For all the ominus buildup in the trailer, what we have here in “Michael Clayton” is basically a mas-macho/midlife-crisis gloss on the ever-classy old saw of corporate-crony scumbags clawing their way back to humanity. From the premise on down, it hopes (hell, it DEMANDS) comparison to the mythic (cue Peter Biskind’s raging hard-on) Great Films Of The 70s, and it’s graciously upfront about this by building much of it’s story-momentum around a character who may as well simply be named Howard Beale Mark II. That’d be Arthur Edens, (Tom Wilkinson,) a legendary corporate lawyer who’s longtime defense of a loathsome chemical conglomerate may-or-may-not have led him to snap, go off his meds and – now “seeing the world clearly” – turn on his masters. The titular Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is the firm’s dirty-job “fixer” called in on damage-control duty.

So, then, the not-great news is that “Clayton” is, at least in part, yet another corporate-culture indictment that desperately, desperately wants to be “Network.” The really-great news is that it doesn’t really matter. Have we, ultimately, been down these roads a few dozen times before? Yup, doesn’t matter. They’re good roads, they go good places. Is Wilkinson’s Arthur another Howard Beale? Yes, he is. Doesn’t matter. Wilkinson is a great actor, and it’s a great spin on the well-worn “madness equals clarity” concept. Tilda Swinton’s bitch-on-wheels company rep bad guy? Yeah, it’s been done, but never quite this way and not lately quite so well.

What sets this apart from it’s predecessors, aside from the actors and the fresh takes they bring to characters just this side of archetypal is the structure; which suggests that the movie is as aware as we are of how much familiar ground it’s covering. The chemical company covering up pollution bit, it seems to know, we’re all familiar with after “Civil Action” and “Erin Brokovich,” and so it drops the intrigue and conspiracy story mostly into the background and zeroes in on the semi-tangential outer lives of the character’s occupying it; taking us through the harried paces of Clayton’s gambling woes and family/financial wreckage and the twitchy, obsessive and profoundly sad-looking preparation rituals of Swinton’s company hitwoman. And, again, while the whole “insane man who’s actually never been saner” thing has been done to DEATH Wilkinson makes it feel entirely fresh – it’s the first time I’ve bought this kind of character in a long time.

Since it’s using genre-familiarity as a shortcut past exposition and into character-study, it’s largely forgivable that most of Clayton’s “heroic-journey” you’re likely to see coming. Yes, the sinister corporate types are probably hiding something really sinister to drive Arthur over the edge, he’s probably got the goods on them, Swinton’s character is probably going to go all-the-way-bad to protect her masters and Michael Clayton is almost certainly going to be tempted remain safely in moral limbo rather than risk finally fighting on the side of good. Not everything has to re-invent the wheel, so long as it still rolls.

Great characters, good movie, go see it.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Yes, yes, I know. Anne Coulter isn’t worth taking seriously. It’s a schtick: Let’s have a leggy blonde say incendiary stuff so that then it’s out there and we can eventually talk it up. I get that.

Still, I’m always more than a little giddy whenever a moment like this befalls a vanguard of the so-called “Religious Right” and reveals their true nature It’s almost like clockwork: Scratch the surface of a Christian (or Muslim) religious extremist, and you’ll find a Anti-Semite almost every time. (See: Mel “Passion” Gibson.) And so, in the grand-tradition of “Sugar Tits,” here’s Mrs. Coulter on CNBC’s “Big Idea” theorizing to (Jewish) host Donny Deutsch that the world would be better off if the Jews were all converted to Christianity – or in her terms, the Jews need to be “perfected.” (the clip includes TV commercials, zip past them for her ludicrous “explanation” of herself:

Mrs. Coulter, if you can here me: Just for reference’s sake, I heard about this because my radio-surfing took me past Michael Savage, who was condemning you for it. MICHAEL SAVAGE. Do you have any idea how much of a creep you have to be for Michael Savage to be able to take a legitimate moral highground on you??

