Thursday, July 30, 2015

Be Cool (2005)

Director: F. Gary Gray                                   Writer: Peter Steinfeld
Film Score: John Powell                                Cinematography: Jeffrey L. Kimball
Starring: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel and Christina Milian

At the beginning of the film Be Cool, movie producer John Travolta bemoans Hollywood’s insistence on sequels. “It was the only time I gave in in my life, but sometimes you gotta do it the studio way . . . I got hustled into doing a sequel.” Travolta should have read the screenplay closer because he go hustled into this picture, too. It’s absolutely terrible. There was no reason to make this film because the character of Chili Palmer had already made it in Hollywood. Where else was there to go? Get Shorty had been made over a decade earlier and it’s a terrific film. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, it was funny in an intelligent way and was able to wring humor out of the characters because of their believability. Sure, they were exaggerated, but in a way that made sense within the structure of the film and the characters’ own motivations. This film, however, is like a Saturday Night Live skit. It’s juvenile, and you can almost see the pained expression on Travolta’s face the entire way through, as if he can’t believe he’s in such an incredibly bad film. The original was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who has a real feel for a certain kind of comedy, while the sequel was directed by F. Gary Gray, who is much better in serious films that have a small vein of humor running through them.

The film begins with Travolta wanting to get out of the movie business. When record producer James Woods is gunned down at a restaurant where they’re eating together, he begins thinking about getting into the music business. Woods had told him about a singer he wanted to sign, Christina Milian, and when Travolta goes to see her at a club singing seventies songs, he takes her away from her current manager, Vince Vaughn. Then he goes over to see Woods’ widow, Uma Thurman, and tries to shoehorn himself into her record label, but she doesn’t want any help. That is, until big-shot producer Cedric the Entertainer comes looking for his pay and Thurman can see in the books that the company is broke. Now Travolta begins working the principals against each other. These include Vaughn and Cedric as well as Vaughn’s bodyguard, Dwayne Johnson, a gay dandy who wants to be an actor, Vaughn’s partner Harvey Keitel, who is continuously on the phone, the police in the form of detectives Debi Mazar and Gregory Alan Williams, and a bunch of idiot Russians. Throw in a hit man who gets himself hit, the members of Aerosmith, and Cedric’s clichéd posse of rappers and the film rapidly turns into farce.

There are three major problems with the film. The first is the lack of quality production. Elmore Leonard may have participated on the screenplay, but it wasn’t his story. As a result, the script is little more than in-jokes referencing the first film and doing the same bits but with different actors. It also rehashes the same story arc but with music this time instead of film. And this leads to the second major problem. In the first film most of the actors spent time talking about the films they were going to make and the audience was able to suspend disbelief pretty easily because they obviously couldn’t read the scripts or see the films. But in a film about music the audience can hear Christina Milian sing and, as producer Paul Adelstein points out in the film, with shows like The Voice the audience has heard hundreds of girls who can do the same thing. So when everyone from Uma Thurman to Steven Tyler is gushing about how great she is--while we can hear she’s just like everyone else--it doesn’t work. The final misstep is that the movie is filled with stereotypes and over-exaggerated characterizations that are simply not funny unless you’re in grade school. And it’s pretty clear from the look on Travolta’s face that he knows it. I had high hopes going into this film because I had loved the first one so much. But Be Cool is a bad film that never should have been made, and if you value the memory of Elmore Leonard or Chili Palmer, you’ll run the other direction when you see it coming.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

End Game (2006)

Director: Andy Cheng                                      Writers: Andy Cheng & J.C. Pollock
Film Score: Kenneth Burgomaster                  Cinematography: Chuck Cohen
Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., Angie Harmon, James Woods and Anne Archer

I’ve seen some bad political thrillers, but End Game goes beyond bad and well over the line into offensive. In fact, it’s difficult to understand how this film was even made because the screenplay alone makes no sense whatsoever. But add to that the world’s worst direction by Andy Cheng, and terrible acting by everyone involved and you have a project that should have been shelved during rushes as a lost cause. Fortunately MGM was acquired by Sony in 2005, just as the film was nearing theatrical release, and it’s not far fetched to think that execs at Sony took a one look at the finished product and balked, choosing instead to send the thing directly to video stores the following year. The direction seriously looks as if it was from 1985 rather than thirty years later. It wouldn’t even have made a good TV movie, there are so many plot holes. Motivations are not only unclear, but it’s as if the assassination is just another assignment for the killers. No angst, no worries about investigations, no concern at all about getting caught. And the people responsible seem even less concerned. In fact, there’s no sense that anyone in the country cares that this happened. The film wants to be a lot of things, Murder at 1600, Absolute Power, and In the Line of Fire, but it falls flat at every level to the point where the audience, literally, doesn’t care either.

Things go bad right from the beginning as the film opens with the president of the United States and first lady being driven to a speaking event. The first lady is Anne Archer, still best remembered for her role in Fatal Attraction. The president, on the other hand, is a complete no-name soap star. At this point it’s obvious to anyone who has ever seen a movie that he’s going to wind up dead. And sure enough, that’s what happens. Cuba Gooding Jr. is the secret service agent assigned to the president, and while he’s shot in the hand, he can’t move fast enough to save him. James Woods, head of the secret service, tells him to take some time off and Gooding proceeds to get drunk that night. Meanwhile Angie Harmon, a newspaper reporter, is investigating the shooting and talks to homeless man David Selby, another soap star, and he shows Harmon the house where the killer stayed. She discovers that he was dying of cancer, but the audience can see she’s being watched. After she leaves to talk to the killer’s sister, Selby is killed. Then after she leaves the sister and mother, their trailer is blown up. By the time she gets to Gooding’s house, she’s left a wide swath of death behind her but doesn’t know it yet. Fortunately, Gooding senses something is wrong and they narrowly escape being blown up in his boat. It’s a conspiracy, to be sure, but when they tell Woods he inexplicably tells them to wait a few days.

The killers, on the other hand, aren’t waiting around and take another crack at Gooding and Harmon, so Gooding gets tired of waiting and seeks out a general, Burt Reynolds, and Reynolds is never seen again the entire film. Cuba Gooding Jr. is obviously going through the motions and doesn’t have a lot to give to the production, but it’s not as if he has a lot to work with given the script. Meanwhile, Angie Harmon looks as if she’s taking an Acting 101 class and flunking badly. She has no range, whatsoever. Woods and Reynolds have what amount to cameo roles, with Woods at least looking his age. Reynolds has so much plastic surgery and an obvious black toupee, that he’s little more than a joke. Anne Archer doesn’t fare much better. She only has a couple of scenes and the corny work of art she’s painting that must be seen from a certain angle to understand is a real groaner. But even the bad guys suck. Peter Greene initially looks as if he’s trying to be Christopher Eccleston from Gone in 60 Seconds, but he gets little in the way of screen time, except as a boogieman at the end of the film, and even then it’s in the dark. And then, after all that, as if to add insult to injury, the ending is the worst part of the film--and that’s saying something. Essentially, Gooding knows who did it and won’t tell anyone. End Game cost approximately five million to produce and only made back one point two million in video sales and rentals. The only surprise is that it made that much.