Movie Review: The Wolfman

The Wolfman (2010) 

Directed by Joe Johnston 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, David Self 

Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving 

Release Date February 12th, 2010 

Published February 11th, 2010 

Andrew Kevin Walker is one of the most daring and dark screenwriters Hollywood has ever known. As famous as his script for Seven is, Walker may be known better as the most rewritten screenwriter in history. Rewrites of Walker screenplays include 8Mm, Sleepy Hollow and countless un-produced properties from Superman to X-Men.

His work has been criticized for being too dark and violent for mainstream audiences, despite Seven having made more than 300 million dollars worldwide. It was with this in mind that Walker went to work on a remake of The Wolfman in 2007. Today, The Wolfman is ready for the big screen and, no surprise, Walker's work has once again been rewritten into a compromised, mainstream ready version.

The Wolfman 2010 remixes Lon Chaney's classic creature with modern day special effects wizardry. It is directed by Jumanji and Jusassic Park 3 director Joe Johnston as a wild ride of techno factory dreariness. Benicio Del Toro takes the lead role of Lawrence Talbot an actor raised in America but born in Wales.

Lawrence happens to be touring in England when his brother Ben is mauled to death by some unknown creature. Ben's fiancee Gwen (Emily Blunt) informs Lawrence of his brother's death and calls him back to his childhood home where Gwen is staying with Lawrence's estranged father Sir Jon Talbot (Sir Anthony Hopkins). Father and son parted ways when Lawrence was a child and witnessed the aftermath of his mother's suicide by cutting her own throat.

Lawrence spent years in a mental health facility before going overseas. His return is warm enough for a father who put his son in a psych ward but the undercurrents of discord are resonant in their halting conversations. Lawrence gets on far better with Gwen whose grief rather quickly gives way to a sad flirtatiousness that Lawrence welcomes.

Unfortunately, the romance has to be put on hold as Lawrence searches for the beast that murdered his brother. The townsfolk blame a dancing bear owned by local gypsies but Lawrence, visiting the gypsies, encounters a woman, Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin) who has a different and far more terrifying theory: a Werewolf did it.

Lawrence has no time to be skeptical of Maleva as soon the camp is overrun by villagers and then the angry, ravenous beast himself. Lawrence chases the beast into the forest and is bitten. When his wounds heal startlingly fast there is only one conclusion, he will become a beast himself.

While Lawrence ponders his fate, Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving) arrives and with suspicions cast on Lawrence he aims to keep a close eye on him.

The plot puzzle that emerges in The Wolfman fits together well enough. Sadly, director Joe Johnston's hyper-kinetic style does not seem to fit a story that thrives on atmosphere and heightened emotions. Johnston cuts to quickly, whirls and tilts his camera and relies on too many cheeseball effects scenes for the gothic atmosphere to set in.

Watch The Wolfman and you find that stars Benicio Del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins are making one movie while director Joe Johnston seems to be making another. Del Toro and Hopkins halt and suspect and busily feel each other out as fits a movie of a slower, more deliberate pace. There are important father/son issues they hope to seed into the story. Director Johnston leaves them no time for that however.

Johnston's charge is to make a fast paced monster movie with modern tech and modern gore. Neither approach is wrong really but the two together are ill-fit and the film falters for a lack of a singular vision. That vision likely could have been writer Andrew Kevin Walker’s whose script the cast signed on for and then saw rewritten when director Johnston came on board by the more by the more mainstream horror writer David Self (The Haunting, Thirteen Days).

The failure to meld two visions into one movie is the failure of The Wolfman and yet it is hard to call the whole film a disaster. Makeup and effects legend Rick Baker's work on Del Toro, what little we see of it in the final CGI heavy edit, is solid as is the work of Del Toro who cuts a strong figure as the titular Wolfman.

It's unfortunate that once again Andrew Kevin Walker finds his work compromised into a by-committee, safe for the simpleton mainstream crowd horror movie. Hollywood studios it seems are the first to underestimate the brains and taste of the majority of audiences and that is part of the downfall of The Wolfman.

Movie Review: Walking Tall

Walking Tall (2004) 

Directed by Kevin Bray 

Written by David Klass, Channing Gibson, David Levien, Brian Koppelman

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Johnny Knoxville, Neal McDonaugh, Kristen Wilson 

Release Date April 2nd, 2004 

Published April 3rd, 2004 

It's an unspoken truth amongst WWE fans that the greatest star in the sport, the People’s champ, The Rock, is finished with the wrestling biz. The most electrifying man in sports entertainment is taking a route that no wrestler has taken before, full acceptance in the world outside of wrestling.

Oh sure, Hulk Hogan became a pop culture icon in the eighties but realistically Hogan never had the mainstream acceptance the Rock is currently receiving. Whereas Hogan was a cartoon and a sideshow attraction, Rock is a full on phenomenon amongst Hollywood producers looking to replace their aging action heroes. His latest action vehicle is a remake of the hillbilly ass kicking revenge fantasy Walking Tall.

Army vet Chris Vaughn (Rock) is returning to the small Oregon town where he grew after 8 years in the Special Forces. Just off the harbor transport Chris walks into a town he no longer recognizes. There are porn shops where the hardware store used to be. A sleazy casino has taken over as the town's main source of income, replacing the lumber mill where Chris's father had worked.

The biggest change of all however is the drugs. As Chris walks through town he sees a mother leaving children unattended while she buys drugs and teenagers discreetly exchanging cash and drugs on each street corner. Chris is shocked and appalled and 

Things have changed even for Chris's old friends. Chris's best friend Ray (Johnny Knoxville) has recently kicked a serious drug problem. Another close friend, Jay (Neil McDonough), always a spoiled rich boy, is the guy who bought and shut down the mill and now runs the eyesore casino. After Chris's nephew ODs on crystal meth, it also becomes clear that Jay is running the local drug trade. Ray wants to make it up to Chris, especially after his goons beat Chris nearly to death, by bringing him in to work in the casino. When Chris says no it begins a war for the soul of the town.

The original Walking Tall from 1974 featured Joe Don Baker and was the supposedly true story of small town sheriff Buford Pusser who fought lawbreakers in his little redneck town armed only with a two by four. In this "reimagining", if I may use our lamest new buzzword, the hero’s name has changed but the mission is the same and so is the weapon. Like a backwoods Dirty Harry, the hero of Walking Tall delivers the kind of vigilante justice that might not be politically correct but is vicariously thrilling.

The Rock is a much more physically intimidating presence than Joe Don Baker and thankfully not saddled with the name Buford. He has the kind of charisma and charm of which Joe Don could never even dream of having. This is a slightly more subdued Rock than the comic performance of last year’s The Rundown but it is just as effective. It’s his appealing personality that makes up for his lack of dramatic weight.

Rock is aided greatly by Johnny Knoxville who can be quite annoying but here finds a good comic sidekick vibe that never gets in the way of The Rock's ass kicking.

A fellow critic and I exchanged emails recently comparing Walking Tall to the 80's redneck fighting movie Roadhouse and the comparison is a fair one. Both films take place in an alternate reality where all cops are crooks, where bullets never hit anyone important, where a fair fight is at least three on one and our hero is infallible. The difference between the films is that The Rock looks more than credible beating on two or even three guys at once while Patrick Swayze was about as intimidating as a guy with a dance background could ever be.

There is something about vigilante justice that many of us find appealing. Justice where little things like civil rights and lawyers never get in the way of the bad guy getting what he has coming to him. Having that justice dealt out by a guy as appealing and charismatic as the Rock is a bonus. This guy is a star and while his acting range is limited to monosyllabic action roles, he makes the most of each those roles and I can't wait to see him in another one.

Movie Review Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Andrew Cosby

Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 11th, 2019

Do we really need a Hellboy reboot? No, no we do not. But, Hollywood does not appear to care for our opinion on this matter. Hellboy is a character that many people recognize and thus may pay money to see and regardless of the compromised state of the character and the story, his marketability is what truly matters. Hellboy has a Q-rating that rings a bell in marketing meetings among the right demographic of desirable young consumers. That’s why we have a new Hellboy.

Stranger Things breakout star, David Harbor, picks up the mantle of Hellboy, for this reboot. In this re-imaging of Hellboy, we join the story with our hero, already a member of the Paranormal Bureau of Investigation and working for his father, Professor Bloom (Ian McShane). Hellboy is out on a personal errand as we join his story, he’s traveled to Mexico to locate a friend and fellow agent who has gone missing in the world of Lucha Libre wrestling.

