This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Keeping Up With the Joneses
Plot Overview
Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe) had
“some college” during which he daydreamed about
the good life but didn't get any lucky breaks. He now lives with
his father-in-law in the old coot's tiny residence squeezed into
the crowded South Hills of Pittsburgh. His wife Cindy
(Elizabeth Ruscio) waitresses, and Arnold mans a small potatoes
security booth at a park where he continues to daydream about
success. He snoops on his former boss Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford)
who'd provoked him to envy at their annual company picnic.
Wayne went to Penn State on a
scholarship, then started a successful car rental company and
moved on from there to manage a consulting firm. He's got a
palatial house in a high end neighborhood and is nearing
retirement, he and his wife having raised two children. His
pampered wife Eileen (Dame Helen Mirren) floats in the pool, does
some shopping, oversees the help, and entertains guests.
The movie bifurcates in the
driveway where Wayne leaves for work and doesn't return
leaving Eileen to call the police and then involve the FBI. Arnold
snatches Wayne in the driveway and marches him up a
woodland trail leading to some distant hunting cabin where
they're supposed to meet Arnold's accomplices. The FBI believes it's
the work of a gang but we never see the others. It's a long walk
for the pair and a long wait for the family.
Ideology
The FBI is unable to
find anyone with a grudge against Wayne, but they do discover
he had an affair with a woman from work. His wife when she found
out “just told him to get rid of her, and we got on with our
life.” They were all adults. But Wayne's phone records
indicate he still kept in contact after that. This can be written
off as: (Prov. 13:8) “The
ransom of a man's life are his riches: but the poor heareth not
rebuke.” It's Wayne's wealth that made him such a target, the
woman Louise Miller (Wendy Crewson) was too poor to stop it
(“When I left the company, he helped me with this place. And
then he just started coming around … to see how I was.”)
Nobody would bother to sue the peon for alienation of affections.
The couple has a golden retriever they call
“Hound.” It'll play fetch-the-ball, but Wayne is unable to lure
it into the swimming pool to retrieve it (“That's cruel.”)
To use a mot juste we'd
say its range was temperate: the house, the lawn, and the deck, but
stopping short of the water. If Hound could overcome his natural
aversion to the wet stuff and go in, we'd call that an exercise in canine
self-control. Or to take a human example from author Thomas Berger:
“The weather was temperate and in washing the car Keese had already
got himself damp enough” (172).
FBI Agent Ray Fuller (Matt Craven) tells the family, “Most kidnappings in this country are small in scale, usually over disagreements about drugs. They usually work themselves out. Somebody pays the bill and on they go.” That is likewise an exercise in temperance, knowing where to draw the line. The Bible often enjoins temperance as in, (2Pet. 1:5-6) “Add to knowledge temperance,” meaning to smartly avoid excesses.
Historically in the days leading up to Prohibition, the word temperance was most often applied to alcohol consumption, so now that's its primary association. The Hayes family were not practitioners of such temperance, however. Wayne woke up with a hangover, their guest wanted a good scotch, the family had wine at the table, and the little woman was tipsy at times. Agent Fuller, on the other hand, practiced temperance on the job (“Pepsi for breakfast.”)
Although less common, the term can be applied to other areas as well. Wayne had quit smoking but accepted a cigarette from Arnold under the stressful circumstance. He was smoking temperately.
When the reliable King James Version
came to be updated with the Revised Standard Version, Prohibition
had already left its mark on society, and temperance had
in many people's minds come to refer exclusively to alcohol, so the
translators changed it to self-control figuring
people would get the idea to cut down on smoking too or
whatever. Unfortunately, self-control can be applied to
overcoming any natural propensity, good or evil, in this movie
Arnold overcoming his innate reluctance to be a nasty
kidnapper. Other Bible versions since then, in competition to
make themselves easy to understand, followed suit.
Solomon provides a metaphor, (Eccl. 4:13-14) “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.” The native words of language infancy used in our King James Version (KJV) have become poor in currency due to reduced usage in common speech. Nevertheless, the wise KJV is still better than the foolish, intractable modern ones that place themselves beyond correction from pew or scholar, “For out of prison he cometh to reign,” that is there's some kind of sordid history behind this language “king,” which makes this movie insightful about what went into making our modern English Bibles from the RSV onwards.
