Movie Review: American Hustle (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Marking the welcome return of the long con crime film subgenre, David O. Russell's American Hustle is an above average, populist comic film that could itself be seen as some kind of confidence game. The movie opens its prologue with Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges' romantic saxophone gem "Jeep's Blues," a piece that links Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), the two crooked lovebirds at the heart of the film. For its opening credits Russell then switches to "Dirty Work," another great sax tune more synonymous with AM light rock. This bait-and-switch signals that we are now entering a world where any perceived and addictive glitz and glamour bears the putrid trace of elaborate falsehood, a parallel drawn by Irving's discarded wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) in reference to her Swedish fingernail polish. Even its first title indicates that only "some of this actually happened," a reference to the ABSCAM scandal from the late 70s that it dramatizes, in which the FBI recruited a bunco artist to teach them how to ensnare crooked politicians willing to take bribes.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

Given the tragedy in Aurora, CO, running a review of The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) on Friday morning just didn't seem right. It's the start of a new week, however, and many of you have had a chance to see the new film. I don't normally go in for spoiler warnings, but given the nature of this beloved franchise, here it goes: if you haven't seen the movie yet, READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL...

Movie Review: The Fighter (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

It doesn't even take as long as you'd think. In fact, it begins during the opening credits for The Fighter. Christian Bale, already being lauded for his "scene-stealing" turn as the crack-addicted former boxer Dicky Eklund, starts showboating. And then, as he walks through his neighborhood with the film's ostensible star—Mark Wahlberg playing Eklund's brother Micky Ward—with a camera crew and some locals (surely non-actors given their earthy, blank-faced realism) gathered around them, someone stops to take a picture of Micky and one of the groupies, and Bale photo-bombs the shot with his hyperactive mugging. It's a moment indicative of the movie's flaws. Director David O. Russell (Three Kings), often portrayed as a control freak of the worst kind, gives up control to the manically cocky Bale, and The Fighter buckles to its knees.

Blu-ray Review: Public Enemies (2009)

by Tony Dayoub



Sometimes I wonder if Michael Mann is onto something that has eluded other directors of his generation. Take Public Enemies, out on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow. As I've said before, there is an immediacy that its digital cinematography brings for the first time to the venerated gangster genre. The film's naysayers gripe about the motion blur and countless other issues they cannot get past when watching the film in theaters this past summer. But a quick pop of the new Blu-ray into my home theater system confirms what I've been saying all along. This movie grows immeasurably when watched digitally, something that many couldn't do depending on the movie theater where they caught it playing.


I was first on to this phenomenon after I experienced a vastly different reaction watching Collateral (2004) at home from the reaction I had seeing it theatrically. A similar experience occurred when I first saw Mann's followup, Miami Vice (2006) at home. It makes me want to throttle theater owners until they make all of their screens digital-ready, an admitted near-impossibility economically (as even the threat of their inability to run Lucas' Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith or Cameron's Avatar has had no effect) for many of them. Seeing the Public Enemies Blu-ray on even just an okay home theater system like mine really puts you there in the midst of Mann's voyeuristic look at the conflict between gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and G-man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale).

Mann's explorations into the codes of masculinity, so representative of his entire body of work, has become increasingly transcendent over the course of his last three films. Whereas Collateral was initially criticized for being too on the nose in its depiction of the ying and the yang symbolized by Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx's two main characters, Miami Vice was attacked by folks who thought it wasn't expressing these themes explicitly enough. Those that were ignorant of the tone poetry that characterized Miami Vice launched into similar attacks on the sleek, stripped down abstractions of these themes as presented in Public Enemies. They fail to recognize Mann's aspirations to achieve a sense of verisimilitude through his digital photography, minimalist dialogue, and heightened preoccupation with the rest of the viewer's sensory perceptions focusing on sound and visual design (especially in the climactic shootout involving Pretty Boy Floyd) rather than dialogue to illustrate his concerns.

To accuse Mann of failing to put any substance into Public Enemies is ignorant. As the dense Blu-ray proves, the film was as meticulously researched as any of his previous ones. There are 4 documentaries that cover Dillinger and Purvis, the other outlaws of the period, the locations depicted in the film, and the making of the film. Here's a clip from one:

Mann's own commentary is particularly enlightening into his process for getting to the heart of a story, which seems to involve research, direct interviews with any survivors of the period, more research, and then a sort of zen letting go of all of his findings to focus on the film on an intuitive level. An interactive picture-in-picture historical timeline that one can watch while seeing the film is also rewarding as far as filling in the blanks for those who aren't completely satisfied by the historical accuracy of the film.

