Crime Wave

CRIME WAVE          A-                   

USA  (73 mi)  1954  d:  André de Toth

You know, it isn’t what a man wants to do, Lacey, but what he has to do.  Now take me — I love to smoke cigarettes, but the doctors say I can’t have them.  So what do I do?  I chew toothpicks, tons of them.

—Detective Lieutenant Sims (Sterling Hayden)  Note – de Toth refused to allow Hayden to smoke on the set, hoping to contribute to an extra level of grumpiness and hostility from Hayden’s performance

A film that wastes no time getting into the heart of the action, becoming a fast-paced, hard-edged crime caper, an obscure, underrated low-budget noir thriller that unfolds in something approaching real time, a formulaic story driven by detail, shot with visual flair and a heavy dose of authenticity, highlighted by tough-as-nails Sterling Hayden as Detective Lieutenant Sims, an intimidating presence, always shot from a low angle by cameraman Bert Glennon, making sure he towers over everyone else, a cop on the case who wants to use ex-felons as stool pigeons, a model for CHINATOWN (1974) and L.A. Confidential (1997) in the stark realism and use of actual shooting locations, featuring an all-too-jaded Los Angeles landscape.  Directed by Hungarian émigré André de Toth, who lost his sight in one eye from a childhood accident, wearing a black eyepatch, which nearly cost him his life, according to his own personal memoirs entitled Fragments: Portraits from the Inside, as he was kidnapped while scouting for locations in Egypt shortly after the the Yom Kippur War of 1973, pistol-whipped and beaten to a pulp during a fierce interrogation session, mistaken for Moyshe Dayan, Israeli General and Defense Minister, released only after an examination of his genitalia revealed he wasn’t even Jewish.  After obtaining a law degree in Budapest, he wrote plays and worked in the theater before making the jump to movies, making seven Hungarian films before fleeing the country when he was forced to direct Nazi propaganda movies, eventually making his way to Hollywood where he directed the searingly intense war drama NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944) before pivoting to making a series of grim, psychological westerns.  Marrying screen siren Veronica Lake, he retained a strong Hungarian accent, cut from the same mold as other hard-living men like John Ford or John Huston, where he was known in Hollywood as a cowboy, painter, and sculptor, developing a reputation as a thrill-seeker who piloted his own airplanes, drove race cars, and loved playing polo, marrying seven times with 19 children.  When offered the film, the studios wanted Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner to star, anticipating a 35 day shoot.  The director refused to use big named stars, preferring more autonomy on the set and the ability to select his own cast.  Jack Warner threw a fit, cutting the budget while reducing the film shoot to just 15 days, and then didn’t release the film until 2 years after it was completed, perhaps out of spite.  But this film, an intense psychological study of crime and punishment, caught the attention of not only Stanley Kubrick, using many of the same themes and actors in THE KILLING (1956), including its documentary visual style as well as the impossible notion of pulling off the “perfect crime,” but it was also one of the favorites of Jean-Pierre Melville, listed at #4 on a list compiled by crime writer James Ellroy, James Ellroy Selects His Ten Favourite Crime Films – July '98. 

Adapted from the short story Criminal Mark by John and Ward Hawkins, originally appearing in The Saturday Evening Post, the film opens from the back seat of a car, much like the heralded scene in Gun Crazy (1950), now standard Hollywood procedure as the car pulls into a gas station, where we hear the radio sounds of Doris Day singing George and Ira Gershwin’s Doris Day - S'Wonderful - YouTube (1:36), and right off the bat the lighthearted mood disappears when something goes terribly wrong during a heist, making off with only chump change, but shooting a cop, while one of the robbers takes a bullet to his gut, breaking up afterwards, with the injured man in a car while the other two exit on foot.  What sets this apart is the use of radio broadcasts, as immediately details go out over the police airwaves, identifying the location of the incident, a description of the robbers, and the make of the car, which repeats incessantly, adding the location of a stolen vehicle, as we see the woman speaking into the microphone relaying the messages, leading to the transmission inside the police station where Sims has been listening, setting up a perimeter around the stolen vehicle, including the names and addresses of former convicts.  With police roadblocks set up to block all avenues of escape, criminals routinely seek help and assistance from former convicts now on the outside, like their own version of the Underground Railroad, offering them protection and safety, though sometimes at the point of a gun, with suggestions that you can never outrun the mistakes of your past.  Rounding up the usual suspects and informers (actually borrowing footage from Gun Crazy), where routine police work is viewed as bullying reluctant witnesses, who appear as ordinary citizens, with the camera following Sims as he moves down a line of desks, one by one, each a revelation of harrowing backstories that feel as if they’ve been interrupted midstream, quickly realizing this is the work of a trio of convicts who recently escaped from San Quintin prison, doing a series of smalltime holdups on their way down the highway to Los Angeles.  Simultaneously, Morgan (Nedrick Young, blacklisted writer and actor), the wounded man, shows up at the doorstep of Steve Lacey (professional dancer Gene Nelson), a former convict trying to go straight, along with his assertive wife Ellen (model turned actress Phyllis Kirk), joined shortly afterwards by Otto Hessler (Jay Novello), another former convict, an alcoholic veterinarian who lost his medical license, summoned to patch up Morgan, but he dies before any work can be done to save him, with Hessler rifling through his pockets taking the money.  Sims hauls in Lacey, suspecting his involvement right from the outset, but he doesn’t squawk, so he learns little, letting him cool his heels in jail for 3 days before trying to enlist him to work a sting operation in San Diego, the most recent sighting of the convicts, but he refuses to play along, eventually releasing him. 

The other two convicts are identified as the smooth talking ‘Doc’ Penny (Ted de Corsia) and his muscle, Ben Hastings (Charles Buchinsky, aka Charles Bronson), who circled back to LA, thinking the cops would never suspect to look for them there, hiding out in Lacey’s apartment, surprising him upon his return home, enlisting him in their foolproof getaway after pulling off a bank heist Penny has been planning for seven years, right down to the last detail, arrogantly thinking he can outsmart the cops, embracing the idea of the “perfect crime.”  Using Lacey’s pilot skills, their getaway includes flying safely into Mexico, as Lacey works nearby at a small airport as an engineer, knowing the ins and outs of the operation, including the security rounds, pulling him into their heist, threatening to harm his wife if he doesn’t play along.  Having no options, basically kidnapped at gunpoint, he becomes the getaway driver, quickly moving to new quarters where a lecherous ex-con Johnny Haslett (Timothy Carey) will keep a close watch over the wife while the heist takes place, refusing to release her unless the police radio confirms a successful getaway.  Another backseat camera leads viewers to the bank, circling around the block after dropping off Penny and Hastings, who enter as typical customers, while a third man Zenner (James Hayward) is disguised as a meter reader, entering through the back, cutting off the bank’s electricity at a designated time, when all mayhem breaks loose, with Lacey hearing the gunshots.  Using a series of rapid edits, the scene erupts into utter chaos with everyone caught offguard.  As Sims approaches Lacey sitting in his car, he speeds off, with Sims following in hot pursuit, making a mad dash back to his wife, who is being manhandled by Haslett when he arrives, quickly pouncing on him.  By the time Sims gets there, the two have tumbled down an outdoor staircase with police standing by (among the most incredible stairway falls in film history).  While an All Points Bulletin has been announced over the airwaves with Lacey “Wanted for Murder,” it appears that his worst fears have been realized, that Sims has him dead to rights, following his lead right from the beginning, believing “once a crook, always a crook.”  Despite Lacey’s insistence that he had no choice, Sims cuts him off, revealing the bank clerks were all planted cops, laying in wait for the outlaws, offering a perfect counter defense, which is like rewinding the crime scene in our heads, putting a different spin on each face.  At 73-minutes, set in an ever expanding nocturnal cityscape, the meticulous precision of the shot selection reveals an economy of no wasted material, finishing under budget and under schedule, shot in just 13 days, tense and suspenseful throughout, and still full of surprises, where Sterling Hayden, in particular, is terrific as the brash toothpick-chewing cop, used by James Ellroy as the model for hard-boiled cop Bud White in L.A. Confidential (1997).    

