Friday, March 6, 1998
Screen Scene
FILM:
"Men With Guns"
Directed by John Sayles
Starring Federico Luppi, Damian Delgado and Tania Cruz
Director John Sayles’ talent has been exposing the tender
interior of human tragedy. His name functions as a sort of brand
name for empathy; he is able to communicate some of the most
bewildering and incomprehensible experiences to those who haven’t
experienced them.
"Men With Guns" attempts to communicate the truth of an
overwhelming, 20th-century saga: the decades of oppression and
violence in Latin America. It is such a huge topic to penetrate –
so many thousands murdered, such a mind-numbing constant of
violence and terror – that he loses himself trying to explain it
all.
The story centers around a wealthy doctor from a city in an
unnamed Latin-American nation, whose travels into the mountains
expose him to life in the Indian villages. It follows the archetype
of the voyage: these characters act as transmitters for the brutal
music of life in contemporary rural Latin America.
Sayles succeeds in showing the types that populate this
landscape. We meet an orphan, a defrocked priest, a mute woman, a
tortured soldier. But because the characters are symbolic, they
lose their humanity, and thus, their affective power. The one
exception is a remarkably sensitive and ambiguous performance by
Damian Delgado as a conscience-stricken soldier.
Just that Sayles tried to explore and communicate the experience
of being poor, Indian and facing constant political violence is a
feat in itself. And as the "men with guns" make recurrent
appearances throughout the film, we come to realize at least one
aspect of that experience: the powerlessness.
Hannah Miller
Grade: B+
"The Leading Man"
Directed by John Duigan
Starring Thandie Newton and Jon Bon Jovi
Though Felix Webb (Lambert Wilson) is "England’s greatest living
playwright," he’s created a pretty shoddy character for his own
personal stage. He’s one of those spineless worms who’s small
enough to find room between a rock and a hard place: his passion
for his lead actress Hilary (Thandie Newton) against his moral
responsibility to his unhappy wife (Anna Galiena, who conjures
sorcery with every smile). He’s been stringing everyone along so
far, that is until Hilary finally gives him the "her or me"
bit.
One would think that the time has come for Felix to act. But the
bookworm is no act-er, and so he hires Robin Grange (Jon Bon Jovi),
a shady American-screen heartthrob and the leading man in Felix’s
play, to seduce his lonely wife so that she can build enough
self-esteem to discover a life independent of Felix. Of course,
there are some unexpected glitches in their plot as the title of
the movie takes on a few different meanings.
Duigan is one of the best Australian directors working today,
and a lot of the moments in "The Leading Man" derive from the very
best of his know-how. His romantic comedies, especially "Sirens,"
have a charming way of fondling human sensuality to slap some fun
at the puritanical paradigms which engender society’s sewing
circles of stuffy hypocrites. That’s not quite Duigan’s intention
this time around (Felix is the only "stuffy" person we see), but we
can still sense his familiar film-making giddiness which evokes
honest smiles.
But giddiness can only go so far, and one noticeable paradox
about Duigan is that his style seems so mature when he deals with
adolescent characters and so adolescent when he deals with his
mature characters. One reason is that adults are simply not as
cheerfully cute as teenagers are when they’re in love, and so
Duigan’s playfulness, at times, becomes a mismatch: what passes for
endearing quirkiness in "Flirting" becomes corny hokum in "The
Leading Man" (and the film’s ending is shamelessly so). And much of
the carefree poetry of Duigan’s language is absent in this film,
but we can mostly attribute that to Virginia Duigan (his sister)
who wrote the script.
Still, it’s nice to see Duigan back again, blowing some light
air into that heavy smog of sexual seriousness that’s in movie
theaters right now.
Tommy Nguyen
Grade: B-
"U.S. Marshals"
Directed by Stuart Baird
Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes
Intrinsic in a chase movie is the idea that eventually the chase
must end, making a sequel nearly impossible. This is perhaps the
most overriding flaw with the "Fugitive’s" follow-up, "U.S.
Marshals," which is pretty much a pointless exercise.
"U.S. Marshals" reverses the protagonist and antagonist of "The
Fugitive," making Jones and his band of deputy marshals the heroes,
pitting them against another fugitive, Mark Roberts (Wesley
Snipes), a former government agent who knows exactly how to outwit
his pursuers.
Snipes had the uneasy task of filling the void left by Harrison
Ford. He does an adequate job of making incredible near-escapes
believable, but the source material here is thin. His character is
a plot device; he is neither sympathetic nor wicked, and the viewer
doesn’t have any concern for his plight.
In addition, the plot is far too confusing. Even after watching
the entire movie, it is still unclear who the "bad guys" really are
and just what their crimes were. It has something to do with the
Chinese mafia and arms smuggling, but that’s just about as far as
the film-makers get. They prefer to rely soley upon the presence of
Jones to move the story along rather than finding a satisfying
conclusion.
All of this would be incidental if the film was at least an
exciting action movie. "U.S. Marshals" fails even at staging
eye-popping adrenaline boosts. The scant few of these scenes lack
any real excitement or intensity. After a few minutes, every action
scene degenerates into a standard car chase or on-foot pursuit.
Devotees of the first movie are likely to be bored throughout
this lame follow-up. What more can be said than the "almighty
dollar" has won out over real film-making once again.
Lonnie Harris
Grade: DSony Pictures
Tania Cruz stars as Graciela in "Men With Guns."