Capsule Reviews: End of Watch, Flight, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

End of Watch (David Ayer, 2012)

Whether the cops in End of Watch talk like cops matters less than the joy of them talking like actual human beings. Jake Gyllenhaal and partner Michael Peña enjoy a natural chemistry that works with Ayer’s hyperactive, disjunctive direction to give the impression of normal police work on L.A. streets even as the calls to which they respond are not only blatantly cinematic on an individual basis but also link up in a building narrative arc. That frenetic direction is the result of handheld cameras, most of which appear diegetically, toted by cop and criminal alike as their colleagues attempt to dissuade the would be filmmakers from carrying around evidence against them. It figures: the one time these characters are spared the weight of allegorical importance, they strive to be symbolic stars of their own movies. Admittedly, the sheer frantic collision of shots holds the film back, but it also pays off in some nearly surreal setpieces, especially during a rescue effort in a burning house that actually manages to communicate the terror of heat forming physical barriers and exits being lost behind smokescreens at a second’s notice. Besides, the technique cannot be too distancing, as End of Watch creates an immediacy of emotional connection rare to cop films. Grade: B+

Brian De Palma: Mission to Mars

Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars is the film you'd least expect from the maker of gory, cynical deconstruction who delighted in adhering to genre tropes as much as he did tearing them apart. A PG-rated space adventure released by Disney, Mission to Mars looks on its face like the ultimate sellout move, an embrace of everything De Palma hated now that he could be trusted to make a profit off his work. Certainly critics and audiences found it easy to go with their gut; the film eked out a box office so thinly above the budget it likely falls within the margin of error, and it received scathing reviews from professionals and amateurs alike.

But I see a remarkable film, one that puts all of De Palma's generic immersion and aesthetic strength to use at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. Here is a film so unabashedly optimistic that De Palma can open on a barbecue with red, white, and blue colors used without a drop of irony, no mean feat for man who loves his American flags huge and imperialistic. And even if one wants to play the usual simplistic game of "Who is De Palma ripping off today?" the closest you'll get is Star Wars by way of 2001. Considering that those two films stand at polar ends to each other, suggesting De Palma is just playing the plagiarist holds even less water than it always has.

Iron Man 2

Two years ago, Iron Man became one of the few films with a budget over $100 million that might conceivably be called a "surprise hit." What was most surprising about it is how it pleased damn near everyone -- including this writer -- with barely anything to its credit. It lacked spectacle, had a more difficult time following up on its themes than The Dark Knight and managed to stretch the relatively short origin story of Tony Stark into two hours of one man riffing while something important seemed to be about to happen but never did. Luckily for Jon Favreau and Marvel, that man was Robert Downey Jr.

I have expressed and will continue to express bottomless derision toward the current trend in Hollywood of dancing around weak screenwriting by filtering it through a faux-postmodern prism, retaining all the bad elements but acting as if they are excusable because the writer knows they suck. However, if anyone can force that current of open lethargy into something entertaining, it's Downey. A more captivating and ingratiating sonuvabitch you'll never meet; Downey always has an air about him that suggests he hates the material, regardless of quality, more than the most dismissive Internet troll ever could, yet he routinely makes good films better and weaker ones memorable. On the rare occasion that he plays a character whose excesses build beyond his control, as he did early in his career in Less Than Zero and recently in Zodiac, the actor can be an emotionally devastating specter of a fallen man.

The first Iron Man never called for that side of Downey's acting prowess and contented itself simply with unleashing his smarmy detachment upon the world in a glorious burst of one-liners that made the film the best comedy of the summer to make up for its often tedious structure. Its sequel, however, could have benefited from a moment or two of reflection, when Downey's facade remains but cracks irreparably to show the raging fear and loathing within. Instead, it chooses to cut off its fleeting severity with comic relief, if not a desperate cut to another location as if literally running away from context. Iron Man 2 suggests that the power source Tony Stark built to save his life might actually be killing him in another way, and Stark's main course of action is to just cover this up from everyone to appear strong, a fitting metaphor for a film that attempts to posit every stereotypically "American" cinematic value through its obscenely wealthy businessman-hero.

