Al's Omniflick: 22 Jump Street

Friday, June 13, 2014

22 Jump Street

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller/Starring: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube, Nick Offerman and Peter Stormare

Apparently a movie need not be very good to merit a sequel but here we are with 22 Jump Street, which is just that. The cast from the first movie is back with a sprinkle of cameos thrown in for at least decent measure.

The story merely exists to provide context and something resembling a plot but the movie really is just a string of gags, mostly bloodless and dumb but occasionally something that registers as amusing or funny accidentally happens.

Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are assigned a new case involving a drug called WhyPhy, which is making the rounds among the students of Metro State, a local college. The two cops go undercover as college students to find the supplier. The joke of course, like the first movie, is that Schmidt and Jenko look a little old to be students; which is the observation of more than just one student.

A student under investigation who died using the drug is seen in a photo supposedly handing it to another student with a tattoo, which is what Schmidt and Jenko use as a lead. While Schmidt's separate investigation leads to a romance with an attractive student named Maya (an intoxicating Amber Stevens), Jenko strikes up a friendship with a football player named Zook (Wyatt Russell). The friendship threatens the quasi-gay relationship Schmidt and Jenko have enjoyed since the first film. So much of the film is a running gag about the homoeroticism involved between Jenko and Zook and though it is played as something natural and unironic, the joke becomes tired, as does the jealous tension simmering between Schmidt and Jenko.

In one of the movie's (few) funnier developments, Maya turns out to be Captain Dickson's (Ice Cube) daughter; setting the stage for a comically tense situation where both Schmidt and Maya's parents meet for lunch. The scene concludes with Captain Dickson angrily and violently helping himself to the buffet, resulting in food being heaped on his plate and flung about with his hands. Ice Cube shows some comic flare in what is probably (for me) one of my favorite moments in the film. I often found the secondary characters more amusing than Schmidt and Jenko. Nick Offerman's Deputy Chief Hardy returns in this movie and I wished he would have been given more screentime because he is funny in the few scenes allotted to him. The same can be said for Jillian Bell's Mercedes; Maya's hostile roommate and Schmidt antagonist. She is given to making fun of Schmidt's age whenever they happen to be in the room together and her barbs are quite amusing.

If only the movie had been consistently funny rather than just a bundle of infrequent, amusing moments. The content of the first movie was pretty thin material on which to launch a second movie. I wondered throughout if the producers might visit another installment on us in the future but a series of bogus trailers for Jump Street movies (everything from Schmidt and Jenko going undercover in seminary school to an equally absurd dance class) hint that 22 Jump Street might mercifully be the end. Please let that be the case.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.