Will Smith

  • King Richard (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) What difference does a moment make? Usually, not much, except when it makes all the difference. Had I written this review immediately after watching King Richard, I may have had something interesting to say about how this biography of the tennis superstar Serena and Venus Williams makes a rather daring choice to focus on their father Richard Williams’s decades-long campaign to get them to succeed. I probably would have discussed how the film, authorized by the Williams family, chooses to positively represent actions that would have been seen as unbearably controlling by others. I even would have had a few positive things to say about Will Smith’s performance, so intent on begging for an Oscar that it channels his undeniable charisma into something sufficiently different to be remarkable, but close enough to his person as to stay recognizably his. But then came The Moment. To recap for future historians: In the middle of the Academy Awards ceremony, Smith got up, walked onstage and physically assaulted presenter Chris Rock by slapping him across the face and berating him with a profanity-laden tirade for a perceived slight against his wife. But then, unlike you and me, who would have been hauled away immediately by security, Smith was allowed to stay in his seat until his name was announced as that year’s Best Actor winner, at which point he delivered a rambling, self-serving tirade that had me audibly booing at home despite watching the ceremony by myself. So, no, I’m not really interested in talking about King Richard. I’m far more interested in talking about Smith’s obnoxious and incessant begging for an Oscar since 1997’s Six Degrees of Separation. (Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness I can still tolerate, but Seven Pounds and Collateral Beauty are trash.)  I want to highlight some of the dumbest career decisions he’s made, not necessarily Wild Wild West, but the way his ego made Hancock worse and the incompetent nepotism of After Earth (which he produced and co-wrote, making it even more uniquely his screw-up) meant to jump-start his son’s acting “career.”  There’s quite a bit to say about Smith’s growing egotism even as his career regularly sputtered, or the way his personal life started overshadowing his performances. I’ll let others weigh in on the slew of hints and allegations (and, um, video footage) about his unhealthy marriage—except that all of that led to the utter hubris of his creating The Moment that exposed him to the world in the worst way possible. (In his acceptance speech, Smith relayed Denzel’s Washington’s dead-on warning ”In your highest moments, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you” but I don’t think he understood what that meant.)  I won’t burn my copies of Smith’s music CDs, but I’ll consider prefacing any future mention of his performances as “face-slapping Will Smith,” and mostly I want him to go away in obscurity for a very long time. In a fit of megalomania, he ruined other people’s crowning achievements (poor Questlove) and overshadowed a film that should have been discussed on its own merit. That’s the difference a moment can make.

  • Bad Boys for Life (2020)

    Bad Boys for Life (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, January 2021) Complaining about bloody violence and police brutality in Bad Boys for Life is complaining about what has ensured the existence of the film in the first place. It’s also going a bit too quickly on how this belated third instalment (seventeen years after the second film!) consciously corrects or at least questions the sadistic abuse that was so troublesome in the second film. Taken away from the clutches of director Michael Bay (who nonetheless has an amusing cameo as a wedding MC), this late-career film keeps poking at how men at the edge of fifty can be action heroes, and how the newer, smarter approach to policing keeps producing equally good results as the cowboy tactics of the protagonists. Or at least one of those protagonists, because if Will Smith remains the firebrand shoot-first cop of earlier films in the series, Martin Lawrence seems surprisingly reasonable as a cop in retirement who doesn’t want to get back to the chases and shootouts. But action cinema has requirements that mild-mannered protagonists can’t meet, and so it doesn’t take much for the series to go back to all-guns-blazing racing through the streets of Miami with increasingly baroque vehicles doing increasingly impossible stunts. Bay may not be conducting the Bayhem this time around, but directors Adil & Bilall prove adept at orchestrating action sequences in a good old-fashioned bombastic fashion, modern CGI compensating what live-action shooting can’t deliver. From a pure thrill-ride perspective, Bad Boys for Life is about as good as that kind of filmmaking gets, and the violence limits itself to blood rather than the sadistic humour of dismemberment that was prevalent in the previous film—a sure improvement at a time when far too many “comedies” and action movies go for horror-grade gore. Still, it’s the script that shows the most improvement: Underneath its coarse action-hero trappings, this is a film that keeps circling issues of age, legacy and retirement. Thematically, the Will Smith character deals with issues that are surprisingly similar to his arc of Gemini Man, albeit with a far happier finale. (We also, finally, get to deduce a halfway plausible explanation for his far-too-expensive lifestyle—spoils from narcotraficante undercover work early retirement!)  Bad Boys for Life will never be mistaken for a deep film—but it’s better than most action movies, features great interplay between the two leads and features some nice character work by supporting actors (with particular notice for the captivating Paola Núñez) creating an interesting “next generation” crew. Miami is once again at the colourful forefront of the action, and while the film can’t help but go to Mexico for its more sombre moments (echoing a problematic tendency for American action films exporting their heroes for overseas justice), it’s remarkably more open-minded than its predecessor, even at the expense of some obvious jokes. My admiration for the purely kinetic mastery of Bay’s work on the previous Bad Boys movies was always more-than-tempered by his gruesome disregard for human decency, but Bad Boys for Life goes a long way into correcting this structural deficiency. It’s far from perfect, but it’s not a bad watch.

