Oscar Nominations 2006
Brokeback Breakout! Homoerotic Drama Lands Eight Nominations While Cast of Crash Snubbed
Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s graphically-depicted, homoerotic period piece about a couple of cowboys in the closet, landed eight Academy Award nominations. Besides Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Score and Screenplay Adaptation, three of the gender-bending Western’s actors were nominated, namely, Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams.
Tied for the second greatest number of nominations were Crash and Good Night, and Good Luck, with six each, followed closely by both Munich, Walk the Line and Capote with five a piece. Of the aforementioned films, faithful readers may remember that only Crash and Munich made this critic’s Top Ten List, earning the #1 and #2 spots, respectively.
Not surprisingly, other than Crash, these leading contenders were all late-year releases, given the studios’ tendency to lobby hardest for movies still in theaters. Among the much-ballyhooed movies making disappointing showings, given the hype, were King Kong, Match Point, The Producers, and Rent.
Ironically, a number of inspired performances went unrecognized, most notably, those delivered by members of the ensemble in Crash, except for Matt Dillon (Best Supporting Actor). Note that that color-conscious drama just won the Screen Actors Guild’s (SAG) top award, Outstanding Performance by a Cast, a distinction conferred by colleagues on the cream of the crop.
So, while Terrence Howard was nominated for playing a jive pimp in Hustle & Flow, he was not for his much more deserving turn as a compromised TV executive in Crash. Similarly, Thandie Newton, who was equally brilliant as his violated wife, was ignored, as were the career performances squeezed out of Sandra Bullock and others by writer/director Paul Haggis.
The Academy Awards will air live on March 5th from the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, with Jon Stewart serving as Master of Ceremony.
List of Major Oscar Nominees
1. Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich.
2. Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote; Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow; Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain; Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line; David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck.
3. Actress: Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity Huffman, Transamerica; Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice; Charlize Theron, North Country; Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line.
4. Supporting Actor: George Clooney, Syriana; Matt Dillon, Crash; Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man; Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain; William Hurt, A History of Violence.
5. Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Junebug; Catherine Keener, Capote; Frances McDormand, North Country; Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener; Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain.
6. Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain; Bennett Miller, Capote; Paul Haggis, Crash; George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck; Steven Spielberg, Munich.
Big Momma's House 2
• 
Martin Lawrence Back in Drag as Obese, Obnoxious Nanny
The first Big Momma’s House was a charming comedy in which Martin Lawrence impersonated an enormous, elderly woman whose grand-daughter, Sherry (Nia Long), were in the Witness Protection Program and being stalked by a murderer. That comic crime caper, set in a quaint town in rural Georgia, managed to make the most of a very colorful cast of supporting characters played by such talented actors as Terrence Howard, Paul Giamatti, Anthony Anderson, and Cedric the Entertainer.
Despite Martin’s unconvincing make-over from Agent Malcolm Turner into a drag queen, the movie had enough hilarious moments to gross over $100 million at the box office. But besides leads Lawrence and Long, no other original cast members were signed on for this sorry sequel, not even the actress who portrayed the real Big Momma (Hattie Mitchell) or the kid who played her great-grandson (Jascha Washington). In fact, Nia’s role has been radically reduced to a wraparound role as Malcolm’s very pregnant wife.
As a result, Big Momma 2 is a Martin Lawrence vehicle in the pure sense of the word, as he gets no help from any gifted comedians like he did the last go-round. The movie takes place in Los Angeles, where Malcolm has taken a desk job in deference to his wife’s concerns about his dangerous profession.
However, after his partner is slain by a computer espionage ring, Malcolm throws caution to the wind and decides, unilaterally, to bring the perpetrators to justice. So, he dusts off the fat suit and applies for a job as a nanny in the home of the prime suspect. But what Malcolm didn’t count on was that trying to tend to the creep’s three kids would turn out to be as challenging as cracking the case.
I sat stoned-faced throughout the duration of this humorless adventure, from Malcolm’s blackmailing his employers to get the job (“I got Al Sharpton on speed dial”) to the mean-spirited way he makes fun of white people dancing (“flailing like a couple of stroke victims”). Worse than its absence of wit or charm, the movie’s preposterous premise tests the bounds of rationality at every turn.
