Red Digital Readout

In the 16th century, an expedition of Spanish soldiers, lead by Francisco Pizarro, travels down the Amazon in search of gold. The journey becomes more perilous with every step, the Spanish and their Indian slaves rapidly falling victim to the elements. Pizarro declares that a scouting party led will move ahead, and must return within two weeks. Don Ursua will lead the party, with Don Aguirre second in command.

Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God plunges the viewer into the heart of madness, fully realized through the eyes of a man with a lust for power that triumphs over all else. The scouting party makes its way through an Amazon jungle teeming with billions of shades of green, which spiral into seeming eternity. Food is scarce, hostile natives are plentiful, and the Spanish are greatly outmatched. They may be settlers, but the jungle seems dizzyingly claustrophobic, natures coiled as if it may spring to life and devour every foreign element that dare trespass. Where many films use nature as a beautiful symbol for harmony, in this film, it is a WMD.

The scouting party rapidly falls apart. Aguirre (Klaus Klinski) moves with a queasy limp, with a head that seems to swivel 360 degrees, his intense eyes not possessing bright intelligence, but dark cunning. He cares not for gold, but for power, and gleefully seizes the chance to overthrow Ursua. Aguirre declares independence Spain, claiming South America as his territory, a bold claim considering the size of the scouting party. He appoints a fat, lazy bureaucrat to be his puppet king, though Aguirre finds this man to be unsatisfactory as well. Little time passes before Aguirre declares himself the new king, feverishly driving the party forward on a giant raft.

Food quickly runs out, Indian attacks intensify. The tragic excess of old Europe sticks out like a sore thumb; the party has cannon, horse, and a sedan chair for Aguirre’s daughter, but rotten fruit for nutrition. Aguirre becomes increasingly unstable, pompously bragging about his hollow empire, ruthlessly striking down any member of his own party that utter a word of doubt. As we watch Aguirre’s sanity deteriorate under the crushing weight of his failed dream, images of Adolf Hitler pounding a battle map and ordering non-existent armies into battle flood into our minds.

Watching the film, one can imagine a similar intensity from Herzog. There is much labor to every movement, a numbing energy to the slow river voyage. Herzog and his crew of eight worked through conditions similar to the horrific ones the party faces, with violent tempers and an aura of lawlessness decorating the production. Incidents involving Herzog, Klinski, and pistols have become filmmaking legend. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now became well known for a similarly hellish production and themes, but Herzog did it first, and better.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God paints a searing indictment of those who would forsake everyone in their vicious quest for power, and serves as a deadly warning to those who would attempt to indulge their insane fantasies. Herzog suggests that whatever mad dream a greedy villain may possess, the forces of nature will inevitably shatter it to pieces, along with those who follow. We can only hope so.

5 out of 5

Many have labeled Running Scared a hard boiled crime film, but the label doesn’t fit. It would be better described as a hyper-kinetic trip through one’s worst nightmares. Not nightmarish, but an unfiltered, wake up drenched in sweat nightmare, the kind that sticks with you for the remainder of your days, where you’re lucky if you only have it once. It not feature a scene where the hero literally wakes up, though the film’s dreamlike quality permeates nearly every frame.

Like a dream, the story makes little practical sense, but manages to click together in the manner only the darkest recesses of the brain can comprehend. The hero (dreamer?) of the film, Joey Gazelle(Paul Walker), finds himself bombarded with off the wall scenarios that link together through his relentless quest for a stolen gun. By the time things have come to a close, Joey has crossed paths with mobsters, Russian psychopaths, pimps, hookers, crooked cops, and a very angry wife, usually with bloody, profane results. I haven’t even mentioned the horrific stopover at the home of loathsome, married child molesters.

Running Scared is a mess, but there exists a surprising method to writer/director Wayne Kramer’s madness. Kramer last directed The Cooler an almost pensive examination of Las Vegas gansters. He must have felt bored with taking it slow, because Running Scared crosses a line that few films are willing to. People’s skulls are vaporized with shotguns, female genitalia make gleeful appearances, and children swear like sailors. At one point, the hero gets held down and tortured by having hockey pucks slammed at his skull, the only lighting being the black lights hanging from the ceiling. Like any good nightmare, the torturers dressed in full hockey garb.

Running Scared’s scattergun methodology ensures a lack of greatness, but won’t be forgotten anytime soon by its audience. Kramer as a director enters Michael Bay territory, orchestrating the ludicrous material by punctuating every scene with a huge exclamation point. Even if one hates the material, how can one hold a grudge against a film with the balls and the confidence to hold a shootout in a black-lit hockey rink? I know I can’t.

3 out of 5

Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) finds himself face to face with his worst enemy, tied to a chair. A Liberian dictator gleefully hands Yuri a gun and tells him to fire away, but Yuri is terrified. The dictator takes Yuri’s hands as if he were helping a child and helps him fire, blowing the other man’s brains out. Yuri may have sold millions of weapons to people all over the world, but he has never fired a single shot.

This was Lord of War’s best scene, a glaring standout in a film soaked with mediocre, gloomy cynicism. Writer/Director Andrew Niccol desperately wants to say something about the arms trade that gives people in third-world countries the means to butcher each other, but his obvious lack of answers infects the entire screenplay. By the end, Niccol’s desperation is palatable as the final ten minutes spirals into an entirely different message than the 110 that preceded it.

Growing up a Ukrainian immigrant in New York, Yuri works at his father’s restaurant. After witnessing a gang shooting, he realizes that he should sell something that everyone needs other than food. He works his way from selling Uzi’s to thugs to bringing shiploads of AK-47’s to dictators. Though a relentless Interpool agent (Ethan Hawke, playing self as a naïve doofus) hounds him at times, Yuri finds the arms trade to be eerily lucrative.

An atheist-existentialist, Yuri never so much as shrugs at the suggestion that his actions are wrong. He hurls heavy handed lines like "You know who's going to inherit the world? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other," every thirty seconds or so, in case we forget that he possesses a cynical world-view. He traipses around the world, narrating in monotone about how much profitable arms sales are, people killing each other, not giving a shit, etc.

Nearly every line and character exists solely for the purpose of illustrating a message Niccol isn’t even certain of. Never does the film make a serious attempt at balancing the gloom and doom. Yuri’s trophy wife lives the high life off his blood money, then dubiously insists he quit. Yuri brings coke-head brother (Jared Leto) along for no reason other than that the screenplay needs a martyr. And in case we didn’t think Yuri was bad enough, the vicious Liberian murders his underlings on a whim. There have been Bond films with more layered characters, and I’ve seen a few with Roger Moore.

Lord of War gets a few shots into the 10-ring with some black humor and appropriately grim photography, but results in a total misfire. Someone should send Andrew Niccol a memo explaining that relentless cynicism unopposed results in mere whining; Lord of War whines so loud it could be heard over a volley of the machine guns Yuri uses to pay for his limo.

2 out of 5

During the first twenty minutes or so of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, we are introduced to Ennis and Jack, two cowboys watching over sheep in Wyoming. Ennis, a sulky, quiet redneck type, feels right at home being a cowboy. Bright eyed and chatty, Jack seems like he would have been better off growing up in the city. The two men watch over the sheep, hunt, and get to know each other. The film plays these scenes in a straightforward, simple manner, and if not for the massive hype surrounding the film’s content, it would be a total shock when they begin to have sex.

Quiet subtlety is Brokeback Mountain’s greatest asset. If a hundred directors were assigned to make a film about gay cowboys, it is doubtful that many would be more subtle than Ang Lee. The film does not take great pains to show us they are in love, nor does it twelve scenes where the characters spell out their every thought with tears streaming down their faces, nor does it stick around for soft pornography. The majority of what is going in is expressed in the characters faces, actions, and simple but effective dialogue. Heath Leder turns in a phenomenal performance as Ennis, who even when in a moment of peace, seems to be in agony. Jake Gyllenhaal is nearly as good as Jack, who impatiently wades through his life, waiting for the happiness he knows must be around the corner.

Ennis and Jack part when the summer is over, Ennis staying in Wyoming, Jack moving to Texas. Neither one is overly enthused about their lives, which include wives and children, but they carry on. One day, Ennis receives a postcard from Jack, and before you know it the two are going on "fishing trips" where no fishing takes place. Jack declares that the two should leave their families and get a farm together, but Ennis quietly scoffs. It is still the 1960’s, and as a boy, his father showed him firsthand the potentially violent death that can await a homosexual.

Brokeback Mountain is not so much about homosexuality or love as it is unfulfilled desire. Jack can not have what he badly wants, and Ennis’ is not willing to take the steps towards his own possible happiness. The film is not nearly as pro-homosexuality as some would have you believe; indeed, throughout the film, Ennis and Jack’s relationship destroys their own lives and badly damages that of others. Instead of giving into their desires or suppressing them entirely, they try halfway, which does not work. In one scene, Ennis ignores his own children in his desperation to run off to a motel with Jack. In another, Jack slinks through a Mexican border town, searching for a male prostitute. These are not happy men, certainly not the characters GLAAD would push.

Brokeback Mountain is a magnificent story of men doomed by impulses they would each rather not possess. One’s own opinions of the politics and morality of homosexuality need not matter much, as everyone can connect to the pain of not having what it is you want most. Is there any feeling much worse than that?

4 out of 5

Within the first several minutes of Capote, Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as the title character reveals itself as phenomenal, the complete transformation in character that most actors could only dream of. Every solitary word, movement, and gesture is flawless, engrossing in ways equal to the best work of Brando, Di Niro, Olivier, and Penn. As far as reviewing films go, Capote plays out like a baseball game where one team scores 20 runs before the first out.

