Harsh things happened to people settling the bare territories. If you’re up for a spare, art house Western that has a somewhat original take on the old plot-line of a rugged cowboy escorting women across the treacherous, wide open Great Plains, then you could do worse than “The Homesman.” Tommy Lee Jones stars in this 2014 drama he also directed and co-wrote from a novel by the same name.
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Hot Movie Takes – “The Leo Adam Biga, Author of “Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film” I highly recommend seeing “Rock the Kasbah” with the proviso that it could have been much more yet. He’s saved by Murray’s winning performance and the sheer entertainment value of this engaging story about culture clashes, impossible odds and two people’s passion to follow their dreams no matter what. yet his miscalculation about the story’s emphasis is hard to forgive even though it doesn’t ruin the movie. Levinson mostly keeps this pastiche together and flowing. to war-torn Kabul to remote villages to seedy nightclubs to desert badlands. which range from wrong side of the tracks Van Nuys Calif. Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography adequately frames the disparate locations. The script by Mitch Glazer is a bit hit and miss but when it’s on it’s very good. Leem Lubany is good as Selima but she’s not given enough to do.īeejan Land is fine as the “The Afghan Star” host.Īrian Maoyed nearly steals the show as Lenz’s driver. He’s basically a good dude, and in the end he does the right thing.īruce Willis adds nothing as a mercenary who winds up protecting Lenz. His character here is something of a stoner Ugly American whose hustle nearly gets him killed. As it is, it’s a variation on “Good Morning, Vietnam,” another Levinson film, though I think “Rock the Kasbah” is better and Murray’s performance is more nuanced than Robin Williams’ performance in that earlier picture. A girl risking everything in a closed veil society in the midst of war is the rich content and context this movie needed to realize its potential. We’ve seen his type in a hundred movies and even though Murray is excellent bringing him to life, it’s Selima’s dilemma and courage, passion and commitment, that the story should not only celebrate but dive deep into. Instead of fleshing out her character and culture, including the dynamic of her life with her father, family and community, Levinson spends 90 percent of the picture on Lenz – on his foibles, on his budding partnership with a super whore played by Kate Hudson and on his regrets. That’s right – the film tells the wrong story or gives emphasis to the wrong part of the story. As entertaining as Lanz is as a character, Levinson should have made Selima’s character the protagonist, not Lenz.
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Driving away from the village, Richie and his driver discover that Salima’s stowed away in the trunk.Īnd here’s where this film, which had the potential to be great, veers into trite territory. The next day he tries convincing her father that he should let her try out for “Afghan Idol” and dad rejects the idea as an insult. That’s when he’s smitten by the sweet sounds of Salima. arms dealers who extort him into closing a deal with the warlord. He’s in a bad fix and winds up fronting for a pair of sleazy U.S. Once over there, his American singer goes AWOL, taking his passport and money with her. He winds up in Afghanistan by pure accident when, in the throes of promoting a singer back in the States played by Zooey Deschanel, he stumbles upon a USO tour opportunity. He’s a burn-out whose marriage and small-time career have hit the skids.
Then, one night, a desperate American music promoter named Richie Lanz, who’s been forced into doing irregular business with her father, strolls outside the village and hears her once in a lifetime voice. In this isolated, repressed place, no one will ever get to appreciate her talent. She must sneak out of her village at night to a cave just in order to sing and to watch the show alone.
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That hook finds a Pashtun girl in Afghanistan possessing a golden singing voice and secretly dreaming of performing on the TV show “The Afghan Star” (the equivalent of “American Idol”) but her fundamentalist warlord father would never permit it. “Rock the Kasbah” (2015) is one of those movies that has a really low aggregate rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I can’t for the life of me figure out why because it’s a superior dark comedy starring Bill Murray and directed by Barry Levinson with a great hook that largely delivers in terms of laughs and tears. Hot Movie Takes – “Rock the Leo Adam Biga, Author of “Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film”
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