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| © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. |
This is the sequel to The Accountant, a very good action movie from nine years ago. While you don't have to have seen the first movie, I think it would help if you do see it and remember it, since the main characters in this film make a number of references to events from that film. You don't absolutely have to get the references, but it might make your experience watching this film more enjoyable.
I say that because I saw and enjoyed the original movie, twice, but still didn't remember it well enough to get all the references. What I did remember was that the Affleck character, autistic underworld accountant Christian Wolff, had an airstream trailer that was his escape plan and most closely-guarded secret. Nobody knew about it. If things went south, he could drive off with the airstream and just disappear. And that's what he did at the end of the first movie.
Now, it seems like everybody knows about the airstream trailer. You would think that in the intervening years Wolff could have managed another home base in a nondescript town in a different part of the country. Instead he just parks his Airstream residence in what looks like a vast sea of identical, presumably vacant Airstream trailers. Nothing is said about it, no explanation is offered.
In this movie, Christian calls on his brother Braxton (Bernthal), a former mercenary who is now a very successful hired killer, to help him and Federal Agent Medina (Addai-Robinson). Her former boss has been murdered, she's trying to find his killer, and she's enlisted Wolff to help; but first they have to find out what he was doing that got him killed. It turns out to involve human trafficking, money laundering, extortion ... all the current buzzword crimes except political corruption, which I suppose we've all just about had enough of since the first movie came out. Anyway, Christian brings his brother in to help. I'm not sure exactly why: Christian is pretty much a one-man army himself, and it really seems like the only advantages gained are that brother Braxton can at least hold an ordinary conversation with ordinary people, and he's a good shot with any weapon (as is Christian, but when you're going up against bunches and bunches of criminals in gangs, well, a second one-man army is helpful).
This movie seems consciously to match the pace set by the previous one. Maybe it seems slow if you're not following the moderately complicated trail of clues being laid down; if you are, it is intense; and when there is violent action on the screen it's measured, from an explosive start to a usually rapid and almost surprising end. Christian is deliberate about violence: it's a fact of life, like breathing and fried food; something that must be done. Braxton seems to enjoy it a lot more, but he, too, isn't profligate with it.
Ben Affleck is excellent as the title character; he really makes the idiosyncratic accountant come alive. The tension between him and his brother is palpable, until they arrive at a working relationship. His more difficult relationship with Addai-Robinson's character takes the opposite track, in that she is left behind when the brothers go off to confront the malefactors. But because Affleck so inhabits the skin of his character, you believe he is that guy.
There is, though, one thing in the plot of this movie that I can't stop thinking about, so, Spoiler Alert:
Near the end, the Wolff brothers are on the way to Juárez, Mexico to stop the murder of a bus-load of children. They have already learned that the bad guys are going to take the kids out in the desert, where a mass grave is being prepared for a particularly reprehensible tying up of loose ends. The good guys arrive just as the bus is setting out for the killing ground, and a firefight ensues, which takes about ten action-packed minutes. Very exciting, and cinematically very well done, but....
The Wolff brothers know the fate of the children if the bus gets away. They have plenty of weapons of every description on hand. They are both outstanding shots. The bus is sitting right there, motionless, a hundred or so yards away, getting ready to leave. Why don't they just shoot the tires? Why doesn't one of them put a bullet through the engine block? Why do they not stop the bus leaving, instead of spending that ten minutes shooting every last bad guy in the gang dead? That, I think, is exceptionally bad plotting, when it would have been so easy to have the Wolff brothers just miss the bus, then at some point during the firefight, they spot it on the road above the camp (or get intel from their high-tech assistants), or see it leaving from the far side of the compound as they arrive so that they have to fight their way through the crowd of bad guys to pursue it. I mean ... I really did enjoy this movie, but I can't stop thinking about that one massive idiot-plot lapse of quality in the script.
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| © Universal Pictures |
This 1984 comedy had a bad reputation back when it was new. I didn't see it then, but not because of the bad word-of-mouth. I was living in a small city deep in the hollers of West Virginia back then, and I don't know if there was a movie theater in that town in 1984. I don't remember ever seeing one. But I was a huge fan of Lily Tomlin then; I knew Steve Martin from Saturday Night Live, and from The Jerk, which in my memory was sort of so-so. I had heard bad things about a couple of his other movies in the intervening years, and so I don't know if I would have gone to see this movie back then.
Having now seen it, I think it fits right into that category of kinda-funny, kinda-not comedies from that era. It's a cute variation on the body-swap theme -- Tomlin's character, rich-bitch Edwina Cutwater is dying, and has arranged to have her soul go into the body of the much younger, much hotter woman whom Cutwater has named as her heir. (It was California in the 1980s; it could happen.)
