Gangs of New York

I'll be honest, I usually find historical epics to be pretty boring. Even the good ones could use some trimming. Leave it to Martin Scorsese though to create one that's gripping from the first second of its nearly three hour running time to the last. It tells the story of New York City before it became the mecca of human civilization it is today, when the streets still ran red with the blood of the many warring factions that vied for influence and their many victims. The film isn't a true story, but besides some embellishments it may as well have been. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio in his first of four collaborations with Scorsese as the son of an Irish immigrant and leader of the Dead Rabbits, and Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, the man who killed him. It starts with a war between two gangs for control of Five Points, a district in the city where the poor make do. The extremely bloody battle sets the tone for the rest of the film, establishing its main characters and their later motivations, as the plot quickly jumps forward to when DiCaprio's character has grown up.

The two best things about the movie are easily Scorsese's direction combined with the amazing work done to recreate 1800s New York and capture it on film, and Day-Lewis' performance. You could pretty much cut the protagonist out of the film and it could just be a great story about a leader of both crime and community in a city as it slowly develops into something resembling modern society. That's not really to slight DiCaprio, that's just how good Day-Lewis is. There's just something cool about the place the film creates, filled with hard men with curly mustaches, top hats, and razors and knives tucked into their clothing. And he epitomizes it with his glass eye and inscrutable nature. You never know if he's going to cut your throat or give you a pat on the shoulder. DiCaprio has his romantic foil, played by Cameron Diaz, can't quite measure up to his work, though they're perfectly fine otherwise.

The supporting cast is fantastic too, featuring recognizable faces in a variety of roles, supporting various sides as they see fit. Liam Neeson brings plenty of gravitas to the couple scenes in the beginning where he plays DiCaprio's father, which lends weight to later scenes where Bill shows clear ongoing respect for his former foe. The small time crew DiCaprio runs with features Al Capone from Boardwalk Empire and D'Angelo from The Wire, and Brendan Gleeson and John C. Reilly give interesting performances as former allies of Neeson who may no longer agree with his ideas. The film isn't without problems, of course. The entire third act is pretty messy, as though the screenwriters lost momentum and had to basically force things to make sure they managed to check off all the plot details they needed to to reach their conclusion. And that conclusion, while thematically appropriate, does result in a rather unfortunate anticlimax of an ending. With Scorsese at the helm though, all of those individual scenes manage to be good if not great, and he makes the problematic ending work because it's very clear what they're going for. He just knows how to make great movies, and this is certainly one of them.

Blood Diamond

Edward Zwick seems to have a strong affinity for ethnically-charged war films and thrillers. As is pretty apparent from the title, this movie is about African conflict diamonds, specifically ones coming from Sierra Leone during a brutal civil war in the 90s. Blood diamonds aren't as widespread as they were a few years ago, but they're still in circulation, and as long as people are making violent action dramas anyway, it's nice that sometimes they can actually be about something. I haven't always been Zwick's biggest fan, but he did a nice job with this film, one which is further elevated by strong central performances.

Despite 2006 being the year The Departed came out, Leonardo DiCaprio got his Oscar nomination that year for this movie, playing Danny Archer, a native slugger who gets caught up in the war while trying to help a fisherman named Solomon Vandy get his family back in return for a gigantic diamond he found and buried. DiCaprio is pretty great in this movie, intense and not entirely noble, but still a relatively good man at heart. He puts on a strong South African-or-thereabouts accent, and while I can't really say exactly how accurate it is, it sounds convincing and the general response from actual Africans is pretty positive. Solomon is played by Djimon Hounsou, whose name isn't as big as it is hard to pronounce, and he's also pretty great, getting award consideration himself. Jennifer Connelly is also good as an American journalist who wants the real blood diamond story and helps Danny in return for information, of course getting close to him in the process.

A lot of the plot and general action aren't particularly exceptional or original, but the casting and often brutal situations make it a more compelling movie than it could have been. The real African issues like the diamonds, corrupt governments, and child soldiers also make the whole thing seem more important and authentic, and add weight to the drama behind the shoot outs and explosions. It could be considered exploitative to use these topics to sell what might otherwise be a normal thriller, but I'd say it's better for more people to know about these things than to make sure the source of the information is 100% pure. And besides, it's a pretty darn good thriller.

Inception

Before I talk about the movie itself, I just want to say how glad I am that it exists. A summer action movie with a huge budget that's not only based on an original idea, but a complicated one, that isn't really explained in the trailers and actually asks the audience to think? It's a miracle that this was made. I have some amount of respect for Avatar for doing a similar thing, but the whole story was so broad that anyone from children to senior citizens could easily understand it, which was its intention. But Inception has the complexity of a low budget, mind-bending labor of love destined to release in a dozen theaters inside the shell of a blockbuster crowd pleaser. I guess it's too bad that Christopher Nolan had to make Warner Bros. six hundred million with The Dark Knight before he was allowed to do it, but I can live with that.

And the best part is that the film delivers. It's not perfect, but no movie really is. It is successful at doing pretty much everything I wanted from it, though. The extraction/inception concept in elegantly realized, giving you the basics in the twisty opening sequence (No punches are pulled; after a couple studio logos in the beginning, Nolan dives right into the story and demands you have your brain on immediately) explaining itself more as necessary, and playing out as expected, following its own rules all the way. Several critics of the film have complained about the film's interpretation of "dreams", saying everything is way too orderly and logical to accurately represent a true dream state. But the movie isn't about a true dream state - it's about something artificial, similar to dreaming but not actually the same, that allows for it to be designed and shared by multiple people. People criticizing the film for not being dream-like didn't understand what it was about. Not that everything is entirely orderly - there's obviously the scenes with the city folding over and exploding around the characters, but what's clever is that all these money shots for the trailer happen when the stakes aren't really that high - it's there to explain the potential of control within the dreams, but the real "heist" in the movie is generally more orderly beyond the different touches that show the way dreams can affect others.

I was actually surprised by how much action there was - I imagine if Nolan had complete creative control there might have been a bit fewer guys with guns running everywhere to focus a bit more on the story, but he made sure to fill it up with shooting and explosions to keep the studio happy. Not that it's ever too distracting, and it's generally pretty well filmed and exciting. I felt a bit of fatigue by the time they get to the snowy area from the trailer but I appreciated the attempt to mix it up a bit. Where the action really shines is one scene in particular, a sequence in a hotel hallway that's tumbling over, which completely captures the potential of the moment and to me was the most striking image in the whole film. Nolan has always been more of a craftsman than a stylist when it comes to his filming technique, and that holds true even in sequences like these, but somehow it makes the crazy story work. I imagine that someone more inclined to wow you with the crazy shit he can come up with might lose the thread, whereas Nolan keeps his insane ideas grounded enough with his studied film work that it all seems to make perfect sense.

Beyond the action and heist movie elements, there's also an emotional core to the story. The whole reason for Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb accepting the job is a personal one, and as we learn more about his dark past over the course of the film, it becomes clear how tragic the implications of all this escaping into dreams is. He's the only one who really gets this sort of development, as everyone else is mostly there to serve the story, but without that aspect the film would merely be a brilliant executed one and not so powerful. It's a really good if understated performance by DiCaprio, and it helps that pretty much everyone else is fantastic too. Ellen Page comes the closest to understanding his character, and she does a great job as the audience surrogate to whom everything is explained, something which isn't always the easiest to do, especially with a concept as heady as this one. Marion Cotillard gives another really damaged performance, and she's quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses in the game. Michael Caine shows up for his fourth Nolan film, although it's really a bit part that he doesn't have much time to do anything with, yet he's still his charming, wise self. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy are really great as members of Cobb's team, charming and badass as required, and I definitely need to see more work by both of them. Ken Watanabe plays a pretty critical role, and does a good job despite an accent that's a bit difficult at times. The rest of the cast is solid as well, though they didn't really jump out.

In the end, I wasn't sure how I really felt about the film. It impressed the heck out of me, but I wasn't sure if it hit me like the other truly great movies that I've seen. Then I spent the rest of the time from leaving the theater to sitting down for this review doing little other than thinking about what I had seen, and continuing to marvel at how well its best parts worked. Screw it, this was a fantastic movie, and it will likely end up in my top ten of this decade easily. It wasn't flawless, but I feel like many of the criticisms were from people who just weren't seeing what they expected to see, and the vision on display is astounding. It's clearly designed for repeat viewings, the ending was perfect, and it was probably the best combination of new ideas, visual ingenuity, and well executed action since The Matrix. If our summers were filled with things like this instead of remakes, sequels, and adaptations of every successful property under the sun, the world would be a better place.

Shutter Island

I almost feel like Martin Scorsese should have been born twenty years later or something. He's certainly impressed me with his older movies, but what he's able to do with the advantages of modern film equipment and techniques is nothing short of amazing. With the help of cinematographer Robert Richardson (who by no real surprise most recently handled the beautiful Inglourious Basterds as well), he's crafted one of the best looking movies I've seen, one that in general is elevated from its potential B-movie status by a sharp script based on a novel by an accomplished author, a great cast of mostly recognizable faces, and excellence in nearly every facet of its production.

The movie isn't perfect, of course. There are a couple missteps. The use of greenscreen is obvious in a few shots (although you wonder a bit if that was intentional to add to the uncertainty of the narrative), and a few lines feel clumsy or melodramatic. Overall though it's a well constructed, tense film that Scorsese seems in control of the entire time despite the somewhat kinetic way in which information is doled out. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a federal marshal named Teddy Daniels assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient at a mental hospital for violent offenders on an island off Massachusetts. He meets his new partner played by Mark Ruffalo on the boat ride over, and from there they soon realize that something is off. The island itself is intensely foreboding, introduced to some of the most sinister music I've ever heard, and it's not long before the marshals start to feel weird about the whole investigation. Ben Kingsley and the other hospital staff seem friendly enough on the surface, but it's clear pretty early that not everything is as it seems. The movie has a twist that I was partly already spoiled on, but it's completely woven into the fabric of the entire film, and it's not so much the surprise of the truth that's interesting but just the way it informs every little thing that happens.

While the normal parts of the story are interesting and well made, the movie stands out the most with its flashbacks to Daniels' experiences during World War II and a couple intense dream sequences that are drenched with amazing imagery and hint strongly at the truth behind everything. He also starts hallucinating at one point, and you're constantly being peppered with little touches that make trying to figure out what's actually going on a constantly entertaining exercise. Despite the certain visual and auditory treats, the movie wouldn't work without a good cast supporting it, and everyone seems to bring their A game. I wasn't sure about DiCaprio at first but he won me over with his reactions to the constantly increasing stress of the situation. Ruffalo is as solid as ever, Kingsley and Max von Sydow are wonderful in their intellectual menace, Michelle Williams is creepily effective in glimpses of Daniels' dead wife, and all the guards and inmates are perfectly leery and off kilter as required.

The story has the appropriate amount of twists and turns before the ending, which is of two parts. First the truth is laid bare, in a scene that might be just a bit too tidy but it ultimately effective mostly because of DiCaprio's performance, and then the plot is finally resolved in just about the perfect fashion. After everything is put together, you can either dwell on the results or think about how well it fits. Considering I was sort of looking for that already, I've already done some of the work, although it definitely still merits a second viewing. I'm not positive every single moment will still make sense, but at least the broad strokes seem to be in order. I expected to like the film, although not to be so impressed by the skill of its creation. Scorsese is definitely getting older, but I'd say his abilities are still pretty far from eroding at this point. It might even be my favorite work of his out of the handful I've seen. If I wasn't already convinced, I definitely have some catching up to do.