Even beforeDoug Limanstarted directing spy movies, duplicity was always his preferred game. The entirety of his breakout filmSwingerspivots onJon Favreau’s character’s ability to pretend to be something he is not to get laid following a particularly disastrous break-up. His riotous, undervalued second feature,Go, hopped and skipped between different characters that end up at the same stupid rave, and much of the narrative hurdles that they clear to arrive there involve lies and keen, acute performance to hide their true intentions and past actions. Indeed, an early exchange inGohasSarah Polley’s Ronna facing off with a bitter, poverty stricken mother who tells her “don’t think you’re something you’re not.” Everyone hides who they are on a somewhat regular basis, perhaps especially those who swear to be incapable of lying. Liman has become something of a master at mapping the constant collisions of the untamable, unpredictable inner self and the practiced, honed veneer of personality and the emotional aftermath of these collisions.
In his best movies, this leads to a ruminative, if often limited study of identity. The entire crux ofThe Bourne Identityis a search from an erased persona, an attempt to become more than his minute-to-minute actions as a skilled spy with amnesia. In almost any other movie, the idea of propping your story up through amnesia would be an absurd, risible narrative course, but Liman, aided byMatt Damon, make the absence of self feel paramount in the film and its spectacular action sequences. In the exuberantEdge of Tomorrow, character and identity are sliced away at through unending combat and hard work without confronting the things that make us human, most notably a finite death.
At his worst, such as withJumper, the emotional core of his characters come off as flimsy, cheaply sold, and gruelingly familiar in every nuance of delivery and dialogue. Liman, nevertheless, has proven surprisingly adept at moving from major features for big studios to smaller, more political fair likeThe WallandFair Game. And though neither of those films are nearly as audacious and unbridled as their stories deserve, it shows growing ambition in the director who will be in charge ofJustice League Darkand at least three of the most anticipatedTom Cruisevehicles on deck.
With Liman’s latest film,The Wall, about to arrive in theaters, I re-watched and ranked Liman’s movies, which have a surprisingly consistent tendency to be both wildly entertaining and compellingly thoughtful.I should note thatGetting In, Liman’s first film, which IMDB lists as a video-only release, is genuinely tough to see these days and after a lengthy search, I wasn’t able to find a decent copy on home video to screen for this piece. If that changes, we will update this ranking ASAP.
9) ‘Jumper’
The idea seemed simple enough: a class of teleporters, led by young Anakin himselfHayden Christensen, must save the world from evil forces. It’s essentiallyX-Menwithout the variety. And yet the film’s writers clearly saw no need to have more than sufficient fun with such a simple set-up, relying on an unwise romantic subplot and a villain (Samuel L. Jackson) that isn’t even remotely compelling and marked by little more than a general hatred for teleporters. Liman goes big on style here, and there are scenes – most of which involveJamie Bell- that hint at a far more entertaining film that could have been. The rigidity of the storytelling and the overwhelming self-seriousness of the good-vs-evil dynamic snuff even that little nib of promise out, however, and by the time the unearned sequel bait is dropped at the end, you want nothing more than to never see hear or think about this movie again. Thankfully, this is not difficult to do.
8) ‘Fair Game’
Though not nearly as skeptical and brutal asThe Wall, Liman’s other outwardly political film has more than a few notable elements within its annoyingly safe framework. This would begin with the two lead performances byNaomi WattsandSean Pennas Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, the married political powerhouses who became famous when Plame’s role in the CIA was uncovered in retribution for Wilson’s public discrediting of President Bush’s belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Niger. Liman’s mastery of pacing makes for an enjoyable, fleet-footed watch and he does well underlining the casual misogyny that allowed Plame to take the brunt of the blame and punishment for this fiasco. The sober filmmaking that Liman employs here is more respectable than substantial, and the script from Jez and John Butterworth, the same team behindJumper, is more interested in the spectacle of intrigue than bringing the ample fury over this outrageous situation to bear. In other words, it’s a movie you can enjoy without paying too much attention to, which does not befit such timely subject matter.
7) ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’
There’s an inherent fascination embedded in this action-comedy just in watchingAngelina JolieandBrad Pittplay off each other as married spies, now that we know what was happening on the other side of the camera. This remains a pretty crucial component to the film’s resilient entertainment value but some time and a divorce have given the film some distance enough to highlight its other notable attributes. The script shows an unfussy, confident understanding of the power that physical sex and desire holds in such work and how fantasies – such as spy movies - are rooted in sexual frustration and existential dread. This is not a particularly new move but Liman and his screenwriters bring these ideas into the foreground rather than leaning heavy on subtext. The action sequences, including a climactic megastore-set battle royale and the chaotic siege at Jane’s work, are exuberantly, skillfully staged and co-starVince Vaughnnearly steals every scene he’s in with his giddy, sardonic delivery. Would that the script had made more of the tangled psychosexual feelings at the heart of the story, or spent a bit more time detailing how John and Jane arrived in their jobs, but Liman’s ends here are clearly to make more of a clever entertainment than a new spy classic. In this, he has succeeded.
6) ‘Swingers’
In hindsight,Swingersis less a prime classic of the 1990s independent movement than a surprisingly resilient calling card.Jon Favreau’s script, with its stridently male-centric, intermittently intimate dialogue, would get him plenty other writing gigs, and his lead performance proved him to be a more-than-capable comedic performer.Vince Vaughn, for all the douchery that he represents here, steals every single scene he appears in with his irrepressible energy and love for the speed, sounds, and timing of language. And Liman, who shot the film as well, shows an almost instinctual sense of no-frills inventive framing and editing, creating a charmingly ramshackle and unpredictable visual palette to convey a world of twenty-somethings who aren’t quite sure if honesty is the best policy when it comes to conversing with and alluring the opposite sex. Some of the language and the overall tone of the film are more than a little dated, and the lack of a fully rounded female character who isn’t inherently connected romantically to a male lead really makes this all feel like the wittiest sausage party. What ascends out of all this dubious material is Liman’s talent as a distinct visual storyteller, one who wears his influences loosely on his sleeve but adds enough of himself to make an unmistakable impression that powered him toward a career as a skilled, imaginative helmer of big-studio entertainments.
5) ‘The Wall’
Considering this hasn’t even come out yet, I’ll make this brief and try not to reveal too much about this remarkably clever wartime two-hander, which gives bothJohn CenaandAaron Taylor-Johnsona couple of the best roles of their respective careers. They play soldiers who get stuck in an impossible situation while investigating an ambush near an Iraqi oil pipeline. after one of them is shot by an enemy combatant, they become trapped in a situation that seems to require a mortal sacrifice. In a way, this is Liman’s most ambitious narrative to date, even if the limited scope of the story also seems to uncharacteristically limit the range of his imagery.The Wallis aggravatingly lacking in style and imagination but what it does preternaturally understand is the gut-rotting, fatal decisions that must be made during wartime, under restraints of time and knowledge of the given area. It’s a rip-roar of a thriller with a deeply painful emotional undercurrent, but Liman and his screenwriter fail to directly confront our current state of war and the political world that informs and shapes these sort of conflicts. Were Liman to get more economical and confident in his compositions, and screenwriterDwain Worrelladded more personal detail in the dialogue,The Wallwould be crucial, skeletal vision of modern warfare. As it stands, it’s a thrilling, lacerating work of note for a director who is slowly embracing his political side.
4) American Made
Doug Limanknows how to properly use his stars. WithMr. & Mrs. Smith, he made what amounted to a madcap fantasy ofAngelina JolieandBrad Pitt’s then-budding relationship, and the actors clearly responded with gusto. The same could be said of his use of character actorsJohn CenaandAaron Taylor-Johnsonas two workaday soldiers inThe Wall. And as withEdge of Tomorrow, he makes great use ofTom CruiseinAmerican Made, where Cruise plays Barry Seal, a Cuban-cigar smuggler who begins doing spy work for the CIA in Latin America.
