The Hunger Games -- Mockingjay, Part 1

Photo: Poster used in the viral campaign for the film, from the film's Wikipedia site.

Mockingjay, Part 1 is a very good, effective film that can be seen as a YA action movie, perhaps the first of its breed.  Jennifer Lawrence's performance and the just-right balance of action and politics carry it, and save it from being just another action film, or just another angry YA film.  I could've done without the (for me) unnecessary romance angle, but I'm not exactly the target audience for this film, and I'm okay with that.  In fact, this film deserves the same kudos as the Alien franchise, and maybe Thelma and Louise: usually action films have male main characters and the females are slower-witted things who get told what to do.  Mockingjay is exactly the opposite of that: the women here are large and in charge, and it's the men who look and act lost.  The men have to be saved by the women, not the other way around.

This is a smarter-than-usual YA movie, which I mean in the kindest of all possible ways.  It's political message is strong: if we all fight each other to the death, surely we will all die.  This makes sense.  Yet, does that mean you shouldn't rebel, as this movie (or, at least, the Capitol, strategically) says for awhile?  The answer is No, of course not.  The rebels will die if they don't rebel, and they may only die if they do.  Furthermore, it makes no sense to support a system that suppresses you.  This makes me want to go on a tangent about Southern Republicans, and the women who support the men behind that social and political system, but for now I'll refrain.  But don't get me started.

This movie should work for the older crowd, such as myself, as long as said crowd remembers that it is a YA action movie, not necessarily made for guys my age.  One immediate criticism (you knew there'd be at least one) hit me, hard, during the movie: Just as the female protagonist (Sigourney Weaver / Ripley) did in the first Alien, Jennifer Lawrence / Katniss (or, more specifically, her sister) does here: during a violent life and death crisis for a large group of people, these two women went back to get the cat.  True, Katniss goes back for her sister who had gone to get the cat, whereupon Ripley simply went back for the cat, but it's still the same.  Of course, the point is that love conquers all--and I'd be a hypocrite if I said I wouldn't risk life and limb for my own pet--but that doesn't stop me from picturing someone in the underground rebel stronghold murmuring: "Uh, could someone close that door, please?  Aren't we getting bombs dropped on us?"  It's a bothersome sequence, though, in 1979 and now, if your point is to show that women can be just as formidable in war as men.  The scenes fit the YA movie, but it didn't fit the movie's subtext.  I'm just sayin'.

And, like me, you may have to assume that the moviemakers really don't believe that an emotionless tyrant in charge of a totalitarian regime--someone so evil that he would bomb a hospital just to prove a point--would let some fighter jets and some really good, sophisticated fighters come and go as they please just to deliver a brainwashed former-boyfriend to a teenage girl who stands mostly as the symbolic representation of a rebellion.

Read that sentence again.

This point was actually discussed between a friend and I recently.  I tried picturing Saddam Hussein, for example, doing the same.  Or, maybe Stalin.  Hell, even Sherman or Ulysses S. Grant.  But, no.  They'd just overwhelm and kill such fighters, or--like Sherman and Stalin--just burn to hell everything in their paths to starve them out.  Chances are, such men wouldn't even know what such emotions were.  There's a war to win here, after all.  Snow wouldn't think he was fighting one teenage girl.  He'd know he was fighting a rebel army, with a solid leader, good fighters, a sophisticated technology expert, etc.  If a brainwashed and violent guy would be trained to go after any of those people, Katniss Everdeen would be the last person he'd strangle.  He'd be sent after President Coin first, the tech guy second.

That'd be like the U.S. South sending a hitman after Harriet Beecher Stowe, who for many was the symbolic representation of the North's stance against slavery.  Didn't happen.  (Well, to the best of my knowledge, anyway.)  Hell, that'd be like Hirohito sending kamikaze pilots after Rosie the Riveter.

But I digress.  I liked the movie.  Seriously.  It's good for all ages, if you like action movies with a political message.  Or if you enjoy looking at Jennifer Lawrence all pissed off.  Maybe she was thinking of the guy who hacked into her cloud.  (Sorry.)  Anyway, go see it, but repeat three times: It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...and a pretty good one, at that.    

Elysium--Movie Review

Photo: Movie's poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Elysium is a very satisfying action / sci-fi movie with a surprisingly blatant social commentary about immigration and health care.  Because immigration is such a fireplug, your stance on it may very well decide how you enjoy the movie.  As a guy who's usually sick with sinus infections, and who has a mostly-liberal bent, this stance was okay with me, but if you're a solid conservative, or severely anti-immigration, consider yourself forewarned.

It stars Matt Damon, who can do this sort of action movie in his sleep these days, and Jodie Foster, in a role that's rather thankless and one-note.  Foster, in fact, is sort of wasted in this role, and she gives herself an occasional accent that befuddles as well.  Writer / director Neill Blomkamp didn't seem to know what to do with her character after the film's bad guys enter Elysium (the utopian society in space populated only by the rich), though while watching the movie, I thought her character could have still gone places: though a psyche reversal was clearly not going to happen, she could have been more of a problem for Matt Damon's character.  Maybe Blomkamp felt the bad guy was more than bad enough, and I suppose he is.  After all, he gets a large chunk of his face blown off, and stays conscious the whole time until he's re-configured by one of Elysium's health pods.  And as you may imagine, if he was a really angry bad guy before his face was blown off, he becomes even more severely pissed off afterwards.  In truth, his character is a comic book villain, and I have already taken the character more seriously than the viewer is supposed to.  Suffice it to say, he, more than Jodie Foster's character, is Damon's character's obstacle.

Speaking of Damon, he does a good job here, even though he plays an ex-con, a side of his character that is not heavily covered, which is perhaps a good thing, since Damon doesn't come across as an ex-con kind of guy, whatever that is.  He's too earnest, too sacrificial.  In fact, all of the ex-cons (and current cons) on Earth come across much more altruistically than I'm going to guess ex-cons really would.  There's not a sincerely bad guy in that bunch; they're all victims of dystopian class-consciousness.  Originally his character was going to do some shady things in order to get himself to Elysium's health pods, to cure him of a massive radiation blast he accidentally incurred at work.  He's got just five days to live otherwise, and a truly depressing, soul-sucking, worker-ant life to go to even if he is cured, so he really has nothing left to lose.  But when we're introduced to a little girl who needs to get to Elysium's health pods to cure her of Stage Three leukemia, you know that Damon's character will willfully get the short end of the stick.  It is one of the slight letdowns: the viewer never has a doubt that he will overcome all odds and save the little girl.

Despite the transparency of the plot, the movie still worked for me because of Damon's earnestness, because of the incredible special effects (which are shown only with necessary, and never overdone to the point of CGI overload), and because of the great action pacing.  And the score, too, I guess, though that, more than the special effects, gets overused at times.  I also could have done without the blatant moralizing, though I do agree wholeheartedly with its point.  It's just that the message is as in-your-face as the action sequences, and so they made odd bedfellows to me.  If that message doesn't bother you, the movie is worth seeing if you like action / sci-fi / special effects movies.  If the message does bother you, I still recommend the movie if (and only if) you really like action / sci-fi / special effects movies.  There's enough to like here without the message getting in the way, if you don't agree with it.

And what is that message, exactly?  That every immigrant who wants to come to the U.S. for health care should make it?  (In the movie, Earth is very clearly Mexico, or other very poor countries, and Elysium is very clearly the U.S.)  That health care should be universal?  That the U.S. / Mexican border wall should come down?  I don't know, and I don't think the movie really knows, either.  But it's some combination of all of those things.  The movie won't sway you, either way, and it certainly won't change your mind, no matter what side of the fence you're on.

Lullaby by Robert B. Parker and Ace Atkins

Photo: Lullaby's book cover, from Kirkus Reviews, at www.kirkusreviews.com

The title says it's "Robert B. Parker's Lullaby," and the copyright belongs to the estate of Robert B. Parker, but this novel, the first without Parker, is all Atkins.  The names are the same, but the writing is completely different.  Not that this is bad; the writing is adequate, sometimes good.  Better than most in the genre, probably.  But the benchmark's of Parker's writing--and though the comparison is unfair, it's inescapable when you take over someone else's iconic series--were the sparseness of his prose, and the breeze of his wit and descriptions.  In short, Parker made it all look effortless.  Atkins simply tries too hard; his wit is sometimes strong and real, and his writing is often funny, but there are obvious instances in which he simply tries too hard to be witty or funny, and, at those specific moments, everything falls flat.  I found the writing too self-aware.  Characters would often say that now, to fit the genre, the other guy should say or do X, or behave like Y.  Even Spenser tries too hard, and the funny thing about his character used to be that he so much didn't give a damn, that that was what partly made his lines so funny.  He simply tried to self-amuse; here, he tries to amuse everyone else.  Doesn't work most of the time.

And the transition novel also too clearly shows the age of the minor characters (Parker had purposely aged Spenser lately; here there's an odd combination of his world, and the other characters, getting old, but he doesn't.  Necessary, of course, for the main character of the series--and Rita Fiore, more than everyone else, clearly hasn't aged a bit--but here it was just a weird juxtaposition.) and the carrying on of the world.  Joe Broz is in Hospice care; the Fed who called Spenser Lochinvar is in a Jewish retirement community in Florida.  Characters lament about how it all used to be, and frequently.  Even a Whitey Bulger-like hood is frowned upon for being with a woman vastly younger than himself--though that's what Hawk does every night.  The plot unfolds much like Parker's might; you'll see nothing new here if you've read his stuff.  Yet it all does seem new anyway, somehow; Atkins clearly goes out of his way to make it his own, and mostly he does it well, and it's okay and necessary that he does so.

Overall it's a good book, sufficiently nostalgic and new at the same time, old and young at the same time (the main minor character, if you will, is fourteen, and the older guys respect her young toughness), Parker's and Atkins' at the same time.  If you liked Parker, you'll like Atkins, and you might like Atkins if you didn't like Parker.

This is because his writing purposely does things that Parker's didn't.  There's lots of imagery and extended metaphor here; outside of Crimson Joy, Parker usually stayed away from those.  The paragraphs and sentences are longer; none of the action is as tightly written as Parker's was.  This last could be worked on.  Two scenes in the novel should've been a lot more tense than they were.

But it's a good transition novel.  Atkins has now made the series his own; it'll be interesting to see what road he travels with it.