Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After I caught Willard in the theater several years ago, I heard another theatergoer remark, "Worst.  Movie.  Ever."  One of my friends (or possibly, me --- it's been a while) loudly countered with, "I don't know about you guys, but I paid to see a movie about rats, and that's what I got."  Expectations can be a tricky thing with movies.  Too high, and you're likely to be disappointed, too low and you'll forgive just about anything.  I was a pretty big Transformers fan as a child, so I was super excited when the first film went into production; then I realized that Michael Bay was directing it, and those expectations dropped considerably.  I've seen all three Transformers movies in theaters now (four, counting the animated one), and I have entered each film with the same expectation: giant robots fighting each other.  Sure, other filler stuff might happen, but that is what the movies need to satisfy me.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon begins with a Transformer spacecraft crash landing on the moon in the early 1960s.  The knowledge of that crash created the space race, which culminated in the Apollo 11 space walk.  You might have thought the space race was a time of scientific achievement and ridiculous funding, but it was all a ruse; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's true mission was to investigate an enormous space wreck.  It makes you wonder what Tom Hanks would have done if Apollo 13 had been successful, eh?

In the present time, the Autobots (the good Trannies) are spending their time hunting for any left over Decepticons (the bad Trannies) that survived Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  To kill time between giant robot fights, they help out the US government by apparently fighting terrorism.

Presumably pictured above: a member of Seal Team 6

On a mission in Chernobyl (tourism motto: the playground of Eastern Europe), the Autobots find a fuel cell from The Ark, an Autobot ship that was damaged as it left the Transformer home planet of Cybertron.  Autobot leader Optimus Prime and the other good Trannies head out to the moon and investigate the wreckage, finding the inactive (but not dead) Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) and some important devices.  These devices, called "pillars," can create a space bridge capable of transporting large amounts of stuff across the universe.  Like what?  Oh, I don't know, maybe...an invading force of Decepticons?  Clearly, Sentinel Prime and the pillars must be kept safe from the Decepticons and their leader, Megatron.  One thing that troubles me, though, is what happened to the several hundred other pillars that were supposed to be on The Ark...

Oh, and there are some stupid human subplots that involve Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) trying to find a joe job and dealing with the pressures of living with a fantastically successful girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) who could pass as an underwear model.  These stresses help shape Sam into an ungrateful, whiny man-child and lead to all sorts of awkward and "comical" interactions with the likes of John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk, and a slumming Frances McDormand.

Yeah, I'd be pissed if I wore white that day, too.

I know that the acting in this movie is probably the furthest thing from your mind, but I have to comment on it.  I hate Shia LaBeouf in this movie.  He is such a dick to everyone else and he keeps getting rewarded for it.  There was one moment, where he had to choose between his girlfriend (who he can have sex with) and Optimus Prime (who he probably can't have sex with), that could have made up for the rest of his bitchy performance --- but that incredibly difficult decision ended up having no impact on the greater plot, so who cares what happened?  I thought Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who more or less replaced Megan Fox as Shia's romantic lead, did a surprisingly good job in her role.  Sure, she was a damsel in distress, had no good lines of dialogue, a bizarre fetish for rabbits, and apparently was hiding a Machiavellian streak for most of the film, but she did a pretty solid job of what she had to work with.  I have to admit, though, that my favorite scene in the movie is the extended shot of her staring blankly into the distance as Transformers blow stuff up behind her.  That made me laugh out loud.  As for the rest of the cast, Patrick Dempsey was MWA-HA-HA evil, Frances McDormand was a bureaucrat, John Malkovich was comic relief, and Ken Jeong delivered the same ridiculous performance that is normally expected out of him.  Nobody was great, but nobody was awful (although that depends on your Jeong tolerance).  Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson return as the sexiest robot fighters the US military has to offer, as do the eternally chatty/embarrassing/migrane-inducing Witwicky parents, played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White.  How these characters have all survived three robot battles is beyond logic.  Speaking of which, John Turturro returns to cash another paycheck as a goofy former secret government agent, this time accompanied by his fey butler, played by Alan Tudyk.  These two are responsible for some of the worst lines in the movie, but I'll give Tudyk credit for actually making me smile a couple of times.

