classicalsteve

This series lost it for me in the first 20 minutes of the first episode. The premise: a filthy rich family on an island in Nantucket is hosting a wedding for their three sons who are marrying three brides.

Nicole Kidman plays their mother and Liev Schreiber plays their father. They have a bash the day before the wedding full of lots of food and booze and small talk to boot. The sons are constantly doting on their mother. Okay fair enough.

The next morning, the day of the weddings, a dead girl's body is found in the water near the shore of the island. The weddings are canceled. So the premise is about a murdered girl and who among the filthy rich family and/or their employees and associates is the guilty party. Could be interesting.

Two detectives are brought in to investigate the case. They begin by asking questions of the family and their associates. This is where it lost it for me. Those being questioned seemed smug, arrogant and rather smarmy. They would flash funny smiles at the investigators. One woman bites her pen and grins. They make funny remarks. At one point the maid brags how she puts in all kinds of important ingredients into a Schreiber's drink. Then the all-important ingredient: vodka!

I didn't buy this testimony! What if the maid was implicated as having gotten another person intoxicated which could relate to the murder! I would be scared to death!

The show seems to be a comedy masquerading as a murder mystery. I don't think it works. I grew tired of the lack of courtesy towards the detectives. Not only did the remarks seemed forced and unnatural but also their expressions. Would people brought in for questioning regarding a death really act smug and smarmy in front of the police? I don't think so.

I loosely define a "modern film noir" as movies made after circa 1970 which contain many of the elements we associate with the sub-genre film noir ("dark/black" film), spanning a period circa 1940 to 1960.

While there is no absolute definition which characterizes a "film noir", aspects include crime, cynicism, cruelty, brutality, and even surrealism. "The Usual Suspects" is one of maybe a dozen films produced after circa 1970 that could be characterized as a "modern film noir". You could include "Reservoir Dogs" directed by Quentin Tarantino and "The Departed" directed by Martin Scorsese. (Interestingly, gangster movies and murder mysteries are often not defined as "film noir".) "The Usual Suspects" is one of those films which was not universal lauded by critics. Roger Ebert gave the film only 1.5/5 stars in large part because of the ending. Rolling Stone and The Washington Post movie reviews praised the film. Just about everyone agreed that Kevin Spacey's performance was out of the ballpark and he won Best Supporting Actor.

I believe it's a brilliant film with an outstanding ensemble cast of weird but strangely fascinating low-lifes. In a nutshell, "The Usual Suspects" is not the easiest film to define. The film begins towards the end of a barbarous incident on a cargo ship on a dock in San Pedro Bay on the California coast. A dark ghost-like character kills another helpless character. Then the "dark man" sets the ship aflame using a cigarette lighter. We learn quickly that most everyone on the ship had died and part of the story is about law enforcement trying to figure out why something like two dozen people were either murdered or died from the flames.

There are two parallel stories: the investigation into the killings on the ship and the events leading up to the murders on the ship. The secondary "plot" (and after you see the film you'll understand why "plot" is in quotes) is about a bunch of hoodlums who were wrongfully accused of a petty crime six weeks earlier. They meet each other at a line-up in a police station. None of them are particularly likeable but they're saving grace is they are compelling and all them have a history of criminal behavior.

Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) appears to be the most intelligent criminal of the lot, McManus (Stephen Baldwin) the most high-strung, Fenster (Benicio de Toro) the most enigmatic who tends to slur his words, Hockney (Kevin Pollack) the most indifferent to opinion about himself, and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) the most unassuming of the bunch being meek and a cripple, and one of the only survivors from the atrocities on the ship. He earned the nickname "Verbal" because he tends to ramble about things unrelated to the current conversation. (At one point he muses about having been in a barber shop quartet when asked about the murders on the ship.) They are hired by an unknown and unseen character, called Keyser Söze, a Hungarian crime boss who we learn is the epitome of evil. There's a flashback where we see thugs hired by a rival crime boss to force Söze to concede his power. The thugs threaten to kill Söze's family. Söze's solution is one of the most brutal moments of the film but we never see Söze's face; we only see him from behind.

When Söze's name is mentioned, Verbal becomes insufferably afraid during his interrogation. In the flashback, the five "suspects" are brought together. They meet one Kobayashi who could be Indian or Pakistani who tells them of his "employer's " intentions. Keyser Söze has dossiers on each of them as a way to compel them to complete a task, which turns out to be the crimes on the boat.

"Suspects" is one of the most compelling and thought-provoking movies I've ever seen. For me it's an amazing piece of cinema from beginning-to-end but it is not for all tastes. In some ways we have even more questions than answers by film's end. But I think that's the fun of it.

But I would not characterize this movie as "joyful" but more of an exploration of the darker sides of human behavior. It is probably in my top 100 favorite movies. I watch it about every few years.

If you're looking for just a pure entertaining action film where the bad guys and good guys are well defined, like "Die Hard", "Heat" may not fit the playbill. "Heat" is quite an extraordinary film. It's sort of "The Italian Job" meets Shakespeare's "Hamlet".

The premise is pretty straight-forward: LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is pursuing heist leader Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and his gang of low-life and murderous thieving thugs. If you're going to pair Pacino and De Niro, the latter has to be the baddie. But to give a lot of credit to De Niro, his character of McCauley is very different than Jimmy Conway from "Goodfellas".

The story beings with a relatively straightforward heist of an armored vehicle containing bearer bonds. The idea was to steal the bonds and let the guards live until one of the gang members executes the guards. Now it's not just robbery but cold-blooded murder, so begins this nearly Shakespearian drama set in contemporary 1990's Los Angeles.

Part of what makes this film more disturbing than you're typical action movie is the characters on each side. They are not terribly likeable. Part of the story, unusual for an "action movie" is we learn about other people in the lives of Hanna, McCauley, and even some of the other gangs members, particularly their wives and/or girlfriends. Part of the intricate web is that some of these people have nothing to do with the crimes but are innocent bystanders caught in the cross-fire.

In some ways, by film's end, we learn that the relationship between Detective Hanna and Thief McCauley is they are as intertwined with each other as their own significant others. And that's what makes this film much more than a simple action movie. It's high drama with some shoot-outs.