Divergent (2014)

Dystopian future youth dramas are getting as much cinema attention as comic book movies, so watching “Divergent” will give you nothing no one has not seen in “Hunger Games” -– good films -– and “Host” –- terrible, awful flick. “Divergent” takes place in a post-war Chicago where humanity has been divided up into factions according to dominant virtue -– smart, giving, war-like, servant, you get the idea. To have multiple virtues, being divergent, is a mark of death under the city’s queen bee (Kate Winslet, all cold). Our heroine is Beatrice (Shailene Woodley, star of near every movie this year), who is from a servant family, but cops multiple traits, mostly warrior. This makes her No. 1 target, assuming she can survive the hand-to-hand and gun/knife combat training of her new war tribe. Does she? Of course, she does. This is film 1 in a series. Woodley is great in the role, going from young and unsure to a survivor of tragedy, so she more than makes up for the ehh side-characters and an odd lack of true horror. I might be playing unfair as no one here carries the menace of Donald Sutherland leering at Jennifer Lawrence. B

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is a 170-minute endurance test thud thud thuding loud as slick CGI and slo-mo explosions litter the screen with buildings, trains, and cars crashing and people running about, always at magic hour. In Bay’s world, every day has five sunsets. The original cast is out, replaced by Mark Wahlberg as a Texas inventor/redneck/father with a Boston accent who happens upon wounded alien robot hero Optimus Prime -– stoic Autobot leader -– and ends up chased by Uncle Sam thugs led by Kelsey Grammer. Our heroes bolt to Utah then Chicago and then Hong Kong, because in China everyone knows kung fu. And Asia means box office coin. Thousands of people die as robots fight and Wahlbeg’s dad saves his pretty teen girl (Nicola Peltz) whose ass Bay glares at, endlessly. The script talks the death of original cinema early on, but “T4” unironically regurgitates films 1-3 and stacks bewildering logic lapses one upon the other. Greatest jaw-dropper: Beijing and Hong Kong within a short drive. Even by the greatest allowance for “dumb” fun and the occasional jolt of a cool image (all those sunsets), Bay’s films are cinema’s death. Soulless, brainless empty robots. D

The Untouchables (1987) and Gangster Squad (2013)

Double bill: Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” with Elliot Ness versus Al Capone, and “Gangster Squad,” with L.A. cops against Mickey Cohen. Both are true cops-and-mobs stories repainted with Hollywood final blowout action scenes. Why allow Frank Nitti his suicide when Ness can toss him off a building? “Squad” plays looser with truth. 

Such is film. Facts hit the floor faster than bodies. In 200 words, my take downs on these mob take-down films.

“Untouchables” –- also based on the rah-rah TV show – follows Eagle Scout/U.S. Treasury agent Ness (Kevin Costner) as he brings in three like-minded heroes (Sean Connery as wise old cop, Andy Garcia as hothead cop, and Charles Martin Smith as nerd cop) to nail Robert De Niro’s Capone. Smart casting and smart-looking film. 

It smells of Chicago and spent bullets. De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet put us in gorgeous locales -– trains station, courthouses, and filthy red alleyways. Dialogue pops like spent lead: Connery barking about knives at a “gun party” is classic. 

I was 13 in ’87 and this became my Instant Favorite Film. The violence, male bravado, scope, and that shoot-out on the stairs. It’s a stellar cops-and-gangsters fantasy for… teenage boys. I’m wiser now, and the red-blood love has waned. This is a sloppy-ass film riddled with dubious continuity errors -– moving corpses, that wondering elevator in the assassination scene, a terrible voice dub throughout, and logic tossed aside in a courtroom finale. Too many scenes make me cringe. 

Was De Palma so in love with his own (admittedly great) style, he forgot the importance of details? Hell if I know. Costner is too fantastic to care. B+

“Squad” whiffs fake as “Untouchables” feels immersed in Chicago lore. You can smell the wet paint. I read Ellroy. Call me biased. Josh Brolin is WWII Army Special Forces vet John O’Mara, now a cop assigned to stop New York-bred Cohen (Sean Penn) from becoming the West Coast Capone.

O’Mara is very Ness to the point I believe writer Will Beall watched “Untouchables” on repeat. Lines are lifted whole. O’Mara also has his three heroes: Robert Patrick as wise old cop, Ryan Gosling as hothead cop, and Giovanni Ribisi as nerd cop. Toss in retro-progression with Anthony Mackie as a black patrolman and Michael Pena as a Hispanic flatfoot named Navidad. (Cringe.) 

Plot: O’Mara’s guys shoot the shit out of Cohen’s guys, who do the same back. Penn is comically spittle-tossing evil, his performance falls into hysterics. I laughed my ass off when a ridiculously dickensesque shoeshiner gets whacked. I gather director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) wasn’t going for giggles among the blood and rape. 

