Hop [2011]

MPAA (G) CNS/USCCB (A-II) Michael Phillips (2 stars) Fr Dennis (1/2 star)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1411704/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/h/hop2011.shtml
Michael Phillips review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/la-et-hop-20110401,0,1693439.story

Hop (directed by Tim Hill, screenplay written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio) is a movie that gushes with sweetness and is impeccable from a technical point of view (mashing live actors with animation). But its messaging is rather "problematic" on all kinds of levels.

On the most obvious level, Hop is aggressively secular promoting for Easter what the Santa myth does to Christmas. The Easter Bunny becomes like Santa, the famous Easter Island out in the South Pacific becomes the Easter Bunny’s "North Pole," little chicks become the Easter Bunny’s "elves"/"raindeer." And the Easter Bunny travels around the world in a contraption which even looks like Santa’s sleigh, driven in this case by a flock of those little chicks, in order to deliver Easter baskets and hide Easter eggs for little boys and girls around the world.

On a stranger level, Hop has the bunnies speaking in English accents and the chick workers in Hispanic ones. The Hispanic accents sort of make sense as Easter Island is nominally under the jurisdiction of Chile in South America. But then a good part of the plot in Hop is an attempt by Carlos (voice by Hank Azaria) the foreman of the Easter bunny’s "worker chicks" seeking to overthrow the Easter bunny and "take over the Easter operations" for the chicks themselves. The reigning Easter bunny (voice by Hugh Laurie) actually functions like something of a King as there apparently could be only "one true Easter bunny" at a time. Thwarting the coup, the older regally accented Easter bunny then dubs his more "prol" accented son, E.B. (voice by Russell Brand) and his new found _American_ human friend Fred (James Mardsen) as the "co-leaders of Easter" thus to save Easter and presumably to continue to "keep the uppity Hispanic chicks down."

Now if you happen to be a Hispanic parent or grandparent, where Easter bunnies, etc were _never_ much part of your tradition anyway, and you just wanted to take your kids or grandkids to a nice kids' movie, you could wonder "What the heck is this?" And it’s a fair question.

To reiterate, self-evidently secular as it is, from a technical and even storytelling point of view, Hop is impeccable (reminds me of an Easter version of Elf). But it’s messaging is very, very strange and I’m not sure if I were a Hispanic parent (or child) what I would do with it.


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Source Code [2011]

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 ½ stars) Fr. Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert’s review

I found Source Code [2011] to be a surprising film. Yes, it’s a sci-fi action film set in the present day (and there are conventions for all these categories) but the film somehow became more than that. It was able to bring the sci-fi "down to earth" and then in a surprisingly positive way. Written by Ben Ripley and directed by Duncan Jones, it mostly involves quite ordinary and ultimately quite sympathetic characters (simple commuters on a train in Chicago).

The premise of the story is that scientists operating on a super-secret project from Nellis Air Force Base (of Area-51 fame) had come up with a way of _quickly_ retrieving the last 8 minutes prior to a terrorist attack _after it happened_ and then to insert a person into those last 8 minutes in order to run through them in order to determine how the attack took place and who was/were the perpetrator(s) were.

In the movie, Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), formerly a US helicopter pilot in Afghanistan is inserted in such a way by military scientists (played by Vera Farmica and Jeffrey Wright) into a commuter train in Chicago blown-up by a bomb in a terrorist attack to determine how it was set off and by whom.

Why couldn’t you just try to determine this through rapid analysis of surveillance cam footage? Well surveillance cams are not everywhere and this project envisioned a way that someone could walk/run through anywhere he or she wanted through the critical space in question during those last 8 minutes.

Why 8 minutes and not 10 or an hour, etc? Well perhaps the exact amount of time that one could go back in time from an accident was arbitrarily set by the film-makers but they offered a very precisely reasoned explanation a limit such as that would exist.

The more damning objection to the movie’s premise would be to question whether one really could run around "anywhere" during those last 8 minutes (even into a sealed or closed compartment or off the train, for instance...), or whether one was still limited (as in the case of surveillance cam footage) _by the retrieved record_ of those last 8 minutes no matter how that record was retrieved.

The movie _does envision_ that the inserted person could view the situation from previously unexamined perspectives (ie go into compartments that were previously closed, walk off the train, etc) and also to interact with the people in the situation, thus necessarily _changing_ the situation (however slightly) each time. This would seem to me to impossible given the manner of "information retrieval" and "insertion" offered in the movie.

