Just Mercy

First Hit: A compelling and moving story about overturning injustice.

This movie is based on the true-life story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), who, after finishing law school at Harvard, moved to the deep south to help death-row prisoners in Alabama.

Although he was offered prestigious positions in other law firms, his mind was made up while during an internship, he interviewed death-row prisoners. He is deeply touched by these prisoner's stories and, after reviewing their files, learned that many of these men were unjustly accused and incarcerated.

Upon graduating from Harvard and passing the Alabama Bar, he moved to and opened a federally funded group to represent prisoners on death row. Arriving at their new offices, he is informed that he and his office manager Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), wouldn’t be able to rent the offices because of the type of work they were doing. Holing up in Eva and her husband’s home, they begin their quest to represent wrongfully convicted death-row inmates. The three touched upon in this film were different types of cases.

One of the stories is about Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan), who was convicted of killing someone by a bomb he planted on the front porch of a house. Yes, he made the bomb, but what wasn’t taken into consideration was that Richardson had PTSD from his time in Vietnam and had struggled by being in and out of mental health facilities for over 30 years. His story is wonderfully mixed into the overall film by following his appeal process and subsequent death by electrocution. The latter is such a powerful scene, that it had our entire Saturday afternoon audience audibly crying.

The main story is about Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man convicted of killing a young 18-year-old girl. The fact was that at the time of the victim’s death, he was surrounded by his entire family preparing food for a local fish fry. The testimony that got him incarcerated was given by Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), who was a convicted felon that made up the story to get off of death row. In other words, he made a deal to lie for the local police and DA so that he would have a more comfortable life in prison.

The storyline follows how Stevenson and Ansley, jump through enormous hoops put forth by the Alabama criminal justice system, to let the truth be known. The resistance was there in order to keep the criminal justice system from having to say it was criminally wrong and did not hand out justice to everyone equally under the law.

The film does a great job of mining the stories of the key players and how they ended up where they are. It also points out the discriminatory nature of many people and areas that still exist in the South.

This is a moving film, and I know that anyone seeing it will be impacted by the excellent acting and story behind the characters. The scene where Richarson is put to death is so powerfully well done even though you never see the actual execution. You’d be hard-pressed to not be affected by this scene.

Jordan was terrific as Stevenson. He plays this character with kindness and driven compassion which is outwardly kept under wraps. Larson is lovely as a mother and woman who is driven to do the right thing regardless of the impact on her family. Foxx was sublime. I loved the way he slowly let his guard down with Stevenson as time passed. It’s a powerful performance. Nelson, as Myers was terrific. His critical role in the story was only outshone by his ability to draw the audience into his persona and how he got to be the person he was. You cannot take your eyes off him when he’s on the screen. Morgan was phenomenal. I loved his character and maybe because I am also a Vietnam Veteran. I’ve met numerous street people who are vets that got lost along the way. His story touched me deeply. Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham wrote an outstanding script and dug in where it needed to. Cretton got incredible performances from the entire cast and needs to be commended for bringing this subject to film.

Overall: A film worth seeing as the story it tells helps us learn who we are and what we need to change.

Angel Has Fallen

First Hit: Highly implausible, slightly boring at times, but there were a couple of touching scenes.

The film begins with Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) moving through rooms in a building shooting and being shot at. It looks and feels real. Then he gets captured, and we discover it is a training exercise at Wade Jennings’ (Danny Huston) new combat training facility.

Wade and Mike talk, and we learn that they are old combat friends. Their lives’ have diverged with Wade setting up this large facility hoping to obtain government contracts to train people and participate in wars for the USA. Mike is a Secret Service Agent, married, with a young daughter, and in line to become a Director.

Mike is shown taking pills to alleviate headaches and other body pains, a result from his past work. As a long-standing Secret Service Agent, he works closely with President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), and during a fishing excursion, the President and all the Secret Service Agents are attacked by a fleet of tiny drones.

The drones kill everyone except Mike and The President because they dive into the water. The audience knows who sent the drones, and it takes very little time for the audience to figure out who is behind the perpetrator’s scheme.

The film attempts to make this story interesting by having the FBI determine that Mike set up the presidential assassination, so they are after him. Having been rescued with the President after the attempt, they lock him up, but of course he escapes their custody. However, relying on this worn storyline, and knowing this isn’t true, there is no suspense in this film, and it now must rely solely on the action being good enough to keep the audience engaged.

For me, it didn’t. It was too predictable, not very inventive, and the film felt like it was trying to be good, but it didn’t flow smoothly or interestingly.

The best parts were when Mike found and engaged with his long-lost father, Clay (Nick Nolte). Clay is a very crusty Vietnam veteran living entirely off the grid deep in a forest area of Virginia. When Wade’s agents, who are looking to kill Mike, come to assassinate them on Clay’s land, Clay’s skills as a mercenary are a hoot to watch in action.

Teaming up, Clay and Mike head out from Clay’s cabin and try to find out who’s behind the assassination attempt and to save The President because someone clearly wants him dead.

When Clay shows up at Mike’s home and surprises his wife Leah (Piper Perabo), the scene is both touching and funny.

Everyone knows how the film ends, and although The President spends most of the time in a coma, his last two scenes, one with Mike and one with his Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson) make up for some of the film’s failings.

Butler was satisfactory in this role as Banning. Given the prognosis from doctors about his physical condition, I sincerely doubt that he would have been able to live through the action he was involved in. But that is movie life, they set up the impossible, but he succeeds. Nolte was a hoot. The Butler remark that he could be mistaken for the Unabomber was perfect. Nolte does a superlative crusty mean. Perabo had a small role, but her sincerity and nature were terrific. The film might be better served if she were more integral to the story. Freeman was his calm intelligent self and always makes a good president, or God. Huston was excellent as the “lion” who wanted to live a life of a lion and fight to the end. Nelson as VP was too easy to see through, from the get-go. Robert Mark Kamen and Matt Cook wrote the screenplay. The issue with it is that it used worn-out ideas in an old concept. There was nothing refreshingly new here except using small drones, in a swarm, to make an assassination attempt. Ric Roman Waugh has a mediocre script to work with, but many scenes seemed to take too long and had little value.

Overall: Just wasn’t exciting enough to keep me engaged.

The Incredible Hulk

First Hit: The second version of this comic book character is much better than the first, but nothing special.

This is the version I was hoping to see the first time through. Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner as someone with depth, intelligence and thoughtfulness.

The film begins with Bruce hiding out in an expansive (fly in shot is great) poor section of a large city in Brazil. We find Bruce working a shift in a soft drink bottling plant where, as a gringo, he isn’t favored by other male workers who push him along with prodding and baiting him to react.

However, the boss likes him because he can also fix electronic problems with an overhead crane. We also see him in his little hole-in-the-wall home communicating via computer with someone in the US named Mr. Blue (played by Tim Blake Nelson).

Mr. Blue is attempting to assist him in discovering a cure to his propensity for becoming the Hulk when he gets angry. There is also a scene where Bruce is learning to control his anger and heart rate through a form of meditation.

All this is to say that there was a lot of effort to make Bruce a human being first and the Hulk second. This was effective and made the film interesting because Norton made this person someone worth caring about.

However, the film is pretty standard in the chase and be chased genre with the eventual winner known.

Edward Norton does an excellent job of bringing humanness and thoughtfulness to the Hulk. Liv Tyler is sweet and uninspiring as his girlfriend Betty. William Hurt playing General Ross, Betty’s father, and the person who is the pursuer of the Hulk, phoned it in. There were members of the audience who applauded, as did I, when Lou Ferrigno, as a security guard, showed up on screen.

Overall: This would be a good film to see on video and otherwise save you money.