7/7/14: Sometimes Truth is Better Than Fiction

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Alessandro Nivola, Arkansas, Atom Egoyan, based on a book, based on a true story, child killing, cinema, Colin Firth, Damien Echols, Dane DeHaan, Devil's Knot, drama, false accusations, film reviews, films, James Hamrick, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley, Joe Berlinger, Kevin Durand, Kris Higgins, Mireille Enos, Movies, murdered children, Pam Hobbs, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Reese Witherspoon, Satanic panic, Scott Derrickson, Seth Meriwether, small town life, true crime, West Memphis, West Memphis Three

Sometimes, there’s only so often you can replow the same ground before you have to let it fallow. Farmers know this but, unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that many filmmakers have yet to fully grasp. This can be applied to remakes and “reimaginings” (my personal pet peeves) but it’s just as valid when discussing multiple films made about the same subject. This problem becomes more pronounced when there’s already a “definitive” work on the particular subject, since anything that follows will either seem lesser, by comparison, or will borrow too much from its predecessor in order to capture some of that lightning twice. Such, unfortunately, is the case with Atom Egoyan’s recent crime-drama, Devil’s Knot (2013), which attempts to put a “slightly fictionalized” spin on the true-life story of the West Memphis Three. The problem, of course, is that the same story was already told in a much more definitive way with Joe Berlinger and Sinofsky’s excellent documentary Paradise Lost (1996). When you already have a film (and two follow-up documentaries) that have already examined the subject in great detail, what more could a fictionalized account of the same incident bring? In the case of Devil’s Knot, the answer is a resounding “Not much at all.”

For those not familiar with the circumstances behind the case, here it is, in a nutshell: In 1993, the bound and tortured bodies of three 8-year-old boys were found in the woods outside of West Memphis, Arkansas. Due to the intense interrogation of teenage suspect Jessie Misskelley (who just happened to be mentally handicapped), two other local teens were arrested: Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. Due to the three boys’ interest in heavy metal, along with Echol’s interest in witchcraft and Aleister Crowley, the small town immediately suspected Satanic influence and the trio were tried and convicted with remarkably little actual evidence: Misskelley and Baldwin were sentenced to life in prison, whereas Echols, seen as the “ringleader,” was sentenced to death. After filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky began poking around in the case, they began to find lots of discrepancies, along with plenty of other potential suspects (including some from the various boys’ families). The whole thing began to seem like a witch-hunt and the filmmakers’ resulting documentary, Paradise Lost, became a huge hit and initiated a groundswell of support for the trio, including some rather famous folks like Eddie Vedder and Henry Rollins. After new evidence finally surfaced, the three were released from prison in 2011: to this point, no one else has been officially charged in the murders, leaving the whole thing as a tragic, unsolved mystery.

Egoyan’s film, then, takes all of the basic facts from the case (and Paradise Lost) and gives everything a melodramatic sheen, choosing to focus in on the character of Pam Hobbs (Reese Witherspoon), the mother of one of the murdered boys. We begin with a few bits of small-town life before getting right to the terrible crime, as the bodies of the missing boys are found in the woods. After the police lean hard on Jessie (Kris Higgins), he gives up his two “friends,” Damien (James Hamrick) and Jason (Seth Meriwether, looking so much like a teenage Geddy Lee that it became distracting): all three boys have a reputation as misfits and loners which, along with Damien’s penchant for listening to Slayer and carving his girlfriend’s name into his arm, leads the town to make all the connections they need to. This is, of course, despite the fact that we see plenty of other odd occurences going on: a mysterious muddy and bloody man washes up in a local fast-food bathroom, while local ice-cream truck driver, Chris Morgan (Dane DeHaan), acts so strange that it seems impossible to think he’s not guilty of something. There’s also the highly suspicious behavior of one of the boys’ fathers, Mark Byers (Kevin Duran), and local woman, Vicki Hutchenson (The Killing’s Mireille Enos), who seems to be sexually obsessed with Nichols and openly lies about being taken to a “witches’ coven” by the teen.

A “white knight,” such as it were, emerges in the form of Ron Lax (Colin Firth), the highfalutin’ big city lawyer who takes on the trio’s case, pro bono, in the interests of serving justice. He faces plenty of opposition, obviously, not the least of which comes from Pam’s angry husband, Terry (Alessandro Nivola) and Mark Byers. In time, however, Ron begins to chip away at Pam’s resolve regarding the guilt of the trio: at first, she’s positive that they’re guilty but the facts just don’t add up for her and she comes to believe that the three might be innocent, after all. Worst of all, however, Pam begins to suspect that the real killer might be someone close to her…maybe even her own husband.

