“Megan Leavey” Distributed by Bleeker Street Films, 116 Minutes, Rated PG-13, Released June 09, 2017:
About halfway through the movie “Megan Leavey,” the title character, a US Marine Corps corporal partnered with a bomb-detecting German Shepherd dog, is on a mine-removal detail in Iraq, in the desert outside Ramadi during the Gulf War. Corporal Leavey and her canine partner Rex have been remarkably successful so far, locating and flagging dozens of mines, possibly saving hundreds of their fellow Marines.
Without warning, an IED—an improvised explosive device—is detonated directly beneath them. The young Marine and her animal partner are lifted into the air by the explosion, and then thrown like rag dolls some twenty or so feet from the site of the blast.
By that point in the movie, the audience has developed an emotional investment in both Leavey and the dog. And the bomb removal mission has been so successful and is so near to completion that although the scene in the film was suspenseful, at times almost unbearably tense, that the viewer sensed it was almost over, that the scene was going to simply point to the effectiveness of the team’s training.
And for that reason, the explosion is an unanticipated, unexpected shock, genuinely stunning to the audience. And as the smoke and dust dissipate and blow away on the desert breeze, the viewer is almost terrified to look, or learn what injuries Leavey and Rex have sustained: Were they killed? Severely wounded? Disabled?
It’s difficult to dislike a motion picture as earnest and eager-to-please as “Megan Leavey,” produced by LD Entertainment and released on June 09 by Bleeker Street. Although the IED explosion experienced by Corporal Leavey and her canine partner is the picture’s central event, the actual point of the film is the young Marine’s post-service endeavor to adopt Rex from the military, opposed by the Corps’ draconian veterinary advisor, who because of the animal’s training and experience has classified Rex as “unadoptable.”
Based on a true story—
based on the real story, it’s important to note, and not
depicting the real story—“Megan Leavey” initially shows an aimless young Generation-X woman drifting without direction through life, living without responsibilities in her divorced mother’s home.
The death of a friend from an overdose compels Leavey to make a change in her lifestyle, an effort to assume some discipline and direction. So the young woman spontaneously joins the Marine Corps. Following basic training—she barely passes—Leavey remains persistently undisciplined, frequently in trouble and finding herself assigned to menial duties as a means of punishment.
While being punished by swamping out the cages of the dogs assigned to the Military Police K9 detail, Leavey begins to bond with Rex, an unusually difficult, untamed, and aggressive German Shepherd. Even though she’s initially intimidated by the animal, Leavey soon finds herself requesting assignment as a Military Police K9 handler. And when eventually her request is reluctantly granted, the young Marine finally finds the inspiration and self-discipline to pursue success as a Marine.
When Rex impulsively bites the hand of his original partner severely enough to fracture a number of bones, Leavey pleads to be partnered with the dog. Leavey and Rex train together in the bomb-detection detail, and continue to bond—two misfits finding in each other a soulmate. Eventually Leavey and Rex are deployed together to Iraq.
Because of Leavey’s gender, she and Rex are at first limited to performing missions in secured areas—female K9 handlers, we are told, were prohibited at the time from assignment to unsecured forward areas or battlefields. But because of a scarcity of K9 teams, the rule is broken—Leavey and Rex volunteer and eventually are assigned to actual battle missions.
It is during such a mission—mine clearance on the battlefield outside Ramadi—that Leavey and Rex encounter the exploding IED. Instead of being killed or seriously wounded, the young Marine and her canine partner are only stunned—Leavey suffers a nosebleed and is later revealed to have sustained punctured eardrums. But the Marine and her dog refuse to be evacuated from the battlefield to a field hospital. Instead, Leavey stands up and brushes off her uniform, takes Rex’s leash, and elects to continue the mission.
The diminutive, animated, and sometimes delicate-appearing Kate Mara is unexpectedly effective and eminently persuasive as Leavey. The actress delivers a sensitive and realistic performance as a character at first undisciplined and then ultimately inspired, driven, and tempered and matured both in training and in actual battlefront situations.
And Mara is supported by a cast of mostly unfamiliar performers who similarly deliver credible representations of Leavey’s family, friends, and Marine Corps colleagues: Bradley Whitford and Edie Falco, late of television’s “The West Wing” and “The Sopranos” respectively, portray Leavey’s estranged parents. Rap musician Common is effective as Leavey’s ultimately reasonable and sympathetic drill sergeant. And Ramon Rodriguez is a fellow K9 handler who becomes both a friend to Leavey and an occasional romantic partner.
“Megan Leavey” was directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, whose previous film experience has been as a producer and director of documentary features such as “Blackfish” in 2013, an examination of the captivity of killer whales. Possibly as a result of Cowperthwaite’s documentary background, one weakness in “Megan Leavey” is that the director is sometimes ineffective in allowing characters to develop and sequences to unfold, a problem not quite a difficult in a documentary film, in which brief footage simply needs to be inserted to establish complex points.
Prior to Leavey’s first bomb-detection mission in Iraq, she quietly confides to Rex, “We are so totally unprepared for this.” And her point is well-taken by the viewer, because up until that point most of Leavey’s training with Rex consists of leading the animal on a leash up and down ramps: Only two search-and-identify trainings are shown, one of which is conspicuously less than successful.
Additionally, military films from the silent “Tell It to the Marines” in 1926 through Kathryn Bigelow’s Academy Award-winning 2008 picture “The Hurt Locker” lead a casual viewer to observe that Corporal Leavey seems to be assigned to a particularly genteel and polite battalion of the US Marine Corps—the commanders and even Gunnery Sergeants rarely shout, yell, or issue an order so much as quietly request a favor.
When the Master Sergeant finally loses his patience with Leavey, the script by Pamela Grey, Annie Mumolo, and Tim Lovestedt renders his bawling out more appropriate to Ward Cleaver’s disappointed reasoning with Wally on TV’s “Leave It to Beaver” than the profane hysteria of, say, R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” Ermey, in fact, actually was a USMC drill instructor prior to his career as an actor, and improvised his scenes in Kubrick’s film from memory, based on his military experience.
For a number of reasons mostly related to image and authenticity, the Department of Defense does not often cooperate with the production of Hollywood films. The United States Marine Corps similarly avoids cooperation with film production, pointing out with some pride that the Marine Corps is in the business of making Marines rather than making movies. Both the Defense Department and the USMC withheld cooperation from the production of “Megan Leavey.”
It’s also been reported that “Megan Leavey,” while depicting the US Marine Corps from a remarkably favorable perspective, might’ve taken unusually broad liberties with the facts of the story. A number of veterans have objected to the picture, not only because of the telescoping of the events represented—again, not unusual for a motion picture—but also because some of the actions attributed to Corporal Leavey were allegedly actually performed by other military personnel present during the time.
Undeniable is the denouement of the picture, in which Corporal Leavey and Rex and other veterans of wartime service in the Gulf War are honored during a pre-game ceremony at Yankee Stadium. It’s both interesting and richly inspiring to view footage of the actual real-life event, available on YouTube, and compare it with the depiction of the ceremony at the end of “Megan Leavey.”
Military men and women often return from wartime service facing enormous physical and emotional challenges. And a legitimate question is whether a picture such as “Megan Leavey” diminishes or trivializes the sacrifices our military veterans have endured, and continue to endure. In real life, following the detonation of the IED, Leavey and Rex did not continue their mission, but instead were evacuated from the battlefield to a medical unit.
“Megan Leavey” is a good picture—not a great picture, but a good one. Ultimately, it’s a feel-good movie, warm and fuzzy, surprisingly and refreshingly apolitical, a depiction of brave people performing honorable deeds, and being eventually—and appropriately—rewarded for their service.
For that reason, the 116-minute, PG-13-rated “Megan Leavey” often resembles a PBS Afterschool Special, a gentle depiction of the problems of Gulf War veterans, produced for viewers too young to know, or remember. Both the highest accolade of the picture and the harshest criticism is that “Megan Leavey” ultimately is the “Lassie Come Home” of war movies.
“Megan Leavey” is rated PG-13 for violence, adult language, suggestive material, and thematic elements.
“The Little Things” Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 127 Minutes, Rated R, Released January 29, 2021:
Fans of actor Denzel Washington know that each of his pictures contains a reason the highly-principled actor (and son of a Pentecostal minister) was attracted to the project--a moral intent, emotionally uplifting component, or lesson he wanted to impart to the audience. Even audience-pleasing action thrillers like “Man on Fire” or the “Equalizer” films carry subtexts about the dichotomy between good and evil, and our responsibility to others.
