Rush (2013)

Winning Isn't Everything...
or
Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Enemies in the Rear-View Mirror (They May be Closer Than They Appear)

The main reason I wanted to see Rush was that it has a script by Peter Morgan, whose work from The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United, Hereafter* have all been thought-provoking, literate screenplays and one wondered how he could provide that in a racing film, a sub-genre focused more on visceral momentum and the visual and where the weakest sections have always been those outside of the cars and off-track.

This one, though, it completely opposite in the tradition of Howard Hawks' race-track movies. And it's all true (except for a lie or two).  It tells the story of two (eventual) Formula 1 drivers, Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), Austrian, teutonic, disciplined, engineer and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), British, louge, seat-of-your-pants, tactician. They couldn't be more different except that both want to be the best and will do anything, risk anything to get there.

And they're both damned good drivers.**

Both are bad boys in their own ways.  Lauda comes from a prominent Austrian family, but does not want to go into the family business, which disowns any acceptance of Niki's ambitions to drive professionally.  So, he finds a race-team going bankrupt, buys it cheap by cashing in his life insurance policy, and takes over, re-building the car's engine from scratch.  Hunt knows a rich boy, Lord Hesketh (Christian McKay) with money to throw away and a party every hour.  In the film, the two despise each other immediately.  The first time Hunt sees Lauda at a Formula Two race (one of those examples of "a lie or two"), director Ron Howard throws a rainbow refraction from Hunt's POV, bringing a mysticism over the moment that might be a bit too much.

That first race, they bump and spin.  Hunt can't pull himself back into the race, his engine conks out, but Lauda, with some difficulty, throws himself the right way and is able to race his way to victory.  Hunt starts to berate Lauda about it, but the Austrian is dismissive—it was the car, not the driver, Lauda had the better car and was able to get back in.  Hunt's still pissed, insults Lauda by saying he looks like a rat, then goes off and parties with Hesketh, the crew and any woman within arm's length, as is his habit.  It's the start of a rivalry that will have its up's and down's, but that is the character-arc that both drivers have, and will have throughout the entire movie.  Their focused competition will push each of them to doing crazy things on and off the track.

It makes a good story.  Except for a lie or two.

It may not seem like much, but it's the Ron Howard way to make movies. Like a good race-track, eliminate any bumps in the road that might add dimension, nuance, or raise a question in the mind that might distract.  If you set up a joke, show the pay-off at the next cut.  If there's a building-up montage, make sure you show the results first thing.  If you want to show the treadmill of being famous, put David Bowie's "Fame" on the soundtrack (released in 1975, it fits the period). 

A shot like this is used quite a bit: it makes you go "hmmm."

In Rush, there's no ambiguity, no wasted shot, not a moment of contemplation or self-doubt.  It runs the rule of every Howard movie (that I've seen, at least, which is all except two) of being so audience friendly that it barely needs an audience, as there is no room for interpretation. At all.

It's not manipulation (all movies are manipulative, even documentaries), so much as keeping it very, very simple—least-common-denominator simple.  It makes a better movie to have Hunt and Lauda just despise each other throughout the movie until the crisis of Lauda's accident.  And even then, the bantering between them has a nice nasty streak running through it.  It would have completely messed up that story through-line if (say) Hunt and Lauda were closer than Morgan and Howard impress...which they were—they were flat-mates for awhile, and enough that Rush would have resembled The Odd Racing Couple if they had shown it—but that would have ruined the all or nothing, go for broke, all-in, simple kind of impression the film-makers are trying to evoke.  If it feels good, why complicate it?  And Howard's films, even the depressing ones, are feel-good movies (I mean, A Beautiful Mind is about schizophrenia and he still managed to bring forth a teary-smile at the end...and won an Oscar for it!).

Really, this is just to increase my Internet "hits."
Olivia Wilde as model Suzy Miller—she's in the film for as long as you're looking at this picture.

