Tony Goldwyn Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Ezra’ (2024), starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Bryne, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson, Tony Goldwyn, William A. Fitzgerald and Robert De Niro

May 27, 2024

by Carla Hay

William A. Fitzgerald and Bobby Cannavale in “Ezra” (Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street)

“Ezra” (2024)

Directed by Tony Goldwyn

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, the dramatic film “Ezra” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A divorced stand-up comedian, who has a volatile temper, illegally takes his 11-year-old autistic son on a cross-country road trip when the comedian gets a guest appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Culture Audience: “Ezra” will appeal primarily to people are fans of the movie’s headliners and stories about father-son bonding, even if some of the story is problematic.

Robert De Niro, Bobby Cannavale and William A. Fitzgerald in “Ezra” (Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street)

Even though the name of the movie is “Ezra,” this uneven but well-acted drama is really about Ezra’s loudmouth and volatile father Max Brandel. This sometimes-frustrating film comes dangerously close to glorifying bad parenting but is saved by some realistic and heartfelt moments. Still, viewers with enough life experience will never feel like this movie is completely relatable, since so much of the movie looks contrived, even if some of the story was inspired by real people.

“Ezra” is directed by Tony Goldwyn, an actor who’s had numerous roles in film and TV but is best known for the role of Fitzgerald Grant III (a fictional U.S. president) on the TV drama series “Scandal,” which was on the air from 2012 to 2018. Goldwyn has directed several episodes in TV series (such as “Scandal” and “Dexter”), and the previous movies he directed have been about romances, such as 1999’s “A Walk on the Moon,” 2001’s “Someone Like You” and 2006’s “The Last Kiss.” Tony Spiridakis wrote the screenplay for “Ezra,” whose title character is a boy living with autism. Spiridakis’ son Dimitri is also living with autism. “Ezra” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

The movie begins with a scene of comedian Max Brandel (played by Bobby Cannavale) doing a stand-up comedy performance somewhere in a New York City nightclub. In his perfomance, Max talks about having an underage autistic son and how this child wouldn’t speak for several years, and “when he finally started speaking, he wouldn’t shut up.” Max tells a few more jokes and gets a fairly good, but not overly impressive, response from the audience. People clap and do some cheering, but they aren’t giving Max a standing ovation.

Max has a few more upcoming gigs booked at this nightclub. The nightclub owner Robert “Bob” Segal (played by Geoffrey Owens) tells Max that a talent booker from “Jimmy Kimmel Live” is going to be in the audience at one of Max’s upcoming shows. Max’s manager Jayne (played by Whoopi Goldberg) is thrilled and tells Max not to do anything to mess up this big opportunity.

Max has a tarnished reputation and a damaged career, so getting a guest apperance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will be a big career boost for Max. He used to be a hotshot comedy writer in late-night television until he was fired for punching his former boss Conan O’Brien. Max became a stand-up comedian after not being able to get a job as a TV writer because of this scandal. Max (who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey) is also financially broke and had to move in with his divorced father Stan (played by Robert De Niro), who also has a “loose cannon” temper.

Max is divorced from Ezra’s mother Jenna (played by Rose Byrne), and they share custody of 11-year-old Ezra (played by William A. Fitzgerald), who is a bright and inquisitive child. (Fitzgerald is on the autism specturm in real life.) Max still hasn’t gotten over the divorce from Jenna and keeps hoping that he and Jenna will get back together. Jenna has already moved on to someone else. She’s currently dating an attorney named Bruce (played by Goldwyn), who’s somewhat smug, but Bruce tries to stay out of the squabbles that Jenna and Max have over how Ezra should be raised.

Max and Jenna have very different parenting styles. Max sees nothing wrong with not having a strict routine for Ezra and exposing Max to entertainment meant for older teens and adults. For example, Max lets Ezra binge watch “Breaking Bad,” a TV series about a drug dealer, with a lot of violence and cursing. Max also sees nothing wrong with bringing Ezra to nightclubs and letting Ezra stay up late to watch Max perform. Jenna wants Ezra to have a more structured upbringing where he’s expected to follow rules that most kids his age would have.

At the public school where Ezra is a student, Ezra gets into trouble for disrupting a class by quoting some threatening curse-filled dialogue that he heard on “Breaking Bad.” Max and Jenna are called to have an urgent meeting with the school’s Principal Lee (played by Daphne Rubin-Vega) to decide what to do about Ezra, who has gotten into fights before at this school. These fights are not seen in the movie, but Max insists in the meeting with Principal Lee that Ezra was being bullied and fought back in self-defense in these previous fight incidents.

Principal Lee suggests that Ezra might be better off in a school for kids with special needs. Max hates the idea because he thinks Ezra needs to learn what it’s like to be in the “real world,” and he thinks Max does not belong in a school for kids with disabilities. Jenna is concerned for Ezra’s safety in this public school, so she is much more open to the idea of putting Ezra in a school where he is much less-likely to be bullied for being “different.”

During this family turmoil, Max is at home with Jenna, when he overhears Bruce sarcastically joking that Bruce can get rid of Max by putting a murder-for-hire hit on Max. Ezra doesn’t understand that Bruce is just joking, so Ezra panics and runs out in the street, where he is hit by a car.

It leads to an investigation over whether or not Ezra is suicidal. Ezra doesn’t tell anyone right away that he ran out in the street because of what he heard Bruce say. Max insists that Ezra is not suicidal. Jenna isn’t so sure and wants to wait and hear the diagnosis of a child psychiatrist who has examined Ezra.

A meeting that Max and Jenna have with a child psychiatrist named Dr. Kaplan (played by Alex Plank) goes very badly when the doctor prescribes Risperdal, also known Risperdone, to Ezra. Risperdal is prescribed to people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Max thinks this medication is too strong and inappropriate for Ezra. Max and Dr. Kaplan have a verbal argument, which turns into Max punching Dr. Kaplan.

Max gets arrested for this assault. Dr. Kaplan declines to press charges on the condition that Max has a restraining order against him. Under this restraining order, Max can’t see Ezra for three months. Bruce is Max’s attorney, which seems like a conflict of interest, but it can be presumed that Bruce only decided to take Max as a client because Jenna asked Bruce. Jenna probably asked Bruce to give Max a discount on Bruce’s usual legal fees.

Not surprisingly, Max hates being in this legal mess, but he doesn’t show much remorse for the fact that he created this mess. Max also thinks it’s unfair that he can’t see Ezra because Max doesn’t think he’s a danger to his child and can’t bear to go three months without seeing Ezra. When Max finds out that he’s been booked for a stand-up comedy appearance on the Los Angeles-based “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Max decides to illegally take Ezra on a cross-country road trip to Los Angeles so that Ezra can be on the set of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to watch Max perform.

During this road trip (which includes stops in Michigan and Nebraska), Ezra tells Max several times that Ezra wants to go home, but Max ignores those pleas. Max rudely and stubbornly treats a frantic Jenna as if she’s being an unreasonable shrew for worrying about Ezra in this kidnapping. And to be clear: It is literally a child abduction, since Max went to Jenna’s home at night, woke up a sleeping Ezra, and secretly took Ezra out of the home without permission. Max also dismisses Stan’s warning advice not to take Ezra on the road trip and to bring Ezra back to Jenna’s home.

If all of this sounds like awful and selfish parenting from Max, it is. And at times, it becomes very annoying when the movie tries to convince viewers that Max is a misunderstood parent who’s fighting back against the “system” that’s “robbing” Max of wanting to spend time with his child. The movie only succeeds if the intention is to show that flawed, self-absorbed and dysfunctional parents like Max exist and are very much in denial about the bad decisions that they make as parents.

Some of Max’s childhood is mentioned as a way to explain why he turned out the way that he is. When Max was a child, Stan used to have a successful career as a professional chef in top-rated restaurants in New York City. But time and time again, Stan would get fired because of something (usually violent) that he did when he lost his temper. Stan’s wife eventually left the family because she couldn’t take living with Stan anymore. Stan raised Max as a single parent, and they have not had contact with Max’s mother for decades.

For a while, when Max was still a boy, Stan and Max moved to a rural part of Nebraska because Stan couldn’t find work as a chef in the New York City area. But father and son eventually moved back to the New York/New Jersey area. Stan became an apartment building doorman, which is the job that he has when this story takes place. Stan seems to have mellowed with age, but he can still be feisty, and he gets into arguments with Max. Although they disagree on many things, Stan and Max are actually a lot more alike than they care to admit.

At first, Jenna doesn’t want to call the police about Max illegally taking Ezra because she thinks it would be traumatic for Ezra to see Max get arrested. But after four days of Max avoiding or deliberately cutting off her phone calls, Jenna takes Bruce’s advice and calls the police to report the kidnapping. Because most of the movie is about the road trip, a lot of screen time in “Ezra” is about Max revisiting friends from his past, because he needs safe places to stay to hide out from the law. Two of these friends are a former comedian named Nick (played by Rainn Wilson) and a former schoolmate named Grace (played by Vera Farmiga), who knows Max from when they went to the same high school.

“Ezra” has moments of messy melodrama that are kind of eye-rolling in how fake these moments look. But then, the movie also has quieter moments that are engaging and more authentic. The scenes where Max visits past friends stand out as among the strongest parts of the movie. Cannavale and Byrne also have realistic chemistry as parents who know each other very well. (Cannavale and Byrne are a couple and parents in real life.)

Ezra has the type of autism where he doesn’t like to be hugged. And so, there are some poignant scenes where Max and Jenna try to hug Ezra, and he recoils as if he’s in pain. He sometimes shouts at someone to not touch him, or he will coldly tell someone who wants to hug him, “You can go now.” These scenes show the heart-wrenching emotions parents must feel when they know showing affection to their child, such as giving a hug to their child, can make the child feel very uncomfortable or unsafe. Jenna can usually calm Ezra down by rubbing his ear while he rubs her ear.

Ezra is also afraid of using eating utensils that aren’t plastic. Max tries to get Ezra to change this way of thinking in a scene that’s a little hard to watch because of how Max loses his patience with Ezra. Max often fails to understand that he can’t force Ezra to have the same type of childhood learning process that Max had when Max was a kid.

Max doesn’t want Ezra to be coddled, but Max frequently loses sight of what’s in the best interest of Ezra. Nowhere is this more evident than in scenes where Max repeatedly describes Ezra as Max’s “mojo” good luck charm. A child should not be described as being a good luck object. A child’s worth should not defined by a parent forcing the child to have the responsibility of making a parent happy. Max uses this excuse as the reason why Ezra needs to go on this road trip with Max to “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Cannavale (who’s doing yet another role as a brash, fast-talking character) carries the movie with a certain amount of intensity but doesn’t go overboard into implausibility for his Max character, even though some of the situations are written and directed in an over-the-top way. (The movie’s mid-credits scene is ridiculous and out of place.) Max isn’t a bad person, but he can be very irritating, and his violent actions should not be excused.

