American Animals: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A good but not great film, that insightfully diagnoses the American condition. 

American Animals, written and directed by Barry Layton, is based on the true story of a heist of rare books from the Transylvania University library in 2004. The film stars Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan. 

American Animals is a good, but not great film, that is fascinating because it accurately diagnoses and portrays what ails men in late stage American empire, namely the lack of meaning and purpose in their lives. 

Director Barry Layton takes this bizarre, real life story, and twists and turns it into a pseudo-Rashomon-eqsue documentary fiction piece of cultural criticism that resonates more thematically than in execution. 

Layton's sprinkles interviews with the actual people at the center of the real-life heist at Transylvania University in 2004 though out the film, which is a daring and interesting approach that works well. Cutting from the real Warren Lipka to Evan Peters playing Warren Lipka, makes for captivating cinema, and the truth is the real people often times seem more compelling than their fictional counterparts. 

Layton deftly weaves in all sorts of cultural commentary throughout the film, including a beautifully executed swipe at the Ocean's Eleven movies, which was so spot on in every single way I could barely contain myself. The fact that the female version of Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Eight, was playing in the theatre right next door, only made Layton's jab all the more effective. 

The cast all do solid work, with Evan Peters and the always intriguing Barry Keoghan carrying most of the weight. Peters and Keoghan are, just like the real Warren Lipjka and Spencer Reinhard, an interesting pair as they are so mismatched one wonders why they would ever come together in the first place. 

Keoghan's penchant for playing odd ducks (he was marvelous in last year's The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is on full display in American Animals. Keoghan's Reinhard is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, surrounded by desperate American angst. 

Peters' Lipka is a combustible concoction of resentment, arrogance and misplaced rage, who, unlike Reinhard, seems to have "Born to Lose" tattooed on his chest. Lipka might be the brains of the operation, and he also might be the balls of the operation, but the problem is he is severely deficient in both brains and balls. 

Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson play Chas Allen and Erick Borsuk respectively, and they do terrific work as well. While their characters are under written compared to Peters and Keoghan, both actors make the most of what is given them and add to the oddball mix of would-be heisters that seems so ill-conceived.

American Animals is less a heist movie, and more a commentary on the culture that loves and needs heist movies. For instance, both Reinhard and Lipka scour Hollywood heist movies in order to learn how to pull one off. While the heist is the main attraction, the more salient point on display in American Animals is the total lack of meaning in the lives of American men that lead them to be attracted to "heists" in the first place. 

Layton masterfully cuts to the bone of America and reveals the rot at its core. America is desperately and irreversibly in decline, and the American male is dying on the vine. One of the books the American Animals gang is trying to steal is written by Charles Darwin, which is ironic since these young men are symbolic of the fact that the American Male has evolved beyond his usefulness and is in fact, in a state of rapid devolution. As Layton exquisitely shows through the use of another of the books targeted by the heist, this one a collection of the works of John James Audubon, our current decadent age of the Flamingo has deluded American men away from their archetypal Hawk, resulting in a loss of connection with their true masculine nature.

In the end, as American men are taught to be Flamingos, they find that the Flamingo archetype does not resonate in their primal psyche, and so they try and reorient to their genetic, animalistic nature by overcompensating, which takes the form of violent or sexually aggressive behavior, in order to prove they indeed are not Flamingos, but really birds of prey…like the American Eagle. But the bad news is, that bird don't hunt anymore. The American Eagle has landed, had his wings and balls clipped and now clucks like a chicken and preens like a peacock. 

The American Animals on display in the movie American Animals are representative of the current state of the American Male and the desperate yearning for the a return of the endangered and nearly extinct Real American Man®™. The current American Male has been deconstructed, domesticated and emasculated. This is why gun violence (with gun as totem phallic symbol) is so prevalent, as are the use of viagra and pornography.

Masculine Nature has been overcome by too much Feminine Nurture, and when that balance goes out of whack the end the result is what is on display in American Animals, a bitter malaise and ennui leading to a misguided angry ambition, which will only further frustrate the American Male because he is now ill-equipped to express his rage in healthy and cathartic ways. 

For example, the real life events of American Animals take place in 2004, as the Iraq War raged half a world away. America lost that war because we are no longer the type of country that wins wars (we haven't won a war in over 70 years)…only the kind that talks loud enough to get ourselves into them. 

