To commemorate the 2 (two) new Spielberg movies that came out recently I decided to finally get aorund to watching all the Spielberg movies I’ve never actually seen. This is gonna include a couple that you guys will be surprised by because everybody else in the world saw them a long time ago. But mostly it will be the “lesser” Spielbergs. Not JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or E.T.

I enjoyed finally seeing Spielberg’s sort-of-debut, as disappointing as it was that it turns out it’s not about a magical train that goes to a mythical world of candy. It’s a loosely-inspired-by-a-true-story kidnapping/road picture. Young Goldie Hawn, looking exactly like young Kate Hudson, comes to a pre-release facility to visit her husband Clovis (William Atherton, aka Dick Thornburg from DIE HARD 1-2) four months before he’s set to get out. He’s thrilled to see her but she’s frantic and crazy ’cause she just lost custody of their baby Langston. Using two classic crazy bitch techniques – the mock break-up and the sudden-passionate-public-sex-interrupted-by-threats – she eggs Clovis into sneaking out with her to go to Sugarland and try to get the baby from the foster parents.

Let me tell you, I’m pretty sure they didn’t name the baby after Langston Hughes. They’re not real smart, is what I’m getting at. Not only do they fuck themselves over by escaping so close to the end of his bid, they also misinterpret a traffic stop and needlessly take a police officer hostage, turning it into a huge deal. And then they still think the law might give them custody of their kid back, so they keep driving. The Captain in charge is wise and patient and wants to avoid bloodshed, so it turns into a long caravan of police cars and a few media vans.

Come to think of it, some cop made a decision like that to slowly follow O.J. Simpson in that white Bronco when he was threatening to kill himself. That guy never gets credit for that part of it turning out okay. And remember how some people decided O.J. was a hero for some reason and waited along the side of the road to cheer him on? Same thing here. As their story becomes known, people begin to line up along the streets to wave or hold up signs. In one town their car is crowded like returning heroes in a parade, people reach into the car giving them gifts, blessings, even kisses. Some sympathize with her as a mother, others are fans of their hostage, who seems to enjoy the support as much as they do.

The officer starts to develop some weird sort of friendship with them. Of course you could call it Stockholm Syndrome (or Helsinki Syndrome as it’s known in the land of Diehardia), but I don’t know. It seems to me like he genuinely feels sorry for her when he hears her dad over the radio calling her trash. Maybe he realizes that the problems in her life must stem at least a little bit from having an asshole dad that makes her feel worthless. Or maybe he just thinks geez, that’s harsh. Anyway he saves her from hearing it.

The captain is kind of the same way, but from a distance. When he sees her at the gas station pulling reams of gold stamps into the car he seems almost charmed by her goofiness. He realizes these are not evil people, they’re just young idiots. So he does his damndest to make this a funny story he can tell later instead of a horrible tragedy he’s gonna be haunted by forever.

There are some jokey moments here and there that seem just a millimeter or two over the line into Burt Reynolds movie territory, but for most of the running time I think this gets the tone just right. It’s a light-hearted surface with an underlying menace. They’re too stupid to see the brick wall they’re headed toward, and the movie reflects their point of view. It acts like hey, yeah, maybe they’ll get their kid back! They’re nice people, right? This oughta work out!

At first it seems kinda different from other Spielberg, he doesn’t usually do movies about lower class people. But as things escalate it looks more and more like his style: great, swooping camera moves, well put together action sequences, stunning magic hour lighting, authentic Texan supporting players. The towns they pass through feel as populated and layered as the one in JAWS (his next movie). There are some amazingly beautiful shots, like the one at the very end with actors in silhouette and sunlight shimmering on the water. Cinematographist Vilmos Zsigmond had already done MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER and shit, so this wasn’t exactly his big break. But he went on to do CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, THE DEER HUNTER, and, uh, SLIVER.

I gotta be honest, Goldie Hawn usually annoys the shit out of me. I couldn’t tell you why, it’s just one of those things. I’m sure I probly misjudge her – after all, she’s got the Kurt Russell seal of approval. But my point is that I think she’s really good in this particular one. It’s a complex character. She’s horrible but sympathetic. I kind of hate her and kind of feel sorry for her and kind of like her. So if you’ve got the same Goldie-aversion don’t let her scare you off of this one.

But Ray is mostly oblivious. He has alot to keep his mind off of so he concentrates on trying not to get bored. He gets out of the hotel, finds an independent film shoot, gets a date, gets some coke, makes fun of Ken for drinking “gay beer” (Stella Artois or something) but later orders one himself.

Ken isn’t as interested in partying, he wants to commune with history. He brings Ray to a medieval church and explains how there’s a thing that people have believed for hundreds of years contains the blood of Jesus and that you’re allowed to touch it. Ray opts not to touch it, but it doesn’t seem like it’s out of some religious objection or worry about his worthiness as a child-killer to touch a holy object. No, it just seems like he’s not interested. It’s like “Hey, you wanna go get a drink?” “Nah, I’m kinda tired, I think I’m gonna go to bed.” Or maybe “You want a piece of gum?” “Nah.”

And of course Ken is thinking they say it’s the fucking blood of Jesus. Why would you not want to touch it!? Just on the off chance? What a great way of showing a generation gap, or just a personality gap. I can relate to Ken thinking jesus, these young people today, they just don’t give a shit about anything. At least he does appreciate the Hieronymous Bosch painting “The Last Judgment,” which they go to see. This was filmed in the real Bruges so I’m assuming they really got to shoot the real painting. I don’t think Ray really cares that it’s more than 500 years old and by one of the greatest painters who ever lived, but just that it’s some crazy fucked up Hell stuff and he’s curious about that kind of thing, given his situation. It doesn’t matter. He looks at it and he appreciates it in a personal way.

The blood of Jesus, though! The Jesus. Not interested.

So Bruges is a place that can be amazing or boring depending on the visitor. It can be a beautiful vacation spot or it can be Hell. Or at least Purgatory. There’s some discussion about that.

They’re interesting characters because they’re all pretty much bad people, but all trying to do something out of a sense of honor. When Ken chooses his loyalty to one friend over another he doesn’t just tell the other guy to go fuck himself (which would be best for self-preservation purposes), he waits to see him face to face, explains his reasoning, accepts the consequences, even says he deserves it. In a way they’re trying to do the right thing, but they’re all at least a little bit dumb or mistaken and that makes it harder for things to turn out well.

In some ways IN BRUGES reminds me of Mr. Tarantino’s works – it’s this very character-driven, dialogue-heavy story about criminals, largely in their off-time, and acting like goofy normal people who sometimes talk about stupid things or get into silly arguments, sometimes have really cool clever things to say to each other. It’s a serious story but with a bunch of really big, usually dark laughs. It’s not an action movie, but occasionally erupts into violence in a way that is at times shocking in its bluntness. I mean, there’s a couple of real disgusting moments here. But it’s not what you come away thinking about, it’s just one minor ingredient in the recipe.

