Bride & Prejudice

Directed by Gurinder Chadha Starring Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Bollywood's mushy melodrama, lavish designs and glorious performance numbers have become institutions in their native India, while its aesthetics and sounds have also cast a spell over Western pop culture. The influence has been multimedia and far ranging, from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! to Truth Hurts' hit song "Addictive." But B-wood musicals remain mostly veiled to North American moviegoers, and their local runs at Raja Cinemas perpetually fail to make the review and listing sections of the mainstream press. Fresh off the sleeper success of Bend It Like Beckham, director Gurinder Chadha seems like a promising matchmaker to properly introduce Hindi sense and sensibilities to Western audiences. Unfortunately, her seemingly ingenious bhangra-song-and-kathak-dance update of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice dilutes that piquant masala flavour to cater to the food-court palette.

In Bride & Prejudice, Bollywood's reining queen Aishwarya Rai of Devdas stars as Elizabeth Bennet - oops - Lalita Bashki, one of the prized daughters for whom her traditional Indian family eagerly wants to find a suitor. Martin Henderson plays pompous American hotel-empire heir "Will" Darcy, who accompanies his pal Bingley - sorry - Balraj (Naveen Andrews) to the rural Amritsar to arrange a monsoon wedding. Mr. Darcy's nemesis Wickham (Daniel Gillies) happens to be vacationing at a local beach resort where Ashanti is conveniently plugging her new track.

Other than trimming an hour off the typical three-hour-plus running time, the film follows most of Bollywood's wet-sari, no-kissing traditions step by step. Still, its various concessions aimed at kid-gloving Western audiences are decidedly underwhelming. Not only are its musical interludes few and far between, but the film frequently cuts away from the convoluted choreography so characters can relay English lyrical translation and poke fun at peculiar dance moves. Quite a number of scenes - such as the opening montage - scream for musical treatment but fall on Chadha's deaf ear. Rai bears a bizarre resemblance to a younger and slimmer Kirstie Alley here, while the director must have explicitly instructed Henderson to imitate Tom Cruise. His Mr. Darcy even sports a haircut and a tan jacket seemingly fallen from Vanilla Sky. All this attention to trifling detail quickly becomes tedious, and Bride & Prejudice ultimately does as much justice to the satin allure of B-wood as does The Guru. Since Harvey Weinstein handily makes a cameo during the end-credits outtakes, you get the idea who's to blame.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Directed by Niels Mueller Starring Sean Penn, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson and Naomi Watts

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Boasting impressive credentials including stars Sean Penn, Don Cheadle and Naomi Watts, as well as producers Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne and Leonardo DiCaprio, last year's award-season leftover The Assassination of Richard Nixon must have been promising on the drawing board. Based on a real-life botched plot to crash a hijacked plane into the White House, it has an eerie post-9/11 timeliness. But it ultimately unfolds as a pretentious by-the-numbers Taxi Driver rip-off. In fact, first-time director Niels Mueller demonstrates a blind ambition for superfluous acclaim rather than probing social commentary.

The film re-imagines assailant Samuel Byck as Sam Bicke (Penn), an all-around loser struggling to get a grip on his failed career and personal life. With his idealist conscience often eclipsing work-a-day-world practicality, he is unable to hold a steady job and support his family. Unrelenting motifs of American-dream-fulfillment Cadillacs, ruthless Dale Carnegie/Norman Vincent Peale mantras, racial repression and televised Watergate coverage endlessly divulge his sense of disenfranchisement. As his slimy boss (Jack Thompson) suggests Tricky Dick as a model salesman who twice closed the deal with American voters pitching identical plans to end the Vietnam War, a target emerges in Bicke's quest for prominence and social justice.

Though few Scorsese homages have managed to make the riveting impression of Gaspar Noé's teeth-gnashing I Stand Alone, that path still serves as a shortcut for novice filmmakers starving for attention. In spite of Mueller's repeated denial in the Assassination press notes of any Taxi Driver influence, parallels between the two films go beyond the thematic and the protagonists' names. His film similarly relies on voice-over narrations - lent by Bicke's reverential messages to Leonard Bernstein that evoke Eminem's "Stan." Bicke's clinging to his estranged wife (Watts) emulates Travis Bickle's stalking of campaign aid Betsy, just as Bicke's rehearsals of the hijack are reminiscent of Bickle's "You talkin' to me?" routine. A strip joint also serves as a flippant replacement for the porn theatre Bickle frequented.

Although Taxi Driver lacked Mamet-esque white-collar disaffection in its pathology case study, Mueller's treatment isn't exactly novel after Falling Down. Assassination chokes on its aesthetics deep throat, with excessive non-diegetic sound, jittery camera and Steven M. Stern’s pseudo-Philip Glass score rescinding any sense of alienation. The most remarkable element is Penn's dependably intense performance, which is always something to behold.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Born Into Brothels

Directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

The Oscar-nominated documentary Born Into Brothels wades into the suffocating squalor of Calcutta's infamous Sonagachi red-light district to meet the prostitutes' children, all between the ages of 10 and 14. Surrounded by poverty, filth, negligent parents and vulgar neighbours, they cope with being the dregs of a rigid caste system, endure deadening dawn-to-dusk domestic toil, and face a grim future in which teenaged girls have little choice but to join the family business. Their tragic existences in this clandestine underworld undeniably make a compelling feature.

Photojournalist - and the film's co-director - Zana Briski initially lived in a brothel to capture the lives of prostitutes, and ended up supplying photography lessons, point-and-shoot cameras and film stock to their kids. They each assembled a portfolio of arresting, vibrant, spontaneous and layered snapshots, for which Briski then worked hard to attain exposure through various exhibitions, an Amnesty International calendar and a Sotheby's auction. Convinced that a boarding-school education was the children's only ticket out of the Sonagachi sewer, she raised tuition money selling their work.

Briski's noble efforts emerge as the film's dominant narrative. She thanklessly cuts through bureaucratic red tape to secure a passport for the prodigious 12-year-old Avijit to attend a World Press Photo conference in Amsterdam, persuades boarding schools to admit the kids, and takes them to a clinic to get STD tests. The film's arguably more significant and riveting accounts from the children's own perspectives unfortunately lack focus and take a back seat. This presents a curious contrast to the segment in The Five Obstructions, during which Lars von Trier sought to challenge Jørgen Leth's detachment as a documentarian by sending him to shoot in Bombay's Falkland Road red-light district. Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman have considerably more access to the brothel and its inhabitants than Leth did, and she even becomes a major figure in the daily lives of her subjects. Yet with Briski's own viewpoint overpowering those of the children, Born Into Brothels emanates that adverse sense of detachment. It's possible to misconstrue this as subconscious colonialism on the part of the directors, since the kids here seem more like Briski's charity cases than subjects she's recording.

Despite its flaws, the film renders some truly heartbreaking vignettes in which the children grapple with their bleak reality. Briski provides a few practical examples to assuage their predicament, and perhaps some viewers will find her efforts inspirational.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

Directed by Prachya Pinkaew Starring Tony Jaa

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

The recent crop of Thai films filling festivals and theatres worldwide offers a diverse array of idiosyncratic fare such as Blissfully Yours and Tears of the Black Tiger as well as pop flicks like The Eye and The Legend of Suriyothai. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is one of the latter, an homage to Bruce Lee that's also tailor-made to showcase the kickboxing prowess of its star Tony Jaa. Even though its generic storylines lack punch, the film is far from weak. Without benefits of stuntmen or CGI, it kicks the bar of its genre up several notches such that it might become a cult favourite and turn Jaa into a superstar.

The film opens amidst a timeless rural backdrop where the theft of a Buddha statue's head jeopardizes the fortunes of a small village. An orphan raised by a monk (Woranard Tantipidok) and trained in Muay Thai, Jaa's character Ting is the town's only hope of retrieving its treasure. After villagers have pitched in their life savings, Ting journeys to a seedy Bangkok where music video-style slow motion, fades, jump cuts and an inauthentic hip-hop score scream culture shock.

Despite his master's warning never to unleash his unmatched martial arts skills on ignorant poor souls, Ting is resolved to get back the plunder at all costs. The thief (Wannakit Siriput) conveniently hangs out at an underground fight club where an assortment of challengers awaits, including the stereotypical Caucasian villain (Nick Kara) who instigates a fight by roughing up a lady and talking such bewildering if not infuriating trash as "Thai women go to my country to become hookers!" What ensues is reminiscent of Lee's squashing racial oppression and rallying Asian representation on film, the thematic context that Jackie Chan and Jet Li never explicitly break into perhaps for fear it might alienate their international audiences.