Martin plays Cobb, a lawyer and jazz musician, who is at the point in life where he feels compelled to make his career his sole focus. (I was following the same trajectory in those days; that's how I came to be in West Virginia in the first place.) Cobb's boss assigns him to deal with Cutwater in her testamentary preparations for this harebrained scheme. They don't hit it off. He stalks angrily out of a meeting while Cutwater, dying, and her spiritual guide prepare for the transfer of her soul. An accident causes the bowl containing Cutwater's soul to fall out the window, where it lands on Cobb's head, and voilà, the two are joined in Cobb's body.
Martin does as well with the sort of physical comedy that follows as anybody in that decade; it's one of the things that made him so popular at the time. The rest of the story concerns efforts to rectify the placement of Cutwater's soul, after the originally planned avatar, Terry (played by Victoria Tennant) decides that she doesn't want to be one with the universe after all, and would rather just enjoy the millions of dollars Cutwater left to her.
There is an innocence to this movie that, in my mind, is down to the influence of Carl Reiner, who directed. He was something of a childhood hero to me, for his work on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was, I think, my first Favourite Show.* His sensibilities always showed in his work, and this movie is no exception. Even the seduction scene involving light BDSM is playful, brief and trivial. The movie almost apologises for having the scene at all, but it does serve to show attributes of the two characters in a quick way that avoids a lot of turgid explication. If your twenty-first-century kids are watching this movie with you, I don't know if they would feel the need to ask what's going on, though I suppose you might want to have an explanation ready in case they do. That innocent light-heartedness carries through all the way to the end of the film, where everyone gets what they need most. Except the horse.
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| © Lionsgate |
So I watched this movie about a dog. I wish I hadn't.
Not that it was a bad movie; it wasn't, though it wasn't a particularly good movie either. It involved a sport called "adventure racing" -- I guess it's a real thing, sort of like Iron-Man competitions and those races where you have to swim and run and ride a bike through dramatic scenery in exotic places; in this case, the jungles of the Dominican Republic. But I don't actually care much about the sport, or the race in the movie, because, like I said, the movie's about the dog that joins the team competing in the race.
(You might might want to skip to the next movie review.)
And even though -- Spoiler alert -- the movie has a happy ending, by then it was too late: I was already crying about every dog I've ever had and lost in my whole life: Shammy, who went to "live on a farm" in 1969; Blinky, her son, hit by a car a few years later, and I still blame my mother for that; Aleta, and watching the light go out of her eyes when we had to put her down, nearly 30 years ago, and yes, it still hurts like it was earlier today; and Homer, the happiest dog that ever lived, who we had to have put down in 2014, and that time I thought I couldn't bear to watch again, so he died alone and I still regret that decision. And now I have Carly, and I know how hard it's going to be, in five or six years, when she comes to the end of her race.
I don't often remember dreams. I had two or three as a child that I remembered snippets of, but they have pretty well faded with the many years and they no longer have any emotional strength. But a couple of years ago I had a dream about Homer. I was looking for him in a strange neighbourhood, some unknown mixed residential and light-industrial area like I see on the West Side of San Antonio, and I was calling him. And then I saw him, a couple of blocks away to my right, and he started running to me, getting closer and closer, and when he got close he leapt up for me to catch ... and I woke up. That was it, that was the whole dream, and I cried for days about it, because if I could have just stayed asleep for another few seconds, I would have been able to hold him in my arms again for one last time.
I think about that dream every couple of weeks now, and it still brings me to tears every time. And this movie reminded me of that, and all those other losses too. So I really wish I hadn't watched this movie.
I did warn you.
There are several things about this story that confuse me.
Bobby (Paul le Mat) and Rose (Dianne Hull) are a couple of young people in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1970s, when this film was made. They share poor judgment and a lack of ambition. Bobby works at a service station; his friend has just been accepted to some kind of auto-mechanics training program that promises to double his future income (from about $3/hr to more than $6/hr). Bobby claims to be uninterested, because the friend will have to be up at six o'clock in the morning, and Bobby would rather lay in bed until noon and "roll in" to work three hours late every day. (I had the impression, watching that scene, that what Bobby really felt was envy, and the recognition that if he had bothered to try, he could probably have gotten into a similar training program.) All Bobby has to his name is a red Camaro and some mechanical skills that he can't be bothered to do much with, beyond souping up his own car.
