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Robert De Niro

The Comeback Trail: Hollywood is Murder

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The Comeback Trail follows Max Barber and Walter Creason (Robert De Niro and Zach Braff), two down-on-their-luck Hollywood producers who can’t seem to make a hit. In debt with a ruthless mobster (Morgan Freeman) and trying to stay afloat, Max gets an idea for a scam that could bail them out of financial ruin. For their next film, he hires ageing movie star Duke Montana (Tommy Lee Jones) as their lead actor with the hope that he’ll die on set so that they can collect the insurance money. However, as the filming commences, Duke, Walter and the rest of the team are re-invigorated by the process and Max must hide his true intentions.

Blending the wild west antics of City Slickers with the satirical edge of Wag the Dog, The Comeback Trail is is an over-the-top, silly comedy that probably shouldn’t work but absolutely does. Written and directed by George Gallo, there’s simply an infectious joy within the film that invests you in the characters. Backed by a solid cast and a (mostly) entertaining script, Gallo has created a movie that likely won’t be remembered in the long run but certainly entertains. 

Although his choices have been hit (Last Vegas, Analyze This) and miss (Dirty Grandpa, Analyze That) throughout his career, De Niro has always shown an interest in comedy. While he’s never been great at wackier material, there’s no doubt that he seems invested in his performance here. In fact, Comeback allows DeNiro’s performance as a corrupt producer to tap into the type of sleaze that makes him such a memorable villain. 

However, while De Niro may be the film’s central focus, it’s really Braff and Jones who steal the show. Braff has an incredible ability to move between silliness and earnestness within his performances, which proves invaluable when held up against De Niro’s frenetic energy. Meanwhile, as washed up veteran Duke Montana, Jones absolutely shines as his character begins to find his stride. Jones has always had the ability to bring gravitas to a role and he manages to offer the film’s strongest performance by far.

Embedded within the film is a message about moving forward. While Max and Duke remain entrenched in the pain of their past, the world around them continues to grow and change. They are the old guard. Living in an era where toxic masculinity and white privilege run rampant and remains unchallenged, both men have been willing to compromise their integrity for the sake of fame and success. 

However, whereas Max seems unable to face a new world, Duke recognizes the damage that he’s caused and seeks to do things differently. (In this way, the film also contains a subtext of ‘white guilt’ as Duke carries the burden of turning his back on visible minorities due to his own selfishness, both on and offscreen.) Embracing change with humility and grace, Duke is grateful for a second chance. By hiring Megan as director and attempting to repair the mistakes of his past, Duke genuinely wants to live his life differently in the future. Through Duke’s journey, Comeback shows that there’s room for change—and potentially hope for those who have caused the harm in the first place

While Comeback is far from perfect, it does have a liveliness and fun that genuinely works. More importantly, even though it may be over-the-top, there’s more to this story than first appears. As Braff, De Niro and Jones slog through the trials of the movie industry, Comeback reveals the brutal toxicity that has held it together for so long. Though change is definitely in the wind, the film shows that Hollywood really can be murder.

The Comeback Trail is available on demand on Friday, August 13th, 2021.

The Wizard of Lies: What Will Greed Get You?

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Bernie Madoff perpetrated the largest Ponzi scheme (currently) in history, having defrauded investors out of approximately sixty-five billion dollars. In Diane B. Henriques’ book, The Wizard of Lies, the story she found as she covered the investigation beginning in 2008 is laid out in some detail. Now, in HBO’s original film of the same name, legendary director Barry Levinson tells the story as adapted to the screen by his son, Sam.

But let’s be clear – the captivating elements of the otherwise ‘numerical’ story come from the performances of the main cast, a set of A-list actors.

De Niro seems born for his typical roles, and this is really no different. But Michelle Pfeiffer also stars as Madoff’s wife, Ruth, and Alessandro Nivola (A Most Violent Year, American Hustle) as their son, Mark. [Hank Azaria plays the role of Madoff’s “second-in-command,” Frank DiPascali.]

While the story shows the intense success (fleetingly) that Madoff achieved, the film’s stark warnings about the cost of this abuse of power and truth hang on after the credits end. There’s the impact on Mark and Ruth, not to mention the incarceration of Madoff, and the bitterness felt by Madoff’s other son. But the thousands of people fleeced by the Madoff scheme? Those wounds will last for generations.

In the end, we’re left with Madoff’s own madness – even his final question (via De Niro) to the real-life Henriques playing herself: “Do you think I’m a sociopath?”

The Comedian – Life Isn’t Always Funny

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The first thing to keep in mind about The Comedian is that it is not a comedy. To be sure there are spots of humor, but it is really a drama focusing on a man at odds with the world—and perhaps with himself as well.

Jackie Burke (Robert De Niro) is an aging comedian who does abusive standup comedy in clubs. He is popular with the public because of a role in a TV series many years ago. He hates that when he takes the stage crowds call out “Eddie! Eddie!”, thinking of him more as that old character than who he really is. Jackie has grown very misanthropic over the years. His comedy routines focus on insulting people. When Jackie discovers a heckler is recording the routine to put online, he assaults him, which leads to a thirty day jail term after he refuses to apologize.

After getting out of jail he must do community service. While working at a soup kitchen for the homeless he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann) who is also doing community service. Despite their difference in age, they hit it off, becoming friends. Both Jackie and Harmony have issues with family. For Jackie it is his brother Jimmy (Danny DeVito) and sister-in-law Florence (Patti LuPone). Florence is especially difficult with Jackie. Harmony struggles with her father Mac (Harvey Keitel) who has the money and connections to get her community service transferred to Florida where he owns a retirement community. After she leaves, Jackie struggles to find work and happiness.

It is often hard to like Jackie. His comedy is crude. He is just as abrasive off stage as on. His struggle to redefine himself after becoming a celebrity has been hard—and the public isn’t cooperative. Our antipathy toward Jackie is by design. We aren’t supposed to laugh at his routines. We are expected to think him boorish. Yet as the film progresses we are able to see the humanity that underlies the rough exterior. Often that happens in the midst of his comedy. While he us often rude, when in Florida trying to impress Harmony and Mac, he performs for the residents in the Senior facility. The scatological routine he develops (highlighted by singing a parody, “Making Poopie”) he is able to connect with the people. Little by little Jackie learns that even though people often love him for who they think he is more than for who he really is, there is something there to love.

Being able to love someone who is abhorrent to us is a difficult task to master. There are so many ways people build walls to protect themselves, but also isolate themselves. For Jackie, Harmony created a crack in the artifice. For many people we meet, we may need to work to discover the way in to meet the child of God within.

Photos courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

The Intern: What Does Your Career Cost?

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Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) takes on an internship at Jules Ostin’s (Anne Hathaway) startup company as a seventy-year-old. His life has fallen into the routine (read: boring) since his wife died, and his career as an executive for a telephone directory company is well in his past. Still, Ostin isn’t interested in the program that is supposed to make her company more palatable to investors, even after Whittaker is assigned to her. Let the odd couple pairing commence!

While the special features on Warner Bros.’ film do shine some light on the hilarious interns (Adam DeVine of Pitch Perfect shines), the film is both a comedy and coming-of-age film for thirty year olds. Ostin is a hardworking (overworked?) mother who is addicted to her work (yes, that’s a lot of work). Whittaker wants her to be happy, and he does his best to run interference for her, but is that enough? If someone doesn’t want to change, can they really pick a new direction?

intern1What The Intern seems to show in the end is that, just because a woman is married to her job, she shouldn’t be betrayed by her husband. [To be clear, having an affair is not the answer to unhappiness in marriage.] But what the film doesn’t really address is that Ostin has lost sight of her husband and daughter – it’s just flipped the script on which married partner is causing the problems at home.

For a startup company to succeed, one or more interested parties have to be completely bought in. (I learned that on Shark Tank!) Nevertheless, without some serious boundaries established, can real change actually occur? We are to guard our hearts, to see everything in balance, and to recognize how to have a multidimensional life. Unfortunately, the work life of a man has been ‘acceptable’ for years, and now, it’s been adopted by women fighting their way through the glass ceiling. It’s too bad that while we see the film ‘wrap up,’ we never get a justifiable resolution to many of the issues plaguing Ostin.

Yes, the interns are funny – especially when they break into Ostin’s mother’s house – but the film isn’t the comedy that the trailer would have you believe. It’s a serious, even tragic, look at what it means to pursue your dreams to the detriment of everything else.

Heist: The Art of Misdirection

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Robert De Niro. Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Kate Bosworth. Morris Chestnut. Gina Carano. Dave Bautista.

The cast list reads like a who’s who of good-but-not-great films that have littered the landscape of early spring and late summer. All of them have been in something spectacular, but bringing them all together echoes with the late-breaking career of Morgan Freeman as the set-up man. Heist (or Bus 657) is that kind of film about a blackjack dealing-father who needs the perfect heist to pay for his daughter’s expensive, non-insurance-covered operation.

Luke Vaughn (Morgan) knows he shouldn’t steal from “The Pope” (De Niro) but when heavy Cox (Bautista, sans makeup) lures him into robbing Pope’s casino and righthand man Derrick Prince (Chestnut), he is all in. Their robbery goes south (duh!) and they end up careening around on a bus driven by Bernie (D.B. Sweeney) with a setup straight out of Speed. However, local officer Kris Bajos (Carano) is in hot pursuit, and is soon joined by a suave Marconi (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). Vaughn and Cox (obviously) disagree on how to proceed, and the plot thickens aboard the bus.

All of this is pretty much what you would expect, like a Speedy Ocean’s Eleven without the humor. We’re warned several times that things are not what they seem but unfortunately, they seem so obvious that the ‘sleight of hand’ was telegraphed well before the big reveal. I don’t know if this is the result of a poor script, or poor direction, but the crew deserved better.

And then there’s the human interest level, as if the kid in the hospital bed motif wasn’t enough: we’re supposed to believe that The Pope really, really badly wishes he had made better life decisions and he wants to go straight. Or at least he wants a shot at conning his completely empathetic daughter (Kate Bosworth) into believing he can go straight, which changes the whole dynamic of the film. I am all for redemptive story arcs, and Bosworth nails the paltry five minutes that she’s given here, but the transition is so jarring that I thought I must’ve missed something. (I had not.)

Fortunately, each piece by each actor is pretty solid. Bautista has my attention after Guardians of the Galaxy and Spectre; I’m already a fan of Bosworth and Morgan. But the real misdirection seems to be in thinking that there was going to be an emotional payoff for the audience that just wasn’t there. I’m disappointed, really.

The trailer had me fooled.