New Reviews: Peaceful Warrior, The Promise & Shadowboxer

ACK! I've fallen so behind on movie reviews. I suck. Here are some new ones. Actually, they're not new now, but they're recent enough. I know, I suck. :)

PEACEFUL WARRIOR
(Lions Gate, rated PG-13. 120 min.)

In his insufferably awe-inspired adaptation of Dan Millman’s best selling self-help book Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Victor Salva ditches the blood and gore of the Jeeper’s Creepers films for the more familiar sentiments that populated 1995’s supernatural feel-good film Powder, yet still manages to convey an equally creepy overtone of another kind. Given his admitted fondness for male youth (he served 12 months for molesting the 12-year-old star of his low-budget feature debut Clownhouse), Salva seems an odd choice to helm the story of a college student (Mean Creek’s Scott Mechlowicz as Millman) who is tutored on the merits of inner strength by an older man (an appropriately grizzled and gravel-voiced Nick Nolte as mysterious and curmudgeonly gas station attendant Socrates). Indeed, the director wastes no time in fawning over his young male lead and the equally strapping actors who portray members and competitors of his gymnastics team, often showing them shirtless and sweaty in all their athletic glory—as if they had walked right out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. The effect is only a bit disquieting, however, as the movie is guilty of far worse faults than youthful homoeroticism. From the first encounter that Dan has with Socrates—when the older man mysteriously vanishes from the ground only to reappear on top of his gas station’s roof in a matter of seconds—the film falls prey to a dewy-eyed mysticism that weighs it down every time it begins to take flight. Socrates coaches Millman through a series of laborious tasks, spouting off bumper-sticker rhetoric such as “The warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it's about love.” Millman, in turn, gets all Ralph Macchio on Socrates, defying his mentor’s teachings and giving in to his own impatience until tragedy strikes and his career is derailed by his own childish impulsiveness and ego. That’s when the real test of his character begins—and the movie really falls victim to its own sense of righteousness. Mechlowicz is a dynamic young actor, but here he overacts through much of the film, while Nolte merely phones it in, but both of these talented men are just victims of Salva’s penchant for overwrought emotion and heavy-handed melodrama. The shots of the half-naked jocks in the locker room, on the other hand, are the few moments where the movie actually feels genuinely inspired. Grade: C. --Originally published in IN Los Angeles Magazine.

THE PROMISE
(Warner Independent, rated PG-13, 102 min.)

Somewhere between the fairy-tale mysticism of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the outlandishly cartoonish theatrics of Kung Fu Hustle lies The Promise, an action-packed Chinese import from director Chen Kaige that mixes storybook simplicity and sweeping romanticism with high-wire stunts and CGI to tell the story of a love triangle that is seemingly doomed by the consequence of human choice. When the lovely princess Quingcheng (Cecilia Cheung) falls in love with the slave (Jang Dong-Gun) who saved her life while disguised as the mighty General Guangming (Hiroyuki Sanada), the fates of all three characters become tragically linked. Complicating the love triangle is a pact that Quingcheng made as a child with a goddess to forsake true love for wealth and power. Toss in a few characters to further complicate matters (such as a mysteriously hooded assassin who can run travel back in time and a scorned duke who wants to make Quingcheng his wife)—as well as plenty of mind-boggling fight sequences that stretch the limits of imagination—and you’ve got all the makings of an epic martial arts extravaganza to equal both Crouching Tiger and Zhang Yimou’s Hero. Or not. Whereas those films were defined by a strong sense of humanity and spiritual tranquility--not to mention subtlety--The Promise demonstrates no such grasp on nuance. Instead, director Kaige stages every twist and turn of the plot as if it were something out of animated flicks like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, placing the emphasis on awe-inspiring fairy-tale shenanigans over emotional resonance. At times, it’s easy to lose yourself in the superficiality of the story (from a script by Kaige and Zhang Tan). The principal players are certainly game enough; Cheung, especially, manages to imbue Quingcheng with three-dimensional qualities, while as evil Duke Wuhuan, Nicholas Tse makes an attractive and charismatic villain. But somewhere between the choppy, disjointed editing (not another ominous fadeout!), the overwrought musical score, and the laughably low-rent CGI, The Promise ends up being more of an amusing distraction instead of the epic romance it wants to be. Grade: C. —Originally published in IN Los Angeles Magazine.

SHADOWBOXER
(Freestyle Releasing, rated R, 93 min.)

Poor Cuba Gooding Jr. Though it’s been 10 years since he won the Academy Award for his performance in Jerry Maguire, the admittedly talented actor still seems to be having a hard time adjusting to life post-Oscar. Having made some pretty bad choices (the short list includes such stinkers as What Dreams May Come, Rat Race, Pearl Harbor and, er, Snow Dogs), Gooding now seems to be focusing on gritty action thrillers and character dramas like the recently released Dirty and this peculiar little indie pic about assassins and redemption. Cast as Mikey, a hired killer of little words reared and—-ahem-—seduced by the female assassin who shot his father, Gooding gamely smokes and smolders his way through the film, in which Mikey and terminally ill mentor/lover Rose (Helen Mirren, effectively shaking off Hollywood ageism) become saddled by Vickie (Angelina Jolie look-alike Vanessa Ferlito)—the pregnant woman they were hired to kill—after Rose has a last-minute change of heart and decides to start an anti-nuclear family. What sets director Lee Daniels’ provocative suspense yarn apart from others of its kind is not only its relatively simple narrative and some of its artier leanings (cinematographer M. David Mullen shadows much of the action in vibrantly colorful hues and occasionally surreal effects), but the film’s unorthodox (yet refreshingly accurate) presentation of human sexuality. Whether it be in the surprisingly sensuous couplings between Gooding and Mirren or the graphically depicted intercourse of those who use sex as a form of control (watch out for that full-frontal shot of a rather well-endowed Stephen Dorff), Shadowboxer reveals a world where black and white, old and young, and thin and fat naturally co-exist sexually. If the story (against his better judgment, Mikey makes a promise to the dying Rose that he will look after Vickie—even if it means his own death) were only so boldly original and not stunted by Daniels’ unfortunate penchant for heavy-handed moodiness, Shadowboxer might have been a major knockout of a film. As it is, it will have to settle for being a movie that merely coulda been a contender. Grade: B-. —Orginally published in IN Los Angeles Magazine.