The Mummy

THE MUMMY (Alex Kurtzman, 2017)

In THE MUMMY Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his partner Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) are soldiers of fortune traversing Iraq while also looking for antiquities they can resell on the side. They get into a firefight with some insurgents and are bailed out with an airstrike by the military. Those bombs also reveal a long-hidden tomb for the Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was buried alive far away from her homeland because of the evil she sought to bring into the world. Nick and Chris would be happy to grab what they can from the site, but archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) notes the importance of this find and persuades them to remove Ahmanet’s sarcophagus for further examination.

Supernatural forces under Ahmanet’s control crash the plane transporting them all back to London. Although Nick appears shockingly unharmed after plummeting from the sky, it’s determined that the revived Ahmanet has cursed him and intends to give physical form to the ancient god Set through him. Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe), who leads a monster hunting squad named Prodigium, considers Nick the bait for destroying Ahmanet.

THE MUMMY is intended to launch the studio’s Dark Universe film series that will unite Universal Pictures’ classic monsters in a manner similar to the Marvel Connected Universe and DC Extended Universe. THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is in the works, and films featuring The Wolfman, Dracula, and The Invisible Man will all presumably follow, not to mention MUMMY sequels if this one performs well enough. While this makes sense in terms of asset and brand management, the creative benefits are questionable, particularly in this first entry. THE MUMMY struggles to assert its own necessity beyond being the foundation for several other movies.

THE MUMMY credits three people for screen story and three others for screenplay, which suggests the script was worked over quite a bit. The film itself confirms as much. THE MUMMY often feels like it is trying to cobble together several ideas with different origins and purposes. The film lacks consistency as it attempts to do right by the franchise, the monster, and the star. It is not the unqualified financial success the studio would want for Dark Universe’s introductory offering, but worldwide returns suggest that THE MUMMY has done well enough to justify more chapters. Creative missteps can always be fixed with retconning. The mummy could refer to Boutella’s character or someone else in the film who encounters the supernatural. Regardless of who you consider to be the monster, the mummy gets shortchanged as an attention-demanding presence. THE MUMMY shows signs of being tailored for Cruise, but all that does is make even more of a hash of the story. It’s no secret that commercial films are products; THE MUMMY just seems more engineered for getting to market without a distinguishing quality.

Like the version of THE MUMMY with Brendan Fraser, this one is doing an Indiana Jones imitation of sorts. Cruise’s character, like everyone else, is poorly defined, which makes his self-centered rogue come off as unlikable or dull despite the actor’s efforts to turn up the charm. The grim Dark Universe name does not extend to THE MUMMY’s tone. Director Alex Kurtzman plays up the goofy and lighthearted nature of the material, particularly as Cruise gets tossed around like a rag doll. Films like this should be fun. Although THE MUMMY isn’t good, its lack of self-seriousness helps this compromised film play better.

Grade: C

The Nice Guys

THE NICE GUYS (Shane Black, 2016)

A young woman is on the run and hiding from unknown people in 1977 Los Angeles when she pays muscle-for-hire Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) to persuade private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling) to stop looking for her in the film noir comedy THE NICE GUYS. Holland is tracking Amelia Kuttner (Margaret Qualley) because an old lady has apparently mistaken her for her niece, a porn actress who died days earlier in a car crash. Jackson and Holland don’t make their introduction on the best of terms, what with Jackson breaking Holland’s arm, but they team up to search for Amelia when the professional intimidator realizes that her life is in danger if they don’t find her first.

Both are broken men, although Jackson is dealing with his wife’s demeaning departure better than Holland mourning his spouse’s death. Complicating their search is the undeniable fact that Holland is a drunk, although at least the disadvantages tend to be canceled by the positive effects of his bumbling. Holland’s precocious thirteen-year-old daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) tends to disregard his orders to go to a friend’s house for the night when the guys are out investigating, so she she often finds a way to tag along. Holly proves to be helpful, but she’s an additional concern for Jackson and Holland when the setting is no place appropriate for a kid and the bullets are flying.

THE NICE GUYS screenplay by director Shane Black and co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi is peppered with plenty of good jokes, several pertaining to the use of language. For instance, Holland corrects a reference to a “porno actress” as a “porno young lady”, as if that’s a more polite way of talking about the victim, and tries to break his daughter’s habit of adding “and stuff” onto the end of statements when he should probably be more concerned about her bluntness. Black and Bagarozzi make vulgar, funny poetry out of the hard-bitten talk of detective movies and pulp novels. Crowe and Gosling function more like a comedy duo than action heroes, with Crowe playing the gruff straight man to Gosling’s klutz.

As pleasurable as it is to listen to these characters’ terse chatter, the physical comedy is aces too. Gosling gets a showcase bit when Jackson confronts Holland in a bathroom stall. With his pants around his ankles while on the toilet Holland tries to recover the lit cigarette he dropped, prop the stall door opened, handle a gun, and keep his private parts covered with a magazine. His fumbling simultaneous management of these tasks is terrific slapstick. There’s a cartoon-like quality to the physical comedy too. When Holland scrambles to retrieve a bouncing film canister, he chases after it with the single-mindedness of Skrat’s pratfall-riddled pursuit of an acorn in the ICE AGE shorts and films. All that’s missing are animated birds circling the head of an uncooperative bartender when Jackson yanks on the witness’ tie like he’s ringing church bells and cracks his forehead on the bar. Looney Tunes wouldn’t go so far to depict the THE NICE GUYS’ darkly humorous disregard for bystander victimization and situational errors, as in corpse disposal, but both share the anarchic sensibility regarding comedic violence. Black makes clever use of the frame to bring some extra kick to the jokes, whether through the use of a lighter’s flame to reveal what a character hasn’t noticed is next to him or finishing gags with action in the background.

While THE NICE GUYS is a very funny movie, the sadness and cynicism coursing through it maintain the connection with noir. A lot of terrible incidents get shrugged off as just the way things are. Despite the film’s blithe attitude about killing and corruption, Holly, impressively played by Rice as a Veronica Mars in the making, embodies innocence worth shielding from all of the ugliness. Having lost her mother and home--and her father too, implicitly--Holly acts as though she’s seen it all, yet Rice reveals the character’s pure nature when directly confronted with the awful actions of adults. Sometimes all you can do is laugh off all of the rotten things in the world, but sometimes you have an obligation to maintain the moral center. THE NICE GUYS balances jaded amusement and reluctant uprightness exceptionally well.

Grade: A-

Noah

NOAH (Darren Aronofsky, 2014)

At the center of the Biblical story of Noah is the kind of spectacular visual event suited for an effects-driven Hollywood production. A vengeful God floods the entire planet to eliminate all living beings from the land except one family and the pairs of creatures of the ground and air that the patriarch is instructed to collect in an ark. The basis for disaster films resides in the oral and written traditions through which the tale has survived. What’s not included, though, are the characterization, plot details, and dialogue that the feature-length cinematic form needs, leaving writer-director Darren Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel to fill in the gaps in NOAH. Although their version deviates from what is taught in Sunday school, they use artistic license for an often thrilling examination of Noah’s psychological challenges in carrying the burden of such a calling and the construction of a sense of the supernatural more prevalent at the time.

Descended from the line of Seth, Noah (Russell Crowe) is a righteous man living off the rocky land with his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and their young sons Ham, Shem, and Japheth. They try to avoid the descendants of Cain, who live in cities where all manner of evil is engaged in. Having received visions of a great flood to come, Noah and his family travel to consult his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) about what is being asked of him. Along the way they add a girl, Ila, to their numbers after finding her as the lone survivor of a slaughtered group.

Noah understands that God is angry with the corrupt humans and plans to drown every person and creature with a great flood. As Noah has found favor with the Creator, he is to build an ark to house his family and the males and females of every kind of animal and bird. After the waters subside, they will repopulate Earth. The Watchers, fallen angels encased in rock and mud, assist Noah and his clan with the years-long task of preparing for the floodwaters to come and protect it from the king Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) and the panicking masses trying to get aboard the ark.

The ancient world of NOAH is more connected to the mystical than contemporary mankind, so glowing stones, a magical snakeskin, and the interpretation of the Nephilim as rock monsters work within the film’s context. Through these enchanted means Aronofsky and Handel tell the allegorical tale in a way that might have seemed logical to early human generations. Although these aspects are likely to be the most contentious departures from the familiar source, creating an air of unreality helps to root NOAH in another time when more active spiritual intervention was assigned responsibility for what was happening. Incorporating fantastical elements also make the antediluvian period feel more real, as it corresponds to how those who followed may have understood the nature of things.

While NOAH excites and amazes by establishing a bygone era through THE LORD OF THE RINGS-like fantasy, it’s greatest power comes in empathizing with the person directed to carry out a divine mission. What is required of Noah is enough to lead one to madness. Crowe invests the character with steadfast faithfulness while also expressing the physical and mental strains of the task at hand. To the doomed Noah behaves like a villain in a horror film. When he seeks wives for his sons he witnesses the depravity in the city that will lead God to wipe all but the chosen few from existence. Noah believes this decision is just and thus must make horrifying choices, yet despite the outcome from his assent to God’s instructions, Noah is also a victim. Shot in close-up inside the ark, Noah listens to the wailing swirl around him as the wicked suffer horrible deaths that he could prevent if told to do otherwise. God is not given an audible voice in NOAH, which makes the protagonist’s struggle to see his job through all the difficult.

