The Big Take: Hollywood is as Noir as Ever

Nothing inspires less confidence than a protagonist who happens to be a struggling screenwriter. Yes, you are supposed to write what you know, but if that is the sum total of your experiences, maybe you were not meant to be the voice of your generation. Justin Daly probably knows a heck of a lot more about the business than his scuffling scribe character, considering he is the son of Pia Lindström and the grandson of Ingrid Bergman. He must know some stories, but he creates some Elmore Leonard-esque business instead for his directorial debut, The Big Take (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Faded movie star Douglas Brown thought he was back on track. He successfully transferred all his finances to Panama to hide his assets from his ex-wife and lined up a reasonably budgeted film as a potential comeback vehicle. However, he could suddenly lose it all, after an unscrupulous aspiring producer walks away with some excruciatingly embarrassing CCTV footage. (Frankly, The Big Take could find itself on the receiving end of Social Justice Warrior wrath for transphobia, but it is still bad for Brown’s business).

Vic Venitos had the bright idea of blackmailing Brown to appear in the film he is supposedly producing and to underwrite the $200K production budget, but he really has not thought this through. Unfortunately, he scrawls his extortion note on a page of the script, which leads back to his hopeful screenwriter-director, Max O’Leary. O’Leary is clueless about his producer’s activities, but through miscommunication and his Ukrainian wife’s surprising fighting chops, they manage to get the better of Frank Manascalpo, a fixer retained by Brown’s agent, Jack Girardi. Then things start to get ugly and personal.

By far, the best thing about Big Take is the supporting cast of veteran character actors and genre journeymen. Bill Sage is wickedly droll as Girardi, while James McCaffrey is hilariously dissipated as Brown. The great Robert Forster seems to be trying to outdo his personal best for world-weariness as cynical West Hollywood Det. Aborn. Dan Hedaya is also instantly credible as the hard-nosed Manascalpo. Zoë Bell is appropriately sinister and even shows a little bit of the action chops she is known for as Edie, the hired killer. Unfortunately, Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s O’Leary is just a mushy nothing, right in the center of the film.

It is always a pleasure watching old school cats like Forster and Hedaya do their thing, but Daly should have given them more outrageous one-darned-things-after-another to deal with. He matches the cynicism of Altman’s The Player and Katz’s Gemini, but not their wit and irony. Still, there is some sharp dialogue and some great work from the old pros. Probably a film you can safely wait to stream on Netflix or Shudder, The Big Take opens today (9/7) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Small Town Crime: Noir at its Booziest

Mike Kendall sounds like a nice, progressive fellow. He was adopted by an African American family and now his best friend is his brother-in-law. He could almost be a character in a Norman Lear sitcom, if he weren’t such a boozy, self-sabotaging low life. However, he just might earn himself a bit of redemption if he can bring the murderers of a prostitute to justice in Eshom & Ian Nelms’ Small Town Crimes (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Kendall longs to return to the police force, but that just isn’t happening after he helplessly watched his partner get gunned down while in a drunken state. Waking up from his nightly bender on the outskirts of town, Kendall discovers the badly beaten body of a young girl. He racers her to the hospital, but she will not make it. For some reason, Kendall cannot leave things as they are. He starts his own independent investigation, even bluffing the victim’s well-heeled grandfather to retain his services as a private investigator (not that he’s licensed, mind you).

Yet, much to the exasperation of the real cops working the case, Kendall starts developing some genuine leads. In fact, he gets close enough to prompt the killers to target his sister Kelly Banks, and her good-natured husband Teddy. Kendall has them convinced he has a legit temp job, which is sort of true, but he is also kidding himself regarding his general crime-fighting fitness.

STC is a sly noir in the Jim Thompson tradition, featuring an absolutely terrific performance from John Hawkes. Just when you think he has finally bottomed out, he finds a way to sink even lower. Just looking at his haggard, drawn face gives you the urge to pop an aspirin with some hair-of-the-dog.

Hawkes owns this film, but he has some worthy support from a colorful cast of characters, including the eternally steely Robert Forster at the peak of his steeliness, as the sharp-shooting estranged grandpa, Steve Yendel. Hawkes and Anthony Anderson’s Teddy Banks also play off each other quite amiably, while executive producer Octavia Spencer is believably exasperated but still completely human and compassionate as his long-suffering sister Kelly. Plus, Clifton Collins Jr. is the total wildcard, who constantly cranks up the energy and attitude as the victim’s eccentrically righteous pimp, “Mood.”