As Ness says, “You aren’t from Chicago.” Do not pretend. C

Lawless (2012)

If you watch the 1930s-set backwoods gangster flick “Lawless” and don’t know better, and you’d be a major idiot not to know better, you might think tiny, mountainous Franklin County, Va., is over the hill and through the woods and one covered bridge over from big bad Windy City Chicago. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter (and rock god) Nick Cave, who previously collaborated on the excellent “The Proposition” and the very good “The Road,” likely believe so.

But I digress, as I always do with the details. 

The duo has taken the wonderfully titled non-fiction family-history novel “The Wettest County in the World” by (my proximity) local author Matt Bondurant and drably re-titled it as “Lawless.” It follows a backwoods trio of Bondurant brothers (Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, and Jason Clarke) who moonlight as moonshiners, selling the vile-looking homemade hooch during the days of Prohibition. Sure enough, things go wrong. In the span of just a few weeks, a (1) former go-go dancer, (2) infamous mob boss, and (3) corrupt federal agent -– all from Chicago, all on separate missions in life -– end up in wee Rocky Mount, and onto the brothers, they respectively, 1) Land a job at the family diner/gas station, 2) Sniff out killer booze to sell back home, and 3) Terrorize the siblings with endlessly wicked means of unlawful law enforcement. The newcomers are played by 1) Jessica Chastain, 2) Gary Oldman, and 3) Guy Pearce. 

The Rocky Mount and Chicago depicted here each must have one only dirt road going out, and it meets in the middle, and provide light-speed travel a la “Star Trek.” Hell, today in real life, it takes roughly 12 hours to get from Rocky Mount to Chicago. Here, pre-Interstate, pre-cruise control, it is magically faster. How fast is to get to Philadelphia? Does the title refer to liquor running, or the rules of physics, time, and distance?

But no matter these logic lapses, nor the cliché dialogue, “Lawless” floats and sinks on the acting. I’ll focus on the guys as the women (Mia Wasikowska also co-stars as a love interest) are only allowed to look “purty” and be supportive to their menfolk. Tom “Bane” Hardy grunts most of his scenes to ill-advised comic effect, while Clarke howls madly with his slimly written character. LeBeouf, former son of Indiana Jones, gives his best as a wimpy runt who must become a hardened man, but his character arc is foolish in the end. Oldman’s nasty scenes are a mere but oh-so-welcome series of cameos.

It’s –- shocker -- Pearce that near kills this film. “Proposition,” “Memento” and “L.A. Confidential” are each new classics, and he excels in all. Here, he overacts himself right out of the movie as a sissy snot named Rakes, channeling Dennis Hopper playing Dame Edna playing an endlessly psychotic version of super-agent-man Elliot Ness with a subscription to GQ for Sadists. Sporting ridiculously greased and parted hair, and shaved eyebrows, Rakes fears blood, and yet –- it is inferred -– gets his thrills raping crippled boys after he murders them in the woods. In a gangster flick in the New York of Mars by David Lynch on full-tilt “Wild at Heart” craziness, his character would stick out as a ridiculous clown. Here? Please.

Oh, one piece of divine greatness: Legendary bluegrass singer and Southwestern Virginia native Ralph Stanley covers the Velvet Underground’s “White Light /White Heat” at film’s end, and it’s an absolutely riveting, soul crushing performance that deserves a far better movie to precede it. For that matter, the entire music score, led by the genius Cave, elevates the movie, especially a breath-taking church singing which hits the soul dead center with pure joy-of-God beauty that can uplift an agnostic. The film misses. C

Source Code (2011)

Duncan Jones’ “Source Code” is a wild take on “Strangers on a Train” – except two men don’t meet and conspire, one guy goes inside another’s mind – literally -- to stop a massive Armageddon massacre on a commuter train in Chicago. Jake Gyllenhaal is the soldier who keeps finding himself, “Groundhog Day” style, placed inside the noggin of a school teacher who is now deceased, a victim of a train explosion. The dire mission given to Gyllenhaal’s soldier: Stop the bomber. His handlers are Jeffrey Wright, all wiggly, whacky mad scientist, and Vera Farmiga, all stiff as a month-old pretzel. Will Jake stop the killer? Will he fall in love with the young woman (Michelle Monahan) in the next seat? For 75 minutes of this sci-fi time-travel twister, I was stoked to find out. I loved Jones’ instant-cult-classic “Moon,” and this flick also follows a loner hero. But then just at the climax, the film doesn’t just go off the rails, it commits suicide in a jaw-dropper immolation of Hollywood hokum and nonsense. As the end credits rolled, I sat stunned wondering if Jones really intended to dis teachers so, and if he is a one-hit wonder. A huge let down. C+