An Irish tough guy takes on the mob

A worthy addition to a reliable genre..

Every now again, a movie takes us by surprise. That’s what happened to me with Kill the Irishman, a welcome addition to the expansive gallery of gangster movies, perhaps our grittiest and most consistently rewarding genre. In addition to having some fire in its belly, Irishman has the added benefit of being based on the true story of a bomb-riddled crime wave that swept Cleveland in the mid-1970s.

A tough Irishman named Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) provides the focus for a drama that pits him and several cohorts against Cleveland's reigning Mafia bosses. At stake: the city’s criminal largess – and a certain, twisted sense of ethnic pride.

Danny, a rough-and-tumble kid who starred on his high school’s basketball team, begins his career working on the Cleveland waterfront. He muscles his way to the top of the longshoreman’s union. Corruption – payoffs and various other forms of larceny – afford Danny a taste of the good life. He relishes it – until the cops close in on him.

After cutting a deal to avoid prosecution, Danny pursues a less organized life of crime with director Jonathan Hensleigh and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub giving dangerous, gritty life to this tumultuous period of Cleveland’s history.

At first, I wasn’t sure about Stevenson’s performance; it seemed a little flat. An Irish-born actor who has spent most of his life in England, Stevenson keeps the histrionics to a minimum, sometimes relying on sheer physical bulk to convey Greene’s bravado and menace, but as the movie progresses, Stevenson becomes increasingly credible. His Danny is as tough as a calloused fist.

A thug who’s not afraid to be caught reading a book, Greene never shrinks from a fight, takes no crap from anyone and seems to have made a major life decision early: In a brutal world, no one was going to push him around. Wisely, Stevenson never quite settles the question of whether we should abhor Danny or admire his grit.

Hensleigh surrounds Stevenson with a large, capable cast. A beefy Val Kilmer plays a cop who grew up with Danny, and has followed his exploits. Vincent D’Onofrio portrays a Mafia guy. Passed over for a promotion, D’Onofrio’s John Nardi forms an alliance with Danny, offering proof of his undying friendship in one of the movie’s most chilling scenes.

These days, no gangster film can call itself complete unless Christopher Walken makes an appearance. Here, Walken plays Shondor Birns, a Jewish restaurateur who’s more interested in crime than cuisine. Tony Lo Bianco signs on as Jack Licavoli, head of the Italian mob in Cleveland. Paul Sorvino does cameo duty as a New York mobster.

I can’t say that Kill the Irishman breaks a lot of new ground, but it does a hell of a job digging up old soil, and it even throws in a bit of Irish romanticism for good measure. In an attempt to present Danny as something more than a mean-spirited thug, we’re given a scene that anoints him as a bona fide Celtic warrior, the noble descendant of a breed of hard-drinking, hard-fighting men who may not have known how to rule the world, but weren’t about to let it rule them.

That may be blarney, but Kill the Irishman delivers the gangster goods, earning its place among a variety of small films that pack some wallop.

One more thing: You'll see so many car-bomb explosions in Kill The Irishman that when you leave the theater, you may be tempted to take a good look under your car before you start it. Hey, you can't be too careful.

'Hanna' unleashes more girl power

Hanna can't be accused of visual dullness, but shouldn't it make a little more sense?

The new thriller Hanna may be visually bold, but there’s less to it than meets the eye. Fairy tale overtones, breathless action and a striking performance from Saoirse Ronan can't quite get Hanna past its own gimmickry.

The movie’s most important gimmick can be found in its title character. Sixteen-year-old Hanna (Ronan) comes equipped with the kind of identity that earns respect in movies. She’s a carefully trained killer, a deadly helping of girl power served in an action context.

Ronan’s Hanna may have an Alice in Wonderland face, but she’s not likely to show up at any tea parties. She can take on multiple foes, out run even the most determined of pursuers, speak a variety of languages, and hunt game before breakfast. Did I mention that she handles weapons as deftly as other kids text?

Raised in a Finnish forest by a rogue CIA agent (Eric Bana), Hanna has been well schooled in the survival arts. She has been taught to anticipate danger and to defend herself.

In fairness, it must be said that Ronan elevates Hanna above the script’s abundant absurdity, giving her an eerie determination that makes this disorienting and far-fetched thriller more compelling than it deserves to be. When Hanna leaves the isolation of the forest, she’s like an alien trying to understand a new planet.

But Ronan can’t totally make up for the script’s lack of logic, unless you buy the idea that references to fairy tales excuse a multitude of sins, particularly a lack of plausibility.

I’m not over-interpreting: Wright makes explicit references to classic fairy tales, beginning with an illustrated edition of Red Riding Hood that Hanna peruses in an early scene and culminating in a showdown in an abandoned German amusement park where Wright offers one last grandly overstated chance to equate evil with a wolf.

Having passed beyond the age of the brothers Grimm, we must look for our ogres, witches and wicked stepmothers in the one place that reliably supports big-screen villainy: the secret corridors of government. Hanna must square off against a CIA bureaucrat (Cate Blanchett) who combines the bite of the Big Bad Wolf with the cunning of a wicked witch.

If Ronan is able to take Hanna beyond gimmickry, Blanchett – a gifted actress who need not apologize for anything she does – fares less well. Her Marissa, an all-business killer, is a predator, right down to her bleeding gums. She’s arch, vicious and burdened by a wavering Southern accent.

Wright, who directed Ronan in Atonement and who also directed a big-screen version of Pride and Prejudice, this time forsakes literary adaptation for a kinetically charged fantasy in which Hanna spends nearly the entire movie on the run. When Hanna decides she’s ready to leave the forest, she’s captured by Marissa’s troops. After she escapes, she heads for Berlin, where she’s supposed to reunite with Bana’s character.

En route, Hanna faces a variety obstacles. Notable among these supporting menaces: Tom Hollander’s Isaacs, a freakish blond killer whose looks and intonations suggest a level of perversity so ingrained, it has become casual.

At heart, Hanna is little more than a glorified series of chases with one interlude offering a bit of relief. Hanna latches onto a normal family that’s touring Morocco in a battered van. Hanna does her best to make friends with the family’s teen-age daughter (a lively Jessica Barden), but Hanna has not learned much about social interaction.

The movie doesn’t sit still for long, and Hanna soon finds herself back in motion, traversing borders with an ease that defies logic. She also runs a lot, an activity that has prompted comparisons to director Tom Tykwer’s 1998 Run Lola Run. Unlike Tykwer’s streamlined effort, Wright’s Hanna loads up on plot, boosting its adrenalin level with a throbbing Chemical Brothers score that amounts to musical fist pumping.

At the end of a movie, it’s sometimes interesting to imagine what might be next in the life of its main character. For Hanna, that question only can be answered in movie terms. What’s next? The only thing I could think of for this wholly unreal character was a sequel.

Put another way: I don’t think there are any proms or SATs in young Hanna’s future.

'Arthur' didn't need remaking

An unnecessary remake of a medium-grade comedy.

After watching Russell Brand play an infantile drunken billionaire in the entirely unnecessary remake of 1981’s Arthur, I thought about stopping at the nearest saloon and ordering a double. A stiff drink might have washed away the taste of mediocrity that pervades a juvenile comedy that has been tweaked for a new century.

Whatever its faults, the original – which earned the estimable John Gielgud an Oscar for playing an imperious butler named Hobson -- tops this silly remake in nearly every way.

To begin with, Brand lacks even the small amounts of pathos that Dudley Moore brought to the title role, and Helen Mirren -- terrific an actress as she is – can’t add the same level of dry humor that marked a Gielgud performance steeped in witty disdain.

In fairness to Mirren, it should be noted that Gielgud was given better dialog. Besides, Mirren’s playing Arthur’s nanny, not his butler. Creepy, no? A grown man with a nanny? Is it hilarious when she Mirren’s Hobson tells Arthur to be sure to wash his “winky?” If you answered “yes” to that question, let’s agree never to talk dirty to each other.

Screenwriter Peter Baynham follows the same basic plot as the original. Arthur's mother orders her Hopelessly playboy son to marry an upper crust New Yorker or be disinherited. In the original, Arthur’s father – head of a large corporation -- issued the marriage ultimatum. The gender changes in Baynham’s script do little to freshen characters that weren’t exactly novel 30 years ago.

The 2011 edition of Arthur boasts a variety of additional miscalculations, not the least of which is the fact that the woman Arthur is ordered to marry (Jennifer Garner) is more appealing than the woman he falls for (Greta Gerwig), a Queens resident who conducts unauthorized guided tours at Manhattan's Grand Central Station and who aspires to write children’s books.

Baynham and director Jason Winer try to make the movie acceptable for 2011 with a half-hearted reference to the recession and an end-of-picture resolution that finds Arthur 12-stepping his way toward sobriety. And you certainly won’t be surprised to learn that the movie refuses to take its silliness straight, mixing in a bit of sentimentality at the end.

