Tin Soldier: Jamie Foxx Starts a Cult

Please, someone tell Hollywood there is more to the veteran experience than PTSD. Yes, it is sad reality and those who struggle with it deserve our support and understanding. Yet, there is also duty, honor, service, heroism, and comradery—which are all solid dramatic themes. Unfortunately, this film uses PTSD to define veterans and exploits it as a Macguffin to justify the formation of a sinister cult. It wasn’t a group of nobodies either. There are some big names in Brad Furman’s Tin Soldier, now playing in theaters.

As the film opens, Nash Cavanaugh is in worse shape than John Rambo at the start of the serious, psychologically realistic First Blood (Rambo #1). Cavanaugh had joined what he thought was a new agey PTSD peer-run treatment ominously called “The Program,” but it was really a personality cult led by the messianic Leon K. Prudhomme, who rebranded himself as “The Bokushi.”

Ironically, The Program started to work, but it was really because he fell in love with Evoli Carmichael. (By the way, I am absolutely not using a faulty AI program to generate these names.) Sadly, he accidentally caused her death while fleeing The Program to start a new life together. Since then, he just continued spiraling downward, until approached by commando Luke Dunn.

The FBI has laid siege to the Bokushi’s compound and is poised for a Waco-style assault. Before that happens, Dunn wants Cavanaugh to lead his team through the compound to take out Prudhomme and hopefully save lives, maybe even including Carmichael’s. Since her body was never recovered, maybe The Program faked her death. At this point, Cavanaugh slaps his forehead and says, “oh man, I wish I’d thought of that sooner.”

Of course, he agrees, even though Emmanuel Ashborn, the shady powerbroker financing the operation is obviously extremely sketchy. Further complicating matters, Dunn also recruits special operator Kivon Jackson, who is pointlessly hostile towards Cavanaugh.

Usually, when an unheralded film suddenly appears in theaters with a starry cast, in the case Robert De Niro, Jamie Foxx, and John Leguizamo, it is a strong indication of quality control issues, which is true here too. Bizarrely, even Rita Ora appears briefly as Dunn’s inside contact, Mama Suki, but by the time you start wondering if she’s really Ora, she’s already gone.

Frankly, the best work in the film comes from Scott Eastwood, who clearly wants to do right by his character and the issues he faces. Arguably, Foxx might have been entertaining in an over-the-top scenery-chewing kind of way, if Tin Soldier had been a more coherent film. Of course, De Niro just disinterestedly phones in scenes as Ashbrook. Frankly, he was probably thinking more about when the car service was scheduled to whisk him away to his next VOD shoot.

Sundance ’14: Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro, Sr.

This is Sundance, not Tribeca. Nevertheless, Robert De Niro has some family business to tend to.  In revealing interviews, De Niro will discuss the life and artistic reputation of his painter father in Perri Peltz & Geeta Gandbhir’s Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro Sr., which screens as part of Documentary Shorts Program II at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, before its HBO premiere later in the year.

The senior De Niro is often lumped in with his Abstract Expressionist colleagues, but he was always a much more figurative painter.  Championed by Peggy Guggenheim at an early point in his career, De Niro was once the leading contender amongst his fellow Hans Hofmann students. Yet, it just never happened for him.  Deeply influenced by French Modernists (Matisse in particular seems to echo in his work), De Niro became increasingly out of step with the Pop and Op directions the American art world took.

Peltz & Gandbhir’s battery of experts do excellent job placing De Niro senior within the context of American art history.  After seeing the film, most viewers will be convinced De Niro the artist would be worthy of the documentary treatment even if he were not the father of De Niro the actor.  Still, there is no denying the De Niro family connection adds an additional element of drama.  As lead interview subject and the narrator of select excerpts from his father’s diary, the junior De Niro is pretty forthright about the senior De Niro’s depression and sexuality issues. Indeed, he opens up to a surprising extent regarding what sounds like a loving but problematic relationship.

Probably the most persuasive part of Remembering’s case for posterity are De Niro’s very paintings, which generously illustrate the film.  His bold technique and rich, warm colors are quite striking.  At just thirty nine minutes, it is like an especially economically installment of American Masters.  Recommended for art lovers and De Niro fans, Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro Sr screens again in Park City today (1/19), Wednesday (1/22), and Saturday (1/25) during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Red Lights: They Mean Stop, Don’t Go

Sigourney Weaver has gone from ghost-busting to ghost debunking.  However, she may have met her match in Simon Silver, a notorious television psychic from the 1970’s, who comes out of retirement for nefarious purposes in Rodrigo Cortés’ Red Lights (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Dr. Margaret Matheson (a Richard Matheson hat-tip, perhaps?) is the chair of the department of skepticism.  Her rival, Dr. Paul Shackleton, is the chair of the department of believing any spooky thing that might bring in funding.  She and her colleague Dr. Tom Buckley expose psychic frauds, while Shackleton plays with his flash cards.  Simon Silver was the one that got away.  Supposedly vindicated by a flawed laboratory study Matheson refused to sign-off on, Silver’s triumph has always been a blot on her reputation. 

