Movie Box Review

There's a scene in Paul Weitz's new film BEING FLYNN where Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), the alcoholic, narcissistic, pitiful, self-destructive father of Nick (Paul Dano), reads to his son from a publisher's rejection letter.  Jonathan sees himself as one of the greatest of all American writers--albeit unpublished--his only peers being Mark Twain and J.D.Salinger, and he considers it a great compliment that in rejecting his novel, the publisher termed it a "virtuoso display of personality."  The phrase comes awfully close to describing DeNiro's performance and Being Flynn itself.

Being Flynn is based on Nick Flynn's memoir "Another Bullshit Day In Suck City," and it tells a mostly pathetic and depressing story.  Jonathan was arrested for bad checks when Nick was just a child, and even when he was released from prison, he was never a meaningful part of Nick's life.  He did, however, send his son scores of letters, mostly desperately self-aggrandizing, and his presence overshadowed Nick's youth and the single mother (Julianne Moore) who diligently raised him but ultimately committed suicide.  Nick, passive and rootless, and also an aspiring writer, drifted into a job at a homeless shelter, and it was there that he and his father, who had been sleeping on the streets, truly met, and and the two began a painful, dysfunctional relationship. 

This is extremely difficult material, much of it no picnic to watch, and Weitz, whose work ranges from the lovely About A Boy to the execrable Little Fockers, doesn't find a tone to make it work.  The film's Jonathan is all mannerism with very little substance.  While it's great to see DeNiro stretching to give a real performance, something he's rarely done in the past 15 years (it's hard to avoid the feeling that Weitz and DeNiro felt so mutually disgusted with Little Fockers that they both needed to cleanse themselves afterward with something serious), he never finds Jonathan's center.  His work feels full of effort and yet superficial.  From the actor who gave us indelible portraits in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, it's subpar.  

DeNiro isn't helped by Weitz's script, which while heartfelt never really draws a bead on who Jonathan is.  For all its gritty detail--no recent Hollywood product (even the indie part of Hollywood) has dealt so seriously with homelessness in quite a while--the film sidesteps complications and settles for bland emotion (and toward the end, sentimentality) too often.  

Dano has a more straightforward role:  he's the guy who hits bottom (getting to know his father leads him to some serious drug use) and manages to climb back up, turning out to be terrifically talented to boot.  Yet while his arc is the more simplistic and undeveloped part of the film, Dano's own odd qualities as an actor make Nick more interesting for a while.  Dano doesn't have a lot of gears, at least not that he's shown thus far--his killer app is a sort of intense distraction that can be played for humor or for surprisingly powerful repressed anger--but they serve him well here.  Olivia Thirlby, as the only sane person around, does so much with very little that one wishes she'd been given more of a part, and Moore, only briefly on screen, is her usual expert self.   

Being Flynn is a hard movie to recommend, because the hard truth is that filmmakers who deal with challenging, uncomfortable material have far less margin for error.  The work is transcendent or it's trite, and Weitz's film isn't transcendent.  It's intermittently powerful and worth watching for some strong scenes and interesting performances, without ever quite achieving a satisfying whole.

CBS was so confident in its returning schedule this season that it barely ordered any back-up shows (and it wasn't far wrong).  Its sole midseason drama, the high-profile cop drama now known as NYC 22 (after previous flirtations with Rookies and The 2-2) will hit the network's schedule starting April 15 on Sundays at 10PM.

NYC 22 won't actually dislodge any existing CBS show, as CSI Miami will have exhausted its 19-episode order for the season by the time tthe new series debuts.  (It appears, at least for now, that CBS will keep The Good Wife on Sundays as NYC 22's lead-in.)  Created by big-time novelist and screenwriter Richard Price (Sea of Love, The Color of Money, Clockers, etc) and with Robert DeNiro as one of the executive producers, NYC 22 had a promising but not completely successful pilot (see our pilot report Here)--however, in the months since it was produced, there's been plenty of time to improve the show, so let's hope for the best.

