BLOOD DIAMOND – edward zwick – 3.9 / 10

In Blood Diamond, Edward Zwick, director of such previous white guilt epics as Glory and The Last Samurai, sends yet another white person into a foreign land to learn something about himself. The white person in question this time is Leonardo DiCaprio (in a truly outstanding, possibly career best performance and easily the best thing about the film) as Danny Archer, a former mercenary turned diamond smuggler. The tempest into which he is sent is the Sierra Leonean civil war of the late 1990s. And the lesson he has to learn, surprise surprise, is to appreciate life in all its bounteous splendor. The only question is how many dark skinned people are going to have to die before Danny figures that out.

I don’t want to be so cynical as to assume that Americans, particularly white middle-class ones, won’t watch a film with a mostly black (or foreign) cast. But I gotta think that even if it wasn’t Zwick’s idea from the start, somewhere along the line in the development of this very expensive film, someone would have made him put some white people in it just to make sure they showed up in the theaters. I don’t know whether Zwick was coaxed into making this concession (exhibits A and B: Glory and The Last Samurai, seem to indicate otherwise) but I understand it. It makes a certain awful kind of business sense. And when you get right down to it, that could even be forgiven if Blood Diamond had turned out to be compelling and interesting. But it isn’t.

It’s not compelling because, despite having an obvious message (diamonds reach our wedding fingers on the broken backs and spilled blood of the world’s exploited indigenous peoples) Zwick and Co. aren’t quite sure how to sell it. Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly, woefully out of her depth), a reporter who’s ventured into Africa to uncover the “truth” about the diamond trade, is obviously the filmmakers’ avatar for their belated activism. She’s the lone voice crying in the wilderness about the exploitation of the people and the ignorance of the selfish uncaring Americans back home. But a few scenes after making that speech, she’s snapping pictures of war ravaged bodies and grief stricken faces to publish in her magazine. How is that any less exploitative than what the diamond smugglers are doing? At least Danny has no pretenses about just what it is he’s doing there at the asshole end of the world.

It’s exactly that sense of conflicted purpose and misplaced anger that so muddies the film. And just when the politics become so convoluted that the whole thing is threatening to collapse under its own self-serious weight, gunfire erupts and something explodes. The camera shakes and blood and dirt splatter the lens as bullets rip through the air. But this, unfortunately, is the other major problem with Blood Diamond; namely that Zwick and Co. want the film to be a big bad piece of slam bang entertainment as well as a political message movie. So mixed in with all the hand wringing about the evils of the diamond trade are car chases and shoot outs in the streets as Danny and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou, also fantastic and deserving of that Supporting Actor Oscar nod) travel the country in search of Solomon’s captive family and eventually to the hiding place of a rare pink diamond. But the big action setpieces and the complicated geopolitical maneuvering are never a perfect fit. The action seems to come out of nowhere and to exist for no other reason than that twenty minutes had passed without something exploding. It’s violence for violence’s sake is what I’m saying and it contradicts the whole point of Maddy’s (read: the filmmakers’) meandering speechifying that violence with no point is about as horrible a thing as people can do to each other.

All of that is not to say that there isn’t the occasional compelling moment in the film. The handful of scenes concerning Solomon’s captive son Dia, for instance, hint at the film that might have been. Kidnapped by the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.), Dia is brainwashed into thinking his parents are dead and then drugged into a stupor until he becomes an unthinking instrument of death. This being a big budget Hollywood spectacular and all, there is little doubt that Dia will eventually be reunited with his father and once again become the future of his country. But along the way, and almost in spite of itself, his becomes the most powerful story in Blood Diamond. His journey from untapped promise to wasted potential and back is the hoped for resolution to the mess that is most of war torn Africa. And thus Dia becomes something of a metaphor for the entire continent. Within him is the promise of a different future, but also the danger of endlessly repeating the mistakes of the past, an idea that is made all the more poignant by the fact that even today child armies continue to roam the jungles of Africa.

As the film draws to a close near the two and a half hour mark, the images of Dia killing innocent, helpless villagers are the only ones that linger, especially considering the somewhat self-defeating titles that close the film by describing the “Kimberley Process” that has, since the time in which the film takes place, supposedly ended the sale of conflict diamonds. Maybe that was tacked on as a sop to the diamond industry. Maybe it’s there to guard against potential lawsuits. Or maybe it’s there because it’s true. Whatever the reason, the contradictory note on which the movie ends is fitting for a film that never really figures out what it wants to say.

And maybe that’s how it should be. Because it’s a tricky quagmire, Africa is, and the filmmakers do not escape it unscathed. However, they do at least seem to be aware of the hopelessness of their plight. “This is Africa” (or just “T.I.A”) is an oft-repeated phrase throughout the film; the idea being that there is no explanation, no logic and no rules to explain what’s going on over there. I applaud their attempt to try to say something about Africa and to try to shine a light on a too-often dim part of the world. But good intentions are not nearly enough, especially when the finished product is so inconsistent, on the one hand bending over backwards to be self-congratulatory and on the other completely misunderstanding what it was actually saying.

