Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) – DVD

June 17, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Biopic, Drama, DVD, France, Luxembourg, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK

**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B-
starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt
screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Tracy Chevalier
directed by Peter Webber

by Bill Chambers It's a tad perverse to shoot a film about the world of Johannes Vermeer in 'scope, considering the artist's own cramped reflection of that world on portable canvasses. A shut-in, if we interpret his life through his surviving pictures, Vermeer didn't just paint in a lambent room on the upper level of his mother-in-law's house in Delft, he painted the room itself–the begrimed walls, the half-stained furniture, the Gingerbread-house windows that caught his human subjects (often, it appears, members of the servant class) in a tractor beam of light.

Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Complete Collection (1987) – DVD

June 16, 2004Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Muppets, Television, UK

Image C Sound B
“The Soldier and Death,” “Fearnot,” “The Luck Child,” “A Story Short,” “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Three Ravens,” “Sapsorrow,” “The Heartless Giant,” “The True Bride”

by Walter Chaw For the span of nine delirious, enchanted episodes, “The Storyteller”, Jim Henson’s too-brief foray into mature anthology fantasy television, is gorgeous for its faithfulness to its mythic source material. Although the show’s longevity was certainly not helped by Henson’s hard-to-shake reputation as the benevolent primogenitor of “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”, looking closer at Henson’s twin, sterling blue masterpieces The Muppet Movie (which he didn’t direct but definitely spearheaded) and The Dark Crystal reveals an artist steeped in a tradition of stung, existential melancholy. It’s easy to laugh at Kermit’s swamp lament or to dismiss, albeit less easily, the heroism of a soon-to-be-extinct species desperate to save a dying world that has all but snuffed them out, but from a perspective of legacy, it’s unwise to file Henson under “kid’s stuff” and leave well enough alone.

50 First Dates (2004) [Widescreen Special Edition] – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin
screenplay by George Wing
directed by Peter Segal

by Walter Chaw The stupid version of Groundhog Day, or, more to the point, the capering warm-up act for Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest Adam Sandler vehicle 50 First Dates is just like almost every other alleged comedy released in the first quarter of any year in that lacks pace and energy. I don't know when it got so hard to make a movie with forward momentum, but I can tell you that the point in the film where you start to count the "dates" to figure out when the damned thing is going to end comes early. Still, there's a moment in the picture involving a brain-damaged young woman making a decision to erase the love of her life from her memory that caught me off guard, causing me to realize how much I hold out hope that Sandler will do another film like Punch-Drunk Love. Sad fact is, though, that it may never happen.

Common Ground (2002) – DVD

June 14, 2004Posted in2000s, Argentina, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Spain

Lugares comunes
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Federico Luppi, Mercedes Sampietro, Arturo Puig, Carlos Santamaria
screenplay by Adolfo Aristarain and Kathy Saavedra, based on the novel by Lorenzo F. Aristarain
directed by Adolfo Aristarain

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching the paralytically subdued spectacle of Common Ground, I had to wonder: what would my old Latin American Cinema prof make of this film? As he generally had us watching agitprop rip-snorters like The Hour of the Furnaces, my first guess is that he'd probably want to punch director Adolfo Aristarain square in the jaw for broaching the subject of the Argentine economic collapse in such flabby, bourgeois terms. True, Aristarain shows exactly what the middle class had to face once the World Bank shellacked the local economy, but he depicts it in such an insular and anesthetized fashion that Common Ground doesn't register very loudly as a protest. In fact, the film's only major distinction is its ability to make enormous economic upheaval seem like a cramp in the style of its formerly comfortable leads, and to block out the rest of the country in its slow crawl to its central character's final destination.

Searching for Debra Winger (2002) – DVD

June 9, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+
"experienced" by Rosanna Arquette

by Walter Chaw Group therapy for once and future A-list actresses, Rosanna Arquette's bizarre foray into auto-confessional documentary essays a fairly impressive selection of talent waxing blue on the struggles of balancing stardom with family. Artists as variegated as Daryl Hannah and Samantha Mathis, JoBeth Williams and Emmanuelle Béart, Frances McDormand and Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter and Robin Wright Penn, Diane Lane and Sharon Stone, Salma Hayek and Charlotte Rampling, and Whoopi Goldberg and Tracey Ullman kvetch about how shitty their gilded lives are while sitting in leather-lined, candlelit restaurants or against the palatial backdrops of their impossible homes and yards. The title, Searching for Debra Winger (referring to the inspiration that triggered the film: to discover why it is that Winger retired from show business), is made ironic by the fact that Winger has come out of retirement since to appear in her husband's shitty Big Bad Love.

