“Hey, this movie gets exciting when the main characters sleep!” sounds a bit strange, but in Director Christopher Nolan’s summer movie-house treat – INCEPTION, it’s the gospel truth! INCEPTION is that very welcome rare summer blockbuster that builds thrills from offbeat elements, not just empty satisfactions such as cool gun-fights, rooftop to rooftop leaps, etc. etc. At almost two and a half hours, INCEPTION rarely asks its audience to like it, like most summer blockbusters do. It offers more filling satisfaction – the action scenes are less in number – but they burst with imagination! The film goes from the screenwriter’s mind to the IMAX screen with apparently little interference from studio execs.

The story, in a nutshell: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a recently widowed head of mega high-tech thieves who gather information by invading other people’s dreams. Their new target is Robert Fischer, (Cillian Murphy, from DARK KNIGHT and 28 DAYS LATER) the young slacker heir to one of the world’s more powerful corporations. Cobb and company must break into Fisher’s dream-world hours after elder Fischer passes away. Secrets holding the fate of Fisher’s corporation, and God knows how much money, is in Fischer’s head. A new member of Cobb’s dream-invaders is Ariadne (Ellen Page from JUNO) a bright young American architect student studying in Paris. She got her job of building Fisher’s dream settings by successful sketching for Cobb, tough-to-solve mazes in a minute or so. You would think there would be SHINING-like mazes popping up in the film, but Nolan is not that simple. The whole film itself is a maze. When are we dreaming? Is this elevator shaft Cobb’s men hide out in an escape route? We’re all safe in an airport, but is the airport real? What’s curious in INCEPTION is the look of young Ariadne’s dream-scape. Here’s a young girl, obviously raised on Youtube, Tivo and Hipster culture, and yet her antique dream-designs are very drab – personality free – like something out of long ago Stalin-era European architecture. (If you don’t know what I mean, look at Lenin’s Tomb, or almost ANY building on a SUNY campus in New York State)

Nolan burst onto the scene ten years back with his mystery-chase-told-in-reverse indie hit MOMENTO and came to inherit the mile-high budgeted BATMAN movie franchise. Nolan repeats imagery from his previous hit THE DARK KNIGHT (The gunman on a motorcycle chasing Cobb’s van reminded me of the Caped Crusader). Where THE DARK KNIGHT excelled better than INCEPTION was in the characters. Of course, we all cherish DARK KNIGHT’s quotable and insanely insane villain (Heath Ledger’s Joker) and some of the supporting characters, like Aaron Eckhart’s mile-deep Harvey Dent or Maggie Gyllenhall’s compelling Maggie. You just don’t have those eccentricities and complexity in the characters here. DiCaprio’s Cobb is too cold and too wrapped up about his dead wife to really care about. There is a haunting back-story of Mal (Marion Cotillard), Cobb’s deceased wife, a suicide – but Mal seems to host a “so-what” drone-personality. (This is DiCaprio’s second film this year with a “deceased-wife-with-terrible-secrets” back-story The other is of course, Martin Scorcese’s SHUTTER ISLAND. Please, the dark-secret back-story has been getting old for some time now; can we switch to “lost toy as a child”?) Ariadne is rather one note, almost a plot device. My complaints end there. See this engrossing strangle-hold to your senses on the biggest screen possible.

When I left the Press Screening for INCEPTION, there was line of eager moviegoers waiting for the film’s midnight opening. The line traveled down a few staircases of a Manhattan uber-multiplex. I was giving these people a big thumbs-up over what they were about to see. It’s Nolan’s touches, like guerilla style film-making in an expensive movie, that helped make THE DARK KNIGHT a hit grossing over a billion dollars. (I always remember sound effects in that film, such as distant people coughing during one of The Joker’s evil speeches). INCEPTION has similar indie film “unpolished” touches that make the film engrossing. Already a couple days after that premier, there are news specials and major articles focusing on INCEPTION’s terrain, the mysteries of dream. As I am writing this, a dream specialist is on the evening news, explaining how one can direct and mold their dreams to their liking. Let’s see, I’m dreaming that Christopher Nolan keeps this pace going and we get decades of great films out of him, and I’m also dreaming that Michael Bay’s remake of WIZARD OF OZ with Megan Fox gets green-lighted.

Huh? Beautifully executed with DiCaprio’s intensity but what does it mean?

Okay, to even begin to decipher INCEPTION we need to dig deep into the knotty well of the subject of writer/director’s Christopher Nolan’s film. Why do we dream?

