Captain America

Captain America failed to capture my imagination.  It never made me feel like I was watching people, even extraordinary people, in dangerous situations.  It made me feel like I was watching characters go through the motions of yet another ‘origin story’ that really served as a prelude to the big Avengers movie the studio has planned for next year.  Its perils didn’t feel organic, its villain struck me as silly (The villain’s someone called Red Skull, who’s a really evil Nazi because – what? – regular Nazis aren’t evil enough?), and Captain America’s “super-special good guy team” just looked goofy.

Hey, I like star Chris Evans, who was the best thing about the Fantastic Four movies and Sunshine.  I like Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci; and Hayley Atwell is easy on the eyes.  But I never believed in what I saw, and it wasn’t long before Captain America had me looking at my watch.  I hope The Avengers will surprise me with something wonderful.  Based on what I saw in Iron Man 2, Thor, and now this, I’m not holding my breath.

Traitor

TRAITOR is an excellent film.

Don Cheadle plays Samir, a Sudanese-American working his way up the ranks of a terrorist organization. He's the textbook terrorist candidate: an immigrant caught between two worlds, smart, capable, devout, and with military training. As played by Cheadle, he's also deeply conflicted. He's a man who wants to do the right thing, but the people telling him what is and is not right don't seem to be any more enlightened than he (I'm describing the character instead of the performance because, hey, it's Don Cheadle. You know he nails it.).

Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, and Neal McDonough are among the Americans working his case. Saïd Taghmaoui, Alyy Kahn, and Raad Rawi are the major players in his cell. Each of these fine actors sells their roles, but it's a testament to Cheadle's ability that he blows them off the screen without even trying. There's so much happening behind this guy's eyes that he's always the most interesting person in the room, no matter how skilled the other players.

The movie itself is well shot and scored, though not particularly dazzling. This is more a character piece than a virtuoso production, and its exploration of the kind of guy who can rig a suicide vest or sacrifice innocents makes an excellent counterpoint to the more hero-oriented GWOT thrillers we've been getting recently. What a pleasure to get inside the mind of a guy like Samir, a guy wrestling with big questions with important consequences. This one is worth seeing.

Flags of our Fathers

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS like a cocoon that's trapping a beautiful butterfly. Wrapped around a gripping war drama with memorable characters, compelling situations, and great photography are layers of emotionally overwrought coming home and reminiscence stories. If we could just do away with that chrysalis, we'd have something to behold.

OK, that gambit failed. Here's another go: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is brilliant when it's on Iwo Jima. It's tedious the rest of the time.

After reading its lukewarm reviews, I hesitated to watch this movie. Nevertheless, I have a reasonable expectation of going to Iwo Jima later this year, I wanted to get some background, and this seemed like a good path to it. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS certainly filled that purpose. Though Clint Eastwood filmed the movie on the beaches of Iceland, he manages to convey the landing and subsequent campaign in the kind of visceral way only good filmmakers can. Problem is, the movie seems only tangentially about Iwo Jima - it's about the three survivors of the flag raising and their subsequent war bond tour, and their song of readjustment and survivor guilt was better sung through the stories of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.

On Iwo, FLAGS gives us a stellar cast featuring favorites such as Barrie Pepper, Robert Patrick, Paul Walker, and Neal McDonough battling their way off the beach. When the action moves to the home front, however, it saddles us with Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, and Ryan Phillippe as the three survivors. Theirs is a worthy tale, but it just isn't cinematic. How many times do we have to hear the Indian guy suffer through lousy Indian jokes before we can throw our hands up and say, "We get it"?

I appreciate the fact that Eastwood wasn't interested in making just another war movie. But I wish he would have.