movie - changeling

changeling joins chinatown, la confidential, and the onion field, (among others,) in the pantheon of films set in a historic los angeles, which tell fascinating stories and simultaneously chronicle some aspect or period of city history. until the day when someone turns mike davis' city of quartz into a film, changeling is likely as realistic a feel for 1920s los angeles as can be seen.

j. michael straczynski wrote the screenplay after doing extensive research on the facts of the story and that research comes through on screen. yes, los angeles had rail cars, a ham-fisted police department and women in the work place who were required to wear roller skates. it is this authenticity that turns the film from a mere fact-based story to a special film worthy of oscar consideration.

angelina jolie plays christine collins, a single mother whose son walter was abducted by gordon northcott and his mother and was presumably killed in the infamous "chicken coup murders." jolie has been nominated for a best supporting actress oscar and deservedly so. that said, angelina jolie is sort of accepted as one of the most attractive women on this planet and despite the demure clothing she wore for the part, there was something disconcerting about her being single, about an entire police force treating her as persona non grata and worse, and about more people besides a local priest not coming out to support her. it just did not ring true. (isn't it refreshing to discover there really can be a downside to physical beauty?)

still, once one gets away from the fact it's angelina jolie up there on the screen, it is easy to see that she gave a great performance. she shows great range in the role and perhaps more importantly, considerable restraint, (which worked.)

for his part clint eastwood does an admirable job directing. his straightforward style keeps the pace brisk thereby negating the 141 minute run time.

changeling tells a factual story in its proper historical context. further, it is dramatic and suspenseful and includes an array of solid performances from the actors, the writer, the costume designer and virtually everyone involved.

movie - gran torino

gran torino was destroyed for me before i even walked into the cinema. unfortunately, my expectations were inordinately high and this film just could not deliver.

i love clint eastwood. i don't love him for the spaghetti westerns or dirty harry, by the way, i love him for his directing work. i loved million dollar baby, (as evidenced by my blogpost from 2005 i linked there.) i loved flags of our fathers and thought letters from iwo jima was even better. since he began directing movies clint eastwood has just been as close to perfect as possible. (have you seen the changeling?)

the idea that this movie, gran torino, was about an elderly man who would successfully take on a local street gang also sounded great to me. ooooooooooohhh!! i just love me some justice in my movies. i expected eastwood would play this part with more subtlety than his dirty harry character and i looked forward to a downplayed, nuanced performance.

i also thought i might learn something about asian gangs in this movie. i thought there would be relationships between races that would be insightful to me.

to be fair, i think the movie also sought these things. that is to say, eastwood must have sought these things as well but to no avail.

for me gran torino was disappointing and worse. immediately after the movie started i noticed there were eyes on me instead of the film from just over my right shoulder. it was unnerving, too. i tried to look and could not tell in the darkness who it was much less why they seemed to be mad-dogging me but they were and it added to why i did not like the movie.

everything in gran torino, in spite of any perceived loftier goals, comes across as trite. eastwood plays walt kowalski, a korean war veteran and former auto worker who upon the death of his wife finds himself mostly alone in his home and in the world. (his children are like cardboard cut-outs prancing into a scene from time to time to remind us of the vacuous, money-grubbing nature of americans at large. they're meant to fill in holes in the background and depth of walt's existence but instead they prove to be mere distractions who only highlight the same caricatured nature of the other characters depicted.)

kowalski discovers in short order that his angelic wife had asked a young, (and i mean like 12,) irish priest to look in on walt and help ensure he makes it to heaven so he can be reunited with her. the priest is meant to come across as a novice but fails even at that. he seems like a novice acting like a novice with zero life experience to draw on to remind him of what it was like to be inexperienced at anything.

kowalski forms relationships with his neighbors, (and again i have no interest in spoiling the plot for you,) in particular the son, thao, and daughter of the hmong family who have recently moved in. the boy, thao, tries to steal his garaged 1972 gran torino as initiation to his cousin's gang but nothing rings true about this plot. thao does not like his cousin. he seems to have no interest in being in the gang as they beat him up prior to his initiation and after the failed attempt on kowalski's car. yeah, yeah, peer pressure can cause people to do things that are out of character at that age but given the strength thao shows later in the movie, the prior action just seems like a hastily arranged device to drive the plot to its end. the daughter, sue vang lor, is at once completely uncomfortable with herself and utterly self-assured. there is a scene wherein a couple of unidentified street hoods, obviously not from this particular neighborhood which we have already learned is rapidly turning asian, are threatening sue with violence and kowalski shows up and pistol whips the boys. all the while sue vang lor sasses the street urchins as if she is an asian cross between juno and supergirl. she is a likable character because she is smart and brave but she smacks of the kind of one-dimensional, heroic qualities eastwood usually avoids in his movies.

gran torino is just a bad movie, which may explain why it is already eastwood's highest grossing film to date. it is too bad the praise of wealth arrives to honor this subpar effort but i guess it is the cardboard characters, the black and white nature of everything therein, (eliminating the need for any critical thought,) and the stereotypical depictions of virtually everyone and everything in this movie that will define it as simple entertainment as opposed to anything resembling art.

when i looked over my shoulder after the house lights came up i realized those eyes that had been so rudely glued to me throughout were atop a little stack of money. apparently it was the cash i could have saved if i would have skipped seeing gran torino.