douglaswilson

Metacritic gives this movie a 24, so far down in the red zone it bleeds all over the page. The Metacritic users give it like a 7.6, lots of green all around, and a bunch of 10s. When that happens, you know it's time to say SCREW THE CRITICS. I wonder what it's like in those ivory towers that gets your head twisted completely around sometimes and you not being aware that you're looking down at your ass instead of your beer gut.

This is a fine movie, one of the best buddy-cop movies ever made, carefully exploring bigotry and intolerance, and acceptance and redemption, and altruism and compromise, all in a setting that imposes some fantasy over reality -- but reminds us that reality has surprising twists and changes in it when pressed by the relentless force of time. The ONLY criticism I have is that in Hollywood there is a subtle campaign to make the F-word as common as "hello". They lose a lot of people that way. The F-word is one that is commonly used in its exclamatory sense for strong, forceful emphasis, and overusing it is like ending all your sentences with an exclamation point. When you hear some guy using it in every breath, you know he's insecure. Which accounts for its excessive use in Hollywood.

I was very impressed with Joel Edgerton as Jakoby, and will follow his career with interest. Will Smith did his usual fine job, and the ladies supporting the leads were good as well. All in all a fine movie.

I don't know how Netflix makes money on a $90 million budget, but hats off to them for creating a constant stream of good originals. Movies are so much better now than they were fifty years ago. And I think it is entirely attributable to not treating the audience as a bunch of drooling idiots. The trick is to work smart but in a way that brings along the droolers. Shakespeare taught us that.

I've watched this movie a number of times since shortly after it was released, and my appreciation for it has declined over time. Huston not only directed but wrote the screenplay, so you know going in it's no fool's work. He tried to do something more serious more serious than a James Bond movie. By piercing the gray exterior of Soviet life, it disrupted some stereotypes and assumptions that our propaganda had created, such as not being able to enter a country like the USSR without being detected, and that Soviet officials were boring bureaucrats who weren't corrupt high-livers, and that criminality was not widespread in the Soviet Union as elsewhere. The problem is that Huston just made up a lot of stuff, or made it look as though he had in a rather clumsy way, and couldn't resist some completely implausible James Bond touches. Thirteen years later "Gorky Park" improved considerably on this groundwork, though not without similar errors. For pointing the way, though not for his own offering, Huston deserves credit.

I think of myself as fairly critical when it comes to comedy, because if I am not amused or laughing out loud in the appropriate places, I can't fairly call it funny. And I hate improbable and implausible plots. This movie is engaging throughout and is very funny at the key points. Admittedly, you want to bitch-slap the boyfriend for his stupidity, but let's face it, a lot of young guys are stupid when it comes to their girlfriends. And even that distraction works this for this film: It is, most of all, a great comedy role for its female star, Penelope Ann Miller, and this is the movie that made me a big fan of hers. Miller and William Forsythe are fine actors and have done as well for the viewing public in the 20 years since as they did in this film. And I am grateful to them for giving us a movie I like to watch every couple of years because it's that good.