FAST AND FURIOUS 6

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Grade: C

Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Luke Evans, Gina Carano, Elsa Pataky and Jordanna Brewster

Premise: Dominic Toretto and his notorious gang of daredevil stunt drivers are recruited by a government agent to help thwart an international terrorist’s plans.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence including multiple devastating car accident scenes, language, some disturbing images and some sexual content, including partial nudity

You’ve been through it. Everyone has. That night when the family gathers hungrily in the kitchen to see what’s for dinner, and mom answers their inquiries with one word: “Leftovers.” Depending on the family in question, this night can occur weekly, and, no matter how accustomed one is to it, Mom’s response almost always brings on a bit of grumbling and moaning. Why? Because leftovers simply aren’t as appetizing as something fresh, something just out of the oven, something just prepared. Leftovers are unoriginal, kinda boring, sometimes a little lacking in taste.

That’s what Fast and Furious 6 felt like to me when I watched it today. Leftovers. Something boring, unoriginal, something a little lacking in quality, that was just thrown together because the same recipe had previously wrought success. It bears all the same qualities as its successful predecessors, and, based on early box office returns, isn’t bothering most people as something lacking originality… But to those of us who care about real quality and freshness in movies, Fast 6 feels loud, clunky and dumb.

It didn’t have to be this way, by the way. Fast 6 didn’t have to be leftovers. In fact, I was actually excited to see it despite my usual exasperation with sequels. After all, 2011’s Fast Five brought some life back to the then-decade-old franchise with its big, appealing cast, spectacular final chase, and its indoctrination of a new star (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) into the fold alongside popular series vets Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. But Fast 6—it’s clear early on—is nothing special and lacks even that film’s snap, stumbling over clichéd dialogue, badly-edited action, and a script with more holes and gaps than a tennis racket.

The story doesn’t matter much, obviously. As long as there are some cool cars, frenetic action, some scantily-clad women and a few pithy one-liners thrown around by burly men bursting out of wife-beaters, Fast 6 has met its goal, right? In any case, as this film opens, series hero Dominic Toretto (Diesel, typically gruff), an international fugitive specializing in high-speed getaways, has found paradise in the remote Spanish islands. He lives in a sea-side villa next door to his sister Mia (Jordanna Brewster, all but forgotten) and her beau, ex-cop Brian O’Connor (Walker). They’ve just had a son, and Dom’s spending his down time in the arms of lovely Brazilian sweetheart Elena (Elsa Pataky). But trouble, of a sort, arrives in paradise in the person of government Search and Capture Officer Hobbs (Johnson), who was hunting Dom and his gang in the previous film until teaming up with them when his men were killed by a baddie’s minions. Hobbs isn’t there to arrest Dom, but to enlist his services. Turns out an ex-SAS operative (Luke Evans) by the name of Owen Shaw has been leading a highly-trained team of individuals specializing in weapons, technology, and vehicular mayhem, and he’s after a secret government computer that might allow him to knock the power out of a whole city, and cause utter chaos. To combat Shaw and his team, Hobbs has come to recruit Dom and his.

They are-if you care and didn’t see Fast Five-motormouthed adrenaline junkie Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson), tech wizard Tej Parker (Chris Bridges), Israeli weapons specialist Giselle (Gal Gadot) and Asian slickster Han (Sung Kang). Also on hand is Hobbs’ partner, a gorgeous but flinty-eyed woman named Reilly (MMA star Gina Carano) who can crack bones as easily as she can smiles. Normally, the fiercely-loyal Dom wouldn’t dare take his “family” from their scattered happy places and put them in harm’s way, but Hobbs has a huge bargaining chip: a clear-as-day photo of one of Shaw’s accomplices, Dom’s lifelong love Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who Dom and all his friends believed died some time before.

That’s pretty much all you need to know (and yes, it was all in the trailer). The rest comes naturally. Mayhem ensues. Dom mumbles and groans about how important family is. Tires squeal and engines roar. Glass shatters. The filmmakers pretend we might decide Paul Walker is as cool as Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson. Tyrese makes countless jokes. Cars crash and flip over. Gina Carano and Michelle Rodriguez get in a few fistfights so vicious the cast of The Expendables would cringe. Dom’s live-in girlfriend Elena sits idly—even supportingly—by as Dom moves heaven and earth to win back the love of his life, whom he clearly still loves, brainwashed turncoat and all. Oh, and cars crash. Cars crash a lot.

There’s no problem with that, necessarily. It’s just that it not only feels familiar, it’s not even well done. Oh, the action is pretty cool (the action scenes are, I believe, the only reason to watch this movie), but everything else has either been done before, needs to be eliminated, or expanded upon a little bit more.

It’s a little sad seeing Walker back collecting a paycheck—he once had a promising career, and was actually the star of the first two films in the series. Diesel’s decent reprising the role that made him (one scene, in which he recounts highlights of his and Letty’s life together to the amnesiac Rodriguez, is the closest this film comes to having a soul). Johnson, whose A-list star magnitude and undeniable charisma helped lift the last film out of a yet-another-sequel rut, has been too fully indoctrinated—he’s only really interesting because he has huge muscles, and, of course, it’s more fun to watch people with big muscles do things than it is to watch other people. Rodriguez is always watchable but seems to have only two levels of personality--snarky and brooding--putting one in mind of a Latina Jennifer Lawrence. Luke Evans’ villain is little more than an Antonio Banderas lookalike. Tyrese is a pick-me-up just because he’s funnier than his costars, and all the major women are either gooey, too-supportive life partners (Brewster, Pataky) or ball-busting mavens (Carano, Gadot).

