THE WIRE: SEASON FIVE – david simon – 9.0 / 10

During the first four seasons of The Wire there were two ways in which one could appreciate the show. On the surface there was a highly entertaining, deceptively realistic, often heartbreaking depiction of a collection of fully realized characters within an urban milieu that was unparalleled in the history of television. Underneath that there was a subtext that had something to say about the cause and nature of many of the problems facing our modern society. That The Wire functioned so well whether or not you delved into the Iraq War parallel of season three or thought much about the systemic dysfunction of institutions is what makes the series one of the all time greats. It works equally well as a treatise on modern life in America or simply as a damn fine piece of entertainment.

In season five, however, it becomes a little harder for the viewer to ignore the subtextual points that David Simon and Co. are making. Perhaps this is because the fifth season focuses a lot of its attention (and screen time) on the Baltimore Sun newspaper where, not coincidentally, David Simon worked for twenty years before moving into television. I imagine it was difficult for him to remain objective and evenhanded when dealing with that particular profession considering how displeased he was with the way the industry had changed since he first started working as a reporter. But whatever the reason, the parts of the show featuring the newsroom are often the most strident and heavy handed, featuring some of the more one dimensional characters the series has so far created. (Though it should be noted that even these characters (Templeton, Klebanow, Whiting and the rest) are still more fully fleshed out than most characters on any other show you’d care to name.) It’s very difficult for the audience to enjoy the newsroom scenes without occasionally thinking about what Simon was trying to say about the death of the newspapers and the impact this was having on both the newsroom and the culture in general.

That said, trying too hard to make your point is a very minor failure, maybe even an admirable one. It only stands out like it does because this show had previously been so masterful in submerging what it was trying to say underneath all the surface stuff. Even still, that doesn’t change the fact that what goes on in the newsroom is still pretty interesting. Though in the end it turns out to be one more in the long line of institutions depicted on The Wire as systemically dysfunctional, I found the peculiarities of how the newspapers are screwed up fairly entertaining.

The other major plotline of season five is the fake serial killer Detective McNulty manufactures in order to get the city, basically insolvent because of a school system $54 million in debt, to start paying for police overtime (or, as the cops say repeatedly, ‘real police work’). Though this storyline is, perhaps, a little over the top, the thorny issues it raises are worth the tradeoff. For instance, McNulty, the hero of the first three seasons, was always the one person who refused to play by the rules and was all the more effective because of it, occasionally even achieving something that looked like victory (a rarity on The Wire). He was the one character most viewers identified with and rooted for. But now here he is in season five manufacturing a serial killer to get the money flowing again. More than just simply a question of the ends justifying the means, this storyline raises questions about McNulty as a person and the viewer for rooting for him.

At no point during the entire fake serial killer fiasco do the writers ever let McNulty (or the viewers who might be rooting for him to get away with it) off the hook. Scene after scene shows the unintended collateral damage he’s caused. Whether it’s Kima Greggs interviewing the parents of one of the serial killer’s ‘victims’ or the two dead homeless men strangled by a copycat killer, there’s no way to see what McNulty has done as heroic. And yet, in the end, the people responsible for at least twenty-two murders are brought to justice because of McNulty’s fictional killer. So does that balance the scales? And if it does, does that justify further flouting of the law as long as the goals are admirable and the person going outside the law is righteous enough? Who should get to make that call?

These questions are further addressed in the primary story at the Sun newspaper where Scott Templeton fabricates much of his reportage and is eventually rewarded for it with a Pulitzer. Here is a man doing more or less the same thing as McNulty, going outside the rules to serve his own interests in the pursuance of his goals. And like McNulty, Templeton leaves a trail of collateral damage that negatively impacts many of those around him.

Obviously most viewers will be firmly opposed to what Templeton is doing and probably even openly rooting for the guy to get caught, punished and kicked off the paper. But many of these same viewers are also rooting for McNulty to get away with what he’s done. We can make all the distinctions we want about the relative virtues of each of these characters’ motivations (i.e. brazen self interest vs. self interest in service of a greater good) but cheering one on while rooting against the other is a contradiction that’s impossible to resolve. If you’re comfortable with allowing a man like McNulty to manufacture a serial killer in order to go after a mass murderer, then you can make no argument against allowing a man like Templeton to circumvent the rules for his own gain. If you condemn the one, you must condemn the other. And thus you also allow the killers of twenty two people to walk free.

In the end both Templeton and McNulty’s farces are allowed to stand because the institutions that these men serve cannot afford the blow to their credibility that revealing the truth would entail. And so The Wire, always obsessed with the dysfunction of institutions, ends with two great institutional victories (drugs on the table and a Pulitzer Prize) earned through a complete disregard for everything the institutions are supposed to stand for.

On top of that the writers have layered a parallel between these two stories and the run-up to the Iraq War when our government falsified intelligence in order to get the country behind a war it might not otherwise have pursued. Bunk Mooreland raises this connection explicitly in the penultimate episode when he says to McNulty, ‘It’s like war. Easy to get in, not so easy to get out.’ In the first scene of the season, Bunk has another line with great resonance on this topic: ‘The bigger the lie, the more they believe.’ In comparison to the lies told to us by our government concerning Iraq, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction that supposedly posed a clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens, McNulty making up a serial killer and Templeton fudging a few stories seems incredibly minor.

By drawing this parallel so explicitly, Simon is cutting off potential criticism of the season’s storylines before they begin. To anyone who might look at McNulty kicking debris around at a crime scene then biting a dead body with a set of false teeth and think it was all too over the top and unbelievable, Simon seeks to remind them that our country is fighting a war where thousands of men and women have lost their lives because the people who were supposed to value the public trust they’d been given didn’t. To anyone who might look at Templeton wantonly fabricating quotes, people and eventually whole stories and think this sort of thing can’t really be going on undetected at our newspapers, Simon reminds them that before 2003 no one would have believed our government would tell outright lies to its people during the State of Union. The bigger the lie, the more they believe indeed.

There is also a none too subtle jab at the press, by now more or less universally acknowledged to have fallen down on the job in the lead-up to the war. Perhaps if they hadn’t been chasing prizes or trying to figure out how to ‘do more with less’ after the latest round of buyouts had decimated the staff, the newspapers might have actually investigated some of these false claims the administration was making. Just like, on the show, they might have realized what the death of someone as important to the citizens of Baltimore as Omar or Proposition Joe really meant and would have given them more than half a paragraph buried deep in the back of the paper.

But there’s no one person to blame because it’s not the individuals who are the problem. They are merely the product of the institutions they serve (as Deputy Commissioner for Operations Daniels often asserts). On just about any other show out there and certainly on every one of the dozen or so procedural law enforcement shows that litter the airwaves, it’s always the individual that’s the root of all evil. Once the good guys catch this person or people and put them in prison, order is restored and good triumphs. Victories, in the form of arrests or convictions, are conclusive and meaningful. Not so on The Wire. There the institution is the root of the problem. The individuals matter little. Putting one person or group of people in prison, firing one person or electing another has no real impact on the underlying institution and therefore no hope of having any real effect on the fundamental cause of the problem. One person, no matter how high minded or determined, has no chance, at least in the world of The Wire, of changing the system. Instead that person either becomes changed by the system or is driven out of it.

That’s not to say that the characters on The Wire aren’t fascinating in and of themselves. Their individual personalities and stories are incredibly compelling. But the final ten minutes of season five, and hence of the series itself, clearly shows that, in the view of Simon and Co. at least, the institutions aren’t changed by the people. It’s the other way around. Michael Lee bursts into Vinsen’s rim shop, shotgun blazing, becoming, in the process, the new Omar. Sydnor bitches to Judge Phelan about the bosses in the hopes that the judge will get some traction for his case, becoming, in effect, the new McNulty. Dukie ties off a vein in a darkened alley and cooks up a shot, becoming the new Bubbles. And so on and so on. The faces change but the system doesn’t.

