Sicario

SICARIO                               B+      

USA  (121 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Denis Villeneuve             Official Facebook

In the manner of Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala (2011), Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and Amat Escalante’s Heli (2013), Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has made a Hollywood action thriller that brings the audience directly into the Mexican drug wars, giving them a front row seat exposing the nefarious practices taking place by our own government in the name of stamping out criminal activities.  While the title of the film is Mexican slang for the word “hitman,” the film paints a dark picture into the skewed moral lines that exist in combatting drug wars, where it’s often hard to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, as both are operating in the same toxic cesspool of greed, corruption, murder, and power, as all sides are vying to control the $19 to $29 billion dollars that the Mexican drug cartels receive annually from U.S. drug sales.  While this is essentially a high powered, adrenaline-laced film from start to finish, we are drawn into the action in a riveting opening, seen through the eyes of Kate Macy (Emily Blunt), an overly conscientious FBI agent specializing in kidnapping cases leading a SWAT team to an Arizona border town home where they believe people are being hidden.  In the process of discovering 40 dead bodies stored vertically in the walls wrapped in plastic body bogs, a planted explosive device wipes out part of the team.  After this harrowing experience, Kate is called into a meeting where a special task force of elite agents is considering their next move, where she is told the house is owned by a local cartel boss Manuel Diaz (Bernardo P. Saracino) before being asked to volunteer as an operative on special assignment headed by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) in the Defense Department, even though she has no real drug enforcement experience.  Their goal is to track down the head of a notorious drug cartel, Fausto Alarcon (Julio Cesar Cedillo), kidnapping one of Diaz’s chief operatives named Guillermo (Edgar Arreola) in an attempt to flush Fausto out of hiding.  While purportedly flying to El Paso, Texas, their real destination is Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where an entirely different set of rules operate, as this has been the site of a long and bloody battleground over contested gang turf.  Mexican drug cartels control 90% of the cocaine entering the United States, where the Ciudad Juárez cartel had control over prime drug trafficking routes, but they have been under attack from the more powerful Sinaloa Cartel, headed by the recently escaped most-wanted prisoner, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, whose estimated net worth is in the billions, infiltrating the police, government and the military, where they are the largest known mafia organization in the world.  Stepping into the middle of this dispute is like walking through the gates of Hell, as over 140,000 people have been killed in the Mexican drug wars since 2006, with nearly 30,000 people still missing.  Because it happens on the other side of the border, it may as well be invisible to most Americans, but life in Mexico can be a traumatizing experience. 

The director uses a blisteringly intense, cinéma vérité style to express just how brutally violent the world in Mexico has become, including the sight of hacked-off remains of dead bodies hanging from a bridge while Kate rides in a caravan of giant SUV’s and machine-gun implanted vans driving through the city streets of Juárez past astonished bystanders, where a firefight may erupt at any second, as they are being tailed by other suspicious vehicles.  Despite this military presence, they are able to surprise Guillermo, literally kidnapping him from his home, then making a mad dash to the border where traffic is backed up due to a car breakdown up ahead, leaving cars in a standstill.  In this tense atmosphere, despite the wall-to-wall presence of civilians, their team must identify would-be assassins in the vicinity and strike before being struck, turning into a bloodbath taking place in a sea of innocent bystanders.  Horrified by what she witnesses, they are quickly whisked away to safety carrying their prisoner in tow to the security of a nearby army facility.  Graver and his all-male team leave Kate out of the information trail, where part of the intentional thrust of the film is that it happens so fast and in such a confusing manner that it’s hard to follow just what’s taking place, where Kate’s mind is stunned by a flurry of improvisational fast action, where her confusion is translated to the audience.  It’s here that she meets Benicio del Toro as Alejandro, a native Colombian and former Mexican prosecutor whose presence is shrouded in mystery, though his physical hand shakes with the appearance of a man who has survived torture.  Appropriately, he is the man who interrogates Guillermo, bringing in a giant water jug, where in pure Hitchcockian fashion the camera focuses upon a drain on the floor, suggesting either waterboarding and/or an outlet for the stream of blood.  Torture is alive and well in the drug wars, where the film provides a searing realism that matches Erick Zonca’s JULIA (2008), especially the back alleys of seedy, gang-infested Mexican neighborhoods where danger lurks around every corner.  Into this swath of unending violence, another smaller story is being told, representing the average Mexican family, where a young Mexican kid is always waiting for his perpetually oversleeping Dad (he’s a cop that works nights) to take him to play soccer, where all he’s really asking for is a hint of normalcy.  This contrasts with the blurred reality of Kate, who is told by Alejandro that “Nothing will make sense to your American ears.  By the end, you will understand,” a clear stand-in for the American public that hasn’t a clue what’s going on, where part of the problem is seeing things exclusively through American eyes, which has a tendency to reveal only what they pick and choose while leaving out the rest.  This trip into Juárez is a surreal reminder of moral ambiguity, like the “heart of darkness” descent up river in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), exposing America’s venture into Cambodia during the Vietnam era, a military excursion shrouded in secrecy taking place simultaneous to a President and Secretary of State repeatedly informing the American public and the world that Cambodia was strictly off limits. 

