5/28/15: Paved With Good Intentions

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Bottled Up, cinema, dramas, drug addiction, drug smuggling, dysfunctional family, enabling, Enid Zentelis, environmentalists, film reviews, films, Fredric Lehne, independent films, indie films, Jamie Harrold, Josh Hamilton, Marin Ireland, Melissa Leo, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Nelson Landrieu, parent-child relationships, pill addiction, romances, Sam Retzer, Tibor Feldman, Tim Boland, writer-director

In an era when so many films seem to fulfill no greater need than increasing some conglomerate’s bottom line, it’s always refreshing to run across movies that actually have something to say, regardless of whether they have the expense account to say it loudly enough to get noticed. As someone who wearies of the “bigger, louder, dumber” mantra that rules the multiplex, I make a point to seek out the quieter, more modest choices whenever possible. After all: which type of film could really use more support…the billion-dollar tentpole flick or the indie that was probably made for a third of the former’s catering budget?

This, of course, ends up being quite the over-simplification but it helps put us in the proper mind to discuss writer-director Enid Zentelis’ Bottled Up (2013). Zentelis’ drug addiction drama, the follow-up to her debut, Evergreen (2004), is just the aforementioned kind of modest indie drama that normally fits my sensibilities like a glove. It’s the kind of film that I normally have no problem championing, usually over the top of something with a much larger advertising budget. In this case, however, I find myself in a bit of a pickle: you see, Bottled Up has its heart in the right place but the film is so fundamentally awkward that it’s difficult to ever become fully invested. That being said, I’ll gladly take a dozen well-intentioned films like this over much of the soulless superhero drivel and remakes that currently glut the multiplexes.

At its heart, Bottled Up is the story of Fay (Melissa Leo) and her adult daughter, Sylvie (Marin Ireland). Sylvie is a pill addict, supposedly the result of a car accident that screwed up her back, while her mother officially holds the title of “world-class enabler.” While Fay is a hard-working, responsible and caring individual, Sylvie is a complete wreck: manic, an habitual liar, an unrepentant thief and constantly in search of her next fix, Sylvie is like a human-shaped albatross perpetually affixed to her poor mother’s neck. Despite being “in control” of her daughter’s pain pills, Fay really isn’t in control of anything: whenever Sylvie feels like it, she just steals more money or hocks more shit, keeping her sleazy dealer, Jerry (Jamie Harrold), on speed-dial the whole while.

Just when things seem to be at their bleakest for Fay, she strikes up a friendship with Becket (Josh Hamilton), the spacey environmental activist who works at the local organic grocery store. Becket recycles, he composts, he takes samples of the local lake water and sends them to the government for testing and, most importantly, he seems to be swooning over Fay. Despite some obvious chemistry between the activist and the mom, however, Fay actually has different plans for Becket: believing that all Sylvie needs to “fix” her is the love of a good man, Fay does her damnedest to set the two up, despite her daughter’s near pathological desire to fuck it all up. As Fay keeps trying to “weld” Becket and Sylvie together, despite their overwhelmingly awkward interactions, she must also fight down her own growing feelings for the sensitive treehugger.

As is often the case, balance becomes a problem: how does one live their own life when they’re also living someone else’s? Fay continues to negotiate this precarious tightrope act, all while the local doctors get wise to Sylvie’s abuse issues and begin to make life even more difficult for the put-upon mother. Add one all-too-eager drug dealer, a spontaneous trip to Canada and growing self-awareness to the mix and you have yourself the recipe for some cathartic, if painful, personal growth. Will Fay finally discover who she really is or will Sylvie’s addiction wind up destroying everyone around her?

All of the elements are in place for Bottled Up to do exactly what it seems to set out to do. Yet, for various reasons, the film ends up feeling oddly flat and rather awkward. All of the principals – Melissa Leo, Marin Ireland and Josh Hamilton – have been responsible for some excellent performances in the past (Leo, in particular). Here, however, none of them seem to gel together, making much of the romantic angle feel forced and, at times, a little creepy. The ways in which Fay tries to push Becket and Sylvie together have a kind of whimsical “meet-cute” feel, at first, but quickly give way to something more awkward and cringe-worthy. Likewise Becket’s romancing of Fay: while it sometimes hits genuinely “sweet” moments, it all too often feels forced and out-of-place.

While Leo manages to get several very nice scenes and emotional moments (despite being saddled with an unfortunate haircut that spends the majority of the film obscuring her face), Ireland’s performance is almost uniformly awkward and strange. I get that Sylvie is a drug addict, many of whom are known to be rather squirrely individuals. Ireland’s performance is so erratic and wild, however, that it’s often difficult to figure out what which of the traits are the character’s and which are the actor’s. At numerous points, a sly look from Sylvie would seem to telegraph something only to amount to nothing: at a certain point, I was positive that Sylvie was trying to make Becket sick although, as I think about it later, it really wouldn’t make sense, under that context.

For his part, Hamilton plays Becket with such a blase, befuddled sense of inattention that, like with Ireland’s performance, it becomes a bit of a question as to what’s intended and what’s not. While the world is full of oblivious, tunnel-visioned individuals, surely none of them could be as absolutely blind to their immediate surroundings as Becket is: it’s not so much that he seems to be obsessed with the lake as that he seems to be willfully ignoring the highly dysfunctional mother-daughter team before him.

Part of the problem with the film’s overall impact is the disparity between some of the obviously whimsical elements and the more grim, overall feel. The score, courtesy of Tim Boland and Sam Retzer, is what I like to call “indie quirky” and the film features such magical-realist elements as Fay’s workplace, the bizarrely esoteric Mailboxes and Thangs (where one can mail a package, buy a donut and get a nipple piercing, all in the same visit). At times, Bottled Up seems one quirky character or cleverly placed indie tune away from the same patch of land where Wes Anderson normally builds his brand of particularly baroque architecture.

These lighthearted touches, however, end up sitting uncomfortably next to the film’s more unrelentingly dark, rather hopeless tone. Despite any of its issues, Bottled Up manages to be rather on-the-nose when it comes to depicting the humiliating, pointless and painful lives that addicts (and their families) suffer through: while the film never wallows in the shit-and-piss ugliness of something like Trainspotting (1996) or Requiem for a Dream (2000), there’s also nothing wholesome, cute or heartwarming about Fay and Sylvie’s relationship. More than anything, there’s a thick air of hopeless defeat that hangs over the characters: it feels as if we’ve entered Fay and Sylvie’s story at the very end, after both parties have, for all intents and purposes, given up. You always need a rock bottom in any recovery story, of course, but the constant emotional back-and-forth feels schizophrenic rather than organic.

Despite the aforementioned problems and the constant sense of awkward distance, there was still a lot to like here. While she doesn’t always hit the mark, Leo turns in another typically sturdy performance: Fay’s character does go through an arc, over the course of the story, and Leo is an assured pro at letting this comes across organically, rather than conveniently. I also really liked the film’s more loopy elements and wish Zentelis had opted to center more of the story there: there’s endless, virtually unexploited potential in the Mailboxes and Thangs concept, alone, not to mention Fay’s tentative steps into the world of conservationism. I also liked the concept of Jerry, the drug dealer, even if the actual character ended up being under-used and seemed to exit the film all too quickly. While the film is about Fay and Sylvie’s struggles, it also works best when it grounds them within the surrounding community.

At the end of the day, Bottled Up is a film with the very best intentions which, as I’ve stated earlier, certainly isn’t lost on me. Even if the various elements never cohere, it’s quite plain that Zentelis does have plenty of good insights into addiction, co-dependence and dysfunctional relationships. There are moments in the film that ring absolutely true and the final resolution is the kind of hopeful break in the storm clouds that really drives a film like this home. Bottled Up is an ode to addicts and the people who love them, even at the expense of their own individuality. I might not agree with how Zentelis said it, but I’ll damned if I can find much fault with what she had to say.

5/26/15: He’s Got the World Up His Ass

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abusive relationships, America's Cup, Andy Canny, Angus Sampson, Australia, Australian films, based on a true story, Chris Pang, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, crime thriller, dark films, dramas, drug dealers, drug mule, drug smuggling, Ewen Leslie, film reviews, films, Fletcher Humphrys, foreign films, Geoff Morrell, Georgina Haig, Hugo Weaving, Ilya Altman, Insidious, Jaime Browne, John Noble, Leigh Whannell, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Noni Hazlehurst, period-piece, Richard Davies, Saw, set in 1980s, set in Australia, Stefan Duscio, The Mule, Tony Mahony, writer-director-actor

If you think about it, being a drug mule has to have one of the worst risk-to-reward ratios of any job, roughly equitable to being the royal food taster in medieval times. Let’s see…you get to swallow multiple, latex-bundled packages full of potentially lethal narcotics, any of which could burst, come open or leak out into your stomach, flipping the hourglass on what could be the last, miserable moments of your existence. If this works out, you then get the white-knuckle thrill-ride of attempting to bypass police, customs, airport security and drug enforcement officials, often in countries where illegal drug possession carries a life sentence (if you’re lucky) or something a bit more permanent (if you’re not).

Get through all of that in one piece and you still have to deal with whomever gave you the job in the first place: historically, drug traffickers haven’t been known to be the most trust-worthy folks, so there’s still every possibility that you’ll get a bullet to the face instead of an envelope of cash for your troubles. Of course, if it all works out perfectly, well…you get to repeat the whole process all over again, rolling the dice anew every step of the way. Small wonder they don’t talk about this one on career day, eh?

While drug mule might not be the profession of choice for most, there’s always a first time for everything: under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the role of smuggler’s little helper might be the only one available. This, of course, is the crux of actor Angus Sampson’s co-directorial debut (he shares the role with Tony Mahony), the appropriately named The Mule (2014). Pulling triple-duty, Sampson co-writes, co-directs and stars in the film as the titular character, a meek, down-trodden nebbish who, quite literally, ends up sticking his future right where the sun doesn’t shine. In the process, Sampson and company come up with one of the most intense, unpleasant and genuinely impressive films of last year, a roller-coaster ride where the weak of stomach would be well-advised to keep a bucket close at hand, while those who like their entertainment pitch-black might just find a new favorite for their collections.

Set in Melbourne, circa 1983, we meet poor Ray Jenkins (Sampson), the kind of salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar guy who seems tailor-made for getting screwed over in film noirs. A rather simple TV repairman who’s really into his footie team, loves his mom (Noni Hazlehurst) and step-dad (Geoff Morell) and can chug a pint of beer faster than most folks can blink, Ray seems to have a pretty decent life. He’s also lifelong mates with Gavin (co-writer Leigh Whannell), who happens to be the captain of Ray’s football team…when he isn’t trafficking drugs for the team’s president, the by-turns jovial and terrifying Pat (John Noble), that is.

When the team decides to take a trip to Thailand to celebrate the end of another successful season, Gavin and Pat see it as the perfect opportunity to bring back another half key of heroin. Although he initially refuses Gavin’s request to help mule the drugs, he changes his tune once he realizes that his step-dad, John, is up to his eyeballs in debt to Pat: if Ray doesn’t help, Pat and his over-sized Russian thug will take John apart and put him back together upside down.

Once Gavin and Ray get to Thailand, however, Gavin calls an audible: he purchases an extra half key of product with the express purpose of selling it himself, without Pat’s knowledge. Despite changing his mind and wanting out, Ray is manipulated into swallowing the entire key of heroin, separated out into a multitude of condom-wrapped packages. With a gut full of drugs and enough anxiety for an entire continent, Ray makes it back to the Australian airport but gets busted after he acts like the kind of twitchy idiot who normally, you know, mules drugs.

Separated from his family, his mates and his normal life, Ray is taken to a motel by a couple of hard-ass detectives, Paris (Ewen Leslie) and Croft (Hugo Weaving), after he refuses to either admit to smuggling drugs or submit to a stomach x-ray. Paris and Croft make the situation quite clear: they’ll keep Ray there, under 24-hour surveillance, until they get the drugs…one way or another. From this point on, it becomes a (literal) fight against the clock, as Ray does everything he can to make sure that the drugs stay right where they are. The record for a mule keeping drugs in his system is 10 days, Croft smugly tells Ray: if he can “hold it” for longer, he’ll be a free man.

While Ray is staying true-blue from the isolation of his motel room prison, however, things are a little dicier on the outside. After figuring out what happened, Pat decides that Ray has become too much of a liability and tasks his best friend with the job of silencing him, once and for all. As all of these forces swirl around him, Ray, with the help of his cheerful public defender, Jasmine (Georgina Haig), puts a final, desperate plan into action. Pat and Gavin aren’t the only threats to his existence, however: sometimes, the baddest people are the ones you least suspect.

From the jump, The Mule is a ridiculously self-assured film, the kind of effortless thriller that the Coens used to pump out in their sleep. Despite this being his first full-length directorial effort, Sampson reveals a complete mastery over the film’s tone, triple impressive considering that he also co-wrote and stars in it. There’s never a point in the film where Ray is anything less than completely sympathetic and some of Sampson’s scenes are so unbelievably powerful that it’s rather impossible for me to believe no one saw fit to nominate him for any kind of acting award. In particular, the showstopping scene where Ray needs to re-ingest the packages is one of the most powerful, painful bits of acting I’ve ever seen. The biggest compliment I can pay Sampson is that he actually becomes Ray: it’s an astonishingly immersive performance.

Sampson isn’t the only actor who goes above and beyond, however: if anything, The Mule is a showcase for intense, masterful performances. Whannell, perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Saw franchise, along with James Wan, is perfect as Ray’s best mate/biggest problem. Weaving and Leslie are, likewise, perfect as the bad cop/bad cop duo, with Weaving turning in the kind of terrifying performance that should make folks remember how versatile and valuable he’s always been. Haig does some really interesting things with her portrayal of Ray’s lawyer, adding some shading and subtle deviousness to a character who could have been a crusading do-gooder on paper. Hazlehurst and Morrell are excellent as Ray’s loving parents, with each of them getting some nice opportunities to shine on their own: the scene where Hazlehurst tries to force-feed Ray some laxative-doped lamp is pretty unforgettable, as is the one where Morrell drunkenly confronts Pat and his murderous restaurant employee, Phuk (a likewise excellent Chris Pang).

And speaking of Pat: let’s take a few moments to sing the praises of John Noble, shall we? As an actor, Noble seems to have the singular ability to not only crawl beneath the skin of many a reprehensible character but beneath the audience’s skin, as well: in a long-line of memorable roles, Pat Shepard is, easily, one of Noble’s best and scariest. Riding the fine-line between joviality and cold-blooded, murderous evil, Pat is a perfect villain and Noble lustily grabs the film with both hands whenever he’s on-screen.

While the acting in The Mule is strictly top-notch, it also helps considerably that the actors have such a great script to work with. Loosely (very loosely) based on true incidents in Sampson and Whannell’s native Australia, The Mule is lean, mean and exquisitely plotted, breathlessly swinging from Ray’s motel imprisonment to Pat’s outside machinations with stunning ease. Full of great dialogue, thrilling setpieces and nicely intuitive emotional beats, The Mule reinforces that Sampson and Whannell are one of the most formidable teams in modern cinema. Throw in some excellent, evocative camerawork, courtesy of Stefan Duscio, along with a great score by Cornel Wilczek and Mikey Young, and you have a film that looks and sounds great: there are no smudged brushstrokes or missing lines in this particular “painting.”

To sum it up: I absolutely loved The Mule from start to finish. Smart, twisted, endlessly entertaining and constantly thrilling, it was nothing short of a minor masterpiece. At times reminiscent of the Coens’ iconic Fargo (1996), at other times bringing to mind Sam Raimi’s relentlessly bleak, under-rated A Simple Plan (1998), Sampson’s The Mule still manages to carve out its own unique acre of cinematic real estate. While you might not think that a film about a man steadfastly refusing to take a shit for over a week is your cup of tea, I’m here to tell you to think again: if you like smart, edgy films with brilliant acting, you’d be an absolute fool to pass up The Mule. Suffice to say, I’ll be sitting right here, breathlessly awaiting the next Sampson/Whannell joint: I’d advise you to do the same.

5/20/14: Holidays in Cambodia

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actor-writer, Antony Starr, Cambodia, cinema, drama, drug smuggling, feature-film debut, Felicity Price, film reviews, films, husband-wife team, indie dramas, infidelity, Joel Edgerton, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Movies, relationships on the rocks, Teresa Palmer, vacations from hell, vanished into thin air, Wish You Were Here, writer-director

There can be very few pains as acute as not knowing what has happened to a missing person, especially a loved one. When someone has died, there is, if nothing else, the opportunity to arrive at closure. When someone is missing, however, there is no such opportunity: any sighting could be a lead…any missed call could be a plea for help…any half-seen face, a glimpse of familiar clothing, might mean something. There’s always the hope that the person might, one day, just walk back into the room: while there’s (not usually) this hope for the dead, the missing could always come back. Possibly. Perhaps. The indie drama Wish You Were Here (2012) deals with the pain and fear that accompanies just such a disappearance and how the resulting actions can stir some very dark waters.

The film begins, in happier times, with two couples jaunting around south Cambodia in one of those sequences that looks alarmingly like a credit card commercial: husband and wife, Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice Flannery (co-scripter Felicity Price), are expecting child number three and want one more chance to let their hair down, while Alice’s sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer), has just met a dreamy new guy, Jeremy (Antony Starr), who wants to treat her (and Alice and Dave, by extension) to an all-expenses-paid vacation in southeast Asia. They seem to be having a blast, sampling the local cuisine, swimming, dancing, visiting beautiful temples and smoke-filled dance clubs. It’s a really kinetic, fun sequence that ends with a shell-shocked Dave stumbling around, on his own, in a desolate countryside. Something has happened, it would seem…something very bad.

We find out that Dave and Alice are now back home in Sydney, while Steph has stayed behind to try to figure out what happened to Jeremy, who’s been missing for nine days, at that point. Both Dave and Alice seem concerned, as befits the situation, but life must go on and they have their hands a bit full. When Steph is unexpectedly ejected from Cambodia for making a nuisance of herself, she returns to Dave and Alice, setting off a chain-reaction of unpleasant revelations, not the least of which is that she and Dave had themselves a little sex on the beach on the night that Jeremy disappeared. As this revelation tears apart Alice, Dave and their two small children, darker revelations begin to seep to the surface: does Dave know more about Jeremy’s disappearance than he’s letting on? Why are the local police so interested in Jeremy’s import/export business? And where, exactly, did Dave go on the night that Jeremy vanished?

For the most part, Wish You Were Here is a suspenseful, involving feature-film debut from Australian actor Kieran Darcy-Smith, co-scripted with his wife, actress Felicity Price. Darcy-Smith is known for brutal crime films like The Square (2008) and Animal Kingdom (2010) and there’s definitely a lot of that grit found in his directorial debut, although the meat of the story is still focused around Dave’s infidelity and the impact it has on the family. To be honest, however, I actually felt this split focus to be a bit of a problem: the missing-person storyline, which technically provides the base of the film, is a much more interesting story than the rather tired infidelity angle. I do understand the need to add weight and emotional heft to the film but the cheating aspect quickly subsumed the mystery angle, to the discredit of both. On the one hand, not enough attention gets paid to the idea of Jeremy being missing in a foreign country, under mysterious circumstances, while undue attention is paid to the back-and-forth between Alice and Dave over his affair with Steph. It’s not spoiling anything to say that the two aspects of the film don’t actually have anything to with each other, unless on a purely coincidental level: removing one aspect or the other wouldn’t have radically changed the opposing storyline, even if it would have made for a much different film.

The acting, especially from Edgerton and Price, is outstanding across the board, although I really wish that Antony Starr would have been utilized more. I’ve been a big fan of Starr since his work on the Australian TV series Outrageous Fortune and was looking forward to seeing him on the big screen. Alas, his role amounts to scarcely more than a cameo: playing the missing guy in a movie about a missing guy generally means that you spend large chunks of time off-camera…unless you’re Tom Hanks, that is. Starr isn’t Hanks but he does bring a breezy, easy-going quality to Jeremy that also leaves room for a little ambivalence: how “nice” of a nice guy is Jeremy, really? Teresa Palmer, as Steph, is the only potential buzzkill in the cast: she vacillates between shrill and wheedling, which assures that her character is almost never sympathetic. Most of the time, you just want to tell her to get on with it, already, which plays as much into Palmer’s performance as to the character.

Darcy-Smith ends up with a pretty good look for the film, although his cinematographer overuses certain filters and visual effects, a tendency which occasionally makes it difficult to differentiate between the films numerous flashbacks and the “present day.” These flashbacks become a bit of a problem as the film progresses: often, it’s difficult to tell what timeframe we’re in and there was one specific instance where I thought Dave had flown back to Cambodia on his own (which would have confused the hell out of me) only to find out later that this was more footage from the night Jeremy died. This seemed needlessly confusing, especially since the film wasn’t trying to tell a particularly tricky story: it just seemed like an overly clunky way to do it, that’s all.

Wish You Were Here isn’t an amazing film and it’s definitely not an original film but it is a consistently well-done and absorbing film. There is some genuine tension to the mystery and I’ll be honest: I didn’t guess the “truth,” which made me pretty happy. The resolution is no “Sixth Sense”-esque mind-bender but it is a fairly nifty revelation and repaints many previous scenes with a new air of menace. All in all, the film is a decent drama about a fractured couple working to rebuild their marriage while looking for their missing friend. If it could have been a much better film as an all-in mystery about looking for Jeremy (something along the lines of Midnight Express (1978) from the outside, perhaps), that’s a bit of a shame.

4/22/14: Set the Way Back Machine to Groovy, Baby

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'70s films, '70s-era, AIP, American Independent Productions, Bullitt, cinema, crime film, drug smuggling, film reviews, films, gangster films, gangsters, heroin trafficking, Italian cinema, Ivo Garrani, mafia, Maurizio Lucidi, mean streets of San Francisco, Movies, race-car driver, Roger Corman, Roger Moore, San Francisco, Stacy Keach, Street People, The French Connection, Ulysses

When it comes to exploring new films, I like to let my instincts do the walking. Like some sort of mutant bloodhound, my nose is finally attuned to sniff out those cinematic delicacies that will most likely keep me entertained, if not actively jumping from my seat and thrusting devil horns into the flat-screen. Sometimes, the cover art can fire my imagination, leading me to wonder how much was made up by the artist and how much actually exists within the framework of the movie proper. Other times, I can be intrigued by a familiar name in the credits, some favorite actor “slumming” it in a B-grade effort to make some pocket cash. In a perfect storm situation, however, all of these disparate elements will align to make a previously unknown film into an absolute must-see. When I found out that Street People, a 1976 Italian gangster flick set on the mean streets of San Francisco, featured Roger Moore as a Sicilian/British mob lawyer and Stacy Keach as his best friend and champion race-car driver…well, let’s just say that the next move was obvious.

