Finding 'Ohana

"Finding 'Ohana" begins with an exhilarating opening sequence as Pili (likeable newcomer Kea Peahu) races a bicycle through Brooklyn. She is geocaching, a GPS-guided treasure hunt that's like an escape room outdoors. "Sorry folks, it's a competition," she apologizes when she knocks people and objects aside in a narrow laundromat, without trying to hide the triumph in her voice. We get a view that puts us on her handlebars, with lively, kinetic editing that makes us feel like we are in the race.

It is not just Pili's riding that's fast. She outsmarts the other participants with tenacity, excellent puzzle-solving, and the ability to communicate with her teammate in Spanish so no one else can hear her solution. She wins! It's a triumphant moment. And the prize is a trip to geocaching camp, so she can work on her skills even more. "This is going to be the best summer EVER!"

But she does not get to go to camp after all. In the next scene, Pili is in a setting so far from the streets of Brooklyn it might be the other side of the world. In fact, it is the other side of the world, rural O'ahu. Pili's perpetually worried, double smoking-cessation patches-on-the-arm mother Leilani (Kelly Hu) has brought Pili and her grumpy teenage brother Ioane (Alex Aiono) back to her childhood home. The children's grandfather (Branscombe Richmond) has had a heart attack and he needs help. Problem number one: He needs even more help than they thought. Problem number two: He doesn't want any help.

Problem number three: E and Pili are not happy to be there. There's not even any wi-fi and almost no cell signal. They miss Brooklyn and do not feel connected to Hawai'i or each other. Ioane insists on being called E because his Hawai'ian name is too difficult and confusing for the people he knows. And then Pili finds an old notebook with clues to a treasure left behind by pirates who betrayed the rest of the crew to steal all of the gold and jewels for themselves.

The people who made this movie are clearly big fans of Indiana Jones and "The Goonies," and parents in the audience will appreciate some references. Indeed, one member of this film's cast appeared in both movies: Ke Huy Quan, Short Round in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and Data in "The Goonies," plays Leilani's sympathetic old friend.

Pili and E will soon go on an adventure in search of treasure, and they will certainly find something even more valuable. If you don't already know where this is going, here's a hint: "''Ohana" means family. But this movie is not just about finding a way to connect Pili with her brother, mother, and grandfather. This film is also about connection to our larger families, with respectful and ultimately moving themes concerning cultural identity and traditions.

Most of all it is enormous fun, with an entertaining mix of adventure, comedy, heartwarming family moments, and even a little (teen) romance, all to an excellent score by Joseph Trapanese. There are also some energetic and cleverly chosen pop songs on the soundtrack, to keep things from getting too tense, including "Pump It" by the Black Eyed Peas (based on themes from Dick Dale's "Misirlou"). The scenery is gorgeous and the stunts are well staged. The young cast is excellent, including Lindsay Watson as a sweet-voiced islander strongly connected to native traditions, but happy to sing along with Meghan Trainor, and Owen Vaccaro ("The House With a Clock in Its Walls") as Casper, a happily weird kid along for the ride. His commentary on "Lost" as they roam around one of its shooting locations is a hoot.

A recurring series of flashbacks hilariously re-create the pirate story as Chris Parnell, Marc Evan Jackson, and Ricky Garcia act out the scenes narrated by Pili and Casper. The clues in the notebook take Pili, E, Hanna, and Casper to exactly the cave kids imagine when they think of pirate treasure, with delightfully treacherous and scary obstacles like skeletons, spiders (some harmless, some not), puzzles, and contraptions. The various challenges give each member of the search party a chance to lead, and each gets to help and to be helped by others. But the movie's final challenge is one they must all take together as they decide not what can be done but what is right. A twist that brings together native myths and modern challenges is at first surprising and then surprisingly satisfying. We leave the film feeling like we've found some 'Ohana ourselves.

Born a Champion

In a 2019 interview for a mixed martial arts (MMA, that is) website, Edson Barboza, a real-life MMA star who plays a key role in this motion picture, said “MMA fans will really enjoy it.” This assessment is so sufficiently to-the-point that I’m almost tempted to reproduce it hundreds of times, “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy” style, and submit it as my review. But my editor don’t play that.

So let us consider “Born a Champion” from the perspective of a non-MMA-fan. It so happens I am this thing. I don’t have anything against the sport (I don’t? Well, I mean, if I gave it any thought I actually might, but never mind), but it’s just not my bag.

It is, apparently, the bag of actor Sean Patrick Flanery, who wrote the movie and stars in it and is a black belt in jiu-jitsu, which is the fighting method depicted and practically proselytized for in the movie. Whether I should call this movie a “passion project” or a “vanity project” is something I’ve thought about, and since it appears from the evidence of the fight scenes in this film that Mr.

Flanery could render me unconscious within half a minute of being introduced to me, “passion project” is the way to go. Directed by Alex Ranarivelo (who co-wrote with Flanery), a bit of a veteran in sports films, “Born a Champion” takes a pseudo-documentary tack from the very beginning. In a window boxed frame, tattooed Rosco (Maurice Compte) speaks of his first meeting with Desert Storm vet Mickey Kelley (Flanery). It was in a parking lot, and some toughs were giving Rosco a hard time, and in a racist way, too. Mickey took three of them out, Rosco recalls in awe, “without throwing a punch.” And then the two became such great friends that Rosco let Mickey nickname him “Taco.”

Mickey’s non-punching method derives from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which has a specialty move that lets you, well, render your opponent unconscious within half a minute of being introduced to them, if that’s what you’re into. Seems to work every time, too. Mickey is soon seen flying to Dubai, teaching some sheikh’s kids, and rescuing an American woman from the clutches of an industrialist who wants to turn her into a prostitute. The woman, Layla (Katrina Bowden) is swept off her feet and follows him back to L.A. (San Pedro to be exact) even though she lives in North Carolina.

Narrator Rosco/Taco then informs us “Those two were f**ing …” Now if you guessed that the next two words would be “like rabbits,” then shame on you, you dirty dirty person. No. The line is “Those two were f**ing inseparable after that.” And soon they’re parents, too, and very good ones. I bring this up only because it’s kind of curious that Flanery and company maintained the language at a level that was sure to get it an “R” rating, because in almost every other respect this is a very wholesome story. It’s not entirely “Rocky”-esque but it is pretty faith-and-family in its stresses.

But it is, also, very martial arts-detail oriented. The story takes the aging Kelly to a pro MMA tourney, hovered over by Dennis Quaid’s Mason, a manager trying to legitimize the sport. Kelley’s relatively advanced age solicits skepticism, but he acquits himself beautifully until Barboza’s character steps in the ring. And beats Kelley in a bout that ends up leaving him with a detached retina and other vision-related complaints. “He would never be medically cleared to fight again,” Rosco tells us.

So how does Kelley end up in a rematch with Blaine five years later? And how is it discovered that Blaine cheated in the first bout, with the evidence going viral on the early internet? Flanery and Ranarivelo lay the groundwork for all the plot turns pretty well, but of course the destination is predictable. And actually, Rosco tells the audience the outcome of said rematch in the first ten minutes of the movie.

That “Born a Champion” is able to maintain suspense despite that is a testimony to craft, to be sure. It’s impressive enough to earn the admiration of a lay person such as myself. But those who are not just disinterested but out-and-out uninterested when it comes to jiu-jitsu moves and their analysis should be aware that watching Ranarivelo's film will give you more of that than you may need.

Brothers by Blood

“Brothers by Blood” is a waiting game in which both the audience and the movie lose. For all of its posturing—its grimacing tough guys, their many leather coats, and the gruesome real-life mob corpses in the opening credits—the film struggles to builds a sense of danger that makes the slow burn worth it. Even the movie's main conflict, of whether or not to kill your hot-headed gangster cousin, lands with a shrug of an ending. The lives of two cousins may be at stake in “Brothers by Blood,” but only on paper.

This the kind of brooding crime drama that lives or dies based on a tough guy's silence, and here it become a dead weight. In this case, such quiet moments belong to Matthias Schoenaerts, a usually fascinating mug and bulky body in nearly anything (including “The Drop,” which this movie dearly wishes it could be). The aforementioned cousin murder quandary falls on his shoulders as he wrestles with what to do about Michael (an irascible but mumbly Joel Kinnaman), who he grew up with like a brother, and has watched slowly turn into a destructive, petulant heavy. There's an ongoing battle between the Irish and the Italian gangs in the city, and Michael's desire to finally end it on behalf of the Italians, with some extreme power plays, is going to do more harm than good.

Schoenaerts’ Peter spends a good deal of “Brothers by Blood” thinking about what he should do, or so we project. There’s not a lot going on in this script by writer/director Jérémie Guez (adapted from the 1991 novel Brotherly Love by Pete Dexter), which sorely feels like it's had atmosphere and character development ripped away from it, so we have to assume that there’s a lot going on behind Schoenaerts’ weary gazes. In some shots, he appears tortured. In many others, you’re more inclined to think that he’s just chilly.

The brash masculinity of this story—which is meant to be its main selling point—turns into gibberish, especially with the muffled conversations from Kinnaman and the script’s tediously vague sense of what violent business these cousins are in. When Michael says between his constantly gritted teeth an aside about "taking over the business," it’s confusing. (It’s not a good sign when a gangster movie has you thinking, “Take what, exactly?”) “Power” is the easy answer, "turf" a little more so, but there's still no sense of what's really at stake. At the beginning it’s the notion that Michael and Peter can get bribing customers decoy "jobs" as roofers, but that’s hardly an interesting scandal. The film stubbornly refuses to really elaborate on this, instead making it a story of Peter slowly accepting what he must do, all while getting whacked seems like the circle of life.

Part of this movie’s interest in toughness involves a cycle of violence, which is represented with flashbacks that involve young Peter (Nicholas Crovetti) witnessing the traumatic dissolution of his family. Each time we check back in with Peter, treading softly through his childhood home, the boy is closer to his final form as A Disturbed Man: first it's the tragic death of his sister, then the mental illness of his mother, and later the fate of his gangster father (Ryan Phillippe), who tries to guide his son in the ways of smart strength. Phillippe is in the film for maybe ten minutes tops, and yet he gets both the best line in the movie and its solely memorable moment. When speaking to young Peter, he offers legitimately meaningful and poetic advice: “It’s one thing to put your fist though drywall. It’s something else when you hit the studs.” If the rest of the movie didn't seem so obviously defective with the gangster movie blueprint, you might lament that it didn't have more of that poignancy.

Midway through the generic bravado of "Brothers by Blood," it hits the studs. Killings and beatings happen at such a clip that they don’t create any emotional momentum, especially when the film is little but Michael's reckless behavior as wannabe leader (which Kinnaman treats with dull restraint) followed up by Peter's delayed admonishment. All the while, its actors—a solid bunch who are often as good as their scripts—are stranded. Maika Monroe appears in a few scenes as Grace, the bartending sister to the slimy Jimmy (Paul Schneider), a restaurant owner who owes Michael money and is going to pay. But Monroe also gets little to work with, and the relief that the movie gives her a little more to do than pouring drinks is the type of kudos "Brothers by Blood" demands.

A superficial force eats at this movie from the inside, including the way that it’s a brawny script with nil visual grit, and a style that mostly announces itself with sporadic neo-noir lighting. Even Peter’s hobby of boxing is a shorthand to reference American masculinity (and recalls Schoenaerts, dukes up, in the Belgian film “Bullhead”) without having to dig into it. For eye-rolling context, Guez also introduces Michael as a Trump voter in 2016 (“He made billions, he can run this f**king country”), a detail that you can tell the filmmakers think is brilliant character development, but simply isn't.

You don’t need to know Philadelphia to be frustrated about how much the city is a non-factor in this film. First the story was called Brotherly Love when it was a book, and before this final title the movie was known as “The Sound of Philadelphia.” But there’s no sense of specificity aside from generic B-roll shots of the city, as the movie's main locations (of a boxing gym, a restaurant, an apartment) make this American microcosm as generic as possible. Rarely does a movie with a specific location and metaphor seem so lost. When one of this film's tough guys brushes off violent business with a “Hey, this is Philadelphia,” they might as well be talking about Phoenix.

Outside the Wire

It is the year 2036. (If this review had a soundtrack, it would play a Hans-Zimmer-inflected variant of a dramatic “dum-DUM” musical bit right now.) Eastern Europe is engulfed in civil war—the sort of civil war that enables filmmakers to keep the ideologies vague and the names sinister-sounding. (“No need to ask, he’s a”) drone operator Lieutenant Harp (Damson Idris) disobeys a direct order to take out a deadly truck. He saves about three dozen soldiers but two fighting men perish. There is bad feeling all around.

He’s sent back to training, but he’s really on a secret mission, working with one Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie). Like Harp, he’s Black, and like Harp, he cusses a bit. Unlike Harp, he’s a cyborg—“fourth generation biotech and I’m giving you 60 seconds to deal with it.” Leaving base, they witness some soldiers heaping abuse on a more obvious robot soldier—these dumb guys are called “Gumps,” get it?—and Leo looks on ruefully. Once back in Eastern Europe, and on the hunt for a madman named Victor Koval (what did I tell you about the names) who’s after some nuclear codes (plus ça change in semi-hacky war/espionage movies), Leo demonstrates some advantages of not being human. He operates with a kind of realpolitik—doesn’t act out of sentiment, stays focused on the immediate. Or so it seems. “I have the ability to break the rules,” he tells Hart. He likes Hart because of his drone decision by the way—says he needs someone who can “think outside the box.” Paradoxically, though, he tells Hart, “Maybe humans aren’t emotional enough, Lieutenant.”

Directed with a brisk not-quite chaos cinema style by Mikael Håfström from a script by Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe, the movie waits a good 50 minutes before showing Leo as a real fighting machine but doesn’t take it too far. Yeah, he can kick multiple asses with haste but he doesn’t run like a Robert Patrick model Terminator or anything. (Glenn Close in “Hillbilly Elegy” would be unimpressed.) As for cerebral endowments, despite being in Eastern Europe Leo doesn’t have to be as much of a super linguist as you’d expect from a robot because in THIS Eastern Europe all but a very few speak perfect English as a default.

The fact that the two characters are black is a red herring; race doesn’t really figure here even as a metaphor. Instead, the movie’s plot and the interaction of the two characters focuses on the robot’s true mission, and the conclusions to which his autonomous robot-thought has brought him. When Leo introduces Hart to an Irish “resistance” fighter, the Lieutenant begins to suspect that, while a product of American ingenuity, Leo might have intentions very contrary to American orders. And indeed, it turns out that Leo, like Hebrew National, is set on answering to a higher authority, one with which fans of “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” will be quite familiar.

And so we are treated to almost every cliché in the book, complete with dialogue like “Sometimes you gotta get dirty to see the real change” and “Humans could learn to do better” and a countdown readout in big red letters at the movie’s climax. The visual effects are decent, the cast is better than decent, and that’s all, folks.