Maria Bello

‘The Woman King’ – Viola Davis Kicks Ass, and That’s No Surprise

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

As soon as Viola Davis rises from the bushes as General Nanisca in “The Woman King,” I knew this film was going to kick ass. Throughout her career, whether she was in “Doubt,” “Out of Sight” or “The Help,” this Oscar-winning actress has proven to be a force of nature and one to be reckoned with. When it came to the film version of “Fences,” the question was not if Davis could her own with Denzel Washington, but if Denzel could hold his own with her. As for her work as Amanda Waller in those “Suicide Squad” movies, she made the crew of delinquents and outright criminals working under her command look like a bunch of pussies. She does the same here as she dominates the screen to where no one with a half a brain should even dare to question how lethal she can be as she lays waste to her oppressors with little in the way of remorse.

“The Woman King” takes us back to the 1800s to the kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. There is an opening prologue which tells us of the peril this kingdom is under that is a little hard to follow, but the main thing to know is that the kingdom is protected by an all-female unit of warriors known as the Agojie. As the opening sequence makes clear, they are far and away the most feared warriors on the continent as we watch them crush their opponents ever so confidently. Of course, you don’t see a lot of blood here as this is a PG-13 rated motion picture, but all the bones breaking and shattering are here on display, reminding us once again that the MPAA remains far more comfortable with violence than love-making.

Yes, this group of warriors did exist in reality. Actress Maria Bello became aware of this piece of history while visiting Africa, and she serves as “The Woman King’s” co-producer and co-writer for good reason. Granted, the movie’s story does deal with inescapable cliches and familiar storylines to where the term “inspired by true events” this movie is being promoted with makes a lot more sense than “based on a true story,” and you all know how I feel about that term which has long since become useless to me.

The story follows certain conventions and employs familiar cliches in an effort to make us follow and understand these characters on a general level. While General Nanisca (Davis) is well-regarded as a warrior, others such as the many wives of King Ghezo (John Boyega) see her as a mere commoner, unworthy of such admiration. Of course, one of those wives gets her comments thrown back in her face upon being reminded of how she hid behind locked doors while the kingdom was being attacked. Be careful when you talk shit about others!

Into the plot comes the young Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) who is about to sold to a man who is to be her husband. This prospective husband, however, is quick to smack Nawi in the face when she does not respond to him, and her response is to shove him back several feet to where he lands flat on his back. Instead of fighting back, he cowers away, blaming Nawi’s father for raising such crazy children.

From there, Nawi’s father drags her to the area where the Agojie train and presents her as a gift to the king. It’s punishment for her not accepting a husband, but even she knows this is her only destiny. Like the Jedi, the Agojie cannot marry or have children, and this is a destiny she is prepared to take on. Of course, it will come with many bumps and bruises throughout time.

Okay, let me get to the performances. Like I said, Davis is a force of nature, and it is so thrilling to watch her use every fiber of being and body to portray such a hardened warrior. Just from looking at her eyes, she makes you believe this is a warrior who has survived many battles and endured much pain and suffering others would never be able to handle. It’s tempting to compare General Nanisca to Tom Berenger’s character of Sgt. Barnes from “Platoon,” but Nanisca still has a lot of heart under that hardened gaze of hers.

Upon her entrance into training, Nawi is met by another Agojie warrior, Izogie, and she is played by “No Time to Die’s” Lashana Lynch who is wickedly good here. Izogie is also a hardened warrior, but she still has a wide smile and an undeniably sharp sense of humor even after all she has been through. It’s a blast watching her as she steals the show in the same way she did opposite Daniel Craig when she portrayed another 007.

Special attention should be also given to Mbedu who takes her character of Nawi from an innocent soul to a true warrior. She runs the gamut of emotions throughout and embodies this soldier-in-training with tremendous enthusiasm to where you believe every part of her rough and tumble journey on an emotional and physical level. You have to respect the actor/actress who can make a transition like this in a motion picture because it is never easy.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love & Basketball,” “Beyond the Lights” and “The Old Guard”) keeps things moving at a steady pace throughout, and the film never lags for a second. She has created one of the more engrossing and action-packed films of 2022 and has brought us a piece of history which will never be easily forgotten once you have watched the action in front of you.

As I write this, “The Woman King” has since earned an A+ rating on CinemaScore and debuted at the top of the U.S. box office. It’s a thrill to see it doing so well in this day and age. Still, part of me wished the filmmakers had given the action more of the “Braveheart” brutality as there were plenty of bones and bodies being crushed, but not much blood. I mean, come on, this is war and battle we are talking about. Seeing it getting the PG-13 treatment feels like a bit of a cheat, but perhaps there is a director’s cut just waiting around the corner.

Regardless, “The Woman King” is both thrilling and endlessly enthralling throughout, and it would be a shame if you missed it on the silver screen. And when you walk out of the theater, the only words you should say, particularly about Viola Davis, is “not bad for a human.”

