Movie Review: American Made

American Made ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Doug Liman.

Written by: Gary Spinelli.

Starring: Tom Cruise (Barry Seal), Domhnall Gleeson (Monty 'Schafer'), Sarah Wright (Lucy Seal), Jesse Plemons (Sheriff Downing), Caleb Landry Jones (JB), Lola Kirke (Judy Downing), Jayma Mays (Dana Sibota), Alejandro Edda (Jorge Ochoa), Benito Martinez (James Rangel), E. Roger Mitchell (Agent Craig McCall), Jed Rees (Louis Finkle), Fredy Yate Escobar (Carlos Ledher), Mauricio Mejía (Pablo Escobar).

 

I really, truly wish that American Made was a better movie than it is – because for the first time in quite some time, Tom Cruise has based one of his performance on something other than stunts and action sequences. It must be said that Cruise does those things remarkably well – perhaps better than anyone else working right now – but he’s also a fine actor in his own right, and he so infrequently flexes those muscles that when he does, you want to like the movie. The problem with American Made though is that the whole thing feels so shallow and superficial – a film that desperately wants to be a Scorsese film circa GoodFellas – but the film doesn’t have that depth. It basically has one mode – amped up speed – that the film never settles down enough to hit you like it should.

 

In the film, Cruise plays Barry Seal – who in the late 1970s goes from a pilot working for TWA, to one working for the CIA – flying missions over Central America, gaining intel on the Communists in the area. But he needs to make more money – and eventually, the opportunity presents itself when in Columbia he is brought to meet Jorge Ochoa – as well as his partner Pablo Escobar – and is made an offer he cannot refuse. He will fly hundreds of kilos of cocaine back to America – and be very well paid for his trouble. The CIA will know, but basically look the other way as long as he doesn’t get caught. His wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright), is sure she likes this – that is, until he’s starts bringing home more money than they can even hide.

 

The film is directed by Doug Liman – and like many of his previous movies both good (Go, Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) the film moves at a breakneck pace for the entirety of its runtime. For the first hour or so, this works quite well – this is when Barry is flying high, there are lots of scene with him flying his plane in tight spots, or with him in various tense conversations, and situations – etc. – and it’s all quite fun. But in the back half of the movie – when everything comes crashing back down to earth, Liman, Cruise and company don’t slow down. People are murdered, this start going to shit, lives are ruined – and Liman doesn’t alter the tone of the movie. It’s like if the second half of Boogie Nights was pitched at the same tone of the never-ending party of the first half. Eventually, everything just seems hollow and meaningless.

 

It really is too bad, because Cruise seems to at least be trying to stretch beyond his heroic roles – even if just by the tiniest bit. He doesn’t seem to quite grasp that Barry is an asshole – but even that could work (assholes never grasp that they are in fact assholes) – but instead, he simply crashes and burns smiling the whole way. I liked the first hour of the movie - , and there are parts of the second half that work as well. The problem here is it never feels like anyone involved really grasped the implications of the movie – and the film just keeps on partying all the way to the end – and even then, doesn’t get it.

Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow
Directed by: Doug Liman.
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth based on the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Starring: Tom Cruise (Cage), Emily Blunt (Rita), Brendan Gleeson (General Brigham), Bill Paxton (Master Sergeant Farell), Jonas Armstrong (Skinner), Tony Way (Kimmel), Kick Gurry (Griff), Franz Drameh (Ford), Dragomir Mrsic (Kuntz), Charlotte Riley (Nance), Terence Maynard (Cruel Sergeant), Noah Taylor (Dr. Carter).

It’s been a reasonably good summer blockbuster season so far – although we’re only a month into what will be a four month marathon, where every week brings another hugely expensive blockbuster, so there’s still time for us to get sick of them. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a little weak – simply because it’s essentially repeating what four other Spider-Man movies did, but was still entertaining. Godzilla may have sacrificed it’s human characters a little, but as large scale spectacle, it’s tough to beat. X-Men: Days of Future Past didn’t fall into the same trap that Spider-Man did and simply repeat what was done before – but tried for something different – and mainly succeeded. Maleficent was disappointing, but only because it seemed like it was reaching for something greater than it initially seemed, and then came up short. But out of all the blockbusters so far, Edge of Tomorrow is probably my favorite – the only one not based on an existing product, and one that really does seem to be trying for something unique and different. The film feels like it was based on a videogame – although it wasn’t – and is the only film I can think of that really captures the feel of playing a video game – dying and re-spawning over and over again, as the game tries to learn what they need to do to survive – and make it further in the game. This may sound like the movie would become repetitive and dull – but the screenplay, direction and performances keep that from happening – cleverly finding new twists, dark humor and ways to keep things moving along at a rapid pace. This is the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a while.

