FILM REVIEW OF ''COLD BLOOD" (2019)

French writer/director Frédéric Petitjean makes his feature film debut with “Cold Blood,” (** OUT OF ****) a somber but suspenseful, low-budget, crime thriller set in the snow-swept wilderness of rural Washington state.  Veteran actor Jean Reno toplines in the familiar role of a professional hitman who prefers peace and solitude to the chaos and anarchy of the city.  Nowhere near as entertaining as “Le Femme Nikita” or “Leon: The Professional,” “Cold Blood” qualifies as a cat and mouse thriller between a quarry and its prey.  Imagine a slight spin on the Stephen King movie “Misery” (1990) where a woman saved a famous author after a car crash and confined him to a bed where she maintained him in excruciating captivity.  “Cold Blood” depicts a somewhat similar storyline.  A young girl has an accident in the middle of nowhere, and a suspicious hermit--a hitman in hiding--helps her recover at his secluded cabin.  The two suspect each other of treachery, but the film plays out under different circumstances than “Misery.” 

Filmed largely on location in the Ukraine, “Cold Blood” benefits immeasurably from the atmospheric, widescreen cinematography of “Fifth Element” lenser Thierry Arbogast.  “Cold Blood” is serene looking, but beneath that serenity lurks evil.  Reno is as cold and calculating as he was in “Le Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional,” but he has been cast here as the villain rather than a hero.  Sarah Lind portrays Melody, the daughter of an underworld crime czar, who plans to avenge the murder of a father whom she barely knew. Joe Anderson is a tenacious N.Y.P.D. detective who never gives up a case.  Happily, Petitjean doesn’t drag out the obvious, and “Cold Blood” doesn’t wear out its welcome before the villain receives his just comeuppance.  Nevertheless, despite its many contemplative strengths, this tense movie is neither a date night outing nor a supercharged shoot’em up.

“Cold Blood” opens with a lone figure careening recklessly through mountainous white terrain on a snowmobile.  A sudden accident launches the rider into a head over heels trajectory into the sky as if propelled from a catapult.  The rider smashes into the ground, and the impact knocks the helmet clean off, so the victim tumbling into the snow is revealed to be a young woman. When she manages to regain consciousness, Melody (Sarah Lind of “The Humanity Bureau”) finds a tree branch partially embedded in her thigh.  Mustering her nerve against the horrific pain, this dark-haired twentysomething removes a fragment of the tree branch.  During the crash, she skinned up her face, and she has blood caked on her forehead. 

Afterward, Melody crawls on her belly down a pristine white hillside, leaving a trail of bright red blood until she passes out again near a remote cabin by a lake where a solitary figure sits ice water fishing.  After Henry discovers her body inexplicably on his property, he carries Melody into his cabin and dresses her wounds as best he can, considering they are seventy miles from civilization.  Moreover, reclusive as he is, Henry isn’t prepared to accommodate guests, especially injured ones who require medical treatment. Fortunately, Henry has enough medical training and the equipment to keep Melody alive.  Mind you, the logistics of Petitjean’s plot calls for Melody’s injuries to be moderate but not life-threatening.  She is in no position to rummage around Henry’s cabin and ends up tearing open the wounds that she inflicted on herself during the accident.

At this point, Petitjean leaves the two in the cabin and flashbacks ten months earlier to the bustling metropolis of New York City, where Henry is walking on a treadmill at a fitness club.  A sleazy millionaire industrialist with organized crime ties, Kessler (Jean-Luc Olivier) joins Henry later in a steamy sauna accompanied by his two bodyguards.  Somehow, after Henry excuses himself from the sauna, one of the bodyguards notices Kessler is bleeding from a wound.  Later, at an entirely different place, Henry removes an inconspicuous attaché case crammed with currency from a coin locker. 

At Kessler’s funeral, two plainclothes detectives, Kappa (Joe Anderson of “Amelia”) and his partner Davies (newcomer Ihor Ciszkewycz), discuss the peculiar nature of the industrialist’s demise.  According to the so-called ‘criminal’s manual,’ killers are supposed to attend their victim’s funeral, but Henry knows better than to show up for the last rites.  Kappa explains to Davies that the bullet which killed Kessler was made from ice, so the police cannot use ballistics to trace the gun.  Mind you, the ice bullet gag is an old assassin’s trick dating as far back as “Corruption” (1933) where a man was shot and killed with an ice bullet to frame another fellow for the murder.  Although the case looks like a dead end for Davies, Kappa pursues it relentlessly. Anyway, everything comes full circle twenty-one minutes later as the gal who wrecked her snowmobile arrives in Spokane to rent a bike.

