The Siege

The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1998) Creepily omniscient film made three years before 9/11 (notice the WTC in the poster) in which terrorism comes home to roost in America, specifically with well-timed, somewhat improvised suicide bombers blowing up buses, theaters, and populous areas in the heart of New York City.  Zwick (and screenwriter Lawrence Wright, with dialogue tweaks by Zwick and Menno Meyjes) showed us something that Americans didn't want to see (and believed impossible): America under terrorist attack.   

No one went to see it, and critics attacked it as being xenophobic and unrealistic.  After 9/11, it was reality.  And one of the last films to feature radical Islamists as terrorists.  Now, studios shy away from such depictions because, in their infinite bravery, they're afraid of reprisals. 

But, here, they weren't, not even when the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations started picketing the theaters, for the film being offensive and promoting stereotypes of Islamic terrorists.  

Evidently Al Qaeda didn't get the communiques.  Might've helped "the cause."

And despite some lip-service to Islam and Arab-Americans being just as aghast at terrorist activities and giving their full cooperation with the investigation—and Tony Shalhoub plays a Islamic Arab on the FBI task force—one gets the distinct impression that some of the film's best friends are Arab-Americans.  

But, that's the sideshow.  

What the film boils down to is not who's doing what to whom, but in meeting the enemy and it being ourselves.  New York becomes the target of accelerating attacks when a bus is hijacked with no demands—and no explosives it turns out, the passengers are merely splattered with blue dye. The FBI's lead investigator Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington) thinks it's more than a prank, or, as it's dismissed, "assault with a deadly color."  He knows two things that worries him: "they" know explosives and "they" know the FBI's response time now.

Inserting herself into the investigation is Elise Kraft (Annette Bening), an NSA investigator who doesn't like to share information, as much as take it. She and Hubbard spar over jurisdiction and ownership.  The FBI is new to the investigation and Elise has been at this for quite some time. "In this game, the most committed wins."  While they're bickering and throwing down threats, another bus gets hijacked, and negotiations begin.  But the results are different, attracting the Feds, especially the Army in the person of General Devereaux (Bruce Willis), who we have seen earlier overseeing the investigation of an Arab cleric (of whom the United States does not officially know the whereabouts).  He's nosing around just to make sure that, although the NSA and FBI seem to bungling and out of their depths at this point, his operation isn't compromised. 

But, the atrocities accelerate and get bigger—The FBI's New York headquarters is attacked, resulting in 600 victims, many of them Hubbard's colleagues, and at that point, the President declares Martial Law. 

Despite his earlier protests in committee ("The Army is a broad sword, not a scalpel. Make no mistake, Senator. We will hunt down the enemy, we will find the enemy, and we will kill the enemy. And no card-carrying member of the ACLU is more dead set against it than I am. Which is why I urge you - I implore you. Do not consider this as an option. Trust me, senator - you do not want the Army in an American city.") Devereaux heads up the operation, cordoning off Brooklyn and gathering up all Arabic-speaking young men and detaining them in Yankee Stadium.  Profiling isn't second-guessed, habeas is suspended, citizens are marched out to camps, and torture is the order of the day—specifically water-boarding.

Must have seemed pretty nightmarish in 1998.  Now, that the "ethics" of water-boarding have been discussed endlessly by the cable-news pundits (to the point where I want to drown them), Guantanamo (or the more friendly "Git-mo!") has been holding prisoners for...how many years now?...we've been living with no-fly lists, and even gone to such silly extremities as taking off our shoes at airports (while "they" have gone the way of planting underwear bombs) over the last eleven...ELEVEN...years.  And a lot of people have died, and Americans—loyal Americans—are coming back to a backlog of unanswered help, and we're now losing more of them to suicide (as we did in Vietnam) than to the actual war.