Posse (1975) – DVD

June 9, 2004Posted in1970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Western

*½/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Kirk Douglas, Bruce Dern, Bo Hopkins, James Stacy
screenplay by William Roberts and Christopher Knopf
directed by Kirk Douglas

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Posse performs the not-inconsiderable feat of taking the iconoclastic spirit of '70s cinema and rendering it completely banal, going through the motions without believing in any of them and repeating gestures it fails to completely understand. Whether this is due to it being the directorial debut of star Kirk Douglas–who doesn't exactly belong to the Film Generation his film mechanically apes–is unclear, but Posse's simple inversion of authority and criminality is so inadequate as a genre critique that it spits more in the eye of the audience than in that of its limply-invoked Man. What remains is a series of blunt narrative events lacking in formal resonance to the extent that they seem to have been communicated through tin cans linked by string.

Secret Window (2004) – DVD

June 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Mystery, Stephen King, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A
starring Johnny Depp, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, John Turturro
screenplay by David Koepp, based on the novella "Secret Window, Secret Garden" by Stephen King
directed by David Koepp

by Walter Chaw Secret Window is a checklist for Stephen King fans in exactly the same way his bloated fiction from the last ten years is a rehash of past material (and like old King material is a rehash of classic EC Comics/"Outer Limits" plots). It's an intensely wearying public window into how a popular writer has taken to auto-consumption and automatic regurgitation when inspiration flags. Typewriter intrigue? "Redrum"-like mantra? Curious wife? Lovable black sidekick dispatched with a hatchet à la Kubrick's The Shining? Check, all. Weird religious iconography, wide-brimmed Amish hats, some sort of sinister cornfield à la Children of the Corn? Surely. Popular writer tortured by an obsessive fan who wants him to write something special, à la Misery? You got it. Mysterious alter-ego nom de plume that appears to have been made manifest à la The Dark Half? Uh huh. Murdered pet and secluded woodland retreat à la Pet Sematary? Even that. Country mouse à la The Green Mile? Believe it or not. In fact, the only thing about Secret Window that doesn't stink of the King perpetual mimeograph machine (The Tommyknockers, "Ballad of the Flexible Bullet") is Johnny Depp's sly comic timing and the smooth direction by Stir of Echoes hyphenate David Koepp.

Spartan (2004) – DVD

June 7, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

½*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Commentary C+
starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, Ed O'Neill
written and directed by David Mamet

by Walter Chaw Because we hate Arabs (and women almost as much as we think that Arabs hate women, those hateful Arabs), there are films like David Mamet's patently ridiculous, relentlessly offensive, unintentionally hilarious Spartan. A brilliant theatre man, the very definition of a keen cultural philosopher (his book of essays Some Freaks is must-reading), Mamet as film auteur has grown increasingly esoteric to the point now that his exclusive playpens of linguistic masturbation are so alien and self-conscious that they begin instantly to function as satires of themselves. His action is action as imagined by an egghead, all awkward movement and frustrated invective. His is the school of anti-casual cool, the drama club suiting up for the Friday night football game, and his supporters are cut from the same cloth, believing that there's a point to be made in Beckett for the brute while ignoring that Beckett is best staged with Spartan minimalism and left in the theatre besides. The films Mamet has directed range from sophomoric (House of Games) to grating (State and Main) to just incompetent (Heist), though Spartan reminds the most of one he only wrote: the wilderness howler The Edge, with its machismo over-examined and placed in a context that isn't allegorical as it must be, but hardboiled realism as it can't be. It's P.G. Wodehouse adapted for the screen by John Milius, and predictably awful.

