Nothing To Get Excited About

1. "Imaginary Heroes". A seemingly normal suburban family hides a seething core of hatred, resentment and pain. One of their sons has just died, and another son blames himself for his death, retreating into his own private world. The mother has responded by becoming a cold, bitter shell of a person, and the father genuinely cares and means well, but is too innefectual to really help. Yes, folks, it's a re-release of "Ordinary People"... what? You say it isn't? It's a NEW movie called "Imaginary Heroes"? Well, you can't blame me for making that mistake!

For all practical purposes, "Imaginary Heroes" really is a remake of "Ordinary People", with the roles originally played by Timothy Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland taken by Emile Hirsch, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels, respectively. Some remarkably creative films have come about from variations on themes others have used before, but in those cases SOME new element or perspective has been added. Not here, folks.

Hirsch has been quite effective in films like "The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys" and "The Emperor's Club", but here he just sulks and mopes for two hours. Daniels settles for playing a dramatic version of the same hapless loser he usually plays for laughs, and Michelle Williams, formerly of "Dawson's Creek", plays the family's estranged daughter so listlessly you might start to wonder whether her charming turn in 2003's "The Station Agent" was a fluke. The only major performance with anything to recommend it is Weaver's... stuck in a role that's really just Mary Tyler Moore redux (mixed with a little bit of her character from "The Ice Storm"), she manages to find layers of complexity in her under-written character that make her more than just a cardboard villain... she loves her family, she hates her family, she wants the world to go away, she wants to be part of it... you have no trouble believing her character is torn so many ways she isn't sure what she feels, except that what she feels is intense, as is the complexity of your response to her. But is that enough to recommend a movie? I'm afraid not... particularly when its early promise of at least being realistic and not backing off from unpleasant truths vanishes like smoke and plot threads are resolved in a manner that has more in common with an episode of some weekly TV family drama.

There is no reason that stories of dysfunctional families should all fall into the same predictable rut. After all, Tolstoy once wrote that unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way. That ought to at least allow for the possibility of a couple of original movies on this subject to have come along since "American Beauty" back in 1999. But as wise as Tolstoy normally was, a viewing of "Imaginary Heroes" might be enough to make you question that wisdom in this one case.

2. "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior". A lot of people are still pining for the days of the Kung Fu movies of the early 1970's, when there was no wire work or special effects, every stunt performed by a character really WAS performed by the actor, and every punch and kick landed with such brutal impact that you almost felt your own bones breaking. They're tired of poetic martial arts movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", or comedy variations like the films of Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow. Well, I yield to very few in my fondness for Hong Kong action and martial arts, but I'm not one of those people. I like a bit of style with my martial arts, some sense that a character has learned a real discipline and isn't just smashing their enemies' bones into powder. And there's very little style in "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior."

Heavily promoted as a successor to Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan, this Thai import stars Tony Jaa. he plays Ting, a resident of a small Thai village whose sacred Buddha, which the town relies on to bring them good fortune, has had its head cut off and taken to Bangkok where it will be sold by a criminal gang. Ting promises that he will go to Bangkok and use his amazing fighting skills to retrieve the head of the Buddha (known as Ong-Bak) even if it costs his own life... or that of seemingly half the people he meets.

An action movie CAN still have an actual plot... it's not COMPLETELY impossible... but the makers of this film don't seem to know that. After Ong-Bak's head is stolen and taken to the city, Ting follows and catches up with the thieves almost as soon as he gets there. This is only about 20 or 25 minutes into a one hour, 50 minute film. But does he just attack them and either triumph of suffer defeat right then and there? Of course not... not when it's possible to have another 85 to 90 minutes of non-stop chase scenes, stunts and brutal combat designed for no purpose other than to stretch the story out to feature length. Sounds great, you say? A lot of classic martial arts films have been little more than stunts and fights with minimal plot? Well, yes... but those stunts have been designed with stunning imagination, and the fights
choreographed to make them works of art along the lines of a more hostile Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire. "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior", on the other hand, gives us almost two hours of ultra-violent, bone crushing brutality with no art involved at all. Again, there are people who are genuinely nostalgic for that sort of thing, and if you're one of them, knock yourself out (so to speak). BUT...

