Man of Steel

Zod It
or
The Never-Ending Battle (No, Really.  The Never-Ending Battle)

Marvel Comics' film division has so saturated the movie market that its Direct Competition, DC Comics looks like a 98-pound weakling by comparison.  Oh, they did well with Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" Batman series (very well), but the Warners film version of Green Lantern was a little dim.  So, if they put out any more product, they'd better do it right, or be seen as also-ran's.  And the one they HAVE to nail is the DC super-star and cornerstone, Superman. The Last Son of Krypton debuted in comics in 1938, has been on-screen since the Fleischer cartoon days of 1942, a radio series since 1940, on television since 1952, and the big screen since 1980 (ushering the current glut of superhero movies).  Superman has had several iterations since, especially on television, starting with George Reeves, then "Lois and Clark," then "Smallville."  Much tribute has been paid the last few years to the movie version starring Chris Reeve—he even appeared on "Smallville" a few times before his death—and Bryan Singer's attempted re-boot, Superman Returns, was a slavish recreation with better technology, that, in retrospect, was so slavish, it was a little creepy.

The rumor is Warner Brothers HAD to make a Superman movie or pay out a healthy sum to the family of Jerry Siegel, the characters' co-creator, and coincidentally, David Goyer gave Christopher Nolan a great idea for how to handle Superman while they were making The Dark Knight Rises.  Nolan wants to direct other things besides super-heroes, so he brought in Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) to do the film, and in some ways its a good choice.  Snyder knows how to bring comic books to the big screen, transposing the static images to a hyper-dramatic movement, even if he sometimes misses the point of what those stories are saying. The trick was making a GOOD Superman movie—even the Reeve ones corroded after a few years—out of an essentially "old-fashioned" character that challenges for worthy opponents.  What can you do with Superman that hasn't already been done?  How do you present it-him?  Is he Moses or Hercules?  Christ or Pro-Wrestler?  There have been lots of interpretations over the last 75 years, and Nolan-Goyer-Snyder have snatched quite a few of them to their purposes.

Lets talk about what's good about Man of Steel: they're no slavish interpretations: on Krypton, there are no gleaming towers, head-bands, or crystal palaces, but instead an interesting steel-chrome re-imagining, with no plastic in sight (even their view-screens are pointilated metal images), with no clean architectural lines but re-engineered as if by Frank Geary.  Superman's suit is more rococo than Ringling Brothers.  Casting is uniformly excellent: yes, Laurence Fishburne makes a great Perry White; Amy Adams a spunky, no-nonsense (for once) Lois Lane; and Henry Cavill is empathetic as the many identities of alien Kal-El, preternaturally handsome, almost beautiful, and alarmingly ripped, he never winks, acts cute, and plays it straight and unironically, with maybe a little too much furrow in his brow.  Russell Crowe's Jor-El is a bit more of an action-figure this time, which seems unnecessary, and Ayelet Zurer has much more to do as Lara than just cry and fret.  Kal-el's Earth foster parents, the Kents, are marvelous, both Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, but especially Costner, whose Jonathan Kent is a moral force to be reckoned with, fully aware that his son is not only a special-needs child, but a sociological game-changer, the answer to "we're not alone in the Universe" and all the potential for panic and fear that his very existence might produce. Costner's been waiting in the wings doing good, unsentimental character work in smaller movies, shucking his ego, for many years for the opportunity to do something this good and remind people that, yeah, he's a good, clever, disciplined actor capable of great things.

