White Male Rage! White Male Rage! NOBODY (2021) and WRATH OF MAN (2021) in Catharsis vs. Damnation

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s about fed up with the Middle-aged Family Man With Tortured Past Whose Rage Gets Triggered By Traumatic Event movie that regained its popularity in 2008 when Liam Neeson rocketed from prestige actor to Action Star in Taken. At their worst, these movies can be a troubling appeal to fascist tendencies, like Charles Bronson gunning down multicolored street thugs in the Death Wish series. At their best they can be fun, but an interview with Neeson a few years ago revealed a real sinister force behind even a throwaway thriller like Taken: the actor’s revealing that his motivation for the Man on a Mission role he’s become synonymous with was an incident in which he almost committed a hate crime is hard to separate from the shoot-‘em-ups and chases in what’s supposed to be an escapist movie.

Regardless, this role has become a rite of passage for a lot of aging male actors: Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Keanu Reeves, and now Bob Odenkirk. Though it’s interesting to see a considerably non-buff performer like Odenkirk kick ass, his vehicle Nobody isn’t much different from its predecessors. 

It starts promisingly, introducing a hero entrenched in his averageness and not eager to leave it. Hutch (Odenkirk) has a good life as a regular old auto parts factory manager with a teenage son and a wife (Connie Nielsen) who’s a successful realtor. When their house is broken into one night, Hutch stops just short of going postal on the burglars. He instructs his family to stand back, lets the burglars take what they want, and calls the police. No one realizes that Hutch is a former special ops soldier who could, if he wanted to, take out an entire battalion singlehandedly. Like they do.

With this setup, Nobody could have been an interesting comment on the hypermasculine revenge drama rather than just another example of it. Director Ilya Naishuller makes it look like Hutch chickened out. Neighbors and co-workers all offer their thoughts on what they would’ve done if their house had been broken into. Hutch just smiles and nods. He knows what he was capable of doing, yet chose not to do. We learn later on that Hutch was being hypervigilant, not hesitant: he noticed the fear and desperation in the burglars’ voices, and that they had no bullets in their gun.

I thought that writer Derek Kolstad, who also wrote the John Wick movies, would take a similar approach here and create a righteously rageful hero whose driving force is empathy rather than wrath. The scenes where the men around Hutch belittle him for refusing to stand his ground are the best in the movie because they ironically play on masculinity rather than trumpet it. While the average Liam Neeson film is about a man protecting his castle, Nobody is about Liam Neeson living among a bunch of guys who think they’re Liam Neeson. Only he knows who he is.

As inventive as the idea is, it doesn’t last long. When Hutch saves a young girl from a gang of loud abusive Russians on a bus, he attracts the ire of a Typical Russian Mobster and the movie plunges headlong into dullsville. There are a few well-choreographed fight scenes, but they all seem so familiar. If you’ve seen John Wick, you won’t be surprised. The only real highlight is an appearance by Christopher Lloyd as Hutch’s father, where… I’ll just say that I thought I knew, and I didn’t.

On the complete flip side of this premise, Guy Ritchie (of all directors) does not spin his revenge thriller Wrath of Man into a lighthearted bruiser, but rather drives his characters straight to hell and lets us dwell there with them. His movie is also about a Man on a Mission, but he doesn’t glorify it. Ritchie’s men are broken and unfixable. There is no redemption, only pain.

At the center is Jason Statham, who unlike Odenkirk is the exact person we expect to be on a revenge mission. Ritchie knows this. Early scenes show him behaving calmly, patiently, unobtrusively, when we know something is bubbling underneath.

Statham is H, who’s hired by an armored car company at which the employees have names like Bullet, Boy Sweat Dave, and Hollow Bob. Everyone there is hiding something for one reason or another. We see H go through the hiring process. He barely passes the test: we see him fire a few stray bullets and almost fenderbend the truck. But he seems to be doing it on purpose. Instinctively, Jason Statham doesn’t seem like someone who messes up. 

Our instincts are right. I won’t reveal what he’s up to, but H’s plan is a credible and fascinating one. Ritchie tells us the story in chapter format, starting with H's job interview, then changing points of view and revealing the surrounding events little by little. Characters played by the reliable and underappreciated Holt McCallany, as well as Josh Hartnett, Andy Garcia, Jeffrey Donovan, Scott Eastwood, and (oddest of all) Post Malone, factor into H's plot in ways I won't reveal. Once we know why H has embedded himself in with this crowd, the movie culminates in a heist sequence that's among the most exciting I've ever seen.

It’s anchored by Statham in a role that departs from his expected wiseguy character from the early Ritchie films and his smarmy antihero from Hobbs and Shaw. Since Ritchie and Statham started their careers together, maybe Ritchie is the only director who could have coaxed this performance from Statham, without ironic distance or smirking nihilism. He plays a hurt man, and he and Ritchie drag us into the hurt with him. The L.A. setting recalls Michael Mann’s work in its sun-drenched days, neon-drenched nights, and labyrinthine roadways and tunnels. 

Ritchie’s victory is in the tone. He refuses to lighten it or let us bask in H’s brutality. A lot of thrillers like this don’t treat violence with real weight. This one does.

Nobody: ** out of ****

Wrath of Man: *** 1/2 out of ****

I CARE A LOT (2020) and ME YOU MADNESS (2021): On Steely Blonde Sociopaths Both Real and Fictional

It's hard to make us care about the three female villains at the center of the two recent black comedies I Care A Lot and Me You Madness, the first two of which are the respective main characters, the third of which is Louise Linton, the writer-director-star of the latter, who happens to be the wife of thankfully-now-former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and a onetime guest of Fort Knox who notoriously scoffed at critics who suggested that her photo op--next to a sheet of money that could have paid a full salary for a laid-off hospitality worker during the pandemic--was a tad out of touch. Linton was an actor before her foray into Marie Antoinettedom, and will no doubt be one again now, but by grace, will never write or direct again.

Both comedies revolve around steely blonde girlbosses who do horrible things with glee, but only I Care A Lot is a gleeful experience to watch. There's a movie somewhere in Me You Madness, a self-aware American Psycho parody about a hedge fund manager/serial killer who unexpectedly finds love in her latest conquest, but Linton isn't the director to make it happen. It's not only that she stumbles as a filmmaker--although she does--but her proud identity as a real-life Cruella de Vil lends too much sobriety to what's supposed to be a bitterly funny satire.

Catherine Black (Linton) does stonks by day, and by night seduces and murders unsuspecting men in her sanitized Malibu dream house. But when she strikes up a rapport with her latest mark, Tyler (Ed Westwick), she grudgingly decides to spare him. And then he steals her car.

It's a decent idea for a comedy, and Linton and Westwick sometimes have an easy chemistry in their banter that's fun to watch, and would certainly be more fun were it not for the real-life sins of both actors threatening to creep in (Westwick has several credible sexual assault allegations against him). There are bright moments: I admit I enjoyed a back-and-forth in which Tyler holds a white sofa hostage with a glass of red wine, and an extended fight sequence which involves a curling iron, thankfully not in the way you expect.

But Linton's idea of black comedy has a pretty high floor. Perhaps her marriage into the Family Values administration makes her reluctant to go too far. I'm probably not spoiling much in revealing that Catherine has a penchant only for murdering bad people--what a cop-out!--and that her idea of "partying" involves a setting on her phone that makes her house play Taylor Dayne. At least Hannibal Lecter was into creepy stuff, like opera. The confounding ending is so maudlin that it feels like it was tacked on by Jerry Falwell (before the throuple scandal). I kept watching through the credits, thinking Linton was saving something snarky for the last minute. Nope: just a reminder that she, like a lot of the Trump ilk, is a conservative traditionalist wearing the temporary skin of a provocateur. Doesn't take much to bring her from knife-wielding badass to smiling handmaid.

 I Care A Lot, meanwhile, is the bizarro version of this story that I expected when I started Me You Madness: a thriller about a sociopath just as cruel as either Catherine or Louise, which doubles down on her cruelty and doesn't hedge. Writer-director J Blakeson takes a huge risk asking us to follow a main character based on audacity alone, because Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) isn't merely cruel; she's irredeemable. But the risk pays off because Blakeson's screenplay is clever and Pike's embodiment of the character is fascinating to see.

Because Blakeson doesn't try to make us like Marla, but rather entices us with her cleverness and brazenness, we remain with her all the way. Marla is a "state-appointed guardian" who, with the help of a corrupt doctor (Alicia Witt), gets herself assigned as conservator for well-to-do elderly women, commits them to a nursing home, and sells their assets for profit. Pike's portrayal of complete remorselessness, accented by the frequent casual power-puff on a vape pen, actually anchors the film: we want to see her comeuppance, and at the same time we want to see how far she'll get.

Marla eventually digs her claws into Jennifer (Dianne Wiest), an early-stage Alzheimer's sufferer who seems too good a mark to be true, because she is. I won't say why, but Marla soon finds herself the target of a mob boss (Peter Dinklage) who is as ruthless as she is.

Where I Care A Lot could have been an average potboiler and gotten away with being merely diverting, Blakeson's writing elevates it to art. Take the scene where Marla first discovers that the mob is after her. An average movie puts her immediately in the victim role, while this one instigates the plot with a scene between Marla and a mob lawyer (Chris Messina) that is one of the funniest I've seen in a thriller since North by Northwest. Messina, who is absolutely flawless at playing a sleazeball, offers to buy her out; her response, and his response to her response, are the confirmation of this movie's greatness.

