Word: smarts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...next to him. He wasn't talking to anyone and seemed pretty uncomfortable for a guy who was having a party thrown for him. Years later, I reviewed his collection of short stories Oblivion, and foolishly, jealously wrote this: "David Foster Wallace writes so beautifully, is so show-offishly smart and understands the intricacies of human emotion so keenly that a reasonable person can only hope he is terribly unhappy. Which, if this collection of short stories is any indication, he is." For a far better, less embittered, summation of this loss, read the soliloquy from Hamlet that gave Wallace...
...breadth escapes, the camera moves faster, but always purposefully. Richet brings all the characters to plausible, entertaining life, but Cassel easily dominates the action. Often, as in Eastern Promises, he plays the strutting punk with more bravado than brains. Here he's the unchallenged star, the total movie criminal: smart, daring, ruthless, indomitable. At least till Part...
...Also in the way, on this meandering trip to another climactic shootout, are a few detectives (John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg and the always smart, luscious, screen-saving Carla Gugino) and some perps: Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, as a Harlem drug lord; Trilby Glover as a lawyer with a coke habit; Oleg Taktarov as a slab-torsoed Russian mobster. They're around mostly to provide alibis and victims, and for spaces between the dialogues of the stars...
...contempt, for the people they've created. From the lover-killers in the Coens' first feature, Blood Simple, to the babynappers in Raising Arizona and a raft of Minnesotans in Fargo, all manner of desperately striving oafs populate the Coen gallery of film art. The brothers have been very smart about their characters' being very stupid...
...movie is at one with its characters: all shiny surfaces and slick camera choreography, it looks so smart it can fool you into thinking something clever is going on or will start in just a minute. Instead, the movie devolves until it practically dissolves, and the only laughter you might hear is from the guys behind the camera...