  • Gemini Man (2019)

    Gemini Man (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) As someone who read a lot of middle-tier thrillers in the 1990s, I could tell you about Richard Steinberg’s The Gemini Man… except that Gemini Man is not its adaptation. Although I originally read the novel, twenty years ago, thinking it was going to be the source of the film – the premise of having an assassin facing off against a younger clone has been kicking around Hollywood since the late 1990s, and it’s finally through director Ang Lee and Will Smith that we get to see it on screens at last. Smith is a great choice for the part – not only does he have the pedigree of an action star, he has also been in the public eye since the early 1990s, so it’s easy for viewers to feel, on an instinctual level, the impact of seeing younger and older versions of Smith on-screen at once. Meanwhile, Lee has often been attracted to technically challenging films, and Gemini Man must have been a handful to manage through complex action sequences, wall-to-wall CGI and a mixture of scientific wizardry and emotional drama for it to come together. But does it come together? There’s an undeniable thrill at seeing some of the action sequences: While the CGI is really not always convincing, it is fun to see just how (imperfectly) the state of the art has come and the ways an actor can be duplicated and de-aged. Alas, this technical trick is roughly all that Gemini Man has to offer: The rest of the film seems like a rehash of clichés, Hollywood shortcuts, dull moments, trite dialogue and genetic determinism. Despite a promising concept (dual Will Smiths, not the nonsense cloning fearmongering), the film doesn’t rise to its potential. In fact, once you snip out the CGI sequences, the rest of the film is roughly undistinguishable from dozens of already-forgotten assassin thrillers that have overloaded screens over the years. That’s the point where anyone can look at the film’s two-decade production history and say, “Really? All of this effort for such an underwhelming result?”

  • Spies in Disguise (2019)

    Spies in Disguise (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) While hardly the best or most original animated film in recent memory, BlueSky’s latest (and possibly last) offering Spies in Disguise is a pleasant, fast-paced, funny and likable family film. Will Smith is in fine form as he voices a top-secret agent who gets transformed into a pigeon and must investigate who framed him against his own clandestine agency—with Tom Holland awkwardly voicing a nebbish teen science genius. There’s a good blend of action and comedy here, with the two creating sparks when the inherently ridiculous concept of a human transformed into a pigeon goes poking against the most serious tropes of spy fiction. Clearly funnier to younger members of the audience without necessarily losing their adult chaperones, Spies in Disguise often plays it safe with its pacifist message, broad physical comedy and bright colourful visuals. But, hey, it works—I can’t imagine anyone being angry at this film…, but then again, I can’t imagine anyone older than ten really loving it. But that’s fine—We’re not expecting the world out of Spies in Disguise, just being entertained for an hour and a half.

  • Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

    Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) An early entry in the “Wil Smith can act” section of Smith’s filmography designed to eventually get him an Oscar, Six Degrees of Separation is tonally very different from the films that ensured Smith’s success: It’s a rather quiet comedy-drama (adapted from a stage play) in which Smith plays a gay conman insinuating himself in the lives of upper-class Manhattanites. Smith looks impossibly young here—this was his first big role, and it happened right in the middle of his Fresh Prince of Bel-Air run. Not that he’s the only one worth noting here: In addition to a pair of lead performances from Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland, the film also sports Ian McKellen, Heather Graham and, improbably, J. J. Abrams before he turned from screenwriter to showrunner and director. Six Degrees of Separation itself is a bit more interesting than expected—not solely content with the con at the heart of it, it goes on tangents about degrees of separation, a discussion of Cats-the-movie (in which McKellen would later star), honours given to Sidney Poitier, and, perhaps most devastatingly, how a significant incident in our lives can become nothing more than someone else’s party anecdote. The theatrical origins of the film mean that the dialogue is better than average, and Smith is already quite impressive in a role that runs on pure charisma. We know how the rest turned out.

  • Aladdin (2019)

    Aladdin (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, Video On-Demand, January 2020) Disney is not to be congratulated for raiding their past classics as fuel for their current lineup of movies (which seems to be working, judging by the box-office receipts), but at least they have the decency to fuel their self-rips homages with decent-enough means and filmmakers. For a movie that doesn’t need to exist, the live-action Aladdin does have big stars, starting with Will Smith, a competent director in Guy Richie, very good special effects and some necessary tweaks to make the details of the story slightly less annoying. Perhaps the biggest creative decision is to propose Will Smith in the role that Robin Williams so memorably voiced back in 1992—it proves to be an acceptable replacement because Smith does have a bigger-than-average presence and he doesn’t try to imitate Williams. Smith’s genie uses Smith’s persona to good effect, and frequently feels more approachable than William’s manic energy did. As a result, much of the script plays on a slightly different tonal range even when it goes through the motions of the same plot once more. (There’s, notably, a budding friendship subplot that wouldn’t have fit as gracefully in the original, and much of the credit for this working well does to Smith’s image as a friendly guy.) Casting issues aside, Aladdin is slightly more sensitive to cultural issues, definitely more adept at making good use of its female characters and a bit more controlled (in admittedly a blockbuster-bland fashion) than the swerves that Williams’ ad-libbed verbal pyrotechnics caused along the way. Richie is clearly cashing in a paycheque to justify his next passion project here, because there’s not much of his directorial verve to go around (although the bit there they re-watch the movie to settle whether Aladdin cheated on his first wish is very funny). Still, Richie does have experience managing big-budget special-effects-heavy productions, and this shows in his sure-handed take—although I definitely prefer him in pop-auteur mode. Although aimed at kids, this Aladdin is potent enough for parents with colourful visuals, including a Bollywood-inspired musical number. Considering that Jasmine is one of my favourite Disney Princesses, her portrayal here is quite good—Naomi Scott plays the character with regal dignity and energy, and the decision to give her a confidante (played by Nasim Pedrad) works well at giving more dimension to the character. The overall result is good enough—good enough to make money at the box office, good enough to be judged acceptable by reviewers, good enough to give the kids something to watch and parents a good excuse to watch along with them, at least the first few handfuls of times. Aladdin is straight out of the Disney playbook, and I expect that there will be more than a few more live-action remakes going now that they’re practically a tradition of their own.

