Rob Brown plays Ernie Davis in the football biopic The Express; Leo and Russell race around the Middle East in Body of Lies; Guy Ritchie hopes for a career comeback with RocknRolla; and Humboldt County provides a modest buzz.
The Express
***
Even though the story of Syracuse running back—and the first African American Heisman Trophy winner—Ernie Davis has never been told on the big screen before, it’s hard to watch the new biopic The
Express without feeling a certain sense of déjà vu. Just take a look at the plot elements for a second. A ’60s-era black athlete encountering prejudice in a white-dominated sport? Wasn’t that movie called Glory Road? A gruff coach whose views on life and the game are changed forever thanks to one great player? Sounds a lot like Hoosiers. A football legend-in-the-making whose career is tragically cut short by cancer? Oh man, that Brian’s Song gets me every time!
Of course, it’s not The Express‘ fault that we’ve seen aspects of its story told in other movies. After all, it’s not like the filmmakers could completely change the details of Davis’ life in the name of making the film version more “original.” Besides, a clichéd sports movie can still be a good sports movie if its got the right combination of strong performances, a compelling personal story and tense game play. And in the case of The Express, its got all three. As Davis, Finding Forrester‘s Rob Brown cuts a charismatic figure on and off the football field, while Dennis Quaid lends his usual authority to the role of Syracuse’s famous coach, Ben Schwartzwalder. (The other notable performance comes from Darrin DeWitt Henson as Syracuse veteran Jim Brown; although he doesn’t really resemble the football legend, Henson does capture the sheer force of Brown’s personality.) Their relationship forms the heart of The Express, lending the movie an emotional weight that guides it through some of its rougher patches, most notably a subplot involving a lame romance between Davis and Sarah Ward (Nicole Beharie), which may or may not be an invention on behalf of the screenwriters.
Football is a notoriously difficult sport to capture realistically on film. That’s why the best pigskin flicks—including Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights and Oliver Stone’s underrated Any Given Sunday—elevate it to something resembling gladiatorial combat. Director Gary Fleder takes a more traditional approach to The Express‘ game sequences, relying on lots of fast cutting and tight close-ups of the scoreboard to generate excitement. This approach doesn’t always work, but it does here, mainly because the film already has us rooting for Davis to triumph in the face of all the doubters, including those on his own team. And that’s the final piece of the puzzle that puts The Express above run-of-the-mill sports movies like The Longshots and Invincible. Davis’ real-life story is too important, too inspiring to not capture our attention. Despite its flaws, at least The Express does its best to honor this groundbreaking player’s memory.
Verdict: See It
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Body of Lies
**
It’s official: the Ridley Scott who created such signature visions as Blade Runner and Alien is dead and has been replaced by a pod person that churns out slick-looking, but wholly generic big-budget time-wasters like American Gangster and A Good Year. Pod-Scott’s latest film is Body of Lies, a war on terror-themed thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as CIA agents with vastly different approaches to their jobs. While young gun DiCaprio prefers to work on the ground in hot zones, veteran operative Crowe monitors the action—and makes executive decisions—from the comfort of his home in suburban Virginia. For his latest assignment, DiCaprio sets up an elaborate sting operation to capture notorious Middle Eastern terrorist Osama Bin Laden…uh, I mean Al-Saleem, only to find his plan repeatedly thwarted by Crowe’s bull-headed meddling. Body of Lies was written by The Departed scribe William Monahan and he works overtime to bring the same macho flair to this script that made Scorsese fanboys flip for that overrated picture. Too bad he didn’t put an equal amount of effort into streamlining the movie’s clunky narrative, which starts out as merely boring before taking a hard left turn into convoluted territory. Meanwhile, behind the camera, Pod-Scott blows lots of shit up to try and mask the fact that he and the stars have no real idea what’s going on. There’s been a lot of chatter recently about how moviegoers are reluctant to plunk down their hard-earned money to watch movies that deal with terrorism and the Iraq War. Films like Body of Lies help prove them right.
Verdict: Skip It
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RocknRolla
*1/2
If you think Body of Lies just barely makes sense, try wrapping your head around the nonsensical story at the center of Guy Ritchie’s latest London-based crime picture. Here’s what little I was able to piece together after a single viewing of this loud, obnoxious retread of Ritchie’s earlier movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Okay, so there’s this London crime lord (Tom Wilkinson) eager to do a deal with some shady Eastern European types. But he needs some capital in order to convince them he’s on the up and up. Enter a pair of low-rent gangsters (300‘s Gerard Butler and The Wire‘s Idris Elba, talking in his native accent for once) who are deep in debt t the big boss and end up stealing the cash from the aforementioned Europeans with the help of a hot-to-trot accountant (Thandie Newton). The crooks then pass this cash onto Wilkinson, who has already pissed off his prospective business partners by losing a valuable painting they loaned him. This priceless artwork was stolen by his own good-for-nothing son (Toby Kebbell), who moonlights as a rock star under the guidance of a pair of American producers/promoters (Jeremy Piven and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges). Did you get all that? No? That’s okay, Ritchie doesn’t really care that much about the plot anyway. His main interest is trying to reignite his stalled career by cribbing shamelessly from Tarantino, Danny Boyle and many other far more talented filmmakers. RocknRolla does have one inspired chase sequence, in which Butler flees a pair of unstoppable Eastern European strongmen, but its surrounded by a lot of flash and noise that turns the film into an endurance test rather than a piece of escapist entertainment.
Verdict: Skip It
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Humboldt County
**1/2
A mellow counterpart to over-the-top stoner comedies like Pineapple Express and the Harold & Kumar movies, Humboldt County follows the marijuana-laced misadventures of overworked med student Peter (Jeremy Strong). After failing an important exam, Peter allows himself to be lured into an impromptu road trip by wild child singer Bogart (Fairuza Balk) from Los Angeles to her home in the wilds of Humboldt County. There, he meets her sort-of family, a pair of pot-growing hippies (Brad Dourif and Frances Conroy) who have a tendency to adopt all the lost souls that find their way to their remote ranch. Another one of their “kids” is Max (Chris Messina), Bogart’s sometimes-boyfriend. Naturally, Peter doesn’t know what to make of this situation at first, but after a few tokes on some primo-weed, he settles back into his best summer vacation ever…at least until the Feds show up and spoil the buzz. While Humboldt County has a nice low-key charm (expect it to play well on DVD) it’s ultimately too laid back. The movie’s neither funny enough nor filled with enough dramatic tension to keep us invested in Peter’s halting journey of self-discovery. Mostly it is content to shuffle amiably along, providing a few chuckles here and there without really challenging itself or the audience.
Verdict: Rent It
