The Shooting

Upon his return to an Old West mining camp, ex-bounty hunter Gashade (Warren Oates) learns from his dim-witted friend Coley (Will Hutchins) that his brother has been implicated in a murder. The two are then hired by a mysterious young woman (Millie Perkins) to lead her to a town called Kingsley. Along the way, they are joined by Spear (Jack Nicholson), an ominous hired gun. As water and horses run low, mistrust grows among the reluctant traveling companions.

Produced by Nicholson, written by Carole Eastman, and directed by Monte Hellman, The Shooting is a gem of a low-budget Western that nearly never got made. Oates’ clashes with Nicholson and Hellman, Nicholson’s insistence on sticking to a $75,000 budget, and an inability to find a distributor almost doomed this project to the status of “might have been.” Fortunately, like other chaotic, free-wheeling productions of the 1960s, it came together and defied expectations.


To start with, The Shooting is incredibly tense. The pace is slow, but the repetitive, Hitchcockian score and the rugged desert landscapes create an almost palpable sense of mounting suspense and paranoia from start to finish. This is the kind of movie where the viewer feels like anything could happen.


Though dialogue is minimal, the cast is more than game. Oates is in good ornery form as Gashade and a young Nicholson is downright creepy as Spear. Perkins – Hellman’s next door neighbor – portrays the unnamed woman with an air of haughty determination, while Hutchins gives Coley a nervous, wide-eyed energy.


All of these elements very nearly compensate for the fact that the film has virtually no plot in the traditional sense. The backstory is hazy at best and what happens on screen is frequently left unexplained. The sense of mystery obviously heightens the drama, but not knowing the where and the why of the journey will leave some viewers all too conscious of the fact that they are being manipulated. Additionally, the ending offers an interesting twist, but some will undoubtedly think a bigger payoff is in order.


Often cited as the first Acid Western, The Shooting is a tense, sparse, difficult slice of existential filmmaking rendered all the more impressive by the challenges behind its creation.


7.75/10

Heartbreak Ridge

Gny. Sgt. Tom Highway (Clint Eastwood) is a highly decorated but chronically insubordinate Marine nearing retirement age. He is sent back to his old stomping grounds to train a group of ragtag Marines in preparation for the invasion of Grenada. Neither his charges, his inexperienced commanding officers or his ex-wife (Marsha Mason) expect him to succeed, but Highway is determined not to quit.

Named for a Korean War battle, the film’s title pulls double duty as Highway tries to get his ex back. Eastwood’s in good form as the tough, hard-drinking Gunny, but the material and supporting cast are beneath him. Mason does her fair share of pushing away before inevitably giving in and Everett McGill is one dimensional as an antagonistic, by-the-book major. Mario Van Peebles at least livens things up as a corporal who moonlights as a rock musician, but he’s hard to take seriously as a fighting man.


The film’s whole problem is one of tone. For the first two thirds of the film, Highway’s Recon Marines are depicted as rejects and losers (who the veteran sergeant will turn around using some unorthodox methods, of course). As a comedy in the Major League/Bad News Bears vein, this would have been derivative and a bit tasteless, but it might have worked. Instead, the film does away with all notions of farce by launching into full-scale combat during the final third. Despite being written by a Vietnam vet and loosely inspired by true events, the war scenes felt preposterous and cartoonish. Amid heavy gunfire and tank, only one friendly bites the dust and you know it’s not going to be Clint.


As mindless entertainment, Heartbreak Ridge delivers with its sense of fun intact. But as a war film, it makes a mockery of our armed forces and falls incredibly flat. The fault doesn’t lie with Eastwood, but even he’s not a miracle worker.


6.25/10

Lonely Hearts

In the late 1940s, Detectives Robinson (John Travolta) and Hildebrandt (James Gandolfini) are hot on the trail of the Lonely Hearts Killers, Raymond Fernandez (Jared Leto) and Martha Beck (Salma Hayek), a twisted couple that finds victims through personal ads and murders them for their money.

Written and directed by Todd Robinson (the grandson of Travolta’s character), Lonely Hearts is a fascinating look at obsession. Haunted by the unexplained suicide of his late wife, Detective Robinson is as compelled to find and stop Fernandez and Beck as they are to keep swindling and killing to preserve their life together. These thematically loaded parallels, coupled with director Robinson’s commendable effort to flesh out every character, raises the film above the level of bland biopic or exploitative ripped-from-the-headlines thriller. Throw in some genuinely tense moments (beware the Se7en-esque sequence involving a bicycle box) and a solid period feel and it becomes hard to see why this didn’t get more notice upon its release in 2006.


The acting is certainly not the culprit. Travolta, whose roles have been almost unwatchably bombastic and smarmy in recent years, offers a powerful, controlled performance. He is nearly eclipsed by an almost unrecognizable Leto, who goes over-the-top at times, but otherwise manages an effectively conflicted portrayal of a delusional lowlife striving for something better. Gandolfini is so-so as Robinson’s sidekick, while Laura Dern makes the most of a thankless role as his mistress. The only real liability here is Hayek, who is badly miscast. She does the femme fatale routine to a T; problem is, the real Martha Beck was obese, homely, and a much more pathetic figure.


The film’s other major demerit is Gandolfini’s voiceover narration. Though he’s the one doing the talking, we learn relatively little about him compared to his favored subjects (Robinson, Martha, and Ray). His narration also contributes to the film’s somewhat haphazard sense of time. There is a lot of movement here, and it’s tough to figure out how far apart one killing is from the next.


Just as Fernandez and Beck are not household names, Lonely Hearts does not make nearly as big a splash as Zodiac or Changeling, two other period films dealing with brutal murders. It does, however, merit a viewing, if for no other reason than to see its evolution from personal family history into near-art.


7.5/10

The Question of Bruno

This debut short story collection from Aleksandar Hemon blends fact and fiction as the Bosnian-born Chicago author tackles subjects as diverse as war and genocide, family history, espionage, relationships, and the immigrant experience.

It’s tough to evaluate a body of work whose parts are so formally disparate yet so thematically intertwined. With The Question of Bruno, Hemon doesn’t merely think outside the box, he obliterates it. The first story, “Islands,” is a series of brief, numbered chapterlets detailing an uncle’s struggle with Soviet oppression. Contrast that with “The Life and Work of Alphonse Cauders,” a fictional biography of a horny misanthrope which hilariously reads like an Eastern European version of Chuck Norris Facts. Contrast both to the heavily annotated “The Sorge Spy Ring,” which examines the genesis of a Soviet secret agent, and “Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls,” a refugee’s take on 90s America.


Hemon is all over the place here, but his stories work in concert to tell a tale of suffering with only a whiff of redemption. Years of Old World torment are swept away in favor of New World alienation, and we are left wondering who had it worse: Uncle Julius in the Soviet gulags or Jozef Pronek, lost in the dead-end jobs of America?


If there is one drawback here, it is that the historical context – which often forms great parallels and contrasts between the personal stories being told – is ladled on too dense at times. The excessive footnoting which accompanied “The Sorge Spy Ring” was more of a distraction than a true companion story/reading aid.


That caveat aside, Hemon’s conviction, narrative sense, and technical proficiency make The Question of Bruno unforgettable, if uneven. A lot of authors use literary gimmickry to mask the fact that they have nothing to say. Here’s one who has plenty to say and whose experimentation with form ultimately ensures that the message comes across louder.


8/10

Tex & Shirley's Family Restaurant

In business since 1972, Tex & Shirley’s has locations at 708 Pembroke Road in Greensboro (the Friendly Center) and 4005 Precision Way in High Point. The menu features Southern-influenced American fare, such as sandwiches, ham steaks, and chicken platters. Breakfast is available all day, and specials change daily.

“Family Restaurant” suggests a focus on congeniality over food, and at Tex & Shirley’s, the suggestion is all too apt. Though the all-day breakfast is a nice touch, the non-breakfast options leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality and variety. A fried oyster sandwich was merely so-so, and the accompanying fries looked like they came out of a bag. On the plus side, everything on the menu runs reasonable-to-cheap. A sandwich, fries, and a drink can be had for under $7.


The Friendly Center location has a wooden interior with lots of space and little liveliness. On average, the crowd here leans toward geriatric – this is the kind of place you frequent if you want to take your grandmother to breakfast. Servers are polite, but not overly swift, even when the place isn’t packed (and at lunch, it isn’t likely to be).


Tex & Shirley’s seems like a perfectly passable option if your culinary wants are simple and you don’t feel like spending much money. If you’re looking for a good meal, however, your better served elsewhere.


5.5/10

Known to Evil

In this follow-up to The Long Fall, underworld fixer turned legit P.I. Leonid McGill is trying to keep his family together and put his past behind him. That all changes when powerful political operator Alphonse Rinaldo hires him to locate a missing woman. It isn’t long before McGill runs afoul of contract killers and the police, not to mention a Romanian pimp who is threatening his son.

At his best, Walter Mosley is a modern-day Raymond Chandler with a great ear for dialogue and a socially conscious edge. At his worst, he is a repetitive, ham-handed polemicist. Fortunately, like the book that it follows, Known to Evil captures more of the former than the latter.

This is a book that succeeds on the strength of its characters, and McGill is one hell of an interesting protagonist. A short, middle-aged Communist’s son, he carries with him both heavy guilt for his past misdeeds and the force of will needed to keep his head above water in increasingly dangerous environments. He is both iron and glass, rolled into one. Though there is a seeming surplus of secondary characters, very few of them bleed together. The retired assassin Hush, compassionate cop Bonilla, surveillance expert Bug, and scheming son Twill all stand out as people, rather than types.

