Movie Review Just Getting Started

Just Getting Started (2017) 

Directed by Ron Shelton 

Written by Ron Shelton 

Starring Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, Rene Russo, Joe Pantoliano, Glenn Headly 

Release Date December 8th, 2017 

Why does the movie Just Getting Started exist? Having seen this ghastly comedy, I can’t for a moment divine why anyone involved thought making this movie was a good idea. The jokes are creaky and unfunny; the story is past its sell by date and the direction is clumsy, bordering on amateurish? What type of blackmail was required to draw Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones to appear in this film? What kind of blackmail was required to get movie theaters to make space for this movie in the same month in which Star Wars The Last Jedi is being released?

Just Getting Started stars Morgan Freeman as Duke, the manager of a high end retirement home in Palm Springs. Duke is living the high life with numerous elderly girlfriends, a loyal coterie of cronies and a seemingly endless pile of cash that he takes out of the company till. But that isn’t even Duke’s biggest secret. He’s also a former mob lawyer who was installed at the retirement home as a cover for his witness protection.

Duke’s idyllic lie is interrupted by the arrival of Leo (Tommy Lee Jones). Leo moves in to the retirement community and immediately takes the attention of Duke’s lady friends. Then, he takes all of Duke’s ill-gotten cash in Duke’s weekly underground poker game. Leo even takes Duke on the golf course, though to be fair, their showdown was cut short by a cobra hidden in Duke’s bag. It appears that Duke’s secret has been uncovered and someone is trying to kill him and make it look like an accident.

Now you might think from my straightforward description that Leo’s appearance in the retirement community would not be coincidental to Duke’s being found by the mob but you would be wrong. I know, it seems like the perfect set up to perhaps have Jones be the hitman and the two battling wits perhaps? Nope! Or maybe Leo would be an undercover agent sent to infiltrate the home and keep Duke from getting wacked, but nope!

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review: Bad Boys 2

Bad Boys 2 (2003)

Directed by Michael Bay 

Written by Ron Shelton, Jerry Stahl 

Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare, Theresa Randle 

Release Date July 18th, 2003 

Published July 17th, 2003 

Director Michael Bay cut his teeth on innovative music videos and commercials until his 30-seconds-at-a-time style caught the attention of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. In Bay, the producers saw a director who fit perfectly their MTV-style films; movies filled with hit soundtracks, quick edits, pretty girls, and massive explosions. For his part Bay was malleable, without a hint of the headstrong behavior that would take a film's authorship from the high-profile producers. 

The music video style of bay was very evident in his first Bruckheimer/Simpson collaboration, 1994's Bad Boys. Now, a mere nine years later, Bay continues in the same whipsaw, bombastic style that made him Bruckheimer's pet director and makes Bad Boys II yet another Bruckheimer assault on the intelligence of the American film-going public.

That they reteamed Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, the stars from the original Bad Boys, is the end of the praise I can give the makers of Bad Boys II. It is Smith and Lawrence's snappy chemistry that provides the film's only moments of pleasure. However, even the charming sass of the leads can't save this loud, dumb disaster.

Smith and Lawrence are again Miami narcotics cops Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett. Mike is still the player, the dog, the trust fund baby, while Marcus is the hard-working family man forever henpecked by his loving wife Theresa (Theresa Randle; reprising her role from the first film, though only in a cameo). Mike and Marcus are tracking a shipment of ecstasy supposedly being shipped in from Cuba.  We are told that since September 11, 2001, security on the ocean has gotten tighter and the drug dealers are adapting quickly, finding new ways to ship drugs into America. In this case, a Cuban dealer named Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla) is shipping drugs and money inside dead bodies.

Not only are Marcus and Mike after Tapia, so is the DEA, lead by Marcus's sister Sydney (the ungodly hot Gabrielle Union). Mike and Sydney have a little secret they have been keeping from Marcus; they secretly hooked up about a month earlier and the relationship is getting serious. While Sydney goes undercover inside Tapia's organization, Mike and Marcus try to protect her while compiling evidence to arrest Tapia (or, more to the point, find an excuse to shoot him.)

Indeed, in the Bay-Bruckheimer world, cops don't arrest people, they compile enough evidence for a justifiable homicide. The script is clever enough to call attention to the carnage with a running gag about Marcus's being in therapy and no longer wanting to kill people. Smith's hotshot Lowery has no such qualms about violence, taking shoot-first ask-questions-later to new heights; he makes Dirty Harry look like an expert in police procedure. 

