12/25/14 (Part Two): Listen All of Y’all, It’s a…Mess

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action film, action films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, cinema, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, David Ayer, DEA agents, drug cartel, drug dealers, dumb films, End of Watch, film reviews, films, hambonin', Harold Perrineau, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Kevin Vance, Mark Schlegel, Martin Donovan, Max Martini, Mireille Enos, Movies, Olivia Williams, Sabotage, Sam Worthington, stolen money, Terrence Howard, writer-director-producer

When we’re talking about action films, there isn’t necessarily anything bad about loud, dumb movies: as someone who worked his way through a veritable mountain of cheesetastic ’80s flicks (picture the ones where the hero takes out the bad guy with a close-range rocket launcher to get the full effect), I can attest that the stupidest films are, quite often, the most thrilling. After all, when we’re bombarded by so much chaos, conflict and real-world violence, sometimes it’s nice to just pop the cap on a cold one, turn off your brain and thrill to explosions, sneered badassitude and black-and-white concepts of good and evil, no?

There is, however, a limit, a tipping point, if you will: invisible to the naked eye, there is, nonetheless, a fine line between stupid and clever (thanks, Tap). David Ayer’s big, loud, Schwarzenegger vehicle, Sabotage (2014), has to see the line, since the whole film seems like a conscious effort to craft the biggest, dumbest, loudest action film possible: the film’s mantra seems to be “bigger is always better” and let me tell ya…this film ends up riding a giant, turbo-charged rocket straight into the heart of stupid, boldly going where few have dared to tread. Existing in a cinematic universe where Antoine Fuqua and Jerry Bruckheimer are the alpha and omega of existence, Sabotage is the ultimate fizzled bonfire: all smoke, precious little actual fire.

Sabotage concerns the various (very bad) activities of a group of rogue DEA agents, the kind that are de rigueur for Hollywood but don’t really paint the rosiest picture of our nation’s continued war on drugs. Led by the leather-faced, oddly-coiffed John “Breacher” Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the crew look (and sound) like various rejects from several seasons of American Gladiator: Monster (Sam Worthington), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Pyro (Max Martini), Tripod (Kevin Vance), Smoke (Mark Schlegel) and Lizzy (Mireille Enos, so amazingly over-the-top that she doesn’t need a cool nickname…she just “is,” dude). Their modus operandi is pretty simple: blow the ever-loving shit out of the bad guys, steal their money, blow up as much stuff as possible, get fuckin’ craaaazy, man…lather, rinse, repeat. It all works splendidly because, well, they’re badasses, man…aren’t you listening?

A fly enters the ointment, however, when one of their “jobs” results in the death of Smoke and the loss of $10 million in stolen drug money. The crew start falling out because agitated shouting is required (along with some good, ol’ character building, don’tcha know?) and, as we all know, you can’t trust a thief…especially if you’re a crooked, bloodthirsty fellow thief, I’m imagining. Things really get complicated, however, when members of the squad start to mysteriously die, one by one. When one guy wakes up to find his RV on the railroad, moments before impact, local police think it could possibly be a case of too much spiked eggnog. After lead detective Carolyn Brentwood (Olivia Williams) slips in a slick of blood the size of Michigan when her and Breacher go to interview another team member, however, her spidey sense is definitely tingling: when she looks up and sees the poor guy nailed to the ceiling, eviscerated, she definitely begins to think that these may be more than simple household accidents.

Working with the overly cagey, withdrawn Breacher, Brentwood tries to gather information from the others, yet meets with nothing but cold resistance: the troops have circled the wagons and no strangers are getting through. As more and more of his squad end up dead, however, Breacher is suddenly faced with the shocking idea that the killer may not be a cartel hitman…it may be someone a little closer to home…dun dun duuunh!

Alright, here’s the thing: I was more than willing to give Sabotage as much slack as it needed, mostly because I was duly impressed with director Ayer’s previous effort, the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring End of Watch (2012). I was able to look past the film’s overly kinetic, restless action sequences, even when said restlessness began to extend into non-action, “quiet” parts of the film. I didn’t care for the shaky camera or odd, overly-saturated color palette but I’d seen plenty worse. I didn’t really even mind the on-the-nose, endlessly posturing dialogue: you have to expect a certain measure of shit-talking in films like this, after all, and who doesn’t love a badass ass-kicker?

