NEW RELEASES
HART’S WAR Certainly one of the more ambitious projects of the new year, this WWII drama falls just shy of qualifying as an out-and-out hit. The problem rests with the pontification, as an initially absorbing storyline eventually gets railroaded by a final half-hour in which everyone boasts about the sacrifices they’ll make before actually getting around to making them. Despite top billing and prominence in all the trailers, Bruce Willis is actually a supporting character, portraying the top dog among the Americans being held at a German POW camp. The Hart of the title is played by Colin Farrell, who’s cast as a greenhorn lieutenant ordered to defend a fellow officer — a black flyer (Terrence Howard) accused of murdering a racist GI (Cole Hauser) — in a kangaroo court set up within the confines of the camp. This extremely well-made drama has its share of high-minded themes to push — for starters, the divisiveness of racism is not only inherently evil but also detrimental to a necessary spirit of camaraderie and self-sacrifice — but such notions of nobility work far more effectively when subtly woven into the fabric of the piece rather than written large across a billboard that’s then toppled onto audience members’ heads. 
1/2
JOHN Q Emotionally effective but also dishonest and irresponsible, John Q is largely DOA. It’s tough not to side with a movie that sticks it to America’s health care crisis, but this heavy-handed button-pusher stacks matters so densely, it doesn’t give any rationale room to breathe. Denzel Washington plays struggling factory worker John Quincy Archibald, who learns that his insurance won’t cover a heart transplant operation for his dying son (Daniel E. Smith). With nowhere to turn, John elects to hold an emergency room hostage, threatening dire consequences if his son’s name isn’t placed on the donor recipient list. This one offers a virtual checklist of “social drama” cliches: the opportunistic police chief (Ray Liotta) wanting to make a good impression in an election year; a tanned TV reporter (Paul Johansson) hungry for ratings (“This is my white Bronco!” he exclaims in one of scripter James Kearns’ many dopey lines); and unfeeling hospital personnel (Anne Heche and James Woods). Furthermore, the notion that the US public would outwardly cheer a man holding innocent people hostage (no matter what the reason) is not only ludicrous but somewhat insulting as well.
RETURN TO NEVER LAND Over the past few years, Disney has been hell-bent on releasing a slew of needless and inferior sequels (e.g. Cinderella II, The Little Mermaid II) to their classic animated features directly to the video market. What, then, persuaded them to throw this sorry sequel to 1953’s Peter Pan into theaters? Perhaps it’s to test the waters on how these shoddy products would fare with highly publicized theatrical campaigns; if that’s the case, then let’s pray this one tanks, since I have no real desire to see the movie marketplace cluttered with the likes of Hercules or Fox and the Hound sequels. Despite the brand name recognition, the ’53 Peter Pan hardly ranks alongside the studio’s finest efforts, but it’s still miles ahead of this poorly realized follow-up that finds Wendy’s daughter Jane helping Peter and the Lost Boys battle persistent Captain Hook. Dull characters, unmemorable songs and flat animation sink this one. 1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
BIRTHDAY GIRL Birthday Girl is one of those movies that starts out so unexpectedly off-kilter, you can’t help but be disappointed once it turns stridently conventional. Ben Chaplin is merely average as John Buckingham, a British milquetoast who sends off for a Russian mail-order bride; he ends up with Nadia (Nicole Kidman), a willowy beauty who speaks no English, smokes non-stop, and works hard to satisfy her new husband’s sexual fetishes. Initially content, he soon finds matters going awry with the arrival of two of her countrymates (Amelie‘s Mathieu Kassovitz and Brotherhood of the Wolf‘s Vincent Cassel). This curio begins as an interesting study of how two dissimilar individuals tentatively break down various communication barriers, and, on the heels of her star turns in The Others and Moulin Rouge, Kidman again demonstrates that she had been living in Tom Cruise’s shadow for far too long. But after an initially intriguing set-up, the film tosses out a “surprise” plot twist that could be spotted from two continents away, and from there it dissolves into a soggy and illogical thriller.
BLACK HAWK DOWN This adaptation of Mark Bowen’s account of the 1993 military operation in Somalia that left several Americans dead is being given the Oscar push, but the truth is that the film adds precious little to the long line of war pictures that have come out of Hollywood over the last century — on the contrary, the movie seems to exist in a bubble, hermetically sealed off from the emotional pull that helped define most of the great war flicks. From the start, this fails to provide much historical or political context to its proceedings, yet even more detrimental is that none of the key contributors — director Ridley Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer or novice screenwriter Ken Nolan — deemed it important to place any stock in their cast of characters. Obviously, Scott et al wanted to recreate the wartime experience in all its shell-shocked urgency rather than fashion a more traditional (read: narrative-driven) movie, but Saving Private Ryan managed to accomplish both objectives without any compromises. Some familiar actors pop up here and there, but for the most part, the unflagging sound and fury make it impossible to identify or empathize with these characters as individuals, since their primary function seems to be to serve as an anonymous slab of American fortitude.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE The latest Arnold Schwarzenegger flick arrives on the scene wielding enough heavy baggage to drag even an ocean liner to the bottom of the deep blue sea. Slated for an October 5 release but yanked following 9/11, this action yarn about a firefighter who seeks revenge on the terrorist who killed his family became the poster child for the ongoing debate on how Hollywood should start treating scripts featuring terrorism. Are such movies cathartic escapism that elevates national pride or insensitive, exploitative junk that plays right into the image of Hollywood (and, by extension, America) as a soulless land that worships the bottom line above all else? It’s often a tricky business, finding this line between moral decency and moral debauchery, but overall, films of this nature are probably no more heinous than the scores of WWII films produced after the fact. In the middle of this raging discourse, it seems almost incidental whether or not this one’s a good movie. For the record, it’s not: Rather, it’s a working-class model of the standard action flick, with very little to distinguish it from the other run-of-the-mill “red meat” endeavors that periodically test the effectiveness of our theaters’ Dolby Digital sound systems.