Also it has very solid, classical camerawork, very nice-looking but nothing hyperactive or show-offy to try to artificially elevate the energy of the thing. If I remember right the trailer might’ve made it seem like a Guy Ritchie type of deal. There is no Guy Ritchie in this movie. Nothing against Guy Ritchie, but he was actually locked up in a cage during the entire filming of this movie just to make sure he wouldn’t show up in Belgium, that he would never come in contact with anybody who worked on it, any prop that ended up on camera, etc. Some kind of British law, they were able to get away with that I guess. Seems like a violation of human rights, as a liberal I am against it but obviously I can understand why they felt it was necessary. (source: N/A)

Anyway it’s more Tarantino than Ritchie, but it’s very un-Tarantino in that it’s in this medieval town, pop culture rarely intrudes (I guess there’s some discussion of Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW), all the characters are European (except some American tourists, who are made fun of), it has lots of pretty stuff in it (old churches, swans, light reflecting off castles at night) and most importantly the music is a gentle, somber score, no upbeat vintage tunes to add swagger or ironically underscore bad things that are happening.

So it reminds me of things I like about Tarantino’s movies while not once reminding me of the various Tarantino knock-offs of the late ’90s. I don’t know if this writer/director Martin McDonagh (who was winning awards for his plays while Tarantino was becoming a phenomenon) was influenced much by Tarantino or not. It feels like they just independently came to similar conclusions about a good way to tell a story.

I just looked it up and his most recent play was A Behanding In Spokane starring Christopher Walken. When I first heard of that play the title sounded like a fictional parody play for a Walken cameo in some comedy, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s good. Between that and THE HIT LIST maybe Spokane, Washington is gonna take over as the state’s media capital.

I know alot of people already figured out a long time ago what a good actor Farrell is, but I’m really seeing it now between this and the remake of FRIGHT NIGHT and even that comedy HORRIBLE BOSSES (where he was one of the funnier parts but wasn’t in it enough). Here he has great comic timing, he’s believable as a dominant physical force in the scuffles that happen, but also has this sort of boyish innocence that makes you forgive him for saying horrible things or for, you know, being a murderer.

This is also a movie that takes place around Christmas. I like adding to my Christmas crime list. Every Christmas it’s good to watch some kind of a Scrooge or a Rudolph, and some Christmas horror and some Christmas crime. And also give money to the poor or whatever. Nice things.

If for some reason you put off seeing this one even longer than I did I highly recommend watching it now. You always knew you’d probly like it, and you were right.

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ELITE SQUAD 2 (as the subtitle on the title screen says) is the 2010 follow-up to the 2007 Brazilian police epic. Same director (Jose Padilha), still writing along with Braulio Mantovani (CITY OF GOD). Wagner Moura returns as Nascimento, head of B.O.P.E., the paramilitary police unit that fights the drug gangs in the favelas of Rio. This is supposed to be quite a few years later, because the baby that was born in part 1 is now a sullen teenager. Luckily they don’t make Moura wear old man makeup or anything, they just ask you to go with it.

In part 1, you remember, Nascimento had to choose his replacement so he could retire. In the opening narration of part 2 he says “I chose a good man to replace me so I could spend more time with my family. That didn’t work out.” And like that, he’s back on the force. It’s almost like an ALIEN 3 situation, it instantly dismisses everything he worked so hard for in the last installment. But the bluntness makes it funny. It’s not only retiring that didn’t work out, it’s also spending time with his family. He’s divorced and his wife has remarried.

And wouldn’t you know it, the new husband is one of Nascimento’s most hated people, a liberal professor and human rights activist named Fraga (Irandhir Santos). Nascimento sounds bitter and disgusted as he describes Fraga as a total scumbag in the narration, and scenes of a tense prison riot are intercut with Fraga in a lecture hall speaking about the prison population of Brazil and the plight of the underpriveleged. I’m waiting for him to be the weasel that Nascimento describes, or a cluelessly naive hippie or something, or a hypocrite… but it turns out that’s not really who he is. And as disgusted as Nascimento is to see Fraga helicoptered in to negotiate with the hostage-takers at the prison, he seems to understand that this guy’s got balls to go in there without a vest and talk to the cartels. And in fact he says himself that Fraga has the situation under control. Everything that goes wrong is caused by his squad doing what he taught them to do (shoot everybody).

Alot of the elements are the same as part 1: it starts when a crazy shootout is about to begin, then skips back and tells the events leading up to that, it has constant narration from Nascimento, he and his guys cross many lines in their police work but also oppose the many dirty cops. But the content is alot different. While the first one was about dealing with the vicious drug gangs that control the favelas, this one moves ahead to a time when Nascimento and his further militarization of the police have successfully wiped out the drug trade. In place of the cartels now they get militias, basically former and current police officers running everything like the mafia.

Nascimento is kind of a Dirty Harry character. I’m not saying he has that kind of charisma, but he’s got that same thing where he is clearly going way over the line of what a cop should be allowed to do, but we root for him to pull it off because we believe that he’s trying to do the right thing. At the same time we are – or I guess I am, I can’t really speak for all of us – sort of horrified to be supporting this. This being Brazil he’s allowed to do shit that even Callahan would be offended by. Shit that would give the Patriot Act a boner. They just treat it like a war, they got snipers in helicopters flying around taking people out.

In fact he gets into a DARK KNIGHT situation where he ends up in charge of the agency that bugs everybody. The movie presents it like it’s not even a controversial issue, of course the government has bugs everywhere and spies on everything and everybody, and it’s a respectable job to listen in and try to bust people for shit. It’s matter-of-fact enough about all this that for a while I wasn’t sure if the movie was trying to tell me this was okay. I think this is one reason why these movies have been misunderstood. They don’t hammer you over the head with it as much as you might expect. I don’t see how my buddies who said the first one was “fascist” could come out of this one still thinking that was the intent, but it takes a while to get there. I see that as a good thing.

There’s a significant addition to Nascimento’s badass qualifications in this one: he practices Brazilian jiujitsu. We know this because of a scene where he spars with his son. It’s a really good scene about their relationship but also has what seems like a more authentic portrayal of the art then I’ve seen in a movie before. It turns out Rickson Gracie (star of the documentary CHOKE) was the consultant for this.

If anybody wants to watch this to figure what Padilha’s gonna do if he really ends up doing the ROBOCOP movie, there’s good news and bad news. I know you like the bad news first so I’ll tell you, the action is all done handheld. It actually looks more like real documentary camerawork than alot of these modern “shakycam” movies, but it really does make it difficult to know how well he can stage an action scene, because you’re too busy trying to focus your eyes onto Nascimento’s face to really know where he’s going exactly.

The good news is that this is further evidence that Padilha must be interested in the substance of the Robocop concept, not just the shiny surface. This is a story about a guy who builds a police squad into an army, uses extreme violations of human rights from beatings to mass wiretappings, and (SPOILER) ultimately decides that it all has to be dismantled. If they have to remake ROBOCOP this is amazing that they didn’t just get some slick director of TV commercials, they actually got a thinker who has spent alot of time on the issues of the original movie and many that extend naturally out of the first movie.

Ah shit, I just convinced myself that Padilha’s gonna waste a couple years on ROBOCOP and then get dumped. I hope he gets some money out of it, then. Poor guy.

Anyway, the word I’d heard on ELITE SQUAD 2 was that it was more of a straight-up crowdpleaser than the first one, more of an action movie fantasy going for stick-it-to-the-man entertainment. It’s the highest grossing movie in Brazil ever, including Hollywood movies. It beat AVATAR there. But it seemed to me like this one spent alot more time explaining politics than the first one did and less time with the thrills. It definitely works, and builds to an exciting climax, but I prefer the first one as a chaotic portrait of well-meaning people hopelessly trying to claw their way out of a briar patch of violence and corruption. I saw the first one as more of a war drama than an action movie, and this one is more of a political thriller, I think.

