Diesel's the lone survivor in dreadful 'Man Apart'

Friday, April 4, 2003

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

Vin Diesel's new action movie, "A Man Apart," should once and for all settle the question that has been bounding around the movie industry for the past year and more: Is this guy an authentic movie star or one more beefed-up, bald-headed fluke?

MOVIE REVIEW

A MAN APART

DIRECTOR: F. Gary Gray

CAST: Vin Diesel, Larentz Tate, Geno Silva

RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes

RATING: R for strong graphic violence, language, drug content and sexuality

WHERE: Bella Bottega, Cinema 17, East Valley, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Longston Place 14, Marysville 14, Meridian 16, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Parkway Plaza 12, Woodinville 12.

GRADE: D

Unlike "The Fast and the Furious" and even last summer's "XXX," this film is so numbingly routine that Diesel is the only drawing card.

It's the umpteenth rendition of that most overworked of all modern action-movie premises: the nice guy transformed into a killing machine and sent on an orgy of revenge when his perfect wife is brutally murdered by bad guys.

Here, that's Sean Vetter (Diesel), a veteran of the streets turned "Mod Squad"-like DEA undercover agent who loses his spouse in a midnight attack on his beachfront home -- apparently in retaliation for his capture of a Mexican drug lord.

With this handy excuse, Diesel spends the rest of the movie conspiring with rival gangsters, gunning down a succession of suspects, pounding people into hamburger and violating the human rights of seemingly half the population of Los Angeles.

Director F. Gary Gray ("The Negotiator") has weighed the movie down with sordid atmosphere and butt-slapping male bonding, and he's gotten a convincingly tortured performance from Diesel, who is a much better actor than most of his current action-hero competition.

But the script is pretentious and surprisingly static for large chunks of time. There's a huge subplot that makes absolutely no sense at all and, in the end, the only thing the movie has going for it is Diesel's Neanderthal charm.