Cynical Cinema

The first 20 minutes of In Bruges are absolutely hilarious. Minutes 20 through 25 are heartbreaking and suddenly, crazily brutal. And the last 82 minutes are hilarious and brutal. And all 107 minutes of this movie are joyously, darkly, utterly fantastic. In Bruges has got to be an early candidate for best movie of 2008. It’s beginning to end fantastic, it never stops being side-splittingly funny, and at no point does it ever half-ass anything, shy away from offensive subject matter, or compromise itself in any way. And this movie could well be considered offensive. To everyone. Blacks, whites, natives, Irishmen, Americans, Belgians, and especially the Vietnamese. Fat people, pregnant people, Christians, tourists and especially midgets and dwarves. And boy, is it ever funny.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as Ray and Ken, two Irish hitmen who have just carried out an assignment in London that has gone horribly wrong. Their employer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) has sent them to lay low in Belgium, in a tiny town called Bruges. Bruges is actually a real town in Belgium, one of the prominent “World Heritage Sites” of UNESCO. It’s a famous town because most of the buildings and structures from the medieval era remain intact, and because, like Venice, it is one of the few canal-based cities in the world. There are roads and plazas, but for the most part people get around on the canals. Bruges features dozens of museums, concert halls, festivals, theatres, and sightseeing locations. And that makes the town an absolutely wonderful place to set a movie filled with such coarse language, gratuitous drug use and graphic violence.

Brendan Gleeson gives an absolutely mesmerizing performance as Ken, the hit man who is completely enamored with this quaint little antique town. His glee at seeing the sights is as charming as Bruges itself. Farrell, on the other hand, absolutely hates the place. He hates the tourists, he hates the sights, he hates the quaintness and the charm. And he has never been funnier in his life. On top of his hatred of Bruges, he has an obsession with midgets, (and their tendency to commit suicide in disproportionate numbers), abuses many substances, and is himself suicidal. There is real pathos in his character, and through all the jokes and the ridiculous situations and the violence, he manages to convey a real sense of pain, loss, and heartbreak in his character.

There is certainly violence in this film, but it’s all first-rate violence. And by that I mean that it’s violence played for laughs, then violence done to tear-jerking effect, then violence for the sake of violence, and then violence for the sake of emotional effect. And it’s all letter-perfect. In fact, just about everything in this movie is done to perfection. The recurring themes - suicide, dwarves, honour - could have seemed very contrived in lesser hands. But in this case, every theme fits perfectly into the scope and tone of the movie. A tone which is sometimes dry, sometimes ironic, sometimes totally insane, and always, always, totally ballsy. This movie does not hesitate to break any taboos, to push any limits, to test any outrage the audience might feel.

Gleeson and Farrell are amazing together. They have the sort of relationship Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega had in Pulp Fiction. And many parts of this movie - especially the dialogue and the drug use and the violence - are very reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. And these two Irish hitmen are every bit as funny and interesting as Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta. And then - Ralph Fiennes shows up! Fiennes, one of the great actors in movies, is playing a psychopathic character that is unlike any other he has played in his career. And yet, he is perfectly cast for the role. While his arrival on the scene seems to forecast a darker, less humourous turn to the movie as it reaches it’s bloody peak. And it certainly does get even darker once Fiennes enters the picture, but amazingly, it actually gets funnier too!

In Bruges is that rarest of movies that manages to be dark, comedic, dramatic, violent, charming, sweet, bad-ass, action-packed and clever all at the same time. It even throws in a little romance. This is the first great movie of 2008, opening in limited theatrical release in February. It made a total of 8 million dollars in North America, 21 million worldwide. The Love Guru, which by all accounts is an absolute pile of crap, made 14 million in it’s first weekend. But then, how many people watch the great films at the box office? In Bruges was the film debut for writer and director Martin McDonagh, who is one of the great talents to watch in movies. Some day, In Bruges will be remembered the same way people remember Reservoir Dogs. As the brilliant first film that launched a brilliant career. And you can pick up this wonderful movie today, July 1st, thanks to Alliance Films.

In 2002, City Of God rocked the movie world with what can be considered one of the greatest movies ever made. Fernando Meirelles directed this masterpiece, a sweeping saga of poverty, crime, and conscience in the slums of Rio De Janeiro. The film became an international sensation, and in his native Brazil, Meirelles sort of spun the movie off into a TV series called City of Men. Douglas Silva was one of the stars of City of God, playing the staggeringly scary and powerfully psychotic Lil’ Dice. He became the star of City of Men, the TV show, and he is the star of City of Men, the movie, which is a movie version of the TV version of City of God. Make sense so far? His character in this movie, however, is far removed from his violent psychopath character in the first film.

City of Men is a little more light-hearted than City of God, in that there is a little bit of humour. Silva plays Acerola (Ace), a young man who is struggling with fatherhood. Barely 18, he works at a watch-post to support his wife and infant son. We learn fairly fast that he is too young and unprepared for being a father, as he forgets his son at the beach, where he is rescued by the local gang crew, led by a charismatic leader named Midnight. The gang, while being a group of drug dealing, murderous thugs, is still fairly friendly with the community around it, and there is never a problem as Ace’s son gets returned to him through several sources. And we learn that Ace, while not being a part of the violence or the gang in any way, is still content to co-exist with them in the particular slum in which they live. Ace’s wife Cris, also a youngster herself, is threatening to move to Sao Paolo, where she can make a much better living than she can in the slum.

Ace’s best friend, the kid who has been closest to him since childhood, is more a brother than a buddy. Laranjinha is also struggling with fatherhood, but from the other side. He has never known his father, or even who he is. As his 18th birthday approaches, Laranjinha is desperately trying to find and meet his own dad. Ace is right at his side the whole time, helping him to discover who the man is and where he lives. When Laranjinha finally does find his father, however, the neighbourhood has gone up in smoke. Midnight’s second-in-command, Fasto, has decided to take over the gang for himself. Through a series of events too complicated to detail here, the new gang that installs itself at the top in the slums, and they believe that Ace has somehow been complicit in Midnight’s activities, warning him of the impending coup. Fasto’s gang is driving everyone related to Midnight out of the slums, which includes Laranjinha, Midnight’s cousin.

So now, even though neither of the kids has participated in any of the gang violence, and both have done everything they can to steer clear of the criminal world, they are involved whether they like it or not. Laranjinha goes to live with his new-found father, and Ace is forced to flee. With nowhere to turn, he ends up living with Midnight in another Brazilian slum, as Midnight prepares to retake his hill. As the movie works up to the inevitable, violent confrontation, the two kids at the centre of the story are swept up in something they can’t control. It all boils down to a question of whether their relationship is stronger than their violent surroundings. And I’m not going to give away the ending here.

City of Men works, but it suffers for being associated with City of God, which was an absolute masterwork. There is a reason there has never been a Casablanca II: The Rise of Captain Renaud, or a Citizen Kane II detailing the construction of Xanadu. Some films just stand alone, and City of God is one of them. Which is not to say that City of Men doesn’t work, or that it’s a poor film, it’s just not nearly as powerful as one could hope. The first film used mostly non-actors from Rio, which gave it an air of immediacy and brutal reality. This new film features actual actors, who do a great job, but some of that visceral feeling of the streets is lost. A fine movie, and even a very good one, City of Men has really one failing, and that is that it isn’t City of God. It comes out today, July 1st, courtesy of Alliance Films.

I have always been a big fan of Karl Malden. I think he is one of the all-time under-rated actors in all of cinema. His performance in Patton is almost on a par with that of George C. Scott. And he holds his own with Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront. But Malden gets forgotten quickly, because Scott in Patton and Brando in Waterfront are two of the most incredible, towering performances in the history of movies. But Karl Malden managed to forge an incredible career, both in movies and in television. One of the few brilliant actors to wind down his career on the small screen, Malden was the star of The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 - 1977. He continued to work in the 80s and 90s, with small roles and TV movies and so forth, but The Streets of San Francisco was really the last great thing he did.

