Heaven Can Wait
No matter what, I will never abandon Clint Eastwood. I will argue with anyone, to this day, that the man is one of the most talented filmmakers working today. His style is subtle, but able to conform to any style that can bring out the most important bits in a film. Lately, however, he’s been coming up a little short in the directorial department. I place the blame squarely on Gran Torino, a film that sucked all the creativity out of Eastwood in favor of stale, blatant depictions of very poor storytelling. Even still, I try to support him as much as possible. I think he’s getting slightly better in his work, but this film, while offering some different strokes from him and pays off in small victories, can’t quite reach the level expected of such a master filmmaker.
There are three simultaneous stories going on in this film, all concerning the themes of the afterlife. One is about a French woman (Cécile de France) who is coping with a near death experience from surviving the 2004 tsunami. The other is about a set of twins living in London. When an accident occurs, the surviving film (Frankie McLaren) copes with the loss of his brother. The other story features top-biller Matt Damon as a psychic trying to move beyond his profession. Bryce Dallas Howard shows up briefly in his timeline as a woman who enters his life and finds out more than she initially wanted.
Eastwood seems to be doing something a little different here, as most of his films tend to, while beautifully executed, find a certain note and communicate it with some noted specificity. Here, it seems like Eastwood is trying to leave the door a little more open, and I still find it something that can work well with his style. However, I would still say he doesn’t get a great hold onto the material and lets large sections drag into dull territory. This is also due to the fact that Peter Morgan’s script, working very much out of his element, lacks so much dramatic and emotional weight that the material feels too lofty to truly take hold. Morgan can pick and choose certain moments that are well conceived, but most of the time it comes up short, leaving Eastwood and his actors to fend for themselves.
I think Damon is a great actor, and much like the performance he gave in Invictus, here he’s not going all out but doing serviceable work. I would say he makes a greater impression than his previous work with Eastwood, but it’s still a little more subdued than I’d like him to be. France gives a lot to her performance, but suffers because her storyline mutes a lot of the emotion. The strongest of the is the one concerning the twins, and the two boys give a very convincing performance as one character, carrying nearly all of the film’s genuine emotional weight.
There’s a few elements that I admire in the film, like Eastwood’s mostly stately direction and a few of the performances. There’s even some things I love, like the story concerning the twins. But, in the end, it never quite comes together and the film never finds the emotional pull it needs, particularly with a story that needs that element in order to survive. I will still give a defense to Eastwood, unless he really chooses to abandon all reason and go off the reservation (the pain of Gran Torino will never die). I give him points for trying something different, but not enough to call this a success.
C+
Barring Time
Unfortunately, Hilary Swank only makes two kinds of movies. They are either good, solid films or they are downright terrible. The gap between movies like Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby and Insomnia and those like The Core, P.S. I Love You and Amerlia couldn’t be wider. There’s never a film that you’ll think is just okay. You’ll either like it or loathe it. I’m happy to report that, this time around, I didn’t come off hating this film with a passion like so many of her others. In fact, by virtue of the rules, I rather liked it on the whole.
Inspired by real life events, Swank plays Betty Ann Waters, a lower-middle class Boston woman who is shocked when her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) is tried and convicted for a murder that he claims he did not commit. She fervently believes him, and sets on a nearly twenty year journey to set him free, which includes her going to law school and becoming a lawyer for the sole purpose of representing her brother. Minnie Driver is along for the ride as Waters’s best friend in her law class, and there’s some supporting work from the likes of Melissa Leo as a possibly corrupt cop and Juliette Lewis as one of Kenny’s flamboyant ex-girlfriends.
For the record, I don’t hate Swank. I even believe that most of the projects she’s in that hinder on the terrible side of the equation are not at her own fault. It’s the material, but she sometimes has difficulty of elevating it to something respectable. This film had the capability of being that type of film, with it’s predictably uplifting storytelling. But, she manages to keep the right amount genuine emotion to keep it all on a believable level. It takes a truly great actor to not get lost in that ridiculously harsh Boston accent, but Swank manages to come out the other side intact. I’d also give a lot of credit to Rockwell, an even better actor, who gives a convincing portrait of Kenny as a complicated man with a lot going on behind the eyes. I wouldn’t count this as one of his best performances, but it’s one that continues to prove how good of an actor he continues to be. Driver, Leo and Lewis all offer some fun in their roles, even though Lewis might be having a little too much fun in the trailer trash role.
There are times when director Tony Goldwyn and writer Pamela Gray come together and create a film that seems sincere in its messages about overcoming the odds and never losing faith. However, Goldwyn often times overindulges on a somewhat saggy midsection in the pace, and Gray deviates far too many times from the actual throughline of the story, particularly felt during flashbacks to see Betty Ann and Kenny as youth. Even though the young Betty Ann is played by the super-talented Bailee Madison, it still comes across as an unnecessary distraction. The film also misses the mark in the follow-up events, leaving out a rather important piece of information as to what happened to one of the main characters. I won’t reveal it, but it certainly puts a more interesting spin on the story that the film chose to leave out.
In all honesty, I was ready to hate this film. Instead, I found it to be well acted, well executed and having a rather uplifting message and theme without doing too much to separate itself beyond some slow parts and usual genre clichés. It’s everything that The Blind Side attempted and failed to be. I’m not touting this as one of the best films of the year, but it’s certainly an enjoyable one and a nice little surprise at that. Hilary Swank has a win for this one, but we still have to take her one project at a time.
B
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