Following in the Italo-film tradition of spaghetti Westerns, Street People features an all-Italian cast, supplemented by Moore and Keach as the token Hollywood names. In many ways, the film is a very stereotypical ’70s Italian gangster film, filmed with gauzy flashbacks, double-crosses, conflict between the church and the mob, car chases, shoot-outs and familial drama. Moore, smack-dab in the middle of his residency as James Bond, plays the Sicilian/British lawyer Ulysses, tasked by his mob-boss uncle Salvatore (Ivo Garrani) with finding a missing shipment of heroin (hidden in a large crucifix, no less). Sal’s brother, Francis, is a cardinal and the theft of the crucifix/heroin, which included the messy murder of its guards, has put a black mark on the church. It’s up to Ulysses and his race-car drivin’ buddy Charlie (Keach) to get to the bottom of the mess and they’ll go from San Francisco to Sicily and back to solve the crime. Along the way, they’ll find out the truth about Sal and Francis’ relationship, the best way to send a message via fish and that every friendship is only as strong as its weakest link.

First of all, Street People is an absolute mess. It’s an awful lot of fun, don’t get me wrong…but it’s a complete mess. The narrative tends to jump all over the place, a problem which is only made worse by the frequent flashbacks. The flashbacks, themselves, tend to be so confusing and loopy (at one point, two characters seem to share a flashback in what must be the strangest attempt at economy I’ve ever seen in a conventional film) that they’re more fever dreams than plot elements. Combine this with the inherently thorny nature of the plot (it is, after all, supposed to be a mystery) and Street People often comes across as frustratingly vague. We always get the general sense of what’s going on (Ulysses and Charlie are looking for the drugs) but who they question, why they question them and where they go afterwards often seems arbitrary, as if we only ever get bits and pieces of any one scene. Chalk this up to the fact that the film was, most likely, re-edited when Roger Corman’s AIP company released it in America but, regardless, it doesn’t make for particularly smooth sailing.

As with other films of this era/ilk, much of Street People is decidedly low-rent, consisting of anonymous people pointing guns at either Moore or Keach, lather, rinse, repeat. The one exception to this, however, would have to be the films numerous and consistently impressive car chases. All of the car chases are thrillingly staged and executed, bringing to mind much more capable films like Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) but a few of them are particularly great. One scene, in which Ulysses and Charlie must maneuver in and around a group of hostile semi-trucks during a high-speed freeway chase is fantastic and recalls a similarly good scene in one of the Bond films (perhaps even one of the Moore bond films, which would be a pretty neat extra layer). While the rest of Street People is neither noticeably better (or worse) than the average Italian gangster pic of the era, with the exception of Moore and Keach, the car chases are always exemplary and certainly worth a look.

Although the rest of the cast is so generic as to become easily interchangeable (including the mob boss), Moore and Keach do just fine in the their respective roles. Moore brings a slightly hard edge to Ulysses, although he keeps enough of the Bond finesse to make him a pretty cool customer. This is a much different tough guy than Bond, however, and it’s to Moore’s credit that he doesn’t play him as a carbon copy of his more famous day job. Keach is a blast and a half, bouncing around the camera frame like a manic wind-up monkey. His dialogue is some of the most outrageously dated in the entire film (the moment where he tries to buy drugs with a plaintive, “C’mon, mama…don’t you jive me now!” is an instant classic, as is his warning to a close-mouthed informant that he’ll “Spread the word that you’re a turkey deluxe”) and Keach manages to steal any and every scene he’s in. Although he plays Charlie as decidedly subservient to Ulysses (an odd choice, considering how take-charge Keach normally is in films), the two have an easy rapport that marks them as genuine friends and makes their scenes together a breezy joy. It also makes the film’s “twist” conclusion a real head-scratcher but it’s certainly not the only narrative lapse in the film.

Overall, Street People is an easy film to sit through but a slightly more difficult one to completely appreciate. While the story is needlessly convoluted and downright nonsensical, Moore and Keach make a constantly delightful duo and there’s no shortage of action scenes to keep things humming along, as well as some genuinely great car chases to offer a little needed eye-candy. If you’re a fan of ’70s-era Italo-crime films, Roger Moore or Stacy Keach, Street People should definitely scratch your itch.

See it now, fool, before I tell everyone that you’re a turkey deluxe.

