Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, while not my favorite actors, can usually be relied on to deliver fine performances in smart, gripping films. Even if I end up not liking a particular movie that these guys are in, I usually don’t feel as though I’ve wasted my time. That’s why I decided to see the thriller Body of Lies, despite the lukewarm ratings and low box office returns the film has received in its first three weeks in wide release. Unfortunately, I should have just passed on this one — or at least waited for it to arrive on DVD.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): DiCaprio stars as Roger Ferris, a CIA operative who’s currently in Jordan trying to make contacts that will help him track down a high-ranking terrorist named Al-Saleem (played by Alon Abutbul). Overseeing Ferris and the operation is CIA handler Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), who watches all the action from Langley via Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and phones in advice to Ferris whenever possible.

One of the most important contacts Ferris has established a relationship with is Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), a very powerful and influential man who is the head of the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. Hani feels confident that he can deliver Al-Saleem, especially if Ferris shares all information with him and doesn’t lie about what the CIA is doing. Ferris agrees to these terms, and the men strike up a partnership.

The two men begin watching a known terrorist cell with suspected ties to Al-Saleem. The cell has been successful because they’ve gone low tech, dispensing with emails and computers in favor of giving orders face to face. This makes them very hard to track, so it’s critical to deal with them very carefully in order not to spook them and send them underground. But Hoffman doesn’t play by these rules, and sure enough, the terrorists soon learn that they’re being watched and scatter quickly thereafter.

Hani blames Ferris for the fiasco, so Ferris returns to the U.S. to discuss matters with Hoffman. They decide on a risky plan to flush Al-Saleem out of hiding — a plan that doesn’t include Hani. Things become complicated, however, when Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani), a nurse that Ferris has taken a liking to, is kidnapped and held hostage by unknown gunmen who want to exchange her for Ferris.

The rest of the film then shows how Ferris carries out the exchange, reveals who kidnapped Aisha, and provides a bit of a twist at the end as we see who was really pulling the strings all along.

My Reaction: For some reason, Body of Lies failed to draw me into the characters or the plot at all. The storyline was fairly basic and easy to follow, but since there was very little character development, I didn’t care who did what to whom, nor did I give a damn who “won” in the end. None of them were particularly likable, none of them seemed to be out for the “greater good”, and none of them earned my respect or sympathies. It’s hard to enjoy a film when you don’t care about the characters or the world they inhabit.

Another thing Body of Lies failed to do was give a unique perspective about the CIA’s role in the Middle East. Hey, look: it’s yet another Hollywood film that denounces everything the American government does in that region! What a surprise… not.

I actually don’t have a whole heck of a lot to say about Body of Lies. It was boring, and not something that I would recommend wasting money on at the theater. I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Since I watch a lot of movies, I’m usually familiar with most Hollywood titles even if I haven’t seen them yet. That’s why I was surprised to come across the 2007 film Cleaner at the video store last weekend. I’d never heard of it at all, which was strange considering the fact that it stars well-known actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, and Eva Mendes. How could I have missed this?

A quick check of IMDb.com told me that Cleaner went straight-to-DVD in the U.S., and only had limited releases in a handful of countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Russia. That history obviously didn’t give me much confidence about the quality of the film, but since I already paid for the rental I figured I might as well watch it. And now, I completely understand its box office fate.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Tom Cutler (played by Jackson) is a retired cop who now makes a living running a cleaning company. This isn’t the kind that sends maids to clean and dust upscale suburban homes, however. It’s a company that specializes in removing biological waste, specifically, the blood, tissue, and other debris left behind at crime scenes or in homes when people die natural deaths. It’s grisly work for sure, but Tom doesn’t mind it.

One day, he gets a call to go out to the Norcut home to clean up a murder scene. The order came in through regular police channels, and Tom treats the job very carefully, taking a lot of photos and documenting his actions. He gets everything done and clears out of there before the grieving widow returns.

The next day, Tom goes back to the house to get Mrs. Norcut’s (Eva Mendes) signature on some forms. The only problem is, Mrs. Norcut has no idea what Tom is talking about. She didn’t order the cleaning service, and no one died in her house. Yes, it’s true that her husband is missing, but he’s holding out hope that he will eventually surface.

