Review: "Angel Has Fallen"

“He knows how we do this. He knows all our tricks.”

Any spy thriller character who hangs around long enough eventually makes it to the betrayal phase. The top guy -- it’s nearly always a guy -- is set up as the stoolie for some nefarious scheme to sabotage the agency from within, and is hunted by the government.

Bond, Borne, Smiley -- it’s always the same thing. They find themselves on the run, having to outwit their own team.

You could argue that “Fallen” isn’t technically in the spy genre, since protagonist Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is a Secret Service agent, not CIA or something similar. But all the hallmarks are there: unstoppable combat skills, stubbornness bordering on mania, international plots and lots of cool technology able to do stuff straight out of, well, a movie.

I liked the first film, “Olympus Has Fallen,” well enough though the sequel, “London Has Fallen,” got tedious and not a little overly macho. All three have the same basic plot: the President’s life is threatened, and only Mike can save him. This time around it’s Allan Trumbull, played by Morgan Freeman with signature gravitas

In most movies like this, the action scenes propel you onward and the slower talkie sequences are what you must suffer through to get back to the pyrotechnics. This time around I was impressed by the “downtime” more than the parts with flying bullets.

Piper Perabo is an empathetic presence as Mike’s suffering wife, put through hell along with their baby girl when he is fingered as the culprit behind an elaborate assassination attempt on Trumball. Freeman spends most of the movie in a hospital bed, but when he was not I was reminded why it’s pleasing to have a man who is seemingly so wise and kind as POTUS.

I really was touched by Nick Nolte as Mike’s long-lost father, Clay, whom he eventually turns to when the chips are down. Clay ran out on the family a long time ago, and is stuck doing the crazy-loner-in-the-woods thing. But Nolte’s wet, pleading eyes, along with a couple of solid speeches about his motivations, genuinely hit the heart.

Quality acting in a dumb blow-em-up flick? Imagine my surprise.

The rest of the story is fairly forgettable, though it moves along at a nice clip under the direction of Ric Roman Waugh, one of the first stunt coordinators to move behind the camera. He co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Cook and Robert Mark Kamen.

Danny Huston plays Wade Jennings, an old Army buddy of Mike’s who now runs his own training facility with a hand-picked crew of mercenaries, and OMG if you don’t know where that’s going then you must not have seen Danny Huston in any movies over the past 20 years.

Seriously, Danny, get a new agent. Otherwise your first scene might as well come with a title card like the silent movies: "The villain has arrived."

Mike’s rumored to be in line for the director’s job at Secret Service, and could steer some business Wade’s way. Secretly he frets about not wanting to hang up his gun for a desk job, plus his body is breaking down after years in the field, leading to some ferocious pill-popping.

Jada Pinkett Smith plays the lead FBI agent hunting Mike; Lance Reddick is the outgoing Secret Service chief; and Tim Blake Nelson plays the nervous nelly vice president who has to take over the reins of office while the president is in a coma.

Butler is decent at the physical stuff, despite looking rather puffy and jowly these days, though the other actors have to carry him through the touchy-feely stuff.

He looks like his skin is sliding off his face and all gathering around his neck. I think the filmmakers were trying to make him look like crap, but also they went that way because that's the clay they had to work with.

Butler seems poised to take over the “Kickass Geezer” mantle that’s been passed down from Harrison Ford to Denzel Washington to Liam Neeson.

Filled with some decent action sequences and even a few well-plucked heartstrings, “Angel Has Fallen” surprises as the best of the trilogy.

Review: "Stan & Ollie"

“Stan & Ollie” is a melancholy look at the relationship between one of film’s great comedic duos: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Though their place in the pop culture consciousness is closer to distant reverence than relevance these days, they were as big in Hollywood as you could get in the 1930s and ‘40s.

In their onscreen act, Oliver Hardy was the portly, overbearing one while Stan Laurel was the skinny numbskull. But as the film makes clear, in real life Stan was the stodgy brains of the outfit who wrote all their material, while Oliver was the joyful retiring sort who was happy to let his partner handle the business side of things.

They are played by Steve Coogan as Stan and John C. Reilly as Oliver. Both are completely believable, physically and otherwise, in their parts. Coogan gets by with just a little Brylcreem and altering his voice; Reilly uses a fat suit and impressive facial prosthetics. We quickly look past the exterior finishing and concentrate on the souls behind the legend.

The film, written by Jeff Pope and directed by Jon S. Baird, is set in 1953 after their fame has mostly faded. Oliver is now in his early 60s and in poor health, while Stan has been cut down by his attempts to buck the Hollywood system. An opening scene from 1937 shows them butting heads with studio chief Hal Roach (Danny Huston), demanding more money, which briefly led to them splitting up the act for a time.

It’s all water under the bridge for Ollie, but Stan still has a chip on his shoulder. He’s organized a stage tour of the United Kingdom, which is to build hype for a film they’re planning to shoot playing off the Robin Hood legend. They keep working on different bits for the movie, even though the man in charge of putting the financing together isn’t returning Stan’s calls.

