Friday April 3,1998
Movie Reviews
9A
Action-adventure meets emotion
By Jeremy M. Doherty
jdoherty@kansan.com
Kanson movie critic
Gotta love these touchy-feely action movies.
Apparently, Bruce Willis got tired of doing so many hardcore adrenaline rides such as Die Hard and The Last Boy Scout.
FBI agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis) and an autistic boy Simon (Mike Hughes) star in the action-adventure movie *Mercury Rising*. Contributed photo
In Mercury Rising, he still gets to scowl at the bad guys and shell out his patented brand of brutal justice. But the character he plays struggles with feelings of guilt and futility after he bungles an undercover job. He is wounded, emotionally.
Sniff, sniff.
Actually, the movie has a pretty intriguing concept backing it up. A 9-year-old autistic savant named Simon, who is well-played by child actor Miko Hughes, cracks Mercury, a previously unbreakable military intelligence code.
The bureaucrats, led by a perfectly snakey Alec Baldwin, are in a panic. Many of their undercover agents including one who has worked his way into Saddam Hussein's inner circle are now potential sitting ducks. What to do?
Unfortunately, screenwriters Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal don't have any fresh ideas. Their solution is to have Baldwin order a hit on the emotionally stunted lad and his parents.
Silly me. If I were Baldwin, I would have had the computer geeks change the code, and then I would have called the compromised agents in from the field. After that I'd crack open a six-pack of Bud and simply chalk it to another bad week in the world of intelligence.
Mercury Rising
Kansan Rating: **1/2 out of
****
Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Rated R for brief but intense violence and profanity
Of course, then we wouldn't have the distinct pleasure of watching Willis enter the scene as tormented FBI agent Art Jeffries. Turns out the high-tech killer dispatched by Baldwin somehow managed not to kill little Simon. Now, the junior Rain Man is prey to Baldwin's predator.
Because his earlier botched mission involved the death of two teenagers, Art feels a certain devotion to Simon. From that point on, Willis dodges bullets and busts jaws as usual, only this time he is lugging around a squirming, screaming kid in one arm.
Whoopee.
Mercury Rising just doesn't cut it because it isn't intense. Simon has a peculiar habit of wandering off into traffic, only to be rescued from death each time at the last minute by Art. it's all contrived — a boring series of car chases and bulging neck muscles without any true power.
Director Harold Becker forgets the best thrillers keep the audience guessing. Vertigo worked because we wanted to find out how far Jimmy Stewart would pursue his obsession with a dead woman. In *Mercury Rising*, the only question is how many bones Willis will crush before the bad guys give up.
Despite being so typical, there is a deliciously perverse scene toward
the end where Willis tortures Baldwin mentally by tampering with the guy's expensive wine collection.
With such star power at his disposal, it's too bad Becker didn't push his writers for more scenes like that.
Greased lightnin' strikes Travolta, audiences again
By Jeremy M. Doherty jdoherty@kansan.com Kanson movie critic
If there were any doubts as to the star status of John Travolta, the 1970s hit Grease should erase those concerns.
During the show-stopping production number, 'Greased Lightin', an unbelievably lean Travolta sings with his buddies about fast cars and hot girls. Flashing a dazzling grin and shaking his hips, he reminds us of the joyous, energetic youth who first conquered Hollywood 20 years ago.
Other than a digitally-overhauled soundtrack, this is very much the same corny, frivolous musical that broke box-office records in 1978. Surprisingly, it's probably a better movie today.
In 1978, audiences were being treated to a series of graphic, sobering films like Taxi Driver and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Even crowd-pleasers like Star Wars and Rocky had a vaguely adult, self-aware aura about them. The fact that a musical could so shamelessly defy that sophistication (in an era when most were declaring the musical a dead genre) is impressive, to say the least.
Based on the hit Broadway musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Grease chronicles
Grease
Kansan Rating: *** out of **** Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Rated PG for mild thematic elements.
the up-and-down relationship of Danny (Travolta) and Sandy (Olivia Newton-John), two lovey-lovey kids who fall in love during the dog days of summer. Back at Rydell High. Danny is the leader of the leather-jacketed T-Birds, a group of duck-tailed reprobates.
To Danny's surprise, Sandy has transferred to Rydell, and he decides that he can't afford to look like a romantic schmee in front of his buds.
Like most musicals, *Grease's* plot is woefully simplistic. Oddly, that only adds to its charm today. What really matters is the music, and on that level, the movie delivers. Even the title song, written and performed by Barry Gibb, is an infectious tune.
Sandy meanwhile attempts to fit in with Rizzo (Stockard Channing) and the Pink Ladies, and Danny veers between wooing Sandy and giving her the cold shoulder.
