Movie Monday #21: Inception

 “An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules...which is why I have to steal it.”

--Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, Inception 

If there was ever a movie that totally blew my mind and left me with my heart pounding and my jaw on the floor, it was Inception.  I bought it back in January on a whim after hearing people talk about it online and hearing how it got nominated for all those awards.  I was wary of watching another Christopher Nolan vehicle, considering how boring The Prestige had been and how utterly ridiculous and confusing The Dark Knight was. 

Inception opens with our hero, Dom Cobb (played deftly by Leonardo DiCaprio), lying on a beach in Japan.  Brought inside to an old man’s home, the homeowner (Ken Watanabe) and Cobb have a mysterious exchange that’s intriguing but doesn’t make any sense.  As the old man reaches for a gun on the table, the film cuts to the past, where a younger Cobb and younger homeowner, who we learn is named Saito, are discussing a matter of security.  You’re led to believe that Cobb and his associate Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are secret agents of some kind...but then you discover that they’re actually operating inside Saito’s mind--specifically, his dreams.

Cobb, Arthur, and many others live in the near future, where the next level of espionage and thievery has been raised to a person’s subconscious.  Through an experimental device and sedating drugs, anyone can enter anybody’s dreams and extract their deepest, darkest secrets (bank account numbers, troop locations, etc.) and sell it to the highest bidder.

There are some basic rules to how this works, however.  You must have someone build the dream world for you (this person is called the “architect”).  If you’re killed in a dream, you wake up.  If you’re simply shot, it causes excruciating pain on the other side.  To wake someone, you “kick” them--knock them off a chair, dunk them in water, or push them off a building.  It’s the falling sensation that wakes them up, you see.  And the biggest trick of all is the “totem”--an item that tells you when you’re back in the real world (i.e., Arthur’s totem is a pair of loaded dice).

In the opening action sequence inside Saito’s dream, we’re also introduced to Cobb’s wife and nemesis, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who always shows up when he’s least expecting it and undermines whatever operation he’s trying to run.  Needless to say, Cobb’s operation goes to hell when Mal shoots Arthur and the dream collapses (which causes the entire building to fall apart like it’s in an earthquake), but they escape with their skin (and their brains) intact.

Unfortunately, Saito catches up to Cobb and Arthur and offers them a deal--instead of stealing ideas, normally referred to as “extraction,” he wants to know if Cobb can plant an idea, referred to as “inception.”  Arthur says it can’t be done.  Cobb says it can.  He takes the job, and Saito promises him that if he’s successful, he’ll be able to return to his children, who he hasn’t seen in several years.

For this job, Cobb’s going to need a new architect.  He travels to London and visits his grandfather, Miles (played by Michael Caine), who brings his brightest student to our hero’s attention--Ariadne, played by the underrated Ellen Page.  In an interesting job interview, Cobb asks her to draw a maze in two minutes that it would take him one minute to solve.  After several tries, Ariadne draws a giant ring and puts other, smaller rings inside of it, so there’s no way in or out.  The smile on Cobb’s face tells us that this is what he was looking for.

Gathering the rest of his team, Cobb prepares for the biggest gamble of his life--they’re going inside the mind of entrepreneur Robert Fischer, Jr. (played by a very grown-up Cillian Murphy) to plant the idea that he break up his father’s company and be his own man, thereby paving the way for Saito’s company and other companies to open the market.  To do this, they need to go three layers deep--a dream within a dream within a dream--and get so deep into Robert’s subconscious that he won’t remember them being there. Once this gets under way, the movie is a no-holds-barred, non-stop, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride.  I don’t intend to spoil it for those who haven’t seen the movie (and shame on you if you haven’t), but I’ll tell you this much: it will take your breath away.

This was my first time watching Leonardo DiCaprio in a film, and I was very impressed.  I guess the reason I’ve stayed away from his work was the ridiculous performance he put up in Titanic, but he’s grown up a lot since then, and so have his acting skills.  He’s the perfect guy to play Dom Cobb, a man haunted by his past who can’t even dream without the aide of a machine and some drugs.  You instantly connect with him, you feel sorry for him, and you want him to overcome his past in order to seize his future.  This was some of the best acting I’ve seen out of anybody in a long time, so hats off to DiCaprio for a job well done.

