Blu-ray Review: Charlie Countryman (2013)

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Original Title: The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman

Hallucinatory and hypnotic – there is a masterpiece of a movie to be found in Frederick Bond’s ultraviolent, dark-as-night valentine Charlie Countryman. Unfortunately and no offense to Shia LaBeouf’s no-holds-barred portrayal of the eponymous lead who’d been sleepwalking through life and is now beginning to feel, the most memorable storyline of the entire movie has absolutely nothing to do with the title character.

Instead, told in flashback and voice-over by the always impressive Evan Rachel Wood, we’re filled in on the unexpectedly riveting back-story of her Beauty and the Beast like romance with the horrific underworld gangster Nigel (a terrifying Mads Mikkelsen).

Sidelined by a near-death encounter, Nigel convalesced in a flat above the Bucharest café where Wood’s gifted yet naïve and sheltered cellist played for customers from morning until night. Growing stronger day by day and note by note – Nigel not only found himself healed by the transformative power of her music but also falling in love with the woman whose playing saved his life before he’d ever laid eyes on her.

And (as Wood’s Gabi explains to Charlie) it was only after the two began a whirlwind romance did Gabi realize that although she saved Nigel’s life, by getting involved with Nigel, she’d forever jeopardized her own as once the afterglow wore off, she learned there was nothing beautiful about this particular beast.

Revealed late into Charlie, it’s only once we reach this point of explanation where Gabi tells LaBeouf’s hopelessly smitten American tourist just how on Earth she could’ve ever married a man who stalks and threatens the lives of her as well as anyone who looks at her twice that we realize what had been missing thus far in the film. Charlie Countryman's missing ingredient was anything resembling an actual and involving storyline.

While Bond’s feature filmmaking debut based on the screenplay by Matt Drake had been undeniably interesting for the first hour, it was ultimately salvaged thanks to his background as a commercial director who knows how to milk style over substance for all its worth and keep us watching for the eye candy alone.

Likewise, the meandering approach taken thus far had only proven why you can’t make great films out of books by Beat Generation authors in that they valued artistry and rhythm over structure and storylines.

Saddled with an uneasy hero in the form of LaBeouf’s American in existential crisis (following the death of his mother), Charlie’s main impetus for action in the film is reaction.

Constantly set in motion by outside stimuli (including conversations with two separate ghosts), Charlie is knocked down like a stack of dominoes from frame one and this process is repeated for a majority of the first act as he passively reacts to people, places and situations. It isn’t until he meets Gabi that he decides to make a decision in his own right, even going as far as to admit that he doesn’t “get feelings” very often.

Although LaBeouf commits himself fully to the role, the way his character bounces back from depressive funk to manic screwball in the blink of an eye, it’s almost as if the screenwriter was as uninterested in him as the audience and kept changing his persona stream-of-consciousness style as he wrote to see if Charlie would suddenly “get interesting.”

While thankfully the film and in turn LaBeouf’s character is augmented by a rather ingenious coda that symbolically harks back to the film’s opening imagery, adding a surprisingly deep layer of extra meaning to the circle of life motif and film’s original title of The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, unfortunately it doesn’t make up for Charlie's divertingly creative if narratively all-over-the-place first two-thirds.

Nonetheless, Bond utilizes his commercial background to his credit, infusing Charlie Countryman with some infectious moments of true romance and stylistic breaths of fresh air (courtesy of his entire behind-the-scenes team including cinematographer Roman Vasyanov and editor Hughes Winborne) that come to life in this sparkling Blu-ray transfer.

With this in mind, Bond is undoubtedly someone to watch in the future of cinema. Nonetheless I can only hope that he’ll choose a far more solid screenplay and take the longer art-form of feature filmmaking into greater consideration to make a film that truly maximizes its running time rather than just passing time until its next out-of-this-world scene that makes it seem like it’s a group of short films strung together rather than a cohesive long one.

While Charlie is admirable for its artistic achievements alone (including the aforementioned mesmerizing segment that wouldn’t have been out of place in music themed film festival alongside The Red Violin and Three Colors: Blue),unfortunately the least fascinating thing about Charlie Countryman is Charlie Countryman.

While it’s hardly LaBeouf’s fault as Drake’s script is – just like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – filled with far too many, richer drawn Mercutio-like figures (including scene-stealers Mads Mikkelsen and Til Schweiger), it is interesting how many times they name-drop Robert Redford characters and movies with regard to LaBeouf.

Perhaps covertly apologizing to his fans for the poorly written character, the film-in-film meta-modern reference to the actor’s far more stellar work acting alongside Redford in the recent The Company You Keep provides a great recommendation for LaBeouf enthusiasts wanting to see something that actually makes the most of his talent and charm.

Reminiscent of In Bruges and A Life Less Ordinary, not to mention the tripper sequences of Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe – which also has star Evan Rachel Wood in common – this official Sundance Film Festival selection is now available to rent or own on disc and download.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: One Way (2007)

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Despite the fact that popular German actor Til Schweiger is exceedingly easy on the eyes, after you begin to size up his character Eddie Schneider in writer/director Reto Salimbeni’s new DVD release One Way, you can see why Quentin Tarantino knew the man had it in him to become part of the ensemble of Inglorious Basterds.

Yet, in One Way, Eddie is our male protagonist which is the film’s greatest obstacle as it’s tough to worry about Schweiger’s constantly lying manipulator who first charms us while delivering a heartfelt speech about his love for Judy (Stefanie von Pfetten) when asking her father for Judy’s hand in marriage.

As this scene follows not just a jump in time but a horrific yet brief opener of a gang rape in the woods that ends with the introduction of a vengeance filled shoot ‘em up “General” (Michael Clarke Duncan) who may or may not be real--we’re admittedly jarred a bit by the sequencing as well as the tone established in the response Eddie receives.

For, since Judy’s father also happens to be Eddie’s boss at the advertising firm where Schweiger’s character works as the company’s creative director, Judy’s father replies to the request with a curt refusal and explains that once he’s landed a lucrative airline account the next day, then he’ll give the two his blessing. And it’s faux jokes like these served by those with icy demeanors in the never believable world of the New York firm Birk Advertising that makes Salimbeni’s film such an enigma.

Our patience for Eddie as a hero is further challenged when he makes the decision to show his devotion to his future fiancé by engaging in a crude quickie with his mistress-- arriving late for the presentation-- and then somehow shocking the executives into accepting his proposal with an over-the-top unprofessional display filled with profanity, ripping up their existing ads, and insulting them.

Yet amazingly you still can’t help sort of liking the guy overall, aside from the whole infidelity thing which by now seems to be an advertising stereotype thanks to this era of Mad Men. And even though I wasn't sure I fully bought his feelings for Judy or the mistress (the very little we see of her, of course and you can take that literally since she plays a mistress), honestly I thought Eddie had the best chemistry with his colleague and gal pal, Angelina Sable (Lauren Lee Smith).

Most likely, the reason the relationship between the two best friends who keep nothing secret from one another is saved is due to the fact that they haven’t jumped into the sack or joined the "men and women at work cliché party" but just as Judy is a much better fiancé to Eddie than he deserves, Angelina is likewise a much better friend as well.

For fairly quickly into the film, Angelina is brutally raped by Judy’s jealous brother—their colleague Anthony Birk (Sebastien Roberts)—in a painfully long sequence that still manages to avoid going for cheap tricks by focusing mostly on facial expressions, keeping actors clothed, and by the movie crew’s wise decision to use minimal lighting.

Quickly ascertaining that she is the very same wounded woman we met in the opening sequence makes Angelina’s ordeal far more excruciating especially when Eddie dutifully brings his traumatized friend to the doctor yet bears false witness to what she confides when Anthony blackmails him with photographic evidence of his infidelity. Since, when he realizes that he’ll hurt either his best friend or his fiancé with Anthony’s threats, Eddie opts to put his career and future in-laws before putting a criminal behind bars but when the plan backfires and Angelina begins to see "The General" again, revenge enters the over-crowded screenplay.

Moreover, the film seems uncertain if it wants to be a morality tale, a thriller, a psychological drama, or an exploitative revenge picture as one sequence made me fear we were heading into the same territory explored in Death Sentence, The Brave One and Closure. Yet despite this, there’s some great ideas at work in the movie but unfortunately I realized that we were following the wrong main character around throughout the entirety of One Way (therefore someone should've pulled the filmmaker over for going the wrong way from the start!).

Having been largely unacquainted with the character of Anthony Birk—Sebastien Roberts is able to fill in all the blanks for us in a scary turn yet a great deal of the time, and most importantly with Judy and Angelina who begged to be explored in larger detail, we’re completely at a loss. Additionally, the entire idea of The General is something that feels as though it had been introduced in the first draft of the screenwriting stage and then slowly deleted as the rewrites began piling up or the frames began to land on the cutting room floor as Duncan’s work is of so little consequence in the finished product that most likely he could’ve filmed his scenes in one day.

Thus, instead of tying up the loose ends or following a story we become genuinely invested in, we’re saddled with a gutless and downright despicable hero. Really rape is better than an affair? Oh yes, please let's root for that guy! And tragically the proof of Schweiger’s poorly constructed Eddie is established as if the film itself were on trial through an obligatory courtroom showdown that features Eric Roberts in an effective if brief cameo as even under oath Eddie is still able to avoid making any real decisions since luckily the strong women in his life will do it for him.

Again, there’s enough in One Way that could’ve been solidly utilized in the construction of a smart thriller… if that’s what they were going for because once more, we’re never quite certain why Eddie’s point-of-view was the one and only way to tell the story. For in the end, what we’re left with is a whole lot of side streets that lead you down them for a bit until you wish that somebody would’ve just stopped to ask for directions. Hmm, again, maybe Angelina or Judy would've been happy to oblige?

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.