The appeal of *Grease* is that its makers were clearly aware what they were doing was silly, a rejection of the mature attitudes of the day. Its impact can be felt today, as the similarly
Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny (John Travolta) embrace in the re-release of 1978 boxoffice buster Grease. Contributed photo
corny Titanic recently triumphed over more serious contenders at the Oscars. Everything, from Frankie Avalon's serenade of Frenchy (Didi Conn) to Danny and Sandy's cheesy drive-in date, has been calculated as a send-up of musicals and 1950s exploitation flicks.
At the advance screening I attended, the folks were enjoying themselves immensely. Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Grease depends upon audience participation for its success. Be sure to check your ego at the door.
By Jeremy M. Dointery
jdoherty@kansan.com
Kansan movie critic
The idea of Robert Altman, the king of alternative cinema, directing a John Grisham potbobler seems to make as much sense as leaving Marilyn Manson in charge of a Sunday school class.
That's the story behind The Gingerbread Man, however, and the gamble mostly pays off as the director of Nashville applies his loopy, off-kilter style to an otherwise standard legal thriller. Although the work isn't seamless, Altman more than anyone previously succeeds at nailing the Southern-fried hippiness that has long been a trademark of Grisham's best books.
Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) is a fast-talking, publicity-courting lawyer practicing in Savannah, Ga. When he's not playing the public relations game in front of television cameras, he's flirting with his assistant (Daryl Hannah) and trying to maintain a relationship with his two children, who now live with his ex-wife.
After a dinner party, an inebriated Magruder ends up in bed with Mallory Doss (Embeth Davidtz), who helped cater the gala. This turns out to be pretty convenient for Mallory, whose uncultured father, Dixon (Robert Duvall), has been breaking into her house and occasionally swiping her car.
The noble-minded Magruder assists in the detention and incarceration of her loony dad, who lives in the woods with a group of fel-
Gingerbread Man
Kansan Rating: *** out of *****
Running time: 2 hours
Rated R for profanity, sexual situations and violence.
ows who look like rejects from Deliverance. Later, this crew of mountain men busts Dixon out of the mental hospital, and Magruder and Mallory find themselves the targets of their vengeance.
Previous Grisham movies had a bland, homogenized feel that failed to exploit their Southern settings. That's not a problem with Gingerbread Man. Altmant reelies heavily on Georgian attitudes and customs, creating an eerie setting that recalls the best of David Lynch.
In fact, up until a silly kidnapping plot arises in the last half of the movie, Gingerbread Man's courtroom tricks were almost arbitrary. Then Altman simply loses interest in his story, and the movie resembles nothing so much as hack work
But if it's hack work, Altman still keeps mainstream audiences at bay with his directing signatures (long takes, roving cinematography and intentionally uneven editing). He also continues to find excuses to put his female actors in various stages of undress, although there's nothing on the order of Juliane Moore's infamous "nopanties" scene from Short Cuts.
Shakespeare vet Branagh gets to chew on a Southern drawl as Magruder, and he proves he doesn't need ruffled shirts and bare bodkins to hold our attention.
First-time director depicts dysfunctional family in film
By Jeremy M. Doherty jdoherty@kansan.com Kansan movie critic
The idea of Gary Oldman, scenery-chewer extraordinaire, stepping behind the camera is probably enough to really get those hemorrhoids churning.
The catch is that *Nil by Mouth*, Oldman's directing and writing debut, is practically devoid of any pretensions. The result is a flawed but undeniably gripping look at a poverty-strecken London family tormented by substance abuse and violence.
Wisely, Oldman shies away from offering trite solutions to these ageless problems. The result is one of the most sorrowful, painfully honest movies to come from a first-time director.
His wife, Valery (Kathy Burke), lives in constant terror of her husband.
Oldman also keeps his eye on Valery's brother, Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles), who lives in fear of his brother-in-law after he nearly bites his nose off.
The focus is on Ray (Ray Winstone), a heavy-drinking, foulmouthed brute who laughs it up with his buddies at the pub and terrorizes his family at home.
Nil by Mouth
Kansan rating: *** out of *****
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Rated R for pervasive strong language and depictions of alcoholism and domestic abuse
Billy is also a heroin addict, and he finds financial support for his habit from his well-meaning mother, Janet (Laila Morse).
In a scene that speaks volumes about the nature of drug abuse, Janet drives her son to a pusher but won't watch while Billy shoots up in the backseat.
Filming largely with a hand-held
fimera, Oldman's movie achieves
an effectively gritty style. Bathing
his actors in yellow fluorescent
lights, *Nil by Mouth* has the
unflinching realism of home movies.
Winstone offer a searing performance soaked in anger and vulgarity. Oldman effectively peels back the layers revealing Ray as an insecure, lonely man. The other actors also offer edgy and believable portraits.
Reportedly based on his own experiences growing up in London, the emotions in Nil by Mouth are clearly personal. In a way, that becomes one of the movie's faults. Oldman is so driven on exercising these demons the movie lacks any texture.