HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)

Rated: R

STARS: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham
DIRECTOR: David MacKenzie
GENRE: Drama/Action/Thriller

Your bank deposits are guaranteed by the FDIC. But other than Jeff Bridges, who is always on the money, I can't give you that same ironclad guarantee that you'll go crazy for the new bank heist film, Hell Or High Water. 

For me, it's always worth the price of a ticket to watch "The Dude" in action, and here Bridges is a down-home boy Texas ranger on the verge of retirement--but as fate would have it, he's got one more messy situation to mop up.

That messy situation being the two brothers who are hitting up branches of the Texas Midland Bank--the same institution that happens to hold the mortgage on the family farm, and is threatening to foreclose and kick their mother out on her butt.  The brothers have a certain figure in mind, and when they reach their goal from the cash grabs they will pay off the debt and save the day. It's Robin Hood with a different twist; steal from the rich and give back to the rich.  

But here is Reason No.1 for the non-guarantee: These brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) are not exactly Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid--the hapless and affable bank robbing duo immortalized by Robert Redford and Paul Newman. It kept nagging me that Pine, as Toby, was too pretty for the role. Really, anybody as pretty as that could have easily had a career as a model, or a movie star (heh heh), and wouldn't have to resort to such desperate measures. Ben Foster, as his adrenaline junkie sibling, Tanner, is perfectly cast though. Tanner is the loose cannon, and Toby, it seems, is rather reluctantly along for the ride. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, even if it is incredibly stupid. I guess we're supposed to have some empathy for these guys, as they stick it to the greedy bankers, making a statement that will resonate with a lot of folks these days. But it's too great of an end-justifies-the-means stretch. 

Reason No. 2: There is no chemistry--zilch--between Jeff Bridges' Marcus, Texas Ranger, and his half-Indian partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham). I place that on Birmingham, who could have smiled a little more...or something. Yes, there is playful banter between the two, but it falls flat.

Reason No. 3: Certain elements of the plot are telegraphed, not only verbally, but musically as well (in the soundtrack song choices). You can see it coming from a Texas mile away. It gives me no joy when I I have to sit there and grimace, waiting for what I know is going to happen to happen.

What Hell Or High Water has going for it is that there's plenty of dramatic tension--never a dull moment--as Marcus and sidekick Alberto try to outwit the brothers by anticipating where they will strike next. Hardcore action/thriller fans will probably dig it. 

Grade:  B -

JILL'S TAKE

For someone who wasn't overly taken with this film, you were certainly generous with your rating, Tim. To begin with, I found the musical score completely in tune (pardon the pun) with the overall darkness of Hell Or High Water. At first, due to the ineptness of the bank robbing brothers, I didn't know if I was watching a comedy, dramedy, or a thriller-in-the-making. And it didn't really matter because the chemistry between these two bunglers kept me both laughing and on the edge of my seat.

As for the racial slurs Jeff Bridges kept peppering his half Indian, half Mexican partner with? I felt it worked very well, giving them a special bond – albeit a dicey one in this day and age of political correctness.

But for my money, the star of this film was Giles Nuttgens' cinematography. Those expansive shots of flat nothingness, winding roads without a tree in sight, or even a tumbleweed, set the stage perfectly. Isolation and desperation make men do terrible things. Not unlike Fargo or No Country For Old Men, this film was relentlessly tense – with just enough humor to make it watchable. Having said that, I must admit there were times—not many—when British director David Mackenzie could have picked up the pace a bit. And the ending—I won't give it away—was not very believable. Still, when Jeff Bridges is on screen, who cares!

Grade: B

SICARIO (2015)

Rated: R

STARS: Emily Blunt, Benecio Del Toro, Josh Brolin
DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve
GENRE: Action/Thriller

There's an old song from the seventies by Dave Mason, with a refrain that goes: ...there ain't no good guy...there ain't no bad guy...and that seems to be the not so subtle point Sicario is making about the failed and misguided American war on drugs. 

Emily Blunt is Kate, an idealistic FBI agent who gets recruited to join an inter-agency task force that aims to bring down a brutal Mexican drug cartel jefe.  

To accomplish their objective, they must first make a foray into the most lawless and dangerous cesspool in the western hemisphere--Juarez--to kidnap one of the cartel's top men. As she is drawn deeper into the violence and moral ambiguity of the mission, Kate's ethical compass is spinning out of control. 

Blunt has shown she is capable of much more depth and nuance (in films such as Sunshine Cleaning and The Adjustment Bureau) than what this role affords her the opportunity to display. And I scratch my head as to why she was drawn to the film to begin with, other than maybe she's always wanted to play an action hero?   

The pros of Sicario are the gritty performances from Josh Brolin, as undercover CIA guy, Matt Graver;  and Benicio Del Toro, Matt's partner--a loose cannon intent upon exacting a personal revenge. The cons, in my opinion, are the grisly scenes of violence (unless you are pathologically drawn to that sort of thing, like SOME people I know), particularly the shocker near the end that only serves to attempt to justify the utter depravity that we, as humans, will resort to with our eye for an eye, end-justifies-the-means mentality.

