The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville.

Starring: Alain Delon (Corey), André Bourvil (Le Commissaire Mattei), Gian-Maria Volontè (Vogel), Yves Montand (Jansen), Paul Crauchet (Le Receleur), Paul Amiot (L'inspecteur général de la police), Pierre Collet (Le Gardien de prison), André Ekyan (Rico), Jean-Pierre Posier (L'assistant de Mattei), François Périer (Santi), Yves Arcanel (Le juge d'instruction), René Berthier (Le directeur de la P.J.), Jean-Marc Boris (Le fils Santi).

 

In some ways, it feels like Le Cercle Rouge was the film that Jean-Pierre Melville was building towards for years before he made it. It is another film of cops and criminals, and the very thin line that separates them, and how they each have to live by a moral code of sorts. Yet in Le Cercle Rouge, Melville pushes this farther then he has before – this sameness between the cops and criminals and their morals is pushed further than before. In terms of filmmaking, its as stripped down as it can get – there is little dialogue in the film – little is needed – and it certainly isn’t quite as much fun as some earlier Melville films were. What it is though is a meticulously crafted crime thriller, about cops and criminals, each deciding where their moral line is – and how far they will go over it.

 

The film once again stars Alain Delon – this time as a thief named Corey. When the film opens, he’s in jail – but is offered a deal by a prison guard who has setup Corey’s release. All he has to do is pull off an elaborate jewel heist when he gets out – it will set both Corey and the guard up if he can pull it off. Corey isn’t overly interested – but really, what choice does he have? When he gets out his first move is to take revenge on Rico – the gangster whose betrayal landed him in jail in the first place, and to make matters worse, Rico has stolen Corey’s girl while he was away in prison. Corey should have left well enough alone.

 

The other major plot involves Vogel (Gian-Maria Volonte), who we first meet as he is in the custody of Commissionar Mattei (Andre Bourvil) – who is transporting him by train to jail – his crime only vaguely spoken about. Mattei falls asleep on the train – allowing Vogel to pick his handcuffs, and leap from the train in a daring escape. Vogel will, quite by happenstance, run into Corey – and soon will become a member of his team to pull off the robbery. Mattei, humiliated at letting Vogel get away, will come after them hard.

 

There are two other major characters. First there is Santi (Francois Perier) – a bartender who knows everything and everyone, and who Mattei will lean on – with increasing pressure – to give up the information he needs to know, even as Santi insists he is no rat. Then there is Jansen (Yves Montand) – a former cop, and expert marksman – now an alcoholic with the DT’s – who Corey and Vogel have to recruit to pull off the elaborate heist. Jansen isn’t in it for the money – he just wants some self-respect back – wants to prove he can do it.

 

For most of the runtime, Melville moves things at a meticulous, but never boring, pace. He starts the movie with a (made-up) quote from the Buddha about people who are destined to meet each other will eventually meet each other – perhaps only because it allows him to pull off his plot that is so heavy with coincidences. The other quote that stands out comes from Mattei’s boss – who observes “No man is innocent. They start out that way, but it doesn’t last”. That becomes true, in its way, during the course of Le Cercle Rouge – as we will witness a lot of these people, on both sides of the law, make bad decisions – perhaps no one worse than Mattei, who is so hell-bent on catching Vogel, on saving face from letting him get away, he will do anything to catch them.

 

The whole movie climaxes with a masterful, 25-minute wordless sequence where the three criminals pull off the elaborate jewel heist. If you’ve seen Jules Dassin’s excellent Rififi, it will likely remind you of that legendary sequence – although Melville’s sequence is perhaps even more elaborate (if not quite as intense – although it’s very close). Apparently Melville delayed making Le Cercle Rouge for years because he wanted to get away from the comparison to Rififi – but why not be compared to the best?

 

The movie ends as it must I suppose. This is a return to the types of films that Melville was making before his masterpiece Army of Shadows (1969) – about his time in the French Resistance of WWII. It is similar to Le Samourai, Le Deuxieme Souffle or Le Doulos. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve seen those films so recently – or that a part of me prefers black and white – but it feels like Le Cercle Rouge is perhaps a notch below those films. It takes Melville’s moral universe to the extreme – but in its way, his characters don’t strike me as quite as complex. Still, it’s telling that most directors could never even dream of pulling something off as meticulously crafted as Le Cercle Rouge – that if they did it would be the defining film of their career – while for Melville, it’s just another masterful crime thriller.

Movie Review: Little Women

Little Women **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Greta Gerwig.

Written by: Greta Gerwig based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott.

Starring: Saoirse Ronan (Jo March), Emma Watson (Meg March), Timothée Chalamet (Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence), Florence Pugh (Amy March), Eliza Scanlen (Beth March), Laura Dern (Marmee March), Tracy Letts (Mr. Dashwood), Bob Odenkirk (Mr. March), James Norton (John Brooke), Louis Garrel (Friedrich Bhaer), Chris Cooper (Mr. Laurence), Jayne Houdyshell (Hannah), Meryl Streep (Aunt March), Maryann Plunkett (Mrs. Kirke), Hadley Robinson (Sallie Gardiner Moffatt), Charlotte Kinder (Viola), Ana Kayne (Olivia), Dash Barber (Fred Vaughn).

 

On the surface there is nothing all that daring about yet another version of Little Women. There have been two silent film adaptations, 1933 film with Katherine Hepburn, a 1949 film with June Allyson, a 1994 film with Winona Ryder and a contemporary film adaptation just two years ago. This is in addition to any number of television versions. You would be forgiven in thinking that there was nothing else today do with Louisa May Alcott’s novel in a film. And yet, despite all of that, Greta Gerwig’s new version still feels fresh and alive – and yes, even original. It is a film made for this moment, even as she sets it in the proper time period. It is a truly great adaptation – perhaps the best we’ve seen so far.

 

The biggest change that Gerwig made in her telling is to jumble up the storyline – to cut back and forth in time, from the time the March sisters were young teenagers, to a decade later, when they are all in their 20s. Some may find this is orienting or confusing, but I was never lost in the films timeline. I actually think it works amazingly well. Gerwig at times cuts back and forth in time to similar moments in Jo’s life – moments of similar emotional impact. At other times, the jumps are more intuitive. There is something European in Gerwig’s telling of this very American story – and it works to make everything feel fresher.

 

The story is still there. It is still about Jo (Saorise Ronan) and her quest to become a writer, while still feeling the pull of her family. Her older sister Meg (Emma Watson) is the most conventional of the sisters – the one who wants the simplest life (and as a result, is as usual, the dullest of the characters). There is the selfless Beth (Eliza Scanlen) – the only one who seems to really see beyond her own ambitions. And then there is Amy – played by Florence Pugh – who intuitively sees Jo as a rival, and wants whatever she has, while at the same time, still loves her – as Jo does with her. The movie is about the March family during the Civil War, as the father is off fighting for the Union, and Marmee (Laura Dern) struggles to hold them together. Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) is the rich kid from across the way – who falls for Jo, but really, falls for the entire March family.

 

The two performances that make the movie are by Ronan and Pugh. Ronan worked with Gerwig before in Lady Bird, and her Jo is similarly ambitious and talkative, while there is still an undercurrent of insecurity to her. She wants to be her own person – make her own way – but it’s a world in which that is nearly impossible for a woman. She gives a great, short, speech late in the film – where she lays out how she feels – how women should be valued for more than just their ability to be wives and mothers – and yet, also, is so incredibly lonely (an addition of Gerwig’s – which makes the whole scene). Her Jo is the most relatable, human, flawed Jo I can recall. She is matched by Pugh – who has the added task of having to play about 13 for part of the film (and does it convincingly, at least in terms of mannerisms, if not appearance). Her Amy is perhaps a little pettier than most – but also relatable in her desires. She doesn’t want to be second best – not anymore.

 

The filmmaking by Gerwig is impeccable. The costumes, the sets, Alexandre Desplat’s lush score, all of which are used to great effect here. But it really is her storytelling that makes the film truly special. It’s not just the way she jumbles the narrative, to give it more meaning, in less time, than others have done. It’s also in the way she ends the movie – an ending that acknowledges who unsatisfying, and yes, phony, the ending of the novel and the other adaptations has been. Gerwig finds a way to be faithful to the book – and still make her own feelings on the subject clear.

 

With Lady Bird, Gerwig firmly established herself as a filmmaker. That was a small film, but one that was so detailed in its writing and attention to performance, that it rose above the myriad of other films of its like that debut every year at Sundance. With Little Women, Gerwig shows that she can do the same thing on a larger scale – and take even the most well-trodden territory, and make it new again.

Movie Review: The Grudge

The Grudge ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Nicolas Pesce   

Written by: Nicolas Pesce and Jeff Buhler based on the original screenplay by Takashi Shimizu.

