Movie Review: The Way Back

The Way Back *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Gavin O'Connor.

Written by: Brad Ingelsby and Gavin O'Connor.

Starring: Ben Affleck (Jack Cunningham), Al Madrigal (Dan), Janina Gavankar (Angela), Michaela Watkins (Beth), Brandon Wilson (Brandon Durrett), Will Ropp (Kenny Dawes), Fernando Luis Vega (Sam Garcia), Charles Lott Jr. (Chubbs Hendricks), Melvin Gregg (Marcus Parrish), Ben Irving (Bobby Freeze), Jeremy Radin (Father Mark Whelan), John Aylward (Father Edward Devine), Da’Vinchi (Devon Childress), Matthew Glave (Coach Lombardo), Nico David (Ryan), Todd Stashwick (Kurt).

 

Ben Affleck became a movie star by playing larger than life – guys who were either the smartest guys in the room, or at least acted as if they were. He is all swagger and charisma. And yet, for me, Affleck is always best as a performer when he doesn’t fall back on any of those. His best performance ever was in David Fincher’s Gone Girl – where he is basically playing an idiot – a clueless man who has no idea what he’s gotten him into – a man who has coasted on his charm, and now is screwed because of it. His performance in The Way Back may just be his second-best performance after Gone girl – and this time, all that movie star charm and charisma is gone, as is the swagger. Affleck plays Jack Cunningham, who works as a construction worker, lives in a depressing apartment, has an ex-wife he isn’t over, and basically drinks all day. He fills his coffee cup with booze during his shift, goes to the bar every night after work. He has a routine at home – pulling a beer from the fridge, putting in the freezer, where he already has an ice cold one waiting for him – and repeating the process over and repeatedly. The next day, he’ll drink a beer in the shower to get himself going again. He’s a sad, broken man – and doesn’t seem to be interested in becoming anything else.

 

Then he gets a phone call – and goes into his old Catholic High School, where he was a basketball star at one point. For some reason, they want him to be their new coach. The team’s stinks – they haven’t made the playoffs since Jack led them there 25 years ago. Left unsaid, but obvious, is that the demographic makeup has changed as well – the team he inherits is mostly African Americans, with a few Latinx people – and one white guy. It becomes clear to Jack right away that his team isn’t the most talented – isn’t close – so they’re going to have to do something else to win. As he stats to mold the team, they start winning – and he at the very least comes alive again, isn’t always in a complete sulk . But redemption and recovery aren’t that easy.

 

Yes, The Way Back is cliched as hell. It is a sports movie in which Affleck’s ragtag team of misfits play the really good, high end school early and get killed, so you know at some point they’ll play that same team at the end of the movie again – and prove them wrong. The director is Gavin O’Connor, who did Miracle years ago, and if Jack doesn’t quite give the Herb Brooks speech near the end of The Way Back, he has certainly heard it and changed it for his purposes.

 

But sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason- they work – and I have to admit I am a sucker for this kind of sports movie. It helps a great deal that behind the camera, O’Connor seems to really believe in this – aside from Miracle, he also did Warrior, an underrated MMA fighting movie, which oddly (but deservedly) got Nick Nolte an Oscar nomination back in 2011. He is drawn to this type of redemptive, underdog sports movies – clichés and all. The team itself is all full of types and stock characters – the talented young cast do a good with them, but it feels like much of the work has been done for them before they even show up – because we’ve seen them before, and what they will do.

 

But it really helps that Affleck really seems to be giving his all here. Affleck has made no secret in recent weeks about his own struggles with addiction and self-destructive behavior – elements he certainly brings to Jack here. The movie doesn’t sugarcoat Jack – he swears constantly, prone to violent outbursts with his temper, and can be downright cruel to people who are trying to help him (we get some reasons for that, which take the edge off of it a little – or at least, explain it). But he’s still an asshole. But he’s an asshole you root for – that you feel for, and think that maybe deep down, he isn’t an asshole after all. The movie doesn’t try and put all that happy an end on all of this – just suggests that perhaps for the first time in a long time, a happy end for Jack is at the very least possible.

Movie Review: The Accountant

The Accountant

Directed by: Gavin O'Connor.

Written by: Bill Dubuque.

Starring: Ben Affleck (Christian Wolff), Anna Kendrick (Dana Cummings), J.K. Simmons (Ray King), Jon Bernthal (Brax), Jeffrey Tambor (Francis Silverberg), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Marybeth Medina), John Lithgow (Lamar Black), Jean Smart (Rita Blackburn), Andy Umberger (Ed Chilton), Alison Wright (Justine).

 

When I am not reviewing movies, my full time job is, of course, an accountant. As far a movie accountant go, I know what to expect most of the time – movie accountants are bookish nerds, unable to see life as anything but numbers that need to be broken out of their sad, pathetic little lives. When you want a boring guy in the movie, the chances are he’s either going to be an accountant, or sell insurance. So, when I saw the trailer for The Accountant – and it had Ben Affleck killing a lot of people, I knew I would have to see the movie. Ultimately, while the film isn’t particularly good, nor is it much of a mold breaker in terms of how it portrays accountants (there are two in the film – played by Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick, are both are desperately alone), it is a least a little amusing to see how the film plays with others perceptions of accountants. The action is okay as well. I’d be willing to go so far as to call the film a guilty pleasure – except, I think, it does way too far over the top in its last act, and in ways that inspire groans, not smiles.

 

In the film, Ben Affleck plays Christian Wolff – a strip mall accountant, who clearly has trouble dealing with people, even if he is a genius. In flashbacks to his childhood, we learn that he is autistic – he has a brilliant mathematical mind, but zero social skills. His dad, who worked is PsyOps in the army, put him and his brother through vigorous training – mainly so that Christian would be able to defend himself, and lead a relatively normal life. He doesn’t though. The head of an investigatory unit in the Treasury department (JK Simmons) has seen him pop up in photos of very bad people from around the world – he knows he is their accountant – someone they bring in to “uncook” the books, and see what happened. Somehow this accountant, with a lot of secrets of powerful men, has been able to stay alive however – if anyone ends up dead, it’s the clients not him. Simmons blacks an underline, Madina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to track down this mysterious accountant. In the meantime, Christian has gotten a new job – not for gangsters, but a robotic company run by Lamar Black (John Lithgow) where he fears some money has been embezzled – this was noticed by the whip smart Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick – thankfully, not a love interest for Affleck’s character, at least not a traditional one). Then there’s also Brax (Jon Bernthal) – a financial fixer in a different way – bringing his gun along to intimidate people into doing the right thing for his clients, who we’re sure, will eventually come into play with the main action.

 

Writing that all down, I realize that the film had WAY more plot than I thought it did – and way more than was needed (I didn’t even mention Jeffrey Tambor’s character). The movie kind of spins off in many different directions at once – but I have to say that director Gavin O’Connor does a decent job at harnessing it all into one coherent movie. For the first two acts, he keeps all the balls of this complicated plot in the air and humming along. It isn’t really his fault when they come crashing down in the last act – the screenplay by Bill Dubuque tries too hard in the last act to try to pull the rug out from under us – but his twists are the worst kind – the ones that make zero sense when they are revealed, because it puts everything that happened in the movie up until then non-sensical (in contrast, the best twists endings, like Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, make complete sense once they are revealed).

 

For the talented ensemble cast, let’s be honest and call this what it is – a pay cheque movie. Affleck has to play flat and emotionless – much like in Batman vs. Superman earlier this year, but thankfully a lot less dour and whiny. He does this okay – but I do think it was a challenge for him to keep his more natural, good nature come out at times. Now that he’s an Oscar winner, this is the type of role J.K. Simmons will get more of – largely forgettable character roles, but ones that are larger than the ones he used to get – although he does a decent job of selling the longest monologue explaining things since Donald Sutherland in JFK. Perhaps its because I’ve watched a few old school Brian De Palma movies recently, but I kind of expected more from John Lithgow – I wanted to see him play a slimy psycho, but his role is largely forgettable (even if his last scene in the film is a gem – largely unrelated to him though). Jon Bernthal gets to add another meat-headed psycho, given to long monologues to his resume – the type of thing he does in every film since The Walking Dead. Poor Addai-Robinson gets to stare dumbfounded at a computer screen for most of the running time. Best of the bunch is probably Kendrick – even if she is essentially playing her Up in the Air character again, she is so charming – and so unexpected in an action movie like this, that she’s a joy to watch.

 

The Accountant isn’t really a bad movie – it runs over two hours, and that’s too long, but for a good 90 minutes of that, it’s an entertaining little action film – the type of film you mildly enjoy and then fall asleep to on TBS on a Sunday night. It goes off the rails at the end to be sure – and is never really as memorable as you’d want it to be. Even if this movie accountant kills more people than most – like the rest, he’s still largely forgettable.

Movie Review: Warrior

Warrior *** ½

Directed by: Gavin O'Connor.

Written by: Gavin O'Connor & Anthony Tambakis & Cliff Dorfman.