Fitzgerald, De Niro and Byrne do fine jobs with their roles and are convincing as family members who are frequently at odds with each other. But this “Ezra” movie is really Max’s show, and everyone else is just living in it. How much viewers will enjoy this movie will depend how much they think what Max does is worth forgiving and how much they think he’ll learn from his terrible mistakes.

Bleecker Street will release “Ezra” in U.S. cinemas on May 31, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was held in U.S. cinemas on May 20, 2024.

Review: ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023), starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh

July 19, 2023

by Carla Hay

Benny Safdie and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

“Oppenheimer” (2023)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in Europe, from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, the dramatic film “Oppenheimer” (based on the non-fiction book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”) features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer invents the atomic bomb, which is used in Japan toward the end of World War II, but he struggles with the moral consequences of this invention.

Culture Audience: “Oppenheimer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Christopher Nolan, the star headliners and history-based movies with a top-notch principal cast.

Emily Blunt and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

“Oppenheimer” has the words “awards bait” written all over it. This epic drama about atomic bomb inventor J. Robert Oppenheimer is crammed with showy performances from an all-star cast. The last third of the movie is the best and most meaningful section.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer” is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 non-fiction book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Oppenheimer was born in 1904 and died in 1967. This three-hour movie has a story that spans from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, with most of the story taking place in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s a very ambitious film that at times seems more interested in showing off how many famous cast members can be stuffed into quick-cutting scenes. The middle part of the movie tends to drag with some repetition, but the movie’s last hour is absolutely riveting.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Robert (played by Cillian Murphy, giving an award-worthy performance), is an intense and quietly brooding American theoretical physicist who is originally from New York, but he did his most significant work in remote areas of Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was tested. The top-secret research into making the atomic bomb was called the Manhattan Project. The movie shows that Robert had mixed feelings about this invention, even before it was actually built. He also worried about how this bomb could possibly start a competition among other countries (specifically, Russia, then known as the Soviet Union) to make an even more destructive bomb.

The first hour of “Oppenheimer” cuts in and out of scenes so quickly, it does a disservice to the story by preventing viewers from getting to know the main characters better. After a while, the movie’s first hour just becomes a parade of big-name actors portraying scientists and government officials who have various debates about the merits and morality of the atomic bomb. It all becomes a bit long-winded, although the visuals in the movie are often stunning. Also noteworthy is composer Ludwig Göransson’s stirring “Oppenheimer” musical score.

There are repetitive mentions of Robert always feeling like the white Anglos who dominate the U.S. government will never truly accept him because he’s Jewish. There’s some antisemitism depicted in the movie, but the biggest prejudices in “Oppenheimer” have to do with political alliances. The movie’s story is steeped in people’s obsession with finding out who’s a Communist (or Communist ally) and who is not. This “Red Scare” would eventually be the undoing of more than one person in the story.

The other real-life people portrayed in “Oppenheimer” include Leslie Groves Jr. (played by Matt Damon), the politically conservative officer of the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers and director of the Manhattan Project; Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.), the founding commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission); and physicist Ernest Lawrence (played by Josh Hartnett), the extroverted inventor of the cyclotron, who befriends the more introverted Robert. Other real-life historical figures portrayed in “Oppenheimer” include Danish physicist Niels Bohr (played by Kenneth Branagh), a mutual admirer of Robert; hydrogen bomb inventor Edward Teller (played by Benny Safdie), an uneasy subordinate of Robert; and physicist Frank Oppenheimer (played by Dylan Arnold), Robert’s younger brother, who was recruited by Robert to work on the Manhattan Project.

And there’s more: Hans Bethe (played by Gustaf Skarsgård), the leader of the Manhattan Project’s theorist department; physicist/chemist Isidor Rabi (played by David Krumholtz), Robert’s longtime friend/advisor; Vannevar Bush (played by Matthew Modine), the leader of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; William Borden (played by David Dastmalchian), executive director of the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy; and world-renowned scientist Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti), who has a few contrived-looking scenes where he has private conversations with Robert.

And there’s even more: Jason Clarke as Roger Robb, special counsel to the Atomic Energy Commission; Macon Blair as Lloyd Garrison, Robert’s attorney; Rami Malek as physicist David Hill; Alden Ehrenreich as an unnamed U.S. Senate aide who works with Lewis Strauss; Casey Affleck as U.S. Army military intelligence officer Boris Pash; Dane DeHaan as civil engineer Kenneth Nichols. Also in the “Oppenheimer” cast are Tony Goldwyn as national security/defense government official Gordon Gray; Jack Quaid as physicist Richard Geynman; Josh Peck as physicist Kenneth Bainbridge; Alex Wolff as physicist Luiz Alvarez; and James Remar as U.S. government official Henry Stimson. Even with a cast packed with well-known actors, most of the supporting actors who are in the movie for less than 10 minutes each don’t have much to do but say their lines while sitting or standing in offices.

One of the best scenes in the movie is when Robert has a tension-filled meeting in 1945, with U.S. president Harry Truman (played Gary Oldman), who dismisses Robert’s concerns about the atomic bomb being a trigger for other countries, such as the Soviet Union, to get into an arms race to build an even more destructive bomb. The scene is less than 15 minutes long, but Oldman absolutely stands out as tough-talking President Truman, who has no regrets about deciding to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that year. President Truman scolds Robert by saying: “Do you think Hiroshima and Nagasaki care who invented the bomb? They care about who dropped it. I did!”