The actor’s fans might have to dig a little deeper than usual to find such an uplifting lesson in “The Little Things,” the new psychological thriller from Warner Bros. Pictures now playing in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming service. But no matter how widely the viewer searches for the moral, this time he might come up short.
In “The Little Things,” Washington plays Joe “Deke” Deacon, a disgraced former Los Angeles homicide detective now toiling as a deputy sheriff 100 miles away in Bakersfield, Kern County. Sent back to his old turf on a lowly errand to transport a piece of evidence in a trivial crime his department’s been investigating, Deacon lands in the middle of a case involving a serial killer with methods similar to the murders he was investigating at the time of his downfall.
When Deacon requests vacation leave from the Kern County PD to casually investigate the Los Angeles case, he soon bumps heads with detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), the LA Sheriff’s Department sergeant who replaced him on the force. As the two lawmen gradually combine their investigations and become reluctant partners, Baxter begins to display the same disquieting emotional characteristics Baxter suffered prior to his undoing.
A tough, humorless but mostly undistinguished police procedural in the tradition of “Dirty Harry” and “Seven,” “The Little Things'' is given prestige by its trio of Academy Award-winning star--Washington and Malek as the cops, and Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”) as their primary suspect. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock (''The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks”), the bad news about the new movie is that with virtually any other contemporary actors in the top roles, the picture would likely have been released without fanfare and quickly forgotten.
Based on a script filmmaker Hancock wrote some 30 years ago, “The Little Things” for no other discernible reason is set during the 1990s, as if Hancock was either too bored or too lazy to blow the dust off his screenplay. With the exception of the vintage automobiles the picture looks and sounds contemporary, but the payphones and pocket pagers are a dead giveaway, at first puzzling the viewer and then becoming a real distraction. This is the rare movie in which the older viewers might need to explain the technology to younger audience members.
Denzel Washington doesn’t invest much of himself into “The Little Things,” at least partly because Hancock’s script doesn’t allow the actor much to work with. As a character, Joe Deacon is fairly one-dimensional, sympathetic but not particularly likable. For a charismatic performer like Washington, that’s a real problem. The actor coasts along as far as he can on his own magnetism and the audience’s goodwill, but contributes little to the picture besides his presence. This is as close as Washington’s likely to get to walking through a picture--it’s a workmanlike performance, but hardly among the actor’s best.
As Baxter, Rami Malek is all quirks and idiosyncrasies. The actor’s chin-first delivery, unblinking gaze, and measured, deliberate vocal vocal tones impart more menace and aggression than Hancock’s routine cop jargon might otherwise contain--every line of dialogue becomes a challenge. Malek’s performance is more a review of his signature mannerisms than a characterization. Jared Leto does much the same as the cops’ prime suspect--with his fixed stare and infuriatingly soft voice augmented by prosthetic makeup and extra padding in his costume, Leto lets the gimmicks do most of the heavy lifting.
Plainly inspired by the manhunt for the Zodiac Killer who terrorized Northern California during the late 1960s and early 1970s (“Dirty Harry” in 1971 and “Zodiac” in 2007 were also based on the still-unsolved case), “The Little Things” contains portent and pretense aplenty, but no real substance and even less of a payoff. While all signs point to a surprise twist at the end, filmmaker Hancock seems to omit the climactic segment. In the process, the filmmaker commits the one unforgivable error in a dramatic structure--his film fails to provide a satisfying resolution.
If Hancock’s script had been framed as a multi-part episode of virtually any hard-hitting television cop drama from the 1980s forward, from “Hill Street Blues” to “NYPD Blue” to “Law and Order,” ”The Little Things” might’ve passed without notice or distinction. Framed as a major motion picture event, the film’s narrative flaws are magnified and enhanced until they sink the picture. It’s appropriate that the picture debuted simultaneously online--it’s a big step in the right direction. The trailer for “The Little Things” is actually better than the movie.
“The Little Things” is rated R for violent and disturbing images, adult language, and nudity (a corpse during an autopsy scene).
“The Way I See It” Distributed by Focus Features, 102 Minutes, Rated PG-13, Released September 18, 2020:
As Americans, we routinely enjoy so many liberties and advantages that we sometimes don’t even notice our blessings even as we rely on them day after typical day. Qualities like kindness and simple decency among our leaders are just unthinkingly accepted as the standards of our natural rights, and rarely are even noticed beyond that...at least until they’re threatened or gone entirely, or when life becomes difficult.