But if they do want to go all-out action movie for a part 3 obviously Nascimento’s son has to be forced into an underground fighting tournament to the death and Nascimento and his elite squad will fight their way in to try to rescue him before the final round but then father and son have to duela bunch of experts in various martial arts and then at the end will be a little bit of the complex explanation of the rigged political system in Brazil. (2D in select theaters.)

We see all this through the eyes of Q (18-year-old Omar Epps in his first movie), basically a good kid and also a very talented DJ, just now getting some traction since he decided to enter a big DJ contest. His friends don’t even really support him in following that dream, but he does it anyway.

So you might think he should just say fuck those guys, but he has a loyalty to them and he feels the same frustrations they do, so in an act of stupidity he goes with them to do this robbery. Shoulda just stayed and hung out with Doctor Dre and Ed Lover at the contest, in my opinion. And Fab 5 Freddy was there too! Why would you just leave? There’s a great moment when Q is up behind the turntables in front of the crowd, in a post-triumph glow, and he looks out and sees his friends. They’re not even smiling for him because they’re there to pick him up for the robbery. That should’ve been the tip-off, though. These guys don’t even give a shit that you beat a bunch of legendary DJs your first time out. Fuck those guys.

Raheem (Khalil Kain) is complicated like Q is. He seems kind of like the big brother and the peacemaker. When Q and this other guy Bishop (played by 19-year-old Tupac Shakur in his first role other than the Digital Underground cameo in NOTHING BUT TROUBLE) keep sniping at each other it’s Raheem that tells them they have to “squash this” and forces them to talk it out. But he’s not exactly the conscience of the group either, because he really wants to do this robbery.

Bishop is the Mr. Blonde in their crew. He’s kind of a suspense-thriller encapsulation of Tupac’s later public persona: charismatic, funny, macho, crazy, dangerous. At first it seems like he’s just reckless and getting out of control, then you start to realize that no, he’s a straight up psychopath. The creepiest moment in the movie is when he goes to the family get-together after the funeral of the friend he shot to death. Q knows Bishop did it but the family doesn’t, so Bishop acts like a sweetheart, offering support and hugs to the mom and the sister while having a threatening staredown with Q over their shoulders.

Before that you can laugh at him a little bit. His loud enthusiasm for the Jimmy Cagney movie WHITE HEAT is pretty great. You’d expect him to be that into SCARFACE or something, but not an old film noir.

There are a few little things that mess with the otherwise gritty and down-to-earth feel of the movie. Samuel L. Jackson’s character seems to have a supernatural ability to know everything (there’s a joke about him already having heard on the streets that Q got into the DJ contest right as he walks out of the audition). There’s a really far-fetched scene where Raheem happens to walk into a restaurant and run into an old friend, who it turns out is about to rob the place and offers to let him join in. He politely declines and is able to just leave peacefully, only finding out later on the news that his friend got killed.

And there are some jokey little cameos, like EPMD are in the background of that restaurant  scene right after the kids shoplift a 12″ of their song “Rampage” featuring LL Cool J. Better yet there’s a scene where Jackson is talking to a buddy, and I didn’t realize it at first but the buddy is Oran “Juice” Jones. I knew he looked familiar, I think I must’ve seen him spying on me one time when I was walking in the rain with his girl. Anyway, you get it? His nickname is Juice. The movie is called JUICE. It’s hard to explain.

On the other hand I have to admit that one of the weird, less believable moments is one of my favorites. Q goes to a place where he’s heard he can get a gun. It’s not what you’d expect, it’s like a little diner club for older people, he doesn’t fit in it all. There’s a lady named Sweets (Jacqui Dickerson – maybe the director’s mom?) in charge, and she gives him the weapon because she recognizes him from when he was younger. “Tell your Mother Jacqui said hi,” she tells him.

I guess you don’t really hear about JUICE too much anymore. Probly even less so in Europe, since it was released there as ANGEL TOWN II, a sequel to an Oliver Gruner movie. But it turns out it holds up well, and it’s also interesting as an important piece in the puzzle of ’90s pop culture. It came out in January ‘92 – less than a year after NEW JACK CITY, BOYZ N THE HOOD and STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN, about a year and a half before MENACE II SOCIETY. Shakur wasn’t a superstar yet. He only had the mildly successful 2Pacalypse Now album under his belt, and was still just a spin-off from Digital Underground. I know some people in documentaries have said he got too into the role of Bishop and that’s what turned him from thoughtful political guy to “thug life” dude going around getting in arguments where everybody pulls guns out. I don’t know, but he’s really good in the movie. If you don’t understand his popularity from listening to his music, watching this movie might help. It’s not a “hey, I recognize this famous rapper” performance, it’s a “whoah, this guy should switch to acting” one.

The director is Ernest Dickerson, who started as a cinematographer on Spike Lee’s student film JOE’S BED-STUY BARBERSHOP: WE CUT HEADS. Then he did a couple movies like THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and KRUSH GROOVE and 8 episodes of Tales From the Crypt before doing Lee’s first six movies, from SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT through MALCOLM X. With JUICE he switched over to director, but it later turned out he wasn’t gonna be the auteur type like Spike. If you ask me his first three were solid entertainment. JUICE was followed by SURVIVING THE GAME and TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT. Then some other stuff, then the Snoop Dogg horror vehicle BONES was kinda funny. Since ‘04 he’s been where all the journeymen directors go, TVland, directing shows including but not limited to Third Watch, Criminal Minds, CSI Miami, Heroes, 6 episodes of The Wire, Burn Notice, SGU Stargate Universe, Treme, The Walking Dead and Dexter. You know, Ernest Dickerson type shows.

But JUICE was good.

It’s a good time capsule too. They listen to their music on cassette tape. They shoplift from a record store – new releases on vinyl – that also rents movies on VHS. There’s an ABOVE THE LAW poster on the wall, and I mean the Steven Seagal movie, not the West Coast rap group. Q has a huge Malcolm X poster behind his turntables (the guy, not the movie) because young people didn’t have phones back then so they cared about stuff like that.

Queen Latifah plays the lady who runs the DJ contest, and this was when she was a current rapper. She still wore a big hat and everything.

Steel (Jermaine Hopkins) has an appreciation for older artists, though. In the record store scene he wants to steal the album Starbooty by Roy Ayers’ group Ubiquity, but nobody else is into it. I guess they’re kinda right, Starbooty is pretty disco. He coulda found something better.

The score is credited to Hank Shocklee and The Bomb Squad – that means the producers of Public Enemy’s early albums and Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, basically the greatest hip hop producers of all time if you ask me. The score is no It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, but it’s got some good beats for chase scenes and shit. Shocklee also helped out with some of the songs on the soundtrack. There are some good ones by Eric B and Rakim, Cypress Hill, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, and that guy “Son of Bazerk” that the Bomb Squad produced that never caught on much.

Please enjoy the excellent theme song, “Juice (Know the Ledge)” by Eric B and Rakim.

And for tangentally-related extra credit here’s Ghostface Killah from his “More Fish” album, having the balls to do his own song over an entire instrumental from one of the greatest rappers of all time… and in my opinion actually pulling it off.

Further reading:
“Bringing the Noise to ‘Juice’: Sonic architect Hank Shocklee surveys the future radically and sees videos, merchandising tie-ins and even rap opera” from The L.A. Times, January 19, 1992.
“Juice fresh 20 years on” from The Guardian, September 29, 2011.

