One thing is pretty clear in  The Infiltrator: bankers are boring. Directed by Brad Furman, from a screenplay by Ellen Brown Furman, it is based on a true story. Bryan Cranston plays Robert Mazur, an undercover federal agent with financial expertise. Mazur is set up as a businessman seeking to launder the Columbian drug profits for Pablo Escobar. John Leguizamo plays Emir Abreu, his partner in the sting.The story requires Mazur to pitch his money laundering chops to a lot of banker-cohorts of Escobar in Miami.

At the film’s climax, the feds raid Mazur’s phony wedding ceremony, and lots of bankers, and even a few drug dealers are arrested. The end credits inform us of the jail terms slapped on these bankers and, yes, I give a thumbs up to that.

But this cluttered, overlong biopic is only intermittently involving. Even though they’re talking about drug money, repetitive static scenes about phony investments makes for dull viewing. And a lot more could have been snipped out, including two scenes with Olympia Dukakis – reliable, as always – that are a total waste. With too many minor characters milling about, we get no single sustained dramatic conflict to peg the movie on. One side-story is how the faithful husband and father is given a “fiancee”, Kathy, played by Diane Kruger, and how Cranston and her deal with their mutual attraction. Spoiler: his fidelity is preserved, but their lack of chemistry together makes it a snooze. In his scenes with Kruger, Cranston seems more interested in financial reports than the gorgeous blonde in his arms; just one more way Furman blows his chances. Actually, Kruger’s best acting was in having to look plain in two early scenes. She was so good I didn’t recognize her. But when Benjamin Bratt – very good as an upscale Escobar crony – gives Kruger a four-strand pearl necklace, which he delicately clasps around her neck, she becomes her familiar dazzling self.

A second story involves Bratt’s character and his wife. Mazur and Kathy maneuver their way into a personal relationship with the couple, only to betray them at the end. But the level of the writing is often superficial and pedestrian.

The action scenes are also hit and miss. One assassination attempt, by motorcycle, is jolting and graphic. But two others, one involving Leguizamo with a snitch demanding more money, and the other with Cranston taken, blindfolded, to a secret hideout, are played out like familiar cable retreads.

The film could also have used more Leguizamo. He puts so much raw, scrappy energy into his scenes that the film seems muted when he’s not on. But Cranston, with one of the great faces in American acting right now, is always worth watching. He supplies real tension even when the screenplay lets him down. Except when he’s with those bankers. Oy!

 

It was not unpleasant to sit in a comfortable, air conditioned theatre in July with a cold Snapple. Unfortunately, having to see Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates came with the deal. It was not as excruciatingly painful as The Hangover, but that’s only because I saw that other atrocity first, which prepared me. Kind of.

The worst part was having to watch some skillful, appealing actors like Aubrey Plaza, Zac Efron and Kumail Nanjiani (of HBO’s Silicon Valley), struggle to make this a “fun” experience. The director, Jake Szymanski, evidently told them to pose and shriek frantically, at maximum volume. Efron’s shtick, which I remember from the (barely) superior Neighbors (also written by Andrew Cohen and Brendan O’Brien) is to get into a face-to-face shouting match with his “bro” – here Adam Devine – and, with rapid crosscutting, get some laughs out of it. They do it twice here, to diminishing effect. Aubrey Plaza is put into some very odd looking outfits which, for some reason, reminded me of Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters. I obtained some amusement by imagining her doing the “Charleston“.

It’s sometimes dangerous when a comedy’s closing credits show the “muffed” out-takes caused when one of the actors breaks up laughing. This is because these can seem funnier than the actual movie. No risk of that here; I didn’t laugh at any of them. But this time I saw something even worse. Except for the “break-up” moments, there was no real difference between the discards and the scenes that were left in. They were equally artificial and unfunny.

A final jab: at one point, a character unlocks a corral, letting a good dozen beautiful horses run free, a joyous escape from captivity. I identified with them. It’s almost as if they were being forced to watch this movie.

 

Wow, this is going to be hard. Only One Night is a first feature, directed by Matt Wu, a popular Taiwanese actor. It starts out as a tough crime thriller about Gao Ye, a compulsive gambler played by Aaron Kwok, who is released from prison in Taipei. A flashback from eight years before shows him as impoverished, filthy and driven to gamble, even after his creditors mutiliate him for not paying up. That night, a prostitute, Momo, played by Yang Zishan, comes to his room because she was told he called for a hooker. Confused, he denies this, but they start to connect and, visibly charmed by him, she winds up lending him money. He loses everything, of course, and she follows him to get her money back, saying the other girls will beat her.

What follows is one of the oddest transformations of a film I can remember. The plot, until the final shocking revelations at the climax, is almost seriocomic in tone. Gao Ye does win the money back, but later events – including a brutal cage-fighting match and a blindfold drag race sequence – get him into more trouble. Eventually, the gangsters threaten to kill his daughter, or sell her into prostitution, if he doesn’t satisfy his debt. But the payment they demand is something other than money.

A jarring shift in tone follows the revelations of Momo’s secret past, one involving Gao Ye, even though they had never met before that night. This effectively turns the film into a female-centered melodrama in which Momo becomes an almost saint-like tragic heroine.

Based on what other reviewers have said, the film is very popular and there is copious weeping in the movie house. Considering the wildly improbable twists in the story, though, the film as a whole can’t be taken seriously. But, while I shed no tears, I didn’t laugh either. Wu has skillfully held our interest in telling a story of spiritual uplift. Momo’s commitment to Gao Ye is based on a genuine belief in his inherent goodness, and that she is fulfilling a predetermined role in his salvation.

Considering the ultimately tragic outcome, the lightness of tone is surprising. The longest scene, where Momo and Gao Ye reveal their pasts to each other in the ruins of a deserted mansion (and Momo is only partly truthful here), is filled with piquant, rather witty banter, and it is elegantly staged. When Momo tells Gao Ye that she is an “actress”, as well as a prostitute, the irony implicit in this comes into sharp focus by the end of the film. Even though the two protagonists will share each other’s company for only one night, the skill of the two actors makes their mutual affection credible.

But the film is a showcase for Zishan, who is married to Wu, and she is impressive. The fluidity with which she shifts from brazen, rude cynicism to emotional generosity is never strained. But, really, the piling up of melodramatic contrivances is deadly. While something is lost because of my lack of familiarity with Taiwanese culture, I don’t think even Bette Davis could have found her way to the spiritual catharsis meant for this character.

Wu shows talent with his actors, but little visual flair. But his passion for good old fashioned melodrama, shared no doubt with screenwriters Ren Peng and Chen Zhengdao, is refreshing. This kind of cinema relies on telling a simple story driven by shared social convention that, through sincere, unaffected acting, reaches an emotional climax. The formula is as old as the industry itself. Studio stalwarts like Leo McCarey and Edmund Goulding handled these vehicles with care. Wu obviously knows that his themes are universal. Transfer the same characters and conflicts to London, and it could have been based on a Somerset Maugham story (Graham Greene would have given it the irony, but not the uplift).

I hope Wu shows greater discipline in story development. His heart’s in the right place.