Two bits of 2005 business to wrap up -- KING KONG and SYRIANA -- and you may wonder what the connection between them is. So what do they have in common? In a nutshell, they both involve a lot of monkey business with tropically hot places, natives in colorful costumes, and consequences right back here at home. Although both were of more than middling interest, they had fatal flaws that undermined their entertainment value.
For example, what can possibly be entertaining about...
...a movie that is so confusing it's impossible to follow the many threads of its plot? SYRIANA was a well-intentioned muddle of a mess that was more convoluted than the story of why Brangelina and their baby-to-be are at Davos instead of Sundance this year. Yeah, both involve the UN and something or other in the Middle East and I'm sure a double-humped camel's load of good intentions, and both are as crazy as Mrs Logan on this season's "24."
SYRIANA is based on a memoir by an ex-CIA agent (played by "fat" George Clooney in the movie) and, whether the memoir is or isn't true (you must be familiar by now with the "Million Pieces" controversy), it led to a film with several dead ends (who the heck cares about his dumb-ass college-age son?), which is damned frustrating in a movie with about 20 plotlines one must follow. From the 40,000-foot level (to quote a colleague of mine), SYRIANA looks at the incestous relationships that govern the oil business, relationships that put the Hatfields of the West into bed with the McCoys of the Middle East. Half of it is in Farsi and Arabic (with subtitles) and the rest of it is in Washington-DC-ese, which is just as incomprehensible. If you go to see it with the intention of following every thread, be prepared to put in a long 2 hours' work; if you want to see George in action, be warned that he put on about 30 pounds and looks like a defeated (if handsome) bureaucrat (and he WAS good, as was the very handsome Alexander Siddig as the Arab Emir-to-be). Stephen Geoghan, who wrote the excellent movie TRAFFIC, wrote and directed this film; it's a perfect example of why an outside "eye" can benefit a movie -- a director other than the writer might have cut some of the loose ends and helped to streamline the story. In its crosses and double-crosses, appreciation of how money and power change hands, moral ambiguity, and impenetrable reasoning, SYRIANA is probably the most accurate picture of the past half century's failed energy policies you're like to get; but if you wanted that, you could watch Wolf Blitzer's interminable "The Situation Room" on CNN. A drama has to have more than verisimitude, it has to, for better or worse, have dramatic movement that makes sense.
As for KING KONG: too long (Thanks, KB!). Really, this was a good movie that, if shortened by 45 or 50 excruciating minutes, would've been a great movie. As it is, you're well advised to pack a lunch.
Naomi Watts deserves every type of congratulations for so convincingly playing against a blue screen -- she really makes you believe in the emotion of her character and the great ape's, and it is for her performance that people have been raving about this being such a great love story. It is the same story we've seen twice before: down on his luck filmmaker (Jack Black) convinces beautiful, down-on-her-luck ingenue Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts in the role immortallized by Fay Wray) to accompany him and his crew to (cue creepy music) Skull Island to make his "masterpiece." A NY screenwriter (Adrian Brody) accompanies them on this version, and falls in love with the ingenue, who is of course kidnapped by the colorfully dressed natives and left as Kong bait to appease the Big Man. He grabs her, is smitten, and ends up being captured by the filmmakers because of his love. Back in NY, the Kongster is drugged and made part of a sideshow, while Ann dreams of his big hairy paws. Wouldn't you know, he escapes, they reunite, they have a sort of fun night on the town, then end up atop the Empire State Building (as classic and beautiful today as in the original version), where... well, either you know the rest or I'll just be spoiling it, so let's leave it at that.
In between this compelling action, there's a very long interlude designed specifically to entrance boys of all ages (it involves dinosaurs and giant slugs) and to showcase director Peter Jackson's special effects wizardry that, while successful in those two endeavors, just bored the hell out of me. It didn't further the action of the story and was more like an intermission travelogue to JURASSIC PARK: PLANET OF THE VERY LARGE APE than an integral part of the KING KONG story. Nobody loves a good monkey story more than I, but this -- despite the amazing lifelike Kong and moving love story -- was just too much.