In reality, Seal was a low-level pot smuggler who evaded prosecution by becoming an informant for the DEA, a deal that led to him being assassinated by the Medellin Cartel, supposedly ordered by Pablo Escobar himself. Liman and screenwriterGary Spinelliavoid the darker implications of Seal’s work for the most part. There’s no palpable fury toward Seal’s capricious attitude, no insight into how badly his work with the U.S. government crippled untold amounts of communities and its long-term effects on these regions. It’s unfortunate and robs the film of depth but that’s not what the film’s creators are after.
What Liman, Spinelli, and Cruise are after is the outlaw spirit of America, and in that alone,American Madeis something of a success. As an entertainment, lined with excellent supporting turns fromDomnhall Gleeson,Sarah Wright,Lola Kirke, andJesse Plemons, the movie is an efficient engine, paced beautifully and handsomely shot for the most part. In taking on such dark, immense, and inherently political material, however,American Madedoes sport an unmistakable emptiness and self-satisfied cynicism that makes even its not-infrequent high points hard to swallow.
3) ‘The Bourne Identity’
It’s easy to forgetThe Bourne IdentityandDoug Liman’s role in building up the minimalist character and paranoid, action-packed world of the Bourne universe.Paul Greengrasstook over directing duties with the second film –The Bourne Supremacy- and from there on out, the franchise was uniquely marked by Greengrass’s in-the-moment aesthetic, even whenTony Gilroytook over for the undervaluedThe Bourne Legacy. And yet Liman’s is the movie where Jason Bourne’s (Matt Damon) state of confusion comes through with full force. This is the only movie where the super-spy is portrayed as vulnerable and at the unswaying mercy of those who have turned him into a government-trained killer. Greengrass’s style lent urgency and intensity to the fight scenes, a sense of intimacy with the central character, but Liman’s film gets at his emotional state with surprisingly clarity without forsaking the excitement of a daring escape or the disquiet of an unwanted yet necessary kill.
2) ‘Edge of Tomorrow’
This is the ideal Doug Liman movie. An inventive premise, based onHiroshi SakurazakaandYoshitoshi ABe’sAll You Need is Killmanga, given an ample yet never overwhelming sense of style, paced with a master’s sense of fluidity. That we also get to seeTom Cruisedie hundreds of times does not hurt these prospects. Cruise stars as Cage, a decorated soldier in the war against a wild alien horde with hyper-speed and ferociously violent tendencies, who finds himself waking up to the same battle every time he dies. His deaths come from both the aliens and Rita (Emily Blunt), a war hero who trains him in the ways of fighting the aliens and harnessing his abilities. Liman doesn’t dig too far into the reflective thematic elements for Cruise – a man who has largely made variations of the same action film over and over again - but he makes the most of the erratic, nonsensical-sounding world that screenwritersChristopher McQuarrieand Jez & John Butterworth have laid out for him. Under the direction of a less contemplative and creative filmmaker, the movie would have been a two-ton dud. Instead, it’s one of the most universally adored science fiction films of the decade.
Yes, there’s a case to be made thatGois just Liman’sPulp Fiction: a litany of like-minded, wittily written scenes surrounding a series of places and events in Los Angeles’ twenty-something drug-and-dance culture. And yet Liman clearly doesn’t delight in blood, pop culture, and violent crime the way that Tarantino does. In telling a sampling of tales surrounding a drug deal and a big rave-party with a glow-in-the-dark Santa Clause looking over all, headed by a cast that includesSarah Polley,Kate Hudson,Timothy Olyphant,William Fichtner,Jay Mohr, andDesmond Askew, what he consistently returns to is the importance of being able to think on your feet. Lives are saved, ordeals averted or met head-on, and relationships are kindled exclusively on the power of screenwriterJohn August’s characters’ ability to think up an idea or talk their way out of a bad situation. It’s relevancy to the art of making films quickly and on a budget shouldn’t be lost on anyone but it’s certainly not lost on Liman. His compositions here are surprisingly lithe yet thoughtful and master editorStephen Mirrione– he ofBirdmanandOcean’s Eleven– turns the mélange of stories into a delirious and delightful trip through the end of the drugged-out 90s. A little less than two decades later, it still plays as Liman’s most vital movie. I hope that’s not always the case.
