ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012): The Search for bin Laden

There recently was another suicide bombing in the world in Pakistan that killed close to ninety people and wounded two-hundred more.  Pakistan, a country on the brink of being a third world nation that possesses nuclear weapons, is also where Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011 by United States Special Forces.

Zero Dark Thirty leads us through events that led to the killing of bin Laden - from September 11, 2001 until just after the raid took place.  We hear the 911 calls made during and after the World Trade Centers are attacked.  Next we see prolonged scenes of interrogation including the torture of a combatant named Ammar (Reda Kateb).  Then we see the work of various operatives sifting through information revealed during the interrogations. 

One tip identifies a possible courier for bin Laden, and this eventually results in identifying the compound that bin Laden is believed located.  The major players then sit at the table with CIA Director, Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini), the decision is made to raid the compound, and we then have a half hour of filming showing the raid itself.

Just as in The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow demonstrates here she is adept at characterization.  At the center of the film is an operative named Maya (Jessica Chastain).  Maya is not a happy person, has no friends, and has little life outside of her duties to infiltrate al Qaeda networks.  At first queasy about duties that include sitting in on the interrogations where water boarding and enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) are used, she nevertheless becomes good at her job.  She even directs the torture in one or two scenes.  Despite opposition of certain supervisors (predictable in every movie thriller), she convinces the powers that be that a raid needs to be conducted on the compound.

Maya must feel insecure and isolated as the result of taking on such a task.  Attempts are made on her life.  Her attempt at friendship to a fellow agent, Jessica (Jennifer Ehle), is brought to a halt when the later is killed by a suicide bomber.  She is personally closest to Dan (Jason Clarke), an agent she first meets while he is interrogating a prisoner through water-boarding.  Maya is smart but, as Panetta remarks, smartness is not key.  Maya is more a useful tool than a person to be admired.  And Maya’s tears at the end of the film were probably not tears of joy.

Zero Dark Thirty rightly should be considered the most controversial film in years, and it needs to make us feel uncomfortable.  It’s a film praised and criticized by both the right and the left for usually the wrong reasons.  Maya is not a feminist film hero like certain critics pretend her to be.  And despite it ending with the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the film is a sober acknowledgment of that fact rather than a feeling of victory.

I hope Americans are not so self-effacing that a movie about such a killing offends them.  No American with a balanced perspective should shed tears over the death of bin Laden.  Osama bin Laden and the Taliban used the plight of suffering people to gain a foothold on power and any U.S. President, regardless of party affiliation, would have sent the troops in if they had known where bin Laden was located.  The number one world power in the nation was (if anything) embarrassed that it took as long as it did.

The controversy in this film lies elsewhere.  Politicians like Senator Dianne Feinstein seem offended at any suggestion that information gleaned from tortures led to the killing of bin Laden.  The United States Senate even released a committee report stating that torture that may or may not have taken place never led to information used to locate bin Laden.  Others more politically to the right feel the depictions of torture were either vastly overstated (and this criticism is probably just) or never conducted (a criticism that is likely naïve).

Yet whatever motivations Bigelow had in making this film, she seemed to believe that torture played a role in locating Osama bin Laden.   In Zero Dark Thirty: (1) there is a half hour of movie time portraying torture; (2) Maya is shown obsessing over these interrogations; (3) torturers, including Dan, end up sitting at the same table with Panetta when decisions to raid the compound are made; and (4) politicians referenced throughout the film play lip service as to how torture never occurred.  But believing the torture did play a role doesn’t mean Bigelow condoned the torture.  This her critics have very wrong.  There is no outpouring of self-congratulations when each portion of the mystery is revealed, any celebration after the killing is subdued, and the film is refreshingly short on false displays of piety.

Of today’s best known movie directors, Bigelow comes closest to remaining true to the narrative she is telling.  The film gets to be too much of a one woman show in search for bin Laden, but that search at least never becomes glorified. For a 157 minute film in Zero Dark Thirty, the film never loses intensity.  Nor does the film ever become sentimental or fail to take its story seriously. 

Bigelow could not have pleased her critics, and that’s mostly to her credit.

February 20, 2013

© Robert S. Miller 2013

LINCOLN (2012): With Malice Toward None

Abraham Lincoln is probably the most mythical character in American History.  When I was a child, I read about how he carried a hot potato in his hand in the morning while walking to school to keep warm, how as a merchant he walked six miles to return the ten cents he overcharged a customer, how as a lawyer he was sanctioned five dollars for telling a joke only to have the judge return the money when he realized how funny the joke was, and how as President he never turned a visitor away, no matter who the person may have been, that came to see him.  The myths are still in play in Steven Spielberg’s movie, Lincoln, it’s just that the myths are somewhat more sophisticated and more aimed at a movie audience.

