Would you believe this was my first time seeing SCHINDLER’S LIST? It’s getting toward 20 years old and I remembered I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet. It’s kind of a heavy decision to make one day: hey, I got 3 hours before I gotta leave for work, maybe I should watch SCHINDLER’S LIST? Never had the urge I guess.

But recently I did just that and I gotta admit it didn’t bum me out as much as I expect, because it left me high on how good the movie was. It’s a great movie, and all the more impressive to watch right after HOOK. Spielberg must’ve felt real guilty about that one to follow it up with the JURASSIC PARK/SCHINDLER’S LIST one-two punch. And after years of avoidance I gotta say SCHINDLER’S LIST is not what I expected. Of course it’s really emotional, but it’s not at all a chore to watch. Is it bad to say that this is an entertaining movie?

It begins with Spielberg’s mastery of imagery. A candle dissolves into what looks like a smokestack – a horrific sight in a WWII movie, but as the camera pulls out – phew, it’s just a steam train. But oh shit, wait – trains are usually bad too! In this case it’s bad, but not as bad as I feared for a second there. It’s Polish Jews arriving at the Warsaw ghetto. The beginning of the horror. They don’t realize yet how bad it’s gonna get. (Later they even have discussions about it, and there are varying levels of optimism.)

Next we see a man getting ready for a night on the town. No face, just glamorous closeups of him putting on his watch and jewelry, his cufflinks, money clip, lighter. This is some suave motherfucker. Then the last thing you see is his swastika pin. Ah shit, cinema tricked us into thinking this guy was cool! Now we feel like assholes.

But of course it’s Liam DARKMAN Neeson as Oskar Schindler, future list-writer, current player, schmoozer and businessman. As the movie and war begin he’s hatching a scheme to buy a pot and pan factory and use it to become the king of black market goods. He finds a brilliant Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and convinces him to use his connections in the community to find investors and employees. In a way it kind of feels like a crime movie like GOODFELLAS, AMERICAN GANGSTER, KILL THE IRISHMAN or anything where you watch a charismatic outside-of-the-box-thinker ingeniously build an empire. Obviously the difference is he never feels like a bad guy or an anti-hero. He’s a criminal against the fuckin Nazi regime. He’s dealing in goods that are only black market because the place got invaded. It’s nice suits and stuff. ‘Cause he likes that stuff. Same thing Diddy would do.

So he’s a good guy, but he’s not exactly Superman or Robin Hood because the only reason he’s sheltering Jews is he thinks it’s “good for business.” Just a convenient part of his money-making scheme, more like a paying-illegal-immigrants-under-the-table type of deal than an intentional good deed. His accountant Stern (Ben Kingsley) is the one that starts claiming old amputees as essential workers to save their lives. But hey, the boss man doesn’t stop him. So he’s a good guy.

Man, what about that scene where Stern doesn’t have his work permit with him and gets put on a train, and Schindler has to threaten the soldiers in charge with getting them fired, then run along the side of the train yelling for Stern until he finds him? It’s an intense struggle to rescue an important man that’s ultimately gonna save hundreds of lives, but at the same time it’s so cold-hearted and uncomfortable – he’s looking past all these people who are gonna be put to their death, searching for the other guy to save. Sorry folks, just looking for my accountant.

Of course this and other experiences lead to a gradual awakening and eventually his activities do become completely about saving lives at great risk to himself. It’s not a business anymore, it’s a front. He even turns it into an ammunition factory for the war effort and then intentionally makes defective ammo. Straight up sabotage. He’s brilliant at justifying his actions with logic that will make sense to Nazis. For example he claims he needs children in his factory because their tiny fingers are the best way to polish the inside of .45 shells. Nazis are assholes, they must love child labor so he’s throwing it out there for them.

And in some sense he is Superman, because there’s something unrelatable about his specific type of heroism. Schindler is not an Everyman. We’re not in his position of power, and even if we were we can’t imagine ourselves ever encountering an evil on the level of the Holocaust. Still, what he does is relevant to any time, ’cause there’s always gonna be business people that could grow a conscience and some balls and use their resources and connections to try to do the right thing and make the world a better place. In some cases it might even be like Schindler at the beginning, it might be “good for business.” There could be profits in getting us off fossil fuels, in letting gay people have weddings, whatever. Or even if there’s not, still you can “Go home to your families as men, not murderers” for doing what you knew in your heart was right.

Ralph Fiennes as the Nazi commandant Goeth is a hell of character too. He’s an evil fucking bastard – some mornings he likes to go out on the porch shirtless and pick off random prisoners with a sniper rifle – but like Verhoeven did later in BLACK BOOK Spielberg dares to give him the monster a few human qualities. His lust for a Jewish woman makes him fantasize about running off with her after the war, and that in turn makes him stand up for Schindler when he gets in trouble for kissing a Jewish woman. It almost seems like they’re building a real friendship, but of course it’s more of a working relationship. Schindler’s gotta butter this guy up to get what he needs out of him, just like buying drinks for the officers in the opening scene. He’s gotta become sort of buddies so he can spray the train cars with hoses (to get much needed water to the prisoners) and make Goeth think it’s a funny, cruel trick. Ha ha, let’s spray ‘em with hoses.

This guy is one of history’s biggest monsters, but in his mind he’s just a hard-working joe who never catches a break. In one amazing scene he complains to Schindler about what a pain in the ass it was to build a concentration camp. I mean, have you ever worked with barbed wire? You don’t really think about how hard it is to string that shit up. It’s hard to imagine somebody being so oblivious to whine about something like that, but of course if somebody was gonna do it it would be the fuckin Nazis. Something felt really horribly true about that scene. I believed that he probly really felt that way.

SCHINDLER’S LIST is obviously a story about an exceptionally heroic operation, but I think it’s comforting just to know there were some people in Germany and Poland who tried to do something, didn’t just go along with the program. The Bad Germans, maybe you’d call them. I read that Adi Dassler of Adidas did a little bit of that, giving jobs in his factory to Jews in order to shield them. Obviously not on the same level as Schindler, but I wonder how widespread that was? It’s nice if alot of places were doing it. I mean, what do we sacrifice these days to try to make the world better? Maybe drive a Prius?

There are a hundred little details in the filmmaking that work brilliantly. In the opening, as hundreds of Jews are brought to the ghetto on trains, he starts to focus in on a bureaucrat’s preparations of pen and ink, so he can put their names on a list. Of course this is later reflected with the preparations of the titular list to save as many of them as possible. Another great early scene – one that feels very loose for Spielberg – has a bunch of Jews standing around talking about life in the ghetto, offering different opinions of it, because none of them really realize how bad it’s gonna get. I swear it’s like a Spike Lee scene, like Mother Sister or Da Mayor talking to Martin Lawrence and the other kids in DO THE RIGHT THING.

I don’t know specifically why Spielberg went with the black and white, but it’s perfect. When people use it now black and white can be very stylized, another step away from reality, and a way to emphasize shadows and contrasts, create a dreamy film noir type of atmosphere. That’s not what this is at all. This looks raw and real, like a newsreel maybe. Spielberg tried out more stripped down documentary type of camerawork, but not the kind where it shakes around and looks like crap. I guess he didn’t use cranes or steadicams and did almost half of it with handheld cameras, so it looks different from his other movies. I think subconsciously it feels a little more “real,” but without sacrificing his usual clear visual storytelling and energetic cuts.

Some day if somebody wants to humiliate me they could confront me with all the movies I have publicly admitted to crying at part of. And alright you assholes, you can add this one to the list. I gotta admit I was unprepared for the little epilogue at the end where real life surviving “Schindler Jews” visit his grave. I thought I was through the woods with my manhood intact and that fucker snuck up on me. It could’ve ended with the ol’ onscreen text telling you how many lives Schindler saved, but it takes the next step and makes you actually see real live people who would not exist if not for the events depicted in the movie. I mean, I thought Neeson was really good in DARKMAN too, but it didn’t end with actual saved lives.

Nothing against DARKMAN, I also like DARKMAN. Part 3 is pretty good too. SCHINDLER’S LIST is not very much like the DARKMANs in my opinion but I still recommend it highly.

That holds the movie back, but it’s not fatal, because it’s really more about the characters and the mood and a bunch of men out in the cold thinking about death. THE GREY is the story of a group of workers in Alaska who survive a plane crash out in the snowy asshole of the earth and then try to stumble back to safety. While being hunted by wolves. That’s about it.

For what it’s worth this is my new favorite movie by Carnahan. Keep in mind I thought NARC was good but not as great as everybody else said at the time, I really liked parts of SMOKIN’ ACES but thought other parts were terrible, and I probly only enjoyed THE A-TEAM at all because I’m such a kind and forgiving individual. But this one has an unironic macho-ness and a heart-on-its-sleeve quality that I think is very Carnahan and very appealing. It opens with a long first-person narration from Liam Neeson that involves both a love letter to a wife he lost and a poem he likes to recite gravely. And the poem comes up a couple more times in the movie. Also he ignores a ROAD HOUSE sized bar brawl while having a drink, almost commits suicide and holds his hand against a wolf he shot to calm it as it bleeds to death. All in the first 5 or 10 minutes. So I liked this movie.

Neeson was one of the highlights of THE A-TEAM, and he must’ve really liked working with Carnahan because this is not one he could do for the paycheck. It has to have been very personal to him, playing a mourning, suicidal man dealing with death so soon after he lost his wife in real life. It almost makes it uncomfortable, like they’re exploiting his tragedy for a movie, but I think he knows what he’s doing. It’s not like they tricked him into signing on, so it must’ve been meaningful to him.

I’m sure this wasn’t a hugely expensive movie, and there’s an occasional phony background shot, but you can tell it was mostly shot on location. The frozen, windy hellhole that it takes place in feels very real, not artificial. Unlike 30 DAYS OF NIGHT I really felt like these poor fuckers were freezing their toes off every day and that they had gone through the ringer by the end. You see their breath alot and I’m pretty sure it’s not CGI.

That reality is established early on with the little rough edges that make it look more like a place and less like a movie setting. I love the bar he goes to, which is huge and brightly lit like a school gym. You can see why he keeps his parka on inside. But that’s the best place they have to go to out there. And the bumpy plane ride goes on for a long time before it crashes, I can’t remember another turbulence scene that felt that authentic. The actual crash sequence is so terrifying that you just know some motherfucker is gonna make sure it becomes in-flight entertainment.

Well, before long Neeson and several other plane crash survivors are scavenging clothes, alcohol, weapons and flammable liquids from the wreckage and trying to figure out how to not freeze to death. I thought it was funny that Neeson immediately takes charge, and at first nobody questions it. It’s almost like they realize that he’s the lead in the movie. But honestly I think it makes sense and fits the themes, because that’s the type of guy he is, a natural leader. I mean, the first time he sees a wolf out there he calls it a motherfucker and runs straight at it. So he demands respect. If he started telling you what to do you’d probly think “this guy seems to know what he’s doing” too. And of course as the movie becomes more about wolves you realize that he’s the alpha-male leading the pack. And thankfully this is never said out loud by any of the characters.

I also laughed when he started spitting out facts about wolves, that they hunt in a 30 mile radius from their den or something like that. But I have to admit that was unfair, I just didn’t realize that the earlier scene where he shot a wolf was establishing that shooting wolves is his job. He is an expert so that’s why he knows that stuff. It would be funnier if he was just a guy who knew alot of random facts about wildlife. Maybe he reads alot of National Geographic.

Their battle with the wolves is pretty simple. They know the wolves are picking them off one by one, and they hope to do the same thing back. But mostly they just try to head for civilization without getting eaten. They don’t try to build a brick house or anything.

Most of the movie is what happens in between the confrontations with beasts. At its best it evokes my favorite scene in JAWS, the long scene of bonding on the boat that leads to Quint’s famous U.S.S. Indianapolis story. Of course it’s not as good as that scene and the rest of the movie is not as good as the rest of JAWS, but it’s still admirable. It’s a bunch of assholes that don’t know each other real well going through hell together, eventually feeling close enough to talk about their lives and fears, and to laugh a little bit.

I didn’t recognize any of these guys besides Neeson, which was cool. They seemed like genuine guys that would be on that plane. I honestly had no idea until the credits that the guy with the glasses who I really liked was Dermot Mulroney. And Diaz, the ex-con guy, is Frank Grillo, Joel Edgerton’s classical music loving trainer in WARRIOR.

This is about as pure a Liam Neeson vehicle as you could get, merging his genre past and present with his dramatic chops. He gets to be tougher and wiser and braver than everybody else, but also sensitive. He gets to cry macho. He shows you to be hopeful even when you’re obviously fucked. If Grandma had seen this that wolf probly never would’ve been able to steal her clothes.

I don’t know if this movie is gonna go over very well. I heard some people laughing at it at the screening I went to. Maybe Carnahan’s brand of rugged poetic survivalism would’ve worked better with some actual wolf fights. Spoonful of sugar and all that. I sure wouldn’t have complained. But THE GREY has a bleakness and a manliness and a sincerity that works for me, and probly a few others.

BONUS END SPOILER: in case you saw the movie and didn’t stay after the credits, there is a little bit after them. But it seemed to me (and I think intentionally) just as ambiguous about the fate of the two combatants as the part before the credits. Kind of a cute way to tell your audience to go fuck itself. It’s like if after the credits on THE THING they made it seem like they were gonna tell you which one was the Thing and then they just faded to black again.

Carano (if you haven’t seen her real fights maybe you saw her cameo in BLOOD AND BONE) plays Mallory Kane, an experienced operative for a private contractor who does covert missions rescuing hostages and shit like that. She begins the movie having, you know, like… a disagreement with her colleague Channing Tatum (FIGHTING), and then she flashes back through the story of how she got doublecrossed as she hauls ass in a commandeered vehicle, headed to settle the score with her boss/ex-boyfriend (Ewan McGregor).

The other agents and bosses include Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Mathieu Kassovitz. The fights are choreographed by J.J. Perry (UNDISPUTED II) and are the clear highlight of the movie. We’re seeing alot of MMA-inspired submission holds in action movies these days, but not usually with this kind of blunt efficiency. It almost reminds me of seeing Seagal’s early movies the first time because the fights are so quick and dirty and the hits look and sound so hard. You know I love elaborate, stylized Shaw Brothers type numbers. This is the opposite of that, but it’s another great approach. These characters are very professional. It always seems like they really are trying to subdue their opponent as quickly as possible, not trying to show off. No time for sadism or to stop and say a line of dialogue. The lack of music and the not-too-exaggerated sound effects also add to the sense of realism. Sometimes I felt like an eyewitness. Uh, hey guys… break it up?

Mallory’s also Seagal-esque in her total domination of foes (all male), but she’s not as indestructible. She tends to get knocked around at first, which makes it great when there are witnesses. It’s like, oh no, look at this fuckin woman beater, he’s gonna seriously hur– oh, shit. What is she doing to him? She’s not quite The Terminator. She sports a number of bruises and cuts throughout the movie.

Soderbergh, thank God, agrees with us about the sad state of action filmatism. I’m happy to report that he lives up to his word, taking advantage of Carano’s skills by not shooting too close up and by doing lots of long takes. And he mostly avoid handheld cameras. Check out this behind the scenes photo where you can glimpse some sort of crazy next-gen technology they’re using that actually holds the camera for them:

Can you believe that!? I think it’s used to move the camera smoothly or possibly to hold it still and, like, point it at stuff. Kinda hard to wrap your mind around. It’ll be interesting to see if other directors decide to start using this technology. I have also heard that tripods have been invented. (not verified)

I was writing somewhere else about how crazy it is that Soderbergh wanting to shoot the fights clearly is a major selling point mentioned in all the interviews, articles and reviews. I believe as recently as 10 years ago this would’ve seemed ridiculous to even mention. At that time it would be considered basic filmatistic competence, now it’s rare enough that it’s considered a novelty. Still, I think these fights would stand out even if we were in a better era for action movies. It’s true that they’re refreshingly against the grain, but they’re also just plain good.

