FILM REVIEW OF ''KIDNAP'' (2017)

Halle Berry lets nothing stop her in “Pusher” director Luis Prieto’s “Kidnap” (*** OUT OF ****) when two predatory rednecks target her six-year old son for abduction in contemporary Louisiana.  This white-knuckled, adrenaline-laced, highway thriller about a mad mom in hot pursuit who refuses to quit is reminiscent of an earlier Halle Berry movie “The Call” (2013) where she portrayed a veteran 911 operator troubled about the welfare of an abducted teenage girl. “The Call” heroine ultimately teamed up with the victim to wreak vengeance on the murderous dastard who had abducted her.  Similarly, Berry is just as driven to catch up with her son’s kidnappers, no matter what the police advise her.  At one point, a policewoman urges her to wait for the authorities to intervene.  Our protagonist relents momentarily until she notices the glut of child abduction posters on a nearby bulletin board and the years that those children have been missing. Mind you, “Kidnap” is one of those contrived, but entertaining Hollywood thrillers where the police are either off elsewhere when needed or useless when involved.  Ultimately, they show up, but they are too late to make a difference.  Nevertheless, in dramatic terms, their last-minute arrival puts the burden on the waitress mom, facing her own child custody battle with her ex-husband and his girlfriend.  When we see Berry for the first time, she is calm and collected. Before “Kidnap” concludes, she is both disheveled and desperate in her efforts to rescue her son.

In a shrewd but calculated effort to endear Karla Dyson’s son Frankie (newcomer Sage Correa) to audiences, director Luis Prieto has appropriated real-life video of the adorable toddler from Correa’s parents.  The prologue in “Kidnap” shows Frankie as a lovable little fellow.  When the story unfolds, he is six-years old, but still lovable.  Frankie is coloring pictures in the restaurant where Karla (Halle Berry of “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) works as a waitress, serving up dishes to diners who aren’t happy.  Sadly, Karla isn’t happy either because she was supposed to have gotten off her shift so she could take Frankie to the city park.  No sooner does she have Frankie at the park than her attorney phones her about her ex-husband’s plans to take her son away from her.  All the racket going on around Karla at the park interferes with her concentration.  She steps away briefly from Frankie to tell her attorney that nobody is going to take her son away from her.  During these short-lived moments, she loses sight of Frankie, and then spots an obese, white woman, Margo (newcomer Chris McGinn), dragging him into her late 1980s’ Green Ford Mustang with a bra over the grille.  Karla scrambles after them, seizes the luggage rack bars atop the car-roof, and is dragged along until the accelerating vehicle jars her hands loose.  Charging off to her red minivan, she drops her cell phone in the street and careens out of the park on the bumper of the Mustang.  As she closes on after them, these fiends hurl everything in the trunk of the Mustang at her.  Happily, Karla swerves out of the path of the debris, but some motorists aren’t so fortunate.  One vehicle tumbles sideways after a spare tire slams into it.  Eventually, the kidnappers hang Frankie’s head out of the passenger’s side door and hold a knife to this throat.  Reluctantly, Karla backs off, but she doesn’t give up her pursuit as easily as the abductors reckoned.

Things complicate quickly when Karla attracts the attention of a motorcycle police officer.  Initially, the cop orders Karla to pull over, but Karla keeps pointing at the Mustang.  Eventually, the cop gets the message, but he finds himself crushed between the recklessly driven Mustang and Karla’s red minivan.  The two cars plow off the highway and onto a grass median where the injured cop crashes his bike.  Karla comes face to face with the kidnappers and tries to bargain with them.  She tosses them her wallet with her credit cards and gives them her pin number in exchange for her son’s life. The tall, lanky, male redneck driver, Terry (Lew Temple of “Lawless”), takes her wallet.  Moments later Karla freaks out when Terry’s mother emerges from the Mustang with the wallet and suggests that Karla take her to the bank to withdraw $10-grand for Frankie.  Naturally, you would never let such a repugnant woman share the same car with you.  Margo slides into the back seat so she can control Karla.  While cruising through an underground, one-lane tunnel, Karla realizes her mistake, and the two women tangle like tigers.  Twisting Karla’s side belt around her neck, Margo strangles her.  Karla ditches Margo, but this isn’t the last that she’ll see of this despicable dame.

