Speed Kills (And So Does the Mob)

Don’t let the “off” fool you. Ben Aronoff is transparently modeled on speed boat designer and manufacturer Donald Aronow. In fact, this film is explicitly based on Arthur Jay Harris’s non-fiction account of Aronow’s rise, fall, and murder, so why bother with such a minor name change? Aronoff/now sold boats to the US Customs Service and plenty of drug runners, but his old associate Meyer Lansky insisted he chose a side: his. At least that is the version of events presented in Jodi Scurfield’s Speed Kills (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Think of this as Casino in the ocean. ‘Noff/Now was a contractor in Jersey who made a fortune building projects “referred” his way by Lansky’s outfit, but things got too hot in 1959, so he skedaddled down to Miami with his family. Initially, he wanted to keep his old mob associates at arm’s length. Right, good luck with that. Soon after arriving, he got an eyeful of boat-racing and was immediately hooked. Soon, he was designing and marketing his own line of cigarette boats. He made a splash by racing his designs to victory in a number of high-profile races, but fielding and supporting a full-time racing team would greatly sap the company’s resources. Hmm, what other markets for power boats could you tap into in the Miami area?

In a way, Noff/Now is also presented as the DeLorean of boats, but screenwriters David Aaron Cohen & John Luessenhop suggest he really wanted to divorce himself from the mob. However, he is still a complete jerk, who cheats on first wife, played by Jennifer Esposito, and steals away his super-model second wife from King Hussein of Jordan (seriously, he does). In between getting whacked in medea res and his tom-catting, Noff/Now participates in a number of predictable races and several staring contests with Lansky’s thuggish, drug-running nephew, Robbie Reemer. Plus, he sells a few boats to Vice Pres. George H.W. Bush and future Treasury Sec. Nicholas Brady.

As Noffsky, John Travolta never ages a day over the film’s nearly thirty-year span, probably because he already looks far too old and creaky to be playing the boat kingpin in his early 1960s racing prime. However, James Remar nearly saves the day as the hardboiled, bourbon-hardened Lansky. Matthew Modine is also surprisingly on-target with his more-or-less respectful cameo as Bush Senior. Tom Sizemore adds some random edginess as the hitman seen in the wrap-around segments. Unfortunately, Katheryn Winnick and Esposito are grossly under-employed as Noffy’s wives, but it is downright embarrassing to watch Kellan Lutz as Reemer, probably the dullest, dreariest, most unsightly mulleted villain to ever barge across a movie screen.

Miami Vice probably would not have been the same without Aronow, but his case is probably better suited to a series of magazine article or a true crime paperback than a full-length feature. Scurfield never elevates the predictable material and the flashback structure largely scuttles any possible suspense right from the start. Not recommended, Speed Kills opens tomorrow (11/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Atomica: Green Tech Runs Amok

Auxilsun is a typical green tech firm. They talk a good game, but they are suspiciously secretive about their operations. Now that the vast majority of the world is powered by their fission reclamation plants, hardly anyone is willing to challenge them. However, a rookie engineer will stumble upon some awkward truth when she is sent to repair a remote desert station in Dagen Merrill’s Atomica (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

When three nuclear reactors simultaneously melted down during the backstory, it nearly destroyed the Earth. Fortunately, Auxilsun saved the day by developing clean and green power stations built to surround older unsafe plants, like bell jars that would be fueled by their radioactive contamination. Of course, there is a double fail safe built into Auxilsun power stations, so no need to worry. When the remote Gibson Desert North facility loses communications, Abby is dispatched to make repairs. Initially, she assumes it will be routine mission, just like the Marines in Aliens.

Unfortunately, Dixon starts getting bad vibes as soon as she meets the squirrely maintenance technician, Robinson Scott (hmm, are screenwriters Kevin Burke, Federico Fernandez-Armesto, and Adam Gyngell I Spy fans?). Apparently, the station supervisor, Dr. Zek just up and left a few days ago, which is a really bad idea, given the overpowering radioactivity of the surrounding desert. Yet Scott does not seem particularly worried about him, or anything else for that matter.

Atomica is the second theatrical release from Syfy Films, but it is disappointingly more in keeping with their grind-em-out network originals than the surprisingly challenging and moody 400 Days. Let’s put it this way, Tom Sizemore appears in Atomica as the missing Dr. Zek, which rather lowers expectations, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, Sarah Habel’s Dixon is smarter and more proactive than your standard issue naïve protag and the hulking Gibson Desert station is strikingly cinematic, in a grungy dystopian kind of way. Still, Dominic Monaghan is way too over-the-top jittery as Robinson. Any rational company employee would have tazered him in under twenty minutes.

Frankly, the big revelations in Atomica are pretty ho-hum. Still, it is perversely entertaining to watch Sizemore do his thing. Enjoyable on a B-movie level but certainly not a film you need to make an effort to see on the big screen, Atomica opens tomorrow (3/17) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

For Veteran’s Day: USS Indianapolis—Men of Honor

There have been a lot of posthumous service medals bestowed in recent years, which maybe isn’t a bad thing, but the Navy has made it pretty dishearteningly clear one of them will absolutely not be the Navy Cross for chaplain Lt. Thomas Conway. According to survivors, he tirelessly swam through shark-infested waters administering spiritual comfort and last rites to the men of the USS Indianapolis. However, the bureaucrats were able to reject a recent petition on technical grounds, allowing them to add further insult to the injury of the 880 fatalities, many of whom possibly could have survived were it not for procedural snafus. The horrific, heroic stories of the heavy cruiser’s captain and crew are told in Mario Van Peebles’ USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (trailer here), which opens this Friday (Veteran’s Day) in New York.

Technically, the Indianapolis’s final mission was an unqualified success. They were delivering parts and uranium for what would be the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian in the Marianas. It was a highly classified mission, so they were not allowed destroyer escorts. They made it to their destination safely, but they were forced to fatally push their luck on the unescorted return trip. To make matters exponentially worse, since their mission was off the books, nobody noticed when the Indianapolis failed to arrive home on schedule.

The gist of what happened after the cruiser was struck by multiple torpedoes will be familiar to many from either Doug Stanton’s bestselling nonfiction account or Quint’s monologue in Jaws. Captain Charles Butler McVay would have preferred to go down with his ship, but through a perverse twist of fate, he survived to become the scapegoat. Historians and screenwriters Cam Cannon & Richard Riondo Del Castro agree it was a dubious court martial, especially when some future presidents received medals for losing PT-boats under roughly analogous circumstances.

The Nic Cage renaissance continues with another surprisingly restrained yet deeply tormented performance as CAPT. McVay. Tom Sizemore does his thing as crusty Chief Petty Officer McWhorter and Thomas Jane channels his dashing inner Errol Flynn as seaplane pilot Lt. Adrian Marks. Awkwardly, the two blandly played Seamen rivals competing for the same girl adds a distracting and unnecessary soap opera side show. However, the unexpected soul of the film comes from terrific character actor Yutaka Takeuchi as Mochitsura Hashimoto the future Shinto priest, who (reluctantly) commanded the submarine that sunk the Indianapolis.

Thanks to the humanistic portrayal of Hashimoto, USS Indianapolis celebrates the courage of the officers and crew, while reproaching the injustices done to McVay without demonizing the Japanese people. However, the dehumanizing aspects of the Imperial war machine, particularly the manned Kaiten suicide torpedoes (so rarely seen in cinema), is depicted in no uncertain terms.

Van Peebles marshals the large-scale battle sequences, multiple sub-plots, and fleet of supporting characters fairly effectively. He also manages to racially integrate the Navy three years before Executive Order 9981, which is quite a feat. Still, he conveys a good sense of the realities of service during wartime and the military mindset. Recommended as a cautionary yet patriotic examination of one of the worst Naval tragedies in American history, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage opens this Friday (11/11) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

6 Ways to Die: Vinnie Jones Explains Them All

Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder knew there were eight million ways to die, but Vinnie Jones only gets six. At least he will make full use of each of them. He will not merely kill his nemesis, Sonny “Sundown” Garcia, he will target the drug lord’s reputation, money, loved ones, sentimental attachments, and his very liberty. However, narrative logic will be the first casualty of Nadeem Soumah’s 6 Ways to Die (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

“John Doe” has it in for Garcia. He has his reasons, but he is very Picard about it all, never setting foot from his old school Oldsmobuick. Somehow, he gets some of the Los Angeles underworld’s most talented to come to him. He needs their skills to torment Garcia and his valuable inside knowledge will make it worth their while. It would seem that they will succeed spectacularly, since it is all told in a bizarre flashback structure. Oh sure, there is a big reveal that changes everything, but it makes absolutely no sense.

Still, 6 Ways offers an opportunity to watch a veritable B–movie all-star team at work. For the starting line-up we have Jones, Bai Ling, Dominique Swain, Vivica A. Fox, and Tom Sizemore. Most of them have real roles to play, but Sizemore appears in a completely tangential prologue. It looks like Soumah had only one day of shooting with him, so he just improvised something on the fly. In reserve, 6 Ways also features Chris Jai Alex and Kinga Philipps, who maybe aren’t so familiar, but have volumes of imdb credits already.

There are times you have to ask just what does this movie think its doing, but not in a resentful way. You sort of have to give it credit for being a grubby striver. It is determined to impress us by riding its bike with no hands, no matter how many times it wipes out on the pavement.

With no action scenes whatsoever, Jones is completely wasted as the mystery man and his role in the big twist defies the evidence of our senses. However, Alex shows real B-movie star power as Frank Casper, the hitman. Bai Ling also adds some serious cool as high class con artist June Lee. Unfortunately, Michael Rene Walton is way too reserved and colorless for a ruthless heavy like Garcia. Fortunately, chewing the scenery is not a problem for Fox, who vamps it up something fierce as the corrupt cop, Veronica Smith.

Soumah has seen way too much Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez for his own good. The resulting product is overly clever and then some. That said, if you enjoy watching B-movie veterans doing B-movie things, 6 Ways will be a satisfying guilty pleasure when it streams on Netflix (which should be imminently). In the short term, it opens this Friday (7/31) in New York, at the Cinema Village.