Still (2014)

STILL         C         
Great Britain  (96 mi)  2014  d:  Simon Blake 

This is another misguided revenge-gone-wrong saga, something of a holdover from the Charles Bronson vigilante justice movies from DEATH WISH (1974), but updated into a gritty, modern era, gang-infested North London atmosphere instead.  While the look is intentionally dark and dreary, much of it seeped in blackness, where color is literally drained from the screen, this film immerses itself in wretched miserablism with a touch of added torture porn, where the painfully trite dialogue written by the director is cliché’d and overly predictable, exploring more of the surface reality than what lies underneath.  Irish actor Aiden Gillen plays Tom Carver, a professional photographer specializing in street portraits of kids whose life is spiraling out of control at the moment, still reeling from the death of his own teenage son a year ago, who by chance bumps into a teenage street thug on the street, which escalates into a series of ever more brutal gang-related reprisals, turning this into a mind-numbing saga of neverending revenge.  While meeting with his ex-wife Rachel (Amanda Mealing) to visit the grave of their son, a regular occurrence in their lives, she describes him as “You’re an accident waiting to happen.”  No one knows how he got himself into this hapless situation or why he insists upon living in a cheap dive of an apartment in the heart of gang territory, but it’s clear that Carver’s way out of this self-imposed prison is to drink his way out of this pitiful state.  Of course the more alcohol he insists upon drinking only makes him a more pathetic figure, no matter where he exists, but unfortunately the majority of this picture is immersed in Carver’s non-stop drinking.  Other than Eugene O’Neill and a few other great playwrights, lead characters that drown their sorrows in alcohol are often a cheap substitute for realism in the movies, as here it adds absolutely nothing, but instead feels fake, like the audience is cheated out of a real performance by using a conventional device used on television.  This actually undermines the entire film, where what might otherwise be tragic becomes self-indulgent and pathetic when seen through the eyes of a masochistic fool that insists upon heaping more misery into his already wretched existence, a guy who apparently lives by the creed misery loves company.  

A low-budget film shot for less than half a million dollars, most of the action takes place in the cramped and claustrophobic confines of Carver’s apartment, where the audience is subject to long, drawn out, alcohol-fueled conversations between Carver and his ex-wife or Carver and his current girlfriend Christina (Elodie Yung) that only grow testy and irritable, usually ending with someone storming out the door in anger.  These are not subtle scenes, but are instead full-throttle flashes of rage and resentment where passions rise in wretched excess, often playing the blame game, where the residue of past sins resurfaces in spectacular fashion.  This personal more interior drama happening within the framework of a larger overall social drama is continuously in play, where the question becomes what influence each one has on the other.  The weakest link of the entire picture is the constant presence of Carver’s supposed best friend Ed (Jonathan Slinger), a slimy character with a seedy side to him, as he’s a freelance journalist always on the lookout for a headline grabbing story.  When gangs begin terrorizing Carver’s home, singling him out for street harassment, Ed goes on all-night stake outs trying to photograph the perpetrators in action and in this way identify who they are.  Throughout the film we rarely see them, but only hear about their menacing presence, where there is power in remaining anonymous and unknown, as neighborhood fears only increase when people feel isolated and alone.  Another developing theme throughout is a budding friendship between a young kid Jimmy (Joseph Duffy) that he photographs who’s brother was killed by the gangs, where he tries to offer encouragement and understanding, claiming he’s well aware of death and the feeling of loss, but the kid is sucked into the terrifying world of poverty, gangs and survival, toyed with and eventually targeted, where the hooligans want to teach him a lesson for befriending Carver.  This coincides with gang targets of Christina, who is attacked in the alleyways just outside the front door, where she is shamed, humiliated, and ultimately defeated, leaving Carver to fume on his own.

Enraged by the gang’s actions, Carver’s life disintegrates before our eyes, as Christina’s departure seems to have sent him over the edge, where his thoughts turn to vengeance, where Ed acts as his trusted Iago-like confidant that always seems to encourage the idea of direct confrontation, though from his perspective it may be little more than a good story.  Once Ed discovers the identity of the young kid, he’s a young street punk named Carl, British rapper Sonny Green (Sonny Green | The biography of Sonny Green) in his film debut, who is kidnapped, handcuffed, and dropped into Carver’s hands for his own brand of street justice.  The idea of taking matters into one’s own hands and wreaking vengeance is never a good idea, in fact it’s a rather preposterous piece of theatrics that borders on the ridiculous.  One doesn’t play God with other people’s lives, no matter how contemptuous they may be, and one should never allow oneself to get placed in that position.  To be that distrustful of an existing legal system of police, courts, and law and order only feeds into the chaos and street anarchy mentality that the gangs want, because in that game they can rule by fear.  Carver is just as psychologically unhinged and obsessed as Charles Bronson, where both think they’re doing society a favor by ridding the streets of these vile creatures, but like rats, there’s plenty more where they came from, and vigilantism doesn’t make a dent in the crime rate.  What finally unfolds is a theater of two individuals, one drunk and psychotically deranged, while the other is a psychopath in his own right, but he’s still just a juvenile kid.  While the adults unashamedly overact throughout, which grows irritating after awhile, the teenagers themselves are excellent, seemingly more natural, especially Green in this final sequence, where he more than holds his own onscreen, shaming Carver, who is wracked with guilt about his own shortcomings, seeing the world in black and white moral absolutes, where there is no in between, but Carl reminds him how much he neglected his own son while he was alive, where he didn’t even know him, where this haymaker hits Carver square on the jaw and comes as the final payback, suggesting there is a connection between indifferent parenting and gang culture, blurring the lines between innocence and evil, where in the end the boy he’s inflicting his wrath upon may as well be his own lost son.          

Prisoners

PRISONERS       C+         
USA  (153 mi)  2013  d:  Denis Villenueve                    Official site

Like Susan Bier, Lone Scherfig, Tom Tykwer, Nimrod Antal, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Wong Kar-wai, John Woo, Guillermo del Toro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and the latest Nicholas Winding Refn effort before him, not to mention countless others, this is another example of a Hollywood flameout by a terrific foreign director, in this case a Canadian from Quebec making his first big budget Hollywood movie with a $50 million dollar budget and what appears to be a terrific cast, and despite the sleek look captured by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins, one of the best in the business, the film starts out with a certain amount of intrigue before taking a nosedive into the kind of sadistic territory that America is starting to represent to the world.  If charges of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were not bad enough, Hollywood churns out even more deplorable violent imagery, where at some point one would have to ask who is responsible for writing this kind of depressing stuff, and who wants to film it and make it into a movie?  While this movie may have earned back nearly half its production cost in the first week, word of mouth is going to kill it, as this is not a feelgood movie, or a complicated whodunit, but it’s a director who knows how to build suspense, but to what end?  Some of the early reviews suggested this was a tense, white knuckles thriller that would have viewers on the edge of their seats, and the story itself, written by Aaron Guzikowski, is a suspense thriller whose interest quickly evaporates, forcing the audience to literally endure nearly two hours of torture that never seems to end.  While it may have been an attempt to resurrect the torture argument before the American public, who felt this was a topic of entertainment, or a subject we need to revisit?  More likely this is the kind of story idea floating around Hollywood, as torture porn has found its way into the mainstream of the movie industry, viewed by audiences around the world, so no one even thinks to question whether it’s a good idea anymore, they just re-use formulaic ideas from existing financially successful films. 

