Is there any conceivable reason for Tim McCarver being allowed to announce baseball, let alone have announced the World Series for... I don't even know how long? It's just brutal listening to him. I'm not a huge fan of Joe Buck either, but Buck is at least tolerable. I don't really like his announcing style, but he's certainly a very playable play-by-play man. The problem is when McCarver tries to interject something playing off of what Buck had just said and it comes out not making any sense whatsoever.
The thing is, McCarver is one of serveral announcers covering major televised sports whose continued employment is simply confounding to me. Before he finally retired, (a couple of years after he said he was going to retire initially) Fox would trot out Pat Summerall, who for all I knew was asleep during half of the games. There would be times going into or coming out of a commercial break in which you would expect the play-by-play guy to give a summary of the current situtation in the game, where Summerall would just sort of meekly say "The Bears.... lead......" and sort of trail off while you just sat watching a shot of the field in complete silence before the producer finally figured out, "Oh shit, he's not gonna say anything else." Hawk Harrelson does this a lot announcing White Sox games, but he does it because he's pissed that the White Sox are losing. Summerall just seemed completely disinterested in anything going on around him. Aliens could attack the stadium and Sumerall would just sort of say, "Well... we've got some... aliens."
Dick Stockton, who just announced the Cubs/Dodgers NLDS (making it that much more painful for me) sounds equally disinterested in what he's doing except he talks more. So instead of 3-hours of mostly silence you sort of get 3 hours of a long stream of monotone like HAL-9000 or something. The thing uniquely bad about Dick Stockton is that he can't seem to be bothered to learn how to pronounce anyone's names. In 2007 in the Cubs\Diamondbacks NLDS he consistently pronounced Mike Quade's name "Kwade", rather than "Kwah-dee." This year, every time he tried to pronounce Kosuke Fukudome it was a struggle. I've seen clips of old NBA Finals games with Dick Stockton announcing, and while I still don't really like him as an announcer in any era, back in the day he wasn't nearly as monotonus and sleepy sounding as he is now. How do these old crumugeons keep getting work in the biggest of sporting events? Is it just loyalty for the seniormost guys? TV executives are always thought of as being obsessed with ratings to an extraordinary degree. I've never once heard anyone say, either online or face-to-face, "You know who I love is that Tim McCarver!"
*******************************
Speaking of the World Series, Game 5 was just suspended in a 2-2 tie in a brutal cold rain in Philadelphia. After it was delayed in the bottom of the 6th, with the Rays having tied the game in the top half of the inning, Chris Meyers interviewed the Chief of Operations (I think that was his title) and he said that the tying run being scored had nothing to do wtih the decision. Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that. He described conditions as having "deteriorated," but they were pretty brutal when the game was still 2-1. There was noticable water pooling on the corners of the infield. Had the game been delayed at 2-1 and not restarted, the game would've ended since 5+ innings had been played, and the Phillies would've won the World Series. From what I've heard, ratings have already been bad for these playoffs. Baseball isn't going to end the season on a rain delay. I wouldn't be surprised if the rules for calling World Series games were changed in the offseason. Its not like they have other games to schedule around. I guess there's TV to consider, but FOX is going to televise the conclusion of Game 5 tomorrow despite the fact that they were supposed to have new episodes of stuff on. At any rate, with Game 3 having ended at about 12:45 Central because of a rain delay and now this, this has been a pretty messed up World Series.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
W
W (**1/2)
Oliver Stone's Bush biopic W had a ton of hype when it was announced for a whole bunch of reasons. It would be the first movie to be made about a President still holding office and Stone's previous films Nixon and JFK have garnered huge notoriety for their controversial portrays of two of the most infamous events in American Presidential history. But, after seeing Stone's latest film about a man who will go down as perhaps the most infamous of Presidents, I came away with a feeling of mostly apathy. There are certainly moments in the movie that are enjoyable, but given that George W. Bush's presidency will most certainly go down as eight of the most important years in modern American history (and mostly for the wrong reasons), you would certainly expect a movie about the man to add up to more than what W is.
W jumps around in time constantly throughout its 2 hour and 10 minute runtime, starting with a cabinet meeting in 2002, going back to his days in a Harvard fraternity, and then continuing from there with two separate storylines: the story of his presidency and the story of how his presidency came to be. Both of these stories are incomplete, and really feel more like snapshots instead of complete storylines with beginnings, middles, and ends. In Bush's past he's shown as a guy who's sort of aloof and can't focus on the same job for more than a month, and seems most interested in perpetually hanging out and drinking. At the same time, he's constantly bothered by being in the shadow of his father, and his father's percieved slights against him in favor of his older brother Jeb. In the present, Bush is shown as a man who truly believes in his cause, but loses his way trying to achieve it, depending too much on Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and not enough on the more cautionary views of the rest of his advisers. Josh Brolin plays Dubya, both young and old, and his performance is incredibly accurate, aided by the make-up or whatever the hell they did to make him look uncannily like Bush throughout the decades. Brolin has all of his phraseology and mannerisms down to a science, and he manages to bring a certain humanity to Bush with a script that seems to accentuate all of his most cartoonish moments.
My main problem with the movie is that its tone jumps around just as much as its timeline. All of the nuances of the principal players are mocked to the fullest extent they can be. In particular, the portrayal of Condolesa Rice is totally ridiculous. She's almost like the female equivalent of Donnie from The Big Lebowski, as she once in a while offers a meek interjection in the middle of a heated conversation, but never seems to have anything to say that anyone else is particularly interested in hearing. As for Bush himself, all of his confounding Bush-isms make it into the film, their context often being changed so they can fit in to the scenes that make it on screen (Bush's butchering of the "fool me once, shame on you..." saying happens during a closed-door meeting instead of at a press conference). We see Bush on the Crawford ranch playing with his dogs as everyone else stands around him with a "how much longer do we have to be here?" on their faces. When a drunken Bush comes home in the middle of the night and tries to fight a fight with his father ("Let's go! Mono-a-mono!") its like the scene from the Seinfeld episode where Frank Costanza fights Elaine after she calls George dumb.
At the same time, though, we get scenes like one in which Bush attends an A.A. meeting and stays afterwards to talk to the reverend about the "tremendous weight" he feels constantly, as we get a bunch of soft-focus shots of the Jesus mural in the background. Later, we see Bush visiting wounded troops in the hospital and he speaks Spanish to a distraught mother of a Latino soldier. I have no doubt that these more sympathetic scenes are as real as the myriad of Bush's well-documented press conference flubs. But, after seeing what amounts to a montage of Bush acting cartoonishly empty-headed, its hard to take these scenes seriously or to have them have any real resonance. Watching the movie, it almost seems like Oliver Stone and writer Stanley Weiser set out to show Bush in a sympathetic light, but then which watching footage of old Bush press conferences kept getting sidetracked and saying, "Wow, look how stupid he looks in this one! How could we not put that one in?"
The half of the movie that focuses on Bush as president from 2002 to now isn't bad, but its sort of like a 101 course in the last eight years of history, not going much in-depth into anything. Dick Cheney explains his idea for the one-percent doctrine to Bush as he's eating a sandwich, mentions in passing the warrantless wiretapping programs they've put in place, and then hands him a sign-off to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques which Bush enthusiastically says he'll read through since its only three pages (again, cartoony). All of those things mentioned in one scene are huge reasons why a hell of a lot of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be an abject disaster and a national embarrassment. Exploring how presumably well-intentioned men came to put these things in place would make for an excellent movie; mentioning them in passing does nothing. Elsewhere in the movie, we see Bush Jr. screening the infamous Willie Horton ad for his father, explaining that it was made by a group led by Roger Ailes so as to distance the campaign from it. When the movie jumps to the junior Bush's presidency, it doesn't go back and explore what impact Roger Ailes has on the politics of today now that he has an entire network in the form of Fox News. Sure, bringing this up would've ruffled some feathers, but isn't that what Oliver Stone is known for doing? Isn't that kind of why he's so well-known as a director?
The points that the movie does try to make and not just gloss over are often too transparently obvious. In the opening scene, we see Bush being briefed in regards to Iraq and whether a legitimate case can be made for war, when Cheney (played pretty convincingly by Richard Dreyfuss) enters, sort of lurks by the door, and the entire mood of the meeting seems to change. Later on, we see Karl Rove literally lurking in the shadows as he points out to Bush that not going into Iraq might hurt his re-election chances. The best supporting performance is probably Jeffery Wright as Colin Powell, who in real life just endorsed Obama as he continues to distance himself from the new neoconservative movement in the Republican party. In the movie, Wright is really more of the voice of the whole anti-war part of the nation. He dissents more often and more strongly than he likely did in real life, as he constantly questions the need for preemptive
war and an abandonment of the country's entire post-World War II foreign policy strategy. Like a lot of the other characters, Powell's portrayal is pretty simplistic, but I think his part in the film resonates more than does anyone else's. Not to digress too much, but I also want to say that appreciate that Stone went out of his way to show the massive protests against the war that cropped up all across the country and all across the world before the war actually began, and not just when things turned south after the occupation. This initial outcry is something that seems to have been lost in the media after the big question about Iraq became, "is the surge working"?
I bitched a lot about the movie's flaws here, but I did give it two and a half stars at the top of the post, and I do have to say that Josh Brolin's uncanny rendition of Bush's folksy, "damned if I know what I'm doing, I'm going to do it" personality is undeniably entertaining. Some of the movie's lighter points are genuinely funny. But the movie isn't trying to be the Naked Gun of presidential politics, and it does try to give a real account of George W. Bush's presidency. Ultimately, W seems to come to no significant conclusions about why his presidency happens as it did and what it means, and I think Bush's presidency is too significant a point in history for a movie to fail to say anything important about it.
Oliver Stone's Bush biopic W had a ton of hype when it was announced for a whole bunch of reasons. It would be the first movie to be made about a President still holding office and Stone's previous films Nixon and JFK have garnered huge notoriety for their controversial portrays of two of the most infamous events in American Presidential history. But, after seeing Stone's latest film about a man who will go down as perhaps the most infamous of Presidents, I came away with a feeling of mostly apathy. There are certainly moments in the movie that are enjoyable, but given that George W. Bush's presidency will most certainly go down as eight of the most important years in modern American history (and mostly for the wrong reasons), you would certainly expect a movie about the man to add up to more than what W is.
W jumps around in time constantly throughout its 2 hour and 10 minute runtime, starting with a cabinet meeting in 2002, going back to his days in a Harvard fraternity, and then continuing from there with two separate storylines: the story of his presidency and the story of how his presidency came to be. Both of these stories are incomplete, and really feel more like snapshots instead of complete storylines with beginnings, middles, and ends. In Bush's past he's shown as a guy who's sort of aloof and can't focus on the same job for more than a month, and seems most interested in perpetually hanging out and drinking. At the same time, he's constantly bothered by being in the shadow of his father, and his father's percieved slights against him in favor of his older brother Jeb. In the present, Bush is shown as a man who truly believes in his cause, but loses his way trying to achieve it, depending too much on Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and not enough on the more cautionary views of the rest of his advisers. Josh Brolin plays Dubya, both young and old, and his performance is incredibly accurate, aided by the make-up or whatever the hell they did to make him look uncannily like Bush throughout the decades. Brolin has all of his phraseology and mannerisms down to a science, and he manages to bring a certain humanity to Bush with a script that seems to accentuate all of his most cartoonish moments.
My main problem with the movie is that its tone jumps around just as much as its timeline. All of the nuances of the principal players are mocked to the fullest extent they can be. In particular, the portrayal of Condolesa Rice is totally ridiculous. She's almost like the female equivalent of Donnie from The Big Lebowski, as she once in a while offers a meek interjection in the middle of a heated conversation, but never seems to have anything to say that anyone else is particularly interested in hearing. As for Bush himself, all of his confounding Bush-isms make it into the film, their context often being changed so they can fit in to the scenes that make it on screen (Bush's butchering of the "fool me once, shame on you..." saying happens during a closed-door meeting instead of at a press conference). We see Bush on the Crawford ranch playing with his dogs as everyone else stands around him with a "how much longer do we have to be here?" on their faces. When a drunken Bush comes home in the middle of the night and tries to fight a fight with his father ("Let's go! Mono-a-mono!") its like the scene from the Seinfeld episode where Frank Costanza fights Elaine after she calls George dumb.
At the same time, though, we get scenes like one in which Bush attends an A.A. meeting and stays afterwards to talk to the reverend about the "tremendous weight" he feels constantly, as we get a bunch of soft-focus shots of the Jesus mural in the background. Later, we see Bush visiting wounded troops in the hospital and he speaks Spanish to a distraught mother of a Latino soldier. I have no doubt that these more sympathetic scenes are as real as the myriad of Bush's well-documented press conference flubs. But, after seeing what amounts to a montage of Bush acting cartoonishly empty-headed, its hard to take these scenes seriously or to have them have any real resonance. Watching the movie, it almost seems like Oliver Stone and writer Stanley Weiser set out to show Bush in a sympathetic light, but then which watching footage of old Bush press conferences kept getting sidetracked and saying, "Wow, look how stupid he looks in this one! How could we not put that one in?"
The half of the movie that focuses on Bush as president from 2002 to now isn't bad, but its sort of like a 101 course in the last eight years of history, not going much in-depth into anything. Dick Cheney explains his idea for the one-percent doctrine to Bush as he's eating a sandwich, mentions in passing the warrantless wiretapping programs they've put in place, and then hands him a sign-off to authorize enhanced interrogation techniques which Bush enthusiastically says he'll read through since its only three pages (again, cartoony). All of those things mentioned in one scene are huge reasons why a hell of a lot of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be an abject disaster and a national embarrassment. Exploring how presumably well-intentioned men came to put these things in place would make for an excellent movie; mentioning them in passing does nothing. Elsewhere in the movie, we see Bush Jr. screening the infamous Willie Horton ad for his father, explaining that it was made by a group led by Roger Ailes so as to distance the campaign from it. When the movie jumps to the junior Bush's presidency, it doesn't go back and explore what impact Roger Ailes has on the politics of today now that he has an entire network in the form of Fox News. Sure, bringing this up would've ruffled some feathers, but isn't that what Oliver Stone is known for doing? Isn't that kind of why he's so well-known as a director?
The points that the movie does try to make and not just gloss over are often too transparently obvious. In the opening scene, we see Bush being briefed in regards to Iraq and whether a legitimate case can be made for war, when Cheney (played pretty convincingly by Richard Dreyfuss) enters, sort of lurks by the door, and the entire mood of the meeting seems to change. Later on, we see Karl Rove literally lurking in the shadows as he points out to Bush that not going into Iraq might hurt his re-election chances. The best supporting performance is probably Jeffery Wright as Colin Powell, who in real life just endorsed Obama as he continues to distance himself from the new neoconservative movement in the Republican party. In the movie, Wright is really more of the voice of the whole anti-war part of the nation. He dissents more often and more strongly than he likely did in real life, as he constantly questions the need for preemptive
war and an abandonment of the country's entire post-World War II foreign policy strategy. Like a lot of the other characters, Powell's portrayal is pretty simplistic, but I think his part in the film resonates more than does anyone else's. Not to digress too much, but I also want to say that appreciate that Stone went out of his way to show the massive protests against the war that cropped up all across the country and all across the world before the war actually began, and not just when things turned south after the occupation. This initial outcry is something that seems to have been lost in the media after the big question about Iraq became, "is the surge working"?
I bitched a lot about the movie's flaws here, but I did give it two and a half stars at the top of the post, and I do have to say that Josh Brolin's uncanny rendition of Bush's folksy, "damned if I know what I'm doing, I'm going to do it" personality is undeniably entertaining. Some of the movie's lighter points are genuinely funny. But the movie isn't trying to be the Naked Gun of presidential politics, and it does try to give a real account of George W. Bush's presidency. Ultimately, W seems to come to no significant conclusions about why his presidency happens as it did and what it means, and I think Bush's presidency is too significant a point in history for a movie to fail to say anything important about it.
