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Mr. E is back and this time with The BJ. No, no that that kind of BJ but instead the follow up to that car commercial from few year back also known as The Italian Job. Heres a look David Twohys The Brazilian Job.
{sidebar id=1}Mr. E here. As my faithful readers may remember, in my review of the James Brown biopic SUPERBAD, I noted that reviewing a film script is a lot more difficult than reviewing a finished movie, because I dont have one of the film critics most important tools: knowing in advance what the hell the movie is supposed to be about.
Take the script for THE BRAZILLIAN JOB by David Twohy as the latest example of my ignorance getting the best of me. When I first got the script, I plunged into reading it, looking forward to a certain kind of film. Ten pages later, I felt gypped and I was mad as hell. I called up IESBs main man Robert Sanchez to express my frustration. The conversation went something like this:
Mr.E: Hey, Mr. Sanchez? This is Mr.E.
Robert: Who?
Mr.E: I write script reviews for you and your website IESB.net.
Robert: Oh yeah - Mr. E. Whats going on?
Mr.E: Well, a friend of mine sent me this script. Its called THE BRAZILLIAN JOB.
Robert: Oh Great! Are you going to send us a review for it?
Mr.E: I dont know. Im ten pages in and I gotta tell you Im really disappointed.
Robert: Disappointed? What? Does it suck? How bad is it?
Mr.E:Its not bad or anything. I guess I was expecting something else.
Robert: What do you mean?
Mr.E: I thought the movie was about a bikini wax!
It turned out the script was a sequel to THE ITALIAN JOB, which I never saw. Now I was worried as well as embarrassed. Was I supposed to know stuff that happened in the first movie? I really hoped not.
It used to be you could walk into a sequel and not only know nothing of the original film but also know nothing about anything, really oh the good old days of NUTTY PROFESSOR 2: THE KLUMPS.
The things I knew about THE ITALIAN JOB was that it starred Charlize Theron and that cute girl from The Wonder Years Winnie Cooper.
What? Oh-the movie featured Cooper Minis? Those cute little cars? My bad.
I can tell this review is not going to be easy.
THE BRAZILIAN JOB begins in SPOILER ALERT Brazil.
MORE SPOILERS
This is the first movie I know of where the first character introduced is an inanimate object. Yes its true, we begin with a loving look at all 629 carats of THE RED RIO DIAMOND. Its ruby charms are being exhibited in front a small group of Diamond merchants including ROSCOE DESILVA and his dog, ATTILLA.
We then go into the title sequence which intercuts the precise cutting of the massive red diamond with the clandestine scurryings of CHARLIE CROKER (Not Matt Damon-whats his name-Wahlberg, Mark Wahlberg) and LYLE (the always reliably great Seth Green). The two are setting up for a heist and since we are going between the action on their rooftop with the cutting of the red giant diamond, the audience is led to believe the two scenes are connected.
Nope. It turns out that CHARLIE and LYLE are in Seattle.
Ha ha. Fooled you. THE BRAZILIAN JOB is going to be one of those tricky movies with double and triple crosses and everyone has a hidden ulterior motive or is some kind of thief or something.
Now were in Rio-that would be Rio De Janeiro, Brazil again and STELLA (the stellar Charlize Theron) is awakened by the desperate phone call from INSPECTOR BAPTISTA, a local cop. It seems the vault at the Espirito Commercial Bank managed to close with someone inside of it. Thats not so bad except for there is a limited amount of air in the vault and the guys wife just wont shut up about it, so could she, STELLA come down and bust open the vault?
STELLA has the tools and the talents and opens the vault. But, by that time, shes alone at the gates of the vault and nobody is in the vault. Shes been set up. She is not happy about this at all, despite the fact she looks like Charlize Theron. So she runs for her life and, luckily for her, gets out of the bank alive, and lucky for us, because the movie has just started.CHARLIE comes down to Rio just in time to find out the real reason STELLA was set up. It seems that the Brazilian bad guys are blackmailing (Blackmail is such an ugly word. Yes, we prefer extortion Hawkeye and BJ from M*A*S*H*) STELLA. If she doesnt do their bidding, theyll give the hard-drive from the banks security system (which not surprisingly has been altered to show STELLA working alone) to the Brazilian prosecutor.
So what do they want? They want STELLA and CHARLIE to break into The DeSilva Diamond Company and empty the vault. The DDC, as it is known by people in the know, is the diamond supplier to all the major diamond dealers in the world like Tiffany and Cartier. STELLA tells BAPTISTA (not the good cop we thought he was) that we are living in a material world and she is a material girl and, heavy sigh, shell do what they want.
A little while later, comma, in London, were re-introduced to characters from the first movie HANDSOME ROB (Jason TRANSPORTER/CRANK Statham) and LEFT EAR (Ford Prefect himself Mos Def). At this point I realized that, apparently, the wonderful actress Joan Allen is not going to be in this movie. I was upset at first, but then I realized it was the last two Matt Damon THE BOURNE WHATEVER movies that she was in, not THE ITALIAN JOB.
Doh!
So hail hail the gangs all here and they set about casing the joint.
THE BRAZILIAN JOB or TBJ (wow - even the initials to this movie sound dirty) was a tough read. Theres one central plot line which is how are our guys going to break into the diamond place thingee and there are several tangential plot lines, like STELLAs re-connection with a former mentor which ended badly, the Brazilians ratcheting up the timeline of the break-in and the consequences of the team neither pulling the job off or not attempting it at all. In the end, the fit hits the shan as all of the interested parties converge into, around and out of the diamond depository - oh good, I think thats the right word.
The problem with reading TBJ is that I had to imagine a constant influx of blueprints, computer graphics, computer-aided imaging, and video feeds to and from multiple monitors and cameras. It would be like seeing the events of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE only by looking at the read-outs on Mr. Spocks science station.
Additionally, this script is a real fast paced read, with writer Twohy not slowing down to even spell words completely. In the scripted words in world of THE BRAZILIAN JOB, a helicopter is a HELO and binoculars are/is (?)BINOX.
END SPOILERS (I THINK)
As the movie moved quickly to its double/triple/fourple-cross conclusion(s) (Sorry-I guess I lost count) the action involving THE RED RIO DIAMONDs cut stones from the beginning of the script that are housed elsewhere in the DDC and DDCs vault diamonds moved so quickly from one truck to another car to what one group was doing and where they were doing it and how it was a diversion to keep the others from doing something else and how what were really doing was, in fact, something else, perhaps you can understand my befuddlement.
Whats THE BRAZILIAN JOBs bottom line? Unless there are some kick-ass Happy Meal toys, like wind-up Cooper Mini Racers or little plastic Charlize Therons, Mark Wahlbergs and Seth Greens to collect, my gut tells me the entertainingly mediocre TBJ is destined to be nothing more than a fun date movie or a good rental to show off a home theatre system.
Sorry Charlize.
THE BRAZILIAN JOB rates a Charlize Theron in AEON FLUX out of a possible Charlize Theron in Arrested Development or 5.5 stars out of 10
Mr. E would like to inform his book reading and/or gift-seeking readers that the former Winnie Cooper, now math wizard Danica McKellar has just published Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail available at fine booksellers everywhere.
THE BRAZILLIAN JOB by David Twohy October 6, 2006
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