Review: ‘American Murderer,’ starring Tom Pelphrey, Ryan Phillippe, Idina Menzel and Jacki Weaver

November 14, 2022

by Carla Hay

Tom Pelphrey in “American Murderer” (Photo courtesy of Saban Films and Lionsgate)

“American Murderer”

Directed by Matthew Gentile

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2004 and 2005 (with several flashbacks to previous years, going back to the 1970s) in Utah, California and Arizona, the crime drama film “American Murderer” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Longtime con man Jason Derek Brown goes on the run from the law after becoming the prime suspect in the shooting and killing of an armored car guard during a robbery.

Culture Audience: “American Murderer” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies about true crime, but this dull and generic thriller leaves out a lot of important information in understanding the real people involved.

Ryan Phillippe in “American Murderer” (Photo courtesy of Saban Films and Lionsgate)

A movie about one of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals should have been intriguing. Unfortunately, the crime drama “American Murderer” wastes the talents of the cast members to deliver a boring story that relies heavily on superficial flashbacks that don’t answer questions. The movie is poorly structured and repetitive in all the wrong ways.

Written and directed by Matthew Gentile, “American Murderer” is about Jason Derek Brown, a longtime con man who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for 17 years. Brown is the prime suspect in the murder of Robert Keith Palomares, a 24-year-old armored car guard who was shot and killed during a robbery in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 29, 2004. Investigators say that the killer stole about $56,000 in cash during this deadly robbery.

A bicycle that the gunman used as the initial getaway vehicle was found not far from the crime scene. Brown’s fingerprints were on the bicycle. The shooter used a .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, which is the same type of gun that Brown was known to have. Brown, who was 35 in 2004, has been on the run ever since this robbery and murder. The charges against him are first-degree murder, armed robbery and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

This information is widely known, so it’s not spoiler information to a lot of people who might see the movie. And the film’s title is enough to tell viewers that a murder is going to happen in the movie, so there shouldn’t be any surprise when it does. Brown has not entered a plea to these accusations. And so, technically, until the case is resolved in a court of law, he’s innocent until proven guilty.

But those legal details (and many other details) are completely ignored in “American Murderer,” which has scenes showing Brown committing the crimes of which he’s accused, thereby declaring him guilty before Brown has answered to these charges. (For the purposes of this review, the real Brown will be referred to as Brown, while the character of Jason Brown in the movie will be referred to as Jason.) Even if the filmmakers wanted to stay neutral about declaring Brown guilty or not guilty of the murder, there are too many other problems with “American Murderer” that make it an unworthy story about this case.

“American Murderer” has a tedious and muddled timeline of events that don’t do very much to explain a lot of things that needed to be explained. The murder isn’t shown until 66 minutes into this 101-minute movie. The movie has so many flashbacks, even the flashbacks have flashbacks. The opening scene of “American Murderer” takes place on November 6, 2004, and depicts Jason (played by Tom Pelphrey) going into a pawn shop to sell a luxury watch and a wedding ring.

Viewers will see that Jason is a highly manipulative con man who can act a certain way, tell lies, and create personas of himself to serve whatever purpose that he has, which is usually to swindle people out of money. In this pawn shop scene, Jason tells the pawn broker (played by Chris Harvey) that the watch belonged to his late father, and the ring belonged to his deceased mother. Jason begins to cry when he talks about his mother, whom he says has recently died of pancreatic cancer.

However, Jason is composed enough to haggle over the purchase price for the jewelry. The pawn broker initially offers $1,000 to buy both items. It’s an amount that Jason thinks is unacceptable, so he and the pawn broker do some back-and-forth bargaining until they settle on $2,000 for the sale. Almost as soon as they make this agreement, Jason sees on the shop’s security camera that some rough-looking men are about to enter the pawn shop.

Jason knows who these men are, and he looks apprehensive. He rushes through the sale, gets the money, and asks the pawn shop broker if he can exit through the back door. The pawn shop broker, who’s used to dealing with shady people, can easily figure out what’s going on, and he doesn’t want any trouble in his shop. He lets Jason leave through the back. As soon as Jason makes a getaway in his car, Jason yells triumphantly to himself, “Fucking idiots!”

The next scene takes place at the FBI office in Salt Lake City, Utah, where special agent Lance Leising (played by Ryan Phillippe) is leading the FBI’s investigation to find Jason. This is where the movie’s sloppy screenwriting starts to show. Viewers who don’t know anything about Jason will be confused about the circumstances that would lead the FBI to look for Jason. Based on the title of the movie and the opening scene, viewers will know that Jason is not going to be the subject of an intense manhunt just because he might have sold some stolen jewelry at a pawn shop.

