Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Body of Lies (2008) -vs- Blood Diamond (2006)

Leo as a Man of Action

The Smackdown.  Given his humble beginnings as a kid doing TV sitcoms like "Growing Pains," it's extraordinary to be writing about two huge-budget films where Leonardo DiCaprio is an action hero, but that's where we are.  Nobody thought the economy would be in the shape it is, either, so life is full of surprises.  In any case, both the Middle-East flavored "Body of Lies" and the Sierra Leone-based drama "Blood Diamond" are different kinds of thrillers, uniquely suited to DiCaprio's screen presence.  They're both thoughtful, smart films where the main character is a conflicted guy who finds himself in the middle of a situation that requires all his skills just to stay alive, let alone to figure out how to be a good guy or if he even wants to.  DiCaprio against DiCaprio in a rumble where bullets fly and f-bombs drop.

The Challenger.  "Body of Lies" is the latest film from super-director Ridley Scott who lately seems to be fascinated by the Middle East and our role in it.  In this film, DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a CIA operative with a bullet (as in, rising star) who's trying to track down a bin Laden-type named al-Saleem.  He's out there in the field nearly getting killed on a daily basis while Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) lives a suburban life back in America where he, literally, phones it in to Ferris out in the field. The theme of the film seems to be deception: how you can let the deception that is part of your job bleed into your life, and that, ultimately, nobody is innocent.  The screenplay was written by William Monahan ("The Departed") working from a book written by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

United 93 (2006) -vs- World Trade Center (2006)

The Day Everything Changed Except Courage

The Smackdown. Both of these 9/11 films were released in 2006 during the run-up to the five-year anniversary of the events of that terrible day. At the time critics kept wringing their hands about whether or not it was too early to tell these stories. Looking back, the better question could easily have been what took so long? Making films is how we increasingly begin to process events like these. It doesn't have to trivialize them or make them less important, although that can be the danger.

We'll use box office stats to name our opponents.  With that as the standard, "World Trade Center" becomes our champ with 163-million dollars worldwide.  "United 93" comes in as the challenger with only 76-million dollars.  But, especially when it comes to material like this, the box office is only a point of reference and nothing more.

Let's say that you have the heart to re-live 9/11 on film with just one of them on this seventh anniversary.  Which one should you watch?

The Challenger. The power of "United 93" is simply undeniable. We've all been on airplanes. It could happen to anyone. Today we all know the risks of terrorism. But the passengers on this flight never saw this coming and had mere minutes to decide to be heroes on that fateful morning when their flight left Newark for San Francisco with 33 passengers and seven crew members on board. Writer/director Paul Greengrass tells this like a documentary and it is simply riveting. The camera work here is dynamic -- handheld, jutting into the chaos. The actors are unknown here and, rather than being a drawback, it makes the entire tableau that much more compelling. For most of the film's 111 minutes, the intensity simply cannot be denied.

Tropic Thunder (2008) -vs- Galaxy Quest (1999)

Reality Bites

The Smackdown. Movies are already an illusion -- stories committed to film that feel real but, at best, are only an impression of reality. With this Smackdown! we have a couple of competitors about real people playing characters in unreal film and TV projects who end up being taken as authentic by people who can, basically, kill them, and so they have to suck it up and act like the heroes they pretend to be. In both "Tropic Thunder" and "Galaxy Quest" (both from DreamWorks), things are not what they seem.  Could Ben Stiller actually fight his way out of a paper bag any more than Tim Allen could save the universe from world-destroying aliens?  Roll film...

The Challenger. You're shopping for something to watch, perhaps a comedy to flavor the mix of summer movies. You need something to cleanse the memory of "The Love Guru" and Eddie Murphy's latest misfire. Going back for another dose of "Hancock" won't do, and neither will another road trip with Harold and Kumar. Maybe try out a comedy that spoofs better than "Get Smart" and comes with a load of pre-release buzz: "Tropic Thunder." It's the latest from writer / actor / director Ben Stiller and will not escape some controversy for having Robert Downey, Jr. appear in black face.

Atonement (2007) -vs- The Kite Runner (2007)

Review by Bryce Zabel 

The Smackdown. We can probably all agree that children should be protected from seeing and hearing and thinking about sexual contacts in the world around them and yet, sometimes they aren't, sometimes they get a dose of reality before they're ready to handle it. In both "Atonement" and "The Kite Runner," young kids end up seeing sexual encounters -- in one case consenting and in the other definitely not -- and they make choices they end up regretting for the rest of their lives. They end up dragging other innocents into their confusion and creating even more victims. Each of these two films lives in a couple of different time periods, too, making just keeping track of some things a challenge. They both explore tough and demanding material where the rooting values and the unfolding of the aftermath is tricky stuff. You want them to succeed but it's a high-wire act. Let's see how these two highly regarded films -- both adapted from respected novels -- stack up against each other.

The Challenger. The first of the two films embedded inside "Atonement" deals with idyllic lives being lived in an English country house between the World War I and World War II. There's a full helping of "Upstairs, Downstairs" served up here because our two leads -- Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) -- are on the two sides of the divide. She's the headstrong older daughter in a wealthy family and he's the housekeeper's son. But love and sex don't always care about those distinctions and Cecilia and Robbie are destined to end up in each other's arms. This would be reasonably okay except that Cecilia's younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), is 13 and even more confused sexually than they are, and she reads a letter and then sees some things that causes her to strike out at the very man she, herself, has an infatuation with. After that happens, suddenly it's five years later, Britain is at war with Germany, Robbie has returned to the scene, and we see the evacuation of Dunkirk in a way it's never been seen in film before. And then, come to think of it, there's even a third time period in this film, but that's all I'm prepared to say about it.

The Defending Champion. The truth is that you could actually call "The Kite Runner" by the title of the other film in this Smackdown, "Atonement," and get away with it. This film concerns life in Afghanistan before and after the rise of the Taliban, moves to the United States and back again. It's all seen through the eyes of another child of privilege, in this case a 12-year-old boy named Amir (back in 1978) who turns out to be a writer in San Francisco (in 2001). The thing is Amir also was involved in an upstairs-downstairs situation with Hassan, the son of the family servant. I've seen what happens between them laid out so explicitly in film reviews that I'm glad I saw this without reading them and I'm not going to repeat the insult. Suffice it to say that something happens to Hassan and Amir is a witness and how he deals with it changes the relationship not only in Afghanistan but follows the adult Amir to America and then back to his homeland.

The Scorecard. Both films ask you to pay attention. In that regard, "The Kite Runner" seems to ask a little more and deliver a little less. On the other hand, it takes most of its audience (in the United States anyway) on a ride that they've never been on before while the journey of "Atonement" feels more familiar, like a very, very expensive "Masterpiece Theater."

Director Marc Forster and screenwriter David Benioff have had to take a lot out of Khaled Hosseini's novel of "The Kite Runner," but they seem to have stayed reasonably true to it. As for "Atonement," director Joe Wright, working from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, seem to have made Ian McEwan's novel breathe more deeply by their intervention.

There are some spectacular performances in both. "Atonement" has Keira Knightly and James McAvoy making us believe they are not only of the period but are completely believable creating the doomed lovers. For an added bonus, Vanessa Redgrave is on screen for only a few moments, but she ties the entire film together in a surprisingly powerful piece of acting. In "The Kite Runner," the son of the servant is played  by Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada in one of those rare pieces of acting that is so wonderful because you know he never set foot in a Hollywood acting class and wouldn't know a method actor from a Mullah. But the peformance that worked for me beyond all others in this film comes from Iranian actor Homayoun Ershadi playing the militant man-about-town Baba who is brought down to a sad reality in his later years in the United States. However, both young and old Amir in this film barely get by.

There's another point of comparison that bears mentioning -- the use of CGI. In "Atonement," it's used to give us the single longest shot in film history (I'm guessing) through the beach at Dunkirk and it happens in a way that feels organic and real. The CGI in "The Kite Runner" gives us kites doing impossible things in the sky, kite POV, and a sense that we have been taken out of the film story entirely. Point, "Atonement."

Charlie Wilson's War (2007) -vs- Primary Colors (1998)

Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog
Review by Bryce Zabel 

The Smackdown. Here are two films from director Mike Nichols which, even looking in the rear-view mirror of history, have a lot to say about the human cost of invasion in Afghanistan and a national election involving the Clintons. Both the soon-to-be released "Charlie Wilson's War" and last decade's "Primary Colors" are adapted from best-selling non-fiction books where a Major Film Star gets to affect a southern accent as a larger-than-life politician with a weakness for women. In that Smackdown, we've got Tom Hanks and John Travolta. There are other parallel roles to contrast: Julia Roberts versus Emma Thompson and those guys with three names,  Phillip Seymour Hoffman versus Billy Bob Thornton. So let the games begin:

