Brooklyn’s Finest has a solid marketing campaign behind it. The trailers look great and the voice over saying, “From the director of Training Day,” would have me heading to the theaters if I were in your shoes no matter the reviews. Unfortunately, while the majority of this film presents a story that’s decent enough with the gritty appearance and tension Fuqua is known for, the ending simply ruins it. It’s as if everything you watched before it meant nothing. How much that affects your overall opinion of the film is up to you, but for me it left a sour taste in my mouth.

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Runtime: 2 hr. 13 min.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama
Theatrical Release: Mar 5, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $26.7M
Starring: Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Will Patton, Lili Taylor, Brian F. O’Byrne, Shannon Kane, Ellen Barkin, Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael Kenneth Williams, Wass W. Stevens, Armando Riesco, Wade Allain-Marcus, Logan Marshall-Green, Hassan Johnson, Jas Anderson, John D’Leo, George DeNoto, Alison Cordaro, Francesca Carchia, Raquel Castro, Stella Maeve, Gwen Stith, Joshua Thompson, Bruce MacVittie, Robert John Burke, Jerry Speziale, Sarah Thompson, Rodney “Bear” Jackson, Cle “Bone” Sloan, Michael Pemberton, Zaire Paige, Gregory Young, Randy Eastman, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Alain Lautre, Joseph Adams, Alok Tewari, Matlok, Zachary Fuqua, Lela Rochon, Ed Moran, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Leonid Citer, Nicoye Banks, Tobias Truvillion, Tawny Cypress, Jeanine Ramirez, Rosalyn Coleman, Paul Diomede, Diana Bologna, Will Stewart
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Screenwriter: Michael C. Martin, Brad Kane
Producer: Elie Cohn
Studio: Overture Films
Links: IMDB, Trailer, Official site.

Gerard Butler plays Milo Boyd, an ex-cop turned unwashed, unshaven bounty hunter who gambles and drinks too much. He’s also ex-husband to intrepid girl reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston). At the start of the film, she’s investigating a mysterious suicide for a story in the New York Daily News but is held up by a pesky court date for a traffic accident. When her source contacts her needing to meet immediately, she skips out on her trial, and a bench warrant is issued for her arrest. Naturally, Milo’s boss is the bondsman who posted her initial bail, and Milo is the bounty hunter sent to collect her. The prospect fills him with uninhibited glee, an unexplained emotion that Butler plays strangely. He giggles and bounces, tracks mud through her apartment and eats Doritos in her bed. Milo must eventually track Nicole to Atlantic City, where her mother, Kitty (Christine Baranski), is a headlining lounge singer. While he’s looking for her, all sorts of seedy types are searching for both of them. There’s a crooked cop (Peter Green) out to kill Nicole before she can discover any more about the “suicide”; a bookie (Cathy Moriarty) who’s sent a couple of her goons to break Milo’s kneecaps for his outstanding debt; and a hapless girly-man in a lavender polo shirt (Jason Sudeikis) who’s in love with Nicole after a drunken office-party makeout session.
Movies like this should get in and out in 90 minutes. But here we’ve got 111 laugh-free minutes to kill, meaning lots of story to tell and eccentric supporting roles to service. But the character interaction, the story trajectory, the subplots and the chase scenes, none of them carry any weight. Stuff happens but is forgotten by the next edit. Nothing sticks. Director Andy Tennant (Hitch) does assemble some talented stock players, but they all drop from the sky, exit just as quickly and never feel part of the show. The heavy-handed soundtrack does make an attempt to get us through the ordeal. It plays constantly–I can’t recall a single moment of action or dialogue that isn’t underscored–and acts like a sitcom laugh track, cluing us into what’s supposed to be funny.

Butler’s character is a booze-loving, gambling big lump of an ex-cop and he doesn’t offer too much more in his performance, but Aniston makes up for it. Her performance as a feisty, but funny leading lady is great.
The Bounty Hunter is a romantic comedy thriller lacking in romance, humor, or intrigue. At best avoid!

