Night Train

Pociąg; drama, Poland, 1959; D: Jerzy Kawalerowicz, S: Lucyna Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Zbigniew Cybulski, Teresa Szmigielówna, Roland Głowacki 

Numerous passengers board a train heading towards the north, the Hel peninsula on the Baltic Sea. Among the passengers are surgeon Jerzy, whose patient died during surgery and who forgot his ticket, and Marta, who bought a ticket from a stranger at the train station; they have to share the same compartment, even though it is reserved for men. They talk and exchange ideas, while Marta admits she is followed by her ex-boyfriend, the crazy Staszek. Other people include a lawyer and his wife, as well as a train conductor. The train stops unexpectedly and several police officers enter, arresting Jerzy under the suspicion of being an escaped murdered, because he is in the compartment that the suspect booked. However, Marta shows them the stranger who sold her the ticket, the real murderer, who runs through the train, presses the emergency breaks, and flees in the countryside. Dozens of passengers chase and capture the murderer, beating him up, after which the police takes him away. The train resumes its trip. The passengers exit at the last stop, including Marta who abandons Staszek.

Voted in a local poll as one of the 13 best films of the first hundred years of Polish cinema, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's "Night Train" is still a step below all this hype, a slightly overrated, but still good achievement. assembled in the form of a road movie set inside a train, where the passengers travel during the night, it is a cozy, competent, fluent film, but a one that is simply not that engaging nor interesting to the fullest. The main ingredient—the conversations between Jerzy and Marta, who have to share the compartment—is only sporadically inspired. One really good dialogue has Jerzy observing Marta's wrist, with a bracelet on it, as they have this exchange: "You loved so much." - "Whom?" - "The man for whom you cut your wrists". The other is when Marta is looking in the camera in a close-up, pondering: "Nobody wants to love. Everybody wants to be loved". The drama segment is rather underwhelming (except for Zbigniew Cybulski playing the wild Staszek, Marta's ex lover), and thus the crime subplot revolving around a murderer hiding among the passengers, emerging in the last third of the film, is much more interesting, reminiscent of a variation of "Murder on the Orient Express", except without the detective part. The scene where the murderer pulls the emergency breaks, stops the train, runs into the meadow, while a dozen passengers run after him, one even throwing mud chunks at him, is the highlight of the film, entering a more intense, more focused territory. An assembly of several characters, "Night Train" attempts a kaleidoscope of Polish mentality, but its enjoyment value is today rather limited.

Grade:++

The Experiment

Das Experiment; psychological thriller-drama, Germany, 2001; D: Oliver Hirschbiegel, S: Moritz Bleibtreu, Justus von Dohnányi, Christian Berkel, Oliver Stokowski, Andrea Sawatzki

Taxi driver Tarek applies for a strange add in which 20 people are supposed to play prisoners and guards in a fake prison for two weeks, for the sake of a social experiment led by University Professor Thon and his assistant Jutta. The reward is 4,000 DEM each. Tarek takes on glasses with a secret camera on them for a journalistic report. Once inside, the relaxed mood quickly disappears and is replaced with more and more tension from the people playing the guards, mostly by Berus and Eckert who resort to cruelty to impose their discipline. Tarek befriends fellow prisoner Steinhoff, an Air Force pilot who secretly monitors the experiment for the German military. Exploiting Thon's absence one night, Berus and Eckert order the guards to beat up an inmate, Schütte, who dies from bleeding; place Tarek in a solitary confinement, and kidnap and imprison Jutta. When Tarek and Steinhoff escape and release the prisoners, they end up in a bitter fight with Berus and Eckert, after which the latter dies. The experiment is aborted and the police arrest the guards.

"The Experiment" is a dark and bitter contemplation on how social laws prevent the worst aggressive impulses from emerging among even ordinary people—and how sometimes the border between playing a role and reality can disappear. It is inspired by the famous Stanford prison experiment led by Philip Zimbardo, but the movie unfortunately takes it very loosely—so loosely, in fact, that it seems more like a Hollywood action film exaggerating everything for pure sensationalism and unearned thrills than an intelligent European film. A little bit more of the latter would have been better. The first half is the best since it still has a sense for measure: the introduction of the characters is effective, and it is ironic watching how the guards of this fake prison are actually seemingly benign characters (Eckert is a professional Elvis impersonator; Berus works as an executive for an airline), but the role of guards gives them that illusion of power, authority and dominance over others, a sort of fake sense of significance. Soon they will start abusing the "volunteer prisoners", already revealing their dark side (an inmate says he cannot drink milk because he is lactose intolerant, but Eckert insists that all of them must eat their meal to the end, until their plates are empty, without exception, so Tarek defuses the situation by simply drinking the man's milk himself). The prison guards are not allowed to use violence, so Berus decides to spray them with a fire extinguisher, take the beds from their cells, strip them naked and leave them like that for the night, since, in his own words, "humiliation in control". There are some thought provoking issues touched upon here, such as situational context, the hidden urge for absolute power among some people (hinted at as an allegory of the Nazi dictatorship), empathy, and the limits of following orders even when it is not "worth it", but the second half becomes just a cheap action and fight collection, with highly unconvincing cliches (the Professor is at first absent, and then when the whole situation goes out of hand, he storms in alone, without any assistants to help him end this), which reduces the film's quality.  

Grade:++

Mob Psycho 100 (season 1)

Mob Psycho 100; animated fantasy action comedy series, Japan, 2016; D: Yuzuru Tachikawa, Takefumi Anzai, Katsuya Shigehara, Tomoaki Ota, S: Setsuo Ito, Takahiro Sakurai, Miyu Irino, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Akio Otsuka

Shigeo "Mob" Kageyama is a secluded teenager with telekinetic powers, which can be upgraded to explosive levels if his anger levels reach 100% capacity. Mob works for Arataka Reigen, a swindler running a psychic agency which exorcises evil spirits from tunnels and schools. When one such evil spirit is defeated, Dimple, he assumes a form of a green ball and becomes Mob's sidekick. When Mob's brother Ritsu also obtains telekinetic powers, he is abducted by the evil Claw organization, which kidnaps people with special powers with a plan to use them to rule the world. Mob, Teruki (a bully he defeated) and Reigen infiltrate the Claw headquarters, destroy it, and release all the prisoners, including Ritsu. 

Warning: do not give up after watching only the first episode of this anime, because it improves later on. The character designs are too bland, but "Mob Psycho 100" excels in a wacky blend of humor, post-modern style, coming-of-age teenage story, discovering your potentials, and egalitarianism (in the finale of the first season, an evil organization wants to establish a world supremacy based on people with telekinetic powers, but the protagonist, himself having these special powers, rejects it and believes everyone should be treated equal). Several bits are simply creative and bursting with ingenuity. For example, in ep. 2, Reigen is arguing with a high school girl on the phone over whether Mob should join her club, and a stylized split screen shows the two of them shouting, with Reigen’s part of the screen moving towards the right side of the screen and taking more “space” when he is arguing more, and then retreating, whereas the girl’s screen is pushing to the left when she is more energetic in arguing. Ep. 3 has a hilarious plot of Mob being solicited by a random masked woman to join an underground sect led by a man called LOL, who can all make them laugh and thus happy. When Mob decides to leave because he is not interested, the cult leader warns him: “You are missing out on life!”, as Mob simply laconically turns his head and counters: “My dad said that people who’ve never smoked before are missing out on half of their lives. It made me realize that everyone has a different idea of “missing out”. 

The leader then challenges Mob to a bet that he should stay in the cult if one of the members make him laugh—specifically, Mob and a member are instructed to both take a full sip of milk, hold it in their mouths, and then try to tickle a chuckle out of each other: the one who laughs and spills milk from his mouth first, loses. This leads to some highly comical bits when one man makes grimaces by pulling his nose up, but then just instinctively laughs himself—and spits milk on Mob's face. After several such outcomes, Mob is tired of always "winning" and ending up with people spitting out milk on his face. Other ideas and sight gags are also amusing, such as when Mob takes a dumbbell with his telekinetic powers, but when he hands it to his own hand, he drops it to the ground since he is physically too weak of holding it; or when he cannot eat curry because spoons keep "bending" Uri Geller-style, while he holds them. The problem and a big flaw is when the story simply gives up on comedy and suddenly switches to an action and martial arts genre in episodes 7-10, as people with telekinetic powers are fighting, which undergoes a sort of undue "Dragonballization" of sorts, since these fights all start looking the same. Luckily, the final two episodes get the story back on the right track, resuming its comedy tone, mostly thanks to the return of Mob's boss Reigen, who is such a swindler that this leads to some unexpected big laughs. The way Reigen simply dismantles the narcissism of two out of three leaders of the Claw organization by demotivating them in episode 12, is deliciously refreshing; even the dialogue of the third leader with Reigen is a riot ("We are special! We are superior lifeforms to the rest of humanity!" - "I'm sure you have to believe that to even go on. But sadly, society has no interest in you"). "Mob Psycho 100" is an acquired taste—but once you get a hang of it, you get addicted, and wonder why that flavor is so rare to find.

Grade:+++

Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy; crime action, USA, 1990; D: Warren Beatty, S: Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Madonna, Charlie Korsmo, Glenne Headly, James Keane, Charles Durning, Dustin Hoffman, Michael J. Pollard, Seymour Cassel, William Forsythe, James Tolkan, Kathy Bates, Catherine O'Hara

A yellow trench coat is his trademark: police detective Dick Tracy works tirelessly to build a case and arrest "Big Boy" Caprice, the mob boss who united all other mob bosses under his rule to control the city and impose a racket on every business. Tracy adopts a little boy who witnessed the murder of gangsters by Caprice's gang, but his inclination towards Caprice's showgirl Breathless Mahoney costs Tracy his relationship with girlfriend Tess. An unknown masked man frames Tracy for murder, but the police still allow him to attack Caprice's headquarters. In the finale on gears, Caprice shoots the masked man, and in the ensuing fight, Tracy throws Caprice down a shaft to his death. The masked man turns out to be Mahoney. Tracy reunites with Tess.

Warren Beatty's 3rd feature length film as a director, "Dick Tracy" is an untypical choice for him, a comic-book adaptation with cult status that could go in a double bill with Burton's "Batman" released a year earlier: squeaky colors (especially yellow and green which are almost fluorescent), over-the-top set-designs, cartoonish villains with impossibly looking faces ("Little Face" has a face as wide as a pumpkin; "Pruneface" looks like The Thing from Fantastic Four) and exaggerated action all form elements of this peculiar achievement. It shows organized crime and mafia in a very specific, childlike way, whereas Beatty himself is pretty good as the title hero. However, after the viewers get used to this opulent world, the storyline becomes somewhat stale, routine and standard, without much inspiration or higher creative lift-offs, which is why the "wow" effect starts to melt away exponentially in the second half. For a homage to old crime and film noir films, "Dick Tracy" needed more snappy dialogue, such as the exchange between Tracy and Mahoney (Madonna): "Whose side are you on?" - "The side I'm always on. Mine." The best was achieved from the excellent Al Pacino as villain "Big Boy" Caprice, who "chews the scenery" and enjoys hamming it up big time, without ever losing the realistic, grounded touch. In one of the funniest scenes, where Caprice has rounded up all mob bosses and demands that he becomes their boss, "Pruneface" interrupts him to lament again: "I say we kill Tracy now!" - "I say you say nothing!" Dustin Hoffman, on the other hand, is wasted as bizarre caricature henchman "Mumbles", since you cannot make out what he is saying. "Dick Tracy" is an effective and attractive film, it is only that the people behind the set-designs showed more creativity than the authors behind the camera. 

Grade:++ 

Electric Sheep

Električne ovce; animated science-fiction short, Croatia, 2026, D: Gabriel Đorđević, S: Simon Radić, Ivona Komorčec

In the future, Bruno works for Atlas, a global AI company. He sits all day in his room and watches a chart on his computer screen, having to notify his superiors if it goes above a specific value. He plays video games online with his friend. In the evening, he feels depressed and activates Venus, an AI program that can assess his psychological status and help him, in this case in the form of an electronic woman that emerges from the screen.

"Electric Sheep" is a dark and bitter vision of the modern phenomenon where the more people have become connected to the Internet and AI, the more disconnected they have become from each other, which causes that feeling of existential dread of missing out on life. Produced by Kino Klub Zagreb, filmed entirely in rotoscopic animation which gives it a surreal touch, "Electric Sheep" is a 30-minute character study revolving around its protagonist, the chubby Bruno, who is the embodiment of such wider human isolation: he sits all day in his room and never leaves it during the day, whereas his job is obscure, since he is tasked to just watch some chart going up and down on his computer screen, so he spends more time simply watching YouTube videos in a sidebar. His father phones him and invites him for a visit, but Bruno declines. Bruno communicates with his friend only online, and plays video games with him remotely, again showing their disconnection. Even fake ads are added to ironically mock the viewers accustomed to endless spamming ads, and thus Bruno's spiritual emptiness becomes tangible, effective and relevant.

