I guess Howard the Duck was a ’70s Marvel character introduced in the comics book  MAN THING. The HOWARD THE DUCK movie is basically the same story as the THOR movie: Howard is a being in another world (Duckworld instead of Asgard) who is zapped through some type of portal to a shithole on Earth (Cleveland instead of New Mexico) where he falls in love with a human girl (Lea Thompson instead of Natalie Portman), has help from a scientist dude in a lab coat (Tim Robbins instead of Stellan Skarsgard), is captured by the authorities (cops instead of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and does battle with a powerful being that follows through the same portal he came from (a “Dark Overlord of the Universe” instead of “the Destroyer”). And like Thor he is torn about going home ’cause he’s fallen for this girl. The major difference besides him being a duck is that instead of abandoning his love to go home he sacrifices his ability to return home in order to save the world. So it’s more dramatic.

I know alot of people didn’t like THOR, and here we can see how maybe it could’ve been better, if instead of having to say goodbye Thor decides to stay on Earth and it ends with a big rock concert where he plays a guitar solo on a song about him written by Thomas Dolby and George Clinton. This ending would also work really good for E.T.

The opening of the movie is probly the best (?) part, because it takes place in Howard’s home of Marshington DC, Duckworld. In what plays like an opening scene to a Moonlighting episode, an unseen Howard comes home to his apartment after a long day of work as an advertising copy writer. The things in his apartment tell us about him: the bowling trophy, the photo of his doo-wop group Howard and the Heartbreakers, the photo of him in some kind of karate outfit, and the one in a hippie outfit. He enjoys movies enough to have framed posters of SPLASHDANCE and BREEDERS OF THE LOST STORK, which is “Coming to Duckworld this summer.” I thought that was funny because our posters would never say “Coming to Humanworld this summer.” They would just say “Coming to the Planet Earth where Humans Live this summer,” or something like that. I should check an actual poster to be sure what it says.

It seems like Duckworld has equivalents for everything on Earth. Much later Howard yells “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, indicating that either there is a duck version of the movie TORA! TORA! TORA! and it doesn’t have a changed title, or that there was an attack on Duck Harbor that was a major turning point in Duck War II, or most likely both. Duckworld also has the Italian language, because the phrase “Ciao for now, Howie” shows up. So there is a definite possibility of there being a Benito Goosalini in their history. And since we see he’s an ex-hippie we can assume he was protesting some sort of water fowl version of the Vietnam War. These ducks can’t swim, so they would still need swift boats.

Also interesting to note, he has an aquarium, with fish in it, and he feeds them. So fish are not people on Duckworld like ducks are. They’re just fish.

Howard reads Playduck Magazine, and when he’s sucked through the portal he crashes through some of his neighbor’s apartments and we see a female duck in the bath with her duck titties hanging out. I don’t know, this is probly covered in the comics and graphic novels, but I’m wondering if this means Duckworld is really more of a Platypusworld. A platypus does lay eggs but it’s a mammal because it nurses its young on milk. Then again a platypus transfers milk through its pores, it doesn’t have mammaries. I looked it up. So it’s hard to say what these ducks really are. This is one of those movies that really makes you think.

Howard lands in Cleveland, which apparently had a thriving glam rock scene that got left in the dust when Minneapolis blew up. Howard saves Beverly (Thompson), the singer for the struggling all-girl band Cherry Bomb, in the traditional crimefighter rescuing-woman-from-punks-in-alley scene. He has no powers but is a self-described “Master of Quack-Fu.” I don’t know if you get it but that’s a play on the Chinese martial art kung fu. Only instead of kung (or gung, it can be translated different ways, gung fu is actually what Bruce Lee called it) what they did is it says “quack,” which is how we describe the sound that a duck makes although to be honest it’s not exactly “quack” that they say, it’s hard to really translate that particular sound into English, but we call it a “quack.” Anyway, I hope you can see why “Master of Quack-Fu” is so funny.

Beverly feels sorry for Howard so she brings him back to her apartment. I know what you’re thinking, that’s a little fast, but it’s not until later in the movie that she lays in bed with him in her underwear, kisses him and almost takes her top off but he turns her down, even though as I’ve already explained  this type of duck does like boobs.

Beverly wants to help him get home, so she brings her to her friend Phil (Academy Award winner Tim Robbins), who is an assistant at a museum but also one of those dipshit movie scientists that’s always yelling about how he’s gonna be famous for his discovery. Of a duck. They figure out what it was that brought Howard to Earth and they try to reverse it, but fellow scientist Jeffrey Jones gets zapped accidentally and starts to slowly be taken over by an evil being from another dimension, and only Howard can stop him. I guess. I don’t know.

But this one’s not really about the narrative, it’s about the characters. And what the fuck is up with this character? It seems like there were alot of this type in ’80s movies, these guys that are supposed to be cool but they’re just assholes, and in retrospect I can’t really tell what’s supposed to be cool about them. I mean, he smokes cigars, he wears sunglasses sometimes, he calls Phil “Philsie” over and over again, he tries to bite a social worker’s fat ass, he calls women “doll” or “toots,” he wears camouflage pants sometimes, he goes into a diner and whistles at the waitress, yells “Hey, honey. Yo!”

What archetype is that based on, what is that supposed to be? Have you ever known a guy like that? Did you think he was cool? I guess he’s kind of like a lamer version of the early Bruce Willis characters. The voice kind of sounds like Richard Dreyfus, but it’s an uncredited Chip Zien (UNITED 93).

There’s a weird inconsistency to the way earthlings react to Howard. Or, what mean is, he’s like a poem or a painting, everyone interprets him differently. Some assume he’s wearing a costume. Some are scared of him like he’s a monster. But punks in alleys or rednecks in diners see him and immediately surround him and try to bully him. You know how those punks are, if they see a duckman they break into a sinister grin and start cracking their knuckles. Cleveland is dangerous for anyone, but especially a 3′2″ talking asshole duck who thinks he’s the shit.

“Diner” isn’t really accurate. It looks like the same old fashioned diners from all movies, but it’s called “Joe Roma’s Cajun Sushi.” You get it? Satire. Because what’s up with sushi, am I right?

Another running joke: when somebody’s turning into a monster or something somebody will say “I think he needs some coffee.” Because we all need our coffee in the morning, huh? Tell me about it! Don’t even get me started! Caffeine! Funny.

There’s actually a couple lines in the movie that made me laugh:

1. Howard is trying to get work, and a social worker thinks he’s pulling a scam: “You think by lookin controversial you’re never gonna find a job and just go on collecting unemployment.” I don’t know why, I just love wearing a duck costume being described as “lookin controversial.”

2. The waitress (Jorli McLain) at the, uh, cajun sushi place is pretty good, and when the possessed Jeffrey Jones is freaking out on her she gets upset and says, “Y’know, hostility is like a psychic boomerang.”

Maybe you had to be there. Not that I’m telling you to be there. I mean, you could. It’s your choice.

The director is Willard Huyck, who wrote the script with his wife Gloria Katz. They’re the team that made that weird horror movie MESSIAH OF EVIL. They were friends with George Lucas at USC, helped him out a little with STAR WARS and wrote AMERICAN GRAFFITI, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and RADIOLAND MURDERS for him. So I guess he called them up when he had this sweet gig of this duck movie he was producing.

In my opinion HOWARD THE DUCK is not as good as STAR WARS (yes, including the prequels you fuckin babies). The one aspect that does seem George Lucasy is that the special effects are pretty great. I mean, Howard is obviously an animatronic duck mask worn by a little person, and kind of looks like he escaped from Show Biz Pizza Place during a smoke break. But I thought they got a surprising amount of expression out of him, I accepted him as a character.

