Crimes of the moment, and also of infamy
Adrien Brody and Hayden Christensen work hard in crime drama American Heist but can’t muscle beyond average material as yin-and-yang brothers coerced into one last bank job.
Brody is inked up and whiny as fresh-out-of-jail screw-up Frankie. Younger brother James (Christensen) is a struggling mechanic who has paid for a past mistakes and hopes for better, including reconnecting with a former girlfriend (Jordana Brewster).
Set in New Orleans, where everyone curiously sounds like a New York tough, Frankie exits jail and unwisely hooks up with former prison pals Sugar (rapper Akon) and Ray (Tory Kittles, as a thug long on banking conspiracy theories).
James isn’t happy to see Frankie, but the older brother who took the fall for him after a botched crime guilts him into a meeting with Sugar and Ray (yes, there’s a joke about that) that goes sour, forcing James to help on an elaborate bank job.
The chaotic takedown has some notable moments and director Sarik Andreasyan tries to make it look almost elegant, variously succeeding. But he and screenwriter Raul Inglis don’t bring anything new, while domestic scenes intended to underscore differences between James and his bad-seed bro only serve to bog things down. Linda Barnard If a boy’s best friend is his mother, “good son” homicide Det. Ko Gun-soo (a solid Lee Sunkyun) knows that better than most in South Korean writer-director Kim Seong-hun’s A Hard Day.
Ko accidentally runs over a man on a dark road while heading back to his mother’s preburial vigil and frantically executes a crazily macabre plan to sneak the body into mom’s casket, getting this darkly humorous, tensionfilled thrill ride off to a terrific start.
But Ko’s troubles are just beginning and a covered-up crime becomes the least of his worries. Turns out the guy he hit wasn’t a random stranger. Plus he has to deal with his chucklehead coworkers and anonymous threats that indicate someone is on to him.
When corrupt cop Park Chang-min (Cho Jinwoong, swaggering and tough) shows up, Ko gets even deeper into the weeds. But he’s no pushover.
Director Kim turns the screw relentlessly, working old-school devices such as ringing phones to excellent effect, while tossing in some inspired fight and chase scenes.
Lee conveys Ko’s rising anxiety, tempered with a classic detective’s cool. It makes him a consistently sympathetic figure despite doing some horrible things in a well-executed plot that keeps us guessing until the last. Linda Barnard Joshua Oppenheimer powerfully revisits the crimes documented in his acclaimed 2013 documentary The Act of Killing, in which perpetrators of Indonesian genocide — a slaughter of one million people in the mid-1960s — gleefully reenacted their horrific deeds.
The point of view this time is that of Adi Rukun, a mild but brave optometrist, who seeks the truth about his older brother Ramli, murdered two years before Adi’s birth. Ramli was slaughtered by members of the military coup that brutally forced regime change.
Adi quietly but insistently interrogates the aging killers who still live in his midst and also near his grieving mother and father. He often quizzes his subjects while administering eye examinations, adding a symbolic poignancy to his quest for clarity.
He seems willing to forgive if not forget, but most of the killers and their deluded family members are more into justification than atonement. They claim they were just following orders, liquidating hated “communists,” but it’s clear many of them enjoyed their ghastly work, which included acts of vampirism and mutilation.
The violence is unseen, and a single archival news reel is employed for historical context. The film is all the more potent for its restraint, as constant on the mind as the cicadas that sound throughout the unyielding night. Peter Howell Both Samantha (Cobie Smulders), a 30-yearold teacher at an inner-city Chicago school slated for closure, and her star pupil, 17-yearold Jasmine (Gail Bean), are pregnant.
Babies don’t figure into their lives now, although Samantha’s emotional struggles with career versus being a stay-at-home mom seem insignificant next to what Jasmine faces in Kris Swanberg’s drama Unexpected.
In short order, Samantha and boyfriend John (Anders Holm) get hitched, disappointing her mom (Elizabeth McGovern) who was hoping for bridal bouquets before a baby.
Samantha won’t let Jasmine quit school and their friendship grows as she helps her apply for college. Swanberg (co-writing with Megan Mercier) makes this feel genuine, if underwritten. We long to know more about Jasmine’s life.
While Samantha admits to having never changed a diaper, Jasmine knows far more about raising kids and struggle than her adult teacher. She also realizes boyfriend Travis isn’t going to grow up enough to be a responsible parent.
Due dates loom and disappointment comes to both lives. Jasmine confronts Samantha: was she so busy playing Lady Bountiful she didn’t consider the consequences of her influence?
Unexpected features fine performances from both women and I’d love to see more from newcomer Bean, showing grace and maturity onscreen. Linda Barnard