Review: "Fatale"

 

Hollywood has never had a firm idea exactly what to do with Hilary Swank. After winning two Oscars in her 20s for non-traditional gender roles, she's been constantly busy but rarely found strong parts in big films or a particular niche to fill. She was wonderful in the under-appreciated "The Homesman" a few years back, which almost nobody saw.

As a result, like Ben Kingsley she's an unfortunate contender for the title of "Oscar winner who appears in the most bad movies."

Sadly that's another point on the board for her with "Fatale," an aggressively awful psychological thriller where she plays a dirty cop setting up a sports management mogul played by Michael Ealy. It's one of those movies intended for mostly African-American audiences where she's relegated to the Evil White Person role. 

I'm OK with making Caucasians the heavy, but just like it when it's done with something like originality and panache. This is like a grade-Z modern film noir where you can literally see every perambulation of the plot three moves ahead. It's crime story as soap opera.

Swank does get to play something we don't get to see her do a lot, a sexy role as an alluring woman of mystery. Her looks have unfortunately become something of a pop culture meme, including that famous "Is Hilary Swank hot?" episode of "The Office" some years back. To me, the answer is unambiguously "yes," so I don't exactly know why this is a thing or has acted to limit her roles.

Maybe it's because of her strong jaw or roles playing a boxer and transman. We've come so far...

The film is directed by Deon Taylor ("Lakeview Terrace") and scripted by David Loughery, both of whom have a knack for these sorts of slick, multicultural, vaguely exploitative dramas. (They worked together on "The Intruder," another crazy-honky-torments-beautiful-black-folk story, also starring Ealy.)

The end result is something that feels formulaic and unfocused. The filmmakers seem obsessed with bedazzling us with the bling of an affluent L.A. lifestyle -- fancy mansions in the hills, zero-edge pools, cars that cost as much as the average American house -- to the detriment of competent plotting and character development.

Ealy is Derrick Taylor, a rising sports agent who built his company from the ground up with his buddy and partner, Rafe (Mike Colter). They're already rich but about to break into the big time with A-list signees. (This being a low-budget film, Lance Stephenson, formerly of the Pacers and most recently the Liaoning Flying Leopards, is the biggest name they get for a cameo.)

His marriage with beautiful-but-icy Traci (Damaris Lewis) is on the rocks, and he starts to suspect all those late nights celebrating with real estate agents are something else. So when he's in Las Vegas for a friend's bachelor's party, Derrick falls to temptation with Veronica (Swank), a tall brunette who's simultaneously tough but needy in a locks-your-phone-in-her-hotel-room-safe kinda way. 

Back in L.A., Derrick is nearly killed by a masked intruder in his home, and who would be assigned to the case but Veronica, who turns out to be a storied police detective. She's got some personal troubles of her own, including a snidely ex (Danny Pino) who's a city councilman keeping their daughter from her.

Somehow, Veronica funnels her hatred for her ex into her contempt for Derrick, because he "used" her back in Las Vegas. Veronica's motivation for her subsequent dastardly actions is the movie's most under-explored territory, which leaves Swank having to stand around spewing a lot ridiculous gun-moll dialogue without any context to ground her character in. I hate to say it, but some of her line readings even come off as amateurish.

As for Ealy, Derrick is built as such a passive, reactive character that he seems like a puppet in his own life. We get lots of scenes of him with brow furrowed and jaw tucked into his chin as he struggles with his fate. I think he's supposed to smolder but largely comes across as an indecisive wimp.

Movies like "Fatale" are made to serve a very specific purpose, and I'm guessing the audience it's intended for will be sated by spoon-feeding them what they want. Personally I hate to see Swank used so poorly once again -- but then again, she signed on for this dreck. 

Video review: "The Hunt"

"The Hunt" is a memorable film, and not just because it was the last movie I saw in a theater in "the before time." No, it's a genuinely interesting picture, though not necessarily a very good one. But sometimes it's the flawed but intriguing movies that stay with you.

The premise is a pretty standard movie trope: the "deadliest game" in which humans hunt each other for sport. We've seen it in various forms, from cautionary dramas to horror flicks to futuristic fantasies like "The Hunger Games." "The Hunt" has elements of all of those, mixed with a political edge you don't often see in mainstream film.

You may have heard this movie was supposed to be released in 2019 but was delayed after mass shootings and the controversy over the fact it features righteous liberals hunting MAGA-types. It was attacked from both the right and the left.

Turns out the political stuff isn't really all that interesting -- it's just the launching point for the story. And the movie aims plenty of satirical barbs at both sides of the aisle.

What really makes it stand out is Betty Gilpin as the main character, Crystal. She and a dozen or so other red-staters wake up from a drugged fog to find themselves in a field. A box of weapons sits at the ready, and a few of them seem capable of putting up a fight. But they're soon torn to pieces by a bunker full of leftists who are using the sport to vent their various aggressions.

Crystal is unlike any other horror or action movie heroine we've ever seen. We soon learn that she's more than capable in a fight, and keeps her head on straight while everyone else is freaking out. She spends little time agonizing over why she's been targeted and gets straight to outsmarting her would-be assailants.

She also has a wry, deadpan sort of humor that's both grim and funny. Think of a self-effacing, feminine version of Dirty Harry with a sense of irony.

Hilary Swank is the main antagonist as Athena, a big-time CEO who organized the hunt. You know it's all building to a big girl-on-girl throwdown with Crystal at the end, and it doesn't disappoint with a surprisingly spirited and bloody clash.

A few other familiar names and faces show up -- Emma Roberts, Amy Madigan, Ethan Suplee, Sturgill Simpson, Ike  Barinholtz among them -- but one of the surprising things about "The Hunt" is its willingness to kill off seemingly important characters no matter who's playing them.

Director Craig Zobel and screenwriters Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelöf go for a mix of thrills, gore, satire and humor, and at times its a wobbly balance of tones. Something happens and we're not sure if we should react with delight, laughter or abhorrence.

Still, Gilpin's butt-kicking Crystal is worth the price of admission. I'd love to see this character reappear, maybe in a Sergio Leone-esque Woman with No Name type of series.

Bonus features are a mite lite, consisting of just three documentary shorts:

• "Crafting The Hunt" -- Discussion of how costumes and props were used to highlight political commentary.
• "Death Scene Breakdowns" -- Special effects team discuss the goriest death scenes.
• "Athena vs Crystal: Hunter or Hunted" -- A behind-the-scenes look at the choreography and training by Gilpin and Swank for their fight sequence.

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Extras:

Video review: "The Homesman"

If I were to measure "The Homesman" only by its two lead performances, I'd call it a home run deserving of multiple Academy Award nominations. Unfortunately, its story wanders this way and that, an open range Western that sometimes gallops, and sometimes stumbles.

Set in about 1850, the tale is of three pioneer wives who have gone mad on the lonely stretches of Nebraska. They need to be transported back to Iowa to be cared for by their families, but none of their husbands have the will or gumption to make the journey. So Mary Bee Cuddy volunteers to be their guardian and chaperone.

Mary Bee is played by Hilary Swank, in another signature performance of her career, and is a woman of immeasurable virtues. She runs her own farm and is, as one fellow says, "as good a man as any man in these parts." However, her soul is weighed down by her inability to find a husband, owing to her plain looks and bossiness.

Early in her journey she runs across George Briggs, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay. Briggs has been strung up for claim jumping, but Mary Bee cuts him down in exchange for his help getting the women back to Iowa.

Along the way they encounter the familiar array of threats from American Indians, rapacious bandits, con men and natural elements. Somehow, these two fiercely independent souls must find a way to trust one another.

Even though the script could've used a few more runs around the corral, "The Homesman" is worth a look if only to see these two master thespians plying their trade.

Bonus features are rather disappointing. The Blu-ray and DVD editions both carry the same three featurettes: "Story to Script," "Shooting the Film" and "19th Century Life."

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Review: "The Homesman"

“The Homesman” exists somewhere in that netherworld between the Western and the anti-Western. It celebrates the austerity and grit of the mid-1800s, and the people who settled west of the Mississippi River; but also casts an unsparing, gimlet eye on the brutality of those times -- and those who made it so.

It’s the sort of movie full of horses and guns and stare-downs between desperate folks, but it’s not really about those things. There is little actual violence, and that which does transpire ill comports with the uses traditionally seen in this terrain of filmmaking.

Story-wise it kind of jags this way and that, like a drunken rider upon a lame horse, neither one too sure about the navigation. But it contains a brilliant performance by Hilary Swank, full of contradictory emotions and urges that nonetheless seem perfectly confined inside a character who feels urgent and alive.

And Tommy Lee Jones, who co-stars and also directed and co-wrote the film, isn’t half-bad himself. Not to mention an impressive supporting cast that includes the likes of Meryl Streep, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, James Spader and Tim Blake Nelson.

