Review: ‘Knox Goes Away,’ starring Michael Keaton, James Marsden, Suzy Nakamura, Joanna Kulig, Ray McKinnon, Lela Loren, Marcia Gay Harden and Al Pacino

March 27, 2024

by Carla Hay

Michael Keaton in “Knox Goes Away” (Photo by Marshall Adams/Saban Films)

“Knox Goes Away”

Directed by Michael Keaton

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the Los Angeles area, the dramatic film “Knox Goes Away” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African American, Asians and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: An assassin with dementia agrees to help his estranged adult son, who has murdered a man and wants to cover up the crime.

Culture Audience: “Knox Goes Away” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and noir crime dramas, even if the movie has several plot holes and unanswered questions.

Michael Keaton in “Knox Goes Away” (Photo by Marshall Adams/Saban Films)

“Knox Goes Away” has the benefit of director/star Michael Keaton’s acting talent, but this movie about an assassin with dementia is dragged down by an uneven tone and a nonsensically convoluted screenplay with plot holes. Al Pacino has a completely useless and unnecessary role in the film. Any movie that wastes Pacino’s talent has got a lot of problems.

Directed by Keaton and written by Gregory Poirier, “Knox Goes Away” (which takes place mostly in the Los Angeles area, where the movie was filmed) tells the story of assassin John Knox (played by Keaton), who finds out early on in the story that he has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is a form of dementia. It’s a neurological disease that progresses quicker than Alzheimer’s disease. John is so paranoid about people finding out about his recent health issues, he travels by plane to San Francisco, where he meets with a medical professional named Dr. Burns (played by Paul Perri), who informs John that John has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. After getting this diagnosis, John is told that it will be only a matter of weeks before he loses his “normal” memory and cognitive abilities.

John (who is divorced and lives alone) is a hardened hit man who was planning to retire anyway. He now has to make arrangements to stay in an assisted living facility, since he has no family members who can take care of him. He keeps this diagnosis a secret from almost everyone he knows. For the people he does not want to tell, John says that he plans to “go away for a while.” John works for a mysterious boss named Jericho, who is never seen or heard in the movie, but Jericho’s name is mentioned several times. John agrees to do “one last job” before he retires, but he does not want to tell Jericho about this planned retirement.

It’s never stated how many years John has been a hit man, but it’s been long enough that it’s implied that it ruined John’s marriage to his ex-wife Ruby Knox (played by Marcia Gay Harden) and led to years of estrangement from their son Miles Knox (played by James Marsden), who both know about John’s past criminal activities and are aware that he’s still an assassin. John is the type of assassin who does not want to know any personal details about his targets. He frequently works with another assassin named Thomas “Tommy” Muncie (played by Ray McKinnon), who is judgmental about John’s cold detachment from their job. It’s an oddly self-righteous attitude for Thomas to have, considering that Thomas commits brutal murders for money too.

John’s “one last job” turns into a disaster. John and Thomas go to the home of their intended target: a man named Elian Zubiri (played by Edwin Garcia II), whom the assassins expect to be home alone. Thomas and John are surprised to see Elian taking a shower with a female companion, later identified as Annette Elmora (played by Nicole Reddinger), an innocent bystander who gets murdered along with Elian.

Because of John’s diminished cognitive abilites, he accidentally shoots and kills Thomas. John stages the crime scene to make the murders of Elian and Annette look like a murder-suicide committed by Elian. John then flees the scene and takes Thomas’ body with him. John later lies to Jericho by saying that Thomas never showed up for this hit job.

Shortly after that fiasco, Miles shows up unannounced at John’s home one night to confess that he has recently murdered a 32-year-old man named Andrew Palmer (played by Charles Bisset), who impregnated Miles’ 16-year-old daughter Kaylee (played by Morgan Bastin) in a sexual predator situation. Miles has a hand injury from this murder, which was committed by stabbing with a kitchen knife. Miles’ wife Cheryl Knox (played by Lela Loren) doesn’t know about this murder, and neither does anyone else at this point. What follows is a ridiculous plan that didn’t have to be as complex as it is in the movie.

