"A Man Apart" (2003) - Movie Review

Probably every one of the 80s flick’s cold sad one liners have been taken to use in “A Man Apart”. This film has no confidence in itself that it needs the hero Sean (Vin Diesel) to grow a beard to show his grievance. I remember gimmick like this been employed in the old 80s Tamil film and the entire summer action Hollywood block buster. A vengeance tale is been attempted to be told and approached as a man’s inner turmoil, a suspense and a stylish violent drama. It does not work in any of those.

Danny Parker/Tom Van Allen in “The Salton Sea” and Leonard in “Memento” deal with their own struggle and grief in complex entertaining ways but still flags the rage in them to go about finding the killers of their respective wives. Today an article in rediff.com said that men are more prone to die once their loved ones depart from them. So we can empathize a lot with Sean (and it is the article and not the movie creates this). But Sean deals with his grief as expected with aggression and insane behaviour. He puts every one in jeopardy inclusive of his dear friend, Demetrius (Larenz Tate). Sean is a tough man to talk about feelings, understandable and an action film to even slightly analyze about it is not expected or may be even might pose awkward. The film wobbles with the idea of to deal or not to deal with his issues. It tries to skim the surface but never has the daunting courage to see inside this devastated man.

So does it mean they take it a notch up with the violence and give a cold hearted action film? No! They give out random gun shots and gruesome murder scenes which have no connection with the ghost drug lord named Diablo they are hunting. Sean busts his seven year work on the big drug lord Memo Lucero (Geno Silva) and the scenes depicting the next big head Diablo as they say, an invisible psycho terror takes over the kingdom of drug cartel left by Memo. Along with it for reasons later said an attack over Sean’s residence kills his wife Stacey (Jacqueline Obradors). So as soon as he gets up from his hospital and visiting his wife’s grave, he directly goes to the one and only man who would want him killed, Memo. But Alas! He is not involved as his “If I want you dead, you would be” dumb dialogue clears his name. If that dialogue is not sufficient for the inability of the writers to come up with an interesting conversation, you need to watch this. Sean visits Memo again and now Memo wants to talk. Memo is sitting in a visiting room with “modern age” spa environment (only in Hollywood jail facility) and he starts talking not looking at Sean and starts, “Me, my brother and sister used to sleep in one room”. It cracked me and was laughing hilariously. Now that is a scene directly needs to be included in the “Hot Shots” or “The Naked Gun” franchise.

F. Gary Gray has good eyes for some visuals and also likes heavy metal at inappropriate times. There are random characters for no particular reason or their fancy element is not sleek either. Hollywood Jack (Timothy Olyphant) is one of many wasteful characters just used as a deviation for the pay off while the audience had by that time worked out the permutation and combination of who tricked Sean and Jack was the first one to be out from that list.

It is films like this which reminds how bad Hollywood can get and how slick they do it too. I can only imagine how Vin Diesel told some of the dialogues without flinching. He is a good actor for a role like this but even he displays offhand work. We can almost see his disinterest and disbelief in this character.

There is significant evidence that they were not able to show how much Sean misses Stacey. When the film carries on with all lovely happenings, happy get together and sharing “I Love You”, the result is certain. Some one needs to die and especially the actress who is less known. To make us sympathize for Sean depends on the casual love and bond he shares with Stacey with good emotional un-cheesy scenes. They act happy. They act. Period. This puts them to further show a scene of melancholy back ground with Sean thinking their good times. Another point of no confidence over the script.

When the film started off with a story line known, I was expecting an action film. Then it turned down in detailing the drug traffic statistics and hence thought it is going to be about that. Suddenly it attempts to shift into drama mode of Sean’s sadness and then a vain twisted change into a cold violent thriller. At this point, I was confused on what to think. And when the talking started, it became a parody of itself. You cannot enjoy it even as a funny movie because you have seen everything in “Hot Shots” which by the way is more action/drama genre than this. And damn it was funny too.