—Sampurn Wire—

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Runtime: 1 hr. 46 min.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Romance, Comedy
Theatrical Release: Mar 19, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $56M
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Gerard Butler, Giovanni Perez, Joel Garland, Jason Kolotouros, Matt Malloy, Jason Sudeikis, Adam Rose, Christine Baranski, Dorian Missick, David Costabile, Lynda Gravatt, Peter Greene, Jeff Garlin, Siobhan Fallon-Hogan, Jayne Houdyshell, Cathy Moriarty, Ritchie Coster, Mark Budd, Mary Testa, Harry Zittel, Charles Techman, Tracy Thorne, Christian Borle, Amanda Dutton, Carol Kane, Adam Le Fevre, Eddie J. Mitchell, Patrick Mitchell, Charlie Hewson, Lou Sumrall, Brooke Allison Stroebele, Eric Zuckerman, Wally Dunn, Mike Sheehan, Natalie Morales
Director: Andy Tennant
Screenwriter: Sarah Thorp
Producer: Neil Moritz
Studio: Sony Pictures
Links: IMDB, Trailer, Official Site.

It all starts there and as more and more inhabitants of Ogden Marsh begin to go insane houses will burn and people will die — lots of people. Sheriff Dutton and his wife (Radha Mitchell) must do all they can to stay alive as the threat that caused the epidemic is just as dangerous as the outbreak itself.

Olyphant and Mitchell serve as the film’s two leads, but much of the emotional connection comes from Russell (Joe Anderson), the town deputy. Anderson delivers a performance with a lot of character making Russell someone you can cheer for and laugh with when the time is right. Danielle Panabaker co-stars as horror films seem to have become her thing following 2009′s Friday the 13th remake, her performance here as the lonely girlfriend and John Carpenter’s The Ward coming soon.

Like most horrors, The Crazies depends on its ability to transition from one frightening sequence to the next and while Eisner occasionally relies on jump scares, for the most part he’s just interested in letting a scene entertain you as opposed to making sure to deliver cheap thrills. Story and entertainment are Eisner’s first concern and this film, scripted by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, gets it right from the start, allowing the director and his actors to have some fun along the way.

A car wash scene is unexpectedly impressive, a moment with an electric bone saw sent my audience into roaring fits of terror followed by uneasy laughter and each and every chase sequence seemed to naturally evolve as opposed to how things often seem so forced as a matter of story convenience in horror films. To put it plainly, this is simply an outstanding horror film.

For those looking at this as just another shoot-’em-in-the-head zombie film, get that out of your mind right now. While there is a comparison to be made based solely on the nature of the villains, The Crazies isn’t about flesh eating, brain dead monsters. It’s simply about infected crazy people with violent tendencies and as such it makes for one hell of an action-horror-thriller.

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Runtime: 1 hr. 41 min.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Drama, Horror
Theatrical Release: Feb 26, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $38.2M
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker, Joe Anderson, Christie Lynn Smith, Brett Rickaby, Preston Bailey, John Aylward, Joe Reegan, Glenn Morshower, Larry Cedar, Gregory Sporleder, Mike Hickman, Lisa K. Wyatt, Justin Welborn, Chet Grissom, Tahmus Rounds, Brett Wagner, Alex Van, Tony Winters, Frank Hoyt Taylor, Justin Miles, Marian Green, E. Roger Mitchell, Michael Cole, Mark Oliver, Lynn Lowry, Chris Carnel, Jimmy Waitman, Jay Pearson, Kathryn Kim, Adam Dingeman, Megan Hensely, Lori Beth Edgeman, Michael “Mickey” Cole, Elizabeth Barrett, Rachel Storey, Bruce Aune, Jacqueline Sherrard, Mary Lynn Owen, Pierre Gagnon, Matthew Lintz, Wilbur Fitzgerald
Director: Breck Eisner
Screenwriter: Ray Wright, Scott Kosar
Studio: Overture Films
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

In addition to Cusack the film features ’80s icons like Crispin Glover (“Back To The Future”), Chevy Chase (“Fletch”) and William Zabka (Johnny from “The Karate Kid”). Crispin Glover being in another time traveling movie alone is genius but the fact that it takes place in the ’80s just makes it all the more ridiculous and sublime. In fact, Glover is brilliant as a one-armed bellhop in the present, so of course when we see that he had two arms in the ’80s, we can’t help but hold our breath waiting for him to loose that appendage. Glover and for that matter all of these actors deserve respect for being comfortable with spoofing their own personas and Glover does that with comedic genius using his whacky delivery with perfect comedic timing. Chase of course is the comedy pro here and grounds the film with his supporting role as our time traveling guide. But it is Cusack’s performance that truly grounds the movie with a believable quality that only Cusack can deliver. And it was a real treat to see William Zabka relieve the ’80s bully role that he mastered in films like “The Karate Kid” and “Just One Of The Guys.”

In the film, Cusack, Corddry and Robinson play three best friends who’s lives are not going the way they would like them and who have all been growing apart over the years. Adam (Cusack), has recently been dumped by his girlfriend because he couldn’t commit and his gamer nephew, Jacob, who lives in his basement. Nick (Robinson) works at a pet salon and is controlled by his over-demanding wife while Lou (Corddry) is a complete mess, a party animal who’s running out of steam. After Lou mistakenly attempts suicide, his two buddies along with Adam’s nephew decide to take Lou back to the ski resort where they all went to in high school and had the best time of their lives. However, when they arrive the resort is deserted and not at all how they remember it. As the boys begin to party in their room they notice a hot tub that one second was run down and the next look sparkling and new. They decide to take a dip in the tub and after drinking heavily all night wake up in 1986.

The four men quickly realize what has happened when they go skiing and notice that the town is now booming and in the middle of the ’86 Winterfest, the best party the ever went to. They’re nightmare is confirmed when they see their reflections in a mirror and realize that to everyone else they appear as they did in 1986. Except of course for Jacob who was not born yet, however he does run into his own mother who at the time was a drunken party-slut. As the guys try to figure out away home they delve into every cliché thing they’ve ever leaned about time travel from movies. The most important things: do not change anything and cause a butterfly-effect. But as the guys continue through their weekend they cannot help themselves to change a few things here and there. But the more things are changed the more the future begins to be affected, which in turn puts Jacob’s entire existence in jeopardy. Eventually Adam meets April (Lizzy Caplan) a Rolling Stones journalist on tour with Poison and must decide whether to stay in the ’80s or go back to the future. The guys now must fix what they have changed before it’s too late.

The films director Steve Pink is also the writer of two of Cusack’s most successful films “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity,” and his short hand with the actor is obvious as this is another comedy triumph. While the film is clearly a retelling of “Back To The Future” it is quite original and it makes it even funnier that Crispin “George McFly” Glover is actually in the film. In fact, some of the similarities include a “Johnny B. Good” moment where Craig Robinson sings a Black Eyed Peas song in the ’80s, Clark Duke “fading away” when his existence was in jeopardy and an ending that is pretty much frame for frame the ending of “Back To The Future,” but I’m okay with that. This film was like a spoof, lampooning those cliché ideas from the ’80s was hilarious and done well here. Again, the fact that actors from the ’80s appear in the film just adds to the magic. Cusack is perfect in his role and Crispin Glover practically steals the film. Corddry and Robinson also give “breakout” performances and show that each actor has a bright future acting in big-screen Hollywood comedies. Duke and Caplan were also good as was Collette Wolf who plays Jacob’s crazy mother. William Zabka’s brief appearance in the film is a real treat while Chevy Chase is a welcomed addition to the cast and wonderful as the goofy time-traveling guide. In the end, “Hot Tub Time Machine” is one of the funniest films of the year, a future comedy classic and a retro-good time.

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Runtime: 1 hr. 39 min.
Genre: Comedy
Theatrical Release: Mar 26, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $48.9M
Starring: John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Crispin Glover, Lizzy Caplan, Chevy Chase, Sebastian Stan, Lyndsy Fonseca, Collette Wolfe, Charlie McDermott, Kellee Stewart
Director: Steve Pink
Screenwriter: Josh Heald
Producer: John Cusack, Grace Loh, Michael Nelson
Studio: MGM
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

Published on Mar 18, 2010

There are typically only two means through which ‘gay’ movies make it into the American mainstream. The first is through prestige and ‘worthiness’. The excellent Brokeback Mountain resides here, but that it lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to racial-tension potboiler Crash was more a statement about America’s guilty conscience on the subject than of which film deserved it more.

The second is to portray homosexuality as a joke. This has proven the more financially viable route Stateside, with the lamentable I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry taking a lot more at the box office than the award-winning ‘gay Western’. While we’re hardly living in the dark ages, there’s no denying that cinema-goers aren’t entirely comfortable with this supposed taboo just yet.

Enter I Love You Phillip Morris, which crosses between both and has thus had a troubled path to cinemas. Indeed, at one stage it looked likely that the film would go straight to DVD. The subject of the studios’ reticence is Steven Russell, played by Jim Carrey, a Texan cop who comes out of the closet in the wake of a near-fatal traffic accident.

Steven then ups and leaves his happy (and more challengingly, Christian) family to live in excess with his boyfriend Jimmy, becoming a conman to fund his expensive new lifestyle. When the law catches up with him, Steven is sent to prison, where he meets Phillip Morris, played by Ewan McGregor. The mild-mannered Phillip has his head turned by Steven, and the two spend the next few years flitting in and out of jail in their efforts to be together.

Jim Carrey has had hits and misses in both his comedic and dramatic roles, and I’m pleased to report that his work in I Love You Phillip Morris counts as a hit. He strikes just the right balance, in a marriage of his more over-the-top acting (Liar Liar), and his more restrained and dramatic performances (The Truman Show).

While Ewan McGregor amiably continues to get his career back on track now he’s finished faffing about with George Lucas and Dan Brown, and Leslie Mann makes a brief but memorable impression as Steven’s befuddled ex-wife, it’s really Carrey’s show. He’s surprisingly intense in places, but he still has better comic timing than most actors working today, and he’s never any less than compelling here.

The mix of comedy and drama in the script itself is often unsettling, but you can really expect nothing less from Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the writers of Bad Santa.

At key points of the film, you’ll have the rug pulled out from underneath you in much the same way as the victims of Steven’s cons. It can lull you into a false sense of poignancy and then make you laugh out loud. It can have you chuckling away and then emotionally sucker-punch you. Whatever your thoughts on homosexuality, this isn’t a film you can relax into.

The ‘gay thing’, as I’ve heard it referred to by more uncomfortable viewers than I, is never really the punchline to any of the jokes, and the film is better for it. Only one scene stood out as a contrivance. An escape attempt by Steven leads him to procure some clothes from another inmate. Apparently, all he could get was a leopard-print mesh vest and some red hotpants. Either he’s the least resourceful inmate ever, or the writers really wanted to put Carrey in that kind of sight gag.

Besides that, the only other off-putting aspect of the film was the appearance of Brennan Brown, better known to cinema fans as Mr. Dresden, the mind-addled film producer from those Orange ads before the film begins. Just as in last year’s State Of Play, it’s really jarring to see him doing anything serious when you saw him just a short while before, trying to get Danny Glover to promote ‘Dial Hard’.

On the whole, I Love You Phillip Morris is funny as hell, and in several instances, it’s really profound. Ficarra and Requa never shoehorn homosexuality into any of the parodic tropes you’ve seen elsewhere, and it’s just a very well-written and likable comedy.

I don’t doubt that The Bounty Hunter is a more likely romcom prospect this weekend, but shame on the American distributors, anyway. In this case, audiences should choose Ewan McGregor as the lead love interest over Jennifer Aniston any day.

