Vantage Point

Vantage Point is a story of a terrorist attack in Spain, as told from eight points of view. It is a exercise in perspective. We all have a different perspective as to what is going on in the world. The film stars Dennis Quaid (sorry, but he totally sucks), William Hurt, Matthew Fox, Sigourney Weaver, and Forest Whitaker, among others. The President is shot (ok, the double of the President, the trailer gives away a little too much here). Explosions ensue, and chaos erupts at this summit meeting that was designed to help stop terrorism. The terrorists strike this meeting for a reason.

This film is quite entertaining, and clocks in at an hour and half, so it packs its punch in a concentrated amount of time. The story starts and we see the events from the perspective of the news network. Then we rewind and see it all again from the perspective of a Secret Service agent. We go back a third time and see it all through the eyes of an undercover Spanish cop. Then again through a tourist, then through a terrorist, etc. This repetition sounds a little boring, but it truly does provide completely different perspectives. In a way, this film takes the Crash filmmaking style and turns it into an exciting action movie. Don't look to Vantage Point to give you a lot in terms of depth and insight into the human condition. It offers nothing profound. Instead, it entertains us immensely and gives us that little rush in searching for the truth. We want to know what happened, and we get to take part in figuring it out. I was very weary of this film because I had been seeing the trailers for almost a year and the release date kept getting pushed back (that usually means the movie sucks, and they don't know what to do to make it better). The film is an exciting, fun to watch experience, a nice action escape following the amazing but heavy-hearted Oscar season.

The Brave One

"Vengeance is mine," sayeth Erica Bain. Bain (Jodie Foster) was mugged, along with her fiance, one night in New York City. Her fiance was beated to death, and Bain was close to death herself. These muggers were sick and twisted. They even videotaped the event. Now Bain needs healing, and she needs to find some way to continue to live with these brutal scars.

Bain's journey back to society begins with getting a gun. She feels unsafe, and no one would blame her for wanting to protect herself. But she feels she needs a gun immediately, and she is having none of this 30 day waiting period crap. So Bain goes to a black-market gun dealer and picks up a 9mm. Now she feels powerful, she feels safe. One night she gets caught in the middle of one man's murderous rage in a convenience store. She must protect herself in order to survive, and does so. But this first act of killing awakens something inside Bain. She flees the scene, destroys any evidence that she has been there, and decides that she will give in to this change, to this new person she is becoming.

Bain is also a radio talk-show host, telling stories of New York City. She uses this as a veiled confessional throughout the film. Also, she meets a detective Mercer (Terrence Howard) who is on the case of the convenience store shootings. They become friends, and Mercer respects Bain's opinion because of what she has been through in the past. Little does he know, he is looking for her.

As is pointed out by a caller on Bain's radio show, we are all happy to see bad guys shot in the head. We all want to see justice, and when the law is too slow, too beaurocratic, or too inept, we like to see people take justice into their own hands. Our desire for justice comes from God. God is a just God, and since we are made in His image, we have a desire for justice as well. It is not wrong to want things to be fair, for things to be right. But God does say "Vengeance is mine." He is ultimately the only one who can judge fairly and justly. When we take matters into our own hands, as Bain does, we are playing God and claiming we know how to handle a situation just as well as He would. Does that mean that God never wants us to get involved? No, but we must learn to entrust our actions and decisions to God. We also must defer to the government in place, as is stated in Romans chapter 13. Yet, there are times when that government fails to do its job. Thus, vigilante justice. This idea is one that gets plenty of screen time in Hollywood, and that is because it reflects a deeper desire, the desire to make things right. We want to play a part in that process. We want to be the heroes and kill the bad guys. Wouldn't it be great if we could just put two slugs in the murdering pedophile or serial rapist? Wouldn't it feel great? Those are the questions The Brave One asks. But let us remember to leave true justice in God's hands, not ours. There is a reason that God instituted "cities of refuge" in the book of Joshua. If someone accidentally killed another, they could flee to these cities for protection from vengeful family members of the victim. They were in place to protect people from vigilante justice. God knows the whole story, we don't, we have a limited view. And isn't that what the courts are there for, at least in theory? To really get the whole story?

Healing is another important theme in The Brave One. Bain is seeking healing from her past, specifically from losing her fiance to brutal violence. The film seeks to show her process as one that goes through violence. Somehow, the enacting of vigilante justice violence brings about her healing, helping her to be confident and to gain the ability to function again. There it is, "the myth of redemptive violence." True healing can only come from Jesus, and it is a process that would be hindered or stunted by vengeance. The focus should be on ourselves, not on those who wronged us. We cannot control the actions of others, and are only responsible for our own. Revenge brings some temporary satisfaction, but I challenge the idea that it brings healing. Detective Mercer is also seeking healing. He is going through a divorce, which is the death of a relationship. He feels rejected, unsafe, violated, and scarred, just like Bain. Their stories parallel each other. But how does Mercer find healing? How does he seek it? These two stories intersect at critical points in the narritive, and the conclusion ties it all together.