Adapting religious texts for popular entertainment will always be a dicey proposition. While there are a sufficient number of creative choices in NOAH to draw the objections of some, Aronofsky’s dynamic rendition of the flood finds room to respect the source while allowing for divergences that help to keep the story relevant.

Grade: B

The Next Three Days

THE NEXT THREE DAYS (Paul Haggis, 2010)

In THE NEXT THREE DAYS John and Lara Brennan’s happy marriage is shattered when Pittsburgh police turn up at their front door one morning to arrest her for murder. Lara (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted to a life sentence, but John (Russell Crowe) holds out hope that the appeals process will ultimately free his wife. Eventually he realizes that the legal system will not overturn her conviction, so he plots to break her out of prison and escape out of the country with her and their son.

John’s singular focus and dogged mission planning propels THE NEXT THREE DAYS for a considerable amount of the running time. He’s a man obsessed with doing whatever he can in the hope of reuniting his family. The film hums from his intensity and the detail-oriented approach, even if it passes along as truth the MYTHBUSTERS-busted technique of using a tennis ball to unlock a locked vehicle.

Crowe delivers a lived-in, no-nonsense performance that has come to define his body of work. Although in comparatively few scenes, Banks is good at conveying her character’s weariness through this ordeal.

THE NEXT THREE DAYS co-writer and director Paul Haggis succeeds at exploring the psychological burdens of this situation while leaving some of the more interesting questions untouched. The audience may take it on good faith that Lara is innocent and wrongly imprisoned, but the film is less clear about that for an astonishingly long time yet doesn’t factor it into the equation. John is warned that he should be prepared to leave his son behind, but that doesn’t feel like a choice the film is ever committed to make.

The bulk of THE NEXT THREE DAYS consists of the build-up to the escape plan, which is probably just as well since this is a thriller surprisingly light on thrills. THE NEXT THREE DAYS mostly works as a dramatic study, but for a movie with a daring prison break, it needs more sizzle in the action.

Grade: C+

American Gangster

AMERICAN GANGSTER (Ridley Scott, 2007)

Free enterprise and old-fashioned hard work carry Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) from a low but trusted spot as a crime boss's driver to the pinnacle of the 1970s New York drug empire in AMERICAN GANGSTER. Frank molds himself into a respected and feared Harlem entrepreneur who gives customers higher quality heroin at a lower price than the competition. He also prefers to maintain a small profile to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement.

Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is the cop leading a task force to bust up the drug underground, but everywhere he turns, he approaches another dead end. Tracing the familiar organized crime players doesn't lead to the kingpin ruling the market. Richie's rigid code of ethics concerning work places him on the outside of a police community riddled with corruption. He has more in common with Frank, another highly principled man, although Richie is the only one on the right side of the law.

As a showcase for Washington and Crowe, AMERICAN GANGSTER does not disappoint. Washington gives Frank an elegant malevolence while never idealizing his vicious core. Depending on the venue, he can be ruthless or respectable, a combination that makes him more dangerous than his thuggish competitors. With a gleam in his eyes, Washington relishes the opportunity to play the smooth criminal.

Alternately, Crowe's Richie is a frayed bundle of turmoil and integrity, an imperfect man rubbed raw by the standards he observes and fails to meet. Combining bookish sensibility and physicality is one of Crowe's strengths as an actor. In Richie he finds an ideal character who must be capable of outfoxing his opponents in the investigation office and courtroom and outhitting them on the inner city's mean streets.

Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steve Zaillian lay out AMERICAN GANGSTER like dual case studies of the drug trade and narcotics investigation. Frank operates with the brutal efficiency and market awareness that could have made him a tycoon examined in business schools if he had put his energy into legitimate endeavors. It's fascinating to follow the ingenuity responsible for his ascension to and residency at the top. Likewise, the labyrinthine nature of Richie's probe makes for compelling viewing. While tough guy posturing is critical and produces exciting chases and shootouts, sifting through mountains of evidence is where the most important work is accomplished.

The meticulous depiction of the ins and outs of the protagonists' chosen professions tends to squeeze out the human side. Richie's family problems are given short shrift. Frank's domestic situation isn't explained enough to understand why his clan would follow him unquestioningly. Filling in these empty corners would have made this a richer film, but AMERICAN GANGSTER is solely concerned with the promise in pulling oneself up by the bootstraps in dogged pursuit of the American dream. Everything else is secondary. After all, it's just business.

Grade: B