With the Uri Geller inspired villain back in the public eye, Buckley is spoiling for a fight and sweating profusely, but Matheson is gun shy.  Even if he does not have psychic powers, Silver is a master of finding his critics’ weak spots and exploiting them.  Yet, with all the stuff suddenly going bump in the night, we are led to wonder whether or not the psychic really does command dark forces after all.

The first half of Red is a rather nifty little paranormal investigation procedural, but once Weaver’s Matheson is unwisely removed from the equation, the film completely craters.  Logic is treated with contempt and the indie breakout sensation Elizabeth Olsen is stuck standing around with nothing to do, besides sleep with her T.A.  To make matters worse, Buckley’s closing monologue and subsequent voiceover narration invite open mockery, following a climax that looks like it was plagiarized from the Harry Potter franchise.  They are so over-the-top, they make the newly rediscovered Ed Wood film, Final Curtain, sound sharp and focused by comparison.

Weaver brings a reliably smart and mature presence to the film as Matheson and she develops a likable and realistic chemistry with Cillian Murphy’s Buckley.  Frankly, the female mentor-male protégé relationship is not often seen in films and it is quite nicely turned here.  Unfortunately, all the woo-woo effects get awfully sour very quickly.  It is also another depressing reminder of the fall of Robert De Niro, once again playing an icily impassive villain in a dark business suit.

Red really can be divided into two distinct parts.  One is pretty engaging.  The other is ridiculous and utterly clichéd.  Sadly, the latter is the somewhat longer concluding piece, which essentially sinks the entire film.  A severe return trip to the editing bay was advocated for Red here when it screened at Sundance, but given the venom heaped on its embarrassingly overwrought conclusion, this clearly did not happen.  As a result, Red is ultimately a disappointment, not recommended, despite the nice work from Weaver up top.  It opens today (7/13) in New York at the AMC Empire.

Limitless: Produced with 20% Brain Functionality

What happened to Obama? So ruthlessly effective on the campaign trail, these days he can hardly chose an iron for his approach shots. Maybe he ran out of NZT. A designer drug formulated to tap into the supposed 80% of the brain lying dormant in mere mortals (a myth says Snopes), NZT offers life changing opportunities to one sad sack would-be writer, but it also comes with a mess of trouble in Neil Burger’s Limitless (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Eddie Morra is a listless under-achiever. His girlfriend Lindy has finally given him the dumping he so richly deserved. Despondent, he mopes around the City until he bumps into his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (no, Lindy is not the first woman to issue Morra his walking papers.). Recognizing his former whatever is a bit glum, Vernon gives him a blue Matrix pill, which the big dummy takes for no good reason. Suddenly, Morra can talk his landlord’s wife into bed, dash off her law school paper on Oliver Wendell Holmes, and then churn out his own novel before calling it a night.

Unfortunately, he wakes up as the same old idiot in the morning, which prompts an emergency visit to his dear old ex-brother-in-law. For some reason, the shadowy cabal developing NZT has entrusted its distribution to a pusher leftover from the glory days of Studio 54. Of course, Vernon’s carelessness gets him killed, but Morra gets his stash. Fueled by smarty-pants pills, Morra takes Wall Street by storm, even attracting the attention of Robert De Niro’s shadowy financier, Thurston W. Focker-Gekko, III, or some such.

Morra might be amped on brainiac drugs, but in Limitless’s world any IQ cracking 100 constitutes genius levels. You would think anyone borrowing money from a loan shark for a quick succession of day trades would make a point of paying that off as soon as possible. Not if you’re a genius, evidently. It would have saved so much trouble though.

Indeed, the clichés fly fast and furious throughout Limitless, while the characters are all pretty slow-witted, NZT notwithstanding. The crooked Focker-Gekko (Carl Van Loo) is a particularly tiresome cliché. The film would have been much fresher and far more engaging had we been invited to identify with his character. Watching Van Loo play a chess match against the younger pharmaceutically-enhanced Morra while relying only on twenty percent of his grey matter and his hard-earned experience, could have been intriguing drama, a la Kasparov vs. Deep Blue. Instead, De Niro just looks bored to distraction.

Years ago, only big movies stars had their names above the title. However, in Limitless’s opening credits, both Bradley Cooper and Abbie Cornish are not just billed over the title, but also above De Niro. Are they joking? De Niro might have made a few too many Fockers, but he is still De Niro. Cooper and Cornish on the other hand, are like actor-widgets, blandly attractive here perhaps, but little more. In the film’s most believable scene, a witness fails to pick Morra out of a line-up. Truly, who could blame her? (Still, Cooper's deadpan neo-noir narration is a plus.)

Given a dull cast and a predictable script, Burger tries to compensate with his execution, using a plethora of razzle dazzle, like fish-eye lenses, time-lapse photography, and Matrix-bullet effects. Frankly, it is appreciated. His pacing is fairly tight and he choreographs some clever bits during the action sequences. It is all rather dumb, but at least on some level, he makes it watchable. Entirely skippable, Limitless opens today (3/18) in New York at the AMC Empire 25 and Loews Lincoln Square.