Film Pairings — Gambling As A Means To A Bad End, Or Not

When I propose these double features, I’m not necessarily recommending them — at least not for every one. I mention this now because I have vey mixed feelings about both Killer Joe and Rounders. Both have fine casts; reason enough to see them, perhaps. The directors are experienced, and the story premises are promising.

However, Killer Joe, with its perfect noir plot, is nonetheless filled with gratuitous violence and prolonged humiliation. I felt this way before I read about director William Friedkin’s battle to keep it from getting the dreaded NC17 rating.  He lost that battle and a similar one in the U.K.  In the end, Friedkin did not make the cuts that would have made the film an “R’ and more profitable in general release.  Good for him.  But while I wholeheartedly support the director’s refusal to give in to censorship, I found myself censoring it on my own by fast-forwarding through scenes when the camera lingered far too long on scenes of little more than torture. Without spoiling the artful twists in plot, here’s the story: A sleazy, mentally disturbed Houston cop, Matthew McConaughey, is hired to kill a woman by the woman’s son, daughter and ex-husband. The son, Emile Hirsch, has a crushing gambling debt and is mere days from extinction.  He has exhausted all alternatives, except the one that brings Joe into their dysfunctional family.  With a common purpose — killing mom — gives family members reason to unite.  Juno Temple, Gina Gershon and Thomas Hayden Church, who brings depth to the depthless, make the characters and story all too real.

John Malkovich and Matt Damon

If Killer Joe suffers from some horribly misplaced exuberance, Rounders may be flawed by too much restraint.  John Dahl, director of one of my favorite, darkly comedic films — The Last Seduction — focuses on a promising young gambler played by Matt Damon in Rounders.  The problem for our protagonist in this film, like Killer Joe, is that when you gamble, sometimes you lose and sometimes you lose to the wrong people.  We spend most of the film as bystanders to poker games as Damon tries to climb out of deep debt the way he got into it — by gambling some more. Even for a poor poker player like me, this was more interesting than I would have imagined.  Each game brings with it its own drama.  However the central drama is the choice Damon’s character must make.  Should he, a smart law student, go straight or, as the devil on his shoulder, Edward Norton, counsels, “go pro” in the exciting world of high-stakes poker.  I stayed with the film for its promise.  Here was John Turturro, John Malkovich and Martin Landau. With all these great characters and the danger hovering over Damon’s genuinely decent character, what great surprise, what profound irony are we going to experience?  I have no idea.  He makes a choice.  If that’s it, it’s not enough.

This is definitely a beer night — the cheaper the better.

Film Pairings — Crimes Or Misdemeanors

Perhaps no crimes have been committed.  No murders, no heists, at least of a material kind.  But what about intentional humiliation?  Deceit for sexual seduction? Something more than mischievousness, something just short of emotional torture?

Les Liaisons Dangereuses was written in the late 1700s by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.  In the 20th and 21st centuries, the book was mined for the cinema by the French, English, American, Korean and, most recently, the Chinese. There are the two available English language versions — Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions.  One is critically acclaimed.  The other has spawned nasty little sequels. And it’s probably important to understand that while the plots of these two are much the same, there couldn’t be a greater difference in style and feeling.

Similar to the initial impression of Wild Things, reviewed last week, Cruel Intentions begins as a dark teen comedy.  Unlike Wild Things, Cruel Intentions never transcends its first impression.  The style may have been intentional, though. It worked for its target market.  Ryan Phillippe, looking uncannily like Justin Bieber in this 1999 film about rich, spoiled, emotionally bullying teens, is joined by Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Phillippe and Gellar are the foxes in the henhouse of innocence. (The “henhouse of innocence? Sorry I lost my mind there for a moment.) And when the nasty deeds are done, they must face each other.  Whatever I might say about its depth or lack of it, the film was entertaining and extraordinarily successful.  Wikipedia says that Cruel Intentions 4 will be released in 2014.

And now for something completely the same only very, very different.  Dangerous Liaisons is essentially the same plot in the hands of masters and set in the luscious excesses of 18th century France.  Christopher Hampton adapted the screenplay from his play and from the book. And Stephen Frears directed this true-to-the-period piece released in 1988.  The cast is extraordinary, featuring Glenn Close and John Malkovich as competing, evil manipulators.  Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman are not only beautiful, but also excellent in their roles.  A very young Keanu Reeves has a minor role. Much like Cruel Intentions, there is plenty of sex. But unlike the young American version, the wit is much more biting in France.  The endings of both might be considered darkly comedic or humorously tragic.

It almost has to be champagne for the evening in honor of the book that inspired all these films and certainly in the meanness that stems from the boredom of being part of the “idle” rich.  Join in for a few hours.  Spoil yourself. Indulge.