I'm a Policeman ... See Mah Badge?

The Brave One (2007)

Rating ... F (8)

Women need faux-empowerment movies too, and since the reprehensible likes of Double Jeopardy and Enough apparently weren't - uh - enough, why not give it another go, this time envisioning the concept to the tune of Paul Haggis does Ms. 45 with the added bonus of defining female empowerment as women partaking in the same revenge plots men have slugged through since insert-your-own-Western-here? Throw in some dime novel dialogue and more narrative deck-stacking than De Sica ever committed with his like-minded, ruffians-on-every-street-corner mentality from The Bicycle Thief, and you've got yourself a sweet deal. There's so much to dislike in The Brave One I'm having difficulty deciding which segments rank as most offensive. Certainly the film's periodic reinforcing of violence (first by cross-cutting between beaten, hospitalized victims and sex, later by completely explicit dialogue - "I think violence is sexy!") seems vile, but not especially more so than the film's templated use of religious iconography and obtrusive, unwieldy writing. ("Places I've never encountered before," muses Jodie Foster during her radio show, a flimsy outlet for bluntly demarcating her generic pyschological self-analysis, "Am I finding them ... or are they finding me?") After getting clobbered by local hooligans (this happens in big cities, y'know) during the film's first act, Foster illegally obtains a firearm and goes renegade on the asses of arbitrarily misbehaving, male New York residents, and the film responds by validating her decision nearly unconditionally, a conceit laughably embraced to its fullest when she guns down not just any convenient store robber, but one who dutifully employed his five seconds of screen time to forcibly assert his desire for custody of his wife's - the store clerk - children. Seemingly snatched straight out of Crash, Terrence Howard plays lead detective who performs cleanup on Foster's dirty work, all the while making lame statements upon arrival at the scenes of the crimes ("Hope this was his stop!" "The circus is in town tonight!") and drawing hazy, contrived conclusions from the "evidence" on hand, complete with Haggis-like deduction. "Money in his pocket ... ?" he remarks confusedly of a deceased, black subway mugger, with the implicit racial condescension on the tip of his tongue: "Black people don't have money in their pockets ... he must have robbed someone!" What finally happens to Foster after all this wreckage, you might ask. Surprisingly little, given she spends the entire film heavy-handedly surmising about her post-traumatic self as "the person I once was" and "the stranger inside of me." The film rewards her as being brave because she chooses vengeance over recovery, and thus she encounters stock character after stock character who also share this philosophy of mutually assured destruction, the most baffling of which has to be her black next-door neighbor who dresses her wounds one evening over tales of how "young boys" from her unnamed country of origin "were given guns to kill their parents." Ignoring the obvious racial contempt of the situation, its very presence constitutes a sentiment the film backs as much as it does any of its other dull, obvious themes. Namely, women can be magical negroes too!


The Astronaut Farmer (2007)

Rating ... D (13)

Will Billy Bob Thornton ascend into space on the coattails of his home-made rocket, despite the brutish antagonism of the henchmen from the FAA, and prove to American audiences the sanctity of dreams and the personal gratitude of pursuing them? Yes, he will. The End. It's a shame Astronaut Farmer doesn't just up and end the moment after Thornton emits a feisty speech about dreams in response to the government bigwigs presiding over the hearing that will decide whether he's officially allowed to travel to space because in the hour or so that follows the film only grows increasingly wearisome with its banal, manipulative drama yet becomes more fixated on its narrow-minded target of fulfilling one's - ugh, there's that word again - dreams. Thus, watching The Astronaut Farmer feels uncomfortably akin to a project submitted by someone with no clue what's going on but wants bonus points just for trying. Such good intentions, unfortunately, are the only armaments in The Astronaut Farmer's limited arsenal that don't feel incredibly outdated or dull. The subject matter isn't completely hackneyed, persay (though when Thornton finally decides upon a name for his rocket he calls it "The Dreamer" - so maybe it is), but the Polish brothers' hand-holding screenplay makes everything explicit. I guess I already mentioned The Astronaut Farmer might possibly pertain to Dreams and Following Them but the film's other pointless shout-outs include WMD's, The Patriot Act, and alternative fuels, as well as a minor character who exists solely to pontificate in awe on how "huge" Billy Bob's rocket is. (That, and all its prosaic connotations then apply to his quest for dream fulfillment, by extension.) The authorities routinely put the squeeze on Thornton's zero-G quest but in all the commotion everyone seems to forget his obsession is entirely self-serving and detrimental to the well-being of his family to boot, which makes it doubly offensive that his wife and kids are the ones that finally persuade him into space after his first failed attempt. I suppose I can live with such juvenile tunnel vision of dream seeking, but would someone please explain how after twelve planetary orbits Thornton inexplicably manages to touch down roughly in the same place he blasted off? Learn ya physics, kids - that's the real lesson.


The Last Legion (2007)

Rating ... C (41)

In 460 A.D., a legion of soliders - the last legion, you could say - despite diversified roots banded together to protect a young Caesar from multifarious and nefarious foes. Their brave not-quite-last stand saw them beat the shit out of their opponents in the name of peace and truth and such, and they proved the insurmountability of brotherhood, the importance of mythos, the capability of women, as well as demonstrated the most foolproof method of kicking evil villains into burning trees - exploits that would ultimately form the basis for the legend of Arthur and Excalibur. Viewers who wish to learn what ultimately formed the basis of the legend of Arthur and Excalibur should surely check this movie out.

... Just don't believe a thing you see about the use of the guillotine. Anachronism Department under-shot that one by almost a thousand years.


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