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Lucky Number Slevin review

Plucky Slevin
Neo-noir romp sports an all-star cast, James Bond references and some pretty groovy wallpaper

By Lennox Lattimore-Davian

Above: Me Mouse, You Cat... Slevin (Josh Hartnett, l) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman, r)


If “Lucky Number Slevin” were a person, I wonder what it would look like.Maybe it would be one of those people who pays $1,000 to look homeless with its calculatedly tousled bed head, two-hundred-dollar faded Led Zeppelin shirt, similarlyworn jeans and Chuck Taylors and aviator glasses to cover its “up all night” eyes. It would call a lot of attention to itself and pretend not to notice, which is either annoying or really annoying depending on your vantage point.

It would have us believe it rolled out of bed this way: non-sequitirs slicker than the Exxon-Valdez spill, one-liners as snappy as an Ali-the-second-time-he-fought-Liston jab, a visual style that is tundra cool, and more twists than a Chubby Checker dance off.I’m sure you won’t come across a more odd title for a movie this year, but just try to ignore that and consider a flick that opens with Bruce Willis working his monotone voice and jackal’s grin to full effect…..in a wheelchair. In giving us a 15-minute preface by explaining the Kansas City Shuffle (grifter jargon that is Latvian for “what the hell….?”), he has handed us a potentially integral element to the movie, which CERTAINLY we would have been able to figure out on our own….right?

Well, er…. maybe.

Helmed by Paul McGuigan (“Gangster Number One”, “Wicker Park”), “Lucky Number Slevin” stars Josh Hartnett (“The Virgin Suicides”, “O”) as the ironically-named title character, a regular enough guy who drops into town to visit a friend….a friend who owes massive amounts of money to rival gangsters, The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Sir Ben Kingsley), who square off against each other in their insular penthouses, both imprisoned in their posh quarters for 2 decades from fear of assassination.

It turns out Slevin is quite an unlucky guy whose nose and solar plexus attract alarmingly frequent bouts of wrath, by way of a running joke throughout the film. After having his wallet stolen and settling into his friend’s apartment, he is promptly picked up by The Boss’s foot soldiers and, after repeated denials concerning his identity, is offered a proposition: kill The Rabbi’s gay son and the debt Slevin doesn’t even owe will be erased.
After being summarily dismissed, he is collared by The Rabbi’s goons, twin pillars of stony, Hasidic venom and, after more repeated denials concerning his identity, is given an almost identical offer: kill The Boss and the debt Slevin doesn’t even owe will be erased. Add to that, he’s being trailed by a persistent cop (Stanley Tucci) and a scarily efficient assassin, Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis as the parallel universe, evil twin version of John McClain) who sells his services to the highest justifiably paranoid, shut-in crime boss.

You know there’s a girl. There’s always a girl. Here, Lucy Liu shakes off her “ice queen” persona to very pleasing results. She is Slevin’s friend’s neighbor Lindsey, a precocious but astute coroner, who is apparently waiting for her amateur-detective decoder ring to come in the mail. She invites herself right into Slevin’s problems by way of an almost-palpable curiosity native to 3-year-olds and thrill-seekers. But she’s competent, exuberant, charming and immediately attracted to Slevin. In contrast to the rampant bloodletting, their chemistry and first-date banter provide a surprising anchor to the whole affair. In fact, their interplay smacks of the classic Thurman-Travolta diner pas de deux in “Pulp Fiction”.

The dialogue, penned by Jason Smilovic, is what I suspect Abbott and Costello might sound like at a fixed poker game. It’s the Generation-X version of “Who’s On First?”, slickly outfitted and hopped up on X. It is language that insists on preciseness AND humor, kind of like a Bill Maher comedy special. Morgan Freeman (who seemed to have sprinkled conjure powder on his “Mean Streets” pimp, to distilled, chilly effect here) and Sir Ben Kingsley (an elegantly seething container of Semitic ire) rightfully get some of the best lines in the film, and deliver them with no elevation in blood pressure.

All the characters strain against caricature, but, thanks to the quality acting, manage to veer away from it by imbuing them with humanity.

For example, Freeman’s and Kingsley’s characters are cast in the mold of the ultimate cinematic pater familias; Marlon Brando’s “Don Corleone”. Similarly, these are men of immense power yet, to a large extent, they are, even in their rage, guided by a sense of family. The slaying of The Boss’s son allows us to feel an empathy for him that we might not otherwise; likewise with The Rabbi’s protective feelings for his own son. In spite of the perceived chasm they have put between themselves, these men are inevitably bound.

Or consider Slevin himself. He could have easily been an unlikable heel (a la Ed Norton’s turn as “Worm” in Rounders), but Hartnett, who shows a real flair for darkly humorous material, infuses him with a sly, seductive amiability, a kind of frat-boy sluggishness and rich-kid insouciance that saves him from being so. At times, Slevin is dangerously, contentiously smug to the point of masochism, but he fits confidently right at that hard-to-reach place, the median between stoner lassitude and Dice-Clay acidity. He is John Heminges’ Falstaff, but with a swimmer’s body and taunting eyes.

Surprisingly, “Slevin” revolves mostly around father-son themes. Granted, you have to peel back the layers of gory retribution they are framed in, but thematically, you could definitely make the argument.

At any rate, there are many questions to be asked by the viewer: Why wouldn’t Slevin try to prove his real identity? And why does he seem so relaxed even in the face of immediate danger? Does he have a relationship to Goodkat? Why does Mykelti Williamson (“Forrest Gump”) have another weird speech-impediment thingy going on?

“Slevin” answers these questions, and with neo-noir gusto through stellar casting and dialogue, and some flamboyant wallpaper. It’s a dizzying, entertaining romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously. And neither should you.

Annapolis review

Navy Blues
This thinly veiled “Officer and a Gentleman” rendition is the old “bait and switch”

By Lennox Lattimore-Davian

Above: Face Off--Huard (Franco, left) and Cole (Gibson, right) foreshadow their Brigades matchup

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: so this guy walks into a venerated military academy, all clenched jaw and Josey Wales squint…..

Welcome to the unlikely world of director Justin Lin’s (“Better Luck Tomorrow”) “Annapolis, where you get to go unpunished for taking cheap shots at your superior and amateur boxing tournaments throw regulations out the window and are conducted without headgear. Raise your hand if you’ve been on a job like that.In a marketing sleight-of-hand unseen probably since “Jerry Maguire”, this movie shows a trailer about one film, but actually turns out to be another. It has little to do with the rigorous lifestyle of Annapolis rookies or “plebes”.

Turns out Annapolis (and I’m speaking strictly of the film here, not the institution which the Navy banned the filmmakers from shooting on) is really a backdrop for a boxing movie. Think of “Rocky” in a Dixie cup or “An Officer and a Gentleman” on low-grade marijuana.The comparisons to that cornerstone film are inevitable. The problem is that “Annapolis” lacks the social commentary punch of the latter picture because of the scarcity of Black drill instructors/superiors at that time.

So we follow James Franco’s (“Spiderman 2”, “Sonny”) ne’er-do-well Jake Huard, a battleship welder from the wrong side of the shipyard whose desire to join the military is a rather curious one. It’s similarly contradictory to a tomboy rocker chick who yearns to be on the cheerleading squad. This paradox makes for an absurd premise to build a movie off of. Where Richard Gere’s Zack Mayo turned to the military as a result of abject despair, Jake appears only to be looking to rankle a few highly decorated feathers, namely those of his superior Midshipman Lt. Cole. Given this, I don’t think I have to allude to the denouement, especially since our protagonist happens to be a more-than-adequate pugilist, who plans to enter himself into the legendary Brigade Championships, which are kind of a big deal.

Add to that this film’s vexing insistence on including a ready-made “no assembly or complexity required” motley crew of archetypes. There’s the “weak” female plebe, and Jake’s roommates: an Asian Mrs. Grundy of a character (who, wouldn’t you know, happens to be a math whiz), a Puerto Rican (who, wouldn’t you know, happens to be a nympho) and a Black fellow (who, wouldn’t you know, happens to be the fat kid who loves cake).

As viewers, the leaps of faith we are asked to take are lofty requests on the part of the cast and director. For example, the grossly unrealistic lack of retaliation against Jake for repeatedly being the cause of mass punishment among the plebes, and the ludicrous dismissal of a rookie from the academy over a simple shower, require a suspension of disbelief that no one but the Wachowski brothers have a right to ask of us.

Tyrese Gibson’s Midshipman Lt. Cole occupies the comfortable median between the sleepy insanity of Jamie Foxx’s Sgt. Sykes in “Jarhead”, and Jack Nicholson’s Molotov-cocktail Col. Nathan Jessep in “A Few Good Men”. While he is nowhere near the militaristic Mephistopheles that Jessep was, he is still a vessel of barely-contained vitriol guided by firm principles, all spit and polish. Gibson handles the role with a sure hand and the Machiavellian brio required for a hardass superior.

I didn’t find Jordana Brewster’s turn as Ali, Jake’s love interest and an upperclassman, to be particularly good or bad, just predictably requisite, which is more than I can say for Donnie Wahlberg’s “what’s your name again?” portrayal of Lt. Cmdr. Burton, who slides wraith-like in and out of scenes with little preamble or logic as to why the hell he’s there in the first place. In an auxiliary role, the always-delightful Chi McBride as the boxing trainer is all avuncular insouciance and off-the-cuff aphorisms.

And then there’s Franco. His Jake Huard is at turns petulant, brooding, observant, stubborn, contentious and proud. With his pent-up Arean energy, he seethes with the best of them, glowering like some dethroned, transubstantiated, erstwhile war god. In his scenes with Brewster his flirting is supposed to be playful, but comes over tepid and unsure; however, he shines in the moments where he must display a raw physicality and aggression which generates a heat that doesn’t scald so much as it invites. But his character is so closed most of the time that any overt displays of emotion seem out of place as though they belong in a different movie altogether. Huard had the elements of being a really good, complex character, but because of banal dialogue and thin plot, the execution was thrown off-kilter, very similar to Brad Pitt’s Achilles in “Troy”. Unfortunately, we don’t really get to empathize with Jake. The loss of his mother is supposed to be the convenient plot device inserted to help us achieve that, but it’s such a worn cliché, especially when coupled with the “disapproving father” archetype. Really, by comparison, his portly bunkmate Nance’s (“24’s” Vicellous Shannon) quest for approval from his father makes Jake look like a poser who pisses people off out of sheer boredom. On the bright side, Franco cuts a beautiful figure in a Naval uniform…….and a wet T-shirt.

Where this film had several chances to make a meaningful connection, it devolved, nearly gleefully, into annoying, syrupy familiarity. Maybe because it’s got nowhere else to go.