Rififi (1955)

Directed by: Jules Dassin
Written by: Jules Dassin, Rene Wheeler, Auguste le Breton 
Starring: Jean Servais, Carl Mohner, Robert Manuel, Jules Dassin
Rated: NR

I was somewhat surprised to see a solid French gangster film, but I'm not sure why. Captain Obvious will tell you noir is a French word, but the retrospectively applied term to the genre leaves more American connotation, or at least English ones, than it does continental European. Of course, director Jules Dassin is American, but he is an American with European sensibilities, and here has fashioned a heist picture that at once applies the tension and male-driven qualities of the dime-a-dozen Hollywood gangster films with the uniquely French emotional qualities which drive the story. Most of the film is unremarkable save one sequence, the heist itself, which will floor you. But more on that to follow. Now, some formalities...

Rififi means "rough-and-tumble", and "Rififi" is a handsome film about a small group of handsome, rough-n'-tumble men who plot to rob a bank safe full of tens of millions of francs worth of precious jewels. Heading the team is Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) who, after a stint in prison is approached by his good friends Jo (Carl Mohner) and Mario (Robert Manuel) who wish to carry out a small heist. When it is discovered the riches hidden in the vaults, they employ the help of safe expert and sexual deviant Cesar (Dassin) to go for the gold, so to speak.

The four plan the perfect caper and they succeed, making them all instantly wealthy. But le Stephanois's past relationship with the lovely Mado (Marie Sabouret) comes back to haunt him when her current beau, the jealous and dangerous Louis Grutter (Pierre Grasset), learns of their robbery, compounded by the hapless bungling of Cesar. While keeping one step ahead of the police, the group must now avoid the rival gang and protect the ice they've stolen.

All in all it's pretty standard fare, full of characters but only peppered with a few people worth worrying about. Most of the cast flit in and out, like Mado, who seems only to be a part of the movie to link le Stephanois to Grutter and provide a valuable, but not crucial bit of information. What these people do with their jewels is of little interest--even le Stephanois doesn't know what he wants them for--but the underlying themes is what people will do to obtain riches, even without an end goal. It seems as though having and holding the gems is the goal itself.

Dassin has done a capable job of wearing multiple hats as director, writer and actor, helming a piece that is taught with a slow build to the final obligatory shootout. But what is most interesting is not the climax, but the heist itself which comes at the halfway mark. Indeed, I'm sure "Rififi" is only really the iconic piece of French cinema it is due the carefully orchestrated breaking and entering of the bank.

For a full 32 minutes the audience is left watching the men execute the plan which they methodically mapped out. Without a single line of dialogue or a note of music the meticulous and exhilarating robbery unfolds. It is beautifully choreographed; I had the impression that I was watching art about art, not about crime, and it certainly makes one wonder about where the information on planning such an intricate scene was gathered. Often ripped off, this is a benchmark moment in cinematic crime, one of terrible urgency yet one that plays with the grace of a Debussy piano suite. It is truly movie magic.

I have a great love for noir  pictures. Even though the characters are meant to move about the screen full of fear and suspicion, I find something so inherently romantic about them. They feature proper men, full of self-worth and a hidden desire to do good. They wander lonely streets and hide behind streetlamps, ducking into payphone booths to send a desperate call of warning. There is never a black and white; the intentions and interests of the characters are made more understandable because they are more morally ambiguous. For all of the heightened sense of drama this brand of cinema feels the most real to me because there really is no good and evil, even though there may be a "good guy" and a "bad guy". Although "Rififi" is largely undistinguished (excepting the centerpiece) it still has the qualities of a great movie, full of that moral ambiguity which I love so much.

3.5/4

The Spectacular Now (2013)

Directed by: James Ponsoldt
Written by: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Starring: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley
Rated: R

Watching "The Spectacular Now" was something of a small revelation for me. Who knew that the coming of age, teenage romp story still had some life left in it? And not just some life, but a beautiful swelling of uncolored emotion. Finally, a film that doesn't treat teenagers like as half-formed people, but rather as fully formed beings transitioning into accountable members of society. I left the theatre with these words rolling around in my head: that was a solid little movie.

Sitting before a keyboard, sipping some unknown potion from a Big Gulp cup, Sutter (Miles Teller) rolls around what to write for his college application essay. It asks him to describe a period of adversity, how he overcame it, and what he learned from the experience. After some thoughtful, moderately drunk moments Sutter describes the end of his relationship with "fucking" awesome girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson). It's an obvious, odious, 18-year-old sex and booze-fueled lusty affair with no sort of real emotion, but that's what he knows. He's a teenage alcoholic, a partier and a joke. That essay is the end of a chapter of his life.

A night of bar hopping leaves a blacked out Sutter on a random lawn to be discovered by Aimee (Shailene Woodley), the quiet good girl who of course isn't right for Sutter, but somehow she is. Rediscovering those long forgotten, pubescent roads hopefully never to be walked again, the movie steers us through those hardest times when "graduation", "virginity", "prom", "parents", "future" were words that held very real and very frightening connotations for us. The yin to his yang, Aimee and Sutter push and pull each other towards an equilibrium in which they can be happy with themselves and each other.

Teller and Woodley deliver surprisingly real and affectionate performances that strip away that shiny tint that seems perpetually painted on movies that deal with the issues of high schoolers. It's an awkward relationship, full of more than casual glances. Sutter is as charismatic as they come, a defense mechanism that we can only assume was acquired from a fear of rejection and failure. He shoots himself down and dotes on others before he himself can become a target of others. She attends French Club and her heroine is a figure from an anime series. She guards herself out of an obligation to her family. To each other though, they are safe.

When you parry it down the plot sounds hackneyed and cliched --the party boy and the loner girl who find solace in each other, but a script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber should alleviate fears of commonplace ideas. After their triumphant "500 Days of Summer" there is no question that the two writers know how to pen conventional stories in a way that is both unconventional and honest. I didn't once watch Sutter and Aimee's romance blossom and think it was forced or contrived for the sake of making an audience happy. The film breathes and resonates because it's relatable. Sutter is not especially handsome and he wins people over with his smooth talking charm, so why couldn't he and Aimee be together? He calls her beautiful and he's absolutely right.

The film's strength is in its raw and sympathetic characters and in the fact that it doesn't feel the need to throw glitter in the eyes of the viewer. The ending hits you like a sucker punch because it has taken the time to create damaged roles for talented actors who are given free reign to explore and expand the identifiable troubles of their relationship. What Aimee and Sutter have may or may not be true love, but the end result isn't the point. The point is the process and "The Spectacular Now" drives it home.

3.5/4

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Directed by: Woody Allen

Written by: Woody Allen

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Bobby Cannavale, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard

Rated: PG-13

Cate Blanchett gives the best performance of her career as the title character of Woody Allen's modern adaptation of Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire". Positively swallowing the screen, Blanchett is an unstoppable force who, unless she meets her immovable object, will handily win the gold come Oscar time. 

Hearkening back to the classic Hollywood performances of the mid-20th Century, she plays the lofty and delusional socialite, Jasmine, a woman who had it all and lost it through her own doing and is forced to take stock of her life. After losing her house and her crook husband (Alec Baldwin), Blanchett leaves New York to stay with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and pick herself back up again. Forced back into the real world, the neurotic housewife struggles with Ginger's humbler way of living and works to maintain the insanity that bubbles just under her surface.  

We meet Jasmine on an airplane where she sits gabbing with an older woman on the plane. The lady says nothing as Jasmine talks and talks and talks, recounting her life story, and when they finally reach the airport the old lady takes off while Jasmine tries to get her phone number. From the start there is the fear and vulnerability of a woman who has just suffered a nervous breakdown. Blanchett does nothing to hide the wounded characteristics of her character and certainly Jasmine is not easy company to keep.

Hawkins gives some fine acting as the caring if enabling Ginger who takes her in much to the chagrin of her grease monkey fiance, Chili (Bobby Cannavale). With her help Jasmine goes to school to learn how to use a computer in order to be able to take online classes on interior design. She tries to work, she tries to date, but mostly she tries to reclaim her status. As much as this is a character study about a woman so complicated only Williams could pen her, it is also a very sharp commentary about the excess of the 1%.