Still, just as the man himself, Lincoln as a movie is something special.  There’s little cynicism in the film, the portrait of Lincoln is thorough and well-rounded, and Daniel Day Lewis is exceptional in the role.  Perhaps most surprisingly is that fact that Lincoln is a relatively humble little film (for being 150 minutes long).  Rather than turn this into an epic film about the entire Civil War, Spielberg focuses specifically in on the passage of the 13^th Amendment – an important historical event, no doubt, but hardly the type of theme that is going to draw in large crowds.

In the movie, while ignoring the advice of his cabinet and turning towards the assistance of some questionable but able lobbyists led by W.N. Bilbo (James Spader), Lincoln is able to get enough votes in Congress to have the 13^th Amendment enacted.  Lincoln especially exasperates his Secretary of State, William Seward (David Strathairn), who admires but can never quite figure out the genius of Lincoln.  Because while others were more concerned with the ending of the war, Lincoln desired the passing of the 13^th Amendment to have something in writing as to why the Civil War had been fought and continuing on for four years.

The relationship that Lincoln had with his family including his wife, Mary Todd (Sally Field), oldest son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and his youngest and mischievous son, Tad (Gulliver McGrath), is well done melodrama that never becomes too maudlin.  Sally Field was surprisingly sympathetic as the wife that too often has been portrayed as a neurotic mad woman.  And though the Lincoln as played by Daniel Day Lewis never departs too much from the persona created by Carl Sandburg as the folksy and wisdom loving leader, the actor is compellingly able to put on display the mind, emotions and aspirations of the great President.

The wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the screen involving all other characters besides Lincoln would be all right in an average film, but it somewhat distracts the viewer here.  The Congressional banter that revolves around the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens played by Tommy Lee Jones mostly comes across as bad farce.  The necessity for passing the 13^th Amendment coupled (and sometimes opposed) with the strong desire of a nation to end the war never get the attention that such themes deserve - unless the character of Lincoln is actually shown on the screen.  Besides the acting of Daniel Day Lewis, I’m guessing the success of Lincoln’s dialogue in the film is mostly due to the screenplay by Tony Kushner.  Kushner, an avowed homosexual, had his own personal reasons for participating in this film.

Now I’ve never been a great Spielberg admirer.  His talent has always been in making a film look great rather than telling a story that truly is great.  Spielberg as a storyteller, even in a movie as important as Schindler’s List, has always played it safe.  The only truly controversial movie he ever made was Munich, and in that movie he failed to convince.  Lincoln also plays it safe, but it’s a moving film that at least portrays one great man convincingly.  If this is one more side to the myth of the Great Emancipator (which it probably is), at least it’s a believable myth.

Lincoln is a formula movie with the good guys and bad guys thoroughly entrenched, but it’s still the best formula movie that has come out in years.  With a movie like Argo winning the Golden Globes Award as Best Picture and Silver Linings Playbook also nominated for an Oscar, it appears that we have another year of mostly average movies receiving all the accolades.  Perhaps only Zero Dark Thirty would be an unconventional choice for best picture.  Still, especially considering the alternatives, I would applaud the choice of Lincoln if it was to win the best picture award at the Academy Awards.  Maybe at some point the Oscar ceremony could even gain the credibility that it hardly ever has deserved.

January 20, 2013

© Robert S. Miller 2013

KILLING THEM SOFTLY (2012): And the Economic Crash

Killing Them Softly is one of those films that at times seem to have approached greatness.  It never comes close to reaching that destination for the same reason that many films of the same type never reach greatness.  The movie comes near to being swallowed up in its bleak and hopeless outlook.

In the movie, three minor criminals feel that they can outsmart the mob by staging a robbery of a card game where mob leaders are present.  The robbery takes place with relatively few hitches, but nobody in the movie audience is convinced that the robbers will ever get away with it.  One of the robbers, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) almost from the moment the robbery is over feels as if the whole plot is going to fall to pieces and spends the remainder of the movie in a state of paranoia.  Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), his drug addled partner, is only concerned with using the proceeds of the robbery to purchase (and use) his heroin as he knows it is only time before the mob catches up with them.

And the mob does find out very quickly what is going on.  Russell can’t keep his mouth shut and he talks to the wrong people.  Soon the mob’s counsel, an unnamed driver played by Richard Jenkins, has a conversation with an expert hit man by the name of Jackie (Brad Pitt).  After originally hiring on another hit man named Mickey (James Gandolfini), who instead of making plans to conduct a hit ends up blowing great sums of cash on booze and hookers, Jackie decides that he needs to take care of the hits himself.

