The “true” story chronicles Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). a heroin dealer who adopts the financial wizardry of his Italian mafia peers to run the Harlemites working under him, and Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe, his arm still aching from throwing telephones at concierges), a cop whose honesty makes him a pariah within the corrupt police community. Even with that handicap, Roberts spends the movie closing in on the bust he needs to put Lucas away.

Not that we care. Director Ridley Scott is so concerned with developing the paradoxes of these two characters (Lucas as a Pablo Escobarian enemy of the state, but a community philanthropist and responsible family-man; Roberts a good cop but a fuck-up at home) that he neglects the plot and, difficult to fathom, character development.

Indeed, his characters are chess pieces—their abilities limited as Scott clumsily tosses foreshadowing and extraneous information into this 157-minute epic, giving the movie an “oh, but first this happened” feel.
Because it’s based on a true story, we’d normally forgive the obligatory car explosion, cop vs. criminal shoot-out, drive-by shooting, bad guy’s suicide via .22 to the mouth; but the whole movie is a cliché. Worst of all, it roots for Denzel’s ruthless,drug-dealing Lucas.

If you want genuine, gritty, ghetto realism, watch Full House re-runs.

-- Eric Siegel

While Dreamgirls has its moments--Eddie Murphy everytime he’s on stage and Jennifer Hudson’s show-stopper “And I am telling you I’m not going,” most of the songs were D.O.A. Take the song “Family,” which the composers wrote while on Methodone. The lyrics are juvenile, simplistic, preachy, like that song a few years back--by Whitney Houston or someone--”Teach the children” or something — it was that bad.

Yeah, the costumes are great, and the first half ever-so-slightly interesting. But when it gets into the corporate Motown stuff, and Beyonce Knowle’s watered-down-to-boring Diana Ross turn, and the absurdly “up” ending, our jaws hit our knees. Plus, we hate that guessing game shit. We totally get that this is about The Supremes. Ergo, the tiny kid doing the moonwalk is Michael Jackson. Can’t you just fucking call him Michael Jackson?

Bottom line, if the music sucks, then the musical sucks. Ok, some may argue that “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” had sucky music, but was still fun. Key word is “fun.” Rocky Horror never took itself seriously. Except for Eddie Murphy, this movie  always takes itself seriously (even to the point of putting in a part about Martin Luther King. If it wanted to comment on the 60s, it should have explored The Temptations “Psychodelic Soul” a great album that, paradoxicallly, dismayed many white fans). It lacks the delirous quality of “Singin’ in the Rain,” (and the dancing), the great music of all those Lerner & Loew and Rogers and Hammerstein vehicles, and we could go on. And Jamie Foxx’s Barry Gordy (we think) is kind of vapid and banal. It’s all so two-dimensional, like a head-achy dream that won’t end. We imagine the fat cat producers hashing out the pre-production details, asking each other: “Yes, it’s boring as hell, but is it boring enough?”

Guys, the answer is yes.

Dear Leo:

Saw your film, “Blood Diamond.” You recall that after The Aviator, we said you looked like a 12-year-old with a fake mustache, and that your naked scene in the room with the milk bottles was as believable as Ronald Reagan without legs. We take it back. A little. “Blood Diamond” isn’t more realistic, but the story is more important—how illegal diamonds, with the complicity of diamond syndicate DeBeers, helped Sierra Leone warlords fund their bloody revolution, massacre tens of thousands, displace a total of 2 million people, while forcing children into military service. Unlike Scorcese’s pathetic attempt to glorify a nutty billionaire racist, this film at least strives for gravitas. You try too, Leo, but your earnest Rhodesian accent gets screechy, and your attempt to act the racist towards Solomon Vandy, the fishermen forced by marauding rebels to search for diamonds, and your attempt to act turned-on by Maddy (Jennifer Connelly), the equally-screechy, laughably unbelievable American journalist, doesn’t quite convince the way, say, Al Pacino does in Glengarry GlenRoss.

I don’t know what the Zimbabweans make of your accent, but it struck me as Meryl Streepian. At first, I’m like, Wow, that sounds real; then I’m like, this guy sweats so much over the accent, he forgets to act. Worse, just when I’m thinking the movie has enough politics and mercenary intrigue to let me forgive its faults, it sinks into a tub of Hollywood sugar. Solomon not only gets his son back and escapes in a private plane to tell the world what he knows about blood diamonds, but you, mortally wounded, become suddenly GOOD, give Solomon his diamond, and, during a violin-soaked exitus, hold off 200 bad guys with a single rifle.

Reminds me of another movie—let’s see, starts with a T and co-stars Kate Winslet…never mind.

Sincerely,
Recharger

P.S. Hate to be all left-wing and shit, but the bad black guy--the Charles Taylor-like warlord called Captain Poison (David Harewood), is about 100 times more evil than you. I realize your white boss (Arnold Vosloo) is no saint either, but he is urbanely tolerable. Captain Poison oozes despicability. His villainy is out of the worst Marvel Comics. He even has an eyepatch. While you, Leo, are tanned and toned and get to explain your villainy (dad decapitated, mom raped and killed); Captain Poison is dark black and dirty and has no motivation other than greed.

Now why’s that, Leo? Could be he’s black and you’re, um, white?

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING – perhaps it is the art deco design, the needle, the, uh, erectness that spurs romance. Though, tragically, those are not qualities we associate with either Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan who fatefully meet here in Sleepless in Seattle (1993). In fact, Ryan is so non-sexual, it’s scary-easy to imagine her with a milk mustache. No, we prefer the testosterone-fueled King Kong, climbing to the movie’s climax, dragging screechy Fay Wray to the building’s (and, metaphorically, Kong’s) point.

New York Times columnist Emily Vasquez writes: “Midnight at the Empire State Building. Gone are the long lines, the strollers and the tour bus crowds. Instead, at 1,050 feet, with rain clouds colored pink, romance abounds.” Recharger, who accidentally tried to get into the Empire State Building on Valentines Day a few years back only to be met with lines stretching 8 blocks wonders, “Why are people so devoid of original romance--the kind we associate with real suffering--that they must visit the Empire State Building in a lame attempt to recreate romance from a very bad movie?”

ROOSEVELT ISLAND TRAM – For good reason, the tram in movies attracts evildoers—the Green Goblin in Spider-Man (2002), international terrorists in Nighthawks (1981). What better way to meet both Toby Maguire and Sylvester Stallone—not exactly cinematic soulmates—than to hijack the tram.

Any terrorist who actually destroyed the tram would probably get a medal. In September, 2005, after a power glitch, more than 80 people were stuck in the tram for 90 minutes. In April 2006, a mechanical bug stalled the tram for seven hours, trapping 69 people. Recharger wants to know where they peed.

SUBWAYS – To Hollywood, the subways are hells on wheels. In The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), four guys hi-jack a subway train. In The French Connection (1971) NYC cops in a car pursue a heroin dealer riding the subway above. In Hellboy (2004) the demon hero fights monsters in the subway and nearly destroys Palmer Street station.

In real life, the subways are boringly safe. Security has increased since 9/11 and many stations are getting beauty makeovers. The worst we have now are the pole-huggers, the baby hip-hoppers doing somersaults, the yuppies telling uninteresting stories about the Yankees. If a Palmer Street Station exists, you can be sure it’s got a Starbucks packed with people talking about--this is just a wild guess--condo prices.

APARTMENTS – Holly Golightly dresses like a fashion model, sings “Moon River” to her cat, happily shop-lifts, and otherwise makes being broke in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) look pretty chic. She lives in a studio walk-up, laughing at her Japanese neighbor (Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, the most racist caricature in film history), but that doesn’t stop her from throwing big parties—and her cat--against the wall.

Reality-wise, not bad. Except for the wild parties, the fashionable clothes, the Japanese neighbor, the cheap rent, and singing Moon River, this is EXACTLY how we live.

-- Leorenz Capili