“Heartbreaker” is the kind of romantic comedy that Hollywood doesn’t seem to know how to make anymore – one that’s actually both witty and romantic, with just the right accent of sadness and loss thrown in (because, you know, boy meets girl, then boy loses girl before boy eventually gets girl).

It’s such an effervescent delight, in fact, that I have no doubt someone in Hollywood is making the deal right this minute to remake and totally screw it up.

Directed by Pascal Chaumeil from a script by a trio of writers, “Heartbreaker” stars the charming Romain Duris, who is lithe, handsome and incredibly fluid when it comes to shifting gears unexpectedly. He plays Alex, part of a trio whose business involves helping convince women who don’t know that they’re in a relationship with the wrong guy. As Alex explains in voiceover, there are three types of women: happy, unhappy, and ones who are unhappy with their relationships but don’t know it yet. Those are the ones in which Alex and his colleages, Marc (Francois Damiens) and Melanie (Julie Ferrier), specialize.

Alex is first seen in Africa, where a woman, on vacation with her boyfriend, leaves the sullen lunk (who wants to stay at the hotel, drinking and watching a promised wet-T-shirt contest) behind for a tour of the dunes. But her boyfriend has caused her to miss the bus. Luckily, she finds a savior, who offers to show her the dunes, right after he makes a stop to do pro bono humanitarian work with orphaned children in a tiny village.

This, of course, is Alex and his team. They not only impress her – they make her fall instantly in love with him, though he assures her they can never be an item because he’s on his way out of the country. But it’s enough: She goes back to the hotel and dumps the boyfriend – and her brother, unbeknownst to her, pays off Alex and his colleagues.

But Alex may have met his match when he’s hired by a wealthy flower merchant to break up his headstrong daughter from her fiancée. The daughter, Juliette (Vanessa Paradis), is set to marry an Englishman (Andrew Lincoln) who, from all appearances is perfect for her. Indeed, having done enough research to figure that out, Alex initially turns down the job.

But when a loan shark, to whom Alex owes a large sum, demands his money on pain of serious bodily harm, Alex changes his mind. He and his team specialize in doing research into their subject’s likes and dislikes, then fashioning Alex as the ideal man. They’ll just have to work a little harder this time.

That’s amplified by the time constraint: Juliette is off to Monaco, where she will spend the week leading to her wedding making preparations. Alex inserts himself into her life as her bodyguard, hired by her father because of threats on her life. She initially resists – she even ditches him a couple of times – but he and his squad eventually manipulate her into viewing him as a necessity.

Turning him into the man who will cause her to call off her wedding is a tougher task. But, between her love of George Michael’s music and her passion for the film “Dirty Dancing,” they’ve got enough to work with.

You can probably see where this is going; Before long, the distance Alex maintains from his clients vanishes and he finds himself doing the one thing he never does: falling for Juliette. Yet her fiancé’s arrival is imminent – can he pull it off?

The romantic comedy, in which one partner makes the other fall in love under false pretenses, always has a tough ending to pull off, yet Chaumeil manages it with both grace and ingenuity. “Heartbreaker” makes everything look easy, including learning that big dance number between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey from the end of “Dirty Dancing.”

Much of that credit must go to Duris, a handsome but also rubbery and facile comedian. He has an ease that seems natural and smooth, unforced even at moments of jeopardy. And he has a solid foil in Paradis, who has the sly self-awareness of a French Michelle Pfeiffer. Nor can enough be said about the unobtrusive scene stealing by the rest of the cast: Damiens and Ferrier as his accomplices, Helena Noguerra as her slutty friend who shows up unannounced to throw a wrench into the proceedings.

“Heartbreaker” earns both its laughs and its romantic sighs. It is a soufflé of a comedy, airy and tasty at the same time.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

With “Going the Distance,” we once again enter the realm of the not-terrible, which is better than expected.

I’ll admit right from the jump here: I’m not a Drew Barrymore fan. I find most of her performances mannered; I always feel as though I can see her acting. And, most of the time, she’s acting cute.

But in “Going the Distance,” Barrymore feels much less actorish, playing a young woman caught in a romantic dilemma: Does she choose the guy or her career? She’s got a natural ease I haven’t seen since, oh, I don’t know, “E.T.”

