Bad Cinema 2004: Closer

The Sublime and the Stupid
by Steve Finkelstein

Million Dollar Baby—Last year, Clint Eastwood directed Mystic River, which was one of 2003’s best pictures. This year, Clint has directed and starred (along with Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman) in Million Dollar Baby, which is one of 2004’s best pictures. Considering Clint is now 74, and many of his contemporaries are sucking applesauce through a straw at the motion picture retirement home in Woodland Hills, CA, this is a considerable achievement. In this film, Clint gives his best performance since Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire, which is saying a helluva lot.

Million Dollar Baby deals with Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), a fight trainer and manager who loses a promising fighter to another manager because Dunn is too timid to give this fighter a title shot. When this fighter wins the title, a former boxing contender who used to be managed by Eastwood and now works at his seedy gym (Freeman) urges him to take on a hard-working and promising female fighter (Swank). Eastwood reluctantly does this, which seems to propel the film into distaff Rocky territory, though far more intelligently and expertly than any of Stallone’s hackneyed boxing flicks. However, about 2/3 of the way through the film, an unexpected plot development occurs which gives the story an emotional depth that Stallone would be incapable of conjuring up. Let’s just say Million Dollar Baby is an anti-Rocky movie.

To give away more of the plot would spoil it for those readers who want to see the film (and that’s the problem with too many damn movie critics these days, idiotically blurting out too many plot details in print). Suffice to say, Morgan Freeman is also wonderful; if this fine actor doesn’t cop a supporting actor Oscar for his performance, there is no justice in the world. The chemistry between him and Eastwood is terrific, recalling their great work in Unforgiven. Hilary Swank is also excellent.

All that’s left to say is that Million Dollar Baby is one of the best films of the year and a testament to Clint Eastwood’s long body of work as a fine, unpretentious actor/ director. The dude is a true great American cinematic artist.

Blade: Trinity—In reviewing this film, I leap from one of the year’s best films to one of its stupidest. The plot of this film (if anyone cares), deals with the hybrid vampire/human Blade (Wesley Snipes), the perennial nemesis of full-blooded vampires who want to take over the world. In this insipid installment, the brood of bloodsucking boobs unearth that Vampire geezer Count Dracula himself, to further their plans to turn earth into the world’s biggest blood bank and to wipe out Blade.

I can’t say this is one of the year’s worst films, but like my take on Closer, it sure as hell comes close. There are some potentially very good plot ideas in this film, but they are buried by a surplus of hyperkinetic dumb action scenes, which consist of an endless array of boring car chases, chop-socky fights and ear-splitting hip-hop music destined to turn audience members into Marlee Matlin clones. Blade: Trinity is typical of the dumb action movies that have proliferated over the last twenty years. Thin on plot and long on clichéd action sequences, conceived by and designed for the generation brought up on MTV and video games, Blade: Trinity fails on even that superficial level. The film seems to be suffering from ADD; if ever a film needed a dose of Ritalin, it’s this one.

The acting is nothing to write home about either. Snipes infuses his character with a monotonous one-note intensity. Even worse is the dude who plays Dracula, who might very well give the worst rendition of that classic vampire ever captured on film. Instead of exuding elegant evil, this piece of beefcake comes across more like the Rock’s stunt double, more at home in a tag team match with Hulk Hogan than in the persona of a menacing bloodsucker.

Still, I did find the film to be occasionally entertaining because of its tongue-in-cheek (or tongue-in-fang) humor. In one priceless sequence, Blade is in a police station because he’s been framed on a murder rap perpetrated by the vampires. Interrogated by a psychiatrist trying to determine his sanity, the shrink asks Blade who the President is. “An asshole,” Snipes tautly sneers. This line caused me to bust a gut laughing and almost validated the film for me; almost, but not quite.

In wrapping things up, let me offer my scholarly prognosis: Blade—sane; his film—sucks (pardon the pun).

In my next article which will appear at the beginning of the New Year, I’ll offer up a list of what I think are 2004’s best films. Try to bear with the suspense until then. A merry Xmas and a happy new year to everyone.

See ya soon.

Steve can be reached at steve@babblog.com.