Dominic Cooper (Iron Man’s dad in CAPTAIN AMERICA, but not in the IRON MAN movies) plays Latif, who is called in by old school acquaintance Uday (also Cooper – you know, just like Eddie Murphy would do), who shows him how they look like twins and tells him he will become his “brother” and be a double to him just like the guy his pops has. Latif refuses, so they lock him up and whip him and threaten his family. So on second thought why not, right? He takes the job.

It’s definitely more like a mafia movie than a political one. Uday has his staff of scary looking, suit-wearing, cigarette smoking enforcers, part bodyguard, part babysitter. They give Latif a tour of his new toys: fancy palaces, expensive cars, hot girls everywhere instructed to do anything he wants (get him strawberries or whatever), but don’t you fucking halfway maybe think about even just barely touching one of Uday’s girls. So yeah, it’s pretty clear early on what this is gonna be about.

I don't completely understand this poster, but I love it. Kinda looks more like a hip hop album cover than a movie poster.

Uday loves women, but also dancing to ’80s dance music with transvestites. He patrols the streets looking for school girls to pick up (and I mean in school uniforms, coming home from school, holding school books, the whole thing). In the most horrifying scene (thankfully off screen) he snatches a young bride from her wedding, rapes her in her wedding dress, and it gets worse from there. And when it’s clear even to him that he’s gone too far his version of feeling bad about it is telling Latif to give the family some money.

My favorite scene is when Latif is telling the other guys that Uday is psychotic. I think he knows they can never agree with him out loud, but he knows from their faces that they can’t deny it. And they don’t try to. “You’re a good man in a bad job,” Latif says. All these guys around him, the guys that might kill him, are victims just like he is. None of them seem to enjoy what they’re doing, but they do it.

Latif figures out the secret to passing as Uday so that even Uday’s inner circle falls for it:

1. Pull what little hair he has down onto his forehead
2. Speak in a higher voice
3. Yell at everybody and smash things

He even does speeches as Uday, and things he does get reported in the paper as Uday. But he doesn’t really get seduced by the power and the lifestyle like you might think. He stays aware of being a prisoner to a sick and dangerous world. He gets into trouble by refusing to do things (shoot a guy in the head, etc.) but keeps getting away with it. It seems like as long as they’re gonna be making up a fake version of the story they could give him a more dramatic arc than just “he has to do it, then after a while he tries to run off.” But that’s what we get.

The big historic events, including the invasion of Kuwait, are handled by showing montages of news footage. It feels a little cheap but it was probly the best idea, to deal with the story on a more intimate level. The biggest drawback to using the real footage is that it emphasizes how much the guy playing Saddam doesn’t really look or seem very much like Saddam. But he’s actually not in it that much.

A bigger problem is that it has this fascinating topic of doubles but doesn’t really explain the process that much. I mean surely there’s gotta be something more to it than there just happened to be a dude in his school that looked fucking 100% identical to him. I guess he’s supposed to be putting on a fake nose or something, but I mean, you see them, they are clearly just the same guy, in real life it wasn’t that easy. Wouldn’t it to be interesting to know how the real guy really did this, got a guy to pass for him so well that even people who actually knew him sometimes couldn’t tell which was which?

And why is it that everyone always believes he’s this famous terror, but suddenly when he escapes he’s just a dude and can go around and nobody thinks he’s Uday anymore? Shouldn’t he have to wear a wig or something?

They do play with the doubling in a few interesting ways, like a scene where Uday sends the double to meet with his dad, just to amuse himself. He waits nearby excitedly asking “What did he say? What did he say?” But the double of Uday insists it was the double of Saddam he met with and real-Uday thinks it was real-Saddam. It kind of makes you question if it’s really known which events were the real guys and which were the doubles.

I guess Ice-T saw The Devil's Double too.

Cooper is good in this, most memorably as Uday. I like that as horrible as he is he seems to have a genuine attachment to Latif. He could just kill him, but he always wants to keep him around, like he’s convinced himself they’re actually good friends. Even after Latif escapes Uday seems to want him to come back and just act like it never happened. I guess in that one sense being a double to a mad prince is good work to have, because you’re hard to replace.

There are many ways this movie should’ve been better and more substantive, but I can’t deny that it’s entertaining because of the inherently fascinating topic. This world is scary because they’re out of control gangsters, but they never have to worry about the cops. It’s like working for Scarface, except he’s a rapist, and in a world with no cops.

And yet when somebody tries to assassinate him, thinking he’s Uday, he goes into soldier mode and starts firing back at them. Obviously it’s self defense, but really he’s on the same side as those guys. It’s hard out here for a devil’s double.

Usually a movie with this type of pedigree wouldn’t pan out, but this is the one-in-every-once-in-a-while one that I’m always looking for, the one that’s better and more interesting than anybody expected. Like Dave Bautista in HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN it’s a muscleman giving a sincere performance as a bottom-of-the-totem-pole criminal trying to do the right thing and getting pulled into somebody else’s bullshit. I liked that one but this one is better – it’s a little quirkier, has a little more personality and it doesn’t have a shitty rock soundtrack.

The movie starts with the voice of Michael Rapaport (BEATS, RHYMES AND LIFE: THE TRAVELS OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST) seemingly narrating about this friend of his who went to prison. But then we see that he’s standing there talking. And then we see that he’s talking to a dog. He’s Jack Small, and he’s there to pick up his friend A.J. (Triple H), fresh off 13 years in Angola for manslaughter. A.J. has a box of pickle jars under his arm, which is unusual in my opinion.

See, I’m still searching for the perfect badass juxtaposition to use some day, and this is one that hadn’t occurred to me yet: an ex-con who’s “not going back to work” and his dream is to make pickles. And they never make a joke about how he ends up getting into a pickle. I guess maybe I just did. It’s hard to say.

They establish right away what close friends Jack and A.J. are. There’s some tension because Jack married A.J.’s sweetheart Claire (Posey) and had a daughter named Pepper (Juliette Goglia). Still, he lets A.J. stay in the guest room like he’s family.

The friendship is genuine, but one thing we learned from KISS OF DEATH is that an ex-con trying to keep his nose clean should point it in the opposite direction of Michael Rapaport. I think Jack sincerely just wants to work with his buddy again, but he needs to learn to lay off. He keeps dragging poor A.J. into business that he has clearly stated he wants no part of. Come on, go with me to this place, come on just say hi to him, just meet this guy real quick, just count this money for me. When he fucks up and marvins a guy* he doesn’t try to keep A.J. involved, he tries to get him to leave. But A.J. takes a deep breath, pistol whips Jack for being such an idiot, and takes over the cleanup operation. (See, it’s a pickle.)

Another thing we learned from KISS OF DEATH is that Nic Cage can bench press Hope Davis. INSIDE OUT doesn’t have anything that insane, but it’s got some flavor. It has the basics of a type of story that we’ve seen before, but the details are all tweaked. For example, A.J. is not as glamorous as most wrestler-played protagonists. Not only is he obsessed with pickles, he drives a station wagon with fake wood paneling. But he knows how to handle himself. When he decides to punch out a car window, for example, he wraps his fists in cardboard.

