Milk

2/4 stars

Note: I don't believe that you can have "spoilers" for a historical drama, so I wrote this review without regard for those concerns. If it turns out I'm wrong, and you can have spoilers... then this review's got 'em.

My objection to Milk may seem a little strange. I thought, first of all, that Sean Penn was exceptional in the title role. Without hardly changing his appearance at all, Penn is nonetheless completely swallowed by the character, embodying a unique set of mannerisms, a new persona. He has impressed me in a number of movies so far, Mystic River, I Am Sam, 21 Grams… but it wasn’t until this one that I realized how completely new he is in each performance. Actors ranging from the dispensable Dane Cook to the formidable Al Pacino have a stage persona, a set of expectations that they will often fall back on. Those like Penn, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Anthony Hopkins (to name a few) who always seem to manage a strong presence without one are impressive to me. Similarly, I’m impressed by the craft that goes into the creation of a successful period piece. A film set in the 1970s is as difficult in many ways to make convincing as one set in 1200, or in Middle Earth. Obviously my knowledge of the 70s is mostly based on movies, but still… In these areas, Milk is successful.

Nonetheless, I didn’t think it was a very good film. I’m a little more writer-centric, I think, than most reviewers you’re bound to read, but my problem with Milk was one I’ve never encountered before. The problem is that I don’t really think the story has a rising action and a falling action. In fact, I don’t think it has much dramatic structure at all. Yes, there is a brief denouement that follows Milk’s death, but this is so obviously necessary (and uninspired) that they get no credit for it. Essentially, Milk just happens until it’s done happening. The first scene is an arbitrary point in time; it almost feels like an in media res. From there, one thing follows another. There’s no change in pace, no dramatic tension, and as a consequence there are no stakes. Milk was a passionate man, and you’re interested in his struggle, but you don’t know what his goal within the context of the movie is. If you know the history behind the character of Harvey Milk then you already know that he will be elected to the board of supervisors and eventually assassinated by Dan White. I assume my knowledge on the subject is roughly average, and I didn’t know any more by way of details than that, but it was enough to rob the movie of any degree of suspense. This isn’t an inevitable feature of a historical drama, but when you make the whole question of the movie “Will he or won’t he do the thing that is the only reason he’s famous enough to have a movie,” you’re in a bad position.

This brings us to the summation, which seems to me to be the part of the review where I say good things about bad movies and vice versa. To that end: There’s a lot to like in Milk. Josh Brolin as Dan White is nearly as good as Penn, and I was glad that the movie resisted the easy temptation to play it as Milk being assassinated for being gay. The actors are excellent, the production is terrific, the dialogue snappy. For all I know, most people are likely to agree with all those rave reviews out there. But I don’t think that Milk works on a basic level, so I call it a failure. Last year, I wrote a 1 star review of No Country for Old Men, expecting to be shouted down by anyone I knew who cared enough to read it. What happened instead was that I heard, for the first time, from a lot of people who agreed with me. I’m looking forward to the feedback on this one…

In the Valley of Elah

2.5/4 stars

In the Valley of Elah is a movie that tries to be a mystery, a tragedy and a political statement. As a mystery it is dense and unpredictable (if somewhat dry), as a tragedy it is well acted and strikingly composed. However, the film's political agenda derails its success in other areas.

Tommy Lee Jones is the protagonist, a father who tries to solve his son's murder even as he grieves. His quiet intensity and constrained emotion are the film's greatest asset, and a reminder of Jones' incredible talent. He plays a character struggling with many emotions; anger, guilt, courage and determination, and he balances them all with great restraint. Charlize Theron gives a well drawn performance as the ambivalent police detective who helps him. The supporting cast includes numerous talented actors and strikes the right note as well, even if this often only requires them to be somber.

Whether or not they agree with the film's political sentiments (a condemnation of war in general and the Iraq war in particular), viewers will find that they rob the film's conclusion of the emotional payoff we should be feeling. Instead of playing as ingenious plot twist, the mystery's solution seems like an arbitrary deux es machina, designed to take us by surprise in the most tragic way possible. The use of a flashback at the end to twist the knife undermines the spare and direct storytelling style that the movie has established, and its powerful final image seems an unearned contrivance. Paul Haggis, while a highly talented writer and director, also has a history of such heavy-handedness (see Crash). In the Valley of Elah is another entry in his catalogue that overshoots the correct balance between drama and message.

No Country For Old Men

1/4 stars

Having already heard the generous praise of this movie from all corners, I spent its entire two hours looking for something to like about it. Sadly, I was unsuccessful. This film has no strong themes, no real character development, almost no music, and no resolution. Not to say that it wasn't well made, that it didn't effectively establish suspense and that it wasn't at least somewhat engrossing, but does that matter? Are those qualities supposed to be enough? In this film, the characters are their actions, nothing more. Like just about everyone else, I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers' Fargo. This is not that film. It lacks the moral center, the subtle interactions between people, the conflict of ideals, and dozens of other things that made Fargo so good. Though the Tommy Lee Jones characters shares some traits with Frances McDormand's, he isn't really a full fledged character, so much as a mouthpiece for an unrealistically bleak worldview. Likewise, Bardem's character is merely an embodiment of this. The fact that he runs around flipping a coin doesn't make him an "agent of fate" as has so often been stated, it merely means that he thinks of himself as one. Though Bardem's performance is good (at what little he's given to do), the character isn't original, just another manifestation of the brainless Hollywood villain who runs around blasting everything in sight. It's as if they thought that by letting him stand unopposed they were creating a new and ingeniously original character. Having considered what the movie has to offer, I see no reason to move from my initial judgement coming out of the theater. No Country For Old Men is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Written February 4, 2008.

American Gangster

3/4 stars

A viewer coming to American Gangster expecting to see something like a formula (or even an exceptional) crime film will be disappointed to find it a somewhat different kind of movie. This isn't an operatic bloodbath, it's more of a biopic. Denzel Washington is top shelf of course, and it's not that he doesn't play a powerful and charismatic personality, but he doesn't do it in the way we have come to expect. Russell Crowe meanwhile, who I have rather pointedly disliked up until recently, gives his second inspired performance of the past year, after 3:10 to Yuma. Though separated for most of the film, when the two meet face to face, the result is a scene that I have a feeling will be well remembered. If this movie has a weakness though, it's that we can't really connect with Washington's character in the way we want to. We never get to see him hurt or challenged. In retrospect, I am also uncomfortable with the almost completely positive light in which the titular gangster is shown, given that he is a real person, and the fact that he apparently contributed a great deal to the making of the film. There are two sides to every story, but this film seems to be a little unbalanced toward the "outlaw as hero" interpretation.

Written February 21, 2008.