Tag: Ben Foster

Hell or High Water

Hell_or_High_Water_film_posterThe salt of the Earth genius of David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water” is that it takes this Robin Hood story of justice for the working family over the bankers and the system and makes it purely Texas. Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay (“Sicario”) sees debt billboards mocking our heroes from every highway and has political, financial commentary carefully weaved in among heist dialogue, brotherly joshing and casually offensive and racist quips. It’s so steeped in Southern values and is one of the most richly American movies of the year.

Toby and Tanner Howard are two brothers with a plan to rob small banks throughout Texas in order to pay off the mortgage on their deceased mother’s ranch. The land will overturn to the bank by the end of the week, but rather than sentimental value associated with the ranch, diggers found oil on their property, and they stand to clear more than the mortgage is worth within the first week of digging.

Toby (Chris Pine) wants to give the property to his ex-wife and sons as a nest egg to atone for his past transgressions. He may not be a great person, but he’s got a clean record, a young, ruggedly handsome face and brains. His brother Tanner (Ben Foster) has been in and out of prison and has volatile mood swings with often amusing results, like when he scares off a woman hitting on his brother and then proceeds to pick up their hotel desk clerk. He says he’s never known a single person get away with any crime, but his reason for helping sums up everything you need to know about their relationship: “Because you asked little brother.” Continue reading “Hell or High Water”

Rampart

After the 1992 Rodney King beating was caught on tape, everyone had questions about the victim we were seeing. “Rampart” looks at the other side of the police brutality video, profiling a bad, racist cop who deserves all the pain that comes to him but recognizes he’s human all the same.

Oren Moverman’s (“The Messenger”) film takes place in 1999 Los Angeles, when the LAPD was notorious for corruption. For Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), racism is a part of his daily routine. He’s got the mentality that we know to be stereotypical and wrong, and yet he’s been around so much that he displays a logic and understanding that can be hard to fully disagree with.

When a Mexican gangbanger collides with Dave’s cop car, the man shoves his car door into Dave and tries to make his escape, only for Dave to chase him down and beat him senseless. The violence is caught on video, and the DA’s office feels Dave is the perfect scapegoat to throw to the press as they juggle their own corruption allegations.

As he tries to escape his punishment and remain on the police force, “Rampart” follows Dave’s descent to rock bottom. Before long he’s pulled all of his strings with a former colleague (Ned Beatty), his on the street contact (Ben Foster) and the defense attorney who is his current lover (Robin Wright), and he’s got no one left to turn to in support of his reckless ways.

Less of a crime procedural and more of an emotionally poignant character drama, “Rampart’s” effort to make us feel empathy for this evil man is built on the fiery performance by Woody Harrelson. Blackmail, framing, adultery, brutality and racism; this guy does it all, but Harrelson is careful never to let Dave take sadistic pleasure out of all his hatred.

We see him as a nuanced man, powerless amidst his own family. He was married to two sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) and fathered a daughter with each. His oldest, Helen (Brie Larson), is now a man-hating lesbian and holds his dad responsible after Dave earned a reputation as “Date-Rape Dave” for allegedly murdering a man trying to rape a woman. He had his reasons for doing what he did to that guy, and they may have even been noble, but what matters is that his family doesn’t feel the same. You wonder then where Dave’s external hatred comes from.

Moverman shoots from canted angles and behind grated bars and windows to show just how skewed a perception Dave has on life. It gets over-stylized at times, and you beg for the simple gritty realism to be found in his previous film “The Messenger.” That movie contained more raw emotion in one, motionless shot that lasted for nearly nine minutes than “Rampart” does in its portrait of a much more emotionally intense character.

Still, “Rampart” is a powerful film. The movie’s cryptic screenplay and open-ended climax has left many audiences frustrated, but the ending doesn’t matter so much as the hard truth that for even the worst guy in the world, we wouldn’t wish upon him the pain of having nothing left.

3 ½ stars

The Messenger

Death is never by the book. In “The Messenger,” two soldiers delivering the news to parents and wives that their relative has been killed in action overseas do all they can to lessen the blow, but no news of this nature ever goes according to plan.

This job then is as tough as anything in the field. It requires massive conviction and strength under pressure. But as one commander says, this job is a more important way of serving your country, because doing this is holy.

The two up for the job are Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) and Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), Stone a veteran showing Montgomery the ropes. No hugging, no added sympathy, no lingering, no sunglasses and no doorbells. The Yankee Doodle jingle followed by a death telegram is not a great way to start one’s day, Stone explains.

But Director Oren Moverman does not envy or glorify their job for one moment. As they hit home after home and break the hard news, there’s an unexpected complication and reaction behind each door. One family learns what has happened to their son before the soldiers say a word. One father nearly beats his daughter when he learns she “married that dirtbag after all,” and then is instantly crushed to hear the bad news. Another man lashes out in anger at Montgomery and Stone, saying, “Why aren’t you dead?”

These sequences are so devastating and unpredictable that you could make a separate movie about each family as soon as Montgomery and Stone walk out the door. Their episodic nature feel as intense and isolated as the war sequences in “The Hurt Locker,” and the psychological ramifications have the emotional impact of the firings in “Up in the Air.” Continue reading “The Messenger”

Contraband

Why is everyone in “Contraband” a smuggler, a screw-up, an idiot or all three? Better yet, why do these people from New Orleans talk with Boston accents?

“Contraband” is a thickheaded heist thriller with a laborious plot and a whole lot of contrived violence against women and children to make up for it.

Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is the best in the biz, and although he’s out of the game, he’s doing “one last job” (sigh) to pay back his kid brother-in-law’s debt after a drug run gone bad.

These guys are in love with the idea of smuggling. They call Chris the “Lennon and McCartney” of smugglers. They discuss their work with their wives, family and friends. They walk right into danger and plot an elaborate heist just because they can, and then they act surprised when things go horribly wrong.

I grew irritated at how many times Chris walked right up to his brother-in-law’s attacker, Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), and then could think of nothing better than to run another job just to pay him his money.

Although, it was not as irritating as Briggs’s voice, an accent so thick and fake (“Say g’bye ta ya wiiife!”) his presence as a villain is laughable.

What’s more, Wahlberg’s tough, bad guy turned straight is getting weary. It’s a role he’s played so many times he better be getting a tax write-off.

Their dull performances do nothing to energize this ugly film shot in a cliché documentary style.

It’s often so slow and without vitality it has to concoct elaborate set pieces like a boat threatening to crash into a pier or a van dangling out of a high flying shipping container, none of which chalk up points for the film as intelligent.

Please let “Contraband” be the one last time Wahlberg does one last job.

2 stars