Today, 10/10/07, as part of their big fall announcements, Nintendo gave the video game world some bad news: “Super Smash Bros.,” the hotly-anticipated Wii installment of their insanely popular fighting game featuring company-branded mascot characters, is being delayed until January in Japan – and, possibly, in the U.S./Europe as well. Major, major bummer.

But, this being Nintendo, they managed to drop a second bit of related fanservice news so “kickass” that it’s probably going to neutralize the bummer of an extended wait – maybe even render it moot altogether. This is IT. The big one. The clash of titans that gamers have been waiting for since the early-90s. The three words that “Smash Bros.” fans thought they would never hear:

SONIC. THE. HEDGEHOG. Not a joke. Not a dream. Not an imaginary tale. Just look at the video:

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=26202

I wonder if younger gamers (I’m talking 16 and under, maybe older too) have any frame of reference for why oldschoolers like me consider this so huge. Back in the day, in the “Golden Age” of the Nintendo vs. Sega console wars – the ultracompetitive battle that, arguably, produced one of the greatest if not THE greatest periods in gaming EVER… Mario and Sonic were the Red Sox and Yankees of video game mascots. This was, among gamers, THE schoolyard/comic store (we didn’t have the internet, so all fanboy arguing was done face to face – can you imagine?) “who would/should win?” debate of all time. If THIS had happened then… if it was possible to actually turn on a game and semi-physically settle it in virtual hand-to-hand combat… my God, “Halo 3” millions be damned, they’d still be counting the money that would’ve earned.

Yes, a small amount of the inherent “no WAY!” of this is diminished by the fact that we’ll see the onetime Coke and Pepsi of game heroes sharing screen-space and competing before this in “Mario & Sonic Olympics”… it’s not the same thing. Seeing M&S and their various allies running a relay or playing tennis is ONE thing. But this… just that one moment in the middle of these two legends facing eachother down on the platform and trading punches… geez, there just aren’t any words for what it’s like to actually SEE that.

The Farrelly Brothers’ Formula is as follows: A sappy romantic comedy, told primarily from the perspective of the male lead, infused with envelope-pushing moments of can-you-show-that-in-a-movie scatology so that teenaged boys don’t realize they’re watching a chick flick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but there it is. Here, it’s been applied to the basic structure of a 1970s Neil Simon flick in place of the original’s very of-the-moment cynicism about the romantic ideals of love and marriage… and I have to wonder if the Brothers are as gobsmacked as I am that it didn’t work.

The basic premise is the same: Eddie (Ben Stiller) a lifetime bachelor, just got married in a hurry (short-version: mid-life crisis) to the beautiful Lila (Malin Ackerman, who’s now the first trouble-sign for “Watchmen” if her turn here isn’t an unfortunate fluke) and headed of to Cabo for the honeymoon – whereupon he quickly discovers A.) that Lila is really, really irritating and wrong for him; and B.) that the (single) woman of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) is at the same hotel.

That’s a funny premise, and it worked the first time around thanks to an honest understanding of the it’s own potentials and implications: It was cynical, but also practical, about the idealizing of both marriage AND singlehood. It’s characters, in the spirit of 1970s dark comedy, were all largely selfish and unidealized creatures – in other words, they were fully human: Charles Grodin as the hero was, while not “evil,” an egocentric jerk. His main dissapointment with his new wife is that she’s too much oriented toward the traditional marriage-ideal – she wants to be June Cleaver, and he’s built more for a Desperate Housewife. That’s why he’s so enamored of the “other woman,” a blonde ice-queen played by Cybil Shepherd: She doesn’t “need” or even all that much “want” him… their made for eachother. Probably.

The Farrelly’s have populated their version with their usual collection of slightly-grosser Hollywood rom-com superbeings, which is the foundation of it’s rapid ruin: This story just doesn’t work when the wandering husband and the other woman are both genuinely good, decent people “destined” to be perfect for eachother. A guy who’s as movie-hero good and decent as we’re told Eddie is would NEVER chase another woman on his honeymoon unless pushed to a ridiculous extreme, which requires that Lila become a ridiculous caricature of body-functions, personality-flaws and dark-backstory that’s just disasterously over-the-top to – It’s not enough to make her “wrong” for Eddie, she has to become a bad person.

