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 ''LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT" (2009)

The only thing surprising about the new remake of Wes Craven’s landmark horror chiller “Last House on the Left” is that Craven and co-producer Sean S. Cunningham waited so long to do it. A former humanities professor, Craven ranks as one of the maestros of movie mayhem. He launched the Freddie Kruger “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise back in 1984 and then scared up the “Scream” trilogy in 1996. Before those two successful series, he helmed “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977) and “The Hills Have Eyes 2” (1985), and served as producer on both remakes in both in 2006 and 2007. He is known for his 1982 horror comedy creature feature “Swamp Thing.”

Craven’s first film, “Last House on the Left,” marked him for future notoriety. Sean S. Cunningham produced “Last House” for Craven in 1972. Eight years later in 1980, Cunningham made horror movie history himself with “Friday the 13th.” Craven and Cunningham have teamed up to produce Greek director Dennis Iliadis’ “Last House on the Left” remake. Best known for “Hardcore” (2005), a grim drama about prostitution set in Athens, Greece, Iliadis appeared to be the ideal director for this new, updated, R-rated remake starring Sarah Paxton, Monica Potter, and Tony Goldwyn. Comparatively, Iliadis’ “Last House on the Left” (** out of ****) lacks the sadism of both the “Saw” and the “Hostel” movies and the eerie atmosphere of the original. Nevertheless, audiences that crave watching make-believe characters stab, rape, and then shoot other make-believe characters to death may applaud this lackluster remake.

Two teenage girlfriends, Mari Collingwood (Sarah Paxton of “Sydney White”) and Paige (Martha MacIsaac of “Superbad”), get together back when Mari arrives in town with her parents. Dr. John Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn of “Ghost”) and his wife Emma (Monica Potter of “Con-Air”), are taking a vacation in the country where they own a lake-front house. Overachieving swim champ daughter Mari borrows mom and dad’s Chevy Suburban to visit Paige in town. Paige works the cash register at a convenience store. Things take a turn for the worse when a hooded teenager, Justin (Spencer Treat Clark of “Superheroes”), asks for a pack of cigarettes. Paige won’t sell them because Justin appears underage. Justin has been eavesdropping on the gals and knows Paige wants to score some marijuana. Reluctantly, Mari drives Paige and Justin back to Justin’s motel where he rolls up some premium grade-A Columbian. Yes, Paige sold Justin cigarettes because she had to have some weed. Everybody is huffing and puffing on pot when Justin’s Manson-looking dad, Krug (Garrett Dillahunt of HBO’s “Deadwood”), his Uncle Francis (Aaron Paul of “Mission Impossible 3”), and Sadie (Riki Lindhome of “Gilmore Girls”) walk in on them.

Krug is an escaped convict. The police were taking Krug to prison when Sadie and Francis rescued him. They caught two unsuspecting cops off guard at a railroad crossing and T-boned the police cruiser with a big truck. Sadie shot the driver in the head and Krug strangled the detective beside the driver. Since the authorities have launched a manhunt, our evildoers cannot turn Mari and Paige loose. Mari and Paige realize too late that their geese are cooked. Krug commandeers Mari’s Suburban, and they cruise off into the woods to avoid roadblocks. They pass not far from where Mari’s parents live. Mari’s unexplained disappearance has Emma and John upset. Meanwhile, Mari and Paige attempt to escape from their captors by scorching Sadie with a cigarette lighter. In the confusion, Krug crashes the truck into a tree. Enraged by the girls’
defiance, Krug and company torture them.

Although the violence in Iliadis’ “Last House” remake is graphic, Craven’s original--even after almost 40 years--surpasses the remake in terms of its depravity. Iliadis and “Disturbia” scenarist Carl Ellsworth with newcomer Adam Alleca have made many drastic changes that prove the old saying ‘they don’t make movies like they used to.’ Indeed, they have eliminated a great deal about the original “Last House” that made it such a memorable nightmare. Iliadis and his writers have retained the basic premise, but the current crop of torture porn pictures overshadows their remake. The remake’s most talked about moment—if you’ve glimpsed the trailer—is the notorious microwave scene. A man’s head is jammed into a microwave and cooked until it explodes. Several friends have assured me that microwaves don’t work with the door open, but reality rarely dictates what Hollywood presents in movies.

Like its horrific predecessor, the “Last House on the Left” remake depicts poetic justice. The depraved deviants slaughter the innocent in the first half, while the parents turn the tables on the dastards in the second half. Ultimately, the villains suffer more than their innocent victims. This difference is what separates “Last House on the Left” from the “Saw” and “Hostel” movies. When the parents pay back the perpetrators in “Last House on the Left,” you may find yourself howling for blood and that’s what makes the movie so wicked.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JURASSIC PARK 3" (2002)