Starring: Joel Edgerton (Brendan Conlon), Tom Hardy (Tommy Conlon), Nick Nolte (Paddy Conlon), Jennifer Morrison (Tess Conlon), Frank Grillo (Frank Campana), Kevin Dunn (Principal Zito), Maximiliano Hernández (Colt Boyd), Jake McLaughlin (Mark Bradford), Vanessa Martinez (Pilar Fernandez), Denzel Whitaker (Stephon), Kurt Angle (Koba), Erik Apple (Pete 'Mad Dog' Grimes), Anthony Johnson (Orlando 'Midnight' Le).

Since the UFC became hugely popular, I have seen several movies about mixed martial arts, but they all seem to be done cheaply and exploitatively. Like the recent spat of dance films, the MMA films up until now have all been about the fighting, with little things such as character development, plot and even basic visuals taking a backseat to seeing a bunch of muscle bound thugs beating the shit out of each other. There is plenty of muscle bound thugs beating the shit out of each other in Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior as well, but for the first time, a movie about MMA has been made with care and intelligence – great acting and a fine visual look and feel. Yes, Warrior is as clichéd as they come as far as underdog sports movies go, but I didn’t much care when I was watching it. I was too busy being entertained.

The movie is about two very different brothers, who grew up with a hard drinking, hard driving, and abusive father named Paddy (Nick Nolte) who trained both of his boys to be fighters. At some point during their teenage years, the younger brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) took off with their mother to get her away from her abusive husband. The older brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) stayed around, because he was in love with – and would eventually marry – Tess (Jennifer Morrison). The brothers haven’t spoken since, and in fact Tommy hasn’t spoken with much of anyone, joining the Marines and fighting in Iraq, just to show up on Paddy’s doorstep one day. Paddy tells him he has stopped drinking, but Tommy hates the old man anyway. Brendan will at least let Paddy call him, but he doesn’t want him near his wife and kids.

Meanwhile, a rich man has decided to put on the biggest MMA tournament in history – Sparta, to take place in Atlantic City over the July 4^th weekend. Tommy gets in because he makes him a Youtube sensation by beating the crap out of one of the top contenders in a sparring match. He needs a coach, and Paddy was good at that – if nothing else – so he enlists his help. Brendan, who was once a UFC fighter, is now a high school teacher, but needs money badly, so he fights in pickup matches in the parking lot of a strip club. After showing up with too many bruises, he is suspended for the rest of the year. Needing money, he decides to train harder to win bigger purses, and enlists his old trainer to do so – who also happens to be training one of the top contenders for Sparta. When a few days before the start of the tournament his contender hurts himself, guess who gets to take his place?

So yes, the whole movie is about the lead up to Sparta, and what we know will be eventually be a brother against brother battle, between two men who act like they hate each other, but really do love each other. You get no points for guessing that fact, especially since they have built almost the entire preview around that. But Warrior is not just another mindless movie about men who kick the shit of each other. There are real characters beneath the three grizzled tough guys at the center of the movie. And three excellent performances.

Nick Nolte is perfectly cast as Paddy. A lot of guys can, and have, played recovering alcoholics, but Nolte brings credibility to the role because we know his assorted history of alcohol and drug abuse, and we can see the ravages of what it has done to him all over his face, and hear it in every raspy word he speaks. Remember, Nolte was once selected by People magazine as the “Sexiest Man Alive”, but those days are long behind him. He brings the right note of regret and longing to his role as Paddy, a man who just wants his family back, and knows he has no one to blame but himself. Tom Hardy, so good in recent years in films like Bronson and Inception, here seems to be trying to channel a young Marlon Brando – he is all dark, brooding intensity. He says very little, but you can tell whatever secrets he is hiding are tearing him up inside. The movie only gradually reveals his past, and unlike other movies, here this works. The main character though is Brendan, and it’s hard to find a more sympathetic character than Joel Edgerton’s in this film. He is a man fighting for his family – and that elevates him. He doesn’t get to be as dark and brooding as Hardy, or as full of remorse as Nolte, but he carries the movie.

The film was directed by Gavin O’Connor, who seems to have made a career out of doing underdog sports movie. Warrior follows the hockey film Miracle and the swimming film Pride and Glory on his resume. For me, this is inarguably his most complete film. I love the dark, visual look he gives to the film early on, and MMA has never seemed as exciting to me as it does here (every time I stop on a UFC fight on TV, it just looks like two half naked guys writhing around on the ground).

Warrior certainly does not bring anything new to the table of underdog sports movies, but I cannot think of the last time I enjoyed one as much as I did this one. Yes, the movie is manipulative in the extreme, and as it progresses, it gets more and more unbelievable. But I didn’t care. Warrior is one of the most purely entertaining films of the year.