Okay, it’s getting old for me to write about, and I’m sure it’s even worse for you to read about. But I feel like if we stop mentioning it it’s like we’re saying it’s okay. Whether it’s Michael Bay’s ridiculous edits or Paul Greengrass’s wobblecams that opened the floodgates, something happened, and old fashioned notions like geography, coherency, and visual storytelling got buried. The language and standards of action cinema that have evolved and developed over generations have been thrown out the window and it’s become acceptable to just have a quick smear of photography that sort of loosely implies the fights and chases that audiences used to pay money to actually see with their own eyes. I think there’s gonna be a backlash against this type of movie pretty soon, and it’s bubbling up in this new wave of DTV action we’ve all been enjoying. But still, you can’t just let it go. You gotta say something.

SALT is obviously not the first or worst offender of this type of deal, but it’s definitely guilty. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a badass superspy who kicks ass, and this we know because in one part near the end the camera actually holds steady on a pretty hardcore dangling-over-a-ledge finishing move she does. I’m also 90% sure she ran up a wall and did a kick like Milla Jovovich would do, but other than that most of her physical feats I can only guess at.

I’ve decided that this must be mentioned every time but it shouldn’t take this many words, so I think I have the right term to describe this type of movie: post-action. Post-action movies are about the same subjects as the action movies we love, they use many of our favorite action movie tropes, but they’re not about the action. The parts of the story that involve action are more of a hassle they want to hurry past than a highlight that they want to display and celebrate. CASINO ROYALE, with its breathtaking parkour chase, is an action movie. QUANTUM OF SOLACE, with its eyeball-punishing car chase, I consider post-action.

As far as post-action movies go, though, SALT is pretty enjoyable ludicrousness. Salt is a CIA agent working as a well-dressed business woman out of a fake office building. She’s about to leave work early to celebrate her first wedding anniversary when a mysterious Russian dude shows up, knows this is really a front and starts telling a story about a Russian baby raised to be a sleeper agent to kill the Russian president at an upcoming state funeral. He claims that Salt is that baby (the alleged sleeper is supposed to be grown up now by the way, not still a baby) so her bosses Pepper (Chiwetel motherfuckin REDBELT Ejiofor) and Butter (Liev Schrieber) try to lock her up for interrogation. She’s worried that somebody’s targeting her husband so she makes a run for it and tests out the whole On the Lam Trying To Prove My Innocence routine. And along the way gets involved in assassination, nuclear war, etc.

(wait, I just checked IMDb and the bosses’ names are actually Peabody and Winter, respectively. Outlaw Vern dot com regrets the error)

It’s definitely a little bit of THE BOURNE FEMININITY, but what I like about it is that it only makes a minor surface effort to seem plausible. It doesn’t fake reality, it pushes it, and pushes it real good. It keeps a straight face the whole time but can’t possibly expect you to take it as seriously as the Bourne movies want you to. It takes no time getting to the improvised explosives (she makes an excellent rocket launcher thing using only basic office and cleaning supplies) or the scene where she hops between the roofs of multiple moving vehicles on a freeway. (And you said a FROGGER movie was impossible.) The story also has twists that aren’t mindboggling or anything but are at times ballsy and definitely not what I expected based on the trailer.

You know what, here’s how to explain what this movie is like. As Salt escapes she ditches her pumps and ends up running through city streets with bare feet. But we’ve all seen DIE HARD before so the filmatists are sure to inconvenience her even more than McClane. Early in the movie she’s climbing on the outside of a building with bare feet, a skirt with no underwear, and a backpack with spiders in it. And later you find out there was also a dog inside the backpack.

They even give her a sort of super hero backstory. Her father was a wrestler, her mom was a beautiful chess champion, she was kidnapped and raised by a brainwashing master spy. So she’s got good genetics and upbringing for the sort of thing she does, and if you need to know all her proficiencies then be ready for the scene where they’re listed on Redbelt’s Blackberry (I only caught something about “edged weapons.”) As far as I know this is a new form of Just How Badass Is She?, putting it on a handheld device and not reading it out loud. I like it.

I appreciate the dedication to absurdity, because it makes Jolie the perfect casting for the role. If it had tried for something gritty and believable her cartoonish beauty might’ve been a problem. Early in the movie, during the U.S.-MARSHALS-but-with-Jolie-instead-of-Snipes portion, it’s funny that she can run around and not be spotted. I mean, the girl is stunning. Not as stunning as when she ate food and had curves, but still. A woman like that goes on the subway or in a crowd, people turn and look at her. I don’t care if she switched from blonde super model hair to brunette super model hair and put in weird contacts, she’s gonna be easy to spot. Later in the movie she has some more elaborate disguises that I can go along with, and if there’s a part 2 hopefully she’ll take it further with a fat suit or old man makeup.

You also gotta suspend the ol’ disbelief to accept that a girl like that is gonna fall for the creepy-looking German spider expert. In my opinion. I mean I guarantee you that creepy-looking German spider experts are watching this movie, looking over at their wives and shaking their heads. Saying come on Hollywood. Nein.

Like many of the higher quality post-action movies there are a few moments of energy and badassness that manage to squeeze through the cracks. For example the part where her enemy is on the other side of a bullet proof window. She unloads her gun into the glass, inches from the guy’s face, and he doesn’t even flinch.

