Review: Observe and Report

Observe and Report

OPENING: 04/10/2009

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

RUN TIME: 86 min

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

SOUNDTRACK:

The Charge
Right Now, The World Needs a Hero.

Opening Statement
Director Jody Hill first caught the attention of audiences with his comedy The Foot Fist Way. The film gave a career boost to both Hill and star Danny McBride, and they would soon collaborate again on the HBO television series Eastbound and Down. Now Hill has returned with a much more high-profile theatrical feature, Observe and Report, starring Seth Rogen. Lest you think Observe and Report is merely another Judd Apatow knock-off, I urge you to think again. You might like it, you might hate it, but this is one of the most offbeat and original comedies of the year.


Facts of the Case
Rogen plays Ronnie Barnhardt, a security guard at a relatively quiet mall. Alas, the peace is disturbed when a flasher decides to start exposing himself to people in the parking lot. Despite Ronnie’s best efforts, the flasher is not caught. Ronnie makes it his life aim to capture the flasher and bring him to justice. He becomes particularly incensed when the flasher assaults Brandi (Anna Faris), the junkie who works behind the makeup counter at the mall. Ronnie has been secretly pining for Brandi for quite a long time, and vows to her that he is going to protect her from inevitable future attacks. Despite his best intentions, things just aren’t going so well. A police detective (Ray Liotta) keeps interfering with Ronnie’s investigation. His attempt to become an official member of the police department doesn’t quite work out. In addition to this, he’s trying to deal with alcoholic mother (Celia Weston) and bipolar disorder. Can Ronnie overcome his personal obstacles and bring the bad guy to justice?


The Evidence
There is a scene about halfway through the film in which Ray Liotta’s character calls Ronnie into his office. He’s preparing to tell him that he isn’t qualified to be a member of the police department. One of Liotta’s co-workers is hiding in the closet, gleefully listening for the humor that is certain to ensue. Alas, after listening to the conversation, the co-worker steps out of the closet and says, “You know, I was in here because I thought this was going to be pretty funny. But it’s actually just kind of sad.”



Observe and Report has a way of working like that. It delivers sadness when we expect laughs and laughs during moments when we shouldn’t, with a disturbing cloud of psychosis lingering over the whole thing. Most reviews have pointed out Hill was largely inspired by Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, but the film is much closer in spirit to Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, another compelling character study that uncomfortably found laughs in dark and troubling territory. It has been said that films do not influence the culture so much as they reflect it. If that’s the case, there have been few recent films which accurately distill modern American culture as well as Observe and Report.

Ronnie Barnhardt is crass, psychotic, messy, self-conscious, uncaring, bigoted, deeply sad, wasted, well-intentioned, and nobly misguided. It’s remarkable Seth Rogen pulls off this role as well as he does. Don’t let the “silly mall cop” trailers fool you. This is a much different performance from Rogen, one that brings out a new side of his acting ability. I’ve always found the guy warm and somewhat likable, but here he puts aside his slovenly Knocked Up persona to create a disturbed individual who is both frightening and repulsive. We care about him in the way that we care about any mentally disturbed individual in need of help or guidance. In his own small, pathetic way, Ronnie regards himself as a protector of humanity, using a sawed-off shotgun to blast away the dark clouds of evil that surround this world. His violent fantasies are not fueled by a desire to hurt people, but by a warped sense of honor he has created for himself.



One of the most compelling elements of the film is the relationship between Ronnie and a girl named Nell (Collette Wolfe, Semi-Pro). Nell works behind the counter at a little shop in the mall that sells coffee and cinnamon roles. She is a broken person with a broken leg. Her boss (Patton Oswalt) constantly insults and ridicules her, nobody understands her attempt to become a “born again virgin,” and Ronnie seems completely oblivious to the fact that she really cares about him. Wolfe and Rogen share scenes together which truly capture the complex emotions the film conjures. Hill finds a way to blend deep feeling and shocking absurdity in a manner which hits you in the pit of your stomach. There’s one particularly effective scene in which Ronnie determines to make Nell’s boss stop bothering her. The scene provides a primal satisfaction, underlined with the undeniable knowledge that what we are seeing is actually very troubled behavior.



In some ways, I was also reminded of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, a film which also attempted to provide a level of unease by blending undeniably energetic and entertaining action sequences with absolutely horrific and violent behavior. This film is even more effective in what it achieves. The film inserts humor during numerous particularly repulsive moments, and slyly dares the viewer not to laugh. The comedy is definitely here, but it’s dark, bitter, and genuinely uncomfortable. There are ample opportunities for Hill to start preaching, but he avoids them all; and because of it, the film makes me nervous in the same way as Fight Club did. I suspect there’s a pretty significant percentage of people out there who are going to take Observe and Report at face value as a celebration of truly despicable activity.

Closing Statement
The film isn’t perfect, largely because it works better on a metaphoric level than on a realistic one. Even so, I admire its blunt frankness, honesty, and raw humanity. I’ve seen a lot of recent comedies, action films, and horror movies which feature repugnant behavior, and I’m always bothered when I hear people in the theatre laughing at things that sadden me. Observe and Report matches pretty much anything out there in terms of R-rated content. The difference is this one knows what is sad, what is creepy, and what is funny. It throws all of these elements together as a potent mixture that says, “We defy you not to feel the messy, icky humanity of this film.” Recommended for viewers with a strong stomach who are looking for more than cheap laughs.


The Verdict
8/10

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