So, what am I saying, that it isn't "arty" enough?  No.  It's plenty arty, with a humorous set design and costuming that will make anyone under 30 think we were all mad (and we were, hey, but don't linger at the mirror, yourself). Howard and his cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (he bounces between Lars von Trier and Danny Boyle, so of course it's arty), manage to shoot making left turns repeatedly interesting to look at, without becoming fetishistic about it (more Grand Prix than Le Mans, more Frankenheimer, less Katzin), and they have a tendency to repeat a lot of good shots, rather than trying to find every possible angle with which you can photograph a moving car.  So, there's a consistency there of quality over quantity.  And the core of the story—of these two outliers, both unlikable but admirable, racing to the drumming of their own pistons, finding inspiration in each other and realizing it, makes it an interesting movie, and worth seeing.

Rush is a Matinee.

Niki and James, when Lauda came back to racing six weeks after his accident.

*  He was also involved in the early stages of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Skyfall.

** Here's a Lauda quote (a real one) about Hunt:"We were big rivals, especially at the end of the [1976] season, but I respected him because you could drive next to him—2 centimeters, wheel-by-wheel, for 300 kilometers or more—and nothing would happen. He was a real top driver at the time."  That's the sort of admiration Lauda would allow himself—an appreciation of undeniable skill.

42

Changing the Face of the American Game
or 
The Saint of Swat

One of the great "unmade" movies is the story of Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the baseball player who broke the color barrier in the quintessential American game.

Oh, it has been made before: Robinson, himself, older and showing the effects of the strain the game and his task had put on him, starred in a B-movie version, The Jackie Robinson Story, in 1950;   Ken Burns' definitive documentary Baseball made his story the lynch-pin of the parallel stories of The Game and race relations in America in the 20th Century (and will probably always be the best telling of what happened).

But Robinson's story has been kicking the turf of home plate for a couple of decades lately—Spike Lee has been working tirelessly to make a film of his story for that long, and I've always wanted to see his version of it, as his directorial voice would absolutely put a distinctively personal philosophical spin on the heroics of it.  A Spike Lee "joint" might also provide some angry tension that was part and parcel of the Jackie Robinson Story, but could never be expressed, lest the long-delayed abolition of sanctioned (but unspoken) segregation of baseball fail in a double-play of racism posing as informed sports commentary (which still goes on today for some reason).

Brian Helgeland's film about Robinson, 42 (the number Robinson wore for the Dodgers and the only number permanently retired in the MLB), doesn't have the inflamed spirit that Lee might have imposed, and is content to stick to the facts, which are enough as the events were charged with over-laying race issues, prejudice posing as business politics, and the uneasy first faltering post-war steps to civil rights legislation.

Make no mistake.  It was a super-human task to be the first black man in an all-white league.  He was a fine hitter, a better runner, and a brilliant strategist who would earn runs without connecting bat to ball, merely by "freaking out" pitchers by stealing bases.  Plus, he had a defiant spirit that would not let prejudice stand.  He wouldn't "just take it."  But, the "handshake" part of his signing with the Dodgers was that he would have to "take it," whatever was thrown his way, be they death-threats, or murderous pitches.  He promised his manager that he would not fight back, show restraint, and be the model player. 

Oh.  The bottom line was that he had to perform, as well.

Robinson and Rickey on the day he signed with the Dodgers

Robinson knew the opportunity that his role would provide, not only for him but also for other "Negro players."  He was described as "a race man," passionate about the lot of African-Americans in a country with Jim Crow laws in place, segregated bathrooms, water faucets and diners, and prejudices not so public under the guise of "tolerance," that actually seemed to take pride in a sentiment like "separate but equal."  And he shouldered it, showing the humility and great generosity of his spirit, always saying the "breaking of the color barrier" was not his story but Branch Rickey's.

But, as dramatized in the film, it was also the story of everyone in the Dodgers organization, especially the players, initially reluctant to allow Robinson in, and upon seeing the rough treatment he was getting from fans, other teams, and previously friendly hotels and restaurants, becoming his ally, team-mate, friend, and first line of defense.  Robinson's imposed tolerance in the face of hate, naked or subtle, inspired empathy with his fellows, and his play raised their game, making all of them better players, and in the words of Dodger announcer Red Barber "better men."

