This Means War

20TH CENTURY FOX, KIMBERLEY FRENCH
Tom Hardy, left, Reese Witherspoon, center, and Chris Pine are shown in a scene from "This Means War."

"This Means War" must have been an easy sell.

Reese Witherspoon, a romantic comedy veteran who also is an accomplished, award-winning actress, is at its center.

The two leads are rising stars: Chris Pine of "Star Trek" (2009) fame, and Tom Hardy, who appeared in the blockbuster "Inception," gave acclaimed performances in "Bronson" and "Warrior," and is set to be the villain in the next Batman movie, this summer's "The Dark Knight Rises."

The director, McG ("Charlie's Angels"), has had success with this kind of slickly made action-comedy.

And the premise, pure fantasy though it may be, bursts with potential.

Early on, screenwriters Timothy Dowling ("Role Models") and Simon Kinberg ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith") struggle with the contrived nature of the scenario—CIA agents/best friends FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) date the same woman, Lauren (Witherspoon), though she is unaware they know each other. (FDR and Lauren meet in a video store. Do those still exist? Funny that I had to stretch my suspension of disbelief the farthest for that plot point.)

McG can't quite grasp it either. The opening scenes lack rhythm, and interactions between characters feel forced and awkward.

But once the pieces are in their proper places, the actors shine through, and the movie coasts along largely on their appeal.

Lauren is a little underdeveloped and mostly reacts to FDR, Tuck and her best friend, Trish (a raunchy Chelsea Handler). She is more of an idea than a character, and Witherspoon's job is to be charming and attractive enough to drive a wedge between two lifelong friends. She succeeds, which makes you wonder why Lauren is so unlucky in love that Trish must create an outrageous profile for her on an online dating website.

Tuck, a single father who entertains the notion of reuniting with his ex (Abigail Spencer) before meeting Lauren, is a sensitive type. His idea of a date is playing carnival games and swinging from a trapeze. FDR fancies himself a player and prefers to take Lauren to the trendiest of trendy nightclubs.

It starts as a friendly competition, with a "gentlemen's agreement," between Tuck and FDR. Each man assembles a CIA team to perform background checks, and install video and audio surveillance in Lauren's home and to keep tabs on the other's courtship. The contest escalates until reaching the level of outright sabotage.

The movie's heart comes from Tuck and FDR's friendship, brought to life by the bromantic chemistry between Pine, putting his sharp comic timing to good use while pulling off a cocky schtick similar to the one he played as Capt. Kirk, and Hardy, stretching himself from his typical tough-guy roles (this is a real revelation if you've seen him in "Bronson").

The writers gloss over very serious constitutional issues, the action scenes are ridiculously over the top and I'm sure the depiction of the CIA has no connection to reality. If you can accept all that, there is a lot of funny stuff here—Tuck's scary dominance in a game of paintball is one of the funnier scenes in recent memory.

I suppose you could call this a "romantic action comedy," with the emphasis on the comedy.

Greg’s Grade: B

(Rated PG-13 for sexual content including references, some violence and action, and for language. 98 minutes.)

Safe House

UNIVERSAL PICTURES, JASIN BOLAND
Denzel Washington is shown in a scene from "Safe House."

You can watch "Safe House" and see the obvious influence of the "Bourne" movies on its many action scenes. You can see Denzel Washington synthesizing his various screen personas into what essentially is a greatest-hits performance. And even though characters talk about the hardships necessitated by a life spent in espionage, you can see a movie that doesn't really have anything meaningful to say.

It would be easy to think, "Been there, done that," and move on to the next disposable entertainment.

But almost in spite of itself, "Safe House" is an effective piece of genre filmmaking.

As Tobin Frost (one of those only-in-the-movies names), a CIA agent who turned traitor nine years earlier, Washington clearly is relishing the antihero role. He gets to be a bit of the bad guy, a bit of the do-gooder with a self-righteous streak. It's a role he could play in his sleep, but he still has fun with it. Frost has something a bunch of people will kill for, so with no other options, he turns himself in at the U.S. Consulate in Cape Town, South Africa.

From there, he's taken to a CIA safe house manned by young Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds, quietly becoming a versatile leading man), who's been desperate for something—anything—to happen there.

He gets his wish when the bad guys storm the safe house and he goes on the run with Frost in his charge.