Right off the bat, Devil’s Knot suffers from one massive problem: it’s telling the exact same story as Paradise Lost but without the benefit of real-life footage. In Paradise Lost, we meet the real Pam and Terry Hobbs, as well as the real Mark and Melissa Myers, which is a much different ballgame than getting their characters filtered through actors like Witherspoon, Nivola and Duran. In Devil’s Knot, we get everything filtered through a distinct layer of melodrama that gives the situation as much gravitas as a made-for-TV movie. In particular, Witherspoon turns in a wildly dramatic performance, highlighted by scenes like the one where she pulls at her hair (after someone asks for a sample, she responds, “Take it all!”) or goes into her dead son’s classroom in order to drop off his last homework assignment and ends up getting hugged by a mob of his classmates. Couple this with her dead son’s propensity to reappear in flashbacks, singing the same Elvis Presley song, ad nauseam, and it’s pretty clear Egoyan and writer Scott Derrickson (himself the director of films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012) and Deliver Us From Evil (2014)) are much more interested in tugging at the heart-strings than actually exploring the ins-and-outs of this particular tragedy.

There are also issues with the way in which the film introduces certain plot elements (the mysterious man at the fast-food restaurant, the bit about young Stevie Hobbs’ pocketknife, Chris Morgan) without ever fully developing them: it’s as if Egoyan and Derrickson wanted to touch on everything but couldn’t be bothered to tie it all into a cohesive whole. Since Devil’s Knot has the benefit of being released after the trio were set free, it would seem to have access to more information, not less, than the preceding Paradise Lost. Despite this, however, the film feels unbelievably slight, like a Cliff Notes-version of the events. We spend so much time with Pam and Ron that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley kind of fade into the background: the film seems to want to focus on the victims and their families, yet basically allows Pam Hobbs to just sub-in for all of them. In many ways, this is the story of how she comes to grips with what happened, which ends up marginalizing everyone else’s struggles (including those of the other grieving parents, who are rarely seen).

There’s no denying that the film is well-made: Egoyan has a way of staging everything that can make even the most “innocent” things see ominous and portentous, which is especially evident at the beginning of the film, which is shot almost like a horror movie. While I found the acting to be frequently over-the-top and too “stagey” (Enos is particularly awful, which is strange considering how great she is in The Killing), I was really taken by Firth’s performance: he disappears so completely into the role of the “crusading American lawyer” that it reminded me (fondly) of Hugh Laurie’s performance as the cynical House. Firth ends up being one of the few characters in the film that comes across as genuine, although it’s certainly a case of “too little, too late.”

Ultimately, I’m not sure who Devil’s Knot is supposed to appeal to. Anyone who’s interested in the actual facts of the case would be much better served seeking out Berlinger and Sinofsky’s original film, along with its two sequels, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011): between those three documentaries, just about everything gets laid bare. Fans of true-crime dramas, on the other hand, would be much better suited seeking something that wasn’t so melodramatic and narrowly focused: if one were to remove the West Memphis Three angle, Devil’s Knot is revealed to be a fairly turgid, if well-made, pot-boiler. All in all, Devil’s Knot ends up being a rather out-of-place creation, a film that’s forever doomed to live in the shadow of a much better, more definitive work.

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6/8/14 (Part Two): What’s Blood For But Shedding?

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1990s films, based on a short story, bees, Bernard Rose, Cabrini-Green, Candyman, cheating husbands, Chicago, child killing, childhood fears, cinema, Clive Barker, Daniel Robitaille, DeJuan Guy, dream-like, electronic score, false accusations, film reviews, films, graffiti, hook for a hand, horror, horror films, housing projects, Immortal Beloved, Kasi Lemmons, Michael Culkin, mirrors, missing child, Movies, murals, Philip Glass, racism, revenge, self-sacrifice, serial killer, Ted Raimi, The Forbidden, Tony Todd, urban legends, Vanessa Williams, vengeance, Virginia Madsen, voice-over narration, writer-director, Xander Berkeley

Urban legends are funny things. On their surface, most of them seem pretty easy to discount: How, exactly, do baby alligators grow to enormous size after being flushed down the toilet? Do we actually believe that people have died from mixing Pop Rocks and soda? How come this stuff always happens to a friend of a friend’s twice-removed cousin? Examined in the cold light of day, almost all urban legends seem absolutely ridiculous (even the hook on the door requires too much suspension of disbelief to be truly scary): rational thought is always there to chase away the boogeymen and monsters of the imagination. As our parents may have been wont to say, we’re only scaring ourselves most of the time: there isn’t really anything out there to be worried about.

