Standard Operating Procedure (3 1/2 stars)
Directed by Errol Morris. With Lynndie England, Javel Davis, Janis Karpinski, Joshua Feinman, Zhubin Rahbar, Merry Grissom, and Cyrus King. (R)
Errol Morris, the visionary documentary filmmaker who finally won the Oscar for his probing film The Fog of War, turns his lens on the current conflict in Iraq with Standard Operating Procedure. Specifically, he zeroes in on the public scandal surrounding the private practices at Abu Ghraib, the military prison that became the stage for the drama of America's fall from grace. It's rich subject matter—the photos of prisoner abuse and degradation were front-page news the world over, as was the outraged response of other countries—but Morris, in a rare stumble, is unable to make the most of it.
The photos themselves are well known by now, and their silent, undeniable evidence is at the heart of the film, staring back at us between the stark interviews and artsy re-enactments that Morris uses to frame his case. Essentially, his argument is that the abuses at Abu Ghraib are only part of a larger problem—a military juggernaut that values compliance, loyalty, and an unquestioning acceptance of the means-to-an-end mentality above individual ethics.
It's an easy case to make in the face of the evidence on display—photos of naked men chained to prison bars and bed frames, their bodies sagging under the strain; men piled and posed in simulated sexual positions—naked again—or forced to masturbate on camera. (Most of the photos are quite explicit, and it can be a shock to see them stripped of the niceties common to newspaper accounts; there's no pixellation of privates or black boxes to spare us the details. The less commonly seen footage shot on video is even more surprising, and its effect is that much more immediate.)
To tell the story of how those photos came to be, Morris relies on interviews with some of the soldiers at the center of the scandal. Surprisingly, the only person who seems angry about it all is Janis Karpinski, the one-time brigadier general in charge of 15 Iraqi prisons, including Abu Ghraib. Demoted in the aftermath of the abuse revelations, she feels scapegoated by her own government, and her bitterness bubbles just below the surface for much of the film.
In contrast to Karpinski's rage, Lynndie England is glibly dismissive. England, the young woman holding a leashed prisoner in one of the most famous pictures, comes off as a deeply offensive woman, and one who will never admit to any wrongdoing. She blames everyone but herself—the press, her fellow soldiers, and above all Specialist Charles Graner, the man whose spell she fell under in Iraq. "I just fell in love with a man" is her excuse for it all, one she practically spits at the camera. Her other justifications seem equally shallow: "We didn't kill 'em… we didn't cut their heads off," she says, as though that exonerates them for what they did do.
Most of her Army friends seem just as reluctant to blame themselves, or accept that they fell victim to mob mentality. Instead, they offer a round-robin of excuses and feigned innocence that only comes across as self-serving. What's missing above all is the testimony of Graner, the playground bully at the center of the mess. He's currently serving time in military prison, and Morris was denied access to him for interviews. His input would have made this a much better film, if only by shedding light on the cult of personality that helped make the whole mess possible.
Some of the film's most telling moments come from a civilian interrogator who was working in Abu Ghraib—a man outside the hothouse atmosphere of the barracks. Consider the story of the Iraqi general ready to give the American forces the information they need to capture the second most wanted man in the country. Instead of taking down his story, his guards shaved off his eyebrows; after that humiliation, the general refused any further cooperation. We're left to wonder how different things might have been if our soldiers had behaved a bit better. In Morris' defense, the film is no political screed—he's too smart to make such a one-sided work—but in this case a more critical eye would have been welcome.
Strangely, Standard Operating Procedure is one of Morris' most visually arresting films, filled with poetic touches that nonetheless clash with the sweat, blood and bodies that are its subjects. A spare, ominous score by Danny Elfman is effective in its own right as well, but feels similarly out of place, making too much art of out of so much pain.
Wanted (3 stars)
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan. With James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, and Thomas Kretschmann. (R)
Wanted is a stylishly over-the-top action whirlwind from the Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, maker of the stylishly over-the-top fantasy whirlwind Night Watch. Like so many action pictures these days, it's been adapted from a comic book, but in the hands of Bekmambetov, who, with the right budget, can create some stunning visuals, it becomes something a bit better than most of its brethren. It's not exactly deep, but it's a good ride for fans of the genre; in other words, this is the movie guys will see while their girlfriends are down the hall at Sex and The City.
James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland) stars as Wesley Gibson, a limp rag of an office worker, a cuckold, and a nervous wreck who's plucked out of his nine-to-five life by a mysterious woman named Fox (Angelina Jolie, whose comic-world features find a good home). When they meet, she informs him quite matter-of-factly that his long-lost father was one of the world's elite assassins; seconds later the pair is in the middle of a high-speed chase and shootout ranging across the city.
Fox is part of The Fraternity—a league of assassins dedicated to keeping the world order by any means necessary. Headed by the grandfatherly Sloan, the group makes its headquarters in an old textile factory, where an old loom gives them coded clues about their next targets (don't ask). Sloan, played by the always dignified Morgan Freeman—when you're making a film about people who take orders from a loom, dignity is a must—has decided to help Wesley fulfill his birthright as an assassin so he can take revenge on the rogue Fraternity member who killed his father.
Boiled down, this is an Oliver Twist story about an orphaned boy who grows up unaware of his true heritage. It turns out that Wesley's heart-pounding anxiety attacks, with his "400 beats per minute" heart rate, are actually the very thing that makes for a great killer—he just needs to learn how to use his heightened awareness. To that end, he ditches office life and embarks on a rigorous training regimen that includes target practice, subway surfing and a whole lot of beatings. When it's all over—six weeks later!—he's ready to go after his man.
It's all ridiculous, of course, but Bekmambetov somehow keeps it going without making you laugh. It helps that he's got McAvoy to work with. A great young actor better known for his work in period art pieces like Atonement, McAvoy brings a solidity to the role that keeps it from becoming a cartoon. It's a performance that recalls Edward Norton's turn in Fight Club, a film which Wanted also resembles in its cubicle-drone-to-alpha-male story line, frequent voiceovers, and late-act turnaround.
The visuals, too, are frequently stunning, especially in a scene of a train derailment over a yawning chasm (there are many close seconds, including a shot of a building being flooded by rats). If the director seems a little too fond of slow-motion sequences, it's a small price to pay for being spared the non-stop kinetics of most modern action films. Those sequences most often seem like homage to the story's graphic roots, however many liberties have been taken with the story.
WALL-E (3 stars)
Directed by Andrew Stanton. Written by Andrew Stanton and Jim Capobianco. With Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, and Sigourney Weaver. (G)
At the rate we're going, the basic premise of WALL-E doesn't seem very far-fetched: that in our not-too-distant future Earth will be covered with so much garbage that we'll be forced to take up new digs in outer space.
In this new film from the Pixar studio, the human race has ditched terra firma, leaving behind an army of automated garbage collectors. Seven hundred years later, the planet is still a dump, and it seems that only one WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is still making the rounds. That particular unit—our hero—is a toddler-sized robot who has developed a personality after a few centuries on his own. Tasked with sweeping up after us, he instead spends much of his time picking through our detritus and carting off new finds to the home he shares with one of the cockroaches that are expected to outlive us.
Chief among his treasures is an old video of Hello, Dolly! from which he absorbs some ideas about romance and companionship. It's something a cockroach can only provide so much of, and when a ship bearing the more modern robot EVE touches down, WALL-E finds himself smitten.
EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) has been sent to see if Earth can support plant life, and when she accomplishes her mission, she heads back to the mother ship with WALL-E in tow. After seven centuries, the humans living in space aren't doing so hot: morbidly obese, their bones have atrophied in the low gravity, and everyone spends their days shuttling around in hoverchairs, sucking down their meals in what look suspiciously like Big-Gulp containers. It's not a flattering portrait, but one that's not terribly off the mark.
While the ship's captain is enthralled with the idea of a return to an Earth he's never known—he thinks growing food means he can have a pizza plant in the garden—the ship's computer has other ideas. Soon enough the machines are in full-blown mutiny, and the humans will have to get off their hoverchairs if they want to get home.
There are some great scenes of animation in WALL-E; the windblown garbage heap of our future Earth is particularly well done and at times strangely beautiful: a familiar landscape ravaged by nature. Once things move to the spaceship, everything gets much slicker and a little less interesting. We've been dazzled so many times by Pixar that perhaps the most compelling thing about WALL-E isn't its technical achievement, but the undercurrent of wistfulness, and even sadness, that runs through it. To want to be loved, to want to return home—who, alone, their thoughts their only companion, hasn't felt that way?
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com