Performances are uniformly excellent.  Harrison Ford is top-lined as Rickey, and Ford chews into the role the way John Wayne jawed Rooster Cogburn, growling and over-playing just a little bit to provide "character," Christopher Meloni of "Law and Order: SVU" does a fine job playing Dodgers coach Leo Durocher, soon replaced by "Barney Miller"'s Max Gail as Burt Shotton, Lucas Black plays Pee Wee Reese and Ryan Merriman plays Dixie Walker, and Nicole Beharie plays the devoted Rachel Robinson with a bracing mixture of grace and spine.  Alan Tudyk surprises with a particularly unsympathetic portrait of Philadelphia coach Ben Chapman, whose taunts on-field But special praise has to be given to Chadwick Boseman's performance as Robinson, which he has down cold.  There's enough footage of his play to copy, but what he nails is Robinson's expression, the enigmatic not-a-smile, and the wary eyes and darkened brow of the already burned and suspicious player, a bit of a caged lion not allowed to roar.

It's a good tribute to the man, if only missing a little bit of the fire that must have burned in the man to accomplish what he needed to, and that needed to be internalized amid so much pressure.  He (with Rickey's patronage) turned the puerile accomplishments of a kid's game (the wins, the records) into something far greater for humankind (American division).  He was the slugger who couldn't hit back, who turned the other cheek and turned America around.  Babe Ruth was baseball's "sultan of swat."  Robinson is its saint.

42 is a Matinee.

As dramatized in the film, Robinson posing with Phillies coach Ben Chapman who was criticized for shouting racial slurs at the player during a game.  This photo op was Chapman's way of trying to fend off charges of "unsportsmanlike conduct." He was fired by Philadelphia in 1948.  Looking at the smile on Robinson, casual and a bit cocky, "helping out" the guy by posing with him, always makes me smile.

Trouble with the Curve

I Am, I Said/To No One There
or
Becoming Eastwood

Amy Adams is amazing, really.  Clint Eastwood has had many female co-stars, from Shirley MacLaine to Meryl Streep, and directed a bevy of others, some of whom have given great performances—Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Hilary Swank, Angelina Jolie, two of them to Oscars—all have studied at the Eastwood school.  The results have been a combination of actress' gifts and Eastwood guile.  But, none of them have taken to heart that state of naturalness, the implacable restraint and mandarin ironic humor that the actor has demonstrated in the past like Adams does in Trouble with the Curve, Eastwood's latest project (produced but not directed—that job going to Eastwood's assistant director Robert Lorenz) about the relationship between an aged baseball scout and his estranged-but-not-fallen-far-from-the-tree daughter.  Linney has played Eastwood's screen-daughter in the past, and she was terrific, but Adams imbues so much of Eastwood's game that one actually believes in the symbiosis, and their scenes together crackle with a lived-in familiarity, a mutual passive-aggressiveness, and a sense of shared past and unspoken tensions.  

Eastwood is the top-liner but it's the daughter's story.  Mickey Lobell (Adams) is on track to partner at a law firm (nice line up of of Bob Gunton, George Wyner and Jack Gilpin—in fact, the film is top-loaded with good character actors, not only in the firm, but also in the Braves organization—Robert Patrick—and among the veteran scouts—Ed Lauter, Raymond Anthony Thomas, and Chelcie Ross) when she gets wind from family friend, Atlanta Braves scouting coach Pete Klein (John Goodman) that her scout father (Eastwood) is about to be brushed back in the organization—he's old, his eyes are going, and there's a new scout (Mathew Lillard) who's more into stats and remote-controlling his decisions than doing the leg-work of seeing and hearing what the talent can do (this one would make a fine double-bill with Moneyball if double-bills still existed).  Lobell is given one last chance—check out a kid with a killer swing (Joe Massingill) who looks to be a high draft pick.  Lobell's job is on the line, and Klein recruits Mickey to follow the old man on-deck and pinch-hit for him if necessary as a seeing-eye daughter.  Against her better instincts, she heads to North Carolina to dog her father by day and work on her client-presentation at night (the film sends mixed messages on the thesis of remote-working, as it seems to be fine for her), the father and daughter trading mutual scowls and muted growls, trying to "get closer" while they couldn't seem more like each other.

That's a lot of scenario for a deceptively simple story about relationships and the importance of "being there" in them.  It is also complicated by the mutual interaction between a fellow scout (Justin Timberlake) that the older Lobell has a past with, and the younger might have a future with—Timberlake does fine, relaxed...even charming...work here, not so strong on the dramatics, but hitting solidly on the humor (best line: "Poor Bruce..."), finding a nice line between Eastwood and Adams and making the most of a convenience role to show growth between the two characters.