Perfect example: Early on, much is made of Lila’s deviated-septum which leads to her accidentally spraying liquids (and more) from her nose. It’s understandable that Eddie would be a bit grossed out to learn this, and at the prospect of having to deal with it for the rest of his life, but for a mere physical tic to help his eye start wandering would make him slightly less than a 100% worth-pulling-for hero; so soon enough we’re told that her condition is the result of a prior cocaine habit. Eddie is put-off and more-than-a-little frightened by her, but the audience is told to HATE her. The Farrelly’s aren’t misogynists, but in trying too hard to make us root for Eddie unconditionally they’ve engaged in the kind of woman-hating that you rarely see outside of films made by women.

Likewise, it’d be ridiculous to assume that someone who’s as nice/smart as we’re told Miranda is wouldn’t catch on tho things sooner. This requires a truly hackneyed bit of contrivance, like something out of the worst sitcom, wherein she believes something about “Eddie’s wife” that isn’t precisely true, and phrases it in such a way so that Eddie thinks everything is okay when, in fact, it isn’t. Dumb.

This is just bad writing and poor filmmaking, plain and simple. The actors, with the exception of a typically-annoying Carlos Mencia, are trying with nothing to work with. And what was surely hoped to be the “Mary Moment” of grossout humor falls totally flat. It’s a bust. Pity.

FINAL RATING: 3/10

Hat-tip: Kotaku.com

Egh. Well, this is certainly a buzzkiller after yesterday’s “Mario Galaxy” trailer.

Produced several years ago but apparently only heading into some kind of release now, “Moral Combat” is – aside from being a new all-time champion in the field of Worst Movie Title Pun EVER – a documentary about the debate over video game violence. http://kotaku.com/gaming/game-violence/moral-kombat-premiers-at-vgxpo-306503.php

The doc, produced by Spencer Halprin, carries the standard promises of a “fair look at both sides,” but I didn’t need to know that it gives substantial screentime (and a premier panel discussion!) to Jack Thompson to know that a red flag was already up on this one. Here’s the thing: It’s all well and good to pretend that every argument carries equal weight and is equally worth considering in the hypothetical realm of academic debate where you do so to sharpen the rhetorical skills. But that’s not – and I know I’m committing a sin against Political Correctness by saying this – how it works in the Real World, where quite often you DO frequently find “debates” where one side IS demonstrably, catastrophically wrong.

Thusly, there are times when “balance” between sides is not possible because any “balance” would have to be artificially-imposed. You cannot “balance” debates about Holocaust Denial, for example, because the “it never happened” side has no evidence or credibility while the “yes it did” side has MOUNTAINS of it. There can be no “balance” there: One side is right, the other side is wrong, and any attempt to make it appear otherwise would have to be an exercise in dishonesty, framing crazy people in order to make them appear as worth hearing from as their legimitate others. All men are created equal… yes, but they don’t stay that way. Jack Thompson, Louis Farrakahn, Pat Robertson, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, etc. are not rational, reliable sources on ANYTHING – they are crazy people.

And that, you may have guessed, is my problem with what this doc claims to be (I will, of course, withhold final judgement until I see it)… it’s not, in my estimation, possible in the realm of intellectual-honesty to make an “unbiased” doc on this subject that is also fair and balanced – it’s NOT a balanced debate, and it NEVER will be. There has never been, and will never be, proof to back up the idea that violent video games are a direct cause of real-world violence. Not one study, not one laboratory test, not one SHRED of hard evidence has ever been found. The Thompson/Leiberman side does not have anything to support their claims. Not a single thing.

Thus, a truly unbiased doc showing both sides as they are would end up looking, well… as innevitably one-sided as a doc about the debate over the roundness of the Earth. Because you have one side that’s made up of rational individuals with evidence and facts, and another side made up of crazy people with nothing to back them up. And as the trailer, which I’m about to show you, demonstrates, the filmmakers are at great pains to make Thompson etc. look to be on equal moral and intellectual footing with their opponents, which is simply not an accurate representation of the situation.

Now, I understand. This is the way people think you NEED to do documentaries, always pretend that everything is exactly equal and worth-considering or else you’ll be accused of propaganda. I get that, and was expecting it. THEN I saw the trailer, which I somehow managed to miss back when it was fresh:

No, you didn’t just imagine that. One of the commentators blames video-games for 9/11, and the film (appears to, based on it’s own trailer) treats this as an argument as worth considering as any other.

Yeah, talk about fair.

“Mario” creator and video game patron-saint Shigeru Miyamoto is, famously, infinitely more a gameplay/visuals guy than a story guy. As such, the series’ that he either created or shepherd tend to tilt toward classical mythic archetype like “Legend of Zelda” or feature the basic “you are ____ you need to _____” structure of the Mario series. Yes, there are story-driven installments like the “Mario RPG,” “Paper Mario” and “Mario & Luigi” sub-series, but the mainline titles tend to shy away from overly-complex in-game narratives and the notion of a larger series continuity is all-but nonexistant. As such, you seldom see a main-series Mario title aim to fit in the kinds of story-advancing cinematic cutscenes you see in so many other “next-gen” games aside from the ‘better-than-the-actual-games’ mini-movies that tended to open the GameCube Mario Sports titles.

Well, apparently the occasion of Mario’s first full-bore platforming foray onto Nintendo’s (now officially the top-selling video game console of this generation so far) little miracle-machine The Wii has given them the incentive to OPEN the highly-anticipated game with THIS magnificient bit of gorgeously-colorful, fan-service heavy cinematic, easily the grandest opening for a Mario game ever (for now only available with it’s Japanese-language version):

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=25847

A bustling, re-designed Mushroom Kingdom being carpet bombed!? Kamek the Magikoopa!? Bowser conjuring up what looks like force lightning!? Flying saucers!? And, most-importantly… “Super Mario Bros. 3”-era AIRSHIPS swooping out of the night sky to their original theme music!!?? I’ve been waiting to see something like that in a Mario game for almost as long as I’ve been waiting to see something like this:

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=24985

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The “Iraq movies” aren’t doing well. If you keep up with movie news, you know that. If you frequent ‘conservative’ punditry sites, you know that AND you’ve endured some insufferable cheerleading about it. It’s one thing if openly-depressing, politically-charged films like “Elah” or the upcoming “Rendition” aren’t exactly making off with billions; but when even a politics-free shoot `em up like “The Kingdom” opens in second place to The Rock as a football toughie with a troublemaking little girl there might just be a problem here.

Well, okay, several problems; “Iraq fatigue” being first and foremost. 70% of the country opposes the war, yes, but polls also show that most are largely resigned to it’s protracted continuation. Thus, while a certain vocal minority (including lots of folks in the movie business) finds Iraq to be all-encompassingly-infuriating, most potential audiences just find it depressing. Fury sells tickets, depression doesn’t.

But at a close second, I think, is a general sense of lacking import. Before I go on, let’s just get this on table: I’m registered as an independent. My politics fall solidly in the camp of “libertarian,” which generally means I’m mostly about what “conservatives” were SUPPOSED to have been about before the Religious Nuts took over that whole “side” of things and ruined American political discourse right up through today – in shorthand, when it comes to applying dated literature to government imperitives I’m inclined to pick Ayn Rand over The Bible – or Koran, or Book of Mormon, or whatever for that matter. I did not vote for Bush or Gore or Kerry (no, not Nader either, put down the hammer.) I will not vote for Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson. I fully expect history to judge George W. Bush as one of the worst American presidents of all time. I am in favor of a War on Terror, but not waged in the slapdash way it is currently being waged. I was in favor of attacking Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, but ALSO not in the slapdash way either was and continues to be done. And I am most definately against the continued presence of combat troops in Iraq: American soldiers, Marines and contractors should NOT be getting blown to bits so that eternally-warring tribes of intellectually-unevolved religious nuts can play Democracy Dress-Up.

