The Contractor (Tarik Saleh, 2022)

 

The Contractor (Tarik Saleh, 2022)

Cast: Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gillian Jacobs, Kiefer Sutherland, Eddie Marsan, JD Pardo, Florian Munteau, Sander Thomas. Screenplay: J.P. Davis. Cinematography: Pierre Aïm. Production design: Roger Rosenberg. Film editing: Theis Schmidt. Music: Alex Belcher. 

The Contractor begins promisingly, suggesting that it might be a hard-hitting film about the mistreatment of veterans and their involvement in private paramilitary organizations. It even name-checks the odious Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and a hero of the American right. Chris Pine plays James Harper, a sergeant in the Special Forces, who is discharged because he has been using illicit drugs to treat the pain from a knee injured in the course of duty. Left without a pension or health care and supporting his wife and young son, he reluctantly follows the course taken by his friend Mike Hawkins (Ben Foster) and signs up with an organization headed by Rusty Jennings (Kiefer Sutherland) that does contract work with the Defense department. But when James is sent off on his first mission, which involves what he is told is a biochemical warfare agent being developed by a scientist in Berlin, the movie becomes a conventional thriller involving a series of intricate double-crosses. Pine is a fine actor, and he treats the script with a respect it doesn’t deserve once it strays into Mission: Impossible territory. If director Tarik Saleh had found a way to get the serious part of the film to mesh with the improbable shootouts and hair’s-breadth escapes that James endures, The Contractor might have been a better, or at least a more enjoyable film. But he sticks with the grimly determined characters and the gloomy look and tone even when the story has turned into a routinely familiar thriller. 

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.

Z for Zachariah (Craig Zobel, 2015)

Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine in Z for Zachariah

Cast: Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine. Screenplay: Nissar Modi, based on a novel by Robert C. O'Brien. Cinematography: Tim Orr. Production design: Matthew Munn. Film editing: Jane Rizzo. Music: Heather McIntosh.

Z for Zachariah is based on a young adult novel, but it's a movie for grownups who know how to savor its treatment of race, religion, sex, secrets, and lies, and moreover who aren't troubled by its failure to provide solutions to all the problems it crams into a microcosm. When I say "based on" I mean that literally: I haven't read the novel on which it's based, but the Wikipedia summary suggests that screenwriter Nissar Modi took only the premise of that book -- surviving a nuclear holocaust in a kind of new Eden -- and crafted something very different, adding a third character and changing the race of one. I have the feeling that if the film had been made by an "art house" director like Kelly Reichardt, for example, or a French director like Olivier Assayas, and with actors that cause no stir at the box office, unlike the beautiful and starry Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine, it would have made more of a sensation among critics than the middling 79% "fresh" rating it gets at Rotten Tomatoes. Because it's a mostly low-key drama simmering with sexual and racial tension. Its ending leaves closure up to the viewer, as the best films do. And despite the cast seeming a little too rich for the film's blood -- they do look a little too well-groomed and well-fed for survivors of the apocalypse, as several critics noted -- the performances are top-notch.

Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017)

Saïd Taghmaoui, Chris Pine, and Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman

Diana: Gal Gadot
Steve Trevor: Chris Pine
Hippolyta: Connie Nielsen
Antiope: Robin Wright
Ludendorff: Danny Huston
Sir Patrick: David Thewlis
Sameer: Saïd Taghmaoui
Charlie: Ewen Bremner
The Chief: Eugene Brave Rock
Etta Candy: Lucy Davis
Dr. Maru: Elena Anaya

Director: Patty Jenkins
Screenplay: Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs
Cinematography: Matthew Jensen
Production design: Aline Bonetto
Film editing: Martin Walsh
Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams

For much of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins directs Gal Gadot and Chris Pine the way Howard Hawks directed Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, keeping the romantic tension and witty byplay at the fore. But this is a superhero comic book movie, and eventually the demands of the genre force romantic wit to be subsumed in pyrotechnics and CGI. Still, for much of the film, Wonder Woman is as entertaining as you could wish. Gadot is the perfect embodiment of the Amazon demigod, carrying herself with regal power but also allowing the human vulnerability to show through. Pine seems to have become everyone's second favorite Chris: The others -- Hemsworth, Evans, and Pratt -- wound up in the currently dominant comic book universe, Marvel, whereas Pine got stuck in the second-tier DC universe. But he's probably the most talented of the four, having demonstrated his musical gifts in Into the Woods (Rob Marshall, 2014) and his dramatic ones in Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016). So although Steve Trevor meets a fiery end in Wonder Woman, Pine is too valuable a performer to let go entirely, and besides, Trevor always had a way of coming back from the dead in the comics.

Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016)

Jeff Bridges, Margaret Bowman, and Gil Birmingham in Hell or High Water

Marcus Hamilton: Jeff Bridges
Toby Howard: Chris Pine
Tanner Howard: Ben Foster
Alberto Parker: Gil Birmingham
Elsie: Dale Dickey
Debbie Howard: Marin Ireland
Jenny Ann: Katy Mixon
Justin Howard: John Paul Howard
T-Bone Waitress: Margaret Bowman

Director: David Mackenzie
Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan
Cinematography: Giles Nuttgens
Production design: Tom Duffield
Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis

Hell or High Water has a resonance in Trumpian America, with its portrayal of a kind of rural desperation that echoes the era of Bonnie and Clyde, when robbing banks was seen as a kind of stick-it-to-the-man activity, a way of getting back at an economic system that allowed no other way of breaking a cycle. As Toby Howard puts it, "I've been poor my whole life, like a disease passing from generation to generation." Toby enlists his ex-con brother, Tanner, in a scheme to rob the small-town branches of the fictional Texas Midland Bank to build up enough cash to pay off the reverse mortgage that threatens the foreclosure of their recently dead mother's ranch, and then to put the property in trust -- with the same bank -- as a guarantee of a better future for Toby's sons. He is, in short, buying off the bank with the bank's money. Given that the Howard brothers have nothing to lose, it's a risk they think worth taking. On the other hand, there is the law to contend with, in the form of Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton, just days away from a retirement he dreads. Hamilton, too, has nothing to lose, which means he doesn't mind dragging along his partner, Alberto Parker, on an pursuit that Parker thinks is absurd. It's a film of beautiful performances, not only another laurel for Jeff Bridges, but also a potential career-maker for Ben Foster and a chance for Chris Pine to show that he's not just another pretty face -- he grunges up well. The West Texas setting -- though the film was shot just across the border in eastern New Mexico -- is exploited skillfully, with deft touches like the frequent billboards advertising ways to get out of debt and the moribund small towns that cause Parker to ask, "Do you want to live here? Got an old hardware store that charges twice what Home Depot does, one restaurant with a rattlesnake for a waitress." The film also plays on the Texan love of guns when the robbers discover that the patrons of the banks are taking full advantage of the state's concealed-carry laws. Hamilton also echoes the region's casual racism, perhaps ironically, with his digs at his partner's American Indian heritage, though the point is made without irony when an old man is surprised that the robbers "ain't Mexican." Hell or High Water perhaps doesn't reach the elegiac heights of No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2007, but in its simpler, less florid way it's an equally worth companion in the neo-Western genre.

Star Trek Beyond (Justin Lin, 2016)

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in Star Trek Beyond

Captain James T. Kirk: Chris Pine
Commander Spock: Zachary Quinto
Dr. McCoy: Karl Urban
Lieutenant Uhura: Zoe Saldana
Montgomery Scott: Simon Pegg
Sulu: John Cho
Chekov: Anton Yelchin
Krall: Idris Elba
Jaylah: Sofia Boutella

Director: Justin Lin
Screenplay: Simon Pegg, Doug Jung
Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon
Production design: Andrew Murdock, Thomas E. Sanders
Music: Michael Giacchino
Costume design: Sanja Milkovic Hays

Writing a screenplay for a Star Trek reboot film must be something of a confining job. You have to provide a worthy adversary for the Enterprise crew, who eat worthy adversaries for lunch, so you need to create a role for an actor who doesn't mind hamming it up, like Eric Bana, Benedict Cumberbatch, or Idris Elba, and keep the role distinct from all the other villains who have threatened the Enterprise. You have to provide the requisite familiar shtick for the characters: Bones and Spock must squabble, but good naturedly; Bones has to say something like "I'm not a doctor, I'm a...." at least once; Scotty has to fuss about the limitations of his engines; Chekov has to have a charming occasion to pronounce his v's like w's, and so on. You also have to provide a few surprises about the characters: Spock and Uhura are a couple! Sulu's gay! You have to have a pretty female newcomer who can wear elaborate alien makeup but still look pretty. You have to set up the plot to accommodate spectacular special effects. So no wonder that each successive reboot movie feels a little overfamiliar, and that there are shortcuts in the narrative that don't bear close inspection. In Star Trek Beyond, for example, we leave Scotty hanging from a cliff by the fingertips of one hand, but not too much later he shows up alive and well with no explanation of how someone with the average musculature of a Simon Pegg hoisted himself over the edge. And no wonder that Star Trek Beyond went through heavy rewriting, with Pegg and Doug Jung taking over the script after a first draft by Roberto Orci, Patrick McKay, and John D. Payne was turned down by the producers. There are some touches of wit in the script, such as the opening sequence in which Kirk faces down a crowd of what appear to be fearsome monsters but turn out to be about the size of schnauzers, and a clever use of an antique boom box -- perhaps a nod to the one carried by the punk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1986), whom Spock incapacitated with a Vulcan nerve pinch -- as a lethally disorienting weapon against Krall's forces. The box booms out the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," a track that would be several centuries old, and Bones asks Spock, "Is that classical music I'm hearing?" to which Spock replies, "Yes, doctor, I believe it is." The cast does its usual best, with Pine nicely suggesting some of the old Shatnerian swagger as Kirk without resorting to caricature, and Elba, for much of the film unrecognizable under the makeup, giving his villain real menacing weight. But in the end, the reboot itself has lost freshness. It's time to give the shtick a rest and to provide a threat to the crew that isn't so dependent on an actor going over the top. Perhaps it's time to come up with a science fiction plot that relies more on science than on fiction.

