Review: "The 33"

“The 33” is one of those movies that delivers everything you expect, does it well, and suffers no surprises. The true tale of the 2010 Chilean mining disaster that left 33 men trapped thousands of feet underground in a gold mine, it’s uplifting, humanistic and harrowing (though not too much).

Directed by Patricia Riggen (“Girl in Progress”) with a screenplay by Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten and Michael Thomas, based on a book by Hector Tobar, the film goes for verisimilitude as we alternate between being buried deep in the mine with the workers or scrambling with the rescuers and family members on the surface striving to free them.

Of course, we know that all the men got out safely after an incredible 69 days trapped underground. This was a huge international story at the time, and even if it weren’t, we’re told from the outset that 33 men were trapped, so if some of them died the title would’ve reflected a lower number. (And, most likely, this movie wouldn’t exist.)

What makes it a great story is that normally all of the miners would’ve perished, but miraculously every one of them made it out alive.

Antonio Banderas plays Mario Sepúlveda, the unofficial leader of the trapped miners. He’s a wise man who recognizes that the greatest danger they face is not the lack of food and water but each other. He carefully rations their meals and breaks up fights before they happen, counseling patience even as others edge up to wigging out.

If the presence of a Spanish actor playing a Chilean bothers you, then you should know the cast is a mishmash of actors of different ethnic backgrounds. Lou Diamond Phillips, who is Scotch-Irish, Cherokee and Filipino, plays the foreman, Luis, who tortures himself over the inadequate safety protections in place in the mine. Other performers are of Mexican, Cuban, Brazilian or other Latino heritage.

There are also some lily white actors such as Bob Gunton, who plays the Chilean president, and Gabriel Byrne, a pale Irishman who portrays the chief engineer overseeing the rescue. Though Chile is more racially diverse than most Americans realize, with roughly half the DNA being of European origin, or so says Wikipedia.

Obviously, you can’t have 33 characters competing for screen time, so the filmmakers focus on a half-dozen or so, with Mario being the first among equals. The other “focus” miners break down into familiar archetypes: the old guy who’s already filed his retirement papers; the young guy who’s about to have a baby; the new guy who’s not from around here and gets heckled for it; the wayward guy battling addiction; the philanderer who’s got a wife and mistress fighting over him on the surface; the religious fellow who offers the others comfort; the Elvis admirer with the outsize personality and temper; and so on.

Up top the families, mostly women, caterwaul and demand action. Juliette Binoche, despite being estranged from her brother (the addict), becomes the de facto leader aboveground just as Mario is the authority figure below. Rodrigo Santoro plays the young government minister sent to talk soothingly and hold hands, but actually tries to make a difference.

The heart of the movie, of course, is what it’s like to be trapped deep in a mine with little hope for survival, slowly wasting away as fears eat into your mind. It’s powerful stuff, with Banderas showing how emotionally accessible he is as an actor.

The best scene is a shared dream/delusion as the men consume the last of their food, as each hallucinates being presented with some bodacious meal by his loved ones. The darkness recedes, it’s all light and joy, as each miner sits at a long table like a recreation of the Last Supper with Jesus and his apostles.

(Though, I am pained to point out, the actors don’t appear to have starved themselves very much for the movie. For a bunch of guys supposedly wasting away, they’re a rather fleshy bunch. I think fat Elvis actually got fatter. Though I guess if you’re going to do that sort of thing you need to either go Full Bale or not bother, and they chose the latter.)

It’s a terrific bit of imagination, both inside the miners’ heads and on the part of those telling the story. “The 33” could’ve done with more of this, but instead sticks to the safe path.

Video review: "Trouble with the Curve"

Fair warning: I'm much higher on "Trouble with the Curve" than most film critics, and apparently hold a loftier opinion of it than audiences did.

This drama starring Clint Eastwood as an aging baseball scout losing his eyesight only garnered modest interest at the box office, and only scored 52 percent on Rotten Tomates' aggregation of critic opinions. But I found it one of the most emotionally satisfying journeys I experienced in 2012, even if the screenplay is a little shaky in the details.

It's perhaps Eastwood's most sensitive performance, in which he shows real vulnerability and weakness. Gus Lobel may be ornery, but he loves the game like gospel and has the ability to see things others can't -- at least he could, before macular degeneration set in.

His daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) agrees to follow him on a big scouting trip to act as his eyes, and they struggle to reconnect after years of estrangement. Meanwhile, a former pitching prospect named Johnny (Justin Timberlake) who blew his arm out and became a scout, tags along as a rival and a love interest.

