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.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

After an entire month of horror movie reviews, what better way to cleanse the palette than an animated feature for children?  I opted to go with a movie that I had always been curious about, but never went to see because...well...I don't have kids, so I can pick and choose my animated movie experiences.  Aside from the fact that the CG animation looks amazing in this trailer, this is also Zack Snyder's first effort at directing an animated movie (although I would argue that Watchmen and 300 come pretty darn close), and I've always liked his visual touch, so hopefully this is pretty awesome.

In a throwback to 80s "children" movies like The Dark Crystal, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole opens with a kidnapping.  After all, who says that children's movies shouldn't make your children cry?  Soren (voiced by Jim Sturgess) is an owl that was goofing off with his little brother, Kludd (Ryan Kwanten), when Kludd kicks Soren out of the nest, before he could fly.  And, because nature abhors terrible siblings, Kludd also lost his balance and fell to the base of their maghty home tree, with Soren.  Instead of getting eaten by Tasamanian Devils, which was apparently an option, the pair was rescued/kidnapped by a couple of dim-witted adult owls.  These scary-looking creatures take young Soren and Kludd to a distant land, where they are presented with an interesting choice.  They can either follow the racist/speciesist teachings of Nyra (Helen Mirren), queen of the Pure Ones, or they can become mindless slaves.

Alternate title: White (Owl) Power

Kludd opts to follow the obvious villain, while Soren rebels and tries to escape.  The strange thing about the Pure Ones is that they're supposed to be the stuff of legend; Soren and Kludd grew up to takes of them being the villains in a long battle against the heroic Guardians.  If the Pure Ones are real, I wonder if the Guardians could be real, too?

Above: an owl realizing that someone wrote sixteen books about owl racism

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole could not be a modern animated movie without a ridiculously famous cast of voice actors.  The most effective in their roles were probably Helen Mirren and Geoffrey Rush; both have wonderfully emotive voices and did a fine job as important, but ultimately peripheral, characters.  Rush plays a great grouch, so it was nice to see that talent being utilized.  Hugo Weaving had a double role, although his voice talents are not exactly what I would call "audibly versatile."  He fine fine in both parts, but anyone who knows his voice can instantly recognize him in both roles.  Joel Edgerton was pretty good as the head bad guy, but it seems odd in retrospect that he was the cast member chosen for the villain role, and not Weaving or Rush.

Maybe he got the role thanks to his physical presence

Sam Neill was well-cast in a bit part, where his lovely voice was meant to be a contrast to his character's actions, and that was nicely done.  But those are just the most notable supporting voice actors.  Jim Sturgess played the main character, a young and idealistic owl who sometimes gets the benefits of super-slow motion shots.

ACTING!

Sturgess was fine, but this is a pretty generic character and he didn't really add anything special to the part.  An odd thing about this cast (that I just noticed) is that it is predominantly Australian, with a few Brits  sprinkled here and there.  I didn't realize that owls needed to speak the Queen's English.  Ryan Kwanten, Anthony LaPaglia, Richard Roxburgh, Leigh Whannell, David Wenham, Essie Davis, Abbie Cornish, and Angus Sampson, Aussies one and all, had roles of varying importance.  Most of their voices were recognizable, but I guess that's point when you fill your voice cast with actual actors.  None of them were bad, but none were too impressive.  As for the non-Australian supporting cast, I thought Miriam Margolyes was suitably cartoonish as a snake nanny and Emily Barclay was suitably bland as the romantic interest for Jim Sturgess.

Romantic owl eyes are slightly unsettling

What about Zack Snyder's direction?  It's no secret that Snyder likes to aim for "epic" as a director, and he did a solid job framing Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole in an epic fashion.  It is interesting watching Snyder's direction in a film where he can get exactly the visuals he wants.  It's not too different from his normal style.  The visuals are stunning.  The slow-motion is prominent and occasionally questionable.

Or, as Snyder likes to call it, "The speed at which all things should happen"

There are large-scale battles, where a small cast of heroes faces down a large number of interchangeable villains.

