Welcome to the film-related musings, complaints, and comments of Zack Clopton, an amateur film-critic, scholar, and screenwriter. Featured here are Director's Report Cards, essays, and other reviews. Enjoy!
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Finding ratings information for obscure television movies from twenty-four years ago is not always easily done. However, I can deduce a few things about the reception “The President's Man” got from audiences in 2000. It drew enough eyeballs for CBS to move forward with the project but not so many that a series order was immediately given. Instead, the greenlight was received for essentially a second pilot. This is typically what happens when a network sees something promising in a show but agrees that some bugs need to be ironed out. It doesn't always happen in public – and then archived forever via home video – as was the case here. “The President's Man: A Line in the Sand” would feature a lighter tone than the first and would recast the younger leading man opposite Chuck Norris. Another big difference was a reflection of how the world had changed between 2000 and January of 2002, when “A Line in the Sand” aired. This is the film that would bring the old school action style of Chuck Norris into the strange, strange era of post-9/11 jingoism.
It would seem about three years have passed since the events of the first "President's Man" film. Deke Slater is now fully established as the American president's personal man of action, with Joshua McCord and his daughter Que acting as assistants. The U.S.A. is currently under threat by Fadhal Rashid, the head of a militant Islamic extremist faction. Rashid's followers have obtained a small nuclear bomb and successfully smuggled it into the United States, with plans to detonate it in a large city. Slater is air-dropped into the Middle East, where he blasts into Rashid's compound and captures the terrorist leader. However, Rashid's followers, most prominently his son Abir, remain at large and await a coded message from their leader. The plan becomes to sneak the dirty bomb into Dallas before setting it off. Slater and McCord leap into action to find the nuke, disarm it, and make the dastardly terrorists pay.
If the above plot synopsis didn't indicate as much, "A Line in the Sand" is a distinctly different brand of propaganda from the first "The President's Man" film. The original had the good guys up against South American drug runners and nebulous "terrorists" of uncertain allegiance, connected to elderly enemies left over from the Cold War. Pretty old hat by 2000. The sequel, meanwhile, positions a seemingly Sunni Islamic jihadist as the mastermind behind a plot to kill countless Americans. Al-Qaeda and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center are mentioned by name. The words "weapons of mass destruction" are spoken. Rashid is described as Pakistani like Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the aforementioned attack. However, his tendency to issue video recorded statements from his secret hiding place and his connections to Saudi Arabia also makes him a clear Osama bin Ladin parallel, already a notorious figure by the late nineties. What is not mentioned is 9/11. IMDb's frequently inaccurate information lists "A Line in the Sand's" filming date as May of 2001. If that is correct is true, any relation to the events that would happen later that year were unintentional. (Assuming you don't believe in certain conspiracy theories.)
However, the film still operates totally in-line with American attitudes after the towers fell. The bad guys are all brown religious extremists who hate the U.S.A. and everyone who lives there as a course of belief. We are the infidels that should be scourged with holy fire. Certainly no mention is made of how the foreign policy of the U.S. and our allies might have radicalized any persons, real or fictional, against us. There are two very weird scenes in "The President's Man II." The first sees McCord – now upgraded to a college professor on all foreign cultures, I guess, not just the Japanese – argue against a student who believes we should indiscriminately nuke all of the Middle East. Chuck's character clarifies that violent terrorists make up a tiny percentage of all Muslims worldwide. That we should not correlate an entire faith with the actions of a few extremists. Later, an American Muslim fires back at Rashid, saying that his bloody schemes are actually in defiance of Muhammad's teachings and that Islam is a religion of peace. These moments stand in stark contrast to the multiple scenes of our white heroes kicking and gunning down brown baddies in turbans and robes.
These scenes remind me of a speech George W. Bush made in the aftermath of 9/11, denouncing anti-Islamic prejudice here and abroad. Words he presumably spoke before approving military actions in Afghanistan that contributed to the estimated 46,319 civilians killed during the resulting twenty year war. In other words, cinematic moments such as these and their real life parallels read as deeply insincere. "A Line in the Sand" is a film about a bad-ass American being dropped into the Middle East and single-handedly capturing a terrorist leader. Its back half features scenes of red-blooded patriots extra-judicially kicking the asses of stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists. These are very weird contexts in which to place pleas that your nearest masque has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. This is aggravated propaganda meant to inflame American hearts and minds against our nebulous enemies, that would soon be the central targets of the war on terror that the U.S. enacted shortly after this movie was filmed.
I must also say that "The President's Man: A Line in the Sand" is not especially good propaganda. In the first film, Dylan Neal played Deke Slater as a hot-headed, standoffish jerk who was only beginning to defrost. The character is recast with Judson Mills in this sequel. This was supposedly because of scheduling conflicts. However, Mills plays Slater in such a wildly different manner from Neal that it might as well be a different character, suggesting that this was a deliberate change. Mills' take on the guy is largely jovial, often making sarcastic observations. I would not say this is an improvement, as Mills is actually more wooden and stiff in his acting than Neal was. He's a bright-eyed hunk of meat with a strong chin but delivers all his dialogue like a surprised baby. There's little charisma or screen presence. I did not find myself invested in the character or enchanted by Mills' acting, making it hard to care too much about any of the shit that happens here.
Judson Mills' appearance here follows a starring role in the last two seasons of “Walker, Texas Ranger.” One assumes that his character was introduced on that show to do the kind of action hero stunts that Chuck Norris was aging out of. That is obviously the case here too. Norris has surprisingly little to do in the first half of “A Line in the Sand.” He spends a lot of the movie standing behind a desk, looking at a screen, and speaking into a com-link. Mills, meanwhile, is doing all the running, leaping, kicking, and punching. I figured this would be the state of affairs throughout all of “A Line in the Sand,” the then-61 year old Chuck Norris having retired to mentor roles. However, the last act of the sequel sees Joshua McCord surprisingly joining the action. This got my hopes up that we might actually see Chuck Norris do some Chuck Norris shit in this motion picture. Unfortunately, “The President's Man II” was made during the era when no attempt at all was being made to disguise that its action star was an old, old man now. The film sees Norris' character doing shit like triple back flips through the air or leaping several feet onto a pipe without any issue. The most action Norris himself has is defusing a bomb, a protracted sequence if I've ever seen one.
