Rabbit-Proof Fence

I tend to look askance at "issue moves." They have this way of putting the issue before the movie, seeking more to educate than entertain. This isn't to imply that movies shouldn't educate - rather, it's a reaction against the hamhandedness that normally accompanies such education.

Thus did I approach RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, a film that's about either the Australian government's earlier policy of reeducating part-Aboriginies and separating them from their heritage or three Aboriginal girls on an awesome journey of escape and endurance.

The film begins as the former, with Kenneth Branagh the genuine but cruelly wrong government official in charge of the relocation and reeducation program. "If only these people knew what we were trying to do for them," he laments. It's hamhanded and, in a separation scene, overtly manipulative to the point of agitprop.

Once it becomes the latter, however, it turns into a better, more effective film. The three girls are heartbreakingly tough and vulnerable, the villains generally well nuanced, and the whole thing thoroughly gripping entertainment.

Ultimately, I think RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is just ok. With a little less agitprop and a little more adventure, the film could have both entertained and scored its points much more effectively.

Shadow of a Doubt

Uncle Charlie's coming for a visit. He's been away for a while, engaged in "business," and now here he is, flush with cash. Charlie's happy to see her namesake uncle, whom she adores in ways both appropriate and inappropriate. Things are about to go very wrong.

And there's the setup for a thriller that's disturbing, engaging, and, yes, thrilling. Joseph Cotton plays Uncle Charlie as a classic sociopath: charismatic, evil, and utterly remorseless. Teresa Wright, as the younger Charlie, does a wonderful job of showing the scales falling from her character's eyes. The film itself winds us tighter and tighter, and the last fifteen minutes had me thoroughly on edge.

Simply put, I enjoyed every frame of SHADOW OF A DOUBT. What a delight.

PS There's a scene in the movie in which Cotton takes Wright to a seedy bar to tell her what's what. As I watched this movie on the Metro last night, someone sat behind me at that very moment. My fellow passenger smelled just like that bar: before I knew it, I was enveloped in the smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Talk about an immersive viewing experience!

Cinderella Man

I enjoyed CINDERELLA MAN. Though I'm now comfortably ensconsed in the upper middle class, I grew up poor. Consequently, I have this constant sense that the wolf is always at the door, that my fortunes could shift in an instant and before I'll know it it'll be all I can do just to feed my family. CINDERELLA MAN's first act was all my fears played out before me, and I couldn't help but empathize with the Braddocks' plight.

Once I bought Braddock, it was easy to buy the rest of the movie, a process aided by the film's excellent photography and production values. I rooted for these people, I booed the delightful Craig Bierko, and I lost track of time for a solid two and a half hours. Consider me a satisfied customer.

Tokyo Story

The more I think about TOKYO STORY, the more I like it.

It's a simple story. Grandma & Grandpa leave their provincial home and come to Tokyo to visit the kids. The kids are busy, and the visit does not go well.

Some audiences may find the movie difficult to approach because it's very Japanese. Its characters do not boradcast their every emotion. They don't yell. They don't burst into song. They don't weep majestically. They smile, and bow, and hurt. In other words, they do the kinds of things that people do all over the world, bu they do it within the bounds of their cultural paradigm. Audiences who are willing to attune themselves to that paradigm will discover a movie that's uncomfortably close to home, that speaks to the ways marriages work and the ways generations deal with one another. They'll discover a movie that speaks to the creeping sense of discontent we sometimes feel creeping up on us, and they'll discover a movie that addresses all of these themes in a thoughtful, compassionate, and adult manner.

TOKYO STORY is a serious movie, well made and performed, that earns its place in our imaginations. It is time well spent.

Return of the Jedi

RETURN OF THE JEDI is the film where the wheels came right off the Star Wars franchise’s cart.

It begins promisingly enough, with an all-grown-up Luke ready to wield the lightsaber in defense of his friends and general goodness. But before you know it, we’re back in another Death Star attack, somebody shrunk the Wookies, and after all this time we find out that Darth Vader is just another old fat guy. This movie has absolutely nothing going for it in terms of character or plot, and the only response it can wring from us is a sense of discomfort over Luke & Leia’s earlier flirtatiousness.