They're like Storm Troopers that cough up pellets

Snyder tells the story ably enough, but he doesn't get great performances out of his most important characters.  The ideas of love and betrayal have never been prominent in any of Snyder's other films, so seeing him ignore them in a children's story might not be as surprising as it should be.  Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole has all the basic elements of an entertaining animated film, but there's no emotional core to it. Part of the problem is with the writing, which spends little time on characterization, but the director should notice a little thing like entirely two-dimensional characters and have it changed.

I'm guessing he focused more on eye reflections than the script

My other problem with Legend of the Guardians is that it feels very, very familiar.  If you're familiar with Star Wars or the Chronicles of Narnia, or just about any other epic tale with children as an intended audience, then you've seen this plot before.  A lot of kid's movies are like that, but this feels like a Frankenstein of epic childhood fiction, with the only new addition being the owls.

This scene actually dubs in dialogue from Attack of the Clones

I take that back.  Making some of the child characters into mindless slaves is somewhat unique, especially in a movie aimed at children.

The moment that crystallized my feelings toward Legend of the Guardians came toward the end.  After growing up with tales of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Soren is happy to tell his father that the Guardians are not just legend, but are real.  His father's response was, "You made them real."  At first glance, it looks like the meaningless "kids rawk" fluff that often pops up in animated movies.  But this was so blatantly wrong that my wife got seriously irritated.  She actually raised her voice to ask, "HOW?  They already exist!"  My wife doesn't like every movie, but she doesn't loudly question movies very often.  To put that in perspective, the last time she watched an animated feature and wasn't happy with it was G-Force.  Congrats, Legend of the Guardians, you are in elite company.  Apparently, there was not enough cute to counteract the dull and stupid here.

Sorry kid, not cute enough

Let's be honest, though.  This is a movie for kids, and the standards of entertainment for children are comically low.  Sadly, Legend of the Guardians doesn't quite meet those unimpressive standards.  There are a few moments that truly "wow" the viewer --- yes, they are in slow motion --- but they are not the most important or memorable parts of the plot.

This scene > rain flying

However, thanks to the dull story, these inconsequential scenes are what I remember most about this film.  The story is too dark to be cutesy, but there are characters clearly designed to just be cute.  And yet, the story is not dark enough to be frightening or to make the story less predictable.  Even the primary staple of animated movies, the goofy supporting character, is absent for most of this movie.  Yes, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole looks nice, but it is genuinely uninteresting and charmless.

The Thing (2011)

Remakes are a funny thing.  On the one hand, you are making a movie to appeal to a newer, younger audience.  On the other hand, you are hoping for the built-in audience of fans who loved the original to also support the new movie.  Of course, there is almost always a backlash from the older fans who argue that the original was a classic that should not be sullied by a slick remake.  The filmmakers behind The Thing (2011) opted to sidestep that issue by making this neither a remake or a sequel, but a prequel to John Carpenter's low-budget classic The Thing (1982).  Hollywood knows how much you love prequels!  Especially prequels that doesn't come right out and tell you if they are, in fact, a prequel or not!  Seriously, how hard would it have been to not use the exact same title as the original?  Was The Thing: Episode I - The Phantom Menace taken?  How about 2 Thing 2 Furious?  The Thing 2: Electric Boogaloo?  Hell, given the plot, they could have gone the James Cameron route and just titled it Things.  But no, we have The Thing (2011).  ***sigh***

A group of Norwegian researchers has tracked down the remains of an alien spaceship that has crash-landed in Antarctica.  That alone would win them some sort of award, but the leader of the expedition, Dr. Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen), focuses exclusively on the alien corpse they found frozen in the tundra.  The team extracts the block of ice with the alien and brings it back to their base.  There, Dr. Halvorson drills into the ice block and takes some DNA to study.  And that's when things (HA!) start to go badly.  The alien wakes up and escapes; it was strong enough to both explode out of the ice block and jump through the ceiling of the facility.  Worse, the alien appears to be killing people and then disguising itself as one of them.  How can you tell who's human and who's not when you're trapped in Antarctica and don't want to precisely imitate The Thing (1982)? 

