Adventure racing movie hits its marks

I’ve often asked myself the following question: If I weren’t reviewing would I bother with this or that movie? When it comes to Arthur the King, a story about adventure racers starring Mark Wahlberg and co-starring an indefatigable mixed-breed dog, the answer probably would be a resounding, “No.” But Wahlberg, who produced, and director Simon Cellan Jones turn out a sports adventure picture built around endurance, courage, and the willingness to take chances. The action sequences — competitors crossing a deep divide while hanging on a wire with mountain bikes strapped to their backs, for example — generate white-knuckle tension. Wahlberg plays Mikael Lindnord, a racer determined to win what will be his last race. He gathers some stalwarts (Simu Liu, Ali Suliman, Nathalie Emmanuel), and it’s off the Dominican Republic. About the dog:  As the adventures unfold, the team meets the dog, eventually dubbed Arthur. A wounded denizen of the streets, Arthur becomes a helpmate and companion to the team, even at one point saving their lives. He follows Mkael wherever he goes. A true story about a Swedish racer has been transferred to the US, but as depicted here, the sport seems to have a definite international flavor.  Focusing on adventure racing -- a competition about which most of us know little -- freshens the movie's formula. And, yes, the finale tugs at the heart strings, particularly for dog lovers. So, no, I might not have otherwise sought this one out, but I wasn’t sorry I saw it, either.

The super-rich also can be cheap

In All the Money in the World, director Ridley Scott tells a 1973 story in which the grandson of J. Paul Getty was kidnapped -- and grandpa refused to pay the ransom.

All the Money in the World stands as a triumph of sorts. With his film already shot, director Ridley Scott decided to replace Kevin Spacey in a principal role. Scott's 11th-hour decision qualifies as an act of cinematic bravado designed, I suppose, to stave off any focus on Spacey, the recent subject of much-publicized sexual abuse allegations.

So the first question: Do the seams show? The answer: Not really.

Although it's difficult not to be aware that Christopher Plummer was a last-minute addition to the production, Scott's skill and Plummer's canny performance as J. Paul Getty help create a spry thriller with plenty of pulse.

In 1973, J. Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher) was snatched off the streets of Rome, where he was wandering aimlessly, a long-haired hippie without much personal direction. Paul's billionaire grandfather, the world's wealthiest man at the time, refused to pay the $17-million ransom the kidnappers demanded.

It falls to Paul's mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), to try to free the boy, no easy task. Divorced from her wayward husband, J. Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan), Harris has no money of her own and doesn't really want the help of an ex-CIA operative (Mark Wahlberg) dispatched by the elder Getty to help with any negotiations to free his grandson.

We get the sense that Getty wants Wahlberg's character to clean up a mess; perhaps Getty see the kidnapping as a nuisance that interferes with his obsessive fondling of ticker tape from the markets; Getty enjoys watching his already staggering wealth increase.

Plummer, who played Scrooge in this year's The Man Who Invented Christmas, expands on his performance as a classic miser; Plummer creates a man of great wealth whose sole devotion is to things. Unlike people, things remain unchanged by any winds of betrayal. Getty collects art on a major scale but otherwise establishes himself as a world-class cheapskate. He believes that anyone can become rich, but only a select few can "be" rich.

Plummer doesn't look particularly convincing as a younger version of Getty in a few awkwardly inserted flashbacks, but those are among the few distractions in Plummer's rendition of one of history's major skinflints, a self-absorbed tycoon. In this telling, Getty values his name more than anyone who inherited it from him. He keeps a payphone in his London estate for anyone wishing to make a call. If necessary, the butler will supply change.

Young Getty's kidnapping gives Scott a premise that plays to his strengths, propelling the movie forward and creating tension.

The kidnappers eventually "sell" Getty No. III to Calabrian mobsters who hope to succeed where the first crew faltered. More ruthless than their predecessors, these second-wave kidnappers eventually cut off one of the boy's ears and send it to an Italian newspaper, affording Scott an opportunity to create a wincingly painful scene.

One of the kidnappers -- Romain Duris' Cinquanta -- develops a relationship with young Getty. Cinquanta eventually tries to help the young man who had been summoned back to Rome by his mother after spending time with his father, who -- at the time -- was immersed in drug-fueled Moroccan escapades.

Williams leads Scott's strong cast as a self-assured woman. Her Gail Harris refuses to be intimidated by Getty. A single attribute gives her leverage: She doesn't want any Getty money. Harris' crisp manner suggests that she's not the warmest person: She may not have money, but you'd never know it from her behavior.

Fine performances and the sense that the story lifts the veil on a lifestyle few of us ever will encounter help Scott sell All the Money right up until the end.

During the film's closing scenes, Scott suggests that Getty dies just as his grandson's story reaches its conclusion. Getty actually died several years later, but Scott shows Getty as a man staggering through his cavernous mansion with only his cherished possessions, a dying titan capable of seeing the beauty in a painting of the baby Jesus but unable to find any in his own children or grandchildren.

The moment feels contrived, an all-too-pat restatement of what's already been said. All the Money may not reach as powerful a crescendo as Scott probably wished, but that doesn't mean his thriller isn't involving. In a crowded holiday field, All the Money holds its own.

'Transformers' stomps on coherence

Another helping of chaotic action from director Michael Bay.

It's fairly common for fantasy movies to ponder the imminent destruction of the Earth and all its inhabitants. Why we need outside (often alien) help to accomplish such devastation puzzles me. We seem to be doing a pretty good job of wrecking the planet ourselves.

Still, it's no surprise that Transformers: The Last Knight again puts the planet under extreme threat. Unfortunately, the movie -- directed by Michael Bay -- misses the point: We all probably should be wondering about the durability of a culture that has now produced its fifth movie based on a line of toys.

I'd like to tell you more about Last Knight, but that won't be easy because the plot stumbles its way through a variety of set pieces that span the movie's taxing two-and-a-half hour length.

If noise were art, Bay would be the Leonardo Da Vinci of movies. He specializes in a brand of visual and aural overstatement that can turn images into a form of cinematic shrapnel.

Bay tries to expand the series' reach by beginning in the Dark Ages, a time when knights fought with heavy swords and dodged streaking fireballs that were catapulted in their direction.

Having already been trashed in another summer movie, King Arthur returns to fight off a barbarous horde. On the verge of being decimated, the Knights of the Round Table only can be saved by Merlin (Stanley Tucci). Tipsy from alcohol in this telling, the fabled magician has a staff that can summon transformers to help vanquish the forces of evil -- or some such.

Don't hold me to every detail in this review because attempting to follow a movie as scattered as Last Knight can feel discombobulating, like trying to balance your checkbook while riding a rollercoaster.

After its Medieval prolog, the movie leaps ahead 1,600 years. The Earth faces grave danger. Among other things, savior robot Optimus Prime has returned to his home planet of Cybertron to search for his maker. Once he arrives home, Prime discovers that Cybertron has fallen on hard times. According to a sorceress named Quintessa, Cybertron only can be saved by sucking the life out of Earth.

If your head doesn't hurt by now, keep reading. If you'd rather stop and do something more constructive (rearrange your sock drawer, say), you have my blessing.

As part of its metallic furor, Last Knight also tells us that the US military has declared war on all robots. Not so fast, says Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), an inventor who remains loyal to his robot allies. Cade befriends Autobots, helpful to humans, as opposed to Decepticons, not helpful to humans.

Isabela Moner plays a young woman who also loves Autobots. She becomes an occasional tag-along partner for Wahlberg's Cade. She also drops out of the movie for extended periods.

I'll spare you a guided tour of the Transformer universe. Know, though, that about half way through, Wahlberg -- more or less the movie's lead -- joins forces with a British character named Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock). She's a Medievalist who knows how to recover Merlin's staff, which holds the key to ... well ... something or other.

Did I mention that there's also a talisman with mystical properties? Talismans are always helpful in movies because just about everyone wants to get hold of one.

The movie makes room for an extended appearance by the estimable Sir Anthony Hopkins. He portrays Sir Edmund Burton, an overly demonstrative nobleman who eventually tells us that Wahlberg's character is "the last knight" of the title.

I have to admit that the movie's final act contains some decent pulp imagery involving an attack on the Earth by what looks like a giant coral reef.

Every now and again, John Turturro, a refugee from the previous movies, makes a cameo appearance from Cuba, where his character presently is located. Turturro could be the first actor ever to have to make phone calls (really) to the main plot in order to make his presence felt.

There's also a small robot that seems to be a dilapidated, trash-can cousin of R2-D2. A late-picture underwater, submarine sequence that arrives after the movie already has sunk.

Attempts at humor are so ham-handed that they're easy to spot amid all the flying debris.

Bay doesn't whip up many edge-of-the-seat moments. Maybe that's because it's difficult to generate real suspense when the series -- like this movie -- feels as if it never will end.

Heroism on a bad day in Boston

Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg reunite for a look at the Boston Marathon bombing.

Patriots Day reunites director Peter Berg with actor Mark Wahlberg for a look at the horrible April day during which the 2013 Boston Marathon was disrupted by terrorist bombings.

Berg, who directed Wahlberg in Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon, approaches the story from two mostly compatible directions: On one hand, he's writing an ode to the city of Boston. He's celebrating the strength and good will of the city's ordinary residents. He supplements that ode to Boston with a police procedural about the frantic search to find the two bombers, who fled the scene of their foul handiwork.

Tense and well-edited, Patriots Day focuses mainly on a slightly disaffected Boston sergeant (Wahlberg) who, at the picture's opening, receives a kind of punishment assignment: He must serve in uniform at the finish line of the marathon, a job he regards as the equivalent of penance. He refers to his uniform -- not usually part of his detective's garb -- as a "clown suit."

Naturally, Wahlberg's Tommy Saunders gets more than he bargained for when a couple of bombs, planted in pressure cookers, turn a day of celebration into a day of bloodshed and grief.

In this case, Wahlberg portrays a character whose personal struggles really don't amount to much; Tommy grumbles about drawing uniformed duty, but he's basically a good-natured policeman who loves his city and his wife (Michelle Monaghan). Wahlberg certainly knows this character, and inhabits him with ease.

We also meet a variety of other characters. Kevin Bacon plays the FBI agent heading the hunt for the bombers from a Boston warehouse; John Goodman portrays the city's police commissioner.

We also meet a young couple (Rachel Brosnahan and Christopher O'Shea) who become victims of the bombers, as does an MIT security guard (Jake Picking) and a young Chinese app designer (Jimmy O. Yang), whose car is hijacked by the bombers while they're on the run.