Pacino has the role of John’s shady criminal friend named Xavier Crane, who is one of the few people who knows about John’s dementia. Xavier agrees to help John with a crime cover-up, but this character actually didn’t need to be in the movie at all, if John really wanted to keep his cover-up activities as secret as possible. Pacino just sort of shuffles along and mumbles in the drab and uninteresting role of Xavier.

The only other person who is close to John is a sex worker named Annie (played by Joanna Kulig), who has been meeting up with John for sessions at his home, every Tuesday for nearly four years. John is an avid book reader/collector, so he often lends books to Annie so that she can read them and tell him what she thinks about the books. It’s later mentioned in the movie that when John was in the U.S. Army, his Army buddies gave him the nickname Aristotle, because John is so intellectual and well-read. Annie and John are not in love, but they are fond of each other and have some emotional intimacy.

The “noir” tone of “Knox Goes Away” is often clumsily handled when it tries to inject some comedy, in order to make the investigating homicide police officers look idiotic. The lead investigator is Detective Emily Ikari (played by Suzy Nakamura), a jaded and sarcastic cop who always thinks she’s the smartest person in the room and spews some awkward jokes as a way to assert her authority. Nakamura is a scene stealer and has very good comedic timing, but the context in which she says these jokes are often unrealistic and cringeworthy.

For example, there’s a scene where Detective Ikari and some other cops are at the scene of a murder at the murder victim’s home. The murder victim’s body is still there. A crime scene investigation technician (played by Benita Krista Hall) tells Detective Ikari that the victim’s cell phone is locked and can only be unlocked by using facial recognition. Detective Ikari then makes a snide remark by telling the technician to do the obvious: Put the phone up to the victim’s face to unlock the phone. Making this technician look this stupid is the movie’s cheap and lazy setup to have Detective Ikari crack another “joke,” usually at the expense of a subordinate or co-worker.

“Knox Goes Away” also doesn’t do much to explain why John became an assassin. The main things that are revealed about John’s past are that he has a troubled history as a father; he used to be a deep reconnaissance officer in the U.S. Army; and he spent six years in prison for tax evasion. John is supposed to be highly intelligent (he has doctorate degrees in English literature and U.S. history), but he makes a lot of illogical decisions—and not just because of his dementia. It’s because of a weak screenplay that tries to look like it’s clever, but it’s really a long-winded excuse to show some mindless and muddled scheming that leads to a predictable ending.

Saban Films released “Knox Goes Away” in select U.S. cinemas on March 15, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on April 5, 2024.

Review: ‘She Came to Me,’ starring Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, Joanna Kulig, Brian d’Arcy James and Anne Hathaway

October 20, 2023

by Carla Hay

Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei in “She Came to Me” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“She Came to Me”

Directed by Rebecca Miller

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and briefly in Delaware, the comedy/drama film “She Came to Me” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) portraying the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An opera composer, who is in a stale marriage to his psychiatrist, overcomes his writer’s block after he has a sexual encounter with a female tugboat captain, who has a history of stalking, while his 18-year-old stepson has relationship problems of his own that involve an accusation of statutory rape.

Culture Audience: “She Came to Me” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and movies that try to be “slice of life” but aren’t very realistic.

Evan Ellison (pictured in front, at left) and Anne Hathaway (pictured in front, at right) in “She Came to Me” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“She Came to Me” is a meandering, off-balance dumpster of half-baked ideas. It fails to have much compelling drama and isn’t very funny in attempts at absurdist comedy. Everything really falls apart in the last half-hour that is annoying nonsense. The movie’s talented cast members mostly flounder around in characters who often don’t have believable chemistry with each other in relationships where they’re supposed to have believable chemistry.

Written and directed by Rebecca Miller, “She Came to Me” had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. The fact that this subpar movie was at such a prestigious film festival is an example of how family connections (Miller is married to Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis) and having famous cast members can give certain filmmakers an advantage to get their movies into a major film festival. The Berlin International Film Festival tends to choose very artsy movies. There’s nothing artsy about “She Came to Me.”