Starring: Andrea Riseborough (Detective Muldoon), John J. Hansen (Burke), Demián Bichir (Goodman), Lin Shaye (Faith Matheson), John Cho (Peter Spencer), Betty Gilpin (Nina Spencer), Jacki Weaver (Lorna Moody), Frankie Faison (William Matheson), William Sadler (Detective Wilson), Tara Westwood (Fiona Landers), Junko Bailey (Kayako Ghost), David Lawrence Brown (Sam Landers), Zoe Fish (Melinda Landers).

 

I never liked any of The Grade movies – either from Japan or America. They always seemed like a cheap knock-off of the superior The Ring (or Ringu) movies, and even those aren’t masterpieces, just highly effective shock films – at least the first time through. By comparison, The Grudge films always seemed like a series of cheap jump scares, with images of Japanese ghosts with long hair, making weird noises, that never did much for me. When The Grudge films stopped being made – or at least released theatrically – I felt relief that this not very good franchise was finally behind us. But, of course, studios don’t let IP stay buried – they need to keep capitalizing on it, so here we are again – another The Grudge movie. It is somewhat surprising to me to report then that this latest one is probably the best Grudge movie I have seen. That doesn’t make it good exactly – but I think perhaps this is as good as this franchise can get.

 

The director this time in Nicolas Pesce, who has made art house horror before now with the very disturbing and visually striking The Eyes of My Mother, and the strange Piercing. I didn’t think either of those were great – but there was such promise to both of them (especially the former) that I full believe that Pesce can, and hopefully will, make a great horror movie one day. The Grudge isn’t it – but it’s also better than it has any right to be. Basically, I kind of feel that if Pesce had been able to make his own film here – and not be saddled with the expectations of a Grudge movie, this could have been very good – what he brings to it works, what the franchise brings, does not.

 

The film is once again about a vengeful Japanese spirit, who haunts anyone who comes in contact with it. This time, an American nurse brings it home with her from a stint in Japan – and over the course of a decade, it haunts anyone who enters the house at 44 Reyburn – eventually killing them all. The film follows Detective Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough), a newly single mother after the death of her husband, who starts a new job, with a new partner (Demian Bichir – apparently auditioning for the next season of True Detective). Their first case involves a dead body in a car – it’s been there for months – with a connection to 44 Reyburn. Bichir worked the original cases there – but never entered the house. Something just felt wrong there. Muldoon doesn’t heed that warning though – and does indeed enter the house. And, over the course of the movie, we’ll flash back to previous people unlucky enough to enter – real estate agents/spouses John Cho and Betty Gilpin, a long married couple Frankie Faison and Lin Shaye, a compassionate Dr. Death Jacki Weaver, Bichir’s old partner, William Sadler, and the original family with the nurse mother returning from Japan.

 

What’s interesting about the film is how much in pain all of these people are in before they enter the house. Whether it’s the death of a husband, the impending death of a longtime spouse, news about a baby with potential birth defect, etc, everyone who steps into the house is already haunted by death – either in the recent past, or coming up in the near future. One of them even enters the house knowing its weird connection with death – hoping that it will give them a chance even after death. These are not just characters lined up for the slaughter.

 

Of course, though, Pesce has to deliver what audiences expect from a Grudge film – and he does. There are many cheap jump scares, some effective, some not – lot of groaning noises, etc. Of course there is a little girl with a lot of hair, and nothing ends well for anyone. Watching the film, I was always frustrated when Pesce had to deliver what was expected of him – especially as he has to wind things up in the end. So much of it seems like the demands of a studio, rather than what was organic to the movie itself. There is a good movie in this version of The Grudge – it just needed to jettison everything that makes it a Grudge movie at all.

Movie Review: Cats

Cats * / *****

Directed by: Tom Hooper.

Written by: Lee Hall and Tom Hooper based on the poetry collection by T.S. Eliot and the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Starring: James Corden (Bustopher Jones), Judi Dench (Old Deuteronomy), Jason Derulo (Rum Tum Tugger), Idris Elba (Macavity), Jennifer Hudson (Grizabella), Ian McKellen (Gus The Theatre Cat), Taylor Swift (Bombalurina), Rebel Wilson (Jennyanydots), Francesca Hayward (Victoria), Laurie Davidson (Mr. Mistoffelees), Robbie Fairchild (Munkustrap), Mette Towley (Cassandra), Steven McRae (Skimbleshanks), Danny Collins (Mungojerrie), Naoimh Morgan (Rumpleteazer), Ray Winstone (Growltiger). 

