Guns Without Roses: This month in North America, film violence aplenty, in
(from left): "Shoot 'Em Up", "The Brave One" and "Halloween".
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oberta
Flack once sung, "where is the love?", and while she probably didn't have
violent American movies in mind when she first sung the song with Donny Hathaway
back in the mid-1970's, her refrain could easily apply to some of the films that
are playing during this month on the big screen in the U.S. and Canada.
"Halloween", Rob Zombie's take on the famous 1978 film, examines the lack of
love in Michael Myers' childhood, providing an explanation, if not an
understanding or justification, for the extreme sociopathic violence he exacts
against anyone and anything that stands in his way. The film hit North
American theaters on August 31, a full two months before Halloween arrives.
Interestingly, much of the violence in Mr. Zombie's film occurs when onscreen
characters are having sex, and while this is not a departure from other horror-slasher
films (see the "Friday The 13th" series), it illustrates the intersection and
equation of sex with violence. For good measure, another slasher film,
"Hatchet", opened on September 7, and its body count of victims likely screamed
louder than its opening weekend box-office take did.
"The Brave One", which opens this Friday across North America, does something
more subtle with the juxtaposition of violence and sex and achieves an arguably
more startling and disquieting effect: the parading of the blood-stained bodies
of Jodie Foster's Erica Bain character and Naveen Andrews' David Kirmani
character -- and an instant later seamless editing by Tony Lawson shows
flashbacks of the two in an intimate session. Their lively, resplendent
bodies are almost in the same positions as they are in their static bloody
repose, having just been the victims of a random violent attack in New York
City's Central Park early on in the film. Neil Jordan's film contains a
strong emotional feeling, in which love -- the love of New York City and the
love of the gritty survivor in the Big Apple town -- emanates in surprising and
startling ways -- yet violence is never far behind. Ms. Foster dispenses
much of it and in brutal fashion, Bronson-style.
The Right To Remain Silent, Forever: Kevin Bacon in "Death Sentence",
Naomi Watts in "Eastern Promises", and Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in "3:10
To Yuma".
The film "Death Sentence", now in theaters across the continent, is a kissing
cousin of "The Brave One". In it, another venerable and respected actor,
Kevin Bacon, goes off the deep end to exact revenge on the band of thugs that
have killed his golden boy son, a hockey star in college who has everything to
look forward to. Nick Hume (Bacon) is a businessman executive who has lost
his soul. He doesn't even truly love his family, as is demonstrated by the
fact that despite his protestations to the contrary, he continuously and
recklessly puts them in harm's way. If this is an outlet of grief-stricken
behavior, it is hardly merited. Both "Death Sentence" and "The Brave One"
cross the line between deserved revenge and pure thrill-killing.
Foster's and Bacon's characters are the perfect sister and brother-in-arms:
firearms. And both films have the obligatory scene where the supposed
fish-out-of-water character who has never fired a round of ammunition in their
life steps out from in between the shadows of morality and madness to pick from
the choicest and deadliest firearms, the kind that put gaping holes in walls.
Furthermore, both characters betray love by becoming the antithesis of it.
Love is the denial, the conceit, and the flawed self-aggrandizement of the
protagonists' acts of incorrect behavior. And while they both have
momentary remorse for their no-turning-back sprees of violence, they know
exactly what they are doing -- betraying love and tarnishing the memory of loved
ones they claim to be out to avenge or protect. What is most telling in
both films is that these two main characters are rather selfish and
self-righteous, yet they also are far more intelligent characters than the
respective screenplays make them. Even with such violence and grief, both
characters make choices that ultimately betray their objectives.
Between "The Brave One" and "Death Sentence", the best of these two films is
actually neither; "Mr. Brooks", a quieter, more subtle film about a family man
whose violent serial-killer urges are barely suppressed was a smarter film that
briefly played in theaters in the summer, with renowned actor Kevin Costner
taking on the complex role of killing fiend, and faring well in it.
Yesteryear violence makes its presence felt this month as well. James
Mangold's "3:10 To Yuma" revisits the western of 1957 that Delmer Dawes made.
Russell Crowe plays a seductive and murderous Ben Wade, who charms and kills his
way through the western terrain of New Mexico. As the body counts pile up
faster than a California wildfire, Christian Bale's Dan Evans tries to preserve
any semblance of love and respect that his wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) and his
oldest son William (Logan Lerman) have for him. He is broken, scarred
physically from the Civil War and also a poor man. He is forced to make
his mark by using violence to attain the love and respect and keep his
internally frayed familial relations intact and tension from exploding.
Mr. Mangold's film is smart about how this complex enterprise plays out, and he
doesn't let any of his characters off the hook at all -- to his credit.
Blood and Betrayal, With Hints of Regret: "The Assassination of Jesse
James By The Coward Robert Ford", "In The Valley Of Elah", and "The Kingdom",
which stars Jamie Foxx.
On September 21, another western, Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination Of Jesse
James By The Coward Robert Ford" takes violence as urban legend, changing the
reputations of the two people in the title of this much-troubled film, forever.
Brad Pitt plays the legend train-robber and gunslinger Jesse James, and Casey
Affleck does his best screen work as Robert Ford. Their relationship is
akin to two snakes in the grass, sizing up each other with oodles of mistrust,
so much so that the tension in the air throughout the nearly-three-hour film is
thick with it. Mr. Dominik's film expands across North America on
September 28 after enjoying an exclusive week's run in New York, Los Angeles,
Toronto and Austin.
One could easily call Michael Davis's clever gonzo violence satire "Shoot 'Em
Up" a western -- it is all guns, guts, bullets and octane. Blood flies all
over the viscera and is the ultimate money shot, if ever there was one in a
graphic action violence film. Mr. Davis, who also wrote the film, which
just opened (on September 7) gets the best results and powerful effects when
mixing together all the things in a film that you are not supposed to.
"Shoot 'Em Up", which is violent in the most cartoonish ways imaginable, surely
cannot be taken to heart, but Mr. Davis is making more than a few points for
audiences to mull over, even as they laugh so hard that they will miss many of
Clive Owen's priceless punch lines.
To call David Cronenberg's films ultra-violent is probably not doing the
celebrated director much justice. His "A History Of Violence" (2005) was
masterful and underrated, and the same audiences who revisited that film early
and often will be in for more violence -- which is generally situational for the
most part in Mr. Cronenberg's films -- in "Eastern Promises", a film that opens
in select U.S. cities (New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) this Friday.
"Promises" re-teams the Canadian director with Viggo Mortensen, the pride of
Denmark, who plays a driver for the Russian mob who is lurking nefariously in
London. There are several graphically violent acts in the film, one of
which is purely gratuitous. The rest flow from the tightly-wound
narrative, which fits the film's mood. A hint of love may be in the offing
in Mr. Cronenberg's latest work, but any love existing at all is the love that
is for the brotherhood formed by violence, loyalty and the loss of innocence.
Family Men With Secret Violent Pasts: Kevin Costner in the underrated "Mr.
Brooks" in June, Viggo Mortensen with Maria Bello in the standout 2005 film "A
History of Violence". Both films are better and more nuanced than the
recent films "Death Sentence" and "The Brave One". And in "Resident Evil:
Extinction", which stars Milla Jovovich (pictured above with machetes), nothing
is left to the imagination.
Paul Haggis's film "In The Valley Of Elah" also
opens on September 14, and it is surely an early front-runner for best picture
in the Academy Awards race for this film year. The film surrounds a
missing American marine in Iraq and his anxious father, himself a former colonel
in the U.S. marines. Expertly played by Tommy Lee Jones in a strong
performance, the father is relentless in his quest for answers to questions
every parent is duty-bound to ask: why?, and where is my son? The film
contains descriptions of violence, and no on-screen violence is ever shown -- it
plays powerfully in the audience's imagination. At the same time however,
"Elah" is permeated by violence -- that of pain, loss and redemption, and hope,
and it is done superbly. And while love takes a back seat (no pun
intended) it does so only temporarily, and when it re-emerges it does so in a
refreshing and elegiac way. Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon also
star.
While the horror-actioner sequel "Resident Evil: Extinction" (September 21)
brings its star Milla Jovovich back into the fold on the big screen with more
violence than you can shake a stick, a bunch of knives, cutlasses or machetes
at, actor-director Peter Berg infuses political drama in Dubai and elsewhere in
the Middle East with the specter of violence in "The Kingdom". Jamie Foxx
and Chris Cooper headline the cast of this film, which opens on September 28
across the U.S. and Canada.
The question remains: where on earth is the love on the big screen in American
films in September?
There are three films which have plenty of love to go around this month.
Robin Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club" (September 14), about the
interweaving relationships of several book club members in Los Angeles stars
Maria Bello, Kathy Baker, Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy and Emily
Blunt; Robert Benton's "Feast Of Love", a sexually-charged romantic drama with
Morgan Freeman, Jane Alexander, Greg Kinnear, and Selma Blair; and the erotic
NC-17-rated espionage love-story drama "Lust, Caution", directed by Ang Lee, who
was last seen directing himself to an Oscar as the best director of the 2005
film "Brokeback Mountain", another charged film about the trappings of forbidden
love. The latter two films emerge in select U.S. cities on September 28.
So with a September saturated with blood and
bullets, will October be any less bloody a month on the big screen in North
America?
One hint at the answer: "Trick 'R' Treat"!!! (opening on October 5.)