* * * ½ out * * * *

‘Prisoners’ is Not Your Average Child Abduction Thriller

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Prisoners movie poster

From the trailers, “Prisoners” looked like just another average child abduction movie with a strong cast which would hopefully make it seem slightly above average. I have seen so many movies like this to where they now seem like the same one no matter who is starring or directing. Boy, was I wrong about this one! “Prisoners” is a heavy-duty character driven drama which generates an agonizing amount of tension and never loses any of it throughout its two and a half hour running time. In a time when many movies are in serious need of an editing job, this one manages to make every single minute count.

It’s a snowy day when Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) takes his family over to his friend Franklin Birch’s (Terrence Howard) house to celebrate Thanksgiving with a big feast. Both men have loving wives, two teenaged children who are unsurprisingly not all that interested in hanging out with their parents, and they have two beautiful six-year old daughters named Anna and Joy who can never seem to sit still for a single moment. But when Anna goes back to her home with Joy to fetch her safety whistle, both of them disappear without a trace and their families begin a desperate search to find them before it is too late.

The only suspect in the case is Alex Jones (Paul Dano), a man with the IQ of a 10-year old, whose RV Anna and Joy were playing around earlier in the day. When the police and Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) are not able to get any answers from Alex as to where the girls are, they are forced to let him go for lack of evidence. Keller, however, becomes convinced Alex does know where they are at, and he becomes infinitely, and frighteningly, determined to make Alex give him the answer he wants. Suffice to say, some moral boundaries are definitely crossed.

It should be no surprise Hugh Jackman gives a seriously intense performance here as a father obsessed with finding his child as we have gotten used to him playing the Wolverine in all those “X-Men” movies. But as furious as he got in “Logan” this past year, Jackman seems even more frightening here as he loses his moral perspective while desperately searching for answers. Just watch him as he bashes a bathroom sink with a hammer.

Jake Gyllenhaal also gives one of his best performances ever as Detective Loki, a man equally obsessed with getting the girls back even as he struggles with an uneasiness which will not let him be. What I especially like about Gyllenhaal here is how he implies certain things about this character without ever having to spell it out for the audience. Loki is a man with a troubled past who has his own demons to fight, and while we don’t always know what those demons are, this allows Gyllenhaal to add another layer to his character which only increases Loki’s complexity.

Terrence Howard, who gave a terrific performance in “Dead Man Down,” gives another one here as the other desperate father. It’s interesting to see him go from playing an intimidating crime lord to a helpless dad who finds himself in a morally dubious position when he is presented with a way of getting the answers, but he becomes increasingly unnerved at the way Keller is trying to obtain them. Howard is great at showing how helplessly conflicted his character is, and he makes you feel his inescapable pain and confusion as he is forced to go down a path he becomes convinced is the wrong one to go down.

Kudos also goes out to Maria Bello and Viola Davis who play the wives to Jackman and Howard. Bello portrays Grace Dover, and she has an especially difficult to watch scene in which she completely falls apart emotionally as she faces the worst nightmare no parent ever wants to face. As for Davis, she once again proves how powerful she can be in the smallest of roles. It should also be noted how each of these actors is a parent in real life, and I cannot even begin to think of what emotional depths they went to give such authentic portrayals.

Paul Dano continues to astonish in each film he appears in, and his performance as Alex Jones is one of his most enigmatic to date. Dano could have just fallen into the trap of making an Alex a caricature or the clichéd mentally disabled character we have seen too many times, but he is much too good an actor to do that. We can never figure out if Alex is truly helpless or cleverly manipulative, and Dano keeps us guessing as to what the answer is for the majority of the movie.

“Prisoners” was directed by Denis Villeneuve, a Canadian writer and director who won the Genie Award (Canada’s equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Director three times for his films “Maelström,” “Polytechnique” and “Incendies,” the latter which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. In recent years, he has given us the brilliant “Sicario” and “Arrival,” and it makes sense he is at the helm of the eagerly anticipated “Blade Runner 2049.” Like I said, I have seen many movies involving child abduction, but he succeeds in making this one of the most intense and agonizing ever made. The fact he is able to main such a strong level of suspense and tension for over two hours is very impressive, and “Prisoners” would make for a great, albeit an emotionally exhausting, double feature with Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone.”

The screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski seems well thought out and has characters who don’t seem like anything the least bit stereotypical. Looking back, this could have been one of those scripts where the writer would come out saying, “Look how clever I am! I kept you guessing, didn’t I?” Guzikowski, however, is not out to make us feel like an idiot and instead gives us a fairly realistic scenario of just how harrowing a kidnapping situation can get.

The filmmakers have also employed the brilliant cinematographer Roger Deakins, who should have gotten the Oscar for “Skyfall,” and he makes the snowy climate these characters inhabit all the more vividly freezing. Even as the setting gets bleaker, Deakins still manages to find a haunting beauty in everything going on.

Child abduction movies can be very difficult to pull off because it is easy to fall into the realm of exploitation. It’s a credit to the filmmakers and actors that “Prisoners” never falls into this trap as it instead focuses on how frayed and unraveled emotions can get when parents have no idea where their children are. This is definitely not a film for new parents or those with small children to watch as I’m sure it will make them seriously uncomfortable. But for those who like their movie going experiences to be infinitely intense, “Prisoners” is definitely worth checking out. It was not at all what I expected it to be, and that’s a good thing.

* * * ½ out of * * * *

The 5th Wave

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

the-5th-wave-poster

“The 5th Wave” comes to us not long after the conclusion of “The Hungers Games,” and it is the latest in a seemingly endless line of young adult book to film adaptations. As a result, I came into this movie feeling worn out even before it started. While the novel it is based on, written by Rick Yancey, might be an interesting read, what unfolds onscreen feels like the same old thing. Only the names and places have been changed to protect the filmmakers from potential lawsuits.

Chloe Grace Moretz stars as Cassie Sullivan, a young teenager (is there any other kind?) who lives a normal life with her family, attends high school where she’s a cheerleader and constantly deals with unrequited love like any other child held prisoner by adolescence. But suddenly an alien ship, which looks like something out of “District 9,” appears in the sky, and the Earth goes through four waves which leave it decimated and on the verge of extinction. All Cassie has left is her brother whom she ends up getting separated from, and from there she is determined to save him from a fate many others have suffered.

This movie does not get off to a good start as the visual effects used to convey the various waves are shoddy CGI, and some scenes end up looking like outtakes from “Independence Day” or any other Roland Emmerich production. When the plot finally gains momentum, Cassie finds herself on the run and forced to defend herself in ways she never planned. She’s also looking for her brother whom she is very close to. Doesn’t this sound like something we just saw?

It’s a shame because the movie does have Moretz who makes this mess more bearable than it should be. Her breakthrough performance in “Kick-Ass” was no fluke and she continues to do strong work in each film she appears in, regardless of whether they are good or bad. She makes Cassie a strong heroine and one whom kids around the same age will easily relate to as she fends for herself in the dangerous world everyone has been thrust into, and Moretz makes you root for her throughout. But even she can’t save this routine young adult movie which has come out way too late.

Actually, what’s especially interesting about “The 5th Wave” is how the female characters are far more interesting than the male ones. It also helps they have such terrific actresses inhabiting those characters, and each of them clearly relishes the opportunity to bring them to life. Maria Bello, sporting a very funky hairdo, makes Sergeant Reznik a slyly manipulative soldier as she forces the children to see the alien threat her way to where getting them to fight for the human race is easy as cake. Maika Monroe, so good in “The Guest” and “It Follows,” makes her character of Ringer a wonderfully tough warrior, and she also skillfully unveils the other layers of Ringer to show us a person who is deeply broken. Along with Moretz, they keep “The 5th Wave” from becoming a complete bore.

The male actors, however, don’t have much to work with and their performances suffer as a result. Nick Robinson plays Ben Parish, the high school football hero who, when he is forced to enlist in the military, is nicknamed Zombie. Zombie proves to be an appropriate name as Robinson has little choice but to give a one-note performance as much of the emotion Ben has experienced in life has long since been drained from his psyche. Then there’s Alex Roe who plays Evan Walker, a man who may not be all that he appears to be. It seems like the screenwriters had some trouble in trying to figure out what to do with this character, and that leaves Roe with little choice but to make Evan far more enigmatic than the character has any right to be.

And let’s not leave out the great Liev Schreiber, wonderfully understated in “Spotlight,” as the movie’s main antagonist Colonel Vosch. It’s no surprise Schreiber can give us such a menacing villain, but there really isn’t much of a character for him to play here. Vosch is merely here as an obstacle for Cassie to overcome, and as a result the actor is wasted in a role which is too unworthy of his talents.

Then there is the love triangle between Moretz, Robinson, and Roe, and after having been subjected to a very similar one between Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth in “The Hunger Games,” I could have cared less about it. I imagine it will give audiences much to swoon over, but it’s a romance that is bland as the male characters in this movie.

“The 5th Wave” was directed by J Blakeson who previously gave us “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” a neo-noir thriller about the kidnapping of a woman by two ex-convicts. His direction on that film was much lauded by the press, and it makes me wonder just how much control he had over this project. Clearly, the studio is setting this up to be another franchise of movies for young adults to become obsessed over as a sequel to “The 5th Wave” has already been published and a third book is on the way. But it all depends of course on how this one does at the box office and considering how we are all still getting over the end of “The Hunger Games” movies, I’m not sure everybody is in a rush for yet another franchise like it.

Perhaps the target audience for “The 5th Wave” will enjoy it the most, but even they have to be outgrowing these kinds of movies at this point. Sooner or later we have to realize kids grow up and become adults, and even adults can save the world and their little brothers too.

* ½ out of * * * *