Parker

Parker - Dir. Taylor Hackford

"I don't steal from people who can't afford it and I don't hurt people that don't deserve it."

The late-Donald E. Westlake is best known for a series of crime novels starring a highly skilled crook named Parker, each penned under the pseudonym of Richard Stark. The first of those books, The Hunter, was famously adapted as Point Blank starring Lee Marvin, a fine example of the classic revenge film. That same book was translated with less success as Payback with Mel Gibson. Neither of those movies featured Parker per se because Westlake wouldn’t allow producers to call him by that name unless they intended to make the whole series. Thus, Marvin became Walker while Gibson was called Porter. Another excellent adaptation was The Outfit starring Robert Duvall and directed by John Flynn, who also helmed Rolling Thunder, one of the best revenge films of the 70's. Following Westlake's death, his wife, Abby, and close friend, producer Les Alexander, hoped to turn the Parker series into the franchise Westlake had envisioned.

Simply titled Parker, this new film is based on Flashfire, one of Westlake's later novels, which was published in 2000. This time Parker (Jason Statham) hooks up with a quartet of crooks for a heist at the Ohio State Fair. Parker's new cohorts are headed up by Melander (Michael Chiklis) and include Carlson (Wendell Pierce), Ross (Clifton Collins Jr.), and Hardwicke (Micah A. Hauptman), a royal screw-up who only has a spot because his uncle is a big time mobster in Chicago. The gang makes off with a million dollars and double-cross Parker in order to use the score to fund their next caper. The rest of the story will sound familiar to Parker fans as their hero is shot and left for dead only to survive, and then go on the hunt for revenge.

Parker tracks his former colleagues to Palm Beach, Florida where they plan to steal $75 million in jewelry from an auction house. He receives unlikely aid from Leslie Rogers (Jennifer Lopez), a down-on-her-luck real estate agent who is divorced, deep in debt, and lives with her overbearing mother (Patti LuPone). Nick Nolte looks like he's about to keel over at any time in his small role as Parker's mentor.

Statham is an old hand when it comes to playing these anti-heroes who adhere to their own moral codes as exemplified in The Transporter and The Mechanic. In fact, swap a few details here and there and Parker could have been any number of previous Statham vehicles. Nothing about the screenplay from John McLaughlin (Hitchcock) feels particularly unique though Statham is charismatic enough to keep you entertained even when he's putting on the worst Southern accent ever. Yes, Parker goes undercover as an oil tycoon from San Antonio with a drawl that would fool no one. Even Statham seems to believe the accent is bad enough that he quits doing it midstream.

Jennifer Lopez's character is a far cry from the tough and resourceful Karen Sisco in Out of Sight. She's shoehorned into the plot almost as awkwardly as some of the flashback sequences. Leslie's only reason for existing is to act as damsel in distress and allow horndogs to ogle Lopez when she strips down to her bra and panties. She's not a love interest for Parker since he already has one in Claire (Emma Booth), the dutiful girlfriend who worries while still patching up his gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, Leslie's mother walks around the house with her foo foo dog demanding the TV be constantly turned to her soap operas. She's so broadly sketched that you half-expect Broadway legend Patti LuPone to appear in a muumuu with curlers in her hair.

Parker is the first genre effort from Taylor Hackford, known more for prestige dramas such as An Officer and a Gentleman and Ray. Hackford's action sequences aren't terrible, but there's no panache to the point that any work-for-hire director like Simon West or Renny Harlin could have been behind the camera.

In the end, Parker is indistinguishable from the rest of the middling early year releases. It's a shame that Westlake's pulpy crime fiction has been diluted into yet another run-of-the-mill Jason Statham actioner. If you want to see Westlake's works translated well, check out the graphic novels by Darwyn Cooke.

Rating: ** (*****)

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Dir. Ruben Fleischer (2013)

In its heyday, Universal Studios was known for classic monster films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. On the other hand, Warner Brothers was renowned for violent gangster flicks that turned actors such as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson into screen legends. Gangster Squad will hardly be ranked alongside Public Enemy, Little Caesar, or the original Scarface.

