A psychiatrist at Nuremberg

 

  In Nuremberg, Director James Vanderbilt benefits from a trial that remains relevant and compelling 80 years after it captured the world's attention, the Nuremberg trials of 1945.

  The subject is not new to movies; Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) stands as one of the best-known dramas to deal with Nazi war criminals.

   Vanderbilt tells a real-life story that's less familiar, basing his movie on the experiences of Douglas M. Kelley, a lieutenant colonel assigned an unusual task. A psychiatrist by trade, Kelley was ordered to evaluate Nuremberg's prisoners, including Hermann Goring, Hitler's second in command.

   Meeting with Nazis in dank cells in a bombed-out city was no easy task. Though certain to be sentenced to death, Goring -- played by Russell Crowe -- remained calm and cunning. Crowe plays him as self-assured and arrogant, a man who believes that his inherent power can't be taken away by lesser mortals even in captivity. 

   Rami Malek portrays Kelley, an Army psychiatrist whose professional ethics are tested when the military asks him to provide "confidential" information that could be used to undermine Goring at trial.

    Eager to establish his reputation, the somewhat naive Kelley plans to write a book about his experiences at Nuremberg. Goring accuses the aspiring author of hitchhiking on the infamous reputations of high-ranking Nazis, principally Goring himself. Kelley knows Goring isn't entirely wrong about that.

  Kelley's book -- 22 Cells in Nuremberg -- details some of what occurred between Kelley and imprisoned members of the German high command. Kelley hoped to identify the cause of their evil. Surely, such horrendous crimes couldn't have been committed by ordinary men.

   The movie, however, isn't based on Kelley's book but on Jack El-Hai's The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Herman Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII. That's a long title, and it's matched by a two-hour and 28-minute movie that features Michael Shannon as Robert Jackson, the Supreme Court justice who believed the Nazis should be tried rather than summarily executed. Not everyone shared Jackson's views.

    As the movie unfolds, Kelley develops a relationship with Goring. The psychiatrist visited Goring's wife (Lotte Verbeek) and young daughter and treated them sympathetically. He brought Goring letters from his wife and seems shocked when he discovers the depths of Nazi depravity, a reaction that mirrors the way many felt immediately after the war.

    We don't get to know a great deal about Kelley, and Jackson receives less attention, although Vanderbilt deals with the political maneuvering required to ensure that the trial was more than the US versus the Nazis. He wanted it to seem as if the world was standing in judgment.

   As if to emphasize this point, Richard E. Grant portrays Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, a British deputy chief prosecutor who comes to Jackson's rescue when the American prosecutor is about to be bested by Goring during a tense moment of testimony.

    The movie's dramatic high point, the trial, includes real footage from Hitler's death camps, horrific no matter how many times we may have seen such images.

    Perhaps to add topical flair, Vanderbilt includes obvious dialogue about the dangers of power-hungry leaders and autocracy. It's as if he's underlining points that are ingrained in the story he's telling. They hardly needed elaboration. 

  I don't think Nuremberg is the great movie such a momentous subject requires. It can bog down in exposition that tends to be instructional, something on the order of Nuremberg 101.

   Still, Vanderbilt's conventional telling of the story is compelling when it needs to be. It also encourages thought about an observation that's not new to the movie or to anyone familiar with Hannah Arendt's oft-cited coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which occurred 16 years after Nuremberg, and gave rise to Arendt's key phrase, "the banality of evil."

    Search as one will, it's impossible to identify traits of malignant exceptionalism that lead ordinary men to such monstrous behavior. Not everyone agrees, but it's still worth pondering.

    A footnote: Goring escaped the noose, swallowing a cyanide capsule he had hidden from his captors shortly before he was to be hanged.*

*I've used the spelling of Goring used in the credits, but couldn't figure out how to add the umlaut over the "o" that German requires. 

'Bikeriders' revs a 1960s engine

  In 1953, Marlon Brando climbed onto a motorcycle and created Johnny Strabler, a character that became an iconic figure who still adorns posters in his leather jacket and tilted cap. The Wild One may not be a great movie, but it stands as a reference point for movies that try to capture the spirit of rebellious youths who impolitely ram their heads against the walls of social convention.

   Bikeriders -- from writer/director Jeff Nichols (Loving, Mud) -- opts for immersion in the midwestern motorcycle culture of the 1960s, basing its screenplay on The Bikeriders, a 1968 book by Danny Lyon. Lyon photographed and documented the lives of members of the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club.  Nichols, who also wrote the screenplay, builds from interviews Lyons (played in the movie by Mike Faist) conducted from 1963 to 1967.

    A prime interview subject, biker girlfriend Kathy (Jodie Comer) becomes the viewer's guide through biker culture. Kathy knows the gang well because she married Benny (Austin Butler), the coolest gang member, a guy who'd rather be beaten silly than remove his Vandals jacket. 

      An actor's feast; Bikeriders boasts riveting, immersive performances from Butler, Comer, and Thomas Hardy, who plays Johnny, the founder of the Vandals -- as they're called in the movie. 

    Hardy can be one of the screen's most imposing actors. Intimidating as a violent leader inspired by The Wild One, Johnny expresses himself through action. When he squares off against an opponent, Johnny asks whether they'd rather fight with fists or knives. They'd be well advised to back down.

      Taking their cue from Lyons' photographs, Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone create a movie with plenty of dirt under its fingernails. Much of Nichols's episodic story unfolds in the shot-and-beer joint the Vandals adopt as their clubhouse. Riding their bikes in formation, they're a fearsome lot.

      As impossible to ignore as a piece of loud clothing, Comer’s clipped Chicago accent defines a character who's smitten by Benny, whose don't give-a-damn-cool and movie-star looks prove irresistible to her. 

      If it hadn’t been for sexual attraction, Kathy might never have encountered the Vandals; she could have been snapping gum with other girls at some local diner and talking about boys. Instead, she entered a world ruled by the bikers' idea of muscle and manhood.

      When I saw that the cast included Michael Shannon, I wondered how he'd fit into the gang. Not only does Shannon make an impression as Zipco, he also defines one of the group's sensibilities. Zipco hates pinkos, the word he uses to express contempt for loafer-wearing college types

       Other bikers include Brucie (Damon Harriman), Cal (Boyd Holbrook), and Funny Sonny (Norman Reedus), a laidback West Coast arrival who joins the gang. These characters give Nichols an opportunity to explore group pressures. What happens when someone outgrows the gang and wants to leave, for example?

     The story narrows to a tug-of-war between Kathy and Johnny. Tired of trying to keep the Vandals going, Johnny wants Benny to take over the gang. Kathy wants him to settle down. She's had enough of the biker life.

     At the same time, the Vandals are morphing into drug-dealing rogues. Initially rejected by the Vandals, a Milwaukee rider (Toby Wallace) tries to redefine the gang, pushing it toward criminality. 

     For his part, Johnny has trouble relating to a new generation of young men who don't care about the unwritten codes by which the Vandals live -- not that the Vandals were angels before the influx of nihilistic newbies.

      Earlier, I described Bikeriders as a feast for actors. The cast swallows it whole. Even Butler's portrayal of a character that seems drawn from an amalgam of characters from other movies has the right kind of presence. He's more magnetic here than he was as Elvis.

      The trailer for Bikeriders bills the movie's characters as freedom-seeking rebels, but Nichols doesn't seem to be after a big statement; he accepts these characters as they are. But what should we make of them?

     That's where the rubber meets the road for me.  Are these riders relics from a moment that has passed its expiration date or do they have something more relevant and deeper to tell us? And who are these guys and what in their experiences made the biker life so appealing?

     Bikeriders documents the 1960s outlaw/motorcycle scene. The movie crackles with dramatic moments but doesn't have much of a dramatic arc. Rough naturalism and vivid performances give the film its charge, but sans a layer of countercultural romanticism (see Easy Rider) or a more compelling story, we're left to wonder whether there's anything left for the movie to latch onto.

An adled foray into academia

 

Michael Shannon embodies the uncertainties of a confused man  in A Little White Lie, a comedy about literary pretensions in the academic world. Director Michael Maren, who also wrong the screenplay, concocts a story about a New York janitor who's mistaken for a mysterious novelist who wrote one highly acclaimed book before vanishing from the publishing scene. Both novelist and janitor have the same name, do the mixup seems plausible. Desperate to save a literary festival at a small California college, the festival's organizer (Kate Hudson) invites Shannon's character to headline the event. Shannon's Shriver attends; the rest of the attendees take his baffled quality as a form of genius. The great author must be tolerated. Don Johnson portrays a professor who has seen better days. Shannon' role that turns him into a man without a core identity but with flickers of conscience that impedes his ability to carry out a con. Hudson gives a lively performance and Johnson makes the most of a small role. The ending adds an unusual, if not entirely convincing twist to the proceedings. The movie plays with ideas about identity and the perils of early literary success but isn't witty enough to be an intellectual head-spinner of a movie. A short speech that Shannon gives during a forum on art and reality should be clipped from the movie and preserved as a beautiful piece of work in an otherwise negligible effort.

Despite its ambition ‘Amsterdam’ falls short

      Director David O. Russell doesn’t always make things easy for himself — or for an audience.

      In Amsterdam, Russell aims big, offering a tilted comic take on a serious subject: the volatile political climate in America just after World War I and before World War II. 

    Creating a drama that swirls with plot and artifice in the early going, the story avoids disclosing its point until its final act when Russell not only clarifies what he’s been doing but tacks on an unconvincing message about the importance of love and kindness.

    That’s a mouthful of meaning and Amsterdam can't quite swallow it whole -- even with help from a strong cast that revolves around Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and David Washington.

   Bale, Robbie, and Washington play characters who meet during World War I. Assigned to lead a company of black soldiers, Bale's Dr. Burt Berendsen develops a lasting friendship with Washington’s Harold Woodman, who returns from the war to become a lawyer in New York City.

   After the war, Burt helps combat-disfigured vets reconstruct their faces using replacement parts that cover gaping wounds but have a stitched-together look that, to push a point, reflects the movie’s fractured soul. Berendsen’s patients are patchworks.

   Berendsen also suffered grave war injuries. He has a glass eye that Russell uses in comic fashion, abetted by Bale whose hair rises from his head like a garden of untended weeds.

   Married to a woman (Andrea Riseborough) whose family can't abide his mixed breed (Catholic/Jewish) origins, Burt struggles along until he and Harold are drawn into the mystery that propels the movie -- albeit in fitful fashion. 

  The movie's central trio is supposed to discover who killed their beloved military commander, a decent fellow played by Ed Begley Jr.

   Washington plays things fairly straight. During the war, Harold falls for Robbie’s Valerie Voze, a free-spirited nurse who creates art from shrapnel she removes from the bodies of wounded soldiers.

   In a playful interlude the three main characters travel to Amsterdam to recover from the war. Burt and Harold decide to return home, even though they might have continued to live with joyful abandon in Europe. 

   For a time, it seems that Amsterdam’s production design has been influenced by Wes Anderson, who specializes in creating environments that insist on existing on their own terms.

   Amsterdam features a host of talent in its supporting roles, too many to name here. I’ll highlight a few. Michael Shannon stands out as a CIA agent who works with a British secret agent (Mike Meyers). Bird lovers both, they make a fine comic duo.

   In the movie's third act, Russell introduces Robert De Niro as if he were a hole card being turned over by a gambler late in the game.

   De Niro appears as General Gil Dillenbeck, the most decorated marine in American history. American fascists and Hitler supporters are trying to turn Dillenbeck into a frontman for a coup.

    About three quarters of the way through a journey that sometimes seems mapless,  Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy turn up as the bother and sister-in-law of Robbie’s Valerie.

   Loosely based on real events, the movie eventually whips comedy and thriller elements into a political cautionary tale with obvious relevance to the current political environment in which some view elections as inconveniences.

  Fair to say that Russell needlessly complicated a story that might have benefited from more straightforward telling. Besides this period of American unease has been dealt with elsewhere, notably in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which turned into an even better HBO series.

   For me, the always adventurous Bale and Robbie are the mainstays of a movie that tries to capture the ingrained absurdity of human interactions during moments of high stress. Think the Marx Brothers only not as funny and without the anarchic glee.

  Amsterdam doesn’t match Russell’s best work in movies such as Three Kings and American Hustle. Sure, the performances can be tasty but this oddly realized movie often has the feel of an interesting fellow who answers the doorbell without first pulling himself together.

 

Bob's Cinema Diary: 11/12/20 -- 'Fireball: Visitors From a Darker World,' 'Echo Boomers,' and 'Where She Lies'

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Fireball: Visitors FromDarker Worlds

Director Werner Herzog, this time along with scientist Clive Oppenheimer, delves into the subject of meteors and the dangers they can pose to Earth. If you know anything about Herzog, you'll immediately understand that Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds will be poetic, idiosyncratic, and full of captivating eccentricities.  In pursuit of all things meteor, Herzog visits a variety of far-off places: from Mecca in Saudi Arabia to Castel Gandolfo (summer home to popes) to Antarctica. He also introduces us to a variety of voluble scientists who eagerly reveal their obsessions with these deep-space visitors, so much so that Herzog sometimes ends their disquisitions, noting that any more would be boring. Herzog offers commentary and Oppenheimer, who collaborated with Herzog on Into the Inferno (2016), does much of the interviewing.  We learn a lot about how meteors have shaped everything from evolution to the Mexican Day of the Dead.  Herzog not only conveys the immensity of a cosmos which may harbor objects that don't bode well for mankind, he also highlights fascinating human idiosyncrasies. Oh, and by the way, Fireball also offers insight into the origins of life on Earth. 

Echo Boomers

Oh, the woe of millennials. They can't find the jobs they're sure they deserve and their path to the great American dream seems to have been blocked at every turn. Echo Boomers subscribes, at least partially, to this self-pitying view, becoming a thriller about disgruntled boomers who turn to crime and convince themselves that they're making bold political statements in the process. When these thieves invade the homes of the rich, they also destroy everything in sight, smearing the walls with half-baked slogans. The story begins with a journalist (Lesley Ann Warren) interviewing an imprisoned young man, Patrick Schwarzenegger's Lance. Warren's character wants to know how Lance became part of a larcenous ring that's connected to the older man (Michael Shannon) who serves as the group's fence. Lance, who's drawn into these criminal forays by his cousin Jack (Gilles Geary), quickly comes to enjoy the adrenaline rush of theft. Lance becomes valuable to the group because he's trained in art. Unable to find a job at a gallery, he can at least identify the best paintings to steal. Alex Pettyfer portrays the group's leader, a guy who seems to believe there's actually something politically relevant about ravaging the homes of the wealthy while walking away with their high-end art.  Director Seth Savoy tries to link a caper movie to some sort of fuzzy political statement. The result:  a movie that peddles a whole lot of hooey, so much so that it may make even hardened leftists feel sorry for the one-percenters whose homes are vandalized.

Where She Lies

Director Zach Marion's documentary, Where She Lies, tells the story of Peggy Phillips who, as a 19-year-old, gave birth to a child in Chattanooga, Tenn. The year: 1961. Phillips, we learn, slept with a man who misled her into thinking he was separated from his wife. Marion becomes personally involved in helping Phillips, who's in her 70s when the director meets her. He joins attempts to locate the daughter that was taken from her shortly after being delivered. The movie's mystery centers on the question of what actually happened to the child. Did she die, as Phillips was told? Did her highly judgmental father arrange to have the baby adopted? At one point,  a young woman claiming to be Phillips' daughter turns up. She has a  criminal record and her life has been marred by drug addiction. It struck me that Marion may have become too involved in Phillips' story but his movie sheds light on the sad and lingering impact of shame that once was heaped on women who became unwed mothers. 

An entertaining mystery with a great cast

Knives Out couples a traditional approach with a cast of colorful contemporary characters.

Knives Out, a movie that unashamedly evokes memories of traditional whodunits, begins where it must: A group of disagreeable relatives gather in hopes of inheriting the fortune of the family’s obscenely rich patriarch.

Conveniently, the wealthy head of the family, a mystery writer played by Christopher Plummer, dies on the night of his 85th birthday celebration. Was it murder or suicide?

Director Rian Johnson isn't shy about declaring his intentions. The movie’s production design includes a rather large and prominently displayed collection of knives, part of the decor of the mansion where family members gather to snipe at one another and wait for the writer's will to be read. A greedy, duplicitous lot, the relatives all become instant suspects should it turn out that Plummer's Harlan Thrombey did not depart this life willingly.

To spark interest, the movie plays some intriguing games with casting.

To begin with, Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Brothers Bloom and Brick) gives Daniel Craig an opportunity to break the Bond mold. Craig portrays a private detective with an overdone Southern drawl that sounds as if the actor mastered it by bathing his vocal cords in Southern Comfort. Craig's improbably named Benoit Blanc claims that an unidentified person has hired him to assist the police in an investigation.

Michael Shannon also plays against expectation, stepping out of scary villain mode to play Harlan's pathetically ineffectual son, a man who has spent most of his life in his father’s shadow.

The writer's nurse (Mara Cabrera), an immigrant who's devoted to her boss, might be the lone character without an ulterior motive for wanting to see Harlan end his earthly journey.

Johnson flirts with caricature but a great cast won't let him get away with it. Toni Collette plays the widow of one of the late writer's sons, a woman who operates a company called Flam. The firm's business: the suspiciously broad theme of wellness. Jamie Lee Curtis appears as the haughty Linda, the writer's daughter. She's married to Don Johnson's Richard.

Like everyone else, Johnson’s character has his eye on the late writer's fortune -- as well as on the occasional woman who wanders into his view. He also delivers an anti-immigrant rant that adds a bit of topicality.

Then there's Ransom (Chris Evans), the writer's grandson, a guy who doesn't seem to care about money, but who nonetheless has become pretty good at spending it. In disdaining the rest of the family, the character of Ransom provides Evans with what must have been a welcome chance not to be Captain America.

I doubt you'll leave the theater burdened by heavy philosophical baggage. Most post-movie conversations likely will focus on Johnson's preposterously wily characters and the actors who seem to be having such a good time playing them.

The point here is entertainment and aside from allowing the proceedings to run a trifle long (two hours and 11 minutes), Johnson delivers what Knives Out promises: wry amusement, a mystery resolved at the last moment, and enough snide observation to justify the appropriately caustic treatment these characters so richly deserve.

Titans battle over who'll rule the electric grid

Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse square off in The Current War, an oddity of a movie.

The Current War: Director's Cut is a difficult movie for me to review. Before it was described as "the director's cut," the movie premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. It was slated to be released by the Weinstein Company, but Harvey Weinstein's #MeToo exposure intervened.

Two years later, the movie found a home with 101 Studios. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon reportedly did some re-editing, added scenes and reduced the film's running time. Is it better than the version that played Toronto? I didn't see the movie then, so I can’t say.