In reality, however, humans are deeply flawed, superstitious creatures who possess boundless capacity for believing in anything under the sun. We need look no further than the infamous witch trials that claimed the lives of so many innocent people in the 1600s: none of us believe in witches until there’s mob rule, at which point we all believe in witches. The human mind is a wondrous thing, the equal to any computer that’s yet been conceived. Part of the mind’s power comes from our ability to acquire, examine and interpret information around us, changing our preconceived notions if the new information should go against them. In other words, we possess the limitless capacity to learn, to absorb new knowledge and experiences and allow these experiences to change and color our overall world-view. We are so amazing because we have the simultaneous ability to soundly reason and to unleash our wildest imaginations. We believe in urban legends because we are human: our rational mind examines the evidence and discards each situation as it arises, yet the imaginative, childlike part of our brain allows for any number of possibilities…including the very real possibility that everything we think we know is wrong. Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992), an adaptation of one of Clive Barker’s short tales, examines the intersection of rational thought and unchecked imagination, detailing what happens when our belief in something becomes so strong that we can pull something from the shadowy world of legend into the cold, hard light of the real world.

After an ominous, impressionistic opening that establishing the oppressive mood of the film, we meet our protagonist, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). Helen is a grad student who happens to be married to the egotistical, philandering Prof. Trevor Lyle (Xander Berkeley). Helen and her friend, Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons), have been doing research on urban legends, with their eyes on publishing a paper about their results. In particular, their work focuses on the legend of Candyman, a hook-handed, vengeful spirit who’s said to haunt the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago. While neither Helen nor Bernadette actually believes in the myth (say “Candyman” five times in a mirror and he’ll appear to gut you with his hook), Bernadette lets Helen know that there are plenty of real-world horrors to be found in Cabrini Green, including vicious street gangs and omnipresent drug devastation.

Ignoring her friend’s warnings, Helen plunges headfirst into the mystery of Candyman, going so far as to examine the abandoned apartment of one of his supposed victims. Once there, Helen finds a hidden passage into an area that contains a giant Candyman mural, explaining the events that led to his original death, as well as what appears to be a shrine to the cult figure. She also meets and befriends Anne-Marie (Vanessa Williams), an initially suspicious and standoffish neighbor who has an infant child and a healthy distrust of white people like Helen: “The white folks that come around ain’t to handshakey,” she tells Helen and it’s not impossible to believe. Cabrini-Green, as portrayed in the film, is an almost post-Apocalyptic, burned-out wreck: Helen seems to be the only white person for miles and the various residents she meets view her with a mixture of contempt, amusement and dislike.

As she continues her journey into Cabrini-Green, Helen befriends a youngster named Jake (DeJuan Guy), a firm believer in the Candyman mythos thanks to a “friend of a friend” connection to the supposed killings. Jake shows her the public restroom where another young boy was supposed to have been butchered by Candyman and, once there, she runs afoul of a local gang leader who calls himself “The Candy Man” and wields a sharp hook. When the police arrest the gang leader, everyone (including Helen) assumes that he’s responsible for all of the Candyman-related deaths. Helen changes her mind, however, when she’s confronted by the real Candyman (Tony Todd) in a parking garage. Helen passes out and wakes up in Anne-Marie’s apartment, covered in blood: Anne-Marie’s dog has been brutally killed, her baby is missing and Helen is lying on her apartment floor, holding a bloody knife.

As the terrified, confused Helen finds herself the number-one suspect in a terrible crime, the walls between fantasy and reality begin to collapse. Helen keeps seeing Candyman everywhere and, when she does, someone around her is sure to be butchered. He seems to want Helen for something although whether it’s vindication or vengeance is left up for debate. As she finds herself increasingly alone, Helen becomes even more connected to Candyman and his tragic history. In order to clear her name and end the terror, Helen must descend into the shadowy recesses of Cabrini-Green, in search of Anne-Marie’s missing child and the truth behind Candyman. Will Helen end up solving the mystery, bringing peace to Cabrini-Green, or will she end up as another of Candyman’s victims? Is there really even a Candyman or is Helen just losing her mind?

I remember watching Candyman when it originally came out and being less than impressed, perhaps because I was such a gonzo Clive Barker fan at the time: I was so eager for any Barker content on the screen that my expectations were constantly too high (damn you, Lord of Illusions (1995)) and I was always getting disappointed. Ironically enough, I haven’t read the original story, “The Forbidden,” in decades, so it’s a little hard for me to determine how close/not Rose’s adaptation ends up being. My most recent viewing of the film, however, revealed a pretty simple truth: Candyman is actually a really good film.

Part of the reason for the film’s success is due to the unrelentingly oppressive atmosphere served up from the first frame to the last. Thanks in part to renowned experimental composer Philip Glass’ haunting, dissonant score and some beautifully evocative cinematography from industry vet Anthony B. Richmond (who shot The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Sand Lot (1993) and one of my all-time favorite films, Ravenous (1999)), there’s a thick, Gothic vibe to everything that really accentuates the horror. Cabrini-Green, with its dilapidated buildings and empty, burned-out streets is a helluva location even before we get to the ultra-creepy “shrine” that Candyman calls home. Stylistically, the film often plays out like a fever-dream, as if avant-garde genius Ken Russell were helming the proceedings rather than a more workmanlike director like Rose. Many of the scenes, such as the beginning and any of Helen’s meetings with Candyman, play out with imperfect logic. The apex of this definitely has to be the disorienting, horrifying scene where Helen wakes up in Anne-Marie’s apartment: the scene is played with such a breathless, breakneck pace that it’s easier to absorb what’s happening than to actually understand it. It ends up being a genuinely powerful cinematic moment in a film that could just as easily have been aimed at lowest-common denominator multiplex audiences.

On occasion, Rose’s film can be a bit heavy-handed (heavenly choirs on the soundtrack always indicate something is up) but this tends to play nicely into the thick, cloying atmosphere. If anything, Candyman often plays a modern-day fairytale, an update to the cautionary tales of the Brothers Grimm. As a horror film, Candyman contains not only the requisite moments of gore and violence (which tend to be a bit shocking, although that’s always been Barker’s milieu) but also scenes that are genuinely creepy and unsettling. One of the most well-done moments in the film involves Helen and Bernadette discovering the secret passage in the murder victim’s apartment. As Helen looks into the mysterious, dark unknown, the sense of creeping tension and dread is palatable. Her passage to the other side carries the same sense of primal wonder and fear that can be found in the similar scene in Michael Mann’s The Keep (1983): humanity moving from the warm light of understanding into the frigid abyss of the unknown.

Candyman’s backstory is well-integrated into the overall themes of the film, driving home the notion that our history of racial inequality and a terrible lynch-mob mentality are ultimately responsible for Candyman’s rampage. While it’s painfully evident that Daniel Robitaille’s transformation into the Candyman is due to the violence inflicted on him by his white oppressors, it’s just as evident that a similar, if much more subtle, form of violence is being inflicted on the mostly black residents of the Cabrini-Green housing project. When Anne-Marie makes her comment about the “white folks not being too handshakey,” she seems to be speaking for most of the residents of the Green: if white people are there at all, they’re there to take advantage, satisfy their curiosity or get a cheap thrill. Even Helen, who seems to have the best of intentions, ends up bringing an untold amount of misery down up on the residents of Cabrini-Green: she presumes to be helping them but she’s really only furthering her own academic ambitions.

Acting-wise, Candyman is top-notch, with Madsen presenting a nicely vulnerable, multi-faceted performance as Helen. Even though she’s far from perfect, Helen actually means well and Madsen takes a character that could come across as condescending and makes her appealingly real. I didn’t always agree with everything Helen did (to be honest, she made some astoundingly bad decisions from the jump) but she never felt like a plot contrivance, especially once we reach the powerful, emotional climax. The final scene is one that could have across as over-the-top and unnecessarily maudlin, but Madsen wisely takes the “Ellen Ripley” approach, letting the character’s inherent heroism shine through, if for only a brief moment.

As the titular “villain,” Tony Todd is excellent in the role that brought him to the attention of the horror world and turned him into a household name along the likes of Robert Englund, Sid Haig, Kane Hodder and Bill Moseley. While Todd doesn’t get a ton of screen-time, relatively speaking, he is a completely empathetic, complicated character, as far from a one-dimensional slasher like Freddy Krueger or Jason as one could get. There’s an inherently sad, tragic and romantic component to the Candyman backstory that’s beautifully communicated via Todd’s ever-expressive, sad face. Combined with his powerful, mellifluous voice, Tony Todd’s depiction of Candyman went a long way towards enshrining the character in the annals of pop culture. That and the ribcage full of bees, of course.

Ultimately, Candyman is equal parts bombastic and restrained, hushed and explosive. While Clive Barker’s books/stories haven’t always survived the transition to the big screen (the aforementioned Lord of Illusions is ridiculously disappointing and the torture-porn version of Dread (2009) is thoroughly wretched and despicable), Candyman is one of the best, perhaps only bested by Barker’s own Hellraiser (1987). I can only imagine that my teenage mind must not have been quite ready to process what was presented on-screen, since my recent viewing brought up very few actual issues with the film, many of which were endemic to ’90s-era horror films. For its intriguing collision of the past and present, violence and sexuality and white vs black relations, Candyman deserves to be dusted off and given another look in the 2010s. Just remember: you better think real hard before you get to that fifth “Candyman.” It’s probably just a myth but…better safe than sorry.