Kate is stunned by the expansion of American authority into Mexico, but receives word from her superiors that for this operation, the rules of engagement have expanded.  After learning the whereabouts of Diaz’s hideout from secret torture sessions, Graver’s team also rounds up Mexican migrants attempting to cross the border, checking for the presence of drug tunnels along the route, zeroing in on a specific location.  At the same time they freeze Diaz’s American bank accounts, where Kate thinks they have sufficient information to prosecute Diaz, but Graver isn’t interested, insisting it’s his boss they’re after.  By being left out of the specifics of each plan, where no one is what they appear to be, all carrying a hidden agenda, while Kate is simply going along for the ride, where the entire mission may have originally been intended to recruit her, but she’s the only one in the entire film that has any sense of a moral compass.  Everyone else is totally out of bounds, where they recognize her hesitation and how green she is immediately.  It’s not hard for her to realize she’s only in the operation because she’s working “within the law,” as a cover for their cowboy recklessness, somehow making it all legal.  While she has an opportunity to simply get out, an awkward moment where Alejandro actually has her back, literally saving her life, she feels compelled to find out where it all leads, as these guys are closer to the heads of the cartels than she’s ever been.  Using infra-red photography, a special ops night mission targets the American entrance of the tunnel, located in the middle of an endless desert expanse, where the look of the film recalls the mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty, both accentuating the military aspect of the raid where these guys mean business, specializing in getting in and out while completing their mission as quickly as possible.  While gunfire is heard in all directions, she gets separated from the team, exiting from one of the many tunnels where she sees something she’s not supposed to see, as it appears Alejandro is about to shoot an unarmed Mexican cop named Silvio (Maximiliano Hernández, the father of the little kid) whose police car is filled to the gills with drugs and refers to Alejandro as “Medellín,” a hint as to his true connections.  The film belongs to del Toro by the end of the picture, where his sinister presence dominates the screen, crossing the line between both hero and villain, yet his intentions are lethal, reminiscent of Max von Sydow’s coolly precise assassin character in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), a man who operates outside all moral laws.  Whether this is all a CIA operation or not, one would think the war on drugs has failed, as America remains the largest consumer of the illegal products, so it’s perfectly conceivable that the U.S. government has no conceivable plan to stop the flow of drugs into this country, as the business is simply too lucrative.  While it’s treading on murky waters, what’s clear is the war on drugs has brought the cartel wars into our own country, where it’s not about stopping the flow of drugs but instead trying to control and/or influence the powers running the business operation.  It’s a chilling ending, where a fatherless kid makes his way to the soccer game, where the everpresent sound of gunfire can be heard from the surrounding neighborhoods, an everyday fact of life that will remain with him always.  The cinematography by Roger Deakins is stellar, while the dark musical score by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson adds a pulsating presence of gloom. 

Into the Woods (2014)

INTO THE WOODS               B+              
USA  (124 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Rob Marshall                       Official site

Into the woods,
It’s time to go,
I hate to leave,
I have to, though.
Into the woods-
It’s time, and so
I must begin my journey.