Viewers who love American History are encouraged to take a look at “The Way I See It,” the new documentary from Focus Features now streaming free on NBC’s Peacock TV. Produced by Academy Award-winning actress Laura Dern, this elegant and wonderfully moving picture details the life and career of photojournalist Pete Souza, the official White House photographer during both the Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama presidential administrations. Intimate and often moving, “The Way I See It” looks at life within the walls of the White House from the inside out, and from the bottom up.
Born in Massachusetts in 1954, Pete Souza was educated at Boston University and Kansas State University, and was a photographer for the small-town Hutchinson News in Kansas during the 1970s before moving to job with the Chicago Sun-Times in the early 1980s. In 1983 at age 29, Souza was invited to join the staff of White House photographers during the administration of Ronald Reagan, and became Reagan’s official photographer when predecessor Michael Evans resigned his post in 1985.
In 2004, Souza was asked by CNN to take photographs for a project documenting Illinois politician Barack Obama’s first year in the US Senate, an assignment which eventually led to the publication in July 2008 of “The Rise of Barack Obama,” a collection of Souza’s photos of the popular senator between 2005 and 2008. In the process of completing the continuing CNN project, Souza and the senator grew close enough for the photographer to naturally follow Obama to the White House when he was elected President of the United States.
During his tenure(s) as the official White House photographer, Souza sought to both preserve the dignity and gravity of the Office of the President of the United States and humanize the person occupying the position many Americans view only as a national symbol. In an article published in 2020, Souza wrote, “The presidency deserves someone who is competent and honest, someone who has empathy and compassion, someone who upholds the dignity and shows respect to the office--someone who has character and knows ultimately the presidency isn’t about him (or someday her), but about us.”
In “The Way I See It” we see some of Souza’s most famous photos, accompanied by the recollections from the photographer and often by television news footage depicting the same events. In his narration, Souza tells the stories behind the photos, and fills in some of the details with personal anecdotes and recollections further humanizing the events depicted, adding warmth to the sometimes momentous developments the photos illustrate. We also see the quiet times behind the history, and the personal side of the people who shape our lives and our futures.
In Souza’s photos, we see President Obama filling in as a coach for his young daughter’s basketball team at school, and fighting back tears as he struggles to find words to console the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook. We see the President of the United States frolic happily in the snow with his two young daughters, and hear the details of Souza’s iconic photo in the White House Situation Room during Osama bin Laden’s capture in 2011. And when Souza became engaged in 2013, we hear how the President spontaneously insisted the wedding be held at the While House...with Obama himself officiating.
The surprising part of “The Way I See It” is not the amount of fascinating and compelling information the film contains, although it’s considerable. Rather, the surprise comes in the number of times the viewer’s likely to be moved to tears--tears of pride in the warmth and empathy we’re capable of reaching, tears of sadness at how cruel and impersonal we occasionally become...and tears of hope for a better and more compassionate future. This wonderful little movie is highly recommended. Check it out.
“The Way I See It” is rated PG-13 for brief strong language.
“One Night in Miami” Distributed by Amazon Studios, 110 Minutes, Rated R, Released December 25, 2020:
An intriguing premise is given a fascinating, challenging, and sometimes even inspiring treatment in “One Night in Miami,” a new motion picture adaptation of playwright Kemp Powers’ 2013 stage play now showing on the Amazon Prime streaming site. Directed by Regina King, in “One Night in Miami” four towering figures from 20th century American history gather together for an evening to discuss their lives, ambitions, and visions and dreams for the future.
On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay defied expectations and won the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, defeating 33-year-old odd-on favorite Sonny Liston in a heavily promoted, sold-out seven-round bout in Miami, Florida. Among the luminaries present in the arena that night were NFL legend Jim Brown, entertainer Sam Cooke, and American Muslim minister and civil rights leader Malcolm X.
Based on and inspired by the apocryphal interaction between the celebrated men that night, and speculation regarding what might’ve been discussed among them, in “One Night in Miami” Malcolm, Brown, and Cooke, along with the famously outspoken Clay, meet together in the boxer’s Miami motel room after the fight...on the eve of his surprising conversion to the American Muslim faith and adoption of the Islamic name Muhammad Ali.