Of course that all really comes second to Blanchett's interpretation of Blanche DuBois and the circumstances that lead to an unstable woman's reality shattering around her. On the surface she is the dying heir to those 1940's starlets: shining with a demure refinement, dressed to the nines, and speaking with a hint of a Mid-Atlantic accent that reminds one of her Oscar-winning turn as Katharine Hepburn. And then one sees Jasmine talking to herself, replaying the events of her life before she was given Edison's Medicine, and we realize that behind that porcelain skin and Fendi purse she is a woman keeping her dismembered parts loosely stitched together with Xanax and alcohol. 

A lot of critics have been saying that this is the best Allen film in years, even decades, and that he has finally struck gold with the blackest sort of comedy at a late hour. I'm not as convinced. Aside from a host of great supporting roles and an almost frighteningly committed turn from the star, the film as a whole is kind of a mess. It has no organic flow to it and no suitable direction to it. Unlike its source material it spends a large amount of time showing us where this mysterious hurricane woman came from and how she got to San Francisco. But the background only gets us so far and we wonder where she will end up. Will her lies assert her back into a life of comfort? Can a make believe world become reality if one presents a picture of composure? There is no satisfying conclusion to the movie and I left wanting more.

This isn't to say that it is a bad film. On the contrary, there are too many good parts for this to even have the possibility of being bad. When the plot is derived from one of the greatest plays of the last hundred years, and is refashioned by master of guilt who has a assembled a truly fine cast it is difficult to err. A more linear narrative from Allen might have worked to his benefit though.

I wouldn't even venture to say that he had much to do with Blanchett's acting. Sure the director is wonderful with his actresses, but there is a point when one person's genius ends and the other's begins. What was so startling about her performance was the way in which she played almost two completely different roles yet was always in character. Some scenes had no buildup to a meltdown, yet Blanchett entered as Jasmine and all semblance of "acting" melted away. No warm-up, just delivery.

In all "Blue Jasmine"'s most powerful asset is its ability to be both funny and tragic, sometimes simultaneously. There is little time for lulls and the plot unfolds with the frenetic energy of Jasmine's mind. The project mostly rests on Blanchett's shoulders, and fortunately all involved there is no reluctance from her about holding it up.

3/4

The East (2013)

Directed by: Zal Batmanglij
Written by: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling
Starring: Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgard, Ellen Page
Rated: R

From Romulus and Remus to Mowgli to Native American folklore, throughout history and around the globe there are stories of feral children raised by wolves. It is in human nature to examine oneself as a beast, to draw association with animals, anthropomorphize them, and study the adaptive behavior of man in a naked form. Government is an artificial construct derived from a pack mentality in which we as humans have an alpha and a series of omegas, but suppose we did not. A Hobbesian state of nature is a cruel place, but for a rare few the structure is far crueler.

Sarah (Brit Marling) is a new operative for a highly secretive intelligence organization that specializes in the protection of large enterprises. Her husband tells her he knew more about her when she worked for the FBI. After nine months of dedicated research she is chosen to infiltrate an anarchic eco-terrorist cell known as the East which has been splashed across the media for their covert and highly dangerous attacks against the major members of certain corporations. Masking herself as an ultra-left wing vagabond (I guess they prefer to be called "travelers") she earns the trust of a member after evading the police.

Brought into their headquarters, a dilapidated, fire scorched house in the middle of the woods, Sarah must then assimilate herself into their small but fiercely dedicated group, and work towards undermining their future attacks. These are the types of people who live off of discarded food found in dumpsters, who bathe each other in rivers and refer to animals as if they were reasoning beings. A disturbing opening sequence shows the hooded group break into the home of a CEO of an oil refining company. Shot using a handycam, we see them slink into the lux abode of the ultra-rich and then dump gallons of oil into the air ducts of the house, the same oil which spilled into the ocean killing an ecosystem.

This is an electrically charged, morally ambiguous thriller about the hypocritical nature of extremism and the way that charisma and cultish community can sway the beliefs of the undecided. It is obvious going in that Sarah's sympathies will be tested; in the first jam we see the disastrous results of pharmaceutical company's new drug. In the second, the effects of contaminated water. And the third, well...more on that later. The group is headed by Benji (Alexander Skarsgard), our alpha male, and under his quiet power Sarah is slowly turned to the cause.

