Reasons to see (or not) The Magnificent Seven

Synopsys: We are in a quiet town somewhere near Sacramento, full of quiet, probably even good, people and a preacher that cares more about an empty building with respect to the six dead bodies around him. Why six dead bodies? I don't know, I'm not sure they were six. The point is that a bad guy called capitalism is coming to town and he is not fucking around too much. The quiet good people hire Denzel Washington to be himself once again. This time, he finds 6 other guys with different stories and probably even a few dreams. Yes, you are right, this makes them 7 and they are... beautiful. This is the story on if and how they saved the town from capitalism.

This movie is a remake of a western that was a remake of a Japanese movie. So one can expect a lack of originality and, let's face it, this movie gives you a Deja Vu feeling that remains with you when you leave the theater. As you can see, the plot is pretty standard for the genre and its development doesn't bring any particular new element.

During the movie I found myself appreciating this aspect. I lived classic western scenes as a citation, even as an homage to the genre. The piano player that stops playing when the badass character enters the saloon while everyone turns to look at him. The excellent crescendo during the staredowns on dusty roads. The music that embraces the plot till the final explosion of notes. All of this is done and presented with great skill, making the movie a very nice work to look at. The problem is that there is nothing new to support the homage, no contribution is coming from the movie. It thus looks very unoriginal to everyone that ever saw a western movie.

A bright spot is the overall performance of the actors, yet bugged with its highs and lows. Denzel is excellent, this is the kind of role that probably most suits him and the alchemy with the director (Antoine Fuqua) is strong for the entire movie. Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke bring to the screen a convincing performance, the one that I have appreciated the most since they convey some sort of journey for the respective characters. On the other hand, the performance of Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor that I liked a lot every time I've seen him (Full Metal Jacket and Daredevil), sounds off and underwhelming. But it can just be me feeling strange while I laugh every time he speaks or moves.

Another bad performance, but I suspect the reason is how the character is written, is coming for the bad guy. It is not a case that I refer to the antagonist as "the capitalism" or "the bad guy". While can be easy to find the actor's name online, I want to stress out that, in a movie with 7 important good guys, the bad guy should pop out of the screen and it simply doesn't happen, leaving the antagonist in an annoying shade of anonymity. The antagonist is one dimensional, he has a very little screen time and does nothing to be remembered.

This was probably the biggest disappointment since the rest of the characters is introduced very efficiently (with a few minor exceptions). We spend the first 30 minutes to meet our heroes, seeing them doing something that immediately gives us a reason to care or be curious about them. This is an aspect that I have appreciated since the last movie that I saw with multiple protagonists (Suicide Squad, reviewed here) was a mess in the introduction. If there we spent the first part of the movie by listening to someone telling us about the characters, in The Magnificent Seven they appear naturally one by one, saving us from what I can call the audiobook-effect. In other words, this movie succeeds where Suicide Squad failed: it goes beyond its trailer.

The action sequences are the other strong suit of the movie. The tension is slowly built up with excellent camera movements and small dialogues. Then the scene explodes with its choreography of smoking guns, flying knives, arrows, and dead bodies piling up. For being only a PG-13 movie, its violence is a very dominant factor, so expect a lot of very well written and directed action sequences with a lot of people dying on screen.

In conclusion, if you never saw a western movie, this is a fair sample of how it would look like and you will probably enjoy the action sequences and the badassery of the protagonists. Otherwise, everything will look familiar and there is the chance to be disappointed by the lack of originality of this movie.

At last, that preacher is a motherfucker.

Everything is fun and games until... Nerve

Synopsys: Nerve is a game like truth or dare, but without the truth. Nerve is or dare (it had to be said, move along). One day, the young people of New York find out that there is a website that dares people to do something in exchange for money and adrenaline. People can play or pay an outrageous amount of money per hour to see other people playing. In this world, where cell phones battery are extremely efficient, a shy girl is tired of not taking any chances in her life and start playing. In the night that follows that decision, everything goes wilder and wilder.

Regardless of my tone, Nerve turned out to be a very entertaining movie, with the right twists and turns, and some sequences that will keep you on the edge of your seats. I went to the theater with no expectations, I didn't come back thinking that I completely wasted my time.