Director Prachya Pinkaew packs Ong Bak with fights, chases and explosions to compensate for its general lack of plots, but he adds an indigenous flavour - such as utilizing local three-wheel taxis for a car chase - to keep these hackneyed elements fresh. Still, none of this would be possible without Jaa. Aside from giving a disarmingly earnest performance, he is a one-man special effect who defies gravity without wires. His shtick might get old some day, but for now it'd be impossible to take your eyes off of him.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Wedding Date

Directed by Clare Kilner Starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

For or better or worse, moviegoers remain faithful to cinematic weddings. Be it Muriel's, Betsy's or Julia Roberts' best friend's. Be it American, Polish, or big fat Greek. Even the banquet, the planner and the singer seem to get warm receptions at the box office. If they throw in three extra weddings and a funeral, they'll even win over Academy voters. Geniuses in Hollywood must have figured that the nuptial theme and a Pretty Woman twist would make a perfect match. But with tin cans of well-worn clichés in tow, The Wedding Date should probably have kept its better-suited original title, Something Borrowed.

Debra Messing is Kat, a single, flaky Kirsten Dunst-esque Manhattanite who would be more convincing as a Californian. Her half-sister Amy (Amy Adams) is a spunky Reese Witherspoon-ish bride-to-be. One can only imagine other A-listers who might have turned down this film. Anyway, Kat rents escort Nick (Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her to London to attend Amy's wedding, so she can alleviate put-downs from her mother (Holland Taylor) and also one-up a heartless old flame (Jeremy Sheffield) who happens to be the best man. Much to her surprise, Nick turns out to be a dreamy hooker with an Ivy League education and (gasp!) a heart of gold. Money apparently can indeed buy you love.

Aside from its derivativeness, the film is often absurd. Elizabeth Young's source novel, Asking for Trouble, is an opportunistic Bridget Jones knock-off complete with that oh-so-charming Englishness. By converting half of the characters to American ex-pats, The Wedding Date divorces itself from the most interesting aspect of the novel. Screenwriter Dana Fox doesn't attempt to make up for the awkwardness brought about by the change. Instead she showers the script with more glaring plot holes - such as Kat trying to board an international flight out of JFK 15 minutes before departure, which would be impossible even in a pre-9/11 world.

Unlike most romantic comedies about matrimony, the film is rarely festive or even intentionally funny. Fox's inept screenplay hopelessly tries to inform sketchy back stories and nonexistent character developments to no avail. Characters incessantly blab out their every thought, to the point that they don’t seem to care about others listening in on their private conversations. When a nasty can of worms opens in the film's final act, you'll wish the theatre lobby had an open bar.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Sea Inside

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar Starring Javier Bardem

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

The advertisements might give the impression that The Sea Inside is a stirring true story about transcending physical paralysis, but the life aquatic with Ramón Sampedro isn't exactly uplifting. The Spanish quadriplegic poet portrayed by Javier Bardem spent some 30 years trying to end his life, even though potential lifesavers such as poetry, imagination and love were within his reach. Here we get glimpses of his relationships with joyless family members, a lawyer (Belén Rueda) crippled by the degenerative CADASIL disease who fights for his right to die and encourages his writing, plus a laid-off single mother (Lola Dueñas) who makes it a personal crusade to find him a reason to stay alive.

This effort falls short of persuasively pleading its case amid the recent wave of films touching on the divisive subject of euthanasia including The Barbarian Invasions and The Event. They all seek to show patients drowning in misery and gasping for a way out, as well as illustrate the moral and ethical dilemmas of such a choice for their loved ones. But The Sea Inside trivializes the Sampedros' constant battles by not depicting their daily routine of suffering and sacrifice in graphic detail. Without witnessing first-hand the laborious process of washing, changing and cleaning up after bodily discharges, it's impossible for viewers to fully grasp the undignified aspects of Sampedro's existence and justify his pursuit of the big sleep. The film also curiously omits much of the legal proceedings that made him a household name in Spain, sparing viewers a generic courtroom drama but also skipping some big-picture perspective on the assisted-suicide debate.

Sampedro's poetry and Javier Aguirresarobe's sweeping cinematography supply the film's more memorable moments where viewers actually gain rare access to the poet's perspective. The most salient scene is a fantasy sequence in which Sampedro's imagination literally takes flight, out to the sea of his youth where he suffered the irrevocable injury. The rest of the film is somewhat suffocating and debilitating, with non-engaging stereotypical characters and pedestrian dialogue worthy of a TV soap.

Director/co-writer Alejandro Amenábar has capably fashioned mysterious atmospheres in Open Your Eyes and The Others, but here his cold and detached style doesn't really float a story that carries the weight of a melodrama. Unlike the third act of Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside merely splashes at ripples on the surface without reaching the emotional depths below.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Woodsman

Directed by Nicole Kassell Starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

One of the few cringe-worthy taboos remaining in a post-Monicagate world, child molestation has become a dinner-table topic thanks to extensive media coverage of Michael Jackson's decade-long legal woes and the 2002 scandal involving Catholic priests. Stanley Kubrick's Lolita addressed the subject on celluloid back in 1962, but Happiness would still lose its original American distributor nearly four decades later due to Todd Solondz's more frank treatment. The floodgate only opened recently as general heightened awareness of the issue led to considerably less outrage surrounding Mystic River, L.I.E. and Capturing the Friedmans.

The Woodsman is of note because it is possibly the first film to depict a child molester chipping away at his inner demons. While the flawed effort offers little else, it boasts a fascinatingly complex and unnervingly unprejudiced portrayal of its predatory protagonist. Walter (Kevin Bacon) has emerged from serving 12 years for the crime and tries to carve out a life for himself outside the prison walls. He cautiously rebuffs friendly gestures from a coworker at his new lumberyard job, attempts to reach out to the family that disowned him, resists temptations all around, endures taunts and harassment, and presses his therapist as to when he will finally be "normal." Disturbingly, Walter's splintered existence only seems completely unperturbed when he works his charm on potential prey.

Often contrasting Walter's instinctive thought process and his struggle to suppress it, the film elicits both disgust and sympathy from viewers. This effect might not have been possible without Bacon's nuanced and multifaceted performance. A therapy session - where Walter bridges a connection between a seemingly innocuous childhood memory and how it manifests into his deviance - is perhaps the film's most emotionally charged moment thanks to the actor's gripping turn.

Still, The Woodsman has plenty of defects. First-time director Nicole Kassell has that fresh-out-of-film-school eagerness to install the unvarnished texture and the freeze-frames from the 1970s to ostentatious effect. Steven Fechter and Kassell's screenplay also often gets lost in loose-fitting minor characters and wobbly subplots. Despite praiseworthy performances by Kyra Sedgwick and Mos Def, tangents involving their characters are unconvincing. Not only does Walter inexplicably live in an apartment that is a box seat for the playground directly across the street, he later hypocritically sets out to protect children from other sexual predators. When the film ultimately stacks the pile too high with calculated confrontations with molestation victims, it finally wanders off into the forest of contrivance.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Million Dollar Baby

Directed by Clint Eastwood Starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

For all its train-wreck brutality, boxing dependably delivers knockout entertainment that has viewers reflexively dodging punches and vicariously experiencing an adrenaline rush. True champions among boxing films - such as the biographical Raging Bull, Ali, and the inspirational first Rocky - are almost not about the sport. Yet the identification with characters and their against-all-odds struggles intensify viewers' reactions to every blow thrown in the protagonists' faces.

In Million Dollar Baby, director Clint Eastwood supplies the expected series of routine set pieces like those seen in Girlfight. But a surprisingly sentimental final round advances the film to somewhat of a B-movie masterpiece.

Eastwood's character, Frankie Dunn, is a predictably world-weary trainer whose chip on the shoulder stems from an estrangement from his daughter, an old pal's injury, and losing a pupil to a hotshot manager. Frankie begrudgingly takes under his wing Hilary Swank's feisty underdog Maggie, who has left her trailer-trash family and forages leftovers from a table-waiting job in order to pursue her elusive dream. Morgan Freeman's Scrap tends Frankie's gym and also lends his unmistakable deep voice to narrate the film as if it were a sequel to The Shawshank Redemption.

Million Dollar Baby is a throwback to smaller 1950s' matinee flicks usually shown as double-bills alongside expensive star vehicles. It's an accessible, solid story without any Michael Bay music-video slickness or art-film pretensions. Eastwood is a wildly inconsistent filmmaker, but he seems to be at top form when he is working within the confines of a discernable genre and resisting its clichés as with Unforgiven. Million Dollar Baby is not entirely flawless in that regard, and there is no short supply of stock one-dimensional opponents answering the bell in and out of the ring. But with the gradual development of a surrogate father-daughter relationship between Frankie and Maggie, the film steadily transcends conventional expectations.

Eastwood not only drops a few uncustomary tears on screen, but he strikes some of the most intimate and tender notes in his directorial work to date. He locates the heart of this character-driven piece by employing an earnest, minimalist style and a contemplative score that he composed himself, rather than resorting to typical low-angle hero shots and soaring musical cues. Maggie's against-the-ropes personal setback in the final act doesn't register as manipulative, but it will leave few viewers unmoved.

© Copyright 2005 Westender. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.