I’d only seen Ken Watanabe in one other film (that being The Last Samurai) before Inception, and I’ve got to say that I really like him.  The Japanese film industry isn’t known for its actors or its films (it’s safer to say that Americans identify better with the anime and manga they produce), but Watanabe-san is probably one of the best Japanese actors I’ve seen in a while.  He’s vastly improved over his performance in The Last Samurai, and the intriguing twists his character takes in the film allows for more range in his acting ability.  Hopefully we’ll see more of him in the future.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a very reserved and very respectable role as Arthur, the guy who’s been through the thick and thin with Cobb.  He’s the one who reveals to the viewer that Mal is Cobb’s wife, and the other shocker that she’s dead--what you see in Cobb’s dreams is his projection of her.  Levitt is a very intelligent, very talented actor who I always thought was capable of so much more, and he proves that he is in Inception.

I first saw Ellen Page in the off-beat dramedy Smart People, and I was left wondering where the hell they’d been hiding her all these years.  Now that she’s getting larger, better roles, I was really excited to see what she could do in Inception.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Ellen has the skills and depth of an actress twice her age, and the little touches of her growing closer to Cobb added some much-needed compassion to a movie that, otherwise, would have been very, very weighty.  I think Miss Page has a long career ahead of her, and I’ll be highly anticipating her upcoming projects.

The supporting cast also performs well, but the one actor I couldn’t figure out was Tom Berenger, who played Fischer’s advisor.  This is probably just me, but I’ve never seen him as an A-lister or even a B-lister, and with his age, he really didn’t fit in with the rest of the cast.  Even with those issues, this was probably one of his better performances, so we’ll leave it at that.

The music by Hans Zimmer was just astounding.  I’ve been very wary of Hans ever since his awful Tears of the Sun score, and I was beginning to wonder if he was losing his touch.  He earned so much respect from me with the score to Inception that I went out and bought the soundtrack CD, grinning like some idiot who had just won the lottery.  In a way, I had--the orchestral/electronic score that Hans devised for this film showcases every single aspect of Christopher Nolan’s vision.  The powerful crescendos, the orchestra hits, and the electronic percussion all comes together to make this one of my favorite film scores of all time, and proves that Hans Zimmer is simply the best at what he does.

The production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas was, in a word, beautiful.  The locations and the sets all look so real that you forget you’re watching a movie, and I guess that was the point--to make all of this look like it was really happening, even though it was inside someone’s mind.  Dyas also gets extra points for constructing a staircase to nowhere and discovering the trick to making it look like it really did loop around itself.

The cinematography by Wally Pfister only added to Dyas’s beautiful production work.  Pfister captures all the varying exteriors, interiors, and locations perfectly, and everything looks gorgeous not only on DVD, but also in high-def, something that’s becoming rare these days. 

Christopher Nolan seems to be at his best when he’s universe-building, and it shows in Inception.  Here he presents to us a future where everything seems impossible and possible all at once, with compelling characters in very dire situations that could spell their life and death (in the real world and in the dream world).  While some people laughed at the movie and called its concepts “ridiculous,” I fell in love with the universe Nolan built and found myself in very familiar territory, trekked by the sci-fi and fantasy writers of old.

Besides my dislike for Tom Berenger and the lengthy run time (nearly two and a half hours), Inception is a perfect film.  You feel for the characters, the revelations are all in the right places, the bits of humor are well-spaced, and the rhythm of the plot is intoxicating.  If you haven’t seen Inception yet and you can catch it at a good price, then grab a copy, sit back, and prepare to be blown away. 

Movie Monday #18: Infernal Affairs

“Do all undercover cops like rooftops?”

--Andy Lau as Lau, Infernal Affairs 

I am not that hip when it comes to the Hong Kong movie scene, and for good reason -- I just don’t get the pacing and the plotting of most Chinese films.  I guess I’m too used to Hollywood car chases and explosions that, admittedly, my favorite Hong Kong film for years was John Woo’s Hard Boiled, mostly because of Tony Leung’s performance in the film.  Last Saturday night, I had the pleasure of taking in another great Tony Leung performance, and a terrific film altogether -- Infernal Affairs, directed by the upcoming team of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak.

The basic story behind this crime thriller is simple -- two cadets rise up quickly through the ranks of the Hong Kong police force, but end up taking separate paths.  Yan (Tony Leung) is “thrown out” of the academy so he can become an undercover cop within the Triads, China’s form of organized crime.  What he and the other cadets don’t know is that Lau (Andy Lau), an ace cadet with perfect marks, is a plant within the police department with loyalties to the Triads.

I was a little surprised that the movie let the big secret out from the get-go, but then I realized just how smart that was.  It screwed up the tension and the anxiety ten times more than they already were, and from that point, the movie proceeds to embellish the characters a bit.  Yan has been undercover for ten years and has been arrested three times for assault of an officer, and his boss, Superintendent Wong (the great Anthony Wong in a stone-cold serious role for a change), orders him to see the department shrink.  Lau, on the other hand, finds himself ordered to locate the mole that’s recently been discovered within the department (which is, naturally, Lau himself) and work directly for Internal Affairs, while still helping Sam (Eric Tsang), the Triad boss he’s loyal too, get his criminal enterprises underway.

If this sounds familiar, it should -- Martin Scorsese ripped off the story of this film to make his cop thriller The Departed, with none so much as a credit to Andrew Lau and Alan Mak as the originators of the story.  But the similarity between the two films pretty much ends at the whole mole here/mole there point in the story.  Yan starts to fall in love with the department psychiatrist, while Lau has one of his underlings tail Superintendent Wong to a meeting with Yan.  This results in the turning point of the story -- the Triads invade the building, and Yan and Wong are trapped.  Yan escapes, but Wong is thrown from the roof and onto the top of a taxicab, some twenty-five floors below.

And like some of my other reviews, I’m going to stop before I get ahead of myself and reveal the entire movie to you.  This is one Hong Kong thriller I’m very proud to say isn’t out to disgust you with gut-punching violence, confuse you with some symbolism that only the director understands, and offend you with gratuitous language and nudity.  Infernal Affairs, despite it’s name and the sexy Chinese woman who appears on the cover of the DVD (who isn’t even in the movie, I came to discover), is a very clean and crisp film that keeps you on the edge of your seat and includes some definitive jaw-dropping moments.

Andy Lau and Tony Leung are the standout performances in this film, though I felt that Lau’s was stronger, because his character goes through the most change.  Leung was still enjoyable and affable as always (that scene when he says he dreams of the psychiatrist and she responds with the sweet ‘I dream of you too’ was extremely well-played), but I felt like the directors were setting him up for a fall throughout the film and not giving him a chance to even try and be a hero.

This film also guest-stars one of my new favorite Hong Kong actors, Edison Chen, who I first saw as Ryousuke in the Initial D live-action film.  Edison plays the young version of Lau’s character, and many of the flashbacks to his cadet days feature Chen.  In my opinion, this is a bright young man with a bright future in cinema, whether it be foreign or domestic.

The production design, in combination with the lighting, is just superb in this film.  The use of white, black, gray, green-gray, blue-gray, and natural lighting really set this off as something that says, “Take notice of me.  I am not to be ignored.”  There are a lot of rooftop scenes in this film, and how they covered and lit them when there’s really nothing around to mount a camera on or plug a camera into is a testament to the Hong Kong film industry’s ingenuity in getting things done.

Overall, this is one film I’m proud to have in my collection, and I found it at the local Blockbuster store in the clearance section of their previously viewed movies for $3.99.  If I can find it there, surely you can find it through similar means.  I encourage you to do so, even if you’re not a fan of Hong Kong cinema, because this film just might change your mind -- it did mine.