When it comes to Michael Douglas, I am of two minds. At times, I find him to be an absolutely brilliant actor (Wall Street, Falling Down), and at other times I find him tolerable in small doses only (A Perfect Murder, Basic Instinct, Disclosure). Thankfully, Streets of San Francisco gives us Michael Douglas in small doses only. What with it being an hour-long program. But for the most part, this show is the good Michael Douglas. Very few TV shows in history have had two actors of this caliber working together for such a long time - six full seasons. Volume One of the second season comes out on DVD tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

The best thing about the show, other than the two lead actors, is the location filming. It’s actually filmed IN the streets of San Francisco, setting for such classic films and car chases as the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt. And those movies (and TV shows) become classic because the streets of San Fran lend themselves very much to the ol’ car chase. And there are certainly some cool car chases in this show. As far as police procedurals go, this one is pretty tight, and pretty quick, and it seems like they put a lot of thought into not just the settings but the procedure as well. It’s a little more logical and well-thought-out than other police shows of the era, and each actor, including the guest stars and the extras, knows exactly what he or she is doing in every scene.

And that is really my only, minor, complaint about the show. With talents like Malden and Douglas, there was a little more leeway to let them do their own thing, I would think. But Malden gets a little typecast as the crotchety ornery older cop. And every time we start to forget that he’s sour, they throw him a line so he can make the point again. The relationship between the two, while it’s generally solid, is constantly being pigeonholed into a father-son dynamic, even when it’s kind of unnecessary. And Malden’s insistence on constantly calling Douglas “buddy boy” really dates things. It all makes the show feel focus-grouped. But it’s “1970s” focus-grouped, so it isn’t all that bad. Like, it isn’t Tila Tequila or anything.

Season Two, Volume One, features some impressive guest stars, like James Wainwright, several episodes with Leslie Nielsen, and one with Martin Sheen as a bank robber. This was the first time Sheen and Malden appeared on screen together - the second time was twenty-seven years later when Malden did a guest spot as Father Cavanaugh on The West Wing in 2000. I don’t know if anyone will care about that. But I researched it because I cared, so I figured I may as well write it down. This is no good reason to watch Streets of San Francisco. But there are many other reasons. Malden, Douglas, and that incredible city with it’s incredible streets that lead to some incredible car chases.

The Flock is the first American effort from Hong Kong film maker Andrew Lau, who is famous for his excellent Infernal Affairs triolgy, the movies which were made into the Scorcese masterpiece The Departed.  However, with The Flock he falls a little short.  The movie is about Richard Gere, who is basically a parole officer for sex offenders.  When we meet him, he is being forcibly retired from his job, since he seems to have lost his mind a little bit.  He is going to be replaced by Claire Danes, and he’ll be teaching her the ropes before he’s done.  But he’s so over the edge that she is not only afraid of the sexual deviants with which they deal every day, she’s also afraid of Gere because he’s clearly a maniac.

When a girl goes missing, the two of them attempt to solve the crime, even though they are not the police, based on the sex offender registry and interviews of Gere’s “flock”, which is how he describes his group of criminals.  The people who took the girl appear to be targeting Gere himself, based on a clue they left just for him at the table where he always sits at the diner where he always goes.  They are sending HIM a message - but why him, why that message, what the abductors hope to gain from it - we never find out.  Why?  Who cares.  Here are some people doing awful things to other people.  Isn’t that awful?  Now let’s get to the end of the film.

Andrew Lau’s previous movies have been brilliant in their depiction of cops and cop culture, as action and drama intersect with double crosses and informants, and complex stories are made to seem much simpler.  However, in The Flock, he makes a fairly simple, straightfoward story seem much more complex than it has to be.  In the end, we get Gere being a tough-guy lunatic, Claire Danes crying a lot, and weird sexually deviant behaviour in rooms in the background.  And that’s about it.  The final scene with the abducted girl is tawdry and contrived, although it does convey an appropriate level of creepiness.

Oh, and one more thing - when you have the credits at the beginning of the movie, with the five main actors who are going to be in the film, and one of those actors is a name people will recognize (in this case Avril Lavigne), you have to understand that you are setting them up already.  Say you’re watching a film, and the first six names that flash at you include, say for the sake of argument, Christopher Walken.  And he appears for about four seconds, ten minutes into the movie.  And then you don’t see him again at all.  But at the end, when the mystery is unraveling, you kind of think to yourself - Christopher Walken got third billing in this movie…I bet he’s the killer…and of course you’d be right.  In this film, it doesn’t happen exactly that way, and it’s a little better done than that.  But still, the end came as absolutely no shock to me based on the opening credits and the rest of the movie.