The Brave One is a pretty standard premise. This film may or may not perpetuate some of the standard Hollywood myths (vigilante justice and redemptive violence), I will leave that up to you, the viewer. But it does delve into our psyches and show us who we are, and why we have this thirst for justice. Yes she is brave, but is it the right kind of brave?

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

It is obvious from the title that this is not a film about what happened, but rather about why it happened.

Written and directed by newcomer Andrew Dominik, The Assassination of Jesse James stars the great Brad Pitt as even more famous bank robber and outlaw James. We start to follow James near the end of his crime career, as things are winding down and his brother Frank is wanting to get out of the game. We meet Robert Ford (Casey Affleck in an Oscar nominated performance) as he is joining the gang for a hit on a train. He has idolized James his whole life, and at 20 Ford still seems as giddy as a school boy around his idol. So how does he get from point A (hero worship) to point B (killing the man he idolized)?

James would fit in well in our culture today. He is a man who makes his own rules, who answers only to himself, and who seems above the law. He is a renegade, a man we all want to be in a way (some more blatantly than others). We all want to be able to do whatever we want all the time. And back then, just as in our time, some people are blown up to mythic proportions. Yet in the West of the 1880's and 1890's it was harder to find out the truth about someone. Their legend would just grow and grow. Robert Ford had a box under his bed of all things James: dime-store novels, newspaper clippings, and even trinkets from his first job with the famous criminal. After getting to know Ford, James began to understand this man's obsession. He asked "Do you want to be like me? Or do you want to be me?" There is a disturbing scene later in the film in which Ford goes through the James house when they are at church. He sips James' water, sniffs James' pillows, pretends to have a stub of a right middle finger like James, and even imagines what James might feel like if Ford were to kill him. In a way he reminds me of myself, or any young man, who idolizes an athelete or a musician (for me those were Ken Griffey Jr. and Eddie Vedder). Ford is still stuck in pre-adolesence, many people are.

As Ford gets to know his hero, he begins to see that this man is human. He begins to realize that the one man he wanted to be is not all he had dreamed of. Or is this just his way of rationalizing the fact that he has decided to protect himself and his family by killing this man? After the assassination we see Ford's reactions, and this explains his psyche in more detail. How does he deal with the fact that he killed the man he worshipped, and in so doing killed some part of himself (hopes/dreams/desires/identity/etc.)? He ends up reenacting the scene on stage day in and day out. He soaks up fame and glory, along with ridicule and threats. He has become nearly as famous as the man he killed (much like Lee Harvey Oswald). He struggles with what he has done. Was he a hero or a coward? Many heckle him, call him names, and are incredibly angry at him for killing such an "important" man, a symbol, a legend, a demi-god. How does he view himself now that this is all over? Did he do it for fame and glory, because it was the right thing to do, or simply because he was scared James would kill him?

The character of Jesse James is interesting, but is almost irrelevant in the film. He is more of an idea than a person. The story centers around Robert Ford, a man with whom we can relate much more easily. He is a man conflicted and confused. He wants to be a real man, a man of courage and strength. He was made to worship something (as are all of us), but doesn't really know what that should be. So he ends up worshipping the most visible symbol of the qualities he admires.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a wonderful western, but a different kind of western. There are no clear good guys, everyone is at least a little bad. The genre has seen a revitalization as of late (this film, 3:10 to Yuma, HBO's Deadwood, etc.) which makes me very happy. Jesse James both honors the genre and takes it in new directions. The cinematography is breathtaking, which is something that always sticks out to me. This film is a long journey well worth the reward, a better understanding of what God meant when he said "Thou shalt have no idols."

The Bucket List

How can you go wrong with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? In The Bucket List Jack plays Edward Cole, a very wealthy man who has recently discovered he will die soon. Freeman plays Carter Chambers, a not-so wealthy man who has also discovered he has only a few months to live. As fate would have it, these two men end up rooming together in the hospital (Cole's hospital). They decide to follow through on an exercise that Chambers had done in college. That exercise: make a list of everything you wanted to do before you kicked the bucket. Thus the title, and plot of the film.