The movie is essentially about how far one can go to impress the faceless crowd that is the internet community. It shows us a story, it shows us the risks of being trapped in such situations, and it shows us how being a faceless crowd and having easy access to other people's life can change our behavior. 

The main risk is to not sound credible. I personally find credible that an app that dares you to film yourself doing something unusual in exchange of money would have success. It's not difficult to imagine that the game goes too far eventually and someone is ready to get hurt in order to not lose the prize. It's not hard to believe that people would watch or film that. Less credible is the indifference of the media (or the police) towards such game, as many others pointed out already. However, the entire movie takes place in less than 24 hours, so it is not impossible to keep it as a secret (and it is in the rules).

Thus we have a credible absurd story unraveling in front of our eyes at a very high pace. She presses that button to start the game and from that moment it escalates with a very constant pace till the predictable grand finale. When I talk about predictability, I only mean that it is easy to expect that something big is going to happen, the curiosity to find out what keeps the viewer attention and makes the high rhythm a good aspect of this movie.

Regardless my surprise of seeing an unexpectedly nice movie, it is fair to say that this light movie has some problems, even accepting its lightness. The main issue is the lack of closure both in the main plot and in the secondary ones. To maintain it spoiler-free, the movie opens arcs of tension between the characters and then simply ends, without resolving most of them. This is usually indicating a lazy writer behind it, or, even worse, a characterization of the story dangerously stereotyped.

Then a message to those that cannot enjoy a movie if it is not scientifically or, as in this case, technologically accurate. Don't go, you will not like it. In the movie, the internet is a magical place, the hackers are wizards, the deep web is an even more magical place with leprechauns, and cell phones' batteries last forever.

In conclusion, this movie is able to surprise you. I'm not sure if it is because of its intrinsic qualities or because of my non-existent expectations, but it is going to surprise you. If you have a couple of hours to spare, it is not a bad idea to lighten up watching it.

Reasons to see (or not) The Infiltrator

Synopsis: Special agent Robert Mazur is like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of undercover agents, but gets tired of chasing narcos for a few dozen of Kg of drugs. He thus decides to chase the dirty money instead of the funny drugs. Here begins the true story of the man that infiltrates Pablo Escobar's cartel and discovers the money-laundering organization behind it. 

Being a true story, it is difficult to really define what is a spoiler or not, but, on the cinematographical point of view, everything that follows is completely spoiler-free.

True stories usually encounter two big issues once they are translated to the screens of our theaters. The writers are often lazy in explaining why a character changes attitude; since the change really happened, they don't feel the need of explaining it too much. Moreover, the fact that the viewer already knows how the story is going to end is often a reason for the lack of tension or, even worse, to make clumsy every attempt to create such tension. Therefore, before we continue with this post, I have to say that movies based on true stories are not my favorite one, generically speaking.

All that being said, The Infiltrator is, by all means, a good movie and most of the credit has to go to another marvelous performance by Bryan Cranston. I'm not usually a big fan of overwhelming performances by actors, but it is difficult to remain indifferent in front of the tridimensionality and the realism that this actor gives to his characters. Therefore, after admitting that true stories are not my favorite stories on screen, it is also time to admit that the ability of the actor is more than enough to make this movie enjoyable. Bryan Cranston's performance is not as good as last year's Trumbo (another true story for which I believe he deserved the Academy Award) but doesn't go too far from that.

However, the ability of the actors is not enough to compensate the transition-problem mentioned before. Although we are not at the low levels of War Dogs (to cite the most recent example AND continue in my self-promotion crusade), where nothing was explained, we are also far away from the high levels of Sully (to cite the most recent example AND continue in my self-promotion crusade), where the transitions in the attitudes of the characters are always well displayed. My guess is that, by trying to communicate the uncertainty and the insecurity of that investigation, the producers ruined from time to time an otherwise perfect flow in the movie. A few transitions are not smooth and they simply do not work on screen.

On the other side, The Infiltrator is a movie that keeps the tension level high every time it is needed. There are many sequences that make you wonder or fear for the protagonists. This is a big win for this kind of movies and worths the price of the ticket by itself. You naturally perceive the danger surrounding the investigation, how incredibly easy is to screw everything up and how close to screwing everything up they actually went.

In conclusion, coming from someone that is not a fan of true stories, not a fan of movies too centered around the ability of an actor, and pretty tired of seeing Pablo Escobar on a screen, this is a very recommended movie, it will completely absorb you into the narration, it has a few good comedy moment and it si definitely a good way of spending your time.

Sully: doing everything right and saying the wrong thing

Clint Eastwood comes back to our screens two years after American Sniper to tell us another American story. This time is the true story of the US Airways flight 1549, which, on February 15, 2009, was forced to land in the Hudson River after hitting several birds in the act of taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport. 

The movie is centered on the figure of the captain, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the hero that saved everyone on that plane by taking the decision and then executing a bold water landing. In the movie, we go through the investigation of the accident and the struggles that captain Sully faced during that period. The hero is then haunted by doubts about himself and by the perspective of losing his pension after 40 years of service. 

Telling a true story on screen is always tricky, but Sully delivers with power every emotion, overcoming the fact that the viewer already knows the outcome of the story. I've enjoyed the movie, I felt a wide spectrum of emotions and it feels authentic. The actors are amazing and very well directed, the dialogues are powerful, and Aaron Eckhart should be forced to keep that glorious mustache till the end of time. Moreover, the narration of the events is very well designed, not giving us the scenes of big visual impact right away (like in the movie Flight), but rather delivered, one bit at a time, in different moments of the movie. 

The only flaw of the movie itself is a piece of dialogue that gave my nerves. It appears to me that the old Clint wants to remind the viewers that something else about planes crashing on New York happened in the recent past. Therefore, starting from the very first scene, we find images of how worse that accident could have been. At first, I tolerated the choice, since it is fitting with a PSTD of the pilot. Moreover, it could be the way of the director to say "everyone will think about 9/11 anyway, let's just ride the elephant in the room" (although I'm not sure about the first part and now we will never know). I ran out of tolerance when the issue was explicitly addressed with a phrase like "It has been a while since New York had good news, especially involving planes" (not a literal transposition). I found it inappropriate and it doesn't fit well in the movie.

Besides that, it is a very well executed movie, I fully recommend it because it is a good way to spend a couple of hours.

At last, I would like to address a message that the movie made me feel and to which I disagree with. The method used to represent the investigation, as well as the people whose duty (and let me stress duty) is to establish what went wrong and who is responsible, made me take a stand against the investigation itself. This is just wrong. In such accidents, the investigation is mandatory because you have also to decide if giving or not to the pilot (or the plane) the responsibilities for other human lives. It is true that the struggle and the self-analysis of the main character are saying that he trust the necessity of such investigation. However, from the choice of the actors (that always interpret annoying characters) to the dialogues, the feeling is that the investigators are the bad guys. I think this is simply the wrong message and I don't think that an expert director like Clint Eastwood did that by accident.

How superb The Night Of is

Regardless my sincere difficulty in putting its title in a sentence, the mini-series The Night Of revealed once again the extreme quality of the HBO's shows. Eight episodes that drive the viewer from the commission of a crime to the detention of the only suspect, and to the consequent trial. 

I personally like the mini-series-format very much, because it is what in a sense resembles more what a movie is. In other words, in such series the events flow naturally in the development of a single plot, developed episode after episode without worrying about setting up a sequel (or a season 2).  The Night Of is a long movie in eight chapters, each one of which is almost self-consistent and has its own messages. The result is a complete immersion both in the plot and in the single details of the single scenes. 

The most powerful message (the one that hit me harder) is encoded in the detention of the protagonist, Nasir (Naz). In the very first episode, we see this young man taking a bad decision after the other, finding himself in a horrifying situation and let the panic take control of his actions. In other words, we see an ordinary person becoming the only suspect for the murder of a young woman. The narration is structured to make the viewer know many useful details and thus lead us to believe in his innocence, regardless the fact that we can't be 100% sure.

Since then, the show mainly focuses on the transformation that Naz experiences in jail waiting for his trial. From the hostile environment that is trying to kill him, he modifies his aspect and his behavior to survive the prison. With the investigation running in the background, we become aware of details of Nasir's private life. Therefore, episode after episode, the most appropriate word to describe this process is not transformation, but rather revelation. 