Of course, whether she wants to admit it, Melody doesn’t have a clue about what she is letting herself in for when she stalks a career assassin who carefully plans everything.  Indeed, as we learn later, Henry knew the odds were outlandish a pretty damsel-in-distress would show up conveniently near his front door with injuries which weren’t fatal but required immediate care.  Petitjean ignores pesky reality.  Naturally, Melody needed an excuse to justify her presence.  Apparently, however, it never occurred to our heroine that she might have killed herself and accomplished nothing. 

“Cold Blood” amounts to a thinly plotted stalemate between these two characters for most of its 91 minutes.  They treat each other with extreme caution and utter few words.  They behave like two predators circling each other, biding their time for the right moment to catch the other off-guard.  Melody has no idea Henry is prepared for virtually any contingency.  Simultaneously, Henry cannot imagine the unsatisfying surprise ending that catches everybody—heroine, villain, and audience--napping.  Altogether, “Cold Blood” is a little too anemic for its own good.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE SCORE'' (2001)

Crime pays only for the best of the bad guys in director Frank Oz’s “The Score,” (*** out of ****) an entertaining, straightforward, procedural heist melodrama in the tradition of Michael Cimino’s “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” (1974) and John McTiernan’s “The Thomas Crown Affair” remake. Not surprisingly, a gifted, powerhouse casting of Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, and Angela Bassett make “The Score” both interesting and easy to watch. Oz depicts the crime of safe-cracking in fairly realistic, down-to-earth terms, in his version of the oft-told tale about the professional criminal that wants to quit the rackets and settle down. Nothing in “The Score” struck me as implausible. Anybody over age thirty who suffers from attention deficit disorder might find it difficult to endure both the quieter, contemplative moments and the deliberate, suspenseful pacing. Not surprisingly, too, Edward Norton excels as a lawbreaker modeled on Kevin Spacey’s Keyser Soze character in Bryan Singer’s first-rate epic “The Usual Suspects.”

All performances in “The Score” are above reproach, even Brando’s flaky Sidney Greenstreet stock character with his Truman Capote wardrobe. Scenarists Kario Salem of “The Fast and the Furious,” Lem Dobbs of “The Limey,” and Scott Marshall Smith of “Men of Honor” have crafted a derivative but solid nail-biter based on a story by Daniel E. Taylor. Never do they let these thieves off the hook, and they confound their every move in an intricately woven yarn of disasters and double-crosses. “The Score” reminded me of those classy, high-stakes European crime thrillers from the 1950s, such as Jules Dassin’s “Rififi” (1954), and “Topkapi” (1964), Giuliano Montaldo’s “Grand Slam” (1968), Henri Verneuil’s “Any Number Can Play (1963), and “The Burglars” (1972), Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi’s “They Came To Rob Las Vegas” (1968), Peter Colllinson’s “The Italian Job” (1968), and Michele Lupo’s “The Master Touch” (1974).

Sure, Hollywood has pulled off its share of these sagas, such as John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950), Phil Karlson’s “Five against the House” (1955), and Lewis Milestone’s “Ocean’s Eleven” (1959), but they don’t compare with these classics. Ironically, “The Score” qualifies as the flip side of Oz’s earlier comedy “Bowfinger,” but the latter boasts a more upbeat ending. Where Steve Martin struggles to produce a movie around Eddie Murphy’s nutty actor in “Bowfinger,” Robert De Niro must outsmart Edward Norton’s devious miscreant during a complex heist. The conflict in “The Score” boils down to an account about the survival of the fittest. The worse criticism is the writers have visited the well once too often for inspiration.

Robert De Niro of “Ronin” plays Nick Wells, a world-weary professional safecracker who owns a jazz club in Montreal when he isn’t pulling jobs out of the country for Max (Marlon Brando of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”), his longtime friend and fence. Nick has survived over the years because he rarely takes chances. Nick recites a speech that sounds like the speech he gave in Michael Mann’s superlative “Heat” about knowing when to walk away from a job. The opening scene brilliantly demonstrates Nick’s imperturbable under pressure in tight spots aplomb. As he is breaking into a safe at a mansion during a late-night party, two young lovers interrupt him. When they cuddle, Nick conceals himself behind a couch. When the girl prefers to smoke a joint before having sex, her boyfriend leaves the darkened room in disgust. Nick grabs the hapless girl from behind when she spots his safecracking tools. He threatens her if she doesn’t keep quiet, and then coolly finishes the heist. Once again, Hollywood warns us smoking pot can get you into deep trouble you never imagined. Something similar happened in the Peter Hyams’ horror movie “Relic.” A deadly creature stumbles onto its first victim, a helpless security guard, and devours him. During the off screen chomping, the camera zooms into a smoldering marijuana cigarette that the guard had been smoking. The message is obvious. If the guard had not been where he was sneaking a few puffs of pot, he would never have been gobbled. Anyway, Nick gets away without being discovered because he believes in discipline. As he later tells an accomplice, “Talent means nothing. Lasting takes discipline.” Max delivers the bad news the day afterward, the person they had planned to sell the jewelry to has died. Nick is upset because he had to finance the jewel heist with $20-thousand of his own money. Max calms him down and tells him about a new job.

Nick wants to settle down with his flight attendant girlfriend, Diane (the lovely Angela Bassett of “Music from the Heart”), but she refuses to marry him if he continues his life of crime. Nick and Diane are seriously contemplating marriage when Max offers Nick a job that will pay $4-million. During their opening dialogue sequence, Nick and Diane discuss what sounds like a crime that Diane participated in with a partner who didn’t make it back from Istanbul. This plot point is left dangling; making it sound like Diane resembles the Pam Grier stewardess in Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” who smuggled in money. As much as he loves Diane, Nick has second thoughts. He wants to wed Diane, but the prospect of a $4-million paycheck and the potential for paying off the mortgage on his club appeals strongly to him. When Nick reveals his illicit plan to Diane, she walks out in a huff.

Meanwhile, things grow complicated because Max tells Nick that the job is in Montreal.
One of Nick’s standard rules is never to pull a job in his backyard, an idea Max instilled in him, but the payoff is so big that not even Max can resist. Later, Nick learns that Max is deep in debt to another criminal. Like Nick, Max wants to use the proceeds to clear himself. Getting Nick to agree to pull the job in Montreal isn’t as difficult as getting him to team up with Jack Teller (Edward Norton of “American X”), the guy who shopped the idea to Max in the first place. Jack bristles with ambition. He masquerades as a part-time janitor with cerebral palsy. All the guards and the head janitor treat Jack like a son, and he used their sympathy to case the Customs House. All classic crime movies have those scenes where the criminals learn everything that they need to know about who they are going to hit, such as routines, etc. This is what I mean by ‘case the joint.’

One of the chief problems with the script is the lack of a back story about how Jack learned about the object of his avarice. Jack wants to steal a 17th century French scepter smuggled into Canada in the leg of a piano, but Far Eastern insects have contaminated the piano. The authorities have decided to incinerate the piano so the bugs don’t spread their contagion. The Customs House officials discover the priceless scepter when Jack points it out as the legs blaze in the furnace. Jack aggravates Nick when he meets him in public doing his cerebral palsy act. Max and Nick argue about Jack. Nick sends his thuggish strong-arm man, Burt (Gary Farmer) to scare him off. Jack proves more resourceful than Nick imagine. Eventually, the two guys patch up their differences and decide to go forward with the heist. About the same time they learn that the Customs House officials are beefing up security. Nick turns to his hacker friend Stephen (Jamie Harrold) who lives in a dark basement at his mother’s house where he surrounds himself with computers. Clearly, the people who made “Live Free Or Die Hard” borrowed this idea with their Kevin Smith character. Anyway, Stephen comes through. “Give me a KayPro 64 and a dial tone and I can do anything,” he proclaims. They need Stephen to get them the specs for the super vault where the scepter is now stashed. More problems occur. Our anti-heroic heroes bribe a hacker inside the security firm. Nothing goes according to plan in “The Score,” and these chaotic screw-ups heighten the drama and its outcome.


Despite the obvious loopholes in the script, director Frank Oz gets away with this crime caper for the most part. He generates considerable tension during the logistical planning scenes when Nick searches for a safe entrance into the Customs House from the Montreal sewer system. Oz knows how to induce anxiety, especially when Nick and Jack have to bribe the computer hackers. Dressed from head to toe in commando garb, De Niro’s Nick Wells looks like the saboteur plumber from Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” when he breaks into the Customs House. Moviegoers who like to hear the explosions of uncooked popcorn kernels hitting the floor of a cinema during the taut crime sequence will relish this atmospheric white-knuckler. If you thrive on gratuitous nudity, sex, and violence set to the tune deafening rap music on a soundtrack, “The Score” is not for you. Jazz lovers will appreciate the cameos Mose Allison and Cassandra Wilson make in Nick’s nightclub.

FILM REVIEW OF ''WALKING TALL: LONE JUSTICE''