The storytelling wavers a bit here and there. Director Robert Lorenz and screenwriter Randy Brown, both rookies, try to wedge in some elements that don't really fit -- a confusing allusion to a harrowing experience in Mickey's childhood being a prime example.

But if the windup isn't always textbook, the delivery is right down the plate. "Trouble with the Curve" was one of my favorite films of 2012.

Alas, video extras are rather skimpy. The DVD comes with a single making-of featurette, "For the Love of the Game." Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and all you add is another featurette titled "Rising Through the Ranks."

Movie:3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Review: "Trouble with the Curve"

"Trouble with the Curve" exceeds the sum of its parts. An imperfect movie, it has modest flaws and inconsistencies that one can point to. But in the theater with the light flickering, it all just works.

It's like a baseball pitcher who displays shaky form in his windup and delivery, but he hurls strike after strike. The fact that you recognize where it goes wrong only makes how everything ends up in the right place even more amazing.

You sit there, marveling.

This excellent drama stars Clint Eastwood in his most vulnerable performance ever, and is easily one of the finest movies of 2012. It acts as a perfect counterpoint to last year's wonderful "Moneyball."

Both films are set in the world of baseball, but are not really sports movies. Instead, they explore the mix of obsession and fear inside the players, the coaches and the scouts.

In "Moneyball," the heroes were the young nerds with their computers and cutting-edge statistical analysis, which allowed them to circumvent the hard-bitten experience of the old-timers. Here, the crotchety veteran scouts are the good guys, and the whippersnappers who stare at screens but never watch a game play the heavies.

Gus Lobel (Eastwood) is an aging scout for the Atlanta Braves, his specialty being snapping up young talent from the Carolinas. But it's been awhile since he recruited any big names, and his eyesight is starting to go. Gus has been a widower a long time, and an ornery cuss even longer, so it's no surprise that he keeps his macular degeneration a secret.
 
Perhaps his only friend in the world is the head of scouting, Pete Klein (John Goodman, in a solid, comfortable performance). He senses something is wrong, and convinces Gus' daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to go be with her dad on his big trip. Gus has been given a make-or-break assignment, to judge whether a beefy young swatter named Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill) is the real deal and should be taken with the Braves' first-round pick.

Mickey and her dad are hardly close, and if he's a piece of work, she's studying to outdo him. A lawyer who hasn't taken a Saturday off in seven years, she has a boyfriend dropping hints about marriage, but treats his overtures like a scheduling conflict.

Mickey has a big case looming that will determine whether she makes partner at her firm. Spending a week trying to reconnect with her standoffish father, and serve as his eyes at games, is not high on her list. The dutiful child, she goes anyway.

It's in plumbing this tenuous relationship between father and daughter that the movie saves its best pitches. Adams and Eastwood have an easy, organic connection -- which is a hard thing when playing characters divided by a lifelong inability to see eye-to-eye.

Playing the third wheel is Justin Timberlake as Johnny Flanagan, a former pitching ace signed by Gus who blew out his arm and is now working his way up the food chain with the Red Sox, doing some scouting while hoping to break in as an announcer.

Johnny and Mickey share a timid, funny little courtship -- two lost souls feeling each other out, natural enemies who can't help bantering. For awhile the movie shifts almost entirely away from Gus and onto them, and we don't mind because it feels so natural.

Timberlake has a tendency to be glib and superficial in his performances, oft skating by as the fast-talking charmer, but here he gets a chance to show a few deeper notes and doesn't falter. As an actor, he's getting there.

The real revelation, though, is Eastwood. At age 82, he does things he simply couldn't have done 25 years ago, balancing moments of humor or tragedy on a risky edge. At one point he sings sweetly to his wife's gravestone, and in another he rejects his daughter's heartfelt outreach.

Given the sorts of movies he used to make and the way he played them, the old Eastwood would have just landed on these moments, hit them solidly and moved on. Here, he caresses and elevates them, like a jazz musician holding a long note, bending it and adding colors unwritten on any sheet of music.

The last time Eastwood acted in a movie he didn't direct himself was 1993's "In the Line of Fire," for veteran Wolfgang Peterson. Here he's doing it for a rookie screenwriter, Randy Brown, and first-time director Robert Lorenz, who's been a producer/assistant director on a number of Eastwood projects.

It says something when someone of Eastwood's stature entrusts himself to a creative team who are novices. From the bracing success of "Trouble with the Curve," it would seem he shares Gus' knack for spotting new talent.

3.5 stars out of four