Jack’s dad, the crime boss who wants A.J. to work for him again (and is played by Bruce Dern!), is an old mob guy from back in the day that all the cops would love to bust but nobody has anything on him. He headquarters his operation out of the back of a veterinary hospital, which he also seems to run. I’m not 100% sure he’s doing surgeries himself, but he’s wearing a white coat and there are dogs there and everything. Anyway his operation isn’t drugs or guns or protection money, it’s cigarettes. He buys them tax free and sells them and there’s big money in it.

The cop that’s after him is not your usual renegade detective, she’s a hard-working but non-tough-talking agent played by Julie White, the mom from the TRANSFORMERSes. She has an informant on the inside but the investigation is falling apart and one of her biggest obstacles is that she’s having a hell of a time convincing other cops that it’s even a crime she’s investigating. We first see her in a small conference room with a bunch of pie charts trying to explain to some guys how money from cigarette smuggling funds al Qaeda. Even though I was already rooting for A.J. to get out of this mess and become one of the country’s premiere picklers I liked this lady right away and wanted her to succeed too, even though she’s on the other side, sort of.

One sort of mysterious character is Bruce Dern’s scary henchwoman Irena (Jency Griffin), who does alot of (but not all of) his dirty work. She never talks and she makes crazy faces when she’s beating up men. I thought maybe she was supposed to be deaf, but there’s a part where she seems to overhear important information. She could still be mute though.

You can respect A.J. trying to help out his friend, but you almost want him to turn snitch, because really he had nothing to do with this and it honestly was an accident. Jack even says at first that he should just go tell the truth about what happened. But then he wants to take the money.

There was one point where I was disappointed in a choice A.J. made. He seems like such an honorable guy but then he’s careless about letting the teenage girl see her mom in bed with him. Not cool, man. I expected more out of you. Probly ruined pickles for her forever.

Relationships with parents is a major theme in the movie. From the time A.J. gets out Jack is always bugging him to visit his mother. He keeps avoiding it and when he finally goes to see her it’s short and awkward. Martha, the cop, has a father in the same home, who gives her coply advice and whose cancer is part of the reason she’s fixated on cigarette smugglers. Jack has a contentious relationship with his father, who he’s always trying to please and who doesn’t respect him at all. Even their friend who owns the bar where the accident happens has an elderly mother living upstairs. And through all this the most important thing for Jack is to be a good father to Pepper.

Seeing that collection of actors on the cover made me laugh, but watching the movie I didn’t feel like any of them were phoning it in, slumming or out of their element. They all give solid performances. Rapaport is his usual ball of nervous energy and jibber jabber, but it’s a sympathetic kind of annoying. You can see how he’s exhausting to A.J. but also means well.

I’m not familiar with Triple H’s wrestling, and he didn’t strike me as one whose ring charisma would translate to the screen when I saw him in BLADE 3. But he’s really natural in this, I liked him. I even watched all the interviews with him on the DVD and found him very likable. They also have Bruce Dern on there talking, I think sincerely, about Triple H’s strong screen presence and how good he is at listening during his scenes.

This isn’t a movie I would beg you to see like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER REGENERATION, BLOOD AND BONE or the UNDISPUTEDs, but I do consider it a gem of some kind. It’s less of an awesome kick to your ass and more of a low key charm, but there’s room for that in the DTV renaissance. We need some humble, hard workers like this.

*having seen two accidental discharge deaths in recent movies (this and SETUP) I figured there should be a word for them and that the word should come from the part in PULP FICTION that probly inspired them.

Anyway these three are old friends, they hang out on a roof together, this is where I go to think, you can see the whole city from here, etc. Then they go do the heist but one of them (SPOILER: Phillippe) shoots the other two and takes the loot. In other words he set them up. It was a SETUP! Or even a SET UP depending on your interpretation of the coloration of the letters on the logo, whether it represents two separate words or just an emphasis of certain letters in one compound word.

So the movie is about 50 going after Phillippe to get revenge. He doesn’t know where he is so he robs a mob poker game to get the attention of the underworld. They’re like Are you crazy, do you know whose money this is, etc.? and he says something like “Tell him an old friend is looking for him!” He’s bold, he’s confident… he’s fucking stupid, this money belongs to Bruce Willis who has nothing to fucking do with Ryan Phillippe. So if you as a crime outsider thought that sounded like a terrible plan for going after the guy then yes, you were correct. Beginner’s luck maybe but good guess everybody.

So mob boss Bruce should probly have some guys break all of 50’s fingers and toes while making him watch them melt down all his jewelry and remold it into the shape of a giant crossed out dollar sign or two guys holding hands or whatever would upset 50 the most. Instead he’s charitable, he sends 50 on a mission to retrieve $2 million that some Russians are about to dig up from a graveyard. If he brings back the money he’s free and clear. Good deal, he gets to live, although he’ll be no closer to getting revenge on his white friend from high school because, I cannot stress this enough, he had just a really, really terrible plan that has completely sidetracked him. He’s lucky it’s even turned out as well as it has. Then things go wrong between the graveyard and Bruce so now he has even more shit to dig his way out of.

Obviously I rented this for Bruce, and I’m happy to say that as far as his supporting player roles go this isn’t bad. Since he’s playing a crime boss it’s fair to expect Cold Bruce, the Bruce we usually see these days where he doesn’t talk much, mostly grimaces and stares people down. He’s great at it but it’s kind of a waste of his charisma that he used to be known for. To my surprise though it’s Wiseass Bruce that we get here. Not full on David Addison mode – there’s no sunglasses or singing of oldies – but he laughs and jokes around while dunking a guy in a tank of water to get information. There’s a pretty good moment where we hear Bruce’s muffled small talk about sports from the POV of the guy underwater. I mean he’s not the protagonist so he’s not in here enough to make the movie worthwhile but he does a good job, better than expected.

Since I didn’t expect much there I was actually a little more excited about UFC Hall-of-Famer/lightly used Expendable Randy Couture’s name on the credits. He plays Bruce’s henchman. Don’t get excited. He’s kind of funny and gets to inject a little personality, but let’s just say he doesn’t last long. No real action scenes either, if that matters to you.

I actually thought 50 had some appeal in this. Some stiff line deliveries (and check out that thumbnail above – he still can’t act even in a still photo) but I can see how he’s kind of likable when he’s smiling and stuff. It made me understand the 50nomenon a little more, I think. Still don’t understand his mumbly style of rap or his open boasting about being a business man who doesn’t care at all about hip hop as a culture or even as a craft, but I can see some charisma here. A little. And I like that he survives getting shot because the bullet hits one of those blinged out crosses he wears. It actually stays under his shirt the whole movie but I like that they worked that piece of his persona into the story, making it a true 50 Cent vehicle. It’s like in DOUBLE TEAM how Dennis Rodman has a basketball themed parachute or in DISORDERLIES they eat a bunch of cakes.

Even better, I like that the bullet still goes into him – the cross just slows it down, it doesn’t deflect it like in most movies. And who would Fiddy have to remove bullets from him? Why, his tattoo artist, of course.

(And yes, he does give him alcohol and then pulls the slug out and dumps it into a metal container with a dramatic clink. Alot of people don’t know that the dramatic clink is actually the main thing that allows a wound to heal, that’s why they have to do that.)

Weirdly it doesn’t really try that hard to make 50 look tough except in a scene where he goes to visit Phillippe’s dad (James Remar) in prison and tells him “I didn’t come to ask for your help. I came to ask if there’s anything you want me to tell your son before I kill him.” Remar flips out but later gushes to his son about how 50 looked him in the eye when he said that.