Movie Monday #16: The Tournament

"Is it my accent or something?"

--Kelly Hu as Lai Lai Zhen, The Tournament

I’m a sucker for an assassin movie due to my formative teenage years being spent watching John Woo’s Hong Kong classics (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled are his three best).  The problem these days is making your average assassin movie interesting enough to pick up off the movie shelf, simply because there are so damn many of them.  I had the pleasure of taking in an assassin film that turned the whole genre into a giant kill-or-be-killed tournament, with plenty of action and thrills to spare.  I’m talking about the Scott Mann film The Tournament.

The story of this film is that every seven years, an unsuspecting town is selected as the battleground for the top thirty assassins in the world.  The challenge is to be the last one standing, winning the large cash prize and the prestige of being the world’s top killer.  The entire contest is viewed through closed-circuit television by a group of mysterious, rich men, who bet on the contestants like a sporting event.  This whole sha-bang is organized by Powers, played to the hilt by Liam Cunningham, a man whose face I’d never seen before but whose voice I’d definitely heard on commercials and from videogame and animation voice-overs.

When the film opens, Joshua Harlowe (Ving Rhames) is participating in the last contest, seven years ago.  He’s out of bullets in his gun, has no other weapons to speak of, and is up against a machine-gun-toting maniac who isn’t taking kindly to Harlowe’s announcement that he’s retiring from the business.  In a bit of trickery, Harlowe pulls off the victory, killing this maniac with some kind of pressurized air gun, blasting his head to pieces.  I should note that this movie is not for the squeamish--there are plenty of body parts and organs flying around and detonating spectacularly.  This may sound like a bad thing, but it really doesn’t detract from the viewing--it adds a dimension of grim reality to the competition that’s about to take place.

Flash-forward seven years, and it’s time for a new tournament.  Enter Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu in a smoking hot role), a Chinese assassin who arrives at her hotel, wakes up the next morning a little groggy from being implanted with a tracking device, and gets a major wake-up call when one of these hitmen attacks her, pretending to be room service.  After some high karate on Lai Lai’s part, she gets her first kill, and she moves up the leader board.

To my surprise, the film proceeds to develop a side story about Father Macavoy (Robert Carlyle), an alcoholic Catholic priest whose faith is a mite weak.  When he enters a diner and has breakfast, one of these ‘contestants’ (the incredible Sebastian Foucan, the inventor of Parcour) enters as well, cuts out his tracking device, and drops it in Father Macavoy’s coffee.  Now, everyone thinks Father Macavoy is that contestant, and this unsuspecting priest has entered the tournament.

Lai Lai Zhen tracks Macavoy down, thinking he’s the Parcour guy, and gets assaulted by a Russian Special Forces maniac who was pulling off incredible martial arts moves without wires.  The only other person I know who has done moves like this without the aid of any apparatus is Matt Mullins (Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight), so this was a welcome surprise.  Lai Lai almost loses this battle, if not for some quick thinking on her part, as she pulls one of the pins on a grenade on the Russian guy’s combat vest (while giving him the finger, no less).

After determining that Father Macavoy is not a willing participant, Lai Lai calls Powers on the emergency line, informing him of this situation.  He sees this as a great betting opportunity for his assembly of mysterious, rich pals and tells her that he’d better start killing, or else he’ll end up dead too...and puts the priest up on the leader board, with the odds of five hundred to one.

Shortly thereafter, Harlowe appears on the grid--seems someone came after him in his Miami home and killed his wife.  He’s come back to the tournament for revenge, because he has information that his wife’s killer is one of the contestants.  So what does he do?  He kills the film’s writer, Nick Rowntree, who cameos for about five or six lines as one of these assassins.  Well, they’re always saying that directors want to kill the writers, so why not do it through the magic of film?

As Harlowe keeps gathering information through each person he kills, Lai Lai and Father Macavoy are in survival mode--she’s trying to keep him alive while avoiding his constant question of “Why are you here?”  When they finally acquire a car, Lai Lai drives as far as she can out of the city, so the tracker won’t be as effective.  Meanwhile, Harlowe has acquired a tanker truck and is following Lai Lai’s tracker.  Everything is set for the final showdown, and what a showdown it is.

It’s pretty clear at this point that I can’t say enough about this movie, because it reminds me of classic 1980’s action films, but done one notch better.  Kelly Hu, as previously mentioned, is absolutely gorgeous (as always) and is smoking hot whether she’s beating the crap out of someone with martial arts or blasting someone with a gun in each hand (which was probably paying homage to John Woo in some way).  Robert Carlyle is perfectly cast as Father Macavoy, a man who has lost his church, his congregation, and his will to live, and finds it all again through the help of Lai Lai.

The only part I didn’t really understand was Ving Rhames as Harlowe.  Rhames plays this part like he’s a guest star in a TV movie, and his part is written in that fashion, even though he should have been the main character.  He seemed distant and out-of-place throughout the entire film, and his talents seem wasted on such a small part as this.

Despite this semi-major flaw in the film, everyone else is also perfectly cast--the hitmen look and sound like hitmen, the bystanders look and sound like bystanders, and the hilarious tech guys who run the closed-circuit cameras sound like total neurotic geeks who should spend more time outside.

The action in this movie is incredible--lots of gunfights, lots of chases, lots of martial arts--and none of it seems forced or just for the sake of having it.  Once you have established the parameters of the world this movie operates in (sort-of a “Pay-Per-View” tournament/sporting event thing), everything else falls into place, and that was a very nice thing to see.

Style-wise, the movie is shot in very drab surroundings with very dark, drab colors, adding to the dark, internal struggles of the three main characters...and let’s just face it, folks--assassins killing each other in a competition every seven years for a cash prize is a pretty dark thing.

The Tournament is a film that delivers on all fronts--action, plot, and characters.  It lays down some commentary about how the world sensationalizes sporting events, and that maybe something like this assassin tourney is where we’re heading.  Luckily, it doesn’t get too bogged down in that and never forgets what it is--a damn good action movie.  If you’re looking for a great action-thriller to add to your collection, then look no further than The Tournament.

Movie Monday #15: P2

I was perusing the shelves of my local Blockbuster Video store (which, sadly, has been closed due to the rise of Redbox and Video on Demand) back in May and spotted the movie on their previously viewed shelf that you're reading about right now--P2, a low-budget horror vehicle featuring a girl trapped in a parking garage with a sadistic security guard on Christmas Eve.

With Halloween two months away, I thought now would be the perfect time to review P2 and let you know that it's one of the few horror movies I actually like.

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 “I know you're just trying to humanize me, Angela, so stop it!  Stop it!"

--Wes Bentley as Thomas, P2

In case you couldn't tell by reading this blog, I'm not a big fan of horror movies.  I think it stems from a childhood fear of Chucky, the sadistic doll from the Child's Play films, and the fact that I have no tolerance for pointless gore.  I do, however, find myself watching a few horror films a year and enjoying them on varying levels.  But there is one that stood out to me above all the others as one of the best experiences I ever had watching a horror flick, and that movie is P2.

P2 (named after the parking garage level it takes place in) starts off simple: Angela (played by Rachel Nichols), a corporate workaholic who is staying late at the office on Christmas Eve, finds that her car is the only one left in the parking garage...and that it won't start.  When Thomas, the overly-friendly security guy (played by Wes Bentley), gives her a jump, the car still doesn't work.  He offers to give her a lift, and even invites her to share Christmas dinner with him in his office, but Angela turns him down and calls a cab.

Unfortunately, Mister Security Guy has locked all the doors in the building, so Angela can't get out to the cab in time before it pulls away.  When she storms down to the garage to have a word with the guy, he turns the lights out on her and forces her into his office...where he drugs her, puts her in a white gown, and forces her to have Christmas dinner with him while she's cuffed to a chair.  Angela, however, is no dummy, and soon devises a way to escape Thomas's clutches (by stabbing him with her dinner fork) and call for help.

