8/13/14: From the Frying Pan to the Inferno

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blue-collar life, brothers, Casey Affleck, Christian Bale, cinema, co-writers, Crazy Heart, drama, Film, film reviews, Forest Whitaker, Harlan DeGroat, illegal fighting, illegal gambling, Jr., Movies, Out of the Furnace, revenge, Rodney Baze, Russell Baze, Sam Shepard, Scott Cooper, small town life, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson, writer-director, Zoe Saldana

Within moments of meeting Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) at a drive-in theater, we watch him force a frankfurter down his date’s throat before slamming her head into the dashboard of his muscle car, after which he beats a wannabe Good Samaritan into a bloody pulp before physically throwing his battered date out of the car, menacing the rest of the gawking movie patrons and burning rubber all the way to the horizon. Without a shadow of a doubt, Harlan is one sonuvabitch, violence made flesh, like a rampaging, backwoods god of war.

On the other side of the rainbow from Harlan, we have Russell Baze (Christian Bale), a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth steel worker (just like his dear ol’ da) with a loving girlfriend, strong ties to the community and visions of starting a family in the near future. Russ is the kind of guy that everyone in town knows and likes, the kind of fella that’ll jump-start your car or lend you $20 (if he has it) without being asked. His tattoos hint at time spent in lockup but his attitude is all good intentions and honest attempts to walk the straight and narrow.

Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lies Rodney Baze, Jr. (Casey Affleck), Russ’s younger brother. Rodney is an ex-Iraq War vet, full of pain, rage and the desire to do anything in life but waste away the remainder of his days in the steel mill, like his “weak” brother and dying father. He firmly believes that he did all the work he’ll ever need to do while in the Armed Forces: from this point on, the U. S. of A. owes him a living, not the other way around. To that end, he makes his money by participating in illegal bare-knuckle fights, most of which he throws, leading him to spend most of his days beat to absolute shit. When he’s not getting beat up for chump change, Rodney is blowing what little money he has at scuzzy off-track betting places, always chasing that elusive “big break,” the kind that routinely seems to pass by people like him and Russ.

The nexus where these three desperate individuals meet forms the crux of Scott Cooper’s powerful Out of the Furnace (2013), a bracing examination of the destructive power of vengeance and the haphazard way in which terrible things sometimes happen to very good people. Despite some minor missteps and a mystifying coda that raises more questions than it answers, Cooper’s film is a slow-burning powerhouse anchored by a dependably sturdy performance from Bale, a thoroughly authentic turn from Affleck and one of the scariest on-screen villains since Max Cady menaced the ever-loving shit out of Sam Bowden.

More than anything, Out of the Furnace is a tragedy, managing to fit almost every definition of the term: the film is relentlessly sad, no doubt, but it’s really about the ultimate downfall of an otherwise good (if flawed) individual. We pretty much like Bale’s Russ from the first time we see him: he’s a hard-working, no-nonsense, blue-collar guy who helps take care of his dying father, tries his damnedest to keep his squirrely brother out of trouble and seems to have a great relationship with his girlfriend, Lena (Zoe Saldana). Although he’s no fabulously wealthy world-changer, Russ seems to have it all. Since this is a tragedy, of course, that means that he’s also going to lose it all.

Russ’ fatal flaw, as it is, ends up being the responsibility he feels for younger brother Rodney. After he finds out that Rodney owes $1500 to small-time gangster John Petty (Willem Defoe), Rodney’s partner in the illegal fighting racket, Russ sets out to make things right with Petty. Stopping by to drop off part of the money, Russ happens to run into Harlan and his associate, who’ve stopped by to menace Petty over the profits from another fight. Passing each other in the doorway, Harlan gives Russ such a stink-eye that he’s prompted to ask if Harlan “has a problem with him.” “I got a problem with everybody,” Harlan snarls back, setting the stage for future conflicts and heartache.

After sharing a few drinks with the jovial Petty, Russ takes off and collides, literally, with his destiny in the form of a broken-down car on an ill-lit country road: Russ slams into the car, which appears to contain a child and, despite doing all he can at the scene, his fate is sealed. When we next see Russ, he’s in prison, forsaken by all of his friends and family save for Rodney, who still comes to visit regularly. Lena, for her part, has moved on to someone else and Russ’ father has passed away, leaving Rodney as his only connection to the old life he once had.

Once he gets out, Russ sees how much everything has really changed. Rodney is now involved with John Petty more than ever, Harlan and his thugs hold the entire county under their brutal sway and Lena is dating Police Chief Wesley Barnes (Forest Whitaker): the couple are expecting their first child and, in a particularly raw scene, Russ congratulates Lena as the former lovers sob and hold each other. Life for Russ is harder than ever but he’s still committed to making the best of things.

A life of leisure, alas, is just not in the cards for these damaged individuals. After Rodney pressures Petty to get him involved with Harlan’s underground fights (brutal affairs that make back-alley grudge-matches look like WWE events), the pair realizes that they are very small fish in a pond stuffed to bursting with ravenous sharks. When Petty is found dead and Rodney disappears, Russ is forced to try to put together all of the pieces. When Chief Barnes seems more interested in keeping Rodney away from Lena than he does in finding Rodney, Russ decides to take matters into his own hands and conduct his own investigation. Hitting the streets with his uncle, Red (Sam Shepard), Russ traces Rodney’s movements right back to Harlan and his backwoods “mafia.” When the law is unable to help, however, Russ must turn his back on “polite” society and give in to the primal rage that drives a monster like Harlan: in order to confront ultimate evil, Russ must, in a way, become that evil. Since this is a tragedy, suffice to say that no one will emerge from this unscathed.

For my money, Out of the Furnace is one of the most “actorly” films I’ve seen in some time: while the occasional action moments hold plenty of impact and the film looks and sounds great, the performances are so rock-solid that they definitely become the focal point of the movie. As usual, Christian Bale completely loses himself in his performance, coming up with something that approaches a less tortured and/or emaciated version of his Trevor Reznik from The Machinist (2004). He ends up projecting such a likeable persona that you really feel bad when his world begins to come crashing around him: Russ is no stereotypical “white knight” but he seems like a genuinely good person. For his part, Affleck gives his most affecting performance, thus far: Rodney is a character that could have across as too self-serving and obnoxious but Affleck finds the core of the character and makes him feel less a cliché than another tragic extension of Russ’ wounded blue-collar soul. The scene where Rodney flips out and starts screaming at Russ could’ve come across as too highly strung, too melodramatic but Affleck and Bale find the inherent, blistered humanity in the moment. One of the greatest compliments I can pay the two is that there was no point in the film where I ever doubted that Russ and Rodney were brothers: the performances felt that authentic.

Towering above it all, however, is the mighty Woody Harrelson. While Harrelson has made a cottage industry out of playing sweet, slightly dumbass characters, I’ve always found him to be at his best when he’s “breaking bad,” as it were, and Harlan DeGroat might be his baddest yet, leap-frogging over the bad cops in Rampart (2011) by a country mile. To not put to fine a point on it, Harrelson is absolutely riveting in the film: from his first scene to his last, it is, literally, impossible to take your eyes off him. While Harlan is bat-shit crazy and unrelentingly scary, Harrelson brings plenty of nuance and shading, as well: the bit where he butts heads with Affleck ends up saying as much about his character as it does about eager-beaver Rodney. Every good revenge film needs a good, despicable villain and Harlan DeGroat is definitely one for the record books: if you’re a fan of Harrelson’s, Out of the Furnace should be required viewing.

While the rest of the cast is quite good (especially Defoe, who seems to be channeling John Waters by way of Steve Buscemi), it was a little disappointing to see Saldana and Whitaker wasted in what amounted to throwaway roles. Whitaker, in particular, doesn’t get to do much more than show up, act mildly concerned and step off-camera: there’s no characterization, making his climatic scene even more ineffective than it might have normally been. The character of Chief Barnes could have been written out of the story and everything would have continued to hum along just fine. Other than the powerful aforementioned scene with Bale, Saldana is similarly wasted, her character seeming to exist only to inject a much-needed female angle into the proceedings: aside from seeming to take place entirely at night, Out of the Furnace also posits a world that seems to consist solely of grouchy men and a few women on the periphery.

Cooper, the writer/director of the Oscar-winning Jeff Bridges vehicle Crazy Heart (2009), brings a similarly sturdy sense of narrative to this film. Kooky coda notwithstanding (and the coda really is a bizarre one, particularly since it appears to unnecessarily throw into question the film’s timeline), Out of the Furnace is a pretty linear and relentless film, if decidedly slow going, at times. While I would have liked a little more grit in the proceedings (the opening scene with Harlan at the drive-in is shot in a washed-out ’70s-style that turns into a more contemporary look for the film “proper”), there’s precious little than I can complain about here. While the film may, ultimately, bear more weight as a particularly grim drama than a revenge film, there’s plenty of both elements to go around. Fans of any of the aforementioned actors (with the possible exception of poor Saldana and Whitaker) would be well-served checking out the film. Anyone who enjoys bravura, all-in portrayals of mad-dog-scary people, however, needs to put this one closer to the top of their list: when Harrelson is good, he’s great. When he’s scary, however, he’s the stuff of nightmares.

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7/23/14: Red Light Morality

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Adrien Brody, based on a book, Black Box, Cam Gigandet, Clifton Collins Jr., Das Experiment, David Banner, degradation, dehumanization, Ethan Cohn, Fisher Stevens, Forest Whitaker, humiliation, Jason Lew, morality, Paul T. Scheuring, power struggles, prison break, prison films, psychological torture, rape, social experiments, Stanford Prison Experiment, The Experiment, Travis Fimmel, writer-director

While most people, if asked, would probably describe themselves as having some sort of moral compass, it really all comes down to a matter of degrees. It’s often easy for people to follow moral codes when either the state or religion sets up the guidelines but remove those constructs and things get a bit iffier. The real problem, of course, tends to be those who are more “circumstantial moralists”: people who would abstain from theft while the clerk is watching but think nothing of nicking a pack of gum when his back is turned. As evidenced by the sheer volume of folks who think nothing of grabbing as much as they can for themselves, with no regards to others or a “greater good,” I’m inclined to say that we, as a society, have largely become circumstantial moralists: we have no problem doing the “right thing” when it’s mandated or when people are watching but tend to revert back to purely selfish needs when the camera isn’t pointed directly at us.

Writer/director Paul T. Scheuring’s The Experiment (2010) is yet another in a pretty long line of films that take the concept of a specific social experiment and uses it as a way to shine a light into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. In this case, the film re-examines the phenomenon of the Stanford Prison Experiment, although it’s also explicitly listed as both an adaptation of Mario Giordano’s novel Black Box and a remake of the German film, Das Experiment (2001), itself an adaptation of Black Box. Despite its slightly thorny genesis, The Experiment ends up being a fairly standard psychological drama, albeit one with more than its fair share of degrading situations and unpleasant scenarios. At the end of the day, however, the film ends up being just another example of the evil that men do when given free rein and how a complacent society is just as guilty as the monsters it allows to roam the land.

For those not aware, the Stanford Prison Experiment was a real social experiment that lasted for all of six days in 1971. In the experiment, a group of 24 men was divided into “prisoners” and “guards,” using the basement of an old Stanford University building as a mock “prison.” The purpose of the experiment was to test how subjects would break down into power relationships, based on their “roles,” but the whole thing ended up being a pretty spectacular disaster. The “guards” turned into brutal authority figures, using violence and psychological torture to break down the “prisoners,” all of which was allowed by the scientists running the test. Needless to say, very few academics will go on record as supporting psychological torture and the tests were shut down post-haste, leaving the whole failed experiment as a sort of sociological shorthand for unexpectedly brutal, authoritarian experiments on conflict study/resolution. Suffice to say that, over forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment still stands as a notable black eye for the world of psychology.

For the most part, The Experiment doesn’t veer far from this basic premise: a group of 26 men, all from different backgrounds and walks of life, are brought to an abandoned prison facility, separated into “guards” and “prisoners” and told to follow a set of five rules. When the rules are violated, punishment must be swift and unflinching: if rule-breakers are not suitably handled within 30 minutes of their violations, a red light will go on, signalling an end to the experiment. Since each of the men are set to earn $1000/day for their participation, it’s in everyone’s best interests to make sure that the light never goes on. This, of course, leads to the film’s central conflict/point: if anything goes, as long as the red light doesn’t come on, how can there possibly be any moral standard or guidelines? The short answer, of course, is that there can’t be: once the experiment revolves around punishing “wrongdoers,” a Pandora’s box is opened, unleashing all manner of horrors upon the “guards” and their unwilling charges.

We meet several of the test participants but two principals emerge pretty early on. The first is Travis (Adrien Brody), who serves as our “every-man” protagonist, a kind-hearted, smart, altruistic guy who’s just lost his job, met a new girl and wants to use his earnings to follow her to India for some good, old-fashioned spiritual awakening. Travis is the kind of guy who attends peace rallies but has no problem putting the hammer down on obnoxious, violent pro-war party-crashers. He’s a good guy, with a capital “G,” and he’ll come to represent the prisoner faction. The other principal player is Michael (Forrest Whitaker), a soft-spoken, shy, slightly nerdy 40-year-old who still lives at home with his brow-beating, ultra-religious mother. Despite his friendly, laid-back attitude, we get the distinct impression that Michael may not be playing with a full deck. Faster than you can say “Overlook Hotel,” Michael has been made a “guard” and has begun what can best be described as a “Nicholsonian” slide into complete bat-shit crazy territory.

