Street Smart/The Gate

After receiving lukewarm reviews during its opening back East a few weeks ago, Street Smart is getting an equally lukewarm national release by Cannon Films. Actually, it’s a good deal more interesting than your average movie fare, although it’s not too difficult to understand why Cannon is shying away from the film.

For one thing, the hero (Christopher Reeve) is a weasely reporter who invents an important story, lies to a courtroom, and cheats on his devoted girlfriend. Not the most attractive figure, yet the film makes something interesting out of this guy.

His story chronicles a day in the life of a New York pimp. It makes the cover of an important magazine, wins great applause, and earns Reeve a television contract with a local station. The twist is that everyone assumes the story is based on a certain notorious pimp (Morgan Freeman) who is currently up on murder charges. Soon the lawyers are ordering Reeve to hand over his non-existent notes and other evidence that might be relevant to the case, while the violent Freeman hatches a plot that draws Reeve even deeper into an ethical swamp.

Street Smart takes some chances by exploring the tarnished hero’s fall. Reeve haunts the low-life streets long after his story is published, and gets romantically involved with a prostitute (very well played by Kathy Baker), to the consternation of his girlfriend (Mimi Rogers).

Most of this stays on the intriguing level, because director Jerry Schatzberg (Scarecrow) doesn’t take the Reeve character to the limit. Reeve is good at portraying the necessary moral shiftiness, but he can’t quite embody or explain the real darkness that must be somewhere in this character.

Schatzberg gets an edginess to many of the street scenes, and every scene that Baker is in has a heartfelt authenticity. This movie is almost a sleeper; file it away for future video rental.

There’s not much need to file the weekend’s other opening, The Gate. It’s a clean-cut horror movie, about a horrible hole that opens up in a suburban backyard while mom and dad are away for a couple of days. The kids do battle with the demons that come up out of this thing.

It’s mostly an excuse for a lot of pretty good special effects. The demons consist of a great many whitish gnomes and homunculi, plus one big poobah demon who could, but for some reason doesn’t, kill the diminutive hero (Stephen Dorff).

There’s some attempt by director Tibor Takacs to suggest the complacency of America’s backyards, and the shady secrets they might conceal. But that angle was much better essayed in the recent The Stepfather, and The Gate can’t match the chilliness of that film.

First published in The Herald, May 1987

Street Smart launched Morgan Freeman into a new realm, that’s for sure. The Gate was Dorff’s first feature film; its director has had an interesting career, and writer Michael Nankin has gone on to a profitable run, mostly in TV.

Clean and Sober

Long, uneven, and perhaps oversimplified, Clean and Sober is nevertheless a strong and affecting movie, the kind that gives you the sense that, when the end credits roll, you’ve been through some kind of real journey.

The journey here is the sobering-up of a high-voltage real-estate broker, played by Michael Keaton. He begins the movie in deep trouble: He’s embezzled money from his company (and lost most of it in the stock market), his date is lying immobile from a cocaine-induced heart attack in his bed, and he’s addicted to coke and alcohol. But when he checks himself into a detox program, it isn’t to conquer, or even admit, his addiction; it’s to hide from the police while he thinks of a solution.

The film details his progress through the program and his eventual re-entry into the real world. He comes perilously close to blowing everything a couple of times, but hangs on with the help of an unsentimental counselor (Morgan Freeman), a milkshake-swigging Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor (M. Emmett Walsh), and especially a fellow addict (beautifully played by Kathy Baker).

In the final section of the film, he attempts to get Baker, a blue-collar worker with a blue vocabulary, out of her self-destructive relationship with a lout. This is the part of Tod Carroll’s screenplay that seems to bog down a bit and become excessively talky, but Baker (recently seen in the unintentional silliness of A Killing Affair) is so strong she carries the day.

Clean and Sober is reminiscent of such classic “getting straight” movies as The Lost Weekend and The Days of Wine and Roses, but with drugs added to the alcoholic mix. As in those films, the leading man has not been known for his dramatic acting (Ray Milland was a suave light leading man before he won the Oscar for Lost Weekend, and Jack Lemmon had a lightweight pedigree in film until Days).

Keaton’s performance is both superficial and authentic. He doesn’t bring anything new to the role, but the same manic energy he has in all his performances suggests the suicidal overdrive of this character. There’s a brilliant scene in which, desperate for cash, he calls his parents and asks them if he might have the money they were planning to leave him in their will.

First published in The Herald, August 1988

Another review cut off! Maybe in my final paragraph I predicted a Keaton run at – you know – Oscar gold, who knows. It seems more likely I would at least mention the film’s director, Glenn Gordon Caron, his first big-screen directing credit after creating the TV series Moonlighting, a show I liked a lot in its heyday. Kathy Baker was fantastic in her early appearances, and of course still is. This still feels like one of those “I’m a real actor” choices on Keaton’s part, during his first flush of stardom; but fair enough, he justifies it.