I suppose that one’s reaction to Arthur hinges on Brand, who looks more dissolute than Moore, who had the appearance of a drunken gnome. Funny as a wanton rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Brand didn’t exactly knock me out in last year’s Get Him to the Greek, and he’s even less amusing here.

In a how-the-mighty-have-fallen aside, it should be noted that Nick Nolte appears in a small role as the father of Arthur’s fianceé. Watching Nolte do this kind of thankless job made me sad, which isn’t what a movie such as Arthur is supposed to do.

And, no, I didn’t stop for that drink. I went home and streamed the original on Netflix, an activity that only confirmed what I already suspected. The remake goes nowhere.

'Your Highness' is a royal flop

This Medieval comedy is vulgar, but not funny..

Once a darling of critics, David Gordon Green (George Washington and All the Real Girls) lately has been dabbling in low-brow comedy, first in 2008's Pineapple Express and now with Your Highness. * Green manages to take two of last year's prominent Oscar names -- James Franco (nominee) and Natalie Portman (winner) on a downward spiraling ride. * Tasteless and often downright ugly, Your Highness attempts to spoof the cliches of the sword-and-sorcery genre. * Danny McBride, who along with Franco appeared in Pineapple Express, plays a prince immersed in a sibling rivalry with his older brother Fabious (Franco). The brothers embark on a quest to save Fabious' finacee (Zooey Deschanel). * Deschanel's Belladonna has fallen into the clutches of the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). The brothers ultimately find Belladonna, but discover few laughs as the script pours on the F-word, something you can do at home without having to purchase a ticket. * Is it me or is there some kind of rule that after winning an Oscar, an actor must always appear in a bad movie? Oh well, at least Portman looks good. * The movie's comic high point involves a severed penis. Does that tell you enough? No? Well, the presence of special effects makes the movie seem as overproduced as it is witless.* By the end, I was hoping that Your Highness wouldn't raise its sword in in triumph, but would fall on it instead.

Playing with reality and art in Tuscany

An Iranian master travels to Italy, and asks provocative questions about the nature of art and reality.

The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has taken a trip to Italy, and we’re better off for it. Certified Copy – Kiarostami’s tantalizing new movie – is that rare film with sophisticated aspirations realized without strain.

By following a couple around the Italian village of Lucignano, Kiarostami plays with the elusive nature of reality, and the difficulty of separating it from illusion. If that’s too heady for you, know that the movie also works as an easygoing look at relationship dynamics.

Here’s the set-up: A British author (William Shimell) visits the Tuscan town of Arezzo to give a lecture. Shimell’s James has written about the uneasy relationship between copies and originals.

Elle (Juliette Binoche), a French antiques dealer who’s living in Italy, arrives after the lecture has begun, and is further distracted when her teen-age son (Adrian Moore) shows up.

Distractions aside, Elle manages to hook up with James. She offers to show him around, deciding that a drive to nearby Lucignano would be perfect. He agrees, and off they go, talking about his ideas about art, her ideas about art, and other subjects that tend to veer toward abstraction.

When the locals begin treating Elle and James as a married couple, they decide to play along. Gradually, they begin acting like a real married couple.

They argue over his long absences from the marriage; they bicker about the way she treats their apparently exasperating son. It becomes increasingly clear that this 15-year fictional “marriage” has reached an impasse, a situation that gains in irony when we realize that many couples – filled with the joy of new love – come to Lucignano to marry.

One such couple asks James and Elle to take a picture with them. She’s willing; he has to be dragged into the photo. Character stands revealed.

As the movie progresses, it almost seems as if the characters themselves have begun to embody Kiarostami's questions about artistic authenticity. The issues between Elle and James seem quite real, even though they’ve told us they’re only pretending to be married. The copy begins to ring true. Or, as some have speculated, maybe Elle and James really are married.

On one level, Certified Copy resembles Richard Linklater’s paired movies Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, but Certified Copy goes beyond those movies to grapple with dizzying questions about the nature of art – all in an unobtrusive and plausible way.

To some, Certified Copy may seem like a slender story about two people playing a game that takes a serious turn. Nothing more. On that level, Bincohe’s impassioned performance contrasts nicely with Shimell’s cool portrayal of a man who spends entirely too much time in his head.

All of this encourages us to ask ourselves a provocative question. Isn’t every movie an illusion, a representation of reality that we treat as if it were real? There never was nor ever will be a Don Corleone, but the title character from The Godfather gives us vivid insights into the psyches of men who wield great power. Pick your own example.

By the end, Kiarostami’s “simple” little movie has opened to complexities that most movies avoid – the complexities of acting a role, the complexities of plumbing the depths of character and the complexities of male/female relationships, of course, but also -- and just as important -- the complexities of the ways in which we see and, therefore, convince ourselves to believe.

His mind is stuck in the '60s

There’s something a little drab about The Music Never Stopped, an interesting -- though slender -- story about a young man (Lou Taylor Pucci) who loses his memory of anything after 1969 as the result of a benign brain tumor. * Based on The Last Hippie, an Oliver Sacks’ story, The Music Never Stopped alternates awkwardly realized flashbacks to the '60s with action set in the assisted living facility where Pucci’s character resides. * Pucci’s father (J.K. Simmons) tries to reestablish a relationship with his son, a difficult task because Pucci’s Gabriel, a former musician, only can communicate when he’s immersed in the ‘60s music he loves; i.e., The Beatles or the Grateful Dead. * Dad’s pretty much a big band guy who hated his son’s music and all the countercultural attitudes that went along with it. * Still, it’s Simmons’ Henry Sawyer who finds a music therapist (Julia Ormand) to help reach out to his son. * An equal blend of touching and strained moments, The Music Never Stopped has its virtues, but never quite achieves the expected impact.

A gripping, if muddled, 'Source Code'

Director Duncan Jones' second feature is vivid and entertaining.

Director Duncan Jones made a splash on the indie film circuit with 2009's Moon, a movie in which Sam Rockwell played an isolated astronaut hoping to return home from a long stint at a moon base. Bigger, sharper and more entertaining than its predecessor, Source Code keeps Jones in the sci-fi realm with a story that can play like a Twilight Zone episode on steroids.

Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Coulter Stevens, a young man who wakes up on a Chicago commuter train. The woman seated across from him (Michelle Monaghan) talks to him as if she knows him. But he doesn't know her. Totally confused, Gyllenhaal's character slips into the restroom to regroup. There, the weirdness gets weirder. When he looks in the mirror, the reflection staring back at him belongs to someone else.

As Source Code progresses, we begin to realize (as does Gyllenhaal's character) what's happening, but it's best not to tell too much more about the movie's plot, except to note that Ben Ripley's screenplay has Gyllenhaal repeating the same scenario a number of times.

We learn what's going on at roughly the same pace as Gyllenhaal's Stevens, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He begins to grasp that he's on a mission that requires him -- with help from some technology, of course -- to keep returning to that train in eight-minute chunks.

With each trip, Stevens gains more knowledge about how high the stakes are. Bombs, domestic terror and terrible urban destruction lurk in the background.

Although I can't say Duncan totally sold me on the movie's time-bending premise, he keeps the story moving with the inexorable speed of the train Stevens revisits. At its best, Source Code comes at us in vivid bursts; its mood becomes increasingly frantic, partly because its hero must work against inflexible deadlines that up the dramatic ante. It's an old contrivance, of course, but Duncan infuses it with fresh energy.

Gyllenhaal acquits himself well, and Monaghan proves exceptionally appealing as a young woman who believes her life has reached a turning point.

The rest of the cast includes Jeffrey Wright, as a brainy scientist, and Vera Farmiga, as Wright's subordinate. Wright, a wonderful actor, seems wasted in a role that just about anyone could have handled. Farmiga, who has more to do, portrays a character that's a bit of a departure for her, but neither Wright nor Farmiga are likely to press this one into their books of indelible acting memories.

Source Code flirts with joining the ranks of paranoia-prone movies that deal with the ways manipulative governments betray their heroes. Too bad the movie's cop-out ending - really an epilogue - pushes Duncan onto less challenging turf. But Duncan knows how to hold an audience's attention, and Source Code's devotion to creating Hitchcock-style suspense keeps us on edge, which (happy to say) is precisely what movies such as this are supposed to do.

Wrestling with a crummy economy

Win Win may pull a few punches, but that doesn't stop it from being an entertaining little movie.

Win Win is a soft comedy about hard times, but -- and this could be the movie's saving grace -- it's neither soggy nor overly sentimental.

Writer/director Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent and The Visitor) builds his story around Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a small-time New Jersey lawyer who represents elderly clients. A sour economy has put the pinch on Mike. He has no money to fix the boiler in his building, and he's worried about how he'll make ends meet at home.

Mike, as you might gather, is not the world's luckiest man. Witness: He serves as the volunteer coach of the local high school wrestling team, which has a record woeful enough to match an economy that has been pinned to the mat.

