Inside Man

Year 2, Day 202 - 7/21/10 - Movie #570

BEFORE: Plane info - check. Laptop computer and headphones, so I can watch DVDs - check. 5 Star Wars-themed novelty T-shirts, check. 2 Hawaiian shirts, check. Cell phone charger (very important), check. Socks, baseball caps, toothbrush, deodorant - check, check. Books and newspaper to read on the plane - check. Damn, I wish I could remember what I'm forgetting...

THE PLOT: A cop has to talk down a bank robber after the criminal's perfect heist spirals into a hostage situation.

AFTER: This is a twisty little bank heist movie, one you need to pay close attention to in order to figure out what's going on. The bank robbers dress all their hostages in blue hazmat suits and masks, similar to the ones they're wearing themselves, with a plan to completely confound the hostages and also the police. The tense drama plays out, as the bank's owner takes steps to protect the mysterious contents of a safe deposit box inside the bank.

Denzel Washington's Detective Frazier pulls double duty - he has to deal with the bank robbers during the hostage situation, and then he has to interview all of the hostages afterwards, to figure out exactly what happened. The two timelines are interwoven, so we learn more about the plan as it plays out, and as the detectives figure it out after the fact.

It's an ingenious plan, and a well-structured film, directed by Spike Lee - and very different from his other films... This is about as close to the "perfect" bank robbery as I've ever seen portrayed on film, but there are schemes within schemes, and other concerns beyond simple robbery - to say any more would give it away.

Also starring Clive Owen (last seen in "Children of Men"), Jodie Foster (last seen in...um, "Taxi Driver"?), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "American Gangster"), Christopher Plummer (last heard in "Up"), Willem Dafoe, Ken Leung (from "Oz" and "Lost") and Darryl Mitchell (last seen in "Lucky Numbers").

RATING: 7 out of 10 pizzas

The Siege

Year 2, Day 201 - 7/20/10 - Movie #569

BEFORE: One more film, then I'll finish packing - yesterday I half-filled my suitcase with the office supplies and promo materials I'll need in San Diego, then stood there wondering what I was forgetting to pack, and I was drawing a complete blank. You'd think I'd never done this before...

From a film about a federal anti-narcotics squad, to a film about a federal anti-terrorism squad. Let's get back to a more heroic Denzel Washington...

THE PLOT: The secret US abduction of a suspected terrorist sparks a wave of terrorist attacks in New York that lead to the declaration of martial law.

AFTER: I was reminded today that the anniversary of 9/11 is coming up - and I think I'll be in the middle of an entirely different chain of films then, so let's just say I'm honoring the event early, OK? Although this film was made in 1998, it's uncanny how accurate this film was - of course, they were probably riffing off of the earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 (I happened to be one block away from it at the time...). But if you substitute planes for a van, and the WTC for 1 Federal Plaza, this film pretty much hit the mark, 3 years in advance.

It's also a look at how federal agents operated, prior to the passing of the USA Patriot Act. (or as I like to call it, the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act"). This is pre-waterboarding, pre-Abu Ghraib prison, etc. So Denzel Washington's character, FBI Agent Anthony Hubbard, is actually concerned about suspects' rights, and naively believes that you can negotiate with terrorists - though he soon learns that's unlikely.

At some points, the FBI and the U.S. Army seem to be working at cross purposes, which actually seems quite believable - the feds are apprehending a suspect inside a building, while the army is trying to blow the same building to pieces. What the film also gets right is the impact of a terrorist event - the cancellation of sporting events, the rounding up of Muslims, the trampling of civil rights, and the moral quandaries that surround the interrogation (torture) of prisoners.

There were a few twists that were a little hard for me to follow, like I didn't get why Annette Bening's character seemed to change her name halfway through the picture - but for the most part this was a good, gripping storyline.

Also starring Bruce Willis (I wish I'd known that, I'd have paired this film with "Live Free or Die Hard"...), Tony Shalhoub (last seen in "A Civil Action"), Lance Reddick (from "Oz" and "The Wire"), David Proval (best known as Richie Aprile from "The Sopranos") and Aasif Mandvi (future correspondent for "The Daily Show").

