Goblet-de-gook.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE continues the disjointed adventure of the world’s most famous boy wizard; not so much a feature film as a laundry list of tasks performed by two-dimensional characters, told with no logic, less motivation and lots and lots of not very special effects. It’s Magic! That’s great! Fuck you!

It surely seems like the most rushed movie in the series so far, as we meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson, growing more legal with each film), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and the Weasley family teleporting to the Quidditch World Cup via an old boot. No characterizations, no introductions, no logic – no surprise. Already I’m fuming over the pointlessness of an old boot in a field being a teleport device. As if hearing my inner monologue on the Riddikulusness of his world, Harry exclaims he “loves magic,” when they walk into their small tent and find it has an interior as capacious as the storyteller’s lack of imagination…

Did I mention the Quidditch World Cup? A game with no rules apparently has an annual meet! Some guys in Klan hoods called Death Eaters (which sounds ominous – until you think about it) attack the festival, and I wonder how anyone could tell it was an external attack and not simply one of the regular rule-less, lethal activities that takes place in every single Quidditch game ever played.

Off to Hogwarts, where two other schools of weirdoes (Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, arriving in a sunken ship and a Pegasus-drawn chariot respectively) visit for a Triwizard Tournament, a competition that can’t make up its mind on whether to be lethal or pointless, in the end choosing both, with a buttload of stupid thrown in. The competitors are chosen from a goblet of fire that spits out their names. No student under 17 can enter. Of course, that doesn’t matter in the least for 14-year-old Harry, whose name is ejaculated by the goblet, the reason given later as Making It Up As It Goes Along. All the adults in the room are cowed by this magical chalice because that’s how religions roll: even if it’s illogical, irrational or lethal to the youngsters, we’re still going to do it because the magical thing told us to. In a world where a man can talk through flaming coals, and where people follow a hologram bouncing ball to sing the school song, why is everyone so surprised that a floating goblet spat out a name that was never entered into it? It’s Magic – that’s great – fuck you.

Ron (who has pumped himself up to actually look sexier than Radcliffe in real life) has a bromantic tiff with Harry, which is so badly acted, I thought I was watching a HARRY POTTER film directed by Mike Newell. Regular screenwriter Steve Kloves (piggybacking off author J.K. Rowling‘s childish storytelling) has given Harry a roving eye in this movie, as he makes eyes (and eyes only) at the plainest chicks on campus; while Hermione’s constant whining seems to indicate she’s met Aunt Flow for the first time. Nonetheless, when some Russian guy asks her out, one would think her faithfulness to her constant male pals up to this point would give her pause but no, she bends over quicker than a nun in heat.

(Interesting to note that in press junkets whenever Emma Watson is asked what it was like to kiss her two familiar male leads, she would pass it off “like kissing her brothers” usually followed by qualifications like “yuk”; while Radcliffe and Grint would describe the experience in more effusive terms, “Quite nice actually…” etc. Need I say: typical. The guys all want to do her, while she has relegated all of them to The Friend Zone.)

Brendan Gleeson arrives as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody. This post has become the revolving door role for the HARRY POTTER series: I guess no one really has a good defense against the dark arts.

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) finds romance with a tall visitor to the school who looks like a transvestite.

Sirius Black (who used to be Gary Oldman in the last film, here, an irritating hologram of coals) sends a message via owl to Harry… these “magical” people using owls as messengers, almost as technological as the Pony Express. I could show you something really magical – it’s called e-mail.

Robert Pattinson is Cedric Diggory, also chosen by the goblet, older friend to Harry and not yet Team Edward.

First task is to grab a dragon’s egg. They’re schoolkids and they’re being pitted against an animal that can fry them to ash. Has any student received their parents’ written consent for this? It’s like a Quidditch game: no rules, no logic, and no point.

The school dance, and author J.K. Rowling shows us she hasn’t got the first clue on how to write teen romance. First of all, Harry is a dragon slayer – and he can’t get a date?! And as wingman, Ron should be woiking Harry’s spoils until the wheels fall off! Yet both of them mope around like eunuchs, lamenting chicks. All philandering aside, this is the sequence where everything should revolve around the male and female leads (specifically, Harry and Hermione) and their hidden emotions for one another; instead, Hermione acts like an incognizant whore waiting to be deflowered by Dolph Lundgren, while Ron shoots barbs at her like a jealous lover and Harry stoops nearby like a Just Friend.

And I eventually have to admit to myself: I don’t give an owl’s hoot what happens to Harry Potter! I really don’t care about this loser wanker’s fate any more. He is the titular hero of this series and with every passing film, he is emasculated to the point where we stop caring whether he actually owns a wand and whether he ever intends to use it. It is so obvious this tale is written by a girl because Harry is not spending every moment of every day thinking about the inside of Hermione’s thighs. Like the rest of male-kind. Keep on being a Just Friend, Harry. It’s not your fault; you’re just written that way.

Tween girls swoon over Harry’s puerile, pasty chest as he steps naked into a bath. A bath? Yeah, just trying to wash those last vestiges of penis off his body. A ghost girl visits and he modestly tries to cover himself, scared she’ll see his pierced vagina.

Next task: hold your breath for an hour under a lake and look for a mermaid’s McGuffin. Harry is terrified that he can’t hold his breath for an hour. That’s easy: use MAGIC, idiot! Everyone else will. Better still, use a freakin’ scuba suit! But why does he have to be “told” of gilliweed? I’m sure that if friend Neville didn’t mention it in passing, anyone else on campus might have told him a million different methods to breathe underwater. It’s magic that’s great fuck you.

And then the maze, an almost tense sequence where Team Edward and Team Potter must find something-something. Are they going to use their magic telepathic gifts? Is there a pulse beacon? No, they’re going to use the scientific method of Running Around Blindly trying to find it. Where’s the drama? Where’s the effort? Where’s Waldo? Then they’re teleported to a graveyard where Harry meets —

LORD VOLDEMORT! And all Ralph Fiennes Cheese breaks loose! Suddenly the tone changes to something eerie, mature, thrilling. Everything comes together in this graveyard scene and makes absolutely less sense that it was already not making, as Voldemort proves his power over Harry, who cringes like a girl baby. Taking elocution lessons from the Emperor in RETURN OF THE JEDI, Voldemort sneers, “I’m going to kill you, Harry Potter,” with the same insouciance as the Emperor’s, “And now young Skywalker, you will die.” Then he proceeds to do exactly what the Emperor did to young Skywalker – not kill him.

Harry escapes, and later tells Dumbledore, “Professor, at one point in the graveyard, Voldemort’s wand and mine touched!” That’s called docking, I think. Or just “touch-tips.”

GOBLET OF FIRE then ends on a sigh of defeat, as Hermione, Ron and Harry walk away talking about nothing; placing them together here at the end only highlighting the fact that they are farther apart than ever. And we hardly care.

It’s magic

that’s great

fuck you

END

Azkabana-fo-fana.

Harry Potter’s getting on to “that age.” At the opening of HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, we meet him in bed under the blankets, playing with his wand.

And Hermione is – how shall I say this without sounding as perverse as the rest of you who deny you’re looking? – budding…

And Ron is still a mourning-faced creature.

But you know what this movie needs? More Gary please!

The great Gary Oldman almost stars in HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN as Sirius Black, a wizard escaped from Azkaban prison, on his way to kill wizard prince Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe). “Almost” because the whole movie is spent talking about him or seeing his face on a Wanted poster; and when we do meet him in the bedlam third act, his only meaty interaction with the other characters involves shouting action lines and being a werewolf half the time, so it’s a tragedy for us – and for the movie. We can see he’s been taking “oily” lessons from Guy Pearce, and he hasn’t bathed since he was Beethoven.

Expecto a batho.

Still, the HARRY POTTER franchise lifts itself slightly with this third installment (following CHAMBER OF SECRETS), helmed by dark lord Alfonso Cuarón (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN), instead of milky waif Chris Columbus. As the three child stars are older, the rating has moved from G to PG-13, so even as Sirius Black tracks Harry, we are afforded more sinister scares with the ominous specters called Dementors tracking Black.

Also, Lord Voldemort has re-entered the Potter tale, as a menacing presence in the background, whom Black is allegedly courting by killing Harry.

So the film is more mature than its predecessors, yet PRISONER OF AZKABAN retains a confused and contradictory forced tapestry of characters and motivations that I’m sure their demographic are too young to apprehend. Throw in a time-travel denouement and this confounded tale buckles under its own weight. As the emperor said in AMADEUS: Too many notes…

Film once again opens in the home that Harry shares with his unloving step-parents, where Harry is goaded into expanding his annoying aunt into a zeppelin that floats out the window. Thankfully, like the Hulk, her knickers stay on. Harry should apparently be penalized by the Wizard Assemblage Neon Knights of English Royal Society (W.A.N.K.E.R.S for short), but is spared the humiliation, and given special dispensation by the Accidental Magic Reversal Department (yeah, and that one I didn’t make up).

He runs away from home, and is picked up by a magic bus, which seems to be a part of the real traffic environment, yet can alter itself to circumvent the environment, as when it needs to squeeze through traffic. Again, no rules, ergo, no tension. How does inertia keep affecting it when Harry is thrown forward as it brakes hard? Why steer?

I hate magic.

Harry is dropped off at an inn where he meets Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). Is author J.K. Rowling making this up as she goes along? Why are Ron and Hermione at this inn? It’s not like everyone ran away from home and needs a transitory shelter before heading back to Hogwarts. Halfway through the first act and you’ve already lost my emotional investment. Even with chest buds.

On the way to Hogwarts, a Dementor attacks the train. It’s looking for Sirius Black but it’ll kill anyone for being black and nearby. Kinda like cops: we’re looking for criminals, but we’ll use violent force on anybody during business hours.

At Hogwarts, there’s a new Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) because sadly, Richard Harris went to that great wizard party in the sky. Dumble warns the children that Dementors are patrolling the school grounds, on the lookout for Sirius. Does anybody else think Dumbledore exhibited unbounded irresponsibility in allowing Dementors on school grounds; beings that he admits are so incognizant they cannot or will not discern between Sirius and a passing school kid? Someone call Child Services on this senile goat!

David Thewlis commands the best role in this film. As new Professor Lupin of Dark Arts, he doesn’t seem stunt cast – like Branagh in the last film, or Emma Thompson in this film, as eccentric soothsayer Sybil – he seems born to be a wizard, like Alan Rickman (Snape) or Gambon. A well-rounded character that is a boon to Harry, ready with knowledge and a helping hand when needed. And a Patronum, whatever the hell that is.

We can safely say this movie is where all the Expecto Patronum started. Expecto Patronum! Jeez, can you make me feel any dirtier? Lupin also teaches the kids the Riddikulus charm; I’m biting not only my lip but my whole face: a spell that you use when confronted with a terrifying thing, to turn it into something comical. Oh my god, there’s not enough soap in my grocery store to wash off this dirtiness I’m feeling right now…

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) introduces his class to a winged eagle-horse called a hippogriff (which is an appropriate name, as hippo means horse in Latin, and griff means that big dumb galoot from BACK TO THE FUTURE II.)

Sybil teaches the kids how to read tea leaves and finds a “grim” in Harry’s cup, wolf-shaped leaves that presage his death. Royt… the fact that he lives through five more films is irrelevant – prophesy is always right, right?

During the Quidditch game, Dementors attack Harry, because again, so dumb they can’t tell a wizard’s elbow from his arsehole. Since Quidditch has no rules anyway, and anyone can do anything at any time for any reason, no one figured the Dementors shouldn’t have been on the field of play – not that they were on the field of play, because there is no defined field of play in Quidditch; and no one could tell they were sucking out Harry’s soul because every Tom, Dick and Draco tries to do that during every Quidditch game anyway. Only when Harry falls off his vaginal broom does Dumbledore stand and gesture, “Arresto momentum!” He didn’t really just say that, did he? By now, I’ve sunk so low in my seat out of embarrassment, it looks empty. Or should I say it looks Evacuo Chairo.

Harry’s broomstick breaks in the fall. Lupin: “I’m sorry to hear about your broomstick. Is there no chance of fixing it?” Harry says no [needle scratch]– Are you kidding me? You’ve just been thigh-humping this broomstick like a personal jetpack against all the laws of physics, Dumbledore just arrestoed your fall from 1000 feet; a supernatural wraith tried to suck out your life essence – and THERE’S NO WAY TO FIX YOUR VAGINA-HUGGING BROOMSTICK? Have you tried Elmer’s Glue and some frickin’ nails?

