For the week of July 22nd, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing Transcendence to Blu-ray. This sci-fi drama was the much anticipated directorial debut from Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister. From Memento through The Dark Knight Rises, Pfister helped solidify Nolan's signature aesthetic style – burnished colors, deep shadows, naturalistic camera movement – and Transcendence appeared on paper like a worthy solo project for the Academy Award-winning DP: Jack Paglen's Black List script promised a tense look at one of the possible results of computer programmers reaching the "Singularity" (the moment when A.I.'s outstrip humans in terms of analytical and intuitive intelligences), and Pfister brought together an all-star cast that included Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, and Nolan veterans Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, and Cillian Murphy. So why does the end result fall so flat? In theory, we should be interested in what happens after brilliant programmer Will Caster (Depp) transfers his consciousness into an advanced computer terminal, but Paglan seems stymied by the enormity of the issue. We never know who to root for; on one hand, the digital Will stalks his grieving wife (Hall) and is capable of using nanotechnology to create what are, essentially, extremely high-end zombies, but on the other hand, the resistance force going after Will's fortified desert compound (led by Mara) is comprised of psychopathic Luddites willing to kill innocent civilians in their pursuit of an off-the-grid future. Now, ambiguity can be a good thing, but the actors don't seem committed to representing difficult contradictions – with the exceptions of Hall, who's her usual brilliant self, no one gets any dynamic material to play (Depp almost literally phones in his performance, and the film completely wastes Murphy and saddles Freeman with yet another wise, old mentor part). And it's not as if the Singularity is too challenging a subject to treat right. Just last year, Spike Jonze's masterful romance Her succeeded in conveying all the messy realities of a world moving towards a digital revolution. Transcendence pays lip service to that concept (especially in terms of Depp and Hall's fraught romance), but mostly, it's just a bland, mediocre action movie. Transcendence looks great – I'll give Pfister that. Otherwise, this is a wan, anemic take on an infinitely fascinating concept: stick with Her or the first two Terminator movies to see Hollywood do the Singularity justice.
Kenneth Brown's Blu-ray review commented on the film's lack of genuine inspiration, that "Pfister never quite escapes that creeping, crawling sense of genre familiarity, nor will you; that nagging knowledge that you've seen this all a hundred times before, and executed with more style, confidence and originality. Worse, elements that might elevate Transcendenceabove the genre crowd - Evelyn's devotion, Max's doubts, A.I. Will's expanding consciousness and eventual expression of force - are robbed of complexity and reduced to paper-thin plot points stretched to the point of tearing. The central mystery - is the advancing intelligence really Will or something wholly inhuman? - isn't even much of a mystery. Pfister and Paglen simply choose an answer near the end of the film. And having position Will as an out-of-control demi-god in the making, the answer is as problematic and unfulfilling as the nanobot swarm vs. human resistance action scenes that precede it (No spoiler alert necessary. Not only do the film's trailers give away the ending, along with just about everything else, Pfister's opening scene involves a horribly misguided and ultimately detrimental flash-forward that reveals way too much way too early)."