The brutal environment that is a prison is bringing out a hidden side of the protagonist, forced to survive to let his violent side take over and then stuck in what is, by all means, his new life. There is a moment when one may experience the emergent of a doubt: if this is his true self, maybe he did it.

Another striking message is surely hidden in the actions of the cops and it is about how the system works. In every book, movie and TV show, we see the detective saying something that bothers me every time: give up to your right of remain silent because it looks bad during the trial otherwise. In The Night Of we see again this dynamic leading to something very close to a self-incrimination. 

Don't get me wrong, the detective does everything within the boundaries of the law and Naz speaks freely with him, for the standards we got used to seeing in other situations. However, a choice given under the threat of a harder trial (if you don't speak the jury will think you are guilty) is not a choice, it is a kind of abuse. An abuse that leads to a very lousy and superficial investigating job that would have been infuriating even without ruining an innocent young man's life.

The message is thus a reminder that the system, intended as the set of rules and rights that a suspect has, exists to protect the suspects. Justice is all about the protection of the innocents and the show describes very accurately what happens if we let even the smallest injustice happen. In those fake choices, in an investigation blinded by the overwhelming presence of circumstantial evidence, and, most of all, in the transformation of Naz in prison we see a lucid representation of one of the most inhumane plagues of the modern world. 

Since the next thing I want to say can be considered a spoiler, I give the opportunity of stopping here and go watch this superb show. For other considerations on the same theme, I self-promote my review of Orange Is The New Black S4. After the picture the last thoughts on this show (with a spoiler).

A bulky presence in the show is the eczema (or generically the skin condition) of the character interpreted by John Turturro. I have to confess that for 7 episodes and 50 minutes I thought it was a tool to make the viewer feel and sympathize with the poor lawyer seeking justice for his client and redemption for himself. Then a little piece of dialogue hit me with power. Both being a murder suspect and having that skin condition is keeping people away from the two characters. Naz was not found guilty and the skin condition is not contagious, but both characters will have their cross to bear for the rest of their lives. For both situations, we see how society is incapable of finding a way to deal with them, or a solution to cure such problem. It could be me overthinking it, but I found this parallelism brilliant.

In conclusion, a show very well executed, with a clean narration, great acting, and powerful messages. Seeing two young lives either terminated or ruined forever, a family broke in its economy and its personal relationships, a good man doing something extraordinary and coming back to the shitty life of a cheap lawyer left me with a deep feeling of emptiness. That is, after all, the reason why I write reviews after the shows are over. Like a junkie.

Reasons to see (or not) War Dogs

This movie is difficult to decipher. Let me thus start with a lousy synopsis.

The story is developed around a young man, having financial problems like many young men, feeling the responsibility of providing for his family. He randomly meets again an old friend of his that really looks he is not having any problem in paying for meals. It turns out that such friend has a small activity where he sells guns to the US army. Our protagonist joins the company and the two of them start facing bigger and bigger challenges to sign up bigger and bigger contracts and be able to afford bigger and bigger meals. Things eventually go over their head and they got in bigger and bigger troubles.

As you can see, the story it is not very original in its development, but absurd (in a good way) enough to be entertaining. The ground material is very valuable and the plot flows almost always from point A to point B, without messing around too much. To be fair, I found a couple of small subplots to be unnecessary at the point that probably I would have enjoyed more a movie 10/15 minutes shorter.

The actors' performances are overall very convincing. Special mention to Jonah Hill, that is confirming himself to be a great actor, pulling off a great performance yet again.

What I didn't like about the movie is that it lacks in personality. It seems to me that they wanted to keep a bright tone while narrating very dark events. They are telling a very upsetting story about how the army is getting its weapons, but it looked to me that the movie doesn't take a stand on that matter. It looks like it is denouncing something, but it doesn't really do that. I can't really define it better than just saying: the narration is too flat. 

In other words, it is a movie of half measures.

Probably they could have achieved a much better result by explaining the transitions in the behavior of the characters, that are, instead, something that simply happens on the screen. This is a common risk in movies based on true stories (and the reason why it is not my favorite genre). Since the facts narrated really happened, the movie makers often think that we, the viewers, do not need much to be involved in the plot or in the psychology of the characters. 

In conclusion, the experiment of Todd Philips of moving from the Hangover trilogy to a serious movie was bold and the result shows all the difficulties that one may encounter in such transition.