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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tatum plays Tyler, introduced in baggy clothes and backwards hat dancing with somebody’s girlfriend at a party and getting a gun pointed at him. He likes to dance, and he’s good at it, but it’s not a dream he pursues. He falls into the School of the Arts by coincidence and sheer stupidity. Fucking around one night with his best friends Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and Skinny (De’Shawn Washington), they’re throwing cans at each other and they accidentally break a window to the school, then decide to go inside, make fun of everything in there and start smashing things. When a security guard comes in Tyler sacrifices himself so his friends can get away, so he ends up sentenced to 200 hours community service and has to report back to the school while it’s in session.

Walking through the halls at first it kinda looks like a normal school where he just doesn’t know anybody. But then he hears piano, sees ballet. Some girls sing in chorus as they pass him, somebody carries a painting behind him, some dudes are in the hallway playing the ol’ Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major together. He shakes his head slightly, maybe surprised to see black dudes playing classical violin.

Meanwhile Nora (Jenna Dewan, now married to Tatum and going by Dewan-Tatum) is a student with a rich mother, deceased father and injured dance partner. She needs a rehearsal partner to practice for “the showcase” that all her dreams hinge on. But all the other students who are willing to help are too weak to lift her, so she builds a machine to do it, and doesn’t bargain for the deadly rampage it will go on when scorned. I’m sorry, I misspoke. There are no jealous machines, she just reluctantly accepts community service janitor Tyler’s offer to fill in.

Of course there is awkwardness, there is sexual tension, there is growing acceptance. They disappoint each other, they make up, they learn from each other, stand up for each other, there is a prick boyfriend she has to break up with (SPOILER), there is developing love, they combine their styles. It’s pretty much what you expect, but with some strange aspects worth discussing in numbered list format:

1. Race. It’s troubling that while Tyler improves his life through the arts his two black friends just play basketball and steal cars. A lesson is eventually learned, but only through BOYZ N THE HOOD style violent tragedy. In other ways it does subvert stereotypes – I mean, have you ever seen a movie where a white guy shows off his dancing skills while his non-dancing black friends sit on a car and watch appreciatively? I haven’t.

The school is portrayed as culturally and racially integrated. There’s no uptight white people bad guys. It’s not a big deal that Nora’s dance is to a hip hop song, and her best friends are a black producer and singer. Race is not entirely ignored, but not generally a big deal.

Ultimately it’s a love story between two white people, like most American movies. But it’s white dancers of the post hip hop generation, so they appreciate black culture without having to prove themselves part of it. Tyler’s hood cred is taken as a given, never questioned. In fact it’s an insult when he’s seen as leaving the hood.

2. Gayness. There’s a really weird moment during the school break-in when they’re making fun of pictures of ballet dancers in the trophy case and Skinny makes an off-hand comment that “They do show off they muscles pretty nice, though.” Tyler and Mac look at him suspiciously, Skinny panics and stutters defensively that he didn’t mean anything. It’s probly meant as a dumb joke about misunderstandings, like later when their friend Miles (Mario [not the one from video games, it's some young R&B singer that looks kinda like Chris Rock]) gets made fun of for saying “I play with myself” in reference to his music. But in Skinny’s case nobody laughs. Tyler backs away from Skinny like he’s afraid of gay cooties and Mac acts angry and concerned. It’s kinda creepy. It doesn’t seem like a scene you’d put in a movie unless it’s gonna later turn out that Skinny is gay and he has to come out and see if his brother and white friend will support him. But no, nothing like that ever comes up again. If Skinny was gay he took it to his grave.

3. Crime. It’s kind of funny how laid back this movie is about crime. Grand theft auto is a pretty serious one for kids. You could get in some trouble for that, in my opinion. I kinda like that the movie never bothers to preach about the ethics or illegality of it. There are no cops in the movie. It’s only bad because it makes some guys mad and they go after Skinny. It’s even implied that Skinny is just too young to do it right without help from the older kids.

