Extr@cti0n

A former CIA operative is kidnapped by a group of terrorists. When his son learns there is no plan for his father to be saved, he launches his own rescue operation.

Movie Review: Side Effects

Side Effects
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Scott Z. Burns.
Starring: Rooney Mara (Emily Taylor), Jude Law (Dr. Jonathan Banks), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Dr. Victoria Siebert), Channing Tatum (Martin Taylor), Vinessa Shaw (Dierdre Banks), Ann Dowd (Martin’s Mother), Polly Draper (Emily's Boss), Michael Nathanson (Assistant District Attorney), Sheila Tapia (Emily's Attorney).

Steven Soderbergh’s is a tight, nifty little thriller. It is well acted by the entire cast, well written by longtime Soderbergh collaborator Scott Z. Burn, contains a marvelous score by Thomas Newman – the type of score that elevates the entire movie, but will never be nominated for an Oscar, and is well directed by Soderbergh himself – who of course, also served as editor and cinematographer. And yet, as good as the movie is – and it is quite good – I could not help but be slightly underwhelmed by the film. Walking into the theater, I was pretty sure I knew how the movie was going to end (thanks trailers!) and sure enough, everything played out pretty much exactly as I expected it would. Considering this is apparently the last feature film by Soderbergh (he will release his apparently final film, Behind the Candelabra on HBO later this year), I was a little let down. Soderbergh had entered a very good segment of his career – making great little genre films like Haywire, Contagion and Magic Mike, and while Side Effects is good, it doesn’t quite measure up.

The movie stars Rooney Mara as Emily Taylor. She is married to Martin (Channing Tatum) who is just getting out of jail after four years for insider trading (perhaps the most preposterous of the movie’s plot points is that anyone on Wall Street would go to jail for anything they do). But while she loves her husband, she is also depressed – trying her best to put on a happy face, but inwardly she’s hurting. After a “cry for help” suicide attempt, where she drives her car into a wall, a psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) is called in for a consult – and while he agrees to let her go, he also insists that she start going to therapy – and start taking anti-depressants. They try a few drugs, and nothing works, but then Emily suggests one of the new drugs – you know the ones on TV with happy people running through a meadow, while a voiceover lists off dozens of possible side effects. Banks doesn’t see the harm in trying her on them – and after consulting with her old doctor Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), he writes a prescription. And he keeps her on them even after she starts sleepwalking, and preparing meals in her sleep. You probably see where this is going, but if you don’t, I won’t spoil it for you. But, of course, it leads to movie’s psychological thriller roots – where one of Emily or Jonathan, is going to have to pay for what Emily does. And all is not precisely what it appears to be.

The performances in the movie are quite good. I was a little disappointed that after her great performance in last year’s Compliance (the best performance NOT nominated for an Oscar in 2012), that Ann Dowd is given nothing to do as Martin’s mother – but she’s a character actress, and she plays her role well. Tatum is good as the Wall Street guy, who made a mistake, has paid for it, and really does seem to want to turn his life around. Catherine Zeta-Jones is very good as Dr. Siebert – but Ebert’s law of economy of characters applies with her. Essentially, because Zeta-Jones is a movie star (not to mention an Oscar winner), you know immediately that her role will turn out to be far more complicated than it at first appears. Still, she plays it well. It’s really the two main performances that are excellent. Law plays Banks as cocksure and confident, until his life starts to completely unravel, and seems powerless to stop it – and than starts to seem paranoid. Is he right, or just so convinced that he could not be wrong that he’s grasping at straws? And Rooney Mara is even better as Emily, as she spirals down into depression, and tries to keep herself under control.

Side Effects certainly takes us into Hitchcock territory – with a modern pharmaceutical twist.  We have the “innocent man wrongly accused” and lying women, and as I mentioned before, an excellent score by Thomas Newman, who may just be the best composer working right now at twisting classic movie score elements for modern use (just look at his score for Soderbergh’s The Good German, the only good thing about the film, or how he twists Bond music in Skyfall). The screenplay is well written, and Soderbergh could do this type of thriller in his sleep, but doesn’t. He pulls out some interesting things from his seemingly bottomless bag of tricks.

But perhaps it’s harder now to make a Hitchcockian thriller than it was in Hitchcock’s day. Modern audiences sit there waiting for the other shoe to drop – the twist ending they aren’t supposed to see coming. But, unfortunately for Side Effects, I did see the twist coming, before I even sat down in the theater. So essentially, I spent much of the movie waiting for the characters to catch up to me.

Side Effects is a good movie. It is rare to see a thriller like this as well acted and directed as Side Effects is. Undoubtedly, unless you still need to catch up on some Oscar films, Side Effects is the best film to see in theaters right now. But considering its early February, which typically (along with January) is when studios dump a lot of crap into theaters, that’s not saying very much. Perhaps my disappointment in Side Effects has more to do with the fact that unless Soderbergh is lying or changes his mind, I will never walk into a theater to see a new Soderbergh film again. He has been a pretty consistent director since the late 1990s – producing at least one decent to great film seemingly every year. And Side Effects is decent. But from the director who has produced such films as Out of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Contagion, Haywire and Magic Mike (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg), Side Effects is certainly going out with a bit of a whimper instead of a bang.

Argo (2012)

 Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller/Biography

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Christopher Denham, Scoot McNairy, Kerry Bishe, Victor Garber

In 1979, the Shah of Iran was over-thrown by the people for having a very westernised approach, flamboyant life and leading the country towards poverty and famine. Ayatollah Khomeini became the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and subsequently its supreme leader, a position created solely for him. The people of Iran demanded that the Shah be returned to them, who was currently hiding in USA for him to be tried and eventually executed. The US governments refusal saw large protests outside the American embassy which eventually saw a crowd taking over the entire embassy and 52 American citizens were taken hostage. 6 diplomats, of the embassy managed to escape through a back door and took shelter with the Ambassador of Canada (Garber). The revolutionists had learnt of the 6 diplomats and would eventually manage to find out where they are hiding. If they are caught inside the house of the Canadian Ambassador, it would create a politically tense situation for not only USA but also Canada. Hence, due to increasing pressure from the Canadian government, USA needed to either rescue the 6 diplomats or risk a political crisis. CIA operative Tony Mendez (Affleck) is assigned the task of rescuing the 6 without anyone being the wiser. His game plan, to fake a Canadian movie production company who is currently in Iran to look for locations. This movie is one of those regular CIA/FBI run-of-the-mill spy movies and can easily be classified into the 'average' category. The big thing about this movie, due to which it has got the astounding acclaim, is only the climax. The steady build up of the suspense and final outburst towards the end is what is exceptionally gripping and very entertaining this is solely what makes this movie a wonderful watch. It should become a case study on 'How to end a movie with a good climax'.

