We Own the Night
dir. James Gray
Set in New York City’s drug wars of the 1980s, We Own the
Night looks like a typical urban thriller, the kind that
invariably stars Matt Damon and/or Joaquin Phoenix and/or Mark
Wahlberg. It is an urban thriller starring the latter two, but
writer-director James Gray keeps a quiet reserve that makes the movie
credible and moving. His New York is cold, dirty, and damp. His actors
have ill-trimmed nails.
Phoenix plays the manager of a fancy, druggy club run by the Russian
mafia. Wahlberg plays his brother, who is also a cop. Robert Duvall
(grizzled, awesome) plays their dad, who is also New York’s chief of
police. Family get-togethers are tense. Then the cop brother gets
promoted to the narcotics squad and the bar brother is offered a cut in
a big coke deal. Everything gets tenser.
The movie’s refusal to drift into shoot-’em-up histrionics keeps us
believing, engaged, and on edge. The obligatory car chase is more
harrowing because it’s clumsy and slow—it’s not hard to imagine
yourself behind the wheel. The scene when the bar brother goes to the
Russian mafia’s cocaine factory is a study in sinister details—a
tattoo glimpsed through a ripped curtain, torn wallpaper, and the tip
of a letter opener sticking out of a man’s sleeve.
And the performances! Phoenix and Wahlberg are fine in a manly and
mumbling way, but the supporting actors make the movie: Robert Duvall’s
minimalist gruffness is improbably charming. Alex Veadov plays the
baddest bad guy with such placid menace that the story you hear about
him at the beginning of the movie—involving a severed head and
some misplaced genitals—sounds about right. He might be a
fictional character, but I’m still afraid to write anything that would
piss him off. BRENDAN KILEY
The Darjeeling Limited
dir. Wes Anderson
In keeping with Wes Anderson’s recent trajectory, The Darjeeling
Limited is maddening. There are, as always, moments when you feel
you’re watching the work of an indisputable genius; unfortunately,
those moments are tempered, and occasionally overwhelmed, by long
stretches of inane chatter and reflexive quirkiness. Stylistically, the
film is a thing of beauty, with India’s vibrant colors providing much
for Anderson’s widescreen lens to capture. But as in The Royal
Tenenbaums and, most glaringly, The Life Aquatic, that
style is squandered on a story that refuses to move beyond a
superficial sheen.
That’s not to say that The Darjeeling Limited is a bad
movie—it’s half bad, with its sharp first reels gradually
undermined by the creeping feeling that Anderson, along with his
cowriters Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, are unconcerned with
where they lead us. Following three estranged brothers (Owen Wilson,
Adrien Brody, and Schwartzman) on “some sort of spiritual quest”
through India, the film’s early moments onboard the cramped Darjeeling
Limited rail line are strange and wonderful. Each brother is
damaged—whether emotionally or, in Wilson’s case,
physically—and their interplay suggests hilarious depth yet to be
explored.
Once the boys are sent off the train, however, The Darjeeling
Limited can’t help but disintegrate. Reaching, jarringly, for
tragedy in the third act, the film’s descent to earth is botched,
completely failing to earn the emotional manipulation it forces on us.
Anderson obviously wants to grow up as a filmmaker (in the first scene
he leaves Bill Murray and, presumably, his previous films, behind at
the station), but just like his characters, he’s unwilling to put in
the work to achieve that goal. By the time the brothers literally shed
their baggage, all you’re left with is quirkiness masking as spiritual
reckoning. If that’s the point, it’s no longer funny. BRADLEY
STEINBACHER
The Final Season
dir. David M. Evans
The Final Season is one of those extremely earnest baseball
movies where nothing happens but baseball. And emotions. There is no
way you won’t be bored, unless you’re one of those extremely earnest
people who are into baseball in a really corny way. Like, maybe you
have a vanity plate that says “#1SLUGR.” And in your den there’s a
wooden plaque that reads, “On the eighth day God created baseball,” and
when you look at it you can’t help but chuckle (every time), but then
you also give a solemn little nod. Because he totally did, you
know? (You like to think of God as the big head coach in the sky.) And
you love it when you’re sitting on your gramps’s porch and he’s talking
about his old Sarge, and how Sarge used to say things like, “Ya know,
those old timers say that baseball’s the only game on earth where the
object is to get home.” And then you start crying, and Gramps makes you
go inside before the whole fucking neighborhood hears you.
Anyway, it’s like that.
Kent Stock (the ever-doughy Sean Astin, who also executive produced)
arrives in Norway, Iowa, to serve as assistant baseball coach at the
local high school, under the legendary Jim Van Scoyoc (Powers
Boothe—YESSSSS!). Thanks to Van Scoyoc, and a preponderance of
heart, these bumpkins and farmers’ sons have managed to win an
astounding 19 consecutive state titles. In fact, they “grow baseball
players” in Norway, “like corn.” Now, the Evil School Board wants to
close Norway High and ship the students to a bigger school 20 miles
away. But “what about our local economy?” AND WHAT ABOUT THE
BASEBALL?
The movie has a sentimental ax to grind about the death of
small-town America (“You don’t get it, do ya? Kids in small towns like
Norway have somethin’ special!”). The writing is terrible. The baseball
is endless. But, like I said, you’ll enjoy it if you really, really
love baseball. Or hate entertainment. Or is there a difference? LINDY
WEST
