Not bad. Not good. Too long. At least occasionally witty and reasonably well-edited and shot. But too often assumes that lots and lots of shooting equals rip-roaring fun. (There’s one fine fight sequence between the two ridiculously-sculpted stars that’s kind of fun–at least compared to Cinderella Man, but then the film ends with a bloated half-hour gun battle, and if you’re not John Woo and Chow-Yun Fat and Tony Leung, don’t bother.)
Can say this: made me want to see Fight Club and Made again. Jolie’s never been in a good movie, has she? She’s got pluck, though–hang in there, kid! The pictures are a tough business!
“reasonably well-edited and shot” that’s a ringing endorsement, Mike! Joel Seigel says, “Not exactly shit, but you wouldn’t put it in your mouth either.” If Joel Siegel were capable of profane witticisms. having just watched the smug and interminable star ego showcase Ocean’s 12 (did Soderbergh die or is it just a temporary setback?), I don’t think I can take another film dependent for its success on the perceived slavish devotion to its stars. unless of course it ends suprisingly with Pitt and Jolie brutally murdering each other.
p.s. I checked Jolie’s filmography on IMDB. one good film (of course I haven’t seen many of the others including her oscar winner Girl Interrupted): Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, though the actors there are superfluous.
p.p.s. regarding Ocean’s 12, at least it captured the essence of the original Ocean’s 11–a bloated vanity project allowing its stars to hang out in glamorous places and do as little onscreen as possible. notable also for Julia Roberts looking remarkably haggard, must have been a rough birth. notable also for a weird new style of cinematography in which everything looks like it was dipped in shiny caramel at 4:30 in the afternoon.
I wish it ended with Pitt and Jolie brutally murdering each other. But a version of that far, far better black comedy has been made — Prizzi’s Honor.
I’ll re-admit, though, that I loved Ocean’s 12. Might have been the music (David Holmes, motherfucker!), might have been the sheer empty-calorie pleasures of the editing, the look. Who knows? I agree–Roberts looked like shit, and when Bruce Willis walks on, he’s the one person in the movie who plays it like it’s a joke… the humorless sot.
Compare it to the Smiths: there is barely a whiff of anarchy in the whole two hours of its mayhem, while I felt throughout 12 that the movie might zip off into some other strange digression, just for the kick of an allusive montage, or to set a scene for some cool found ‘seventies euro-pop single. I went in expecting dullness, and got dizzy instead. Again, though, I listen to the soundtrack on regular rotation still, so I may just have liked it as one long music video.
I’m all for low-minded high-concept tripe, if there is even a modicum of wit and/or irony and/or fun involved.
Nobody will see my new posting way down here! waaaaa! but anyway..I just saw Mr and Mrs. Smith this past weekend–and despite my resistance, I find myself thinking back on it with pleasure. It managed to be fairly light on its feet and I think it did a decent job of balancing the romance and action–neither was particularly compelling in itself but somehow the combination worked. I hated the smug final scene in the psychologist’s office which felt improvised and pointless. One reason for liking the film perhaps is the way it offhandedly relegates its stars to the status of fetish consumer objects, just like the house, cars and items in the Home supply store. I wish the ending had not tried to have it both ways–setting us up for a kind of Bonnie and Clyde self-immolation then suddenly whisking our glamour couple away and indicating that All is Well.
one potentially disturbing thought, perhaps merely a manifestation of nostalgia for earlier films–but Bonnie and Clyde is so compelling and its finale so shocking because we have been entirely caught up in the lives of what are essentially two rather dim sociopaths. The beauty of the hollywood actors is part of this complex process; when they are shot down brutally, the ending is both a kind of self-critique of the film itself (and of a Hollywood tradition?) and a pointed demand of the spectator to evaluate how far his/her sympathy has gone at this point. That’s why the “excess” of the last scene is so effective.
I don’t know what to think of the conclusion of Mr and Mrs. Smith, which like I said wants to have it both ways. And then the final scene seems to indicate that we should take such great pleasure in the survival of what are essentially two amoral psychopaths because….well, because I think, because they are beautiful and wealthy. And not merely beautiful and wealthy characters but beautiful and wealthy Celebrities. The fact that they are beautiful fetish objects suddenly seems to be turned against the audience–but they’re better than you, baby!! weird not-entirely handsome actors like Tim Robbins are entirely expendable–but the glamour boys and girls are as untouchable again, as if the studios had never gone away?
Yeah–if Pitt and Jolie’s survival had stemmed more directly from the fact that they were “essentially two amoral psychopaths” I’d have been much happier; there was a potential to exploit the chilliness of their beauty (and the matte-finish photo spread of their home and car and belongings), undermining the empty appreciation we have for such things. It could have been a brilliant joke: the ultimate consumers.
But the film’s lightness–which I, too, admired–helps to take the edge off, and the ending (both the exasperating gunfight and the close-cute coda in the office) entirely blunts the potential for something more stinging or provocative. I think you nail it: they survive because they’re beautiful, and even if we want to see beautiful things blown up, or punch one another, we want to see them again, and again–their real destruction would be devastating.
in my alternative ending perhaps Jolie and Pitt might have suffered horrible but complementary mutilations–he loses the use of the right side of his face, she loses a left eye..but anything but telling us they now have sex 8 times a week! Pitt shows some willigness to play with and undercut his image–as in Fight Club–but not so far Jolie; what we need is Jolie and Ashley Judd in a remake of Brian de Palma’s Sisters. I’ll direct and waive my usual fee.
Even Scorsese pulled his punches in the task of disfiguring the beautiful celebrity: do you recall DeCaprio in Gangs of New York. Bill the Butcher was supposed to mutilate the little punk–but he comes out of it with nothing more than a scratch on the side of his face. Was that in Leonardo’s contract?
the two mikes are insane. i watched this film on my flight back from delhi and it was utter crap.
Mikes, care to respond?
I wasn’t exactly effusive in my response. But “utter” crap… well, I expected utter, but got not-quite-completely.