Pride and Glory
Directed by Gavin O'Connor. Written by Joe Carnahan and Gavin O'Connor. With Colin Farrell, Edward Norton, Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich, Jennifer Ehle, and Lake Bell. (R)
Pride and Glory is the cinematic equivalent of an airport paperback, one of any number of police procedurals that feature some combination of the following: corrupt cops, a wounded hero, New Yawk accents, and a lot of cursing and drinking in Irish bars. You've seen it before, and it's likely you'll see it again, but unless you're a particular fan of the genre, or stuck on a long flight, there is little reason to seek it out.
At least it's usually interesting to watch Edward Norton work. Here he stars as Ray Tierney (wounded hero), a cop who took a low-profile job after an incident in the Bronx left him with a jagged scar running across his cheek. Exactly what happened is the film's one secret; by the time Ray's history is revealed, variations of the phrase "remember Mott Haven"—a rough Bronx neighborhood—have become an unintentional running joke. Whatever happened, it has left him separated from his wife and living alone on a leaky houseboat.
He's brought back into the fold by his father (Jon Voight; alcoholic), a high-ranking officer who wants him to head up a task force to investigate the murders of four cops. Very quickly, Tierney uncovers evidence of a band of corrupt officers working out of a precinct run by his brother Francis—the same one his brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell; corrupt cop, cursing, Irish bars) works in.
That's not giving anything away. There's little mystery to Pride and Glory beyond one essential question: when Tierney realizes his family is implicated, will he turn them in, or turn a blind eye? Norton does the best he can in a situation that doesn't give him much to work with, but even the best of actors wouldn't be able to overcome some of the jaw-droppingly ludicrous scenes included here, notably a moment where he and Farrell essentially agree to have a fistfight to decide which of them will be going to jail. In fact, nearly all of the important scenes are howlers: you start to wonder how uniformed cops who break the law in broad daylight—committing robberies and beatings and burning a corpse, for crying out loud—manage to get away with anything.
With its focus on family loyalties and crime, the film seems to aspire to Godfather-like saga, and there are moments—as when Voight's tipsy patriarch celebrates his children in a speech at Christmas dinner—when one can get a sense of that kind of drama. But then, just as you start to remember the holidays of your own childhood, you're hauled back to a land where Colin Farrell is threatening to brand a baby with a steam iron.
W.
Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Stanley Weiser. With Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Ellen Burstyn, Scott Glenn, Thandie Newton, and Jeffrey Wright. (PG-13)
Oliver Stone (Nixon, JFK) continues his run of presidential flicks with the surprisingly entertaining W. The W, of course, is Dubya, our current president and no stranger to parody. The surprise here is just how little parody Stone puts into his picture. Instead, it's a thoughtful and engaging look at the early life that made George W. Bush the man and president that he is today.
As the film opens, Bush (Josh Brolin) and his staff are planning the infamous "Axis of Evil" line in the State of the Union address that preceded the war in Iraq. After some debate, they settle on the term, and Bush concludes the meeting by leading everyone in prayer—his signature sign-off.
When we see him next, Bush is some 35 years younger, in the middle of a beer-soaked frat hazing at Yale, and, shortly after, in jail. Bush senior (James Cromwell) pulls strings to get him released, and so begins the mesmerizing flow of W., as we shuttle back and forth between the Bible-toting Bush of today and the young man his future wife describes as a "devil in a white hat."
It's a fascinating story of conversion, one that focuses squarely on the man. Indeed, it's amazing what's left out: there's little to nothing about the disputed 2000 election or the bungled Hurricane Katrina response. Even the 9/11 attacks don't get much coverage. Yet what is covered—a string of job failures, a religious awakening, a political education courtesy of a young Karl Rove—gives us far greater insight into the mind of the man.
Above all, it's Bush's conflicted relationship with his father that drives his scattershot early years. Always a disappointment, he bridles at living in the shadow of his father even as he relies on the old man's goodwill and political connections to keep him afloat. James Cromwell is wonderful as the elder Bush ("Poppy"), depicting the shrewd, calculating man who plots out his progeny's lives—it's almost Shakespearean in effect, and the film is helped tremendously by his performance. Alternately chilling and warm, loving and let down, Cromwell can convey both the buttoned-up fastidiousness and the underlying ruthlessness of Bush senior with just the tone of his voice or the curl of his lip. There's a scene in W. where father and son almost come to blows; it says a lot that you're not sure who would get the better of whom.
For his part, Brolin—who doesn't particularly resemble the president—captures much of the physicality that makes Bush an easy mark for impressionists: the swagger and the squint. In the present-day sections of the film, where the physical discrepancy is more obvious, Brolin gets an enormous boost from Richard Dreyfuss and Thandie Newton as Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. While Dreyfuss does a scarily good Cheney, Newton's Rice is arguably even better—less true to life, perhaps, but somehow cutting deeper.
There are some flaws, of course: Stone shoehorns in all the mangled Bush quotes he can, from "Is our children learning?" to "misunderestimated" to "I'm the decider," and they often come off as cheap shots in a film that otherwise resists ridicule. I wish the story of Laura Bush had been explored a bit further; the film portrays her as a sharp young woman with some very different views than her husband's. How, if, or when those changed, however, is never really answered. Perhaps the biggest question left unanswered is this: Is the president's favorite play really—as the film tells us it is—Cats?
The Duchess
Directed by Saul Dibb. With Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell, and Simon McBurney. (PG-13)
There is a scene in The Duchess when the Duke of Devonshire dismantles the various accoutrements of his new bride's wardrobe as they prepare for their first night in wedlock. As he removes the wire supports for her skirts and unlaces her corset, he remarks that he's never understood why women's clothing has to be so complicated. It's intended to be a gentle means of putting his wife at ease before they share a bed, but it could be a condemnation of the kind of costume drama that values pomp over circumstance, the sort of movie filled with so many glittering gowns and horse-drawn carriages that actual emotion gets crowded out.
This, luckily, is not one of those films. Based on the true story of Georgiana Cavendish, who became the Duchess of Devonshire just as she turned 17, it spends far more time on the travails of her private life than it does on the frippery of aristocratic England.
As played by Keira Knightley, Georgiana is a Princess Diana prototype, a free-thinking, free-spirited young woman who marries above her station only to regret it later. Her husband the duke (Ralph Fiennes) is primarily interested in two things: producing a male heir, and his dogs. In the absence of marital bliss, Georgiana throws herself into political life and is drawn to Charles Grey, an up-and-comer in the Whig Party. An affair ensues, one which, given the standards of the time, cannot end well.
When Georgiana continues to give birth to daughters, the Duke steps outside his vows to take his wife's friend Bess as his mistress; their affair produces several sons. Here things get downright progressive for 18th century England: the three live in a m?nage ? trois for the next 20 years. That's not to say it's always a smooth ride; Georgiana suffers all manner of insult and hardship, but endures for the sake of her children.
The performances here are all at least good, but Ralph Fiennes is simply amazing in his ability to make us feel for a man who causes so much pain. His duke isn't a cardboard villain but in many ways a very simple man who will do whatever is logical to achieve his ends. That he can't understand his own wife seems less a personal fault than a sad characteristic of the time in which he lived. If for no other reason, see this film for Fiennes—he's really that special.
*
Also this week: Luis Bunuel's 1967 classic Belle de Jour comes to Northampton's Academy of Music for a one-night-only screening. Though often (and rightly) described as an erotic film, it's less about heavy breathing and boudoir gymnastics than about the self-titillation of one woman's rich fantasy life.
French film icon Catherine Deneuve stars as Severine, the wife of a surgeon with whom she shares a stale, conventional marriage. Beneath the surface, however, Severine is aflame with masochistic fantasies—of being assaulted, or covered in mud while being tied up. When she discovers the existence of brothels that employ housewives, she begins leading a double life, spending afternoons exploring her fantasies before returning home to her husband. (The title is a succinct play on words that manages to refer both to a French term for prostitute and to a day-blooming flower.)
When she meets Marcel, a young gangster with a mouthful of metal teeth, she seems to have found the ideal puppet for her explorations. But if for Severine the affairs have always been impersonal—they're all about her, in the end—for Marcel the liaison becomes an obsession. As she tries to disentangle herself from the all-too-real world she has built, Severine finds that her short secret life may have longlasting consequences.
Belle de Jour plays at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Wednesday, November 5th at 7:15 p.m.
