Movie Review: Dead Man's Burden

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Movie Review: Dead Man's Burden

Dead Man`s Burden
Directed by: Jared Moshe.
Written by: Jared Moshe.
Starring: Barlow Jacobs (Wade McCurry), Clare Bowen (Martha Kirkland), David Call (Heck Kirkland), Joseph Lyle Taylor (E.J. Lane), Richard Riehle (Three Penny Hank), Jerry Clarke (Sheriff Deacon), Adam O'Byrne (Archie Ainsworth), Travis Hammer (Ben Ainsworth), Luce Rains (Joe McCurry), William Sterchi (WC Claymore).

Jared Moshe’s Western Dead Man’s Burden has a killer opening and an even better ending. Those are often the two areas where movies screw up the most – either by lulling you to sleep with too much exposition at the beginning, or tacking on an unsatisfying conclusion at the end. But Moshe nails both. The problem with Dead Man’s Burden in the middle hour of this 90 minute movie – that’s a dead zone that pretty much sinks the entire movie.

The movie stars Wade McCurry as Barlow Jacobs, who left his Southern home years before during the Civil War, and was disowned by his father (the movie thinks the reason behind this disowning is some sort of big secret – but you’ll probably guess it, like I did, inside of a minute). He fought in the War, became a Deputy after it, but has received a letter from his dying father telling him to come home. His father is dead by the time he gets there – as are his two brothers – killed during the war. The only surviving family member is Martha (Clare Bowen), who along with her conniving husband Heck (David Call) wants to sell the land to a mining company – representing by E.J. Lane (Joseph Lyle Taylor). The old man would never sell, but Martha and Heck want to make a new life for themselves in San Francisco – and if Wade doesn’t screw it up, they just may do that.

Dead Man’s Burden is a low budget movie – a very low budget movie actually, and you can see that in certain respects. I don’t think I can recall seeing any of the actors – except Richard Riehle – in a movie before (although I probably have). Jacobs in particular isn’t quite up to the task of playing Wade. Wade is the strong, silent type – a staple in the Western genre – but Jacobs doesn’t have much screen presence here. Bowen has plenty of spunk as Martha – but never really hits any shades of grey – and she’s laying the accent on a little too thick. In short, the actors, at times, seem more like kids playing dress-up than delivering realistic performances.

And that is a shame, because much of the movie is quite good. The low budget production design works very well – they film feels authentic, at least in the setting. And then there is the beginning and the end of the movie, which are both great. Of course, both involving gun fights – but not the typical ballet of bullets, galloping horses, etc. you remember from many Westerns. They gunfights are short, sweet, brutal and bloody – and they pack a wallop. After the opening scenes, I couldn’t wait to find out where the movie was going – and then I sat there fairly bored until the closing 15 minutes or so – which is also great.

The problem is the middle. It drags – on and on – without much to hang onto. I’ve already complained about the performances, but even they may not have killed the movie had the story been better. But it isn’t – Moshe, who also wrote the screenplay, doesn’t try to do anything new with the genre. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except here, it does make for a deadly dull sit – especially since the “dark secrets” the movie promises are easy to guess from the outset. We spend most of the movie waiting for the characters to catch up to us.

It’s a shame that people don’t make more Westerns these days. The genre is still solid and dependable – even if we get more fun entertainments like 3:10 to Yuma or Appaloosa and fewer masterworks like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. So I admire Moshe for trying to make a traditional Western – I just wish he made a better one.

Movie Review: Django Unchained

Monday, December 31, 2012

Movie Review: Django Unchained

Django Unchained
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino.
Written by: Quentin Tarantino.
Starring: Jamie Foxx (Django), Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Schultz), Leonardo DiCaprio (Calvin Candie), Kerry Washington (Broomhilda), Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen), Walton Goggins (Billy Crash), Dennis Christopher (Leonide Moguy), James Remar (Butch Pooch / Ace Speck), David Steen (Mr. Stonesipher), Dana Michelle Gourrier (Cora), Nichole Galicia (Sheba), Laura Cayouette (Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly), Ato Essandoh (D'Artagnan), Don Johnson (Big Daddy), Franco Nero (Bar Patron), James Russo (Dicky Speck), Bruce Dern (Old Man Carrucan), Jonah Hill (Bag Head #2).