 

Is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats always this bad? This borderline unwatchable? I know there have been many jokes made about Cats over the years – I remember the ones on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for instance – but something that has run for as many decades as Cats, and has such a following, surely cannot be this awful can it? Watching Tom Hooper’s film version, I could not help but wonder how this plays on a stage, and if it really could be any better than this? It has to be right? What is wrong with Cats, the film, goes well beyond the much mocked digital fur technology. Basically, well, everything. Everything in this movie is terrible – the acting, the songs, the visual effects, etc. Only Taylor Swift emerges unscathed – she somehow shows up for one song, late in the film, and finds the absolute perfect tone for the song, the perfect delivery, and for a few glorious moments, the film works – or at least comes close. The rest of it, yikes.

 

The story, such as it is, revolves around Victoria (Francesca Howard), a new cat thrown into the streets of London, where she is befriended by some Jellicle cats. What is a jellicle cat you ask? Don’t worry, there are approximately 10 songs about it in this film. We meet some of these cats along the way – they all come up and sing their song about what kind of cat they are, and then, are often whisked away by Macavity (Idris Elba). Because, you see, tonight is the Jellicle ball, and there, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench – who has never been worse) will choose one Jellicle cat to ascend to heaven and start a new life, and Macavity is determined he will win this year – and being a criminal, the only way he can is to eliminate the competition. So yes, the movie is basically about a bunch of cats, who one at a time sing a song about what kind of cat they are in the hopes of being chosen to die.

 

This has to work better on stage, right? It cannot be this bad. What I will say for Hooper and company is that they all really do seem committed to this insanity. They dive headlong into it, and don’t come up for air. So if the movie requires Rebel Wilson to bit the heads off of some singing, dancing cockroaches, so be it. If Ian McKellan needs to drink from a saucer of milk, okay. If Judi Dench has to clean herself with her paws, go for it Dame Judi. Everything in the movie is equally garish – the songs, the sets, the visual effects, the performances. I guess you could praise its consistency.

 

Personally, I don’t really like internet pile-ons for movies – they often result in people trying to come up with the cleverest take-down of a movie, and grows so outsized that when I end up seeing the movie, I walk away thinking that while bad, it didn’t deserve the pile on. Cats deserves it. Because even with how garish and weird it all it, it also manages to be boring. It’s the type of film that you almost cannot believe exists, so you watch it just to prove yourself it is real. Cats is very real, and very, very, very bad.

Movie Review: Lucy in the Sky

Lucy in the Sky ** / *****   

Directed by: Noah Hawley.

Written by: Noah Hawley and Elliott DiGuiseppi and Brian C. Brown.

Starring: Natalie Portman (Lucy Cola), Jon Hamm (Mark Goodwin), Zazie Beetz (Erin Eccles), Dan Stevens (Drew Cola), Pearl Amanda Dickson (Blue Iris), Ellen Burstyn (Nana Holbrook), Colman Domingo (Frank Paxton), Jeremiah Birkett (Hank Lynch), Jeffrey Donovan (Jim Hunt), Tig Notaro (Kate Mounier), Stella Edwards (Chelsea), Arlo Mertz (Emily), Tobias Schönleitner (Miles Henckle), Diana DeLaCruz (Dr. Addison), Nick Offerman (Will Plimpton), Joe Williamson (Mayer Hines), Arnell Powell (Earl Pearly).

 

There are some bad films that are bad because the filmmakers don’t have the talent or the budget to make them work. And then there are bad films made by talented people, with a lot of resources, who just fundamentally misjudge the material, and somehow the whole things gets away from them. Lucy in the Sky is a film like that. It is loosely based on a true story – the strange story of astronaut Lisa Nowak – who, after returning from space, ended up driving across country – wearing astronaut diapers so she wouldn’t have to stop – in a plan to kidnap a romantic rival. That story is insane – and should make for a compelling movie. The problem is that the very talented co-writer/director Noah Hawley (who did Fargo and Legion for TV) decided to take the material super seriously. He didn’t want to make a cheap, fun film about this insane story – and in taking it so seriously, he basically sucks all the air out of the film. He tries so many stylistic things in the movie that it comes off as a first time director (which, in terms of films, Hawley is) trying to show off, instead of making a movie that services the material. He ends up stranding his incredibly talented cast with nothing much to do.

 

Natalie Portman has the lead role here – Lucy Cola, who when we first meet her is in space, at the international space station, looking down on the world from a vantage point that most of us will never see. That sort of thing can change a person – and it does for Lucy. When she arrives back to earth, all of a sudden her dull, but nice, husband Drew (Dan Stevens) seems so much duller than before. In fact, everything in her life seems so much duller. As she says, what are supposed to do when you get back from space, go to Applebee’s? She gravitates towards others who have been to space – in particular Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm), a womanizer, who is having an affair with another astronaut, Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz) at the same time he is doing the same with Lucy.

 

Hawley plays with the aspect ratios throughout Lucy in the Sky – it is wide and expansive in space, or when she returns and is training to go back to space, and tight and constrictive when she goes about her day to day life. Interestingly, Hawley keeps the tight constrictive ratio even when Lucy is having sex with Mark – meaning that the sex she is having outside of her marriage isn’t any less dull to her – but perhaps she just needs that connection to someone who understands what she has gone through.

 

You can see how this sort of material could work – but I’m not sure Hawley ever really cracks it. Perhaps, coming from a TV background, had he gotten 8-10 hours to spend with Lucy, he would have done it. What we get instead is the truth that going to space changes you – but no real understanding of the how or why. By the time we get to the last act of the movie – and Lucy really starts spiraling out-of-control, the movie kind of does as well. Portman can spiral – she won an Oscar for Black Swan, which was one long spiral out-of-control – but here, buried under a bad wig, and a fake sounding Southern accent, it never really feels like she’s doing anything except playing dress up. What really seems to set her off is when she is told she won’t be on the next mission – and that she is too “emotional” right now for that – the kind of casual, everyday misogyny women deal with all the time, or would be if she didn’t go so far off the deep end right after that she more than proves their point.

 

It doesn’t help much that the film is full of unnecessary character – Lucy’s niece in particular serves no purpose for how much time she gets, and even wastes Ellen Burstyn as Portman’s profane grandma (her crack about astronaut dick is a good one – and belongs in the more fun version of Nowack’s story). Even a talented actor like Stevens doesn’t seem to know what to do with Drew other than the make him as full as possible (as an accountant, I am thankful they made him a PR guy, because normally someone this dull in a movie would have my job). Hamm is well-cast – he could play this role to perfection – if there was more to dig into. And, sadly, this is yet another film that completely wastes the talents of Zazie Beetz.

 

Hawley has talented. If I made a decade list of my favorite TV shows in the last 10 years, Fargo would be on it – and high on it, and I came into that thinking it was a mistake to try and make a TV shows out of the Coen’s masterpiece. Here, though, he gives into his worst instincts – the type of stuff that eventually made me stop watching Legion. At a certain point, you have to stop showing off, and tell a story worth telling, with characters you want to keep watching. He doesn’t crack the code with Lucy in the Sky – a major disappointment for 2019.

Movie Review: Official Secrets

Official Secrets ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Gavin Hood.

Written by: Gregory Bernstein and Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood based on the book by Marcia Mitchell and Thomas Mitchell.

Starring: Keira Knightley (Katharine Gun), Matt Smith (Martin Bright), Matthew Goode (Peter Beaumont), Rhys Ifans (Ed Vulliamy), Adam Bakri (Yasar Gun), Indira Varma (Shami Chakrabarti), Ralph Fiennes (Ben Emmerson), Conleth Hill (Roger Alton), Tamsin Greig (Elizabeth Wilmshurst), Hattie Morahan (Yvonne Ridley), Ray Panthaki (Kamal Ahmed), Angus Wright (Mark Ellison), Chris Larkin (Nigel Jones), Jeremy Northam (Ken MacDonald).

 

Official Secrets is the story of Katherine Gun, who in the lead up to the Iraq war, worked for British intelligence as a translator. She knew that the intelligence didn’t really support the war, and that both the American and Iraqi governments were lying about it – and eventually her conscience gets the best of her – and she leaks an internal memo from the Americans, to the British, requesting information on members of the UN Security council, that could be used to essentially blackmail them to voting for the war. She didn’t do this for personal gain – in fact, it was a tremendous personal risk to her, as she could be fired and charged, and her Muslim refugee husband could end up being deported. It is a great story – and not one all that well-known outside of England. And yet, the movie that tells the story is more than a little dull – and never quite hits the way it should.

 

I think the reason the film doesn’t really work is because co-writer/director Gavin Hood never really settles on the story he wants to tell. He has essentially made three movies here – and none of them work as well as they should. One of the movies is about Gun herself – played in a fine performance by Keira Knightley, as a woman who gets increasingly exasperated with what she knows are lies, leading her country to war, and eventually breaks and leaks the document – and then has second thoughts. When the leak is discovered, and she is discovered the leaker, the pressure mounts on her – and her husband.

