The Heat

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – Sometimes funny, but relentlessly foul-mouthed, director Paul Feig’s buddy comedy “The Heat” (Fox) revels in its own vulgarity.

In large part, that’s because of the character of Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy), a scruffy, rule-averse Boston police officer who’s none too pleased when she’s forced to team, temporarily, with uptight FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock). As this odd couple work to bring down a drug lord, though, their squabbling is predictably transformed into friendship.

Feig gains some traction from McCarthy’s wild riffs at the expense of stiff straight-man Bullock. But gears grind as gritty vocabulary works its way into virtually every sentence of dialogue.

Additionally, Mullins’ inability to form emotional bonds with any of the numerous men in her life, while shown to be dysfunctional, nevertheless leads to a comic (albeit indirect) treatment of casual sex.

A recurring joke concerns the bad religious art favoured by Mullins’ South Boston Irish clan of perpetually quarrelling relatives. But, far from being irreverent, this segment of the humour satirises the cheapening of faith. Thus we see Jesus, against a background of black velvet, taking part in various sporting events as a co-opted member of one cherished Beantown team after another.

While that aspect of life in Southie may pass comic muster, Mullins’ fondness for low street talk – a taste her unruly family members are portrayed as sharing all-too-fully- leaves no F-bomb within reach unexploded. Among the resulting casualties is the occasionally touching – if formulaic – bond that eventually unites the two previously lonely main characters.

The film contains a frivolous view of promiscuity, much sexual humour, frequent instances of profanity and excessive rough and crude language

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

By Joseph McAleer, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – Are terrorists born or made? And which is worse: a jihadist just following the precepts of the Koran, or a Wall Street corporate raider, reaping misery as he follows orders, cuts jobs and increases profits?

Such dichotomies, as illogical as they may seem, form the basis of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (IFC), a thought-provoking – and provocative – exploration of the wide-ranging impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks both on individuals and on whole cultures.

Working from the novel by Mohsin Hamid, director Mira Nair (“Amelia”) lets the audience pass judgment, for better or worse. The result is an absorbing story with a flawed conclusion – one that seems to prioritize the force of circumstance over conscience when choosing between good and evil.

In Pakistan in 2011, an American professor has been kidnapped by radicals, who demand a ransom and the release of political prisoners. Hot on the trail is Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), a journalist who has been recruited by the CIA to interview the chief suspect, Changez (Riz Ahmed).

Changez, who teaches at the same university as the victim, is a firebrand, notorious for his lectures denouncing the United States and its imperialist policies abroad (yet commanding his students to pursue peace, not violence). But he wasn’t always so anti-American, as he proves by recounting his life story to Bobby.

“Looks can be deceiving,” he insists. “I am a lover of America. Although it was hard for me to leave my family, I left to go West, where I was welcomed with open arms.”

Told in flashback, the film explores Changez’s journey, first as a brilliant foreign student at Princeton, and then on the path of his meteoric rise to the top within a wicked corporation run by Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland).

Changez is seduced by money and power, as well as by the boss’ niece, Erica (Kate Hudson), a bohemian artist with big issues of her own. He travels the world as a “Master of the Universe,” downsizing companies and racking up corporate profits.

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center fall, however, so does Changez. “You picked a side after 9/11,” he tells Bobby. “I didn’t have to. It was picked for me.”

Changez becomes a victim of discrimination and suspicion because of his appearance and accent. Brick by brick, the careful foundation he has built for himself in the New World crumbles. As he witnesses resurgent American patriotism and militarism with intervention in Afghanistan, he is drawn home to a new life as an activist.

So does Changez become a terrorist (“reluctant” or not), or is he a victim of circumstance? Whatever the outcome, the film overlooks the real “fundamental” issue at play, whether you’re from Pakistan, the U.S., or Bora Bora: the ethical imperative to refrain from the rampant pursuit of one’s own self-interest, heedless of the consequences for others.

The film contains fleeting action violence and gunplay, a gruesome image, brief sensuality, and some profane and crass language.

Pain and Gain

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) – The fact-based crime chronicle “Pain and Gain” (Paramount) presents itself as a merry riff on the theme of a gang too comically inept to shoot straight. Yet the vicious antics of its central characters — acted out within a lowlife milieu of strippers and porn pushers – are too repellant to be amusing. Snarky swipes at religion throughout Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s screenplay, moreover, culminate in blasphemous humor and the character of a pervert priest.

Set in Florida in the early 1990s, director Michael Bay’s would-be caper follows a trio of dimwitted bodybuilders: personal trainers Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) and ex-con gym rat Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie). Dissatisfaction with his working-class lot prompts Daniel to come up with an extortion scheme – and to recruit his two pals as accomplices.

Their target is one of Daniel’s clients, abrasive but successful businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub). Kidnapping Victor, the boys plan to beat and torture him into signing over all his holdings to them. Once he does so, they’ll kill him.

Despite the array of slapstick errors they commit while executing it, their harebrained plot almost succeeds. But then, thanks in large part to the intervention of straight-arrow police officer-turned-private-eye Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris), things begin to unravel.

In adapting a series of magazine articles by Pete Collins, Bay invites viewers to marvel at the he-men’s jaw-dropping stupidity. But the nasty proceedings that pit these dopes against the thoroughly unlikable Victor – and, subsequently, against a predictably low-minded porno king – involve too much cruelty and bloodletting to register as comic.

Via Adrian’s behind-bars conversion to a simplistic, utterly hypocritical brand of Catholicism, faith comes in for a satiric bashing. So it’s hardly a surprise when we see the seedy clergyman to whom Adrian turns for help on his release from the big house start to put the moves on his newfound protege.

Happily married Ed provides the picture’s slim moral core. But, surrounded by gleeful greed, mindless mayhem and dumbbell debauchery, the center, in the words of poet W.B. Yeats, cannot hold.

The film contains a negative portrayal of Christian faith and clergy, brutal, sometimes gory violence, strong sexual content – including graphic sex acts, masturbation and upper female and rear nudity – drug use, about a half-dozen instances of profanity and pervasive rough and crude language.