Khandi Alexander has a brief, but entirely compelling, scene as the woman who interrogates the wife of one of the bombers (Melissa Benoist). Why Alexander doesn't find work in more movies remains a mystery to me. She's terrific here.

Meanwhile, J.K. Simmons suffers from no such shortage of exposure; here, he portrays a Watertown police sergeant who winds up with one of the bombers hiding in a boat in a Watertown driveway.

Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff portray the two brothers who carried out this monstrous act, setting off a tidal wave of heartbreak in what should have been a day of pure excitement.

Berg focuses on the chaos and impromptu heroism that arose along with the professionalism that it took to keep the situation under control.

If you're looking for nuance, it's probably best to look elsewhere. Patriots Day offers straightforward storytelling with an emphasis on down-to-earth patriotism.

But the real point here, I think, is to salute the working people of Boston as the heart and soul of a badly wounded city. Put another way, you might summarize the whole of Patriots Day by noting that Berg seems to be bringing us one simple message: "This is what we mean by Boston Strong."

A movie star meets his demon

Mojave is the kind of failed movie that offers occasional glimpses of what might have been, most of them concentrated in Oscar Isaac's impressively inflated performance as Jack, a dangerous loner who encounters a dispirited movie star (Garrett Hedlund) who has taken a solitary trip to the desert. Headland's character seems to be engaged in a metaphoric pity party: He wants to escape the pressures of fame that have plagued him since his teen years. Jack may quote Shakespeare, but he comes on like a demon sent to taunt Hedlund's Thomas. In a line that sounds more like it derives from a term paper than a living character, Jack tells Thomas he's into "motiveless malignity." After a pivotal incident, Thomas returns to LA, but we know that Jack won't be far behind, and that he'll bring violence with him. It's possible to view Jack as more a figment of Thomas' imagination than a real character. After all, Thomas has been living an unreal celebrity life for years. Writer/director William Monahan, who wrote the screenplay for The Departed, can't quite balance this screenplay's contempt for Hollywood with elements of film noir and silly bursts of intellectualism. Whatever is intended, Mojave proves only intermittently arresting.

It's one 'Ted' too many

Laughs in short supply as Seth MacFarlane brings back the bear.

Near the beginning of Ted 2, the sequel to the 2012 comedy about a teddy bear that comes to life, director Seth MacFarlane stages a production number, a song-and-dance routine that evokes memories of Busby Berkeley. Dancers glide over highly polished floors in a number (Steppin' Out With My Baby) built around men in tuxedos, a silvery chorus line and, of course, Ted.

If you don't know by now, Ted (voice by MacFarlane) is a button-cute toy and foul-mouthed resident of Boston. Ted is pals with Johnny (Mark Wahlberg), the guy who owned him as a kid and who, as an adult, has devolved into a class A schlub. Recently divorced, Johnny has an unhealthy interest in Internet porn.

The joke? The cute bear has a mouth that could make a longshoreman blush.

That gives you a clue about McFarlane's comedy. He tends to create a friendly, feel good surface and then shreds it with jokes that are profane and even purposefully offensive.

But guess what? Once was enough.

Maybe it's the moment, but I wasn't in the mood for what feels like an endless stream of jokes about black men and their private parts. Nor was I in the mood for gay jokes or sexist jokes or any of the other so-called jests that Ted 2 tries to peddle in its efforts to give political correctness a sharp poke in the eye.

The second edition opens at Ted's wedding. He's marrying bombshell Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). The couple couldn't be happier.

The movie then flashes forward by a year.

Living in a cramped apartment Ted and Tami-Lynn are at each other's throats. With their marriage threatening to dissolve, Ted suggests that the couple have a baby.

The problem: Ted -- who began his existence as a toy -- doesn't have the one appendage that accounts for so many of the movie's jokes.

As the plot develops, Ted and Tami-Lynn learn that adoption isn't an option because Massachusetts has decided that Ted isn't human. He's property.

The movie then chronicles Ted's fight for rights, a turn that allows MacFarlane to make references to the struggle for black and gay rights. MacFarlane seems to be serious about all this, but raising important issues in this context is a bit like wearing a tuxedo to a mud-wrestling contest.

The movie's legal thrust introduces Amanda Seyfried as novice attorney Sam L. Jackson; when she's not taking hits off a bong, she represents Ted in court. MacFarlane also gives her a musical number. She sings Mean Ol Moon around a camp fire.

Then there's an entirely useless storyline in which Donny (Giovanni Ribisi), the weird half-wit from the first movie, persuades a Hasbro executive (John Carroll Lynch) to try to steal Ted, murder him and cut him open to find out what brought him to life. The plan: To make more Teds.

There's more pseudo-seriousness when Morgan Freeman shows up as a prominent civil rights lawyer who winds up playing the movie's moral anthem by telling us what makes us human in a courtroom speech.

Ted 2 is better than McFarlane's last movie, the disastrous A Million Ways to Die in the West, and there's always an audience for this kind of humor.

Me? Let's put it this way, a scene in which Wahlberg's Johnny finds himself covered with semen made the semen scene in There's Something About Mary (heaven help us we're talking semen scenes) look as if it might have been written by Oscar Wilde.