Harry uses his cloak of invisibility – but if it’s not to spy on Hermione, then I don’t really care.

The twist is that Sirius is not really trying to kill Harry but shout a few action lines and pick up a paycheck. Harry saves Sirius’s life saying Expecto Patronum so many times that *I* almost disappeared in embarrassment. Then a white stag appears and chases away the dark specters. Yay. For no reason. Even when we discover how the white stag appeared, it still has no reason to be a white stag. Unless, of course, there’s a deeper phallic meaning, or a cry for help from Harry over how Rowling is slowly making him too douchey for words…  I love reading all the apologists debating over why a white stag, why a Patronus, why a time loop, why no girls will touch them…

Over and above all the expecto boolshitus adventures, there’s Hermione’s time traveling/shark jumping. Woven into the story like an OCEAN’S TWELVE post-exposition, only the nerds care whether her chrono anomalies jigsaw into the body of the tale; everyone else is just happy to see Hermione in that jumper and those jeans –cough, chestbuds–

As we’ve already discovered, all these kids are at “that age”; gearing up to be swatted flat with hormonal discharges enough to knock over an elephant. Inevitably the question of “romance” will arise in this episode – in the most surprising, offhanded manner. I think everyone in the world took it for granted Hermione and Harry would be an item. How shocking then, during a traumatic moment, when Hermione instinctively embraces RON WEASLEY instead of Harry! Harry moves up behind Hermione like a third wheel and tries to… uh, uh, spoon her meaningfully, but the moment has been lost and it is forced and embarrassing. It is staged in this way on purpose; to set up Ron’s future relationship with this world’s greatest spinner. In one small move, Harry has been emasculated and excised from the emotional loop. You might think this intimate move is nothing consequential, but a move like this is always consequential. To paraphrase Vincent Vega in PULP FICTION, “We act like it don’t mean somethin’ – and that’s what’s so cool about it – but it always means somethin’!”

This ruins the franchise. Our hearts are just not in it anymore. By 2014, even Rowling would regret not bowing to convention and simply pairing the two leads; at the very least, she might have created sexual tension between them until they were of legal age. Now everything that comes after that hug looks obtuse and pointless. When Harry and Hermione ride that wild, frothing beast from BACK TO THE FUTURE and Harry makes a comment to Hermione, no matter what he says, he’s stuck in the Friend Zone now, never to return, so nothing he says can be taken seriously anymore.

Is this what Sybil actually meant when she predicted the death of Harry Potter in the tea leaves? Is this the hidden meaning behind Harry unable to fix his broom?

Coitus Patronum Interruptus, Harry! Even the Accidental Magic Reversal Department can’t save you from this one…

END

A Royale with cheese.

So the British Royals are ordained by God, eh? God moving in yet another mysterious way by “blessing” King George VI with a chronic stammer… Ergo, no God – or God’s an asshole.

THE KING’S SPEECH is a fascinating insight into a non-publicized corner of English Royal history, revealing a sordid truth deeper than the question of whether the Royals ever go to the toilet: King George VI (1895-1952) had a speech therapist! And a Commoner at that! A fact guarded as preciously as any illicit state secret, because during the waning years of the Royals being taken seriously (circa WWII), God and Country forbad the Royals ever admit they were less than perfect. That would be like admitting they go to the toilet.

Colin Firth (the British Tim Robbins) is Prince Albert of York, later to assume the title King George VI. Geoffrey Rush at his most avuncular is the Australian-born speech therapist Lionel Logue, practicing in London, whom Prince Albert turns to, at first for his speech defect and later (so the movie portrays) as a confidant and for psychological support. Helena Bonham-Carter is perfectly cast as The Royal Wife (although she is overshadowed by the bromantic resonance of the two male leads, so is relegated to prop status; a fine performance of course, but nothing that an actor of her stature could not phone in).

THE KING’S SPEECH artfully weaves in another sordid episode in British Royal history: I remember as a child seeing a documentary about the king who abdicated his throne to marry a commoner. This movie’s subplot is about that king – Guy Pearce is King Edward VII, older brother to Albert (not averse to mean-spiritedly mocking Albert’s stammer) who thrusts Albert onto the unwanted throne by abdicating for the love of trim.

Hence, the movie title attains its double meaning. We presume it refers to some world-shaking State Of The Empire grand address to the nation, but it might just be referring very simply to the way the king talks. As it happens, Edward’s abdication, Albert’s ascension to the throne as King George, and the escalation of World War II would thrust George into the spotlight and the necessity to allay England’s fears with a world-shaking State Of The Empire grand address to the nation – which becomes the film’s climax.

In a type of Freudian methodology, Logue relates Albert’s stammer to psychological trauma from his youth; a “talking therapy,” coupled with physical exercises (which we presume are more for goofy 30-second trailers than utility), gradually becoming such a crutch for the future king (to the chagrin of Mother Church), that George VI could not make his grand speech without Logue in the isolation booth also, coaching him through his hard consonants and soft syllables face to face.

Compliments to the filmmakers for avoiding the bleating orchestra swell during the king’s grand speech, rather, a majestic Beethoven soundtrack (from Symphony No.7 to the Emperor Concerto) underscores the fact that the king – even in this moment of triumph – has not attained some kind of elocution epiphany, but must keep hammering at his impediment with Lionel’s help.

The searing talent of the two leading men will make you weep. Such nuance and control, such an innate understanding of humanity. Firth does an awe-inspiring mimicry job (mimicking a stammerer, yet absorbing the chest-hitching difficulty of speech as if he was born with it). The mark of a great actor is how he “acts badly” – Rush performs a Shakespeare audition like a community theater beginner, dropping in and out of his badly rendered stage character with such believability we wonder how he ever won that Oscar for SHINE.

THE KING’S SPEECH is truly revisionist, showing us scenes that would have been cause for beheading during the golden years of the Royals’ reign: we see how that famous picture of King George supposedly giving his speech from his desk was a setup – the actual broadcast room was draped in hideous curtains, soundproofed like your first garage music studio; after the speech, the king makes his way to the desk with the little box speakers and a photo is snapped. We also see King George commenting on newsreel footage of Hitler, “I don’t know what he’s saying but he seems to be saying it rather well.” Imagine how Republicans of today might spin that comment. But the moviemakers are not saying George advocated Hitler, they were framing the movie in the fabric of its time (when Adolph was just the crazed chancellor of Germany, not the icon of evil he would become). It also frames another interesting dimension of WWII: besides the great orator Churchill (played here with schoolyard brio by Timothy Spall, all frowns and jowls and elongated vowels), England’s representative was a King who couldn’t speak, pitted against a Chancellor who was madly eloquent.