No, “Walking Tall: Lone Justice” (**1/2 out of ****) doesn’t resume where “Walking Tall: The Payback” ended. The major players in Dallas behind sleazy Howard Morris—Traxell Byrne (Jerry Cotton of “American Outlaws”) and his right-hand henchman, Lou Dowdy (Todd Terry of “The Anarchist Cookbook”)—got away scot-free. Neither were apprehended and held accountable for their perfidy. Whether this was a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers or a gaping hole is still debatable. Those two precipitated two of the most important events in “Walking Tall: The Payback.” In a sense, they served as plot puppeteers. They pulled strings and got the hero and the villain to dance to their tune. Instead, the “Lone Justice” in this genuine sequel refers to a ruthless Hispanic druglord, Octavio Perez (newcomer Rodrigo De la Rosa), who the Feds are prosecuting as a racketeer. Producer Andrew Stevens has a cameo as Octavio’s defense attorney. Tenacious FBI agent Kate Jenson (Yvette Nipar of “Vampire Klan”) and her rebellious daughter Samantha (Haley Ramm of “X-Men: The Last Stand”) return, and Nick is now Kate’s boyfriend much to Samantha’s chagrin. Nick’s mother, Emma Prescott (Gail Cronauer of “Boys Don’t Cry”) is also back in this follow-up. The story takes place initially in Dallas and then the characters retreat to Nick’s ranch in the sticks. When Nick isn’t battling the villains, Samantha and he bond, and she considers him more of a friend than an enemy. FBI Agent Marcia Tunney (Elizabeth Barondes of “The Forsaken”) emerges as the most interesting character.

“Walking Tall: Lone Justice” surpasses “Walking Tall: The Payback.” The Joe Halpin & Brian Strasmann screenplay is a hundred times better than their previous effort, but it isn’t without its flaws. Happily, “Walking Tall: Lone Justice” generated considerable suspense despite the cliches that clutter this familiar FBI versus the notorious drug felon narrative. This movie develops the theme of ‘teamwork.’ Furthermore, it features at least one example of judiciously placed foreshadowing. Pay attention to Nick and Samantha’s discussion about firearms in the barn. The villains pose a greater challenge to our heroes than the previous ones did and these villains are rather nefarious. They don’t mind amputating one FBI agents thumbs when she refuses to answer their questions. Our hero, Nick Prescott, finds himself in a tight situation or two. At one point, the villains have him tied up like Rambo was in “Rambo: First Blood, Part 2” when he was attached to mattress box springs and received jolts of electricity. Unfortunately, in spite of the superior script, director Trip Reed relies on annoying concertina zooms and frenetic jump cuts to not only intensify but also accelerate the action. The concertina zooms look jarring and the jump cuts that are designed to break up mundane actions are equally annoying. Neither of these cinematic devices adds anything to the story. On the other hand, they call attention to the lack of action.

The action unfolds with Nick driving to Dallas to see his girlfriend. Nick stops off at a convenience store to pick up fresh flowers for Kate and ice cream for dessert. This scene contains its share of humor and drama. While Nick searches for the appropriate flavor of ice cream, an African-American gangsta and his Hispanic sidekick try to rob the cashier. They demand that the cashier open the safe. Nick throws a can that knocks the poor cashier out cold and then he single-handedly thwarts the two robbers. The Hispanic robber tries to use marital arts moves on our hero and Nick routinely slings bags of potato chips at him before he takes him down. Although Nick kept the criminals from robbing the store, he winds up in jail for hitting the cashier with a can. Nevertheless, Kate comes down and gets him out of jail. Samantha, who doesn’t know Nick that well yet, sees him as a distraction for her mother who is too distracted by the demands of her job to pay her daughter the attention that her daughter deems suitable. Initially, tension mounts between Samantha and Nick.

Meanwhile, Kate is part of a prosecution case against Octavio. The Feds are protecting a witness against the druglord who can send him to jail for good. Unlike the R-rated “Walking Tall: The Payback” with its objectionable rape scene that showed no nudity, “Walking Tall: Lone Justice” forefronts a nude scene with a Hispanic honey stripping and displaying her abundant breasts so that she can catch the eye of the witness. While he stands at the window in plain view against the wishes of his protector, Perez’s henchmen relieve a bellboy of his duties and masquerade so they can get into the motel room and kill the witness. The Feds cannot prosecute Perez on a major charge, so they fall back to a money laundering charge and their witnesses are their own agents. Kate is one of them and she and her colleagues move to a safe house until they are to be called to testify. Somehow, the Perez gang learns about their whereabouts and wipes out everybody, killing Kate in the process, too. This is the first of a couple of genuine surprises that elevates “Walking Tall: Lone Justice” over its pathetic predecessor.
The Perez gang watches Kate’s funeral from a distance and they believe that their problems have been taken care of, but they are wrong, dead wrong.

Saying anything else about this better than average sequel would ruin its impact. Kevin Sorbo looks comfortable in his role as Nick. The scene in the hospital when a fellow FBI agent and he try to avoid Perez’s killers churns up considerable suspense. Nevertheless, the hole that plagues this tense scene is the absence of any hospital security guards. That Perez’s killers—disguised as EMTs—could smuggle automatic weapons into the hospital is too much to ask. The last scene at Nick’s ranch has problems, too. The convention in both “Walking Tall” movies is the heroes cannot play hardball the way that the villains can and remain heroic.