My boy’s going through a huge Star Wars phase right now, but I can’t go there with him. I love, love, love the first Star Wars movie, conveniently entitled STAR WARS: it’s everything an adventure film should be. Nothing else, unfortunately, comes close.

The Keys to the House

THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE wants to be, tries to be, a moving little drama about a journey to manhood and father - son bonding. It begins well, with an intriguing premise (haunted runaway dad reclaims custody after 14 years) and likeable actors, but the journey to manhood isn’t particularly compelling and the father-son bonding is pretty much complete only 2/3 of the way through the movie.

This is a drab film, drearily shot, with nothing to engage the eye while the mind wanders. The actors do their jobs well enough, but they’re hampered by a directorial affection for long, motionless silences – there’s a reason why they’re called motion pictures, buddy. If you’re going to have people just stand or sit there, you’d better have good reason and you’d better not do it often.

In a recent CHUD interview, Paul Greengrass compared a major American studio picture to an orchestral symphony. THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE, a small Italian production, tries to be a charming little chamber piece, but it plays a dull tune on drab instruments. Ignore the palms on the DVD cover and give this one a pass.

Black Snake Moan

BLACK SNAKE MOAN didn't get much traction in theaters, though it garnered positive reviews. I can probably sum up the reasons why in my wife's response to the film when she saw the disc arrive in the mail: "Isn't that the one where Samuel L. Jackson chains the girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY to a radiator? I'll pass."

Well, yeah, Samuel L. Jackson does chain the girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY to a radiator, but the movie isn't about hot "old black man / chained white chick" action (though I'm sure there are many web sites that are). It's about finding out who you are, whether you've forgotten or simply never knew. It's about dignity, and it's about a particular slice of Southern culture that's as alien to me as a Mongolian yurt, yet feels familiar and comforting.

Here's the deal: Sam Jackson is a farmer and blues musician who has the blues so bad, he can't even play the blues. He leads a blues kind of life: he looks like a bluesman, with his little pot belly and fringe of white hair; but it's been so long since he's picked up a guitar that he can barely remember what it feels like. Sam lives outside a small Delta town, and in that town lives Christina Ricci, the town whore. Not hooker, mind you - she's free. But she has no impulse control, and when things go wrong and she winds up bleeding and unconscious on the side of a country road, Sam finds her. And then he, well ... but it seems like a good idea at the time!

Now no one can deny that that's a great, pulpy core for a story. But that's not what makes the movie. What makes the movie are the sense of time and place it creates, a South both real and archetypical, a South that's far more interesting than the one I lived in for 15 painful months (Ask me about the restaurant that really did have a menu that said, "Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner."). The wonderful, bluesy score takes some credit for that, as does the perfect set and costume design. Samuel L. Jackson certainly deserves his share of the credit, reminding us that, yes, this guy is one fine actor when he brings his A game. And Christina Ricci delivers a brave, demanding performance that changes her status from "girl from THE ADDAMS FAMILY" to "amazing actress from BLACK SNAKE MOAN."

Director Craig Brewer's previous film was HUSTLE AND FLOW, which was brilliant. With this followup effort, he proves that he's not a one-shot wonder. He's a unique and assured voice of the South, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say next.

Bob le Flambeur

I found BOB LE FLAMBEUR thoroughly captivating. It's held together by the titular Bob (Roger Duchesne), a guy who reminded me Burt Lancaster right up to the moment when he dons a tuxedo, at which point he reminded me of George Clooney. Bob's a high-roller, which is another way of saying he's a gambling addict, and you know what always happens to gambling addicts: they lose. Once, long ago, he'd been part of a heist (presumably to cover his debts) gone wrong, but saved the life of a police officer during the arrest. Now he's done his time and he's generally a good guy, but he loves chance so much that he has a slot machine in his closet. And, of course, you know what always happens to gambling addicts.

BOB is a film that deals in shades of morality and people who choose just which shade they'll be. It deals with nobility and weariness, and it offers one of the best heist setups I've ever seen. Jean-Pierre Melville shoots it with just the right combination of glitz and grime, and I believed everyone and everything I saw on the screen before me. What a treat.

The Empire Strikes Back

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a perfectly fine movie, but I have one major problem with it: it isn’t really a movie. It’s two-thirds of a movie, with a great buildup to a third act that never actually happens.