RATING: 7 out of 10 sleeper cells

American Gangster

Year 2, Day 200 - 7/19/10 - Movie #568

BEFORE: Three hours long? This movie is three hours? What movie besides "Gone With the Wind" has any right to be that long? Jeez, I'm supposed to be packing for San Diego, my plane leaves in about 48 hours, and after this film I still need to watch 2 more before I go! I think I might have made a critical mistake in scheduling this movie right before my trip.

THE PLOT: In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East.

AFTER: Tonight's film is a bit of a twist in the chain, since Denzel Washington doesn't play a cop in this one, he plays the title gangster role, Frank Lucas. The lead cop, Richie Roberts, is played by Russell Crowe, and this is apparently based on a true story. (Washington and Crowe co-starred together before, in a film called "Virtuosity", with Washington playing the hero role and Crowe as the villain...)

As with "Training Day", this film seems to be all about contrasts - the different lives that the two men lead, the drug kingpin who lives in the lap of luxury, and the divorced cop barely making ends meet. While Frank Lucas is enjoying a Thanksgiving feast with his extended family, Richie Roberts is making a tuna sandwich.

There's another contrast established between Roberts, the honest-to-a-fault New Jersey cop, and Det. Trupo, the slick, well-dressed New York City cop from "Special Investigations", who wants to get paid by Lucas for not investigating him. Trupo and Roberts are set up as polar opposites, both working to get at Lucas, but in different ways. Roberts wants Lucas behind bars, and Trupo wants to leave his "cash cow" alone.

Lucas has a scheme to take advantage of America's involvement in Vietnam to get purer heroin smuggled into the U.S., and Roberts becomes part of the first Federal Narcotics investigation squad, eventually discovering that Lucas is the "mystery man" behind the sudden rise of more potent drugs on the NYC streets. It takes months of surveillance to identify Lucas's underlings, and to find one in enough trouble to flip and give them a way to take down Lucas.

And unfortunately, these months of surveillance are represented by an almost three-hour running time. I'd usually suggest that any movie over two hours probably could be trimmed down, but this is an epic story, covering years of crime and investigation, the rise and fall of a crimelord, so I'm hard pressed to find a place where the story could be simplified.

Once Lucas is eventually arrested, I at first thought that Lucas and Roberts were a little too chummy, working together to identify and arrest corrupt police officers - if Lucas is a gangster, why does Roberts believe all of his accusations against the cops? I guess they turned out to be true, and Lucas and Roberts did end up forming a friendship - Roberts eventually became a public defender, and took Lucas on as a client.

There are references here to the "French Connection" case - I do have that film on my list, but I'm planning to watch it next month, along with other drug-related films like "Blow" and "The Falcon and the Snowman". I'll stick with the Denzel Washington cop films, even if I have to watch two of them tomorrow - maybe I can fit another movie in early Wednesday morning, before I head out to the airport.

Also starring Josh Brolin (last seen in "No Country For Old Men"), John Hawkes (last seen in "The Perfect Storm"), Ted Levine (most famous for TV's "Monk" and also "The Silence of the Lambs"), Carla Gugino (last seen in "Michael"), Cuba Gooding Jr. (last seen in "Men of Honor"), Armand Assante, Ruby Dee (last seen in "Jungle Fever"), Joe Morton, Common, Clarence Williams III (last seen in "The General's Daughter"), and character actors Jon Polito (last seen in "Blankman") and Roger Bart.

RATING: 6 out of 10 search warrants

Training Day

Year 2, Day 199 - 7/18/10 - Movie #567

BEFORE: Sticking in Los Angeles for this film that won Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar - so expectations are high.

THE PLOT: On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears to be.

AFTER: Well, after playing cops that were falsely accused of all kinds of things this week, Denzel finally plays an actual dirty cop. See, if you wanted an Oscar, that's all you had to do... I think he probably got the nomination and the award because the character is so complex. Easy Rawlins and the "Mighty" Xavier Quinn are pretty one-note, by comparison.

The movie follows the first day of rookie police officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) on the undercover narcotics beat, who is under the supervision of Det. Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). But Hoyt (and the viewer) quickly learns that this is not your typical beat-cop situation, when Alonzo forces Hoyt to smoke some weed after a drug bust. He explains that a narcotics cop might find himself in situations where he has to sample the product, or at least be familiar with it, and in a weird way, this almost makes sense. Hoyt is at first worried about failing drug tests, but Alonzo says that exceptions are made for undercover cops - which again, seems to make some kind of backwards sense.

But as the day wears on, we see that Alonzo is engaged in all manner of illicit activities - payoffs, illegal searches, excessive violence against suspects - and all that's before lunch! He seems to have an answer for it all, explaining that the world of narcotics is not all black and white, and that complicated steps have to be taken to reach the upper levels of the drug trade. He's almost charming enough to make Hoyt (and the audience) believe him. I'm sure working an undercover beat is more complicated than my job, but I'd like to think it's a little more cut-and-dry than this.

My bone of contention comes with the ending - after explaining for most of the film how complicated the narcotics beat is, in the end it turns out to be pretty simple - black hat vs. white hat, dirty cop vs. honest cop, good vs. evil. Were we right in the first place, thinking that it's easy to tell right from wrong? Or did someone write a complicated screenplay and find themselves unable to come up with a nuanced ending?

And about that black vs. white stuff - the evil cop is African-American, and the noble rookie cop is Caucasian. Is that maybe a little simplistic, or even racist? It's a little hard to get a read on what exactly the message of the film is, with so many ethical lines crossed during the course of the film. Is it OK for the cops to break rules in order to collar crooks? There's an essay question...

Also starring Eva Mendes (last seen in "Out of Time"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Right Stuff"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "10,000 B.C.") with cameos from Tom Berenger, Harris Yulin (last seen in "The Hurricane", also with Denzel), Snoop Dogg (last seen in "Starsky & Hutch), Dr. Dre and Macy Gray.

RATING: 7 out of 10 bullet holes

Devil in a Blue Dress

Year 2, Day 198 - 7/17/10 - Movie #566

BEFORE: From hot, sunny Jamaica days we move to hot, sultry L.A. nights -

THE PLOT: An African-American private detective is hired to find a woman and gets mixed up in a murderous political scandal.

AFTER: Set back in the L.A. of 1948 - a city that was still culturally segregated in many ways. Like "Get Shorty", this was the first film featuring an author's long-running hero - Denzel Washington plays Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, star of several books by Walter Mosley. But I guess this one didn't catch on as a series, or else Hollywood just never got around to filming any more.

It's too bad, since it's got a unique perspective, telling a tale of a black man in the 40's - who has a mortgage and debts, and is therefore forced to take jobs he may not want, much like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe or other classic film detectives. In this case he's hired by a man representing a white mayoral candidate, to go into the underground black club scene to find a missing woman.

Unfortunately there were a few too many characters in this film, and the plot was a little too twisty, making it a little hard to follow. I'm not sure if the fault lies with me or with the filmmakers, but I guess I would have liked a little more explanation of how the missing woman was tied to the mayoral race. And the big reveal didn't seem that shocking to me, I guess it would have been more of a scandal back in 1948.

But just like in "Out of Time" and "Fallen", Denzel's character can't seem to solve a crime without getting mixed up in everything and implicated for murder himself...I guess that's a fairly common motif in crime movies, but it's odd to see it turn up three times this week.

Also starring Tom Sizemore (last seen in "Passenger 57"), Don Cheadle (last seen in "The Meteor Man"), Jennifer Beals (last seen in "Flashdance"), Terry Kinney (most famous for being on HBO's "Oz"), Lisa Nicole Carson (most famous for being on "Ally McBeal"), and character actor Maury Chaykin (last seen in..."Twins", I think.)

Update the board - 4 days left on the Comic-Con countdown clock...

RATING: 5 out of 10