 

Lean on Me

Lean on Me is based on the life of Joe Clark, the high school principal who took over a seething New Jersey school and whipped it into shape through an unbending belief in discipline. Clark was loved by some and despised by others, all of which made for juicy headlines a couple of years ago. (You may remember the image of Clark on the school steps, brandishing a bullhorn and a baseball bat).

Whatever his methods were, they seemed to get results. And those results have been deemed cause enough for Lean on Me, which tells Clark’s story in some fairly conventional terms.

The format has become familiar by now, the one about the teacher who strides into the chaos and inspires his students through the force of his personality. The format should be familiar, since it’s basically borrowed from countless Westerns.

When we first glimpse Eastside High, we hear the blare of “Welcome to the Jungle,” accompanied by scenes of a whole array of felonies being committed in graffiti-covered hallways. The stakes are clear, and Clark cleans house from the outset. His attention is focused on kicking out the malcontents, demanding absolute discipline, and teaching everybody the school song.

To its credit, the movie suggests that Clark’s unbending policies went too far at times. It suggests, but does not explore – the better to hustle toward the uplifting climax. Lean on Me was, after all, directed by John G. Avildsen, who directed the first Rocky. This means the issues are laid out as simply as possible, and solutions are a bit more handy than they are in real life; for instance, Avildsen shamelessly leans on the cardboard villains, a weak-kneed mayor and a belligerent school board member.

The fact that Lean on Me is based on a true story helps it achieve some effectiveness as an entertainment. And it’s fun to watch Morgan Freeman, who plays Joe Clark. Because of Clark’s apparent penchant for speechifying, Freeman is given the opportunity, every other scene or so, to deliver up a lengthy rave.

If you don’t recognize Freeman’s name, you might soon. He was nominated for an Oscar last year for Street Smart, a film few people saw, and Pauline Kael of The New Yorker magazine mused whether he might be one of the best American actors in the movies.

First published in The Herald, May 2, 1989

I wonder what I said about Freeman? This review appears to have been cut short by an insensitive editor. Kael actually said, “Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?”, which stuck me at the time (her Street Smart review) as a fine piece of agitating. I’m surprised I misquoted it, but you didn’t have the internet in those days. Apologies to the late Bill Withers, unmentioned here, whose title song has had renewed currency in recent weeks.

 

Glory

Glory recounts the true story of a stirring chapter in American history, that of the 54th Masachusetts volunteer infantry, one of America’s earliest black regiments. Formed in 1863 while the Civil War was ablaze, the unit was trained and led by a 25-year-old white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw.

Shaw’s men might have been used for merely symbolic value, but they insisted on combat duty, and performed heroically in a battle that, as the film duly notes, was ultimately quite futile. It is an intriguing American story, and the film, written by Kevin Jarre and directed by Edward Zwick, tells it with even-handedness and dignity.

Glory shifts between telling of the inner turmoil of Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick) and the development of the volunteers, who include a wry old-timer (Morgan Freeman), a friendly, stuttering Southerner (Jihmi Kennedy) and a fiery ex­-slave (Denzel Washington).

Shaw ought to be an interesting character, and he left lyrical letters that record his state of mind during the war months (some are read during the film). Yet he is the movie’s weak spot, a nebuloµs character who comes off as rather simple.

As an actor, Broderick looks right – he has the drooping eyes and mustache of a Matthew Brady photograph – but he can’t bring his own complexity to the role, and the movie drifts a bit, lacking a center.

Aside from that, and the embarrassing overstatement of James Horner’s music, Glory goes about the job of telling its story. The most remarkable thing about this is that the film makes the prospect of battle seem honorable, even desirable.

Now, it would probably be impossible for a movie to ever again depict war as unambiguously heroic. We’ve all become too jaundiced for that. And Glory duly notes the horror of war, in its opening sequence of Shaw’s disturbing experience at Antietam and in its portrayal of brutal, insane hand-to-hand fighting. But the fact is that black soldiers had something to prove by getting into the fight; much of white America believed that blacks wouid lack the courage to last in battle. The 54th smashed those beliefs.

Director Zwick’s previous feature was About Last Night … and he is one of the creators and guiding forces behind thirtysomething. Glory is therefore an unanticipated career move, and for the most part an admirable and welcome one, if not quite glorious.

First published in The Herald, January 12, 1990

Safe to say the film is considered something of a classic today, and it won three Oscars – for Washington, sound, and Freddie Francis’s cinematography. How naive of me to believe that nobody would make films that depict war as unambiguously heroic, but this was 30 years ago. Happy Memorial Day, anyway.

Johnny Handsome

In Johnny Handsome, Mickey Rourke takes his propensity for disfigurement to a new level. You thought he was ugly in Barfly, or Angel Heart? That was relative comeliness. In Johnny Handsome, Rourke plays a lowlife criminal whose face is unspeakably deformed. He’s so repellent he’s contemptuously known as Johnny Handsome.

When Johnny is double-crossed during a robbery and his best friend killed, he’s packed off to prison, a two-time loser. But then a doctor (Forest Whitaker), a specialist in reconstructive surgery, sees Johnny’s face, and he puts Johnny under the knife to try to make a new man of him. At least he fashions a new, socially acceptable face, but can a new face change the man?

As Johnny Handsome finds out, he must remain true to who he is. The second half of the film shows his revenge against the two sleazeballs who sold him out (deliciously and dementedly played by Ellen Barkin, also on sizzling view these days in Sea of Love, and Lance Henriksen). This part of the movie isn’t quite as intriguing as the character study of the first half, because it’s mostly clockwork action.

But action is the specialty of director Walter Hill (Red Heat), and he can bring this kind of thing off as well as anybody. Hill also glories in the blue-collar New Orleans locations and the tough, epigrammatic dialogue. When Barkin sizes up the new Johnny Handsome—she doesn’t recognize him—she leans in and leers, “I’ll tell you sumpin’, sweetheart: Lookin’ at you gives me some baaad thoughts.”

In the end, Johnny Handsome comes close to being a real thug’s tragedy. It’s got seediness and flavorful characters, including Johnny’s post-makeover girlfriend (Elizabeth McGovern), who isn’t quite the goody-two-shoes she seems to be, and Johnny’s nemesis, a police lieutenant (Morgan Freeman) who is merciless in his harassment of Johnny—or is it merciful?

Rourke does well with his role. The scene in which his bandages come off and he peers into a mirror is one of the best pieces of acting I’ve seen in a movie this year.

Finally the movie and his performance come up short, because there isn’t really enough of Johnny to provide for truly tragic dimensions; he becomes submerged in the revenge story. That story is a pip, nevertheless, and Johnny Handsome is a fascinating brew.

First published in the Herald, September 29, 1989

Still waiting for the Johnny Handsome cult to gather. I guess the film doesn’t quite work, but Hill gets moments like nobody else, and Rourke is pretty remarkable.

Driving Miss Daisy

As a play, Driving Miss Daisy won a Pulitzer Prize and rave reviews. As a film, Driving Miss Daisy already has won the best picture citation from the National Board of Review, as well as its best-actor prize. It appears to be a shoo-in to rustle up a few Oscar nominations this spring.

At the risk of sounding Grinch-like, I suggest that all of this raises a question: Why?

I don’t know what form the original play took, but the film of Driving Miss Daisy is a likable and extremely modest little concoction that comes off as just the teeniest bit self-congratulatory.

Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) is your typical strong-willed Southern lady, vinegary and plain-speaking. She is too old to drive, and when her wealthy son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd, in a deftly handled career sidestep) suggests she take on a chauffeur, she has a predictable response to the idea. She loathes it.

So Boolie goes ahead and hires a driver anyway. He is Hoke (Morgan Freeman) a 60ish black man with old-school manners and a natural inclination to chat. Alfred Uhry’s screenplay, which he adapted from his play, takes the relationship between these two from their meeting in 1948 through more than 25 years of front-seat, back-seat conversations.

It is, you will notice, the period of civil rights advances, and the ensuing friendship between the black man and the white Jewish woman is reflective of the times. This is achieved in mostly understated ways.

The most poignant scene in the film comes when, in the early 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Atlanta. Miss Daisy is interested in going, but she can’t quite bring herself to ask Hoke if he would like to join her. When she does ask him, as Hoke is driving her to the speech, he refuses. She could have asked him earlier. He sits outside alone, listening to the speech on the car radio, while she is inside the auditorium.

Driving Miss Daisy is directed by Bruce Beresford, the Australian filmmaker whose career has traveled, somewhat alarmingly, from Breaker Morant to Her Alibi. Beresford brings his customary nondescript touch to the proceedings. The finest parts of the film are the last few scenes, of Miss Daisy and Hoke in very old age. But everything that has come before seems slight.

The film is an actor’s vehicle. Morgan Freeman has quickly become the best thing in many movies (he’s in the current Glory), and he slips into Hoke, which he also played on stage, so completely as to disappear. Jessica Tandy, the aged trouper, brings grace and brittleness to her role. It’s a nice match and, if not earth-shaking, a pleasure to watch.

First published in the Herald, January 12, 1990

It won Best Picture. Even with the duds in his filmography, Beresford is one of those guys who surely deserve more credit than they get when a movie turns out well, a thought perhaps inspired by the fact that he didn’t get Oscar-nominated here (although the movie won four in total, including Tandy’s). I don’t remember the film inspiring a huge backlash at the time, along the lines of what The Help (a similarly middlebrow look back at the civil rights era) has encountered, although Do the Right Thing was in competition that year and didn’t get nominated for very much, a situation that left Spike Lee, as ever, not amused.