The Homesman

The Homesman - Dir. Tommy Lee Jones (2014)

Judging by outward appearances, Tommy Lee Jones doesn't seem to be a jolly old fellow. No surprise that Jones has chosen rather dour material for his directorial efforts. His first film as director, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, was a somber modern-day Western about a rancher making his way to Mexico with the corpse of a ranch hand and the Border Agent who killed him. You could hardly call Jones' sophomore feature, The Homesman, a traditional Western. Sure, the period is appropriate, but white hats don't shoot it out with black hats and the hero doesn't triumphantly ride off into the sunset.

The Homesman takes place during the mid-1800's in the desolate territory now known as Nebraska. Life has been harsh, especially for three women driven insane by the rigors of the frontier and an overbearing patriarchal society. Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer) hasn't even hit her 20's and has already lost her three children to diphtheria. Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) went mad due to the death of her mother and repeated sexual abuse by her husband. Theoline Bellknapp (Miranda Otto) suffered such a nervous breakdown that she does something unthinkable. In the movie's most harrowing moment, Theoline stumbles towards an outhouse and tosses her newborn infant into the latrine.

The burgeoning town is hardly equipped to handle this pitiable trio, but a church in Iowa has agreed to care for them. When it's clear their husbands are either unable or unwilling to take them, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers to embark on the journey. Perhaps, she feels a kinship to these women as she hides her own crushing loneliness. Cuddy is 31 and unwed, making her a spinster in everyone's eyes. She's been sharply turned down for marriage because she's too "bossy" and too "plain."

As strong-willed as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot make the trip on her own. Due to happenstance, she comes across George Briggs (Jones), a buffoonish claim jumper left to hang. Briggs agrees not so much out of chivalry, but to get out of the noose along with $300 and a jug of whiskey.

The Homesman was based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, who also wrote The Shootist, which was adapted into a film starring a grizzled John Wayne in what would be his final role. Of course, Jones brings grizzled to a whole new level. He's not exactly the most amiable of travel partners. The prim and proper Mary Bee does not end up falling for the gruff Briggs the way Katherine Hepburn did with Bogart in The African Queen. In fact, The Homesman never goes where you expect. The protagonists and their charges are outsiders in a rigid culture. They don't find redemption, happiness or sanity.

Jones turns in a fine performance that goes beyond his trademark surliness. He is able to go to dark place while playing the buffoon. Swank's success ratio hasn't been that spectacular, but her work in The Homesman ranks right up there with Million Dollar Baby and her breakout role in Boys Don't Cry. It's a fierce and heartbreaking performance.

The Homesman has been called an anti-western and a feminist revision of the genre. Jones' sophomore effort certainly has more in common with the existentialism of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the beautiful bleakness of No Country for Old Men. He unravels the romanticism of the Old West by presenting its ugliness without restraint. One of the more underrated films of 2014.

Rating: *** ½ (*****)

3 Days To Kill

3 Days To Kill - Dir. McG (2014)

Luc Besson is partially responsible for Liam Neeson’s renaissance as an action hero. Now, the prolific French auteur has turned his sights on another aging screen idol in Kevin Costner. Besson serves as writer and producer on 3 Days to Kill while handing over directorial duties to the modern day Renny Harlin, McG.

Costner is CIA agent Ethan Renner, who just recently transferred to Paris to repair his estranged relationship with his ex-wife Christine (Connie Nielsen) and their daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld). An assignment goes tragically wrong when Renner and his team are tasked with taking down the Albino (Tomas Lemarquis), a lieutenant in an organization led by the mysterious Wolf (Richard Sammel). Several agents are killed, a hotel explodes, and the Albino escapes when Ethan collapses in the street.

Doctors alert Ethan that he has an inoperable brain tumor and only has a few months to live. He wishes to spend what little time he has left with reconnecting with Zoey, who isn’t too eager to be with her formerly absentee father. Ethan is soon given an offer he cannot refuse. Vivi (Amber Heard) has been sent by her CIA handlers to kill the Wolf and offers Ethan an experimental serum that can extend his life in exchange for his assistance.

The script by Besson and Adi Hasak is overstuffed with subplots and scattershot in tone. 3 Days to Kill floats between being an action flick, a comedy, and a maudlin drama. In addition to Ethan’s troubles with terrorists and a rebellious daughter, he’s also got a family of Malian squatters in his apartment leading to some cutesy scenes between Costner and a little boy asking for high fives. Amber Heard appears as the femme fatale with an all-too convenient panacea. There’s really nothing to her character aside from a blatantly salacious scene where Ethan meets Vivi while she receives a private show with a stripper. Hailee Steinfeld is good, but you wish she had followed up her big debut in True Grit with movies on a similar level. The action itself isn’t memorable at all and the villains are just generic Euro-trash.

Costner’s sheer presence is the one thing that binds the mish-mash of Besson’s disparate ideas together. He doesn’t possess the physically imposing stature of Neeson, but he conveys the same world weariness with the folksy charm seen in Field of Dreams. When Costner rescues his daughter from would-be rapists and carries her off in his arms, you half-expect the soundtrack to start blaring Whitney Houston.