Gangster Squad is loosely based on a series of articles published by the L.A. Times and written by Paul Lieberman. "Tales from the Gangster Squad" was about a covert unit of the LAPD that waged war against organized crime. One of their primary targets was Mickey Cohen, a Jewish prizefighter who arrived on the west coast as hired muscle for Bugsy Siegel. The seedy underworld of Hollywood past was previously brought to life in L.A. Confidential. Indeed, Gangster Squad borrows heavily from the works of James Ellroy and The Untouchables.

Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) has brutally risen through the criminal underworld to control all of the drugs, gambling, and prostitution in Los Angeles. Corruption throughout the LAPD and local government has enabled Cohen's operations. The embattled Chief of Police Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) tasks Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), a decorated WWII veteran, with assembling his own task force to combat Cohen. They are given carte blanche to dismantle Cohen's empire without the need for warrants or arrests. The roster for O'Mara's squad includes: Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), a suave ladies' man; Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), a black beat cop with a mastery of the switchblade; surveillance expert Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi); Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), a mustachioed gunslinger; and earnest rookie Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena). Things are complicated when Wooters romances Cohen's girlfriend and etiquette tutor, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone).

Gangster Squad is a visually stunning picture. Production designer Maher Ahmad has faithfully recreated a bygone era of Los Angeles full of fedoras, trenchcoats, sporty roadsters, and Tommy guns. It's all exquisitely lit with an accentuated color palette thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe. Director Ruben Fleischer made a stylish debut with Zombieland and continues his trend for energetic action sequences with plenty of shootouts, explosions, chaotic brawls, and a car chase where potato masher grenades are lobbed about. One of the best staged scenes involves the squad breaking into Cohen's nightclub to burn his dirty money while Carmen Miranda sings on stage. One scene that didn't make the cut featured gangsters opening fire on a packed audience inside Grauman's Chinese Theater. The movie was delayed from its original September release following the tragedy in Aurora and the sequence was replaced with a shootout in Chinatown, which was no less bloody. Make no mistake; Gangster Squad is a violent film. Bodies are riddled with bullets, a trio of goons is burned alive, innocent bystanders routinely die, and one man is ripped in half after being tied to two cars.

Fleischer isn't afraid to reference other films in an obvious manner. The movie opens with Penn's Cohen quoting Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Later, a character is shot and falls face first into a swimming pool ala Sunset Boulevard. Fleischer even throws in a staircase gunfight during the climax as a nod to The Untouchables recreation of the Odessa Steps from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Anthony Mackie flings his knife in a similar fashion to James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. While Untouchables and Magnificent Seven were certainly an influence, there's also a heavy dose of Dick Tracy throughout Gangster Squad. Josh Brolin's square-jawed hero looks an awful lot like Chester Gould's iconic detective with the humorless stoicism of Joe Friday from Dragnet. Then, there's Sean Penn who bears no resemblance to the real Cohen and appears to have stepped right out of a comic strip. The make-up work turns him into a caricature and Penn plays it accordingly. He's a snarling beast chewing through every scene. Penn gets his Cagney moment when he shouts, "Here comes Santy Claus," while latching onto a Tommy gun during a Christmas shootout.

The hammy acting and relentless violence distracts from the fact that the hackneyed plot. The screenplay by Will Beall, a former LAPD officer, is rife with clichés and one-dimensional characters. Brolin's O'Mara is one of the worst leaders in cinematic history. As Wooters states, "You're a bull in a China shop, Sarge, but we follow you in anyways." That doesn't say much for O'Mara or his charges. He blindly leaps into the fray and can definitely be blamed for much of the film's collateral damage. In a nice twist, it is O'Mara's wife (Mireille Enos) who selects the members of his squad though she's never given more to do other than worry about her husband. The squad themselves aren't given any distinct personalities. Meanwhile, Gosling is so laidback cool that it almost borders on self-parody, especially when he's effortlessly flicking his Zippo lighter. He has some great scenes with Emma Stone who might as well be Jessica Rabbit's younger, slinkier sister.

Gangster Squad is a pure exercise in style over substance. This is L.A. Confidential dumbed down and turned into an R-rated, live-action cartoon.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

Warrior

Warrior - Dir. Gavin O'Connor (2011)

Gavin O'Connor delved into family dysfunction with his previous picture, the crime drama Pride and Glory. Before that, he directed 2004's Miracle, a rousing underdog story about the USA's Olympic hockey team and their victory over the heavily-favored Russians. In Warrior, O'Connor and co-writers Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman combine both themes for a tear jerking story capitalizing on the rise in popularity of MMA and the current economic crisis.

Warrior takes the classic Rocky formula and splits it two ways. The protagonists are estranged brothers, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy (Tom Hardy), who were raised by a drunken and abusive father in Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). The rift between siblings began when Tommy finally convinced their mother to leave with him for California where she later succumbed to cancer. Brendan chose to stay behind and marry his high school sweetheart, Tess (Jennifer Morrison), with whom he has two beautiful daughters.

Fourteen years later, Tommy returns to the family home in Pittsburgh to find his father is now a recovering alcoholic closing in on a thousand days of sobriety and full of regret. Tommy has been overseas after a tour in the Middle East with the Marines and clearly traumatized about his combat experiences. While working out at a local gym, he becomes a YouTube sensation after pulverizing one of the top welterweight fights in the country during a sparring match. Tommy, an undefeated amateur wrestler in his youth, asks his father to train him once again, but makes it clear there will be no personal connection between the two.

Meanwhile, Brendan has become a high school physics teacher who is in desperate need of money after falling behind on his mortgage. He gets an old friend, Frank Campana (Frank Grillo), to train him for an Atlantic City tournament known as Sparta, where the grand prize is $5 million. Tommy too has entered the contest for his own reason.

Anyone with a firm grasp of basic Hollywood story structure will see where the film is going from the opening minutes. Tess doesn't want her husband becoming a fighter again nor does she wish to see any of his fights. Yet, she will inevitably appear in the front row to support Brendan at a climactic moment. It also shouldn't be much of a spoiler (especially since it's in the trailer) that the brothers will meet in the tournament finals to finally settle the score inside the caged octagon. O'Connor keeps both Brendan and Tommy on an even keel so that the audience's sympathy isn't strongly in favor of one or the other. While the moment is played as a triumphant victory, there is an underlying sense of tragedy that the siblings can only solve their problems by beating the crap out of each other.

There's nothing subtle about Warrior. The movie hammers the viewer with soap opera subplots like a fighter reins down fists on a prone opponent caught in a rear mount. There's Paddy's attempt to remain sober and reconnect with Tommy and Brendan, who was ignored due to the younger's superior athletic achievements. In a ham-fisted attempt at allegory, Paddy listens to Moby Dick on tape with his own white whale being the forgiveness of his sons. Toss in Tommy's need to overcome his harsh life and Brendan's efforts to provide for his family. Oh, and Brendan's youngest daughter has had health problems which required extensive medical attention and insurmountable hospital bills. Each man's fighting style mirrors their own inner turmoil. Tommy is blunt force trauma, destroying his opponents and leaving the ring without fanfare before the official decision is even read. Brendan, on the other hand, takes a great deal of punishment before staging his comeback. O'Connor makes sure no stone is unturned when it comes to milking every conceivable emotion. At an almost inexcusable two hours and twenty minutes, he gets plenty of opportunity to do so.

Warrior mainly succeeds because of its talented ensemble. Don't expect minimalistic performances here, this is acting that draws attention to itself. However, it works hand in hand with the tone O'Connor goes for, that of a testosterone fueled weepie. It's hard to imagine that the two working class boys at the center of the film are played by an Aussie and a Brit. Edgerton does a solid job, but he's outshined by the showier performances by Nick Nolte and Tom Hardy. Nolte is perfectly cast as the world weary burnout with an unshakeable sadness about him. Hardy has risen to a whole new level as an actor following brilliant turns in Nicholas Winding Refn's Bronson and Christopher Nolan's Inception. Here, Hardy plays a brooding time bomb of seething frustration and hostility. His portrayal of Tommy is reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando and his iconic role in On the Waterfront.

The obligatory montage training sequences are present in Warrior though they are sadly not set to 1980's power ballads.

