27. 2007
reviews 17
09.27.2007 = JAYPLAY
THE BRAVE ONE
Making The Brave One is like trying to cook an oatmeal without eggs. The director has all the finest ingredients to work with—imaginative camera work shooting proven actors in beautiful NYC—but he forgets to pick up the plot that holds all the expensive stuff together.
Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) is a radio personality who hosts a show about the joys of living the New York life. But when her fiancée is beaten to death in a senseless act of violence, she turns fearful of the city she once loved.
So far so good.
Her paranoia leads her to buy a
9 MM and a few scenes later she finds herself in the middle of a supermarket holdup, in which she, never having fired a gun, shoots the crook square in the chest through a glass of olive oil. Hmmm.
Hmmm...
Somehow Bain, never a crime victim until her late forties, begins encountering about one bad guy per week, all of whom she kills. It's just all too convenient. After all, this isn't pre-Giuliani New York that we're talking about.
Then it starts getting really screwy. Bain begins to address the mystery vigilante on her radio show. She befriends Mercer (Terrence Howard), who is characterized as an accomplished detective, but in all actuality needs some criminology training. When Erica loses blood in a fight at the crime scene, Mercer doesn't even go so far as to collect it, showing that the screenwriters don't live with us in the CSI era, but are stuck in "Murder She Wrote" times.
It's too bad for Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard, whose solid performances still don't eclipse the other filmic elements that come together to make a product that is ultimately difficult to digest.
★★
Ian Stanford
EASTERN PROMISES
Eastern Promises is one unstable animal. Captivating at times, the movie unhinges itself with glaring inconsistencies that I would guess are a result of budget issues. As a mob drama, the whackings have an inherited importance. But while half of the action scenes look like the polished American History X, the other half made me think of the Kung Fu satire Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.
A take on Russian
A take off nausea from organized crime, the movie looks in on a powerful family whose forte is fixing the problems that it usually creates itself. The family members are all stereotypes of Russians, led by the boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son Krill (Vincent Cassel), who both take vodka with their chess. Their issue de jour is taking care of the accidental pregnancy of a prostitute, whose baby has fallen into the hands of an estrogenic midwife (Naomi Watts).
Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), the family's right hand man, is sent off to do the dirty work. Always the one for thought before action, Nikolai is somehow able to schmoose his way into Watts' heart with an accent that sounds like a non-comical Borat. But before the baby is sent down the river, Nikolai experiences a change of heart that I would've thought incapable for a former KGB Agent to have. He is also able to convince Krill to join him and turn against his father.
And then, when the time is right for a coup against the manipulative Semyon... it ends. No surreptitious lamb chop poisoning or a gathering up of the reserves to help rush the mansion in what would be a brilliant tour de force victory for righteousness. Just the credits. Such an awkward ending after only 100 minutes further suggests that director David Crorenberg ran out of money. For us, a logical ending is just another promise that Eastern Promises can keep.
★★
lan Stanford
LAST CALL for new Bitch and Moan writers.Write your own questions and answers and submit them to jayplay07@gmail.com. CUT OFF: October 4,2007
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