New to home video: XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

Action movies traditionally stretch credibility when it comes to applying logic to their stunts. (“Wait, could somebody really survive that?” “Wait, is that even physically possible?”) And, admittedly, the stunts in the first “XXX” stretched credibility even by action movie standards. But the latest movie in the franchise — “XXX: The Return of Xander Cage” — takes even those standards and throws them out the window. The results are sometimes entertaining, sometimes just annoying.

In the first movie, Vin Diesel starred as Cage, an extreme-sports dynamo recruited as a special agent by the NSA. A salary dispute led to Diesel’s temporary replacement in the second movie (which instead starred Ice Cube as Darius Stone, the “new Agent XXX”), but now Cage/ Diesel is back, and hoo boy does this movie celebrate his return to ridiculous extremes. Every line of dialogue seems written, every action scene is choreographed, with the singular agenda of constantly reminding us how awesome Cage and Diesel allegedly are. From his introductory scene, in which Cage inexplicably shrugs off a fall that should have killed him, to the countless supporting characters who refer to him as “the legendary Xander Cage!” (a phrase I started to get a little tired of), to the scene in which Cage has to prove his bona fides to a criminal informant by bedding multiple women at the same time (though it’s very unclear exactly how this feat is supposed to prove his legitimacy as anything other than a particularly skilled lover), Cage repeatedly outbonds Bond, all with a smirk that Bond himself would find a bit too smug.

The plot: a device called “the insultingly obvious McGuffin” —oops, I mean a device called “Pandora’s Box” is stolen from the American intelligence community (the movie, in a bit of very sloppy continuity, is noticeably inconsistent over whether the device was stolen from the CIA, FBI, or NSA), and the humorless deputy director (of whichever agency it’s supposed to be) recruits Cage to find and return it. Cage, in turn, recruits a small group of risk-takers to aid in his quest, and together, Cage and his friends chase, are chased by, and fight countless bad guys in the course of his mission.

Let me take a moment to describe one particular scene, just to illustrate how thoroughly the filmmakers disregard any possible intelligence from their audience: There is a motorcycle chase scene. It starts out in the middle of the night, and is inexplicably in broad daylight moments later.(Did the filmmakers somehow actually forget the beginning of the scene, or are they trying to imply that the characters have been engaging in a high-speed chase for hours?) A good portion of this motorcycle chase occurs in the ocean, as the bikes can instantly convert into jet skis. Conveniently, both the hero and the villain know exactly what button to push on their stolen motorcycles to activate this transformation. At some point, a small gang of henchmen show up at the beach and start shooting at Cage during this chase. It’s worth noting that Cage and the bad guy have, at this point, been chasing each other all over the island. Did the gunmen somehow psychically know that the chase would end up at this particular beach, or did they just choose to wait at this random spot “just in case,” and proved to have made a lucky guess? Tellingly, this isn’t the last time characters suddenly pop up for no discernible reason other than to heighten suspense or to push the plot along where it needs to go. How does everyone know where everyone else is in this movie, anyway? Are they watching the movie as it plays out, like in “Spaceballs”?

By the time the movie gets to its final, yawningly predictable plot twist, you’ll have been entertained to an extent, but you’ll also be relieved it’s all finally over.

Why the Flash's Power Would Bore the Hell out of Him

The most recent episode of The Flash was both clever and  highly entertaining, but it was also, if you think about it, highly problematic for its implications.

The story: The Flash stars Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, a young man who, due to a freak accident that occurred in the pilot episode, can move and run at impossibly high speeds, and uses this ability to fight crime as a superhero. As the Flash, Barry has a seemingly wide variety of astounding capabilities, but it's stated explicitly and repeatedly that these are all just consequences and/ or variations of his ability to move super-fast.