Why does Malcolm lie to both his wife and his boss about going back undercover? Why does he choose to dress in drag again, when it was totally unnecessary? Why does he claim to be half-Jewish? Why would he fill a beloved pet dog’s water bowl with Tequila? And why, after all the trouble he goes through to catch the murderer, would he then intervene to keep the killer out of prison?
No logic, no laughs, a classic “take-the-money-and-run” sequel which had me praying for a projector malfunction or some other excuse to leave the theater early.
Rated PG-13 for coarse humor and a drug reference)
Running time: 99 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Beautiful Things
••
Anatomy of a Relationship at Heart of Slice-of-Life Drama
Shola (Hallie Brown) is an aspiring young actress, Gabe (Tambay Obenson), an aspiring, young film director. The two meet by chance on the subway and embark on an affair which evolves from the crush phase to passion to jaded to fed-up.
Telescoping tightly on an anatomy of a love relationship is the task of Beautiful Things, the first feature-length film by Tambay Obenson. The 32 year-old Nigerian-born resident of Brooklyn not only wrote and directed, but stars in his claustrophobic slice-of-life drama. And this black-and-white picture’s only other character of consequence is his co-star, who struck this reviewer as more of a reluctant, real-life girlfriend, than an actual thespian. But who knows.
In any case, the film is deliberately divided into four chapters, each of which represents a separate stage of this conflicted couple’s relationship. The good news is that via gritty, grainy visuals and obviously unscripted dialogue, the flick has a super-realistic ambiance that makes you forget you’re watching a movie. The downside is that there’s an infuriating amount of stammering which makes you wish the director had spent a little more time in the editing room.
Nonetheless, it’s decent enough for a production which cost less than $2,000. Next time, though, this promising director needs to find a co-star willing to convey the sense that she wants to be onscreen.
Unrated
Running time: 74 minutes
Studio: Voyager Film Company
Breaking News
•••
Cops and Robbers, Hong-Kong Style, in High Body-Count Crime Caper
After a gang of bank robbers leaves the street littered with the corpses of cops courtesy of a gruesome shootout aired live on TV, the police force is left embarrassed with a lot of egg on its face. So, to restore the department’s credibility, the chief deploys thousands of officers to find the crooks and to bring them to justice.
Eventually the five bandits are discovered holed up in a hideout, and television news crews are again on the scene to broadcasts the relentlessly grisly blow-by-blow. So unfolds Breaking News, a gruesome adventure reminiscent of 15 Minutes, a crime saga starred Robert De Niro and Edward Burns. But where the bad guys were wielding the camera in that flick, Breaking News focuses on the action from the point of view of the bad guys.
Like a Bruce Lee chopsocky, this movie doesn’t have much more to offer beyond incessant vivisection, which ought to satiate the bloodthirst of fans of gratuitous gore.
A brainless but harmless display of senseless slaughter.
Unrated
In Cantonese, Mandarin and English with subtitles.
Running time: 98 minutes
Studio: Palm Pictures
CSA: The Confederate States of America
••••
What if the South Had Won the Civil War?
If you’ve ever wondered what course America history might have taken if the South had won the Civil War, you might like to check out CSA: The Confederate States of America. Written and directed by Kevin Willmott, a cinema professor at the University of Kansas, this fake film unfolds much like a Ken Burns PBS documentary, though narrated by a Brit as if a serious BBC production.
Willmott has cleverly spliced in reams of historical footage, though editing them in to present a country where slavery never ended. This documentary-style flick also contains present-day commercials in order to convey the sense that one is actually watching television.
For instance, the first ad, for Confederate Family Insurance, features a carefree white family frolicking in front of their suburban home with a picket fence. The commercial is unremarkable till the very end when a voiceover proudly proclaims, “For over 100 years, protecting a people and their property,” while showing a slave toiling away in the garden.
Lampooning everything from World War II to the Home Shopping Network, the production presents a very familiar country except that slavery still exists. So, the NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Chattel People, and Blacks attempting to escape from their condition are diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness referred to as Runaway Slave Syndrome.
CSA is likely to be misunderstood in much the same way Spike Lee’s Bamboozled caused controversy, because it presents America’s ugly legacy of racism in an in-your-face fashion, which leaves the viewer wondering whether the South might have actually won the Civil War after all.
