BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD

Director: Sydney Lumet (Serpico, 12 Angry Men, Network)
Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney

For many years (from his directing debut 1957's 12 Angry Men to 1982's The Verdict) Lumet was a major name in Hollywood, with 5 Best Director nominations and scores of pictures to his name. Today's audiences will probably know him best from his 1970s films Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network, but as far as I'm concerned his first film 12 Angry Men was his best. Regardless, for us film fans he had more or less disappeared from the landscape for that past 20 to 25 years. Given that he's now 83, I think this is understandable.

After this layoff Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a surprising return to form for him. It's a good film, although I will note that I feel similarly about this film as I do Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. They're all very good movies, worth seeing and with much to recommend them, but personally I think all of them fall just short of 'great' movies. I think Pacino was largely to thank for turning those 1970s films into 'classics' that we still see on TV. Hoffman and Finney are particularly good in Devil, but even though this is a very good film, I don't think it's quite going to make it into HBO's rotation 30 years from now.

Regardless, the story is a classic Shakespearean tragedy watching a family disintegrate. It follows 2 brothers, Hoffman as the older, a slimy middle manager, and Hawke as the 30-something immature baby of the family. They are confused, unhappy people, selfish people. They want to be good, but they can't quite make it there. Hoffman's in a troubled marriage to a beautiful gold-digger (Tomei), and has a secret drug habit siphoning away funds. Hawke is divorced and unable to keep up with his child support payments (perhaps drinking the cash away). They need money. They decide to commit a crime to get it. Their plan? The plan is to rob their own parent's suburban jewelry store. Not surprisingly the plan dramatically misfires. After the events begin to spiral completely out of control, the second half of the movie focuses on the relationship between the father (Finney) and the sons. We get hints to past unhappiness leading to the current unhappiness, but nothing solid and substantial. I hope I'm not letting the cat of the bag, but as I said this film is a tragedy - in the classic theatrical sense of the word. Eventually, the family's relationships and the characters themselves end in tragedy.

Every review on this film undoubtedly notes one particular thing (and I will do the same), the movie starts with a fairly graphic sex scene between Hoffman and Tomei. In fact Tomei seems to spend over half her screen time naked. I'm shameless enough to note that this a net positive for my review. It is actually noteworthy beyond her good looks however, as the first scene is a bit jarring. It sets up the jarring events that follow very, very well.

For me there was a very personal link to this film, however. One that I kept thinking about throughout. Long ago I wrote a short story roughly based on a friend of my much older brother. This man was in his mid 30s at the time, grossly overweight, with thinning hair, seemingly sweaty and out of breath just by getting up out of a chair. This man grew up with my brothers, so I'd known him my whole life. By the time I'd entered college he was an insurance salesman with a (fairly) pretty wife and a big Victorian house in the center of my small home town. He was an annoyingly outspoken strength-and-values Republican, in the Rush Limbaugh mold. In fact, he reminded me in many, many ways of Limbaugh. What this man also was was a criminal. He was embezzling money from his clients to pay for his overdrawn life with his wife, as well as for creepily frequent trips to strip clubs and bars. In the midst of the drawn out criminal proceedings he had a heart attack and died, at 35 or so.

What I most clearly remember about this man was one time I (somehow) ended up eating dinner with him alone while the criminal proceedings were just coming to light. I knew about his crimes, but I don't think he knew I did. Or if he did, he didn't show it. That 60 minutes was one of the more enlightening of my life. I learned a lot in that brief time about human desires, hypocrisy, and how we make our choices. I learned about weak people and strong people, and how unbelievably easy it is to lie. I sat down and wrote a story the moment I got back. I think I won 2nd place in a university contest for it.

I bring this up because Hoffman in this movie simply *was* this friend of my brother's. I've never found a celluloid character to so closely resemble a real person - not including biopics I suppose. From the pale red skin, and somewhat bulging features, to the hypocrisy and way of thinking, the parallels were utterly uncanny. I can say it definitively: There's a lot of truth in this film.

Standouts: Lumet and his actors and his Greek tragedy about an American family.
Blowouts: I didn't like Hawke much in this film. I see what he was going for in his character, but didn't like the results.

Grade: A-

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Director: The Coen Brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple, many more)

Starring: Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones

Put simply, I think this is the Coen brothers best film (and that's high praise). Fargo was a wonderful creation, but this film is richer in many ways. It's also deeper, much better written and much more meaningful. It's no coincidence that this is the Coen's first film using a script adapted from other material, and excellent material at that - National Book Award winner Cormac McCarthy's novel (albeit not the novel he won the award for ...).

The Coen's have shown themselves many times over to be extremely talented at the art (and craft) of filmmaking. They know pacing, and editing, story, and tension, They definitely know atmosphere. The problem (if you can even claim there was a problem) was that their films were generally silly little romps (not that there's anything wrong with that). These two were talented enough to tackle harder subjects, but seemed to just plain enjoy weirdness and wackiness too much to even want to tackle harder subjects. Fargo was the closest the pair came to melding their unique, kooky style to real human issues, and real human emotions, until now. This film is occasionally absurd. It's occasionally funny. It's occasionally weird. It's always terrifying, and mesmerizing, and excellent. This will undoubtedly be one of the best films of 2007.

In addition to all of the praise I've given the Coen's, there's much left over for the actors. Jones, Brolin and Bardem were all successful enough in their roles to warrant Oscar nominations. Jones (as a rural Texas sheriff) begins the film with a voiceover, telling us about a criminal he once caught. His lawyers may have claimed he killed in the heat of the moment, but the criminal confided to Jones that he always knew was going to kill. It was all a matter of when that was going to be. Jones conceds that to fight that kind of evil puts your own soul in jeopardy, and that's not a pleasant proposition for any man.

Yes, the story revolves around (and around and around) the notion that evil exists in us, and that we're not going to kill it. And that's a depressing thought, and a hard one to face. The plot of the story is even harder and more depressing in some ways, although always engrossing and entertaining. While hunting, Josh Brolin stumbles across the remains of a drug deal gone bad. Next to the bodies of evil men, he picks up a satchel full of cash. It's a lot of money, but it's also a death sentence for him the moment he lifts it off the ground. The drug lords are not about to let that money get away.

They call in Javier Bardem, a hitman or sorts. Bardem is (bluntly) one of the creepier bad guys in movie history. He's passionless, purely evil. He's full of his own strange convictions of what's right and wrong, and he's true to those convictions. In a very, very abstract way, he is made of the same stuff as Muslim terrorists, and abortion clinic bombers.

For the next hour or so the film mainly shows us Bardem hunting down Brolin. The hitman keeps popping up like a killer in a slasher film, but it's all well explained and plausable. There are chases and an exciting gun fight (and that's 'exciting' in a heart-pounding bad way, not in a heart-pounding good way). The big gun fight is hardly the climax, however, thanks to some good writing. I won't ruin the ending for you. I won't tell you whether Brolin lives or dies, or what happens with Jones as the lawman hoping to save Brolin's life. I will say that what does happen is terrible, and very true to the story, and well worth seeing.

Standouts: Nearly everything. Story, acting, directing, pacing, editing, etc, etc, etc.

Blowouts: The only downside I can see is just how depressing the film is. There's isn't much more than a glimmer of hope peaking around the edges of this dark cloud.

Grade: A+

BEE MOVIE

Director(s): Steve Hickner (Prince of Egypt), Simon J Smith
Starring: voices of Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zellwegger, Matthew Broderick

There is an endearing corniness to Bee Movie that grows on you. For the first few scenes I sat in my seat stoically through a series of silly puns and groaners, a little scared that there might be 90 minutes more of the same. After an hour I was smiling at each one-liner. By the end of the film, I was laughing out loud (okay, only a time or two did I actually chuckle out loud). Yes, the jokes in this film seem like the kind of thing your wacky uncle would come up with, rather than the king of droll Jerry Seinfeld. Somehow, though, it all works. The silly jokes, the corny humor, and the wackiness really grew on me. It's a cute little film, and recommended.

Bee Movie, I have heard, began it's life with its pun of a title. The story that was woven around that title is ... decent. It's certainly not a great story, but neither can I find much fault. It seems a tad thin for the big screen, but who am I to argue. The plot here follows a bee named Barry (Seinfeld) who decides he doesn't want to join the worker society of his beeish world. That's "beeish", which is similar to "Jewish", which led to one of my more favorite jokes of the film where bee Seinfeld and a bee friend (Broderick) offhandly discuss how his family would disown him if he ever married a wasp. Corny, but still funny.

Barry the bee is destined to work in the honey factory - THE industry of the hive - just like most every other bee in his world. Of course being a cartoon, the honey factory is a gigantic Rube Goldberg production line. Barry decides he doesn't want to do that though. Just like that. Barry decides he wants to fly out of the hive with the pollen collectors. Once out in the world Barry meets a woman (Zellwegger), and sues the human honey industry (on the grounds that they are stealing from the bees). I'll stop there to save you the pain of my simply repeating the plot point by point ...

... except to say that most surprising of all, this court case wasn't the big finish. Nope, there's quite a bit more. The little lesson from this film is that the system isn't all bad. It's not perfect by any means, but it does a lot of good too. You see, Barry finds out that there are unexpected consequences to winning his court case. The bees become lazy and no longer collect pollen, since they can now live lives of ease on their court verdict "winnings". Without bees pollinating the flowers, the flowers stop reproducing - a serious problem indeed. Of course the problem get solved in the end.

This was a light film, and utterly lacking in cynicism (which couldn't have made me any happier). If you're a cynic you might find the film too corny for consumption. If not, I recommend it for what it is: A cute kids movie, with a slightly different twist. Not great, but definitely not bad.

Standouts: Cute (enough) story, occasionally funny (albeit uber-corny).
Blowouts: A lot of the characters were just bland. Somehow the film got around this rather big complaint, though.

Grade: B

AMERICAN GANGSTER

Director: Ridley Scott (Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe

Ridley Scott has a habit of overselling his films. I remember when he made Kingdom of Heaven he was plainly derisive about all of the other 'history' films made after his Gladiator was a hit. I recall at least one quote where he claimed how he knew how to make those movies work and everyone else didn't. Of course Kingdom of Heaven was a decent movie, but hardly anything special. Similarly I've seen a number of quotes calling American Gangster 'Serpico mixed with the Godfather'. Believe me, this is little more than standard Hollywood marketing. American Gangster has nothing to do with the Godfather. It's yet another fine Ridley Scott film, enjoyable, entertainingly, and of good quality. What it's not is a masterpiece that will be long remembered.

The film follows two connected stories, first the rise and demise of Frank Lucas (Washington) the real-life Harlem heroin king of the 1970s, and the cop (Crowe) who brought him down. The two stories are certainly connected, but the two actors only spend 10 minutes or so at the end simultaneously on screen. I'll admit I liked this structure a lot, where half the time we see the criminal's point of view, and half the time the cop.

For the longest time the cops don't have a clue that Frank Lucas even exists. They only know that the heroin market has suddenly become awash in a cheap, high-quality product called blue magic. In one of the best little tidbits of the film (which is quite true I've heard), the cops first get Lucas on their radar at the famous 1971 Frazier-Ali fight. Crowe and his squad see a black man in an outrageous chinchilla coat and white hat sitting *in front* of the well-known mobsters of the day. That clues them in that this might just be someone worth checking out. That's just awesome in every way, I think.

Once they've got Lucas in their sights, it becomes a matter of pinning the drugs to him, which they eventually do when they find out an even better little tidbit (also quite true). It seems that Lucas was importing his heroin from southeast Asia inside the coffins of dead American servicemen from the Vietnam war. Like they say, amazing, but true.

So the story of Frank Lucas is really quite interesting throughout, but that aside, what is this movie about? Quite surprisingly, it's about economics I think. Economics and the American dream. Frank Lucas lived his version of the American dream by embracing the tenets of capitalism. He put a better product on the market and made millions. Here's the problem I have with the film, though. Yes, in the end he was captured and lost his money and even went to prison (for a while), but the film still manages to show this man in an extremely positive light. The movie doesn't seem to quite have its moral compass in order, I think. There is one(1), very brief scene showing the effects all that cheap heroin had on society. Believe me that scene doesn't counteract all of the positive vibes we get about Lucas in the rest of the movie. In the Godfather, Michael Corleone eventually loses his soul. In American Gangster, Frank Lucas loses his cash, but remains a hero.

Standouts: Pretty good screenplay, fine (although not great) acting by Washington and Crowe.
Blowouts: Yet another of the seemingly hundreds of films of the last few years that's a little too in love with human flaws. This movie simply doesn't find Frank Lucas to be a bad guy.

Grade: B+