I wondered, though, whether Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) didn't insist on a director's cut so that the movie -- which received a lukewarm reception in Toronto -- could be seen with fresh eyes.

Whatever the case, the movie that now arrives on the nation’s screens is a bit of an oddity.

Gomez-Rejon has tried (boy, has he tried) to make a visionary movie about visionaries, a choice that puts the movie in an odd position: It’s competing with its characters.

The story centers on the battle between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Geroge Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), two great names of American invention and commerce. A third revolutionary, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) works his way into the story, first as an employee of Edison and later as an ally of Westinghouse.

The great competition concerns a question: Should direct or alternating current be adopted as the US standard. Edison champions direct current; Westinghouse hoists the banner for alternating current. You already know the outcome, so it's difficult to say The Current War generates a great deal of suspense. In the US, alternating current rules.

To the extent that there's more at stake than money and, of course, power, it's worth noting that Edison represents invention in its purest form. Westinghouse takes a more commercially oriented view. Because alternating current was cheaper and could carry over longer distances than direct current, Westinghouse deemed it the better bet.

This is not to say that Edison becomes the movie's hero. He's arrogant and not especially friendly. Instead of making him admirable, his commitment to principle makes him a pain in the butt. And Westinghouse -- though capable of underhanded behavior -- seems genuinely interested in making the world a better place.

It takes an actor as good as Shannon to convey the complexities of Westinghouse's personality and I half wished that the movie had been more about Westinghouse than Edison.

Safe to say that the 19th century battle about the future of electricity isn't easy to dramatize. But it’s Gomez-Rejon's unrelenting commitment to an arty style that makes the movie difficult to embrace: He uses endlessly shifting camera angles, dark lighting, and other self-conscious cinematic gestures in ways that sometimes wall off us off from the story he's trying to tell.

And yet ...

The Current War also creates an atmosphere that is intriguing and strange -- incredibly detailed and yet somehow weirdly unfamiliar.

There isn't much by way of memorable work from the movie's supporting cast.

Tom Holland portrays Samuel Insull, Edison's loyal assistant. Matthew Macfadyen plays J.P. Morgan, a titan of finance who Edison snubs. Tuppence Middleton portrays Edison's wife and Katherine Waterston appears as Marguerite Westinghouse, by far the more interesting of the two spouses.

Gomez-Rajon hints at the dark side of technological advance by introducing the invention of the electric chair, which was supposed to take the cruelty out of capital punishment but which might have made things worse. Both Edison and Westinghouse were compromised by their positions on the use of the chair.

All of this builds toward a competition over who will land the contract to light The Chicago Exposition of 1893, a major coup for whoever wins the day -- or, better put, the night.

Gomez-Rejon whips up some excellent imagery and the story generates interest. And yet ... as I've said ... The Current War isn't so much a failure as a puzzlement, a movie that, in my view, creates too many impediments to its fullest appreciation.

A family deals with Alzheimer's

Hilary Swank leads a strong cast in the drama What They Had.

There's no faulting the acting in writer/director Elizabeth Chomko's What They Had, a story about the impact of Alzheimer's on a family already dealing with typical issues of generational conflict and parental approval.

Hilary Swank portrays Bridget, a woman who travels with her teenage daughter (Taissa Farmiga) from California to Chicago when her brother (Michael Shannon) asks for help.

Shannon's Nicky, who remained in Chicago, has cared for his mother (Blythe Danner) and father (Robert Forster) but he's reached the end of his rope. Danner's Ruth has wandered off in her nightgown on a cold Chicago night and the family is frantic about the harm that might befall her. The drama centers on what to do about Ruth, a once-competent woman who's increasingly removed from reality and who soon turns up unharmed.

Forster's Bert resists putting his wife in memory care, even if he can live a nearby assisted living facility that would allow him to visit at will. He refuses to let go of his marriage and insists that he's perfectly capable of taking care of Danner's Ruth by himself.

Shannon gets a much-needed opportunity to play a normal guy -- albeit one who's struggling with and frustrated by difficult problems. Shannon's Nicky owns a bar that's not doing as well as he'd hoped. He's constantly battling with his father. Dad berates Nicky for not finishing college and becoming a bartender. It means nothing to Dad that his son owns the bar.

Forster, in fine form, plays an ardent Catholic, a down-to-earth guy who believes in marriage as an "until-death-do-us-part" proposition? Bert isn't one for nuance, but he's never treated like an idiot. Forster keeps him real and helps us understand that Bert can't reconcile his memories of better days with the situation in which he now finds himself.

Swank's Bridget seems conflicted about nearly everything: her role as a mother, her daughter's refusal to enroll in college and her relationship with the husband (a briefly seen Josh Lucas) she left in LA.

It's hardly a surprise to say that the always impressive Shannon gives a strong performance, but he does. He captures Nicky’s genuine concern and snide humor, as well as his fury.

Danner plays a wife and mother convincingly addled by her medical condition, yet still showing traces of a woman who's able to laugh at herself.

Not every moment in What They Had rang true to me. Bridget's listless marriage, for example, receives too little attention to make it a convincing part of the story. But the movie never feels less than fully lived-in by a cast that couldn't be any better.

'12 Strong': action beats insight

Chris Hemsworth leads a Special Forces unit into the wilds of Afghanistan.

The best war movies generally take a position that gets us beyond strategy, tactics and reflexive expressions of heroism. Considering that, 12 Strong, the story of a Special Force unit that was the first to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11, falls far short of the best in its breed. Though based on a true story, the movie would have been right at home during any summer action-movie onslaught.

Chris Hemsworth, as Capt. Mitch Nelson, leads a group that includes Chief Warrant Officer Hal Spencer (Michael Shannon) and Sgt. First Class Sam Diller (Michael Pena). Trevante Rhodes, recently of Moonlight, also checks in as a sergeant, but proves no more distinctive than any of the other actors in this generically presented group.

When the picture opens, the newly retired Nelson wants to return to action; he can't sit idly by after his country undergoes an attack, which -- at the time -- seemed inconceivable. Sketchy scenes of the soldiers on the home-front are followed by scenes in which the GIs, newly arrived in Afghanistan, try to bond with locals and meet with CIA agents who already were engaged in combat.

As it turns out, Nelson's unit was assisted by forces from the Northern Alliance, in this case, led by General Dostum (Navid Negahban), a warlord who hated the Taliban but could be wary of Americans, as well.