But no one expects great acting from a movie like this. The aforementioned scene between Diesel and Rodriguez where Dom tries to get Letty to remember him and recognize his affection for her works not because Diesel’s a great actor but because both actors in the scene have a significant screen presence, and because the dialogue evokes nostalgic thoughts of the earlier, better-made, films in the franchise. And like I said, the action scenes are cool, but…when, even in a movie like this, is too much too much? People survive devastating car wrecks with nary a scratch when the script requires them to (when it’s too early in the film for anyone to croak) and then similarly fail to survive similar wrecks—also when the script requires them to (when the movie’s almost over). All the main players who die do so quickly, bloodlessly, and their deaths are never explored, to the point that you have a hard time believing anything important has happened. Here’s where I point out that Fast 6 also expects us to believe some characters can survive being catapulted fifty feet from a car and landing halfway through another vehicle’s windshield but others can’t survive a five-foot fall.

There’s also a scene I have to point out—one in which Fast 6, by appearance and intention a popcorn blockbuster, skirts dangerously close to bad taste. After hijacking a military convoy containing the last bit of data for the aforementioned all-powerful computer chip, Shaw and his team commandeer an army tank and begin churning down the highway, against traffic. Dom and his gang are out to try and distract/stop them, whipping around in little sports cars, and they thought a tank would be a nice answer. In any case, as this tank began racing down the highway, its speeding treads tearing incoming cars to sawdust, I was struck by a horrible thought: people are being killed in those cars, probably being torn to shreds, and the movie couldn’t care less because it looks cool to have a speeding tank running over cars. Rodriguez’s character does begin chiding Shaw for this, but the filmmakers plainly don’t expect the audience to care beyond a level of whoa, that’s one bad dude. No, what I thought was: whoa, a lot of people are dying really horrible deaths, and the filmmakers assume we don’t care as long as all the name actors are still around. Just a nasty impression I got.

Well anyway, I could go on, but, needless to say, Fast 6 provides some exciting car-chases and some enjoyable badass fisticuffs (Carano/Rodriguez, Johnson/muscular dudes fighting for the bad guys, Diesel/Evans, Carano/Rodriguez again), but it doesn’t feel very new or fresh. There’s little character development, less emotion, and one actually legitimate attempt at screenwriting sleight-of-hand, concerning the fate of a character who supposedly died in one of the previous installments, is ruined by a gimmick spoiler as to who will guest-star in the next installment. Fast Seven? Um….

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Directed by Justin Lin

Written for the Screen by Chris Morgan; Based on Characters Created by Gary Scott Thompson

Rated PG-13

Length: 130 minutes

CLOUD ATLAS

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Grade: B

Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant, Keith David, David Gyasi, Zhou Xun and Susan Sarandon

Premise: People in different places and eras experience love and loss, sickness, tragedy, ecstasy and self-awareness while the same spirit runs through them all.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, language (including racial slurs), sexuality and nudity, and some disturbing images

One of the most polarizing films of last year, Cloud Atlas is one heck of a movie. To watch. To think about. To critique. To review. I’m actually quite proud of that premise I came up with two lines above—that’s a very vague and succinct but not inaccurate nutshell description of this nearly 3-hour epic, which is based on a famously-crafted 2004 novel by author David Mitchell. This film, which features thirteen different actors donning different accents, costumes, looks, ages, characters and genders in different storylines that span centuries, contains, in order, a period epic, a costume drama, a paranoid conspiracy thriller, a crackling modern-day satire, a futuristic sci-fi allegory, and a dramatic postapocalyptic saga.

I’ve taken a peek at Mitchell’s novel, which goes by the same mysteriously catchy moniker, and it’s an impressive achievement. Each storyline is written from a different point of view, features a different style of writing, and feature completely different characters. The writing-no matter the story-is dense, sophisticated, keep-up-or-go-home prose. And despite these wide-ranging tales, it contains symbols, patterns, metaphors and concurrent themes on humanity and its essence, some of which are subtle and some are not.

The trio who sought to bring this towering but offbeat novel to the screen features two people who already created one of the most original and lasting spectacle movies of all time. Andy and Lana Wachowski (formerly Andy’s brother Larry, having undergone a successful sex change) were the writers and directors of The Matrix, the special effects bonanza that tore apart the box office and changed action effects forever in 1999. Of course, packing on the religious metaphors for two melodramatic sequels forever soured, in most people’s minds, the impact of that original film. Here, they team with writer/sometime-composer Tom Tykwer to adapt Mitchell’s steep novel.

