Dear reader, a procedural and housecleaning note: Soon, this site is going away — or, rather, re-directing to www.jamesrocchi.com. Why not mosey over there now?
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BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.—Considering he spends his newest film, Faster, playing an ex-con known only as Driver who is racing to punish a fist full of bad guys, Dwayne Johnson — the actor formerly known as “The Rock” is surprisingly relaxed promoting his rough, rugged new film.
Cut from the same coarse-but-sturdy cloth as classic crime films like Point Blank, The Mechanic and Two-Lane Blacktop, Faster, which opened Wednesday, is a rarity in today’s action landscape — a gritty, close-to-the-ground film with no CG and plenty of raw, real-world emotions. According to Johnson, that’s by design.
“It’s very rare to find an action script that’s about human beings, that’s about character, that’s about emotion, which is why this script moved me so much from the very first time I read it. You are challenged more with a budget like this. You have ‘X’ amount of dollars — can’t go over. Not a big, major studio. So you’re challenged: ‘Okay, what’s the goal?’ The goal is to make something stylized in a rooted way and tell a great story.”
And while Faster follows a string of family friendly comedies and adventures for Johnson like Tooth Fairy and Race to Witch Mountain, Johnson says that he doesn’t think about alternating projects in a mechanical way, but instead goes with whatever feels right at the time.
“I happened to have three family comedies cooking at the same time and all ready to be made, all the while knowing that Faster was in development too — so no, I never thought for a second, ‘Oh, I should do this genre, then that genre, and then back and forth.’ ”
Johnson also knows that making and marketing Faster — which doesn’t exactly leave itself open for a sequel — is a challenge.
“What’s interesting is it’s a different time in Hollywood these days. Fewer movies are being made. How they’re being made is tight. Budgets are tightened. Everything is tightened. The studio is owned by a corporate conglomerate. What doesn’t change, I think, is the solid performances that actors put out. That never goes away. The challenge is everybody wants the franchise.
“Everybody wants Bourne. Everybody wants Bond,” he added. “They try and get that. They want that in comedies; they want that across the board. And I get that. If it’s right, I want that too. The challenge is making sure that you stick to your guns. So it was important to us to revel in (Faster’s) simplicity and its power and leave it at that.”
While he may be famed for his physique, what’s elevated Johnson above other modern wrestlers-turned-action-heroes is his willingness to stretch his range as actor as much as his range of motion.
“When I read the script, I didn’t think of him as a hero, nor did I think of him as a cold-blooded killer. I thought of him as a man who’s tortured; there’s a lot of turmoil going on,” he said.
“Not often do you get an opportunity like (Faster) where you can have these dramatic tones and a great moral essence. Especially in all these scenes where you have all these interactions with all these individuals, everything is heightened: your heart rate is elevated, there’s tension in it, he’s discovering (himself) as the audience is discovering with him. At the end, very specifically, there’s a big biblical moment under the sun, under God, and I’m mad at God; that’s powerful. Having the moral essence layered throughout was a big reason why it moved me.”
Another benefit of Faster? Having Billy Bob Thornton playing the cop on Johnson’s trail — a pairing that, according to Johnson, made him step up.
“Working with actors like Billy Bob helped me elevate my game, working with directors and great material.” And his goal with Faster? “To come in and find material like this and step back into the action genre and do well — always remembering the goal is to dominate.”
It wasn’t all mental preparation, though. Johnson beefed up his already-substantial form to give his ex-con character even more menace, even as he talked to real-life prisoners to shape his role.
“It was about probably two to three months of training, (adding) 10, 12 pounds. We had the great fortune of sitting down with individuals who had served a lot of time in maximum security prisons for a variety of crimes including murder, getting into their psyche and their thought process and their perspective on what it’s like to take another man’s life.”
Johnson added that today’s world of special effects and CGI, it was satisfying “to be part of that type of rooted, grounded reality and have all the action and intention and motivation across the board, whether it’s physical, whether it’s killing … whatever it may be, fueled by emotion. Everything was fueled by emotion.”
