John Travolta
has had quite the storied career, from being run over by Carrie to accidentally
shooting Marvin’s face off in Pulp Fiction! And he was killed by a swordfish in
Swordfish!…right? I’ve only seen Halle Berry’s uh performance from that film.
But hey everybody loses their luster at some point. Not everything can be a
winner. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. I’m sorry I’m just
trying to ease the pain when I say that Travolta’s latest vehicle The Forger is
a FORGERY of a film! With Travolta’s terrible accent and wooden acting, a
lifeless, dull, meandering plot, and an uncanny ability to make puppies cry, it
appears director Phillip Martin just threw mud at the wall and called it art.
The film’s plot
revolves around Travolta’s thief Ray Cutter’s release from prision. He’s asked
to do a job copying a Monet painting for a shady gangster (Anson Mount). Also,
Ray wants to spent time with his cancer-ridden son Will (Tye Sheridan), who has
been in the care of Ray’s father Joseph (Christopher Plummer). There’s also
something about a young police woman inexplicably played by an unrecognizable
Abigail Spencer trying to track down Ray, or the gangster, or anybody really.
She’s just super eager to arrest someone.
The Forger
seems to be advertised as an action-thriller — in the first act, there’s a hint
that that might actually be the case, with violence spread thick throughout. In
fact, Ray, the sensitive painter-thief beats down an entire mob of goons just
for some information. There’s whispers of a forthcoming heist that’s going to
change everybody’s life. We see a gun or two. But it’s all a trap. We’ve been
set up, double-crossed, we’ve been made everybody! The film grinds to a halt
almost immediately. The plot moves slower than, you know, something slow. Like
a slug or a worm on the sidewalk after it rains. I frequently checked the time
to see how long until the heist, which I assumed would be in the third act. I
was right, but boy, that was a disappointment. More on that in a moment.
I need to
address the acting in this film. Travolta has adopted a Boston accent so bad
that Mark Walhberg has officially threatened to make The Happenening 2:
Happenin’ Again as punishment. In fact, everyone in this movie seems to be
trying to do an accent, to varying degrees of success. It’s laughable to see
the ebb and flow of Travolta’s enthusiasm for the accent throughout the film.
Otherwise in the scenes of hamfisted drama or mild contemplation on behalf of
Ray’s character, Travolta is simply just trying way too hard to emote and it
comes off as forced. Plummer, however, knowing what a sham this film is, hams
it up as an extremely cartoonish, drunken Irish grandpa. He’s the only bright
spot in this brood-fest.
The plot, like
I said, moves slowly. It meanders between shaky scenes of Travolta and Sheridan
awkwardly becoming father-and-son through an adventure at the end of Will’s
life. Will sets out to achieve three “wishes” before he passes. Ray assists
him, along with painting the fake Monet, and brooding alone. The second act is
consumed with the Ray-Will storyline, pushing the “heist” part of this heist
film to the back-burner while we comically try to get Will laid. The tone
shifts so often between dark and drear to lighthearted family romping to
“thrilling” that it was hard to stay focused or get into the film at all.
Not helping is
Martin’s idea to film the sole “action” scene of the film from a very awkward
fly-on-the-wall long shot. While it’s technically a one-take fight scene that’s
becoming more and more prevalent these days, the audience can’t see anything.
Nothing. Travolta punches some people, they punch him, it’s definitely a fight,
but thanks to the ridiculously low lighting and far away camera position, the
audience doesn’t engage in the conflict whatsoever. Instead, we’re left to
shrug and say “Hey, wow, Travolta’s so tough he beat up people I guess.” Very
poor decision there.
The heist
sequence is extraordinarily brief. It’s not even a third of the third act. They
treat it like just another scene in the film, not attempting to add any more
tension than they’ve had previously in the film already. There’s a ton of build
up, obviously, to this going down, but we don’t see any actual planning of
anything. The three plus Ray’s brother go in and steal and swap and… it’s done.
Then the movie ends pretty soon afterward. So much for having an engaging, full
plot. Let’s just have stuff happen and call it a movie.
There’s other
storylines, but they’re tied up pretty quickly leaving the audience to focus solely
on Ray’s immediate goings-ons. The core of the film is, I suppose, Ray’s
“journey.” Only not much really seems to happen; even the characters all seem
bored. In a tidy ending that the film did not deserve, one can only make the
“:/” face in real life and exhale slowly. The film was dark, distant, cold, and
unloving. There was no joy, not even the cynical performance from Plummer can
make people crack half a smile. The Forger is bland, boring, and sad. I expect
to find twenty copies of it at my local used media store next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment