June 20, 2007
By Jeff Roedel
In theaters Friday: 1408, Evan Almighty, A Mighty Heart.
New on DVD: Bridge To Terabithia, Gray Matters, Miss Potter.
Celebrity birthday: Josh Lucas turns 36 on Wednesday. Lucas, I admire you for making the best of it, but ultimately you can’t escape the label of “Poor man’sMatthew McConaughey" (or should that be poor woman’s?). On a personal note, there’s the unseemly business of you hitting my pal Sam Garland in the face with a basketball while filming Glory Road. It may have been in the script, but I’ve got a script for you, and you’re not going to like it…
Okay here’s the deal on Breach. Writer/director Billy Ray did a pretty admirable job of retelling a true story as a suspense drama (he attempted the same with 2003’s Shattered Glass), but this time around he has a tad more to work with. Namely Chris Cooper who is creepy, bellicose and also a little sympathetic as senior level FBI turncoat Robert Hanssen. Which might be one of the problems of the movie. For this type of thriller to really work, audiences should not feel an ounce of remorse for the villain. Any empathy should be overshadowed by sheer dread of the man. After selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia for more than a decade, it’s pretty safe to say Hanssen is the most treacherous spy in U.S. history. The guy double-crossed the U.S. so much in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, he makes Benedict Arnold look like George Patton. He was spared the chair and is sitting in federal prison for life, so why do anything to make him seem like a victim (even if it is of his own poor decisions and addictions)?
Don’t get me wrong, Breach is worth the rental for its historical significance (probably the biggest get for U.S. intelligence in the Bush era other than the Fort Dix and Kennedy Airport deals), and to see another great Cooper performance. I just can’t help but wonder what the film could have been had Ray ratcheted up the suspense a few notches and had Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Freddy Rodriguez instead of a bland mumbler like Ryan Phillippe as the lead.
If you saw Ocean’s 13 and are looking for a multilayered, subtle and quality performance from Al Pacino, you know one with depth…like an actor, then look no further than The Panic in Needle Park, out on DVD for the first time this week. Pacino stars as an addict holed up in New York with a homeless girlfriend in a role that won him his part in The Godfather. This is one of the first mainstream movies to deal with hard drug addiction without glorifying or sugar coating the problem.
Finally, here is the trailer to the upcoming 3:10 to Yuma. Yes, it’s a remake of the 50 year-old Western of the same name, but it stars Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Peter Fonda and Ben Foster! So, yeah, don’t hate. Yuma debuts Oct. 7 and, mark my words, it’s going to be the best Western since Tombstone.
Comments
Post a comment
(225 magazine reserves the right to remove any comments from this site we deem offensive, malicious or otherwise inappropriate.)