In fact, the action scenes in “A Line in the Sand” are some really silly business. When Slater is fighting off bad guys, his favorite move is a somersault kick that seems to violate the law of gravity to me. During the aforementioned triple back flip, Chuck's character is also accurately firing a gun. The film gets goofier as it goes on, the finale featuring the heroes delivering superhuman blows that launch their opponents across the room. All I can figure is this was some half-ass attempt to catch up with the exaggerated action theatrics of “The Matrix” and the wave of films it inspired. In general, the film is infected with a fatal cheesiness that outstrips the original. There's a random jet pack sequence. Multiple training montages or sparring sessions are scored to hilariously bad rap songs. While some camp value can be derived from ridiculous moments, the impression the film leaves a viewer with is that the project's vision far outstripped its available resources.
Truthfully, most of “The President's Man II: A Line in the Sand” is dull. The action scenes are repetitive and rare. Far more of the film is devoted to people standing around and talking about shit. Its obviously Islamophobic content is interesting from an anthropological perspective, as a relic of a time that we have hopefully moved past, but is just reheated bullshit in execution. While I can imagine a perspective “President's Man” series further building off the national mood of blind jingoism and paranoia that would follow, not even that was enough to get the public interested in this one. The film would be the end of this particular franchise. More dire than the already pretty lame original, this film represents the point where it dawned on me that watching all of Chuck Norris movies might have been a mistake. [4/10]
[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 2 outta 5] [X] Facial Hair [X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall [] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face [] Shows Off His Hairy Chest [] Sports Some Cowboy Getup
After nine seasons and two hundred and three episodes, “Walker, Texas Ranger” would hang up his silver star in May of 2001. Presumably because he had roundhouse kicked every bank robber, crime boss, drug runner, human trafficker, Neo-Nazi, Satanist and skinwalker in Texas. Chuck Norris was not going to take it easy though. Instead, a year before “Walker” ended, he was already trying to get a follow-up going. CBS would air “The President's Man” on April 2nd of 2000, Norris Brothers Production having their logo right at the front of the presentation. As with “Logan's War,” the perspective series being set up by this TV movie would place Norris in more of a mentor role, while a younger, more agile performer shared the spotlight. In this case, Dylan Neal, another stout-chinned hunk of meat TV actor whose career never quite took off. Did it work better on a second go-around?
It turns out that the President of the United States has a special operative, a secret agent infiltrator and all-around bad-ass, that answers to him and him alone. The current President's Man is Joshua McCord, a Vietnam veteran, college professor of Asian history, and martial arts expert. After rescuing the First Lady from South American terrorists, McCord fears he is getting too long in the teeth. Along with his daughter, Que, they seek out a protege. They find one in Sgt. Deke Slater, an Army Ranger who got dishonorably discharged for punching out a commanding officer and is now serving a thirty year prison sentence for killing a White Supremacist in a jail yard brawl. Slater is sprung from jail and taken under McCord's wing, the hot head bristling against the expert during the grueling training. Soon, the team is back in South America, seeking out a kidnapped nuclear physicist being blackmailed into building a nuke for the drug cartel. A cartel led by a former South Vietnamese general that McCord has unfinished business with.
The opening of "The President's Man" features Chuck Norris parachuting out of a stealth bomber, dispatching some baddies via knife throws and window dives, before paragliding the First Lady to safety. As this happens, a musical sting on the soundtrack that sounds suspiciously like the James Bond theme plays. This clarifies "The President's Man" as an attempt to do some super spy antics on an extremely TV budget. The drop out of the airplane features some sketchy CGI. Unlike the always horny Bond, McCord never makes any moves towards the totally grandmotherly First Lady, because that wouldn't fit television standards. For a movie about global politics and black operations, the sets and locations are seriously limited. The top secret training center for the presidential hit squad looks a lot like a suburban gym or recreational center. They hang off monkey bars, get kicked in the chest while doing pull-ups, and throw knives at spinning targets. A lot of the international missions seem to take place in sparsely forested fields surrounding farm houses. I really wouldn't expect a movie about the president's personal Rambo to feature this many scenes in offices, ranches, and sheds.
The cheap production values of "The President's Man" point towards the film's status as basically the pilot for a series and not a work meant to stand alone. You also see this in the story structure. Within this ninety minute runtime, we see: The rescue of the First Lady, the botched mission that got Slater kicked out of the Army and dumped in prison, his first mission with McCord to snatch a Senator's daughter from a weird cult compound, and the saving of the nuclear scientists from some sadistic foreigners. Each of these story threads essentially stand alone, making "The President's Man" feel less like a single narrative and more like a couple of scripts for different episodes shoved together. The connecting fiber is devoted to the repetitive scenes of Slater training with McCord and his daughter, the kind of standard sequences used to establish the general set-up of a weekly show at the start of every hour. If "Logan's War" was an attempt to squeeze a whole backstory for a hero and his first adventure into one movie, "The President's Man" is an even shakier test-run for a concept more ready to air every Wednesday at 9PM than be watched as a complete story in its own right.
One of the movies that makes up the episodic structure of “The President's Man” is basically a TV series version of “Missing in Action.” It's interesting how the television star portion of Norris' career saw him recycling ideas from his movie roles. “Walker” was “Lone Wolf McQuade” while “Logan's War” drew a little from “The Delta Force” and “Good Guys Wear Black.” This one makes McCord a Vietnam veteran. Much like Braddock, he has a Vietnamese wife and a child with her. As in “Missing in Action III,” she's murdered. To make the connection all-but-explicit, Soon-Tek Oh plays the killer who has returned, after previously appearing as the sadistic general in “Missing in Action II.” Chuck was too old at this point to take on-screen abuse so Dylan Neal gets strung up by the villains, shirtless and soaking wet, for an electrified torture scene. Braddock had a son that he didn't know about for years while McCord has a daughter that has grown up with him, Jennifer Tung playing the female lead. “The President's Man” also emphasizes this Chuck hero as a master of martial arts, who even gives lectures on samurai culture and practices zen meditation. Nevertheless, it would not take a lot of editing to make this a years later TV continuation of the “Missing in Action” flicks.