As the late Roger Ebert wrote in his glowing review of Cloud Atlas (he called it “a daring and visionary film…one of the most ambitious films ever made”) it’s nigh impossible to give a specific, accurate, meaningful plot synopsis for this movie. The stories, and even the characters, are barely even the point here. I believe what the movie teaches about enlightenment, love, tragedy, and trust are what really count. But, to give you some idea…

1)      Aboard a slave ship in the remote South Pacific in 1850, a young American lawyer (Jim Sturgess) saves the life of a native islander stowaway (David Gyasi) and recounts his experiences in a diary, even after he falls gravely ill with what the ship doctor (Tom Hanks) says is a possibly terminal bug.

2)      The lawyer’s later-published diary is read in 1931 by a young, lonely, bisexual musician (Ben Whishaw), who, while serving as an apprentice to an old, famous composer (Jim Broadbent), is so inspired by the diary’s passages of melancholy, loneliness and love that he writes a famous musical piece called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet”.

3)      In 1975, a crusading journalist (Halle Berry) is given a tip by an elderly stranger (James D’Arcy, playing both the young and old versions of the aforementioned musician’s gay lover) that a local nuclear power plant is unsafe and possibly very harmful to the environment. However, the plant’s CEO (Hugh Grant) will go to any lengths to stop this information leaking.

4)       In the modern day, a publisher (Jim Broadbent) strikes it rich when one of his clients goes bananas and kills a man, spiking the sales of the man’s published book. However, the man’s thuggish relatives threaten the publisher to the point that he seeks refuge in what his brother (Hugh Grant) claims is a hotel. It’s really a retirement home, and, once in, the publisher won’t be released by anyone, particular a hardened head nurse (Hugo Weaving).

5)      In the futuristic city of Neo-Seoul, one individual in a mass production of fast-food serving clones (Doona Bae) begins to think for herself and question her surroundings. When she’s sprung from her dull, repetitive existence by a charismatic stranger (Jim Sturgess), she learns more about herself, and humanity, then she ever dreamed. But the utilitarian government will track her to the ends of the earth to keep her from revealing her revolutionary ideas.

6)      In the distant future, a primitive tribesman (Tom Hanks) struggles with the idea of trusting an exotic stranger (Halle Berry) whose technologies and theory that the world may be ending shake up his simple daily life.

Confused yet? Yes, you read that right: Hanks, Berry, Broadbent, Sturgess, Whishaw, Weaving and Grant all appear in each story in some form, and at least four other actors appear in multiple roles as well. These stories technically have little or nothing to do with each other, though at least one character in each has a particular comet-shaped birthmark, and there are times when certain characters feel sure they’ve met a certain other character before. And I already mentioned the ways the stories overlap, with the exception of the final story, in which the primitive people Hanks’ tribesman belongs to worship the teachings that were given by the Neo Seoul clone, Sonmi-451, and consider her a deity.

Cloud Atlas is far from perfect. Its different stories are well edited together and, probably because they’re so intertwined, are never boring, but there are hiccups aplenty along the way. The stunt-casting of the same principle actors in different genders and nationalities—undoubtedly meant to foster a sense of unity and continuum in the story in addition to saving Tykwer and the Wachowskis money in not requiring a ridiculous-sized cast—is sometimes intriguing, sometimes a terrible idea. For instance, the makeup team does a persuasive job making the 30-ish British D’Arcy a convincing Korean spy. They also do a fair job taking Hugh Grant from bearded aristocrat to elderly swindler to slick corporate CEO to raging, body-painted cannibal. But casting the African-American Keith David as another Asian revolutionary was a terrible idea; an even worse misfire was recreating the Asian Bae as the young lawyer from the first story’s pretty American wife, complete with red hair, freckles, and blue eyes.  Did you ever wonder what Ben Whishaw might look like as an old woman? How about Hugo Weaving? And Halle Berry as a white Jewish housewife? With green-hazel eyes and an odd complexion, she looks more alien than human (she and David’s aforementioned turn as an Asian look like rejects from the Star Wars cantina scene). And other than the looks, the language in the distant future story, written with apostrophes and abbreviations (and dropped conjunctions) aplenty, just as it was in Mitchell’s text, is sometimes cringe-inducingly silly.

And yet… Despite the inherent goofiness of the looks and the casting and some of the spiritualistic/fortune-cookie catchphrases, Cloud Atlas is marvelous in its own distinct way. It certainly gives you plenty to think about, plenty to look at, plenty to talk about afterward. It soars in its best moments (the stowaway slave proving his worth as a sailor, the publisher and some retirement home friends escaping their prison), and it almost never drags. You legitimately care about almost all of the main characters. And some parts leave you cheering (in fact, nearly each of the individual story lines would make an intriguing stand-alone feature, if perhaps fleshed out a bit). The Wachowskis directed the 1850 Pacific storyline and the two futuristic sagas, Tykwer directed the other three, and the divided responsibilities and obvious dedication to the material shows: it’s beautifully shot, often engaging, and edited very nimbly together.

What else can I say? I give the Wachowskis and Tykwer a huge amount of credit for their screenplay and production, making an “unfilmable” novel an impressive, memorable work. The actors, though sometimes forced into bizarre looks or worse accents or over-the-top material (Tom Hanks, I’m looking at you), come together impressively, and the credits sequence showing each main actor in each role is worth watching. Cloud Atlas is long, a little slow, and I’m not sure it really means a whole lot, but as an exercise and as something truly, joyfully different, its admirable and commendable.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Written for the Screen and Directed by Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer

Based on the novel “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell

Rated R

Length: 172 minutes

THE MESSENGER

The Messenger (2009)

Grade: B+

Starring: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone and Steve Buscemi

Premise: A decorated young soldier is reassigned to the U.S. Army’s Casualty Notification Service for his final months of duty, and soon finds himself attracted to a widow he encounters in the line of service.

