“Oz the Great and Powerful”

Four stars

Starring: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, Joey King, Bill Cobbs, Tony Cox

Rating: PG, and rather generously, for considerable fantasy peril, scary scenes and brief profanity

Fresh take on the Emerald City suitably honors the work of author L. Frank Baum

By Derrick Bang
Enterprise film critic

“Oz the Great and Powerful” is a rich, imaginative and droll delight from start to finish. To be sure, its protagonists face their share of peril — the winged monkeys were the most terrifying part of 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz,” and that’s still true in this new film — but the tone is mostly adventure-scary and family-friendly.

More to the point, scripters Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire — drawing from more of the rich material in Baum’s 1900 novel, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” — have fashioned a prequel that cleverly imitates the style and formula established by the beloved 1939 musical, while also laying the groundwork to anticipate key events in that earlier film’s storyline.

That’s no small accomplishment. Better still, director Sam Raimi and editor Bob Murawski pace their film perfectly, alternating essential character development with fantastical encounters both exhilarating and unnerving.

And — as was the case with Tim Burton’s recent re-boot of “Alice in Wonderland,” also for Disney — Raimi doesn’t slow the pace by pausing and calling attention to Oz’s myriad wonders; they’re simply present to be enjoyed, if even noticed the first time through. I predict hot home-video sales and plenty of repeat viewings, in order to spot and savor everything that production designer Robert Stromberg and visual effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk have packed into this film.

The story, set in the early 20th century, begins roughly a generation before the events in the 1939 film. We’re once again in a small Kansas community — displayed in time-honored black-and-white, in a squarish, standard-frame image — this time in the shabby, sepia-toned “tent city” of a worn and seedy traveling carnival. Its various sideshow attractions include Oscar Diggs (James Franco), nicknamed Oz, a flashy stage magician and rake of dubious ethics who likely has a woman at every stop … with an angry father or husband right behind her.

At this particular town, Oz is gently confronted by Annie (Michelle Williams), a woman who genuinely loves him but recognizes his failings; she has come to bid farewell, while telling Oz that she has accepted a marriage proposal from an honorable fellow named John Gale (the first point at which our Baum radar goes off). Despite genuine regret, Oz knows that cannot change; he worships a dream of puffed-up “greatness” too much to embrace any charitable or honorable feelings.

One massive Kansas twister later, Oz — who has tried to escape an angry husband by hopping into the carnival’s hot-air balloon — has been blown to … somewhere strange and wondrous. He’s greeted by Theodora (Mila Kunis), an impressionable young woman who insists that he is the “wizard of prophecy” who will destroy the wicked witch who has lain waste to this magical realm. (Cinematographer Peter Deming has shifted now to glorious, vibrant color and a modern widescreen image.)

Oh, and — just in passing — Theodora is a witch. Which Oz finds hard to believe, since she’s so sweet and guileless.

Oz is surprised to learn that he shares his name with this land of musical flowers, water fairies and … many somethings that are large, winged and menacing. He’s perfectly willing to let Theodora lead him to the Emerald City, assuming there must be a way to work a few angles once inside its opulent gates.

He’s met within by Theodora’s sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), an equally kind witch who also is troubled by what has befallen their realm. She reveals Emerald City’s great treasure chamber — into which Oz dives, much like Scrooge McDuck — and explains that it can be his to use as he sees fit … after he finds and defeats the wicked witch.

And, so, Oz begins his quest, following a yellow brick road that looks just as it did in the 1939 film. He gathers companions along the way, of course, starting with an adorable — if somewhat snarky — little winged monkey in a bellboy’s uniform; this helpful creature is Finley, voiced by Zach Braff … who we’ve earlier seen as Oz’s badly treated assistant, back in Kansas.

The duo becomes a trio after Oz and Finley find the China Girl, the sole survivor of a terrible attack that has destroyed everything and everybody else in her fragile little hamlet (the “Dainty China Country” in Baum’s book, drolly re-christened Chinatown here). China Girl has her Kansas antecedent as well: a disabled little girl in a wheelchair (Joey King, still well remembered as Ramona Quimby, in 2010’s “Ramona and Beezus”), who wishes for legs that work.

This is the point at which Kapner and Lindsay-Abaire’s script really bares its teeth. The implications of what has happened in Chinatown, once we understand them, are deeply unsettling … as is China Girl’s condition, when she’s introduced. Every moment spent with this fragile supporting character elicits a state of high anxiety, our hearts immediately won over by her vulnerability and pluck.