As long as I’m using Seagalogical comparisons I should say that this is most like the Golden Era Seagal works, where the action is more street-level violence, hand-to-hand scuffles, and less guns, car stunts or CGI. They hired Carano because of her Muay Thai and her MMA, so it would be stupid to waste a bunch of time acting like she’s a champion sharpshooter. But she is on the run so they do give her a couple really exciting foot and car chases, the car ones mainly shot from inside, reminding me of parts I loved in CHILDREN OF MEN, THE DRIVER and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION. You feel like if she crashes you’re going through the windshield.

One little detail I noticed that illustrates Soderbergh’s respect for clear filmatism is during a foot chase. The camera is looking down on Mallory running. There’s a traffic light or something hanging between us and the street, but as Mallory turns she arcs right around it so that our view of her is never blocked. Almost as if they, like, planned the shot in advance.

I think all the fights are done without music, but alot of the other scenes are heavily score driven, another great one by David Holmes. It’s reminiscent of OUT OF SIGHT with its driving basslines, super-tight drums and eerie electric pianos, but with horns in more of a Lalo Schifrin style. Very GET CARTER with maybe a drop or two of James Bond.

I guess some people have claimed that Carano’s acting is weak. I completely disagree, I didn’t notice a single poor line delivery or anything like that. But even if she wasn’t as good I think that complaints like that are missing the entire reason for this movie to exist. By casting a fighter to act Soderbergh is offering an alternative to the usual practice of casting an actor to fight. Compare Carano in HAYWIRE to Angelina Jolie – an Academy Award winning (and 2-time SAG winning, and 3-time Golden Globe winning) actress who I like – playing a very similar character in SALT. Jolie’s fine in the movie, but does she carry herself as convincingly as a woman who knows how to handle herself in a fight, in a double-cross, in a chase? Does she look like she’s the one doing the fighting and running and jumping? Does she move on screen in ways that are as interesting, as badass? Of course not. If somebody prefers the Academy Award winning actor’s version of this character it’s a free country but still, you gotta be fuckin kidding me. If Carano’s acting was weak it would be worth the sacrifice.

I mean, I don’t think Tony Jaa’s a very good actor, but I bet his version of ONG BAK is better than the version with, say, Viggo Mortensen would be. Although I would definitely watch that. Actually, maybe that’s a bad example. You know what, there’s room for both. Let’s have both.

Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal liked HAYWIRE, but in his final paragraph as he compliments Carano for being “very much at home in a strong cast” he writes, “It remains to be seen whether Ms. Carano’s star presence will take her beyond action roles, but she’s certainly appealing in this one…” I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but it’s a funny attitude that people have, as if for some reason Carano would’ve done this movie in hopes of eventually getting enough experience to be in a period drama or a romantic comedy or something. Like you do a genre movie as an audition for “real” movies “beyond action roles.” The truth is it’s usually the other way around. You do an amazing dramatic performance and then you’re allowed to play a super hero or super villain (see: Eric Bana, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hardy, etc.) In fact, most of the respected supporting cast here had to do years of “beyond action roles” before they would ever be cast in something like this.

But I’m sure Morgenstern would agree that it would be a waste of Carano’s gifts if she tried to do non-fighting roles. At least wait until your body’s getting frail, like Jackie Chan.

I like most of Soderbergh’s movies, and even the ones I don’t love are almost always an admirable attempt at something interesting. Who else can do both an upbeat studio movie starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts, and a micro-budget partially improvised experiment starring a lady he found working at a KFC? And seem to be passionate about both? He’s the only one. I love his broad range of interests, but of course my favorite movies by him are the ones where he tries to combine his commercial entertainer instincts with his thoughtful artist ones. My favorite from him is still the one that balances those the best, OUT OF SIGHT. It manages to be broadly entertaining, funny, romantic and joyful, but also a little bit mournful and contemplative. Like Elmore Leonard.

I think HAYWIRE is aimed for that same balance, but tips closer to THE LIMEY and what I consider Arthouse Badass. I’d like to think it could win over a wide audience like DRIVE did, but it didn’t seem to work on the middle aged couple who talked through pretty much the entire movie, or the two little kids that some lady brought. (The kids were quieter than the adults, but afterwards one reported “I didn’t like that movie that much.”) I figure they might not like the way both story and character are more implied and referred to than spelled out. In the opening we don’t really know what they’re talking about, as the events happen they’re a little confusing, eventually the explanation is pretty simple. But it’s kind of like the “Rabbit’s Foot” in MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE 3: it doesn’t really matter that much specifically why they’re after her. It just matters that she finds out. And hopefully beats some dudes up.

Same goes for the character of Mallory Kane. I mean, you know I would enjoy it if there was a “Just How Badass Is She?” line in here somewhere. But I like that they don’t waste our time with some dumb backstory. Tatum tries to guess one, but (like the one the Joker tells in DARK KNIGHT) it’s probly bullshit. If you need one, just make some shit up, it would’ve been like 2 or 3 lines of dialogue and you would’ve been happy. “You might think I joined the service because of my dad. The truth is, he was never there for me. Always off fighting some battle, even after he came home. I got into alot of trouble. Burglary, car theft. Eventually I took it too far, almost got killed, got locked up instead. There were two ways I could’ve gotten another chance: from Jesus, or from The Marines. I chose the Marines.”

Blah blah blah, why do we need to know that? We know Mallory Kane through what she knows: how to avoid being tracked, where to hide, when to surrender, how to relate to cops. We know she was in the Marines, and isn’t anymore. We see what her dad does, what he’s willing to do for her, and also the look on his face when he sees what she does. But even that’s pretty ambiguous – I read a little bit of fear, and then a little pride, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

Actually the father-daughter relationship is one thing that’s similar to OUT OF SIGHT, where Karen Sisco’s ex-cop dad seems to be her best friend. But Bill Paxton’s alot younger than Dennis Farina, or Terence Stamp. Man, we’re getting old. Game over, man.

Now that I think about it I don’t remember any explosions in the movie. That’s weird. Maybe that’s why they don’t like it. Explosions are important. There’s also a major sequence early on that’s done kind of like a music video, with people talking but we don’t hear it. Nothing too challenging but you know how people are. Sometimes they’re disappointed if they don’t get exactly what they expected, exactly what they got last time. Do something even slightly off-kilter and you might get sued.

I don’t think it’s as extreme as what happened with THE AMERICAN, but based on the Rotten Tomatoes computer machine HAYWIRE seems to be well liked by critics and not liked by “audiences.” Therefore I’m afraid I shouldn’t dream about the Mallory Kane series of movies that should so obviously happen. Soderbergh has said he plans to retire soon, and also that he did everything he wanted to do in an action movie with this one and can’t see himself doing another one unless he thought of something new. But I think it would be great if he stayed on as a producer and helped other cool directors to take the character in different (but still clearly photographed) directions.

I mean if he really wanted a WRATH OF KANE or a LONG LIVE THE KANE I’m sure he could do it DTV if he had to. That wouldn’t be that much different from what he did with BUBBLE and THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, which were released on DVD the same day as theaters.

Oh well, I’m happy we at least got this one. That alone is a miracle. It’s just so random that he happened to see Gina Carano on TV and then remembered her when his version of MONEYBALL fell apart and he kinda felt like doing a spy movie. If Soderbergh DVRd or Hulued everything he wouldn’t even have known who she was to make a movie about her. Thank you, TVs and remote controls. I owe you one.

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(Note: I think this is the fight Soderbergh saw, or at least it’s the one she’d just had before he met her. She didn’t want to go because she still had a black eye.)

The Stath puts together a team and starts his series of tricks and ambushes of the Brits on his hit list. They have to be clever about it because they have to first get a videotaped confession, then kill them but have it look like an accident. That’s hard enough, but another ex-S.A.S. guy who’s not on the list (Clive Owen) stumbles across their suspicious snooping and starts interfering with their whole plot. So there are some fights, some car chases, some guns.

I like how the posters and the DVD/blu-ray cover tell you the most important thing you need to know: these are some guys that wear sunglasses and shoot guns. But they leave off my favorite member of the sunglass-wearing/gun-shooting team: Dominic Purcell, believe it or not, in a role a little better than I’ve seen him in before. He wears a ridiculous mustache and sideburns well and they adapt organically into his disguises as he fakes a couple different nationalities. (Nobody buys his Welsh, though.) He has a really good comedic moment where he’s on a beach with his gut hanging out and fakes an ice cream cone accident to cover letting the air out of a tire.

Owen’s part is interesting because if they edited the scenes in a different order he would be the good guy. Statham and team are introduced first, so we identify with them, but they’re guilty of the exact same kind of murders these S.A.S. guys are being avenged for (”I’m just glad I never did a raghead,” Purcell says – a racist way of admitting that they could easily be the ones on the list). In his circle Owen is the perceptive one who figures out there’s a plot afoot, and that nobody will listen to. He even gets set up to take a fall for them – the whole hero thing. He could be Tom Cruise in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. He’s totally the good guy.

He does have a mustache though, that’s the only thing that really makes him evil. He has a glass eye too, but you notice the mustache first.

One detail I like is the tension between Clive and the emerging punk culture in Britain. In one scene he’s in a bar and some punks turn on the juke box while he’s trying to watch a news report about a dead soldier. He yells at them for having no respect. In a funnier scene a crazy old ex-S.A.S. guy beats the shit out of four skinheads for keying his car.

I’m happy to report that this doesn’t have all the dull trappings of modern action. There is some color in it, some sunshine, some variation in locations. Some of the face-to-face fights are a little shaky, but overall the action is pretty old fashioned workmanlike, for better or worse. There are some suspenseful sequences (like when they gotta force two other vehicles into an accident) and some good moves (bread loaf silencer, tied-to-chair-flip, tunnel chase hornet’s nest elbow [done by Ben Mendelsohn, the most evil guy from ANIMAL KINGDOM]).

DeNiro’s a prisoner for most of the movie but does manage to be involved in a couple big shoot outs and later has a scene where he uses his charm to keep Statham’s girl (Yvonne Strahovski) from panicking. Like the movie itself this mentor character is not exactly one of the greats, but is pretty likable. I like how he calls 44 year old Statham “kid” or “kiddo” all the time, and how he decides he has to go back to get his watch during an escape attempt.

This KILLER ELITE has nothing to do with the Sam Peckinpah movie THE KILLER ELITE. It’s adapted from a 1991 book called “The Feather Men” by Ralph and Joseph Fiennes’s third cousin Sir Ranulph Fiennes. That sounds made up, but it’s true. That’s the guy’s name and he really is related to them. The book was promoted as non-fiction even though the words “FACT OR FICTION?” were on the cover and that seems to be sort of a self answering question. You wouldn’t put that on the cover of “Angela’s Ashes.” From summaries of the book it sounds like it’s different from the movie in that the assassinations take place over 17 years, and Clive Owen probly is the good guy. His group are called “The Feather Men” and they save Sir Fiennes from being killed by what would be Statham’s group, “The Clinic.” In the movie I guess his character is one of the ones that gets killed. The text at the end still claims it’s a true story, so maybe out of spite Fiennes now says it was all made up.

Anyway, KILLER ELITE’s not bad. You could do worse. I guess it made sense to put Statham in the remake of THE MECHANIC because he really is putting together a body of work that in a way makes him the closest thing we have to a modern Charles Bronson. Or at least a white Jim Brown. He just needs some more DEATH WISHes under his belt. But he’s got a bunch of THE EVIL THAT MEN DOs.

This review, should you choose to read it, contains some spoilers.

Man, this is the most disappointing movie I’ve seen in a long time, because of the misleading title. Before you waste your money, please know that there are no ghosts in this movie at all. I hope that lady that tried to sue DRIVE for not being THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS will consider throwing some of her legal fund at this one too. It’s just shitty to take advantage of worldwide ghostamania like that. In all other aspects though I really enjoyed it.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL (subtitle said in Shaggy voice) is animation directionist Brad Bird’s first live action movie. I think he got pissed about George Miller, Zack Snyder and Wes Anderson directing cartoons so he was like “fuck you guys” and took one of their jobs. Or maybe it’s just that most directors of this genre these days are so lacking in the basic skills of filmatism that he was called in to tutor them. Whatever the motivation, I think his talents probly serve the world more uniquely doing cartoons, but luckily they also translate well to live action so his time away from his true calling isn’t a total waste.

I really dig that this series of movies has a new director for each installment, doing their own version of it. The directors so far always have a good pedigree, although of course John Woo blew it. But still. The idea of a big Hollywood based-on-a-TV-show franchise where DePalma set the template and other talented directors come in one time and then hit the road is a good one. It’s the ALIEN model, I guess. (DePalma directed prequel coming up?)

So this one can completely stand on its own, but for those keeping track it has more connection to the rest of the series than the others do. Part 3 director J.J. Abrams (don’t even fuckin think about it, AsimovLives) stayed on as producer for this one. It connects to what was going on with that one, using Ethan Hunt’s wife as a plot point, promoting Simon Pegg’s character Benji from cameo computer expert to co-starring field agent, and it doesn’t really try to reinvent the wheel. It’s only a somewhat tweaked wheel with more and clearer action and even more of an emphasis on the team. You got Cruise, Pegg, Paula The Super-hot Teacher Lady From PRECIOUS BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE PUBLISHED BY KNOPF 1996 Patton, and THE HURT LOCKER’s Jeremy Renner as the secretary’s analyst that ends up on the run with the team and having some skills to earn his keep.

The teamwork is welcome because a big part of the old TV show was how cool it was to watch a team of experts work together to basically pull off a big prank in the name of national security or whatever. (they should add Steve-O to the team in the next one. I was gonna say Ashton Kutcher because he’s more of a pranker, but Steve-O would do his own stunts.) DePalma cleverly blew up the team in the first one, but that unfortunately set it up as The Tom Cruise Show, and this is the first time he keeps one team for the whole movie. Instead of the familiar plot of Cruise getting framed and disavowed it’s the whole IMF organization. Some asshole (Michael Nyqvist, male lead of the Swedish GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy) blew up the Kremlin and stole a nuclear warhead while our IMF friends were sneaking around in there too. Not cool. He’s gotta understand that when he does something like that he makes all Kremlin-infiltrators look bad, they all get lumped in together.

One thing you learn in this movie is that if you happen to be there when somebody is blowing up the Kremlin it would be best not to be found unconscious wearing a reversible Russian army jacket. Good travel tip there.

Then the secretary of defense or whatever (Tom Wilkinson) has to give them their mission and pretend to break ties with them, that is what Spooooky Protocol means. You’ve been decommissioned, I’m hear to take you into custody, while I am briefly distracted please take this train car full of crazy high tech shit and get the fuck out of here.

Before that, when Hunt gets his first mission that he can choose to accept, the message fails to self destruct as promised. He walks away, then looks back at it, has to go give it a whack like we used to do with TVs when they lost reception. Only then does it blow up. It’s a good joke and a bad omen about their missions in this movie: everything is always gonna go wrong. They can’t break into the computers the way they wanted to, the machines that make those cool masks get stuck, they accidentally kill somebody they need alive, they get hit by a sandstorm, the retinal scanner on the side of his secret train car requires him to hop up and down because he’s too short for it, the list goes on.

The rest of the team are so used to Hunt’s awesomeness that they think nothing of asking him to climb up the side of the world’s tallest building to break into a server just so they can slow down some elevators. His high tech spiderman type suction gloves stop working, so all he has is those rock climbing skills he showed in the opening of part 2. You know it’s a Brad Bird movie when the glove he tosses blows back to the building and has its own little character moment.

Just like the climbing gloves, all of the technology they use is incredible but fallible. One of the best scenes involves an elaborate illusion used to sneak past a security guard, but it can only look right from one angle. In the opening a network of micro-cameras, databases and facial recognition software identifies and warns an agent about an assassin, but the notification distracts him just as she pulls her gun out. So maybe he would’ve had a better chance without it.

