The Beaver

Jodie Foster, 2011 (8.2*)
I liked this bizarre psychological study, that starts out funny but soon turns serious. Mel Gibson is at his best here, if you can get over his personal issues, and there is some gallows humor in the beginning for those who hate him, they will be smiling. He is also allowed to use his real Aussie accent, or maybe what he thought Americans would like to hear as a smart-ass Aussie, in this case speaking as a character called simply The Beaver.

He plays a chronic depressive, married to an exasperated Jodie Foster. Somewhere along the way he manages to get a beaver toy on his hand and it starts talking back to him but in Mel's Aussie voice, rather than his character Walter's real American accent - and he actually makes sense, so this intelligence is within Walter somewhere. Jodie even asks "and what's with the accent?", which alone was pretty funny. The two worked well onscreen together, likely due to both her professionalism and her direction here.

This story is hard to describe without giving too much away, but there is a sidebar story with Walt's unhappy and distant son (Anton Yelchin), who's becoming friends with local high school beauty and class valedictorean Norah, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who was Oscar®-nominated for lead actress in last year's crime mystery Winter's Bone (2010). They become friends in an unexpected way that I won't reveal, only that this part of the film was perhaps a little disjointed from the rest of the story, it seemed to have very little to do with Walter and the Beaver, while the rest of the film revolved around little else.

Still, this film didn't make me angry at times like Forrest Gump did, which I felt was taking advantage of someone's mental state. The difference is that in this film Walter is the CEO of a toy company with a sharp business mind, who seems down for little reason, or at least reasons we aren't privy to know - it's something from his past and his parents that we can only guess at. Foster's delicate direction (this is her best at the helm) kept this from going overboard in any direction.

Even if you're a Mel hater, you may be surprised by his acting here, it's far better than all the revenge films, where he's out for vengance on some criminal that kidnapped his kid or wife or killed one or more - that seems to have been at least half his storylines from Mad Max to Braveheart to Payback to Ransom to Edge of Darkness, maybe even The Patriot. At least this is a psycho CEO with a beaver puppet on his hand doing all his intelligent talking. Were this a little funnier, it would be a cult classic like Heathers (1989) or Repo Man (1984).

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The Way Back

Peter Weir, 2010 (8.2*)
This incredible story begins with "In 1945, three men came out of the wilderness after a 4,000 mile walk from Siberia - this film is dedicated to the memory of these men."

Based on a memoir by Slavomir Rawicz called "The Long Walk", which depicted his escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4000-mile walk to freedom in India. This popular adventure became a bestseller, selling over 500,000 copies. Credited with inspiring explorers, one survival expert recreated the same hike himself and served as a technical advisor on this film. However, the BBC unearthed records in 2006 (including some written by Rawicz himself) that showed he had been released by the USSR in 1942, while another former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski, claimed in 2009 that the book was really an account of his own escape. ("I walked 4000 miles!" - "No, I did!")

Whatever the facts, the film depicts a tribute to the survival instinct of man, a harrowing wilderness adventure trek across Siberia, Lake Baikal, Mongolia, Tibet, and finally emerging in the Indian Himilayas.

The story follows seven men who escape from a Siberian gulag consisting of foreign workers who were jailed by Stalin while working in Russia, and the typical assortment of lifetime criminals, led by Colin Farrell, who carries a knife, and a tattoo of Lenin and Stalin on his chest. He escapes with an international group led by American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), Pole Janusz (Jim Sturgess), a Swede, Russian, and a Hungarian (or was it Romanian?) They are followed by a young Polish teen, who eventually joins the group, played by Saorise Ronan (who celebrated her 16th birthday on the set). Of her talents, Weir said "She was born with a particular acting talent that can't be learned".

The film perhaps loses it's emotional intensity along the way and becomes a slow walk to inevitability, so in that regard it's not as artistic as most of Weir's better efforts, such as Fearless, Witness, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. In spite of that, it's an adventure that needs to be told, and if true, one of the most amazing feats in human history. Similar stories have been documented as many prisoners spend years returning home after wars, many walking as far at 8-10,000 miles, so this story is not that unbelievable.

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