Okay, sometimes that is easier done than other times

The acting in The Thing is surprisingly solid, given that this is a survival/horror movie.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is perfectly adequate as the heroine.  I would have liked to see some shades of grey in her choices, but that's more of a story problem than an acting one.  I was expecting more from Joel Edgerton, though; his acting was decent, but he spent a large chunk of the movie off-camera.  Eric Christian Olsen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje were also also fine.  Nobody really stood out among the recognizable actors, but nobody was bad, either.  The rest of the cast (AKA the cannon fodder) was comprised of Norwegian actors who spoke little English.  Of them, only Jørgen Langhelle impressed me, if only because he was the only character who couldn't speak English, but he still communicated in a fairly realistic way. 

Actual dialogue: "Bork bork bork!!!"

The direction, on the other hand, was less impressive.  Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. made his feature-length debut with this movie, and it gets a bit rough in parts.  What makes the original The Thing so compelling is the suspense and the ambiguity.  This movie has little of either.  Instead of focusing on how anyone could be infected/assimilated, this film opts for the tone of a standard monster movie, making it feel more like a somewhat action-free Resident Evil than anything else.

Give that starfish some teeth and Milla Jovovich will kill it

It's not a bad idea to change the tone of this film significantly from that of the original film, but it's clear that van Heijningen Jr. wasn't doing that intentionally.  There are moments where the characters are accusing each other and acting paranoid, but those scenes lack tension and suspense.  Why?  Because the film doesn't focus on who has been alone and could be a monster.  Without the audience noticing who could be a Thing, it feels absolutely random and devoid of suspense or emotional investment.  And then there is the fact that many of the characters die of starfish-arm-powered chest punctures and everyone who is suspected of being a Thing actually is shown Thing-ing out.  I blame the director for taking a decent premise and boring me with poor execution.

One of the most iconic parts of The Thing (1982) was its truly stellar use of practical effects.  I recall hearing the filmmakers comment about how much effort was going into the practical effects of The Thing (2011), back when they were promoting the film, but there is also a substantial amount of CGI.  What practical effects were in the movie were actually pretty good.  Specifically, the alien autopsy had a pretty cool bit, although I imagine most species would have more internal organs than were shown here.

Oh, it had a person-sized pouch in its tummy?

Aside from that, though, I was significantly unimpressed.  The CGI wasn't that bad, but it was uninspired.  The monsters certainly became monstrous, but I would have liked to see more adaptation in the forms; mouths and eyes for the creature appeared to remain on the human head, which was puzzling because the original form from the ice seemed far more amorphous.

Becoming an alien, or about to projective vomit?  You decide

The most disappointing aspect of the special effects for me was how much they clearly imitated Resident Evil.  Sure, there was some continuity to the FX in the original film, but I hated the starfish-shaped killer appendages.  Is the Thing trying to murder the hell out of Antarctica, or is it supposed to be assimilating people and making its way to mainland to conquer the Earth? 

It's backup plan was to audition for The Addams Family

Even with the poor direction and the disappointing special effects, The Thing could have been a mediocre movie.  But it's not.  Why?  To put it simply, this film doesn't follow its own logic.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character is a paleontologist who is hired to examine the alien.  That makes sense, right?  And yet, not only is everything she says dismissed, she doesn't even do the preliminary examination of the alien's blood or body!  What the hell is she there for, if not those exact reasons?  For that matter, why is everyone so interested in the alien body, but not the ship?  The group extracts a huge ice cube with an alien inside it and where do they keep it?  In the heated building, of course.  To be fair, it was still cold in the building, but why risk any thawing/spoiling when you can just leave it outside?  It's not like a passerby is going to steal it.  Speaking of the alien, its ship was found hundreds of yards beneath the surface of the ice, and yet the alien was found only inches below.  I'm not saying that is impossible, but it seems unlikely.  Even less likely is the irrational acceptance of fire as a cure-all in this movie, despite important evidence to the contrary. 