The only two women with prominent speaking roles in the movie are mainly there as love interests to the male protagonist, even though these women have their own careers. Florence Pugh plays a commitment-phobic, Stanford-educated psychiatrist named Jean Tatlock, who has a fling with Robert around the same time that he meets his future wife Katherine, nicknamed Kitty (played by Emily Blunt), who is an outspoken botanist/biologist. Robert was Kitty’s fourth husband.

Both women are portrayed as being “difficult” for Robert, who’s depicted as the “long-suffering” person who has to deal with these strong-willed and opinionated women. Robert is portrayed as a “romantic” who just can’t help falling for women who might be wrong for him. “Oppenheimer” absolutely excuses his affairs with married women, including Kitty, whom he got pregnant when she was married to her third husband. Robert’s responsibility in this homewrecking infidelity is glossed over in the movie with a “wink, wink, nudge nudge/boys will be boys” attitude, while Kitty gets the most of the shaming.

As was the case with many wives in the 1940s and 1950s, Kitty (who came from an affluent family) had to make her career take a back seat to her husband’s career while she was the primary caretaker of their two children: son Peter and daughter Toni. Kitty is very unhappy in New Mexico. Her mental health starts to deteriorate, and she has some addiction issues.

Despite her personal challenges, Kitty maintains a defiant nature. Kitty encourages Robert to stand up for himself when he becomes the target of a smear campaign by former ally Lewis Strauss, who spreads lies that Robert is a secret Communist who might have been a spy for the Russian government. Blunt gives a compelling performance that has a little more depth than the typical “loyal wife of the main character.” Downey has his moments to shine as the sneaky and duplicitous Lewis, but Downey performs in “Oppenheimer” like he’s trying too hard to win an Oscar.

“Oppenheimer” is a very “male gaze” movie that wallows in showing a lot of men in ego rivalries and power struggles, while all the women react to whatever the men do. Pugh being topless in her sex scene with Murphy is a very “male gaze” decision, since she didn’t need to be shown with her naked breasts exposed in this movie. Meanwhile, her male co-star had absolutely no “private parts” nudity in this sex scene. Directors really need to stop this blatant double standard about nudity in sex scenes, where women have to show some kind of nudity, while men do not have to show any nudity. It’s a very outdated double standard that’s a turnoff to many viewers who aren’t stuck in this type of backwards and sexist mindset.

The lead-up to the making of the atomic bomb isn’t nearly as interesting in “Oppenheimer” as what happens in the aftermath, when Robert struggles with the consequences of his invention. He becomes famous and lauded as a war hero in America, but with that fame come scrutiny and jealousy from some of the people he had trusted as colleagues. People who know what happened in real life to Oppenheimer can debate if what is shown in the movie is entirely accurate. The “Oppenheimer” movie obviously makes him look like a sympathetic person.

One of the ways that “Oppenheimer” depicts Robert’s guilt is when he hallucinates visions of people in front of him dying from the bomb, with their faces melting or their bodies being ripped apart. Curiously, he only envisions white people suffering from this catastrophe, not the thousands of Japanese people who were actually killed by the bomb he invented. It might be a tone-deaf part of the movie, or it might be writer/director Nolan’s way of showing that even “liberal” Robert Oppenheimer couldn’t see past his own insular world that has no racial diversity.

“Oppenheimer” is not the masterpiece that some people might hail it to be. As a history-based drama, it’s got a very narrow point of view. However, the performances by Murphy, Blunt and Oldman elevate this very long movie, even if much of the dialogue is basic and perfunctory. During the course of the story, Robert Oppenheimer goes from being an underdog to a hero to an embattled public figure. It’s this most difficult phase of his life that brings out his true character and the best that “Oppenheimer” has to offer.

Universal Pictures will release “Oppenheimer” in U.S. cinemas on July 21, 2023.

Review: ‘Plane,’ starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter

January 14, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Plane”

Directed by Jean-François Richet

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Philippines and briefly in Singapore and New York City, the action film “Plane” features a white and Asian cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A Scottish-born airplane pilot working for a commercial American airline company leads a rescue mission after a plane that he is piloting makes an emergency landing in a remote jungle in the Philippines, and the survivors are held hostage by a gang of terrorists.

Culture Audience: “Plane” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of star Gerard Butler and well-paced action movies about heroic rescue missions.

Daniella Pineda, Gerard Butler and Yoson An in “Plane” (Photo by Kenneth Rexach/Lionsgate)

As a semi-realistic action movie, “Plane” delivers exactly what it’s supposed to be: pure escapist entertainment full of gripping suspense. The movie has a few twists that don’t make the story as predictable as it could have been. “Plane” isn’t pretending to be award-worthy art, so viewers shouldn’t have those expectations at all.

Directed by Jean-François Richet, “Plane” (whose screenplay was written by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis) has a somewhat misleading title because most of the action does not take place on a plane. The first third of the movie is about a commercial plane having to make an emergency landing in a remote jungle of the Philippines, due to an electrical malfunction and lightning striking the plane. The rest of the film is about what happens when the surviving passengers and crew members are stranded in the jungle and targeted by a gang of terrorists.

