Alex Cross

I'm going to start out this review with a few disclaimers.  First of all, I am not a big fan of James Patterson's work as an author, or as the inspiration for movies.  I have also not paid any attention to Tyler Perry's body of work; the only Tyler Perry movie I've seen up to this point is Star Trek.  I don't particularly care one way or the other about the choice to reboot this franchise with a younger star (Morgan Freeman played Alex Cross in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider).  Having said all that, I have to point out that the movie trailer for Alex Cross looked pretty generic, at best:

Does anyone actually need to be persuaded to leave Detroit?  And while I am not a big fan of the previous Alex Cross movies, I have to say that I preferred the character as someone who out-thinks the bad guys, instead of just another cop on the edge.  Still, maybe that was just the trailer; it seems unlikely that the movie will have a dubstep score, so maybe the movie was just cut to shreds by the people making the movie trailer.

Alex Cross is, not surprisingly, about Alex Cross (Tyler Perry), a Detroit police detective who for some reason is called "doctor" Cross by most people.  I get it, he probably has a psychology degree or something, but that seems like a title that would not trump "detective," at least not when he is a detective.  Cross and his team --- Alex's lifelong friend, Thomas (Edward Burns), and Thomas's girlfriend, Monica (Rachel Nichols) ---are assigned to a violent crime by their Captain (John C. McGinley) because...um...they're the best?  They're next up on the rotation?  I'm not entirely sure.  The crime scene is in a swanky area, and there are four victims; three are bodyguards who appear to have not gotten a shot off, and the fourth is their client, who was tortured to death while wearing lingerie.  Alex gives the scene the once-over and decides, without any evidence that he's willing to share with the audience or his fellow detectives, that this was all the work of one man.  A highly trained and sadistic man, but one man nonetheless.

"Look, I'm just reading a script.  If you want insight, hire a poet"

At the scene, they recover a Cubist-inspired pencil drawing of the dead woman, writhing in pain.  Or maybe she just looks like a normal Cubist portrait.  I'm not an art critic.  Alex notices something odd in the drawing, though, and --- I have to emphasize how odd a choice this is for any sane person --- treats it like a Mad Magaize fold-in, which results in Alex finding a hidden message in the drawing that identifies the killer's next target.  Remarkably, Alex and his team show up at exactly the same time that the killer (Matthew Fox) does, and they prevent him from eliminating his target.

He shouldn't have wasted time rocking out to "Come Sail Away"

Cross realizes that the real target of this crazy killer must be international businessman Leon Mercier (Jean Reno), who employed both targets.  Why the killer needed to kill off two underlings before his primary target doesn't make much sense (wouldn't it just put Mercier on alert?), but we're in Movie Killer Country now, so you have to roll with it.  Little does Alex Cross realize how much he has inconvenienced the killer, and how personal this case is about to become...

So how does Tyler Perry do in his first true attempt at broadening his acting horizons?  Honestly, I was expecting more.  He did a decent Morgan Freeman impression when profiling the killer, but he was pretty unconvincing when he had to show grief or rage.  There's a part where somebody died, and it was because Alex Cross misjudged the situation; the way Perry moans "I was wrong" almost made it seem like he felt worse about being incorrect than the death.  It's not a wretched performance, though --- just extremely bland.  I really liked Matthew Fox's work as the killer, though.  Fox's physical transformation for the role was impressive and I thought he had some great crazy eyes. 

Unfortunately, his character was poorly developed, so Fox was relegated to being kinda creepy instead of definitely disturbing.  Edward Burns was mediocre as Cross' buddy and partner.  His emotional range was pretty limited, but his character seemed to exist only for Alex Cross to prove him wrong, so I have a hard time imagining Burns turning in a magical performance.  I will say that the chemistry between Burns and Perry was not very impressive for a pair that was supposedly best friends since kindergarten.  Rachel Nichols had a role that mainly consisted of her looking attractive, and she delivered; I wouldn't mind seeing her in a role that actually required acting, but she's perfectly adequate here as a pretty cop.   John C. McGinley was a smart casting choice for a stereotypically caustic police chief --- as much as I hate Zach Braff, I have to admit McGinley was funny on Scrubs --- but the execution was butchered.  McGinley's character winds up being not a foul-mouthed, Lethal Weapon-esque boss, but a temperate, ladder-climbing politician.  What a misuse of resources.  Cicely Tyson was fine as Cross' sassy mother in a bit part, as was Carmen Ejogo as Cross' perfect wife.  I was a little disappointed that Jean Reno didn't have more to work with, but he's reaching a point in his career where he simply gets by playing generic Europeans in Hollywood movies.

Correction: slightly bloated Europeans

I'm not sure that Rob Cohen was the right choice to direct Alex Cross.  I'm not going to lie and say that I haven't enjoyed his work in the past --- xXx and The Fast and the Furious are both great movies to drink to --- but he's not the director I would choose for any movie that wanted to have better dialogue than "I live for this shit."  Here's the thing: you don't hire Rob Cohen to direct a movie unless you want it to be filled with dumb action.  Alex Cross has some action, sure, but it's definitely not a dumb action movie.  Even the action it has --- particularly the hand-to-hand scene with Perry and Fox --- is subpar.  It's one thing to have a camera shaking because there is allegedly so much action, but it's another thing entirely to see a lame fight scene and shake the camera to add some spice.  Cohen is incapable of line coaching or editing things together into a cohesive whole, so I can't justify his involvement in this project.  Alex Cross doesn't fit Cohen's strengths, and it emphasized his weaknesses.

Two out of three people are sitting in this action scene

Speaking of weaknesses, I have to address some of the things that irritated me about Alex Cross.  The film opens with Cross chasing a suspect in an abandoned area in Detroit (so...anywhere in Detroit).  The suspect fires at Cross, and the camera cuts to Cross, who dodges the bullet a few seconds later.  Not a good sign when the opening scene can't manage to get the basics of a firefight correct.  Anyway, Cross and his team chase down the perp.  They all congratulate each other on a good day's work, and the next scene has Cross visiting a woman at a prison, trying to convince her to not do jail time for a crime she did not commit. 

"Good work team.  Let's do very different things and zero paperwork in the next few scenes"

The next scene skips ahead almost twenty-four hours and shows Cross being a vaguely affectionate husband, child and parent.  Are there connections between these scenes?  Only Alex Cross as a character.  The initial criminal has nothing to do with the rest of the movie; the woman in prison is referenced as a means to an end toward the end of the film, and Cross' family time does little to develop him as a character.

Another odd choice had the camera follow Matthew Fox around as he planned and executed his crimes.  First of all, it appears that Fox's character (who is dismissively called "Picasso" once in the movie, and yet IMDb lists it has his character's name) is motivated by money.  To that end, it appears that he will kill to fulfill his contract.  Makes sense, right?  His first target is a sexy lady who likes MMA fights.  Naturally, he enters the octagon, acts brutal and attracts her attention.  Just as naturally, she sees a brutal stranger and invites him to her home for sexy time.  

Yes.  Invite this home.  That makes sense.

After he "tortures her to death" (because that's a scientific cause of death, Mr. Police Coroner), Picasso opts to not take anything of value from her home.  In fact, it seems like this character has his own motivations and that the money he received in his first scene was just icing on top.  Too bad nothing about his motivations are ever revealed.  If he was in it for money, why not steal from his victims?  If he was on a mission, why would he get sidetracked with Alex Cross's team?  I don't need to know his life story, but this character could have been great with maybe five more minutes of cohesive development.

The biggest problem with Alex Cross, though, is with how it handles the main character.  If Alex Cross is such a brilliant detective, shouldn't he be right some of the time?  Or maybe he should prevent crimes?  By the time this movie ends, there are about two dozen dead at the hands of this killer because Cross is consistently wrong.  If Alex Cross hadn't been so "clever," the total would have been closer to three.

Alex Cross always gets his man.  Suck it, math!

It wouldn't have been so annoying if Picasso was supposed to be some kind of genius, but he wasn't.  Except when the script implied that he was, for convenience's sake.  Instead, the resident genius in this movie is Alex Cross, whose insights come from a first-year psychology textbook.  The conclusions he draws from crime scenes do not appear to be based on any evidence, either.  How hard is it to make someone seem smart while interpreting evidence?  That's 95% of American scripted television!  He basically fails where David Caruso succeeds.  Ouch.

I'm a sucker for a good police procedural, but even I couldn't stand Alex Cross.  This was a gross misfire of a well-known and successful property.  It wasn't a bad choice to change the tone of this series --- who doesn't like a little action with their cerebral crime solving? --- but it failed as a fun action movie and as a procedural.  It would be easy to blame Tyler Perry for dropping the ball that Morgan Freeman carried so effortlessly, but the real problem came from the script and direction.  This is less "Don't ever cross Alex Cross" and more "Don't ever watch Alex Cross."

Armored

When I was looking into the actors in Armored, I came to a realization: Matt Dillon is not in good movies.  Sure, I laughed at There's Something About Mary when I was stupid and in high school, but that shouldn't be his career highlight.  Considering that the lead roles in this film are split between Dillon and Columbus Short, who is more famous for dancing than acting, Armored might not be a great film.