Tom makes some phone calls and finds out that Mrs. Norcut’s husband was set to testify in a major corruption case against the police department. He had evidence documenting payoffs and other illegal activity, and could bring down nearly everyone in the department, including the chief. Tom then puts two and two together to realize that Norcut was murdered to eliminate his testimony, and the crime was cleverly covered up by having Tom clean the scene.

Mrs. Norcut begs Tom to help her find out what really happened to her husband, so the rest of the film deals with their unofficial investigation into the murder. There is one “twist” along the way, but since the audience can see it coming almost from the beginning, it wasn’t a real surprise at all.

My Reaction: I thought Cleaner had a very interesting premise and started out extremely well. I liked the idea that a killer would use this type of cleaning service to get rid of all evidence of his crime, because for as many police procedural shows that I watch, I’ve never seen that setup before. That type of originality is hard to come by these days.

Unfortunately, the film soon slipped into the predictable pattern that most of these police whodunnits follow. The blustery cop who comes off as a real jackass doesn’t have anything to hide and is actually just doing his job. The good friend can’t be trusted. And everybody’s playing an angle.

As I mentioned above, the twist involving the Harris character wasn’t all that surprising. The only hard part was figuring out his connection to Mrs. Norcut — which was conveniently shown to viewers via a volunteer plaque. Nice storytelling there…. not!

Watching the mystery slowly unravel was very dull, as nothing much happens in Act II. Plus, there were a lot of unnecessary scenes involving Tom’s daughter and home life, which added nothing to the main plot, very little to characterization, and served only to add minutes to an already anemic film.

Overall, it’s not surprising that Cleaner went straight to DVD here. The big names do what they can with the material, but in the end it simply wasn’t enough to make this film worth watching. Chalk this one up as another bomb from director Renny Harlin. I give it 1 star out of 5.

Caper films are generally enjoyable for me, as, like George Peppard’s character from The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together. It’s cool seeing criminal masterminds devise a clever plan to break into the a seemingly impenetrable bank or museum and then walk away with millions of dollars worth of swag. If the caper is based on a true story, so much the better — which is why I was looking forward to seeing The Bank Job on DVD.

The Bank Job is a British film about the real-life 1971 heist of a Baker Street bank in London, where a group of petty criminals managed to abscond with an untold amount of cash and valuables. It was long rumored that the crime, which was issued a D-notice (gag order) by the British government, was actually perpetrated by the intelligence agency MI5 to protect a member of the Royal Family, a position which director Roger Donaldson fully backs in his film.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Terry Leather (played by Jason Statham) is a reformed petty crook who’s trying to earn an honest living running a used car garage. Unfortunately, he’s having lots of trouble making ends meet, and is plagued by roughneck debt collectors who think nothing of coming in and smashing up a few cars as reminders of sums owed. So when Terry’s ex-squeeze Martine (Saffron Burrows) shows up one day with the inside scoop on a sure-thing big job that will put an end to Terry’s money troubles, he’s all ears.

Martine wants to hit a bank on Baker Street in London over a holiday weekend when she knows their security system will be temporarily disabled. She’s got the plan outlined already: they’ll rent a storefront two doors down from the target and tunnel underground directly into the vault, whereupon they’ll have access to cash and safety deposit boxes. All Martine needs is some muscle to help carry out the plan, and that’s where Terry comes in.

Although a bit skeptical after seeing Martine speaking to some mysterious man, Terry agrees. He rounds up a few buddies, tells his wife that he’ll be out on business for a couple of days, and then proceeds with the plan. Martine continues to act erratically, but Terry pushes on… only to discover too late that he’s caught right in the middle of an elaborate MI5 scheme to recover compromising, sexually explicit photographs of Princess Margaret with two men.

The rest of the film then deals with Terry’s attempts to extricate himself and his crew from the middle of the MI5 cover-up without landing in prison (and with a bit of loot for their trouble) — which, according to Donaldson’s version of the story, is precisely what happens.

My Reaction: I have to admit that I was surprised to read so many negative reviews about The Bank Job from professional critics and fans alike. A number of the reviews talked about how boring the film was or how implausible the whole plot seemed to be, but I didn’t feel the same way at all. Yes, there were some slow scenes that probably could have been cut, and yes, there were a few fortuitous occurrences that allowed the robbers to get away with the crime.