Ancient civilizations saw dreams as portals for receiving wisdom from the gods. In modern psychology, Sigmund Freud famously theorized that dreams were the “royal road to the unconscious”. From the psychoanalytic perspective, Freud’s theory of dreams suggested that dreams were a representation of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations.

According to Freud, people are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed from conscious awareness. While these thoughts are not consciously expressed, Freud suggested that they find their way into our awareness via dreams.

But Freud has been dismissed. It’s not about sexual rage, aggression and unresolved fetishes, it’s all about New Age poppycock love. You don’t get a Ph.D., M.D. in psychiatry, or grant money in dream research by saying Freud doped out the whole thing long ago. You look to develop another working theory. Let’s admit it: Freud didn’t have google. He had to think up everything himself!

Now theorists say we may dream to de-clutter our brains. Every day we are bombarded with new information, both consciously (through learning) and unconsciously (through online porn sites).

This modern dream theory suggests dreaming is a way to file away key information and discard meaningless data. It helps keep our brains organized and optimizes our learning.

Then there is the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming which holds that the process is not random and that it is instead guided by the emotions of the dreamer.

Dreams are a way of assembling and dumping daily gunk. So I have been asking scientists I know:

Do prisoners held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day dream? Do cloistered nuns and monks living in a vow of silence dream? Do mystic cave-dwellers dream?

What about people in comas? Do they dream?

When I trekked through Tibet, my dreams were very, very different – and unusually and strangely menacing. I now understand why Tibet’s deities are so awesomely terrifying. It’s the effects of the high altitude.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is not your run-of-the-mill corporate spy. He and his team go into the dreams of businessmen and steal their top-secret ideas. That is where I keep my deep, dark secrets and important corporate raiding schemes – in my “dream vault”.

Cobb’s team is made up of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and new recruit Ariadne (Ellen Page – out of her league here).

Problem is, Cobb’s subconscious is haunted by his ever-present, nagging, dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), who has a nasty habit of showing up in his subconscious and wreaking havoc on his intrusive job of going into other people’s dreams.
His workplace is other people’s dreams – who invited her along? She just won’t go into The Light!

Mal has an agenda. She’s mad she is dead and wants Cobb to join her. That is how much she loves him.

Cobb is an international fugitive. He is accused of killing his wife. He didn’t do it, but he’s carrying around a lot of guilt. He constantly moans and bitches: “I want my life back!”

Businessman Mr Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb and his team to create a dream whereby his future rival, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), will believe it is his idea – and a good one, to boot – to sell his father’s business empire when he inherits it.

Instead of stealing ideas locked in the dreamer’s vault, Mr Saito wants Cobb to interject an idea into a dream. In return, he promises to purge Cobb’s fugitive record allowing him to return to his two children and go home.

Why doesn’t Mr Saito just hire a Russian hooker or buy up all the company stock? Hasn’t Saito ever heard of greenmail?

After Yusuf drugs the client, in this case Fischer, the team gets drugged. They all go to sleep and plunge into Fischer’s dream and mess around in there. Ariadne is an architect and has designed the entire dream landscape.

There are a few glitches – it’s her first job. And there are some pitfalls Cobb neglected to tell her about. Mainly, you can get stuck inside someone’s dream and never get back. You can spend years sitting in an empty room without cable.

Cobb fell into this dreaded 5th level rabbit hole once. This is why he is so unhinged and unstable.

Mild-mannered, impeccably dressed, pillow-lipped Fischer has his own unconscious dream landscape and Cobb & Company must battle a rogue team of dream-saboteurs and Fischer’s love of travel.

DiCaprio is sensational. Having followed in Robert De Niro’s footsteps by being mentored by Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio is fully invested in every film project he is in. He does not walk through any movie. Let’s hope there is never a THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE or a lucrative franchise like MEET THE PARENTS down the road for DiCaprio.

After 25-30 years in the business, it’s all about the money, not the work.

DiCaprio’s supporting cast of Gordon-Levitt, Hardy, and Rao is strong. Page and Cotillard – not so much.

I thought Marion Cotillard was brilliant in LA VIE EN ROSE, but her Hollywood roles have been terrible (PUBLIC ENEMIES, NINE). Why is she in INCEPTION and why is the song used in the film as the dream ticking clock (it’s INCEPTION’S Rosebud) Edith Piaf’s “Non, “je ne regrette rien”? Does Cotillard deserve this homage at this point in her Hollywood career?