Yes, it's going to be that kind of a review, but, in fairness, the Iron Man series is currently the most openly political comic book film franchise to hit theaters. Its hero found his calling after being kidnapped by Arab insurgents and discovering that the weapons his company designed passed into enemy hands. This brought about a personal epiphany and a question about the possibility of only supplying one party in a modern, global network, which was almost immediately discarded to reconstitute the film as nothing more than a contrast between a grating but moral businessman and the evil, greedy corporate weasel who actively sold products to America's enemies. Stark defeated this man and went straight to a hearing where he brazenly revealed his secret identity to the world.

Iron Man 2 picks up right where its predecessor left off, and the best that can be said for this turn of events is that the film does at last give us a comic book hero who not only doesn't doubt his powers or capacity when the sequel comes around; rather, he's so psyched that he tells everyone. Perhaps if Favreau had followed that line, a truly original one in the over-exposed yet still young and potential-filled field of comic book movies, Iron Man 2 might have made for interesting and fresh viewing. But the political aspect returns, introducing bigger issues yet somehow compressing them into even broader oversimplifications.

"I have successfully privatized world peace," he crows in a Senate committee hearing on the ownership of the Iron Man suit, a statement that horrifically elicits wild cheering from the crowd as Stark's chief critic, Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) is reduced to openly swearing in impotent rage at his nemesis. One sympathizes; the brash and arrogant Tony Stark that made for such a cheeky twist in the first film is gone, replaced by a whirling maelstrom of narcissism. Stark's self-love has morphed into outright solipsism, forcing the audience to follow around a character who does not want us to identify with him, who would not even let us wax one of the many cars he rarely drives.

With his pencil-thin mustache, hands-on approach to his inventions, rampant womanizing and erratic behavior terms "eccentricity" due to personal wealth and social standing, Tony Stark is most clearly modeled upon infamous playboy/basket case Howard Hughes, who also defied governmental authority and got away with it because of his wealth. But Hughes, despicable and hateful little man that he was, has an air of tragedy that Tony lacks.

Perhaps that's just a result of the times changing. Hughes' tics and obsessions would raise eyebrows today, but a half-century ago they were outlandishly scandalous. Stark, on the other hand, enjoys a world filled with vacuous, flash-hungry millennials so inundated with Internet gossip and so dumbed-down by, well, movies like this that the cocky antics of this incorrigible billionaire are perceived as cool. "Blow something up!" yells one young man from the nether-region of off-screen ADR when Tony makes a grandiose entry to an expo in the suit, the man in question having clearly fallen for Iron Man during some filmed raid of a Middle Eastern locale. For these fictional people, the act of seeing something on video instantly renders it entertainment in the same way our own intermittent carpet-bombing of Baghdad across the decades looks like a video game.

In this sense, Iron Man 2 offers the audience a strange opportunity to watch itself watching the film, a potentially metaphysical commentary on the nature of blockbusters in altering our sensitivity to violence and our acceptance of those "Amurican" values of isolationism as strident individualism and physical strength (this theory is inherently flawed, however, when you factor in Stark's hyper-intelligence and the opposition with which the people who most ardently embrace such hawkish nonsense as patriotism typically view the highly educated). I say "potentially," of course, because Favreau wants nothing less than to follow up on these sociopolitical tendrils, clearly willing as he is to present them so nakedly.

And so, Tony is permitted to live his life of staggering hypocrisy, cutting weapons development from Stark Industries (which existed almost exclusively to make weapons) while keeping the most advanced and dangerous weapon, whether he admits it's one or not, in the world for himself. When someone like Senator Stern, who is left without party affiliation, points this out, he is shamed not only within the film by Stark and his blinding (perhaps literally, given what he can get away with) charisma but outside of it by the director, who films Shandling in so unflattering a light you'll wish he'd directed that episode of The Larry Sanders Show he guested on, if not all of them. As it happened in the far more abhorrent -- aesthetically, structurally and morally -- Transformers 2, the sole voice of reason is presented as a nasally, pernicious genital wart, a bureaucratic farce who has the audacity to stand in the way between us and shit getting blown up. What an asshole.

Fine, so Jon Favreau maybe isn't the person to iron out (get it?) the political implications of Iron Man, though perhaps they should find someone who is since the hero is a conflicted weapons dealer and that brings with it political ramifications. But let's stop beating this horse for a while when so many more horses have been generously donated by Stark Industries for glue production. Perhaps I should get into the plot soon.

