5A — Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

FILM REVIEW

ABC

“You used to call me on my cell phone.”
No redemption
for ‘Wicked City’

New ABC drama
negates feminist
progress on TV

By SHIR AVINADAV

For The Daily

Ed Westwick broke “Gos-

sip Girl” ’s fans hearts as Upper
East Side playboy, Chuck, and
does it again
in
ABC’s

new thriller,
“Wicked
City”
as

suave serial
killer
Kent.

Like Chuck,
Kent has a
troubled past
and takes it
out on women. However, Kent’s
vendetta against women is a little
more extreme. Set in 1980s Los
Angeles, “Wicked City” follows
the troubled young killer who
uses his charm (a familiar char-
acter trait of Westwick’s) to lure
unsuspecting victims into his
twisted killing routine.

Within the first few minutes,

he sways two women into hand-
ing over their phone numbers.
One, a young naïve journalist
(not cliché at all) who was lucky
to elude Kent’s plans for her,
becomes essential in identifying
the unknown serial killer relent-
lessly pursued by investigator
Jack Roth (Jeremy Sisto, “Law
and Order”). The less fortunate
young woman gets her 15 seconds
of fame as Kent’s first victim of
the season. After being led back
to his car under the guise of an
innocent hookup (this is the ‘80s
after all), she is brutally stabbed
to death. Though the premise of
the show was obvious prior to
watching the pilot, seeing this
unnamed girl repeatedly stabbed,
her blood splattered on the car’s
dashboard, while engaged in a

sexual act, was appalling.

Perhaps what was truly shock-

ing was the fact that it’s 2015, and
such a horrifying act of violence
committed against a woman was
shown on network television as
entertainment. And victim num-
ber one was just one of many girls
whose roles on the pilot equated
to that of a tissue – used and dis-
posed of quickly and without a
second thought.

Aside from the tired plotlines

and melodramatic tone recycled
from every other crime series on
television, the show is just plain
offensive. Competing investiga-
tors Jack and Paco (Gabriel Luna,
“Bernie”), who are (big surprise)
forced to work on Kent’s case
together, conclude that Kent’s
targeting of women is the prod-
uct of “mommy issues” and call
it a day. Top notch investigative
work! With Kent’s inner psyche
thoroughly analyzed we can con-
tinue watching him justifiably
victimize the female population
of Los Angeles with a newfound
sympathy for his actions.

How could this have been the

angle “Wicked City” ’s writers
chose to take? Humanizing a psy-
chotic murderer is one thing, but
profiling him in a way intended
to shift the blame onto women
is wrong and completely absurd.
The show isn’t the first to explore
the mind of a serial killer to drive
the narrative down a twisted
and dark path that satisfies audi-
ences’ bizarre obsession with
glamorizing crime. But, it does
so by exploiting some question-
able subjects – the least of which
include sex and drugs.

The attempt to humanize Kent

takes an even more bizarre turn
when he lets his guard down
for almost-victim, Betty (Erika
Christensen,
“Parenthood”),

a single mom (like Kent’s own
mother) who also has a tenden-
cy towards sadism. Her cold-
blooded proclivity is revealed

in a less graphic manner than
Kent’s when she plays with a spi-
der and then crushes it with her
bare hands. Their relationship
escalates quickly, and strangely
at that. Kent makes her pretend
like she’s dead when they have
sex for the first time, and then
almost completely dismisses her
when she has to cancel on their
date because of work. Of course
she makes the logical decision
and blows off her demanding job
as a nurse to salvage her budding
relationship with Kent. She goes
to meet him at the predetermined
location of their date only to find
him leaving with another girl.
He then whispers something in
Betty’s ear, and we are left guess-
ing at what could have possibly
convinced her to go along with
him and the unsuspecting girl,
with wickedly grin on her face.
And just like that, the killer nec-
rophilic couple is formed.

Kent doesn’t seem to be the

only character exempt of soci-
ety’s
moral
standards.
The

supposed hero of the pilot’s
awkwardly strung together plot-
line, Jack Roth, is sleeping with
his coworker Dianne (Karolina
Wydra, “True Blood”), whom
he appears to be using for a one-
sided trade of information to help
solve his cases. Of course Paco has
to deprecatingly comment on the
fact that she’s a stripper, only to
find out that she’s actually work-
ing undercover at the strip club to
take down a cocaine dealer. This
revelation isn’t surprising com-
pared to the discovery that Jack
is married with kids. Soon after,
we see Jack using his work as a
guise for his affair with Dianne.
This is yet another banal plotline
– which doesn’t exactly elevate
the show’s already exhaustive use
of the plotlines and dialogue typi-
cal of the endless crime shows
already congesting network pro-
gramming. So, do we really need
another one?

D

Wicked City

Series Premiere
Tuesdays at
10 p.m.

ABC

One-sided ‘Truth’
feels too superficial

By REBECCA LERNER

Daily Arts Writer

The film “Truth” revisits a

time in America’s history when
politics ensnared media in its
corruption and
lies.
“Truth”

has its saving
graces
—
an

all-star
cast

of Hollywood
pros
and
an

ultimately
fascinating
story.
Unfortunately,
it sags under
the pressure of its disputed
storyline.


“Truth”
is
about
the

controversial 2004 news story
that “60 Minutes” producer
Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett,
“Carol”) broke about George
Bush’s service in the National
Guard. With the story, Mapes
asserts that Bush was able
to avoid service in Vietnam
through favoritism. She has

help from her research team,
played
by
Elisabeth
Moss

(“Mad Men”), Dennis Quaid
(“Footloose”)
and
Topher

Grace
(“American
Ultra”).

Considering the potential for
greatness in these supporting
actors, particularly Moss as a
journalism professor, they are
underused in roles that could
have added to the character
relationships had they been
deeper. The face of the scandal
is veteran news anchor Dan
Rathers, skillfully portrayed by
Robert Redford (“A Walk in the
Woods”). Skepticism is raised
when
Bush’s
commanding

officer doubts his service, so
the entire blogosphere, still
in its youth in 2004, begins a
witch-hunt. Mapes stands as
the main target of the bloggers’
wrath, but everyone involved is
implicated.

Firstly, as a director and

screenwriter, James Vanderbilt
uses a strange angle to explain
Mapes’s
fierce
journalism.

While she sleeps on a plane

back to New York, her team
discusses her past. They justify
her tenacity with her abusive
father, who would beat her
and her siblings for asking
questions.
Unfortunately,

the
shocked
response
over

her journalism career feels
manufactured and awkward.
When Mapes discusses the
abuse with her husband, she
equates the media’s persecution
of herself to her father’s abuse.
It’s an odd association, and
she is already portrayed as the
victim in this story, so it feels
like too much to put another
degree of victimhood onto her
character.

Despite this, Blanchett and

Redford do an admirable job of
creating compelling characters.

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

In some respects, a movie

about a famous psychologi-
cal study writes itself. Experi-
ments like
the
Stan-

ford Prison
Experiment
(the
basis

of
a
film

that
was

released
earlier
this
year)

are inherently cinematic, with
thrilling sequences of tension
and violence rooted in real
human psychology. In drama-
tizing these studies, filmmakers
can do a better job of explaining
their implications, beyond just
reading their Wikipedia summa-
ries. With deeper research, the
films can create a more visceral
reaction in the viewer. A movie
based on true events needs to
do more than just recount what
happened. That’s where “Exper-
imenter” falls apart.

Directed
and
written
by

Michael Almereyda (“Hamlet”),
“Experimenter” is the latest film
to attempt the dramatization of
a psychological study. Stanley
Milgram, played here by Peter
Sarsgaard (“Shattered Glass”),
conducts
an
experiment
in

which the participants believe
they’re delivering increasingly
painful
electric
shocks
to

other participants. The study
intended to examine the effects
of punishment on learning. In
reality, the designated “learner”
(Jim
Gaffigan,
“The
Jim

Gaffigan Show”) is an actor in
on the experiment, not actually
being shocked; the study is
meant to observe how far the

subjects are willing to comply to
continue delivering shocks.

Viewers who know anything

about the study won’t be sur-
prised to learn that the subjects
are disturbingly willing to shock
the learner. The actors playing
the subjects, like John Leguiza-
mo (“Chef”), Taryn Manning
(“Orange is the New Black”) and
Anton Yelchin (“Star Trek”),
portray their characters in a way
that presents the full spectrum
of human reactions to Milgram’s
seemingly sadistic commands.
Most subjects begin to wince or
clench their fists as the shocks
become more and more pain-
ful, but they continue to obey
the experimenter even when the
learner begs them to stop.

The first half of the film plays

out like a History Channel spe-
cial, with Sarsgaard often break-
ing the fourth wall to explain
the psychological concepts at
play. “Experimenter” would be
a decent movie if it was willing
to stay focused on the study and
keep the scenes at Yale. But to
reach greatness, an experiment-
based film needs to have a pur-
pose beyond reenactment. There
needs to be an emotional core
— something that justifies the
film’s existence. Unfortunately,
after a kinetic first half explor-
ing the shock experiment’s sig-
nificance, the second half of
“Experimenter” devolves into
disconnected scenes devoid of
narrative drive.

“Experimenter” makes the

mistake of attempting to portray
new dimensions by slowly trans-
forming into a biopic of Stanley
Milgram. Sarsgaard, as always,
is great in the role, and Winona
Ryder (“Beetlejuice”) lends a
warm, curious presence as his
wife. Still, the film struggles to

justify Sasha Milgram’s necessity
as a character in the film. After
they get married, she mostly sits
back and watches Stanley work,
at most helping him sort papers
or cheering him on.

Ultimately, this story doesn’t

belong to Sasha Milgram, or
sociologist
Paul
Hollander

(Edoardo Ballerini, “The Sopra-
nos”), or the numerous other
minor characters who either
challenge or support Stanley
Milgram along the way. “Exper-
imenter” passes these support-
ing characters off as important
in Stanley Milgram’s life, but
the first act of the film presents
the study as the protagonist, not
Milgram himself.

As a result, once the experi-

ment is over, the film feels
inconsequential. There’s no par-
ticular grounded story left to tell
besides a slightly comic, meta
subplot in which Milgram’s
study is made into a television
film starring William Shatner
(Kellan Lutz, “Twilight”). The
last two acts do explore the con-
troversy around the study and
Milgram’s subsequent rise to
infamy, but these stories pro-
ceed exactly how you’d imagine:
with detractors criticizing Mil-
gram’s ethics and Milgram defi-
antly dismissing them.

The most compelling scenes

in the second half are simple
episodes
explaining
related

psychological studies, like the
small-world
experiment
that

spawned “six degrees of separa-
tion.” Even these brief interludes
though are barely connected to
any overarching plot or purpose.
The film is worth watching for
its profound depictions of Mil-
gram’s experiments, but as a
biopic about Milgram himself, it
barely leaves an impression.

‘Experimenter’ can’t
decide on genre, style

MAGNOLIA PICTURES

“Prepare to be shocked by my science thing.”

C+

Experimenter

Magnolia Pictures

State Theater

“Truth” accomplishes what it
does because of their acting
finesse, as Blanchett’s every
movement and facial expression
is perfect for her role. Redford,
at 79 years old, is still a force to
be reckoned with onscreen, as
he sincerely portrays Rathers’s
nuanced character.

Ironically, the screenplay

— based on Mapes’s memoir
detailing the events leading up
to her end in TV journalism
in 2004 — has been charged
with not telling the whole
truth. The network for “60
Minutes,” CBS, refuses to run
ads for the show, and “Truth”

has received criticism for its
conspiracy theories about the
media’s influence on the Bush
administration’s public policy.
“Truth” seems to want to
answer the questions America
still has, but when we walk out
of the theater, we’re still left in
the dark.

C

Truth

Sony Pictures
Classics

Michigan Theater,

Rave & Quality 16

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

More fun than Hillary.

Vanderbilt uses
a strange angle.

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