New Releases
HOSTAGE Maybe it’s because it was produced by his own company, Cheyenne Enterprises. Or maybe it’s because the part of his character’s imperiled daughter is played by his real-life daughter, Rumer Willis. Or maybe it’s simply because he’s been slumbering too long. Whatever the reason, Bruce Willis has woken up in time to deliver a committed performance in this adaptation of Robert Crais’ novel. Opening with a stylized, eye-popping title sequence that might lead viewers to think they’re catching an early sneak of the new Batman flick, Hostage then settles into familiar crime territory with the introduction of Willis as Jeff Talley, an LAPD hostage negotiator whose botching of a tense standoff leaves him with innocent blood on his hands and prods him into moving to a sleepy community where the crime rate hovers around zero. But once three ruffians attempting to steal a car end up killing a police officer and subsequently taking a family hostage, Talley finds himself back in the sort of situation he would like to avoid. For a good while, director Florent Siri and scripter Doug Richardson do their pulpy material proud, with a real attention to both exposition and execution. But as the storyline gets more crowded (another gang of villains ends up holding Talley’s own family hostage), the attention shifts from individual character detail and psychological chess matches to outlandish developments and ludicrous resolutions to the various plot strands. 
1/2
THE SEA INSIDE Go figure: Spain’s Alejandro Amenabar makes three terrific movies back-to-back-to-back – the foreign imports Thesis and Open Your Eyes and the Nicole Kidman vehicle The Others – but because they’re in the disreputable genres of (turn nose upward here) horror and fantasy, they’re viewed as little more than reasonably entertaining matinee fodder. Yet the minute Amenabar makes a movie about a subject as serious as (nod head approvingly here) euthanasia, flowers are tossed from balconies, the champagne flows freely, and prizes start arriving by the carload. Winner of both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film – not to mention the recipient of a whopping 14 Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscar equivalent) – The Sea Inside is respectable but undistinguished, and it places a distant second to 2004’s other award winner about euthanasia (don’t ask, won’t tell). Javier Bardem, whose performance as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls deserved the 2000 Oscar, is understandably more subdued this time around; he’s cast as Ramon Sampredo, a writer who’s spent close to three decades as a quadriplegic following a swimming accident. Paralyzed from the neck down, Ramon has decided that he wants to end his life, a revelation that sparks a flurry of wildly differing opinions not only from household members but from seemingly every citizen of Spain. Based on a true story, The Sea Inside suffers from using its protagonist as merely a mouthpiece through which to channel noble platitudes about freedom of choice and occasionally testy tirades aimed at the church. That’s all well and good, but it’s only through sheer force of personality that Bardem manages to add any human dimension to this paper martyr. 1/2
Current Releases
BE COOL Yet one more lazy sequel to a great film, Be Cool is a major disappointment that fails to capture the essence of what made Get Shorty such a terrific film experience. The movie never provides a compelling argument for its own existence: Because it spends far more time salivating over musical numbers featuring pop star Christina Milian than on watching shylock-turned-movie-producer Chili Palmer (John Travolta) test the shark-infested waters of the music business, it’s clear that priorities are out of whack. The degree to which characters, plot developments and even snatches of dialogue mimic those from the first film is irritating, and while there are some big laughs, they’re isolated moments of mirth cast adrift in an ocean of indifference.
BRIDE & PREJUDICE As she did with Bend It Like Beckham, writer-director Gurinder Chadha has tentatively mixed the worlds of Hollywood and Bollywood, fashioning a global tale out of Jane Austen’s Brit-lit staple Pride and Prejudice. Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai plays Lalita Bakshi, one of four sisters whose pushy mom (Nadira Babbar) is perennially trying to find her children suitable Indian husbands. Mrs. Bakshi attempts to hook Lalita up with an Anglicized nerd (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), but the independent-minded woman instead finds herself torn between sly English charmer Johnny Wickham (Daniel Gillies) and American businessman Will Darcy (dull Martin Henderson). Bride is far less polished than Beckham, but Rai makes an appealing heroine, and the movie’s musical numbers are a treat to behold.
CONSTANTINE Based on the DC Comics/Vertigo series Hellblazer, this disappointment casts Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, a man with the ability to recognize the angels and demons that walk the earth in human form. Yet as he goes about his business of wiping out as many of the demonic “half-breeds” as possible (in an attempt to “buy” his way into Heaven), he realizes that there’s a seismic shift occurring in the underworld, and the only way he can get to the bottom of the mystery is to join forces with a police detective (Rachel Weisz) investigating the apparent suicide of her psychic twin sister. Because it’s an exhaustive exercise to keep abreast of the story’s seemingly haphazard developments, Constantine ends up resembling nothing so much as a punctured tire with a slow leak, letting all the air seep out until what’s finally left is flat and fairly ineffectual.
DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN Watching this adaptation of Tyler Perry’s stage play is akin to channel surfing between showings of Soul Food and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps – with an occasional flip over to The Jeffersons for good measure. A huge hit with Afro-American audiences, Perry’s play, about a pampered wife (Kimberly Elise) who starts over after being dumped by her odious husband (Steve Harris), has been adapted (by the author himself) into a movie that’s overflowing with positive Christian ideals as well as an honest assessment of the intrinsic desire for seeking retribution versus the spiritual need for giving absolution. In this respect, the movie’s emotionally satisfying (if a bit simplistic), yet Perry dilutes its potency by casting himself in the sitcom roles of a profane, gun-wielding grandmother and her brother, a flatulent elder constantly leering at women when he’s not busy smoking dope. 1/2
HITCH A warm and witty comedy that unfortunately runs itself into the ground, Hitch benefits immeasurably from the presence of Will Smith, who may or may not be a great actor but who is most assuredly a great movie star. There’s something to be said for effortless magnetism, and in that respect, Smith has more in common with the sophisticated comedians of the past than the coarse jokesters of today. He’s at turns sly, suave and sexy as Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, who earns a living by advising other men how to land the woman of their dreams. Yet even as he tries to pair up a clumsy accountant (Kevin James) with a supermodel (Amber Valletta), he unexpectedly finds his own attention drawn to a gossip columnist (Eva Mendes). Viewers who go with the flow will gladly put reality on pause in order to enjoy this movie’s modest pleasures – it’s just a shame the picture reverts to rigid formula in its final half-hour. 1/2
THE JACKET The psychological thriller The Jacket shouldn’t be confused with the Jackie Chan dud The Tuxedo, though when it comes to sartorial splendor, it’s hard to imagine moviegoers wanting to get fitted for either film. This new picture is eerily reminiscent of last year’s The Butterfly Effect, the clumsy time travel yarn that asked audiences to empathize with a character played by Ashton Kutcher. This one makes the task easier by casting amiable Oscar winner Adrien Brody as an amnesiac Gulf War vet whose stint at an insane asylum finds him serving as experimental fodder for a mad scientist (Kris Kristofferson). That the movie never attempts to even offer an explanation of its weird science exemplifies the haphazardness that dominates the movie. Jennifer Jason Leigh is on hand as a conscientious doctor, but even she can’t save a cinematic dog that narratively ends up chasing its own tail.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY The best picture of 2004 is an instant classic, much like director-producer-star Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. But whereas that revisionist Western deconstructed genre conventions, turning them inside out to expose the inherent contradictions and compromises, this movie leaves many of the cliches intact, deriving its power not by upending them but by burrowing so deeply that it feels like we’re witnessing familiar sights for the very first time. Eastwood stars as a gym owner who’s urged by his only friend (Morgan Freeman) to train a young woman (Hilary Swank) determined to make it as a boxer, yet what starts out as a familiar (if brilliantly told) story eventually changes course and emerges as a profound and moving filmgoing experience. There’s very little about this movie that feels extraneous – it’s tight, taut storytelling, anchored by three astonishing performances and helmed by a man still able to teach Hollywood’s young punks a thing or two.
ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR The studio behind Ong-Bak reasons that because the 1970s gave us Bruce Lee, the 1980s introduced us to Jackie Chan and the 1990s heralded the arrival of Jet Li, then why shouldn’t Thailand’s Tony Jaa be earmarked as the great martial arts star of the 2000s? Yet even with the decade half over, I say we hold out a while longer: Jaa doesn’t possess the authority of Lee, the charisma of Chan or the intensity of Li, though he does project plenty of the same sleepy-eyed blandness as flash-in-the-pan Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ong-Bak resembles nothing so much as one of those action cheapies regularly churned out by outfits like Cannon back in the 80s, the ones in which goofy performances and lazy plotlines competed with passable fight sequences for the lion’s share of the running time.
THE WEDDING DATE We expect TV stars trying to make the transition to the big screen to find themselves saddled with subpar material, but this one takes that notion to the extreme. To say that the script for The Wedding Date is bottom-of-the-barrel would be too kind; this one was already decomposing under a mountain of mulch before Will & Grace‘s Debra Messing fished it out. Messing plays a woman whose neurotic impulses are meant to be endearing but who instead comes off as something of a pill. Required to fly to England to attend the wedding of her loathsome sister (Amy Adams), she can’t stand the thought of arriving alone, so she spends $6,000 to hire a male prostitute (Dermot Mulroney) to pretend to be her boyfriend. This was clearly inspired by the success of such Brit-flavored confections as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’ Diary – and the comparisons end there.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.
