At the Movies
"21" - The MIT brainiacs of this gambling romp are smart
enough to count cards and make a fortune at the blackjack table yet
so dumb they fall into greedy, grubby plot holes a C-minus
Statistics 101 student would have seen coming a mile to the Nth
power away. The movie's a morality play preaching sophomoric ethics
- avarice bad, clean living and hard work good. Yet the only
interesting thing it holds up to the light is the gluttony the
movie eventually decries - money, booze, fast living, the sheer
intemperance of making a killing, Vegas-style. Based on the real
story of MIT students who card-counted their way to a fortune in
Vegas, the movie stars Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth as math
whizzes recruited by a professor (Kevin Spacey) to join his team of
blackjack weekend warriors. Laurence Fishburne co-stars as a Vegas
enforcer whose job is to run card counters out of town. MIT
students turning the tables on big casinos is a fresh concept, yet
the story plays out predictably like something we've seen in the
cards a hundred times before. PG-13 for some violence, and sexual
content including partial nudity. 118 min. Two stars out of four.
"Chapter 27" - Jared Leto put on some 60 pounds to play John
Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman, a feat that some have likened
to Robert De Niro's transformative weight gain for "Raging Bull."
Well, there's nothing raging about this feature debut from
writer-director Jarrett Schaefer, a lethargic, ponderous slog that
feels much longer than its brief running time. Schaefer relies too
heavily on voiceover to convey Chapman's inner state, but he
provides little insight. We know Chapman was obsessed with J.D.
Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," and even went so far as to
believe he was the book's protagonist, Holden Caulfield. But over
the three days in December 1980 when Chapman stands outside the
Dakota apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, waiting
for Lennon to emerge so he can shoot him, he thinks clunky, literal
thoughts about the fact that - you guessed it! - he believes he's
Holden Caulfield and wants to kill John Lennon. Thanks for Leto
does resemble Chapman with his black hair, double chin and
oversized glasses. But mimicry alone isn't exactly acting, and the
raspy whisper-scream he uses for his interior monologues is
annoyingly gimmicky. Lindsay Lohan appears in a few scenes as a
Lennon fan named - wait for it - Jude, who also stands outside the
Dakota all day and inexplicably can't figure out that Chapman is
one odd dude. R for language and some sexual content. 83 min. One
star out of four.
"Run, Fat Boy, Run": The most immediate and glaring problem
with "Run, Fat Boy, Run" is that it's lacking a "fat boy." It
might be very American to think so, but Simon Pegg, the British
comedian of "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead," is not portly
by any means, but merely - as he asserts himself in the film -
"unfit." A sense of mismatched talent pervades the comedy,
directed by David Schwimmer ("Friends") and co-written by Michael
Ian Black ("Wet Hot American Summer"). The film contains neither
the madcap absurdity of Black, the easy farce of Pegg nor
Schwimmer's knack for tender humor. Pegg is Dennis, a slovenly
security guard who five years ago made the unfathomable decision to
walk out on Libby, his pregnant girlfriend (Thandie Newton). Fast
forward five years later and lo and behold, Dennis is regretting
his decision. What follows is the shopworn story of a schlub trying
to fix his life by proving himself in a single, meaningless event -
in this case, a marathon. One feels any initial originality in
Black's draft - transplanted from New York to London - was snuffed
out in adapting it to Pegg's style. The only one who successfully
carves out his own voice is Dylan Moran, who plays Dennis' best
friend with a vacant deadpan that Bill Murray would approve of.
PG-13 for some rude and sexual humor, nudity, language and smoking.
97 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
"Stop-Loss" - For her first film since 1999's "Boys Don't
Cry," the raw drama that earned Hilary Swank her first
best-actress Oscar, Kimberly Peirce initially wanted to make a
documentary about soldiers who'd fought in the Iraq war. Inspired
by her younger brother, who enlisted in the Army after Sept. 11,
2001, she wanted to let them tell their stories of discontentment,
of questioning the war, of going AWOL. Then she learned that one of
her brother's friends had been stop-lossed - sent back for another
tour of duty even though he'd fulfilled his contract - and decided
to make a feature instead. Certainly there has been no shortage of
nonfiction films about the war, but considering the frustrating
unevenness of "Stop-Loss," Peirce's intentions at least make one
curious about what her documentary might have been like. As
director and co-writer, she tells the story of Sgt. Brandon King
(Ryan Phillippe), who returns to his small Texas town with a Purple
Heart, a Bronze Star, a welcome-home parade - and orders to return
to Iraq, even though he thought he was done and was looking forward
to civilian life. Instead, he flips out and goes AWOL, taking a
road trip with the girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) of his childhood best
friend and fellow soldier (Channing Tatum). Peirce shows some
sensitivity to the trauma these men endure as they struggle to
resume their former lives. But she also vacillates between
earnestness and superficiality, making "Stop-Loss" feel like eye
candy with a message. R for graphic violence and pervasive
language. 112 min. Two stars out of four.