For What it's Worth

Reviewed: ‘Deaf President Now!’ and ‘The Assessment’

‘Deaf President Now!’ (2025)

Davis Guggenheim has long aimed his lens on social issues and humans of interest, be it his Oscar-winning climate change contemplation “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), “He Named Me Malala” (2015) or “Waiting for Superman” (2010), which took on the failures of the education system. Here, with co-director Nyle DeMarco, the first Deaf contestant to win “Dancing with the Stars” and “America’s Next Top Model,” Guggenheim homes in on a small moment of American civil disobedience that, in context, reflects larger equity issues. The time is the big ’80s, the place, Gallaudet University, the only Deaf university in the world. Founded as a result of an executive order by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 (one we can all get behind), Gallaudet had never had a Deaf president; when it was announced that two of the three candidates to take on the role in 1988 were Deaf, there was much hope and excitement among students. The trustees, none of whom were Deaf or hearing impaired, picked the lone hearing candidate, Elisabeth Zinzer. The students immediately rejected Zinzer and locked down the campus. For the framing, Guggenheim and DeMarco find the four leaders of the protest – the reserved Tim, the passionately demonstrative Jerry, the quiet and demurring Greg and fiery Bridgetta – to reflect back. One of the most intriguing aspects of the protest is how the student negotiator to the trustees was selected: Jerry, who in flashbacks clearly has the innate ability to rouse a crowd, believed he should have been the one, but it was Greg, who, while reserved, was student body president. His showdown on “Nightline” with Zinzer, which nearly gets thrown by host-mediator Ted Koppel doing his Ted Koppel thing, is telling on many levels. The lockdown also had pundits and politicians such as Pat Buchanan and Barney Frank at odds and in an uproar. One of the most inflaming inflection points however, was the insistence by Zinzer and the head of the board, an out-of-touch matron with an impeccable bouffant by the name of Jane Bassett Spilman, that they were simply trying to “help” the students. As with Guggenheim’s other delves, “Deaf President Now!” is composed meticulously. There’s a virtuosic blending of interviews with archival footage and smart dramatizations that aptly employ sensory deprivation to put you in the moment. The Gallaudet uprising came two years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by the administration of Bush senior. The roots of that law is well framed in the small, little seen 2007 Ron Livingston film “Music Within,” which would make an ideal viewing companion with “Deaf President Now!”

Reviewed: ‘The Surfer’ and ‘Havoc’

‘The Surfer’ (2024)

Fans of Nicolas Cage behaving off-center in such curios as “Mandy” (2018), “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” (2022) or “Pig” (2021), should be all in on this hazing ritual turned grudge match. Cage stars as an unnamed family man (we’ll just call him Cage; the credits list him as “The Surfer”) who wants to take his teen son (Finn Little) surfing at a remote beach in Australia. Once on the golden sands of surfer paradise, the local hang-10 tribe – trim, hyper-fit, middle-aged men – tell Cage and his kid: No surf, not now, not ever. Cage quickly but sheepishly notes that it’s a public beach, to which the snappish beach bullies threaten a beatdown. “Before you can surf, you must suffer,” says the ringleader (a steely-eyed Julian McMahon). If Cage seems an odd fit to be randomly out in the wilds of Australia, since he doesn’t dial up an Australian accent for a second, the script has answers: Cage’s pa was born on a hillside house overlooking the beach; Cage has returned all these years later after being raised in California. Also, hey, this is a Nic Cage movie, and you can’t have Cage not being Cage. What ensues is Cage living out of his car in the parking lot above the beach (his son is back at some hotel with his mother), trying to suss out the right opportunity to sneak in a run. Adding complexity to the quest at hand, the surf bros have a rocking beach shack that they seemingly never leave and from which they regularly dispatch squads to harass Cage and trash his ride. Days pass, tensions rise and mean-boy pranks get nastier and nastier, as Cage’s classic Bimmer becomes a squalid rat’s nest of candy wrappers and fly-worthy grunge. It’s a grinding game of wills with the prospect of tripping into point-of-no-return territory, as well done in Down Under touchstones “Wake in Fright” (1971) and “Eden Lake” (2008). “The Surfer” is not quite that kind of psychological horror-thriller; it’s more a psychological dark comedy with ’70s B-movie bite, though with a redundant ebb and flow of conflict and retreat in which the stakes don’t rise. Sure, there are ripples that affect Cage’s character’s offscreen life (money, family, the father’s house, etc.), but it feels like filler, not consequence. Still, Lorcan Finnegan’s sunbaked homage and Cage’s winning persona carry the never-surrender clash in from the foamy breakers without a wipeout. It’s a safe, sure ride that never fully shoots the waves.

‘Havoc’ (2025)

Off the top, there’s a lot to like about this amped-up actioner. First, the cast is killer: Tom Hardy (“Inception,” “Dunkirk”), Oscar winner Forrest Whitaker, Timothy Olyphant of “Justified” and Luis Guzmán, whom we haven’t seen enough as of late. Secondly, the slick, style-infused crime thriller has aspirations of, of all things, Peckinpah and Woo, which should come as no surprise – it’s directed by Gareth Evans, the hyperactive eye behind the gonzo Indonesian cop beatdown “Raid” flicks. All that goodness gets lost in an arduous overkill of hyper action that explodes around Hardy’s dirty cop on a bloody path to redemption. The film, an opulent, rain-slicked, Gotham-esque spectacle, is set in an unnamed, ambiguous American city (Chicago gets my bid, though it was shot in the U.K.) where gangs, racial lines and revenge agendas stand out like blazing neon road signs in the jet-black night. In the mix, we have a Chinese triad, a corrupt business owner running for mayor (Whitaker), a massive shipment of smack, an inner sanctum of cops on the take who shoot first, and a bunch of hockey-masked gangbangers who have gotten in too deep. The resident triad boss gets offed because of the smack, and his hair-triggered mother (Yann Yann Yeo) comes stateside for a little payback. Hardy’s Walker gets caught in the never-ending crossfire trying to protect one of the gangbangers (Quelin Sepulveda) from the wrath of the triad and other bent cops (led by Olyphant) trying to cover their bloody tracks with more blood. It’s also Christmas, and Walker has an estranged 6-year-old daughter he wants to get a present to. It’s just more dressing for long, overproduced shootouts and smackdowns that go on far too long. Some of the choreography and camera work are more than impressive, but “Havoc” is style over substance, with a director continually shouting out “did you see what I did there?” Hardy’s inherent bristling grit, well used in “Fury Road” (2015), gets wasted here; most of what sparkles and pops are the dark sets, acute framings and a fresh-faced Jessie Mei Li as one of the department’s only clean cops.