Director: Andrew Niccol
Runtime: 102 minutes
In terms of subject matter, director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) could not have chosen a more timely arena for his latest film: drone warfare. Unmanned craft (especially the weaponized form) are political and ethical lightning rods, and not without reason. If you've heard of them, you likely have some strong opinions about how they should and shouldn't be used. If only Niccol's film was as stirring as the debate it wades into. Good Kill, though a marked improvement over Niccol's recent films, is affecting for brief moments, but mostly succumbs to either listlessness or misjudged melodrama (or both).
At the heart of Good Kill's moral queasiness is Maj. Tommy Egan (Ethan Hawke), a former pilot who now spends his days cramped inside a metal box on a Las Vegas airbase. Inside said metal box is the high-tech ground control for drones operating thousands of miles away. Without ever risking a crash (or even being detected), Egan and his teammates are able to take out targets as they please with brutal efficiency.
Yet the drones' all-seeing eyes can cause more stress than one might think. Early on, Egan and his commander (Bruce Greenwood), watch helplessly as a woman in Pakistan's Waziristan region is raped by a neighbor (a neighbor who may or may not be an insurgent). Since the drones' only weapons are missiles, there's nothing that can be done to stop the horrific act, even though Egan and co. are the only outsiders bearing witness to the woman's suffering. Scenes like this get Good Kill off to a solid start, promising something of a variation on The Hurt Locker in regards to depicting the thornier aspects of military life. The life of drone pilots is one of much greater contrast than that of a foot soldier. At the end of his shift, Tommy drives a few miles to a wife (January Jones) and two kids. He gets to fight the allegedly good fight with no more than some simple clicks in an air-conditioned room.
Though the personal advantages of this sort of work are obvious, Tommy begins to doubt the integrity of his orders once the CIA enters the fray. With Langley suddenly calling the shots via conference call, there's a new layer of disassociation added to Tommy's supposedly necessary strikes. Instead of conferring with other people face to face before lighting up a target, he now takes orders from the cryptic bureaucratic droning of a voice coming out of a headset. The CIA spokesman's voice, combined with Niccol's eerily tight shots of the phoneset's red speaker light, call to mind a white collar HAL9000. Sure, the drone is an impersonal weapon, but more than any other soldier committing morally questionable acts, it really was just following orders.
The CIA's orders, which push Egan and his team beyond their comfort zones on a regular basis, are the beginning of Egan's unravelling. But rather than build momentum, Niccol's script starts to flail. One early confrontation between Hawke and Jones plays out with a level of intensity that makes one wonder if the scene was actually supposed to come near the end of the film. Later developments don't fare much better. Once Tommy finally opens up to his wife, he spills his guts so rapidly that you'll wonder if you zoned out and accidentally missed some transitional scenes.
Niccol's visual style doesn't do much to amplify his interior story. Camera work and editing are solid during the drone sessions, but everything else is scattershot. Due to filters and/or color correction, Good Kill often looks unpleasantly oversaturated. And when the frame isn't filled with synthetic coloring, it's draped in some oppressive shadows. Nighttime scenes in Tommy's bedroom look like they belong in a bad noir, with only ugly bursts of orange light breaking up the darkness. And Tommy's aforementioned confessions to his wife play out in a bizarre, stilted pastoral shot that has Hawke and Jones stand side-by-side like they're delivering lines for an experimental piece of theater.
Beyond its subject matter, Good Kill is also a waste of some perfectly talented actors. Mr. Hawke's performance stumbles here and there, but that mostly comes down to Niccol's writing and direction. For the most part, Hawke does a good job with the wounded stoic routine, making Egan's journey coherent and convincing, even when the film lurches from one IMPORTANT development to the next. Although even Hawke is left powerless by the tastelessness of the final scene, which wants to give Good Kill's protagonist a heroic moment while completely ignoring the ramifications of his actions so many miles away. Meanwhile Jones, though seriously miscast opposite someone of Hawke's age (is it that hard to find someone age appropriate?), is actually quite good with her role as the put-upon wife trying to hold onto her marriage. Egan's military peers, top-lined by Greenwood and Zoe Kravitz, do nice work as well, especially the latter. One can only imagine what they all might have accomplished had they been in the hands of a script that dared to be more than thinly-sketched portrait of one of modern warfare's most polarizing advancements.
Grade: C
Director: JJ Abrams
Runtime: 132 minutes
The fun of a sequel (at least on paper) is that the groundwork for the characters has already been established. This allows future installments to hit the ground running, and build up bigger, more epic plots that can produce thrills on a grander scale. The most obvious recent example of this trend is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, which took the foundation of Batman Begins and introduced a darker, larger narrative, along with a more potent villain and higher stakes.
JJ Abrams, on the other hand, has opted for an oddity of a sequel in his reboot of the Star Trek film franchise. Like its predecessor, Star Trek: Into Darkness has slick visuals, a good sense of humor, and fun set pieces. It also boasts a more enjoyable and menacing villain. On the other hand, Abrams' film feels strangely limited in scope, due to the script's initially choppy plotting. Overall, Into Darkness is a solid follow-up to Abrams' 09 film, yet it can't help but feel like a step in the wrong direction when it comes to narrative ambition.
Thankfully, the lighthearted opening sequence quickly re-establishes the best traits of the last film. The thrills are there, and, more importantly, so are the laughs. Though certain returning characters get little to work with (including Zoe Saldana's Uhura), the dynamics across the ensemble are still handled with a swift effortlessness. As the film's co-leads, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto continue to delight. Their chemistry has remained firmly intact, and it's capable of infusing even the darkest moments with flashes of wit. Yet where Quinto was quite easily the MVP in the previous film, it's Pine who's the real surprise this time around. Kirk's existential conflicts aren't as inherently as interesting as Spock's, yet the way the script pushes the character (and the actor playing him) to his emotional limits is a tremendous boon. Of the returning supporting players, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg continue to have a ball as Bones and Scotty. John Cho's Sulu, refreshingly, also gets a few brief moments to steal the spotlight.
However, much like The Dark Knight, the real draw of Into Darkness is the villain. And while Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison (a rogue Star Fleet agent) may lack any nasty scars or colorful clown make-up, he's still a memorable force to be reckoned with. Cumberbatch is no stranger to playing slightly detached, hyper-intelligent characters. Yet unlike his excellent work on BBC's Sherlock, Harrison allows the actor to take that intelligence (along with his commanding deep voice) and slather on a nice thick layer of menace. Cumberbatch rarely raises his voice throughout the film, and his expression is often a mask. The actor largely allows his intonations to carry the character, and it works. From the beginning, Harrison is a mystery. As such, it's fitting that he becomes more expressive as his identity emerges. He's a blank canvas because that's what he needs to be for his own purposes (and possibly others').
Unfortunately, to get to the real meat of Into Darkness' plot and characterization, one has to endure a surprisingly clunky opening act. After the fun opening, the script then jumps around between drama at Star Fleet (Kirk loses command of the Enterprise), and Harrison's first attack on London. Then there's the matter of Harrison's possible connections to the bellicose Klingons, who threaten Earth's peaceful galatic explorations. Once everything comes together, there are a nice number of a-ha moments. By contrast, the first half's material is more obligatory than fully engaging. Abrams seems to agree. Barring the opening, the action sequences in the first half or so feel like they're being directed on autopilot. Given the immense charm of the cast, the film is never in danger of dragging. At the same time, there are moments where Into Darkness seems to coast along like a perfectly engineered machine that's also completely devoid of any true verve or personality. Rather than bring something new to the table, the first half of the film feels like more of the same, only without the fresh energy that Abrams brought to the table four years ago.
Without that same energy, many of the early set-pieces lack true tension. There are a few too many times when characters are on the brink of death's door, yet the tone is too light for the stakes to feel real. However, once the various plot threads come together, Into Darkness stops being merely competent, and starts rising to the occasion. A trio of extended action sequences help drive the film to a smashing conclusion, albeit one that ends on a surprisingly small scale. Abrams finally seems fully alert in the director's chair, and drives the film home with equal amounts of glossy thrills and genuine (yet never sentimental) emotion. The whole film is a marvel of sights and sounds (visual effects and scoring are dynamite), yet it's in the second half of the film where they start to really pop. Above all else, the film is worth sticking with just to watch the stunningly put together sequence where the Enterprise plummets down from space and through the Earth's atmosphere. It's the sort of stuff that big budget extravaganzas were made for, and Into Darkness more than delivers.
Yet once the adrenaline of the finale wears off, it's hard not to view the film as mildly underwhelming. When the film works, it works spectacularly. And even when it isn't flowing together smoothly, it has engaging characters and a sense of humor that prevents the film from drowning in self-seriousness. But even as the film reaches some wonderful highs, it still comes off as a bit of a missed opportunity. Into Darkness should have been Abrams' chance to go bigger and bolder. Instead, he's opted for more of same, on roughly the same scale (possibly smaller). That doesn't make Into Darkness a bad film, or a bad movie-going experience. It just makes it a slight step backwards for a franchised that seemed primed for a great leap forward.
Grade: B
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Runtime: 138 minutes
Robert Zemeckis' Flight, the director's return to live-action filmmaking after three divisive motion-capture efforts, is certainly a polished, well-made film. After his trio of soulless animated features, the director proves that he's still game as ever when it comes to working with real people, sets, and locations. Yet Zemeckis' energetic direction isn't quite enough to prevent Flight from stumbling thanks to its script, even though he does keep the film from going into a complete nosedive.
Whip Williams (Denzel Washington), as is quickly established, is a womanizer, an alcoholic, and an avid cocaine user. He's also pilot. While it's not a good combination, there's no doubt as to Williams' skill in the cockpit. On a routine (and very short) flight, Whitaker's plane endures a series of malfunctions, eventually pitching into a straight dive. Almost miraculously, Whip successfully lands the plan after rolling it not once, but twice before setting down in a field behind a small church. Six people die in the course of the landing, but Williams is hailed as a hero, even as he flees the spotlight. Yet complications arrise when blood samples taken after the accident reveal levels of intoxication in Williams and another crew member.
From there, Flight glides ahead with energetic camera work and solid performances, even as the script constantly throws in some unwelcome turbulence. As capably as the cast performs (Washington is as engaging and watchable as ever), John Gatins' script is both too thin and too morally muddled. Whip's alcoholism is treated more as a plot device than a character trait. While the portrayal of alcoholism (and the self-deception involved) likely hits some truthful notes, we never have any grounding as to why Whip drinks the way he does. At best we know that his drinking was responsible for ending his marriage, but the conflict is too thinly detailed to hit home.
Credit should go to Washington, however, for taking a relatively one-dimensional character and making him compelling to follow, even if it's more due to the actor's inherent star magnetism. With a richer script and a deeper character to latch onto, Washington could have truly soared. Instead, he's left putting in a lot of emotional effort into a role that is written at a level far beneath him.
Other cast members aren't so lucky. Don Cheadle, as a lawyer tasked with sorting out Whip's side of the criminal investigation, has the script's least developed major character. Yes, his character's purpose is ultimately to support and challenge Whip, but the character appears to have been written on autopilot, used more as an expository tool of legal information. Kelly Reilly, as drug addict Whip meets in the hospital, gets a tad more to work with, but the role is as shallow as they come, as she's used more to bring up the painfully thin AA subplot in the film. Gatins gives her an interest in photography to lend her something outside of her drug troubles, but it's barely touched upon. Worst of all, the film wastes Melissa Leo as the head of the investigation into the crash landing. John Goodman also pops up in two irritating scenes, one of which is so bizarre and confused in its morality and tone that it beggars belief.
Surprisingly, it's some of the smallest parts that stand out in the film. Washington and Reilly's performances (mostly the former's) have received the most awards talk, but the stand out of the cast might actually be James Badge Dale. The actor only appears for one scene, yet his turn as a rambling cancer patient is nothing short of electrifying, and it's a shame that the actor wasn't used to better effect. Honorable mention should go to Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker) as Whip's co-pilot during the crash landing, who brings an extra layer of intensity to one of the many one-note roles filling out the ensemble.
Unfortunately, as Flight progresses through its three main "chapters," it becomes weaker and weaker. The crash landing is a marvel of white-knuckle intensity, but once Whip wakes up in the hospital, the drop in dramatic power is tremendous. The middle section, which had the most room for character development, squanders it on scenes that merely coast by. Both Whip's relationship to Reilly's Nicole and the background details of the investigation are touched on so lightly that it's as if Gatins nearly forgot about them. There's a level of expert craftsmanship in Flight, even down to the seemingly "normal" but richly textured cinematography. Yet, unlike some examples in recent memory (Joe Wright's Hanna springs to mind), said craftsmanship isn't nearly enough to overcome the overarching weaknesses of the writing. The great irony, then, of Flight is that it only soars when its titular character is plunging straight down out of the sky.
Grade: C