The newest of these capabilities is the ability to share his speed with anyone or anything he touches: As long as he holds onto you, you can also move at super-speed, but you'll lose this ability the instant he lets go of you. If I recall correctly, the first time he demonstrates this ability is during a courtroom scene a few episodes ago. Barry has been framed for murder, and the judge is about to announce the verdict. Barry's wife, Iris, believes that publicly announcing Barry's secret identity will clear his name, but Barry disagrees, so he goes into super-speed mode, grabs Iris by the shoulders, and convinces her not to reveal his secret. From their perspective, they have time to have an extended conversation, but because they're both in super-speed mode, all of this occurs within the blink of an eye from the perspective of everyone around them. What this scene illustrates is that the Flash's ability to move so quickly that he can have an entire conversation with somebody within a split second demonstrates that when he moves fast enough, his super power becomes, for all intents and purposes, completely indistinguishable from slowing down or even stopping time around him. This scene therefore hints at astounding implications that became much more central and relevant in the most recent episode, "Flashtime," which bases its entire concept on the "stopping time" aspect of the Flash's ability.

In "Flashtime," a domestic terrorist sets off a nuclear bomb in the middle of downtown Central City. Sure, the Flash can run insanely fast, but how is this going to help him save the population of a whole city from a nuclear explosion? This dilemma forms the heart and matter of the entire episode. The Flash slips into super-speed mode, which does indeed seem, from his perspective, to stop time, or at least slow it down to the extent that movement is imperceivable to the Flash's eye. The episode title is named after the descriptive term the Flash now uses to describe this phenomenon.

Okay, so now time is stopped. But how can the Flash prevent the explosion, which has already started, from killing everyone? He doesn't know. He gets reinforcements. Some of these people are able to converse with him because they also move at super-speed, and thus can experience Flashtime with the Flash. Other people slip into Flashtime because the Flash touches them long enough for them to have a conversation. Many such conversations occur in the episode. The Flash and his allies and friends come up with a variety of plans, and they try a variety of methods. None of them work. The Flash tries time and again to thwart the nuclear explosion, but because it's already started, all of his plans fail. By the time he and Iris come up with a solution, the Flash is exhausted, because even though everyone else's perspective is that all of this has occurred within a fraction of a second -- in less time than it takes a nuclear explosion to occur -- from the Flash's perspective, he has spent an entire day moving as fast as he can. Even when he seems to be standing still from his/ the audience's perspective, he's still moving at super-speed, using a variation of his ability to vibrate his body astoundingly fast so that he can stay in Flashtime.

So, what does all of this mean for the character? It means that  when Barry uses his powers, even though he seems to be moving within the blink of an eye, from his perspective, time has simply slowed or stopped. In some ways, this is a good thing. If he really ran as fast as he could but without some degree of hyper-awareness of time, he wouldn't have time to perceive or react to the things around him, and he'd be crashing into people and things all the time. But still, there are some glaringly negative implications to Flashtime as well.

Let's look at a typical domestic scene from Barry's private life. It's not uncommon for Barry to make breakfast for Iris, and, sometimes to impress Iris, or sometimes simply to save time, Barry often does this at super speed. Usually, Iris appreciates this, although in one episode, Iris gets annoyed, and accuses Barry of making breakfast at super speed so that he doesn't have to spend time with her. Iris's complaint demonstrates a lack of understanding on her part of exactly how the Flash's ability works. Yes, from her perspective the breakfast has been made in a . . . well, in a flash -- but in order to do something as complicated as making an entire breakfast, Barry has had to slip into Flashtime, and, from that perspective, he has actually taken the time, however long it takes, to make breakfast. He has cooked eggs and bacon, however long that takes. He has taken a walk to the coffee shop and brought back hot coffee (presumably leaving money for it on the counter), however long that takes. And so on.

This in itself is problematic. How did Barry manage to accelerate the time it takes for an egg to fry? Who knows. Maybe he "shared his speed" with the egg and cooking implements, or maybe one of the more mundane variations of his ability is to somehow use all the kinetic energy from his own body to fry eggs at super speed. It doesn't matter. The point is, think about how long it would take you to fry bacon and eggs and then, on top of that, take a walk to the local coffee shop and bring back some coffee. I'd say even if the coffee shop was right next door, it would all take an absolute minimum of fifteen minutes. The important thing is that even if it all occurred within a matter of seconds for Iris, from Barry's perspective, the breakfast-making process has taken fifteen minutes or longer. From Barry's perspective, he's not "saving time" at all.