So, then, to lack of import. With the final chapter of the Iraq War debacle still to be written, and the larger Terror War still ongoing, and even the Bush Legacy still up in the air… what, exactly, are these movies going to “be” in the here and now? It’s too late to stop the war, and too early to get any kind of intellectually-honest read of what this war will “mean” to the American psyche overall. So, even though I’m aware that most of the people making these movies are sincere in their beliefs and pure of motive… I have to ask what the “point” is. The downer Vietnam movies of the 70s and 80s had the benefit of hindsight for perspective. Downer WWII movies like “Flags of Our Fathers” or “Letters From Iwo Jima” offer a more complex examination of the “Good War.” Basically, if I’m going to endure undeniably depressing subject matter, the typical tradeoff is some kind of larger benefit – and I don’t really see that being feesible in these “too late”/”too soon” Iraq films. Hearing a feature-length “we told you so” from Robert Redford and Paul Haggis is not a benefit, I’m sorry.

The lack of hindsight perspective is especially problematic for these films, because in it’s absence you wind up imposing the structure of previous films about previous wars onto this one – and that it’s not a precise “fit” is always going to show. The battle-scars a war leaves on the national psyche effects what sorts of stories take shape about it, and one scar doesn’t fit with another. Making a gung-ho WWII film in Veitnam doesn’t work (see: “The Green Berets,”) just as making a sombre Veitnam film in WWII doesn’t either (see: “The Thin Red Line.”) And so we have Paul Haggis’ “In The Valley of Elah,” which wants very much to be “Coming Home” for Iraq… and that’s why it doesn’t totally work. It feels far too much like a Veitnam movie transplanted to Iraq, and however similar the two may wind up looking the disconnect is too noticable.

This is one of those very sincere and earnest films that feels in need of a few more years of mental gestation before it goes before cameras – it’s more like a rough idea of a great movie than a great movie in it’s own right. Haggis, clearly, wanted to make an anti-war film about Iraq in a visual and tonal-milieu of working-class Middle America; and the individual peices of this construction are all there to see: Pickup-trucks and flagpoles. Army uniforms and shaved heads. Flat-country vistas and homey local diners. A police-procedural about a murdered, possibly-AWOL Iraq veteran and the greater mystery of heat-scrambled video on his cellphone. Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar-worthy performance as a walking avatar of worn, wounded American manhood.

Jones is a gruff, old-fashioned and (truth be told) bullheaded and often unpleasant veteran who’s already lost one son to the war in Afghanistan. When informed that his other son, last known to be serving in Iraq, was in fact recently back stateside and now AWOL, he matter-of-factly heads to the town surrounding the base to check things out. A tragic surprise awaits him: His son’s body has been found, burned and cut into peices, evidently the victim of a violent murder. The geography of the crime scene leads to a clash between the local police and Army, but as a former MP Jones takes it upon himself to investigate the crime vigilante-style. He enlists (well, bullies, really) some help from a local cop (Charlize Theron, her Midwestern accent vastly improved since “North Country”) who starts to smell conspiracy and possible cover-up. Meanwhile, Jones’ character contends with a darker personal mystery poised to shatter his very reality: a series of videos from Iraq found on his son’s cellphone are slowly being reconstructed, and each new peice of footage suggests darker and darker truths to come about his son, the war and What Really Happened Over There.

As I said, all the peices are in place for a really good, if tough, examination of the lasting effects of a war. But since the war-proper still hasn’t revealed what the actual nature of it’s effects will be, early-bird “Elah” has to make do with archetypes and suggestion. The result is that the “mystery” is too easy to solve – once you’ve met the players and detected the intended message, you already know what has to have happened and what it will mean. With appologies to Mr. Haggis, who I believe was making a sincere effort at having his message movie function as a legitimate whodunnit, it just doesn’t work: The early notes of looming darkness, Bush speeches as background chatter and methodically-rising drumbeat of plot points involving shell-shocked, maladjusted veterans are just too clear an indicator as to what MUST have “gone down” for the story to arrive at it’s largely pre-announced ‘point;’ so the red-herrings of drug deals and Mexican gangs just feel like so much obvious misdirection.

