Review: THE BIG LEBOWSKI (R)

"Oh come on, Donny. They were threatening castration! Are we gonna split hairs here?"

U.S. Release Date: March 6, 1998

Running Time: 115 minutes

MPAA Classification: R (Language, violence, drugs, sexual content, nudity)

Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, Ben Gazzara, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliot, Tara Reid

Director: Joel Coen

Producers: Ethan Coen, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner

Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

 

By STEPHEN EARNEST / December 26, 2010

The Coen brothers hit home again with their uproarious stoner noir, The Big Lebowski, which is hands down the funniest film that I’ve seen in a long, long while. Essentially, The Big Lebowski is a Coen-esque retelling of Raymond Chandler’s classic detective novel, “The Big Sleep.” (It even parodies the novel with its title.) Obviously, that’s the main influence here and you can expect for the Coens’ adaptation to be pretty reliable to the source material (as were both No Country for Old Men and True Grit.) But that’s not saying that they don’t make a couple of changes of their own.

Instead of private detective Philip Marlowe, we get The Dude; a laidback, unemployed slacker and California native who ends almost every sentence with the word “man.” (His real name is Jeffery Lebowski, but that’s not the name that he prefers.) The Dude is the ultimate movie hero. He’s likable, unmotivated, and surprisingly oblivious to most of what goes on around him. He’s a man of the people, yet the people in his world don’t seem to be too fond of him. When asked what he does with his free time, he replies, “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.” See, the Coens specialize in creating memorable characters. They’re less concerned with plot and more concerned with giving us a character that is original, relatable, and sticks out. The Dude is a character of a different time and place. (You could even say that he belongs in an entirely different movie.) He’s contrasting in nearly every aspect from the other characters in the story and because of this, we grow fond of him.

The story begins with The Dude being mistaken for someone else: the other Jeffrey Lebowski – the millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski, whose wife is in debt with a notorious porn king. The Dude’s home is invaded by a pair of thugs, who – after confronting him and realizing that he is not the man they are looking for – urinate on his rug and leave. “Not on the rug, man,” The Dude cries in defeat. And with that, the story has begun.

See, that rug really tied the room together, and The Dude doesn’t appreciate it. So, he decides to pay a visit to the real Lebowski in hopes of getting some kind of compensation, but that’s when problems start to arise. Things get complicated. Lebowski’s wife goes missing and a ransom note appears in her place, detailing her exchange for one million dollars. The Dude is then hired to act as a bagman and deliver the satchel to the kidnappers, but the hand-off goes awry and they never end up getting the money. Of course, the story does not end there. Double-crossings occur. Relatively shady characters appear. There are more plot twists than you can keep track of. The Big Lebowski pays homage to the film noirs of a time never replicated but always copied and it does them justice.

Naturally, the film’s strengths come from its acting and writing. That’s a given. When a film is under the direction of the Coens, it’s in good hands. Here, their writing outdoes their direction. Their script is full of fine moments. The dialogue is brilliant and colorful and there’s such a unique and oddball cast of characters. Originality has always been a staple of the Coen brothers’ works and in The Big Lebowski they are at their creative best.

The two best – and funniest – performances come from Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. Bridges was made for his role. He is The Dude and channels him like no other actor could, especially in his voice and gait. Opposite him is John Goodman in the role of Walter Sobchak, a disgruntled and stubborn Vietnam veteran. Goodman literally kills his role, taking the cake for the best comedic performance of the 1990s. Just his appearance in general can make you laugh, and for a majority of his screen time, I was. I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen a more idiosyncratic character than Walter Sobchak. From his countless references to the Vietnam War to his constant use of the phrases “Am I wrong?” and “Shut the fuck up, Donny!”, Sobchak is a timeless character and one to be remembered for ages. I don’t believe any other actor besides Goodman could’ve pulled him off.

The Coens have never failed to make an intriguing movie, even if the result wasn’t as good as their intentions were. Their films are always quirky, interesting, and delightful, and are some of the most noticeable films out there. They have a style that cannot be replicated, even though many have tried to. They are immensely talented and influential, and while The Big Lebowski isn’t their best film per se, it’s definitely their funniest.

“Am I wrong?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Am I wrong?”

RATING: 3.5/4

Review: THURSDAY (R)

Aaron Eckhart and Paulina Porizkova.