“She Came to Me” is a clumsy back-and-forth stumble between two storylines that are shoved together in the last 20 minutes in a way that looks completely fake and unearned. It’s as if Miller couldn’t think of a good way to end the movie and came up with something that panders to the lowest-common, silly denominator in the last third of the film, when the tone for the previous two-thirds of the film aimed to have more of a cutting-edge comedic tone.

In “She Came to Me” (which takes place mostly in New York City and briefly in Delaware), the two storylines that are awkwardly placed are about the love life problems of a father and his 18-year-old stepson. The marketing of “She Came to Me” misleadingly makes it look like the father’s storyline is the only focus of the movie, but the son’s storyline gets nearly as much screen time. The teenage romance that takes up so much time in “She Came to Me” is not hinted at in the movie’s poster or trailer.

In the beginning of “She Came to Me,” viewers are introduced to New York City-based opera composer Steven Lauddem (played by Peter Dinklage) and his psychiatrist wife Patricia Jessup-Lauddem (played by Anne Hathaway), who are experiencing a rough patch in their marriage. Steven is mopey and anxious because he has writer’s block and is expected to meet a deadline in a few weeks to complete the first draft of his next opera.

Patricia has her own issues: She seems to be obsessive-compulsive about keeping everything neat and clean. Patricia has relegated her sex life with Steven to be “by appointment only.” She is also conflicted about her interfaith background (her mother was Catholic; her father was Jewish), but Patricia is currently a practicing Catholic.

The first scene in the movie shows Steven and Patricia at a house party. Some of Steven’s colleagues in the opera industry are there. Steven is very uncomfortable and reluctant to be at the party, because he doesn’t want to have to answer questions about his next opera, which he secretly hasn’t even begun to write. Only a few people, such as Patricia, know that Steven has writer’s block. Patricia thinks this party will be a good networking opportunity for Steven.

One of the people at the party is Duftin Haverford (played by Gregg Edelman), a high-ranking official at an opera company. Duftin inevitably asks Steven when Steven’s next opera will be completed. Steven pretends that he can meet Duftin’s deadline for a first draft in two weeks. It’s a deadline that Steven is dreading.

As Duftin walks away from Steven and Patricia, Duftin tells his party companion that Steven had a nervous breakdown five years ago and went into a deep depression. Patricia was Steven’s therapist, but at some point, their relationship obviously became more than a doctor-patient relationship, and they got married. Duftin quips, “If she were my therapist, I’d marry her too.” Little does Duftin know how stagnant this marriage has become.

Meanwhile, Patricia’s 18-year-old son from her first marriage is Julian Jessup (played by Evan Ellison), who is having a happy romance with his 16-year-old girlfriend Tereza Szyskowski (played by Harlow Jane) while they are students at the same high school. Julian and Tereza, who have no siblings, are good students in school and spend as much time as they can together. Tereza and Julian are lab partners in a science class, and they both have aspirations to become “futurist” engineers. It’s mentioned later in the movie that Patricia’s first husband (Julian’s father) left her and Julian and then died after the divorce.

Julian and Tereza are very close, but apparently not close enough for Tereza to introduce Julian to her parents or invite him into her home. Tereza’s mother Magdalena Szymkowski (played by Joanna Kulig) is a Polish immigrant who works as a house cleaner. Tereza and Magdalena have a tension-filled relationship that is typical of what can happen between a parent and a teenage child: The teenager wants more freedom than the parent is willing to give.

Magdalena is protective of Tereza because she doesn’t want Tereza to make wrong decisions when it comes to love and romance. The movie doesn’t go into too many details of what happened to Tereza’s biological father. However, Magdalena says enough in conversations for viewers to know that it was a bad marriage, where Magdalena felt disrespected and stifled, so she has vowed to never be financially dependent on a man again. She’s teaching Tereza to have the same outlook on life.

Ironically, Magdalena is now with a live-in partner who is very controlling. Magdalena’s current beau is Trey Ruffa (played by Brian d’Arcy James), who has adopted Tereza, even though he and Magdalena aren’t married. Trey works as a courtroom stenographer. Trey likes to think that even though he didn’t go to college, he knows enough about the law that he could be a prosecutor if he had the credentials for it.