First performed in 2013 at the Rogue Machine Theater in Los Angeles, Powers’ play won three LA Drama Critics Circle Awards and received nearly universal acclaim not only for its studied and persuasive portrayals of the four American icons depicted in the narrative, but also for rendering them in such intimate, familiar, and realistic detail. That each of the four remains so firmly fixed in America’s popular lexicon makes their portrayal a daunting task for any actors who attempt the roles.
Adapted for the screen by author Powers himself and directed by the acclaimed and prolific Academy Award-winning actress Regina King in her feature filmmaking debut, “One Night in Miami” remains very much an actor’s vehicle. The film’s stage origins are plain--as director, King resists the temptation to “open up” Powers’ powerful narrative and exploit the advantages of film.
Rather, King allows her well-chosen cast the flexibility to interpret the personalities of their well-known characters within the boundaries of their legacies. The actors in “One Night in Miami” are not performing imitations or impressions. Each of the actors, physically and through the enhancements of makeup, lighting, and costume, resembles the historical figures they’re portraying closely enough to be easily recognized, and employ some of their subject’s signature characteristics. But it’s the actors themselves who bring the history to vivid life in the picture.
And the approach works well. The performances in King’s picture are always persuasive, but the characterizations--and the real historical personalities’ natural charisma--never overwhelm the narrative. That’s important in a drama depicting celebrated persons many audiences may know only from history books or through aging black-and-white newsreel footage. Historical icons become human beings in “One Night in Miami”--people with faults, shortcomings, egos, dreams, ambitions, and feelings.
Much like the session musicians in the recent film adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the four historical figures arguing the future and advancement of the African-American people of their era in “One Night in Miami” predict the future lies in one word: Power. Only their definitions of the word differ: To Malcolm, power is a spiritual entity, while to Brown it’s empowerment to pursue individual dreams and freedoms, and to Cooke it’s the financial independence to fulfill his artistic ambitions. “I don’t want a piece of the pie,” Cooke says, “I want the recipe.”
Wavering between the three is the young Cassius Clay. Intelligent, outspoken, prone to exaggerated public statements that attract publicity but make him appear brash, arrogant, and even clownish, the fighter is still the inexperienced 22-year-old youngster among the other men in the room, overwhelmed by his first taste of global fame and fortune. Malcolm’s Islamic faith seems attractive to the young Cassius...but the pleasures and excesses extolled by Brown and Cooke also beckon. “Drink it while you can,” murmurs Brown as he proffers a surreptitious flask of liquor to the young fighter.
There’s no real star either among the four primary characters in “One Night in Miami” or the actors portraying them--each role is as essential to Powers’ narrative as the other three. As Malcolm X, the British Kingsley Ben-Adir is bookish and solemn behind Malcolm’s signature goatee and glasses; Aldis Hodge (“Hidden Figures,” “The Invisible Man”) instinctively captures Jim Brown’s laconic power, but also projects sensitivity and a streetwise wisdom; Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) as Sam Cooke starts slowly but warms to his character as the movie unfolds; and Eli Goree as Cassius Clay is a naive showoff trying to fulfill some great expectations indeed.
Also featuring small roles for Michael Imperioli as trainer Angelo Dundee, Lawrence Gilliard Jr. as cornerman Bundini Brown, Joaquina Kalukango as Malcolm’s worried wife Betty Shabazz, Lance Reddick as Malcolm’s ominous bodyguard, and Beau Bridges in a brief appearance as a cheerfully bigoted Brown family acquaintance, “One Night in Miami” is rated R for adult language throughout.
“Mank” Distributed by Netflix, 131 Minutes, Rated R, Released November 13, 2020:
Most movie buffs, especially the connoisseurs of classic film comedy, will likely already be familiar with the name and career of Herman J. Mankiewicz.
A onetime newspaperman, the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and drama critic for both The New York Times and The New Yorker, Mankiewicz was lured to Hollywood during the 1920s with the promise of easy money as a writer of scenarios for silent pictures. During the early days of the talking picture era, Mankiewicz was responsible for some of the sharpest and most sidesplitting comedies ever made...and in 1940 was the co-writer, with Orson Welles, of “Citizen Kane,” usually referred to by critics as the greatest film of all time.
Called “the funniest man in New York” by writer and critic Alexander Woollcott and noted for his irreverent attitudes toward life in general and the motion picture business in particular, Mankiewicz was also plagued with alcoholism, and enduring rehabilitation during the production of “Citizen Kane.” One biographer observed that Mankiewicz’ behavior “made him seem erratic even by the standards of Hollywood drunks.”
With a roster of friends and collaborators which included George S. Kaufman, Orson Welles, W.C. Fields, William Randolph Hearst, Dorothy Parker, Ben Hecht, and the Marx Brothers, Mankiewicz’s life had it all--sidesplitting comedy, compelling human drama, and heartbreaking tragedy. Any film student or historian who’s ever read a biography of Mankiewicz or an account of his astonishing career has likely wished for a movie biography of the man and his times, and mused about which actor might play the role.
Well, wonder no more--written by journalist Jack Fincher, directed by his son David Fincher (“Seven,” “Gone Girl”) and starring Academy Award-winning actor Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, the new movie “Mank” is now streaming on Netflix. And the good news is that the movie gets most of the facts right and is as challenging and rich in anecdotal material as movie historians might’ve hoped.
The bad news is that “Mank” might not be a picture anyone but a film school professor will enjoy, or want to see again. Like “Citizen Kane,” Fincher’s film biography of Herman Mankiewicz will dazzle viewers with its unique filming style, crisp black-and-white cinematography, and assault-on-the-senses editing. There’s much to admire in “Mank,” but precious little to like, or be entertained by--the movie’s as dry and informative as a documentary or an entry in an encyclopedia...and about as lively.
Framed by scenes depicting a washed-up, bedridden, and dissipated Mankiewicz simultaneously recovering from injuries sustained in an automobile crash and attempting to dry himself out while dictating to a secretary the script which will eventually become “Citizen Kane,” the film depicts in flashbacks Mankewicz’ colorful movie career...especially his relationship with the married newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies, which will eventually inform much of the controversy surrounding filmmaker Orson Welles’ historic picture.
With its evocative photography, lighting, and editing and a narrative which essentially begins at the end and then works backward in time to explain how the central character arrived there, “Mank” is clearly tailored to emulate “Citizen Kane” in style. But in its content and tone, Fincher’s picture resembles “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s 1994 film biography of the notorious 1950s auteur of terrible movies such as “Bride of the Monster” and “Jail Bait.”
And that’s both fortunate and unfortunate. Director Tim Burton found in the life of Ed Wood a moving, affectionate, brutally funny, and ultimately joyous celebration of the art of filmmaking. “Mank” infuses its narrative with facts and information but little spirit, and no joy. It’s as if filmmaker Fincher and screenwriter Fincher want to impress us with all their research and knowledge of their subject. And when every single line of dialogue in a picture is either an exposition or a wisecrack, the audience grows awfully weary….especially after 131 minutes.
As Mankiewicz, actor Gary Oldman contributes another vivid characterization to a list of movie roles which includes Beethoven, Jacob Marley, Dracula, Lee Oswald, and Winston Churchill. Stout and tallowy, scattered, wily, with irreverent sensibilities which border on morbid, Oldman’s portrayal breathes doomed life into the man who became a living dichotomy, a legend among writers yet damned by his own choices, and by all appearances laughing all the way to his own grave. In playing Mankiewicz, Oldman seems to be the only one having fun with the picture.
A who’s who of character actors appear with varying degrees of effectiveness as some of the luminaries in Mank’s orbit. Charles Dance is probably the most successful in his role as a hulking and cadaverous William Randolph Hearst, while MGM despot Louis B. Mayer looks a lot like actor Arliss Howard in owlish horn-rimmed glasses and an ill-fitting suit. Amanda Seyfried is pixieish and the pixelated Marion Davies...who Fincher’s script suggests might’ve been Mankiewicz’ great unrequited love.
“Mank” was a labor of love for director David Fincher, an homage to his late father. The screenplay was a longtime hobby of Jack Fincher, a former magazine writer and San Francisco Bureau Chief for Life Magazine. The younger Fincher originally intended to produce his father’s screenplay in 1997 with actor Kevin Spacey as Mankiewicz and Jodie Foster as Marion Davies, as a followup to his picture “The Game.” But Fincher encountered difficulty in securing the necessary financing, partly due to his insistence on filming the picture in black and white...and partly due to the failure of “The Game” at the box office.
“Mank” is rated R for language concerns and adult themes.
