Film Reviews

LADY VENGEANCE This putative final chapter in Korean director (and Quentin Tarantino fetish object) Park Chan-Wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” finds the director working in familiar storytelling mode: Upon her release, a paroled prisoner (Lee Yeoung-Ae) begins plotting an elaborate revenge against the man who, 20 years earlier, framed her for a brutal child kidnapping and murder, then absconded with her young daughter. This is OldBoy or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance redux, with the minor twist of a female protagonist, which only makes the movie seem that much more of a cut-rate Kill Bill clone. Aren’t trilogies supposed to take us somewhere new, as opposed to doubling back on the same well-trodden ground over and over again? Admittedly, the movie’s style changes midstream: After an hour of Park’s de rigueur camera pyrotechnics, cartoonish blood splatter and simplistic dream imagery, things settle into a more mature rhythm, complete with expansive wide-screen compositions held for more than a few seconds at a time and a downright sedate pace that suggests someone on the crew injected a powerful tranquilizer into Park’s bloodstream. But Park’s ideas never evolve, and by the end he resorts to that old warhorse of making the villain of the piece (OldBoy star Choi Min-Sik) so execrable that all the hand-wringing over the morality of revenge is rendered moot. If this is what qualifies, as some critics have suggested, as an artistic advance for Mr. Park, let us pray for a hasty retreat. (Nuart) (Scott Foundas)

(Photo by Thinkfilm)

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• Lindsay Lohan
• Richard Grant
• Scott Marshall
• Prisons
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

GO SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS A big bruiser of a hardened convict stands on the scrubby playing field of a prison complex and recites Prospero’s famous lines from The Tempest: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on!” he bellows, with enough primal lung power to rally an army regiment or an NFL squad. His oration is the upshot of the “Shakespeare Behind Bars” program at a Kentucky medium-security prison that’s unusual for its progressive-leaning leadership. (From the horse’s mouth: “I’m a warden who hates prison.”) Each year, the prisoners cast, rehearse, direct and perform the Bard themselves, and Hank Rogerson’s documentary chronicles their production of The Tempest from its first workshops through to opening night, making clear (in candid interviews) that the play’s themes of imprisonment, isolation and forgiveness resonate with urgency among the cast and crew. The movie derives energy from its odd juxtapositions: men serving long or lifetime sentences — some have murdered their partners or molested children — hone their iambic pentameter and, teary-eyed, speak in the tidy jargon of therapy. Albeit a tad repetitive, Shakespeare Behind Bars succeeds in humanizing men we might too easily label as monsters, and provides a solid argument in favor of prisons that place rehabilitation above retribution. (Fairfax) (Jessica Winter)

SAVING SHILOH The latest film to be drawn from Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s best-selling young-adult trilogy about a frisky West Virginia beagle with a knack for bringing people together, Saving Shiloh takes place in 2005, but in its setting and sensibility, it feels like 1930s Walton’s Mountain. In a little town called Friendly, Marty (Jason Dolley) lives with his parents, two little sisters and Shiloh, the lovable mutt he rescued from a dog-kicking meanie named Judd (Scott Wilson). In this final adventure, Marty attempts to cement the tentative friendship he and Judd formed in the second film, despite the fact that everyone in town thinks Judd responsible for a recent murder. Marty’s a nice boy, but dull, and though Shiloh is certainly a smart, sweet dog, the movies that bear his name, which aren’t exactly pulse-pounding, gain their true resonance not from Naylor’s old-fashioned lessons in faith and friendship (faithfully rendered by screenwriter Dale Rosenbloom and director Sandy Tung) but from the deeply pained eyes of Wilson, a character actor who’s been making villainy complex since he portrayed Richard Hickock in the 1967 film version of In Cold Blood. It’s kind of a lovely thing — in these decidedly unhip children’s films, he’s found the role of a lifetime. (Selected theaters) (Chuck Wilson)

SIDE EFFECTS Side Effects writer-director Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau used to be a sales rep for pharmaceutical manufacturers, then quit that job due to her increasing disgust over industry practices. Rather than make a Michael Moore–style gotcha documentary to spread her beliefs and insights about how new drugs are created and sold, she’s instead turned out this romantic comedy about — what else? — a young pharmaceutical sales rep. As Karly (Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl) finds herself moving up the corporate ladder, she grows uneasy about industry practices that place sales volume above patient safety, while at the same time struggling to nurture her budding relationship with a rugged guy who’s building his own house in the woods. It’s a tantalizing idea — a little rom-com sugar to help the Big Pharma exposé pill go down — but Slattery-Moschkau is simply not a writer of the caliber necessary to pull off that delicate balancing act. Lovers’ spats too quickly turn into debates over business ethics, and all the drug-industry info feels tacked on. When Side Effects does work, it’s because of the very winning presence of Heigl, who makes even the most stilted speechifying seem less unnatural — and it doesn’t hurt that she’s game for some gratuitous dancing in her underwear and conspicuous side-boob action. While Slattery-Moschkau is obviously coming from a very earnest place — a card before the final credits compares the annual budget for the pharmaceutical industry to that of her own film — it doesn’t make the overall effort any less clumsy. (Sunset 5) (Mark Olsen)