It’s an incredibly cynical worldview but also one for which David Simon and his writers make a very convincing case. It’s sad to think that the Baltimore introduced in the first episode of season one is fundamentally the same Baltimore in the last episode of season five despite the best efforts of many dedicated men and women hoping to make it otherwise. But that sadness is tempered with enough happy endings for the individual characters that it feels just about right. In a world where it’s impossible to change what fundamentally ails the cities of America, it’s nice to know that at least the people we’ve come to know and love over sixty long hours of television ended up better than when they started. It’s the smallest of victories, of course, but it’s also the only kind we were ever going to get. And as much as we might have wished it otherwise, this has to be good enough.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT – dennis iliadis – 7.5 / 10

More of a thought experiment than an actual film, The Last House of the Left is only intermittently successful as a piece of entertainment. Perhaps that’s because it’s a horror film that requires its audience to think. Or maybe that’s because it's impossible to get sucked into the film without rooting for something horribly violent to happen, which, if the viewer has any sort of self-awareness at all, is something they aren’t willing to do. But for whatever reason the film keeps the audience at a bit more of a remove than most horror films, never scaring or exhilarating as the best of the genre can,

That said, the film is very well directed. Take, for instance, a moment early in the film where Mari is getting dressed. The camera lingers over her body, expressly sexualizing her and making the audience (especially the male members of it) think about what she might look like naked. Then, later in the film, when Mari is assaulted and raped, that desire comes back to haunt the viewer. Director Dennis Iliadis gives the audience what they had seemed to want but in a way that makes them question their own desires.

The same holds true for the violence later in the film when Mari’s parents discover that the people they’ve just taken in for the night are the ones who hurt their daughter and begin exacting their revenge. At first, the audience is completely on their side (to the point of cheering during the screening I attended). But Iliadis and Co. don’t allow any of the murders that John (Tony Goldwyn) and Emma (Monica Potter) commit go down simply or easily. There’s no (relatively) clean gunshots or stabbings in the heart. Francis, their first victim, is beaten and stabbed, has his hand stuck in the garbage disposal and is finally hit over the head with a claw hammer.

And during all this, as the level of violence continues to escalate, John and Emma take a moment to pause and look at each other as if to say, “Yes, we really are going to do this.” And that moment implicates the audience as much as it does the characters. This murder is what the audience paid their money to see but, Iliadis is asking, do they really want it if it's going to be this real and gory?

Still, as smart as all this is (though the sexual aspect of it was swiped from The Devil’s Rejects), it’s really only intermittently entertaining. At around the halfway point the course of the film is pretty much set and it’s just a matter of waiting around to see exactly how the remaining baddies are dispatched. (The audience knows, thanks to an admittedly great but nonetheless spoiler filled trailer, that the parents win this battle so the outcome is never in doubt.) And without the suspense of not knowing who’s going to make it out alive, there’s not really enough to fully engage the viewer.

The film seems to end with a few shots of John and Emma taking Mari to the hospital on their boat. I say ‘seems’ because the film then cuts back to some other time (everyone’s in different clothes, facial wounds sustained during the film are not present, etc.) to find John in the garage with one of the bad guy’s lying paralyzed on his workbench, a microwave positioned around his head. And a moment after that the film really ends on a final gross out gag of the bad guy’s head exploding.

That moment, the part of the trailer probably responsible for the presence of half of the people in the theater (and thus half of the film’s box office take), makes absolutely no sense within the context of the film. It comes out of nowhere, after the film is basically over, and all but invalidates everything that came before it. It’s a moment that was plainly added to juice up the trailer and give viewers (at least the ones who hadn’t picked up on the notion that the rest of the film was criticizing their bloodlust) a last, horrifying kill to cheer at.

I’m almost positive that moment was studio mandated (probably after a test screening where all the cards came back saying, 'Give us more blood!'). And because of that I’m reluctant to hold it against Iliadis. Still, it did leave a bad taste in my mouth after what had been a pretty smart, interesting film. It’s the one instance of violence in the entire film that has no real subtext, nothing on its mind beyond the simple fact of the violence itself. It’s gore for gore’s sake is what I’m saying. And the rest of the film had gone to great lengths to show how that sort of attitude towards violence (even of the on screen variety) is stupid at best and dangerous at worst. The whole thing runs completely counter to what the rest of the film had been trying to say and the fact that it’s probably the one thing most people are going to remember about the film is a shame.

