Ride Along

Ride Along - Dir. Tim Story (2014)

Is there anything new to say about the buddy cop movie? Recent attempts like The Other Guys and 21 Jump Street brought the laughs by lampooning the genre and satirizing action movies in general. Ride Along is perfectly happy to coast on every convention established since 1982's 48 Hrs. Not a surprise since Kevin Hart has long aspired to having a career like Eddie Murphy and comparisons between the two have been made by many. Hart is perfectly cast as the fast-talking comedic foil while Ice Cube steps into the Nick Nolte role as the stern and short-tempered straight man.

Hart is Ben Barber, a high school security guard in Atlanta who loves playing first person shooting games. He's just proposed to his beautiful girlfriend Angela (Tika Sumpter) and been accepted into the police academy. Ben should be content with his life if not for Angela's other brother James (Cube). James is a hard-nosed detective who doesn't believe Ben is worthy of marrying his sister, let alone becoming a police officer. In an effort to get rid of the little runt, James decides to take his prospective brother-in-law on a ride along. Ben seems ready to throw in the towel when he's forced to deal with a biker gang, a mouthy pre-teen, and a lunatic in a supermarket. Yet, Ben provides improbable help in James's investigation into a mysterious crime lord known only as Omar.

Just as The Heat did with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, Ride Along relies almost solely on the chemistry between Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. Despite featuring four screenwriters in the credits, the script doesn't bother to do anything clever with a recognizable premise. Their idea of comedy involves quoting lines from Training Day and an opening car chase (with Ice Cube driving through a fiery explosion) appears to have been lifted right out of Other Guys. While director Tim Story has shown a knack for character-based comedies (Barbershop), he has a distinct lack of flair for action (Fantastic Four).

It's left entirely up to the leading stars to keep the audience's interest intact as the lackluster plot plods along. Hart is a bit like Chris Tucker with proper restraints. He knows when to play it to the hilt, but knows the right moments to dial it back. His manic energy is a strong contrast to the stoic Ice Cube, who ironically portrays the type of cop Cube railed against in his NWA days. Bruce McGill co-stars as the exasperated superior that's become a genre requirement along with John Leguizamo and Bryan Callen as fellow detectives. Laurence Fishburne manages to kick Ride Along up a notch when he makes a third act appearance as the enigmatic Omar.

Ice Cube struck a nerve when he took to social media to complain after he and Kevin Hart failed to win the MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo. They lost to Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Sorry, but Cube must have an overinflated opinion of himself. His supporting work in Jump Street was much funnier. As it stands, Ride Along is a pedestrian comedy strictly for fans of Cube and Hart.

Rating: ** (*****)

Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen - Dir. F. Gary Gray (2009)


I can see the pitch meeting right now, Death Wish meets Saw. Law Abiding Citizen comes to us from director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job, Be Cool) and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, a true master of subtlety. Wimmer wrote and directed the guilty pleasure actioner Equilibrium and the gawdy video game-esque Ultraviolet. Citizen laughably attempts to pass itself off as insightful, sociopolitical commentary on our faulty legal system when it’s really just a dumb action movie.

Gerard Butler stars as Clyde Shelton, a nerdy inventor. Well, at least as nerdy as King Leonidas can be. Shelton happy suburban life is shattered when two men break into his home and forced to watch as his wife and daughter are murdered. The men are arrested, but one, Darby (Christian Stolte), the fellow who did the actual killings cuts a deal with an opportunistic prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx). He gets a light sentence while his partner receives the death penalty.

Shelton disappears for ten years and returns with a vengeance. He tampers with the lethal injection machine causing the execution to be excruciatingly agonizing. He abducts Darby and cuts him up into pieces. Later, Shelton brags about slicing Darby’s penis off with a boxcutter. Yep.

Despite being placed behind bars, anyone remotely connected to his case are dropping like flies. The defense attorney, the judge, the district attorney, I think Shelton kills a few hapless interns as well. Turns out, he used to work for the CIA assassinating targets with intricately designed deathtraps and devices.

Unable to live up its intriguing premise, Law Abiding Citizen crumbles in the final act. The film grows more and more implausible. Like so many others, the filmmakers run out of ideas and choose to descend into a mess of explosions. Butler is his usual gruff manliness while Viola Davis (who wowed audiences in Doubt) brings more gravitas than this movie deserves in her tiny role as the Mayor.

Rating: **

W.

W. - Dir. Oliver Stone (2008)

The always controversial Oliver Stone courts more of the same with the first biopic focusing on a sitting president. In a similar fashion to Nixon, Stone takes a not-so-beloved figure and breaks him down into a sympathetic light. W. isn’t the hatchet job most believed it would be. Stone’s Dubya certainly isn’t an eloquent man, but he’s far from the greedy warmonger many liberals paint him out to be. He’s a man desperate to get out of the shadow of a far more successful, far more renowned father. A man born of privilege who still enjoys burgers, beer, and Cheetos. A simple man overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle the position of power he finds himself in. The whole film hinges on Josh Brolin whose superb performance could have easily slipped onto the level of a bad SNL sketch. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role, especially Stone’s first choice, Christian Bale, who actually spent months studying “Bushy” to hone his take.

Stone paints a far less favorable picture of Bush’s inner circle. The actors may not capture the look of their real-life counterparts, they capture their essence. Condoleezza Rice is a sycophant parroting everything the President says. Rumsfeld is full of self-assurance and arrogance even past the point when its proven Iraq has no WMDs. Even worse is Dick Cheney. In the film’s most over-the-top moment, the Vice-President steps up to the plate in the war room, extorting the importance of oil and the building of an American empire. ”There is no exit strategy. We stay. Nobody will fuck with us.” It’s a sequence more fitting for a James Bond villain, yet may not stray too far from the truth. It is Cheney and Karl Rove who pull the strings of the gullible and easily swayed Dubya. Only Colin Powell is shown in any sort of positive light as the circle’s sole voice of conscience.

Is it a perfect film? Definitely not. The weakest moments of the picture come from Stone’s usual flourishes into the metaphysical. The main narrative is framed around a fantasy of Bush in an empty Arlington Park which never gels with the rest of the film. Obviously, much of the film should be taken with a grain of salt. It’ll be interesting to see what audience W. finds. Liberals may be disappointed by the lack of Bush bashing while conservatives won’t bother with what they think will be more of the same from bleeding heart Hollywood types.

Rating: ***

Vantage Point

Vantage Point - Dir. Pete Travis (2008)

Rashomon if it had been remade by a Michael Bay knockoff (McG, Simon West, I'm looking at you).

Cliched, derivative script full of stock characters tricked out by a gimmicky premise to fool you into believing you were watching something substantial.