Not all bits and pieces work in the story. For instance, there is a strange opening act of two Chinese businessmen talking via phone, only two static photos of their faces visible on the left and right of the screen, the year "1 9 9 8" is seen, as the one on the right wakes up the other one at 4am because "Atlas will control the entire Chinese telecommunication and internet network", but the other is grumpy because he is sleepy: "I will rejoice tomorrow. Goodbye, Song!", and hangs up. This could have been cut. Likewise, the opening 24-minute segment revolving just around Bruno sitting in his apartment is too long, while the crucial final segment with the AI Venus is too short, starting only some 5 minutes before the end. This bit is the most fascinating, but too sparse. It consists out of Venus asking Bruno comical questions to assess his psychological status (for instance, what would he do if his friend showed him the photo of his new girlfriend, and it is the photo of Bruno's mother), and then the blond face of a woman emerges from the computer screen, heading towards Bruno on bed. This ends in an anticlimax, since it is followed only by bizarre phantasmagorical hallucinations, leaving everything deliberately vague and unsatisfying, to maybe connect it with the superficial nature of any attempt at finding happiness in a computer. The author Gabriel Dordevic still shows a quality made allegory on how people became victims of virtual living.

Grade:++

The Fountain

The Fountain; science-fiction drama / tragedy / art-film, USA, 2006; D: Darren Aronofsky, S: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Mark Margolis

Dr. Tom Creo is experimenting with a new potential cure for a tumor on a monkey in order to heal his terminally-ill wife Izzi. He transplants parts of an unknown tree from South America in the monkey's brain, and it regenerates the animal. However, it is too late and Izzi dies. Tom plants the seed of the mysterious tree near her grave. She gave him the manuscript of her novel and asks that he finishes the last chapter... In the novel, a 16th century Spanish grand Inquisitor is searching for Isabela, who sends Conquistador Tomas to South America to find a legendary tree of life so that she can prolong her life. Tomas loses his soldiers, but stumbles upon a Mayan pyramid where he is injured by a Mayan warrior. He reaches the tree of life and drinks its juice, but it just causes plants to grow from his body... In the far future, a bald Tom is traveling in a space sphere containing the tree of life, which prolonged his life as long as he eats bits of its crust, and Izzi's grave towards the Shibalba nebula, a legendary place that the Maya considered the source of life. The star explodes, engulfing Tom, the tree of life and the grave, uniting them. 

Darren Aronofsky's peculiar and nonlinear film "The Fountain" is a hermetic contemplation on death, transience, attempts at prolonging life, Buddhism, Taoism and acceptance, which is aggravated by the director's occasional autistic approach. It is unpleasant, but ambitious and worthy watch, facing the viewers with some existential thoughts they would rather usually avoid. The main story of a doctor (Hugh Jackman) searching for the cure to cancer for his terminally-ill wife (Rachel Weisz) is a banal soap opera, sometimes even a bit tedious, but the two side stories are at times fascinating. The dialogue is standard and routine, but Aronofsky's visual style is a standout, filled with several unusual camera pans, huge close ups, match cuts and scene transitions. The scenes in the far future, where Tom is traveling in a transparent sphere through space, containing the tree of life and the grave of his wife, are the most awe-inspiring. One phenomenal frame, some 8 minutes into the film, shows Tom's fingers coming close to the tree, causing its "hairs" to "turn" towards his touch, while the next frame has a camera panning up from the close up of Izza's hand, through her arm, to her head out of focus. He is also seen as a black silhouette practicing Tai Chi moves in the background of thousands of stars. And there is a wide shot of this unusual transparent sphere, seen only as a small dot, going from the lower to the upper frame of the universe. At around 32 minutes into the film, there is an exquisite frame of Tom, in the modern story, reading Izzi's manuscript, as the frame pans towards the right and shows huge close ups of letters: "Spain is on fire. The grand Inquisition...", as it slowly dissolves into this actual subplot of 16th century Spanish Inquisition, transitioning to another segment. Despite the ending contemplating the cycle of life, "The Fountain" is more stimulating in its visual style than in its spirituality and philosophy.