As with the other Transformers movies, the coolest characters are still the giant robots.  We see the return of Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving again), and Starscream, as well as some of the supporting Autobots, but only Bumblebee and Optimus get a decent amount of screen time.  Megatron spends the film with a gaping hole in his skull that is being slowly repaired by insect Transformers and I only noticed Starscream when he stopped by to chat with Megatron.  The two big additions to the robo-cast this year were Sentinel Prime and Shockwave.

If they made a fourth film, I want an Autobot with fat Elvis sideburns.

Sentinel was voiced by Leonard Nimoy and, for reasons I still can't comprehend, has a goatee.  Sure, it's a robotic goatee that probably transforms into something else (a Van Dyke, maybe?), but it's damned odd.  Anyway, I wasn't impressed with his design or the "unpredictable" twists he provides to the general plot.

I was similarly under-impressed with Shockwave.  He was the toughest villain in the movie and he was more of an ominous general that commands the big worm-looking thing than anything else.  I don't even remember him transforming into anything.  Whatever, he had a pretty sweet final scene, even if they did change up his character design significantly from the cartoon.

Shockwave: bustiest of all Decepticons!

I've never been a big fan of Michael Bay, either as a director or a producer.  At his best, he makes nonsensical action movies with meaningless catch phrases.  At his worst, he combines spectacular destruction sequences with extreme melodrama.  The Transformers series, to me, has always leaned toward Bay's worst tendencies.  Yes, the action sequences are pretty damn cool, especially for fans of the toys.  The human elements in the stories, though, are just an annoying distraction from robots punching each other.  This time around, Bay managed to make Shia LaBeouf far less likable than ever before and he threw in as much random supporting character "humor" as he could, in an attempt to disguise a paper-thin plot.  I'll give Bay credit, though.  The fight in Chicago looked pretty cool.  But there was at least ninety minutes of crappy movie before that.

It was a lot of fun to see giant robots destroy downtown Chicago, though.  As a Chicagoland native, there was a little thrill whenever I saw something I recognized getting blown up or ravaged by a giant Transformer worm thing (that transforms into...?).  The action scenes in general were all loud and fast, and (most importantly) featured giant robots fighting each other.  My complaint with the action in this movie is the same as with all the movies.  Aside from Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Megatron --- who are all given prominent speaking roles and are visually different from the other 'bots --- most of the fighting robots were interchangeable.  The Decepticons rarely had any colors to differentiate them from each other and the Autobots were still poorly developed, even after two previous films.

The winner of MTV's "Pimp My Autobot"

Action scenes would happen, and I would catch the gist of them (good robots vs. evil robots, right?), but there was rarely a time where I could explain who was actually fighting on screen, why, or where they were, in comparison to the other characters.  I was also a little uncomfortable with Optimus Prime acting as a vengeance machine.  He actually states that he (and the Autobots) will kill all the Decepticons.  That's awfully final and brutal for a hero, Optimus.  At the end of the movie, he actually executes a Decepticon --- the other character is begging for mercy and he snuffs them!  That's some cold shit for a PG-13 movie.

Action something something explosion

For every fight scene that entertained me or made me geek-out a little, there was about thirty minutes of truly awful movie.  The emotional weight of the story rested on sympathizing with Sam Witwicky --- who grew up wealthy and has only dated model-quality women --- as he tries to find a job where he is important.  Those are readily found in entry-level positions, right?  At least we get to see him have trouble committing to a beautiful woman for the second straight movie.  His whining about finding a job is more annoying as we see how "comically" bad he is at interviewing; the interviews were another thing --- who manages to get five or six sit-down interviews in the same day?  Apparently, someone who wears jeans to big-boy job interviews in Washington, DC.  Jackass.