Nevertheless, the movie assumes that the inserted person _could_ interact with the environment (and with the people in the environment) and not merely observe it/them. One recalls here that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry famously asked how the "Heisenberg Compensators" which powered the Starship Enterprise’s warp engines worked, replied "very well." Welcome to sci-fi, where one does have to "suspend disbelief" at some point to make the story "work" ;-).

Assuming then that possibility that a person inserted into the past could interact with the environment (and its people) and not merely observe it, then all sorts of possibilities (and paradoxes) regarding "time travel" come to fore: Forget trying to figure out who perpetrated a terrorist attack, why not try to frustrate it to begin with. But if one did that, does the history that followed the terrorist attack (or the sinking of the Titanic, as another example ...) _get expunged_ or does a new history where the terrorist attack did not occur (or the Titanic did not sink ...) "split off" from the history in which these events took place? This gets into the realm of parallel universes, that can make for great fodder for late night discussions over beer and pizza. (Morgan Freeman recently narrated a series called Through the Wormhole for the Science Channel, which presented topics such as these).

Of course, Colter Stevens decides to try to do this – to try to foil the terrorist attack to begin with – thus trying to save the utterly lovable and utterly _not_ deserving to be incinerated in a terrorist attack Christina Warren (played by Michelle Monagnan) as well as the rest of the people on the commuter train, petty jerks, dweebs, and otherwise utterly ordinary people that they may be.

But then, if he does succeed (I’m not going to tell you if he does) would he save them, period? Or would he simply save them in an "alternate universe" created by his interfering in the sequence of events in the one in which they lived (and in which they were destined to be blown up)? Finally, would it matter to the people involved if they were saved from the fireball?

Great, great, teenage / young adult stuff ;-)

ADDENDUM

Near the end of the movie arises a fairly "heavy question" about the "redeemability of the world." This is all the more interesting perhaps since the movie touches on possibilities of "time travel" and "parallel universes."  What's your take on the question?  Is the world redeemable?  Or should we wait for it (or even want it) to "blow up?"


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Paul

MPAA (R) CNS (O) Roger Ebert (2 1/2 stars) Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092026/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/p/paul2011.shtml
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110316/REVIEWS/110319984

I went to see Paul (written by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg and directed by Greg Motolla) for a number of reasons. First, over the years, I’ve generally liked Seth Rogan. The (hopefully exaggerated) enormity of his character’s drug use notwithstanding, I liked generally him in Knocked Up and I even liked him in the Green Hornet. Even though his role in Superbad was actually pretty tame (rather "good" rather than "bad";-), I just didn’t like Superbad, period, finding very little positive or even particularly funny in that movie. Second, I went to see Paul because as far as I could discern from the trailer and reviews, I thought I’d like Paul’s plot. To be honest I was disappointed with both Paul and with Rogan.

Again, the plot seemed promising: Graeme Willy (played by Simon Pegg) and Clive Golings (played by Nick Frost) a couple of wide-eyed "geeks" from England come to California for a comic book convention. Growing up a "geek" myself and with plenty of other "geeks" as friends, "I could relate." Then after the convention, the two rent a big RV to begin a tour of the UFO hot spots of the American South West. Being the son of Czech immigrants, I also know something of that "wide-eyed" experience of relatives and friends of relatives first coming to this country (even to visit) and "hitting the road" in a big, often _very big_ car (or RV) for the very first time. So there was something both EPIC and REALLY, REALLY ENDEARING watching a movie about this experience of two Europeans in the U.S. for the first time, taking that RV on the road to explore "the America of their Dreams."

The key plot-twist advertised in the trailers was that while on this American odyssey the two run into an actual space alien named "Paul" (voice by Seth Rogan), who after some adventures they then help "go home" (hey, that even sounds like a tribute to the plot of E.T. ;-).

What I found disappointing (and frankly needless) was the other plot twist (not exactly advertised) where the movie became an extended, and not particularly funny slam of fundamentalist Christians. How this happens is that the two British tourists along with their new found alien friend stop at a RV campsite somewhere in Nevada operated by Ruth Buggs (played by Kristen Wiig) and her father Moses Buggs (played by John Carroll Lynch) who play stereotypical "three toothed" hick Christian fundamentalist ignoramuses (Ruth even has a "glass eye" when she first appears). Staring face to face at Paul, Ruth who believes God created the world in 7 days 4000 years ago, declares Paul to be a "demon." Over the rest of the movie, the aliens, Graeme and Clive from England and Paul from outer space, evangelize Ruth into accepting the "true gospel" (of evolution).  Note that neither I have, nor more importantly the Catholic Church has ever had, a great problem with evolution.

Now the two British stars Frost and Pegg wrote the screenplay and it is possible that the fundamentalism of the American countryside simply appalls them. Still, honestly, I did find their portrayal both unfunny and unfair.

For while there certainly are Christian fundamentalists like Ruth and Moses in the United States and are perhaps more prevalent in the American countryside, the American west is also the "American heartland of black helicopters, cattle mutilations and UFOs." And there has been an entire series on the History Channel in recent years promoting Ancient Alien Theory which suggests that God/"the gods" was/were perhaps alien biochemist(s)/astronaut(s). So good old Graeme and Clive could have just as easily (or IMHO much more easily) run into a milieu of good-ole-boys where God and aliens, the Flood and UFOs would have been seamlessly talked about as being basically one and the same thing, and a good part of those good-ole-boys would have had rather impressive comic book collections of their own stored under their "boxes of ammo" (if one needed to go there) as well ;-). So I do believe that the American "outback" is far more interesting a place than those two British writers (and Seth Rogan/"Paul") made it out to be.

Above all, I do believe that this movie could have been much more fun than it was. Instead, the makers of this film chose to make it into a needlessly gratuitous slam of people who are always much more interesting/complex than their stereotypes suggest.

So while IMHO the movie had a great deal of potential, I have to say that I left very, very disappointed, because it did not have to go that way. Would I recommend this movie? With difficulty and only if one was able to hold one’s nose while Christian fundamentalists were needlessly and gratuitously getting slammed over and over, for a very, very long time.

PS - A number of years ago, the Vatican declared that Catholics need not have difficulty in reconciling both their faith and a belief that life, even intelligent life could exist on other worlds. To deny even the possibility of there being life, even intelligent life on other worlds would limit the greatness of God (Osservatore Romano, May 14, 2008, Ital original, Eng translation)

ADDENDUM

An excellent book that covers much of the same territory as Paul does but with a much kinder smile is fellow Britisher Jon Ronson's book Them: Adventures with Extremists.  A number of years ago, I wrote a review of Them on Facebook that I reposted recently reposted on my personal blog.  Ronson's point, well taken, is that we have far more in common with "Them" (the "Other guys" that we don't like) than we may think.  I much prefered Ronson's gentle humor to the "hit people we don't like with a baseball bat" approach of the makers of Paul.


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Outside the Law (orig. Hors la Loi)

MPAA (unrated) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229381/
CNS/USCCB review -
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110323/REVIEWS/110329992/1023

Outside of the Law (orig. Hors La Loi), written and directed by Rachid Bouchareb is a French and Arabic language film with English subtitles about the Algerian struggle for independence, that ought to be required viewing by _anyone_ who has a strong opinion (of _any_ kind) on the current American war on terror. It’s well acted and brutally honest. NO ONE in this film comes off looking particularly good.

The movie is about three Algerian-born brothers, whose family was thrown off their ancestral farm in 1925 by a Frenchman waving a deed. (The Algerian family didn’t even know what a deed was just that they had been working the same land for generations). In 1945 as World War II comes to a close, their father is shot by a stray bullet fired by French colonists/authorities trying to supress a pro-Algerian civil rights march in the town in which they lived.

The three brothers, now adults and with only their mother to take care of, take different paths.

Messaoud (played by Roschdy Zem) the oldest of the three brothers is arrested following the march in which his father was killed for being one of the march’s organizers. While in prison, he is radicalized and joins the Algerian independence movement (FLN).

The middle brother Abdelkader (played by Sami Bouijila) joins (or is forced to join) the French Foreign Legion and does a tour in French-Indochina (Vietnam) where he is captured by the victorious Vietnamese. During his captivity, he and the other non-French colonial troops are propagandized by the message: "Why are you here fighting us when you have your own countries to liberate?"

The youngest brother Said (played by Jamel Debbouze), generally despises politics and is left to take care of their mother. He eventually emigrates with her to Paris, where he can’t find work and eventually gets involved in organized crime.