Costner’s performance is enough to save 3 Days to Kill from being a complete dud, but it’s certainly not enough to recommend.

Rating: ** (*****)

True Grit

True Grit - Dirs. The Coen Brothers (2010)

From the Duke to the Dude, the Coen Brothers put their own indelible stamp on the Western in this latest adaptation of the 1968 novel, True Grit, by Charles Portis. Portis's book was previously brought to the screen a year after publication in a film directed by Henry Hathaway with John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, a surly, one-eyed U.S. Marshal. It was a role that earned Wayne his one and only Oscar.

The Coens' remake goes back to the source material to create a darker film, but one that is not nearly as nihilistic as their previous works like No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading, and A Serious Man. While Hathaway's film was set in the Colorado Rockies during autumn, the Coens take their story back to the frontiers of Arkansas (though it was shot in New Mexico and Texas) during the cold winter. The Coens' long-time D.P. Roger Deakins skillfully manages to capture the desolation and loneliness of this world. The only way to describe Deakins' cinematography would be beautiful bleakness. It is a harsh world that young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) finds herself.

Mattie arrives in the town of Ft. Smith to collect the body of her father, who was murdered by a drifter in his employ named Tom Cheney (Josh Brolin). Only 14 years of age, Mattie carries herself with more confidence, and intelligence than most of the adults she encounters. Mattie will need all the stern maturity she can muster as she embarks on a startling rite of passage. By the end of her first day in Ft. Smith, Mattie witnesses the hanging of three men and spends the night in the undertaker's parlor amidst the company of some newly arrived corpses. The next morning, Mattie sets about finding a lawman with "grit" to hunt down Cheney and bring him to justice. To do this, Mattie seeks out the meanest, orneriest cuss around. She finds him in Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) with a patch over his right eye (the opposite of Wayne) and a belly full of whiskey.

Cogburn reluctantly accepts the job to find Cheney who is hiding out in Indian Territory with a band of outlaws led by "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper). However, he draws the line when it comes to young Mattie accompanying him on the quest. Undeterred, Mattie follows to ensure the deed is done joined by another tagalong in LaBeouf (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger who has hunted Cheney for months for the murder of a senator.

True Grit isn't an outright revisionist film as it is a twist on classic Western iconography. It is grimier and, yes, grittier where the lush visuals of Monument Valley disappear in favor of barren country landscapes and dead trees. The heroes' journey is dotted with the surreal touches that are par for the course in a Coen Brothers film, such as an encounter with a hanging body and a frontiersman in a bearskin. As portrayed by Bridges, Rooster Cogburn gives a whole new meaning to the term grizzled. Yes, Wayne did play him as something of a past-his-prime drunk, but he never lost the trademark swagger that made him a movie legend. With a gruff growl to his voice, Bridges isn't afraid to make his Cogburn look foolish from time to time. He doesn't get the grand entrance like Wayne in Stagecoach or Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. The first time we meet Cogburn, his voice bellows from inside an outhouse as he tends to "prior business." But, damn if Cogburn still doesn't look badass with the reins in his mouth riding into a gun blazing showdown with the bad guys ("Fill your hands, you son of a bitch.")

Not to be outdone is Matt Damon, an upgrade from the inexplicable casting of the "Rhinestone Cowboy" crooner, Glen Campbell. Damon's LaBeouf (or as he pronounces it, Le Beef) is a bit of a Southern dandy, clad in jangling spurs and a fringed jacket. A play on the virtuous white hats, LaBeouf is overly sensitive to the jabs of his companions at his overinflated opinion of himself. So too is Brolin's Cheney an atypical black hat. He's more of a coward and a whiner than he is the frighteningly skillful gunhand in the vein of Jack Palance in Shane or Michael Biehn in Tombstone. At one point, an exasperated Cheney pathetically mopes and mutters to himself, "Everything is against me."

Therein lies another uniquely Coen touch to True Grit, the dialogue. Many lines are lifted directly out of the original novel and Portis's idiosyncratic lines feel as if they come right out of Joel and Ethan's playbook. In their vision of the Old West, nobody uses contractions.

True Grit is a rare confluence of talent where the acting, the writing, and the direction all come together to create a fantastic film. Yet, none of that would mean anything if the central role of Mattie Ross was improperly cast. Where Hathaway went with an older actress in the then 20-year old Kim Darby, the Coens discovered 13-year old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. To use a well-worn cliché, Steinfeld is a revelation, able to convey poise beyond her years. She also displays the same gift of gab possessed by other Coen-created protagonists. Her unwavering logic and firm grasp of language enable her to verbally emasculate a horse trader, who has underestimated this pre-pubescent customer. Mattie's thrust upon adulthood is symbolized when she sheds her schoolmarm black dress and dons her late-father's coat and hat, both of which are two sizes too big for her. Yet, she never sheds her tightly braided pigtails thus maintaining an innocence about her.

Joel & Ethan Coen return to form with a rousing crowd pleaser in True Grit. This is one of the best films of 2010.

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