The crackdown will be televised

"We have met the enemy, and they are us."  That was the message of The Siege and no one listened.*  And here we are, on the anniversary of 9/11, and the longest war in our history, and conflicts have not been resolved.  They're only getting more complicated.  The situation has gotten even more fractured, and the wars are internal as well as external, looking more like the Mexican stand-off that ends the film. 
Now, here we are, a dozen years after the fact, and there are folks amidst the current host of Syria chatterers, who want to bomb Damascus, take out their leader, and replace him with the rebels opposing him, and in the glib words of Willis' commander "be back at base in time for the play-offs."

Trouble is, some of the factions among the rebels are Al Qaeda, who we've been fighting over these last dozen years and trillions of dollars.  As the movie says "It's easy to tell the difference between right and wrong. What's hard is choosing the wrong that's more right." 

Orwell is in his grave...creating his own spin zone.

* Anthony 'Hub' Hubbard: [upon learning Devereaux's plans to torture Tariq] Are you people insane? What are you talkin' about?

General William Devereaux: The time has come for one man to suffer in order to save hundreds of lives.

Anthony 'Hub' Hubbard: One Man? What about two, huh? What about six? How about public executions?

General William Devereaux: Feel free to leave whenever you like, Agent Hubbard.

Anthony 'Hub' Hubbard: Come on General, you've lost men, I've lost men, but you - you, you *can't* do this! What, what if they don't even want the sheik, have you considered that? What if what they really want is for us to herd our children into stadiums like we're doing? And put soldiers on the street and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General, we do that and everything we have fought, and bled, and died for is over. And they've won. They've already won!

General William Devereaux: Escort him out.

Flight

Flying Inverted
or
Cracking the Whip

It's been years since Robert Zemeckis made a live-action film (the last being Cast Away, all the way back in 2000, the time being taken up with his three motion capture animated films) and this one, Flight, is an interesting choice, quite unlike anything the director has done, but falling in line with his other films about people being left up in the air about fundamental choices in their lives.  

Captain Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot on cruise-control.  Unfortunately, it's a path that will ultimately crash and burn.  An alcoholic and coke-head, he'll do a layover with a stew (in this instance, Nadine Velazquez), get wasted, and then to get himself #1 on the runway will do a line, so he can do the "pilot walk" to the cabin—all confidence and casualness for the launching of "souls" into the wild-blue yonder.

Even before he takes off, Whip is flying.  But his nonchalance and bon homie gets him through, even through a difficult take-off through low turbulence.  He pushes the plane, but clears the clouds early and restores order to the flight, then settles back to cadge some booze samples, smuggle them into his orange juice and catch some sleep.  He wakes up just in time for a crisis: the plane bangs, then goes into a steep dive that terrifies the passengers and crew (and me) and merely gives Whip a much needed shot of adrenaline.  The only way he can take the plane from pile-driving into the ground is to bank it until he's flying upside down, then skimming the Earth until he can find a clear place to land, then cork-screw right side up and ditching for a landing.

Six people die, two on the crew.  Whittaker wakes up in the hospital with torn ligaments in his knees, lacerations around his eye and no idea how he got there.  First visitor is the pilot's union rep (Bruce Greenwood), then the NTSB who are all "just the facts" and deferential.  Next is Whip's "connection" (John Goodman), a Dr. Feelgood who waltzes in (to the tune of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil;" Whip's is "Feelin' Alright"), tells Whip he's a hero, that reporters are hunting him, and criticizes the doctors' choice in pain-killers: "Amateur night!"  All Whip can think about is getting out, but it's not as simple as that.  He's under investigation for the crash (his simple response is "it was a broken plane"), has been lawyered up with an attorney (Don Cheadle) who doesn't like him, thinks he's a creep, but is going to do his job, and on top of it all, Whittaker must deal with a pissed-off ex-wife and a son who doesn't know him, and has no intentions to.

In the hospital, he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly, you'll remember her as Dr. Watson's wife in the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies), who's recovering from an overdose and not in a good way.  Whip is attracted—she's female and weak, which seem to be all that's required—and he whisks her away to his family's small farm and failed crop-dusting business in rural Georgia.  He's already ditched all the alcohol, but after a couple days, he's back in the bag, drinking himself into oblivion while Nicole goes to AA meetings.  Whip visits, too, but when things get personal, he takes off.