“Jurassic Park 3” (*1/2 out of ****) doesn’t take itself seriously like its predecessors and neither should you. Director Steven Spielberg and bestselling author Michael Crichton, who collaborated on the superlative “Jurassic Park” (1993) and its knockout sequel “The Lost World (1997), had something to say about scientists who play God and the dangers of cloning. (I’m not given to handing out high praise to anything Spielberg does, but the first two “Jurassic Park” epics, like “Jaws,” are exceptions to the rule.) Sadly, Spielberg and Crichton had nothing to do with this sequel, and former “Star Wars” art director Joe Johnston of “October Sky” (1999), “The Rocketeer” (1991), and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989) replaced Spielberg at the helm. You’d think Johnston’s experience on “Jumanji” (1995) where zoo animals stomped everything in sight, would have made him the ideal candidate. Unfortunately, it didn’t. You can count the major differences between Johnston’s “Jurassic Park” and Spielberg’s “Jurassic Parks” in minutes. “JP3” clocks in at about 90 minutes, while both Spielberg epics exceeded two hours. Although it isn’t as pretentious—we’ll say—as the first two movies, “JP3” relies far more on humor than horror to its detriment.

This lukewarm, less-than-savage installment in the cloned-dinosaurs-run-amok series makes references to its predecessors that only hardcore, nitpicking “Jurassic Park” fans could catch. The joke about Jack Horner was cute. The dinosaurs are just as menacing, even though bloodthirsty moviegoers may feel cheated. (Imagine what Italian gorefest cult director Lucio Fulci would have done with a “Jurassic Park” movie.) Missing this time around is ‘chaos theoretician’ Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum of “Independence Day”), who enlivened both the original and the follow-up with his sarcasm. Paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill of “Jurassic Park”), who skipped out on “The Lost World,” returns as the dullest of dull heroes, while Grant’s former colleague Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern of “October Sky”) reappears in a welcome cameo. Grant visits her in the opening scene and finds her happily married to a U.S. State Department official with a toddler son and baby daughter. Before she waves goodbye, Ellie reminds Grant to call her if he ever needs her help. Predictably, freshman scenarist Peter Buchman, along with writers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor of “Election” and “Citizen Ruth” don’t let her welsh on her promise. Film scriptwriting manuals classify this as ‘foreshadowing,’ setting up some future action so it doesn’t appear to haphazardly pop up out of the blue.

Basically, “JP3” follows the formula that “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World” created with greater detail and daring. Reportedly, after Johnston perused the shooting script, he tore it up and ordered rushed rewrites. If this was the best they could contrive, no wonder “JP3” is so forgettable. Not only did “The Lost World” raise the stakes, but it also surpassed the original with its thrills and chills. Clearly, the third time wasn’t the charm. “Jurassic Park 3” is as pedestrian as “Jaws 3.” If you’ve seen the others, you know Laura Dern’s cameo at the outset is standard “Jurassic Park” practice. In “The Lost World,” Malcolm reunited briefly with John Hammond (Richard Attenborough of “The Great Escape”) and his grandchildren: Timothy ‘Tim’ Murphy (Joseph Mazzello) and Alexis ‘Lex’ Murphy (Ariana Richards) in an early scene. Children cannot die in the “Jurassic Park” franchise. Neither apparently can mother nor fathers. So much for suspense. Like “Jurassic Park,” “Jurassic Park 3 has our desperate heroes plundering piles of dinosaur dung in search of a satellite phone that could serve as their salvation. That stinking satellite phone infuriated me initially when I heard it ring. I figured that some fool had left their cell phone ringer on in the theatre! Nevertheless, Sarah Harding owned a tattered camera bag she called her lucky bag, just as Belly Brennan sorts a similar camera bag. The scene where Tea Leoni hangs from a tree as ravenous raptors leap up at her alludes to the kitchen scene near the end of “Jurassic Park.” Instead of being jostling about in small recreational vehicles, Dr. Grant finds himself slammed around in the wrecked fuselage of a plane by a dinosaur. This scene lacks the sheer terror of the T-Rex’s introduction in “Jurassic Park” and doesn’t generate the suspense of “The Lost World” cliffhanger scene. Billy steals raptor eggs, and the mothers pursue them across Isla Sorna in a variation on “The Lost World” heroes that freed an injured T-Rex baby with a broken leg and found its irate mother pushing their motor home over a cliff. “The Lost World” T-Rexes subjected the motor home to more hair-raising demolition than the “JP3” T-Rex does to the plane. This time around baby Pterodactyls attack a teenager, much as “The Lost World” lizards swarmed after a little rich girl. The major revelation here is the raptors can communicate with each other and might possibly have supplanted primates. Wait, didn’t those same raptors communicate with each other back in “Jurassic Park” in the kitchen scene?

No matter where Dr. Alan Grant lectures, everybody only wants to quiz him about Isla Nublar and the San Diego disaster. He refuses to answer any questions about the first and reminds everybody that he wasn’t around when the dinosaurs stormed the California mainland. He insists fossils still provide the only legitimate source of information for paleontologists. “No force on Earth or Heaven will get me back on that island,” vows an incredulous Grant when tycoon Paul Kirby (William H. Macy of “Fargo”) and his ex-wife Amanda (Tea Leoni of “Deep Impact”) wave their checkbooks at him. No, we never learn what price Dr. Grant put on his services. While this dearth of information is deplorable, had we known Grant’s fee we might have felt less sympathetic toward him. All the Kirbys want him for is to serve as their guide as they fly over Isla Sorna, where “The Lost World” took place, and snap pictures of the wildlife. Paul assures him his import/export business contacts have cleared their flight with Costa Rican authorities to fly closer than anybody since the hurricane swept the island. Reluctantly, Grant changes his mind when his new assistant Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola of “Face/Off”) reminds him that they need funds to maintain their latest archeological expedition. Grant realizes his error when they land on the island. By the time he regains his wits they have landed. Watching them knock Grant out make him appear even more sympathetic. Kirby’s crew consists of Udesky (Michael Jeter of “The Green Mile”), the big-gun toting Cooper (John Diehl of “Pearl Harbor”) and pilot Nash (Bruce A. Young of “Trepass”). These expendables should have worn numbered jerseys in the order of their deaths by dinosaur. Anybody who has seen John Diehl in anything knows that he has become strictly a bit player since being one of the back-up narcotics partners in “Miami Vice.”

Director Joe Johnston misses the mark with “Jurassic Park 3.” Every movie he has helmed since “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” has been an improvement. Unfortunately, along with an abysmal, cut-rate script, Johnston never establishes the proper tone of terror. The talking dinosaur in Dr. Grant’s nightmare gets things off on the wrong foot. Tea Leoni’s ad nauseam scream sequence when a decaying skeleton dangles from a tree in classic textbook horror fashion struck me as a bad Mantan Moreland impersonation. She spends too much time dancing in revulsion. The scenarists shoulder part of the blame for their predictable, uninspired screenplay. Of course, the characters least attached to the audience die first. Neither Johnston nor his scribes spring a surprise until the abruptly quirky conclusion. Don’t look for character depth or development. The filmmakers didn’t have enough time. Obviously, violence was curbed for a family friendly PG-13 rating. Johnston never focuses on a death scene after the first chomp and keeps the aftermath pretty spotless. Munched bodies don’t bleed; though our heroes do extract human bones from dinosaur dung. Instead, to his credit, Johnston keeps the action moving at a gallop. Ultimately, “Jurassic Park 3” degenerates into a mediocre “The Most Dangerous Game: rehash with the dinosaurs stalking humans rather like a big game hunter stalking a human. Universal Studios must have blown the better part of their budget on the dinosaurs because “Jurassic Park 3” looks almost as low tech as “Alien3.”
Although Dr. Grant fires a flare gun once to distract a dinosaur, nobody packs a real gun for any length of time. The plot boils down to a series of random encounters in the jungle on their trek to the sea and a boat. Johnston stages none of these scenes with any verve.

Apparently, their 14-year old son Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan of “The Sixth Sense”) and his guardian Ben Hildebrand (TV actor Mark Harelik) disappeared eight weeks ago while paragliding dangerously near Isla Sorna, and the Kirbys have launched an impromptu rescue mission without the consent of Costa Rican officials. Kirby carps about how useless the State Department is, and ironically his complaint comes back to haunt him in the end. Worse, Kirby confesses he is not a millionaire, merely a plumber. When our heroes discover it was a bad idea to land, they try to take off, and a dinosaur knocks their aircraft out of the air. They spend the remaining 75-minutes searching for Eric and dodging ravenous T-Rexes, velociraptors, flying Pteranodons, and a new lethal lizard called a Spinosaurus. Half of the fun of any horror movie is watching the idiots wander off from the main group and imperiling themselves. Nothing drastic enough occurs to get you to talk back to the screen about the characters behavior in “Jurassic Park 3.”

“Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World” definitely weren’t for the squeamish, but “Jurassic Park 3” should give nobody nightmares. As in the first two entries, the genetically engineered dinosaurs walk tough, howl vividly, and snap up hapless humans in their jaws. Indeed, the visual effects technology has improved exponentially; sadly, the art of scriptwriting has regressed just as much. Unlike Spielberg, Johnston takes neither the plot nor the stakes to a higher level. Moreover, nothing in “Jurassic Park 3” matches either the T-Rex gobbling up the lawyer, Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero of “Get Shorty”), in the original or the scenes from “The Lost World” where two T-Rexes tore poor Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) apart. Grant calls Ellie when a real dino tries to chomp and/or drown everybody. Hilariously, her young son delays taking her the phone so he can watch his favorite Barney the Purple Dinosaur episode! The out-of-place Barney scene deflates any suspense and tension that the Site B dinosaur causes as he rips away at a cage housing our heroes. Anybody who thrilled to the first two “Jurassic Park” creature features will probably roll their eyeballs in disbelief at the infantile idiocy of “Jurassic Park 3.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''PANIC ROOM" (2002)

David Fincher has fashioned some first-rate films since he started directing movies back in 1992. The Colorado native called the shots on “Se7en” (1995), a gripping serial killer saga starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as the cops and Kevin Stacey as the villain, that disturbed as much as it enthralled audiences. He toyed mischievously with audiences in “The Game” (1997) toplining Michael Douglas and Sean Penn in the tradition of George Roy Hill’s Oscar-winning Best Picture “The Sting.” The incomparable and offbeat “Fight Club” (1999) qualified hands down as Fincher’s finest, reuniting him with Brad Pitt and co-starring Edward Norton in a pre-terrorist 9/11 opus. Until he made the Jodie Foster crime film “Panic Room” (*1/2 out of ****), “Alien 3” ranked as Fincher’s least distinguished epic, with a shaven-headed Sigourney Weaver impersonating science officer Ripley for the last time as a flesh & blood human being. Comparatively, as the least commercial entry in the creature-feature franchise, the anemic “Alien 3” induced sleep rather than suspense. No matter how atrocious “Alien 3” seemed, “Panic Room” weighs in as infinitely worse. Only deep-fried Jodie Foster fans will savor this superficial, occasionally sadistic exercise in futility. Actually, the producers cast Nicole Kidman, but she injured herself and pulled out. A hopelessly miscast Jodie Foster brings a certain elegance to this unexceptional nail-biter. Indeed, lensers Conrad Hall and Darius Khondji’s atmospheric cinematography, the eerie lighting, and the looming interiors win “Panic Room” brownie points, not nearly enough.

This inferior feminist fable takes its title from a 12 by 12 foot, steel-plated, concrete bunker inside a four-story Brownstone in Upper West Side Manhattan. The reclusive tycoon who owned it has died, and our divorced heroine, Meg Altman (a bespectacled Jodie Foster) and her diabetic daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart of “Twilight”) now occupy the place. Plagued by paranoia, the late millionaire equipped the townhouse with a secret room. This impregnable bomb shelter boasts a high tech surveillance system with a cameras that scan the premises 24 hours a day from every angle inside and outside. The chamber contains its own ventilation system and features a separate telephone line. During the first night that Meg and Sarah sleep in their new beds, they awaken to find themselves at the mercy of three harebrained hoodlums out to steal millions of dollars worth of bearer bonds that the dead financier concealed in a vault in the safe room.

Predictably, Meg and Sarah hole up in the bunker while Junior (Jared Leto of “Girl, Interrupted”), Burnham (Forrest Whitaker of “Bird”), and Raoul (country singer Dwight Yoakam of “Sling Blade”) toil incompetently to evict them. Aside from their vulnerability as females-at-risk with flaws—Meg suffers from claustrophobia, while Sarah requires insulin shots)—these females do little to appeal to our sympathy. Ironically, Whitaker’s character emerges as not only the most sympathetic but also the most interesting. Poor Patrick Bauchau of “A View to a Kill” plays Meg’s millionaire, ex-husband (no relation to the deceased tycoon) and takes a hellacious beating from Raoul in a scene which will undoubtedly sicken some viewers.

This tedious, third-rate tale unravels from the outset with a premise as contrived as it convoluted plot. What veteran scenarist David Koepp of “Stir of Echoes” fame doesn’t steal from his own scripts, he appropriates from the durable Audrey Hepburn thriller “Wait Until Dark” (1967) and the exciting Sean Connery caper “The Anderson Tapes” (1972). The Raoul character clearly recalls the Mafia thug in “Anderson Tapes” that veteran character actor Val Avery played in a ski-mask with a penchant for violence. The ending that disposes of the bearer bonds comes straight out of John Huston’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948). Had the “Panic Room” been a tenth as entertaining as any of those classics, this derivative mishmash with its unintentionally hilarious histrionics might have proven tolerable. Instead, “Panic Room” resembles a heavy-handed Lifetime channel version of “Home Alone.” Decked out in a black, tank-top to display cleavage, Jodie Foster imitates the antics of Macaulay Culkin as she battles a trio of bungling burglars. These clueless cretins make the Three Stooges appear like intellectual titans. Foster is a top-flight actress who shouldn’t have stooped to this one-dimensional nonsense. Koepp’s script bristles with inconsistencies. After making a big deal about Meg’s claustrophobia early in the film, Fincher and Koepp unaccountably drop it from the plot when they tighten the screws on our protagonists. The scene with the butane gas tank elicits derision more than dread, and the flashlight batteries in another scene were clearly of the Eveready variety.

Don’t get trapped in the “Panic Room.”

FILM REVIEW OF "FUTURE FORCE" (1989)

“Future Force” (*1/2 stars out of ****) qualifies as a cheesy, predictable, low-budget action crime saga that delivers no surprises and looks more like a modern-day, urban western rather than a futuristic tale about justice in Los Angeles. “Kill Bill” star David Carradine served as the associate producer so there is mystery as to why he appears in this tongue-in-cheek thriller, but the wonderful Robert Tessier of “The Longest Yard” provides the film with a few moments of fun. “Future Force” contains a modicum of nudity, and strippers chiefly furnish those fleeting moments in a bar named the DMZ where unsavory gun-totting civilian cops hang out between jobs. The special effects are really awful, with superimposed blue lines that spread like a spider web over whatever and laser beams that are straight blue lights. The biggest thing in his thriller occurs when a guy fires a LAWS rocket at a police helicopter and it vanishes in an explosion. The dialogue is forgettable, but “Jungle Assault” director David A. Prior keeps the mindless mayhem moving fast enough and shows a few interesting camera movements so “Future Force” doesn’t stall out.