There’s also an urban foot chase scene that isn’t anything great but to be fair I guess it pretty much follows standard action movie language. If you’re wondering, and I’m sure you are, Salt’s fleeing etiquette is pretty middle of the road. She doesn’t go out of her way to be polite to her fellow pedestrians (like Schwarzenegger when he keeps apologizing to everybody in TRUE LIES) but at least she’s not one of those assholes who messes up kiosks and shit, throws O.P.P. behind her to slow down her pursuers.

To be frankly honest the foot chase really doesn’t need to be mentioned in this review, but I brought it up because I’ve been itching for an excuse to go off on a tangent about sidewalk etiquette. Bear with me ladies and gentlemen. This is gonna by some real Larry Seinfeld type shit, it’s gonna blow your mind. Observant, funny, petty, sad, etc.

This rant stems from a brief, insignificant incident a few months ago. An associate and I had just left my apartment and were groggily walking down the sidewalk when a voice yelled from behind: “ON YOUR LEFT!”

It was a woman out for a morning run, coming up behind us, and in retrospect I know that what she wanted was for me to be aware that she was about to run past me to my left. The problem is that it was 10 am, early morning for me, and I was on a city sidewalk, not a trail or a track. I had just woken up, was 10 feet from my residence and was not prepared for athletic commands to be shouted at me from behind. I tried to do the right thing, but in that moment I wasn’t sure what she wanted. Who’s left is she on? Does that mean to my left, or to my companion’s left, which is to my right? Or does she want me to move to the left so she can get through? Is she even shouting at me, or is there somebody else she’s on the left of? Could I be on that person’s right? What do I do?

These were not answers that were coming to me within that half a second so what I did was, I turned around to look. But this put me in the young woman’s path and caused her to almost crash into me. Whoops.

Lady, you don’t know me from Adam. You come up behind me, you don’t know if I’m drunk, if I have earbuds in, if I’m completely deaf. Although I guess if I was it would’ve been fine, I wouldn’t have heard her and wouldn’t have turned around. But in my opinion if somebody runs up behind you and yells at you, it is a natural and expected reflex to turn around to see who the fuck is yelling at you and why. This woman disagreed. Instead of saying “sorry” or even just ignoring it and continuing, she yelled “JEE-ZUSS!!!” in self righteous fury. To her I was the asshole, I had really put her out by not properly translating sudden unexpected shouted commands on a public sidewalk.

Don’t worry, I didn’t yell or run after her or anything, but man it got my blood boiling, and has haunted me ever since. I mean, aren’t I right about this one? If I was playing sports and somebody yelled out something to me about where to go or what to catch, that would be fair. There would be a mutually agreed upon relationship and set of goals. It would be in context. If I was on a trail for bikes and jogging that would also be acceptable, because I would be there with the understanding that biking and jogging are the trail’s primary uses.

But my own city sidewalk where I live? No. I’ve had this problem before and actually it’s usually worse because it’s usually people on bikes who are shouting from behind. And so far I’ve kept my cool but I know one of these days I’m gonna lose it and I’m gonna grab somebody and yank ‘em off of that thing. I haven’t had a car since the early ’90s so I don’t hate bicyclists like alot of drivers do. But it pisses me off when they don’t have the balls to ride among cars but think it’s okay to throw their weight around on the sidewalk.

If you’re on a bike you can and legally should ride in the streets. We wheel-free pedestrians can’t and shouldn’t walk there. Therefore, the sidewalk belongs to pedestrians. Since we are polite we are willing to welcome you as our guest, but don’t be an asshole. If you you are biking or running at a speed where you’re gonna run into pedestrians unless you shout out a command at them then that means you’re doing it wrong. That means you’re being an asshole. You’re on the same level as the purse snatchers in movies and TV, who push people out of their way and knock things over. When you drive I’m sure you knock over innocent fruit carts.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve run on sidewalks before. Good for the heart, sometimes required for catching buses, or sometimes a man needs to evade capture, right? But you steer clear of innocents. If I was that runner I would’ve just stepped out into the street, which was completely clear of traffic and parking, and if traffic did come it would’ve been facing her. It would’ve been so much easier to just avoid us than to try to warn us she’s buzzing our tower. I feel strongly that I was an innocent victim here, and she was the one who fucked up. But I didn’t get mad or yell the Lord’s name at her. So she shouldn’t have. Learn your sidewalk etiquette, lady. Salt would never do that shit.

. . .

Okay, good. Sorry about that. But I needed that off my chest. Now hopefully I can forget about the whole thing, just like the filmatists here forgot they had Andre Braugher playing the Secretary of Defense, and gave him like one or two lines.

So anyway, here’s another attempt at a female James Bond or Jason Bourne. She does all the good secret agent business: shooting, bombing, punching, running, climbing, disguising, poisoning, deceiving. She passes the test. What she doesn’t get to do is fuck. She has a husband who she loves, but you’re not sure why she thinks he’s a really really good man, and he’s not in the movie much. Bourne gets to fall in love, Bond gets to get it on, but Salt just gets to look good. She doesn’t talk about sex, or all the good times and bad times that may be. It seems unfair since she’s the female counterpart to those male hoes. But I kind of like it too, because she can be very capable without falling as much into the sexpot trap as most of our female asskickers. And actually I’d rather the screen time be spent on her tricking people and blowing up buildings than on meeting dudes and falling in love. So maybe the women are ahead of the men on that one.

The skipper for SALT is former action director Philip Noyce (BLIND FURY), the writer is former action writer Kurt Wimmer (ONE TOUGH BASTARD), and Brian PAYBACK Helgeland did the “we’re switching it from Tom Cruise to Angelina Jolie” uncredited rewrite, meaning he wrote the part where she took her panties off to block a security camera. One of the two credited editors is Stuart Baird, director of EXECUTIVE DECISION and, strangely enough, U.S. MARSHALS. The musical score is by Spinderella.

