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THE DARJEELING LIMITED Wes Anderson is the type of filmmaker who stirs love-him-or-leave-him vibes in audience members, which makes my own ambivalence toward him slightly perplexing: I've mildly enjoyed all of his films to date, yet I've never detected that spark of genius that his fans (and many critics) insist he possesses. Anderson's movies are too slight to earn such hefty acclaim, and were they not peopled with strong actors who can punch across his sweet-and-sour declarations (most memorably Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums), they would blow off the screen with the ease of a dandelion caught in a summer breeze. The Darjeeling Limited is Anderson's most wispish work to date, a road movie in which the road is made of railroad tracks. Carrying over the thematic baggage of most of his previous efforts, this one also concerns itself with familiar discord – here, Francis (Owen Wilson) invites his younger brothers Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) to India to join him on a spiritual quest. They travel mainly aboard the train The Darjeeling Limited, attempting to communicate (but often just miscommunicating) with each other as they reflect on their relationships with loved ones as well as with each other. Anderson regular Bill Murray pops up at the very beginning, and his shaggy-dog appearance sets the tone for the remainder of the picture. This is a mixed bag of a movie, with some exquisite camera shots and clever exchanges not quite enough to overtake the tale's slenderness or the limitations of the lead characters. But it still offers enough modest charms to earn it a mild recommendation. **1/2
GONE BABY GONE Ben Affleck makes his directorial debut with Gone Baby Gone, and by playing it close to the vest, he turns out a compelling drama that's deeply absorbing and constantly surprising. A better movie than Clint Eastwood's marginally overrated Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone sports a connection to that film since both were adapted from novels by Dennis Lehane. Here, a little girl is snatched from her home in a working-class Boston neighborhood, and the family hires two private investigators (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) to track down the missing moppet. Working in uneasy unison with a couple of detectives (Ed Harris and John Ashton), sometimes without the knowledge of the cops' superior officer (Morgan Freeman), the pair follow the trail of clues wherever it leads, which is usually straight into an underworld populated by thuggish crime lords and coke-addled pedophiles. Aided by a stellar cast that showcases superlative turns by Ben's brother Casey, Harris and Amy Ryan as the child's trashy mom, Affleck (who also co-scripted with Aaron Stockard) has crafted a forceful crime flick that's made even more irresistible by way of a moral ambivalence that's extremely rare in modern dramas. It's this stance that propels the film through its knockout finale, since a sequence about two-thirds through the picture erroneously leads us to believe that the film is winding down with a disappointingly conventional ending. But it's a mere ruse, since it clears the way for more surprises that in turn build toward a devastating conclusion guaranteed to remain in the mind for days, weeks, maybe even months. ***1/2
THE HUNTING PARTY Writer-director Richard Shepard's The Matador, about the relationship between a hit man and a family man, was a smooth blend of jet-black comedy and hard-edged drama, and he's going for the same mix again. Thus, we find TV journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) and cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) drinking, joking and whoring as they make their way through the world's hot spots. But one day, a slaughter in a Bosnian village causes Simon to lose it on the air, and as a result, his career is over. Five years later, Duck returns to that area, where a disheveled Simon needs his help to land an exclusive interview with an exiled war criminal. Loosely based on an Esquire article, this opens with a disclaimer that "only the most ridiculous parts are true." As it stands, that's only partially correct. It's no problem accepting that everyone (including the CIA) knows the whereabouts of the world's most heinous war criminals but can't be bothered to apprehend them; we are, after all, living in a country that gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden a long time ago, meaning that bureaucratic incompetence and indifference are all too easy to believe. Rather, the parts that are hard to digest are the ones that feel more like movie conventions than anything based in the real world: the Lethal Weapon banter between the leads, the shoehorning in of a sketchy character (Jesse Eisenberg as a rookie reporter) for nebbishy comic relief, the dramatic last-minute rescues. It's a testament to the convictions of Gere and Howard that the movie succeeds at all; without them, The Hunting Party would continually be shooting itself in the foot. **1/2
