Movie Review: The Man

The Man (2005) 

Directed by Les Mayfield 

Written by Jim Piddick, Stephen Carpenter

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Eugene Levy. Miguel Ferrer, Luke Goss, Anthony Mackie 

Release Date September 9th, 2005 

Published September 8th, 2005 

Both Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy have appeared in some very bad movies. Jackson has missed a number of opportunities to establish himself as an above the title star by choosing to star in subpar films like No Good Deed and Formula 51 and worse choices accepting supporting roles in bad movies like Twisted, Deep Blue Sea and Basic. 

Eugene Levy has always been a dependable supporting player but roles in bad movies like Bringing Down The House, New York Minute, and Like Mike have some wishing he would only accept work with his good friend Christopher Guest where Levy really excels. Given the actors' track records teaming them in a buddy comedy did not exactly scream hit movie. The Man is not as bad as some of their previous poor outings but certainly not among either actor's highlights.

In The Man Samuel L. Jackson essays the kind of take-no-crap badass cop, ATF agent Derrick Vann, that has become his own personal cliché. When a cache of guns is stolen and a cop is found dead it's up to Agent Vann to find who did it. In his take-no-prisoners way, Vann quickly gets a bead on the bad guys but he is about to be derailed in a most unexpected way.

Andy Fidlar (Eugene Levy) is a good husband and father who loves his job selling dental supplies. The pinnacle of Andy's career is a speech he is going to give in Detroit in front of hundreds of colleagues. Unfortunately for Andy things do not go as planned as he ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Accidentally intercepting Agent Vann's meeting with the bad guys, Andy now must join Vann to bring down the bad guys but only if Vann can resist the urge to kill the annoying and bumbling Andy.

The plot of The Man is established quickly and efficiently with characters suitably introduced and motivations well understood. Credit director Les Mayfield whose strength is in his quick pacing as he showed in the comedies Blue Streak and Encino Man. At 87 minutes The Man is another example of Mayfield's talent for efficient film-making.

Of course efficiency alone does not a great film make. Mayfield's quick pace has a lot to do with the film's very thin story. The plot is about puddle deep and relies heavily on well-worn clichés and the likability of Jackson and Levy. The script does neither actor many favors. It's a very flimsy premise and writers Jim Piddock, Margeret Oberman and Stephen Carpenter also resort to bathroom humor and light gay bashing. Call it the trifecta of bad screenwriting.

Even in this clichéd story both stars remain appealing. Jackson's taciturn bad-ass is overly familiar but not without its entertaining moments. Levy's chatterbox obliviousness has most of the film's funniest moments, though, like Jackson's cop character, we have seen Levy do this before. The mismatched buddy humor works occasionally in The Man simply because both actors are so talented.

In scenes where Jackson and Levy bond unintentionally thetwo actors show a talent for elevating material that is often well below their respective talents. If The Man has any moments of solid humor it is because both actors work hard to bring life to the material, something they can almost always be depended on for. In the merely functional role of the bad guy little known British actor Luke Goss acquits himself about as well as he can given the dull witted way the character was written. Goss has little to do but exist as a rerun of bad guys past. His role is distinguished only by moments where Goss and Levy trade confused tough guy dialogue. It's only two or three scenes but Goss at least shows up well enough not to be embarrassed.

The same cannot be said of supporting roles for Saturday Night Live's Horatio Sanz, comedian Suzy Essman, and Miguel Ferrer all of whom are stuck with commonplace roles indistinguishable from lame TV tropes of similar characters. The Man is not as bad as many of the horrible films released in 2005 and that is owed entirely to Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy. Even in a bad movie both actors remain entertaining. If both were to fire their agents and focus on finding better material maybe they could work together again in a film worthy of such strong and appealing talents.