Above: a demonstration of "Dr. Halvorson's Botanical Syrup and Skin Bronzing Solution"

So they all discover the monster, right?  And then they burn the shit out of it, right?  Well, it is soon discovered that the blood from the dead creature was not dead, which means that the crispy critter was also not dead.

And we're not talking Miracle Max or "mostly dead," either

So fire doesn't kill these Things.  And yet, it does.  You would think a little thing like its blood surviving char-broiling would lead to the "dead" Things coming back to life, but no.  And nobody has a problem with that.

From a production aspect, I have to wonder why this movie was ever made.  Was anyone dying to know how the alien was discovered?  I don't think so.  No, I suspect that someone saw the opportunity to make some cash by remaking a well-remembered horror flick and figured out a way to differentiate this from all the other horror remakes out there.  After all, the original movie touched on the Norwegian group that went through virtually the exact same experience as Kurt Russell and friends; why not exploit that to make virtually the same movie, but not have to deal with fans whining about the changes made in the update?  Of course, if they really wanted to differentiate this film from the original, then it wouldn't have the same damn title.  If this movie wasn't such a faded ditto copy, I would be a little more lenient and say it was just sub-par.  Aping a classic without the guts to admit it, along with its clumsy execution makes this movie pretty awful.

On a side note, what are the odds that Joel Edgerton's character A) has an earring in 1982 and B) is desperate for news about the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were in the middle of a 9-year period of atrociousness?

Warrior

Before I begin my review of Warrior, I would like to address the elephant in the room.  No, this is not the prequel to The Warriors.  Sorry to crush your hopes and dreams.

Warrior is the tale of two brothers, Brendan Conlan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy).  The film begins with an angry and drunken Tommy showing up at his childhood home and confronting Paddy (Nick Nolte), his recovering alcoholic father.  It has been years since the two have spoken, and all we learn is that Tommy left with his mother, she died and he joined the Marines.  Unwilling to talk about his past, Tommy spends his time working out and manages to humiliate a top-ranking MMA fighter in a sparring match.  This gets him attention from the right promoters, and pretty soon Tommy is entered into an elite 16-man MMA tournament, Sparta, with a five million dollar purse on the line.

It's humiliating when the ref starts spanking you in the ring

Meanwhile, Brendan is in serious trouble with his home mortgage; his family will lose their home in three months.  Brendan is a high school teacher and his wife (Jennifer Morrison) apparently works in the short skirt industry, and Brendan even occasionally moonlights as an amateur MMA fighter for a couple hundred bucks a pop.  There's really no way for them to make much more money than they already are.  When Brendan shows up for school with visible bruises on his face, he is suspended from work without pay.  With no other real options, he starts to train full-time and winds up being a last-minute replacement for an injured fighter in the Sparta tournament.

Don't fighters usually show off their chests and abs?

You can figure out where the basic plot goes from there.  Yes, both men are unknown underdogs.  Yes, family is of utmost importance to both brothers.  Yes, they have the good luck of being in opposite sides of the tournament bracket, which will allow the climax of the film to have brother fighting brother to win the tournament.  What will win the day: Tommy's fury, or Brendan's desperation?

Despite the familiar and predictable plot, Warrior stands out with some excellent performances.  Joel Edgerton was quite good as the workhorse for the film; his was the character with the most relatable and understandable emotions, and he conveyed these emotions well.  Edgerton also gave an impressive physical performance; his character's style --- wear 'em down and make them submit --- matches his age and body type.  He was very convincing as an underdog that could, in the right circumstances, win.

Like Rocky, he blocks their punches with his face until they get tired

Tom Hardy's performance was much more visceral.  Thanks to the bulk he put on for the role and the crazy eyes he showed during the fight scenes, Hardy looked and acted like an angry violent man.  His non-fighting scenes were fine --- he certainly had more of a Philadelphia accent than Edgerton --- but it was how fully he threw himself into the furious physicality of his role that impressed me.

Where'd his neck go?

