Film Reviews

DON In Don, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan makes the snazziest gangster-dude entrance since Chow Yun-Fat’s in A Better Tomorrow, way back in 1987. The sheer sensuous relish of a fantasy of mob glamour that favors Oakley shades and blue-velvet Nehru jackets and sudsy marble bathtubs and kung fu kicks in superslow motion is one of the principle charms of Farhan Akhtar’s glossy green action fantasy, which eschews originality from the outset except in the fetishistic details of the international megathriller vocabulary. The film is a remake (with surprising variations) of the classic Amitabh Bachchan vehicle of 1978, a down-and-dirty B movie with A actors co-written by Farhan’s father, Javed Akhtar, one half of the culture-shaping Salim Javed screenwriting team that created Bachchan’s “angry young man” persona in films like Zanjeer (1973) and Sholay (1975). The two halves of the central dual role, both the international crime lord Don and the paan-chomping street performer Vijay, who assumes Don’s identity after his death, were written expressly for Bachchan and were tailored perfectly to his talents. Only a very foolhardy actor would attempt to beat The Big B at his own game, and Khan is nobody’s fool. His normal acting style is so stylized it often verges on pantomime, and he finds an only slightly more flamboyant approach that fits perfectly in this aggressively self-conscious fantasia in which timing the actors’ movements to the pattern of the split-screen effects is more important than their emotions. After only two features, Dil Chahta Hai and Lakshya, Akhtar is a superlative craftsman. There is a slum-demolishing car chase as electrifying as anything in the Bourne movies, and a shootout in a nightclub that’s composed almost entirely of claustrophobic close-ups, but even the standard expository scenes have been pumped full of caffeine. Working to keep the home audience interested in a story it knows by heart, Akhtar adds so many additional betrayals and secret identities to an already far-fetched plot that the real world becomes a distant memory, and happily so. (Fallbrook 7, Naz 8) (David Chute)

EXCELLENT CADAVERS Director Marco Turco has shaped his documentary on the Italian Mafia, and the ill-fated prosecutors who dedicated their lives to bringing them down, like a Hollywood political thriller. Based on the book by Alexander Stille, the documentary is filled with connective footage of the author trekking through libraries, poring over boxes of old papers and staring pensively as he narrates the stories of the brave, relentless prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The film offers an engrossing, detailed history of the birth and growth of the Mafia (especially the ways in which “legitimate” politicians employed and then became snared by the mob during the Cold War). But what really hooks the viewer are the copious news footage and crime-scene photos of Sicily and Palermo drenched in blood — car bombs, decapitated heads, bodies spilled in awkward poses after assassinations in street cafés. In showing all the stuff that the History Channel discreetly edits out, Excellent Cadavers dismantles the celluloid romanticizing of the Mafia, nowhere more so than when an inconsolable widow addresses a crowd of mourners, sobbing, “They [the Mafia] won’t change. There is no love here.” (Grande 4-Plex) (Ernest Hardy)

GREG & GENTILLON Greg and Gentillon (Louis Durand and Thomas Michael) are best friends from suburban Quebec and the toast of their local bar, where the lame, almost majestically unfunny comedy double-act they’ve been honing since high school is the toast of their drunken buddies. Cursed by the imperishable shared delusion that they have a scintilla of talent between them, they head for Toronto to make it big. That’s the hook of this tepid mockumentary from Canada, in which everyone is real except for Greg and Gentillon (or, as their tin-eared fliers have it: “G2: 2 Guys, 1 Laugh!”). Trouble is, sending two faux-provincial innocents into real-life situations involving levelheaded, genially imperturbable Canadians offers only the mildest kind of comedy. Greg’s mangled English is occasionally amusing (“Je ne suis pas dans un beau head space maintenant! J’ai fucked up!”) and Gentillon’s ironfisted and totally misguided certainty about making it big someday (“in Las Vegas! In L.A.!”) is touchingly demented, but the movie lacks the kind of sharp, provocative, overarching premise — the kind so carefully sculpted in advance by mockumentary maestros like Sacha Baron Cohen, Ricky Gervais or Christopher Guest — that might elicit true discomfort or raw ire, let alone prompt laughter from the (in this case) luckless viewer. (Laemmle Music Hall) (John Patterson)

HOLLYWOOD Testing the theory that aspiring actors truly will watch anything that has to do with their chosen profession, Hollywood trots out every reach-for-the-stars banality for one more excruciatingly tedious portrait of up-and-coming thespians trying to make their way in show biz. The plot centers around three actors at different crossroads: Owen (writer-director Rick Rose) is close to breaking through but, darn it, his girlfriend (Tava Smiley) wants him to get a real job; Abby (Martini Paratore) works as a real estate agent to pay the bills but can’t find time for auditions; and Jazzy (Katherine Azarmi) tirelessly promotes herself but keeps being typecast as “too ethnic.” While we’re expected to sympathize with these characters’ foibles and struggles — we’re supposed to understand that these people are hopelessly shallow because the cutthroat industry made them that way — Hollywood’s shoddy DV look and uninspired script feel like the cinematic equivalent of the score-settling, self-indulgent one-person shows that befoul every half-filled performance space between Fairfax and Highland. Taking potshots at the city’s myriad life coaches, acting classes and therapists, Rose decries what he sees as the false idols who seduce the naive with promises of self-improvement — though, oddly, his own character’s path to enlightenment is guided by a trip to a yoga instructor. Filled with halfhearted inspirational messages and clear contempt for most of its luckless dreamers, Hollywood argues for staying true to your Art and abandoning all distractions that get in the way. You should heed that message and steer clear of this dud. (Sunset 5) (Tim Grierson)