The guy that runs the chop shop is Omar, played by The Overweight Lover Heavy Bundiddly Diddly D. He gets mad at Mac and Tyler about something and in a normal movie they would somehow get on his shit list and be in serious trouble. Not in this one. In fact, he delivers the movie’s most After School Special style wisdom. When Mac is surprised to find out that Miles goes to MSA, Omar gets mad: “What the hell is an art-school cat supposed to look like? Miles Davis, Tupac, Mobb Deep – those cats went to art school.”

4. Friendship. There’s a theme about loyalty. Nora’s boyfriend is an asshole for getting a record contract but ditching his producer Miles. Tyler is wrong to stop helping Nora after they have a disagreement. Nora is wrong to go back to her original dance partner after everything Tyler did for her. The one that’s funny to me though is Mac’s feeling of betrayal when he finds out the community service Tyler’s been doing is at the school. He walks in on a dance rehearsal like he walked in on him fucking his daughter. He storms off, Tyler has to chase him and they have an emotional confrontation. “It’s not like that!”

I mean, he says he’s mad that his friend left him hanging “to hang out with a bunch of rich kids,” but his disgust shows that it’s the dancing that bothers him, just like his homophobia towards Skinny and his muscles comment. He told Skinny they had to get him a girl, but he switches to quiet fury when he realizes Tyler is “messin around with our friendship… for a girl?” Later there’s this exchange:

“So what happened with that girl?”

“Nothin.”

“Nothin? I’m ‘posed to just believe you?”

I think there might be something else going on here besides Skinny being gay.

And Mac, I guess I need to remind you that he’s fucking doing it because he took the fall when you dipshits vandalized the school! He could still be mopping the floors, but he managed to improve the situation so he can fulfill his 200 hours while doing something he’s passionate about. You should be happy for him. You’re as bad as Nora’s mom. Okay, to be fair you both show up at the showcase and end up being proud. I guess you’re forgiven, Mac. But you’re a weirdo.

* * *

STEP UP is a stupid movie, that’s what I like about it. But I gotta admit there’s some kind of charm to it too. I don’t like the style of dancing, but you can tell that the two leads are real dancers, and they also have some charisma and chemistry. Dewan (who I guess was a dancer on a Janet Jackson tour) is good lookin too. And I think I’m supposed to hate Channing Tatum, but there’s something I kind of like about him. His whitebonics way of slurring his speech can be unappealing, but he’s good at showing the inner turmoil of a sensitive guy trying to act macho and uncaring. I mean you wouldn’t know that from GI JOE, but he’s pretty good in this and FIGHTING.

The director, Anne Fletcher, is a dancer and choreographer who started directing with this one and went on to do the romantic comedies 27 DRESSES and THE PROPOSAL. I think I’ll sit those out. The writers are Duane Adler (who did other dance movies like SAVE THE LAST DANCE) and Melissa Rosenberg (who did all the TWILIGHT movies). And it’s fair to say that it’s pretty much the movie you’d expect from that group trying to make a movie about ballet and the streets of Baltimore. 88 minutes in there’s a funeral, by 97 everybody’s smiling and celebrating. I wish the ballet class from the opening credits would’ve burst into the dark warehouse and all hell woulda broke loose. But you can’t have everything.

You could definitely compare the movie to HARD TIMES. It also made me think of LIONHEART because it’s this circle of rich assholes setting up underground fights in different weird locations. But honestly it’s more Spike Lee or Martin Scorsese than Jean-Claude Van Damme. This is not the slick Hollywood movie I expected, it’s a gritty New York movie, layered with texture and naturalism. It makes you feel like you’re in New York, surrounded by people, hearing sounds coming from all directions. It’s all shot in interesting, dirty and cramped locations. The dialogue sounds partly improvised, mumbled and overlapping, sentences that trail off.

Channing Tatum (seen strung up to the right) plays Shawn Macarthur, a homeless dude in New York selling fake Harry Potter books on the street. When some kids steal his money and he fights back he catches the eye of Terence Howard as Harvey, another two bit hustler who decides to manage him in the underground fights.