The final climax and conclusion are disappointing only because the setup has been so gripping. We expect an explosion, and we only really get a spark, which is still fine. And Blakeson doesn't cop out like Linton does, in that he gives Marla the coda she's earned.

Me You Madness: * 1/2 out of ****

I Care A Lot: *** 1/2 out of **** 

I Care A Lot is available on Netflix. Me You Madness is available in hell's car wash discount bin.

THINGS HEARD & SEEN (2021)

 

Things Heard & Seen, which to my displeasure is not a sequel to Things Smelt & Dealt, is a 90-minute comedy lurking inside a very roomy two-hour ghost story. I think all that would need to change is the editing, and maybe the ending, for it to become a bitter but funny satire of academic life, with a hint of mysticism. It's the sort of thing Woody Allen excelled at, right down to the lecherous male lead who makes women pay for his own misdoings (not unlike Woody himself). Surely Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini, the directors who debuted with the brilliant American Splendor, realize that what distinguishes it is not the lame ghosts but the truly odd real-world figures.

Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) and George (James Norton), with their young daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger), move from the city to distant upstate New York, where George has gotten a position as assistant art professor at a small private school. The head of his department (F. Murray Abraham) loves him, and the students--mostly female--adore him, but Catherine, who had been an art restorer and painter, is out of her element. There's nothing for her there, but she goes where her husband goes. They move into a beautiful 19th-century house, which the realtor (Karen Allen, who's very welcome) neglects to mention has a devious past.

The typical events happen: lights flicker, things break, gusts of wind fly, voices whisper, images flash in front of people and then disappear. The academics around them are all enamored of Swedenborg, the Christian mystic who believed he could pass back and forth between heaven and hell (we spend more time in the latter than the former). Swedenborg's name is invoked more often here, I think, than in Lars von Trier's The Kingdom, which is a lot. While Catherine contends with the spirits, and with two helpful neighbors (Alex Neustaedter and Jack Gore) who have a connection with the previous owners of the house, George takes a special interest in a young townie (Natalia Dyer) who enjoys Caravaggio.

Norton is terrific at playing the grinning, superficially charming, boundlessly narcissistic professor whose boorishness matches his desperation. George might be the best on-screen sociopath since Zac Efron took on Ted Bundy, one who knows he's secured a lot in life that feeds his pride and lust endlessly, and he needs to make sure he holds on to it. There's a dignity to Seyfried's performance too, in that she manages to be convincing as someone who would be married to George, while still playing Catherine to the height of her intelligence and avoiding horror-movie mistakes (at least to a point). She's allowed to be better here than in You Should Have Left, where she also played the wife of a white dude who behaves badly, the sort of role she needs to branch away from as soon as possible.

The main plot, in which Catherine experiences ghosts that wouldn't scare a Goosebumps reader, is a total bore, but never mind that: take a look at the world the movie takes place in. As the goofy spiritualist art professor, Abraham is effortlessly likable. Pay attention, too, to Michael O'Keefe's performance as the sheriff, who's also the realtor's husband: his fish-out-of-water demeanor as a townie among a gaggle of seasonal academics is one of the movie's little subtle joys. Natalia Dyer needs more to do as the object of George's dalliance; her first couple of scenes suggest that she's going to be a formidable challenge to his little plot, refusing to be the virgin or jezebel he seems to expect, but she sadly fades into the background.

The same goes for Rhea Seehorn as Justine, an adjunct weaving professor (ho, ho) who befriends Catherine and quickly becomes hip to George. She's the movie's version of a Strong Woman, which is not that strong at all: she's mostly there to function as the detective and then the target of George's ire. James Urbaniak steals every scene as her husband, a wayward author who moved upstate to write a book but now says things like "We should go outside and look at the alpacas before they nap." I would watch a documentary about their marriage.

The ending is unacceptable. I had thought we were beyond stories where women's martyring themselves to punish cruel men is considered heroic rather than tragic, especially in one co-directed by a woman, but here we are. Let's have a story where the guy gets his comeuppance and the women get to live fulfilling lives without him. The last shot, in which the action of the movie is seamlessly blended into a painting, is pretty neat, or would have been, if it weren't so artificial.

The premise and plot of this movie scream out for ironic dark comedy rather than the dull earnest gothic romance it's trying to be. Picture Noel Coward writing it, and the arc being less focused on the supernatural events and more focused on Catherine and company gradually realizing, possibly with some spiritual help, that George is a total fraud and a cheat. Don't even change Norton's performance: George's increasingly audacious efforts to save face are perfect for comedy. Woody Allen made a movie called Melinda and Melinda, which was not one of his best, or even very good, but had an irresistible premise: a story centering around one woman told alternately as a tragedy and as a comedy. Things Heard & Seen is Melinda, when what we need is Melinda.

* 1/2 out of ****