Walk All Over Me is a Canadian film starring Leelee Sobieski and Tricia Helfer.  You can tell it’s Canadian by Minute Four, and you can tell nothing cool is going to happen by Minute Nine.  And you can tell you regret renting it by Minute Eleven.  And you can stop watching it right then and there.  The premise of the movie is that Leelee Sobieski is Alberta, a hot small-town teenage girl who runs away from home after getting into trouble with some thugs.  She runs to Vancouver, where she decides to hide out with Celine (Tricia Helfer), who is either a friend or a relative.  Or something.  Celine, you see, is a dominatrix.  And I know the nerds out there are excited already.  Tricia Helfer?  Dominatrix?  Yes…yes…and they are hosting Battlestar Galactica marathons in order to prepare themselves to watch this.

But you know what?  Tricia Helfer does not get naked.  Leelee Sobieski becomes a dominatrix too, but she also does not get naked.  Then why bother having the “dominatrix” theme in the movie at all?  Because it means that this way Sobieski gets to spend the entire movie in fishnets and cleavage-boosting bustiers and spiked heels on CFM boots.  And it also means that much of the film will take place in weird rooms, and people “not knowing what that weird helmet is for” becomes the standard punchline to jokes that were never told.  But there is almost no actual dominatrix action whatsoever, it’s just the clothes that appear in the film.  Which would be fine if you were making a porno, but this movie takes itself almost seriously.

It’s one of those crime capers where bad guys are after a good guy because they believe he stole some money, and bad guys capture good guys, and new guys get involved, and new guys capture bad guys, and bad guys trade good guys with new guys.  One of those.  But Canadian.  Obviuously Canadian.  And therefore painfully boring and not too good.  Perhaps the idea was that putting Sobieski and Helfer in boob-showing shirts and fishnets and short skirts and hooker boots would distract people from the lack of plot, the poor acting and the senseless story.  And, in a way, that DID actually work on me.  After all, how many times have I mentioned it in this review alone?  And the clothes and girls DID keep me watching past the eleven minute mark.  But by then I had seen everything, and I wished I had turned it off.  So there’s my advice to you.  Eleven minutes in.  Turn this off and watch a fishing show.

When I bought my Blu-Ray player, almost a year ago, it came with 5 free Blu-Ray movies.  I had to fill out a little card checking off the movies I might like, and they would be shipped to my house.  Because it was almost a year ago, there weren’t many movies out on Blu-Ray yet.  So although I could grab Full Metal Jacket and The Prestige, the others were a crap-shoot, so I just picked the three I hadn’t seen.  One of those was S.W.A.T.  I think.  I can’t really remember.  In fact, I had completely forgotten I had ever placed this order, since it took eight months for it to arrive.  And when it did, it came with a not saying there had been a “slight delay” in shipping because one of the titles I had requested was no longer being made and they had to replace it with something else.  And maybe that something was S.W.A.T.  I sure hope I didn’t order it on purpose.

And that’s why the movie, although it’s old, merits a review.  Because people who are loving the Blu-Ray technology are buying up everything they can on that medium.  Every movie that’s out there on Blu-Ray gets serious consideration from the owners of the players.  And I am writing this to warn those of you who may want to purchase all these films to avoid SWAT.  At all costs.  It doesn’t matter one bit how good it looks on your TV, it is a giant waste of your time.  Yet another vehicle for Colin Farrell to play an Irish tough guy, SWAT concerns the LAPD SWAT team, the “toughest, meanest, best, coolest, heaviest, deadliest, most powerful, most bad-ass, most attractive fighting force in the world”.  Or something.

Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Samuel L. Jackson, and some other chumps train to be SWAT.  Farrell is getting a second chance at the team, one that comes after a dust-up with his out-of-control former SWAT team-mate.  I wonder if that preamble will be referenced later?  Of course it will!  For the first hour of the movie, the team trains.  And then they pass their course.  Much to the chagrin of their captain, who hates them!  We also get to see the evil antics of some foreign bad-guy.  He might be a drug dealer, or a human trafficker, or  a counterfeiter or a distributor of fake Faberge Eggs.  We have no idea.  We just know he’s evil, because he kills folks, and he will obviously eventually be the guy who faces off against the SWAT team.

So after an hour plus of six guys looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to each other while wearing mad-cool sunglasses, there is actually…the plot!  Of the movie!  Which involves the entire city attacking the SWAT team, who respond by looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to other people while wearing mad-cool sunglasses.  There is actually no story in the film, no compelling character, no single scene that’s cool enough to justify the action portions of the film…no reason at all to watch this hunk of junk.

Hero Wanted is a rather painful experience.  I like Ray Liotta, who is a pretty solid, you-get-what-you-expect B-Movie actor.  Unfortunately, with Cuba Gooding Jr. you also get what you expect.  And, from him, I expect absolute crap.  Every movie this guy’s been in since Boyz N The Hood, he’s been just awful.  He seems to be that rare actor that gets worse with every passing year and project.  His finest acting performance may well have been in one of those MacGyver episodes when he was a teenager.  (Ironically, that chick who played Blossom - Mayim Bialik - also did her best work on MacGyver.)  And in Hero Wanted, Gooding is predictably putrid and unconvincing as a man on a quest for vengeance.  This is basically the same role that has been played by some very good actors in recent years -Jodie Foster, Kevin Bacon, and of course Charles Bronson.

 Speaking of Charles Bronson, there was a movie made about eight years ago called Boondock Saints (a far better movie), in which the two main characters, played by Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, make reference a few times to Charles Bronson.  It’s the way Boondock Saints tipped it’s hat to the Bronson revenge fantasy flicks that preceded it, movies that clearly had an influence on the film.  Now here comes Hero Wanted, and where is the tip of the hat to Bronson?  Or for that matter, to Boondock Saints?  As it turns out, this movie is, throughout it’s hour-and-a-half running time, completely ripping off Boondock Saints.  Here’s how.

The guy starring with Gooding?  Norman Reedus from Boondock Saints.  Maybe the film makers thought that his involvement was in itself a big enough hat-tip.  It isn’t.  Ray Liotta plays an unusually smart and literate cop who makes amazing leaps in logic to close in on the real killer, all the while talking down to his subordinates and sending them out to get him coffee when they say something stupid.  Just like Willem Dafoe does in Boondock Saints.  He begins to feel empathy for, and identify with, the vigilante, just like Dafoe.  Cuba Gooding becomes, through some strange circumstances, a vigilante out for vengeance, just like Reedus and Flannery in Boondock Saints.  The director (first-timer Brian Smrz) loves the camera shot that goes around the characters in a sweeping circle, the kind of shot made popular by…Boondock Saints.  The big finale features a surprise appearance by an ex-marine badass killing machine, and every character has two guns, just like the big finale in Boondock Saints.  The killing scenes are shown piece by piece, where the scene begins, then they cut away, then the cops show up to piece it together, then we see how the scene plays out.  Just like in Boondock Saints.  The list goes on.

The movie starts with Cuba Gooding at a bar, playing an unconvincing drunk.  His drinking problem is easily explained away with the old quick, trite explanation.  Dead wife and unborn child, nothing to live for, and so on and so forth.  Then we see him working as a garbage man with Norman Reedus as a partner, when out of nowhere a car crash happens right in front of them.  Gooding jumps into the car and saves the little girl trapped inside, while the car burns.  He becomes an instant hero.  It’s the only good thing he’s done with his life…and so forth.  But he’s still a messed up weirdo, and he becomes obsessed with a girl who works as a bank teller.  When he approaches her, and the bank is robbed, she gets shot in the head.  He goes a little nuts, and tracks down the robbers one by one, in a quest for vengeance.  The fact that he knows who the robbers are and the police don’t gives away the ending right away, but I’ll leave out the quirky little details in case someone actually wants to see Gooding struggle his way through this painful movie.

Not only is Cuba Gooding Jr. unconvincing as a vigilante, he is also pretty bad at it.  He seems to need to deliver that one, last, tough-guy line before he kills someone, which gives them a chance to avoid death and fight him before he (obviously) eventually comes out on top.  As Eli Wallach said in The Good The Bad And The Ugly, “if you’re going to shoot, shoot!  Don’t talk!”  And the ending is ridiculous and implausible in virtually every way.  The more emotional and heartwrenching the ending tries to be, the more I laughed.  By the time Gooding inexplicably gets the girl, I was in stitches, pausing the movie several times because my sides hurt.  It’s almost worth watching just for that kind of hilarity.  But it isn’t.  Stay far away from this garbage.

          American Gangster, the movie, was a great film that did very well behind the acting skills of Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas and Russell Crowe as Ritchie Roberts.  American Gangster, the TV show, is a terrific program that does extremely well behind interviews of the real Frank Lucas and Ritchie Roberts.  And many others like them.  Season Two comes out this coming Tuesday, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s a fascinating documentary series.  It examines the most notorious African-American gangsters, from Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson to the Philly Black Mafia.  It also, less often, tackles criminals who would not, by strictest definition, be called “gangsters”.  Serial killers like the
Washington, D.C. snipers, and bank robbers like Chaz Williams. 

          The series is narrated by Ving Rhames, and while he doesn’t have the classic Robert Stack or Morgan Freeman narrator voice, he DID play Marsellus Wallace.  And when Marsellus Wallace says the word “gangster”, it certainly conveys a substantial amount of authority.  And the series is very well done.  Extensively researched and very thorough, almost all the principal players, including the criminals themselves when possible, become interview subjects in the show.  An incredible amount of time must be spent digging these people up for the TV program., but it’s certainly worthwhile.  American Gangster doesn’t shy away from the horror and the violence caused by these criminals, and as such never seems to be glamourizing the crime, just relating it in every imaginable detail. 

          It’s awfully interesting to see the real Frank Lucas and the real Ritchie Roberts relating their stories, which so closely mirror the recent American Gangster movie.  Denzel Washington actually appears in the episode himself, talking about Frank Lucas, who consulted a lot on the film set.  Also interesting is the story of Melvin Williams, a
Baltimore gambler with a genius IQ who managed to build up a massive heroin operation, and became one of the inspirations behind the HBO show The Wire, which is now over but available on DVD.  The director of the show appears in the American Gangster episode, and Melvin Williams himself, it turns out, appears on The Wire.  (For fans of that show - he plays that compassionate church deacon guy - a role FAR from his real-life persona.) 

          American Gangster is a terrific show about horrific acts and terrible people.  (And some who aren’t all that bad.)  Ving Rhames adds that terrific extra touch to make this one of the best documentary series on television today.  And Season Two features enough familiar names to be really compelling all the way through.

Cleaner, starring Samuel L. Jackson, is the kind of movie you get when producers look at all the other movies and TV shows that have been made in the past year, and try to make one just like that.  But with a new idea that will make this movie seem different!  And they’ve already done the spy thing, they’ve done the cop-on-the-edge thing, they’ve done the Negotiator (also with Jackson), and they’ve done every combination and permutation of the characters from CSI and Bones and Cold Case and Medium and every other cop-related profession.  But wait - we have never done a movie about the guy who cleans up the blood after murders!  This is so NEW!  Oh, it doesn’t matter that it’s the exact same story we’ve used in every movie and TV show over the past ten years, this character is new.  He cleans up blood!  Get it?

So you get a movie about a murder, and a guy trying to solve it, and police corruption and extramarital affairs and betrayal and father-daughter relationships and blah blah blah, ground up in the meat grinder of every script ever written, and spit out into this movie with the fresh new character idea.  And we have Samuel L. Jackson as the guy who comes by after cops are done their investigations and cleans up the blood and gross stuff at murder scenes.  This, really has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie.  It just gives the film a title and a new, fresh main character who is still a cop and still solves crimes but isn’t the same.  And next thing you know, he gets caught up in a web of intrigue that involves a mysterious hot chick (Eva Mendes) and his former best friend and cop-buddy (Ed Harris).  Be warned - the next bits here contain spoilers!

In watching Cleaner, I discovered a few bothersome things.  First of all, one of my favourite actors, Ed Harris, has somehow become a bit of a caricature.  I was sad when Harris showed up, as Jackson’s best friend, and I thought - oh, no!  You can’t trust Ed Harris!  Think of Gone Baby Gone, A History of Violence, and now this!  I knew it the second he stepped onto the screen.  Ed Harris is just too big an actor to play second-banana, the hero’s best friend.  If he’s in there as something other than the star, he’s the surprise hero cop, or the bad guy.  That’s it.  And then Eva Mendes shows up.  And I’m thinking  - oh no!  Don’t trust Eva Mendes either!  She just looks like a vamp who will screw you over.  And then there’s Luis Guzman, who I really like.  He seems untrustworthy, which likely means that by the end he will be a good guy, and an ally to our hero.  And lo and behold, all of these assumptions turned out to be true!  This is either because these actors are now typecast, or because the director somehow telegraphed the ending.

 And I believe that the latter is true.  The direction in this movie, by Renny Harlin, is clumsy at best.  Harlin, I would argue, has never directed a good movie in his career.  His previous best was The Long Kiss Goodnight, also with Samuel L. Jackson, and it was average at best.  Too often he seems to try to add a small twist to existing plots and cliched scripts, and ends up making boring film.  And Cleaner is no exception.  The clumsiness is most apparent in the relationship between Jackson and his daughter, played very ably by Keke Palmer.  But the best acting in the world couldn’t save Cleaner from the clumsy, awkward, obvious and irritating moments between the two.  Their relationship swings wildly from that father-daughter sharing-everything warm and fuzzy one to the absentee-father-who-lets-his-work-dominate-his-home-life one.  Sometimes within the same scene!  And the latter relationship culminates in that oh-so-obnoxious cliche, him MISSING HER SOCCER GAME!  I HATE the parent-missing-the-child’s-soccer-game cliche. 

And the other, close-bond father-daughter relationship culminates with another horrible cliche that I hate.  The daughter, having to choose between her distant father and the trusted family friend who all of a sudden can’t be trusted, chooses to shoot the formerly trusted family friend.  I hate this ending.  It hasn’t been original or interesting since the third time it was used, in 1923.  Oh, come on.  Just an example of the powerfully unoriginal, clumsily constructed movie that is the Cleaner.  It is so neatly wrapped up in a tidy little package at the end that it looks really stupid.  This movie really needed to be far rougher around the edges to even keep my attention for more than half the film.  Avoid this, it sucks.

Flashpoint opens with a short montage of Donnie Yen performing some impressive acts of police brutality in his pursuit of criminals. This lands him, within the first two minutes of the film, in front of internal affairs. Then the internal affairs thing is forgotten for the rest of the movie. It would just interfere with the leg-breaking and gunfights and bad-ass martial arts if he had to worry about who he was hurting and killing. Yen’s brother, you see, is also a cop - one who is in deep undercover with a dangerous and evil criminal organization. This gang is almost as good with the crazy kung-fu moves as Yen himself. Almost. Pay close attention, that will be important information at the end of the movie.

The gang is taken down, and the trial is going to happen, but witnesses start getting killed, and so do some cops. Hong Kong martial arts movies love killing cops, even when the cops are the heroes. In fact, especially when they are. And they also love to have tightly-bonded families, devoted brotherhood, and vengeance. Oh, and they’re also alla bout the lonely cops, loner cops, and possible-problem-drinker cops. Like Bruce Willis, with kung-fu and way more guns. And Flashpoint is no exception. All of these standard Asian action movie stereotypes are in place, and there is nothing new about this film at all.

However, it is good. Flashpoint, in fact, is very good. The gunfights are expertly choreographed, the action is fantastic, the story moves along at a lightning pace, the actors are suitably bad-ass, and Donnie Yen is at his best, sort of a Bruce Lee type - combining Jet Li’s fast and brutal abilities with Clint Eastwood’s dangerous stare. The final showdown is everything you could want from a martial arts movie and more. Not only are there high-flying attacks, hardcore kicking and punching and arm breaking and leg twisting, but there is a real UFC-type feel to the scene, as well as a tip of the hat to hockey fighting. Everything in the world of hand-to-hand combat is thrown at the wall here, and it all sticks. One of the most impressive climactic fights in modern Asian cinema. Flashpoint comes out, courtesy of Alliance Films, on May 27th.