Word: banalized
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Events like these happen so often that Americans' sense of horror and outrage has been numbed. Death by gunfire has become nearly as banal in the U.S. as auto fatalities; shootings are so routine that they are sometimes ignored by the local news. Only by coming face to face with the needless victims does the wastefulness sink...
...come for a meeting. "At least there's one cook that ain't wired to the max," Big John concedes. "He never touches the Product." It shows: most illegal drug chemists, awash in dollars but their brains stewed by fumes, seldom pay attention to the little touches that transform banal consumer goods into personal statements of good taste. Bernard has 14-karat-gold-plated wheels on his favorite Corvette, and he gave a designer team jacket to the fellow who jockeys his offshore-racing boat. But Bernard is not some Johnny-come-lately cook with a jailhouse recipe...
Oddly, Philby's comments on world politics and on his colorful past seem wan and trite. It is almost as if this supermole wanted to demystify his own legend, making double agentry seem as banal as bartending. The impression of ordinariness is reinforced by his chatty letters to Knightley, which are cited in extenso. Philby comes across as a slightly dotty old Brit, complaining about how hard it is to find "bilambees" (an Indian vegetable) in Moscow and fuming about the "preposterous" radio commentaries of "the BBC's own Smarty Cooke, Alistair of that...
...same impersonal zoo it has always been. Elbows, drinks, faces and now Winthrop ties are coming at you from almost every direction. There is a huge bottleneck by the Cheap Champagne Bar where seniors can prove how senior they are by drinking in the morning while fending off the banal chitchat of leering, over-friendly marshals...
This mostly unseen star is played by Byron Thames, but special citations must go to Richard Brooks, Nicholas Cascone and Glenn Morshower, as his most sharply delineated subjects. It is, however, first-time director Duncan's raw technique that jolts, transforms and grants powerful immediacy to basically banal material. In these bland days, more famous directors, operating on bigger budgets, are not managing to do as well...