Movie Review Freedomland

Freedomland (2006) 

Directed by Joe Roth 

Written by Richard Price 

Starring Samuel L Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, Ron Eldard, Anthony Mackie 

Release Date February 17th, 2006 

Published February 16th, 2006 

In my line of work I see a lot of bad movies. Most are simply innocuous and forgettable. Some are painful but instructive in crafting worst of the year lists. And still some reach a level of awful that seems unachievable in this day and age. A level of awful that only a few, Michael Bay or Uwe Boll or the late great Ed Wood, tread. Joe Roth's Freedomland is one of those, thankfully, rare films. Freedomland is a film that reaches a pantheon of awful next to Armageddon, Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk or Howard The Duck. It's a disaster of ineptitude, hubris, and simpleminded idiocy. Freedomland is a shockingly bad film. 

Samuel L Jackson stars in Freedomland as detective Lorenzo Counsel. Respected in the tiny, mostly African American, community of Dempsey, New Jersey, Lorenzo is the wise arbiter of any dispute and the man everyone turns to in times of trouble. So it is, when a white woman, Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore), from a neighboring white suburb, claims she was carjacked by an anonymous black man from Dempsey, Lorenzo gets the job of investigating the case and keeping the peace.

Unfortunately this is no mere carjacking. According to Brenda her four year old son was asleep in the back of the car. Worse yet, Brenda's brother Danny (Ron Eldard) is a cop from the neighboring district and has begun an all out invasion of Dempsey in search of the kid. Shutting down the neighborhood, Danny and the suburban cops have touched off a potential race riot.

Edie Falco later joins the story as Karen Colucci, the leader of an organization that searches for missing children. Though Brenda is difficult to get through to, Karen finally does convince her to let the group search the area where her son went missing. The search leads to an abandoned children's hospital called Freedomland and a revelation that I'm sure was supposed to shock us but instead draws derisive chuckles.

The film's title and trailer points the focus of the film toward the search scenes, toward the abandoned hospital Freedomland. Various characters along the way deliver horror stories about the hospital, about why it was shut down and a few missing children who have turned up there in the past. Then in a mindblowingly idiotic twist.... NOTHING HAPPENS AT FREEDOMLAND!!!

The stunning idiocy of the crafting of Freedomland is difficult to describe. As rational, intelligent moviegoers we have the fair expectation that filmmakers will adhere to a basic logic. Freedomland director Joe Roth, perhaps in a vain attempt to be unpredictable, throws logic to the wind and instead puts stars Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore into an ever devolving series of brain free conversations that lead to one ludicrous twist after another. 

The one consistently entertaining aspect of Freedomland is the amount of derisive laughter it evokes. The film is grimly serious but because it is so poorly assembled and so mindblowingly, offensively, stupid, one can't help but chuckle at the absurdity. How in this day and age does a movie this bad make it to theaters?

I've rarely asked this question in the past. Films like the misguided hip hop comedy Marci X and the bizarre romantic comedy failure Someone Like You with Ashley Judd inspired the question in the past. Those films however, were comedies and comedy is actually quite easy to be bad at. For thrillers it is a challenge to be this horrendously bad. There are so many fallbacks and cliches a director can employ to turn a thriller from horrendous to merely innocuously bad, like say... Taking Lives with Angelina Jolie or another Ashley Judd failure called Twisted. Both bad thrillers but innocuous and forgettably bad thrillers.

Freedomland is so awful it burrows into your brain and begs to be remembered for its badness. I will refer to Freedomland in the future when citing film making at its lowest points. Part of what makes Freedomland so memorably awful is the cast. Samuel L. Jackson has made bad pictures, in fact he was in Twisted with Ashley Judd, but he has never looked this lost and confused on screen. Poor Julianne Moore hasn't been in anything remotely this horrible since Assassins with Stallone and Banderas. Assasins is Oscar material compared to Freedomland.

Both Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore will survive Freedomland, though it will always darken their resumes, and sadly so will director Joe Roth. The man has already survived after directing Revenge of The Nerds 2 and Christmas With The Kranks so clearly the man has a horseshoe up his ass. At the very least he must have good friends to be able to continue finding work after so many out and out disasters and now the fetid, rancid, shlock that is Freedomland.