U.S. Release Date: September 10, 1998

Running Time: 83 minutes

MPAA Classification: R (Language/sexual dialogue, violence, drugs, sexual situations, nudity)

Cast: Thomas Jane, Aaron Eckhart, Paulina Porizkova, James LeGros, Mickey Rourke, Michael Jeter, Paual Marshall, Glenn Plummer

Director: Skip Woods

Producers: Skip Woods, Alan Poul, Christine Sheaks,

Screenplay: Skip Woods

 

By STEPHEN EARNEST / November 20, 2010

Black comedy isn’t easy. Being funny and disturbing at the same time is a hard thing to do and often enough, the result isn’t as funny or as disturbing as you intended for it to be. You’ve got to make the audience feel bad for laughing. You’ve got to make them squirm in their seats while keeping a consistent comedic tone. When black comedy is done right, you get movies like Fargo and Pulp Fiction. When it’s done wrong, you get movies like Thursday.

The movie’s centered on Casey Wells (Thomas Jane), a guy who’s managed to clean up his otherwise shady past. He lives in a quaint little neighborhood with trimmed hedges and starch-white picket fences. He’s gotten married to a loving wife and is looking to adopt a child. Life seems pretty good. Well, until — yeah, you guessed it — his past manages to catch up with him.

And for Casey, his past comes in the form of Nick (Aaron Eckhart), an old friend from Casey’s drug dealing days. We already know Nick though from an earlier scene; a scene in which he unmercifully kills a gas station attendant over a cup of coffee. Nick and Casey talk for a bit, until Nick says he gotta leave and run some errands. But before he heads out, he dumps a couple of suitcases in one of the bedrooms. Eventually, Casey’s curiosity gets the better of him and he investigates the contents of the suitcases, only to discover in horror that they’re full of heroin.

Thursday is a droll, dreary, and distasteful mess that basically exists only as a way to exploit every taboo subject known to the movie world. Not only does it glorify violence without justification; it encourages it. It throws it onto the screen and tries to tone it down by adding a funny joke at the end, as if trying to make it seem like it’s okay. That, sir, is not black comedy.

To be as blunt as possible, the writer/director Skip Woods is a hack. He’s a cop-out, desperately trying to make something fresh out of a stale script. I strongly dislike referring to something as “Taratinoan”, but Thursday seems like one of the projects that Tarantino himself personally scrapped.

The biggest difference between Woods and Tarantino is that where Tarantino holds back, Woods doesn’t. He doesn’t just push the limits; he rips them apart and stomps them into the ground. He leaves nothing to the imagination at all, even when a little imagination would highly benefit his production. What looks good on paper often doesn’t transfer to the screen as well as it should, and nothing in Woods’ script looks good to begin with. It’s an ugly, shameful attempt to ride the Tarantino bandwagon to success, but Woods lacks the talent to do even that.

There is torture, prolonged rape, drug use, excessively brutal violence, graphic sexual dialogue, and language offensive not only to women and African-Americans, but to nearly all of the people that populate the continent of Asia. I was perplexed almost to a state of illness from what I saw and when it was finally over, I felt sickened by Woods for having made it and by the actors for having participated in it.

Thursday is filthy, inexcusable, reprehensible trash that fails in every way possible. It is not hip or original or funny even in slightest bit, and though I gather that it will retain it’s cult-like persona for years to come, there is not one redeeming quality about it.

RATING: .5/4

Review: SNATCH (R)

Shots like this are one of the high points of Guy Ritchie's "Snatch."

By STEPHEN EARNEST / October 21, 2010

Guy Ritchie’s previous film, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, was a genuine masterpiece. Here is Snatch, a film that uses the same style, sound, and character choice, but doesn’t have quite the same amount of heart. Like Lock, Stock, Snatch has a story that is nearly bewildering. There are several characters involved and all of them have their own, different stories, but by the end, everyone is connected in one way or another. There’s Brad Pitt as a fast-talking gypsy; Rade Serbedzija as an ex-KGB arms dealer; Jason Statham as an unlicensed boxing promoter; Alan Ford as a foul-mouthed gangster;  Benicio del Toro as a four-fingered thief and gambling addict; Vinnie Jones as a bullet-toothed mercenary; Dennis Farina as a New York-based jeweler; and Mike Reid as a Jewish diamond dealer. That’s not to the mention countless other thugs, criminals, and lowlifes. Now, there’s a colorful cast.

The main item that has everyone talking happens to be a precious diamond. People start killing each other over it. Foul language is rampant. Coincidence is the name of the game. This kind of incoherent formula worked for Ritchie before, but here, not so much. For me, the biggest problem was the dialogue. Not only was it incomprehensible, but it simply wasn’t funny. Ritchie’s just repeating himself and half of the time, the things that he’s trying to make funny clearly aren’t. The whole exercise has just gotten stale and overused. Essentially, Snatch is the same funny joke told by a completely unfunny person.

Now, I don’t mean to put Ritchie to shame by saying this. The man is a fairly adequate film maker. It’s just that I wasn’t pleased by Snatch at all. I mean, some parts of it are quite enjoyable, but only a few select scenes. Vinnie Jones takes the cake as Bullet-Tooth Tony, but there’s not much else to like — unless you can count Brad Pitt’s jibber-jabber as an acting performance. In the end, I blame the failure of Snatch on the acclaim of Ritchie’s first feature. He realized how good Lock, Stock was and tried to make another movie in the same vein as it. But it’s just not possible. Snatch is almost like a remake. More often than not, remakes are never as good as the original. Case and point.

RATING: 2.5/4

Review: LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (R)

From left to right: Dexter Fletcher, Vas Blackwood, Jason Statham, and Jason Flemyng.

By STEPHEN EARNEST / June 6, 2010

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is funny, foul-mouthed, fast-paced, incomprehensible, witty, and original. It’s one of the finest examples of a caper film done right and provided me with an immensely enjoyable viewing experience.

In relation to all of the twists and turns that the movie takes, the storyline is fairly minute. You’ll be dumbfounded by how many times writer/director Guy Ritchie will flip something on its ear and surprise you. It stars Nick Moran as Eddie, a card sharp who teams up with his buddies Bacon (Jason Statham), Soap (Dexter Fletcher), and Tom (Jason Flemyng) to put money into a high-stakes card game. The man in charge of the game is “Hatchet” Harry (P.H. Moriarty), a gangster and local porn king. Do we have any idea what kind of card game they’re playing? It’s called three card brag, but I have absolutely no idea how it works.

So, naturally, Eddie loses the card game and ends up owing Harry half a million pounds. Harry’s brutish henchman, Barry the Baptist (played with utmost ferocity by bare-knuckle boxer Lenny McLean), warns Eddie that if he and his friends to get the money to Harry in a weeks time, he can expect physical harm.

The plot unravels into much, much more complication than that. Several other characters are added into the mix, such as a Greek arms dealer, a group of misinformed drug dealers, an abusive thief named Dog and his gang of misfits, a pair of bungling small-time criminals, a menacing debt collector and his son, and a black drug dealer named Rory Breaker.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is an incredibly entertaining film. Despite the near nonexistent character depth, you’ll be surprised by how involved you get. It’s implausible and hectic, but controlled, and I like that about it. It’s not afraid to get too out there, but not so far that it gets preposterous. It’s still within reach of reality and possibility.

The writing is brilliant. Ritchie uses Cockney-rhyming slang for much of the dialogue and it’s hard to understand at first, but you eventually pick up on it. My advice would be to either watch it a second time or use subtitles (like I did). The pacing is wonderful, the direction is keen, and the cinematography is gritty. Before directing this film, Ritchie directed commercials and he sort of uses some of the same techniques. Overall, I think that these techniques are beneficial in giving Lock, Stock its technically “wild” nature.

Overall, I was completely impressed by Ritchie’s debut. It’s got to one of the most impressive out there, and for good reason, too. Here is a film so undeniably original that it demands attention. And it’s hilarious — not only in the things that the characters say, but in the things that they do. Most of the humor is slapstick, and as unappealing as that may sound, it’s actually not. Ritchie does it justice. He throws his characters into hilarious situations and we get to watch as they try and wiggle their way out.

Also, there is a great soundtrack here. One of the best I’ve ever heard. Ritchie has great music choice, throwing in songs from James Brown to the Stooges to even Stretch. It gives a very much Tarantino-like effect to the film, making violent situations comical.

Don’t let Guy Ritchie’s recent career moves dissuade you from watching this film. It’s entertaining, interesting, enjoyable, and it’s not likely that you’ll anything like it again. And if you do, I can guarantee it won’t nearly be as good.

RATING: 4/4