Film Friday: Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

Jack the Giant Slayer was considered a box office bomb, as it just about broke even. The critics hated it, giving it a 50% rating. They used words like “one-dimensional,” saying it lacked a good script, and called it “an attempt to cash in on a trend.” Well, I can’t disagree with any of that, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the film. This film is a throwback to a simpler age, I just wish it had offered a stronger script.

Plot

Directed by Bryan Singer of The Usual Suspects and X-Men, Jack the Giant Slayer is the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk” done as an action film. It follows in the questionable footsteps of Red Riding Hood and Snow White and the Huntsman, and it probably draws its roots back to Van Helsing. Unlike these other films, however, it is neither dark nor cynical nor anachronistic.

The story begins with two families telling their children the story of Erik, an ancient king who defeated an army of giants from the sky by crafting a magical crown which compelled the giants to obey. The story is told to Jack, a peasant, and Princess Isabelle, a descendent of Erik. Then we skip ahead ten years. Jack has been sent to town by his uncle to sell his horse. In town, Jack sees a group of turds harassing a young woman and he steps up to defend her. This is Princess Isabelle and moments later Elmont (Ewan McGregor), the Captain of the King’s Guard, arrives to protect her and take her away. Naturally, Jack is smitten.

As Jack continues through town, he runs into a monk who appears to be fleeing the authorities. The monk offers Jack some magic beans in exchange for his horse. He tells Jack that Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci) would pay handsomely for their return. The monk then takes Jack’s horse and flees.

Jack returns home to find that his uncle is a tad angry that Jack traded his horse for some worthless beans. He takes the beans and throws them away. Meanwhile, Isabelle has escaped the castle because she doesn’t want to marry Lord Roderick. She takes shelter in Jack’s house because it has begun to rain. When the water from the rain hits one of the beans, it grows into a beanstalk which destroys the house and grows way up into the sky. Isabelle ends up up the stalk.

Back on the ground, King Brahmwell (Ian McShane) sends a team up the stalk to rescue his daughter. This team includes Elmont, Jack, Roderick and some others. When they reach the top, they find an entirely different world. This is a world of giants. Soon enough, most of the team is dead or captured. Elmont and Jack find themselves in the kitchen where they are being baked into snacks for the giants. Roderick, however, has gone a different route. He has stolen the magical crown which lets him control the giants and he intends to lead them back down the beanstalk to take over the kingdom. He has also been responsible for killing most of the team.

On the ground, the King decides they need to destroy the beanstalk, even if his daughter remains missing.

I won’t spoil the rest.

Why I Liked This

Let’s get this out of the way: this isn’t a great film by any stretch. The effects are good, but nothing special. The acting is what you expect, but nothing memorable. The dialog is not clever – even the clever bits are obvious. The story is very, very simple. There are no unforeseen twists. There is nothing that isn’t predictable. In short, there’s nothing really to commend this film.

What this film does have though, is a sense of earnestness that makes this fun. There is no cynicism in this film. The bad guy wears a black hat and twirls a mustache, the good guys are pure and chocked full of noble traits, no good guy is secretly bad or must overcome some prior act of evil. The King isn’t stupid or an ass. He loves his daughter. Jack is heroic. Elmont is heroic. And they all rise to the occasion. And not a single character rolls his eye to the audience telling them they view the film as a joke.

Putting this in different terms, this film is a real throwback to the simpler age of storytelling where good and evil are well divided, where you’re not asked “to understand” the villain apart from knowing his motive, where the hero is a hero rather than an anti-hero, and where the world isn’t a dark, nasty place awash in cynicism, corruption and betrayal... nor is this “earnestness” meant sarcastically. This is simply a film that tells a story that is meant to be enjoyed. Moreover, there are no politics here. There’s no attempt to impart some political message about the rich or capitalism or the environment or the plight of peasants, nor is the film politically correct. It’s just a film about some people who end up fighting some giants. That makes for a pleasant, fun film.

It’s too bad this film was let down by its script, and I mean this in two ways. First, it seems clear that with the lack of cynicism, the writer was at a bit of a loss for how to come up with conflict to keep the film moving. Indeed, understanding the structure of modern scripts, you can see the points where the various negative parts usually sit, and in their place here you get characters lamenting that they are incapable of doing anything except waiting, i.e. the writer didn’t fill those parts with non-cynical plot points or conflict. The writer also struggled a bit with how to have Jack earn the respect of others around him; it happens far too quickly and too easily. I think these points are related. Had the writer focused the script more on Jack’s journey from good but stupid farm boy to hero of the Kingdom and stretched this out over the course of the movie, then I think this could have been quite a rousing film. But he didn’t. So instead, you end up with a film that is about moving between set pieces.

