Depp Sizzles As Dillinger

While Mann makes the movie look pretty without big budget effects!

The tale of John Dillinger is known to an extant in the modern world. Most would recognize the name but very few would actually know his story. Director Michael Mann (Heat, Miami Vice) has set out to change that. Not only did he direct but also co-wrote the film with Ronan Bennett (Lucky Break) and Ann Biderman (Primal Fear) who based their screenplay off Bryan Burrough’s book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI. Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) plays John Dillinger while Stephen Graham (Inkheart) and Channing Tatum (Fighting) star as the other notorious gangsters Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd. Billy Crudup (Watchmen) is J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, who gives the task of finding John Dillinger to Melvin Purvis portrayed by Christian Bale (The Dark Knight). Rounding out the spectacular supporting cast is Marion Cotillard (A Good Year), Giovanni Ribisi (Perfect Stranger), Stephen Dorff (Blade), Leelee Sobieski (88 Minutes), Jason Clarke (Death Race), Shawn Hatosy (Alpha Dog) and Branka Katic (The Englishmen).

To say this is a John Dillinger bio-pic could be misleading. Mann chose to tell the tale of Dillinger’s final years. It is a very interesting lead-up to his demise but we never find out what drives the man. “I rob banks” is what Dillinger states throughout the film and he is good at it. We are never given any insight as to why he robs banks. So if you go in expecting to find this information out you will leave disappointed.

That being said, this film is fantastic looking. Mann knows his way around a camera, better than any other director in my opinion, bringing us beautiful angles, landscapes and gun battles. Even if this was a bad film I could watch it over again for the detail that Mann puts into it. A unique choice that Mann made was not telling us in big bold letters across the screen “TUCSON”, instead he carefully dropped that the gang was going to meet there next and showed us cacti and desert to imply where they are. A few times in the movie this was used and it is never jarring and very easy to figure out exactly what city they are currently residing in.

The sprawling amount of cast members in this movie was surprising. I knew Mann had brought quite a few actors on board that could hold their own with Depp and Bale but I couldn’t believe how deep a cast it was. The best part about it, not a single person was miscast. Everyone was as convincing as the next. I want to say that Bale might have been the weak point but I think that had to do with the lack of growth his character received throughout the film. On the other hand Depp brings his persona and turns it into Dillinger’s (even looking quite like the real John Dillinger). "I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars... and you. What else do you need to know?" spews Dillinger, and Depp delivers his line so perfect as the overconfident, smug outlaw.

I found only two things really wrong with this film. One may not have actually been the film itself but the theatre and the crappy sound system. In the beginning minute when Dillinger is escaping from the jail with his gang, a few of the men spoke from the back seat and you could hardly hear a word they said. Only a few seconds later one of them spoke again, louder than the sound of the gun shots from moments ago. Later in the film, and I found this problem with Mann’s Miami Vice as well, there were moments when the film really slowed down. Mann could have made some edits which could have solved this problem.

Since I saw the first poster of Depp as Dillinger I knew I wanted to see this. Honestly, this was probably my most anticipated film to see this year. I would watch the movie trailer almost weekly. Now, after seeing the film, I can say that it was a good film but it did disappoint a bit. It was not the great film I expected but it is definitely worth watching and I will be buying this when it comes out on DVD (or maybe I will have upgraded to Blu-Ray by then). Mann shoots Depp and his co-stars so beautifully that even if this was a bad film I would tell you to go see it.

4 out of 5
Colin Enquist

DVD Pick: The Prestige

Nolan constructs an intricate magic show

Director Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Memento) reunites with Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Machinist), Michael Caine (again Batman Begins!, Sleuth (1972 and 2007 version!)) and brings along another actor and actress who star in a comic book film in Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the X-Men series) as well as Scarlett Johansson ( Lost in Translation, The Spirit). Jonathon Nolan, brother to the director, helped Christopher adapt the 1995 award winning novel by Christopher Priest of the same name.

Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) are assistants to a magician, both are aspiring to be magicians themselves but when a death destroys their friendship a rivalry is born. Becoming so obsessed with each other they jeopardize everything and everyone they hold dear to upstage the other.

I am having a really tough time writing this review. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the movie but something felt off. I am not sure if it was because I was lost at the beginning of the film, which could have been the director’s prerogative, but felt like I missed something entirely. It seemed that Nolan was making the film more complicated than it really needed to be.

The acting was concrete from top to bottom, the supporting actors really helped bring along the sense of urgency between the two rivals. Bale and Jackman are the centerpieces but Caine is fantastic like always. As a surprise, David Bowie really does a nice job in the film, holding his own up against the rest of the great crew.