At a certain point, however, all of Sabotage’s dead weight ends up dragging the film straight to Davy Jones’ locker, my patience be damned. Perhaps it was the unbelievably douchy scene where Brentwood comes by to speak to the crew during a pool party and the whole thing devolves into ridiculous chest-thumping and frat-boy innuendos: I can’t tell you how bad I wanted to slap the fucking smirk straight off Joe Manganiello’s dumb mug right about the time he got up in the detective’s face and started hambonin’ her (thanks, Regular Show). Maybe it was the insultingly obnoxious “banter” between Brentwood and her partner, Jackson (Harold Perrineau), scenes which reminded me of the cringingly bad interplay between Jay Leno and his ever-suffering band-leader, Kevin Eubanks. Perhaps it was the climatic chase scene that involved one of the characters blasting away at the good guys from a car trunk, chewing and swallowing so much scenery that you can feel the film’s world unraveling from the massive gravitational pull of it all.

One thing’s for certain, however: the acting on display here does no one any favors. Schwarzenegger comes off the best, unsurprisingly, although that damned dead marmot on his head makes it patently impossible to take him completely seriously. His world-weary, “I’m too old for this” schtick actually works, much of the time, and he even gets a few “relatively” reflective moments to do a little modest acting…nothing that will make folks forget his glory days, mind you, but a decent enough continuation of his un-retirement. Other than that relative high point, however, the rest of the cast is pretty much a wash. While all of them are patently ridiculous, I must reserve a special amount of scorn for Enos and Manganiello: at no point in the film are either character anything approaching realistic, likable or even interesting…they’re just unbelievably loud, crude, obnoxious and rather hateful little cliches (Manganiello the huge, unstoppable Cro-Magnon, Enos the “tough chick with bigger balls than the whole combined crew”). As someone who’s a huge fan of Enos’ work on the cable series The Killing, I must admit to being completely flabbergasted by her film work: her previous performance, in Devil’s Knot (2013), was pretty awful but her work as Lizzy vaults her into a whole new realm of terribleness. If the only requirement for portraying a badass character is to shout til your veins pop, Enos’ Lizzy is our new gold standard.

And there, in a nutshell, is pretty much Sabotage’s problem: it’s a thoroughly average action film that’s completely undone by the constantly shifting tone, terrible characters/acting and patently ridiculous situations. One of the most puzzling aspects of the film, for me, was the way in which it almost seemed to have a foot in the horror world: between the splattery aftermath of the great train kapow and the evisceration scene that’s fully Hannibal Lecter approved, Sabotage often feels like a slasher film in action clothing, ala No One Lives (2012). While the gore is well done, it also feels completely out-of-place, similar to how the occasionally intentional comic beats fail miserably.

Despite how it sounds, I didn’t hate Sabotage, although I will freely admit to hating many of the performances. Rather, the film reminded me of any number of bottom-of-the-barrel actioners that I used to gorge myself on during rainy weekends as a kid. Without all of the critical injuries, I don’t see any reason why Ayer’s film couldn’t limp into the finish line. As it stands, however, I can’t help but feel that someone should have done the noble thing and just taken it out in the field to be shot, instead.

7/16/14: Hat’s Off to the Old School

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action films, bad cops, based on a book, bullies, Burt Reynolds, Chuck Zito, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, DEA agents, drug dealer, druglord, film reviews, films, Frank Grillo, Gary Fleder, Homefront, Izabela Vidovic, James Franco, Jason Statham, Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester, Movies, Rachelle Lefevre, single father, small town life, Sylvester Stallone, thrillers, Winona Ryder

There’s certainly something to be said for a nice full-throttle, no-frills, old-fashioned action film. You know the kind that I mean: white hats vs black hats, clear-cut heroes and villains, lots of ass-kicking and just enough tension to make us think that anything could happen, even if our steadfast hero has everything locked down tighter than Fort Knox. The ’80s were a pretty fertile breeding ground for films like this, turning square-jawed bruisers like Chuck Norris, Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Burt Reynolds and their ilk into box-office warriors and giving a generation of kids a bakers’ dozen of take-charge “do-gooders” to look up to. While it’s debatable whether modern audiences are looking that far backwards (although the prevalence of remakes and re-dos as of late makes me think that someone has their eye planted on the rearview mirror), it’s pretty clear that filmmakers are, consciously or not, evoking the Reagan-era left and right. Case in point: director Gary Fleder’s recent Homefront (2013), a film that comes off as so influenced by gritty ’80s action films that it plays as more of an homage to the era than other obviously ’80s-leaning flicks like Almost Human (2013) and Hobo With a Shotgun (2011).

In certain ways, Homefront plays like a long-lost Burt Reynolds film, perhaps one of the string of gritty shoot-’em’ups that the hirsute mega-star was involved with throughout the ’80s: movies like Sharky’s Machine (1981), Stick (1985), Heat (1986) and especially Malone (1987) certainly seem to be spiritual forefathers to Homefront, if not strictly genetic ones. It’s certainly not difficult to see star Jason Statham as the successor to ’80s action stars: his patented brand of brooding, kind-hearted cynicism seems tailor-made for films where he reluctantly (but efficiently) opens industrial-sized barrels of whup-ass on thoroughly deserving bad guys. With Homefront, however, Statham might have just found his most implicitly ’80s film yet: that the film also ends up being one his most entertaining is certainly no mean feat.

Homefront kicks off with a sequence that, for better or worse, looked and felt like a scene from Sons of Anarchy: we watch as undercover DEA agent Phil Broker (Jason Statham) is involved in the takedown of big-time biker/druglord Danny T (Chuck Zito) and his gang. During the bust and subsequent high-speed chase through the city, Danny T’s son pulls a piece and is promptly aerated by multiple rounds from about a million cops. Broker is disgusted by the senseless killing (although, to be fair, the dude did pull a gun while surrounded by at least an entire squadron of police officers…what did he assume would happen?) and quits the force.

Fast-forward two years and Broker is now the single-father to adorable 9-year-old munchkin Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). The two live in a small, Southern town where Broker is a building contractor and does everything humanly possible to blend into the background. Blending is difficult when you have a self-assured kid who’s an expert at self-defense, however, which Broker learns after Maddy (politely) kicks the ever-loving shit out of a douchbag bully at school. Enter the bully’s repulsive parents, the ridiculously white-trash-and-proud-of-it Cassie (Kate Bosworth) and her spineless asshat of a husband, Jimmy (Marcus Hester). Cassie is furious that her beloved meatsack son got schooled by a girl and browbeats Jimmy into confronting Broker. This, of course, is a terrible move, as Broker proceeds to politely kick Jimmy’s ass up one side of the street and down the other, all while the local Sheriff (Clancy Brown) looks on.

Since Cassie has never been one to leave well-enough alone, she decides to take her complaint up the food chain: next stop, her insane brother and local meth kingpin, “Gator” Bodine (James Franco). Gator is a real piece of work, as we see when he mercilessly beats a group of sad-sack wannabe meth cooks with a baseball bat. Gator may be providing meth to his miserable addict of a sister but she’s still family, dammit, and no smooth city boy is gonna fuck with his family. This ends up setting off a chain of events where Gator and his men try to run Broker and his daughter out of town, all while Broker finds new and exciting ways to break jaws, legs, ribs and skulls. All that Broker wants is to be left alone to raise his daughter in (relative) peace and quiet. When Gator ups the ante by getting Danny T involved, Broker has no choice but to take it all to its logical extreme: if it’s a war that the backwoods mafia wants, it’s a war that they’re gonna get. To paraphrase that paragon of ’80s badassery: I pity the fool who gets between Broker and his daughter.

Like the best ’80s action flicks, Homefront is one big, thrilling mess of shattered limbs, anonymous baddies getting ventilated with automatic weapons, massive explosions, gritty violence and memorably evil antagonists. As with the best ’80s action flicks, however, Homefront lives or dies based on the inherent cool of its hero and Statham is more than up for the task. While I’ve always enjoyed Statham as an action figure, I must admit that most of his more popular films (The Transporter series, the Crank series) tend to just wear me out: as a rule, the films are kinetic nightmares, full of seemingly endless stunts, fights, explosions and little to no sense of narrative flow. If anything, they seem sort of like R-rated cartoons, so chaotic and manic that sitting through them is more about overcoming the distractions and “absorbing” the films versus actually enjoying them.

Not so with Homefront, thankfully: despite its overly polished look and sound (at times, the film looks distressingly like a Hallmark Movie of the Week, albeit one with a poundingly loud soundtrack and more casual ultra-violence than most Schwarzenegger flicks), Homefront is just about as gritty as it gets and is decidedly reminiscent of the aforementioned ’80s actions flicks. Statham brings a tired, world-weary sensibility to his portrayal of Phil Broker that really works: he doesn’t want to keep cracking skulls but he’ll be damned if these morons just can’t take the hint. Every good ’80s action star needs a good villain, however, and Franco is more than capable as the bat-shit-scary Gator. I have a love-hate relationship with Franco, to be honest: when the guy is on point, he’s pretty damn amazing, a smirking chameleon who can easily morph into whatever role he wants. The rest of the time, however, I find him to be a rather pretentious douchbag, more given to creating and upholding his own “mythology” than he is in crafting an indelible body of work: I can totally dig “Franco the actor” but I often find myself wanting to kick “Franco the celebrity” square in the family jewels.

Luckily for me, “Franco the actor” is front and center in Homefront and his Gator may be my favorite role of his yet. Franco can be an unusually expressive actor and his performance here is a minor miracle of facial tics, raised eyebrows, subtle mannerisms and explosive violence: he underplays the role so much that when he finally lets loose, he really lets loose, bringing the thunder in a pretty major way. Compare this to Winona Ryder’s “gal Friday” part as Gator’s on-again/off-again girlfriend Sheryl for an interesting parallel: Franco underplays everything to marvelous effect while Ryder overplays everything and comes across like a nitwit. In a long career of hot-and-cold performances, Ryder’s Sheryl has to be one of her coldest: despite the histrionics, there’s no part of her performance that resonates in any meaningful way.

Kate Bosworth, on the other hand, surprises rather handily as the virulent, awful Cassie. At first, Cassie comes across as the worst kind of stereotypical redneck (think a Deliverance (1972) baddie but with less self-control) but Bosworth is a gifted enough performer to bring plenty of nuance to her character, enough so that her 11th hour “humanization” comes across more as a natural progression than a deus ex machina. Poor Rachelle Lefevre (Under the Dome), however, ends up being completely wasted as Susan, one of Maddy’s teachers. In certain ways, the character of Susan feels as if it were hacked to pieces and left to bleed out on the cutting-room floor: not only does the expected (and teased) romance with Broker never materialize but Susan doesn’t really do much of anything, save walk around and look concerned. Faring much better is current action star Frank Grillo (The Grey (2011), The Purge: Anarchy (2014)), who makes a pretty scary badguy as Danny T’s lieutenant, Cyrus. The scene where he forces Sheryl to meet him at a seafood restaurant, despite her allergy to shellfish, is pretty unforgettable and prime Grillo, a it were.

Despite really enjoying Homefront, there were a few issues that forced me to rate it a little lower than I might have otherwise. As mentioned earlier, the film is never quite gritty enough to shake off that whole “Hallmark Movie” notion (in particular, the score is always heavy-handed and way too leading), despite the abundance of violence. There’s also an odd tendency for the “heroes” to seem all but invincible: there are at least four, if not more, times during the film where a good guy suffers what appears to be a fatal injury only to just “walk it off.” The same doesn’t apply to the bad guys, however, who tend to kick the bucket in herds. I was also less than enamored with a weird, irritating editing tic wherein upcoming scenes are briefly edited onto the tail-end of the preceding scene. I’m not sure who thought this was a good (or even clever) idea but it really isn’t: had the rest of the film not been so rock-solid, this would have been a deal-breaker, for sure.

That being said, I ended up enjoying Homefront to an almost ludicrous degree, perhaps because it so effectively channeled those ’80s flicks I grew up on. The script, based on a novel but adapted by action star Sly Stallone, is quite good and the numerous fight scenes are real corkers: Statham really knows how to portray a cinematic asskicker and Fleder, who also helmed Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) and Kiss the Girls (1997), really knows how to make him look badass doing it. I really bought the relationship between Maddy and her dad, which never seemed forced and overly saccharine. And then, of course, there’s that glorious performance by Franco: somebody make this guy a Bond villain, stat!

At the end of the day, Homefront is unapologetically violent, a little cheesy and over-produced. The film is also genuinely exciting, action-packed and full of undeniable energy and verve. If you’re looking for a good, old-fashioned, black-and-white story about good guys kicking the snot out of bad guys, you could do a whole lot worse than Homefront. For anyone who grew up on those caustically cool ’80s actioners, however, Homefront may just look a lot like manna from heaven. Statham may not have Burt’s chest-chair but he sure as hell has his eye for dependably tough action roles. Let’s hope he can grind out a few more of these and give the Transporter and Crank films a rest.