Trey is a very strict parent, while Magdalena is willing to have more flexibility in parenting of Tereza. There’s a useless tangent in the movie about Trey being a Civil War re-enactment enthusiast. He brings an uninterested Magdalena and Tereza to a Civil War re-enactment event where participants have to dress in Civil War-era costumes.

There are other reasons (that are at first unspoken, but come out later in the movie) to explain why Tereza doesn’t feel comfortable bringing Julian to her home to introduce him to her parents. There are differences between Julian and Tereza when it comes to their ages (and what they can legally do because of their ages), social classes and races. (Julian is black, and Tereza is white.) If there’s a racist in Tereza’s family, it’s easy to guess who it is. Tereza is reluctant to show Julian what her family is like, but she is welcome in Julian’s home, where Tereza has a very good rapport with Patricia.

One day, while Steven is wallowing in self-pity over his writer’s block, he decides to walk his French bulldog Levi and go to a local bar at around 11 a.m. to have a drink or two. At the bar, he meets an unusual stranger: a tugboat captain named Katrina Trento (played by Marisa Tomei), who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but is passing through New York City for work-related reasons. Steven and Katrina have a conversation where they tell each other a little bit about their lives. He doesn’t tell Katrina right away that he’s married.

Katrina mentions that her tugboat business has been in her family for generations. She makes it obvious that she’s attracted to Steven and invites him to go on her tugboat nearby. Steven is curious but a little nervous. On the tugboat, Katrina reveals more about herself. She confesses, “I’m addicted to romance.” She also says she’s been in court-ordered rehab, because she has a history of stalking love interests.

Most people with common sense would steer clear of someone with these problems, but Steven seems to crave the attention that Katrina is giving him at that moment. And so, when she starts taking off her baggy work clothes to reveal that she’s got slinky lingerie underneath, it comes as no surprise that Katrina seduces Steven. None of this is spoiler information, since this plot development (and many others) are revealed in the trailer for “She Came to Me.”

At the end of this sexual encounter, Katrina starts babbling to Steven as if she expects them to be in a relationship. Steven tactfully tells Katrina that what they had is a one-time encounter, and he doesn’t want to see her again. He also urges her to get psychiatric help for her obsessiveness. He then quickly leaves the tugboat.

Steven’s tryst with Katrina (and his accidental fall in the dock’s water when he leaves the tugboat) jolt him out of his writer’s block and inspire him to write the opera “She Came to Me,” which is about an attractive female tugboat captain who seduces men and kills them. The opera is a hit. Katrina eventually finds out that she’s the inspiration for the opera when she goes to a performance. After the show, Katrina tells Steven (who is surprised to see Katrina) that she has permanently moved to New York City. (This plot development is also revealed in the movie’s trailer.)

All of this sounds like more than enough for two movies, which is why “She Came to Me” is often unfocused and unwieldly. The movie’s opera scenes are embarrassingly horrible. In no way, shape or form would this amateurish opera ever realistically be on any legitimate, major opera stage in New York City. There are some high school productions in real life that look better than the opera scenes in “She Came to Me.”

And although the “love triangle” between Steven, Patricia and Katrina is a major part of the movie, the three middle-aged adults in this situation are a lot more foolish and less mature than the two teenagers (Julian and Tereza), who go through their own personal drama. The storyline involving Steven, Patricia and Katrina gets so unrealistic, it’s almost like it belongs in a completely separate movie. “She Came to Me” starts off with a somewhat offbeat comedic tone, then makes an abrupt turn into a melodrama, and then sinks into a cesspool of ridiculous schmaltz.

