BEFORE: Well, since "The Core" featured a group of heroes getting in a vessel and setting off to save the planet, this is as good a time as any to start thinking about "Avengers: Endgame", and that means imposing a week's worth of radio silence, because I don't want to hear anything (more) about the plot from now until next Monday. I'm only going to go on Facebook and Twitter long enough to tweet my daily link to my review, or for work stuff. It's not going to be easy.
I already feel I know too much about "Endgame" just because I read the "Infinity Gauntlet" mini-series years ago (now available in trade paperback) and "Infinity War" really only told HALF of that story, so if they stay true at all to the comic books, then I already feel like I know (some of) what's going to happen, and that's too much right there. Of course, they may put a new twist on things, they don't HAVE to follow the storyline of the comic, so therefore, it's radio silence for me. Maybe I should re-watch "Infinity War" this coming weekend to prepare, if there's time, but that's it - I want to go in to "Endgame" as clueless as possible. The chatter is going to be EVERYWHERE in just a few days.
Today I'm watching the last film of six in the Bruce Greenwood chain - he's in one more film on my list, but I need that film to make a connection in June, so I'll have to circle back to that one. And today's film also has Bradley Cooper in it, and he's scheduled to be my lead-in link to "Avengers: Endgame", but I've also separated THIS film from the other Bradley Cooper films, and I'll follow a different link tonight, which allows me to fit in three more films before getting back to Bradley Cooper. It's all part of the plan - if I'm going to link all the films from January to July this year, this is how it's got to be.
THE PLOT: A motorcycle stunt rider turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his newborn son, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop navigating a department ruled by a corrupt detective.
AFTER: It's very helpful if you check Wikipedia after watching a film, I've found. The title of this film comes from the translation (from Mohawk) of the name of Schenectady, New York, where this film takes place. This is an epic crime story of sorts, depicting two generations of two separate families in that city, connected by a combination of tragedy and, let's say, random chance. The point is to depict how moral decisions that people make have repercussions that can last for decades, and this cause-and-unintended-effect can be either good or bad, depending. Mostly bad, though.
And the film is sort of neatly divided into three parts, and although they're connected, there are different central characters to each section, so one character might be the focus of one part, and then the storyline sort of shifts because of a key event, and then follows a different character for the second part, with very good reason, that is to say, motivated by the story. I can't recall ever seeing a film with a structure like this before - the closest might be something like "Pulp Fiction", where we know (eventually) that all of the characters are part of the same world and end up connecting/colliding with each other, but the connections are spread out and tossed to us like so many non-linear bread crumbs - and putting it all together can become a lot like putting the piece of bread back together from those crumbs.
But Hallelujah, this film plays out in proper linear fashion - though I'm sure there was probably a temptation for some screenwriter (or editor) to chop this film up into bits and toggle between the three time periods - start with the climax, the most important moment with the characters clashing, and then jump back to the past for a bit of Luke's story, then flash forward to Avery the cop's story, then flash way forward to two teenagers, AJ and Jason, and show how they met, without revealing anything about how AJ and Jason are connected to Luke and Avery. I'm really, really glad that they chose to not do this, because it's silly, trendy and ultimately a gimmick that makes the audience work too hard to piece the story together. If the story is strong enough, you don't need to do this at all, we'll see the similarities between THIS character in the past and THAT character 15 years later, and since the past happens before the future, as it should, guess what - all the mysteries of the future are preserved this way. Just as the characters don't know what's going to happen to them, then neither do we.
If there is, let's say, a shooting, and we see it quickly before flashing back to the events that led up to the shooting, we the audience are going to spend the next hour wondering about the shooting - who shot who? And why? How did this come about, how did those two characters end up in the same room together? It's OK, we're going to get there, it's not worth bending the rules of time and space just to tease the audience and keep them wondering. If the story is strong enough, there should be plenty of dramatic tension as is, without monkeying with the time stream. For example, Luke gets the bright idea to rob banks, then speed away on a motorbike, and together with his partner in crime, they come up with an idea to make the motorbike essentially vanish, a few blocks away from the bank. But the situation is filled with tension - how many robberies can he pull off? At what point are the cops going to figure out how he manages to disappear every time? How long can his luck hold out? See, right there, I'm on the edge of my seat.
In Avery's section, he's a rookie cop rising through the ranks after getting involved in a high-profile case. But he finds that the criminals don't have anything on the cops, who search people's homes without warrants, keeping whatever they find and also helping themselves to whatever they might enjoy from the evidence room. This puts Avery in a terrible position, if he reports the corruption he's seen, then he's a rat and his life is in danger, but if he doesn't report it, then he's complicit and the other cops know they can take advantage of him. It's a lose-lose situation.
Finally, the third section, about those two high-school students, picks up loose threads from both previous sections and sort of ties them together, in a half-elegant way. By this time, Avery is no longer a cop, but he's running for office. And AJ is his son, who wants to move back home and live with his father, but really he just wants to skip school, get stoned, party and get other people to buy drugs for him. He finds a kindred spirit in Jason, another burn-out student at school, but it becomes a love-hate relationship, because AJ can't just be friends with someone, at the same time he's also interested in what that person can do for him. He sort of never looks past the present situation, or considers any of the ramifications of things. AJ and Jason are like oil and water, they're capable of coming together to accomplish things (even if those things aren't exactly legal), but chemically they can't stay together for long, they're destined to separate.
I like that there were a lot of morally gray areas here - there's still right and wrong in terms of legal and illegal, but "moral" is a lot trickier. Like Luke robbing banks to get money for his son - he's doing the wrong thing, but a little bit for the right reasons. Avery comes to regard his heroic action as anything but, because taking down a criminal HERE also leaves a young boy without a father over THERE. And if you take a corrupt cop down, that still removes a cop from the street and gives a bad reputation to the whole force. And by the time we get to the second generation, who even knows what's right or wrong any more? Echoes of good and bad deeds are still bouncing off of each other and the characters involve may no longer even know which way is up.
I have to say that Ben Mendelsohn was a real acting standout here - I only really know him from "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and "Ready Player One", and in both of those films he played the smooth, evil corporate character - so I'd pretty much typecasted him that way in my mind, because he was so good at that. But here he plays a rural upstate NY dirtbag, and one who's really rough and fairly unsure of himself - so I had trouble convincing myself that was the same actor, even.
Also starring Ryan Gosling (last seen in 'Blade Runner 2019"), Bradley Cooper (last heard in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Eva Mendes (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Dane DeHaan (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"), Emory Cohen (last seen in "War Machine"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "The Meddler"), Mahershala Ali (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Harris Yulin (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Robert Clohessy (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Olga Merediz (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Gabe Fazio, Joe B. McCarthy, Jefrey Pollock, Michael Cullen (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs").
RATING: 6 out of 10 carnival rides
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