The Portable Door: Unevenly framed

The Portable Door (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

First impressions can be crucial, and this film’s first act is needlessly messy.

 

Director Jeffrey Walker’s initially frantic, quasi-slapstick tone is matched by performances that are all over the place; one gets a sense that everybody involved is desperate to prove that This Movie Will Be Fun.

 

Paul (Patrick Carpenter) and Sophie (Sophie Wilde) realize they're in a lot of trouble,
after being dumped into a huge, door-laden sub-level of J.W. Welles & Co.

The resulting impression instead veers toward exasperation, and viewers are likely to give up after about 20 minutes. That would be a shame, because — once Walker and his cast settle down — this larkish fantasy becomes much more palatable.

Leon Ford’s screenplay is adapted from British author Tom Holt’s 2003 novel of the same title, first in what has become his eight-book (and counting) “J.W. Wells & Co.” series, referencing the venerable London firm where mysterious doings take place.

 

Our entry point, as this film begins, is Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson), a hapless failure-to-launch who is light-years away from getting his life together. Reduced to seeking employment at a local café, his attempt to do so is interrupted by a string of coincidences: His alarm doesn’t go off, his trousers have a stain, his shoelace breaks — twice — and his toaster blows up. 

 

When Paul finally reaches the queue of would-be baristas hoping for the same job, he’s distracted by an enthusiastic “Great to see you again!” from a jovial fellow who claims to have been one of his university professors — but whom Paul doesn’t recognize —and then by a scruffy little dog that steals his scarf.

 

Paul’s attempt to retrieve the scarf terminates in an alley — the dog having vanished — just outside a partially open door marked “Applicants.” This turns out to be a side entrance to J.W. Wells & Co., where Paul finds himself on a couch alongside the well-appointed and rudely stuffy Sophie Pettingel (Sophie Wilde), one of apparently several individuals angling for an intern’s slot.

 

To Paul’s surprise, he’s summoned next — by name — by middle manager Dennis Tanner (Sam Neill), for an odd interview led by CEO Humphrey Wells (Christoph Waltz). Additional board members Nienke Van Spee (Rachel House), Countess Judy (Miranda Otto) and Casimir Suslowicz (Chris Pang) observe silently. Everybody looks sadly amused by this obviously under-talented applicant, until Paul mentions the series of odd coincidences that led to his presence.

 

And, just like that, Paul is hired, to begin immediately … despite his lack of worthwhile skills. He soon learns that J.W. Wells is a wonderland of weird: Van Spee’s hair has a life of its own; receptionist Rosie Tanner (Jessica De Gouw) seems unusually fond of a stapler; and a baby dragon can be spotted at odd moments.

The Commuter: Catch the next train

The Commuter (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

When Lewis Carroll’s Alice quite reasonably suggests that one can’t believe impossible things, the Queen of Hearts insists that “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The queen would have been right at home with this movie.

When Joanna (Vera Farmiga) — a total stranger — sits opposite Michael (Liam Neeson)
and proposes a mysterious "what if?" scenario, he assumes that she's merely passing the
time during their commute. Increasingly unlikely events quickly will demonstrate that
she's completely serious...

Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Commuter is a hilariously ludicrous start to the cinematic new year: a thriller that makes absolutely no sense and survives on momentum alone ... until it doesn’t.

The script — assign the blame to Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle — sails right past improbable and far-fetched, and heads straight into preposterous. It demands a suspension of disbelief far beyond the capability of mere mortals.

Theater ushers will have quite a task after each screening, carefully scooping up all the viewer eyeballs that have rolled right out of their sockets.

This storyline probably began with the intriguing notion that regular commuters — despite sharing (in this case) the same New York train, five days a week, 52 weeks a year — really don’t know much about the folks with whom they exchange cheerful greetings twice each day. What secrets might be concealed behind those superficial smiles?

Insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson) finds out one day, when his late-afternoon trip home is interrupted by an enigmatic woman (Vera Farmiga, as Joanna) who sits in the opposite chair and strikes up a conversation. She behaves like a friendly, flirty psychologist, posing a “What would you do for $100,000?” scenario.

Michael indulges her (already unlikely, on a New York City train).

Perhaps, being well read, he recognizes this riff on Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story, “Button, Button,” in which a mysterious man gives a poverty-stricken couple a box with a button, promising $200,000 if they push the button, which will kill “someone whom you don’t know.” (It was filmed as an episode of the 1985-86 revival of The Twilight Zone, and then again in 2009, as the feature film The Box.)

Joanna departs at the next station, with an ambiguous comment that suggests her scenario isn’t all that fictitious. Michael, curious, investigates ... and finds a percentage of the cash, hidden right where she promised. At which point, she calls his smart phone, insists that he now has no choice but to comply with her demands ... lest his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) and son be harmed.

Michael’s task: to find the person on the train who “doesn’t belong,” is carrying a bag, and answers to the name of “Prin.” Before the train reaches the end of the line.

Escape Plan: A breakout surprise

Escape Plan (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes it pays to approach a film with diminished expectations.

After the comic book nonsense of both Expendables flicks, not to mention January’s distastefully trashy Bullet to the Head, I held out little hope for Sylvester Stallone’s recent return to the big screen.

Although trapped in a maximum-security prison that offers little hope for any sort of
escape plan, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone, left) and Emil Rottmayer (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) have a few ideas ... all of them highly dangerous, of course, and
with little chance of success. But it's not like they have anything else to do...

And although Arnold Schwarzenegger cleverly parodied his advancing age in The Last Stand, also released in January, box-office disinterest made that little action flick’s title seem prophetic, with respect to his career.

I therefore haven’t been surprised by the disinterest in Escape Plan, which arrives in theaters today after a rather lackluster publicity campaign.

Which just goes to show the folly of jumping to conclusions. Swedish-born director Mikael Håfström has uncorked a tidy little thriller, which gets much of its juice from a clever script by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller. The premise is intriguing, the execution is engaging — if occasionally burdened by exploitation flick clichés — and, yes, Stallone and Schwarzenegger acquit themselves honorably.

Indeed, they’re perfectly cast in this twisty prison saga, which seems to have been shaped with their strengths — and acting limitations — in mind. Håfström allows them to do what they do best, and they do it well; the result certainly won’t be more than a footnote in cinema history, but it’s a reasonably entertaining way to spend a night at the movies.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) has a most unusual career: He’s a structural engineer who specializes in prison design, or — more precisely — the weaknesses of such institutions. As the “field agent” half of the Los Angeles-based security firm Breslin-Clark, he allows himself to be incarcerated into various prisons as an apparent felon, in order to escape and thus expose design and (more frequently) staffing weaknesses.

Although ostensibly on his own, Breslin always is monitored by his operational partners: handler Abigail Ross (Amy Ryan) and genius hacker Hush (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson). Partner Lester Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) acts as the company “face,” securing the assignments and managing the tidy sums that Breslin charges for his talents.

Following the completion of yet another routine assignment, Breslin is offered a tantalizing challenge by CIA operative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe). Wanting to remove the political stink left by a decade’s worth of nasty headlines concerning Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, shadowy U.S. black-ops agencies have collaborated to construct a top-secret über-prison at an undisclosed location, well away from prying media eyes. The goal is to keep its dangerous occupants locked up, no matter how clever — or desperate — they might be.

That’s where Breslin comes in: If he can’t break out, then All Concerned will be satisfied that their “detention center” lives up to its promise.