Does any of this prove especially entertain or interesting? The bits where Chuck is playing a wise sensai, especially when he's simply reading a book while his protege blusters around, are mildly amusing. While most of his kicks and punches continue to come from off-screen at this point, he does get a semi-decent fight with Soon-Tek Oh. The opening incursion he does got me to smile once or twice. Unfortunately, the action throughout is mostly extremely unremarkable. As a lead, Dylan Neal is astonishingly uninteresting. He's got a swell chin and a heroic build but little in the way of charisma or screen presence, instead merely acting like a generic tough guy. This is most apparent in the training montages, of which are there are many and all of them are quite dramatically inert. Jennifer Tung is a little more interesting and it was nice to see Stuart Whitman, in his final role, as Chuck's mentor. Sadly, most everything about “The President's Man” resists being memorable or compelling at all.
The greatest value “The President's Man” has might be as unintentional comedy. The film features an extremely corny inspirational rock song during its training montage, both of which made me laugh from how repetitive they are. Another quirk that's impossible not to notice is the awful sound design. Every punch sounds like a thunder crack, which because especially funny when Neal is driving several into a random goon's face at once. In general, this one is very cheap, extremely derivative and lame in its narrative, and doesn't present us with any characters to care about much. It's directed like an unambitious episode of television, which is more-or-less what it is. I guess it's a little more entertaining than “Logan's War,” if only becomes Chuck has more to do – despite really, really starting to show his age – and at least it's not 70% set-up. Consider this damning with the faintest of praise. [5/10]
[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5] [X] Facial Hair [X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall [X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face [] Shows Off His Hairy Chest* [] Sports Some Cowboy Getup
*Chuck has a shirtless scene but, extremely distressingly, he has obviously shaved!
In 1977, Chuck Norris' career was at a turning point. Kickboxing champ Benny “The Jet” Urquidez – who would later have a memorable bout with Jackie Chan in “Wheels on Meals” – reached out to him about starting a new professional fighting league. At the same time, “Breaker! Breaker!” was about to come out and potentially launch a proper film career for Norris. Obviously, Chuck went with the latter option and he pursued it seriously. He had a hand in conceiving the story for his next movie, “Good Guys Wear Black.” He sought out producers for the film personally, banking on his karate cred. When a distributor couldn't be secured, the producers four-walled the movie themselves and Chuck promoted it heavily. The strategy worked. The film grossed 18 million against its small budget and set Chuck up for a very busy eighties. A perhaps more important question remains though: Is the movie any good?
During the waning days of the Vietnam War, John T. Booker would lead a team of CIA-backed commandos known as the Black Tigers. Their final mission was to go behind enemy lines and bust American POWs out of a prison camp. The mission goes badly, all but four members of the team are killed, and no helicopter arrives to pull Booker and the boys out. This was the work of Senator Conrad Morgan, part of a sketchy negotiation to end the war. Five years later, Booker and the other guys are in the U.S. and trying to move on with their lives. A female reporter named Margaret reaches out to him and clearly has secret information about the Black Tigers and their botched mission. At the same time, someone is hunting down and killing the remaining members of Booker's team. He sets out on a journey across the U.S., uncertain of Margaret's loyalties but keeping her close-by, and tries to rescue his teammates before the killer finds them.
Looking at how the American mass consciousness processed the Vietnam War through our pulpiest pulp fiction is fascinating. By the time “Rambo: First Blood Part II” had come out in 1985, the narrative that neither the American armed forces nor capitalism were beaten but were instead let down by politicians in D.C. was firmly established. The war had only been over for five years by the time “Good Guys Wear Black” came out but it features almost this same attitude. The machine gun wielding soldiers sent overseas to kill, who did so without question, certainly weren't wrong. They're heroes, by gum! Instead, they were failed by a deliberate conspiracy within Washington to get the war over with, who only cared about their own popularity and power and not the lives lost. Chuck's character is a political science professor in his day job and admits during a lecture that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, that the U.S. never should've been involved. This feels like a weird half-way point to the Reagan era's full-bore revisionism, when brawny super-soldiers were allowed to retroactively win the war. It's a half-hearted admission that, yes, the Vietnam War was wrong. John T. Booker and his team of black-clad super secret assassins are the good guys though. The title says so! You can root for him. Don't think about what the CIA was doing in Vietnam.
Despite possibly containing some insight into how All-American types compartmentalized the Vietnam War, “Good Guys Wear Black” unfortunately is not actually about that. It simply uses the war as background for its hero and villain, as a motivating factor for why Chuck Norris is awesome and why somebody wants him and his buddies dead. Instead, the film is trying to be a conspiracy thriller of sorts. It has Booker traveling the country, looking over his shoulders for possible attackers, being paranoid at airports and in parking lots. There are repeated scenes of Booker being met by Lloyd Haynes in offices, while the latter stares at terse read-outs on computer screens. While the film is clearly trying to build tension over who is doing these killings and why, any suspense is wasted by the very first scene. That depicts Senator Morgan explaining his plan to screw over the Black Tigers and his reasoning why. Kind of deludes the mystery when the movie informs us right from the get-go who ordered the screw job and why!
On one level, I suspect screenwriters Bruce Cohn and Mark Medoff – the esteemed playwright of “When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?” and “Children of a Lesser God,” who must've needed a paycheck – were aware that the film shoots itself in the foot from the get-go. There is an attempt to create tension with another story element. When Anne Archer first meets Chuck, she immediately begins asking him about the black ops. shit he did during the war. That is clearly suspicious and Booker is rightly uncertain of her loyalties. (Though not, in the proud tradition of James Bond, enough to turn down sleeping with her.) This angle is repeatedly brought up by Norris sneering at Archer about who she is and what she actually wants. That's some weird spy movie version of your classical romantic subplot, built on whether these two will end up together. With the question of “they might not,” being followed by “because she's a CIA spook out to kill him.” While Chuck was not without his charms, they are not on-display here. He has little chemistry with Archer, the romance never materializing over the improbability of these two having much interaction at all. I feel like a former special forces guy would not humor any questions about his secret missions, not even from an attractive woman.
While Norris himself was a driving force on “Good Guys Wear Black,” the film seems to misunderstand his appeal some. Out of everything I've mentioned in this review, have you noticed what hasn't come up much? The kicking and the punching, what we're here to see this karate champ do. “Good Guys Wear Black” does have some strong action scenes. There's a decent fight outside an airport and another that ends with Chuck jump kicking through a car's windshield, probably the highlight of the entire film. Aside from a overly dark opening raid in Vietnam, a punch isn't thrown until an hour into the movie though. The climax is not a one-and-one fight between the hero and villain but instead a terse conversation in a car. I'm sure Norris was eager to prove he could do more than just fight but “Good Guys Wear Black” deliberately turning away from his strengths is a baffling choice.
While “Good Guys Wear Black” is disappointingly short on fisticuffs, it does have a weirdly stacked cast of recognizable character actors. Haynes brings some mild authority to a thankless part. Dana Andrews pops in as a foppish government director who goes out in a silk bathrobe while swilling Scotch. Maybe the most unexpected name in the credits is Jim Backus, Mr. Howell himself, who gets surprisingly high billing despite playing a comedic hotel doorman in one sequence. Another former Bruce Lee co-star, James Franciscus, plays the scheming senator. He does fine in the role, better than he did filling in Charlton Heston in director Ted Post's earlier “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.” Little of the eccentricity of that film or “The Baby” are on display here, the action scenes being flatly shot and most of the movie looking like a TV cop drama. Though this is the second Chuck Norris movie in a row to feature a Faulkerian man-child, which is unexpected. Weirdly, he's one of the Black Tigers, which seems to say something about the CIA's qualifications for a black operations team. “Good Guys Wear Black” made money and Chuck credits this one for truly launching his career but I found it to be a misconceived snooze. [5/10]
[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 4 outta 5] [X] Facial Hair [X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall [X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face [X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest [] Sports Some Cowboy Getup
My favorite release of 2020 was “Bacurau.” That Brazilian thriller drew you in with an intriguing mystery that then headed towards a brilliantly engineered last act. It was both a clever work of social commentary and an extremely satisfying piece of pulp fiction. The film was co-directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, a critic turned director whose work has been continuously well received in his home country. Each narrative feature he has directed has won Best Film at the Brazilian Academy Awards and his last three movies have all been nominated for the Palme d'Or. Well, now it would seem that we ignorant Americans are noticing Filho as well. His latest fictional work, “The Secret Agent,” would earn a surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor at this year's Oscars. Considering this is the second year in a row that a Brazilian movie would break through into the top category, perhaps the Academy is noticing South American cinema more than before.
And like “I'm Still Here,” a movie that otherwise doesn't have much in common with this one, “The Secret Agent” is also set during the twenty year period when Brazil was ruled by a CIA-backed military dictatorship. It follows Armando. He returns to the city of Recife to spend Carnival with his son Fernando, currently living with his grandparents. He finds himself in an apartment complex run by communists and occupied by other refugees and political dissidents. Armando fled the city after making an enemy of a powerful electric company CEO. The same man has hired a pair of hit men to find and kill Armando. While attempting to reconnect with his son, Armando works at an identity card office, searches for information on his dead mother, and finds political allies based out of his father-in-law's local cinema. These story threads connect with the news of a human leg found inside a dead shark and researchers working in the present day.
From its opening scene, “The Secret Agent” establishes the tension ever-present in living under a violent regime. The first sequence involves Armando pulling into a gas station. A dead body lays on the ground out-front, the result of a shoot-out the night before. The proprietor of the business has simply covered the corpse up with some cardboard, not considering a homicide occurring right before him that outrageous. When the cops roll in, Armando has to present his documents. Before the details behind the character are even established, the audience can already tell that this guy has something to hide from the authorities. The near-by presence of death establishes a sense of pertinent danger, making us assume that the cops shooting Armando in the head would not be out of the ordinary. It turns out alright for Armando in this instance but that atmosphere of always being in danger, of the constant threat of being found out by the authorities, never leaves “The Secret Agent.” Characters must watch what they say in the privacies of their own home and assassins lurk the streets.
This is the world “The Secret Agent” inhabits and, of course, it was the real world for many people living in Brazil in 1977. While Armando's life forms the backbone of the film, the narrative often meanders over to numerous side characters. We learn details about the other inhabits in the apartment, like the elderly owner who is a former revolutionary and the refugees from the Angolan Civil War. We see the hit men go about their grisly business like it's any other job or the corrupt cops halfheartedly investigating the crimes. A lengthy digression features the cops harassing an elderly German Jew, played by Udo Kier in his final screen appearance. No matter how minor the characters turn out to be, we get this sense that they are fully formed individuals. The cat that lives in the apartment, which literally has two faces as a result of a birth defect, or the one cop always banging hookers in the records room feel as interesting and fleshed-out as the main characters.
Yes, “The Secret Agent” does operate like a collection of snapshots of life in seventies Brazil. Filho was working on the film at the same time he was making a documentary called “Pictures of Ghosts.” I would not be surprised if many of the sequences in this movie were inspired by real anecdotes Filho collected while making that film. “Pictures of Ghosts,” however, is mostly a personal recollection of the filmmaker's childhood memories of growing up in Recife, filtered through the theme of the cinemas he frequented at the time. This too greatly informs “The Secret Agent.” The cinema setting makes clips of films a reoccurring element. We see “The Omen” attracting a crowd, especially after a publicity stunt of a priest performing an exorcism in the lobby. The trailer for Jean-Paul Belmondo action-farce “Le Magnifique” plays at one point, Filho seemingly taking the title for this movie from that one's Brazilian tagline. In particular, “Jaws” is a reoccurring motif here. After the story of the leg being dug out of the shark goes viral, Armando's son becomes obsessed with sharks and the “Jaws” poster. One can't help but assume that the boy is something of a stand-in for Kleber himself.
It's mentioned that the boy is having nightmares about sharks too. This dovetails with an idea that many other filmmakers have observed in the past: That movies are not too dissimilar from dreams and visions. Easily my favorite sequence in the film brings a sensationalized newspaper story about that severed leg to life. It depicts the leg hopping around on its own, going on a horror movie style rampage through a park used for clandestine hook-ups by gay men. It's a burst of campy, outrageous comedy in an otherwise fairly grim movie. It also shows how the movie blends dreams, memories, and fiction with reality. This incident obviously did not actually happen, the bullshit yarn operating as a way for the paper to report on actual crimes without catching the attention of government censors. Once the movie starts to cut to the present day scenes, where recorded conversations of the past are unearthed, this theme is made all the more apparent. Movies are another way we reckon with our past, with history. Much the same way dreams and memories exist as forms to process our daily realities.