The action unfolds with some lengthy exposition that sets up the world of “Future Force.” According to the narrator: “In the year 1991, crime in America was out of control. Prisons were overloaded. Police forces were understaffed. Gun battles in city streets became common place. No one was safe. The cities had become the battlefields of the future and the criminals were winning the war. The public demanded change and the government responded. Police departments across the country were shut down, and law enforcement was handed over to private enterprise. Civilian Operated Police Systems, Incorporated., took over. Within two years crime was under control. The price, however, was a heavy one. For justice as we once knew it had ceased to exist.”

Former L.A.P.D. officer John Tucker (a paunchy David Carradine) is one of the best in the business. He has acquired a bad reputation for not bringing in any prisoners alive. The Miranda-style statement that he utters to each lawbreaker is amusing. “You’ve committed a crime. You’re presumed guilty until proven innocent. You have the right to die. You choose to relinquish that right you’ll be placed under arrest and put in prison.” In his first encounter of many with a suspect, Tucker guns him down old West style in a fast draw showdown. The two other creeps that were with the suspect attack Tucker. He punches one in the balls and uses the club that they attacked him with to smash the other guy’s face. When these two try to escape, Tucker wields a huge bionic glove that he wears over his hand and forearm to stop them from fleeing the scene in their car. The power of this bionic glove is such that he can plant it onto the roof of the car and hold it in place when the driver floors the accelerator and the tires spin. When Tucke releases the car to check his computer in his Cherokee Chief truck, the felons try to run him down and Tucker uses the laser built into the glove to flip the car. When he learns from his computer whiz go-between, Billy that the two guys in the wrecked car were guilty only of parking tickets, Tucker shrugs and observes that they are going to be charged probably with another parking violation.

Tucker has an onboard computer in his truck and the computer nerd (D.C. Douglas) who keeps him posted with updates about new criminals and is confined to a wheelchair. Tucker accidentally shot him when Billy was a six-year old and Tucker and his partner responded to a crime call at the kid’s residence. Meanwhile, Jason Adams (William Zipp of “Operation Warzone”) is the Chief Executive Officer in Charge and he doesn’t have a qualm about killing people. The first time that we see him he has a rival tied up in a junk car. The rival begs Adams to let him go, but Adams sends him off to a car crushing machine to do a “Goldfinger” number on the guy. Becker (Robert Tessier of “The Longest Yard”) serves as Adams’ chief of security and he accompanies Adams anywhere. Adams is as corrupt as they come. He tries to get fifty percent of a mobster’s action, but the mobster, Grimes (Patrick Culliton of “Armed Response”), refuses to pay him. Eventually, the greedy Adams finds himself in a predicament when the Channel 3 News anchor girl, Marion Sims (Anna Rapagna of “The A-Team”), promises her viewers that she will feature an expose on Adams that concerns his illegal activities. An angry Adams has Becker put out an arrest warrant on Sims, but Billy intercepts it and channels it to Tucker and Tucker picks her up and tries to bring her in. Adams sends out other men to get the anchorwoman and Tucker guns down them. Adams has a warrant issued for Tucker and our hero finds himself on the run, too.

The best scene in “Future Force” involves Tucker’s use of the forearm glove. Just as Becker is about to shoot him, Tucker produces the remote control unit for the glove that he has refused to use and punches it up. The hatch of his Cherokee Chief flies up, the mechanical snap locks on the case pop open, and the bionic glove flies through the air and clamps onto Becker’s neck.

The screenplay by creator Thomas Baldwin and co-scenarist Prior is not without holes. After Adams calls criminal boss Grimes in for a conference and demands a 50 percent cut, we don’t see Grimes again until he shoots down a helicopter menacing our heroes. The irony about Sims is that she only reads the news copy.
Everything about this thriller is strictly routine, though Prior does handle some scene with a minimum of flair. A far better sequel “Future Zone” ensued in 1991 with Carradine reprising his heroic role as John Tucker, but Gail Jensen took over the role of Marion Sims that Anna Papagna had created. Patrick Culliton played another crime boss, but this time his name was Hoffman.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JOE KIDD'' (1971)