–From my article at The Toronto Star
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Let us pause, for a moment, and think about the challenges facing the 21st-century action hero. Studios want to make huge franchises. Superhero films promise either untold riches or unimaginable embarrassment. Computer-generated effects mean that anything can be faked, but also that everything can look fake.
And, standing against all of this — with a low-budget, low-down gritty action film without a single pixel of CGI and a mean streak as wide as four lanes of blacktop — is Dwayne Johnson. His new film, “Faster,” sees Johnson take on the role of a recently released convict — known only as “Driver” — working a bloody to-do list as payback for the post-bank heist robbery that left his brother dead and saw him imprisoned for a decade. Johnson knows he’s got an uphill climb ahead of him playing a normal guy fueled by will and want as opposed to mythic powers or superhuman abilities. Speaking with him in Beverly Hills, it’s clear he relishes the challenge. “I’ve been privileged to do some pretty good action movies in the past that have done some pretty good business … that I’ve enjoyed doing,” he says. “Getting a movie like this — getting a script like this — was very refreshing. I like the idea, I like the notion of all the action. And not only physical action, either: All the action in the movie was driven and motivated by emotion, such great emotion throughout. So for me as an actor, I was excited for something meaty that I could sink my teeth into and embrace and enjoy the challenges of that, too.”
Of course, it wasn’t all acting challenges and moral morasses. Johnson also gets to drive a block-rockin’ car and shoot a gun the size of your head. Asked about the Chevelle his character drives — and the Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan he shoots — Johnson lights up. “There were two cars presented on the lot at CBS. It was myself and (director) George Tillman. Both Chevelles. One was blue, one was black. It’s written in the script to be blue with a white stripe. They had one in black made, and George says, ‘Which one is Driver?’ Immediately went to the black. Got in it, started it up, heard the supercharger, revved it. I said, ‘I’m home.’”
As for the other piece of heavy metal Johnson employs, well, that was just as immediately appealing. “The gun? One of the biggest revolvers in the world, the Super Redhawk Alaskan,” he says. “Went down to the gun range, held it in my hands, loaded it. Before I fired it, our weapons adviser said, ‘It has tremendous kickback. You’ve got to hold it with both hands.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to hold it with both hands in the movie. It’s not my interpretation of it.’ He said, ‘You have to, though. It has tremendous kickback.’ I said, ‘Let me try it without holding it with both hands.’ Fired it with one arm, went just like that. Maybe moved about 3 inches. He looked at me. His eyebrows went up like, ‘Wow.’ I looked at him and said, ‘There’s my baby.’ It was awesome.”
–From my article at The Rundown
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Dwayne Johnson’s “Faster” marks an interesting milestone in the actor’s career: It’s being released in the 10th year since he leapt from the wrestling ring to the big screen. I ask Johnson what, over a decade of acting, he’s learned — about the field and about himself. “One of the important things that I’ve learned, that helped me and that’s been pivotal, is to fully embrace what you do and who you’re playing,” he says. “Whether it be in a comedy where you can wink at the audience and have fun; whether it be in a family film; whether it be in an action movie, whether it be in a drama; whether it be in an animated movie, fully embrace what you’re doing. You cannot lie to two things: a camera, and the public and the audience. They see, they know what’s real; they know what’s not. Overall, they’re suspending their disbelief — of course, it’s a movie — but they see the individuals who are dedicated and committed to the role and who are owning it. That was important.”
Johnson is in a place where he must get to see every action script in Hollywood — but, talking with him, I note that he’s in the company of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt and other A-list actors who’ve never suited up to play a superhero — or, as I coarsely define it, “taking the spandex money.” Asked if that would ever happen, Johnson laughs. “I love that term. That’s awesome. It always comes down to script. I would love the opportunity to play a superhero. I’d love that. I’m a fan. However, it’s tricky when casting for a superhero. You want to be careful about casting actors who are well-established — and you want to make sure it’s right for the audience, too, and it doesn’t require so much suspension of disbelief. I understand that it’s a tricky thing. It’ll come along. I’m sure it’ll come along. I’m very aware — and sensitive, by the way — about casting superheroes, because it’s so important. It’s gotta be right for the audience, and it’s gotta be right for the homage to the superhero.”