And that may have something to do with her costar. Actually, it probably has everything to do with the fact that she’s playing opposite her real-life squeeze, Justin Long. And Long is a talented comedian who, apparently, can make even Drew Barrymore look good.

As a result, “Going the Distance” is actually a surprisingly funny movie. It’s not great – not by a long shot. But it made me laugh on a much more regular basis than I expected. And that’s not something I can discount easily.

Directed by documentarian Nanette Burstein, from a script by Geoff LaTulippe, “Going the Distance” casts Barrymore and Long as Erin and Garrett, who meet cute in a Brooklyn bar one night, when he spoils her game of Centipede. He is fresh from a break-up with a girlfriend, who he believed when she said she didn’t want him to get her a birthday gift. “It’s not about the gift,” she weeps, but it obviously is.

Erin is, at 31, an intern at a New York newspaper for the summer, before going back to grad school. Her dream is to be a newspaper reporter (oops, good luck with that one). When she and Garrett connect, she makes it clear that she’s only got six weeks left in New York, before she goes back to Stanford.

But they connect – so well that, when it’s time for her to leave, the two of them vow to try to keep the flame alive via phone calls, video chats, texting and the like, with occasional visits thrown in. But long-distance relationships have limited life expectancies, once the initial glow wears off.

And that’s what the movie is about: the strain of distance and the way the best parts of a relationship begin to mean less when the pressures of the rest of life bear down. But that, in and of itself, isn’t particularly entertaining.

Thankfully, LaTulippe has written some very funny friends for each of the principal characters. Long is part of a trio of pals that includes Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live” and Charlie Day from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Barrymore gets Christina Applegate as her germaphobe sister and Jim Gaffigan as Applegate’s long-suffering husband.

And that’s really the best part of “Going the Distance”: watching Long and Barrymore react to their wonderfully weird assortment of friends. Day is particularly funny, though his character isn’t that far removed from the one he plays on “It’s Always Sunny.” And Applegate remains an underutilized and effective comedienne of great economy and range.

Long also has a way with a punchline, with great facial, physical and verbal skill. He brings out the best in Barrymore, who has a looseness I haven’t previously noticed.

The script itself is hit-and-miss, relying too heavily on the word “fuck” as a modifier without taking the time to make it either colorful, distinctive or funny.

I wouldn’t classify “Going the Distance” as a chick flick because the male side is pretty equally represented. But it is a date movie. And, as I said, it’s a surprisingly painless and enjoyable one.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

”Max Manus” is a superior war movie, a tale of resistance and danger set amid the struggle by occupied people against the Nazis during World War II.

In the U. S., we’re acquainted with stories of the French resistance, which seems unspeakably romantic because, well, it’s French. Or we hear about the Spanish Republicans, fighting Franco in the years before WWII.

But “Max Manus” reminds us that there was a strong, self-sacrificing resistance movement in Scandinavia as well, whether in Denmark (last year’s “Flame and Citron”) or Norway, after Quisling turned his country over to Hitler’s forces. Directed by Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, “Max Manus” celebrates the courage, heroism and humanity of the title character, a Norwegian fighter so slippery the Nazis couldn’t catch him, though he pulled off daring acts of sabotage right under their noses.

When first seen, Max (Aksel Hennie) is a high-school drop-out who has volunteered to help Finland fight off the invasion by the Soviets. But he returns home from that successful campaign to find that, in fact, Norway’s government has opened its doors, rather than fight for its freedom against Germany.

So Max joins a group of fellow former students, who are excited about the idea of being resistance fighters but have no sense of just who they’re up against. They leaflet and plaster flyers in broad daylight, then casually steal explosives to perpetrate an act of sabotage to make a statement.

But they’ve been so careless that the Nazis know exactly who they are and what they’re up to. When Nazis arrive at Max’s doorstep to take him away, Max leaps through a window to escape, winding up in a hospital with a broken leg. The Nazis still want to execute him – so he finds a way to escape through another window, this time getting safely away to Scotland, where he begins training to return to Norway as leader of a full-fledged and fully operational resistance cell.

