Texas Killing Fields - Dir. Ami Canaan Mann (2011)
Texas Killing Fields was inspired by the unsolved disappearances and murders of over thirty young women along a lonely stretch of highway between Galveston and Houston, Texas. Of particular note is an abandoned oil field outside the small town of League City, colloquially known as "the Killing Fields," where four of the bodies have been found. These crimes have dated as far back as the 1970's.
Tough guys Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Sam Worthington are Brian Heigh and Mike Souder, two gruff detectives patrolling Texas City, a rural burg surrounded by desolate bayous and rusty oil derricks. Heigh is a weary veteran, who has moved from New York with his wife (Annabeth Gish) due to unspecified reasons. Souder is a hothead and often clashes with his partner.
Heigh also looks after Little Anne Sigler (Chloe Grace Moretz), a girl who is usually found wandering the streets because her drug addicted mother doesn't want her around while she's entertaining male company.
The detectives are investigating the murder of a young prostitute and Souder believes it's an open and shut case against her accused pimp. Heigh isn't so sure, especially when the mutilated body of a missing woman is discovered in the Fields by Souder's ex-wife, Det. Pam Stall (Jessica Chastain). Souder believes they shouldn't get involved as the Fields are outside their jurisdiction, but Heigh feels differently.
Texas Killing Fields was written by Don Ferrarone, a former DEA agent who has worked as a technical advisor on films like Man on Fire and Miami Vice. Speaking of which, Michael Mann served as producer while his daughter, Ami Canaan Mann directed. Her style certainly shares similarities with her father judging by the way she composes a shootout and car chase. The tone of the film is closest to Manhunter, Michael Mann's oft-forgotten adaptation of an early Hannibal Lecter novel. Don't expect Texas Killing Fields to follow in the relentlessly dark footsteps of Seven or Silence of the Lambs.
The film had been in development hell for a while with Danny Boyle once attached as director. Boyle once stated that the script was so dark, it might never be made. It's quite clear that many concessions were made to make the final product more palpable to mainstream audiences. Instead of an unsettling thriller, Texas Killing Fields is more of a dreary procedural littered with half-finished subplots. Much like Seven, the story veers towards a pessimistic view that the bad guy can get away and that darkness can consume even the best of us. Yet, these themes are undone by a tacked on happy ending.
Luckily the cast is talented enough to elevate the material slightly above mediocre levels. With his deep, gravelly voice, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was an excellent choice to play the burdened Brian Heigh. Sam Worthington doesn't fare as well. The Australian-born actor sometimes has a difficult time pulling off an American accent; a Southern one was too much to ask. His speech is all over the map. Then, there's the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain, who had hear breakout year in 2011. She won rave reviews for her roles in The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, and The Help. However, her work here and in The Debt was overlooked, likely because both films were rather subpar. Still, she's the best thing in either picture. Also present in Fields is Chloe Moretz in a role more subdued than her turns in Let Me In and Kick-Ass. She has the air of a young Jodie Foster here and it's a shame she wasn't given more to do as Little Anne served as the heart of the movie.
Despite an excellent cast and an intriguing true crime premise, Texas Killing Fields can't muster up the suspense of an average episode of CSI.
Comic book movies are now a staple of the summer blockbuster season. This modern age of the comic book film can be traced back to an unlikely source in Blade. For decades, Marvel had attempted to turn their characters into successful feature films. Yet, all they had to show for it are a pair of awful direct-to-video movies based on Captain America and the Punisher and a Roger Corman-directed Fantastic Four that was never even released. With top properties like Spider-Man and the X-Men languishing in development hell, it was an unknown vampire slayer that broke through for Marvel and set the stage for Iron Man and others.
In recent years, Marvel’s main competitor, DC Comics, has had massive success with its rebooted Batman franchise. However, Superman Returns was a failure and they’ve struggled to get other A-list characters like Wonder Woman and the Flash off the ground while Green Lantern finally hits screens next year. It only makes sense for DC to exploit its lesser known characters or creator-owned properties to fill the void. And along rides Jonah Hex.