Thumbs up: Phenomenal build up and the eventual peaking

Thumbs down: A bit slow beginning, can be discarded as any other average movie

Rating: 8.1/10

Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty
Directed by:  Kathryn Bigelow.
Written by: Mark Boal.
Starring: Jessica Chastain (Maya), Jason Clarke (Dan), Mark Strong (George), Jennifer Ehle (Jessica), Kyle Chandler (Joseph Bradley), Mark Duplass (Steve), James Gandolfini (C.I.A. Director), Stephen Dillane (National Security Advisor), John Schwab (Deputy National Security Advisor), Édgar Ramírez (Larry from Ground Branch), Reda Kateb (Ammar), Harold Perrineau (Jack), Fares Fares (Hakim), Yoav Levi (Abu Faraj al-Libbi), Fredric Lehne (The Wolf), Tushaar Mehra (Abu Ahmed), Joel Edgerton (Patrick - Squadron Team Leader), Chris Pratt (Justin – DEVGRU), Taylor Kinney (Jared – DEVGRU), Callan Mulvey (Saber – DEVGRU), Siaosi Fonua (Henry – DEVGRU), Phil Somerville (Phil – DEVGRU), Nash Edgerton (Nate - DEVGRU EOD), Mike Colter (Mike – DEVGRU).

Zero Dark Thirty opens not with images of 9/11 but with only the sounds of 9/11 – desperate phone calls from people saying goodbye, begging for help that they know will never come. In many ways this brief, imageless segment is more effective a representation of 9/11 than the few movies that have dealt with the tragedy in a more direct way in the years since. Those images are already burned into our collective memories – we don’t need to see them again. These sounds bring the events of that day roaring back – and is perhaps the most effective opening sequence you could ask for.

The following two and half hours of Zero Dark Thirty is about the CIA’s efforts to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind responsible for that tragedy. The movie focuses its attention of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA agent who will simply not let go until she has caught Bin Laden. We see her, and other CIA agents, as they use “enhanced interrogation methods” on detainees, and any delusions you have about whether or not this is torture will fly out the window fairly quickly. It is torture. And it is brutal. Eventually the interrogations lead to a name – Abu Ahmed – who the CIA is told is a courier for a man named Faraj, a key financier for Al Qaeda. Abu Ahmed is the man who is responsible for transferring messages back and forth from Faraj to Bin Laden. And may be the only person who really knows where the Al Qaeda leader is hiding. Maya doggedly pursues this lead for years – refusing to give up on it when everyone else in the CIA believes it to be a dead end. But since we know how the movie will end, we also know that Maya is right.

Zero Dark Thirty does many things – all of them well. On one hand, it is a portrait of a woman who becomes obsessed with putting the pieces of a puzzle together. We’ve seen this in a few great movies in the last few years – David Fincher’s Zodiac springs to mind. Because like Robert Graysmith in that film, who thinks he has all the pieces of the puzzle to figure out who Zodiac is but cannot quite make them fit, Maya is similarly driven and obsessed. Both are lonely characters – Graysmith’s family being literally replaced around the dinner table by boxes and boxes of paper – and Maya doesn’t even have a family to begin with. When one character (Jennifer Ehle, wonderfully sympathetic) asks her if she has is sleeping with anyone on base, Maya bluntly responds “I’m not the girl who fucks” – Maya is driven solely by her obsession. There is nothing else in her life. And it’s to Chastain’s credit that she makes Maya’s obsession seem real and turns Maya into a real character instead of the robot she could have seemed. It really is one of the very best performances of 2012.

The other great performance in Zero Dark Thirty is by Jason Clarke, who plays Dan, who heads up the “detainee” program – and is the one who is principally responsible for all the “enhanced interrogation”. Dan is a likable guy – when he’s not interrogating people, which is when he becomes downright scary. “You lie to me, and I’m gonna hurt you” he tells the detainees – and they believe him, because he’s more than willing to back up his claim. Clarke, poised to become a star thanks to great performances here and earlier this year in Lawless (not to mention several high profile upcoming releases) makes Dan into an intelligent, thoughtful, yet brutal human being.

And these two performances (and the one by Ehle) are key because they add the human element to what could have “just” been an expertly crafted procedural. And make no mistake, this is an expertly crafted film. Mark Boal’s well-researched screenplay takes you through, one step at a time, what happened, and what led to that night when Bin Laden was killed. And Kathryn Bigelow’s direction is even sharper here than it was in her Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, especially in that final night time raid, which is the most suspenseful sequence of the year, even though we know how it turns out. Boal and Bigelow have once again crafted a timely, important movie – one that leaves politics aside, for the most part, and allows the audience to make up their own mind.

Which, unfortunately, brings me to the made up “controversy” that surrounds the film. Do I think that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture? No, I don’t. I think it shows torture, without judgment, and allows the characters who commit it to explain their actions. But showing something does not equal endorsing it. Do you really need to be told that torture is wrong? Can you honestly sit there and watch what happens to these detainees and not think that it shouldn’t be done to another human being? As for the question about the movie saying that torture was essential to capturing Bin Laden, and the claims of politicians and pundits saying it wasn’t, I have to wonder what they were watching. It is true that the first person in the film who mentions the name of the courier, which will eventually lead to Bin Laden, was subjected to “enhanced interrogation methods”. It is also true that while he is being enhancely interrogated, he doesn’t reveal the name of the courier – he only does that later, when they are being nice to him, and trying to build up trust. Besides, any movie that is about the War on Terror that doesn’t include torture would be a needless whitewash of history. Whether you like it or not, America engaged in torture for a time to try to win the War on Terror. Zero Dark Thirty faces this head-on.