As time passes, Oz, Finley and China Girl also meet the Munchkins, the Tinkers and other denizens of Quadling Country, the Ozian realm guarded by Glinda (Williams again), the benevolent witch who travels in oversized bubbles — here granted a more amusing gelatinous consistency — that we’ll also recall from the 1939 film.

Naturally, though, Oz’s quest proves to have complications, and he begins to appreciate the folly of rash assumptions … and the perils of rash behavior.

Franco is appropriately feckless and smarmy as Oz, inevitably living down to our diminishing expectations of the man. His smile is cheerfully insincere, his self-aggrandizing manner a constant disappointment to those — Finley, Glinda — who quickly perceive these failings.

On the other hand, some of Franco’s line readings are clumsy and superficial, his expressions too frequently suggesting not sincerity, but condescending, out-of-character arrogance, as if he can’t believe he’s being forced to utter such “inane” dialogue. It’s difficult to believe in Oz’s growing maturity as a caring human being, when all his lines are delivered with the same snickering superficiality.

Fortunately, it’s not constant. Franco deftly handles Oz’s initial encounter with China Girl, for example, and his growing rapport with Glinda is both amusing and emotionally persuasive.

Weisz chews up the scenery in style, as the enigmatic Evanora; the actress displays all the panache and delicious subtlety that Franco too frequently lacks. Kunis initially is understated — almost muted — as Theodora, but that’s deliberate; once events ignite this woman’s passion, Kunis gives Weisz a run for her money.

Williams is properly angelic as the oh-so-honorable Glinda, although the part, as written, doesn’t allow much depth. Braff and King voice their Ozian characters with spunk; at times, Finley and China Girl seem far more “real” than their human co-stars.

Raimi and Deming make excellent use of the film’s 3D effects, whether in anticipated ways — a volley of spears coming right at us — or the unexpected thrill as Oz’s deflating hot-air balloon hurtles down a waterfall.

I note that quite a few of my critical brethren and sistren seem to be trashing this film, which is both bewildering and sad; it deserves much better. Granted, Franco’s superficial performance undercuts the dramatic flow at times, but certainly not to the point of damaging one of the most entertaining and admirably faithful big-screen adaptations of Baum’s work.

Just as the citizens of Oz need to believe in their wizard, we really should believe in Raimi’s adaptation. It deserves that much.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Donna Murphy, Stacy Keach, Dennis Boutsikaris, Zeljko Ivanek

By Derrick Bang

Enterprise film critic

Any doubts about the Bourne film series surviving Matt Damon’s departure can be laid to rest; replacement star Jeremy Renner capably opens a new chapter in Robert Ludlum’s popular franchise.

Although it’s perhaps not the chapter fans were expecting.

Ludlum, who died in 2001, wrote the three books made into the film trilogy that featured Damon between ’02 and ’07. Ludlum’s estate sanctioned Jason Bourne’s literary revival in an ongoing series of sequels by the prolific Eric Van Lustbader, who thus far has written seven more, starting with 2004’s “The Bourne Legacy.”

But although this new film shares the same title, that’s all it shares. Like most latter-day James Bond films, which also borrowed Ian Fleming’s book and short story titles — and nothing else — director/co-scripter Tony Gilroy concocted an entirely new narrative suggested by Ludlum’s conspiracy-laden premise.

And rather than tagging a new actor to play Jason Bourne — thus cleverly leaving the door open for Damon’s return, at some future point — Renner is introduced as Aaron Cross, one of several “sidebar assets” in the U.S. black ops agency’s clandestine Treadstone project.

Gilroy scripted all three of Damon’s “Bourne” films; he also wrote and directed the sleekly sinister George Clooney vehicle, “Michael Clayton,” and had fun riffing on industrial espionage with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, in 2009’s “Duplicity.” So it’s safe to say that Gilroy knows the territory.

Gilroy wisely takes his time with the first act of this new film, introducing Cross during an extreme survival training session in the Alaskan wilderness. Details are sketchy, aside from the same heightened senses and reflexes that characterized Bourne; Cross also carefully maintains a daily regimen of pills — one blue, one green — that are safeguarded in a container worn around his neck.

Back in D.C., high-level spook Eric Byer (Edward Norton) frets over the public appearance of Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney), recognized from the previous film in this series. Similarly, Pam Landy (Joan Allen), Jason Bourne’s former handler, has threatened to go public with Treadstone’s seamier details.

