No real shades of grey
Feb. 28th, 2003 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynReview of the movie Dark Blue
I’ve been catching up on my movies this week while I’m on vacation. I’m incredibly far behind, and finally saw The Hours and Chicago as part of my "see all Oscar nom movies before the Oscars" program, both of which disappointed me a lot and I’m especially baffled by the best picture nomination for Chicago (why that empty but glitzy tripe would win best comedy/musical at the Golden Globes over such an exquisite piece of melancholy comedy like About a Boy is just... grrrr). Sadly, too, one of the better movies of 2002 wasn’t released last year, but just came out last week, and I would have loved to see this thing get the same attention Training Day gave to Denzel Washington and to its director.
Dark Blue was written by James Ellroy, of LA Confidential book fame (among many other wonderful books), and directed by Ron Shelton, who seems to have a special flair for stories about irredeemable bad boys finding redemption at the last minute, and usually being punished when they do. Bull Durham is a huge favorite of mine not just because of the comedy and chemistry, but because of the underlying sadness and hopelessness of men who love a game so much they sacrifice everything to keep playing it. And Dark Blue stars Kurt Russell, who is wearing his age beautifully (the lines on his neck and face, the grey in his beard and hair), and whose crystal blue eyes are still as sharp as lasers and carry decades of pain and anger inside them. Kurt’s been one of my favorites since I was a little girl and he was a teenage star in the Disney movies; he’s also one of the only actors I know of who can carry off actiony trash like Breakdown or Escape from New York and intelligent roles like Silkwood and this new movie -- he’s a rare actor who has that actiony personality as well as solid acting chops. He gets to use both aspects here, and he’s mesmerizing -- I felt in many ways every bit as mesmerizing as Denzel in Training Day, and the role was equally flashy, though Kurt didn’t make it so obvious, so no attention’s been paid to it.
This could easily have been the corrupt cop movie of the year, if only it’d been released last year (and corrupt cop movies are huge faves at the Oscars); it will be buried and long forgotten by the end of the year when the press starts handing out their accolades. Which is sad, because everything about this was beautifully done: the performances are all top-notch, the writing is crisp and solid (a few showboaty speeches here and there and the normal sprinkling of not surprising surprises), and the cinematography is often lovely, especially the interior and night scenes that are filmed in a dark blue to nicely tie into the title.
Russell plays Eldon Perry, a racist, sexist, asshole cop who’s as corrupt as they come -- unless you’re comparing him to his boss, Van Meter, who appears to have written the book on corruption and sleaze and evilness. Perry works for Van Meter’s special investigations section, the elite unit inside LAPD, and the story unfolds during the days-long jury deliberations on the Rodney King trial, and the subsequent rioting. Perry’s young partner, Keogh, is watching all these men around him, learning the ropes on corruption, and he doesn’t necessarily like what he sees, but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s sleeping with a woman he doesn’t know is a cop who’s helping the ambitious chief played by Ving Rhames, Holland, who’s trying to bring down Perry and his bunch. It’s fascinating to watch everything unfold after a brutal quadruple homicide at a convenience store, how this seemingly random and vicious killing subsequently mutates into the personal quagmire and redemption for all the major characters.
Setting the story at the cusp of the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and starting us in the story by showing the videotaped beating of King where we’d normally see credits, is a great visual and aural clue into the nature of the endemic and casual racism we’re about to see. It’s so much a part of the background of the movie that it almost seems like Holland is just being the prig and phony crusading do-gooder he’s described as; but as the story progresses, we see just how close he comes to walking that line of corruption himself and what he’s sacrificed and lost in his own quest for personal power. Rhames is, as always, just amazing here, he can do so much with a quiet stare that it’s easy to forget what an incredible actor he is. And his accomplice, played by Michael Michelle, I actually found myself liking, and normally I just hate that actress -- her affectless unemotionalism wore on me on Homicide and ER, but here, when she’s sparking with Keogh or Holland, something else comes out in her at last.
But watching Russell just take hold of this part was the real reward. His kind of edgy, good old boy quality really comes out here, and he carries the weight of what he’s slowly coming to realize is an evil world of his own making every bit like a man who understands he’s doomed. He’s almost stooped over from it, given to alternating rages and slow burns, bitter laughter and drunken stupidity, and he moves through the range of his emotions and fears gorgeously. In one scene, when Van Meter dresses him down, you can see the foundation slowly being laid inside him for the changes that bring about the denouement; even while immediately after that scene he attacks his partner for daring to question Van Meter’s intentions and importance, you know he’s doing it to convince himself, because he’s completely lost faith in his own faith. When he’s cast adrift and he finally wakes up to that, after losing his wife, his partner’s respect, and everything he thinks he’s worked for, he seems to physically change before our eyes. The best part, though, is how well Russell communicates Perry’s knowledge that redemption comes with an incredibly heavy price, and he never makes it seem simplistic or casually cool, or easily escaped with apologies or obfuscation.
And maybe most importantly, through Perry’s easy-going racism and the department’s ugly condoning behavior of its officers, we get a movie that takes a real moral stand -- evil and corruption are evil and corrupt, never banal and shallow, and virtue and goodness are shown to be earned, to be worked at. Being good is hard in this world, and the people who are -- Keogh, Holland, etc. -- they suffer for trying to stay on the right path and not shift into that casual, easy, lazy hate that permeates everything like the harsh LA sunshine. Dark Blue is a hard movie to sit through, it’s often painful and ugly in the way real life is. But it’s got mesmerizing performances and a real honest to god moral story at its core, and I wish that this was one of the movies people had been talking about for Oscar buzz this year. If for no other reason than for Russell’s indelible performance and Ellroy’s layered, complicated story, I’d have loved to see this get the recognition it deserves and isn’t getting in its current release.
I’ve been catching up on my movies this week while I’m on vacation. I’m incredibly far behind, and finally saw The Hours and Chicago as part of my "see all Oscar nom movies before the Oscars" program, both of which disappointed me a lot and I’m especially baffled by the best picture nomination for Chicago (why that empty but glitzy tripe would win best comedy/musical at the Golden Globes over such an exquisite piece of melancholy comedy like About a Boy is just... grrrr). Sadly, too, one of the better movies of 2002 wasn’t released last year, but just came out last week, and I would have loved to see this thing get the same attention Training Day gave to Denzel Washington and to its director.
Dark Blue was written by James Ellroy, of LA Confidential book fame (among many other wonderful books), and directed by Ron Shelton, who seems to have a special flair for stories about irredeemable bad boys finding redemption at the last minute, and usually being punished when they do. Bull Durham is a huge favorite of mine not just because of the comedy and chemistry, but because of the underlying sadness and hopelessness of men who love a game so much they sacrifice everything to keep playing it. And Dark Blue stars Kurt Russell, who is wearing his age beautifully (the lines on his neck and face, the grey in his beard and hair), and whose crystal blue eyes are still as sharp as lasers and carry decades of pain and anger inside them. Kurt’s been one of my favorites since I was a little girl and he was a teenage star in the Disney movies; he’s also one of the only actors I know of who can carry off actiony trash like Breakdown or Escape from New York and intelligent roles like Silkwood and this new movie -- he’s a rare actor who has that actiony personality as well as solid acting chops. He gets to use both aspects here, and he’s mesmerizing -- I felt in many ways every bit as mesmerizing as Denzel in Training Day, and the role was equally flashy, though Kurt didn’t make it so obvious, so no attention’s been paid to it.
This could easily have been the corrupt cop movie of the year, if only it’d been released last year (and corrupt cop movies are huge faves at the Oscars); it will be buried and long forgotten by the end of the year when the press starts handing out their accolades. Which is sad, because everything about this was beautifully done: the performances are all top-notch, the writing is crisp and solid (a few showboaty speeches here and there and the normal sprinkling of not surprising surprises), and the cinematography is often lovely, especially the interior and night scenes that are filmed in a dark blue to nicely tie into the title.
Russell plays Eldon Perry, a racist, sexist, asshole cop who’s as corrupt as they come -- unless you’re comparing him to his boss, Van Meter, who appears to have written the book on corruption and sleaze and evilness. Perry works for Van Meter’s special investigations section, the elite unit inside LAPD, and the story unfolds during the days-long jury deliberations on the Rodney King trial, and the subsequent rioting. Perry’s young partner, Keogh, is watching all these men around him, learning the ropes on corruption, and he doesn’t necessarily like what he sees, but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s sleeping with a woman he doesn’t know is a cop who’s helping the ambitious chief played by Ving Rhames, Holland, who’s trying to bring down Perry and his bunch. It’s fascinating to watch everything unfold after a brutal quadruple homicide at a convenience store, how this seemingly random and vicious killing subsequently mutates into the personal quagmire and redemption for all the major characters.
Setting the story at the cusp of the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and starting us in the story by showing the videotaped beating of King where we’d normally see credits, is a great visual and aural clue into the nature of the endemic and casual racism we’re about to see. It’s so much a part of the background of the movie that it almost seems like Holland is just being the prig and phony crusading do-gooder he’s described as; but as the story progresses, we see just how close he comes to walking that line of corruption himself and what he’s sacrificed and lost in his own quest for personal power. Rhames is, as always, just amazing here, he can do so much with a quiet stare that it’s easy to forget what an incredible actor he is. And his accomplice, played by Michael Michelle, I actually found myself liking, and normally I just hate that actress -- her affectless unemotionalism wore on me on Homicide and ER, but here, when she’s sparking with Keogh or Holland, something else comes out in her at last.
But watching Russell just take hold of this part was the real reward. His kind of edgy, good old boy quality really comes out here, and he carries the weight of what he’s slowly coming to realize is an evil world of his own making every bit like a man who understands he’s doomed. He’s almost stooped over from it, given to alternating rages and slow burns, bitter laughter and drunken stupidity, and he moves through the range of his emotions and fears gorgeously. In one scene, when Van Meter dresses him down, you can see the foundation slowly being laid inside him for the changes that bring about the denouement; even while immediately after that scene he attacks his partner for daring to question Van Meter’s intentions and importance, you know he’s doing it to convince himself, because he’s completely lost faith in his own faith. When he’s cast adrift and he finally wakes up to that, after losing his wife, his partner’s respect, and everything he thinks he’s worked for, he seems to physically change before our eyes. The best part, though, is how well Russell communicates Perry’s knowledge that redemption comes with an incredibly heavy price, and he never makes it seem simplistic or casually cool, or easily escaped with apologies or obfuscation.
And maybe most importantly, through Perry’s easy-going racism and the department’s ugly condoning behavior of its officers, we get a movie that takes a real moral stand -- evil and corruption are evil and corrupt, never banal and shallow, and virtue and goodness are shown to be earned, to be worked at. Being good is hard in this world, and the people who are -- Keogh, Holland, etc. -- they suffer for trying to stay on the right path and not shift into that casual, easy, lazy hate that permeates everything like the harsh LA sunshine. Dark Blue is a hard movie to sit through, it’s often painful and ugly in the way real life is. But it’s got mesmerizing performances and a real honest to god moral story at its core, and I wish that this was one of the movies people had been talking about for Oscar buzz this year. If for no other reason than for Russell’s indelible performance and Ellroy’s layered, complicated story, I’d have loved to see this get the recognition it deserves and isn’t getting in its current release.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-01 12:05 am (UTC)Ok, you can ignore me now.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-01 10:07 am (UTC)I never know what the etiquette is for icons -- I see things I like, but I don't have a graphics program or ability to do screen caps, and so I never know if I'm okay to steal things, if I should ask, whatever. I know there's some sites that do just icons, but I rarely find anything I like -- what I like is usually on the LJs of individuals I'm friends with. So I'm in the want-take-should I have? mode and never know what to do, so don't change my icon often.
I'm so pathetic it scares me.
Re:
Date: 2003-03-01 12:18 pm (UTC)For future reference, that means any icon I use, I eather got from a sharing course, or I made. And since I like to consider myself a sharing source, you can pretty much take any of mine. ;)
some other good sources of free icons:
http://ficbitch.com/pretty/index2.html
http://www.spicedrum.net/sickness/index.html
http://www21.brinkster.com/infinitetime/index.html
Good Review
Date: 2003-03-01 10:33 am (UTC)