AMISTAD ** out of **** AS GOOD AS IT GETS *** out of **** JACKIE BROWN *** out of **** |
Count on Hollywood to come up with a Scrooge story to cash in on the Christmas season, all wrapped up in a neat package. Too neat, really. Of course our Scrooge lightens up, but how he gets there is a rushed affair. This is too bad since AS GOOD AS IT GETS is quite good, with Jack Nicholson in his element and Helen Hunt equal to the task. With skilled performances and whip-smart dialogue at hand it is a shame the story is less vigorous. Nicholson is Melvin Udall, this year's model of Scrooge, a romance novelist whose obsessive-compulsive disorder becomes fodder for some laughs. Melvin's odd rituals include a rigorous avoidance of cracks on the sidewalk, meticulous handwashing with newly-unwrapped soap and an insistence on eating his usual meal at a specific table in a local restaurant. Carol (Hunt) is the only waitress that serves him his meals, not because Melvin insists on it but because she is the only one who will stand against his brusqueness, no thanks to a Tourette’s variation. Unblinking, unthinking of their consequences, Melvin tosses off stinging invectives. Unfortunates include his gay neighbour, painter Simon (Greg Kinnear) and his impossibly-cute pet rodent Verdell. Melvin's finickiness may be played to laughs, but this is really a (poor) medical excuse for the bile that comes out of his mouth. Luckily, there's Carol. When Melvin flippantly mentions her sickly son, Carol goes on guard, forcing him to acknowledge his remark's caustic edge. These exchanges are at the core of the appeal of AS GOOD AS IT GETS. The leads thrust and parry, with unhesitantly common-sense Carol making Melvin visibly squirm against what comes naturally to him. Any other actor would worry about typecasting, but luckily for Nicholson his usual smirk and smarm has come to be expected by many. Admittedly he is very good with this limited range (although one wishes he’d move on), but when at the service of mediocre scripts such as BLOOD AND WINE, this can become irksome. The script for AS GOOD AS IT GETS serves Nicholson well, relying to a degree on Nicholson's reputation for playing difficult people and our expectation that behind the upturned brow lurks someone likeable. Hunt is very good as the single mother toughened up by the grind but not to the point of invulnerability. Carol pines for companionship, but her concern for her son's health denies her the time and chance to pursue this longing. In a case of the verbal storm providing refuge, Carol’s situation and Simon’s misfortunes provide Melvin the opportunities to redeem himself. In the film's best scene, another engaging display of the push-and-pull between them, Melvin confesses that Carol makes him want to be a better man. One is not altogether convinced that repression through willpower alone will bring about his redemption. Melvin's gutter talk is startlingly contemporary and true enough, but his ascension out of it is not. B+ ~ ~ ~ With AMISTAD Steven Spielberg does little to convince me otherwise of his need for lessons in subtlety. Model-turned-actor Djimon Hounsou as Cinque acts ably in a one-note role but is monumentalized to excess; an early scene where we look up at his moon-lit well-muscled body against a backdrop of stars seems more appropriate for a cheesecake calendar shoot than a movie about slavery’s horrors. He is lionized to the point that his suffering and that of the other slaves is overlooked. A courtroom outburst by Cinque is embarrassing in how it ineptly attempts to elicit a desired emotional impact. All one needs is a golden heavenly light followed by a rush of angels to carry our slaves away from the boredom of legal wranglings. A later illustrated Bible story courtesy of one of the slaves is also inept, and somewhat suspect - is this an attempt to make these slaves more sympathetic by showing their understanding of the Bible? Yes, as with SCHINDLER’S LIST, Spielberg effectively lenses the horrors (the easy task), but the rest of the time AMISTAD remains emotionally inert. In the former, Oskar Schindler served as a moral compass, engaged in ever-increasing risk to self, but in AMISTAD instead are a series of battles on the fine points of law. In fact, the slaves’ victory in AMISTAD seems a rather hollow one won over the fine points of law, an elision of slavery's reprehensibility. AMISTAD reveals a curious truth about law – that it is not concerned with truth or tragedy, only in its own intricacies. That law is navel-gazer is nothing new, but as cinematic fodder such activity is a bore. C ~ ~ ~ Those expecting hard-boiled attitude and low-life crass on the same frenzied level as RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION will be slightly disappointed by Quentin Tarantino's newest, JACKIE BROWN. With a bit more discipline this lack could have been less glaring. Though wanting in control, there is nevertheless a strategy at work here. Tarantino puts out what has become expected of him: his penchant of recovering oldies for a marketable soundtrack, loopy conversational tangents, wallows in amorality, the latter an activity Samuel L. Jackson (as Ordell Robbie the tirade-prone gun runner) evidently relishes. After doling out his trademarks, Tarantino also delves into human sensibility, somewhat refreshing with all his familiar glibness going on. Pam Grier is Jackie Brown, a 44-year old flight attendant for a bottom-of-the-barrel Mexican airline, a convenient cover so she can run gun money for Ordell. Grier pulls off a weary but alert Jackie to root for as she engages in a game of one-upsmanship against Ordell for half a million in retirement funds. Even better is Robert Forster as the weathered bail bondsman Max Cherry, bringing to the role a dignified calm. It is the calibre of the performances that keeps JACKIE BROWN interesting in spite of its two and a half hour running time. Elmore Leonard’s RUM PUNCH provides Tarantino with the rest of his criminal cast in a not very surprising caper. B |
| AMISTAD Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by David Franzoni Based on the book Black Mutiny by William Owens U.S.A., 1997 |
AS GOOD AS IT GETS Directed by James L. Brooks Written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks U.S.A., 1997 |
| JACKIE BROWN Directed and written by Quentin Tarantino Based on the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. U.S.A., 1997 |
Reviews completed on December 29, 1997. |