Rated R for strong language, intense, disturbing emotional content, and some sexuality/nudity

With the days of John Wayne heroics long past, the movie industry has learned to stop conveying war as something exciting or desirable. Now that makeup and special effects can convincingly portray sizable explosions and graphic injuries, and movie ratings’ committees allow for more realistic depictions of battle, war has stopped being portrayed as “fun”. But despite all the battered bodies, stunning explosions, fierce emotion and what-are-we-doing-to-each-other lamentation war movies have conjured up in the past few decades, movies about war haven’t always left us shaken, haven’t always reminded us Americans, for one, that we’ve been engaged in a very real, very costly war for over a decade now.

As a guy who always loves a good battle scene, there aren’t many war movies that have really left me shaken, or re-routed my way of thinking about war and its ramifications. In the past few years, The Hurt Locker, In the Valley of Elah and Jarhead all did that, mostly because they all uncovered something new about the wartime life/experience in my mind. They were more about people and their emotions than machine-gun heroics on the field of battle.

After I watched it last night, Oren Moverman’s The Messenger immediately joined that club. Chronicling the daily lives of a pair of U.S. Army soldiers in the Casualty Notification Service—i.e. the men who show up on people’s doorsteps in their dress uniforms and begin each new phase of their job with the phrase, “The Secretary of the Army regrets…”—this 2009 film is a quiet but blistering drama that almost dares you to believe it’s real, that the things it portrays really happen. Beautifully acted and brilliantly filmed, The Messenger is a riveting and shattering reminder of what a war can do to the lives of people who are thousands of miles from the bullets.

Growing up in a family guarded and guided by the United States Marine Corps, I experienced many of the familiar tropes of military life, but I luckily never experienced the sort of vivid, grueling encounter The Messenger deals with. My dad did, though. As a squadron Commanding Officer late in his career, he had to don his best uniform and visit houses in the wake of a catastrophic miss-hap that involved two helicopters on training runs colliding in mid-air and then plunging into the ocean off the African coast. I didn’t accompany him on his visits, of course (though I believe my mom did), but I know he first had to visit the houses of those several Marines who were aboard the helicopters to tell the families the men were missing, and, within a few days, to tell them they were confirmed dead. I would never ask him to re-visit these experiences for my sake, but I saw then-and I still see, now-the impact they left on him. Obviously, that is one job nobody wants to have.

In The Messenger, that is the precise task newly bequeathed to decorated combat veteran Will Montgomery, a US Army Sergeant played in a brilliant performance by Ben Foster. Emotionally stunted and physically scarred (he has a deep, anchor-shaped indentation beneath his left eye that requires daily medicated drops, and walks with a slight limp), Will has come home to a barren life: his parents are absent and his pre-wartime girlfriend (Jena Malone) is engaged to another man. He doesn’t care a whit for his “hero” label and thinks he may give it all up when his enlistment ends in a few months. But, until then, he’s assigned to the Casualty Notification Service, the “sacred” corps that informs American citizens that someone they love has died.

Will, with his clear, quiet voice and hard stare, is subsequently paired up with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson, characteristically witty and earthy), a man with no significant combat experience but lots of time logged in Casualty Notification. Being thus experienced, Stone quickly lays out the basics of the Casualty Notification job for Will: only speak to the specified primary Next of Kin, always use the full name, use no euphemisms for death (it won’t help), don’t hug or otherwise touch the informed individuals, and, essentially, get in and get out. There’s even a script Will has to learn, about how the Secretary of the Army expresses his deepest sympathies, how a Casualty Assistance Officer will contact the informed individuals within a few hours to begin laying out the details of memorial services and funerals, and how they ought to call a friend, neighbor, or relative to help them during this difficult time.

Obviously, no matter how well-rehearsed, the episodes never go as planned, and, in a half-dozen terrifying and grueling sequences, Will and Stone visit the houses of deceased soldiers and break the news. In one house, the mother and girlfriend of the dead soldier break into shrieks and howls of hysteria, but not before the mother deals Captain Stone a hard slap in the face. In another, a man sobs over his daughter’s death while her son plays with toys in the background. At another, the father (Steve Buscemi) of a fallen soldier explodes into a rage, hitting Will and calling him an idiot and a coward, demanding to know why he isn’t “over there dying”. But there’s one where the quiet widow (Samantha Morton) of a fallen soldier almost seems to have expected the news, thanks Will and Stone for telling her, and even shakes their hands and acknowledges how hard it must be for them. It’s the latter that Will can’t get out of his mind, and, sensing some of the same loneliness and loss he himself feels, he goes back to visit the woman. He helps fix her car, he joins her and her son for pizza. Will is just so lonely, and so haunted, that this calm, resigned, plain-speaking woman is soothing to him.