Into the woods
And through the trees
To where I am
Expected ma’am,
Into the woods
To Grandmother’s house-

—Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford)

When you’re dead, you’re dead.         —The Witch (Meryl Streep)

One of the most beloved musicals in the Sondheim repertoire, one that inverts the childlike innocence of fairy tales, ingeniously combining several classic fairy tales into a single story, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk, allowing tragedy, heartache, and death to intrude, creating a post apocalyptic feel that mirrors today’s post 9/11 world where unspeakable horrors continue to plague and traumatize a harrowed worldwide population, especially each new generation of children.  Originally opening on Broadway on November 5, 1987, the production won three Tony Awards, Best Score (Sondheim), Best Book (or Story, James Lapine), and Best Actress in a Musical (Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s wife) in a year dominated by The Phantom of the Opera, winner of seven Tony awards, becoming the longest running Broadway show in history.  While the original film version, Into the Woods (1991), directed by Lapine was simply filming a live performance of the original Broadway cast in front of an audience, the original singers are far superior, especially Bernadette Peters, who simply exudes greater complexity, bringing more humor and anguished personality into the Witch, while the comic timing throughout is more free flowing as well, but this is a much more entertaining version as the camera isn't so suffocatingly confined to fixed positions, though the direction does feel distracting at times.  More importantly, in both productions the Sondheim complexity really does shine through, where the theatrical experience is not only among the best Sondheim productions of his entire career, rivaling West Side Story (1957) and Company (1970), but among the most transforming theatrical experiences ever.  Nonetheless, the film underwent many changes to be brought to the screen by Disney, which will invariably be questioned, especially by Sondheim purists who wouldn’t change a thing, but it does streamline a three-hour production, with an Intermission, into a two-hour film.  First off, it eliminates about ten songs, including two new songs written by Sondheim specifically for the film that were also dropped.  Additionally, there is no narrator standing off to the side of the stage, which is seen as more of a theatrical device, instead the narration is provided by the Baker (James Corden) from the opening scene, which adds a bit of symmetry as he is again telling a story at the end of the movie.     

While Into the Woods (1991) *is* the definitive stage version, after the passing of 25 years, perhaps it’s due for a reassessment.  It’s worth noting that the legendary Bob Fosse took the stage version of Cabaret and completely changed it for the film, which won 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, beating out Francis Ford Coppola in the process for THE GODFATHER (1972), Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor.  Fosse cut two major characters, remade the lead into an American, and cut most of the material except for the songs in the nightclub, and for that the man is considered a genius.  Comparatively speaking, these are only minor alterations, none of which change the tone of the original, except perhaps it’s darker, as none of the characters who are killed off return to the stage for a rousing final number before the curtain falls.  As something of a quest movie, the opening ten minutes or so are a rush of exhilaration built around a single musical theme of “Into the Woods,” which introduces the central characters, the childless Baker (Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt, probably the best thing in the entire show), who have been cursed by the Witch (Meryl Streep in a less comic, much meaner version), who has herself been cursed into ugliness, demanding that they retrieve certain items to reverse the spell in order to conceive a child, where they continue to interact with other storybook characters throughout their journey.  Nearby the poor and not so bright farm boy Jack (Daniel Huddlestone) is scolded by his mother (Tracey Ullman) when he hesitates to take his best friend, a cow named Milky White, to the market for needed money, while Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) is continually humiliated and mistreated at home as she dreams of attending the luxurious Prince’s ball, but visiting her sick grandmother is Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) who gathers as many cookies from the Baker as she can, stuffing them into a basket before she skips along into the woods, meeting a devious wolf (Johnny Depp) who has other ideas along the way.  Often you can’t really tell where one musical number ends and another begins, continually moving in and out of dialogue, where film allows much of the story to be told in flashback, something you can’t do on stage.  

