'The Mandalorian' hits the big screen

   In some respects, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu qualifies as one of the biggest puppet shows ever staged. The creatures who populate The Mandalorian may not look entirely real, but they display the imagination and skill created by a seamless mix of CGI, animatronics, puppetry, and models.

      I guess I'm saying that realism takes a backseat to craft in The Mandalorian and Grogu, a movie that's better than I thought it would be, even if it lacks the super thrills of the best Star Wars movies.

     For those unversed in the Mandalorian world, here are a few essentials:

     The Mandalorian, a.k.a. Din Djarin, works as a hired gun for the anti-imperial New Republic.

      In this case, The Mandalorian is charged with finding and arresting Lord Janu (Jonny Coyne), one of the series' villains. The Republic makes a deal with a couple of Hutts (yes, a duo of the familiar blubbery creatures) to locate Rotta the Hutt and return him to Hutt control.

      Jeremy Allen White gives voice to Rotta. If you're expecting to hear the voice associated with White's character in The Bear, forget it. White's voice sounds as if it has been given an electronic assist.

       Whatever else it is, The Mandalorian isn't a star showcase. The Mandalorian seldom appears without his helmet, which means Pedro Pascal, makes heavy use of voice work.

       Martin Scorsese's jangled delivery as a four-armed food truck operator feels more connected to Scorsese's personality and provides a welcome dash of humor.

       Looking unsettlingly like ... well ... herself, Sigourney Weaver turns up as Col. Ward, the New Republic commander who sends the Mandalorian on the mission that defines the movie's structure: Set a goal, confront an obstacle, stage a fight, and then proceed to the next set piece.

      The movie's emotional core involves father/son issues, a Star Wars favorite. Imprisoned by Lord Janu, Rotta -- son of Jabba-- has attained a degree of stardom as a kind of gladiator. He rejects his father's criminal past, and aims to lead a life of his own, once he escapes Janu's clutches.

      More importantly, The Mandalorian serves as a father figure to Grogu, who's devoted to him, and, who, thanks to one of the movie's better plot twists, eventually is asked to save his surrogate father.

      There's something happily unsophisticated about The Mandalorian, both in its dialogue and characterizations. Although he's responsible for the movie's more tender moments, Grogu offers as much cuteness as clout, underscoring a vibe that feels less like hard-core sci-fi than Disneyesque fantasy.

        Maybe it fits the current moment, but The Mandalaorian works for money rather than for a vision of a free and thriving universe. To ensure that we don't see him as too greedy, the screenplay offers instances in which The Mandalorian doesn't accept payment. If nothing else, he deserves a vacation after engaging in an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) string of battles.

         I should note that I haven't watched the series on Disney Plus and still found the story easy enough to follow.  I didn't expect a deep-space adventure rendered in epic proportions; a bit of Googling primed me for a Star Wars descendant with less imposing villains and lower stakes. That's what I got.

       Scale aside, the battle between the New Republic and the forces of evil imperialism have been dragging on for nearly 50 years. Who knows? Maybe Grogu  one day will no longer rest on The Mandalorian's shoulders, but ....

        Oh, forget it.

         The Star Wars universe is geared for endless battling to save the Republic. One expects the fight to continue. Talk about "forever wars."

'First Steps' revives the Fantastic Four

   I'm not sure what it means, but if you look at the photo above, the blue and white outfits worn by the Fantastic Four may remind you of pajamas you'd expect find at a kiddie sleepover. I mention it because it's not easy to take Fantastic Four: First Steps, the movie from which this photo was taken, too seriously. Consider that a good thing.

  This fourth Fantastic Four movie represents an upbeat improvement over its three predecessors, which may be enough to kick it into recommendable territory -- provided you have any interest in another Marvel movie.

 Given a 60's aura by director Matt Shakman and recast with Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby in pivotal roles, First Steps has a welcome low-tech quality in which a robot looks more clunky than sleek. Sci-fi elements such as teleportation operate at rudimentary levels, as does a story that expeditiously introduces the Four while taking care of world-building.

  Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach complete the Fantastic quartet. A ton of CGI effects turn Moss-Bachrach into The Thing, a powerhouse who can lift a Volkswagen bug as if it weighed no more than a pebble. Quinn's Human Torch blazes his way through numerous action scenes.

   I'm to going to waste space describing all the superpowers of the Four, but it's important to know that when we meet them, they're living as a family in a New York apartment that has a mid-century garnish.

   For the record, Pascal's Reed Richard (a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic) and Kirby's Sue Storm (a.k.a. Invisible Woman) are married and expecting a child, which leads to scene in which Sue gives birth aboard a spaceship while dealing with a zero-gravity environment.

   The newborn, a mixture of CGI and a real infant, becomes an important plot element. The world-devouring villain, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), offers to spare Earth if Sue gives him Baby Franklin. When Sue declines, the failure of the Four to stave off doom raises the ire of the world's populace. Sue chooses the one above the many.

   Looking like a sleek statue inspired by an awards show, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) serves as Galactus's reconnaissance specialist. She surfs to new worlds, identifying planets that will feed her overlord's voracious appetite, although he's a bit tired of roaming galaxy after galaxy in search of nourishment. 

   The effects employed in the movie's finale are effectively realized, and Galactus's ominous-looking space ship reinforces the sense of doom facing Earth's inhabitants.

    Happily, First Steps doesn't overdo the interconnections that burden many Marvel films. You won't need a glossary to follow a plot designed for efficiency.

   I can't say that I was emotionally invested in First Steps. The movie's comic-book artifice makes it difficult really to fear for Earth's future, but a bit more than tolerable beats the heck out of terrible.

   On that level, First Steps satisfies.

Immersing in a country gone nuts

   

   Some of have billed director Ari Aster's Eddington as a Neo-western, possibly because it takes place in a small New Mexican town and hinges on a conflict between the town's sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and its mayor (Pedro Pascal). 

    Unlike his deputies, Phoenix's Joe Cross wears jeans and a sizable white cowboy hat, a look that suggests cowboy as channeled through central casting. But Eddington seems less a Neo-western than an ambitious, if misguided, attempt to capture the warped essence of current American experience.

     To accomplish this, Aster returns to May of 2020, a time of heightened uncertainty and fear. The  town of Eddington can't quite adjust to the demands of the recently arrived Covid pandemic. 

    A trip to the supermarket can set shoppers against one another, spurring conflicts between the masked and unmasked. The sheriff sees such requirements, supported by the mayor, as community-wrecking intrusions that violate personal liberties.

    Working in broad, on-the-nose strokes, Aster depicts the fractious nature of a country full of dueling perceptions about what  matters. It's arguable that you could get the same impression from 20 minutes of channel switching among cable news outlets, but that doesn't make the observation less disturbing.

    Aster, who grew up in New Mexico, populates a mixture of comedy and eruptive tension with a variety of characters. A down-to-earth guy, Sheriff Cross suspects that Mayor Garcia is a pretentious, self-serving liberal. He's not entirely wrong, but he's  not entirely right, either.

     Cross's world includes his wife Louise (a badly underutilized Emma Stone), a troubled woman who seems to have fallen into lethargic despair. His mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell) occupies herself culling conspiracy theories from the internet.

      The townsfolk include Brian (Cameron Mann), a teenager who's swept away by the activism of Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), a kid who's animated by the Black Lives Matter frenzy that erupts after the George Floyd shooting. Scenes involving protests draw from a comedy well in which people avidly decry what they  know only from online reports and perhaps television news, white kids screaming about white privilege.

     Luke Grimes and Michael Ward portray Cross's deputies. The protesters see Ward, who's Black, as a sellout and his colleagues eventually view him with suspicion -- for reasons best discovered in a theater.

     Looking compellingly ragged, Austin Butler turns up as a kind of wandering guru who captures Louise's attention and turns her into an acolyte. He rants about the horrors of pedophilia. Everyone seems to have a rant of some sort.

      Much of what the movie offers as satire tends to illustrate already-familiar ideas, the main one being that the country has lost its marbles. A homeless alcoholic mumbles his way through the streets, another signal that nothing makes sense.

       Upset about a perceived loss of freedom and his wife's resistance to physical contact, Cross decides to run for mayor. He stages meager political rallies that verge on the preposterous. Joe wants to save the town or restore it to a romanticized version of what it once was.

      Meanwhile, a corporate invader is planning to build a massive data center outside of town, a sure sign that a digital empire ultimately will conquer all sides -- or something like that. 

   Aster's filmography includes Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau is Afraid (2023). Phoenix gave a commanding performance in Beau is Afraid. He doesn't disappoint here. Always courageous in his choices, Phoenix finds a character who's equally likable and odious. 

      It's impossible to write about how this conflict is brought to a boil without spoilers, but I had trouble buying the movie's shift to thriller territory, especially when it began dishing out ample amounts of gunfire and bloodshed. 

       I think I was supposed to have a strong reaction to Eddington. I was struck by its feverishness, its flirtations with chaos, and its display of wanton absurdity. But Eddington remains sketchy. It loses its way as it spends 148 minutes trying to show a world that has lost its mind.

Love vs. money in a modern romance

 

   Director Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023) was a small wonder,  a movie about fated love untracked by time and circumstance. In Materialists, Song dips her toe into Hollywood waters, employing a name cast — Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans — as she flirts with and sometimes ignores rom-com cliches.

   Johnson's Lucy works for a matchmaking service called Adore. She's good at her job. For Adore, matchmaking extends an algorithm mindset. Before dating begins, the matchmaker obtains a list of requirements. Perhaps a lasting union will occur.

    Set in Manhattan, the screenplay, also by Song, creates a triangle. Harry (Pascal) is the rich brother of one of Lucy's clients. Charming and self-assured, Harry sees Johnson’s Lucy as a potential match. A superior strategist, she'll make a great helpmate, and it doesn't hurt that she's attractive.

   A match with Harry may make sense for Lucy, as well. She broke up with her struggling actor boyfriend (Evans) when she got sick of being down-and-out in Manhattan, a place where the good life comes with price tags that exclude wannabes. 

   Lucy meets Harry at the wedding of one of her clients. Conveniently, Evans John happens to be working the same wedding as a waiter for the company that's doing the catering. It seems apparent that neither John nor Lucy has totally moved on.

   Materialists outsmarts the average rom-com, which doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been even smarter. Enjoyably satirical when it comes to elucidating the impossible demands of a privileged generation, the movie doesn't commit to a rom-com blueprint nor does it rip it to shreds. 

   Song occupies a middle ground that sets up the movie's major problem: Should a marriage make sense in much the same way as a business merger? Is it a bad bet to surrender to love, which can't be reduced to a series of boxes one checks? 

    Considering the charm and posh surroundings in which Harry effortlessly moves, he’s playing with a clear advantage. But Song doesn’t turn Harry into a jerk; he’s sensitive and considerate, a man of taste and intelligence.

     John, on the other hand, is a 37-year-old actor who's close to the point where he may have to accept that his life as a cater waiter isn't as temporary as he once hoped.

     Moreover, Lucy seems to have abandoned the idea that two people can survive on love and a dime. When Harry takes Lucy to his apartment for the first time, she responds to his amorous advances, but also manages to eagerly eye the richly appointed surroundings. 

    In a flashback, we see the incident that drove Lucy from John. Short on funds, he couldn’t pay for parking before a dinner marking their fourth anniversary together. She called it quits.

    A pivotal incident occurs when Sophie (Zoe Winters), one of Lucy’s clients, experiences a terrible outcome on a date. Lucy's conscience is tweaked. For her, Sophie had been a lingering failure; in other words, Sophie was a tough sell in the dating market.

     Materialists leaves it to us to decide what to think about a world in which money has become the most meaningful metric and where few seem to regard virtue or decency as an asset.

     It’s not possible to make a rom-com, even a self-aware one, without some contrivance. Although Materialists has its share of them, many are easy to overlook. A law suit brought by Sophie against Adore receives short shrift, and Song ties up a variety of loose ends -- not all of them neatly.  

    Materialists ultimately kneels at the altar of formula, although it tries to expand its reach with a prologue and an epilogue involving prehistoric romance. Did the movie need to introduce cave people to prove that love hasn't necessarily evolved? I don't think so.

    Still, I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing Materialists, which is well-acted and engaging. I wish, though, that I felt the same way about it as I felt about Past Lives; i.e., that I had seen something truly special.

        

‘Gladiator II’: More but not better

 

    I’d been looking forward to Gladiator II, hoping director Ridley Scott would deliver an epic-scaled movie that provided a healthy dose of sword-and- sandal escapism while paying homage to an idealized version of bygone Roman virtues: honor and strength. 

  What I experienced was a mixture of involvement and disappointment, a movie that prioritizes spectacle as it labors to refresh the structure of the original movie, which made its debut 20 years ago.

   Gone, aside from a few references in flashback, is Russell Crowe as Maximus, an obvious necessity prompted by the fact that Maximus died in the first installment. He's replaced by Paul Mescal as Lucius, who we first meet on the eve of the Roman siege of Numidia, a North African Berber kingdom.

    David Scarpa’s screenplay introduces Lucius as an adult who was taken in by North African "barbarians” (as the Romans refer to its non-Roman subjects) as a child. The Numidians are ripe for conquest by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a loyal Roman who’s devoted to imperial expansion and to the republican ways of the past.

    Early on, we get the whole Scott enchilada: big ships, catapulted fire balls, gory hand-to-hand combat, scaled walls, and flaming arrows. 

    It should surprise no one that the empire is evil. The cunning wickedness of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus -- so important in the first movie -- has been replaced by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a conniving entrepreneur who owns and wagers on gladiators and angles to surpass those who belong to the senatorial elite.

    Returnees include Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Maximum’s one-time lover.

   As if to differentiate this belated and somewhat boated sequel, two actors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) play callow brothers who rule the empire, providing dual helpings of cruelty. 

   Plenty of action, much of it set in the Roman Coliseum, follows as the movie ratifies its status as a collection of CGI thrills. Digitally created super-monsters battle gladiators. These include vicious creatures that look like a combination of rabid dogs and monkeys and a rhinoceros the size of a small building.

    At one point, the arena is flooded for a simulated naval battle conducted while man-eating sharks ply the shallow waters. 

   Though obvious, the word "overkill" leaps to mind.

   I won’t bother you with details about a plot that includes reasonably predictable elements that echo developments in first movie. In case it isn't already clear, I'll summarize: After Lucius' wife is killed in the battle for Numida, he's captured and taken to Rome, where Macrinus purchases him and makes him a gladiator.

    The principal performances are all up to snuff. Mescal rages and looks muscular, a man contemptuous of his origins but not entirely freed of them, even as he seeks his vengeance for his wife’s death at Roman hands. 

   Playing a man of conscience, Mescal’s presence is missed when he's not on screen. The movie needed  more of his weight.

   In what becomes the movie's stand-out performance, Washington brings Shakespearean stature to a man of wit and cunning.

   Nielsen acquits herself well as Marcus’ wife, a lady with a "secret" that’s eventually revealed but which is obvious from the start.

   Although many of the movie's characters are based on real historical figures, the minority of viewers who are versed in Roman history in the 200s, may blanch at inaccuracies. 

   Those aside, Gladiator II finds Scott putting himself through the required paces. His battle scenes serve as crowdpleasers, much in the way battling gladiators served the Roman yearning for bloody escapism.

  I found the movie — which unfolds over two and a half hours -- a somewhat mechanical attempt to highlight a checklist of themes: Roman intrigue, Roman debauchery, the Roman taste for spectacle, Roman stoicism in the face of doom, and a buffed version of Roman virtue.

   Put it all together and you have a movie that finds  captivating moments amid a scattered, unexceptional plot. Gladiator II can't replicate the sorrows of the first movie or reach its noble heights.

   As a long-time spectator in the entertainment area, I'll turn my thumb sideways and move on.

 

Bob's Cinema Diary: Oct. 1, 2024 -- 'The Wild Robot' and 'Wolfs'

Here are two quick, catch-up reviews of two movies that I couldn't review on their opening days. Blame scheduling conflicts and movie overload. The Wild Robot, which has won favor with both critics and audiences, has the potential to become an animated classic. Wolfs, on the other hand, a disposable feel of familiarity, a comic thriller in which Brad Pitt and George Clooney break little new ground.

 

The Wild Robot. Can a robot develop emotions? Can that same robot bond with an orphaned gosling and become its surrogate mother? Can the robot, an automaton that lives apart from other robots on a wooded island, be accepted by the island's natural denizens?  Based on 2020 bestseller by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot provides a stylish and often poignant response to these questions. Rozzum Unit 7134, voiced by Lupita  Nyong'o, becomes the movie's centerpiece as the robot develops relationships with Fink, a sly fox voiced by Pedro Pascal. Kit Connor does the voice work for Brightbill, the gosling. Director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stich, How to Train Your Dragon) offers a mixture of cartoonish action, layered meaning, and appealing characters as both Roz and Brightbill struggle with issues of belonging and connection. Eventually, Roz's maker sends a more strident robot (Stephanie Hsu) to retrieve the wayward bot and wipe its memory. Skillfully animated by Brown's team, The Wild Robot stands as family entertainment that avoids the worst pitfalls of such fare, notably unearned sentiment. Although it leans heavily toward children, adults may appreciate the way the movie balances the predatory instincts of animals with their need to achieve common goals.

Wolfs

Brad Pitt and George Clooney team for a comic thriller about two men with unusual jobs. For handsome fees, they dispose of bodies that otherwise might lead to murder indictments. As loners who've never met before, Pitt and Clooney's bickering fixers are pushed into an uneasy alliance; they must get rid of the body of a young man (Austin Abrams) who had been taken to a high-end New York hotel by a politician (Amy Ryan) looking for a fling. Nothing like a body on the floor to ruin a reputation. Pitt and Clooney deliver the expected banter, but the story, which unfolds during the course of a single night, doesn't feel nearly as offbeat as might have been intended. Undeniable star power boosts director Jon Watts's (Spider-Man: Homecoming) effort, but Pitt and Clooney can't make this stale vehicle shine. 

Pedro Almodovar visits the Old West

 It's hardly a surprise that director Pedro Almodovar, once regarded as the gifted and undisputed bad boy of Spanish cinema, has decided to make a film about gay gunslingers in the Old American West. Surprisingly, though, Strange Way of Life, a  31-minute, English-language short doesn't  go much of anywhere. Those familiar with Almodovar's work know him as a visual master whose films brilliantly  meld design and meaning. He’s an ardent proponent of entertaining the eye in ways that serve both the worlds and the characters he creates. You'll see some of that in Strange Way of Life, but there's not much more to consider about the movie. Ethan Hawke stars as a bitter, tormented sheriff who reunites with a former lover (Pedro Pascal) after 25 years. Jake (Hawke) has a sexual reunion with Pascal's Silva, but resists taking things further. A strained subplot revolves around Jake's duty to track his sister-in-law's killer (George Steane). The killer happens to be Silva's son. Silva argues that Jake should allow the young man to flee to Mexico. Almodovar includes a flashback to the Wild Bunch days Jake and Silva once shared. Viewers may have seen the subject of gay men in macho worlds better developed in Brokeback Mountain and more recently in The Power of the Dog.  Hawke, however, brings the force of severity to the lawman role Jack feels compelled to play. Strange Way of Life tries for the poignance that stems from recognizing roads not taken. But the movie might be confused with the sizzle reel for a feature-length movie that never materialized.

Strange Way of Life is being released theatrically on a double bill with The Human Voice, another short film by Almodovar. First released in 2020, The Human Voice stars Tilda Swinton in an adaptation of a play by Jean Cocteau. I haven’t seen it.

Everything but a consistently involving story

 

     At two-and-a-half-hours, Wonder Woman 1984 doesn't have a compelling enough story to keep the movie from wearing out. Gal Gadot returns as Wonder Woman. And director Patty Jenkins again takes charge of a movie that at least in its early going delivers the humor and buoyancy that make superhero movies fun.

    A prologue showing us Wonder Woman as a child stands as a masterful action sequence in which young Diana competes with grown women of her island home in games that recall TV shows in which contestants are pitted against one another on fiendishly designed obstacle courses. 