Ted 2 isn't exactly a rehash; it is, however, hash, a low-down, unsatisfying jumble.

This gamble doesn't pay off

Mark Wahlberg stars in a lame remake of 1974's The Gambler.

The 2014 edition of The Gambler is less a remake of the 1974 Karel Reisz-directed drama than a highly stylized imitation.

In trying to evoke the spirit of 1970s cinema -- if that was the intention -- director Rupert Wyatt has made a movie that seems to include as much posturing as probing.

Working from a screenplay by William Monahan (The Departed), Wyatt tells the story of Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg), a college professor and desperate gambler who's trying to pay off a major debt by (what else?) gambling more.

Bennett owes $240,000 to the kind of people who aren't big on forgiveness.

The gambler in the original -- the grandson of a powerful Jewish businessman who built a life from nothing -- tried to prove that he had the nerve to walk on the dark side, that, he too, could be a jungle cat on the prowl. James Caan's Axel Freed courted risk even when he knew he was being stupid about it, and Caan nailed the role.

Wahlberg isn't an actor you'd automatically cast as a college professor, but then -- in 1974 -- neither was Caan, who was still best known for playing Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.

Wahlberg works at conveying a sense of brilliance, defeat and arrogance, but he appears to be fighting an uphill battle, working a little too hard, and you may find yourself wondering whether he isn't sometimes straining to play against type.

Moving the story from New York to California and updating James Toback's original screenplay, The Gambler can't quite make its grit credible, either.

This self-conscious sense of toughness mixed with smarts is nowhere more apparent than in the portrayal of John Goodman's Frank, a bald, decidedly overweight mobster whom Bennett approaches for money.

Goodman stands out as a shirtless Jabba-the-Gangster, but his character is treated as if he were an effect, a big rock dropped into the story solely to make a splash.

The New York gambling milieu gives way to a West Coast environment in which a group of Koreans run an illegal gambling establishment. Bennett loses big money to the Koreans, and the boss of the casino (Alvin Ing) wants it back.

Indifferent to personal safety, Bennett borrows $50,000 from a loan shark (Michael Kenneth Williams) who makes it clear that he'll play rough if he's not repaid.

Bennett also has no qualms about asking his wealthy mother (Jessica Lange) for money, which she reluctantly gives him, prompting a scene at a bank that mimics a similar scene in the original.

Of course, Mom should know better. Will Bennett use the money to pay his debts and walk away? Nah, he'll gamble more.

Bennett isn't exactly Mr. Chipps in the classroom. He berates his students, finding only one of them worthy of literary study, a blonde coed played by Brie Larson. She tries to establish a relationship with Bennett. He resists -- until he doesn't.

Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Escapist) certainly knows how to give a movie visual polish. Overall though, The Gambler seems soulless and synthetic, unlike what felt twisted and real in the 1970s.

I won't give anything away, but if you have the time and interest, compare the way the 1974 and 2014 movies end. That should tell you everything you need to know.

Another 'Transformers' stomps into theaters

There's a new cast, but the approach is still metal-on-metal.

No point blaming director Michael Bay for trying to retool his Transformers franchise with a new cast, a ton of blurry action and a carload of unimaginative plotting.

And let's give some credit where it's due: Bay is master when it comes to creating imagery of destruction or utilizing CGI technology to transform his Autobots from cars into mega-robots. A shot of vast spacecraft hovering over Hong Kong like a giant, dark-winged bird shivers with menace.

That's right. Give Bay props for unashamed bravado and a reasonably astute understanding of his audience.

Which brings me to my point: It's not Bay we should fret over, but an audience that's willing to forgive narrative lapses, silly stories, action sequences in which it's not always possible to tell who's fighting whom and a tendency to equate loud noise with drama.

In this helping -- set two years after Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- Bay continues in customary fashion: He doesn't so much build toward a climax as leap into it, something like an eager kid cannonballing into a swimming pool. And when he does cook up a great image, he tends to repeat it.

Transformers: Age of Extinction jettisons Shia LaBeouf, and brings a new cast on-line.

No stranger to big-screen combat, Mark Wahlberg plays Cade Yaeger, a Texas widower and inventor who lives with his teen-age daughter (Nicola Peltz). Dad's not having much success as an inventor, but don't worry: Father and daughter quickly are caught up in trying to help robot Optimus Prime reassert himself after being severely damaged and winding up in Cade's workshop.

Jack Reynor joins this chaotic mission. He plays Cade's daughter's boyfriend, a character who gives Wahlberg an opportunity to deliver cliched fatherly dialogue about his daughter's budding womanhood.

Stanley Tucci turns up as the head of a company that's trying to manufacture its own Autobots, and a depressed-looking Kelsey Grammer plays a CIA agent, a character who helps make government an easy target of audience mistrust and scorn.

Bingbing Li portrays one of Tucci's employees when the story shifts to Beijing en route to Hong Kong, where it concludes and concludes and then concludes some more.

But who really cares about the actors or even about the fate of humanity? The Transformer series belongs to the giant alien robots, who are beginning to make discoveries about themselves and who, it's suggested, might take over the entire story should another sequel follow.

No point rattling on. I saw the movie in IMAX and 3-D, which certainly aided Bay's efforts to present everything on a gargantuan scale.

As for Bay? He seems to hellbent not only on giving audiences what they want but on giving them so much of what they want, they'll be reduced to insensibility. Many people evidently consider this fun.