There's a lot of interesting ideas in “The Secret Agent” and I wish the film held together as a whole better for me. There's not much of a narrative here. The focus on portraying bits and pieces from multiple lives, how the script slowly reveals the protagonist's past, the unexpected leaps ahead into the present: The result is a movie without much overall narrative coherence or forward momentum. “The Secret Agent” is on the long side, twenty minutes short of three hours, and I sometimes found myself wondering what the point of all this was. Too often, the movie feels like a collection of moments and characters in search of a plot. It comes together in its own way but I probably would have liked this more with a tighter narrative. That's obviously not the movie Fihlo was making, so it's more my problem than the movie's.
The performances are strong, lived-in and realistic. Wagner Moura balances an undercurrent of anxiety and a struggle for normality in the lead. The cinematography is warm and concise. The editing is very well done. It's definitely a good movie and I'm glad I watched it. It does feel like an unexpected breakout success. The title suggests a more straight-forward genre operation but the film is, intentionally so, much more scattered than that. Not something you would expect the Academy voters to love a lot but, here we are. Filho certainly remains a filmmaker to watch. “The Secret Agent” is bold, interesting, insightful, meandering, shapeless, but singular. [7/10]
Every corner of the globe has their own monsters. However, it does seem certain ideas catch on within specific geographical spaces. Practically every Eastern European country has their variation on the vampire. La bruja seems to be the dominate bugbear in Latin American cultures and the djinn is prominent in Muslim majority countries. Meanwhile, multiple areas in East Asia tell tales of ghostly women who seek vengeance on unfaithful men. Sometimes while having long, stringy black hair and wearing white burial gowns. Japan has been fascinated with the story of the ghost of Oiwa for two centuries. The equivalent figure in Chinese myths is called a nü gui while the Korean version is usually known as cheonyeogwisin, the virgin maiden ghost. In Thailand, they have the supposedly true legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong. A shrine to the phantasmic bride and her unborn child stands in Bangkok to this day. Wikipedia mentions at least 24 film adaptations of the folktale. This meticulously researched Letterboxd list points to a 1936 version as the earliest cinematic take on the story. Of these many retellings, the most well known in the West is 1999's “Nang Nak,” from director Nonzee Nimibutr. It was, for a time, the highest grossing Thai film ever made.
For those unfamiliar, this is how the story goes: Mak has been drafted to fight in the Siamese-Vietnamese War. He leaves his small village behind, his devoted – and very pregnant – wife Nak being left alone. While on the battle field, Mak suffers a near fatal injury. He is rescued by a monk and his assistant, who insist he leave behind his old life and devote himself to the spiritual path. Mak refuses to abandon his wife and child though. He returns home, joyously received into his wife's arm. While haunted by dreams of the war, Mak notices that Nak is starting to act strangely. He also notices that no one else in the village wants anything to do with him and that many of their neighbors are dead. An old friend tries to convince Mak of something that seems impossible to him: Nak died during childbirth and now exists only as a ghost, terrorizing anyone who dare tries to separate them. Mak refuses to believe at first but soon can no longer deny that his wife is an undead spectre.
Most folk tales persist because they tell a moral that speaks to the values of the surrounding culture. Admittedly speaking as an outsider looking in, it would seem to me that the story of “Nang Nak” contains a specifically Buddhist message. After nearly dying and being saved by a monk, Mak is told to leave all his worldly possessions and passions behind. He can't do it because he loves his wife so much. Similarly, Nak herself cannot move onto the hereafter because she remains utterly attached to her husband. The idea of refusing to accept death as a part of a natural cycle and trying to escape the cycle of rebirth runs throughout the whole film. Unsurprisingly, the same Buddhist monk from earlier emerges as the story's hero by the end. It's as much a lesson about the tenets of Buddhism as any story of a vampire being warded off with a crucifix is a message about how awesome Christianity is. No belief exists in a vacuum and stories are reflections of the people that birthed them.
It reads, like most folklore that is at least a hundred years old, as melodrama to modern eyes. The emotions on display in “Nang Nak” are quite oversized. The first ten minutes of the film involves characters' names repeatedly being shouted, amid dramatic partings. Nang and Mak often declare their love for one another. The guy is so excitable that, simply seeing an old friend is enough to make him leap naked from a lake. When the ghost business takes precedence, the villagers are soon wielding torches and promising to drive out the evil. Nak's threats of supernatural vengeance against those who are trying to separate her from her husband are similarly overblown. However, despite the sweatiness of the emotions in this story, it still worked for me. This is mostly because the love story, one-note as it may be, is quite sweet. Intira Joroenupra and Winai Kraibutr have strong chemistry together as the couple. We never learn much about their history together but scenes like a flashback, in which they flirt in the field and share some betel leaf, are genuinely sweet. By the end, when yet more operatic declarations of love are being made, I admittedly found myself effected by them. The idea of loving someone so much that you refuse to live without them – despite being dead – is a powerful one.
Given the story its telling, Nimibutr's film functions more like a supernatural romance than a horror movie. However, the other villagers have good reason to be afraid of Nang Nak. When enraged, she summons a fire storm. In the legend's most famous moment, she stands upside down on a ceiling above a group of monks plotting her destruction. The special effects in “Nang Nak” are often quite cheesy. Another pivotal moment in the story, when Mak realizes his wife is a ghost when he sees her stretch her arm out to pick up a fallen piece of fruit, looks fairly silly. However, there is a classical eeriness to much of what follows. A thunderstorm billowing through a thatch hut, a dead body washing up in a boat, a shaman forced to bash his own head in: These are all striking moments that appear as mythic and old as they actually are. The period setting and ancient rites that seal the ghost make this the folkiest of folk horrors. Nimbutr's film is a respectable, stately retelling of these events that speaks to their power.
Much of “Nang Nak” seems to function as a historical lesson. An opening narration establishes the period setting. An epilogue expands on the legend of what happened to the ritualistic artifact that ultimately contains the ghost. I have no idea how this “Nang Nak” compares to the many other tellings of the story. Older Thai genre cinema is still almost impossible to find on the English language web and largely undistributed on disc. However, it is easy to see why this legend has endured for such a long time. It is a story of undying love and supernatural rage, of rejection and acceptance and unbreakable bonds. It's highly culturally specific, that should go without saying, but these themes are also universal. It is hard to call “Nang Nak” scary. It's almost better described as corny. However, as an argument for the value of folkloric tales such as these, it makes its point. [7/10]
I'm not an expert. I know very little. But: In the sixties, De-Stalinization started in Czechoslovakia and a more liberal government began to take shape. During this time, distinctly Czech and Slovakian voices emerged from the country's literary and art scenes. This is when notable filmmakers like Miloš Forman, Juraj Herz, Jan Švankmajer and František Vláčil started to draw international attention. Today, this movement is known as the Czech/Slovak New Wave and produced some of the most acclaimed movies to be made in the country. It all came to an abrupt end when Soviet forces invaded the country in 1968. The previous period of protest, reform, and liberalization was shoved back into the closet and stricter government censorship was reinstated on all sectors. The films made right at this turning point were some of the most inflammatory in Czech cinematic history up to that point. The likes of Herz' “The Cremator” and Forman's “The Firemen's Ball” were quickly banned by the in-coming administration. Perhaps no film captures this time better – he says, not really knowing what the hell he's talking about – than Karel Kachyňa's “The Ear.” The fusion of domestic drama, paranoia, ice cold absurdist humor, and an overarching tone of nightmarish dread would remain largely unseen until the nineties.
Ludvik is a low ranking member of the ruling Communist regime in Prague. He attends a work party with his wife, Anna. They hobnob with various government officials. Upon returning home, the drunk Anna realizes she left the key to their gate behind. The couple sneak into their own house. That is when they notice apparent government agents standing outside. Ludvik obsessively goes over his memories of the evening, becoming convinced that him and his wife are being targeted for elimination. As the two scour their home for hidden electronic listening devices – ears, you could call them – their already tense relationship begins to fall apart. Every minor slight and long-held complaint rushes to the surface. The night grows stranger and more distressing as they argue endlessly, burn documents, and repeatedly wonder how much they are being watched and listened to.
“The Ear” is not a traditional horror film by any means. Despite its presence on many lists of acclaimed scary movies, it resides on the margins of the genre. The horror present in this motion picture is strictly of the psychic variety. As Ludvik becomes increasingly convinced that every aspect of his life has been under surveillance, he reflects on everything he's said and done. The threat of living in a totalitarian state is that nothing is private. You are held accountable for every thought you have. Every grumble, whisper, and yawn can be held against you. Throughout “The Ear,” Ludvik and his wife move from room-to-room in their house. Private sanctums like the bedroom and bathroom slowly become violated as they are revealed to be bugged too. Their mental state slowly cracks up under the pressure of constantly being listened to and watched, any and all personal feelings being flattened out and kept private by a state that demands constant and complete submission.
One of the scariest suggestions in “The Ear” is that it doesn't truly matter whether this governing body, policing everything the characters say and think, exists or not. Throughout the film, Ludvik and Anna frequently argue about the degree of observation they are under. By the end, there is this creeping suspicion that the bugs in the house aren't hooked up to anything. The events of the next morning, coming at the very end and only after the endless night, leaves the protagonists wondering if they've done anything “wrong” at all. That perpetual uncertainty is exactly where the state wants them to be. Never sure when the hammer might come down, always fearful that they could slip up at any moment and be unpersoned the next day. Whether the structure of control exists or not is irrelevant The mere suggestion of it is enough to shake the duo to their core. The last line in “The Ear” is simply “I'm afraid.” When everything you say and do may or may not be evidence against you, it creates an unending fear of the inevitable punishment. Because we are all guilty of something, after all, aren't we?
In such an environment, what role does interpersonal relationships play? From the opening minutes of “The Ear,” it's evident that Ludvik and Anna's marriage is not a happy one. He seems to regard her with contempt. She seems to drink to help deal with the repressed feelings of resentment towards her husband. The two have a child but he never appears on-screen, only existing as a voice and a concept to be argue about and bargained over. A reoccurring thread in “The Ear” is how these two have never actually known each other, how both have sides they refuse to show. Not unlike how they must keep some thoughts and feelings secret from the government's ever-listening ears. They clearly dislike each other far more than they've ever cared about one another. However, they stay together anyway. In an oppressive country such as this, all relationships are mere tools for the government. More than once, Anna shouts out to the ears, eager to reveal (real or imagined) betrayals her husband has inflicted on her. “The Ear” gets quite a lot of suspense out of how far this unraveling of the relationship will go, supported by a properly frantic performance from Jiřina Bohdalová as Anna and a far more contained Radoslav Brzobohatý as Ludvik.
I say all of the above as if I actually have a clue what the hell I'm talking about. Much as I did when I watched "The Devil" last year, I must concede that I lack the proper cultural context to truly get my brain around "The Ear." Kachyňa's film is not only specifically Czech but also very relevant to life in the country during this particular moment of transition. Which means everything I wrote above is mostly me grasping in the dark. However, that doesn't mean I didn't find value in "The Ear." Josef Illík's black-and-white cinematography is extremely moody. The shadowy images establish an eerie tone right away. When the lights come on for the first time halfway through the movie, it feels almost akin to a jump scare. So much of "The Ear" is about secret deeds done in dark rooms, that the presence of brightness feels like an intrusion. The camera often assumes the point-of-view of the film's characters, furthering a paranoid feeling of being watched. Svatopluk Havelka's eccentric score creates a deliberately surreal atmosphere. A sequence where the government officials begin doing a strange dance at the party is when "The Ear" properly captures the sense of a nightmare. When Ludvik's "friends" from work arrive at the house and refuse to leave, it continues the feeling that we are stuck in a bad dream that simply won't end. When the sun comes up and the night finally concludes, the characters are stuck with the realization that their nightmare of paranoia is far from over.
I'm definitely too dumb to fully understand "The Ear." I think I would have to watch a lot more Czech New Wave movies – plus read a few books about the Prague Spring, the resulting Warsaw Pact invasion, and life under Soviet rule – to truly appreciate this one. I'd also argue that its classification within the horror genre is more metaphorical than literal. Not that the spectre of constant government surveillance, the resulting de-personalization, or the crushing paranoia isn't pretty scary. It simply doesn't scream Halloween spookiness to me. Nevertheless, the chilly atmosphere, the creepy visuals, and entombing tone of suspicion did work for me. It's kind of funny too, in that extremely dry and very absurd Eastern European way. Probably best recommended to the serious art house crowd and not your average Fangoria reader, unless you're working hard to expand your boundaries like I am these days. [7/10]
Looks like it was about six years ago when I last watched an episode of NBC's short-lived 1981 anthology “Darkroom.” I wasn't much impressed with what I saw but the James Coburn hosted program does have its defenders. Let's give it another shot, shall we? “Uncle George” concerns the Haskells, a nice old couple who live in a simple home out in the woods. Since Bert had a heart attack, he can't work the way he used to. Margo devotes her days to taking care of Uncle George, the bed-ridden relative in the upstairs bedroom. When Uncle George passes peacefully in his sleep, it is more than simply an emotional loss. Old George received a pension check every month and it helped the couple pay their bills. Bert buries George in the basement and drives over to the local bar. He finds Dixie, a homeless man. Bert takes him into a bar, buys him a drink, and makes him an offer: Dixie can live in their home for free if he poses as Uncle George, insuring that the household still gets that check every month. It seems like a sweet deal and Dixie happily accepts it... There's a serious catch though.
IMDb lists 16 episodes of “Darkroom.” However, this was one of those hour-long shows that usually included two segments per episode. Meaning the whole series actually only lasted for eight installments. The other “Darkroom” stories I've seen have been tales of supernatural horror. The one paired with “Uncle George,” for example, is a monster movie riff from ol' reliable Robert Bloch. For the majority of “Uncle George's” runtime, it seems to be an exception to that rule. It's a thoroughly sentimental story. Bert and Margo are happy to take care of their Uncle George, simply because he's family. It wasn't until Bert's injury that the checks became essential to their survival. When he picks up the old drunk off the street, it's basically a charitable act. Dixie describes how he's never had a family of his own, never been much valued by anyone around him. Here a complete stranger is, giving him a roof over his head and a bed to sleep on. There was a part of me that was wondering if this wasn't “Darkroom's” “Kick the Can” or “The Messiah on Mott Street.” Ya know, a break from the usual macabre subject matter for something more whimsical.
However, all throughout the episode, there is an underlying sinister intent. Claude Atkins and June Lockhart are as warm as can be as the couple. However, they approach what they are doing like it's a serious crime. I mean, it is a swindle but they are rather grave about it. The hushed tones they carry themselves with leaves the viewer guessing, wondering what exactly is up with these two. When that reveal comes, it's literally minutes before the end credits roll, the truth being held off until the final second. It's a hell of a swerve too, that changes the entire tone of the episode and successfully moves an otherwise sweet story into the realm of grisly horror. I don't know if “Uncle George” would have much value at all if it wasn't for that dynamite ending. However, sometimes that's all you really need to bring a half-hour episode together. Maybe “Darkroom” was better than I thought? James Coburn isn't a bad host either, with a wry winkle in his eye as he delivers grandiose, Serling-like introductions. [7/10]
If you'll allow me to, once again, compare and contrast America's two favorite families of the macabre once again:. It is a common observation that, while the Munsters are a working class family, the Addams family are rich. Herman was often at his day job at the funeral home. I think there's been exactly two episodes where Gomez' profession as a lawyer has been relevant at all. I bring it up because the Addams' philosophy towards employment is central to “Pugsley's Allowance.” The eldest child comes to his parents with a strange request: He thinks it's time for him to get a job. Gomez and Morticia are horrified at first, wondering why an Addams should have to work at all. The boy refuses offers of an allowance or an easy job with his dad. Instead, he seeks out a series of odd jobs, none of which are particularly suited to his eccentric personality. It comes to a head when Mr. Henson, frequent season one antagonist and the normie next door, hires the kids to clean out his attic.
“Pugsley's Allowance” does feel a bit like an episode where the writers looked around at some elements they hadn't used in a while and decided to do something with them again. Pugsley hasn't truly been the focus of an episode since that time Fester thought he turned him into a chimp. Mr. Henson is brought back, for the first time since “Gomez the People's Choice,” to once again fill the role of all-purpose antagonist. Now, he's the Addams' neighbor and ends up threatening to sue the family after Pugsley and Wednesday blow his attic up. That is when Gomez' knowledge of the law come back up, planning on counter-suing the guy. Ya know, for all the hardcore “Addams Family” nerds who are closely following the continuity of this silly old sitcom.
This episode does have a good number of funny bits. Pugsley repeatedly being sent back home by his employer every time, because of his unusual perspective, makes for an amusing running gag. It reaches an ideal climax when Pugsley's final attempt to find work outside the home – being the assistant to a bookie – results in another visit. Lurch reaching for guests' hat also gets a good repeat here. The direct way the kids did with Henson's dirty attic is a joke you see coming. But it's a strong one, specifically because it plays off the differing values between the Addams and stuffy, regular suburbanites like Henson. This episode also shows one of the few times in the series when Morticia gets genuinely angry, when her children are threatened. You definitely don't want to piss her off! “Pugsley's Allowance” also features Gomez being chained and padlocked by his wife. He remains tied up for most of the episode. Looks like these two are altogether freaky, am I right? [7/10]
"Scout" aired on BBC2 on September 8th of 1987. Quite literally the next night after Danny Boyle officially became a director of film and television, his second "movie" also aired on the same network as part of the same program. "The Venus DeMilo Instead," about Irish school boys coping with the Troubles, ended up being the second of five "ScreenPlay" installments Boyle would direct. He contributed "The Hen House" in the fourth season, "Arise and Go Now" in the sixth season, and "Not Even God is Wise Enough" in the eighth and final season. "The Venus DeMilo Instead" appears to have been available for rent on British streaming services at one point – it's not anymore – but Boyle's other "ScreenPlay" episodes, as far as I can tell, have remained elusive in the years since they aired. This is true for a lot of his early TV work. The two episodes of "Inspector Morse" he directed and "Mr. Wroe's Virgins," a four episode series about nuns that he oversaw, can currently be found on BritBox and Tubi.
Otherwise? "Monkeys," an intriguing sounding television movie about John DeLorean from 1989, doesn't appear to have ever been released. "For the Greater Good," a 1991 BBC mini-series about the aftermath of World War II, seems to pop up in various places from time to time. I couldn't find it as of this writing. Among the obscure projects from this stage of Boyle's career, I was able to locate "The Nightwatch." That's a late night hour-long movie, also about the Troubles and also made for the BBC, that Boyle also directed in 1989. Some helpful soul uploaded it to that sketchy Russian YouTube clone that is frequently a godsend for those seeking movies totally unavailable through any official channels. The video quality is a bit crunchy and there's a distracting time strip running along the top of the whole time. However, for pedantic film nerds like me who try to get as close to 100% on a director's Letterboxd page as possible, this hard-to-find presentation can at least be observed.
Not that I was able to understand "The Nightwatch" much anyway. And not only because of the lack of subtitles for all the distinct elocution going on. The film is loosely inspired by the Littlejohn affair. That is, as far as I can tell from the kind of convoluted Wikipedia page, an incident that occurred in 1973. Brothers Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn, two British expats with a long history of criminal behavior, pulled off the then-biggest bank robbery in Dublin history. While being held for trial, Kenneth claimed to have been an English double agent in the Official Irish Republican Army the entire time, committing all his crimes on behalf of the British crown to destabilize the Irish rebellion. The story gets more bizarre from there, as the brothers made a daring escape from prison and went on the run, with Kenneth eventually being arrested while in his underwear. I am absolutely certain that I do not have enough of a grasp on the history of the British/Irish conflict to truly understand all the nuances of these events. However, I will say that it sounds like a pretty compelling premise for a movie.
Unfortunately, "The Nightwatch" seems to operate with the assumption that the viewer is familiar with this true story while also understanding that a British made-for-TV movie in the late eighties certainly did not have the budget necessary to accurately portray such a tale. Instead, it heavily fictionalizes Kenneth Littlejohn's story as practically a chamber drama. It follows bank robber and MI6 asset David Smallman as he busts his brother out of prison in Northern Ireland. They relocate to Amsterdam. Four years later, Smallman is recruited by the crown again on behalf of a pair of American businessmen planning some kind of illegal activity. Smallman reassembles his band of former partners-in-crime under the pretense of them joining the operation. However, following a night of debauchery in the Dutch city, Smallman reveals that he has a far more personal matter to resolve.
I didn't know any of the above information about the true story that inspired "The Nightwatch" when I sat down to watch it. Yes, I was acting like your typical ignorant American, assuming that homework was not required to understand an obscure TV movie from 1989. This meant I was very confused almost the entire hour I was watching the film, having little familiarity with the political turmoil of the Troubles and the specific historical affair being referenced here. From the perspective of my dim, thoroughly mid-Atlantic eyes, "The Nightwatch" is almost entirely an hour of men with difficult Irish accents having conversations inside restaurants, hotel rooms, or night clubs. I would say a good seventy percent of the runtime is devoted to interior scenes, of the cast seated around a table. They argue and bicker about vague and secret plans. Sometimes they pull guns and threaten one another. Most often, they sneer hardboiled dialogue laced with resentments over long since passed events and battles.
That "The Nightwatch" is largely devoted to a stage play-like sequence of events, of people talking about things that happened, is frustrating for another reason. The film resembles a well-known structure. Namely, any number of previous narratives about putting together a team of rough and tumble guys to seek out an objective of debatable morality. I always love a good "men on a mission" movie. Of course, "The Nightwatch" decidedly is not that kind of story. It starts and stops at the "putting together a team" step of this familiar formula. I don't think we see Smallman and the band of scumbags he gets tangled up never actually set out on their mission only because the BBC clearly didn't have the money for it. This is a movie, partially anyway, about frustration. It is purposely an extended first act. These guys hate each other and wouldn't make a good team anyway. The idea, I suspect, is to subvert expectations by showing that a group of hardened criminals are exactly the kind of people who don't play well with others.
It's an interesting idea but that doesn't mean it's a pleasant one to watch. "The Nightwatch" produces an overall mood of cruelty and bitterness. Leslie Grantham plays Smallman as someone who is constantly scowling and griping. James Cosmo, as the first associate recruited for the job, plays a character who is a dead-eyed, racist psychopath that has no problem reminding others of the violent acts he has performed in the past and has no qualms about performing in the future. Tony Doyle as the second recruit is more outwardly obnoxious and confrontational. Don Fellows is the American businessman who regales the others with his stories of sexually abusing women in Vietnam. Once the gang gets together, they visit a brothel and beat a homeless man in an alleyway. These are deeply terrible people and spending time with them is not exactly rewarding, interesting, or compelling.
I do think there is a point here. Smallman's MI6 recruiter is a pathetic figure, an alcoholic who whines and moans at the agent he's watching over more like he's an old drinking buddy than a spy in his employ. This is not an exciting call to adventure for the protagonist but a humiliating obligation. The final act takes place in a brothel, where Smallman begins to rant to a prostitute about power and control while also humiliating and threatening her. That is where the heart of the movie is, I think. This is a story about power and control, about a desperate need to reclaim power from the system that controls. "The Nightwatch" has neither the runtime nor the interest to fully explore these ideas. It ends rather abruptly not long after this thematically establishing moment. In the espionage genre, where spies are usually action heroes, a film that considers how assets are at the beck-and-call of their masters, in a twisted power play that recalls the same systems of control that direct international affairs, is an interesting approach.
However, I'll say this much about "The Nightwatch:" You can tell Danny Boyle directed it. Since I'm currently unable to see the missing films between "Scout" and this one, I can only speculate on how it happened. However, the director had definitely developed his own style by this point. New Wave music plays throughout the film, with notable needle drops from the Art of Noise and The Cure. (Not to mention a cameo from the memorably bizarre video for New Order's "True Faith.") A few times, these musical choices are paired with quickly edited montages. The descent into depravity that occurs before the final third, where our characters explore the Amsterdam red light district while becoming more unhinged, is easily the highlight of the film. If only because it allows some of the nervous energy, confined to the tight interiors for most of the runtime, a release.
By the way, here in reality, the Official IRA would disavow the Littlejohn brothers as ever being members of their outfit, calling some of the details of their story into question. Kenneth would serve six years in prison for another bank robbery in 1981. The current whereabouts of the notorious figure doesn't seem to be public knowledge and I doubt we'll know all the details of his story for a long time. "The Nightwatch" has a much more permanent, far more downbeat ending, unsurprisingly. The true story is probably a good degree more interesting than this fictionalized account, which is clearly compromised by a lack of budget and resources and a decision to play too many of its details close to its chest. Not the best work of the burgeoning filmmaker behind it, though it does present some interesting – if ultimately unfulfilled – opportunities. [Grade: C-]