  • Bright (2017)

    Bright (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2018) The good news is that Netflix is now able to finance big-budget spectacle films, going beyond simply acquiring other low-budget productions. With Bright, we have an urban fantasy film featuring no less a movie star than Will Smith and well-known director David Ayer, with a copious amount of special effects and top-notch technical qualities. The not-so-good news are that Netflix may want to re-read the scripts they approve, because Bright makes less and less sense the moment you think about it. Some of the dumbness is made inevitable by even blockbuster budgetary constraints: Even if you imagine a world in which fantastic creatures have always existed alongside humanity, it makes some sense to shoot the movie in contemporary settings. But there’s “affordable” and then there’s “dumb”: seasoned SF&F fans will be aghast to see a movie in which even the presence of elves, orcs, dragons and supernatural demons has ended up producing a Los Angeles undistinguishable from ours at the exception of a few extra skyscrapers. “Dinosaurs survive; how will this affect Nixon’s re-election chances in 1972?” is the usual SF-fannish wisecrack to describe this kind of incompetent parallel world world-building and it has seldom been more appropriate than in describing an alternate universe with orcs in which Shrek exists. Why does Bright have to be so dumb? Even if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for a while, it’s almost guaranteed that Bright will do something to snap it every ten minutes or so. Transposing David Ayer’s usual LAPD crooked-cop obsessions to a fantasy parallel universe still requires more thought and subtlety than the film is able to achieve: here the parallels with “our” kind of racism are broad and too obvious, whereas the script is so by-the-numbers that it doesn’t take much to predict the entire conclusion. Will Smith, at least, gets to play the dramatic-action-movie variation of his usual persona, whereas Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace and Edgar Ramirez all turn in fine supporting performances. The result is occasionally promising, and just as often disappointing. It suggests that Netflix can play in the big leagues of today’s franchise entertainment landscape (and Bright is obviously designed to spawn sequels), for better or for worse: the days when Netflix could do no wrong are obviously gone.

  • Collateral Beauty (2016)

    Collateral Beauty (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2017) It’s hard to accurately gauge whether an actor is smart from their screen performances alone. The best ones can play characters completely unlike themselves and we’d never know. But I have a growing suspicion that you can tell a lot about an actor by the roles they choose to play. Now, I won’t make any accusations about Will Smith (whom I still rather like a lot), but looking at a filmography that includes Seven Pounds and After Earth and now Collateral Beauty, I have to ask—is he even reading those scripts? Replace After Earth by the more respectable The Pursuit of Happiness and you would have an instant trilogy of manipulative faux-inspiring dramas that are so melodramatic as to court unintentional hilarity. So it is that Collateral Beauty is so ill-conceived from the start (something about a grieving man writing to Death, Time and Love, and then scheming co-workers hiring actors to play Death, Time and Love) that the first half hour plays as a farce despite itself, ridiculous while insisting otherwise. Things really don’t improve much during the last act of the film, in which two bigger revelations are dropped upon the audience, unfortunately earning nothing more than two big collective shrugs. Collateral Beauty is convinced that it has something profound and poignant to say, but it has forgotten to check whether audiences agree. I suspect that reactions will vary widely—as for myself, I’ve seen too many of those movies to be impressed. Now, I won’t make too much of Smith’s talents for script-picking considering that the cast also includes reliable performers such as Hellen Mirren, Edward Norton, Michael Peña and (to a lesser extent) Kiera Knightley. They may all have gone insane, but then again maybe I’m out to lunch on this particular film. Either way, I can only report that the result feels like a falsely profound tearjerker attempt. The premise seems so flawed that I’m not sure anything could have been done to rescue the result from unintended laughter. The twists won’t matter so much when it’s established early on that the movie stems from an inane place.

  • Suicide Squad (2016)

    Suicide Squad (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2017) What’s most fascinating about Suicide Squad isn’t that it’s a film that begs for mixed reviews … it’s that some of the worst things about it are usually strengths in other contexts. I like classic rock soundtracks a lot, for instance, but even I felt that the film was trying too hard by the time its third hit song started playing barely five minutes into the movie. I like exploding helicopters, but seeing three of them go down in a single movie was excessive (and who knew such crashes were all easily survivable). I’m a big fan of dense detail-rich editing, but even I was getting tired of Suicide Squad’s opening act, masquerading a dull exposition structure by plenty of fancy cuts. So it goes, on and on, for much of the movie. The script can’t commit to the idea of villain protagonists, and that’s how we end up with even more exposition to soften their edges. Will Smith takes over a film his character had no business taking over, leaving little to his co-stars of what’s supposed to be an ensemble cast. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn runs against nearly everything I usually like about the character, making her an oversexualized strumpet with the special power of … waving a baseball bat around? Jared Leto’s Joker seems self-consciously edgy for no good reason. And let’s not talk about Slipknot, because the film really isn’t interested in him. David Ayer’s direction may use CGI like crazy but can’t put all the pieces of this disjointed film together in a harmonious whole. Tonally inconsistent, the film tries for operatic gritty grandeur but ends up joking around CGI most of the time. Visually, moments of it are nice … but don’t quite amount to anything better than pretty pictures. There are rumors, to be clarified in a decade or so, that the production of the film was marred by reshoots, change of direction and a competitive editing process—who knows where the real problem was? What’s obvious is that Warner Brothers ends up with another ho-hum film in its attempt to compete with Marvel in presenting a coherent shared universe on-screen. I’m not saying that Suicide Squad is a disaster—Michael Jai Courtney here has his best role to date, while Viola Davis is having fun as Amanda Walker. It’s just too bad that the script never used her, or the squad, in ways most appropriate to their characters. As read here and there on fan forums, a far better conceptualized Suicide Squad would have seen supervillains going against superheroes for a noble goal, not fighting another generic super-monster like they do here. Frankly, go watch the “Bohemian Rhapsody” trailer of the film again for a purer Suicide Squad experience.

  • Independence Day (1996)

    Independence Day (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2017) Hoo boy, Independence Day. I first saw it on opening day back on July 4, 1996, and the whole thing remains vivid in my mind, from the time (at my uncle’s farm, lying down in the muddy straw, doing mechanical repairs on a baling machine) that I decided that I was going to see the film that evening to my naively infuriated reaction to the film’s scientific absurdities and self-satisfied stupidity. (I used to have a nicely hysterical 1996-vintage review of the Independence Day novelization on this site, but I did the world a favour since then by taking it down when I purged some of my more juvenile content.) For years, Independence Day (or, eek, ID4) was my go-to reference for “dumb Hollywood SF movies” in my smarter-than-thou rants. I may not have matured much since then, but I’d like to think that I’m slightly less deliberately abrasive—I was bizarrely looking forward to re-watching the movie, and not just as an exercise in checklist-marking before watching the sequel. Upon re-watch, you can’t exactly mark me down as a fan of the film, but I think I’m better able to see its strength and place in history. Perhaps the best thing it did was update a classic SF trope for a new generation of special effects. The alien-invasion story has been done many times before or since, but Independence Day takes a refreshingly blunt approach to it, with a large cast of characters reacting in their own way, still-spectacular destruction sequences and plucky humans mounting a satisfying revenge upon the invaders. Independence Day still doesn’t make a shred of sense (I spent much of the first half-hour muttering, “no, that’s not how it would happen. That’s not how any of this would happen.”) but I will reluctantly admit that it’s clever. Clever in how it moves its pieces, clever in how it acknowledges that the audience is in on the joke (there are at least three moments in which the film cuts to something, except to reveal that it’s not what we’d expect) and clever in how it maximizes every single opportunity it has for spectacle or overwrought drama. I still think the presidential speech sucks. I still think that the dog should have died. The special effects are dodgy, but there are a lot of them. I still think that as a Science Fiction film, it’s a blunt instrument at a time where we could use more scalpels à la Arrival. But Bill Paxton, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith deliver persona-defining performances, the film moves at a decent pace once the throat-clearing ends, and writer/directors Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin understood what audiences wanted from a summer blockbuster. In some significant ways, it seems obvious that Independence Day revitalized movie SF for a few vital years, playing with new special effects technology and proving the box-office potential of the genre for a few good years. I’ll even go as far as identify the quasi-nostalgic hunger for an Independence Day-style movie experience as a driver for the 2010–2014 resurgence of alien-invasion movies, the best of whom were good SF movies in their own right. Over a sufficiently long time, I think that most critical opinions reverts to the mean (either a tempering of praise, or a softening of condemnation), and Independence Day illustrates this better than most other movies I can think of at the moment. While I may have been willing to burn the movie poster in a one-star rant back in 1996, by 2017 I’m okay with a measured middle-of-the-road three-star critical essay.