Stage shows are notoriously difficult to bring to the screen, where Sondheim’s earlier A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (1977) fell short of audience’s expectations, while Tim Burton’s dark-themed SWEENEY TODD (2007) had flashes of brilliance but catered to a distinct few, quickly leaving the theaters after a short run.  But unlike earlier failed attempts, like CAMELOT (1967) or MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972), the inspiring magic of the Sondheim source material remains intact and can be enthralling, especially for those experiencing it for the first time.  The film is an alluring mix of absurdism and childhood fantasy with real life themes, where the stark seriousness can catch unsuspecting viewers off guard, yet the beauty of the music can literally be enchanting.  There’s a broad attempt to turn this into a Shakespearean Midsummer Night’s Dream, an exotic place where a little magic dust gets everything mixed up, including the two Prince Charmings, Star Trek’s Chris Pine as Cinderella’s Prince and Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince, both hamming it up to excessively vulgar and distasteful delight while singing “Agony” like a cologne advertising shoot along some artificial waterfalls, each complaining bitterly about the difficulties encountered in their attempts at romance, eventually marrying their destined fairybook sweethearts before time creates a rift between them, where both cheat on their wives with little to no remorse.  This incident in particular plagues the Baker’s wife, succumbing to the Prince’s charms in a momentary lapse of reason, who feels as if a kind of madness has taken over, as the world around her is quickly coming apart at the seams before she finally comes to her senses, but it’s too late, a victim of the unpredictable violence of the times.  The film retains the brilliance of the original story, which has not only a fascinating interplay between what’s real and what’s imagined, but has another interesting dynamic where children are seen through the eyes of Little Red Riding Hood and Jack, while the emphasis on the Bakers shifts the importance to the views of expectant parents, where the disasters occurring throughout reflect a kind of imaginary world that they both need to navigate their way through together.  When the Witch sings “Stay with Me” to her daughter Rapunzel as she’s about to leave with her Prince, it’s one of the best songs about parental loss ever written.  Perhaps more emphasized in the film are the anxieties associated with parenthood, where the Baker encounters the spirit of his father more as a reflection of his own fear of fatherhood, which is paralleled later near the end when the Baker encounters the spirit of his dead wife, offering him tender but encouraging words of advice about his ability to handle such a complex situation on his own. 

Perhaps no contemporary American composer has broken more rules than Sondheim, who views humankind as potentially problem solving.  To that end, the opening is stuffed full of complicated situations, with each character drawn into this internal whirlwind of the story.  But as the film progresses, the concept of time expands with age, becoming more contemplative, where the marvel of the story is how the characters interact with one another, where their shared conflicts help them grow as they ask questions about what to do.  According to Mark Eden Horowitz’s Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions, “wishing” is the key character in Into the Woods, wishing for love, for a child, for understanding, which connects the characters not only to one another but to the audience.  The initial fantasies are elaborated upon through a sophisticated musical score that initially charms and delights before growing more somberly reflective.  Sondheim was himself abandoned by his father at age ten and had a psychologically abusive mother, eventually becoming an institutionalized child having little contact with his original family.  When his mother died in 1992, Sondheim did not attend the funeral.  This dark world of feeling abandoned and disconnected from the world around you is the setting of the film, where the songs literally bring the viewer inside these fragile moments of tragedy and personal loss that become nothing less than heartbreaking in the song “No One Is Alone,” No One Is Alone by Bernadette Peters - YouTube (5:15), where Cinderella, separated from her Prince, comforts Little Red Riding Hood while the Baker, who has lost his wife, consoles Jack after he’s lost his mother.  The film is preoccupied by the tragedy of the times we live in, which has become a much more unstable and threatening world.  Visited by the spirits of the ones they (and we) have lost, it’s the Witch who uncannily sees through this myriad of missed connections, unraveling lives and broken dreams, and as if in a haze delivers one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs, “Children Will Listen,” Children Will Listen by Bernadette Peters - YouTube (3:05), that somehow magically and triumphantly reconnects us all to each other, from one generation to the next, literally transforming this fairy tale about inexplicable loss into a transcendent passion play on love, forgiveness, and human redemption.  

Looper

LOOPER                      B                    

USA  China  (118 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Rian Johnson             Official site

This film steals from at least a dozen or more different movies, but does it with such relish that it hardly matters, literally inventing a futuristic world on a relatively modest budget, where the film features plenty of satiric wit, sardonic dialogue, weird character development, and constantly changing storylines that will keep the audience guessing what’s happening next, with a few mind blowing moments, used effectively in the context of this particular story.  Like the two other Rian Johnson films, BRICK (2005), still his most original feature, and THE BROTHERS BLOOM (2008), LOOPER is utterly entertaining, a real popcorn movie, cleverly making use of genre forms as if the director is trying to amuse himself, where it just feels like everyone had a blast making this movie, as there are special effects sequences, but also scenes that rely exclusively on wit and originality, where the entire movie is a game of cat and mouse, as the mob is always chasing after somebody.  Set in the year 2044, prior to the invention of time travel, which occurs 30 years into the future and is immediately banned but taken over by the mob, who invent a foolproof system of taking care of their undesirables, as they tie the victim’s hands behind their backs, place a hood over their head and send them off in a time machine, like PRIMER (2004), where they arrive at a designated time in the same exact location in a rural area next to a cornfield, like the New Jersey Turnpike of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999), where they are immediately wasted by hired killers, known as loopers, as they extinguish bodies in the past so they don’t exist in the future.  These loopers have it tough, because in 30 years, they themselves will be sent back, closing the loop, so to speak, covering their tracks, so there is no evidence connecting any of these assassinations to people that don't exist.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who appeared in both earlier films by the director, plays Joe, a completely unphased looper, the kind of guy that doesn’t let anything get to him, who spends most of his time getting high and chasing after strippers, one of whom, Suzie (Piper Perabo), he may actually care about. 