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Runtime: 1 hr. 40 min.
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Theatrical Release: Oct 31, 2010 Wide
Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Michael Mandel, Marc Macaulay, Johnny Rock
Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Screenwriter: John Requa, Glenn Ficarra
Studio: Consolidated Pictures Group
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

James McAvoy stars as Valentin, and make no mistake about it, he is the sole lead of this film as he is introduced to the Tolstoy camp as the famous writer has renounced his noble title, his property and even his family in favor of poverty, vegetarianism and even celibacy. Amidst all of this is the Tolstoyan religious following based on Tolstoy’s beliefs and founded by his closest friend, Vladimir Chertkov portrayed here with typical and expected flair by Paul Giamatti.
McAvoy comes within arms reach of his icon as an assistant but soon finds himself used by Chertkov who is concerned Tolstoy’s wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), will wreck havoc on his plans to put together a new will; one that will leave Tolstoy’s works to the people of Russia and not to his family. There’s obvious tension in the Tolstoy household and entering the fray as a disciple of Tolstoy, it takes a while before McAvoy’s eyes begin to open as to who the man he has worshipped really  is and what those around him have done to spoil everything he holds dear.

The Last Station is little more than a coming of age story as we watch McAvoy’s character go from a celibate worshipper of a movement he learns isn’t as pure as he thought it was, to experiencing what it means to be in love and realizing the truth about the world around him. Unfortunately, this “world” is portrayed in something of a “beat you over the head” fashion as we watch Sofya argue with her husband only to occasionally soothe him by clucking like a chicken and even take to grand theatrics to gain attention. Mirren is a much more restrained and calculated actress than we see here, as her character’s actions are more a result of petty disagreement rather than logical disapproval.

Of course, her concerns are logical and Giamatti portrays Chertkov as something of a snake in the grass as he twirls his mustache, constantly making sure he still has Tolstoy in the palm of his hand. Then again, Tolstoy doesn’t care what’s going on around him. Christopher Plummer plays the writer as rather aloof and more like an old soul, rather than a man concerned with the rights to his life’s work. If he recited a Bible verse and handed out Werther’s Originals it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to me. It’s no wonder his wife is going crazy; the man she had 13 children with suddenly turns celibate and allows his decisions to be made by Chertkov without so much as a question.

The film only truly flourishes when the story stays focused on McAvoy’s interpretation of the world he once thought he knew and the world he is now realizing. Along with that comes Kerry Condon playing Masha, an unconventional disciple of Tolstoy who’s managed to find her own way around the priorities of what it means to be “Tolstoyan.” Condon is a breath of fresh air alongside the wide-eyed McAvoy in a film filled with stale characters that are more cliche and on the nose than they truly need be.

The Last Station is a perfectly fine film. I wouldn’t be upset if I paid to see it, but it doesn’t deliver the punch I was expecting from a late to the party, potential Oscar contender. It never seems to fully realize or appreciate the story it’s telling.

As a side note, The Last Station made me think of another one of this year’s releases, Me and Orson Welles. Both are telling the story of a young man in the presence and under the influence of a major historical figure and in the circumstance of determining where values come into play. Both films focus on the story of the smaller character amidst the historical giant and both run into problems where one outplays the other. In this case McAvoy runs the show while Plummer’s mimicking performance tries its hardest to get in the driver’s seat. With Orson Welles it was Christian McKay’s performance as Welles that stole the show while Zac Efron’s titular “me” was simply part of the picture.

The idea of telling the story of a disciple of an icon is a great one, but you have to be committed to allowing the icon to remain in the background for the film to work entirely. The Last Station isn’t committed to that as it tries to constantly wedge Tolstoy into the picture, which is unfortunate seeing how he isn’t the focus of the story.

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Runtime: 1 hr. 52 min.
Genre: Drama
Theatrical Release: Jan 15, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $6.2M
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Condon, John Sessions, Patrick Kennedy
Director: Michael Hoffman
Screenwriter: Michael Hoffman
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

The women in the clubs they frequent are almost as crass as they are, or at least appear to be. They travel in groups, too, and superficially recall Carrie Bradshaw and her pals. But this breed of New York woman is hungrier and more competitive, with lower romantic expectations than the die-hard romantics of “Sex and the City.”

“The Good Guy” is narrated by its handsome anti-hero Tommy (Scott Porter), a virtual clone of Tom Cruise playing one of his obnoxious go-getters a decade or more ago. Mr. Porter flashes the same cocky grin that practically invites a fist to smash its transparent insincerity. Already rich enough to live in a dream apartment at Fifth Avenue and 84th Street, Tommy has the world — and several women — on a string. His current girlfriend of three months, Beth (Alexis Bledel), an urban conservationist, is rightly suspicious about his character.

A riff on Ford Madox Ford’s novel “The Good Soldier,” the story begins with a scene of Tommy standing in the rain in the wee small hours in front of Beth’s apartment begging her to bring him some cash. Then it flashes back to cover the previous six weeks of his life.

Tommy and Daniel are polar opposites. Daniel, whose colleagues scornfully describe him as “Forrest Gump without people skills,” is shy with women, eats peanut butter from the jar and loves good literature. When the most successful trader in Tommy’s group leaves Morgan & Morgan for a job that doubles his salary (to $2 million a year), Tommy anoints Daniel, the group’s gofer and resident computer geek, as his replacement. Tommy’s first order of business is to give Daniel a crash course in hard-boiled deal-making and picking up women.

Tommy’s protégé soon becomes his rival after Daniel is invited to be the only male member of Beth’s reading group, and an unspoken attraction develops between Beth and Daniel. The Boy Scout versus the cad is an old story, and the outcome of the competition is a romantic-comedy no-brainer. But the movie’s confident performances and its eye and ear for detail make “The Good Guy” a satisfying insider’s snapshot of a shark tank.

“The Good Guy” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has abundant profanity and sexual situations.

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Genre: Comedy, Romance
Running Time: 90 min.
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Julio DePietro
Writer: Julio DePietro
Cast: Alexis Bledel, Aaron Yoo, Andrew McCarthy, Scott Porter, Anna Chlumsky, Bryan Greenberg, Kate Nauta, Trini Alvarado, Colin Egglesfield, Adrian Martinez
Release Date: February 19, 2009
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

The town of Prospect, in which Small Town Saturday Night takes place, has many characters, not the least of which is Rhett’s own family. There’s Les, his pudgy, awkward younger brother who pumps iron and shaves his legs in the hope of being a something other than a pudgy, awkward younger brother. Their mother is convinced he’s gay and tries, as mothers do, to do what she thinks is best for him. She’s a domineering, God-fearing woman — what is it about mothers in small-town movies? — and you get the feeling that the family are all quite timid around her. Rhett works at a gas station where his job primarily appears to be covering for his work-shy colleague Travis, and keeping clear of part-time garage owner and full-time drunk, Charlie. Charlie’s son, Donny, is the town ne’er-do-well, just out of prison and himself the father of an absent child. And then there’s Tommy, the law-enforcement officer who grew up with all these people and now has to juggle old loyalties with police business.

Today is Saturday. Rhett’s booked in for his final show in town before leaving, and he spends the day at work and hanging out with his buddies, one of whom is played by Ryan Craig, the writer and director of the movie (if you didn’t know this, as I didn’t, and then checked the credits you will be surprised). Rhett’s girlfriend is having a severe case of second thoughts about leaving town and taking her daughter away from her natural father. All of Rhett’s planning begins to crumble as he too doubts his departure: Leave and maybe make a name for himself or stay to be with the two girls he loves. Everyone has an opinion on the subject. Meanwhile Donny can’t catch a break. Evicted from his trailer, with no job, overdrawn at the bank, and forbidden from seeing his son, he takes drastic action.

Small Town Saturday Night crept up on me in so many ways. For the first twenty minutes or so nothing seemed to happen, and the pace was funereal. But, as we grew to know the characters, a theme emerged. Not, in itself, an original one but the time-honored one of families and communities. There are parents and offspring galore here, as you might expect from such a small community, and it’s how they interact with each other that is important. Donny’s father hates him, Donny can’t see his son. Tommy’s lost his daughter to another man, Rhett, who may even take her away from him forever. The town’s elders keep their own watching brief but rest assured that everyone knows everything going on in the town. Director Craig is a little unsure of himself at times, almost as if he knows what he’s trying to say, but just can’t get it across — a problem I’m all too familiar with. The ending feels contrived and a cop-out compared to what went before, and set a completely different tone to the rest of the movie; it has the feel of a last-minute edit.

The cast list creeps up on you, too. First of all there’s Chris Pine, as Rhett. He’s much better known for playing Kirk in the 2009 reboot of Star Trek. His father is played by real-life dad Robert, whose face is immediately recognizable as one of those “seen him everywhere” type of actors. The same could also be said of Brent Briscoe, as Travis, whom I first noted in Sam Raimi’s subversive A Simple Plan back in 1998. John Hawkes is an actor I’ve loved ever since 2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, where he played a gawky, awkward loner of a shoe salesman but here Hawkes adapts that gangliness into a mean and wiry Donny. It’s a solid list.

Since Peter Bogdanovich’s sublime The Last Picture Show, small-town America has often been a subject for enterprising young filmmakers. Locations are plentiful and picturesque, characters can be expected to be a little eccentric, and without much in the way of action the production costs are low. Small Town Saturday Night, whilst no Bogdanovich classic, is still a worthwhile addition to the genre. With a little touch-up here and there, this movie could have been a great one.

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Genre: Drama
Starring: Bre Blair, Brent Briscoe, Chris Pine, John Hawkes, Lin Shaye, Muse Watson, Octavia Spencer, Scott Michael Campbell, Shawn Christian, Adam Hendershott
Director: Ryan Craig
Screenwriter: Ryan Craig
Distributor: Grindstone Entertainment Group
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer

1. The Karate Kid

2. The A-Team
Weekend Gross: $25,669,455
Gross To Date: $25,669,455
Last Week’s Rank: New
Weeks In Release: 1
Number of Theaters: 3,535
Theatre Avg: $7,261
Percent Change: New

3. Shrek Forever After
Weekend Gross: $15,770,491
Gross To Date: $210,022,557
Last Week’s Rank: 1
Weeks In Release: 4
Number of Theaters: 3,868
Theatre Avg: $4,077
Percent Change: -38%

4. Get Him to the Greek
Weekend Gross: $9,942,405
Gross To Date: $36,400,720
Last Week’s Rank: 2
Weeks In Release: 2
Number of Theaters: 2,702
Theatre Avg: $3,679
Percent Change: -43%

5. Killers
Weekend Gross: $8,008,007
Gross To Date: $30,261,624
Last Week’s Rank: 3
Weeks In Release: 2
Number of Theaters: 2,859
Theatre Avg: $2,800
Percent Change: -49%

6. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Weekend Gross: $6,486,150
Gross To Date: $72,228,302
Last Week’s Rank: 4
Weeks In Release: 3
Number of Theaters: 3,108
Theatre Avg: $2,086
Percent Change: -54%

7. Marmaduke
Weekend Gross: $6,006,704
Gross To Date: $22,285,540
Last Week’s Rank: 6
Weeks In Release: 2
Number of Theaters: 3,213
Theatre Avg: $1,869
Percent Change: -48%

8. Sex and the City 2
Weekend Gross: $5,438,345
Gross To Date: $84,658,826
Last Week’s Rank: 5
Weeks In Release: 3
Number of Theaters: 2,750
Theatre Avg: $1,977
Percent Change: -56%

9. Iron Man 2
Weekend Gross: $4,521,206
Gross To Date: $299,282,390
Last Week’s Rank: 7
Weeks In Release: 6
Number of Theaters: 2,305
Theatre Avg: $1,961
Percent Change: -43%

10. Splice
Weekend Gross: $2,942,492
Gross To Date: $13,153,956
Last Week’s Rank: 8
Weeks In Release: 2
Number of Theaters: 2,450
Theatre Avg: $1,201
Percent Change: -60%

Green Zone takes place in Baghdad in 2003 with Matt Damon starring as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who, along with his team, has been assigned the duty of finding weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled throughout the Iraqi desert. Unfortunately, all of their missions are coming up empty and with a couple of recent casualties on fruitless missions Miller wants to know why they’re coming up empty and where the bad intel is coming from. When he begins challenging the system he finds most doors slamming shut, but the CIA is willing to listen, sending him on a mission into the desert to find the truth.