The time period is 2008 and the location is apparently New Orleans.  In the backdrop, we hear speeches delivered first by President George W. Bush and then President-to-be, Barack Obama.  The volume of these speeches is turned up as the movie progresses, and we never are for sure whether we are hearing the shallow talk of politicians (as Jackie suggests) or an alternative approach to the jaded and desperately unhappy viewpoint of the characters in the movie.  Perhaps the only character in the movie that we can even somewhat care for is Markie (Ray Liotta), the individual that sets up the mob card game that is robbed, and he is beaten so brutally in the film that we understandably know why all he wants is to die quickly.  Russell perhaps gets off the most easily as he ends up back in jail after being busted for drugs.  And Frankie is shot in the head by Jackie only after he begins to believe that Jackie is the one person he can trust.

The film ends with Jackie and the mob counsel sitting in the bar dickering over the price of the hits that Jackie has performed.  While listening to the speech of the newly elected President on television, Jackie spews scorn both on Obama and, going all the way back to our founding fathers, on Thomas Jefferson.

Killing Them Softly is a film with many attributes.  At 97 minutes, the film is short and to the point.  The dialogue, though in the same vein as a film like Pulp Fiction, helps the story along and is never a distraction.  The acting is first rate from everyone in the film.  The setting is stark and befitting for the story.  The story is happily never sentimental.  Despite casting Pitt in a leading role, the film was never designed to be a commercial blockbuster.  And using the mob as a metaphor for the banking industry is apt, and the criticism of a shallow and narrow materialistic culture is just.

Yet for all the good things that can be said about the film, it is not a movie that most audience members will repeatedly want to see.  This isn’t because the film makes us uncomfortable.  Rather, the film is limited in scope as the lessons do not go as deep as the director and writer, Andrew Dominik, may believe.  Unless you juxtapose the message Obama attempted to bring in his speeches to those articulated by Jackie in the film’s conclusion, Dominik’s critique of our capitalistic society provides no alternative solution.  This film tells us we live in a shallow and self-seeking society.  What do we replace it with?

In my opinion, Killing Them Softly fails in the same manner that many near great movies also fail: for example The Wild Bunch, Raging Bull, Trainspotting, The Departed, No Country for Old Men and about every film directed by Quentin Tarantino – ambitious, clever and well acted movies that were intended as an expose of a sick society but contain no other message.  These movies will probably not be watched over and over again except by a small set of superior feeling viewers that flock to joyless comedies.

I give the makers of Killing Them Softly and most of its viewers more credit than this.  I don’t think that these individuals are simply giving in to derision, but the film does at times come close to being one more crass depiction of society.  The classic definition of a cynic is an individual that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The filmmakers of Killing Them Softly only avoid this label by actually seeming to care about what the banking system and our political culture has become. 

December 23, 2012

© Robert S. Miller 2012

THE GODFATHER: PART II (1974) – Award Winning Sequel

The movie The Godfather, Part II is my opinion not as good as the original.  It was wishing for too much to hope that the sequel would ever be as good, and we miss the presence of Marlon Brando playing the character of Vito Corleone.  Also, juxtaposing the two stories of father and son side-by-side in the sequel may seem fashionable, but it wasn’t as successful as director Francis Ford Coppola may have hoped.

I’ve never been satisfied with the flashback scenes in this movie, despite an Academy Award going to Robert De Niro as a young Vito Corleone.  These scenes are well choreographed and well acted.  Still, the young Corleone played by De Niro is not the same entity as the older Corleone played by Brando.  The young Vito in Part II joins the underworld only for magnanimous reasons and - despite the carrying off a pair of revenge killings - we never see the sinister side to the young Vito that comes out so starkly every time Brando came on the scene during the original Godfather.

Nevertheless, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone plays his part consistently powerful in both of the first two films, and his counterpart, Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth adds a dimension that was missing in the first film by providing Michael with a worthy adversary that we get to know in depth.

The film is 200 minutes long.  It features the cat-and-mouse game that Michael and Roth play in trying to best each other.  There are also the great side plots concerning betrayal by Michael’s one remaining brother, Fredo (John Cazale) and a betrayal by an old friend of the family, Frank Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo).  Both feel left out of the family business and, disastrously, attempt to sidestep Michael’s authority. 

