The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I loved The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  This is a fun, frothy movie with fast cars, stunning Mediterranean locations, beautiful people, and loads of stunts; and it’s all served up with an early-60’s lounge-cool vibe that’s just plain irresistible.

Here’s the setup: there are leftover Nazis, and they’re hiding out in Italy.  They’re about to get their hands on a nuclear weapon.  The CIA and KGB put their top agents on the case, forcing them to work together.  In other words, it’s a movie about a couple of ubermenschen who team up to fight Nazis off the Amalfi Coast. 

Now, if that isn’t the setup for a good time at the movies, I don’t know what is.  Ubermenschen Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer make for great spies, and Alicia Vikander more than holds her own as a spy in training.  The movie looks great, the music bops along wonderfully, and everyone seems to be having a great time.  What more could you ask for?

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows amounts to 129 minutes of missing Steven Moffat, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Martin Freeman.  Where the BBC’s brilliant “Sherlock” series of telefilms offers puzzling plots, delightful verbal interplay, and a sly (and often ribald) sense of humor, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is mostly just loud.  Where “Sherlock” gives us Moriarty as a comic, twisted genius, Game of Shadows lazily offers us Moriarty as just another Bond villain.  Where “Sherlock”’s unique visual style amuses and intrigues us, Game of Shadows only makes us wonder exactly how much cocaine director Guy Ritchie blew through while shooting and editing this film.

Here’s the story: it’s about a year since the events of the first film, Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes and Watson reunite to bring the nefarious Professor Moriarty to justice after the villain tries to have Dr. & Mrs. Watson killed for no apparent reason.  Lots of stuff blows up.  Noomi Rapace appears because she was hot after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire and it seems like a good career move.  More stuff blows up, there are some fistfights, and a bunch of people get shot, all in slow motion.  The Bond villain reveals his Bond villainesque plan, and his henchman reveals a disappointing lack of sterling silver dental work.  More ‘splosions and fights and shooting, and even more slo-mo.  We reflect that Robert Downey, Jr. doesn’t look remotely like an otter.  The film draws to an utterly unsurprising conclusion.  The End.  Next.

Hey, kudos to Guy Ritchie for (a) achieving his unique and singular vision, and (b) finding a studio to underwrite his coke habit.  But Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows just isn’t much fun.  It needs more wit.  It needs more style.  Aww, the heck with it: it needs Moffat, Cumberbatch, and Freeman.  They own the franchise now. 

Sherlock Holmes

I never believed that Robert Downey, Jr. was Sherlock Holmes. I never believed that Jude Law was Dr. Watson. I never believed that Rachel McAdams was anyone other than Rachel McAdams. I never believed. I never believed. I never believed.

Perhaps the movie was spoiled by the previews that came before it. Seeing Robert Downey, Jr. doing his shtick as Iron Man made me realize that the guy’s been playing the same character since the superlative KISS KISS BANG BANG. By the time he came onscreen in the feature, I was already done with him.

Perhaps it was spoiled by its seeming love for Victorian London, surely one of the most depressing combinations of city and era in history. As the film went from one CGI vista to the next, I sensed that it was trying to wow me, or at least draw me in. Instead, I merely thought, “The English exploited the world merely to fund that $#!^hole?”

Perhaps its casting choices killed it. McAdams is roughly ten years too young to be her character. Mark Strong, as the villain, is so much better than everyone else that he made me wonder why he isn’t starring in major motion pictures. And the leads, well, they are who they are and they play who they are.

Then again, the problem may have been the story. There’s all this business about an ominous raven, which we know (since this is a Holmes story) is just so much jerking us around. The pièce de résistance of the villain’s evil scheme is to bring the US back into the empire. Oh, the horror! Soccer! Fish and chips! “Spaced,” “Fawlty Towers,” and “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”! Give me a break. By the time the movie gets around to flat-out ripping off The Da Vinci Code, I was through.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the heck out of it.  Then again, she'd happily watch Robert Downey, Jr. fold socks, so your mileage may vary. I wanted to like SHERLOCK HOLMES. I was ready to invest in SHERLOCK HOLMES. But I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.

RocknRolla

ROCK N ROLLA is a great time at the movies.

Like LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, ROCKNROLLA is a British thug drama, though drama may be the wrong word. This isn’t a film about the human condition, and it isn’t a film about real people with real problems. It’s a game, a Rube Goldberg device, a chance to set up a bunch of characters in impossible situations and see how everything works itself out. And while that kind of movie can be a grinding bore of plot machination, ROCK N ROLLA hums like a finely tuned engine.

Why? I’ll chalk it up to two things: witty and well-written dialogue, and propulsive direction and editing. The dialogue seems like the kind of stuff that I’d enjoy reading as much as seeing performed, though the performances (by “The Wire”’s Idris Elba, Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, and Tom Wilkinson, among others, do it credit. The direction and editing, which combine for the look of the film, are alive with energy and excitement, like the kind of storyteller
who’s so caught in the moment that the words tumble out of him at nearly the speed of thought.

So here I am, four paragraphs in (if you count the lede), and I have yet to say what the movie is actually about. You know what? It doesn’t matter what the movie’s about, any more than it matters what a good storyteller’s tale is actually about. What matters is that it’s a tale from a good storyteller.

That’s enough for me.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

There's a moment at the beginning of the endgame of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (1998) in which all the pieces are assembled on the board, but the interlocking stories and plots are jumbled together and everything appears to be headed for total chaos. Watching it, I thought, "How the hell is this guy (writer / director Guy Ritchie) going to pull this off?"

He pulls it off with dash, flair, humor, and not a little bit of gratuitous violence. The same could be said of the entire film. LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is a fun, vibrant picture that isn't afraid to tell a raucous story raucously. Ritchie clearly enjoys writing dialogue that, if not entirely natural, is a pleasure to hear. Additionally, the guy knows how to craft a story that's inherently violent without giving it any real sense of danger. His characters and situations are so outlandish that they feel like characters and situations, not like real people, and that adds to the movie's sense of fun.

LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS could have gone wrong in any number of ways. Fortunately, Ritchie avoids them and delivers an energetic, amusing picture.

What a pleasant surprise.

PS There's a whole other side to this movie, the investigation of which was inconsistent with the upbeat tone of my remarks. LS&TSB does some interesting things with the nature of class, cleverly delineating various levels of "us-ness" and "them-ness." This is the kind of movie that could take you from a fun time at the theater to a fun time over coffee later, as you consider how calculated the film is, and how complicit you are, in its presentation of class and ethnicity.