The American soldiers were highly motivated but hadn't been trained for the kind of combat that Dostum knew well. Absent any other way to negotiate Afghanistan's rugged terrain, soldiers were asked to fight on horseback.

Still best known for playing Thor, Hemsworth gives the expected take-charge performance, but the movie doesn't get much from Shannon, who almost always leaves a mark.

The soldiers who fought in some of the world’s worst conditions unquestionably were brave. To make matters even more difficult, they were outnumbered 40 to one. When they wrested control of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban, they made military history.

But that doesn’t mean that their story — based on a book by Doug Stanton — transcends its bounty of action to give us new insights into the war in Afghanistan. Instead, 12 Strong celebrates the usual band-of-bros bravado as director Nicolai Fuglsig garnishes combat sequences with a generous helping of explosions.

For some that will be enough, but the movie fails to lay the groundwork for understanding why, some 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan still rages or what, in the long run, might constitute success in this besieged and battered country.

A fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro

The Shape of Water, a romantic fantasy about a cleaner and a "monster.''

Guillermo del Toro chases dreams, attempting (and often succeeding) in mixing horror and romanticism as he allows his ample imagination to invade reality. In his great 2006 movie, Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro produced a dark fantasy about Franco's Spain. Now in The Shape of Water, del Toro turns to American shores, for a fairy tale about the love between a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) and a creature who has been brought from the depths of the Amazon to the US by government officials who see him as a threat.

The second half of del Toro's conception -- the part involving an attempt by a government agent (Michael Shannon) to destroy the creature -- might be the weakest part of the movie, flirting with cliches about the way officialdom inevitably becomes the enemy of beauty and mystery.

But this creature is different. Called Amphibian Man in the credits (Doug Jones under a ton of make-up), the creature has the physique of a man but also has scales and the ability to be fierce when threatened. In the Amazon, natives thought Amphibian Man was a god. Rather than trying to trample his strangeness, they elevated it.

Perhaps never quite as poetic as its wonderful title, The Shape of Water nonetheless allows del Toro to give full vent to an imagination into which movies flow, cinematic tributaries that fuel his sense of invention. It's not coincidental that Hawkins' Elisa lives above a theater called the Orpheum where The Story of Ruth is playing or that her neighbor (a gay artist played by Richard Jenkins) obsessively watches old movies, preferring them to the news of the day.

Set in Baltimore during the 1960s, the movie alternates between two major locations: Elisa's apartment and her place of employment, a government installation where Amphibian man is being held prisoner.

Elisa and her co-worker (a down-to-earth Octavia Spencer) learn that the creature is being tormented by Shannon's character. An authoritarian jerk, Shannon's Strickland becomes the real monster, a self-justifying sadist disguised as a "normal" man. Shannon's Strickland lives in suburbia, indulges himself by buying a Cadillac and pounds away (literally) during sex with his mildly libidinous wife.

Michael Stuhlbarg makes an appearance as a scientist who wants to preserve the creature. He believes that it would be a crime to destroy Amphibian Man. Stuhlbarg's Bob has a double identity. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that Bob is also a Russian spy and that the Russians have their eye on this creature. They, too, would like to harness its powers.

Hawkins excels in her performance as a silent woman who gradually reveals her strengths. From the beginning, del Toro establishes Elisa's affinity for water. For Elisa, water and sexuality are intimately connected. And, yes, Elisa not only has a romantic interest in the creature; she has sex with him. She explains to Spencer's curious Zelda how this union is possible in one of the movie's giggly joking moments.

Del Toro delivers on the promise of the title. There's a lot of water in The Shape of Water, arriving in the form of flooded rooms, downpours and the tank in which Amphibian Man languishes. Water is life and, as such, can't always be contained.

The movie's romanticism extends to its elements that in the 1960s might have been considered "subversive," a woman who can't speak, a gay man, and a black woman. It falls to these outsiders to appreciate Amphibian Man in all his scaly glory. It is only in union with Amphibian Man that Elisa finds her true identity. She's finally complete.

Those familiar with del Toro's work won't be surprised at the movie's visual mastery, greatly aided by the cinematography of Dan Lausten and the production design of Paul D. Austerberry; they help the movie live in a world all its own.

The Shape of Water doesn't quite reach the magical heights at which del Toro must have been aiming, but it stands as a work in which sweet and sour tones bump against one another with del Toro insisting that only in the full embrace of those we deem alien do we find our deepest humanity -- or maybe he's just telling a small story about a woman who deserves more than life has given her.

Either way, The Shape of Water brims with strange charm.

Style can't save 'Nocturnal Animals'

Despite high style and self-conscious stabs at meaning, this one leaves a bad aftertaste.

Director Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals mixes the self-consciously stylish look of art-house cinema (or what some think of as art house cinema) with the substance of a trashy noir thriller. To borrow from the recent presidential campaign, the movie can be viewed as an attempt to go low and high at the same time.

The bulk of Ford's movie centers on Susan (Amy Adams), a Los Angeles art gallery owner who spends most of this overly determined effort either reading or remembering -- and doing very little actual living.

The movie begins with a piece of performance art at Susan's purportedly sophisticated gallery. Wearing only majorette hats and boots, some very heavy women are seen dancing. The piece demands that we look at bodies that normally would remain hidden.

Whether Ford intends this fleshy romp as ironic commentary about the hollowness of the current art scene remains unclear. Maybe it's a bit of visual snark about Hollywood's tyranny of thinness. Your guess is as good as mine.

The most vivid part of the movie involves Ford's presentation of the brutal, exploitative story that Susan spends most of the movie reading.

This story within a story begins when Susan receives a manuscript from her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal), a novelist she hasn't seen since she upended their marriage 19 years earlier.

Dedicated to her, the book tells the story of a West Texas incident in which a hapless husband (also Gyllenhaal), a wife and their teen-age daughter (Isla Fisher and Ellie Bamber) are harassed by redneck creeps on a lonely Texas highway. Mother and daughter don't fare well.

This part of the story eventually becomes a revenge tale in which Gyllenhaal's character joins forces with a local lawman (Michael Shannon) whose rasping cough turns out to be a case of terminal lung cancer.

Shannon's Bobby Andes urges the aggrieved husband toward vengeance, as the movie prattles on about whether Gyllenhaal's character has the stomach for taking matters into his own hands. Is he weak or is he a real man?

Other scenes immerse us in Susan's meaning-challenged life, an existence steeped in self-loathing -- albeit in upscale surroundings of a kind few of us ever actually encounter. Oh, how the rich do suffer.