Everyone else seems to fall in line somewhere between these two polar opposites: on the prisoner side, you have Nix (Clifton Collins, Jr.), whose tattoos seem suspiciously reminiscent of real Aryan Nation prison tats; Benjy (Ethan Cohn), a gawky, comic-book obsessed diabetic; and Oscar (Jason Lew), the only openly gay member of the group. On the guard side, we have Chase (Cam Gigandet), a ridiculously macho, sadistic “bro-dog”; Helweg (Travis Fimmel), a guyliner-wearing sycophant who follows whoever happens to be the current alpha male and Bosch (David Banner), a kind-hearted individual who becomes increasingly uneasy as “upholding the rules” quickly devolves into “inhuman torture.”

And devolve it does…rather quickly, too, if I might add. After an impromptu basketball game ends with Bosch’s bloody nose, Chase decides that a little punishment is in order and forces the prisoners to do push-ups. Helweg sees Chase as some sort of conquering hero but Michael isn’t so sure…until, that is, he comes to believe that the prisoners all need to be knocked down a peg or two. Targeting Travis, who is seen as the defacto leader, Michael initiates psychological warfare against the other man: he’s chained to his cell wall overnight, wearing only his underwear; blasted with a fire extinguisher; has his head forcibly shaved and, in one of the film’s most horrifying/nauseating moments, is repeatedly urinated on. Despite what they throw at him, however, Travis refuses to break or resort to violence: the rest of the prisoners continue to look up to him and the guards’ hold remains tenuous, at best. Michael is not a man to be trifled with, however, and power can be a heady drug. The harder that Travis resists, the harder that Michael strikes back, culminating in a shocking act of violence that ends up pitting the prisoners against the guards in final, bloody conflict.

Although The Experiment is neither a particularly original nor an especially thought-provoking film, there are a few elements that unnecessarily hobble the production. Chief among the issues, unfortunately, is Whitaker’s completely over-the-top performance. Normally an incredibly reliable presence, Whitaker seems to be channeling the worst excesses of Nicholas Cage here and his transition from “slightly subdued” to “full-bore loony” is so quick as to be virtually non-existent. When Whitaker really takes off, such as the absolutely awful bit where he screams, “Time to clean the TOY-A-LETT!,” at Brody’s character, the film pretty much grinds to a halt around him and becomes something closer to parody than drama. There is one fairly brilliant moment that gives visual representation to the notion that power gives men a boner but, aside from that bit, it’s almost impossible to take him seriously which makes suspension of disbelief a bit of a problem.

Brody, for his part, turns in one of those standard-issue performances that are just tuned-in enough but no substitute for his better genre performances in films like Splice (2009) or Predators (2010). This is more along the lines of his work in Wrecked (2010) or Giallo (2009): good enough but too prone to histrionics to be truly affecting.

The rest of the cast ends up being a mixed bag, although Cam Gigandet is a thoroughly repulsive presence as the rape-happy Chase, a character so loathsome that he seems to have been wholly subbed in from something like the modern remake of I Spit on Your Grave (2010). Travis Fimmel, by contrast, is a complete non-entity as Helweg, a character who ends up being even less three-dimensional than the rest of the paper-thin characters. In one of the film’s strangest moves, veteran weirdo and all-around awesome character actor Fisher Stevens gets what amounts to a cameo: they couldn’t have made him one of the test subjects?

There are plenty of tonal issues and more than a few plot holes (the resolution, in particular, makes less and less sense the more you think about it) but the uneven, generally OTT performances are definitely the crippling blow here. The film isn’t short on ideas, even if none of them are particularly interesting, but it’s impossible to take anything seriously when Whitaker is stomping around, bellowing, rolling his eyes and cracking prisoner skulls like he was a fairytale ogre. Writer/director Scheuring is probably best known as the creator of the TV series Prison Break, which would seem to make him a natural fit for something like this. There is plenty of “prison drama”-type brutality on display here (that urination scene will stick with you for a long, long time…trust me) but little of really seems to hit with any impact.

