Release Date: April 4, 2003
Starring: Vin Diesel, Larenz Tate, Steve Eastin, Timothy Olyphant, Jacqueline Obradors, Geno Silva, George Sharperson
Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Written by: Christian Gudegast, Paul Scheuring
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
MPAA Rating: R (strong graphic violence, language, drug content, sexuality)
Vin Diesel is in danger of becoming his own genre. If you’re a rising star, as Diesel was five years prior to A Man Apart, the last thing you want to do is become your own genre. Think of the other actors who became their own genres: Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to name a few. Even in their commercial success, none can be considered a paragon of cinematic stardom, and some (or even all) of them are now fighting to keep their careers afloat.
Then there’s Diesel, who has never looked more inclined to waste his unquestionably and refreshingly distinct screen persona. He is a rumbling, bristling, baritone hulk of an actor who is constantly letting on that he’s probably a lot more intelligent then you would guess, considering that he looks like he should be playing cornerback for a pro football team rather than starring in Hollywood action thrillers. But although he once showed a flair for movies that were different and intriguing -- Pitch Black and Boiler Room were two -- he has since begun to slide down the slippery slope of generic actioners like A Man Apart.
In this movie, he plays a DEA agent named Sean Vetter, who, in the movie’s opening sequence, is involved in a sting operation, along with his partner, Demetrius (Larenz Tate), to capture a Mexican drug lord named Memo Lucero (Geno Silva). The DEA gets its man, but soon afterwards, a new cartel, headed up by a mysterious leader named Diablo, moves in to take over Memo’s business. To make a statement, Diablo sends his men to kill Sean, but they end up shooting his wife Stacy (Jacqueline Obradors) instead. Sean snaps, and becomes reckless on the job, forcing his commanding officer, Frost (Steve Eastin), to take him off the case, but Sean won’t be stopped; beginning his own investigation, he gets a small crew of men together to seek revenge on Diablo.
No one will ever accuse Vin Diesel of playing terribly complex characters, but even by his standards, which include the particularly flat The Fast and the Furious, his DEA agent, Sean Vetter, is as undeveloped as they come. In fact, he’s not really a character at all, but rather a walking motivation: when his wife takes a bullet, Sean must get revenge. It’s a sort of ethical code, built into action movies, that saves the screenwriters -- in this case, Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring, working on their first major motion picture screenplay -- the time and effort of developing more substantial characters.
But that’s usually the case with most action heroes, which leaves it up to the star and the production crew to make it fresh. Though he may have potential as an actor, Diesel will never win an Oscar, so it’s a matter of appropriately tapping his talent, and director F. Gary Gray never really accomplishes that here. Diesel spends most of his time filling up the screen, uttering lines that are as monotonous as Diesel’s trademark cadence: “What would you do?” he asks his partner, trying to get his help for the revenge mission, and with all the gusto of someone just waking up from a nap.
Despite Diesel’s obvious marketability as an action star (his character here seems to be a little bit of a spin-off from his character in The Fast and the Furious -- he might be a narc, but he’s still a rebel with a cause), as a whole, A Man Apart isn’t very action-packed or exciting, either. There are two or three scenes that feature major shoot-outs, but no one will point to A Man Apart as an example of how to stage a gunfight, because any effectiveness Gray has in generating action is ruined by the wild, jerky cinematography and chaotic editing. With the camera flying over the action and the shots pieced together in haphazard order, it’s hard to get caught up in the mindless fun that is supposed to accompany a well-planned action thriller shoot-out.
But what makes A Man Apart, in some respects, an even more substantial failure than Diesel’s last full-fledged actioner, XXX, is that it obviously wants to carry its own weight, dramatically. Both the futility of the war on drugs (strangely brushed over in this film) and the death of a loved one (beaten to death here) are dramatically poignant elements, but they’re hardly of any caliber worth mentioning here. Rather, the movie is just a ghost of a more serious, more fulfilling action-drama. XXX, on the other hand, was a bread-and-butter actioner, albeit a poorly conceived one.
It’s likely, though, that those who see A Man Apart will be doing so based on their enjoyment of XXX -- and contrary to critics’ wishes, there were plenty who saw and enjoyed it. If that’s the case, then whether or not they get what they expect for, at they least they’ll pay for what they get.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)