Tag: David Harbour

Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland)

Black Widow gets a lot better after the first act. Mostly because the prologue—set in 1995 Ohio where tween-who-will-be-Scarlet-Johansson Ever Anderson lives with her All-American family (little sister Violet McGraw, mom Rachel Weisz, dad David Harbour)—is almost classy enough. With better music and a more patient, less blandly jingoistic look at Americana, it’d be potentially great; Widow’s got a handful of scenes where the actors’ performances break its commercial bounds and its potential all of a sudden seems boundless, but the prologue is about the only time the filmmaking’s there. Even with the weak score and anemic filmmaking—though, it takes place in Ohio so it is kind of appropriate it’s flavorless. And it answers the question of Johansson never having a Russian accent even though the character’s Russian.

Except then it turns out she’s not about to be bitten by a radioactive black widow and they’re actually Russian sleeper agents and they’ve got to get out of town. It ends up being a really effective sequence thanks to the acting, Anderson in particular, and the action set piece out of a James Bond movie.

Almost all of Widow’s action set pieces seem like they’re out of a James Bond movie. There’s even a scene where we find out Johansson—grown-up—loves James Bond movies. Loves Moonraker. So, like, laughably bad taste but the reference also sets the film’s targets appropriately. I’ve actually never seen Moonraker; I don’t know if Widow ends up homaging it with any of the sequences. The movie’s got a very Bond villain in Ray Winstone, but only on the surface. Winstone’s repugnant villain isn’t flashy at all. He’s just an evil son of a bitch. At the beginning of his villain monologue I wondered why—well, I wondered why they didn’t get a single Russian actor for the four new Russian parts–but I also wondered why he wasn’t flashy. No scenery chewing. Ray Winstone can eat a couch, but not here. Because he’s just a repugnant son of a bitch. Take out the Bond villain hideout and he’s the realest Marvel villain maybe ever.

After the too long opening credits (flashbacks to Anderson’s assassin training intercut with her happy Ohio life), it’s post Captain America 3 and William Hurt is hunting down Johansson. But since it’s the first act, she gets away for now and runs off to… well, somewhere. But then gets attacked by a costumed supervillain called “The Taskmaster” who can duplicate any fighting style he sees, which is comics accurate. Why they decided to make him look like an extreme sports version of early eighties Batman villain “The Sportsman” (not Sportsmaster, Sportsman)… well, I assume budget. Since most of the characters aren’t actually superheroes, but they all have costumes and then they have multiple ones because action figures, it’s often Johansson fighting a bad guy who looks like a mid-eighties Darth Vader rip-off.

Like almost out of the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe movie. Throw in the uninspired (being complimentary there) fight choreography and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain shooting everything through a yellow pee filter, it seems like Widow’s going to be a slog.

But then Florence Pugh shows up—playing little sister grown-up—and it starts getting better. Pugh and Johansson aren’t great together from the start. Pugh’s great. Johansson’s outacted—though the script’s particularly not great for that portion of the film. Once Harbour and Weisz show up in the present action, however, everything starts to balance out nicely. Minus some joyless flashback reveals and more disappointing fight scenes.

Best performance is Pugh or Harbour, then Weisz. Johansson ends up doing pretty well, even though the movie—her single solo outing without any of the boy Avengers comes eleven years after she first appeared in the part and is, due to big developments in the boy movies, a flashback story. Though there’s room for more because the epilogue is nonsensical and entirely played for a fun Bond-esque moment.

Shortland’s direction is middling. She’s better with the actors than the action for sure, but even then it takes until Harbour shows up to get the energy right. She does all right with the tension, however, which is important since Johansson not really be in danger is part of the film’s conceit. After all, she’s fine for the movies you’ve presumably already seen. But it works even in the prologue. Shortland’s good at finding the humanity in the characters. And the actors run with that humanity admirably.

There were a couple surprising omissions—not including the big, intentional plot hole—and it seems like they could definitely gin up a sequel. And even it were as contrived as this outing, it’d be welcome one. Johansson and company (emphasis on the company) work really well together.

No Sudden Move (2021, Steven Soderbergh)

I spent most of No Sudden Move hoping against hope it’d somehow end well. Unfortunately, by the end of Move, I’d forgotten it started as a potential pulpy franchise for Don Cheadle (twenty-five years after Devil in a Blue Dress maybe he could get the one he deserved). The third act is such a slog, the stunt cameo reveal is so protracted, and the “real world” reveal is so labored, I’d forgotten what the movie was even ostensibly about.

No Sudden Move, if the stylized opening titles, the stylized music, and the stylized visuals (director Soderbergh and cinematographer “Peter Andrews” shoot the entire thing with slight fisheye lens) don’t give it away, is a series of homages to various film noir classics. There are some very obvious homages, then some less obvious ones, then the ones where recycling now familiar homages thanks to other movies using the same homage device. After a very gimmicky and very effective first act MacGuffin, it’s clear there’s not going to be anything new to Move so might as well enjoy the good acting, directing, and nostalgia.

It works until the third act, which goes entirely awry starting with a very bad stunt cameo. At first it seems like the second half is going to be all stunt cameos but when Kevin Scollin turns out not to be Steve Guttenberg, then the single stunt cameo is just… unfortunate. The twists and turns of the third act are all unfortunate as well; Move’s never ambitious—aggressively racist Italian mob flunky Benicio Del Toro abuse of Black man Cheadle ends in their second scene together and while there’s a little more to the female characters than you’d expect in a fifties noir… there’s not much more (and we’re not counting Soderbergh’s fisheye thing as ambitious, he’s just carrying a gag on too long)—but it’s always pretty good. The film finds a decent balance of dangerous and engaging. It’s never quirky, but it’s occasionally wry.

And Cheadle’s great.

Del Toro’s really good too, but the part’s not as good. Then as the film progresses, Cheadle’s part gets worse and Del Toro’s follows suit. David Harbour—playing the suburban dad whose family is in danger from hired guns Cheadle, Del Toro, and a very effective Kieran Culkin—is third-billed. He gets a lot to do but not really. Ditto cop Jon Hamm. Move assembles a picture perfect cast and gives them very little to do. Cheadle at least gets something to do for long stretches of the film. No one else.

Lots of good acting in the supporting parts. Brendan Fraser’s the guy who puts the job together, Ray Liotta and Bill Duke are the warring local crime bosses who both have it out for Cheadle, Amy Seimetz as Harbour’s wife. There really aren’t any female roles. Seimetz gets more than everyone else, but she’s still mostly there to support Harbour or son Noah Jupe. Jupe’s okay. It’d be better if he were better.

It’d be better if the writing for him were better too.

Hamm in particular is completely wasted.

Harbour’s good, but it’s far from a breakout part or performance. The third-billing is a bit of deceptive aggrandizing.

I’m tempted to give a list of movies to watch instead of No Sudden Move, which is far from the reaction I wanted to have. Even with the fisheye, I was rooting for No Sudden Move and making a lot of allowances for Ed Solomon’s script. But the third act is just too much of a mess. And Soderbergh completely gives up on it with the directing too; after waiting for him to leverage the fisheye the entire movie (there’s maybe one shot of Harbour where the fisheye emphasizes his perspective), Soderbergh has to go high contrast to hide the lack of budget and it looks really, really bad. Twelve year-olds filming toy dinosaurs in their backyards with Super 8s have done better action shots.

No Sudden Move’s not not a waste of time and energy. There’s good acting but for nothing.

The Green Hornet (2011, Michel Gondry)

Of the Seth Rogen films I’ve seen—those he’s written, I mean—The Green Hornet is the weakest. It’s only partially Rogen and cowriter Evan Goldberg’s fault. The concept does not present them with the best opportunities.

At its most amusing, it’s usually Rogen and costar Jay Chou bickering. Rogen and Goldberg’s strength is when the film is a bromance, something they eventually have to abandon in order to have a superhero movie. Unfortunately, the big superhero plot they come up with is pretty weak—there’s only so much one can do with the character, like I said—and it gets a tedious in the third act.

Rogen and Chou are both excellent; they make the movie worth watching. Cameron Diaz is actually not annoying as their unwilling joint love interest (major potential is actually wasted with her, though the unlikely sequel would have probably put her to better use). Her success is the script’s fault. Rogen and Goldberg actually write a good script… just not the masked adventurers parts of it.

Tom Wilkinson is wasted. David Harbour’s bad in a supporting role. Edward James Olmos is fine; Edward Furlong has a good cameo… as does an uncredited former costar of Rogen’s.

As the villain, Christoph Waltz tries hard but too much. He can’t sell the absurdity of his character.

Gondry’s direction is actually pretty indistinct. A stronger hand might have made it work.

Good photography from John Schwartzman and bad music from James Newton Howard.

It’s an interesting failure.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Michel Gondry; screenplay by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, based on a radio series created by George W. Trendle; director of photography, John Schwartzman; edited by Michael Tronick; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Owen Paterson; produced by Neal H. Moritz; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Seth Rogen (Britt Reid / The Green Hornet), Jay Chou (Kato), Cameron Diaz (Lenore Case), Tom Wilkinson (James Reid), Christoph Waltz (Chudnofsky), David Harbour (D.A. Frank Scanlon), Edward James Olmos (Mike Axford), Jamie Harris (Popeye), Chad Coleman (Chili) and Edward Furlong (Tupper).

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