There are details in THE KING’S SPEECH that were discovered only during its production: Director Tom Hooper and writer David Seidler freely admit to starting production on this film with the few details known to the public (all plumed hats and Hollywood medals adorning the king, in place of a private wardrobe which was never spoken about in public), but nine weeks before shooting began they came upon the handwritten diaries of Lionel Logue, direct from an attic of Logue’s descendant! As they say in Hollywood: You couldn’t write this shit! (Actually, that doesn’t refer to the tale being too outlandish to be written, just that Hollywood writers are too untalented to write anything remotely creative.)

As Hooper reveals on the audio commentary, “We thought he would always be in plumed hat and finery and medals – but he was an everyman – in black coats and top hat and suits… They visited Lionel’s flat in South Kensington quite often as king and queen, dressed normally, as friends.” Lends a humanity to a family that is portrayed – even in this film – as devoid of it.

The Royal Family’s mystique has been carefully cultivated to portray them as godlike and infallible, even though most of us common rabble are aware of their parliamentary impotency in modern times. As well as being a smashing tale loaded with friendship, respect, politics, humor and Geoffrey Rush thankfully speaking without a pirate accent, THE KING’S SPEECH pulls back the curtain on King George VI and the Royal mythos. The Royals are like you and me: powerful and frail, insecure and ambitious, fragile and resilient.

They just never go to the toilet.

END

Eggs over easy.

THE GREAT ESCAPE meets KFC.

Creator Nick Park brings his WALLACE AND GROMIT stop-motion skills to the chicken coop, with CHICKEN RUN, a cutesy claymation adventure set in a British farmyard where a group of chickens are trying to escape Tweedy’s Farm, whose owner has just purchased a pie-making machine that makes… chicken pies! The chickens enlist the aid of a sexy cock – I mean, rooster, who tricks them into thinking he can teach them to fly out.

Told like a World War II prison camp tale starring Steve McQueen, Julia Sawalha (ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS) is “head chick” Ginger, constantly planning escape attempts but being foiled by her incompetent hen accomplices. One day, Rocky the Rooster (voiced by Mel Gibson) lands in their camp and injures his wing. An American circus rooster, he was just fired from a cannon, but to Ginger’s eyes seemed to be flying. (Hilarious that Mel should callback to his most famous role in BRAVEHEART by yelling as he goes over the chicken camp, “Freeeedoom!”) Trying to escape the rigors of the circus, he asks Ginger to hide him in the camp, in return for helping them escape by teaching them how to “fly” like him.

Of course, it’s a big ruse that allows him to have his fill of the cock-starved chicks whose only contact with another rooster is their resident old army ironsides, Fowler (Benjamin Whitrow).

Adding to the drama is Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) whose motto (like Oberst von Scherbach from STALAG 17, and Colonel Klink from HOGAN’S HEROES) is “No chicken escapes from Tweedy’s Farm!,” as she plots to throw all the chickens into a pie-making machine for her new chicken pie business venture.

Phil Daniels (QUADROPHENIA) and Timothy Spall (SWEENEY TODD, 2007) bring their salivating cockney accents to two rats who help the chickens. Makeshift aircraft finale resembles another WWII movie, THE BIRDMEN (1971). Eggs over. Easy.

It’s funny, creative, cute, and smooth Plasticine.

(The wealth of writers on this movie just seems like politics. Count them: besides director Peter Lord and Nick Park himself, there are 14 others. Poor Park, who probably had to take it like a pullet or face dismissal of the project.)

One wonders: if Mrs. Tweedy puts her limited amount of hens through the pie machine for her chicken pie venture, what happens after they’re sold as pies? Her goose will be cooked, that’s what. To make that big machine worthwhile, she would have to buy more hens or breed them. The irony is, we already consider Mrs. Tweedy evil for wanting to cook our Heroine Hens, but we’d never consider her to be so evil to be grooming animals for the pot, housed in sardine-like enclosures, fueled by fattening foods and artificial light, tainted with psychological detriment. Brrrr! Should we tell the kiddies that’s how The Colonel cultivates his secret recipe?

END

Slashing Singing Scissorhands.

Edward Scissorhands is all grown up! Never more apparent than when Johnny Depp (as the eponymous demon barber, Sweeney Todd) holds aloft a gleaming razor and boldly affirms in song: “At last! My right arm is complete again!” (My Friends.)

Shave and a Haircut – Uh oh!

Violent, gruesome, blackly hilarious, deliriously entertaining, director Tim Burton’s vision of SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is a wild cry of bloodlust put to song.

The tale of Sweeney Todd is apocryphal at best, but it makes for a grand murderous musical: a naïve London barber, Benjamin Barker (Depp, sans eye-liner) with a wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and young child, is deported by a lustful judge (Alan Rickman) on false charges, so that the judge could carnalize the barber’s wife and raise the barber’s child to young womanhood (Jayne Wisener), with intent to have carnal relations with her also. After years in exile, the barber returns, wearing more eye-liner than Twisted Sister, more Aquanet than C.C. DeVille, with a new alias, Sweeney Todd. Opening a homicidal barber’s shop above a flagging meat pie shop, owned by Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter, looking more Edward Scissorhands than even Johnny Depp), Sweeney turns the corpses he makes into the pies she bakes; his single-minded goal – to get his deporting Judge in the barber’s chair and give him the closest of shaves (wink bloody wink).

As Sweeney sails into London harbor, he croaks his first pessimistic lines (No Place Like London): “There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit / And it’s filled with people who are filled with shit! / And its morals aren’t worth what a pig can spit…” Then he spends the movie proving it.

The most urgent question asked of this production is: “So can Johnny Depp sing?” Yes, of course he can. So too can everyone else in the cast. A production of this size would not allow less-than-exemplary performances to make the finished cut. What do people expect they’re going to hear? Breaking voices and flat notes? Alan Rickman’s Judge is probably the “Oliver Reed” of the bunch, falling back on the untrained singer’s “talking/singing” technique.