I don’t like his look though. I know they just didn’t have the technology, but it kinda bothers me that this duck doesn’t have a neck. Necks seem like a pretty important part of ducks. This is why Disney/Marvel MUST reboot the HOWARD THE DUCK saga using the motion capture technology from RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES to create a believable duck neck. Also there would be room for more sophisticated Quack Fu choreography. Give him some solo movies to set him up for leading the Avengers as he did in the comics probly (no time to research). Or he could team up with some of the other great Marvel Comics characters that have had movies such as Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer or Garfield.

But the truly great effect is the stop motion Dark Overlord of the Universe monster at the end. It’s done by the great Phil Tippett and has a really impressive amount of detail and personality in its movement. It almost looks digital, in a good way. I love this fuckin thing:

Unlike THE AVENGERS, HOWARD THE DUCK was a notorious flop. It barely made back its production budget in theaters, got vicious reviews and caused the head of production at Universal to get replaced. Uh, probly ’cause it was marketed wrong? I can’t see any logical explanation for why people wouldn’t want to see it…

According to interviews on the DVD, Katz and Huyck “knew pretty well early on we were a fried egg” so they flew to Hawaii and didn’t read any reviews. Decades later they’re still kind of in denial. Katz describes what they wanted as “kind of very film noir with this absurdist element” and then busts out the ol’ “it’s not supposed to be Hamlet” defense:

“I don’t know if it was before its time, or it was misunderstood, but, I mean listen, this is a movie about a duck from outer space. It’s not supposed to be, you know, an existential experience here. We’re supposed to have fun with this concept. But for some reason reviewers weren’t able to get over that problem.”

See, I got that it was about a duck from outer space. That was explained in the movie. But if there’s a way to make a good movie about a duck from outer space, this sure as shit isn’t even close to it. I mean come on, lady. Have you watched it?

But if he would’ve hit that it would’ve been a perfect movie. I don’t know why he’s so racist. Beverly got over her hangups and she has alot more to offer to him than he does to her. Alot of ducks now days think they’re real progressive because they were hippies back in the day, but they’re alot more conservative and establishment than they realize.

It starts with a bang, which in this case means a conversation with a guy he has locked in the trunk of his car, followed by a non-metaphorical bang when he blows up the car. That’s a great classical lead-up to the title, but would it have killed you to put in a “SCOTT ADKINS IS,” After Dark? Why does nobody ever get an “is” credit anymore? In fact he doesn’t even get his name on the opening. Not cool. I’m against it.

Like Adkins’ best character Boyka, El Gringo is an anti-hero. He commits murder in the opening scene and is kind of a cocky asshole. Also he calls women “honey” (as in “you’re holding the knife wrong, honey.”) In my opinion Adkins radiates nice guy, so this isn’t as natural a fit on him as it is for Kurt Russell or somebody, at least not without doing his Russian accent. But he pulls it off.

Director Eduardo Rodriguez seems to be riffing on Robert Rodriguez (no relation)’s riffs on spaghetti westerns. Predictably the music is a mediocre combination of fake-Morricone and rock, but most of the other elements work better. Lots of extreme camera angles (gimmicky POVs, hero shots) keep it visually interesting. A little cartoonish, but in a good way. There’s one unique bit of filmatistic language: every time a character realizes they’re about to die their face turns black and white. A couple times this also happens to inanimate objects, and the logic is sound. You’d have to see it, I guess.

El Gringo (also referred to as “perro” and “The Man,” which I believe is English for El Gringo) is having the shittiest day of his life. Some NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN type shit just went down (revealed later in a couple flashbacks), he’s having a hell of a time finding a drink of water (first due to bad luck, then straight up cruelty by Mexican bartenders), some girl keeps trying to steal his bag without even knowing what’s in it, and the lady at the bus station claims there’s no bus coming until maybe tomorrow. And things are gonna keep getting worse. Part of what makes the whitey relatable is his exasperated reactions to all this. Rodriguez is nice enough to give him a beat to say “Aw, shit” or shake his head in disgust to what’s happening.

There are a couple different running gags, but my favorite one involves his rapport with the dog that he rescues from being abused by some dudes at a shack out in the desert. The dog loyally follows him and every time some shit goes down he gives it a disappointed look for not helping out. After one particularly embarrassing ambush he yells at the dog, “Get your head in the game!”

There’s a pretty good love interest (Yvette Yates), a bartender with some serious va-va-voom, of which the camera takes note. (I think the camera is a boob-man.) I like that she’s so unimpressed by him at first that she makes him pay $500 cash for a shot glass of water, and even then makes a long drawn out show of pouring it a few drops at a time. She let’s him sleep in her attic (and more), but she’s not a pushover.

Yates is pretty good – she doesn’t seem like an off-brand Salma Hayek, even though she does sexy bullet removal surgery like Hayek did in DESPERADO.

The other major female character is Flaca (Sofia Sisniega), the girl that keeps trying to steal his bag. She has almost a Wile E. Coyote quality to her. She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into, and I kind of rooted for her because I knew she could never pull it off. She chose the wrong gringo.

Trivia: Sisniega is also in GET THE GRINGO, the other action movie with “GRINGO” in the title that came out on VOD the same day that my friend thought I was talking about when I said I was gonna watch this. (It’s on Direct TV or something that I don’t get, so I’ll have to wait.)

And there’s the gang leader with the Day of the Dead skeleton makeup. Don’t worry, it’s better than it sounds. He’s pretty interesting because he at times is willing to let the gringo go. He’s not as single-minded as you’d expect from a guy with guns and face paint.

One thing most of the After Dark Action movies seem to have in common is putting a marquee name in a supporting role and then maybe playing them up too much in the promotion. But hopefully people won’t be disappointed that Christian Slater’s character doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time. I think he’s pretty good in it though, pretty funny. He’s the only character that makes fun of the guy’s skeleton makeup.

This is a solid and enjoyable Adkins vehicle that I would recommend to anybody who enjoys a good Adkins or Van Damme type of picture. But the public has a right to know that it’s more of a showcase of him as a leading man than as a martial artist. Of course he fights, but it’s more about running around getting in gun fights than his usual acrobatic kicks. Don’t worry though, there’s a pretty good amount of action with some good moves (my favorite: he uses a guy as a human shield, then shoots through him, then kicks him in the back pushing him into some other people) and some explosions. I like explosions. Also, I could be wrong, but I swear it’s all analog blood. Lots of size-XL blood packs. Did you know they still make those? Somebody should get the word out.

The movie’s biggest weakness is that it fails to learn the lessons of a previous era of DTV action. Not enough to ruin it for me, but this does have the annoying stylistic lack of discipline that came about when people first started editing digitally and were excited to find out what all the buttons did. I guess maybe they were nostalgic for the days when Avid farts were a bigger problem than shakycam. During a flashback shootout there’s a sort of strobing style of editing that at first seems like a reflection of the machine guns being used in the scene. But it keeps coming back in other flashbacks. It never reaches KILL SWITCH levels of shitting-the-bed, but there’s at least one scene where I wondered if they were trying to annoy me into turning it off and ordering STASH HOUSE instead.

The one big flying kick that Adkins does has a strobe edit on it, so you don’t get to see it that well. Despite this, the action is all clearer than the modern standard. At least the cameras are aiming at stuff.

Did anybody watch any of the other After Dark Action titles, and if so, do they all have the stupid freeze-frames-with-character-names cliche? I’m wondering if one of the producers demands it. What is the thought process, anyway? You know, I don’t like in this scene how the character walks in, and you have to be introduced to them and find out who they are through context. What I’d like to do is, I’d like to freeze frame it and write their name on the screen. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Wait, no, this is kind of boring, why don’t we trace over the frame in Photoshop, so it looks more like a comic book? You know, like one of those comic books that’s traced over in Photoshop. I love it!

You know what, this looks terrible, why don’t we put a layer of texture over it, like an old wanted poster or something? That’s probly what we need.

Hmmm, still bad, kind of seems like we shouldn’t have done this, but we’ve put alot of work into it, so I’m keeping it. You know what? Sounds effects. Like a WHOOOOSHHHH  combined with a SHOOONKK maybe? And guitars maybe?

I don’t know. Just use it, I’m leaving. Do this with all the characters.

Another thing they always do now, including in DRAGON EYES: digitally washed out colors. In some scenes it kind of looks like a faded vacation photo from the ’70s, that’s kinda nice, but other times they just make it look colorless. At least they’re trying to make it look sunny, so it’s not the dreary bluish-but-almost-black-and-white of so many of the shot-in-Bulgaria DTVs. But still. Put some color in these movies sometimes, fellas. Red, blue, green, yellow. There’s different ones, you’re allowed to put them next to each other sometimes. Look it up.

Also, thumbs down to the local-news-quality Acapulco graphic that’s supposed to be hilarious every time it shows up. It’s like they felt bad about not using computers for the blood so they had to throw in some other needless shit to keep America working.

Yeah, I had those complaints, but I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. It’s a solid B-level Scott Adkins that I think some people will find on cable and maybe he’ll get to go farther than Gary Daniels or somebody. I say that with all due respect to Gary, but I haven’t seen any movies by him I liked as much as the UNDISPUTEDs, so I got higher hopes for Adkins.

Notes:
1. IMDb was wrong about Michael Jai White and Matt Mullins being in the movie. That was apparently a misunderstanding about a photo of them on the set of that HEAVY METAL tv show
2. Speaking of heavy metal, the band “Manowar” does the theme song on the end credits, if that means anything to anybody
3. Isaac Florentine is credited as executive producer, which may or may not confirm the rumors that he rappelled in to help with some of the action scenes

The original MOTHER’S DAY was written by Charles Kaufman – not the SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK guy, the Lloyd Kaufman’s brother guy. I don’t remember it much but I thought it was kind of a Troma-esque riff on the TEXAS CHAIN SAW family of inbred maniacs type story. This is credited as a remake, but it doesn’t have much to do with the original from what I could tell, and the tone is completely opposite. If anything it’s too serious. But pretty good.

tThe reason I watched it: Rebecca De Mornay plays the mother. I’m not sure why I was thinking she was some revered artist above doing schlock, but I was surprised they could get her for this. She’s good in it, a serious non-mega performance of a good looking, well dressed lady psycho. She looks like she could be reporting the news or working in the West Wing, but instead she’s terrorizing a bunch of innocent hostages in her old house that got foreclosed.

The shit goes down when her sons come home, one sporting a could-be-fatal bullet wound earned in a botched bank robbery. They’re outlaws who fucked up their system of secret communication (basically they lost the dedicated cell phone Mom gave them) so they didn’t know she didn’t own the house anymore. They bust in, realize they’re not alone and have to take the new owners and their guests hostage. During the housewarming party, no less. The house is not even warm and this happens.

This does have some things in common with the SAW series. No Rube Goldberg contraptions, but the brothers are sickos who find a wide variety of ways to mistreat these people. Most disturbingly and most SAW-like, they seem bent on proving that human nature is ugly. They especially enjoy putting people in situations where they have to doom their friends if they want to survive. Some of their victims give in, and it’s not even backstabbing – one girl stabs her friend in the front.

Just as they turn on their friends I turned on the movie a couple times. It seemed to agree with the torturers, having ugly secrets revealed so our protagonists are jerks, or even somewhat responsible for what goes down. But ultimately it seems to be saying that people can work through their fuck-ups, find redemption and unite to survive. I even found it moving when one character emotionally apologized for something while in danger. So the movie and I begrudgingly became allies.

When I wasn’t feeling like I was getting my nose rubbed in it I was impressed by the amount of variety in the horrors that happen within this simple scenario. A few characters have to leave the house, so there are tense situations at an ATM, at a hospital, at a traffic stop. I don’t know if the tornado was necessary, and if it was maybe they should’ve had one of the bad guys get sucked up and fly away like the cow in TWISTER, but I guess it adds to the helpless, apocalyptic atmosphere. There are some effectively gruesome sights, some admirable escape attempts, some savage reprisals, some good twists. It puts us in messy situations where the lines between self sacrifice and stupidity are not clear. It doesn’t encourage an every-man-for-himself attitude, but acknowledges that sometimes it might be the smartest option.

It earned my respect as it went along. At first the characters – both victims and victimizers – seem like pretty typical bland studio casting and characterization. Good looking middle class white people with one gorgeous black couple; sweaty, spikey-haired bad guys trying to do a touch of redneck menace without going full (or even one-third) Hitchhiker. (One guy has one of those big leather bracelets with studs, so you know he’s legit.) And it’s hard not to be distracted by how obvious it is that the guy with the bullet wound studied Tim Roth’s performance in RESERVOIR DOGS. But as the situation gets out of control the threat feels more legitimate. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT grimy, but with less rape. Refreshing.

In the house they got Shawn Ashmore, who I believe was one of the young X-Men. They also got Briana Evigan, the star of STEP UP 2, but she doesn’t get to dance and they put some shitty tattoos on her. (It’s weird that she’s in this, because she’s in Dolph’s upcoming movie STASH HOUSE, which is about the exact same thing – couple in house that used to belong to criminals being terrorized because there might be loot hidden in the walls.) They have Frank Grillo, who I immediately liked because he’s the guy from WARRIOR and THE GREY, but he turns out to be less deserving of my support than some of the other characters.

The standout in the cast of protagonists is Jaime King. She’s only about 30 but she’s got some womanly age around her super model eyes that makes her seem a little more real than when she was a youth. I remember she at first went by “James King,” which seemed like a ballsy thing she could only pull off because of her looks. But she changed it to Jaime pretty quick.

Anyway she pulls it together pretty good and it becomes a story of opposing mothers, like ALIENS. Only a brief flashback actually takes place on Mother’s Day, but the themes are definitely appropriate for the holiday. Both of these women dearly want to be mothers, but have some difficulties with it. One of them, in my opinion, would probly do a better job.

But De Mornay definitely makes the movie. I especially like her during the short period where she tries to pretend she’s a nice lady. Seeing the violence in her (former) home she says “This is unacceptable!” and asks the hostages to “Please, sit down.” Her eyes are wide and she seems very sincere. She’s not being sarcastic as a way of threatening them, she’s serious. Like she thinks her etiquette will make what they’re doing more justifiable. I wish she’d kept that up longer, like the Cook apologizing for poking Sally with the broom in TEXAS CHAIN SAW, but she’s still fun when she’s more open about being evil. I disagree with some of the things she encourages her boys to do, but I guess it’s always good to be a supportive parent.

This also might be the most crying I’ve seen a horror movie villain do in a long time. That’s pretty unique that she gets upset as much as she gets angry.