But remember, this film was based on a true story, and whatever poetic license the writers may have taken with the details, I believe the basic plot was probably pretty accurate, and therefore I actually liked The Bank Job more than I thought I would.

I usually lose interest in films that don’t have any recognizable (to me) faces, and though The Bank Job fits this description, I found myself engrossed from pretty early on. I know Jason Statham is a pretty big star in the UK, and has been in “mainstream” films like Snatch, The One, Cellular, and The Italian Job, but I didn’t know who he was until I looked up the info on IMDb. Even so, I thought he was very good in his role as Terry Leather, and did sufficiently well carrying the entire film as leading man.

Although the gang’s “brute force” approach to entering the vault via an underground tunnel wasn’t as elaborate or entertaining as the Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, or Thirteen ruses, there were enough plot developments scattered along the way to keep things interesting.

Overall, I thought The Bank Job was a solid film that is well worth watching. I leave its authenticity and accuracy to be debated among people who are more familiar with the original case, but as a casual viewer, I was treated to an enjoyable couple of hours. I give the film 4 stars out of 5.

While the Internet is unquestionably the most important communications medium ever invented, no one can deny that it has a decidedly dark underbelly. There’s no telling what kinds of websites the average person will come across while just innocently surfing around, and no telling what kinds of sites exist to address popular demand.

If the 2008 film Untraceable is to be believed, a website set up to stream slow, torturous murders would receive tens of thousands of hits and be a tremendous success, even if the visitors know that they are helping kill the victim faster simply by being on the site. At first, I thought this sounded a little extreme, but then I remembered how many people watched the Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and Saddam Hussein execution videos and concluded that the plot of Untraceable is entirely plausible.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Jennifer Marsh (played by Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) are FBI agents who work the night shift monitoring the Internet for criminal activity. They mostly try to track down pedophiles and scam artists, but occasionally bigger cases come across their desk — which is precisely what happens when Marsh stumbles across a site called KillWithMe.com.

The site shows a kitten being killed, and at first Marsh and Dowd think the setup might be a hoax. But after the kitten’s owner says the animal was stolen right out of his yard in broad daylight, the FBI agents start to look at the site a bit more closely. Unfortunately, they can’t get a read on who’s running the site since the whole thing is organized in a way that makes the guy’s identity and location untraceable.

From the kitten, the unknown subject (unsub) moves on to killing people. The first victim is a helicopter pilot who was injected with an anticoagulant that essentially allowed him to bleed to death. Two more victims follow, with each person’s death hastened by the number of visitors who come to the website to watch the proceedings.

The rest of the film then deals with the FBI’s attempts to track down the killer by finding an obscure connection between the victims. Of course, a couple of the agents find themselves in imminent danger before all is said and done, but they eventually get their guy in the end.

My Reaction: I thought Untraceable was a decent, but not great, thriller. As I said above, the plot was believable, and the action moved along at a nice, quick pace that left me little time to get bored with what was going on. However, the film had several flaws that prevented it from being a wholly satisfactory viewing experience.

The most glaring of these was the ending, which I felt was extremely anticlimactic. After all that Marsh has gone through in order to capture the killer, we end with her shooting the guy and the picture fading to black? That was it? I was expecting at least one wrap-up scene after that, but obviously didn’t get it. I guess you could argue that there was nothing left to show since the killer was dead, but still… the ending was far too abrupt for my tastes.

The killer’s motive was interesting and original. His father’s suicide was shown live, so he thought he’d get his revenge by doing the same thing to those who were involved in his father’s death. I liked that angle, but couldn’t help wondering if the guy would simply stop killing once he got to everyone who had a part in that death. As such, the whole situation would feel a lot less urgent — which I suppose is why he switched to FBI agents midway through his agenda.

Overall, Untraceable does a passable job of giving viewers an engaging story for an hour and a half. There are some problems along the way, but on the whole, the film is worth watching. I give it 3 stars out of 5.

If you needed $300,000 to pay for Harvard medical school, what would you do? If you’re like most people in that situation, you’d likely apply for student aid loans, grants, and scholarships to help foot the bill. If you’re an MIT whiz kid with a penchant for numbers, then you’d learn to count cards and go take Vegas for a ride.

At least that’s what happens in the 2008 film 21, where none of the characters have apparently ever heard of financial aid, work-study programs, self-control, or anything less than the most prestigious scholarship Harvard has to offer. All I can say, is it’s a good thing real life doesn’t imitate the goings-on in this movie, otherwise we’d have a shortage of doctors in the country, what with everyone thinking they need their full tuition amount up front and all.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Ben Campbell (played by Jim Sturgess) is a senior at MIT who wants nothing more than to go to Harvard medical school. He’s got the grades (straight A’s), the MCAT score (44), and all the right teacher recommendations. What he doesn’t have is the $300,000 for tuition. So he’s applying for a prestigious full-ride scholarship, one that will go to a single student out of 76 applicants. Being a math whiz, Ben immediately knows how slim his odds of winning are.

After dazzling professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) with some quick percentage calculations in class, Ben is approached to join a secret club of card counters. Led by Rosa, the club consists of four other MIT students who are just as brilliant with numbers as Ben is. They practice counting during the week, and then head to Vegas to clean out the casinos (or, as this movie seems to imply, casino — singular).

Ben is apprehensive about joining in, despite the fact that everyone makes it a point to explain to him that counting cards is not illegal. But since Ben’s beautiful blond crush Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) is involved, it’s only a matter of time before Ben caves in and says, “Yes.”

From that point forward, the film goes into autopilot, following a course everyone in the audience more or less expects. Ben proves to be very adept at counting cards. He wins big on his first few trips to Vegas, allowing him to live the high life. He then starts making mistakes and loses big. He has a falling out with Rosa. And then there’s a twist at the end to wrap everything up nice and tidy — just as Hollywood likes it.

My Reaction: As an avid blackjack player myself, I really wanted to like 21. But there were so many things in this film that simply didn’t make sense that it was hard for me to overlook the flaws and enjoy the ride.

One of the biggest problems with this film is that the basic setup regarding the money for Harvard medical wasn’t believable. Why wouldn’t Ben apply for financial aid like 99% of the other students out there? Why did he need all of the tuition money up front? How was he able to afford MIT in the first place? Instead of opening with montages and a voiceover, perhaps it would have been better for the filmmakers to explore some of these questions by giving the audience more background info on Ben first.

Another problem I had with the film was the way the team’s first practice session was portrayed. All of the members were sitting around in the MIT basement or whatever, and were practicing their counting. How is it that they were messing up the count??? These players had been involved in Micky’s group for a long time, so they knew what they were doing. If they couldn’t track the cards in a quiet room with no distractions, how would they be able to do it in a casino? It was obviously just a script gimmick to allow Ben to make his grand entrance, but it was so awkward and bumbling that it totally bugged me.

I also had a hard time figuring out why the team gambled at the same casino every time they went to Vegas. I read some message forums for this movie, where many other people had the same question. One possible answer was that Micky’s team was playing in the only casino left that didn’t use the biometric facial recognition software that the Laurence Fishburne character kept talking about. But if I recall correctly, the gamblers didn’t know about that software at all — not until Ben was hauled down to the basement for his beating. With all the casinos in Vegas, it just seems like they could have been more careful about changing their venue.

And why wouldn’t they mix things up by going to Atlantic City as well? Not as big as Vegas, of course, but there’s still blackjack action over there, right?

Don’t get me started about why Ben would hide the money in his dorm room and not in a safety deposit box, his mother’s home, or even in an offshore account. $300k is nothing to sneeze at, so this was another thing that didn’t make sense about the movie and that was clearly in place just so the story would work out for the screenwriter.

I didn’t even feel that the gambling sequences were done right in this film. The way the montages were put together, the viewer gets the impression that when the count is high, the player will just win, win, win. That’s not true at all. It’s still a total roller coaster ride as far as winning some hands and losing some hands in the shoe — because the count is high for the dealer too! The dealer will get just as many 19s, 20s, and blackjacks as the players, so to make it look like high count = automatic wins was just bullshit.

Overall, 21 suffered from all of the problems I listed above and plenty more that I don’t have the energy to get into. I was hoping this film could become Rounders for the blackjack crowd, but it just doesn’t have the substance. I give it 2 stars out of 5.