Known to Evil moves at a quick pace, but Mosley still finds plenty of room to incorporate back story and asides about the nature of McGill’s corruption-tainted world. Like any good mystery, the more information that is provided to the reader, the more questions that are raised.

If there is one fatal flaw to this book, it is the tremendously disappointing ending. A wrap-up in every sense of the word, it is one of the weakest I’ve encountered in recent memory. The last chapter in particular is heavily summarized and glossed over. Had Mosley taken the time to handle this properly, he could have generated a ton of interest for the next McGill book. Instead, his quick fix leaves the reader feeling shortchanged.

That aside, Known to Evil makes for a decent read. Traditional enough to satisfy most mystery fans, it also makes good use of a New York setting without feeling stale. A lack of depth, abetted by the lackluster conclusion, means this probably won’t resonate very deeply, but at least you won’t feel like you’ve read it all before.

7.25/10

The A-Team

In Mexico, a group of veteran Army rangers come together to thwart a corrupt general. Led by the wily, cigar-chomping Col. Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson), the team includes ladies’ man Lt. “Face” Peck (Bradley Cooper), tough mechanic Cpl. B.A. Baracus (Quinton “Rampage” Jackson) and possibly insane helicopter pilot Cpt. H.M. Murdock (Sharlto Copley). Eight years later in Iraq, the A-Team is hired by CIA Agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson) to recover some valuable printing plates. When the mission goes wrong, the team becomes a group of fugitives fighting to clear their name.

A staple of my childhood, The A-Team television series left me with fond memories of bullets that didn’t actually hit anyone, Mr. T calling people “fool,” and a souped-up van. When I saw the trailer for the film remake, my first two thoughts were “You’re kidding?!” and “This is going to suck.” Because I am a sucker for nostalgia, I went to see it anyway, expecting, at best, some decent entertainment.


On that level, The A-Team delivered...and then some. Unlike last year’s insipid G.I. Joe remake, The A-Team kept its sense of fun intact. B.A.’s fear of flying is played up for comic relief, and Murdock’s oddball shtick is entertaining more times than not. In addition, Joe Carnahan is a competent action director. His kinetic staging of certain sequences (i.e. a tank falling from the sky) allow for suspension of disbelief.


Make no mistake about it though: this is a dumb movie. The convoluted plot pits the team against, at various times, Mexicans, Iraqis, a Blackwater knock-off, the CIA, and the U.S. Army, all without skipping a beat. Attempts at imbuing a message – what is the cost of violence? – are laughably mishandled.


The acting is tougher to evaluate. Any time someone walks into a role someone else made famous, there is going to be criticism of the replacement. On the whole, Neeson, Cooper, Jackson and Copley do an admirable job of filling in for George Peppard, Dirk Benedict, Mr. T and Dwight Schultz. The non-actor Jackson in particular had some big shoes to fill and exceeded expectations. However, the vain and arrogant Cooper is pressed awkwardly into a leading role, Jessica Biel is only so-so as his Army officer love interest, and Wilson is too smarmy to be a really effective antagonist.


Certainly, the cinematic A-Team is more violent and harder-edged than its television counterpart. And while this will upset purists, the spirit of the original – dumb, loud, likeable, vapid and fun – is nevertheless alive and well.


6.5/10

The Quiet American

Thomas Fowler is a jaded, bitter, atheistic middle-aged English journalist covering the First Indochina War. Though married, Fowler has taken beautiful, sheltered 20-year-old Phuong as his lover. Enter Alden Pyle, a young, well-educated, soft-spoken American official. Despite their mutual admiration, it isn’t long before Pyle’s idealism (he believes a Third Force can emerge apart from the French colonialists and the Vietnamese Communists) and interest in Phuong divide them.


A former British spy with leftist political leanings and Catholic convictions, Graham Greene is as an interesting choice as one could fathom to write about the then-brewing trouble in Vietnam. His treatment of the subject was widely attacked as being anti-American, but the truth is that the only agenda displayed here by Greene (or his mouthpiece, Fowler) is one of relentless cynicism. Colonialism, revolution, and the vaunted middle path are all constructed as ideas which, by the end of the day, leave little but failure and bloodshed. Greene was remarkably prescient in that regard.


Remove the political considerations and The Quiet American still stands out as an impressive piece of literature because of Greene’s sharply drawn characters. Fowler at once fills the roles of both narrator and antagonist. It’s an astonishing feat that a story told through the eyes of a selfish, lazy, scheming philanderer remains so compelling, especially given the dearth of likeable characters here. Certainly, one can’t lionize Pyle, whose idealism is equal parts destructive and self-serving, nor can anyone find much to like about the deliberately underdeveloped Phuong or her domineering sister. The closest we get to a hero here is Vigot, the French police inspector who hasn’t let his weariness destroy his sense of duty.


Amid this jumble of misanthropy, Greene finds ample time to take us in-country and explore the geography. From salacious nightclubs to war-torn battle zones, the calamity of 1950s Vietnam is rendered well, if a bit too succinctly at times. A pivotal bombing scene, for example, would have been more effective if we were more fully immersed in the surroundings.


The Quiet American is a direct novel. It gets at the Big Issues of love, war, politics, faith and betrayal without ingenuity or coyness. Some may find this earnestness disarming or mistake the candidness for laziness on the author’s part. But what separates The Quiet American from lackluster political theatre is a very moving human story at the core.


8/10

Nowhere Man

The second book from Aleksandar Hemon is a collection of semi-autobiographical vignettes starring Blind Jozef Pronek, who featured previously in an eponymous short story. A Bosnian of Ukrainian descent, Pronek wanders through life as a failed blues musician, an incompetent soldier, a would-be detective and a reluctant Greenpeace volunteer. Along the way, he witnesses the collapse of the Soviet Union and enters suburban Chicago society.

Though frequently compared to Nabokov and Joseph Conrad, the author Hemon most closely evokes here is Ralph Ellison. Like the narrator of Invisible Man, Pronek functions as a virtual blank slate for characters to project their assumptions about foreigners, war and religion. Pronek’s attempts to assert his own identity are consistently ignored, right up until the book’s vaguely horrific climax.


Pronek is more than just a political statement, however. Hemon fleshes him out while keeping an air of mystery around him. Pronek’s love of The Beatles gives the book its title, while his poor grasp of English makes for some often-hilarious dialogue. It’s worth noting that the author’s command of the language is as masterful as the character’s is shoddy.


The episodic quality of Nowhere Man makes it difficult to follow as a linear narrative and some sections evoke a disjointed, dreamlike quality. The final section in particular is disconnected plot wise from everything else in the book, though the strong thematic connection more than justifies its inclusion. The frequent point-of-view shifts, on the other hand, can bring reading to a standstill while you wonder where a given part of the story is coming from.


On the whole, Nowhere Man is funny, tragic, fluid, and well worth reading. At less than 250 pages, it lacks the heft and expansiveness of a great literary tome, but Hemon still displays gifts that more verbose writers could only hope to borrow one day.


8.25/10

Under the Dome

When a mysterious indestructible dome surrounds the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine, a panic ensues. As the death toll rises and misfortunes multiply, the townsfolk increasingly divide their loyalties between Big Jim Rennie, a powerful local politician determined to keep order at all costs, and Dale Barbara, an Army veteran turned fry cook who has been recommissioned to find whatever is powering the dome and shut it down from the inside.

The latest from Stephen King is old hat for the veteran horror writer. He previously explored apocalyptic scenarios and small-town dynamics in works such as Cell, The Stand, and Needful Things. However, Under the Dome is no From a Buick 8 struggling to regain the glory of a prior Christine. This book is not only contemporary (President Obama is mentioned by name), but relevant as well. The incorporation of changing technologies, mistrust of government, and war-weariness into Chester’s Mill’s plight shows that King is very much in-sync with the problems and attitudes of today. Whether this will seem dated and inaccessible in 20 years is anyone’s guess.


At nearly 1100 pages, Under the Dome is not a light read. It is, however, a lean one. King’s pacing is excellent, as he continues to draw interest and build tension hundreds of pages in. There is very little here that felt superfluous or bloated.


Where this book falls short of greatness is in its characterization. On a macro level, King nails it. He employs his usual gift for Maine settings to construct The Mill as a fully realized place. As such, his characters, from Julia Shumway, the annoyingly persistent newspaperwoman to Peter Randolph, the dimwitted bureaucrat of a police chief, are wholly believable as representatives of that place. Taken as individual actors, however, they often falter. Rennie, for example, comes across as a Palpatine-type who has been waiting for an opportunity all along, while meth-addled Phil Bushey can be seen as his counterpart: a bad man waiting to do some good. By having these folks fit so neatly and transparently into the roles of savior, nemesis, etc., King deemphasizes the role that tragedy can have on a relatively normal human being.


Of course, this isn’t the only qualm. The language is slack in places, the feel-good ending felt clumsily executed, and we are transported to the point of view of a dog at one point. These are forgivable transgressions, given the length and scope of the novel, but they do tend to sap Under the Dome of its “epic” pretensions.


For King fans, Under the Dome is a difficult book to evaluate. Though full of completely new material, it is based on a concept King has attempted on and off since the 1970s. It reads neither like vintage King nor like a poor imitation/parody of his prior work. The best way to take it is probably to avoid comparisons and enjoy it for what it is: a compelling, vivid, flawed, politically astute, sometimes simplistic page-turner.


7.5/10