There is a lot to hate about Transformers: Dark of the Moon.  The plot is dull and predictable.  The script tries and fails to be funny over and over again.  The action is often confusing; the cinematography frequently made it difficult who was fighting who.  The acting was mediocre at best.  The movie was two-and-a-half hours long, with the only fun stuff in the extended final 45-minute fight scene!  They never try to explain why the Decepticons pick Chicago as a place to stage their invasion!!  Wouldn't their evil plan cause the Earth to crash into Cybertron?!?  Most Decepticons on Earth take the form of cars; when Sam is running away from a man who admitted to working for the Decepticons, he hops into a car that was owned by that man!!!  And how bad were the special effects in the early scenes that bridged the gaps between 1960s news reels and the rest of the movie?  Worst Presidential impressions ever.

And yet, none of that really seems to matter.  This is a movie about giant robots fighting each other.  Do you really expect anything else?  From a quality film perspective, this film deserves a pitiful rating of

From the perspective of someone looking for giant robots killing each other, the movie is actually much, much more entertaining.  If you combine that love of action with a desire to laugh at Michael Bay, Transformers: Dark of the Moon gets a solid Lefty Gold rating.  Watching Chicago get ruined is pretty entertaining, but the rest of the film's awfulness more or less balances that out.

I would bump the entire movie up six stars if this scene actually happened, but sadly, it is just someone making great use of Photoshop.

State of Grace

“You ever see a dog explode?”  That’s one of the first lines of dialogue in State of Grace.  I was kind of hoping that it would be an indicator of how the movie would progress --- weird, morbid dialogue is usually pretty fun, right? ---  but doesn’t really come up again.  Instead, this film turns out to be a story about deception and loyalty.  Eh, I guess that's okay, too.

Terry Noonan (Sean Penn) hasn’t been in Hell’s Kitchen for years when he finally shows up in a bar and surprises his old best friend, Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman).  Jackie is a soldier in the Kitchen’s Irish mob; he’s not too bright, but he is funny, forever drunk, and very dangerous.  And he’s loyal to a fault.  Jackie welcomes Terry home with no reservations, and pretty soon he talks his brother, Frankie Flannery (Ed Harris), the head of their gang, into letting Terry work for them.  Being back in the Kitchen throws Terry into his old rut of trouble-making and drinking; more importantly, though, it reignites his childhood romance with Jackie’s sister, Kathleen (Robin Wright), who wants nothing to do with her brothers’ scene.  While Terry and Jackie are doing strong-arm work on the streets, Frankie is busy trying to negotiate a deal that would ally his gang with the big boys, the New York mafia.  Little does Frankie realize that his newest hire, Terry, is actually an undercover cop intent on bringing him down.

State of Grace is, for all intents and purposes, a showcase for the three main actors.  Sean Penn loves to play characters that are wracked with guilt, and Terry Noonan’s duplicitous role is right up his alley.  Penn’s performance is about what you might expect from him; he is good, but likes to overact in scenes where his character is sad or feels guilty.  Ed Harris does a much better job, internalizing most of his character’s conflicts.  I wish he was a more charismatic leader, but I’m not going to fault his performance on what the screenplay demanded.  The real star here, though, is Gary Oldman.  Nobody plays “dangerous” like Gary Oldman; his character just oozes sweat, grease, whiskey and blood.  In the hands of a less capable actor, Jackie Flannery might have come off as a gunman with a dark sense of humor (which is still pretty cool), but here is charismatic and magnetic.  Oldman makes Jackie into the center of every scene, whether by being playful, scary, or just drunk.  This certainly isn’t Oldman at his subtlest, but he's an actor whose most memorable performances are often the most over-the-top.

Is he about to punch you, or order some whiskey?  I'll give even odds.

Being a crime drama, there are a lot of characters that pop up, some with more substantial roles than others.  Robin Wright was decent as the conflicted romantic lead, but neither her acting nor her character were anything special.  John Turturro was better as Terry’s unsympathetic police contact, but this is definitely not a Coen Brothers-style supporting role; he plays his part pretty straight.  R.D. Call, an actor that I was unfamiliar with, did a very good job as Frankie’s quiet but businesslike right hand man.  A surprisingly skinny John C. Reilly shows up as a luckless gambler, and he was pretty good.  After the past five or six years of mostly comedic roles, it can be easy to forget that Reilly was once one of the best dramatic supporting actors in the business.  Burgess Meredith also had a bit part, although it wasn’t exactly a scene-stealer.

Ennio Morricone composed the score to the film, but it was far from his best work.  Unlike his stellar work with Sergio Leone in the Man With No Name trilogy, this score was very much in the background of the picture.  When I saw Morricone’s name in the credits, I hoped for more, but this was just your stereotypical, boring score.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Phil Joanou’s direction, but it was decent.  I didn’t like the choice he made to keep Terry’s undercover status a secret for so long (almost 50 minutes!), when it was pretty obvious from the get-go.  Obviously, Joanou must have a decent touch with the actors, because he got some pretty strong performances.  I just wasn’t terribly impressed with the way the story was told.

Unfortunately, the story was the weakest part of this film, and it needed all the help it could get.  The last act of the script is just plain dumb, testosterone-fueled action, completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.  I don’t think Kathleen’s character added much of anything to the overall story, and I would have preferred Terry’s friendship with Jackie be the focus.  Splitting Terry’s devotion between the two characters made his inevitable betrayal less interesting, because there was always the slim chance that Kathleen might forgive him for arresting her brothers.  Oh, and the whole waiting-an-hour-to-reveal-Terry-is-a-cop thing?  Completely unnecessary.  It was implied in the very first scene and was beyond obvious.  Really, the only surprises this movie has are what Frankie is willing to do to clinch his deal with the mafia.  Unfortunately, the focus of the story is on Terry.

State of Grace isn’t a bad movie, but it definitely underachieves.  With the talented actors here, most directors would be able to make a classic.  Instead, what we have is a less complicated version of The Departed.  Gary Oldman’s performance, though, is certainly worth watching.  It’s just too bad it was spent on an otherwise mediocre movie.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Woo!  Let's hear it for remakes!  WOO!  Yeah...I may be overcompensating.  Let's hear it for train-based thrillers, then?  Woo...?

In the mid-70s, Walter Matthau starred in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.  While making a movie about criminals with a master plan was certainly not new at the time, the sarcastic and light-hearted tone of the main characters added some unexpected levity to a subject matter that would normally have been deadly serious.  It is that tone, more than the crime itself, that made One Two Three a success.

Fast forward thirty years or so, and it is naturally time to remake this movie and update it to modern times.  The Taking of Pelham 123 (check it out --- the numbers aren't spelled out any more...edgy!) makes a few important departures from the original film.  Four armed men seize control of the New York subway train leaving Pelham station at 1:23, led by a man who will eventually identify himself as "Ryder...with a Y" (John Travolta).  Ryder alerts the on-duty train dispatcher, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), and demands $10 million in ransom for the hostages he has.  The city of New York has one hour to comply before Ryder starts killing hostages.  That's all well and good, and the mayor of New York (James Gandolfini) is willing to pay the ransom, but how does Ryder expect to escape?

I am not the biggest fan in the world of Tony Scott's direction, but the man has made some pretty good movies over the years.  This might not be one of them.  The movie has plenty of scenes shown in fast motion, often followed up with extremely blurry slow-motion shots.  Is it because the camera is showing things passing by from the train's perspective, and then slowing down to show something important?  No, I think it's done simply to look cool.  And it does, it just doesn't have anything to do with the story or characters, and that irritates me.  The rest of his direction is fine, I guess.  I think he hasn't been bringing out the best in Denzel in their past few collaborations, but even mediocre Denzel is still pretty solid.