Watched on Hulu

Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams, 2013)

I'm not a Trekkie. I never watched TOS* when it was first on TV, and only got hooked on TNG* when it went into re-runs. I don't speak a word of Klingon. But I can do the "Live long and prosper" hand sign, so I guess I can pass among those who aren't really hardcore. In fact, when I learned that J.J. Abrams, the rebooter of moribund franchises, was going to make his first Star Trek film (2009), I was neither appalled nor intrigued, as a real Trekkie would be. Only one of the movies featuring the cast of TOS was really very good: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1986), aka "the one with the whales." And even then, it was the script that made William Shatner in rug and corset trying to recapture the old Capt. Kirk swagger even plausible. Fortunately, it will take a few more years before the new cast -- Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin -- need their own reboot. The great charm of Star Trek has always been its ensemble work. No one watching the series either on TV or in movies really cares that much about the story. It's the interplay of characters -- the bromance of Kirk and Spock (heightened to near-homoeroticism in the Pine-Quinto version), the grumpiness of Bones McCoy, the devotion of Scotty to his engines, and so on -- that makes the creaky old sci-fi clichés come to life. Throw in some in-jokes for longtime fans, such as the Tribble in this film, and you've got a surefire hit. The remarkable thing about the cast of the Abrams films is that they so far have transcended the paint-by-numbers quality of the plots and managed to make the CGI effects secondary to the humanity. Benedict Cumberbatch is a far more terrifying Khan than Ricardo Montalban with his rubber pecs ever was. And I admit that I teared up a bit seeing Leonard Nimoy in what turned out to be his farewell cameo. No, this is not a great movie, but there is great shrewdness in its casting.

*If you're reading this entry, I assume you don't have to be told that this is Trekkiese for Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation. But if you're reading this footnote, I guess you do.

Into the Woods (Rob Marshall, 2014)

James Corden and Emily Blunt in Into the Woods

Cinderella: Anna Kendrick
Baker/Narrator: James Corden
Baker's Wife: Emily Blunt
Witch: Meryl Streep
Wolf: Johnny Depp
Cinderella's Prince: Chris Pine
Jack: Daniel Huttlestone
Stepmother: Christine Baranski
Florinda: Tammy Blanchard
Lucinda: Lucy Punch
Jack's Mother: Tracey Ullman
Rapunzel's Prince: Billy Magnussen
Little Red Riding Hood: Lilla Crawford
Baker's Father: Simon Russell Beale
Cinderella's Mother: Joanna Riding
Rapunzel: Mackenzie Mauzy
Granny: Annette Crosbie
Steward: Richard Glover
Giant: Frances de la Tour

Director: Rob Marshall
Screenplay: James Lapine
Based on the play by James Lapine
Cinematography: Dion Beebe
Production design: Dennis Gassner
Film editing: Wyatt Smith
Music: Stephen Sondheim

My favorite movie musicals tend to be the ones like Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) and Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) that were created for the movies, and not the ones adapted from stage hits like My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) or West Side Story (Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, 1961). But Rob Marshall did such a good job transforming Chicago (2002) into a cinematic experience that I had hopes for Into the Woods. Unfortunately the James Lapine-Stephen Sondheim book and lyrics are so droll and cerebral that they tend to get swamped by the special effects and big stars in the movie. Instead of being caught up in the story, I kept wondering "how are they going to top that?" The book is structured to be anticlimactic, with the wedding of Cinderella and the prince as the usual happy ending followed by the dark not-so-happily-ever-after sequel. This works in the theatrical version, when you know that there's another act coming, but in the film version it has the effect of making you look at your watch. Still, there's a lot to like about the movie, especially seeing Meryl Streep ham it up as the witch. The other cast members are also effective, but the real star among them for me is Emily Blunt as the baker's wife, demonstrating good comic timing as well as a solid understanding of the character.