A thriller under heavy thematic weather

Prisoners is one of the most effectively grim thrillers in a long time.

Denis Villeneuve's new thriller, Prisoners, brings an alarming shiver to the screen, not only because its story generates a dire and escalating sense of creepiness and dread, but because cinematographer Roger Deakins's corroborating imagery tends to be dark, damp and as unforgiving as the hard-driving rains of a Pennsylvania winter.

The French-Canadian Villeneuve (Incendies) has made a movie that sometimes feels as if it's happening in an alternate reality, one in which moral rot has penetrated the heart of a small Pennsylvania city.

That may sound more like the basis for a horror movie than a thriller, and it's worth knowing that Villeneuve -- working from a script by Aaron Guzikowski -- stirs suggestions of horror into the movie's intensely dour mix.

The title is apt in many ways, not the least of which is the way in which Villeneuve and Deakins depict the American landscape as one imprisoned by gloom, almost as if nature has become an accomplice in some ill-defined decline.

The story could have been inspired by any number of real-life crime scenarios. Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, a struggling carpenter whose life -- and that of his wife (Maria Bello) -- receives a terrifying jolt when his young daughter is kidnapped along with the daughter of a neighboring couple (Viola Davis and Terrence Howard).

Dissatisfied with the work of a local detective (Jake Gyllenhaal), Keller takes matters into his own hands, kidnapping a prime suspect, a young man (Paul Dano) who hasn't progressed beyond the mental age of 10. After being questioned by police, Dano's Alex Jones is released for lack of evidence.

Davis and Howard gradually slip from view as the script concentrates its moral ambiguities in the hands of Jackman (fierce and uncompromising) and Gyllenhaal (a cop with an eye twitch and a bad haircut).

Believing that only Jones can lead him to his daughter, Keller proceeds to imprison and torture the mentally challenged man, and the screenplay begins introducing a near-barrage of red herrings.

The initial disappearance of the children takes place during a Thanksgiving dinner that's being shared by Jackman and Bello and Howard and Davis. It's clear that the two families -- each of which also has an older child -- are accustomed to spending time together, but as the story progresses, it also becomes clear that Jackman's Keller is the most extreme member of this quartet; he's a recovering alcoholic, a hunter and an amateur survivalist who's deeply schooled in the notion that men take care of themselves and that society -- with its wafer-thin veneer of laws -- cannot be trusted.

The screenplay doesn't overemphasize Keller's dissatisfaction, but he's the kind of blue-collar guy who easily could feel that the system -- however he defines it -- might, at any moment, betray him.

Sporting gray hair and the shuffling walk of a woman aged beyond her years, Melissa Leo plays Alex's aunt, the woman who helped raise him.

Of course, we feel the anxiety of parents who aren't sure that their children remain alive. Of course, we feel the brutal effectiveness of torture scenes that take place in an abandoned apartment building that Keller owns but can't afford to renovate. And the film holds our attention through its 2 1/2-hour length.

It's difficult to discuss much more without spoilers, but know that Prisoners -- though encompassing, well-acted and morally ambitious -- includes a bit of overreaching in its finale, perhaps an attempt to underline the movie's thematic seriousness. at times, the screenplay loses credibility amid Villeneuve's thickening applications of tension and mood.

Unlike more traditional thrillers, Prisoners does not offer a totally cathartic sense of relief. It wraps things up, but the physical and moral dampness that pervades everything feels as if it might never dry.

History served up in bold slices

It takes liberties with the real man's life, but Lee Daniels' The Butler works as a tumultuous summary of the Civil Rights era.

August isn't a bad month for critics to stop paying attention to movies. As we inch toward Labor Day, the releases tend to have the feel of filler. A look at the multiplex schedule makes you wonder whether Hollywood isn't marking time until the Oscar-bound big boys lumber into view.

All of this by way of saying that I've been traveling, and haven't seen my usual quota of movies, a situation that in late August can be seen as more reprieve than deprivation.

Was I bereft that I missed the preview screening of Kick-Ass 2? If so, it was only because airline re-routing had condemned my wife and her quick-to-grumble husband to an interminable day of schedule shuffling, plane delays and airborne discomfort.

Upon my return to Denver, I decided that there was only one movie I needed to see to fill in my otherwise empty dance card: Lee Daniels' The Butler, the story of Cecil Gaines, a black man who served as a butler in the White House from the time of President Eisenhower until the reign of Ronald -- a.k.a. the Great Communicator -- Reagan.

I should confess that I'm not much of a Daniels' fan. I didn't jump on the Precious (2009) bandwagon, and I found 2012's The Paperboy to be mired in excess bordering on hysteria, a wallowing and sweaty movie that, at one point, saw Nicole Kidman's character urinate on Zac Efron's character, one of the few times I hoped that special effects had indeed supplanted any attempt at realism.