This is the third time Tony Scott has directed Denzel Washington, after Man on Fire and Deja Vu, and I am very surprised that they keep working together.  Sure, Man on Fire was awesome, but Denzel is capable of a lot more than what Scott demands of him in these thrillers.  Yes, he was fine in this movie.  His character was changed significantly from the original film to add depth and moral ambiguity, and Washington conveys those differences well.  It's just not a great role in a great movie.  John Travolta is partly to blame for that.  I hate it when Travolta plays villains.  For some reason, playing morally bankrupt characters gives him a license to overact and deliver incredibly stupid lines.  It all began back in Broken Arrow, and he has managed to find the most ridiculous lines in every mean character he's played since.
(Link) View more Riley Hale Sound Clips and Vic Deakins Sound Clips
This movie's winner for my "John Travolta 'Yeah...ain't it cool' Award" is:

"[Walter Garber] sounds sexy.  He'd be my bitch in prison."

Thanks for the insight, John.  Basically, Travolta misses the mark on being sinister and instead is an over-animated egomaniac with a "cool" mustache. The supporting cast is full of really good actors, but their characters aren't too spectacular.  James Gandolfini is the best of the bunch, with Luis Guzman and John Turturro playing pretty vanilla characters that are there just to propel the plot.  That really disappointed me, since I like all three actors.

I would also like to call out Brian Helgeland's script.  While Helgeland is capable of some pretty great work, he leans more toward bad writing.  This isn't one of his better efforts.  Since the movie is a remake it's easy to see what was changed in the script.  Helgeland added copious amounts of profanity, unnecessary car crashes, and the typical movie stereotype of New Yorkers (you know...loud-mouthed jerks).  Personally, I think the writing matches up pretty well with Scott's jittery camera work, but it's not terribly thrilling and just turning up the attitude of the bad guys doesn't fix that core problem.  And what was with changing the names of the bad guys?  In the original, the villains had code names, so they couldn't be identified; they went by colors, an idea later copied in Reservoir Dogs.  Instead of sticking with the original smart idea (and drawing comparisons to Dogs), he came up with..."Ryder with a Y"?  What, am I supposed to infer that this train rider is a rebel because he's only sometimes a vowel?  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  My least favorite thing about the plot is Ryder's motive. SPOILER: Ryder is already rich, and doesn't need the ransom money.  He already has $2 million, and it's been invested in gold for about a decade.  This is all just to make him obscenely wealthy.  What a boring motive for a villain.

This isn't a bad movie, but it's just not that great.  They updated a movie by removing all the charm from it, replacing it with random F-bombs and Travolta-stache.  The cast is very talented, but the script isn't very interesting, which is hard to do with a heist movie.  It is fast-paced and manages to keep the puzzle pieces falling slowly enough so that there is always something to learn, but it's just not enough.  This is just a bland product with some good ingredients.

Clockers

Hey...doesn't that movie poster look familiar?  It should.  Depending on who you ask, it's either an homage to or blatant theft of the poster for Anatomy of a Murder.  I don't want to get into an argument over intellectual property vs. public entertainment, so I'll go with the homage idea; as an homage, I guess we can assume that this movie will, like Anatomy of a Murder, examine one crime through the lens of somewhat amoral characters.  Well, this is a Spike Lee "joint," and he doesn't usually trade in films dealing with complex emotions, so I think that's a pretty safe assumption.