Whoops, wrong again the score was by James Newton Howard. And Pepa doesn’t have a cameo. But keep it in mind for the sequel, fellas. Speaking of which, I hope this does become a series as long as they increase the silliness in each installment. I’d like one that’s an EASTERN PROMISES rip-off, with a tattooed Salt going undercover in the Russian mafia. Also there should be an underground fighting tournament one where she has to fight Oleg Taktarov. Or maybe they could even make that one a crossover where she meets Ivan Drago and/or Uri Boyka. Anyway, welcome back, Cold War. We missed you.

So I went way back to this VHS-only cult oddity from Ate de Jong, director of DROP DEAD FRED. This is actually Helgeland’s last credit before ASSASSINS, but it came out back in 1991, when he was still considered a horror guy, having done NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, 976-EVIL, and some episodes of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES.

It’s the story of two kids on the road to Vegas, where they plan to elope. Despite mysterious warnings from a gas station attendant (Richard Farnsworth) they stop at the wrong place on the backroads and the girl, Kristy Swanson, is taken into custody by a Hellcop – an officer of the law who has crossed over from the inferno. His face is burnt and ritualistically carved and his uniform has pentagram patches on it. His handcuffs are a pair of living severed hands connected by a chain. I’m glad our cops aren’t allowed to use those, last thing we needed back then was another pair of hands beating on Rodney King.

Farnsworth has a history with the Hellpigs so he gives the groom tips and equipment to go into Hell and get his fiancee back. So far so good. The trouble is that the groom, as played by Chad Lowe, is a complete weiner. He’s supposed to be some kind of everynerd I think, but he’s just such a whiny bitch you want to gag him and drive him to the Helljail yourself. The idea is pretty good, the direction is passable, but Lowe and Swanson just don’t have enough screen presence or charisma to pull it off. You do not feel compelled to watch these people. They make it seem like an episode of some okay-but-forgettable horror TV anthology series that you figure would be better if they had the cast and budget of a real movie. Come to think of it, those shows did have alot of old timey gas stations and diners in the middle of nowhere.

But forget about those two, the star of the show is the world it takes place in, the goofy depiction of Hell. Some of the humor reminded me of BEETLEJUICE, the way they have cartoonish jobs people do in the afterlife. Hell has celebrities (Gilbert Gottfried as Hitler) and some kind of municipal government. Most of the locals are Road Warrior types or crazies, like young Ben Stiller as a guy at a diner who pressures people to eat the roadkill he barbecues. (Stiller also plays Atilla the Hun. And his dad is in it too.) There seems to be only one Hellcop, but there are a whole bunch of Andy Warhols directing traffic for some reason.

Then our weiner hero meets a cool, nice guy who offers to help him out, and for some reason he’s not suspicious. And the guy’s name is Beezel! For fuck’s sake, horror movie people! You gotta look out for these devil names, especially when you’re in Hell. It’s just common sense. Here are a few of the names to avoid:

B.L. Zebub
Lou C. Fir
Prinze O. Darkniss
Dev L. Worship
Natas Mai
Livedehtta Nikoolerauoy
Evel Kdievel
Wicket W. Warlock

Also, any of these names backwards. Avoid contact and especially bargains or agreements. A handshake does constitute an oral contract. Also, an accidental drop of blood on a contract counts as a binding signature according to the GHOST RIDER precedent.

This is not a good movie, but there’s enough good and unusual stuff in there that I thought it was worth my time. I especially like that the Hellcop is treated as a serious horror villain, despite the movie having alot of jokes in it. And I like that he doesn’t talk. He’s a silly idea but he works, drawing on our instinctive fear of cops and authority figures. You know when you get pulled over and you see that cop walking toward you, you haven’t heard a voice yet and you don’t know what he wants, he’s kind of a scarier figure then? That’s what the Hellcop is for the whole movie, except demonic. Also he’s funny because he causes Chad Lowe to accidentally pull a gun on a real cop in the real world. Whoops! That’s gonna be hard to live down. Good luck, weiner.

[ratings]

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Stallone, Banderas, Julianne Moore, Richard Donner. Not a bad roster, but I never heard anything good about this 1995 studio action picture. I’ve had it on my list for a while anyway because the script is credited to Andy & Larry Wachowski and Brian Helgeland. How do you go too wrong with that? Whoever’s script got ditched they were rewritten by somebody good. Either the MATRIX guys or the PAYBACK guy.

Well, overall the movie’s only okay, decent, watchable. Some nice touches, but fairly forgettable. But I gotta say, the first half hour or so approaches greatness. My favorite scene is actually right at the beginning. Stallone is leading another guy out into the woods at gunpoint, obviously to put him down like Old Yeller. Their faces are glum, like this is an inevitable conclusion they’ve dreaded for a long time. Both are wearing nice suits and ties, Stallone is wearing knee-high rubber boots.

Suddenly they get to a marsh. The guy’s shoe sticks in the mud. He laughs. “You know, when I saw you I wasn’t scared, but I did wonder why you were wearing those. Now I know.”

Just the perfect mood, a grim sort of bonding between two killers. He knows he can’t get out of this one so he accepts his fate. And there’s no point in being a dick about it, he’s a murderer too, he knows Stallone’s just doing his job. Might as well make conversation.

I don’t think Stallone talks in the entire scene. He’s really good in this movie. So quiet and his face looks dead of emotion except in little subtle traces. This is one of those “hitman trying to quit” stories, but he doesn’t turn out to have a heart of gold. For all we know it’s just self preservation, fighting back when his people (the CIA?) try to screw him. He fully intends to kill Julianne Moore when he tracks her down, and he only doesn’t when Banderas is there too. See, Banderas is this younger guy who’s been a real pain in the ass lately, he keeps showing up and trying to steal Stallone’s targets. He’s hyper and goofy, and he knows everything about the older assassin, who he idolizes and studies. But he’s okay with killing him, that would be a great honor to him.

The really great part of the movie is when it’s just about the two assassins. They first come face-to-face when Stallone pretends to be a taxi driver and picks Banderas up. So they confront each other through bullet-proof glass, size each other up, then try to figure out how to get around the glass to shoot each other. (Banderas tries shooting through the glass, laughs and says he had to at least try it.)

The story doesn’t fall apart but becomes more standard Hollywood stuff when Moore comes in. She’s a reclusive computer genius who talks to her cats and sets up complicated tricks using remote control cars. Kind of a familiar goofy character doing movie computer hacker stuff. She’s trying to sell a computer disc full of mcmuffiny secrets, Banderas is trying to take her out, etc. Of course she goes with Stallone, they bond, work together to outsmart and outgun the people after them. There is a bank account, a Day of the Dead celebration (the holiday, not the movie), an abandoned church hideout. Movie stuff. Enjoyable, but you’ve seen it before.

That beginning was so good though, I wondered who was responsible, so I looked it up. Turns out the Wachowskis wrote the original script and sold it to Joel Silver around the same time they sold THE MATRIX. When Donner signed on though he didn’t like the script (so why did you sign on, pal?) and had Helgeland rewrite the whole thing. Supposedly he toned down the violence and the love story. The Wachowskis tried to take their names off of it.

Both scripts are online, and someday I’d like to read both versions. But for now I just wanted to see who wrote the scene with the mud and the boots.

The Wachowski script had the scene, complete with the shoe getting stuck in the mud and everything. But in their version there was a long back-and-forth conversation, the guy asking all kinds of questions about how the assassin game works, how he does different things, what’s going through his mind about death, etc. They talk about moon pies. You know – that dialogue everybody tried to do back then after they saw PULP FICTION, but they didn’t think they were copying.

It was the Helgeland version that trimmed down the talking, made the subject more serious, made Stallone quiet and had the line about the boots. So, point goes to Helgeland. You are forgiven for not salvaging MAN ON FIRE.

[ratings]

Well, Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin and writer/director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) is no John Boorman. But I think Payback is an underrated movie. It’s a good balance of vicious and funny. It’s got a bit of a ’70s throwback feel and lots of weird touches to make it an indistinct time period. There are rotary phones, and primitive credit card technology that makes fraud more convenient, and the film is washed out with bleach making everything have a pale blue tint to it. You’re not sure when this is supposed to be taking place, which in a weird way reminds me of the experience of reading the books. Most of it reads pretty modern but obviously you are dealing with armed robbers, there is money, communication and security technology that would make some of the stories impossible today. So I sometimes have to check the copyright dates to be sure when this would’ve happened.

Point Blank is the best movie based on those books, but it’s not really faithful to their tone. It’s much more arty, and “Walker” (as Lee Marvin’s Parker character is called) is much more emotional. There’s even a part where he sits on a couch being sad for a long time. They always gotta give Parker too many normal human attachments in the movie adaptations. I think Payback is a little closer to the feel of the book. You side with him, but he always does things that make you think, like James Coburn’s character says, “Man, that’s just mean!”

Let me give you an example of how tough this movie is. Right now the current movie everybody I know is talking about is Grindhouse. In that movie, Freddy Rodriguez plays a guy who is pretty much supposed to be the toughest, most skilled motherfucker on the planet. In Payback, Mel Gibson as “Porter” beats the living shit out of Freddy Rodriguez. He grabs him by the head and tosses him against a wall. Freddy pulls a gun, Porter quickly grabs it out of his hand, punches him in the stomach, nearly makes him puke. Then he turns him around and frisks him. Then he punches him four or five times in the kidneys. Then he rips out his nose ring. Watching the movie back in 1999 I thought “Jesus, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” and watching it again the other day I thought the same thing.

However, there has always been a dark cloud over Payback. You see, when the movie was test screened, the studio and the producer (who happened to be Mel Gibson) got scared. Apparently they all agreed it wasn’t working, but Helgeland just wanted to work on the very end of the movie. The other people thought it needed to be completely reworked to be more audience friendly. Gibson had the last act rewritten, but Helgeland simply was not interested in doing extensive reshoots, he didn’t know how to imagine the movie any other way than what he had. Because he was the producer of the movie, director’s guild rules wouldn’t allow Gibson to take over as director. The rumor at the time was that he hired his hairdresser as the “director,” really just acting as a mouthpiece for Gibson.

What they came up with was a much different version. They added more explanation to Porter’s coming back from the dead at the beginning. They added voiceovers to make him more into a film noir anti-hero. They gave it a happy ending, obviously. In fact they rewrote and reshot the entire third act with a kidnapping plot that wasn’t in there before. Kris Kristofferson was added as the lead villain Bronson — in Helgeland’s version Bronson was just Angie Dickinson’s voice over a speaker phone.