Other than detailing Will and Olivia’s (Morton’s character) quasi-relationship, The Messenger doesn’t particularly have a forward-moving plot. Will and Stone get to know each other, the snarky and disaffected Stone senses real value and courage in Will while Will decides his thrice-divorced, semi-recovering alcoholic partner/mentor isn’t such an uncaring jackass. Mostly, it’s about brokenness, the brokenness people feel as a result of any catastrophe, but especially an ongoing war that, while it sometimes demands your immediate attention, mostly demands that you go on with life as much as you can, no matter what’s happening around you. Boy, can we, in this day and age, identify with that.

The acting is utterly superb. Harrelson snagged an Academy Award nomination in the Supporting Actor category in 2009 for the role, and while he definitely deserves it, I can’t believe Foster and Morton didn’t make it into the Lead Actor and Supporting Actress categories. Foster, as previously noted, is amazing. The subtle but unmistakable look in Will’s eyes when another soldier praises him as a hero is one snapshot in a superbly powerful performance that is more about facial expressions than fancy dialogue. That said, his long, quiet, regretful monologue about the circumstances that got him his injuries and his medals that occurs late in the proceedings is an absolute marvel. Will is absolutely believable as a real person, one’s whose sometimes repulsive and sometimes lovable, but always sympathetic. Harrelson, getting the gaudier and funnier performance, is similarly good, dynamite in his early scenes of teaching Will the ropes and devastatingly convincing as a trained, but no less nervous or vulnerable, bearer of the bad news (one late scene, in which Capt. Stone breaks down in the wake of Will’s disturbing recount of his experience and guilt over his breaking his three years’ sobriety, almost makes you want to hide your eyes, it’s so raw). Morton, as the final leg of the main trio, gives another powerful performance—one particular scene, alone, made her worthy of an Oscar nomination.

The scene takes place in Olivia’s kitchen. Her son is at school, and she and Will have been talking, even running errands together. He’s fixed her car, they’ve talked, they’ve both confided in each other a little bit. And they stand in her kitchen, nearly embracing, briefly waltzing, drawing very close to gently kissing before Olivia pulls back, ashamed and grief-stricken at thoughts of her dead husband. She comes back to Will, then draws away again. Then she comes back in. Will, for his part, looks willing, and you can tell he’s starving for real human contact, but he doesn’t force her or push her—he knows she’s fragile and won’t make her do something she’ll regret. He stays very close to her, though, lightly touching her, sometimes resting his forehead against hers, while she struggles with some clear physical attraction (or else, a need for passionate intimacy with another person), before breaking into an impulsive and emotional monologue about how she once loved her now-dead husband, came to fear and even hate him as their marriage soured, but, after his death, has come to love and value him again. In a lesser movie, Will and Olivia would have developed a more conventional romance—in this scene, most movies would have reverted to these two lonely, broken people grappling and pulling their clothes off, seeking solace and companionship in passion physical interaction (think Monster’s Ball’s famous “make me feel good” scene between Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton). That does not happen, and the movie’s the better for it. The scene—like many in this film—is so riveting, so real, so astonishingly believable that, as a viewer, you almost feel like an intruder, like it’s indecent to have a camera there.

The other important actors in the film are, of course, the Next of Kin (who Captain Stone refers to as NOKs) in this movie’s idea of set-pieces, the Casualty Notifications. Other than Steven Buscemi, none of them are name actors, and they rarely get long screenshots or even actual facial shots, but their different reactions (grief, anger, gut-wrenching sadness, even sudden physical sickness) are mesmerizing and haunting. They are what makes this movie so memorable.

Many movies have featured individuals coming to the door to inform the Next of Kin of the loss of their loved ones (be it the telegraph-bearing mailmen in Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers, or the decked out high-ranking officers in countless police and firefighter movies), but none has focused as exclusively on them as The Messenger, and, as a result, few movies can register quite as harrowing and gut-wrenching. You know it’s something people do, and, yet knowing it’s something certain people do on a daily basis-as their job-and yet can never possibly “get better at”, is a haunting concept. It dares to make the viewer wonder what it would be like if there were on either end of a Casualty Notification—the person receiving the worst news you can hear, or the person somehow giving it. Beautifully acted, fearlessly filmed and written, and heartbreakingly true, The Messenger joins the hallowed ranks of war movies that never show a single skirmish and don’t take place on a battlefield, but are singularly disturbing reminders of its cost.

The Messenger (2009)

Directed by Oren Moverman

Written by Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman

Rated R

Length: 112 minutes

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Grade: A-

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Alice Eve, Peter Weller, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Bruce Greenwood

Premise: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is enlisted to hunt down and destroy a Starfleet officer turned traitor, who has quickly become an intergalactic menace.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence and peril, some scary images, some language, and brief suggestive material

The words that keep coming to me after seeing Star Trek Into Darkness—the hotly-anticipated sequel to 2009’s very promising reboot of the classic sci-fi franchise—are “almost unreasonably entertaining”. Like its predecessor, Into Darkness hits the ground running and then only speeds up, delivering on its promise to please with eye-popping spectacle, wall-to-wall action, and entertaining character interaction, and it does it all while seeming flat-out smarter than the average summer popcorn movie.