I like the new team members. Patton has a great moment where shit is about to go down and she kicks off her pumps – it’s like a secretary coming home from a long day of work crossed with Billy Jack taking off his boots. Renner impressed me because he’s so good at playing ugly weirdos (DAHMER, THE TOWN) and here he’s transformed into a suave action hero. He wears nice suits and gets in fights, but does a little more self-deprecating humor than James Bond would. I love when Hunt pulls a gun on him just to prove he’ll know what to do about it. He does.

I don’t know what to say about Tom Cruise. He’s good in the way he’s usually good. I know you’re supposed to hate him now, ’cause he’s a weirdo, but I like him as this intensely focused superman. This time they let him look slightly ragged under the eyes and a little skinny when he’s shirtless. In his climbing gear he looks like a dorky bicyclist. But I don’t think you can say he’s a more relatable character. I don’t want him to be.

Wouldn’t it be funny if he bought the rights to do a sequel to V FOR VENDETTA, just to see if they’d stop wearing those masks to protest his church?

About a half hour of the movie was shot in Imax, so when you see it in real Imax (film projector, not digital) it pops out from letterboxed to full Imax screen for these gigantic establishing shots and incredible stunts on that building in Dubai. It reminded me of seeing LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in 70mm (and there’s even a musical homage to that movie during a desert shot).

It goes without saying that it’s refreshing to see a movie in this day and age that’s packed with action and never had me frustrated by disorienting closeups, shakiness or poor staging and editing (delete previous sentence, goes without saying). There’s alot going on but it flows. Even a deliberately confusing chase in a sandstorm comes off at least as coherent as the current Hollywood standard for non-sandstorm action in movies like SALT or WARRIOR. This is crucial because it’s not much of an exaggeration to call it non-stop action. They’re always hurtling ahead – even the handful of debriefing or pre-planning discussions tend to take place in moving vehicles on the way to some place they gotta sneak into. Without involving action and a good storytelling rhythm this could easily be one of those torturous movies of endless banging and yelling like THE MUMMY or the TRANSFORMERSes. But for me it was constantly entertaining and breezed by like a much shorter movie.

Bird is able to work the little character subplots in without slowing that constant forward movement. At the end there’s a “phew, let’s all take a few minutes to unwind and enjoy not being shot at” type of scene and I thought it was a nice way of doing it. Okay, we’ve blown the roof off, let’s use like 2 or 3 minutes to tie together some emotions and stuff.

My only real complaint is that after packing the movie with so many clever gimmicks and suspenseful sequences some of the stuff at the end seems a little weaker than what came before. Renner hovering through a fan via magnet power, for example, is played as a goofy sideplot. So it doesn’t have half the tension of Hunt trying not to fall off the building earlier or of course his cable work in the silent vault in part 1. And the showdown with Nyqvist in a revolving car garage seemed like it could’ve been the climax of a Pierce Brosnan Bond movie. It’s a small complaint though. That stuff is fine, but it’s the earlier stuff I keep thinking about.

I love the opening of the movie, where Hunt is being broken out of a Russian prison. To the horror of his team he decides to go off plan to sneak back through and rescue his informant (who has no idea he’s a secret agent, or that he’s not Russian). It’s a fun scene where he uses hand signals to Pegg to open specific security doors, carefully orchestrating the releasing of prisoners in order to create the right amount of rioting to facilitate his escape. It’s a great setpiece but after the movie was over I realized how significant it was to the character. If he’d stuck with the original plan and left that guy behind he wouldn’t have had access to crucial resources that ended up saving the day.

So is it karma, or is it brilliant strategy? He tells his team he couldn’t leave an informant behind to be killed, and tells the guy “I look after my friends.” But he might be just saying that to sound nice, it might really be that he’s always thinking 72 steps ahead. I’d like to say that it’s the first one and his selfless act ended up saving his ass later. But I’m not really sure.

Either way, they stopped a nuclear war. I’m for it. Keep doing that, guys.

* * *

BONUS SPOILER: In the opening there’s an IMF agent we haven’t seen before that gets Estevezed. It turns out you’re supposed to know he’s an actor from the TV program Lost. You may remember that TV’s Felicity played that same role in part 3. As long as J.J. Abrams is producing these things I think we know what’s gonna happen. Jennifer Garner will be an agent that dies in part 5 and the Cloverfield monster in part 6.

DOUBLE BONUS SPOILER: I kept waiting for the Lost guy to come back as a ghost, as part of the protocol, but it never happened. RIP OFF.

TRIPLE BONUS SPOILER QUESTION: Do you think it’s a reference to GOODFELLAS that she ended up in Seattle (well, Vancouver I think) at the end? That’s where witness protection put him in GOODFELLAS. I wonder if they know each other? Man, IMF could’ve taken out the mafia so much faster than the cops could’ve. That would be unconstitutional though I think.

If 50 Cent is also in there, though, that’s a detracting factor. Not that I think he’ll do that bad of a job, just that he does not have much of a track record for participating in movies that people should spend their time watching. And actually while the presence of Mickey Rourke in a movie can make it interesting or even great, Mickey Rourke + 50 Cent actually reverses Mickey Rourke and turns him into a likely negative. But in this case there is also the Statham/Winstone combo which could easily overpower the force of Rourke/50, especially when you factor in Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon, ’cause he’s in it too.

So I crunched all this data and according to my calculations 50 is not gonna ruin 13. He already did a DTV movie called 12, he probly just stuck around ’til they starting filming 13 and they just let him be in it because he seemed nice and was passing out Vitamin Water to everybody. So they made the movie with him and later I rented it.

But the other thing is it’s a remake of 13 TZAMETI (French for “13 Thirteen”), a movie I didn’t really know anything about but knew everybody said was good. People liked it so much they couldn’t wait to see what that director would do next, provided it was a remake of 13 TZAMETI in English with Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, Ben Gazzara, Michael Shannon and 50 Cent. I don’t usually do this, but I decided to throw caution to the wolves or whatever and watch the remake first.

The movie stars none of those guys I just mentioned. It’s actually Sam Riley, who starred in that movie CONTROL and who looks 3/4 Leonardo Dicaprio, 1/4th James McEvoy. He plays Vince, a meek electrician whose mother has to sell the family home to afford medical bills for dad, who’s laid up in the hospital in a full body cast.

Nobody except dad is really complaining out loud about losing the house. They’re resigned to their fate and willing to make the sacrifice for dad. At least he’s alive, they can be thankful for that. But there’s the obvious, unspoken fact that this is fucked.

So Vince has his ears open when a couple in a house he’s working on talk about something that came in the mail that gives the guy a chance to get a huge pay day for one day’s work. Obviously he could use some mail like that of his own. Then the guy in the house dies of a drug overdose, so our boy takes the letter.

In a way this is kind of the same setup as RED ROCK WEST. We see that he’s a nice, decent, hard working guy, but he’s down on his luck. And there seems to be this opportunity here and the guy it’s meant for is not available so why not take it? He takes the letter and follows the instructions and hopefully he’ll get away with going in this guy’s place.

Hmmm. Maybe should’ve looked into this more. What he’s volunteering for is a way, way underground gambling ring. He’s gonna be in a tournament, basically. If you haven’t heard what the game is that he has to play, my advice is to just rent the original 13 TZAMETI and find out at the same time that he does. But I got a review to write here so I’m gonna explain it.

The contestants are each assigned a number. Vince is #13. They are given a gun and one bullet. The ringmaster/referee guy (Shannon) stands on a ladder instructing them to hold the guns above their heads and spin the chamber. They then point the guns at each other’s heads, like a big organized end-of-RESERVOIR-DOGS. (I believe the person they point their gun at is decided by random drawing). They watch a lightbulb (which for some reason has a spider painted on it) and when the light goes on they pull the trigger. Whoever doesn’t die gets to stick around for the next round.

In between the rounds there’s time for the contestants’ sponsors to place bets and for the contestants to sit and stew and try not to shit their pants. In the second round there are 2 bullets in each chamber, third round 3 bullets, etc. The last guy that survives will get a bunch of money. Hey, thanks for leaving me this great opportunity, dead junkie who needed house repairs.

Winstone plays #6, a crazy player who decides he has a problem with #13. Statham plays #6’s brother, who got him out of the asylum and into this competition. What a great guy. Rourke (with one of those cowboy hats he always wears now) is the only player that seems to be here against his will. He got snatched out of a Mexican prison and forced into this. 50 Cent is his sponsor, working for some mafia or other, and not very friendly to him. These stories come out in brief flashbacks that seem structurally out of place as late as they come in the movie, but they’re okay, they give you a reason to be interested in the fate of a couple other players besides the protagonist.

There are a couple minor details I don’t get about this sport. First of all, why do these guys just wear shitty t-shirts with numbers made out of electrical tape? Isn’t that kinda chintzy? This seems to be a multi-million dollar business, I feel like they could spring for some fuckin uniforms.

Second, aren’t the viewers worried about stray bullets? It seems pretty ballsy to just stand there in the room while this is going on, it’s alot of guns to predict the trajectory of. Or at the very least they oughta be concerned about splatter. You’d think people in the front would have to be planning to get dirty, like at a Gallagher or Gwar concert.

I don’t know man, I don’t mean to be a prude. I know I’m always talking up the early UFC before it was commissioned and had so many rules. But this seems a little too much to me. I’m not sure this is a sport I can really get behind, in my opinion. I personally hope it doesn’t really catch on.

But as a movie gimmick it’s ingenious and sinister. It’s the classic Kumite tournament-to-the-death, two-men-enter-one-man-leaves type deal, except there is no skill involved whatsoever. There is no way our hero can find the misunderstood brilliant master or work hard enough during the training montages or find just the amount of inspiration and eye of the tiger to win or learn a special move that he practices a whole bunch and then you forget about it but in the climax of the final round he finds the perfect opportunity to do it in slow motion. No, there is none of that, there is absolutely nothing he can do to prepare at all.

It’s 100% luck, and the odds are not good. To win this he just has to get really fuckin lucky. And that seems unlikely because the whole reason he got here in the first place was the bad luck that fucked over his family. Also, remember what his number is. Shit.

It’s just so fuckin brutal, but these old rich guys bet on it like it’s horse races. You think they’re cruel to the greyhounds, what about these guys? In one scene a big overweight player (#3 I believe?) is hunched over and he’s sweating up a storm, he’s having a hard time standing up, so his sponsor asks if he can have a chair to sit in. The way he asks it is like “Please, for God’s sake, have some empathy here.” And they give him the chair and it’s like everybody’s proud of the great humanity they’ve shown there, letting the guy sit down before he gets his head blown off for sport. Great job, everybody.

Well, I think you can guess who wins. And then the guy that’s paying for him, Gazzara, talks to him like a proud grandpa. “Well done, young man. Well done,” he says. As if there was anything to do well. And then it becomes a whole new ball game because he actually gets the money, and he realizes he has to somehow get the money to his mother before one of his guys snuffs him, or Statham, or before the cops (who he sees following him) can find the money or prove what he’s been up to.

Well, 13 was good so I had to watch the original, 13 TZAMETI (13 THIRTEEN). It’s a very faithful remake. Some scenes are pretty much word for word (except translated), but some things are added or tweaked. In the original he’s a Georgian immigrant in France, played by the director’s brother. He’s just trying to get money for his family, there is no disaster. He gets involved in pretty much the same way, and has the same rivalry with #6. But there are no flashbacks or explanations of any of the other players. After the tournament, when he’s running from the police and the brother, some of the events are moved around a little, and the remake made it into a little bit more of a close call, I think. But the ending is almost the same.

The better looking movie, without a doubt, is the original. You wouldn’t think so, because it’s lower budget and everything, but the remake is not particularly accomplished visually, and the original has very nice black and white cinematography. That gives it a pretty timeless look. For me anyway it also benefits from not having any recognizable faces in the cast. As much as I like the cast in the remake they create a movie star sized distance between you and the horror of what’s going on. In the original it’s a bunch of guys who don’t really look like actors, speaking a language I don’t understand, pulling me into this mysterious, horrible world.

On the other hand the beauty of the black and white creates a layer of distance itself, turning this dirty, sick place into a pretty art project. And for such a fucked up concept it sure is bloodless. I mean I’m glad the remake didn’t go full-on gory but if they didn’t have blood when they should’ve I sure didn’t notice. In this one I noticed. It kept striking me that a whole bunch of people are getting their heads blown off and we’re not seeing or hearing any blood or brain matter. Makes it kind of antiseptic.

There’s a little moment where #3, the big guy, sits and plays piano between rounds. I don’t remember that being in the remake. It’s a nice touch. He probly took lessons all through childhood, he enjoys the feel of the keys under his fingers, likes impressing people with his skills, maybe making people smile or something. Well, this’ll probly be the last time for that. Might as well take a minute to do this one last time.

One thing I thought was improved in the remake, though, was his motivation for entering. I like that neither one of them puts too fine of a point on his desperation. He keeps it inside. But I think the remake had the more fitting depiction of what would cause that desperation. In the original I think the idea is he’s an immigrant so he doesn’t have alot of money. For an American version it’s very fitting that he needs the money for health care, and for the story it’s fitting that it’s bad luck that pushed him into this competition of luck.

Our boy Fred in the comments recently interviewed Mickey Rourke and he asked him about 13. “It’s a piece of crap,” Mickey told him. “If you don’t believe me, call up Jason and Ray.” Well, I can see why those guys might think that. They’re all playing roles that are smaller and less fleshed out than they usually do. I mean, it’s pretty clear that they’re the names the producers put in there to sell the movie, and they probly added a little bit to their characters to try to justify it. Actually Statham’s role is a pretty good small one, he gets to be kind of ambiguous and a villain even in a character that’s not that different from alot of his heroes. He shouldn’t be mad.

Okay, there was no real reason to remake it, but they did fine with it. I recommend checking out one or more of these 13s.

I saw the trailer for this on some other DTV movie and I thought it looked potentially good. I’ve also had it recommended to me by a couple people. The only thing that slowed me down is that the assassin is played by Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. And the cover made me laugh. I guess it’s probly trying to look like MAN ON FIRE, but it makes me think of the cool grey suit Junior’s JERRY MAGUIRE co-star wore as a similar character in COLLATERAL. I heard they went to Jonathan Lipnicki first but he turned this role down.

I think I gotta reconsider my assumptions about Junior though. He was good as a totally different hit man character in that nutso Lee Daniels freakout SHADOWBOXER, and he’s good in this one. As this hit man, Jonas, his eyes look tired and cold while his posture is confident, like he’s a killing machine who doesn’t give a shit anymore but can’t override the programming. He’s a little bit like Denzel in TRAINING DAY too, very good at browbeating and bullying while acting like he’s your buddy. But he kind of is your buddy. I didn’t want him to kill these people, but I kind of rooted for him to get away. I liked him.

The author of the titular list is Allan, played by Cole Hauser (too bad he doesn’t go by Wings Hauser, Jr.), who I enjoyed playing a similar regular-guy-pushed-to-the edge-by-high-concept in PAPARAZZI. He’s a good balance of Hollywood leading man and regular guy, believable enough as an office worker who gets fucked over but also as the (currently blowing it) husband of a gal that looks like young Catherine Zeta Jones (Ginny Weirick). He sports a cut under his eye from some guys he owes money to, so he’s down to earth.

Allan has to run around town – Spokane, Washington to be specific, a weird choice – trying to talk sense into Jonas and also to not be blamed by the cops who are on the trail of these murders and know that he’s connected. And Jonas makes things worse by forcing him at gunpoint to come along with him and do shit. In most movies everybody picks up guns at this point. I like that this guy doesn’t want to become a killer, and avoids it for as long as he can.

The police, I noticed, seem to be trying a little harder than some movie police. They check for cell phone and internet activity, things like that. And they don’t jump to a stubborn conclusion that he’s guilty. They listen to what he has to say.

You’ll see in the very first scene that Jonas has a case of Movie Cough, which sadly has no cure, it is always terminal. When we find out how this ties in with his sudden change in attitude toward killing for The Man it’s a pretty current issue that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned in other movies. But I’m more interested in an angle that I could easily be reading too much into. Let me explain through the medium of spoilers.

When Jonas wakes up in a hotel room in Seattle feeling like shit and not wanting to assassinate the guy he’s supposed to assassinate he turns on the TV and sees a Bill O’Reilly type blowhard delivering a rant against gay marriage. We later hear on the news that the guy from TV was murdered. While they’re getting to know each other in the bar Jonas admits to Allan that he was the one that killed the guy, “for personal reasons.”

Is it too much of an assumption to think that this means Jonas is gay? After all there are a million topics the O’Reilly guy could be going off on to make it clear that he was an asshole. It’s weird that it singles out his opposition to gay marriage if it doesn’t have some special significance. But other than that there’s nothing to imply he might be gay, and even a part where he makes a seemingly homophobic comment (”What is this, a fag bar?”). But I like to think that he’s gay and that his country’s denial of his basic right to marry is one last hypocrisy straw on the back of the willing-to-kill-for-his-country camel.

The director, William Kaufman, did one last year called SINNERS AND SAINTS that I’ve heard is good too, but it doesn’t officially come out until January. His next one is called ONE IN THE CHAMBER, and stars Junior again along with Dolph Lundgren. I won’t give away which one of them is playing a Russian.

This is a solid DTV thriller. I’d like to think it’s just more proof of my belief that we’re experiencing the start of a DTV golden age, but it could also just mean that I shouldn’t write off all these movies that Cuba Gooding Jr. comes out with all the time. I think I’m gonna have to stick with the first one though, ’cause the second one has alot of scary implications (mostly involving me watching a bunch of potentially crappy Cuba Gooding Jr. movies just to be sure).

Yeah, basically it’s PANIC ROOM, and it’s kinda funny to compare Schumacher’s idea of PANIC ROOM to David Fincher’s. In Fincher’s the daughter could look like a boy and ride a scooter, in Schumacher’s she’s a sassy party girl interchangeable with six thousand other characters in modern teen and horror movies. Both movies get respectable, somewhat under-the-radar actors under the ski masks: Fincher had Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakum, Schumacher has Ben Mendelsohn from ANIMAL KINGDOM and Dash Mihok from Felicity. Both movies have kind of a teen heartthrob type that played an antagonist in a fighting movie – Jared Leto (My So Called Life, FIGHT CLUB) for Fincher, Cam Gigandet (The O.C., NEVER BACK DOWN) for Schumacher. Surprisingly it’s Fincher’s not Shumacher’s, that has a white guy with corn rows.

It’s mostly what you expect: home invaders pushing the couple around, roughing them up, the backstory and identity of the thieves slowly revealed through dialogue and flashbacks, the couple being shamed and tested by accusations and information that come out during the whole ordeal. Wait a minute, the wife knows Gigandet? And the husband might be lying about how much money he has? Deep dark secrets, all that shit.

Before everything went down the daughter implied that there was some trouble in their marriage, and they seemed in denial about it. Now, when they need each other most, they’re being pushed apart. etc.

Meanwhile Cage keeps refusing to open the safe and coming up with schemes (including offering to find a buyer for the diamonds they plan to steal from him) and the thieves come up with new ways to threaten him. And of course there’s the whole bit where one thief is really out of control and another thief is more sympathetic and trying to keep things under control, and there’s  a girl thief who has no restraint at all and starts putting on the wife’s dresses and then flips out and panics at the drop of a dime.

I thought the twist at the end was the best part of the movie, so I’ll go ahead and spoil it. SPOILER is what I’m saying. Instead of having some scandalous revelation the twist is that there isn’t anything scandalous. The implied affair between Kidman and Gigandet never happened – he had a thing for her, she rejected him, but the flashbacks were shown to us misleadingly out of context. Cage hiding from his wife that he’d blown all their money? Never happened either. He just convinced the thieves of that to hide the fact that he’d been squirreling away money for his family’s protection. And after all this the family find themselves together on the floor, hugging, even Little Miss I-hate-you-Mom-I’m-going-to-the-party. This nightmare has shown them that things aren’t actually that bad and that they really do love each other. It’s sure not deep, but it’s kinda sweet as far as these things go.

Not only that, but TRESPASS is not very faithful to the original. The whole situation is totally different. It takes out the racial and class tension and also switches it so that the protagonists are the people getting looted instead of the other way around. I guess Cage would be Ice Cube, Kidman would be Ice-T, Gigandet is Bill Paxton and Mihok must be William Sadler. But Cage and Kidman don’t do a song together over the credits so what the hell’s the point?

It’s a tense thriller but it first comes up to you like a friend before it slowly tightens its grip on your throat and never lets its fingers slip. Writer/director Steve De Jarnatt (who wrote STRANGE BREW) diabolically begins it as a quirky romantic comedy. Harry is our nerd hero, so he’s played by avenging nerd Edwards. By day he’s a museum guide who likes to dorkily joke around with kids, by early evening he plays trumpet in a big band trying to be “the king of the Glenn Miller impersonators” according to his narration. Then he meets his “dream girl,” Julie, played by Mare Winningham. On their first date they free some lobsters, he meets her grandparents and they have so much fun they plan to meet up again after she gets off her waitressing shift at midnight.

If all had gone as planned they would’ve gone dancing and remained blissfully ignorant of possibly impending nuclear holocaust. They probly would not have gotten laid, if that’s any consolation, because she already scheduled that for the third date. But nothing goes as planned because the power goes out and Harry overnaps and shows up at the diner hours late. He misses the girl but he catches that phone call.

Harry’s first move after hearing about the war is to appeal to everybody in that diner in the middle of the night. At first they think he’s a nut, eventually they hatch an escape plan together. I wonder if De Jarnatt came up with that idea while eating hashbrowns one night, looking around at the other diners and imagining what good they’d be in a pre-apocalyptic scenario. If so he must’ve decided they were mostly useless, ’cause these people don’t offer much. One exception is Landa (Denise Crosby), the mysterious stock broker (or something) with a satellite phone briefcase and connections to verify some of the information and charter a helicopter to the airport. But she’s such an overachiever she already has the waitress and some dude compiling the list of important people to bring to their Antarctican compound. Oprah is mentioned, which was a different joke in 1989 than it would’ve been more recently.

The outlook is good all things considered, but Harry has to split from the group because he’s got to get his girl. I’ve read some internetical commenters who don’t understand why he would risk it all for a girl he just met – but of course he would. The movie really captures the giddiness of a brand new relationship, a super-crush, a first date that turns into non-stop time together. In the long term, if there was a long term, maybe he’d look back and say “Ha ha, I was so into her I thought we had to be together for the end of the world.” But in the million degree heat of the moment she’s all he cares about. He’s not gonna say “Well, I really like her, but I don’t know her that well. I’m gonna leave her behind to die, just to be safe.” Hell, if anything the situation is gonna cause him to make even more rash and emotional decisions than he normally would. So that is not far-fetched that he would go back for her. I have no doubt in my mind that he would do that.

The movie is a series of attempts to get where he needs to go, to find the things he needs (the girl, a ride to the helipad, a helicopter pilot) to get out of the new problems that arise. And the more time passes the more the rumor spreads and more people are in his way. At one point there’s an amazing shot where he’s trying to cross the street but it’s total mayhem. There’s a crazy bike crash right in front of him, cars skidding out, panicked people running around. A little later he climbs up on top of a van and looks out at all the madness. People and cars everywhere, things crashing and blowing up. And he’s in awe because either the world is about to end or he started all this by misunderstanding a phone call.

It’s a great suspense movie because it has the deadliest possible threat hanging over and yet the guy just can’t catch a break. It’s like meeting the girl he likes so much used up all his good luck and now he’s getting it back hard. It reminds me of a stress dream where you’re trying to get to work or something and you’re just going around in circles. I remember the first time I saw this having to yell “Get out of there!” at the TV screen more than once. After a bunch of false starts and set backs he ends up back at the cafe, and the big spinning digital clock rubs it in his and our faces that an hour has passed and he’s in the same damn place where he was when he found out he had to get the hell out of there.