The theme for this movie was all over the place. Secrecy, obsession, science, revenge, and rivalry are all placed nicely up your sleeve but you can not just take one out at a time but they all to fall out at once making a mess you aren’t sure you understand. A very lifeless score was played throughout the film and the only good thing about it was that it is just slight background noise that it is easy to ignore.

I think this film will really benefit from a second viewing, picking out some of the plot twists that are surely hinted at before they happen, and when I get around to that I may have to just write another review! Learning how some of the magic is done was pretty neat and any time a trick was being explained I was fascinated. The movie was fun at times, tedious at others, strong acting really helps this film and some really beautiful cinematography makes it worth the watch.

3 out of 5
Colin Enquist

Holy Cyborgs, Batman!

Terminator Salvation, because everyone (including movie series) deserves a second chance

That is to say, Holy Cybernetic Organisms, Batman…but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well, does it?

Directed by Joseph "McG" McGinty Nichol (We are Marshall, Charlie's Angels and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), this fourth installment in the Terminator series stars Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, 3:10 to Yuma) as John Connor, prophet and saviour of the human resistance, Sam Worthington (Macbeth, Rogue) as cyborg prototype Marcus Wright, and Anton Yelchin (Star Trek, Charlie Bartlett) as Kyle Reese, the young man who eventually goes on to father John Connor (remember the first movie?), with a brief CGI heavy appearance by The Governator.

The movie opens on death row in the year 2003, where Wright is visited by Dr. Serena Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter, sporting a very poor, very nasal American Accent), who offers him the chance to redeem himself by selling his body to Cyberdyne Systems to help further medical breakthroughs in disease control. He argues at first, claiming he doesn’t deserve a second chance, being responsible for the death of his brother as well as two policemen. He relents and decides to sell his body to the cancer-ridden doctor for a kiss, proclaiming, “So that’s what death tastes like.”

We jump to 2018, where a brief recap of the Judgment Day brings us up to date on the war between humans and the machines. John Connor is leading a group of resistance soldiers on what appears to be a fact finding mission, when he discovers a corral of people being held captive by Cyberdyne for future research and development. He also discovers plans for the new T-800 Terminator, proving his “prophecy”, which is really the information gleaned from the first two movies.

An attack on the group leaves Connor the sole survivor, or so he thinks. Once he is rescued, Marcus Wright crawls naked from the wreckage, steals some clothes from a dead resistance soldier, and makes his way across the dessert. From that point on the movie is a fast-paced jump from attack to explosion as the few humans left try to avoid and/or destroy the threat of the machines.

Through the first half of the film the plot relied heavily on coincidence, i.e. the first person Wright comes across happens to be the same person that John Connor is searching for, Wright just happens to be an electrical/mechanical whiz and gets a radio going just as Connor is broadcasting a message to the resistance, and so on, but I was pretty distracted by the explosions and robots to dwell on it for long, and it was only in thinking back on the movie to write this review that it even occurred to me, and it all makes sense later.

I found this movie to be a vast improvement over Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Until I saw that movie I didn’t think it would be possible to make a movie about cyborgs boring. The plot dragged, and at no point did I really feel any kind of sympathy to Connor (played by Nick Stahl), who came across as a head case. Terminator Salvation essentially ignores T3, with very little explanation offered for the years between, other than the quick recap, which I think works in its favour.

As someone who never really followed the Terminator series (they were my mom’s favourite movies. Do you feel old now, Arnie?) I might have preferred a bit more back-story, but you aren’t lost without it. There are a few references to the past movies, i.e. Connor accusing a cyborg of trying to kill him and his family when they went back in time (this film doesn’t use any time travel), and a few quotes from the movies, “if you’re going to point a gun at someone, you’d better be ready to pull the trigger,” “come with me if you want to live,” and my personal favourite, “I’ll be back.” These moments were probably more clarified to those that were fans of the series, but the humour of the quotes wasn’t lost on me, thanks to teenaged boys (and husbands) who quote movie lines to death.

I was leery of the casting when I first heard Bale was going to be John Connors, not because I had any deep feelings on who should play him but because he’s Batman. He has so completely absorbed that role in my mind that I didn’t know if I’d be able to separate Bale from Batman, but he becomes John Connor as easily as if he’d always been him. He has just the right amount of badass blended with humanity to make him the natural voice of the resistance.