I was much relieved to discover that The Butler -- though vividly realized -- represents a toned-down version of Daniels-style drama.

First, my problem:
Too many years in journalism have, I think, stunted my imagination. When I read about the divergence between fact and fiction in a movie that's depicting a slice of history, I tend to feel a bit deflated. Look, I know there can be a crucial difference between truth and fact, but too many years in newsrooms have made me partial to historical drama that limits distortion to mild flirtation.

To the point: Daniels and screenwriter Daniel Strong, who also wrote HBO's Game Change, have taken considerable liberties with their main character, played with admirable reserve by Forest Whitaker.

Gaines was inspired by the real-life story of a man named Eugene Allen, who worked for 34 years in the White House. In the movie, Gaines' oldest son (ably played by David Oyelowo)becomes contemptuous of his father's calling during the Civil Rights era.

Oyelowo's Louis is a convenient fictional creation, a young man who makes the transition from a hopeful freedom rider to a resolute member of the Black Panther party, an arc that describes the historical backdrop against which the story unfolds and which adds a dose of generational tension to the story.

During the movie, Gaines' wife, brilliantly played by Oprah Winfrey, has an affair with a neighbor (Terrence Howard), presumably because she's upset and lonely. Her duty-obsessed husband isn't around much. Evidently, the real butler's wife was loyal and devoted.

In the movie, the couple's youngest son (Elijah Kelley) dies in Vietnam. In real life, the Gaines' only son returned from Vietnam and went on to find employment in the State Department.

I've gotten all of this from an Aug. 16 article in Time; I repeat highlights of that story more to reveal my own bias than to debunk the movie, which -- in the broadest terms -- is successful.

And, yes, I understand the approach. Daniels uses Gaines' personal history as a point of expansion, a spine that allows him to tell a story that's bigger and more important than one man's life.

In taking this fictionalized look at a man who served in the White House, Daniels also charts the sweep of the Civil Rights movement, and he makes effective use of news footage that seems no less shocking now than it did during the heyday of a grassroots movement that changed the United States.

Moroever, only a couple of scenes -- an explosive argument at a dinner table and a pointless interlude involving Mrs. Gaines' dalliance with her neighbor -- push the movie into what looks like familiar, i.e., over-amped, Daniels' territory.

More often than not, though, the rough candor in Daniels' style serves the screenplay, which won't be mistaken for anyone's idea of a finesse job. Right from its start, The Butler makes bold points boldly, which may be precisely what the material demands.

Now, some side comments: It's amazing to me that a personality as identifiable as Winfrey was able to convince us that she's the whiskey tippling, sometimes resentful wife of a man who learned the butler's trade at an early age.

Young Gaines was brought into "the big house" by a racist Georgia woman (Vanessa Redgrave in a small role) who schooled Gaines in domestic servitude after her son raped the boy's mother and shot his father.

Many presidents appear during the course of the story, some effectively portrayed, some less so. Robin Williams plays Eisenhower, although he looks like a dead ringer for Harry Truman. James Marsden capture's JFK's voice, but looks too much like a frat boy to be entirely convincing. Alan Rickman makes a surprisingly good Reagan. Ditto for Liev Schreiber as the blunt Lyndon B. Johnson.

Whoever had the idea of casting John Cusack as Nixon probably thinks Silicon Valley is best known for its fine macrame. Perhaps Jane Fonda's inevitably ironic appearance as Nancy Reagan makes up for it.

So what the hell am I saying here? Yes, I felt a bit of a letdown when I began reading about the real White House butler who inspired the movie and whose life was first written about by Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood.

But watching The Butler is another story. Daniels evokes a strong feeling for the chaotic blend of horror and idealism that marked a period when some of the best people in the country were -- as Martin Luther King famously said -- trying to bend the moral arc of the universe toward a higher plane of justice.

Murky plot sinks 'Dead Man Down'

A disappointing thriller from a strong collection of talent.
If you're interested in movies, Dead Man Down seems difficult to ignore. The movie marks the U.S. debut of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the Swedish edition of the enormously popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On top of that, the movie stars Noomi Rapace, the gifted actress who worked with Oplev to create the pivotal (and unforgettable) character of Lizbeth Salander in the original Dragon Tattoo series.

The rest of the movie's cast -- Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard, Isabelle Huppert, F. Murray Abraham and, very briefly, Armand Assante -- suggests we're in for a movie with strong performances and a multi-national flavor.