Jason is going to be a suspect for murder, but the “who, what, where, when and why” questions about the murder aren’t addressed until 66 minutes into the movie, when the actual murder takes place. Until then, viewers are kept in the dark (unless they already know the real-life story) about what exactly Jason did that has the FBI putting so many resources into looking for him. A better movie would have told the story in chronological order, or would have at least established from the beginning why Jason committed a federal crime that fell under the FBI’s jurisdiction.

Up until the murder scene, “American Murderer” shows mostly these two types of scenes: (1) interviews conducted by Lance and (2) flashbacks of Jason’s life before the murder was committed. One of the first people whom Lance is shown interviewing in Utah is a real-estate agent named Melanie Baker (played by Idina Menzel), a single mother who owns a house across the street from the house where she lives. For a period of time before the murder happened, Jason was her tenant in the rental house. Jason told her that he and his brother had a successful business importing and exporting golf equipment from Asia.

During the interview, Lance mentions that some of Melanie’s neighbors think that Melanie and Jason had an intimate relationship. Melanie denies that she and Jason ever had sex or dated, but flashbacks show that Melanie is lying. While Jason was signing the rental contract, Jason was very flirtatious and asked her on a date, but she declined the offer because she said that she had to be home when her son leaves school for the day. Still, it’s obvious she’s attracted to him, Jason knows it, and they both act on that attraction later.

Melanie has a son named Zachary “Zach” Baker (played by Asher James), who’s about 11 or 12 years old. Flashbacks show that Jason quickly charmed himself into Melanie’s and Zach’s lives. Jason and Melanie began having sex with each other. Jason got Zach to like him by secretly playing video games with him that Melanie won’t allow Zach to play. Jason also began acting like Melanie’s boyfriend by helping take care of Zach, having meals and sleepovers at Melanie’s place, and buying gifts for Zach and Melanie.

Melanie has this to say about Jason in her interview with Lance: “Maybe he was a little ostentatious and rubbed people the wrong way, but when I needed Jason’s help, he really was there for me.” She adds, “Jason was really great with kids. With all the toys he had and money he threw around, he actually endeared himself to the neighborhood pretty quickly.”

A big problem with “American Murderer” is that it gives these snippets of information but not a full or meaningful picture. For example, it’s mentioned in the movie that Jason was a career con artist for years, but he was only arrested once before the 2004 armed robbery/murder happened. In a flashback scene taking place about eight years before the robbery/murder, Jason is shown stealing golf equipment from a store and being arrested for it the same day.

Even though his arrest for that theft is shown in the movie, “American Murderer” never shows or explains how or why he got away with so many other alleged crimes for so long. What happened to any investigations into his scams? What happened to the victims? Those questions are never answered in the movie.

“American Murderer” also doesn’t fill in many blanks that it creates about Jason’s family background. He was born in Los Angeles and raised in California’s Los Angeles/Orange County region. His parents divorced when he and his two siblings were underage children. There’s a late 1970s flashback scene showing Jason’s father David Brown Sr. (played by Kevin Corrigan) in a small motel room with Jason (played by Dayne Xavier Fox), Jason’s older brother David Brown Jr. (played by Adrian Perez) and Jason’s older sister Jamie Brown (played by Ryan Bingham). The kids are about 9 to 12 years old.

Jamie complains that she wants to go home. David Sr. tells the kids that they are with him because their mother didn’t fight hard enough for custody. Jamie says that he’s lying. David Sr. puts a large wad of cash in the motel room’s safe and gives David Jr. and Jason some money to go play arcade games. The boys are willing to do whatever their father wants, but Jamie is stubbornly mistrustful of David Sr.

This scene is an example of something that is put in the movie but ultimately doesn’t do anything but bring up questions that the movie (once again) never answers. How were these children really raised? What exactly was the custody arrangement after the divorce? This motel scene looks like David Sr. took the kids away from their mother without the mother’s consent, and he’s lying to the kids about it, but everything is so vague in this scene, it’s difficult to come to any conclusions.

Later in the movie, it’s mentioned that David Sr. disappeared in 1994, when Jason was 25 years old, and he still has not been found to this day. There’s nothing in the movie that explains how this disappearance affected Jason and the rest of the family. There’s not even a mention of what the family thinks happened to David Sr. to cause this disappearance.

“American Murderer” also shows that, in 2004, Jason’s mother really isn’t dead, like he claimed in the pawn shop scene. In 2004, Jason’s mother Jeanne Brown (played by Jacki Weaver) is alive and well and has had periods of estrangement from Jason because he’s a pathological liar who only contacts her when he wants money from her. She loves him but she’s become fed up with Jason and his con-artist ways.

One of the movie’s best scenes (in a movie that has very few good scenes) is when Jason and Jeanne have a confrontational argument when he shows up at her home unannounced, after not seeing or speaking to her for three years. Jason is there to ask Jeanne for $20,000 to invest in a business that they both know doesn’t really exist. Much credit should go to Weaver for her exemplary acting talent in this memorable scene, but she’s not in the movie long enough to save it from its shoddy storytelling.

After the 2004 robbery/murder, Jason’s older siblings Jamie (played by Shantel VanSanten) and David Jr. (played by Paul Schneider) come into contact with FBI agent Lance, who interviews them at different points in the movie. Jamie gives more information about Jason than David does. Jamie says their father David Sr. is probably why Jason turned into a criminal. But then, the movie cuts to that 1970s flashback scene of the family in the motel, which doesn’t show anything except that Jamie thinks her father is lying about their mother not caring enough about the kids to fight for custody for them.

“American Murderer” has a scene where Lance interviews a woman who knew Jason because she was his friend from high school. She briefly mentions that Jason used to be married and “a straight-laced Mormon missionary in France.” But don’t expect to see any scenes in the movie showing that part of Jason’s life. Instead, there are several repetitive flashbacks of Jason as a cocaine-snorting jerk who has a habit of partying at nightclubs, showing off whatever luxury car he got with money he scammed, and being a playboy. A better movie would have shown the massive contrasts between his Mormon missionary life and his criminal life that he would have later on.

“American Murderer” also has multiple scenes showing that Jason owed enough money where thugs were following him and sometimes beating him up. At one point, during one of these beatings, Jason is told that he needs to pay the $80,000 that he owes, or else something worse than a beating will happen to him. When an injured Jason tries to get a loan from a bank, his application is rejected. The loan officer (played by Sila Agavale), who notices Jason’s facial injuries, advises Jason to get out of town.

After he fails to get the money he needs, Jason (now living in the Phoenix area) starts planning to rob an armored truck after it picks up money from a movie theater. Jason wants to commit the robbery on a Monday, when he knows that the truck will be carrying cash from the weekend—the period of time when movie theaters do their biggest business of the week. One of the people who knew about Jason’s scheme was a drug buddy named Kyle Wallace (played by Moises Arias), who is interviewed by Lance.

In yet another flashback scene, Jason is shown snorting cocaine with Kyle at Kyle’s home when Jason tells Kyle about the robbery plan and asks Kyle to commit the robbery with him, but Kyle wants no part of it. Jason gets angry about this rejection, so he puts a gun to Kyle’s head in a threatening manner and pulls the trigger. Jason then tells Kyle that the gun is empty, and Jason laughs at Kyle, like it’s all one big joke. Kyle doesn’t think it’s funny at all, and he orders Jason out of his home, but Jason doesn’t want to leave.

Kyle is much smaller than Jason, but Kyle is very angry and gets in a physical scuffle with Jason, which catches Jason off guard. When Jason sees that Kyle is not easily intimidated by him, Jason switches gears and makes profuse apologies for the gun “prank,” but Kyle is unmoved. Kyle manages to cut Jason out of his life by ignoring Jason’s persistent attempts to recruit Kyle for help with the robbery.

In his portrayal of this notorious criminal, Pelphrey seems to be making an effort to depict Jason as a complex “Jekyll and Hyde” personality, but that effort can only go so far when the movie’s screenplay and direction are so shallow and limited. Phillippe’s Lance Leising character is based on the real FBI investigator of the same name, but the character is written and portrayed as very bland and extremely generic. “American Murderer” is just a jumbled mess of scenes that don’t add up to anything but a tedious and substandard “criminal investigation” movie that fails to offer impactful insights into the real people involved in this case.

Saban Films and Lionsgate released “American Murderer” in select U.S. cinemas on October 21, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on October 28, 2022.

Review: ‘She Said,’ starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton and Ashley Judd

October 13, 2022

by Carla Hay

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

“She Said”

Directed by Maria Schrader

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2016 and 2017, primarily in New York City (and briefly in California, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy), the dramatic film “She Said” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey investigate sexual abuse allegations against entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and help usher in a new era in the #MeToo movement.

Culture Audience: “She Said” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching well-acted historical dramas about investigative journalism and seeking justice for crimes.

Wesley Holloway, Jennifer Ehle and Justine Colan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

With the tone and pace of a procedural crime drama, “She Said” uncovers nothing new about The New York Times’ 2017 report that helped spur the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, who went from being a powerful mogul in the entertainment industry to becoming an imprisoned, convicted rapist. However, the movie’s top-notch cast members (including a terrific Samantha Morton in a standout supporting role) deliver better-than-average performances in this important story that needs to be told. It’s a very female-driven movie that puts the narrative where it belongs: on Weinstein’s abuse survivors who had the courage to speak to The New York Times for this groundbreaking report, as well as the two women who investigated and wrote this report.

Directed by Maria Schrader and written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, “She Said” is adapted from the 2019 non-fiction book “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement,” written by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the two New York Times reporters who investigated and wrote the report that exposed accusations against Weinstein for crimes and misdeeds against women, spanning several decades as far back as the 1980s. The report, which was published in October 2017, included detailed accounts of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault alleged by a variety of women, including some of Weinstein’s former employees, famous actresses (such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd) and various other colleagues. “She Said” had its world premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

“She Said” opens with a flashback to 1992. In this scene, a 21-year-old female production assistant is on a film set in Ireland. She comes across as an eager and friendly employee who’s happy to be at her job and enjoys being around her co-workers. The movie then abruptly shifts to showing her running in fear on a city street, as if she’s just experienced something terrifying.

It’s at this point you know that this woman has become one of Weinstein’s sexual abuse victims. In 1992, Weinstein (who co-founded Miramax Films and later The Weinstein Company) was on the rise in the industry as a movie producer and studio chief. He would eventually win an Academy Award for Best Picture, for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love.”

Later on in “She Said,” which takes place mostly in 2016 and 2017, viewers find out that this frightened young woman’s name is Zelda Perkins. And 25 years after her horrifying experience with Weinstein left her with deep trauma and disillusionment about the entertainment industry, Zelda (played by Morton) is ready to tell her story to The New York Times. It’s by far the best scene in the movie. She declares, “This is bigger than Weinstein. This is about the system protecting abusers.”

“She Said” goes step-by-step in showing how Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) ended up working together on this landmark investigation which helped bring a surge to the #MeToo movement and garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Kantor and Twohey. (For the purpose of this review, the movie characters will be referred to by their first names, while the real-life people will be referred to by their last names.) Someone who is briefly mentioned (but never shown) in the movie is investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, who also won a Pultizer Prize for his own Weinstein exposé that The New Yorker published a day after The New York Times’ report. “She Said” portrays Farrow’s report as something that Jodi and Megan were aware was happening simultaneously, but Farrow’s competing report did not distract Jodi and Megan from their own investigation.

Jodi’s and Megan’s respective personal lives are shown tangentially for context reasons, in order to give viewers an idea of how this investigation affected their lives outside of their jobs. Jodi and Megan both have loving, supportive husbands (Jodi’s journalist husband Ron Lieber is played by Adam Shapiro; Megan’s literary-agent husband Vadim “Jim” Rutman is played by Tom Pelphrey), but the women are at different stages in their lives when it comes to motherhood.

At the beginning of the investigation, Jodi had two daughters under the age of 12, while Megan was a mother of a newborn child. (Elle Graham has the role of Jodi and Ron’s older daughter Gracie, while Maren Heary has the role of younger daughter Nell.) Their struggles with post-partum depression are mentioned in the movie when Megan confides in Jodi about having post-partum depression, and Jodi reveals that she had this type of depression too.

“She Said” also shows that while Jodi was enthusiastic about pursuing the investigation from the beginning, Megan was more skeptical and reluctant, because many of their sources refused to go on the record, usually because they signed non-disclosure agreements with Weinstein in exchange for a monetary settlement, and/or the accusers feared retaliation. The movie takes on sinister qualities when it shows that Megan and Jodi (and some of their sources) were stalked and threatened by unidentified men who were believed to have been hired by Weinstein.

Slowly but surely, through in-person visits to interview many of the survivors in person, Jodi and Megan begin to get a growing number of women who were willing to go on the record. Judd portrays herself in the scenes where she interacts with Megan and Jodi. In real life and in the movie, Judd tells her story about how Weinstein had her blackballed from getting jobs after she rejected his sexual advances.

Two other key witnesses come forward to help with the investigation: former Weinstein employees Rowena Chiu (played by Angela Yeoh) and Laura Madden (played by Jennifer Ehle), a mother of two underage children, who was also dealing with the recent news that she would have to get a mastectomy due to her breast cancer. (Justine Colan has the role of Laura’s daughter Iris, while Wesley Holloway has the role of Laura’s son Hywel.) Yeoh and Ehle both make an impact with their admirable performances.

Jodi, the more emotionally sensitive reporter of the duo, is described by Megan at one point in the movie as “less intimidating” than Megan because Jodi is shorter and looks more approachable. There’s a well-performed scene where Jodi makes a big mistake in revealing some information to Rowena’s husband that could derail a possible interview with Rowena. Jodi is distraught by this mistake, in a powerful scene that shows the human fallibility that can happen in investigative journalism.

Megan considers herself to be a more seasoned and more jaded reporter than Jodi. Megan doesn’t like to show emotional vulnerability, but she goes through more of an emotional rollercoaster due to her post-partum depression, which she tries to hide from her colleagues, in order not to be perceived as “weak” or “incompetent.” It’s an issue that many mothers in the workforce go through in real life, and it’s handled with tasteful respect in “She Said,” with Mulligan giving a nuanced performance.

The movie also depicts some of the rejections that Jodi and Megan received from potential sources who ultimately were too afraid or uninterested in going on the record with The New York Times. And the movie also depicts some of Weinstein’s enablers, including attorney Lisa Bloom (played by Anastasia Barzee), who tarnished her feminist image when she was hired to be a paid consultant to do damage control for Weinstein. Bloom also had a book deal with Weinstein. John Schmidt (played John Mazurek), who worked for Weinstein as a chief financial officer, and attorney Lanny Davis (played by Peter Friedman), who used to be one of Weinstein’s consultants, are shown having guilt-ridden reckonings when they are confronted by Megan and Jodi about their active participation in covering up Weinstein’s abuses.

The New York Times is portrayed as approaching this story meticulously, with supportive editors who demanded a high level of accountability and evidence before publishing the report. Patricia Clarkson has a generic role as New York Times assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett. Andre Braugher has the flashier supervisor role as New York Times managing editor Dean Baquet, who has some of the best scenes in the movie in showing how he’s not intimidated by a bully like Weinstein.

As for any portrayal of Weinstein, “She Said” wisely relegates him to just being mostly a voice, with a brief glimpses of an actor (Mike Houston) portraying Weinstein on screen, such as when he walks in a public area with members of his team. There’s a scene where Weinstein threatens Dean with legal action against The New York Times because of the investigation that he knows will expose dark secrets. In response, Dean tells Weinstein that if he wants to make any statements on the record, Weinstein needs to talk directly to Jodi and Megan.

“She Said” also includes the 2015 real-life audio recording of Weinstein trying and failing to coerce actress/model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez into his hotel suite, a day after she says he sexually groped her without her consent. She reported this crime to the New York Police Department, which investigated Weinstein for that incident at the time, but no charges were filed against him. It’s an example of how not all of Weinstein’s accusers waited years to come forward to report Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct against them. The movie shows in no uncertain terms that those who did go public before 2017 were silenced or ignored.

Also getting a “voice only” depiction in “She Said” is actress/activist Rose McGowan (voiced by Keilly McQuail), who is shown declining to be interviewed by The New York Times about her accusation that Weinstein raped her, because she says she felt mistreated by The New York Times in the past. In real life, McGowan would go on the record with Farrow for his coverage for The New Yorker. “She Said” also has a scene of Megan and Jodi going to Paltrow’s California home to interview this Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love” actress, but Paltrow is also just a phone voice in the movie. (Near the beginning of the movie, there’s also voice cameo from an actor portraying Donald Trump, who calls Megan in 2016, during his presidential campaign, to tell her that she’s a “disgusting human being” for reporting sexual harassment allegations against Trump.)

Early on in “She Said,” the movie acknlowedges that Weinstein’s downfall happened after the April 2017 downfall of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations. Sarah Anne Masse, who is one of Weinstein’s real-life accusers (she claims he sexually harassed her in a job interview), has a cameo role as New York Times reporter Emily Steel, who helped break the story about O’Reilly’s alleged sexual misconduct. Steel and Michael S. Schmidt co-wrote the New York Times report that exposed how News Corp. (the parent company of Fox News) paid at least $13 million to settle sexual-harassment complaints made against O’Reilly, who was eventually fired from Fox News when advertisers boycotted his show. (That settlement total is now estimated to be at least $32 million.)

“She Said” might get some comparisons to the Oscar-winning 2015 drama “Spotlight,” which was about the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church covering up priests’ sexual abuse for decades. In real life, that Boston Globe report also won a Pulitzer Prize, but “Spotlight” was very much about a male-majority team of journalists (with one token woman) doing the investigating. “She Said” is much more streamlined, because there is only one main sexual abuser being investigated, although the movie does hammer home the point many times that Weinstein was aided by a system that allowed him to get away with his crimes for years.

None of this information is surprising to anyone who followed the Weinstein scandal and the aftermath of what was reported in The New York Times and The New Yorker. There have been countless news reports and some documentaries of the same subject matter. What will resonate with viewers the most in “She Said” is exactly what the title of the movie promises: Instead of making the villain the center of the story (which true-crime movies tend to do), “She Said” is all about celebrating the bravery and fortitude of the women survivors who came forward to tell their truths, and the people who helped bring some measure of justice to stop Weinstein’s reign of terror.

Universal Pictures will release “She Said” in U.S. cinemas on November 18, 2022.

Review: ‘Mank,’ starring Gary Oldman

February 6, 2021

by Carla Hay

Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman in “Mank” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Mank”

Directed by David Fincher

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1930 to 1942 in Southern California, the dramatic film “Mank” features an all-white cast of characters who are are involved in some way in the movie industry.

Culture Clash: Alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz has personal and professional conflicts while trying to complete the “Citizen Kane” screenplay, the 1941 classic film directed by and starring Orson Welles.

Culture Audience: “Mank” will appeal primarily to people interested in dramatic depictions of Hollywood film history from the 1930s and 1940s.

Tom Burke in “Mank” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

A lot of visual flair, technical precision and above-average acting went into the creation of the dramatic film “Mank” (directed by David Fincher and written by his late father Jack Fincher), but it’s the type of movie that will still leave some viewers cold. The movie certainly has compelling performances, snappy dialogue and impressive cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt. “Mank” is a feast for cinephiles who appreciate the art that came from the Golden Age of Hollywood. But “Mank” is a famine for people who want to see movie characters with relatable emotions that are not motivated by greed or ruthless ambition.

Any disdain or apathy for “Mank” might come from people who don’t care about what the movie industry was like in 1930s or 1940s, or who don’t want to be reminded of how racially segregated America was back then. And people could also be turned off from “Mank” because they don’t want to see this part of American history glorified in a movie that recreates the racist and sexist bubble of Hollywood willing to give an alcoholic, difficult screenwriter so many chances to work on prestige projects because of his white male privilege. These are all valid reasons for people not to like “Mank,” which doesn’t try to rewrite history, but the movie also doesn’t try to make any insightful commentary on the rampant racism and sexism in Hollywood and society at large that didn’t allow anyone but white men to be the top filmmakers during this era.

“Mank” is filmed in black-and-white and in a style that emulates exactly how a biographical film about Mankiewicz would have been made in the 1940s. That’s the decade when Mank (who died in 1953, at the age of 55) was at the height of his career, as the co-writer of director Orson Welles’ classic 1941 drama “Citizen Kane,” which is often named in film historians’ lists as the best movie of all time. The “Citizen Kane” original screenplay, which was loosely based on the life of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was the only Academy Award won by the movie, which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor. (Welles starred in the film as Kane.)

The Best Original Screenplay prize for “Citizen Kane” was also the only Academy Award won by Mankiewicz and Welles, who died in 1985, at the age 70. “Mank” essentially tells the story of the tortuous process of getting the screenplay completed and the clashes over creative control. It’s a story that could apply to how numerous other movies have been made under similar circumstances, but “Citizen Kane” just happens to be what many film experts consider to be a masterpiece.

“Mank” depicts Mank (played by Gary Oldman) as a talented and experienced screenwriter but also a hardcore alcoholic. He’s under pressure to finish the “Citizen Kane” screenplay by his deadline. However, his alcoholism and his conflicts with Welles threaten to derail the project. At first, Mank was willing to give full screenwriter credit to Welles for “Citizen Kane.” Much of “Mank” is about how and why Mank changed his mind and demanded co-writing credit.

The opening scene of “Mank” shows Mank checking in as a guest at the North Verde Ranch in Victorville, California, in 1940. His intent is to retreat to the ranch so that he can finish the “Citizen Kane” screenplay in relative solitude. Welles (played by Tom Burke) has given Mank a deadline to finish the screenplay in 60 days. Even though Mank is told that North Verde is a “dry ranch” (no alcohol is allowed), that doesn’t stop Mank from having a suitcase full of liquor delivered to his room.

Mank’s discomfort isn’t only because he’s told that the ranch has a ban on alcohol. He also has to use crutches, because he broke his right leg in a car accident. He’s introduced to the female typist who will be working with him: A British immigrant named Rita Alexander (played Lily Collins), who tells Mank that her husband (who’s not in the movie) flies Firebird planes for the Royal Air Force. Rita’s character, like all the female characters in “Mank,” are written to have only one purpose in the film: to be dutiful, passive, and willing to please the men.

Mank’s long-suffering wife Sara Mankiewicz (played by Tuppence Middleton) sometimes talks some sass to her philandering, hard-drinking husband. But ultimately, she caves in to societal pressure to be a wife who’s completely dependent on her husband. Later in the movie, Mank becomes infatuated with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies (played by Amanda Seyfried), a famous actress who is all too aware that her good looks and her connection to Hearst are the main reasons why her acting career is thriving.

In an early scene in the movie, Sara is helping a very drunk Mank get into bed. She mentions their past courtship of him being a war correspondent who “ruined” her home. It’s a reference to when Mank worked for the American Red Cross News Service in Paris in 1919 and 1920, the year that he and Sara were married. There are not-so-subtle hints in Mank’s interactions with Sara that Sara knew she was marrying a “bad boy” and made the mistake of thinking that he would change after they got married.

In “Mank,” he spends more time with Davies than he does with his wife and children. It’s a commentary on what the filmmakers think his priorities were at the time. Davies is portrayed as a coquettish charmer who isn’t passionately in love with Hearst (played by Charles Dance), but she’s fond enough of him to let him treat her like his trophy girlfriend so that she can enjoy all the benefits that come with it.

Davies was born to a working-class family in Brooklyn, New York, so Seyfried really plays up these roots with a heavy Brooklyn accent in “Mank.” In real life, by all accounts, Davies had lost her Brooklyn accent by the time she became a Hollywood actress. But the accent that the Davies character has in “Mank” is meant to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that she came from a working-class background and she now hobnobs with the rich and famous.

The Brooklyn accent is also apparently an excuse for the “Mank” screenplay to have Mank utter a cheesy line of dialogue when he’s flirting with Davies. Mank sees her at a birthday party for actor John Gilbert (played by Nick Job), and Davies begins telling Mank some stories about when she used to live in Brooklyn. Mank says in a remark dripping with a bad pun/double entendre: “Your Flatbush is showing.” Mank’s lusty facial expression and tone of his voice leave no doubt what he meant by that comment.

In a scene that’s a flashback to 1930, “Mank” shows the misogyny of treating women only as sex objects. The scene takes place in a writer’s room. In the room are Mank, his younger brother Joe Mankiewicz (played by Tom Pelphrey), George Kaufman (played by Adam Shapiro), Sidney Pearlman (played by Jack Romano), Charles MacArthur (played by John Churchill), Shelly Metcalf (played by Jamie McShane) and Ben Hecht (played by Jeff Harms).

There’s a secretary in the room too, but she’s topless, except for pasties covering her nipples. It’s obvious that she’s expected to look this way and to do things such as sit on a man’s lap when he tells her to do it. The men act as if it’s perfectly normal for a woman to be treated this way in a work environment.

It’s easy to see that the screenplay for “Mank” did not want to rely on showing repetitious scenes of a drunken Mank struggling to finish the “Citizen Kane” screenplay on time because he procrastinates. These types of scenes are in the movie, but at a bare minimum. The movie is filled with flashbacks of how he got to know Davies and Hearst and how Mank was tentatively invited into their social circle. Toward the end of the movie, there’s a big costume dinner party scene where, in true Mank fashion, he shows up very drunk. And you can imagine what happens.

If Hearst was the inspiration for “Citizen Kane,” then Welles was the movie’s visionary creative leader. But the person who had the most influence on Mank’s career was MGM Studios co-founder Louis B. Mayer (played by Arliss Howard), who at times was like a exasperated mentor to Mank, if you believe what’s presented to this movie. Mank spends more time on screen with Mayer than he does with Welles.

The movie has several flashbacks to how Mank’s business relationship with Mayer evolved. In a scene that takes place in 1934, Mank introduces Joe to Mayer, who quips: “We only have one star here: Leo the Lion [the MGM mascot]. Many stars forget that. And now, they twinkle elsewhere.”

Mayer is depicted as someone who’s a control freak and only concerned about himself, but is skilled at deceiving people into thinking he has their best interests at heart. This duplicitous nature is shown in a scene, also in 1934, where Mayer is on stage at an auditorium and speaking to an assembly of MGM employees. Mayer explains that the Great Depression has negatively impacted the movie industry. And he tells the employees that he needs them to volunteer to take a 50% pay cut for eight weeks, for the good of the company.

At first, the MGM employees are angry with the news that their salaries will be reduced. Mayer tells them the other option would be to make staff layoffs. And he assures the employees that if they take the pay cut, when President Franklin Roosevelt opens the banks again, Mayer promises that he will pay all of the employees the compensation that they lost out on during this eight-week period.

The employees go from a potentially angry crowd to cheering for Mayer, who’s convinced them that he’s a compassionate boss who really cares about them. Mank is watching this from the wings of the stage and somewhat awed at how Mayer was able to turn the situation around so quickly. But when Mayer leaves the stage, he tells Mank that the speech was all for show and that he has no intention of making the salary reimbursement that he promised on stage.

As a way to seemingly fill up time in this 131-minute movie, “Mank” also takes a few detours into politics, with an entire subplot of how Mank was perceived as a Socialist and how it affected his career. The movie shows that Mank refused to sign an agreement stating that he would never join a writer’s union. The union was opposed by Mayer and MGM head of production Irving Thalberg (played by Ferdinand Kingsley), who put pressure on Mank to side with MGM. The way it’s shown in “Mank,” Thalberg was ready to accuse Mank of being a Communist if Mank didn’t comply with what MGM wanted.

And as if to make it abundantly clear that Mank was a left-wing liberal, there are some unnecessary scenes of him getting caught up on in the 1934 election for California’s governor. The race came down to conservative Republican Frank Merriam versus liberal Democrat (and former Socialist Party member) Upton Sinclair. Mank refuses Thalberg’s demand to contribute to MGM’s anti-Sinclair fund, Thalberg says in a threatening tone: “I hate to think what L.B. [Louis B. Mayer] might do if he finds out that you’re the only holdout.”

Mank replies defiantly, “You don’t need my donation! You don’t need anybody’s donation. You can make the world swear that King Kong is 10 stories tall and Mary Pickford is a virgin at 40, yet you can’t convince starving Californians that a turncoat Socialist is a menace to everything they hold dear. You’re barely trying.” Mank then walks out of Thalberg’s office like a future rapper who just dropped the mic.

On election night at the Trocadero nightclub, where a crowd is gathered to listen to the election results, a drunken Mank makes a $24,000 bet on who will win. It’s the kind of money that he knows could ruin him financially, but he bets it all anyway. Viewers of this movie who know who won the election in real life can easily guess which of the candidates got Mank’s support and how this scene ends.

There’s a minor subplot of how his younger brother Joe feels overshadowed by Mank. Joe is also the more cautious brother who expresses concerns to Mank about the repercussions that Mank will get from Hearst over the “Citizen Kane” screenplay. “Self-preservation is not politics,” warns Joe. Mank doesn’t seem to care. He replies, “I’m washed up, Joe. I have been for years.”

Despite this scene where the Mankiewicz brothers have this candid talk, the brotherly dynamic is often shunted aside, since this movie is just what the title says it is: It’s ultimately all about Mank. His wife is treated as a marginal character, while his children Don and Johanna have no bearing on the plot and are briefly in the movie.

Throughout the movie, Mank seems proud of his disruptive reputation, with the type of bravado of someone who knows he is not the target of racism and sexism. Mank was Jewish, but it’s implied throughout the story that because most of the major Hollywood studios at the time were owned by Jewish men, Mank didn’t get the type of anti-Semitism that he would’ve gotten if he worked in an industry that wasn’t controlled at the time by people who weren’t Jewish.

The movie is intent on making Mank look like a lovable rogue, without any real examination of how his awful actions might have damaged other people. “Mank” gives him somewhat of a “see, he’s not that bad” redemption arc when it’s revealed that he did an act of kindness to help his German immigrant employee named Fraulein Freda (played by Monika Grossman) by sponsoring her German family to live in the United States. When typist Rita is ready to quit in frustration over Mank’s heavy drinking, Freda tells her about Mank’s immigration assistance and that he’s a “good man.”

However, it can be argued that an act of kindness is truly noble when the person committing the act won’t get anything out of it in return. Would Mank have gone to the trouble of helping Freda if she didn’t work for him and if he didn’t need to use her services in some way? Viewers can make up their own minds about Mank’s character by other actions he takes in the movie.

Although “Mank” doesn’t goes as far to say that Mank and Davies had a sexual affair, the movie shows that the two did have some kind of intimate emotional affair. After all, Davies is shown as the one who gave Mank a lot of personal information about Hearst that ended up being used for the Kane character in “Citizen Kane.” As for why Sara stayed married to Mank, she tells him what she thinks of their marriage: “It’s never boring. Exhausting? Yes.”

People watching “Mank” might be surprised by how the character of Welles doesn’t have as much screen time as expected for a movie about the pre-production of “Citizen Kane.” And it’s too bad that Welles is only in the movie for about 15 minutes, because the showdown between Welles and Mank is one of the best scenes in the film. The two men have an explosive argument when Mank tells Welles that he wants co-writing credit for the screenplay.

It’s a battle of egos and power. Welles was a hotshot filmmaker at age 24 when he was given complete creative control over “Citizen Kane” in his contract with RKO Pictures. And he was very arrogant about it, by all accounts. Mank, who was 42 or 43 when he completed the “Citizen Kane” screenplay, had the advantage of being more experienced in Hollywood.

Mank declares to Welles during their argument: “I may be a loose cannon, but you, my friend, are the outsider.” Welles shouts back: “Who’s producing this picture? Directing in it? Starring in it?”

One of the better aspects of “Mank” is it that perfectly captures the tone, pace and voice cadence of movies from the 1930s and 1940s. It looks like a movie that could have been made back then, except the pristine technical aspects (such as the film editing) make it clear that the movie benefited from modern technology. “Mank” uses an eye-catching technique of identifying the year and location of each new scene by showing this information on screen as typing on a paper script with one of the era’s typewriters.

“Mank” director Fincher has immense talent for his attention to detail, when it comes to production design, costume design, a film’s visuals and getting the best that he can out of the cast members in the movie. Those superb qualities make “Mank” worth watching for people who want to immerse themselves in Old Hollywood. However, many of Fincher’s films have main characters who are selfish and/or obsessive to the point where much of their humanity is lost. And that is one of the main reasons why some people will want to avoid watching “Mank.”

Netflix released “Mank” in select U.S. cinemas on November 13, 2020. The movie premiered on Netflix on December 4, 2020.

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