Review: "The Connection"

"The French Connection" became a classic crime movie because of Gene Hackman's pugnacious portrayal of an American cop chasing down the flow of heroin from France, and William Friedkin's gritty, bloody-knuckles style of filmmaking. But the drug war was actually a real thing, and for years international law enforcement agencies seemed powerless against an octopus of a criminal cartel.

"The Connection" is the based-on-truth tale of the beast finally meeting its maker from the French perspective. Jean Dujardin, an Oscar winner for his joyous turn in "The Artist," plays a crusading young magistrate who took the fight to the mob bosses.

This movie doesn't have the immediacy or punch of the 1971 film, but it's an engaging crime procedural that shows the daring steps drug lords go to in order to carry out their illicit trade, and what a herculean effort it requires for the law-and-order types to untie the knot of corruption that often ensnares their own agencies and colleagues.

Dujardin plays Pierre Michel, a callow magistrate who mostly dealt with reforming young junkies until he was tapped to oversee the major crimes unit in Marseilles. In one of the interesting things about the story, magistrates are a European concoction that combine aspects of American police, judge and prosecutor. He works with the local cops but has to convince them to cooperate.

Pierre encounters a lot of resistance at first, especially from an older police officer who's seen plenty of magistrates come and go, more interested in promoting themselves to the next higher office than actually slowing the flow of deadly heroine. The first half of the movie essentially deals with the two men finding a way to work together, and eventually becoming fast friends.

The latter half becomes more of a character study between Pierre and his chief opponent, crime boss Gaëtan "Tany" Zampa. He's played by Gilles Lellouche, who has a physical resemblance to Dujardin so strong that I cannot believe director Cedric Jimenez left it to accident. (Jimenez also co-wrote the screenplay.) Both men have sloping foreheads and prominent Gallic brows and noses; they resemble distant cousins of Liam Neeson whose forebears might've slipped across the Channel long ago.

Each are family men who place a high price on loyalty and comradeship. They have one great scene together where Pierre is tailing Tany in his car -- this magistrate likes to savor the street action -- and they end up having a faceoff with one of the beautiful Marseilles backdrops behind them. Lellouche and Dujardin make for a charismatic pair of antagonists.

Also a formidable screen presence is Benoît Magimel as Thomas Calazzi, aka Crazy Horse, one of Tany's chief rivals who ends up as something of a third wheel in the long war between Pierre and Tany. He has a shocking twist to his story that is probably showbiz BS, but I still was enthralled by it.

Céline Sallette has the thankless role of Pierre's wife, the sort who's always complaining about the main character spending so much time at work. I also enjoyed Bruno Todeschini as a smarmy party boy type who gets in too deep with the bad guys, and Guillaume Gouix as a junior detective who shows Pierre the underbelly of policing in southern France.

"The Conversation" isn't a great movie; it seems to have grander ambitions about linking the lives of the two main characters with their relationship to their wives, children, underlings, etc. These tend to get swept under by the relentless plot, but that's OK when the story is this gripping.

Video review: "The Monuments Men"

One of the more disappointing films of the last few months, “The Monuments Men” was an OK movie that could’ve been great.

You had an offbeat, interesting subject: the citizen/soldiers who labored during World War II to save art works and antiquities from destruction or theft by the German Reich. And a reliable director, George Clooney, who also co-write the script (with Grant Heslov, a frequent partner-in-crime). Plus, in addition to Clooney, an eclectic cast of (mostly) older white guys: Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin.

Alas, this is a gumbo with a whole list of great ingredients that just didn’t come together in a flavorful way. “Men” is alternately silly and somber, and the incongruity cancels out the effectiveness of each.

The film takes great liberties with the historical record – starting with the fact that the Monuments Men are depicted as a small motley group of art experts, when in fact hundreds of people were involved with the effort.

In trying to turn this into, effectively, a “Dirty Dozen” type of story, Clooney and his cast and crew try to do a whole bunch of things, and end up not doing anything particularly well.

Video extras are similarly so-so. The DVD comes with two making-of features: “George Clooney’s Mission” and “Marshaling the Cast.” Go for the Blu-ray version and you add some deleted scenes and two more featurettes: “The Real Monuments Men” and “A Woman Amongst the Monuments Men.”

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Video review: "The Wolf of Wall Street"

“No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough,” wrote Roger Ebert. I don’t entirely agree – I’ve seen plenty of worthy films that could’ve been improved with a nip and a tuck. Case in point: “The Wolf of Wall Street,” at 180 minutes, is occasionally self-indulgent and sprawling.