She is the feral child, and the East is her pack. The fluidity of beliefs raises all sorts of ethical questions, and although the film at first seems to hold left-leaning sympathies it's results are not so cut and dry. They praise equality and freedom from oppression of the establishment for that only leads to the harming of the masses by the privileged few, but there is a natural order to the group headed by Benji, Doc, and Izzy (Ellen Page). They cherish life and love, but warp Biblical passages to justify what they believe to be their magnanimous justice.

The film is sleek and stylish and full of great performances. Fortunately, for all the nail-biting tension of the jams, the ethics lessons and political remarks, the plot never loses the human quality behind it all. There are deeply spiritual moments of beauty and love shared within the East, and the strong acting from all involved keep it grounded and clear of being labeled corny.

Spoiler Alert

There are so many good things going on throughout the duration of the movie that it is almost a shame to talk about the major hole in the plot which irked me beyond measure.

We know from the onset that there will be three jams against certain companies: the poisoning of the CEOs at the party and pushing Izzy's father into the polluted lake are established. Then Sarah goes back to her intel company, and upon returning learns that the last attack will be against her own firm. It turns out Benji knew all along that Sarah was a mole and was keeping her around and earning her trust in tandem with her doing the same.

But this implies that the attack on Sarah's company was premeditated from the start, contradictory to what learn about the East initially: that everyone knows their part and most of them understand the whole of the jam before they commit it. If only Benji and one other person knew about Sarah, then is this jam new? Was it formulated after Izzy's death? If so, why wasn't that explained?

The third act falls to pieces, feeling muddled and rushed, and I didn't buy the message of the end credits at all. The lack of believability in its final moments ruined the even-handedness of the first two-thirds of the film. I knew there was something amiss while watching it, but it was not until further thought after I left the theater that I pinpointed what rubbed me the wrong way.

A bit more care towards the end was needed, but it doesn't completely diminish the solid work of most of this very cool picture.

3/4

City of God (2002)

Directed by: Katia Lund, Fernando Meirelles
Written by: Braulio Mantovani
Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino,Phellipe Haagensen
Rated: R 

An opening shot from "City of God" shows the vibrant life a favela in Rio de Janeiro, full of music and color and chatter. A chicken escapes from a butcher and goes running down the street, soon to be chased by a group of school age kids wielding pistols. They run and laugh and shoot wildly at this chicken, unchecked by locals or the police, and we must infer that this is normality. Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles's exuberant and horrifying account of the Brazilian drug wars of the 1970's is masterclass work and one of those rare films that sneaks up on you and knocks you right on your ass.

A dense tapestry made of the stories of many colorful characters, we are grounded to the narrative by Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a young man who has lived a life surrounded by crime but avoided it with a passion for photography. A Dickensian-type character, Rocket's story is never the primary focus, but like a camera we see snapshots of the lives of the people who surround him over the course of a decade.

Mainly it is the story of Li'l Dice, later known as Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino), who was raised in the slums and shadowed by would-be hoodlums until he grew into his own taste for violence. At a young age the deeply insecure and sociopathic teen moved to the City of God and set his sights upon taking charge of the swelling neighborhood. The major players reveal themselves as Benny (Phellipe Haagensen), Carrot, and Knockout Ned, and through their stories we watch the harrowing politics of drug dealing unfold in graphic detail. There are rules to these slums, gerrymandering and canvassing, power plays and backstabbing, all in an effort to seize more territory and more business.

It's a challenging drama with many different players and subplots, but Lund and Meirelles take firm hold of the dense plot and create something that is almost hypnotic is its speed, its brutality and the contradictory vivaciousness with which it is all presented. Watching dozens and dozens of kids throw their lives away for a war which they have no authority on or information about is desperately hard to watch, but at the same time it is not simply about faceless child soldiers doing the bidding of kingpins. There is an unquestionable rejoicing of life and a celebration of youth in its recklessness. Through the bloodshed these are teenagers like any others in the world whose lives are centered on getting high, getting laid, getting a job, finding a purpose in the world.

