In the Line of Fire (1993, Wolfgang Petersen)

In the Line of Fire is about bad use of taxpayer funds. President Jim Curley is on the campaign trail, trying to shore up support in ten states in nine days or something, and his chief of staff, Fred Thompson, doesn’t want to listen to any nonsense from the Secret Service about a viable threat. Now, Fire’s a lot of things. It’s a gentle reckoning with history as lead Clint Eastwood deconstructs the naive heroism of pre-1963 United States (very gentle, don’t dwell too much); Eastwood was one of the agents with JFK that day, and now he’s got to stop another assassin—a scenery inhaling John Malkovich—from doing a repeat.

Malkovich is a very dangerous man (with a very particular set of skills, if you know what I mean), and there’s a relatively high collateral damage body count in Fire. Because no one listens to Eastwood. Or when they do listen to Eastwood, like lady agent Rene Russo, who has to admit even though he’s a Greatest Generation edge lord, Eastwood knows his stuff, they get in trouble for siding with him.

The movie makes a big deal out of how Eastwood’s a burnout, one of the oldest field agents, doing counterfeit investigations to stay out of anyone important’s hair. A random tip brings him into Malkovich’s master plan, which involves lots of disguises, modeling composite, and a shocking amount of petty cash. Malkovich’s finances and how he uses them to further his goals are the most interesting part of his scheme, and they get very little attention. Though there are a handful of guest stars involved.

See, despite “who’s that” Jim Curley as the President of the United States, Fire features a litany of familiar faces, ranging from Tobin Bell to Patrika Darbo, John Mahoney to John Heard. There are so many people in it. But not the big guy because Eastwood doesn’t want to get to know Curley. He got to know JFK, which obviously didn’t work out, but—as Eastwood tells Russo at one point—sometimes you get to know the people and decide you’re not willing to take a bullet for them. Oh, the naivety of the nineties. Miss it.

The film’s split between Eastwood’s “I’m too old for this shit” protecting the President plot, which gives him the opportunity to bump heads with young whippersnapper boss Gary Cole and flirt with colleague Russo, Eastwood and likable but too bland sidekick Dylan McDermott (whose agent should’ve reminded him it wasn’t actually a Dirty Harry movie) trying to figure out Malkovich’s plan, and then Malkovich either executing the scheme or calling up Eastwood to chit-chat about the old days. Eastwood gets to do some good acting listening to Malkovich monologue, lips quivering, and so on, as Malkovich dregs up all Eastwood’s trauma for Russo to empathize with and literally all the other guys to mock. Not McDermott, but only because McDermott doesn’t get to play with the regular fancy supporting cast.

McDermott’s absence is indicative of the problem with Jeff Maguire’s screenplay—there’s no balance in the second half. Eastwood starts with McDermott and then graduates to the big leagues with Russo and Cole, only to go back with McDermott and forget the rest exists. Or happened. It can play into Eastwood’s stoicism for a bit, but not forever, not with some of the plot developments. And there’s no real reintegration later on, either. Eastwood should just be joining the plot already in progress, but Maguire then needs to jumpstart that plot. They’d been idling it too long.

Okay direction from Petersen. The film’s technical star is Anne V. Coates’s cutting. Fire’s an expertly edited action picture. Everything else goes off the rails a bit—Petersen’s direction, John Bailey’s photography, even Ennio Morricone’s score is a little much at times—but Coates does a phenomenal job every time. Even during the final when they either don’t have the budget—or the stunt people—for the showdown. Coates makes it work as much as anyone can. However, she can’t do anything to make the composites look better. And Petersen and Bailey really seem to like their composites. They have a bunch of needless composites to make it look like they had the first unit on all the locations.

It’s a good time—even if it is all about Curley wasting taxpayer money (not just on the Secret Service expenses, but really, why do we pay politicians to campaign for re-election)—with good star performances from Eastwood, Malkovich, and Russo. It’s fairly lean goings by the finish, with Russo left with very little, but it’s a good time.

And that Morricone score’s usually beautiful.

This post is part of the Two Jacks Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

The Marvels (2023, Nia DaCosta)

The Marvels is a sequel to Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson, which came out four years before but takes place thirty years before. It’s also a sequel to the TV shows “WandaVision,” which introduced Teyonah Parris (though her character appeared as a little kid in Captain), and “Ms. Marvel,” which introduced Iman Vellani as a teenage hero who idolizes Larson.

Through celeritous convenience and contrivance, Marvels gets the three together, along with Samuel L. Jackson (who also starred in Captain, CGI de-aged, and is back here in a combination comedic relief and exposition provider role) and Vellani’s family, also coming back from the “Ms. Marvel” show. Marvels spotlights mom Zenobia Shroff and dad Mohan Kapur the most, but does give older brother Saagar Shaikh some great comedic bits. Shaikh’s wife is mysteriously absent like they filmed Marvels before all of “Ms.”

