Saturday Night at the Movies
Love and corruption: Results **½ & The Seven Five ***
By Dennis Hartley
…when is somebody going to give this perennial second banana a starring role?
Maybe someone was listening. In Results, the latest offering from quirky writer-director Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess), Corrigan receives equal star billing with his cohorts.
The ever-deadpan Corrigan is well-cast as Danny, a listless, divorced nebbish who has come into a sizable inheritance. He mopes around his spacious, minimally furnished home, seemingly bereft of ideas as to where or how to blow through his pile of money. Stumbling across a YouTube video posted by a local gym manager named Trevor (Guy Pearce), Danny decides that it’s time to whip his paunchy bod into shape. He sets up a meet with Trevor, informing him that his ultimate fitness goal is to “be able to take a punch”. Before Trevor can raise an eyebrow, Danny pulls out a wad of bills and tells him he’ll pay for a year’s worth of sessions in advance. Trevor promptly offers Danny the services of his top personal trainer, Kat (Cobie Smulders). Danny soon develops a serious crush on Kat (who unbeknownst to him, has a history with Trevor)…and hilarity ensues.
Well, perhaps “hilarity” is a bit of an exaggeration; since this is, after all, a Bujalski film. The director is credited (or blamed, depending on your tolerance for the genre) with sparking the “mumblecore” movement in indie film. Not to infer that the actors “mumble” their lines, per se; but referring to a low-key, episodic narrative that shoots along at the speed of day-to-day, humdrum existence (OK…some might call it “boring”).
I’m sure that stalwart fans of Woody Allen will recognize these characters, particularly the neurotic Trevor and Kat (especially the manner in which their egos shadow-box whilst they continue to dance around the fact that they still harbor strong feelings for each other). In a fashion, Corrigan gets short-changed yet again; he’s all but banished from the deflating third act, which meanders mightily as Trevor and Kat hit the road to propose a business partnership with a successful competitor (played with Euro-trashy aplomb by an unrecognizable Anthony Michael Hall). While it’s a somewhat disappointing follow-up to Computer Chess (which made my Top 10 of 2013), when compared to the formulaic rom-coms churned out by the Hollywood gristmill…Results is a breath of fresh (-ish) air.
Pretzels and beer. Soup and sandwich. New York City and police corruption. Some things seem to naturally go together. Not that police corruption is exclusive to the Big Apple, but there is something inherently cinematic about the combo. Serpico 
…based on a true story. French Connection 
…based on a true story. Prince of the City 
…based on a true story. Cop Land
, Bad Lieutenant
…mmm, could happen (I think you get the gist).
…based on a true story. French Connection …based on a true story. Prince of the City …based on a true story. Cop Land, Bad Lieutenant…mmm, could happen (I think you get the gist).
The story in Tiller Russell’s riveting documentary, The Seven-Five, is not only true, but comes right from the mouths of the perps themselves. The “star” (for wont of a better term) of Russell’s film was once dubbed the “dirtiest cop” in the department’s history by NYC rags (and that’s saying a lot). Michael Dowd headed up a posse of rogue cops who worked the 75th Precinct. For a period stretching from the late 80s into the early 90s, they shook down Brooklyn drug dealers for protection money (among many other things). At the apex of his “career”, Dowd was basically holding down two full-time jobs, one as a cop, and one as a robber. As one of the interviewees observes, “Some cops end up becoming criminals; Michael Dowd was a criminal, who just happened to become a cop.”
When Dowd and his cohorts first popped onscreen, I became a little disoriented. I knew that this was billed as a “documentary”, but surely these were actors; they seemed too much in “character”. I mean, these guys could just as well have strolled right out of a Scorsese film (I could easily picture Dowd saying “Business bad? Fuck you. Pay me.”).
It’s easy to be bamboozled by Dowd’s…charm? But you have to delineate the colorful raconteur from the laundry list of misdeeds he so casually catalogues…he is by any definition a bad, bad man. At least former partner Ken Eurell displays something resembling a conscience (Eurell was a “good” cop…until he fell under sway of Dowd, who never was). Compelling yet disturbing, The Seven-Five tells an all-too-familiar tale that reflects a systemic blight that continues to fester in American cities large and small.
(Note: Both of this week’s films are playing in select cities and also available on VOD).
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