I’m sorry I even had to include the above paragraph in this review of one of the best films of the year. This is a film that intelligent people will be able to go into and make up their own minds – and the whole time, they will also be entertained by a tight thriller made my filmmakers at the top of their game. Believe the buzz – Zero Dark Thirty is a masterwork.

Movie Review: Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie.
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie based on the book by Lee Child.
Starring: Tom Cruise (Reacher), Rosamund Pike (Helen), Richard Jenkins (Rodin), David Oyelowo (Emerson), Werner Herzog (The Zec), Jai Courtney (Charlie), Vladimir Sizov (Vlad), Joseph Sikora (Barr), Michael Raymond-James (Linsky), Alexia Fast (Sandy), Josh Helman (Jeb), Robert Duvall (Cash).

Jack Reacher, the character created by Lee Child who has starred in well over 10 novels now is a six-foot-five, 250 pound ex-Army cop who wanders around America getting himself involved in police investigations everyone he goes. Tom Cruise is not the first person you would think of to play the film version of this beloved character. Who would be? Maybe the new, kickass Liam Neeson? And yet, what Tom Cruise lacks in pure physical size, he makes up for in other ways. Like all of Cruise’s best characters, Reacher is driven to the point of obsession. You get in his way, and he’ll bring you down one way or another. Cruise plays fiercely determined as well as anyone – and that’s pretty much the best way to describe Reacher.

Had the filmmakers had a crystal ball, they probably would have picked another Reacher novel than One Shot to adapt for his first cinematic outing. As it stands, the movie opens with a lone gunman preparing and then opening fire into a crowd, killing five people with his sniper rifle and then taking off. It doesn’t take long for the cops to identify James Barr as the suspect, and the mountain of evidence against him seems too irrefutable. The problem though is that we know Barr didn’t do it, since we saw the real shooter (a change from the novel – and not a good one). Before Barr is beaten into a coma in jail, he asks the cops to track down Jack Reacher. But Reacher is a ghost, and unless he wants to be found, he won’t be. Luckily, he wants to be found. He has history with Barr, and wants to see justice done this time, even if it wasn’t in the past. No sooner does Reacher arrive on scene than a tug of war begins – between the cops and the defense lawyer (Rosamund Pike) to find out what Reacher knows. Also, it seems like someone wants to scare Reacher away – but Reacher is not easily scared.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Jack Reacher is a solid thriller from beginning to end. We know from the beginning that things aren’t quite as they appear, but that Reacher will figure everything out. Cruise anchors the film with a fine, but unspectacular performance. Much better is the assortment of supporting characters that surround him – Robert Duvall as an old jarhead, Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo as the DA and the lead cop respectively, who both may not be trustworthy. And best of all is that mad German genius Werner Herzog as the mysteriously named The Zec. Herzog adds a level of insanity to any movie he’s involved in, and Jack Reacher is no different.

Like the Reacher novels, the movie is a fine, disposable entertainment – involving while you’re in the story, almost instantly forgettable once it’s over. I enjoyed the film. It held my attention, had some performances and a twisty story that will keep you guessing (unless you read the book). This is probably as good as a Jack Reacher movie could be.

Alex Cross

I'm cross with Alex, for this was my very first Tyler Perry film, and it did not impress me at all.

I'm cross with Alex because although he is a police officer with great psychological and investigative instincts, he never really brings about the thrills in the film which proved to be an average action film with an average action hero.

I'm cross with the people who wrote the script for Alex because it lacks any meat. It's a simple 'psychotic killer on the loose being hunted by the hero' story which has nothing really exceptional about it.

I'm cross with Alex for the rather choppy action scenes, especially the climax.

I'm cross that Alex would rope in someone like Jean Reno for an insubstantial role, one that could have been iconic but comes nowhere close to it. I wonder why Reno did the film in the first place.

I'm not cross at Alex because it does take a few bold steps in the storyline that help make the film more interesting, slightly, but then I am cross at Alex for being a film that is rushed and never explores in-depth what could have been a good psychological thriller.

So, given the chance once again I would certainly cross out the film from my watch list, and would actually recommend that you too cross-out this sub-par action flick.

Rating 1.5/5

Talaash (2012)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Fantasy/Thriller

Starring: Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Nazwazuddin Siddiqui

A mysterious death of a movie star on a sea-side road in Mumbai leads police inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat (Khan) to investigate and understand what happened and why. On probing further, Surjan finds himself in Mumbai's famous red light district which is teeming with brothels and sex-workers alike. Surjan is having his own set of personal problems in trying to get over his sons death and thus ends up quarreling with his wife, Roshni (Mukerji) much too often. He finds respite in Rosie (Kapoor) a sex-worker who not only gives him some leads in his case but also offers him mental comfort and someone he can talk to. The movie plays upon the mysteries of the mind and the personal vs professional life of a police inspector. Aamir Khan has done his usual outstanding performance with Mukerji being at par with him. The only let down of the movie is the climax which is slightly low-key and not what the audience was expecting. Psychological thrillers are still a relatively new concept for the Indian audience and it be hard to find takers for such a movie. Had the climax been more astounding or twisted, the movie would have been worth the second watch. All that said and done, not a bad movie at all and a decent attempt.

Thumbs up: Aamir Khan and the rest of the star cast

Thumbs down: Not so thrilling climax

Rating: 6.8/10

Movie Review: The Paperboy

The Paperboy

Directed by: Lee Daniels.

Written by: Lee Daniels & Peter Dexter based on the novel by Dexter.

Starring: Zac Efron (Jack Jansen), Matthew McConaughey (Ward Jansen), Nicole Kidman (Charlotte Bless), John Cusack (Hillary Van Wetter), David Oyelowo (Yardley Acheman), Scott Glenn (W.W. Jansen), Ned Bellamy (Tyree Van Wetter), Nealla Gordon (Ellen Guthrie), Macy Gray (Anita Chester).