What this lovely film shows is how people can be a perfect fit onstage but not really get along off it. They don’t detest each other or anything like that. They’ve played golf and double-dated with their wives -- whichever ones they had at the moment; both men have married and divorced repeatedly, which has cut into their finances -- without ever really becoming true friends.

Comedy is their shared language and point of reference for, well, everything. Playing seedy theaters before small audiences and staying in third-rate hotels, they make a joke of their circumstances while seething about it. But at the urging of the vaguely slimy producer handling the tour, Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones), they do some publicity stunts in the different locales.

The crowds start to get bigger, and the boys find themselves actually enjoying working together again. What's more, they find themselves bonding in a way they hadn't before.

Around the midway point “the girls” arrive: Stan’s wife, Ida (Nina Arianda) and Ollie’s wife, Lucille (Shirley Henderson). Both men finally got it right after several tries, and found women they remained married to until they died. Ida is surly and Russian, and keeps prattling about her own dubious showbiz career. Lucille is a little shy and snarky, and worries that Ollie is endangering his health with the tour.

The women soon set to bickering, but the boys are still overjoyed to have them around.

There isn’t a whole lot of story to “Stan & Ollie.” It’s the story of two guys whose stars were inseparable, but whose personalities didn’t quite mesh. And yet, they managed to create something that endures. Sometimes just doing good work is enough.

Video review: "Wonder Woman"

I sometimes stop to think why “Wonder Woman” is such a superior super-hero flick.

After all, it is fairly conventional in its storytelling structure: a standard-issue origin tale, in which a reluctant youngster acquires extraordinary abilities/status, applies them in the greater world in what they think are appropriate ways and later learns the pitfalls of that whole great powers/great responsibilities rubric.

It starts, I think, with this heroine and this actress. The superhero genre has gone through some interesting changes over the past two decades, but it’s still heavily predominated by male filmmakers presenting male characters for a male audience. The women are, literally, the background characters and the sidekicks.

Even Wonder Woman started out that way, as a third-act boost to -- and in many ways the best thing about – last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

There was a sad, reluctant quality to Wonder Woman in her few moments of non-fighting scenes, and we get to explore that fully and forcefully in her solo flick. Directed by Patty Jenkins – who had to wait 14 years between her first and second feature film directing credit – from a screenplay by Allan Heinberg, the film re-introduces us to the character, fleshing out the flashy exterior in ways that surprise and touch us.

She journeys from naivety to poise, from innocent to hardened warrior and from privileged princess to self-imposed outsider.

And you cannot separate Gal Gadot from the success of “Wonder Woman.” She embodies the character’s strength and vulnerability, bringing a weighty presence you don’t normally see in a superhero flick. It may just be the best acting performance in this genre since… ever.

Chris Pine acquits himself nicely in the “romantic interest” role normally reserved for a female character, as an American spy infiltrating the German World War I war machine working on chemical weapons of mass destruction.

Danny Huston is his usual sneering self as the chief villain, but I was much more affected by Dr. Maru, the creepy scientist dubbed “Dr. Poison,” played so soulfully by Elena Anaya. With her broken mask and shattered psyche, the character is worthy of her own movie.

In the end, “Wonder Woman” triumphed not just because it was about a female hero, but because the people involved in making it obviously invested so much of their passion and souls into this wondrous film.

Bonus features are quite expansive and exquisite, and are nearly the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions. The centerpiece is “Crafting the Wonder,” a comprehensive making-of documentary.

Probably the highlight is a series of featurettes called “A Director’s Vision,” as Jenkins takes viewers on exclusive behind-the-scenes journeys through filming several key sequences and themes of the picture. There is one bonus new scene and several extended ones, a blooper reel, and interactions with young female filmmakers, poets and other artists who have been inspired by Wonder Woman.

Other features explore her role within the DC Comics “Trinity” with Batman and Superman and creating the Amazonian army.

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Review: "Hitchcock"

If Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t been a bona fide figure, Hollywood would’ve invented him. With his inverted-light-bulb physique and that pained slur of a monotone drawl, the great film director stood out both for his exemplary craftsmanship and his oddball image. In some ways his personal iconography has endured every bit as much as his movies.

“Hitchcock,” which puts the filmmaker under the microscope during the making of his landmark film “Psycho,” features a spot-on impersonation by Anthony Hopkins. Wearing an impressive body suit and extensive facial prosthetics to mimic the droopy mien of “Hitch” (as he preferred to be called), Hopkins evokes the spirit and personality of the man behind masterpieces like “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo.”

In this portrait, Hitchcock is both supremely self-confident and filled with obsessive fears about being a washed-up failure. At age 60, Hitch frets that his best days were behind him, that he is tainted by his association with television, and that he will never receive the accolades (i.e., an Academy Award) he feels are surely deserved.

But the movie, directed by Sacha Gervasi from John J. McLaughlin’s screenplay (based on a book by Stephen Rebello), goes further by exploring the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville. And it’s in this journey that the film rises from amusing bauble to a full-throated and satisfying depiction of a great man and the unheralded woman who helped make him so.