This concept of Flashtime has serious implications for action scenes too. Many times, the Flash has had to battle, chase, or race various villains who also have super-speed. So they slip into Flashtime and battle it out. From everyone else's perspective, the Flash and Reverse-Flash may be standing right next to them one moment, and the hero and villain are suddenly clear across town mere seconds later. The TV audience's perspective switches back and forth between Flashtime and regular time, so we can understand what's going on. But wait a minute! We're apparently only seeing isolated moments of Flashtime! If you apply the Flashtime implications to Barry's fight with Savitar, for example, sure, the hero and villain exchange a few punches, quips, and threats, but don't forget that from their perspective, they're still taking the time to run all the way across town. Sure, it takes only seconds from everyone else's perspective, but how long does it all take in Flashtime? An hour? Two hours? Are they trading threats the entire time? Would they eventually run out of new things to say to each other, and just run in awkward silence for long periods of time?

A few times in the show, the heroes have had to find someone in a hurry, and the Flash runs off to search a building, a neighborhood, or, a couple of times, all of Central City. From everyone else's perspective: Whew, thank god we have the Flash, he was able to search the city in a matter of moments! But wait a minute! That's from their perspective! From the Flash's perspective, it took however long it takes to single-handedly search a building, a neighborhood, or even an entire city. Think about that. How long would it take you to search an entire city for one individual? To check every room of every house, office building, etc. in an entire city? I'm thinking "hours" and even "days" would be unrealistic answers. It would take weeks. From the Flash's perspective, though, that's how long it must have taken. And before you object that I'm over-applying the concept of Flashtime, I don't think so. Even if the Flash was capable of moving and doing things at super-speed without slipping into Flashtime, somehow turning off his hyper-awareness of the passage of time so that he can actually search an entire city within moments even from his own perspective -- he wouldn't. Because how could he possibly find anything that way? Think about when you're trying to find something and you have no idea where it is. Do you ever find anything by running around like a madman, blindly stumbling around the house, moving around so quickly that even if the car keys are right in front of your eyes, you might not even see it? If you somehow had the ability to run around the house a thousand times faster, but without changing your ability to perceive the world around you, would that make finding the keys any easier? Of course not. The Flash needs the hyper-awareness that comes with Flashtime in order to do his Flash-speed searches. Which means that by the time he reports back to his allies at Star Labs, he should be bored out of his mind.

"Did you find him?"

"No -- and I searched the entire city!" means that it doesn't matter if it's only thirty seconds later from everyone else's perspective (even the TV audience); from Barry's perspective, he has just spent the entire month checking every damn room in the city, and he still couldn't find the bad guy. No wonder he seems so frustrated when these searches prove unfruitful. Everyone in the show keeps talking about how Barry's frustration stems from him being too hard on himself, but no, half the time, it's because he's spent the equivalent of a month searching for someone, so when he shows up and says, "I couldn't find him," you can bet it's got to be a hard thing for him to admit.

You know who was the first person to observe all of this, by the way? Don Rosa, the Donald Duck comic book artist and writer. In one issue, Donald gets zapped by a meteor or something and develops super powers, only for a repeated series of mishaps to prevent him from proving his capabilities to anyone. At one point, Donald brags that he's going to run all the way around the world in a matter of minutes, just to prove to his nephews that he can. (The ocean in the way wouldn't even be an issue, as stories with super-speed characters always indicate that, if you run fast enough, you won't have time to sink into the water.)

Donald starts running, and notices that, from his perspective, nobody else in the city appears to be moving. Time has appeared to stop. Donald understands that time hasn't really stopped, it's just that he's become hyper-aware of the passage of time, and compared to his own speed of movement and perception, the movement around him has only appeared to slow to an imperceptible degree. He has essentially slipped into Flashtime, and he's only about halfway across town before it occurs to him exactly why this makes "running around the world" a humongous problem. Yes, within the context of the story, there's no question that he'd be capable of running all the way around the world in a matter of minutes -- from everyone else's perspective. But Donald quickly realizes that from his perspective -- from the perspective of Flashtime -- it will take however long it would take a person to actually walk around the entire globe. How long would it take to actually accomplish such a feat? The good people at Reddit came up with a few answers, and the most conservative one is 334 days -- roughly a month shy of a year. Imagine doing absolutely nothing but walking for a year. You couldn't interact with anyone else (they're not in Flashtime, and they wouldn't even be able perceive your existence), you wouldn't have enough objective time to get hungry enough for a meal break, you can't watch movies or TV, you are doing absolutely nothing but walking -- for a whole year. In the comics story, Donald immediately turns around and admits that he aborted his "run around the world" plan because he got bored. The nephews can't believe his explanation. I sure as heck can.

new to home video: Small Town Crime

Small Town Crime is advertised as a comedy, but it's really not. I've noticed that studios tend to do that with movies that they don't really know what to do with, and I can sort of understand that reaction to this film. It's a "quirky comedy" without the comedy, which is not to say it's a failed comedy, so much as that the laughs are intentionally few and far between.

As I was watching -- and enjoying -- Small Town Crime, I was also trying to figure out what exactly it is. At first, I thought, "Tarantinoesque," and then I amended that thought. It wasn't wrong, exactly, but it wasn't spot-on, either. Then I realized it with a mental "shoulda been obvious" slap to the forehead: Small Town Crime is an homage to the hard-boiled mystery novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and their ilk, the kind of movies that at one point would have starred Humphrey Bogart. Remove the cell phones, and this could have very well been a Bogart movie back in the day. It's not parody, by any means, but, like its predecessors in the 1950s and earlier, it does sport an occasional dry wit.

That sort of explains why I thought of Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino's movies are all about paying homage to yesteryear, and he would have had a ball with this material. But as much as I admire him as a filmmaker, he may not have been right for this particular story. He might have pushed the nudges and winks to the audience too far. Directors/ writers Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms get it just right.

John Hawkes stars (and right there's your first quirk, because the phrase "John Hawkes stars" is almost never uttered) as Mike Kendall, an alcoholic, unemployed mess. An opening montage of him botching a series of job interviews ends with a punchline: He finally gets a job offer, and then decides to end the interview with a little too much honesty, intentionally tanking the opportunity. We then see that his unemployment check is larger than the  potential salaries from minimum-wage jobs he seems to qualify for, and understand that his unemployment is less out of desperation and more out of lifestyle choice. He's gaming the system, and how you feel about this decision -- whether we focus on the cleverness of the choice, or its dishonesty -- probably depends less on Kendall himself, and more on how you personally feel about the welfare system.

Kendall used to be a cop, but he was forced to resign in disgrace, after his partner was fatally shot on the job, and it was discovered that Kendall was drunk at the time. Now Kendall spends his time drinking in bars, intentionally bumbling job interviews, and mooching off his his adopted sister  Kelly (Octavia Spencer) and her husband Teddy (Anthony Anderson). It's certainly fair to say that Kelly and Teddy enable Kendall's unhealthy, unwise lifestyle: Kelly lets him know that she disapproves of his choices, but still gives him money whenever he asks for it, and Teddy's even worse, enabling Kendall as his frequent drinking partner. They all mean well, but nobody's doing Kendall any favors.

After a few scenes -- just enough to establish Kendall's self-destructive patterns -- the story is set in motion when he stumbles upon the badly beaten body of a young woman on the side of the road. Kendall rushes her to the hospital, but she dies shortly afterward. The police treat it as a low priority because she was a prostitute, the parents are distraught but uninterested in pursuing the mystery of who killed her, and Kendall feels that someone has to care, so he gets involved despite the advice of  one of his few remaining police friends, Detective Crawford (Michael Vartan). Presenting himself as a private investigator, Kendall teams up with the only other person who seems to care about the dead girl, an outraged grandfather played by Robert Forster.

