Hannah's Pick: The Fighter

Well, I had a fairly good streak going on the blog, running the Monday to Friday life and getting reviews posted.  And then, all fell flat.  I wish there was a great reason for this.  I wish I could come up with a grand explanation as to why I was absent for the last few days.  Sadly, I have nothing other than a video game addiction that overtook me, which lead to a complete inability to track time.  I think I may have had a bug as well, but it was more so due to my desire to crush, kill and destroy pixelated villains in the name of good.

While many people look to this year as being the career renaissance of actor Matthew McConaughey, 2010 was the turning point in career of director/writer David O. Russell.  He had not directed a movie since 2004’s I Heart Huckabees and returned with The Fighter, which started off an incredible run of three movies in four years that would all earn Oscar nominations for best picture, best director, and a slew of acting nominations and wins.  I believe it is the first time in history that a director got such big recognition for three consecutive movies, and, as a pick from my wonderful sister-in-law Hannah, I thought it would be a great idea to travel back and take a look at the film.

One thing that Russell has managed to excel at in his films is the ability to draw captivating performances from his actors (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle both got nominations in all four acting categories).  These performances, combined with great script and direction, quickly create people who we are invested in and we become quickly wrapped up in the story.

The Fighter, a movie about the life of boxer Micky Ward, follows brothers Micky (Mark Walberg) and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) as Ward finds himself in a battle between his own best interests and those of his dysfunctional family.  Managed by his mother Alice (Melissa Leo), the attention is never on what is most appropriate for Micky, but on the former glory of Dicky, who is battling drug addiction.  Micky soon meets a local bartender named Charlene (Amy Adams) and finally has someone in his life who puts his needs ahead of his brother’s.

A typical boxing movie can be a great thing, as we get to cheer for the underdog as they claw their way up the ranks with grit and determination.  The story of Micky Ward is indeed one of the underdog, but it plays out so differently than most other films.  The real focus in this film is the relationships that surround Ward, the support (or lack of support) that he gets from different people, and the choices that he must make regarding career and family.  The pugilistic elements is just a backdrop for a deep story of human connection that hits a head and shatters, needing to be either swept away forever or put back together.

Because the boxing is secondary, the action scenes are not the strongest to exist in a boxing flick.  There is little sense of the crowd and environment (except for a wonderful scene as Micky is preparing to walk out to the ring), which may have been an intentional decision to make it more about Micky and those who were ringside.  The voice over commentary of the action also felt a little lifeless and forced at times, which detracts from the emotional experience of the boxing event.

That aside, there is very little that can be criticized about this film.  The acting was a collage of performances making a piece of art, instead of simply one or two stand out roles that compel the audience.  The characters are such a part of each other in this movie that the majesty of the ensemble’s efforts propels the story to another level.  It is especially the chemistry between Walhberg and Bale that plays well on the screen, giving so much history and context of their relationship simply through their body language and how they interact together.

Ward’s life was one of blue collar upbringing, and that essence comes across in perfect clarity thanks in equal parts to the hair, wardrobe, and locations.  It is easy to forget just how far those aspects can go in immersing the audience in the tale set before them, and the attention to detail that each received in The Fighter increased the tone of the film and took it to the next level.

I may be more than a bit of a David O. Russell fan, but his style of storytelling is right up my alley.   I get really geeked out about movies that focus on creating deep and interesting characters, put them in a situation, and have them have to play off of even more deep and interesting characters.  Some people may think that to be a bore, but I would take that any day over run-of-the-mill special effects and explosions.  Russell is one of the modern masters at this craft, and The Fighter is an excellent case study of how impactful a story can be when we actually care about the choices of the people on the screen.

Rating – 3.5 out of 4 stars

Pain and Gain

With having heard today that Michael Bay will be producing the upcoming remake of The Birds, an announcement that spurred on a lot of personal feelings, I think it is only fitting to look at Pain and Gain, Bay’s voyage into a crime comedy.  Best known for his Transformer franchise, Bay often brings about movies that are visually spectacular yet generally lose focus when it comes down to items such as plot and character development.  Personally, those are two things that I would hold above immaculately rendered explosions, but I cannot blame people for getting excited about eye candy, especially when it is front and centre on the big screen.

In Pain and Gain we have a genre that is outside of the norm for Bay, a story about muscled up gym rats who turn to crimes such as kidnapping and fraud to earn some much desired cash.  The movie was based on the true story of the Sun Gym Gang, and stars Mark Walhberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie as the rogues gallery of villains who have more brawns than brain and end up facing mishap after mishap as they attempt to kidnap and extort a wealthy jerk, played by Tony Shaloub.  One thing this movie teaches us is that iron-pumping alpha males may not make criminal masterminds.

Even though this is not the typical Michael Bay format, it does not take long to see his personal style imprinted all throughout this tale.  I often think of his style as ‘rock and roll directing,’ where things are loud, flashy, and non-stop, and unfortunately this seeped into the bones of Pain and Gain, giving it a feeling of an energy drink commercial at times. 

One aspect that keeps this driving feel throughout the film is the almost continuous assault of music, feeling like the beating heart of a speed freak who has just ran a marathon, drank a case of Jolt Colas (remember those?), and ate chocolate covered espresso beans.  It reminded me of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, where music seems to feel the need to creep into almost every moment to the point of not allowing situations, emotions, and environment settle down on the audience.  I believe the point of this choice was to create a feel to the movie to mimic the roid-raging fellas who like to keep the iron pumping, but it never felt like a match.  In the movie Crank, a film with a speedy pulse as well, I was annoyed by the style but soon appreciated how it went hand in hand with how the film rolled out.  In Pain and Gain there appears to be no real correlation between the flowing of the story (not that I am saying there is much of a flow) and the presentation.  There was also an abundance of slow motions shots for some reason.

For a movie that is a ‘comedy,’ I barely found any moments of laughter as a lot of the jokes seemed almost cruel in nature or extremely immature.  Rebel Wilson was able to bring some humour, charm, and charisma into the film through her performance as Mackie’s girlfriend, but her appearances were few and far between.  Dwayne Johnson also made me laugh a time or two, but not as much as I would have liked to.  His character (which was not based on a real life person, but more of a collection of multiple people) was incredibly simplistic and almost stereotypish in how he behaved, making his motivations almost unbelievable.  There is no point in blaming him, or any of the cast for that matter, as he was working with what he was given.

In the film, the three main characters are portrayed as mostly harmless individuals who just get caught up in a situation that brings about actions that they were not really intending to indulge in, such as torture and murder.  The reality of the case is that the torture was in truth brutal, almost done in good fun, and murder was an intention from the start.  As the film progressed, I was not sure why Bay chose to attempt to make the characters relatable, because they really weren’t, not even in the dumbed down and padded version that we ended up seeing.  Were we supposed to sympathize with these people?  Was the intention that we would see the movie and think about the poor guys who just lost their way?

A bright note in the movie was the underused character of Ed Harris, who played a private investigator (retired, but called in for one more case… yep, cliché) who assisted the kidnap victim in tracking down the people who took everything he had.  Really, Harris should have been the person the story should have followed, as he was someone the audience could relate to and understand.  Instead, he was just another piece in a puzzle and felt like a bunch of mismatched pieces jammed together by a toddler with peanut butter all over his hands.

Normally I do not get too critical of a film that claims it is based on a true story and then deviates away from the truth to get to the story that the director was inspired to tell.  Pain and Gain gets no shelter from this as far as I am concerned, as this was the first movie that I can recall that actually stopped the action well into the film to directly remind the audience that ‘this is still a true story.’  Claims as such made outside the credits, or close to them, just serve as an indicator that something like this has actually happened, but to insert a statement directly in the middle of the tale seeks to assure the audience that it is an accurate story.  Oddly enough, at the moment of the reassurance of the legitimacy of the story, we see a fictional character grilling body parts in a location where it did not happen, and getting reprimanded for it by the character who, in real life, was the one who did the grilling.

The movie really felt like a jumbled mess, aided by the fact that almost every character got a chance to be the narrator, creating a confusion of who this film is really about.  For a crime movie it was not very captivating, and for a comedy it was not very funny.  It was a film that tried to use a flashy approach that works well enough for a popcorn munching blockbuster, but falls extremely short for a ‘based on real life’ movie about some tank top wearing good old boys who commit fraud, kidnapping, and murder.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars

Lone Survivor

For Peter Berg, getting Lone Survivor right was very important, and there are a number of reasons why its success was key.  First of all, it is based off of and honouring the service and sacrifice of soldiers in Afghanistan and a failed component of Operation Red Wings.  Also, this was a passion project of Berg’s, which he was able to do on account of accepting to direct Battleship.  Thirdly, Berg’s career was tarnished because of Battleship (I have not seen it, but can he really be blamed for a board game as such failing as a movie?) and success on Lone Survivor is what could restore his career to its previous state.

The movie follows the story of four Navy SEALs who were sent into hostile territory to perform recon before things become incredibly pear-shaped as their presence becomes known.  Playing the SEALs are Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster, who are portrayed as a very tight group with a ferocious bond.  That theme is really what starts off the film, highlighting the training of endurance that they have to undergo and the brotherhood that forms.  I really do not want to sound too down on the film, but there were times where it felt like an advertisement for the Navy.

Perhaps it is because I am Canadian and not American, but it was at times almost over glorifying and romanticising the roles of the military and what they stand for.  I imagine that for a different audience, such as my neighbours to the south, there is a lot of built in pride for armed forces but that sort of thing if not properly tempered can fall victim to the cultural divide in other nations.  I do believe that perhaps the military nature of the United States and the more peace-minded nature of Canada allows for different interpretations of the film.

One thing that I find Peter Berg does effectively in action sequences is that he is able to keep them tight and quickly edited without being hard to follow.  As well, he once again proves that he has a skill of keeping action from being too ‘Hollywood’ like.  He does not focus on the explosions and the booming sound effects, but rather the scraps, bruises, shrapnel and bullets that the soldiers came face to face with.  The first action sequence has a very long build to it, and the sound track is silence, allowing a great deal of anticipation to properly build within the audience.  While I found the lead in to the first battle in the movie to be expertly done, the final conflict just sort of happened out of nowhere.  There were a few shots to establish its approach, but nothing to the extent that created the success of the first fire fight.

While the movie is called Lone Survivor, it focuses mostly on the group aspect of the battle, and less of the plight of the individual.  The movie was two hours long, but I feel like it could have used about another fifteen minutes to really catch the emotions of the experience that the one soldier went through in the ordeal.  Before anyone criticizes me for spoiling the fact that one of the soldiers survives, I refer you to the title and ensure you that it is no spoiler.  All of that to say, I felt like the singular experience was neglected for the sake of the group story and I think both could have existed in this film.

In The Kingdom, Berg does a wonderful job of taking away the concept of the blameless good guy and the pure evil of the bad guy, and was able to round out the tale with allowing perspective to the whole cycle of violence.  While he does not lend any relatable traits to the Taliban in this movie, he does work to insert bravery and morality into the people of Afghanistan to show that there is more to the story than just the American side.

In a time where action movies are pointless and supercharged with special effects and end of world consequences, Berg did a good job of delivering a more down to earth war movie.  While the action was very well done, it came off as almost over patriotic in creating these men as heroes.  I do not say that to diminish the work of the real life soldiers that it was based on, but it is more a comment in the tone of delivery.  The ending of the movie came off to be over dramatized, perhaps because of the slow paced nature and the slow tempo version of ‘We Could Be Heroes’ that played (it is a song about love, not war… maybe they should have read the lyrics).  I do think that it is important to pay tribute, but the pace of it did not fit in with the rest of the film and it felt like an over enthusiastic gut punch.

I don’t know.  Perhaps I am just a big meany, but I don’t think so.  This film is a real love letter to their legacy (almost to the point of making them a little unbelievably tough) and maybe it did not hit home because I am not within that kind of world… but is that not what a good movie does, or is supposed to do?  A great movie takes us by the hand and leads us into a part of life that we are not accustomed to and connects us with it, for good or bad, and leaves us touched by the experience. 

Rating – 2.5 out of 4 stars