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Contemplating
the Naval: Annapolis I had read nothing about Annapolis, Justin Lin’s film about a young man’s plebe (freshman) year at the Naval Academy. Given the title, I had some expectations. I thought the movie might actually have something to do with the place. Instead, it’s a boxing flick, overlaid with a little—very little—romance. It happens to be set at Annapolis. Our hero is Jake Huard, played by James Franco. Jake is a welder, working alongside his father and friends. Jake’s future looks mapped out—union card, a job on the docks building ships, and beery evenings with buddies at the local tavern. Jake wants more. He’s a decent boxer, but he doesn’t want that, either. Jake wants to go to Annapolis. That much is made clear early in the movie. What is never made clear is why. Eventually we get reasons, sort of. It was his mother’s lifelong wish. Jake burns to show the world, especially his father, that he’s worthy. Why this requires the assistance of the United States Navy, I don’t know. I thought there might be something about Jake wanting to serve his country. Or about the possibility that Jake and his classmates will graduate into a war. Shouldn’t the academy itself, its customs and traditions, play some part in the story? Otherwise, Lin could have set it elsewhere, and saved on all those uniforms. Annapolis travels a familiar path. If you’ve seen An Officer and a Gentleman, you’ll recognize where we’re going. All the stock characters are here. There’s The Speech about weeding out the unfit. There’s Tyrese Gibson as Cole, an icy upperclass taskmaster who takes a dislike to Jake. There’s muddy physical training, tons of push-ups, and hazing. There’s a beautiful fellow midshipman, Ali, played by Jordana Brewster. But that’s all in the background, because Annapolis is mostly about boxing. After more training footage than you’ll see in two Rocky films, Jake and Cole square off in the academy’s intramural boxing championship. How that turns out isn’t important. Nor is much else. Annapolis doesn’t so much as end; it just comes to a stop. There are some fine supporting performances. Donnie Wahlberg does a good job as a tough-love academy instructor, Burgess Meredith with shoulder boards. My favorite character was Jake’s classmate and confidante, played by Vicellous Reon Shannon. Nicknamed “Twins” for his physique, he’s an overweight underachiever who gets special treatment from the upperclassmen, to the point of desperation. Shannon gives a heartfelt, funny performance. I cared a lot more about him than I did Franco’s Jake. Franco devotes much of his on-camera time to sweating and staring moodily across the water. Annapolis is a large enough stage for a love story, a coming-of-age story, or a reconciliation-with-dad story. Annapolis tries to contain all these, but never lets us know what is at the heart of it all. It’s a set of sideshows, with no main show. Bottom Line:
Cut class. |
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Transamerica:
A Most Idiosyncratic Road Trip Like Monster and Capote, Transamerica is a decent movie framing a showcase performance. Though not as disguised as Charlize Theron was, Felicity Huffman is altered enough to make you blink occasionally, separating her actual features from those that were changed slightly to aid her portrait of Bree, a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual. Bree lives a constrained and strained life, completely cutting herself off from her past to live her new life as a woman. A week before her surgery, Bree receives a phone call from someone looking for Stanley, Bree’s previous identity, and learns his son needs to be bailed out of jail in New York. As her therapist is about to sign off on the consent form for the surgery, Bree offhandedly mentions the strange phone call she received, and her therapist rescinds permission, contingent on Bree traveling from L.A. to New York to explore this unresolved part of her past as a man. With the hours dwindling before her appointment at the hospital, Bree flies to New York to spring her 17-year-old son Toby from jail. Pretending to be a missionary, she offers Toby a ride to L.A., hoping and trying to push him off on the first willing relative of his that she can find. Instead, veiled as a stodgy church lady, she learns more about him as they travel across the country. As he was in jail for hustling and drug possession, their journey through the Bible belt and other places not often graced by the presence of transgendered people is made even more tense. While the film is solidly written and researched, with good insights into one transsexual’s life and offers much in the way of both drama and humor, it’s Huffman’s performance as the uptight, calculated Bree that’s most worth viewing. Not only does she do a marvelous job as an underrepresented type of character, she also creates a wonderful and aching portrayal of someone who must live in a completely constructed reality, removing herself entirely from her roots and considering every movement and every sound in her quest to become who she really is. Particularly when she is going through the country, passing as a bio-woman, going in “deep stealth” to places that would certainly be less than welcoming if they knew the whole truth about her, she’s a marvel to watch, Beyond that, Transamerica is worth watching simply because it’s a subject seldom explored in film, barring the occasional small, under distributed documentary. It has its faults, particularly Bree’s ongoing lie about why she posted Toby’s bail. What starts as a joke at the jail (“I’m from… the Church of the Potential Father!”) is awkwardly turned into a ridiculous cover, and becomes a gag that goes on for far too long. Transamerica will be talked about more for its subject than for its actual merits, but fortunately the film itself holds up well enough that it won’t be a disservice to those it represents. It’s regrettable that there are so few transsexual characters in film so this one will be made representative of such wide and varied experiences, but this community could get far worse representation. Bottom line: an intelligent look at an under explored subject. |
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