I know, I know, EMPIRE existed to serve up RETURN OF THE JEDI, but I don’t care. Films should exist on their own, as self-contained entities, even if those entities exist as part of a larger whole. Even if we know another film is coming, we should walk out of the theater satisfied with the narrative experience. EMPIRE forces us to do without that satisfaction, however, leaving us with a cliffhanger that leaves so much unresolved that we feel we wasted our time in watching it.

Some people feel that EMPIRE is best of all the Star Wars films. These are the kind of people who think that all buildup with no payoff is a good thing. As for me, give me my climax and send me home happy.

Take Me Out to The Ball Game

Busby Berkeley's TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Esther Williams, is utterly, atrociously, horribly bad.

Kelly, Sinatra, Williams, and the supporting cast don't act - they merely mark time between uninspired musical numbers. The story, your basic love triangle, isn't interesting because there's no real sense that any of these people even like one another. The comedy falls flat, Kelly's dancing is tied down by his costars, and not even the pool number can do much more than put a check in a box.

Here's the setup: Kelly and Sinatra are, basically, Ruth and Gherig, a couple of ballplayers on the vaudeville circuit between seasons. Gher-, er, Sinatra is all smiles and enthusiasm, while Kelly's all about the money and has fallen out of love with baseball. When these guys finally show up to spring training, there's bad news: the team's owner has died, leaving it to his stripper wife, who ... oh, wait, that's from a better movie. This movie's bad news is that the owner had died and left the team to his niece, a woman who, dontcha know it, has a talent for and knowledge of baseball. You can fill in the rest of the dots from here, but why bother? It's the middle of summer - why not just go to a ball game, instead?

When Comedy Was King

WHEN COMEDY WAS KING is a clip show of silent – era comedies that defeats its own purpose.

Look, there’s no debating that cinema produced a great deal of comedy gold in its early years, and there are very few ways you can go wrong in stringing together a bunch of good bits and putting them out there for public consumption. WCWK, however, does find one sure way to get things wrong: the thing is narrated with condescension and spite by some guy who sounds like a kindly uncle who nurtures a quiet hatred for the world and everything in it. “Where has the laughter gone?” he asks. Hey, jackass – go to the movies, there’s plenty of laughter to go around. Now I know that this, too is an old movie, but hey, there was plenty of laughter to go around when WHEN COMEDY WAS KING was first released, as well.

The movie does a service in splicing together all those clips, however. If you want to introduce yourself or your family to this great genre, you could do worse than fire it up. Just do so with the sound off. Your own laughter is all the commentary these clips need.

Spaceballs

SPACEBALLS, as seen from the perspective of my 7-year-old boy:

Ha. "Pizza the Hutt." That's funny.

Darth Vader is silly.

Ewww, kissing. Gross!

What, a giant vacuum cleaner transformer? This is like the worst STAR WARS movie ever!

Let's send it back. Right away.

Now, SPACEBALLS, as seen from my perspective:

SPACEBALLS is a failure. It fails to generate laughs, insight, or even a hummable theme song. It's as if the whole thing were done on autopilot for the express purpose of making a quick buck, and it couldn't even do that. It's a wonder Bill Pullman's career survived this debacle. Avoid it all costs.

Presumed Innocent

Here's another one from Joe McDonald:

If there was ever a movie that dealt with the compromising of integrity in as many shades of grey as "Presumed Innocent" does, then I would like to know: ****.

"PI" is the story of district attorney Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford) whose former mistress, Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi), is a gorgeous co-worker who is murdered. To say the plot thickens when we discover that she has also had an affair with Ford's supervisor (Brian Dennehy), who assigns Ford to her murder case, is to only begin to unravel the Pandora's box that Polhemus' death creates. Sabich is still whipped on her and his wife sees that, he is less than enthusiastic to assume responsibility for this case which his boss thrust on him, and then lo and behold, he becomes the prime suspect. To boot, we have missing evidence, the presiding judge's connection to Polhemus, and the prosecuting attorneys unseemly connection to Sabich's office.

The situation is a complete mess, and yet the script is written with an airtight clarity that makes us care about our flawed protagonist and understand the layers of agendas that permeate this movie. This is one of Ford's most underappreciated performances. He is spellbound by a seductive, enticing woman with an agenda, but he he is a man of principle as well. We see the exact moment when his principles lose her attraction, and his erotic fix is lost forever. He is a lost puppy, thereafter.

If Scacchi, on the other hand, could mass produce, bottle and market her sexuality, she could retire after six months. She is sumptuous, power hungry, tragic, and maybe just a tad bit kind-hearted. Wow. And finally, I am so sorry to see Raul Julia and his magnetic performance as Sabich's defense attorney. This was one of his most memorable roles before he died in 1994. He is the straw that stirs the drink once he is hired: measured, well studied, sympathetic, never expends more energy than needed, but strikes hard and effectively when the iron is hot.

This is one of the best courtroom drama I have even seen. And the ending turned me upside down; once I thought it ended, it resurrected itself for just a little longer. Sad, tragic, brilliant.

Blades of Glory

The Will Ferrell figure skating comedy BLADES OF GLORY, which could just have easily been entitled WILL FERRELL FIGURE SKATING COMEDY is intermittently funny, but it’s the kind of movie whose comedy comes from its situations, not its characters. That’s because the movie has no real characters, but rather characatures. There’s Ferrell as, essentially, Elvis Stojko and John Heder as Brian Boitano. When the two are banned from Men’s Singles competition, they do what Brian Boitano would do: they man up and start skating doubles.

That’s pretty much your movie, and it’s intermittently entertaining as long as you’re willing to go along with its central premise: that figure skating is ridiculous and that male figure skaters are pussies. That premise, and the gags BLADES OF GLORY milks from it, is pretty much all the movie has to offer. This would spell disaster if they’d cast anyone other than Ferrell at his schticky best, Heder in full mincing ninny mode, and (married) comic geniuses Will “Final Countdown” Arnett and Amy Poehler as their hilariously evil foils. (Aside: I’d never accept an invitation to the Arnett/Poehler house for dinner. I don’t think I could get out of there without peeing my pants with laughter.) This cast takes a paper-thin (and potentially offensive) premise and characters with less depth than an 8-yr-old’s poetry and, amazingly, makes them work. BLADES OF GLORY didn’t make me out-and-out guffaw, but it did keep me chuckling. That’s good enough for an in-flight movie, and that’s all I needed when I saw it.

Breach

BREACH, based on the true story of the Robert Hanssen Treason Investigation, features Ryan Philippe as the young FBI agent assigned to Hanssen’s staff for the sole purpose of investigating him. He’s an interesting enough fellow, but Chris Cooper, as Hanssen, blows him and everyone else off the screen every moment he’s up there.

The story itself, of the biggest spy investigation in FBI history, makes for an interesting tale. Add a sense of verisimilitude gained by using many actual DC-area locations and paying attention to geography (When Hanssen, stuck in traffic, grouses that he could walk to FBI headquarters in ten minutes, I thought, “Well, maybe 15.” That’s pretty good, seeing as how a popular television series like 24 expects us to believe that Jack Bauer can make from LAX to Hollywood in five.), and I believed I was watching a reenactment of events, not a dramatization.

BREACH is cast with a number of respected character actors, including geek favorite Gary Cole, but Chris Cooper deserves praise for creating a Robert Hanssen that’s completely believable, corrupt, and more than a little sympathetic. Cooper first came to my attention in the magnificent LONE STAR, and since then, he’s made a career of playing multidimensional, conflicted character with whom we can invest. Watching him play the warning signs I learned about in basic counterintelligence classes (and which anyone can learn by enjoying a visit to DC’s exceptional Spy Museum), I saw the bitterness, the vanity, the twisted sense of duty, the rage at marginalization I was taught to look for in people with access to sensitive information. I knew that Hanssen was a traitor, an accessory to murder, and a generally unlikable character, and I expected him to get his comeuppance. I didn’t expect him to break my heart, as he does here. Truly, Chris Cooper is one of the best actors working in American film.

I have a transatlantic flight coming up, and I think I’ll spend part of it watching the commentary with Eric O’Neill, the FBI agent played by Philippe. I want to see just how much of I was watching really happened.

Interesting aside: At the Spy Museum, they show a video interview with one of the women who first figured out that Hanssen was a spy. She had been conducting interviews with the (very large) suspect pool, and one of her stock questions was, “If you were going to spy on America for the Russians, how would you do it?” People really seemed to groove on this question, taking it as an interesting thought experiment and providing detailed, creative answers. Hanssen was the only interviewee who clammed up and got combative. That was the “A-ha!” moment that, eventually led to his arrest. Fascinating stuff.

The Good Shepherd

Filmmaker Joe McDonald sent me his thoughts on the THE GOOD SHEPHERD. I enjoyed his writing so much that I thought I'd pass it along to you.

Believe the peanut gallery, "TGS" was booorrring: **. I am so glad, in hindsight, that you were so compelled to suggest "Rocky Balboa" when it was "TGS" that I really had my eye on last Christmas.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale graduate who, I believe, belonged to that same stupid secret society that Bush belongs to that signifies the beginning of a career of puppet-mastering in offices of power and prestige. At the cusp of graduation, Damon is approached by an army general (Robert DeNiro) to help form an organization that creates information and misinformation to assist the war effort during WWII, an organization we have come to know now as the CIA. And so begins a life of seven-day work weeks, talking in crypto-speak, a friendless environment, and alienating oneself from the family Damon loves. When he is approached by the same army general to head a similar peacetime organization to fight the Cold War, gee, how can he resist?

Why did this movie not work? There were no goals in this movie. I needed to see the value of having a CIA during World War II and thereafter. I needed to see Damon achieve a victory during the war that demonstrates his value to such an organization and seeing him get hooked. I needed to see some history and background of the CIA. This could have been soooo interesting. What I saw was the stoic faces, the subtextual conversations, shady characters, and close acquaintances getting killed during the war. I kept yelling at the TV for Damon to ditch the job, dump Angelina Jolie, and find that hot, deaf girl he was dating in college so that he can teach poetry at some northeast prep school like he wants to.

"TGS" looked fabulous visually, the cast is an all-star team of Oscar nominees and winners, the set dec and costumes are second to none. Hell, the screenwriter is Eric Roth ("Munich", "Forrest Gump", "The Insider"). What happened here?! Were all the good parts edited out? Is DeNiro a bad director?

What I do know is that I began to balance my checkbook at the halfway point of this movie. Pass on it.

The Waterboy

THE WATERBOY, a vintage Adam Sandler comedy from his “inappropriately aggressive man-child” phase, is an underdog sports comedy that has the titular water boy fired from LSU and sent to work at Louisiana’s last-place football college. Soon, he discovers a talent for sacking quarterbacks and makes the team, despite the fact that he seems to have an IQ of roughly 50. This movie works because it will do anything, absolutely anything, for a laugh. Think watching Fairuza Balk bite the heads off a baby ‘gator on a stick is funny? It’s in there! Think ‘70s fashion and hairstyles are funny? They’re in there! Think guys with crazy eyes and silly voices are funny? Well, you get the point.

Some of THE WATERBOY’s gags are funny, but most aren’t. However, seeing as how there’s roughly a gag a minute in this picture, you’re sure to find a several that’ll make you chuckle and, hopefully, one or two that will make you laugh out loud. That ain’t bad.

Acepted

ACCEPTED is your basic slobs vs. snobs comedy, anchored by Justin Long and set in an upstart college that dares to let students study whatever they want, on their own, as their path to self-actualization.

Long is likeable enough, the movie rocks along all right, and I chuckled once or twice, but it got me to thinking. ACCEPTED is both a wish fulfillment fantasy and a commentary on the current state of American society. Let's set aside, for now, the hypocrisy of the incredibly competitive entertainment industry in distributing a movie that celebrates just letting it all hang out. I'm more interested in the film's assumption that going to college in order to set oneself up for a decent job is a pale excuse for education when measured against finding oneself. Tell that to college kids in Bangalore and Dalian – the kids who are overtaking the US in technical innovation and international patent applications. They're in it for material gain, to compete in the global market, while American kids flee the hard sciences and engineering in favor of liberal arts degrees that feel good but both fail to prepare them for the international job market and keep them from being able to help maintain America's technical
edge.

Have we truly left the American work ethic behind, yearning instead for unlimited time to work the half-pipe and take pictures of girls in bikinis? If so, then look out, America: in another generation or two, we'll be the call the center operators of the world. Talking will be all we know how to do.

Fixed Bayonets!

FIXED BAYONETS! lays it right out for you in the opening lines, when one GI opines, "It takes more than brains to be a general. It takes guts to lead." And that's pretty much your movie. When Corporal Denno (Richard Basehart) admits that he doesn't have the guts to lead men in battle and thanks God that there's a lieutenant and three sergeants between him and command, we know that it's Four Little Indians and then this guy's gotta find out what he's made of.

From the IMDB (corrected for grammar):

The premise of this film is factually based on Task Force Faith in the Korean War: In late November 1950, the Chinese struck along the Chongchon River and overran several ROK divisions, landing an extremely heavy blow on the flank of the remaining UN forces. The resulting withdrawal of the United States Eighth Army was the longest retreat of an American unit in national history. In the east, at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir (November 26–December 13) a 3,000 man unit from the US 7th Infantry Division, Task Force Faith, was virtually wiped out, with significant hand to hand fighting. The Marines fared better; though surrounded and forced to retreat, they inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese, who committed 6 divisions while trying to
destroy the Marines.

Of the 2,500 troops trapped by the Chinese, about 1,500 eventually made it back to American lines, the majority of them wounded or badly frostbitten. Roughly 300 able-bodied survivors were formed into a provisional battalion which was attached to the Marines and fought with them in the breakout of the 1st Marine Division during the remainder of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Over 1,000 soldiers of Task Force Faith were killed or died in Chinese captivity.

In FIXED BAYONETS!, a 2-Star tells his colonels that he needs a platoon to cover his division's retreat, fooling the Chinese into
thinking that he hasn't retreated at all. CPL Denno's platoon draws the short straw, and from there it's all about 36 guys trying to stay alive in the snow while Denno doesn't so much shirk responsibility as hope it doesn't fall on his shoulders. It could be so much drek, but it's brought to life by a man uniquely qualified to do so: co-screenwriter and director Samuel Fuller.

From Wikipedia: During World War II, Fuller joined the Army. He was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. He also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart.

Fuller understands the Army, he understands combat, and he understands platoon dynamics, which lends FIXED BAYONETS! an authenticity I hadn't expected. It gives the story urgency and drama, and it helps to create a thoroughly engrossing military thriller, even if we are absolutely certain of how CPL Denno will respond when the chips are down. In this case, it isn't so much the destination as it is the journey, and FIXED BAYONETS! is the closest you can get to winter in Korea without getting frostbite.

This is an excellent movie.

Sympathy for Mister Vengeance

Chan Wook Park's SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is a beautiful, horrifying, depressing, and thoroughly successful picture. With the exception of a final scene so implausible that it drew me out of the movie, SFMV captured and held my attention and imagination, even when I wanted to look away.

Park, the director behind JSA and OLDBOY, knows how to compose a scene. The color palette (Does green have special significance in Korean iconography?), set decoration, and placement of the actors themselves work together time and again to not only drive the narrative but generate stills I'd be happy to linger over in book form. While Park's composition can deliver real beauty, it can also deliver real horror. Be warned: SFMV is a horrifying movie, with many shots more akin to Miike than Malick. You may want to think twice before screening it for your friends, and I had to flip the screen down on my portable DVD player more than once to avoid disturbing those around me on the Metro.

As Don alluded in his comments on HOSTEL, horror works best when we've invested in its characters. SFMV's cast, including JSA's Kang-Ho Song (also excellent in MEMORIES OF MURDER) and Ha-Kyun Shin, bring their characters fully to life and give us people for whom we hope and fear. I'd like to take special note of Shin, who says more with his deaf-mute character than some actors do with 90 minutes-worth of dialogue. This investment has a downside, however: SFMV is just plain depressing. It gives us people we like and proceeds to punish them, punish them, and punish them some more. But here's the brilliance of this movie: just when things are at their worst, it gives us a chance to say, "Wow, what a shot!" Its artistry actually serves to give us the distance to stay engaged in the film. Without it, the experience would be too much.

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE works. It just plain does. On every level. This is the kind of movie I could watch again and again, finding more in the composition and structure, more in the events and performances. Rent it today.