The cast members are not to blame for why this disappointing movie has such an unfortunate identity crisis. Dinklage, Ellison, Jane and Kulig give solid performances. Hathaway and Tomei (the two Oscar winners in the movie’s principal cast) make an effort to bring nuance to their roles, but the characters of Patricia and Katrina are such cringeworthy clichés (the sexually repressed wife and the wacky, uninhibited mistress), these stereotypes are borderline misogynistic. Toward the end of the movie, certain characters make decisions that are nonsensical and look very inauthentic. Ultimately, viewers are more likely to feel disconnected from most of the characters in this dreadful dud of a movie, instead of feeling connected and invested in what will happen next.

Vertical released “She Came to Me” in select U.S. cinemas on October 6, 2023.

Review: ‘Kompromat,’ starring Gilles Lellouche and Joanna Kulig

April 8, 2023

by Carla Hay

Gilles Lellouche (center) in “Kompromat” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“Kompromat”

Directed by Jérôme Salle

Russian and French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Russia and Estonia, the dramatic film “Kompromat” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A French diplomat living in Russia is falsely accused of child sex abuse, and he breaks out of jail to go into hiding and possibly try to prove his innocence. 

Culture Audience: “Kompromat” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching political thrillers, even if these thrillers stretch the bounds of credibility.

Joanna Kulig in “Kompromat” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)

“Kompromat” delivers great suspense, and it benefits from an absorbing lead performance from Gilles Lellouche, but the movie becomes more far-fetched as it goes along. It weakens the intended message that everything in this drama could happen in real life. “Kompromat” is supposed to be “based on a true story,” but what mostly rings true is the conspiracy aspect of the story, not what happens after the main character escapes from prison. His prison escape is already revealed in the “Kompromat” trailer.

Directed by Jérôme Salle (who co-wrote the “Kompromat” screenplay with Caryl Ferey), “Kompromat” has a title that is the Russian word for documents used to destroy someone’s reputation. In the case of this story, the person whose reputation is destroyed is a French diplomat living in Irkutsk, Russia. His name is Mathieu Roussel (played by Lellouche), and he works as the director of the French Alliance, which is a cultural exchange between France and other countries. Some sections of “Kompromat” are told in flashbacks, so viewers have to put pieces of the narrative puzzle together.

Part of Mathieu’s job is promote French culture in Siberia, Russia. In the beginning of the story, Mathieu is well-respected by his colleagues, which include a woman named Michèle (played by Judith Henry), who is the cultural attaché at the French Embassy in Russia. Mathieu is shown giving a well-received speech, where he thanks Andrei Ivanovich (played by Mikhail Safronov), who is the equivalent to being Mathieu’s Russian counterpart. Mathieu is sought-after by the media, because a TV network wants to interview him.

As for his personal life, Mathieu and his wife Alice Roussel (played by Elisa Lasowski) have had a somewhat cold and distant relationship lately. Their marriage has become strained because Alice didn’t want to relocate from France to Russia. Alice really wants to move back to France, but Mathieu likes how things are going with his job in Russia.

Mathieu thinks the problems in their marriage aren’t serious enough where he and Alice will separate. Alice and Mathieu are both devoted parents to a daughter named Rose (played by Olivia Malahieude), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. The spouses also have a nanny named Julia (played by Larisa Kalpokaite), who works part-time for the family.

Mathieu makes a fateful decision to bring a French experimental performing arts show to a big Russian theater. There’s a homoerotic aspect to the show, when two shirtless men dance on stage and then kiss passionately. Even though there are only adults in the audience, Mathieu underestimates how conservative Russia is when it comes to public homosexuality. There are noticeable uncomfortable and disgusted reactions from several members of the audience. A few people walk out of the venue after seeing these two men kiss each other.

Mathieu knows this performance was not as well-received as he hoped it would be. He goes to a nightclub and gets drunk. One of the people he sees in the club is a young woman he was briefly introduced to in the venue’s foyer before the performance. Her name is Svetlana (played by Joanna Kulig), who works as a French-language teacher for the French Alliance.

Svetlana and Mathieu do some flirty dancing with each other at the nightclub. Someone at the nightclub who notices this flirtation is Dmitri Rostov (played by Mikhail Gorevoy, also known as Mikhail Gor), who has a brief conversation with Mathieu, by asking him if Mathieu thinks Svetlana is pretty. “Do you know her?” Mathieu asks.

