Towering comebacks

FILM REVIEW

Tower Heist
DIRECTED BY: Brett Ratner
STARRING: Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick, Eddie Murphy, Alan Alda
CERT: 12A

Tower Heist is being flogged mainly as Eddie Murphy’s comeback movie. Which presumably means he has come back from that terrible dark place where they make immensely stupid films for children, the kind of films the children themselves are embarrassed to talk about, for fear they will be ostracised in play school.
On that account, Tower Heist is a victory, for Eddie and the kids at least. For everyone else, it’s a harmlessly amusing yarn, a pleasant enough way to pass the time on a cold evening.
The tower – a building Donald Trump might recognise – is a luxury apartment complex, where Manhattan’s wealthiest put their feet up at night. It’s managed by Josh Kovacs (Stiller), a perfectionist who runs a tight ship, always eager to please the building’s pampered tenants – not least the crooked financier who lives in the penthouse suite, Arthur Shaw (Alda).
Shaw has gotten himself in a spot of bother with the FBI over one of those creative financial schemes that banjaxed the world. Unfortunately for Josh and his fellow employees, the money that so magically disappeared includes their pension accounts. Sure you know how it is.
Hopping mad, Josh rounds up a crew – Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe – to break into Shaw’s apartment. He’s also recruited a streetwise loudmouth called Slide (Murphy), since it will probably help to have someone on the team who actually knows a thing or two about crime.
The plan is to loot Shaw’s safe but that’s before they acquire certain information about the man’s prized possession – a red 1953 Ferrari, supposedly once owned by Steve McQueen.
Tower Heist is not the most subtle of comedies – it was never going to be with Brett Ratner at the wheel, the man who gave the world the Rush Hour movies and X-Men 3 and whose mouth has been getting him in trouble again lately. And if you think about the plot at all, its foolishness might give you brain damage.
But there’s some decent writing in the script, a fair few laughs and some enjoyable performances. It’s not the best thing any of these people have done but it’s the best thing Eddie Murphy has done in many years and a rare chance for the great Alan Alda to show what he can do when given a chance.
Hard to believe it’s almost 40 years since M*A*S*H kicked off. It’s 25 since Matthew Broderick took another red Ferrari for a spin. After seeing Tower Heist, my sister said Ferris Bueller hasn’t aged well. But, well, as one of Bueller’s generation, I’m not going to comment on that.

Machine Gun Preacher
DIRECTED BY: Marc Forster
STARRING: Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Daisy Kathy Baker
CERT: 15A

If Eddie Murphy needed rescuing from kiddie film purgatory, Gerard Butler badly needed to be saved from chick flick hell. Machine Gun Preacher provides the blessed salvation, setting him free to do his manly thing again. He does a fine job, though the film itself is a strange beast.
Butler plays Sam Childers, a tough nut hellraiser from Pennsylvania, with a fondness for the demon substances and a tendency to be a miserable git to his family.
After a spell in prison, he comes home to find his wife (Monaghan) has become a Born Again Christian. Sam is having nothing to do with that, until a night on the town goes bad and a reluctant visit to church brings him to his knees, a changed man.
Later, a sermon by a visiting missionary convinces Sam he needs to go to Sudan to build an orphanage. While there, he inevitably gets caught up in the bloody misery orchestrated by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, who specialise in kidnapping children, making soldiers of the boys and sex slaves of the girls.
Well, as the title might suggest, Childers doesn’t put up with that, so he takes up arms and joins the fight alongside the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Not the kind of thing your average preacher gets up to but then, the average preacher isn’t driven mad by violent lunatics in Sudan. Whether his rage is righteous or not, is the bothersome question.
The film is based on a true story that’s a bit more messy than the screen version. The real Childers is a controversial figure even in Sudan, which is saying something.
The SPLA claim they don’t know him at all and want nothing to do with what they call his “narcissistic model of armed humanitarianism”. In the West, his Mad Max methods are naturally frowned upon, though he would probably claim he has an understanding comrade in Saint Peter, a man who was not averse to swinging a sword.
Director Marc Forster is clearly a friend, too and he does his best to win you over with his film. So does Butler, who gives it plenty of welly and Michelle Monaghan is very impressive as the wife who leads her man to the Lord, then ends up taking a back seat to the guns. 
Strange story and not as well told as it might have been.