Movie Review The Commuter

The Commuter (2018) 

Directed by Jaume Collet Serra 

Written by Byron Willinger, Phillip de Blasi, Ryan Engle

Starring Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neil

Release Date January 12th, 2018

The Commuter is yet another desperately silly effort from Liam Neeson. Once again teaming with director Jaume Collet Serra, Neeson is once again playing an action hero in a desperate situation in which life and death hang in the balance. At this point, a trip to the grocery store could be the premise for a Neeson action hero; it’s not as if he needs anything more than a place, a gun and an elaborate idiot plot for his Mad Libs take on the action genre.

In The Commuter, Liam Neeson stars as Michael, an Insurance Agent and former cop who takes the train to the city every day. Michael’s life is changed forever when he loses his job and on his commuter train home he is approached by an odd but attractive woman named Joanna (Vera Farmiga) who makes a unique proposition. Joanna wants Michael to use his knowledge of the regular riders on the train to find the one person who doesn’t belong.

This person is carrying a bag and Michael is to tag the bag with a GPS tracker. In exchange for doing this, Michael will receive $25,000 waiting for him hidden on the train and another $75,000 after he gets the job done. Michael is dubious until he finds the initial payment and decides to do the job. Naturally, nothing is as it appears. When Michael tries to back out of the deal he gets a message that his family is in danger and he is forced to continue.

I mentioned Mad Libs earlier and admittedly that is a shallow and glib interpretation. That said, we’ve seen Liam Neeson play a very similar character as this one only on a plane in Non-Stop. In that film, Neeson played an innocent man who was being framed for taking over a plane. Here, Neeson’s Michael is being framed for taking over a commuter train so as glib as the Mad Libs comparison is, it’s not exactly off-base.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Origin

Origin (2024) 

Directed by Ava Duvernay

Written by Ava Duvernay

Starring Anjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Isha Blaaker

Release Date January 25th, 2024 

Published January 25th, 2024 

Origin is a big project. Adapting a non-fiction story tracking the origin of racial discrimination via the history of the caste system worldwide, is not an easy task. It's a roiling beast of a project that director Ava Duvernay is perhaps the only filmmaker could attempt to tame and tease into a familiar film drama. The book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, a bestseller for writer Isabel Wilkerson, is a deeply academic, research heavy effort that is far from the most natural book to be turned into a dramatic feature film. Director Ava Duvernay had to give a dramatic shape to the story and she found that shape in the author's life story. 

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars in Origin as Isabel Wilkerson, an author struggling with the idea for her next book. She wants to chart the origin of racism in America but her research slowly takes her in a new direction. What she finds is that racism isn't as simple as white people hating black people, though that is a big part of it. Rather, the true roots of racism are often economic in nature. The need for a class of people who exist to do the work that others don't wish to do leads to the owning class to create a caste system in which particular members of a culture are chosen to be that class of people who will perform tasks. 

Leaders in these cultures quickly realized that they could create the workers they needed by exploiting racial and religious differences. Demonizing people for the color of their skin or by the difference in their religious beliefs proved to be an effective way to find a cheap, pliable workforce, groups of people who have no option but to accept poor treatment, low wages, and terrible working conditions, just for the chance to survive. Thus, confronting racial differences required more than overcoming a specific prejudice based on color, it requires dismantling economic systems that have been constructed over hundreds of years that thrived off of this forced labor based on discrimination. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Captive State

Captive State (2019) 

Directed by Rupert Wyatt 

Written by Erica Beeney, Rupert Wyatt 

Starring John Goodman, Ashton Sanders, Jonathan Majors, Colson Baker, Vera Farmiga

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 15th, 2019 

Rupert Wyatt is a pretty terrific director. His Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an exceptional sequel in a series that was pretty heavy with greatness. Wyatt’s talent for colorful characters and kinetic action set-pieces served him well on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and he brings a similar talent to the new sci-fi action flick Captive State. Unfortunately, for all the good that Wyatt brings to Captive State, the film lacks an essential something, a star quality that could have raised it above the nature of television drama fare.

Captive State stars Ashton Sanders as Gabriel. As a child, Gabriel lost his father and sister to a group of attacking aliens that will come to be referred to as ‘Roaches’ for their bug-like appearance. Gabriel’s brother, Rafe (Jonathan Majors), grew up to be a freedom fighter. While most of the rest of the world gave up hope and began serving the roaches, Gabriel and a small cabal of activists began fighting back.

It’s been five years, as we join the story of Captive State, since Gabriel last saw his brother. He assumes the worst but holds a flicker of hope. In his own little way, Gabriel is rebelling against the system. He and a friend have a plan to get out of their Chicago neighborhood and hopefully out from under the ‘Legislators’ as some have come to call the roaches and the humans who work for them and benefit from their betrayal with wealth and privilege.

The plan involves playing courier to a message, a phone number that he must sneak out of his job where he searches and destroys cell phone memory cards. The phone number is a lovely little creative device as it is written inside a rolled cigarette and we watch it sit precariously behind Gabriel’s ear as he witnesses someone in a similar situation get nabbed and taken away by the police. This sequence is a testament to the talent of director Wyatt and his editor, Andrew Groves, who build a strong, gradual tension even as we know its too early for our hero to falter.

The phone number bit almost coincidentally leads Gabriel to his brother. Rafe has been hiding out in their former apartment in a part of Chicago that had been almost completely decimated years earlier when the roaches sent hunters in to level the place while searching for Rafe and his crew of terrorists. This only hardened Rafe’s desire to battle back and try to light the match that he hopes will spark a revolution.

You may be wondering where John Goodman figures into all of this. He does, of course, feature prominently in the marketing of Captive State as the only recognizable actor in the movie, aside from a bit part played by Vera Farmiga. Goodman plays a police detective who believes that Gabriel may be the key to preventing another attack by Rafe and his freedom fighters. Goodman’s Detective Mulligan is a super smart character whose motives are well shrouded. I especially loved his brief interactions with Farmiga which carry both a ruefulness and mistrust and a genuine tenderness that informs all that eventually happens in the third act.

Again, Rupert Wyatt is a smart director and because of his clever choices and solid artistry, I kind of enjoy Captive State. Unfortunately, the rest of the film’s cast is where the movie struggles to the point that I struggle to recommend it to you, dear reader. Let me preface this that I believe Ashton Sanders is a fine actor. He does the best that he can but as a relative newcomer he is limited and what he lacks is the heft of recognition. You don’t know who Ashton Sanders is and by extension, Gabriel remains something of an unknown.

This problem extends to Jonathan Majors as Rafe. For a time, we are taken from Gabriel who becomes trapped by some alien force for a time and sidelined from the plot. With Majors are four other actors whose names I struggle to even identify on IMDB. None of these people are bad actors but they are about as recognizable as strangers in a crowd. We are supposed to invest in these characters as they plot a major attack on the legislators but I struggled to keep an eye on them and remember who they were.

I know this won’t be popular to say, but these roles needed more than merely competent actors. If these characters are going to be this important to the plot, they need to be played by people who carry some form of recognition with the audience. They need to be played by, for lack of a better descriptor: stars. These actors are competent but not one of them has the charisma of a star. I don’t mean box office attractions, I mean that ineffable quality, that charisma that sets some actors apart from others.

Actor Ben Mendelsohn is a frequent topic of discussion between myself and my friends. I have made fun of the fact that he is not a household name. I’m not wrong about that. But, what Mendelsohn has in spades is that ineffable quality; he stands out in a crowd. The camera doesn’t search for him, it’s attracted to him. Mendelsohn, like great character actors before him such as J.T Walsh or the great Harry Dean Stanton or Ned Beatty, has a charisma that helps him stand apart from any crowd they are in.

Sadly, Jonathan Majors, Madeline Brewer, Marc Grapey, even the slightly more recognizable Kevin J. O’Connor, lack that charisma. This is not to say they won’t ever develop that recognition level, they are already quite capable performers. Unfortunately, a movie that relies so heavily on us being able to keep track of these characters needs actors who draw our eye and our sympathy based almost entirely on our innate attraction to them.

There are simply so many characters to track through Captive State that when things begin to happen at a breakneck pace it’s very easy to get lost in the crowd and our emotional connection to these faces we only barely remember is limited. If one of these characters were played by Walton Goggins or a Margo Martindale or a Kal Penn, we might find it easier to get and stay invested in them and their fate.

I know some are saying that either this should not matter or that the actors in this movie aren’t good enough but I don’t think that is the case. I think these actors are fine, and even the direction is quite good at trying to help us stay with these actors but we don’t have that deeper recognition that comes from an actor or actress we remember. This plot would resonate more if we had a deeper connection to these minor yet important characters. Movie stars matter when you are trying to connect your audience to your characters.

This isn’t the only thing that holds back Captive State but it is the most trying element for me. The film grows a tad convoluted in the final act and the ending has a particular predictability to it but I could have got behind it if I were more invested in the supporting cast. That extends to our ostensible star, Ashton Sanders. As handsome and capable as he is, he’s not yet a movie star. He’s not ready to carry the burden of being the central figure in a major movie.

Some movies do benefit from a less than showy cast. Steven Soderbergh loves working with amateur casts and has made amazing movies with first time actors in unusual roles. His film Bubble is a minor classic that has no movie stars. Captive State however, is basically a big budget sci-fi movie on a shoestring budget. With a plot this big and a story this expansive, we need the grounding of a recognizable face. In this way, Captive State comes up just a little short of something I can fully recommend. 

Movie Review The Front Runner

The Front Runner (2018)

Directed by Jason Reitman 

Written by Matt Bai, Jason Reitman, Jay Carson

Starring Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K Simmons, Alfred Molina 

Release Date November 6th, 2018

Published November 4th, 2018

My mother, Sue, loved Gary Hart. As a lifelong Democrat she saw in Hart not just another handsome politician, but the first real heir to the President she’d grown up idealizing, the late John F. Kennedy. I was only 11 years old in 1987 but my mom made sure I knew who Gary Hart was and why he was so important to her. In her opinion, he was going to be the next President of the United States. 

Obviously, we know that did not happen but what did happen? To Gary Hart, I mean, not the race for the Presidency in 1988, we know that then Vice President George H.W Bush trounced the overmatched Mike Dukakis. But, what happened to Gary Hart? Why did his promise flicker out so quickly? Why did the man who appeared destined to be the next President of the United State at one moment become a massive punchline and cautionary tale in the span of weeks? 

The new movie, The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman, and directed by Juno director Jason Reitman, aims, if not to answer the question of what happened, to at least place a context and a frame on what we believe happened. It’s a story about a sea change in the world of journalism and politics, the end of the buddy-buddy bedfellows of Washington D.C and the beginning of a rampant decline in our political discourse that remains to this very day. 

The story begins in 1984 when Gary Hart first attempted to run for President. Hart, a relative newcomer and young lion at just 44 years old gave the establishment Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale, a pretty good scare, all the way to the Democratic convention where he was finally forced to concede to the former Vice President. Mondale would go on to the worst electoral beating in American history while Hart remained the biggest young star in his party. 

Cut to 1988, Gary Hart is back in the Presidential race. He’s announcing his candidacy and while his staff is struggling to keep up with his Western values, including a candidate announcement at Red Rocks in Colorado, well outside the political and media mainstream, Hart was dynamically bursting into the Presidential race as a front runner. Immediately after the announcement of his candidacy, polls placed the Colorado Senator as a frontrunner not merely for the Democratic nomination, he was up double digit numbers over VP Bush for the general election. 

It was, in 1987, beginning to feel like an inevitability that Gary Hart was going to be President of the United States. Inside the campaign however, cracks were showing relatively early, earlier than anyone outside Hart’s inner circle were aware. The cracks were showing in how candidate Hart and Senator Hart felt about questions related to his family and rumors of infidelity. Hart bristled at any talk of family or personal profiles, even sitting for photos with his wife appeared to be sticking points for Gary Hart. 