Captain James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) and his Vulcan First Officer, Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), may have learned to work together, but that doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily settled their differences. When a daring move by Kirk on a peace-keeping mission to a primitive planet jeopardizes the well-being of some of the locals, Spock is quick to report it to Starfleet Command, even if it may have been the right thing to do. Kirk is subsequently stripped of his command and placed back under the tutelage of Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood), his sensible father figure, but Starfleet Command comes crawling back to Kirk soon, in desperate need of his courage, toughness, and do-anything tenacity. The reason? A mysterious Starfleet officer, John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), has begun an all-out war on the federation, first by blowing up an archives building in London and then by attacking Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco, killing many senior officers in the process. The readily-motivated Kirk is immediately dispatched to exact revenge on the rogue, who has found refuge in an abandoned corner of Klingon space. So, with Spock, tough-talking doctor Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), whip-smart techie Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin), gutsy pilot Hikaro Sulu (John Cho) and uber-skilled linguist Nyoda Uhura (Zoe Saldana) on board, the Enterprise sets off. Only brainy-but-witty mechanic Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg) stays behind, voluntarily backing out of the mission after an attack of conscience upon seeing the highly destructive warheads Kirk has been given to finish off Harrison.

The mission turns out to be fraught with complications, however. Internal strife arises with Scotty’s resignation, mechanical failings, a lover’s quarrel between Spock and Uhura, Spock’s tendency to play devil’s advocate to Kirk’s every move, and Kirk’s last-minute hiring of a mysterious science officer (Alice Eve) who specializes in advanced weaponry and begins to smell like a turncoat. Things aren’t any easier outside the Enterprise’s walls, though, with Kirk and company dealing with the presence of bigger, faster, more heavily-armed ships, trigger-happy Klingons, and a hard-hearted, flinty-eyed Starfleet superior (Peter Weller) who wants Harrison killed at any cost. And then there’s Harrison himself, a slippery piece of work who’s stronger than Kirk, smarter than Spock, ruthlessly cunning, and willing to hurt anyone, at any time, to achieve his goals.

Once again at the helm is J.J. Abrams, one of the creators of Lost and the previous Star Trek’s director, which is cause for joy (Abrams has also got to be the right man-if there is such a thing-to try and resurrect the beleaguered Star Wars franchise; he’s already been hired). Knowing this is a summer blockbuster and the audience is there for action, Abrams keeps the pace frenetic, but, unlike so many other empty-headed blockbusters, he doesn’t lose sight of the people at the center. The story is full of unexpected twists, emotional nuance, and the chance to learn more about each of the main characters, so that, no matter the spectacle, the people some audience members have cared about for 40 years are front and center. Just as he did in the reboot, Abrams mixes the ingredients just right: we can legitimately enjoy Kirk and Spock’s yin-yang interplay while also being wowed by a spectacular scene in which a starship traveling at warp speed is overtaken by a bigger, faster ship that comes at it with guns blazing.

Speaking of the characters, Into Darkness brings with it a great ensemble that reminds us why we so readily embrace franchises in the first place. While it’s impossible to give everybody their due with a principle cast this size (Yelchin’s Chekov, in particular, is relegated largely to the sidelines), the actors keep us engaged. Pine gives us the wit and bravado people love about Captain Kirk, but with more humanity this time around; he’s a devoted but flawed hero. Quinto’s Spock is nothing less than a delight—hearing him spout retorts with his sophisticated rhetoric is worth the price of admission alone. Pegg’s Scotty is alternately hilarious and heroic on cue, Saldana’s Uhura is a little less important, but no less likeable, this time around, and Cho delivers Sulu’s single fiery monologue with panache. And, of course, Cumberbatch, who’s best known as British TV’s Sherlock, makes Harrison (who goes by another name as well, but even though it’s all over the internet, it’s clearly still a surprise to some, judging by the reaction of certain people in my theater) an alternately hiss-worthy and awe-inspiring villain.

Is it better than the first one? I wouldn’t say that’s the important question, not so much as does it feel as fresh and entertaining as the first one, to which I’d say yes. Abrams and his cast make this a compelling, delightful, fast, funny exercise (and one that’s worth about a half dozen Marvel comics adaptations).

Bottom Line: I feel like I’ve been spewing adjectives for two whole pages. I may be a tiny bit biased, because the 2009 Star Trek is one of my favorite films, but Into Darkness is a terrific movie that’s well worth the price of admission.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof; Based on the TV series and characters created by Gene Roddenberry

Rated PG-13

Length: 132 minutes

THE GREAT GATSBY

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Grade: C

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton

Premise: An ambitious young man ends up in the inner circle of his phenomenally and mysteriously wealthy neighbor, only to learn the man has designs on his gorgeous married cousin.

Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some violent and disturbing images

I’ve never read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, an older novel that’s generally on the classics’ shelves at bookstores, but after seeing the newest movie version (directed by visual maestro Baz Luhrmann), I can tell it’s like most other books that reside on those classics’ shelves. It’s got some larger than life characters, it’s full to bursting with impenetrable, highly-sophisticated dialogue, at its center is a fiery, life-changing passion, and it’s largely about love and loss. I haven’t read it, but after seeing the movie, I am, at least, interested in looking up the plot of the novel, just to see how close it seems to the movie’s plot. But that’s about all I’m interested in regarding this movie.