5/31/14 (Part Two): The Children Suffer

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abused children, Aharon Keshales, Ami Weinberg, bad cops, Big Bad Wolves, black comedies, child killing, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, cops, cops behaving badly, Doval'e Glickman, Dror, fairy tales, film reviews, films, gallows' humor, Gidi, irony, Israeli films, Kalevet, Lior Ashkenazi, Menashe Noy, Micki, missing child, Movies, Nati Kluger, Navot Papushado, Prisoners, Rabies, revenge, Rotem Keinan, torture, Tzahi Grad, vengeance, writer-director

While we’d all like to think that we’re above primal emotions like hate and fear, the reality is actually a lot less black-and-white. The human animal may try to distance itself from its more feral, four-legged “cousins,” casting its eyes (and aspirations) to the cosmos, suppressing more earthy, “unpleasant” instincts. It may do this to its heart’s content but one overwhelming fact cannot be denied: the wild, untamed brutality of the animal kingdom always lurks just below the serene, civilized facade of humanity. At any given moment, we all walk the razor’s edge, careful not to give ourselves over too completely to the darkness.

This delicate balancing act becomes a lifelong task, then, just one other facet of life to navigate. We’re always perfectly balanced, the necessary combination of light and dark to survive in a dangerous world…until we aren’t. When we allow powerful, devastating primal urges like hate, fear and vengeance to take the controls, we tempt the fates, throw off the natural order of things. Too little of the “animal instinct” and we’re gingerbread figures, empty haircuts that mean as much to the natural order as plankton do to whales. Too much of the “old ways,” however, and we become something much different from human…much more dangerous. When the hearts of men and women become overstuffed with hate and vengeance, when we cast aside all other notions of humanity in service of stoking the indignant fire in our guts, we become wolves, ourselves. As we see in Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s extraordinary, incendiary new film, Big Bad Wolves (2013), even the desire for justice can become something ugly in the blast furnace of hate, leading us to do all of the right things for all of the most terribly wrong reasons.

Our protagonist, Micki (Lior Ashkenazi), is a charismatic Israeli police detective with a huge problem: there’s a psychopath kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing young girls. Micki’s a good guy, at heart, but he’s also one of those movie cops who operates best outside the polite constraints of the law. Along with his by-the-book partner, Rami (Menashe Noy), and a couple of eager young cops nicknamed “Beavis and Butthead,” Micki takes the chief suspect in the case, Dror (Rotem Keinan), to an abandoned factory for a little good old-fashioned “questioning questioning.” Dror, a religious studies teacher, is a particularly pathetic figure, resembling nothing so much as one of those shaggy dogs that gets wet and ends up looking like a drowned rat. During the course of the “interrogation,” Micki and the perpetually giggling moron brothers put quite the smack-down on Dror (including actually smacking him repeatedly with a phone book), all in the hope of getting him to cop to the heinous crimes. When the factory ends up being less than abandoned, footage of the entire incident is uploaded to YouTube: Micki becomes an instant celebrity and is rewarded with being busted down to traffic cop, while Dror is summarily released into a community that has pretty much already convicted him. Not the best situation for a school teacher, it turns out, and Dror is quickly asked to take a little “vacation” by the principal (Ami Weinberg): he’s welcome to come back once everyone’s “got over it,” presumably sometime between “the distant future” and “never.”

Despite being summarily chewed out by his superior, Tsvika (Dvir Benedek), Micki is still positive that Dror is guilty and intends on continuing to push him until he cracks. With a knowing look, Tsvika tells him that he can do whatever he likes, since he’s no longer working the case…as long as he doesn’t get caught, of course. But Micki does end up getting caught, right at the key moment when he has spirited Dror away to an isolated forest locale and made the terrified man dig his own grave. Far from an agent of law enforcement, however, Dror’s “guardian angel” ends up being a devil in disguise: Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the vengeful father of one of the dead girls. Like Micki, he’s also convinced that Dror is guilty but his ultimate intention is a bit different from Micki’s: he intends to torture Dror until he reveals the location of his daughter’s missing head. By inflicting all of the torture onto Dror that he suspects the schoolteacher of inflicting on the girls, Gidi hopes to achieve a kind of perverted justice. If Dror talks, he gets a merciful bullet to the brain. If he doesn’t, he’ll get the hammers…and the pliers…and the blowtorch.

As the three men interact within the isolated, soundproofed house that Gidi has set-up expressly for this occasion, allegiances are formed and torn asunder. Micki alternates between being Gidi’s captive and his accomplish, depending on how far down the rabbit-hole he’s willing to go. Dror tries to appeal to Micki’s basic humanity, as well as their shared connection as fathers: both Dror and Micki have young daughters and difficult relationships with their respective wives. Complications arise when Gidi’s pushy father, Yoram (Doval’e Glickman), drops by to bring him some soup. Upon seeing the situation, Yoram gently chides Gidi but offers to help: he’s ex-military, after all, and knows a thing or two about getting men to talk. As the situation for Dror (and Micki) becomes more dire, new revelations threaten to spin the entire mess off the rails. When men become angry, desperate and frightened, they become dangerous: they become big, bad wolves.

One of the first things that becomes clear in Big, Bad Wolves is that there’s a strong, consistent dose of gallows’ humor that runs throughout the entire film. In fact, right up until the gut-punch final image (which manages to be as terrifyingly bleak as the final scene in Darabont’s The Mist (2007)), the film is actually quite funny. Bleak, violent, savage and hopeless? Absolutely. The dark subject matter is leavened considerably, however, by a script that manages to be not only subtly clever but also broadly comedic, when called for. One of the best scenes in the film is the one where Tsvika calls Micki into his office. It’s “Bring Your Son to Work Day” and Tsvika has brought his son with him: in a classic scene that works on a number of levels, Tsvika and his son engage in some tandem ball-busting that’s pretty damn funny. “This is the yellow card conversation,” Tsvika tells his son, at one point. “Like in soccer, dad?” “Just like in soccer, son,” Tsvika says proudly, mussing his son’s hair while staring Micki down with a glare that would melt Medusa.

Keshales and Papushado (whose debut film, Kalevet (2010), bears the distinction of being Israel’s first-ever horror film) use this scene of humor is some truly surprising, disarming ways, none more so than the scenes where Gidi tortures Dror. There’s never anything funny about torture but the filmmakers manage to wring a surprising amount of genuine laughs out of these scenes. As Gidi sets about on his path of vengeance, he’s constantly interrupted by reminders of the “polite” world. As Gidi is about to begin breaking Dror’s fingers, one by one, his cellphone rings: it’s Gidi’s mom and he’d better take the call, lest she go “crazy.” Gidi and Micki flip a coin to see who gets the first go at Dror, only to have the coin dramatically roll away. Micki tries to stall the inevitable mayhem by telling Gidi that they should drug Dror first, if they really wanted to do everything to him that he did to the kids: Gidi matter-of-factly tells him that Dror also violated the girls sexually but they’ve both decided to pass on that punishment…there are always compromises.

In many ways, Big, Bad Wolves plays as a sardonic counterpart to the much more po-faced Prisoners (2013). While the Jake Gyllenahaal-starring Oscar nominee had a portentous, serious tone that practically demanded it be taken seriously, its Israeli “cousin” is much more loose and easy-going. For one thing, Ashkenazi is a ridiculously charismatic lead, sort of a Middle Eastern take on George Clooney: he does more acting with his eyes and the corner of his mouth than most actors do with the entire script. In a particularly knockout moment, Micki stares incredulously as Dror stops to help an old woman cross a busy street. The look of surprise and disbelief is obvious, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement and, dare I say, approval, that comes through just as loud and clear. Micki is a complex, engaging character with a truly heartbreaking arc and one of the most interesting cinematic creations in some time.

The real revelation of the film, however, is the towering, absolutely astounding performance of Tzahi Grad as Gidi. By the time we’re introduced to him, Gidi is already “past” the actual murder of his daughter and is moving on to the closure that he wants: there’s very little outward “sadness” to the character and no moping or chest-beating whatsoever. Gidi is a practical, cold and successful man who has been dealt a terrible blow and now must make it all “right,” just as he’s always done. As additional details about Gidi’s character creep in, we begin to see a more fully formed vision of the man, making his actions that much more difficult to fully condone (or condemn, if we’re being honest). There is nothing stereotypical about Gidi or his actions. Frequently, I would find myself genuinely shocked by something he does (the film does not wallow in gore and violence but what there is tends to be extremely sudden, extremely brutal and rather unforgettable) but I never lost my connection to him as a character. While the writing in Big, Bad Wolves is pretty flawless, a lot of the credit for this must go to Grad: it’s not easy to make a potentially monstrous character “human,” but Gidi manages to be not only massively human but completely relateable and likable, as well. He feels like a real person, not a film construct.

Big, Bad Wolves ends up being filled with the kind of subtle details and moments that practically demand repeat viewings. A throwaway line of dialogue becomes an important bit of foreshadowing…a “random” encounter with a mysterious, nomadic horseman (Kais Nashif) becomes an opportunity for an incisive point about Arab/Israeli relations. The whole film is full of fairy-tale imagery, from the opening title sequence to the trail of “breadcrumbs” that lead to the dead girls to the title of the film, itself. Far from being an all-too obvious bit of symbolism, the fairy-tale aspect is completely organic, seamlessly interwoven into the film and providing a rich depth missing from the straight-laced, nuts-and-bolts construction that was Prisoners.