Hopefully this won’t be an implied spoiler, but I like how it ends too. These characters have to make it through a harrowing gauntlet of brutality, but there are parts that remind me of the more fun-oriented franchise horror of the ’80s, and I like that. It’s dark but more ridiculous than some of the horrible shit that happened to the characters earlier, so it works as a bit of an entertainment cherry on top of the punch-in-the-face sundae. Hope you enjoy it, Mom!

I guess we weren’t the only ones that noticed, because (as reported a couple days ago on Twitch) Lionsgate has now released an Adkins as Hector poster.

So here’s the poster:

and I’m sure you’ve all seen the new trailer:

I know some of you wanted a place to discuss that. I don’t have time right now to go through shot by shot like I did on the teaser, but a couple points:

1.  Action doesn’t look shaky from what they show
2. Did Statham mention to Stallone that he already did that finger gun gag in CRANK? (or maybe CRANK 2, I can’t remember)
3. I like the ridiculous “man and knife” line, but I think we can all agree it would work better if Arnold said it
4. Still not enough Couture
5. I’m glad they figured out that it was important for the names to be made out of metal and for them to be slammed onto the screen with a loud clank
6. Probly the most heavily armed movie logo of all time
7. Kind of disappointing that the logo doesn’t explode and send shrapnel, mortally wounding other trailers

Spartan is a typical non-iconic Stallone character – mumbly, down-to-earth, see-through-the-bullshit everyman, except when he goes into battle, then he’s so prone to blow shit up that he’s nicknamed Demolition Man against his wishes.

Phoenix is larger-than-life, bordering on mega in his villainy. He’s kind of a bizarro Blade – he has almost the same haircuit, but bleached blond. Instead of black leather he wears loud early ’90s clothes, almost like a clown costume. He fights in a similar style to Blade but instead of being quietly cocky about it he’s flipping everybody shit and strutting around laughing. When he finds out about the outcast underclasses living literally underground he borrows their ROAD WARRIOR fashion sense, armor and big shoulder pads made out of tires.

The movie opens in 1996, 3 years into the future from when it was released. Los Angeles in chaos, so the first shot is from the back of the Hollywood sign, on fire. Phoenix has declared South Central a sovereign kingdom and has taken a bunch of hostages to insure whitey’s boot staying off his neck. When Spartan comes to confront him Phoenix blows up the hostages, and since blowing shit up is Spartan’s trademark everybody thinks he did it. Instead of prison they both get frozen, ’cause obviously that’s what they did in the futuristic mid-’90s.

The joke is that the good guy maniac and the bad guy maniac awake in 2032 to a world that’s never seen anything like them, “a society of peace and understanding” where there hasn’t been a murder in 16 years. Or, as Phoenix puts it, “The world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of robed sissies.”

Phoenix sounds mad, but he actually loves it, because he can just go around beating up cops, calling them “Stoopid!”, doing what he wants. Since he was freed as part of a conspiracy he was also taught all kinds of computer shit through osmosis, and has crazy hacker abilities. (Spartan was only given the ability to knit.)

Spartan teams up with a couple of the modern cops, future MISS CONGENIALITY co-stars Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt. But guns are literally history (you only see them in the “Hall of Violence” display at the museum) so they don’t really do the same type of police work he’s used to, and Bratt doesn’t even know how to carry himself in what would be considered a manly manner. But Bullock is obsessed with the 20th century, so she’s excited to work with him and acts as sort of a translator between eras. Kind of like what would happen if a detective from the ’50s was transported to the future and teamed with the cast of some production of Grease.

Like in MINORITY REPORT there’s a sacrifice in freedom that has to be made to achieve this peace and harmony. “This fascist crap makes me want to puke,” Spartan says. The fascist crap includes fines for the use of profanity, RFID chips implanted in hands, chocolate and spicy foods banned. When Bullock proposes sex with him he gets excited but it turns out to be something where you put a device on your head and think about fucking (a gag lifted from BARBARELLA). People of the future are so against bodily fluid exchanges that she’s disgusted by the idea of kissing. At first I didn’t believe that could be taken out of the human instinct but then I thought about how cow’s milk is fine but I would probly puke if I tried to drink human milk. So we can be trained to go against our nature.

Spartan starts to realize that the powers-that-be he’s working for are not really the good guys, and the outcasts who are trying to steal food are not really the bad guys. But the rebels don’t seem as upset about economic inequality as about the nanny state. Their leader is Dennis Leary, who apparently was cast only so he could do one of those corny rants he did on MTV about how he wants to eat red meat and smoke cigars and he’s mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. In the ’90s people were real fuckin worried about this “political correctness.” Quite a luxury.

In addition to stealing food the rebels climb through sewers to perpetrate drone graffiti attacks. A great idea, but instantly counter-acted by self-cleaning walls, and really bad graffiti anyway.

As with any movie like this it’s funny to compare its predictions of the future to reality. Their idea of futuristic phones isn’t too far off – it’s basically an iPad. They didn’t know how small they were gonna get, that’s all. They were way off on video formats, since they mention laser discs. There’s a reference to Jeffrey Dahmer being frozen in the future, though in reality he was killed in prison even before Spartan and Phoenix were frozen. Bullock’s late 20th century artifacts do not seem all that representative from my perspective: she has posters for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, an album called Hate Fed Love by a band called Bomb, and LETHAL WEAPON 3. There’s a reference to Unsolved Mysteries, so people still remember that in the future. Or maybe we can look forward to a reboot. Interestingly there’s a mention of Jackie Chan movies. This was a pretty cool reference because Jackie wasn’t very well known to the mainstream in the U.S. until a couple years later when RUMBLE IN THE BRONX came out. So that was a correct prediction.

It’s a little weird that it brings up the serious matter of Spartan sleeping through his wife’s death and his daughter growing old, then doesn’t mention it again. Apparently a subplot about finding his daughter was cut out, because they were more interested in spectacle. Some of the stunts are pretty cool, like the bungee jump out of a police helicopter at the beginning, and Spartan running through hallways taking out a bunch of different guys. Snipes’s moves are good, showing his knack for badass martial arts posing, for example:

I’m not too excited about the climax taking place on a big laboratory set, but I guess you gotta bring the ice cubes back to the freezer at the end.

It’s a Joel Silver production. The director is Marco Brambilla. You know, Marco Brambilla, the video artist. He went on to direct EXCESS BAGGAGE and some TV before going back to being a video artist. But it seems to me like the most noticeable voice is Daniel Waters (HEATHERS, FORD FAIRLANE, HUDSON HAWK) who according to Silver on the commentary track wrote the original script that was re-written by Robert Reneau (ACTION JACKSON) and Peter M. Lenkov (SON IN LAW, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER 2-3 [the cable ones with Burt Reynolds]). The dialogue and humorous concepts seem in line with his other work. But I appreciate one instance where they avoided a quip (END SPOILER): Phoenix is frozen and gets his head broken off like Christian Slater’s leg in MINDHUNTERS. This is a callback to the opening when he said that he’d lose his head if it wasn’t attached and Spartan said he’d remember that. I also remembered it so I like that Spartan doesn’t make a joke about it. They don’t have to point it out to the audience.

I’m gonna go ahead and give Waters credit for the goofy names, too. Bullock’s character is named Lenina Huxley, obviously in reference to Aldous Huxley and Brave New World. Bratt’s character is Alfredo Garcia, because he’s… well, he doesn’t carry a severed head around. I have no idea why he’s named that. Because it’s a good movie.