Rose had taken her VW Beetle convertible in for repairs at the station where Bobby works. He fixes it and delivers it to her at her workplace. She gives him a ride back to the service station, stopping first at her house, where Bobby meets Rose's mother and young son. Next thing you know, Bobby and Rose are dating. They've gone to a liquor store to get something to drink -- at that time the drinking age almost everywhere was 18, so we know they're at least that old, though neither one of them looks or acts that old. When the clerk turns his back to him, Bobby playfully pokes his back with a Slim Jim, puts on a Clyde Barrow accent (that famous movie had come out a few years before), and pretends he's robbing the store. The store owner, having heard Bobby talking, comes out of the back office with a shotgun, claims to recognize Bobby as the person who robbed the store a week previously, and tells the clerk to call the police. When Rose tries to explain that it's just a joke, the old man tells her to "stay out of this." For some reason she thinks the appropriate response to the situation at this point is to break a bottle over the old man's head, and she proceeds to do so. In falling, he discharges the shotgun, killing his store clerk. Bobby and Rose rush off in a panic because "no twelve people around here are going to believe what really happened back there."
As they flee, with Bobby driving Rose's car, she -- if I understood the scene right; I had to watch it twice to figure out what was going on -- seems to decide they should go back. It's hard to make out what she's saying because she's blubbering, and this DVD doesn't offer closed captions. She appears to grab the steering wheel and try to make Bobby turn around, but only succeeds in crashing her little car (which miraculously recovers from a roll of about sixty degrees to right itself; the laws of physics are like everything else in California: a little different).
Bobby is going on the lam. He says he has an uncle in San Diego where he can get some cash, and then he's going to Mexico. He puts Rose on what may be a city bus, but from their conversation and the design of the bus stop it seems to be an intercity transit of some kind; I don't know why she would be going anywhere at this point. They haven't left Los Angeles, and she misses her son. Bobby walks away; Rose immediately has a change of heart and gets off the bus to follow Bobby, whom she's known for one day (albeit an impressively full day) into hiding from the law. So much for missing her son.
In San Diego, Bobby and Rose end up, through a short series of somewhat humorous events, in the company of Buford and his "old lady" Donna Sue. They're from Texas. It's always refreshing when somebody without an accent appears on screen, but they're always portrayed as intellectually deficient, when really all they are is normal folk trying to get by in life.
Buford is a good ol' boy looking for business opportunities, while Donna Sue seems to just be a good ol' gal with a heart of gold. The four of them go for dinner, at Buford's insistence, in Mexico. Rose again is missing her son, and no wonder: after one evening with Bobby, look at everything that's happened. During their brief acquaintance, Buford manages twice to rile others around him, but he knows when to pull out "Uncle Frank," a revolver he carries, who suggests the opposing party might want to go elsewhere. Buford is comic relief. You may have guessed that already. Like I said, he's from Texas, and this is definitely a California movie in every regard.
As they're returning to San Diego, the four come across some kind of emergency involving dead bodies on the street; I couldn't tell if there had been an auto accident or a shooting, but whatever it was, it prompts Buford to decide that he and Donna Sue will just "drive straight home" -- from Tijuana to Fort Worth, mind you, and it's already been a late night. He gives Bobby the hotel-room key he had booked for himself and Donna Sue, and just drives away in his heavily modified Lincoln Continental, after insisting Bobby give him a call later on.
I don't know how Bobby and Rose got from Tijuana back to his Camaro, which he had left somewhere in the vicinity of San Diego. Rose still misses her son; they go back to Los Angeles to get the boy, and Bobby paints his red car black. I don't know why. When they stop for an ice cream cone, a police officer finds the car parked on the curb with the child inside alone. Me being a modern type of guy, I thought the problem was that the child was unattended in the car, but no, apparently the officer recognizes the car as being of interest for some criminal activity.
Rose and Bobby, walking back from the ice cream store, see the policemen with the child and the car, and turn back, walk away, and make some plan that involves Bobby calling Buford -- who, after an 18-hour drive accomplished in no more than about fourteen hours, has already found and arranged his business opportunity*, funded by Donna Sue's family, and he promptly offers Bobby a place in it -- while Rose calls her mother to retrieve the child from the police. Instead, Rose calls the police to tell them about "an accident at a liquor store a couple of days ago."