The rest of the cast was decent.  Nick Nolte had a fairly complex role and he showed off a bit; Nolte's the sort of actor that seems to meet the difficulty level of his role, so it was nice to see him playing a part that relied on hints and subtleties in the script.  Jennifer Morrison was fine, but her character's logic bothered me; she bounced too easily from being protective to supportive for my liking, and she switched over at the worst possible time.  Kurt Angle was cast to basically serve as the Russian MMA bogeyman, and he certainly looked fierce, although I don't think that required much acting.  Noah Emmerich made a brief appearance as a somewhat mean bank officer, which is not surprising, since he always seems to play heels.  Kevin Dunn was inconsequential as the principal at Brendan's school.  Rounding out the notable cast, Frank Grillo looked the part of a physical trainer, complete with stupid haircut, but I found him considerably less annoying than his character might have been.


Gavin O'Connor directed Warrior, and I thought he did a pretty good job.  At its core, Warrior is an extremely predictable film.  O'Connor makes sure to do it very well, though.  Better than simply telling the story competently, though, is the fact that O'Connor invests a lot of effort in the dramatic scenes.  The acting is very well done --- I would argue that it is far better than the script deserved --- and those scenes are powerful enough to make you forget that you know in your heart exactly how the film will end.  You will probably have at least a moment where you don't know which brother you want to win the championship, and that is a huge accomplishment for O'Connor's direction.  I also liked how he handled certain obligatory scenes.  Yes, there is a training montage, but it goes by faster because O'Connor splits up the screen to show both brothers training at the same time.  I thought the fight scenes were shot very well; my wife and I agreed that if real UFC fights were as exciting as these scenes, we might actually give a crap about MMA.  Honestly, I was not excited about this movie because I don't care about mixed martial arts.  I was pleasantly surprised to not only care about the characters in Warrior, but I genuinely enjoyed the fight scenes, too.

"Are you sure you want to fight this guy?"

Warrior certainly has its flaws, though.  The familiar story is the most obvious example, but the script isn't very good, either.  Even if you ignore some of the boring dialogue, the script is plagued with shallow characters with poorly explained motives (although the cast does a fantastic job of disguising that) and a climax that is missing falling action and explicit conflict resolution.  And it is pretty ridiculous to believe that two unknown fighters --- one considered too old to compete and the other apparently without a valid US ID --- would be able to enter a highly competitive 16-man tournament for a large prize.  Even if that was believable, none of the fighters are described as UFC fighters; I understand why Anderson Silva wouldn't want to play a loser, but the script references the UFC, and yet none of the fighters are supposed to be current UFC champions or contenders.  Really?  Not even for $5 million?  That makes no sense to me.

Despite some logical gaps, the emotional performances were enough to keep me engaged with Warrior.  Whenever I felt a knowing eye-roll coming on, the acting of Hardy and Edgerton drew me back into the story.  Knowing (or guessing) the ending doesn't hurt this movie --- it's all about caring for the characters, instead.

Animal Kingdom

The DVD case for Animal Kingdom has a quote from a critic, calling this "Australia's answer to GoodFellas."  That's a bold statement.  It did win seven Australian Film Institute awards and was nominated for five more.  Granted, I don't know what it was up against in Australia --- did AC/DC or silverchair act in any movies this year? --- but that's still pretty impressive.  Jacki Weaver was even nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, so it's not just the Aussies that like this movie.  But this is America, home of the gangster movie.  How does Animal Kingdom stack up?

Joshua Cody's (James Frecheville) mother has died from a heroin overdose, so he goes to live with his estranged grandmother, "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver).  Smurf is mother to one of the more notorious gangs in Australia.  Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the eldest, is into armed robbery; Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a major drug dealer; Darren (Luke Ford), the youngest, just kind of follows his brothers' lead; Baz Brown (Joel Edgerton), a brother by everything except blood, is Pope's partner in crime and appears to be the brains of the group.  Joshua is only eighteen, so he's not exactly running in the same circles as the other Codys, but their problems quickly become his own.