Now, I'm not asking for realism, but some level of professionalism isn't out of the question. If police want to get upset about their portrayal in rap music, where is their outrage about their portrayal in Bad Boys II? Here, Cops are portrayed wanton cowboys who leave as much carnage in their wake as the bad guys they collar? Why is that acceptable but portraying cops as abusing their power out of line? It can't possibly be that Cops like being portrayed as Bad Boy cowboys is it? 

At a bloated two hours, 37 minutes, Bad Boys II is an interminable jumble of massive explosions and flying bullets. And while Michael Bay may feel that this is his specialty, being good at it doesn't make it entertaining. As he does in Armageddon, The Rock, and Pearl Harbor, Bay delights in blowin' stuff up good and may in fact have collected more bullets and explosions than ever before in Bad Boys II. Like an overlong Motley Crue video, Bad Boys II whips forward with jump-cut edits, fiery explosions, and busty stripper chicks, including a naked dead girl the guys stop to ogle while searching for evidence. Classy. 

I have a lot of goodwill for Smith and Lawrence and would love to see them work together again, but on a different project. In Bad Boys II, their quick, jokey banter is completely overwhelmed by Bay's over-the-top obsession with pyrotechnics.

Movie Review Hollywood Homicide

Hollywood Homicide (2003) 

Directed by Ron Shelton

Written by Ron Shelton

Starring Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett, Master P, Lena Olin, Bruce Greenwood, Isaiah Washington, Keith David, Dwight Yoakam, Martin Landau

Release Date June 13th, 2003 

Published June 12th, 2003 

Every time I complain about a film’s marketing campaign I get emails asking me why I complain about something that has nothing to do with the film. I politely disagree with that sentiment. A film’s marketing shapes your perception and the movie Hollywood Homicide is an excellent example of my feelings. The ad campaign of the film is accompanied by a rap soundtrack that is not only misleading, it's misguided. That aside, and despite his aging demographic, Ford shows in Hollywood Homicide that he's still got that magical IT quality that makes a superstar.

In Hollywood Homicide Harrison Ford is Joe Gavilan, real estate agent by day, Hollywood homicide cop at night. His young partner is KC Calden (Josh Hartnett), who is also a part-time yoga instructor and wannabe actor. The two are brought in to investigate the murder of an up and coming rap group in a LA nightclub owned by Julius (Master P). In one of the film’s funniest moments, Joe takes time out from the investigation to pitch Julius about a house he has for sale. The murder sets the plot in motion but there is something else going on in this film.

In most cop movies, we would track from the evidence that implies the rap groups record company owner killed them for trying to break their contract. Isaiah Washington fills that vaguely Suge Knightish role. However at some point in the making of Hollywood Homicide, director Ron Shelton forgot about this by-the-numbers plot and fell in love with his quirky characters. Lucky for him, these are great characters and even better actors playing them.

As the murder plot becomes merely a subplot, it's the weird friendship between Ford and Hartnett that takes center stage and the two actors show an excellent chemistry. Ford also has a subplot with the wife of one of his fellow LAPD detectives, who also happens to be working for the bad guys. Lena Olin fills the role of Ford's love interest and brings a mature sexuality to what could have been a throwaway role. There are a couple of strands of plot also working throughout Hollywood Homicide, such as Dwight Yoakam as a dirty former cop working for Isaiah Washington and his connection to the murder of Hartnett's father. Yet again, such plot machinations are merely background for the actors.

The film’s ending is a car wreck, literally and figuratively. The figurative car wreck is the number of unresolved plot points that are simply thrown away or disregarded. Bruce Greenwood in particular gets the short shrift as his character arc is resolved with little notice to the audience as to why or how. Not that it made any difference to the plot but it didn't fit any kind of logic. You can tell a lot of this subplot was left on the cutting room floor. In fact, from the messy narrative that is on display, I would bet the director’s cut must have been just over three hours just to explain the extraneous plot points..

You can speculate for hours as to what happened during the filming of Hollywood Homicide that brought it to it's current state. Despite my praise of the film’s leads and its humor, the film is a real mess from a plot standpoint. One could wonder if the obvious allusions to Suge Knight in Isaiah Washington's character caused that character to be cut back a good deal. You can see many of the cop movie cliches fighting to surface and Shelton seemed to make a very pronounced effort to downplay those cliches. He leaves the film’s big action movie moments until the end of the film and focuses on the films strengths, it's actors and the humor they generate from their interaction.

That doesn't make the film feel any less messy but it makes it far more tolerable than it might have been. -

Movie Review: Dark Blue

Dark Blue (2003) 

Directed by Ron Shelton

Written by David Ayer

Starring Kurt Russell, Ving Rhames, Scott Speedman, Michael Michele, Brendan Gleeson 

Release Date February 21st, 2003

Published February 20th, 2003

The corrupt cop movie has become a genre all it's own and a surprisingly compelling one. Two of the genres most recent entries are Joe Carnahan's Narc and Antoine Fuqua's Training Day, two well-acted and well-written films. However, the genre is also a convenient backdrop for straight to video exploitation films starring Baldwin brothers. So to which extreme does the Kurt Russell-Ron Shelton teaming Dark Blue lean? Sadly a little bit of both.

Set in Los Angeles in 1992, one year after the Rodney King beating and just four days before the acquittal of the four officers involved in the beating, Dark Blue stars Russell as LAPD detective Elden Perry. A member of LA's feared S.I.S unit, Perry and his young partner Bobby Keogh (Felicity's Scott Speedman) have a “play by their own rules” style that flies in the face of legality but does get things done.

As we join the story, Keough is in front of an investigative board to determine whether his use of deadly force in a recent bust was justified. The investigators seem to be willing to accept that the shooting was justified, all of them accept Deputy Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) who has been suspicious of S.I.S tactics for a very long time. As we soon find out the shooting wasn't clean and Keough wasn't the one who actually pulled the trigger. Indeed, it's questionable whether the guy they shot was even the right criminal.

The S.I.S is headed up by a corrupt lifetime cop Jack Van Meter (Brenden Gleeson), who served with Elden's father and taught Perry the tactics of planting evidence and closing cases regardless of the evidence.

The ambitious Arthur Holland sees the S.I.S for the criminals they are but also as an opportunity. Take down the S.I.S, clean up the department’s most corrupt cops and make a run at becoming LA's first black police chief. With the help of his assistant, SGT. Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), Holland begins an investigation into the S.I.S and Williamson discovers that the cop she has been dating anonymously is Bobby Keough.

The odd thing about Dark Blue is how little screentime Ving Rhames actually has. The films ad campaign plays up the rivalry between Rhames' and Russell's characters. However, most of that war is off screen and what we see more often is the interaction between Russell and Scott Speedman as they investigate a crime they have been instructed not to solve.

The film is based on a story by James Ellroy, best known for LA Confidential. Dark Blue was actually written with the Watts riots of the 1960's as the backdrop. The time shift from then to the 90's and the LA riots touched off by the Rodney King verdict doesn't hurt the story. In addition, the 1992 riots are a good touchstone for modern audiences who still haven't forgotten the riots themselves even if not much was learned from their brutality.

A lot has been made of Russell's performance, which some have said is the best of his career. I disagree. I found Russell's performance to be mostly on the surface. He is the anti-hero, at first he is a bad guy because he plants evidence and believes that cops who beat Rodney King were right to have done it. But he is also conflicted about his work and drinks heavily to cover his emotions. Whether he gets the right bad guy or not, he always busts criminals. Still, Russell never seems to believe the things he says or does. I'm sure the character is supposed to believe them but Russell's laid-back line delivery betrays that.

As for Scott Speedman, there is a reason why his character has little face-time in the film’s marketing. It’s because in every scene he communicates how over-matched he is by the material. Russell and Michael Michele do what they can to carry Speedman but his performance never comes together. Ving Rhames,  meanwhile, really gets abused in Dark Blue. He gets star billing and little screen time. The screen time he does get is mostly silent brooding and pious speechifying. This amazing powerful actor deserves far better than this underused and underwritten character.

Dark Blue isn't a bad film and indeed once it begins dramatizing the beginning of the LA riots, it takes on a visceral excitement that puts the film’s many problems in the background if only momentarily. It's only moments later that we get to Russell's big scene where he gives a rather long-winded speech as the city burns to the ground.

Director Ron Shelton is a technician who knows how to frame the film’s action. Problem is, the script spends too much time painting its characters motivations and not enough time dealing with it's politics about race and corruption in the LAPD. That is the story the film wants to tell but disregards in favor of a more action-centered plot involving a pair of criminals bankrolled by Gleeson's corrupt cop.

There is a film to be made about the racial politics of the LAPD leading from the Rodney King case to the LA riots but Dark Blue is not that film.