Alma, played by Helen Mirren, dutifully performs the role of the loyal wife in public, but quietly seethes with resentment underneath. A talented editor and writer in her own right, she married a promising young director and made his career her own. Reville rewrote scripts, played the part of Hitch’s main sounding board and even (if this film’s depiction is to be believed) stood in for him behind the camera when his health failed.

As the story opens, Hitch is coming off the resounding success of "North by Northwest," but hasn't a clue as to what to make for his next picture. Some, including Alma, are quietly suggesting he retire with grace. Those calls become increasing urgent as he lights upon the gruesome story of Ed Gein, a serial murderer who chopped up his victims.

When the Hollywood press is repulsed by the topic, Hitchcock digs deeper. When Alma dismisses the story as cheap horror show, he is intrigued by the challenge: "What if someone really good made a horror picture?" he asks.

Realizing that his dream female star, Grace Kelly, is now unavailable due to having married into royalty, Hitch settles on Janet Leigh. As played by Scarlett Johansson, Leigh is a paragon of niceness and professionalism in a cutthroat business. At first she's ambivalent about Hitchcock, especially how he will handle the famous shower scene. But she eventually finds herself in his corner.

"Compared to Orson Welles, he's a sweetheart," she muses.

Her counterpoint is Vera Miles (Jessica Biel), whom Hitch had hoped to make a big star, but she rejected him to play the real-life role of wife and mother. It was part of his long fixation on "these blonde women of mystery" who regularly populated his films.

Hitchcock can't get the studio to finance "Psycho," so he ends up writing a check for $800,000 out of his own pocket. It threatens to bankrupt them, and Alma responds to being shut out of the creative process by collaborating with an old friend (Danny Huston) who's a little bit too familiar with the married "Mrs. Hitchcock."

Director Gervasi's only other film was the documentary "Anvil: The Story of Anvil," which looked at a washed-up heavy metal band. His switch to narrative storytelling is a seamless one, as he expertly plucks the audience's strings, much like composer Bernard Hermann's screeching violin strings in "Psycho."

At a crisp 98 minutes, "Hitchcock" is as taut as one of Hitch's own mystery thrillers.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Edge of Darkness"

"Edge of Darkness" is a strange, strange movie. Not a terrible one, though its good parts are scattered in a wilderness of discombobulated scenes and disjointed story elements.

Mel Gibson -- in his first starring role in eight years -- plays a familiar archetype, an old-school cop out for revenge after his child is kidnapped/murdered/raped. It's a forceful, effective performance; we believe Gibson as Craven, a Boston detective who becomes unhinged when his daughter Emma (Bojana Navakovic) is gunned down on the front steps of his house.

But unlike, say, last year's "Taken" with Liam Neeson in a similar movie, we never see Craven in any context other than revenge mode. He does not seem to exist as a person outside of roughing up suspects and hunting down clues.

We know he owns a nice house in Roslindale, because that's where the murder took place. Presumably he had a wife once, but she's never mentioned. Craven is a detective, and declines to take a leave of absence, but abandons his own duties (if he ever had any) to pursue his daughter's killers. No one in the chain of command ever questions why he's running around getting into knife fights and highway shoot-outs.

The investigation leads to the doorstep of a corporation called Northmoor, where his daughter worked, and then things really get weird.

In his interview with the Northmoor boss, Craven is immediately put off by the man's elusive answers and strange behavior. The boss is played by Danny Huston, who has been so typecast as the heavy that whenever he first appears onscreen in a film, the audience thinks to itself, "The villain has just arrived." Huston really should talk to his agent about doing a romantic comedy or something just to mix things up.

The strangeness deepens. Northmoor apparently is into some nasty business, with the government's tacit approval, and a spook named Jedburgh is dispatched to take care of things. Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) meets with Craven, talks to him, seems to like him -- while making it clear that he may be inclined to rub Craven out at some indeterminate point in the future.

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") and screenwriters William Monahan and Andrew Bovell based the film on an old British TV series that Campbell directed. Perhaps that explains the episodic flow of the action, with big events followed by weepy scenes where Craven imagines he's seeing his daughter, still a little girl.

The transitions are abrupt, and often arbitrary.

At one point Craven comes across a name associated with his daughter, goes to the man's house and starts beating the hell out of him. He stops hitting the guy, saying his daughter wouldn't approve, then remembers that she's dead and starts wailing away again.

The audience laughs, and our critical link to Craven's pain shatters in a moment of cheap humor. What's more, the guy he's beating up, who seems bewildered by this assault, then disappears with nary another reference to him.

For all we know, Craven had the wrong address and was pummeling a pharmacist.

As much as I was perplexed by the movie's strange fits, I was never bored by it. I enjoyed the running joke between Jedburgh and Craven that, "Everything's illegal in Massachusetts." Jedburgh, who for some reason is British, wryly suggests it's "payback for the Tea Party."

I doubt "Edge of Darkness" will herald Mel Gibson's return to stardom. He's still a convincing performer, in need of better material.

2 stars