Also Glenn Shadix, the priest in HEATHERS, plays the executive assistant “Associate Bob.”

Silver claims that Dennis Rodman got his hair-do from Simon Phoenix. I wonder if that’s also where he got his movie SIMON SEZ, which happens to be an annoying catch-phrase for Phoenix.

It’s a movie with alot of laughs and I enjoy watching it, but I think there’s something missing, and I think I know what it is. It’s a satire, but a satire of what? The best satirical sci-fi concepts have that THEY LIVE feeling of “it figures it would be something like this” accuracy. I think DEMOLITION MAN tries for that but fails.

The joke about getting fined every time they curse is always good for a laugh, especially since (with the exception of a scene in the middle where Phoenix seems to get away with a couple) it continues throughout the movie – whenever a character swears a recording can be heard somewhere in the background informing them that they are in violation – Big Brother’s swear jar. We can all laugh at this because it’s so silly and because we hate uptight people telling us what words to use. But the idea that our society is headed toward a future like this seems completely off base to me. In the years since DEMOLITION MAN we’ve seen South Park and Family Guy, you can say “shit” on regular TV shows, The Boondocks can say the n-word on the Cartoon Network and kids can find on the internet what previous generations could only dream of finding hidden in their dad’s closets. There will always be some prudes stirring up shit about Janet Jackson’s boob on the Super Bowl or whatever, but it would be ludicrous to argue that society in general is moving in the direction of complete sanitization. So that part rings funny, but not true.

I think instead of imagining a dystopia by extrapolating from things going on in the modern world DEMOLITION MAN extrapolates from things going on in the fantasy world of ’80s cop movies. It’s not the nightmare future a real person fears, it’s the one Marion Cobretti does. It’s a dystopia because crime and murder have been successfully curbed non-violently. There’s no one for him to blow up and nothing for him to do. When he chauvinistically insists on driving the car he finds out that cars of the future drive themselves. And those damn liberals are trying to stop him from getting heartburn. He has to go into the underground to buy a burger and then it turns out to be made of rat meat. (He still thinks it’s great, though.) He enlightens Bullock and Bratt by teaching them violence. That’s how he improves the world. Maybe he should’ve just bought everybody rat-burgers.

I will give them some credit for showing a corporate-controlled future. In this world all restaurants are Taco Bells – even the fancy rich person restaurant with waiters and tiny, pretty servings. And the most popular radio station is an oldies station that only plays “mini-tunes,” which is advertising jingles. I don’t know about an oldies station being the most popular station, but I’m a sucker for that type of concept.

Looking back, the movie is weirdly tone deaf for the time it came out. We just had the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots/uprising. That was April 29 – May 4th, ‘92. DEMOLITION MAN came out in October of ‘93, so it was filming just after the riots (Brambilla says on the commentary that’s why he put the burning Hollywood sign in there, to show even more unrest in ‘96). In that context isn’t it weird we’re supposed to side with the white LAPD cop known for going too far, and believe the militant black man in South Central who wants to be left alone is a hostage-taking terrorist super-villain? Is it an intentional visual reference to the Rodney King beating when bad-guy Snipes is surrounded by white cops with clubs? (I don’t think so, because there’s 6 cops instead of 2).

I’m sure it was written before Rodney King got beat up, and I’m not sure Simon Phoenix was even originally intended to be black (the ol’ IMDb trivia claims Stallone tried to get Jackie Chan to do it). But geez, man. Right after Rodney King, and they’re making a movie with the point of view that the LAPD should be allowed to be more violent, and the black guy from South Central is lying to make him look bad? It just shows how clueless some of us whites were about what was going on over there, that we thought that was okay.

I’m not trying to tear the movie apart, I just think that’s interesting to dissect. But there is one aspect of the movie that I find very offensive: they fuckin waste Jesse Ventura! He’s in here as another unfrozen ex-con that works for Snipes, but you barely notice him. I guess he had a fight scene that got cut out, but he shoulda got more than that anyway. This is like 6 years after PREDATOR, and also after RUNNING MAN, which is right in this movie’s sub-Verhoeven action satire wheelhouse. It’s not like they didn’t know what he could do.

Shame on you, DEMOLITION MAN. Shame.

Isaac also directed THE HORROR SHOW, SKINWALKERS and PIG HUNT.

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I don’t know if it’s clear – I’m not talking about the Julianne Moore one, I’m talking about the Jason Statham one.

Statham’s character Luke Wright is more of an everyman than he usually plays, because he’s totally down on his luck. In a way he’s the anti-Transporter. He does drive a couple times, but only stolen cars, and he doesn’t make it far without getting a bunch of bullets through his windows. He doesn’t have a nice car like Frank Transporter, in fact he doesn’t have a car at all, or much of anything else. He’s homeless. He doesn’t wear a suave suit, he wears a stained sweatshirt and even when he uses a credit card stolen from a Russian gangster to buy nicer clothes he keeps his ratty worn out tennis shoes (probly on account of an incident earlier in the movie caused by his nicest pair of kicks). I think this is significant. He’s a guy that doesn’t need luxury, maybe thinks he doesn’t deserve it, only uses it as a disguise, and even then only as much as he needs.

As he’s building himself back up for revenge it was easy to notice that this character has some Parker-esque qualities. Man, I hope that movie is good.

He does try to protect an Asian girl like the Transporter did, but not because he was hired to. He does it because as he’s about to commit suicide he sees her being chased by the same assholes that murdered his wife ’cause he owed them money. A sign from God. Her name is Mei and she’s a math prodigy who has some very valuable numbers memorized, so she’s a human McMuffin.

SAFE is written and directed by Boaz Yakin. That’s the guy that was a writer on the Dolph version of THE PUNISHER, then THE ROOKIE, then in 1994 became a director with the excellent FRESH. Since then he hasn’t really done the type of movies I’ve been interested in seeing (he directed A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES, REMEMBER THE TITANS, UPTOWN GIRLS…) other than having a part in writing FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2 and producing the HOSTELs. But I always thought he was good, so I had my fingers crossed for his return to action movies.

I’m not superstitious, but maybe the finger crossing helped. This is a movie that shows the sure hand of a director trying to do something interesting without completely violating the expectations of an action movie. Honoring the traditions but putting a little bit of a spin on them. It has a good use of a flashback structure, beginning with the crucial intersection of Luke and Mei’s lives, then bumping back to show how they got there, but catching up early on so we can continue in the present tense without any confusion. It has alot of what I think of as “propulsive stortyelling” – scenes that give you only the information you need and then cut immediately to the next thing you need instead of lingering. For example, Luke is first introduced in a cage about to fight, cut to him being chewed out by the other fighter’s wife as he tries to apologize for putting him in a coma. (Later it does have some fighting, so I was okay with it goofing on me at this point.)

IMDB lists UNDISPUTED II’s J.J. “Loco” Perry as one of the fight choreographers, but I swear the movie listed him only as stunt coordinator and somebody else whose name I forgot got a full screen “action choreographed by” credit. The action scenes do involve alot of handheld cameras, but in my opinion they’re well done and qualify as action, not post-action. Despite some chaos you can always see Statham’s moves and his hits, you know what he’s doing to the guy.

My favorite bits of action are the shootouts that make artful use of a limited perspective. There are two scenes where the camera is inside a car being attacked and the shooters can only be seen in the rear-view and side mirrors. I thought that was a clever alternative to the shakycam we hate, a way of putting you in the confusion of battle but still showing you something.

