21 (2008)

“21” -– based on a true-story -– is a casino heist film of a different color, relying on card-counting for its anti-heroes to steal from the rich. Speaking of color, the characters onscreen are of a different color too, as the real suspects were Asian-Americans. On film, it’s WASPed up the nil. (Producers say they tried really hard to find college-age Asian actors.) But I digress. The story: MIT math geek Ben (Jim Sturgess) digs the class held by a snarky professor (Kevin Spacey) and is soon asked to join the man’s off-hours Blackjack Club. But it’s a con, and the prof has his students pulling down Vegas casinos in front of all seeing eyes, two of which belong to Laurence Fishburne. Will Ben, a good lower-middle-class boy with an hourly job and a wish to attend Harvard Med, wake up from his Gordon Gekko dive and do good? Put aside the race issue, we’re watching an Eagle Scout build a fire with flashy editing, loud music, and the lure of sex stewing faux suspense to make us forget the guy’s a freakin’ Eagle Scout. The ending is so upbeat happy, Ben could be Roy Hobbs. C+

Taken 2 (2012)

“Taken 2” is pure GOP values: ’Merica is pure and strong, and every last Muslim is an evil perv-o killer, and women are helpless creatures who cannot drive a car or plan a vacation without male supervision. Fox News would endorse it. The themes are serious, I think. Liam Neeson again plays the ex-CIA agent who shoots,stabs, stomps, and rips apart dozens of evil foreigners to save his daughter (Maggie Grace) and now kidnapped wife (Famke Janssen) from slavery. We’re in Turkey and Islam looms like a disease, and every person of color -– be it police to hotel clerk -- is part of the conspiracy. Fox News. It’s all less than 90 minutes, so the trip is mercifully short, and Neeson is fast becoming a thinking man’s Chuck Norris, even if the thinking is fascist and WASP. To get a PG-13, director Olivier Megaton (his real name?) goes bloodless and when necks break in Neeson’s fists, we hear no sound because snapping bone is somehow more offensive than gunfire. The editing is terrible, and so  is the slant that Neeson (wonderful actor) is taking onscreen. D+

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

John Carpenter’s cult-classic, >$100,000-budget action thriller “Assault of Precinct 13” is the parent to all “siege” movies that would come a decade later, including “Die Hard.” Itself a modern re-make of “Alamo”-type flicks, this also was to be set in the West, but Carpenter could not swing the budget. The bare plot: A mysterious pack of gang members attack a L.A. ghetto police station on the eve of its closure, trapping a stalwart African-American officer (Austin Stoker), several women, and convicted felons (including Darwin Joston) inside. “Assault” is a midnight feature that can play as a maybe-zombie film -– the gang members dabble with bowls of blood and are all but suicidal. Deep-thoughts: It’s a post-Vietnam American meltdown, or a satire on 1950s films that celebrated white heroics and all but demeaned blacks, flipped on its, middle finger held out proud. But the heck with deep anything, this is a blazin’ cool cheap “B” flick that excels its origins and is seriously nasty fun. The title, by the way, is infamously wrong. The besieged station is District 13, Precinct 9. “Assault of Precinct 9”? Hmmm. Na. “13.” B+

The Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day (2009)

It took Troy Duffy 10 years to make “The Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day,” a sequel to his 1999 fascist romp about two devout Christian brothers (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery) doing God’s work. If God we’re a White Master Race sociopath hell-bent on mass murder.

Part 1 was repugnant, sexist and cruelly anti-gay, on top of being a poorly made rip-off off of Tarantino, Woo, Scorsese and Coppola. One would hope that Duffy matured during the past decade. He did not. This is the same piss-poor film, only more offensive. Hate Mexicans? You’ll love this.

Here the brothers are self-exiled in Ireland until the vile murder of a priest in Boston calls them back into action. The boys soon find themselves in cahoots with an FBI agent (Julie Benz), very much in line with Willem Dafoe’s self-loathing gay agent from film one, as they hunt and kill. Benz’s agent dresses in stiletto heels and high-dollar call girl outfits, when she’s not imagining herself as an Annie Oakley stripper.

Her first line: “I’m so smart, I make smart people feel retarded.” Benz outdoes Dafoe in trash acting with the worst Dixie accent I’ve ever heard. Her character is not so much a woman of power (FBI agent), but a cartoon written by a man who hates (fears?) strong females. Added screen treats: Several close-ups of a fat man’s ass after he shits his pink panties. How subtle. Duffy is an anvil to intelligence. His fans, fuck them.

The first film’s only redeeming asset was Reedus and Flanery. Not here. Reedus is listless, while Flanery looks like a strung out Meth addict barely able to stay awake. I still can't decide if Duffy is, in fact, a self-loathing homosexual or a full-blown hater, the Fred Phelps/Bull Connor of trash cinema. In both films Duffy has his brothers shower together, and the camera stares in slo-mo awe at their naked bodies as water runs down. You decide.

The final scene promises a Part III, as the brothers mock-shoot a group of black men. Stay classy, Duffy.There is not one redeeming person of color in this film, which must play constant at Klan rallies and Tea Parties, gun nuts crying, “Take our country back, ” with dreams of  popping off minorities. Rarely has a film ever made me so sick in the soul, so ashamed of having watched to the end credits. F

The Blind Side (2009)

It’s impossible to hate “The Blind Side.” It has a story so uplifting it could make Sarah Palin and Barack Obama fist bump and hug if they double-dated on movie night. The movie’s “based on a true story” tag is the sweet honey in the hot tea. Oh, and it’s got sports. I also saw apple pie in one scene. Hand to God.

The story is well-known: Vastly wealthy Memphis couple Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw) are wildly wealthy conservative Christians with a hugely successful Taco Bell franchise and memberships with the NRA. One cold rainy night, they take in wondering homeless black teen Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron). The boy has never had a true family, a sit-down holiday dinner or even a bed to sleep in. This family is a savior. He needs them. They grow to need him, too.

This story kicks every “rich Republicans are racists” cliché in the teeth. Without a “tsk-tsk” to be heard. And folks like these aren’t normal Hollywood movie fare. Even as a proud liberal, I know the conservative Christian class of America is vastly, wholly underserved by the entertainment community. No wonder the film, directed by feel-good master John Lee Hancock, was a smash hit Oscar winner.

But I digress. Because of the Tuohys’ fortune and compassion, Oher is able to remain at a solid school, obtain a personal study tutor, play high school football and work his way toward college. University, of course, leads to the NFL’s Ravens. (If this is a spoiler, than I welcome you to Planet Earth.)

But it’s equally impossible for me to love “Blind Side.” The screenplay always, without exception, goes for cute, sweet or funny. Even during a major automobile crash. I get it, it’s a movie. An uplifting, “life is beautiful” Hollywood movie lost from the 1950s. But having a skinny-ass 8-year-old white boy running a 300-pound-plus black teen through football scenarios and calisthenics may be LOL funny and aww-so-sweet to some. I found it just damn icky as hell. And I don’t care if everyone swears its fact. It's bull. Throughout, Oher’s character is sidelined for such hi-jinks. Why? This is his story.

Bullock is truly a hoot to watch. She commands the screen as a headstrong woman with the tenacity and will power of a runaway train, who wears boutique clothing to the projects, pistol in purse. Did she deserve the Oscar? Ehhh. No. But you can’t deny it’s a good show she puts on. The real Lynette Twohy apparently is just as thrillingly alive. McGraw, wisely, ducks and covers and just smiles as the husband.

Sadly, the film does the same. B-