Spoof Of Strife

SHOW TIMES AMERICAN HOUSE OF CINEMA Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel M: Kievskaya, 941-8747 (All films in English; Russian headphone translation Tue.-Sun.) Proof of Life Apr. 19: 22.00; Apr. 21: 16.30, 23.00; Apr. 24: 22.30 Watcher Apr. 19: 20.20; Apr. 21: 19.00; Apr. 24: 20.00 Enemy at the Gates Apr. 21: 14.00, 20.40 Hannibal Apr. 26: 22.30; Apr. 28: 18.00, 22.30; Apr. 29: 14.00, 19.00, 23.00 Heartbreakers Apr. 26: 20.00; Apr. 28: 20.30; Apr. 29: 16.30, 21.00   DOME CINEMA 18/1, Olympiysky prospekt M: Prospect Mira, 931-98-73 (All films in English; Russian headphone translation by headphones) Snatch Apr. 20: 19.00, 21.30, 23.45; Apr. 22: 14.20, 16.30, 19.00, 21.30; Apr. 24: 19.30, 21.30; Apr. 25 - 26: 16.30, 19.00, 21.30; Apr. 27: 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 23.45; Apr. 28: 14.20, 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 23.45; Apr. 29: 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 23.45 102 Dalmatians Apr. 22, 28: 12.30; Apr. 29: 12.30, 14.30   35 MM 47/24, Ul. Pokrovka M: Krasnye Vorota, 917-5492 Der Krieger und die Kaiserin Apr. 19 - 21: 9.00, 11.30, 14.00, 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 00.00; Apr. 22: 9.00, 14.00, 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 00.00; Apr. 23 - 25: 9.00, 11.30, 14.00, 16.30, 19.00, 21.30, 00.00; Apr. 26: 9.00, 11.30, 14.00, 16.30   KHUDOZHESTVENNY 14, Arbatskaya ploshchad M: Arbatskaya, 291-9624 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Apr. 19 - 25: 13.00, 17.00; Apr. 26 - 29: 10.30, 12.30, 17.00 Traffic Apr. 19 - 25: 21.00 Hannibal Apr. 26 - 29: 14.30, 19.00, 21.30 Yady, ily Vsemirnaya Istoria Otravleniy Apr. 19 - 25: 11.00, 15.00, 19.00   GORIZONT 21/10, Komsomolsky prospekt M: Frunzenskaya, 245-3143 Requiem for a Dream Apr. 5-15: 9.00, 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, 17.00, 19.00, 21.00, 23.00, 01.00   ROLAN 12a, Chistoprudny bulvar M: Chistye Prudy, 916-9190 Snatch Apr. 19: 20.30, 22.30; Apr. 20 - 25: 17.00, 21.15, 23.30; Traffic Apr. 19: 20.45 The Watcher Apr. 19: 13.30, 18.00; Apr. 20 - 25: 15.00, 19.00 Enemy at the Gates Apr.19: 15.30 Billy Elliot Apr. 19: 12.00, 14.15, 16.30; Apr. 20 - 25: 12.00, 16.00, 18.15 Cansas-City Apr. 19: 00.30 Sweet and Lowdown Apr. 21: 00.30 Ylya Mouromets Apr. 20 - 25: 11.00, 13.30 Yady, or Vsemirnaya Istoria Otravleni Apr. 19: 18.45, 23.15; Apr. 20 - 25: 14.00, 20.30, 22.30   PUSHKINSKY 2, Pushkinskaya ploshchad M: Pushkinskaya/Chechovskaya, 229-2111 Yady, ily Vsemirnaya Istoria Otravleniy Apr. 19: 19.30, 22.30; Apr. 20 - 25: 11.00, 16.30; Apr. 26: 11.00 Proof of Life Apr. 19: 10.50, 13.30, 16.30; Apr. 20 - 25: 13.30, 19.00, 22.00; Apr. 26: 13.30, 16.30 Hannibal Apr. 27 - 29: 10.50, 13.30, 16.30, 19.30, 22.30

By Kevin McElwee  kevin@exile.ru

Much to my surprise, the Taylor Hackford-directed kidnap drama PROOF OF LIFE proved to be an entirely watchable flick. I’m not the world’s biggest Russell Crowe fan, but he did bring a certain solid intensity to the role of a workaholic kidnap and ransom (K&R in the lingo of the film) consultant for an insurance underwriter. What’s more shocking, I even found it possible to bear the presence of Meg Ryan—for some reason the fact that she had a cigarette in her hand for most of the movie made it easy enough to imagine that she was just another aging skinny broad with stringy hair and little tits.