Based upon a book by Glendon Swarthout, the story concerns a journey from Nebraska to Iowa roundabouts 1850 to return three wives who have gone crazy on the lonely plains to their families back East. Their husbands are reluctant to leave their crops or children to make the long, arduous journey, so Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank) steps forward.

To all outward appearances, Mary Bee is a marvel. An educated woman from New York, she runs a prosperous claim including prime farmland, stock and a tidy house. She is active in her church and community – as much as one can be when you measure the distance to neighbors in miles – and respected by all. She is, as one forthright fellow puts it, as good a man as any man in these parts.

But there is an itchy desperation to Mary Bee, driven by the fact that she is 31 years old (firmly into spinsterhood), a mite bossy and “plain as an old tin pail,” to use a variation on a common refrain. As the story opens she essentially throws herself at a callow clod with whom she has lately been social. “Why not marry?” she proposes, going on to outline the financial benefits of a pairing, and we sense this not the first time such a speech has been given.

Rejected, Mary Bee agrees to oversee three women who have been more successful in getting married, but not in what comes after. Played by Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter and Grace Gummer, each has experienced extreme tragedy that has driven them over the edge, including the death of children, due to causes natural ... and otherwise.

The trio exists as ghostly, wordless figures of pity, though Jones and his co-screenwriters (Wesley A. Oliver and Kieran Fitzgerald) are careful to show glimpses of the cruel lives that made them so.

Her charges locked into a boxed wagon, Mary Bee begins her expedition but stumbles across a man sitting on a horse with a noose around his neck. He is George Briggs (Jones), a claim-jumper and man of constant wanderings. He agrees to assist Mary Bee in exchange for saving his life, and thus begins a volatile relationship built on distrust and resentment, but also a shared sense of solitariness.

Along the way they encounter the usual sorts of challenges – Indians, rapacious cowboys, bitter snows and stomachs shriveled from hunger. The real journey is in these two damaged people venturing toward a nexus where they can both abide. It would seem impossible; she has a despairing desire to be needed, while he holds his rootless freedom as his most cherished (and often only) possession.

I wish “The Homesman” had as coherent a sense of narrative as it does well-limned portraits of its main characters. Some of the encounters in the film, particularly in the second half, have little connective tissue with the themes and story that surround them. (One, a visit to an intended town that so far has only built a hotel, tries too transparently to borrow a page from “Unforgiven.”)

But Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones are well worth the price of admission on their own. In most Westerns the actions define the character, but here it’s the words, said and unsaid, that offer a peek inside distant souls.

Review: "Conviction"

"Conviction" is a well-meaning drama that contains absolutely zero surprises. Hilary Swank gives another strong, stubborn performance as a working-class woman who essentially put her life on hold for two decades to get her brother sprung from prison on a wrongful murder conviction. We know even before the arrest that he will eventually be let go, because why else would they bother making this movie, based on a true story?

Tony Goldwyn directs in a resolute, straightforward manner that never allows any doubts about who the good and bad guys are. Melissa Leo, playing the ambitious cop who made the arrest, is denied even a sliver of humanity. There's one scene, years later, of Betty Anne Waters (Swank) confronting the cop, and she makes some weak excuse about being the only woman on the force in the early 1980s.

Tales of this officer's misdeeds continue, but she's never seen or heard from again. If she's supposed to represent the villain of the piece, then screenwriter Pamela Gray does a poor job of setting her up as a worthy antagonist.

The story begins with the arrest of Betty Anne's brother, Kenny (Sam Rockwell). Because he has a criminal record, the local police harass him over every misdeed committed in the community. But officer Nancy Taylor (Leo) seems to hold a special grudge against him. Kenny is depicted as a rebellious spirit who loves his sister fiercely, but just can't back down when he's pushed.

After it's clear no lawyer will touch the case, Betty Anne resolves to go to law school herself so she can represent her brother. Lacking even a high school diploma, this process takes years and years, during which time her marriage (Loren Dean plays the husband) dissolves and her relationship with her two sons grows strained.

What makes it a great role for Swank is that Betty Anne just won't take no for answer and won't give up -- even when Kenny does. Rockwell gives a genuine performance of measured power, as Kenny's will is slowly sapped out of him by the passing of time and the fading of hope. Rockwell makes us feel the years.

Minnie Driver plays a fellow older law student who offers her friendship and assistance, and Peter Gallagher plays Barry Scheck, the head of the Innocence Project, which provides a hand in getting Kenny freed. Juliette Lewis has a small, (unintentionally?) comic turn as one of the witnesses who helped seal Kenny's fate, and now provides a key break in the case.

As a legal drama, "Conviction" doesn't really have much plot to churn over. Betty Anne isn't portrayed as some kind of blue-collar Eliza Doolittle who suddenly transforms into a legal savant. Their case is built entirely around the slim hope of finding some blood evidence that wasn't destroyed so they can have it DNA tested.

I don't know how many scenes there are of Betty Anne and her cohorts phoning, pleading, looking through storage rooms in search of the elusive DNA. Of course, we know it will eventually turn up. Once it's found, though -- a little more than an hour into the film's run time -- the story keeps finding ways to delay the inevitable, and milk the dramaturgy.

As is to be expected in a Hollywood movie, certain liberties have been taken. The film portrays the time between which the DNA evidence turned up until Kenny's release as more than a year, when in fact it was something like two weeks.

Strangely, in the inevitable title cards right before the end credits that explain what happened to the various people, it doesn't mention that Kenny Waters died in a fall a few months after getting out of prison.

As a film that got a lot of early mentions for Oscar contention, there's no denying "Conviction" registers as a disappointment. Swank and Rockwell still give fine performances, almost enough to recommend the movie on that basis alone. The stubbornness of Betty Anne, though, is mirrored in the script's tunnel-vision approach to storytelling, which doesn't leave much room for nuance or complexity.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "Amelia"

Most people missed "Amelia," the Hilary Swank biopic of Amelia Earhart, including me. The film wasn't screened for Indianapolis critics, and it fell into that category of movies I wanted to see and meant to see, but just didn't get around to.

I have quite a strong aviation streak in my family -- my mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law are all licensed pilots, my wife stopped training a little short of her own, my father was in the Air Force and worked at an airport most of his career, and my nephew is taking lessons toward his license. So movies about fliers tend to interest me greatly.

Structurally, "Amelia" is very similar to "The Spirit of St. Louis," the excellent movie starring Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindbergh. The fateful flight of their careers -- successful in Lindbergh's case, unsuccessful in Earhart's -- acts as the framing device, with flashbacks recounting the events of their life that led up to it.

Director Mira Nair ("The Namesake") and screenwriters Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan (working from a couple of source books) are to be commended for an unflinching portrait of the hype behind the Amelia Earhart legend.

Although an accomplished pilot, she was hired by promoter George Putnam (Richard Gere) as a passenger for a publicity stunt. She sat in the back of a plane bought by a wealthy dilettante as two men piloted it across the Atlantic. She was called the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, but even she admitted her function was essentially that of "a sack of potatoes."

Later on Earhart undertook the flight again, this time solo, but there's no denying her career, or at least her role as a media darling, started off with a bit of showbiz fraud.

Swank portrays Earhart as an ambitious, independent woman who was willing to engage in flimflam -- speaking engagements, photo shoots, even endorsing her own line of clothes and luggage -- as long as it enabled to continue her passion for flying. Earhart always labeled herself a social worker who flew for fun, even though she had an historic impact on not only the feminist movement, but aviation history.

The movie is simply gorgeous to gaze upon -- Nair's shots of airplanes and the landscape passing beneath are practically worth the price of admission itself.

But the movie falls flat in other areas, particularly the portrayal of her relationship with Putnam, who would later become her husband. Nair and her screenwriters cut corners to focus on the flying. So we're left with a lot of scenes of Putnam staring forlornly into a radio transmitter, waiting for word that his wife has arrived safely.

Earhart's affair with Gene Vidal, who set up some of the earliest commercial flights, is given even shorter shrift. We never get a chance to see what they meant to each other, and the impact on her marriage is given the brush-off in a single scene in the couple's rose garden. Perhaps that's an ironic comment, as in "I never promised you a..."

The extent of the short-cutting is evident in the DVD extras. A bundle of deleted scenes reveals the character of Putnam's first wife, played by Virginia Madsen, whose role was completely cut out of the movie. I can only surmise that the filmmakers made a cynical decision to omit the fact that Earhart broke up their marriage in order to make the character seem more likable.

And what a blow for Madsen -- unknown actors get left on the cutting room floor all the time, but Oscar nominees?

Similarly, we learn that Earhart herself had a fiance, who bowed out when her career in the air took off.

The DVD also has a rather ordinary making-of documentary, and a featurette looking at the enduring legacy of Earhart. A nice addition is a number of original MovieTone newsreels about Earhart and her exploits. They help us see the cues Swank took in molding her performance, particularly the distinctive Midwestern accent of the Kansas native.

It's such a shame that such an unconventional historical figure received such a conventional film about her life.

Film: 2.5 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars