Richard Jewell

First Hit: Outstanding film and portrayal of a man who went through hell because of the FBI and the malfeasance of a newspaper reporter.

I so bought into Richard Jewell’s character as portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser. He was terrific and gave me a real sense of a man who really tried hard to follow the rule of law and be someone people could count on to protect them.

This is based on a true story about Richard Jewell, who was pretty much a loner, lived with his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), and wanted to be part of the law enforcement community all his life.

When we first engage with Jewell, he’s a supply clerk in a company and we see that he is thoughtful and careful about his work. We are shown this as he overhears a loud, aggressive telephone conversation by Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) and a client of the company they work for.

Apologizing for overhearing the conversation (there’s no way he couldn’t hear), he tells Watson to look in a drawer because Jewell has filled it with the pens Watson uses in his work. Also, asking Bryant to open another drawer, it is filled with Snickers candy bars, the snack food Bryant eats when stressed.

Through this interchange, they become acquaintances and chat from time to time. One day Jewell gets a job offer to be a security guard at a local college campus. Jewell’s goodbye to Bryant is very sweet. Bryant, caught off guard, gives him a $100 bill in case he might need anything during the transition between jobs. Jewell is touched, and for him, their friendship is now rock-solid.

At his new job, he has a run-in with some students who are breaking campus rules and he gets fired for this and because he’s overstepping his bounds by stopping cars on the highway near the campus looking for drugs.

These things highlight a couple of things about Jewell. He believes in following the rules, and he can and will step outside the bounds of his authority.

Jewell finally gets a security guard job at AT&T’s events at Centennial Park which are part of the celebrations for the 1996 Atlanta, GA Olympics. His thoughtfulness and kindness are highlighted here, as well. He provides water or Coca Cola to pregnant women so that they do not become dehydrated, and he also supplies the lighting and filming crew in the nearby tower with food or other things they need. He wants to be helpful.

He’s also looking for suspicious items and people. When he discovers a backpack that has been left under a bench where he was sitting, he tells the police. The police team brings in some experts and they realize it is a bomb. While moving the crowd back, the bomb explodes, and two people are killed, and many others are injured.

At first, he’s seen as a hero and is on television. He’s proud of his work, and his mother is especially pleased because her favorite newscaster, Tom Brokaw, spoke glowingly about her son.

FBI Agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) was also stationed at the park and is disappointed that he was stationed there, and even worse, something happened on his watch, and he didn’t prevent it. After interviewing Jewell’s past records and after meeting with the college who fired Jewell, Richard becomes a suspect. What does Jewell do when he realizes the FBI is considering him a suspect? He calls Bryant.

Local newspaper columnist Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who only wants to make a name for herself, uses her sexuality towards Shaw to extract this FBI probe about Jewell. She writes an unconfirmed expose front-page article in the newspaper, and in a New York minute, it jumps up to become national headlines.

Now Jewell is seen as the vilified criminal, not the hero, all in a span of about a week.

The film then tells the story of how his friendship with Bryant and the undying support of his mom, and longtime friend Brandon Walker (Mike Pniewski) help him through the onslaught of the rush-to-judgment people – the FBI and Media.

I did find it interesting that this film has come out when both the FBI and the Media are under a public spotlight and scrutiny.

Hauser needs to receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jewell. He was terrific in bringing this confused, caring man to life. His sincerity, thoughtfulness, and helpfulness (even at the wrong times) are excellently portrayed. Rockwell gives yet another robust and stunning performance as Jewell’s friend and attorney. His sarcasm and pointed jabs at the FBI’s flawed work were excellent. Hamm was good, but it would be nice to see him in a role where drinking and sex are not his only motivation. Wilde was all over the place and enjoyable as Scruggs, who clearly had only one thing on her mind, fame. Bates was terrific as Jewell’s mother. Her demonstration of faith in her son and that he wasn’t who people were making him out to be, was sublime. Nina Arlanda, as Watson Bryant’s office manager and friend, Nadya Light, brought a beautiful blend of humor and persistence to Bryant’s actions. Billy Ray wrote an outstanding screenplay that was crisp and painted each character entirely. Clint Eastwood did an excellent job of directing this story. He is usually efficient in telling stories and here he stepped it up a notch.

Overall: This was a wonderfully entertaining film and brought to life a story I read about some twenty-three years ago.

Gemini Man

First Hit: Entertaining story, but it was the special effects of a young Henry Brogan (a young Will Smith) that was the star.

Ang Lee spent time and money using CGI to make Henry (Will Smith) have a Junior, and it worked.

Brogan is the most perfect and lethal sniper the US Government has ever had. To prove the point, we see him in the first scenes preparing to kill a man moving on a train traveling at 248 kilometers per hour (154 mph) while lying on a hillside some 200 meters (~650 ft) away from the tracks. He nails it.

But Brogan is done with killing after he’s shot more than seventy people. He’s tired, 51-years-old and all the deaths are eating away at him. At one point, he says, “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”

However, the powers that be, including CIA director Janet Lassiter (Linda Emond), want Brogan dead, and the funny thing is that the reason for this is poorly explained and developed in this story. This was the weakest part of the plot, but if you buy their explanation, it works well enough to enjoy the rest of the film.

Arriving back home after the initial assassination scene, ready to enter retirement, he heads to the harbor where he has a boat. Going to pay for gas, he finds a new person named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in the dock shed. She gives him a story that the previous guy retired and that she’s studying marine biology at the nearby University of Georgia.

Taking his boat to meet with a secret contact, he finds a directional bug under the dashboard. Arriving back at the dock, he storms into the shed where Danny is seated and accuses her of being an agent operative for the government. She denies and denies his allegations. Apologizing he asks her out to eat as a way to make up for his rudeness and accusations. When he meets her for dinner, she shows her his research proving she’s an agent.

This scene gives the audience supporting information that Brogan is smart and knows what he’s doing, not only with a rifle, but he’s made it this far because he’s smart. Secondly, being found out implicates Danny in a larger scheme, and now she must support Brogan because she becomes an assassination target as well.

He awakes when assassins come to his home. He takes care of them as only an assassin would and rushes to Danny’s house to tell her she’s surly a target for assassination now and to go with him.

This is the setup. Lassiter is under threat by Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who owns a gun for hire company called Gemini. Verris is holding information that will ruin Lassiter’s career. If Lassiter cannot finish the job by getting rid of Brogan, his team will. Her ego won’t let him take over yet. She wants to prove she can finish the job.

After multiple failures by Lassiter’s team, Verris uses his squad of assassins, including a 23-year-old-clone version of Brogan, to kill Brogan, Zakarweski, and Brogan’s close pilot friend Baron (Benedict Wong).

The rest of the film is about the battle between the clone and Brogan, along with understanding why a clone of Brogan was created.

The action was excellent, although at times it seemed as if the fight scenes were too long. The realism of the younger clone put together by the CGI team was terrific. I loved having Danny as part of the plot because her rationality and the way she added to the story grounded the film.

Smith was strong as Brogan, the supreme assassin and weapon of the United States. He outwardly carried enough of the internal pain of his upbringing to make his character seem real and whole. Winstead was excellent as the agent sent to track Brogan and ends up partnering with him as he gets to the root of the issue at hand. Owen is outstanding and always makes a great evil foil. His voice and attitude are perfect as the antagonist. Emond was good as the CIA director trying to clean up the mess she’s created by losing so many men to Brogan’s skills. Wong was the perfect long-time associate to Brogan. They had great chemistry together. David Benioff and Billy Ray wrote an entertaining screenplay. Lee knows how to create action, and he does here as well. I think they might have gotten more impact by shortened the fighting scenes as they felt long. He didn’t settle for less with the CGI of the Will Smith (Brogan) clone. It was amazingly done it seemed like Brogan was fighting a real person.

Overall: Entertaining enough and at the end with Brogan is telling his clone about his prowess it felt typical good time Will Smith.

Secret In Their Eyes

First Hit:  There were some good moments, but it lacked the kind of tenseness to make it interesting.

There are films that do time shifts well and others that do not. This film does not.

When the audience has to work, look for clues, to find out what time period they are in, it takes them out of experiencing the story. This is what happens here, because some of the characters don’t show the 13 year change or difference enough to know what time frame we are in at that moment of the new scene gets presented to the audience. I had to think “what time are they in now?”

The character that was the most difficult was Claire (Nicole Kidman), she was rarely discernable. Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was, at times, discernible between the two different time periods, and other times I had to look hard at his hair or facial features to figure out where the film was. Jess (played by Julia Roberts), however, was easily discernible between the time periods mostly because her grieving and self-made purgatory created a look that was far different than the earlier time period.

This story is about three people, Ray, Claire and Jess who are attempting to capture and prosecute a man Marzin/Beckwith (Joe Cole) who raped and killed Jess’ daughter Carolyn (Zoe Graham). It is also about obsession. How people get obsessed with people whether they are, friends, infatuations, or object of an investigation.  

Initially the murderer gets off on a technicality but Ray's obsession of finding and trying Marzin, after 13 years of looking, is a good story. When he finds, who he believes is the man, he's convinced the team can put him away this time. The film tells the initial story of Carolyn’s death and the killer getting off, as well as the new road the three take to get Marzin convicted this time around. I did think that Roberts was really good in unglamorous role. The way she wore the pain of the death of her daughter was spot on good.

