Is Paris Burning?-James Patterson’s “Private Paris” (2016)-A Book Review  

Book Review

By Book Critic Lane Lawrence

Private Paris, by James Patterson with Mark Sullivan, Little, Brown and Company, New York,  2016 

Legends Of The Fall-Julia Roberts and Brad Pitts’ The Mexican (2001)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Sam Lowell

The Mexican, starring Julia Roberts, Brad Pitts, James 2001

Sometimes I wonder what makes perfectly good, maybe better that good, actors take roles in films that seem well beneath their abilities and which assuredly will not have a spot in any future cinematic retrospective of their work. (Second and third-rate actors, bit players and walk-on obviously will take anything that comes their way in order to keep a bungalow roof over their heads and off the unemployment lines.) Maybe, and this is pure speculation they grab a script and on paper the thing looks juicy, looks like it will expand their acting resume. Maybe it is something in the back of their minds that careers in Hollywood can be very short even for the big names and you had better grab what you can grab whenever anything is offered. Or maybe it is just pure hubris. There have been less worthy motives than that in this wicked old world. Take the film under review, The Mexican, starring Julia Roberts and Brad Pitts. I have liked Ms. Roberts work ever since I first saw her in her breakthrough film when she played the young woman from the wrong side of the tracks in the quirky Mystic Pizza and the same with Brad Pitts ever since he played the headstrong son in Legends Of The Fall from which this piece takes its title. Brad and Julia have taken a cinematic fall from Eden in this one which mad me pose the above question.   

Here’s the skinny. Brad plays a goof small time hood, a small time hood who apparently came directly out of the cast of the gang that could not shoot straight. Somehow he got indebted, indebted big time to a mob after one of its members got blindsided by him which he was performing company duty by preparing to take a guy out of circulation in the trunk of his car. Not good.  Not good at all since that gangster did some serious time in stir for his mistake. So brad was to pay up by doing different illegal services for the gang. Goofed them up mainly. Given one last chance the mob boss asks him, no, insists that he go down to sunny Mexico (hence the title) and grab a guy and a valuable gun in his position. Piece of cake-right. Wrong. Since before he is through he gets into every possible mishap south of the border from having vehicles stolen to being shot at and held hostage. See the gun he is supposed to being back has its own legend, or rather series of legends depending on whose version you want to believe.

Of course the mob didn’t give a damn about legend or legends they just wanted to sell the thing and get rich despite their leader’s desire to return it to a relative of a guy, a hombre, he met in stir. To insure that Brad deliveries the goods they sent one of their boys, one of their hit men, a gay hit man as the film makes painfully clear, played by James to insure Brad’s good faith. That hit man’s job-keep tabs on Brad’s off-the-wall girlfriend. That is where Julia Roberts enters the crime scene. She is to be held hostage to insure delivery. But see Julia is full of New Age ideas about her relationship or lack of relationship with the errant Brad.  So we are treated to an overwrought mostly hare-brained wild woman who berates Brad at every chance for not being a New Age guy. Ho hum. Ho hum is the ending as well since all’s well that ends well as both that antique legendary gun and the hapless couple’s relationship are restore at the end. Yeah Brad and Julia fell a long way from cinematic Eden in this one. No question