Who Needs Twists Who Needs Twists? Theres no ...
The new Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time isn't a great movie, but it earns points for jaunty, cynical efficiency. It neuters the plot guessers by making its setup as obvious as possible, then concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the hero's attempts to save his own skin. The press notes describe the movie as "noirish," which sounds like the genre-movie equivalent of smooth jazz or lite beer. It's an apt description. As written by Dave Collard and directed by Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress), Out of Time is not a true noir (it lacks a tragic ending). It's more like a noir-inflected action picture in which a dishonest but crafty protagonist stays one step ahead of his would-be punishers.
(Warning: plot spoilers ahead.) From the second that small town Florida police chief Matt Whitlock (Washington) answers a "distress call" at the home of Ann Harrison (Sanaa Lathan), a young sexpot married to Matt's abusive ex-jock colleague (Dean Cain), and engages in arch but funny, beat cop/lonely housewife banter, you know the chief is a dog and Ann is leading him around by his?um, leash? (Sorry; sexy movies get my metaphors in a tangle.) The script establishes that Matt recently seized a fat pile of drug money and stored it in a safe at the police station. When Matt contemplates the loot, Franklin films the moment from inside the safe looking out, visually transforming the safe into a (second) maw that's fated to entrap our hero. When the clingy Anna takes Matt along on a visit to her doctor and receives a "surprise" diagnosis of terminal cancer, you may stifle a giggle. When you hear that the experimental treatment Ann craves will cost about as much as Matt has stored in his police safe, you can giggle freely. (Are gigglers more annoying than plot guessers?) When Ann and her husband turn up charred in an explosive house fire and Matt's name appears on Ann's insurance policy, you can guffaw with clear conscience, because by that point, Out of Time has become less a movie than an amusement-park ride: Noir-O-Rama.
In one long, complex, gracefully edited sequence, Matt juggles fake phone calls to phony sources while deleting his own name from his late lover's phone records and fielding messages from an irate DEA agent demanding that he hand over the now-nonexistent loot. The whole time, Matt's ex-wife, police investigator Alex Diaz-Whitlock (Eva Mendes), dutifully works the case while subcontracting potentially incriminating tasks to Matt. (The movie's structure and tone suggest 1987's No Way Out, which was a remake of 1948's The Big Clock; both featured panicked antiheroes investigating crimes in which they were the prime suspects. The title Out of Time implies that the chain of influence has come full-circle.)
The actors have fun pretending to be in an old movie, but not all succeed. Lathan is a knockout, and her scratchy, bad-girl voice could raise gooseflesh on a dead man, but her damaged-goods routine is so clearly bogus that the character veers toward Zucker-Zucker-Abrams country. (I kept waiting for a scene where Matt pauses during cunnilingus to inquire who tattooed "Femme Fatale" down there.) Mendes is, as always, game and sexy but rather dull. John Billingsley is hammy but appealing as Matt's shady coroner pal. Cain, an ex-football player best known for donning Superman tights on tv, is quite convincing as an alpha-male scumbag. Washington is too macho and knowing in the early scenes, but once Matt switches into freaked-out action hero mode, his acting tightens up and the movie follows suit. In the second half, his performance is dry, precise and powerfully physical-a mix of deadpan whoppers, constipated double takes and Harrison Ford-style, sprint-and-punch desperation. Washington's acting and Franklin's knowing, slightly italicized direction underline the fact that when you mop the sexy sweat and purplish blood from neo-noirs, what's left is physical comedy. Out of Time is trashy slapstick with a body count, costarring Harold Lloyd and his woodie.
Rock On
PLotwise, School of Rock is pretty much the same movie as The Fighting Temptations, and both movies are part of the same subgenre as The Full Monty, Drumline and almost any sports film you can name. They're fables of self-improvement that offer audiences the chance to watch eccentric strangers get better at something through practice. Done well, these kinds of films can't miss. School of Rock doesn't miss.
Professional scene-stealer Jack Black (High Fidelity, Shallow Hal) plays Dewey Finn, a portly guitarist who worships at the altar of rock 'n' roll like it's still 1973 and indulges in stage dives and endless solos that eventually get him kicked out of the band he created. Depressed and desperate for cash, he impersonates his substitute-teacher roommate (writer-director Mike White of Chuck and Buck), gets a job at a prep school and embarks on a ridiculous scheme to retrain his class full of talented young classical musicians as a rock group to win a local battle of the bands.
This sounds like a description of one of those dreadful Saturday Night Live movies, but amazingly, School of Rock is a rare Hollywood movie that steers clear of needless stupidity while still giving audiences the sight gags, life lessons and hard-won victories this genre has conditioned us to expect. Paramount isn't making a big deal of the fact that the picture was written by White (the writer and star of Chuck and Buck) and directed by Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life). Both do a convincing impression of slick Hollywood filmmakers while refusing to abandon their off-kilter personalities and their eye for the odd but telling detail.
Black is irresistibly freakish-a crazy-eyed teddy bear who spirals around on the floor during guitar solos like Curly from the Three Stooges, lectures the kids on how the world is run by The Man, draws baroque musical flowcharts on his chalkboard and pumps up one of his students by telling him, "Raise your goblet of rock!" and then air-toasting like a Viking warrior. Except for Dewey, every character is a stock character, but Linklater, a hopeless actor-lover, still lets his performers have moments of individuality and charm. The standout is Joan Cusack, who at first seems the prototypically uptight principal, but is revealed as a big time Stevie Nicks fan who regrets how responsible she's become.
Linklater and cinematographer Rogier Stoffers frame many portions of the musical numbers in medium closeup and keep each shot going as long as they can without cutting, to show you that Black and his child bandmates are, in fact, singing and playing instruments in real time. The kid roles were cast with real-life juvenile musicians, and most of the numbers appear to have been recorded on the set rather than being taped elsewhere and lip-synched. When Mike Leigh takes these kinds of production risks, he's hailed by critics for his uncompromising commitment to the physical reality of art. Linklater is an American, so he'll have to settle for a hit soundtrack.