 

The second movie is about the reporters who eventually get the memo. They work for a paper that is pro-war – but cannot resist a good story. They have trouble verifying the story – and they have to go to print still not 100% sure that they are correct – even though they have vetted it as much as they can. This part is probably the weakest – because it’s the most well-known and clichéd part – and as talented as some of the actors (Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Matt Smith) are, they cannot quite breathe life into it.

 

The third movie starts late – and centers of a lawyer played by Ralph Fiennes, who decides to take on the case for Katherine, when the government seems to be coming for her guns blazing. His challenge is to mount a defense for a woman who has confessed her crime, and is charged under a law that pretty much says the government can do whatever they want. His only defense is that the war was illegal – so therefore, what Katherine did to try and stop it wasn’t.

 

I will say that the movie builds to a satisfying courtroom climax – the rare courtroom climax that literally did surprise me, and would be the type of thing you wouldn’t believe unless it were true. It hits just the right notes in that climax.

 

But the rest of the movie feels a little too bland, a little too predictable, a little too stolid and solid, without really digging very deep. It’s all very British in a reserved way – but without the subtlety that can sometimes come along with it. The film holds your interest, without ever being very involving. It’s just kind of there.

Movie Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon

Brittany Runs a Marathon *** / *****

Directed by: Paul Downs Colaizzo.   

Written by: Paul Downs Colaizzo.

Starring: Jillian Bell (Brittany), Michaela Watkins (Catherine), Utkarsh Ambudkar (Jern), Lil Rel Howery (Demetrius), Micah Stock (Seth), Alice Lee (Gretchen), Patch Darragh (Doctor Falloway), Mikey Day (Dev). 

 

If I told you that the basic outline of Brittany Runs a Marathon is that an overweight, underachieving New York based woman decides to get her life in order by training to run the New York Marathon, you would likely think that the film is yet another Sundance film designed to illicit both cheers and tears. To a certain extent, all of that is true (including the Sundance part) – and yet Brittany Runs a Marathon earns those cheers and those tears because the lead character is more than just a sum of feel-good clichés. Played by Jillian Bell, who up until now has specialized in stealing movies in small supporting roles, Brittany is a jumble of contradictions – and isn’t always the easiest protagonist to like or cheer for. But Bell is so winning in the title role – so funny, and yet so real, that even when she does things that are impossible to approve you, you root for her anyway. The film does hit many of those clichés – but because the lead character is so well written and performed, you forgive it that, and go along for the ride.

 

In the film, Bell plays a New York based would be writer, who cannot seem to get out of her own way. She doesn’t really have a job or any real prospects. She has one friend – but they bond mostly over their desire to go drinking during the week, and the limits of that friendship come into sharp focus when Brittany decides to better herself. Brittany knows she is overweight, knows she doesn’t have much going on, is 30, and in listless. Through a series of convenient plot developments, she starts running – joins a running group, makes new friends, develops a love interest – Jern (Utkarsh Amdudkar) – and becomes determined to run in the New York Marathon. It isn’t an easy journey.

 

Bell is always a delightful presence is movies – but mostly she has been used for comic relief – a blunt truth teller who puts everyone else in their place, and then moves on. Here, Bell still gets the chance to be funny – she delivers one-liners as good as anyone – but she also gets to delve deeper into a thorny character. Brittany is s spiky character – she uses those spikes to keep people at a distance, and it masks deep insecurities. Those insecurities never really go away in the movie either. The movie isn’t offering this journey as a kind of band aid to fix everything in her life, nor will simply getting in shape make her a better, happier, more secure person. They just come out in different ways. Brittany does go through a physical transformation in the film – Bell apparently lost 40 pounds for the film – but that doesn’t make her a better person. She has to become secure in the person she is for that to happen.

 

The film that surrounds Bell isn’t as good as she is. The supporting characters never really become anything more that types, and attempts to make them more complex than that don’t really work, as they aren’t given enough time to breath. An “inspirational” letter that Bell receives late in the film after an inappropriate meltdown at a barbecue, seems out of place – like the film wanted to get all that information in somehow, and couldn’t find a more natural way for it to happen.

 

Still, Bell is enough. She makes Brittany into, yes, an inspirational and aspirational character – but doesn’t pretend that simply losing some weight and running a race is a cure all. It’s all just a little more complicated than that – and it makes the film.