Reviews: October 2007 Archives

After the following review appeared in the White Plains Times, I got an email from my friend Sharon -- I'll call her "Ms. K" -- that spurred more thinking and writing on the subject. I'm including the review, Ms. K's response, and my replies below. (Thanks, Sharon!)

Think of this intense drama about corporate shenanigans as the capper to a George Clooney trilogy about duty, ethics and professionalism. Along with Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck, Michael Clayton is about careerism and morality. Clooney's titular protagonist is a high-powered fix-it man for a New York law firm representing a corporate client whose pesticides may be killing farmers. He's working to repair the damage done by Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a high-profile litigator who went off his meds and had a nervous breakdown (or a crisis of conscience) during a deposition. The story stays in standard conspiracy thriller territory, but what's remarkable is the way it's filmed. Writer/director Tony Gilroy keeps the camera close to all of his actors, especially Clooney and Tilda Swinton--playing a sweaty, high-powered corporate lawyer with her own reasons for tracking Edens down--and their intensely nuanced performances reward the attention. Cinematographer Robert Elswit has a dazzling eye for actors' faces, and he makes good use of the widescreen frame and the film's authentic New York locations. It's smart and spooky stuff. The only misstep is a tidy climax--it's too conventional an ending for this refreshingly bold, ethically fraught thriller.

Dear DEEP-FOCUS.COM,

I'm a middle-aged widower with three children and a successful newspaper advice column that espouses my core ideals of wisdom, fairness, and the importance of family. Recently, while traveling on a long weekend with my extended family, I met a woman. She is the sophisticated, European type. I soon learned that this woman was already in a happy relationship with my brother (!), but it was too late. I was attracted to her, and therefore I had already begun leveraging my self-effacing charm and knack for deceit to ensure that she had feelings for me. Eventually, I manipulated her into falling in love with me and dumping my brother. But my girls now resent me, my brother wants to beat me up, and the rest of my family is treating me like a pariah. Am I a hypocrite?

Sign me, Dan in Real Life.

---

Dan,

Not only are you a hypocrite, you're selfish, childish, and morally bankrupt -- following your bliss with carefree abandon, oblivious to the needs and emotions of your sibling, your family, and perhaps especially the poor woman whose approach toward happiness you've decisively wrecked. Grow up. Learn that the world does not revolve around you, and start setting an example for your kids. Teach yourself the important lesson that your needs do not supersede those of the other people in your life, and your fleeting sexual desires and skill at cajoling sympathy cannot be conflated with the foundation of a truly meaningful, adult relationship between equals.

Unless your brother's a douchebag. In that case, go for it!

Sincerely,
D-F

P.S. B-

Unexpectedly, Gone Baby Gone boasts one of the year's scariest scenes. It comes partway into the film's third act and involves a guy with a shotgun and unclear intentions. It works as well as it does for the usual reasons: story, performance, camerawork. It's so thoroughly gripping that I didn't realize until it was over that all my critical faculties had been put temporarily and decisively on hold. It's one of those rare moments when I'm not engaging with the narrative intellectually, as a piece of art, but emotionally, as experience. That seems to happen less and less often these days, but when it does, it's bliss.

The high ground that The Brave One never recovers is taken early in the film, after Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) and her boyfriend are accosted in Central Park by thugs who kill him and put her in the hospital. Director Neil Jordan cuts back and forth from a flashback showing the couple making love to the present-tense aftermath of the attack: limp bodies, and clothing scissored away from blood-caked skin. I doubt this sobering editorial flourish was a screenwriter's creation -- more likely it was cooked up by Jordan and his editor, Tony Lawson, who was an assistant on Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. It points up the fact that The Brave One is well-made in a number of important ways -- it boasts sensitive direction, colorful widescreen camerawork, and a fine, voice-centered performance from Jodie Foster. It's disappointing that it's not a better movie.

The story is straightforward revenge-thriller material -- Bain buys a 9mm pistol and takes criminal justice into her own hands. Along the way she befriends Mercer (Terrence Howard), an earnest detective who befriends Erica while (of course) investigating the rash of vigilante killings. So our story begins with a brutal murder and ends with multiple acts of audience-pleasing vengeance, and the material in between is peppered with explosions of violence. So far, so good. (Hey, Ms. 45 is one of my favorite movies.) But the film is executed as a think piece, with Foster playing a woman so full of fear and anger that she loses her moral compass entirely. That's fine, too, but the difference between the movie's twin impulses -- is this a Death Wish update or a highbrow character study? -- creates a conflict that the script doesn't support and Jordan can't reconcile. It reminds me of In the Cut, another serious movie by serious filmmakers who seemed too aware that they were slumming in the material. I admire what Jordan's trying to accomplish here, but this sort of thing demands the hand of a director who's less, shall we say, earnest about it. C+