I AM SAM Has there been a more shameless movie released over the past year than this wretchedly written melodrama? In the most blatant lunge at an Oscar since Al Pacino’s repugnant turn in Scent of a Woman, Sean Penn gives a cringe-inducing performance as a mentally challenged man who raises his daughter Lucy from birth until the age of seven (she’s played by Dakota Fanning, who’s so adorable she immediately melts away all traces of cool-eyed critical detachment). But at this age, Lucy’s intelligence level now matches that of her father, so here come the social workers to rip Lucy away and place her in foster care. Michelle Pfeiffer is quite good in the worst role of her career — the harried attorney who takes Sam’s case and becomes a better person simply by knowing him — and it’s her contribution, as well as those of a fine supporting cast (Dianne Wiest, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern), that prevents this from landing a bomb rating. A couple of years ago, Penn publicly criticized Nicolas Cage for selling out as a serious actor; now here he is, making a picture about as bad as any on Cage’s recent resume. There’s a saying about people in glass houses throwing stones; at this point, Penn might want to reinforce his walls with adamant. 1/2
MONSTER’S BALL Director Marc Forster and writers Will Rokos and Milo Addica are all relative newcomers on the film scene, and perhaps it’s this infusion of fresh blood that allows Monster’s Ball — one of the best films of 2001 — to transcend plot developments that might have come off badly had they been entrusted to veteran Hollywood filmmakers comfortable with smoothing out all the rough edges. A relentless downer akin to Affliction — albeit one with a few glimmers of hope shining through — this stars Billy Bob Thornton as Hank Grotowski, a corrections officer at a Georgia prison who tolerates his racist pop (Peter Boyle), loathes his sensitive son (Heath Ledger) and enters into a relationship with the widow (Halle Berry) of the Death Row inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution he oversaw. Monster’s Ball makes very few missteps as it navigates its characters through its raw scenarios, and the ending — both insightful and unexpected — is especially memorable. So, too, are the lead performances: Berry has never been better — frankly, I didn’t think she had this in her — while Thornton continues to demonstrate that he has few equals when it comes to playing ordinary joes. 1/2
NO MAN’S LAND A trenchant look at a peculiar form of trench warfare, No Man’s Land is writer-director Danis Tanovic’s searing look at the skirmish that has laid waste to his homeland. It almost sounds like the set-up for a bad joke: Did you hear the one about the Bosnian and the Serb? Well, they both get stuck in this trench, see… But for Ciki (Branko Djuric) and Nino (Rene Bitorajac), it’s no laughing matter. Ciki the Bosnian and Nino the Serb, who have been trained to hate each other despite their ample common ground, are placed in an explosive situation made even more tense by the fact that one of Ciki’s comrades (Filip Sovagovic) is also in the trench with them, resting on top of a mine that will blow them all to smithereens if he even tries to move. A compassionate United Nations peacekeeper (Georges Siatidis) wants to help defuse the situation, but his efforts are hindered by his odious superiors, none of whom want to take responsibility should anything go wrong. A foreign cousin to Robert Altman’s anti-war classic M*A*S*H, this one also uses plenty of mordant humor to further heighten the absurdity of it all. 1/2
ROLLERBALL Hollywood has a fondness for remaking classics, but the more logical route might be to remake movies that weren’t particularly good the first time around — that way, there’s reams more room for improvement. Alas, one application of that theory gets shot to hell with Rollerball, as the mediocre 1975 original gets accorded a remake that’s infinitely worse than the earlier dud. Set in a future in which all violence has been outlawed except when played in the arena of a popular new sport, Norman Jewison’s ’75 model was stuffy and ponderous, only coming alive during the well-staged game sequences. This stupefying new version is a complete overhaul — Starship Troopers and Howards End have more in common with each other than this reworking does with the original — but somehow the changes have only made matters worse. By setting the tale in the present and stripping it of all sociopolitical context, this violent film plays like an incoherent, badly staged taping of one of those inane TV sports events like pro wrestling or the XFL. Loud, garish, and directed within an inch of its life by John McTiernan, this Rollerball Redux is probably preferable to the disco turkey Roller Boogie, though even that’s arguable.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2002.
