Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Television: The Company

The Company
Executive Producers - Ridley and Tony Scott
Writer - Ken Nolan
Director - Mikael Salomon


On Sunday night, AMC wrapped up the third and final part of its CIA miniseries, The Company. It was a “television event” executive produced by the Scott brothers (Ridley and Tony) and headed up by heavy hitter thespians, Alfred Molina, Michael Keaton and a guy who’s been under the radar for a while, Chris O’Donnell. Also starring, and they are truly stars in this piece are Allessandro Nivola, who you will recognize but may have trouble placing, Rory Chochrane, who you will recognize but may have trouble placing because last time you probably saw him he was rotoscoped in “A Scanner Darkly” and Tom Hollander, a Brit whom you will definitely recognize if you’ve been paying attention to any pirate themed blockbusters in the last while. I normally would not take so much time just to tell you who is in the six hour miniseries but all five of these actors, along with the rest of the huge cast are the ones that make sitting down to watch worth it.

The story is that of three friends (O’Connell, Nivola and Chochrane) and their role as it related what many probably think of as its most interesting but are probably only the most declassified years of the CIA: The Cold War. Starting in post WWII Germany and spanning all the way to 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Company has a stunning amount of ground to cover but cover it, it does.

It centers around Chris O’Donnell as Jack McCauliffe, an idealist who suffers greatly at the hands of either his idealism or the cold bureaucratic indifference of the espionage game. The fact that Salomon, the Scott Brothers and writer Ken Nolan never tell us which is to blame, the CIA itself or Jack’s refusal to leave it is part of what makes The Company such a good watch. Even when the whole thing is over the smoke never clears. It is not moral ambiguity that is currency here but the question of what morality really is.

The rest of the cast take on the roles of real characters or characters that are based on real people (even Nivola and Chochrane’s having basis in history). Michael Keaton takes on the role of James Jesus Angleton, one of the most renowned master spies of all time, who even after being destroyed body and soul by his own many delicate webs of intrigue remains a very well respected figure, having pretty much written the manual for counter-intelligence. Keaton brings the man to life in an intensely chilling and nuanced way, always taking his time to speak, always carrying something up his sleeve and never too proud to let you know it though what it was he would never tell. Angleton, while respected, was not well liked in his later years and from Keaton’s portrayal, it’s easy to see why.

On a visual level the series takes you from one incredible set to another. From tensions in Berlin to Russian tanks rolling through Hungary to the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, the audience is kept in the action, drawn along to see both the puppet masters and the consequences of their games, all the while keeping it humanized by bringing you back to the three friends and the lives they affect and effect. There is a little of both.

After summers full of Bourne or Bond or winters with ‘real spy’ doses like The Good Shepherd (incidentally, a movie entirely about Keaton's character going by a different name), The Company finds a good compromise between the very slow waiting game that is clearly hardest part of espionage and the brutal violence and war-torn countries that come as the result of a few men’s scheming. A few men on both sides, trying to do what they believe is correct.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

"Kidulthood" - A Review

Film - Kidulthood
Director - Menhaj Huda
Writer - Noel Clarke

I do not enjoy "Youth Reality" movies.

Before I cite it as a contributer to my anger, allow me to give KIDS a reluctant pass on the following rant. As much as I dislike the message (The kids are fucked.), it has genuine merit as a film.

Now: The Rant.

I just watched "Kidulthood", a British film about kids and the darker side of life. It's well shot and... Well, it's well shot. Sadly, it is also edited to an inconsistent pace, directed to a shaky visual mix of KIDS and Requiem for a Dream and sprinkled with a few flashback montages reminiscent of 80's action movies. It also has slow motion bad-guy-stands-up shot near the end that’s just too Die Hard to not mention. This is to say nothing of the script which is... aheh, well the script is so junked on clichés you'd think it mainlined them. I found it a struggle to watch the whole thing.

But there's a deeper reason.

Kidulthood falls into the same category as Larry Clark's KIDS, joining it in a genre that in the same breath managed to glamorize and demonize the hard inner city life as a youth. But Kidulthood lacks the focus of KIDS, taking on the philosophy of 'High School is a war zone' but accelerating it to a ridiculous level; showing every child around trying to just get through with their head down or narcotize themselves through their adolescence like the Viet Cong had sprung an ambush and killed their third best friend this month.

I'm not calling hyperbole on the situation the movie addresses, just on the movie. I am aware that in some places going to school is the most dangerous part of a young person's day; old enough to be exposed to dangers but still too young to mount a strong defense. Sadly Kidulthood, so full of stereotypical parental disengagement that every generation seems to think is a new epidemic serves not to act as a wake up call to the world, as movies like Boyz In The Hood did for black on black youth violence but is simply a dour, nihilistic gloom-fest promoted as the dark, hard reality that everybody has blinded themselves to. All the kids have AIDS, they peddle firearms as favors and terrify their teachers with a look so hard it could freeze water. The world is their playground, as painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

But concepts of solution? Redemption? Improvement in their lives? The good things that every kid wants even if they've convinced themselves they'll never have? Nada. At the end of this movie as with just about every one like it I inevitably felt like I'd just swilled down some junkie bohemians' coffee after the physical embodiment of self-pity had taken a piss in it. Films like this don't leave me horrified, concerned for the future of my unborn children or saddened by the state of the world as according to the director. They leave me angry.

Billed with adjectives such as gritty and realistic, I find them to be, in reality, failed attempts at tragedy born out of someone forgetting that a tragedy requires a hero trying to do the right thing and failing because they are flawed. Instead we get children with a sociopath's sense of morality ending up victims of a conglomeration of sad events that might happen to a small town's worth of people over the course of a month but instead happen to a van's worth of people in the course of a day. When taken from a distance I can imagine these being the people you would laugh shamefully at as you read about them in the news, the ones you get drunk and tell your friends about with the preface, "You think you're unlucky? Jesus, lemme tell you about this kid I read about." And everyone listens with a sense of car-crash horror, laughing and moaning in turn every time the story comes to its next part, "But wait, there's more!"