Screenplayed by John Logan, Steven Sondheim’s numbers are edited for Hollywood-movie-length and, though none could be regarded as “classics,” are generally snappy enough to move the story along briskly; the only reprise that garnered repose being Johanna, the daughter’s theme – every time someone started puling “Johaaaaana!” my eyelids grew heavy.

Sacha Baron Cohen – back after BORAT – slam-dunks his hilarious cameo to the canvas as a rival barber, Signor Adolfo Pirelli, who unwittingly exposes Sweeney’s barbering talents in public, whereupon the Judge’s liege, Beadle Bamford (deliciously lecherous Timothy Spall), books a shave for the judge at Sweeney’s new establishment. Narrowly missing his throat-cutting opportunity with the Judge, Sweeney falls into insanity, installing a tilt-a-chair that drops his arterially-spurting victims down a chute and onto their heads – hard – in the concrete basement of Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Shoppe.

Mrs. Lovett only has raccoon eyes for Sweeney, who only has sunken eyes for his razors and there is a smart overlapping of vocals where they are both singing the same line, her to him, and him to his razors in My Friends: “Come let me hold you / Now, with a sigh, you grow warm in my hand / My friend! / My clever friend…”

Another smart double-vocal is when the Judge is in the chair and sharing thoughts with Sweeney over Pretty Women: though they sing the words in unison, Sweeney is remembering his lost wife, while the Judge is perversely thinking of his underage charge and Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna. “Sitting in the window or / Standing on the stair / Something in them cheers the air. / Pretty women.”

In a surprising turn of fortune, the more Mrs. Lovett grinds and bakes Sweeney’s unfortunate customers into her meat pies, the more successful the pie shop becomes. Still, her grinding machine could do a better job, as their young apprentice finds fingers and feet aplenty garnishing the upper crust of his pastry. Nonetheless, I must admit that seeing the grand meat pie again (a novelty food indigenous to British and Australian shores) made me hanker for one, no matter what flesh was ground into it!

It is pleasantly surprising to see that Burton never stays his hand when it comes to brutality. SWEENEY earns its R rating decisively, with many a spurting carotid being accompanied by joyous song. All set in visual tones cartoonishly gloomy (production design by Dante Ferretti), unnaturally leached of all color except blood-red, with ornately gutter set design (by Francesca Lo Schiavo) and churling cinematography (by DP, Dariusz Wolski) impeccably screaming Burton’s auteur hand.

There is a subplot of a young sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower) rescuing Johanna from the clutches of the Judge, and there are tale twists where we hold our breath that Sweeney is going to do something regretful – and parts where Sweeney DOES in fact do something regretful – all winding to an inevitable climax that merely proves the philosophy of both protagonists in the story, Judge and Sweeney alike: that all men have done something in their lives for which they deserve to die.

“There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit / And it’s filled with people who are filled with shit!”

Mmm! I feel like a feet pie!

END

Trying to out-act a cardboard cutout.

Mock Star.

In ROCK STAR, Chris Cole (played sufficiently blandly by Mark Wahlberg) is a big loser with bigger hair and an even bigger voice. Through a freak turn of events he is hired by an international metal band (Steel Dragon, led by a big-haired Dominic West) and attains his dream of rock superstardom. Finding he is too vagina-whipped – and what a vagina! Jennifer Aniston’s! – for that level of adulation and its attendant financial, sexual and psychological abandon, he abjures that well-salaried and well-knob-polished position only to purvey his feeble artistry at the lowest possible echelon of the music business – the toilet pub level. For no pay.

Er – Wha?

From stadiums to Starbucks. Every musician in the world knows what is wrong with this Hindenburg Disaster of a plot arc. But when it comes to music, rock bands in particular, observers and listeners and drunken rednecks in pubs who ululate “Freebird!” at regular intervals selectively forget that we live in a world that revolves not because of orbital angular momentum – but because of capitalism. Though it is true that one can easily find a wannabe rock-n-roller in any given pub in any major city in the world who is plying his art for free, his goal is invariably to earn wodges of cash in the foreseeably-planned or far-fantasized future.

Iggy Poff

ROCK STAR’s denouement decimated everything it had painstakingly purveyed as Chris’s goal – fame and fortune. We are told to “work hard enough, want it bad enough and to follow our dreams” – yet when Chris attains his sought-after dream, he gives it up! It is implied that The Dream is a lie; that it holds no substance. He renounces everything for the sake of two things: his chick (any man who would place his chick before music is not a musician in the first place – nor is he a man), and because his band disallowed him creative input on their songs – oh, cry me a river, Tchaikovsky! Not only would this songwriting condition have been spelled out in his contract, even if he was too monkey to apprehend the copyrighting and royalty situation, his enviable position in the band – as prominent lead vocalist – would have lent itself to riding on the legacy of Steel Dragon to forge a solo career parallel to theirs. But no logic could save this movie once we saw the predictable character arc aiming towards the intersection of Hollywood and Whine.

After coercing us into rooting for the struggling Chris, the movie does an about-face and has Chris gutlessly back away from his own ambition – purely for the sake of “dramatic” impact. But who would this spineless ending appeal to?

Dumb chicks.

ROCK STAR’s demographic of wannabe rockstars and starving musicians would have welcomed a story where the struggling kid becomes an international rocker – and stays an international rocker. I was heartily enjoying this portrayal of my past life of debauchery and devil-may-care enterprise (the inclusion of real-life rockers, Zakk Wylde and Jason Bonham as Steel Dragon members, and source music culled directly from my archived record collection only enhancing the nostalgia) – until the denouement insulted every musician who ever bashed his brains against the unyielding wall of the deaf music industry, and made the hero a puerile girly-man whose supposedly giant “dreams” were ultimately low-brow, middle-class, blue-collar mediocrity. And any real musician will tell you that a dork who gives up an international music career for a chick deserves every non-paying toilet gig he gets.

The last scene finds Chris puling his alternative angst to coffee house yuppies and the untalented, introspective “singer-songwriter” coterie. Next stop: Nursing Homes and Poetry Slams. If this is indeed Chris’s dream coalescing, it is more correctly a NIGHTMARE. I know. I’ve lived it. It is implied this dead-end gig is part of an epiphany or righteous road, whereby he now “creates art” on his own terms, when it is merely to whine his way back into his girlfriend’s panties.

One of the feature songs is Steel Dragon’s Stand Up And Shout, which the movie metaphorically achieves in spades during its first act. Soon enough, it devolves to Bowie’s livid shout of outrage: ”This ain’t rock and roll, this is – genocide!”

The writer of ROCK STAR, John Stockwell, was an actor in EDDIE & THE CRUISERS, which was an abject lesson on how NOT to write a rock and roll movie – and Stockwell seems to have learned that lesson well, showing us how good he is at NOT writing one.

Director Stephen Herek (who crafted a reasonable music-based movie with MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS, 1995), seems to capture the essence of 80’s Bighair Metal in all its garish androgyny. The song stylings are there, as are the leather pants, low-slung guitars, bovine attitudes and Big-Haired-and-Breasted bims. The parking lot argument over which tribute band is better of the two is a slice of history more hilarious, asinine and ridiculously true than any fiction could conceive. There is also a searing scene involving Aniston wearing a tantalizingly see-through dress, squirming the dance floor, while Nugent’s Stranglehold sensuously sweeps the soundtrack. All these things about ROCK STAR are commendable.

We soon realize – well, at least musicians soon realize – that the movie is merely the media portrayal of the 80s Metal Scene. Sure, this Scene existed, but underneath the glam-hamming and strumpet-humping, there was a struggling, starving reality, which ROCK STAR tried desperately to pin down. And failed.

Much was touted about this story mirroring that of real-life vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens and his rise to prominence with metal gods Judas Priest, but though the story quantizes the basic events surrounding Ripper’s situation (singer of a Tribute Band ends up playing in the Real Thing), it captures none of the streetwise intelligence or truthful motivation of someone in Ripper’s position.

Instead, it gives us Marky Mark.

the high life of the lowlifes

“Is it hot in here – or is it just these pants?”

Achieving a goal of living a shallow, yet sinfully entertaining existence doesn’t necessarily mean that your life is meaningless or unfulfilled. Your goal may very well have been to achieve a shallow, yet sinfully entertaining existence, with all your finances, food and fun taken care of by people whom you pay to manage those aspects. Who ever said that Life has to be stoic and boring and routine to be Meaningful?

Who even made the rule that “art” has to be created on your own terms to be fulfilling? We seem to forget that all the art of the Renaissance was commissioned by the church or state or royalty; if those shiftless artistes were allowed to create art on their own terms, we would never have had the Sistine Chapel, The Last Supper, The Ninth Symphony or St. Paul’s Cathedral.

People really do believe artists do not exist on the same capitalistic plane as the rest of the world. And here we hit the teeth-grinding fallacy of the public’s ignorance pertaining to rock and roll bands.

Must have been so easy to sell ROCK STAR as a feasible story, not only because the chick demographic would fall for the idiotic ending (where his girl returns to him for being so loyal to give up his dream for her puss), but also because – it’s not a “real” job, right? You just get up there and wangle your dangle and get paid and laid, right?

And when you fly to the Moon, you just sit there and they press a button and you fly upwards, right?

Over twenty years of performing has made me realize that non-musicians have no idea how musicians come to be onstage before their eyes, or how we fit into the fiscal scheme of things; they think we put this together just last night and arrived here two minutes before downbeat. (Like they believe radio personalities arrive at the studio one minute before airtime; or all it takes to be an actor is to memorize your lines.) What you see onstage is the culmination of years of studious learning, finger-bleeding practice, ear-numbing rehearsal, frustrating hustling, prodigal promoting, inspired recording, sleepless nights, jet-lagged days, thankless personnel coordination, futile sacrifice, abject poverty, deranged ambition, iron will, starving, stealing, creating controlled chaos and burning bridges; getting had, getting took, I tell you folks, it’s harder than it looks…

What we do, we do for arena love and blood money – we earned our bones long before you ever heard Freebird for the first time. This is a Real Job that no one gives us any credit for, because of pasty-faced karaoke dweebs who think they can sing, art-choking MTV who thinks it promotes music, AMERICAN IDOL douchebags who think they have talent, countless films portraying bands as mental deficients or portraying a ludicrous hyper-reality (like this film), and every joker who thinks he can play rock guitar after stumbling erroneously through Smoke On The Water using barre chords –

And you have the audacity to be outraged because I won’t play your insipid redneck request?

I got your Freebird right here, mongo!

the business of rock and roll

Jennifer Aniston in a see-through mesh dress? Okay, I’m done.

We know Chris is a Loser from the outset because his girlfriend is his manager. (Only musicians will understand that gag.) We are given many other indications that Chris is not real rock star material, first from his brother, who points out, “You don’t have any fantasies of your own – you fantasize about being someone else” (that being, Bobby Beers, vocalist of Steel Dragon, played by Jason Flemyng). Chris’s bandmate (Timothy Olyphant) also alerts Chris to the fact that, “You don’t know where Chris Cole ends and Bobby Beers begins.” The screenwriter seemed to be including these elements to illustrate how “dedicated” Chris is, but it only kept pounding home the fact that he was clueless. He is content to live off someone else’s laurels and had no interest in promoting original music. Later, when the songwriting bug bites him, he does another stupid thing and walks out on the biggest band on Earth…

When Chris initially walks out on his garage band, girlfriend Emily (Jennifer Aniston), states, “All the talent in the room walked out that door – the first rule in this business is to go where the talent is.” Uh, no. It’s a lot more complicated than that, honey…

It’s not about talent. Or looks. Or networking. Or even songwriting. All those aspects are part of a bigger picture that requires your willingness to morph to whatever the people who are advancing your salary tell you to morph into, to appeal to a pointed market and recoup your advance, staying economically viable by making a profit. For them.

After your initial success, if any, no matter how much “talent” you display with your bedroom songs and kitchen voice, you will be left with only your force of will to continue in the music business, or to succumb to its decadences or obstacles, and die a funky death.

Your employer will abandon you at the first sign of flagging sales or a better Business Model (read as someone even more willing than you to Do What He Say), and each successive deal, each contract you sign, each company you work, each funder and producer and agent will take slices of your integrity and humanity and leave you a husk of a prostitute. But by then, you won’t care. In LAST ACTION HERO, Arnold tells us he “won’t die till the grosses go down.” And when they do… your Q plummets, the scripts stop arriving, and everyone stops calling you “Mel baby.” Either you forge ahead with your force of will or you find a comfortable corner to die. Most people in the entertainment business are not so much afraid of dying alone, as dying unknown.