Feeling that they have no choice, Byer and fellow conspirator Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) decide to shut down Treadstone and its half-dozen human assets, despite their highly effective work in various world hot spots. And in this realm of unsupervised behavior, “shutting down” has lethal ramifications for said assets.

Rather reprehensibly, the soulless Byer — quickly established as this story’s uber-villain — goes for total shutdown, which also means eliminating all scientists and medical researchers working to produce those little blue and green pills, in the concealed lab of a Maryland pharma-giant dubbed Candent.

Byer’s scheme isn’t entirely successful; one top-security researcher, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), survives and withdraws, shaken, to the comfort of her magnificently dilapidated, three-story fixer-upper mansion in the Maryland woods. Shearing also knows Cross, but only as a man dubbed “Patient No. 5” who routinely submitted to blood panels and full medical work-ups numerous times, during the previous few years.

More to the point, Cross remembers Shearing; when everything goes pear-shaped, she becomes the one person who might be able to help him stay alive — and properly medicated — long enough to figure out what the hell is going on.

Assuming she lives that long.

Although you’ve just read a fairly straightforward précis of Gilroy’s narrative set-up, these details don’t arrive anywhere near as neatly in the film. Indeed, Gilroy and co-scripter Dan Gilroy (an older brother) go out of their way to deliver crucial details through flashbacks, confusing cross-cutting and just plain obfuscation. It could be argued that the screenwriters try too hard to be obtuse, relying overmuch on terse, heated and vaguely worded arguments between Byer, Turso and Cadent CEO Terrence Ward (Dennis Boutsikaris).

It’s difficult to get emotionally involved with the “crisis,” early on, when we haven’t the slightest idea what these guys are quarrelling about.

At the same time, though, Tony Gilroy’s leisurely pace allows us plenty of time to get inside Cross’ head. Like Bourne before him — whom he doesn’t know — Cross had a former life and career before being co-opted by Byer into this soul-deadening black-ops existence. Although properly grim and implacable when necessary, Renner also grants Cross gentler characteristics: curiosity, wary anxiety, compassion and a strong moral compass that Byer definitely wouldn’t admire.

Renner looks friendly, and his Aaron Cross believably slides from companionable smiles to lightning-quick lethal action in the blink of an eye. Renner is totally convincing, and when his expression turns grim, the results aren’t the slightest bit surprising. Indeed, we come to anticipate that transformation.

Unlike so many directors who front-load their action scenes and then have nowhere to go — I’m looking at you, “Total Recall” — Gilroy understands the effective art of building to a suspenseful climax. We learn much about Cross’ capabilities during the extended Alaskan sojourn, but these are hardly melees; his hand-to-hand skills don’t come into play until he returns to civilization. Cross doesn’t fully explode until he resourcefully finds his way to Shearing’s Maryland home, at which point Gilroy kicks his film into a higher gear.

But even this proves to be only an intermediate phase. Gilroy, editor John Gilroy (a younger brother) and stunt coordinator Dan Bradley throw everything into the climactic third act, which opens with a rooftop pursuit and builds to a jaw-dropping motorcycle chase.

Weisz is note-perfect as a lab rat wholly out of her depth, in this dangerous world into which Shearing suddenly is plunged. Her initial slide into hysteria looks and sounds just right, as Weisz digs deep for an inner core of stubborn defiance, in order to hold things together. Later, having (reluctantly) learned to trust Cross, Weisz brings considerable emotional warmth to what follows, her character’s sincerity doing much to elicit similar positive virtues from this man who, at other times, seems more killing machine than human being.

Norton is properly smarmy as Byer, and Tony Award-winning stage actress Donna Murphy is memorably persuasive as his capable and similarly pragmatic aide. Zeljko Ivanek is chilling as Foite, one of Shearing’s Cadent lab colleagues; Elizabeth Marvel is similarly creepy, as a government psychologist whose motives prove to be less than sincere.

Scott Glenn and David Strathairn briefly pop up in the roles they introduced in 2007’s “Bourne Ultimatum,” and Gilroy cheekily keeps Matt Damon firmly in our minds, with occasional photographs in files passed among key characters.

“The Bourne Legacy” layers slick, suspenseful action atop an intriguing, intelligent and emotionally involving narrative. Previous director Paul Greengrass definitely brought Ludlum’s Bourne series into the 21st century with authoritative snap, and Gilroy has continued the tradition quite honorably.

And as this film’s closing scene quite blatantly teases, we’ve not seen the last of Aaron Cross.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at http://derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com