Minus issues like the overacting and over-reliance on cheesy slo-mo effects, The Experiment would be a well-made, if rather unexceptional prison-drama/thriller. As it stands, however, the film is, by turns, genuinely cringe worthy and unintentionally humorous. There are scattered moments of real power and impact but, for the most part, this has all been done before, to greater effect. Unless you’re an Adrien Brody or Forest Whitaker completest (or a prison-flick aficionado), skipping The Experiment is probably a safe bet: if the red light doesn’t go on after thirty minutes, you’ll know that you made the right choice.

2/14/14: A Little Quiet Dignity

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African-American history, Alan Rickman, all-star cast, Andrew Dunn, butlers, Cecil Gaines, cinema, Cuba Gooding Jr., David Oyelowo, Eugene Allen, Film, film reviews, Forest Whitaker, historical drama, James Marsden, Jane Fonda, John Cusack, Lee Daniels, Lenny Kravitz, Liev Schrieber, Movies, Oprah Winfrey, passive resistance, Precious, racial equality, Robin Williams, Terrence Howard, the Black Panthers, The Butler, the Civil Rights Movement, the White House, U.S. presidents

Sometimes, a film can do everything right, yet not quite move me in the way that (I’m assuming) it meant to. I’m not necessarily thinking about tragic romances or tear-jerkers when I say this, since those types of film tend to be manipulative by their very nature (a manipulation which I’ve managed to avoid for most of my life with the exception of animal stories, which tend to reduce me to a blubbering man-baby in no-time flat). Rather, I’m thinking about certain particularly earnest dramas, dramatic films which tend to have important ideas and themes yet are diluted to the point of banality due to their pressing need to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

These are not bad films, necessarily, but they are safe films and tend to have as much real resonance and staying power as similarly sincere “made-for-TV” films: the “After-School Special” syndrome, as it were. Although Lee Daniels’ historical drama The Butler is extremely well-made and filled with some very solid performances, the film has an unfortunate tendency to carve out a middle-of-the-road path that makes it feel technically adept, yet unfortunately disposable. In a year where Steve McQueen released the painful open-wound that was 12 Years a Slave, Daniels’ The Butler doesn’t seem quite as weighty.

Loosely-based on the life of Eugene Allen, who served as White House butler over the course of 34 years and eight different presidential administrations, The Butler features Forrest Whitaker as the fictionalized Cecil Gaines. Together with his wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and sons Louis (David Oyelowo) and Charlie (Elijah Kelley), Cecil watches the U.S. go through many social changes and struggles, from the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War, from the rise of the Black Panthers to the assassination of JFK. Through it all, Cecil tries to hold on to the same quiet sense of dignity that he’s maintained since he first watched his father get murdered on a sharecropper’s farm, even as his eldest son, Louis, becomes more and more involved in “radical” politics. Father and son eventually wind up at odds with each other, as one continues to throw himself into a life of service, while the other comes to realize the importance of fighting for your own human rights.

One of the biggest problems with The Butler, as strange as it may seem, is that the film is really too short to fully develop all of its ideas and themes. Even though Daniels’ film clocks in at a little over two hours, it has an awful lot of history and time to wade through: 34+ years, to be exact. As such, much of the film takes on the feel of a “Cliff-Notes” version of the events. I’m not asking that we spend an inordinate amount of time on any particular era: I fully understand that this was not meant to be an exhaustive history of the United States, only a fictionalized account of one man’s life. Nonetheless, the film has a tendency to speed through decades (and eras) that can give short-shrift to not only characters and story elements but to actual themes, as well.

This problem becomes exacerbated by the numerous sub-plots that begin to crop up everywhere: Gloria’s affair with Howard (Terrence Howard); Charlie’s military service; Louis’ increasing radicalization. In and of themselves, any of these subplots would be enough to give added meat to the core story of Cecil and the White House. Taken altogether, however, the effect becomes not only rather overwhelming but of decidedly questionable intent: what, exactly, is the point of Gloria’s affair with Howard? Other than an offhand mention once or twice, the situation seems to have no bearing on the story whatsoever. It felt like a rather misguided attempt to add depth to Winfrey’s character, as well as providing more of a role for Howard. In reality, however, it just ends up bloating the story unnecessarily and led me to focus more energy/attention on Howard’s character than was needed. It almost seemed as if the subplot existed simply to pad out Terrence Howard’s role.

