Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)

Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp), a noted figure from the capitol, arrives at an outpost town on the far edge of the empire.  The town magistrate (Mark Rylance) welcomes him and offers whatever assistance he might require.  Among his friends, the magistrate chuckles at the Colonel's mission, declaring that once every generation there arises a fear that the nomadic tribes will rise to attack the empire.  The following day, Joll interrogates a pair of sheep rustlers.  When he is done, one of them is dead and the other has revealed a planned rising among the desert tribes.  The magistrate finds this ludicrous, but Joll sets out into the desert and returns with more nomads to interrogate.  When Joll leaves to report his findings, the magistrate releases all the captured tribesmen and tries to return the town to its pre-Joll state.  However, there is a blind woman (Gana Bayarsaikhan) who begs in the streets.  The magistrate takes her in and eventually discovers that she was blinded, had her ankles broken, and was severely scarred by Joll's interrogations.  The magistrate offers to return her to her people and sets out into the desert with her and a small escort.  Upon his return, Officer Mandel (Robert Pattinson) has taken over the outpost and arrests the magistrate for consorting with the enemy.

The movie plays as a morality tale.  Joll sees an uprising that does not exist and through his efforts to expose it, he has created an uprising.  The peaceful co-existence that had stood for years was broken thanks to the intervention of an emissary from the distant capitol who did not understand the region.  Worse, he ignored the magistrate who was quite familiar with the people and customs.

Based on the uniforms and the setting, I had guessed this was supposed to be the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, but it is a purely fictional empire.  Most of the characters are nameless; that works fine in films, but it is awkward in writing.

Though well-acted, the story is unengaging.  The magistrate is a learned man whose hobbies include archeology and cryptography, but he is often detached from current events.  Sure, he sees what is going on and does not approve, but he is passive about it.  He's just a victim of this series of events.  Victims rarely make for good protagonists, even if they are the only moral and upright characters.

Mediocre.  Skip.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Henry Turner, the 9 year-old son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, paddles out to sea then jumps overboard with a rock tied to his ankle.  He sinks to the bottom and lands on the deck of the Flying Dutchman.  The ship surfaces and his father (Orlando Bloom), who is partly covered by barnacles, confronts him.  Henry has a plan to free his father from the Dutchman but his father is skeptical.

Ten years later, Henry (Brenton Thwaites) is aboard a British Man-o-War as it chases down a pirate ship.  Seeing that the ship is about to sail into suicidal waters, he confronts the captain and is soon tossed into the brig.  Of course, the ship sinks and the ghost of Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) leaves Henry alive to tell Jack Sparrow that vengeance is coming.

In St. Martin, Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) has been convicted of witchcraft - because erudition is a clear sign of sorcery in women - and sentenced to hang.  However, she manages to escape the prison because she is also skilled at picking locks.  She happens to dash past the grand opening of a new bank.

 

In the bank is none other than Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), who is clearly inebriated, entangled with the banker's wife, and rather perplexed as to why he is there.  It turns out that he is robbing the bank.  Thus begins a ludicrous chase in which a team of horses drag the entire bank through the streets while Jack attempts to intercept and just happens to bump into Carina on the way.

 

To add to the cast of characters, Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) has risen to the pinnacle of the Caribbean pirate hierarchy but the unleashed ghost of Captain Salazar is wiping out his fleet and can only be sated by the death of Jack Sparrow.  Thus, Barbossa sets out to find Jack.

 

Inevitably, all these parties collide in outlandish and comedic fights and chases.  Henry and Carina provide the romance.  It is a fun romp, but - like Alien: Covenant - does not bare much scrutiny after its over.

 

There are plenty of anachronisms, some of which have occurred in previous films in the franchise.  The guillotine is still some decades from being invented and, even when it was, it was not adopted by the British.  Why is everyone baffled by the idea of celestial navigation?  Carina is the only one who can navigate by stars.  Also, Carina is familiar with John Harrison's use of chronometers for determining longitude and uses a pocket watch for that purpose.  Such pocket watches were not introduced until 1759.  However, Blackbeard (died 1718) was prominent in the last movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  Jack should be a very old man.  Executions of witches mostly ended with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, long before Carina was born but I suppose having an educated woman accused of witchcraft was supposed to be funny?

 

The movie contains the modern practice of making oafs out of men and a paragon out of the heroine.  Carina can do no wrong and is this endless source of confidence, witty comments, and demeaning barbs  At one point she asks if all pirates are this stupid to which all the pirates agree.  Yes, it was funny but it plays to an all too common trope in modern movies.  When she is on the gallows, she starts to give a lecture to the unwashed and banters with Jack who is about to be guillotined.  When rescued (no, that isn't a spoiler, we all knew she was going to be rescued), she upbraids her rescuer for the placement of his hands.  Such gratitude.

 

There is a post credit scene that promises a sequel with Will and Elizabeth.  At the current pace, I suspect this one will take place during the Napoleonic Wars.

Mortdecai

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is enormously proud of his newly-grown mustache, which is probably the most distracting and pointless part of the film though it is constantly at the fore.  Mustache aside, Mortdecai is descended of an aristocratic English family and something of an art expert but he has fallen into financial difficulty.  In an effort to get some cash, he is in Hong Kong to sell a rare Chinese vase to a shady collector.  Sadly, it turns out that he cheated this very collector in a previous sale and there is now going to be violent retribution.  Luckily, Mortdecai brought his manservant, Jock (Paul Bettany), who proves to be a hardy fighter.  The pair escape but the vase is destroyed as is the money.  He has hardly returned to his English estate when Martland (Ewan McGregor) of MI-5, who happens to be an old acquaintance from university, pressures him to investigate a certain painting.