He and his team – “the boys,” as he refers to them – become expert at their mission. They use canoes under cover of darkness to plant explosives below the waterline at the main harbor, sinking several Nazi ships. They destroy draft registration records to flummox Nazi efforts to conscript Norwegian youth for the front lines. Each time, they put their lives at risk – and some of them don’t return.

They spend interludes in Sweden, where Max and his pal Gregers (Nicolai Cleve Broch) meet Gregers’ friend Tikken (Agnes Kittelsen), another expatriate with whom Max first has friction, then develops feelings. But there is always another mission, another piece of Nazi infrastructure to destroy, even as the Nazi commandant Siegfried Fehmer (Ken Duken) hunts them, killing their friends and collaborators.

“Max Manus” is not just about the derring-do and narrow escapes. It is also about the strain of living an underground life and the courage to fight for one’s beliefs against seemingly impossible odds. It is also, in a way, about survivor’s guilt: the feelings Max gets that he has somehow betrayed his colleagues when they die and he escapes.

It also examines the nature of heroism and duty. Max approaches his task with an almost selfish patriotism: “They took my country – I want it back,” he says on a couple of different occasions, when asked why he is risking his neck. That kind of zealousness seems fine when it is offered in opposition to the fascist repression of Nazism; on the other hand, when we hear it today from the Tea Party types, it sends a certain chill.

In any case, a strong cast, a bold visual sense with dynamic camera work and a propulsive story – they are the keys to a riveting film. Which is what “Max Manus” is from start to finish.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Robert Rodriguez is one of those rare filmmakers whose movies – for better or worse – always come alive with his sheer enjoyment of making them.

In the case of “Machete,” that’s a good thing. Unlike his corny kids’ movies (“Spy Kids,” “Shorts”), “Machete” bleeds pure entertainment. Returning to the crank-it-up style Rodriguez brought to his half of the vastly underrated “Grindhouse,” “Machete” comes out swinging – and usually what it’s swinging includes an extremely sharp blade.

In fact, “Machete” was first glimpsed as a coming-attractions trailer between the two halves of “Grindhouse.” With its delicious catch-phrase, “You fucked with the wrong Mexican,” it promised over-the-top action and a dizzying cast that ran the gamut from Jessica Alba to Lindsay Lohan, built around character actor Danny Trejo in the title role.

Rodriguez delivers on the promise of that trailer and then some. Indeed, the first 10 minutes of “Machete” contains more wild action than the climax of most ordinary action films.

No doubt there will be those critics who don’t appreciate Rodriguez’s gory aesthetic. His style here is pure drive-in exploitation film, circa 1973, right down to the choppy edits. Everything is overstated and takes the action two notches farther than you’d expect. Rodriguez is like a kid with a new toy (or an old favorite), amping things to suit his own pleasure center, perpetually asking the question, “Wouldn’t it be cool if …?”

Like, wouldn’t it be cool if Machete, a Mexican federale played by the menacingly scowly Trejo, attacked a drug lord’s headquarters, chopped off the hand of a guy with a gun in it, then picked up the gun, and used the severed hand to squeeze the trigger?

Or: wouldn’t it be cool if Machete mounted a pair of gatling guns on a motorcycle, then flew it off a ramp, shooting bad guys as he soared through the air?

Or … well, put it this way: If Rodriguez could think of it, he has included it in this film. He’s a maestro of mayhem, throwing caution – and, occasionally, dramatic logic – to the wind to assemble the kind of action film that pins the needle on the thrill meter in scene after scene.

His story, such as it is, focuses on Machete, who is left for dead after that opening sequence – and next shows up as an itinerant and undocumented immigrant, looking for work in Austin, Texas. He’s approached by Booth (Jeff Fahey) to do a dirty job: assassinate Sen. McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), an outspoken conservative whose reelection platform centers on closing the borders to the invading hordes of Mexicans.

But it’s a set-up – and Machete finds himself on the run from the law, though he’s not the one who plugged the senator in the leg. He is rescued by members of an immigrant underground, led by a taco stand owner named Luz (Michelle Rodriguez). Both of them, however, are being trailed by Sartana (Jessica Alba), an immigration enforcement cop.

There’s more – much, much more, in fact – involving plots within plots and offering action showdowns with stars like Cheech Marin (as a shotgun-toting priest), Lindsay Lohan, typecast as a rich-kid trouble child with a drinking and drug habit – and even Don Johnson, as an anti-immigrant militia leader. Oh yeah – and Steven Seagal plays a vicious drug lord who happens to be an expert with samurai swords (and whose hairline looks like something not found in nature).

Does Rodriguez have anything serious to say about immigration? Does it matter? (Though he does point out the hypocrisy, hyperbole and fear-mongering of the right wing.) It’s mostly a backdrop and plot device to build to a massive final battle between Mexican-Americans and Tea Party types.

In the midst of it all is Trejo as Machete, a stoic but imposing presence who isn’t afraid to take action – drastic action – without blinking. He’s a chick magnet without wanting to be, an inventive action hero who does whatever it takes to stay alive (even though, despite several gunshot wounds, he seems to have extraordinary healing power). He gives new meaning to the phrase “it takes guts.”

Yes, there will be those who dismiss “Machete” as self-referential or merely sensational. But that would be to deny both the wit and imagination that Rodriguez brings to this extravagantly entertaining movie. Turn your mind off, relax – and don’t take the kids.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

It seems like a weirdly cross-cultural idea: the notion of Chinese master Zhang Yimou doing a remake of the Coen brothers’ debut film, “Blood Simple.”

But Zhang makes the movie uniquely his own with the spaghetti-western-style title, “A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop.” If the film lacks the dryly mordant Coen wit, it offers other pleasures – but also some problems.

Most of those have to do with the film’s tone, which has an antic quality that is distinctly Chinese in style. The acting has an exaggerated, Peking Opera flavor and the comedy is unfortunately slapsticky, lowering the stakes and otherwise distracting from the noir twists and ultimately violent undoing of most of the characters.

The skeleton of the story remains the same, though the location has been changed from mid-1980s Texas to what appears to be 17th-century China. In this case, the setting is a noodle shop in a remote outpost of China, a way station for travelers that isn’t anyone’s destination.

The owner of the noodle shop is the manipulative and nasty Wang (Ni Dahong). Wang is unhappy because he knows that his wife (Yan Ni), is having an affair, though he’s not sure who with. In fact, she’s having it off with the clownish noodle shop assistant Li (Xiao Shenyang).

When a troop of soldiers come through collecting taxes, Wang waylays one of them, Zhang (Sun Hunglei), offering him a pile of cash to kill his wife and her lover. Instead, the soldier fakes the deaths, then kills Wang instead. But, as in the Coens’ film, this guy won’t die easily.

Even when he does, his cause of death remains a mystery to both Wang’s wife and Li, each of whom thinks the other has committed the murder. The ending of the film is not quite shot-for-shot with the Coens, but it’s close. And, oh yes, there’s a gun – a novelty in this particular era.

Once the film kicks into suspense mode, it hits a groove. But that’s a long wait, given the stylized silliness that precedes it. Better you should go rent “Blood Simple” and see what it’s all about.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Let’s say this upfront: “The American” is not an audience movie in the generally recognized sense of the term.

It is not an action movie.

It is not a thriller in any conventional sense.

Forget about the TV commercials and theatrical trailers that make it look like George Clooney is playing some Jason Bourne-like character, mowing down every bad guy who gets in his way.

It’s not that movie. Instead, it’s an art film. Anyone who goes in expecting it to be in any way a typical Hollywood product will be sorely disappointed.

Now, having said that, let me say how much I enjoyed “The American.” It is one of the most beautifully photographed, controlled, even formal films I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a character study with a thoroughly European sensibility, an examination of one man coming to terms with his own sins and shortcomings. It is a film that rewards the patient viewer with a superbly understated Clooney performance; everyone else will, unfortunately, be bored silly.

As played by Clooney, Jack (or Edward, depending on who he’s talking to) is a professional killer whose last job went south in a bad way. Initially seen in a post-prandial pose in a Swedish cabin on a wintry lake with a naked woman, it ends with Clooney having killed three people.

As he rides a ferry back to whatever it is that his life is, the bearded Clooney has a decidedly haunted cast to his features. That slightly doomy countenance – not nervous but intensely alert, as much anticipating the hand of karma as guarding against the expected bullet from an enemy – rarely leaves Clooney’s face through “The American.”

Jack heads for Rome, where his employer (Johan Leysen) offers him a refuge and another assignment: a job that doesn’t involve killing anyone. Rather, he heads for a tiny town in the Italian hills, where he meets a woman (Thekla Reuten) in search of a custom-made weapon, one with the capacity of a machine gun and the range of a rifle. Jack’s job is to build it for her (though his mantra to anyone who asks is “I’m not good with machines”). She’s obviously a professional, but Jack is so much of a pro (and so withdrawn) that he only asks about specifications and otherwise speaks when spoken to.

And, really, that’s it. He holes up in the little town, orders the parts, scavenges the rest, machines them into the gun and noise-suppressor that she seeks and, eventually delivers the product. There is one action interlude, in which he realizes he’s being followed by another killer and has a showdown – and then a violent finale. The end.

A word about the town of Castel del Monte, where much of the film is set: Given that it is picture-postcard beautiful, it is perhaps the most deserted little burg in the world. Really, there’s never anyone on the street, no matter what time of day or night Jack goes for a stroll. Except for one person: the local priest (Paolo Bonacelli), who knows a tortured soul when he sees one and frequently strikes up relatively one-sided conversations with the taciturn Jack.

The only other person who figures in Jack’s existence is a prostitute from another town, Clara (Violante Placido), who begins as Jack’s physical outlet and ends up as his lover. You know this guy is doomed when, perpetual loner that he is, he begins having actual feelings for her (even if some of them are suspicion).

Suspicion, however, is his natural state of existence, layering the film with a sense of dread that is palpable. It’s in the careful camera set-ups that Corbijn uses, whether in the painterly landscapes and aerial shots of the amazing Italian countryside and the small town, or in the fascinating close-ups of Clooney, an actor who does an amazing job of conveying a pain and regret from which there is no escape, while speaking barely a word.

And those are the true pleasures of “The American”: Clooney’s study in stillness and Corbijn’s striking images (the cinematographer is Martin Ruhe, but Corbijn, a noted still photographer, is obviously in complete control).

The dialogue in Rowan Joffe’s script (from the novel by Martin Booth) is almost gestural in nature, with discussion of sin and forgiveness between the priest and Jack, and the prostitute Clara’s chatter about Jack’s obviously dark secret. (The fact that the name, Clara, means “clear” is not accidental.)

There isn’t much talk in the film, just enough to move from scene to scene. But the character of Jack is played almost entirely in Clooney’s eyes and in his face. It is, depending on your point of view, a beautifully restrained performance – or a completely unexpressive one.

I think “The American” is an outstanding film – not a masterpiece, but a daring exercise in trust that the audience doesn’t need wisecracks, automatic-weapon gunfights, explosions and elaborate car chases to tell a story that plumbs the depths of one man’s dark soul. No doubt Corbijn has overestimated the mass audience, but I admire him for having the nerve to do so.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Sports movies all seem to spring from the same template, most having to do with redemption, learning to forgive and/or believe in oneself and finding the courage and/or confidence to give more than you thought possible when you feel like you’ve got nothing to give.

Geez, just talking about it seems to bring clichés to the surface.

Which is what makes “The Winning Season” (opening in limited release Friday, 9/3/10) such a welcome surprise. Does it follow the formula? Absolutely – as if it were a math equation that director James C. Strouse could solve in his sleep.

And yet Strouse’s script – and, more importantly, his star – jigger inventively with the rhythms, the emotions and, most importantly, the humor in this story about a loser who finds himself coaching girls’ high-school basketball.

The star, in this case, is the invaluable Sam Rockwell, who plays Bill Greaves, an alcoholic former high-school coach first seen bussing tables at a chain restaurant (while eating the leftovers and, when possible, downing an unfinished beer). But an old pal, Terry Schemerhorn (Robb Cordry), shows up to offer him a way out.

Terry is now principal at the local high school – and he needs a last-minute replacement to coach girls’ basketball. He and Bill are old friends - and Terry is well aware of Bill’s drinking. He also knows that, a few years earlier, Bill was fired in the midst of the state tournament, when his boys’ team walked off the court mid-game, rather than play for him.

But, because his own daughter is on the team, Terry is willing to take a chance on Bill. He knows what a handful Bill is – but he also knows how good he can be.

Bill, on the other hand, isn’t convinced that this is a break at all. There are only six girls on the team – and one of them has her foot in a cast. The rest are eager but unschooled, less interested in getting their game faces on than in talking things over. And, as Bill points out, they’re girls.

Gradually, however, they wear each other down. The team (which includes Emma Roberts, Shareeka Epps and future “it” girl Rooney Mara) eventually begins to grasp the concepts that Bill is teaching them – and Bill begins to see them as real players, rather than just a bunch of females he’s been stuck with to collect a paycheck.

Though the film is set in the world of Indiana high-school basketball (which is as much a religion as it is a sport), the comparison is less to “Hoosiers,” a film that is referenced here, than to “The Bad News Bears.” The idea remains the same: When you multiply a negative by a negative, you get a positive.

Not that Bill turns warm and fuzzy once his girls begin to win. Rockwell gives Bill a crust you couldn’t break through with a lobster cracker. But he does get his drinking under control and begins to believe in his players the same way they begin to trust him.

Rockwell gives a performance that’s always funny, never sentimental and yet deeper than the layer of sarcasm that serves as his defense mechanism. Rockwell make Bill a perfectionist who turns self-destructive to act out his impatience with himself. He’s also so totally wrapped up in basketball that he ignores the feelings he might be hurting in pursuit of excellence. He’s an irascible bastard, yet one you can’t help but care about.

The actresses who play his team are equal to Rockwell, neither airheads nor hotheads, but sensible to the point of humor. Part of the joke is that they aren’t nearly as worldly as they think, yet they have Bill’s number from the start.

Don’t get me wrong: “The Winning Season” is far from perfect. As noted, it follows the three-act formula, building to a finale that is silly and far-fetched in its set-up, but which works much better than you’d expect because of the real desperation Rockwell brings to the character.

There are more laughs than you’d imagine possible in “The Winning Season,” despite it being a comedy that seems so familiar in its plotting. This is a small film, too small to inch its way into public awareness without the kind of backing or advertising budget that it undoubtedly lacks. But if you’re looking for a movie that’s both diverting and funny – and you want to see a terrific Sam Rockwell performance – this one is worth finding.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

August, like January, is a dumping ground for movies, a time when the multiplexes are flooded with leftover product, as opposed to films. Still, occasionally, a gem sneaks in – a movie that someone has underestimated.

“Takers,” however, is not that film.

It’s not terrible: It’s a slick, fast-paced and semi-intelligent heist film, featuring a couple of impressive action set-pieces. It also obviously offered a legion of stuntmen a lot of work, including one particularly talented one who doubles for Chris Brown on a parkour-infused chase scene up and down the architecture of downtown Los Angeles.

But “Takers” wants to be “Heat” and it’s not. Director John Luessenhop and his squad of writers make gestures in that direction but never actually get beyond the surface tension – the style as opposed to the substance.

The crew at the center of “Takers” is led by Gordon (Idris Elba) and John (Paul Walker) and includes brothers Jake and Jesse Attica (Michael Ealy and Chris Brown) and A.J. (Hayden Christensen as an annoyingly fedora-wearing hipster wannabe). They pull off a clockwork heist at a bank in an LA skyscraper, escaping by stealing a helicopter from TV news crew. Pretty slick until you stop and think about how an entire plan was built on the possibility that a TV news copter would actually land atop the building after being beckoned by a crook disguised as a security guide.

The cop on their trail is Jack Welles (Matt Dillon), a harried hard-boiled type with marital problems. He has unerring instincts when it comes to sorting clues and amazing luck, when it comes to being in the right place at the right moment.

Having pulled off its bank job, the robbery crew is surprised when one of their former members, Ghost (rapper T.I.) shows up, having been released from prison after five years. He was shot and captured during a job and never rolled over on his pals; now he wants not only his share of the old job but to help plan the next one.

And he has a target: an armored car that will be carrying $20 million in cash. But he also has his own agenda, having to do with being left behind when he was injured – and with the fact that Jake has taken up with Ghost’s girl (Zoe Saldana in a throwaway role).

One other catch: The job is in five days, much faster than the usual meticulously planned operations this crew is used to. Yet, somehow, they manage to come up with the necessary maps and schematics of downtown L.A. infrastructure and acquire the equipment and explosives necessary – then somehow manufacture the extra time needed to pull this off.

Welles, meanwhile, has been following the crumbs of clues to develop his own conclusions about who’s pulling these jobs and where they’re going to hit next. But he’s hampered by the considerations of real life: his weekly visitation with his young daughter, interference from the police department’s Internal Affairs squad and so forth.

Luessenhop’s idea of an action sequence, however, is littered with jittery, unintelligible shots that keep you guessing about what’s actually going on. It’s loud, fast and messy, without contributing to your involvement in the moment. His camera generally is too close to the action and the actors to get a real picture of who’s doing what. Abstract impressionism is fine as far as it goes, but here it’s simply unsatisfying.

Meanwhile, the script gives these actors little in the way of character to play. Elba and Dillon get the most to work with: Dillon as the impatient, under-siege cop trying to stay focused in the face of distractions. Elba is given a substance-abusing sister (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), fresh out of rehab, demanding his attention at a moment when he can’t give it, then going out on a bender that compromises his security.

Otherwise, only T.I, as the snaky Ghost, gives off much more than attitude. The rest have to make do with a series of hard-eyed looks and gunplay, instead of characters (except for Saldana, who looks lost playing a pawn in the chess game between Jake and Ghost).

“Takers” is diverting and mindless. It’s less exciting than you hope and less involving than it needs to be.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Rob Reiner’s first big hit as a director was “Stand By Me,” more than 20 years ago. Though his earlier “The Sure Thing” was a solid and witty entry – and “This is Spinal Tap” has become a classic over the years – it was Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Body” that really confirmed his stature as a director.

So, after a cold streak that includes such duds as “Alex and Emma” and “Rumor Has It,” it’s not surprising that Reiner would go back to the period of his youth as the setting for his new film, “Flipped.” A romantic coming-of-age comedy mostly set in the pre-Beatles’ 1960s, “Flipped” is another exploration of what it means to be an adolescent – except instead of boys dealing with the demands they face as men, this one is about boys and girls who suddenly see each other as young men and women.

Unfortunately, “Flipped” is flat and unfunny for a couple of reasons. One is the script, which Reiner and Andrew Scheinman adapted from the book by Wendelin Van Draanen. The other is Reiner’s casting: specifically, young Callan McAuliffe, who plays the male lead against a much more appealing Madeline Carroll as his would-be love interest.

Really, it’s not McAuliffe’s fault so much as the writers’. Compared to Carroll’s Juli Baker, McAuliffe’s character, Bryce Loski, is a total lox – a wimpy drip of a kid without the guts to swat a fly. The character is so mealy and formless that you keep hoping he’ll get hit by a truck or otherwise disappear from the film, to be replaced by a character with whom you actually want to engage.

The story is told from two points of view: Bryce’s and Juli’s, who who lives across the street from the house into which Bryce’s family moves circa 1957. She falls for him instantly – but he, being a boy, has no interest in girls. And, as written, he’s so socially challenged that he can’t even be friendly to her, though they’re neighbors for the next six years.

Most of the film takes place when they’re in sixth and seventh grade. And as we see the story told and retold from their different points of view, it quickly becomes clear: Juli is too good for this kid. She’s smart, funny, passionate and cute. Bryce is good-looking, but he’s got the personality of an ottoman. So by the time he realizes just what he’s got in Juli, she’s figured out that he doesn’t deserve her.

There’s more – too much more – involving his churl of a dad (Anthony Edwards) and her father (Aidan Quinn), a sensitive bricklayer whose spare time is devoted to landscape painting and who’s spent his life taking care of his brain-damaged brother. But none of it has the dramatic weight or comic impact that Reiner seems to think.

I shouldn’t be so harsh on young McAuliffe, who does what he’s supposed to. It’s the character as written that’s the problem. By contract, Carroll’s Juli is iridescent, lighting up every scene she’s in. So does John Mahoney as Bryce’s grandfather, who befriends Juli when Bryce ignores her.

“Flipped” wants both laughs and a lump-in-the-throat ending. Unfortunately, it earns neither.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Mention “The Godfather” or “Scarface” or “Goodfellas” – it doesn’t matter which American gangster epic you reference, chances are Jean-Francois Richet’s pair of “Mesrine” films stack up pretty well as an example of gutsy, energetic and thoughtful filmmaking.

The two films are “Mesrine: Killer Instinct” and “Mesrine: Public Enemy #1,” which won a variety of awards in France when they were released there. The matched set opens in limited release on consecutive weeks in New York – “Killer Instinct” on Friday (8/27/10), “Public Enemy #1” on Sept. 3.

Movies don’t come with much more vitality, excitement and suspense than the “Mesrine” films. Starring the hulkingly suave Vincent Cassel as late French gangster Jacques Mesrine (who was killed by police in 1979, after 20-plus years of robbing banks), the “Mesrine” films are a fiercely elegant blend of thriller and character study, built around a French outlaw who is charismatic and captivating.

As played by Cassel with a blend of confidence, cool and occasional confusion, Jacques Mesrine (pronounced, as he keeps reminding people, may-REEN) begins as a disaffected young Frenchman in 1950s France, having served in the French Army in Algeria during that uprising. He’s been party to torture and killed men, so a square job arranged for him by his father seems pretty dull.

Instead, he joins forces with a chum and starts pulling burglaries, eventually coming to the attention of local crime boss Guido (Gerard Depardieu). Jacques winds up with a Spanish wife and a child and, eventually, Jacques’ bull-headed methods – such as robbing a bank, then spontaneously walking across the street to rob a second bank – earn him a stint in jail.

He comes out determined to go straight, to take care of his family and bring home a paycheck. But when he’s laid off, he winds up back with Guido. Eventually, however, with other criminals moving in on his territory, Jacques bolts for Canada, winding up in Montreal. There, he starts out working a straight job – then tries his hand at robbing banks and winds up in a maximum-security prison.

By the end of the first film, he’s not only absconded from the prison in a daring daylight escape – but he comes back with a colleague, intent on blasting his way back in to set his fellow convicts free.

The second film begins with Mesrine back in captivity in France, having been caught and deported from the U.S. But not for long: He pulls a bold break from the courtroom, running wild once more before being captured and locked in an even more secure prison in France.

His subsequent jailbreak, with a fellow high-security felon played by Mathieu Amalric, leads to a variety of adventures, including a very funny kidnapping, in which he snatches a slumlord, then must haggle with the elderly curmudgeon over the size of the ransom.

Cassel plays Mesrine as a charmer with a half-formed code, who pays attention to the left-wing guerrilla movements of the 1970s – the Red Guard kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the exploits of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Eventually, he starts spouting revolutionary rhetoric of his own, fashioning himself as a people’s hero whose actions are shaped by his beliefs, though he obviously has no real interest in politics. Rather, he understands how to exploit the press’ interest to build his own legend and keep the police off-guard.

Yet Cassel and Richet never overlook Mesrine’s essentially thuggish nature. He prides himself on his honesty – he never stiffs a partner and always keeps his word – yet he can also be brutally and arbitrarily violent. At one point, angered by a right-wing reporter who besmirches Mesrine’s honor in an article ridiculing him, Mesrine arranges a meeting with the reporter by promising him an exclusive interview – then pounds the crap out of him in revenge.

Cassel is joined by a stellar cast of actors, from the hefty Depardieu as the sleekly dangerous Guido to Amalric as the asp-like bank robber to Ludivine Sagnier as a woman with whom he shares his final years.

Richet never pauses to explain or provide a lot of context. He lets the scenes speak for themselves, offering subtitles to set the date and place, then letting the action play. He gives the various gun battles and car chases a visceral, jittery look that puts you right inside the action as the brazen Mesrine and accomplices repeatedly shoot it out with the police.

Jacques Mesrine was self-aware enough to write his own autobiography, called “Killer Instinct,” while in prison, having it smuggled out and published. How accurate it was remains to be seen – and the same is true of the “Mesrine” films. But the sweep of the films – and the sheer gutsiness of the performance by Cassel – makes for juicy and jazzy work.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.