But Dead Man Down -- which was written by J.H. Wyman and which is set in New York City -- proves to be a murky affair, an overly complex story that revolves around Manhattan real estate, mobsters (domestic and Albanian), explosive violence and an odd, evolving relationship between Farrell's Victor and Rapace's Beatrice, a beautician whose face has been badly scarred in an automobile accident.

Dead Man Down puts a variety of revenge-driven forces into play, turning itself into a puzzle of a movie that bets that we'll stick with it until its loose-ends are tied at the end. But in this case, we're asked to make our way through a thick pile of narrative sludge as Dead Man Down heads toward its ultra-violent resolution.

Part of the problem involves the characters. Farrell, who's in almost every frame, portrays an emotionally withdrawn, recessive man who works for a mobster named Alphonse (Howard). It takes time for the screenplay to get around to explaining what Victor really wants, and Farrell can seem as inert as he is mysterious.

Victor and Beatrice live in separate but neighboring apartment buildings. She watches him from her balcony and decides -- with encouragement from her mother (Huppert) -- that she ought to meet this mysterious fellow. As it turns out, Beatrice has a vengeful agenda of her own, which can't be described here without adding significant spoilers.

Suffice it to say that the movie's dreary mood extends to the performances. Rapace fares better than the others, remaining interesting despite the fact that she's playing a character that doesn't compute, but Howard, whose work I almost always enjoy, never seems to find a handle on his character.

Huppert portrays a happy woman who speaks more French than English, Assante is limited to one scene, and an equally underutilized Abraham pops in an out of the story as Victor's uncle.

The movie tries to make use of the fact that Victor -- a native of Hungry who was trained as an engineer -- has technical skills, but little about the character sticks, and in the end, Oplev resolves the plot's many conflicts with an overblown and preposterous display of violence.

Although Dead Man Down generates a bit of visual interest, it's noir musings mostly come off as leaden, unbelievable and more than a little confusing.

Disappointing as it is, Dead Man Down does boast at least one distinction: It may be the first neo-noir movie to figure out a way to work Tupperware into its plot.

'Red Tails' offers a fleet history lesson

A rudimentary look at the battles the Tuskegee Airmen fought.

It's hardly surprising that the George Lucas-financed Red Tails puts lots of energy into flying sequences that evoke the terror and excitement of airborne battle.

Of course, Red Tails has more on its mind than zooming action. The movie also aims for social significance, telling the story of the Tuskegee Airman, black pilots who overcame prejudice and long odds to make significant contributions to the World War II combat effort.

Red Tails isn't the first feature to tackle the Tuskegee story, another being The Tuskegee Airman, a 1995 HBO movie starring Laurence Fishburne. The action in Red Tails may be a lot spiffier than what you'll find in its 1995 counterpart, but I found the older movie to be more comprehensive, more interesting and better acted - although both may be more earnest than they need to be.

As directed by Anthony Hemingway, from a screenplay by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, Red Tails rides on bursts of bold action and straightforward exposition, some of which points out the alarming contradictions faced by airmen fighting for a country that didn't fully accept their humanity.

These highly educated men were relegated to flying behind-the-lines missions until a determined colonel (Terrence Howard) convinced a wary and sometimes bigoted Washington hierarchy that the Tuskegee Airmen -- stationed in Italy at the time - deserved a chance to fight.

Supposedly drawn from interviews with Tuskegee Airmen, the drama in Red Tails nonetheless has a cookie-cutter feel that limits the efforts of a large and appealing cast.

The screenplay's two main Tuskegee pilots are Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo) and Martin "Easy" Julian (Nate Parker.) Little and Julian are best friends but have fundamental disagreements that revolve around Julian's drinking and Little's risk-taking.

Cuba Gooding Jr., who appeared in the HBO movie, joins Howard as a ranking officer. He seems to be trying to provide all his scenes with an exclamation point by determinedly stuffing a pipe into his mouth.

Perhaps to add dramatic variety, Red Tails has Oyelowo's Little strike up a relationship with an Italian woman (Daniela Ruah). Maybe someone thought a few quiet moments were necessary to punctuate the atmosphere of robust camaraderie surrounding the fliers, who can be intensely competitive with one another.

Lucas has said that he had to finance the picture and pay for its distribution because studios shied away from an all-black cast. That may be true, and Lucas is to be commended for having the persistence to stay with a project that he began thinking about in 1988, but Red Tails can't be called a complete success.

In achieving some of the old-fashioned zeal for which it must have been aiming, Red Tails sacrifices much of the edge we've come to expect from the best war movies.

That's not to say that Red Tails is without value. Young audiences in particular may know little or nothing about the segregated quality of civilian and military life during the 1940s. Deficiencies aside, Red Tails offers a zippy - if rudimentary -- history lesson, as well as plenty of affirmation of the achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen.