All posts by One Guys Opinion

Dr. Frank Swietek is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dallas, where he is regarded as a particularly tough grader. He has been the film critic of the University News since 1988, and has discussed movies on air at KRLD-AM (Dallas) and KOMO-AM (Seattle). He is also the Founding President of the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics' Association, a group of print and broadcast journalists covering film in the Metroplex area, and was a charter member of the Society of Texas Film Critics. Dr. Swietek is a member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). He was instrumental in the creation of the Lone Star Awards, which, through the efforts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Film Commission, give recognition annually to the best feature films and television programs produced in Texas.
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RESIDENT EVIL

Producers: Robert Kulzer, Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Carter Swan and Asad Qizilbash   Director: Zach Cregger   Screenplay: Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten   Cast: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, Johnno Wilson, Andrea Miltnerová, Will Merrick, Emily Piggford, Zoé Bellas, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Griffin Newman, Magdalena Sittova and Shawn W. Loeser   Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures

Grade: C+

Zach Cregger’s is the best “Resident Evil” movie ever.  But that’s a very low bar, since the seven previous ones were all atrocious.  It’s an extremely canny exercise in comic horror, technically impressive and well very choreographed.  Yet it’s nothing more than an efficient cinematic roller-coaster ride, with plenty of exhilarating, stomach-challenging ups.  The downside is that there’s no surprise about where it will end up, however many twists are built into it. 

That’s the result of Cregger’s decision to make what amounts to an “origins” movie, though told from the perspective of a character new to the franchise, a scruffy, nebbishy fellow named Bryan (Austin Abrams) who unwillingly becomes the cog in a last-ditch effort to head off the spread of the t-virus inadvertently released by the Umbrella Corporation.  A medical courier who’s assigned to transport a parcel to Raccoon City on a snowy winter’s night, he doesn’t know that the bag contains the key to an antidote that will stop the spread of the infection.  But to deliver it, he’ll have to run a gauntlet of increasingly icky, menacing obstacles.

We meet Bryan as he’s delivering one medical parcel to a hospital, and taking the opportunity to pick up another though his car isn’t actually fitted for the ice-covered roads.  He’s also dealing with a crisis involving his girlfriend, who’s told him she’s pregnant.  In their phone conversations, she’s not satisfied with his attitude about how to proceed.  (This is a subplot that could easily have been excised without loss.)

But at least it explains his distraction when an apparently deranged woman (Andrea Miltnerová) jumps out in front of his car on the lonely road to Raccoon City.  He hits her, but not fatally.  Being an essentially nice guy he starts to take her to the hospital until the sheriff (Johnno Wilson) pulls him over.  The cop agrees to escort him and his bag to the hospital, and even to take the woman in his car.  But to Bryan’s horror the police car skids off the road and crashes, the cop dies, and the woman escapes; he eventually shoots her with the cop’s gun as she chases him maniacally. Obviously, she’s infected and zombiefied, though Bryan doesn’t know that yet. 

Then he walks to the only house he sees, a bad decision as he’s attacked, first by a dog that turns into a grotesquely tentacled, sharp-toothed monster and then by an infected resident, whom he shoots with a shotgun he finds, as he does the original woman who has come back to life and followed him.  Watching the corpses’ intertwining leads him to mumble the phrase that will repeatedly come to his lips, the immortal “What the f—?”

He eventually escapes back to the road after failing for the second time to shoot open a padlock (a joke repeated often) and finds cars, and an RV, crashed near a tunnel.  Inside the latter he finds an infected young girl, whom he’s forced to shoot when those ugly tentacles attack him from her leg.  Points here for Cregger’s willingness to off a child—always proof that a horror movie is serious. 