Clockers is based on Richard Price's novel of the same name, and he co-wrote the screenplay with Lee.  The title refers to a slang term for drug dealers; if you're clocking, that means you're dealing.  Strike (Mekhi Pfifer, in his film debut) is a low-level dealer in the Brooklyn projects.  He's not a total scrub, but he's not big time enough to have more than a few subordinates.  One day, the big boss, Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), takes Strike aside and tells him that another drug dealer, Darryl Adams (frequent Lee bit player Steve White), is stealing from him.  And that is not tolerable; after making sure Strike has access to a gun, Rodney tells him that Darryl has "got to be got," and Strike needs to make sure he gets got.  Or gotten.  I'm not sure how to conjugate slang.  So, the clear implication is that Rodney wants Strike to kill Darryl.  Why?  Well, Rodney learned a long time ago that, if you are going to trust someone completely, you have to have the ability to blackmail them, just in case; if Strike is going to move up the not-so-corporate ladder, Rodney needs some serious dirt on him.  Realizing that Darryl works in a fast food joint next to a bar, Strike heads to the bar to drink a little liquid courage.  Inside, he meets his hard-working and honest brother, Victor (Isaiah Washington), and tells him that Darryl is a woman beater.  That riles Victor up some, but not nearly enough to get Strike off the job, so he leaves.

Later that night, Detective Klein (Harvey Keitel) is investigating the murder of Darryl Adams.  This is not a police procedural, though.  The police have a confession to the crime from Victor; Detective Klein doesn't buy the story, though, since Victor has a family, two jobs, and a story full of holes.  Klein concludes that Victor is covering for his scummy brother, Strike.  He doesn't have any proof, though.  Meanwhile, Strike is getting respect and admiration from Rodney and is even mentoring a young kid in the thug life.  Nothing screws up the upward mobility of a clocker like attention from the police, though.

I haven't seen many of Spike Lee's movies, but I can say with some knowledge that he is not a fantastic cinematographer or a symbolic filmmaker.  He comes up with a story and tells it, and in that he is competent.  Despite not having billing above the title, Mekhi Pfifer does pretty well in his first movie role, and it's the lead.  He's not great, but he does convey the proper complexity of emotion needed for someone who wants to improve his life, but is surrounded by trouble.  Harvey Keitel shares some of the spotlight with Pfifer as a detective that is more stubborn than caring, and his approach to the crime is unusually passive-agressive, which was interesting to watch. I wish John Turturro got a little more attention as his partner, not because I liked his character, but because he is usually fun to watch as an actor.  Actually, most of the police suffer from underimaginative dialogue; throw a racist term here and an inappropriate joke there, and you have 90% of the cop lines in the movie.  Delroy Lindo was pretty good as the manipulative drug kingpin and Keith David rounded out the main cast well as the angry parent figure in the projects.  Michael Imperioli, Sticky Fingaz, and Isaiah Washington are all solid in their small supporting roles.

The problem with this film is that the character of Strike is completely unsympathetic.  Why should I care about the struggles of a drug dealer that is willing to let his brother take a murder rap for him?  The movie spends a lot of time trying to come up with reasons (because he drinks Yoo-Hoo all the time, because he likes toy trains, because he appears to have stomach ulcers), but it's a waste of time because those answers just aren't good enough. You can argue that Harvey Keitel is the protagonist of the film, but that's not much better.  He's not pursuing this case because he needs to solve a crime (Victor confessed), or because he thinks it will make a difference (he doesn't), or because he needs to know the truth.  He's doing it because he thinks he's right, which  isn't as altruistic of a reason as it may sound.  Since Strike isn't supposed to be likable, it is important for Detective Klein to be.  Klein isn't a bad guy, but he's not very likable, either.

I get that this movie is about the self-perpetuating cycle of crime in the inner city.  I get that this movie isn't going to provide answers to that problem.  What I don't understand is why I should care about this story.  While Delroy Lindo and Mekhi Pfifer have pretty well-rounded characters, you can't root for them because they do bad things and don't care.  In fact, you can argue that they got to get got.  The police aren't much better as largely indifferent guys, just punching a time clock for their pay.  The most sympathetic and likable character in the whole film is Keith David's and he is barely in the movie.  There are so many examples of police procedural stories where you care about the police involved (Law and Order: Jersey Shore Unit), and there are many movies where you care about drug dealers either because they're sympathetic or charismatic (Boyz n the Hood, Scarface).  Sometimes, you get a blend of these two types of storytelling (the excellent The Wire), and sometimes the crime itself becomes the interesting part of the movie.  I see none of that here.  There are a number of good performances and no bad ones (except for Spike Lee's cameo, of course) and the story is told decently well.  When it was all said and done, though, I just didn't care.

To Live and Die In L.A.

It is weird how wildly a director's output can vary.  William Friedkin directed The French Connection, The Exorcist, and The Boys In the Band, all very well directed movies, and all classics.  On the other hand, Friedkin also directed Cruising, Jade, and the least exciting hand-to-hand combat movie ever, The Hunted.  While he may have an Oscar for Best Director, William Friedkin is not someone you can trust to make awesome movies every time out.  This time, though, he managed to make a good movie, seemingly against all odds.

The film stars William Petersen (of CSI fame) in his first major film role as a rough-and-tumble loose cannon Secret Service agent.  If this was a pitch meeting, I would say something like "He's gonna bring the bad guys to justice, even if he has to break the law to do it!"  Trite as that sound-byte is, it's a pretty good description of Petersen's character.  Of course, the loose cannon gets paired with the straight-laced partner, played by John Pankow (from Mad About You and Ally McBeal).  Pretty obvious, stereotypical stuff so far.  Since they're the Secret Service, they need criminals to chase.  John Turturro has a small role as a minor player, but the main villain is Willem Dafoe.  Dafoe is running a counterfeit operation and Petersen's original partner died while investigating it.  This puts a bee in Petersen's proverbial bonnet, and so the counterfeiter must be arrested, at all cost.

Obviously, the basic plot isn't anything special.  The script isn't particularly memorable, either, at least in terms of dialogue.  It's not bad, mind you, and Turturro's character in particular has some nice lines, but there are some odd choices.  For some reason, Petersen uses the word "amigo" as a synonym for "wuss," as in, "I'm sorry you feel that way, amigo, but I'm gonna do this my way."  Yeah, this is LA in 1985, but that's just awkward every time it's used.  Ooooh!  Petersen's partner, playing an aging cop about to retire, does say "I'm getting too old for this shit," which predates Lethal Weapon by two years.  So, I guess that's memorable, although always attributed to Danny Glover.

Okay, so the plot and the dialogue aren't too special.  As I watched this, I didn't think the characters or the script were too special, either, but then it got interesting.  The movie is progressing along the well-tread path of most 80s cop movies, but then Petersen's character makes some odd choices.  These choices aren't your usual M. Night Shyamalan, out of nowhere, end-of-the-movie twists.  They make sense for the character; they're just not in the top twenty logical choices sane people would make.  This is where the film differentiates itself.  The characters are well established, but you don't know them well enough to know exactly what they will do.  And yet, the choices they make, and how they react to things, still make sense.

Petersen's character is a classic hard boiled detective; he's smart, a world-class jerk, takes risks, and would rather be right than be legal.  Pankow does a good job as the reluctant partner and both characters develop naturally as the story progresses.  Dafoe (who is surprisingly not hideous in 1985) does a good job as the pragmatic villain.  Sometimes, movies make white collar criminals represent the extremes of the criminal world.  Either they're weak, or they have a hundred tough guys willing to do their evil bidding.  Dafoe is somewhere in the middle and I appreciate that.  It's hard to believe that Petersen, Dafoe and Turturro were still a year away from starring in classics like Manhunter, Platoon, and The Color of Money, respectively, because their performances here show how ready they were for a larger audience.

This movie is rightly described as a noir.  Noir might be my favorite film genre, at least in part because the bad noirs rarely make it onto DVD.  Still, the simple plots, tough guy leads, and character-driven stories are always welcome in my home theater (such a it is).  While this movie has weak points, the good definitely outweighs the bad.  If it could have overcome some cliches and drawn me into the plot sooner, this would be a great film.  Still, this stands as one of the best noir films of the last thirty years.