“At Any Price”: Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid’s Corn Belt thriller

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Movies about so-called ordinary people in the American heartland, even when they’re pretty good, tend to be driven by a reflexive and almost guilty sentimentality. Even the hardened, cynical coastal types who make films don’t want to challenge the national myth that life in rural America possesses a realness absent in more metropolitan surroundings. There’s some genuine history behind that myth, in the sense that over the course of the 20th century the nation’s population and economy permanently shifted away from the agrarian republic imagined by the founders, but a great many of us have rural roots in the not-too-distant past. One of my grandfathers was an Irish immigrant, but the other was born in a prairie town I’ve never even visited, to a father who sold Case tractors.

One of the best things about Ramin Bahrani’s bracing farmland thriller “At Any Price” is its refusal to condescend to the Iowa farm family at its center by depicting them as nobler, more innocent and less sophisticated than other people. Many people who see this movie will be understandably focused on Zac Efron’s intense performance as Dean Whipple, the family’s handsome but embittered youngest son who yearns to be a stock-car driver. But for me the breakthrough in “At Any Price” comes from 59-year-old Dennis Quaid, cementing his character-actor renaissance with what may be the nastiest role of his career.

Are the networks finished?

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 13:30:00 +0000

The new period drama “Vegas,” CBS’ attempt to make one of those serious, morally complex, high-minded cable series that command awards and respect, is a tale of two heads. The first belongs to Dennis Quaid, the star of the show. He plays Ralph Lamb, a rugged and laconic rancher in 1960 Nevada, the sort of ultra-competent, no-nonsense guy who just wants to be left alone to tend his cattle and wear his white hat, but is constantly being called on to solve crimes and punch people in an infant Sin City instead. Through an expert alignment of haircut, hair gel and God-given ears, Lamb appears silly without his 10-gallon Stetson on, very turtle without his shell. Ralph’s a cowboy and he looks the part.

The second head belongs to Michael Chiklis, playing casino owner and mob boss Vincent Saviano. (See “The Godfather II,” “Casino” and myriad other Vegas-set Mafioso tales for the archetype.) Saviano wears a hat— black, of course— as was the custom of the day (in 1960, Kennedy was just making hats uncool) and it covers his completely shorn head, decidedly not a 1960s silhouette. Saviano’s a gangster, but he looks like one imported from the post-Michael Jordan age, not Eisenhower-era America. As these two heads suggest, “Vegas” is willing to go pretty far to commit to its setting and themes, but not all the way.

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“At Any Price”: Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid’s Corn Belt thriller

Are the networks finished?