Eventually, with a remarkably entertaining and engaging setup, we arrive at the meat of The Front Runner. In May of 1987 with things going swimmingly on the policy side of things, Gary Hart accepted an invitation for a boat ride in Florida with an old friend and lobbyist named Billy Broadhurst (Toby Huss) and a few invited guests, including a beautiful model that Hart had met before by the name of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton). 

Rice and Hart spent time together socializing and perhaps flirting on the boat, photos were taken but nothing initially came from the boat trip to Bimini. Things actually kicked into gear when one of Rice’s friends tipped off a Miami Herald reporter named Tom Fiedler (Steve Zissis) that a woman was headed to D.C to meet Hart. Fiedler, along with another reporter played by comedian Bill Burr, ends up staking out Hart’s Washington D.C townhouse on a weekend when Donna Rice comes for a visit. 

It’s here where the most important moment in The Front Runner unfolds in a fashion that is riveting and memorable. Hart figures out that someone is stalking him out and assumes it is Republican operatives. He is genuinely confused to find Tom Fiedler, a reporter who had been on his campaign bus, now hiding in his bushes. Hart confronts the reporters who stand their ground, asks where Donna Rice is, asks if she’s staying at his townhouse and thus ends the era of the press and politician glad-handing. 

In one fell swoop the personal lives of Presidential candidates, the rumors, the gossip and the private peccadillos suddenly became front page headlines. Here, director Jason Reitman rather brilliantly lays out the moment. In a scene set inside the offices of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee (Alfred Molina) relays a story about Lyndon Johnson warning the press to give his private life the same wide-birth they’d given to Kennedy or they would witness a parade of women who were not Lady Bird Johnson, leaving the White House. 

The press in D.C and the politicians used to have an understanding. They would drink and commiserate and members of the Congress would happily trade stories off the record with friendly reporters who would use the background for news stories. Politicians would look the other way when reporters took pieces of conversations and stretched them into stories as long as it was political and not personal. 

This ended for good with the Gary Hart scandal. No longer would the press abide by the gentleman’s agreement regarding sex and infidelity. With the rise of the religious right and the growing political power of the church in America, suddenly the issue of character and morality became buzzwords and political litmus tests. Candidates suddenly had to be open about religion, their marriage and their families. 

Was this a genuine change? It’s hard to say. Had Gary Hart not been the front runner in question would these questions have come up? It’s clear the Republican Party saw a weak spot in Hart’s campaign when it came to women and with him being so presumptive a leader, it made sense that making character and morality into political issues was a smart and effective tactic against a Senator with a strong political resume. 

However, the film makes a strong point that this sea change was coming with or without Gary Hart. Ari Graynor plays a reporter for the Washington Post and while her part is quite small she does make one of the most important #MeToo points in the movie when she says that Gary Hart is a man with power and opportunity and that takes a certain responsibility. “If he were just some day trader, screwing around with cocktail girls, I could handle just not liking him. But, as our potential next President, that makes me nervous.” 

She’s talking about Hart but she could be talking about Bill Clinton or even President Trump given their very public proclivities. It’s a strong moment and it leads to another remarkable scene where Hart is confronted with his behavior by a reporter and backed into a corner of his own making. The movie is quite fair and doesn’t let Hart off the hook just because journalists have begun crossing lines between gossip and journalism. 

The Front Runner is a superb film filled with tremendous drama and excitement and a lead performance by Hugh Jackman that captures Gary Hart in a way that feels authentic. Jackman perfectly captures the duality of Hart and the times he lived in. A man of the 60’s and 70’s where the loose morality was a given among the boys club of politics and the highly intelligent and thoughtful communicator who, despite his dalliances, may have perhaps made a great leader or have been just one scandal from a downfall at all times. 

The Front Runner offers a tantalizing what if story that is fair to all sides. Did journalists cross boundaries? Yes, they did. Were politicians including Gary Hart making character arguments while sleeping around on their wives? Yes they were. Does a candidate's infidelity demonstrate a lack of character? Yes, as does lying about it but does cheating make someone bad at being a leader or even a President? That last question is one that The Front Runner beautifully lays on us with no clear answer. 