DUPLICITY – tony gilroy – 3.9 / 10

It’s pretty difficult to discuss Duplicity in any depth without getting into at least a few of the many reversals and double crosses that litter the film. So, fair warning, spoilers lie ahead.

Judging from his previous film (Michael Clayton) and this one, it’s clear that there are a couple things that Tony Gilroy really likes to put in his films. For instance, he obviously loves showing the audience a seemingly inconsequential moment and then later revealing that there was a lot more going on than it appeared (see: the GPS on the fritz in the beginning of Michael Clayton that, when revisited later, turns out to be due to a bomb that's been planted in the dashboard). And he loves the fake out (or reversal or double cross or, hell, all three at once) (see: the tape recorder reveal at the end of Michael Clayton). Both of these storytelling devices work relatively well provided they aren’t overused and don’t seem to be employed just to screw with the audience for no reason. The relative success of Michael Clayton is a testament to that.

Duplicity, on the other hand, reveals how annoying the fake out, the double cross and the-inconsequential-detail-that-turns-out-to-be-really-important can be when overused for no apparent reason. Is there some reason why, for instance, the chronology of the film is as jumbled as it is other than just to mess with the audience? If there is, I can’t see it. To me it seems like showing Claire (Julia Roberts, playing at being sexy and not quite getting there) and Ray (Clive Owen, a little overmatched by the tongue twisting dialogue) meeting in New York after supposedly not having seen each other in five years before revealing that they actually rehearsed this meeting a hundred times, is just screwing with the audience. I’ll admit that the initial New York scene is enjoyable but it sounds so rehearsed that when it’s revealed that the scene was actually scripted by the characters ahead of time, it comes as no real surprise. Plus, isn’t the point of rehearsing the thing supposed to be that they sound natural?

The film is really little more than an exercise in withholding information from the audience. Gilroy shows the viewer a scene without context that seems kind of cool. Then he shows another one. Then he reveals what was actually going on in that first scene while simultaneously showing something else that seems to make no sense. And then, just when the whole thing is getting pretty annoying, he reveals what’s really going on. Only to have that be revealed as a fake out a few minutes later. Sound like fun? To me it sounds like a filmmaker getting off on playing god with his audience, doling out just enough information to keep them interested but not so much that they ever know what’s really going on.

But the cumulative effect of all this is to make the audience completely distrust the filmmakers and the film itself. Thus when, at the end of the film, it’s revealed that what we’ve seen is not really what was happening, it comes as little surprise. Since Ray and Claire have spent the whole movie going on and on about how you can’t trust anybody, I can’t see how anyone in the audience isn’t anticipating most of the ‘surprise’ fake outs that end the film.

Actually, you know what? I don’t think many people would actually predict the final fake out wherein it’s revealed that Burkett and Randle, the company that Ray and Claire had been trying to steal from, had been playing them the whole time. I don’t know that anyone would see that coming because in a film as light as this there’s no way the audience expects Ray and Claire to lose. Imagine, for example, that Danny Ocean’s band of merry thieves hadn’t gotten away with the loot in Ocean’s 11. Kinda disappointing, right?

In fact, after the final double cross is revealed at the end of Duplicity I was fully expecting that this was just one more fake out and somehow Ray and Claire saw this coming and had something else up their sleeves. But no, they really do lose in the end. And while I’m not the kind of person who needs the ‘heroes’ of the film to win, in a movie like this, where the stakes are so low and the outcome so seemingly predetermined, this final reversal of expectation, rather than feeling revelatory, seems more like a fuck you to the audience. It's a final slap in the face from a filmmaker who’s been lording his ‘genius’ over the audience for the entire film.

THE WIRE: SEASON FOUR – david simon – 9.7 / 10

As great as The Wire unquestionably is, the tone and aesthetics of the show sometimes work to keep the audience at arm’s length. By foregoing most of the standard tools of the television trade that make wringing tears or goosebumps out of the viewer much easier, The Wire has-- by design-- always had an uphill battle when it comes to drawing emotion out of its audience. The show doesn’t use music to heighten the mood. It doesn’t use close-ups to foster audience identification with the characters. It doesn’t use handheld camerawork to heighten the action sequences. It doesn’t use long-winded monologues or dramatic speeches to pontificate on a particular subject or make a point. Basically, The Wire doesn’t use any of the standard tricks of the trade that make forging an emotional connection with the viewer easy. They have to work for it. And because of that, the show cannot hide any of its flaws. If a performance is flat or an action scene boring, it can’t be hid with quick edits or crash zooms or the perfect musical choice.

But that’s what makes The Wire a singular artistic achievement. (That’s also probably why it takes the average viewer three or four episodes to really understand what the show is trying to do.) Without all the bells and whistles hiding their faults, just about any other show would, if they were to take the same approach as The Wire, immediately reveal their artistic shortcomings. That The Wire is able to maintain such a high level of both quality and entertainment value without having to resort to these tricks is remarkable and leads to perhaps the most enjoyable television viewing experience out there.

But often that enjoyment is somewhat intellectual, more an enjoyment for the head rather than the heart. Although it’s impressive, even admirable that the show doesn’t have to trick its audience into getting emotionally involved, this approach can put the audience at a bit of remove. For instance, many viewers love characters like Stringer Bell, Bodie Broadus and Omar Little more than perhaps any other characters they’ve seen on television. But unlike on other shows, when these characters meet their tragic ends, The Wire doesn’t play up the moment with slow motion or sad music. The moment isn’t drawn out, giving the audience time to process their death and grieve for it. On The Wire death comes as it does in real life, quickly and randomly. So even though the loss of Bodie or Stringer might sting more than the death of almost any other character on any other show, they are mourned in a different way. There are no tears shed as a somber tune plays on the soundtrack, no lingering tracking shots over the dead body, no goosebumps raised as another character recites a heartfelt homily over their grave.

If I had to guess, I would say that David Simon and Co. chose to do it this way because giving the audience a chance to cry also gives them a chance to get it out of their system. They weep for a few minutes and then forget it ever happened. But done without all the tricks, the loss of these characters lingers, much the way a real life tragedy might.

And make no mistake, the fourth season of The Wire is a tragedy. Primarily concerned with the Baltimore city public school system and the people that make it (not) run, season four introduces the audience, for the first time, to major characters who are just barely in their teens. And by the end of the season, as the stories of Randy Wagstaff, Duquan Weems and Michael Lee begin to draw to a heartbreaking close, The Wire doesn’t pull any punches. The audience can see where these characters are going to end up but is powerless to stop it. There's nothing more tragic, especially when kids are involved, than to know that something horrible is coming and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Widely hailed as the best season of the show, season four is, I believe, so revered because it’s impossible to forget. The stories of these four kids linger, festering in the back of your mind, popping into your thoughts at random. They have the sort of gut punch emotional power not usually seen on television (not as fiction anyway). And yet these stories are told with The Wire’s trademark realism, making them that much more tragic because of their believability. Any show that can so deeply engage both the head and the heart is a truly remarkable achievement.

WATCHMEN – zack snyder – 3.9 / 10

More than twenty years after it was first published and after almost a dozen different writers and directors attempted to make it and failed, Watchmen finally arrives on the big screen. Like any film based on a popular book, there are two types of potential viewers, those who’ve read the book and those who haven’t. The former are going to be measuring the film against the movie that played in their heads as they read the book and the latter are going to measure the film based solely on what’s up on the screen. Since I’ve read the book a few times (most recently a week ago) I can’t really speak to whether or not the latter group will like this movie (though my suspicion is that they won’t because it’s just too damn silly) but I can say that fans of the graphic novel will probably feel that Snyder and Co. followed the letter of the book but completely missed its spirit.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009) – marcus nispel – 3.5 / 10

Marcus Nispel, who is carving out a strange little niche for himself within the horror genre by remaking some of its most well known films (previously he directed the remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), directs the new Friday the 13th with a workmanlike sensibility. There are a couple nice shots but mostly the film is just the standard slasher flick boilerplate. Thus, to discuss the direction or the lighting or the shot selection would be to spend more time on those subjects than the director did himself.