The intense reality of combat

Courage amid chaos in Lone Survivor.

For the most part, the war in Afghanistan has taken place beyond the view of news cameras. In near-Orwellian fashion, most Americans have been insulated from the painful realities of sustained combat. Because of that, it's difficult not to admire the intense authenticity of director Peter Berg's Lone Survivor, a movie about four Navy SEALs sent on a 2005 mission to kill a Taliban leader.

Lone Survivor follows the rigorously trained and highly motivated SEALs from their base camp to a remote area in the mountains. Everything seems under control until an unexpected obstacle compromises the mission: An accidental encounter with a trio of goat herders threatens to expose the SEALs' position.

The SEALs then confront an ethical issue. Should they protect themselves and the mission by killing their captives? Should they tie the herders up, possibly leaving them to succumb to the rigors of the wild? Or should they let them go and abort the mission?

The rules of engagement seem to argue for the latter position, but ethics and extreme pressure don't always mesh, and every possible decision harbors potentially disastrous consequences.

Beyond that, the SEALs are fully aware that a wrong choice could result in a torrent of unwanted after-the-fact attention from a press that doesn't take kindly to the killing of civilians.

All of this makes for the most interesting part of the movie, but it seems like only a few minutes before the SEALs release the shepherds and begin to evacuate the area -- which seems like the right choice. The downside, of course, is that the SEALs quickly are exposed to small army of Taliban fighters.

The result: a vicious battle for survival that's presented with all the harrowing realism Berg can muster.

In a moment when SEALs are credited with many successes, it's interesting to see a movie about a mission gone terribly wrong. No matter how well-planned a mission is and no matter how good the SEALs are at their jobs, there's always a chance that something unpredictable will happen. In all, 19 men were killed, the bulk of them during an attempted helicopter rescue of the four stranded SEALs.

Lone Survivor isn't easy to watch; it's unsparing in its presentation of the bloodshed of combat and the physical and emotional hardships faced by Americans stationed in a country where a good part of the population hates them.

As played by Mark Wahlberg, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell gradually emerges as the central figure in a band-of-brothers exercise that acknowledges and respects the warrior code that has been imbued in men whose bravery is beyond question.

The men taking part in this mission include Marcus, Matt Axelson (Ben Foster), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Mike Murphy (Taylor Kitsch). There's a hierarchy here, but the SEALs work mostly as a team, and Berg makes it clear that the main motivation for the men involves their loyalty to one another.

Berg understands how to maximize cinematic impact. An example: He films the death of team leader Murphy in agonizing slow motion, a self-consciously cinematic touch but one that works to expand the moment to the point at which it's almost unbearable.

In the heat and confusion of combat, other emotional moments can be found. It's impossible not to be moved when a severely wounded Axelson tells Luttrell he wants his wife to know that he loved her, that he died with his brothers and that his heart was full.

In casual, almost off-handed ways, Berg lets us know that these men have lives away from the alien world of Afghanistan's battlefields -- wives, girlfriends and children. It's almost as if their jobs take them into an alternate universe.

The movie's title makes it clear from the start that three of the men aren't going to make it, and we also know that the lone survivor of the title will be Luttrell, who -- along with Patrick Robinson -- wrote the book on which the screenplay (also by Berg) is based.

After a ferocious combat section, the movie slows a bit as Luttrell tries to survive on his own, receiving assistance from friendly villagers, one of whom keeps him from being executed in a scene that's as traumatic as anything else in the film.

Viewed strictly in movie terms, Lone Survivor brims with relentless action and nerve-wracking tension. Berg, who has directed movies such as Battleship (awful) and Friday Night Lights (better), knows how rub our noses in the dirt of war, giving us as little time to reflect as the SEALs themselves have.

It's not the job of the SEALs, who sign up for particularly hazardous duty, to decide whether their sacrifices are absolutely necessary, certainly not during the brutalizing heat of battle. Lone Survivor leaves it to us to struggle with that question. We should.

'2 Guns:' watchable but empty

Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg have violent fun as reluctant allies.

Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are the headliners in 2 Guns, a thriller about two reluctant allies who find themselves at odds with Mexican drug lords, the CIA, the DEA and just about any other individual or agency the screenplay decides to throw at them.

Warming to their buddy movie chores, Washington and Wahlberg more than hold their own, but the overly convoluted 2 Guns wallows in the dirt of governmental and criminal corruption without having much to say about either.

For all its attempts at winning the summer movie grit-stakes, 2 Guns stands as a lightweight drama punctuated by heavy gunfire, bursts of sadistic violence and familiar action elements such as car-crushing collisions and fiery explosions. The movie might have been better had it paid more attention to its title: Two guns would have been plenty.

As is often the case with this kind of thriller, we have to look to the supporting cast for additional color. Although he's playing a character who defies plausibility, Bill Paxton registers as a brutal CIA agent with a sadistic streak, a southern accent and a cowboy look. Edward James Olmos plays a drug kingpin who greets almost any situation with a world-weary attitude. He's like a drug-dealing grandpa who occasionally orders up a few murders.

Paula Patton is mostly wasted as a DEA agent who provides an opportunity for a sex scene.

