Globalizacion and the human soul.

Mondays in the Sun Directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa "All that dignity!" a friend criticizes Carlos Santamaria, an obstinate, unemployed dockworker in Northern Spain. Other laid-off workers who pass time at a local bar with "Santa" (his affectionate nickname) stand in awe and frustration at his stubborn pride. As Javier Bardem plays this role (and that's with subtle magnificence), Santa is also a man of bottomless warmth. Much more than a proletarian icon, Bardem's Santa is familiarly, multifariously human. The irascible spark of his brown eyes, the sly smile within his dark beard gives great emotional richness to Mondays in the Sun.

Director Fernando Leon de Aranoa personalizes labor crisis in the era of the International Monetary Fund with a dry, almost mournful narrative like such recent landmarks as Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels and the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta. Those non-coercive, semi-documentary films imposed a nearly detached perspective on citizens adrift in the workplace, suggesting a politicized analysis. De Aranoa keeps politics in the background. After an opening montage of labor strikes, Mondays in the Sun concentrates on the way individual men react to their new social identity, their sudden redundancy. Struggling to rebound or to steady now-rocky marriages (and their sense of self-esteem) is what confers dignity.

Santa is so aggravated about a citation he received for throwing a rock that knocked out a street lamp during a demonstration, that he risks going to jail rather than pay the fine. That's the "dignity" a bar mate bemoans, and by pointing out Santa's arrogance, de Aranoa avoids sentimentalizing it. He doesn't need to because the solid way Bardem embodies' Santa's feelings provides something heftier than left-wing romanticism. Like last year's existential drama Time Out, Mondays in the Sun offers a post-Marxist view of labor crisis and fundamental human worth. De Aranoa's film studies the different temperaments of working-class men: Santa's the unattached bachelor; Jose (Luis Tosar) is an anxious husband whose wife Ana (Nieve de Medina) takes on a job that adds to his insecurity; middle-aged Lino (Jose Angel Egido) tries to compete against the next generation of skilled workers; the immigrant Sergei (Serge Riaboukine) still reels from the global crisis at his heels; and Amador (Celso Bugallo) confronts his illusions. De Aranoa orchestrates a chorus of anxieties-various voices of bewilderment and pain humming the same sorrowful tune. And yet as the movie reveals these men's resilience (or lack thereof), contrasting perseverance with pessimism, it gains increasing fascination. Not depressing, Mondays in the Sun becomes more deeply affecting in the affirmative.

This first-rate social observation results from de Aranoa's artful portrayal of what it means to be middle-aged in a changing and indifferent world. Perhaps that is what makes Bardem's performance so crucial; it preserves a link to the personal aspiration-the soulfulness-that jobless people fear losing. It's Santa's unruly humor, the sexual calm he sustains, that wins the argument for his human rights. A speech he makes at the bar, berating a colleague who thinks the men haven't tried hard enough, shows Santa's clear understanding of how international economics have turned against the welfare of individual citizens. But this explanation isn't grandstanding; de Aranoa keeps it plain. More subtle and convincing explanation comes when Santa approaches an attractive woman, Angela (Laura Dominguez) doing part-time work offering snack samples in a supermarket. Their mutuality goes beyond politics. It's both sensual and sympathetic. (Jean Gabin and Arletty's glamorous-prole tete-a-tete in Marcel Carne's 1930s Popular Front melodrama Daybreak was no more appealing than this.)

Mondays in the Sun works toward an improved sense of dignity. It should not be mistaken for a typical, doctrinaire tale about the exploited classes (like the overrated Lilya 4-Ever) because it is, essentially, about the drive people have inside. Santa's dalliance with the 15-year-old daughter of his bar-owner pal just misses impropriety to show the light shining within a disgruntled man. As he and young Nata (Aida Folch) sing karaoke together, the obvious suggestion of class optimism (as in the karaoke scene in Mike Leigh's All or Nothing) comes second to the characters' vividly illustrated spirit. De Aranoa knows the secret that made the great humanist filmmakers (from Luchino Visconti to Martin Ritt) distinguishable from propagandists. He gives Bardem the opportunity to authenticate Santa's humanity in his tough gut, heavy steps and his constant idle dream of how better life must be in Australia just because it's the other side of the world. Though ornery, Santa has reserves of compassion (note the caring way he flips a light-switch for a friend); that's the same virtue de Aranoa brings to Jose and Ana's broken marriage (they must overcome two very different senses of shame).

One of the signal instances of de Aranoa's achievement is Lino's job interview: Having darkened his hair, he wears his son's stylish, chest-striped sweater beneath a suit coat. As Lino sweats in the reception area and his dye-job drips down his collar, his own show of dignity intentionally recalls Visconti's Death in Venice-a breathtaking demonstration of de Aranoa's wide-ranging, artful compassion. Mondays in the Sun is the kind of movie I had in mind at film school and took a naive stab at making. Now I'm grateful for Bardem's chameleon smoothness and de Aranoa's craft; they've done something moving and important by recognizing how dignity supersedes pity.

Bad Boys II Directed by Michael Bay Buffalo Soldiers Directed by Gregor Jordan No one should have made Buffalo Soldiers or Bad Boys II, and only fools would want to see them. The cynicism of each film is overpoweringly odorous. Framed as entertainment (Buffalo Soldiers is that former Hollywood staple: the service comedy; Bad Boys II is that current Hollywood staple: the summer action sequel), these movies are actually masquerades of today's political apathy. They don't depict the world as corrupt so much as they cater to the corruption of moviegoers who have dispensed with moral and political thinking. These films are for anyone who wants to root for dishonest, self-centered heroes like Joaquin Pheonix's Army supply officer stationed at a U.S. Army camp in Germany and the Miami detectives played by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence (who re-do Miami Vice as if Mr. Policeman was every urban brother's friend).

Gregor Jordan may be the more egregious of the two directors, just because Buffalo Soldiers indeed offers political commentary that is sour, dishonest. Laughing at American military incompetence and criminality, it's an anti-recruiting poster suitable for the post-Iraq war, anti-American mood. Michael Bay, as everyone knows, is a director with no mind, just a tv-camera for eyes. That's why Bad Boys II is very much a police recruiting poster; there's no ethnic profiling, and Miami P.D. cops flash sportscars and a Prada wardrobe.

Pandering Jordan mixes in the fall of the Berlin Wall with a tank demolition driven by stoned G.I.s. Pandering Bay features a big highway chase scene with flying cars and boats modeled after Twister. Neither movie offers the political enlightenment found in David O. Russell's terrific Three Kings, which managed to touch on the issues of military and ethnic patriotism that Jordan and Bay trash. Buffalo Soldiers holds interest for the short while that the singular Anna Paquin delays Pheonix's venality (she plays the daughter of his nemesis), but eventually the bad-boy humor gets overwhelmed by Jordan's celebration of greed and nihilism. Bay does the same more spectacularly. Climax #67 in Bad Boys II has Smith and Lawrence dispatching a cadre of Haitian drug-dealers with detailed, grotesque, bloody casualness (i.e., racist disdain). Can't wait to hear what Wyclef Jean will say about that.