Joker (3/5 Stars)

Politically Correct Psycho Killer

Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver, once stated in an oral history of the movie:

“I had written the character of the pimp [that Harvel Keitel plays] as black, and we were told by Colombia we had to change it to a white guy because the lawyers were concerned “if we do this and Travis kills all those black people at the end, then we’re going to have a riot. And we’re going to be liable for this.”

Imagine for a moment that Taxi Driver had not cast Harvey Keitel as the pimp. That the movie instead had cast a black man and that Travis Bickle ends the movie by murdering that black man to save the thirteen-year-old prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Such a scenario would make sense for Travis Bickle’s character. He is a racist. That isn’t the end all be all of his personality, but it is there. He has a great disgust for the city he is living in (1970s New York) and black people are clearly a part of his disgust. If this detail were more overt, would anyone have had the guts to think of Taxi Driver as a great movie? Or would it have been completely overwhelmed by the political reaction? If Scorsese had made the decision to stick with the original plan in casting, would that have been an act of racism? Is it itself racist to make a good movie about a racist?

This kind of question is relevant now given the several controversies over the movie Joker, wherein the creators have been accused of providing a platform for incels and other kinds of gloomy white men to expound their hatred. Little do these critics know that they have already won the war. (Most have only seen the trailer). Joker preemptively self-censored itself. This gloomy white man named Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, only targets rich white men and ends up creating a protest movement against income inequality. Now, who could argue about that?

There is a strange disconnect in the setting of this movie. Everything looks like it takes place in the “bad old days” of New York. It is painted in the bad fashion, subway graffiti, and super rats of inner-city decay. There is even a very important scene that initiates Arthur Fleck on his journey to become the nihilistic arch-villain of Gotham. He is jumped on the subway, pulls a gun, and kills the men who attacked him. Does this remind you of anyone? Clearly, it is Bernie Goetz, the subway killer, reborn in movie form. In the early 1980s, this man shot four would-be muggers in a city subway and was lionized by a large section of the city who were also sick of getting mugged. Of course, the difference between Goetz and Arthur Fleck is that Goetz shot four black teenagers. Here, Arthur Fleck kills three drunk white wall street assholes.

I’m making a big deal about this because of what Joker is supposed to be: a gritty realistic origin story of a villain. It would make sense if the audience didn’t approve of the man’s motives and it would have made the movie far more weighty and interesting if the motives matched the environment being evoked. But it seems that the movie’s creators were too scared to make the character controversial out of concerns that certain critics wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the point of view of movie makers and characters within a movie. In effect, we have a movie that wants to instill a mood akin to great 1970s movies but lacks the emotional depth to actually do so. It’s like a player piano. It hits all the correct notes, but has no feeling. You won’t walk out of it unnerved like the way you felt when you watched Taxi Driver. It probably will make far more money though.

Joker contains a very good performance by Joaquin Phoenix, great production design, and an evocative score. It was directed by Todd Phillips, best known for comedies like Old School and The Hangover who shows that he can at least play the right notes in a drama. If anything, it is much better than all the recent D.C. comic fare. They ought to make more movies like this one, more character based and less effects driven. I only wish, well, that it wasn’t a comic book movie. That would be more interesting.

War Dogs (4/5 Stars)

Miles Teller does not understand why a twenty-something guy like him, who was a physical therapist a few months ago, is making a living running guns for the United States' war in Iraq. It’s like this, Jonah Hill, his childhood friend and current employer explains: Remember little league where at the end of the year they would only give out one trophy to the Most Valuable Player. Then one year a parent complained and so they had to start giving out trophies out to everyone. Even the fat retarded kid got a trophy. Well the Bush-Cheney people fucked up big. When Halliburton got all the big contracts for the Iraq War, all the other mid-range suppliers’ strarted screaming unfair. So now there is this website that anybody and I mean anybody can bid for contracts on and that’s how we are in this business.

“So you’re the fat retarded kid?” asks Miles.

“Dude, I’m the fattest and most retarded kid there is!” exclaims Jonah.

Such is the backdrop for this stranger-than-fiction tale from director Todd Phillips. Phillips, known as a comedy director (Old School, The Hangover) is expanding his creative scope here and make no mistake, although “War Dogs” has a lot of laughs, it is drama, and a very well made one at that.