So if you could know the exact moment of your death, would you? A good question which, according to the film, 96% of people answered no. But what would be the advantage of knowing? Well, you wouldn't worry about what you normally worry about. You would live with a wreckless abandon, making the most of the time you have left. So why don't we live like that always. Well, there's that whole responsibility thing. To some extent, we should live every day like it is our last. But on the flip side, it is irresponsible for us to live like that all the time. We have families, children, or other responsibilities that should be more important to us that our own personal happiness. Yet, as the film points out, when we "truly live" we actually make life better for those around us too, sometimes. It is a fine line to walk, but we should all ask God's wisdom in figuring out how to live our life completely and fully in the here and now, while still honoring and loving those around us.

The thing that stuck out to me as I watched the film was our culture's lack of same-sex friendships, guy friendships to be specific. We as American men, in many ways, don't know how to have good guy relationships. Usually it takes something tragic to bring us together (like cancer in the film). I realized this while I watched the film next to a man whom I have grown very close to over the last few years. Sadly, this friendship did not go to a deeper level until tragedy hit. Nonetheless, I am extremely grateful for this friendship. Guy friends are something all of us men need desperately, and we need to be courageous and take our some of our acquaintances to a deep level of friendship. We are not all God created us to be without them.

The Bucket List bordered on cheesy at times, but it ended up being better than I had expected. It helps us ask hard questions of our own lives, and to truly be thankful for every moment we have been given by our gracious God (whether those moments are fun, difficult, painful, or breathtaking).

The Savages

Laura Linney (in an Academy nominated performance) stars alongside my favorite actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a new dramedy about what happens to our deteriorating bodies during old age. These two fine actors play Wendy and Jon Savage, two siblings who have been estranged from their father, Lenny, for many years. After finding out that their father has lost his girlfriend, been kicked out of his house, and is developing dementia, Wendy and Jon go down to Sun City, AZ to bring their father back to New York. They decide to place him in a nursing home. They struggle with this decision, especially Wendy who sees it as cruel and unusual punishment. But Jon is comforted by the fact that they are treating their old man better than he ever treated them.

One scene in The Savages stood out to me more than any other. After putting Lenny in a nursing home, Wendy decides that he deserves better. So they take him to another facility to interview, and Wendy thinks this place is much better than the one he is in now. It has nice, manicured lawns. It has tall, beautiful trees. It looks wonderful on the outside, and it has all the bells ans whistles. But Jon makes a scathing observation. He says that all of this outward beauty is there for the visiting family of the resident, not the resident themself. It is all there to distract the family from the fact that people are dying, and that death is a horror show. It is a filthy, messy thing to die. All of the wonderful outward adornments are there to prey upon the guilt that family members feel in abandoning their loved ones.

Death is a horrible thing, and we all know that death entered the world because of sin. It is our punishment for rebellion against God. Death is our cage. Yet Christ conquered death on the cross, and we now can have ultimate freedom from this horrible end. But instead of seeing the truth, the deliverance from death in Christ, we as a society just try to cover up the problem and act like it isn't there, or it's not that bad. Let us not ignore that fact that death is real and scary, lest we minimize Christ's victory over this horrible foe.

Lenny experiences advanced stages of dementia, specifically Parkinson's disease. He sometimes forgets who his children are, and rarely shows any love or affection for them (he never did much of this anyway). So this is the question that is asked of Jon and Wendy: Can you love someone who doesn't love you back? Can you love someone who doesn't know who you are? We all fall into the trap of "loving" others only when we think we will get something in return. That is not love. True love is giving, and giving, and giving, with absolutely no thought of and of it reciprocating. This is Jesus' love. And this love is impossible without Jesus.

Wendy is a very interesting character in this film. She is incredibly selfish, but masks it by trying to do everything perfect on the outside for her father. She is trying to assuage her guilt all the time. She is also very insecure because of her childhood, and therefore tries to find the approval of a man. She chooses the absolute worst person in the world to latch onto, a married man. She carries on this relationship, a pathetic one, for her own need of security. Yet, her deep need is never met. When a man from Nigeria takes an interest in her and her father, she immediately translates that gesture into a desire for romance, and kisses him. Her insecurity is heart-breaking. At the end of the film, she finally finds a good outlet for her desire to help others and find purpose. She eventually finds some sort of security in herself.

The Savages delves into one of the most taboo topics in our society today, the elderly population. The film treats the subject with the seriousness it deserves, but also is awkwardly funny and true to life. People are real people in this film, and they are all imperfect. People sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. Some people truly need specialized care, but the sad fact is that some children put their parents in "homes" merely because they have become too great a burden. I do not want to minimize anyone's decisions about how to care for their loved ones, but regardless of what decision is best for our elderly family members, we are all called to love and support them unconditionally no matter what state thier bodies or minds are in. This is a great film by relative newcomer Tamara Jenkins that not only hits an emotional nerve, but reminds us that life is funny too, and strange, and awkward.