By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Conceived by 74-year-old Westport attorney Michael Koskoff and his screenwriter son Jacob, “Marshall” is a courtroom drama set in Fairfield County, focusing on a rape case in 1941, when Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) was a crusading civil rights lawyer for the NAACP.
After a Greenwich socialite, Mrs. Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson), accuses her African-American chauffeur, Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), of raping her and pushing her off a bridge, he’s arrested, and frightened white people across the country began firing their domestic workers.
At age 32, Thurgood Marshall already had a formidable reputation, traveling around the South defending African-Americans in redneck towns, and he’d already argued before the Supreme Court.
Arriving in Bridgeport, Marshall quickly realizes that Spell’s ‘confession’ was coerced. And Judge Colin Foster (James Cromwell) sides with prosecutor Loren Willis (Dan Stevens), ruling that, while Marshall may sit at the defense table as co-counsel, he can’t speak because he’s from out-of-state.
Instead, Spell’s defense is articulated by Samuel Friedman (Josh Gad), a reluctant insurance attorney with no experience in criminal law. As the case proceeds, these two young lawyers — a black and a Jew — bond, enduring a huge amount of racism and anti-Semitism.
Like most docudramas, what really happened is visualized in accordance with conflicting testimonies.
Conventionally directed by Reginald Hudlin with strong performances by Boseman and Gad it struggles to keep a consistent tone, particularly when Marshall visits Harlem’s Minton’s Playhouse, hanging out with Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
Not long after, Thurgood Marshall won the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, which desegregated public schools; in 1967, he became the Supreme Court’s first African-American judge.
FYI: Because of Connecticut’s moratorium on filmmaking tax credits, it was not filmed here. And actress Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by George Zimmerman, plays a bit part.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Marshall” is a historically significant 6, a biopic filled with cultural resonance.
In 1970 when “Airport” was released, it got terrible reviews but made more than 10 times its budget at the box-office. Then came “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Earthquake” and “The Towering Inferno.”
Disaster movies are a campy genre. There’s not much character development and they’re not subtle. But they have to seem relevant at the time. During the past few months, natural catastrophes — “extreme weather events” like hurricanes, floods and wildfires — have wreaked so much devastation. That’s part of the problem with “Geostorm.”
Set in the early 2020s, nations of the world have joined together to fight the effects of climate change. Under the aegis of the United States, there’s now an international satellite system to control the weather. It’s called “Dutch boy” after the Dutch lad who plugged a hole in the dike with his finger.
Although it was designed by hotshot scientist Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), his obnoxious arrogance and temper have led to his dismissal, leaving his estranged younger brother, Max (Jim Sturgess), a State department bureaucrat, in charge until oversight is transferred to a global coalition.
But then something goes terribly wrong. A desert village in Afghanistan is suddenly frozen, along with a beach resort in Rio. Extreme heat ignites Hong Kong. A tsunami engulfs Dubai. Lightning strikes Orlando. And when investigators on the space station try to find the cause of the malfunction, they’re killed.
When an apocalyptic geostorm seems inevitable, Jake is dispatched to fix Dutch boy. Meanwhile, in Washington, Max and his Secret Service agent girlfriend, Sarah Wilson (Abbie Cornish), deal with a sabotage conspiracy involving the Secretary of State (Ed Harris) and President (Andy Garcia).
The cliché-riddled script by Paul Guyot and director Dean Devlin is absurdly contrived. Too many peripheral characters appear and disappear, meaning the audience has little investment in their survival.
And while Butler and Sturgess develop a superficial camaraderie, they totally lack the charisma necessary to overcome the scientifically improbable predicament they face.
On the Granger Gauge, “Geostorm” is a schlocky 6, a miscalculated cataclysm crippled by bad timing.
Last year, Jackie Chan was awarded an Honorary Oscar, perhaps heralding his transition from martial arts and comedic antics to a chance at serious acting in “The Foreigner,” a Chinese-U. K. coproduction.
London-based restaurateur Quan Ngoc Minh (Chan) is understandably grief-stricken when his teenage daughter Fan (Katie Leung) is killed in a Knightsbridge street bombing that’s executed by a rogue sect calling themselves “authentic IRA” from Northern Ireland.
Distraught yet determined to wreak vengeance on her killers, he goes to Belfast, where he confronts Irish Deputy Minister Liam Hennessey (Pierce Brosnan), demanding to know who killed his daughter. When Hennessey refuses to give him the names of the culprits, Quan explodes his office bathroom with a device he created out of groceries and plants another bomb in his car, demanding “names.”
Relentlessly pursuing former-terrorist-turned-politician Hennessey to his country home, Quan camps out in the woods, terrorizing the security guards. “I need more men,” growls Hennessey, sending for his New York-based nephew Sean (Rory Fleck Byrne), an Iraq War veteran.
In the meantime, infuriated Hennessey is facing domestic complications, namely a clash between his conniving wife (Orla Brady) and his much-younger mistress (Charlie Murphy).
Since Vietnamese-born Quan is a retired special-ops agent, still-agile Chan delivers the requisite action/stunts, but Brosnan, utilizing a thick Irish brogue, simply steals the show.
Based on Stephen Leather’s novel “The Chinaman,” it’s adapted by David Marconi, who updates the timeline to the present, although the IRA is no longer the constant threat that it was back in 1992 when the book was written, and aptly directed as a convoluted conspiracy thriller by Martin Campbell.
On the Granger Gauge, “The Foreigner” is a frantic, fast-paced 5, filled with violence particularly against women.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