  • The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)

    The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2016) I have never played golf and I’m sure it’s a nice excuse to go for a walk, but the lengths through which The Legend of Bagger Vance goes to add a layer of mysticism to hitting a gold ball would be impressive if they weren’t faintly ridiculous. A very young Matt Damon stars as a golf prodigy damaged by his WWI experiences and recapturing his groove during a crucial tournament. Will Smith shows up as the exemplar of the so-called “Magical Negro” trope but makes it an endearing role through folksy sayings and unaffected demeanour. Charlize Theron has a decent role as a woman trying to save her father’s gold club from closing down and at least looks the part of a southern aristocrat down to the garter belt and stockings. Other than that, and notwithstanding the magical titular character, The Legend of Bagger Vance is very much a standard underdog sports drama, ending with just enough success to feel like a victory. It does feature of lot of material in which golf becomes a proxy for genteel life philosophy. Director Robert Redford is going for a quiet period film and does manage to feature some lush scenery along the way. But the result, for some reason, seems aimed squarely at those middle-aged (and older) men trying to rationalize their love of the game to whoever will listen. No wonder I caught the movie as it was playing on the Golf Channel!

  • Concussion (2015)

    Concussion (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2016) The National Football League has wrapped itself so tightly in the American flag and associated values that attacking it seems outright blasphemous if not vaguely treasonous. So you’ll excuse Concussion if it carefully walks a line between denouncing the league and yet not offending any sensibilities. Transforming true events in a conspiracy thriller in which a lone brave doctor discovers the link between football and premature brain damage, Concussion pumps far too much drama in its structure. It works, but only to a point: While the middle third of the story is reasonably gripping, the first act leisurely establishes the endearingly nerdish personality of its protagonist, and the conclusion peters out without a clear triumphant moment to ease the lead character’s trials. As the headliner, Will Smith is actually pretty good: he credibly takes on a Nigerian accent and minimizes his natural cockiness in a role that only needs a fraction of it. It’s a refreshingly adult performance for an actor who has had trouble evolving his screen persona. Gugu Mbatha-Raw does good work in what is slightly more than a generic character, while Alec Baldwin still makes the most of his propensity to play antagonists … even when he isn’t. Football is America’s secular religion, and Concussion occasionally seems preoccupied by the need to pull its punches. The made-up conspiracy angle (with FBI raids! And car pursuits! And a miscarriage!) whimpers out, leading to an underwhelming conclusion that relies a bit too much on title cards. Concussion is not a bad film, but it does feel unfinished at times.

  • Winter’s Tale (2014)

    Winter’s Tale (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2015) Oh, what a mess.  A problem with urban fantasy is the tendency to just keep stuffing the story with magic without pausing to reflect on whether it all fits together, and Winter’s Tale has a bad case of dumb world-building piled upon nonsensical mythology.  There’s something about stars being people and not stars, something about Satan and his demon knights, something about having one miracle to spend in one’s lifetime, something about being amnesiac for a century… or whatever.  It barely fits together even as a summary, let alone in the details.  I’m told that the novel on which the film is based is far more coherent, so the blame here would go entirely to writer/director Akiva Goldsman, proving here that almost two decades of bad reviews since Batman & Robin can’t entirely be blamed on directors mangling his scripts.  Interestingly enough, little of the film’s problems affect the actors in it: Colin Farrell is OK as the lead, while Jessica Brown Findlay is very good as the romantic lead despite being burdened with an awful role.  Russell Crowe and Will Smith are curiously enjoyable as the villains of the story, despite (again) not making much sense as such.  Jennifer Connelly looks lost in an underwritten role –one of the many issues with Winter’s Tale is that it jumps forward in time, but can’t be bothered to decide whether the circa-2014 story is a third act or an epilogue.  (But then again, the film is so bad at math or elementary logic that in 2014, one of the non-magical characters should be 108 years old.)  Interminable digressions help make the film feel even longer than it is, while fairly good production values can’t paper over the dumb script.  It’s one of the defining characteristics of bad movies that whatever profound sentiment they try to express is met with eye-rolling and accusations of pretentiousness, but by the time Winter’s Tale last few moment try to smother viewers in a gelatinous gloop of unearned sentiment, you too will understand why the film is more laughable than interesting.

