1989 Rewind: Say Anything...

Cameron Crowe's films are distinctive because he gives us characters that somehow straddle the line between offbeat quirk and total relatability. When you see a teenager touring the country while tricking Rolling Stone into thinking he's a qualified writer, your first inclination is disbelief, yet you know it could happen because that's how Crowe himself got his start. An energetic sports agent suffering a crisis of conscience who loses every client but a single football player who lets his mouth get in the way of his talent is just so crazy it works.

The characters of Say Anything... are no different. Its story concerns three people: a book-smart valedictorian who's sweet and friendly but was too busying studying to ever make friends, her protective father who enjoys more of a best friend relationship with his daughter, and the lad who attempts to woo the girl. Each of these characters, however, as well as the supporting actors who populate this world, has his own unique trait. Lloyd Dobler himself is often described as being so perfect that no guy can ever reach his level.

The film opens with Lloyd (John Cusack), Diane Court (Ione Skye) and all the other seniors graduating from high school. In her graduation speech, Diane has her first moment of connection with her peers when she admits that she's scared of what the future holds for her. Lloyd decides to ask her out before it's too late, and his gal friends Corey (Lili Taylor) and D.C. (Amy Brooks) back him up. Both clearly are somewhat in love with their best bud, and it's not hard to see why: Cusack plays Lloyd with a dopey, clumsy charm. He has a propensity for incessant talking when he's nervous, and his big dream is to become a kickboxer because it would allow him to make a living without working within the corporate world. Lloyd espouses this political opinion with such a humble matter-of-factness that you can tell he genuinely believes it and is not simply putting on a show.

He's also unflinchingly sweet. When he calls Diane to ask her out, he gets her dad Jim (John Mahoney). He stumbles through an awkward conversation and sort of flubs, "She's pretty great, isn't she?" to which the dad can only smile and attest. When Lloyd eventually does get a hold of her and she agrees to come to a graduation party, she has to field questions from rude partygoers as to why she would come with Lloyd. Without hesitation, she says, "He made me laugh." Diane is that girl in high school that everyone noticed but was too afraid to approach. Coupled with her own obliviousness to the school around her, she's just as naïve and maladjusted as Lloyd; she's just smarter and not as awkward.

Lloyd and Diane's relationship must be one of the most romantic in all of cinema. When the two do eventually have sex, we are treated to an actual love scene. Not a sex scene, a love scene. The day after, Lloyd sends Diane a short note that expresses his feelings for her beyond getting in her pants, and Corey and D.C. are visibly moved. Diane is so taken with Lloyd's complete earnestness that the two grow close in no time, much to the dismay of Diane's father. Diane keeps nothing from Jim, and even admits that she and Lloyd had sex. The initially genial man who lavishes gifts upon his daughter and recognizes Lloyd as a harmless and sweet sap grows increasingly cold, until we discover that he's been defrauding the IRS and stealing from the residents of the nursing home he runs.

Jim's dark secret struck me as unnecessary the first time I watched Say Anything..., but after a few more watches and a few listens to the commentary, I see it as vital to the story. Watch from the beginning: Jim knows that the hammer will fall any day, but he keeps up the façade just long enough to ensure that his daughter receives her fellowship to England. He wants to keep everything together until he can get her out of his corrupt life, and the title takes an ironic undertone as we see what appeared to be an ideal father-child relationship crumble to reveal itself as a part of a giant lie. Re-watching the film gives me an understanding and a sympathy for Jim, despite the heinousness of ripping off a bunch of invalids.

The supporting characters are no less interesting. Jeremy Piven makes a great cameo as a wild, drunken fool, while Phillip Baker Hall's IRS agent creates a sinking feeling in your stomach when he tells Diane that her father is guilty in that deep, merciless voice of his. Lili Taylor, though, walks away with the entire film. Corey is neck-deep in a tumultuous relationship with a callous, cheating jerk named Joe, but her reactions to her despair never fail to make me laugh. Crowe frames every shot placed in her room to contain a picture of Joe or something he wrote. At the graduation party in the first act, she spends the entire night playing a myriad of songs, some remorseful, some angry. Lloyd notes to Joe, "She's written 65 songs...They're all about you. They're all about pain." Taylor has a way of getting big laughs effortlessly, but she also conveys deep pain and a thinly veiled longing for a person like Lloyd.

Everything about this film is perfect. It doesn't make grand proclamations about the human condition, nor does it feature any memorable direction -- it was Crowe's first time behind the camera, though his camerawork has never been the main draw of his work. However, the direction fits this simple but profound piece, and it captures the story perfectly. The actors are so natural that you stop viewing them as characters despite their quirks, and they become so much more memorable for it. When Lloyd gives his fantastic speech to Jim and his business partners about not wanting to work in any occupation that buys, sells or processes, he casually mentions that his army dad wants him to enlist, but he "just can't work for that corporation." It's a brilliant line, but Cusack delivers it so casually you'd just assume the Army was a corporation.