Talking with Johnson about his dream project, an action epic about the life of 17th-century Hawaiian warrior-king Kamehameha, you get a sense of the way he thinks about the entire equation of moviemaking when he contemplates future projects: “That has always been a dream project for me. This is an exciting time in my career, that I may be able to have such a varied career and work with all these different projects — ‘Faster,’ ‘Fast V,’ ‘Mysterious Island’ and whatever else we do next. But also to have an opportunity now with the advancement of technology with a movie and a story like King Kamehameha, it’s a wonderful issue to have. Do we shoot it like ‘Braveheart’? Do we shoot it like ’300′? Do we need to do an infusion of both? I think that’s an exciting time, and it’s exciting that we keep talking about it. It’s worth talking about the project and lining everything up to do it.”
But Johnson doesn’t just have story lines on his wish list; he also has storytellers he’d love to work with. “More so than a project, there are great directors out there that I would love to work with, from Jon Favreau to Tarantino to Clint Eastwood to Spielberg himself. That excites me, the opportunity to do that — whenever that might be, if ever that may be — down the line. Working with these filmmakers that, I think, can not only elevate my game and help me bring out the best in me, but then to create something really special, whatever that may be, whether it’s a superhero movie or whether it’s a drama or whether it’s a big epic movie or whether it’s an adventure. Whatever it is.”
–From my article at The Rundown
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Earlier in the day, the “Faster” press conference offered plenty of laughter, not just from Johnson’s single-entendres about his workout regimen (“Bigger is always better” the actor noted), but also from Billy Bob Thornton’s no-holds-barred take on his character, known only as “Cop,” and on the state of modern moviemaking. Asked about the challenges of the modern press, Thornton took the road less travelled to talk about what, exactly, doing a film like “Faster” meant to him in this day and age.
“I’ll put it this way,” he said. “We’re living in a time in the entertainment business when if you have the opportunity to do something real — and that’s one of the reasons this particular movie, maybe in a different time, might be just considered an action movie, but this movie did not rely on computers and things like that. People are saying this is like a ’70s movie. It kind of is. It does have a contemporary feel because of the editing and the sound design and all that stuff , but at the same time, it is a real movie, so, in other words, if we’re chasing each other down a hallway, it’s a hallway.”
“We’ve done something real here, and it is nice to be able to talk about it in this day and time, because most movies are about vampires in 3-D or fantasy movies and war eagles and all these kind of things, or whatever they are. And so when you’re an actual actor and you like to do real movies and you want to stay grounded, over the years … it’s real nice to be able to do good work and work with you guys like these and come in and talk to you guys about it. But right now, we rely on you guys when we actually do a good movie or a real movie, or at least we’re trying to, whatever it is, to come in and be able to say, ‘Hey, good to see you,’ without getting stuck in the ass.”
But Thornton also waxed poetic about enjoying his role as a smack-shooting cop, weary but doggedly intent on following the trail of blood in Dwayne Johnson’s wake. “I think one of the flaws in most commercial action movies is that the characters are usually not very developed,” he said. “They’re just there to serve as the job, you know what I mean? In other words, a lot of times you’ll have the movie-star hero and then some bad guys who are just there to be killed by the hero, and they’re nameless, faceless people. As a result, you’re usually not afraid of them — because you don’t see them ask somebody to pass the salt, you don’t see them with your kids, you know what I mean? So in this script (screenwriters Joe and Tony Gayton) gave each of the characters a story, and that sort of world-weariness of my character, I think, added to the movie because he’s not black or white. It puts him in a very gray area.” “Faster” opens nationwide Thanksgiving Day.
–From my article at The Rundown
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Mandy Moore voices the lead role of Rapunzel in “Tangled,” the latest Disney animated fairy tale, which is not only coming to the screen in 3-D, but is also the 50th animated full-length feature from the legendary studio. Moore and her co-star Zachary Levi (“Chuck”), however, didn’t know they were part of that milestone while they were filming. “No one said anything to us until a few weeks ago — someone mentioned it when we were doing an interview, I believe,” Moore says. “I remember both Zach and I were sort of, ‘Wow, oh!’ I wasn’t aware of it, at least, going in. I feel like that would have maybe added some undue pressure.