For years I’ve had a shitty VHS bootleg of Helgeland’s unfinished cut, so I knew how different it was. But honestly I liked both versions equally. Some of the cheesier elements of the movie (like the way he blows up a car) I think were added in Gibson’s version, but I like some of what he added too. The story does seem to build to a more exciting climax, so there is something to say for being more Hollywood. And it’s not like they completely toned it down. I mean, that version opens with a sleazy back alley abortionist prying bullets out of Porter’s back. And one of the ways they made him more “heroic” was to have the bad guys smash his toes with a hammer.

So I always liked both versions about equally, but the studio version wasn’t exactly beloved by many, and there was always this bad aftertaste about it because this underdog Helgeland got so fucked over. A couple days after he won an Academy Award, too. But I believe it was either Howard Zinn or the dad from The Simpsons who said “Did Braveheart run away? Did Payback run away?” And the answer, to the second one at least, is no. Last Tuesday something that I never thought would happen actually happened: Paramount released Payback — Straight Up: the Director’s Cut to DVD and various high tech space technologies.

This Straight Up version is an entirely different movie. It’s not even like that old bootleg I have. Helgeland went back and recut the movie from scratch (on film, even). He rescored it and they even re-processed it, so it doesn’t have that blue tint anymore, but a more subtle digitally created washed out look.

It does have that original third act (now with Sally Kellerman’s voice as Bronson, for some reason) but even the earlier scenes feel new. The whole tone is different. Most of it no longer feels like you should be laughing. There’s a very disturbing new scene early on where Porter beats up his wife, played by Deborah Kara Unger, and shows her a photo. It’s only later, in a flashback, that you learn she was the one who shot him in the back, and what the meaning of the photo is. It’s a tricky move — he lets you wonder for a while what you’re supposed to think of this guy. Then you see the flashback and realize oh, okay, he’s not such a monster after all. But still, what a bastard.

The weird thing is, I still think there’s enough room in the world for both Payback and Point Blank, but now that I see this darker, more serious version I realize that it’s not as different from Point Blank as it used to be. The new music actually makes everything seem much grimmer, not as wiseass as it was before. The opening theme is not as funky as it used to be, but otherwise I think the new score is a huge improvement. No more Lethal Weapon style guitar noodling, no unnecessary use of a Jimi Hendrix song. The movie is also more fast paced now, they cut out 11 minutes. And in retrospect, there was a lot of contrived Hollywood business in that theatrical cut — we really don’t need to see Porter blowing up a car from a gas trail and all that shit, do we?

The DVD doesn’t include the theatrical version of the movie, but otherwise it has everything you would want: a commentary track, a couple really in-depth documentaries, even an interview with Richard Stark expert Donald L. Westlake.

One documentary goes through the whole history of the director’s cut and how it was made. They talk fairly openly about the disagreements, and Helgeland seems pretty forgiving about it. Gibson deserves credit not only for helping Helgeland to get this cut made and released, but for actually being interviewed in the extras. And he did the interview when he was sporting that crazy Apocalypto beard, too. So we have that one archived for posterity. Gibson does seem a little defensive about his part in the whole fiasco, and only halfway convincing in his argument that “you can’t make a movie for an elite” and need to appeal to a broad audience every time. But I still can’t believe he was willing to talk about it. I guess after his whole anti-semitic thing he’s used to coming out and taking his lumps.

The one topic they completely avoid is who actually directed the reshoots. I have had a pet theory for a few years now, I believe it was Paul Abascal, director of the 2004 Gibson-produced (and completely insane) action movie Paparazzi. The director was rumored to be Gibson’s hairdresser, as Abascal was on the Lethal Weapon series. His first directorial works were “Mel Gibson’s Video Diaries” for some of the Lethal Weapon pictures, so he fits the profile of a director willing to work as a mouthpiece for Mel Gibson. He also directed some TV here and there, but his first official movie directing credit was Paparazzi, a movie produced by Gibson, from an idea by Gibson, clearly based on the life of Gibson (it’s about the star of a popular action movie series being harassed by photographers). So when I saw that movie I thought wait a minute. Maybe it really was Gibson’s hairdresser directing the reshoots, but not just as a proxy for Gibson. Maybe he really is a director.

The new Payback DVD does not confirm or deny my theory, but IMDb does. Some time between now and when Paparazzi came out, somebody added production designer John Myhre as the uncredited director of the reshoots. I don’t know where that information comes from, but it is not as cool as my theory. So this one will have to end like Zodiac — here I am, finally satisfied with my conclusion, but seemingly disproven in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Oh well. The important thing is, we now have two Paybacks. I think I officially like the director’s cut better, but I’m keeping both versions. Now there’s one Paparazzi in the world, two Paybacks — that seems about right. Life isn’t too bad.

Originally published at Screengrab: http://www.nervepop.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e10692#10692

[ratings]

Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition.

At the video store I found one Mel Gibson film called Ransom, about a kidnapping. I figured okay this will be good, it’s probaly about a cop named Ransom, I’m thinking most likely John Ransom. Well turns out he’s not John Ransom, Ransom is just the name of the movie and not Mel Gibson. He’s not a cop either, he’s just a rich guy. But his name isn’t Ransom. So I decided to give this one a pass and pickup Payback instead.

Turns out his name is Porter in Payback but at least he’s not some rich guy. He’s not a cop either but come to think of it why the fuck does the star of an action movie have to be a cop anway? I mean nothing against McClane but let’s face it, if you had to pick one occupation of guys you want to hang out with, it’s not going to be a fucking cop, jesus. That’s why I haven’t been watching as much TV lately, I mean if I want to see cops and lawyers I’ll just answer the door.