3/18/14: The Faint Spark of Hope

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Alan Parker, Americans abroad, Angela's Ashes, auteur theory, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Adapted Screenplay winner, Best Director nominee, Best Original Score winner, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Billy Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Brad Davis, buddy films, cinema, college student, critically-acclaimed films, dark films, drama, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, electronic score, Erich, escape from prison, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Giorgio Moroder, Hamidou, homoerotic tension, homophobia, Irene Miracle, jail-break, Jimmy Booth, John Hurt, legal nightmare, Max, Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning, Movies, multiple Golden Globe winner, multiple Oscar winner, Norbert Weisser, Oliver Stone, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Palme d'Or nominee, Paolo Bonacelli, Paul Smith, prison films, Randy Quaid, Rifki, The Wall, Turkish prison, Vangelis

We’ve all done stupid things: that’s the one constant across humanity, regardless of age, race, gender, creed, nationality, income level or relative place in the historical timeline (cavemen did stupid things, too). Part of the human experience is learning and one of the best ways to learn something is to royally screw it up. Touch the open flame once and you know not to touch it again. Poke the tiger? Not twice, you won’t. We’ve all said and done things that were stupid: many of us may have even done things that were stupid and illegal (never a great combo). For the most part, any and everything is a good excuse for a learning opportunity: after all, many of the most powerful and respected people in the world have pasts that are littered with everything from petty crimes to outrageous public declarations. As long as your stupidity doesn’t actively hurt someone else and you’re given the opportunity to learn and grow from the situation, what’s the big deal? In fact, the whole point of youth is to be stupid, make mistakes and learn from them: it’s the “entry-level-fast-food-job/internship” phase of life, setting you up for the “responsible career” phase that’s to come.

But what if you make that one stupid mistake and, rather than a learning experience, it becomes a game-ender? Normal, average people make stupid choices and screw things up everyday: what if your “mistake” was so serious that it landed you in prison? What if you were a young, naive American college student, facing a life sentence in a harsh, barbaric Turkish prison? If you were Billy Hayes in the 1970s, these wouldn’t be questions: they would be facts. Alan Parker’s critically acclaimed Midnight Express takes viewers into Billy’s world and shows how the stupidest actions can have the most dire of consequences. In the process, it also shows us that most miraculous of human traits: the ability to hold on to hope, even when all hope seems lost.

Midnight Express begins with Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) making one of those aforementioned stupid decisions: he opts to smuggle (or attempt to smuggle, as it were) hashish out of Turkey. Even better, he does this in the dawning years of the 1970’s, during a time when Turkey and the Middle East were experiencing particularly high levels of terrorist attacks. As such, authorities are ever vigilant and Billy…well, he’s a bit of a dumb-ass. After sweating, stuttering and barely inching his way past airport security, he ends up on an Amtrak track that, unfortunately, passes through a security checkpoint. A cursory pat-down reveals the dope and our poor schmuck begins his journey down a very long, dark, grim pathway.

After a failed escape attempt, Billy winds up in a Turkish prison, where he promptly runs afoul of head guard Hamidou (Paul Smith), one of the vilest cinematic creations ever shat unto the big-screen. Hamidou beats Billy senseless for having the temerity to take a blanket and, when he comes to, he’s being cared for by a trio of prisoners: crazy-eyed Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid), strung-out philosopher Max (John Hurt) and gentle Erich (Norbert Weisser). They quickly show Billy the ropes and cue him in on a few important facts: Steer clear of Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli), a nasty prisoner who rats out other prisoners for money; be careful of the children who run around everywhere, since they’re as untrustworthy as the guards and Rifki; all foreigners and homosexuals are considered scum but almost all prisoners practice homosexuality when no one is looking; for the right price, the Turkish legal system can be bought and sold; and, perhaps most importantly: once you’re inside, you’re probably not getting outside.

In due time, Billy’s life becomes a waking nightmare of harsh conditions (the prison is like a squalid, rat-trap hotel where the concierges occasionally beat you so bad that you herniate), a bizarre, nonsensical legal system (Billy can’t even understand the language during his trial, much less offer any useful defense) and the constant, terrifying notion that he’s doomed to spend the rest of his days in this living hell. When his original “generous” sentence of 4 years is over-turned for a more “reasonable” 30-year sentence, Billy finally decides to jump onto Jimmy’s crazy train and attempt a prison breakout. As expected, this doesn’t go quite as planned, leading to more confrontations with Hamidou and Rifki, as well as a long-in-the-making mental breakdown for Billy. After a certain point, Billy’s life seems completely hopeless. If he can just manage to keep his head above water, however, there just might be a light at the end of the tunnel after all.

In certain ways, Midnight Express is a strictly by-the-book prison film, one of those myriad productions where a “good” person ends up in the pokey and must adapt to survive. The Turkish setting is certainly novel, although anyone who grew up on any of the faceless, Philippine-set prison films of the late-’60s and ’70s won’t find much to be surprised by here. The setting certainly does give the filmmakers ample opportunity to play up the disparity between the Westerners and the native Turks but, more often than not, it devolves simply into “complex Westerners” vs “feral, rabid, caveman Turks.” In hindsight, there really aren’t any positive portrayals of Middle Eastern characters in the film: they’re all either vicious, sneering sadists or bumbling, incompetent Keystone Kops. Since the screenplay is written by Oliver Stone (for which he won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar), I wasn’t particularly surprised by this but it was, nonetheless, fairly tiresome. By the time we get to Rifki hanging a cute kitten and Hamidou attempting to violently rape Billy, the “villains” don’t resemble humans so much as fairy-tale ogres. Since the actual Billy Hayes has complained about the negative portrayals of Turkish characters in the film, this seems to be a problem that at least a few folks have had.

Since the film tends to be a fairly standard “men-in-prison” film, it also features plenty of familiar beats: the newbie getting instructed on the lay of the land; the intricate escape plans; the scene where a friendly character is falsely blamed for something; the homoerotic tension between cellmates; the rat; the vicious head-guard. None of these are particularly unique and the only aspect that has the potential to bear interesting fruit (the homoerotic tension between Billy and Erich) is dispensed with pretty quickly. Since this is a film adaptation of a true story, I wasn’t expecting anything particularly “tricky,” as it were, but much of Midnight Express seemed rather old-hat to me Perhaps my opinion would have been different had I seen it when it was released (you know…when I was 1) but decades of prison films since have neutered its impact a bit. Don’t get me wrong: the film is still intensely grim — the scene where a screaming Randy Quaid gets dragged out to be beaten so bad that he’ll lose a testicle is not something that anyone will forget easily — but it’s also not something inherently “fresh” or shocking.

My other major complaint with the film definitely revolves around the musical score by Giorgio Moroder, which inexplicably won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. There are times when the score seems unobtrusive (not high praise, mind you) but, for the most part, it sticks out like a sore thumb. One of the silliest moments has to be Billy’s initial escape from police custody, before he reaches the prison. His escape attempt is scored by some truly ludicrous electro music, complete with laser sound effects: not only does it do nothing to create tension, the score actually made me burst out laughing, which (presumably) wasn’t the desired effect. Later on, Billy mopes about the prison grounds as a moody electronic score plays: I’m pretty sure the intent was something similar to Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner but, again, the execution just doesn’t produce anything but groans. I’m actually a big Giorgio Moroder fan and was pretty excited when I saw his name in the credits: this, however, was like getting coal for Christmas.

On the other hand, the things that work in Midnight Express work fairly well. The performances are uniformly good, with special praise due for Quaid and Hurt’s rock-solid turns as Billy’s only friends. Quaid’s performance is a good reminder that, once upon a time, he was an actor to take seriously. Paul Smith and Paolo Bonacelli are absolutely phenomenal as Hamidou and Rifki, with Bonacelli especially noteworthy. Truly detestable villains are hard to pull off and Midnight Express’ pair of baddies are almost an embarrassment of riches. The only “main” character that seems to get short shrift is Billy’s girlfriend Susan, played by Irene Miracle. Miracle does just fine with what she’s given but she’s not given much: the emotional climax of her character is definitely the moment where she bares her breasts for Billy during a jail visitation but Brad Davis ends up doing most of the heavy lifting. Likewise, Mike Kellin, playing Billy’s dad, is pretty much a non-entity, his participation in events essentially boiling down to the moment where he tells Hamidou to “take good care of (Billy), you Turkish bastard.”

Overall, Midnight Express exists as one of those “critically over-acclaimed” films that can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment, especially when one considers previous films in director Parker’s canon, films like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Mississippi Burning and Angela’s Ashes. As your standard “men in prison must escape” film, Midnight Express is good but nothing legendary. When the film is more understated, it works quite well, although it too frequently lapses into melodrama and overwrought theatrics (the scene where Billy breaks down in court is particularly over-the-top).

As I stated earlier, however, it’s a little hard to fully get behind Billy’s plight since his own stupidity got him there in the first place. It was much easier to sympathize with Jimmy (in prison for stealing two candlesticks from a church) and Max (a heroin junkie) than it was to support Billy: the others were people caught in bad situations, whereas this dumbass college student put himself there…big difference. As a study in people making bad decisions, Midnight Express has to be one of the most on-the-noise. As a prison film, it’s pretty standard fare. As a character study, however, it just doesn’t seem like it has a lot to say.