That’s in line with the style of other non-action scenes where certain things are left deliberately unshown. He gets interrogated by cops and you only see them from the shoulders down (they don’t have that Peanuts “wuh-wahhh-wuh-WUUUUHHhhh” type talking), he comes home to find his wife dead surrounded by Russian gangsters, and you only see him looking in a doorway and curling his fists in that way Statham often does that looks so cool. You never see his wife, or even blood. You don’t have to.

It’s kind of funny how you keep finding out more about Luke’s background. I was willing to accept that he could handle himself because he was a cage fighter, but then we find out another thing he used to do, and another. It kind of builds from him trying to stay out of trouble to going full on OUT FOR JUSTICE on some guys, and he has a great way of putting together a formidable team to back him up when he makes his move on the safe in a bid to make him and the girl safe. Oh shit, I think I just realized something about the title. It is possible that it has a double meaning. Probly not.

James Hong is in the movie. You expect a bunch of balloons to fall down and congratulate him on his 1,000th sleazy Asian mafia kingpin role. There are alot of good faces in the supporting cast, guys that look like they’ve been knocked around by life and remain standing. The only one I could place was Igor Jijikine, the scary lookin Russian from the opening of KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and from Seagal’s DRIVEN TO KILL. I mean, I had to look up his name, but I knew it was the same guy. I noticed Danny Hoch in the credits, that’s the performance artist who did that movie WHITE BOYS, but I didn’t recognize him in the movie. Maybe if he’d done a freestyle.

The mayor is played by Chris Sarandon, and there’s another guy that looked similar to him, causing a momentary confusion for me that was enjoyable. I thought for a second they were telling me that the mayor was previously part of an elite hit squad. That would’ve been pretty good.

I like the score, especially during the end credits. It sounds very old school and hard-hitting, without a cute retro or tongue in cheekness about it. I was really surprised when I checked the credits and it was Wes Anderson’s chum Mark Mothersbaugh.

I did feel SAFE was guilty of one major action movie sin: during the climactic showdown it has the characters putting their guns down Mad Dog style so they can use their fists, then doesn’t have the fight. They make a joke out of it, but I don’t think the joke is as good as the fight would’ve been. It’s not a dealbreaker, though. And not as painful as the championship ring in THE MECHANIC being merely a clue and not the promise of a good fight that I read it as.

As I’m writing this I realize that Statham has a whole bunch of movies that I don’t consider great but that I enjoyed watching: DEATH RACE, THE MECHANIC, KILLER ELITE, the pretty good ensembles like ITALIAN JOB and BANK JOB. My favorite movie where he’s the star is TRANSPORTER 2, which is weird because I didn’t really like the other two very much, but that one was just so joyfully ridiculous. Even in his dull or annoying movies I always like him. Career-wise, not quality-wise, he’s the closest thing we have to a modern Bronson, Stallone, Schwarzenegger or whatever, a brand name for endless supplies of theatrically released action movies. There are plenty of people who will go see the new Statham movie and not even have to know what it’s about. And we don’t care that he’s always playing basically the same guy.

Does Statham have a DEATH WISH, a FIRST BLOOD, a TERMINATOR/CONAN/PREDATOR on his filmography to make him worthy of that status? Nope. But it could happen. SAFE isn’t on that level, but it’s a good one. It gives me faith that his best movies aren’t behind him.

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As much as I enjoyed Uma Thurman and the teddy bear costumes in the original AVENGERS, this one is an improvement. It’s a fun super hero movie with lots of colorful super-characters like in the X-MEN pictures, but with more of a disaster-movie-level of spectacle. Instead of just fighting 1-3 supervillains they’re fighting an alien invasion. As you know this teams up characters from IRON MAN 1-2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) (arguably), CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR under the direction and writing of Joss Whedon (SERENITY, Buffy the Vampire, all that). If they had had some guy from Doctor Who in there and based it on a video game or anime it would’ve had the monopoly on all of the existing nerd audiences. But also it’s fun for all of us.

Okay, I know everybody’s already made that joke about the Sean Connery AVENGERS, so sorry about that. But I haven’t seen anybody point out the important element present in both movies:

Am I right, fellas? Coincidence or not, I appreciate that AVENGERSes traditionally have a good lookin fake red head kickin ass in a black leather catsuit.

Anyway. Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the fantasy asshole brother from THOR, has teamed up with some ugly alien dudes to fly through a magic portal on Green Goblin sky skis and a herd of giant flying robotic worms in an attempt to conquer the puny humans. I guess Asgardians are naive and don’t know you can control the world with a corporation. Or maybe they do know that but they just love the giant flying robotic worms. That would be a legitimate stance in my opinion.

Whedon and Marvel Comics/Movies do exactly as promised, they combine the elements of each of the previous movies in the series: Iron Man gets to do his quipping and hot-rodding (with a whole bevy of weirdos to make up insulting nicknames for), Thor brings his fantasy world and old timey speechifying, Captain America brings his soldier’s sense of duty, inspiration and boy scout etiquette (best line: “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that”), The Incredible Bruce Banner brings his dread of the monster inside but finally comes to terms with turning green and smashing shit on purpose.

And they all team up for a big battle but I like the way the movie (which is about 2 1/2 hours long, a good length for the subject) takes its time putting them together. It kind of reminds me of UNCOMMON VALOUR when they have to go around and recruit each of the team members. The other movies got the origin stories out of the way but this gets to re-introduce them, so we see what they’re up to now and how they’re convinced to come in.

Whedon’s quippy dialogue gets alot of praise (’cause alot of it’s funny) and criticism (’cause it seems formulaic at times), and his fans love his characters and his troupe of actors and everything. But he probly doesn’t get enough credit for his construction. I like the way these scenes flow into each other, the end of each pushing into what needs to happen next. In the same vein, it has one of those perfect title sequences. What are we gonna do? Nick Fury turns, very serious. THE AVENGERS.

Whedon’s also a good juggler. Probly literally, but also figuratively. All of the characters get to have their moments and their little storylines. Even that S.H.I.E.L.D. guy Agent Coulson and one of my favorite CAPTAIN AMERICA characters, Captain America’s Shield. Various combinations of the super heroes get to fight each other (Thor vs. Hulk, Iron Man vs. Thor, Thor’s Hammer vs. Captain America’s Shield) and become friends with each other. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner nerd out over science shit. Recently-unfrozen-from-WWII Captain America is excited when visiting-from-another-plane Thor is more out of touch than he is. Black Widow earns Captain America’s respect enough that he’s willing to take a former brainwashed traitor back into the fold based only on her nod of approval.

It is cool to see all these big characters together, but ironically I was most excited about the only one that didn’t carry over from the previous movie. I fuckin knew Edward Norton would never stick around for AVENGERS, and that seemed like they blew it. But it was great to see the character  now played by Mark Ruffalo and with a different Hulk look. He has chest hair. Hulk gets a couple of the best moments in the movie, and it’s always a thrill when he shows up because he adds some good chaos. I don’t know man, I just like seeing a big growling monster run through an office, makin everybody shit their pants. It’s satisfying.

In THE INCREDIBLE HULK the audience’s needs were opposite of the hero’s, because it was in his best interest not to turn into the monster that we needed him to turn into in order to be entertained. Here it’s okay to root for him to turn into the monster because hey, Tony Stark’s doin it, and also he gets to do it on purpose to help save the day.

I was also into the secondary characters that we get to see more than in the previous movies. Heading the organization is Nick Fury, previously seen in after-credits scenes and distracting from the plot in IRON MAN 2. I don’t think Samuel L. Jackson can say the Whedon dialogue as well as he can Tarantino’s, but this is made up for by the fact that he’s wearing an eyepatch and a Blade coat and shot from many heroic angles. He’s an interesting leader because he’s Machiavellian enough to exaggerate a story to manipulate the Avengers, but conscientious enough to flat refuse an order to RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD Manhattan. We respect him because when a jet tries to take off to drop the bomb he personally chases after it and fires a rocket at it. But his superiors knew him well enough to have sent a decoy. Then he pulls out his handgun, like that’s gonna do something. Kind of like when Don Frye pulled a sword on Godzilla. Nick Fury is the Don Frye of The Avengers.

Then there’s Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. He’s just a guy that’s real good with arrows. He has exploding ones and grappling ones and all types of shit. He’s ballsy enough to jump off buildings. I think some people are racist against the non-super-super heroes and don’t think they should be in here because they’re not magic and can’t afford a billion dollar flying suit. But personally I like that there are a couple of Avengers that are just highly trained assassins, like Hawkeye and Black Widow (Scarlett Johannsen). They prove their worth.

This Whedon is known for his strong woman characters, so I wasn’t surprised that Black Widow is a stand-out in this movie. I mean, I liked her in IRON MAN 2 actually, because 1. hubba, 2. the fight in the hallway, and 3. hubba. But here she gives a better acting performance and has more to do, including a great introduction where she gets to outsmart people, kick ass, be funny and demonstrate what the greatest Marvel Comics movie character of all time, Blade, should’ve done when the cops had him shackled in part 3: do a backflip and smash the chair on the ground.

Harry Dean Stanton is in one part as a security guard. I hope he gets a spin-off.

I think this is well done special-effects action. It’s not the same rush you get from THE RAID or HAYWIRE or something; it’s massive digital destruction, actors green screened or animated flying around crashing into shit, punching aliens, shooting beams, the camera flying around as if on a jetpack to capture all the mayhem. It’s hectic because so much is going on, but it reads well. There are well done super-strength fights and some (artificial) long takes. I like the one of Captain America doing his patriot parkour over a bunch of cars, but the stand-out is clearly the long continuous shot that zips around showing each of the heroes fighting and how they intersect with each other or help each other out.

(I should note that I didn’t have faith in the fake 3D so I found a place that had it in regular-D. It also happened to be 35mm, which I thought looked good even though it was shot digital. There’s some pretty dark scenes in it that I imagine could not have played well in fake 3D, but let me know if I’m wrong.)

Whedon pulls his favorite trick for establishing that stakes is high (hint: the opposite of bringing Ripley back to life in ALIEN RESURRECTION), but mostly the tone is upbeat. Super people do super stuff, they learn to get along, they are inspired, they inspire others, they kinda have fun doing it. I’m not gonna go along with the idea that Mr. Nolan’s Batmans are now wrong for being more broody and reality-esque, but this is another great way to approach a comic book movie that hasn’t always been done this well. It’s “comic booky” without being campy, a good balance for pleasing both the hardcores and the everybody elses, like J.J. Abrams did with STAR TREK (but overall more impressive I think).

My buddy Harry says he wants a new AVENGERS every 2 years and he wants them to go into space now and he wants so-and-so and the such-and-suches introduced. Good to see him excited, but let’s not fly too close to the sun on wax wings. This is a topnotch comics supergroup of an event movie. Let’s do regular movies still. Trying to top this over and over would probly not work. Personally I don’t like to see the world and the universe in danger over and over again. I’m more moved by the personal travails of Blade, Batman and Frank Punisher. But will some people not want to watch IRON MAN 3 anymore because it’s gonna seem smaller than this? Also, how will this movie play with some distance, or without knowing the supplementary movies? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter right now. This is good summer entertainment, satisfying the big and loud and fun that some people want without the dumb or cynical some of us don’t want.

Now, I mean this sincerely, I want to congratulate the Harrys of the world on the existence of this movie. They’ve dreamed about this “a bunch of set-up movies leading to a team-up movie” concept for years now, and I have to admit that I didn’t believe it would work. There was a time when it was supposed to be a given that THE AVENGERS would be amazing, even though INCREDIBLE HULK wasn’t that popular and nobody knew if the riskier CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR would be either, or if any of the actors would have chemistry together, or if they could come up with a good way to get them all together in the same movie. And there was the Edward Norton thing to deal with.

But fuck it, they pulled it off, and that’s awesome. I’m not just happy because I liked it, but because most of the people who were excited for it seem to love it. Give it enough time I’m sure 1/4 to 1/2 of them will turn around, pull down their pants and take a giant dump on it like they do everything else, but for now it seems to be uniting all of the nerd kingdom and sympathetic parties in joy. I’m for it.

At home I didn’t have it on CD, but I had it on a “the Crusaders at their best” LP that I tracked down after I first fell in love with the song. I’d been meaning to get it into my iTunes but I hadn’t figured out how to hook up the turntable since finally getting a new computer last year. But today I decided it was time to do it.

See, I never knew about the Jazz Crusaders back in the day, but I started trying to find out about them when I heard this song on a documentary in 2006. Specifically, it was AWESOME, I FUCKIN SHOT THAT, the Beastie Boys concert doc directed by Adam Yauch, who died this morning.

It’s not really a movie I ever watched over and over, but two parts really stuck with me: the beginning and the end. The beginning makes me laugh every time I think about it: a completely incongruous text crawl about Fidel Castro and Cuban refugees.  For a second you’re thinking, what the fuck is this? Is this the right movie? And then you realize that you’re hearing Giorgio Moroder’s electronic score from SCARFACE. This is the opening of SCARFACE! After going through the whole thing, it says something like “Regardless, in 2004 Beastie Boys played Madison Square Garden…” and it goes into the movie.

The movie is the concert, documented by 50 fans who were given camcorders. Yauch weaves the footage together showing many perspectives, good seats and bad, including some dude sitting near Ben Stiller. You can see the movie on DVD or read all about it but it’s the end that I wanted to talk about. After they’ve left the stage, “Way Back Home” plays…

First time hearing it I thought it was a little easy-listening for a second, with those saxophones and everything, that simple, laid back melody, repeated over and over. It seemed kind of tongue-in-cheek to present this song to the stadium full of amped up Beastie Boys fans. And then I started really hearing that beat and that funky bassline, and it clicked. The beat starts getting hard as hell, breakbeat worthy, driving that mellow stroll the rest of the band is going on. I think there are two beats overlapped, actually.

It sounds kind of sad to me, but kind of nostalgic. Like, it’s been a great concert, we’ve had fun, sad to leave, but let’s appreciate what’s in the air right now, let’s leave with smiles on our faces. The perfect choice to play as the fans are leaving, excited about what they’ve seen, and the group is backstage hugging Biz Markie, getting ready to get back on the bus.

Last year Yauch directed the half hour short “Fight For Your Right Revisited,” in which Danny McBride, Elijah Wood and Seth Rogen play the Beastie Boys immediately after leaving the party/pie fight from the 1986 “Fight For Your Right To Party” video. They’re confronted by angry parents, break into a bodega, steal beer, walk down the street spraying it on people, and eventually encounter future versions of themselves (Jack Black, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly), who have a dance battle and then pee on each other. Those future versions are wearing their same outfits, and are described by McBride-as-MCA as “the ghost of License to Ill future,” a possible future. What’s beautiful is that that’s not the future they ever had in store.

