Movie Review: Water for Elephants

20th Century Fox

Water for Elephants may one day show up in a film class as a lesson in how not to adapt a popular novel for the screen. Sara Gruen’s 2006 book is packed with unique characters and compelling stories of life in a Depression era circus – many of them based on actual accounts – but screenwriter Richard LaGravanese chooses to ignore most of that and focus instead on the love triangle at the center of the story. Then he runs out of things to do. So we see a lot of Robert Pattinson, playing young Jacob, staring into Reese Witherspoon’s eyes – she’s Marlena, the star attraction under the big top; and then we see Marlena staring into her husband August’s eyes (Christopher Walz, reprising his deranged Nazi role). And then we see August staring from a distance at Jacob and Marlena – well, you get the idea.

It’s a shame. Because the time lavished on the pretty faces of the stars would have been better spent developing the supporting characters, who are pivotal to nearly every important moment in the story. And it’s a good story, opening with young Jacob on the verge of getting his veterinary license and feeling the first stirrings of love, and then losing everything in a moment when he learns that his parents are dead and his inheritance is worthless. Despairing, he hops a train out of town and, quite by accident, joins the circus. He gets permanent work as a vet with the show, but soon discovers that owner August is a sadistic man who is cruel to his animals and his human employees, throwing men off the train if it helps lighten his payroll or soothe his easily injured pride. The troupe bonds together to maintain their spirits and protect each other from August’s wrath, and they take Jacob in, first out of sympathy but then out of respect and hope that he can become their de facto defender and leader.

But you won’t see any of this in the film, or any cohesive version of it, anyway. LaGravenese, along with director Francis Lawrence, seem to find the colorful characters and grittiness of circus life and the desperation of Depression times to be merely background noise to the story, instead of the very thing that gives it depth and authenticity. So the film is a bore. Still playing in lots of theaters but it got trampled by Rio and Tyler Perry’s latest picture over the weekend; don’t expect a long run. C

Movie review: Hanna

Focus Features

This movie has a great trailer. I’ve watched it a lot. We see an ethereal blonde haired girl, blue eyes luminous, gutting a newly killed antelope. A voice behind her says “You’re dead! I’ve just killed you.” And the angelic child suddenly becomes a twisting punching shrieking fighting machine.

Cool.

Hanna has a great premise, the notion of a sweet faced youngster trained to be an elite assassin before her sixteenth birthday. She has lived her life in a remote forest in Finland, where her father (a restrained, but warmhearted Eric Bana) has instructed her in martial arts and survival skills. She can fight with a gun or a knife or a good stout stick, but all this training is very directed: once she comes of age, she needs to assassinate Marissa Viegler, an elite American agent who, according to dad, wants Hanna dead. It’s kill or be killed in this adventure, and once Hanna (played with memorable delicacy and believable toughness by Saoirse Ronan) sets events in motion so she can confront her nemesis, it seems we are off on a rollicking roller coaster ride of a movie.

Or not.  When Hanna leaves the forest behind, when she makes her first assault on the evil crew that wants to do her in and then speeds away into the desert, the tension of the story slips. It appears that Marissa Viegler – played by Cate Blanchett with a cold heart and Texas twang – does want Hanna dead, but we don’t know why, and what’s more, we don’t know what’s at stake. Is Hanna at risk of becoming a mercenary soldier for some nefarious international organization? Could her sweet nature be corrupted by their evil demands? Is there an innocent population at risk? International relations on the brink?

Apparently not. Marissa Viegler wants Hanna dead because she does. She hires henchmen to help her, and they kill people because that’s what they do – the film is full of violence that serves no purpose; it doesn’t heighten the risks or propel the plot. A lot of it isn’t even interesting, the bad guys and their methods are oddly trite. And there are peculiar lapses in logic: early on, we see Hanna staring dumbfounded at a television; a few scenes later, she expertly types search terms into Google in an effort to understand her peculiar genetic make up.  Pretty sophisticated stuff for a kid raised by lantern light in a remote forest.

But mostly what goes on here are chase scenes, punctuated by fights, followed by more running away. There is a charming intimacy to the early moments of the film when Hanna and her father prepare for her entry into the world, where they struggle with their upcoming separation with the kind of mixed feeling parents and children have always had, even if the kid isn’t setting off to assassinate someone. (But why Hanna needs to go off on this mission by herself is never explained. Would it have been so bad for dad to have her back?) The most entertaining part of the movie happens when Hanna meets up with an English family on holiday; they have a teenage daughter named Sophie who takes Hanna under her irrepressible wing. Jessica Barden delivers Sophie’s lines with excellent comic timing, the film is almost worth seeing just for her. But the real star of the show is Saoirse Ronan, who makes Hanna so intriguing and sympathetic you leave the theater hoping for a sequel; one with a more interesting plot. Playing everywhere, had a pretty average box office performance on opening weekend so it may not last long. B-

Movie Review: The Source Code

Summit Entertainment

The Source Code is an entertaining little science fiction film that doesn’t always make sense, but then, science fiction films often don’t. It’s fun to watch, anyway. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier in Afghanistan who wakes up to find himself on a commuter train traveling into Chicago. He is the only one surprised that he is there: turns out that a government technology experiment has spirited him out of his war injured body and into the body of another man, a high school teacher who regularly rides this train. Colter was sent there to complete a mission, which he has eight minutes to get right, but like Groundhog Day, that eight minutes keeps playing over and over again until he has an opportunity to figure the mystery out.

Pretty cool, right? Actually, it is. The whole notion of being able to re-live a bit of time, even if it’s only eight minutes, and having a chance to do things better on every go-round is intriguing. Unlike the Bill Murray movie though, this story has an extra layer: the eight minutes that Colter is reliving aren’t exactly real; they represent the “halo” of consciousness left behind when people die, the last eight minutes of their earthly lives. In other words, all the folks on the train, including the poor old math teacher whose body Colter inhabits, are dead, victims of a terrorist bomb.

This is where you don’t want to start asking too many questions.

Jake Gyllenhaal does a bang up job as the bewildered but purposeful young soldier. He doesn’t understand how the Source Code works (either did I; they kept telling this geeky dude to “fire up the drivers,” and he would hit a few keys on a laptop and away Colter would go. Seems like a pretty pedestrian way to power someone into a metaphysical realm.) But Colter does understand that he has a mission to do: it’s his job to identify the guy who blew up the train before the villain goes on to ignite a dirty bomb over the city of Chicago. Train explosion is the past, but the destruction of Chicago is the future, and the military puppeteers who are pulling Jake’s strings are trying to save the city.

So Colter works his way through the train, eight minutes at a time, harassing passengers and rifling backpacks, generally acting deranged, much to the amusement and occasional alarm of his seatmate, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), a young woman who clearly has a crush on the man Colter is supposed to be. And here’s where things get sticky, because after spending say, 40 minutes with this woman on a kind of repeat shuffle, Colter is smitten and he doesn’t want her to die. Even though she is already dead.

Again, better not to get too inquisitive.

Vera Farmiga is wonderful as the military officer who is responsible for giving Colter his orders. We mostly see her face on a small video screen, but she is calm and persuasive, determined to keep the disoriented soldier on track even as she shows glimpses of sympathy for his perplexing situation. In the end she is as much the hero of this piece as the soldier boy. Source Code is a fun night out, worth seeing on the big screen. It had a decent opening weekend so it is still playing pretty much everywhere. B+