Unfortunately for Miller, whatever truth he comes up with will be irrelevant as he’s fighting against a power not only unwilling to listen, but the actual cause of all the troubles at hand. While masquerading as a thriller, Green Zone is actually more interested in making sure audiences are aware the war in Iraq was started under false pretenses (the fact there were no weapons of mass destruction), a point we’ve all been aware of for some time now, which means Green Zone isn’t telling audiences anything they didn’t already know. What this leaves us with is a shell of a movie that asks a few questions, but seems either unwilling or unsure of how to answer them.

What should a country do if the reason they went to war turns out to be a lie or simply proven untrue? Do you pull out? Stay in? Act like it didn’t happen? Throughout Green Zone questions such as these arise, but they are brushed under the rug as the film slows down just enough to make sure you’re paying attention — THERE ARE NO WMDS! — before tirelessly moving on to the next action sequence.

In an effort to pull all of this off, the story is told much like an episode of “24″ and has Damon’s character going from here to there finding everything we expect him to find only to learn his efforts are fruitless. The thrill of it all is lost in redundancy. While there is an expert level of technical proficiency in the action sequences, they all mirror one another to the point one bleeds into the next and it all feels like territory we’ve tread only minutes earlier.

This film will draw instant comparisons to the Bourne series of films, if not because Greengrass directed Damon in the final two films in the franchise, then because that’s how Universal is selling it. In all honesty, this is a Bourne film only the names and occupations have been changed. The dramatic difference between the Bourne films and this one being screenwriter Brian Helgeland doesn’t seem to have been able to find much of a story in his adaptation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone,” which served as the film’s source material. It tries to begin exploring the consequences of dissolving the Iraqi army, but by the time it comes to that this one has already gone too far downhill. Once they went to the stock footage of George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln I was pretty much fed up.

The only way Green Zone could have been interesting is if it had been released back in 2001 or 2002, and it’s theories had been explored as a “what if?” scenario before the war in Iraq had ever started. Instead, it’s subject matter serving as a coherent story is an afterthought and the fictional telling of the events make it even more irrelevant. Had this been a movie offering answers, or had it named actual names as opposed to making everything up, there may have been something to talk about. If Green Zone does anything it offers up the message we should learn from our mistakes, but did we really need Paul Greengrass to waste two hours of our life to tell us that?

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Runtime: 1 hr. 55 min.
Genre: Drama, Mystery & Suspense
Theatrical Release: Mar 12, 2010 Wide
US Box Office: $33.1M
Starring: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs, Antoni Corone, Igal Naor, Said Faraj, Aymen Hamdouchi, Nicoye Banks, Jerry Della Salla, Sean Huze, Raad Rawi, Bijan Daneshmand, Bryan Reents, Michael O’Neill, Allen Vaught, Paul Rieckhoff, Martin McDougall, Driss Roukhe, Muayad Ali, Soumaya Akaaboune, Faical Attougui, John Roberson, James Brown, Michael Judge, Paul Jones, Patrick St. Esprit, Tim Ahern, Whitley Bruner, Intishal Al Timmi, Jamal Selamoui, Mohamed Kafi, Kadhum Sabur, Boubker Hilal, Thamou el Metouani, Salah Eddine Elamari, Naji El Jouhary, Aroun Benchkaroun, Hajar Machroune, William Oakes, Ziad Adwan, Ian Bendel, Venie Joshua, Miguel Berroa, Peter Shayhorn, Miguel Palaugalarza, Christopher Lilly, Omar Berdouni, Sabir Ed-Dayab, Alex Moore, Alistair Bailey, Paul Cloutier, Wallace Bagwell, William Meredith, Tommy Campbell, James ‘Kimo’ Wills, Jered Bezemek, Johnny Nilsson, Michael Dwyer, Edouard H.R. Gluck, Brian Siefkes, Adam Wendling, Abdul Henderson, Paul Karsko, Robert Miller, Eugene Cherry, Alexander Drum, Brian Van Riper, Matthew Knott, Nathan Lewis, Salman Hassan, Ammar Khdir, Youssif Falah-Jassem, Latif Al Anzi, Yigal Naor
Director: Paul Greengrass
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Studio: Universal Pictures
Links: IMDB, Official site, Trailer