Reviews

Peter Navarro, someone no economist believes has even the most rudimentary understanding of economics, has "directed" this propaganda piece of protectionist fearmongering being promoted under the guise of a documentary. He joins the Dinesh D'Souza brotherhood of conjuring up some notion of the uneducated, ill-informed 21st Century John Birchers and spins it out through illogical pearl-clutching interviews with others of his ilk. These "experts" are reminiscent of the "experts" on Secrets of Ancient Aliens and Bigfoot Revealed! on cable network TV shows. Shame on Martin Sheen for lending gravitas to this POS by agreeing to narrate it.

I saw this movie when it first came out, and remember thinking how good it was. I saw it again today, and realized that while the themes it tackles are important, it really isn't as great a film as I remembered. Filled with stereotypes (despite places in the film that seem to be mocking how people stereotype one another), the dialogue is stiff, unnatural, and again, like someone's impression of stereotypes of Brooklyn street slang. Most of the performances consist of various people screaming bad lines at one another. I really wish this was the movie I thought I saw in 1989.

So one rainy day in the early 1990's I was sitting at home flipping through the local TV stations looking for something to watch when I momentarily caught a glimpse of someone who looked familiar. I stopped changing channels for a moment to see if I could figure out why this old guy looked familiar, when it hit me-- that's Henri Charriere, the author of Papillon! He was in a movie? This would have been in the Dark Ages, before the advent of Google or IMDb, so I did what anyone would do back in the day... I called the TV station to ask what the name of the movie was that they were showing at the moment. And it was this film.

Despite the presence of Claudia Cardinale, a well-known (and highly paid) actress (at least in Europe), it only took a few minutes of viewing to see that the film was, well, kinda shite. Poor production values (especially the sound editing, which may have been at least partly caused by overdubs, as the cast seems to have been from all over (Italy, France, Spain, UK). And Charriere is awful; his English is all but incomprehensible, and his acting is a flat as the surface of a CD. The story might have been interesting if the dialogue had been written better, and the director and crew more talented. As is, it's only real value is seeing Charriere on film, as he died shortly before the release of the Steve McQueen/Dustin Hoffman film Papillion, based on his memoir.

I see many of the comments on here are "this is Tyler Perry's best film ever." That's pretty much like saying the Yugo was best Serbian-built car ever.

Tyler Perry can't write. He tends to choose actors who can't act. He just keeps re-writing the same basic, tired, stereotyped characters and puts them in virtually the same tired plots over and over. But he apparently knows his demographic, because the same folks will run out and plunk down $10 to see this crappy, sappy mess.

It works for him, so I'm sure there will be another Madea movie within 18 months.

Greg Davis and Bryan Daly take some crazed statements by a terrorists, add some commentary by a bunch of uber-right reactionaries, ascribe the most extreme positions of the most fundamentalist Moslems on the planet to everyone who calls themselves a Moslem, and presents this as the theology of Islam. Maybe their next film will involve interviewing Fred Phelps and the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church, adding commentary by some militant atheist "scholars, and call their film "What the World Needs to Know About Christianity." Ultimately, this film suffers from both poor production values and lack of attention to the most basic standards of journalism. Don't waste your time and money; just turn on your AM radio and listen to Rush Limbaugh for a couple of days for free and you'll get the same message with the same level of intellectual analysis.

I plan to see the film this weekend, so i won't yet comment on the film's artistic merit. i've always appreciated Garcia as an underrated actor despite not really caring for his politics (and i'm no Castro apologist, so please don't flame me about this--i'm talking about rather his Republican leanings), and i look forward to his directorial outing here. but i do find it interesting that virtually every glowing review of this film on IMDb has the words "as a Cuban-American..." or "as the son of Cuban parents who fled the Castro regime..." or something similar in the body of the review, then blasts the "PC critics" who have not praised the film as highly as the reviewer. it would seem that one's perspective might cloud one's ability to view the work as art, and are praising the film because of its perspective, not for its artistic accomplishment.

UPDATE--

I've now seen the movie. While i think the film has some merit, my suspicions expressed above were confirmed, and clearly explain the huge difference between the reviews on IMDb ("viewers comments") and those of established film reviewers. Those who left Cuba after Fidel's dictatorship began (and their progeny) love the film's barely concealed political POV, and that love blinds them to the artistic flaws. Those who are looking at the film from the point of view of art, regardless of the politics, see the artistic problems: dialogue that doesn't ring true, the failure to develop characters into three-dimensional humans, the irritating and useless character played by the normally brilliant Bill Murray, etc.

one huge problem is that the film is overly long; Garcia, like Oliver Stone, is in dire need of an editor who can work on the director's cut at arms-length to tighten the film and help weave the narrative in a cogent manner. add to that the fact that Garcia and Infante (whose Tres Tristes Tigres is one of my favorite books) have created caricatures, not characters, for this film. For the most part, they exist in a black=and-white world, where people are either all good or all evil.

The praise IMDb raters have given the film for "historical accuracy" has no foundation; it is only an accurate portrayal of the dim or created memories of the upper class of pre-revolution Cuba, fed by the political ideology of the Cuban diaspora. the film completely ignores 90% of the population of the island and their circumstances prior to 1959, presenting a seriously limited view of Cuba and particularly Havana as a place where wealthy, well-dressed academics and large landowners stay out all night partying, get up at midday to a lovely breakfast at their city home or country manor, and worry about whether or not their personal wealth might be impacted by the crazy political problems around them. Where are the working classes? where (besides the "black" club where Garcia's character takes his brother's widow for a night of "slumming") are the black Cubans? where are the cane workers and tobacco-field campesinos? in the beautiful Lost City, these people are somewhere behind the scenes, not in front of the camera. if you honestly accept that this limited view is all that you want to portray, then there is nothing wrong with that. but to say, as Garcia has (and many of the IMDb fans have), that the goal of the film was to show the world what Cuba was really like, and what "la revolution" really did, shows either artistic dishonesty or blindness to reality (willful or otherwise).

with writing and directing that started with less of a political agenda, Garcia might have been able to make a pretty good 2 hour movie. unfortunately, the film ultimately is an over-long, heavy-handed mess. it's a pretty mess, and probably a mess worth seeing, but be forewarned.

I'll admit I'm a sucker for cinematography. I'll go further and say that if the cinematography includes a well-done rain sequence, the rest of the movie could consist of the cast of Rat Race reprising their least funny scenes and i'd probably give it 5 out of 10 points. That being said, i loved Road to Perdition--8.5 points on a 10 point scale.

I won't go into the long details about the plot that you can read in the other 500 reviews this film will get on IMDB. Instead, i'll just say that while i dislike Tom Hanks, he does a decent job in this film, and Paul Newman was spectacular in every scene he graced with his presence. Jude Law was creepy (nice physical bit by him as well, with the slumped posture and nasty smirk). Daniel Craig does a good turn as the violence prone, trying-hard-but-failing-to-prove-to-my-dad-i'm-a-worthy-successor son of Paul Newman's character. Poor Jennifer Jason Leigh's talents are wasted in a bit role and all of 2 minutes on screen time.

The script left a little to be desired--i'm not sure i ever really bought the bond between Hanks and his son, and the bank robbery scenes seemed to have existed merely for a bit of comic relief in what is otherwise a well-designed dark, depressing atmosphere that otherwise is pervasive throughout. I'm not sure what Mendes was trying to accomplish with the cheesy opening either--cut it and get right to the story.

the bottom line--it's not the Godfather, but it's a film well worth seeing; and if Conrad Hall doesn't get an Oscar nomination for cinematography, may the entire Academy burn in Hell.