The Nelms Brothers have a few prior indie films to their credit, but STC deserves to be their breakout. We’d also be happy to see it spawn a bleary-eyed Mike Kendall franchise. He might actually be the most dissolute movie detective since who knows when, but that is all part of his charm. Enthusiastically recommended, Small Town Crime opens this Friday (1/19) in New York, at the Village East.

Isaac Florentine’s Acts of Vengeance

Stoics never lose their cool. The pursuit of vengeance taking would therefore seem at odds with practice of stoicism, but anyone who can roughly merge them together will be one dangerous customer. A grieving father inspired by Marcus Aurelius will try to do exactly that in Isaac Florentine’s Acts of Vengeance (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Presumably Frank Valera’s voice-overs are an interior monologue, because he has taken a secular vow of silence after the murder of his wife and young daughter. He ruefully admits he used to talk quite a bit as a slimy defense attorney. No, the irony that he used to defend criminals possibly like the ones who killed Sue and Olivia Valera is not lost on him. For a while, he tortures himself by acting as a human punching bag in underground steel cage fights. However, a chance encounter with the Emperor’s Meditations changes his perspective. It says: “Punish only those who are guilty of the crime.” Right, sounds like a plan.

Valera starts snooping around the post-industrial crime scene neighborhood, drawing the attention of the Russian mob. He will take out some frustration on their enforcers, becoming the protector of a nurse at a low-income clinic, who had been forced to supply them traffickable prescription drugs. However, the true identity of his wife’s killer will be a third act revelation most viewers will guess, simply due to the limited cast of characters.

Despite the unsurprising surprise, Acts is suitably lean and agile payback thriller. Florentine is one of the best in the business at rendering street-level action (frankly, he is overdue for a New York retrospective). Once again, his fight scenes are cleanly legible (no shaky cam here), but Florentine adds a further personal stamp by also appearing on-screen as Valera’s hard-nosed sensei.

The whole stoicism thing probably helps (no teary outbursts wanted or required), but Antonio Banderas still gives one of his best performances since at least The Skin I Live In (another revenge drama) and maybe going all the way back to Philadelphia. We definitely believe he is deeply wounded and extremely ticked off. He also shows some convincing moves in the fight scenes. That is all to the good, because Banderas is on screen nearly every second. Still, even in limited screen time, Robert Forster leaves his mark as Valera’s slightly disappointed father-in-law.

Viewers like us may well be of two minds with respect to the film’s ironic twist, but there is no denying its grit. Florentine does this kind of film better than anyone and he brought out Banderas’s A-game. It is also pretty darn literate for the genre. Acts of Vengeance is definitely worth seeing eventually, but whether you should wait for VOD or catch it in theaters depends on how enthusiastic you are about Banderas or Florentine and action payback cinema. It opens tomorrow (10/27) in New York, at the Village East.

The American Side: Niagara Noir

If you think Niagara Falls is a romantic spot, you probably haven’t seen Niagara with Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten. Hopefully, you are also unfamiliar with local P.I. Charlie Paczynski, who specializes in the sleaziest divorce cases possible. When the stripper-partner he employs for honey trap scams is rather inconveniently murdered, the Polish detective will blunder into a far-reaching conspiracy in Jenna Ricker’s The American Side (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Paczynski and “Kat” were basically running a blackmail operation, until one of her “dates” up and killed her. He liked her way more than Sam Spade liked Miles Archer, so he duly follows the clues to a suspicious character named Tom Soberin. When his chief suspect takes a swan dive off the Falls, Paczynski realizes there is a larger scheme at work. It turns out Soberin was once an employee of an experimental energy firm, whose co-founders have had a falling out. It is unclear which faction he ultimately chose, but he supposedly had an affair with Emily Chase, the younger, far less stable but much more alluring sister of Borden Chase, who largely won the corporate power struggle.

Sterling Whitmore, Borden Chase’s ostensible partner, serves up cryptic clues to Paczynski while he develops a high tech barrel sufficiently reinforced to provide safe passage over the American side of the Falls. Evidently, people have made the ill-advised trip on the more forgiving Canadian side, but not from New York. In fact, Paczinski will have no shortage of dubious sources, including a fishy FBI agent, a Serbian spook, and “the Eavesdropper.”