A larger part of me than I would care to admit admires The Paperboy. This is the most lurid, ridiculous, violent, disgusting, over the top pulp melodrama to come along in I don’t know how long. But co-writer and director Lee Daniels full embraces this ridiculous story, and fills the movie with the type of visual flourishes that would normally look ridiculous, but somehow completely fits this particular movie. Not only that, but Daniels gets his entire cast of movie stars to completely abandon any pretext of vanity and has them dive headlong into the crazy movie that he is making. He’s going for broke behind the camera, and gets the entire cast to go for broke in front of it. The movie is so filled with logic flaws, with characters doing things that no sane person would even think of doing, let alone going right ahead and doing it, but somehow the actors make you think what they’re doing makes sense at the time. This is the type of guilty pleasure you either roll along with, or else you rip it to shreds. My only real problem with the movie – the one that kept me from enjoying this trash – is that two of the characters frustratingly insist on having real, relatable human emotions that make you feel bad for them. How the hell am I supposed to enjoy this movie when these two keep getting in the way?

The movie is set in the Florida swamps of 1969. Four years earlier, Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) was convicted of murdering the violent, racist local sheriff and sentenced to death row. No one is going to argue that Van Wetter is a good person – being trailer trash would be an unattainable goal for him – or that he isn’t a violent, horrible person. But, there are serious questions regarding his case – and the fairness of his trial. Two reporters from the Miami Star – Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), a black man from London and Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) come to this small town to try and get to the bottom of it. Ward grew up in this town, and left his newspaper running father (Scott Glenn) and his little brother Jack (Zac Efron) behind. Jack is really the main character of the story – recently thrown out of school, and lounging around the house, Ward hires him to be their driver while they’re around investigating. Two other characters need to be mentioned – the Jansen’s maid Anita (Macy Gray), who narrates the story, and has really been a sort of surrogate mother/older sister to Jack and Ward since their mama ran off. And then there’s Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), one of those women who writes to convicts on death row and fall in love with them. Her latest pen pal is Hillary, and according to her, they two of them share a deep and powerful connection – emotional and sexual – even though they have never been in the same room together. Even though Jack knows this, he still falls hopelessly in love with Charlotte. This is a kid with serious mommy issues.

The Paperboy is full of violent, disgusting and lurid scenes. The one where Jack gets stung by a jellyfish, and Charlotte chases off a group of high school girls yelling “If anyone gonna piss on him, it’s gonna be me”, and then yes, proceeds to piss all over Zac Efron, has already become the stuff of legend – and for good reason. It’s the most ridiculous scene in a movie I’ve seen this year, but damn it, if it isn’t fun to watch it at the same time. But the most outlandish scene in the movie isn’t this, but happens earlier – the first time Charlotte and Hillary are in the same room together, although it’s a prison visiting room and Jack, Ward and Yardley are also there, and the two “lovers” cannot come within 10 feet of each other, and yet still manage to have simultaneous orgasms. How they accomplish this has to be seen to be believed. They movie is full of sex scenes – some that are graphic and violent to boot – and lots of blood and guts (the scene when Hillary’s even bigger redneck guts a gator will haunt by dreams forever), yet still nothing quite compares to that scene for its sheer outlandishness.

What kept me from just rolling with the movie, was that Zac Efron, in the lead role, is kind of dull. I don’t think this is really his fault – and admire this teen heart throb for having the guts to do this kind of movie. I don’t even mind his horrible Southern accent – it simply adds to the outlandishness of the movie. But the character himself doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of this motley crew. He’s really just a sweet kid with abandonment issues that gets in over his head. And then there’s Macy Gray’s Anita. I loved Gray in this movie- she uses her one of kind voice  to make Anita into a sympathetic, funny character. But it almost seems like she’s been shipped in from another movie – maybe a better version of The Help – and neither she or Jack belongs with the rest of these people. The movie keeps coming back to them, and ruining the guilty pleasure the rest of the movie was giving me.

The rest of the cast though is pretty fantastic, and obviously having fun with their roles. John Cusack never quite convinced me that he was a gator killing redneck, but he tries really hard. Matthew McConaughey continues his streak of interesting performances in smaller movie – combine his work here with that in Bernie, Magic Mike and Killer Joe, and he is having far and away the best year of his career. All this from an actor I previously thought had little to no talent. David Oyelowo is hilarious and amoral as Yardley (I love the scene where Efron visits him in Miami). Best of all is Nicole Kidman, who I kid you not deserves Oscar consideration for her role as Charlotte. I cannot imagine a person like Charlotte existing in the real world, but Kidman goes completely for broke in the role – wildly over the top, sexy, slutty, sympathetic, hilarious and kind of gross all at the same time. Kidman often doesn’t get credit for all the risks she takes in her career – Charlotte Bless is one of her biggest risks, and she pulls it off.

I cannot say that The Paperboy is a good movie. The movie has way too many flaws in terms of logic for that to be true, including perhaps the most ridiculous finale of any movie this year. When you add in all these logic flaws with the fact that the main character just isn’t very interesting, and in fact distracts from the madness going on around him, The Paperboy is a movie that simply collapses under its own weight. And yet, I cannot say I am sorry I saw the film – or that I am not looking forward to seeing what Daniels does next. He has only directed three films in his career – the god-awful Shadowboxer, the quite good Precious and now The Paperboy. He does nothing halfway – there is nothing subtle about his movies, and he gets his cast to dive headlong into whatever he is doing. This time, despite all the things I admire about the movie, it didn’t quite work. Hopefully next time it will.

Mr. Brooks (2007)

Genre: Thriller/Crime/Drama

Starring: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Danielle Panabaker

Everybody has some or the other hobby that we all like to regularly practice. The reason why we have a hobby is because it gives us fun, enjoyment and a lot of satisfaction. Mr. Earl Brooks (Costner), the Man of the Year and a successful and rich businessman, too has a hobby that he regularly practices. He loves killing people. He is known as the 'Thumbprint Killer' since he leaves a thumbprint of the victims after the murder. He has no motive, no pattern and has no connection with the victims whatsoever, pure pleasure. Mr. Brooks has abstained from his sadistic hobby for two years by curbing his desires, but his alter-ego and id, Walter (Hurt) keeps playing with his mind and convinces him to return once more. The movie is a sensational thriller that he keeps you glued for a very long time. Although this may not be a true murder mystery or the kind of crime movie that we are generally accustomed to, its still very different and interesting. What the movie lacks are some sensational twists or some eye-popping scenes, which its simple and consistent plot line seems to be missing, Kevin Costner has done a phenomenal performance of a wealthy man with a wicked and dark side and he seems to be tailor made for the role. A great watch but it has scope for improvement.