“Plane” begins by showing this ill-fated flight and who is on board for this trip. The fictional airplane company Trailblazer (which is based in New York City) is operating Flight 119, which is going from Singapore, with a planned layover in Tokyo, and then on to Hawaii. (“Plane” was actually filmed in Puerto Rico.) The captain of this flight is Brodie Torrance (played by Gerard Butler), a native of Scotland who has experience flying for the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom. Brodie is a widower (his wife died three years ago) who lives in Hawaii. He has a daughter named Daniela (played by Haleigh Hekking), who is in her late teens.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and there are only 14 passengers on this flight. The co-pilot is Samuel Dele (played by Yoson An), who is originally from Hong Kong. Samuel is happily married with two pre-teen daughters. The three flight attendants on this trip are Bonnie Lane (played by Daniella Pineda), Maria Falco (played by Amber Rivera) and Isabella Yu (played by Michelle Lee), with Bonnie as the flight attendant who has the most obvious leadership qualities.

Not long before the flight is scheduled to leave, Brodie is informed by the FBI that an agent named Shellback (played by Remi Adeleke) will be boarding with a recently arrested fugitive who was found in Singapore, after the fugitive evaded capture for 15 years. This fugitive, whose name is Louis Gaspare (played by Mike Colter), is an American who is wanted for murder. Louis is brought on board in handcuffs, but Brodie thinks it’s best if the rest of the flight’s crew members do not know the details of why Louis is handcuffed.

Shellback and Louis are seated in the very last row of the plane. The other passengers are scattered in various other seats. Many of these passengers are not given enough screen time or dialogue to have distinguishable personalities. But other passengers stand out and affect certain parts of the story.

Matt Sinclair (played by Joey Slotnick) is an impatient and demanding American in his 50s. Maxwell Carver (played by Oliver Trevena) is a talkative and inquisitive Brit in his 30s. Two women in their 20s are friends and travel companions: Brie (played by Lily Krug) is American, and Katie (played by Kelly Gale) is Swedish. Katie and Brie are both giggly and excited to be on this trip.

While boarding the plane, one of the passengers notices that the plane is an old model and makes a comment about it to Brodie. In a defensive but pleasant tone, Brodie says, “These planes are indestructible.” And when someone in an airplane disaster action movie brags about the plane being indestructible, you know what that means: The plane is going to malfunction.

Even before this happens, there’s tension on the plane because a few of the passengers have noticed that Louis came on board in handcuffs. Brie and Katie were originally assigned to sit in the seats now occupied by Louis and Shellback, but Bonnie discreetly tells Brie and Katie that they have to move a few rows up. When Brie and Katie are seated, they start to take a selfie photo.

However, Louis gets very agitated at the thought of being in the background of their photo, and he barks at them when they’re about to take the picture: “Can you not do that?” Later in the movie, when Maxwell starts making a video recording with his own phone, Louis has an even angrier and more extreme reaction. How much of a loose cannon is Louis? And can he be trusted?

It’s already shown in the “Plane” trailer and other marketing materials that Louis is eventually taken out of his handcuffs to help Brodie in the jungle when the surviving people on the plane come under attack by the gang of terrorists. (Brodie is the one who makes this decision to uncuff Louis.) The leader of the terrorist gang is a ruthless thug named Junmar (played by Evan Dane Taylor), who wants to hold these survivors hostage for big ransom money. It’s something that the gang has done before when visitors have the misfortune of getting stranded in this jungle.

Meanwhile, back at Trailblazer headquarters in New York City, company officials are frantically trying to locate the plane and its occupants, since the plane has dropped off the radar and is considered missing. Trailblazer chief executive Scarsdale (played by Tony Goldwyn) is leading the search-and-rescue efforts. It’s explained in the movie that the Philippines government won’t get involved because the jungle is in a part of the country overrun with terrorists that the Philippines government has given up trying to control. Therefore, Scarsdale makes the decision to hire a private group of mercenaries to help.

“Plane” has some adrenaline-packed action scenes that go in some unexpected directions, while some of the “shoot ’em up” scenes come very close to looking like generic video-game combat. However, the dynamics between Brodie and Louis make “Plane” a little more interesting than the average action flick. There’s nothing particularly special about any of the acting in the film, but no one is outright horrible either. “Plane” is an overall satisfying and serviceable thriller for anyone seeking this type of entertainment.

Lionsgate released “Plane” in U.S. cinemas on January 13, 2023.

Review: ‘King Richard,’ starring Will Smith

November 21, 2021

by Carla Hay

“King Richard”

Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green

Culture Representation: Taking place in the early-to-mid-1990s, mainly in California and Florida, the dramatic film “King Richard” features a cast of African American and white characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Coming from an underprivileged background, Richard “Richie” Williams becomes the first tennis coach of his daughters Venus and Serena, but his unorthodox methods often clash with the traditions of the elite world of tennis.

Culture Audience: “King Richard” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Will Smith and the real-life Venus Williams and Serena Williams, as well as people who are interested in well-acted sports movies about people who triumph against the odds.

Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Will Smith and Tony Goldwyn in King Richard” (Photo by Chiabella James/Warner Bros. Pictures)

The dramatic film “King Richard” is both a tribute and a feel-good Hollywood version of how Richard “Richie” Williams guided his daughters Venus and Serena to tennis superstardom. The movie is set in the early-to-mid-1990s, at the beginning of Venus’ and Serena’s tennis careers. The tennis matches in the story focus more on Venus’ rise to tennis glory, since her championships came before Serena’s.

In the role of Richard Williams, Will Smith gives a very charismatic performance as a flawed but loving and determined father. The movie shows in abundance how Richard Williams’ stubbornness was both an asset and a liability when he became the person who had the biggest impact on Venus’ and Serena’s respective tennis careers. As it stands, this movie is told from Richard’s male and very domineering perspective.

What saves this movie from being unchecked worship of patriarchy is that it gives credit to Oracene “Brandy” Williams (Venus and Serena’s mother, winningly played by Aunjanue Ellis) as being an underrated, positive force in the family. Oracene (who was a nurse when this story took place) was the one who held the family together in their toughest times. She was also the intelligence behind some of the crucial decisions that were made when Venus and Serena were underage children. If Richard was the “king” of the family, then Oracene was undoubtedly the “queen.”

Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by Zach Baylin, “King Richard” doesn’t shy away from some of the controversial aspects of Richard Williams’ life, nor does the movie portray him as saintly. But the title of the movie says it all: The intention of “King Richard” is to give Richard Williams the same level of respect as the tennis stars who are treated as sports royalty. It’s a bit of a stretch, considering that Richard wasn’t the only coach that Venus and Serena ever had.

The movie acknowledges that Venus (played by Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (played by Demi Singleton) had plenty of other people who helped them along the way. There are moments when “King Richard” puts Richard Williams a little too much on a pedestal for being a “prophet” who predicted, when Venus and Serena were in elementary school, that Venus and Serena would become phenomenal tennis champs. Much ado is made about his 78-page plan where he made these predictions. The movie also depicts how Richard filmed homemade videos as electronic press kits to promote Venus and Serena.

Lots of parents have grandiose plans for their children, but it helps if those kids have the talent for whatever the parents are motivating them to do. This movie could have had a little more insight into the talent that makes Venus and Serena so special, as well as more information on when they started showing an interest in tennis. “King Richard” starts off with Venus at approximately age 11 and Serena at approximately age 10, with Richard as their “tough love” coach, already practicing on run-down tennis courts in their working-class hometown of Compton, California. At the time, Richard worked the night shift as a security guard.

The movie makes it look like all Richard had to do in the earliest days of their tennis career was to get Venus and Serena to practice a lot, in order to put the two sisters on the path to becoming great tennis players. But did Venus and Serena start with that passion for tennis, or were they pushed into it? The movie never says, because Richard (as the protagonist) is the main focus of the story. (It should be noted that Smith is also one of the producers of “King Richard.”) There are countless tennis parents who do the same things that Richard did to prepare their kids to become professional tennis players, but we don’t hear about them because their tennis kids just aren’t talented.

In the movie, Oracene (who was a widow when she married Richard in 1980) is the one who tells Richard that practicing on inferior tennis courts with substandard tennis rackets would get Venus and Serena nowhere, no matter how much hard work they did. Oracene is the one who motivates Richard to make the right connections in the elite world of tennis, where you need the kind of money that’s required to pay for training and entry fees into top tennis tournaments. However, the Williams family couldn’t afford these fees at the time. It’s at this point in the movie that Richard starts to transform himself into a maverick wheeler dealer in the tennis world.

He’s an unlikely tennis maverick. From the opening scene, the movie makes it clear that Richard’s English grammar skills aren’t very good, and he comes from a rough-and-tumble background. In a voiceover, Richard describes the type of upbringing he had: “Tennis was not a game peoples played. We was too busy running from the [Ku Klux] Klan.” (Richard was born in 1942 in Shreveport, Louisiana.)

Later in the movie, Richard tells his daughters: “When I was your age, I had to fight someone every day,” which is why he says that doesn’t get as fazed by setbacks as other people might be. The issues of racial differences and social-class inequalities are ever-present in the movie because a huge part of Venus’ and Serena’s success story is about how they became champions in a sport that’s been accessible mainly to white people who can afford it.

The Williams family members who are also depicted in the movie are Oracene’s three daughters from her first marriage: Tunde Price (played by Mikayla Bartholomew), Isha Price (played by Daniele Lawson) and Lyndrea Price (played Layla Crawford). (In real life, Venus, Serena and Isha are among the executive producers of “King Richard.”) When this movie takes place, the Williams household consists of Richard, Oracene, Venus, Serena, Tunde, Isha and Lyndrea. The girls are seen being being playful and happy around each other, doing things such as karaoke-type talent shows in their home when they spend time together.

However, “King Richard” has fairly shallow portrayals of Tunde, Isha and Lyndrea as nothing but characters whose main purpose in life is to agree with Richard and cheer on Venus and Serena when needed. In a household of five sisters, the sisters are never seen arguing with each other, or having jealousy issues because a parent seems to favor one child over another. This lack of sibling conflict is very unrealistic. The movie doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge that Richard’s single-minded focus on making Venus and Serena tennis champs surely came at a cost to his relationship with his stepdaughters, who must have felt treated differently by him.

Even in the best of circumstances, “King Richard” makes it look like Richard didn’t think his stepdaughters were worthy of the same type of attention that he was giving to Venus and Serena. Richard briefly mentions that he thinks that his other daughters in the household are “future doctors and lawyers,” but if he spent any time supporting his stepdaughters’ career goals, the movie never shows it and never shows what those goals were. “King Richard” doesn’t make an effort to distinguish the personalities of Tunde, Isha and Lyndrea, because the movie just makes them background characters in the Richard Williams show.

The only time Richard is showing individual “protective dad” attention to one of his stepdaughters is in an early scene in the movie where 16-year-old Tunde is watching Venus and Serena practice on a Compton tennis court. Richard and his other stepdaughters are there too. Some guys in their 20s are nearby. One of them, who’s named Bells (played by Craig Tate), tries to flirtatiously talk to Tunde, who seems uncomfortable with his attention. She quickly walks away from Bells when Richard sees what’s going on and tells her to get away from this leering stranger. Richard steps in and orders Bells to leave Tunde alone because she’s only 16 and not interested in dating him.

In response, Bells turns into a thug and punches Richard hard enough for Richard to fall to the ground. Richard gets up and walks away, but all five of the girls have witnessed this assault while waiting in Richard’s Volkswagen van. When he gets in the van and he’s asked if he’s okay, that’s when Richard says he had to fight someone every day when he was the same ages as his daughters. “And I didn’t have no daddy to stand in the way,” he adds. “They’re going to respect y’all.”

It won’t be the last time Richard takes a beating. He gets beat up physically, emotionally and mentally in various ways during his unstoppable efforts to make Venus and Serena among the greatest tennis players of all time. He gets plenty of rejections, of course. And he’s openly ridiculed for his decision to take Venus and Serena out of junior league tennis tournaments, so that Venus and Serena could focus on their education and go directly to the professional leagues. He often annoys people with his blunt approach, because he can be arrogant.

Richard is not a smooth talker, but the one characteristic that defines Richard in his key to his success is persistence. He’s well-aware that he doesn’t come from an educated, privileged and well-connected background. But that’s exactly why he’s so hungry for the success that he wants for Venus and Serena. He’s also fiercely proud and supportive of Venus and Serena, even if they lose a match. At least that’s how the movie portrays him.

Because of Richard’s persuasive finagling, Venus and Serena sign on with their first professional coach: Paul Cohen (played by Tony Goldwyn), who agrees to coach Venus and Serena for free because he believes in their talent and wants a cut of any prize money they will eventually win. For a while, Oracene helped RIchard with coaching duties for Serena when Cohen initially said he would only coach one of the sisters for free, and Richard decided it would be Venus. Later, Venus and Serena sign on with coach Rick Macci (played by Jon Bernthal), who agrees to relocate the entire Williams household to Macci’s home base in Florida’s Palm Beach County, where he pays for all of their living expenses and buys them the house where they live.

Macci is also motivated by getting a percentage of the millions that he thinks Venus and Serena will eventually earn. At the time, the Rick Macci International Tennis Academy (in Delray Beach, Florida) was best known for training tennis star Jennifer Capriati (played by Jessica Wacnik), who was an idol of Venus and Serena. Macci is shocked and dismayed when the investment he thought he made in Venus and Serena as future junior league champs turns out to be funding for Venus and Serena to not go on the junior league circuit after all.

It’s because Richard didn’t want his future tennis champs to get burned out on the junior league circuit. Richard tells Macci of this plan after Richard got what he wanted in their contract. Richard made the then-controversial and unheard-of decision to take Venus and Serena out of the junior leagues (the traditional route for tennis players to turn pro), so they could go to school like “normal kids” while training to go straight into the professional leagues.

Richard is further convinced he made the right decision when he sees the scandalous downfall of Capriati, beginning with her 1994 arrest for marijuana possession. The arrest exposed many of Capriati’s personal problems, which she has since largely blamed on the pressures and burnout of her junior league tennis career. Many people doubted that Venus and Serena could turn pro in their mid-teens, but Venus and Serena proved the naysayers wrong.

In addition to Capriati, other real-life tennis players are depicted by actors in brief appearances in the movie. They include John McEnroe (played by Christopher Wallinger), Pete Sampras (played by Chase Del Rey) and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (played by Marcela Zacarias), who is Venus’ opponent in the movie’s big tennis showdown. McEnroe and Sampras are seen training with Cohen during one of Richard’s first meetings with the coach. Don’t expect any of these other tennis stars to have any meaningful lines of dialogue in the movie. Each person only says a few sentences.

In the movie, Richard is depicted as being a proverbial “helicopter dad” who hovers during practice and tries to tell coaches Cohen and Macci how to do their jobs. The movie demonstrates in these scenes that these coaches only tolerated Richard because of Venus’ and Serena’s talent, not because these coaches genuinely liked Richard as a friend or respected him as a business person. Macci, who’s more emotional than Cohen, isn’t afraid to express his anger at feeling deceived or frustrated by Richard. Both coaches are the friendliest to Richard when it’s about how they can make money off of Venus and Serena.

The movie tends to gloss over the fact that for all of Richard’s big talk, what really opened important doors for Venus and Serena were the money and connections of coaches such as Cohen and Macci. Richard was a package deal with Venus and Serena. We’ll never know how differently Richard might have been treated by some of these people if Venus and Serena weren’t his underage children at the start of their tennis careers.

In other words, if Venus and Serena weren’t underage children under Richard’s legal control, would he have been as successful in launching their careers? The movie implies the answer: Probably not, because less people in the tennis industry would’ve tolerated him and his admittedly alienating ways.

However, it’s precisely because Richard was the father of Venus and Serena that he protected them in ways that many coaches or managers probably would not have protected them. The issue of race cannot be underestimated because Venus and Serena got “real talk” from Richard about the racism they would experience in the sport of tennis, which has a reputation for being elitist and catering mainly to white people. As such, one of the movie’s obvious “Oscar bait” clips is a scene where a tearful Richard tells Venus in a pep talk about her groundbreaking role in professional tennis: “You’re not just going to be representing you. You’re going to be representing every little black girl on Earth!”

Venus and Serena are portrayed as polite, hardworking children who have no other interests besides tennis and hanging out with their sisters. In the movie, Richard is shown discouraging Venus and Serena from getting too close to kids outside of their family. When Richard wants a “yes” answer from his daughters, they answer, “Yes, Daddy,” like robotic kids on command. Richard expects Venus and Serena to tell him he’s their best friend when he asks. Venus complies with the answer Richard wants to hear, but Serena says Venus is her best friend first.

It’s all played for laughs and feel-good cheer. But some of this banter just seems a little too phony, giving the impression that a lot of the real story is left out about how Richard would lose his temper and say harmful things to Venus and Serena. It’s hard to believe this movie’s rosy portrayal that Richard never really yelled hurtful things to Venus and Serena, when every hard-driving, tough-talking coach does that one point or another to people whom the coach is training. The perspectives of Venus and Serena are not given much importance in this movie, except when it comes to how they’re going to win tennis matches.

For example, viewers never learn what Venus and Serena liked to study in school or what types of friends they made in school, even if the movie makes it look like Richard was the type of father who didn’t want his underage daughters to invite any friends to visit them in their home. The movie never shows how the family celebrated milestones such as Venus’ and Serena’s birthdays, or when they graduated from middle school to high school. It’s a strange omission, considering that in real life, Richard got a lot of criticism precisely because he wanted Venus and Serena to have “normal” school experiences at that age instead of going on tennis tours.

The movie’s erasure of Venus’ and Serena’s childhood experiences that aren’t related to tennis or family all goes back to the patriarchal purpose of the movie: Showing how Richard programmed Venus and Serena on how to be tennis champs, not how to prepare them for life after tennis. There have been several documentaries about Venus and Serena where the two sisters openly admit that they will have a difficult time dealing with life when they both retire from tennis.

And how hard was Richard on Venus and Serena? The movie hints that people had concerns. There’s a scene where a police officer and a government social worker go to the Williams home in Compton to investigate a complaint that Venus and Serena were being abused because of all the rigorous training that Richard made them do.

Richard and Oracene are naturally insulted and defensive. They deny any abuse, and nothing comes of the complaint. The movie makes it look like a jealous neighbor named Ms. Strickland (played by Erika Ringor) is behind the complaint, but you have to wonder if that neighbor character was created in the movie as a villainous stand-in for well-meaning people in real life who had concerns about Richard’s parenting skills.

Whether or not there was any abuse, the family did have serious problems, which is acknowledged in one of the movie’s best scenes. It’s when Oracene confronts Richard for letting his ego stifle Venus’ wishes to play in the professional leagues at the age of 14. Oracene and Richard have an argument, which leads to Oracene verbally ripping into Richard for abandoning the family he had with his first wife and not seeming to care about having a relationship with the children he left behind in the divorce. (Richard had five biological kids and one stepchild with his first wife Betty Johnson, to whom he was married from 1965 to 1973.)

During this argument, Oracene reminds Richard that he’s had a string of failed businesses because he gave up too quickly when things got a little too hard for him. It’s easy to read between the lines, even though the movie doesn’t come right out and say it: Venus and Serena were Richard’s last-ditch attempt to get rich after he failed at starting his own businesses. He needed their talent because his own skills as an entrepreneur were questionable at best.

In the movie’s zeal to put Richard on a “prophet pedestal” and to make Oracene and Richard look like a loving couple that will stay together “’til death do us part,” the movie’s epilogue leaves out this reality: Richard and Oracene divorced in 2002. In 2010, Richard married his third wife Lakeisha Juanita Graham (who’s young enough to be his daughter), they had a son, and then the marriage ended in divorce in 2017. Maybe the “King Richard” filmmakers think that the public shouldn’t care about these details of Richard being a failure as a husband because Venus and Serena turned out to be rich and famous.

Despite the flaws in the movie’s screenplay, “King Richard” has exemplary acting from Smith, who gives one of his best movie performances as the gruff but compelling Richard. Sidney’s portrayal of Venus gets more of an emotional journey than Singleton’s portrayal of Serena, who is mostly in Venus’ shadow at this point in the sisters’ lives. (In real life, Serena would later emerge has having a more assertive personality than Venus.)

In the movie, Richard explains to Serena that he planned for Venus to become a star first. Richard predicts Venus will be ranked No. 1 in the world before Serena achieves that same goal, but Serena will eventually be considered by many to be the “greatest of all time” in tennis. He tells Serena: “I knew you was rough, you was tough, and you was a fighter.”

Sidney and Singleton both adeptly handle the movie’s tennis-playing scenes. A big highlight of the movie is an emotionally gripping, climactic scene at the 1994 Bank of the West Classic tournament in Oakland, California. One of the movie’s strengths is that it doesn’t fall into the usual clichés of how sports dramas usually end. However, the tropes of a “tough love” father/coach are played to the hilt.

As a sports movie, “King Richard” might disappoint some viewers who are expecting more screen time devoted to tennis matches. But more tennis matches on screen should be expected if Venus and Serena were the central characters. “King Richard” never lets you forget that the central character is someone who was never a pro tennis player: Richard Williams. However, the movie has the grace to admit that Venus and Serena turned out to be extraordinary people because of their mother Oracene too.

Warner Bros. Pictures released “King Richard” in U.S. cinemas and on HBO Max on November 19, 2021.