Side starts out as a nifty old school noir that fully capitalizes on the faded glory of its Buffalo and Niagara Falls locales. However, viewers better hold on to their hats when wildly speculative Nikola Tesla schematics enter the picture. Holy death rays, Mike Hammer. It is so crazy, it kind of works.

Co-screenwriter Greg Stuhr has the right kind of nervy presence and caustic attitude for a hardnosed antihero like Paczynski. Alicja Bachleda (so terrific in Ondine) smolders up the lens as Nikki Meeker, the Tesla expert in distress. Matthew Broderick’s Borden Chase will be nobody’s idea of a sinister heavy, but as Emily Chase, Camilla Belle is a hot mess in the grand tradition of Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep. However, nobody can out-noir Robert Forster doing his thing as Whitmore, even when Robert Vaughn and Joe Grifasi (FX the movie) pop up in cameos.

Cinematographer Frank Barrera gives it all a suitably murky, noir glow, while David Shire (whose soundtrack for the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three remains a perennial collector favorite) reinforces the mood with his insinuating score. Like The Big Sleep referenced above, The American Side is a fun film, even when it doesn’t make perfect sense. Recommended for genre fans, it opens this Friday (4/29) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Survivor: Jovovich vs. Brosnan

Let’s face it, the terrorists are way more unified than we are. When there is an opportunity to strike a blow against the ever-tolerant West, they will put aside doctrinal differences to make it happen. In contrast, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are much more concerned about politics, turf management, and general career CYA-ing. At least that is the timely picture that emerges in James McTeigue’s Survivor (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Kate Abbott has only been stationed in London for five months or so, but it is clear the Foreign Service security specialist is really good at her job—too good, in fact. When she discovers Bill Talbot, the head of the visa department has personally intervened to admit several dubious chemical specialists into the country, he quickly arranges to have her killed in a bombing, along with the rest of the visa section. Naturally fate dictates she will be away from the table at the critical moment. That means the assassin, a veteran terrorist known simply as “the Watchmaker” will have to finish her off personally, spy-versus-spy style.

Of course, suspicion immediately falls on Abbott, with the American ambassador and Inspector Paul Anderson, the Scotland Yard point man being especially obtuse about it all. Only Sam Parker, the senior political officer, believes in her glaringly obvious innocence. Unfortunately, as the Yanks and the Brits chase Abbott, the Watchmaker and his allies have an open field to finish the last stages of their grand WMD conspiracy.

Having helmed the radical favorite V for Vendetta, it is rather odd to see McTeigue associated with a film that considers the mass murder of innocent civilians a bad thing—one to be avoided if at all possible. The credit is probably due to screenwriter Philip Shelby, who co-wrote the second novel in Robert Ludlum’s Covert One series. There are some flashes of inspiration to be found within, particularly with respects to the disturbing but seemingly unrelated prologue, but the film soon settles into a by-the-numbers “Wrong Man” style thriller. It is also disappointing to see Survivor wimping out in terms of the ultimate villains, who are mere schemers hoping to make a fortune selling short.

However, as Abbott, Milla Jovovich is a surprisingly credible presence. After ten or twelve Resident Evil films, we know she has action chops, but she is also convincing playing a smart, reserved character. A Lindsay Lohan or a Megan Fox just couldn’t carry it off. Strangely though, the film does not fully capitalize on her hardnosed potential, forcing her to be a little damsel-in-distress-y at times.

Of course, Pierce Brosnan is no stranger to international intrigue, but he cruises through Survivor on auto-pilot. It is hard to forget how much better he was as a ruthless assassin opposite Michael Caine in The Fourth Protocol. Still, Robert Forster is reliable as ever humanizing the treasonous Talbot (he has his tragic reasons), but James D’Arcy’s unintuitive Inspector seems to be hinting at every repressed, twittish cliché about British public school civil servants.

To its credit, Shelby’s screenplay acknowledges some important realities, such as the events of September 11^th, which were Abbott’s motivation for her current line of work. Survivor makes a strong case Jovovich has been grossly underemployed by Hollywood, but as a big picture thriller, it is rather routine. Perhaps worth a look streaming or on cable, Survivor opens tomorrow (5/29) in New York, at the AMC Empire.