Film Review: Free State of Jones (2016)

The most interesting part of this film is its subject matter, not the filmmaking itself. Matthew McConaughey plays Newton Knight, a medical orderly in the Confederate Army who deserts after learning that a new law allows the sons of the richest slaveholders to be excused military service. Knight returns to his home in Jones County, Mississippi, where he's hunted by the local Confederate militia. After they burn down his home, Knight hides out in a swamp with some runaway slaves. This becomes the nucleus of a guerilla group that eventually numbers in the hundreds and battles the local Confederate forces. Knight and his men end up controlling a significant swath of Mississippi and declare the "free state of Jones", a land dedicated to the principle of egalitarianism for all men, no matter what their colour. The war ends and the Reconstruction period is followed by brutal suppression of black political activism by the KKK and plantation owners. Knight takes a black woman as his wife after the war, and a sub-plot set in the 1950s shows one of his male descendants, who is one-eighth black, fighting Jim Crow laws for the right to marry his white fiance.

The earnest, plodding, clunkiness of this biopic feels, at times, like a throwback to film styles and tropes from the '50s and '60s. 12 Years a Slave and Glory are set in the same era, but they told their stories with subtlety and cinematic flair without diminishing the messages they wanted to get across. Jones has no time for artistry. Dramatic and romantic elements are handled like assignments for a required university course, and the action sequences are staged like pageants. One battle set in a graveyard actually borders on the farcical.

By this point you might think I didn't like this film. Wrong. What sets it apart from a Glory or 12 Years a Slave is that it's eager and willing to tackle issues that don't normally get an airing in American films, specifically the subject of class warfare. At several points in the film it's explicitly stated that the Civil War was primarily about plantation owners, the plutocracy of the South, defending their capital interests with the lives of poor whites. Most films about this period in history might have ended with the conclusion of the war. Jones continues its study of class politics with the Reconstruction period, which, as far as I know, has never been dealt with in any film. The film makes it clear that the efforts of the KKK and their capitalist supporters were directed at denying blacks political power because that kind of power meant a tidal shift in the relationship between capital and labour. All those notions about white Southern notions of "honour" and ''tradition" and fear of black violence were just hogwash. Whites were only interested in instituting a system of legal peonage to replace slavery. In this way Jones emerges as a superior film to Glory and 12 Years a Slave because the latter two films are dealing in honorable platitudes: racism are slavery were bad. This film brings something new to the discussion by showing how racism is so often a screen behind which politicians and capitalists practice their black arts.

Free State of Jones is a flawed film from a purely cinematic point of view, but as an examination of an often poorly understood part of American history it really has no equal. And lest you think that this subject matter isn't worth re-examining in this day and age, check out the interview below with legendary film director William Friedkin. From the 6:23 mark onwards Friedkin defends the birth of the KKK. It's jaw-dropping stuff, and this from someone who's from the allegedly liberal bastion of Hollywood.

Eight Actors Who Should Fire Their Agents

Legendary agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar. His white Persian cat had the day off.

One of the mysteries of the Hollywood universe is how some good actors consistently end up in cruddy films, and yet others somehow miss out on that one big film that would catapult them to superstardom. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in their agents. It is, after all, the modern-day Irving "Swifty" Lazars who vet the scripts and directors before ringing up their client to let them know that, fingers crossed, they're going to be getting the lead in Police Academy vs Predator. Clearly, the best career advice for the following list of actors is to dump their representation and find some other way of finding roles; the Magic 8-Ball might be one option.

8. Mira Sorvino

Let's see; beautiful Mira is fluent in French and Mandarin Chinese; she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard;  she won an Oscar in 1995 for Mighty Aphrodite; and since then she's done...nothing, Nothing worthwhile, that is. Her IMDB CV since Aphrodite reads like the contents of a DVD sale bin at Wal-Mart: a lot of schlocky action films and others that are probably part of some film tax credit dodge. If it's true there's a conspiracy against brainy women in Hollywood then Sorvino is the poster child for it.

7. Clive Owen

Poor Clive Owen; it seems like yesterday he was on the short list to be the next James Bond, and now he's stuck doing the action films Daniel Craig turns down. Shoot 'Em Up, The International,  Derailed and Killer Elite represent the stuff star actors do on their way up or down. Owen is in his prime and he really only has Children of Men on the plus side of the ledger. And he'll have to win at least two Oscars to make up for King Arthur.