The actors only bolster Crowe's knowing script, one that contains its fair share of platitudes about love that are on-point enough to stave off cloying sentimentality. Honestly, Crowe must be the finest director of sentimental pictures since Frank Capra: neither is perfect, but they have a knack for capturing a fundamental optimism and hope even in the midst of darkness. The difference between the two is that Crowe's films are more intimate more -- as he says in his commentary for Almost Famous -- "shamelessly personal," and I just can't help but love them.

Public Enemies

There may be no major Hollywood director as underrated as Michael Mann. Only Martin Scorsese can claim to capture America's seedy underworld better, and even the master lacks Mann's attention to detail. He's far from a "style over substance" director, though; masterpieces like Heat and The Insider take the time to examine their characters outside the superb action sequences. Sadly, that character examination is sorely lacking in his new film, Public Enemies, in which his characters are so calculatingly shot that they might as well be a part of the beautiful backgrounds.

Maybe that's the point: too many films destroy our mythic figures by applying cheap psychology to them, and Mann is trying to spare us yet more talk of abusive fathers or warped moral codes. Such explanations are hinted at, but they're delivered through lines that mock such conventions, as if the movie buff Dillinger is as sick of them as we are. Yet a film with a known outcome needs some sort of revisionist analysis to justify its existence, especially one clocking in at two and a half hours.

As a result, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale – two of the most brilliantly off-kilter actors in the business – never get to sink their teeth into their roles, those of infamous gangster John Dillinger and FBI agent Melvin Pruvis, respectively. These men, as with the cop and robber in “Heat,” are perfect foils for one another: Dillinger robs banks because he cannot accept authority, while Purvis is trying to prove the usefulness of the FBI, which is still in its infancy in the ‘30s. Both spend a great deal of time staring into the dying eyes of fallen comrades, only furthering their resolve.

However, Mann spends so much time playing up both sides as heroic archetypes that neither ever becomes interesting. Heat worked because both the cop and the robber were trapped, tragic victims of their own pride and world view. Pacino and De Niro's characters were perfect foils because they saw in each other a kindred spirit, the only person who could fully understand their turmoil. There is no equivalent to the diner scene in Public Enemies, nor is there even a successful juxtaposition between the two: we merely see the Robin Hood-esque robber and the agent who is no less heroic for taking him down.

Dillinger and Purvis duke it out in a Depression-era America painstakingly researched and perfectly recreated that it would look as real as anything you’d see on your own street corner even without the documentary-like direction. But that camera work, combined with the sharp detail of digital cameras, makes the film feel more like a technical exercise than a visceral crime epic.

Nevertheless, Mann has a gift for pacing, and Public Enemies zips along despite its padded length, which lapses into a loop of planning-robbery-aftermath. Its action scenes, the best of which being the shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge, jump out of nowhere and, true to heists and crackdowns, are over as soon as they begin. The little details of Dillinger's heists, from letting the customers keep their money to tying hosting to the getaway car to discourage any gunfire, give these scenes a sense of visceral realism. True to form, Mann makes the gunfire loud and the muzzle flashes blinding -- be sure to bring some aspirin with you, just in case.

If only the actors had something to do, they might have filled the gap between these brief but overpowering shooting matches. Marion Cotillard, in her first role since her Oscar win for La Vie en Rose, is completely flat as Dillinger’s main squeeze, and Billy Crudup brings nothing more to the role of J. Edgar Hoover than a bad accent. Mann has an under-appreciated knack for getting great performances from his actors, be they master craftsmen like Al Pacino and Daniel Day-Lewis or more star-oriented players like Tom Cruise and Will Smith (who genuinely earned his Oscar nomination in the otherwise unremarkable Ali). Only Stephen Graham’s manic portrayal of Baby Face Nelson breaks free of the cage that holds everyone else; Dillinger lives the gangster life for the media that turn him into a sensation, but Nelson is just plain crazy, and Graham pulls it off beautifully.

I don't want to suggest that the film is boring, mind you; the shootouts only continue to prove that Mann is the finest action director working today. But what's with the shaky-cam? The reason why the battle in Heat remains one of the great cinematic gunfights is the simple fact that you can tell what's going on. In an age where action editing consists of forcing a first-person perspective on the audience to the point that we can no longer make out all the vast special effects, I was looking forward to Michael Mann showing the kids how to do it right. These scenes vacillate between the artful camera work that defined his old action sequences with the hands-on digital approach that informed recent work like the brilliant Collateral and the misfire Miami Vice, and they left me wanting more even as I was absorbed in the moment.

In the end, “Public Enemies” is a technically resplendent film that never shifts out of first gear until its chief action sequence, only to shift down again as soon as it’s over. Mann always was too fond of his scripts, which sometimes paid off (Heat) and sometimes derailed what might have been a decent flick (Miami Vice); this most definitely fits the latter. Well, assuming this film has a point at all, because I've yet to figure out why Mann made it at all. As it is, it’s certainly worth your money as a popcorn flick, but too much of this film, right down to its title, is uncharacteristically and tragically generic.