Although, 2 Guns seldom proves boring, it's ultimately an inconsequential helping of action that comes equipped with car chases and gun battles that seem to function as safety devices, elements that feel as if they've been included to make the story palatable for summer audiences for whom seriousness is about as welcome as a case of West Nile Virus.

Director Baltasar Kormákur, who directed Wahlberg in 2012's Contraband, has has made a pseudo-adult movie in which scenes of considerable brutality have momentary shock value, but don't really add up to much of anything.

Watching Washington work is never difficult and Wahlberg certainly keeps pace, but 2 Guns feels awfully scattered. The movie tries to touch so many bases, it almost forgets what game it's trying to play.

A transformed Michael Bay? Hmm...

Violence sometimes trumps comedy in Pain & Gain.
As it happens, I'm writing this review in Krakow, while working on a film project. Poland, a land rich in both painful history and cultural gain, seems an odd place to be reviewing Michael Bay's dramatically hyperventilated Pain & Gain, but that's the situation in which I find myself.

I suppose it's not entirely inappropriate. If you follow a diagonal line from the National Museum in Krakow to an opposing street corner, you'll run smack into a colossus of a billboard advertising Tom Cruise's Oblivion. That billboard, I suppose, underscores the oft-made but still unsettling point: American movie culture is ubiquitous.

So, Pain & Gain ...

Basing his movie on an improbable but true story, Bay detours from the crash & smash style he brought to movies such as Transformers, forsaking massive explosions for a hyped-up look at low-level Florida thugs who cook up a kidnapping scheme.

In many ways, Pain & Gain is an odd, even bizarre hybrid -- part comedy, part display of shocking violence and part satire about the distorting powers of the American dream.

Despite its multiple ambitions, the movie works best as a comedy about dopey, violent hoodlums who are too dumb to achieve their felonious ambitions. Bay tries to give the violence as much twisted humor as possible, serving up jolts that cause us to wince even as we chuckle.

There's a fine line here, of course, and Bay sometimes crosses it. Too much vividly displayed violence can (and sometimes does) steamroll the movie's comic elements.

Muscularity, of course, is what Bay's after with this story about body builders gone terribly wrong. Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a weight lifter who works as a trainer at Miami's Sun Gym. The time: the 1990s.

Fearing that he's stuck in a dead-end life, Lugo attends a self-help seminar. He decides that he should be a doer. For Lugo, this means hatching a scheme to kidnap a successful businessman (Tony Shalhoub).

Lugo recruits two cohorts (Anthony Mackie and Dwayne Johnson) to carry out his ill-conceived criminal plans. He decides to hold Shalhoub's Victor Kershaw as a prisoner, until Kershaw signs over all his property and wealth to Lugo.

This trio of IQ-deprived felons doesn't count on Kershaw's powers of resistance. The victim refuses to acquiesce. Lugo & company then proceed with a variety of crudely conceived tortures.

To say that these guys are ham-handed gives them more credit than they deserve. They're precisely the kind of bungling fools one used to find in old Ealing Studio comedies -- with one exception: They're in a Michael Bay movie that seems intent on channeling some of Quentin Tarantino's taste for irony-laced violence.

Each of the thugs represents a different brand of self-deception. Lugo comes off a flexed muscle of a man whose brawn and ambition exceed his brain power and skill. Since his release from prison, Johnson's Paul Doyle has been struggling to give up a life of sex, drugs and crime. Despite a new-found love for Jesus, Paul has trouble staying a straight and narrow course. Mackie portrays Adrian Doorbal, a young man whose steroid abuse has left him buffed but impotent.

The supporting cast adds additional noir flavor. Rebel Wilson, who scored big time as Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect, plays the woman who falls for Mackie's Adrian. Michael Rispoli has a nice turn as a porn king who's as sleazy as our trio of heroes, but smarter, and Ken Jeong makes a credible motivational guru, the man whose pseudo-philosophy encourages Wahlberg's Lugo to aspire to a future that doesn't involve wearing sweat pants.

Also look for Ed Harris, as a retired Miami detective who decides to help recover Shaloub's character's wealth.

You should take the movie's "R" rating seriously, but it's not always is easy to take the same attitude toward the rest of Pain & Gain, which can feel like drama gone berserk.

Look, Pain & Gain represents Bay's most interesting work in some time, even though its stylized agitation and dim-witted characters can feel increasingly mismatched.

And then there's this: Pain & Gain has some enjoyable kick, but to paraphrase a line from the late Pauline Kael, the movie may make you wonder why you're spending valuable time watching dumb people do a lot of dumb things.