6. Matthew McConaughey

If Clive Owen's problem is too many action films, Matthew's curse is too few. This is one of the most macho, virile actors around, and just when you think he's going to become the next big he-man actor he turns around and does some desperately witless rom-com.   U-571 was followed by The Wedding Planner; Reign of Fire by How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days; and what does he follow up The Lincoln Lawyer with? Magic Mike! A chick flick about male strippers! The only way forward for Matthew is for he and Clive Owen to switch agents and thereby rescue two careers.

5. Eddie Murphy

Some might say Eddie is his own worst enemy when it comes to picking roles, but the issue here is that he's a fine comic actor who's consistently been willing to whore his talents in any jerky comedy that came with a big paycheque. Check him out in Bowfinger and The Nutty Professor and you see someone who has a Peter Sellers-like ability to create and inhabit fully-realized comic characters. Most comedians play one character the entirety of their career (step forward, Adam Sandler), but Murphy can do much, much better. It's time for Eddie to stop letting his posse choose his scripts.

4. Alec Baldwin

If any actor deserves to get a mulligan on their career it's Baldwin. Turns out he's one of the best comic actors around, but until 30 Rock came along he'd been wasting his time trying to play it straight and macho in dire efforts like The Getaway and The Shadow. His agent was apparently blinded by Alec's leading man good looks and figured comedy was beneath him.

3. Geena Davis

She can play it sexy, tough or funny, but apparently she can't survive her agent's decision to put her in Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight. That pair of bombs effectively ended Geena's place on the A-list, and since then she's been reduced to playing a supporting role to a CGI mouse in three Stuart Little films. Her agent couldn't find her at least one rom-com?

2. Steve Martin

It's possible that Steve and Eddie Murphy share the same agent, because Martin can also be accused of wasting his talents in a string of family-friendly comedies like Father of the Bride, Cheaper by the Dozen and Parenthood. And there's no explaining his participation in the jaw-droppingly racist Bringing Down the House. Steve was once a wild and crazy guy, and his early films, The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and The Man with Two Brains, reflect that persona. Perhaps Steve spent too long working at Disneyland in his youth, because he's played things pretty safe for a long time now.

1. Jeff Bridges

This might seem like an odd choice, and it's definitely too late in the day for him to switch agents, but it seems to me Jeff could have had a much more spectacular career. He's possibly the best actor of his generation, but somehow he's never got the big hit or the big role. His agent certainly tried. Bridges got the lead roles in films that were supposed to be big, like King Kong, Starman, Tron and Heaven's Gate, but they all turned out to be different flavours of turkey. Take a moment to imagine if Jeff had had Harrison Ford's agent. Jeff Bridges as Han Solo? as Indiana Jones? Those films would all have been even better with Bridges on board. In fact, most any big film of the 1970s and '80s would, in my opinion, would have been better with him in it. It could even be a drinking game: you and your friends name any random quality film from the last 40 years, and if a majority agrees that the film would be even better with Bridges at the top of the bill then everyone downs a shot. You'll be falling down drunk in no time.

Film Review: The Lincoln Lawyer

Hurrah! Matthew McConaughey's finally made a movie a male audience can enjoy. I don't know why, but McConaughey is always getting roped into starring in lame ass romantic comedies such as Fool's Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Isn't that what Paul Rudd's for? McConaughey's been excellent as an action hero in otherwise B-grade films like Reign of Fire and U-571, but he seems to prefer romcoms.

In The Lincoln Lawyer he plays a semi-slimy lawyer named Mick Haller who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Continental. The car is driven by his (political incorrectness alert!) black chauffeur. Anyway, he ends up representing a spoiled rich kid accused of assaulting a prostitute and things get sticky from that point on.

The fun of this film is that it has a retro 1970s feel. The stylish opening credits seems to announce this fact, and the gritty L.A. locations aren't the usual postcard scenes of piers, beaches and boardwalks. Although there are thriller elements here, the film is mostly a courtroom drama, and it's one of the better ones to come along in recent years. The glue that holds the whole film together, though, is McConaughey's performance. He's got the rogue with a heart of gold (divorced with a daughter he loves dearly) thing down pat, and he's believable as a sharp-witted lawyer.

The film does suffer a bit from a couple of scenes that require McConaughey to show some teary emotion; it's not that he can't do this, it's just the scenes feel shoehorned in to make the character more human. Ryan Phillipe's rich kid is completely one-dimensional, which is fine since the fun in this kind of film is a clever plot, not revealing layers of character motivation. And in that regard the ending is pleasantly unexpected. Instead of being changed by his experience, the Haller character goes right back to being a sharp, slimy lawyer who's fun to watch. Not a perfect movie, but it's always fun.