The other thing that gave me great hope for Man of Steel was its re-interpretation of the whole "growing up super" problem.  Kal-El/Clark Kent grows up with a gradually increasing set of powers—in class one day, he freaks out because he can see the skeletons of all his classmates, a cacophony of sounds from miles around threaten to split his skull, he runs to isolate himself in (as tradition) a broom-closet, and when teacher threatens to open the door, he zaps it with heat-vision.  He can't tell people what's going on—Dad's orders—but he has to learn to deal with being different, and suppress it, even to the disservice of others.  It's the "gift or curse" dlllemma, which has been touched on before in the mythos, but never to this extent.  And the other nifty thing is that more than any other "Super"-movie, this one is more science-fiction oriented, it's an alien invasion movie that "Superman" just happens to star in, and be the chief target for.  And there is a concerted effort to make this "THE moment" when Clark becomes Superman.  Here, Kent's been going from one job to another for years, hiding from society, and when super-opportunity rears its ugly head, he moves on, lest he be found out (it's also the impetus to introduce Lois Lane, who happens to stumble on this "mysterious stranger" and, reporter that she is, tracks him down).  But, that "alien threat" text is a great way to keep Superman under wraps,* dealing with the anonymity, and bringing Lane into it.  There's great potential there, as the one person who exposes to the people of Earth that there are "aliens among us," is the picture's chief villain, Krypton's General Zod.

One of the best things about Man of Steel is its cast, including Kevin Costner as Superman's Earth Dad.

And this is where the movie gets into trouble.  Not that Zod isn't a great character.  Genetically-engineered—the Kryptonian way—to be a soldier, he stages a coup in the last days of Krypton in a misguided attempt to keep Krypton "pure."  He finds the naturally-birthed Kal-El repellent, Jor-el a traitor, and is single-mindedly determined to return Krypton to its proper way.  And as spewed by Michael Shannon (who's terrific here, but then he's always terrific), he is a seriously deranged megalomaniac. And although his plans are simple, his means of doing it are so complex,** they tend to bog the movie down, leading to the worst problem with the film—it's ultimately dull and tedious.

We all remember Superman II—with Terence Stamp as General Zod—and the extended fight between Christopher Reeves' Superman and the three Kryptonian criminals which, while good for its time, seemed to be merely a bunch of fighting Cirque De Soleil wire-work.  This time, it's the way it's imagined in the comics, super-fast, punching, punching, punching, the combatants sending each other crashing through buildings and skidding across  pavement to screw themselves up and go at each other again...over and over and over again.  Comics-geeks (including me) have always wanted to see this, it's a dream come true, but like Hitchcock's retort to why his characters never go to the police ("because it's bo-oring" and then proved it in Psycho), it's too much of the same thing, no matter how much collateral damage is being inflicted, it becomes as dull as a "Transformers" movie. One shouldn't be looking "up in the sky" by rolling their eyes. Someone once expressed a dissatisfaction with "super-hero" movies because Hollywood has turned them from adventure stories to war stories, and the ante is being upped to the point of unsustainability and sameness. It's the familiar, in recent story-challenged movies, city-calving carnage, but just in different costumes, and if film-makers are going to keep trying to tap this dry well, they need to come up with unique stories besides battles royale, ones suited to the particular characters (and not particularly the villains').

And that's where Man of Steel ultimately fails—the screenwriters let the character down.  What sets Superman apart is he IS so pure, his intentions are the best, he's "the big blue boy scout," with a moral compass that's been set on both Krypton and Earth, the best of both worlds.  Here Superman makes choices for his adopted home-world that should scare the bejesus out of its citizens, and they're made about twenty minutes of destruction (and how many unseen lives) too late. Forget the considerable property damage sustained—whole city blocks are turned to scrap, buildings collapse, with I'm sure lots of people crushed in the rubble—his ultimate action and the timing of it, is just not what The Man of Tomorrow represents in any of its incarnations. The filmmakers negate what makes the character of Superman so special in that one act, making the character just another guy with too much power in a suit, and not a very good guy at that.*** 

Lots of good things here, but lots of bad things as well, and I argued back and forth with myself over what to rate this, but just because of the tedium factor I chose what I chose, so one could fast-forward—like a speeding bullet—through the never-ending battles.

Man of Steel is a Rental.

Direct dialogue grab from Grant Morrison's (and Frank Quitely's) "All-Star Superman"

* The TV-series "Smallville" did a similar thing, hiding "Supes'" as "The Blur," but Clark Kent stayed illogically stationary as a target.

** In fact, it's the same story-line of the recent story-arc "H'el on Earth" that spanned through the comics last year.

*** It's not like the filmmakers don't know it, they're preaching it throughout the entire movie.  In fact, at one point, Kal-el surrenders to the military as part of Zod's ultimatum to Earth.  He sits in an interview room, placidly, in hand-cuffs, the allowance of which is brought up by reporter Lane.  His explanation and one of the best lines in the movie:  "Well, it wouldn't be much of a surrender if I didn't..."

The Next Three Days

"Thinking Outside the Cell-Block"
or
"It Doesn't Matter What We Believe"

Director Paul Haggis you either love or you hate.  The haters find him manipulative and obvious (I'll buy the second charge, but movies, even documentaries, are—du-uh!—manipulative by their very nature) and will never forgive him for making Crash, which beat out Brokeback Mountain for the Best Picture Oscar.*  The lovers, well, there aren't too many of them outside the movie industry—but Clint Eastwood and the Bond producers love him, and that's good enough for me.

His third film, The Next Three Days, which he wrote and directed,** tells the story of a couple (with child) who are separated, when she (Elizabeth Banks) is arrested, tried and convicted for murder.  Her husband (Russell Crowe), a school teacher, exhausts their finances—selling two homes—and all legal recourses, trying to prove her innocence.  After three years of incarceration, her child doesn't even acknowledge her (having lived half his life without her), and after her last appeal is turned down, she attempts suicide.

Time to think outside the box...the legal system, and the penal system.  The civilized courses have failed...as a matter of course.  It's time to take action, and matters...into one's own hands.

In a way, this is the same movie Haggis has been making all along, his thesis converted into an action plot device more positive in its usage than negative in its omission.  Both Crash and In the Valley of Elah feature protagonists trying to do more than the expected by-the-book (or society) response, to subvert the easy knee-jerk "comfortable" reaction, and (I dunno) think a little deeper.  He seeks the help of a multi-prison escapee (Liam Neeson, in a too-short cameo), who gives him a broad picture of the strategies of going over the wall, and more importantly, staying out.  One of the first things he says may be what's written on the first page of Haggis' screenwriting notebook, as it informs so much of his work: "You have to do a lot of lookin'—things that disrupt the day-to-day routine."  That semi-somnambulent day-to-day routine has been the loam Haggis has toiled in over the years, and in this film, he finds a protagonist who tries to take advantage of it, rather than subvert it.*** 

It's a heist film, basically, with human valuables.  It is also, for a brief time, an "incredible mess" movie as Crowe's John Brennan must—painfully—learn the ropes of the outlaw life (and occasionally be beaten with them).  This pays off later in the film—well, nearly everything pays off later in the film—as the "anything that could go wrong" scenarios start piling up in the film's nerve-rattling desperate finale, and one remembers how those early efforts only served to make matters worse.  The barriers that Brennan must overcome are represented by a filming scheme that places so much of the film behind screens and windows of various opacities—a traditional trope of prison films (it just doesn't happen so much out in the so-called open, as it does in here—Haggis wants us to know there are traps inside and outside prison).

Great cast.  Crowe is nicely casual initially, then gradually turns into the ragged obsessive/compulsive he needs to be, Banks does drama as well as she does comedy (very), and, beyond Neeson, there are nice cameos by Daniel Stern, Olivia Wilde (as a divorcee...really?)...and particularly, Brian Dennehy, who, with the least amount of dialogue, makes the most of his scenes.

There will, no doubt, be an increase in interest in "bump"-keys, and breaking into vehicles with tennis-balls, and Haggis even throws a bone to his critics by purposely leaving a plot-thread frustratingly unresolved.  It's a good film, professionally done, and with enough twists and turns to keep one engaged, while still taking the time—one of the critical elements the film focusses on—to keep things realistic, and not turning the down-to-earth perps into clairvoyant superheroes.  I'd say it was a matinee if the scope reached a bit more, but, as it is...

The Next Three Days is a Rental.  A good one. 


* A decision I've always agreed with: I think Crash was reaching for something to say—especially about the 7-10 split of a city that is Los Angeles, and the casualness of racism as the easy way out.  Brokeback Mountain, although I admired its photography and I thought Heath Ledger had the best cowboy voice in movie history (great work, that—Jake Gyllenhaal, not so much) felt too much like a Joan Crawford movie in reverse-drag.  Mellerdrama at its sawdustiest.