I only mention this notion of “padding” since there are an awful lot of characters moving in, out and around the perimeter of the story and many of them seem to exist only to offer a little screen-time to some very familiar faces. We get the various presidents that Gaines works for, of course, played by a virtual cornucopia of actors:  Robin Williams as Eisenhower; James Marsden as Kennedy; Liev Schreiber as LBJ; John Cusack as Richard Nixon and Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan. Of these, only Schreiber, Cusack and Rickman get much time, with Williams putting in more of a glorified cameo and Marsden not making much impression as Kennedy at all. Schreiber is quite magnificent as Johnson, bringing a real sense of grit and a bit of a lunatic edge to the 36th President: the bit where he barks orders while seated on the toilet is both inspired and a little scary. Cusack is admirably sleazy as Nixon and inhabits the role quite nicely: I’ve really come to appreciate his acting over the last several years, even if his taste in roles (The Butler notwithstanding) has been a bit questionable of late. Rickman’s portrayal of Reagan is a bit odd, to be honest: at first, I thought this was Ciaran Hinds reprising his role from Political Animals. It was only during the credits that I realized I’d been watching Alan Rickman all along. Recognizable or not, Rickman’s performance also reminded me the least of the various represented presidents, with Marsden’s generic JFK coming in a close second.

Along with these famous presidential portrayers, we also get Mariah Carey as Cecil’s young mother; Terrence Howard as Cecil’s friend/Gloria’s lover; Vanessa Redgrave as the aged matriarch of a plantation; Clarence Williams III (aka Linc from the Mod Squad) as Cecil’s mentor; Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Carter, a White House butler who becomes like a brother to Cecil; Lenny Kravitz as another White House Butler; Minka Kelly as Jackie Kennedy and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan. Many of these performances, such as Carey and Redgrave, amount to little more than brief cameos, sometimes giving the proceedings the feel of one of those epic, star-studded Herman Wouk mini-series’ from a bygone era of television.

Despite the occasional celebrity overkill, there are plenty of good performances filling The Butler. Whitaker is a consistently gentle and dignified presence, the very definition of perseverance. Oprah isn’t amazing in her role as Gloria but she gets steadily better as the film progresses and she has some genuinely powerful moments in the film’s back half. Cuba Gooding Jr. is charmingly rakish as Carter, managing to make the character both filthy and boyishly innocent: it’s the kind of role that makes me wish Cuba did these kind of roles more often. Kelly and Fonda give two very different types of performances but both actresses manage to nail their respective First Ladies to a tee. The very idea of Jane Fonda playing the uber-conservative Reagan is good for a laugh but Fonda really sinks her teeth into the role, portraying Nancy as quick, smart and strangely fashionable, in her own way. Kelly, by contrast, gets a stunning scene where she sits wailing in the Oval Office, covered in her dead husband’s blood. It would be a powerful scene in any film but becomes particularly resonant when paralleled with the Gaines’ own loss later on.

From a film-making perspective, The Butler has a nice, gritty look, partly thanks to cinematographer Andrew Dunn (who also shot Daniels’ Precious). This results in some nice period pieces, a look which is deflated a bit by the film’s over-reliance on its obvious and, to be honest, schmaltzy score. The script is good, too, although it featured far too many disparate threads and subplots for my liking. I was also a bit curious as to why Daniels’ chose to gloss over Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter almost completely: whereas Presidents 34-37 and 40 get their own scenes and representations, Presidents 38-39 are only seen via stock footage. I’m pretty sure that this is due to the film’s tendency to try and cram too much info into too small a space but I’m only guessing. Regardless of the reason, I thought it a little odd and certainly part of “Cliff-Notes” issue I had with the film, as a whole.

In truth, I liked The Butler enough to want more but found myself consistently frustrated by the film’s tendency to skim the surface of so many issues. I was also nagged by the feeling that the film seemed to lose its interest in Cecil halfway through, choosing to switch the focus to Louis. In some ways, I think this has to do with the vast difference in their philosophies: Louis’ immersion in the Civil Rights Movement makes for a much more kinetic film experience than Cecil’s stoic acceptance of his circumstances. This still has the effect of making Cecil the second-banana in his own story, however, which seems like just one more slight to heap on the guy.

Ultimately, The Butler stands as a good film that strives to be much more: it strives to be an enduring classic. While there’s much to laud here, the film just doesn’t do much new with its subject matter, even if it does do it well. In a year that was filmed with absolute masterpieces, The Butler stands proudly but doesn’t stand out quite as much as it might have hoped. Ironically enough, this seems to be strangely fitting for a film about a man who proudly (and quietly) went about his job for 34 years.