BuzzSugar

Movie Preview: Timberlake and Bridges in The Open Road

BuzzSugar — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:30:50 -0700

Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake make a pretty cute father-son pair in The Open Road, a road trip movie that also stars Kate Mara and Mary Steenburgen. It looks predictable (a mismatched pair is forced to hit the road together and after some wacky adventures they learn to respect each other!), but the cast is still rather adorable. Bridges seems to be doing much of the heavy lifting, though Timberlake seems to do alright as the average guy who has to deal with his estranged (and strange) father.

I won't be rushing out to see this one when it opens Aug. 28, but it'll probably be a fine rental somewhere down the line. What do you think? To take a look at the trailer, read more.

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Transsiberian: Spooky But Irritating

BuzzSugar — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:30:29 -0700

In select cities, a little indie thriller titled Transsiberian quietly opened over the weekend and did fairly well in the indie market (despite the long shadow cast by The Dark Knight's opening), which frankly surprises me. With some folks calling the movie "Hitchcockian" in its suspense, and featuring a cast that includes the enigmatic Emily Mortimer and a shape-shifting Ben Kingsley, I was interested in seeing it myself. But now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson play Americans Roy and Jesse, who are taking a train through Russia after completing a missionary assignment teaching English in China. Roy is your typical all-American tourist, boisterous, over-eager and naive, while Jesse has worked hard to get over her bad girl past, in which she struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. They meet another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who turn out to have some shady secrets of their own, and Carlos manages to rope Jesse into a dangerous world of drug trafficking. Enter the two-faced Russian cop Grinko (Ben Kingsley) who has interests in Carlos's activities extending beyond official police work. When Carlos goes missing and Jesse was the last to see him, Grinko focuses all his energies on the American couple, and the movie kinda derails from there. To see what I mean, read more.

In terms of setting up a chilling, unfamiliar atmosphere in which terrible things could happen, director Brad Anderson succeeds on all counts. The snow white light of middle-of-nowhere Russia casts everything in a filmy gray, and the bulk of the story takes place on a speeding train, evoking a panicky feeling of being trapped in an foreign country in close quarters with untrustworthy people. Certainly, there are moments of genuine suspense, and the setting is such that this could have been a real nail-biter. But then someone talks, or does something incredibly dumb, and it's all over.

The most debilitating aspect of Transsiberian is the set of characters. At every turn Jesse does something (or doesn't do something - how hard is it to discreetly drop a bag in a trash bin in a public space where nobody is paying attention to you? Come on!) that is so inane, so illogical, there's no response but to throw your hands up in the air and curse under your breath. Indeed, this is the kind of film that was fun to watch with a few friends - but only because we could yell at the screen together out of bafflement and frustration. Though she admirably puts her all into it, even Mortimer can't elevate the quality of this character.

And then there's Woody Harrelson, who brings the stock character of dumb American buffoon to preposterous levels. He could have easily taken the blithe ignorance down a notch and we would have still gotten the picture. As it was, his character was so incredibly stupid at times, I wondered if there were something wrong with him, mentally. In the end, you can have a spooky setting, but characters really matter, too, and if we don't root for, care about or even remotely like any of them, it's hard to find the film worthwhile.

Shooter: Overblown But Still Satisfying

BuzzSugar — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:41:35 -0700

First, let's get one thing straight: Mark Wahlberg's new thriller, Shooter, is full of shooting. Possibly more shooting than I've ever seen in a movie. So if that sort of thing bothers you, you'll probably want to skip the latest from director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). But if you can put up with some oh-how-convenient plot twists and gratuitous cleavage and bulging-bicep shots, Shooter is a captivating, conspiracy-drenched action flick that's part Fugitive and part Bourne Identity, with lots of post-9/11 paranoia thrown in.

Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger, a top Marine sniper who leaves the force after the death of his spotter (aka, a sniper's very important partner) during a botched mission. He's living like a liberal Ted Nugent in the Wyoming mountains, hunting his food and reading The 9/11 Commission Report, when he's approached by some covert government types (led by Danny Glover) with a mission. It seems the government has received a presidential assassination threat involving sniper tactics, so the guys want Swagger to figure out how the crime would be committed in order to help prevent it.

Swagger accepts, only to discover that the whole scheme has been orchestrated to frame him for the assassination attempt that soon goes down. And that's just the first 25 minutes, so

Most of the movie has Swagger on the run from the Feds, frantically trying to unravel the conspiracy. As viewers, we are only slightly more well-informed then he is, as we follow the clues hatched by a seemingly hapless FBI agent (Michael Peña), who is rightfully suspicious about the whole case. Amid some serious sensory overload - relentless explosions, hyper-real color, and mind-blowing revelations - we follow Swagger's trail from the Kentucky home of his spotter's widow (Kate Mara) to the remote corners of Montana.

Like most action movies, this one is pretty ridiculous, but the conspiracy-comes-true plot and earnest performances make it incredibly gripping. Wahlberg's strong performance is as dutiful as his character's motivation, but it's so subdued that, sadly, Shooter isn't likely to establish Wahlberg as a leading man.

More notable are several of the supporting turns: Mara ("Nip/Tuck," We Are Marshall) pulls off a wonderful Southern accent, managing a performance far more subtle than the low-cut tops she dons in every scene. Also, Levon Helm (yes, the drummer/vocalist for The Band) has a scene-stealing cameo as a reclusive gun expert, while Ned Beatty shines as an obnoxious red-state senator.

Shooter is full of the usual action-movie tropes, but it's also scattered with enough surprises - sinister character twists, liberal agenda items, and oh-no-they-didn't shootouts - that it still manages to be delightfully unpredictable.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures