Zero Dark Thirty

Of all the Oscar-nominated films of 2012, none was as controversial as Zero Dark Thirty.  There were a few different reasons for this (most of which boils down to election-year political babbling), but the element that received the most discussion --- intelligent or otherwise --- revolved around the film's portrayal of torture as an effective interrogation tactic.  I certainly will not be as eloquent as some of those articles, but I will try to address the issue in a small way.  First things first, though.  I went in to Zero Dark Thirty as the final film in a marathon of Best Picture nominees.  I had high hopes, even though I wasn't in love with Kathryn Bigelow's last film, The Hurt Locker.  I heard that this was a film that asked a lot of tough questions and did not give comforting answers.  America has been fighting its War on Terror for over a decade now, and we still haven't gotten a movie that (in my mind, anyway) makes an awesome statement about it.  It may be a lot to ask of a movie, but that was what I was hoping for with Zero Dark Thirty.

Zero Dark Thirty is the somewhat true-ish tale of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden (played by the always delightful Ryan Reynolds).  Maya (Jessica Chastain) is a fresh CIA recruit in 2003, newly assigned to the task force that is trying to track down Bin Laden.  Right out of the gate, Maya is confronted with the harsh reality of torture.  One of her new coworkers, Dan (Jason Clarke), spends a good amount of time at a Black Box site, interrogating detainees.  Dan and his subordinates threaten, badger, and offer the occasional kindness in their quest for information --- aaand they also torture the shit out of their prisoners, too.  Waterboarding, humiliation, sensory deprivation, and just general abuse are some of the more colorful ways Dan elicits information.

Above: Dan, scraping some "torture juice" off his shoes

While no one is willing to dish on Osama Bin Laden, Dan and Maya managed to trick one detainee into naming a courier that delivers messages to Bin Laden. In and of itself, that little morsel of information doesn't mean much, but over the next few years, Maya is able to piece together a small piece of the larger picture.  If she is correct, and this courier is trusted with an important job, then that means he actually meets with the elusive Osama Bin Laden.  If that is true, then all Maya needs to do is track down this courier (who she does not have a picture or real name of) to find Bin Laden.  It's as easy as combing through literally tons of intelligence reports for a single clue over an eight-year span, while negotiating changing political and professional priorities and surviving a terrorist bombing.

She went in a novice and left a female David Caruso.  YEAAAAHHHH!

If nothing else, Kathryn Bigelow does an excellent job subverting expectations with Zero Dark Thirty.  This is less of a war movie or a manhunt than it is a police procedural.  In that regard, it's a pretty solid one.  Jessica Chastain fills the role of the obsessive person who just knows that they're right capably, and Bigelow does a good job making her look like the most capable person in the room at any given time.  When it finally gets to be Zero Dark Fifteen-ish, Bigelow shifts gears and reminds audiences that she knows how to add tension to military scenes.

What I found most interesting about Bigelow's approach to the material was that it felt surprisingly light on judgement.  The torture scenes seemed to affect the characters just as much as suicide bombers, or the final assault on Bin Laden's complex.  This could easily have been a propaganda piece, like The Green Berets, but Zero Dark Thirty strove for a much more documentary feel.

As a movie that is, essentially, a procedural with documentary tones to it, Zero Dark Thirty is not a great spotlight for acting.  Jessica Chastain was pretty good as the emotional core of the film, but even her fairly rounded character exhibited frustration more than anything else.  She did morph into a convincingly bad-ass intelligence agent, but I felt that the personal investment of the character --- which was mind-numbingly large --- didn't translate into her performance. 

Jason Clarke was impressive in a supporting role; the more I see of Clarke, the more I like him and truly believe that he's close to a breakout role.  He had one of the more despicable parts in the film, but he gave it some unexpected humanity, too.  Most of the rest of the film was filled with bit parts, and many of them were played by character actors.  Still, in the cast of thousands, there were some familiar faces.  On the political side of the plot, Kyle Chandler was (once again) a bureaucrat, Mark Strong was a sneakier type of bureaucrat, James Gandolfini was kind of a military bureaucrat, and John Barrowman essentially acted as Jessica Chastain's hype man with his sole line.  All of those are good actors, but only Mark Strong had an opportunity to show off any (which he did).  On Maya's team, Harold Perrineau made a very brief and very welcome appearance and Jennifer Ehle was pretty good as the intelligence character that always seemed to be wrong.  When the story turned to the military side of things, Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton were the face of the strike team.  Pratt was surprisingly engaging as a slight goofball, while Edgerton played his part more through glaring than with dialogue.

