Martin's Musings

If you were to make a mashup of Munich and Inglorious Basterds, you would have The Debt. Like Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film, this movie explores the toll revenge takes when Israeli agents seek to even the score with enemies of their people, and features a cast that includes Ciarán Hinds. And like Quentin Tarantino’s also-Oscar-nominated film, it features Jews kicking ass (specifically, a strong female Jew kicking ass), and a revenge plot involving Nazis. With direction by Oscar-nominated John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) and a cast that also includes Oscar winner Helen Mirren, The Debt takes a rightful place with those other films.

The Debt flashes back and forth between two time periods: 1966 and 1997. In that later year, we meet retired Mossad agents Rachel (Mirren), Stefan (Tom Wilkinson), and David (Hinds), who are brought together because of a new book about their mission in 1966, when the trio (played, respectively, by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington) tracked down and kidnapped Dieter Vogel, the former Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), in East Berlin, and killed him. Or did they? In 1997, developments call their successful mission into question, and send one of the three back into secret duty.

A tense thriller, The Debt is carried by strong performances across the board. But it’s the ethical and moral issues that left the greater impact on me. The trio’s mission is simply to kidnap Vogel and bring him home to stand trial. That is how it is decided they will right the wrong. But when things go awry, the trio has other options, ones they don’t want. As at least one character says, they are not murderers, they are people of peace. No matter how many deaths Vogel caused during World War II, how great must the crime be to merit an equal response? As noted, this is a similar issue covered in Munich, and here it is no less an intense conflict, especially as Vogel, now held prisoner and a witness to the interactions and frustrations between the trio, begins to exploit the situation, playing anti-Semitic mind games with any of the three who listens.

Chastain, whose Rachel is not just caught between right and wrong, but is also the focal point of a love triangle, shows how challenging the dilemma is. Her simultaneously tough and fearful performance is a mile away from the ones she gave in The Help and Tree of Life. And in Rachel’s later years, Mirren communicates less through words than by facial expressions how that answer never gets easier.

Right and wrong is not as simple as black and white. And in The Debt, our “heroes” earn your support and your sympathy. That doesn’t make what they do any easier to watch. I’m giving the movie a B+.

If you’re anything like me, you’re gonna need to take a long Purell shower after seeing Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a mysterious airborne illness that wipes out a significant portion of the world’s population.

And that’s just for starters.

You won’t be able to touch a glass or piece of silverware in a restaurant, put your hand on a subway pole, or pass along a folder in your office.

You won’t want to eat bacon, or give another person a hug, either.

Heck, you may as well just stay home and contain yourself so you don’t incur any risk of catching a similar virus. Continue reading →

Contrary to popular belief, the new film Our Idiot Brother was not written or directed by my sister and brother-in-law. In a way, that’s a shame because Ned Rochlin, the character at the heart of the movie, is such a good-hearted, lovable guy, that it would be nice if he actually was modeled after me. But no matter. Ned (Paul Rudd) sees the good in everyone and everything, telling the truth and doing it all with good intentions. For example, he really believes a cop has had a bad day when he traps Ned into selling him marijuana. This nice streak runs counter to his siblings, who each have their own problems and live their own deluded lives. When the sisters welcome Ned into their homes and lives, he leaves each one of them changed.

As you might assume, this dramedy is the latest in a long line of summer indies featuring quirky families (see Little Miss Sunshine, among others). Like the others, it features a likeable cast, a handful of laughs, and a not-too-challenging plot. Our Idiot Brother, like its lead character, grooves along easily, and delivers its simple message of treating everyone with love and honesty in enjoyable fashion. An award-winner this is not, but Our Idiot Brother deserves to be welcomed into your family. I’m giving it a B.

So here’s how the apes came to rule the planet, according to the new film Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Sometime in the present day, a scientist (James Franco) develops a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease — one that not only restores normal brain function but improves upon it. Tests on chimps have the expected result: They get more intelligent. So these already strong beasts are now smart as well.

And while the scientist is kind, and he takes good care of one chimp in particular named Caesar, he’s the only human who does, so Caesar eventually gets mad. Sharing the drug with his fellow primates, he leads a rebellion against humankind and, well, anyone who’s seen the other Planet of the Apes movies knows the rest. Continue reading →

The premise is cringe-worthy and racially-charged: In the early 1960s, a white young woman in Jackson, Miss., interviews black housekeepers to learn what it’s really like to work for such cruel and racist families. And yet, The Help tells its story with a fair amount of love and respect, so it is not as offensive as it could have been. Much of that is due to the dignified and heartfelt performance of Viola Davis, and of course, much credit also goes to writer/director Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of Kathryn Stockett, on whose book this film is based. (Octavia Spencer, another longtime friend of Stockett’s who inspired one of the characters, also gives a notable performance.)

But love will only take you so far. While much care may have gone into the making of The Help, the movie itself will not be a winner for all audiences. It’s a “women’s picture” — which is to say not a dumb romantic comedy “chick-flick” — and I’m definitely not the target audience. I also didn’t really dig yet another story about an idealist young white woman who redeems the persecuted black community. I’m just not sure Davis or Spencer’s characters would ever have told so much to fresh-from-college Skeeter, even if she is played by the in-demand Emma Stone. So The Help, while not an awful movie, gets just a B from me. No doubt it will be beloved by many who’ve read the book, but it’s not my piece of pie.