Thumbs up: Kevin Costner, interesting story

Thumbs down: Lack of good twists and an engaging climax

Rating: 7.6/10

Movie Review: Argo

Argo

Directed by: Ben Affleck.

Written by: Chris Terrio based on the article by Joshuah Bearman.

Starring: Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez), Bryan Cranston (Jack O'Donnell), Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel), John Goodman (John Chambers), Victor Garber (Ken Taylor), Tate Donovan (Bob Anders), Clea DuVall (Cora Lijek), Scoot McNairy (Joe Stafford), Rory Cochrane (Lee Schatz), Christopher Denham (Mark Lijek), Kerry Bishé (Kathy Stafford), Kyle Chandler (Hamilton Jordan), Chris Messina (Malinov), Zeljko Ivanek (Robert Pender), Titus Welliver (Bates), Keith Szarabajka (Adam Engell), Bob Gunton (Cyrus Vance), Richard Kind (Max Klein), Taylor Schilling (Christine Mendez).

A lot of actors eventually try their hand at directing. Some do it simply as a vanity project or to prove to themselves they can actually do it. And some become filmmakers whose directing career eventually becomes even better than their acting career – Clint Eastwood for instance. Ben Affleck is more of the second type of actor. A few years ago, Affleck, the actor, had a string of disappointments on his resume and was most likely disappointed with how things had gone for the past few years. So he directed Gone Baby Gone (2007), a wonderful little crime movie that turned out to be much deeper than its genre roots suggested. He followed that up with The Town (2010), which was another fine crime film. With those two films, Affleck proved himself to be a director to watch – one with a definite skill and style. If he hadn’t quite crafted a great movie yet, he was surely on his way to doing so. His third film, Argo, is that great film.

Argo is a thriller, that if it wasn’t true, you couldn’t possibly believe it. As everyone knows, in 1979 Iranians stormed the American embassy and took all the workers their hostage. Six of those workers however escaped out a back door and ended up hiding in the Canadian ambassador’s house. No one knew they were there, and it had to stay that way. Eventually though, these six workers had to get out of the country – and no one has any idea how to do that. That is until Tony Mendez (Affleck), who specializes in getting people out of places that shouldn’t be, comes up with a gloriously absurd idea – the six embassy workers are really a Canadian film crew, scouting locations for a Star Wars rip-off that needs an exotic location, deserts, etc. Why wouldn’t a film crew want to shoot a movie in Iran during a hostage crisis?

It turns out making a fake movie isn’t as easy as you would think. The key to getting away with any lie is that the details have to be accurate. And so before he heads to Iran, Tony heads to L.A. He meets up with John Chambers (John Goodman), an Oscar winning make-up man and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a producer. They need to make Argo, the movie they are supposedly making, look real – they have a script, a poster, storyboards and even host a big event in Hollywood and get written up in Variety. Then Tony heads to Iran to train the embassy workers on their jobs, so they can head to the airport and all fly out together.

In some respects, Argo is almost two different movies – both of them great. On one hand, you have a Hollywood comedy not unlike Wag the Dog, where a Washington insider goes to a Hollywood producer to create a fake war, and the scenes in LA are mined for great comedic effect. John Goodman and especially Alan Arkin are great in their roles as Hollywood men, doing something not for fame or money, but simply because it is the right thing to do. These scenes are great for film buffs.

The other movie is much more delicate and hard to pull off – a thriller without chase sequences, shootouts or really any violence of any kind. It is easy to manufacture drama, and get audiences perched on the edge of their seats with those types of scenes, but Argo contains none of them. Instead, it is a breathless thriller where seemingly simple actions are heightened to an almost unbearable degree of suspense – where a simple questioning by the Imperial Guard becomes nail biting. This is where Affleck’s real accomplishment lay.

Affleck also casts his movie well – even the smallest roles are seemingly played by actors we recognize, and together they make up one of the best ensembles of the years. Arkin and Goodman are great, yes, as the Hollywood people. Even better though is Bryan Cranston, the best actor on TV right now, as Affleck’s CIA boss who is quick thinking, intelligent and has an acid tongued sense of humor, even in the most intense moments. Scoot McNairy is also wonderful as one of the embassy workers who doesn’t think they should be leaving.

Argo is gripping, exciting, funny entertainment. It’s rare to get someone attempting that mixture in a film – even more rare for a film to pull it. If Gone Baby Gone and The Town showed Affleck was a director with promise, Argo fulfills that promise.

Movie Review: Arbitrage

Arbitrage

Directed by: Nicholas Jarecki.

Written by: Nicholas Jarecki.

Starring: Richard Gere (Robert Miller), Susan Sarandon (Ellen Miller), Tim Roth (Det. Michael Bryer), Brit Marling (Brooke Miller), Laetitia Casta (Julie Cote), Nate Parker (Jimmy Grant), Stuart Margolin (Syd Felder), Chris Eigeman (Gavin Briar), Graydon Carter (James Mayfield), Bruce Altman (Chris Vogler), Larry Pine (Jeffrey Greenberg), Curtiss Cook (Det. Mills), Reg E. Cathey (Earl Monroe), Felix Solis (A.D.A. Deferlito), Tibor Feldman (Judge Rittenband).

Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage wants to be an update of Tom Wolfe’s brilliant novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Both Wolfe’s book and Jarecki’s film are about a “Master of the Universe” on Wall Street, who are in over their heads financially but believe they can get away with anything. Both have at their center men whose success affords them a beautiful, younger mistress, and involve a car accident where someone is killed – and the Master of the Universe thinks he can get away with it. But Jarecki’s film is even more cynical than Wolfe’s novel. Where Wolfe’s character eventually has to face the music, Jarecki’s proves himself right – he really is above the law.

Richard Gere gives a very good performance in Arbitrage as Robert Miller, who runs a successful investing firm worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He keeps his wife, Ellen (Susan Sarandon) in the style in which she is accustomed, loves his grandkids, and seems to be a good father – especially to his prized daughter Brooke (Brit Marling), who is following in his footsteps. He has been a big success on Wall Street – smart enough to avoid collapse when the bottom of the market fell out in 2008. A big bank wants to buy his company – something that will make him even richer than he already is, and will finally let him retire. But Robert has some secrets.