Washington is brilliant in all of this, showing both the pilot's strengths and pitiful weaknesses.  His scenes of bleary drunkenness feel real and incomprehensible, and one watches his constant crashing after attempts to bring himself up are painful to watch.  The balance of the film is Whip's cart-wheeling from sober to sloshed, his best instincts superseded by his addictions—a man in constant denial, addicted to lying (and pulling himself out of a crisis) and risk-taking as much as to the hooch.  It's a rough ride to be a part of and even observe, Whittaker constantly pulling himself out of his dives, then going into another tailspin, and you just know the only time he'll level off is when he crashes.  The parallels between flight and addiction are obvious (how far can you push yourself before everything breaks and if you survive, how much further can you push?) and audiences who gripe about all the action being in the first 20 minutes, may not realize that they're watching a parallel course throughout the rest of the movie, only far more personal, and maybe (hopefully) not as relatable.  

It is a tough, emotional roller-coaster to be a part of, but everything is of a piece.  At one point, Cheadle's lawyer puts it succinctly: "Death demands responsibility," and responsibility is one thing Whittaker has never known.  The old Irwin Allen disaster movie posters used to scream "Who Will Survive?" The same applies here, even if the audience-grabbing disaster only occurs at the beginning, and we white-knuckle it to see who'll surface from the rubble.  This is a smart, troubling, painful movie to watch.  But, you can't turn away, either in horror or fascination.

Flight is a Full-Price Ticket.

Whip Whittaker's sobering flight is just the first leg on the itinerary.

Unstoppable

"The Braking of Pelham 4-5-6"
or
"So...Now What the Hell Do We Do?"

Tony Scott's last film was the very "meh" update of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 with Denzel Washington as a harried subway supervisor on the day that crazy terrorist John Travolta decides to take a train (and its passengers) hostage.  The movie was hysterical in the "hair-on-fire" way (and not in the "ha-ha" way) where the earlier Joseph Sargent-directed version was cleverly funny, the film-makers leaching colors out of the picture and backing it with a hip-hop beat.  It was a dull and lifeless movie with all sorts of editing tricks and false drama trying to make the thing seem more like an action movie than the material had the capacity to fulfill.  So, what you got was a movie that felt like it was suffering from inappropriate  'roid-rage.

Perhaps they should have skipped Pelham and gone straight to Unstoppable (called that because, presumably, Andrey Konchalovskiy already made Runaway Train in 1985!).  Based on the "Crazy 8's" incident in 2001, where an engineer-less train—train 777, making it apparently that much closer to "the Choo-Choo of the Beast"—carrying dangerous chemicals (the "molten phenol" used in the film), moved unimpeded and under power at speeds up to 48 mph, it has, like Pelham, been ginned up with drama and death and daring-do, and the inevitable "countdown to disaster" that could end Scranton, Pennsylvania as we know it.

Everything that can go wrong can and does.  The train is under power due to an operator error—he was under pressure from co-workers to move a heavily laden train quickly, and left the cab to try and move a track-switcher—with its brakes disconnected, is on a collision course with another filled with school-kids on a "train-safety" field-trip (Oooooh, the irony!), but there seem to be enough Pennsylvanians on the track that you suspect it was "Go Stand on a Railroad Track Day" in the state (at least, the film-makers kept it free of nuns, widows, orphans and puppies—although one shot of a raccoon crossing the track with the train hurtling at us in the background provoked an inappropriate fit of the giggles).  It's carrying the afore-mentioned molten phynol "used in the manufacture of glue"—and in case we don't get it (a problem with this movie) it is reiterated that it is "very toxic, highly volatile" and the place the train will most likely derail is in the middle of Scranton on a curve that overlooks (conveniently) a large collection of fuel oil storage tanks.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is bad city planning. 