Speaking of the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger headlines a new release this week, the cop thriller Sabotage. It's a weird bird, this one. Writer/director David Ayer has made a name for himself as a purveyor of gritty cop stories – without him, we'd have no Training Day or End of Watch - and much of Sabotage plays like him applying a pulpier sheen to his well-established cinematic wheelhouse. The film centers on John "Breacher" Wharton (Schwarzenegger), a corrupt DEA officer who pulls off a heist of drug cartel money with his equally corrupt DEA strike team (including Max Martini, Mireille Enos, Terrence Howard, Josh Holloway, Joe Manganiello, and Sam Worthington, who's a dead ringer for Anthrax guitar player Scott Ian Rosenfeld here). Given Ayer's track record, we might expect the heist to lead to divided loyalties, maybe some cartel retaliation, and we're not wrong, but the filmmaker throws in a bigger curveball: at the end of the day, Sabotage is actually a bloody, foul-mouthed riff on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, since once the money goes missing, someone begins picking off Breacher's team one by one, and everyone becomes a suspect. The fit between police procedural and suspense-horror isn't a seamless one, and Ayer doesn't help matters by tossing in even more subplots, from Breacher's tortured backstory to the external investigation of Olivia Williams' canny local cop – the relentless unpleasantness of the violence and language certainly doesn't help either, as it becomes a bit of a chore to spend time with Breacher's crew (on one end of the spectrum: Terrence Howard, who barely registers in the cast. On the other end: Enos, whose drug-abusing, promiscuous sadist is so over the top she barely leaves any scenery for the rest of the cast to chew). But for all its issues, Sabotage is watchable and rarely boring (it's too amped up for that), and Schwarzenegger is quite good as a bad man who fears that his worst sins have finally caught up to him.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that the film "is a rare character-driven action movie that's much more about motivation, personal history, and camaraderie than it is the usual Action movie mantra of 'see bad guy, shoot bad guy, save the day.' Action films have been inching in this direction for awhile now, particularly the DTV field that tends to overcomplicate the plot and the characters, tone down the action, and find itself in a murky middle ground where nothing works. Sabotage finds that middle ground, embraces it, and walks that line with confidence. The characters are well-developed, real, and relatable, even as they put on a hard, impenetrable exterior of muscle, tattoo, and precision operator skill. Where the movie goes - who's behind what, the motivations that drive the characters - really doesn't come as much of a surprise once all is revealed, but the film does well to hide its intentions and allow the mystery and action to play out side-by-side while simultaneously digging deeper into the lives of all the key players. Director David Ayer…perfectly paces Sabotage and intermixes all of those key elements together with a gritty grace that serves the movie very well. His pacing is deliberate, but not slow, allowing characters and the larger complexities of their lives to seep into the audience at a fast trickle, fast enough to keep the movie flowing and slow enough not to spoil the ride too early."
Far more engaging a crime-centric feature is Richard Shepard's Dom Hemingway. In a career-reviving turn, Jude Law stars as the title character, an ex-con who expects – nay, demands - the world to adjust to him after he finishes a twelve-year prison stint: chief among those demands is the fortune he claims he's owed for not snitching on a powerful crime lord (Demián Bichir), but Dom's beyond-abrasive personal style and the machinations of a seductive femme fatale (Mădălina Diana Ghenea) threaten to compromise his newly earned freedom. At least, that's what the film looks like on the surface – in reality, it's a lot more complicated. A lot of people have taken issue with Dom Hemingway as a proper British crime flick, and to be sure, when measured against the impossibly high standards of features like Get Carter, Mona Lisa, and Layer Cake, it seems to come up short; Dom's actual criminal enterprises take up a scant percentage of the runtime, with his main "heist" (Dom has to crack a safe in under ten minutes or risk losing a very important part of his anatomy to an old rival) reduced to a comic punchline. But Dom Hemingway really isn't about crime. As he's indicated in his other ventures (The Matador and many episodes of HBO's Girls, including the controversial "One Man's Trash"), Shepard makes character studies instead of genre pieces, and this one is no exception. Dom might be a criminal, yet Shepard directs our attention to the in-between moments, like Dom's manic rage giving way to sudden regret, his insecurities about getting old, his delightful bickering with his best friend (the invaluable Richard E. Grant), and his Hail-Mary attempts to eke out some kind of positive relationship with his estranged daughter (Game of Thrones Emilia Clarke). It's a portrait of a life, in miniature, with Law's volcanic lead performance and Shepard's great dialogue (the film opens with Dom delivering a virtuoso monologue about his genitals, which sets a high bar that the movie consistently clears) ensuring that we stay engaged despite the lack of pulp shenanigans.
