Category Archives: Now Showing

Now Showing

HENRY JOHNSON

Producers: Lije Sarki and Evan Jonigkeit   Director: David Mamet   Screenplay: David Mamet   Cast: Evan Jonigkeit, Chris Bauer, Shia LaBeouf and Dominic Hoffman   Distributor: 1993

Grade: B-

David Mamet’s play, first performed in Los Angeles in 2023 (though when he actually wrote it is unclear), is about manipulation—those who practice it and those who allow themselves to be victims of it.  That L.A. staging has been transferred to the screen by the author with the original cast, though it’s been given a bare-bones but effective visual makeover by production designer Gabrael Wilson, cinematographer Sing Howe Yam and editor Banner Gwin, as well as composer Jay Wadley, who contributes a modest, spare score.  (Justin M. Davey’s sound design is actually more important, especially in the last of the four scenes.)

The title character, played by Evan Jonigkeit, is a guy who might be described as a perennial schmuck.  In the first scene, he’s introduced in a conversation with Barnes (Chris Bauer), his boss at a law firm, whom he’s asked to consider hiring a college acquaintance of his, an ex-con whose release he helped secure.  Barnes questions Henry brusquely, pointing to the brutality of the crime of which his friend was convicted and Johnson’s weak grounds for supporting him.  Docile Henry’s led by Barnes into a trap as it’s revealed that to help the man who’d persuaded him to take up his case, Henry broke the law himself.

The second scene finds Johnson a new prison inmate, forced to share a cell with hardened, cynical Gene (Shia LaBeouf), who introduces himself with a harangue about how the hard realities of prison life reflect the basic rules of human relationships outside as well.  Again Henry is essentially a passive recipient, convinced by Gene’s gruff certitude to submit to his lead.  Gene exhibits his skills by suggesting, successfully as it turns out, to a guard named Jerry (Dominic Hoffman) that Henry should be assigned to a plum job in the prison library.

That carries over into the third scene, set in the library, where Henry has told Gene about how the counselor, a woman, has offered to help him deal with a decision to prolong his sentence.  Gene’s response is to suggest she’s coming on to him and that he should use that to his advantage.  Henry is doubtful but once again goes along.

The final scene is set in the library as a prison break is occurring.  Henry has a gun and a prisoner—Jerry.  As sirens blare outside and occasional gunfire is heard, Henry tries to blockade the door.  Jerry is the virtual monologist here, rambling on about his past and urging Henry to do the smart thing and surrender in a way that will convince the approaching guards not to shoot him.

Mamet has always been interested in power games, and in his best work (like 1975’s “American Buffalo” or 1983’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” brilliantly filmed by James Foley in 1992) he’s portrayed them through dialogue that has a singularly raw, brusquely theatrical edge.  Those early plays emphasized the back-and-forth between predators and prey in a way that “Henry Johnson” doesn’t: Johnson is a patsy from first to last, his rare interjections to those shrewdly dominating him registering nothing but his weakness.  The result is that the film is just an account of a fellow going from bad to worse, helpless to resist falling further; he’s merely the hapless pawn in other people’s machinations.

But despite that rather dull downward trajectory (as well as a lack of connective explanations between the scenes), Mamet has contrived dialogue that sometimes crackles in his old style, particularly when delivered with such brisk sharpness as it is by Bauer.  LaBeouf is even more impressive with his rough growl and menacing mien, and while Hoffman’s attitude is completely different—he’s desperately trying to survive, after all, and has to defer, however insincerely, to Johnson—he captures the “Mamet speak” too.  Jonigkeit has far less to work with, but his meekness fits the character.  All are bolstered by the efforts of Wilson, Yam and Gwin, and the precision of their work is, of course, helped by the fact that Mamet is directing, and knows exactly the points in the dialogue he wants emphasized, both verbally and visually.

If pressed, one might discern a political element to Mamet’s play, seeing dopey Johnson as the symbol of wimpy do-gooder idealism as opposed to macho realism.  But it’s certainly not necessary to read things in that fashion. In the end, “Henry Johnson” isn’t first-rate Mamet.  But it retains a tinge of the power his work once reliably delivered, diluted perhaps but still distinctive.