Coupled with this, the already-creaky device of the phone videos being decoded by a program that moves at plot-point-generating speed starts to feel outright phony – there’s never any real question of “what” will be revealed. Finally, a way over-telegraphed final coda is, I’m sorry, just plain heavy-handed. This is material that, given the presumptive nature of doing it now, demands a certain level of subtlty and let’s face it, “subtle” hasn’t really been Haggis stock in trade up to this point. I liked “Crash,” yes, but the only way that particular film could’ve been more “heightened” and operatic would be to have the cast burst into song. It worked there. Here, Haggis is going for “dialed down” drama and it’s clear it isn’t where he lives, creatively – what’s supposed to be terse and restrained instead feels… vauge.

Overall, it isn’t a bad movie – just a deeply flawed one. Jones turns it into a work of real worth with his achingly-good performance alone, matched only by Susan Sarandon as his wife in what’s easily one of the most real and believable “older couple who communicate without much talking” relationships onscreen in ages. In fact, it’s heartbreakingly easy to imagine a great, genre-defining film being made about Iraq from this same story, with the same cast and talent, several years from now. But right now, working only with what history and reality has provided so far, what the film winds up with is a cinematic-variation on one of the very actions it seeks to condemn: A pre-emptive strike on a target it doesn’t yet sufficiently understand.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Here’s the basic problems facing you if you’re trying to make military-related action films in Hollywood. Firstly, the old wars are getting played out. Now that the post-Russert “You rule, grammy and grampy!” resurgence of WWII films is starting to crest, The Great War will have been revisited in every concievable way for awhile now. WWI isn’t fast-paced enough, and even our SMART youngsters have trouble telling you what it was about. Ditto the Veitnam genre. The Civil War hasn’t made for a great film in years (no, Ron Maxwell’s crap doesn’t count) and the Revolutionary War… well, “The Patriot” for better or worse is kinda hard to top.

Secondly, doing it “current” means engaging the thus-far rather uncinematic War on Terror. Seriously, all political thorniness aside, the current war as film fodder is problematic: “Us” the high-tech war machine as good guys versus gruff, cave-dwelling improvisors as the bad guys cuts hard against the good-guy/bad-guy grain of the last decade or so of action movies: WE’RE supposed to be John Rambo, making an arsenal out of sticks and mud while the bad guys are supposed to be all slick and heavily-armed. Nevermind the fact that too much of our polarized country is going to either see or demand to see any War on Terror film as some kind of referendum one way or the other on Iraq and the Bushies – no genuinely good movie will ever be anti-war enough for “liberals” or “pro-American” enough for “conservatives.”

How, then, one makes a good War on Terror action film is a puzzle that “The Kingdom” sets out to solve and – surprise, surprise – it mostly succeeds. The key, it seems, is in taking a two-directional long view of the situation: Bush, Iraq and Red vs. Blue states loom large right now; but Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism and the world issues it drives/ties-into has been around and will continue to be around longer. It’s this bigger picture (driven-home by a stunning pre-credit sequence encapsulating American/Saudi relations from the discovery of oil to 9-11 in bullet-point format) that drives the events of the story, and enables it to sidestep the murky territory of messages and moral lessons in favor of mining the circumstances for drama and suspense. As a result, we have the first really solid American “War on Terrorism” movie that won’t feel dated once Iraq has (one way or another) concluded.

In many ways, the film plays out as though “CSI: Miami” and “24” had baby – and then sent it to Finishing School to curb it of (most) of it’s baser instincts. It’s a fish-out-of-water cop story with an international scope and a Secular West meets Islamic Middle-East hook, with a tight focus on what the culture-clash in question results-in as opposed to what it “means” or how it makes one “feel.” A horrifically cruel series of terrorist attacks on the living-areas of American oil workers and their families in Saudi Arabia raises the ire of an FBI forensics team (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper) when a mutual friend turns up among the victims. Despite stonewalling by superiors, they semi-legally slip into The Kingdom with a small window of time to try and get some answers and possibly seek out Abu-Hamza, the terror kingpin believed to have planned the attacks.

That’s all easier said than done, of course, or there’d be no movie: As if the expected troubles of trying to process evidence under the auspices of the strict social and religious customs of the society (Garner’s female-hood invites glares, Bateman’s passport has an Israeli stamp, and how DO you perform an autopsy when a non-believer can’t touch the body of a dead Muslim?) aren’t enough, the investigation as a whole is initially hamstrung by the tricky political navigations the Saudi princes have to make in regards to their volatile citizenry. Luckily, the Americans have a sympathetic ally in Colonel Al-Ghazi, (Arab-Israeli actor Ashraf Barhom,) a tough and highly-intelligent Saudi police officer who wants to ice Abu-Hamza AND strains against the forces preventing him from doing so every bit as much as the Americans.

All the more impressive since he’s working amid such a talented overall cast, let me echo the sentiments of just about everyone who’s been to see this so far and state that Barhom just about walks off with the entire movie – he’s a STAR. Equal parts calm, collected detective; reluctant-but-efficient beaurocrat and gunslinging action hero, Al Ghazi may just be the first great, fully-realized, three-dimensional Muslim good guy character of post-911 Hollywood. This is no ethnic sidekick, nor is he a politically correct “wise foreign sage” cliche. He’s essentially the moral center of the movie: The guy who not only aims to do the right thing, but also to do it the right way.

The refreshing no demonizing, no-idealizing, no-bullshit-PERIOD take extends to the film’s overall approach to it’s setting and it’s indiginous culture: The ‘differences’ of Saudi Arabia are played, certainly, for exotica but not so much for outright shock or message-mongering. The callous scrutiny and sexism of the culture toward Garner’s character is noted, depicted and (by Al Ghazi) lamented… but there’s no showy speech about how wrong it is or about how we need to “respect other cultures” instead – it’s there, she dislikes it, most of the audience will agree, but it’s just an element of the plot. The film is more concerned with how this issue will impact the investigation than it is with the larger religious/political questions it raises. I still can’t get over how pleasant it actually is to go see a terrorism movie that ISN’T just a longform essay on either the evils of Islam OR a conspiracy-piece about Big Oil and Halliburton.

Great cast playing great characters, interesting story in a fascinating setting, killer opening, smooth police-procedural second act, visceral action climax and a devastating final coda – this is one of the best action/dramas of the year. Yeah, if your a “conservative” hoping to see a kill-em-all campaign-commercial about the need to stay in Iraq OR if your a “liberal” hoping to see the evil imperialist/capitalist white-male-power-structure Americans ‘get it;’ you’re probably not going to like it. But, then again, if you’re THAT kinda crazy on either side, you’re probably a pretty miserable person to begin with. Those of you with clear heads regardless of party affiliation who’re aching for a DAMN GOOD actioner with brains to match? Get out there and see this.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

On September 24, 2007, an evil man took the stage to speak at Columbia University. A psychopath. A thug. Leader of nation that murders dissidents, jails reporters and imposes the death penalty for ‘impure’ women’s clothing or homosexuality. An enemy of the United States who supplies weapons to Iraqis used to kill American soldiers. Who has threatened to destroy the nation of Israel for reasons not exceeding the practice of it’s citizens of the “incorrect” religion. Who subscribes to a strain of religious fundamentalism that dictates the need to jump-start worldwide Armageddon.

For days leading up to this, the “conservative” pundit class had been excoriating Columbia for inviting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. “Liberal college students!” “Traitors!” “America-Haters!” Then the actual event got under way…

…and everyone, from the university president on down, essentially stood Ahmadinejad up on the stage and threw tomatoes at him. The president called him a petty tyrant without the intellectual honesty to answer their questions. The assembled students laughed in his face. They made a fool of him, dressing him down in front of a worldwide audience.

Set aside the fact that the right-wing talking heads owe Columbia an appology, though they most certainly do. Something extraordinary may have happened here. We may have seen the first real sign of International Politics in the age of “The Daily Show.” Faced with a figure of Hitlerian ambitions and outright evil, these kids did what years of Jedi Training under Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, “Borat” and “South Park” had prepared them to do: They tore evil a new rhetorical asshole. They mocked him. Derrided him. They dealt him a punishing media-age blow by robbing him, violently, of that which all like him desire most: Respect and fear.