McCarthy mixes realistic observation and sports-movie tropes as he explores two major plot developments. In the first, Mike arranges for one of his clients (Burt Young) to be placed in an assisted living facility. On the verge of Alzheimer's Young's Leo Poplar needs help, but Mike's behavior in this matter may not be exemplary.

In a related development, Leo's grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) shows up for a visit. When Kyle's drug-addicted mother was ordered into rehab, Kyle fled his Ohio home to escape Mom's abusive boyfriend. Because Kyle is unable to live with his grandfather, Mike decides to look after the boy, an act of ... let's say -- semi-altruism.

Why not full-bore altruism? As it turns out, Kyle was a champion wrestler back in Ohio. Should he enroll in the local high school, he just might help reverse the fortunes of Mike's downtrodden team, a prospect that buoys Mike's sagging spirits, as well as those of his assistant coach (a dour Jeffrey Tambor).

McCarthy assembles the ingredients of a standard sports movie, the kind that builds toward a triumphant finale with high-fives all around. Happily, he takes another tack, focusing on the ways in which Mike's decisions impact those around him, as well as on Kyle's search for an adult he can trust. Kyle's the kind of kid whose young life has been riddled with disappointment.

Shaffer, who had never acted prior to Win Win, offers a believable mix of sullenness and openness, and Giamatti again proves a master of the art of hangdog expression, coupled this time with a sneaky bent for pragmatism that sometimes leads him astray.

The supporting cast includes Amy Ryan, bracing and true as Mike's down-to-Earth wife, and Bobby Cannavale, a little over the top, as a wealthy friend of Mike's who's trying to get past the pain of a divorce and who sometimes acts the buffoon. Cannavale, who worked with McCarthy on Station Agent, provides comic relief -- although he never struck me as especially funny. Melanie Lynskey portrays Kyle's mother, a woman who shows up just when things seem to be progressing for her troubled son. She insists that Kyle return to Ohio with her.

McCarthy wraps things up in a way that's satisfying, perhaps because the ending is only slightly attenuated. There may be a few loose ends, but we get the feeling that things probably are going to work out for everyone involved.

Win Win uses a depressed economy as the starting point for a drama that can be accused of pulling a few punches, but compensates with characters who are life-sized, plausbile and appealingly ordinary. Admirably, it also refuses to surrender to the most obvious sports-movie cliches. It probably sounds condescending, but I mean no disrespect when I say that Win Win is a nice little movie.

'Jane Eyre' only fitfully springs to life

Come on baby, light my fire. This Jane Eyre takes too long to spark.

Watching Jane Eyre, the umpteenth adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's, dog-eared 1847 novel, I was besieged by a single nagging thought: "Will high school English never end?"

I had approached the latest big-screen edition of Jane Eyre with more hope than usual, mostly because Cary Joji Fukunaga directed it. Fukunaga's previous work - the viscerally charged immigration drama Sin Nombre - seemed light years away from the world of Bronte, but Fukunaga could have been precisely the right man to breathe new life into a literary classic.

Did he? Not entirely.

Despite the presence of a gifted young actress - Mia Wasikowska - this Jane Eyre comes up short on urgency and passion. Even the presence of the estimable Judi Dench, as the housekeeper at the movie's principal location - Thornfield Hall - doesn't provide a totally compelling reason for us once again to trample across the moors.

Of course, it's all mostly acceptable. And, yes, I'm being something of a spoilsport. Jane Eyre is by no means a bad movie, just one that probably needn't have been made. Besides, if you can't give into your prejudices now and then, what's the point of being a critic?

For those who don't know, the story begins with Jane's mistreatment by an aunt (Sally Hawkins) after her parents die. Jane's shipped off to an orphanage where she's further abused. When she's old enough to leave, Jane lands a position as governess to a child who's being cared for by the gloomy Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbinder).

Rochester's house, we learn, harbors a secret: Jane, we learn, is forbidden from entering an attic room, and often hears strange goings-on about the house with Fukunaga cranking up the ominous atmosphere.

Fassbinder lacks the stature that Orson Welles brought to the role of Rochester, a man whose demeanor can be gruff. Fassbinder broods with the best of them, but he's probably not imposing enough.

Wasikowska - familiar to those who've seen Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland or those who saw her as the daughter of Julianne Moore and Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right -- is a gifted young actress - but even her work can't always elevate a Jane Eyre that takes its time finding the kind chemistry between Jane and Rochester that can satisfy committed romantics.

Oh well. Enough. With movies such as Jane Eyre I'm never sure whether to write a review or a book report.

So to borrow a phrase from Bill Maher, maybe we need a new rule: Please, a moratorium on movies made from novels for which there are CliffsNotes.