Monday, October 13, 2008
CUBS: The Autopsy
We're now more than a week removed from the Dodgers' 3-0 sweep of the Cubs in the NLDS, and I think I'm not in a healthy enough mental state to try and write about what the hell happened. Firstly, in spite of what I've heard from the more short-tempered fans out there, the Cubs getting swept is in no way a sign that the team has to get "blown up" or rebuilt from scratch. Over in the AL this year, the Angels were baseball's only 100 win team, and they got beat 3-1 in their series with the BoSox, and they had to go to extras to get their only win. That's not to say that people should be happy with the result of the season. The team's goal was to win the World Series and they came up well short of that. As such they underachieved this year and will have to play better come playoff time next year. But these knee jerk "oh woe is us, this team will never win anything, blow it up and start from scratch!" reactions are just silly. Over the three games in the playoffs they played significantly worse than in just about any three game stretch during the regular season, worse enough to make me think that the team does have some issues (not involving goats) regarding the pressure of the postseason and the tremendous weight of trying to overcome 100 years of futility. This is simply not enough reason to get rid of a team that has gone 182-141 over the past two seasons. There are however, sensible changes to the team that should be made.
Firstly, its important to keep in mind what happened. The Cubs only scored 6 runs for the series, and the conventional wisdom is that they simply didn't hit the ball as with the Arizona series in 2007. That's not really entirely true. They hit .240, which is pretty meager compared to their batting average during the regular season, but sizeably better than the .194 that they managed against the Diamondbacks. They actually outhit the Dodgers in game 1, despite losing 7-2. What did happen is, after leading the NL in walks in the regular season, the managed to draw only 6 walks for the entirety of the series against the Dodgers. A lot of credit needs to be given to Dodger pitching, and I don't think they've gotten much of it, at least not from Cubs fans who have been too busy opining about their own team choking. The Cubs bailed them out out by swinging at a lot of bad pitches (I noticed pitching tailing away down and outside seemed to kill them every time for some reason), but the Dodgers also simply threw a lot of strikes. There weren't a lot of 3-0, 3-1 strikes at all during the series, and when they were, they weren't in key situations. The Cubs also seemed to have trouble getting the lead off man on in each inning. The Cubs did get some hits as I said, but they were often times scattered instead of chained together and often with two outs.
As for what the Cubs should do next season, first and foremost they should take Soriano out of the lead off spot. Unlike a lot of Cubs fans who are quick to scapegoat Soriano and a lot of the cockiness and nonchalantness that he shows when things go bad, I still think Soriano is a top-tier hitter and a huge reason for this team's success the past two years. I simply don't think he should be leading off though. As much as he says he's a leadoff hitter, he strikes out a lot, doesn't walk a lot, and hits for a lot of power. He'd be much better in, say, the #5 spot behind people like Lee, Ramirez, and Theriot who, in theory, can get on base at a better clip than can Soriano. Fukudome is obvoiusly a significant problem, ending up the year with an average under .260. That simply can't happen for a starting corner outfielder on a 1st place team. Since Jim Edmonds is probably gone from the team they could move Kosuke to center, where his offensive struggles would be a little more tolerable. There are questions as to how well he can play center though. He could also be platooned with someone like Reed Jonhson and face only righties, against which he consistently looked more comfortable at the plate, but who knows if the Cubs would be filling to have such a high-priced player in a platoon role. Ideally, Kosuke simply gets better in 2009. He'll have a year of major-league experience under his belt, but he's also over 30 years old right now. It's hard to imagine him getting that much better.
The Cubs have already exercised Rich Harden's option, and statistically he certainly deserves to come back. His health remains a huge question mark though. Another question mark is Ryan Dempster. He had a fantastic year on the mound in his first year as a starter since joining the Cubs, but this year was certainly the exception and not the rule for his career thus far. Was the Ryan Dempster who couldn't seem to find the strike zone in the NLDS closer to the Ryan Dempster we'd see in '09 than the Ryan Dempster which looked unhittable at times during the regular season? Good starting pitching is always a preciously rare commodity, but if the Cubs can find a move to make that makes sense they should pull the trigger on it. Its probably time for the Cubs to figure out what Sean Marshall's role is going to be going forward, since he's bounced around all over the place, from the rotation to the bullpen to AAA. Bob Howry's also probably going to be gone from the 'pen. If Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio can't step up and be effective middle relievers, the Cubs may have to go out and get somewhere there as well. There's been some discussion of the Cubs going out and getting a shortstop and then moving Theriot to 2nd, which is actually his natural postion. It wouldn't be a bad idea. What then happens to DeRosa, though? Would he end up playing right?
