Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
Pulp is like crack for some filmmakers.
The lure of the lurid is undeniable. And I’m always fascinated by what happens when people dabble in pulp, when “serious” filmmakers embrace that desire and try their hand at some “low art” for a change. There are some filmmakers who walk the line between art and pulp, and some who erase it altogether. Right now, there are a few films playing here in LA that represent varying degrees of success in playing with pulp.
Right now, it’s still in limited release. Meaning Arclight crowds. But I’m hoping they have enough faith in this as an audience movie to roll it out wide in the weeks ahead. This is a nakedly entertaining movie, pun fully intended. I’ve been a David Cronenberg fan for as long as I’ve been in love with movies, and one of the things that fascinates me about his work is the way he mixes chilly intellect with an almost primal fear of the physical. Even when he was just getting started in his career, he seemed determine to take what was thought of as a trashy genre and class it up. I’ve always thought of him as a world-class filmmaker, but it seems that it has only been in recent years that he has finally shrugged off whatever labels keep horror filmmakers in an artistic ghetto, and finally the mainstream seems to have made room for Cronenberg. Or maybe it’s that he’s starting to have fun playing to a broader audience, tweaking them with more gentle subversions.
Either way, he’s found a second wind that is truly impressive. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was a critical and commercial success for him, but more importantly, it brought him together with Viggo Mortensen. If these two decide to make working together a regular thing, I will be a very happy viewer indeed. Especially if they keep finding new ways to twist expectations. It’s impressive the way his last few films have been written by other people, yet they still manage to feel like natural parts of Cronenberg’s filmography. He once said “Civilization is repression,” and that’s an underlying idea in both A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and EASTERN PROMISES, that notion that repression is part of our human identity.
Using Viggo as his proxy, Cronenberg has been able to examine the same idea from different angles, and part of what makes the films so interesting taken back-to-back is the way the new one almost seems like a response to the one before. In both films, Viggo plays a person who wears several faces, but to very different ends. Both films deal with criminal underworlds, entire subcultures that hide in plain view. In both films, characters lie to themselves and to everyone around them in order to survive. It’s sort of amazing that AHOV was written by Josh Olson and this film was written by Steven Knight, that they aren’t both from the same author originally. I think that’s a real tribute to Cronenberg as a reader of material... to be able to tease these things out of these totally disparate pieces of work... that’s what I think he’s always done well. With THE FLY or with THE DEAD ZONE or with NAKED LUNCH, he’s found a way to take a piece of source material and somehow bend it to his will.
A young girl staggers into a London pharmacy, speaking only Russian. She bleeds freely from between her legs and collapses. She’s rushed to a nearby hospital where she gives birth, and one of the people who attends to her is a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts). The girl dies in childbirth, but the child is saved, and Anna takes it upon herself to see if she can track down any family for the little girl. She finds a diary in the girl’s belongings, a diary all in Russian. Getting it translated turns out to be the first step in Anna’s gradual immersion into the notorious vory v zakone gangland underworld, as she learns just how the parentage of that baby girl relates to the power struggles of one particular criminal family.
Basically, her dealings bring her into the orbit of three men. There’s Kirill, played by Vincent Cassel at his animal best. He’s a big dumb ape in this, a perfect foil for Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a quiet but laser-sharp driver who seems determined to work his way up the ladder of the organization. Sitting at the top of this particular shitheap is Semyon (Armi Mueller-Stahl), who stops just short of actual scenery-chewing as a not-terribly-mysterious patriarchal figurehead. He’s not bad, but it’s not really his film. I was far more interested in what happened between Nikolai and Kirill, or between Nikolai and Anna.
If there’s one thing I am surprised by about this film, it’s the chaste nature of the relationship between the two of them. After the frank sexual material in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, which was impressive not only because of the adult nature in which Cronenberg shot the scenes but also because of how well they were used to communicate important character information, I think I expected more of the same in this film. Especially when you’ve got Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts, two fairly frank actors who have certainly not been shy in the past. It seems a natural reason to explain why Anna doesn’t just run for the cover of police protection right away in this film, and without a connection like this, it’s hard to believe how brazen she is about poking her nose into obviously criminal business. I think Watts is given a fairly thankless role here, and the script ultimately cheats her by marginalizing her as the film rolls on.
The good news about that is that as her part gets smaller, there’s more time spent with Nikolai, and Mortensen is fascinating in the second half. As you learn more about who he is and what he really wants, there’s this larger story that you suddenly realize is playing out. You look at Viggo’s body, covered in these tattoos that tell a story, and you realize that this character’s been living that story out up until now, and this is just one chess move of many, and when the film ends, Viggo’s story is really just turning a corner. Nothing’s over. Nothing’s resolved. There’s no ending here. This movie’s about the brief moment where his story intersects with Anna’s story. Why that happens. How that happens. And when that’s over, when that random connection is totally played out, the film is over. I like that feeling at the end of the film, that sensation that something larger is playing out at the edges of this movie.
Cronenberg’s become a master at shooting close-quarters combat with these last two movies, trying out some really visceral techniques for making these scenes memorable. The fight that takes place in the steam baths in this film is a classic, something that instantly gets added to a list of great violent cinematic set pieces. Much has been written about Viggo Mortensen’s nudity in the scene, to the extent that David Cronenberg actually discussed AICN in the FILM COMMENT interview, talking about the test screening review that ran here and how the reviewer was “obsessed” with Viggo’s balls in his review.
Sure enough, when Nikolai is surprised in the steam room, he’s wearing just a towel, and as soon as he starts to fight for his life, that towel goes missing. This is a primal fight that goes on longer than you think it possibly can, and there’s real impact to the violence. The audience I saw it with recoiled, but they also sat up and leaned in closer in case there was more. It’s exhilarating, but it also leaves you jittery, freaked out. The very first scene in the film features an act of such extreme violence that I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some walk-outs before the credits are even done, but I think that’s Cronenberg testing you. Because you know how far he’ll go, and because you know that he’s willing to really fuck a character up, there’s a sequence near the end involving a baby and a set of steps leading to water that carries more genuine suspense and fear than the entire running time of SHOOT ‘EM UP. And I liked SHOOT ‘EM UP... it’s just that you knew while watching it that nothing was ever going to happen to that baby. It was safe. Here, you’re pretty sure Cronenberg would be more than happy to kill the baby right in front of you, and that makes the entire film feel more dangerous.
It’s not a perfect film. I think it’s a little obvious in places, a little heavy-handed, a wee bit purple prosed, but overall, I think it’s one of the most compulsively watchable films that Cronenberg’s made. This is one I’ll definitely want to see again, and even when I respect Cronenberg’s work, I’m not always itching to experience it a second time, so that’s saying something.
When I went to see 3:10 TO YUMA, I did so on complete impulse. My wife and my son were taking an afternoon nap, and I checked the times at both the Winnetka All Stadium 21 and the Northridge Fashion Center All Stadium 10. They’re each about five minutes from my house. If that. Walking distance. The Fashion Center had a better start time, and I decided to check out Mangold’s western, figuring I could be back about the time everyone started to get out of bed. I was one of about seven people in the theater at 2:20 in the afternoon, and based on the lobby, I’m sure none of the other films playing were any more full. I’ve avoided reading much of anything about the film, but it seems like what little I have read has been generally enthusiastic. As a big fan of the genre, I walked in with fingers crossed.
And, for the most part, I’m pretty happy with what I got. I can definitely see the fingerprints of screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas on this one, and in its own way, this is just as popcorn slick as 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS. Mangold isn’t out to deconstruct or reinvent the western with this remake... he’s just enjoying the visceral pleasures of making one. This is a guy’s western, an action movie with a great set-up and ticking clock. It’s designed to entertain first. There are two great movie star parts here... but both of them end up being a little underwritten. They both go through some pretty seismic personal shifts in the film, but the shifts happen because they have to, not because they feel fairly motivated. It’s an entertaining film, but sometimes at the cost of logic. How much it bothers you will play a big part in how the film’s last 20 minutes work for you. I thought it all got a little silly, overearnest and unbelievable. But it’s well put-together, well-played. If you roll with it, I’m sure the film works like gangbusters. I didn’t mind the silliness, but it certainly kept me from completely enjoying myself.
I think the reason I wanted a little more from the film is because Crowe and Bale have real chemistry, and there’s an interesting macho dynamic between them, this game of one-upsmanship with Bale’s son (played by Logan Lerman, who bears a strikingly creepy resemblance to a young Christian Slater) in the middle, his sense of right and wrong at stake. At its best, 3:10 TO YUMA is sort of rough and sort of gritty and sort of fun and sort of serious. There are a few big stunt moments that are almost too big, almost too Hollywood, and a few touches like an exploding horse (laugh out loud funny, IMO) seem to skirt gratuitous excess. But then again... that’s what is fun about doing pulp material. You get to indulge that sort of excess. And if you do it right, it becomes a virtue. I think 3:10 TO YUMA makes the mistake of trying to be too important at the end, but just a little bit. It’s never obnoxious... it just tries a little too hard, and there are certainly worse sins a film can commit. Marco Beltrami’s score helps nail the tone down in several crucial places, and Phedon Papamichael’s photography is bright, clean, properly burnished. Mangold manages to effectively illustrate why he loves westerns, and it’s infectious. If westerns all worked at least as hard as 3:10 TO YUMA, the genre would probably be much more healthy than it is.
Speaking of which, I’ll have my review of JESSE JAMES up a little later today. I’m also going to write up Larry Fessenden’s new film, THE LAST WINTER, as well as Craig Zobel’s debut feature, GREAT WORLD OF SOUND. I’ve got interviews with two directors that you’ll see here this weekend, and then at least another six or seven reviews on deck for next week. Busy, busy, busy...
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