Shortly after, Cregger adds some characters, Umbrella folk.  Bryan’s picked up by a corporate exec (Paul Walter Hauser) and security guard (Kali Reis) who drive him into the city to deliver the bag to the Umbrella lab atop a damaged skyscraper.  Many more infected humans and deformed creatures are introduced along the way, including a bulbous Jabba-like figure in the sewer who proves pregnant, and both of his companions are dispatched.  But Bryan makes it inside the building, where he’s forced to navigate the twenty-eight floors up to the lab.  He finds it was unwise to ignore advice not to take an elevator during an emergency. 

But he makes it despite the grotesque beings confronting him in transit, only to have the medical bag quickly seized by Umbrella technicians led by Dave (Zach Cherry).  Unfortunately, that nasty scrape Bryan’s suffered on his arm proves their undoing, with Dave’s trembling assistant (Will Merrick) the last man standing, except Bryan of course. After a fashion, at least.

Cregger delivers all this in speedy, episodic form, sometimes collaborating with expert cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and editor Joe Murphy in crafting tracking shots that mimic the first-person graphics of the videogame but not being slavish about it, more often using visuals of a more conventional sort.  He’s fortunate to have Abrams as Bryan; a member of the ensemble in his last film, “Weapons,” the young actor manages to keep semi-goofy Bryan sympathetic even when he’s blowing away people in terror.  The rest of the cast is merely serviceable, but Hauser gets a few laughs as a craven corporate type.

Abrams’ real co-stars, though, are the creations of the effects and makeup departments, who have done yeoman work in confecting the various baddies he faces.  The main influence here seems to have been the fantastically grotesque creature effects in John Carpenter’s 1982 “The Thing,” a film which, in spite of its failure in original release, has become the seminal modern horror movie.  But Cregger’s monsters still lack the wonderfully anarchic ghoulishness of Carpenter’s. 

The visuals are overall quite fine, considering that filming in Prague probably gave production designer Tom Hammock fits in creating a convincing American landscape—and a persuasive Raccoon City.  They’re accompanied by a music score by Hays and Ryan Holladay that juxtaposes spookiness in the creepy scenes with unabashed vigor in the action ones, and an effective sound design that, for example, catches beautifully the crunch of boots on ice-covered snow. 

But Cregger’s “Resident Evil” has the same weakness that hobbled the prequel trilogy to “Star Wars”—it tells us in greater detail something we already know.  It’s not so acute in this case, as it concentrates on new characters, and the treatment isn’t the lumbering thing the trilogy was; Cregger is smart enough to keep the movie trim and swift, and the effects certainly meet the gore test.  But after the cleverness of “Barbarian” and “Weapons,” it leaves one asking, “Is that all there is?”

Incidentally, it’s been reported that after test screenings Cregger removed jokes from the film because viewers complained it was too funny.  One can only speculate about what was jettisoned, but what’s left certainly still qualifies as a horror comedy, though admittedly the humor is of a caustic, quirky sort. 

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THE WEIGHT

Producers: Simon Fields, Nathan Fields, Ryan Hawke, Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo   Director: Padraic McKinley   Screenplay: Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines   Cast: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Alec Newman, Sam Hazeldine, Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen, George Burgess, Avy Berry and Cameron Brady   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: B

Ethan Hawke is one of the busiest actors in the business, and he’s been unusually astute in his choice of vehicles.  “The Weight” might not be one of his very best films, but it’s still quite good. 

It might be thought of as a combination of “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Wages of Fear” (or “Sorcerer,” if you prefer).  Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, introduced in 1933 Oregon as a World War I veteran and single dad to angelic tyke Penny (Avy Berry).  Returning from church one morning, they find an eviction notice on their apartment door and their belongings stacked up in the stairwell.  When the new renters arrive, Samuel sells them a radio, along with Penny’s cherished teddy bear, though he vows to get it back eventually.     

