Movie Reviews: Save Me, Take Out, Hounddog

GO  THE POOL Leaving Milwaukee to tell an indigenous tale of life on India’s west coast, director/DP Chris Smith (American Movie) inevitably brings an outsider’s eye. Instead of a collection of souvenir-tchotchke exotic vistas, The Pool is an album of observed human minutiae: of kids hustling rupees by reselling plastic bags, and the touching curiosity that passes between the subcontinent’s young men and women. The exposition occurs incidentally, slipped into a bustling schedule of repetitive chores. The protagonists are two overemployed country boys, teenage Venkatesh and 11-year-old Jhangir (played by local nonprofessional actors), transplanted to the provincial capital to earn a living. Bits of “business” anchor a succession of task-oriented scenes (beds turned down, water from the well, street food gobbled on the fly); this heightened consciousness of objects and obligations ballasts the drama-light, class-conscious fable with tactile life. Venkatesh spends his rare off-hours shimmying up a tree to contemplate the water of a posh house’s swimming pool — and the girl beside it — with inchoate longing; it’s his Gatsby green light. He gets behind the walls working for the sullen patriarch (Nana Patekar), never more expressive than when halving a green coconut, or spinning the child’s top that itself practically gives a supporting performance. (Nuart) (Nick Pinkerton)

Chris Smith trades Wisconsin for Goa in The Pool

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RIGHTEOUS KILL Where once the decline of Robert De Niro’s and Al Pacino’s prodigious talent inspired howls of anguish and impassioned critical essays, it’s a sad state of affairs when the best news about Righteous Kill, the cop thriller that stars them both, is that it isn’t awful. New York City tough-guy detectives Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino) are investigating a serial killer who’s bumping off heinous criminals acquitted by the judicial system, but suspicion soon turns to the detectives themselves. Screenwriter Russell Gewirtz’s first script was another New York crime drama, Spike Lee’s crackerjack Inside Man, which featured a slew of well-drawn characters as clever as the story’s twists. But Righteous Kill (directed by journeyman Jon Avnet) jettisons most of the wit for macho bluster and a surprise you can see coming down the turnpike. While there’s no point in commenting that De Niro and Pacino are playing calcified versions of their once-great selves, at least Pacino is more reserved than usual — a welcome change. But between the film’s police-procedural minutiae and trite thematic concerns (the weight of Catholic guilt, the thin moral line between cop and crook), Righteous Kill isn’t so much bad as it is played out. No wonder the film’s faded stars seem to fit right in. (Citywide) (Tim Grierson) 

GO  SAVE ME The plot of Save Me sounds like a ripped-from-the-headlines gay play circa five years ago, but the film itself subverts expectation. Mark (Chad Allen) is a young New Mexico man who’s crashing from a crystal meth–fueled sex binge, when his brother sends him to a remote desert ministry house run by Gayle (Judith Light) and Ted (Stephen Lang), two devout Christians whose mutual calling is to turn queer boys straight via the Word. A couple of Bible-study classes later, Mark has forsaken meth (with improbable ease), found the Lord and begun a budding relationship with the star resident, Scott (Robert Gant). Seeing Mark and Scott interact causes the already taut-necked Gayle to grow even more tense, and when she blows, it’s high melodrama but also a rather wrenching sight. Directed here by Robert Cary (Ira and Abby), Light, best known for her TV-sitcom work, turns a cliché — the zealot with a secret pain of her own — into an achingly sad woman; it’s one of the year’s best performances (from a script by Light’s husband, Robert Desiderio). Allen, Gant and the ever-generous Lang match her nicely, and though Save Me never quite surmounts its schematic scenario, scene by scene, beat by beat, it’s pretty damn good. (Sunset 5) (Chuck Wilson)

GO  TAKE OUT You’ll hopefully think twice before giving the Chinese-food deliveryman a lousy tip after experiencing a nerve-racking day in the life of Ming Ding (wonderfully understated first-timer Charles Jang), an illegal immigrant in Manhattan who struggles to send money home to his wife and child. Woken up and thwacked with a hammer by a gang of loan sharks who helped smuggle him into the U.S., Ming has until the end of the day to pay them $800 in juice — a daunting feat for a guy who’s lucky to earn a tenth of that delivering broccoli and bean curd. Starkly shot in voyeuristically detached DV vérité by Greg the Bunny co-creator Sean Baker (who co-directs the film with Shih-Ching Tsou), Ming’s race to make up the difference in tips after borrowing from friends and family has a compellingly hypnotic effect: Only the faces behind the apartment doors seem to change. But beyond the bickering yuppies, condescending complainers and “that bitch at 845 West End,” a seamless supporting cast of pros and amateurs, and scenes shot in a real takeout restaurant during business hours — plus a palpable sense of levity amid the humility — make for some of the most authentic neorealism this side of De Sica. This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets. (Fallbrook 7; Playhouse 7; Sunset 5) (Aaron Hillis)