When the oldest brother, Messaoud, is released from prison, he is given the task of organizing Paris’ Algerian ghetto on behalf of the FLN. At about the same time as he is released, Abdelkader returns from Indochina and decides to throw his lot in with Messaoud to fight for Algeria’s independence.

The fight and the tactics are brutal. Messaoud is told by the FLN that _every_ Algerian must pay a "tax" to the FLN to support the struggle. Messaoud and Abdelkader are forced to enforce this "discipline" in the Algerian ghetto. As a result, their tactics make Said’s mere operation of a prostitution/boxing racket look tame. Among other things, Messaoud and Abdelkader have to punish a poor Algerian who has a wife and three children because he used his money to buy his family a refrigerator rather than pay the FLN’s tax.  They knock on his door, drag the wife out of the house, summarily condemn him to death on behalf of the FLN and then carry out the sentence by strangling him to death.

As the fight becomes more desperate, the French increasingly resort to terrorist tactics themselves. Colonel Faivre (played by Bernard Blancan) a former hero of the French resistance, who now heads an anti-terrorist command in Paris, receives permission to organize a unit which becomes called "the Red hand" which would nominally operate as "a criminal organization" and yet have immunity from the French Ministry of Justice to do whatever they saw fit to terrorize the Algerian community in Paris back into submission. Hence they assassinate suspected leaders of the FLN, blow-up shops and homes of FLN sympathizers, etc. As a result, the FLN’s command in Paris largely flees to Germany (Frankfurt) and Switzerland (Geneva).

By the end of the movie, the three brothers are all reconciled as a result of the madness. Said gets a tip that the French authorities were going to intercept an arms shipment into France organized by Messaoud from Frankfurt and Abdelkader still working from inside France and tries to save the two brothers. Messaoud, in turn is able to save Said’s life from an assassination attempt by the FLN because Said wanted to put-up an Algerian-born boxer to fight for the French national boxing championship while the FLN insisted total boycott anything French.  Said, ever apolitical simply didn't understand the boycott -- "Wouldn't it be _great_ if an Algerian won the French boxing title?" (apparently _not_ in the view of the FLN...)

In the end, only one of the three brothers is left standing, but Algeria does win its independence...

Outside of the Law is a brutal movie, I’d definitely recommend it to anyone with ANY strong opinion IN ANY DIRECTION regarding our current war on terror. The FLN were not nice people. And in fighting them, the French "took off their gloves" in ways that _even today_ would seem unimaginable in the United States and it _still_ wasn’t enough.

The movie does ask the question: How far OUTSIDE THE LAW is either side willing to go to "win?" And it was clear in the Algerian conflict, that BOTH sides were willing to go very, very far.


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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules

MPAA (G) CNS/USCCB (A-1) Mike Phillips (2 stars) Fr Dennis (2 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650043/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/d/diaryofawimpykid2011.shtml
Mike Phillips’ review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0323-diary-wimpy-kid-rodrick-r20110324,0,7565114.column

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (directed by David Bowers) caught my eye because it was a kid/family oriented movie, received good reviews and scored #1 in the box office in the United States in its first weekend in the theaters. It is the second movie made following the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of cartoon novels written by Jeff Kenney.

Centered on the life of Gregory Heffley (played by Zachary Gordon) entering the 7^th grade in this movie and his family. Gregory is the middle of three brothers. He’s tormented by his older brother Rodrick (played by Devon Bostick) who’s in High School, already drives, and is the drummer in a garage band (calling itself Löded Dyper) made up mostly of his high school buddies. And Rodrick generally thinks of himself as being far cooler/worldly than Gregory. Gregory then has a younger brother, who seems to get away with everything because he’s only fffrreee (3). So Gregory has kind of the worst of both worlds in the sibbling pecking order. His best friend is Rowley Jefferson (played by Robert Capron) who’s similarly geeky but perhaps more at piece with it. Mom and Dad are Rachell Harris and Steve Zahn. Mom writes an advice column on parenting in the local, suburban paper and both Mom and Dad suffer from trying to be both "in control" of their household and "cool," which anyone who would be looking from the outside (ie the audience) would immediately realize is pretty much impossible. Thus the stage is set for many painfully funny situations.

