New-ish Releases: Good Time (2017); The Great Wall (2016)

Good Time (2017)

Directors: Benny and Josh Safdie

A frenetic, wild ride that captures a crazy day in the life of a native, desperate New Yorker whose bad decisions collide with insane situations at a dizzying rate.

In an extremely tense 100 minutes, we follow Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) after a bungled bank robbery he pulls with his mentally challenged brother, Nick (co-writer and co-director Benny Safdie). Though Connie manages to elude the police, the ever-confused Benny is captured and sent to jail. Connie, a consummate fast-talker and short-term thinker, tries to call in every favor and use any idea he can to get his challenged brother out of jail. As one plan of action after another either goes completely wrong or creates new problems, Connie grows more and more desperate, finding himself zipping all over Queens, his sole purpose to free the helpless Benny.

Good Time is, while bearing similarities to a few other films, one of the most unique heist movies I've ever seen. Sure, there have been bank robbery movies where things go comically wrong at every turn, a la Quick Change and others, and there have been dozens and dozens of New York crime stories.
There have also been plenty of films focusing on would-be criminals too dumb or myopic to get out of their own way, with Martin Scorsese's classics arguably being the best among them. But Good Time somehow conveys the sweaty, off-the-rails insanity of such situations as authentically as I've ever seen. It's not that anything in the story is implausible. Quite the contrary. Almost all of us have met a few people who were like Connie: clearly intelligent to a degree, but whose mental faculties are all steered towards the wrong objectives. In Connie's case, it's nabbing short-term gains at the expense of virtually anything else. In real life, it can be depressingly tragic; in a film, though, it can actually be engaging and even entertaining at times. Such is the case in Good Time.

The acting is amazing in this movie. Like most, I only really knew Robert Pattinson from trailers for the laughable Twilight series of films, a young-adult-oriented fantasy/horror series in which Pattinson played the main role of a dreamy vampire. After seeing him play Connie in Good Time, though, it is very clear that this guy can act. He basically carries the entire movie with his feverish energy and ability to downshift into a scuzzier version of a silver-tongued devil when the situation demands it. The several supporting cast members are all perfect, as well, only adding to the highly palpable atmosphere of the film.

I've now heard that the co-writers and co-directors, the Safdie brothers, have established a solid reputation in their relatively short resume. I'll be keeping an eye out to see what they do next, as Good Time lived up to its quiet but solid critical acclaim.

The Great Wall (2016)

Director: Yimou Zhang

A decent enough, fun action/adventure movie that got a bit of a bad wrap upon its release a year ago.

The movie mostly follows a pair of mercenaries from Western Europe - William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) - who were part of a band out to find the rumored Chinese "black powder" (gunpowder in modern parlance) and buy, beg, or steal it back to their bidders back in the West. William and Tovar's band is harried by local bandits, and then attacked by some strange creature at night, leaving only the two of them alive. They are then soon taken as prisoners by the Chinese army at their astonishingly impressive Great Wall. There, William and Tovar learn that the Wall and the impressively skilled and disciplined army stationed there are the major line of defense against a horde of monsters. These monsters - Tao Tie, in Chinese - have a sort of hive-mind intelligence governed by a queen. They are eerily cunning, and they attack in calculated waves against the Wall's forces of male and female warriors, who are divided into specialized units to maximize their differing abilities. As William watches the Chinese fight for the lives of their civilization, he must decide whether he is more interested in the profit he can make from smuggling out the highly-coveted black powder or in putting his preternatural skills as an archer to use in assisting the Chinese against the monstrous Tao Tie.

For what it is, this movie was pretty fun. I honestly put it on with the plan of giving it 15 or 20 minutes to catch my interest. It did, and it held it all the way through to the end. It is not especially creative in terms of overall narrative or character depth, to be sure, but it is a fairly entertaining, visually lush and dazzling fantasy action-adventure tale, as you might expect from Yimou Zhang. While the fight choreography isn't on par with the best martial arts flicks, the set pieces, costumes, and general action scene set-ups are enjoyably creative and sights to behold. Not the best I've ever seen, but engaging if you're in the mood for such things. There was also some novelty in how the Chinese defense force is organized into its various fighting units, using different, brightly colored uniforms to differentiate each unit.

The acting? Meh. Surprisingly, Matt Damon does fine, even with the faux Irish/English/Unplaceable accent that he's putting on. He didn't bother me one bit, and I thought he was solid. His fellow Westerner Pedro Pascal also does well. Willem Dafoe, whom I absolutely love, feels rather out of place as the shifty hangabout Ballard. Female lead Tian Jing seems fine, especially when she is able to work in her native language of Chinese. When delivering her English lines, though, she seems uncomfortable, as if she's reciting phonetically-memorized scripts rather than using natural fluency (I feel confident assessing this, given that I am actually a professional English as a Second Language instructor who has worked with literally hundreds of Chinese-speakers of every possible level). That said, my hat is off for doing as well as she does, as acting in a language not ones native tongue must be exceedingly challenging.

William, alongside several of the higher-ranking members of
the Wall's impressive defense force. Rather than a "white
savior," Damon's character is much more of an accidental
hero who assists rather than outright saves the local warriors.

Some of you may remember that when The Great Wall was released in late 2016/early 2017, it got blasted pretty hard and was considered a "bust" at the box office. Firstly, it should be noted that it was really only a "bomb" in the United States, where is pulled in just over $45 million. That is a rather low total for such a large-scale, big-budget spectacle film, but it should be noted that the cinema universe does not revolve solely around the U.S. anymore. The movie actually made over $330 million worldwide, which was more than double its budget. In that respect, it did well enough, if not exactly Marvel Cinematic Universe or James Cameron type levels of profit.

So why did it do so "poorly" in the U.S.? The main reason may be the one that you recall the movie for - the "whitewashing" accusations. This is something that Hollywood has certainly been guilty of, without question - casting a white actor in a "savior" role, especially when the character he is playing is meant to be a person of color. This was no doubt the case in recent movies like The Prince of Persia, Gods of Egypt, and others. However, I think this accusation was applied incorrectly to The Great Wall. If one watches the movie, it's clear that Matt Damon's character is meant as the "outsider" - which is a tried and true method for storytelling. His being a white man makes perfect sense in the story, and is hardly a case of white washing. One could perhaps argue that he is placed in a "savior" role for the sake of Western audiences, but I would also point out that he only "saves the day" right alongside his female Chinese general Lin Mae (played by Tian Jing). So I have to feel that the harsh criticism levied upon the movie was mostly unfounded.

I am comfortable in recommending this movie to those who want a fairly light, fun, and yes, culturally inclusive movie that has a bunch of kick-ass warriors fighting off hordes of reptilian monsters. Simply the stuff of fun, fantasy, popcorn flicks. No more, no less.