Oh, but that'll just make me angrier. Iron Man 2 pairs Tony against Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who builds his own arc reactor from blueprints his father made when he was the partner of Tony's father, Howard. Justin Theroux reworked Ivan and his father, Anton, from Anton's roots in the comics as the Crimson Dynamo into a much more inherently interesting story. Whiplash, originally a Stark employee turned rogue, is now the son of the scientist Tony's father had deported and discredited, giving him a link to the hero that could prove fruitful. Further, the two make for terrific foils: both are the sons of scientific geniuses, partners even. Both of those fathers were emotionally distant, Howard from his work (which, as we learn, was more far-reaching than his son ever knew) and Anton from his alcoholic bitterness; the difference, of course, is that Tony grew up in the lap of luxury while Ivan must get by with DIY experiments.

That too, flies out the window as quickly it appears, leaving Rourke to indulge his wackiest indulgences, chief among them a strange relationship with a parakeet. Supposedly he caused so much stress in production that Favreau changed the film to bar Rourke from returning in a future installment, but perhaps the actor just got bored with having to sit around all day to drawl his 12 lines in a thick Russian accent. You might go a little stir-crazy too.

He's lucky to have any lines at all, though, considering just how much they managed to somehow cram more words into Downey's mouth. Much as the limp-fisted political content riles, it cannot compare to Iron Man 2's crucial flaw: too much of a good thing. Downey spit out self-aggrandizing lines at a blinding pace in the first film, and the one-liners fly so fast here that most are lost in the shuffle. He and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, who looks so confused and frustrated by how quickly everything is moving you almost pity her) lock themselves into so many overlapping arguments that Altman might be invoked had the layered dialogue been remotely understandable or there for any reason other than to stuff in as many jokes as possible. As I watched Iron Man 2, I thought less of The Dark Knight, which for all its flaws is certainly still the best comic book film, and more of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Both franchises feature an offbeat actor playing a part practically created for him, allowing for a high-comic symbiosis that, in the case of the earlier film, made us forget we were watching a movie about a damn theme park attraction and, in Iron Man, effortlessly propelled a film without much narrative thrust. But but franchises oversold their hot ticket with the successors, now actively trying to capture what had just been a harmonic tuning until the quirky-but-natural performances feel processed and forced.

Pepper gets a storyline of her own as Tony's pick as replacement for CEO of Stark Industries, though we only get to see her when she edges into Tony's periphery, when she's spending more time still running PR for Tony than running the business she was so happy to inherit. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) also shows up to discuss S.H.I.E.L.D. operations with Tony, and a new assistant named Natalie (Scarlett Johansson) factors into Tony's life as well. These are all tiny threads in a tapestry that was never woven together, taking away time from Tony's conundrum with his arc reactor, his conflict with Whiplash and his ongoing debate with the United States government while never progressing on their own terms. Like just about every other sequel, Iron Man 2 simply decides to be bigger without being better, barely leaving time for any action scenes and spending more time ogling computer-animated images of how computers might one day...animate images than it does with any character.

Surprisingly, the worst element of the film, rival weapons dealer Justin Hammer, is actually the most enjoyable, thanks to a giddy performance by Sam Rockwell. To make Tony Stark look well-adjusted, they had to turn Hammer into a joke of a character, a sniveling incompetent who receives government funding when Stark drops out of the weapons game -- and why isn't military-industrial collusion a focus of any amount of concern in these films? But Rockwell owns the part, parlaying the greasy charm he brings to his vilest characters into a faux-suave schmoozer who can barely keep ahead of his own uselessness as an inventor. His interplay with Rourke, all motor-mouthed schmoozing and awkward capitulation in the face of Ivan's tacit stonewalling, is hilarious, and possibly not at all faked if Rockwell and the others had to contend with Rourke's infamous preening and petulance.

Indeed, I almost, almost, want to give Iron Man 2 a pass simply because it raises the mainstream profile of three of my favorite living actors. It cements the "don't call them comebacks" of Rourke and Downey and offers Sam Rockwell his most visible job yet, perhaps paving the way for him to unleash the talent he's been refining just off the beaten path for a few years now in works like Snow Angels, Choke and Moon upon the mainstream world. Even Lt. Col. James Rhodes gets an upgrade, replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle over money hassles.