Secondly, the script fails for lack of cleverness. Time and again, it feels like the writer chose the line of dialog that was obvious for the moment. The few bits that are truly clever come from the special effects people or some moment in the action. That's not enough. This is the kind of movie that needs to be packed with puns, turns of phrase, and well-earned irony to be memorable, but the writing here simply never offers any of that. Indeed, in this cynical age of ours, where every character is a twisted mess with a secret villainous side waiting to happen and voyeurism can be added to any script to give it punch, a film like this needs more than such a simple and simplistic telling if it’s going to pull in an audience.

So I feel mixed about recommending this film. This is a fun movie, but don’t expect anything that will make an impression on you... but it’s not going to insult you or turn you off either. It is a decent movie and I respect what it was trying to do and I think it’s worth your time if you’re just looking to be entertained, but it never moves beyond that, and that's too bad.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: X-Men: First Class (2011)

I’ve generally enjoyed the X-Men films. The third wasn’t nearly as good as the first two, but was still quite watchable. The first was rather good and I thought the second was even better. When I heard they were making X-Men: First Class about the origin of the X-Men in the 1960s, I was fairly enthusiastic. Now I’ve seen it. Meh. It’s ok. It’s also obnoxiously political.

** spoiler alert **

Directed by Matthew Vaughn and written by Bryan Singer, X-Men: First Class is a prequel to the other X-Men films. This film takes place in the 1960s when Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lensherr (Magneto) are in their twenties and just starting out. The whole film is set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, as villain Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) tries to get the Russians and the Americans to blow each other up because he believes the radiation resulting from a nuclear war would kill humanity while allowing mutants to thrive.

As films go, this one is entertaining enough to watch if you’re looking to blow a couple hours, but don’t expect to be impressed or to remember anything about it. Ultimately, this film proves little more than a series of scenes where the mutants show off their powers and then blow things up. There are several of the inevitable training scenes all these films require and a plethora of ironic moments where future bad guys start as good guys and then change sides. If you’re in love with these characters, those scenes may make you happy, but if you’re not in love with them, then these scenes are at best weak and feel pointless. Don’t expect much from the acting either. McAvoy is so sedate you often think he’s asleep. Michael Fassbender couldn’t control his accent and has no gravitas. January Jones and Rose Byrne were awful. Kevin Bacon was ok, only he didn’t really have much to do despite being the villain. In fact, the only truly charismatic character (and the film’s best moment) came when they went to recruit Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). His strong screen presence really contrasted sharply with the weakness of the others.

In any event, two things struck me about this film. First, the film does a very poor job of recreating the 1960s. Secondly, this film is incredibly heavy-handed with its pro-gay message.

Setting a film in the past can pay huge dividends when done right. Humans are interested in the past and want to see how we lived during certain eras. Thus, a film set in the past can give audiences the dual experience of seeing a good film and feeling like they’ve gotten a window into the past. Moreover, Hollywood has the benefit of not needing to be entirely historically accurate. Thus, it can create stylized versions of the past which are essentially the fantasy worlds that are so popular in science fiction, only these come with the stamp of being “real.”

X-Men: First Class tries the stylized approach, but it never really works. For one thing, despite the setting, everything is simply too modern. For example, the dialog has a modern feel. Indeed, the film kept using words and phrases that struck me as distinctly modern. The costuming didn’t feel genuine. And much of what they presented never felt realistic. For example, Sebastian Shaw is a mix of Hugh Hefner and Bruce Wayne, and the CIA had more of the feel of In Like Flint than any real government agency. The Pentagon also came across more like a knock-off of Dr. Strangelove than anything we know to be true. Ultimately, this film didn’t feel like it was set in the 1960s, it felt like it took pieces out of 1960s films, stylized them, and placed them in the present.

The actors didn’t help this either. It was nearly impossible to see James McAvoy as a young Patrick Stewart because he seemed to mistake depression for wisdom. Michael Fassbender was even harder to see as Magneto because he looks nothing like a young Ian McKellen and the entire second half of the film he kept slipping into an out-of-place Irish accent. The other actors didn’t help either as none of them acted at all according to the social norms of the 1960s.

