High
Crimes & Changing Lanes
Get Ready For A Deluge Of Movie
Thrillers
Hollywood Loves Feeding Our Appetite For Thrills.
What is it about violence, murder and mayhem that we can't
get enough of, at least at the movies? Is it the thrills, the
salacious adrenaline rush, or watching fake bad things happen
to make-believe people that keeps us coming back to thrillers,
horror flicks and their like over and over again? The excitement
of being a voyeur in the safety of a movie theatre? I don't
know what it is, but I love to be scared and I love to be on
the edge of my seat at the movies just like a lot of you, and
Hollywood knows it, because hardly a week goes by that a new
suspense or scary film isn't released into theaters. Hollywood
studios love to feed our appetite for fear and we usually eat
it up, turning the latest thriller, action, science-fiction
or horror film into the week's latest box-office winner.
A few weeks ago, director David
Fincher's Panic Room, a stylish, suspense-drenched picture
starring Jodie Foster as the most protective mom since Sigourney
Weaver's Ripley in Aliens, opened to big business and continues
to play well, even while a number of other thriller-style movies
have opened in the same recent time, like High Crimes, Changing
Lanes, and Frailty. And the thrills are just getting started
as a number of more high octane action yarns are getting set
for release in the coming weeks, such as: wrastler The Rock's
Mummy-spinoff The Scorpion King; Sandra Bullock takes a walk
on the grim side as a detective investigating a couple of murdering
teens in Murder By Numbers; Jennifer Lopez stops shaking her
J-Lo booty long enough to star as a battered wife who's
had Enough and decides to fight back; Al Pacino plays a cop
who can't get a decent night's sleep while trailing
a killer in Alaska in Insomniac; Ben Affleck takes on the role
made famous by Harrison Ford as Tom Clancey's best-selling
hero Jack Ryan and tries to head off nuclear annihilation in
The Sum of All Fears, while Affleck's best buddy Matt Damon
plays a super-spy with amnesia in The Bourne Identity, taken
from the novel by Robert Ludlum; then there's the return
of a certain hockey-masked, machete-wielding horror icon --
this time, laughably enough, in outerspace! -- in Jason
X; and, not to mention, the latest chapter in director George
Lucas's space opera, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. It's
all enough to give a movie thrill junkie an overdose of cinematic
excitement, but not all of these films will be of the same caliber
of Panic Room, as shown by the current competition of Fincher's
film. Let's have a look at some of the newer arrivals .
. .
High Crimes is an incredulous,
predictable thriller that reunites Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman,
co-stars of the hit serial killer thriller Kiss The Girls. In
the film, spunky Judd stars as a no-nonsense attorney who is
forced to defend her handsome hubby (played by Jim Caviezel)
when he is accused by the military of committing a civilian
massacre in El Salvador from years ago. Freeman plays a former
crackerjack military defense attorney, now semi-washed up boozer,
who smells a military cover-up and attempts to help Judd with
the case. The film, directed by the usually reliable Carl Franklin
(One False Move, Devil In A Blue Dress), is a real mess: if
Caviezel's character is guilty of the charges, then why
are shadowy military-type bad guys trying to discourage Judd
from pursuing her investigation by intimidating and even physically
harming her and her family? High Crimes' big mystery --
did he or did he not commit the massacre -- is fairly obvious
if you've seen one of these ???????? farst-filled thrillers
that have become all the rage at the movies in the last few
years. Let's just say Ashley's character could use
one of these self-help books about women who love bad men, but
the film's big denouncement seems to make everything that
happened before it in the film seem irrelevant. High Crimes
is a crime alright -- of the cinematic variety.
Much better than High Crimes is
Changing Lanes, a grabber of a thriller that keeps you watching,
but one that's not without its problems. The film's
biggest problem is that its protagonists are so unsympathetic
and hard to pull for. Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck star
as a couple of unsavory characters whose lives intersect when
they're involved in a traffic accident. Jackson plays a
hotheaded recovering alcoholic on his way to a court hearing
to try and win visitation rights to his two children when he's
sideswiped by Affleck's rich and smarmy New York lawyer
on his way to court to file some very important papers. Affleck's
in too big a hurry to stop and help Jackson, who he leaves stranded
on the side of the road, but he doesn't notice that he's
also left behind that important brief. Jackson arrives late
for his custody hearing, losing his visitation rights, and when
Affleck tries to get his papers back, an angry Jackson refuses
to hand them over. Affleck's lawyer seeks retribution and
thus begins an ever-escalating game of deadly one-upmanship
as the two seek revenge against one another and things get ugly
quickly.
Fittingly, Changing Lanes is the
cinematic equivalent of seeing a car wreck on the highway --
you can't help but watch as you pass by even if it is a
disturbing sight. Even though their characters aren't particularly
likable (until, of course, they predictably see the error of
their ways and try to turn their situation around at the film's
end), Jackson and Affleck give strong performances as Changing
Lanes seeks to show how indifferent as human beings we've
become to each other's needs and feelings as the hardships
of life corrupt our thoughts and deeds. As directed by Roger
Michell (Notting Hill), the film is often difficult to watch,
but seldom hard to resist.
The best of the new wave of thrillers
currently playing in theaters is Frailty, a grimly efficient
low-budget shocker that is disturbingly unforgettable. Bill
Paxton (Aliens, Titanic, A Simple Plan) stars in and makes his
directorial debut with this twisted, haunting stunner as a blue
collar Texas father of two boys (well played by Matt O'Leary
and Jeremy Sumpler) who believes he's seen a vision from
God that tells him to destroy demons, which are people he believes
have committed horrible acts and are demons. He enlists his
two young sons' help to aid him in dispatching these demons,
axing them in the head after he kidnaps them, and swears the
boys to silence for fear that if they tell, God will seek revenge
on them. Years later and now grown-up, one of the emotionally
damaged beyond repair boys (a surprisingly effective Matthew
McConaughey) shows up at the Texas office at the F.B.I. to confess
his father's crimes to a disbelieving agent (Powers Boothe)
and to turn in his brother, who he believes in carrying on Dad's
grisly mission as a murderer called the God's Hand Killer.
Unrelentingly horrific and with a a jaw-dropping twist ending,
Frailty isn't a movie for the faint of heart, but for horror
fans who want to risk a good night's sleep, the film is
a must-see.
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