I am not the only one writing about this film who’s noticed this, but one thing that’s somewhat strange about the portrayal of this family and the town that its from is that it is almost utterly white. Down to the school kids, teachers, neighbors, roller rink patrons, the _only_ person of color in the entire movie is an Indian classmate of Gregory’s named Chirag Gupta (played by Karan Brar). And he flies back to India for a number of weeks during the film, so it’s signaled that he’s "rich" (that is, probably an upper Brahman cast, that is a member of the "original Aryans"). Between that, the "umlaut" on the "Löded Dyper" band name and even Mom’s glasses and hair-style that progressively make her look more and more like Sarah Palin, one wonders if the movie was _purposefully_ cast to appeal to a _white-conscious_ pro-Palin demographic or was purposefully subverted by those doing the casting _to lampoon_ that demographic.

Honestly, I think it could go either way. But the utter lack of non-Aryan "people of color" felt weird, especially since the movie would have worked in most demographics.

Then as a Catholic priest, I did find the Church scene amusing because it was clearly Protestant "with some Catholic trappings thrown in." It was Protestant because, first there was no altar and second it’s been my experience that pretty much the _only_ Catholics who dress up in their "Sunday best" in the United States today are actually African American or Haitian (face it, most American Catholics going to Mass today go as slobs and that goes for even funerals and holidays). But the service had "Catholic trappings" because the Congregants in the movie went up to receive Communion, dispensed "to the hand" from Protestant looking collection plates. The attempt appeared to "try" to be "respectful" of both Protestants and Catholics but in a way that again could be interpreted as either pandering to or lampooning a white "Palin nation" demographic now utterly scrubbed clean in that Church of any non-whites.

So would I recommend this movie? Sure, the gags are fun. But if I were Asian (Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese), Black or Hispanic, I’d just find the movie stunningly devoid of people like me.


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Sucker Punch [2011]

MPAA (PG-13), CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Mike Phillips (0 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Mike Phillips review

Sucker Punch, directed by Zack Snyder of 300 fame, is another recently released movie that’s probably inappropriately rated PG-13. The fetishized dress of the central (female) characters (though without any nudity), spectacular (though again stylized) violence, and "life is like an insane asylum/brothel" theme would make an R-rating seem much more appropriate. Still, the movie runs like a 2 hour music video and actually pulses with hard, head banging music throughout. So the dress and "life can suck," teenage "angst" thematics would not seem altogether strange to anyone who’s grown up over the last 40 years or spent at least some of that time as a fan of  the music television channels MTV or VH-1. Still, I wonder how much simpler/better the movie could have been if the film-makers had decided to just accept an R-rating and then used the same technology, fireworks and thematics to just tell a good story without seeking to "get away" with anything.

What’s Sucker Punch about? Well the plot could be summarized in this way: After the death of her mother, a young (teenage) girl is sent by her (step)father to said insane asylum/brothel. The movie is about her attempt, indeed campaign, to escape.

Now one could assume that this young girl was really sent by her (step)father to an insane asylum/brothel, but then one would not understand this movie at all (or understand the music of the last 40 or so years, from heavy metal to rap). The "asylum/brothel" and even "the crisis" that landed her there are _all_ best understood as symbolic.

Yes, life _can_ at times seem senseless (like an insane asylum) or a like a game (like a brothel). And anyone who’s ever listened to, been a fan of Pink Floyd / Supertramp, etc or, been simultaneously attracted to / scandalized by the sexualized lyrics of either AC/DC (heavy metal) or 50 cent (rap) would understand that teens/young people have been absorbing and utilizing this imagery since at least the 1960s. And lest one get upset about that, let us appreciate that both Desert (fallenness, senselessness) and Prostitution imagery have been present throughout the Bible from the journey of the Exodus to the Prophets (Hosea, et al) to the Book of Revelation (always disturbing and yet always one of the Christian Bible’s most popular books).

The young girl, nick-named Baby Doll (played by Emily Browning), is given two guides, one in this world (female, Dr. Vera Gorski, played by Carla Gugino), one in her dreams (male, nicknamed "Wise Man", played by Scott Glenn) to help her escape.

Her female guide in this world tells her ‘to dance,’ and _while she dances_ to see this as an opportunity to seek her freedom. This advice too, can be taken in two ways. Taken in a crass/literal way (which also assumes that the protagonist is literally in an insane asylym/brothel would understand the advice to be that given to a young prostitute to encourage her to "split" emotionally from her "work." Taken symbolically, however, the advice is far more useful. Telling the protagonist to "dance with the music," is to tell the her go on with her work, schooling, day-to-day business. But telling her to also "seek her freedom while dancing" here is to tell her to also use one's time to "work on a plan" to find a way out of the situation that she is in.