The Challenger. "Charlie Wilson's War" is based on the late George Crile's book about how, in the late 80s, a hard-drinking, coke-snorting, skirt-chasing congressman almost single-handedly got a covert war financed so the Afghan Mujahideen could shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships in Afghanistan. If that sounds like an unlikely premise for a hot film, I have two words for you. Aaron Sorkin. It's his dialogue, that whip-smart, hyper-real patter of the cynical idealist that he perfected on TV's "The West Wing" that lifts the story, particularly when Hanks' Charlie Wilson and Philip Seymour Hoffman's CIA op Gust Avrakotos get together. Director Nichols has learned a thing or two over the years, too, staging one of the funniest scenes between the two that is timed just perfectly. In any case, Charlie and Gust conspire with Julia Roberts' Joanne Herring, a wealthy Texas socialite, to buy Soviet weapons from Israel, sell them to Pakistan and get them into Afghanistan. Eventually, the Soviets turn tail and run in defeat, and the guys we armed turn into the Taliban, welcome the al-Qaeda gang, and plot 9/11, but that's another movie. This movie is about saying that nothing would ever get done if people played by the rules and that a good guy sometimes has to act like a bad guy to make a difference.

The Champion. The film comes with its own strong pedigree: political writer Joe Klein wrote the book (originally as "Anonymous"), and the film was written by Elaine May and directed by Mike Nichols. Everything inside is paper-thin disguised as being about the 1992 Clinton campaign for the White House. John Travolta's Jack Stanton loves politics just like the real character he's based on and really cares about people, some of them so much he can't resist having sex with them. The reason to watch the film today, of course, is for insight into the Hillary character, Susan Stanton, as played by Emma Thompson (if you can get past how her repression of her British accent seems to give her Susan a sort of non-American blandness). Travolta's impression of our former president is a little too slow and scratchy and never quite nails down this character as someone who could win the presidency despite some huge errors in personal judgment. There's a great moment when Susan Stanton up and slaps the hell out of her husband's face after his latest infidelity: it's surprising and it's what you would hope Hill actually did to Bill at some point. However, this is a film that doesn't actually pick sides: Clinton haters will see it as proof that Bill was barely a moral level above pond scum, and Clinton lovers will see it as proof of his humanity, however flawed and imperfect.

The Scorecard. I actually saw this film at the Directors Guild theater where Mike Nichols was the guest (interviewed by Alexander Payne) and answered questions for almost an hour. Nichols talked about both films but didn't seem to see how much character and tone they shared. Nichols sang the praises of both his earlier writer and partner, Elaine May, and his latest, Aaron Sorkin. As he told it, Sorkin was working on his TV series "Studio 60" and launching his play "The Farnsworth Invention" when he was doing "Charlie Wilson's War." A little of that Attention Deficit Disorder seems to have sunk into not only the dialogue but also Nichols' final pacing of his film. "Primary Colors," by way of comparison, was almost two-and a half hours.

Nichols began by saying that "All films are political" and one audience member challenged him in the last question of the night about how the film was a "love letter to Bush," an opinion that neither the director nor me seemed to share (and that I know for a fact Sorkin clearly doesn't). But it did point out that "Charlie Wilson's War" is by far more murky in terms of getting an easy handle on its politics. "Primary Colors" is all personal and, if anything, seems only to be saying that running for office is a game that sometimes is fun, sometimes dangerous and always played for keeps. This latest film, though, has Democrats wanting to kill Russians in Afghanistan and lionizes Hanks' Wilson even though what he did is bend and twist the government rules to get his way and, for my money, not all that differently from Oliver North. The moral of "Charlie Wilson's War" seems to be that conning lawmakers to turn a $5-million covert ops budget into a $1-billion one is fine because their heart was in the right place and our only mistake was not building schools for the Afghans after the Soviets were defeated. It was an odd moment: 95% of the DGA audience, the director, the screenwriter and probably everybody else in Hollywood is opposed to the use of force by the U.S. and our interference in foreign conflict most of the time, but in this film, it's the rooting value.

In terms of performances, though, Tom Hanks makes a more convincing Charlie Wilson than John Travolta does a Bill Clinton. Of course, part of this is we know who Clinton is, and we have no clue about Wilson, but it's also that Travolta is operating in a place of less comfort than Hanks. The point here goes to "Charlie Wilson's War." Both films have their sparkplugs: Hoffman in "Charlie" and Thornton in "Colors" but Hoffman's is the more important role and he just takes the movie and the decision here, too. Emma Thompson in "Colors," however, is far more interesting than Julia Roberts in "Charlie."

In the writing honors, Sorkin gets the edge over May, but only on points. Both of these people know what they're doing so well, and it shows. You can debate the politics, but not the quality of the words.