Lipka and Reinhard's motivation for the heist was the same thing that motivated men from Achilles to Chris Kyle over the centuries, they were ultimately searching for glory. Unlike Achilles and his ilk, Lipka and Reinhard also wanted a short cut to gaining wealth, which has become the new God of our age…and people think it will give meaning and purpose to their lives just like the old Judeo-Christian God gave meaning and purpose to people for two centuries. 

Enlisting and fighting in Iraq would maybe get Lipka and Rienhard some barstool glory, or a "thank you for your service" from some narcissistic poseur, but it could also get them killed or maimed for absolutely nothing, and it sure as hell wouldn't get them rich. So Lipka and Reinhard took another route…which is a much more typically modern American route than seeking glory on the battlefield, they took the route of Wall Street and Washington, they became thieves. The fraud/conman/thief is the archetype that resonates in our collective psyche right now, which is why we have the president, the politics, the economy, the media and the country we do. 

American Animals is fascinating for the themes it conjures and investigates, and although, like its characters, its artistic eyes are a bit bigger than its stomach, I found it to be a worthwhile cinematic endeavor. I thoroughly enjoyed American Animals and thought it was a very smart and insightful film, although never rising to the level of being a great one. 

If you want to see an accurate diagnosis of what drives late stage empire America, with its rampant opioid addiction, suicides, militarism, fraudulent economy, crumbling institutions, and spiritual decrepitude and dis-ease…then check out American Animals. If you prefer to be like a frog in boiling water and be oblivious to the growing heat around you…you might enjoy Hearts Beat Loud a whole lot more.

©2018  

Logan Lucky : A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!****

My Rating : 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SKIP IT. No use seeing this clunker anywhere or at anytime. 

Logan Lucky, written by "Rebecca Blunt" and directed by Steven Soderbergh, is the story of Jimmy Logan, a down on his luck West Virginian from a perpetually unlucky lineage, who decides to pull off a heist of a NASCAR race with his family and friends. The film stars Channing Tatum, and features supporting turns from Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Seth MacFarland, Katie Holmes and Hillary Swank.

A few years ago, director Steven Soderbergh announced he was retiring from directing movies. I know people who hold Soderbergh in the highest artistic regard, so much so they would place him on the Mount Rushmore of American filmmakers alongside Kurbick, Scorsese, Malick and Altman (or whatever filmmakers you may choose for such an honor), so when he retired they were downtrodden.  I have never disliked Soderbergh, but I have never held him in such high esteem either. Soderbergh is worshiped by critics, which, considering my tepid opinion of him, always makes me think of what Van Halen's frontman Diamond David Lee Roth said in 1984 about another critical darling, Elvis Costello, who is the musical equivalent of Steven Soderbergh. Roth said, " I think music critics LIKE Elvis Costello, because they LOOK LIKE Elvis Costello". I believe the same can be said of Steven Soderbergh. 

I think Soderbergh is a very skilled director, but if I am being honest, I think his greatest talent is in elevating otherwise mundane material into moderately above average films. Even his great films (meaning most successful financially and critically) like Traffic, Erin Brockovich and the Ocean's Eleven trilogy, are anything but transcendent. Traffic is arguably Soderbergh's best film and won him a Best Director Oscar, and while it is certainly an interesting film, it never rises to be a truly great one. 

That said, I did enjoy Sex, Lies and Videotape, Traffic and Che (maybe my favorite Soderbergh film), and was even entertained by the technical proficiency of the Ocean's Eleven franchise, so when I heard Soderbergh was returning from his self-imposed exile, I thought I'd go check out the fruit of his labor. 

The thought that came to my mind while I sat through the first third of Logan Lucky was…Steven Soderbergh came out of retirement for this? At the half way point of the film, the thought I had was…Soderbergh definitely should've stayed retired. In the final third of the film, it occurred to me…he did.

Logan Lucky is a derivative, repetitive, manipulative and painstakingly dull movie with no redeeming value whatsoever. The film is an homage to Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven films, and even self-consciously describes itself as Ocean's 7-11, a play on the fact that it is a heist movie featuring hillbillies in West Virginia and not professional thieves in Las Vegas. The question remains though, were people clamoring for a redneck Ocean's Eleven? And why would Soderbergh return to moviemaking with such an insidiously frivolous and insipid film that, even giving it every benefit of the doubt, has no artistic purpose to it and is devoid of any greater meaning? I understand that not all movies have to "mean" something, and I readily accept that Logan Lucky is meant to be nothing more than pure entertainment, but that still doesn't explain why it would be Soderbergh's comeback vehicle.

In terms of entertainment and fun, Logan Lucky fails in the most conspicuous way because it contains absolutely zero laughs. The continuing and only punchline in the film are the hillbillies who inhabit it, which makes Logan Lucky feel uncomfortably like a modern day version of Stepin Fetchit set in Appalachia meant to belittle and demean working class White people. Everyone in the movie is a one-dimensional idiot and a walking caricature and if they were a racial or religious minority would undoubtedly be considered extremely offensive. 

Another huge issue with a heist movie populated with idiotic bumpkins, is that it makes the heist seem totally unbelievable. In the Ocean's Eleven films you had professional thieves concocting elaborate schemes to rob a casino, and those films certainly strain credulity, but they are able to maintain a tenuous grasp upon reality because they have set up the premise of an all-star group of sophisticated con men attempting to pull off the job. In Logan Lucky, the exact opposite occurs, the set-up for the film is that everyone is a moron with "Born to Lose" tattooed in their chests, yet they are somehow able to conceive, coordinate and then pull off this complicated and convoluted heist in the most improbable way. The film suffers from this detachment from any sort of believability also because of its own disgust with the culture and people it portrays. 

The other problem with having a cast of characters that are all nitwits, is that you never connect with them, you only laugh at them. What this does is eliminate any sort of suspense or drama when they are trying to pull off the heist. You don't care if they get caught because you don't care about them. It is impossible for an audience to care about characters when the filmmaker doesn't, and in Logan Lucky, Soderbergh is holding up the rednecks for ridicule, not reflection. 

It doesn't help that uniformly, the cast does a second rate job of acting. The accents are all too big, too showy and hit too hard to be even remotely considered believable. And it seems everyone, with the notable exclusion of Channing Tatum, turns their character into a quirky  eccentric for quirkiness and eccentricities sake. The film is so stuffed with wacky, unreal characters it feels more like an homage to Hee-Haw than Ocean's Eleven.

Sadly, the film also boasts what may be three of the worst performances I've seen this year. Seth MacFarland, Hillary Swank and Katie Holmes are so bad in this movie it is staggering. MacFarland is so atrocious he should be banned from ever appearing on any screen, anywhere, ever again. Holmes  strains so hard to be her "character", I was afraid she was going to have a stroke. And Hillary Swank makes the unbelievably poor decision to try and imitate Clint Eastwood with her performance as an FBI agent. I am not kidding, she looks like a third-rate Rich Little trying to impersonate Clint, with everything from her voice to her posture mimicking the iconic tough guy. Not surprisingly, it comes off as amateurish, unreal and frankly embarrassing. 

What made the Ocean's Eleven films successful were that they were efficiently made, beautifully shot, and they allowed the audience to feel like they were hanging out with the biggest movie stars in the world. Men got to project themselves onto George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and company, while women got to project themselves with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and company. At their core though, what the Ocean's films really did, was give the celebrity worshiping audience an opportunity to watch good looking famous people have more fun than they ever would, at a party they could watch but weren't invited to enter.

Why Logan Lucky fails is that, while efficiently, but certainly not exquisitely, made, it gives the audience an opportunity to hang out with people with whom they would never choose to be around. It gives male audience members no one to project themselves onto, and gives female audience members no one to swoon over. At Logan Lucky's most basic level, it is an utter failure. The blame for that rests on Steven Soderbergh, and on screenwriter Rebecca Blunt, who may or may not be a real person, and may be a pseudonym for Soderbergh himself. I can see why Soderbergh would want to hide behind a fake name for churning out the piece of excrement that is this script. 

In the final analysis, unlike say Detroit, which was an awful movie about an important topic, Logan Lucky is a meaningless movie about nothing, so it being as dreadful as it is didn't make me angry, it just made me bored. I had no interest in anyone or anything in this movie. I was daydreaming and even considered leaving, but I figured, if nothing else, I'd sit in the air condition and enjoy the full two hours of cool darkness. That said, even if you are desperately attempting to avoid sun stroke or dehydration, don't do it by sitting through Logan Lucky. I recommend you embrace your heat induced hallucinations rather than waste your time and money sitting through this dead-on-arrival piece of detritus. And even if you stumble across it for free on tv, skip it, life is too short to spend two hours of it watching something as inconsequential and moribund as Steven Soderbergh's latest, and hopefully final, film.
 

©2017