Basically, “Kidnap” puts us in the passenger’s seat with Karla as she chases the villains.  Initially, she has little luck catching up with them.  The filmmakers refrain from showing us what little Frankie is enduring until the end when the tension really comes to a boil.  Director Luis Prieto doesn’t pull too many punches because you know our heroine is going to rescue her son.  Nevertheless, our heroine must deal with one infuriating setback after another.  Chiefly, the villains are hopelessly unsavory and have no qualms about endangering innocent bystanders.  Indeed, one pedestrian gets in Terry’s way, and he smashes into her, somersaulting her off the windshield of his stolen car.  Not even the sight of a woman crumpled up on the asphalt in dire need of medical help distracts our brave heroine from letting her adversary escape from her!  Prieto keeps his camera focused tightly on Karla so she is up in our face for the duration of the harrowing chase.  You’ll be pulling your hair out by the roots at the unbearably suspenseful grand finale of “Kidnap” when our heroine finally tracks down Frankie! Clocking in at 95-minutes, “Kidnap” will keep you poised on the edge of your seat.

FILM REVIEW OF ''HOMEFRONT" (2013)

Don’t let the title of the latest Jason Statham thriller “Homefront” (*** OUT OF ****) deceive you.  This is no soap opera about life in the boondocks.  “Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead” director Gary Fleder and “Cobra” scenarist Sylvester Stallone should have entitled it “Hell On A Bayou.”  This exciting but formulaic revenge saga pits a retired DEA Agent against a murderous bunch of bikers and rednecks who resemble the hellions in the “Sons of Anarchy” television series.  Naturally, Statham plays the conscientious DEA Agent who witnessed a gross miscarriage of justice that his superior defends as ‘protocol.’  After an explosive drug bust at a New Orleans’ nightclub, our undercover hero’s brothers-in-blue mow down a clueless biker in a fusillade of gunfire.  Apparently, they suspected that the poor slob was reaching for a concealed weapon during a stand-off.  The blood-splattered experience sickened our protagonist enough that he resigned from the agency and settled down in a two-bit Louisiana town to raise his young daughter.  While he wants to put as much distance between his past as he can, our hero doesn’t realize that escaping his bullet-riddled past is easier said than done.  Basically, “Homefront” shares a lot in common with a witness relocation thriller, except the hero here is a cop rather than an eye-witness.  Stallone adapted Chuck Logan’s novel, but the filmmakers have altered the setting from Minnesota to Louisiana.  A former Vietnam veteran, Logan has published eight novels about his protagonist Phil Broker, and “Homefront” appeared in print back in 2009.  As it turns out, “Homefront” provides Statham with an ideal vehicle, and its rural setting and dastardly villains have the flavor of an Elmore Leonard novel.  Co-stars James Franco, Winona Ryder, Clancy Brown, Kate Bosworth, and Frank Grillo constitute a first-class cast for this gritty, hard-boiled, methamphetamine melodrama.

