Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare's back and Branagh's got him. Again.

And Kenneth Branagh s production of Much Ado About Nothing is a good, solid piece of work. Too often, people behave as if Shakespeare requires a Ph.D. to be understood. Actually, Old Willy frequently pitched his plays to the rubes in the back bleachers. In his direction of the film, Branagh is reaching for the same mass audience.

The Anglo-American cast of Much Ado is part of that pitch. While Branagh cast many of his chums from the Royal Shakespeare Company in the film, he also sprinkled it with an odd assortment of Yanks. In turn, the Brits have toned down their accents, and the dialogue sounds like a mellow, mid-Atlantic symphony.

The performances are as well-executed as the film itself. As Benedick and Beatrice, Shakespeare's flirtatiously quarrelsome lovers, Branagh and Emma Thompson play off each other with the witty agility of a seasoned couple (which, of course, they are). But it's Thompson who carries the real spark of the film, successfully providing her heroine with fierce intelligence and suppressed passion.

Keanu Reeves' performance, however, is a notable exception to those of his colleagues. As the conniving Don John, Reeves conveys a spooky blank look — as if he is constantly searching for the cue cards.

Much Ado About Nothing is a well made film, but Branagh can't quite overcome the long-standing suspicion that it's minor Shakespeare. The play itself often reads like a mere diversion — a quick comedic study tossed off in a rush. A bit of sex, a little slapstick and a fast resolution.

Despite Branagh's reputation as the wunderkind of British cinema, he is actually a visually weak filmmaker. And, he is often incapable of exploring the material for anything more than the obvious.

Several years ago, when he directed Henry V, he coasted along on the play's grand, epic structure. When he tries to deal with the scaled-down subtleties of Much Ado, his ambitions shrink as well.

Both the strengths and weaknesses of Branagh's film making lie in his derivative approach. Henry V worked, in part, because Branagh found a good model in Orson Welles' Falstaff. In fact, Henry was essentially a sequel to Welles' more complex and audacious masterpiece. With Much Ado About Nothing, Branagh borrows from the populist school of Franco Zeffirelli.

Specifically, Branagh copies Zeffirelli's production of The Taming of the Shrew. But where Zeffirelli effectively pushed the material to extremes, which resulted in a sharp mix of Italian earthiness and farce, Branagh doesn't push far enough in any direction. The closest Much Ado comes to challenging the material is Michael Keaton's truly bizarre performance as Dogberry — but it stems from the actor's sense of high energy.

Still, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Much Ado About Nothing has a good feel for the bard's more biting barbs about men, women and the contrariness of love.

Chain Reaction

Massive paranoia has long been a favorite American past time. Even the great American novel Moby Dick is thoroughly infused with enough cosmic fear and loathing to send some readers scurrying for the closet. But if the summer movies are any indication, then the great Yankee quest for the elusive white whale has taken on an obsessive, internalized dimension. In Mission: Impossible, The Rock, and Eraser, the enemies are all home grown as the country seemingly shifts its focus away from perceived foreign menace. Now the guns are being trained on the jerks who live next door.

Chain Reaction is the latest reminder that we have met the enemy and he is us. Of course, for those who are old enough to remember the Vietnam years, this observation is hardly unique. But even a graying hippie would have to be a little startled by the degree to which this motto has now become an institutionalized norm.

Not that Chain Reaction isn't potentially loaded with some interesting references to a few of the dirty secrets of modern American history. The movie plays as a revisionist overview of the Manhattan Project, stripped of the short sighted jingoism of the World War Two era. The central gizmo in Chain Reaction is a process that can remove all the hydrogen from simple water and turn it into pure energy. But the idealistic scientists working on the project have no concept as to the nasty devils from the military/industrial complex who employs them.

At the eve of their successful completion of the project, the Chicago-based laboratory explodes in an neo-atomic fireball (the other hot thing this summer, e.g. Independence Day). One of the few survivors is Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves), a machinist who also just happens to be a physics school drop-out. Well, actually, he was asked to leave school after he blew up a building (for reasons never explained in the movie). Not surprisingly, Kasalivich is quickly promoted to the top of the FBI's most wanted list.

Equally suspected is Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz), a physicist who wasn't at the lab due to a major hang-over. The FBI becomes convinced that she was the brain behind Kasalivich's brawn's. This means that Lily and Eddie now have more in common with each other than most couples as they proceed to go on the lam together.

They are both young, attractive, and very sincere in their convictions. They also share an unfortunate faith in their project director, Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman). This is not that significant tipping of a plot point. After all, most academic administers don't travel to expensive Chicago restaurants in limos and maintain lavish estates in Georgetown. Ah oh! Do you think he might work for something known in intelligence lingo as The Company?

Of course, the plot of Chain Reaction quickly begins to resemble The Fugitive (on the run, but with a date this time). The resemblance is enhanced by the fact that director Andrew Davis created both films. But the deja vu quality of Chain Reaction is not the movie's real problem. Its real problem is ham-fisted message-making coupled with too many silly action scenes.

Technically, Chain Reaction could have been an incredible action movie with a sly political context. But the action is unloaded in a hyper-fast manner that eventually grows tiresome and absurd. Likewise, the social message is finally delivered in a quick set of broad statements that sounds like a lecture from a school child. At times, Chain Reaction is extremely engaging. But all too often, the movie plays like the world's longest coming attraction trailer. It's all highlights, minus any scenes that might make the viewer give a hoot about the characters (in this regard, it makes The Rock look like a character study).

Which is too bad, since the movie contains some fine work by both Freeman and Brian Cox as his Company connection. Likewise, Reeves has interesting possibilities as a hi-tech primitive who exists by quirky instincts, has a nearly supernatural command of computers, and is supremely capable of clubbing an assassin with the forearm of a real Neanderthal. Reeves might yet prove to be the definitive action hero of the Nineties.

But he better check the script next time. Chain Reaction never explodes beyond the special effects (which are very well done). Even Speed II might be an improvement.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Sooner or later, most American directors go a little bit crazy and try to film an unfilmable novel.

You could call it the John Huston Syn­drome, in honor of the man who turned Moby Dick into a fish tale and Under the Volcano into a drinking yarn. But we don't have ol' John to kick around any more, so it's a good thing that Gus Van Sant Jr. has been willing to take on the challenge of creating another mis­guided literary adaptation.

Not that Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is any­where near as bad as some of the dubious clas­sics of the adaptation genre. It tries really hard to flesh out the poetic prose and elaborate fan­tasies of the Tom Robbins novel of the same name. But the elusive, abstract qualities of words refuse to be roped and hog-tied by the concrete realism of visual images. The movie bucks like a bad bronco ride, with Van Sant getting tossed at every turn. After so many spills, it's amazing that he's able to stay on top every once in awhile.

The oddball epic story of Sissy Hankshaw (Uma Thurman) and her incredibly long thumbs starts out promisingly when her father (Ken Kesey) inadvertently plants the dream of hitch-hiking info her youthful head. That, combined with the prediction of a fortune teller (Roseanne Arnold) that she will have many erotic encounters with both men and women, points Sissy in the rambling direction of the open road and her free-floating destiny.

But the movie runs into trouble (early on) when Sissy becomes an adult and her won­drous thumbs begin to look like pieces of bratwurst glued to her hands. Besides, she doesn't have much time to actually hitch-hike — she's too busy meeting famous Hollywood stars who appear in cameos. Keanu Reeves, Buck Henry, Angie Dickinson, John Hurt, Crispin Glover, Carol Kane and many others are rotated through the movie as if Van Sant got confused and thought he was lining up guests for The Tonight Show.

The movie does eventually wander over to the Rubber Rose Ranch (the seat of the action in the novel), where a posse of revolutionary lesbian cowgirls is preparing to seize control of the ranch in an attempt to dismount the male-dominated order. Unfortu­nately, the movie's already running out of steam by the time we arrive at the Rubber Rose. Rain Phoenix (River's sister) is able to breathe some life into the film as head cowgirl Bonanza Jellybean, but the choppiness of its second half undercuts most of her efforts.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was originally scheduled for release last fall, but was pulled at the director's request after a negative test-screening. Van Sant had hoped that a new edit would save the film, but he hoped in vain — editing isn't its problem. All you have to do is listen to Robbins' narration of the movie, and suddenly the gap between image and language opens wider than the Grand Canyon. Van Sant simply couldn't find a way to make his vision match Robbins' prose.