Susan lives with her philandering second husband (Armie Hammer), a businessman who's going through a slump. He conveniently leaves LA for a trip to New York, which makes it possible for Susan to spend most of the movie reading in bed.

Ford's layered approach to narrative also charts the course of Susan's first marriage: Susan wants a life her aspiring novelist husband can't provide, thus proving that her mother (Laura Linney in cameo) was right to suggest that she find a stronger mate.

Shannon gives the movie's best performance, proving that he can be scary even when he's on the right side of the law.

Trapped in a purposeless world of art and glitz, Susan doesn't provide Adams with enough opportunity to vary her performance, and Gyllenhaal does what he can with dual roles, sweating through bouts of grief and existential desperation.

Ford (A Single Man) piles on the style as he traces noir gestures in the air, leaving little but a sour aftertaste as the movie dissolves into a muddled and disconcerting ether.

The couple that changed the law

Loving tells the story of ordinary people deprived of justice because of race.

After the Obama presidency, it may be difficult for younger audiences to realize that it wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme Court set aside Virginia laws prohibiting interracial marriage such as the one that produced our 44th president.

In the new movie, Loving -- named for Mildred and Richard Loving, the couple at the heart of a groundbreaking case -- director Jeff Nichols works in a deliberately muted style that pushes away melodrama and allows us react to the movie with an appropriate sense of outrage and empathy.

Nichols wisely gives his movie an abiding quality of ordinariness as he tells the story of a white man (Joel Edgerton) and a black woman (Ruth Negga), two Virginians who, in 1958, skirted Virginia law by traveling to Washington, D.C. for their wedding.

After a brief foray back to their home state, the Lovings settled in Washington, D.C. as they searched for a less troubled life. In 1963, they decided to return to Virginia, and their problems re-surfaced.

Edgerton gives a quietly staunch performance. No crusader or civil rights champion, Richard is an average guy who loves his wife.

As the story develops, Negga's equally reticent Mildred develops more of a political consciousness, but Nichols's point is clear: In a more just society, we never would have heard anything about these two people.

Richard would have spent his time working, being a good father and tinkering with cars; Mildred might have been a typical '50s wife and mother.

Although Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) resists the temptation to turn the movie into thundering court room drama, we do meet the lawyers (Nick Kroll and Jon Bass) who took on the case. They became involved when Robert Kennedy, to whom Mildred had written about her plight, referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Michael Shannon plays the Life Magazine photographer who took an iconic photo of the Lovings that helped bring them to national attention, but the Lovings mostly wanted to live freely (and anonymously) in Virginia. They wanted to be near their respective families, and Mildred didn't much like city life.

Throughout its legally and morally resonant story, Loving remains rooted in the lives of two people who clearly would have been happier had they been allowed to pursue the kind of lives that most of their fellow citizens were able to take for granted.

A president meets 'the king'

Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey make a fine Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon. I know . I wouldn't have believed it, either.

Talk about a stretch. If you were making up a list of actors who could convincingly play Elvis Presley, I doubt whether Michael Shannon's name would make your short list. And Kevin Spacey may play President Frances Underwood on House of Cards, but Nixon? Well, Spacey's a terrific mimmic, so maybe.

I don't know who decided to team Shannon and Spacey in a comedy called Elvis & Nixon, but whoever it was deserves credit for a masterstroke.

Although Shannon looks nothing like Elvis -- even with deep sideburns and generous helpings of Memphis bling -- he manages to capture the spirit of "The King."

And Spacey, who can be a great comic actor, makes a more than credible Nixon, hunched over, dyspeptic and willing to warm to anyone who happens to agree with him.

What we wind up with is a rousing snapshot of two paranoid men -- one a president, the other a "king" -- both of whom display cagey smarts.

The screenplay -- credited to Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes -- takes a real incident and tries to determine what might have happened the day Elvis showed up at the White House requesting a meeting with Nixon.

Nixon didn't install his infamous taping system until a few years later, so it's open season for anyone who wants to speculate about a meeting between such unlikely companions.

Director Liza Johnson (Hateship Loveship) evidently thinks the meeting, which resulted in the most requested photo in the National Archives, couldn't help but be funny. In her imagination, Elvis didn't kowtow to Nixon, who initially was reluctant to meet with a rock n' roller.

Isolated and accustomed to being the center of attention, Elvis digs into Nixon's M&Ms, which had been forbidden to him, and asks to drink the Dr. Pepper Nixon's aides also asked him not to touch.

Elvis had no interest in protocol; he wanted Nixon to give him a badge that would make him a "federal agent at large," a lawman with undercover responsibilities.

Elvis liked badges, and had been awarded many by various local police departments. He carried firearms (licensed) and, in this telling, even brought them to the White House.

Johnson wisely delays the fated meeting until about an hour into the movie. Until then, Elvis gathers his support system, which includes Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), a friend who had known Elvis since childhood and whom Elvis trusted, and Sonny (Johnny Knoxville) another -- albeit goofier -- member of the Elvis entourage.

We also see some of the familiar White House figures of the day: H.R. Haldeman (Tate Donovan); Egil Keogh (Colin Hanks); and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters).

Elvis' team is busy catering to "The King;" Nixon's team tries to convince him that it will be good for the president to meet with Elvis because everyone loves Elvis and some of that love could translate into votes.

There's a bit of a subplot: Elvis persuades Schilling, who lives in LA, to accompany him to Washington. Schilling promises the woman he loves he'll be home in time to meet her parents the next day. I can't say we worry too much about whether he'll make it.

Shannon and Spacey come awfully close to parody with their portrayals, but they're far too skilled to let the movie degenerate into impersonations of two famous men, both of whom had little use for the Black Panthers, hippies and the counterculture.

Shannon convincingly finds the loneliness of a man who long ago got lost in his own image, but who also knows how to use that image to his advantage. And Spacey conveys all of Nixon's pettiness, as well as his deal-making instincts.

I'm not sure that Elvis & Nixon, which doesn't use any of Elvis' music but adds a lot of R&B to its soundtrack, is more than an amplified sketch, but why quibble: In Shannon and Spacey's hands, it produces a hunk, a hunk of pointed laughs.

When houses stop being homes

99 Homes humanizes the devastations of the mortgage crisis.

In 99 Homes, director Ramin Bahrani -- who made his mark in the film world with 2005's Man Push Cart -- takes an exacting look at what happens when homes are in foreclosure and the vultures descend, a situation that in 2007 came to be known as the subprime mortgage crisis.

The set-up: Michael Shannon plays an unscrupulous real estate hustler who has amassed a small fortune, and Andrew Garfield portrays an unemployed construction worker who's evicted from his home, but winds up working for Shannon's Rick Carver.

Set in Florida during the darkest days of the recession, the movie early on finds Carver showing up at Nash's door with a couple of sheriff's deputies. They give Nash all of two minutes to gather his belongings and move his mother (Laura Dern) and young son (Noah Lomax) out of the house.

Nash initially resists, but there's no forestalling the inevitable. The family winds up in a bad motel with few prospects for improving its lot. At this point, you can feel hope swirling down the drain.

For his part, Carver wastes no time on hope. He's too busy scheming: He works for banks, but knows how to scam the government for money. He'll also offer insultingly meager amounts of cash to take over a home for a quick flip. He calls the program "cash for keys." How about taking $3,500 for your home before the sheriff shows up?

Unlike Carver, Nash has a conscience, and Garfield does a fine job of mining Nash's uneasiness. He's in a position that's bringing in unexpected amounts of money, first as a handyman for Carver and then as a participant in evictions. He's required to push people around the way he once was pushed around, but he's never comfortable in the role.

Shannon makes Carver a credible character, a man whose ethos springs from a dog-eat-dog reading of reality. He saw his father get screwed by the system, and vowed that he'd never share such a fate. Carver isn't about to be the dog that's eaten.

Carver's a businessman who learned how to shut off his emotions so that he could capitalize on other people's suffering. An amoral pragmatist, he's willing to give Nash an opportunity to flip the script on a society that has left him out in the cold. There's no bailout for losers, Carver insists.

Bahrani's movie revolves around two conflicting notions of housing.

To Nash, the home from which he was evicted is the cornerstone of his family's stability. He grew up the house. His mother operated her haircutting businesses there, and his son knew no other residence.

Carver's view of homes couldn't be more different. To him a house is nothing but a box and an opportunity to make money. Boxes have no emotional meaning and neither do the deluded people who live in them.

Carver used to make money by selling people homes. Now he makes money by throwing them out of their houses. He understands the irony, but doesn't much care.

Garfield, the British actor who took a turn at Spider Man, does fine work as a guy who wants to earn a decent wage with his hands, but finds himself dabbling in a world where money has become the only measure that matters.

Bahrani isn't afraid of social relevance, which may be why the movie's at its best when it's showing us what life is like for people who find themselves looking at their belongings on the front lawn and not knowing where the hell to go next.

It's an important image to absorb, but when you review the story in your mind, you may realize that Bahrani is better at presenting telling incidents and episodes than he is at delivering a fully enriched narrative.

Still, 99 Homes puts us in touch with a devastating moment from which many have yet to recover -- and perhaps never will.

Action filled, but less than super

Instead of being a renewed helping of Superman, Man of Steel feels like one more summer blockbuster.

Despite a ton of action -- some of it impressive, some merely clangorous -- Man of Steel just didn't feel like a Superman movie to me.

It wasn't just that Henry Cavill, the British actor who plays Superman, looks a bit like a young John Travolta -- only buffed to the max. And it wasn't that many of the touchstone events marking Clark Kent's evolution to Superman pass without appropriate fanfare. And it wasn't that lovable stock figures such as Daily Planet editor Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) have been drained of vitality or even that spunky Lois Lane (Amy Adams) knows Superman's true identity from the start. They even smooch.

Those things don't help, but none of them prove fatal.

But by flooding the Superman story with blockbuster-style action and by presenting it in distinctly darker hues, director Zack Snyder (Watchmen) has deprived Man of Steel of the innocence, humor and moral certainty on which Superman thrives.

And by updating the series to the present day, the filmmakers are forced to abandon some of Superman's trademark flourishes. In the age of the cell phone, Clark Kent would be hard pressed to find a phone booth in which to change into his trademark outfit, form fighting tights and a red cape. Even Superman's suit has been rendered in a darker shade of blue than those of his predecessors, suggesting a super hero for an era consumed by global gloom.

And that "S" on Superman's chest? You might have thought it stood for Superman; it's really a symbol of hope from his home planet, Krypton.

Snyder & company treat Man of Steel as an origins story. In much of the movie, Superman is referred to as, Kal-el, the name he was given by his father Jor-el (Russell Crowe) on Krypton.

This young superhero has yet to discover his destiny, which eventually will cast him as a Christ-like savior for a needy planet, providing, of course, you can imagine a savior whose battles can result in the wanton destruction of whole cites.

At the movie's end, Metropolis becomes the stage for a fierce battle between Kal-el and General Zod (Michael Shannon), a villain who escapes imprisonment, along with a handful of dedicated followers after the planet Krypton self-destructs. The planet's core gives way, much like the center of this highly anticipated re-start.

In case you think I'm exaggerating about the connection between Superman and a more widely acknowledge savior, consider this: The movie includes a scene in which a troubled Clark Kent talks to a priest. A stained-glass figure of a kneeling Jesus provides an obvious symbolic backdrop for the conversation, which takes place moments before Superman makes an appearance in his trademark cape.

Perusal of the supporting cast gives you a quick idea about the way Man of Steel unfolds. Kevin Coster appears as Superman's earthly father, the dad who doesn't want his adopted son to reveal his powers lest the wary residents of Earth turn on him.

Diane Lane -- unconvincingly aged during the proceedings, plays Clark's mother -- and a group of mostly indistinguishable actors portray General Zod's evil devotees.

Zod plans to destroy humanity and reconstruct the planet Krypton on Earth, thus ensuring the survival of his race. To do this, he must tamper with the Earth's gravity and take possession of a Codex, a device in which all the genetic codes of Krypton have been implanted.

Man of Steel doesn't skimp on action. When Superman, still a drifting Clark Kent, saves the crew of a burning oil rig, the large scaled imagery proves impressive. So do CGI images of a monster tornado that sweeps over Smallville.

And for those who like pulpy views of alien planets, early depictions of Krypton may prove interesting. Of course, these also devolve into showers of fiery pyrotechnics.

Making Zod the villain tends to turn Man of Steel into a second-rate space opera that's equipped with ominous spaceships that resemble giant bugs that perhaps should have been fought with mega-blasts of Raid.

A booming display of CGI dominates a protracted finale that features so much destruction, you might think that Snyder hired Michael Bay (of Transformers fame) as a consultant.

There had been hope that the participation of Christopher Nolan (of Batman fame) as one of the film's writers and producers would add a compelling contemporary sensibility to the Superman story. But looked at with the benefit of hindsight, a more serious Superman represents a major miscalculation. The same goes for the memory-trigged flashbacks that reveal Superman's childhood.

Kal-el remembers a youth in which he tried to restrain his super powers, prompting an identity crisis that pervades the movie. This Superman really is an alien on Earth.

We're all locked into our personal cultural prisons. In the case of Superman, the walls of mine were built from the comic books I read as a kid when my parents weren't looking, from the early TV show starring George Reeves and from the better Superman movies in which Christopher Reeve found a signature role.

This edition -- which no doubt will smash as many box-office records as it does Metropolis skyscrapers -- seems to lack deep affection for Superman. To me, Man of Steel seems more like a medium-grade summer movie than a convincing revival. I missed the character whose claim to fame involved leaping tall buildings at a single bound and moving faster than a speeding bullet.

But even if you accept Snyder's action-dominated 143 minutes, you may have have to admit that the movie might have benefited from some narrative Super Glue. Are scene-to-scene transitions a totally forgotten art?

Only the movie's final scene offers a hint of the winking chemistry that Superman needs. Yet, it too can seem weirdly misguided. Clark Kent lands a job at the Daily Planet, thus making him one of the few people in any galaxy who doesn't know that the newspaper business is foundering. Bad career choice, Clark.

Man of Steel -- which offers enough action to induce motion sickness -- can't be accused of lacking an interpretive slant. (I didn't like it, but at least it has one.) And, yes, it makes a hell of a lot of noise.

What's missing? How about a major helping of fun? How about a clear sense of yearning for the simple virtues Superman so reliably embodies? By the end of this edition, Superman not only had rocketed through Earth's atmosphere, he'd basically flown the coop.

An icy hit man stalks his prey

New Jersey-based hit man Richard Kuklinski reportedly killed more than 100 people during his career as an assassin so cold-blooded, he was called The Iceman. We've seen a lot of movies that glamorize criminal life and plenty that go for hard-core grit. The Iceman -- which tells Kuklinski's story -- falls squarely into the latter category, and were it not for the work of Michael Shannon, the movie might have been another bit of cinematic slumming, one more foray into society's lower depths.

But Shannon, who's carving out a career playing men of intensity and weirdness, brings frightening credibility to the role of a killer who murdered as part of his routine and then went home to his wife (Winona Ryder) and two daughters. Let's just say Richie -- as his cronies referred to him -- must have been good at compartmentalizing.

Director Ariel Vroment surely knew that he had struck gold with Shannon because he works hard to support a performance that creates its own tension and dread. If you're looking fully to understand a Polish-American killer who plied his trade for Italian mobsters, you'll probably have to look elsewhere. A half-hearted reference to abuse Kuklinski suffered at the hands of his father neither justifies nor explains a man who seems to feel that he needs neither justification nor explanation.

That's just what makes Richie so terrifying. Aside from a professed love for his family, he doesn't seem to feel much of anything.

Although the movie clearly belongs to Shannon, the rest of the cast keeps pace. Ryder has her best outing in some time as Richie's wife, Deborah. She sees Richie as a protector, the man who loves her and takes care of her. She doesn't push him too hard about his cover story. Kuklinski accounts for his suburban lifestyle by claiming to be a savvy currency trader.

We've seen Ray Liotta as a tough guy so many times, it's a little disappointing to find him playing that role again, although he's obviously good at it. Here, he's mobster Roy DeMeo, the man who elevates -- if that's the right word -- Kuklinski from his job in a lab that processes pirated porn films to the job of hit man. Roy asks Kuklilnski to audition for his new role by killing a bum, a task Richie carries out without much fuss.

James Franco is convincing in a small role as Marty Freeman, a man who has the misfortune of crossing paths with Kuklinski, and David Schwimmer has a nice turn as Josh Rosenthal, a long-standing friend of Ray's with a talent for getting his mobbed-up boss in trouble.

In a movie such as The Iceman , the look and feel of things can be every bit as important as plot. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski sees New Jersey at its depressing worst, creating a downcast mood the movie seldom breaks.

Even turns of plot that might have been played for cheap ironies and chuckles pass without much winking humor.
Chris Evans, for example, plays killer Robert Pronge, a hit man with whom Kuklinski forms a seedy partnership when his boss no longer needs his services. Pronge's day job: He drives an ice cream truck. His nickname: Mister Softee.

The plot unfolds pretty much as you'd expect: Vroment laces the screen with double-crosses and betrayals that eventually tighten a noose around Kuklinski's increasingly vulnerable neck. He's desperate to find a way out of the box he's constructed for himself. At a certain point, his occupation and his private life seem destined to collide.

Shannon's chilling performance keeps the movie's wheels spinning. He presents Richie in all of his icy, terrifying stature. But Richie's different than a lot of movie gangsters: He's one cold-blooded devil who never begs for sympathy.

In this movie, speed is the message

Speeding bikes, heavy traffic and a silly plot turn Premium Rush into a fun ride.

Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) rides a bike with no brakes and no gears to shift. He's a minimalist who works as a bicycle messenger in Manhattan, which means that he's adept at dodging the city's omnipresent taxis, as well as every other form of vehicular transportation. Wilee's also the main character in Premium Rush, a smartly paced and entertaining movie in which speed, danger and stunts are hung on a plot that's built around one of Wilee's assignments. As the movie progresses, director David Koepp works in Chinese gambling dens, an immigration scheme and a very corrupt cop, played with bizarre relish by Michael Shannon. At heart, Premium Rush is a chase movie, but Koepp has fun with graphics, using them to show us how Wilee thinks through the complex maneuvers required to move around jammed city streets. Koepp, who has written action movies such as Mission Impossible, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Spider-Man and who has directed movies such as Ghost Town, mounts the action with sharpness and clarity. As Wilee furiously pedals to complete his task, Koepp fleshes out the story by moving back and forth in time. Gordon-Levitt infuses Wilee with just enough character (no desk job for this bike jockey) to avoid becoming a cartoon. I've read that the bike riding stunts are real and have not been digitally created, another ploy that helps distinguish Premium Rush from the rest of the breathless genre movies that whiz by during the course of a summer.