Kidman was OK, her best part was interviewing Marzin. The sultry, focused, primal nature of her questioning was amazing. Ejiofor was strong however there were too many scenes I didn’t know what time period he was in soon enough – I had to think about it. Kidman was good but besides the interviewing Marzin scene, her role wasn’t dynamic. Dean Norris as Bumpy Willis was the easiest character to know the time span, his role and the makeup did him right. In this role he was very good. Michael Kelly as Reg Siefert was also very good as the antagonistic cop who worked both for and against the main characters during all these years. Billy Ray and Juan Jose Campanella wrote an interesting screenplay but the execution wasn’t quite good enough through Billy Ray’s direction.

Overall:  The story good, the execution was less than good which brought down what could have been a better film.

Captain Phillips

First Hit:  Tom Hanks is Oscar worthy as was Barkhad Abdi in their respective roles although the film is longer than needed.

This is a great story of two men from different cultures with different objectives colliding.

We meet Captain Phillips (Hanks) with his wife as he heads towards the airport to be dropped off for another trip. He’s a rules guy and wants his crew to shape up – he takes his job seriously. Just as he’s testing the crew on their readiness, a set of boats are approaching fast.

As he discerns that they are pirates, he implores his crew to follow procedure and lock-down the ship, hide, and don’t take chances. He on the other hand, will take intentional chances to keep his crew, the ship and the cargo safe.

Muse (Abdi) is leading a small group of pirates to hijack Phillip's ship and take it back to Somalia for “millions of dollars”. His "boss" has control of Muse's village and forces them to hijack ships or their village will suffer casualties. The ship he attacks is a US registered ship and the US Navy isn’t going to let his dreams of millions come true.

That’s the overall plot. But the action is the dialog between Phillips and Muse. It is intense, crisp, and objective driven.

Director Paul Greengrass uses hand-held cameras and for the most part makes effective use of them by not shaking them just for shakings’ sake. Ships use space effectively and there are a lot of close quarters so his use of these cameras is required to make this film work.

Where the film didn’t work for me was that we are required to spend well over an hour (of a 2+ hour film) waiting for it to get toward the inevitable conclusion. It just seemed to me that some of the extended scenes in the lifeboat weren’t needed.

Hanks is phenomenal. He will win an Oscar nomination for best actor. His final scenes of going through the shock of his experience were transcendent. Abdi’s performance was equally remarkable as Hanks. His intensity as expressed through his eyes showed through. He deserves a best supporting actor nomination for his portrayal of the “Captain” of the hijackers. Everyone else was good. Billy Ray wrote an engaging script and Greengrass did an extraordinary job of bringing this true story for life.

Overall:  Although too long, this is a great story and film to watch.

The Hunger Games

First Hit:  A tad long but a satisfying storyline, some great acting and visually enticing.

This is an age old story about the have and have-nots.

The haves living their life of opulence and self-aggrandizing while they abuse the have-nots by making their young kill each other for their pleasure and television amusement. Remind you of history? 

If this is a picture of how we could end up, it is very sad. Oppression of another human being is not the way out of our inability to see each and every human being as our equal.

In this version of this old story, Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to step in for her younger sister who was selected, in her first year of eligibility, to be one of two warriors from the depressed area called District 12. From age 12 to age 18, once a year each district (there are 12) must submit two warriors to compete to the death as homage to their society and/or religious beliefs.

Her partner from District 12 is Peeta (played by Josh Hutcherson) a quiet unassuming boy who has had a difficult history. Together they are take a modern train to a very modern opulent city where they are groomed and trained to kill each other and the other 22 participants.

They are coached by a heavily drinking guide named Haymitch (played by Woody Harrelson) and kind stylist named Cinna (played by Lenny Kravitz). The behind the scenes producer for the television program which everyone watches is Seneca Crane (played by Wes Bentley). He is under the guidance of President Snow (played by Donald Sutherland).

The MC for the television program where they are interviewed before being set out to kill each other is Caesar Flickerman (played by Stanley Tucci). One character which stood out for me besides the main characters was Rue (Amandla Stenberg) who was one of the 24 selected to be part of the killing. Her soft kindness and presence was one of the hopes of a better generation.

The visual shots, at times, were stunning the utopian city was well crafted to reflect both future and totalitarian Nazi like symbols. However, some of the hand-held stuff was just jerky stupid. One does not see the world in this jerky way and makes me wonder about the overuse and intentional camera movement.

Lawrence was, as she was in “Winter’s Bone” driven, clear and with feeling and kindness. She has an ability to emote strength and heartfelt empathy in one look. Hutcherson was solid as the guy who knew he was going to die, was self-effacing and yet let it be known he was in love. Harrelson was, again, superb. Kravitz was very strong as someone who cared about the participants. Tucci was on the edge of being over the top as the MC – wonderful job. Bentley was good but I was very distracted by his beard. Stenberg was sublime. Sutherland was very good as the President who controlled the games uncaringly. Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray created a strong script from the book of the same name. Gary Ross allowed this film to unfold well but some of his choices of camera shots – especially the jerky ones were ill advised and take away from being engaged with the film.

Overall:  This was enjoyable if a bit long and made me wonder why this film and the books are aimed at and popular with teens.