Is this the future of cinema; a future in which one really doesn't get the entire picture until one views the film in multiple platforms? I certainly hope not, since I believe the text of a film is ultimately more important than its subtext (even though this can yield its own rewards). Public Enemies certainly struck me as one of the best films of the year when I saw it theatrically. But what Mann seems to be on to is that films are becoming interactive to a previously unimaginable degree. The Blu-ray for Public Enemies makes me wonder if he is now approaching his work with some of that aforethought.

Movie Review: Public Enemies (2009)

[This is a contribution to Michael Mann Week currently running at Radiator Heaven from June 28th to July 4th.] Michael Mann's newest film, Public Enemies, confirms what many of us who follow him have long suspected about the director. He is deliberately focused on his larger body of work and how each of his films fits in with the others. Unlike many of cinema's modern auteurs, who seem to move from project to project based on whims or moods—and how deeply a script they happen on strikes their fancy—Mann seems intent on refining the same theme he has been addressing since Thief (1981), and perhaps even earlier. Public Enemies covers the last year of bank robber John Dillinger's life. Dillinger (Johnny Depp) represents an old world, Robin-Hood-style thief who adheres to a certain code. As he tells fellow crook Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), he respects the public, for it is amongst them that he must hide. He tells one bank customer to put his money away as he robs his bank, declaring that he is there for the bank's, not his. But society is evolving, and Dillinger's sentimentality is becoming a liability in this new world. Psychopaths like Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) are giving bank robbers a bad name. And nobler thieves like Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) are falling to the new generation of law enforcement, G-men like Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). Like Thief's Frank (James Caan), and Neil (Robert De Niro) in Heat (1995), Dillinger is a bandit who must weigh the importance of his personal relationships against the life of crime that defines him. As Mann has matured his perspective on this subject has evolved from rebellion to resignation. Frank's philosophy on personal attachments—never keep any that you can't walk away from should you be in imminent danger—is one that the young Mann believes in, and approaches rather admiringly at the conclusion of Thief, when Frank is able to robotically detach from his new wife, child, home, and businesses, to confront Leo (Robert Prosky), the gang boss who "holds the paper" on Frank's life. However, an older Mann seems to view things differently by the time he directs Heat. In that film, Neil tells the same story, "A guy told me one time, 'Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.'" But when it comes time to put it into practice, Neil finds that he can't just walk away from his obligations. At great personal risk to himself, he decides to go after someone who betrayed him, even when faced with the knowledge that he will most certainly walk right into the hands of his pursuer. Mann's thinking on this has changed even further in the 14 years since Heat's release. Their is a certain doom that hangs over Public Enemies, a sense of predestination that lingers over the character of Dillinger. Though Dante Spinotti shoots in some of the grittiest high-definition clarity yet for a Mann film, the film has a lyrical quality that adds to this—best demonstrated in the scene where Dillinger walks into the Chicago Police Department's Dillinger squad room. Here the room is hauntingly vacant—the cops all out in force looking for their quarry—save for the photographs of Dillinger's associates, all stamped DECEASED, lining the bulletin boards throughout the room. Red (Jason Clarke) warns Dillinger that their time is up, moments before he is shot. As he lays dying, he advises Dillinger to let him go, let his girlfriend Billie (Marion Cotillard) go, let everything go and run—like Frank and Neil were also advised to do in Mann's earlier films. Yet Dillinger doesn't even entertain the notion, demonstrating the more mature Mann's new outlook that breaking off personal ties is not nearly as easy as Frank made it look in Thief. In fact, to move so dispassionately through life may ultimately prove to be one's undoing, as implied through the character of Dillinger's opposite, Melvin Purvis. Like in Heat, where Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) served as both antagonist and doppelganger to Neil, Bale's Purvis mirrors Dillinger. They meet face to face but once in the film, where Dillinger assures Purvis with no small amount of swagger that he has become more inured to the loss of his comrades than Purvis will ever be to the loss of his officers in the line of duty. Bale's expression when he turns his back to Depp reveals that, for Purvis, this is quite true. His single-mindedness in the pursuit of Dillinger recalls that of Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) in pursuit of gang boss Ray Luca (Anthony Denison) in Mann's Crime Story (1986-88). But unlike with Torello or Hanna, Mann implies that Purvis—a strong and disciplined officer—is only human in his inability to walk away from the pain. The title card at the end of Public Enemies sadly reveals that Purvis died by his own hand in 1960. Michael Mann's Public Enemies is a summation of a filmography that has often explored the noble man's ability/inability to dissociate from his personal attachments when threatened. So it is perhaps fitting that Mann bookends the movie with closeups of two notable character actors that have contributed to his oeuvre, James Russo (Miami Vice, Crime Story) and Stephen Lang (Manhunter, Crime Story). Russo plays Walter Dietrich, a man that in many ways "created" Dillinger, tutoring him on how to attain success as a bank robber. And Lang portrays Charles Winstead, the old Texas lawman who killed Dillinger with a shot through the face. Both play honorable men, yet in different circumstances, whose time of sentiment, nobility, and personal codes of honor are quickly coming to an end. And Mann's Public Enemies asserts that our society is diminished by their extinction.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