That’s one thing I really respect about Yauch is the evolution he went through in his short life. He and Beastie Boys started as bratty beer-spraying would-be-frat-boys-if-they-went-to-college. That attitude doesn’t change the revolutionary breakthrough that their first album was, not only in bringing hip hop to the mainstream but also in its unique rock-inspired production by Rick Rubin. Then they got sick of themselves, threw away about half of their style and image and made their second album, up there with It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back as one of the all time great sample-scapes. An album that could never be made again, partly because it’s lightning in a bottle, partly because it’s illegal.

For more than two decades they continued to reinvent themselves musically, while Yauch in particular changed himself as a person, going from the dust-smoking tough guy of the group to the introspective Buddhist, starting charities for Tibetan freedom while also being a goofball directing some of their videos and confusing entertainment reporters by crashing award shows in lederhosen, babbling about Spike Jonze creating Star Wars. In recent years he founded Oscilloscope laboratories, bringing attention to and high quality releases of a vast catalog of documentaries and independent films. From what I understand he had a big hand in what they put out (and his basketball documentary GUNNIN FOR THAT #1 SPOT is supposed to be great, not sure why I haven’t watched it yet).

He had this very serious and political side, but was still a funny dude. The same dude that was going onto the roof of his hotel throwing eggs at tourists while in the middle of recording an all time classic album.

The other thing I respect about all three of these guys is the way they defiantly did their own thing the whole time. It was crazy for white boys to be rapping in clubs in 1986, but they did it. It was crazy for rappers to be opening for Madonna at that time, but they did it. It was kind of a joke, with all their corny slang and style (the VW hood ornament on Mike D’s gold chain instead of Mercedes), but also they legimiately loved, respected and help evolve hip hop. It made sense when they toured with Run DMC, but also when they started playing instruments and were doing festivals that the Red Hot Chili Peppers would do. Almost all rappers, including the greats, at some point in their career start imitating the rap music that is popular at the time, desperately trying to stay relevant. Beastie Boys stayed relevant by never fuckin doing that. Taking their time on an album, going where their hearts took them.

Beastie Boys were cool nerds before it was cool to be a nerd. They were complete dorks who stormed into a scene with funny hats and a giant inflatable dick and somehow made people respect them. They were white Jewish kids who loved black culture but didn’t pretend to be a part of it, legit hip hop without ever pretending to be gangsta. They loved pop culture and punk rock and crate digging. They had more hits than my man John Woo. Yauch was a great example of becoming a better person and more enlightened without ever having a stick up his ass. Trying to do the right thing and never turning up his nose at everybody else.

I can’t listen to Stevie Wonder’s “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” or “They Won’t Go When I Go” without getting sad about Michael Jackson, because Stevie played those for him at his memorial service and they were so perfect. For me today “Way Back Home” is the perfect song to eulogize MCA, so I’ve been listening to it too many times. The title even fits the occasion, although it maybe sounds like a more Christian concept of death than a Buddhist one. But listen to this song – it’s like Beastie Boys themselves. At first it’s “is this a joke?” and then it’s “this is actually good!” and “holy shit, this is funky!” It says I’m sad about this, why the fuck does this type of shit happen to so many good people, but also let’s appreciate how good it was to have him around contributing to our culture. We wish we could have him longer, at least he crammed alot in there like he knew it was only gonna be 47 years.

thanks Adam Yauch, good work

The sequel directly follows part 1. Chan’s character Chan Ka-Kui, in the great tradition of movie hero cops, is demoted to traffic patrol for being so awesome and busting the drug lord. His boss and uncle return, and although they develop a stronger friendship over the movie it starts out with him being chewed out for all the property damage his famous part 1 stunts caused, including driving over the shantytown and sliding down the weird Christmas tree looking thing in the shopping mall: “Why didn’t you use the stairs? Did you have to destroy the chandelier?”

Even without the secretary from part 1 around to cause misunderstandings, Ka-Kui’s girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) is always getting mad at him because he works too much and his job is dangerous and all that shit. She still rides the scooter, and there’s a callback (with flashback) to the part where he grabbed her bag and accidentally pulled her off. This time he doesn’t do it but she crashes into a car.

Things get even worse because of a terminal disease. No, Ka-Kui doesn’t get one – the drug lord does, so he gets out of the joint on a compassionate discharge, and he and his right hand man start stalking Ka-Kui and his girl, showing up at their homes, spying on them, etc. There’s a running joke that the one guy keeps getting his glasses broken. If I were him I would get contacts.

These guys are jerks, so they beat up his girlfriend, even though she’s a girl and not Michelle Yeoh or Cynthia Rothrock. The conflict escalates. To me the highlight of the movie is when he sees the druglord in the window of a restaurant in the distance, and has to run across a freeway into the establishment to beat everybody up.

After that he tries to quit the force, but this isn’t EX-POLICE STORY, so he gets drawn back in due to a series of bombings that have been going on. He’s introduced to the squad of special agents, young people with different types of hip, suave or nerdy fashion, no uniforms. They almost seem like 21 Jump Street except instead of going undercover in schools they go overboard in interrogation rooms, beating up suspects and threatening them and stuff.

Ka-Kui starts doing a little more special ops type police work, like sneaking into a corporate board room to plant a bug. To go undercover to meet with an explosives dealer he wears a mustache and wire rimmed glasses, he looks like he could be one of the background employees at Blue Moon Detective Agency on Moonlighting. He gets into character and is meaner and tougher than regular Ka-Kui. The guy reports him to 21 Jump Street (who don’t know he’s there in disguise), he gets out of it and busts into the guy’s house to beat him up as punishment.

The bombers are a circle of interesting creeps. One of them puts bombs on radio controlled cars. I wonder if that inspired the toy car bombs in THE DEAD POOL, but if so it’s okay because they don’t take it as far in this one.

It’s a solid movie with plenty of Jackie moments. There’s the “10 Man Park Brawl” (according to a newspaper headline) which has him doing his trademark complex fight choreography on various playground equipment, tossing people through monkeybars, against the side of the swing set and that kind of stuff. There’s a part where he gets onto the top of a bus and his to leap over or duck under some signs. He leads a car down a dead end alley, jumps up the wall to avoid getting hit, lands on the hood and then kicks through the windshield. He gets to be set on fire and run away from an exploding fireworks factory.

I think there’s less of the out-of-place groaner humor, except for a scene about Ka-Kui’s uncle farting on a crowded elevator. There’s also a part with uncle on a toilet, but that part was pretty funny I thought.

I guess it’s a bigger budget than the first one, so they have more of the explosion stuff. There’s a big scene at a mall with some pyrotechnics that I guess were a big deal at the time, and it’s cool, but is it as when he jumped down that chandelier thing? Not at all. That’s Part 2’s weakness – it spends alot of time connecting to the flimsy plot of the first one but, at least speaking for myself, that’s not really what I care about. It can bring back the story of his girlfriend’s moped but it isn’t really able to top the insane stunts that made that movie unforgettable.

In ‘85 Jackie was hungry to do a movie his way because he was so disappointed in his experience making THE PROTECTOR in the US. 3 years later, after the success of part 1 (plus ARMOUR OF GOD, PROJECT A 2 and DRAGONS FOREVER), there wasn’t as much urgency to go for broke, I bet.

Then again, you watch this trailer here and you can see there’s more great shit than in your average movie, or even some of your above average movies. And there’s alot of blood in the outtakes. I can’t dismiss that. They may not have destroyed a shantytown, but they’re still risking themselves on this one. Thank you, Jackie Chan Stunt Team. I appreciate your sacrifice.