Despite being an exceptionally difficult film to watch, at times, Big, Bad Wolves is the furthest thing possible from “torture porn” like Hostel (2005) and Seven Days (2010). Unlike more shallow genre exercises, the torture and violence in Big, Bad Wolves is not intended to be fodder for gorehounds: there is real pain and suffering to be found here, not just from the battered, bloody man receiving the violence but from the emotionally scarred men distributing it. Similar to Winner’s original Death Wish (1974), Keshales and Papushado’s film goes to great lengths to explore the actual concept of vengeance: inflicting pain on someone will never bring back a loved one. In a way, it’s just another death: the death of the soul and the death of essential humanity.

Ultimately, Big, Bad Wolves is a fierce, ferocious and utterly alive film. It practically bursts from the screen, thanks to a combination of exceptionally skilled filmmaking (the script and cinematography, alone, are two of the very best of 2013) and raw, vital acting. If Keshales and Papushado marked themselves as filmmakers to watch with their debut, they’ve cemented their reputations with its follow-up. Undoubtedly, there will be some who can’t stomach the audacious mixture of soul-crushing violence and humor that the film offers and that’s quite alright: the real world, the terribly unfair, brutal and beautiful orb that we stand on, is the same mixture of violence and comedy and many can’t deal with that, either. As the most cutting, intuitive writers have always known, however, comedy and tragedy always go hand-in-hand…it’s quite impossible to live without experiencing more than your fair share of both. It may seem wrong to laugh as it all comes collapsing to the ground but it’s also necessary. After all, without a sense of humor, aren’t we really all just wolves?

 

2/17/14: These are Mean Times

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action films, Assault on Precinct 13, Austin Stoker, auteur theory, B-movies, child killing, cinema, classic movies, claustrophic, Darwin Joston, Douglas Knapp, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, gang members, Halloween, iconic film scores, John Carpenter, Lalo Schifrin, low-budget films, Movies, Napoleon Wilson, police station, score, siege, synth scores, working together

Anyone who knows me well knows that pinning me down on my favorite anything can be an exercise in frustration: my specific lists of favorite films, music, TV shows, food, etc…tend to change not so much on a regular basis but on a moment-to-moment basis. Stick around long enough and, chances are, you’ll hear me call at least two separate things “the greatest ______ ever,” if not five separate things. This isn’t to say that I’m necessarily fickle with my entertainment loves: rather, I try to constantly expose myself to new films, music, etc, which often has the effect of displacing some of my previous loves.

That being said, however, there are still a few films that never quite leave the “Best of…” list, even if their ultimate position in said list tends to be constantly changing. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is one of those films, as is The Godfather and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are both on there, of course, because I can’t have a  favorites list without some Scorcese. It goes without saying that John Carpenter’s seminal Halloween is on the list but there’s another Carpenter film that, for me, is even more of a no-brainer for inclusion. This is a film so perfect that I ceased looking for flaws at least a decade ago and have simply accepted its place in the ultimate list of my life: somewhere right around the top, maybe bumping shoulders with Faith No More, Travis Bickle and Leatherface. It’s a movie that, if I’m being honest with myself, I actually like more than Halloween. The film? Assault on Precinct 13. Why do I love it so much? Let me count the ways.

Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 is one of those cases where the individual parts of a movie, while mighty on their own, come together to form something akin to the Voltron of exploitation cinema. We start with Carpenter’s iconic synth score, including that mammoth theme song. For me, this provokes a near Pavlovian response, similar to the one I get from Morricone’s essential score for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: every time I hear that series of terse, clipped notes, followed by that simmering synth stab, I get a little adrenaline rush, a little tickle in the back of my reptile brain. This is the “ass-kicking” cortex getting stimulated and the Assault on Precinct 13 theme is its cellphone ringer. Pair this theme with the stark red letters on black screen opening credits and the film seems classic before it even properly begins.

Carpenter’s score is a whole lot more than just that jagged, robotic call-to-arms, however. There’s a moody piece in the score that plays during Bishop’s arrival at Precinct 13 (as well as the aftermath of the “shoot-in”) that ranks as one of my favorite pieces of film music ever, including such luminous peers as the sweeping Godfather score and Morricone’s aforementioned Good, Bad, Ugly score. It’s a melancholy, nearly bluesy bit that reminds me of Lalo Schifrin’s score for Dirty Harry (another of my all-time favorite film/score combos) and is so perfectly evocative that it almost tells a story on its own. It’s a pensive piece that neatly serves as a theme for Bishop’s thoughtful, quiet leadership style.