But alas, there is no help coming.  This is Christmas Eve, remember?  Angela has to fight her way out, using whatever tools are available, including a fire axe, a crowbar, and Thomas's stun gun, to name a few.  Thomas has a few tools on his side as well, such as filling the garage's elevator with water, using all the security cameras to track Angela down, and unleashing a very nasty Rottweiler that he's named Elvis.  And just when it seems Angela's figured out a way to beat Thomas and escape, Thomas figures out a way to stop her, which leads to a game of chicken in rental cars that will make your jaw drop.

You can say all you want about P2 being one of those low-budget, one-location horror films--it makes great use of its location (the parking garage) and the little nooks and crannies that occupy it.  I've never felt very safe in a parking garage, and after watching P2, I think I know why--they're very creepy when they're empty and dark!  This film plays on that perception and heightens it to the umpteenth level, creating the ultimate "what if" scenario.  The idea is ingenious and it hasn't been done before, so hats off to the creative team for their effort in that department.

The casting for the film couldn't have been better.  Rachel Nichols was perfect for Angela, because she could play both sides of the character--the desperate, frightened corporate employee who just wants a way out...and the kick-ass heroine she becomes when she's finally had enough.  She spends most of this film barefoot and in a cleavage-bearing white dress, which is a real challenge for any actress to take on, and Rachel pulls it off with sympathy and credibility. 

Wes Bentley is the perfect villain as Thomas, a guy who could be the creepy security guard in real life, let alone in P2.  He pretends to be gentle and caring to Angela in the beginning, but once she starts to rebel against his wishes, his psycho side starts coming out, and that's when you're in for a real treat.  Wes also gives us a taste of his funny side as he performs a homage to the Elvis Presley hit "Blue Christmas" while Angela is knocking out his security cameras with the fire axe.

Oleg Savytski performed the production design on this film, and I've become an instant fan of his work.  From the darkened corridors of the parking garage to Thomas's cluttered office and the elevator that Angela nearly drowns in, the design team made a one-location movie seem bigger than it was and made it last longer than the usual ninety-minute runtime.  They didn't do it alone, though--costume designer Ruth Secord came up with the fifteen different dresses that Rachel Nichols wore during shooting; director of photography Maxime Alexandre gave everything the necessary spookiness; and the music by Tomandandy (a composing team I'd never heard of before) blended perfectly into the background and made us feel exactly what we needed to feel at the moments we needed to feel it.

There are some glaring mistakes in P2, though.  One of them has to do with the scene where Thomas floods the garage's elevator with water and Angela presses the up button.  The elevator moves up and takes the water with it.  It looks downright silly, and according to IMDB, elevators are designed to drain the water out through the bottom if such an event occurs.  Two of the smaller mistakes involve the fork that Angela stabs Thomas with (it never stays in the same position) and a scene where a crew member's silhouette is visible on the wall of the rental car area.

One of the other issues with P2 is that it has the dreaded "3 Screenwriter Curse," meaning that three separate writers worked on the script.  In Hollywood, one screenwriter can either be good or bad; two screenwriters (or a two-person writing team) is usually a good bet; but three screenwriters is a recipe for disaster.  Jumper is a good example of this, since it had three screenwriters and was one of the worst movies I saw that year.  A more recent example would be the Sam Worthington vehicle Man on a Ledge, which not only had three screenwriters but was also a one-location film (and played out more like a TV movie than anything else).

Do you get what I mean by the 3 Screenwriter Curse?  Good, because I'm here to tell you that P2 rises above the curse and delivers on all fronts.  The script by Franck Khalfoun (who also directed the film), Alexandre Aja (who produced the film), and Gregory Levasseur (who also produced the film) gave us the perfect setup, the perfect amount of dialogue, and the perfect moments of tension to deliver one of my favorite horror films of all time.  I tend to gravitate toward unique, independent productions, and with P2 being an eight million-dollar parking garage film, I knew I had to see it.  I was not disappointed, and you won't be either...though you might become a little leery of being the only car in the parking garage at night.