And yet, no one has enough time to make a real impression, except Downey, who frankly has too much. Even if they did, they could never fully distract from the film's glaring weaknesses. If the first Iron Man managed to work without a propulsive plot, its sequel introduces so many storylines that it never moves into the action extravaganza it thinks it is. That's actually the most fascinating trait of these films: both times this franchise has tricked people into this its spare moments of action somehow fill most of the film's length, even though more time is spent on the advanced computers in Stark's home than with the Iron Man in battle. This deception remains a curious psych-out that could possibly save studios a great deal of money on their blockbusters if anyone could work out how Favreau pulls it off, if he is even consciously aware of the effect at all. But with the Stark levels constantly in the red, the lack of releasing spectacle is more evident here, and Iron Man 2 often wobbles between its belief in its own cool and the reality of its inaction. Frankly, I knew I was in trouble when Tony's first action in the film, flying ostentatiously into a stadium as fireworks explode and barely-dressed women dance around him, only to then immediately launch into a speech about changing the way the world gets energy. That's like setting off Roman Candles before you make a goddamn time share pitch. In that one ludicrous moment is the whole film: an idiotic distraction that wants to flirt with seriousness but has commitment issues.

I cannot say that Iron Man 2 is everything wrong with mainstream American cinema and our self-perception, not with Transformers 2 bumbling around the universe. It lacks the overt racism of Bay's disaster (and, truth be told, the first Iron Man, with its pathetic scenes of wish-fulfillment concerning the War on Terror), as well as the sexism, fashioning Natalie Rushman into a capable, strong fighter and letting Pepper be reasonable without being lambasted for it the way Stern is. Too, Favreau's direction is not quite sterling, but he has a better sense of staging than Michael Bay; aesthetically, Iron Man 2 is at worst passively unengaging, while Bay's style is far more offensively gauche and incompetent.

Yet the film still puts forward in laziness and unexplored themes what Transformers 2 actively advocated in its jingoistic ejaculation. Stark, already modeled for a past mogul, is an open throwback to '80s-era business excess, a time when corporate corruption was no less abhorrent but at least had a popular face under the condoned, even lauded hedonism of the wealthy under Reagan. We are made to believe that Tony, who does not wish to answer to the federal government but displays lip-service loyalty to America, to be the unequivocally "good" guy while people like Obadiah Stane and Justin Hammer, who will take their products where there is profit to be made, as evil. Both sides are ludicrously rich and filled with a sense of entitlement, but an outdated sense of patriotism absolves Tony. Yet one cannot look at the hypocritical vilification of Hammer or Stane without thinking of some of the current doublespeak involving Big Business by those beholden to it, the most recent example being the fiasco in the Gulf. Harebrained opportunists like Sarah Palin use the incident to call for an end to foreign oil, ignoring (or ignorant of) the impossibility of "domestic oil" when a company like, you know, British Petroleum is the one sucking up the black gold from our waters and land. Hammer and Stane should represent the insidiousness of globalization in relation to corporate crime and lawlessness, but instead they get to be easy targets that represent "bad business" while Tony gets to be the Reaganite star child without full reproach. For God's sake, the villain is even Russian, a nationality once again becoming our cinematic enemies either out of fear of Islamist reprisal or the continued desire to just return to simpler times when we just had to worry about a thermonuclear device instantly vaporizing us instead of all this car-bomb suspicion.

I certainly don't think, of course, that Favreau is intentionally putting forward this haltingly pro-unchecked capitalist (so long as those capitalists use some of their wealth to buy American flags) sentiment, but there's no way he didn't acknowledge some of the glaring political content, considering how much he undercuts personal insight to call more attention to senators and corrupt businessmen. What he is most guilty of is the same laziness the rest of America feels toward our current crisis: no one wants to fix the problem, only to return to a time when the problem wasn't noticeable.

We'd still like to thumb our noses at the problem though, and Iron Man 2 comes with a smugness common to the state of public perception at the moment, in which everyone would like to look down on everything, preferably without having to do anything so inconvenient as "research" or "reading." The film apathetically taps into our hatred of politicians, condescension and latently xenophobic rejection of downtrodden foreigners and our desire to continue the worship of money after its high priests have been exposed as rapacious, fraudulent thieves. Ultimately, Iron Man 2 wants nothing more than to turn us into that guy in the crowd, placed in the middle of an expo promoting technological advancement and the possibilities of scientific growth in a country that has vilified the educated and the fact-based in praise of the blinded faithful, unable to think of anything other than how cool it would be to see something blow up.

Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights revolves around one of the most darkly comic MacGuffins in cinematic history. Like the shark in Jaws, the member of Dirk Diggler at once drives the film and remains unseen, achieving a mythic quality before the payoff. We gauge its size through the reaction shots of those who gaze upon it. Anderson films close-ups of widened eyes and slacked jaws; women (and jealous, insecure men) gaze lustfully at Dirk's diggler, and its symbolic import drives most of the film. Yet just as the shark ultimately didn't live up to the hype -- who can miss that bounce when the shark leaps onto the boat? -- so too does Dirk's member fail to measure up in the end, a flaccid and impotent fossil of the great beast it once was.

Boogie Nights' immediate and most pervasive influence is, of course, Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas: both use highly stylized direction (Anderson's clearly derives from Marty's) to weave an epic tragicomedy of a seedy underworld, GoodFellas with organized crime and Boogie Nights the porn industry. Anderson defines his world with two early, extended tracking shots, one in a discotheque that briefly introduces the large cast and a second, at a pool party, that gives them shape and definition. Both of these tracking shots, as with the magnificent shots of the club and the Copa in GoodFellas, are shimmering and sensual, not so much calling attention to themselves -- as so many extended tracking shots do -- but calling attention to themselves through the narcissism of the world it paints; in both films, the shots justify themselves by reflecting the vanity and self-indulgence of the areas they profile.

At the discotheque works Dirk (né Eddie Adams), a high school dropout who cleans dishes in between working as a male prostitute. His home life recalls Rebel Without a Cause, a harpy-like mother who snaps at her submissive husband; Dirk has to take a bus from Torrance to Reseda to work at the nightclub, a job he could just as easily get closer to home, but then he might not enjoy the benefit of that extra hour each way away from his family. One night, Eddie meets Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), an adult film director who's heard rumors of the particularly gifted washroom boy. Jack invites the lad to his lavish home in the suburbs, a convenient offer when Eddie runs away from home, and before you know it Eddie renames himself Dirk and jumps into his new occupation with vigor.

Toeing the line between absurdity and epic tragedy, Boogie Nights charts the rise and fall of the Me Generation through the highs and lows of the pornography industry, the snowblind cocaine binge of its stars a microcosm for the nation's own drug escapism and the effect of the VHS tape on the business representative of the Reagonomic turn to cold, pragmatic capitalism above all else. Anderson, for his part, understands how ridiculous his story is, and he fills the screen with goofball characters too odd to be anything but believable, such as Don Cheadle as a country music-loving porn star who by day works as a stereo salesman and audiophile; Heather Graham as a young starlet who never takes off her roller skates; John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild, the former big star who gets gently shoved to the role of the sidekick to make way for Dirk even before the kid enters the business; and William H. Macy as Bill, the cuckolded assistant director, always forced to suffer the indignity of his wife's (porn star Nina Hartley, who ironically enjoyed reportedly the most stable and longest lasting relationship in the business*) public adultery.

Too, Anderson uses his camera with a great deal of wit: he oversaturates the pool party with light, a cheeky emphasis on the sunny appeal of this line of work to the impressionable and, as we learn quickly, childlike Dirk. When Scotty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the gay boom operator, arrives, Anderson cuts to his POV, framing Dirk in an iris. Naturally, the scenes involving actual porn shoots are hysterical, with the characters woodenly delivering basic dialogue as Jack looks on, brow furrowed in concentration as if a compatriot of the New Hollywood filmmakers taking cinema to bold new territories around the same time. Anderson's stylistic quick-tracks and brightly colored sheen are captivating and immersive even as they are off-putting, gently separating us from the fast-paced, gaudy world he's documenting to allow us to spot the cracks forming before the world of leopard prints and suede crumbles around them.

Working with a cast of Altmanesque proportions, Anderson nevertheless adheres to Scorsese's GoodFellas formula of centering the action on a few characters and rooting the camera in the point of view of the main protagonist. Like Henry Hill, Eddie/Dirk falls into his seedy line of work in adolescence -- Henry starts working for the mob as a boy, while the emotionally stunted, teenage Eddie finds the same familial comfort in adult films -- and rises through the ranks by knowing the game in and out. Dirk even has a primal innocence that Hill never exhibited: in his first shoot, he sheepishly asks if he's doing well, gently asking for encouragement from both his partner in the scene and the people filming. Even as he edges Reed to the sidelines, he develops a deep friendship with the guy. Yet, as Henry before him, Dirk loses himself to cocaine, the white powder affecting his performance and seeding jealous paranoia in his mind, fueling an impotent rage that sends him into a tailspin. Mark Wahlberg, then underwear model and wannabe rapper who played like the New Kids on the Block (of which his brother Donnie was a member) crossed with Vanilla Ice, manages to walk the same tightrope Ray Liotta traversed, between reactive dependency on the factors that affect the character and propulsive acting.