“I was just more excited to be a part of the Disney family and to be playing a Disney princess. I think back to a lot of the films I loved growing up — ‘Aladdin,’ ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ — those were part of my childhood, so to think I will be a part of that collective history? It was overwhelming. It still kind of is.”
With her close-cropped brunette hair, tan silk blouse and black shorts, the 26-year-old Moore looks about as far removed from her blond fairy-tale princess Rapunzel and her 70 feet of computer-generated hair as possible. It’s a disconnect that, as Moore explained, made it easy for her to simply enjoy the finished film: “I think I’m able to really separate myself from this movie more so than watching a live-action film because I do not resemble Rapunzel at all. Except at the end when she is a brunette; I’m pretty sure I’ve had that same haircut before, so that was the only time I sort of did a double-take.”
And unlike Moore’s previous experiences with leading men (including John Krasinski, Adrian Grenier and Billy Crudup), the nature of modern animation meant that Moore didn’t even get to meet co-star Zachary Levi until the press tour long after recording was done. “I was excited when the movie was cast and I found out there was such a good group of folks involved. I immediately thought, ‘It’s going to be so much fun, everyone’s going to become fast friends, the camaraderie, going into the booth together.’
“And alas, you find yourself in this giant, empty room. I think I probably would have not gotten as much work done if I had worked with Zach, because he’s ridiculously funny and goofy, and I’m sure there would have been a lot of ad-libs. I’m a really easy laugh, too, so I think I would have been distracted by that.”
Moore also considers herself fortunate to be part of Disney’s storytelling tradition — even if she’s not quite sure what’s next for her acting career: “Zach kept saying “bucket list,” checking it off the bucket list. It perfectly describes this. I’m so happy to be able to check that one off, even if that’s as good as it gets — where do you go from here, anyway? It’s pretty cool. It’s something that will live on forever.”
And a legacy in the hearts of kids isn’t that bad a thing to have, as Moore pragmatically explains. “There’s — believe me — there’s so many projects I’ve done that I wish would find a way to get swept under the rug of time and just disappear completely, just disintegrate. This is one that I’m so proud to be a part of, and I’m excited that for long past my time, it’ll still be hanging in there.”
–From my article at The Rundown
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Lanky and relaxed, Zachary Levi is a self-diagnosed “Dis-nerd” — his term — a huge fan of the company’s rich animation tradition. “I’m a huge Dis-nerd. I mean huge,” he says. “I could go off for days on all the Disney movies. And not just those that were my generation, starting with ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Aladdin,’ ‘Pocahontas,’ ‘Mulan,’ ‘Hercules,’ so on and so forth. Growing up with wonderful VHS tapes of ‘Jungle Book’ and ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘The Rescuers’ and ‘Fox and the Hound.’ Then going farther back than that, obviously the ‘Snow White’s and the ‘Bambi’s and the ‘Dumbo’s. But Disney also has so many amazing, more obscure little features and featurettes, like ‘Johnny Appleseed’ and ‘Paul Bunyan’ and ‘Ferdinand the Bull’ and ‘Lambert the Sheepish Lion,’ and all these incredible films. The Disney Channel was my babysitter for a good portion of my life, me and my sisters.”
And voicing the male lead in ‘Tangled,’ thief and scoundrel Flynn Ryder, Levi knows he’s part of a noble tradition of seemingly less-than-noble male Disney characters. “Aladdin and Flynn do share that bandit thread — or not bandit, but thief thread, anyway,” he says. “The charming rogue, sure. But Aladdin was far more pure. That guy had a heart of gold. He was the diamond in the rough, and he was only stealing because he was starving. There wasn’t a lot of selfishness in Aladdin at all, other than wishing he wasn’t where he was in his life, and wanting to be loved, and falling in love with Jasmine, being the Prince Ali, blah blah blah. Flynn is so self-absorbed and arrogant and vain.”
Levi’s also aware that “Tangled,” which had its name changed from “Rapunzel” early on, faces a little skepticism from the audience, but he thinks people will come around. “People were talking about when the named changed, and “It’s going to be CG, it’s not cell-animated.” There’s a lot of uproar, and there still is. You’re never going to please everybody, and it is what it is. I do think Disney is doing the right thing — and they’ve always done this. They embrace wherever we’re at, wherever society’s at and where technology’s at. I think that kids will be able to watch this and not feel like they’re part of an antiquated system — they’re part of the now system and still getting what Disney has always been about.”