So I liked that, but now I’m about all out of nice things to say, because SETUP is a bad movie. I say that as somebody who can appreciate this type of movie. I don’t necessarily mind that it’s not original at all, but the execution has to be better than this. It doesn’t feel real at all. Putting an ugly tattoo on Ryan Phillipe’s hand and having him sometimes slip into a Channing Tatum “I’m from the streets” accent off and on doesn’t make me believe him as a threat (even if the real Channing Tatum’s wife, the girl from STEP UP part 1, plays his sister). He’s lucky though because all the other criminals are so bad at what they do he’s able to last longer. 50 gets sidetracked with that indirect way of going after him. Then Couture fucks that up by convincing him to “celebrate” between getting the $2 million and delivering it, then fucks around with 50’s friend’s guns and misfires his own head off. Even if he hadn’t had the gun accident I think The Natural would’ve probly met some other unpleasant end. He actually said out loud, “Who’s gonna know I have $2 million in my car?” while leaving it parked at the apartment of some weed dealer he doesn’t even know. It’s almost like the character didn’t want to be in the movie long and was trying to create opportunities to get out of it.

So 50 and Couture’s characters are stupid, but so are these Russians. You’d think it would be hard to steal $2 million from Russian gangsters, but all 50 does is park in plain sight, not even a block’s distance away, and watch them dig up the money. Then he gets out and points guns at them. Doesn’t even have to be sneaky about it. How did they let him get the drop on them? They really had no plan, they thought they could just dig it up and not watch their backs? It boggles the mind.

He does the same thing following the STEP UP girl, just drives right behind her, parks and watches her go into a place, and come back out, and she never spots him. She must have some condition where she can’t see over her shoulder. Or maybe it was supposed to be he’s a ghost and Bruce can talk to him but everybody else that talks to him is also a ghost. I don’t know, but it goes so well you have to wonder why he even waits for her to leave, he probly should’ve just walked in the front door and took a look around while she was there, I’m sure she wouldn’t notice him or would figure he’s supposed to be there.

What 50 should’ve done in my opinion, and hear me out on this, he should’ve brought Bruce the $2 million and said “here is your $2 million, I’m sorry that Randy Couture got shot.” Instead he disappears for a couple days and then comes to Bruce and lies and claims that he didn’t get the money. This is part of his master plan to play Bruce and his gang against Ryan Phillippe, but what I’m saying is that it is not necessary. It’s Ryan Phillippe. I think you can handle him, even if the hand-tattoo is intimidating, and get your share of the diamond money.

Instead 50 plays Bruce and gets away with it because Bruce’s character is just as dumb as everybody else. One mistake he makes is he just lets 50 disappear for like 3 days and thinks “Huh, wonder what happened to my money? Oh well.” Another mistake is that when 50 does show up he believes what he tells him. He’s weirdly trusting and loyal and he will live to regret it. Well, he will regret it.

Even the dead guy’s widow is dumb, she doesn’t slap 50 at the funeral when he says “I’ll make it better.” She should know that means “I’ll give you a bunch of stolen mob money which is of equal value to the life of your husband.” This creepily detached materialism also fits the 50 Cent persona, but I’m not sure that was a conscious artistic choice. It’s supposed to be normal I think.

Movies have a way of making you root for someone who in reality wouldn’t deserve your support. We root for bank robbers all the time. Just recently I rooted for the driver in DRIVE even though he’s a total psychopath. So it’s embarrassing for this movie to let me turn on the protagonist. By the end I disagreed with what he was doing. Sure, kill Phillippe, get back your money from the diamond heist. I get that. But he drags Bruce into it. He lies to Bruce and steals his money. Bruce’s only crime – well, his only crime against 50 – is to trust 50 and be good to his word. He is clearly the more honorable of the two crooks, and of course the most likable, but you’re supposed to be okay with him getting fucked over by this asshole.

I want to like scenes with Bruce making conversation about random things like his prayer habits or his feelings about the death of newspapers, but when you drop one of those into such a lazy, amateur hour crime story it doesn’t have much power. I already don’t believe in the characters or the situations, so why am I gonna give a shit what one character has to say about his ritual of reading the box scores with breakfast? It seems at best self-conscious, at worst pathetically fake Tarantino.

So the battle was probly lost from the script stage, but some of the crappier elements of the movie reek of postproduction producer suggestions. There’s alot of awkward first person narration, like a scene where he watches Randy Couture’s dead body get ground into hamburger while explaining to us that it made him think about such and such. It’s all supposed to bring the story together but mostly seems useless. Filmatically the movie is pretty restrained, not a bunch of Avid farts or anything, but there are some annoying digital zoom-ins, a dead giveaway that somebody in the editing room felt the movie was boring as shit and that nothing they’d actually shot was gonna change that but hey maybe the idiots who would watch this garbage would be hypnotized by me pushing this button here that makes it zoom in. Let’s try that.

But way worse than that is the freeze frames and text as each of the characters is introduced, with generic terms like “THE MOB BOSS” or “THE MUSCLE” or whatever. You see, it’s playing with archetypes. It seems like these are just empty cliche characters without much substance or personality, but that’s because it’s a tribute to the literary tradition of the– you know, it’s like the, I don’t know. Film noir or– you know… what’s that, ‘meta,’ do they say? You know what I’m saying.

In every single case I pictured the movie without those titles, with just the characters showing up and you gotta figure out from their conversations who they are, like in a movie. In every single case it would clearly work better that way. Man, you guys gotta stop doing that. I don’t know what makes you think that’s gonna add style to your movie.

Not that it was gonna work without that shit though. I’m just guessing here but this seems like 50 Cent (who is one of the producers) came up with the basic idea of it and the screenwriter had to halfway flesh it out and everybody was more like “Is this what you want, 50?” and trying to make him happy than trying to figure out the actual good  way to make it into a professional movie for people to watch. So competence and paychecks are about all anybody’s getting out of this, except for Bruce. He does pretty good, so good job Bruce.

I’d say this guy is about 70% Steve McQueen, 20% The Terminator, 10% Edward Scissorhands. It’s a great character and performance for Gosling. When he’s not on the job he seems like kind of a savant, a sweet, quiet guy with a goofy smile, doesn’t talk much even when it would be socially preferable. Then when it’s time he turns steely and intense, all business. He never carries guns but sure knows how to use them when necessary. “When necessary” is not that much considering how good he is with just fists and feet or sharp metal things. Like Stuntman Mike he has a silver jacket that he always wears, even as it gets more and more bloodied. It has a scorpion on the back. He says something about a scorpion one time late in the movie, implying that it has some unspecified significance to him.

There are tense car chases, bursts of surprisingly brutal violence, and nerve-racking scenes of waiting in the getaway car, watching the front door of an establishment, hoping not to hear shots fired inside. It opens with a fuckin wallop, a great getaway scene that shows his skills as a driver, his clever strategy and his extreme cool under pressure. Its declaration of badass intent is Gosling wearing sunglasses, driving, some kind of throbbing Blondie-esque keyboard throbbing from the radio and his credit in purple with the RISKY BUSINESS font.

Alot of the style of the movie is a tribute to a rare commodity: ’80s cool, not ironic, ages well. Basically Michael Mann circa THIEF. Quiet, sparse, broody, night, Los Angeles. This is a solid new entry in the arthouse badass category along with THE LIMEY, GHOST DOG, THE AMERICAN, etc.

That might cause trouble in some multiplexes. I could’ve done without all the sighing in the auditorium. There was a dude in my row who angrily muttered at one point “There better be a gunfight after this.” Later, “I’m gonna walk out of this movie.” But he didn’t. I actually think it might’ve got him at the end, I’m not sure. It doesn’t go all VALHALLA RISING on us – I mean, it’s ambiguous about some important questions but it does build to a traditional showdown type climax, not a bunch of poetic weirdness. But at the end I heard a girl in the theater say “It was soooooooo slow!” and I’ve heard reports of this type of reaction across the country.

It’s kinda funny. Why is it that the people least open to seeing a different type of movie than they expected are the same ones that don’t know how to take 2 minutes to read what a movie is before they go see it? But it’s also kinda befuddling. I can sense that this style is gonna be challenging for certain people but I can’t really understand exactly why. I mean it’s not THE TRANSPORTER 2 but it’s not exactly LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD either. It’s only 100 minutes long, it begins, middles and ends with a bang, it has several really interesting characters played by recognizable and good looking Hollywood actors, some strong relationships, scary bad guys, better action than is generally allowed these days (cars, guns, punching, stabbing), a couple laughs, a bunch of shocks.

But it’s quiet. That’s it. They don’t talk alot, and Refn likes to let the camera sit still and watch an actor’s face. I guess these days people can’t even wipe their ass without watching part of a youtube video, sending 3 text messages and updating their Teen Friendpalz status to “wiping ass watching part of y-tube v. & texting x3 ;p”  so to ask them to enjoy a little mood and atmosphere for more than 10 seconds is equivalent to some horrendous torture Torquemeda would’ve come up with during the Inquisition but was too timid to try it out.

I honestly believe if they took this exactl movie and just played songs from the 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS soundtrack non-stop from beginning to end that these same people would’ve liked it. But for some reason that quiet just pisses them off. They don’t want to be alone with their thoughts, I guess. I paid to be entertained, not to be entertained well.

Anyway, DRIVE chose not to use the 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS soundtrack. It’s not wall-to-wall music, but it’s really good music. It’s the second best type of soundtrack: the one where it’s not the kind of music I would normally listen to, but in conjunction with the images it gives me chills. Just hearing a clip of the opening credits song during a podcast I wanted to get up and go to the theater right then to watch the movie again. The score by Cliff Martinez is also the second best type, the moody old school keyboard type deal. (First best type is blaxploitation funk, obviously.)

Everybody’s really good in this one. For example you got Perlman, a small time gangster but a scary one, partly because he’s desperate to claw his way up to the top. I know Perlman’s played a gangster sort of like this a million times, but here the movie is more worth his efforts. So it’s nice to see him in a good role, and no 8 hours in the makeup chair.

But for sure the most brilliant casting idea is Brooks as movie producer turned underworld figure Bernie Rose (the director of CANDYMAN did this?). He’s scary, but he’s still Albert Brooks. He seems kind of nice actually, but with the underlying threat that if you cross him or if he no longer needs you there could be trouble. I kept wondering if he really would rather just be friends than kill people or if that’s just his sick way of terrorizing people. I decided he’s for real, he does want to be your buddy, but business is business.

Oscar Isaac has a similar ambiguousness as Mulligan’s husband, just back from the joint. I want to believe he’s a nice guy but I have more reason to believe he’ll want to kill our driver. I mean, nobody’s gonna be happy about the young handsome guy that’s been “helping out” while they were locked up. Careful with that one, ladies.

I kept trying to remember where I knew this actor from, and as soon as I saw his name on the end credits I remembered that’s Blue, the guy that runs the imaginary brothel in SUCKER PUNCH. Most people I know hated that movie but I hope they’d admit he was good. In that one he was clearly the villain but he makes these little speeches about how he’s doing what he’s doing because he cares about the girls, and it seems like he really believes that shit. He must be a master of playing the evil nice guy.

I guess you could say our driver blurs the line too. We like him because he’s interesting to watch, and then we start to think he’s okay because he’s obviously sincere about taking care of this girl and her son. And even her husband. But he’s a criminal, he’s a very good killer, and business is business for him too. He’s crazy. There’s a point where he wears a disguise to follow somebody, which I enjoyed because I’d just seen a 50 Cent movie that annoyed me because he kept being really obvious about following people and I couldn’t believe they didn’t see him. This guy puts in the effort to make it believable. But then there’s these great shots where he’s standing rigidly in the dark, stalking this guy, and it’s like holy shit, have I been rooting for Michael Meyers this whole time?

There’s a great moment where he does something way more crazy than we knew he was capable of, and he does it right after kissing the girl, and then there’s a long shot of her, probably still in shock, and her expression is not quite readable but not what you’d expect either. I think there are alot of ways you could read it, and I like that.

Oh shit, this whole movie is ambiguous. Might be a metaphor for Christianity’s encroachment on the Norse religions. Or it might just be understated. I’ll have to see it again to be sure.

This is the third Refn movie I’ve seen after BRONSON and VALHALLA RISING. Each one is better than the last. Like those ones it’s a serious-minded, arty type of filmatism, derivative of the masters, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. Here he has it all under control better than I’ve seen before.

Since seeing the movie I’ve heard a couple interviews with Refn, who says that it’s about a man who drives around at night listening to pop music because it’s the only way he can feel, and that it was based on Grimm’s fairy tales and that the mask part was him turning into a super hero, that he considers himself “a fetish filmmaker,” that it’s an autobiographical story about how he’d do anything to protect his wife. And I’ve read about Ryan Gosling saying that it’s about the fakeness of Hollywood and a guy who thinks he’s in a movie. And I’ve read people calling it “existential,” because if a guy is driving around being quiet you gotta figure it means he’s contemplating his existence or whatever.

I didn’t really pick up on any of those things while watching it. And sometimes I think a certain type of movie buff has to call a movie like this “existential” as a phony justification for watching an awesome movie. If it was just a normal crime movie they would look down on it but if it’s “existential” they can praise it to the sky, it seems like. But you only get one existence, pal. You oughta let loose, live your existence and enjoy awesome movies.

All those interpretations are legit, but to me the important thing about DRIVE is that it’s a great genre movie done with style, atmosphere, restraint, and patience. And with enough quiet moments in between that your brain can fill it in with whatever poetical interpretation it wants.

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there were two clever gimmicks I wanted to mention at the end ’cause they’re sort of spoilers

1. the scene in the garage where Cranston walks past a long row of badass car after badass car while talking about the one he prepared for the kid, and when he finally gets to it it’s a Chevy Impala.

2. the reveal of his day job after the opening robbery, where he’s wearing a police uniform for a movie role, and for a second you think “Holy shit, this guy’s a cop!?”

It’s a movie that constantly impresses with ideas like that, but never nudges you and says “hey, lookit this, you see what I’m doing here?” It impresses with little details like the blase look on a hooker’s face when the driver storms into the dressing room wielding a hammer, or with brief injections of utter strangeness, like the musical scene of the scary-mask-wearing driver walking up and staring dumbly into the window of Perlman’s pizza parlor.  I don’t know why you want these people to be talking all the time. They say so much more with their mouths shut.

Check out that tag line. Good stuff.

Bautista plays Ray Shane, head of security at an illegal casino and brothel in Grand Rapids. He used to be a cop, but a bunch of them were on the take and he took the fall for it, did 5 years. One night one of his guys is not at his post, he watches the door for the guy and some armed gunmen get the drop on him. Not only does he lose a bunch of the club’s money, but the boss’s son gets shot and killed. So the boss decides that it’s Ray’s responsibility to use the skills he learned as a detective to get the money back and catch the killer. It’s kind of a noir mystery type deal: somebody’s trying to set him up, he uses his old connections to find leads, he follows the trail of clues, etc.

It’s kind of a Schwarzenegger role in a way. Other than his troubled situation he’s a pretty regular guy who just happens to be a giant muscleman. He’s not a super criminal or elite warrior. He gets into some scuffles but doesn’t bust out the wrestling moves much. When he starts questioning people they keep saying he looks like a cop, and I always thought “I never seen a cop like that.” Looks more like a barbarian to me. (I guess that’s why he’s gonna be in the next SCORPION KING movie. Too bad it’s not as the Scorpion King.)

There’s a good scene where he kind of forces his way into a guy’s house to ask him questions and it takes a little bit for the guy to understand that he’s not a cop and then start fighting him.

Dominic Purcell (Dracula from BLADE III) is one of the guys he works for, Amy Smart (Felicity) is his ex-girlfriend, Danny Trejo is another crime boss. It’s not the best type of role for Trejo because he’s just a slick kingpin guy, it could be played by plenty of actors who lack Trejo’s particular look and presence. And it’s a small part too, but it’s a pivotal character at least.

There’s nothing very original about any of this, but it has some novelistic detail to it, some nice man-to-man conversations, it’s not your typical DTV mob stuff. I really like that Ray Shane is not a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type who always wins. No, he knows he’s in deep shit, and he goes after these big shots to plead his case, explain what really happened, try to convince them. It’s not at all a typical role for an ex-wrestler. If I had the means this is how I’d reward him:

Of course the cover shows him shirtless with a gun, as if he just goes around in public wearing his wrestling gear. Actually he wears winter clothes for most of the movie so it seems kind of out of place the one time you see his shirt off and all his ink. I’m not sure the character would really have that style of tattoos.

Amy Smart’s role is a little thin. For a while she’s just the slightly crazed ex-girlfriend ho. And she’s not as good as she usually is. It kinda seems like she didn’t like the character and didn’t put too much effort into it. But what happens with her character surprised me. I thought I knew what she was up to but I was wrong.

My biggest problem with the movie is the music. There’s a whole bunch of rock songs, many of them with corny lyrics about the government being after you and shit that doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the movie. This is really the only thing about the movie that seems maybe designed for the wrestling fan demographic that Bautista would appeal to. I know it’s a personal taste thing but I really feel like a more retro type soundtrack works better with these crime movies. But I guess just because you’re filming in Michigan doesn’t mean you can afford Motown songs on your soundtrack.

But it does have snow in it. It’s kind of hard to have snow in a low budget movie. Good job on the snow, fellas. It doesn’t look like they tried to, it just happened to snow while they were filming and they got the continuity to work.

It really is based on a book by a guy named Chuck Hustmyre, who has done a bunch of well reviewed books. But the Amazon description says the book takes place in New Orleans. I guess the tax breaks in Michigan were better than the ones in New Orleans. Also from the description I learned that the name of the club where everything went down is The House of the Rising Sun, so that explains the title. I was wondering ’cause I didn’t notice anything Japanese in the movie.

This isn’t really good enough to put on a list of new DTV classics, but I think it’s an interesting and surprisingly solid entry in the history of movies starring former wrestlers, and I think it speaks well for Bautista’s potential as an actor and/or movie star. I’m sure there was easier and more obvious material he could’ve gotten involved with, he must have interesting tastes if this is what he chose. Good job Demon Dave if you helped steer him toward this one.

Everybody loves a good "guy holding a giant thing" movie poster

So Brant gets put on the case. ‘Cause if he’s gonna cross a line it might as well be on this motherfucker.

But it’s not a Statham vehicle. It’s kind of an ensemble, with a couple of subplots. There’s Roberts (Mark Rylance), who’s taking a leave ’cause his wife just died. There’s the ex-junkie gal Falls (Zawe Ashton) that’s trying to help a neighborhood kid who might’ve beat somebody to death. The best and most prominent storyline is about the relationship between Brant and Porter Nash (Paddy Considine), an outsider to the department put in charge of the investigation.

The boys aren’t happy about Nash being in charge, and they don’t exactly roll out the red carpet, by which I mean they draw grafitti of him sucking dicks. Male dicks. At first I thought he was supposed to be an uptight bureaucrat and that’s why they hate him, but it turns out he’s openly gay, and gets openly harassed about it. Brant is supposed to be a homophobe, but also he knows his cop shit. So although he doesn’t stick up for Nash at all he does come to him privately, tells him he respects him and has a good talk with him about his darkest secrets and what makes him tick. But falls asleep during the talk.

Brant and Nash’s partnership is alot like Clint and Tyne Daley in THE ENFORCER – Brant says some horrible shit, but shows respect through his actions. If he becomes more enlightened he won’t admit it. Nash doesn’t seem desperate for his approval, but obviously appreciates that he gets it. I really like Considine in this movie. He does play some kind of “gayness,” holding himself differently from the other cops, but it’s neither a lispy stereotype or the “you’d never guess he was gay” opposite route.

Gillen is also great as Blitz. He’s a good Gemini type character, not all the way into comic book super villainy, but believable in his arrogant assertion that he’s more dangerous than other criminals. And completely fucked in the head. After one murder he sits on the couch watching a game show, guessing the answers while the corpse is still bleeding next to him on the floor.

Ultimately there’s not anything very original about BLITZ, and it’s the type of cop story they used to call “fascist”-  it manufactures a situation where the best thing for cops to do is to murder somebody and lie about what happened. On the other hand the whole situation was caused by Brant beating on a guy a long time ago, so maybe it’s saying something about the endless cycle of violence and what not.

I heard how things ended in the book and it sounds better than what they did here. But the execution makes it good, the feel of it. It’s the characters, the setting, the procedure, the little details, the gallows humor. It’s a real scummy view of London, full of junkie snitches, crooked cops and kids who beat immigrants to death for fun. It feels more realistic than most cop movies, or more novelistic. Or more like Homicide: Life On the Street. But British.

Looking over some of the other reviews it seems like alot of people thought it was supposed to be THE TRANSPORTER and that it was a mistake to put, like, other characters and events in the movie that weren’t about Statham. It definitely feels like one of those things where alot of stuff from the book is missing (especially in the Falls storyline) but I think Statham is a good tough guy actor who’s capable of doing his thing in a more complex tapestry of a movie where there’s detective work and no vehicles going off jumps. He’s allowed to do other types of movies occasionally, in my opinion.

The director is named Elliott Lester, the writer is Nathan Parker, who wrote MOON. The music is some kind of electro business that I think might be “dubstep” now that I know dubstep doesn’t sound like dub. At first I was a little thrown off by the music, I always figure a crime movie works better with music that could come from the ’70s or earlier. But that’s just my personal prejudice, and their lasery computery sounds eventually won me over.

I would like to see more of these, but I don’t think that’s the plan seeing as how they sort of, uh, get rid of one of the main characters from the series. Still, much better than CHAOS.