Payback starts off real nice and right away you can tell this is going to be a more down to earth type hero you can relate to. First a doctor who in my opinion is probaly unlicensed pulls bullets out of Porter. From there there is a montage type thing with Porter stealing from a panhandler, lifting a man’s wallet, using his credit cards to buy suits and food, getting a gun from a thrift shop. Then he just starts strutting along like a true motherfucker and it plays this funky theme song and it just makes you go, “I love this fucking movie already.” This scene sort of tells the rags to riches type story of a dude who lost everything who now uses his wits to build up a roll and get the basic tools needed for his mission.

That mission is the title of the film. What it is in case you forgot is he is going to get payback. What he needs payback or revenge for is this whole deal where his wife and his partner double crossed him and shot him so they could take all the money from a robbery. I don’t know if you have experienced something like this but it is a real pisser in my opinion, some of you may know what I’m talking about. So you know you can see where this carter dude is coming from right away.

The structure of this filmwork is very simple and old fashioned and follows the same pattern as that opening montage. He takes each basic resource and builds up more resources – first a suit and a gun, later a police badge, various connections, etc. His partner used his money to pay off a crime syndicate called THe Outfit. It is only fair for him to ask for his money back so he climbs his way up to the very top of the outfit killing people until he gets it.

Let me tell you man it is really good to see Mel back playing a regular guy like Porter or Mad Max instead of a cop or a rich guy. Porter is a real Badass unlike I have seen in any other recent movies. I mean he does a lot of Badass type activities up to and including blowing up a car, intentionally crashing a car, pulling out a dude’s nose ring, getting his toes crushed by a hammer, killing a dude for not having a lighter on him. The main thing about this movie, and the Badass movement in general, is attitude. Mel has a real dead look in his eye, doesn’t talk too much, he knows how to smoke a cigarette just right and he can intimidate and/or mangle motherfuckers like nobody’s business.

For one example, there is a scene where he comes in wanting to talk to a crime boss, but there is a HUGE black dude in the front office that tells him the man isn’t in. Porter keeps trying to ask where is he, maybe he’s at home, where is he exactly? But the bouncer won’t give him the time of day. Porter shakes his head in frustration and disappointment.

Suddenly, cut to that bouncer walking into the back room holding a towel over his ear, blood dripping down his face, calling for his boss somebody’s here to see you.

This is Porter’s style, you don’t even have to see what he did to a dude, you just can assume it was Badass. This dude can get past security in an elevator AND steals their cigarettes. Good work Porter.

This movie, and again the Badass movement, is also about style in my opinion. This is very much like an early ’70s movie, with alot of funky music and the photographing is all washed out and tinted blue. The world is kind of a timeless place where there are rotary phones in the cars but nose rings on the heroin dealers. It is like real life where both the policing and criming industries are mostly filled with a bunch of pricks. But I do like this Porter in my opinion on account of he is good at what he does, which I should remind you is getting payback.

Now okay not everything about Payback is that good. Some of the guitaristry I thought was out of date but not out of date enough to be cool. Also the technique on blowing up the car was the oldest trick in the book although I do give points for the explosion itself just on principle. But I would highly recommend this piece, it is definitely one of the best movies and characters of this year and hopefully it will show audiences that the Badass community are still a vital audience in the millennial Cinema films of the year 2-G.

[ratings]

Well now I’ve finally caught up with it and although it’s not an outstanding new high for Clint like FEMME FATALE is for Brian DePalma, there is nothing wrong with it at all. In fact any fan of Badass Cinema owes it to themselves to see it as one of the only american pictures relevant to our genre this year. It’s an old school cop thriller but for some reason it reminded me most of IN THE LINE OF FIRE. I think one reason Clint has stayed relevant (well, up until now I guess since nobody saw this one) is because he acts his age. He doesn’t pretend to be a young man even if he’s kissing gals who are younger than him. He is very conscious of being an old man.

So like IN THE LINE OF FIRE his age and health is a big part of the story. It’s based on a novel and apparently Clint had Helgeland write in more health troubles than in the book in order to fit his age better. Chasing down some asshole serial killer, Clint collapses. We cut to a couple years later and he is recovering from a heart transplant. So he’s retired.

But wait! You know he’s going to have to get back in the game somehow. What happens is a young gal tracks him down at his houseboat and shows him a picture of her murdered sister. The sister was an organ donor and this gal has figured out from articles that Clint had to have received her sister’s heart. So she guilts him into looking into this dormant case and seeing if he can solve it.

Of course he ends up getting a little more involved than he wants to. And I don’t want to give anything away but he MAY end up solving the crime. I’m not gonna say whether he does or not definitively but just understand that it IS a possibility that the movie will be about him catching this murderer. Anyway he is sort of a cop because he has all these connections and experience but he is also sort of an outlaw/vigilante because he’s not licensed as a PI and he has to go around asking for favors or misleading people to think he is still a cop.

But the real gimmick is his health. People keep worrying about him, telling him he looks sick and what not. As he gets closer to the killer you worry that he’s going to keel over if he gets in a confrontation. In fact we have it on good word from his heart specialist that he should be staying at home resting, and not working on his boat too much, or his body might reject the transplant. Instead he’s running around trying to fight crime. Sometimes you even hear his heart beat on the soundtrack but you don’t even need that to worry about him. His hair is so grey now, and his voice is so hoarse, and he keeps sweating. In fact I was kind of sad watching this movie, getting that feeling where you know this guy is not going to be around too much longer. He’s not going to be making too many more movies. I mean Clint is getting old.