Their haircuts match their characters

Okay, I've covered the plot, the direction and the acting.  What about all that torture?  On the one hand, I can agree (to an extent) with the argument that acceptance can be construed as condoning.  I honestly don't get where people are coming from when they say that the overall message here is that torture was necessary to find Bin Laden.  At worst, this film takes an indifferent stance on the issue.  Of course, the message is not that torture did no good, either; information gleaned through torture did eventually lead to the film's climax, but the methods are not shown as heroic or even necessary evils.  As with so much of Zero Dark Thirty, it would be so much easier to derive meaning and intent if this film had given in to machismo or back-patting nationalism.  Instead, the audience is subjected to extended periods of unpleasantness as the detainees are tortured on-screen.  If there is a message in Zero Dark Thirty about torture, I would argue that it is closer to "torture sure is messed up, right?" than anything else.

I was not sure how I felt about Zero Dark Thirty when it ended.  It certainly did not live up to my expectations, but that is not a bad thing.  This was a substantially different film than I was expecting, and I respected the emotionally-neutral choice of tone.  I would have preferred something that asked questions instead of simply reported issues, but that would have fundamentally altered Bigelow's documentary-feel.  I wish it had felt more immediate, though.  I was so separated from the emotions of these characters that the exits of Kyle Chandler and Jennifer Ehle had no impact on me, much less anything that happened to Jessica Chastain.  Everything just felt too impersonal.  That can happen in procedural dramas, but the main character's charisma or brilliance helps keep things exciting as the audience is drip-fed clues.  Chastain was at her best in conference room scenes, convincing bureaucrats to believe her.

There was a shocking amount of whatever you want to call this

For Zero Dark Thirty to work as a procedural, her best scenes needed to be her putting the pieces of the puzzle together.  This is a movie that could have done more, but also could have been truly insufferable.  Instead, it landed somewhere in the middle for me.

Lawless

John Hillcoat has made some gritty movies.  This is not a filmmaker given to sentimentality, and he's not afraid of capturing ugliness on film.  His last two films have impressed me, but fell just shy of being great; if there was just a little bit of spectacle added to spice up the bleakness, The Proposition and The Road would have been radically different.  Hillcoat's newest film, Lawless, prominently features Shia LaBeouf, which isn't necessarily a sign of quality or grittiness.  Lawless does have Tom Hardy, who I am quickly becoming a fan of, and the great Gary Oldman, who I love.  Adding Shia (which is Hebrew for "fluffy") to those two masters of transformation (as in acting, not turning into cars) and a frequently depressing director sounds like something worth watching.

Lawless is the true(-ish) story of the Bondurant boys, a family of moonshine makers/bootleggers in Prohibition-era America.  In Franklin County, Virginia, though, that was nothing special --- just about everyone either made their own moonshine or bought it from their neighbors.  Heck, even the police buy moonshine.  The Bondurants were different thanks to their reputation for toughness.  Well, thanks to Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard's (Jason Clarke) reputation, that is.  While those two have defied death and done things like punching Godzilla in the taint (I'm paraphrasing), their little brother, Jack (Shia LaBeouf) hasn't done much of anything.  With his brothers being local legends, that means that little Jack has a chip on his shoulder and big shoes to fill.  When the film begins, Jack's biggest problem is impressing a local girl and trying to make moonshine on his own.

The secret ingredient is urine

Things get significantly worse when a hot-shot Special Agent from Chicago rolls into town.  For the record, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) might have a badge, but he is not a good man or a lawful one.  He is brutal and his game is extortion.

But he looks so nice...!

Rakes and his boss want to run the moonshine business in Franklin County; if the moonshiners give Rakes money, then he won't have the police harass them.  Forrest isn't the type to lay down for anyone, though, and refuses to pay.  Cue the violence!

Shia competes in the 200M Outdoor Shootout

The acting in Lawless was uniformly good.  Shia LaBeouf was the point of view character, but he was clearly not the most important character.  Still, even though his character was kind of annoying and remarkably stupid at times, I thought LaBeouf handled the part well.  All his actions made sense (for him) and LaBeouf's comic timing lightened up the film considerably.  Tom Hardy was the true star, though.  Hardy has great physical presence on the screen and his crazy eyes are some of the best in Hollywood right now.  When you give him a part where he is supposed to intimidate people, he slips into it with ease.  They even try to make him less threatening by having him wear sweaters all the time and speak in grunts, but he is still magnetic on the screen.  It's rare to have a clearly violent character portrayed as a patient man, but Hardy manages to pulls it off.

