When Good Directors Go Bad: A Life Less Ordinary (1997, Danny Boyle)

Paul Clark — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Since its premiere on the fall festival circuit, Danny Boyle’s new film Slumdog Millionaire has ridden a wave of ecstatic buzz, one which many believe the film will ride to numerous Oscar nominations. With his crowd-pleasing arthouse hit, it seems that Boyle has finally arrived for real in Hollywood, a full dozen years after his breakthrough films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. In the wake of Trainspotting’s international success, Boyle was tapped by Fox to bring his directorial sensibility to America with his subsequent project A Life Less Ordinary, which paired Boyle’s favored leading man Ewan McGregor with hot Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz. Life was the director’s take on the romantic comedy, and Boyle’s goal was to infuse the warm fuzzy genre with a liberal amount of mid-nineties post-Tarantino edge while simultaneously indulging the audience’s romantic urges.

Under the right circumstances, A Life Less Ordinary might have been a zeitgeist-ready hit, particularly at the twentysomethings at whom it was aimed. However, it wasn’t to be. What’s more, the disappointing box office returns for the film were, for once, a reflection of its quality. It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to blame his intended audience for not “getting” the movie when it flops, but if the movie in question isn’t very good, the filmmaker doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Part of the problem was that the convoluted storyline, in which so much business is happening at once that very little actually makes an impact. The setup: God, disturbed by the lack of love in the world, begins dispatching angels to Earth to bring people together. Two of the angels, O’Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) are assigned to the case of Robert (McGregor), a down-and-out wannabe writer, and Celine (Diaz), a bitchy heiress. And how do they meet, you ask? Why, when Robert storms into Celine’s father’s (Ian Holm) office and somehow ends up kidnapping her. How else were they supposed to meet? From there, it’s off to the races, as Robert finds himself an inept kidnapper, Celine decides to help him in order to get a cut of the ransom for herself, and the heavenly duo (masquerading as bounty hunters) relentlessly pursue the mismatched couple. With all this going on, it’s a wonder they ever find time to fall in love, then out of love, then finally back in love again, precisely on cue.

But then, most romantic comedies depend on contrivances, just as long as we’re rooting for the romantic leads to turn out OK. However, in order for this to happen we’d actually have to care about them, and these two hardly seem to be worth the effort it takes to bring them together. McGregor is fairly likable as Robert, a pretty nice guy who is easily overwhelmed and somewhat over-eager to apologize for himself. However, Diaz is another matter entirely. On the page, Celine is a tricky character- a rich girl who lets herself be kidnapped in order to escape her life. But while the role might have worked if Diaz had made her a somewhat daffy thrill seeker, instead she plays Celine as a harpy and a nag for most of the movie, until the plot suddenly demands that she fall in love with Robert. As the movie progresses, we’re rooting for Robert all right- rooting for him to get as far away from her as possible.

With a romantic vacuum at its center, the story becomes little more than a parade of quirky characters and situations, flailing about onscreen in search of a reason to exist. Where to begin? There’s a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who Celine shoots in the frontal lobe while playing William Tell, only to return to work mere days later. There’s also the crazy backwoodsman (Maury Chaykin) who encounters Robert and Celine shortly after the kidnapping, and his even crazier friend who barks instead of speaking. And then there’s the ever-dogged O’Reilly and Jackson forever in pursuit, with O’Reilly brandishing a machine gun and hanging off the hood of Robert and Celine’s car- not at the same time, of course. How is all this supposed to make the central duo fall in love? Your guess is as good as mine.

Late in the film, after their funds have been depleted, Robert and Celine decide to rob a bank. When Celine holds up a teller, she asks to make a withdrawal, to which Robert responds, “I thought we agreed there’d be no clichés.” Boyle and writer John Hodge seemed to have used this line as their philosophy when making A Life Less Ordinary. However, it’s not enough to avoid clichés- one must replace them with other, more interesting ideas, and this is the failure of the film. A Life Less Ordinary is a film that tries to liven up its genre, but it never manages to do so, primarily because it fails to be romantic or funny. When Robert and Celine end up together, it feels not so much like a logical conclusion to this story as a cue for the lights to go up and the credits to roll. I suppose A Life Less Ordinary isn’t exactly ordinary, but it’s pretty lifeless.

That Guy!: Delroy Lindo

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:45:00 GMT

All throughout Black History Month in February, the Screengrab's That Guy! feature will be taking a look at some of Hollywood's finest African-American character actors. Last week we focused on Ving Rhames, and this week, we're taking a look at the man recently voted Most Likely To Be Mistaken For Ving Rhames: Delroy Lindo. Born in London to a family of Jamaican ancestry, Lindo's facial similarities to Rhames, along with his powerful physique and tendency to portray gangsters, drug dealers and other low-lifes, has often led to confusion between the two. But while Rhames' on-screen style is smooth, calculating and understated, Lindo tends towards the edgy, the explosive, the half-mad. After making his first major film (More American Graffiti) in 1979, Delroy Lindo didn't make another film for a decade, preferring to focus on the stage roles to which he still occasionally returns; he earned widespread praise (and Tony nominations) for his work in Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. When he finally returned to the big screen, he found his biggest proponent in America's most prominent black director: Spike Lee cast him in a number of memorable roles, and even handed him the role of family man Woody Carmichael in Crooklyn — a thinly veiled portrait of Lee's own father. Despite his frequent portrayal of criminal thugs, Lindo imbues even his most brutal characters with a rind of humanity, and has equally excelled at playing patriarchs, professionals, and even the odd romantic lead. One of his least-appreciated performances was a natural and charismatic turn as legendary Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige in the TV movie Soul of the Game; the NAACP, at least, liked him enough to hand him an Image Award for the film. Lindo's film career has been quiet of late; after landing his first major television role (aside from an enjoyable performance as a frustrated social worker in the "Brawl in the Family" episode of The Simpsons) in the short-lived thriller Kidnapped, he's preferred to focus exclusively on his work in the theatre, appearing in major roles in London and on Broadway and even in Toronto, where he lived for some time. However, at 55 years old, Lindo is at precisely the age when immense opportunities can open up for character actors of his skill and demeanor. We'd hate to think that he'll make us wait another ten years before his next big-screen appearance.

Where to see Delroy Lindo at his best:

MALCOLM X (1992)

Delroy Lindo's first major film appearance after his decade-long exile from motion pictures was Spike Lee's epic biography of the black nationalist leader Malcolm X. His turn as West Indian Archie, the Boston numbers runner with the photographic memory for whom young Malcolm worked, was by turns fearsome and pathetic, perfectly conveying the sense of loss and rage that Malcolm felt at the degradation of blacks in America. It's one of the most memorable performances in a movie full of them, and it served to make Lindo's reputation as a character to watch out for.

CLOCKERS (1995)

Soon after casting Lindo in Crooklyn, Spike Lee gave Delroy Lindo his third choice role in a row as the sinister drug lord Rodney Little. Although the movie has since become notable as the big-screen debut of Mekhi Phifer, it's Lindo who steals the show as Rodney: as is typical of his portrayal of criminals and undesirables, he charges the role with unmistakable emotion and humanity, especially in the scenes where he innocently plays with model trains after ordering the death of his subordinates. One of Lee's most underrated movies, Clockers is anchored by Lindo's role in a story that strongly presages the urban realism of The Wire.

GET SHORTY (1996)

The second installment of John Travolta's umpteenth career comeback was this slight but enjoyable Barry Sonnenfeld adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel. While Travolta's Chili Palmer is the star of the show, it's Delroy Lindo as the L.A. gangster Bo "The Cat" Catlett who gets most of the movie's best lines. Diverging from his usual mode of instilling his thugs with a redeeming sliver of decency or vulnerability, here Lindo goes for flat-out humor, and proves himself to be a rather able screen comedian. Even when he doesn't have the great one-liners — which isn't often — his ability to mix nervousness, intimidation and exasperation carry the laughs.

The Screengrab : delroy lindo

When Good Directors Go Bad: A Life Less Ordinary (1997, Danny Boyle)

That Guy!: Delroy Lindo