For one thing, he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is – he lost hundreds of millions in a deal on a copper mine in Russia, and has been covering up these losses – with the deposit from a friend who wants his money back. Robert just has to make it until the deal closes, then he can replace the money, and no one will know the difference. He also has a mistress on the side – Julie Cote (Laetitia Casta), a beautiful French woman, who he has set up with an apartment and an art gallery. She, like all mistresses, thinks that eventually Robert will leave his wife for her – and is starting to get antsy and demanding. But all of that pales in comparison to the trouble Robert is about to get into – while driving his mistress, in her car, one night he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes. She’s killed instantly – but rather than call in the accident and face the music, he decides to run for it. He calls a friend – Jimmy Grant (Nate Parker), a young African American son of his former driver, who he helped out. He needs a ride – and he needs no one to know about it. The police, led by Detective Bryer (Tim Roth) aren’t fooled by any of this – but they need proof. And like Robert, Bryer is not above breaking the rules to get it.

Arbitrage flips the idea of a traditional thriller on its head. This is not the story of an innocent man, wrongly accused just trying to prove his innocence. This is the story of a guilty man, rightly accused, trying to cover his tracks. You find yourself cheering for Robert – hoping that he’ll get away with everything, even though you know he’s guilty and he damn well should be punished. This is partly because of Gere, who is so good in the lead role. He looks and acts the part of a Wall Street millionaire – he is affable and charming. And we’re used to liking Richard Gere, so you go with it, even though you know it’s wrong.

But, for me, something is holding Arbitrage back from being a truly good movie. I think writer/director Jarecki’s film is lacking a real sense of urgency – of outrage. Oliver Stone may lay his contempt on Wall Street types a little too thickly in his films on the subject, and goes overboard with the stylistics, but Jarecki has gone too far in the other direction – making a strangely matter of fact film. There is also so little complexity to any of the characters, that even though the entire cast is good – they never truly seem like three dimensional people. The best one if the cast is Roth, who contempt for Gere is palpable, and who doesn’t play his cop as a typical “just the facts, ma’am” movie detective, but something altogether more unique. Nate Parker has some nice moments as well as Jimmy, who wants to do the right thing, but doesn’t know what that is. The rest of the cast is too one note – and I never bought that Marling’s Brooke could be so naïve, and you spend the whole movie waiting for Sarandon to do something – which you know she will because why the hell else would you cast an actress like Sarandon in such a seemingly throwaway role?

There is an interesting idea at the heart of Arbitrage – something that should have made a very good movie. And yet Jarecki’s film, in trying to be realistic, sucks the tension out of it. Arbitrage is still an ok film – an engaging one in which I was never bored. But it never grabbed hold of me the way good thrillers do.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Genre: Thriller/Drama/Crime

Starring: Daniel Manche, Blythe Auffarth, Blanche Baker, Madeline Taylor, Benjamin Ross Kaplan, Graham Patrick Martin

At times there are some movies that you wonder why anyone would want to make them. The question mark over this movies existence is not based on it being too outrageous but the mere fact that it gets far too disturbing to watch. Set in the '50's, the movie narrates the experiences of a pre-teen boy, David (Manche) and a life-changing incident that he witnessed which changed him forever. Two young girls, Meg (Auffarth) and Susan (Taylor) are sent to live with their Aunt Ruth (Baker) after the loss of their parents in a tragic car accident. Ruth and David are neighbours and David regularly spends time with Ruths' sons and the other boys in the neighborhood. David is immediately attracted towards Meg and so are all the other boys. However, there was a difference between David's attraction, which was friendship and love, and the other boys, which was purely sexual. Ruth saw Susan and Meg as a burden on her and her displeasure towards them led her to severely punish them for every small deed until the intensity of the punishments kept growing to the point of no return. The movie portrays David as being a witness to the incident and although he never agreed with what was happening, he was unable to do anything to prevent it. Although the movie builds on a good foundation, it simply gets extremely disturbing and far too graphic to be a peaceful watch. You would probably wince and turn your head on multiple occasions, so be warned before you watch.

Thumbs up: Good depiction of a single event

Thumbs down: Slow, can get extremely disturbing towards a point

Rating: 5.8/10

The Devil's Advocate (1997)

Genre: Thriller/Crime/Drama/Fantasy

Starring: Keanu Reaves, Charlize Theron, Al Pacino, Jeffrey Jones, Connie Nielsen, Craig T. Nelson

A small-town man captures the eye of a big-city business tycoon who offers him everything in the world. But as so many movies in the past on this plot line have taught us, too much money can cause too much collateral damage. Kevin Lomax (Reaves) is a successful lawyer based in a small town in Florida. Lomax has a record for never losing a case even though he knew his client to be guilty but yet managed to get an acquittal. John Milton (Pacino) a senior partner at Milton, Chadwick and Waters learns of Lomax and his winning streak and offers him a big figure salary in his firm in New York City. A fancy apartment in a prime location and a whole lot of money tempts his wife Mary Ann (Theron) who wants Kevin to accept the offer. However, Kevin's job demands far too much of his time and Mary Ann having no job to spend her time, starts getting increasingly annoyed with staying at home alone day in and day out which starts straining Kevin and Mary Ann's relationship. Although the movie classifies itself as a 'thriller' there isn't too much in it to send chills down your spine. Most of the movie appears to be a rags to riches story and the eventual downfall, but the climax turns out to be surprisingly different. Al Pacino puts on a good performance and there is something about his look in the movie which gives him a very sly and cunning appearance right from his first shot. Theron puts on an outstanding performance, especially in the second half and does every piece of justice to her role. A decent fantasy cum thriller but with a slightly tried and tested story.

Thumbs up: Charlize Theron's fabulous acting

Thumbs down: Stretched, run-of-the-mill story

Rating: 6.2/10

The Oxford Murders (2008)

Genre: Thriller/Crime/Drama/Mystery

Starring: Elijah Wood, John Hurt, Julie Cox, Leonar Watling, Jim Carter

Lets have a math class, shall we? Complete the series; 1, 2, 3, ___. If you thought 4, Aurthur Seldom (Hurt) may not entirely agree with you. A well-renowned mathematician at the University of Oxford, he, like all other mathematicians, believes that a series may have infinite possibilities, depending upon the logic one applies. Martin (Wood) is a young American student who has come to study at Oxford and particularly hopes that Seldom would be his research supervisor. Martin is staying as a paying guest at the house of Mrs. Eagleton who lives with her daughter Beth (Cox). Mrs. Eagleton is murdered and her body is discovered by both Seldom and Martin together. Seldom claims to have received a clue during a conference which led him to Mrs. Eagleton's house. The clue contained a circle which, according to Aurthur, is the first symbol of a symbolic series and Aurthur suggests that there could be more to come. Martin and Aurthur start diving deep into murder solving and try to list down the various possible symbols that cold come after the circle and try to track the murderers next target. The movie is a fabulously well made whodunit that can keep you absorbed right till the very end. It magically uses maths, probabilities, science and logic, all together, to track every tiny move that the killer might make. The average viewer might find themselves getting lost amongst the numbers, the mathematical jargon and the complex logic that the movie throws up, but the actual charm lies right there. The climax is fitting for a movie of its kind, but some might classify it as too obvious. It does not have a fabulously great ending, but neither is it too ordinary.

Thumbs up: A hugely enjoyable murder mystery

Thumbs down: Too much mathematical jargon, climax could be improved

Rating: 7.8/10

Movie Review: Headhunters

Headhunters
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Written by: Lars Gudmestad  &Ulf Ryberg based on the novel by Jo Nesbø.
Starring: Aksel Hennie (Roger Brown), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Clas Greve), Synnøve Macody Lund (Diana Brown), Eivind Sander (Ove Kjikerud), Julie R. Ølgaard (Lotte), Kyrre Haugen Sydness (Jeremias Lander), Reidar Sørensen (Brede Sperre), Nils Jørgen Kaalstad (Stig).

One of the reasons why we see so few great thrillers these days is because audiences have become hard to surprise. Everyone has seen countless thrillers, and most of them hit the same plot points over and over again – and even when the plot twists, in ways in which the filmmakers feel will be shocking, they really aren’t that surprising anymore. Audiences have grown to become wary of thrillers – to mistrust them, and always be on the lookout for the next twist. In short, they have gotten good at expecting the unexpected – and figuring out a movies supposedly complex, twisted plot well before the characters in the film do. That’s what makes Headhunters such a refreshing movie – it’s that rare thriller that from one moment to the next, kept me guessing.

This Norwegian thriller stars Aksel Hennie as Roger Brown, a short man with one hell of a head of hair. He has a good job as a corporate head-hunter, but that’s not enough for him. He has a gorgeous, statuesque wife (Synnøve Macody Lund), and feels he needs to be able to give her anything she ever wanted, or she will leave him. He showers her with gifts, but refuses to give her what she really wants – a child. In order to fund this constant spending, he moonlights as an art thief. He breaks into to people’s houses when they aren’t around, replaces their masterpieces with a knockoff, and then sells them on the black market. He is an expert thief, and his plan works well. When he meets Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former Swedish soldier, who made a fortune in private security, in town to renovate his deceased grandma’s apartment, and discovers he has a long lost painting worth around $100 million, he thinks his big score has finally came in. Of course, things go horribly wrong, and Roger has to go on the run, with Clas hot on his trail. To give away anymore would be criminal.

Headhunters reminded me of two filmmakers – the first being Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock, who directed many of the greatest thrillers in movie history, also had a sense of humor running through them. He succeeded at making films that have dazzling visual set pieces, which keep you on the edge of your seat, not because of violence, but because of anticipation – wondering just what was going to happen next. There is no better example of this in a recent film than a scene where Clas tracks down Roger, and he has to hide in the last place you would want to. Director Morten Tyldum first finds the dark humor to this scene, that Hitchcock would have loved, and then ratchets it up the tension to an almost unbearable degree. The second filmmaking duo the film reminded me of is the Coen brothers, because of some of the absurdist touches the movie has – including a chase scene that would sound ridiculous if I explained it here, but somehow works.

The movie piles on the information in one scene after the next, so we’re never quite sure what is going to become useful information, and what is essentially a red herring. Right up until the finale, the movie keeps you guessing, keeps you wondering how this could possibly turn out. The ending of the movie doesn’t give Roger the finale he deserves – he is, after all, not a good guy – but the ending the audience wants for him. Despite yourself, you may just find yourself loving this art thief with a Napoleon complex. You root for this guy, and as a result, Headhunters is one of the best thrillers you will see this year.

DVD Review: Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice
Directed by: Roger Donaldson.
Written by: Todd Hickey & Robert Tannen.
Starring: Nicolas Cage (Will Gerard), January Jones (Laura Gerard), Guy Pearce (Simon), Jennifer Carpenter (Trudy), Harold Perrineau, (Jimmy), Xander Berkeley (Lieutenant Durgan), IronE Singleton (Scar), Jason Davis (Leon Walczak / Alan Marsh).

I have defended Nicolas Cage many times over the years, all the while admitting many of his movies are absolutely awful. I defend him because when he gets the right role – like Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing Out the Dead, Adaptation, Lord of War, The Weatherman, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans or even something as cheesy as Drive Angry, he delivers the kind of manic, over the top brilliant performance that no other actor can give. The problem is he gives manic, over the top performances all the time – in horrible movies, or movies in which that type of performance just doesn’t make any damn sense. But Cage, even when he’s awful or in an awful movie, is almost always at least entertaining and interesting. I’m never really bored watching a Nicolas Cage movie. But bored I was while watching Seeking Justice. Cage does what everyone else always seems to be telling him to do – dial down the manic energy. And I have to admit, I would have preferred the manic energy. At least it would have added some interest to this boring, by the numbers thriller.

Cage stars as Will Gerard, a high school teacher working with high risk kids. He is married to Laura (January Jones), a musician, who is brutally attacked and raped one night. While waiting at the hospital, he is approached by a strange man named Simon (Guy Pearce). He tells him that not only does he knows how raped his wife; he can have “taken care of” for him. All the ask in return is that they do him, and his group, a favor in return one day – nothing major, just making a phone call or dropping off a package. Of course, when he agrees to Simon’s deal, and he eventually comes calling for that favor, it’s not that simple – they want him to kill someone. And when he refuses, he becomes a target of the group himself – which of course, has a wider reach than he thought possible.

