Med City Movie Guy

Cena, Gillen square-off in “12 Rounds”

In 12 Rounds, the new film from WWE superstar John Cena, the four-time world champion grappler plays cop who’s the target of an egomaniacal arms dealer. Some minor twists notwithstanding, Cena’s fate is predictable: professional wrestler, action hero, then eventually ... governor of Minnesota.

     A year ago, New Orleans police officer Danny Fisher (Cena) was part of a routine bust to take down wormy arms dealer Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen). While making a run for it, Jackson’s girlfriend became an unwilling hood ornament on a speeding truck. Now Jackson has broken out of prison and wants vengeance. He kidnaps Fisher’s significant other, Molly (Ashley Scott), and concocts a game with twelve deadly rounds. If Fisher can survive, Molly lives. If he dies, well, then the move is over in twenty-five minutes and that would be a Hollywood first.
     12 Rounds is immediately engaging and surprisingly the intensity is sustained throughout. Cena, who can easily pass for actor Mark Wahlberg (and, probably unintentionally, also for QVC host David Venable who pitches delicious dishes and garden accoutrements on the cable shopping channel) does an admirable job; but he is no Keanu Reeves or Al Pacino – stars of two films whose plots are also strikingly familiar: Speed and last year’s 88 Minutes. Co-star Aidan Gillen does not disappoint either as the more-purposeful-than-he-appears Miles Jackson, a character that isn’t unlike John Malkovich’s Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom in 1997’s Con Air, even if Gillen does play it more like he’s auditioning for the lead role in a Gary Oldman biopic.
     In other words, no film or cast has ever been so much like so many others.
     That’s Hollywood for you. Long before Al Gore made being green fashionable, Tinseltown was recycling plots and characters. Only this time, for a change, scriptwriter Daniel Kunka (his first effort) and Veteran director Renny Harlin (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Die Hard 2: Die Harder) have managed to reformulate the best ingredients into a palatable pot luck that is not unsatisfying.
     The duo can also be thanked for favoring the true grit of New Orleans over a Los Angeles soundstage. NOLA, of course, has been featured in many movies. Unfortunately, most of them—Live and Let Die and Double Jeopardy for example—have left filmgoers with the impression that the city is one big French Quarter. There is certainly a lot more going on there. And there is a lot more going on in 12 Rounds, as well.

2 ½ Honks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.

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“Duplicity” takes 'two' many turns

In the newest Julia Roberts film, the Academy Award-winning actress plots a duplicitous scheme using dubious claims that on close examination suggest, in spite of their best efforts, very little likelihood of actually succeeding. The film was originally titled “The Wet House.”

     After a happenstance meeting in Dubai, government agents Claire Stenwick and Ray Koval (Roberts and Clive Owen) hatch a scheme to go private where one big score can assure them a life of living large. The pair agree to retire—she from the CIA, he from MI6—and take jobs as corporate spies for competing conglomerates, one of which is on the verge of a major medical breakthrough. Under the guise of stealing the chemical formula from Claire’s employer Burkett & Randle, Ray gets her a job as a double-agent in his security detail at rival Omnikrom whose CEO, Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti), is desperate for something to announce at an upcoming shareholder’s meeting. The pair, of course, want to pull a switch and sell the formula on the black market but Burkett & Randle’s folksy CEO Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) is not as charming as he appears and before long, it’s not clear who is gaming who.
     If it is not already obvious, be forewarned, Duplicity requires some effort to follow. It starts confusing but quickly becomes intriguing by slowly revealing plot points through flash backs (and flash forwards) not unlike the 1998 Steven Soderbergh film (and Med City Movie Guy favorite) Out of Sight. It’s a risky style that isn’t always successfully executed or well received though director Tony Gilroy (who scribed the Bourne Identity trilogy) seems to pull it off here.
     Julia Roberts is always a bankable crowd-pleaser and doesn’t disappoint. Clive Owen, following the underwhelming International earlier this year, thankfully redeems himself with an enjoyable character. Oscar nominees Tom Wilkinson (for 2007’s Michael Clayton) and Paul Giamatti  (for 2005’s Cinderella Man) are well-cast as CEOs: one seasoned, the other slightly neurotic. However, the best performance might just be one of the smallest. As the Appletini-imbibing corporate travel agent Barbara Bofferd, actress Carrie Preston is positively hysterical, especially when being interrogated by Julia Roberts whose wordless reactions to Bofferd’s confessions easily make it the best scene in the entire movie.
     Probably the worse that can be said of this romantic comedy / spy thriller is that it is too little. It’s a little bit James Bond, a little bit Ocean’s Eleven (Clooney version) and a little bit The Sting. But not enough of any of them. It’s entertaining, for sure, but it could have been a lot better.

2 1/2 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and some sexual content.

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“March” misses by a mile

In Miss March, the new movie from Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, stars of the popular Independent Film Channel sketch comedy show “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” a young man wakes from a four-year coma to find that his high-school sweetheart is Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Month; a cute premise that, unfortunately, is about as fun to watch as the back of Ed Asner’s hospital gown.

     A the story unfolds, longtime buds Eugene and Tucker (Cregger and Moore) have twenty-seven hours to get from North Carolina to a party at the Playboy Mansion in California where Eugene hopes to win-back Cindy (Raquel Alessi), his girl-next-door who went on to become the magazine’s Miss March. To expedite things, they enlist the aid of an old friend who has since made it big, hardcore rapper “dot MPEG” (The Office’s Craig Robinson), who offers the duo a ride to L.A. on his party bus. With Tucker’s scorned girlfriend Candace (Molly Stanton) and her fireman brother Rick (Geoff Meed) in hot pursuit, they all eventually make their way to the mansion where the relationships are tidily sorted out under the watchful gaze (via security camera) of the man himself, Hugh Hefner, who finds the reconciliation so touching that a tear actually rolls down the octogenarian’s cheek.
     It’s all too much. Or too little ... depending on your standards.
     With the exception of a few fraternity brothers, audiences almost universally agree that the film is unwatchable – one local moviegoer even compared the experience to waterboarding. This can’t all be blamed on the film’s over-the-top raunch. Last year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and 1999’s American Pie costarred vulgarity, as well, but after distilling-away the R-rated elements you were still left with a charming tale of relationships. Miss March on the other hand, has nothing going for it beyond the sophomoric gags, which wouldn’t be so bad if there were more of them. But there are only two. One of them is Tucker’s delivery of the line, “Hef! No!” to the admission that in spite of beings surrounded by all of the grotto eye candy, the robed one still carries a torch for his less than staple-worthy childhood sweetheart Gertrude von Brauer. The other is unprintable.
     Though we are only three months into 2009, many critics are already heralding Miss March as the worse film of the year. That may unfairly underrate the movie, others say, because it is, in fact, probably the worst film of the decade (how soon they forgot Delgo). It is neither, but it is definitely on the short list.

½ Honk
MPAA Rating: R for lots of good reasons.

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Movies can be the best of times in even the worst of times

In the vernacular of a theme park, our current economic ride ranks somewhere between a rollercoaster at the Mall of America and Valleyfair’s Power Tower plunge.

     Which is also to say that when the going gets tough, we turn to escapism for entertainment. In the throes of the Great Depression, for instance, Americans lined-up for films like King Kong, Babes in Toyland, the Flash Gordon serials and anything else that took them as far from their grim reality as possible.
     To remind us that even in these bad times we can still have a good time, here are five DVDs that feature, as a backdrop, the worst fiscal crisis we have endured.

Duck Soup (1933)
     Widely regarded as the best Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup tells the story of the fictional country of Freedonia, which has gone bankrupt through fiscal mismanagement. A wealthy window offers to provide a stimulus injection of $20 million provided a progressive new leader, Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), is appointed. He is and the ensuing madness is either hysterical farce or a frightening prophetic tale for our times. Either way, it is definitely more fun to watch than a C-SPAN Congressional hearing on the automotive bailout.

Hard Times (1975)
     Charles Bronson is the bare-knuckled street fighter “Chaney” who does all he can to survive in Depression-era New Orleans. He teams with a smalltime gambler named Speed (James Coburn) who helps arrange illegal fights with an eye on a bigger prize: one big score. A great period piece that some say includes Bronson’s best performance -- and with a body of work that includes The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape and Death Wish that’s saying a lot.

Paper Moon (1973)
     Ryan O’Neal and daughter Tatum O'Neal star in this classic Peter Bogdanovich comedic drama about an unscrupulous bible salesman who teams-up with a young orphan in 1930’s Kansas. Together they run some of the most effective (and charming) cons until things go terribly wrong. Tatum O'Neal’s portrayal of Addie Loggins earned the 10-year-old an Oscar (she was, and still is, the youngest person to have ever won one) in part because her sass and preciousness were so genuine, but truth be told, the highlight of the film is watching her smoke a cigarette. Gasp! Could this film even be made today?

Rambling Rose (1991)
    To avoid a life of “professional rambling,” Rose (Laura Dern) gets taken-in as a housemaid to the Hillyer family (Robert Duvall, Lukas Haas and Dern’s real-life mom Diane Ladd) where she finds that her spirit and the effect she has on the men in 1930’s Georgia is so pronounced it may require the courts to intercede. A quirky comedy not without controversy and appropriately rated R.

They Shoot Horses, Don t They? (1969)
     Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin are marathon dancers in this exhausting Sydney Pollack classic that demonstrates the misery desperate people in desperate times will endure when money is at stake. A kitschy cast that includes Red Buttons, Bruce Dern and Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis help buoy the film but actor Gig Young steals the show with his portrayal of Rocky, the sadistic emcee.