 Bottom line...if you're thirsty for blood, forgo the latest vampire movie and see Sicario instead.    

Grade:  C

JILL'S TAKE

I can't imagine who Tim might be referring to when he talks about aficionados of violence! Me, I thirst after blood when it's part of the story. And, indeed, Sicario offers a lot of it. It also offers an abundance of confusion. Not just for Emily Blunt's character, who is kept in the dark for two-thirds of the film. I, too, was totally confused. As a rule, I like good villains (good as in nasty, cruel, sadistic, etc.). But I couldn't decide between Josh Brolin's perpetual sneer and Benicio Del Toro's squinty eyes. I will, however, give mucho kudos to Benicio (Benny for short) for his stellar performance.

For me, the real star of this vehicle was the scorer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, whose repetitive themes set a scary mood from beginning to end. Not unlike John Williams' theme in Jaws.

I walked away from this movie, fascinated by the fact that ISIS has now taken over the headlines. You don't hear much about the drug war south of our border these days. The fact that the biggest drug lord of them all, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who tunneled his way out of a Mexican jail nearly four months ago, is still on the loose is hardly mentioned. Guess that's the point of Sicario. You can't catch 'em all, even in the movies.

Grade: B

CHAPPIE (2015)

Rated: R

STARS: Dev Patel,  Sharlito Copley, Hugh Jackman, Watkin Tudor Jones, Yolandi Visser,  Sigourney Weaver
DIRECTOR: Neil Blomkamp
GENRE: Action/Sci-fi/Fantasy


It's the near future--so near that nothing much looks different except for the droids that now comprise a segment of the Johannesburg police force. (If this ever happens for real, it might improve the public perception of the cops...anything's worth a try). Young inventor Deon (Dev Patel), designs them.  But he's not stopping there. He wants to create the first robot with genuine artificial intelligence. He succeeds (be careful what you wish for) in the form of "Chappie," who starts out as a mental infant, but he's a really quick study and before you know it he's mastering the language and painting like that dude on TV with the big Afro.

When Chappie is kidnapped by some nasty-ass thugs who think they can use him to pull off a big heist, the plot kicks into high gear.  Deon falls into the clutches of the gangsters too, and though he gets roughed-up and threatened, he takes a stand for good parenting and implores his highly impressionable creation not to do bad things. Meanwhile, rival engineer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), who works for the same weapons manufacturer as Deon, has had the funding cut for his own attack robot, Moose. He makes it his mission to take Chappie out of commission, putting himself and Moose on a collision course with Deon and his brainchild in an epic CGI battle that rivals the one in writer-director Neil Blomkamp's District 9. In both films, Blomkamp is making a point about heroism and laying it all on the line when the odds are stacked against you. And I've never seen it done in more soul-stirring fashion. 

 Despite all that, Chappie is played for laughs as often as not. It's cute and endearing when the gangsters teach him to pepper his speech with ghetto expletives (yes, a robot spouting the MF word is funny because it's so unexpected), and when they hang all this bling around his neck to make him one bad lookin' dude. The only thing I felt was over the top at first was Chappie's voice. Instead of your normal monotone droid voice, Chappie's takes on a human quality--first mimicking that of a scared toddler, then going through the other stages of development until he grows into an emotional adult. This made him a little too human for my willing suspension of disbelief to kick in. I mean, sooner or later he's gonna start thinking about women, and then he looks down at himself and tries to figure out just how that's gonna work... er, forget I mentioned it . But it's impossible to watch this film and not be won over by the little guy. The way we were won over by E. T. 

Chappie poses thoughtful questions about the nature of consciousness--even drawing parallels with reincarnation--as a robot with a dying battery finds himself in a race against time to find a new body to inhabit. 

I walked out of the theater thinking, Well... that was pretty wild!

Grade:  B +


JILL'S TAKE

It's more fun for the reader when Tim and I disagree. And being un-fond of futuristic, robot-infested films, I was positive we would. But I soon forgot all about Chappie's outer appearance and became totally caught up in his life-threatening adventure. When he was being beaten up by a gang of homeless hooligans, my heart went out to him. When he was torn between doing the right thing or seeking his bad-ass daddy's approval, I empathized. Just like I teared up when ET put his glowing finger on Elliot's forehead and said, "I'll...be...right...here." I don't know who deserves the most credit for making these non humans human. Is it the director? The writer? The digital miracle workers? I suppose it's a combination of all three. I was even reminded of that volleyball in Cast Away that Tom Hanks named Wilson, how real that inanimate object became!

Sure, there were holes in Chappie.(The script not his body.) Hugh Jackman's character was ill-defined and cartoonish in his need for revenge. And Deon, Chappie's nerdy inventor, seemed irrationally brave considering his line of work. But I was totally caught up in the story; how seeking approval makes even robots do the damndest things. Scriptwriters Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell were spot on when it comes to showing us what a huge influence parent figures  have—be they criminals or computer geeks—on a young, untested mind.

Sorry, folks. But I'm with Tim on this one.

Grade: B +

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Rated: R

STARS: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
DIRECTOR:  Clint Eastwood
GENRE: Action/War

Knowing Clint Eastwood's politics, I knew going in that American Sniper was going to portray its subject as a hero and true patriot, and that is pretty much what we get. Eastwood apparently doesn't go any deeper than my-country-right-or-wrong--the Dick Cheney credo of the end always justifies the means-- and that the world is made up of good guys and bad guys and very little in between (like in those spaghetti westerns of his early career) and thus anything is permitted, and justified, if it eliminates the bad guys.  (Of course, the more we do that around the world, the more "bad guys" keep popping up in Whac-A-Mole fashion to threaten us. What's up with that?)     

Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) was a Navy Seal sniper with 160 confirmed kills (men, women, and children) to his credit during the Iraq war. (To be fair, those women and children were allegedly acting in threatening ways, like attempting to blow up some of our troops.)  There is no Iraqi in this movie that isn't portrayed as some kind of potential threat. The ones who have taken up arms against us are "savages," so dispatching them can be done without a whit of soul-searching. They become mere stick figures--like the anonymous war-whooping Indians getting picked off one by one by the "good guy" cowboys in the western films many of us grew up with.  Okay, there is one scene where Kyle has his sights trained on a young boy who is about to pick up an anti-tank weapon and do some damage with it. The sniper sweats and grimaces, and begs under his breath for the kid to put the weapon down so he doesn't have to shoot him. This is supposed to show us that Kyle has a conscience. That runs contrary to the real guy's assertion that killing was "FUN,"  and his unsubstantiated claim that he had murdered looters during hurricane Katrina. So draw your own conclusions about that.

Technically, American Sniper is superb. The combat scenes are among the most realistic I have seen. But they go on and on and on, covering Kyle's four tours of duty, and after a while you become numb watching them, and ultimately bored because of the tremendous overkill (pardon the pun). I can't imagine anyone but 14 year-old boys addicted to playing war games on Xbox being avidly engaged with this kind of stuff all the way through. And that is where Eastwood misses the mark. He gives us an out and out action movie, where a little balance, by examining some of the moral and psychological aspects of it all, would have made it a much better film. 

To the director's credit, he does give some cursory play to  the effects of PTSD, and how it affected his subject and others returning from the battlefield. Perhaps numbing us out with all the violence in American Sniper is supposed to make us draw a parallel between that and the numbed out Chris Kyle, whose social skills had departed, and he could no longer relate to his family or people he would meet when he was back home. There is a scene at a picnic gathering where we observe what a ticking time bomb the man had become. 

Speaking of which, I fear we are becoming a nation of numbed-out voyeurs, inured to the violence we see, and so we keep increasing the dose of the drug just to feel something. American Sniper does that by ramping it up and feeding into our insatiable appetite for blood (maybe that's why vampire flick are so popular) that we drink up on television, on the movie screen, and in the news. It's a sick obsession, but those with mental health issues rarely recognize it themselves until someone points it out. And so the image of the female breast in a movie continues to be blurred out when it shows on TV, but all the grisly blood-spattering-against-the-wall scenes of murder and mayhem are fine and dandy.  

As for this film, I can't give it a pass based on technical merit alone. Not when Clint Eastwood fails to examine the complicated issues involving real HUMAN BEINGS on both sides of the conflict, or the reasons why we've been drawn into this war of ideologies--with no end in sight--in the first place.     

Grade: C--

JILL'S TAKE

After that rant, who'd have the balls to disagree? Me. But not by much. Unlike my co-writer, I feel Clint Eastwood did take the time to explain why psychologically Chris Kyle was such a patriot-turned-killer. At the very beginning of the film, we witness a scene at the dinner table where Kyle's dad gives a speech to his two boys about lambs versus wolves. This dad reminded me of another tough-guy Marine played so brilliantly by Robert Duvall in The Great Santini. Before signing up to go to war, we see Kyle as a rodeo rider/wannabe cowboy and it's easy to assume he's seen every John Wayne movie that ever existed.

I'm not here to judge the rightness or wrongness of war. It's a movie, after all. Based on a best-selling book. As a movie, I felt it was overly long. By Kyle's fourth tour of duty, I was nodding off despite all the blood and bomb blasts. Still, it made me understand why so many soldiers return from this craziness and commit suicide. (The numbers are truly staggering.) Back to the film and Bradley Cooper's perfomance. I'm told he gained 35 pounds to play the part and he was certainly convincing as both a fearless sniper and a zoned out husband. I don't, however, think he deserves an Oscar. Not compared to the other contenders.

As a TV watcher, I had to giggle at cameo appearances by Eric Close as DIA Agent Snead (he plays the mayor in Nashville) and Jonathan Groff as YoungVet Mads (he's a gay man, eager to get laid in HBO's Looking). That's the problem with being a regular on TV: it's jarring to see that same actor in a different role. Be that as it may, I didn't hateAmerican Sniper. Or get emotionally upset by its content. Maybe I should have. But war has -- and always will -- provide us with many an Oscar-winning film.

Grade: B