An Alternative World of Torn Labels

Rating: Null/10 (25 December 2002)

Spoilers herein.
Yesterday, I saw the first watchable Scorsese film in decades, and the same today with Spielberg. Something weird is in the wind.
And yes, I know this isn't a `real' Spielberg movie and that he only stepped in after paging through a half dozen directors, and only to protect his investment as a producer, and only because he has no real project underway. Still, I'm surprised. The compact Spielberg usually demands of the viewer is that in return for allowing him to turn us into children, he will expertly push children's buttons. He has been consistent in this even as he plowed through `serious' matters of war and holocaust. All are steeped in juvenile sentimentality. His recent `AI' and `Minority' were solid attempts to escape himself. After all, he knows he will not be remembered well and wants to be before he dies.
So even though this is something he stepped into late, I count it as a solid victory for the pressures from his peers to make a real movie, with an intelligent stance. He does. Its not a great movie, but it has smarts. And it is relatively original.
The first thing is how he adopts the notion of making the film itself a character. Lynch did this first (to my knowledge) with `Velvet.' Most recently, Haynes did so with `Far from Heaven,' where the dynamics of the story occur not in reality but in the artificial reality of films of the era. So the limits of `society' were the action of the film as a force within the drama. So too here -- to denote this we have the colors of the stock of the era, we have the very air of the film world invading as smoke. And we have the director asking the actors to discard modern irony and act as if they were Michael Caine in the early seventies. `Pleasantville' was another in this line -- the production designer is from that project.
The film is set up as a reverse con. We know in the first couple minutes what he did and how the con ends. The traditional con story is a film within a film, which gives the opportunity to make the inner film the character as already noted. It is a clever idea that only could be conceived by someone intimate with shaping film. It makes the outer film more genuine by making the inner one more counterfeit.
Then we have the actors. The con artist is the most sought after role in all filmdom because the actor plays a character who is acting, something that allows them to exploit their own experience (often the only real experience these stunted lives have). Decaprio doesn't quite rise to the challenge. We've had one wondrous performance in `Gilbert Grape,' and another intelligent turn in Luhrmann's `Romeo.' Nothing of note since except occasional competence. He is competent here. Hanks gives us his regular routine: he's sinking fast, turning into another Morgan Freeman.
The real acting here is by Walken, who exceeds Spielberg's shaping of the project so much that we suspect no one really noticed it made the others look bad. Amy Adams has a passion that Leo lost long ago.
Incidentally, we have another filmworld jab at the French here. They really do have thuggish police who brutalize Americans when possible. Film `police' too. And the Mom in real life was a real tart who played a dumb soldier for US citizenship then sold herself to a higher bidder. But why introduce all this without developing it? The man in charge here has a special ax to grind, I think.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.