Reality Bites (1994) [10th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

June 7, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by Helen Childress
directed by Ben Stiller

Realitybitescap

by Bill Chambers If Some Kind of Wonderful is just an inverted Pretty in Pink, then Reality Bites is Some Kind of Wonderful inverted back again, with a proud young woman positioned at the apex of a love triangle and flanked by suitors from opposite poles of class who share a sincere affection for their mutual inamorata. More than conceivable that screenwriter Helen Childress was influenced by these John Hughes productions (whether or not she consciously chose to emulate them), it's probable: Childress was of breakfast-club age when they were released, and as any child of the '80s will tell you, they were too reverent of teenage travails to inspire much in the way of hipster backlash. (While some have speculated that Ferris Bueller is Hughes through the looking glass, the speech from that eponymous film in which a secretary canonizes Ferris–"The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads…they all adore him: they think he's a righteous dude"–suggests that Ferris is nothing less than the personification of Hughes's cottage industry.) What's interesting is that Reality Bites' loyalty to a proven formula only traps it in the same adolescent mindset it purports to preach against ("grow up" is a major refrain): If it were about the consequences of our heroine's choice of mate instead of about the choice itself once more, it might've satisfied Hughes's maturing constituency on a deeper level.

Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004) [Special Edition] – DVD

June 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve
screenplay by Don D. Scott
directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan

by Walter Chaw If not for a cringe-worthy conclusion and the awkwardness of an entire Queen Latifah subplot too clearly an embedded trailer for the upcoming Beauty Shop, Barbershop 2: Back in Business would not only be better than the first film, but also almost worthy of consideration as a lighthearted version of Do the Right Thing. Firmly rooted in politics, the opening credit sequence–which charts black history through the evolution of the afro haircut, with each image group ending, incisively, with a shot that demonstrates how white culture invariably hijacks black trends–is alone worth the price of admission. It summarizes a sticky, Ouroborosian circle of self-consumption, owing to the fact that hip-hop culture itself takes elements of white culture and redefines them through its own prism. What's the explanation for Vanilla Ice's ski-slope pompadour in the bigger picture of race relations and cultural diffusion? A look at the progression of Michael Jackson would seem the cheap shot, and it would have been out of this context, but while no mention of Wacko Jacko fails to inspire reflexive groans anymore, Barbershop 2 actually, wordlessly, scores a poignant, precise, eloquent point about the state of our state. Taking a swipe at the King of Pop is easy–having it score in a way fresh with insight is invaluable.

Roswell: The Complete First Season (1999-2000) – DVD

June 1, 2004Posted in1990s, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Teen, Television, Thriller

Image A Sound A Extras B
"Pilot," "The Morning After," "Monsters," "Leaving Normal," "Missing," "285 South," "River Dog," "Blood Brother," "Heat Wave," "The Balance," "Toy House," "Into the Woods," "The Convention," "Blind Date," "Independence Day," "Sexual Healing," "Crazy," "Tess, Lies and Videotape," "Four Square," "Max to the Max," "The White Room," "Destiny"

by Walter Chaw What begins as something romantic and mysterious ends as something predominantly memorable for the impact it had on Dido's wan career. Charting the WB's "Roswell"'s downward trajectory from a piquant, lovely pilot to the worst of "The X Files" and "Dawson's Creek" is a fascinating, instructive thing to watch–not only for the schadenfreude of it all, but also for the way that corporate perception of what an audience purportedly wants invariably leads to production of the same kind of dull crapulence over and over again. (Though, in the WB's defense, a grassroots letter-writing campaign that saved the series from oblivion at least once indicates a fervid devotion to this kind of garbage.) In the fine tradition of making a self-pitying clone of "thirtysomething" for teen-somethings played by a cast of twenty-somethings, "Roswell" is "Sweet Valley High" mixed with the Troll Books variety of soft-core science fiction, making that "My So-Called Life" feeling of middle school alienation literal in its tale of three or four actual aliens getting teased by jocks in Roswell, NM. It's the love child of Robert A. Heinlein and Judy Blume, and it ain't pretty.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Fantasy, New Zealand

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
directed by Peter Jackson

Returnofthekingeecap2

by Walter Chaw For the uninitiated few, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are diminutive hobbits making their way, with the treacherous Gollum (Andy Serkis) as their guide, through perilous lands on a quest to destroy the One Ring of power, forged by evil Sauron in a volcano called Mount Doom. Their story is set against a series of epic military manoeuvres and intimate Machiavellian machinations engaged in by elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the once and future human king, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen).