It doesn’t matter, of course, because the point’s getting the trio together. Fangirl but still professional superhero Vellani, government scientific investigator turned reluctant metahuman Harris, and intergalactic world-saver (and world destroyer) Larson, who’s not really aware of how her celebrity works on her home planet. Thanks to villain Zawe Ashton, Vellani, Harris, and Larson find their powers intertwined; if one uses their power, they change locations—across the galaxy—with another. While the film does an excellent montage sequence with the three learning how to use the “Marvels leaping” to their advantage (the movie doesn’t make that joke; I made that joke, blame me), it never explains the rules.

Marvels opens with Ashton and her sidekick Daniel Ings (who supposedly has a name in the movie, but I don’t think so) finding an ancient space artifact—a bangle like the one from “Ms. Marvel,” now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus. It never occurred to Ashton one of the bangles would end up on a desolate planetoid, and the other would just be on planet Earth in Pakistan. One of Marvels’s subtlest recurring plot points is how little people look at things from the other person’s perspective. See, Ashton might not have been in Captain Marvel, but only because they didn’t know they would need to have a character mad at Larson for what she did at the end of that movie.

Thirty years ago in story time. In between, there was half the universe disappearing and coming back, which features into Parris’s backstory but no one else’s. It presumably would have also affected Ashton’s scheme. Ashton’s scheme is unclear for a while. When we find out exactly what she’s got planned, it’s maybe Marvels’s biggest plot contrivance. The film runs a nimble 105 minutes, with profoundly precise cutting by Catrin Hedström and Evan Schiff. Director DaCosta likes doing some nice sci-fi establishing shots, too—lots of space superhero grandeur on display, but she never holds the shot too long. Marvels is clearly on a schedule, and DaCosta doesn’t miss any stops.

Things get a little clunky in the second act, which has Jackson dealing with a grim and gritty tribbles “Star Trek” episode. At the same time, Parris and Vellani discover Larson’s space adventures are a lot weirder (and more “Doctor Who,” frankly) than they were expecting.

But then the third act’s a powerhouse. Even as the film ignores plot thread after plot thread—I’m not sure any of the outstanding ones get resolved, the movie instead just floors it, relying on Vellani, Parris, and Larson to get the finale through. And it works just right, even though the film’s got three cameos from elsewhere in the franchise, with one deep—but modern—cut and then another deep and surprising one. They’re all effective—though only the surprising one doesn’t require franchise literacy. It can stand alone, whereas the first two only make sense if you’re up on the lore.

But there’s not much lore otherwise. It’s like the screenwriters—director DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik—all realized there’s just no way to do a straight sequel to Captain Marvel so they might as well treat it as a legacy crossover sequel. With Vellani’s family playing such a large part (besides them, the only other regular characters are Leila Farzad and Abraham Popoola as Jackson’s flunkies), it feels a little like a legacy sequel, a little like “Ms. Marvel Goes to the Movies,” and then… well, no, just those two things. It does feel like there were cuts, whether filmed material or just cut from the script and while some of them were undoubtedly delightful, Marvels works better as a leaner picture.

Larson, Parris, and Vellani are trying to save the universe, after all; they’re going to be in a rush to get it done.

Vellani’s delightful, Larson and Parris are both good—Larson gets the least to do of the three; she’s the stoic one. Jackson’s always funny, even when he’s stretching the bit; Shroff, Kapur, and Shaikh are great. Ashton’s fine. Could she be better? Sure. Does the movie need her to be better? Nah. She’s a good foil, but not too good of one because it’s not about anyone and their nemesis; it’s about people and their… friends, family, country-people? None of the terms really work, but it’s about people who care about one another working together (which makes Jackson’s secret space military organization even weirder since they’re just a bunch of lovable nerds).

Anyway.

The Marvels is a great time.

Also, if you like cats, you’ll have an even better one.

Unless you want the thread resolved, of course. No time for tidying up here, just warping ahead.

Sorry, wrong franchise.

The Missing (2003, Ron Howard), the extended cut

There’s a moment in The Missing when Tommy Lee Jones appears to be dead-panning at the camera, clearly as exasperated being in the film as the people watching him in the film. He’s tired because The Missing makes sure to keep him busy, but he easily soldiers on because Jones is in Missing to soldier on. No one in The Missing can be relied upon for anything except Jones. And all Jones promises is not to embarrass himself further than the project’s conceit.

Too bad the conceit is so damning, particularly for Jones.

See, The Missing is about Jones returning to his daughter, played by Cate Blanchett, in 1885 New Mexico. Jones ran off to… join a Native American tribe? It’s unclear. He ran out on Blanchett and her mom and eventually ended up living with various Native tribes, but how they knew he ran off to join up is unclear. Given the thoughtfulness of Ken Kaufman’s screenplay, maybe they thought he jumped on a freight train like he was running off to join the circus.

Jones goes to find Blanchett, so he’s around when she needs an experienced tracker to go find her daughter Evan Rachel Wood, who renegade Indian Scouts have kidnaped. Eric Schweig plays the main villain, a witch. His gang kidnaps young women to sell in Mexico. The calvary is after them—led by Val Kilmer in one of the film’s rare good casting ideas—except the calvary are dipshits, and they’re going the wrong way.

