Critics fret that there is hardly any market left for American films made with adults in mind. One reason we worry is because there has been virtually zero interest in films, intelligent or otherwise, about our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Films as powerful as In the Valley of Elah and The Hurt Locker together grossed less than $20 million.
The new film The Messenger probably won’t do boffo box office itself, but this time we can skip the hand-wringing. Unlike most of its predecessors, this aftermath-of-war movie really isn’t very good. Or rather, for maybe a third of its playing time the film is amazing and maybe even important. But for the other two-thirds I recommend copious amounts of popcorn to keep you company.
Let’s start with the good news. The Messenger is more or less a buddy movie (though admittedly a very idiosyncratic one) that follows the travails of Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), an emotionally and physically damaged war “hero” (the movie itself supplies the irony), and his partner, Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), as they make their rounds informing parents and spouses that their loved ones have just died in action. It’s an audacious idea for a film, and in the scenes where Stone and Will are getting their faces slapped, spit on, and cried into by the heartbroken (such as an excellent Steve Buscemi), the film is extremely moving.
The devastated parents and wives come in a variety of ages, races and economic brackets; at times the film feels like a secret roadmap of American grief.
But filmmaker Oren Moverman, himself a former Israeli soldier, has little idea of what to do with his characters when they’re not painfully reciting their “The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you…” lines. Despite the fact that the two lead actors work well together, and that their characters mesh in an interesting way (turns out Captain Stone is jealous that his enlisted assistant is a battle-tested warrior and he isn’t), the film only works at all when both men are on screen. There’s a strange tinge of Apocalypse Now here, which for a time had me wishing that the gleaming-pated and emotionally spiky Harrelson had played Col. Kurtz instead of the preposterous Brando. Ben Foster certainly seems to be channeling Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard when his character drunkenly smashes up his own apartment.
Actually, Foster’s performance is a big part of the film’s problem. Outside of the “messenger” scenes, Foster mostly seems to be channeling other war movies rather than honest emotion. He’s gotten some good reviews for his work here, but I’d have to rate his performance a dud. The film’s main subplot, Will’s courtship of the newly-widowed Olivia (Samantha Morton), is not so much awkward, and therefore touching, as “huh”-inducing. Really, Sergeant?
Harrelson’s performance, and his character, are much more interesting. Harrelson’s peeling away of his emotionally stunted good-old-boy’s layers often strikes a nerve, but Moverman unwisely has him playing second banana.
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Movie Review
Horror film Abigail pairs camp and suspense but with limited success
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have established themselves as notable horror filmmakers over the past decade, rising to the point that they were tapped to helm the last two Scream films. Following the so-so response to Scream VI, they’ve now gone back to original storytelling with the new film, Abigail.
A group of six criminals – given the Rat Pack nicknames of Joey (Melissa Barrera), Frank (Dan Stevens), Sammy (Kathryn Newton), Peter (Kevin Durand), Rickles (William Catlett), and Dean (the late Angus Cloud) – have carried out a job to kidnap a young girl, Abigail (Alisha Weir), under orders from their boss, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito). They take her to a remote mansion, where they are to wait for 24 hours while Lambert secures a ransom from Abigail’s rich father.
What happens during that long day is better if it goes unspoiled (although the trailer straight up gives it away), but suffice it to say that the relatively simple job the group thought they signed up for turns out to be much more difficult. Locked in the house, on constant alert for an unexpected threat, and dealing with a team that is collectively not that intelligent, they must somehow find a way to survive.
Written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, the film is full of many weird decisions, starting with its tone. What at first seems like it’s going to be a tense thriller turns into a hybrid of camp and suspense, a combination that is tough to pair and doesn’t work well here. The filmmakers seem to want to have the film be both scary and funny, depending on the situation, but they fail to find the right balance, and so it winds up being neither.
That’s not to say that you won’t laugh while watching it, as there are times that it gets so ridiculous that laughter is the only possible response, but perhaps not in the way Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett had intended. Dumb characters repeatedly fail to listen to others, throwing themselves in harm’s way for, I guess, the sake of a kill. Abigail, a budding ballerina, is shown striking ballet poses in increasingly absurd situations, scenes that would be legitimately hilarious if they weren’t also supposed to be horrifying for the characters.
The filmmakers don’t have to be subtle in a film like this, but the overly expository script and bad dialogue don’t help with the overall quality. Two separate scenes feature two different characters revealing details about the group, as if once wasn’t enough, and painful one-liners and other groan-worthy lines litter the landscape. It would be one thing if the film’s main purpose was to be a comedy, but since it clearly isn’t, those parts fall flat.
Barrera, Stevens, and Newton have each made names for themselves in recent years, but they have varying degrees of success here. Scream star Barrera is given the choice role, so she comes off the best. Durand and Cloud each play characters with lower-than-average intelligence, a choice that seems like overkill initially and doesn’t become better as the film goes along. Esposito coasts on his reputation, not that his character has much to do anyway.
There are moments in Abigail where you can tell that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett still have talent and could have shown it more if they had chosen other paths in the film. Alas, they did not, as so we’re left with a movie that only commits halfway to both of its two options, succeeding at neither.
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Abigail is now playing in theaters.