Everything goes wrong for our hero when his nine-year old daughter Maddy (newcomer Izabela Vidovic) picks on the wrong bully at her elementary school.  Fat Teddy Klum (Austin Craig) not only steals Maddy’s baseball cap, but he also terrorizes the willowy little darling on the playground.  Maddy warns Teddy twice to hand her cap back, but Teddy chuckles contemptuously at the defiant little waif.  Imagine Teddy’s surprise when Maddy socks him in the snout and knocks him on his obese butt!  Phil Broker (Jason Statham of “Safe”) is remodeling a house with his African-American partner Teedo (Omar Benson Miller of “8 Mile”) when he receives a call from the Rayville Elementary School.  School psychologist Susan Hetch (Rachelle Lefevre of “Twilight”) briefs Broker about the incident, and Sheriff Keith Rodrigue (Clancy Brown of “Highlander”) struggles to keep Teddy’s mom Cassie Bodine Klum (Kate Bosworth of “Straw Dogs”) off Broker’s back.  When she cannot slap Broker around, Cassie incites her husband Jimmy (Marcus Hester of “Lawless”) to rough him up.  Broker puts Jimmy out of action with the ease of a kung fu master, and the sheriff wonders where our hero got his training.  Later, Cassie resorts to her scumbag brother, Gator (James Franco of “Spring Breakers”), to take care of Broker.  Teedo warns Broker that Gator operates a local meth factory and discourages any competitors by informing on them to Sheriff Rodrigue.  Gator burglarizes Broker’s remote house in the middle of the woods and stumbles upon Broker’s files from his DEA days.  Furthermore, he discovers Broker was the anonymous snitch that sent Outcast motorcycle gang member Danny T Turrie (Chuck Zito of “Carlito’s Way”) to prison and put the first of the 47 bullets into Danny’s worthless son Jojo (Linds Edwards) on the street in New Orleans.  Gator concocts a hare-brained scheme with low-life waitress Sheryl Marie Mott (Winona Ryder of “Heathers”) to alert the Outcasts about Broker’s whereabouts.  Gator dreams in his naive mind that the Outcasts will repay him for his friendly little tip by helping him distribute his meth.  Outcast motorcycle chieftain Cyrus Hanks (Frank Grillo of “Disconnect”) and his best bangers roll into Rayville with payback on their brains. Meanwhile, our hero realizes that he is living in a land where feuding is a way of life.  At the last minute, after Gator has stolen Maddy’s pet kitten, Broker smells the stench of murder in the air and tries to clear out.  Unfortunately, our hero doesn’t get far before he discovers that there is too much lead in the air for him to hightail it without jeopardizing his daughter’s life.  

Mind you, “Homefront” would be just another entertaining but predictable shoot’em up, but director Gary Fleder has assembled a knock-out cast of celebrity talent and orchestrated some crowd pleasing action scenes.  James Franco plays Statham’s grinning redneck adversary with gusto galore.  At one point, he chides Phil Broker because our hero doesn’t “smell the wood burning” and “cannot connect the dots.”  Winona Ryder gives an electrifying performance as Gator’s scummy ex-convict accomplice who served time for smuggling narcotics into Angola Prison.  Topping both Franco and Ryder is sexy Kate Bosworth of “Straw Dogs” and “Blue Crush” as a housewife hooked on meth who ridicules her husband into doing what she cannot.  Seasoned character actor Clancy Brown emerges from the background a corrupt local sheriff who behaves with more discretion than the usual paid-off politician.  Essentially, nobody gives a bad performance in “Homefront,” and the children are incredibly convincing, too.  Of course, Fleder and Stallone shoot the works, and Statham displays his usual physical prowess.  Basically, if you enjoy watching the “Transporter” kick the crap out of his antagonists after they threaten his daughter, you’ll enjoy “Homefront.”  The close encounter combat sequence between our hero and two thugs at a local gas station is hilariously violent.  Statham is quickly turning into the new Steven Segal with the effortless aplomb with which he dispatches his opponents.  Dutch lenser Theo van de Sande’s cinematography of the swampy Louisiana locations is simply gorgeous; Sande shot the Wesley Snipes vampire opus “Blade.”  Clocking in at a nimble 100 minutes, “Homefront” never wears out its welcome.

FILM REVIEW OF ''12 YEARS A SLAVE" (2013)

A searing indictment of chattel slavery in the antebellum South, “12 Years a Slave” (**** OUT OF ****) depicts the tragic odyssey of a free-born African-American violinist shanghaied and sold into slavery by unscrupulous white chiselers.  Solomon Northup’s literary chronicle implicates himself as much for his own naivety as the avarice of the assailants who hoodwinked him for monetary gain.  Two smooth-talking con artists in top-hats persuade our hero to leave the safety of New York so he can play his fiddle at a concert in Washington, D.C.  They assure Northup that they will pay him handsomely for his services and reimburse him for any expenses incurred during the trip to and from the capitol.   The surprises and shocks that ensue as a consequence of their mendacity turn Northup’s life upside-down.  British-born, black director Steve McQueen and “Red Tails” screenwriter John Ridley pull few punches in their largely realistic portrayal of Northup’s exploits.  They adapted Northup’s eloquent autobiographical account of his captivity between 1841 and 1853.   Of course, nobody should be flabbergasted that Northup’s memoirs contain a far greater wealth of information than the film.  Naturally, McQueen and Ridley had to eliminate some Northup’s various adventures to make a movie under two-and-a-half-hours in length.  Northup’s hanging provides one clear example.  Three bitter whites resolve to string up Northup until an overseer intervenes.  In Northup’s memoir, he was never actually hanged.  In McQueen’s film, Northup is hanged, but he manages to balance himself on the tip-toes until somebody cuts down.   “