Warrior drifts too frequently into schmaltzy territory and is about twenty minutes too long. Still, it is an effective melodrama for men. This is one of those movies where it's okay for a guy to cry.

Rating: *** (*****)

Arthur

Arthur - Dir. Jason Winer (2011)

The original 1981 Arthur has its share of fans, who consider it to be a comedy classic. The titular Arthur Bach, a spoiled and drunken playboy, was Dudley Moore’s most memorable and celebrated role. Personally, I never understood the appeal. The idea of a middle-aged Moore portraying an overgrown man-child was slightly creepy, but I can see how his incessant cackling and never-ending stream of quips might be considered charming…sort of.

The 2011 remake plugs Russell Brand into the lead role. Brand’s Arthur isn’t too much of a departure from hedonistic rock star Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. But, it’s a much kindler and gentler version of the Russell Brand persona, just like the remake is a kindler and gentler version of the original. In this modern world of political correctness, alcoholism is no longer something to be mocked or glorified. It’s also a completely different New York City, a gentrified, post-Giuliani Big Apple. As such, this new Arthur must predictably go to rehab and can no longer trawl the streets for prostitutes. The adult contemporary soft rock music by Burt Bacharach and Christopher Cross is replaced by a modern hipster soundtrack by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard. And yes, there is a cover version of Cross’s “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” by Fitz and the Tantrums, which plays over the end credits.

Arthur is an irresponsible gadabout, who was raised by his stern nanny Hobson (Helen Mirren) rather than his icy CEO mother, Vivienne (Geraldine James). Arthur frivolously wastes his unearned riches on wild parties and other nonsense. He bids against himself at high-class auctions and runs roughshod through Wall Street in the Batmobile. The ultimate waste since it was the Schumacher Batmobile and not the cool one from the Tim Burton films (or even the Adam West TV show). Vivienne has grown weary of her son’s idiotic behavior and forces him into a marriage with Susan Johnson (Jennifer Garner), the daughter of a wealthy construction magnate (Nick Nolte).

Arthur is against the arrangement until he is threatened with being cut off from his $900 million inheritance. His fortunes change when he literally bumps into Naomi (Greta Gerwig), an unlicensed tour guide and becomes inspired by her self-made, blue-collar work ethic.

The original Arthur was written and directed by Steve Gordon, whose only prior experience was in television. Warner Brothers chose not to tempt fate and hired Jason Winer, an executive producer for Modern Family, to direct the remake. Winer worked from a script by Peter Baynham, one of several credited writers for Borat. Along with Brand, they do an admirable job in making the movie a lot better than the tepid trailers made it appear. Not exactly a winning endorsement, but Arthur has its moments. Brand’s humor is hit-and-miss and so was Dudley Moore’s. However, Moore had an air of spontaneity while Brand’s jokes feel overly scripted. Also, he looks a little odd clean-shaven. While Brand may not shine in the starring role, his supporting cast provides excellent back-up.

Sir John Gielgud won an Oscar for his portrayal of the original Hobson, Arthur’s loyal and ever-patient butler. The remake has cleverly switched genders, making Hobson a nanny (and surrogate mother figure), and allowing the addition of Helen Mirren to the mix. Mirren isn’t as condescending as Gielgud, but she more than matches his dry, sardonic wit. Greta Gerwig is infinitely lovable as the pixie in a scarf and fedora Arthur falls for at first sight. She brings the same warmth and effervescent smile that she possessed in Greenberg. Not to be outdone by her co-stars, Jennifer Garner is cast against type as the aggressive social climber with Nick Nolte in full Nick Nolte mode as her intense daddy.

Russell Brand shared the spotlight with Jonah Hill in Get Him to the Greek, but Arthur is his first real chance at top lining a major studio release. While Hop (featuring the voice of Brand) has done strong box office, Arthur opened to an anemic $12.2 million. Perhaps, American audiences haven’t yet warmed up to Brand’s unique sense of humor. Arthur isn’t the best showcase for his talents, but it’s not the worst. It’s strictly middle-of-the-road entertainment and a few notches above the typical romantic comedy.

Rating: ** (*****)