Levi explained how part of the challenge, and the fun, of his role was doing physical comedy — like Flynn’s fights and feuds with the noble horse Maximus — even though he was standing immobile in a recording studio. “Having The Disney Channel be my babysitter for so long, just cartoons in general, I see it,” he says. “When I’m reading the lines and I see this happens, then Maximus hits Flynn, then Flynn hits Maximus, we’re grappling for the satchel, whatever — not that I have any kind of special power over this kind of stuff, but I’ve watched enough cartoons to have a really good feel for that, I think. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’m sure what you see in ‘Chuck’ is informed more by cartoons than it’s informed by anything else. I love that world. I love physical comedy. People like John Ritter and Peter Sellers, Jim Carrey to some extent, what they’ve been able to do with certain roles that they’ve taken on. So when I’m going through those scenes, it’s easier for me to visualize it and then give whatever I can to that.” “Tangled” opens nationwide in 3-D on Thanksgiving. Little boys in your neighborhood will be playing Flynn Ryder almost immediately after.
–From my article at The Rundown
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“Faster,” the new hard-R-rated action film starring Dwayne Johnson, is far from perfect. It has an entire subplot that could be excised from the film, and that removal would probably be for the good. It is clearly made on the cheap, without a single pixel of CGI visible in its mayhem, relying instead on muscle and metal and sweat. The plot is unadorned, starting with a bloody bang and going from there in a straight, unbending line with only a few minor, easily predicted twists along its path.
And yet, there is something to admire: a certain nobility of ignoble purpose; its willingness to explore territories of revenge and regret and repentance that few action films even hint at; the way it revolves around characters who are not superheroes or spies or mythic beings being set up to launch a franchise but instead simply mortals put in motion to tell a single story. Much like the ’66 Chevelle that its lead character, called only Driver, uses to speed through the sun-burnt sprawl of California and Nevada, “Faster” feels like an artifact from another, simpler time, but it still has plenty of power when the people behind the wheel hit the gas.
Written by Joe and Tony Gayton, the movie starts with the ballistic bullet-path simplicity of “Point Blank,” as Johnson is released from a 10-year prison stint. Leaving the prison, he runs to a local car lot, finds his Chevelle waiting with a gun and a stack of papers in the front seat, drives to the closest address on a list in the papers, walks in to a small business … and shoots a man dead. No hesitation, no warning, not a word spoken. And then on to the next one.
“Faster” is not simply “Dwayne Johnson Shoots People in the Head,” though — and even if it were, in an age of video-game and comic-book adaptations, doesn’t something that primal and simple sound immensely appealing? Instead, as the ragged, haggard character Cop (Billy Bob Thornton) and smooth, sociopathic Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) track Driver’s mission from what seem like either ends of the law, Driver’s mission to avenge his murdered brother — killed in the wake of a bank heist that got hijacked — becomes as much of a moral journey as a geographic one. Much as the under-seen and under-appreciated “Way of the Gun” did, “Faster” delivers pure excitement, to be sure — but it also uses those heart-pounding sequences as a window into the souls of its characters. There are three scenes in “Faster” that have more emotional power and moral complexity than many of this year’s would-be Oscar contenders.
Director George Tillman Jr. (“Men of Honor,” “Notorious”) keeps “Faster” on track — although I’m still trying to figure out what, if any, actual purpose Jackson-Cohen’s OCD hit man serves; his scenes, and his subplot with Maggie Grace as a confusingly complicit true love, serve minimal purpose. Thornton is excellent: Cop is bedraggled and beaten, 10 days from retirement, and, yes, it is a cliché role for an actor of Thornton’s caliber, until the film makes it clear why an actor of his caliber was required. Jennifer Carpenter (“Dexter”) has one scene, brief and brisk and brutal, that put the hairs on the back of my neck to stirring with its haunting power. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje gets a scene with Johnson that plays out with the bleak Biblical power of a Johnny Cash song. And Johnson, both unstoppable force and immovable object, shows a richer, darker side than any of his prior action films have allowed him to demonstrate, while still filling the film’s every moment with poisoned purpose and murderous magnetism.