Hex was created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga and first appeared in 1971 in All-Star Western #10. Set in the Old West, Hex was a bounty hunter with half his face hideously scarred. He was sold into slavery to the Apache as a child and fought for the Confederacy in adulthood. Later, he was revamped with a supernatural bent as part of DC’s Vertigo imprint. The movie version combines a little bit of both, but is a very loose adaptation of the character.
Josh Brolin stars as Jonah Hex; a Civil War veteran who surrendered to the Union inadvertantly resulting in the death of his best friend Jeb Turnbull (an uncredited Jeffrey Dean Morgan). In revenge, Jeb’s father, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) forces Hex to watch helplessly while his wife and son are murdered. Left for dead with his face branded, Hex is saved by Indians and the ordeal leaves him the power to temporarily speak with the dead.
Since then, the disfigured anti-hero has made his mark as a renowned bounty hunter and gunfighter of exceptional skill. Meanwhile, Turnbull has become a terrorist striking out against the American government. He steals a massive supergun, dubbed the ‘Nation Killer,’ in order to destroy Washington during the country’s centennial celebration.
Jonah Hex endured a problematic journey into the theaters. The script was originally written by Neveldine & Taylor, the team behind the Crank films and Gamer, who were also attached to direct. Brolin signed onto the project supposedly because he loved its atrociousness. The pair left the project and was eventually replaced by the oddball choice of Jimmy Hayward whose only previous experience was the animated Horton Hears a Who. The project saw last minute reshoots under the supervision of Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) and a massive retooling of the plot.
What’s left is a complete mess that is barely 80 minutes long, not counting the credits. Jonah Hex is like two fractured films hastily duct taped together. There is a strange battle on a metaphysical plain between Hex and Turnbull that was once set to be the climax of the movie. Instead, it’s clumsily and confusingly intercut with two major sequences of the final product. The mystical elements are excised and in their place we find ludicrous weaponry like saddle-mounted Gatling guns, dynamite launching crossbows, and a monstrous cannon powered by glowing orange orbs invented by Eli Whitney, the creator of the cotton gin. No, really.
Some of the cast seem to realize what a colossal turd they’re in and play along. Brolin tries to rise above it all as the gravelly voiced Hex while Michael Fassbender goes over-the-top as a knife-wielding Irish henchman. Megan Fox also appears as a tough hooker with a lilting Southern accent and an impossibly thin hourglass waist. She seriously looks like she’ll snap in half at any second. For some reason, Fox almost always appears in close-ups with soft lighting no matter what the situation. Will Arnett is woefully miscast as a straight-laced Union officer while Michael Shannon pops in for one and only one scene as the ringleader of an underground fight club. Both actors are victims of the reshoots and slapdash editing.
Jonah Hex never purports to be anything more than a low-grade B-movie. Some might be able to enjoy it on a ‘so bad, it’s good’ level, but not me. Jonah Hex makes no attempt to remain faithful to the source material. It’s a shame really as the character had the potential to star in a Leone-style Spaghetti Western. The movie isn’t so much A Fistful of Dollars as it is Wild Wild West. In the pantheon of DC adaptations, it ranks at the bottom of the pile alongside Catwoman and Steel.
I’m not really sure how I should feel about an action film that uses “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey as its theme song.
2010 is a big year for comic book movies (Kick-Ass, Iron Man 2) and movies about elite military units (The A-Team and The Expendables). Well, The Losers fits into both categories. Published by DC Comics, the original incarnation of the Losers was created in 1970 by Robert Kanigher who also co-created Sgt. Rock with legendary artist Joe Kubert. They were a Special Forces group that operated during WWII. In 2004, the concept was revamped for DC’s mature readers imprint, Vertigo.
The titular team is comprised of several colorful individuals each with specialized abilities. The Losers are under the command of Col. Franklin Clay, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan with the same gruff and rough edges that he brought to the Comedian in Watchmen. Clay’s second-in-command is Roque (Idris Elba) who seems to be equally as gruff. Rounding out the team are fast-talking tech-head Jensen (Chris Evans), pilot/driver Pooch (Columbus Short), and the silent sniper Cougar (Oscar Jaenada).
The Losers are sent on a mission in Central America to mark the compound of a big-time drug lord for an air strike. When they see children in the compound being used as mules, they disobey orders and go in to rescue them. The Losers load the kids onto their extraction chopper only to watch helplessly as it’s blown to pieces. Presumed dead, the Losers lay low while Clay seethes with anger at the betrayal of their mysterious handler known only as Max (Jason Patric). They are approached by a woman named Aisha (Zoe Saldana) who claims she can hand them Max on a silver platter. Smuggled back into the U.S. in caskets, the Losers plan a series of intricate heists to bring down Max and get back their lives.
The Losers is a movie about good-looking people getting together, blowing shit up then saying a bunch of witty one-liners. There aren’t many nuances beyond that in the script by Peter Berg (who was previously attached to direct) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac). The opening of the film really goes for the jugular in a cheesy way by going into a close-up of a burning teddy bear in the aftermath of the crash. Despite all the wreckage, we don’t see any dismembered limbs or kiddie corpses. It’s a lot like an old episode of G.I. Joe where planes crash constantly, but the pilots always parachute out at the last second.
Since the screenplay uses nearly every corny, action movie cliché in the story, Sylvain White apparently felt the need to employ nearly every corny, action movie cliché in his direction. The movie is littered with slow motion, fast motion, jump cuts, whip pans, and zooms. Characters stand dramatically in various positions as if they were posing for an album cover. We get at least two or three variations of the standard ‘good guys walk away from an explosion in slow motion without looking back’ sequences.
However, the film is so breezy and cartoonish that it’s hard not to sit back and check your brain at the door. Most of the fun comes from the chemistry and interplay between the characters. Especially noteworthy is Chris Evans who seems to be having a ton of fun as the smart aleck to end all smart alecks. He was one of the only highlights of the atrocious Fantastic Four movies and he’s one of the highlights here, including belting out a really obnoxious rendition of the above mentioned Journey tune. Evans seems to be gunning for Ryan Reynolds’ spot as Mr. Comic Book Movie. In addition to both Fantastic Four pictures and The Losers, he’ll be seen in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and was recently cast as Captain America for Marvel Studios. Also hamming it up is Jason Patric as the evil Max. Patric understands that he’s been cast firmly in a B-movie and takes every opportunity to chew his scenes and spit them out.
The Losers won’t be widely regarded in the canon of comic book films the way Iron Man or The Dark Knight are. It’s blunt and one-dimensional, but it’s a fun popcorn flick. Besides, any movie where Zoe Saldana fires a rocket launcher can’t be all bad.
”For this is the soul’s secret: only when the hero has abandoned it, then only approach it in dreams – the superhero.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
I never thought I’d see the day when the feature film version of Watchmen would finally hit the screen, let alone see anything Watchmen related outside the comic book shop. Now, you can walk into Target and buy the trade paperback. There are huge displays of Watchmen books, CDs, and posters at Borders. There are Watchmen action figures, Watchmen on the cover of mainstream magazines, and segments about Watchmen on Entertainment Tonight. It’s been a strange, strange journey to get to this point. It’s been in development hell for nearly 20 years, passed through the hands of several big name directors (Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass), seen lawsuits and its co-creator wash his hands of the entire thing. Fans thought it would never happen, but Watchmen has arrived.
Originally published by DC Comics as a 12-issue mini-series in 1986, Watchmen has gone on to become one of the most revered comic books ever published. Time magazine listed it as one of the 100 greatest novels published since 1923. Written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons, Watchmen was originally intended to star a stable of lesser-known characters DC purchased from the defunct-Charlton Comics line. When DC realized Moore’s story would render these characters unusable, they directed him to create a cast of original costumed heroes. Moore had already begun challenging the accepted notions of what superhero comic book should be with his work on Miracleman and Swamp Thing by dealing with adult themes of authority, theology, and existentialism. Moore looked to further shatter those preconceptions with Watchmen which acted as both a psychological deconstruction of the superhero mythology as well as a comment on the Cold War politics of the time (a continuation of the themes from V for Vendetta). At a time when Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were two of the most powerful people in the world, Moore hoped to point out the dangers of entrusting one’s life and safety in the hands of other individuals simply because they had the power. Who watches the watchmen?
With Watchmen, Moore imagined what the world would be like if costumed adventurers really existed. What would the heroes be like if they had all the same hang-ups as real human beings? It was practically revolutionary when Stan Lee created Spider-Man as an awkward teen who couldn’t get girls or pay the bills. Here, the superheroes are sadists, masochists or psychopaths. How would the superheroes affect the socio-political structure of the world? And how exactly do you solve society’s problems by dressing up in a costume and punching people in the face? The costumes themselves were meant to look intentionally silly for some and for others, heightened into sexualized, costume fetish wear. Moore played up and tore down various superhero tropes that had been in place for decades when creating the inhabitants of the Watchmen world.
The Watchmen film opens in 1985 in an alternate reality where Nixon is still president and the world is on the brink of nuclear holocaust. Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who once operated as The Comedian sits in his high-rise apartment watching the news of Russian forces amassing on the Afghanistan border. Just then, an unknown assailant bursts through the door and the pair engages in a rousing fist fight until Blake is hurled out the window, plummeting to the ground below. From there, the film really shows off its ingenuity with a brilliant opening credit sequence (set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’”) highlighting the history of the masked vigilantes and how they influenced society. We are introduced to the Minutemen, a group of garishly clad heroes whose look and sensibilities matched the simpler times of their era and the Golden Age of comics. We also watch the brutal and tragic fates that befell some of the Minutemen. Dollar Bill (Dan Payne), for example, was shot to death after getting his cape stuck in a revolving door.
As we learn in the opener and the rest of the film, Blake was the second gunman on the grassy knoll during JFK’s assassination and likely murdered Woodward and Bernstein before they could expose the Watergate break-in. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Comedian is a glorified thug and a representation of the dark side of American history. As amoral as he is, Blake is the only character of the bunch that sees the futility of caped crusaders slugging it out with purse snatchers while the world is on the brink of destruction.
His murder is investigated upon by Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley), a gravel voiced vigilante who hides his face behind a mask of moving inkblots. He has the trenchcoat, fedora, and short stature of Bogart with the seething vitriol of Travis Bickle. Rorschach is driven by a fanatical moral code which finds its origins in Ayn Rand’s objectivism. To paraphrase Rorschach, not even in the face of Armageddon will he compromise. Believing in a vast conspiracy to eliminate costumed heroes, Rorschach goes to warn his former partner, Dan Drieberg (Patrick Wilson) who operated as Nite-Owl and was armed with an array of gadgets and an airship nicknamed Archie. Now, he’s retired, out-of-shape and directionless, mostly moping in his basement while his costumes collect dust in the closet. Rorschach and Dreiberg get in contact with more of their former colleagues. There’s “the world’s smartest man,” Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), aka Ozymandias who turned his costumed career into a multinational conglomerate built on toys and health books. There’s Laurie Juspeczyk (Malin Ackerman), the Silk Spectre, who only became a superhero because she was pushed into it by her mother, Sally (Carla Gugino), the original Silk Spectre who was more Bettie Page pin-up than crime fighter.
The last of their group of Watchmen is the only one who has actual superpowers, the glowing, blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). Manhattan was formerly physicist Jon Osterman until a lab accident inside an intrinsic field separator vaporized him. Osterman somehow managed to reform himself into something akin to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man with abs of steel. The Vietnam War was over in a week because of Manhattan, a living weapon of mass destruction. He has the power to do just about anything including teleportation, telekinesis, and matter manipulation. He has evolved to a quantum state of awareness, no longer experiencing time as we do. Manhattan views the past, present, and future simultaneously, not unlike how we view the panels on the page of a comic book. He has drifted further and further away from humanity, seeing things only in subatomic particles. To him, there is no discernable difference between a live or dead body on a microscopic level. Needless to say, this puts a serious damper on his relationship with girlfriend, Laurie.