The screenplay was co-written by Phillips and Steven Chin. Chin has an interesting story. In his young twenties he became interested in doing a story about two young arms runners in Iraq. So he went to Iraq to interview them and get their story rights. This story isn’t exactly about those two guys but Chin’s experiences, and his innate ability to understand the type of person who would go half way across the world on a whim in search of forturne, lends this story the its impressive amount of rich contextual detail.

There is nothing I like more than a story that is told by people who seem to really know what they are talking about. “War Dogs” is that type of movie. When Miles and Jonah (I’m writing this review so late that I have forgotten the names of the main characters) need to solve problems, they need to solve very specific ones. For instance, they have a contract to deliver a certain amount of Remington handguns to  a particular general in Iraq. The Italian legislature has just passed a bill outlawing the selling of arms to Iraq. So Miles and Jonah (under threat of never getting business again if they do not deliver) need to redirect their Italian handguns to Jordan, bribe the local officials, and then personally drive the hand guns through Anbar province to Baghdad.

When I speak of the power of details in strong action storytelling this is a good example. The nitty-gritty down to earth stuff lends suspense to a journey regular action blockbusters can’t deliver even with the help of giant robots and the destruction of entire cities. And you might learn something too like bribable soldiers like Marlboro cigarettes.

At its heart, “War Dogs” in is a story about a small business start-up and has all the hallmarks of the trials and tribulation of a good business tale. It has unpaid subcontractors, personal disputes between partners, the joy of success, and the business deal that goes wrong and then goes really wrong. This movie could maybe have been made about any small business but it says a lot about movies, and storytelling in general, that business movies are generally only about two types of businesses: Drugs and Guns. Businesses are perhaps inherently boring or put another way, if they go well, should be boring and so most businesses in movies generally have outside action to enliven the experience of them. How many times have you seen a movie about a bank robber? And how many times have you seen a movie about a bank manager that operates a bank efficiently and competently? That's my point.

As a member of a two man small business, it was fun for me to see a movie like this with my employer. It felt very right. I mean besides the fact that Jonah, the boss in the movie, is a sociopath. My boss isn’t like that. That's obvious enough. I'm not sure why I even mentioned it.

However, going back to Jonah Hill. He is great in this movie. There are certain actors that can really stretch a performance to hit as many notes as possible and in this movie there is not a scene that Jonah is not doing something interesting or funny in it. It is odd that I need to say this next thing given that he already has two Oscar nominations, but Jonah Hill is a great actor with considerable range. Given his girth, there is really not so many other actors like him that can fully supersede the comedy genre and become full-fledged dramatic actors. But he can do it and I look forward to see him do it for a while in the future. (On an irrelevant note: He has successfully gained back the entirety of the weight he impressively lost over the past couple years. That's too bad. I bet he's really struggling about it.)

Bradley Cooper also shows up as a heavy dramatic presence in this movie. It is a role I haven’t seen him play before but he does a good job at being scary enough. My favorite line, “I am not a bad man, but in my line of business, I sometimes have to ask myself: what would a bad man do?”

The Hangover: Part II (2/5 Stars)

“10: The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.”

- Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

Comedy happens when somebody gets exactly what they deserve. Tragedy happens when bad things befall good people. If you do not have the ability to grasp this very simple basic difference than you might just be one of the makers of “The Hangover: Part 2,” a movie that discards nearly everything that made Part I a superior comedy and leaves behind a mess of awkwardness, unpleasantness, and a story that, if it took place in the real world, would be really sad.

The original conceit of the first Hangover movie was nothing short of brilliant. Four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning, Alan (played by Zach Galifinakis), Stu (played by Ed Helms), and Phil (played by Bradley Cooper) wake up in a trashed hotel room with disastrous hangovers. The groom is missing and nobody can remember where they lost him. But there are several clues around: a hospital band, a receipt from an ATM, a tiger, a chicken, a baby, and a police car. The rest of the movie concerns the three trying to piece together the mystery and meeting many different comic characters along the way. “The Hangover: Part II” follows this formula but in a vastly inferior way. This time it is Stu getting married. The wedding is taking place in Thailand. A couple of nights before the wedding, the four guys plus the bride’s 16-year-old nephew, Terry, have one beer by a campfire. Stu, Alan, and Phil wake-up the next morning with disastrous hangovers in a vagrant apartment in Bangkok and Terry is missing. But instead of a multitude of clues there is but two, a monkey and a severed finger. Both are dead ends and don’t lead to anything. In fact, whenever a clue or lead is finally brought to light it is usually entirely explored in the very next scene. Thus, there is very little mystery to Part II and that is a huge problem both in terms of the movie’s pace and comedy.

One of the more brilliant things about the first movie’s structure was the way it efficiently set up subplots. A clue was shown at the beginning and this gave the movie an excuse to switch tracks from one comic situation to another via some hilarious shock moments. Some good examples are the cops busting into a room, Mike Tyson waiting for the guys in their hotel room, or an Asian gang purposefully ramming the guys’ car. These moments don't exist in Part II because nothing is ever set up. So instead of quick comical transitions we are left with the guys walking around in depressed moods to locations that seem arbitrarily chosen. This movie isn't nearly as intelligent nor as interesting to watch unfold.

But this wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem if the movie were funny. And this is where “The Hangover Part II” inexplicably fails consistently. For one thing, all the characters have turned into jerks. The most notable transformation is Alan. What was a very funny weird but well-meaning oddball in the first movie has turned into a total asshole. He is mean to his parents, his friends, and most notably to Terry, who hasn’t done anything to deserve all the insults. This isn't funny. It's awkward. Generally speaking, a movie should make the audience like the good people in the story and dislike the bad. That way the movie is enjoyable when good stuff happens to the good people and bad stuff happens to the bad. (You would think that this would go without saying). But here there is no difference between the good and bad. They are all assholes. This goes for all the side characters in the sub-plots as well. Where Part I had some variability in the types of people the guys met (like say sweetheart Mike Tyson, heart of gold hooker Heather Graham, macho cop Rob Riggle, the annoyed doctor, etc.) everyone in Part II seems to be slightly different versions of the same jerk. The tattoo guy is a jerk. The Buddhist Monks are jerks. The drug dealers are jerks. The father-in-law is a jerk. The crime boss, played by Paul Giamatti, is a huge snarling screaming jerk. Nobody seems to be having any fun. Even the flashbacks of the night before don't show anybody having fun. The one exception is Mr. Chow, played once again by Ken Jeong, and he’s dead for half the movie. The story takes place almost entirely in a dank cesspool of inner city Bangkok. Everything is the color of puke. The funniest lines are spoken by Alan and these are mostly non-sequitors. You know a comedy is in trouble when the best jokes are funny precisely because they have nothing to do with the storyline.

The director Todd Phillips has always been very skilled at casting groups of comedians with different comic styles (Road Trip, Old School, Starsky and Hutch). In the first Hangover he hit the motherlode with the oddball Galifinakis, the neurotic Helms, and the laid back Bradley Cooper. The three played off each other very well. This was especially true whenever things would get too crazy. At that point the movie could depend on Cooper to be a relaxing agent. They wake up in a trashed hotel room. “Looks like we had a bit of fun last night,” Cooper wryly remarks, hardly worried. A valet brings around a cop car instead of their Rolls Royce. Cooper volunteers to drive it, not missing a beat. In Part II, this dynamic falls apart completely and the main reason is that Cooper can’t realistically be a relaxing agent without sounding like an uncaring asshole. The situations the guys find themselves in are far too serious. Do you understand the comedic difference between getting tasered as a punishment for stealing a cop car as opposed to getting shot for no reason whatsoever? Do you understand the difference between a very bad sunburn and a permanent face tattoo? Or how about the difference between cheating on an unfaithful shrew of a girlfriend by accidentally marrying Heather Graham as opposed to cheating on your faultless fiancé via sodomy with a transvestite prostitute? If you do, then I would argue you have a much keener understanding of what is funny and what is not than the makers of this movie. There is a very telling scene in this movie as far as the audience’s laughter level in the theater with me was concerned. It dealt with Stu’s father-in-law giving a toast. It starts with a couple of insults at Stu’s expense, which the audience definitely laughed at. It goes on for several more insults, each one drawing less laughter than the one before. And then the toast just keeps on going for much longer than the movie needed to make absolutely clear that the father-in-law isn’t telling jokes at all. Instead, he is expressing outright hatred of his son-in-law and maliciously intends to humiliate him in front of his bride to be, his entire family, and all his friends. By the end of the toast, the audience had stopped laughing. It wasn’t funny. It was just really fucking mean. 

The Hangover Part II has made so much money already that I’m sure there is more than enough financial incentive to make Part III. I am of the belief that Part III could still be very funny if it stayed competently faithful to the formula of the first movie. The first step I would think is to hire back the original writers, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and fire the hacks they hired to write this one.

The Hangover (5/5 Stars) June 18, 2009

To watch The Hangover is to witness the manifestation of a perfectly conceived comedic idea brought to full flower in a perfect comedy and also, perhaps, a couple of breakout performances that may turn some of these dudes, particularly Ed Helms and Zach Gallifinakas, into legitimate stars.
The writers of The Hangover, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, probably uncorked a bottle of champagne and lit up a couple of cigars the moment they thought up just the concept of this movie. The must have known they had just hit the mother lode. Four buddies head to Vegas for a bachelor’s party two days before one of them gets hitched. Fast-forward to the next morning when three of them wake up in their trash-strewn suite and Doug, the one getting married, is nowhere to be found. Not one of them remembers a thing after they took Jaeger shots on the roof of the hotel the night before, although the tall handsome one (Bradley Cooper picking up a hefty load as the straight man) remarks that the place looks like they had a great time. They find clues that include a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, a hospital wristband, and an enraged Japanese gang among several other things that are too funny to give away. As Ed Helms says, “What is Going On!??!?!!” and yes that is correctly punctuated. 
The genius of this story is that it provides so much opportunity for jokes. From the beginning, the clever idea that anything can happen when one is wasted gives the writers the ability to insert crazy side characters and incredibly wacky subplots at all points of the story with very little needed context. There’s a buck-naked Japanese gang lord in the trunk of the car and he’s pissed off and wielding a crowbar. Sure I believe that, as Mike Tyson wisely intones, “People do weird shit when they’re fucked up.” On top of all this the characters themselves are well written. Phil, played by Bradley Cooper, is perhaps the leader. He rolls with the punches, doesn’t freak out too much, and keeps their course straight unless he’s personally getting them into more trouble, like say, driving on the sidewalk. Stu, played by Ed Helms, is a neurotic dentist with a girlfriend who’s a bitch (She thinks he’s in Napa, because she wouldn’t allow him to go to Vegas). He is certainly the most articulate about how horrible everything is (He is paying for everything himself). This is Ed Helms first major film role and here he is given free rein to go all out. He spends most of the movie in a state of frenzied delirium. Rounding out the trio of misfits is Alan, played by Zach Gallifinakis aka ‘Fat Jesus,’ the brother of the Doug’s fiance. He’s tagging along because he’s the type of person that “social interaction would be good for.” He doesn’t need booze to say weird shit. As far as I can tell he's some sort of Rain Man Retarded, but in a hilarious way. It’s probably helped the movie a lot that none of these guys are stars, because the level playing field between them gives each the ability to support each other’s shine through moments in the script. And there are a lot of shine through moments.
This idea is so good, the structure is so accommodating, the characters so well-developed, and the actors so perfectly cast that as soon as the story is setup in the 1st fifteen minutes before they take those jaeger shots the rest of the movie is an hour and a half of punch line followed by punch line followed by punch line followed by punch line. Every scene is funny, every joke works, not one scene falls flat. The Hangover is the best film I have seen so far this year.
Comedy isn’t easy. Making people laugh for over two hours is a hard thing to do. A good comedy is hard to come by. A great comedy (and by that I mean a movie that succeeds at making people laugh at least every thirty seconds while providing an original and meaningful storyline) is something special to behold. If Comedy got any respect this movie would be seeing nominations come awards time. I suggest one for Best Original Screenplay and perhaps another for Ed Helms for Best Supporting Actor. 
The Director Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip, Starsky and Hutch) isn’t the most technically proficient guy but he does have some of the best cameos. Remember that curly haired guy with the glasses who gets caught giving head in the elevator. Yeah, that’s him.