Speed

Is the typical Schwarzenegger movie too complex for ya? Do you like your screenplays to resemble a news report from the Indy 500? Do you suspect that Keanu Reeves could be the new Brando, if he ever learned to act? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then this movie is just your Speed.

Hi-octane action is the main ingredient of this mindless thriller that delivers the mindless goods and threatens to be the sur­prise, mindless hit of the summer. Speed has so much action that it doesn't have any room for a plot. It hardly has any room for the actors. Heck, its makers were barely able to squeeze in all of the vehicles they smash up. What do you want, dialogue?

Reeves (in a wooden performance) plays an LAPD cop who likes grunge fashions and unusual solutions to crisis situations. Shooting all of the hostages is one of his bright ideas. Shooting his own partner (Jeff Daniels) is another good one. Given the LAPD's track record, he could eventually make chief of police.

Dennis Hopper (in a lazy performance) plays a brilliant, but deranged, bomb expert who's out to blackmail the city. That's why he has wired a crosstown bus to explode if its speed drops below 50 m.p.h. Actually, his plan makes no sense, since we're talking about Los Angeles, where nobody uses public transportation. But Hopper really needs the money — given the amount of equipment he's using, he owes Radio Shack some big bucks.

But Speed isn't about actors. It's about large-scale, metal-wrenching mayhem, as we demolish assorted elevators, buses, cars, airplanes, subway trains and several bystanders. Speed is about fabulously filmed carnage (first-time director Jan DeBont is a noted cinematographer), ludicrous stunts and existential sarcasm.

Speed has no illusions about itself, as it throttles the audience with it's charged craziness. It may even be the definitive junk movie of the summer.

Just be sure to leave your brain in the lobby.

Little Buddha

Bernardo Bertolucci says that he's fed up with mindless Western con­sumerism, and that his new film, Little Buddha, is his pursuit of some greater, more spiritual value.

Okay. It sounds good to me. But despite the philosophy, Little Buddha plays like a meandering exercise in monotony. The brilliant flair that Bertolucci has often shown for portraying decadence just doesn't appear to spark when he's trying hard to be meditative. Instead, you get the distinct impression that Bertolucci directed this movie in his sleep.

Little Buddha is more of a Zen fairy tale than an epic quest. The idea for the film was inspired by several recent cases of young Western children who are believed to be the reincarnation of various important Tibetan lamas. Considering the brutal conditions of life in Chinese-occupied Tibet, it's not hard to see why a reincarnated lama might wish to appear in the States. The only question is, why Seattle? As presented in Little Buddha, the whole state of Washington is a perpetu­ally grey, rain-swept slab of concrete.

But Lama Dorje (Tsultim Gyelsen Geshe) must have liked the climate. Though dead, he returns to a fellow Tibetan priest in a dream and suggests that his reincarna­tion lives in a fancy modernist house in Seattle. Apparently, his soul has been reborn in the form of the all-American kid (Alex Wiesendanger) who lives there.

The boy's parents (Chris Isaak and Brid­get Fonda) are perturbed, at first, when a gaggle of Tibetan monks shows up on their doorstep. But since both Isaak and Fonda deliver embarrassingly bad performances, they have no business giving anyone else a hard time. In fact, the monks (some of whom are actually Buddhist monks) are the only people in the movie who act as if they know what they're doing.

In order to help the bad Western actors understand what's happening, the monks give them a children's book that explains how young Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha. Flashback to India 2,500 years ago (where we finally get to see some sunlight). Keanu Reeves pops up as the original poster boy of Karma in a jazzy rendition of Buddhist mythology that repeatedly veers into the Cecil B. DeMille school of thun­derous enlightenment. You half expect Charlton Heston to show up.

Through it all, a single, nagging question is continually reborn: what's the point? In the past, Bertolucci has been stylistically breathtaking (The Conformist), raw and dar­ing (Last Tango in Paris) and outrageously ambitious (1900 and The Last Emperor). With Little Buddha, he appears to be interested only in being exotic. Most of the movie comes off like a photo spread for National Geographic — lacking, however, the informative captions.