Lots of laughs for a one-joke movie

If it weren't for the irresistible pull of adolescence, America's multiplexes would be hard-pressed to find a comedy to play. Ted, the latest in the endless round of supposedly envelope-pushing comedies, finds a preposterously creative way to literalize the insistently popular boy/man split. Director Seth MacFarlane, of TV's animated comedy Family Guy, has directed a movie about a man (Mark Wahlberg) whose best friend is a teddy bear (voice by MacFarlane). The story begins in 1985. As a boy, Whalberg's John Bennett wishes that the teddy bear he receives as a Christmas gift could talk. John's wish is granted, and the movie forges ahead. Now in his mid-30s, John lives in Boston with Ted, his unimaginatively named bear, and his girlfriend (Mila Kunis). At this point, MacFarlane unveils the movie's single joke: Far from being a cuddly stuffed animal, Ted has matured into a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking adult who spews non-stop pop-cultural references. Disgusted with this perpetual juvenilia, Kunis's Lori insists that John move on, leaving Ted behind. MacFarlane gets more than the expected mileage from what essentially is a one-joke movie built around Ted's politically incorrect proclivities. The movie's supporting cast is used to mixed effect. Joel McHale plays Lori's obnoxious boss; Giovanni Ribisi portrays a nutcase who wants to kidnap Ted for his overweight son; and Sam J. Jones, who played Flash Gordon in the critically-derided 1980 movie, shows up as himself. The movie predictably (and unfortunately) sweetens toward the end, some of MacFarlane's jokes miss, and some of the jokes really are more offensive than funny. Overall, though, Ted works better than it has any right to, and when it hits, it tends to hit big, even finding a way to work Fenway Park into an action-oriented finale in which MacFarlane tires his hand at a car chase. Bad idea.

'Contraband' smuggles a few thrills into January

Mark Wahlberg stars in a caper movie that's not nearly as ambitious as some of what he's produced.

There are two ways to look at a movie such as Contraband. As a hard-boiled thriller compared to dozens of other similar movies, it's not exactly a groundbreaker. If, on the other hand, you're prone to seasonal generosity, you may want to regard Contraband as a serviceable entertainment, particularly for those seeking a quick genre fix.

An admission: I don't always get Mark Wahlberg, who's building one of the great mixed-bag resumes. He's produced great shows on HBO (Entourage and Boardwalk Empire), and has given really strong performances in movies (The Departed and The Fighter). With Contraband, Wahlberg works hard to turn in another performance as a regular guy, a former smuggler who's working hard to go straight, but he doesn't seem to be operating on the most ambitious side of his ledger.

Contraband focuses on Wahlberg's Chris Faraday, a married man and father who has started his own security alarm business as he tries to leave his criminal past behind. There's not much dramatic ore to be mined in movies about former felons who give up lives of crime, so the movie must find a way to force a reluctant Faraday back on the wrong side of the law.

It doesn't take long for us to learn that Faraday's brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) has screwed up a drug smuggling job. As a result, he owes major money to a vicious mobster, Giovanni Ribisi in another over-the-top performance as a smuggler with a sadistic streak.

The only way Chris can ride to his brother-in-law's rescue is to set up another smuggling job with help from a buddy (Ben Foster).

The most interesting thing about Contraband may be its milieu. The movie begins in New Orleans, but winds up spending a fair amount of time working its way through the world of container ships. Faraday stages a smuggling caper that takes him to Panama and brings him into contact with various thugs as the plot expands to involve counterfeit money, cocaine and a Jackson Pollack painting. Don't ask.

The supporting cast, some of it underutilized, includes Kate Beckinsale in the somewhat thankless role of Chris' wife, a woman who's increasingly threatened as the movie wears on, and J.K. Simmons, as the captain of the ship that Chris uses for his smuggling operation.

Director Baltasar Kormakur, who starred in the Icelandic original on which Contraband is based, doesn't always help matters, directing in an edgy, abrupt style that can be more disorienting than exciting.

Kormakur deserves credit for wrapping up a lot of details in fairly short order, even if the ending doesn't deliver quite enough kick to lift Contraband out of the thriller ghetto. Having said that, I'll add that I didn't really mind the movie, and even got caught up in it at times. I know this isn't going to sound like high praise, but for all its problems and loose ends, Contraband is ... well ... OK.

Supporting actors give 'Fighter' its punch

The Fighter may not be a boxing classic, but it's got loads of spit-in-your-eye spirit.

The Fighter may be the first boxing movie in which the women look as if they could out-punch the men. The true-life story of welterweight Micky Ward introduces us to two of the year’s toughest big-screen women, Ward’s mom (a brilliant Melissa Leo) and his girlfriend (an unexpectedly gritty Amy Adams).

As directed by David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees and Three Kings), the setting of The Fighter – Lowell, Mass. – proves as important as the movie’s characters. A breeding ground for toughness, blue-collar Lowell comes off as the sort of place where the weak easily can be eaten alive and the streets are a place to strut.

Mark Wahlberg, who also served as one of the movie’s producers, plays Micky, an aspiring welterweight who’s managed by his mom and trained by his brother Dicky (Christian Bale). In the movie’s least showy performance (OK, it's a little dull), Wahlberg makes Micky a bit of a cipher, a guy on whom others easily can project their hopes and ambitions.

Bale’s Dicky Edlund (he’s a half brother to Micky) is among those invested in Micky’s career. Dicky, who has fallen into reprobate territory by the time the movie opens, was a talented young boxer whose claim to flame centered on the fact that he once knocked Sugar Ray Leonard on his butt. Dicky went on to lose the fight, but he had his moment of glory.

Formerly known as “The Pride of Lowell,” Dicky’s now a nerve-jangled crack addict with rotting teeth, a thick accent, a backward baseball cap and a body that seems to be on a collision course with itself. Bale somehow masters the art of moving in several different directions simultaneously. Dicky tends to speak with his body before any words come out. Speech almost seems an afterthought.

Early on, we learn that HBO is making a documentary about Dicky. Poor deluded Dicky thinks the movie will focus on a potential comeback: HBO has a different idea; i.e., a documentary about crack addiction.

