Film Noir (2007)

It's style over substance in this luridly entertaining animated movie. It boasts black and white visuals with just a little color thrown in for style (think Sin City), tons of classic noir imagery (piles of just smoked cigarettes, 50's style diners, strip clubs), and an amnesiac protag who narrates his own story in a worn down voice that sort of says "Seen it all, heard it all and still don't know what to make of it..." It takes place in LA (largely around Hollywood) and also has a lot of nudity and sex in it, especially for an animated movie. This one is for those who like dark gritty settings and messy complicated plots.


Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the perspective that the reader has already seen the work in question and desires further commentary or explanation. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined. Though in the case of this film, I'll try and keep spoilers to a minimum, being that it isn't a major work.

The man wakes up lying in front of the Hollywood sign to find blood on his hands, and a dead man nearby with bullet between his eyes. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. A quick examination reveals that the dead man is a cop, and with no one else around, deduction tells us that our main character is the killer. He flees the scene quickly hearing reports of shots fired on the police radio, driving away in the dead man's car. He cannot find any ID but it's clear that someone wants him dead, and he has no idea who or why. Not knowing who he is, what to do, or even where he is going, he muses to himself: "One thing was for certain, I was the bad guy in this story."There comes a point a while later in the tale, where our main character reasons that if he'd had a choice between being lucky or good, he'd chose lucky every time. I can't help but think this guy really does have that kind of luck too given what happens over the course of the film, and two of the biggest examples occur right towards the beginning. The first of which is when he decides to visit the house of the man he just killed, figuring that at least that guy wouldn't be home, only to find half the police force and the guy's family waiting there to surprise him with a party. Only some quick thinking gets him out of that jam. The second occurs at the office of Sam Rueben, where he's led by one of the few clues he has amongst his possessions in the car. Upon leaving the office after getting the run around by the secretary, he is called by that very same girl who mistakes his voice for Rueben's (it appears he has Rueben's phone, and neither he nor she knew it). "That guy you were looking for was just here" she says. "Who?" "David Hudson, you idiot!" And so now our protagonist has a name, or at least an identity people believe him to be.

We follow the man around as he gets lucky again and again (women he cannot remember want to sleep with him, old accomplices give him help and valuable info/items even though he doesn't know what to do with them right away) and also has several very unlucky encounters (he's chased around and gets beaten up a few times, and even has armed men in a helicopter trying to kill him). "The more I learned about David Hudson, the more I realized what a despicable guy he was." we hear him think at one point. We see him make attempts to change the way the people around him see him and act towards him, as when he refuses to whip and beat a woman who knew him and is an addict to both heroin and S&M. He confides in some, needing at the very least someone to trust him, and conceals himself to others, bluffing about how much he knows to get away again and again. He gets caught by the cops, only to have fate step in again with another strange turn when the men who come to kill him end up inadvertently providing him a chance to escape.It all leads to a safe-deposit box that he at first is unable to get into, and the revelation that the one out to kill him is publicly a well regarded philanthropist but secretly is a corrupt and perverse man who wants what is in that box too, as well our protagonist dead. We also learn that our central character is not who he thinks he is in one very startling scene.

The conclusion to the story comes after the standard fare for this kind of flick: shootouts, deals with the police, recovery of what's in the box. We're told the identity of our central character, though thinking carefully about the reasoning behind it, it has its holes: "Did this guy really not know there'd be risks doing such a thing?" I asked myself immediately after learning who the man really is and why he has the face he does.
The style is really laid on thick in this movie, and done well for the most part, the atmosphere really drips of classic themes mixed with neo-noir elements. The action, however, isn't always handled in a believable manner (the henchman in the helicopter seems dangerous and cool at first, but absolutely defies logic, and seems more of pest by the end of the movie). I was reminded at times of video games I'd played with similar style that were just a little off in execution when compared to their movie counterparts (Max Payne and the GTA series, especially 4). All in all though it does make for a very fun hour and a half of viewing if noir is what you're into.

* * *

Amnesia, it's said, is very uncommon in real life and generally you retain nearly all of your memory, losing only what is most stressful of painful. It generally happens to memories more in the present tense when the person in question is under extraordinary circumstances. Forgetting one's past is extremely rare and I would guess occurs in only those with the most unbearable histories. That we see it so often in films and TV and books and other stories I think has less to do with what I just said, and is instead more a testament to usefulness as a plot device. The idea of losing one's past is intriguing and proves an often irresistible concept to storytellers. While not an overly complex piece of work, Film Noir does allow its lead character a few instances to ponder his existence over the course of the tale. "The problem with having amnesia is that you hold yourself to impossibly high standards. You're like a new-born, a child, a virgin, a clean slate inside, but on the outside you're not, you have a past, have done things, hurt people." Sometimes I wonder if noir itself, as a genre isn't uniquely suited for the element of amnesia. Its stories are often mysteries and when the central character is already in the dark about whodunnit then why give them the added challenge of losing all their memories so that they have to solve that as well? There's also the grimly illuminating idea that were a person to lose their memory they would quickly be seized upon by those willing to use them and take advantage of them -anyone who's seen Memento (another dark noir-like film with an amnesiac hero) will recognize this one. Finally there's just a sort of dreamlike quality to most noir, that comes of having a strange world that doesn't quite feel right, and characters inhabiting it who don't act normal, don't follow the rules. In the world of noir, it feels like no one can be completely believed, nothing is what it seems, and everything is open to suspicion.

Public Enemies

Michael Mann's meditation on the landscape of crime and the professions it creates (detectives and narcs, robbers and hitmen), continues with Public Enemies, albeit a look back in time to the criminal landscape of another era, inhabited by a different breed of criminals and enforcers. We spend a good deal of time looking at both sides of the conflict, and are witness to the birth of modern federal enforcement and the demise of one of the most intelligent and successful bankrobbers in US history. At the center of the struggle are two men, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), the aforementioned bankrobber, and Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the federal agent in charge of apprehending him. Other important characters are Billie (Marion Cotillard) as Dillinger's love interest, "Baby Face Nelson" (Stephen Graham), one of Dillenger's accomplices, and J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), the future leader of the FBI who assigns Purvis with catching Dillinger.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question and desires further commentary or explanation. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

The movie opens with a jailbreak. It happens even as Dillinger is just being brought to prison. The whole thing proceeds smoothly until one of Dillinger's gang shoots a guard, alerting the other prison guards to their presence. What would've been a quiet getaway, turns into a shootout and a chase. When one of Dillinger's friends is killed during the escape, he furiously beats and then tosses the accomplice who shot the guard out of their getaway vehicle while it's still moving. From the beginning we are given a glimpse of just how hard this man is, and Purvis's "intro" will be much the same. In his opening scene we watch him chase and gun down "Pretty Boy Floyd", another robber, in an orchid with a squad of lawmen at his back.

J. Edgar Hoover is looking to expand the jurisdiction and importance of his bureau, which at this point in time is not on the federal level. He charges Purvis with tracking down and finding Dillinger who has since moved on to Chicago where the seats of organized crime there are giving him shelter. The movie makes no attempt to disguise the drudgery of such a task. Purvis charges his own men with making endless querries into a simple overcoat that Dillinger left at the scene of his last robbery as it is their only piece of evidence, and bureau work for the moment at least looks like the tedious process it mostly is.

We can see in the beginning that Purvis and his group are not yet prepared for the enormity of this task. When he and his men come upon a choice opportunity to catch their quarry, Dillenger, Nelson and the others in their gang slip through their fingers not only because they are willing to shoot first, but because Purvis's own men, lacking procedure, abandon their road block when they hear the gunshots to come to the scene and try to help.

Dillinger hooks up with Billie, a girl he meets and dances with at a club, and very shortly after, even tells her who he really is and what he does to make money. It's hard not to marvel at the directness of this character; when Billie objects to being with him, claiming she know almost nothing about him, he replies bluntly

"I was raised on a farm in Moooresville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you... what else you need to know?"

He lacks almost any sense of humor, is almost always completely focused, and tends to say things in complete seriousness.

We see what a dangerous opponent he is early in the film when we watch one of his bank robberies. He and his men operate completely aware of how much time they're taking and how much attention they've attracted. They plan for contingencies like the police showing up by posting a man at the front door and marching a few bank patrons in front of them as human shields when they board their getaway vehicles. Dillinger himself knows how to go directly to find the bank manager and get him to take him to the big money.

Dillinger is ruthless, driven, very intelligent, and cool under pressure. He is also a bit cocky and perhaps a little too sure of himself for his own good. At one point Billie worries over him, saying she doesn't want to see him die. Dillinger candidly replies that he's too good for them, and that he can strike any bank he wants anytime, while they can't be at every bank waiting to stop him. While his logic appears to make sense from the standpoint of robbing banks, it's also plain enough to see that this overlooks the fact that there are other ways of catching a crook then staking out potential banks. Dillinger lives in the moment. He doesn't yet realize that the time of bank robbers like himself is coming to an end. "It ain't about we're I've been, it's about where I'm going" he tells Billie. In an important conversation later when an associate of his observes that "robbing banks is getting harder", he says "We're having such a good time today, we ain't even thinking bout tomorrow." "You oughta", the man advises, in essence saying he should take what he can and get out quick. We in the audience as well can see the way the winds of change are blowing when we look at Hoover's agency taking form and realize how the government is formulating their response to the threat of Dillinger and his like.

Dillinger is captured in Arizona and taken by plane back to Indiana. The publicity he receives upon arrival is tremendous; to judge from some of the questions he's asked when interviewed by the press, he's being treated like a near-celebrity. He meets Melvin Purvis face to face through the bars of a jail cell door, and even in this encounter he is aloof and confident. We see the ingenuity of the man as he escapes using a fake gun carved out of wood to threaten the guards, then passes through one secure door after another, obtains real weapons for himself, changes clothes, and then finally sneaks past everyone in the sheriff's own car.

All of this leads to Hoover and Purvis cracking down on all of Dillinger's known associates. Dillinger finds himself without aid from other criminals. In one scene, he is firmly rebuffed by one of them who directs his attention to the phones behind him saying "These phones make more money in a day than you do on one of your heists and they do it continuously every day unless they stop ringing cause the cops come." The creation of federal law enforcement, along with advancements to "modern" crime fighting techniques may not be able to stop crime, but what they aparently did do for a country like america is force it further underground, out of the limelight. While the truly big criminals might indeed be the ones running the phones in the background, Dillinger's exploits have created an atmosphere of sensationalism, and the public's need to feel safe pushes it up in priority. This is coupled with another factor as well. Stunts like using a sheriff's own car to break out of jail create a spectacle and embarrass the law, thus swelling their desire to catch him as well.

Dillinger now is forced to rely on less trustworthy men than those he would prefer to. Their next bank robbery is sloppy and rushed due to the triggerhappy nature of one of the men on his team. The methodical approach we've seen him use so successfully thus far instead turns into a bloodbath. Dillinger is hurt during the escape, but worse yet, one of his men is also wounded and caught. Purvis begins to show how far he is willing to go to catch Dillinger when he denies this captive treatment and inflicts more pain on him until the man divulges the location Dillinger was headed to. It's borderline torture, or perhaps it even crosses the line. Another gunfight ensues when Purvis comes for Dillinger who is hiding out in a cabin in the woods, but once more Dillinger shoots free and slips away under the cover of darkness.

The final robbery Dillinger plans with the same cautious associate who warned him to be careful before. Before this can happen, however, we learn that one of the women who is shielding Dillinger is selling him out for the chance to become a naturalized citizen of the US. Again we see Purvis's hardline as he refuses even to make a promise to the woman to get her what she wants (he'll only recommend she be allowed to stay in the country), instead coercing from her what he wants against the threat of being deported if she doesn't cooperate.

The movie both benefits from and suffers for its realism in its ending. There is no climactic shootout, only the agents staking out, following and ambushing Dillinger to shoot him dead in the street as he leaves a movie theater. It's realistic and true to history, and perhaps even holds some suspense for those in the audience as opposed to another gunfight, though real-life seldom ever is as dramatic as movies would like them to be. The movie closes with one of Purvis's men, telling Dillinger's final words to Billie, who is still in jail at the time. The words refer to a lyric in the song they danced to when they first met and provide someting of a closure to their time together.

* * *

It strikes me how men like Dillinger were ahead of their time when it came to their manner of commiting crimes. They forced the law to up its game and adapt to their new strategies. It really isn't until Dillinger becomes a media beacon that the police harass his associates, and this in turn triggers them to turn their back on him. In a way, it is Dillinger's loss of professionalism when bragging to the media that does him in, as things only proceed to get more difficult from there on out.

The era of bank robberies showcased in this film was a unique one. It sort of progressed out of the old west style of bank holdups, although updating technology like cars and machine guns made things dangerous in a completely different way, and the rise of cities, together with the shriveling of the uncharted west made way for a renewed strategy of hiding within the law's reach but beneath its sight.

