Strong kickoff for another Marvel character

 

    Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings leaps into Asian-American mythos in much in the way that Black Panther brought Afrocentric freshness to the indestructible Marvel universe.

    I don’t know if Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will have the same impact as Black Panther — either commercially or culturally. But this latest Marvel movie has enough positive elements (action, humor and a story with deep family roots) to constitute an entertaining addition to Marvel’s apparently endless stream of movies.

     Shang-Chi gets off to a lively start. Sean (Simu Liu) -- later to become Shang-Chi -- works as a valet in San Francisco along with pal Katy (Awkwafina). It doesn't take long for the two to take a dizzying ride in a borrowed car.

     Sean and Katy also encounter a group of thugs on a bus, a sequence in which clever martial-arts maneuvers are augmented by the excitement of watching a large vehicle careen through the streets of San Francisco.

    Sean, we learn, has a secret. He was raised in China by a father (Tony Leung) who schooled him in martial arts. Leung's Wenwu was no pipe-and-slippers dad. Centuries ago, he acquired the fabled 10 rings which gave him superhero powers and eternal life. He expected his son to take his place as head of a powerful secret force of warriors.

    Shang-Chi had other ideas. He fled China when he was 14. 

    Upon his return to Macau 10 years later, Shang reunites with his younger sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang). She's still upset that Shang left her with a father who didn't treat his daughter the way he treated his son.

   The plot eventually takes Shang and Katy to the mythic land of Ta-Lo where they meet Shang's aunt Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh), a wise woman who makes positive use of her martial arts-skills.

    Like most Marvel movies, Shang-Chi gobbles up comic-book mythology as if were popcorn. Wuwen, who gave up his powers when he married Shang's mother (Fala Chen), believes that he can reunite with his late wife if he penetrates a seal that separates an evil soul-sucking dragon from humanity. 

    The meeting of Wuwen and Chen's Jiang Li produces some of the movie's more intriguing and well-choreographed action. Li's the only person who's able to subdue Wuwen's fighting spirit. 

     It makes more sense to see all this in a theater than to write about it in a review. Besides, the mythic elements of the story are supported by recognizable emotions: a husband's inability to accept his wife's death, a son's struggle to accept his true identity, and a sister who can't totally abandon her sibling resentments.

    The Ta-Lo sequences include an element of cuteness in the form of a furry faceless, winged creature that struck me as more Disney than Marvel, a little too precious perhaps. 

    But Shang-Chi never skimps on action. A fight that takes place on scaffolding attached to a high rise offers vertiginous fun.

    I've read that Liu wanted to model his fighting style on Jackie Chan. The fight sequences contain elements of Chan-like humor but, in my view, don’t rise to the level of Chan’s best work, which admittedly makes for a high bar.

   Director Destin Daniel Cretton and his team were smart to give Shang-Chi a sidekick and the movie suffers a bit when Awkwafina is off-screen. Liu masters the physical aspects of the role but sometimes  comes up short on personality. Oh well, that's probably a marginal criticism considering that Shang-Chi is an emerging character.

   The supporting cast -- particularly Yeoh, Leung, and Zhang -- offer more than window dressing. They really supports the movie, as does Benedict Wong, whose role is smaller but still strong. Ben Kingsley adds humor as Trevor Slattery, a fading TV actor whose presence is played for laughs. 

   The movie's ending -- involving dragons (good and evil), a father/son battle, and lots of fiery combat -- can't entirely avoid the bloat that seems obligatory in these efforts.

    Overall, though, Shang-Chi succeeds in introducing a new Marvel character to the screen and proves an invigorating addition to the Marvel universe. 

    Equally important in a world in which sequels seem mandatory, the movie leaves you wanting to see more of Shang-Chi and Katy, a comic-book duo with promising  potential.

When bigotry makes a mockery of truth

Just Mercy tells the real-life story of an Alabama black man who's wrongly sentenced to death.

If Just Mercy, director Destin Daniel Cretton>'s big-screen adaptation of Bryan Stevenson's book of the same name, doesn't move you, I'm not sure what could.

Just Mercy qualifies as the straightforward story about a persistent, Harvard educated attorney (Michael B. Jordan) who moves to Alabama in the 1980s to head a project devoted to representing inmates on death row, as well as others who can't afford legal help.

One of the attorney's clients (Jamie Foxx) has been sentenced to death despite a jury's determination that he deserved life in prison. A shoddy defense completed the frame-up. Foxx's Walter McMillan - a.k.a. Johnny D -- was accused of killing a teenage white girl and the white community in Monroeville — the town where Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird -- hungered for someone to punish.

Just Mercy may not brim with groundbreaking insights about racism but it makes us feel the sting of injustice with performances that embody so much determination, pain and emotional truth that the movie rises above anything that might be deemed routine.

Cretton (Short Term 12) charts a course that explores the deep humanity of black Americans who have been wronged by a system that's rigged against them. As Foxx's character says at one point, he was born into a society that regarded him as guilty at birth.

Jordan (of Creed and Black Panther fame) can dominate a scene if he chooses. Here, he avoids any pyrotechnics in playing a young Harvard Law grad who isn't entirely sure of himself but who has decided that there's little point in being a lawyer if the fight for justice isn't at the heart of his practice.

Jordan's Bryan Stevenson can't always approach his work dispassionately. As a young black man, he not only wants to fight injustice; he feels the weight of it. He arrives in Monroe County where Eva Ansley (Brie Larson) has been working as operations director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Although she's not a lawyer, Ansley devotes herself to doing everything in her power to facilitate Stevenson's work.

The movie's themes are embodied in a cast that revolves around Jordan. As a death-row inmate, Foxx can be imposing in his mistrust of the system and tender in the way he helps to calm a fellow inmate (a terrific Rob Morgan) on the eve of his execution.

In some ways, Richardson's story resonates more powerfully than Johnny D's. A Vietnam veteran, Richardson was responsible for a woman's death. He can't escape the burden of his guilt. At the same time, it's clear that this victim of war-related post-traumatic stress doesn't belong on death row. As one inmate puts it, he should be hospitalized.

It's heartbreaking to hear Richardson say that the way people treat him on the day of his execution -- asking if there's anything they can do to help -- is the nicest anyone's been to him in his entire life. When the guards lead him out of his cell, he politely asks permission to say goodbye to his friends, fellow inmates on death row.

It's difficult to imagine a more convincing portrait of a man who has been battered and beaten by the world and by the torment of knowing that he veered out of control.

For his part, Foxx completely inhabits the role of a man who knows he's innocent but who also understands that no one cares. When truth doesn’t matter, cynicism is the inevitable result. Tough and guarded, Walter has adjusted to death row in the only way possible: He expects nothing from anyone.

It falls to Tim Blake Nelson to give a key performance as the convict whose false testimony condemned Johnny D. His face contorted from burns experienced as a kid in foster care, Nelson's account of how he was coerced into lying in court proves chilling.

Cretton chronicles the legal maneuvering required to try to win a new trial for Johnny D. But it's the clearly expressed human toll taken by a corrupted system that creates the movie’s emotional engagement. Cretton allows the movie's ending to go on too long, but even that can't dull the heartbreak of a story about bonds formed by people -- who in a more just world -- never would have met.