The film is directed by Roger Donaldson, who has made some good thrillers in the past – such as No Way Out, 13 Days and The Recruit. Here, he is undone by a screenplay that is simply going through the motions. The basic idea behind the film is, of course, ridiculous – but that doesn’t mean that as a movie it couldn’t have worked – most thrillers have a rather stupid plot, but they work because they help us suspend disbelief. The problem with Seeking Justice is that once it comes up with the basic plot, it never thinks of anything interesting to do with it – each twist and turn the movie takes is pretty much exactly what you would expect.

I have a feeling that everyone involved in the movie knew that it was a fairly standard thriller, and as a result everyone is going through the motions. Donaldson has been an expert at building suspense in the past, but here he doesn’t seem to try very hard. The same is true of almost everyone in the cast – especially January Jones, who the more movies I see her in, the more I suspect that she really, really cannot act. Other talented TV actors – Jennifer Carpenter, Harold Perrineau, Xander Berkeley and IronE Singleton show up in supporting roles, but are given nothing to do. For once, Cage seems to playing his role straight – after all, he is supposed to be a mild mannered teacher forced to try and prove his innocence (see, the setup could easily have made a good Hitchcock film), but weather he’s grieving, teaching, comforting, chasing or fighting, his pulse never seems to be raised. You never really buy him as an everyman. The only redeeming performance is by Pearce, who makes no attempt to try and play Simon as a realistic bad guy, but revels in his insane evil. It is the type of role, strangely, that Cage would be great in.

 
In short, Seeking Justice is a forgettable thriller, featuring a forgettable lead performance by Nicolas Cage. That in itself is a rarity – but not the good kind.

21 Grams (2003)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance

Starring: Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo

Normal individuals, each living a separate life culminate together due to an incident, big or small. Its a plot line that is not new to the movie industry and success or failure of the movie solely depends upon the depth and relevance of that very incident. A mathematics professor, Paul Rivers (Penn) has a fatal heart condition due to his smoking habit and needs a transplant if he wishes to survive. He has managed to get back to his wife Mary (Gainsbourg) although their relationship is very distant. Jack Jordan (del Toro) is a convict who is out on parole and learns the way of Jesus to redeem himself of his sins and give up on his alcohol and drug problems. Christina Peck (Watts) is a happily married mother of two beautiful daughters who has managed to put her drug abuse behind her and move on to become a responsible and caring mother. The three families come together when Jack accidentally runs over Christina's husband and two daughters and kills them. Christina decides to donate her husbands organs and his heart reaches Paul who undergoes a transplant. Jack is filled with guilt and decides to turn himself to the police. Paul wants to find out whose heart is inside him. Christina needs a shoulder to cry on and cannot seem to move on in life. The incident that brings the three together is well crafted but the movie is far too slow and stretched and demands a lot of patience from the audience to sit through the entire 2 hour ordeal. The performances are good with Naomi Watts particularly standing out for her exceptional performance. The movie can be acclaimed on technical grounds but lacks the entertainment factor that the average viewer is always looking for.

Thumbs up: Naomi Watts and her exceptional acting

Thumbs down: Too slow and stretched to be likable

Rating: 6.7/10

DVD Review: Man on a Ledge

Man on the Ledge **
Directed by: Asger Leth.
Written by: Pablo F. Fenjves.
Starring: Sam Worthington (Nick Cassidy), Elizabeth Banks (Lydia Mercer), Jamie Bell (Joey Cassidy), Ed Harris (David Englander), Anthony Mackie (Mike Ackerman), Genesis Rodriguez (Angie), Edward Burns (Jack Dougherty), Titus Welliver (Dante Marcus), Kyra Sedgwick (Suzie Morales), William Sadler (Valet).

If I were so inclined, I could spend the entirety of this review just poking holes in the plot of Man on a Ledge. It seems to know nothing about how the legal system or prison system works. It seems to know about hostage negotiation, the media or jewel heists either. In short, there is not really a minute of Man on a Ledge that you can take the least bit seriously. But did I like it? Not really. But was I bored? No, I wasn’t. The movie was too goofy to bore me.

We first meet Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) in prison. He is there because of an apparent jewel heist, that he says he is innocent of, and we believe him, because it’s Sam Worthington, and he seems incapable of deception. He was a cop, and his old partner Mike (Anthony Mackie) comes to tell him his brother died – but he’ll get him out for the funeral on a day pass. Flash to the funeral, where Cassidy escapes, of course. Flash forward again, and he’s checking into a swanky New York Hotel. It is not long before he’s out on the ledge, and demanding to talk to Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), a hostage negotiator who just blew a big case – but did get a lot of media attention. And Nick needs a crowd and attention, because he’s not really planning on killing himself – he just wants to cause a distraction so that his other brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his hot girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) can break into the office of David Englander (Ed Harris) across the street. It was Englander’s diamond Nick apparently stole, and he wants to prove he didn’t.

Once you figure you, fairly early on, that the movie is ridiculous, you can either roll your eyes at the film or you can role with it. No, I do not think that anything would play out like it does here – where even seemingly minor secondary characters who just happen to be on the scene turn out to be players in the conspiracy that put Nick in jail in the first place. The actors for the most part sell it. Sam Worthington is still a blank slate of an actor, and a rather bland leading man, but his role does not really require much out of him. Better is Elizabeth Banks as a train wreck of a negotiator who gets a chance at redemption, who really does make you believe that she would do the crazy things she does. Jamie Bell, who can be great, is pretty much wasted as Nick`s brother. As for Ed Harris, he some manages to be even more immediately evil than he was in A History of Violence, where he showed up dressed like a Reservoir Dog with scars all over his face. He is a real estate Wall Street tycoon, and if there has ever been a good one of those in a movie, I cannot remember them. The less said about Kyra Sedgwick as a reporter on the street the better – it’s not her fault, but the movie never does anything with her. I think they were trying to make the tired point that the media are heartless ghouls who use tragedy for the sake of ratings – but the movie cannot even make that labored point believable, because it forgets about her for long stretches at a time.

Man on the Ledge moves at a quick enough pace that you’re never bored by it, but not so quickly that it makes you forget just how ridiculous it is.