“Henry Johnson” is available for rental directly from its official site (https://henryjohnsonmovie.com).  

Now Showing

THE RUSE

Producers: John Caglione Jr. and Stevan Mena   Director: Stevan Mena   Screenplay: Stevan Mena   Cast:  Veronica Cartwright, Madelyn Dundon, Michael Steger, Michael Bakkensen, T.C. Carter, Nicola Silber, Drew Moerlein, Kayleigh Ruller, Janet Lopez and Vincent Butta   Distributor: Seismic Releasing

Grade: D

In a way the title of Stevan Mena’s movie (which he edited and wrote the music for, in addition to writing and directing it), is an example of truth in advertising: it purports to be a thriller, but that’s a ruse: it’s so ponderously paced and clumsily constructed that it engenders zero suspense or tension.  It does have a lot of twists, though—so many, in fact, that in the end it takes a good twenty minutes of laborious explanation by a third-rate Columbo (Michael Bakkensen as a detective named Burke), complete with flashbacks and periodic objections from the villain, to unravel the preposterously convoluted scheme, and the motivations behind it, that drive the plot.  Any viewer who’s stuck it out until then will be either exhausted, incredulous, or both.

The setting is a big old house on a remote slice of the Maine coast, owned by Olivia (Veronica Cartwright), a composer and orchestral conductor who’s widowed and suffering from dementia that involves periods of lucidity alternating with others of confusion and anger, as well as COPD, which mostly confines her to bed and an oxygen mask.  Her condition requires a live-in caregiver, and in a prologue we meet the latest of them, Tracy (Kayleigh Ruller), who’s insisting over the phone to her supervisor Ed (Vincent Butta) that he needs to send a replacement.  She’s terrified by noises in the house and believes herself in danger.  After she hangs up, she turns toward the camera and screams, leaving a suggestion that something supernatural might be afoot.

Cut to Dale (Madelyn Dundon) in the city, living with her boyfriend Ben (Drew Moerlein).  A nurse who’s been put on leave for an incident in which a patient died in her care, she’s called by Ed to earn her job back by stepping in for Tracy.  Despite Ben’s reluctance to see her go, she drives up the coast to Olivia’s house.  But she’s greeted not by Tracy, who’s simply disappeared, but by Tom (Michael Steger), the solicitous neighbor who found Olivia all alone.  A widower with a young daughter named Penny (Nicola Silber), he shows Dale around and gives her his number should she need help.

Dale’s interactions with Olivia vary wildly.  Sometimes the woman berates her, but at others has nice conversations with her.  Dale is a bit unsettled by her insistence that the ghost of her husband occasionally walks the halls, and by the bumps and squeaks that occur in the old place (who—or what—made that painting hang crooked?), but the real problems are the few people she deals with.  Tom is pleasant but kind of shifty, Penny seems withdrawn, and Jacob (T.C. Carter), the deliveryman, is positively weird, claiming that Tom has it in for him while trying to get close to Dale himself.  It’s not long before Dale is as nervous as Tracy had been, and her concerns about her predecessor’s fate—and her own—grow.  It’s not long before she’s asking Ed for a replacement, too, and eventually Alice (Janet Lopez) will show up to take over the caretaking job.

By then, however, things have gone totally off the rails, and it’s been a long time coming.  Red herrings abound, suspects are indicated, dropped in favor of others and then brought back for renewed consideration, and finally after misdirection after misdirection—as well as a messy climactic attack—Burke, who’s appeared up until then an officious dweeb, shows up to explain everything in that protracted speech, in which facts previously unknown are suddenly sprung on viewers out of the blue.  Turns out he’s been a dutiful shamus all along.

Cartwright, who has a résumé stretching back to when she was a kid, does her best to salvage her scenes, but it’s a losing effort.  The rest of the cast veers from pallid (Dundon, Bakkensen) to way over-the-top (Carter), but it would be pointless to beat up on any of them; the material is hopeless, and that’s that.  The tech crew—production designer Jack Ryan, cinematographer Cory Geryak—do adequate work, and the Maine location is attractive enough.  But as editor Mena is too protective of his script, allowing it to unfold lethargically; and his score is generic.

The message: don’t be taken in by this “Ruse.”