The Coen Brothers have done it again!

If by "it" you mean "made another soulless, self-referential piece of pastiche," then you'd be exactly right. Once again, the Coens indulge their love of film noir, and, techincally, manage to get it almost exactly right. The film looks perfect. There are lots of vertical shafts of dark and light. Billy Bob Thornton's face is full of interesting shading. Visually, the film moves as though it were actually made 50-some years ago (with a couple exceptions -- the Coens can't indulge their Busby Berkeley-by-way-of-MTV visual impulses for an entire shoot, apparently, so the film does break character in a few spots, thereby ruining the one aspect of the film they managed to get right)

But once you get past the visual aspect, The Man Who Wasn't There has some flaws that run very deep, starting with the performances. Not Billy Bob. He does a great job of expressing virtually no emotion and, in doing so, manages to retain his dignity throughout the film. Sadly, the same cannot be said for most of the supporting cast. Michael Badalucco, Jon Polito, and Tony Shalhoub all seem more than willing to portray shrill, shrieking charicatures instead of actually, you know, acting. I'm sure it's not their fault. The Coen Brothers have shown, over the years, a remarkably ability to get otherwise decent actors to complete forgo any attempts to make their character seem even vaguely like a real person. While this approach works fine in lighter comedic works like Raising Arizona, it becomes disconcertingly annoying in a "drama" like this.

As annoying as the acting is, the hamhanded attempts to wedge existential/postmodern thinking into the movie hurt. I mean, caused physical pain. Tony Shalhoub's defense attorney going on and on about Heisenberg was truly painful. I understand the idea of interpreting classic film noir as the closest filmic version of existentialism, and even claiming it as the first mass-culture rumblings of postmodern discontent, but to be so blatant and explicit in shoe-horning the "content" into the film is not something to be rewarded with praise, but solely with scorn.

Rating: D (Not actually a film noir, but a shallow facsimile thereof)

Topics: movies

Is that what kung fu has come to? Latest American Jet Li flick trying, I guess, to one-up Black Mask. Nothing new here. First-time director Chris Nahon, instead of studying the greats (Li does Lee in Fist of Legend), takes all his hints from American directors working with Hong Kong stars, and so instead of getting the Jet Li of Twin Warriors, we get an Americanized version, which is not to say Li is Americanized (though of course they find a way to call him Johnny in the flick) so much as to say that the direction is like the direction in other recent American-HK flicks. Nahon takes all his cues from The Replacement Killers, and Antoine Fuqua isn’t exactly 1992 John Woo; 1999 John Woo isn’t exactly 1992 John Woo, though at least he knows the source material. Fuqua, a music video guy, destroyed Replacement Killers by losing the action: he fired a lot of rounds, but he failed to ground the action, opting instead for what he considered the kineticism of quick-cut, and for some unfortunate and unknown reason, this, along with early US/HK collaborations like Simon Sez (what?) became the style of the American HK. Simon Sez, made by a legit HK director, Ringo Lam, seems to have been taken at face value by the Fuquas of the world, but Lam was never as much of an action director as a gunfire man. Jet Li needs his directors to have seen his old work.

As if aware of the need for some old-school, non-Propaganda Films street cred, Kiss of the Dragon builds on the rep and skills of Luc Besson, co-writer and producer, and as La Femme Nikita and Leon (The Professional) are thematically the building blocks here, Besson's hand is heavy, down to his favorite gags: the laundry chute, the police station, the elevator kick, the hand grenade.

Kiss of the Dragon does have some news, and the news is the kill shot. If the plot is rotten, the dialogue worse, the camerawork shaky where it needs to be solid (literally, not judgmentally), and the action Jackie Chan one scene and 100% Besson the next, Nahon's Faces of Death interest in the portrayal of the grisly demise seems to be what sets him apart from Fuqua.

The deaths are gruesome, and in fact their over-the-top quality is the only aspect to set Kiss of the Dragon apart. Here are a few: look away if you're squeamish about destruction or giving away the point of movies.

Besson's laundry-chute escape, lifted straight from La Femme Nikita, goes one step beyond: the grenade (missile) doesn’t just force Li (Parillaud) into rapid escape, but blows one henchman apart, sending legs fluttering (?) slo-mo to the ground and eliciting the first of many Eeeewwws from the audience.

The neck snap, a heavy staple of US action film for years, enjoying a resurgence since its use in Total Recall, is used here to serious effect, and Nahon has enough faith in it to use it twice in a single scene, a daring move which is upheld only through very creative use in a WWF kind of tombstone move fairly rare in the "serious" action film.

The movie's point, in a lot of ways, is the Kiss of the Dragon, revealed at the end to be the final kill, when we learn that Jet Li is skilled in the ancient and mystical art of David Cronenberg, and Nahon's insistence on showing us the whole thing, even without any semblance at all of Roger Avary glee or James Bondish tongue-in-cheek, is revealed to be his ultimate justification for making this movie: the willingness to show...

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Topics: movies