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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 29, 2001
New releases
Made (R)
Two lunkheads dying to be mobsters get a low-level money-laundering gig that gets royally botched. Writer-director Jon Favreau tries to duplicate the breakthrough success of Swingers, paired again with Vince Vaughn as guys talking a much better game than they play. Peter Falk scores in a small role as the neighborhood fixer giving the boys a break.
First impressions: "Favreau directs Made in a style recalling the works of John Cassavetes, with hand-held cameras imposing on circuitous conversations that sound improvised. They reveal humorously, but only to viewers ready to overlook the static action and listen closely to the call-back jokes. The appearance of Falk, a favorite of Cassavetes, seals the aesthetic connection to the late filmmaker."
Second thoughts: Hardly as "money" as Swingers, but an amusing, mussed twist on gangs who can't do anything straight.
Rental audience: Mob movie fans, independent film junkies.
Rent it if you enjoy: Swingers, Cassavetes' Gloria, his son Nick's She's So Lovely.
Chris Rock used his hard-earned clout to produce an embarrassing movie based on a skit from his HBO series. Lance Crouther plays the ill-titled character, a blaxploitation-style avenger crusading against all vices except his own. A running joke about Pootie's poor enunciation is nearly the only joke on display. Rock appears briefly as Pootie's belt-whupping daddy, apparently too busy with his own flop, Down to Earth, to stick around long.
First impressions: "Pootie Tang is not bad so much as inexplicable. You watch in puzzlement: How did this train wreck happen? How was this movie assembled out of such ill-fitting pieces? Who thought it was funny? Who thought it was finished? For that matter, was it finished? . . . It's like one of those lab experiments where the room smells like swamp gas and all the mice are dead." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)
Second thoughts: Swamp gas? I'll pass.
Rental audience: Solid Rock fans and . . . maybe two other people.
Rent it if you enjoy: The Ladies Man, Sprung.
Videos worth another look
Don Cheadle, who turns 47 today, has been choosy about his roles and is impressive in most of them.
Don Cheadle is an actor whose presence in any film's cast practically guarantees something impressive. Sometimes he's the only thing worth remembering, such as his dandy portrayal of a guardian angel in last year's otherwise forgettable The Family Man and an uncredited turn in the recent Rush Hour 2.
Those situations are rare because Cheadle has mostly shown patience and taste in choosing his roles. Nobody needs to show him the money, just a good script. Cheadle has been involved in some of the most acclaimed films of recent years, usually as an indispensable part of a dynamic ensemble cast. He's so good that you barely notice, the kind of unselfish actor who may someday receive a sentimental Oscar nod just because he's overdue.
Maybe it'll be for Ocean's Eleven, Steven Soderbergh's Rat Pack remake partly filmed in St. Petersburg and opening nationwide next week.
Celebrate Cheadle's 47th birthday today by catching up with his career highlights in these home video suggestions:
Devil in a Blue Dress -- Denzel Washington starred as 1940s private eye Easy Rawlins, but Cheadle stole the show as "Mouse" Alexander, a casually psychotic hit man. Oscar buzz was plentiful, but Cheadle and the film were overlooked.
Rosewood -- The true story of a Florida atrocity cast Cheadle as Sylvester Carrier, a sharecropper standing firm against murdering racists. John Singleton's violent film found its moral center in Cheadle's performance.
Boogie Nights -- Cheadle played a tender-hearted porn star named Buck Swope in Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling tale of 1970s excess. All get what they want, but only Buck gets what he deserves.
Bulworth -- Angry white senator (Warren Beatty) plots his own assassination, then commits political suicide by rapping what people don't want to hear. Cheadle's bottom-line drug dealer was one of the few characters keeping it real.
Out of Sight -- The actor's first collaboration with Soderbergh, followed by Traffic and Ocean's Eleven. Cheadle never appeared meaner than as Snoopy Miller, the muscle in George Clooney's gang.
The Rat Pack -- How's this for convergence? Cheadle does a striking impression of Sammy Davis Jr., who co-starred in the original Ocean's Eleven. The fantasy sequence when Davis sings to a pack of racist pickets is powerful stuff. Golden Globes voters agreed, naming Cheadle TV's best supporting actor, his most prestigious award to date.
Traffic -- Two dedicated cops (Cheadle, Luis Guzman) were the moral axis of Soderbergh's wheel of narcotics misfortune. The cast earned a Screen Actors Guild prize for best ensemble.
DVD
New and noteworthy for digital players
The Stunt Man (limited edition)
Richard Rush's 1980 film was the last gasp of 1970's cinematic attitude, when movies were still allowed to be oblique by mainstream audiences who didn't need everything explained. Moviegoers got lazier, trained by blockbusters to expect clear-cut answers to what was occurring on screen even before the characters know.
The beauty of The Stunt Man is that nothing is what it appears to be, not the physical action or anyone's motivations. Part of that is due to the film's setting in a fictional filmmaker's universe where falsehoods are a necessary creative evil. Pulling the strings is devilish Eli Cross, played to the hilt by Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole, taking his megalomania beyond the set and into the lives of his cast and crew.
Eli's latest toy is Cameron (Steve Railsback), an escaped convict who stumbles into the midst of a key scene in Eli's new opus, a World War I drama. Eli hires Cameron as a stunt man, but it's never clear whether the jeopardy created is Hollywood magic or a plot to kill. Cameron falls in love with the leading lady (Barbara Hershey) and begins a deadly test of wills with Eli.
Simple enough. But the way Rush continually confounds our expectations is a joy to behold. Identities and intentions are always in doubt. The Stunt Man is a constant mystery told from Cameron's paranoid perspective. We learn clues only when he does and are seldom capable of deducing them first.
"Suddenly, all of the elements fall into place, which is the way it usually happens to us in real life," says Rush on this DVD's audio commentary track. "This is the style of the movie, a presentation of information and events given in a random fashion, which you have to assemble yourself. You don't get to figure it out until the hero figures it out."
Rush's step-by-step analysis of these grand illusions is fascinating, the words of a filmmaker calmly saying "I told you so" to those studio executives who believed The Stunt Man to be too long and vague for its own good. Scenes deleted to accommodate a mandatory limit on running time are included in the two-disc set.
The commentary is occasionally embellished with amusing memories from O'Toole, Hershey and Railsback. Each of them participates in a 114-minute documentary, The Sinister Saga of The Stunt Man, tracing the project from first discussions through abortive distributions and surprising Academy Award nominations for O'Toole, Rush and the screenplay. Now the film has been resurrected on DVD, and anyone who loves movies should rush to figure it out for themselves.