300 - zack snyder - 5.5 / 10

For all its digital fire and brimstone and the lip service it pays to the Spartan warrior ethic and code of honorable death, it’s a damn shame that at its core 300 turns out to be so staunchly conservative and puritanical, its warrior heroes dying with cries for their wives and children on their lips. And what’s truly baffling here is that that stuff isn’t in the graphic novel upon which this film is based (neither is the ridiculous legislative maneuvering going on back in Sparta but that’s another matter I’ll get to later) and it certainly isn’t historically accurate. Now I’m no advocate of being a slave to the written source or even to history. But when changes are made recklessly and wantonly, all you get is a very conflicted message.

BLACK SNAKE MOAN – craig brewer – 5.5 / 10

Although it may be faint praise to say it, Black Snake Moan is better than I thought it was going to be. Considering it was written and directed by Craig Brewer (the man behind the pretty weak and borderline racist Hustle & Flow) and concerns a nymphomaniac being chained to a radiator by a dude named Lazarus (who, gasp, comes back to “life” over the course of the film), you’d think it would be pretty much the silliest film ever. But it isn’t, I swear.

I say that even though Brewer and everyone involved in this film did no research whatsoever about nymphomania. Not that I did either but I highly doubt that nymphomania manifests itself as an unscratchable itch that prompts those suffering from it to tear off their clothing and tackle the nearest male (as Christina Ricci does in this film). And I say that even though Ricci wears $200 Citizens of Humanity cut-offs but can’t afford to buy herself dinner.

What’s good about the film is that it so completely believes in its lunatic concept that, for a while (at least until an overmatched Justin Timberlake enters the picture), the audience is caught up in it. It gets the down home, good ol’ boy feel of the Deep South just right and its early characterizations are dead on. This carries the film across the somewhat ludicrous idea that someone could cure another of their “wickedness” by chaining them to a radiator. You just kind of go with it.

The problem comes after the “wickedness” has been cured and Ricci’s boyfriend (played by the aforementioned Mr. Timberlake) returns from Iraq, or more accurately, the boot camp he was kicked out of for the anxiety he gets when confronted with loud noises. Never minding the fact that it’s pretty unlikely that a person would get debilitating anxiety from loud noises and then want to enlist in the Army, the last thing the film needs is another person with some deep-seated mental hurdle to clear. It already has Samuel L. Jackson’s scarred and wounded Lazarus and Ricci’s crazed nymphomaniac.

So, in the third act of the film, we’ve now got that to deal with. And quite frankly, JT is not up to the job. Yes, his role is weak and a lot of what he’s called on to do is silly, but so is what Ricci and Jackson are asked to do and the audience buys into their roles. Timberlake just isn’t able to make us buy into his affliction the way the film needs us to.

I don’t want to lay the blame for this film’s failures at the feet of Justin Timberlake; it’s not his film to carry after all. And maybe the failure of the third act isn’t his fault at all. Maybe there’s just no way a ridiculous film like this could end up satisfactorily. But whatever the reason, the simple fact is that the whole film collapses like a house of cards in its last half hour. It has a completely unearned uplifting ending in which every character is happily paired off with another as if, no matter the damage and pain you cause, if you repent you’ll find happiness. It’s a very Christian message and a bizarrely conservative one coming from a film that toys with hardcore sexual depravity and the darkest anxiety.

THE NEW WORLD – terrence malick – 5.5 / 10

Terrence Malick is the definition of an auteur. He is also exhibit number one in why the auteur theory is not the be all and end all of film criticism. For though each of his films is clearly and distinctly his own, they all more or less fail in exactly the same ways. It doesn’t matter if the film is about soldiers in World War II or criminals in the 1950s Midwest or John Smith and Pocahontas, every Malick film is going to be exactly the same: lots of shots of nature and sun-dappled trees and grass as the characters look longingly at each other and speak in breathlessly whispered voiceover on the soundtrack.

The New World is more of the same from Malick. However, that being said, it is probably the most entertaining of his films. Despite it’s dreadfully slow pace (another Malick trademark) it doesn't go on and on without end or direction (like The Thin Red Line). It has a clear narrative with lives at stake and as such has some compelling moments of action and drama. And the story it tells, though well known, is nonetheless interesting.

Moreover, it is undeniable that Malick has a keen visual sense. There are plenty of breathtaking shots in this film. And he does a good job of conveying the wonder with which the Englishmen see the New World and, similarly, with which Pocahontas sees England. Both worlds are so lush and vibrant as to be like paradise.

But none of that takes away from the fact that, like all other Terrence Malick movies before it, The New World is dreadfully boring for long stretches. True there are moments of action and moments in which the plot is developing quickly. But those are clearly not the moments that Malick is interested in. No, he’d rather spend twenty minutes with Pocahontas and John Smith cavorting in the fields as the sun sets behind them and their voices speak about ridiculously pretentious nonsense in hushed voiceover. And that’s all well and good but it’s boring as hell. And those voiceovers, Christ, a grown man writes that nonsense and grown men are supposed to be entertained by it? I’d have been embarrassed to have written that in high school. And if someone had chanced to come upon it, I think I would have died of shame. To put it out there for all the world to see is just ridiculous, borderline laughable.

I’m really curious to know what this film looked like when it was in script form. I wonder how many pages it was. And I wonder if it made any sense. I can’t even tell what happened at the end of the film. Does Pocahontas die? Or does she return to the New World with John Smith? I can’t tell.

In the end, I guess the film is as good as your tolerance for meandering though good-looking asides about the romance of the world and the romance between two people. If you like this kind of stuff, The New World is for you. If you don’t, steer well clear.