Film Pairing — Year Of The Con

Seems as if 2016 is the “Year of the Con,” with the election and all these candidates for public office pretending to be honest and competent, if not pious and brilliant. Let me recommend two films that pick up on the theme though in slightly different ways.  The first is light jazz. The second is visceral.  The first will make you smile.  The second will make you wince. Both are blessed with extreme talent. Both garnered film awards and considerable critical acclaim.  Both are based on true stories. The odd observation here is that the actors are pretending to be someone pretending to be someone they are not. Only actors and politicians are allowed to do that.

 Catch Me If You Can — This is the moment, I think, we catch Leonardo DiCaprio make his transition from vulnerable child star to adult without missing a step as a highly talented actor.  Here he portrays Frank Abagnale, upon whose book and life, the film is based. Young Frank grows up admiring his father, a man who despite his talent as a loving parent couldn’t quite make it as a provider despite or because of his con artist ways.  Frank, who occasionally participated in his father’s antics and wanting to impress his dad, took con artistry to a new level of fraud. With fake identities, he scammed millions eventually attracting a bland but determined pursuer, played exquisitely by Tom Hanks. Rounding out the supersized cast are Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, James Brolin and Amy Adams.  The film, released in 2002, was directed by Steven Spielberg.

American Hustle — This is a considerably more down-to-earth film. While Catch Me If You Can has some serious undertones, it is a funny film. In American Hustle, the humor is there, certainly, but it is much, much darker.  Two con artists agree to scam an Arab sheik for a casino development in Atlantic City. An ambitious FBI agent catches on, and will throw them both in jail unless they help him bring down some dishonest politicians who would be caught with their hands in the till thereby helping the FBI agent make his bones at the Agency. If only humans didn’t have human failings. If only good was good and bad was bad and never the twain should met. Damn those gray areas. Damn that we should fall in love with stupid people who think they’re helping us but screw up our lives. Can’t I do a little wrong if the result is a greater good? Lots of questions. But answers?  Who is responsible for the answers?  Not the filmmakers. Based on the famous ABSCAM scandals of the ‘80s and directed by David O. Russell, the film was released in 2013. The gritty film is populated by incredibly fine actors giving fine performances at every level.  Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence and Louis CK are featured. Robert De Niro makes a brief but powerful appearance.

Something to quench your thirst while you watch a couple of hours of disingenuous behavior? Champagne for the first. Light and bubbly, but with an ultimately calming effect.  For the second, you’ll have to get serious. Bourbon with no more than two ice cubes.  Or do what I do these days — some ice, tonic water, and a twist of lime or lemon. No alcohol.  People will think gin and tonic and you’ve pulled of a little scam of your own.

Film Pairing — The Once And Future Noir

Blade Runner ranked first on a list of top nine crime films I posted here earlier. If I were to redo the list I might have to make room for Inception. 

While it doesn’t have the wonderful noir moodiness of Blade Runner, Inception is exceptional.  Someone described it as a heist movie.  That works for me.  A team of criminals with specialized talents go about the delicate process of stealing information from the brain of one person in order to implant that idea into the brain of a person who will believe is his own.  We travel not in the outside world but in the world of dreams and dreams within dreams.  The laws of reality, as they often do in my dreams anyway, are suspended.

Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film’s protagonist, played by Leonardo DeCaprio, is a deeply flawed dream traveler who brings with him a team of experts to carry out the heist.  Among the other actors are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Cilian Murphy and Tom Berenger.  Michael Caine makes a brief appearance.  As you might expect from Nolan, though, the real star are the special effects — dazzling in their imagination and convincing in their execution.  Oddly enough and unlike say, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, there remains a cold genuine connection to reality after all.  The images may be oddly placed and even fold into themselves, but it is not truly as fantastic as dreams or nightmares might be. No matter which dream we are witnessing, these are familiar worlds.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Blade Runner is a masterpiece.  I have no authority to say so.  It is simply my opinion.  The world created in this film is recognizable in the sense that we understand such things as modes of transportation, the concept of robots designed to be human-like, and characters who are cops and robbers.  However, the characters are more broadly and colorfully imagined — more exotic and unpredictable without being absurd.  These are people we can come to believe exist, which is important because some of them are “replicants,” who are not considered human, have no feelings, aren’t, in some minds, alive. But is this true? The simple plot belies the implications, historically and currently, of those who view others as unlike them, perhaps even less than human.  Other races or ethnicities.  Undocumented immigrants.  People of another class or in a different circumstance.  It’s a simple, but powerful story.

Based, many say “loosely,” on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ridley Scott has a world that is both different and relatable.  Harrison Ford is at his best.  Rutger Hauer and Sean Young are perfectly cast and give the performances of their careers. 

These two films offer a night of challenge.  Inception, particularly, demands that you pay attention.  If you get up for a second glass of Pernod, put the DVD on “pause.”  For a different reason, you won’t want to miss a moment of Blade Runner.  Each frame is a work of art.  Both films will make you think, imagine, question. 

I suggested Pernod as an accompaniment to the night of films because of its near hallucinogenic quality.  Whatever you choose, it should loosen you up a bit.  It’s not a night for Scotch or Martinis.

Film Pairing — Corrupt Cops and Self-Destruction

One of the standard noir plots and of crime fact and fiction in general is about cops becoming robbers.  I think that being a cop has to make even the noblest of people vulnerable to the hardening of the soul, to the bitterness that comes when the bad guys make out better than the good guys, when it seems that nothing you do seems to make any difference or when getting by with it looks easy.  And of course, not every soul is noble to begin with.

Two films, one heralded and showered with awards and the other nearly forgotten even before it was released are featured here.

The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, won four Oscars. Scorsese, himself, won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best director. Released in 2006, the film was based in large part on a highly rated Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs.  What we have is an active-duty cop on the take and another cop doing undercover in a Boston gang trying to ferret him out.  It’s a simple plot, but one with suspenseful twists and turns and a cast of Hollywood heavyweights.  Where else would you find Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Vera Farmiga in the same film? And for good measure there is the inimitable Ray Winstone playing second in charge of the local Irish gang to Boston boss Nicholson, more than keeping up with the scenery-chewing icon.  Lots of testosterone.  It oozes from the screen.

In The Departed the story is about finding the bad cop.  In Rampart, the story is about a police department that doesn’t want the cop found.  They are already sinking in a sea of bad PR from the bigger corruption — Rampart, a real LAPD scandal of immense proportions.  They don’t want the story of this bad seed and his highly personal brand of corruption to the mess. What we get from Rampart, released only last year, is a lesser phenomenon, but not a lesser film. The corruption of the cop in The Departed is a fait accompli pretty much from the beginning of the film.  In Rampart the focus of the film is on one cop, who despite the larger scandal going on around him, finds ways to be corrupt all on his own. He is a guy who wants what he wants and takes it — a man without allegiance. The world exists for him alone. It is perhaps a little less exciting than The Departed, but we delve into character a bit deeper — or try to. 

In a screenplay co-written by the famous crime writer, James Ellroy, we watch Woody Harrelson’s cop character devolve from a nasty human being to an even nastier one.  While the cast is not the powerhouse of The Departed, we are treated to fine performances from Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, and Ice Cube, with a cameo by Steve Buscemi.

If you get thirsty or want to feel part of the gang, you might open a bottle of Irish whiskey. If you want to change for the second feature, you could go for beer. Domestic is fine.