Cynical Cinema

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.

Mad Money is about Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah stealing money. Katie Holmes is Tom Cruise’s wife and was in Teaching Mrs. Tingle. Queen Latifah was a rapper who appeared in the movie Taxi and produced Who’s Your Caddy. Diane Keaton, on the other hand, was Annie Hall. She was in The Godfather. And Manhattan. She is the one who should have known better. When a director whose previous credits include “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” approaches you about starring in a movie with Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah, you say no. Well, if you’re some actress just trying to break into films, you don’t. But if you’re Diane Keaton, with seven certifiable all-time classics under your belt, you do. You say now, you walk away, and you wait for the next legitimate offer to come rolling in. Saying yes to this movie would be like Jack Nicholson agreeing to star opposite Adam Sandler in a comedy directed by the guy who did The Nutty Professor II and Tommy Boy. Oh…wait…that happened too.

Frankly though, I think Diane Keaton’s appearance in Mad Money is not a reason to make fun of her. I think it is more likely a result of so few good roles popping up in movies for women over the age of 35. There have been five good, older-lady starring roles in movies over the past decade. Two have gone to Judi Dench, and three to Helen Mirren. There is nothing left. So if you want to continue acting, you take whatever comes along, even if that means appearing in one of the worst comedies of 2008, Mad Money. Keaton plays a upper-class yuppie who gets thrust back into the work force when her husband (Ted Danson) gets downsized. She ends up getting a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where she decides she really does want to be able to continue buying those Faberge Eggs after all, and so she decides to steal some money to continue her yuppie lifestyle.

She enlists two other cleaners to help her. Katie Holmes is a spaced-out airhead. Queen Latifah is an angry single mother. And…laugh! OK, laugh! Nope. Laughs are few and far between as the plan gets put into action. There is also very little drama, very little excitement, and no boobs at all. So…what reason would someone have to watch this? A good question. The answer is - none. No reason at all. Mad Money doesn’t even work on the level of one of those loser idiot gross-out Adam Sandler movies. Like the one directed by the guy who did Tommy Boy. At least there was something interesting about it. Like, how low can Jack Nicholson actually GO in a movie? Here there is no suspense. Diane Keaton has already shown how low she can go by appearing in Because I Said So, which was even worse than this. (To see Keaton and Nicholson both phoning it in for a paycheque at the same time, watch Something’s Gotta Give.)

There are some seriously lousy performances in this movie, although Keaton’s isn’t one. Latifah plays who she always plays, she’s phoning it in too. Katie Holmes is given a role so unchallenging that it doesn’t matter whether she’s any good at all. Stephen Root, however, is unnecessarily obnoxious as the boss of the Federal Reserve. You would think that a guy in charge of something like that would be a little less smarmy and creepy than Steve Carrell in The Office. But what do I know. Ted Danson is useless as Keaton’s husband, existing only to cry about the loss of his job and complain about the thievery, both of which he doesn’t do well. There are a few funny moments. The moment where Queen Latifah asks the dean of her son’s private school if she can pay him in crack is hilarious. But…this IS supposed to be a comedy. One laugh and fifty-five cringe-inducing moments do not a comedy make. They make a turd heap. And Mad Money is one. It comes out tomorrow, May 13th, courtesy of Alliance Films.