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A Man Apart
**
Cinema
Reviews - Week of April 4, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. USA.
114 minutes. Directed by F. Gary Gray. Written by Christian Gudegast, Paul
Scheuring. Starring Vin Diesel, Larenz Tate, Steve Eastin, Timothy Olyphant,
Jacqueline Obradors, Geno Silva, Juan Fernadez, Jeff Kober, Mike Moroff,
Emilio Rivera, George Sharperson, Santiago Verdu.
F. Gary Gray is a director whose trademark, so
far, has been taking material that appears pretty hackneyed and giving it
something in the execution that just seems to make it work. "Friday" was
a neighbourhood comedy with few original jokes, but it moved with sweetness
and confidence, and has turned into something of a cult classic. "Set It
Off" was a heist movie with genuine and relatable acting. Gray's best film
is probably "The Negotiator", full of stock situations from other cop movies,
yet stunning for its heated visuals and for Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson
in a smart battle of wills.
Perhaps Gray sees himself as building a relationship
with the mainstream audience, and attempting to sneak quality into movies
that could potentially be braindead. Or maybe he's a born talent who happens
to choose his projects without care. I have no idea, but now he gives us
"A Man Apart", which is stunningly made on the surface and
total junk at every layer beneath. The movie is not just a mess; it is actively
unsettling. The force of the filmmaking has gravitas and conviction -- pay
attention to anything that's going on, and first you wonder where the hell
the mood came from, and then you feel used by it.
Vin Diesel stars as a Los Angeles DEA agent, whose
team, we are told, don't walk, talk or act like cops, because they came from
the hood, and are down with the kids, and all the rest of it. At the start
of the movie, they manage to shop an elusive Mexican drug kingpin named Mateo
Santos (Juan Fernandez), and the old man makes the dire warning that Diesel
has bought himself a whole lot of trouble. Sure enough, all hell breaks loose:
The Santos cartel is invaded by the ruthless team of some unseen figure known
as El Diablo, whose hitmen make the rounds and blast away at figures from
all levels of the border-area cocaine networks. The homes of cops are visited
too, and in a raid in the dead of night, Diesel's wife is
killed.
The wives of policemen are often killed at the
starts of their movies, but in true Gray form, the cliché is handled
skilfully. Sure, we get all the silly scenes of Diesel sitting by the shore,
swigging from a bottle of whisky, and -- gasp! -- he starts smoking! But
what's impressive is the way grief and emptiness hangs over his whole performance
with a degree of authenticity. Even when the wife goes unmentioned, Diesel
seems like a guy with something hanging in the pit of his stomach. He seems
both distanced and focused, the way people do when something is eating them
up inside, and driving them at the same time.
Diesel might be able to hide the fact that his
character's dilemma comes straight from a formula, but most of the details
in the movie are too badly written to be disguised. Much is made of how the
gang of cops were boys from the streets, and it's a plot point that leads
to one great scene, when Diesel and his best friend (Larenz Tate) manage
to talk a jumpy low-level drug dealer into laying down his gun, by explaining
who they're really after in terms that reach out to the guy's values. Apart
from that moment, it's all just expert swagger, and good performances cannot
override poor material in convincing us that these men have a bond. Early
on, there's a scene where Tate is reciting all that stuff about how men always
wanna do it while women aren't so upfront about such things, and how guys
in relationships are kept on a leash by their ladies. This is supposed to
be our introduction to these characters, and they have such presence that
we assume the dialogue is going to bend into a clever, or at least halfway
amusing, direction. But it doesn't, and all we get are the tired old
jokes.
As for the drug trade elements of the plot, they
start out intricate and fascinating, and move into excuses for very fast
action sequences, the kind where we can't tell the bad guys from the good,
or who is winning anyway, and we just want the frenzy to calm down already.
Eventually, all the underworld politics turn out to be an excuse for an
unnecessary, unrealistic twist that invalidates one of the story's key
relationships.
These are the kinds of problems that come from
petty and amateurish scripting, but they seem so wrong because the feel of
the movie is heavy and serious. It's shot in harsh, hazy textures, and it
sounds of eerie foreboding rumbles and out-of-proportion crunches from footsteps
and background noises. There's a sense of pain and expectant violence about
the thing, its quiet scenes the most effective. Diesel's strange voice is
perfectly placed; it has a faint machine-like quality, as if we're hearing
not only vocal chords but jet packs, and even when he plays for sadness we
can feel rising force.
It's such gripping atmosphere that at times I
was convinced the movie was good. And then it kept going and getting stupid.
When "A Man Apart" is effective, it almost makes us flinch. We want to flinch
more when it's ineffective -- the flaws make the strengths seem inappropriate,
as if a movie aiming this low didn't earn the right to present itself with
intensity.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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