The most annoying part of the film was actually the politics. I don’t personally care about gay issues one way or the other, and it doesn’t bother me if a film wants to include a pro-gay message. Whatever. But I am bothered by a lack of subtlety, and this thing wasn’t subtle. In scene after scene, the characters used gay slogans (e.g. “mutant and proud”) or made direct references to things gays consider discriminatory. For example, one character says, “you didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.” Then they have a couple minute love-in where each of the characters tells this character how great he is and how he shouldn’t have to hide. This is obnoxious. It’s ham-fisted and obvious. Think of it this way. Flip the ideology around and imagine that every scene contained a character telling you, “You know, Jesus offers us salvation” or some similar slogan. How long would it take before this really got on your nerves? It’s the same thing here. If you are aware of the slogans and symbols the gay movement has used, you will see them used blatantly and repeatedly in this film.

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to inject a political message into a non-political film, then it needs to be subtle. It needs to make your point without huge flashing lights that scream at the audience, “MESSAGE COMING IN. . . MESSAGE”. When your characters spend their time repeating slogans that didn’t exist for another forty years and then each scene ends up an After School Special, where the characters hug and pledge solidarity to the cause, you’ve gone too far. And since this film offered little else by way of plot, this really stuck out.

So all in all, I can’t recommend this film either way. I enjoyed it enough that I didn’t regret watching it, but I won’t watch it again because it offers nothing that could interest me a second time. It’s competently done in all the technicals, but flat in the story and very weak in the writing. It’s annoying at time and just dull at others, but it’s also got just enough interest to it to keep me from turning it off. Make of that what you will.

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Film Friday: The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects is a neo-noir crime thriller with an intensely intelligent plot that twists and turns and wraps a riddle within an enigma as it tricks the audience with their own preconceptions. Add in stellar acting from an incredible cast, a pitch perfect soundtrack, an absolute lack of mistakes or bad choices by a creative director, and easily the most daring script of any film I’ve seen, and you’ve got one of my favorite movies and a movie you must see.

To discuss this film will require MAJOR SPOILERS. Do NOT read this if you haven’t seen the film.

Directed by Bryan Singer, The Usual Suspects ostensibly is a story of a robbery gone wrong, but that’s hardly a fair description. When all is said and done, The Usual Suspects is a mystery, where different characters give you different facts that you need to piece together to decide what really happened.

The story begins with small-time criminal Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) telling U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) what happened the prior night when a group of criminals attacked a boat in San Pedro harbor. Verbal appears to be the only survivor and he has given testimony in exchange for immunity. Kujan is racing against the clock to question him before he is released. According to Verbal, the robbery began several weeks prior in New York, when the police brought in four hardened criminals (and Verbal) for a lineup after a truck was highjacked. This group consists of Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Fenster (Benicio del Toro). They decide to use the opportunity of the lineup to work together on a heist in NYC. After they pull off the heist, they fly to Los Angeles to meet the fence who will sell what they’ve stolen. In L.A., they are forced to perform a robbery for a criminal legend named Keyser Sӧze, who may or may not exist. Sӧze, supposedly, is a ruthless, omnipresent Turkish criminal mastermind who uses other criminals to commit his crimes. The robbery involves forty million dollars in dope and an equal amount of cash on a ship in San Pedro harbor.

This sounds straight forward, but director Singer does something daring. As Verbal tells this story, Agent Kujan keeps interrupting him with facts that Verbal either does not know or has lied about. At the same time, FBI Agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) provides us with additional facts. For example, there were no drugs and it appears the true purpose of the raid was to kill a man who could identify Sӧze. When Kujan finally confronts Verbal with what Kujan believes happened, Verbal breaks down and agrees with everything Kujan says. He is then released. But as he leaves, we learn one more crucial fact -- Verbal is identified as Keyser Sӧze by a witness pulled out of the harbor. In this way, Singer presents four different versions of what happened. Verbal tells one story. Within Verbal’s story, we are given a second version by Dean Keaton, the man Kujan thinks is the leader of the group and who Kujan ultimately believes to be Keyser Sӧze. Agent Kujan and Baer give us a third version based on the facts Kujan collected from before the robbery and Baer collects from the harbor. Finally, we are given what appears to be the truth when we learn at the end that Verbal is Sӧze.

This alone makes this a brave script. The use of the four different version plot device (which dates back to Kurosawa’s Rashomon) is very difficult to pull off and extremely confusing when done poorly. Moreover, unlike prior films that used this and which always told the audience what really happened in the final version, Singer only provides some verified facts and leaves it to the audience to piece the truth together. That is a daring choice because it’s by no means certain the audience will be able to put this back together, and a confused audience is an unhappy audience.

What’s more, Singer doubles down on the difficulty by mixing up the movie’s chronology: it starts the night before, moves forward to today, backs up several weeks, swings back to the present, moves back to a different point in the past, and so on, as different parts of the story are told. There are many dangers to this approach. For example, the audience may not be able to put the story back in the right order. Moreover, because the audience knows the ending right at the beginning, there is a real danger the attack on the harbor will lose its drama because the audience knows how it will end. But Singer overcomes these issues brilliantly both by maintaining a strong pace and by giving you characters who seem so determined, so in control, and so competent that you don’t believe they can fail, even though you’ve already been shown that they do.

But even more than these issues, Singer takes a tremendous chance in that ultimately we know nothing of what really happened. Indeed, when we analyze the facts presented and we consider what we actually know to be true, rather than what we think we know, we quickly discover that we can’t believe anything we’ve been told throughout the movie. The only facts we know for certain are (1) Verbal is Keyser Sӧze, (2) Verbal and a group of men attacked the harbor, (3) the four criminals (Keaton, McManus, Fenster and Hockney) are dead, and (4) Keaton’s girlfriend is dead. That’s it. Nothing else in Verbal’s story can be verified and most of it can even be dismissed out of hand. Thus, Singer essentially shatters the entire film. The danger with this approach is that it risks alienating the audience. Audiences don’t like feeling like they’ve been misled or like their time has been wasted, and nothing feels more like having your time wasted than being told that you can’t believe anything you’ve seen over the last two hours. But Singer does something very clever here. Despite telling the audience quite plainly that nothing they’ve just seen can be believed, he also gives them one moment of truth -- when Verbal’s true identity is revealed. This allows the audience to feel that they really do know what happened; indeed, strangely, we take this fact and instantly reassemble the story into a new narrative that makes sense to us. . . even though none of the pieces we use to reassemble that narrative are true.

And that brings us to the twist. Using a twist in a movie is very risky because a poorly done twist, i.e. one that isn’t organic to the story, feels cheap and tacked on and leaves the audience feeling cheated. But making a twist feel organic and still keeping the audience from seeing the twist too early is very difficult and often requires careful slight of hand.

Yet, despite this difficulty, Singer hides nothing. Indeed, from frame one, we are told this will be a mystery and the question will be “who killed Dean Keaton.” Thus, the audience is put on alert from the beginning. Then, throughout the film, Singer constantly gives clues as to Keyser Sӧze’s true identity. For example, Sӧze and Verbal have the same lighter and Verbal clearly is playing with Kujan -- something that should be out of character if he is who he says he is. Yet, the audience overlooks these clues because Verbal doesn't fit our preconceived notions about what a criminal mastermind must look like and act like. In other words, we simply find it impossible to believe that the meek cripple is the Satanesque villain we are looking for (Kujan, by the way, makes the same mistake and indeed tells Verbal repeatedly that a "stupid," "cripple" like Verbal could only be a pawn). Instead, we find it much easier to believe that the menacing, brooding Dean Keaton is Sӧze, just as Kujan urges us to believe.


Which one is the master criminal?


Singer takes a huge risk here that the audience will see the twist coming and link Verbal to Sӧze right away -- which would ruin the movie. He even adds to that risk by warning us that we need to look beyond our perceived notions. He does this when Verbal warns Kujan: “for the cops, there’s no mystery to the street. If you think some guy did it, then you’re going to find you’re right.” And that is exactly what we do in the film: we size up the suspects and we pick the guy it usually would be -- Dean Keaton. Singer deserves tremendous credit for correctly calculating that we would ignore the clues.

That’s why this is easily one of the smartest films you will ever see. It is so tightly written, so daring in its choices, so mistake free, so perfectly acted, and so expertly assembled that a movie that could have been a horrific jumble in other hands turns into an intelligent puzzle in Singer’s hands. And Singer takes real risks and overcomes them brilliantly by skillfully deceiving us with our own preconceptions. The American Film Institute ranked this the tenth best mystery film of all time, I would rank it higher.

Not bad for a six million dollar film no one wanted to fund.

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