Deception - Review

Deception is a lean, well-crafted sex thriller with a polished European feel and a striking visual style courtesy of first time Swiss director Marcel Langenegger. It’s a quieter sort of thriller than we’ve become used to after so many Bourne flicks, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. To the contrary: there are plenty of thrills (and plenty of sex) packed into this briskly paced film, but at its core Deception is a character driven meditation on alienation in regimented world (The Metamorphosis, anyone?). Sure it’s as fizzy as a glass of champagne in most other ways, but who says entertainment can’t also be intellectually stimulating?

Ewan McGregor plays the nebbishy Jonathan McQuarry, an 18-hour a day workaholic accountant with no social life to speak of. He spends his evenings alone in glass buildings, staring out blankly from behind his laptop screen at the lighted streets of New York. Langenegger creates visual metaphors for Jonathan’s ghost-like isolation, many of them lifted from Antonioni. In one scene Jonathan rides an elevator while two women chat about their sex life, blatantly unconscious to his presence. In another he is left stranded between two concrete pillars, just having had the subway doors slam in his face.

His colorless existence changes dramatically when Jonathan meets the charismatic, snake-like lawyer Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman). With a charming smile and an invitation for tennis, Wyatt slowly coaxes Jonathan out of his unsociable shell. The plot picks up steam when a cell phone switch up between the two men leads the hapless Jonathan to a Sex Club informally called “The List” (“Intimacy without intricacy” is its motto). Soon the fairly virginal Jonathan is taking a giddy tour of the most fancy hotels in New York, meeting Wall Street women for consequence free sex (including the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling as the “Belle of Wall Street” with a self-declared soft spot for “bashful boys”). It is not until he meets the luminous, if remote ‘S’ (Michelle Williams) that Jonathan truly begins to blossom. Alas, a good thing never lasts as an ill-fated tryst throws Jonathan into the midst of a sex scandal, engineered by the dubious Wyatt – obviously not the white-collar type he pretended to be to entrap the naïve Jonathan in his web. It is now clear that Jonathan will have to outmaneuver the crafty Wyatt in order to save himself from social ruin.

The lead performances are uniformly solid. McGregor plays Jonathan as an inelegant numbers man uncomfortable in his own skin. His severely parted hair and geeky glasses are a shield, a layer of protection between him and the world. As the film progresses McGregor subtly changes his character’s tics, showing how Jonathan is changed, not just by his passion for ‘S’, but by a newly found sense of self-worth. Jackman glitters as a cruelly suave conman with a taste for international crime. Williams has eyes the size of platters and lips to match, but sadly doesn’t have enough screen time here to truly give an effective performance. Still, her empathetic presence is a welcome one; its obvious Jonathan would fall in love with ‘S’ at first sight, which is all that’s really required of her (this is a sex thriller, after all).

Mark Bomback’s (Live Free or Die Hard) script for Deception is exceedingly tidy; there are no extraneous scenes or plot lines left unresolved. The narrative hurtles smoothly towards the satisfying, if somewhat predictable ending. Any predictability in the last 20 minutes can be forgiven however, because the rest film is put together in such an appealing, thoroughly entertaining way. We are left with the sense that every part of Deception was as carefully plotted out as Wyatt’s takedown of Jonathan. Deception knows exactly where it’s going and exactly how it’s going to get there. It may be popcorn, but it’s well-made popcorn and that makes all the difference.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay - Review

Unbelievably, Kal Penn and John Cho are both in their 30’s, but they’re still the perfect image of mid-20’s slackerdom in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the sequel no one would have expected when Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle made just $18 million in theatres. But thanks to the wonders of DVD, America’s current favorite stoners are back, bringing with them pretty much everything that made us love them to begin with.

The movie kicks off literally minutes after the first one ended, with Harold (Cho) and Kumar (Penn) preparing to fly to Amsterdam and meet Harold’s dream girl, neighbor Maria (Paula Garcés). You’d expect them to get tangled up in airport security, but they make it onto the plane and into the tiny bathroom, where Kumar can’t resist taking a puff of his special no-smoke bong. It’s no surprise than an Indian-American wielding a battery-powered bong on an airplane is doomed, and before too long Harold and Kumar have been shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, shown no mercy from the crazed Homeland Security officer Ron (Rob Corddry).