Jeffrey Kauffman commented that "Dom Hemingway starts with one of those monologues that actors crave—a big, showy piece full of florid language and incredibly vivid imagery, delivered straight at the camera as if it were being communicated one to one by the actor directly to the viewer. In this case, however, there is a decidedly shocking element to it all, one that might have given even the great Jude Law pause as he summoned the spirit to deliver the lines properly. Law portrays the titular Dom Hemingway, a career criminal who is incarcerated as the film begins. The opening scene - and the monologue - is a deliberately provocative gambit that has Dom being fellated (slightly out of frame) by another inmate while Dom waxes rapturous about the supposed exalted characteristics of his manhood. It's outré, it's jaw dropping, and, yes, it's completely unforgettable—for good or ill. But it at least lets the viewer know within just a few seconds that this film is going to be a take no prisoners jaunt through the life of a decidedly unlikely 'hero,' a sad sack bad guy who by his own admission has 'anger issues' (to put it mildly) and who is often engaged, as in this first scene, in epic blandishments which ostensibly aid in his quest for self-esteem. Dom Hemingway is often scabrously funny, but it's the sort of humor that pleases those who don't want to just see someone slip on a banana peel—they then want to see a grand piano come crashing down on the prone victim. Dom spends most of the film stumbling through a series of misadventures, including several disasters of his own making, before hinting (if only barely) that redemption might be possible for even this dunderheaded of an individual."
Finally, Kino Video is bringing two pictures from master filmmaker Billy Wilder to Blu-ray: the 1957 mystery Witness for the Prosecution and his 1970 character study The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Witness for the Prosecution comes right in the middle of a creative run that included Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Stalag 17, and The Apartment, and as such, it finds Wilder firing on all cylinders. Working with the equally iconic Agatha Christie, he concocts a devious little puzzler about a shrewd barrister (Charles Laughton) trying to defend a man (Tyrone Power) from a murder charge. Even if you know where the movie is going – and if Witness for the Prosecution seems a little predictable to modern audiences, it's only because this film helped establish certain thriller mechanics that have been used (and re-used) by many other movies and TV shows – Wilder brings his customary acid wit and snap to the proceedings, and the whole cast is aces. As Jeffrey Kauffman writes, "Putting aside that perhaps understandable issue [of the film's central artifice], the rest of Witness for the Prosecution works like gangbusters." The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, is a far more melancholy affair. Wilder and his longtime screenwriter partner I.A.L. Diamond intended for this movie to be a three-hour roadshow that looked at the partnership of Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely), but studio interference and Wilder's own insecurities about the project compromised the end result; the film lost over forty crucial minutes of footage and died at the box office, thus driving a personal wedge between Wilder and Diamond and ending Wilder's nearly thirty-year hot streak. The shame is, even in its truncated form, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes still offers a singular experience. It's almost an anti-character study, in that it makes Holmes seem even more impenetrable by the end of the picture, and the slivers we do get (be they part of Wilder and Diamond's original intentions or simply a result of editorial elisions) suggest dimensions mostly left unexplored by other works featuring Holmes. Stephens and Blakely makes a great pairing, and Wilder grants their partnership the respect it deserves while gently ribbing it in subtle ways. Should the deleted footage never surface (and at this point, it's doubtful that film archivists will ever be able to restore it), what remains of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is more than worthy for Wilder fans.
Of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Brian Orndorf wrote that the film "celebrates its title in the opening, where secretive writings from Watson are unearthed 50 years after his death, ready to share the lesser known aspects of Holmes's life with the world. Of course, this promises a few more salacious details than the production is willing to deliver, but it's an interesting method to help dive back into Doyle's world, handed a twist of remembrance by Wilder and Diamond. This Holmes isn't exactly the famous figure he's allowed Watson to create, slightly frustrated with the role he plays with the public as his friend expands his achievements and fudges his stats to generate a superhero in fog-thick Victorian England. It's a slightly satiric take on Holmes, though the screenplay doesn't stay interested in such mythmaking for long, settling down with traditional mystery elements that bring out the best in the pair...Wilder and Diamond also makes a commitment to Holmes's unsavory side, bringing up his cocaine habit as a mournful medication of concern, taking to the needle as a way to quiet his mind. The production doesn't back away from depicting this aspect of the character, with the screenplay taking time to understand Holmes's motivation and Watson's worry, adding another layer to their already complex partnership."