Like BLADE RUNNER (1982), the future has a dreary and dilapidated look about it, as if everything runs on second hand parts, where there are futuristic motorcars that ride off into the air, but the retro look resembles 1950’s motorcycles, where loopers for that matter, bear a resemblance to blade runners who are forced to track down replicants, where the world would be in constant danger if they didn’t.  Joe immediately comes under suspicion when the operation learns he’s harboring an agent (Paul Dano) that failed to carry out his mission, who couldn’t pull the trigger when he realized the guy he was supposed to kill was himself in the future.  Jeff Daniels as Abe is the world weary head of operations, a guy sent back from the future to run things smoothly, who has a friendly enough manner, but can also be ruthless in order to make his point, where like JUDGE DREDD (1995), he uses a hammer instead of a gavel breaking the hands of his fellow miscreants when they step out of line.  Joe has an interesting habit of visiting a coffee shop near the cornfield, where he practices French on the waitress Beatrix (Tracie Thoms), thinking he will live in France once he’s retired with exactly 30 years left to live.  What happens instead is the same thing that happened to his friend, as he’s stunned to see himself as the man to be executed and he hesitates, leaving both the old and the new versions of himself on the run like rats in a maze.  The man he evolves into is Bruce Willis as Old Joe, who ends up in China instead of France, discovering the love of his life, Qing Xu, living a few idyllic years together before his 30 years are up.  Right out of THE TERMINATOR (1984), Old Joe vows to change the past so that he and his wife may live together on into the future, but to do that he must execute the boss man of the future, known only as the Rainmaker, where little is known about him, so it’s hard to trace his past, but he’d be alive during Joe’s era. While Old Joe is focused on what he needs to do, he’s continually thwarted by trying to keep young Joe alive, as he’s a completely undisciplined hardass who refuses to listen to anybody, even himself in the future.  

While Abe has a constant surveillance network out looking for the two Joe’s, young Joe has crawled through the cornfield to a farm on the other side, where Emily Blunt as Sara, a rifle-toting farmgirl, pulls him out barely alive and strung out on drugs.  Blunt may be the best thing in the movie, as this perfectly fits her cool reserve, as she’s fervently protecting her young son Daniel (Kamden Beauchamp), as if she’s hiding from the world as well.  Daniel is an extremely inquisitive but hard headed kid who’s bright but doesn’t follow instructions at all from his mother, as he pretty much does whatever he pleases, inquiring about guns from Joe, while Old Joe has narrowed the Rainmaker down to 3 children, tracking each of them down, one of whom is Daniel.  But first Willis has to take on the entire network of Abe’s men, turning into Bruce Willis, the one man wrecking machine from DIE HARD (1988), continually shooting and blowing everyone up.  Meanwhile, one of Abe’s men has visited the farm and is asking questions, instead finding Joe there, but Daniel flies into a rage that resembles THE OMEN (2006), where we realize he may literally be the devil incarnate, using tele-kinetic forces that defy gravity, moving objects at will until they’re floating in air, much like INCEPTION (2010), which also starred Gordon-Levitt.  Basically the writer/director has a blast creating a sci-fi funhouse thriller that defies expectations, continually discovering new grounds, mixing set pieces with onsite rural locations, changing the visual focus, rotating what characters are featured, but always getting excellent performances from the principal characters, turning this into a rollicking ride that continually offers more surprises.  Brilliantly mixing genre sequences, Johnson has turned into one of the more creative writers on the American front.  While this has a more playful feel than something to be taken seriously, it’s still well executed, continually using the power of the imagination over high tech special effects.  The effects are there, but the originality shown throughout is much more appealing.