The movie breaks down to a series of fights and chase scenes, with a few character beats and a little mystery about who inside the CIA leaked the safe house location thrown in between.

The action, especially the hand-to-hand combat, is raw and visceral. As the movie goes on, and characters become tired and wounded, the fights take on a clumsy, chaotic quality that ups the brutality.

This is the kind of movie you feel more in the gut than the head.

Greg’s Grade: B+

(Rated R for strong violence throughout and some language. 115 minutes.)

The Woman in Black

CBS FILMS, NICK WALL
Daniel Radcliffe is shown in a scene from "The Woman in Black."

"I think I'll work through the night."

Many stupid things have been said in movies, horror movies in particular. But "I think I'll work through the night" from "The Woman in Black" has got to be near the top of the list.

The speaker is Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a young attorney sent from London to a remote coastal village to settle the affairs of the recently deceased Alice Drablow.

He already has spent some time at her home, the Eel Marsh House, a place where the locals, except the friendly, wealthy Sam Daily (Ciaran Hinds), are afraid to go. He already has seen the mysterious, black-clothed woman on the grounds. He already has learned of the violent deaths that occurred there in the past. And he already has seen how spooky the house can be in the daytime.

So when Sam tells him when he must return to pick him up before high tide makes the one road to and from the place impassable, Arthur, with all this knowledge, knowing he will be stranded there until the next day, doesn't hesitate a beat before saying, "Oh no, it's fine. I think I'll work through the night."

Why does he do this? Because otherwise there would be no movie.

There isn't even much of one as it stands.

Produced in part by the recently revived Hammer Films, I give "The Woman in Black" credit for at least trying to spook up some scares the old-fashioned way. The Eel Marsh House, created by production designer Kave Quinn and brought to dimly lit life by cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones, is the real star of the movie, creaking and groaning like an old man with bad knees and filled with doors that are locked and immovable one moment and swinging wide open the next.

Director James Watkins, though, fails to get as much out of it as he probably could have, favoring BOO! moments that release the tension instead of allowing the suspense to accumulate.

Radcliffe, in his first post-"Harry Potter" movie role, spends much of his time onscreen alone in the house, which is problematic because through a combination of writing and performance, his Arthur essentially is a blank slate. And the actor appears far too young to portray a man who is a solicitor, widower and father to a 4-year-old son.

The only other thing we know about Arthur is he's a hard worker, dedicated to, if nothing else, making sure we get our movie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Greg's Grade: C-

(Rated PG-13 for thematic material and violence/disturbing images. 96 minutes.)

Man on a Ledge

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, MYLES ARONOWITZ
Elizabeth Banks, left, and Sam Worthington are shown in a scene from "Man on a Ledge."

It's called "Man on a Ledge." And sure enough, when the movie begins, there is a man. And within a couple minutes, before he has spoken his fourth line of dialogue, that man is on a ledge.

The movie has many faults, but false advertising is not among them.

The man is Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington), once a cop, now an escaped convict. The ledge is on the 21st floor of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Because this is a movie, we know with about 99 percent certainly that Nick will not jump to his death, that he is an innocent man, that he was framed for the theft of a $40 million diamond from businessman David Englander (Ed Harris) and that his innocence will be proven by his brother, Joey (Jamie Bell), and Joey's girlfriend, Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), who are across the street breaking into Englander's building. And, in accordance with Roger Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters (which states, "Movie budgets make it impossible for any film to contain unnecessary characters"), we know the people responsible for the frame job are on on screen right in front of us.

Director Asger Leth and screenwriter Pablo Fenjves suggest tension but never follow through and actually create it. We can't invest ourselves in Nick's plan because we don't know what it is until it's late in the game. At the same time, the scenario of Nick on the ledge feels too contrived to generate any real suspense.

Leth and Fenjves try to inject more character drama with Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), a police officer who specializes in talking down jumpers and who was traumatized when a rookie cop threw himself off a bridge on her watch. They set up the back story, then do nothing with it. Lydia quickly becomes convinced of Nick's innocence, her inner turmoil forgotten, the character entirely inessential to the remainder of the movie.

Still, a strong lead performance could go a long way toward erasing these stumbles. Instead, we get Worthington struggling with a New York accent and hampered by a script that doesn't know how much to reveal and when to reveal it—and let's face it, when it finally lays down all of its cards, the hand it plays is simply uninteresting.

Under these conditions, the ledge is the movie's most dynamic performer.

Greg's Grade: D+

(Rated PG-13 for violence and brief strong language. 102 minutes.)

The Grey

OPEN ROAD FILMS, KIMBERLEY FRENCH
From left, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Liam Neeson and Nonso Anozie are shown in a scene from "The Grey."

Pushing 60, Liam Neeson has seen his career take an abrupt turn in recent years. "Taken" (2009) and "Unknown" (2011) established him as a box-office draw in the early part of the year and an unlikely action hero with a world-weary, working-class approach to beating up the bad guys.

"The Grey" emphasizes that world-weary quality. The actor, at his very best, draws from his own experience—mourning the 2009 death of his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, in a skiing accident—to portray Ottway, a lonely, brooding man who also has loved and lost.

Working with an Alaskan oil-drilling team, patrolling the perimeter, shooting the dangerous wolves that venture a little too close, Ottway is on the verge of suicide when we meet him. Stronger instincts kick in, though, when he and a handful of others survive a plane crash and are stranded in the harsh Alaskan wilderness. They must contend with both the elements and a pack wolves that doesn't take kindly to guests in its territory.

Though marketed as an action movie, "The Grey" is suprisingly contemplative and deceptively character-driven. Squabbling among the survivors and dealing with the wolves dominate the movie early on, but as it progresses—and the number of characters dwindles—it takes a turn toward introspection, showing us how these men react when pushed to the brink and, eventually, how each deals with the inevitably of his own demise.

The wolves are the antagonists; they are not monsters. They react on instinct developed over countless years. Just like Ottway and the others, their goal is survival. As much as anything else, "The Grey” is a testament to the awesome power of nature, brought to life through the vivid cinematography by Masanobu Takayanagi. As far as we've come, as much as we've accomplished, we still are at its mercy.

Director Joe Carnahan, light years away from his previous film, "The A-Team" (2010), creates an aura of unrelenting danger, a sense of dread so oppressive it's almost a relief when the wolves make their move.

"The Grey" is a harrowing tale not necesarily of survival but of the will to survive and what happens when maybe that isn't enough.

Chalk up another winter win for Neeson.

Greg’s Grade: A-

(Rated R for violence/disturbing content including bloody images, and for pervasive language. 117 minutes.)

Narc (2002)

Ray Liotta, left, and Jason Patric are shown in a scene from "Narc."

Joe Carnahan, director of the new Liam Neeson survival thriller "The Grey," had his breakthrough with the 2002 cop movie "Narc."

Detroit cop Henry Oak is a beast of a man, an intimidating figure with an end-justifies-the-means attitude toward law enforcement. Brought to ferocious life by Ray Liotta in "Narc," written and directed by Joe Carnahan, he's a ticking time bomb hellbent on finding the killer of his former partner and friend, an undercover narcotics cop named Michael Calvess.

Oak is the man with whom Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), a narc who's been suspended since accidentally shooting a pregnant woman 18 months earlier, must work when he's brought onto the case. The departmental brass hope Tellis can use his old street contacts to get to the killer. With his captain (Chi McBride) dangling full reinstatement in front of him, he has to accept the offer even though it will take him away from his wife (Krista Bridges) and baby son. He tries to refuse, but he's as addicted to the job as he was to the drugs he got hooked on while working undercover.

The mean Detroit streets of "8 Mile" seem almost cheerful compared to the cruel world of "Narc." Carnahan employs every stylistic trick in the book to create this effect, including extensive use of handheld camera shots (used to great effect in the opening chase scene), filters, flashbacks presented with quick-hitting, violent edits, toying with the focus and using split screen (an economic method to get us through the more mundane period of the investigation). Used intelligently, these tools all serve to enhance the story, characters, mood and tone.

Carnahan mines familiar cop-movie terrain, but this is not a "buddy" movie and nothing is played for laughs. This is a cold, brutal look at two dedicated cops with very different but effective approaches to their jobs. While most movies draw distinct lines between right and wrong, good and evil, "Narc" exists in a gray area. As they methodically go about their investigation, the routine of Tellis and Oak is not so much good cop/bad cop as it is bad cop/worse cop. We get the feeling Tellis is acting as he needed to survive working as an undercover narc, while Oak is driven by some deeply-rooted anger, the source of which is unknown to us.

Adding 30 pounds and a menacing salt-and-pepper goatee, Liotta is electrifying, reminding us of what a great actor he can be when he has strong material. It is important that Oak is not just a bloodthirsty madman. In one of many scenes that easily could seem clichéd but is not, Oak opens up to Tellis during a stakeout as they talk about their families and the death of Oak's wife. Oak passionately pursues his work and is protective of his murdered partner's family—he's furious when Tellis questions them without him.

Liotta has the showier role, but he knows when to pull back, and he never overshadows Patric, the movie's true lead. The conflict between Tellis and his wife is familiar, but it works. Having been there before, Tellis knows the problems that will arise when he goes back to work; the job consumes him so much that he's practically abandoning his family, but he cannot resist. His wife's concerns seem real, and Patric, who has been absent from the movies for far too long (he last appeared in "Your Friends and Neighbors" in 1998) is so convincing that the scenario works beautifully. It's a small part of the film, but it immeasurably fleshes out Tellis as a character.

Together, Liotta and Patric bounce off each other nicely, with an instant, natural camaraderie forming between the two cops. But as the investigation continues and Tellis sees more and more of Oak's violent nature, he begins to wonder just how far his new partner will go.

The details of the actual investigation are unimportant until the final act, when a few startling twists occur. Looking back, the surprises are more than simple trickery, and Carnahan makes no obvious attempts to mislead us before we get there.

The ending—far from a happy one—is unsettling and does not provide the tidy resolution most people expect from movies. Tellis's fate on the police force and that of the investigation are left open. But that is not what's important here. This is a character-driven film, and it's not about action—though there's plenty of it—or finding the bad guys.

"Narc," a showcase for two talented actors and Carnahan's technical wizardry, is a welcome entry in a tired genre.

Greg’s Grade: A

(Rated R for strong brutal violence, drug content and pervasive language. 105 minutes.)

Haywire

RELATIVITY MEDIA, CLAUDETTE BARIUS
Gina Carano and Ewan McGregor are shown in a scene from "Haywire."

Action film, spy movie, revenge picture—any way you slice it, the nuts and bolts of “Haywire” have been done to death. But never before by maverick filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.

In his hands, the movie becomes a bit of a puzzle, with cross-cut flashbacks, occasional shots of black and white, and an array of unconventional camera angles.

To top it off, Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Lem Dobbs (who also wrote Soderbergh's “Kafka” and “The Limey”), developed the movie around a performer with virtually no acting experience, former mixed martial arts star Gina Carano.

They tailored the script to her strengths, resulting in a terse heroine of the Jason Bourne variety and a narrative that, despite everything Soderbergh pulls from his bag of directorial tricks, is based on a handful of visceral hand-to-hand combat scenes.

The approach to the action is novel in this age of shaky, handheld cameras and furious cutting. Soderbergh, who acts as his own cinematographer and camera operator, shoots the fights in either static or tracking shots, often at a wide angle and with relatively long takes. He cast Carano for her physical abilities, and he truly captures her skills with his camera. You wouldn't cobble together a single line reading by Meryl Streep from multiple takes, so why would you want to show Carano in action a second or fractions of a second at a time?

Soderbergh heightens the intensity by dropping David Holmes' bouncy musical score during the action scenes, leaving us only with the natural sounds of the fights [-] a fist smashing a face, a back slamming into a wall.

When it's time for Carano to deliver dialogue, she isn't going to win any awards, but she gets the job done. She has to given the talent around her.

Ewan McGregor is the head of a covert team, which includes Carano's Mallory Kane, that the government employs for jobs it would rather not be involved with directly, such as a hostage extraction in Barcelona.

Michael Douglas is the government agent who serves as a liaison to the team.

And Michael Fassbender is a British intelligence agent with whom Mallory is paired on an assignment in Dublin. The discovery of a dead body there arouses her already piqued suspicions about the job. Her partner's attempt on her life confirms them.

Marked for death and framed for murder, Mallory goes on the run from both her employers and international authorities while trying to sort out what went down in Barcelona and Dublin.

Soderbergh moves the movie along at a swift pace, his concise storytelling and rhythmic editing fitting it snugly into its 93-minute running time. The action is low-tech—no fancy pyrotechnics or computer graphics—and that only increases its impact.

You might think you've seen this movie before—but you haven't seen it like this.
 
Greg's Grade: A-

(Rated R for some violence. 93 minutes.)