I won’t reveal anymore of the plot, but the rest of the film extends from a simple murder mystery to a vast conspiracy of epic proportions. Zack Snyder, the visionary director of 300 (which I still can’t say with a straight face), directs from a script written by David Hayter and Alex Tse. The filmmakers have stayed remarkably close to the original source material. Many shot compositions are lifted right out of the comic book while many scenes are stuffed with Easter eggs that only die-hard fans will recognize. However, like the majority of adaptations, changes were made with mostly minimal impact on the overall story. Only the ending goes through any significant change. I won’t spoil either the film or the graphic novel, but will say the new conclusion comes with positives and negatives.
Snyder mixes in his own sensibilities, ratcheting up the action sequences and violence. Bones are snapped in half, meat cleaver meets human skull, and bullets rip through the flesh of a human leg. Human bodies explode with bloody viscera splattered across the faces of gawking bystanders. The slow motion effects that were ludicrously overused in 300 rear their head here, but not enough to detract from the scenes. Neither does the music. The score by Tyler Bates is a mixture of harsh heavy metal with a jazzy, 80’s synth sound that evokes Vangelis. The soundtrack selection is a bit obvious though some were also referenced in the comic. They are effective in placing the audience into the time period. One-hit wonder, “99 Luftballoons,” doubles as a sly allusion to the ticking clock as the song is about nuclear war. However, Snyder’s use of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during an overly long sex scene elicited far too many chuckles from the audience I was with. I don’t blame them.
Watchmen has long been thought of as ‘unfilmable.’ When Terry Gilliam attempted to bring Watchmen to life, he asked Alan Moore how he’d adapt it. Moore simply replied, ”I wouldn’t.” The original mini-series was a dozen issues long with each issue featuring supplementary material such as mock-ups of interviews, magazine articles, and documents that further flesh out the history of the world. Even with a runtime of approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes, Watchmen still feels rushed. The film desperately tries to juggle a large ensemble of characters as well as attempting to educate the audience about this alternate reality that not every plot thread or character is given enough screen time. The story is relies heavily on flashbacks to do this. Each issue of the comic focused on a different character. Lost producer and Watchmen fan, Damon Lindelof, has admitted to lifting this method for his show. While the flashback structure works in an episodic environment, it might test the patience of those expecting more forward momentum in the picture.
The acting is good across the board with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earl Haley as the stand-outs. Morgan really relishes the role and dives right in giving a weariness and roguish charm to the morally repugnant Comedian. And who would have thought the biker kid from Bad News Bears would turn out to be so ruthless and darkly comical? Haley’s Little Children co-star, Patrick Wilson comes off well as Dreiberg whose nerdy Clark Kent mannerisms are almost as good as Christopher Reeve’s. The cast members that weren’t as strong were Malin Ackerman who looked great in tight latex, but gave a couple stilted line readings, and Matthew Goode who played his hand far too strongly. Both of them suffered more from being marginalized when their characters should have been given more screen time.
Those of you unfamiliar with the comics may be satisfied with Watchmen as a big-budget action spectacle. It works on that level. Just don’t expect this to be X-Men where clean-cut heroes battle the forces of evil. As an adaptation, it’s like reading the Cliff Notes version. Everything has been condensed and distilled. Most of the tiny details you had to read between the lines to figure out are completely spelled out for you in the film version. Part of the problem is that Watchmen is such a unique product of its medium. Even the structure and layout of the panels on the page played a significant role in its reading. It has been called the Citizen Kane of comic books. Like Citizen Kane, it only truly works in its original form. You could read a novelization of Kane or view it as a stage play, but you lose a lot of the essence.