But it’s still a terrific film, one of the best of 2013. My guess is that people who were put off from seeing it in theaters due to its three-hour run time will cozy up to the latest handsome collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, their fifth together, now that it’s out on video.

DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a slick young stock broker who founds an investment firm dedicated to partying hard and snorting up commission fees from clients on questionable deals. Along with a handful of sycophantic collaborators, including a giddy Jonah Hill as his wingman, they set about to take Wall Street by storm.

This they do – but attracting the attentions of certain lawmen in the process. Jordan & Co. spend as much time hiding their antics from the public eye as they do chasing the almighty dollar.

“Wolf” careens all over the place between comedy and drama, cautionary tale and generous helpings of sex ‘n’ drugs. Much as Scorsese has often been accused of idolizing the gangsters so often featured in his movies, there’s no denying this film gleefully dives into a pool of debauchery.

It may be kind of a mess, and would probably be better if it were 15 or 20 minutes shorter, but it’s still one terrific cinematic ride.

Video features are a big disappointment. If you buy the DVD version, you get absolutely nothing – not even a theatrical trailer.

Spring for the Blu-ray combo pack and you add only “The Wolf Pack” – a series of interviews with Scorsese, cast and crew about making the film.

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Review: "The Monuments Men"

"The Monuments Men" was expected to be a major contender in the Oscar race, but got pulled at the last minute from its December release and moved into February. That rarely speaks well for a movie's quality, so it's no surprise that the latest from director/co-writer/star George Clooney is a disappointment.

It's not a bad movie, certainly, and isolated sections are quite enjoyable in a breezy, been-there-done-that sort of way. It's a World War II story that owes a lot of plot points to other war pictures, and also copies their look and tone. Since it stars all middle-aged actors, with the average somewhere in the early 50s, once could dismiss it as "Saving Private Ryan with Geezers."

(Indeed, Matt Damon, a whippersnapper when he played the title role in "Ryan," is now the youngest guy on the team.)

The concept is certainly a departure from the norm. Instead of the usual dogfaces-in-their-trenches action or generals agonizing over war plans and lost lives, this is the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, an Alllied effort to preserve antiquities being stolen or destroyed by the Nazi machine.

They saved millions of pieces of art, and it's an engaging, relatively unknown subject that received notoriety in a book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, adapted for the screen by Clooney and longtime collaborator Grant Heslov.

Of course, liberties have to be taken to translate such a grand undertaking for a movie, and the film does so liberally. The primary conceit is presenting the Monuments Men as a tiny group of art experts who trade in their magnifying glasses for rifles, when in reality more than 400 soldiers and civilians were involved.

This automatically brings up similarities with other WWII movies like "The Dirty Dozen," where a ragtag team of cast-offs are thrown together and given a big, seemingly impossible mission. The film also has similarities to crime caper flicks, since our guys are essentially trying to steal the art before Hitler does (though with the intention of giving it back to the original owners).

As a result of this and some of the casting choices, "The Monuments Men" has a curiously comedic vibe. Bill Murray plays Campbell, the resident architect and droll quip-man. Bob Balaban is Savitz, the chief target of his jokes, an intemperate little man who resents being looked down upon. John Goodman is Garfield, much too old and large for Army gear, and Jean Dujardin is Clermont, the obligatory French guy.

Damon plays Granger, an art expert who gets sent ahead to be the advance man as the Germans retreat, and Hugh Bonneville is Jeffries, a stiff-upper-lip British type who is looking to redeem himself after past failures. Clooney is Stokes, who came up with the idea for the Monuments Men and acts as leader.

Dimitri Leonidas is the add-on as Epstein, a Jewish German emigre who gets conscripted because he speaks the lingo. Cate Blanchett turns up as a bookish French art expert who worked for the Nazis, and has to be convinced by Granger to give up her secrets.

The biggest problem with the movie is inconsistency. Some sections sing, while others feel flat and by-the-numbers. For instance, the conflict between the Damon and Blanchett characters that eventually turns to feelings of ardor seems preordained.

Clooney & Co. go for a certain amount of gravitas in certain sections, but that's  undercut by all the humor. For instance, after operating as the comic relief for the entire movie, Murray suddenly gets a dramatic scene with a message from home; the whole thing feels forced and false. There's another scene where Garfield and Savitz share a tense moment with a young German soldier that seems to come out of nowhere, and recede just as quickly.

They're not helped by a bombastic score by the usually reliable Alexandre Desplat ("The King's Speech"), who appears to have come up with the music by copying passages from other WWII movies. Good film music should add to the atmosphere rather than try to substitute for it; Desplat's score pushes the audience around.

The lack of a compelling villain also hurts. We get a succession of German officers who appear and then disappear as the chief baddie; Clooney gets a big face-off scene with a smirky SS officer, but because we've only seen him once before the moment carries little real weight. Late in the game they also add in a competing Soviet "trophy brigade" who are snatching up all the art for Mother Russia, but all they seem to do is ride around in vehicles, more existential threat than antagonists.

"The Monuments Men" is something of a puzzle. It has all the pedigree of a good or even great film, but falls flat. I'm reminded of "American Gangster," another movie loaded with talent that just couldn't seem to come together.

As a filmmaker, George Clooney has usually been ol' reliable, lighting up everything he touches. Despite being a movie about the preciousness of artistry, the magic is missing here.

Review: "The Wolf of Wall Street"

If it seems like "The Wolf of Wall Street" bears more than a passing resemblance to Martin Scorsese's masterpiece "Goodfellas," that's because it does. Both films follow similar themes in relating a first-person account of a young guy who stumbled into way more wealth and power than he deserved, and how he set about squandering it.

For Henry Hill, the mafia was his ladder up to the stratosphere of egomania and drug abuse; for Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), it was the stock market.

This mostly-true story, based on Belfort's own book of the same title and translated by screenwriter Terence Winter, is a bacchanalia of drugs, hubris and debauchery. At three hours, it's a sprawling, untidy film that nevertheless often flirts with brilliance.

Tonally, the movie wanders this way and that, from raucous comedy to straight drama to fizzy caper and eventually into tragedy. But rather than being a film that seemingly can't decide what it wants to be, "Wolf" just opted to be everything at once -- and does a very good job at it.

Set in the late 1980s and 1990s, the story follows Belfort as he rises (or descends, depending on your perspective) in the world of stock trading. Wiped out as a young broker in the crash of '87, he latches onto the penny stock market, where the values are tiny but the potential for huge commissions is like dripping red meat to a slavering, greedy talent like himself.

Recruiting some of his buddies -- including a spot-on Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff, his veneer-wearing, sycophantic right-hand man -- Jordan founds Stratton Oakmont, a firm with a name designed to appeal to old-money types who normally wouldn't have anything to do with shady characters like themselves.

It's an overnight success, and they start attracting a lot of attention for their wild spending and frat-boy antics. Such as the dwarf-tossing competition that first opens the movie, where Jordan throws $25,000 in cash on the ground as a bet.

Eventually, his operation attracts the notice of a dogged FBI investigator (Kyle Chandler) and the SEC. Jordan makes a show of wising up, even hiring his father (Rob Reiner) to be the office watchdog. He marries a beautiful model, Naomi, whom he dubs the Duchess of his sprawling empire, and then uses her poorly. She's played by Margot Robbie, who in the tradition of Scorsese leading ladies has a sweet exterior covering up a hard-bitten core.

Rounding out the cast are Jon Bernthal as a street thug Jordan sometimes uses for muscle; Jean Dujardin as a slimy Swiss banker; Joanna Lumley as Naomi's somewhat helpful British aunt; and Ethan Suplee, Kenneth Choi and Barry Rothbart as Jordan's lunkhead recruits.

Matthew McConaughey has a brief, kooky but delicious cameo as a seasoned broker who first instructs Jordan in what it takes to be successful in the stock trading game -- in short, a total disregard for others plus astonishing quantities of cocaine.

And there is plenty of both depicted in the movie. Scorsese has been criticized throughout his career for his reliance on violence, but with "Wolf" he trades in the gore for debauchery. He flaunts the sex-and-drugs material with the same relish he previously showed in beating people to a bloody pulp. There's enough nudity and kinky sex here to give "Blue Is the Warmest Color" a run for the title of most explicit Oscar contender this year.

Holding it all together is DiCaprio in his second magnificent performance of 2013, along with "The Great Gatsby." Callous yet charismatic, Jordan is a Quaalude-dropping, prostitute-hording, filthy-mouthed messiah to those who follow him. Making money is their first, and only priority in life. That, and a good party.

While some might be put off by the length and subject matter of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” it’s another career high point for both Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, and one of the year’s finest films. I’m betting they just might work together again, if they can pay dividends as good as these.

Video review: "The Artist"

Here's an interesting fact: three out of the last four winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture have been foreign-made. Though the latest, "The Artist," is somewhat debatable in that it was shot in Los Angeles with a few recognizable American actors in supporting parts. But the filmmakers and lead performers are French.