It works and works solidly if you, like Eastwood's character, don't look too well at it.  And there's some late inning contrivances that come out of left field that tie everything up a little too conveniently and nicely, managing to retire the side and take care of every issue in only three pitches.  I smelled a rigged game—we really didn't need a Grand Slam on the last pitch to put up a "W" for this one, and, to my mind, took away from the good things that had come before.

Maybe I was feeling that way, anyway.  Personally, I'd've been happy if Clint Eastwood had stuck to his lack of guns and retired from acting (as he said he was doing) with Gran Torino.  The grace-note of that particular character's last act served as a "period" to the syntax of Eastwood's career, full of so many unrealistic face-offs with clusters of opponents throughout the years.  It was the perfect bow and the perfect statement.  But, he had to do a friend a favor—get his buddy a director card—and so he came back.  I found it a little disappointing to find out that even Eastwood didn't know when the quitting was good.  But, his work here is good, even if the eyes are squinting down to a lack of expressiveness (he does a wink here that is probably only visible in HD), and the voice has been reduced to a burned-out husk.  The gravitas and irony are still there, though, enough for Adams to latch onto and take advantage of.  And it makes for a pretty good show, while it lasts.

Trouble with the Curve is a Rental.  

Fat City

Fat City (John Huston, 1972) Fat City got a lot of positive critical attention when it came out in '72 and one sees why.  It must have been surprising for a lot of critics that, after a couple of movies (The Kremlin Letter, Sinful Davey, A Walk with Love and Death) that seemed to be desperate to reach a youth market or cater to the looser restrictions on subject matter, that the veteran director could still pull off a gritty down-on-your-heels story and make something new out of it—the old dog still had some tricks up his sleeve, and could do a change-up of genre and tone and come up with something as impressive as the young turks starting to enter the field, like Friedkin and Coppola.  

But it shouldn't have surprised anybody.  Huston was a gambler by trade and by hobby, and was never afraid of taking on different approaches to telling a story.  Sure, he could take a mis-step here and there, especially when he tried to do somthing "of the times," rather than in his own perenneal classicism.  It was always story for Huston, and he was never afraid to take things in complex directions.


Fat City is a tale of two boxers—Tully (Stacy Keach) and Ernie (Jeff Bridges) one on the way up and one on the way down, but the only difference between the two, career-wise, is in the timing.  Ernie is in the early rounds of the bout, all pupptish energy and vigor.  Keach's Tully is in the later stages of the fight, battered, bruised, and tired, having known defeat and the ocassional victory, always just out of reach of a right jab.  When we first encounter them, Ernie has yet to have his first professional fight.  Tully is a couple years out of the ring, barely subsisting.  He's scarred over, but that hardening of tissue, mostly keeps the sense-memory of past victories ringing in his head.  Both mean are trying to get into the ring, one with no way of knowing what will come when he's in it, and the other all too aware of the toll it will take...but, anything is better than his current situation.  As it's said in The Shawshank Redemption, you either gotta get busy living or get busy dying.  In this case, living is fighting.  And for the older pugilist, there's still some fighting to be done, rounds to go before he sleeps.

Huston has had many great male performances under his direction, from such as Bogart, Gable, Clift, Brando, Connery, Finney, but I don't think I've ever seen a better performance in one of Huston's films than Stacy Keach in this.* In whatever you've seen him in, nothing prepares you for the internalized pain that Keach conveys in every aspect of his performance. And there's one moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. During the fight-centerpiece of the film, when Tully makes his comeback, he's knocked to the canvas, but never counted out. He spends an interminable nine seconds on his knees and elbows, head hanging—and there's a moment, a long moment, when you wonder if he's going to get up—if he even wants to get up. Then, he rolls up into a rickety stance to complete the last few seconds of the round. The fighters retreat to their corners and Keach sprawls on his stool, as the cut-men treat a bleeding gash over his left eye.

Huston stays on Keach's face, and there is no expression on it—none.  So, you go to his eyes, which are dead, betraying no light and no spark.  There may be nothing going on in his mind except the most primal reptile instincts to survive; his head is a black hole, nothing leaves, and there may be nothing to leave.  He's a shell, hollow and broken.  That look will show up again in the film, as a final note, lacking in grace, the soundtrack empty, giving a brief glimpse of death, a living one, yes, but a death that still haunts.