  • Focus (2015)

    Focus (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on Demand, June 2015)  Con-man romantic comedies (con-rom-coms?) are, by now, such an established sub-genre (The Thomas Crown Affair(s), Duplicity, Confidence… and that’s from memory alone) that they can work on recognition rather than surprises, even if surprises are the point of the film.  We already know that such con-rom-coms will end with the romantic leads driving off into the sunset, that we’ll witness elaborate triple-cross confidence tricks, that the entire thematic structure of the film will be the tension between greed and love, and the trust issues in all human relationships, whether they be romantic or criminal.  So, when Focus comes along, it feels as if we already know how it’s going to play out, and a proper appreciation of the film can be boiled down to basic questions: Are the lead actors sympathetic?  Is there some romantic chemistry between the leads?  Are the confidence tricks interesting?  Does the film hold our attention from one moment to the next?  Fortunately, Focus succeeds even when it’s not being particularly original.  The showcase sequence of the film, a high-stakes gambling sequence in a stadium luxury box, may not be original, but it clicks perfectly.  The film’s two biggest assets are Will Smith, playing his usual brand of charismatic confidence (his best such role since Hitch, and a substantial return to form after the After Earth debacle), and Margot Robbie, making another serious case (after The Wolf of Wall Street) as to why she’s more than Today’s It Girl: her role is a tricky mix of deception, sexiness, vulnerability and mixed agendas, and she hits all of the right notes.  With both of them playing off each other, Focus feels like an old-fashioned movie-star vehicle, far more worthwhile for its slick execution than any conceptual boldness.  And it works.  Sometimes, behind the analytical façade and the numerous references to trends and industry terms, the critic abides and simply repeats the obvious: it works.

  • The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

    The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2015)  A particularly aggressive entry in the “inspirational drama showing the protagonist triumphing against nearly-impossible odds”, The Pursuit of Happyness gives a too-rare grown-up role to Will Smith as the father of a child who finds himself in desperate circumstances after losing his wife, his house, his savings and trying to take care of his son while chasing a near-impossible unpaid internship at a brokerage house.  Eking a meager living on the streets of 1980s San Francisco by night, giving the impression of being a serious stockbroker candidate by day, the story comes from real-life events from businessman Chris Gardner’s life, but dramatically softens some of the harsher edges of the truth.  (Sometimes in ways that don’t quite make sense: seeing a mother abandon her son is nigh-incomprehensible on film, but can be explained in the real story by the fact that he was the son from her husband’s affair.)  Still, this is the kind of film that has no shame in exploiting whatever sympathy we may have for its characters, their brutal setbacks and their tiny triumphs.  Smith is actually pretty good as a father trying to improve life for himself and his son –his performance feels free of his usual showboating tendencies, while allowing him enough opportunities to turn up the charm when necessary.  It may help that his son his played by his real-life son Jaden Smith.  The Pursuit of Happyness is occasionally asphyxiating in its desperation (the protagonist is so poor that every dollar counts) but fairly earns its final triumphs.  It’s definitively praise to point out that the film could have been far more mawkish or sentimental, and that by grounding its story into small and often painful details, it keeps the usual fanfare at bay.  It may not be pleasant viewing during most of its duration, but it amounts to a satisfying viewing experience.