Reviews

What a disappointment! Three cardboard characters thrown together: the hot, co-dependent German girl (played by the eternally underrated Heike Makatsch), who inexplicably becomes torn between two whiny dweebs -- a fragile French wimp (never saw this actor before - competent, but way too doe-eyed) and an overly emotional, childish, uninteresting nothing (pre-Bond Daniel Craig, not so much acting as impersonating Rod Steiger). A series of contrived situations bring these three together, in a sort of Männer for Morons... Painful to watch, but good for an occasional unintentional laugh... Geeze, I have never written such a scathing review...

The budding screenwriter in me admires the craftsmanship of the story and the direction, editing, and acting -- but the journalist in me spent the whole time cringing. Despite claims of authenticity, this story mixes gun-running and arms-dealing -- blending those who operate legally, albeit in a moral gray zone, with those who simply sell guns to child soldiers. I'm not sure about the claim that the US simply leaves its guns behind because it is cheaper than to take them with -- that does not ring true, but I would not be surprised to find an element of truth in it. If so, then it certainly should be exposed -- but the real crime in the arms trade is one that exists in this film, but is not properly explored: namely, that that arms travel through loopholes all over the world. There are no raids on arms dealers the way there are on gun runners. Arms dealers are clean and above the fray. And the problem isn't a conspiracy from the top down, but rather a failure to cooperate multilaterally. Interpol, far from being a solution, is part of the problem -- it does not exist the way portrayed in this film. There are no James Bond-like Interpol agents, because that treads on issues of national sovereignty. All Interpol can really do is pass information on from one agency to another. The real stuff gets done by agents of governments working with each other in a legal gray zone that is truly fascinating to explore. My experience with intelligence agents, by the way, is that most of them are conscientious, truth-obsessed, and and professional. That reality is actually quite fascinating, because it contradicts our preconceptions. This film, on the other hand, plays up to them. This film tries to portray incidents like the Iran-Contra Affair as being the rule rather than the exception. The film works dramatically because they chose to over-simplify reality -- but that is an artistic cop-out. I'm giving it a much lower rating that it should get if I were basing it just on its technical merits, but because the film pretends to be revealing a disturbing reality to us, it has taken on a degree of difficulty that it comes nowhere near achieving -- and judging by the comments from other people, it has done a disservice rather than a service.

I caught this gem on a plane, and stayed awake because I really just wanted to watch Scarlett Johansson's lips move. As I found myself being drawn into the story, I began to wonder why I had never heard of this gem before -- now that I see the tag line, I get it: she is in no way the central character, but just a prop -- the real characters are her dad, played by Dennis Quaid, and her dad's boss, played by the kid with the funny name. Both characters are quite believable -- and they arc around each other wonderfully. The real central character is the kid, who is busting his butt to impress himself and his stiff wife, who seems to cringe whenever he is in the room. He is annoying and driven -- but clearly on a path that doesn't suit him. His silly marketing ideas actually seem to work for the kiddie crowd, and he is placed in charge of ad sales for a respected sports magazine -- where he displaces the Quaid character, who is himself juggling a ton of pressures since his lovely daughter (Johansson) is going to NYU and his lovely wife is unexpectedly pregnant. He is dealing with his own ageing, his daughters' both coming of age, his latest confrontation with fatherhood, and now a boy boss -- who begins looking to him for guidance, but also isn't above threatening him if he doesn't play ball. But the Quaid character knows his own core values, and he doesn't deviate from them -- is he a dinosaur, or is the kid a flash in the pan? Well, I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that the writers on this really knew what they were doing -- as did whoever casted this thing. All conflicts are resolved to my satisfaction -- and that does not mean all the good guys win economically. Also impressive: there are no real bad guys. Even the total heavy, a sort of cartoon Carl Icahn played by Malcomb McDowell, doesn't come off as all that bad. He is just the agent of change... And when bad guys get hit, they become victims. Just a very tight film, with characters you care about. And Scarlett's lips do move exquisitely well...

Another promising idea sunk by the unwillingness of the creator to let others reel him in. I gave it a nine because I found myself watching the damn thing in spite of the incredibly crappy production values and the unnecessary blah blah. Basically, he creates an intriguing central character, but the actor seems overly aware of the fact that he is being played for humor. Also, too much exposition -- too much background on the living girlfriend -- although the trick of having it revealed as the central character unburdons himself to the dead girlfriend provides a good segue into what is going on. Some of the jokes are brilliant -- but then they repeat themselves over and over and over and over... Again, I gave it a nine because I watched the thing to the end -- despite its glaring faults. Compared to Weekend at Bernie's and other films about stiffs, this one is quite lively. You care about the relationship between the living guy and himself -- and even between himself and the dead girl. It just needs to be made by a real director....