NEW YEAR'S EVE:  Not At Any Price - Calling it a "Sit-Com" Insults TV

NEW YEAR'S EVE is such a calculated piece of commercial manufacture that it deserves a Powerpoint presentation more than a review.  Although strictly speaking it isn't a sequel to Valentine's Day (and in fact a few of the same actors turn up in this one playing different roles), everything has been done to duplicate the style and execution of that $216M worldwide grosser, including hiring the same screenwriter (Katherine Fugate) and director (Garry Marshall).  But the joke's on them, because this one is even worse than Valentine's was.

The setting this time is NY rather than LA, but the format is the same:  intercut between a dozen mostly  romantic comedy storylines featuring recognizable actors, all taking place on the same holiday night.  (It's quite cost-efficient because since the episodes are mostly self-contained, the actors are each only needed for a week or so, making them available at a bargain price.)  That date, of course, is December 31, and the focal point of the various stories is Times Square, the dropping of the ball, and the splashy party that's supposed to be taking place afterward. 

To the extent there's any one central character, it's probably the woman trying to make sure the ball-drop goes smoothly (Hilary Swank, uncomfortable as usual in a standard Hollywood role).  The other stories radiate outward from that.  We get the rock star singing as part of the Times Square festivities (Jon Bon Jovi) and his ex who happens to be catering the party (Katherine Heigl); the back-up singer (Lea Michele) caught in an elevator--let me repeat that, caught in an elevator, because that plot hasn't been used since 1964--with a neighbor who hates New Year's (Ashton Kutcher); the teen (Abigail Breslin) who's desperate to get to Times Square for the sake of a boy and her mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) who's trying to find her; the guy who works for the company throwing the party (Josh Duhamel) and has to be at a certain corner after midnight to meet the mystery potential love of his life; the drone office worker with tickets to the party (Michelle Pfeiffer) who offers them to a delivery boy (Zac Efron) if he'll fulfill her fantasies--and no, not those kinds of fantasies; and so on.  In a nearby hospital we also get a dying old guy who wants to see one last New Year's (Robert DeNiro) with the help of his nurse (Halle Berry) because he seemingly (accent on "seemingly") doesn't have any family, along with a truly cringe-inducing race between Jessica Biel and Sarah Paulson to be the first to give birth in the new year and win a cash prize--this one should have had a separate soundtrack, although screams of horror might have been more appropriate than a laugh track.  There are a few supposed mysteries about how the stories will connect, all easily guessable, moronic or both, and since this is a Garry Marshall movie, Hector Elizondo shows up.  And Ryan Seacrest.

Marshall has never been a subtle craftsmen, but his best romances have some grace and charm.  New Year's Eve, though, is a slack assembly of flat scenes, given the illusion of pace by the fact that double-digit plotlines are jumbled into 2 hours.  Worse even than the holes where laughs should have been is the shameless sentimentality that's wielded throughout with utter cynicism.  Even though he's considered an "actors' director," Marshall doesn't do any of the stars favors:  the cinematography by Charles Minsky is so ugly that many of the performers look awful, and there's no chemistry between any of the couples (particularly Heigl and Bon Jovi, whose scenes together are like a traffic accident).  It's embarrassing to see Sofia Vergara, consistently hilarious on Modern Family, reduced to playing a sidekick with a funny accent, and simply painful to watch Robert DeNiro, once one of the great actors of his day, collecting yet another bored paycheck.  Also, someone should have told Heigl that the last thing her career needed was a role where she constantly screams and complains stridently.  The survivors include Breslin, who is able to appear half-way human, and Pfeiffer and Efron, who have a ludicrous storyline but manage to skate above it.

Complaining about a movie like New Year's Eve is like complaining that the sun will go down in the evening:  with its cast, and the fact that it owns the romantic comedy genre for the next few weeks (Young Adult is only barely a comedy and definitely not a romance), it's going to make money.  Which means in a year or two, it may well be our duty to sit through "Fourth of July" or "First Night of Passover."  Sadly, the calendar will run out of holidays before Warners runs out of ways to exploit them.

The new KILLER ELITE takes little from Sam Peckinpah's 1975 action movie apart from its title (Peckinpah used "The" in his) and the general notion of mercenaries and ex-spies double-crossing each other.  This isn't a huge loss, as the 1975 version was part of Peckinpah's "fascinating but not good" period that also included Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (he essentially turned the movie into an allegory about Hollywood), which occupied the years before his career entered its final decline.   The 2011 reboot, directed by Gary McKendry in his feature debut, is considerably less fascinating and no better.

The script, written by McKendry and Matt Sherring, is based on a non-fiction book called "The Feather Men" by Ranulph Fiennes (in what was presumably a shared joke, that name is given to one of the assassins' targets in the film).  The fictionalized premise is nothing if not convoluted.  in 1980, Danny (Jason Statham) is a mercenary who's had a crisis of conscience and retired to a farm in Australia, where he re-meets a comely lass (Yvonne Strahovski, from Chuck) he'd known as a boy.  Of course, no movie mercenary is allowed to stay retired for long, and soon a sheik has kidnapped Danny's best friend Hunter (Robert DeNiro), and the ransom is that Danny has to perform the task Hunter was originally hired to do:  assassinate 3 British ex-SAS agents who had each killed one of the sheik's sons in the Oman war years earlier, but not before getting each of them on tape confessing to his particular killing.  Oh, and each murder has to look like an accident.

Danny, with the help of 2 associates (Dominic Purcell and Aden Young), gets to work eliminating the killers of the sheik's sons.  But the killings soon arouse the attention of the "Feather Men" (because their touch is light as--figure it out), a fellowhood of former SAS agents whose enforcer is Spike (Clive Owen).  Spike sets out to track down and kill the assassins.  

None of this, as directed by McKendry, is very exciting.  There's one rote action scene after another (the one fun scene, where Statham has to fight while bound to a chair, is showcased in the trailer), and the attempts to juice things up in the last reel with a succession of double-crosses doesn't help.  Also, the third act hinges on Danny, who had previously been completely honorable in all his actions, doing something sneaky that's both unconvincing and stupid, because inevitably he's going to be found out.  Danny is the only character who gets any kind of development, and his story is completely cliched; Spike is a complete cipher, making the duel between the two one-sided.  The nature of the plot means that Statham's talent for grim humor is rarely in play, and while Owen seems committed to his role, he only shares one scene with Statham in the first two-thirds of the film.  DeNiro seems to be enjoying his paycheck in a small role, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbale is pungent as the mercenaries' untrustworthy agent.  

Killer Elite is competent enough, but it mostly feels as tired as its characters are of the grind of killing and chasing other killers, and it's hard to feel very gripped by the proceedings when the only stakes are whether the expressionless Danny will get his fairy-tale girl.  The picture doesn't have the spark of Statham's Crank movies, much less the quality one associates with Owen or DeNiro (we do still associate DeNiro with "quality," right?).  The first movie to be released by the new distributor Open Road is hardly an auspicious start; Killer Elite couldn't be more skippable.

THE 2-2 is the deluxe version of Rookie Blue.  It's got a superb pedigree, with a script by Richard Price, acclaimed for his novels ("Bloodbrothers," "Clockers"), screenplays (Sea Of Love, The Color of Money) and television work (The Wire aka The Greatest Cop Show Ever).  The pilot director is James Mangold, whose features include Walk the Line and Knight and Day, and who's just been announced as the director of the Wolverine sequel.  In addition, the show was developed at Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Productions (DeNiro starred in Price's Mad Dog and Glory).  For all that, there's nothing particularly distinctive about the series they've all made.

This being CBS and not ABC, the tone of the piece is more procedural and less soapy than Rookie Blue's.  (We only get one illicit romance.)  And as the participation of Price and DeNiro would suggest, we're on the streets of New York, not in Canada.  But it's essentially the same group of newbie cops, under the supervision of a crusty-but-benign veteran (Terry Kinney).  The 6 cops have backstories, which include a stint in Iraq for Leelee Sobieski's "Whitehouse," a NBA career that ended with a blown knee for "Jackpot" (Harold House Moore), 14 years as a local newspaper reporter for "Lazarus" (Adam Goldberg), etc.  At the start of the episode, they're all told clearly to stay quiet and follow orders--which of course they don't, leading--who would have guessed?--to armed confrontations and unnecessary danger.

Very little of this is surprising or exciting.  The only character immediately suggesting any depth is Goldberg's, who at one point doesn't behave as a TV cop is supposed to.  The rest are foolish and brave, overeager and stressed-out.  If they weren't easily differentiated by gender and ethnic background, they'd practically be interchangeable.  With Price in charge, there's some better-than-average writing, as when Jackpot, who had been a hero (and an arrogant one) to his high school pals, meets one of them on the streets years later., and when he runs into an elderly woman who has strong opinions about his pro basketball career  Mostly, though, it's rudimentary, predictable stuff.  None of the actors manage to stand out, and Mangold's direction is professional but anonymous.

CBS, of course, lives off this genre.  They haven't yet announced a day or time for The 2-2, but it could fit in with any number of their other procedurals.  What may hold it back, though, is its lack of any uniqueness:  the CSI shows have their high-tech jargon, Mentalist its titular protagonist, the new Unforgettable its heroine with her freakish memory--but The 2-2 is plain, down-the-middle police work.  When you finish watching it, you feel like you should fill out a timesheet.

Worth a ticket.

In movies, as in life, when someone is offered an illicit miracle drug that seems too good to be true, it usually is. So the general narrative arc of LIMITLESS doesn't come as a huge surprise. What is surprising is that Neil Burger's film, predicted to be the highest opener this weekend, manages to be enjoyable, if more than a little silly, fun.

Our hero is Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper, in his first real leading role), who might as well have a huge "L" stenciled on his forehead. He's an aspiring writer who can't make himself actually write, a slob, a drinker, and he's already failed at marriage and is about to ruin his longterm relationship with the lovely Lindy (Abbie Cornish). Then one fateful day his ex-brother-in-law and sometime drug dealer (Johnny Whitworth) offers him a clear pill that will change his life. In 30 seconds, Eddie is using 100% of his brain's capacity: finishing his novel is a snap, learning languages no challenge, and mastering the intricacies of high finance his new calling. He becomes an advisor to one of the world's richest men, the wonderfully named Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro), on a giant merger... and that's when things start to go bad. Like Cliff Robertson's title character in Charly, Eddie finds out that drug therapy can't solve everything. But unlike that kind of moralistic fable, Leslie's Dixon's script (based on Alan Glynn's novel "The Dark Fields") is bracingly dry and cynical, with plenty of gratuitously effective violence--it becomes the PG-13 equivalent of a Crank movie--and scheming that starts with double-crosses and mounts from there.

Burger's previous films Interview With the Assassin, The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones, with their relatively indie sensibilities, didn't suggest how goofily effective a commercial moviemaker he could be, and Cooper has the movie-star knack of keeping his charisma on display even while his character is being dragged progressively down. DeNiro has relatively little to do, but it's a relief not to see him in a Focker movie, and Abbie Cornish and Anna Friel are good as the women in Eddie's life. Worthy of particular note is Andrew Howard, who takes the incredibly cliched role of an evil Eastern European gangster and manages to do something amusing wth it; it's like he'd wandered in from a Guy Ritchie picture. The title may be a bit overstated, but this is a picture that successfully exceeds its seeming limits.