If there's a common thread to nearly all of Michael Mann's films it would have to be professionalism, although crime (and the roles it creates) plays a large part in many as well. Public Enemies contains both of these themes and in terms of similarity bears a bit of a resemblance to his 1995 film "Heat" which also shared its time looking over both cops and criminals. It's been said that Mann is the kind of person who has equal amounts of respect for both sides of the law and it shows in both Heat and Public Enemies. Juxtaposing these two films, we can see what a snapshot Public Enemies is, from the metaphor of an american history of crime. While Heat does have a similar story to tell -one of detectives on the trail of some very skilled robbers- its differences reflect the period it takes place in: modern techniques of suvailance, legal manuevres. The second of these two is especially important to note as the characters in Heat have addresses known to the police, are not wanted men but instead are merely suspected of the crimes they commit, and quite simply put, hide in plain view. In short, they are not "public" enemies in the way the characters in Dillinger's time are.

Renaissance: Paris 2054

Dark in look and feel, Renaissance is a film whose only grays are between the things we normally look at. The sharp angular lines of the city, structures, and characters' faces, conceal the fact that character-wise, they are anything but black and white, though in the end dark could be used to describe them all; dark pasts, dark acts, dark motives and methods and secrets.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

As an animated film which uses the same rotoscoping technology as "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly" (both by Richard Linklater), Renaissance boasts a distinct visual look. Unlike those two films, however, Renaissance takes things to another level, by reducing the palette to only black and white giving it a feel more reminiscent of the older film noirs it resembles thematically. Stylistically it's in the same ballpark as "Sin City", but whereas that film used color to bring important details to life, there are is virtually no color in Renaissance, and for that matter almost no grays either; everything seems fall within the catagory of being either light or shadow. At times we feel like what we're looking at is actually invisible and what we can "see" is merely the shadow or after-effect of the subjects we are trying to follow. It lends itself quite well to a story such as this, full of mystery, secrets, and clues hidden within the details. The saga is full of shifting alliances, culprits hiding in plain view, and plot twists which linger just around the corner and can felt before we actually see them.

The story itself is quite spare, and like many of the better film noirs it relies heavily on exposition, terse dialogue, and a slowly unfolding plot to maintain its air of secrecy. Think neo niors like Heat and L.A. Confidential though due to its futuristic elements works like Blade Runner (another sci-fi noir with sparse dialogue and a lot of atmosphere) and the anime Cowboy Bebop might be more on target. Even the romantic subplot of the film (probably its most heavily dramatic portion) is sparing when it comes to words: "I bet you meet a lot of flawless women in your line of work."

Karas and Bislane

The setting is a distopian Paris set in the not too distant future where the Eifel Tower can still be seen, and many new, tall and impressive buildings have been erected to tower over the slums and alleys where the parasites still live and continue to commit their petty crimes as they have since cities came into existance. An impressive opening shot pans down from the Eifel tower itself, lower and lower into the seemy underbelly of the metropolis. At a dingy techno-club a girl named Bislane dances on the floor. Unbenounced to her, her younger sister Ilona has come to the club to see the owner and bartender, Dimitri, with a dark purpose in mind. He's stolen something for her, a book the plot will later reveal, which contains the secret of immortality. Dimitri tells Ilona he had some trouble getting what she wanted, sleezily lets her know the price has gone up and then, after getting into a minor scuffle with her is confronted and told to leave by Bislane who finds the two where they are arguing on the balcony. Ilona will leave empty handed only to be abducted, setting in motion a plot that focuses on the search for her whereabouts, the hidden motives behind why she was taken, and what is at stake in her return.

Two exemplary images of noir

Above: Bislane in front of the Paris Skyline

Below: Reflection in the eye of Ilona's dead dog, the only witness to her abduction

A mega-company called Avalon looms above all else in the city of Paris in Renaissance. It employs the best and brightest (including the two sisters mentioned previously), and it maintains an iron grip on all. Our main character is Karas, a character like many we've seen in another film. He's tough and possesses a strong sense of justice, and is willing to bend the rules to do what he feels is right. In an early scene we watch him break protocol on a hostage situation to take out three kidnappers who have a young boy held at gunpoint. He seems to have as little regard for his own life as he does for operating procedure.