After being awarded the Silver Star for his service in the War on Terror, Ty (Columbus Short) has been having a rough time back home.  With his parents gone, Ty is the sole guardian of his brother Jimmy (Andre Kinney).  To make ends meet, Ty has taken on a job as a security guard for armored cars.  He's second-generation in his job; the rest of his co-workers remember his father fondly, particularly his godfather, Mike (Matt Dillon).  After work one day, the guards head to a bar to unwind and talk a bit about some of the more famous armored car robberies; afterward, Mike tells Ty that the whole crew is going to rob their own armored car and split the money, which amounts to $7 million each.  At first, he's reluctant, but when social services threaten to take Jimmy away, Ty agrees to help, as long as nobody gets hurt.  Well, guess what?  People get hurt.  Ty won't stand for that, so he fights back against the other five guards.

I won't say that the acting was great in this movie, but it wasn't terrible.  In the lead role, Columbus Short did much better than any professional dancer should be expected to do in a feature film.  No, he wasn't amazing, but he was halfway decent, at long as he wasn't supposed to convey feelings.  Matt Dillon was...well, Matt Dillon.  Nothing new there.  The other veteran actors were not particularly impressive, either.  Skeet Ulrich and Jean Reno just showed up long enough to cash a paycheck.   Amaury Nolasco, who I normally despise, surprised me by playing a character with at least a little depth, but that came to naught when his character unexpectedly committed suicide...I assume.  They never showed the body, which suggests that the budget wasn't very high for this movie.  Laurence Fishburne normally adds a little bit of class to the movies he is in, but here, he plays a violent dimwit.  It's a surprisingly dull role for him, but he was in Biker Boyz, so I probably shouldn't be surprised.

Hello?  Is my dignity there?  Well, can I leave a message?

As for young Andre Kinney, I suppose his not-terribly-intelligent and graffiti-loving role here is a step up from his recurring role on Hannah Montana, but he is still several blocks away from being a real actor.  Milo Ventimiglia also makes an appearance as a police officer, but he gets shot pretty early on, resulting in him talking with a funny voice; I don't think I've seen him in a movie without a weird voice, so I'm still not sure if he can act in feature films.


Mediocre acting does not necessarily doom a film (Avatar, anyone?), but mediocre direction doesn't help, either.  Nimrod Antal is a capable action director, I will admit.  I was able to follow the plot, too, which shows that he has the rudimentary skills to tell a story.  As for directing actors to actually act...well, I don't see any proof of that here.  The dramatic scenes aren't bad, but they aren't very natural, especially between Short and...well, anyone.  Take, for instance, the scene where Short comes home to find Kinney spray painting an owl --- and owl! --- on their kitchen wall.  Instead of them butting heads like a surly teen and an overwhelmed sibling, it plays out like this:

Short: Why'd you paint an owl in our kitchen?  That's where we cook!  I mean, when we cook.  Well, where we're supposed to cook, anyway.
Kinney: I dunno.
Short: What?  I forgot what we were talking about.  Have some McDonald's.

I'm not saying that these actors had a lot to work with, but they sure didn't take advantage of the opportunities they had.

The primary obstacle to this movie's success is the story, which was written by a first-time screenwriter.  Aside from some pretty cliche action moments, I have to wonder just how much thought went into the construction of the armored cars in this movie.  You would think that a real armored car that transfers cash would be pretty secure, right?  Well, not according to Armored.  There are all sorts of ways to mess with these vehicles in the movie.  The alarm is easily disabled without alerting the company base.  They are not on a particular time table, even after picking up money.  The floor of the truck has a thin floorboard that can be disassembled with basic tools.  Sure, the bad guys eventually do the logical thing and go after the door hinges, but those are some suspiciously large hinges for a secure vehicle.  Okay, fine.  Let's say that the armored car problems make sense, or the movie is entertaining enough for that not to not matter.  There is no climax.  None.  There are explosions, and we assume characters die.  Then Matt Dillon shows up and there's a minor showdown, but nothing huge.  I kept expecting another character (Larry Fishburne, I'm looking at you) to show up, partially charbroiled and ready to kill, but the movie just...ends.  Boo!

This movie wasn't incompetent.  It wasn't terrible.  It was mediocre with a bad story.  Its only accomplishment was being a heist movie that I didn't like.

Interesting side note: a Google image search of "Columbus Short glove" comes up with this image.  Why?  I'm so very confused...

Hotel Rwanda

I borrowed this DVD from a friend when the movie first came out, intent on watching Don Cheadle's acclaimed performance.  I never got around to it.  I always looked at the film as inevitably depressing, and I didn't know much about the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and I always feel sketchy if I let a movie educate me on world events.  In the intervening years, I've educated myself to a point where, when I saw the movie available On Demand through my cable, I finally felt I was ready to watch it.

