Movie Box Review

IDENTITY is so clearly a Jerry-Bruckheimer-for-CBS procedural that it comes as a shock to realize that it was neither produced by Bruckheimer nor developed for CBS.  In fact, Mark Gordon's company produced the show for ABC Studios and the ABC network, which must have remembered at some point that it was in fact ABC and passed on the project.  Even as ersatz Bruckheimer/CBS fodder, the pilot wasn't very good.



John Glenn's script (he wrote the silly but successful Shia LaBoeuf vehicle Eagle Eye), centers on an elite FBI squad--it's always an elite squad--organized to stop identity theft and related crime.  The members cover pretty much all the crucial cliches:  steely leader (Angela Bassett), by-the-rules guy who's skilled but a bit of a fuddy-duddy (Orlando Jones), single woman computer genius (Bree Turner), liaison to the "young people" (Jay Paulson)... and, of course, the reckless, intuitively brilliant agent (Colin O'Donoghue) who drives By-The-Rules Guy crazy and who has something to hide.

The pilot cheats--as, no doubt, the series would regularly have done as well--by choosing as the villain an identity thief who's completely insane, a multiple murderer with a very personal motive for his crimes, which probably isn't the norm for this particular kind of illegality.  This allows for a certain amount of story breadth, although hardly any of it is convincing.  Director Gary Fleder provides the required high-tech war room set  with many computer and video monitors, and quick flashback cuts to the various crimes, but none of it can make the pilot seem less generic than it is.

The cast does its job.  Bassett is an actress of enormous strength who nevertheless needs something to play (she was quite good as the senior doctor toward the end of ER's epic run), here she's just used for her air of authority.  At least she was used for something, which put her one up on the other actors--Turner's part is limited to the kind of singleton quips that make you wince for the actress.  Only O'Donoghue is given any kind of storyline, and that one is fairly dumb.

IDENTITY's biggest problem was that it didn't have one--the pilot feels like the script itself should have carried the subtitle "A Busted Pilot."  The chance for identity crimesolvers to have their own primetime network TV series will have to remain on hold for another season.

Peter Tolan, who with Denis Leary created Rescue Me, knows something about the comedy that emerges when when men try to assert their masculinity in the most idiotic ways.  So you can understand why FOX developed COUNCIL OF DADS, which was meant to bring that kind of tone to a family sitcom.  Alas, what ended up being produced was like some kind of strange spawn of Rescue Me, a Disney movie and one of those pictures like The Protector where an assassin has to bumblingly take care of children.



The premise of Council was at least a new spin on the family genre.  Catherine (Diane Farr) would have been raising her two kids as a single mom after the death of her husband Michael, but Michael made a back-up plan:  he designated 4 of his friends as a collective of paternity, each supposedly bringing a particular strength to the council.  Marty (Kyle Bornheimer), Michael's oldest friend, is the "fun" dad; trainer Randy (Rick Gomez) the jock; therapist Jerry (Patrick Breen) the one the kids can talk to about their feelings; and business partner Bill (Richard T. Jones) can help with schoolwork.  (They're like a less tuneful seven dwarves.)  Meanwhile, Michael's father Buck (Ken Howard) hovers jealously over the group and intrudes at will. 

Naturally, all of the "dads" are morons who constantly compete over who will be the dominant one of the group, but whether it was the inability to make sex jokes and use dirty words that hindered Tolan in thix context, or if he was just off his game, none of it is funny.  The pilot has Randy and Marty fighting about who can make the best model car for Michael's son to use in a contest, with Buck ridiculing them both, and the big joke is a draw between the guys taking off their shirts to reveal their unathletic bodies and wrestle each other, and Marty dripping blood everywhere from his cut finger.  The actors don't distinguish themselves, although it's always nice to see Farr (who recurred as a Rescue Me firefighter for a season).  The Russo brothers, who are behind the camera for some of the best Community episodes, keep the action going, but can't contribute much else.