Movie Review Tin Cup

Tin Cup (1996) 

Directed by Ron Shelton 

Written by John Norville 

Starring Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson 

Release Date August 16th, 1996

Published August 15th, 2016

The game of golf is mysterious; it honors neither will nor skill. The game affords license to the talented but even talent will on occasion be humbled by the gods of the game, Mother Nature and Lady Luck. A squirrel runs across a perfectly good lie leaving a small dent and fates are changed forever. That is golf that is life.

Such a perfect thing as well struck golf shot 

For Roy McAvoy it’s not the gods or the squirrels, though he is a little nuts, rather it’s all in his head. Roy has the talent; he has in the past had favor of the gods but he simply cannot get out of his own way. Once when attempting to qualify for the PGA Tour he went for a seemingly impossible shot, missed, tried again and eventually cost himself a tour card. 

That was decades ago. Today, Roy or ‘Tin Cup’ to his friends, is a small time golf instructor at a beyond run down East Texas driving range marked by a sign announcing ‘Last chance to hit golf balls for 540 miles.’ That anyone has ever stopped at this establishment where Roy and his menagerie of friends bide their time betting on which bug will die first in the bug zapper, seems unlikely.

Waggle it 

Then, in walks a very beautiful woman. Her name is Dr. Molly Griswold and she is the new shrink in town and for some reason she wants golf lessons. Rene Russo plays Molly and her discomfort with comedy is evident in her stilted delivery and inability to punch a punch line, something about a saddle.

Despite the struggle, she and we, through her, meet the real Tin Cup, Kevin Costner’s unendingly charming, slightly drunken rogue. Irresistible to women and admired by men who can’t quite figure out why they admire him; this is the Kevin Costner of “Bull Durham,” of “Field of Dreams” and in moments from later films like “For Love of the Game” and “The Upside of Anger.”

Like a tuning fork in your heart  

That ridiculous grin, that floppy, fading hairline and the fact that he’s rarely seen the inside of a gym are just some of the reasons that Kevin Costner became an icon, an actor who will be forever marked in the memory of film fans. Before he gave up everything in favor of an inflated ego and the notion of being a respected ‘artist,’ Kevin Costner was an everyman who loved having a good time and inviting audiences to join him.

No director understood that side of Kevin Costner quite as well as “Tin Cup” director Ron Shelton. It was Shelton’s “Bull Durham” that delivered Costner to stardom in “Bull Durham” and in “Tin Cup” nearly rescued Costner from the excesses of his artistic tripe. Sadly, only flashes of that Costner remain while Shelton himself struggled to find other stars that could enliven his work in the way Costner had.

“Tin Cup” is a movie about a golfer but it’s also a time capsule of a movie moment, one when an actor and a director came together in an absolute understanding of how to entertain an audience. The cohesiveness of Shelton and Costner’s effort is evident in each wonderful scene of “Tin Cup” as Costner strides through Shelton’s scene setting in perfect pitch, striking each line and hitting each lopsided punch line not unlike a well struck tee shot.

The Shanks

Drawing out the metaphor to its farthest reaches, Kevin Costner is “Tin Cup.” Hindsight forces the film critic in me to see that as Roy chooses to pass on the chance to win the US Open in favor of trying to land one difficult shot that repeatedly eluded him that Costner’s “Waterworld” was one of those shots that landed short of the green. So were “The Postman” and “Message” in a Bottle attempts at greatness that courted failure and failed.

Thankfully, there is “Tin Cup” which, unknown to Costner in 1996 as he was making it, was that one perfectly struck shot that you feel in your loins that lands on the green, earning the roar of the crowd. As Roy says “You define the moment or the moment defines you.” For a moment, Kevin Costner was defined by Tin Cup and it was glorious. Today, he is defined in so many other ways, far less glorious. Such is the heroic quest for that one perfect shot.

Greatness courts failure Romeo

When people talk about golf and movies they think of “Caddyshack.” Nothing could ever take away from the comic genius of Caddyshack but, as golf movies go, for me and a growing cult, “Tin Cup” is the ultimate golf movie. Roy ‘Tin Cup’ McAvoy is both a guy all of us know and a representation of something in ourselves; that always striving, often failing part that takes comfort in the little things like a drink, good friends and a good woman. 

It’s golf season again and “Tin Cup” is out there on each and every course seeking the greatness in a single shot when par would have been good enough. Such is life.