12/28/14 (Part Two): Great Ed Helms’ Ghost!

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action-comedies, After Hours, Ben Bray, Brooklyn Decker, Chris Pine, cinema, comedies, David Hasselhoff, eccentric billionaire, Ed Helms, film reviews, films, James Badge Dale, Jessica Alba, Joe Carnahan, limo driver, Matthew Willig, Movies, Narc, Patrick Wilson, Randy Couture, Ray Liotta, Shaun Toub, Smokin' Aces, Stretch, True Romance, voice-over narration, writer-director

You’ve gotta hand it to writer-director Joe Carnahan: from the Guy Ritchie-baiting hyperactivity of Smokin’ Aces (2006) to the brooding, troubled tough-guy-copisms of Narc (2002)…from the standard-issue “blow shit up” aesthetic of his A-Team (2010) remake to the “tough guys stranded in the harsh wilderness with ravenous wolves” romp that was The Grey (2011)…Carnahan has found a way to represent pretty much every flavor of macho cinematic action trope possible. As if ticking another possibility off a long list, the writer-director’s follow-up to his previous hit, the Liam Neeson-starring The Grey, takes a stab at another enduring staple of tough-guy cinema: the tough guy car film. In this case, Stretch (2014) is a return to Carnahan’s more tongue-in-cheek material, ala Smokin’ Aces, as he eschews the self-flagellation of The Grey in favor of some good, old-fashioned, high-energy action hi-jinks.

Kevin (Patrick Wilson), aka Stretch, is a sad sack actor wannabe who moves to L.A. in search of fame and fortune but ends up driving a limo instead. His boss, Nasseem (Shaun Toub), is a tyrant; Stretch is constantly losing clients to his company’s mysterious rival, the nearly mystical, long maned figure known as The Jovi (Randy Couture); and his “mentor” was the supernaturally efficient Karl (Ed Helms), who blew his brains out, went to Hell and returned with a bitchin’ mustache. Karl now appears to Stretch as a sort of ghost/hallucination/ego manifestation and basically gets to act out the “bad boy” impulses that he resisted while alive. To makes matters even better, Stretch owes six grand to loan shark Iggy (Ben Bray) and the reluctant leg-breaker needs to collect post-haste. In short: poor Stretch is kinda fucked.

Into this sky of dark clouds pops a tiny sliver of sunlight when Stretch’s doting dispatcher, Charlie (Jessica Alba) hips him to a “white whale”: eccentric billionaire Roger Karos (an uncredited Chris Pine) is in need of a ride for the evening and he’s been known to tip thousands of dollars at a time. After finally meeting up, Karos offers Stretch the deal of a lifetime: if he’ll be his faithful servant for the evening, Karos will make Stretch’s money problems instantly disappear. In no position to refuse, Stretch sets out on the adventure of a lifetime as he sets out on an evening that will include a mysterious sex club, drug deals, crazy valets, FBI stings, double-crosses, true love, high-speed chases, angry limo drivers, conniving rap stars and enough danger to choke a horse. For most people, it would be the ultimate nightmare. For Stretch, it’s just another night in the City of Angels.

For the most part, Stretch is an entertaining, if distinctly low-brow and, occasionally,excessively dumb, film. Forgoing the po-faced solemnity of The Grey, Carnahan is much more interested in a high-speed romp this time around and it’s definitely a refreshing change of pace. The film is actually full of some pretty good setpieces, including several high-octane scenes involving the speeding limo that are ridiculously thrilling. Carnahan also gets excellent work from Wilson, who’s quickly developing a name for these kinds of B-level genre flicks. While his tough guy posturing can get a little eye-rolling, at times, Wilson is consistently fun and is a big reason for any success the film has. If there was ever a doubt that Wilson is leading man material, let Stretch show that he’s charismatic enough to effortlessly top the marquee, especially in this kind of breezy material.

While Wilson gets able support from a decent supporting cast that includes Jessica Alba in a low-key, rather sweet role, there are two areas where the whole enterprise kind of deflates: Ed Helms and Chris Pine. In the case of Helms, there just isn’t a lot for him to do: essentially reduced to a ghost within the film’s first five minutes, he’s pretty much trotted out for over-the-top comic relief (the mustache is silly but his new ‘tude is even sillier) and any sense of character development evaporates. Pine, for his part, just isn’t up to the kind of subtle, twisted menace that’s so integral to the character of Roger Karos: in his hands, the billionaire comes off as more of a quirky doofus who experiences an eleventh-hour transition into Bond villain territory that feels utterly inauthentic. It’s not so much that Pine is bad: he’s not amazing but it’s not embarrassing, either. It’s more that the character of Karos demands an unforgettable representation and Pine just ain’t it.