“Scorsese achieves something entirely different than any other film he’s done. If you involve yourself enough, it will resonate for days”

Watching the trailers for SHUTTER ISLAND I feared it might’ve suffered from what I like to call the “Hambone Twist”. You know the cheap twist at the end where everything that happened to our main character didn’t really happen but was either a dream or all in the head of another personality etc… The ‘Hambone Twist’ is usually explained through quick flashbacks where we see the images of what we thought were something, become something they apparently were in REALITY. Thankfully SHUTTER ISLAND doesn’t go that route.

Without giving things away, Scorsese’s latest, dubbed a ‘Gothic Horror suspense thriller’ is one of the smartest, thought-provoking and semi-avant garde films I’ve ever seen. He successfully creates a mood and psychological world that is able to be both lived in along with Teddy Daniels (LEONARDO DICAPRIO) and interpreted throughout. It’s a B-movie concept given an A-List treatment, interwoven with psychological paranoia and the visual flair of a true master.

Scorsese is clearly a big fan of Asian Cinema and of the idea of dreams and reality plus the psychological aspects that surround them. He even played Vincent Van Gough in Kurosawa’s “Dreams” Back in 1990. Here he uses every inch of his imagination as a narrative filmmaker, his love of music and production design and Leonardo Dicaprio’s capacity as an actor to create a memorable, challenging and oddly beautiful view of insanity and the devastation that surrounds it. Thelmaker Schoonmaker (in her 22nd collaboration with Scorsese) officially rings in the new decade as the premier “auteur” editor of our time.

In order to enjoy or at least appreciate the film I think you do have to participate and doubt yourself and ask questions and be as involving as you can. The only thing there is no doubt about is that Scorsese was having boat loads of fun manipulating the audience, creating dream sequences and challenging the minds and sanity of the viewer. He does this in one of the most profoundly original ways I seen. What’s not original, but hopefully funny is the spoof I did on youtube.com/eastchesterjester

The fact that we may walk out feeling we’re unsure or crazy like the mind of our protagonist is proof that the film is a success. The film hasn’t left my mind and has already spawned countless conversations with other viewers. In a time where so many things are forgotten so quickly, that’s something special.

DiCaprio memorably transcends Scorsese.

Depicting crazy people is always tough. They never comb their hair and the drugs, instead of making them catatonic zombies, seem to make them don maniacal faces. Didn’t sage Forest Gump say it best – “Crazy is as crazy does”?

With the exception of CAPE FEAR (Martin Scorsese had to follow the original material and De Niro’s pleasure in playing sadist Max Cody brought a strong sexual tension to the thriller), Scorsese is not a director who should be handling the horror genre. What SHUTTER ISLAND is missing is a sexual subtext which adds a potent and horrifying dimension to nightmares.

In 1954, two U.S. Marshalls, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travel to Ashecliffe Hospital, a concentration camp-like facility for the criminally insane on the remote Shutter Island. They are there to investigate the disappearance of a female child killer, Rachel 1 (Emily Mortimer).

Getting not much help from Ashecliffe’s Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) or Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), Teddy begins to question not only what is going on but why other patients are surreptitiously telling him to “run”.

The only thing a spare-haired crazy didn’t do is smile at Teddy while running her finger across her throat.

As a hurricane approaches and devastates the island making departure impossible, Teddy confides that he asked for this assignment. He believes that his wife, Dolores’ (Michelle Williams) killer is in one of the wards.

And Teddy is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to his participation in the WWII liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. He’s having flashbacks, especially when he intuits that Dr. Naehring is a Nazi doctor brought to the U.S. through Project Paperclip. If it wasn’t for the Nazi doctors operating in the U.S., there would be no LSD-induced mind control experimentation on patients and civilians. The Nazi doctors made lobotomies popular.

The answer Teddy is looking for might be found at the lighthouse, where he is told surgeries on patient’s brains are being done. In the lighthouse he finds badly beaten George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley) who wises Teddy up. Trying to leave the island, he runs into Rachel 2 (Patricia Clarkson) hiding in a cave. By now, he’s totally freaked out!

If director Martin Scorsese is, as has been suggested, honoring Alfred Hitchcock, he’s taken the worst part of PSYCHO – at the end when the doctor explains what happened to Norman Bates – and bogged down SHUTTER ISLAND with a tad too much unnecessary exposition. The denouement is laid out very nicely. Trust the audience – we go to a lot of movies.

Even lousy ones like Garry Marshall’s VALENTINE’S DAY. Clearly no one read the overwhelming negative reviews and gave it a $52.4 opening weekend.

The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis (from a novel by Dennis Lehane) is paced beautifully, giving DiCaprio a full landscape of emotions to explore. And he’s definitely up to the challenge. SHUTTER ISLAND is all about him and he’s fantastic.