It takes them all of five minutes to escape, thanks to some handy real terrorists in the next cell, and from there they’re on the run through the deep South, hoping to make it to Texas to break up the wedding between Kumar’s ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Danneel Harris) and her politically connected fiancée Colton (Eric Winter). Their adventures involve a bottomless (as opposed to topless) party in Miami, a creepy trailer in Alabama, a Klan rally, an urban neighborhood’s basketball game, and, of course, a run-in with Neil Patrick Harris, who takes them to what might actually be the best little whorehouse in Texas.

Mixed in with the madness, as in the first one, are a lot of jabs of America’s simultaneous racism and fear of sounding racist. Corddry’s Homeland Security agent is so flagrantly racist he tries to tempt Jewish witnesses with a jangling bag of pennies and actually wipes his ass with the Bill of Rights. Ed Helms shows up in an interrogation scene as an interpreter who can’t understand that Harold’s parents can speak English. The pokes at racism were funny enough in the first movie, but when linked in this way to the American government they take on a deeper, more barbed meaning. And given that Harold and Kumar escape prison with the help of terrorists, the movie deftly avoids doing anything remotely like defending terrorism. When one of the angry Al-Qaeda members tells Kumar that Americans need to eat fewer donuts and pay attention to the world, Kumar shouts back, “Fuck you! Donuts are awesome!” Case closed.

Cho and Penn continue being the best part of the series—it’s hard to imagine the first one succeeding without their charm and camaraderie. Penn even gets a chance to show off his real acting chops, in a flashback to college when Vanessa helped him break out of his nerd shell. The men make Harold and Kumar enough fun to spend time with, even when the jokes get slow and repetitive. Same goes for Neil Patrick Harris, who tries valiantly to make his on-screen persona different from the character he plays each week on How I Met Your Mother; it doesn’t really work except when Harris takes mushrooms, which is something no one on CBS primetime ever gets to do.

Harold and Kumar is a bit grosser than Judd Apatow’s usual fare, and won’t have quite the same crossover appeal as the equally stoned Knocked Up. But its fans will leave the theater happy. Provided they ever make it to the theater to begin with. Hard to smoke in a public place, you know.

The Forbidden Kingdom - Review

The Forbidden Kingdom features the first ever on screen pairing of cinema’s two greatest living martial arts legends: Jet Li and Jackie Chan. That alone makes this movie a must see for anyone and everyone, but screenwriter John Fusco and director Rob Minkoff have done more than simply throw two of kung fu’s most famous faces together in the same picture. They’ve crafted a magical film using both Chan and Li’s legendary reputations as the lynchpins in telling an entertaining, crowd-pleasing, action-fantasy story.

Initially the film pours itself into the mold of The Neverending Story, only this time the kid in question isn’t obsessed with old books, but with Kung Fu movies. Like Neverending’s Bastian, Jason is a social outcast accosted by almost cartoonish bullies. He finds comfort hanging out in a Chinatown store browsing for forgotten martial arts films and chatting with its elderly, somewhat cranky owner. Forbidden Kingdom isn’t copying The Neverending Story, it’s just tapping into those same, primal geek-energies by taking its character to a place every awkward, put-upon kid can understand. And like the Neverending Story, it uses that energy to form an instant, sympathetic connection with its audience for Jason, before launching him into a fantastical adventure.

At the back of the store, Jason finds an antique bowstaff which, when trouble starts, magically propels him back through time to an ancient, forgotten China ruled by an evil overlord. Lost and out of his element, Jason meets two legendary Kung Fu masters who take him under their wing and guide him down a path which will not only free China, but send him home. The masters in question are played by Jackie Chan and Jet Li, but they aren’t just played by them, they are them. Forbidden Kingdom gives them different names of course. Chan is a drunken Kung Fu master named Lu Yan, and Li is a pious monk named Lan Cai He. But the characters are written to be avatars composed of both Chan and Li’s greatest on screen moments, and the film takes advantage of the mystique and power of our past perception of these two actors to make them seem doubly heroic.

Because of the way it uses it’s stars, The Forbidden Kingdom delivers on every level, both as an fun, fantasy film and as a the long awaited, team-up tribute to the genre’s two greatest stars. Maybe it’s ten years too late, after all Chan and Li are now long past their prime, and Jackie in particular has been noticeably slipping in his most recent previous films. Years of insane stuntwork have taken a toll on both master’s bodies. It doesn’t matter. Whatever either of these men had left in the tank, they use it all up here. You’ll thrill as the film has them revisit and pay tribute to some of their greatest martial arts fight choreography, and then lets every fan live out every fantasy he’s had by making them use it on each other. And that’s just in the first thirty minutes.