On top of that, the corporate heads irresponsibly want to stop it in the least expensive way possible, meaning that it probably won't work, and the two engineers also on a collision course with "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building" consist of a bitter company vet and a kid on his first day on the job with a court appearance that he has to make.

This is one over-loaded train.  Scott pulls out all the stops—he doesn't have any brakes, either—skip-and ramp-editing the train footage to move it faster, swooping around the trains to give everything more momentum, constantly changing perspective to keep one ill at ease (until the two Mutt and Jeff engineers—Denzel Washington and Chris Pine—share a laugh—and a frame—half-way through the film, their conversations consist of separate shots of each speaking their lines from opposite perspectives of the engine compartment), it is a busy, busy movie.  Credit to Scott, he keeps you informed what's going on so you never get lost in the spinning images.  If anything, there is too much information—needlessly identifying various locations at the beginning when they're all 200 miles of each other, and not trusting any piece of information to not be re-iterated (after a terse conversation with the corporate HQ, do we need to have the gal in charge (Rosario Dawson) call her callous supervisor, played "an asshole?").  The entire plot is summed up a couple times during the movie ("So, what you're telling me is....") to the point where you're feeling slightly talked down to.  Still, it is a bit of a fun ride for all the lapses in passenger-service.

One funny aspect of the film is its constant thrusting of Fox News coverage of the event (the film is a 20th Century Fox release and both entities are holdings of News Corp.).  But it may be a bit of a miscalculation: the circling news helicopters buzzing the train seem to not only distract, but also interfere with the rescue efforts, to the point where they're actually one of the things hampering the struggles of the people to resolve the situation.   Fox runs the risk of making one of their own divisions look poor in their attempt to cross-promote, derailing their own efforts throughout the film.

Unstoppable is a Rental.   

The Book of Eli

"The Book of Eli" (The Hughes Brothers, 2010) Eli (Denzel Washington) trudges through a sepia-toned crater-strewn post-apocalypse in slow motion.  He's been walking for 30 years, heading West, compelled by voices that a path will be made for him.  He should fear no Evil.

Probably because he's the biggest bad-ass in the Valley of Death.

Not exactly chapter and verse of lines he says in the movie, but you get the point:  we're talking about a religious-themed apocalypse story, more than a mere Christ-allegory, ala "I Am Legend."  And the way the Hughes Brothers have put it together, they're making a western of the "Shane" variety, but it could also be "Mad Max" (they're similar, especially "The Road Warrior"), another legendary loaner who must make his way being civilized after civilization has crumbled, like so many over-passes, into rubble.

Now, before we get too far, let us just say that, given what we see in the first five minutes of the film, its ultimate revelation is impossible, maybe the Hughes Bros. thought we'd forget or didn't care, but it's stretching things quite a bit.  I could speculate (and give things away) but maybe it's merely sufficient to say that in the scheme of things, you have to take it on Faith, because "The Book of Eli" is all about Faith.  Faith is what drives Eli, he is suffused with it.  He has been assured by the voice that a path will be made for him and all will be provided.

He's pretty lucky in that regard.  He manages to find potable water and to recharge his I-pod filled with classic rock* (It's all classic rock at this point in time!), and he's particular about weapons, bullets being hard to come by in a land where "one man's garbage is another man's treasure."  When he chooses to fight (and he chooses not to a couple of times in the film, choosing, rather, to "stay on the path" than help the victims of an attack), it is with particularly nasty looking long knives—Kukri machetes (I love the Internet)—as well as bows, rifles, pistols (and probably boomerangs if he was in Mad Max's apocalypse), all aimed and fired with deadly accuracy.