For in a telling postscript, the picture sorts out some of its fact from fiction, explaining that much of what you’ve just witnessed, such as Niggerhead Cigarettes and Coon Chicken were not fabrications but real products which were only relatively recently discontinued. Meanwhile, the culture is still saturated with subtle slave imagery, such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.
An infinitely creative, and alternately sobering and humorous look at America’s lingering legacy of racism.
Unrated
Running time: 89 minutes
Studio: IFC Films
Firewall
•••
Harrison Ford in Familiar Role as Harried Husband on the Run
Jack Stansfield has it all, courtesy of his successful career as a computer security specialist with Landrock Pacific Bank. He and his family are quietly living out their version of the American Dream in the lap of luxury in a sprawling, split-level, suburban Seattle mansion blessed with breathtaking views of the ocean. But they have no idea that that dream is about to turn into a harrowing nightmare, because a gang of goons are about to hatch a well-planned plot to kidnap Jack’s wife, Beth (Virginia Madsen), and kids, eight year-old Andrew (Jimmy Bennett), and 14 year-old Sarah (Carly Schroeder).
Knowing that he is capable of cracking the codes, the intruders demand that he steal $100 million from his employer as ransom. But this, of course, only implicates the compromised computer expert in the heist. If Firewall’s fact pattern sounds vaguely familiar, one need only ascertain that the picture stars Harrison Ford, who has played practically the same character several times before, most obviously in Frantic (1988) and The Fugitive (1993).
In Frantic, he was a humorless doctor who couldn’t count on either the cops or the French embassy when his wife mysteriously disappeared while the couple was in Paris for a medical convention. There, the humorless, happily-married husband had to rely on the help of an attractive young woman whose powers of seduction he had no trouble resisting.
In The Fugitive, Ford was back as another stoic M.D., though this time framed for the murder of his spouse. But the Hitchcockian formula still relied upon his being bewildered about his predicament and having to rely on his own wits to crack the case and clear his name.
There’s not much new about Firewall either, despite the movie’s generous portions of pretentious technobabble. At heart, it’s just another generic, pressure-cooked, non-stop action thriller about an honest Everyman forced against his will to the wrong side of the law for the sake of his family. Unable to avail himself of help from the authorities, he then has to rise to the occasion in a battle of wits against a sadistic villain.
At the point of departure, we learn that Jack’s company, Landrock Pacific, is contemplating a merger with an outfit led by a British businessman named Bill Cox (Paul Bettany). But what no one suspects is that Cox is a conniving crook. Worse, he and his henchman, with the help of digital video recorders and parabolic microphones, have been secretly monitoring every intimate detail of the Stansfield household’s daily activities.
As a result, the conspirators know how to defeat their burglar alarm and that little Andrew is extremely allergic to peanut butter. So, when they sweep into the home and hold the family hostage, resistance is futile. However, after Jack is allowed out to hack into Landrock Pacific’s accounts, he summons up the gumption to take them on, relying only on a few handily-placed clues, and the assistance of his unfairly-fired secretary (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and his intrepid dog, Rusty.
To the extent that you are a diehard Harrison Ford fan, you are likely to enjoy this latest variation on a tried-and-true theme. Delivering a vintage performance, the spry 63 year-old proves himself still capable of mixing it up convincingly in an assortment of fight scenes. Plus, Paul Bettany’s equally-inspired turn as the despicable mastermind only adds to one’s ultimate enjoyment of the score-settling resolution.
Another edge-of-your-seat, roller coaster ride from a matinee idol everybody loves to root for.
PG-13 for intense violence.
Running time: 105 minutes
Studio: Warner Brothers
The Pink Panther
•
Steve Martin and Beyonce’ in Revival of Classic Comic Caper
The Pink Panther (1963) introduced Peter Sellers as the bumbling, French detective Jacques Clouseau in an endearing enough performance to give rise to a beloved film franchise which would ultimately include five, zany crime capers. In the original, the hapless gumshoe was out to recover a diamond stolen by a playboy who not only had pilfered the priceless jewel but who was also carrying-on an affair with clueless Clouseau’s wife right under his nose.
Sadly, the series slowly faded into oblivion as each ensuing installment relied more on silly slapstick and less on the sublime sort of humor which had made the first so memorable. And regrettably, this revival of The Pink Panther is more akin to the later episodes than to the earlier material.
Directed by Shawn Levy, the movie features a talented cast which includes Steve Martin as Clouseau; Emily Mortimer as Nicole, his shy secretary; Kevin Kline as Chief Dreyfus, his conniving boss; Jean Reno as Ponton, his partner; and Beyonce as the fetching, femme fatale, typecast as Xania, an international pop star.
The film opens at a soccer match where Xania’s boyfriend, Team France’s soccer coach Yves Gluant (Jason Statham) is felled on the field by a poisoned dart during the celebration of its victory over China. Just as mysterious as his murder is the disappearance of his ring which was fitted with the famed Pink Panther.
Chief Dreyfus, in line for the prestigious Medal of Honor, assigns the case to Clouseau, fully expecting him to fail. It certainly seems like the right choice, since the goofy gendarme can’t park a car, take Viagra or attach electrodes to a suspect’s gonads without it ending up as a gag.
Suspects abound, starting with Xania who, we learn, had been two-timing her beau with Bizu (William Abadie), one of his players. Could it be Bizu, himself? Then there’s Raymond LaBarge (Roger Rees), the sleazy casino owner; Yuri (Henry Czerny), the Russian soccer trainer; and Cherie (Kristin Chenowth), a flirtatious publicist.
Sadly, Clouseau, ever the clown, proceeds to solve this mystery without a whit of subtlety, and therein lies the fatal flaw of this tired retread. The movie induces nary a laugh, only groans of disbelief that we’re expected to find such a sorry string of dumb puns, infantile farts, awful accents and endless pratfalls funny.
Rated PG for crude humor and suggestive language.
Running time: 93 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
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Something New
•••
Blind Date Leads to Unlikely Love in Cross-Cultural Romantic Comedy 
By most standards, Kenya McQueen (Sanaa Lathan) should have nothing to complain about. She has benefited from the attention of doting parents whose emphasis on academics and career has inspired her to earn degrees from Wharton and Stanford. This, in turn, enabled the ambitious overachiever to land a great job at a top accounting firm where her meteoric rise has her presently poised to make partner.
Plus, she has three close girlfriends who are just as successful: a judge, a pediatrician and a banker. And now that she’s just bought her own home in an exclusive section of Los Angeles, the only thing missing is a man to share her practically-perfect picture life with. Because Kenya happens to be African American, she is well aware of the scary
statistic which indicates that 42 percent of Black females are fated never to marry. So, she finds herself on weekends sitting around commiserating with similarly-situated sisters about their dire prospects for a satisfying social life.
This is the point of departure of Something New, a delightful romantic romp which suggests that Kenya’s problem is that she’s limited her options by waiting for an IBM, meaning an Ideal Black Man, instead of considering dating a dude of a different color. Fortunately, she does manage to meet Mr. Wonderful in spite of herself, after agreeing to a blind date arranged by a concerned co-worker who says, “We got to get you married.”
Normally self-assured Kenya meets Brian (Simon Baker) for coffee, and sparks start to fly. Yet, she loses her composure, coming unglued not because he’s a gardener, but because he’s white. This source of embarrassment allows for loads of pure, sitcom-style silliness, such as when she tries to bond with a Black Starbucks employee by asking how the shop’s owner, Magic Johnson, has been treating him. “Never met him,” is the stunned cashier’s reaction.
Simultaneously, the picture presents a plausible tension between the lovebirds as the relationship deepens, and as loved ones learn of their liaison. For instance, her womanizing brother (Donald Faison) accuses her of “sleeping with the enemy,” while her female friends inquire about her Caucasian Casanova’s endowment and quality of performance in the sack.
But the cozy couple is less focused on superficialities as they deal with more meaningful differences. Brian is annoyed by Kenya’s repeatedly referring to this or that grievance due to discrimination, since he sees her as far better off financially than he.
“Every day, I’m reminded that I’m Black,” she counters. “Are you expecting me to be in this relationship and not talk about race?”
“Not just all the time,” he responds, trying to be supportive though ostensibly exasperated by this unfamiliar emotional baggage.
Mixing mirth with such sophisticated moments, Something New ultimately triumphs primarily because of the easy-going screen chemistry generated by Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker. For they are rather convincing conveying the idea that this workaholic ice princess’s reservations and skepticism would prove to be no match for the earnestness of a handsome, laid-back landscaper with enough passion, persistence and patience to melt her heart while turning everyone they know colorblind.
Kudos to Moroccan-born director Sanaa Hamri, who makes her feature film debut, here, after producing music videos for Mariah Carey, India Arie, Destiny’s Child, and Jay-Z. Same goes for a stellar supporting cast which includes Blair Underwood, Mike Epps, Taraji Henson, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Alfre Woodard, and John Ratzenberger in a blinked-and-you-missed-it cameo.
Rated PG-13 for sexual references
Running time: 100 minutes
Studio: Focus Features
The Tenants
•••
Snoop Dogg and Dylan McDermott Square-Off in Seventies Melodrama
First we had In the Mix, a movie about a Black guy dating a white girl. More recently, we had Something New, where the script was flipped to have a white guy going after a Black girl. Now, The Tenants does both of those pictures one better by featuring both a Black male-white female and a white male-Black female relationship.
The film is based on the best seller by Bernard Malamud, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Natural. Set in 1972, it stars Snoop Dogg and Dylan McDermott as writers, both of whom happen to be squatting in an otherwise empty Brooklyn tenement.
As the movie opens, we find reclusive Harry Lesser (McDermott) working on his third novel, but alone, because he doesn’t have much in the way of social skills. Worldly Willie Spearmint (Dogg), on the other hand, has a white girlfriend, Irene (Rose Byrne), but hasn’t yet landed a contract with a publisher.
The two tend to keep their distance, except for when Willie wants help polishing his writing, or when Harry wants a lesson on how to loosen up around the ladies. The plot thickens when Harry makes a move on Irene, after criticizing the latest draft of Willie’s book, which is entitled Kill Whitey.
Overhearing Willie tell his “b-word” to go mate with herself, Harry figures that the girl might be ripe for a more appreciative mate. Irene declines, however, explaining that in, “loving a Black man, sometimes you feel Black yourself.” She informs Willie of the overture, and the ensuing tension simmers till Willie introduces his neighbor to Mary (Niki Crawford), a sister who seduces the nerdy Jew when he admits he’s never been with a Black woman.
The stripped-down production looks more like a play than a movie, but all the actors do a decent job with a script which turns increasingly preposterous at every turn. Yet, because it held my interest from start to finish, this latest variation on the Black-white romance theme earns this critic’s recommendation.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated R for violence, nudity, sexuality, drug use, ethnic slurs and pervasive profanity.
Running time: 97 minutes
Studio: The Tenants, Inc.
Date Movie
•• 1/2
Silly Spoof Lampoons Lots of Romantic Comedies
Being a big fan of romantic comedies will undoubtedly add to your enjoyment of Date Movie, a silly spoof from the writing/directing team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the same brains behind the Scary Movie trilogy. This go-round, the irreverent pair have set their sights on so-called chick flicks, rewriting memorable scenes from dozens of hit films, including My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Hitch, Shallow Hal, When Harry Met Sally, Legally Blonde, You’ve got Mail, There’s Something about Mary, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet the Parents, The Wedding Planner, Pretty Woman, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, What Women Want,and The Wedding Crashers, to name a few.
By the way, Date Movie doesn’t restrict itself to one genre when it comes to making such  references, for the frequent filmgoer will also recognize recreations of The Lord of the Rings, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, King Kong and more. The picture is structured as a string of disconnected skits with only the rudiments of a plotline.
Courtesy of the miracle of colorblind casting, Eddie Griffin, who is Black, and Meera Simhan, who is of East Indian extraction, portray Frank and Linda Jones, the parents of the relatively pale-looking Julia, as played by Alison Hannigan. The script only adds to the confusion by explaining that the daughter is a quarter Greek, a quarter Indian, a quarter Japanese, and a quarter Jewish.
Hannigan dons an unflattering fat suit for the film’s opening tableau during which a sudden gust of wind blows her dress up in the air, ala Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. Her unsightly cellulite grosses-out passers-by, who proceed to gag instead of leer at her legs. But an oblivious Julia heads to her family’s Greek restaurant where her well-meaning father sprays humus, his convenient cure-all, on her ugly mole.
With her father pressuring her to marry a nerd named Nicky (Judah Friedlander), Julia pays a visit to love doctor Hitch (Tony Cox) to avoid an arranged marriage. Hitch proceeds to “pimp her out” which means make her over into a man-pleaser capable of catching the eye of the man of her dreams, Grant Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell).
Rather than relate what transpires in this non-linear story, permit me to point out a few of the film’s familiar-sounding highlights. Michael Jackson repeatedly trying to seduce a little boy. Grant faking an orgasm in a diner. Frank asking his future son-in-law to milk his nipples. “B*tch” being a baby’s first word. An old lady tongue-kissing a cat in heat. And J-Lo getting her enormous butt stuck in a chair. 
Somehow, all this depravity leads to a sweet ending lifted verbatim from Notting Hill where Julia impatiently implores Grant to take her in his arms, with: “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”
More shocking than hilarious, Date Movie offers just enough funny moments to earn this critic’s seal of approval.
PG-13 for continuous crude and sexual humor.
Running time: 80 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Freedomland
•••
Carjacked Kid Fuels Ethnic Tensions in Taut, Well-Acted Thriller
When Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) arrives bruised, bleeding and mute at a hospital emergency room after a carjacking, Detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) is soon summoned to the hospital. In the course of patiently taking the shaken woman’s statement, it only belatedly comes out that her four year-old son, Cody (Marlon Sherman), was asleep in the back seat of the automobile at the time of the heist.
The veteran detective immediately calls headquarters and an all-points bulletin is issued. Because Brenda is white and her young assailant was black, cops descend in droves on the African-American neighborhood where the incident allegedly occurred, virtually shutting down all traffic both into and out of the Armstrong Projects, as civil rights are violated in order to catch the culprit.
This development doesn’t sit well with the inconvenienced residents, who bitterly complain that the authorities only care in this instance because the missing child is white, and that there’s never been a similar police presence on behalf of a black crime victim. So, by the time Council shows up on the scene with Brenda in tow, ethnic tensions are already well-stoked and threatening to boil over.
Adding fuel to the fire is the presence of her hot-headed brother, Danny (Ron Eldard), who happens to be an officer on the force in Gannon, the lily-white town located just across the tracks. It falls to Council, as the only sympathetic cop around, to prevail upon the community to let cooler heads prevail.
This is the highly-charged point of departure of Freedomland, a heavy-handed morality tale which unfolds primarily in the mythical metropolis of Dempsy, New Jersey. If this city’s name rings a bell, that’s because it also served as the setting for Clockers, the Spike Lee film based on another best seller by Oscar-nominee Richard Price (for The Color of Money). But this movie, with its ever-present threat of a race riot, is actually more reminiscent of another of Spike’s flicks, namely, the incendiary Do the Right Thing.
Freedomland’s success is clearly due to a first-rate cast talented enough to overcome an alternatively preachy and preposterous script which betrays them in the end. Academy Award-nominee Samuel L. Jackson (for Pulp Fiction) plays to his strength, here, as the irrepressibly intimidating sort of character he first found fame playing. At every turn, Detective Council seems to be shouting in someone’s face, whether at suspects, colleagues, superiors, or even at Brenda, as he becomes increasingly skeptical about her unlikely story.
Four-time Oscar-nominee Julianne Moore is just as effective in a familiar role she’s handled before, that of an anguished mother who has lost a child. Equally-engaging performances are turned in by Aunjanue Ellis, Anthony Mackie, and three-time Emmy-winner Edie Falco (for The Sopranos) as the co-leader of a volunteer search team. Rounding out the cast are Freedomland’s author Richard Price as Brenda’s attorney and Samuel L. Jackson’s real-life wife, LaTanya Richardson.
By frequently relying on dizzying, hand-held camera work, director Joe Roth (Christmas with the Kranks) manufactures a palpable sense of perhaps unearned urgency. This electricity in the charged atmosphere is only amplified by the Council’s incessant barking which imbues the screen with an emotional edge, even in situations which aren’t as volatile as a scene might suggest.
An intensely engrossing melodrama, despite its ultimately squandering an opportunity to deliver an emotional payoff.
Rated R for profanity and violence.
Running time: 112 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
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