Over the course of the film, Karas will meet several important characters. Jonas Muller is a brilliant scientist and was a mentor to Ilona. Farfella is a shadowy gangster and childhood friend to Karas (the kind of friend who's useful when one wants to skirt the law, as Karas will have to later in this film). The slimy Dellenbach is the head of Avalon who bugs Karas's comm device, and later has Dimitri killed and attempts to abduct Muller with thugs who use a type of thermo-camouflage (the latter of which sets off a pretty interesting shootout in a greenhouse). Eventually Karas will get kicked off the force and have to rely upon Bislane to access information from Avalon which sets off a romantic subplot between the two. The final major character to be introduced is the elderly Nakata who was on the same team as Muller during a crucial project. He reveals the secret of their research that everyone seems to be dying to get their hands on: immortality. Muller, it turns out, had a younger brother with Progeria, a disease which causes hyper-rapid aging, and by trying to counteract it, it seems he's discovered the means to eternal youth.

Above: Another image reminiscent of classic noir, two silhouettes kissing in the rain

Below: Thermo-camouflaged soldiers

All of this leads to a confrontation as Karas and Dellenbach's men close in on Ilona's whereabouts at the same time and Karas is forced to choose between killing Ilona to keep Muller's secret or allowing her to live and reveal it to Avalon. On the one hand, Muller has died for the secret already and entrusted the choice to Karas. "Avalon cannot be allowed to obtain such limitless power. Without death life will become meaningless..." On the other hand, Karas has promised Bislane, now his current lover, that he will save Ilona, even though it has been decided beforehand that she will have to go into hiding and take on a new identity.

Things do not go as expected when Karas finally reaches Ilona. She has been held against her will by Muller (now dead) and his younger brother, who constitutes the one piece of evidence Muller couldn't destroy. When Karas arrives Ilona is trying to do just that, until Karas stops her from choking him to death. Ilona reveals herself to be completely selfish and willing to accomodate Avalon. She rejects the premise of taking a new identity and even tells Karas of her intention to take credit for Muller's work, saying "The world is waiting for MY discovery." After suffering a gunshot wound to his shoulder from one of Dellenbach's henchmen, Karas finds himself incapacitated and unable to physically restrain her and takes her life with his gun after she throws away the new identity he gives her and begins to defiantly march back to Dellenbach. When talking with Bislane afterward, Karas doesn't let on what happened with Ilona's death, choosing instead to let her sister retain a positive memory and the belief that she is still out there safe and alive.

* * *

Thematically, Renaissance is fairly ambiguous, even while the question of morallity when it comes to eternal life is a big one. "Without death, life is meaningless", utters the character of Muller right before he expires. And with the brisk pace the plot continues we viewers are given little time to contemplate this until the lights come back on and the question resurfaces in our minds.

I remember the first time I saw the movie with a friend we ended up having a long discussion about the ending. He was ticked off at the decision Karas had made, feeling immortality was something which should have been allowed into Avalon's hands. I've often wondered if there isn't something inherently corrupt in the very idea of eternal life. Few can deny the power it would confer on those who possess it, and power as we all know, corrupts.

What if eternal life were made into a product? Should it really? Who decides who lives and who dies, and in the end is all of it merely a matter of money or favors? In many ways we live in something of a similar system already where those with large amounts of money or influence survive much longer despite sometimes having far worse ailments. The poor who become sick or infirm or just plain old suffer as their bodies slowly break down, addicted to medicine or life saving treatment, but what if there were a source of immortality and we all knew we could live on forever and not just for a few more years if only we could afford to pay the price... Movies like this one reflect the real world in a real way, and businesses like the fictional Avalon are not a far cry from the dirty pharmaceutical companies that deny medicine to the dying if there isn't a profit in it for them to make.

Another question I'd have to consider is what even if immortality were granted to the common man would be his future? Imagine being a slave for all eternity, with no release ever to be seen. It's been often said that there are fates worse than death, and with death no longer a master to us, who would be left? That human beings can be far crueler than death is something I have little doubt of, and characters like the villain Dellenbach make it quite believable that immortality might not just be the end of death's great menace, but also the beginning of an endless living hell as humans without scruple acquire what damn near amounts to godhod. Richard Dawkins once argued that death coupled with reproduction could actually be seen as a very big advantage to immortality, largely due to the ability to start over, brand new from scratch, and potentially fix the problems within a previous version of any creature.

Like the Watchmen movie which was adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, Renaissance doesn't give its viewers answers to these questions per se. Instead it merely shows us the decisions of its characters, leaving us to ponder them and whether or not we agree or disagree.