The rest of the cast is just as good. Minkoff could have gotten away with casting blocks of wood and the audience probably still would’ve been happy, as long as Jackie and Jet go at it, but Michael Angarano is capable as the film’s lead. Minkoff uses him as a stand in for us, as a way for an audience of Jackie and Jet’s fans to put themselves in the movie and be transported to a world where they get to do Kung Fu with the artform’s greatest heroes.

Some of the villains are over the top, the effects are formidable, and fight scenes frequently disobey the laws of physics, but it’s all part of the fun. The Forbidden Kingdom is an unabashedly innocent, wide-eyed movie selling the ultimate in martial arts fantasy. It delivers beautifully, on every level with fight sequences that pop, breathtaking landscapes, and classic good guys versus bad guys family-friendly drama. Forget Batman vs. Superman. Jackie and Jet are bigger, better, and they’re together for the first, and almost certainly last time in a film that’s unbelievably worthy of playing host to their formidable reputations.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Review

I have seen far too much of Jason Segel’s penis today. Not that I can imagine there’s any day that would be a good day for me to see his penis, or to see it any more than I have seen it today. Regardless, I have seen too much of it, specifically after viewing Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I mention this because it really is the only bad thing I can think to say about the movie, which is an incredibly realistic yet comical look at breakups and the process that people go through when they’re dumped, with some good old-fashioned raunch comedy thrown in for good measure.

Written and starring Jason Segel, the movie tells the story of Peter, a composer who has been dating actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) for five years. Both work for a hit police drama TV show, allowing lots of jokes made at the expense of the overloaded C.S.I. genre. Within minutes of the movie’s start, Sarah dumps Peter, devastating the musician into a downward spiral that leads to him sleeping with every girl he meets and eventually attempting to get away from his life by taking a vacation to Hawaii… where Sarah and her new boyfriend also happen to be vacationing.

The movie keeps things moving at a brisk pace from the get-go. We get to know Peter quickly. Within five minutes we’ve seen him naked (including full-frontal nudity) and within six minutes Sarah has broken up with him. The pace does start to slow down a bit as Peter meets Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis) and starts a new potential relationship with her, but that’s only to allow for some wonderfully awkward moments like a dinner between Peter, Rachel, Sarah, and her boyfriend, rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), where he shares his philosophy of being allowed to sleep with any woman he meets.

Anyone who has seen How I Met Your Mother or Veronica Mars is well acquainted with the talent of the primary cast members, although Kunis may surprise some people since she was so limited in That 70’s Show and Brand is a relative newcomer to American audiences. As a film produced in part by Judd Apatow, I expected to see a lot more of his regulars and was surprised not to see Seth Rogen put in an appearance (Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd both have small supporting roles which are well executed). The true standout of the supporting players is Jack MacBrayer, who has been making audiences laugh as Kenneth the page on 30 Rock and shows a more risqué edge to a similar character here as a newlywed virgin on his honeymoon.

The true strength of the film isn’t the cast, although they wind up benefiting from it. The strength is in the characters built by Segel’s script. The writer has crafted such well-rounded characters that there’s no clear cut villain for the story. Sure Sarah has broken Peter’s heart, but she’s really not a bad person; she just has some character flaws, as does Peter. Even Brand’s musician, who had been sleeping with Sarah for some time before she dumped Peter, isn’t completely villainous and has some redeeming qualities. Segel creates characters that are realistic. Let’s face it – when you’ve been dumped, there’s a part of you that still loves the person you lost, and that’s very easy to believe here because all of the characters have such depth. The actors have a lot to work with, resulting in stronger performances and making the whole story a success.

On top of such strong characters, Segel clearly has a good mind for comedy. Here it’s executed without any sort of limitations, from his shocking nudity to free discussion of adult concepts. It’ll be interesting to see what he can do in the future with his plans of a Muppet movie (which would require a very different comedic style than Sarah Marshall) but I have full faith that he can pull it off. He gets that the characters need to be strong and not just an excuse for a punchline – a good lesson I suspect he’s picked up from Apatow.

With a strong story and complex characterizations, Forgetting Sarah Marshall could easily earn the honor of being one of this year’s best comedies, although it’s potential audience may be limited a bit by its raunchy approach. Here’s hoping Segel can continue to craft stories like this in the future, although ironically a little less nudity might give the actor/writer a bit more exposure.