The score, by turns ominous and melancholy, perfectly underscores the film’s themes and walks hand-in-hand with the stark, gritty visuals. Shot by Carpenter’s Dark Star cinematographer Douglas Knapp (on what would end up being his last feature film work, to date), Assault on Precinct 13 has a washed-out, sun-bleached look that recalls Dirty Harry, yet manages to incorporate the deep-focus elements that would become so familiar when Halloween rampaged across movie screens two years later. As in Halloween, there’s a lot in Assault on Precinct 13 that occurs on the edges of the frame: figures skulking about, the sudden appearance (or disappearance) of a character. The tight framing handily evokes a constant, sustained feeling of claustrophobia throughout the film, while the washed-out color palette gives everything a subtly doomed feel.

As with everything else in the film, Assault on Precinct 13th’s plot is lean, mean and fat-free: on the eve that a small, isolated police station in one of the worst parts of the city is about to be shuttered, a tiny skeleton crew of officers and prisoners must make a desperate stand against a seemingly endless army of blood-thirsty, armed-to-the-teeth gang members. With no hope of rescue or reinforcements until the wee hours of the morning, Lt. Bishop (Austin Stoker), Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and notorious convict Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) must use their wits, resolve and whatever weapons they can scrounge together to keep from becoming more casualties of the mean streets.

And that’s it, folks: no meandering B and C stories…no unnecessary romantic subplots…no drifting off into tangents that dilute the overall impact…just 90 minutes of pure survival. This isn’t to say that there isn’t any character development or that everyone is flat: far from it. Rather, Carpenter has written an excellent, tight script that allows characters to develop organically, rather than exist merely as convenient genre stereotypes. Bishop and Wilson, on their own, are two of the most fascinating genre creations to ever grace the silver screen: neither one comes across as clichéd and I’ve always found myself wondering what happened to the characters after the film ended. Hell, I often find myself wondering what happened to the characters before the movie started and I’m a guy that pretty much abhors prequels. In this case, however, I’ve always been dying to know what Napoleon did that was so terrible and what happened to Lt. Bishop as a young man. It’s a testament to Carpenter’s writing that he’s left me wanting more, just like a good book.

All of these elements add up to a lot but they wouldn’t add up to a righteously kick-ass action film without some righteously kick-ass action sequences, now would they? Fear not, friends and neighbors: Assault on Precinct 13th has this covered. From the Western-esque scene where about one million gang members shoot approximately 4 billion bullets into the station house to the edge-of-the-seat finale where Bishop and Wilson hold off a snarling, feral mob in a narrow corridor from behind the world’s tiniest barricade, Assault on Precinct 13 very rarely comes up for air. In fact, the film is so tense that the pressure kicks on in the first frames (thanks to that epic theme) and is ratcheted up before we even get to the police station: by that point, the film is ready to explode…and does.

The acting, like everything else in Assault on Precinct 13, is impeccable. Although the cast is filled with unfamiliar faces and lacks the recognizable appeal of a Donald Pleasence, they work together quite beautifully. In particular, special recognition must be given to the two leads: Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston.

Stoker brings a real sense of quiet dignity and resolve to Lt. Bishop, qualities that almost bring him more in line with traditional Western heroes than with law enforcement ones. Joston, on the other hand, plays Napoleon Wilson with just the right amount of Southern charm, self-deprecation and quiet menace. Stoker and Joston have real chemistry together and I’ve always wished that the two could have gone on to do other “buddy”-type films. Missed opportunities notwithstanding, the friendship between the black police officer and the white, Southern convict brings some emotional heft to the story and makes the ending genuinely powerful: as Bishop and Wilson stand in the debris, a “rescuing” officer attempts to grab the prisoner, only to be violently shoved away by Lt. Bishop. After staring down the over-eager officer, Bishop walks Wilson out with the dignity and respect that he’s earned over the course of the siege. It’s a big, powerful moment and it never fails to get me in the gut every time: follow that with a quick cut back to the red text/black background with the theme playing and I stand and salute every single damn time.

At the end of the day, I have a lot of concrete reasons for loving Assault on Precinct 13: the acting is fantastic, the cinematography is moody and claustrophobic, the script is smart, the dialogue cracks, the relationship between Bishop and Wilson feels completely genuine and the score is absolutely superb. For me, these all seem like ingredients in a sure-fire formula for a perfect film. More than anything, however, there’s a feeling I get from watching this film that’s hard to quite explain. I’ll never stop watching Halloween or The Thing but there’s just something about Assault on Precinct 13 that really gets to me on a primal level. Perhaps it’s because we live in such a hard world and it seems like the streets of the Anderson Precinct could become a reality at any time. Perhaps it’s because the film so gloriously upholds that most human and beautiful of beliefs: as long as you can breathe, you can keep fighting.