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: Richard Linklater
Runtime: 166 minutes
The late Roger Ebert once remarked that "No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough." Richard Linklater's long-gestating Boyhood is stunning evidence in favor of this idea. The story is limited (a boy and his family grow and change), yet Linklater's three hour opus is so vibrant that it could have gone on for much longer. Boyhood is epic in the time it covers, yet still incomplete in the best sense. Mr. Linklater isn't necessarily bringing anything new to the table in regards to what his latest film says. Instead, he has opted to capture it all with astounding thoroughness. Boyhood started as an experiment. Now, after over a decade, it has emerged as a triumph.
What's truly staggering is how much Linklater managed to accomplish. Though production ran on and off for 12 years, there were only 39 days of actual shooting. For all of the advances in filmmaking technology that took place, it's remarkable how cohesive the whole effort turned out. Rather than constantly call attention to the experimental nature of the production, Linklater masterfully refrains from showing off. As young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) ages from six to 18, the changes feel appropriately gradual. Jumps forward in time aren't handled as major events or shifts. They exist side by side with other moments, just as life outside of the silver screen does.
And, despite the title's emphasis on a young boy, Boyhood gives stunning attention to all of its major characters. Mason's mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette), father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) and sister Samantha (Lorelai Linklater), are all as richly realized. Though the film concludes with its emphasis firmly on Mason Jr.'s path, the various ups and downs of those around him remain equally vivid. This is Mason's story, but it's also the story of an American family living a messy and modern American life. There are marriages and divorces, first loves and first heartbreaks, and they're all masterfully woven together as part of a wild, ever-expanding tapestry, and scenes as ordinary as brothers and sisters bickering absolutely crackle with life.
Even when characters are at their lowest points, Linklater maintains a distant, almost academic sort of optimism about the progression of life. Boyhood is ultimately a study of time, which makes the unusual production schedule such an inspired gamble. Small moments stir up feelings of happiness or regret, yet they aren't meant to knock one over with their intensity. Boyhood doesn't build to grand moments. It lets the lives of its characters unfold with a beautiful command of time - cinematic and real - to capture childhood as a simultaneously mundane and epic series of experiences.
When a movie spends over a decade in production, it's hard not to keep that in mind while watching. And even though Linklater doesn't ram the conceit in the viewer's face, he deserves praise for not trying to completely separate narrative and technique. Each has informed the other, and Linklater's gifts as a writer and director are what enable them to feel so seamless. And, in turn, it's what enables Boyhood to function as such an effortlessly compelling merger of art and life. The visual simplicity is wholly deceptive. This is an epic of both the biggest and smallest nature, one that is both a fully realized journey as well as but the first section of the complexity of life as a whole. Boyhood contains multitudes, and yet in Linklater's hands, feels like it's also just the first chapter in a masterful novel just waiting to be written.
Grade: A
Director: Richard Linklater
Runtime: 108 minutes
When one thinks of memorable film trilogies, the default answers are often of the epic variety. From The Godfather to The Lord of the Rings, the cinematic trilogy is often reserved for stories that aim for a sense of grandeur. Occasionally smaller films will merit a lone sequel, but you'd be hard pressed to find many noteworthy examples. However, with the release of Before Midnight, Richard Linklater's trilogy of conversation-led romances has cemented itself as one of the all-time greats, up there with those sprawling sagas about gangsters and hobbits.
Once again, Linklater turns his attention on Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jessie (Ethan Hawke). Yet where Before Sunrise and Before Sunset dealt with the couple's initial courtship, Midnight takes them into less blissful territory. Traces of the carefree students from the first film still remain, but, as the opening sequence shows us, time catches up with everyone. Jessie struggles to accept his fractured relationship with his son from his first marriage. Celine, on the other hand, struggles with how Jessie's actions are upsetting the otherwise stable nature of their current union, which includes two young girls. Celine and Jessie first met on a train, where they both had flexibility in their destinations. This time, however, the couple has to drive with their daughters in tow, always with some purpose or obligation, even on their vacation in Greece.
Even the opening conversations, which still have their share of charm and humor, seem mundane. It can be a little off-putting, but it ultimately makes sense. There's little in the way of discovery for these characters, now in their forties. Every now and then one of them digs up a story they had previously withheld, but it's still in the context of a relationship that has long left the honeymoon phase. Yet, despite the mundane quality of some of the film's early stretches, Linklater (along with Delpy and Hawke as co-writers) still has the ability to capture the central duo's relationship with equal doses of charm and honesty.
Despite the familiarity that came with Before Sunset, one could plausibly criticize the film as being almost the exact same as its predecessor. Celine and Jessie only had one day with each other before they reunited for the first time, which hardly makes for a dense relationship. With Before Midnight, however, Linklater has finally given his duo a chance to exist on screen after years together. Small pleasures remain, but they lack the freshness that came before. The couple used to try and discover things about each other. Now they muse about how intimately they know each other, warts and all. Less romantic? Certainly, but it's also more grounded and mature, which is entirely appropriate.
And despite all of the time that has passed, it's still a pleasure to watch these two interact. The biggest challenge of the series is that it's grounded in the interactions of two people (though Midnight does include some other couples in the first half). Yet while Celine and Jessie are feeling strain in their relationship, their one-on-one interactions are as dynamic as ever, even as they come tinged with bittersweetness, and even outright hostility. For the first time, we have to experience them deal with more legitimate problems of love and family, the kind that can do legitimate damage to a couple's relationship. The usual issues are scattered throughout the film - work vs. family, wants vs. needs, etc... - yet in the hands of Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke, their banality feels fresh. Even as the film takes the couple to their lowest emotional points, there remains a liveliness to both performances, even with the added years and lines on both actors' faces.
Before Midnight is possibly (I'm still not entirely certain) the weakest of the three films, yet it affords the two leads the room for their best performances. Framed often in long tracking shots, whether in the car or amid ancient Greek ruins, watching these two bounce off of each other has lost none of its appeal. The thornier emotional territory may put a damper on the pure charm of Sunrise and Sunset, but it also provides its own ample dramatic dividends. The most rewarding aspect of this trait is to see how Celine has taken on some of Jessie's personality (and vice versa), while still staying true to the character from the first two films. It doesn't quite reach the level of the searing conflicts in Blue Valentine or A Separation, but it doesn't really need to. Linklater has found a level of emotional strife that is perfectly in sync with the feel of the previous two films, as well as Celine and Jessie's on-screen chemistry.
Linklater's knack for pacing remains intact as well, and, barring the scenes with other couples present, Before Midnight remains as sharp and tight as the other two films. Though it runs close to 108 minutes, by the time the conclusion arrives it feels as though it's barely been more than an hour or so. To get a little nit-picky, Before Midnight might segue into its lovely conclusion almost too quickly. Given the nature of what precedes said ending, it feels as though a longer denouement is in store (and even required). In a story so beautifully handled over the course of three films (each roughly a decade apart), the choice to rush so suddenly into a finale creates a sense of narrative whiplash in an otherwise smooth ride that is well worth taking.
Grade: A-