All in all, Stretch is a fun, if decidedly non-essential, action-comedy, sort of a poor-man’s True Romance (1993), although I’m wondering if Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) might not be a more apt comparison. Thanks to some great action setpieces and a solid lead performance from Patrick Wilson, however, there’s enough good stuff here to make this an easy recommendation for anyone in need of a quick adrenaline fix. Plus, you get the inherent joy of watching David Hasselhoff play a foul-mouthed, evil-tempered version of himself and that’s gotta be worth something, right?

6/6/14 (Part Two): Alpha Males

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action-adventure, adventures, Alaska, Alaskan wilderness, alpha males, based on a short story, Bronson, cinema, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, faith, fighting animals, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank Grillo, Greg Nicotero, guy movies, isolation, Jack London, Joe Anderson, Joe Carnahan, killer wolves, Lee Marvin, Liam Neeson, man vs. nature, Movies, Narc, Nonso Anozie, oil riggers, Ottway, plane crash, Smokin' Aces, snow, stranded, survival, survival-horror, The A-Team, The Descent, The Grey, voice-over narration, wolves, writer-director

Mankind likes to think that it’s the master of any domain it comes across but the reality isn’t quite as optimistic. Sure, we can go into frigid Arctic areas, travel deep below the sea and even walk on the Moon: if we put our minds to it, nothing seems impossible. Throw humans into any of these situations wearing just the frail skins we were born with, however, and see how far we get. We may be able to use technology and innovation to take us further than anyone has gone before but, at our core, we are shockingly fragile, insignificant little things. Without the various safety nets we establish for ourselves, like clothing, shelter and weaponry, humanity is very much at the mercy of the natural world. Hunters are all-powerful when they’re armed but look an awful lot like food when they aren’t. A shady banker with a computer can bring down the world: a shady banker, in the forest, with no protection, will get eaten by a bear…that’s just the way the world works.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (2011) (an adaptation of Ian Mackenzie Jeffer’s short story, “Ghost Walker”), is yet another examination of “man vs. nature,” one of those time-honored tales where disparate and diverse personalities must come together in order to survive a greater threat. In the process, the characters will do lots of surviving, lots of dying and lots of personal discovery. While this type of story is certainly nothing new (hell, Jack London may have invented this subgenre all the way back in the 1900s), The Grey ends up being an extraordinarily powerful film, anchored by a quietly explosive performance from Liam Neeson and a strong, viscerally violent atmosphere. While popular jokes at the time may have cast The Grey as nothing more than “Liam Neeson punching wolves,” the film is a helluva lot more than that. In fact, it may just be the best survival-horror film since Marshall’s classic The Descent (2006).

We’re immediately dropped into the desolate, snow and wind-blasted wilderness of Alaska, where we meet Ottway (Liam Neeson), our guide through this particular wasteland. Ottway is a master outdoors-man and responsible for protecting the rugged members of an oil-rigging crew from the hungry wolves that endlessly patrol the icy wastes. Ottway is also a hopelessly damaged individual, suffering from some sort of unnamed loss (we get lots and lots of flashbacks) that drives him perilously close to eating a bullet. He doesn’t, however, and boards a plane with the rest of the crew, including Diaz (Frank Grillo), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Burke (Nonso Anozie). When the weather gets worse, the plane freezes over and ends up crashing in a spectacular, absolutely thrilling sequence (talk about edge of your seat…literally): the lucky ones are killed in the crash. The unlucky ones, led by Ottway, must now survive in the harsh elements with only the clothes on their backs and a few canisters of pilfered airplane fuel to start fires. They need to get back to civilization but there are plenty of eyes watching from the woods…hungry eyes.

As Ottway does his damnedest to keep the survivors alive, he finds himself butting heads with the worst aspects of humanity, including greed, fear and the selfish desire to survive at the cost of everyone else. In particular, Ottway finds himself at odds with Diaz: while the vicious wolves circle in the darkness, Diaz and Ottway circle each other in the light, sniffing for weakness and constantly struggling for domination. Even as Ottway discusses the need to find and slay the alpha male wolf, the struggle for alpha dominance within the survivors threatens to tear them all asunder. Will Ottway be able to overcome his own emotional issues in order to fulfill his duties as group protector? Will the men learn to work together, against all odds, or will they continue to be picked off, one by one, until only their bones remain to remind of their existence? In order to survive, the men will not only need to overcome the wolves: they will need to become the wolves.

The Grey is, first and foremost, a glorious return to the kind of big-screen adventure-survival epics that used to be de rigueur at the box office back in the ’70s. In many ways, the film isn’t such a huge departure from films like Deliverance (1972), Jaws (1975) or Sorcerer (1977) but a much closer parallel would be the aforementioned one with The Descent. In many ways, The Grey is definitely a survival-horror film: the wolves are introduced in a way that establishes them as monsters (the glowing eyes and frightening baying) and the alpha male wolf is established in a way that sets him up as the “chief bad guy” (the scene where Diaz tosses the decapitated wolves’ head into the darkness, only to be met by the angry response call from the alpha male, isn’t much different from any scene where an evil leader reacts in anger to the death of a subordinate at the hands of the heroes). In this way, the wolves are very similar to something like Peter Jackson’s orcs or Marshall’s cave dwellers and serve a similar function in the film.

An action-adventure film lives or dies by its action sequences and, in this regard, The Grey is a complete stunner. From the initial plane crash to the heart-in-mouth scene where the survivors rappel down a craggy mountain-side to the final confrontation with the alpha wolf, The Grey is one incredibly intense scene after another. Carnahan masterfully coils and uncoils the tension, building up quiet, personal dialogue scenes into explosive action beats, prompting me to (literally) jump out of my seat on at least a half-dozen occasions. One of the scenes, which begins as a confrontation between Diaz and Ottway but ends as a confrontation between Diaz and a wolf, is so perfectly executed that it’s almost a textbook example of how to set-up and execute such a moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of Carnahan’s other films (I positively abhor the empty-headed Smokin’ Aces (2006)) but he displays an absolutely deft touch on The Grey that has me eagerly anticipating his next project.

The film almost always looks and sounds great (the sound design is particularly strong) but I wasn’t fond of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi’s (who also shot the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) frequent over-reliance on blown-out visuals. His landscape cinematography was so beautiful that it was frustrating to have such an obvious visual aesthetic for the more intimate scenes: I get that it’s a cold, white, desolate place…no need to rub my nose in it. Additionally, in the minor quibble department, I felt that Ottway’s frequent flashbacks/dream sequences wore out their welcome pretty early into the film and frequently killed the forward momentum. The sequences did a little to help establish Ottway’s character, although this type of character development seems particularly heavy-handed and unnecessary.

Ultimately, however, no discussion of The Grey can be complete without singling out Liam Neeson for some special recognition. Although the rest of the cast is solid (Dermot Mulroney is particularly good as Talget), this is definitely Neeson’s film. Over the last few years, Neeson has been gradually morphing into an action star, not too far removed from what Bronson and Eastwood were doing in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone like Bronson, Eastwood or Lee Marvin playing the part of Ottway: it’s a quiet, brooding role that requires not only plenty of ass-kicking but also some degree of wounded vulnerability. Ottway may be a man of action but he’s still just a man: Neeson shows us the confusion, fear and conflict beneath his stoic visage, without doing anything to denigrate his inherent heroism. Ottway is not some unrealistically pure “white knight”: he’s just as fucked up as everyone else, yet manages to work through his issues to do what needs to be done. It’s a truly multi-faceted performance made all the more impressive by how little (relatively speaking) Neeson says. Those flinty eyes tell a helluva story, however, and Carnahan/Takayanagi take full advantage of this with plenty of intense closeups, ala Eastwood and his similarly flinty orbs.

While The Grey could, perhaps, be considered the ultimate “guy movie,” (the only women in the film appear in flashback/dream sequences, which is probably rather telling) I think that there’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface than mindless chest-beating and machismo. This is definitely an action film, through and through, and packed with enough hardcore, visceral violence to please even the most discerning gorehound (the film doesn’t skimp on the “wolves eating people” visuals and there’s one bit involving half of a guy that’s pretty difficult to watch). Along with action and violence, however, there are some surprisingly deep conversations about the nature of faith and there’s one particularly moving scene where Ottway helps a dying man pass on peacefully. They’re rare moments of beauty and serenity in an otherwise unforgiving, harsh landscape but they make the film an overall richer experience.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with The Grey: perhaps future viewings will help push it into the neo-classic status of films like The Descent but, for the time being, it simply stands as an extraordinary, ridiculously exciting adventure film. That being said, the film also features one of the most perfect final scenes I’ve ever seen (ruined only so slightly by an unnecessary post-credits tag), a scene that manages to be simultaneously regal, sad and ruthlessly badass. It’s a scene that stops right before it begins, leaving the viewer’s brain to fill in the gap. It’s a wonderful, powerful, amazingly cinematic moment: it’s what movies are all about (in my non-humble opinion) and any modern film should be proud to feature anything close to it. If the finale doesn’t find you on your feet, fist thrust heroically into the air…well, let’s just say that there may not be any hope for you, after all. The Grey is vicious, vital, bloody filmmaking at its very best: you’d be wise to give it a look sometime.