The movie takes place during the genocide, but thankfully is not a document of the killings.  Instead, it tells the tale of Paul (Don Cheadle), a manager for the finest hotel around.  Paul is very talented at using words to get what he wants; when that fails, bribery usually does the trick.  This serves him well as manager, allowing him to get his hands on high end cigars, liquor, and more.  These treats are not for him, but to gain favor with local politicians, international military leaders, and anyone else.  It's a good thing he is good at his job, because ethnic tensions in Rwanda reach their boiling point, with paramilitary groups of the Hutu ethnic majority gathering and executing any of the Tutsi minority they can find.  Paul is Hutu, but his wife (Sophie Okonedo) is Tutsi.  Seeing his neighborhood quickly becoming a war zone, Paul manages to sneak and bribe his family's way into the hotel.  There, he tries to keep things business-as-usual.  It doesn't really work.  First of all, a war was going on, just outside the hotel.  Secondly, it's the old any-port-in-a-storm rule.  The hotel quickly acts as a shelter for overflow from the United Nations camps, the Red Cross, and for war orphans.  Why don't the Hutu militias just attack the hotel?  Good question.  The answer seems to be because Paul maintains the image of a professional European hotel; it feels like another country, or at least an embassy.  That means that, if the locals attack, there could possibly be some retaliation from the Western world.  Seeing the importance of maintaining this image, Paul must keep the hotel running for appearances' sake, care for the refugees, and act as the support for his own family.  For a while, Paul has his hopes set on the United Nations sending in a peacekeeping force to stop the massacre, but that never happens.  The burden for saving the 1200+ refugees in his hotel ultimately falls on Paul's shoulders.

This is an important movie to watch.  Hearing the abstract numbers (about 800,000 dead in an area about the size of a New England state) doesn't really sink in.  Seeing people being shot in the streets is more effective.  Showing trucks drive over miles of road, clogged with dead bodies is better still.  This movie doesn't set out to over-horrify you, which is good.  This is an exhausting viewing experience, and I say that in the best way possible; at the time of this genocide, Americans were either upset over Kurt Cobain's suicide, or fascinated by OJ Simpson's car chase in a white Ford Bronco.  Sure, those are obviously important things, but I have no recollection of Rwanda from school or news at that time, and that embarrasses me.  Still, this could have easily become a testament to the horrific things humans do to each other, but director and co-writer Terry George wisely chose to avoid making this movie an unwatchable guilt trip.  Instead, we have these terrible things framing a true story of heroic humanitarianism.

I was surprised that this movie did not show off the director or cinematographer's skills more.  Usually, when directors make an "important" movie, they make sure to show their skills or make things a little artsy.  This movie is shot in a straightforward fashion, with no artistic embellishments.

The film clearly focuses on Cheadle's character, but there are several recognizable actors with supporting roles.  Nick Nolte plays a Canadian UN military forces member, and he delivers the best white-versus-black speech I have heard in a long while.  Joaquin Phoenix is a news cameraman that asks many questions about the Hutu and the Tutsi for the benefits of the viewers; since his character is essentially there for exposition, his role is less impressive.  Jean Reno makes a brief, uncredited cameo just for recognition purposes.  Cara Seymour is the Red Cross worker that helps Paul save refugees; she's not in the movie much, but I thought she did a pretty good job.  Sophie Okonedo plays Paul's wife, and it is a demanding performance; she basically spends the whole movie terrified.

As I mentioned earlier, though, the real acting burden belongs to Don Cheadle.  It's rare to see a movie about death and destruction where the hero is not a man of action.  There are several points where Cheadle's character reaches a breaking point, and you watch him crumble in private, only to put himself back together in front of others.  It's fairly common for a low-key drama to have a nuanced grieving performance given by the lead actor or actress; this movie is not low-key, but Cheadle is still able to channel that same sort of private, subtle performance here.  There are two great scenes in particular that show this off.  The first is when he tells his wife to kill herself and their kids if the hotel is invaded; this could have easily been overacted, but his control here made his loss of control later all the more effective.  The second scene is just Cheadle cleaning himself up after unwittingly stumbling upon thousands of fresh corpses.  Cheadle has always been pretty good, but this role really showed what he is capable of.

Despite Cheadle's performance, this isn't a movie I will ever watch over and over again.  That's probably not the point of this movie, I get that, but it should be a little better.  Joaquin Phoenix's character is a little too guilt-ridden and a little too clueless to not be offensive.  I understand that Americans don't know what Hutus and Tutsis are; I think a short prologue would have worked better than having a stupid American make obvious comments about how he can't tell the difference between the two groups (there's a racist joke there, but I'm passing it by).  I think it's funny that Nick Nolte's character expressed his guilt more creatively and accurately (basically, the West sees Africa as a crap pile) as a Canadian than Phoenix's American could.  I also would have enjoyed a little more time spent adding symbolism and the like to make this a little more technically interesting.  I'm not saying the movie needed a Schindler's List red jacket, but a few little touches would have been nice.  Other than that, though, this is an interesting subject with one excellent performance.