Truman Capote, the (in)famous writer and celebrity gossip machine, was not an easy figure to grasp. He was a brilliant writer and man in general, with no qualms about gleefully showing his genius off. He was also as effeminate as three Miss America pageants, deeply insecure, with a childhood that would outright obliterate lesser men. Early in the film we see him as the center of attention at a hip New York party, but minutes later he pays a bellhop to rave about his works in front of a pre-TKAM Harper Lee.

Capote is drawn, almost mysteriously, to a small Kansas town where a family was brutally shot-gunned for no apparent reason. The locals do not quite know what to make of him, but he is charming and manipulative in a way they have never seen, and before long he has befriended everyone he needs to, including the sheriff (Chris Cooper). His ability to recall 94% of what he reads comes in handy for both interviews as well as impressing the citizenry. When the murderers are apprehended, he nearly jumps for joy, seeing an opportunity to write an amazing book, a ‘non-fiction novel’.

Exploiting someone for material for a book isn’t a pleasant experience, even if they are a murderer. Capote, ever seeking approval in a world he can never call home, barely even tries to defend himself when others accuse him of exploitation. When one of the killers asks Capote about the book’s title, claims not to know, neglecting to mention that In Cold Blood has been decided upon.

He immediately finds himself attracted to Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), a soft spoken but undeniably chilling man with whom Capote sees as both a kindred spirit and a gold mine. His visits to Smith on death row are light on homo-eroticism and heavy on desperation. Smith desperately needs a friend, and does not want to be remembered as a monster; Capote must balance his attraction and desire to help Smith with the fact that he needs a gruesome re-telling of the murder, and most morbidly, a final ending to his book. Life in prison won’t do the trick.

Capote’s relationship with Smith and experience when writing his masterpiece becomes all consuming, dragging his psyche into places more horrific than even he imagined. Smith can appear gentle and pained, but the vicious murderer never moves far under the surface. When Capote finally hears Smith’s calm and straightforward description of how he murdered an entire family with no remorse, Capote’s soul crosses the point of no return.

Nothing short of spellbinding, gut-wrenching, and brilliant, Capote deserves recognition as an instant classic. Masterfully crafted on every level and with physically palatable power, it epitomizes why the movies are the most poignant and relevant art form today.

5 out of 5

Ultraviolet may be the best video game movie ever made, even though a video game version has yet to be produced. The cheap CGI is plentiful, the colors vivid, the heroine single-handedly takes on hundreds of men at once, weapons quite literally appearing in her hands out of nowhere. I interpreted the recent film Running Scared as a long nightmare, and it’s tempting to interpret Ultraviolet as a nerdy teenager playing a T-rated Xbox 360 game.

The film’s plot transparently serves as nothing more than a string from which to hang ten or so action massacres. Violet (the criminally beautiful Milla Jovovich), the heroine, flips from one scene to the next, clad in laughably revealing outfits, butchering anyone that crosses her sight. It’s not that the gunfights aren’t well done, but without even a limp effort at storytelling, all we get are the mish-mash of comic book colors on screen. Later in the film, Violet refuses to attack a building guarded by 700 soldiers, citing superior numbers, though by now nothing has indicated she can be harmed by anything short of terminal cancer.

Within Ultraviolet’s 84 minute running time (including credits), two different resurrections occur, neither with any accompanying explanation. Perhaps Player 1 had several more lives left and the Pre-Algebra homework could wait, though an extra lives meter at the top of the screen could have been useful to the audience.

In 2002, Ultraviolet writer/director Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium was released. Barely heard of in the U.S. until its DVD release, the film was a sci-fi/action masterpiece, a wildly fun, visually stunning, shatteringly touching assault on the senses. Where Equilibrium’s action was over the top but crisp and sharp, Ultraviolet’s fight scenes simply ratchet up the body count until Violet moves on to the next level. Equilibrium’s dark, moody tones gave way to occasional bursts of vibrant color, while Ultraviolet splatters every frame with techno-comic ink that could give migraines to a child.

What I missed most from Equilibrium was a story that worked, with characters and events that I could care about. In Equilibrium’s best sequence, the hero watches a recording of his wife being tried and executed, and rushes prevent another woman he loves from meeting the same fate. Ultraviolet has a scene where Violet tries to rescue a child, but it makes no sense, giving us not a sliver of believable dialogue or action that would imply she would care. Every interaction in the film reeks of phoniness; it could be taught to show why action flicks really do need good characters, after all.

Wimmer may have gotten a bigger budget with Ultraviolet, but jumped several steps backwards. The filmography seems to be reversed, Ultraviolet looking like the experiment, Equilibrium the glorious result. If none of Wimmer’s fans ask "What happened?", he can assume they’re busy playing video games. Good ones.

1.5 out of 5