** After Crash and In the Valley of Elah, The Next Three Days is not original—it is based on the French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her, 2008)

*** Even a late-minute extreme act by one of the protagonists is an expression of trying to break out of the routine, to think outside the box (or in this case, the van) and break the lock-step the other is in.

Robin Hood (2010)

"Rise...and Rise Again...and Again...and Again"

Every fifteen years or so, there must be a big budget remake of the "Robin Hood" legend—that's a bit less than the turnaround cycle for The Compleate Works of Jane Austen. The last time the fletches flew on the big screen there were two competing Hoods—the flashy Kevin Reynolds/Kevin Costner version and one starring Patrick Bergin. Before them was "Robin and Marian," various series, and "The Adventures of Robin Hood," the Warner Bros. classic with Errol Flynn, which was itself a remake of silent versions. Then, there have been satiric vignettes in "Shrek" and "Time Bandits,"* Mel Brooks has done a movie ("Men in Tights") AND a series ("When Things Were Rotten")—Mel loves his Public Domain. Disney has touched on it a couple times as well, including an animated funny animals version.

The character and his ancillary co-stars have a long oral tradition with many variations of "The Hode," so it's natural that someone drums him up for another "Have at ye" every few years, each reflecting the times in which they were made. Robin has been yeoman and nobleman, Crusader and thief, trickster and military man, young and old. Although we've been down this well-trod pathe in the glenne before, it was interesting to think about what the "Gladiator" team of Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe could do with the story, and how they would approach it.

And the answer is: with a little bit of everything. Scott with the help of scenarist Brian Helgeland** has a Robin Hood, an orphan Saxon Crusading with Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston-he's great in this), who's an expert bowman and strategist by day, and a grifter by night. At the end of the Crusades, he is given a task, the complications of which lead him to Nottingham and the masquerade of being Robert Loxley, slain son of Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) and spouse of Lady Marian Loxley (Cate Blanchett)—this Robin is both commoner and gentry. The Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew McFadyen) is not given much to do this time 'round, instead the intrigues are by Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong) and King Phillip of France, who plot to undermine the already shaky reign of the new King John (Oscar Isaac), the last son of King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins), and invade England.

The general structure of "Robin Hood" is superficially similar to “Gladiator” with big battles at both ends, and Scott uses the same stutter-shutter technique to give some verve to the action scenes. But there it ends. Crowe is considerably lighter as Robin Hood, though he does summon up genuine moments of drama. Performances are fine all around withCate Blanchett and William Hurt being stand-outs. But the best performance is by Max von Sydow as the elderly Sir Walter. Blind, but nobody’s fool, Sir Walter takes the news of his son’s death with grim determination and courtesy for its messenger, and comes up with the Robin-as-Loxley ruse to protect Marion from having their land confiscated should he die. Von Sydow has been ill-used of late, playing teutonic villains of similar coldness, but this role shows him at full thespian power, and it would be robbery if he was not nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

The film boasts good values all around, with Scott’s keen eye for cinematography and detail, the writing is clever and often ingenious (I think the fact that it's another Robin Hood movie sours a lot of people's expectations). The film never drags and offers considerable entertainment value. Only at the end does it falter, with a beach battle that seems overly-stretched in terms of production value and credibility. Either there was not enough planning or extras, but it looks to be constructed to not show something as opposed to creating an epic battle. Too much is made of the presence of landing craft as obstacles, and of one particular participant in the clamor, which seems to be done for scoring political points rather than good story-telling.

But that is twenty minutes out of 140. For the most part, this new “Robin Hood” hits its mark. Yes, it might be superfluous (we can say this—with a straight face—with so many sequels headed our way?), but what's there on the screen is an interesting "take" on the legend that has lasted so long.

"Robin Hood" is a Matinee.

* John Cleese's immaculate nobleman with a "Bonny Prince Charlie" manner is one of my favorites.

** The original script, by the team of Ethan Rieff and Cyrus Voris, called "Nottingham," was more radical, but interesting in a concept-twist kind of way, but once Ridley Scott came on board, the concept changed.