The major women in the film play far smaller parts.  Connie Corleone (Talia Shire), Michael’s only sister, tries to hurt Michael by letting her life go into disarray.  In the end she rejoins Michael.  Kay (Diane Keaton), Michael’s wife, on the other hand hurts Michael almost as much as any character shown in either the original or the sequel by aborting Michael’s baby.  (Only in the poorly made Godfather, Part III would Michael have ever dreamed of forgiving her.)

Like the original, The Godfather, Part II is a glossy and violent soap opera.  Michael is so believably corrupted by the end of the film that he begins assassinating old enemies, old friends and even a brother – none of which any longer serve as a threat to him.  Michael keeps around a corrupt Senator (G.D. Spradlin) only because the Senator still proves to be useful for him.  Even his most loyal follower, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), a stepbrother to Michael, is no longer completely trusted.

In the end, Michael outsmarts everyone but himself.  Whatever victories he achieves as the undisputed head of the Mafia, Michael achieves no satisfaction.  He has made good on the promise that he made to his father in the original Godfather to be with him always, and it has rotted away his conscience.  There is nothing left of the young and sensitive man that volunteered to fight when America went to war in Germany and Japan.  Only the brain is still functioning.  The rest of Michael becomes a cipher.

Coppola may be one of the best storytellers in film since movies began.  In his major early efforts (The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, Apocalypse Now), Coppola had the skills to hold a loose story together.  He has not been successful at doing that since that time. 

In any case, Coppola directed three of the more powerful movies from the 1970s – the kinds of which we have never seen remade by anyone.  Coppola did it by taking chances.

October 31, 2012

© Robert S. Miller 2012

A BRONX TALE (1993): Modest and Decent Gangster Film

Since I’ve so far refused to subscribe to cable or satellite television, I often end up watching movies that best fit onto a 17 inch screen television.  The best of such films are usually shown around two o’clock in the morning for individuals working odd shifts or that cannot sleep at night.  One such film is A Bronx Tale that was directed and starred Robert De Niro.  Strangely, it co-stars Chazz Palminteri who also wrote the play and screenplay for which the film was adapted.

Especially for a film that is about gangsters, A Bronx Tale is unusual in that it’s so devoid of cynicism  – a trait that have practically destroyed a large percentage of Hollywood movies.  It’s sometimes a bit too cloying, and the chief gangster, Sonny LoSpecchio (Palminteri) can be unbelievably benevolent and gentle when he’s not out to eliminate his perceived enemies.  Still, we care for the major characters because the emotion projected by such characters is honest.

The story takes place somewhere between the Bronx and Brooklyn during the 1960s.  Calogero (Francis Capra playing the young boy, and Lillo Brancato as a teenager) very early in his life witnesses Sonny commit a murder over a minor traffic accident.  Calogero never turns Sonny in, and Sonny tries to show gratitude by offering Calogero’s father, Lorenzo (De Niro), a good paying job.  Lorenzo refuses the offer and, in fact, discourages Calogero from ever seeing Sonny.  Nevertheless, Calogero continues seeing Sonny and even does what he can to help him out.

Lorenzo and Sonny living completely different lives often share similar world views.  Though Lorenzo is strictly hard working and blue collar, he can never convince Calogero to stay away from the easy money presented by association with Sonny.  But though this typically would be a disastrous choice, Sonny provides sage advice about romance, growing up and racial tensions in the Bronx, and he dissuades Calogero from ever pursuing a career in the mob.  In the end, Sonny makes his point when he (Sonny) is gunned down by a rival mobster seeking revenge.

Both Lorenzo and Sonny are remarkably open minded about Calogero’s pursuance of romance with a beautiful black high school student named Jane (Taral Hicks), and though the relationship never goes beyond that of a teenage romance, Calogero’s feelings for Jane allow him to see the difference between a decent world and the narrow world inhabited by many of his bigoted friends.  The problem with both the romance and the racial overtones is that it’s forced.  When it comes to racial dealings, it’s perhaps the only portion of the movie that is preachy.  This film was meant to be about two father figures, and the female presence in this film becomes a distraction.

A Bronx Tale, a 122 minute film, is remarkably much like the movie Hud, though the Bronx is very long way away from Texas.  One film takes place in the inner city, and the other takes place in wide open land.  Yet torn loyalty on the part of a 17-year old boy is the chief theme in both films.  In A Bronx Tale, the wiser of the two father figures wins out.  In Hud, no one wins – though the unscrupulous Hud does outlive his own father.

The decade of the 1990s was made up of a number of crass films, but at least here we had a movie that tried to give a positive message.  And when De Niro and Palminteri are on the screen, the movie’s sentimentality is manageable.

September 30, 2012

© Robert S. Miller 2012