The entire production is impressive though the music (Scorsese and music supervisor Robbie Robertson go back as far as THE LAST WALTZ IN 1978) is intrusive and awful. Scorsese, who by now has a strong relationship with DiCaprio (it’s their fourth movie together and DiCaprio will play Frank Sinatra in Scorsese’s planned bio of the icon), stumbles with the obvious heavy-handed directing. It needed a more intelligent handling and, as I mentioned, a sexual subtext.

DiCaprio works hard while Crowe does chores at home and eats.

Getting fat for a role is necessary when you are playing a real-life fat man. Diego Rivera was obese (Alfred Molina in FRIDA) and the older Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro in RAGING BULL) had gone to seed. But let’s face facts, Russell Crowe is fat, so why claim he was told by BODY OF LIES director Ridley Scott to put on an extra 63 pounds? Crowe says Scott told him: “Now, mate, would you mind putting on a significant amount of weight? I see him (the character) as an ex-athlete who has let himself go.”

This is the 4th movie Crowe has made with Scott (with NOTTINGHAM – number 5 – opening next year). Does anyone believe Crowe did what Scott asked him to do and force-fed himself Twinkies all day long?

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a CIA agent working in the Middle East being stage-managed by a spy satellite (that everyone on the ground can clearly see) that is directed by god-like, omnipresent Ed Hoffman (Crowe) who is really a house-husband. While manipulating world events as he sees fit in the Middle East, Hoffman does chores such as driving his children to school, making breakfast, and doing laundry. Attached 24/7 to an ear phone to the agents on the ground in the hotbed Middle East, he’s also likely to be his son’s nursery school aide every Monday.

I needed a War On Terror manual to follow this jumble of picturesque intrigue. Ferris is a fluent Arabic-speaking operative doing and going exactly where Hoffman directs him. Hey, maybe that’s what Crowe liked about the role! He’s telling a big star to heel, stay, roll over, and kill.

Ferris’s mission is to find a secretive terrorist operating out of Jordan. This brings Ferris from Iraq to Jordan and an uneasy alliance with the bespoke-wearing head of Jordanian intelligence, Hani (Mark Strong). Ferris also has a local tour-guide and contact, Bassam (Oscar Isaac), a computer genius (Simon McBurney), and a nurse-love interest, Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani).

Ferris decides on a scheme to flush out the targeted terrorist by setting up a bogus rival terrorist group. His reasoning is that this terrorist is really interested in his own hagiographic legacy and will be jealous of an interloper carrying out non-sanctioned, rogue bombings.

There’re a few mano-a-mano scenes between Ferris and Hoffman to show off DiCaprio’s acting skills. And, to be honest, DiCaprio is picking his roles wisely, choosing projects that are tough and give him lots of dimension. The romance between Ferris and Aisha is not only unnecessary but awkward. Shouldn’t Ferris be smart enough not be give his enemies and his overseer Hoffman an emotional target to get at him?

This spy thriller gets muddled, then murky, and ends as all spy thrillers must, as another day at the office. Nothing gets resolved and Hoffman has to wrap things up quickly since he has to take his kids to see “The Lion King” while his wife leads a black-op group in Pakistan hunting OBL.

Crowe is a sexy fat man and he is always seductive with his male co-stars. It’s his way of getting the upper-hand in scene-stealing. Now I know the Sheriff of Nottingham liked banquets so he could be a well-fed villain, but are we going to see a hefty Robin Hood flirting with Friar Tuck?

DiCaprio gives a masterful performance. He’s become a man’s man with a powerful on-screen presence.

Ernest Blom, the president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, said in a 2006 article I read recently (in an airline magazine on my way to South Africa), that conflict diamonds are now all but “an historical fact.”

Blom noted that “In 2000, it came to our attention that trade in conflict diamonds (stones mined in countries at war and sold to fund the war of efforts of an invading army. Key culprits included Angola and Sierra Leone) accounted for as much as 4% of global turnover in rough diamonds.” Blom said the industry was quick to react and formed the World Diamond Council. So successful has this system been that trade in conflict diamonds has been reduced to less than .5% of total global turnover.

Diamonds are a huge commodity and the De Beers Group (that has a near de facto monopoly on the world’s diamond trade and rules the industry by creating an artificial scarcity) doesn’t like these rebel-mined diamonds that support death and civil war, sullying their pristine PR campaign.

Does the consumer care?