Her spiritual guide, who first appears to her in the guise of an Eastern martial arts guru sets her on a "quest" in search of (1) a map, (2) some fire, (3) a knife, (4) a key and (5) a fifth element which is "a mystery" but involves "sacrifice." Each of these elements has obvious symbolic meanings, and represent elements needed in assembling a "plan of escape."

The protagonist convinces a few of her in/brothel mates (whether or not they actually are in an insane asylum or brothel) to join her on her quest to escape the senselessness/oppression of the "insane asylum/brothel" that they find themselves in.

Each time, while the protagonist "dances" (_never_ actually shown) a fantastic battle involving all concerned takes place.

There are a couple of plot twists that take place that can’t be revealed without ruining the story but it can be said that while not all in her party are able make it free, a number do.

The whole story is played out in vivid, stylized ‘dreamlike’ sequences that make last year's wunder-film Inception look like a stick figure cartoon.  Each of these 'dream sequences' is actually a period piece incorporating both actual and popular cultural elements from the period in the sequence. They are then mixed / "mashed" in a IMHO fascinating way.  Thus one sequence has the girls appearing in a WW II British bomber in the midst of a Tolkein style battle involving dragons and orcs.  In another, the girls are sent in a Vietnam era helicoptor to disarm a cold-war style nuclear weapon heading on a train toward a target that looks very much like Lower Manhattan while fighting Terminator-like cyborgs.  Again, the imagery in this movie is often simply awesome. 

Harder questions for young adults to ponder would be: What is the nature of  the "freedom" that is sought in this movie?  And are we really strong enough to _alone_ bestow meaning to our lives?

I do find the movie far more intelligent than most critics give it credit (Mike Philips of the Chicago Tribune, a respected critic with no axe to grind, gave Sucker Punch _zero stars_).

I’ve also found times during my life that have seemed dry and senseless (like that of passing through a Desert or perhaps approaching living in an Insane Asylum). For myself, I do not know how I would have been able to pass through such difficult times without a sense that God was at my side.  The imagery of the famous recent Catholic hymn Be Not Afraid comes to mind.

This movie is vivid and disturbing. I don’t think it’s appropriate _at all_ for young children. Parents of teens would have legitimate concerns about the sexualized dress and general plot trajectory of the story. But high schoolers especially in the upper grades and certainly college aged young adults and above will probably "get" the story and probably understand it better than the parents (or most movie critics).

Finally returning to the highly dramatic, stylized but often violent imagery of the movie. As always with such violent imagery, which also generally exists in Apocalyptic literature, a legitimate concern can be raised if the audience experiencing it will understand that the conflict and violence depicted, _indeed the whole story_, is to be _understood symbolically_. (Consider simply that most Muslim scholars will both passionately and sincerely say that Jihad is supposed to be understood as an "internal struggle," but tell that to Osama bin Laden and Al Queda ...).

But in the end, my gosh, would this movie make for a _great_ (and _fun_) discussion piece among college students at a coffee house, over a pizza (or at a Newman Center) after watching the film!


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The Lincoln Lawyer

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (R) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb Listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1189340/
CNS/USCCB Review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/l/lincolnlawyer2011.shtml
Roger Ebert’s Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110316/REVIEWS/110319985

"Man, I’m a big fan of your work,
playing one side off against the other,
in bed with everybody..."
       – from The Big Lebowski

The Lincoln Lawyer (directed by Brad Furman, screenplay by John Romano based on the novel by Michael Connelly) continues in a long line of hard-boiled Hollywood crime dramas extending back to the days of the character Sam Spade, black and white film noirs and author Mickey Spillane. More recently, John Grisham updated this genre of tales by making a lawyer (rather than a private investigator) the central character of the story.

Still the elements of this kind of story remain the same: A hardened protagonist (usually male), usually a private eye or more recently a lawyer with a practice in a large "fallen city," is presented with a case that initially sounds like so many others that (usually) he has worked-on before. As the case proceeds, however, it gets even more depraved than (usually) he ever imagined. The "fallen city" is even more "fallen" than previously thought. The depravity of the case both reinforces the protagonist’s hard-boiled world view and redeems the protagonist by forcing (usually) him to rectify the situation and bring justice.

Interestingly, the audience follows along usually identifying with the protagonist thoughout the whole trajectory of the story. Thus the world-view presented is, in fact, largely that of the audience itself. It sees the world as fundamentally corrupt/fallen ("fallenness" being as Biblical a theme (1) (2) (3) as one can get). Yet, the audience is shocked to see just how corrupt/fallen it has become and it cheers the protagonist as (usually) he seeks to rectify this new Evil.

Certainly other countries have produced their share of crime dramas. However, this basic script has been standard Hollywood fare since the days of Humphrey Bogart (1930s-40s). So it could be said that this storyline has a definite place in the American psyche to the extent that so long as one begins with a decent script and the acting, direction and camera-work is at least average, one’s guaranteed a "b movie" that will make money here.

I mention all this because Americans are often thought of by foreigners as being somehow naive about "how the world works." These movies testify to the opposite, that Americans are NOT naive, that there is a long home-grown American tradition of reflecting on Evil and that by that tradition Americans have come to understand that Evil does not exist just "outside" but also "within" – that mayors, D.A.s, police officers, even the "little old lady across the street" could "have an an angle." It is a tradition in which "Party Lines" are dismissed out of hand as probably being lies (Would Sam Spade believe _any_ "party line?") Yet despite his cynicism, the protagonist in these films is shaken out of his complacency by an Evil that does go beyond the pale, but _not_ before following that Evil all the way to its source, often a good distance from where it first presented itself, often implicating people who initially posed as the "good guys."  It’s really a subversive story-line, but it’s one that worked in Hollywood for decades.

So then, how does The Lincoln Lawyer "stack up" this tradition hard-boiled crime dramas? Mick Haller (played by Matthew McConaughey) plays a slick Los Angeles defense attorney who makes a living defending scumbags.  He drives around, chauffered, in a big black Lincoln Continental (an impressive "bad-a car" if there ever was one), keeping tabs on his clients, picking up new ones and collecting his fees.  Indeed, like archetypical scumbag defense lawyer Bill Flynn from the musical Chicago (Flynn played perfectly in _that_ movie by Richard Gere), Mick’s only criterion in taking up a case is whether or not the client can pay. Indeed, we’re told early in this story that Mick’s only fear is of one day getting a client who really is innocent...

Many in the police hate him, of course, for defending scumbags who deserve to be in jail. But Mick does not care. He tells one officer that he sees his job as making sure that the police _do their jobs_ and don’t over-reach.

Early in the movie, we are also introduced to Mick’s ex-wife, Maggie MacPhearson (played by Marisa Tomei) who works for Los Angeles District Attorney’s office and who had divorced Mick because was just too strange for her to be working to put scumbags in jail while her husband was working to keep them out. The two have a young daughter that they both love and seek to protect from the dangers/consequences of their work. Theirs is an interesting modern situation and calls to mind that many people today work in professions that if they were honest about it are not particularly conducive to marriage and family...

A new case comes up involving a Louis Roulet (played by Ryan Phillipe) a rich 20-something who helps his mother in the upscale real estate business of Beverley Hills and Malibu. Louis is accused of viciously beating-up a young woman he met in an trendy Los Angeles club. He claims to have been set-up by a gold-digger seeking to sue him later for his money. He’s not exactly Mick’s typical client, but Louis personally asked for him and the family is more than willing to pay. Mick has his private investigator, Frank Levin (played by William H. Macy), check into the story...

Much happens. As in the case of other reviews I’ve written and posted on my blog, I’ll leave it the readers to check out the movie and make their own judgement as to whether the movie was satisfactory (or even if it made sense).

I will say that I found the movie _well crafted_ and _well acted_.  And yes, inanimate, devoid of any "special powers" as it was, _the car_ was a _worthy_ "supporting character."   And as far as I could discern, the movie’s various twists and turns "added up" nicely by the end. So I found this story to be a very good "crime drama" of the vein I described above.

Was The Lincoln Lawyer a great film? Probably not, but movies like this don’t aspire to greatness. Did it hold its own? Certainly.  Does it tell a great, well crafted, story?  Ditto.

Any concerns about viewership? I probably wouldn’t see much value in very, very young kids seeing the movie. But regarding others, I do believe that this movie is "as American as (a crusty :-) apple pie."


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