A movie that brings war close

  In 2006, a platoon of Navy SEALs entered a two-story apartment building in Ramadi, Iraq. One apartment was still occupied.

  Through an interpreter, the SEALs informed the civilians that they wouldn't be hurt. The SEALs then  set up a post from which they observed the street, possibly preparing for trouble. They weren't sure what awaited them.

  In the new movie Warfare, the SEALs begin their mission after whooping it up in manic fashion while watching an exercise video featuring women in skimpy outfits. Like everything else in the movie, which chronicles a real incident, the scene is based on the accounts of SEALs who fought in the Iraq war.

   It doesn't take long for macho ritual, if that's what we're seeing, to give way to a forceful portrayal of relentless combat during the course of a single day.

    Director Alex Garland (Civil War) and co-director Ray Mendoza, who served as a Navy SEAL and advised Garland on the battle sequences in Civil War, team for a movie that eventually concentrates on SEAL efforts to evacuate the platoon from the besieged house, and more importantly, to save the lives of  two badly wounded SEALs.

    We don't know these men as fully developed characters, but as part of a team. Garland resists further elaboration. Early on, the dialogue consists mostly of military information related to the job. 

    The SEALs are well-equipped and have high-tech gear at their disposal. Yet, Garland makes us aware that beneath helmets and body armor, these men are made of flesh that can be torn apart and blood that can be spilled.

   Garland often allows the action to unfold in real-time, and sound designer Glenn Freemantle recreates the shock of explosions and their impact on woozy SEALS.  At one point, the SEALs request what's called "a show of force," and a jet buzzes the street with ear-shattering intensity. It's meant to distract the enemy.

    When one of the SEALs (Cosmo Jarvis) is severely wounded, his sustained screams are chilling. Another wounded SEAL (Joseph Quinn) begs for morphine.

    For most of the film, Garland almost makes us forget that innocent civilians, including children, remain in the house.  Maybe that's the point: The SEALs don't want the building's occupants to be hurt but they're busy fighting for their lives, tending to the wounded, and communicating with the SEALs who ultimately will come to their aid. They continue to function.

   Garland, Mendoza, and a cast that includes D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Charles Melton bring considerable skill to the task of making us feel the desperate urgency of a combat situation.

   So what to make of all this?

   I'm not sure how to process the movie beyond acknowledging its experiential power. Warfare isn't concerned with the rights or wrongs of the Iraq War. It's not about the policy decisions that led to the SEALs to combat; it operates on a narrower gauge, immersing us in a specific and dangerous moment in the Iraq War.

   If there's a conclusion to be drawn from all this, it may involve recognizing the stark gap between unseen policy makers and on-the-ground combatants. Who bothers with political thoughts when an IED delivers its shocking blow or when a friend and fellow SEAL is on the verge of bleeding out?

   Brutally effective, Warfare brings a vivid helping of Iraq war realism to the screen. Maybe that's enough of an accomplishment for a movie that reminds us that whatever else we might think about war, there's nothing abstract about it -- not for those who have to fight and possibly die.

An actress tackles a sensational story

  Gracie was 36 when she slept with Joe. He was 13. 

  She went to jail for her choice and gave brith to a baby (his) while incarcerated. May December,  a movie about the aftermath of their affair, begins 20 years after Joe and Gracie made national news.

   The age difference disturbs, of course, but equally important, is the fact that Joe's marriage deprived him of the opportunity to grow into the role of husband and father. Joe and Gracie, who live in Savannah, Ga., have three kids, all older than Joe was when their life-changing affair began.

   In what feels like an attempt to give the story some mind-bending dimension, director Todd Haynes focuses on the arrival of Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), an actress who will play Gracie (Julianne Moore) in a movie that's soon to start filming.

   Elizabeth becomes increasingly insistent as she explores the lives of the characters who lived the story.

   Absorbing and quietly challenging, May December engages us in a pursuit similar to the one Elizabeth undertakes. We're continually trying to process scenes that don't quite compute, a father trying to relate to a teenage son who's going through a stage he never experienced.

     As she tires to nail the character, Elizabeth meets Gracie and her two twins (Gabriel Chung and Elizabeth Yu), teens who are about to graduate from high school, leaving Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) as empty-nesters. An older daughter — the one born in prison — already has left home.

     Think about your life. Is the person you loved at 17 someone you could have spent the rest of your days with?  We wonder whether Joe and Gracie really love each other or have backed themselves into a corner, trapped into justifying behavior few would condone.

    The screenplay's focus on acting elevates content that easily might have turned trashy. As a result, May December hinges on Portman's performance as an actress who tries to penetrate Gracie's soul, ultimately in shockingly disreputable ways. Can acting be viewed as an invasion of privacy, even an act of aggression?  

   Under the guise of professionalism, Elizabeth also explores the salacious nature of the material. When she visits the stock room in the pet shop where both Gracie and Joe once worked and where they were caught having sex, she allows her imagination to reproduce Gracie's moment of ecstatic abandon. 

     Fortunately, the owner of the pet shop remains otherwise occupied and out of view.

    Portman's performance requires a degree of subtlety and seduction. Initially, she must seduce the audience, asking that we grant her the presumption of professional curiosity. But as the movie develops, Elizabeth's twisted psyche becomes more evident.

   Elizabeth’s quest broadens the movie’s scope: She talks to a variety of Savannah residents, including the man to whom Gracie was married (D.W. Moffett) at the time of her dalliance. She also meets with the lawyer (Lawrence Arancio) who represented Gracie at her trial and with her son (Cory Michael Smith) from her first marriage.

      Questions of control -- Gracie's over Joe and the rest of her family -- are reflected in the way Moore shifts identities: mother, seductress, wife, and lover.  

      Only Melton's Joe seems an innocent participant in a drama he never really controlled. Joe breeds butterflies, an overly obvious symbolic reference to his inability to escape the cocoon of his marriage and blossom into a fully developed adult.

       Should we believe Gracie when, late in the movie, she insists that Joe initiated their sexual relationship? And even if her assertion were true, does it altar the fact that she was an adult and he was still a kid?

      Those familiar with Haynes's work (Far From Heaven and Carol) won't be surprised that Haynes has little interest in sanctioning his characters or generating undue sympathy for Gracie, a woman who, after all, spent time in jail for second-degree rape.

      In the end, May December is as much about the way Haynes and his two principal actresses toy with the story than about the story itself. He provokes us to ask questions that revolve around a central inquiry,  "What becomes of people who have lived through this kind of experience?"

    With a screenplay by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, May December is more than a trashy TV movie. Viewers may disagree about how much more because Haynes can confound as much as he clarifies, leaving us to wonder whether we're meant to take everything we see at face value.

     Whatever you decide, you may find yourself realizing that in the game Haynes and his cast of characters are playing, no one emerges victorious. 

Older but still bad boys at heart

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence deliver for viewers who like these kinds of formula jobs.

Bad Boys for Life includes a late-picture plot twist so preposterous and far-fetched that it practically wraps itself in immunity from criticism. It's as if the filmmakers are saying, "Hey, you've come this far, might as well go along with the rest."

With this third in the Bad Boy series, which began in 1995 and continued with a sequel in 2003, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence attempt to reclaim box-office potency and prove that buddy movies, even in re-treaded form, are as much big-screen staple as corn is to American agriculture.

Director Michael Bay, at the helm for the first two movies, cedes directing chores to Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, a duo that lives in Belgium. They approach the challenge with something approaching cheerful brio.

Now, it needs to be said at the outset that any movie that looks for its juice from Mexican drug cartels, which Bad Boys for Life does, already feels a trifle old hat. But Arbi and Fallah don’t seem to care. For them, it's pedal to the metal and full speed ahead.

The directors must have known that they’ve been charged with ensuring, as many critics previously have noted, that thair movie includes ample amounts of bullets and banter, both of which they ladle out in over-sized helpings.

On the way out of a preview screening, an audience member described the movie as “fun.” That's what movies such as Bad Boys for Life are supposed to provide — fun with bloodshed or maybe it's the reverse, bloodshed with fun.

To be fair, Bad Boys for Life does provide some fun. The banter between Will Smith’s Mike and Martin Lawrence’s Marcus ranges from funny to routine. Smith, of course, plays the serious cop; Lawrence provides the comic relief as a Miami detective who wants to retire, particularly after a mysterious assassin riddles Mike with bullets in the movie’s early going.

Though badly wounded, Mike makes a miraculous recovery. He then decides that he must find the motorcycle-riding murderer who gunned him down in the street. Of course, he wants Marcus to join him.

No, says Marcus, who insists on hanging up his badge so that he can watch his infant grandson grow up. Besides, when Mike was hovering near death in the hospital, Marcus promised God that he wouldn’t commit any more violent acts if Mike pulled through.

Will Marcus finally relent? What do you think?

A wary police captain (Joe Pantoliano) half-heartedly tells Mike not to investigate his own case, but even he knows that Mike won't listen. In movies such as this, no one gets in the way of the formula.

That doesn't mean the filmmakers can't accessorize. The screenplay surrounds Mike and Marcus with a kind of tech-savvy IM Force led by Miami cop played by Paola Nunez. She and Mike once had a thing.

As it turns out, the plot against Mike has been authored by the vicious widow (Kate del Castillo) of a drug lord who Mike helped bring down. The widow insists that her equally brutal and maniacally focused son (Jacob Scipio) make Mike suffer before killing him.

If you have no taste for this kind of mayhem, Bad Boys for Life gives you no reason to expand your window of tolerance.

If, on the other hand, you're up for a well-oiled big-screen machine that gives Smith a chance to mix dead-pan seriousness with a bit of charm and eventually makes room for Lawrence to find his way to some real laughs, you could do worse.

Bad Boys for Life provides the expected jokes about aging, but a teaser that runs during the film’s end credits suggests that we take the title seriously. Smith and Lawrence may be in it for the duration.