In outline, The Fighter tells a classic story about an unlikely kid who fights his way toward a championship bout. But the real pleasures of the movie lie outside the ring as Micky’s family – which includes chorus of seven vocal sisters – horns in on the action, sometimes in ways that threaten to put Micky in a stranglehold.

When Micky hooks up with Charlene (Adams), he finds a new kind of support, someone who’s interested only in him and not the welfare of his family. Charlene gives Micky the courage to strike out on his own, shedding his mom as a manager and finding someone other than his brother to train him. After retreating to a construction job, Micky decides to give boxing one more try.

Micky’s bid for independence puts Charlene into direct conflict with Leo’s mother, a woman with the kind of blonde hair that looks as if it's been sculpted rather than combed. Leo’s Alice is a belligerent old bird who’s not afraid to throw her weight around. She indulges Dicky in the way parents sometimes treat a lovable but troubled kid. Micky, who never causes problems, tends to get short shrift.

Russell handles the fight scenes in ways that highlight Micky’s approach, which involves a style that’s stronger on guts than skill. Micky tends to take brutal beatings while waiting for the other guy to punch himself out. He then moves in for the kill. Micky’s punching mantra: “Head, body. Head, body.”

The best boxing movies have the kind of social and thematic reach that eludes The Fighter, which is content to slug it out on a fairly realistic plane. If I had a complaint about the movie it involves the way Russell treats Micky and his family as a source of sustained low-life comedy, sharply drawn caricatures that inhabit a shot-with-a-beer-back world where boxing is pronounced “bawx-ing.”

But the performances – Adams, Leo and Bale all probably will earn Oscar nominations – are too lively to be pinned to the wall of stereotype, and the movie has a spit-in-your-eye spirit that I liked.

The Fighter is less about one man’s redemption (either in or out of the ring) than about the hardscrabble attitudes that are necessary for survival in a scrappy, disorganized family.

In a limo on the way back from a losing fight, Micky’s mother asks him a pointed question, “What are you gonna do without your family?”

For Micky, it’s the question of a lifetime. To the movie’s and to Micky’s credit, he works hard trying to answer it.

Police work may be a laughing matter

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as hapless cops.

If you don't like Will Ferrell, you'd best run for cover. Not only does Ferrell have a new comedy - The Other Guys - out this week, but he also has two movies in postproduction and seven in development. So says IMDb, the invaluable movie web site.

Ferrell has made his big-screen mark in movies as diverse as the gleefully crude Old School (2003) and the more sophisticated Stranger than Fiction (2006). He also has experienced some critical drubbing, notably for Land of the Lost of the Lost (2009), which scored a dismal 32 out of 100 at the aggregate review site Metacritic.

Ferrell's growing filmography suggests that he has a kind of unstoppable drive, and it's evident in his work, which typically finds him mixing silliness and earnestness in ways that create an absurd incongruence, like opening your door and discovering a naked insurance salesman on the porch.

Although The Other Guys isn't a top-drawer comedy, it makes room for some of Ferrell's funniest work. Presented in the guise of a buddy-cop movie, The Other Guys teams Ferrell with Mark Wahlberg; they play detectives too inept even to pull off a routine good cop/bad cop interrogation.

The Other Guys reunites Ferrell with director Adam McKay, who directed Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. This time, Ferrell and McKay spoof urban cop movies, adding topical gloss with a plot that revolves around a Bernie Madoff-like financial fraud. Steve Coogan plays a British financier who's involved in a scam that has Ferrell and Wahlberg racing around New York City.

Ferrell portrays Allen Gamble, an accountant who works for the New York City Police Department, where he tries never to leave his desk. Wahlberg plays Terry Hoitz, a loose-cannon detective who craves action, but who has been shunted aside because of a whopping error in judgment. (You'll have to see the movie to find out what it is.)

The temptation with comedy is to steal some of the jokes for a review. I'll try to resist. Ferrell has some funny bits, not the least of which involves the way he describes his wife (Eva Mendes). I won't give away more, except to note that there are few red-blooded American men who would regard the sultry Mendes as an eyesore and a burden.

An amusing bit involving the way in which Ferrell's character earned money in college requires him to flip into a strange alter-ego expression of a "dark side" that he struggles to keep under wraps. These collegiate flashbacks make no sense, which, of course, makes them even funnier.

Michael Keaton is spot on but underutilized as Capt. Gene Mauch, boss of this improbable duo, a policeman who supplements his income with shifts at Bed, Bath & Beyond. He needs extra cash to support his college-age son, a character who doesn't appear in the movie but who becomes the source of a repetitive joke about sexual preference.

Wahlberg? At times, he seems to be pushing awfully hard to provide a contrast with Ferrell. But the two keep things humming through a variety of scenes that make for a ragged jigsaw puzzle of a movie. Put another way: The Other Guys is a bit of a mess.

Opinions may differ, but I don't think that McKay has the right chops to handle the movie's action, presumably intended as a send-up of the action in many urban movies of recent memory. But the thing about comedy is this: If you laugh enough, you stop caring about everything else. You feel a little better about saying that no one likely will mistake The Other Guys for a great movie, even as you wish that someone (anyone) could make a comedy that comes close to working on all levels.

Hang around for the end credits, which are designed to raise your ire about the current economic situation and which contain more pointed satire than anything else in the movie. Very clever.