In actuality, "The Artist" is a really film that transcends borders. It's a love song to silent American films, as seen from across the Atlantic.

If you haven't already seen this wonderful movie -- easily the best of 2011 -- you may be put off by the knowledge that "The Artist" is silent and black-and-white. Don't be. While certainly artistic, this film isn't arty.

Instead, it's a gorgeous and emotionally transporting celebration of cinema. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, vainglorious king of Hollywood until the "talkies" invade and make him seem artistically antiquated. Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) is the spitfire ingénue who lands a bit part in one of his movies, and turns into a big star herself.

Dujardin is a delight as the narcissistic but generous-hearted Valentin. With a pencil mustache and raconteur's smile, he's part Errol Flynn and part Gene Kelly -- especially during the smash musical finale.

Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius gives us a film that is self-aware but not self-absorbed. Foreign or not, "The Artist" is a triumph.

Extra features are commendable, if not as extensive as I might like.

There's a blooper reel and a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers. A half-dozen making-of featurettes explore topics like the film score and costumes to the Hollywood locations used throughout the film.

Movie: 4 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "The Artist"

Love, love, love!

For the first time in 2011, I have fallen, madly, for a movie. "The Artist" is a French film (but about, and largely of, Americans) that is in black-and-white and silent (!) to boot.

Never fear -- this is not a snooty art-house film intended only for people wearing black turtlenecks. It's a rapturous movie full of passion and artistry, self-aware but not self-absorbed. "The Artist" is about movie-making, in the way that great Hollywood movies have turned a loving (yet acerbic) gaze at themselves, like "Singin' in the Rain."

I cite "Singin'" because star Jean Dujardin reminded me very much of Gene Kelly in that film, with a heavy dash of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. thrown in. With a pencil mustache, slicked hair and rascal smile, he plays George Valentin, an aging matinee idol of silent films who finds his star falling with the advent of "talkies," or sound pictures.

At the same time, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) -- love that name -- the sparkly young ingénue who literally bumps into Valentine at one of his premiers and causes a stir, becomes the biggest light in Hollywood's new age of sound.

When I say that "The Artist" is silent, it is not of course absolutely lacking sound like the films before 1929, which were accompanied by a live orchestra or recorded music. Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius had the ingenious idea of showing us one of Valentin's movies first, operating under the familiar principle of demonstrative acting broken up by title cards for dialogue.

But then the camera pulls back to show the movie-within-a-movie being made -- but the people's mouths still flap soundlessly, and written dialogue provides their words for us.

Hazanavicius retains this charade throughout ... with two notable exceptions that fidget with the film's internal conventions.

The wonderful original score by Ludovic Bource is essential to the story, since virtually every second of film is accompanied by music. Bource also mixes in samples of scores from other movies -- the great Bernard Herrmann's eerie/gorgeous theme from "Vertigo," one of my favorite pieces of movie music, is employed beautifully in one pivotal scene.

There is a love affair between Valentin and Peppy, but it's pure and chaste. He's married, unhappily -- Penelope Ann Miller plays the wife, and the dissolution of their relationship is shown in a montage that pays homage to "Citizen Kane" -- and isn't the type to stray.

Although Valentin is undeniably a ham, and is overly fond of himself, he isn't a cad. He just loves the limelight, so when it's yanked away he folds into himself, like a flower denied the sun.

A number of recognizable American actors take supporting parts in the film, and it's a hoot to watch them attack silent acting. James Cromwell plays Valentin's doting chauffeur, who sticks by him even when his wages disappear. John Goodman is the chief at Kinograph Studios -- not an entirely bad fellow, but one who always knows where the greenbacks are. Missi Pyle plays a starlet tired of being upstaged by Valentin's showboating.

When the talkies invade, Valentin refuses to make the jump, insisting that audiences never needed to hear him talk before. It's stubborn pride, and even he knows this, but nothing can push him to compromise his artistic integrity.

It's an interesting exercise to consider exactly how serious an artist Valentin was. Truly, he made daffy little pictures in which he always played the handsome adventurer, accompanied by his smart little dog (who is his best friend in real life, too). Essentially, he starred in adventure serials that were already getting stale before sound pictures came along.

Hazanavicius harkens back to the first decades of movies -- even using the old-fashioned 1.66 aspect ratio -- with a mix of reverent nostalgia and modern ingenuity. "The Artist" isn't really a deep meditation on art and movies, but a joyful celebration of filmmaking and filmmakers.

4 stars out of four