Searching for a new apartment, Samuel is accosted by three men in an alley, gets in an altercation and is arrested and sent to prison; Penny is taken into foster care, and is due to come up for adoption.  Meanwhile her father is sent to a work camp presided over by crusty warden Clancy (Russell Crowe).  Clancy, tasked with building a road, is impressed by Murphy’s skill in using leverage to move a boulder obstructing the path, and even more by the convict’s ability to fix his car.

And as it happens, he’s on the lookout for a talented man.  He’s in cahoots with Taggert (Alec Newman), overseer at a nearby goldmine; together they’re anxious to move the bullion stored there before it’s confiscated by the federal government in accordance with FDR’s Executive Order 6102 prohibiting private hoarding of gold.  They plan to use a contingent of convicts to carry the bars into the forest, and to Clancy, Murphy seems to be the ideal man to lead the team.  In exchange he offers to commute Murphy’s sentence to time served, freeing him to reunite with Penny before she’s adopted. 

Murphy selects his three roomies to fill out the smuggling crew—sneering racist Rankin (Austin Amelio), socialist immigrant Singh (Avi Nash) and even-tempered lug Olson (Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen), and they set out with their heavy baggage under the watchful gaze of Taggert’s two brutal enforcers Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess).  To the group is soon added Anna (Julia Jones), a runaway from the mine who escapes and follows them, eventually becoming an important member of the team.

The journey is an eventful one, spelled out for us with captions counting down its five days, which are marked by squabbles among the men (Rankin and Singh are constantly arguing), and tension with the guards.  But what changes the situation most seriously is the arrival of a stranger (Cameron Brady), who approaches the group with a request for food and. Murphy surmises, will return with friends, and guns. 

Murphy is convinced they must take evasive action, which in turn leads to some unexpected dangers, including a life-threatening crush of logs coming downriver at a most inopportune moment, and a threadbare rope-and-slats bridge that requires Murphy to improvise a way to transport each gold brick from one cliff to the other by stationing himself to catch it midway and then fling it to a waiting comrade the rest of the way. 

In the end there’s a major betrayal, of course, requiring some fast thinking, gunplay, a car chase and a bit of mechanical ingenuity to save the day.  Most of Murphy’s squad survive to return to Clancy’s camp with demands that the corrupt warden is in no position to deny.  But even then Murphy acts as a voice of reason rather than revenge, and the compromises dictated by the times are worked out to everyone’s acceptance, if not total satisfaction.

This is the first feature directed by editor Padraic McKinley, who also continues in his more familiar role alongside Matthew Woolley, and in truth the end result is a mite lumpy and halting, with some abrupt transitions and shifts of perspective; moreover, a couple of the subplots, like the hint of romance between Samuel and Anna, are too ephemeral to leave much of an impression.  The action sequences, moreover, are sometimes too murkily photographed and choppily cut. 

But oddly the very roughness adds to the grit of the depression-era setting.  So does the gloomy look of the film, which was shot in Bavaria by cinematographer Matteo Cocco; somehow production designer Cora Pratz and costumer Esther Walz manage a convincing sense of place in the town sequences, and the dark German forests bring a sense of grim ruggedness to the outdoor scenes that dominate.  The atmospheric score by Latham and Shelby Gaines also helps in engendering a somber mood.

But it’s the cast that ultimately sells the film.  Crowe adds another telling turn to his recent streak of perceptive performances as the smoothly scheming warden, and the rest of the supporting cast are solid down the line, though Berry does not seem a natural child actor.

Hawke, however, is really the indispensable element.  His quiet determination encapsulates a man literally weighed down not only by the heavy burden he must carry across the wild, but by the experiences he’s endured both in the European trenches and back in an economically ravaged America.  Murphy is a physically challenging role, and Hawke carries off those demands without exaggeration.  But it’s the emotional truth he brings to a character beaten down but not broken by circumstances that’s so powerful.

“The Weight” is in many respects an old-fashioned film reflective of an earlier era of filmmaking.  One could say it fits the description of the kind of movie they don’t make anymore. It’s satisfying enough to make you wish they did more often.