In a way that makes it exactly like every other fighting movie, but this one is different. Harvey isn’t an inspirational visionary or even a cheating scumbag. He has a little bit of both but mostly he’s kind of a whiny grandmother type. He has a messy apartment and stacks of tickets to Broadway shows that he scalps. He offers Shawn free tickets to Wicked or Legally Blonde, but he never accepts.

Harvey is competing against two other fighter managers played by Luis Guzman (MAGNOLIA, THE SUBSTITUTE) and Roger Guenveur Smith (DO THE RIGHT THING, MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE). They’re not in it that much (it’s not called MANAGING) and those are the only recognizable faces in the movie. That includes the much younger dudes who hang out with Harvey, I thought maybe they were his kids but maybe not. They become Shawn’s entourage, dudes who tell him good job but don’t have much else to offer. I like seeing people in movies that just look like actual people you would see around and not really know what their deal is. Just, you know, those guys that go to Shawn’s fights with him.

I like that it’s not glamourous. Even when Shawn starts being successful he never lives the high life. When he makes money he puts it in his sock. Harvey keeps his winnings in a suitcase hidden in the piles of crap in his living room. Luis and Roger have a fancy office but it’s hidden in the back of a 99 cent store behind a money-themed beach towel.

Shawn’s not very macho, either. He’s the introverted Van Damme. Sure, he’s got muscles and wears a tank top. And he wants to win. But he never glories in being a champion. Courting his woman he’s shy and awkward. He’s very polite, constantly thanking or apologizing. He doesn’t try to show off his street cred like Vin Diesel or somebody would. He tries to hide that he sleeps on the street, he’s ashamed of it. When he first hooks up with Harvey he knows he’s a commodity to him, but he’s just doing what he has to to get some money and looks kind of embarrassed about it, like he’s a prostitute.

Another weird thing that kind of subverts the genre: you hardly ever see him training or practicing. And you don’t hear about him knowing any special fighting styles or moves. It’s not about him trying to get better. He’s just a tough guy, they have faith in him being able to fight. Maybe they just get lucky. Before the final fight he finally trains: he does clap pushups on the subway. Beat that, Rocky. You thought you were low budget with the meat thing, but meat is expensive. Shawn probaly jumped the turnstile too.

At first I was disappointed that the fights were shot in the 2009 style, closeup and handheld. But they won me over. You all know I prefer stylized fights with choreography, show-offy moves and clear staging, but most of that honestly wouldn’t work in this movie. Some of these fights feel very real, with an obvious UFC influence. There’s one behind a convenience store that feels like the audience-recorded bootleg of a concert – your view is sometimes blocked by the crowd, and you can hear people talking over the grunts of the fighters. Another one, inside a fancy apartment, has some chokeholds and drops that look deadly. And the final fight is just brutal. There’s one fight against a guy who I thought “Now come on, he couldn’t possibly beat this guy.” And then he didn’t. (I guess one guy he defeats is a well known fighter who could kick his ass, but I thought they made his come-from-behind victory more believable than many fight movies. It’s not one of those things where he beats him by using slow motion.)

But this is not much of an action movie, it’s more of a drama. It’s about relationships and quiet moments and shit. And they work. I think LIONHEART is a pretty well directed action movie, but this is the type of movie that focuses much more on the directorial craft and less at making the main character and his physical activities look cool. The setting is the most important character I think, the huge buildings, the weird people coming by mumbling random shit, Harvey whining at them to move along. Because you see this city you understand the characters better and what they’re struggling against. My metaphorical hat is off to director Dito Montiel of that movie called A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS that I don’t even know what it’s about but I think it has Channing Tatum in it also.