I read an article on CNN.com that “in 2005 diamond engagement ring sales totaled $4.5 billion. For the first quarter ended in April, 2005, the New York-based luxury jeweler Tiffany’s said profit was up 8.8 percent from the year earlier. In 2004, U.S. retail sales jumped 14 percent, helped by sales of big rocks. Tiffany said sales of diamond rings over three carats, called “statement” rings, are running strong as are sales of diamond-encrusted “celebration” rings that run from $5,000 to $12,000 a piece.”

Apparently, not many people are concerned that their coveted “bling-bling” status symbol might be a “blood diamond” (tagged by humanitarian groups to garner a negative association), or, a “conflict” diamond (the diamond industry’s more gentle term). Buyers of diamonds don’t care.

I’m surprised de Beers didn’t go with the term “squabble diamonds.”

Imagine how more psychically charged your diamond is (according to statistics, the sale of higher-carat stones has increased dramatically) if it was mined using forced labor and people lost their lives, or an arm, for you to celebrate your engagement?

B.OOD DIAMOND is set in 1999 in Sierra Leone, a country in the throes of civil war. The rebels are mining diamonds and selling them to fund their purchase of guns. These diamonds might be for sale at your mall.

Last week, I was in Botswana. One year after gaining their independence, Botswana serendipitously found diamonds! The government is in 50-50 partnership with de Beers and the economy is thriving.

Survival International, the UK-based indigenous peoples’ advocates, said Botswana had forcibly evicted communities of Bushmen from their homelands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to make way for diamond prospecting.

Zimbabwean Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a diamond middleman. Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) is a good man. He is a poor fisherman with a wife and three children. Caught up in the bloody civil war, rebels take Solomon’s young son. His wife and children are sent to a refugee camp. He is forced into slave labor mining diamonds. His life collides with Archer’s when he finds a rare, 100-carat pink diamond and, risking death, buries it. When Archer hears about the rough stone, he joins up with Solomon – who only wants his family back. Archer wants to get out of the nasty business by selling the diamond. Let’s face the facts: How is Solomon going to sell the stone without Archer’s help?

Solomon knows that his son Dia’s fate is to become a child soldier and he uses his knowledge of where he buried the stone as leverage with Archer. They join forces to find Dia, the stone, and secure Solomon’s family release from the refugee camp.

Archer meets Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist reporting on conflict diamonds. Maddy is quick to size up Archer as a major player in transporting diamonds from the rebels to Amsterdam. Only with Maddy’s status as a journalist can Archer and Solomon navigate the dangerous rebel-held territory. Being on a Time magazine cover or on CNN seduces even the most cruel rebel leader.

There is enough Message here to make Mother Theresa weep from the grave. There is the real brutality of child soldier-killers that might frighten off the now-peaceful Sierra Leone tourism. There is also high-stakes action, danger, tough talk, and the beauty of Africa.

What is really compelling about BLOOD DIAMOND is DiCaprio’s outstanding performance and skillful African accent. He is not afraid to commit to a character that is ruthless, selfish and with a one-goal agenda. His Archer is an un-redemptive, experienced killer slogging through death for a small piece of rock with a big payoff. Hounsou knows he is playing a one-dimensional character of a good man searching for his son. Connelly wisely keeps her flirting to a minimum. While director Edward Zwick can direct epics of this dimension, he has yet to find a screenplay that will galvanize the audience.

What is missing from BLOOD DIAMOND is the consumer. Where were the scenes of movie stars on the Red Carpet and rap stars in their videos decked out in millions of dollars of diamonds?

Warner Bros. Pictures / A Plan B/Initial Entertainment Group/Vertigo Entertainment production in association with Media Asia Films
Running time — 152 minutes / MPAA rating: R

Sensational. Before, Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio, Damon, and Walherg were movie stars; now they are “Class A” actors. The only woman is the weak link.

I wish Jack Nicholson would shut up about his sex life.

Why has Leonardo DiCaprio made three films – and counting – with Martin Scorsese? Scorsese gets terrific performances out of actors. Watch THE DEPARTED – even minor characters have presence. With a first rate script by William Monahan (adapting Hong Kong smash thriller INFERNAL AFFAIRS – I tried watching it twenty times but couldn’t keep track of who was who), Scorsese delivers exactly what you want: highly stylized, and vicious-glamorous, characters.

The script is funny, witty, and dangerously smart.

You expect DiCaprio and Damon to be good, but you can’t wait for Mark Wahlberg to turn up.

And Jack? Its all about him, isn’t it? Scorsese, understanding that Jack can chew the scenery and the drapes, uses him selectively. But that grinning-crazy Jack does show up. To please his mega-star, Scorsese apparently filmed a three-way sex scene Jack wanted. Thank God it never made it into the film. (Nicholson told Rolling Stone magazine that he convinced Scorsese to include a sex scene featuring himself, two hot women and a sex toy in THE DEPARTED. He said: “I thought it would be more frightening if my character had a sexual component . . . so I called Marty up and said, ‘Look, I just thought of what would be an interesting scene of [my character] having wild sex. And in this scene with two girls, one of the girls is wearing a strap-on’ . . . This was my idea and improvisational, and Marty went for it.”)

And now this expensive perk is part of Nicholson’s at-home after-dinner entertainment.

Feared south Boston mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) takes a liking to pre-teen Colin Sullivan (Damon) and, teaching him The Ways of the Mob, guides his career path by placing him inside the Massachusetts state police. Colin, very intelligent and collegian-appropriate, soon joins the Special Investigation Unit. The unit is run by Captain Ellerby (Alec Baldwin) and he wants them to concentrate all their efforts on destroying Frank Costello.

Another arm of the Special Investigation Unit that runs undercover operations enlists Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), whose family history is tainted with low-level criminals. After an accusatory interrogation by Capt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his foul-mouthed side-kick Sgt. Dignam (Wahlberg), Billy agrees to go undercover and infiltrate Frank’s gang. He is busted, dropped from the state police, and goes to prison. Returning to the streets, his family’s legacy brings him into contact with Frank’s loyal right-hand man, Mr. French (Ray Winstone). His sudden brutality is perfect mob-molding fodder. Undergoing a nasty ritualistic initiation by Frank, he is on the team. Billy soon makes his dead father proud.

So here they are – Billy’s on Frank’s team but really working undercover, and Colin is on the Special Investigation Unit in constant communication with Frank.

But Billy is under tremendous stress. Frank’s crew kills people and Frank is a proud homicidal maniac.

During a highly tense transaction, both sides realize that they have a mole inside their ranks. For Frank, it’s obvious. It’s got to be the new guy, right?

The excitement never lets up, and Scorsese’s love of vicious criminals is mob opera. The only weak link is police psychologist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga). The underwritten character is not fleshed-out by Farmiga, who is clearly not able to emotionally engage us with her conflicted attraction to Men Who Kill. We should have seen her morbid fascination with dangerous men as she becomes involved with both Colin and Billy.

You know what I mean – those female public defenders who sneak killers out of prison, or those needy obese women who marry death row inmates. A more experienced actress would have found a way to telegraph Madolyn’s character flaws.

This is DiCaprio’s movie. You can see that his relationship with Scorsese brings out the best in him. As the messy killings mount around him, he starts cracking up. You not only see it, you feel it.

Damon has scenes that seem tailor-written for him. Everyone (except Farmiga) was terrific – I even loved the background players. And Baldwin, whose notorious bad behavior on sets are legends, must have behaved himself. After all, it’s a Scorsese film. It’s not THE CAT IN THE HAT.

Once again, praise must be given to Scorsese’s long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker. She edited the great Scorese films RAGING BULL, GOODFELLAS, CASINO, and CAPE FEAR!

By the way Jack, we really want to hear what you know about Brad Pitt’s sex life.

Credits:
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: William Monahan
Based on the film “Infernal Affairs” directed by Alan Mak and Andrew Lau Wai Keung
Producers: Brad Pitt, Brad Grey, Graham King
Executive producers: Roy Lee, Doug Davison, G. Mac Brown, Kristen Hahn, Gianni Nunnari
Director of photography: Michael Ballhaus
Production designer: Kristi Zea
Music: Howard Shore
Co-producers: Joseph Reidy, Michael Aguilar, Rick Schwartz
Costume designer: Sandy Powell
Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

Cast:
Billy: Leonardo DiCaprio
Colin: Matt Damon
Costello: Jack Nicholson
Dignam: Mark Wahlberg
Mr. French: Ray Winstone
Madolyn: Vera Farmiga
Brown: Anthony Anderson
Ellerby: Alec Baldwin

Miramax Films
Running time — 168 minutes / MPAA rating: R

What drew director Martin Scorsese to obsess about this project for 20 years? Sometimes, obsessions should be safely left for mulling over during long car rides.

Luckily, Scorsese was able to seduce Daniel Day-Lewis to return to films in an extravagantly realized, brilliant performance as Bill “The Butcher” Poole. His hair, nose, moustache, arthritic walk, clothes, gravelly fluid voice and anorexic demeanor all pay tribute to his character. Every penny of the huge budget is on the screen in dazzling sets, but its scope detracts from one of Scorsese’s strengths – exposing his characters subconscious motivations. A movie must be more than set design and background extras. Without the benefit of a screenplay that mines his character’s past as an orphaned youth, Leonardo DiCaprio struggles to hold his own next to Day-Lewis. He’s just no match. The story drags on and the drama only comes to life when Poole is on screen. Day-Lewis is riveting. Embracing a villain’s best traits, Poole is violently unpredictable and charming.

The story, while historically compelling, is weak here and can’t sustain the bloated running time. Scorsese, who has stamped his mark on so many films, appears overwhelmed by the scenery. Remarkably, his vision is unfocused. He’s lost in the crowd.

The film opens in 1863 amid the backdrop of immigrants pouring into New York City. The “native” Americans of English ancestry resent the Irish immigrants who flood into the city at a rate of 15,000 a week. New York is a cesspool of crime, corruption, and lawlessness. The Civil War is about to break out. Grime, depravity, and menace are the currency people respect. The notorious filth and stench of early New York City is glamorized by GANGS’ elaborate sets. Immigrant leader Father Vallon (Liam Neeson) dies in a bloody turf war with Bill “The Butcher” Poole (Daniel Day-Lewis) over territory known as the Five Points. Vallon’s young son witnesses his father’s death at Poole’s hand. Twenty years later Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns seeking revenge. Poole takes a sudden liking to Amsterdam and allows him to become his protégé. Amsterdam quickly becomes interested in pickpocket artist Jenny Everdeane (miscast Cameron Diaz). While every sweeping epic needs a romance, here it lessens the hero’s resolve.

There are some uncommon touches that seem pressed upon Scorsese by show business overlords. An early music score is so hip-hop modern it’s glaringly ridiculous. And topless women abound – something Scorsese hasn’t indulged in previously. Perhaps it was appropriate to Poole’s debauchery, but appears condescending rather than a nod to historical accuracy.

While the story of the rise of Irish gangsters and the political machine that created unparalleled corruption in this country may have made interesting reading, the fact that it took three writers, Jay Cocks (THE AGE OF INNOCENCE), Steven Zaillian (HANNIBAL), and Kenneth Lonergan (YOU CAN COUNT ON ME) to craft the screenplay indicates that problems brewed early on (and were acknowledged). Scorsese works best when there is a definitive point of view present. Three screenwriters muddled the story’s spine and the weakened the film’s impact.

In light of current world events, GANGS could have been a metaphor for expressing how lawlessness and corruption have shaped the beginnings of a society. Or how different groups of people clash and then do manage to live peacefully together. GANGS stays reasonably close to historical fact in such details as the king’s ransom of $300 to avoid going to war (The History Channel’s documentary on The Five Points gangs theorized this would be equivalent to $40,000 today). But the story of the immigrants, the conflict of the classes, and political corruption could have used one dominant voice.

Cast:
Amsterdam Vallon: Leonardo DiCaprio
Bill the Butcher: Daniel Day-Lewis
Jenny Everdeane: Cameron Diaz
Boss Tweed: Jim Broadbent
Happy Jack: John C. Reilly
Johnny Sirocco: Henry Thomas
Monk: Brendan Gleeson
Priest Vallon: Liam Neeson

Credits:
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan
Story by: Jay Cocks
Producers: Alberto Grimaldi, Harvey Weinstein
Executive producers: Michael Ovitz, Bob Weinstein, Rick Yorn,
Michael Hausman, Maurizio Grimaldi
Director of photography: Michael Ballhaus
Production designer: Dante Ferretti
Music: Howard Shore
Costume designer: Sandy Powell
Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

20th-Century Fox Release.
Rated R. Running time: 112 minutes. Opening: Feb. 11 ’00.

Though released in February, THE BEACH is truly a “January” movie–the month studios usually dump their turkeys onto an unwary public. Not exactly a bomb, but close enough– unless you’re among the legion of fans besotted with Leonardo DiCaprio. The guy can act, as he amply showed in Gilbert Grape and This Boy’s Life, but with this demented script, he’s not given the chance to do much more than show his abs.

Plot: Richard (DiCaprio), a young American backpacker in Bangkok, gets a map of a secret paradise by Daffy, a deranged man who then promptly kills himself. So, in search of high adventure and with two new friends in tow, Richard hies off to this Shangri-La, filled with a gaggle of global groupies just as uninteresting and dull as he is. In between, he drinks snake blood, battles a baby shark and hangs out with the rest of the pack who don’t seem to have any vocation except, well, smoking pot, hanging out and making love. It’s every teenager’s fantasy. So who knows? Bad as it is, if you factor in the star’s titanic appeal to 13-year-old girls, 20th Century-Fox might yet recoup their investment (including Leo’s $20 million salary).

The premise of the film, one can suppose, is that after a while, “paradise” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It can be hellish– in this case, for the audience as well as inhabitants. If you can keep awake, you can’t help but notice how very derivative The Beach is to so many other features, in whole or part. To cite a few: Deerhunter (the Russian roulette scene), Lost Horizon (the lure and enchantment of Shangri-La), Blue Lagoon (young lovers on a deserted isle), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (the famous scene of the pair jumping off a high cliff to the waters below), and most especially, with its obvious comparison to Lord of the Flies (the breakdown of civilized behavior).

What’s sorely missing is any developed sense of the characters. Who are they? Except for their mutual desire for sex, pot and privacy, they’re all ciphers. Maybe that’s for the best. They’re not at all worth knowing. On the other hand, there’s plenty of extended, extensive close-ups of DiCaprio–and maybe, too, that’s the reason the film was made.

And now this is your editor writing, having watched the film on DVD, to see if anything can moderate Bobby’s pronouncement, as DVD releases so often do.

And the answer is – not really. Danny Boyle is a good filmmaker, and there are elements of Trainspotting here, particularly in the downward spiral of our protagonist in Act 3. On the commentary track he speaks engagingly, allowing time between each of his comments for us to reenter the narrative, which I liked. Several times he explains that scenes were deleted (and placed on the DVD’s extra material venue) for pacing and dramatic drive, both euphemisms for Ôthey made the film more leaden than it is now.’ A few of these are in the first act, which the DVD screening committee members found particularly unmotivated. For instance, there is an earlier scene with DeCaprio and the French couple, chatting over breakfast, which would have made his bursting in on them and proposing the journey a bit more logical than it is now.

Boyle discusses camerawork, the negative publicity the production received because of their treatment of the island they used (even though they restored it to its original state to the satisfaction of the Thai government), being offered a real marijuana field to use (which they declined, and grew a field of hemp). It’s a decent commentary overview, but doesn’t rescue the film, and frankly, none of the committee members wanted to see the deleted scenes. I think they felt they’d been through enough.

The image and sound are excellent, if you’re considering a purchase. And the film is a bit more cycnical and bleak than one sensed from the way it was reviewed in the mass press upon its opening. Makes one wonder how many of the critics made it to the end, since the idyllic hippie milieu of Act 2 is pretty much used as a set-up for the bad trip to come.

My favorite insight on the commentary track: Tilda Swinton is the self-appointed head of the secret society on ‘the beach’, and we all know what an odd-looking creature she is, one I’d like to see as Charles Dance’s wife in some surrealistic bit of casting some day. She’s also known to be exceedingly bright, and according to Boyle, she characterized her role in the film as a cross between Stalin and Aromatherapy. My admiration for her grows with each sound bite.

And a parting aside. One of the ‘undesirable’ hippie types who DeCaprio regrets letting in on his secret, in discussing the island, compares it to the urban legend of the Kentucky Fried Mouse, a famed anecdote passed around the Big Apple for decades concerning a patron at the fried chicken fast food emporium who was given the stiffened, deep fried body of a mouse that had fallen into the fryer. Well…I saw the actual Kentucky fried rodent. It was during a private tour of NYC’s morgue museum. Aisles of ceiling high shelves, stacked with trivia from the city’s forensic history – a tooth from the pilot who crashed his plane into the Empire State Building, etc. And there was the actual urban legend itself, sitting in formaldehyde for all to see who could gain entrance to this unique museum, which is not open to the public. I got in because of my friend ship with Sukey Raphael, the then Bat Lady of New York, who was donating a bat cadaver to the museum.

And just for your edification, there was nothing there belonging to John Dillinger…

Credits:
Director: Danny Boyle.
Script by John Hodge,
adapted from novel by Alex Garland.
Photography: Darius Khondii;
Editor: Masahiro Hirakubo;
Original Music: Angelo Badalamenti.

Cast:
Leonardo DiCaprio (Richard),
Tilda Swinton (Sal),
Virginia Ledoyen (Francoise),
Guillaume Canet (Etienne),
Staffan Kihlbom (Christo),
Robert Carlyle (Daffy),
Magnus Lindgren (Sten),
Victoria Smurfit (Weather Girl).