stronaut Spencer Armacost (Depp) promises his schoolteacher wife Jillian
that he'll phone her from the space shuttle during his mission the next day. And, to
her surprise, she actually gets the call. "I'm right above you. I want you
to smile for me," he tells her.
But later, she hears that Spencer and his partner, Alex Streck (Nick
Cassavetes), have lost touch with Earth for two minutes following an explosion in
space. Rushed to NASA by aide Sherman Reese (Morton), Jillian and Streck's
wife, Natalie (Donna Murphy), watch anxiously as the shuttle lands.
Back on Earth, Spencer recovers quickly, but Alex has a harder time. However,
they both eventually get back on their feet and are hailed as American
heroes. That's when Spencer breaks the surprising news to Jillian: He's
quitting the astronaut corps, taking a job with an aerospace firm and the
two are moving to New York City. Natalie, meanwhile, confides her post-mission anxieties to Jillian.
"Those two minutes, they almost died," she says. "To go through that and
never talk about it--it's bizarre."
At the going away party, Jillian watches in horror as Alex and Natalie
argue and Alex suddenly convulses and dies. Later, at the wake, a
distraught Natalie tells Jillian: "He's hiding inside me."
It's not long before Natalie dies too.
Once in New York,
Jillian tries to get Spencer to tell her what happened
in space. It was cold as death, he tells her: "Then I felt warmth--it was
the warmth of you, Jillian."
Later, she discovers that she's pregnant, carrying twins. But this good
news is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a disheveled Reese in
New York. He corners her in a toy store, warning her that Spencer may not
be what he seems. He also relates disturbing news about Natalie's death. Is
Reese crazy?
As Jillian tries to uncover the truth, Spencer watches her. Has he
changed? And if he has, what does that mean for the new life growing inside
her?
"I'm going to be here...always."
The Astronaut's Wife, from first-time director Rand Ravich, is a new
take on an old story: specifically, Roman Polanski's 1968 supernatural
thriller Rosemary's Baby. It even boasts its own Cassavetes: Nick Cassavetes,
son of Rosemary's Baby star John Cassavetes.
But where the former was an exercise in campy dread, Astronaut's
Wife is dead serious, moves at a glacial pace and expends a lot of
energy on mood and setup that leads to very little payoff.
Not that it's a bad film. Ravich has a terrific eye and tells his story
almost exclusively from Jillian's point of view, resulting in some
unorthodox storytelling and stunning images. A space shuttle launch is a
rattling window; bad news on TV is blood on a cucumber. Jillian's growing
fear of her husband is conveyed in nightmares or, in one key sequence,
overhead images of each of them in separate elevators, as viewed from a
security monitor.
The film also looks great, particularly the Armacosts' chilly New York
penthouse, which looks like the presidential suite on the Death Star. At
crucial moments, Ravich also favors extreme close-ups, particularly of
Theron's luscious lips.
There are also some nice character moments, like Jillian's interactions with
her irrepressible fourth-grade class, and Spencer's diatribe against a
politician moviegoers learn is the president.
And the cast is great, especially supporting roles by veterans like Blair
Brown, Morton, Tom Noonan and Samantha Eggar and newcomer DuVall. Theron is
luminous and sympathetic, and Depp manages to be folksy and threatening at
the same time.
But the good parts don't quite add up to a suspenseful whole. The
audience is teased right up to the end about the central question--is
Spencer an alien, or isn't he? But, by the time the answer comes, the audience
isn't likely to care much. The movie creeps along slowly, leaving moviegoers
feeling like voyeurs of Jillian's paranoia.
he Vikings were bad men. At least, that is the common 21st-century view.
However, despite their ferocity and warrior acumen, they were not the fearless
fighters modern humans believe. There were things, shadowy things, hungry things, things
that pierced the Norsemen's hearts with fear. The things were called "spirits in
the mist" and they stole into villages at night, murdering the innocents and
eating their corpses. Such is the premise of The 13th Warrior.
A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead, the
movie stars Antonio Banderas as Ibn Fahdlan, an Arab poet who covets his
neighbor's wife. Unfortunately, the neighbor has friends in
high places, and Fahdlan is expelled from Baghdad on an emissary's trek to the Northlands. En route, Fahdlan falls in with a Viking clan
to escape marauding Turks.
So far, so good, but the Northmen--as Fahdlan calls the Vikes--are summoned to
help a fellow clan. Their shaman claims that 12 Northmen (one for each month of
the year) and one foreigner must go on the journey to aid the brother Vikings.
All eyes turn to Banderas. A couple of scenes and two longboats later, Fahdlan
finds himself one of a baker's dozen warriors on a mission to save fellow
Vikings who are being ravaged by vicious animalistic creatures. Let the slashing
begin.
Tough, believable and warm
The 13th Warrior is quickly amassing a
bad reputation, due mainly to plenty of bad reviews from critics.
It's a reputation the film doesn't deserve.
Banderas turns in an excellent performance as a poet turned warrior. Want a pumped-up superhero lead
on steroids? Look elsewhere. Banderas is simply a man. He fights, he fears, he prays to
Allah to let him live the story's climactic moments well.
Initially disdainful of the rough Northmen, he learns they have knowledge and
honor equal to, but different from, that which exists in Baghdad.
Banderas's friend Herger the Joyous (Dennis Storhoi) and their leader, Buliwyf
(Vladimir Kulich), are tough yet believable characters. The warmth between
Storhoi and Banderas is real, and it pulls viewers into the circle of 13, making
their fate an issue that matters. On the other hand, Kulich's character
displays a strength of will, a focus of purpose, that's refreshing in today's
conditionally moralistic film world.
Is 13th Warrior bloody? Yes, but the real question should be, is the blood
for purpose or panache? Unlike the sprinkler incident in Blade or the
blood-river passageway in Event Horizon, 13th Warrior's gore sets a
mood. These were gritty, dirty, brutal times. The task of fighting and killing
humans with blunt clubs and 60-pound swords was a bloody endeavor. To ignore
that would have made the movie less.
An edge-of-seat experience, The 13th Warrior is one of the better adventure
flicks of the year. Its blend of real characters, plausible plot and tense
action grabs viewers by the imagination and doesn't let go.