Keach in Huston's Fat City

* Everybody is good in this, but one should also note Susan Tyrrell's feisty, free-wheeling performance of a drunk bar-fly that is on par with Keach's and  feels so real you want to throw up your hands and give up.

Gentleman Jim

Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh, 1942) It's all background in this Errol Flynn vehicle, as the audience focuses on Flynn portraying boxer "Gentleman" Jim Corbett as he serves as point-man (chin variety) for the gentrification of the pugilistic sport.  As we fade in the first rule  of the fight game is "nobody talks about the fight game." Not in polite society anyway.  As it is, floating boxing matches are staged hectically before the police can find out and they regularly end, not with the sound of a bell, but the sound of a gavel in a courtroom.  Once "Johnny Law" gets wind of the fight (or hears the sound of one, they're fairly rambunctious affairs), they descend, the crowd scattering as they round up fighters and fans alike.  It's all strictly word-of-mouth, grudge matches, really, the only civility being those of the Marquis of Queensbury—and anybody who's seen Wilde knows what a toad he was.

But Corbett brings some civility to the hammering blows, even to the point of impressing heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond), who goes so far as to meet up with Corbett at a post-match soiree to congratulate him for being the man who took him down.  

Walsh contrasts the match fighting (which takes up relatively little screen-time) with Corbett's efforts to rise in the ranks of Society, as well as in the ring standings, learning to exploit his victories to promote himself to the hoi polloi as well as fight promoters.  It's the burgeoning of the age of sports figures as superstars, and not thugs, rising above gutter tactics and championing their skills as valuable commodities to the elite, giving the rich a taste of the hard-scrabble competition they've left behind.

It's a natural extension of Flynn's persona as a cavalier, being the winking bad boy who's naughty to all the right people, but especially to the really bad ones—the jaunty trickster with a gleam in his eye, who'll find a way to get ahead...by left hook or by crook, the competent high-wire artist in marked contrast to buddy Walter Lowrie (Jack Carson, one of my favorite character actors), the lovable schlub who plays pilot-fish to Corbett's shark, never ablt to achieve success, but omnipresent to enjoy it for him.

Moneyball

"Re-Inventing the Game/Enjoying the Show"
or
"...Like an Island of Misfit Toys"

"It is played everywhere...in parks and playgrounds and prison-yards.  In back alleys and farmers fields. By small boys and old men.  Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of Spring-time and ending with the hard facts of Autumn. Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.  It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers.  And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners; scandal and reform; the individual and the collective.  It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope and coming home.  At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities;  an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. And...the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes."      Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, "Baseball"

Baseball is my favorite sport.  I've played that and soccer (never well) but baseball has always seemed to fascinate me as an observer as no other sport can.  Yes, it depends on athleticism, but it also has an intricate strategy, a formula that can be tossed out in favor of an improvised gambit—baseball can go for long stretches with nothing happening except anticipation, which will snap into frenetic activity, going from 0 to 60 at speeds that NASCAR fans can only dream about.  It can create long-term loyalties but crush your heart in an instant.  It is a cruel mistress, inspiring love but at the cost of your spirit.

There's never been a movie about baseball that has satisfied me.  Often,  the game is ignored for personality, or uses it has a metaphor, wrapping it in myth (The Natural) or legend (Eight Men Out).  But the game is lost in the melodrama, serving only as backstop or stage.

This is why Bennett Miller's film of Moneyball grabbed me so intensely.  Written brilliantly by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, it manages to tell the story of the game—as it is now, where budget and salaries have as much to do with a winning season as the efforts on the field, the front office strategy (or lack thereof), team dynamics and its construction, the reliance between old ways of doing things and the boiling down of what it takes to win, its joys and failings in one film, created by filmmakers all playing their A-game.

The Oakland Athletics have just lost another chance to make it to The World Series and their general manager, former washout-as-a-player Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) faces a long winter trying to re-build a winning team after losing his three key players while his budget for salaries is capped.  He can't compete with money-pits like the Yankees ("It's like a farm system for the New York Yankees," he gripes to his scouts at one point. "We're organ donors for the rich!").  Convinced that the economics of the game, as it stands, is unfair, he tries unsuccessfully to make headway, until he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill—never better), former Yale student in economics, who is working his first job as an adviser to the Cleveland Indians.  The nonathletic portly kid has a unique way of working, matching stats against potential, finding a niche of talent that is undervalued by the old-school way of judging talent ("He's got an ugly girlfriend—means he lacks confidence") Beane's first recruit is Brand as Assistant GM, who can look past the "conventional wisdom" and see the best advantages of the worst paid players.  The strategy is to abandon the "home run hitters" and find the guys who can get on base, make plays and score in-field runs.  The top-dollar guys can have their home run derbies, Beane wants to win, and find a way to win that doesn't depend on the size of the purse-strings.

But, the conventional wisdom still runs the A's.  Beane clashes with the vet scouts and with the coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who starred in Bennett's Capote), whose traditional ways tend to hamper the efforts rather than enhance them.  The A's start the season at the bottom of the ALWest, and the traditional empty-air of sports opinion turns against Beane. 

The story is in the record-books, but that's just a collection of stats.  Moneyball, as with "Moneyball," depends on what you do with them.  The nicely streamlined script is smart, subtly funny, and performed by all involved, especially by Pitt, whose never seemed so relaxed in front of the camera, can be caught in nary "a pose," and even manages to do some nifty tricks with delivery that seem beyond casual. Hill is a performer I've always seen as comic stunt-casting, but here, playing a character perpetually on the verge of a peptic ulcer, he gives a performance of such restraint, that when he does break out it's a bit of a revelation.  And Hoffman, playing the A's "seen-it-all" cynical coach, barely lifts an eyebrow playing smug defiance.  There are pieces of this film that I already know will be showing up in my "Best Moments of 2011" at the end of the year.

The film does hedge the timeline a bit.  "The system" didn't pay off quite so immediately for Beane, but it did pay off—enough that the "level playing field" he dreamed of, is even leveler while more askew, thanks to other teams adapting his methods. The "mythic contradictions" of baseball never seem to cease.  

Moneyball is one for the record books and (yes) the best film about sports I have ever seen.

Moneyball is worth a Full-Price Ticket—right behind home plate.



Prefontaine

"Prefontaine" (Steve James, 1997) The first of the two movies (the other being Robert Towne's "Without Limits") lionizing the patron saint of the running culture (especially in the Northwest) Steve Prefontaine. I've mentioned in the review of the other, some particulars and "Prefontaine" covers the same territory, but owing to who's telling the story and who gave rights to be portrayed, some of the emphases are different for bragging and story-rights. For instance, more is made of "the girl he left behind" in Coos Bay, "Pre's" relationship with fellow track team members (especially Mr. Shot-Put Guy), and the assistant coach. Because the film was produced by the producer-director team of the documentary "Hoop Dreams," the film is staged with scripted "interviews" with actors aged with not-too-convincing make-up, and a reliance on "found footage" of the real Prefontaine (and fortunately, Jared Leto looks just like him so there's no disconnect between the two sources). More emphasis is put on the college recruitment process (a main theme in "Hoop Dreams"). But it is pretty much the same story. Bill Bowerman as portrayed by R. Lee Ermey is more of a military hard-ass than Donald Sutherland's crazy-like-a-fox mystic in "Without Limits."

Towne's film is more assured, technically and scriptually, and the "Hoop Dreams" team can't avoid over-dramatising certain things...like changing Prefontaine's accident the night of his accomplishing the goal of staging an amateur track competition in Eugene. Does "Pre" have to look one of the Black September terrorists in the eye across their balconies at the '72 Munich Olympics? Does Ermey have to emphasize the point at the final race by looking at the camera and saying "I want all the people to know that what they are looking is the kind of runner who comes along only once in a lifetime." Thanks for the tip, but a little unnecessary.

"Prefontaine" was filmed in Tacoma, so quite a few Seattle sports reporters have quick-as-a-blink cameos.

But, when it comes to the finish line, "Without Limits" comes out a few lengths ahead as the better "Pre" film.

North Face (2008)

"Die-hard Climbers Die Easier Than You Think"

Released in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in 2008 (and only just now making its way to the U.S.), "North Face" (aka "Nordwand") chronicles the 1936 attempt by two teams (one German, one Swiss) to climb the sheer North face of the Eiger ("The Ogre") near Berne, Switzerland. Though the western edge had been summitted since 1858, but the concave bowl on the North slope was considered a particular challenge—"the last problem of the Alps." The deaths of two German climbers in 1935 resulted in a suspension of climbing attempts, but several teams made the trek in 1936 to be the first to attempt that route's first summit.