    The movie then shifts to Washington, D.C. The now-grown Diana, who in case you haven't already figured it out is also Wonder Woman, works at the Smithsonian. She dresses stylishly and avoids anything resembling a social life. 

    She hasn't gotten over losing the love of her life (Chris Pine), a World War I pilot. That happened in the last movie, but as we all know, sadness lingers.

    Sorrow aside, Diana remains Wonder Woman, saving kids at malls in set pieces that assure us Diana hasn't lost her mojo. 

     Enter Barbara (Kristen Wiig), a klutzy bespectacled anthropologist who's beginning work at the Smithsonian. Socially awkward and burdened by a hairdo in which no two strands of hair seem to be traveling in the same direction, Barbara badly needs a pal.  

     And unlike Diana, Barbara also would like to find love. She envies Diana's coolness and preternatural composure.

    While perusing her department's various treasures, Barbara comes across a crystal that she quickly deems worthless and which we immediately understand will be thrown into the plot in a big way, 

    OK, might as well spill the beans: The crystal can fulfill wishes, a power that will be bent toward evil before Wonder Woman's protracted finale.

    Eventually, the movie must get around to a plot. This one involves Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a conman who uses TV to try to persuade ordinary people to make what he calls sure-fire oil investments. Remember, it's 1984 and oil still rules. 

    Lord refers to himself as a "TV personality," not a conman Any resemblance to any real-life public figure must have been purely coincidental.

    Anyway, the crystal falls into Lord's hands and he uses it  (surprise!) to threaten global catastrophe. 

    Oh, I forgot to mention that the crystal's wishing power also brings back Pine's Steve Trevor, which allows Jenkins to add a variety of comic bits (selection of clothing being one) that play on Steve's awe at the '80s world into which he has been reborn. 

     Steve's return also provides Pine with an occasion to apply techniques gleaned from the open-mouth school of acting as he gapes at the special effects.

    Once Steve arrives, the movie becomes a twosome. Diana and Steve travel to far-flung places -- Egypt among them. Their mission: to put an end to Lord's malicious plans. 

    I don't think it's a spoiler to let you know that the villainy is ... well ... only adequate. Pascal gives a pitchman's one note performance. It's almost like watching a comic-book character scream as he tries to lift himself off the page.

    When envy prompts Barbara's transformation into Cheetah, the evil opposite of Wonder Woman, the movie seems more silly than scary.

    Wonder Woman isn't a dreadful misfire, and it's difficult to imagine that we've seen the last of the superhero who speaks to issues of women's power. 

    After its long -- intermittently amusing journey -- Wonder Woman 1984 does some undisguised cheerleading for the truth, make that Truth with a capital "T."

    So here's my truth, subject of course to a bit of relativism that may be unsuited to a comic book world: Wonder Woman 1984 struck me as part engaging entertainment, part overlong franchise entry, part inflated action movie, and one more stop on what seems to be an endless superhero highway.

Warriors on a larcenous mission

Triple Frontier doesn't exactly freshen an old formula, but skillfully repeats it.

The story probably sounds familiar. A disgruntled ex-member of the special forces gathers a trusted group of fellow warriors in hopes of pulling off a job that will repay them for the work they did while in uniform.

The target: a South American drug lord, who also happens to be a vicious killer. No one among the righteous will mourn the drug czar's demise. The obvious question: What could go wrong. The obvious answer: Plenty.

Triple Frontier boasts heavy credentials. The movie was directed by J.C. Chandor (Margin Call, A Most Violent Year). Mark Boal (The Hurt Lucker and Zero Dark Thirty) earned co-writing credit, and high-tension maven Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) served as one of the movie's producers.

A couple of top-liners add additional appeal. Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck head a cast that includes Garret Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, and Charlie Hunnam. <>
The movie signals its intentions in the names of its characters. Isaac plays Santiago 'Pope' Garcia, the mission's prime mover. Affleck portrays Tom 'Redfly' Davis, a logistical genious. My favorite: Hunnam's William 'Ironhead' Miller.

These hard-bitten but aging warriors know how to plan an operation, but -- as the saying goes -- the best-laid plans ... Well, you know the rest.

Chandor handles the action with aplomb, ensuring that it unfolds in coherent fashion. The big heist generates the requisite tension and the cast does as much as it can with material that won't evoke any comparisons with Chekov. Triple Frontier displays more interest in the ABCs of survival than in any deep exploration of character.

I'm a bit of sucker for this kind of material and Triple Frontier -- which wisely places its robbery about midway through -- earns passing grades with challenging locations (crossing the Andes on foot) and by emphasizing the sheer weight of the haul of cash the gang tries to bring back to the U.S.

I guess that's the point: Major money can weigh you down as much as it can open doors to liberation. Or maybe the point is something else: This kind of material remains irresistible for filmmakers.

This 'Wall' is far from great

Matt Damon joins director Zhang Yimou for a giant helping of spectacle -- and little else.

Can a wall protect a country's capital from being overrun by hordes of lethal monsters?

No, we're not talking about a debate on the Senate floor, but about a large-scale movie that turns Matt Damon into a western warrior enlisted in a Chinese battle to preserve humanity.

Directed by Zhang Yimou and shot entirely in China, The Great Wall may not totally crumble, but it doesn't rise to epic standards, either.

And for cineasts, the movie hardly marks a milestone. Zhang made his entry on the international stage with Red Sorghum (1987). He continued with Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and Shanghai Triad (1995). He was regarded as a young master of what was known as the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, and his work was bolstered by the presence of the beautiful and talented Gong Li.

In later movies such as Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Zhang began turning out highly stylized martial arts films. And in 2008, he directed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Now comes The Great Wall, a movie whose only virtues involve costumes, spectacle and CGI-enhanced action. It seems to derive less from Zhang's earlier work than from his spectacular Olympic contributions.

Burdened by stock characters, wooden dialogue (much of it in English), and lame attempts at humor, the movie offers a less-than-stirring rendition of a legend about creatures that storm China's Great Wall in an effort to reach the capital.

The movie's dragon-like creatures -- Tao Tie by name -- are connected to a finger-wagging theme. It seems the monsters emerge every 60 years, which evidently coincides with society having become too greedy for its own good.

The Great Wall feels overly calibrated for international success with lots of action, some of it impressive. The first assault on the Great Wall (here serving as a fortress protecting the capital) involves archers in red armor and women in blue armor who leap off towering platforms to spear the dragons. If color could kill, these warriors would have no equal.

There's a whisper of a story. Damon portrays William, a western mercenary who has traveled to China with his warrior pals in hopes of cornering the gunpowder market. After most of his comrades are killed in early-picture skirmishes, William and his pal Tovar (Pedro Pascal) become prisoners of the Nameless Order, the army that occupies the Wall, executing its various maneuvers to a variety of compelling drum beats.

There's spectacle, but much of it feels underlined to elicit oohs and aahs: a scene in which thousands of lanterns are borne skyward in tribute to a fallen general, for example.

Willem Dafoe signs on as a character who also came to China in search of gunpowder, but who has been kept inside the great Chinese redoubt for 25 years. He wants to help William and Tovar escape so that he, too, can make his way back to the western world with plenty of gunpowder in tow.

The Chinese display a variety of weapons, but William pretty much sticks to archery. His skill as an archer impresses his captors. Eventually, his prowess is recognized by Lin (Jing Tian), a woman commander. She leads the squads of blue-clad female warriors who leap off the side of the Great Wall, doing their lethal work before being hoisted back up.

There's a bit of a moral here -- albeit a hackneyed one. Will William cling to his mercenary values or will he fight for a higher ideal, as in helping to save the unsuspecting residents of the capital? The Chinese understand higher ideals: trust and sacrifice. The Westerns are decidedly more crass.

A lack of stand-out performances (Damon included) doesn't help to turn the movie into anything more than a display of visual extravagance. And there's virtually no suspense in wondering whether -- in the end -- Damon's William will do the right thing.

I won't say more about whether the Tao Ties eventually reach the capital. But I will say that our president might do well to watch this movie because it says something about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of walls when it comes to defending the populace from invasion.