And we can’t even count the number of unnecessary blowjobs given in the name of the “who you know” fallacy. It’s not who you know, but HOW you know them. You can “know” scores of high-echelon stars, but if they are merely passing acquaintances, employers, fellow musicians, that gets you exactly nowhere. But know one high-level “executive” responsible for signing or development of acts at a major label; know him as a drinking buddy; know his sexual war stories, as he knows yours; know him so well that you can reach over his arm and scam a slice of his pizza with the familiarity of a room-mate – and your ticket to stardom is sealed. It’s about personal trust. No talent required.

The first rule in music is really: No One Cares About Your Music – Except YOU.

So keep your demos away from me. And stay away from my pizza.

dying young, living old.

“If you work hard enough, and want it bad enough, dreams do come true, so follow your dreams man, cos we all die young…” I don’t think even the cliché-churning screenwriter comprehends exactly how portentous those words are.

“I’ve lost my eyeliner, someone cut my hair like a lesbian, and my sweater smells like a dog fart… uh, this next song is dedicated to Eddie Vedder…”

If you do not “make it” – become a financial success as a “rock star” – at an early age, your chances of becoming a success dwindle at an exponential rate as your age increases. That is, your marketability as a star – a product, a brand, an icon – is tied to your formative years. In the entertainment world, we all “die young”; spent by the time we are 30. But, you argue, the Eagles are still around, as are KISS and the Stones and McCartney – yet all those denizens of the upper reaches of the superstar stratosphere “made it” WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG. Only by doing so could they have guaranteed their current longevity. Pink Floyd and Madonna and Aerosmith all found themselves entrenched in the industry while still under 30.

The movie gives Chris many aspects of his stellar fame to be dissatisfied with – all of which are superficial. When you are solidifying your financial future and that of your potential family’s for generations hence, what piddling nuisance is it for a girlfriend to whine that you’ve “lost your way”? What triviality that your band does not allow you to write songs for the band? You are on a salary per night that the working class makes per quarter – what juvenile gripe that you feel unfulfilled? Is a 4 a.m. garbage route any more fulfilling? Try it. You might like it.

At one point, manager Timothy Spall tells Marky about a dead-end marriage he was in, and how he just walked away from it when he felt trapped. Marky uses this analogy to simply walk away from the band onstage one night in the middle of a gig, and let a kid from the audience take over (coincidentally enough – it’s Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge, Slash), an awesome actual hard rock vocalist!). Contracts, lawyers, rehearsals, insurance, waivers, logistics of stage show and explosives and moving platforms be damned!

Emily decides she wants to own a place where hippie assholes converge to talk Sartre and pretend sophistication and industry clout – in other words, a coffee shop. The movie implies – insidiously, via Emily’s disparagement of Chris’s tour schedule – that stabilizing your base of operations is the path to successful business. But the rock band’s base of operations – the Record Company – is stabilized; the band is only that cog of the Stable Machine that must necessarily move to progress business. Emily whines that she “wants a life.” And being on tour is not A Life? The tragedy is that Emily – through the ignorant, traitorous screenwriter – speaks for everyone who arrogantly and condescendingly believes that being on the road in a band is “not a real job.”

All we ever hear in life is that we should aspire to never being tied behind a desk – when Chris achieves this, Emily decides to Stand Up And Pout and leaves him. Her last straw is when Chris cannot remember what city he is in and forgets their date due to sleep-deprivation coupled with insensate philandering. (So what? On the road, band members rarely know which city they’re in, even when they are completely cognizant – performing the gig and promoting the product is the paramount reason for their existence at that juncture. Since they are cattled at the road manager’s behest onto a stage which is constructed to look exactly the same every night, all they have to do is go through their well-rehearsed motions to earn their pay.) Emily sees this as an ongoing problem which will only escalate – but if she won’t stand by him during the good times – and make no mistake, these are the good times (with chicks and guns and firetrucks and hookers and drugs and booze – all the things that make life worth livin’ for) – why would Chris ever consider her a candidate for standing by him during the bad?

The obvious paradox is: by movie’s end, when Chris has re-started below the bottom of the barrel, just what is he aiming to achieve?

Maybe in five years, his feeble, freebie “project” might graduate to pub band level, playing Sweet Home Alabama and Brown-Eyed Girl to a gaggle of drunk ingrates and Skynyrd junkies, pulling down a whole $35 per man for five hours onstage, shelling out expenses for flyers and petrol and food and rehearsals and equipment, and eventually getting fired for not bringing enough heads in the door; making sycophantic calls to venue managers who assuage their small-knobbed insecurities by playing power games of hiring and firing; entering every futile Battle Of The Bands comp, never realizing it’s still about bringing heads in the door and not about their “soul-searching” music; trying to secure an “audition” gig in a Pasadena restaurant and fantasizing that one day they’ll be –

Rock Stars – ? – !

END

“Okay, okay, I promise: I won’t mention Scientology again!”

Samurai Hei.

I love sushi. I also love Toshiro Mifune. Guess that makes me a prime candidate for a samurai warrior – at least, that’s all it seems to take for a Westerner in this movie to wear kamishimo and wield katana. Despite that conceptual annoyance, this film does craft a sincere portrayal of an outsider undergoing an assimilation into Samurai culture without Western disparagement or cheap stereotype satire. THE LAST SAMURAI is a grandiose film, sweeping, majestic, inspiring – even WITH Tom Cruise in it.

I am always torn on how to approach films of this ilk; as “historical document” or “man-toy blockbuster”? Ultimately, in attempting to fully appreciate the nuances the filmmakers are trying to impart, I ford this conundrum by spending way too much time researching history and not enough time writing punchlines. I hate myself for my thoroughness.

Thusly – so my research informs me – the late 1800’s saw Japanese businessmen (besotted with Western commerce), convince the Imperial rulers of Japan that the shogunate government and its military rule through shogun and samurai (bakufu) was outdated, and hindering Japan’s financial and technological advancement. To transform feudal Japan into a modern nation, it was necessary to hire Westerners to train their dark age armies in the Way of the Gun.

Poffyhiro Cucuzake
The Last Vegetable

As imbecilic as that may sound (bringing haughty Yankees into a milieu where blade technology had attained a zenith in construction and killing prowess in the hands of the samurai millennia before the Americas were a twinkle in Europe’s eye), the gun did historically overrun the sword as the primary weapon of warfare in Imperial Japan. (We recall Leon’s assessment of weaponry in LEON: long-range rifle for amateurs, knife for a professional; illustrated by simply viewing the honor codes, demeanor and discipline of the blade wielders as opposed to the disheveled and dishonorable rabble populating the gun-toting military.)

This flensing of bakufu came to a head during the reign of Emperor Meiji, by all accounts as naïve, indecisive and ignorant of the best political path for his country as he is portrayed by young Shichinosuke Nakamura in this movie. THE LAST SAUMRAI’s plot centers around one last village of renegade samurai, led by Katsumoto (the leviathan Ken Watanabe, out-acting the movie’s titular “star” by acres), obstructing the Way of the New Government, embodied by Meiji.

Katsumoto was once Meiji’s respected tutor, which compromises Meiji’s decisiveness in annihilating the samurai. During one of their meetings, when Katsumoto accuses the Imperial house of being swayed by Western capitalism, Meiji retorts, “If we are whores, the samurai made us this way” – a notion also intimated in Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI when Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) blames the samurai themselves for making the farmers distrustful of warriors, due to the samurai penchant for accruing land and power as payment for their service (samurai means “to serve”), ultimately gaining political and military primacy. To this day it seems the very people we empower to protect us, attain a level of supremacy over us through the very strength that is the essence of their utility.

To combat Katsumoto’s outlaws, Meiji’s CEOs rescue a burned-out lush of a Civil War vet, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), from his Dudley Moore ARTHUR impersonations, to train their “modern” soldiery, a conscription of weaselly, panty-wetting nerds, whose ineptitude in battle rivals that of STAR WARS stormtroopers who trip over twigs and knock themselves unconscious when chased by Ewoks.

Ergo, it is no surprise when Algren’s Benny Hill-ian troops are decimated during their first battle, Algren being taken alive as Katsumoto’s prisoner.

Through the winter months, Algren is imprisoned by the natural isolation of the samurai village. Ostensibly to learn of his enemy’s tactics, Katsumoto engages Algren in philosophical conversations, whereby Algren – begrudgingly at first – comes to learn the Way of Bushido, the samurai honor code, embracing it with a passion when he finds it fills the vacuum in his guts that had turned him to the Way of Dudley Moore’s Arthur. In being an American soldier, he found only shame where he thought there was honor (when ordered to kill women and children); now, in this most unlikely place – the village of his enemy – he is startled to find honor once more in Bushido.

It is during this powerfully moving second act that the movie simultaneously excels and fails: excels because of its quietude, its controlled passages defining Algren’s recapturing of his humanity lost – and fails because Algren becomes too adept too quickly as a samurai swordsman. There is foreshadowing that he is a marksman and like most Civil War officers, he is issued a saber, yet all it takes is one ROCKY montage and he is besting his fencing tutor, Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada, who bears a marked resemblance to Toshiro Mifune, so was aces in my book from the get-go – giving Tom Cruise a beating with a bokken in the rain upon their first meeting only increased his net worth).

It would have been enough that Algren embrace the creed and find “life in every breath,” but in following the Bushido For Dummies handbook and having Algren become a master swordsman in the space of one winter (and mastering the language to boot), the film unconsciously adopts the superior Westerner stance that it fooled us into believing it was trying to avoid, thereby cheapening the lifelong devotion, dedication and discipline of true samurai.

Algren’s expertise is demonstrated as he battles side by side with Katsumoto and his warriors against ninja assassins. In this fiercely-staged, dynamite battle sequence, viewers may spring a lone tear for the level of loyalty that Algren has unwittingly attained for his captors – but are we really buying that he can hold his own against ninjas trained to be assassins from the cradle?

It is Algren’s immersion in samurai culture that begs the question of who the eponymous “last samurai” actually is. In the final battle scene, Katsumoto and Algren are the last two “samurai” lying wounded. Katsumoto asks Algren to give him a good death, leaving Algren as the last warrior alive representing the samurai village. Would it be too easy to assume that Katsumoto was the “last samurai”? Are the filmmakers trying to be too clever-clever in metaphorically bestowing that honor upon the white devil, Algren?

That ain’t right.

Vainglorious Yankee spirit triumphing once again – cross-culturally no less, when in reality, most white Americans cannot even master their mother tongue, let alone a philosophical, physical and linguistic overhaul into a culture far superior to their Way. From a country where any kind of dedication to a discipline is disparaged; where collective bone-laziness has created such “time-saving” devices as the salad shooter, the leaf-blower, the workout video and exercise machines that end up as clothes racks – THIS is the society whom we are meant to believe can send one of its flock into the heart of a millennia-aged culture and assimilate it in one winter?

Turning Japanese I think I’m turning Japanese oh I don’t THINK so.

When Algren is delivered back into “civilization,” he finds he cannot re-assimilate into the shameful dishabille of his own people, so allies with the samurai against his own army.

Thankfully, no computer warriors were killed on the final battlefield, hence, these rambunctious scenes resembled Mel Gibson’s last-of-the-HUMAN battle epics, BRAVEHEART. Gloriously so.

An unnecessary romance blossoms between Algren and the wife of the warrior he killed before being taken prisoner. Though it might be construed as Algren attaining such a level of respect that the warrior’s widow is now considering him fresh meat (when once she considered him as smelly as a pig, bringing disgrace on her house), the real reason why these two are the last characters onscreen giving each other meaningful glances is because this film sports a bankable Hollywood Man-Toy which necessitates a gratuitous romance for the chick demographic.

Director Edward Zwick and writers John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz and Zwick himself might have forged a 10-Cukee movie had they not made Algren such a superlative warrior and then opted for Hollywood Happy Ending protocol. Zwick steers it so close to immortality, then insults us by painting-by-numbers.

With a supporting cast including Masato Harada, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly and Tony Goldwyn, performances are stellar (yes, including Cruise’s – Zwick must be given due credit in achieving the mission impossible of extending Cruise’s acting range beyond the One Glib Expression method).

Still, watching a samurai film without Toshiro Mifune is like eating sushi without fish.

END