Movies in Brief
Directed by Jean-Claude LaMarre. With LaMarre, John Jean and Debbi Morgan. R (violence, adult themes). Running time: 1 hour, 28 mins. Playing at: UA Cheltenham Square.It's not The Passion of the Christ, and that's a good thing.
Color of the Cross **Directed by Jean-Claude LaMarre. With LaMarre, John Jean and Debbi Morgan. R (violence, adult themes). Running time: 1 hour, 28 mins. Playing at: UA Cheltenham Square.
It's not The Passion of the Christ, and that's a good thing.
Color of the Cross, written, directed, coproduced and starring Jean-Claude LaMarre as a black Jesus, cuts to the chase, or to Golgotha, actually: One minute the carpenter from Nazareth is being rounded up by Roman soldiers at the bidding of Jewish high priests, and the next he's nailed to wood, crowned in thorns, murmuring, "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
Audiences have been spared the blood, guts and projectile flesh that Mel Gibson reveled in.
But LaMarre's film, which likewise chronicles the last two days of Jesus' life - and challenges the pervasive Western image of the son of God as a white man - has other problems: It would be one thing, and a fine thing, to present Jesus, Joseph, Mary and, yes, Judas, too, as people of color. But to suggest that the Messiah was crucified because of his race is something else altogether.
"Do you think they are doing this because he is black?" wonders Mary, understandably aghast at the persecution of her son.
Filled with close-ups of Jesus and his apostles (all the better to hide the absence of elaborate period sets), mixing quotes from the Scripture with flat exposition, this low-budget affair is earnest and, alas, more than a little bit cartoonish.
- Steven Rea
Harsh Times ***
Directed by David Ayer. With Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez and Eva Longoria. R (violence, profanity, sex, adult themes). Running time: 2 hours. Playing at: area theaters.
A live-wire, neck-snapping directing bow from the writer of Training Day, David Ayer's Harsh Times is a drug-and-drink-fueled, guns-to-the-head trip into the wacked-out world of an ex-Army Ranger trying - ha! - to assimilate into civilian life.
Set in the barrios and bars of South Central Los Angeles, the film stars Christian Bale as Jim Davis, a vet still spooked by his experience in Afghanistan, and looking for a job as a cop. When he fails his psych test with the LAPD, Jim and his buddy, Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), tool around town, getting into trouble, more trouble, and more.
Like Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day, Bale and Rodriguez do a lot of their tough-guy chatter from the front seat of a car. Likewise, the violence in Harsh Times comes fast and furious.
Bale brings intense energy (and a convincing American accent) to the proceedings, and the film manages to make this borderline Travis Bickle into a sympathetic character - with a sweetheart, and a sweeter life, beckoning from south of the border. Strong stuff.
- Steven Rea
American Hardcore ***
Directed by Paul Rachman. With Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, H.R., Chuck Treece. R (profanity, sex and drugs references). Running time: 1 hour, 40 mins. Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse.
Back in the Ronald Reagan 1980s, angry, unruly, testosterone-drunk bands roamed the land, bashing out their angst as fast and furiously as they possibly could. American Hardcore, Paul Rachman's impressively thorough documentary, tells of the second-generation punk rockers who learned from the Sex Pistols and Ramones and then did their DIY thing, raging on in church basements and VFW halls, with the idea of commercial success not even a remote possibility.
The Minutemen's Mike Watt, Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye, and Black Flag's Henry Rollins are among the thoughtful, now middle-aged white guys who recount the desperate defiance that fueled this often violent, sometimes misogynist, rebellious scene. Righteous African American rockers Bad Brains are spoken of with deserved reverence, and former graduates of the hardcore scene such as Moby and Philadelphia's Chuck Treece have their say.
Rachman's film, based on a book by Steven Blush, does the scene justice, but could have done with less talk: Few hardcore songs stretched to even three minutes, but not one is played from beginning to end in this movie.
- Dan DeLuca, Inquirer music critic
Unknown **
Directed by Simon Brand. With Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper. NR (violence, profanity). Running time: 1 hour, 38 mins. Playing at: Clearview's Bala.
A movie that would have definitely made for a better play, Simon Brand's Unknown is set mostly inside a gloomy warehouse in Southern California where five men with erased memories are trying to figure out who they are and what they're doing there.
Two of the men (Jeremy Sisto, Joe Pantoliano) are bound, and one (Greg Kinnear) has a broken nose. Each is suspicious of the four others.
From a story in a newspaper left lying around, they learn that two are developers who have been kidnapped. But which two? Who are the bad guys and who are the good? And why have they all lost their memories?
Written by Matthew Waynee, Unknown is a coy mind game combining influences from Reservoir Dogs and Memento. It doles out its clues in measured quantities, mostly through flashbacks in the recovering memory of an unnamed character played by Jim Caviezel.
There are occasional cuts to a police station in Los Angeles where detectives are interviewing the wife (Bridget Moynahan) of a man in the warehouse. Again, which one?
It all comes together at the end, logically and with a twist. But it's not a game that allows the audience to play along. When the story is controlled by whatever memories the writer and director choose to put in the characters' heads, you're always on the outside looking in.
- Jack Mathews, New York Daily News