Tatum barely seems like the same stiff guy from GI JOE. He’s much more natural. The character is kind of a meathead, and he talks with what you might call a “white rapper accent” (or even a Seagal accent) so that probaly bugs people. But I liked him. I also think this is probaly the best Terence Howard performance since HUSTLE & FLOW. I wasn’t excited about him being in this, he’s been pretty generic in movies like THE BRAVE ONE and GET RICH OR DIE TRYING, but here he gives his own weird flair to the character that I can’t imagine anybody else doing. According to the brain trust at the IMDb message boards “OMG, this has to be the worst acting in a movie ever!!! What happened to Terrance Howard? He is a good actor, but in this movie he talked with some kind of odd accent, it was weird.” But I like him because he’s not your typical movie character, he’s not cool, he’s kind of pathetic, but I also kind of felt sorry for him. He has all the same problems that Shawn has but he’s a little older so he tries to pass himself off as more in control. Still, his voice shows his constant disappointment in the way things keep turning out.

Some people would probaly argue that this is a best of neither world type situation where somebody looking for a bunch of Van Damme kickboxing would be disappointed because it’s not really about fighting, and somebody wanting an independent drama wouldn’t like it because it is kind of about fighting and doesn’t try to go that deep into the characters, just more than you would in BLOODSPORT. But personally I think it’s a nice balance. It has some of what I like about both types of movies and makes for an unusual combination.

[ratings]

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I don’t know what you’ve heard, I don’t know what kind of rumors are flying around, but this here is not what anybody should call a “good summer popcorn movie.” GI JOE can’t be mentioned in the same breath as JAWS or even JURASSIC PARK or even INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, so don’t ever read this sentence out loud. But there is something unique about this movie and I would recommend it to some of you. If you’re the type of individual with room in your heart for a ridiculous movie that comes out in August that you go see in a half (or all) empty theater for a laugh, then I believe this movie will deliver for you spectacularly. For example I paid money to see STEALTH a few years ago and it was kind of funny. If STEALTH was a single this is a grand slam. I was laughing pretty much from the extravagant new Hasbro logo at the beginning to the weirdly intelligence-insulting final scene, without many lulls in between. For some of you it will be unwatchable crap, but for me it’s hilariously terrible and/or terribly hilarious.

It’s supposed to be an epic so it begins in France, 1641, and spans Asia, Africa and the polar ice caps. It includes powersuits, underwater bases, jet packs, robotic fish, ninjas, submarines, helicopters, laser cannons, asskicking supergenius babes, giant drills, Humvee bulldozers, high tech training programs, CGI polar bears, snowmobiles, experimental jets, missiles, air craft carriers, throwing stars, nanobots, mind control, invisibility suits, holograms, silly masks, the destruction of the Eiffel Tower, a secret entrance next to the pyramids (I wonder why they didn’t know about that ancient doomsday machine hidden inside the pyramid in TRANSFORMERS 2?)… all of it depicted with the help of digital effects that might qualify as state of the art in the Hong Kong film industry of several years ago. It has all kinds of stuff constantly on display but doesn’t look or feel like a modern cutting edge movie. There’s a little bit of a MORTAL KOMBAT or POWER RANGERS kind of feel in there.

I think that’s part of what makes it enjoyable, and why so many of the nerd websight guys are saying it’s “fun.” I have no idea what the fuck director Stephen Sommers is thinking, but he seems serious, and there’s something kind of charming about that fearlessness and/or cluelessness. Most modern movies take a “property” like this and instead of just running with it they try to legitimize everything, explain everything or apologize for everything. For example in that other notable adaptation from the works of Hasbro, the TRANSFORMERS saga, they’re worried about people accepting a story about robots from space so they make it about a kid trying to get laid who happens to know some robots. They don’t want to be laughed at so they have every character constantly joking, trying to keep an ironic distance. GI JOE revives the ancient tradition of the annoying comic relief character – Marlon Wayans is the one guy who makes lame jokes, the rest of the characters take everything seriously, and that makes it much funnier and more tolerable.

I can’t imagine this movie will catch on big or get the same “check your brain at the door” pass that TRANSFORMERS got, because it just does not try to be hip, ironic, modern or grounded in the real world. It says “fuck it, I’m a GI Joe movie, why lie?” So you got these characters who are not embarrassed to melodramatically spew exposition and call each other names like “Ripcord” and “Storm Shadow” and “Snake Eyes” and “Dr. Mindbender” and never stop to point out that it’s goofy or wink at the audience or any stupid shit like that. And then on the other hand you got a couple over-the-top villain characters who are just known by their first names. In one of the early scenes Duke (Channing Tatum)’s convoy is attacked by a helicopter full of robotic-looking troopers, their leader is super-hot Sienna Miller in all black leather. As she climbs into her futuristic helicopter carrying a case of stolen WMDs Duke looks at her and says “Anna?” Turns out the super terrorist he ran into is his ex-fiancee. (Next time the bad guys threaten the world he should send some of their private photos to one of those ex-girlfriend porn sights.)

Man, there’s so many flashbacks. There’s this Scottish arms dealer at the middle of the whole thing, he has a mask he keeps that was used to torture one of his ancestors in 1641 for selling weapons to the wrong people. He could easily just explain that’s why he has the mask in his office but for some reason they feel they need to show flashbacks to it. Snake Eyes (Outlaw Award winner Ray Park) is the good ninja and Storm Shadow is the bad one and they keep flashing back to them fighting each other as kids (young Storm Shadow is played by the kid who led the drug cartel in TROPIC THUNDER). Snake Eyes doesn’t speak and can do flips on top of moving vehicles and looks like his entire body was dipped in black rubber. So it made me smile whenever they’d show “the Joes” all standing together because nobody cares that one guy has black rubber muscles and mouth. He just walks around wearing that shit like it’s normal. I guess it shows that GI Joe is a safe, non-judgmental work environment for people with alternative lifestyles.

In a way the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow rivalry subverts the usual ninja coloring system, because the good guy is dressed in black and the bad guy in white. But of course in the White Ninja tradition the good guy is the Caucasian trained in Asian ways.

Sometimes the characters set up each other’s flashbacks. One of my favorites is when Anna says “We all have regrets,” and the camera pans over to Storm Shadow looking sad. Man, nothing sadder than ninja regrets. Later Anna is the one having regrets, she keeps flashing back to her old boyfriend and you’d think somebody would notice her “oh my goodness what have I done?” face while standing in the midst of an evil planning session in an underwater lair, but if they do nobody says anything.

I bet when the actors came in to try on their costumes somebody told them to stand in front of a green screen holding a steering wheel. There’s alot of slowly rotating around these guys in the cockpits of CGI planes, helicopters and submarines.

There’s so many goofy things in the plot that don’t quite fly, like the scene where the GI Joe supercomputer has figured out who Anna is. It doesn’t seem that impressive because much earlier in the movie Duke already told them who she was and handed them a photo of her from his wallet.

The great Billy Zane lookalike Arnold Vosloo has a small role as Zartan, who is a master of disguise. We know this from when another character says “you are a master of disguise”. But he never puts on fake noses or anything, he just steals a soldier’s uniform and later wears an eyepatch. I gotta wonder how Vosloo felt about this, having played a less lazy master of disguise in DARKMAN 2-3. Seems like kind of an insult to his disguise mastery.

There’s a whole storyline about Zartan having his face transmutitated to mimic somebody, they don’t say who at first. Maybe 2/3 of the way through the movie he goes in to replace the president of the United States. Then at the very end of the movie the president starts whistling “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” the same song Zartan annoyingly whistled in all his other scenes. You’re supposed to be surprised that Zartan has replaced the president, even though this was clearly communicated in an earlier scene! A real head-scratcher of an ending, especially since it’s all about setting up a part 2 that I’m guessing (sadly) will never be made.

By the way the president is played by Jonathan Pryce, so this is a movie where the star of BRAZIL and Lance Henriksen’s henchman from HARD TARGET play the same character.

The bad guys have created a race of mindless soldiers who have no fear and are immune to cobra venom. I don’t know how handy that last part’s gonna be, I guess that’s just a “better safe than sorry” type feature.

