Fun, Inventive "Ant-Man" Makes A Compelling Case for Ant-Man

Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas star as Ant-Man, past and present.

In the past, Marvel Studios has found a way to get modern audiences to embrace possibly laughable scenarios involving warring Norse gods or gun-toting raccoons with alien tree sidekicks, but with Ant-Man they’ve managed something even trickier. They’ve found a way to make a seemingly lame super hero incredibly awesome.

For those unfamiliar, Ant-Man revolves around a super hero who can shrink down to the size of an ant and command ants to do his bidding. He may not be the lamest sounding super hero – Aquaman takes the cake there, as exemplified by shows as diverse as Family Guy and Big Bang Theory – but he's not far off.

However, via a series of inventive fight scenes, including a one-on-one battle with Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Ant-Man makes an excellent case for why Ant-Man deserves a place at the Avengers' table. It's exciting to imagine the havoc the little guy could wreck when playing alongside the big boys.

Like nearly every film Marvel Studios has made over the last seven years, Ant-Man struggles with a weak villain and repeats the same basic story about keeping a powerful McGuffin from falling into the wrong hands. And, although it was long-billed as a heist movie, the central heist of the film is underwhelmingly derivative.

Despite all that, the film is a blast. Structurally, it hits many of the same beats as Iron Man with a disgruntled second-in-command and a strong redemption angle to boot. The film offers an interesting retcon of the MCU thus far, positing that Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) was another player in the fight against Hydra, much like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Howard Stark (John Slattery).

Some super impressive CGI is used to de-age Douglas for a flashback that establishes Pym developed a suit that allowed shrinking to the size of an ant via the use of Pym Particles. Although Pym used his tech to fight America's enemies as The Ant-Man, he refused to share his formula, fearful it would fall into untrustworthy hands (smart move given Hydra had infiltrated Shield by that point even if they remained hidden until the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Years later we see him struggling with the notion that his former protégée Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) is on the precipice of cracking the formula and preparing to sell it to Hydra (who else?).

Enter Scott Lang (Rudd), a wronged-engineer who struck back at the fat cats as a Robin Hood-like cat-burglar and wound up in prison. At the outset of the film, he is released from jail, and we see the struggle he has getting his life back together so he can reconnect with his beloved daughter Cassie. Pym, who has a troubled relationship with his own daughter Hope (Evangeline Lily), targets Lang as the ideal candidate to use his suit in an effort to stop Cross.

This is the first post-Avengers film to really address why other heroes aren't lending a hand, and best of all, the reason is rooted in character. Immediately after hearing Pym's pitch, Lang says, "I think we should call the Avengers," and it's refreshing as hell to hear. But Pym had a strained relationship with Howard Stark, and so he refuses to seek the help of his son, whose Iron-Man suit he dismisses as "cute tech" when compared to the Ant-Man one.

Thematically, the film does a lot with fatherhood, exploring the notion of earning the adoration our children naturally give us. The film is borderline cloying at times, but the coupling of the off-center tone and a game cast keeps everything together. This is far-and-away the jokiest Marvel film to date, and all of it lands perfectly. The film gets a lot of mileage out of size-related humor and Douglas, Rudd and Lily charm in the lead roles. However, despite filling the second most generic major role in the film (first goes to Judy Greer's no-fun mom, a role she recently played in Jurassic World), Michael Pena practically walks away with the movie on the strength of his unfettered energy and a great running gag.

Few would argue Peyton Reed is as strong a filmmaker as Edgar Wright (who shepherded the project for years but then left right before production due the creative differences), but, as a big fan of the character, Reed was a good choice to take the project across the finish line. Ant-Man is a real winner for Marvel, and another testament to their ability to turn outlandish properties into four-quadrant entertainments. Jury’s out on if they can continue that trend with next year's Dr. Strange, but I wouldn’t bet against them. B+

Cheeky Approach Makes Gangster Squad a Worthwhile Ride

The titular squad is filled with interesting actors.

On paper, Gangster Squad is a movie that’s right up my alley. It plays in the same LA-set noir sandbox as personal favorites like LA Confidential, Chinatown, and Sunset Boulevard. It’s directed by Ruben Fleischer, who, even after the misstep of 30 Minutes Or Less (check out my review here), is still a director worth watching due to the style and finesse he displayed with Zombieland. And it features a slew of talented actors – Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Emma Stone and Anthony Mackie to name a few – who consistently bring their A-games.

By nuts-and-bolts description, Gangster Squad is a film I should hate. It’s utterly predictable and paint-by-the-numbers, most of the characters are one or two-trait animals at best, and it consistently indulges in nonsensical “movie moments” (like a climatic moment where the protagonist tosses his gun aside to box with the bad guy or a scene where the gunslinger throws a can in the air and keeps hitting it to prove his bona fides) that would normally get under my skin.

And yet, in practice, Gangster Squad is a movie I’m ultimately quite taken with. The key, I think, is in the eye-popping style and glib tone that make it far more Dick Tracy than LA Confidential.

It’s essentially a sensationalized cartoon noir that makes no bones about being an overt riff on Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables, liberally lifting many of the same archetypes – scenery chewing mob head, climatic shootout on steps, and a rogue unit of cops that includes a dogged leader, a sharpshooter, and a dweeby bookish type. It actually would make for a great LA companion piece to DePalma’s Chicago-set classic.

Set in 1949, the film focuses on the battle between the mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Penn) and the titular gangster squad lead by “bull in a china shop” John O’Mara (Brolin), who is introduced single-handedly taking down one of Cohen’s brothels.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling continue to showcase 

fantastic chemistry in their second pairing together.

At the film’s outset, Cohen already supplies prostitutes and drugs in LA, and is in the process of making a play to have his hands in every wire bet placed west of Chicago. He’s got most of the important cops, politicians, and judges in his pocket, excluding Chief of Police Bill Parker (Nick Nolte), who sees Cohen’s reign as enemy occupation. Impressed by O’Mara, Parker recruits the former WWII vet to assemble an off-the-books team and wage guerilla warfare on Cohen in a battle for the “soul of Los Angeles.”

At the suggestion of his crafty and very pregnant wife (Mireille Enos), John avoids recruiting top of their class cops (most of whom are likely targets to be on Cohen’s payroll), and instead assembles a rogues gallery, including a knife-wielding, black beat cop (Mackie), a wary, technology expert (Giovanni Ribisi), and an old celebrity sharpshooter  (Robert Patrick) and his rookie Latino sidekick (Michael Pena). Eventually, the disengaged Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Gosling), who is bedding Cohen’s top moll (Emma Stone), finds his own reasons to join on as well.

The well-paced film clocks in at a lean 113 minutes, leaving little room for full-rounded characterizations. It’s just as well, because much more would seem incongruous with the tone of the piece.

Nevertheless, the principles find admirable ways into their characters. Brolin is a solid anchor, giving a mostly straight (but always interesting), performance that plays well off of his more stylized costars. Impressively equipped with a prosthetic nose and droopy eyelids, Penn is a frothing-at-the-mouth live wire, and his Cohen is a close cousin to Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro’s performances in Tracy and Untouchables.

A climatic fight scene between Sean Penn and Josh Brolin

is one of the many trite"movie moments" that Gangster 

Squad manages to get away with.

But the true scene-stealer is Gosling, whose character is a combination of his charming cad from Crazy, Stupid, Love and ferocious id from Drive. With a stylized higher octave, Gosling creates a creampuff character who is initially pure charisma, and he has a palpable chemistry with everyone he shares the screen with, particularly Brolin and Stone (with whom he also sizzled in Crazy, Stupid, Love). His Jerry is called a “lamb in wolves clothing,” but there are moments where the madness seeps through, and Jerry ultimately comes across as the most deceptively dangerous player in the ensemble.

Stone has the husky voice and right look for her part, but she's an incredibly modern presence and gets little to do beyond her well-played tête-à-têtes with Gosling. Meanwhile, Ribisi and Enos provide a certain degree of pathos and conscience, while Mackie, Patrick and Pena offer up ace comic relief.

The trailers aren’t really selling the inherent humor of the film, but they are focusing on the action, and that’s not a misleading a smoke screen as it has been in the promos for Zero Dark Thirty. There’s plenty of action throughout, and it’s all top notch, particularly a CG-enhanced car chase midway through the film. The violence is prevalent and often indulgent, particularly in the gruesome ways Cohen has people killed.

In the end, Gangster Squad is a predictable movie that pays little more than token lip service to three dimensionality and any sort of self-reflection about the methods of such a deadly task force. However, it’s all done with an eye toward making the most enjoyable movie possible, and the effort is made noteworthy by a distinctively cheeky tone and a game cast. B