Director's Spotlight: James Mangold
By Joshua Pasch
August 11, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Walk the Line
Let me start this analysis by freely admitting that I am decidedly not a fan of the music-centered docudrama sub-genre. Ray is a mundane film with a single great performance and Dreamgirls is almost insufferable. Am I honestly the only one who feels a little bit like Johnny Cash's problems are exactly like those of Ray Charles, except that Cash is white and also happens to have the gift of sight? Forgive me for failing to see the drama in Cash's story. His music was not of my generation, and it isn't my fault he got caught up with groupies and drugs just like every other performer who reached that level of popularity. Just because he is a Country Music Hall of Famer doesn't mean his story deserves the A-list group of dramatizers that came together to make Walk the Line.
With its mid-November release date and rapturous reviews (seriously, outside of the two performances I really don't know why critics gush over this stuff), Walk the Line was an early awards seasons favorite. However, as the buzz cooled, more people seemed to side with the sentiment that this was a showcase for some decent music and acting, but no real achievement as a piece of dramatic cinema. With that, the film earned five Oscar noms in smaller categories like Editing, Costume Design, and, of course, Sound. Witherspoon walked away with a statue, and Phoenix, through no fault of his own, was largely considered the runner-up in a stacked year that included David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow, Heath Ledger in that famous cowboy role, and winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote.
Audiences, on the other hand, gave Walk the Line the ultimate stamp of approval, opening the pic to a sizable $22 and legging it out to a robust $119.5 million - a definite winner against an under $30 million budget. It is far and away the highest grossing music bio-pic, and stands as Mangold's biggest hit by a sizable margin.
3:10 to Yuma
Can the term "overlooked" be applied to a film that grossed a sturdy $53 million at the domestic box office? Somehow, with this mid-tier release from Lionsgate, it feels that way. 3:10, a remake to a well-received but generally forgotten western, felt like it would fall into the category of "Really? Why'd they remake that one?" The reaction to the remake is one more of surprise than bated anticipation. Even though it opened at #1 during a dreary box office weekend in September 2007, 3:10 To Yuma was unremarkable at the box office, earning $14 million during its opening weekend. With Russell Crowe playing a tight-lipped villain, Christian Bale as the brooding leading man, and Ben Foster as Crowe's wily right hand man, this high-concept but mostly low tech Western deserved a bigger audience.
Bale stars as a modest rancher, Dan Evans, who agrees to help bring infamous outlaw Ben Wade (menacingly played by Crowe) to take the 3:10 train to Yuma for a likely death sentence. The plot is simple, but Mangold adds depth by telling the story gracefully, giving both leads plenty of back story. Crowe and Bale are perfect foils for one another, and as they reach a climactic race for the train, they are forced to question their motives and values; by the time the film is over, its hard to tell villain from anti-hero. Looming over them through their trek are Wade's persistent henchmen, led by Charlie Prince - played by the film's true breakout performer, Ben Foster. Foster, one of Hollywood's brightest young talents, steals every scene with wild eyes and reckless abandon.
Mangold, again the beneficiary of some truly wonderful performances, weaves together this simple story with more grit and depth and emotional resonance than anyone could reasonably expect going in. Painting this story against a gorgeously shot American landscape, Mangold directed what should have been a real breakout success. 3:10 to Yuma exceeded almost every one of my admittedly high expectations and I thought for sure audiences would connect with it the way I did.
Whether audiences are still not ready to re-embrace the Western (a test they will again sit for with True Grit's remake later this year), or if audiences simple weren't ready to give Crowe a shot at redemption, 3:10 to Yuma was mostly shrugged at by the general movie going audience. It picked up a couple of sound and score nominations at the Oscars - but Bale, Crowe, and Foster were never even considered in the running. Regardless, Mangold continued to build versatility in his resume (though, at this point, I think that's fairly obvious), and he set out for his next challenge.
Knight and Day
It's funny to think that for a lengthy period of time, Tom Cruise was far and away the most bankable A-lister in Hollywood. In the early 2000s, Russell Crowe looked like he had a chance to join those elite ranks or even supersede Cruise at the top of the tippy top of the list of elite Hollywood movie stars. Yet, by 2005 both Cruise and Crowe were throwing either their hands or phones in the air in fits of joy and rage, and both became the sought after subjects for tabloid fodder. In 2004, the idea that Mangold would be saddled with overcoming either Crowe or Cruise's presence in his films would have been ridiculous. And yet, here we are, and in back-to-back features Mangold's potential audience might have been turned-off by these has-been A-list actors.
Knight and Day, formerly known as The Man from Wichita, is standard action-comedy fare. There is nothing ostensibly or offensively bad about it - it just…is. It is the kind of fluff you wish were just a little bit less fluffy. You wish the twist was a bit less obvious, you wish the romance were a bit more natural, you wish the action were less CGI-ified, but through it all, the popcorn tastes fine, Diaz still looks decent in a bikini, Cruise still runs really, really fast, and shit still blows up. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes seems to mirror that opinion with a not-too-rotten rating of 54%, but since its release, the film has been incessantly criticized for a botched marketing plan that included obscuring both leads from the movie's posters.
The summer flick decided to bump up its release at the last second from a Friday to a Wednesday, presumably to capitalize on what Fox was hoping to be positive word-of-mouth. Unfortunately for the execs at Fox, that buzz never materialized, and soon any positive reactions (and there were some) were mostly drowned out by the disappointing Wednesday gross (only $3.8 million), followed up by another rehashing of Cruise's fading star power. To date, Knight and Day has earned a none-too-impressive $75 million and won't make it too much further. Bolstered by $110 million overseas so far, the film will likely be a wash for Fox, but is at least a little bit damaging to Mangold. Based on a pretty lively first trailer and breezy tone, I was convinced Mangold would have elevated this material, but instead things fell just above flat for everyone involved.
Wicked (?)
Mangold's next directorial project is surprisingly still TBD. Mangold, who churns out one film about every two years or so, will likely be attached to a project at some point in the upcoming months. As recently as earlier this month his name was tossed in with JJ Abrams, Rob Marshall, and Ryan Murphy (Glee) as potential candidates for the film adaptation of Wicked. If Mangold does land the gig, it will be one that comes with sky-high expectations and could send him into another tier of household name directors. It would also be his first musical - Walk the Line doesn't really count - further diversifying his already diverse resume. But with a whopping ten (!) projects listed on his IMDb page as being "in development," odds are just as high that he'll throw us yet another curveball.