Next thing you know a police officer sees Bobby walking in the rain from across the street, shouts "He's got a gun!" and shoots Bobby dead. I have no idea why; Bobby didn't have a gun and didn't look like he had a gun, and this was the 1970s; were cops so trigger-happy back then? Now, okay, but not in the '70s. I don't even know why the police seemed to be looking for Bobby, or for Bobby's Camaro, as they were driving Rose's VW when the clerk was shot, and since all this takes place in such a short span of time, there's no way they could have already connected the dots to be looking for the Camaro -- though clearly Bobby thinks they will; why else paint it black? I just don't know. I re-ran parts of this film several times just to try and figure out what was going on, but by the middle of the movie -- about the time Buford was revenge-pissing in the car of a guy who had irritated him in the restaurant -- I had given up on that.
Other than the hard-to-follow story that has no respect for real-world time, this isn't a bad movie at all. The acting by the principles overcomes a disjointed script, or maybe it's poor editing; the performances are competent, though I wouldn't say they rise much above the level of journeyman. Maybe the two stars were as confused about what their characters are supposed to be as the characters themselves are. (Or maybe in some kind of meta-way, theirs actually are outstanding performances, but in service of mediocrity.) I thought Tim McIntire as Buford did the best, but then he had more to work with. I also think -- in fact, I'm pretty sure -- that all the failings this little film has happened on the other side of the camera.
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| © Universal Pictures |
After the catharsis of the dog movie and the confusion of the California movie, it felt good to sit back and be swept along by a plain ol' shoot-'em-up action movie with just the bare bones of a plot. And that's what this is: well-made, to be sure, with lots of shots of the ordinary parts of Los Angeles (freeways, downtown, warehouses and places where normal people live; not a single mansion with a cement pond). The plot only exists to give purpose and structure to two-and-a-quarter hours of, essentially, an extended car chase. It is made appropriately simple by the employment of a few stock characters: the FBI agent who used to be friends with the bank robber; the cocksure police captain who arrives with a huge dog in a tiny car; the police techie with no respect for authority; the ambulance driver who is first-day new to the job; the uncaring insurance-company supervisor. Essentially, anyone who makes an appearance in this movie.
Will (Abdul-Mateen) and Danny (Gyllenhaal) are adopted brothers. If there's a plot-related reason why one has to be white and the other black, it's not apparent to me; but neither is there a reason not to. Will is the good brother, the one who joined the Marines and lives life by a code of honour. Danny also has a code, but it's one he sort of adapted from his bank-robber father, who had no code whatsoever.
Will is driven to desperation by his wife's illness and the American health-insurance industry. He asks his brother for a loan, but his timing is bad. Danny's about to rob a bank, and it seems that one of this crew has called in sick, or something, so Danny ropes Will into filling in. Will had been a medic and driver in the service in Afghanistan, plus he knows his way around L.A. better than anybody. This sets up the heart of the dramatic aspect of the movie: we watch Danny, who starts off tightly-wound, come unhinged, and we watch Will, a man of principled integrity, get drawn into things he could never live with.
I won't bother you with the details of how Danny's elaborate plan goes wrong; suffice it to say that the two brothers are the sole survivors of what started as a fairly extensive crew, and they end up hijacking an ambulance containing the rookie police officer who unwittingly found himself in the middle of the robbery. The officer is attended by Cam (Gonzalez), who is the Best Damn Emergency Medical Technician in the city, but possibly the worst person.
The changes these three characters undergo in this movie keep the film from being banal. Though, with all that goes on, I don't know if anybody would really notice. The action is non-stop, its energy immense, and despite the often-gratuitous violence depicted, it rarely strays from the believable. (The only case I can think of is when a gang Danny has called on to provide a diversion for him sends in a remote-control low-rider Chevy loaded with C-4 explosive and a machine gun mounted discreetly in the front seat, along with enough ammunition to take out the entire police department. And there are a couple of occasions when pursuing cop cars flip for no good reason.)
It's a fun movie, and if you like this genre, I can recommend it. I know that, if I come across it being shown on television, I'll watch it again, at least until the next commercial break, and I'll probably come back to it when I give up on other shows.
I do want to mention two particularly good items in this film. One is the comic-relief character, Castro, played by a rapper who goes by one name, Wale. He's the guy who answers the phone at Danny's warehouse (where Danny stores classic cars for customers). The character is played low-key, and his consummate bumbling combines well with lack of comprehension and New-Age health fads.
The other thing is the score. Usually it's best if you don't notice the music in a movie, unless it's by John Williams and is performed by orchestras around the country during fund-raising campaigns. The music in this film, by Lorne Balfe -- particularly the long crescendoing theme played near the end of the film as loose ends are tied up -- ought to be performed by those same orchestras.
Once again I think I'm approaching the limits of my readers' attention span. The 4th Annual HFF will pick up again in a few days with another installment.