Joseph Gordon Levitt (HALLOWEEN H20) plays Anna’s kid brother/Duke and Ripcord’s best friend in one scene, but he turns out to secretly (SPOILER) be an evil cyborg mad scientist working for the bad guys, and then at the end he puts on a different silly mask to become their leader. He does a cartoonish Evil Voice for the doctor character and then when he puts on the other mask (not to hide his identity by the way, since everybody knows who he is) he switches to an entirely different Evil Voice. I wonder how he decided which one was which? Did he bank on there being a sequel and save his favorite one for last? Also it’s funny because when discussing his evil plots everybody just refers to him as “Rex,” even the people who don’t know him personally. It’s all very informal.

As long as we’re talking SPOILERS I gotta say I was disappointed when Sienna Miller turned good at the end. They must’ve figured she was too hot to be evil, but paradoxically making her not evil anymore makes her less hot.

Somebody said the action scenes are good, but I don’t agree. I think people are only saying that because of TRANSFORMERS 2, QUANTUM OF SOLACE and other recent movies setting the comprehensibility bar so low. GI JOE isn’t the worst offender but its action scenes are very chaotic with lots of wobbly cameras, unnecessary closeups and quick cuts making them confusing. It seems more like sloppiness than stylization (except for a war flashback that hilariously switches to shakycam to remind you of BLACK HAWK DOWN). I thought maybe it was just me, that I’m getting too sensitive to these things, but then two people who aren’t as concerned with that issue brought it up to me and seemed to have more trouble with it than I did.

But I don’t know man, it still kept me laughing. I’m not sure exactly what to make of this fuckin thing. I’m not even sure if it “knows what it is,” and that’s what makes it interesting. It’s a kind of crappiness you’ve seen before but not on this level, not this extravagant. The effects are all low rent and cheap looking, it’s not at all the kind of spectacle that TRANSFORMERS is. But they just keep coming at you, they didn’t get lazy with it. Every 30 seconds somebody pulls out a jetpack or bursts out of a wall driving a giant drill machine or says “send in the sharks!” to deploy an army of submarines. And I’m pretty sure about 300 civilians were killed just by the good guys during the Paris chase scene.

Obviously this is some stupid shit, and I enjoyed it. So you might be asking what makes this more tolerable for me than the TRANSFORMERS movies. If not, I’m asking myself that. I already mentioned a couple reasons: it doesn’t have the constant barrage of terrible jokes (because Marlon Wayans is sometimes off screen) and it has the balls to make it about ninjas and soldiers in power suits, not a kid in a Strokes t-shirt who befriends the ninjas and soldiers in power suits. But I think it’s also that it’s not as mean-spirited. The TRANSFORMERS movies have this cruel undercurrent – Bernie Mac calling his grandma a bitch, Bumblebee smashing a girl’s head for trying to seduce whatsisdick, John Turturro getting pissed on, the soldiers scaring the Obama administration bureaucrat by tricking him into skydiving, Optimus Prime murdering the giant wheel for being on the wrong team, all the ugly racial stereotypes, etc. I didn’t sense that same hateful undercurrent in GI JOE, and I guess maybe since it all looks so low rent it seems more like the underdog you want to like instead of the rich bully pushing everybody around by having the latest ILM effects. I can’t really picture people watching this over TERMINATOR 2.

I don’t know if any of that is fair, but that’s my theory for why one moron movie rubbed me the wrong way and the other one didn’t. They might be equal in stupidity and crappiness, but this one didn’t piss me off.

It turns out GI Joe is a big thing to some males of a certain age. I know it was those dolls they used to make and then in the ’80s it was a cartoon to sell toys. I never knew anybody gave a shit until they announced this movie and some of the Ain’t It Cool talkbackers started having the same sort of zealot intensity as those homophobes who protest at soldier’s funerals. There was a cultural misunderstanding where I think I compared GI Joe to Cheetohs commercials or something and one guy was so mad he would post on all of my reviews that I had no credibility because I didn’t “get” GI Joe so nobody should listen to me and I should fuck off, etc.

