December 2019 – Page 2 – Reel Priest Peggy

Honey with a Sting

Honey Boy – 2019 – R

I did not know that Shia LaBeouf was a Disney channel child star. I did not know he starred in the first three Transformers movies. I didn’t even know Shia played Tyler in Peanut Butter Falcon and I just saw it…twice! I thought wow, whoever played Tyler in PBF and James in Honey Boy sure have the same mannerisms! Duh. I had no clue Shia LaBeouf, during a court-ordered rehab alternative to jail, wrote Honey Boy, an autobiographical screen play about a tumultuous relationship with his abusive and alcoholic dad. But, now I do and so do you. And just why are fathers and sons always such a big thing? They get Fences, Field of Dreams, It’s a Beautiful Life, Dear Zachery, Lion King, Boyhood, Frequency, Dr. Sleep and Finding Nemo, etc, etc, etc. Mothers and daughters have Lady Bird and I,Tonya, not exactly a gender draw.

“Honey Boy” is what James (Shia LeBeouf) calls his son Otis (Noah Jupe as 12-year old and Lucas Hedges as 22-year old Otis). Having LeBeouf not only write the story but then turn around and play the role of his PTSD-afflicted father added a unique theatrical and therapeutic dimension. After the film’s Sundance world premier Shia commented, “It is strange to fetishize your pain and make a product out of it and feel guilty about that. It felt very selfish. This whole thing felt very selfish. I never went into this thinking, ‘Oh, I am going to fucking help people.’ That wasn’t my goal. I was falling apart.“

The story is based at a seedy, unsavory motel in 1995 where wildly eccentric James, former rodeo clown, military veteran, registered sex offender and recovering alcoholic coaches Otis on the art of mime and slapstick. Otis learns well, adds his own comedic shtick and is on the rise as a popular child actor “hiring” James as his chaperone/agent so unemployable dad can make a living. Apparently given the flea bag hotel, surrounded by hookers and dealers, it’s not a boatload of money. When a sinister-looking water snake wriggles across the pool I seriously cringe. Mom telephones now and then, she and James shriek at each other about who’s the lamest loser parent. Otis jumps in and mediates. Otis assumes proxy parent status early on. The film jumps back and forth between young Otis and young man Otis. We witness the outrageous behavior that manic James afflicts on his adolescent son and ten years later, 2005, the ramifications on 22-year old Otis, a tortured soul, serving a court-ordered rehab stint, at first dodging, but ultimately confronting the demons of his childhood.

The acting across the board is terrific. The relationship between James and Otis develops with depth and complexity. Dad is not a monster. We learn at an AA meeting gut wrenching disclosure that James is a product of his own father’s abuse. Victim becomes victimizer. A sad, predictable cycle.The scathing criticism heaped by James on Otis is palatable to a degree, deflected by the sublime creativity and remarkable maturity of young Otis. Shia LaBeouf’s acting interpretation of his father is raw, desperate and draws an unexpected empathetic response. Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges own this film with their gutty, hard scrabble performances as survivors. Coming in at a sparing 93 minutes, Honey Boy is an intriguing, soulful, cathartic cinematic immersion. I foresee Academy nominations in its future if the Academy can look past LaBeouf’s real life antics and the film being an Amazon release. We can hope.

Painting Houses Red

The Irishman – 2019 – R

Full disclosure, when I spotted the 3 1/2 hour runtime, I elected to watch The Irishman on Netflix from the comfort of my reclining LazyBoy within ten paces of my personal snack bar known best as “the kitchen.” I couldn’t think of tucking into a theater seat for that long without needing help to get up. I envisioned pushing the concession order button and facing this humiliating exchange,“What may I get you?” “Up.” Plus I could refill my personal, perfect-for-this-movie beverage cup as often as I wished!

Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic stars Joe Pesci as mob boss Russell Bufalino, Robert De Niro as Mafia hit man Frank Sheeran and Al Pacino as Teamster Union leader Jimmy Hoffa. Three Hollywood Hall of Fame actors and one iconic director unite to craft an extraordinary saga that covers decades of true-to-life intersections between organized labor and organized crime, a legacy story of friendship and loyalty, brutality and reckoning. People power wielded by powerful people. Don’t expect any warm fuzzies though. No kumbaya moments from the Pesci/DeNiro/Pacino Trio. I held my breath during baptism scenes. Friendship falters at the foot of power. Always. Jimmy Hoffa should have seen Frank Sheeran coming. Et tu, Brute? Securing and defending power and position trumps any mobster code of conduct. Underscore, there is no honor among thieves. The carnage grinds along, but setting a decidedly unique tone from the typical gangster genre, violence was casual, matter-of-fact, ho hum. Sheeran strolls up behind some poor upstart schmuck, shoots him twice in the head, walks away, tosses his gun over a bridge (there is a very funny scene about the gun graveyard) and heads home for supper. The message is clear, “Nothing to get worked up over. {shrug} Just another day painting houses. Pass the spaghetti please.” To keep the same actors and shrug consistency—even as their stories bounce around through the decades—computerized de-aging digital technology was used. Oh, Santa, please leave a sample of that Fountain of Youth in my Christmas stocking.