So, he's not your typical man of Faith, using it like a weapon.  Eli takes his place in the long line of men (and women) with no, or only one, name who have tumbled through the landscape of westerly-headed movies.  The Hughes Brother owe a large debt to Sergio Leone for this one (and present the receipt by having one of the characters whistle "Cockeye's Theme" from "Once Upon a Time in America"), but also to John Ford, in an excquisitely composed showdown with the player on the other side who also uses Faith as a weapon, a town-kingpin named Carnegie (played with a Jim Jones quivering fervor by Gary Oldman), who, as in history, has this "thing" about books...and one book in particular that he can use to consolidate his power...three guesses what it is (and I'll be saving the other two for next time).  But, it's a good respectable movie, although well-telegraphed, and forming a kind of post-apocalyptic "greatest nuclear hits" in one movie, with its "Wild West" motifs fitting like a lead-lined glove.  Not a bad movie to watch in the shelter, really.  

* Another "take-it-on-Faith" detail.  Hate to tell you this, kids, but a nuclear pulse will erase all your mp3's, no matter how long you've been collecting.  They're right when they say a nuclear war can ruin your whole day.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

"If You Don't Need it, Leave it!"
or
Hip-Hopping Right off the Tracks

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was a 1973 best-selling novel by John Godey that was snapped up for the movies almost immediately. The resulting 1974 film by the efficient Joseph Sargent benefited from an energetically entertaining script by Peter Stone and good performances by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Stone ("1776," "Charade"), being a student of Hitchcock, understood that a good thriller is more fun if you can enjoy it, rather than identify with it, and his script bristled with a sarcastic brio that played with the rich ethnicity of New Yawk. It was filmed again for television in 1999 with Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio that nodded to advances in technology a bit, but lacked energy and suspense.

There was no need for a further sequel, let alone one that would cost upwards of $100 million dollars—most of which seems to have gone to New York location taxes and helicopter rentals—but the Scott brothers evidently felt the need, this one directed by brother Tony in the same needlessly overt style that characterized his last few pictures. Scott's direction has always emphasized flash over substance, and here the film unnecessarily employs MTV cutting, streak shots, ramp-edits and cutesy sound design (a cranked up helicopter shot of a dawn New York skyline punctuates the sun blasting between skyscrapers with first two subway whooshes, than a horn) just to establish location.* This new version of "The Taking of Pelham 123"** is all over the top, set to a hip-hop beat, and it's only at the end that it's clear why Scott is being so aggressive with these techniques—he'll need them again to convey a sense of speed for a subway car supposedly out of control, but in the location shots looks soothingly like it would never leave the tracks.

And if Stone's 1974 screenplay is an example of subtlety, the script by Brian Helgeland (and uncredited David Koepp) is a chunk of concrete, dropping so many f-bombs that it passes for humor in a script devoid of it—one of the very first examples of dialogue is a string of them in a sentence devoid of any meaning, but is merely an example of macho puffery, representing in microcosm both the script and film. Ethnicity is also made a factor in this script, but where Stone's punctured attitudes and stereotypes, in the 2009 script ethnicity defines you and can be used against you (and yet tries to imprint the message that you can "adapt"—interesting. Mixed message, and racistly judgemental...but interesting).

The performances are credible, although I've always had problems seeing John Travolta as a bad guy (thoughtless, yes, but never deliberately malicious). Denzel Washington sinks into his role as everyman, caught in a circumstance he didn't walk to work foreseeing and doing his best to punt. James Gandolfini portrays a subway-riding mayor and the actor shrugs power. John Turturro has a smallish role as a police negotiator, and the highpoint of the film for me is a long held shot of Turturro reacting to the death of a hostage—his eyes portraying shock, and behind them simultaneously trying to pull himself out and consider his next step.

The cumulative effect is numbness and dumbness. A firefight between perps surrounded by a ring of cops turns into a multi-camera squirt-a-thon nightmare. It looks impressive, you start to wonder how none of the police shoot any of the cops opposite them. For all the attempts to update, "The Taking of Pelham 123" is a downgrade in quality, suspense and effectiveness.

Let's see, the Scott brothers managed to mess up "The Andromeda Strain," and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," what other 70's thriller can they destroy?***

"The Taking of Pelham 123" (2009) is, generously, a cable-watcher.