Rather than the corrupt speech the king brings from his former prison days, we can see the same thing from a porno incident where two angels showed up to warn Lot that God was about to destroy the wicked city of Sodom where he was living. The Sodomites wanted to molest his visitors, but Lot gave them an alternative: (Gen. 19:8-11) “Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”
The compromise offer of the virgins is temperate, a solution of
moderation. The blinded men struggling to find the door to get
at the handsome angels is a determined exercise in self-control to
pursue their nasty ends.
Remember what happened in the Bible when
the apostle Paul was mobbed by the Jews in Jerusalem for preaching
the resurrection of the dead, which didn't set well with them. A
troop of soldiers rescued Paul and spirited him away to be
investigated by the governor Felix for that disturbance of the
pax Romana
(peace of Rome.) Felix found Paul had done nothing amiss, it was no
concern of his the particulars of Jewish beliefs. But rather than
set Paul free outright he kept him under house arrest.
(Acts 24:23-26) “And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to minister or come unto him. And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.”
It was intemperate of Felix to keep Paul under guard. Temperance was what Paul wanted. It was denied him through the iron willed self-control of the authority who had other ideas though he knew better.
Modernized, Protestant, English Bibles have been substituting self-control for temperance, which is a malapropism. It can mean the opposite of the other as it does above, depending on the circumstance. Paul didn't want Felix to be more self-controlled in his set course but to temper his sentence to time served. That, we gather, is one of the reasons he was preaching temperance. It's as Baldacci has put in a novel:
“Cops have zip. You were in jail at the time. The judge dismissed the case without prejudice, but they can't re-charge you unless they have some evidence tying you to the crime. Now, they may go out and get some. Find an accomplice who did the killings for you for some reason. They may even make something up.”“Can they do that?” asked Leopold in childlike wonder.
“Sure. They do it all the time. If they think you're a bad guy they'll do anything to nail you, get you off the streets. They're sworn to protect and defend. You can see that, right?” (158)
As George
P. Marsh put it in an 1859
postgraduate lecture on the English Bible of 1611,
(448–9):
the English Bible sustains, and always has sustained to the general English tongue, the position of a treatise upon a special knowledge requiring, like any branch of science, a special nomenclature and phraseology. The language of the law, for example, in both vocabulary and structure, differs widely from that of unprofessional life; the language of medicine, of metaphysics, of astronomy, of chemistry, of mechanical art, all these have their appropriate idioms, very diverse from the speech which is the common heritage of all. Why, then, should theology, the highest of knowledges, alone be required to file her tongue to the vulgar utterance, when every other human interest has its own appropriate expression, which no man thinks of conforming to a standard that, because it is too common, can hardly be other than unclean?
“Clearing” is rated R for brief strong language, but the only ones to use it are the Hayes family who themselves got it from the fathers' mill work environment. Similarly, Solomon's king who came out of prison to reign, he got his rough language from the prison environment. To someone steeped in the elegant KJV speech, ordinary language by comparison sounds substandard in sacred settings.
Production Values
“” (2004) was directed by Pieter Jan Brugge. It was written by Pieter Jan Brugge and Justin Haythe. It stars Robert Redford, Willem Dafoe and Helen Mirren: three greats who don't disappoint. The secondary parts are credible.
The camera goes back and forth between two independent timelines, but in a couple places they connect. Eileen hears distant thunder out her window, and the men on the trail take temporary shelter in a falling-down hunters blind. Eileen tries to phone her husband on his cell, and it doesn't go through when Arnold busts it up.
As mentioned above MPA rated it R for brief strong language. Wayne is shown in flashback adeptly ballroom dancing with his wife. His sense of balance and coordination may serve him well on the trail should he decide to give the kidnapper the slip. The opening camera work is excellent contrasting the digs of the two men. Runtime is 1 hour 35 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is not the typical thriller kidnap caper. Nothing much happens and there is little conversation and no razzle-dazzle. Wayne makes his peace with a distant God and the couple with each other.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good Date Movie. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Unless otherwise stated, scripture quotations were from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Baldacci, David. Memory Man. Copyright © 2015 by Columbus Rose, Ltd. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015. Print.
Berger, Thomas. Neighbors. Copyright © 1980 by Thomas Berger. New York: Delacorte Press. Print.
Marsh, George P. “Formation
of our English sacred dialect.”
Lectures on the English
Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
——available to
read or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.
bibles.n7nz.org