More than a suspense thriller, or even a police procedural, this is actually a vigilante movie, one where Charles Bronson in the 70’s would resort to the same kind of savage brutality as the bad guys, but because he was always on the side of good, avenging his daughter or protecting neighborhoods and families that the police were disturbingly unable to protect, so audiences accepted his vicious overkill, including a hair-trigger temper and near samurai speed and skill with a gun.  Despite heavy obstacles set in his path, Bronson would always kickass and save the day, becoming an avenging angel, much like the perception of Travis Bickle at the end of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), or Clint Eastwood in his 70’s and 80’s American westerns.  But America after 9/11 has become a more divided political landscape filled with moral uncertainty, where Hollywood has resorted to apolitical heroes that include mythical animated strongmen and women as well as futuristic space adventure epics that save the universe, where comic book superheroes make megabucks at the box office.  Even Woody Allen has spent the better part of a decade away from America to make his movies.  The nation as a whole has found it difficult to settle upon likeable heroes that don’t themselves remain morally conflicted, like Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a fictional TV crime boss who vacillates emotionally from the constant turmoil about being a loving father and family man while having to make a living where he’s forced to commit brutal murders.  Where in the past it was always easy to tell the good guys from the bad, in the post 9/11 era that’s not so clear, where that’s particularly evident in this movie.  Unfortunately, much of what this resorts to are stereotypes that insult the audience’s intelligence and only diminishes the complexity and overall appeal, even as the audience wades through the various twists and turns in the road, as the narrative outcome remains elusively uncertain.  An overall sense of dread is prevalent throughout, easily sustained due to the subject matter, but one has to question the methods used to advance the suspense.

In a weird casting choice, Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a carpenter barely scraping out a living in the suburbs, but also a hard corps American survivalist with fundamentalist religious roots, whose family motto is “Pray for the best but prepare for the worst,” words he takes to heart, ingraining the seriousness of it into his teenage son with a constant drumbeat.  Dover is the kind of driven, no-nonsense figure who takes things to the limit, but is also a self-righteous man that refuses to acknowledge his own mistakes, believing it is his manly duty to remain strong for his wife and children.  The cast is superlative, one of the best ensemble casts seen all year, though only a few stand out, where one of the most egregious crimes of the film is the criminal underuse of some of the actors, especially those of color.  Set in the cold and rainy hills of Pennsylvania, Dover and his family walk across the street to spend Thanksgiving with the Birch family, none other than Terrence Howard and Viola Davis, where the kids would rather play outside.  In the course of the afternoon, two six year old girls end up missing, one from each family.  After an initial panic, it becomes clear they didn’t just run away, that they were more likely abducted, where a beat up RV camper was seen parked nearby but has disappeared along with the girls.  When a police detective arrives on the scene, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), Dover goes berserk, becoming an obnoxiously aggressive, perpetually angry parent that wants the police to be as gung ho as he is, literally intimidating them not to be anything less.  Loki is a dedicated and devoted officer, but his deliberate and methodical methods contrast with the wildly impulsive actions of Dover.  When the police find the RV, they discover the driver is Alex Jones (Paul Dano), a mentally damaged young man with a child’s IQ, who is arrested and released, as there is no evidence found in the van linking the presence of the girls. 

Dover, however, hounds the suspect, eventually kidnapping and brutally torturing him, keeping him locked in an abandoned building, absolutely positive that he knows something.  As there are no other suspects, the film is largely about taking the law into your own hands, becoming judge and jury, where the merciless brutality reveals nothing, only more horrific acts.  When the Birch family acquiesces to the gruesome methods, literally aiding and abetting, the moral center of the film is blown to bits, becoming more about the tactics of torture than child abduction.  With Dover representing the fundamentalist conservative, with the liberal Birch family so easily drawn into the fray as well, the film suggests all bets are off on personal ethics when it’s your kid that’s been abducted, where in desperation you’ll do anything, cross any moral line, resort to the ugliest of human impulses short of murder in order to force the victim to tell you what you want to hear.  The rest of the film concerns itself with human depravity, even as it continues to build suspense for the missing girls.  Even as evidence suggests there may be another suspect, Dover single-mindedly continues his personal crusade, refusing to acknowledge he could be wrong, where his arrogance defies reason, yet he continues.  Personally driven in much the same way, but held to legal standards, Loki is equally determined to find the girls, where their overriding obsession dominates the film, while after awhile the series of discovered clues feels like mere afterthought.  This is a picture that may as well have the theme: “This is a man’s world,” as mens’ obsessions drive the action, where both refuse to break.  The relentlessly dark material clouds any real enjoyment of what is otherwise a well-made thriller, though the film continually bogs down in near misses and misleading evidence, so much of the time it feels like they’re continuously running in circles until the end sequence rolls, where it has the ominous feeling of an end sequence even before it develops, though by the end, one feels like they’re still left in the darkness.      

