Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/15/20

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, August 15, 2020

This Means War (McG, 2012)

Tom Hardy, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine in This Means War

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Til Schweiger, Chelsea Handler, John Paul Ruttan, Abigail Spencer, Angela Bassett, Rosemary Harris, George Touliatos. Screenplay: Timothy Dowling, Simon Kinberg, Marcus Gautesen. Cinematography: Russell Carpenter. Production design: Martin Laing. Film editing: Nicolas De Toth. Music: Christoph Beck.

Professionalism consists of doing your best even when the task assigned to you isn't worthy of your talents. This Means War certifies the professionalism of Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, and Reese Witherspoon, who do every absurd thing and speak every inane line that they're given as if the project warranted their full commitment. The experience of making the film caused Hardy to vow that he'll never do another rom-com, and it's likely that Pine and Witherspoon don't highlight the movie on their résumés. The film is, in short, a terrible mess, a mashup of action movie and sex farce, almost unwatchable except for the sheer charisma of its three principles. Its chief virtue, aside from the handsome performers, is that it's short: only 97 minutes, after being reduced from a director's cut of 107 minutes. This reduction seems to have jettisoned the backstory about the bad guys who put the three leads in jeopardy, making the film less coherent but probably more tolerable. Once upon a time, the presence of Hardy, Pine, and Witherspoon -- as well as such skilled performers as Angela Bassett and Rosemary Harris in barely there supporting roles -- would have been easy to explain: Under the studio system, stars were obligated by their contracts to do what they were handed. But that system vanished half a century ago, and nothing can justify wasting the time and talent of actors like these on This Means War.