The role of Steve Yendel is very much "the Robert Forster role" that the actor has specialized in since Tarantino created it with Jackie Brown in 1997: that of a sensitve but tough aging man, someone whose face shows decency and vulnerability, but whose tone of voice lets you know that he's dangerous if pushed too far. Forster plays this type of role time and time again precisely because he does it so well.

The dual mysteries of who killed the girl, and why they killed her, become obsessions with Kendall, and lead him to a series of encounters with various lowlifes. Meanwhile, the sympathetic Crawford and his verbally abusive partner occasionally show up, playing the  "Good Cop/ Bad Cop" mixed-message routine as they alternately demand Kendall stop investigating, and yet also insist on him giving them any information he may have already learned.

All of this will sound very familiar to anyone who's seen the Bogie/ John Huston version of The Maltese Falcon, or, for that matter, any movie in that vein. Yes, it's all been done before, but rarely so well, and certainly not in a long time. It's a better-than-decent mystery, with excellent character work, and a rare chance for Hawkes to shine in a central role. (Off the top of my head, the only other example I can think of is The Sessions.) Okay, you may not care about the acting career of John Hawkes. But if you like a good story, I still highly recommend Small Town Crime. I'd gladly watch Hawkes reprise the role in a sequel. It's that good.

new to home video: Murder on the Orient Express

About mid-way through watching the latest version of Murder on the Orient Express, I suddenly remembered two things you'd think I would have remembered earlier: I'd read the novel, and I'd also seen the 1974 cinematic adaptation. More to the point, this caused me to suddenly remember how the story ends. This was a bit disappointing to me, as I was by this point thoroughly enthralled in the mystery of who killed Samuel Ratchett. No more mystery: I remembered precisely whodunit.

I didn't care.

Murder on the Orient Express is a delight for the eye, a symphony for the ear, and a welcome antidote to loving gift to viewers who like a little bit of intelligence in their cinema. It got mostly bad reviews. The critics are often, to put it bluntly, stupid.

The story: World famous private detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is suddenly called to London on urgent business, and, though a friendship with a railroad executive, is able to gain a last-minute seat on the Orient Express. He meets a colorful assortment of fellow passengers, including a gangster-like art dealer named Sam Ratchett (Johnny Depp). At some point during the journey, Ratchett is murdered, leaving everyone on the train as a suspect. To Poirot's frustration, every single person on the train has both an alibi and a possible motive, which makes solving the case nearly impossible.

That's the story in a nut shell, and it's an intriguing premise. But what makes Murder on the Orient Express work so well is the (no pun intended) execution.

Branagh, who directs as well as stars, has never been accused of subtlety, either as an actor or as a director. Whether he is actually capable of subtlety is unknowable and irrelevant. He simply is uninterested in subtlety. He believes in the big moment, the grand gesture, the spectacle. Sometimes this works (Dead Again is one of my favorite movies of all time), sometimes it doesn't (Love's Labour's Lost), and sometimes it's somewhere in between (I found his interpretation of Hamlet to be entertaining, but problematic). Here, it works wonders.

The casting: The 1974 movie version was famous for gathering an all-star cast, including such notables as Anthony Perkins, John Gielgud, and Sean Connery. Branagh revives that tradition here. You've got rising stars like Daisy Ridley and Josh Gad, respected veterans like Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench, brilliant character actors like Willem Dafoe, and established box office stars like Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer. None of it comes across as stunt casting; each celeb is perfectly cast in their role.

The soundtrack: Patrick Doyle's music is beautiful. As a regular collaborator with Branagh, he has often been called upon to go over the top with his orchestral soundtracks, but here, his music is reflective and wonderous. 

The visuals: The story is absolutely compelling, but even if you're already familiar with previous versions, watch this for the visuals. Working together with cinematographer Haris Zambarloukis, Branagh has turned every shot into a work of art. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole. Hypnotically falling snow and spectacular sunsets abound, but even the character shots are a marvel to behold. Seriously, freeze-frame any moment, and it's a feast for the eyes.

This is one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a long time.