* In the "Rail Control Center," digital effects are used to make the display board more like a video game with zoomed graphics both in the display, and created for dramatic uses by cutting out little windows in the film itself.

** Criminy, even the name is simplified and spoon-fed, lest anyone not "get" it.

*** That question is already answered: Ridley Scott is shooting "Robin Hood." Interesting story: the original script, called "Nottingham," focused on the Sheriff of Nottingham, caught in a struggle between a corrupt King and anarchists with the people's support. Russell Crowe was signed to star. In the interim, the script morphed into Robin being the Sheriff of Nottingham (?), now it's back to the old traditional—and umpteenth—version of "Robin Hood," and Maid Marion are the good guys and the King and Sheriff are bad guys. We've seen it before. Again, the question is: why? Probably because Hollywood can't get enough of the delicious irony of making money on a story about a guy who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor."

It's too bad—I'd have liked to have seen "Nottingham," not another retread.

Mississippi Masala

"Mississippi Masala" (Mira Nair, 1991)

There is so much that I liked about Mississsippi Masala that is seems churlish to be critical. It is the story of a family of Ugandan Asians expelled from their homeland by Idi Amin who fetch up in Greenwood Mississippi, living on the charity of relatives. Most of the movie takes place in 1990 and revolves around the Romeo and Juliet tale of Meena and Dimitri, a black carpet cleaner who first meet when she rear-ends his truck. Nair also shows us the circumstances of the family's expulsion from Uganda in order to introduce us to Okelo, the childhood friend of Meena's father, Jay. He is the person who persuades Jay that he must leave his homeland because 'Africa is for Africans now, Black Africans'. Yet, he is the one who rescues Jay from prison by bribing the police chief. This friendship is important because it reveals the tension that drives the movie, between what people feel about each other and what they feel about race and how these can conflict within the same person. The strength of this movie is that Nair manages to let all sides tell their own story and she refuses to be partial. We end up being as sympathetic to the Asian-Americans as to the African-Americans, to the immigrants as to the natives. The only group that comes out wholesale as less than sympathetic are the few White characters who appear. There are plenty of scenes that are well-observed such as when Meena first meets Dimitri's family at a backyard barbecue when she is interrogated by his family who are fascinated by her - the irony is that as they try to understand where she is from and what category she fits into, it is finally clear that she is the only one at the party who is truly African.

What doesn't work so well for me was first of all the episodic nature of the movie. Nair is concerned to give us a full context for the experiences of this Ugandan Asian family and so we have the sub-plot of her father's struggle to be compensated for all that he has left behind in Africa. It is rather heavy-handed as is some of the direction. There are times in the movie when the acting seems forced and awkward and you wish for a lighter hand on the tiller. However, it is a movie that is more than the sum of its parts.

Deja Vu

Once More into the Time-Breach, Dear Friends, or:
Stop me if you've heard this one...

I took an "Introduction to Film" course in college (it's why I'm so danged qualified to write these things!). When we got to the study of Russian Cinema, the instructor discussed the differences between their film-making and Hollywood film-making. Russian films were big on "montage." They'd give you pieces of a puzzle and you'd add them up to form the story, and sometimes the juxtaposition of images would react against each other. A shot of a hillside under a sunny sky. A shot of wheat. Another shot of wheat. Another shot of LOTS of wheat. Black smoke appearing over the hillside. A large tire crunches the dirt. The grill of a tractor (for it is a tractor, comrade). People marching (with flags, yet!) beside the tractor in solidarity to the...well, you get the idea. There's a lot of coverage for a simple event.

By CONTRAST, the Hollywood film works like this: a shot of a hillside under a sunny sky; a plane enters the frame.

It blows up.

"Déjà Vu" is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and with him, you get the best of both film-making worlds--the long drawn out set-up AND something blowing up!! That's art you can take to the BANK, baby! And Bruckheimer does. You can pooh-pooh a lot of his films like "Days of Thunder," "Bad Boys," "Armageddon" and "Con-Air" (and his morgue-TV franchise "CSI: Anywhere," which this film resembles at times) but they draw in the crowds in amazing numbers, especially when Tony Scott (Ridley's brother) is directing ("Top Gun," "Crimson Tide,"), and this is the latest collaboration between Denzel Washington, Scott and Bruckheimer.