Watching Quentin Tarantino`s Django Unchained I couldn’t help but think of those news stories you hear from time to time about how some group of Southern politicians want to downplay the “racial aspect” of slavery and teach students that the Civil War was about “States Rights” more than slavery (which is technically true, although since the right the Confederate States were fighting for was the right to own slaves, their argument doesn’t hold much water). What Tarantino has essentially done in Django Unchained is make the anti-Gone with the Wind. There are no smiling, happy slaves cracking jokes here. There is no romanticizing or idealizing the old South. In Tarantino`s film, everyone in the South is a racist bastard, deserving of what they get. Coming on the heels of his last film, Inglorious Basterds about a group of Jewish soldiers killing Nazis, giving us a more fitting ending to WWII than the real war gave us; Tarantino has essentially done the same thing here for slavery. That will not sit well with some – what he is essentially saying is that there is little to no difference between Southern slave owners and Nazis – but it is more accurate than not.

The film stars Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave who has been sold at auction and is tracked down by King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist turned bounty hunter. He needs Django to point out the Brittle Brothers for him so he can kill them and collect the bounty. He makes Django a deal – he helps him catch the Brittle brothers, and Schultz will give Django his freedom. Django acquits himself so well on that first job; he decides to make their partnership more permanent. Django agrees. He needs money – and also help in becoming a killing machine. His wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) was also sold at auction, and Django will do anything to get her back. Schultz agrees to help him get Broomhilda back, after a winter of tracking, killing and making money.

The heart of the films first and second act is the relationship between Django and Schultz. In many ways, it is a mentor and student relationship – with Schultz molding Django's raw talent for killing people and helping to channel his immense anger into a more productive means. Waltz, who won an Oscar for Basterds playing perhaps the most memorably evil Nazi in cinema history, is essentially playing a Good German this time around. He is the one white character in the movie who disapproves of slavery, and you treats Django more or less like an equal. I say more or less, because even after they form a partnership, Schultz still only gives Django a third of the bounty they collect instead of half. And there are times when he seems almost patronizing to Django. Still, he is clearly the only good white character in the movie – and make no mistake, it is not a coincidence that he is not American. Foxx has the less showy of the two roles – Waltz gets the best dialogue, and as in Basterds, he makes the most of it. But through the course of the film, Foxx’s Django becomes his own man. While he needs Schultz at first to teach him what to do, by the third act, Django needs no one.

That third act is what elevates the film to the truly great. Once Schultz and Django figure out that Broomhilda has been bought by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), owner of the famed Candie Land plantation, who prefers to be called Monsieur Candie, they come up with a plan to get her back. Candie likes to put on a front of civility, class and enlightenment – and doesn’t understand how being one of the leading purveyors of Mandingo Fighting (slaves fighting slaves to the death) interferes with that. He even treats Django with more respect than he would treat any other black person, because Schultz treats him as an equal, and because he is posing as a “black slaver” himself. But make no mistake, Candie is as vile as creation as Tarantino has ever created – horribly, gleefully racist, and when he figures out that Schultz and Django may be playing him, he becomes even more hateful, and spews even more bile. Yet, despite how evil Candie is, perhaps the real villain of the film is Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s most trusted, oldest slave – who laughs at all Candie’s racist jokes, and looks down his nose at Django. Through the course of the movie, Steven does even more to protect his way of life – in which slavery plays a pivotal role. It is no mistake that the makeup job on Jackson makes him look like Uncle Ben. Jackson, who has pretty much been sleepwalking through his roles for the last decade or so, rips into his role as Steven – and makes what could have been a regular Uncle Tom role into something much deeper, darker and more complicated.

The film has all the hallmarks of a Tarantino film. The films dialogue has a rhythm all its own – from the early scenes of Schultz and his “negotiation” with Django’s owner, to the dinner party scene which is the centerpiece of the third act to a ingenious and hilarious scene in which a bunch of Klan members complain about the lack of visibility in their hoods, no one writes dialogue quite like Tarantino – and no one is better at finding the right actors to deliver that dialogue. The film is also the most violent of Tarantino’s films – blood splatters the wall, the grass, the flowers, the trees and everything else around them every time guns are drawn – which is often.

What Tarantino has done in his last two films is what critics always complained about in his earlier films – he has developed a world view and a sense of morality. While Basterds was a better film – it is Tarantino’s masterpiece because his love of cinema and dialogue actually became key thematic elements in the film itself – Django is probably his angriest film. Many people have fooled themselves that in an America where Barack Obama is President, that racism is dead and we live in a “post racial world”. Tarantino doesn’t buy that argument. Django Unchained is a violent, angry look at race relations in America – yes, one that recognizes that America has come a long way from its earliest days, but still knows there is more to do. America still needs to reconcile itself with its violent, racist past and in some ways, a film like Django Unchained can help that. Yes, it is a spaghetti Western, a Blaxploitation film and a comedy. But it is also a more honest look at race in America than any other film in recent memory. Oh, and it’s the year’s most entertaining film to boot. This is truly a masterful film – one that only Tarantino could make.