The movie opens with a lightning quick explanatory sequence – some brief news footage which talks about a meteor hit, and then ensuing invasion by an alien force known as “mimics” who have been marauding through Europe for five years now – seemingly unstoppable. That was until the battle of Verdun – where a hero emerged – Rita (Emily Blunt) who, as the footage repeatedly tells us with “new technology and little training” she was able to whip out hundreds of mimics in one battle. The allies are now planning one final, D-Day like attack on the mimics in Europe, which they think will succeed spectacularly, and end the mimic war. They’re wrong.

Tom Cruise stars as William Cage – a character who reminded me of James Garner’s character in Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky’s underrated The Americanization of Emily – where he played a character who is very good at his job as a PR hack, who is a coward when tasked with filming the action on D-Day. That’s what Cage faces as well – he’s called into the office of General Brigham (Brendan Gleason) and told he’ll be on the frontlines, filming the action. Cage doesn’t handle the situation well – and instead of doing that, he’s assigned to be an actual soldier on the frontlines. He is assigned to J-Company, under the leadership of Master Sergeant Farrell (an amusing Bill Paxton) – and isn’t expected to last long. He doesn’t – but right before he’s killed, he kills a mimic and is covered in his blood. This allows him to hijack the mimics power – the capability of “resetting” time every time he dies, so that he’s once again assigned to J-Company, and once again screws up, once again dies, and once again re-spawns. He meets Rita on the beach, and she figures out what is happening to him – because it happened to her before. She tells him to “find me when you wake up” – and eventually the two pair up and tries to win the war – with him remembering everything that happened, and she having to start fresh every day.

I liked pretty much everything about the first and second acts of Edge of Tomorrow. The quick explanatory section over the opening credits is really all you need to become engrossed in the world, and that’s all the movie gives you. Once it explains its concept once, it doesn’t dwell on it over and over again, but just immerses the audience in the action over and over – with slight changes. Sometimes when we think we’re seeing something for the first time, it turns out it’s happened many times before, and we only catch up when Rita does. The movie takes a disappointingly generic and predictable turn in the final act – but it’s one that seems necessary to satisfy the demands of the market to have large scale action at the end of every movie – and if I’m being honest, I have no idea how else they could have ended the movie (the movie does make up for this disappointingly predictable turn a little bit by having a great final scene).

As Angelina Jolie showed last week in Maleficent, Tom Cruise shows this week why we still do need movie stars in movies like this. Cruise doesn’t have the complexity in his role that Jolie had in that film – but he immediately establishes a screen presence in the film, and his character is never lost in the midst of all the special effects laden excitement. This isn’t easy to do (see everyone in Godzilla for an example of how to become completely overwhelmed by special effects) – and Cruise shows everyone else how it’s done. It’s not a great performance, but it’s a great “movie star performance” – which is what the film needs. I have no idea why the filmmakers chose Blunt to play Rita (perhaps they were fans of Julie Andrews in The Americanization of Emily) – because I don’t remember seeing her in an action film before, but Blunt is great as Rita – full of steely resolve, but also a sense of confusion and frustration. She had Cage’s power once, and lost it. Now she’s stuck trying to figure out new, every day, what exactly is going on. The best supporting performance, far and away, is by Bill Paxton – who is having a great deal of fun as Farrell. Add this to his memorable work last year in 2 Guns (the only memorable thing about that movie) – and I think it’s safe to say no one is having more fun in action movies right now than Paxton.

The film was directed by Doug Liman – who has had an interesting, up and down career so far. He has directed two large hits in the past – The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith – although both were apparently plagued by cost and schedule overruns, and second unit directors doing more of their share of the work (if you believe the rumors at least). At his best – like his earlier films, especially Go (1999), his films have a propulsive energy that keeps things moving from one scene to the next rapidly, never slowing down or missing a beat. He does that in Edge of Tomorrow – this film moves quickly. It also has a dark sense of humor – it has Tom Cruise die in any number of strange ways, sometimes played for laughs (the first time he tries to roll under the truck being the best).

In what has already been a rather good summer for big spectacles, I think Edge of Tomorrow is the best so far. It will have more competition – weekly – but it’s rare to have a movie of this size also have the intelligence that this one does – a film that takes a science fiction premise (or rips off Groundhog Day depending on your perceptive) and runs with it full bore. I had more fun watching Edge of Tomorrow than I’ve had at the movies in a while – but there’s also something a little bit more here. It’s not quite a great movie – the third act does that – but it’s great summer entertainment.

