Cops and Robbers

September brings a whole new season, and with it many changes. Around the country, leaves change color and fall from the trees, the sun sets earlier and earlier, and Hollywood starts churning out the movies they think will actually have a chance of making an impression on critics and moviegoers. Yes, hidden amid the glut of Summer blockbusters and early-year critical fodder have been several intriguing films, including The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud, Fruitvale Station and The Way, Way Back. But with the soon-to-be-released likes of 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street... I could go on, but you get the picture. The coming months are so jam-packed with Oscar bait that even movies that would have been sure things a year or so ago will almost certainly find themselves on the outside looking in. Autumn (and winter afterward) brings with it the Big Boys, and the first officially serious candidate to rear its head is Denis Villeneuve's ensemble title Prisoners.

Jackman trying out as the "older, weathered" Bruce Wayne, perhaps?

In his follow-up to the Academy Award-nominated Canadian Incendies, Villeneuve takes his all-star cast and pits them against an unenviable foe when the daughters of friends Keller Dover (a poorly-monikered Hugh Jackman) and Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) are kidnapped in broad daylight near their suburban homes. The police and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) apprehend prime suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano), only to discover no evidence linking the mentally-underdeveloped man-child with the crime. Days pass without any clues, and with the families driven mad by the tragedy, Keller decides that the only way he will see his daughter alive is if he takes matters into his own hands.

Oh, wait, he just has that face all the time.

It's the above-mentioned veteran actors - plus talented performers like Viola Davis, Maria Bello, and Melissa Leo - who give Prisoners it's most compelling strength, with Jackman front and center as a distraught father who desperate choices in an attempt to rescue his daughter. Since Jackman so often appears in relatively simple action films like The Wolverine and Real Steel, it's always wonderful to be surprised by the acting muscles he doesn't often flex, even if they belong to such a dark and despondent plot. Jackman owns his material, and while I am ragging on him in the photo comments about his stone-carved angry face, he does so much with vocal inflection and his actions that it makes up for any other weaknesses in his performance. Gyllenhaal also stands out, though a lack of character development means that those easily-recognizable demons from his past (which manifest themselves in neck tattoos and conspicuous eye twitches) are never explained. The film splits its time between those two actors, and not once do they fail to keep you hooked.

A little help from the rest of the cast.

Now if only the rest of the cast had been treated as reverently as the two leads. After the first act, I assumed Dano would be my favorite actor in this. Besides the fact that he has some great films on his resume (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks and Looper just to start), Dano is a natural talent who is really going into new territory with this role. As the mentally-disabled prime suspect, he puts real fear in the audience in his early scenes. But sadly, despite still playing a major role in the remaining acts, he is relegated to the background. The rest of the supporting cast is also misused, most getting one or two front-and-center scenes before fading back into obscurity. It's certainly not due to talent issues; this is one of the best-collected casts in recent memory, with more than enough ability to keep things interesting. Given more to do, they might have helped improve the film's mood, as well as director Villeneuve's pacing. Instead, they are mostly wasted.

He still can't believe he graduated from the Police Academy.

And it's the hands of Villeneuve where Prisoners gets a little sketchy. He gets some great performances out of his actors, and knows how to perfectly frame a shot. The director's technical prowess is certainly not my concern here. However, he might have been given a bit too much control over the movie's final release this past weekend. For one, the film is two-and-a-half hours long. Typically, I don't care about length; unlike many ADHD-riddled moviegoers, I can actually sit through a movie that's longer than an hour and a half and not be fidgety by time the credits roll, so long as the movie is actually good. I'm willing to sit through such a long film when the time is actually used to tell the story, as opposed to relatively short films who use so much filler you have to wonder about why they got made in the first place. Sometimes I even think that standard two-hour movies SHOULD add another twenty minutes to flesh out certain characters or elaborate on particular plot points, which would have made all the difference in the world. But Villeneuve tries to mimic the pacing of award-winning thrillers like The Usual Suspects with mixed results. Scenes are deliberately paced, there are far too many side-plots, and the red herrings become far too distracting as the story leads to a formulaic, mediocre ending. By my reckoning, an entire subplot containing a copycat kidnapper could have been cut without any major issues, perhaps to the benefit of allowing the side characters to become more significant (okay, I'm done with that rant). I'm rarely a fan of studios clamping down on a director's "artistic vision", but this was a situation where Warner Brothers perhaps should have stepped in and requested some cuts to the final product.

Obligatory pointing-of-the-gun cliche.

Perhaps Villeneuve just got a little overly-excited about directing his first American feature. He's still a talented director, but his treatment of Prisoners wasn't his best effort at expressing that ability. He's got a great cast, a solid story and the perfect mood, but the material doesn't quite gel in the way it really ought to. It's still a decent flick, and one I'd recommend for a decent DVD perusal. But awards bait this is not, likely forgotten in a few months time. It's truly a shame, as with the talent involved, it could have easily turned into one of the year's best. In a nutshell, that  is the difference between potential and the real world.

Open Letters Monthly: Grown Ups 2

Couldn't we have another Hangover movie instead?

Grown Ups was not just a surprise hit when it was released three years ago, but also the biggest-grossing film for star Adam Sandler. With his next few projects garnering mixed reviews and negative box office receipts, he got together the old team from that 2010 hit and put together the aptly-named sequel (his first actual sequel as well) Grown Ups 2.

Lenny Feder and his family have moved to his New England hometown in an effort to lead a normal, low-key life with his friends Eric, Kurt and Higgy and their respective households. On the last day of school, each grown-up is provided with a challenge which educates them about how special their children are and just how good a job they have done as parents. But will rivalries old and new derail those new found discoveries?

Grown Ups 2 is directed by Dennis Dugan and stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Nick Swardson, Steve Austin, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph and Taylor Lautner.

Click here for the full review at Open Letters Monthly.

Stolen Time

Is it wrong that I actually wanted to see Abduction?

Don't get me wrong; I could care less that this film is the first project to be headlined by Twilight star Taylor Lautner as a leading man, as the pug-faced bodybuilder has done nothing to convince me that he's earned the shot. Being in a successful series of films based on an even more successful series of teen supernatural novels is NOT a recipe for standalone success; Kristen Stewart has had no tangible success outside of the Twilight movies and Robert Pattinson had to adapt another popular novel (in the great Water for Elephants) to star in another hit. No, Lautner was nowhere near the top of the list of reasons I had for wanting to see this film; it was instead his director and co-stars who baited me into the theater like a mouse to cheese. I've never seen a John Singleton film, but even a middle-class white boy can understand the impact he has had with the urban titles Poetic Justice and the Oscar-nominated Boyz n tha Hood. And the talent piled around Lautner? Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello and Michael Nyqvist are all top-notch performers whose presence spoke to me and guaranteed that I would be seeing this film as soon as I could fit it into my schedule.

Movie appealing to teens? Guaranteed liberal cell phone usage

Nathan Harper (Lautner) is a normal suburban teenager. He's on the wrestling team in high school, crushes on his classmate/neighbor Karen (Lily Collins) and lives with his parents Kevin (Isaacs) and Mara (Bello). His is a fairly normal life, but he is also troubled in that he suffers from insomnia and rage issues brought on by dreams he has of witnessing a woman he vaguely recognizes being murdered. As a result Nathan doesn't always feel like he belongs in the life he leads, all more complicated by the discovery of his childhood photo on a missing person's website. Soon after learning that the people in his house are not his parents, Nathan and Karen find themselves on the run from a CIA group led by Frank Burton (Molina) and a Russian terrorist group under the leadership of Viktor Koslow (Nyqvist). If they are to have any chance, Nathan must learn about his real father and the reasons his life up to this point has been a lie.

Because every teenager need a motorcycle for... stuff

Unfortunately, there's very little good to say about Abduction. While the premise has some potential, it is utterly wasted thanks to a terrible screenplay by Stellastarr frontman Shawn Christensen. This man needs to stick to his musical career, as the film's horrid dialogue and pacing fail on every level. Almost is bad is Singleton's work as director. As far from the subjects of his earlier work as humanly possible, Abduction simply didn't have the right man in charge, as Singleton can't do for upper-class white kids what he did for lower-class urban black youths in the nineties. The whole teen angst movement that has become so popular in recent years seems over his head and one can't help but wonder what would happen if someone more in tune like Catherine Hardwicke had been in charge (of course she made the atrocious Red Riding Hood so she might not be the best example). Maybe it's time Singleton go back to writing his own screenplays, as he really doesn't seem to do well when it comes to other people's stories.

Sweaty Taylor Lautner is not a pretty thing

And yet this might have been slightly redeemable if Lautner had been a more polished lead actor; sadly, this was a bad first pick for a shot at a post-Twilight career. It's not the Lautner is a BAD actor, it's just that he can't overcome the trite material he's given to work with at this stage. Looking like a poor-man's Tom Cruise is not a good thing if you can't capture that early Tom Cruise charm, something he will desperately need if he wants success in the future. Lily Collins is no better, having not lived up to her billing as an actress to watch out for. As she was in this year's other snore-fest action film Priest, Collins is a goal and something to protect, but never breaks out of that shell and becomes her own character. She does get one moment to shine, but the scene is so overlooked by the filmmakers that it barely warrants a mention. Together, the pair make for an uninteresting set of leads, complete with an entirely implausible romance.

Trying to be slick. Failing.

And so it falls to the support cast to keep this film completely out of the gutter. However, despite the amazing amount of talent present even this group can't save this mess. Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina and Jason Isaacs are all high-impact talents who usually raise the quality of a film just by their mere presence. Look at Weaver in Paul; the perfect example of a perfectly-cast small role. And Molina was easily the best part of Prince of Persia, one of 2010's worst titles. Both are completely wasted here, with Molina not quite ringing true as a CIA operative who may or may not be trustworthy, and Weaver shockingly bland as one of Nathan's true allies. Isaacs has been good in just about every genre of film you can imagine, from the women's drama Nine Lives to the action thriller Green Zone to the sci-fi horror Event Horizon. He's always been amongst the best performers that nobody in the community recognizes, and part of the reason for that is his inability to pick the great, popular movies. In that way, he's kind of a male, English Robin Wright. Here, he's the best part of the film, only to be killed off early, along with the equally-talented Maria Bello. The biggest hope I had for this film was for Michael Nyqvist to make an impact on Hollywood. Nyqvist, best known for his leading role of Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larssen's Millennium trilogy, had an opportunity to become a known quantity to an American audience. Unfortunately, he suffers the same fate as Weaver, as what talent he brings to the table is countered by cliche characterization and the lousy script. He'll have another chance with the latest Mission Impossible film when it releases later this year, but it's still a major disappointment to see him wasted in this film.

Sadly, Excitement missed the last train to the filming of Abduction

Let's get this straight: Abduction is not a good film. It's not even a mediocre film. A cheap knockoff of the Jason Bourne series, this is a bad film that takes the talents present and cuts it all out until you cannot tell that it was ever there. One of the year's worst, it has the wrong director, a misused cast, and lead actor who can't yet cut it as a lead actor. Unlike the much more polished Pattinson, Lautner hasn't proven that he can yet carry a film with any degree of authority. Until he can, and until he starts to pick better material, I think I can safely avoid his theatrical releases for now and the immediate future.