 Clint Eastwood, scenarist Elmore Leonard, and director John Sturges teamed up to make this traditional, action-packed horse opera about racial injustice in the old West. “Joe Kidd” (***1/2 out of ****) ranks as Eastwood’s least appreciated western. Nevertheless, it qualifies as a solid, well-made, shoot’em up with spectacular scenery enhanced by Bruce Surtees’ pictorially elegant widescreen cinematography, and a well-rounded, first-class supporting cast including Robert Duvall, John Saxon, Don Stroud, Paul Koslo, and Gregory Walcott. “Mission Impossible” composer Lalo Schifrin’s orchestral score delivers atmosphere and ramps up the suspense without calling attention to itself. Schifrin is the flipside of the coin to Sturges’ usual composer Elmer Bernstein. Bernstein always brought a thunderous, larger-than-life, Aaron Copland quality to Sturge's westerns, chiefly “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Hallelujah Trail.” Indeed, “Bad Day at Black Rock” helmer John Sturges crafted a modest, little dust-raiser that gave Clint Eastwood his least pretentious but most masculine role while Duvall makes a worthy adversary with Saxon as the victimized Hispanic caught in the crossfire. Elmore Leonard of “Hombre” and “3:10 to Yuma” delivers his usual brand of quirky dialogue that has an improvisational spontaneity. “Joe Kidd” isn’t the kind of oater that makes a big impression. It lacks the off-beat imagination of “High Plains Drifter,” the stolidity of “Hang’em High,” the abrasive violence of Leone’s Spaghetti western trilogy, the epic grandeur of Eastwood’s own “Outlaw Josey Wales,” or the funereal Bergman-esque histrionics of Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” and “Unforgiven.” Watching “Joe Kidd” is like eating ham on rye and washing it down with a light beer. You’ll enjoy it, but you’ll probably forget it until somebody prompts you to comment about it and because it is so fluid, you’ll dismiss as adequate but less than memorable. If you do remember “Joe Kidd,” you’ll remember it as the western where Clint Eastwood wields an automatic German Mauser pistol and crashes a locomotive through a saloon.

 “Joe Kidd” unfolds with a long shot of a Mexican woman, Helen (Stella Garcia) driving a buckboard across a rock-strewn landscape. Schifrin’s music is low-key and ominous. As the introductory credits appear, several Mexican horsemen drift into Sinola from various directions, dismount, and casually loiter here and there. Unarmed, they seem initially unremarkable. As several more Mexican riders appear and the music mounts insistently, all these Mexicans converge on Helen’s wagon in a back lot. They uncover a pile of guns and arm themselves. In an interview that I conducted with John Sturges in 1978, he explained the rationale behind the various shots used to show the Mexicans riding into town. "Of course, they would arrive in groups from different directions so as not to cause unusual notice. Yet they must arrive as a group at the same time, and take up certain strategic positions bound to have a similarity. Of course, they would do this in the most casual manner they could manage meanwhile covertly looking around for possible trouble or holding onto the security of their holstered guns. Any citizen who saw all this in the detail it is shown by the camera would rush off for the sheriff, but none does or can. The audience does and maybe the word geometric relates to the way that town is laid out and foresees the movement." Meanwhile, Sheriff Bob Mitchell (Gregory Walcott of “Midway”) leaves the courthouse as the judge explains to the predominantly Hispanic audience why their land claims cannot be recognized as legitimate. At the jail, the deputies bring coffee and a pot of stew to the prisoners for breakfast. Ramon (Ron Soble of “True Grit”) and Naco (Pepe Callahan of “Mackenna’s Gold”) share the cell with Joe (Clint Eastwood) who wears city duds and a derby. Mitchell arrested Joe for drunk and disorderly and handcuffed him to the bed. Naco slides Joe’s coffee out of reach. Later, Joe slings the pot of slew in Naco’s villainous face and then clobbers him with a pot.

Luis Chama (John Saxon of “Enter the Dragon”) invades the courthouse with his men, seizes land property deeds from the records, and sets them ablaze because his forefathers were treated similarly. Chama wants to take the judge as hostage, but Joe thwarts Chama’s efforts. Another amusing scene takes place when Joe waits in a bar for Naco. Naco enters and Joe raises a double-barreled shotgun with one hand. Naco turns to leave, but then bursts back into the saloon as Joe triggers the shotgun. This is a signature scene that Leonard used in his novel “Valdez Is Coming.” Chama hightails it out of Sinola and Joe winds up serving 10 days because he refused to pay the $10 fine for poaching a mule deer on Indian reservation lands. He also resisted arrest because The day after the ruckus, Harlan (Robert Duvall of “The Godfather”) and his entourage, including Elma (Lynne Marta), Roy Gannon (Paul Koslo of “Mr. Majestyk”) Lamarr Simms (Don Stroud of “Coogan’s Bluff”), and Olin Mingo (James Wainwright) step off the train and settle into the hotel run by Dick Van Patten.

Not long after Kidd hires on to guide Harlan and company into rough country in pursuit of Chama, he discovers that Harlan has no qualms about killing Chama. Initially, Kidd turned Harlan down and decided to serve out his ten days. Joe owns a small horse ranch, and he found his Mexican ranch hand barb-wired to a fence. Ramon did this to Joe’s hired hand, so Joe changes his mind and tells Harlan that he will guide him for a $1000 rather than $500 dollars. Joe and Lamarr get off to a bad start. Lamarr confronts Joe on the hotel staircase and asks him where he is going. Joe simply grabs Lamarr’s belt and sends him tumbling down the stairs. Later, Lamarr confronts Joe again and threatens to kill him with his multi-shot Mauser pistol. Harlen and company with Kidd set out to find Chama.

At one point, Harlan takes an entire village hostage and threatens to five people if Chama doesn’t give himself up. Harlan fires Kidd and packs him into the church with the rest of the hostages. Joe has a brief scrap with Lamarr and leaves the upstart henchmen reeling after he slams a rifle butt into Lamarr’s throat and knocks him down. In the church, Joe sprawls out in the priest’s quarters. At this point, “Joe Kidd” takes on symbolic significance. The Eastwood character is about to become a genuine hero. First, the village priest offers him holy water, and this act serves as a kind of consecration for him. Kidd asks the priest to get him a gun, but he doesn't really think that the cleric with come through on his request. Later, the priest smuggles a revolver to Kidd because he cannot stand the thought of Harlan killing five of his worshippers. Kidd escapes from the church by ascending through the bell tower and manages to dispatch villainous Lamarr. Symbolically, Joe makes a messianic ascension and then spirits Helen away with him, and they ride off to find Chama. Kidd defies the odds and takes Chama back to Sinola, but Harlan doesn’t give us so easily and “Joe Kidd” concludes with a gunfight. The last scene when Kidd guns down Harlan in the same courtroom epitomizes Kidd’s character. He is seated where the judge sets so he amounts metaphorically to judge, jury, and executioner.

Characterization is integrated into the action so that the entire film becomes a fast-moving, tightly-knit story without one extraneous character or event. Every action that Kidd performs in the opening sequence foreshadows his later behavior. Rescuing the judge from Chama’s men compares with Kidd’s decision to bring in Chama before Harlan’s men kill innocent Mexicans. The remorse that Kidd displayed in the courtroom or tried to conceal with his admission later that he “made a poor judgment with which he must live. This philosophy reveals Kidd’s character. He accepts live in terms of good and poor judgments and lives with them. He is not proud of his mistakes, but he wastes no sentiment on them. Throughout the opening scenes, Sturges strongly characterizes Kidd as a man of unruffled nonchalance. According to Clint Eastwood, at CLINT EASTWOOD.NET, "Joe Kidd" never had an ending, and Eastwood states that he had never before gone into a movie without knowing "the punchline." Eastwood adds that Sturges said they would figure it out as they went along. Eastwood didn't seem too impressed with the train ending." Glenn Lovall in his book "Escape Artist" points out that Sturges got the idea for the train ending from an unproduced World War II movie project. Sturges had ambivalent feelings afterward about the film. He wrote in a letter to me in 1978 that, "There were a lot of holes in Joe Kidd. Some in the script that were never fixed and some resulting from cuts because the scenes just did't play." What sets “Joe Kidd” apart from other Eastwood westerns is the reluctance of the hero to shoot down his adversaries. Altogether, “Joe Kidd” qualifies as an underrated oater.

An excellent book to peruse if you are interested in John Sturges, his life, and his films is Glen Lovell's exhaustive biography on Sturges entitled "Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges." Mr. Lovell spent 10 years writing and researching this seminal text.

FILM REVIEW OF ''WATCHMEN'' (2009)

Anybody who has read Alan Moore’s grim but ground-breaking graphic novel “Watchmen” should enjoy the R-rated, 161-minute, Warner Brothers/Paramount Studios’ big-screen adaptation. “Dawn of the Dead” director Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” (**** out of ****) ranks as the best costumed crime fighters movie of all time. Think of it as the “Gone with the Wind” of superhero sagas. “Watchmen” makes both “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins” look like adolescent fantasies. The crime busters of “Watchmen” aren’t role models, and the novel and the film both emerge as hopelessly cynical with cosmic irony galore. Scenarists David (“X-Men” & “X-Men 2”) Hayter and newcomer Alex Tse have retained about 90 percent of Moore’s novel, but Moore refused to let the studios plaster his name on the movie. Presumably, Moore hasn’t recovered from the blasphemous Sean Connery movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” that left a bad taste in his mouth.

This exciting epic about a faction of superheroes based in New York City who come out of retirement (call it the dark flipside of “The Incredibles”) to save the world from itself qualifies as an elaborate exercise in cutting-edge computer-generated visuals and high-octane, adrenaline-laced heroics. Parents who take their children to see “Watchmen” ought to be reported to the Department of Human Services. Although the violence isn’t gratuitous, “Watchmen” features scenes of acute brutality and carnage. An unsavory superhero guns down a pregnant Vietnamese woman with extreme prejudice after she slashes his face with a broken beer bottle. In another scene, a prison inmate brandishes a portable, electric circular saw and mistakenly cuts off another inmate’s forearms. At least two characters are atomized into a splatter of bloody entrails, and a kidnapper dies from a meat cleaver slammed repeatedly into his skull. Violence is one aspect of “Watchmen,” while nudity is quite another. “Watchmen” is undoubtedly the first mainstream Hollywood movie that presents full frontal male nudity, too. The only genuine superhero, Dr. Manhattan, parades around more often than not in his birthday suit, looking like Obsession cologne product placement. There is probably a message in all this nudity, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

The far-fetched action unfolds one dark, gloomy night with one of these crime fighters, Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan of “Grey’s Anatomy”), swaps blows with an assailant who has invaded his high-rise apartment. In an amusing reference to his last movie, director Zach Snyder has designated 300 as the number of Comedian’s apartment. The assailant beats Comedian to a pulp and then propels him through a plate-glass window without a qualm. Comedian plunges many stories to the street below and splatters in a bloody pile of limbs and legs. Comedian’s yellow smiley face badge lands in his spreading pool of blood. Naturally, the N.Y.P.D. doesn’t have a clue. One of Comedian’s fellow crime fighters, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Halley of the 1976 “Bad News Bears”), launches his own investigation. Rorschach warns the rest of his cohorts, Night Owl 2 (Patrick Wilson of “Lakeview Terrace”), Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup of “Almost Famous”), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode of “Match Point”), and Silk Spectre 2 (Valerie Perrine lookalike Malin Akerman of “27 Dresses”) that somebody is out to slaughter them. Unless you’ve perused Moore’s novel, you’ll never solve the mystery.

For the record, Night Owl 2 is the equivalent of Batman, without a Robin, who flies around in a stealth fighter that resembles an electric shaver. Silk Spectre 2 is a butt kicking Wonder Woman clone. She doesn’t need a man to hold her hand, especially when she helps liberate one of her own during a prison break with convicts lining up to smudge her make-up with fists and feet. Rorschach is a pint-sized Humphrey Bogart type who wears a stocking over his face with an ink blot pattern that shifts. He is an uncompromising crime buster who sees life in terms of good and evil with no shades of gray. Ozymandias is the smartest man in the world with a flair for public relations. He has the ability to move around as rapidly as Ricochet Rabbit. Dr. Manhattan is a tall, blue, bald, blank-eyed muscular male who wears eye-liner and mascara, hates wearing clothing and can atomize anything with a thought. Again, Dr. Manhattan is the only superhero in the Watchmen group. Dr. Manhattan’s real-life companions can survive the worst anybody can dish out with no ill effects.

DC Comics published Moore’s graphic, twelve-chapter novel in 1986 and 1987. Currently, DC has released a 5-hour plus motion comic book version of “Watchmen” on DVD that contains more than Hayter and Tse condensed into their complex screenplay. Like the novel, the theatrical “Watchmen” takes place back in 1985. Essentially, “Watchmen” is a science-fiction saga about an alternate version of America. Snyder’s movie condenses over twenty years of costumed crime fighter history during the opening credits. Indeed, “Watchmen” combines elements of “Forrest Gump” and every Oliver Stone movie since “Platoon.” President John Kennedy shakes hands with Dr. Manhattan, while President Richard Nixon exploits Dr. Manhattan as a nuclear deterrent. The story includes JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, with a clear view of his assassin. In the time altered universe of “Watchmen,” America wins the Vietnam War largely through Dr. Manhattan’s intervention.

In the beginning, Dr. Manhattan was ordinary Jewish physicist Jonathan Osterman. He died tragically during an accident at a top-secret, government research lab that disintegrated his body. He manages to reconstitute himself and emerges as America’s chief weapon against the Soviet Union. Nixon dispatches Dr. Manhattan to Vietnam with Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan wins the war. Indeed, Dr. Manhattan is the only genuine super hero with super powers while everybody else is human but very resilient. Despite victory in Vietnam, America still wallows in domestic turmoil that degenerates into chaos and street violence. Hippies plant flowers in the rifle barrels of military policemen who massacre them. The police go on strike and eventually Nixon passes legislation that outlaws vigilante-minded costume clad crime fighters that aren’t employed by the government. Interestingly, the clock that showed the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States is referred to as the Doomsday Clock, a neat concept considering the constant tension between the Soviets and the Americans during the Cold War.
Later, under the Keene Act, Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian are the only costume clad crime fighters who are licensed to perform heroic feats.

Basically, the “Watchmen” plot defies synopsis. Like Moore’s novel, the story boasts enough material for an entire film franchise, but “Watchmen” does an excellent job of bringing all the action together in less than three hours to create a coherent but outlandish parable of an alternate future. The idea that victory in Vietnam would not have made a difference in the American Dream is fairly audacious for any movie. Moreover, Snyder and his scenarists take the concept of vigilante heroes farther than even “The Dark Knight” dared and meditates on the ultimate contradictions involved with these costume clad crime fighters. Furthermore, not all of the Watchmen survive; the Comedian & Rorschach bite the dust. Not only does the Comedian deserve his fate because he raped Sally Jupiter, but he also killed a Vietnamese woman pregnant with his child. The Comedian acquires his scar because of Vietnamese woman. You won’t find stuff like this in any super hero movie. The 9/11 finale with its surprise ending is a mind-blower that will leave you reeling. Like “Forrest Gump,” “Watchmen” inserts several landmark rock songs to underline its multiple messages. “Watchmen” lacks a happy ending and the problems that humanity faces here aren’t simple.