Luhrmann’s epic recreation of Gatsby is rather like the trailer that preceded its arrival into theaters—long and loud, striking in its own busy, colorful, intense way, and yet you’d rather it just be over. Like Luhrmann’s best-known films (1996’s modern retelling of Romeo & Juliet, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, and 2008’s Australia) it’s packed with stunning visuals and an aesthetic language that’s meant to be awe-inspiring. Notice: that's meant to be awe-inspiring.

This spastic, slow, melodramatic story begins and ends with a weary young man (Tobey Maguire) recounting the adventures he had in New York in the summer of 1922, which largely concerned his encounters with a remarkably rich, uncannily successful and famous figure, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Maguire’s Nick Carraway is a nobody in New York, just another guy trying to strike it rich selling bonds, occasionally enjoying visits with his pretty, sweet-natured cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), who’s married to a pompous old college buddy of Nick’s, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). One day, however, Nick—who lives in a modest cottage that’s all but invisible in a neighborhood of towering mansions—gets an invitation to a lavish party held by his next-door neighbor, the owner of the largest mansion in the neighborhood, Gatsby. The party is huge—an explosion of music and alcohol and dancing girls in skimpy outfits and societal bigwigs acting fools—and it’s there that Nick hears all about Gatsby. Some say he’s a spy. Some say he’s related to the defeated Kaiser. Some say he’s a mobster.

Whatever he is, Gatsby seeks out Nick fairly soon with an unusual request—he’d like to have tea with Nick and Daisy. It’s then that Nick learns that Daisy—who’s trapped in a loveless marriage to the boring, philandering Tom—and Gatsby were deeply in love and on the verge of marriage before the latter went off to fight in the Great War. Brushing carelessly aside the fact that Daisy’s married, Gatsby sees her as the final piece to his perfect life, a life he imagined while growing up penniless in the mid-West. He means to marry her and shower her with riches forever. Nick slowly comes to realize that Gatsby is not content with just seeing Daisy again or even having an affair—he wants her, and he’s so used to getting whatever he wants via his immense wealth and popularity, he’s not even considering that anything might get in the way. Nonetheless, Daisy’s long absences at home arouse the suspicion of her husband, who launches an investigation to find out who Gatsby really is.

The trailer made the central premise pretty clear—ordinary guy meets crazy rich, mysterious guy, who loves a girl—and it’s interesting enough, but this Gatsby starts going downhill fast. You know a movie’s in love with itself when a fairly meaningless sequence in which Nick and his buddy Tom party turns into a five-minute montage of people drinking, dancing, kissing, and squealing with laughter. Oh, and be sure to add in clips of a trumpet player on the street—entirely unrelated to the main action—playing his shiny trumpet at mind-shattering volume, undoubtedly just for atmospheric purposes. Nick’s visit to one of Gatsby’s lavish parties is the same way—a long, interminable sequence of deafening music, fast-cut editing and almost blindingly-busy visuals. As with Luhrmann’s other films, nothing is subtle, nothing is gentle. Everything is beaten into the ground.

Oh, and the dialogue is atrocious. I’m sure a lot of it is lifted straight from Fitzgerald’s gracefully-aging text, but the actors sound ridiculous saying some of the things they do, which often seem unrelated and rarely flow in the same scene. Mulligan’s Daisy, in particular, hardly ever seemed to say anything that a) a normal person would say, and b) was at all relevant to the current circumstances in the movie. This robs Gatsby of real suspense or interest, this feeling—one I’ve experienced in movies before, and it’s never a good one—that the movie, two and a half hours long as it is, feels like a trailer for a longer, more complete film.

I’ll take a pass on that one, though. DiCaprio, playing an eccentric role that reminded me a lot of his turn as the impressive but crazy-OCD Howard Hughes in 2004’s The Aviator, teeters from intriguing to annoying—Gatsby quickly goes from someone of interest to a twittering man-child. Maguire has the part-blessing/part-curse role of playing the straight man—in a movie like this, he’s by far the least-interesting/memorable character, all but a talking prop. It’s Edgerton as the pompous but fiercely-proud Tom who makes up the film’s best moments, mainly because he’s the only person who doesn’t worship at the altar of Jay Gatsby, who doesn’t grow on you as the movie’s running time passes (I might slam my head in a door if I hear anyone call anyone else “old sport” ever again).

As with his memorable Romeo & Juliet re-tread (one of DiCaprio’s first popular roles), Luhrmann overdoes it to the extreme, making this movie all about the pomp and spectacle. It may allow him to breathe easier as an artist extraordinaire, but it doesn’t help the movie, or the audience, breathe. It’s suffocating, heavy, and slow.

