HollywoodIdiocy.com

Al Pacino and Colin Farrell star in this Blu-Ray release of The Recruit, a spy-in-training suspense film that is supposed to be about mind games. Farrell comports himself quite well in the role, managing to come off as more innocent and naïve than he has in most of his films. He plays a CIA recruit who is singled out by Al Pacino’s character for induction into the Agency.

The film makes good use of the talents of its two-star cast and gives them more screen time with each other than with anyone else. Unfortunately, the film is held back from being as shocking as it might otherwise be by two important elements.

The first element is that the script is a fairly by-the-numbers suspense flick that telegraphs its punches and never really keeps you guessing. Predictability is one of the seven deadly sins, right? Eh, maybe not, but it ought to be, at least in Hollywood.

The other element holding the film back is the filmic legacy of Pacino; when the time comes for various plot twists involving his character, it’s hard to be too shocked because of the acting legacy Pacino brings to any film he appears in, especially a film using him to “play to type,” rather than countering his established image.

The film is not without its merits; Bridget Moynahan appears and is effective in her role as a fellow recruit, but her character Layla is flat and uninspired despite the on-screen chemistry she pulls off with Farrell. While the film takes us through its mind-game paces, creative uses for shower faucets are among the many forms of mind-breaking that James Clayton (Farrell) faces. But I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot.

Although its pedestrian script holds the film back from being truly watchable, it’s also not unwatchable. In other words, the film is worth seeing once, but perhaps not quite worth owning; a better example of the genre is the film currently in theatres, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. The Recruit is OK, but it’s not one you’ll want to go out of your way to see, unless you’re a devoted fan of either Farrell or Pacino.

There is a solid audience for Oprah Winfrey-produced films, and I realize Mitch Albom has a following thanks to his early works like The Five People You Meet In Heaven and Tuesdays With Morrie. However, even among folks who normally like this sort of thing, including my wife, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day is both annoying and snooze-inducing. In fact, I dozed lightly a couple times watching it and my wife almost needed GPS tracking to lure me back to the land of the wide awake.

The story revolves around a washed up baseball player who has screwed up his life and his relationship with his family so badly, he’s at the verge of committing suicide; but just as he is about to pull the trigger, he sees his mother, nine years dead, looking on from the other side of a Little League diamond.

As the title predicts, he gets to spend “one more day” with his mom, who takes him on a sort of “Ghost of Christmas Past” journey of his life, ala “A Christmas Carol,” to see what an utter piece of doo-doo he’d been to his mom throughout his life, because he was so eager to please his emotionally distant dad.

The cast offers little to speak of in the way of allure. Ellyn Burstyn is the biggest name in the cast, although 1980s starlet Samantha Mathis, made mildly famous in the movie Dream A Little Dream, suddenly re-emerges from obscurity to play a younger, early-40s version of this guy’s mom.

While Albom has mixed sentimentality well in the past, and the book may be more effective, the movie is plodding and ponderous and about as riveting as watching paint dry. Also, I just don’t follow the logic of the movie; his mom’s ghost is there to convince him not to kill himself, and does this by … showing him what an ass he’s been all these years? Way to motivate a fellow that life’s worth living, huh?

The DVD is short on extras, but it’s not the sort of film most folks will want to spend extra time with. If you’re an Albom fan, I’d say pick up his novels and start reading, or if you must see Albom’s work on film, rent Tuesdays With Morrie instead. For One More Day is, for this reviewer, one day too many.

Pixar’s animated robat flick topped Universal’s Angelina-mated assassin flick over the weekend, but both opened quite well, combining for a monstrous weekend at the box office. Wall-E won out with $62.5 million in its opening weekend, about a third of its $180 million budget; Wanted opened well above expectations with $51.1 million, or over two-thirds of its relatively modest $75 million budget. It all combined for a spectacular box office weekend that kept popcorn machines popping, prior to the coming July 4 holiday.

Last week’s champ, Get Smart, held on to third with a healthy second-week take of $20 million, bringing its total to $77.2 million after two weeks, against an $80 million budget. Kung Fu Panda dropped precipitously with the new competition for kids flicks from Wall-E, and took in only $11.7 million. Incredible Hulk was a strong fifth-placer with $9.2 million. With domestic box office now at $115 million and another $65 million in global box office, Incredible Hulk is now at $180 million, or $30 million into profit mode.

All 12 movies in the top 12 this weekend made at least $1 million or more.