Paula Patton

  • Sacrifice (2019)

    Sacrifice (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Star power, sex-appeal, likability… call it what you want, but such a thing can matter a lot in compensating for an otherwise disappointing film. I would watch Paula Patton in just about anything, and so she’s one of the few things keeping me from calling BET+ Original film Sacrifice a complete miss. Here she plays a high-powered entertainment lawyer who, rather than do dull stuff like negotiating contracts and taking care of intellectual rights tangles, uses shady methods to investigate crimes and fight the local District Attorney on behalf of her rather loathsome clients. There’s a uniquely BET sensibility to the premise, blending flashy entertainment bling (all of her clients are music people—nothing so mundane as a writer or non-hyphenate actor) and the narrative assets of someone who can fight crime. Or condone it, as the film’s fuzzy morality suggests. If that sounds like an ideal premise for a Ray Donovan-like TV series, then you’ll understand my growing dismay as the film heads for a non-conclusive ending as if it was a TV pilot, because it is, and to a degree rarely seen in publicly aired pilots. Interesting characters are introduced, plot lines are set in motion, the dramatic redemption arc is barely sketched (let alone begun), an innocent killed, an overarching mystery set up… and then the film ends at a funeral, with opposite personalities hissing at each other while outlining the moral stakes of the series. Designed to hook viewers into a series that, as of one year after the announcement, was theoretically approved but never put in production due to the pandemic, Sacrifice is probably avoided until the follow-up series materializes [November 2021: Which it did!], or unless your crush on Patton is strong enough. Uninspired direction and some clunky dialogue don’t help. The unfinished narrative business also gives a very odd morality to the standalone result: The protagonist is set up as having many long-term issues (murdered dad, promiscuousness, shady morals) that are designed to be untangled and resolved over a long period of time, but just make her feel like an unlikable villain—even when she sororially tangles with a bullheaded DA that, from an objective perspective, should be the person we should cheer for. Liking Patton (and the extravagant outfits she gets in every scene) helps a lot, but she’s a beautiful actress who needs to be firmly directed to break out of her emotionless delivery, and I don’t think that writer-director Chris Stokes was able to do that: whether it’s a quirk of character or the actress herself, her flat blank-face line reading is not nearly effective enough. I did like many of the supporting characters, though—Erica Ash frequently rolls over Patton as the hard-charging DA, Veronika Boseman is captivating in a supporting role and there’s a good geekish character that feels like an ensemble dark horse. You can see where a series would go with those elements, but that presupposes that a series would be there to provide character development and dramatic resolution. Right now, though—none of that is available. Some pilots are developed without resolution… but they’re never shown publicly without the rest of the series, and that’s probably what should have happened with Sacrifice.

  • Traffik (2018)

    Traffik (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) It would be an exaggeration to put Traffik in the “when bad movies happen to good actors” category — I like Paula Patton a lot, but I have seen some less-than-stellar performances from her. Nor would she be the only one to slum in this bad movie: Considering that Traffik sports an intriguing cast that includes such notable character actors as Omar Epps, Roselyn Sánchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle and William Fichtner, there are plenty of resumés skipping over their involvement in Traffik these days. A more appropriate category for the film would be “exploitative garbage that attaches itself to a Serious Issue in an unconvincing bid for respectability,” because while it tries to be about human trafficking, it’s nothing more than a cheap sensationalist thriller/horror film. Ignore the meaningless “based on a true story” and the equally meaningless inflated statistics that close the film — Traffik is really about that old Hollywood chestnut: the woman in danger from cartoonishly evil antagonists. The set dressing may be contemporary (Patton plays a journalist who gets embroiled in a sexual trafficking ring led by—what else?—racist bikers) but the plot beats are as old as exploitation itself. The point here is cheap horror-movie scares, not particularly well executed by writer-director Deon Taylor. This is exceptionally familiar stuff if you’re used to the bottom tier of the horror genre: the only thing of note is the better-than-average cast. Which, yes, does bring us back to “when bad movies happen to good actors” as a shorthand for Traffik — maybe not Oscar-calibre actors, but ones that definitely deserve better. The added lesson here is that if you’re going to wrap your film in hot-button issues, you better bring something more to the table than exploiting those issues for thrills.

  • Four Kids and It (2020)

    Four Kids and It (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) A kids’ fantasy film so lightweight that it flies away as soon as it’s over, Four Kids and It looks and feels like a TV movie that somehow stumbled upon a promising cast. The story is about what happens when four kids in a newly blended family discover a mysterious beach creature with the power of making wishes real. Complications accumulate as they explore the limits of that power, and when a local aristocrat has designs on the creature. There are some interesting names in the cast: Michael Caine voicing the creature, Paula Patton and Matthew Goode as the parents of the blended family, and (sigh) Russell Brand as the villain. The special effects are generally acceptable, and the film has enough budget to indulge in its script’s flights of fancy. But there are too many problems to discount: Patton and Goode are saddled with unlikable characters that they can’t fix, while the kids are even more obnoxious than the parents. Brand seems to be playing in a film aimed at an older and more irony-appreciating audience, and the film doesn’t have enough plot to cover it 110 minutes. In the end, Four Kids and It feels like slot-filling TV: it exists because it’s cheap and fulfills some basic programming imperative, but could have been replaced by just about anything even remotely similar.

  • Mirrors (2008)

    Mirrors (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2015)  A common failing for horror movies is to fail to match the surface shocks with a coherent background acting as explanation.  Some filmmakers aren’t even interested in doing so, and their films feel like a series of shocks untroubled with justifications.  But I trust that viewers like a bit of substance to go with the scares.  Mirrors, to its credit, almost gets it right: its surface shocks have to do with reflective surfaces and what can reach characters from behind the mirror.  The gather good atmosphere supports an effective sense of dread (especially during its very end), and the film’s various gags get to have a bit of fun with the concept of “mirrors”.  As Mirrors develops its mythology further, though, we’re asked to believe in increasingly arbitrary details, inconsistent powers and a rather dull origin story.  Keifer Sutherland does what he can to keep things interesting, and Paula Patton does her darnedest in an underwritten role, but there really isn’t much more here than a few showpieces for director Alexandre Aja.  Mirrors is far more interesting in small disconnected moments than as a coherent whole, and even a few effective shots don’t make more of a lasting impact if they’re impossible to place in an effective story.  

  • About Last Night (2014)

    About Last Night (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2015)  I wasn’t expecting much from this low-profile romantic comedy (a remake of a 1986 film based on a 1974 David Mamet play), but I should have suspected otherwise given that it stars the enormously likable Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant.  Set in downtown Los Angeles, About Last Time details a year in the life of four young people, during which they meet, fall in love, break up, reconcile and change careers.  Almost immediately charming, it’s a film built on dialogues and performances, and all four main actors truly knock it out of the park, with particular mentions for Hart and Hall, both of whom play the uninhibited comic relief couple to the more conventional Ealy and Bryant.  (Elsewhere in the film, Paula Patton has another great but too-short turn as a romantic antagonist.)  While About Last Night isn’t particularly original, it’s slickly-made, modern, almost constantly funny and features intensely likable actors.  It’s hard to ask for much more from a romantic comedy

  • Baggage Claim (2013)

    Baggage Claim (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, March 2014) There is absolutely nothing new in Baggage Claim, a good-natured but familiar romantic comedy in which a flight attendant frantically sets out to find a husband in thirty days by re-examining her past boyfriends. The conclusion is obvious barely thirty minutes in the film (to the point where the remaining plot elements either feel forced or obvious) and all that remains is enjoying the actors’ performances. Which, frankly, isn’t a bad thing: Paula Patton finally gets a good starring comic role (after what felt like a long series of supporting roles in action movies) and she plays the comedy as broadly as she can, with infectiously charming results. There is also a lot to like in the series of would-be suitors jostling for screen time, from Derek Luke’s boy-next-door charm to Taye Diggs’ power-broker strength to Djimon Hounsou’s effortless smoothness. (Seriously; is that guy even capable of being anything less than totally suave?) While the film’s romantic messages (“Be yourself”, etc.) and airport-set climax were old decades ago, this familiarity works at lowering expectations to the point where the film feels likable even despite having nothing new to say. Romantic Comedies have the built-in advantage of innocuous failure modes: even at their blandest, they’re more forgettable than actively irritating. So it is that Baggage Claim may have flaws, but it’s competently-executed enough to settle for mild entertainment. The actors get to show what they can do, no one will be offended by the results and I can name plenty of films that don’t even meet those two criteria.

  • 2 Guns (2013)

    2 Guns (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, January 2014) Sometimes, subtlety or originality be damned, simple and straightforward is the way to do it. So it is that 2 Guns doesn’t need much more than a premise re-using familiar genre elements (in this case, two undercover agents teaming up against drug cartels after accidentally stealing far more than they expected and discovering that the other is not a hardened criminal) and two solid actors doing what they know best. Mark Wahlberg is up to his usual average-blue-collar-guy persona as a Navy agent caught hanging in the breeze, while Denzel Washington is all effortless charm as a DEA agent close to going rogue. Both actors work differently, but here they get a good chance to play off each other, and the result feels more than entertaining. They really don’t stretch their persona, but 2 Guns is a breezy film that doesn’t requires brave performances. (Case in point: Paula Patton looking good and Bill Paxton acting bad, stretching a bit but not too much.) Director Baltasar Kormákur ably follows-up on his previous Contraband by delivering an average but competent criminal action thriller with clean set-pieces and straightforward narrative rhythm. It’s hard to say much more about 2 Guns: Who needs a new classic when the same-old can be done so well?