On Screen

...Sam loves the Beatles, but we never hear them sing on the soundtrack...

...Her overuse of the steadicam, of grotesque closeups, of slow and stop motion mutes the power and beauty of the actors in an attempt to milk each scene for every drop of sentiment...

...For most of the movie, the state is an unregenerate villain, but in the end it accepts Brewer's morality...

...Love and nurture exist in these worlds, but only as background abstractions...

...Collateral Damage's finale was too much for me, but I could take most of the film's silliness in stride because it never pretended to be anything except a dumb thriller...

...The mourners, like Brewer, express grief mainly through the desire for revenge...

...Instead, modern bands offer grating cover versions of the great group's songs, exacerbating the sense of inauthenticity...

...But as in all his best work, Altaian's farcical tendencies play out in a narrative with pathetic, even tragic turns...

...But what the film lets slide after he forgoes treatment is the terrible danger of his condition, and not just to himself...

...When little Lucy (Dakota Fanning) reaches Sam's mental age, the "authorities," fat and satanically goateed and often shot in silhouette, take her forcibly from him, putting her first into an orphanage and then in foster care...

...In Collateral Damage, the latest thriller from Andrew Davis, the hero's travails begin before the opening credits flash the director's name...

...After a perfunctory montage showing Gordon Brewer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a Los Angeles firefighter, receiving unconditional love from his perfect wife and young son, he witnesses their deaths at an outdoor cafe...

...Aftermuch consideration and delay...

...First he begs Peter Brandt (Elias Koteas), a CIA agent, to hunt down the killer and his cohort, but is turned away...

...So the Fowlers, who have become estranged, reunite to plan their vengeance...

...Because John is working and has insurance, he cannot qualify for government assistance...

...The film centers on the efforts of the trapped men to defend themselves, and the resolve of their comrades back at the base to reinfiltrate the city and rescue them from hordes of Somali attackers...

...Having endorsed a vigilante killer bent on defying the hapless U.S...

...Hordes" is precisely the right word...

...Most of Altman's trademark obsessions can be found here: There are instances of sexual intrigue, mistaken identity and genre parody—this time, of the Charlie Chan murder mystery...

...Black Hawk Down conveys the unholy impression that the U.S...

...One key scene mirrors the confrontation between Brewer and El Lobo: A Somalian officer interrogating a captured American GI waxes crazily about how his people will never accept American democracy because the only language in Somalia is the language of killing...

...In the end we are asked to view the horrible frigidity Matt shows Ruth following their loss as a kind of courageous stoicism, a cousin to the manly stoninessthatmade Schwarzenegger an idol in the Ronald Reagan era...

...In the Bedroom proceeds with greater deliberateness than Collateral Damage and features far stronger performances...

...The characters' multiple allusions to Kramer vs...

...However, I must take a moment, belatedly, to thank heaven and Robert Altman for the real thing, Gosford Park, a film I can praise without equivocation...

...I can't think of another movie with so many instances of white-onblack violence...

...indeed, despite regularly breaking the law, he is ultimately applauded...

...Dropping heavy hints that our boys should never have been sent to Somalia in the first place, Scott dramatizes one of the worst military blunders in recent U.S...

...The moment their perverse versions of family values are restored, the closing credits roll...

...His initially reluctant lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the first to come around, but the list of Sam's fans grows to include even Lucy's foster mother (Laura Dein), who tearfully hands the child back to him...

...As it progresses, though, the characters shrink in stature...

...Like Black Hawk Down, A Beautiful Mind is aimed at both popular and discriminating audiences...

...The message is that the creators of the country's ineffective policies regarding terrorism should take a lesson from Brewer's frenzied recklessness...

...Although not a revenge story...

...The film has no central figure...

...I Am Sam has such a preposterous plot that one feels director and co-scenarist Jessie Nelson is more interested in getting you to weep than in making her characters or situations believable...

...Murder mends a broken home...

...And in this era of corporate scandal and divided government the genre is more favored than ever...

...Disregarding the unanimous warnings of caretakers, he goes off the medication, manages to keep his demons at bay, and ultimately wins the Nobel Prize...

...Psychiatry gets a bad rap as well in I Am Sam, the most maudlin and manipulative of this spate of films...

...it tells them they simply lack willpower...

...IF I Am Sam is the least effective of the current crop of distorted Capraesque movies, John Q is the most affecting, probably because it evokes an actual ongoing national crisis...

...Even though John 0 parades many of the usual implausibilities, including another ridiculously happy ending that involves harvesting the heart of a dying supermodel (a car accident victim listed in the credits as Beautiful Woman), the work scores points by giving faces and names to the heartless establishment...

...I don't have the space to recount all of its story lines orto name its huge cast of brilliant actors, but I can confidently say it is the best entry of the new millennium, and I heartily recommend it...

...Disgusted, Brewer does what any burly, fiftysomething guy would do...

...Black Hawk Down, again like Collateral Damage and In the Bedroom, promotes the virtue of pawns over kings...

...And Ruth, a silent sufferer who unjustly claims responsibility for her family's lack of communication, devolves into a cardboard rendition of Lady Macbeth...

...Davis is far too busy trying to convince us that Brewer deserves a return to domestic tranquillity after his Joblike ordeal...

...they numb his senses and prevent him from concentrating on his work...

...Sam Dawson (Sean Perai), a man with autistic tendencies and the IQ of a seven-year-old, fathers a child with a homeless woman who quickly exits the scene...

...The HMO will only pay up to $20,000 and refuses to sanction what it decides is elective surgery...

...And again, this time because of legal technicalities, the system fails them...

...military consists almost entirely of white GQ models (I counted only two African-Americans with significant speaking parts), while the opposing force is portrayed as a mass of fierce, wiry aggressors, each of them hateful, all of them black...

...After assuring us it has something to reveal about the pains of familial life and the salve of grief, it crushes that promise...

...history...

...These are supposed to be the sentiments of a madman, but both Collateral Damage and In the Bedroom embrace El Lobo's philosophy...

...After raising all the money he can and learning that his dying son is nevertheless about to be dismissed, John confronts the head surgeon at gunpoint, locks him in the emergency room with a colorful array of patients, and warns the police who then surround the place that heads will roll if his boy is not put at the top of the heart recipient list...

...Our losses counted for a tiny fraction of the casualties during this encounter, yet the picture dwells melodramatically on every American death and never spends more than a few seconds recording the bloody fall of foes...

...Here again we see the director supporting the enemy's ideals...

...Kramer, a much better film about a custody battle, further weaken this shallow imitation...

...Fortunately for him, El Lobo's globeshattering network is something of a mom-and-pop organization...

...The director clearly isn't much concerned with the poor lad, who, when he finds out what Brewer has done, is bound to develop an Oedipus complex the size of both Americas...

...Lucy seems the most mature figure in the movie: She is impeccably well-behaved, understands everything that is said to her, and desires nothing more than quality time with her father...

...The film thus caps an antiestablishment premise with a reactionary resolution...

...All three of these films view hatred as a spur to heroism...

...The scientific establishment—represented by the medical community—is the bugbear here, and it acquiesces to Nash's resolve when it awards him the big Prize...

...It is as original and surprising as the other films I've mentioned are predictable and self-defeating...

...As in Collateral Damage and .-1 Beautiful Mind, the inept system capitulates to the emotions of the protagonists, rewarding them by adopting their positions...

...The guiding principles of Collateral Damage are curiously similar to those of Todd Field's In the Bedroom, though the latter is touted as a wine-and-brie affair, a highbrow alternative to the shenanigans of the Schwarzenegger set...

...But even this blow does not offer enough closure for the filmmakers...

...When he returns home, Ruth offers him loving gestures she has not displayed since tending to her son...

...a more apt title would be A Hideous Lie...

...But it is not significantly deeper than the actionmovie...

...The film does a good job of demonstrating the vast divide between the security enjoyed by the Woods and Heche characters and the struggles of the unprivileged Archibalds, victims of the cold professionalism and efficiency of their antagonists...

...Pfeiffer, too, is luminous and Fanning adorable, but Nelson's lumbering style gives the impression that she resents their efforts...

...Major General William Garrison (Sam Shepard), well-meaning but foolish, orders his men into the heart of Mogadishu, where they are ambushed and pinned down by the opposition...

...He goes to Colombia to pursue El Lobo on his own...

...Despite the uncanny violence on screen, Black Hawk Down lends no insight into war...

...Straddling the markets discussed above, it serves up blindingly violent battle scenes while trying to garner art house points with its commentary on the war in Somalia, where it is set...

...It stacks the deck in Sam's favor by portraying him as incredibly sweet, utterly without guile or malice...

...During the courtroom proceedings that ensue, lawyers plant a few legitimate doubts about the father's ability to provide for a growing child, but the film never seriously questions whether Sam and Lucy should be living together...

...Doctors and loved ones convince him to go on medication, but Nash cannot bear the side effects of the pills...

...Most of Scott's shots are of explosions and carnage...

...In the effective montage sequence of Archibald petitioning various organizations for help, he discovers that the factory where he works has reclassified him as a part-time laborer and transferred his medical policy to an HMO without his consent...

...In the outrageous last scene, Brewer joyfully embraces the child of his antagonists, taking on the role of surrogate father...

...In the company I have described, a competent effort like John Q comes across like a classic...

...Set in 1932, it is about a group of aristocrats who gather, servants in tow, at an English country house for a weekend of conversation, food and shooting fowl...

...This fairy tale, which has very little to do with the real Nash, presents itself as a challenge to our sense of normalcy...

...Sam's good heart and the mutual love between him and Lucy finally melt the opposition to their reunion...

...The boss works on such a small scale that he carnes out the hits himself, often accompanied by his wife and son...

...At best, the parents' lawyer says, Strout will get a light prison sentence...

...As in Collateral Damage, law and order are superseded by a stronger, more bitter initiative...

...Each is obsessed with combat...

...I hope those who take needed medication that has abhorrent side effects will not see this movie...

...The Fowlers fight their lawyers and each other before uniting against Strout...

...When the butchery stops, the characters recite a few jejune words about bravery and the screen goes dark...

...When Brewer learns that the perpetrators have shrugged off the demise of his family as "collateral damage," he seeks revenge...

...Brewer must battle Brandt and other officials to achieve his victory over El Lobo...

...A Colombian terrorist known as El Lobo (Cliff Curtis) has set off a bomb in the crowded square with the intent of assassinating a U.S...

...Perm does a fine job as Sam...

...as they pile up, the audience cannot help but grow numb to the dying...

...Based on the life of mathematical genius John Nash (Russell Crowe), it tells the story of a brilliant psychotic, a man so disturbed he cannot distinguish between physical reality and figments of his imagination...

...official...

...She should be administrating a center for all the other characters, who are prone to pettiness and tantrums...

...Despite its many subplots, the picture gels into a genuinely moving experience...

...Earlier he tossed furni ture out the window, came close to beating his wife, and almost drowned his infant son in the bathtub...

...The film is a cruel variation on Capra's triumphant thoughtful striver...

...The picture never suggests its hero is wrong to goad our nation toward retaliatory violence...

...In one of the most ludicrous episodes in Collateral Damage, El Lobo, having cornered Brewer in Colombia, raves about how Americans hide behind "family values" and don't understand the necessity of war...

...instead, it follows over 20 individuals above and below stairs, relating a variety of plots that unfold with delightful unpredictability...

...In an era when directors like John Woo and Michael Bay (not to mention Ridley Scott, whom I'll come to shortly) prettify their pulp narratives with pretentious tableaux that bloat the running time for the sake of building "mood," I found Davis' by-the-numbers pacing refreshingly retro...

...Stories of institutions failing to match the moral rectitude of main characters are now as likely to appear at the multiplex as in the art house...

...This somber movie concerns Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), whose grown-up son is murdered by his girlfriend's abusive ex-husband, Richard Strout (William Mapother...

...It never bothers to imagine what peace would be like...

...Matt tracks down and shoots the killer, burying the body where no one will ever find it...

...Brewer, dodging Brandt's blundering interventions, smokes out the clan, chases them to the U.S., and at the climax brutally kills the murderous couple, finishing the bloodbath by whacking El Lobo in the chest with an ax...

...From what I understand about the kind of psychosis we are shown, no act of will can correct it...

...Unlike the best recent war films, Black Hawk Down focuses exclusively on how war ravages the American side...

...government, the script has the same government finally renege and approve Brewer's actions, rewarding him with little Lobo...

...At the hospital, the chief heart surgeon (James Woods) tells the Archibalds the boy needs a transplant, but the hospital's administrator (Anne Heche) informs the desperate parents their insurance will not cover the procedure, which costs a quarter million dollars...

...severe chemical imbalances in the brain are involved...

...But the crudeness of In the Bedroom is much harder to forgive...

...Field's work spends its first hour developing flawed yet sympathetic figures and crises that are powerfully realistic...

...About an hour in, I began to envision white supremacists greedily purchasing the video and screening it repeatedly for their friends...

...We should, it pleads, be able to see through Nash's bizarre mannerisms to the sweet and clever guy underneath...

...Asimilar hypocrisy burns through in Ridley Scott's ghastly ? lack Hawk Down, which has not only won critical acclaim but also made a killing at the box office...

...Other recent releases that dwell on the stupidity, corruption and misguidedness of American institutions are less violent, but their conclusions are equally reactionary...

...John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington) is barely making ends meet for his wife (Kimberly Elise) and child (Daniel E. Smith) when young Mike collapses in the middle of a Little League game...

...Black Hawk Down is merely the most vulgar and obvious of the lot...