Bottom Line: I’ve never read the book, but Baz Luhrmann’s visually stupefying but surprisingly dull monolith doesn’t exactly make me want to run to a bookstore and grab it—unless maybe I wanted to see if this movie at all resembled its source text. Not saying other people couldn’t enjoy it, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Written for the Screen by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce; Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rated PG-13

Length: 143 minutes

IRON MAN 3

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Grade: B-

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, James Badge Dale, Ben Kingsley, Ty Simpkins and William Sadler

Premise: When a terrorist named the Mandarin threatens the world with grisly war, genius billionaire Tony Stark has to muster his resources to confront and defeat him.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence, some gory and disturbing content, language and brief suggestive material

Okay, okay, okay, so Marvel movies aren’t made for guys like me. I guess it says a lot about me that my favorite movie of last year was Les Miserables. Whereas most people go to movies wanting to be entertained, I go wanting to be moved, touched, changed. Several people were appalled at my merely lukewarm reaction to last year’s Marvel superhero jackpot, The Avengers, and they’ll probably be appalled at my similar reaction to Iron Man 3. Yes, I can watch some movies and just be glad to be entertained, but, in general, I desire more from movies than explosions and jokes.

Plot: Surprisingly, carefree genius billionaire Tony Stark (the always-entertaining Robert Downey Jr.) didn’t walk away from the events of The Avengers unscathed. Though he’s as rich and famous as ever, and now has a consistent, happily serious relationship with the comely Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), he’s a little off. He was always a workaholic, but now it seems he’s diving into the endless creation and tweaking of his patented weaponized iron suits in order to avoid having to stop and think. He’s dissatisfied with his work, he’s having nightmares, he even has the odd all-consuming panic attack. And that’s even before two ghosts from his past—a brilliant botanist (The Town’s Rebecca Hall) he once spent a night with and an ambitious braniac whose interest and ideas he once spurned (Guy Pearce, who will never, ever, play a decent human being in a movie)—reappear in harrowing fashion, distracting him just as he’s preparing to engage in all-out war with a terrifying criminal mastermind called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). With his safety and girlfriend in jeopardy, his mind not quite what it has been in the past, and the President of the United States (William Sadler) requesting his help, Tony is forced to up his game to confront the types of assaults and weapons he never imagined existed.

What Works?

Popcorn movies like this always, absolutely always, must have a few good setpieces up their sleeves, and this one is no different, and it uses several of them well. From the sobering destruction of Tony’s Oceanside mansion to an impressive mid-air rescue, Iron Man 3 delivers the goods when it needs to. There are also some great jokes, some genuinely surprising twists, and nearly as much engaging drama as there’s ever been in a superhero movie not directed by Christopher Nolan. This film can’t match the 2008 original for sheer fresh, creative wit and panache, but it’s a big step up from the tepid 2010 sequel that was basically a warm up for The Avengers (speaking of which, I was a little sorry to see that, even after Avengers’ monumental success, this film does not feature either Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury or Scarlett Johanssen’s Black Widow, both of whom were crucial to Iron Man 2).

Acting

Thanks largely to this role as the cocky but genuinely smart and dynamic Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. has proven to be one of the most watchable actors alive, and it’s no different this time around. While the actor is forced to navigate some uneven waters from this film’s shifts in tone (he has to go from bravura action star or shocked, stunned dramatic hero to absurdist comic in the same breath, never mind the same scene, on multiple occasions), he remains a guy you root for without fail. Sparring partner/romantic opposite Gwyneth Paltrow gets a bigger, juicier role this time around, and the movie’s the better for it. Pearce has his usual devilish fun playing a despicable villain, Don Cheadle kicks the crap out of some bad guys as Tony’s commando friend Colonel James Rhodes, and James Badge Dale brings some real menace to his role as bad guy Pearce’s No. 2. However, the mannered Rebecca Hall and the solid Kingsley are largely overlooked, with the exception of a bizzaro twist to Kingsley’s character that completely threw me.

What Doesn’t Work?

One of the main reasons I didn’t go wild for The Avengers was that, I kept saying, I felt like I’d already seen it. Sure it was cool to see The Hulk and Thor and Captain America in the same scene with Iron Man, but I’d seen dudes with special powers fighting interstellar/dastardly human villains before. Iron Man 3, then, since it doesn’t even have the added bonus of all the other guys, suffers from the same problem. As mentioned, there are a couple sequences here that I hadn’t seen the like of before and derived a legitimate thrill from, but the action scenes go on forever, and, as mentioned, the very sudden shifts in tone—tons of jokes come across as self-conscious, awkward, or just plain unnecessary. And, clocking in at two-plus hours and feeling like it, Iron Man 3 is definitely longer and more cluttered than it needs to be.

Content

For all the whiz/bang nature of its bread-and-butter content, Iron Man 3 is only mildly unsettling. It’s crazy violent, but, with the exception of an instance or two, it’s all in the neat PG-13 popcorn blockbuster package. There’s barely any blood, little cussing, little actual sinister content, and, despite an abundance of scantily-clad babes, nothing particularly suggestive. Iron Man 3 is not out to shock anyone; it’s out to make money.

Bottom Line: A step up from the halfhearted Iron Man 2 but not nearly as much fun as last year’s Avengers, Iron Man 3 has Downey Jr., Paltrow, Pearce, some cool action and some memorable moments, but it’s getting harder and harder for Marvel movies to really jump out and amaze. This is a passable summer action flick.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Directed by Shane Black

Written for the Screen by Shane Black and Drew Pearce; Based on the comic book by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby

Rated PG-13

Length: 130 minutes