Movie Review: Fair Game

Fair Game ***
Directed by: Doug Liman.
Written By: Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth based on books by Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.
Starring: Naomi Watts (Valerie Plame), Sean Penn (Joe Wilson), David Andrews (Scooter Libby), Ty Burrell (Fred), Jessica Hecht (Sue), Norbert Leo Butz (Steve Norbert), Rebecca Rigg (Lisa), Brooke Smith (Diana), Thomas McCarthy (Jeff), Ashley Gerasimovich (Samantha Wilson), Quinn Broggy (Trevor Wilson), Michael Kelly (Jack McAllister), Noah Emmerich (Bill Johnson), Bruce McGill (Jim Pavitt), Adam LeFevre (Karl Rove), Polly Holliday (Diane Plame), Sam Shepard (Sam Plame).

Valerie Plame got screwed over – of that can be little doubt no matter what you think of the War in Iraq or her husband, Joe Wilson. She was a covert CIA Agent – only her husband and parents knew what her job actually was. Her husband was a former ambassador trying to make a living as a consultant in Washington, when the CIA approached him in the weeks after 9/11 about going to the African nation of Niger to see if it was possible that they had supplied yellow cake uranium to Iraq, and British intelligence had suggested. He went, thought it was impossible and told them. A few months later, he heard Bush at the State of the Union still saying that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake from Niger. Eventually, tired of lies, he wrote an article for the New York Times, which started a media firestorm. In response, Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, leaked the story that his wife was a CIA agent.

Fair Game, the new film by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identiry, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) is an interesting story that tells Wilson and Plame’s side of the story. It is based on the two books they wrote – separately – about the incident. It paints them in a positive light, and Libby is seen pretty much as an evil guy. Liman stops short of suggesting that anyone else was involved in the plot – but it strongly implies that at least Karl Rove was.

The film can be split into two different sections – before and after. I enjoyed the first part of the movie more, which concentrated on Plame and her role as a CIA Agent. This isn’t like most spy movies we see – with jet setting glamourous locations and shoot outs, but a more realistic approach. Naomi Watts does an excellent job in the role of Plame as she builds trust with her contacts, and tries to get to the truth of the matter in front of her. We do see some push back even in these scenes – with Libby constantly coming down to the CIA offices and questioning the staff, trying to get them to doubt themselves because most of them believe (correctly it turned out) that Iraq had no WMDs, and no program to try and produce them.

The second half concentrates more on Wilson, what he did, and how he defends himself and his wife when she refuses to speak after the story breaks. Sean Penn obviously relishes the opportunity to play a man openly critical of the Bush administration, but he hardly makes Wilson into a zealot. The movie paints him as a man who has strong opinions – and seemingly the need to share those opinions with anyone who will listen. He cannot even control himself at dinner with friends.

The heart of the movie is the performances by Watts and Penn. What is fascinating is they seem to take opposite approaches to the material, and yet appear to effortlessly embody a long standing married couple. Watts’ performance is largely internal – she tries her best not to give her emotions away, whether its with a contact, being questioned at the office, or as her life crumbles down around her. Penn on the other hand attacks the role – he relishes his numerous speeches and goes at them full bore. If you have to read Watts’ face to read her emotions, no such thing is needed with Penn – he tells you right to your face.

What surprised me is how honest the movie seems to be about these two people. Watts doesn’t really portray Plame as a heroine in a thriller – even in some of the early scenes where the movie seemingly tries to paint her that way. It is honest about the cost this had on their life and their marriage – at one point Plame has all but left Wilson. For his part, the movie sees Wilson as a man who relishes the attention. Before the story breaks, we see him speaking to a largely empty room of college students about his time in Iraq in the early 1990s. No one cares what he has to say. One article comes out, and he is all of sudden everyone, speaking to packed houses and loving every minute of it. He did what he did, at least in part, to get attention.

The film is intelligent, well made and well acted from beginning to end. But curiously, it was also rather unaffecting on an emotional level as well. Perhaps its because we see Wilson and Plame, and their two beautiful children and their nice house, and have a hard time really seeing them as victims – when the real victims are largely left off screen. (The movie tries to paint a picture of Plame’s work with scientists in the Iraqi nuclear program, but doesn’t really pull it off effectively). Yet it remained a fascinating movie to me – one that kept me involved from beginning to end. Not a great movie, but an interesting one nonetheless.