Grade:++

Remake

Remake; war drama, BiH / France / Turkey, 2003; D: Dino Mustafić, S: Ermin Bravo, Ermin Sijamija, Helena Minić, Aleksandar Seksan, Dejan Aćimović, Lucija Šerbedžija, Miralem Zupčević, Jasna Diklić, Emir Hadžihafizbegović

Paris. French film producers introduce Tarik, a Bosniak writer of their upcoming film, at a party. He remembers his life a year ago: Sarajevo, March 1 9 9 2. Tarik submits his film script to a French company. When the Bosnian War erupts, Tarik's girlfriend Alma is able to cross into Bosniak-controlled Sarajevo, while Tarik and his father Ahmed are evicted from their apartment in Grbavica by a Serb paramilitary. Tarik is assigned forced labor by digging trenches, but his old friend, Serb Miro, who was forcefully drafted, helps him escape. Tarik is again caught by Serb forces and verbally abused by commander Mišo, his former neighbor. The UN is able to release Tarik from captivity. In Paris, Tarik meets Mišo again and wants to shoot him, but eventually does not. Tarik returns to Bosnia as a soldier, throw a grenade in a Serb bunker and realizes he killed Miro inside. He is also killed in the explosion... 50 years ago, Tarik's father Ahmed is in a relationship with Eva. Appalled by the Nazi and Ustashe persecution of Jews and Serbs in World War II, Ahmed joins Communists and is sent to the Jasenovac concentration camp. He is released by Communist Marko, but Ahmed shoots him upon hearing he accidentally killed Eva when he wanted to assassinate her father. 

Based on writer Zlatko Topčić's allegedly real life events he experienced during the Siege of Sarajevo which he then connected in a parallel story of his father's experience in World War II, "Remake" is a bitter and effective war drama that sardonically contemplates how some historical patterns repeat themselves, and how each new war is basically a remake of a previous one. By showing these two parallel stories that rhyme, the director Dino Mustafic uses several scene transitions to flip-flop between one and the other. For example, in one scene Tarik and his friends observe hundreds of protestors walking on the street of modern Sarajevo, advocating for peace, holding slogans about "brotherhood and unity" and a photo of Tito, which then elegantly transitions to different protestors on the same street protesting against Fascism, in a time jump 50 years earlier. 

Tarik's captivity in a Serb concentration camp, where he is witness of abuse (some fifty prisoners are given only 16 seconds to eat mashed potatoes for lunch, with plates on the ground, and they are not allowed to use their hands, so they eat like dogs) is mirrored with his father Ahmed's captivity in the Ustashe-run Jasenovac concentration camp (with one particularly gruesome scene of dozens of men being lined up naked and ordered to walk outside under the excuse that they will take a bath, only for them to be lined up near a shore where they are killed by being hit with giant hammers from behind and their corpses being thrown into the Sava river), to bring the theme across: war only destroys people and their humanity, and never achieves any benefits to their lives. Circumstances might change, two groups that were allies in the past may become enemies in the future, but unless they disavow violence, this cursed cycle will never end. This is underlined in the subplot where Tarik recognizes his tormentor, ex-Serb commander Mišo (who was, ironically, his neighbor in Sarajevo before the war), in Paris, is tempted to shoot him—but then refuses, thereby outgrowing this fatalism. Some bits are a bit didactic, schematic or overstretched, since the theme threatens to "eat" the film's style and storyline, yet Mustafic is able to find a balance, whereas he has a sense for characters who feel alive (in one amusing scene, after an argument caused by Tarik belittling his girlfriend Alma for wrongly guessing a mime game, she just shows him her middle finger: "One word. And it's not the ring finger!"). 

Grade:+++ 

Journey of Hope

Reise der Hoffnung; drama / road movie, Switzerland / Turkey, 1990; D: Xavier Koller, S: Necmettin Cobanoglu, Nur Sürer, Emin Sivas, Yaman Okay, Mathias Gnädinger, Dietmar Schönherr

Eastern Turkey. Haydar and his wife Meryem have seven children, but feel there is no future for them in their village. After receiving a postcard from relative Celam who lives in Switzerland and praises said country, Haydar decides to sell his horse, cows and majority of land to get money to travel there. He at first plans to leave the children with grandparents, but Meryem persuades him to bring their oldest son Mehmet with them. They board a bus to a harbor in Aegean Sea and hide in a shipping container, because Haydar did not inform the agent to buy an extra ticket for the kid. They depart at Naples and take a truck drive to the Swiss border, but get rejected because their passports do not have a visa. In Milan, they contact people smugglers who agree to take them in exchange for Haydar giving them half of his future salary. While trying to cross a mountain, Mehmet dies from cold, whereas Haydar is arrested by the border patrol and sent to jail for investigation.

Roughly based on a real-life incident of a Turkish immigrant who tried to cross into Switzerland in '88, "Journey of Hope" is an interesting road movie depicting immigration to first world countries in a naturalistic manner, and from the perspective of these less fortunate outsiders living in poverty. The director and screenwriter Xavier Koller crafts the film in a raw, rough, astringent, minimalistic and objective way, refusing to slip into sentimentality, always keeping a distance, though he sympathizes with his three heroes and their long journey. At almost two hours, the movie is overlong, and needed more artistic inspiration or creativity to offer a richer viewing experience, since it is rather too simplistic in this edition. Koller builds the film on little gestures and quiet details: upon hearing that Haydar wants to emigrate from Turkey, his father laments: "Even grass comes out with all its roots. Once you've sold everything, you're worth less than this grass. You'll be without roots, a nothing." While stowaways in an Italian ship, Haydar, his wife Meryem and son Mehmet are given a small room to stay, yet since there is a poster of a topless woman on the wall, Haydar covers it discreetly by hanging a towel over it. The best frame is probably the one where, after trying to cross the cold mountain, three Turkish immigrants lean on to a glass window of a hotel, freezing in snow outside, while a man emerges from a swimming pool inside in swim briefs, telling them to go away because the "entrance is closed". Also, in the hotel, a border patrol officer is arguing with a doctor over how much more immigrants Switzerland can absorb: "We are up to our neck with this!" - "Then learn how to swim!" - "And you should learn Turkish!" Touching upon some timeless themes of immigration, xenophobia, prejudice, the search for a better life, tolerance and compassion, "Journey of Hope" is a quality film, but it could have been much better if it dared to be just half as courageous in crossing its cinematic boundaries as the protagonists were in crossing country boundaries.

Grade:++

Dragnet

Dragnet; crime comedy, USA, 1987; D: Tom Mankiewicz, S: Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, Alexandra Paul, Dabney Coleman, Jack O'Halloran, Harry Morgan

Los Angeles. The stiff, rigid Sergeant Joe Friday is assigned a new partner, the liberal, relaxed Pep Streebek, and their first assignment is to investigate mysterious crimes committed by an unknown cult called P.A.G.A.N. Following leads, Joe and Pep go to a secret gathering of the cult and save a virgin woman, Connie, from a ritual sacrifice to a snake in a well. She recognizes the cult leader behind a mask: Reverend Whirley. It turns out Whirley is trying to raise crime rates to topple the current Mayor and push Commissioner Jane Kirkpatrick in the upcoming election as the new Mayor, and conspires with erotic magazine publisher Jerry Caesar to finance this plan. When Whirley plans to kill Caesar in his mansion with poisonous gas, Joe and Pep stop and arrest him. Joe starts a relationship with Connie.

Tom Mankiewicz's feature length debut film, a humorous film adaptation of the popular eponymous TV crime series, and a rare movie where Tom Hanks has a 2nd billing to a comedian, "Dragnet" is a film that is under-hyped. It has flaws, some clumsy scenes (the chaotic ritual sacrifice attempt of the cult P.A.G.A.N.) and a few obvious cliches (random male fan service in the scene where a "Playboy"-style woman shows her chest to Joe and asks if these are "breasts of a 43-year old" or Pep bringing Joe for a coffee in a strip club), but its merits actually rise to the occasion in several moments, whereas Dan Aykroyd plays the stiff protagonist Joe Friday with gusto. The legendary "Dragnet" theme is also impressive. Several jokes are simply clever—for instance, the opening scenes show how a police officer arrives at a warehouse and asks brute Emil, disguised as a fireman: "Chief, where's the fire?", and then Emil lights a Molotov cocktail and throws it into the warehouse. While questioning the landlord about the suspicious Emil who lived at her apartment, she describes him as: "Useless scum-lapping shitbag", but Joe interrupts: "Just the facts, ma'am". During the interrogation room, Emil spits at Pep, who quickly dodges left—and thus the spit hits Joe in the face, who was standing behind Pep. Upon hearing Joe is missing since last night, Pep is worried: "No, Joe Friday has never stayed out all night, either. The day he was born, his mother had him home by 9:00".