Mathieu doesn’t find out until much later that Dmitri is Svetlana’s father-in-law. Svetlana is in a very unhappy marriage to Dmitiri’s abusive and insecure son Sasha Rostov (played by Daniil Vorobyov), who is an alcoholic. Sasha frequently accuses Svetlana of cheating on him. Dmitri and Sasha are in the same line of work, which is later revealed in the movie and which will have a direct effect on what happens to Mathieu and Svetlana.

Shortly after this performance and nightclub encounter, that’s when Mathieu’s troubles start. He is suddenly arrested without warning at his home, in front of Rose and Julia the nanny. In a police interrogation room, where Mathieu is handcuffed to a chair, he is told that he has been arrested for distributing child pornography and for sexually molesting Rose. Mathieu is in shock and vigorously denies the charges. “It’s impossible,” he says when told what he’s been accused of doing.

Mathieu gets put in a jail without bail and without being able to speak to an attorney right away. He’s in a jail cell with about 10 other men. One of the men, who is the obvious bully leader, demands that Mathieu tell him why Mathieu was arrested. Mathieu is smart enough to know that people arrested for sex crimes against children get the worst abuse in prison, so Mathieu lies and says he doesn’t know why he was arrested.

The inmate thug tells Mathieu: “There are three categories of men here: Men we respect, men we beat, and men we fuck.” The bully also warns Mathieu that there are ways to find out why Mathieu was arrested. Of course, the other inmates find out why Mathieu was arrested, which leads to scenes of Mathieu getting brutally attacked and humiliated.

With Michèle’s help, Mathieu gets a well-respected attorney named Mr. Borodin (played by Aleksey Gorbunov), who tells Mathieu some very bad news: The Russian government has framed Mathieu with false documents and has already decided that Mathieu will get 10 to 15 years in prison. This is information that’s also revealed in the “Kompromat” trailer, which shows about 80% of the movie’s plot.

A shocked Mathieu gets even more disturbing news when he finds out it wasn’t just the controversial homoerotic dance performance that got him in trouble with the Russian government. Someone very close to Mathieu betrayed him, in order to get him out of the way and fulfill a specific agenda. After Mathieu finds out about this betrayal, he doesn’t think he has anything left to lose, so he escapes from jail before going to trial. This jail escape is a plot development that’s also revealed in the “Kompromat” trailer.

The “Kompromat” trailer also reveals that Mathieu gets help from Svetlana in going on the run from law enforcement. Also shown in the trailer are some pivotal fight scenes that really should have been left out of the trailer. And so, if anyone sees the “Kompromat” trailer before watching “Kompromat,” then many things that should have been surprises have already been revealed.

The only things that the “Kompromat” trailer don’t reveal about the movie are (1) whether or not Mathieu gets captured after he goes on the run and (2) whether or not Mathieu and Svetlana become romantic involved with each other. The last third of the movie has some hard-to-believe occurences. For example, Svetlana is suspected of helping Mathieu, but she’s never put under the type of surveillance that she would get in real life. This lack of credibility doesn’t ruin the movie, but it does make the end of the film look phony.

However, there are many parts of “Kompromat” that are very realistic and harrowing, thereby making up for the flaws in the movie. Lellouche gives the type of engaging performance that makes it easy to root for Mathieu to get out of his nightmare situation and reunite with his loved ones. And if this movie is “based a true story,” then it’s based on an untold number of people who’ve been the victims of real-life kompromat situations.

Kulig as Svetlana also performs well in the movie, but Svetlana’s storyline has a very noticeable contradiction to lowers the movie’s credibility: Svetlana’s husband and father-in-law are controlling and have ways of spying on her, but Svetlana can also can slip away for extensive periods of time to travel with Mathieu for long distances. The ending of “Kompromat” looks like a compromise for the sake of an expected formula. But at that point in “Kompromat,” viewers should know that the movie has traded in realism for a heightened version of reality, in order to ramp up the action and suspense.

Magnet Releasing released “Kompromat” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on January 27, 2023.

Copyright 2017-2024 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX