Be Cool (DVD)

...the Russian mafia. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could just be cool?

Director F Gary Gray clearly isn't a man afraid of unoriginality; he previously helmed "The Italian Job" remake. That could be the reason that "Be Cool" feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a real story. For one thing it's a sequel to a very popular film and for another it trades heavily on the reputations and charisma of its stars. ...
...chain-smoking in an attempt to be commanding. He occasionally relents and lets the slightly more charming twinkly-eyed side do the talking, but it still doesn't qualify as acting. He's still trying to trade on the kudos lent him by "Pulp Fiction", but those days are long gone and he's plunged too deep into the mainstream to be considered a cult figure. He's now just a portly middle-aged man on the slide.

Uma Thurman disappoints ... more

Chili Palmer is back; the former Miami shylock has tired of the film industry and considers branching out into the music business. The die is cast when he sees talented songstress Linda Moon performing in a club. But her twitchy manager doesn't want to let go of her and Chili is dragged into an even more dangerous world than the film industry. He finds himself pursued by would-be actors, gangsta rappers and the Russian mafia. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could just be cool?

Director F Gary Gray clearly isn't a man afraid of unoriginality; he previously helmed "The Italian Job" remake. That could be the reason that "Be Cool" feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a real story. For one thing it's a sequel to a very popular film and for another it trades heavily on the reputations and charisma of its stars. Gray falls short because he is clearly in awe of his actors and allows them to drive the action rather than using them to service the story. This leads to a lack of directorial voice, an over-long running time and plodding pacing. There are too many lingering close-ups of the leads, as if Gray couldn't quite believe his luck in directing such big names. The celebrity cameos are overlong, making it feel like he is fawning over James Woods et al. As if that wasn't bad enough, he gives a lot of musicians cameos where they merely show why they aren't actors. The big set-pieces feel flabby and contrived as, for example, John Travolta and Uma Thurman try to recapture their chemistry and relive past "Pulp Fiction" glories in a prolonged dance sequence that is neither as interesting nor as amusing as Tarantino's version. His action sequences are slow-moving and lack excitement because Gray is too busy populating them with zany characters like toupee-wearing Russian hitmen. There is too much emphasis on the musical interludes and the film is built around them instead of vice versa. So the movie feels like a series of sketches and music videos with a lame attempt at plotting pasted over the top. This isn't helped with his often gimmick-laden direction that uses speeded up inserts, grainy digital video footage and dead men's point-of-view to no apparent end. Then there's the ridiculous end-credits dancing montage…

Peter Steinfeld's script is based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard, who wrote it after seeing the film of his original book. Which may go some way to explain why this is such a poorly-conceived, self-referential screenplay. First of all, the writer assumes everyone watching the movie has seen the original, so doesn't bother with any character development for Chili Palmer, allowing Travolta to coast along. Secondly there are so many new characters to introduce that there's virtually no time to develop their backgrounds, so the majority feel two-dimensional. The relationship between Chili and record company-owning widow Edie Athens is rushed and pointless, building on non-existent chemistry that is never given a chance to grow. The speech is far from snappy, lumbering Chili with the motto "No more than I have to - if that." There is a lack of banter that slows the film down and Cedric The Entertainers monologue on the influence of black Americans feels like it's been airlifted in from another movie. There are too many references to the first film with a poster for "Tom Hanks is 'Mr Lovejoy' - A Film by Harry Zim" cropping up, too many nods to a sequel to the film-within-a-film from the first movie and all the comments about sequels never being as good as the original. How true that is of this one. It gets sucked into the post-ironic mire, apparently believing that if you say something isn't funny then do it, it makes it funny; except it doesn't. Then there's the frankly abhorrent behaviour towards Elliot, the gay bodyguard, who is subjected to the kind of verbal abuse that has no place in modern life, let alone the movies.

I'm not a big fan of John Travolta because he picks one mode of acting for a film and sticks to it through thick and thin. It's no different with "Be Cool", where he goes for po-faced frowning and chain-smoking in an attempt to be commanding. He occasionally relents and lets the slightly more charming twinkly-eyed side do the talking, but it still doesn't qualify as acting. He's still trying to trade on the kudos lent him by "Pulp Fiction", but those days are long gone and he's plunged too deep into the mainstream to be considered a cult figure. He's now just a portly middle-aged man on the slide.

Uma Thurman disappoints as sexy widow Edie; she's clearly too used to working with Quentin Tarantino and his ludicrously overwritten and self-consciously cool scripts. In that context halting delivery and mannered acting are par for the course but here they undermine a badly underwritten role. Her attempts at girlish drunkenness and sultry flirting feel uncomfortable and embarrassing to watch. Vince Vaughn is horribly miscast as the irritating gangsta wannabe Raji. He's never allowed to let his natural charm shine through and like the character he plays, he tries too hard but fails miserably at character comedy. Christina Milian makes a warm, genuine debut as singer Linda Moon, though oddly for a singer, her musical performances feel theatrical and heavy-handed and the lip-synching on her later performances is terrible. Harvey Keitel phones in his performance as ex-mafioso Nicky Carr, who ironically spends most of the film on the blower. The performances by musicians are passable on the whole, though Aerosmith front man Steve Tyler lets the side down with a wooden performance that would make a sideboard blush.

The most consistently amusing actors are those in bit parts, with The Rock proving he can do consistently funny as Raji's put-upon gay bodyguard Elliott. He makes the most of his moderate talent playing a bad actor with his tongue firmly in cheek. Cedric the Entertainer is bluff and cheery as rap producer Sin LaSalle, determined to get what he wants by whatever means necessary (watch him lay about a radio producer with a fish slice because he won't play Sin's brand of rap) but always with a sense of propriety. Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 from Outkast) proves he has a nice comic touch as scene-stealing Dabu the misguided gangsta rapper.

As the film is set in the music industry, music plays a big part; too big. The soundtrack runs rampant over the film, threatening to drown out the dialogue in a misguided attempt to keep the pace of the film up. There is an absence of consistency with the music skipping from jazzy funk to disco, Portuguese samba to swing and gangsta rap to country and western. Tracks by The Black Eyed Peas, Cher and of course Aerosmith and Christina Milian (including a duet of "Cryin'") are shoehorned in. But instead of advancing the story, they stop it in its tracks, expecting both audience and characters to sit around and wait for it to be over before getting on with the more interesting bits of the film.

Poor Uma Thurman gets the rough end of the stick with some truly awful costumes that include a hideous stripy catsuit and a deeply unflattering all-white ensemble that wouldn't look out of place at a 70s revival. At least she has some mildly amusing slogan T-shirts that say "Mourning" and "Widow" in funereal black. Travolta fares better with some well cut suits in traditional black and The Rock has some interesting cowboy outfits.

This is a film that feels like a pastiche of a parody. It is too busy back-slapping its actors and being self-referential to bother with putting together a decent story or well-written characters. At almost two hours it feels flabby and could have done with losing at least half-an-hour in the editing room. F Gary Gray would do well to come up with some new ideas instead of waiting for another remake or sequel to land on his desk before he gets behind a camera again. It is largely his fault that this film is so flaccid, though bloater-boy Travolta should shoulder some of the blame. A couple of cult films do not a career make and he should retire from acting and go into his second job as an airline pilot full-time. Unless you're a massive fan of Fat-T I'd avoid this one.
 

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