Around this time, the Melbourne task force for armed robbery was under a lot of pressure for apprehending a suspicious number of newly deceased suspects; they were approaching suspects (that were probably guilty) and, instead of arresting them, shooting them dead without cause.  Word on the street was that Pope is next on their list, so he is in hiding by the time Joshua moves in to the Cody house.  The street was wrong, though; it was another member of the gang that is shot dead by police, unarmed, in a grocery store parking lot.  That sort of aggression cannot go unchallenged in high stakes cops-and-robbers; the Codys decide to murder some police officers to send a message.  It's not like they aren't suspects, though, so the entire family gets picked up for questioning, including Joseph.  He hasn't been raised around crime, though, and the rest of the family starts to get nervous over what he may or may not have said.  Inspector Leckie (Guy Pearce) begins paying special attention to Joseph, which unnerves the Codys even more.  The film opens with a voice-over from Joseph, where he explains that all criminals are afraid, even if they don't realize it, because they all know that theirs will not be a happy ending.  How can Joseph live with people who fear him being used to hurt them?  How can family solve a problem like that?  Who will make the choices that must be made for survival?  Can they all live happily ever after?  All these questions, and more, will be answered in the next exciting episode of...Animal Kingdom!

...and we're back.  This isn't exactly the sort of plot you usually associate with GoodFellas, is it?  Right off the bat, the film starts off with a downer (heroin-dead mother) and it doesn't ever become fun.  Joshua never witnesses the perks of being a gangster.  There is no romanticizing a life of crime here.  Instead, this film focuses on what is typically the final third of any gangster film: the investigation and apprehension of the gang.  It does that very well, in fact.  The film is believable, the characters are cutthroat, and the pace suits the plot.  This is David Michod's feature film debut as a writer and/or director, and I was impressed with how well he told this story and how he handled the actors.

Speaking of actors, all good gangster movies need a few standout characters.  Despite his age, James Frecheville was very impressive in his feature film debut.  It's not like he put on an acting showcase or anything, but his performance might be one of the best sullen teenager bits I've ever seen; teens are surly and not terribly talkative to their families, and Frecheville captured that attitude perfectly.  He wasn't terribly interesting, but that wasn't his job.  The star of the movie was undoubtedly Ben Mendelsohn as Pope.  As a person, Mendelsohn looks unassuming, even a little nerdy.  He takes that awkwardness and transforms it into something creepy and frightening in this movie.  It's not even what he does (at least at first), it's how he stares at people.  Jacki Weaver's performance was also noteworthy; I was waiting for her Oscar-worthy moment for almost the entire film, but it was worth it when it came.  She was a creepy, cold-hearted bitch, and yet did it in a very motherly way.  The rest of the cast was good, but more or less filled their parts.  Nobody was bad, but there were only a few choice parts in the movie.  I would like to point out Guy Pearce's respectable mustache:

That's not teen surliness; it's cop 'stache envy

While I liked the characters, I was disappointed that I didn't actually get to see the rising action in this story.  Would it have been too much to ask for one armed robbery scene, or one drug deal gone bad?  Australian movies (the ones I have seen lately, anyway) seem intent on taking all the fun out of violent films.  Yes, this was impressively plausible.  The ending was pretty awesome, too.  I just wish the film had even one moment where things seemed all right, if only to contrast with the tense atmosphere of the rest of the movie.  I also would have liked to see more of Smurf in the movie; the idea of a mother actively supporting her gangster sons is an intriguing one, and I think her part could have been bigger.  You know, looking at it with a bit of distance, I suppose that this movie does share one thing in common with GoodFellas; both have main characters that are nowhere near as frightening or interesting as their crazy friends.

Despite that, this is definitely more character-driven than I expected.  Without that robbery gone bad or whatever to begin the film, Animal Kingdom latches on to the faults of each respective Cody brother as they handle this less than ideal situation.  I'm not a huge fan of voice-overs --- they are often tacked on because the movie is hard to understand otherwise --- but Joseph's bit at the start of the movie acts as the theme to the film, and was very well done.  If the movie had any variance in mood, or if Joseph was a more charismatic character, I think this movie would have moved from "worth viewing" to "seriously awesome."