With Terminator Salvation, director McG almost makes you forget that he was ever known for the two Charlie's Angels misfires. He reignites what was once THE flagship sci-fi action franchise, and brings it into the 21st century, with a relentless juggernaut of a flick that evokes the same feelings The Road Warrior did so long ago. And just like in that movie, the one to watch is an Australian actor, Sam Worthington. He plays Marcus Wright, a death-row inmate executed in 2003, only to wake up in a Terminator hive in 2018. Finding everything a bit topsy-turvy after a nuclear war decimated most of the world, he soon finds two spunky young resistance fighters fighting cyborgs in post-apocalyptic L.A. One of them, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is destined to play a major role one day as seen in the first Terminator (where he was portrayed by Michael Biehn). The three journey towards friendlier territory in search of a legendary prophet, resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale). But when Reese and his fellow fighter are imprisoned in a Terminator fortress, Wright must enlist Connor's help to break Reese out - something, as it turns out, Connor's very existence depends on as well. The Terminator series has always been a mash-up of sorts, a pastiche of all of the sci-fi stories and low-budget effects technology that influenced writer-director James Cameron (Titanic). So it's no surprise that a lot of this film steals from a number of sources. There are little nods to each of the three previous films, including the notable reuse of L.A.'s Griffith Observatory (where Arnold's Terminator first beamed into our time). Chase scenes in apocalyptic landscapes come directly from the Mad Max films. Snake-like robots with red eyes swishing furiously underwater are right out of The Matrix series. And the action setpieces in the Terminator hive are quotes of similar sequences in both the Alien and Resident Evil series. But it's what McG does with these lifts that makes the movie so special. With each scene of the film, he ratchets up the tension, and the stakes, for the heroes. Much of the attraction to this film was the anticipation in seeing Christian Bale play John Connor, a performance that should finally allow us to believe that Connor is the messianic savior the films claim he is. And on this count, Bale succeeds. The intensity and compassion he gives Connor outshines the qualities that similarly animate his portrayal of the Batman. However, the true heart of the film (literally you'll see) is Sam Worthington. Reminiscent of the young babier-faced Mel Gibson (a look which may have been deliberately cultivated by the Mad Max costuming), Worthington is the prime mover of the film's events. And it is through sheer charisma, not the paper-thin backstory of his Marcus character, that Worthington manages to engage us throughout the film to the near exclusion of the always dependable Bale. Can a blockbuster of this kind be so exciting that you wish they DON'T do a sequel? Where Star Trek seems to re-set the table, with the promise of future movies in the series providing the feast, Terminator Salvation completely satisfies one's appetite in this outing. And all of the credit should rest on the shoulder of McG and the film's lead. Sam Worthington, you're a star. Terminator Salvation opens in theaters nationwide this Thursday.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight - Gotham Story: The Tragedy of Harvey Dent, or Part Two: The Actual Film Analysis

by Tony Dayoub



Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is the second act of the epic he started in Batman Begins (2005). It is now becoming clear that he is not satisfied in simply rehashing the familiar story of The Batman (Christian Bale). Slowly emerging from behind the vigilante's cape is a more ambitious crime saga that is really an examination of the corrupt, made-up city of Gotham. There are nods to other directors that have with equal ambition taken on the dissection of a crime-ridden burg. But Nolan has the advantage that Gotham is fictional, and its tale is represented in the tragedy of the movie's true protagonist, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).