Maybe because the film relied on its trio of septuagenarian stars, senior citizen gangstas prevailed. There is no youth movement or secession planning. In general, Mafia men share a similar fate as marine life where 95% of all sea creatures will be eaten by bigger, badder sea creatures. Could be where we get the well known gangland cliché, “Swimming with the fishes.” Death is simply an occupational hazard. By taking out their competitors ad infinitum and ad nauseam, the 5% claiming the top of the mobster food chain survive into their golden years. There is a downside though. As mobsters age, it gives the feds time to catch up, the “old” turn “elderly,” still competing for #1 to the bitter end, but now confined to wheelchairs or pushing walkers around federal prison yards playing bocce ball. The non-incarcerated alternative is even worse. The film opens with narrator Sheeran abandoned to a lonely nursing home vigil, wrapped in a warm shawl, waiting for family that never appear, a phone that never rings, a letter that never arrives. But at least aged Frank has the means to select the most magnificent coffin featured in the funeral home coffin showroom! Pitiless, brutal emptiness.

The Irishman is not The Godfather and La Cosa Nostra. Jimmy Hoffa is German-Irish, Frank Sheeran, Swedish-Irish and Russell Bufalino, the sole Sicilian. Organized crime embraces diversity and fans out from New York to Philly to Detroit to Vegas. It’s a grand tale. And it’s not over yet. Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, leader of the Gambino crime family was gunned down last March outside his Staten Island home, the first murder of a mob boss since 1985. The FBI estimate 3,000 Italian-American mafia members continue operating gambling, loan-sharking, extortion, human trafficking, and drug-running (mostly heroin) enterprises. Meanwhile, Russia, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, studying the American model, flexed their international mob muscle and organized a global web of illicit and illegal productivity. Fodder for an endless stream of crime films. The Russian. The Colombian. While you wait for these spin-offs or a Godfather IV, watch The Irishman. You’re not afraid of tough guys, are you?

Big Apple Lockdown

21 Bridges – 2019 – R

Having spent a few crazy fun days in NYC last spring hailing planes, trains and automobiles to and around Manhattan, my curiosity was piqued as to how an NYPD manhunt that completely locked down the island would play out. NYC’s George Washington Bridge alone is the world’s busiest, 103 million vehicles crossing it per year, 282,192 a day. Quite a doomsday backup! And that’s just one of the 21 bridges! However, my imagination must take over because the film, obviously just foisting about for an enticing title, didn’t go anywhere with the potential destruction derby of a cops and robbers chase confined to Armageddon gridlock. On the upside, the film did feature the longest, wildest, baddest foot chase in movie history with trigger happy, Internal Affairs regular, macho man, Super Detective Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther) chasing smart, logical criminal-with-a-conscious Michael (Stephan James) through the Meatpacking District on the far west side of Manhattan. A street sprint to end all sprints! Best part of the movie!

In a nutshell, two bad guys, young Michael and 12-stepper, military veteran Ray hit a Brooklyn restaurant expecting a quick in-and-out heist of 30 kilos of cocaine but, whoa baby, packed neatly away are not 30 but 300 kilos of pure, uncut blow. Dang. Shoulda brought bigger backpacks boys! Oddly, a group of NYPD officers show up at almost the same time, rap-tap-tapping on the establishment’s locked doors. The unplanned convergence of cops and robbers ends bloody and badly, eight officers down, seven die at the scene, one later at the hospital. Clearly the officers calmly knocking on the restaurant door were caught off guard. Why is that? Detective Davis wonders the same and soon sorts through the clues and loops us in. Seems the drug stash is all in a day’s work for some dirty cops of the 85th precinct. The police were there on business. Not good, not good.

You get the vibe. Cop killers, dirty cops and super cop on a mission. A mission that starts out as a justifiable, rabid hunt for cop killers but quickly gets complicated when sharp and shrewd Detective Davis deduces the bad guys include his own and the evidence needed to dismantle the thin blue line conspiracy rests with bringing the cop killers in alive. With Ray early on shot to smithereens, Davis desperately turns his focus on taking Michael alive—competing with the entire NYPD blue army who, for reasons of righteous revenge or evidence suppression, want Michael dead. Davis doesn’t know who fits in each category so, unable to trust anyone, he’s forced to work alone. The blue on blue high stakes, deadly race for Michael takes up most of the film’s 99 packed minutes.

21 Bridges is a low budget B movie that does its best to smuggle in a hint of social commentary, entertain the masses and bring the scrum of bad guys to justice. Yes, the dialogue is nothing that would probably ever be said. Yes, there are holes in the plot that could only be explained by magical incantations. No, the public apparently experienced zero inconveniences despite all NYC transportation options eliminated for hours. But, yes, I still enjoyed 21 Bridges. Walking out I kept delivering my best deadpan, “You’re going down,” to anyone in the gathered Frozen II Disney toddler mob who looked my way. That was fun—and together with the longest, wildest, baddest foot chase in movie history—made 21 Bridges worth giving up an afternoon of my time.