Instead I’d like to ask why the characters in this film are so shallow and annoying. I guess it’s sort of a staple of the genre that the characters are disposable meat bags but it seems to me that the trend lately has been to make them more annoying than ever before. It’s almost as if the audience is supposed to be rooting for the killer to cut these idiots down.

If you’ve followed Jason through all eleven of the previous films in which he’s appeared (and I pity you if you have), it becomes impossible not to have a little empathy for the guy by the end of it. After all, he only really wanted to be left alone. It’s just that these damn kids keep intruding into his neck of the woods and then proceed to openly do drugs and have sex. And since Jason is basically a child in a massive man’s body, he can't really process what he's seeing, flips out and goes on a murderous rampage. After ten or twelve different iterations of this scenario, the viewer can’t help but at least understand where Jason is coming for. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want the kids in the films to be killed.

However, it seems like that’s the goal of this new remake of Friday the 13th. All of the kids in the film (except for the two that are clearly destined to live through this mess (to be killed in the inevitable sequel?) are such abhorrent jackasses that even if the viewer isn't actively rooting for them to die their deaths have no real impact.

To my way of thinking, this has a couple of corollary effects, neither of which helps the film in any way. Firstly, since all the characters are such idiots, it makes their deaths more or less meaningless. A scary or suspenseful scene is going to work whether or not the audience cares about the potential victim. But in order for that death to have any weight, in order for it to linger once the body is off the screen, the audience needs to have been wishing the character would live. Since everyone in this film (save the aforementioned brother and sister pair who are the only decent people in sight) is a self-centered dickhead who is either a sex-obsessed creep or just plain stupid, the idea that they might die at the end of any particular scene is of little concern to the audience. And since that’s the case, the only compelling reason to watch the film is just to see how the different characters bite it.

The second (unintended?) consequence of having all the ancillary characters behave as douchebags is that the audience may actually end up rooting for these idiots to get offed. Take, for instance, the jerkwad who cheated on his girlfriend, bitched out his friends multiple times for things he hadn’t told them not to do in the first place, managed to lose his handgun and then talked to it in the hopes that it would suddenly appear to him. For me personally, I was itching to see this guy get hacked to pieces with Jason’s machete. But how is having the viewer wanting to see a character get murdered an effective way to tell a horror story?

If the viewer is indifferent towards the characters, let alone actively rooting against them, it takes a lot of the tension out of the supposedly scary scenes. Why should the audience pay close attention, scanning the frame for the smallest sign of the killer’s presence if they aren’t nervous about whether the character on screen will make it out alive? Horror films, unlike thrillers or mainstream action films, do not have to have their lead characters make it through the film alive. When watching something like Die Hard, for instance, no one in their right mind thinks Bruce Willis is in any real danger (a notion tweaked brilliantly in Live Free or Die Hard which basically saw McClane become an unstoppable killing machine). But in a horror film, you never know. Thus the danger the characters are in from the killer is more real than in most other films. And because of that the suspense can be that much greater, the tension ratcheted up that much higher. But if the audience actually wants the characters to die, well, then the filmmakers have lost one of the most valuable things they had working for them. And so they have to resort to every more obnoxious loud screeches on the soundtrack to make people jump in their seats. There’s a reason the masters of the genre like Hitchcock and Carpenter never had to resort to such nonsense.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if this concept of making the characters so disposable, worthless and downright horrible is limited to the new Friday the 13th. Nor is it even limited to the films of Marcus Nispel. From Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake (where all the characters are constantly at each other’s throats despite being the last survivors of the human race) to the Saw films (where not only is everyone a despicable human being, that’s sort of the point of the whole enterprise) it seems that good people aren’t in horror movies much these days. And that baffles me because by doing that the filmmakers are making their jobs that much harder. It’s not easy to elicit a genuine emotional response from an audience and to cripple your film in this way strikes me as remarkably stupid, worthy of something one of the idiot characters that populate these films would do.