review

you may have been asking yourself where are pat’s reviews of the films he has seen? could it be that i haven’t been going to the cinema? hell no, my name’s is not paul.
in fact i have been a bit of a cinematic busy buzzy bee. have seen several movies of varying quality.
the best of the bunch has to have been “good night and good luck”, george clooney’s sumptuous look at the mccarthy communist trials of the 50s. although dealing with an important part of american history clooney chooses to deal with it on an intimate level by focusing in on edward murrow and his attack on the methods employed by mccarthy. the acting is all top notch. it is a joy to watch.
unsurprisingly i am going to say that “lucky number slevin” is also a good film, but then how can a film with bruce willis and lucy liu in it fail. it is a slick double triple cross movie, it has some strong performances from josh hartnett (never thought i would say that!), sir ben kingsley and morgan freeman. as ever with these sorts of films it has the stylised story telling and dialogue. hartnett plays slevin who looks like he is being set up to act as a hired killer. my interest in the film never waned as it moved from one complication to another for the hartnett character. the one real problem with the film is that you know fairly soon on how it is going to play out, the joy is seeing how it gets to the obvious conclusion. one of the problems though is that in “selling” the dummy to the audience we have “see” things that don’t really happen and are made up, while not a huge failing it is one of those moments when you go “oh that didn’t work”. all in all though a strong film.
spike lee’s “the inside man” is another of those films where a central part of it doesn’t work. it’s a heist hostage style movie, but not in the same quality bracket as “dog day afternoon” and “taking of pelham 123”. it is a fairly straight forward film in terms of the plot – bank robbery is turned into a hostage situation, there is something in the bank that someone wants to keep secret, the robbers are one step ahead of the police, and someone other than the police is trying to get a resolution. the structure of the film includes some flash forwards to the aftermath of the robbery, which gives away the fact that they get away with it, but that is not exactly a surprise.
again this is a film that is easily watchable because of its lead actor, denzil washington. washington, as ever, is so easy on the eye that you don’t notice him acting. and i have to say jodie foster is looking fine in her advancing years. i have never really been a fan of spike lee (even though he is a big basketball fan) and this isn’t a film that is going to convert me to him. the action is not well handled and some of the shots to make it look like it is an action film look forced and unnecessary. where lee makes the film work is in the moments between the characters. even some of the minor characters are given their moment to shine under his direction. there are several problems with the film, especially at the end (and don’t read until you see @@@@@@@@@@ if you don’t want to know the ending….)

the heist is basically a document proving that the owner of the bank got his money from dealing with the nazis, plus his own personal stash of diamonds taken from jews by the nazis. this fact alone seems to be able to absolve the robbers of any guilt in what they are doing (where in fact it make s them not much better than the original thief). there is never an indication of how they came by the information about the document and the diamonds (as we are told there is no record of the safety deposit box they are in and it seems that they have been there since the bank was built…) for all of the posturing of honesty and how bad it is to use nazi diamonds it seems that denzil’s character isn’t above using one that he has been “given” for a wedding ring (its all right he has done his bit by making sure “the man” gets into trouble the diamonds), the just so happens to be arriving at the bank as the same time the master criminal is making his escape (even though it is several days later), he fact that the swat team seem ready to have the technology to create bugs for the pizza cartons but seem incapable of recognising that they are listening to a recording and not actual conversation.

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add those plot points to a film that is perhaps a little too long you have a bit of a missed opportunity. worth a look, but not great.