Also key to the story and its thematic purpose is Jack. Played by Burt Reynolds, possibly the icon of '70s populist cinema, Jack represents a perversion of the nostalgia of the decade. As much as he's a seasoned pro, Jack genuinely believes the bullshit he's slinging -- that he's a true filmmaker bringing art to the genre, that he discovers and fosters artistic talent and that he's a father figure to these strung-out, lost children -- and Reynolds makes us like him almost in spite of himself. Perhaps the central performance of the film, however, is Julianne Moore as Amber Waves, the aging porn star who projects the matronly love she's not allowed to give her actual child, separated by her vindictive ex-husband, onto the people in the business, offering a bastion of warmth and support for kids too dumb to realize that she's worse than all of them. She acts out a reverse Oedipal complex with Dirk, her feelings falling somewhere in-between motherly love and sexual lust; a testament to her misplaced sensibilities, she is the one who first offers Dirk cocaine, setting in motion his downfall.

Boogie Nights takes a turn for the worse, symbolically, on the eve of the new decade, with a murder-suicide that grinds the festivities and optimism to a screeching halt. Bill's explosive solution to his wife's infidelity is brief and brutal, ushering in the age of instant gratification: soon, Jack's financier (Robert Ridgely) is busted for possession of child pornography, and his new producer (Philip Baker Hall) curtly tears down Jack's belief in the art of his films, forcing the director to make cheap, to-the-point pictures to be released straight to VHS.

A dark comedy floats over the entire picture, but it dives into the blackest abyss in the third act. Buck (Cheadle) cannot secure a loan for his own stereo outlet, as the bank won't finance a porn star, thus trapping him in the lifestyle. His dream become a harsh nightmare, Jack's cool enthusiasm for his work transforms into bitter workmanship, and both he and Rollergirl unleash their pent-up fury on a derisive amateur performer. Dirk and Reed fall out of the porn business in their addled and attempt to land a record deal, and dire straits force Dirk to return to his life as a male prostitute, leading to an altercation with a group of homophobes.

Brilliantly illustrating the cultural shift from the carefree, self-appraising narcissism and the outright, desperate solipsism of Reagan's '80s is the final extended scene, in which Dirk, Reed and their buddy Todd (Thomas Jane) attempt to scam and rob a drug dealer (Alfred Molina). Molina's apartment condenses the difference between the two decades by replacing the faux-homely, gaudy, sickly warm splendor of '70s decor with icy modern interior design: harsh, white lighting illuminating the slick, mathematically precise furniture, speakers booming soulless synth-pop to match the feel of the decor. One of the most twisted, bizarrely funny sequences I can recall seeing -- and the only sequence in contemporary film that matches the odd tension of one of Quentin Tarantino's elongated scenes -- Todd's plan strikes us as doomed from the start and only gets worse as Molina bandies wildly about the place waving a gun around while a Vietnamese boy in the corner of the living room tosses firecrackers to freak these coked-up robbers out even further. It ends with the sudden, comic brutality of a Tarantino climax, paving the way for a change of heart in Dirk.

Boogie Nights ends with the characters reconciled, several living in Jack's home, the familial undertones of initial interactions now fully developed ties. Yet the comforting ending belies the tragedy of the film: whenever any of these characters interact with the outside world -- as they did in most of the third act -- they are beaten, shot, derided and shunned. Jack will never make another film that will play in a theater; Amber will never gain custody of her child; Dirk and Rollergirl are just two high school dropouts with talents that can be considered old and useless on a yearly basis (surf a few web sites on a virus-protected computer to see an industry that shoehorns its performers into the mature category before they even hit 30**). Anderson is kind enough (though perhaps naïve) not to show any characters ravaged by AIDS, as we so many porn stars during the '80s (among them John Holmes, the basis for Dirk Diggler), but one could scarcely call the ending a happy one. These characters are trapped in their version of Grey Gardens, cut off by a world that sanctimoniously condescends to them even as they increasingly embrace pornography's ethos of gratification and hollow glamor. Even in their glitzy, expensive estate, they're as manipulated and castrated by Reagan's economy and the rise of empty moralism as the poor.



