Review: "On the Basis of Sex"

We’ve already had one movie this year feting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the excellent documentary “RBG.” So why not a feature film, too?

“On the Basis of Sex” is a straightforward, old-fashioned biopic-slash-courtroom drama chronicling Ginsburg’s first steps into the hallowed laws of American jurisprudence. It’s the tale of how Ginsburg, shunted aside despite graduating at the top of her class at Harvard Law School, began quietly but forcefully building a body of law against legalized discrimination based on gender.

Felicity Jones plays Ginsburg in a vibrant, assured performance of a woman raised not to make waves, but whose intellect and inner fire drove her to challenge the system. There’s not much physical resemblance, though prosthetic teeth help. Towering actor Armie Hammer is cast as her loving husband, Martin, which helps play up Ginsburg’s famous diminutiveness.

They had an interesting dynamic that was radical for a couple in the mid-1950s: both attending the same law school a year apart, already married and with a baby, equally splitting the home chores and the academic burden. When Martin came down with a serious illness, Ruth attended all his classes and took notes, as well as her own.

Still, when she graduates no New York City law firm will touch her. In one terrific little scene, the head partner of a smaller firm is clearly ensorcelled by her prodigious brainpower, but pulls back: the partners’ wives will be jealous to have a pretty young thing around the office.

The story then skips ahead to 1970, with Martin a striving Wall Street tax attorney and Ruth a professor at a modest law school. A seemingly innocuous case falls into their lap: a man sues the tax collector for rejecting his deduction of the cost of a caregiver for his elderly mother. This is something women are allowed to do, but not men.

Despite a disputed sum amounting to 200-and-some dollars, Ruth immediately seizes upon the broader possibilities: by challenging the first in a series of laws that enshrine discrimination on the basis of sex on behalf of a male client, they will open the door to years of litigation to unravel an outdated set of rules and replace them with another.

Consider that, in this same era, women had to obtain credit cards in their husbands’ names, and were forbidden to serve in any number of jobs -- completely legally and, many thought, justifiably.

Ginsburg enlists the head of the ACLU on her behalf, Mel Wulf, played by Justin Theroux as a man who’s a fierce litigator but a major pill to deal with.

“On the Basis of Sex” isn’t an especially surprising or original movie. We can feel the film moving through its beats with a carefully ordered choreography. Rookie screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman sticks a little too close to formula, and director Mimi Leder betrays some of the melodramatic influences of television where she’s largely spent the last two decades.

For instance, we know the scenes of Ginsburg clashing with her idealistic teen daughter, Jane (Cailee Spaeny), will surely be followed by their reconciliation via the court case that captures both their passions. It’s as inevitable as the sun.

Similarly, the law school professor and dean (Stephen Root and Sam Waterston) who were once Ginsburg’s prickly mentors become her adversaries for the big case, muttering in deep tones in dark-wood offices about the dangerous precedent being attempted by this rebellious female upstart.

Jack Reynor plays the opposing counsel for the big court scene, all swollen Southern swagger, and Kathy Bates cameos as Dorothy Kenyon, a pioneering feminist from before they had a name for such a thing.

Even though the film isn’t terribly bold, it still tells a story worth hearing, and tells it very well indeed. Now let’s get the Antonin Scalia biopic rolling.

Review: "Detroit"

Political correctness is a sordid game I refuse to play. But even I admit I’m uncomfortable with a feature film about the 1967 Detroit riots with an almost entirely white creative team.

Director Kathryn Bigelow reteams with her “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter, Mark Boal, in a film that attempts to look at the watershed civic unrest from the perspective of African-Americans who suffered at the hands of brutal police tactics. While most of the cast is black, the movie struggles to get over a sense of existing more to soothe white guilt than chronicle a racist tragedy.

Indeed, the first words we see or hear refer to the 1967 riots, also known as the 12th Street riots, as “the Detroit Rebellion.” I don’t know any serious historian who would use that term, which refers to an organized uprising designed to topple the power hierarchy, either by replacing the exiting government or splitting off from it.

Somehow, I doubt even the people who took to the streets, throwing rocks and setting storefronts on fire, would have called their actions a rebellion. They were simply enraged at being continually abused and stepped upon, and reached a point where they didn’t want to take it anymore.

I admired the film but got stuck on the fact this wasn’t the movie I was expecting. This is not a comprehensive look at the root causes of the unrest, the tactics undertaken by authorities to quell the violence, or the aftermath suffered by a community that struggles to this day to overcome that dark moment in history.

Indeed, if any moment can be pinpointed as the tipping point of when the great modern divide in America began -- between cities and suburbs, whites and those of color, blue and red -- the ’67 riot is it.

Although Bigelow and Boal start their story in the streets, this is really the tale of the Algiers Motel incident. Largely forgotten now amidst the bigger backdrop of the riots, this was the case of Detroit police officers, state police and national guardsmen detaining a group of young black men and two 18-year-old white women after gunshots were heard from the annex of the motel, a party spot a few blocks away from the mayhem.

Over the course of several hours, the suspects -- who were never charged with anything -- were beaten, abused, assaulted. It became clear the white officers were angered by white girls dallying with black boys. Three black men were fatally shot, with trumped-up excuses after the fact to justify self-defense by the officers. It was, as depicted in the film, essentially torture.

Anthony Mackie plays one of the victims, a recently discharged Army soldier, and Hannah Murray plays the mouthy girl. Algee Smith is Larry, lead singer of an up-and-coming Motown group called The Dramatics, who gets caught up along with his manager (Jacob Latimore).

Baby-faced Will Poulter is the central villain as the police officer directing the interrogation; earlier in the day we watched him pump two shotgun blasts into the back of a looter carrying groceries. Jay Reynor and Ben O’Toole are his wing men, dim and deliberate, respectively.

John Beyega is more or less the central character as Mel Dismukes, an African-American man working as a private security officer protecting a nearby business. He continually inserts himself into situations, using his uniform and officious demeanor to stave off some of the worst law enforcement abuses of black folks.

The film unequivocally presents Dismukes as a hero, when in fact he was charged with abusing the Algiers suspects along with the three police. All were found not guilty (though not, as the movie condenses, in the same trial).

Exactly what happened in the motel remains sketchy even today, though the movie carelessly presents its own version with crisp black-and-white lines, knowing this is what will be etched into the public consciousness.

From a narrative and technical standpoint, “Detroit” is a very well-crafted film that strings the audience’s emotions along with an expert hand. What’s less clear is who this movie is about, or for.