This is a clever and colorful way to start the movie but, sadly, it’s all downhill from here. Hellboy finds his friend and is forced to kill him when he becomes a demon bat. Before he dies, the friend warns Hellboy that the end of the world is coming. In a prologue to the story, we meet the Blood Queen (Milla Jovavich). The Blood Queen intended to bring monsters and demons out of the shadows and destroy humanity thousands of years ago before she was stopped by King Arthur and Merlin.

Now, The Blood Queen is about to make a comeback. Despite having been beheaded and having her body carved into several pieces and locked inside boxes, The Blood Queen is set to return and only Hellboy and his friends can stop her from destroying humanity. Aiding Hellboy are his long time friend Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic with ever changing and growing powers, and Major Ben Daimio, an English secret agent who claims to hate monsters like Hellboy while harboring a monstrous secret of his own.

Together, reluctantly, they will battle The Blood Queen and several other deathly threats put forward by director Neil Marshall, a man with a known knack for quality monsters. Neil Marshall was the director of one of my favorite monster movies of recent memory, 2005’s The Descent. Where that remarkable talent has gone since then is anyone’s guess. Marshall followed up The Descent with a mediocre Mad Max knock off called Doomsday and has never again looked like the director who crafted The Descent.

Hellboy demonstrates some of the craft that Marshall was once known for but it is also lacking in many of the same ways that Marshall’s post-The Descent features are lacking. Much like Doomsday, which cribbed heavily from the worst tropes of the Mad Max movies, Hellboy feels overly familiar with an arc that is indistinguishable from any number of fantasy adventure or superhero-comic book movies. There is little to no invention in this story.

David Harbour cuts a giant figure as Hellboy but the choice to direct him as a larger, slower, version of Deadpool is perhaps the film's biggest failing. The R-Rating for Hellboy essentially gets second billing to Hellboy himself with the film using the freedom of the R-Rating to attempt to appeal to hardcore comic fans. Unfortunately, Hellboy lacks the skill and intelligence of the makers of Deadpool and there is simply no wit and not nearly enough style to the R-Rated violence in Hellboy as there was in Deadpool.

Hellboy doesn’t need an R-Rating. The violence that director Neil Marshall has employed that earns the film that rating never feels organic or necessary. The violence of Hellboy somehow fails to even induce shock and without that pinch of shock it comes off as merely gross. Hellboy comes off as childish and infantile in comparison to other R-Rated heroes such as Logan and Deadpool, and that’s saying something given the level of juvenile in Deadpool 2. In Deadpool, the hardcore violence is delivered with such style and humor that no matter what Deadpool the character does, the film feels mature. Hellboy never achieves anything similar.

Hellboy is a kid brother’s version of an R-Rated fantasy comic. It’s all flash and no style. It’s all blood and guts and no character or wit. Hellboy has all the pretension toward something edgy without ever actually becoming edgy or even controversial. Small kids might lose sleep over some of the gory images of Hellboy 2019, but anyone with fully developed sensibilities will find the film witless, charmless and infantile, especially when compared to other R-Rated comic book hero stories

Movie Review Hellboy

Hellboy (2004) 

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro 

Written by Guillermo Del Toro 

Starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, David Hyde Pierce, Doug Jones, Karl Roden, Rupert Evans

Release Date April 2nd, 2004

Release Date April 1st, 2004 

What Director Guillermo Del Toro went through to realize his vision of the comic book Hellboy on the big screen is the textbook definition of perseverance. Del Toro survived dozens of pitch meetings, copious amounts of idiotic studio notes about everything from “Why is Hellboy red?” to “Can he have a hellmobile?” to the biggest battle over the casting of Hellboy himself. From day one, Del Toro wanted Ron Perlman. Various studios kept suggesting The Rock, Vin Diesel or even Schwarzenegger (pre-Governator).

If only the vision that Del Toro finally realized was as interesting as the battle to realize it.

Ron Perlman is Hellboy, born in the fires of hell and brought to Earth via a portal opened by the Nazis in 1944. You see, Hitler was a devout occultist and hoped to use a portal created by the legendary Russian bad guy Rasputin (Karl Roden) to unleash the 7 chaos of blah blah whatever. Rasputin was interrupted in his attempt to destroy the world by a group of US Army soldiers, led by President Roosevelt's top advisor on paranormal activity, Professor Broom (John Hurt). The interruption prevented the end of the world and killed Rasputin, sort of. One thing did survive and that was Hellboy.