The film makes it an exercise in politics and career advancement for an assistant at a Berlin publication (Johanna Wokalek), an amateur alpinist, who persuades her childhood Berchtesgaden chums Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andreas Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) to make the attempt so that she might cover it for her paper. Kurz is initially reluctant, but his affection for Luise and the challenge of the mountain persuades him to make the attempt in July of 1936. It's watched closely by the German government, as the ascent might make quite a splash for the Nazi Olympics coming up.

The film itself is a marvel, with the actors doing their own stunts and "really being there" grasping the sides of the mountain. Director Philipp Stölzl creates tense climbing sequences of a type that hasn't been seen before, where every missed opportunity, dropped piece of equipment, and injury is keenly felt in a way that films like "Touching the Void" can't seem to convey. Partially, it's Stölzl's use of time as a factor He doesn't take short-cuts, compress events, and deliberately reminds the audience of the clock and time and daylight passing. His climbers are seen as more altruistic, as well, to the point where one liberty is taken with the story to keep the German boys in a good, audience-identifying light. And there is marked cross-cutting between the struggles on the mountain and the tourists living in the lap of luxury on the ground, while crowding the telescopes to check the climbers' progress.

It's one of the best mountain-climbing films ever made,* with a richly dramatic story keenly conveyed. That it's, for the most part, true is just frosting.

"North Face" is a Matinee. Dress warm.

* The only down-side is composer Christian Kolonovits' intrusive score which, for some ungodly reason, uses samples of pick-axes for percussion, making you think there are others on the mountain just out of sight. It's distracting and takes away from the drama on the screen.

The Rookie (2002)

"The Rookie" (John Lee Hancock, 2002) With all the fuss being made over "The Blind Side," attention must be paid to the director's previous sports-film that proved popular, like "The Blind Side," also based on a actual story that's just this side of incredible and told with a clear-eyed lack of pretension.

John Lee Hancock's first film in the Majors* is a double-header of a sports film that manages to tell its male-weepie "dreams do come true" stories, both of them essentially true, with a minimum of sentimentality—the principals are actually quite bitter throughout the film, weighed down by the burden of "what might've been," and to a certain extent paralyzed by it. Coach Jim Morris, a former Big League prospect makes a deal with the High School team he coaches he'll "re-up" if they win their division. It then moves on to top itself to tell the consequence of that first story to the coach who must fulfill a promise to his team...and himself...to try out—again—for the Majors at the age of 39, a time when most pitchers are eyeing retirement, not opposing pitchers.

And because it's situated in Texas (for the most part), there's not an awful lot of talking about it, but, instead, there is a lot of scowling and stewing and time spent in solitude beating themselves up by transference in the form of hurling a baseball in frustration as fast as can be at some woe-be-gone target.

It might have been that baseball abuse added a few feet per second to Jim Morris' pitch, or it might be an arm strengthened by scar-tissue that can top his fast-ball at two ticks shy of a hundred mph. Whatever the reason, the science teacher/baseball coach in the arid football town of Big Lake, Texas must put-up or shut-up to his high-school team after his exhortation to pursue their dreams (and some batting practice with his blazing fast-ball) sharpens them up to become division champions.

That's story one. Story two is Morris' old-man hoofing it through try-outs and the farm system at the off-chance of being called to "The Show." It is an unlikely scenario, but Morris manages to do it, the film ending on the fairy-tale night that he must pitch in his first Major League game in his home state in front of his team and friends and family.

The movie could have been a sob-fest, but instead Hancock hinges it on dark nights of the soul and doubts about responsibility. This isn't some up-beat "Rudy" story where "wishing makes it so," (despite being produced by Disney). Morris (Dennis Quaid) must make a personal journey of dealing with a lifetime of disappointment and what might-have-been to accept the result of his efforts. After a life of compromise and making-do (and blaming others), he has to learn the grace to accept the gifts he has been given and the opportunities he's been afforded. Whatever pain goes behind each pitch, he must also put behind him.


Grace? Sacrifice? Forgiveness? Where do you go to learn such traits? Such inspiration usually is found at the Cathedral, the Temple, or the Mosque, but in the sports-world the big stadium is the source of humility. Hancock stages Morris' first walk into the Texas Rangers stadium as if he was walking into the Vatican, the high-arched entryway with the sun streaming through that stretches to a vanishing point that evokes a long journey, but also the long history of a game that, more than any other sport, is a competition with the ghosts of the past as well as the Boys of that particular Summer. The arches reach to the sky to define the goal but also press down with the weight of tradition, dwarfing the new recruit, challenging him to fill the space. In the distance, his fellow rookie, half his age, looks on in amusement at the old duffer hanging back in awe, anxious to start his journey and not thinking he may be looking at a flash-forward to a future of regret. It is a poignant moment of film, that says volumes in a single image and no words.

It's a good story told well. The characters are not larger than life, merely as large as they need to be. And no decision is made with a self-serving speech and heraldic trumpets—decisions and their consequences are agonized and fretted over. It's a story of people who not only have a lot to lose—they know it—but take the chance anyway for whatever amount of time it may last. "The Rookie" manages to make it look not quixotic, but essential.

Jim Morris' baseball card

* After writing two quirky off-beat films for Clint Eastwood: "A Perfect World" (1993) and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (1997).

Invictus

"No One Plays 100%"

Rugby for the sake of rugby would not a movie make. John Huston's "Victory," a soccer film about soccer, is a listless affair even with a cast that features Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Pelé. But Clint Eastwood's "Invictus,"* about Nelson Mandela's uniting of an apartheid-torn South Africa though a burst of sports-fever, manages to tell a deeper story through the guise of a sports-film. It's a ruse that's perpetuated throughout the film as incident after incident of potential assassination or terrorism is exposed as something else; the fragile coalitions uniting the divided country are constantly in danger of exploding into violence, and the reminders are all around.

Reminders is exactly what Mandela is fighting against. His personal mandate is to keep the past in the past and move towards a united future. A former terrorist and prisoner, as president of a deposed Dutch government, he re-casts himself fresh to serve his country's interests, and finds the most difficult part of the job convincing others to do the same. By uniting former enemies under a common interest, the hope is the citizenry can at least start to look at each other without suspicion.

Eastwood lays out the territory in his first elegant shot, panning from a neatly manicured grass-field filled with well-appointed white rugby players, up over a rigid fence to a city street and beyond it, to a ram-shackle wire fence holding back a vacant lot of towns-folk playing rugby as best they can. They have the one thing in common, but that's it. And that's the start.

A major criticism of the Eastwood style is a tendency to over-state the case, and that is in abundance in this film: through ham-fisted characters like a full-of-himself sports-announcer who provides story exposition in the most patronizing way; in the performance of Morgan Freeman, who, though stooped and halting, does not in any way project Mandela's fragility, making him more of a wax-work representation than a characterization; the occasional too-blunt dialogue.

The dialogue is where the movie fails; the direction is where the movie succeeds and surprises. One becomes more interested in the film's back-story of how Mandela's security detail—once on opposite sides of a political conflict—now must forge a bond to protect the president and each other (there is a situation in which they are clearly over their heads, and the empathy for them knows no boundary). The coming-together of the group stutters and evolves organically, far smoother than the soccer story.

But once, the soccer story kicks in—that's when things get very interesting. Field sports are tough to simulate and make authentic-looking (even "The Damned United" avoided it, for the most part, with archival footage), but Eastwood doesn't shy away from it, going in close, slowing the action down, amping up the stakes. The final game of the 1995 World Cup between South Africa's Springboks and the Māori-themed New Zealand All Blacks (there's some historical irony for you), where one should expect the film to start to drag, instead becomes a brutally intense struggle that more than serves as a metaphor for government struggling against itself and its own inertia to gain some ground in accomplishing some good. You can gripe all you want about stodginess and speechifying, but in subtle and surprising ways, Eastwood and crew bring you back to a thoughtful, invigorating re-appraisal of the themes through the action of the film, delivering a moving sub-text that elevates the film far beyond words. One goes into the film expecting one kind of film, and walks out amazed at how fulfilling, and skilfully presented, the film is.

"Invictus" is a Matinee.


* Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849 - 1902)