The movie picks up shortly after the end of the first film. The Batman has inspired a wave of copycats that hinder more than help in his crusade against Gotham City's criminal elements. Mobsters like The Chechen (Ritchie Coster) and Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts) are uniting against this common enemy. Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) of the Gotham police has now formed a Major Crimes Unit staffed by his most trusted cops, some of which may have fallen to the corruption plaguing the town. All of this is just setting the stage for the introduction of two important players. The Joker (Heath Ledger), an element of chaos, is a psychotic who reflects the evil underbelly of Gotham. Harvey Dent, an element of order, is the new District Attorney. Though coming up through the ranks of Internal Affairs investigating some of Gordon's own MCU cops, he is not above bending the law as a means to an end, the salvation of Gotham City. Dent represents Bruce Wayne's best hope for stepping out from behind the mask allowing him to reunite with the love of his life, A.D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Together The Batman, Gordon and Dent form a powerful troika that is Gotham's best chance for vanquishing its criminals. But will the new unknown variable of The Joker disrupt the equation?

That all of these protagonists share the stage serves to spotlight that it is in this chapter that Gotham City emerges as the central character. It had been alluded to earlier, in Batman Begins, when Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) explained that his goal was to bring down the morally compromised Gotham. Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache), Bruce's father, had been at the opposite end of the spectrum, trying to save the city. Both served as metaphorical fathers to The Batman, the outcast with his finger in the dike, trying to keep the flood of evil from overtaking Gotham, but resigned to the fact that his battle may be a perpetual one.

Nolan took great care in the casting of the fictional Gotham. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he chose Chicago, a city whose past is rooted in corruption as well, to double for Gotham. It's geography serves Gotham well, with its elevated trains running high over the dangerous streets. Its prohibition era story of outlaws hijacking the law, as told in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) is obliquely referenced, when The Batman intimidates Maroni on a rooftop, and the response is laughing skepticism that The Batman would ever kill a criminal and break his moral code. This scene is a quote of De Palma's finale when G-Man Elliot Ness similarly threatens Capone henchman, Frank Nitti.

More explicitly referenced is Michael Mann's Heat (1995), in the film's opening bank heist scene. Loud, violent, and committed in broad daylight, like in the climactic bank heist of the previous film, the nod to that film is made more apparent by the appearance of William Fichtner. Playing a doublecrossing financial mastermind in Heat, here he plays a bank employee literally packing some heat, as a gun-toting bank manager protecting his mob employers' financial interests. And like in this movie, the crime saga Heat is an exploration of the moral decay prevalent at all levels of the law in a city, L.A.

Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is haunting. I won't say much about it here, because it has been talked about plenty. But it does merit all the praise being lavished on it, and it is sad that it is Ledger's final role. The spectre of evil hangs over this Joker like no other one before. While Jack Nicholson's iteration of the role seemed to erase any notion of Cesar Romero in the part, Ledger's take on it reduces Nicholson's performance to a mere postmodern, hipper imitation of Romero's. Because the character bursts forth fully formed, that is with no origin story to tell you how he became The Joker; because Ledger so completely subsumes himself into the part; and because of Ledger's untimely death, there is a spooky dimension to the performance that so disarms the viewer, that the very appearance of the villain in the frame is cause to sit on the edge of one's seat.

The rest of the cast, from Christian Bale to the smallest cameo by Tiny Lister, is equally exemplary, without the added attention brought to their performances by an unfortunate death, as in Ledger's case. But Aaron Eckhart must be singled out for his ferocious, swaggering performance as Harvey Dent.

Dent is the "White Knight" to The Batman's "Dark Knight." He is the local boy, who rose up through the ranks of Gotham's corrupt political system the hard way. Not born to privilege like Wayne, not working outside the law like The Batman, Dent has had to play by the city's rules to withstand its evil influences. Fighting corruption from within, he shows a sardonic tendency to nonetheless be open to it. Bending, though not breaking, the law, he has been able to circumvent the city's decay, and emerges as a heroic option to take up the crusade started by The Batman, bringing it out of the shadows and into the light. So it is all the sadder when The Joker's metaphorical defacing of Gotham leads to the literal defacing of Dent himself.

Taking on the nickname given to him while at Internal Affairs, Two-Face, The Batman and The Joker now serve as the metaphorical fathers to Gotham's twisted new incarnation of fairness. Harvey "Two-Face" Dent now embodies both justice and vengeance, order and chaos. Trusting his two-headed coin - one fine, one scarred - to make all of his decisions, Dent now personifies the only system he's ever considered to be fair, random chance.

At the end of this film, it is on the edge of this two-headed coin that Gotham stands, precariously capable of falling to either side depending on whether The Batman's crusade succeeds or fails. Gotham's story... to be continued?

DVD Review: I'm Not There - Bob Dylan... Chameleon or Cipher?

by Tony Dayoub

Look up the definition of a cipher. The first definition on Dictionary.com for cipher is simply the word zero. Singer Bob Dylan has been anything and everything but a zero. However, as Todd Haynes illustrates in his paean to Dylan, I'm Not There, Dylan viewed himself as somewhat of an empty receptacle. As he used his chameleon-like abilities to create new personas he could hide behind, friends, fans, and particularly the press, would fill that receptacle with their own preconceived notions of who Dylan really was. Haynes found it so difficult to present Dylan in a straightforward manner, that he instead chose six actors to interpret many of his adopted personas. And if much of the stories told about Dylan or by him are apocryphal, then Haynes found the best way to tell the story. He took the advice of a character in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Among the personas appearing in the movie are the poet-like Dylan known as Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), Rimbaud being the poet whose quotation, "I is the other," is the central thesis of the film. Young African-American actor, Marcus Carl Franklin, plays the Woody Guthrie persona. Dylan had fashioned a background story for himself as a young folk-singing hobo, who spent his youth jumping on trains to travel cross-country, a story later found out to be false. Haynes casting of the 11-year-old Franklin is a wink to viewers, making it obvious that this kid could not possibly be a surrogate for Dylan despite his stories leading one to believe it so. Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) is the Greenwich Village folkie that we closely associate with Joan Baez (or in this movie, Julianne Moore's Alice Fabian). Bale also reappears as Pastor John, the born-again Dylan of the late seventies. Jack Rollins (Heath Ledger) is the self-absorbed movie star Dylan, who's crumbling marriage is symbolized by the trajectory America takes during the Vietnam war. Richard Gere is Billy the Kid, the Dylan that retreats from public view to live a quiet life in Riddle, a town populated by characters from his songs.

The most iconic and spot-on performance, in fact, almost a transformation, is Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, the defensive Dylan facing rejection from his folk fans after going electric. Her nomination for an Oscar is well deserved, for at no time are you consciously aware that this is Blanchett acting. You are transfixed by her charisma as the androgynous rock star at the height of his sixties-era confrontational posturing towards the press. Blanchett captures the Dylan that sees himself as a cipher, "One having no influence or value; a nonentity."

Haynes shoots each story in the style of cinema suited to the period and story being covered. For example, Blanchett's segment is reminiscent of Fellini's 8 1/2, and Gere's evokes the westerns of the seventies, like Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (which Dylan appeared in).

I was enthralled by the enigmatic film on a level that I can't quite explain. It certainly has an emotional effect on the most visceral level. But the enigmatic film resists any intellectualizing. Much of the explanations above were derived from a thorough survey of the special features included on the DVD, in stores now. I am a casual Bob Dylan fan so I did not have any reference points to lean on when watching the film. But the wealth of extras on the disc can serve as a crash-course on the singer's life and work. Special attention should be payed to the writings on the film collected under the title "An Introduction to the Film" on Disc 1. The point is that none of this should hinder enjoyment of the film, as long as you can accept its perplexing metaphorical nature.

"I is the other." As Dylan would say, I is not me... I'm not there. Haynes fractured biopic depicts the nonentity that characterizes Dylan. And perhaps his film consciously exemplifies yet another definition of a cipher, "[a private mode of communication] contrived for the safe transmission of secrets."

Still provided courtesy of Genius Products and The Weinstein Company.