Here's to a 2009 season that's as good as 2008's, with a better postseason tacked onto it.
Firstly, its important to keep in mind what happened. The Cubs only scored 6 runs for the series, and the conventional wisdom is that they simply didn't hit the ball as with the Arizona series in 2007. That's not really entirely true. They hit .240, which is pretty meager compared to their batting average during the regular season, but sizeably better than the .194 that they managed against the Diamondbacks. They actually outhit the Dodgers in game 1, despite losing 7-2. What did happen is, after leading the NL in walks in the regular season, the managed to draw only 6 walks for the entirety of the series against the Dodgers. A lot of credit needs to be given to Dodger pitching, and I don't think they've gotten much of it, at least not from Cubs fans who have been too busy opining about their own team choking. The Cubs bailed them out out by swinging at a lot of bad pitches (I noticed pitching tailing away down and outside seemed to kill them every time for some reason), but the Dodgers also simply threw a lot of strikes. There weren't a lot of 3-0, 3-1 strikes at all during the series, and when they were, they weren't in key situations. The Cubs also seemed to have trouble getting the lead off man on in each inning. The Cubs did get some hits as I said, but they were often times scattered instead of chained together and often with two outs.
As for what the Cubs should do next season, first and foremost they should take Soriano out of the lead off spot. Unlike a lot of Cubs fans who are quick to scapegoat Soriano and a lot of the cockiness and nonchalantness that he shows when things go bad, I still think Soriano is a top-tier hitter and a huge reason for this team's success the past two years. I simply don't think he should be leading off though. As much as he says he's a leadoff hitter, he strikes out a lot, doesn't walk a lot, and hits for a lot of power. He'd be much better in, say, the #5 spot behind people like Lee, Ramirez, and Theriot who, in theory, can get on base at a better clip than can Soriano. Fukudome is obvoiusly a significant problem, ending up the year with an average under .260. That simply can't happen for a starting corner outfielder on a 1st place team. Since Jim Edmonds is probably gone from the team they could move Kosuke to center, where his offensive struggles would be a little more tolerable. There are questions as to how well he can play center though. He could also be platooned with someone like Reed Jonhson and face only righties, against which he consistently looked more comfortable at the plate, but who knows if the Cubs would be filling to have such a high-priced player in a platoon role. Ideally, Kosuke simply gets better in 2009. He'll have a year of major-league experience under his belt, but he's also over 30 years old right now. It's hard to imagine him getting that much better.
The Cubs have already exercised Rich Harden's option, and statistically he certainly deserves to come back. His health remains a huge question mark though. Another question mark is Ryan Dempster. He had a fantastic year on the mound in his first year as a starter since joining the Cubs, but this year was certainly the exception and not the rule for his career thus far. Was the Ryan Dempster who couldn't seem to find the strike zone in the NLDS closer to the Ryan Dempster we'd see in '09 than the Ryan Dempster which looked unhittable at times during the regular season? Good starting pitching is always a preciously rare commodity, but if the Cubs can find a move to make that makes sense they should pull the trigger on it. Its probably time for the Cubs to figure out what Sean Marshall's role is going to be going forward, since he's bounced around all over the place, from the rotation to the bullpen to AAA. Bob Howry's also probably going to be gone from the 'pen. If Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio can't step up and be effective middle relievers, the Cubs may have to go out and get somewhere there as well. There's been some discussion of the Cubs going out and getting a shortstop and then moving Theriot to 2nd, which is actually his natural postion. It wouldn't be a bad idea. What then happens to DeRosa, though? Would he end up playing right?
Here's to a 2009 season that's as good as 2008's, with a better postseason tacked onto it.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Layer Cake
Layer Cake (***)
It's a few years old now, but I saw Layer Cake this for the first time over the weekend. I remember it getting a fair amount of buzz when it came out in the states, and while I don't think it's a work of absolute genius, its definitely a very fun British crime drama. There's been a whole slew of movies in much the same vein as Layer Cake made in Britain and elsewhere. What the movie is able to do best to set itself apart is establish a compelling and different main character. Said character, who we're never given a name for, is played by Dainel Craig, and you can see a lot of what he would go on to do as Bond in what he does in this movie. Craig's character is involved in the drug trade, and the risks that go along with it, but he's smart enough to know when to hedge his bets. He's put his money with a legitimate accountant, he has a front as a real-estate agent, and he's set a date for his retirement from the drug business that he plans on sticking to.
Like most gangster movies though, retiring is never as easy as it seems ("Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!"), and we follow the main character as he gets entangled in a deal of ecstasy pills that were stolen from some super-creepy Serbian guys. Craig plays his character with a certain wit and charisma that makes him endearing but--as he did with Bond in Casino Royale--also gives his character more weakness and humanity than we normally expect from protagonists in movies like this. Though he's surrounded by violence, Craig's character (at least initially) deplores guns, and when his life is threatened we're actually allowed to see him worry instead of seeing him simply tossing around a one-liner like "This shit just got real!" and leave to go flip out and kill people.
There are some great supporting characters as well, with some other well-known British actors like Colm Meaney (aka O'Brien from Star Trek) and Michael Gambon. They sort of represent the last generation of criminals, back before drugs were the "in" thing, and bank robbery was the preferred method of obtaining ill-gotten money. Their quips about how it was like in the old days ("when life was as simple as a game of cops and robbers") are funny and strangely poignant at the same time. The movie is kind of frantically directed--it reminds me a lot of Snatch in that way--and initially the quick cuts between scenes can be somewhat distracting, but it mostly works. The surprise ending is, well, genuinely surprising, though I'm not sure how much I like it as an ending, especially after a resolution to the conflict to that point that seems to work maybe a little too perfectly. At any rate, as I said, its a fun British gangster movie and it has more than enough endearing characters and funny exchanges to make up for some of the story's imperfections.
It's a few years old now, but I saw Layer Cake this for the first time over the weekend. I remember it getting a fair amount of buzz when it came out in the states, and while I don't think it's a work of absolute genius, its definitely a very fun British crime drama. There's been a whole slew of movies in much the same vein as Layer Cake made in Britain and elsewhere. What the movie is able to do best to set itself apart is establish a compelling and different main character. Said character, who we're never given a name for, is played by Dainel Craig, and you can see a lot of what he would go on to do as Bond in what he does in this movie. Craig's character is involved in the drug trade, and the risks that go along with it, but he's smart enough to know when to hedge his bets. He's put his money with a legitimate accountant, he has a front as a real-estate agent, and he's set a date for his retirement from the drug business that he plans on sticking to.
Like most gangster movies though, retiring is never as easy as it seems ("Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!"), and we follow the main character as he gets entangled in a deal of ecstasy pills that were stolen from some super-creepy Serbian guys. Craig plays his character with a certain wit and charisma that makes him endearing but--as he did with Bond in Casino Royale--also gives his character more weakness and humanity than we normally expect from protagonists in movies like this. Though he's surrounded by violence, Craig's character (at least initially) deplores guns, and when his life is threatened we're actually allowed to see him worry instead of seeing him simply tossing around a one-liner like "This shit just got real!" and leave to go flip out and kill people.
There are some great supporting characters as well, with some other well-known British actors like Colm Meaney (aka O'Brien from Star Trek) and Michael Gambon. They sort of represent the last generation of criminals, back before drugs were the "in" thing, and bank robbery was the preferred method of obtaining ill-gotten money. Their quips about how it was like in the old days ("when life was as simple as a game of cops and robbers") are funny and strangely poignant at the same time. The movie is kind of frantically directed--it reminds me a lot of Snatch in that way--and initially the quick cuts between scenes can be somewhat distracting, but it mostly works. The surprise ending is, well, genuinely surprising, though I'm not sure how much I like it as an ending, especially after a resolution to the conflict to that point that seems to work maybe a little too perfectly. At any rate, as I said, its a fun British gangster movie and it has more than enough endearing characters and funny exchanges to make up for some of the story's imperfections.
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