Tron: Legacy: Grid-locked!

It’s been two decades since programming genius and former ENCOM CEO Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) fell off the grid and disappeared into the Grid, leaving behind a son so baffled and dim he never bothered to check the wall behind dad’s Tron arcade game for the secret passage leading to the electronic rabbit hole. Perhaps Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) preferred being a wealthy orphan, having inherited dad’s company without having to assume any of dad’s responsibilities. When asked what he thinks happened to his father, Sam, now 27, shrugs amiably and replies, “He’s either dead or chillin’ in Costa Rica. Probably both!”

When Sam does finally follow Kevin into the infinite geometrical plain of the Grid, he actually seems more at home there than in Vancouver, where Tron: Legacy was filmed. Having simply traded one world without sunlight for another, Sam’s immediately stripped of earthly clothing, covered in flatteringly body-hugging electro-goo, given an “identidisc”—a sleek LP-sized object which slips snugly into your backpack and records everything you do—and sent off to play killer Frisbee in the neon coliseum. Sam proves a natural gladiator, literally shattering his opponents in quick succession and breaking away to find Kevin, who’s been hiding in some pocket where Clu (also Jeff Bridges), his evil renegade avatar who now controls the Grid, can’t find him. Kevin, now bearded and gray, wears comfy looking karate gear and sits barefoot and cross-legged, still pondering the possibility of “a digital frontier that will reshape the human condition” and “a system where all information is free and open… Beautiful.”

If we don’t count his appearances in a brief flashback and as Clu, whose face is digitally air-brushed to make Bridges look 27 years younger and really, really creepy, Sam’s reunion with Kevin about marks Bridges’ proper star entrance, 30 minutes or so into Tron: Legacy and not a moment too soon. 20 years trapped in a video game and Bridges still seems like a human being, while Hedlund, whose performance involves a great deal of face squishing, feels like a figure out of a video game from the very start. Bridges’ approach is so loose, funky and tender as to be refreshingly antithetical to the one-dimensional performance style that dominates these sorts of effects-heavy 3-D fantasies. Despite being a fugitive in the now fascist state of the Grid, Bridges’ Kevin retains a youthful enthusiasm for his grandiose project, which might as well be an organic farm on Mars. “You’re messing with my Zen thing, man!” The Dude abides… in virtual reality!

(There is one other notable actor of considerable skill and subtlety in Tron: Legacy, but unfortunately Michael Sheen, whose work I generally enjoy very much, here in creamy platinum Ziggy Stardust mullet, is working very hard at something that just doesn’t seem to fit. He plays this Mad Hatter nightclub owner. His clientele is uniformly sedate, but he dances around shouting and playing air guitar with his dandyish cane. As I write this it occurs to me that Sheen’s incongruous mania probably sounds pretty funny. If it is, I missed the gag the first time around.)

To be honest, though Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis’ script is somehow simultaneously underwritten and confusing, if not completely nonsensical—How do flesh-and-bone people get sucked into the Grid? And how do they eat that sucking pig?— there’s a lot about Tron: Legacy that feels like a welcome alternative to your average contemporary science fiction blockbuster. Rather than assault the viewer with frames saturated with extraneous detail and Redbull-addled editing, Joseph Kosinksi’s directorial debut, with production design by Darren Gilford, ushers us into a disco-lit world of smooth plateaus and distant thunder that’s austere enough to allow the action to become more graphically dynamic. The outfits, motorbikes and ships employed by the bad guys emanate a warm orange glow that reminds me of the inside of my toaster oven, and Daft Punk’s pleasingly percolating synth washes enhance the film’s overall liquid vibe as Sam, Kevin, and Quorra, Kevin’s lovely, almond-eyed Girl Friday (Olivia Wilde), attempt to cross the Sea of Simulation. It’s both a chase movie and the cinematic equivalent of a warm bath.

Tron: Legacy ends however not in the Grid but back in our gungy material world. Kevin’s big epiphany during his years away was that perfection needs to be cultivated rather than designed or dictated: “Bio-digital jazz, man!” The final shot, which of course alludes to another Tron sequel, implies that it’s the world we actually live in that contains the real adventure.

Interview with the vampire: Frost/Nixon

Success in America is unlike success anywhere else, says David Frost. Failure, one assumes, achieves an equally singular stature. And so the terms are set for Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard’s movie of Peter Morgan’s play, which was indeed successful in America, and was inspired by something that took place there in 1977, when English talk show host Frost sat with former President Richard Nixon for nearly 30 hours of interviews that made broadcast history. Both sought to redeem failures, or slumps, in their careers. The event wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it did find an underdog unsettling a formidable orator sufficiently to yield something like an apology for abuses of power. The movie then is timely, coming precisely when millions crave to see another US President confess to not dissimilar sins.

For all his monstrous associations, Nixon is often flattered by Hollywood, and Frank Langella, with his handsomeness, sonorous voice and effortless charisma, is a delight to watch even if he misses those traces of sheer weirdness that perhaps no actor need do justice to since we have the real Nixon so heavily documented for posterity. I adore Langella, but I don’t think he quite escapes the confines of impersonation. His facial mask is impressive, but it tethers him to too limited an array of expressions. Michael Sheen, playing an easy-to-dismiss puff-meister has to work harder and thus gets us more involved as Frost, the film’s actual protagonist, and one rather aligned in his obstacles with Sheen’s Tony Blair in The Queen, also written by Morgan. It’s a part that probably won’t get the same accolades but which the story absolutely hinges on, especially when the movie’s authors manage the material in less than inspired ways.

Morgan’s written his own adaptation, and while you can’t blame the guy for wanting to “open up” the play, it’s hard not to notice that the immediacy and tension of the theatre is sorely missed. The action keeps getting diluted, and the supporting roles are at times left too exposed to scrutiny, like Rebecca Hall’s Caroline Cushing, who hangs around a lot but is the epitome of arm decoration for the male lead, a way of ensuring that we know he’s not gay.

Howard for his part does nothing to spoil the entertainment value of Frost/Nixon—he’s far too safe a director for that—but he doesn’t stir it up much either, despite a Hans Zimmer score that at times sounds better suited to a spy thriller or submarine movie. There’s a compelling statement near the end where investigative journalist James Reston, played by Sam Rockwell, talks about “the reductive power of the close-up.” Howard, in his typically workmanlike but dazzlingly unreflexive way, directs Frost/Nixon as though he hadn’t read this page in the script, offering us, well, a whole lot of close-ups. And boy, are they ever reductive. It doesn’t seem like Howard considered how a movie version might offer something vital that the play—not to mention the actual televised event, with its ample number of close-ups—could not. But he’s dutifully revived a genuinely interesting media landmark and let it play as a fun drama, and that’s reason enough to check it out.