Sixty years later, Dr. Broom has raised Hellboy as his son and the two fight evil as part of a secret FBI division dedicated to the paranormal. With the help of other freaks like the psychic fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones with the voice of David Hyde Pierce) and the pyro-kinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Hellboy fights evil. Well at first Liz isn't much help, unable to control her fire making capability, she has left the group and is trying to forget her past. Hellboy, nursing a serious crush on Liz, won't let her forget.

The group’s newest member is just a regular guy, Agent John Myers (Rupert Evans). His assignment is to take over Dr. Broom's daily assignment of attempting to cover Hellboy's huge tracks. The media has been hounding FBI Director Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) about Hellboy for years. Still, the FBI always denies his existence with graceful dodges. That task is complicated by Hellboy's constant escapes to retrieve beer, cigars and to see Liz. It's Myers' job to keep Hellboy in line.

When Rasputin rises from the grave, with the help of his henchwoman, an immortal named Ilsa (Biddy Hodson) and a surgery freak dome-wearing Nazi, he brings with him a group of squid-like dogs that feed on human flesh and multiply when killed. The squids are meant to occupy and capture Hellboy and Liz for some convoluted end-of-the-world scheme. If you think my plot description is complicated, see the film and try to figure it out for yourself.

What I liked about Hellboy is Ron Perlman. Perlman plays Hellboy like your average world-weary cop who happens to be seven foot tall and from Hell. Sadly resigned to his fate Hellboy sets about each task in front of him as if this were just another average day. Perlman gives Hellboy humor and depth with the way he delivers his lines and the way he regards the camera and the other actors. Hellboy is the one and only fully fleshed out character in the film.

The rest of the cast is a wash, especially Rupert Evans as Agent Myers. Evans is the first actor I have seen who makes Ben Chaplin look animated. His blank stare and damsel in distress poses should be played for laughs but sadly it's obvious he was playing it all straight. The character of Myers is given a subplot as a romantic rival to Hellboy for Liz Sherman, but it's never a fair fight. As for Selma Blair, one of my absolute favorite actresses, she is sadly on autopilot in this film. She can conjure fire but her eyes never show any flame of interest in the story.

Oddly, the one interesting character aside from Hellboy is the Nazi in the helmet who keeps himself alive through gruesome means. That character is uncredited on IMDB so I know neither the character or the actor’s name, but he was pretty good. He’s a better villain than Karl Roden's Rasputin who is basically Alan Rickman minus charisma.

I will say this for director Guillermo Del Toro, his eye for special effects, makeup and CGI is spectacular. The CGI in Hellboy is some of the best outside of George Lucas and Star Wars. Seamlessly integrated with the actors, very little of the digital shadowing that haunts so much of the CGI effects employed in this type of picture.

If as much work had been put into creating a coherent story as was put into the incredible effects, then Hellboy could have been spectacular. As it is, it's worth seeing for Perlman and the work of Del Toro's special effects, makeup and graphics teams.

Movie Review Never Die Alone

Never Die Alone (2004) 

Directed by Ernest Dickerson 

Written by James Gibson

Starring DMX, David Arquette, Michael Ealy, Clifton Powell 

Release Date March 26th, 2004

Published March 25th, 2004 

For rapper DMX, Hollywood has been difficult to navigate. Stuck with B-movie plots and co-stars (Steven Seagal, Jet Li), DMX has managed to show raw potential but little else. The most notable things about his film career thus far are his multi-platinum soundtrack albums that have been better than the films they accompany. Now, however, teamed with director Ernest Dickerson in Never Die Alone, DMX gets an opportunity to realize some of that raw potential.

DMX stars as King David, a bad-ass drug dealer who has returned to New York to settle old debts and reestablish his home. After ten years on the West Coast rolling up huge amounts of cash selling heroin to starlets, David has more than enough cash to pay off New York's top drug dealer Mr. Moon (Clifton Powell). The deal is he will give the money to Moon's top thug Mike (Michael Ealy from Barbershop) and once Moon has the cash, King is free.

Young Mike however, has other plans. Mike and the King have a history that King doesn't know about. A dangerous secret leads to Mike stabbing King. As Mike makes his escape, a writer named Paul (David Arquette) witnesses the stabbing and runs to the aid of King. As Paul drives King to the hospital, the dying man pledges all of his possessions to Paul with the caveat that Paul uses them to locate King's son. At the hospital King dies and Paul is left to put the pieces of King's life back together with the audio tapes King left behind in a hollowed out bible.

It's convenient that Paul happens to be a writer living in the King's old neighborhood for research on a gritty crime novel. Not many writers are lucky enough to have a gritty urban crime story fall into their lap like that. Paul is merely a convenient device through which to tell King's cold, hard, thug story. The King's tapes take us back to when he left for LA and eventually why he ran, which sets up the main plot of the film.

The scenes in LA are a frightening examination of the kind of sociopath it takes to be a cold hard killer. King uses the drugs and money he lifted off of Moon to wine and dine a Hollywood actress (Jennifer Sky), willing to front drugs to her TV co-stars and a young med student (Reagan Gomez-Preston). King met the college girl at her job as a waitress and with the cool cunning of a snake he gets into her bed and his drugs into her veins. Watching the way King slowly deconstructs the once promising student reminded me of a moment from the movie Fight Club where Edward Norton maims Jared Leto in a fight and coolly explains that he felt like destroying something beautiful.

Many critics are faulting Director Ernest Dickerson's choice of visual style. Dickerson, the former cinematographer for Spike Lee, abuses his film stock with scratches and washed out color to give the film a classic seventies Blaxploitation look. The look evokes that early seventies feel but the story is a modern hard edged urban noir in the vein of Sugar Hill or New Jack City. All that is missing is a Wesley Snipes cameo to pass the torch of urban menace to DMX.

That said there is more than one way to look at King's portrayal. On the one hand, this is an unglamorous end that teaches, if you live hard you die hard. On the other hand, DMX's powerful, charismatic cool could earn cult status among those predisposed to admire such things. DMX is powerful, his tattooed, muscled presence and serial killer mentality is as intimidating as a horror film villain should be. His charm and charisma is so enticing you would admire him if the film didn't demonstrate what a bastard he really is. This is DMX's best performance thus far though too many more roles like it will lead to typecasting. For now though DMX wears the hardcore gangster persona like a perfectly fit Italian suit and that comfort is part of his charm.

For young Michael Ealy, Never Die Alone is a chance to establish some dramatic cache to match his well liked comic performance in Barbershop and he does a terrific job. Ealy's heartfelt sadness and tortured existence is the perfect counterbalance to DMX's cold, sociopathic, and charismatic performance. Though the film’s twist near the end calls logic into question, Ealy sells it well and we accept it because he does. David Arquette is far less successful in his role as plot device. Arquette's Paul is entirely a function of the plot and never an interesting participant.

Ernest Dickerson has yet to make the masterpiece that I'm sure his former protégé Spike Lee is expecting him to make. But, Never Die Alone is a step in the right direction. Expect Dickerson to do something spectacular very soon. For now, Never Die Alone is a terrific genre piece, a gritty urban drama worthy of comparison with other great gangster films.

Movie Review Secret Window

Secret Window (2004) 

Directed by David Koepp 

Written by David Koepp 

Starring Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Charles S. Dutton, Timothy Hutton 

Release Date March 12th, 2004 

Published March 11th, 2004

In an interview with Time Magazine, Secret Window writer-director David Koepp wondered aloud why Johnny Depp had chosen to star in his movie. He was grateful but said it's hard to be certain what motivates Depp, it's possible he just wanted to play a guy named Mort. That’s a statement that perfectly captures Depp's unique approach to Hollywood. An actor who does things his own unique way, Depp makes Secret Window a strange and unique Hollywood thriller.

Depp is Mort Rainey, a successful mystery writer whose life is upended when he finds his wife in bed with another man. Cut to six months later and Mort is living in a cabin on a lake in some nondescript small town. The solitude should help him working on his next novel but it's more helpful in providing time for his long naps and general malaise.

The solitude is interrupted by a menacing stranger named John Shooter (John Turturro), an oddball farmer from Mississippi who claims that Mort stole one of his stories. Shooter's story is definitely similar to one Mort wrote years earlier called Secret Window, but Mort is sure he can prove the story is his own. Shooter meanwhile sets about making Mort miserable, including killing his dog and threatening Mort's ex-wife Amy (Maria Bello).

Eventually Mort figures out that there is far more to this story than mere plagiarism and he begins to suspect his wife's new boyfriend, Ted (Timothy Hutton), may have put Shooter up to it. In fear, Mort hires an ex-police officer (Charles S. Dutton) to watch his back. When the cop turns up dead, Mort is on his own in the scary old cabin.

It's a very conventional thriller setup that sounds predictable but David Koepp, the writer of Panic Room, and the director of the underrated Kevin Bacon thriller Stir Of Echoes, has something up his sleeve. Employing camera moves he must have lifted from working with David Fincher, Koepp sails his camera around the tiny cabin in ways that some might call showy but I would say are just cool. He's helped greatly by a classic Philip Glass score and most of all…

…by his star Johnny Depp.

What Johnny Depp does in Secret Window is difficult to describe. It's so delightfully odd and yet perfectly sensible that it defies description. Mort spends the first third of the film essentially in solitude, napping and laying about, talking to his dog or to himself. There is one fascinating inner monologue, darkly humorous, witty, angry and frustrated. Watch the way he reacts while talking to his wife on the phone.

In some scenes you can see that Depp is finding actorly motivation where none is called for, such as a scene where he hides his cigarette from his cleaning lady. There is no reason why Mort would hide his smoking except that Depp assumed that the character would do that. In another scene, Depp and Charles Dutton exchange dialogue while hitting a chess clock as if marking who's turn it is to talk. It's the kind of character shorthand that most writers and actors neglect.

It's as if while the supporting cast was making a typical Hollywood thriller, Johnny Depp was jamming to some totally different vibe. Depp is riffing like a jazz combo and the film is forced to bounce along to his beat. It's safe to say that much of what Depp does in the film wasn't in the original script and certainly not in the Stephen King novella on which the film is based. That it works is a testament to his considerable skills.

Movie Review Spartan

Spartan (2004) 

Directed by David Mamet 

Written by David Mamet 

Starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, Ed O'Neill, Kristen Bell 

Release Date March 12th, 2004 

Published March 15th, 2004 

"Where's the girl?"

A line tersely delivered, often through the gritted teeth of aggravated men. This is the writing of David Mamet in his newest incarnation, the action thriller Spartan. Minimalist, to the point, and exciting when delivered by actors with conviction, Mamet's writing is the highlight of all of his films (State and Main, The Spanish Prisoner, House of Games) and when teamed with a capable cast it's sublime in it's simplicity, smarts and humor. Spartan is the latest example of Mamet at his best.

Val Kilmer stars as John Scott, some sort of secret agent though I'm at a loss to figure out who he works for exactly. Scott is first seen on a military training mission with a pair of recruits (Derek Luke and Tia Texada) acting out some exercise that is important to Scott but apparently not the audience. Once the exercise is over, Scott gets a phone call that takes him into the film’s real plot.

Scott is called in to join a task force to search for the daughter of the President, (Kristen Bell). The first daughter was kidnapped, the who and the what is a twist-laden trip into typical thriller territory except smarter and more interesting because David Mamet doesn't know how to do anything typical. First rate dialogue, whip smart plot turns, and a terrific cast make Spartan far better than the usual thriller fare.

In what some are calling a comeback performance, Val Kilmer shines, biting into Mamet's dialogue with the necessary sharpness and clarity. Anyone who calls this a comeback obviously missed his brilliant work in 2002's The Salton Sea, but then sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who ever saw that one. Scott is a rare part for Kilmer's recent outings, it's his first hero role since The Saint.

For Mamet, Spartan seems like an attempt to fit his rather esoteric style into a mainstream film. It's a surprisingly good fit. I have for years belabored the idea that even the most clichéd retread plot can be made well if written, acted and directed with intelligence and the commitment not to fall into the familiar rhythm. Spartan is a mainstream thriller with Mamet's brains in place of the usual thickheaded clichés and that works for me.

I'm tempted to compare Mamet to John Sayles in that both are the preeminent writers of my mind. However, Sayles is more of an artist than Mamet. Where Mamet has a longing for mainstream acceptance, Sayles has a more secular point of view. Sayles isn't interested in appealing to anyone other than himself, Mamet wants to appeal to the populace. It's a dangerous gamble because it can cause a director to compromise vision for demographic.

Thankfully Mamet isn't so desperate as to compromise, at least not in a film he directs himself. His writing assignments for others are questionable. Spartan is not a compromise but an uneasy entreaty into mainstream fare. Let's hope that its box office returns don't lead to future compromise.