axsmashcrushallthree

I saw this film fairly recently, and was excited because the material is a real treasure trove that could be mined for quite a haul, particularly in the hands of someone like Darren Aranofsky.

However, for me, it's Aranofsky's worst film by far, and I've seen them all. As a technician and stylist, he's one of my favorite current directors, but the story and performances were hammered home with so many clichés that the venture was just laughable.

I mean, Darren's singular approach of blurring space and time worked well with "Requiem for a Dream" and "The Fountain" because of the inherent reality/unreality that is the central focus for the main character. Here, it's played out in the dichotomous relationship of TWO characters, and it's just plain silly - there is no granularity to it at all. The impresario and mother characters come off like crap - Anton Walbrook must have been turning in his grave. And of course, Mila Coon-Ass really kills it - a better actress with more allure, more subtlety, a better ability to convey passive-aggressiveness - now that might have helped a bit. Ultra-bad casting decision, but you have to give some credit to Natalie Portman, who turns in an agreeably flamboyant performance that, while probably not Oscar-worthy, is worth attending to.

But this thing is a turkey for me - it is ponderous and flat-footed rather than brooding and potent. This guy is a wonderfully talented director, but I hope Darren doesn't think that he's John Ford now after the Oscars of last year. Ford built his legacy through craft over time - so far, Darren has distinguished himself with techniques more akin to Roman Polanski. I'd love to see Aranofsky tackle something like "Othello" or "Macbeth"!

And frankly, I'd rather see Roman Polanski tackle THIS material - shades of "Repulsion"! Overall, I get more out of balletic conflicts like "The Red Shoes" and "The Turning Point" than this thing - I'd suggest that viewers at least see these as a source of comparison - heck, see "Repulsion" as well. I'm afraid that this isn't worth more than 3 out of 10.

To put it bluntly, this film is a virulent mess. I mean, who would've thunk it? After Joe Wright's shimmering triumphs in "Pride and Prejudice" and "Charles II: The Power and the Passion"? And this cast? And this Ian McEwan storyline worthy of Graham Greene? And a Best Picture BAFTA?

It stinks, and here's how it apparently happened. Wright's florid cinematics worked well in his earlier two enterprises because of the strengths of the characters and the compelling story lines that held a great deal of interest via action and resulting character development. In this film, we find a context of greater introversion and subtlety, and the hope was that Wright would tone things down a little. Instead, he goes the opposite way, attempting to create a singular grafting of camera and musical themes (including typewriter key sounds) that defines rather than underpins the film.

Joe Wright is not Darren Aranovsky, however. And ultimately, the result is gratingly self-conscious and infuriatingly pretentious, consistently turning scenes into deflating "look-at-this" exercises. And if this isn't enough, Wright attempts to turn the story into an cinematic "epic", apparently wishing to rival "The English Patient" and "For Whom The Bell Tolls" in scope and detail. McEwan's story doesn't lend itself well to this treatment, so the film collapses under massively detailed expositions of WWII and other events that contribute nothing to the story. The expositions themselves don't even ring true, and the plot's final twist almost seems anticlimactic under all of that weight.

Ultimately, my distaste for the enterprise led me into the fast-forward/laugh mode - fast-forwarding through the endless yawning pits of the superfluous landscape while laughing at the overall lost motivation of the film. I haven't done this with a major motion picture since "Braveheart", but with "Braveheart", I was laughing at the film's unintentionally hilarious content, not at its overall motivations.

2 Stars, and hopefully the nadir of a very talented director's career.

This remake of "Internal Affairs", a great movie in its own right, adds a Whitey Bulger-John Connolly Boston twist that just BEGS for brilliance - it's a can't-miss story line with a powerhouse cast.

However, it's a huge disappointment. Despite such compelling material, Scorsese only skims the surface, opting for gloss instead of substance, adding confusing sub-plots that serve mainly to hook the audience. These sub-plots destroy the momentum of the film and pull the whole thing off the tracks. Without these (no spoilers), the film may have had a chance. Scorsese's trademark violence stingers are now overripe at best. Am I the only one who started to yawn when people were getting pounded over a loud soundtrack in "Casino"? I doubt it...

There is some pretty silly ensemble work here, too - we're not talking "Glenngary Glen Ross" or "The Usual Suspects" here by any stretch. Most of the bad highlights usually involve Wahlberg's profane fool of a character. Overall, the individual characterizations seem to be either shrill, as in the case of the annoying Wahlberg and chest-thumping Damon, or flat, like Sheen's police captain. Nicholson's Whitey Bulger take is completely lacking in menace - it's amusing, if nothing else. Only DiCaprio's brooding Billy Costigan stands out, but he's got nowhere to go, both literally and figuratively - the sub-plots basically turn his character to face the wall...

Much has been made of the ending here, but I would describe it with one word - "cowardly". I just couldn't respect this film much, particularly in light of "GoodFellas" and other Scorsese masterpieces. Overall, 4 stars and only because it's him - probably the worst best picture Oscar since "American Beauty".