It’s not that Jai Courtney is a bad actor, but his latest film, “Semper Fi,” just shows how many times he hasn’t been able to tap into what makes him such an engaging on-screen presence. Excluding his delightfully-scrappy turn as Captain Boomerang in “Suicide Squad” (your mileage may vary on the rest of that one), Courtney really hasn’t had an opportunity to really prove his worth with only a handful of franchise nonstarters and supporting turns to build on.
His steely persona and ability to crack wise makes you wonder if he’s another one of those prototype leading men that filter in and out of whatever fourth or fifth sequel is coming out of the Hollywood machine, but throughout his career, there have been glimmers of something more going on in there hinting at untapped potential.
The new film “Semper Fi” is a perfect vehicle for him to get into something different, a role with some real meat on its bones. Here, he’s quite effective in playing Callahan (or “Cal” for short), a straight-laced police officer and reserve Marine who finds his half-brother Oyster (Nat Wolff), a live wire with a rap sheet and a prowess for cooking, ensnared in a bad conviction after a bar fight leaves the person who confronted him dead.
It’s a story that we all know will probably culminate in some sort of breakout attempt, with Cal and his dutiful military buddies (Finn Wittrock, Arturo Castro, Beau Knapp) all equipped to perform such an act, and the film’s pacing portends to something inevitable. But it takes its time to get there, a surprising amount of build-up and tension for Cal to come to the conclusion his brother’s tough sentence cannot be solved by any other means.
“Semper Fi” is a patient movie, and though some might find its resolution and decision to wait a while to arrive there all at once a little unreasonable and unorthodox, the approach carries some considerable weight. “Murderball” director Henry-Alex Rubin tells a matter-of-fact story with lived-in characters and room for genuine emotion. Whatever direction was give to the actors worked pretty well: all of them subvert the military archetypes that typically sink films of this brand and flesh out real people we can at least somewhat relate with.
The film takes place in 2005, and the conflicts in the Middle East rage on in the background. Cal’s crew heads over to serve right after Oyster’s sentence, and while there, Wittrock’s character loses a leg in an explosion and a shell-shocked Cal recklessly shoots and kills a civilian in a heated confrontation. It fractures both men in different ways, with obvious literal and metaphorical commentary for how these wars left those who served overseas.
Is it a bit uneven to try and fit this subplot into a movie that mainly succeeds with being a touching brother-to-brother drama? Sure, but life isn’t always nearly as clean as we’d like for it to be, and Rubin and co-writer/Army veteran Sean Mullin seems to want to tell both stories the best they can to enrich the characters. It doesn’t always work as well as planned, but the war story compliments the main plot better than you might expect.
The drama with Courtney and Wolff cuts hard. Both actors dance around some obvious tropes with care and consideration, with Courtney carrying the weight of being the one who had to arrest his brother before his sentence with what he did while serving overseas and Wolff, quite excellent in small doses, rectifying his anger for his brother’s supposed betrayal with his disbelief on where he’s landed
Courtney almost looks like a lost puppy at times, confused and out of sorts like he’s had his heart broken, and it’s the finest acting he’s turned out so far. Portraying downright defeatism takes skill, and we get that from him, outside of the determined nobility the performance has in busting his brother out of jail. It’d be great to see more of this side of him down the road.
The film refocuses just a bit at times into Wittrock’s life as a paraplegic to nice effect, with that actor’s stereotypical approach to the “annoying bro at the party” fading into something much more meaningful as he adjusts to life on the other side and tries to pay back Cal for saving his life after the explosion. It’s such a different approach for this film to basically hammer in an ancillary commentary on the veteran’s struggle when he returns from war on a prison breakout drama, but, again, it works better than you might think.
For the most part, “Semper Fi” is a fine return to filmmaking for Rubin, the Oscar nominee who is only on his second narrative feature and hasn’t been in the movies since 2012. He gives actors like Courtney, Wolff, and Wittrock ample space to show off their talents, and tells a simple-yet-complex story about the weight of familial responsibilities and the somber post-war journey for veterans.
Rubin embodies some of what latter-day Clint Eastwood does in his more quietly-observed work: a gentle score plays over romantic vistas of small-town America and stern men who must confront what haunts them on the inside and out. Rubin’s latest is a dignified film, a bit erstwhile in its approach but always impressionable in its open-hearted emotions. [B]