This guy stands at his podium and postures like a man who needs to be feared and revered, and a bunch of snarky American college kids told him, loudly, that he’s not. You’re a JOKE, and we are not afraid of you.

I love my country. This is why.

Sometimes, honestly, it can get a bit bothersome to be “the movie guy” in your place of business, or circle of friends, or family gathering. Usually, these times involve those instances when a question about a movie becomes so automatic and ubiquitous that you already know it’s about to be asked just based on who’s asking and what the movie is.

So, in the spirit of that, to my female readers: YES, you can his penis. Will that be all? It will? Groovy. Moving on…

“Eastern Promises” is probably the leanest movie of actual substance to come along in some time. It’s so efficient and to-the-point, but (thanks largely to it’s actors) so fundamentally alive that the best descriptive I can find for it would be biomechanical, which given that the director is David Cronenberg seems entirely appropriate. There’s not an ounce of fat on this – every scene moves the story ahead, every line reveals something of vital importance about the story or the people in it, every fact we hear is important, every character has a specific and important role to play, everything means something. There’s no stopping to smell the roses, no larger or broader themes to explore, no loose threads to leave for interpretation. Even a fairly “wowzer” third-act twist that anywhere else would be the key to blowing open a whole other “grander” level to the proceedings is here just a part of the machinery: It makes sense, fits perfectly with what we’ve already seen, and propels the story ahead to the next point.

Which, all told, makes it kind of a pain in the neck to review. I mean, c’mon David… think of us critics. We NEED extraneous digressions, vauge open-to-interpretation loose ends and subtle, small-detail hints to give us something to write all flowery and academic about. Why, you go and make something so bullshit-free and efficient all we can really do is tell the people what it’s about and whether or not we think it’s any good. Hmph! You’re just a mean ol’ Canadian spoilsport, is what you are 🙂

The story involves transplanted Russian immigrants and their families in London. Hospital midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) has placed in her care the newborn baby of dead, drugged-addicted Russian girl who’s diary reveals (after Anna has it translated, as she doesn’t speak Russian herself) that she was involved in the human-smuggling operations of the Vor v Zakone; a dangerous branch of the Russian mafia. This places the child, Anna and her family in danger – especially since, while seeking translators, Anna has unknowingly already gotten dangerously close to the local Vor leadership: Deceptively-gentle restauranture Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his psychotic son Kirill (Vincent Cassell.) She’s also caught the attention of the enigmatic Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) Kirill’s chauffer/bodyguard – and he’s caught her’s.

This all unspools with, as mentioned previously, a certain mechanical innevitability. Save for one significant reveal, there’s never any question as to what’s going on, what the stakes are and what eventually has to happen – it’s all a matter of when and how. Credit Cronenberg for understanding how to wring all that can be wrung in terms of drama and suspense from material that isn’t about to offer up “extras” on anything – there’s no room for loligagging, but he knows just when to end a scene and when to draw one out to the maximum. The result: Not a single scene of dialogue or exposition goes on a fraction longer than it needs to, while other sequences like two decidedly un-slick throat-slitting murders (violent sawing instead of kung-fu-quick slice n’ go) and a brutal knife/fist/wrestling fight between Nikolai and two attackers in a bathhouse become hugely-memorable setpieces. The bathhouse fight, in particular, is one of the most visceral and exciting brawls to hit screens all year, a (literal) knockout scene that makes the overrated “realism” of the “Bourne” series’ action scenes look like so much shakycam’d flailing.

Credit also the actors, who may be in a no-frills crime picture but committ to their roles as though they’re in a nothing-but-breathing-room character peice. These are fully-developed, richly-characterized beings who carry the full implication of lives and experiences outside the frame – even if the film-proper isn’t at all interested in exploring them. Take notice, folks: It’s work like this, not talking-head fests, where acting from the inside out really pays off.

Um… yeah. Like I said, not much else to be said beyond that. Russian Mob movie. Well made. Well acted. Go see it.

FINAL RATING: 9/10