*Research for this film was...interesting.
** Again, very interesting.

Out of Sight

Out of Sight's opening sequence is one of the most delightfully witty heist scenes you'll ever see: a suave man dressed in business attire approaches the counter and charmingly tells the clerk that his partner, currently speaking to one of the managers as if opening an account, will shoot the man in the head if she makes one false move. The plan goes off without a hitch -- the robber knows not to take the bills at the bottom of the register, does his best to keep the clerk calm, and he walks out of the bank without anyone the wise. Then his getaway car doesn't start.

That's Out of Sight in a nutshell: a deftly cool comedy of errors, one whose characters have all the details in place save the most basic. Jack Foley (George Clooney) has been robbing banks since adolescence, so many he's lost count, and he views prison as more of a timeout than a punishment. Enlisting the help of two of his buddies -- well, maybe just one buddy and a mutual acquaintance -- Jack stages a break-out and ensures his success by ratting out another potential escapee to divert attention.

In his escape, he happens to meet U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), who is stuffed into the trunk of her own car along with Foley while his accomplice Buddy (Ving Rhames) drives them to safety. Because this is a film, Karen and Jack develop an instant attraction to each other. Because this film is based on an Elmore Leonard novel, it is somehow brilliant.

Soderbergh captures Leonard's deft characterizations, witty dialogue and involving plot with aplomb: Clooney and Lopez have such believable sexual tension that your TV will probably give off static electricity when you're done watching the film. The dynamic between them, and the question of whether Sisco pursues Foley out of love or to take him down, creates a sexual tension rarely felt in your average, manufactured rom-com, a genre that, for all of Out of Sight's crime elements and Soderbergh's inventive camera trickery, seems to be the best fit for the film.

The rest of the cast excels with the material as well; Rhames then had numerous thug/crime boss roles under his belt, but here he serves as Jack's conscience, practically begging Foley to, just once, think before he acts but unfailing in his support for his friend. Only on a second viewing did I even recognize Albert Brooks as a millionaire we meet in a flashback of one of Foley's stints of prison, using his finances to ensure his safety, particularly from Don Cheadle's Snoopy Miller, a sadistic thug who milks the terrified white-collar criminal for all he can.

Steve Zahn shows up as Glenn, the accomplice nobody wants on his team but always knows just enough to justify his position in the crew. Zahn steals most of his scenes, because he's Steve Zahn; his goofy charm provides overt comic relief in a film already bouncing with cleverness, but he brings enough paranoia and self-awareness to the stoned fool to anchor him to the story. Perhaps my pro-Zahn bias influenced my perception of the character: I adore Steve Zahn, and he makes every film he graces with his presence just that much better. Hell, I even enjoyed the National Treasure movies because Justin Bartha's character reminded me of Steve Zahn.

Soderbergh does not simply rely on these killer performances to see him through to the end, however. With editor Anne V. Coates, who also photographed Lawrence of Arabia(!), Soderbergh enacts a creative rebirth after being largely cast aside through the early '90s. Shots end in freeze-frames and softly fade into the next one. As he would do in his future films, Soderbergh plays audio from some other shot under another; is the audio a memory? A dream? If so, whose memory or dream is it? The editing adds to the mystery of the relationship, so that when Jack and Karen meet in a bar, it's anyone's guess whether the scene will end with the two shagging, in a car returning Jack to prison, or with one character jolting out of bed sweating from that crazy dream they just had. Soderbergh further displays his off-kilter and often brilliant cinematic sensibilities by casting Michael Keaton as FBI Agent Ray Nicolette, the same role he played in Jackie Brown. I don't know if this is the only time that an actor has played the same role in two unlinked films made by separate directors, but there's something so exciting about the way Soderbergh makes cinema a part of his movies.

I can't find much to criticize about Out of Sight. It's dense and it folds back on itself more than once, but that only adds to the film's intrigue. It has all the wit and cheek of the Ocean's films without their narcissism, giving each character their foibles to balance out their first-impression personalities. The cast uniformly excels, and they look like they're having fun with the material without forgetting why they're there. But for all the bouncy quality of the actors and the wit that flows freely from their mouths, Out of Sight occasionally puts forward a moment of simple, effective truth. How many other heist films would allow their protagonist the clarity to ask of their plan, "Do you know anyone who did one last big score and then gone on to live the good life?"