Peter Tolan is a real talent, and no doubt after Rescue Me goes to its rest in another couple of episodes, he'll go on to other great work.  Council of Dads suggests that the all-ages-admitted sitcom isn't the genre where he'll do it.

There's a certain irony in the fact that, in this summer of Super 8 and its Spielberg rapture, the most successfully Spielbergian movie of the season is Marvel's CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER.  Its connection to Steven Spielberg is faint but important:  director Joe Johnston served as Art Director on both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and later directed an episode of TV's Young Indiana Jones; not concidentally, this is something like the Indiana Jones 4 that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull never was, and although it has its limitations, Captain America is a surprisingly entertaining old-fashioned adventure.

One of the most engaging things about Captain America as a movie is that it's as unpretentious as a $150M+ giant superhero extravaganza can be.  The first section of the movie tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, CG'd in the way of Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button) a 90-pound weakling but endlessly stout of heart, who longs to join the Army in World War II and fight against Nazis, but is rejected because of his physical frailty.  Steve finally runs into Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci, putting on a great show), a German refugee scientist who has a magic serum--not to mention his gorgeous aide Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).  Johnston and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley take their time with this part of the story, and it pays off; although we know that Steve will turn into, well, Captain America, we get to know him first as a plucky underdog.  Even after the transformation, there's a witty sequence where the new Steve is turned into a pitchman for War Bonds (it's like the comedy version of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers), complete with a musical production number by Alan Menken--by the time Steve gets to Europe, we're as longing for him to see battle as he is.

The huge action sequences, when they finally arrive, deliver in size and design, but they're kept for the most part on a human scale--like the Indiana Jones movies, they stay just this side of what an actual human being might be able to do.  Evans is less interesting as the full-fledged Captain than he was as the puny version, but he has a few moments where he gets to reveal the scrawny kid within, and the rest of the time he hits the stalwart buttons effectively.  And there are welcome supporting actors to perk things up between battles:  Tommy Lee Jones does his Tommy Lee Jones thing--it's like he invented macho snark--and Toby Jones is a junior evil Nazi.  Atwell, who's been doing very good work under the radar in projects like Woody Allen's little-seen Cassandra's Dream and the TV miniseries Pillars Of the Earth, has a snappy way with dialogue to go with her looks, and the gadget man on Captain America's team is Howard Stark, who would one day father Iron Man (ah, Marvel); he's played by Dominic Cooper, who'll soon be seen to much splashier advantage in The Devil's Double.   

The very clever production design by Rick Heinrichs creates a larger-than-life version of 1940s archetypes without calling too much attention to itself (as opposed, say, to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's attempt to do the same thing):  tanks, motorcycles and planes that make sense in the World War II context but are convincingly a bit beyond reality.  The photography by Shelly Johnson, unfortunately, is obscured by a terrible 3D conversion that has little effect beyond badly smudging the original image--this is definitely a picture where audiences should try to save the money and find a 2D auditorium.

Where Captain America really falters is in its villain.  Hugo Weaver, who may be out of fantasy role inspiration now that he's done The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Transformers and The Wolfman, seemingly does a deliberate Christoph Waltz imitation as Red Skull; he's your basic raving super-Nazi (he even listens to Wagner), with a little of Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Voldemort's noselessness.  Red Skull never says or does anything interesting in the picture, and that lowers the stakes of the drama quite a bit; at this point in movie history, if you're going to scare us with a Nazi villain, it takes more than a red digital make-up job to do it.

Despite that central flaw, Captain America is a fun ride.  It's actually disappointing that in their zeal to get the character into next year's all-important Avengers conglomerate (consumer note:  sit through all 10 minutes of credits and you'll be rewarded with the teaser for next year's everyone-but-the-kitchen-sink epic), Marvel was in such a hurry to pull him out of the 1940s.  This retro fantasy could have made a nice variation from their usual formula, but it's seemingly a one-time effort; although we must all believe in the powers of Joss Whedon, he'll have his hands full juggling half a dozen heroes in Avengers, and the Captain's charm may not age well.  That, however, is next year's movie problem.