The Mechanic (2011)

THE MECHANIC                                          C

USA  (93 mi)  2011  'Scope  d:  Simon West

You know, I’ve always had a soft spot for Charles Bronson, a guy with a tough looking face who always had a gentle side that usually covered up his ferocious behavior, noted for his break out role as a Bohemian beach bum with a thing for Elizabeth Taylor in THE SANDPIPER (1965), and for his superb performances as a mysterious stranger in Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), as a U.S. Army special investigator who travels to France in search of a rapist, developing an attachment with a beautiful young woman in the romantic psychological thriller RIDER ON THE RAIN (1970), and as a charming but mythical outlaw in an underrated western with a startlingly original storyline in FROM NOON TILL THREE (1976).  Bronson, however, was prone to type, and with his tough guy image ended up being type cast to death, all but ruining his career, as he repeated the exact same role over and over again, such as the lone vigilante Paul Kersey in five DEATH WISH movies over a span of 20 years.  But the early 70’s were some of Bronson’s best years, as he exuded confidence and a seasoned maturity, no more so than as a highly specialized mob hit man in THE MECHANIC (1972).  In the role of Arthur Bishop, he takes an apprentice under his wing, Jan-Michael Vincent, who appears eager to learn the skills of the trade, but in the end there is an obligatory double cross.  Nearly thirty years later, the film is being remade, using the same title, but with Jason Stratham in the Bronson role of Arthur Bishop, the cool, consummate professional whose operations are so meticulously planned out, no one even knows he was there, as evidenced by an opening sequence where a drug kingpin is killed while swimming in his own pool undetected by watchful security guards, as all the action takes place underneath while the surface shows nothing drawing anyone’s attention.  When Bishop gets back to his remote glass house somewhere in the bayou of Louisiana, for relaxation he pulls out a record of the highly distinctive Schubert Piano Trio Andante movement made famous in Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975).   

Donald Sutherland in a wheelchair makes a brief appearance as Bishop’s friend and longtime superior, before himself becoming the subject of the next hit, something about a plan going awry in South Africa where several highly trained men ended up dead.  Enter Ben Foster as Sutherland’s volatile, hot-tempered son vowing revenge, a younger kid who seems to screw up everything he touches, so Bishop takes him under his wing and attempts to teach him to channel those emotions rather than be driven by them.  While Foster immediately picks up on the adrenaline of the action, and is a rush of energy himself, his scenes careen out of control because he can’t follow the plan and instead creates a bloody catastrophe with every hit.  The two end up in Chicago where we see them scale high rise buildings and leap from dangerous rooftops, making it all look easy, though we never see any training for this kind of operation.  In the Bronson film, there would be word interplay between the two characters, as Bronson always has a screen personality, but these two have little to say to one another and speak through action scenes where they have to develop a trust with one another.  The film does move with a brisk pace, and the Hollywood action sequences are well designed and deliver the necessary tension, however, as predicted, due to Foster’s presence, their work starts to look very messy, making business look bad, drawing the attention of the superiors, as this is certainly the exact opposite of the victims never knowing a hit man was there.  What follows is Foster gets a hint that Bishop may have been involved in his father’s killing, while at the same time Bishop gets a hint that Sutherland was used as a fall guy and never deserved to be killed.  With this kind of toxic information flying through the air, none of it communicated to one another, the stage is set for a final climax sequence which is highly charged and explosive, but differs quite substantially from the original, which was much more daring than the ending here, which actually has a MAD MAX (1979) feel to it, as if the world out there is nothing but a wasteland.