The Company (2003) – DVD

May 30, 2004Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Germany, Music, Romance, UK

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco, Barbara Robertson
screenplay by Barbara Turner
directed by Robert Altman

Mustownby Walter Chaw There is a moment in Robert Altman's beautifully metered The Company where we're introduced to a cook played by James Franco through a low angle shot hovering over the green, smoke-haloed expanse of a gin-joint pool table. Wordless, the sequence plays out as Ry (Neve Campbell, never better) shoots a rack to the cool blues slinking out of a corner jukebox, glancing up now and again to meet Josh's (Franco) frank interest with gradually thawing humour and heat. Discretely, the film cuts to the next morning as Josh cooks an omelette with what's available in the kitchen of Ry's artist's loft.

Dracula: The Legacy Collection – DVD

May 27, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Vampire, Werewolf

DRACULA (1931)
***/**** Image C Sound C|A (with Glass score) Extras A+
starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston
directed by Tod Browning

DRÁCULA (1931)
***/**** Image C+ Sound B-
starring Carlos Villarias, Lupita Taylor, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, Barry Norton
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the novel by Bram Stoker and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston; adapted in Spanish by B. Fernandez Cue
directed by George Melford

DRACULA’S DAUGHTER (1936)
***½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Edward Van Sloan
screenplay by Garrett Fort, based on the story “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker
directed by Lambert Hillyer

SON OF DRACULA (1943)
*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Paige, Louise Allbritton, Evelyn Ankers
screenplay by Eric Taylor
directed by Robert Siodmak

HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)
½*/**** Image B Sound B
starring Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, Lionel Atwill
screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr.
directed by Erle C. Kenton

by Walter Chaw Tod Browning’s Dracula finds its way to the DVD format for the second time as part of a handsome “Legacy Collection” heralding the theatrical bow of the studio’s lead balloon Van Helsing, possibly denoting the first time that a cynically-timed archival video release was announced with pride and fanfare instead of slipped surreptitiously into the marketplace. Never mind that a purchase of the Legacy collection whole (essaying Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein) proves to be far better for the soul than shelling out a few bones to catch Stephen Sommers’s latest assault on sense and cinema, even if doing so feels a little like letting Universal have its cake and eat it, too: There are worse things in the world than a mainstream shipwreck inspiring a vital resurrection.

The Haunted Mansion (2003) [Widescreen] – DVD

May 26, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Eddie Murphy, Family, Horror, Mystery

**/**** Image A- Sound A+ Extras B
starring Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Wallace Shawn, Marsha Thomason
screenplay by David Berenbaum
directed by Rob Minkoff

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching Eddie Murphy act his heart out in The Haunted Mansion, you have to ask yourself: how does he do it? How does he take a family-entertainment sausage like this and keep his enthusiasm up, filling out his time-tested family man with enough tics and asides to almost humanize him? Alas, the question is a moot point, because all that hard work is thrown away–Murphy is working in a vacuum, performing to the best of his ability a role that's completely beneath him. And that sums up the production in general: a lot of very talented people, from actors and technicians to designers and costumers, have knocked themselves out in the service of an advertisement for a theme park. The good work hasn't even got the wherewithal to reach beyond its material: gifted though they are, everybody involved with the production believes in the system to such an extent that the chances of artistic subversion on set were about nil. The result is surprisingly watchable but predictably unmoving.

Chasing Liberty (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

May 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie, Romance, Teen, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Annabella Sciorra
screenplay by Derek Guiley & David Schneiderman
directed by Andy Cadiff

by Walter Chaw Giving a whole new meaning to the term "Grand Old Party," now that Jenna and Barbara Bush have made being the first daughter delinquent-delightful again after that stick-in-the-mud scholar/ambassador Chelsea (the "Family Values" party has a little 'splainin' to do), gird yourself for no fewer than three films featuring the exploits of the most powerful girl-child in the free world: David Mamet's Spartan, the Katie Holmes starrer First Daughter, and, first out of the block, Andy Cadiff's execrable Chasing Liberty.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) + Monster (2003) – DVDs