This film begins with the kind of "America in slo-mo" shots they usually reserve for commercials for something unpleasant like life insurance, or Dupont chemicals. The rule is if you've got kids leaping on the grass at half-speed no one will think anything but happy thoughts when you mention chemical fertilizer. Well, we get a lot of that as sailors and their families happily (and sloooowly) board a ferry boat. Then BOOM! It blows up in different speeds at different angles. Lots of coverage of the orange fireball. We've seen this sort of thing from Bruckheimer before. Prolonged normalcy, then instant carnage (is gonna get you). But it's just the beginning of the pattern of referrals, call-backs and out-right "steals" in this moebius strip of a movie.

Enter Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington). He's a crime scene investigator, but instead of being CSI, he's ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). He's misplaced his partner someplace (yes, it's significant) so he's handling the investigation solo. But that's okay, because like CSI's Gil Grissom, he can spot molecules out of place on a beach filled with debris. In no time at all, he's scored a major lead in the case, while the cops take longer trying to explain where the coffee urn is--no, I'm not making that up. Washington is so ingratiating in the role (doing a grinning spin on his "Inside Man" investigator) that you're just happy he's on the case.*

Now Gil Grissom actually does show up, but if you blink once or twice you'll realize that it's merely Val Kilmer doing a Bill Petersen imitation. Kilmer's a gifted performer (The Doors, Tombstone, KissKissBangBang), but here he's a little bloated looking, like the love-child of John Travolta and Kurt Russell.

Carlin's ability to see grains of sand out of place attracts his attention--and they make their way to the Guardian of Forever...or Project Tic-Toc...actually, it's a big terra-computer that can see back in time precisely four days and six hours and with it, the investigators hope to be able to track down the terrorists before they can launch the attack, but they don't know where to pick up the thread. That's Carlin's job and he naturally says, "Watch the girl." And before you can sing one verse of "Laura is the face in the misty light" the group is following her every move even into the shower. High Tech Stalking, but, hey, it's all in the past, after all, and it's (harrumph) "National Security." Now, most investigators fall in love with the object of the investigation (the "Laura" trope) when they see them across a room. This guy sees her across a coroner's slab. So to the creepy "stalking" aspect, perhaps we should add necromancy. Or "nec-romance."

I would say that to reveal more of the plot would spoil the movie, but, really, you've there's nothing new that hasn't been done in better and worse films and TV series. And you just know that once the subject of seeing into the past comes up, someone is actually going to try to...(you're probably way ahead of me AND the movie, which is a sort of reverse time-travel--which should upset the time-space continuum...or at least cause the lights to go dim in Robert McKee's screenwriting seminar!). Luckily for the folks involved, though in most movies of this sort, messing with the past can cause some unseen complications, in this movie there are no loose ends**--everything turns out just as it was before, but better. Well, except for the movie, of course. It's not that "Déjà Vu" is bad. It's just that it's cobbled together from bits of other movies, so, like the phenomenon for which it's named, you get the nagging feeling you've seen it all before.

And you have.

Boom!

Déjà Vu is very much a cable movie--endlessly repeating, ad infinitum.

*With that lead comes a red herring--a woman has washed up on the beach--she's burned, but still beautiful--and she got there before the explosion and against the tide. And before you can say "we'll cross that Einstein-Rosen bridge when we come to it," Washington's Carlin inexplicably makes her the locus/focus of the case..and of course, he's right.

** No, I'm wrong. There is a loose end..with this review. Where's the cat-joke? At one point, going through the "girl's" apartment, Carlin feeds her by-now starving cat...which provoked FarmerScott's retort after the movie, "That's 'Schrödinger's cat!'" And, of course, it is. It's also one of the best inside jokes that even Dennis Miller wouldn't have had the stones to use.

American Gangster

"That's What's Wrong with America. You can't Find the Heart of Anything to Stick the Knife In"

"American Gangster" tells the story of Frank Lucas, who, for a time in the 60's and 70's, ran the most successful narcotics operation in Harlem. The film is based on a "New York" magazine article from an interview with the real-life Lucas, so it must be based on fact, right?*

Ridley Scott's played fast and loose with facts before (1492, Black Hawk Down), so one should take the credit "Based on a True Story" with a kilo of salt. But, that aside, how is the movie?

It tells the parallel stories of Lucas' rise in power on the Harlem streets by "cutting out the middle-man" smuggling in raw opium from Thailand, and manufacturing a concoction called "Blue Magic" that had twice the potency, but at half the cost, with the story of the cop who eventually busted him, a down on his luck detective named Richie Roberts who's too honest to be trusted by the New York Police. While Lucas starts to make his version of the American Dream, Roberts continually has his legs knocked out from under him--his wife leaves him, takes his kid, he struggles with classes to better himself (public speaking, law), his partner turns junkie, and implicates him in a murder. The movie drips with irony at every turn, constantly showing the easy path of Crime and the tough road of Law Enforcement, that recalls that epitome of the thesis-"The French Connection."** In a montage of Thanksgiving, Lucas is shown with his entire family at a stereotypical Thanksgiving spread (and in one of the more heavy-handed of Scott's directorial choices frames it like Norman Rockwell's "Freedom from Want" painting, while Roberts, makes a cold sandwich of canned turkey-spread and potato chips over the kitchen sink. But then the director re-ups it by showing junkies shooting up between their toes in grimy bathrooms, and a mother passed out in bed, while her child is screaming in the room. Whatever glamour Lucas may enjoy, Scott is particular about showing the cost in human misery. No one gets off Scott-free.

Sometimes the tables are turned. Lucas occasionally has troubles in the operation, and however much he may espouse core-values of honesty and integrity, the very nature of his business starts to rot his dreams for his family. And the more Roberts investigates, the closer he comes to his target, the more his team of "Untouchables" gel, and his investigation and life begin to come into focus.

Ridley Scott misses as much as he hits. For every good film (The Duellists, Alien, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise), there is a terrible one (Legend, 1492, Someone To Watch Over Me, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year), and some that have just enough quality in them (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Matchstick Men) that his directorial brio can compensate for weaknesses and messy scripts. But here, he has a cracker-jack script by Steve Zaillian, no worries about creating "a world" out of whole cloth, and a stunning cast that includes Clarence Williams III (uncredited), Joe Morton, Armand Assante, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., the magnificent Ruby Dee, Ted Levine, Roger Bart, Carla Gugino, Chiwetel Ojiofor, and top-lined by Russell Crowe, but especially Denzel Washington. When these two heavy-weights get together, their scenes crackle with invention. Everybody does incredibly lived-in work.

And nobody less than the director. This is Ridley Scott's best film in ages. At times the details get a bit murky, but Scott does so to keep a multi-faceted story moving at a brisk pace. And he pulls off some amazing little camera tricks that stun, and some of the most unpretentious action-sequences put to film. Those action sequences are rough stuff--the film begins with the immolation and point-blank gundown of a mob rival--and the junkie sequences are harrowing, so one should be warned. But missing it would be missing a great film.

"American Gangster" is a full-price ticket

* a casual glance at the internet will disprove a lot of myth from fact. Lucas did not work for crime boss "Bumpy" Johnson for 15 years, but five (he's been in prison before), he was not with him when he died, did not marry "Miss Puerto Rico," or own "Small's" nightclub. And that's just the start for Lucas. The real Roberts is a bit miffed that to attract Crowe, they beefed up his part by making him more of a loser. Lucas admits that the film is "about 20% true."

** The names "Eddie Egan" and "Sonny Grosso" are invoked early on, and Crowe's Roberts employs a foot-chase under the "El" that figured so prominently in the movie.