It’s up to Jones and Blanchett to put aside their differences and team up to save Wood, with Blanchett’s younger daughter, played by Jenna Boyd, tagging along. Boyd’s supposed to be precocious. She’s terrible. Blanchett’s supposed to be… well, actually, Blanchett’s not supposed to be anything. Missing is terrified of spending any time with Blanchett, which tracks because her performance is embarrassingly bad, but still. The film’s ostensibly about Jones and Blanchett’s relationship, except the only time they have an honest conversation is like ninety seconds about halfway through the movie and then never again. They have other conversations pertaining to their character arcs, but they’re all bad because Blanchett’s terrible. That first conversation is the only time she actually works at the character.

She’s playing The Woman With No Name the rest of the time. Except she’s got a name. But also has a pretty cool Western wanderer outfit courtesy costume designer Julie Weiss, who’s otherwise just trying to make the Native characters’ costumes as close to cartoonishly racist without some respectability line. Missing thinks it gets a lot of mileage from having Jones culturally appropriating the Native Americans while villainizing the Native Americans who sold out to the white man. It’d be more cringe if the movie weren’t such garbage.

Mostly good photography from Salvatore Totino. Totino has a lot of bad moments, particularly with composite shots, but otherwise, it’s competent work. The editing not so much, but director Howard’s got no ideas for his set pieces, so it’s not the editors’ faults. Not entirely.

James Horner’s score is repetitive but has its moments. At least until the end of the second act when it craps the bed and basically sits out all the moments the film needs it in the third act. The music’s never good, but at least it seemed professional. Not in the finale.

The Missing seems like someone’s very bad idea for Oscar-bait, not realizing Jones wasn’t going to make a part for himself and Blanchett wasn’t capable of holding an accent, much less making up for zero character development. Sure, it’s about Blanchett never giving up on daughter Wood, but only after all the men who care for her fail her.

There are some abysmal performances in the film besides Blanchett and Boyd, like Aaron Eckhart, who is so bad he makes Blanchett look good. Eckhart’s utterly inept in the film—it’s not his fault; he’s just so obviously miscast it’s silly. It’s director Howard’s fault. Lots is Howard’s fault.

Sergio Calderón’s bad. Ray McKinnon’s awful. Max Perlich’s bad.

Wood’s okay. The movie spends a lot of time with her in the second act because it’s an excellent way to avoid character development for Blanchett, and Wood’s got some good scenes. Unfortunately, the movie gives her some really lousy material for the third act.

The Missing’s tedious and terrible.

Hit! (1973, Sidney J. Furie)

Hit! is multiple movies all at once. It’s a heist procedural, with Billy Dee Williams putting together an unlikely crew of experts to take out the Marseille heroin syndicate. It’s a rogue secret agent movie—Williams’s boss, a profoundly under-cast Norman Burton, doesn’t want him showing up the U.S. government by taking out the bad guys. It’s a muted, detached character drama; Williams is after the Marseille gang because his teenage daughter died from a heroin overdose, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to avenge her, even as it makes him a much worse person. It’s an anti-drug movie, though very careful to humanize the addict. Astoundingly problematic humanizing, but the effort is sincere. It’s anti-lesbian. There’s a little homophobia with Richard Pryor doing an impression, but there’s a lot of anti-lesbian stuff (his impression involves making fun of lesbians). One of the villains is a woman who forces herself on various unwilling but terrified young ladies. It’s exceptionally anti-French. All of the French people—except maybe the evil lesbian—are gluttonous caricatures.

And, finally, it’s a McDonald’s commercial. There’s not just McDonald’s product placement; one of the characters frequently laments the lack of good Mickey D’s in France.

As a heist procedural, Hit!’s exceptional. Director Furie has this great device to show where Williams is going (he’s got to travel the continental United States to put together his team), always showing a license plate in the establishing shot. The first seventy or eighty minutes is Williams putting the team together. In addition to Pryor—an underwater demolitions expert whose (way too young) wife was murdered by a junkie—there are another six team members. It ought to be seven more team members, but Hit! wants all the heist details to be surprises, so we never find out how Williams adjusts when fate changes his plans.

There’s sniper, Renaissance man, racist, and drug smuggler Paul Hampton. Hit! takes full advantage of the Vietnam War allowing for various demographics to have the types of skills Williams needs. Hampton and Pryor are both Vietnam veterans, though there’s no bonding between those two. Hampton does appear to bond with San Francisco tough cop Warren J. Kemmerling, the surveillance man. Gwen Welles is an Ivy League French club superstar turned working girl and—more importantly—functioning heroin addict, which Williams leverages for her participation. Everyone else has a relevant heist skill; Welles apparently is just a fetching young woman who speaks French. She falls for Williams, who’s got no time for love (much less with a heroin addict).

Lastly, there’s older adult couple Janet Brandt and Sid Melton. They have a very particular set of skills but have gone straight and are running a lunch counter. Their son recently died from an overdose. Hit!’s got a lot of good acting, but Brandt and Melton get to show the most heart. They’re lovable. Even though Pryor’s likable, relatable, and sometimes adorable, he’s not lovable in the same way. Welles is very sympathetic, especially as Williams tries to motivate her through cruelty, but she’s not lovable. Hampton’s always a prick. Kemmerling’s fun, albeit a piece of shit cop (the film’s careful to only show him roughing up white hippies, who are all into heroin anyway).

And then Williams. It’s a fantastic lead performance from Williams. He manages to survive all the silliness the film throws at him, which mostly involves CIA boss Burton sending goons after him. Zooey Hall and Todd Martin play the goons. They’re assholes but amusing (purposefully), while Burton’s a lukewarm dishrag. They really missed their chance on the stunt cast. But Williams also has the worst third act heist action. Heist with an asterisk; they’re all on assassination runs (the film’s not shy about a Godfather nod either). Williams gets the silliest, least dramatic one. While Argyle Nelson Jr.’s editing is sublime, cutting between subplots, even he can’t compensate for Williams’s heist focus being so inert.

Technically, the film’s phenomenal. Furie and cinematographer John A. Alonzo do gorgeous work. Everything’s exceptionally deliberate and thoughtful during the setup and training phases of the film, while the conclusion—set in Marseille—is hurried. There are occasional shades of the earlier quiet, but once the action starts, it never lets up. Until the ill-advised epilogue.

Great music from Lalo Schifrin. It occasionally seems like it’s not fitting—Schifrin’s almost always doing a score for the drama, particularly with the various members of the gang—but it always works out thanks to Furie. Furie also does an outstanding job with the actors, particularly Williams, but also Pryor, Welles, and—of course—Brandt.

Hit!’s got a rocky finish, but it’s an excellent, distinctive picture.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)

Dial of Destiny opens with a very long prologue flashback to 1945, setting up Harrison Ford (a CGI-de-aged Ford) having Toby Jones as a best buddy in the forties during the war and running afoul of Nazi scientist Mads Mikkelsen. The flashback’s technically successful; de-aged Ford looks pretty good (the eyes are off, and the expressions are static), but the sequence itself is kind of pointless. It’s ostensibly to start on an action sequence with Ford, but it’s a tolerable action sequence. Director Mangold—the first and presumably last director to pick up Spielberg’s whip for a theatrical Indiana Jones—will do great action sequences later on, but this first one feels like a video game cutscene. And having a computer-generated lead certainly doesn’t do anything to dissuade that feeling.

But once they’ve established Ford and Jones know each other, Jones is obsessed with Archimedes’s Antikythera device, and Mikkelsen is also after the Antikythera, the flashback’s done its work, and it’s time to jump ahead twenty-four years. Ford’s already done the Indiana Jones legacy sequel, which turned canon on its head, and now they’re doing a second legacy sequel, but it’s also basically a legacy sequel (coming fifteen years after that entry). So we’ve got all sorts of first act establishing to do: Ford’s been a settled down college professor for ten years, happily married to Karen Allen for some of them, but after son Shia LeBeouf died off-screen in Vietnam—he enlisted to piss off Ford which fails some basic logic tests if you start doing the math on LaBeouf’s age, but whatever… he’s not back.

Instead, Dial of Destiny introduces Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Jones’s grown-up daughter, who’s also after the Antikythera. After her is Mikkelsen, who spent the post-war being coddled by the U.S. government so he could get them to the moon before the Russians. He’s got a Black woman CIA handler (Shaunette Renée Wilson, who brings more to it than the role deserves), a redneck henchman (Boyd Holbrook, who maybe shouldn’t have trusted Mangold it’d be a good part), and a giant (Olivier Richters) helping him in the quest. Dial pulls no Nazi punches—it’s a Disney movie, after all, and they’re fighting fascists in real-life these days—but it’s fairly tepid with the American race relations. Holbrook really doesn’t like Wilson because she’s Black (and a woman), but he can’t say anything because political correctness. Meanwhile, Mikkelsen isn’t the standard Indiana Jones Nazi… he’s even more invested in the ideology than most. Because Nazis, even removed from the mid-twentieth century, are really dangerous and shouldn’t be ignored or placated.

Waller-Bridge shows up in New York City for Ford’s retirement—which seems to have been decided after they filmed Ford giving a lecture on the morning of the Apollo 11 parade (he’s telling the kids what’s on their final, but he’s apparently leaving right after that class)—and asks for his help with the Antikythera. Only she’s not being super honest, and since it’s 1969, Ford can’t just Google her.

The adventure will take them to North Africa, then the Mediterranean, where they can pick up various sidekicks, and there will be time for cameos from the other movies. Though very limited cameos; the franchise put all its eggs in a LeBeouf-sized basket last time, after all. Waller-Bridge has her own Short Round (spoiler: no cameo from Ke Huy Quan, which is too bad) in Ethann Isidore. And then Ford brings in Antonio Banderas to help just when it seems like there’s no more room for supporting characters.

The film will have some big third act surprises regarding supporting cast introductions, but the second act is where Dial of Destiny’s gears work up their momentum. Turns out Mangold can direct character-paced action scenes (something entirely missing from the opening), and Waller-Bridge and Ford are fun together. Though when it’s them and Isidore trying to beat the Nazis to the treasure, it’s painfully obvious the franchise missed a big opportunity for Indiana Jones Family with Ford, Allen, and, well, LeBeouf, I guess. Thanks to Waller-Bridge, it still works out with Dial’s configuration, but it’d have been nice for the four screenwriters to come up with a less comprised story.

In all, it’s mostly a success. The technicals are all sturdy without being exemplary, with Phedon Papamichael’s photography being the easy standout. John Williams’s score isn’t bad. It isn’t particularly good, but it isn’t bad. Excellent costumes from Joanna Johnston, which compensate for Adam Stockhausen’s surprisingly pedestrian production design. Thank goodness Papamichael’s lighting it.

Once he gets to act the part instead of his CGI counterpart doing it, Ford has some good moments. It’s a rough part, mostly because he’s trying to incorporate so much hackneyed plotting from previous entries. Waller-Bridge is tabula rosa and can zoom past Ford, but she keeps pace with Ford thanks to her timing and Mangold’s direction. He maintains a steady clip at eighty years old (playing seventy), but there aren’t any Indiana Jones endless punch-outs this sequel. No Ben Burtt punches.

Mikkelsen’s great. Isidore’s fine. Banderas is fun. Holbrook’s a good piece of shit? Maybe don’t get typecast. And good little turn from Thomas Kretschmann in the prologue.

Dial of Destiny is too long, too digital, and too trepidatious.

But, otherwise, it’s aces.

Black Rain (1989, Ridley Scott)

Black Rain features one of the worst action movie fight scenes. It’s unnecessary—they could’ve just worked around it since participants Michael Douglas and Matsuda Yûsaku are bad at it, the fight choreography is terrible, and it manages to be the most embarrassing thing director Scott oversees in the film and Black Rain’s chock full of laughable acting, worse writing, and lots of racism.

But that fight scene.

Yikes.

The film—which, two-thirds of the way through, I realized—was supposed to be a Beverly Hills Cop sequel. But instead of Eddie Murphy cracking wise as he and Judge Reinhold travel through Osaka—Osaka City Cop?—it’s Douglas and Andy Garcia. They went out for a totally normal New York cop lunch—Douglas had just gotten railroaded by the “suits” in Internal Affairs (remember when media tried to convince the world Internal Affairs was more than enough), so he and Garcia have a drinking lunch. Now, Douglas is a tough guy cop. Garcia is the dapper, charming one. Garcia’s a lot of fun in Black Rain. He’s the only one who thinks it might be able to lead to something.

I mean, I’m sure Douglas thought he had a future as “the thinking man’s Stallone,” but he very much did not, and Rain shows why. Douglas has one-liners at the end of every scene. And he’s a dirty cop. Black Rain is about how we should like dirty cops. They’re the real heroes if you think about it. The dirty cop stuff should be the wildest the movie gets—but the racism is where it’s at. Multiple times in Black Rain, the movie pauses for Douglas to try to think of something racist to say, but then the script can’t think of anything, so he stammers out something silly. Then the nearest Japanese character has to acknowledge what Douglas said, agree with it, apologize for it, and prostrate themselves so Douglas can get in the shitty one-liner.

The film’s script, from Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis, is garbage. Not just because it’s bad, racist, and fascist but because it doesn’t have a story. See, at their drinking lunch, Douglas and Garcia see eighties manga caricature Matsuda kill some guys. So they give chase—they’re hero cops, after all; the entire movie is about how they’re running to the next action scene. It’s silly but also might work with Murphy and Reinhold. They catch Matsuda and have to take him back to Japan. The exchange goes wrong, and Douglas and Garcia stay to show the stupid Japanese cops how it’s done.

At its best, Black Rain’s a good-looking vanity cologne commercial for Douglas. Jan de Bont and Howard Atherton’s photography is peerless. Rain’s gorgeous, even when it’s trying to say the Japanese are super-polluted and not chill like New York City. It’s one heck of a flex given Rain is one of those “let’s shoot New York like L.A.,” so Douglas is motorcycling around the city, often chewing gum.

Douglas is terrible. I mean, his heart’s in some of it. He delivers the racism from the diaphragm, but he’s utterly charmless. Garcia’s okay. Fun, likable. Okay. Takakura Ken is their Japanese cop sidekick. After being the brunt of Douglas’s jokes, he eventually becomes part of the gang, after prostrating himself to white savior Douglas.

Kate Capshaw’s the “love interest.” It’s a nothing role; she’s there to translate for Douglas and get him takeout, but Capshaw’s working way harder than the part deserves. You see her run out of script and direction and just wing it to try to find some meat.

Lousy music from Hans Zimmer. The Gregg Allman original song is terrible, though I do wish it were subtitled Michael Douglas’s Theme.

Good production design from Norris Spencer, who basically makes Osaka look as much like Blade Runner as he can. It’s a bad, unpleasant movie–I forgot, John Spencer’s bad in it, which is enough reason it should be avoided; John Spencer FTW—but the photography’s singular. Maybe it’s better muted.

It’s definitely better muted.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022, Ryan Coogler)

Not to mix metaphors or cross franchises, but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a Herculean effort from director Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole. It’s not quite a Herculean success, but it’s a success, which is more than enough given the numerous constraints they’re dealing with.

First and foremost, the unexpected, tragic, and real-life heroic passing of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. Cooler and Cole handle it quite well, turning the entire film into a non-exploitative mourning of Boseman from the perspective of his little sister, Letitia Wright. After the prologue, which features Boseman’s off-screen death, the film jumps forward a year. Mom (and again Queen of Wakanda) Angela Bassett wants Wright to grieve, while Wright wants to avoid it and concentrate on her work.

At its best, Wakanda Forever is about juxtaposing Wright against other characters, starting with Bassett. But Wright then starts encountering other alter egos thanks to the film’s events, first Dominique Thorne as a nineteen-year-old wunderkind who has built a vibranium detector (and had it stolen, without her knowledge, by the U.S. government). Naturally, the U.S. doesn’t think Africans should have that vibranium, and they want it; if they can find it themselves, fine, but if CIA director Julia Louis-Dreyfus has her way, they’ll kill all the Wakandians for it.

The film’s incredibly upfront about shitty white people working hard to get white supremacy going again after the Blip. There aren’t any Black people in the post-Blip U.S. government, apparently, not even as window dressing. But Louis-Dreyfus doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie when Wakanda Forever gets around to being a sequel to the first film. Until then, it’s about mourning Boseman… and the discovery of vibranium outside Wakanda, which no one knew about.

It’s in the ocean, where its presence has allowed an undersea kingdom—led by “mutant” king Tenoch Huerta—to thrive while entirely hidden from the surface world. Except with the U.S. searching for vibranium, Huerta’s realized he’s got to deal with the potential invaders. So he goes to Bassett hoping to find an ally and is surprised when she’s not thrilled at the idea of killing a young American Black woman just to appease Huerta.

Eventually, Wright and Huerta bond over their shared experience of keeping murderous colonizing white people at bay—though Huerta’s experience was the conquistadors—and Wright’s thinking about the more modern threats.

Except Huerta appeals to Wright’s destructive side, Thorne to her creative one. It could lead to a great balancing arc, but at some point, Wakanda Forever can’t be about a character arc; it’s got to be a Marvel movie. Albeit one with some incredibly nuanced politics and characters. At least until the third act, which ends up feeling more like the end of the second act because there’s so much left unresolved for Black Panther 3. They should have just done another hour and gotten through it. Instead, they minimize almost all the character development and then take the movie away from Wright in the epilogues. Then, just when it seems like she’ll get to sit and play it out, they come back and take away some more.

The film runs just over two and a half hours, so another hour would’ve been a very big swing and probably too much of one. Coogler’s direction’s solid throughout, but during the first act, he’s got some phenomenal stuff going on, particularly with Bassett. The special effects visuals too, but his focus on the performances is key. In the lengthy second act (he and Cole do three first acts, mostly consecutively, while keeping the previous ones running), he gets to do the incredible undersea kingdom sequences—and make Huerta’s little wings on his ankles the coolest superhuman physical attribute in a superhero movie maybe ever—but the character work eventually starts stalling. Wakanda Forever brings in deus ex machinas really early.

The second act also reintroduces characters from the previous film who’ve been absent—Lupita Nyong'o and Martin Freeman, both in glorified cameos. Freeman’s just there for a not all white people hashtag, and to reveal Louis-Dreyfus’s casting as a super-spy ice queen is actually about her getting to do sitcom beats. Better than the high-key racism, I guess.

And there’s a reason Nyong’o doesn’t get much, but it’s a contrived reason, not a good one.

Until Nyong’o shows up, Danai Gurira gets a bunch as Bassett’s chief general and Wright’s odd-couple sidekick. It’s like a quarter her movie. Then she loses all of it. In return, like a couple other characters, she gets an Iron Man suit for the finish. Or the Wakanda Forever version of an Iron Man suit. It’s all in the third act, though, where everything’s a little too lacking. Coogler and Cole ran out of time for the story, then Coogler ran out of energy for the directing.

So Forever finishes a strong, still very special okay, instead of a qualified great.

Wright’s a solid lead; the film fails her, sometimes pointedly, but she does well in a challenging situation. Huerta ought to be a breakout. He’s close, but again, the film doesn’t give him an actual arc. The standout performances are Bassett and Winston Duke.

Gorgeous photography from Autumn Durald Arkapaw, even all the composite shots, and a good soundtrack and decent score from Ludwig Göransson. Hannah Beachler’s production design and, especially, Ruth E. Carter’s costumes are fantastic.

Wakanda Forever is an often rousing, always emotional, unfortunately, singular success.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995, Geoff Murphy)

It’s never good when the worst thing about a Steven Seagal performance isn’t the Steven Seagal performance.

Kidding.

Sort of.

And while he’s terrible in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, he’s far from the worst performance. Stunt cast villain Eric Bogosian is much worse, for instance. As is Seagal’s sidekick, Morris Chestnut, who’s playing a Black sidekick out of the sixties. But Territory humiliates Chestnut (and all the female actors) regardless of their abilities. So the worst performance must go to Everett McGill, whose “soldier of fortune” tough guy only shows any enthusiasm when he gets to be pervy with fourteen-year-old Katherine Heigl. The rest of the movie, McGill’s a joke. That scene, it’s real creepy.

Heigl is playing Seagal’s niece. He’s meeting her train in Denver, and they’re going together to Los Angeles. It’s unclear why. Her parents have recently died in a plane crash—hence the train travel—but since Seagal refuses to talk for most of the film (not a bad move), we don’t get any information on what they’re planning on doing in L.A.

They just happen to be on the same train as Brenda Bakke and David Gianopoulos, who are two employees at a secret military installation run by Kurtwood Smith. The tedious opening titles reveal Smith and his gang, including the CIA guy from the first movie, Nick Mancuso (who’s the butt of a joke he doesn’t seem to get), have a secret agent spy scope that pulls in the moon, the stars, the planets, and the satellites, and the little bitty space men. It can even perv on women sunbathing, which the film gleefully explores.

Anyway.

Bogosian designed the satellite (an earthquake gun out of a Bond movie), only then he got fired for being unstable, so he faked his death, teamed up with domestic terrorist wannabe McGill, and hatched a plan to ambush Bakke and Gianopoulos on the train for their spy codes. Much of the film feels rewritten between scenes, though it never seems to get any better, just makes less sense.

McGill’s crack team of red shirts for Seagal to take out later on include familiar faces like Jonathan Banks and Peter Greene, along with Scott Sowers as “the racist one.” Why’s he racist? Because.

Dark Terrority’s also got the interesting problem of director Murphy. He’s not good at any of it. He’s not good with the actors, he’s not good with the fight scenes (he bungles every one of Seagal’s fisticuffs), and he’s not good with the pyrotechnics. The movie’s got lots of good explosions; it just doesn’t shoot them well.

However, much of the action is green screen and cinematographer Robbie Greenberg’s atrocious lighting for it. On the other hand, the actual stunt guy (not Seagal) climbing on the train is fantastic.

Basil Poledouris’s score is bad but could be worse. It’s kind of funny how obviously Poledouris wants to give Seagal the Robocop theme.

There’s some actual “Die Hard on a train” inventiveness in the second act, but the movie quickly forgets about it, especially since Murphy can’t direct it.

Also returning from Part 1 are Andy Romano and Dale Dye. Romano’s actually pretty dang good, all things considered. And, unlike almost everyone else, Dye doesn’t embarrass himself.

Oh, and the bad mid-nineties CGI.

Dark Territory’s a briefly fascinating time capsule, but otherwise, it’s terrible, boring, and gross about teenager Heigl every chance it gets.

Black Adam (2022, Jaume Collet-Serra)

Black Adam opens with kid narration. At first, it seems like the narrator kid is Ancient Kahndaqi Jalon Christian, who’s sick and tired of living under a tyrannical king who has his people mining eternium for him. Eternium is not a “Masters of the Universe” thing; it’s more like the DC Universe version of vibranium. Except not really, because it doesn’t do anything. They set it up like it gives people superpowers, but… no.

But the narrator is not Christian because the flashback’s not in English. The present-day Kahndaqi people all speak English (and are apparently a Christian Middle Eastern nation-state in the DC Movie Universe—they’re Muslim in the comics, but the movie people don’t have the stones to make sympathetic Muslims).

Anyway. The narrator is Bodhi Sabongui. His mom is renegade university professor Sarah Shahi (dressed like a less objectified “Tomb Raider”); she’s trying to keep Intergang from getting all the Eternium. Including a magic crown, which we saw in the prologue. The evil king wants to be a demon lord and needs the crown, but then the people’s hero comes to stop him.

In the comics, Intergang was a criminal organization in Metropolis who gave Superman trouble. In Black Adam, they’re Blackwater, except they’re called Intergang. And they’re committing war crimes daily, but there’s no United Nations to send Jean-Claude Van Damme and whoever in the DC Universe. Instead, there’s the Justice Society, and they don’t give a shit about Intergang committing war crimes. They’re about maintaining the status quo, globally speaking.

So when Shahi resurrects Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson from his tomb to save her from a bunch of bad guys, Viola Davis calls Hawkman Aldis Hodge to go keep the West’s oil interests safe or whatever. The first act of Black Adam—besides the introduction to the superhero team, which is basically just an X-Men sequence (or Deadpool 1)—is a little like Terminator 2. Sabongui is going to teach Johnson it’s not okay to kill people. Except, not really, because Sabongui’s country is being occupied by a criminal organization who made speeder bikes because they really liked Tron. It’s a complicated situation and might need Johnson’s killer instincts, which Pierce Brosnan realizes, but no one listens to him despite him being a hundred years old with a magical gold helmet to tell him the future.

Now, I really hope Davis gets two million dollars a minute in these movies on the condition she films on her iPhone in the bathroom, but Brosnan’s hacking through this movie. He gets some energy when he’s opposite the other actors, including Hodge, who’s an intentional charisma vacuum (he’s playing the straight edge who gets in the Rock’s way), and especially Johnson. Still, Brosnan looks exasperated with all the superhero business.

So, interesting casting choice.

Quintessa Swindell and Noah Centineo play the young superheroes. Centineo is a legacy hero and a lovable, slightly dopey bro. Swindell has a way too intense origin recap, seemingly just so she can privilege-check Centineo. Black Adam’s got three credited screenwriters, but it feels like Many Hands contributed. Because despite that first act “young John Connor and his pet Terminator” setup, the second act’s mostly a superhero fight movie. Johnson’s dealing with the mercenaries while Hodge tries to stop him and let the mercenaries go back to killing civilians.

But there’s also the magical archeology subplot with Shahi and then the secrets of Johnson’s origin story.

The movie’s got a surprisingly effective plot structure. Director Collet-Serra front-loads the best action sequences, set to either pop songs or scene-appropriate selections; the rest of the action’s middling, occasionally a little better. Johnson turns on the charm a little earlier than he should—narratively speaking—but the movie needs it, and he obliges.

Oddly catchy score from Lorne Balfe; it’s not particularly good, but it earworms all right. The special effects and technicals are all competent, though there’s way too much going on in the third act without enough actual content. Characters have big, action-packed story arcs just to delay them from participating in the main plot. It’s weird. They also use a lot of slow and fast motion effects to distract from the finale’s limited scale.

Johnson’s the whole show and he’s much better than anyone else in the movie. His closest competition is Brosnan and Brosnan’s not close. Centineo and Swindell are likable, but in a TV show supporting cast sort of way (which is appropriate since they’re TV show supporting cast). But Shahi and Sabongui—occasional affability aside—aren’t good. And whatever Hodge is doing isn’t working.

With some very specific caveats, Black Adam’s far from a fail.

Enola Holmes 2 (2022, Harry Bradbeer)

Enola Holmes 2 runs a long two hours and nine minutes, but the movie actually leaves a bunch on the table. For example, antagonist David Thewlis has history with both Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mama Holmes (Helena Bonham Carter), seemingly separately, but the film never gets into it. Thewlis is phoning it in, gloriously biting off scenery in giant chunks; he can do this part—and well—effortlessly, which is good because director Bradbeer’s not great with actors.

Everyone in Holmes 2 is solid, however. Millie Bobby Brown is a fine lead, except whenever Bradbeer doesn’t know what to do, he has her wink at the camera or break the fourth wall. It’s cute—but for the first and most of the second act, Brown could just be narrating the adventure straight. She opens the film narrating, and there’s always something; why not just go all the way?

Cavill’s effortlessly charming and more than willing to make room for his younger costars, to the point he’s just taking up space. He’s constantly around in this one like they wanted to make him work for the sequel bucks, but they don’t give him anything to do. The film reveals a bunch about Enola Holmes universe versions of Sherlock Holmes mainstays, but mostly just as gags or Easter eggs. It’s awkward world-building.

Louis Partridge is also back as Brown’s love interest, a young lord trying to fight the good fight against the blue blood stuffed shirts. Partridge never really gets anything to do in the movie. He takes a while to show up, then is sort of around, but also not. He’s perfectly good, and he and Brown get some fine teamwork moments, along with romantic ones, but he should’ve been in the movie more. Or less.

Just like Bonham Carter and Susan Wokoma. Wokoma shows up out of nowhere in the late second act like she wasn’t going to be in the movie, but then they needed a combination action and heist sequence, so suddenly Cavill brings her in. Except when she shows up next, it’s with Bonham Carter, and Cavill’s detached from that whole sequence. It’s like the supporting cast is tagging in and out. Got to keep them around, even if they won’t have anything to do until—presumably—Enola Holmes 3D.

The film kicks off with an affable but uninformative recap of the first film. Netflix is assuming you’re binging both pictures. Since the first movie, Brown has gone into business for herself but not seen Partridge, Cavill, or Bonham Carter much. She’s going it alone. And she’s going out of business, right up until adorable street urchin Serrana Su-Ling Bliss shows up at her door looking for her missing sister. Bliss and her friends are matchstick girls, and it certainly seems possible they’ve stumbled into the rich British people killing poor ones for profit.

Ah, capitalism.

It ends up being a semi-true story, which screenwriter Jack Thorne (with story co-credit to director Bradbeer) does an atrocious job integrating. Too many important things in Holmes seem shoe-horned in, with Bradbeer assuming Brown making a joke or Cavill grinning will cover. The film’s a case study in charm only getting you so far.

Decent, thankless supporting turn from Adele Akhtar as Enola Universe Lestrade, and an excellent bit performance from Sharon Duncan-Brewster as another unappreciated Victorian woman. Hopefully, they’ll bring Duncan-Brewster back too.

If Enola 2 had been twenty minutes shorter, it probably would be more successful. The mystery investigation goes on about ten minutes too long. But then it also needs another twenty minutes in the first act, probably. Thorne and Bradbeer don’t flop, but they need more substance for the cast. Not everyone can chaw sets like Thewlis.