Aside from the sheer wearing, relentless thud and blunder, this film also takes that old martial arts movie standby, the action scene shown from from two or even three different cameras and points of view, one at a time, and doesn't just run it into the ground, but runs it so FAR into the ground that it comes out on the other side of the world. This technique can be dazzling when used sparingly (as in Jackie Chan's "Project A"), but when virtually every single blow of every single fight scene in the entire movie goes through that process, it wears out its welcome faster than Jet Li's "No Shadow Kick." And haven't there been WAY, WAY too many martial arts movies filled with scenes of one-on-one combat in an illegal, underground "fight club"? I thought this kind of thing went out of style when Jean-Claude Van Damme's movies finally started going direct to video, but now here it is again!

Tony Jaa himself is a remarkable fighter and athlete, capable of performing feats that will take your breath away (in the case of his opponents, literally). But he deserves better than this rehash of a movie. Of course, Jackie Chan and Jet Li weren't always (or often) in brilliant films at the beginning of THEIR careers either, so there's still hope that Jaa will get the movie he deserves. And fans still pining for a return to the days of blood, blood and more blood probably won't care how talented he is, anyhow. So for those folks: this is your movie, hope you enjoy it. As for the rest of us: well, there should be a new
Jackie Chan movie out before long...

3. "Be Cool." Ten years ago, basking in the glory of his "Pulp Fiction" comeback, John Travolta starred in "Get Shorty", the story of a small-time hood from New York sent to L.A. to collect a debt, who winds up becoming involved in the world of movies. Like the Elmore Leonard novel it was based on, it was wry, clever and amusing, with plenty of pointed barbs at the lunatic world of Hollywood. A decade later, SOME of the same cast, plus a different director, have reunited to film Leonard's own sequel to that book, with Chilly Palmer (Travolta) leaving the movie business and becoming a record producer. The novel itself was a worthy successor. This film? Not so much.

It was a major mistake to dispense with the services of former Coen Brothers cinematographer-turned-director Barry Sonnenfeld. Sonnenfeld has a real talent for finding the off-beat and off-kilter in seemingly normal moments and characters, but "Be Cool" is directed by F. Gary Gray, whose most notable previous achievement was the by-the-books, unexciting remake of "The Italian Job" starring Mark Wahlberg. Then there's Travolta... the man seems to have lost all of the passion for acting that "Pulp Fiction" revived in him, and is going through the motions as much as Gray is. Even teaming him up with Uma Thurman once more doesn't help... the chemistry that sparked "Pulp Fiction" just isn't there anymore, something that's especially and painfully notable when the two of them go out on a dance floor and, trying bravely to conjure up the spirit of their greatest moment together in that movie, fail miserably. In fact, this movie is filled with good actors who do sub-par jobs here... James Woods, Harvey Keitel... they all parade across the screen without making any major impression. Of course, it doesn't help that so much of their time is dedicated to taking way too easy shots at sitting-duck-type targets (in both a literal and figurative sense).

There are a couple of real surprises in the casting in the smaller roles, though, where the greats have the movie stolen from them. Action mainstay The Rock plays the gay-and-proud-of-it bodyguard of a sleezy record executive with such a strong sense of sheer fun and enthusiasm that it reminds you how much most of the movie misses that kind of thing... he seems to be thinking that if the movie isn't any good, at least HE'S going to enjoy himself, and he certainly is, in a character that couldn't possibly be further from "The Scorpion King." There's also Andre 3000 (real name Andre Benjamin) of the group Outkast, as a trigger-happy gunman who gets very, very frustrated waiting for someone to allow him to use his talents. The man is genuinely funny, which is more than you can say for most of the participants in this movie. Once again, as has been the case so often in recent months, there are small moments of creativity and a couple of interesting characters and performers that give you just enough of a glimpse of how much better the movie could have been to make you frustrated that it wasn't. Except for a three-year stretch in the late 90's, Elmore Leonard's books haven't fared well at the movies, and "Be cool" does not improve the track record.

So, the movie fails as a sequel, as an adaptation of a good novel, as a comedy... is there anything it succeeds at? Well, sort of. It does succeed as a negative example for film-makers doing future Leonard books... this is what not to do. Quentin Tarantino, who brought Leonard's "Rum Punch" to the screen as "Jackie Brown", still owns the film rights to three other Leonard novels. We can only hope...