Bale is just one example of great casting in this movie. Worthington is able to play on our sympathies despite the fact that our first view of him is as a murderer, and he just looks pretty in a trench coat. Yelchin has enough caution to take care of himself and his young friend Star, while being brave (or crazy?) enough to align himself with the resistance, even if his section is only two people strong.

The only character that bothered me is Connor’s wife, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) who, despite being trained as a veterinarian and apparently physician, comes across a little bit like a stereotypical 1950’s housewife, pregnant and stoking the home fires waiting for her man to come home. Which isn’t to say that I think a woman as pregnant as she is should be out hunting cyborgs, but her only purpose in the movie seems to be to add humanity to John, a reminder for why he shouldn’t just give up. The other women in the movie (Star, Blair, the old woman…who is never really explained) make up in strength and ingenuity what Kate lacks.

On the whole, I found Terminator Salvation to be a fun and exciting movie, not just a stupid action flick where you need to leave your brain at the door (though there were a few moments where my date was probably ready to leave me at the theatre, after “why is he doing that, wouldn’t x make more sense, would I be less confused if I’d seen the other movies more recently?”), and I look forward to the coming sequels. I might even go back and watch the first two. But not the third.

4 out of 5

Laura Gies

DVD Vault: The Machinist (2004)

Before Batman, Christian Bale bored us in this cerebral "thriller"

BY EMIL TIEDEMANN

It may have been because director Brad Anderson (Session 9) helmed most of the film lying in a gurney after suffering from a back injury during filming, or perhaps it was star Christian Bale (as Trevor Reznik) remaining almost at a stand-still with his character's inability to evoke any emotions other than exhaustion and paranoia. Whatever the reason, the Spanish-made psychological thriller The Machinist fell flat, nearly overshadowing its own plot with Bales' unavoidable physique, a mere ghost of himself, shedding a reported 62 pounds and reducing his mass to 120.

Evidently, Bale had planned on dropping yet another 20 pounds, but the filmmakers quickly put a stop to it, concerned over the insistent method actor's health. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not pointing any fingers at Bale (I heard he has a temper!), because I'm sure he forfilled his part to a tee, but Reznik's chronic insomnia nearly put me to sleep. In fact, Bale's sacrificial performance was committedly daunting, reminding me of a recent movie that asked as much from its star Michael Fassbender, who also went on a crash diet for his role in Hunger (2008).

Reznik (a tip of the hat to Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor) is a machinist--go figure--who hasn't been able to fall asleep in about a year. He leads a lonely existance, estranged from his past, scrapping by on the part-time affection of a discerning call girl named Stevie (Single White Female's Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the imagined chit-chat of an airport waitress named Maria (A Walk in the Clouds' Aitana Sanchez-Gijon).

The frail machinist corrodes into a paraniod state of confusion, starving himself for reasons unbeknown to us until...well never, really! I never fully understood the point of Reznik's hunger strike, even after the film untangled itself at the very end, explaining Reznik's behaviour as the result of a hit-and-run that ate at him, quite literally.

The Machinist ended--finally--when Reznik confessed what he had buried beneath layers of denial and a puzzling eating disorder, all of which piled into one big ball of shit that sunk him into a comatose mess, parallel with Anderson's irksome effort.

The tipping point was that I had actually recently watched The Machinist before, but I had perceptibly erased it from my memory, just like Reznik does with his vehicular manslaughter. In fact, as every scene kicked in I had no idea what was going to happen, barely recognizing the storyline as it ploddingly flowed, despite a prior viewing that obviously left no impression on me. Add in a pesky score that did no favours for the film, and The Machinist lost itself early off, too concerned with shocking its audience.

2/5 stars

SiM Poster: Terminator Salvation

Bale takes off the Batman suit for the fourth Terminator film

The fourth chapter in the quarter-century-old Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros.), has released no less than 10 movie posters over the last few months, including this recent one. Helmed by former music video director McG (Charlie's Angels), Salvation stars Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) as a soldier looking to lead the human race in a war against the Skynet computer system. The $200 million blockbuster, which is due in theatres May 21st, also features Sam Worthington (Macbeth), Moon Bloodgood (Pathfinder), Anton Yelchin (Star Trek), Helena Bonham Carter (Fight Club), and hip-hop star Common (Wanted), and is narrated by Linda Hamilton, who starred in the first two Terminator movies (1984 & 1991).

SiM Trailers: Terminator Salvation TV Spots

Director: McG (We Are Marshall)
Stars: Christian Bale (The Dark Knight), Sam Worthington (Rogue), Anton Yelchin (Alpha Dog)
Distibuted By: Warner Bros.
Due Date: May 21st, 2009

Synopsis: In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet's operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.