In an age where so many action films strive for the kind of “perfection” that results in multipicture deals and tie-in products and safe, steady returns on investment, a film as brutally simple and yet unexpectedly complex as “Faster” becomes a pleasure in and of itself, and a thing to be cherished. Handmade, cheaply made and simply made, the rough edges of “Faster” still cut cleanly, and I’ll take that over the bland, blunt, committee-crafted excesses that bigger companies and bigger budgets offer us. I can’t tell you that “Faster” will last long in theaters, but it’s already echoing in my head and heart with a combined sense of power and purpose as welcome as it is unexpected.
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“Love and Other Drugs,” the new star-driven romance from director Ed Zwick, isn’t exactly unwelcome. The leads, Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, are charming and light as they meet and fall for each other, and they also dig deep — or, rather, deeper than the average rom-com — when romantic uncertainty and Hathaway’s Parkinson’s disease drag the long shadows of sadness and mortality into the sunshine of their love. The supporting cast — including Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt — give their little side bits everything they have. It’s also nice to see Zwick stepping away from his recent string of leaden, well-intentioned films (“Blood Diamond,” “Defiance”) that tried to be both entertaining and important and yet somehow wound up being neither.
The only thing to dislike about “Love and Other Drugs” is how clearly, and desperately, it wants to be liked. And that’s frankly a pity, because there’s something sincere and plainspoken at the heart of the film, and you can sense it shooting for the same kind of modern-Zen territory as “Jerry Maguire.” What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be successful? What does it mean to love? These aren’t bad questions for a movie to want to answer, and you can feel the movie sharpen its pencils and get out its paper and begin tackle those big issues … only to have those efforts distracted and diluted by the subplots, secondary characters and sideways digressions of the script.
Gyllenhaal’s Jamie, charming and callow and jobless in the wintry wilds of Ohio in 1996, gets a job as a pharmaceuticals rep for Pfizer. While on his pleading, cajoling rounds he sits in on a local MD’s examination of Hathaway’s bohemian beauty Maggie. (We know Maggie is a bohemian because we see her making wacky art, wearing paint-spattered overalls, smoking weed, walking about barefoot and listening to Liz Phair. Not all at once, mind you; that would be too obvious.)
And just as Jamie gets lucky at love, he gets even luckier at work, as Pfizer releases — or, more appropriately, unleashes — its new erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. Jamie is suddenly the Candyman, bestowing blue pills and firmer fortunes upon all in his gaze. Maggie is also dealing with her Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease harder — and less immediately profitable — for the American medical-industrial establishment to take on.
There has been Oscar buzz for Hathaway’s work as Maggie, as the character is doomed, sassy and more than willing to take her clothes off. (A cynic will suggest that the film’s nudity is deliberately weighed as a provocative awards-worthy bit of “bravery,” but it’s also nice to see a film about sex and love that doesn’t rely on artfully shy camera angles and the traditional L-shaped sheet configuration where the gentleman in a set of lovers is covered waist-down by the linens and the lady is mysteriously covered, by the same sheet, starting somewhere around the collarbone.) But while Hathaway’s not exactly delivering Oscar-caliber work here, she is at the very least good, and occasionally excellent. Gyllenhaal’s charm and enthusiasm help a lot, especially in the early, breezy scenes before the whole film puts on a dour, sour expression of gloom and suffering for its own sake and then veers off into wacky slapstick in the final act before the big-feelings finish.
The relationship material here is good — frank and blunt and well-stated — but it is so good I found myself watching a climactic scene with Gyllenhaal and Hathaway talking in a parking lot and sincerely wishing they could be in a relationship film that didn’t have the convenient, cliché motor of tragic illness driving it. Josh Gad comes in as Gyllenhaal’s comedy-relief nerd brother, but his scenes are, for lack of a better word, excruciating — low jokes that burn up screen time that could be used for something, anything else.
But there are laughs here, and there are more than a few sincere and insightful discussions of love and its consequences. Then, though, the film will wind up going on some lengthy tangent away from all that and make you wish that Zwick and his stars could be telling one story instead of the five, or six, they have going on. “Love and Other Drugs” is intended as the cinematic equivalent of a pill-pusher’s feel-good prescription — easy to swallow, full of happy feelings and designed to fill you with a warm glow that ideally drowns out the unintended side effects. If everyone involved had thought less like a pharmaceuticals pitchman and more like a surgeon — calmly and swiftly cutting away dead tissue in the name of strength and health — then the movie would feel less like a frustrating near-miss and more like the exceptional film it’s trying too hard to be.
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Some thrillers give us pure action, where the audience is offered the adrenalized pleasure of watching professional cops, soldiers and spies at work as people who are trained to handle trouble tackle it, and we can enjoy the unfolding of the story line as these characters, so unlike us, make sure that good triumphs. Other thrillers offer us a different kind of suspense, where we are offered the nervier prospect of normal people plunged into the thick of circumstance, and we are caught up in the question of if these characters, not unlike us, will not only triumph but, more pressingly, even survive.
Taken from the French film “Pour Elle,” “The Next Three Days” is an example — and a strong example — of the latter, and while it may make the occasional misstep, it represents a steady-handed and modest effort from writer-director Paul Haggis. Haggis’ previous best-known films and scripts have all aspired to varying degrees of nobility and purpose, with varying degrees of success. “Crash,” “In the Valley of Elah,” and even the script for “Million Dollar Baby” are all somewhat failed, in lesser or greater degrees, and watching Haggis simply work the pulses, guts and adrenal glands of the audience is decidedly more pleasant than having him clamber into our laps to appeal to our hearts, minds and souls.
The plot is simple: The loving Brennan family — dad John (Russell Crowe), mom Lara (Elizabeth Banks) and son Luke (Ty Simpkins) — is torn asunder when Lara is arrested and jailed for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. Years pass in the wake of the arrest, the appeals have been exhausted, and John simply cannot face the prospect of his life, and his son’s life, without her presence. And since the law will not put things right, the law must be broken.
Haggis does several things with this plot that work remarkably well. The opening scene, like that of “Let Me In,” represents a flash-forward — not to the end, but, rather, to a point about two-thirds of the way through the plot, so we can enjoy the dread building through the desperate times that lead to the desperate measures. Haggis also creates not one but two ticking-clock deadlines that must be met, juicing the timeline of the final act. And Haggis’ proclivity for revealing information late in the game for maximum dramatic impact — as in “The Valley of Elah,” where cell-phone videos are unscrambled and repaired in the precise order of optimum service to the narrative — is, in this case, a feature and not a bug.
Crowe and Banks are fine. She has everywoman grit under her suburban sheen; he has a beefy bulk that reveals strength in crisis. Brian Dennehy, as Crowe’s father, has, perhaps, 50 words to speak on-screen … and makes a banquet of them. Lennie James, as Pittsburgh’s answer to Inspector Javert, growls doggedly to move things forward. And Liam Neeson, with just one scene as an expert ex-jailbreaker, gets out emotion and exposition with real economy.
“The Next Three Days” is far from perfect. There’s a climactic action scene that strains both narrative and visual belief, where we not only doubt that the character would do what they did, but also where the pixilated, computer-generated clunkiness of it is so distracting in the moment that I had to look down to make sure that I wasn’t holding an Xbox 360 controller. And yet that can’t entirely undermine the simple pleasures of the film: Crowe’s sincere determination as he makes jailbreak into the ultimate Do-It-Yourself project, the creation of the plan, the sudden last-minute alterations as things go awry.
Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography has the raw, righteous funk of ’70s ordinary-guy thrillers like “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View,” and Haggis (with one or two exceptions) keeps the film’s modest ambitions within that narrow groove. “The Next Three Days” is a nice change-up from the director — it’s made to inspire edge-of-seat enjoyment in the theater, not standing-ovation adulation at awards shows — and while it’s not exactly a nail-biter for the ages, it’s exactly the kind of meat-and-potatoes thriller designed for you and your dad to enjoy in the stuffing-swollen post-dinner hours of Thanksgiving weekend.
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