Luckily I watched the making of documentary and was relieved to see that Clint looks and sounds about 10-15 years younger in real life… he’s actually playing OLDER for the movie. That’s my Clint.

So the story is just ungeneric enough to work and the filmatism of course is solid and effective since it’s Clint’s. No modern bullshit like quick cuts and pop music and he never flies up in the air and does a flip or nothing like that. I noticed one clever filmatic innovation that is a twist on the negative flashes you alway see in the serial killer movies, or at least in the trailers for them. You know what I’m talking about? They show the killer with an evil look on his face and then there’s like a camera flash sound or a whoooosh and for a second you see a negative image of the same shot. Well Clint decided to do the exact opposite, he did an entire nightmare sequence in negative with occasional quick flashes of positive. And it’s much more interesting the backwards way.

There’s also one great badass setpiece, one for the record books. Just pure adrenaline rush badass like when he jumps onto that bus in Dirty Harry or when he foils a bank robbery while eating a hot dog. This time he’s getting in the car with his cop friend and he notices in the rearview mirror a parked car watching them. Instead of telling his friend what’s going on he tells her he needs to put his bag in the trunk. So he gets out, steals her shotgun out of the trunk and starts walking across the street towards the parked car as he cocks it. This is the Oh Shit It’s On Moment. Even if the rest of the movie was pure shit it would’ve been worth watching it for this scene.

Also you gotta hand it to the cast. Because it’s Clint, he’s able to get big name actors in parts they might otherwise turn down. You got Jeff Daniels from that weird ass goose movie playing Clint’s neighbor, sort of his comic relief sidekick who drives him around and claims to be his partner. And more impressive you got Angelica Huston playing his doctor. This is a really good supporting role, but it’s just a doctor. She’s not the love interest or nothing. I’m telling you if it was somebody besides Clint Angelica Huston would not have done the role. But she did and it really adds some weight to the movie I think. Good job Angelica.

You know, a long time ago I remember seeing Jeff Daniels on some talk show talking about the scene in DUMB AND DUMBER where he is humiliated by diarhea in a show house where the toilet turns out to not be hooked up to plumbing. And he told this story about how Clint Eastwood came up to him at a party and told him that scene was hilarious because it had happened to him. I wonder if that’s why he chose Jeff Daniels for this movie. Don’t worry there is no diarhea I just can’t help but think maybe that’s why he chose him. Some kind of bonding.

Anyway the one actor I don’t like in the movie is fuckin Paul Rodriguez, that obnoxious comedian who you can never really figure out how he got famous, since all he is supposed to do is be funny and he can’t even do that. I remember a while back he was criticizing the Taco Bell pooch as being a racist stereotype. I don’t necessarily disagree with that but how are people supposed to take that seriously from a comedian whose entire act is “Ha ha, look at me, I’m Mexican! Get it? Mexican.” I swear to christ, you can check if you don’t believe me, on the making of documentary on the dvd he describes his character as having “a chip on his shoulder. A corn chip.”

Anyway Mr. Rodriguez plays a wisecracking cop and in the opening scene he keeps making bad puns about a murder scene and you’re thinking, uh oh. Fortunately he’s not Clint’s partner or anything – in fact, Clint hates the guy, he’s supposed to be an asshole, and he never gets redeemed. So I guess that makes it okay that he’s in the movie. It turns out okay.

Jazz factor: in this one Clint does not play an instrument or collect jazz records. There is not room on his boat for a piano. However the opening credits are accompanied by some jazz music.

[ratings]

So I guess that makes Tony the underdog here, and he had one this year called MAN ON FIRE that seemed to show some promise as a film of Badass Cinema. Academy Award Winner Denzel Washington (”You shot me in the ass!”) plays an alcoholic ex-CIA killer guy who’s hard up for work so he becomes a bodyguard for a little girl in South America. People get kidnapped there more often than they don’t get kidnapped, so next thing you know she gets stolen and this motherfucker stops at nothing to get her back and/or torture, maim and murder the people responsible. And I don’t know if you ever saw the poster for this one but it was real good. No collage or nothing, just one giant picture of Denzel wearing a suit and sunglasses, looking real tough. Behind him you see nothing but fire and smoke, and he’s standing half way in front of this little girl, holding out one hand in front of her, and she’s wearing a private school uniform and hugging a teddy bear. (You know, for emphasis.) It’s like Chow Yun Fat with the baby on the HARD BOILED poster, only 9 years later.

So far so good, right? Well I haven’t even got to the good part, which is screenplay by Brian Helgeland. Not to rub it in Ridley’s face, but Brian is an actual Academy Award Winner for LA CONFIDENTIAL (he was also nominated for MYSTIC RIVER, but like Ridley Scott, he went home that night with the empty hand of shame). I thought LA CONFIDENTIAL was pretty good but it didn’t give me the same boner it gave everybody else, so that doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. The important thing to me is that he’s the writer/director for Outlaw Award Winner PAYBACK, and he wrote BLOOD WORK which is more my speed of Clint Eastwood movie than MYSTIC RIVER was. Helgeland’s thing is gritty adaptations of gritty novels, which is what this one is too.

Denzel is exactly as good as you would expect in this role, making the guy intense and scary even though there’s a tangent where he becomes the girl’s swim coach in order to show the humanity, etc. Before that he’s kind of mean to the girl and tells her not to talk to him and he doesn’t even like birds but I mean it goes without saying that he has a special bodyguard bond with his peppy little rich girl charge and this is why he will later go around shooting cars with a rocket launcher, chopping off fingers and literally putting C-4 up a guy’s ass. Which is kind of pervy, in my opinion, but as we know from Abu Ghraib, these intelligence people are into the butt stuff, I guess. I don’t want to be judgmental about CIA traditions so I won’t say anything.

Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken (playing a good guy!) have small roles and there is a good little moment early on where Denzel asks Walken out of the blue, “Do you think God will forgive us for what we’ve done?” They agree that He won’t and then continue with their small talk. My other favorite part of the movie is another conversation Denzel has with the girl’s dad before he’s hired, when he candidly admits that his drinking affects him and that the level of protection will be “on par with the pay.” That was a real good scene.

Also the cinematography is real nice.

What I have done here though is I have listed the good things. It’s like Thomas Jefferson or Thumper or somebody once said, if you can’t say something nice, forget it. Unfortunately I do not think this movie achieves on the same level that Ridley has achieved in his competition with Tony. It is real slow, taking more than an hour to even get to the kidnapping. I guess it works to make you feel like you know the girl before she gets kidnapped, but I’m not sure it’s worth the wait. And I know they were trying to make a dark movie here but still I gotta say it, this movie is just too gloomy and humorless to be enjoyed. I don’t mind that there are no jokes or oneliners but jesus man, give me something other than brooding, random flashes and the occasional sadism.

If you think about it, The Man On Fire is very similar to the Parker character Mel Gibson played in PAYBACK. Both of them are mostly emotionless, cold-blooded killers who are wronged and spend the movie violently and single-mindedly righting that wrong. I mean really, just righting the shit out of it. But the difference is, Parker (actually they call him Porter in the movie) is fun to watch. He’s not joking around, he’s very serious, but there’s joy in the clever ways he accomplishes his goals and humor in the way his scumbag adversaries respond to his success. The “oh shit” looks they get on their faces when he shows up at their place of business.

By the way, did I imagine it or did Denzel really say, “Revenge is a meal best served cold!” as he knocked a car off a cliff? I’m pretty sure this really happened in the movie. I wonder if that was Denzel’s plan all along to start doing glorified Brian Bosworth movies as soon as he got another Oscar. This is not gonna make me sound real smart, but I honestly think THE PUNISHER is a better ex-government badass turned alcoholic sadistic revenge killer movie. True, the Punisher had that corny narration about “not revenge – punishment,” but at least he made that up himself. The Man On Fire just repeats a cliche, and gets the wording wrong! Come on man, if that’s all you got, be a stoic killer. You don’t gotta say shit. You’re ruining it.

Another major problem in this movie though is the way it’s edited and shot. This is one of those movies where it’s EXTREME CLOSE UP, cut to shaky blurry handheld footage of traffic, cut to EXTREME CLOSEUP THROUGH WINDOW WITH REFLECTIONS IN WINDOW, freeze frame, speed up, slo mo, cut to nonsensical flashback of swimming lessons, EXTREME CLOSEUP, cut to OTHER EXTREME CLOSEUP, freeze frame again, cut to short clip of KOOYANISQATSI, etc. It’s also what I call a whooshy movie, where edits and camera movements seem to create sound. The camera moves and you hear a WHOOSH or the sound of traffic zooming by or a metal garage door slamming shut. And a man can only take so much of that nonsense. This movie is groundbreaking because it’s the first as far as I know to go one step beyond and let this annoying sugar high filmatic technique leak into the medium of subtitles.

Obviously, taking place in South America, there is some Spanish dialogue in this movie. And when you got Spanish dialogue in an English movie, usually you gotta translate it for us uneducated Americans, so you write the translation in the lower center area of the screen in easy to read letters, preferably yellow or white with black outlines in case of a scene taking place at a ski resort (I’m looking at you, VHS edition of Roger Vadim’s DANGEROUS LIASIONS).

But no! That’s not what Tony Scott wants! Tony Scott doesn’t play that shit! Tony Scott still probaly gets christmas cards from Jerry Bruckheimer, I’m sure he has the occasional social drinking with Michael Bay, they may or may not snort lines of cocaine off the hood of a gold plated humvee halfway submerged in a champagne jacuzzi surrounded by giant american flags and stacks of Playboy and Maxim magazines taller than most NBA players. I mean I’m just speculating here, I don’t have any inside info on this. So what Tony Scott does, he has subtitles that are supposed to just LOOK COOL instead of actually be readable. They roll out and spin around and slide across the screen. They show up on the top or on the side or sometimes the characters walk in front of them and they disappear. WHOOSH!

This type of horseplay might conceivably work in a movie like CHARLIE’S ANGELS but it does not work in a serious movie with no sense of humor. At first I thought maybe some young film students raised on MTV, Sugar Smacks and Visa commercials had taken over the movie in postproduction, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this assault on cinematic language was built into the shots, it had to have been premeditated. Admittedly, it is done slightly more artistically than in the Michael Bay movies, and there are a few scenes where it is used to intentionally disorient the audience and put them in the mind frame of the character. But not usually. For most of the movie, it’s the equivalent of Tony Scott wearing an earring and baggy pants. No, I’m not that old. What do you mean, old? I’m young and edgy. Look at my blond streaks. I’m one of these new young wunderkinds they got, I’m reinventing the filmatic language for my generation. Look out old people, little Tony Scott is coming and his movie is WHOOSHY! It’s gonna whooshy the starch right out of your collar!

Which reminds me there’s a part where Denzel goes to a “rave” and to fit in he wears a bandana on his head. That shit was hilarious.

Otherwise, this movie is a disappointment.

[ratings]