Mind you, this isn’t the first time that Northup’s horrific ordeal has been presented in the media.   “Shaft” director Gordon Parks produced “Solomon Northup's Odyssey” back in 1984 for PBS's “American Playhouse” anthology television series.   After its original telecast, the Parks’ teleplay came out on home video as “Half Slave, Half Free.”  Inexplicably, McQueen had never heard about Solomon Northup and his plight when he was searching for a story to shoot about slavery.  Unlike Parks and his “American Playhouse” production, Mc Queen and Ridley were not restrained by the straitlaced standards of television censorship.  As much as “12 Years a Slave” is a yarn about courage in the face of  wholly insurmountable odds, this Fox Searchlight release qualifies as a horror movie that provides little relief from our protagonist’s travails until the end credits roll.  Happily, McQueen doesn’t paint all whites as unrepentant dastards.  Indeed, our hero survives this adversity because compassionate whites stand up to unsavory whites. Nonetheless, for all but a quarter-hour of its running time, “12 Years a Slave” makes you abhor the individuals who abuse Solomon.  The worst plantation owner of the bunch rapes his most productive black female slave repeatedly on a regular basis while his jealous wife dreams up schemes to drive the object of her husband’s lust from their property.

Movies about Southern slavery, sometimes referred to as the “peculiar institution,” usually focus on slaves born into bondage.   McQueen sought to make a film that would appeal to broader audience.  Ridley and he found in Northup’s memoir the perfect vehicle for this perspective.  Since Northup had been born free, we can identify with him more than we might a poor soul who never possessed his freedom.  Similarly, the same is true of those 18^th century British sea-faring tales about helpless lads kidnapped by press gangs and forced into service by His Majesty’s Government because they happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.  In “12 Years a Slave,” two grifters posing as traveling entertainers appealed to Solomon’s vanity as a musician to earn some quick, easy cash.  When things seem too good to be true is when you should flee temptation.  Solomon trusts these gentlemen implicitly, and they escort him to the nation’s capitol.  Once they arrive, they wine and dine him at an elegant restaurant and then slip him a Mickey Finn, the equivalent of the date rape drug Rohypnol, in his libation.  When he entered Washington, Solomon was dressed as splendidly as any Caucasian gentleman.  When he awakens the following morning on the outskirts of the capitol, Solomon finds himself attired in a night gown with a web of chains on both his wrists and ankles.  When he protests his status as a free-born black, the slave traders whip him into submission with a wooden paddle.  At this point, our hero winds up far from home in Louisiana where he must pick cotton, cut sugar cane, and grovel before his bullwhip wielding masters.

“12 Years a Slave” lives up to its R-rating.  The film contains considerable violence and cruelty, with extreme profanity as well as some nudity and brief sexuality.  Various characters utter the politically incorrect N-word as many as 60 times in the company of other derogatory adjectives.  The violence is far more disturbing than the sexuality.  Nude scenes occur when the slaves must bathe before an auction. Similarly, when buyers inspect the slaves, they force them to strip naked.  According to Northup’s memoirs, slaves whose bodies bore the mark of the lash were not as easy to sell as slaves with unblemished bodies.  A slave with too many scars was regarded as rebellious and considered poor prospect for sale.  12 Years a Slave” makes the Hollywood classic “Gone with the Wind” look like a fairy tale.  Although nobody suffers the loss of body parts as in the television mini-series “Roots,” the torture scenes where a female slave is lashed so badly that her back resembles a chopping board and male slaves are hoisted atop tree branches to hang until dead equal any of the ghastly horrors in Steven Spielberg 1993 Holocaust epic “Schindler's List.” English actor Chiwetel Ejiofor of “American Gangster” gives an unforgettable performance as Solomon Northup who suffered untold terror at the hands of his sadistic captors.   Naturally, as formidable as McQueen’s film is, Solomon Northup’s memoir is ten times more fascinating.