May 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Germany, Romance, Thriller, UK

AILEEN: LIFE AND DEATH OF A SERIAL KILLER
***/**** Image B Sound B
directed by Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill

MONSTER
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen
written and directed by Patty Jenkins

by Bill Chambers If the documentary's renaissance needed further confirmation, it's either the propagation of sequels to non-fiction films (nothing nestles a genre into the mainstream like second chapters), or the commercial synergy that has so flagrantly asserted itself in the marketing of Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill's Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer–a quasi-continuation, as it happens, of Broomfield's own 1992 Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. Of course, it was one thing for Lantern Lane Entertainment to time the theatrical release of Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (henceforth Aileen 2) so that it surfed the ripples of hype generated by the splash-landing of Newmarket's Monster, and it's another thing for Sony, their common home video distributor, to unleash the two films on DVD simultaneously. But for NY MAGAZINE to print "Aileen Wuornos, the subject of Charlize Theron's Monster, distills absolutely terrifying interviews with the late serial killer," and for Columbia TriStar to then splatter that quote on the back of the Aileen 2 disc, signifies a blurring of divides more critical than ever in this age of reality-TV. Neither Theron nor Wuornos deserves to become inextricably associated with the other's (mis)deeds over a marketing crutch; Monster probably should've been called Aileen Wuornos for Dummies, but it wasn't, and that's the point.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) [D-Day 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition] – DVD

May 24, 2004Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, DVD, Spielberg, War

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore
screenplay by Robert Rodat
directed by Steven Spielberg

Savingprivateryancap

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. One is tempted to speculate that, perhaps even more than his father's tour of duty, something that inspired the teenaged Steven Spielberg to shoot a succession of WWII docudramas on 8mm (since he had authentic props–Dad's medals–at his disposal), lingering guilt over his dismissal from the U.S. Army after a military shrink deemed him unfit for the battlefield accounts for Spielberg's frequent digressions into the war genre. As reductive, nay, Freudian as this may seem, for one thing, it has the potential to dilute the vitriol commonly reserved for the bookends of Saving Private Ryan by bringing them into autobiographical relief. Certainly ignoring the picture's prologue and epilogue altogether doesn't help: I once programmed my DVD player to do just that and the result felt surprisingly incomplete, as the context for a WWII narrative with a conspicuously anecdotal quality had all of a sudden disappeared.

Loverboy (1989) – DVD

May 20, 2004Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD

*/**** Image C- Sound B+
starring Patrick Dempsey, Kate Jackson, Carrie Fisher, Robert Ginty
screenplay by Robin Schiff and Tom Ropelewski & Leslie Dixon
directed by Joan Micklin Silver

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Loverboy is a brightly-lit sex comedy from the '80s; for those who lived through those dark times, this statement is criticism enough. But I know that there are vast numbers of young people who have never had the distinct displeasure of watching rich people with enamel-white houses and shoulder-pad dresses have their way with Patrick Dempsey, thus it behoves me to warn this lost generation of the perils of this film and all of its ignoble brethren. If you are watching something out of the corner of your eye late at night while channel-surfing, and you notice a lack of cuts, no discernable attempts at style, and a whole lot of ugly pastels, you are in serious danger of seeing Loverboy. Change the channel immediately, for the discomfort and nausea will be acute and irreversible. The fact that a DVD exists is mind-boggling.

Too Late the Hero (1970) – DVD

May 19, 2004Posted in1970s, Action, Drama, DVD, War

***/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Ian Bannen, Harry Andrews
screenplay by Robert Aldrich and Lukas Heller
directed by Robert Aldrich

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Too Late the Hero is the consummate "solid flick"–sturdy, well-written, and just thoughtful enough to keep its machinations from working on autopilot. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it is suffused with a dread and a tension that lift it out of the bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission ghetto and into something more sober and dignified. Whether or not it is the subterfuge Vietnam allegory of cult legend, it's a war film about people–not iron-jawed superheroes–whose selfless deeds have all the more impact when placed in context with the cowardice and stupidity of others. In the end, it does mouth certain pieties about that heroism that keep it from being too corrosive, but in this age of Black Hawk Down and Iraq prison scandals, it's refreshing for its refusal to knuckle under to the myth of the glorious warrior.