When I saw the preview for this movie, I thought it was going to be a detective movie.  Mortdecai looked to be an unconventional inspector with ulterior motives.  Nope, he's just a conman who specializes in fine art.

 

The plot is actually quite good.  There's a missing painting from a Spanish master that may have the Swiss bank account for a Nazi bigwig on the back.  Russians, terrorists, and rival collectors are all trying to get the painting.  What a great McGuffin.  This could have been a great caper movie if the lame comedy bits had just been dropped.  Rather than a cowardly oaf, I would like to have seen Mortdecai as a shrewd but desperate rogue trying to save his estate.  That is what he did but it came across as more fool's luck than calculated genius.  The constant nonsense about the mustache was grating.  Yes, the titular character is a lily-livered buffoon with a hugely over-inflated and unjustified ego.

 

Just as with Mortdecai, the rest of the characters are almost universally difficult to like.  Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is mostly a nag who is apparently nauseated by her husband's silly mustache and only too happy to make him believe she is about to have an affair with Martland.  Martland spends most of the movie trying to get Johanna into bed, often using his MI-5 channels to get Mortdecai out of the country to better enable such a tryst.  Jock is ever eager to suffer severe injury in the service of Mortdecai, much of that injury delivered by none other than Mortdecai.  Also, for no apparent reason, he attracts women like he was in an Axe commercial.  The villains are all some combination of avarice and stupidity with a large dollop of animosity toward Mortdecai.  Not surprisingly, this does not play well as comedy.

 

It is no wonder this movie bombed.  Best avoided.

The Lone Ranger

The movie opens in 1933 where a young boy dressed as the lone ranger (the radio series debuted in 1933) enters a tent that claims to have the wonders of the Old West. There, he encounters Tonto. The wizened old Indian tells the true tale of the Lone Ranger.

The movie is often fun but just as often absurd and irritating. As with the last Lone Ranger movie (1981), this one takes place near Monument Valley which was apparently part of Texas in 1869, not Utah. Maybe it moved since then. Yeah, it is a staple location in Westerns but I find it bothersome nonetheless.

There are two great faults with the movie. First, the action is so extreme that it is more likely to induce eye-rolling than thrills. Of course, this is all being told from Tanto’s point of view and he may be exaggerating in his telling; that might work in a book or with some voice narration but it didn’t fly here. Many of the stunts had to be done with CGI. Second, Armie Hammer was an embarrassment as the Lone Ranger. He comes across as a complete buffoon, an incompetent who should have died shortly after we meet him. He is always a fish out of water and often rants at Tonto. He is repeatedly humiliated by the script and rarely looks like a hero. Again and again, he survives through dumb luck. In an homage to the original series, the only times he actually hits a target, he shoots the gun out of their hand. See, the Lone Ranger doesn’t shoot to kill. However, he fires scores of bullets in the finale but never hits. Was he intentionally missing?

The movie runs afoul of history. It is widely known that the railroad finally connected the east coast to the west coast in 1869. There is a famous photo of the event. In this movie, the joining takes place in Colby, Texas, rather than Utah. Really? You know the transcontinental railroad didn’t even pass partially through Texas? Apparently not.

Now for the just plain silly. Red Harrington, who runs the whore house, lost her right leg in an untold backstory. Apparently, Butch Cavendish was the culprit. So, she now has a prosthetic leg made of ivory that has a built-in shotgun. Sure, that was common in the Old West. Just a few miles east of where the railroads meet, there turns out to be two parallel tracks that zig and zag through the woods, which proves to be ideal for a two train chase finale. Sure, why not. Our heroes rob a bank and steal a wagonload of explosives. Of course, the part where they carry it all out to a wagon (which they did not have), load it up, and then drive away, all happens off screen. So, two men did this labor intense robbery in broad daylight in the Old West where most citizens had guns? I’d like to have seen that. Tonto discovers a secret railroad track in Comanche territory. Huh? It’s really hard to build a secret railroad. Silver the Flying Horse. Yes, somehow, Silver finds his way onto rooftops and even into a tree. Racing across the roof of a train was a bit much too. Oh, and when Silver licked scorpions off the Lone Ranger’s face and ate them, that was pretty strange too. At one point, our heroes are sitting at a campfire when several rabbits scoot nearby. Tonto tosses them a part of the rabbit that is cooking over the fire and the rabbits bare their fangs and devour it! What? I was hoping to see a Western but instead found a Fantasy film set in the Old West.

 

I did enjoy Johnny Depp as Tonto. He is a more developed character than the Lone Ranger and more sympathetic as well. All too often, he proves to be correct in his assessment of the situation and is constantly foiled by the naïve Lone Ranger. Really, the movie should have been called Tonto. His scenes as an old man talking to the young boy were some of the best in the movie. My biggest issue with Tonto was that he changed his mind about the supernatural at the end of the movie. Always he is saying that the evil of the Wendigo (Butch Cavendish) explained the bizarre happenings in nature (e.g. the carnivorous rabbits) but at the end, he proclaims that he was wrong. Huh? Then what explains the cannibal rabbits?

As mentioned, it could just be that Tonto – as narrator – gave himself more credit than he deserved and spiced up the story with tales of flying spirit horses and fanged rabbits. I’d rather have seen it played straight and not made a fool of the Lone Ranger. Wait to see it on Netflix.