It is wonderful to see Hanks simply "chewing the scenery" as a comedian, before his departure into more dramatic roles in the 90s. Aykroyd plays Joe as some sort of Sheldon Cooper, a too rigid robot-man who is a slave to rules and laws, and thus his teaming up with the relaxed, untrammeled Pep works because he gives him that passion, emotions and free spirit that makes him more human. The plot concept about manipulative toxic conservatism is remarkably subversive even today by showing that sometimes people who scream the loudest about morals are often the biggest criminals and hypocrites in private, embodied in the villain Reverend Whirley (very good Christopher Plummer), founder of M.A.M.A. (Moral Advance Movement of America), who is secretly the leader of the P.A.G.A.N. cult; wants to increase crime rates in L.A. to topple the current Mayor and install his own puppet; and cooperates with Jerry Caesar, an erotic magazine publisher, because, in his own words: "Without Jerry Caesars, there would be no moral outrage. And what's the good of moral outrage unless you have something tangible to direct it against? ... I'll control both sides of the equation". Whirley thus wants to support and nurture his own nemesis to have an excuse to gain more money and power from the people. The screenplay is not thought-out to the fullest, though—for instance, the plot hole here is that Whirley wants to assassinate Caesar. Why? It would eliminate his necessary rival. This is illogical, or, at the very least, "Dragnet" needed at least one more scene where Whirley is preparing to set up a new replacement for Caesar. As crazy as all of this is, "Dragnet" is a surprisingly well made crime comedy which shows that humor can even enhance the original serious source material.

Grade:++

Bean

Bean; comedy, UK / USA, 1997; D: Mel Smith, S: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulin, Tricia Vessey, Andrew Lawrence, John Mills, Burt Reynolds

London. Since they cannot fire Mr. Bean, an obnoxiously incompetent security guard working at an art gallery, the board of directors decides to get rid of him by sending him to unveil the painting Whistler's Mother which is about to be shipped to a Los Angeles art gallery. Once in L.A., Bean settles at the home of gallery's curator David Langley, which in turn causes David's wife and two kids to leave him. Bean accidentally sneezes on the painting, thereby destroying its paint, but hides it inside the gallery's wall. To fix this, Bean secretly goes into the gallery at night and replaces the real painting with a poster. When General Newton arrives together with reporters to see the unveiling, they are fooled into believing it is the real one. Bean also wakes up David's teenage daughter Jennifer from a coma after a motorcycle crash, and thus the Langley family forgives him. Bean returns back to London.

6 years after the TV show "Mr. Bean" was released, the producers made this feature length film, which is of varying quality: some jokes work, some are contrived and inept. Two additional flaws are the tendencies of director Mel Smith to recycle jokes from the TV show (the rollercoaster and airplane scenes, for instance) and to indulge in the dumbest possible type of American 'lowbrow' humor for the broader masses, instead of staying true to its British humor (the failed gag of a motorcyclist giving Bean the middle finger, so Bean thinks it is a form of a friendly greeting in California and shows his middle finger to everyone during the ride in a car, was already bad when it was used the first time in the weak comedy "The Beverly Hillbillies"). However, Rowan Atkinson still has a sense for comic timing which helps tip the movie in the better direction, relying on physical comedy and slapstick reminiscent of comedians from the silent movie era, which used it as a form of universal appeal. Bean speaks very little, but is still able to transmit his personality through body language. Surprisingly, Peter MacNicol almost steals the show from Atkinson in dialogue moments, when his character David reacts to the idea that Jon Bon Jovi should unveil the painting Whistler's Mother: "I've nothing against Jon Bon Jovi. The man has had two great hairstyles in the last ten years, which is an achievement not to be sniffed at", but then adds he is still the wrong person for such a task. The finale in the hospital is forced, once again showing that the episodic set of sketches could have been aligned better for a feature film. "Bean" is a fun, silly, crazy, wacky light comedy, but the authors were more inspired in the better sequel "Mr. Bean's Holiday", which had a more harmonious set of jokes.

Grade:++