There could not simply be one or the other, the life or the death, for then we would be apathetic to both. Seeing Rocket with his first nice camera fills us with a pleasure in knowing that it is through art that he is avoiding a life of drugs and violence. But at the same time this camera was a gift from a "boss" of the favela who obtained it as trade for cocaine from the junkie Tiago. Rocket's fortunate turn comes from Tiago's dependence on Li'l Ze and his operation's lack of competition. The even-handedness of it all is what makes the film so special.

Beautiful mixtures of color, music and excellent framing accentuate stellar performances from a cast largely made of nonprofessionals. There is an authenticity to the artistry of the filmmakers that affords them the leniency in making such a huge picture that raises far more questions than it answers. While watching I couldn't escape the feeling that these men did not direct this out a desire to transfer a didactic message about the state of the favelas or police corruption or the inner workings of a drug racket. To me it seemed more an outpouring of emotions, and that the whole movie was directed by the whims of their creativity.

This is a story as powerful as any you could hope to watch, filled with images that will seer into your eyelids. The talent in this film is huge and gushes out untempered by political correctness or industry standards. It is one of those rare moments when great parts equal a greater whole, all of which is commanded by pure inspiration.

4/4    

   

Pacific Rim (2013)

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Written by: Travis Beacham, Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba
Rated: PG-13

Writing about this film is pretty pointless. Watch the trailer and you'll know that it's about a monster-alien invasion which is combatted by giant new robots and they smash each other and it's bright and loud and over two hours of smashing and special effects and bad one-liners and no real plot or fully developed characters buthowcoulditbebadbecauseit'sdirectedbyaforeignersoitmustbegoodandGODILOVEFILMSTHATREMINDMEOFPOWERRANGERS!!!

Basically it's big, it's dumb, it's visually stunning and you shouldn't expect anymore than what they trailer gives you. I could go on giving you a plot about inter-dimensional portals which let in giant monsters called Kaiju who reek havoc on the world's major cities. And then I could go on about the Jaeger Program and mind melding and all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, but in the end aren't you just going to the theater to watch your childhood action figure fantasies get played out with a $180,000,000 budget?

I did, and I had a blast.

(Here's the trailer, just in case you live under a rock.)

3/4

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Roy Jacobsen, Matthew Read

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen 

Rated: NR

If there is some point to Nicolas Winding Refn's "Valhalla Rising" it eluded me entirely. This tiresome, masturbatory Viking flick served as nothing more than an assault on my patience as it slithered at a snail's pace from one pointless, gruesome fight scene to another. 

Set in the year 1000 CE, we follow the escapades of the ultra-violent mute, One Eye, as he breaks free from the bonds of his pagan oppressors and joins a group of Christian Vikings on their way to the Holy Land. Nature and God forsake them, and One Eye prophesies that instead of reaching Jerusalem they will wind up in the savage New World. 

Refn continues to expand on his thesis that nature is violent and violence is natural in this unrelenting barrage of unsympathetic characters killing each other in the most heinous ways. We are introduced to One Eye as a sort of gladiatorial slave, taken from tribe to tribe by a group of wild men and their chieftain in order to fight men to the death for money. One Eye is the undisputed champion, but is left barely a man for his efforts. He is in fact described as being from Hell. 

His escape brings him into the hands of Christians who also recruit him for his warrior prowess, and One Eye joins them for some undisclosed reason. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything in the film except for the Christians' quest for God. There is no sign of civilization in the film, no women, just senseless violence. The life of these men is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", but as they have no real human characteristics do we care? I sure as hell didn't.

At times I felt that this might have been Refn's attack on Christianity. One Viking says that Jesus sacrificed himself to free them all from a life of pain and misery, the irony being that everything we see is mud and blood and fear. These "men" fill the screen like hunted animals, bonding together in small huddled masses, startled and reactionary to any foreign stimulus. Then at the end of the film we see a baptism scene and One Eye sacrifice himself for the sake of a young boy. So is he Jesus? If that's my Lord and Savior then we are all damned.   

I was actually rather surprised that this was ever given the green light to be made. I cannot remember the last time I've been so bored watching a 90 minute film. If you got a hold of the script I'd expect that on paper it would be no more than 20 pages. Refn's aggressive yet languid filmmaking quickly pushes his story (what little of it there is) off the cliff into self-importance. I finished watching and not only did I feel that Refn had wasted my time exploring the style of movie making that was done in Zack Snyder's abomination  "300", but that he actually felt that he was doing something important in making it.

With no real protagonist, a fleshless story, no real script and a gratuitous amount of violence, "Valhalla Rising" is nothing more than a testosterone-fueled attack on good taste. The man knows how to make a good film--"Drive" is one of my favorites of the last decade--but good heavens, actually put in some effort in creating some substance underneath all that style.

0.5/4 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Directed by: Andrew Dominik
Written by: Andrew Dominik
Starring: Brat Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell
Rated: R

What a terrific idea to create a film about Jesse James which is not told from the perspective of Jesse James. The famed gunslinging train robber extraordinaire lived his life more myth than man, famed and idolized for his reckless spirit and the air of danger he toted with him. It would make more sense then not to show the myth from the myth's perspective, but to show him from man's point of view--Robert Ford's view, to be exact. For who the man is makes, shifts, alters, breaks the power and perspective of the myth, and this man's singular point of view is key.

Casey Affleck proves himself a star as the coward Robert Ford, a simpering young man with big ambitions whose very state of being invites ridicule. He idolized James ever since he was a child, reading books on him, preparing himself to be James's sidekick. At 19, he was given the chance to work along side him, beginning a relationship spanning several years in which Ford's opinion of James is tested by the latter's braggadocios, bullying ways.

Director Andrew Dominik has a point to make on the power of perspective, but he seems to be in no hurry to make it. At 160 minutes, the film lumbers along and occasionally threatens to buckle under its own weight. It is largely without action which seems counterintuitive considering it is period piece about trigger-happy robbers, but the movie really isn't so much about what the public read of James or how we remember him. Listening to Ford gush about how found he is of him, James comments on the books written about him: "Most of them ain't real." It instead has almost Terrence Malick quality to it, one that breathes and ponders and allows the actors to fully embrace their roles.

Although it is spearheaded by a phenomenal Affleck and a perfectly cast Brad Pitt as James, it is largely an ensemble piece, with Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Sam Shepard, Garret Dillahunt and Paul Schneider rounding out the James gang. James struts about with a false bravado that hides his own insecurities and paranoia, aspects to his personality which eventually shift allegiances within his cohorts.

Dominik's sprawling film follows James and Ford in tandem, looking at the former and how years of running has broken the mind of the great American outlaw, and how the latter's obsessive adoration slowly morphs into loathing. The title of the film makes no effort to hide the end of the film, nor does history evade James's final end, but the point of the film is why and how. My money would go to the lover spurned, as the film is saddled with an abundance of homosexual undertones, but any number of things could drive a man to murder.

Dominik tries to insert himself as director quite often in the movie, but despite his best efforts it is in its core an actor's film. I was unsure of this in the first 30 or so minutes, as the film's large opening scene involves a cinematic, visually-daring train robbery with some spectacular camera work. The rest of the film unfortunately did not match the grandness of cinematographer Roger Deakin's work in those first few minutes.

The power play of two deeply troubled men, however, is engaging enough to carry the sometimes labored efforts, and the story raises some interesting points. At about 135 minutes Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford. I was surprised to see it happen so soon and wondered what had to be said that needed 25 minutes. It turns out far more than the time allotted for it. After the assassination Robert became the most famous man in America for a year and then quite suddenly turned into a pariah. Without this film we might not even recognize the man's name. So how does a man kill the most famed person of his time, become a hero, and then vanish into obscurity? Again it's all about myth and perception.  The public looks for those it wishes to demonize and glorify, and although this story may change our views of who deserved what, Ford happened to draw the short straw.

I am torn as to whether it was too long or not long enough. The results of James's murder felt abbreviated when there was so much to explore. That said, the film we do have is rich, emotionally complex and is a fine showcase for some very talented male actors. I sincerely hope Affleck makes a name for himself in the way that his brother has, for in this case Casey has the talent that should back up the fame.

3/4