I happened to be home in the states when Proof of Life premiered back in December, and all anyone could talk about at the time was the steamy on-set affair between Crowe and Ryan that finally ended her doomed marriage to second-tier actor Dennis Quaid and which uncannily mirrored the plot (in the film, Crowe is working to rescue Ryan’s kidnapped husband, but the situation and motives become complicated as the two gradually fall in love). While the alleged real-life romance seemed like a clumsy prerelease marketing ploy masquerading as news (much like, say, the case of the “skintight costumes designed for Tobey Maguire” that were supposedly stolen recently from the set of Sam Raimi’s upcoming Spiderman adaptation), the onscreen courtship is actually handled with a fair degree of subtlety. The actual romance is reduced to a single ambiguous kiss that may or may not have involved one or more tongues (supposedly, a steamy scene in which the relationship was actually consummated was cut from the film once the real-life romance became publicized, but my gut tells me this is just more marketing bullshit). It is this uncharacteristic restraint (the last thing most would be expecting from the director of The Devil’s Advocate) that keeps the film’s Casablanca ending from seeming totally contrived. This shameless appropriation of the classic ending from what was obviously a far, far superior movie could easily have become grounds for objection, and yet somehow it does not here. Crowe’s effective little pseudo-feather in the ass (“You’ve got a plane to catch”) on the helicopter landing site is a big part of this, I think.

Another factor in Proof of Life’s favor is the sensible way it borrows from Heat. Copping the signature style of Heat has become something of a cottage industry lately, but the poachers rarely demonstrate an understanding of what it was that made Michael Mann’s LA crime epic so great in the first place. Steven Soderbergh (see last issue’s review of Traffic) may have become the latest humorless hack to travel this road, but even Mann himself was guilty of this in The Insider—a woefully misguided Heat rip-off if there ever was one, which coincidentally also starred Russell Crowe. Hackford, for his part, at least seems to have enjoyed Heat on its own terms. This is best indicated by the use of the line “I’ll call you back on the landline” (uttered into a cellphone by soon-to-be-kidnapped David Morse), which could even be taken as a subtle acknowledgment by Hackford that he has engaged in some unauthorized borrowing.

That said, Proof of Life ain’t all gravy, of course. For one thing, there’s Pamela Reed as Morse’s repellent sister. Reed is one of those rare actresses who has clearly never been even remotely hot, and she is admittedly well-cast as the kind of shrill former-lesbian soccer-mom who has apparently given up alcohol and cigarettes so as to focus all of her energies on making her children miserable.

Then there’s David Morse himself, looking altogether like another doomed Meg Ryan spouse—i.e., Anthony Edwards in Top Gun. I’ve never cared for Morse, whose career has been on something of an upswing of late after the long dry spell that followed in the wake of his St. Elsewhere character being raped during a prison riot. There’s something wishy-washy and flat about Morse’s presence on the big screen and he always seems miscast—even when playing someone who’s supposed to be wishy-washy and flat.

It does not help that Morse’s character, in addition to being in captive isolation the whole movie while his wife and Crowe are making puppy-dog eyes at one another, frequently behaves in ways that defy comprehension. For example: he’s supposed to be a do-gooder lefty engineer type who has spent most of his life working on humanitarian projects in third world countries, yet he does not have enough sense to maintain a low profile while on the payroll of a U.S. oil company in a South American drug-producing nation on the verge of civil war. At the time of his kidnapping, he’s jabbering on a cellphone in a shiny black VW convertible and proudly wearing a “Rice” (his alma mater, presumably) baseball cap. After this idiotic performance, it’s not even particularly shocking when he begins mouthing off and trash talking to his AK-toting captors. It’s even a bit inspiring when the kidnappers make such a big deal of swiping off his cap and throwing it roughly to the ground.

There are other dubious elements, to be sure—from the vaguely amusing (the high-profile K&R consultancy Crowe works for misspells Azerbaijan on a blackboard list of current geopolitical hot spots) to the simply annoying (the pre-kidnap scenes feature much stilted married couple dialogue; sample Meg Ryan line: “I am not an agenda”). Of course, the political background of the revolutionary group responsible for the kidnapping is handled in the most simplistic and cursory of fashions... but then would you really expect anything different.

All in all though, I can’t overstate how surprised I am at how unobjectionable this Proof of Life turned out to be. As luck would have it, the movie also carries with it a thinly veiled but unmistakable message to Russia. The opening scene depicts Crowe undertaking a daring hostage rescue in Chechnya. Crowe’s description of the operation to his superiors makes it clear that while the Chechen captors had acted more or less according to the accepted code for such dealings, it was the unpredictable and back-stabbing actions of the unpredictable Russian military that had necessitated such a dangerous and unusual rescue operation. Yet when the action moves to South America, ,the setting is the fictional nation of Tecala, which is actually played by the real-life country of Ecuador.

In other words, even a second-rate banana republic like Ecuador has enough clout with the United States not to be portrayed (not by name, at least) in a major motion picture as a corrupt police state that is second only to Columbia in illegal drug exports. On the other hand, the filmmakers have absolutely no qualms about portraying Russia (without benefit of fictional stand-in) in an almost equally negative light.

Vladimir Putin would be advised to take this message to heart—especially if he’s at all serious in his oft-stated desire to restore some modicum of Russia’s Soviet status on the international stage.