Director Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 is one of those rare movies that pulls off a feat of narrative tightrope walking, in this case a comedy-drama about a young man with cancer that manages to be thought-provoking and insightful without being melodramatic, and funny and irreverant rather than woefully inappropriate or boringly safe.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues his career ascendancy that arguably started several years ago with Mysterious Skin and Brick; here he plays Adam, a 27-year-old public radio producer who learns quite suddenly that he is suffering from a rare form of spinal cancer. (The movie’s title refers to his chances of survival.)
Even though he is surrounded by supporters, Adam’s feeling of isolation is palpable and, in a way, the movie is as much about their reaction to his diagnosis as it is about him. His best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is supportive, but also exploits Adam’s illness to pick up girls and as an easy excuse for getting stoned (in all fairness, he does share his weed and women with his bro). Adam’s flaky artist girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) folds fairly quickly, while his therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick) is a 24-year-old med school graduate who’s still operating from a textbook. His father (Serge Houde) has Alzheimer’s Syndrome and his mother (Angelica Huston) is the smothering over-protective type who can be as infuriating as she is supportive. Fellow chemotherapy patients Alan and Mitch (Phillip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer, respectively) are the only people to whom he can relate.
Screenwriter Will Reiser based the script on his own personal experience with the disease, and he infuses the story with the kind of insight only a survivor can provide. Fortuantely, he spares us the faux sentimentality or weepy melodrama, and gives the viewer something more than Terms of Endearment for the tween crowd. He successfully navigates some unforgiving terrain, as only a person who’s been there could.
Gordon-Levitt is savvy enough to modulate his performance as needed, hanging onto Adam’s mild-mannered nature as he struggles to keep his wits in the face of the worst form of uncertainty. It’s a performance that cements his status as a leading man in need of a break-out role.
A disparate mix of grit, violence, religious awakening, and socio-political commentary, Marc Forster’s biopic Machine Gun Preacher asks the age-old question “Who would Jesus shoot?”. Based on the last decade or so in the life of ex-biker/ex-con Sam Childers (played here by Gerard Butler), it’s a message movie at conflict with itself.
The story opens with Childers being released from prison circa the late 1990s. Almost immediately he excoriates his wife for having quit her job as a stripper and finding religion and slides back into his routine of shooting heroin, robbing drug dealers, and messing up drifters. It’s only a matter of time before he bottoms out in grand style and seeks help in changing his ways, leading to a passionate conversion to Christianity.
He eventually learns of the plight of orphans and refugees in war-torn Sudan, where the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army commits atrocities so horrendous it can make one question the existence of God. Childers decides to use his construction skills to build an orphanage that quickly becomes a target of the LRA, who are known for pressing children into their ranks as soldiers. Childers reaction is to become a commander in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a holy-rolling Rambo trying to have it both ways.
What follows is a questionable form of humanitarianism, as Childers divides his time between preaching and scrounging for donations at home, and rescuing children from horrifically dire situations and gunning down bad guys in Africa. His drive and his intentions are admirable, until they threaten to dissolve his family and hurt those around him. Eventually a bounty is put on his head, making one wonder if hanging around an orphanage is really a wise thing to be doing.
Forster, screenwriter Jason Keller, and Butler do an admirable job in delving into Childers dark side — he’s fallen so low when the movie begins that he makes the cast of Sons of Anarchy look like a boys’ choir — as well as the depths of his passion, which borders on obsession. Here’s a guy so desperate to atone and do just one good thing with his life that he almost forsakes his wife and daughter to put his life on the line in a hell hole half a world away; a guy who’s fear that he’d killed a man led him to a religious conversion, who later shows no hesitation when pulling a trigger.
He’s born again, true, but he hasn’t changed, he’s just found a new outlet for his anger and aggression. The movie shies away from exploring this disconnect in depth, no doubt out of fear of losing audience sympathy for the subject. Unfortunately, the result is a message is too mixed to be effective. Angelika
