Tag Archives: Russel Crowe

Movie Review: The Weight

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The new movie, “The Weight,” is about a financially desperate single father, Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke), and his six-year-old daughter during the Great Depression. While looking for another run-down apartment after being evicted, Samuel is arrested by the police after they assault him for no reason in an alley. He then finds himself on a chain gang building a road, once again desperate to do his time and get back to his daughter after the huge injustice of being imprisoned after being attacked by the police for no reason.

I was surprised to see Russel Crowe (J.J. Clancy) in a small part as the warden of the chain gang, who had some good acting scenes in this relatively low-budget movie. Ethan Hawke deserves credit for taking this role, which was shot almost entirely in the dense woods of Oregon, with several intense fight scenes and dangerous scenes on a river. One day, the warden of the chain gang gives Murphy an assignment to transport gold bars with four other men he trusts for fifty miles through the difficult terrain of the Oregon wilderness. A promise was made by the warden that if he successfully transported all the gold, then he would be released from prison immediately. This sets the stage for some well-shot action scenes and the addition of an Indian woman, Anna (Julia Jones), who holds her own during the long, difficult trek.

I thought this story was well told and does hold your attention throughout, with no boring parts. The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 93% is too high; a more accurate audience rating is 78%, with my rating of 82% and a recommendation.

Movie Review: Nuremburg

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The atrocities of World War II, perpetrated on humanity, are some of the worst in the entire history of the world. The millions of murders, mostly of Jews in Europe, were so extreme that once the war ended, all governments in the world realized that something had to be done to punish the Nazi animals responsible, if for no other reason, to try and prevent something like this from ever happening again. The problem was that the world had never put war criminals on trial, with the United States, Russia, England, and Ireland all interested in bringing this group of Nazi war criminals to justice.

Then the problem became hiring a psychologist, Major Douglas M. Kelley, to determine whether these Nazi war criminals were mentally fit to stand trial, which is the major part of the new movie “Nuremberg”, starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring and Rami Malek as Douglas Kelly. The many conversation scenes between Crowe and Malik in this movie were very well acted, with Crowe giving one of his best acting performances in decades.

The lead prosecutor for the Nuremberg trial, Robert H. Jackson, played very well by Michael Shannon, provides some of the best scenes in this film, as he interviews Göring, with the help of the prosecutor from England, getting Göringto admit that after he testified that he knew nothing about the mass murders, that given what he knows now, he still would not go against Adolf Hitler.

The aftermath of the trial included the righteous hanging of all the Nazi War criminals, with Göring committing suicide with a long-hidden cyanide capsule, minutes before he was scheduled to be hanged. The life of Douglass Kelly took a very negative turn for years after the Nuremberg trials, where he suffered from extreme depression and took his own life in 1958.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are way too low 72%, as this movie was also snubbed for Golden Globe nominations, where Crowe, Malik, and Shannon all should have been nominated for best actor awards. None of this makes any sense for a movie about an extremely important part of world history and such standout acting. My rating is an 85% and a solid recommendation to see this well-acted and important movie.

Movie Review: Gladiator II

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The peak of actor Russel Crowes’ career was in 2000 and 2001 when he starred in the first “Gladiator” movie and won the Best Actor Oscar and was then nominated the following year (and should have won) for playing the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning professor John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind,” directed by Ron Howard. Unfortunately for Crowe, after some bad breaks and the ongoing harsh realities of the movie industry, getting a top movie role, finding a good enough screenplay, and trying to survive the fickleness of the American public, Russel Crowe has never reached the heights of 2000 and 2001 again.

The sequel to Gladiator, “Gladiator II,” is another story that spends much time creating excuses for major fight scenes and violent death inside the Roman Colosseum, and not much time for character development and interesting dialogue. For me with both films, the historical content of showing thousands of human beings sitting in a huge stadium while smiling and laughing at the agony and horrific death of slaves and soldiers is one of history’s greatest examples of “man’s inhumanity to man”. This sequel does have scenes of Crowe as Maxiumus from the original movie, with a timeline some 20 years later with Maxiumus’s son, Lucius played very well by actor Paul Mescal and Maxiumus’s wife Lucilla played once again by Connie Nielsen.

In this sequel, there are no Tigers that rush into the Colosseum to kill people, instead, the director
Ridley Scott, who directed the first Gladiator, has vicious monkeys, a huge charging rhinoceros ridden by a Roman Soldier, and even an ocean-water-filled Colosseum floor with man-eating sharks who attack and kill men who fall off the boats while fighting with swords and bow and arrows. This part of the story, with Sharks, Monkeys, and a huge Rhinocerous has more to do with Hollywood embellishment than being true to Roman history.

Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, the central antagonist in this story who is constantly scheming to take over as emperor of Rome does provide some of the best acting in this film, a main reason to see this sequel despite the obvious drop in quality from the first movie. As with the last film, the fighting is extremely violent, brutal and definitely not for children younger than 15.

The critics are not very high on this movie, giving an anemic 72% rating, and this time around I agree with the critics as this movie is too much about nonstop fighting scenes, with not much else. Due to the impressive special effects, I give Gladiator II a small recommendation.