Movie Review Source Code

Source Code (2011) 

Directed by Duncan Jones

Written by Ben Ripley

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright, Vera Farmiga

Release Date April 20th, 2011

Published April 19th, 2011

The less you know going into "Source Code," the more you will enjoy it. "Source Code" is an ingenious sci-fi thriller that delivers surprises that seem nearly impossible in the age of the spoiler alert. Directed by Duncan Jones and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan, "Source Code" is an early candidate for year end best of lists.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a Chicago commuter train disoriented and very confused. The woman in the seat across from him, Christina (Michele Monaghan) looks at him as if she knows who he is but she calls him by a different name. None of the other passengers seem familiar. Finally, when he gets to the mirror in the bathroom he finds a face he does not recognize.

Then, the train explodes and Colter is fired to another reality. Now, he is strapped to a seat inside some kind of pod. Over an unseen intercom a woman's voice begins quizzing him about what he had seen on the train. Slowly, Colter begins to recognize the commands he is being given.

There has been a terrorist attack on a Chicago commuter train and 100 people on board are dead. It is Colter's mission to go back to that train before the bomb goes off and find and identify the bomber and report back to the voice on the intercom, Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and her boss Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright.)

To tell you more than that, the very basic description of the opening minutes of "Source Code" threatens to rob you of the joys of this terrifically crafted sci-fi thriller. "Source Code" is about plot, it's about confusion and it's about shocking clarifications. Director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley unfold the plot of "Source Code" with the clever twistiness of a young M.Night Shyamalan.

Source Code is a time travel movie and the time travel aspect is a lot of fun. Duncan Jones and his team create their own time travel rules and employ those rules to create nail biting suspense. We and Jake Gyllenhaal's Colter know what the rules are but most of the other characters don't and that creates a terrific tension as the everyday people Colter is trying to rescue become his accidental antagonists. 

Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright commit completely to the notions of "Source Code" and their investment in the plot and in their individual characters sells all of the pseudo science as a believable plot. Either you buy what these actors are selling or you don't. I bought it and I loved "Source Code."

The crafty plotting and terrific cast of "Source Code" create a thrilling and fun movie going experience. Do not let anyone spoil the plot for you and you may love "Source Code" even more than I did and I had far too many clues going in and still was blown away. "Source Code" is an excellent movie.

Movie Review The Departed

The Departed (2006) 

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by William Monahan

Starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin

Release Date October 6th, 2006

Published October 5th, 2006

I know that when you hear some critic say that such and such movie is the best movie of the year you must roll your eyes a little bit. Take it with a grain of salt and what not. But I am telling you honestly that thus far in 2006 I have yet to see a film as accomplished, entertaining, shocking and moving as The Departed, the latest from the brilliant mind of director Martin Scorsese.

A remake of the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs, The Departed is no simple retelling of someone else's story. Scorsese takes the sketch of Infernal Affairs and makes the story his own, shifting the action to South Boston -surprisingly not his home turf in New York City- and casting a large group of well respected actors, The Departed separates itself from its inspiration, and becomes pure Scorsese.

In a snaky two pronged plot Leonardo DiCaprio stars in The Departed as Billy Costigan a Boston native with ties to the tough crime ridden streets of south Boston and the upscale side of town as well. This dichotomy has led Billy to the state police academy where his background comes to the attention of the undercover unit headed up by Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his right hand man Sgt. Dignum (Mark Wahlberg).

Costigan is perfect for the undercover unit's needs because his father and uncle were well known in the south Boston neighborhood where mobster Frank Costello runs things. With his lineage people in the neighborhood would have an easy time believing him as a criminal freshly released from prison looking to find an in with Costello's crew. The assignment still however, requires Costigan to spend three months behind bars, deep undercover, in order to sell the story.

Costigan's job is to get in close with Costello, catch him with some big criminal enterprise and help put him away. Not an easy task however, given Costello's crafty paranoia and a mole in the police department that keeps Costello a step ahead of the cops. Luckily for Costigan, Queenan works apart from the rest of the department, thus his identity remains a mystery to the mole.

The corrupt cop inside the department is a fast rising, ambitious south Boston kid named Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). Colin was raised under the wing of Frank Costello and bred to become a cop specifically to help out Costello sometime in the future. When Costello suspects there is a cop in his crew he turns to Sullivan to find him.

Working from a very smart script by William Monahan, Martin Scorsese crafts a gut wrenchingly violent thriller that twists and turns in cat and mouse fashion and keeps audiences on the edge of their seat before devastating them with stunning violence. This is some of the smartest and most violent work of Scorsese's career and never before has he kept his audience more off their guard.

Leonardo DiCaprio keeps getting better and better as he grows further away from the teen idol persona that was thrust upon him even before Titanic. DiCaprio and Scorsese work so well together with Scorsese bringing out Dicaprio's masculinity and DiCaprio bringing vulnerability to Scorsese's tough guy world. It's a perfect match in The Departed where DiCaprio perfectly balances the conflicting bravado and fear of an undercover officer in the midst of a highly volatile situation.

Being a native of Boston Matt Damon brings an authentic accent to his role but it is his darting eyes and cutthroat wits that make Colin the complicated, cold blooded, center of The Departed. Damon is ice cold, reminiscent of his serial killer in The Talented Mr. Ripley. The characters are both ambitious and eager to please on the surface, hiding a dark side capable of just about anything.

For popcorn entertainment in The Departed it's all about Jack. Jack Nicholson's charismatic wacko mobster is outsized and yet believable. The ruthless, hard edge, nature of Frank Costello matched with the wildly charming Nicholson persona is both horrifying and fascinating. Combining elements of his own well crafted persona with elements of his wildly diverse characters of the past, Nicholson plays Costello as part Cuckoo's nest, part Shining and part L.A Lakers courtside peacock. It's a wonderful and terrifying performance.

The most entertaining thing about The Departed however, is watching Scorsese return to the genre that he made great, the gritty from the streets thriller. While I loved both Gangs of New York and The Aviator for their grand ambition and exulting scale, both are at times desperate and cloying. You can see where Scorsese got the reputation for courting the academy with these pictures. Having Bob and Harvey Weinstein produce both pictures only exacerbated the issue.

There is nothing desperate or cloying in The Departed. This is Scorsese telling a story with smarts and guts. Spilling blood, firing bullets and crafting tough guy characters that we haven't seen since the last time Scorsese hit the streets with his iconic gangster flick Goodfellas. If Scorsese never made another picture The Departed would be the perfect film to truly capture his legacy, a smart, tough, rough-hewn gangster epic.

The Departed is unquestionably the best film of 2006. Scorsese finally stepping out from under the influence of the awards greedy Weinstein clan, returns to his roots for a story he truly knows how to tell. A potboiler from the streets, with great dialogue and extraordinary violence. This is Scorsese's milieu, his home turf, and he takes full advantage in The Departed.

This is an absolute must see picture.

Movie Review Running Scared

Running Scared (2006) 

Directed by Wayne Kramer 

Written Wayne Kramer

Starring Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Michael Cudlitz

Release Date February 24th, 2006

Published February 24th, 2006 

Violence for the sake of violence is not necessarily a hallmark of the thriller genre, unless you're Quentin Tarentino. The thriller Running Scared shows why most thrillers begin with a plot and then introduce only the violence necessary to tell the story. Overwhelmed by its blood, guts and body count, Running Scared devolves quickly from a fast paced, Tony Scott inspired thriller into a nonsensical horror film.

Making matters worse is the fact that the film was directed by the terrific young auteur Wayne Kramer who made such a great splash with his debut feature The Cooler. Running Scared is a major step backward for a director with more talent than what this film demonstrates.

Paul Walker stars as Joey Gazelle, a low level mobster with the simple task of getting rid of dirty guns. After a drug deal goes bad and Joey's boss (Johnny Messner) kills a dirty cop, it's up to Joey to get rid of the piece, a pearl handled snub nosed revolver. Joey however has another idea. In covering his own backside he has been taking the hot guns he was supposed to be disposing of and hiding them in his basement in case he needs them for leverage.

Things go bad for Joey when one of his son's friends, Oleg (Cameron Bright) takes the pearl handle gun from his stash and uses it to try and kill his abusive father (John Noble). The kid fails to kill his dad, who also happens to have mob connections, and is now on the streets with the hot piece. Joey must find the kid and retrieve the gun before his partners or the cops find it first.

The plot to Running Scared is a correlative to Robert Altman's brilliant but short lived anthology series Gun which aired briefly on ABC in the mid-nineties. That show followed the path of a gun from one owner to the next and detailed the havoc wreaked in its wake. In the case of the gun in Running Scared it's the lives of mobsters, dirty cops, gang bangers and one small child.

Where Gun was a brilliant verbose little drama, Running Scared is a brutally violent and utterly meaningless mess of a film. Director Wayne Kramer, who made the far more interesting film The Cooler with William H. Macy, directs Running Scared as if he wished he had made a horror film instead of a gritty thriller. Amping up the body count to cover up his lack of a compelling plot, Kramer is forced to rely on his sleepy eyed star to provide the film's driving force and oh what a mistake that is.

Paul Walker with his slacker, frat boy, surfer demeanor is an actor I find insufferable. Though he was not bad in the doggy adventure flick Eight Below he was out acted by a group of huskies. He was okay in the Fast and Furious films but those movies aren't exactly challenging cinema. Running Scared wants to be something a little more than a cheap violent thriller but because Walker's only emotions are confused and sleepy the film falls short of exciting or even playful.

Kramer's love of over the top violence and seeing my sexuality are not merely reminiscent of Tony Scott they are, in Running Scared, an outright ripoff. The whip pan camera work and overlapping film stocks are direct lifts from Scott's last two features Domino and Man On Fire. The ridiculous violence and high body count a nod to Scott's True Romance.

The only originality to seep into this dark, dystopian thriller is a hockey torture scene that has received heavy rotation in the films ad campaign. The look of the scene is clever and the torture is something I had never seen before. The scene is bloody and a bit of a nail biter. Unfortunately this good scene is rare amidst the misguided plot.

Running Scared is a bizarre little film. Violent to the point of parody, the film could qualify as a horror flick for the amount of blood and guts that get spilled but it's all in service of nothing. There is nothing you can take away from the film. This film's many influences, Tony Scott and Quentin Tarentino among others, are each far superior. While Scott's last two films, Domino and Man On Fire were not great films, Scott's direction is amped and always in service of a compelling if flawed plot.

Tarentino is, of course, the master of screen violence. Kill Bill 1 & 2 are the only films outside the horror film genre that can favorably compare body counts with Running Scared. The difference is the violence in Tarentino's masterpieces plays like a blood and guts symphony. Each bullet fired, each slice of a samurai blade a note in a grand opera of eloquent violence. In Running Scared the violence is simply for the sake of being violent. The style of the film, the grit, the color scheme and the whip pans, are merely showing off and never part of a coherent vision of how to present screen violence.

Violence for violence sake is okay in the horror genre, but it gets old quickly in the thriller or noir genre if it is not clearly in service of a good plot. The plot to Running Scared is simply not compelling enough to justify the blood, guts and body count. Pure viscerality can only get a movie so far before you need to give the audience something to really chew on.

Running Scared is a step backward for a director who showed eclectic style in his debut feature. Wayne Kramer's The Cooler was a hard R-rated character piece with an excellent cast that was directed with a purpose. The violence and sexuality of The Cooler worked with its compelling characters and unique plot not against them. There was simply more to that film than the action and flesh displayed.

Running Scared never stops moving which works for maybe 45 minutes but without great characters and not much of a plot the wheels eventually come off and the film flies off the rails.

Movie Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air (2009) 

Directed by Jason Reitman 

Written by Jason Reitman 

Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Danny McBride 

Release Date December 4th, 2009 

Published December 3rd, 2009 

It's a horrifying idea but I am told it is real. Companies actually do hire people to fire employees for them. It's bad enough losing your job but to have the people you have given your hard work and dedication to for however many years hand you off to someone else for the worst moment of your career is a disgusting thought. It's just the kind of cowardly and dehumanizing effect of modern capitalism that turns my stomach. 

George Clooney gives life to one of these workplace specters of career death in a snappy suit, a  and a pamphlet for a sickle. He's the villain of this story in many ways but by drilling down on this character, we don't find a villain but a lonely, sad result of what soulless capitalist pursuits can do to a human soul. George Clooney delivers the best performance of his career under the direction of Jason Reitman in Up in the Air. 

In “Up in the Air” George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who takes pride in spending some 330 days of the year traveling. He has a semblance of a home, a tidy bachelor hovel in Omaha, near the corporate headquarters of the company he works for but rarely sees. It is Ryan's job to fly into cities across the country, visit some no name corporate outlet and do the boss's dirty work - firing people. He and the company have some cruel euphemism for firing but it's a firing and it's as ugly as you imagine. 

Ryan is very good at his job, occasionally he's actually soothing which, given the circumstance, is rather impressive. Ryan doesn't love his job, though when asked to he can romanticize and defend it. What he truly loves is the travel which allows him the comfort he's never found at home. In passing relations with fellow travelers and the faux kindness of the service industry professionals he encounters Ryan finds the kinds of relationship he's never achieved with just one person. Simple relationships unencumbered by emotion or instability.

Naturally, all of Ryan's notions are soon challenged. The first challenge is personal as, while on a layover in some airline lounge, he strikes up a conversation with Alex (Vera Farmiga) over her choice of Blackberry. The conversation soon turns to travel, rental cars, hotel upgrades and all of the things both truly cherish. He tells her he has a goal for airline miles but refuses to tell her what it is. That, for Ryan, is too personal.

The second challenge is professional and arrives in the form of Natalie (Anna Kendrick), an up-and-comer from the home office in Omaha who has a plan that will take Ryan off the road and strand him in Nebraska. She wants to fire people over a computer link up and the honchos, led by a less than convincing Jason Bateman, are ready to back the idea. In defending his way of doing things Ryan inadvertently ends up with Natalie as his protégé and traveling partner as he teaches her how to do his job.

Jason Reitman and  co-screenwriter Sheldon Turner tell a two track story in Up in the Air that coalesces into one spectacular series of scenes that includes gate-crashing a computer convention and an appearance by rapper Young MC. These scenes show Ryan and Alex falling in love while young Natalie unwittingly challenges each of their notions about who they are and why they are attracted to one another. This happens as she mourns the loss of the only relationship she has known in her own life. 

Of course, the scenes that will strike a chord with 2009 audiences are scenes featuring real people who went through the pain of being fired during the bailout crisis and recession of this late portion of the decade. Director Jason Reitman hired real people who had lost their jobs to take part in these scenes and the pain in their voices as they talk about the loss of their jobs is exceptionally powerful.

The firing sessions give the film weight and allow the romance to blossom around them in unexpected ways. Scenes with actors Zach Galifianakis and Reitman favorite J.K Simmons provide the visual link between the film world and the real world. Without Galifianakis and Simmons, among others, the transition between the real world of these awful firings to the film world's comedy and romance would be too jarring. It’s among many smart choices in this terrifically smart film.

In the end, “Up in the Air” is a film about connections - literal and figurative. The unique ways in which Ryan Bingham’s personal and professional lives connect are at the heart of a film that may not strive to define the last decade of American culture but in many ways does. From our current economic uncertainty, to our ever more casual sexuality, to our changing attitude about infidelities and modern obsessions with gadgetry, “Up in the Air” offers a modest comment on each and does so with style, wit, a little romance and never feels arrogant or overblown doing it.

Writer George Will flippantly called “Up in the Air” ‘Grapes of Wrath for the service industry.’ He’s not entirely wrong. Where that book and film defined a movement toward social justice coming out of the Great Depression, inside the romance of “Up in the Air” is an inkling of a cry for a just truce between greedy corporate titans and the humans they refer to as resources. It is only an inkling; this is still a modern, big star, Hollywood production, just one with a big beating heart for those who are struggling.