Of course there’s something morbidly ironic about the setting. The poor guy works at the La Brea tar pits and is having a hell of a time getting away from there – looks like humans might go the way of the dinosaurs. The movie actually begins with a video from the museum where he works, an animation that shows the evolution from single-celled organisms to human beings. All that just to be ended by some asshole president we never even see in the movie. “I think it’s the insects’ turn,” Harry says.

One thing I like is that this makes an incredible time capsule for the end of the ’80s. These days nuclear war seems like kind of an abstract threat. If anything we’re concerned about some fanatics stealing a bomb and setting it off somewhere. That’s a terrifying idea but back then “mutually assured destruction” was pretty much assumed – if one went off then a whole bunch went off, fired back and forth between two sides until everybody’s dead. We would talk about which leaders had “their finger on the button.” TV movies like THE DAY AFTER were advertised as important issue movies that everybody had to have an opinion on. In Seattle people would talk about how we would be one of the first targets because we had the Trident submarines here. So this was very much a movie about a major universal fear of the ’80s.

But alot of ’80s movies pretend like everybody has money dripping out their assholes, they all wear expensive suits and live in penthouse apartments and have big cocaine parties and shit. Not here. Harry lives in a pretty shitty apartment that gets the power shut down by a crazy dude burning shit. His job at the museum is not exactly glamorous. And Julie actually works two jobs – she’s a teacher and a waitress. How often do you see a movie where somebody works two jobs unless it’s making a big deal about how hard it is? Here it’s just a fact of life. But I’m sure if the world doesn’t end the trickle-down economics thing will start working eventually.

Okay, so the end of the world is looming over our heads and we gotta work two jobs, but there are some things we can be excited about – I am speaking of course about fitness. I’m gonna take it as a joke about exercise-crazy L.A. in the ’80s that the gym Harry follows some people into is packed even though it’s about 4:30 am. There’s even an aerobics class in session.

One thing that’s not typical of the ’80s, but is really cool, is that Brian Thompson has a bit part as a gay bodybuilder helicopter pilot. And it’s non-judgmental about him being gay. In fact, he asks “Any problems?” and Harry says “No.”

One thing that is kind of typical of the ’80s and also is really cool is that the score is by Tangerine Dream.

Anyway, as you know if you’ve seen it (IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT THIS END SPOILER IS NOT VERY SPECIFIC, IT’S STILL A HUGE SPOILER) it’s got a pretty dark ending.

And you know what? So much for saving the lives of those lobsters. I doubt they got very far.

So through his connections he gets the police files on the four suspects the cops have, and he gets a high tech device or two, and he goes after them. He basically torments the four guys, quickly figures out which one did it, and exacts a complicated method of torture/revenge (torvenge).

Filmatistically this director is a master. His shots are beautiful, his action is clean, his rhythm is perfect. Somehow he knows how to linger on shots and not be in such a hurry, but also knows how to move quickly from scene to scene and skip over unnecessary information to keep an exciting pace.

Soo-hyun is a ridiculously smooth and capable badass just like the character in BITTERSWEET LIFE, only this time he’s on the right side of the law. At least occupationally speaking, not really in his activities here. At a glance he just looks like a handsome, well-dressed young man, but he moves like a ninja. He can quickly climb onto a roof, he can knife fight, knows some kind of martial art, all very quick. He doesn’t talk very much. He means business and has many classic badass moments. One favorite is a shot from inside his car as he pulls up behind one of the suspects, who’s on a motorcycle. I figure he’s gonna follow the guy, find out where he goes. But before I can process it he just rams him from behind and knocks him off the bike.

This movie messed with my head in an unusual way. After a gut-wrenchingly grim opening it turns into such an awesome action/revenge movie for a while that I almost felt guilty how much I was enjoying it. It seems like too much fun for the subject matter. I always enjoy seeing a guy like this go after some sicko bastard, but after what we’ve seen the poor girl go through, and the horror it’s brought to her family and the whole community, it’s a weird fit. Like if ZODIAC turned into COMMANDO.

But like at least half of all revenge movies this is actually a public service announcement for the anti-revenge lobby. As his would’ve-been-sister-in-law tells him, “Revenge is for movies.” The girl’s dad, a retired police chief or something, sort of puts him up to it, and even he starts to think it’s time to cool it.

But our boy is not gonna stop and let the police catch up. He doesn’t care what it does to his soul, he’s on a mission. By “I saw the devil” I think the title means “when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back into you, and then you’re like what the fuck are you looking at, and the abyss is like sorry sir, I didn’t mean any offense and you’re like you better fucking apologize, abyss, and the abyss is all nervous and it goes yeah, sorry and you shake your head condescendingly as you walk away and in retrospect you were being a real dick to the abyss but the point is you both totally stared each other down it wasn’t a one-way type deal in my opinion.” (That’s an exact quote from Machiavelli or somebody.)

There’s a delicate balance in a revenge movie. It’s fun to watch somebody get revenge on a horrible person, but not if you become conscious of your own sadism and bloodlust while you’re watching and you feel like the movie doesn’t have that same awareness. When that happens you feel dirty. But I don’t know, if anybody comes out of this one feeling satisfied about the level he goes to and what it accomplishes then I would say it is possible they missed the point. And I don’t know what more the movie can be expected to do to get it through your thick skull. I think the movie is off the hook on that one.

Part of the fun is knowing how much he’s lost it, even before worse comes to worstest. He catches Kyung-chul, the maniac who decapitated his fiancee, and he doesn’t kill him at first. He lets him go. Then he follows him around like a wild animal with a tracking tag. Even Kyung-chul (a great sleazy performance by Choi Min-sik) can’t believe it when he wakes up in a hole, left alive, and with a pack of money. He says, “What the hell? The bastard’s a complete psycho.”

Alot of people complain about CGI blood and gore, but in the case of this movie there are at least four absolutely horrifying acts of digital violence. One is a quick knife fight in an enclosed space, one involves the hammering of a face and the third one is more drastic. These are not cool but they are upsetting and disturbingly realistic. It’s over-the-top gore that’s never funny, unless you laugh at just how awful it all is.

But despite all the horrible, graphic shit depicted in this movie I think one of the most unpleasant scenes is the one where the killer is alone with a nurse in a doctor’s office, not even doing anything yet. What makes it so uncomfortable is that you know Soo-hyun has put this innocent nurse in this position by letting his maniac go loose. And you don’t know where our guy is, how much he understands what danger he’s causing, how soon he’s going to intervene.

And the actress playing the nurse is so convincingly young and vulnerable. She’s helpless against this asshole, not just physically but mentally. It’s painful.

These Koreans are getting really good at making movies, but it looks like they need to work on their law enforcement. I mean what the hell, they really got four different guys in the area who might be the murderer because “they’ve done things like this before,” and you haven’t busted them yet? And our guy is able to go find them and you guys haven’t? Are you even working on this case?

And there’s even a fifth and sixth maniac in the area, because Kyung-chul goes to visit his friends, a cannibal couple. No wonder Jee-woon Kim is coming here to do an English language movie next. He’s gotta get the fuck out of Korea. That place is dangerous.

I doubt Schwarzenegger will really end up starring in Kim’s next one like they’re saying, but I sure hope he does. Kim is so good at making Byung-hun Lee seem badass with quick movements and few words. I think he could do wonders with Scharzenegger and bring to our shores the type of clean filmatism modern action movies are sorely lacking.

I don’t think I SAW THE DEVIL has anything new to say about the serial killers or the violent revenge. These are topics that have been covered pretty well in movies, in my opinion. But you know, a sermon doesn’t gotta be brand new material for a great preacher to make it sound good. I really enjoyed — or whatever you call it when a movie like this really works on you — being dragged around and shaken up by this one. Exceptionally well made, unsettling, fucked up, fun, sad. God damn ugly devil. Never shoulda shown his face around here.