Mr. Scott admitted that before working on the movie — a retelling of John Godey’s best-selling New York City subway hostage thriller, made into a classic 1974 movie — he had never been in the subway. “Well, when I say never, I mean maybe once or twice quite drunk at night, when I couldn’t find a taxi,” said Mr. Scott, who was born in England and lives in Los Angeles. [posted 3 May]
Public Enemies (4+)Ball Don't LieThe centerpiece of this astonishing film about Bobby Sands and the other IRA hunger strikers of 1981--after we see the prisoners' excretory protests, before we see the grotesque mechanics of the starving body's attack against itself--is a long, maybe 15-minute, scene at a table of an otherwise empty dining hall, as Sands and his parish priest debate the religious, ethical, and political rightness of the upcoming strike. Sounds as undramatic as can be, right? Two guys talking, My Cigarette with Bobby. But in context it is more dramatic, I suspect, than anything the X-Men or Star Trek movies have for us, as both men fight for both men's souls.
One of the best films I can hope to see this year.
Anytime Robert Downey Jr. is in a film and you come out talking about someone else, that someone else has done something pretty spectacular; so with Jamie Foxx here.
I've sometimes said that the Oscar-darling "afflicted guy" often isn't as challenging as a character more in the range of what we see in everyday life. Well, there's nothing simple about this afflicted-guy performance; Foxx's Nathaniel Ayers makes us uneasy throughout, always as uncertain of what he'll do next as those in his life must be. Not a great film, but a great performance.
By the way, the trailer does not prepare you for the hell of LA homelessness that the film portrays; apparently the producers were afraid that that would be too big a downer. Instead, the trailer emphasizes the uplift that is indeed a keynote of the film, but not the only one.