The world's deadliest cardigan fan, after Bill Cosby

Jason Clarke was also pretty good; his part largely consisted of him looking haggard and wordlessly communicating with Hardy, but he still felt dangerous.  Having Guy Pearce play the villain was an interesting choice, because he doesn't really stack up well against Tom Hardy.  Thankfully, they opted to make him weird, creepy and condescending --- thoroughly unlikable, in other words, and very much Hardy's opposite.  And in case you're wondering, yes, he did shave the part into his hairline.  Jessica Chastain was solid as Hardy's romantic interest, although her character's choices pointed to some of the film's weaknesses.  Mia Wasikowska played Shia's love interest, and she was fine in an uncomplicated part.  Dane DeHaan had a solid supporting role as Cricket, the Bondurant friend who survived rickets.  It wasn't a flashy part, but a solid supporting role in an ensemble drama; if he keeps picking roles like this, DeHaan might wind up being a big deal.  Speaking of big deals, I was excited to see Gary Oldman's first scene, where he calmly shoots the hell out of a pursuing car with a tommy gun.  He didn't say a word, he just winked.  And it was awesome. 

You had me at "tommy gun"

After that, though, he has maybe three more minutes of screen time.  What a waste!  Gary Oldman --- one of this generation's greatest actors and over-actors --- playing a bad-ass gangster that follows murders with winks, and he's barely in the story at all?!?  Lawless, you're a wicked tease.

I've mentioned that John Hillcoat is known for his less than optimistic films.  Part of that has something to do with him getting Nick Cave to write two of his films (including this one), but it is also a very deliberate choice on the part of Hillcoat.  He has never been one for sentiment when depressing realism is available.  That is what makes Lawless such a departure for him; it doesn't try to sear your soul.  In fact, Hillcoat actually tries to play to the humor in the script.

Ha ha!  Jokes!

Most of the film's levity comes from the awkwardness of Shia LaBeouf's character, but the best bits come from Tom Hardy's minimal reactions to Jessica Chastain.  These aren't supposed to be thigh-slapping gags, mind you, but those lighter moments are a lot more amusing in the otherwise grim context of this story.  Hillcoat is not going to impress you with his cinematography --- although the man knows how to frame a landscape shot --- instead, he opts for capturing unpleasantness.  His primary tool is a willing cast, and I thought he did a great job directing them.  He also managed to make a graphically violent film that does not feel exploitative.  We get to see several characters serve as blood-puking punching bags, but the focus is more on the horror of the violence than on how awesome the aggressor is.  If anything, this movie is about how you rebound from violence, instead of how you actually fight.

Two out of three brothers agree: rebound with alcohol

Thanks to that attitude, we are not forced to witness any explicit violence toward women, even though there are opportunities in the story.  For that matter, the gratuitous sex scene would have been pretty tasteful, too, if it didn't have Jessica Chastain getting naked about half a scene too early.  Oh, well.  All in all, I think this was a nice step forward for Hillcoat as an artist, since he has stretched his style a bit with (more or less) success.

Lawless is definitely a violent film, which naturally means that there are plenty of action scenes.  The movie trailer makes it seem as if this is going to be a movie filled with gunfire, but the focus is instead on hand-to-hand combat.  The most gruesome scenes involve knives, boots, and brass knuckles.  For fans of gore, there are more than a few scenes where it looks like the fellow getting beat up will be picking his own teeth out of his crap over the next few days.  The gunplay is fairly anticlimactic by comparison.  Aside from Gary Oldman's tommy gun scene and Guy Pearce's powerful revolver, nothing cool ever happens with guns.  That fits the tone of the film just fine, mind you.  If you're looking for something that basks in gunfire like Tombstone or a John Woo movie, though, this may not be for you.

Taking care of boo-boos is much easier than gunshot wounds

The biggest problem with Lawless is the story itself.  Hillcoat does a pretty good job, given the script, and Nick Cave's script is pretty engaging for being based on a true story.  The focus is all wrong, though.  At its core, Lawless is about greed and power (personified by Guy Pearce) infringing on freedom and principle (personified by Tom Hardy).  Unfortunately, the main character was Shia LaBeouf's, and too much of the film centered on his attempts at romance and manhood. 

"You staring blankly reminds me of my last girlfriend.  Do you know Megan Fox?"

Due to that focus, the filmmakers never get around to addressing the motivations of Jessica Chastain's character; I think there was an opportunity for a great supporting actress role here, but it gets buried because it does not directly impact Shia.  His character isn't strong enough to carry a "fill the shoes of my brother" sort of story, and that becomes obvious as the plot ticks on.  I like the way this movie looks and feels, and I enjoy the acting.  The story is the unfortunate weak point.  For fans of Tom Hardy and bloody face punching, though, it is definitely worth a watch.