A movie review – Widows

Chicago, Illinois. The South Side’s 18th ward is up for grabs as rotten to the core Jack Mulligan and equally sleazy Jamal Manning are running for alderman. No punches are pulled as we are given a tour of Chicago’s most crime-plagued precinct. In this otherwise charming neighborhood where robberies aren’t exactly uncommon, thief Harry Rawlings and his crew get killed in the aftermath of a job. As a result, their widows, led by Veronica Rawlings, find themselves in a highly uncomfortable situation. Indeed, their late husbands’ legacy includes a $2 million debt that they can’t exactly afford to settle (at least not legally). Stop looking, you’ve got yourself the heist movie of the year.

If glancing at the menu hasn’t convinced you yet, you might want to take a closer look at the ingredients. Academy Award winning director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and writing genius Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects) co-wrote the screenplay and their cast alone probably justifies the $42 million budget (all right, all the explosions must have cost a few nickels too). Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Duvall and Elizabeth Debicki, to name but a few, hold their own to say the least. However, Daniel Kaluuyah of Black Mirror fame leaves them all in the shade with his stellar performance as ruthless goon Jatemme (I love you too) Manning. Even his London accent seamlessly disappears as his midwestern character takes over. And I haven’t even mentioned Veronica’s dog’s acting skills yet.

If this movie still doesn’t have your vote after this show of force, here’s the real reason why you should drop everything and go watch it. Its thrilling heist component is merely an excuse to explore multiple thought-provoking societal themes in a sometimes utterly brutal way. Guns, extreme violence, crimes of all kinds, political dynasties, status quo, ghettos, racism, police brutality, toxic masculinity, you name it. Chicago’s 18th ward seems to encapsulate and amplify everything that is wrong with the world in general and America in particular. There is so much (too much?) to unpack that this movie should be seen at least twice. Especially since the plot takes as many twists as it offers issues to examine. Much in the same way as it is done in Crash, my all-time favorite movie, all of these individuals’ seemingly unrelated deeds are actually a part of the same much bigger picture. You’ll end up breathless and probably quite shaken (I can think of a few scenes that will have you grip your armrests) but grateful for the ride.

Picture: Diego Delso, Skyline de Chicago desde el centro, Illinois, Estados Unidos, 2012-10-20, DD 06.jpg, Wikimedia Commons.

The Mentalist: series ender or deal breaker?

American TV shows have long supplanted Hollywood movies as far as yours truly is concerned. Especially since my attention span has got dangerously close to that of a goldfish lately. I guess I have to thank local teacher training classes and their unbearable boredom for that. Being a very inconsistent reader on top of it all, when I go through reader’s block and have therefore put Stephen King’s latest masterpiece to rest on my nightstand, I like sitting on my couch to enjoy my (multiple) weekly 42-minute dramas. Or at least I do as long as the writers don’t decide it’s time for their hero to take one last stroll down Channel Surfing Lane before hanging his boots (all right, or their heroine hanging her stilettos, I do watch New Girl and Revenge after all). Indeed, the announcement that a show is entering its last season has been very bad news recently. And not for the usual reasons. Here we are. I don’t want to sound like a moaner or a backseat driver, but here’s something that really grinds my gears.

Desperate Housewives, Dexter, House, you name it, all ended up suffering from the last season syndrome. From Wisteria Lane’s patronizing fairy tale ending to the major anticlimactic finale to the feats of Miami’s favorite serial killer and Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital’s sad excuse for a final (and belated) diagnosis*, one might catch themselves missing simpler times when shows just got canceled on the spot after the tiniest drop in numbers. That’s when The Mentalist decided to top all that with Bruno Heller’s own version of an integrated spin-off. Indeed, the show’s creator came up with the perfect season (series?) finale in… November, a good fourteen episodes away from the end of the season in May. If you’re a few episodes behind, you might not want to read what follows just yet. Are you still there? All right. So RED JOHN’S IDENTITY WAS REVEALED AND HE WAS KILLED BY PATRICK JANE. I will not get into the endless argument on whether this way of answering all the questions without actually answering any and introducing – right before dispatching him without a second thought – a desperately human Red John figure in Sheriff McAllister (Xander Berkeley) was either brilliant or suicidal because I haven’t figured it out for myself yet. And don’t even get me started on the blatant confusion between justice and retaliation endorsed by the show and the absence of legal consequences for someone who carried out not one but two cold-blooded executions over two years.

In the aftermath of this seemingly obvious series ender, Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) and Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) left the show, the CBI was dismantled by the FBI and the setting moved from Sacramento, California to Austin, Texas. Furthermore, a hot yet severe (or is it the other way around?) special agent (Emily Swallow, I’m fighting really hard against the urge to make a terrible pun) and a teenage IT nerd (Joe Adler) have come in as reinforcements to Jane-besotted Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and taciturn (but oh so brilliant) Kimball Cho (Tim Kang), not to mention dear old Rockmond Dunbar of Prison Break fame as Jane’s new boss. That’s a crossover episode if there’s ever been one. Indeed, one can’t help but relate that to what happened on CSI to create the Miami and New York versions, on Grey’s Anatomy to launch Private Practice and on NCIS (itself a spin-off from JAG) to get acquainted with the Los Angeles team, to name but a few of these occurrences. The final ingredient, that idea of a federal agency sending a team all over the country to solve cases, seems to come directly from Criminal Minds.

One minor detail though: there’s no spin-off on the horizon and we’re not crossing over anything. The Mentalist is still one and the same show and Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) is dangerously close to working as a consultant on criminal cases all over again. It is now up to Bruno Heller to show us that we’re not headed back to a normal – and therefore boring – situation involving unrelated cases devoid of the Red John glue that used to bring (some of) them together and to give Jane’s life (and my Monday nights over here in Europe) a purpose. Indeed, there are already at least a dozen police shows on the market offering such hackneyed storylines (most of which mentioned above). While the last season syndrome is a disease that has been striking a lot these days, all the symptoms of missing one’s cue as far as when to end a successful show is concerned are there. Ask Gregory House and his team. The next threat being a case of jumping the shark, which is usually terminal.

*All right, all right, the last four or five episodes weren’t half bad and the finale was almost brilliant. But the rest of the season was boring as death.

Picture: By Jay Baldwin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons