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Captive State

by Hope Madden

Imagine, if you will, that someone bullied their way to a takeover of the government. Imagine that they exploited the poor for labor while gutting Earth’s natural resources for their own gain, leaving a husk of a planet behind.

Imagine that they enacted blunt order with no thought to human rights, as they built walls, separated families and cordoned off neighborhoods to keep the poor a safe distance from the wealthy.

Let’s say they also passed themselves off as some almost holy enterprise that rewarded compliance and adoration.

Right, not such a stretch.

Oh, it’s aliens? That would actually be a lot easier to accept.

Filmmaker Rupert Wyatt returns to the theme of his greatest success, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with his latest SciFi adventure, Captive State.

Wyatt drops us into the heart of Chicago some ten or so years after an alien invasion. Earth has long since accepted the aliens as their new legislature, and terrestrial natives are now either blindly following command with the hope of reward, or they are not.

Gabriel Drummond (Ashton Sanders, Moonlight) can’t quite make up his mind. His brother Rafe (Jonathan Majors) is the symbol of the revolution, but Gabriel just wants to get out of Dodge and try for a new life.

Lawman William Mulligan (John Goodman, wonderful as always) won’t let him. What emerges is an intricate and often clever thriller about submission and resistance.

Though Wyatt’s allegory is clear, it doesn’t drown the story itself. Even the most thinly drawn character has purpose and dimension, the ensemble talent assembled here delivering memorable but understated turns.

Vera Farmiga offers a particularly poignant performance, though her screen time can’t reach past 2 minutes. Likewise, James Ransone, Alan Ruck and Lawrence Grimm balance desperation, courage and hope in brief episodes that help Wyatt create the bleak but almost optimistic tone.

The look is a bit murky, the 1984-style occupations a tad convenient and the lack of one single point of view character limits audience investment in character, and therefore, in the outcome. But the aliens look pretty cool, John Goodman offers a twisty, melancholy performance that’s worth seeing, and there’s rarely a bad time to be reminded of the power of resistance.

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The Gambler

by George Wolf

“I tell the truth, that’s all I got.”

So says Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) in The Gambler, an intermittently tense thriller that doesn’t feel all that truthful.

Bennett is a college literature professor with a secret: he’s a high stakes gambler, and he’s deep in debt to the kind of people you shouldn’t be deep in debt to. Jim borrows from everyone and his mother (Jessica Lange) to get out, but his compulsion leads to a deeper and deeper hole.

If it all sounds familiar, then you remember the original 1974 version starring James Caan, a film that doesn’t exactly beg for a re-do. Still, if you’re going to do it, the writer/director team of William Monahan and Rupert Wyatt is a pretty good building block. The exciting, well-paced opening sets the hook for a more effective crime drama than the one that materializes.

Monahan wrote The Departed, and Wyatt helmed Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which makes The Gambler‘s resulting missteps all the more surprising.

Though John Goodman and Michael Kenneth Williams make solid gangsters, you never believe Jim is in any real danger if he fails to pay up. Sure, they rough him up a bit, but Jim just keeps on cracking wise like he’s in Lethal Weapon 6 and someone who’s too old for this shit is coming with the cavalry.

Even worse, when Jim gets involved in a point-shaving scheme, the resulting basketball footage makes you wonder if Wyatt has ever watched even five minutes of an actual college game.

Still, there are stretches that suggest The Gambler could have been more of a contender. Wahlberg is always better with a confident director, and he realizes Jim’s self-loathing without letting it become a caricature. Brie Larson is equally fine in an under-developed role as a student who has seen Jim’s dark side.

There are characters here that are ripe for exploring, amid the stylish depiction of a seedy underbelly worthy of illumination. It’s been done well before, but doing it well again requires hedging your bets with a few risky moves, and The Gambler is just too quick to fold ’em.

 

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