Some of the more moderate GI Joeists explained that it’s not what it seems like, this is not adults getting a little too nostalgic about a cartoon they grew up on that was churned out without much care just to brainwash them into getting their parents to buy products. Serious GI Joe fans don’t like the cartoon, they only like the more nuanced long running Marvel Comics series, which was written by a Vietnam vet with a history in writing war stories who had more time to really flesh out the long histories and relationships of the characters. Also they like playing with the little dolls and what not and maybe wearing costumes. Totally innocent.

In all sincerity, I feel like these nerds sort of convinced me. I could see how this concept actually could make a cool action movie. GI Joe is this elite military team where every character has a different specialty and colorful nickname, and they have high tech weapons and fight against a colorful snake cult terrorist cell. They could be larger than life badasses like the team in PREDATOR if somebody good was making the movie. But that’s the problem I was trying to warn the Joephiliacs about: the auteur theory. If they had high hopes for this movie they should’ve taken them out to the shed for a talk as soon as they heard the director was Stephen Sommers.

I gave up on Sommers after the first MUMMY. I know some people like DEEP RISING, maybe I’ll give it another shot some day, but both of those movies were obnoxious, just steamrollering through, no rhythm or pacing, no quiet moments. Just one long, loud, pan-banging sequence that doesn’t even fade in or out. When THE MUMMY ended I had no idea that we had reached some sort of climax. It’s almost like you could play it backwards and it would be the same movie. When I think of THE MUMMY I always think of the scene in the library where for no reason Rachel Weisz clumsily knocks over all the shelves domino-style, destroying the entire library. In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Steven Spielberg figured an audience would be okay with his professor character having a few quiet conversations at the beginning, but Sommers doesn’t share that belief.

So I haven’t watched THE MUMMY RETURNS or VAN HELSING but this one looked too funny to miss, and I don’t regret my decision. I don’t want to call GI JOE “a masterpiece of camp” or anything like that. It’s not a masterpiece. But it’s a piece of something.

Best toy adaptation so far!

[ratings]

NOTE: This is another one of those ones I sent in to Ain’t It Cool and they never ran it. But I was kind of thinking of making it a geocities exclusive anyway because I knew as soon as some asshole talkbacker pointed out it was long I would ram my head through a wall.

***
IMPORTANT NOTICE – RFL/NFW: This will be a Real Fucking Long review that will also talk about my own observations of the actual historical events the movie is based on. You’ve been warned so NFW (No Fucking Whining).
***

At a glance BATTLE IN SEATTLE might seem like a perfect opening film for this year’s Seattle International Film Festival. For one thing, it has the word “Seattle” in the title. For another it takes place in Seattle. Those are only two of the reasons.

But I was thinking it was a mistake because this is a movie about the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, screening within walking distance of where it happened, but most of the movie is filmed far away in Vancouver. And some of us might have a problem with that. Could be risky.

I got a big laugh when I flipped through the Seattle Weekly’s coverage of SIFF. The Weekly was bought out by Village Voice Media a year or two ago, so alot of their reviews now are just recycled from the weeklies in other cities. Here is a movie about protesting globalism in Seattle, and instead of a local perspective they re-use an old review from a previous film festival written by Texas-based Robert Wilonsky. Don’t call Alanis Morissette yet, I’m still looking into this, but I have reason to believe it may be ironic.

At least actor-turned-first-time-director Stuart Townsend acknowledged what he was up against when he introduced the movie. He asked how many people had been there during the protests and when the hands went up he said, “Oh shit.”

Well, he didn’t have to worry about this crowd. They gave it a standing ovation, they cheered every time some character made some political statement they agreed with (which was alot), or when it reminded them of something cool that happened during the protests. There was alot of attempted sticking it to the man going on in the Seattle Opera House. The audience questions afterwards gushed about the movie. And to be honest the switches to Vancouver were not as noticeable as I expected. You get used to movies taking place in Seattle and just having one helicopter shot of the Space Needle. This one had quite a few scenes in front of the real Paramount Theater, the Chief Seattle statue by Zeke’s Pizza, the monorail, and a shot of the Cinerama. You see, THE HOLLOW MAN 2, or CHAOS starring Wesley Snipes and Jason Statham? You could’ve done better.

So opening night was not the disaster I imagined. There weren’t many major regional faux pas other than Governor Gary Locke being given a Chinese accent. There were no protesters outside the opera house chanting “This is what Seattle looks like.” So that was all good but in my opinion the movie was not. I hate to say it, because Townsend seems like a nice, sincere guy (and Charlize Theron is purdy – she was there and I can confirm that it was only makeup in MONSTER) but for me this movie doesn’t cut it. The characters don’t have much depth, too much of the story is told through awkward dialogue or news reports instead of showing it, the scenes don’t feel very real and I don’t think it does a very good job of communicating what exactly was going on.

That last one is partly because of the budget, because what made those days so awe inspiring was the sheer size of the protest. Without a ton of money it’s hard to show how epic it was. In the movie it mostly looks like a small group crowding up maybe half a block. The only time you can see how big it is is when they cut to actual documentary footage, but that’s always a little offputting because it instantly feels so much more real than the rest of the movie and emphasizes how fake the re-enactments are. There are a whole lot of scenes in huge crowds but where you can clearly hear the main characters talk to each other with minimal background noise. It just feels artificial.

The outsourced review compared it to CRASH, but that’s not an accurate comparison. There is no fucking of leg wounds or rubbing nipples against airplanes or anything like that. Or if they’re talking about the Paul Haggis one I don’t agree with that either. This is neither as hilariously ludicrous as CRASH’s worst moments or as well directed and acted as CRASH’s best moments. The only similarity is that it follows various characters on different sides of the conflict and eventually some of their stories intersect. You’ve got Ray Liotta as the in-over-his-head mayor (not named Paul Schell like the genuine article), Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jennifer Carpenter and Andre 3000 Benjamin as activists, Woody Harrelson and Channing Tatum as cops. Inside the WTO there’s a couple recognizable faces trying to get their issues to the table, including Rade Sherbedzija (the costume shop owner from EYES WIDE SHUT) and Isaach De Bankole (the ice cream man from GHOST DOG!).

The style of the movie is Paul Greengrass, handheld documentary kind of look. That’s a good way to do a movie on a budget but directors don’t seem to consider how the style can backfire. If the camerawork is “real” shouldn’t the acting and dialogue be more real than this? Should we really have the characters explaining the story to the audience, like “Six months of preparation. Here we go” or “Welcome to the first internet protest!”? The “real” look clashes with the Hollywood feel of some of the writing, like giving Henderson a back story about his brother who was killed in a previous protest. And none of the characters end up with enough screen time to really have a strong story. Theron especially seems wasted playing half of her role in a hospital bed.

The most interesting character is actually one of the few establishment figures, the mayor. Both in the movie and in real life I kind of felt sorry for that guy. He thought he had this big coup bringing the WTO to the city, and it turned into a notorious disaster that ended his career. He made a genuine but naive attempt to honor Seattle’s way of life by not squelching the protest, but it was worse than he expected and then pressure started coming from the (American-accented) governor and the White House to clamp down. So he goes in the opposite direction, complete overkill, and makes the problem way worse. But he can’t seem to accept the fact that he’s now The Man. He keeps mentioning to the press that he protested Vietnam. Hey come on guys, I’m one of the good guys, I swear.

A guy in that position is so much more interesting than protesters that I started to wonder why the movie wasn’t just about him. Alot of what happens is never shown, you just hear somebody telling the mayor that it happened, so maybe they should’ve saved money and gone in a more minimalistic theatrical kind of approach. You see the whole thing from the perspective of this poor bastard hiding out in a building somewhere trying to make the right decisions. But I guess that wouldn’t have had the messages Townsend wanted to get across.

* * *

Let me give some of that local perspective that Seattle Weekly couldn’t give. I had my own minor brush with the protests so I have an idea what they were like. I’m a left winger but not an activist. I was living outside of town and I wasn’t about to go to the protest because I didn’t know what the fuck a WTO was. I watched the news on the first day and saw those anarchist kids smashing some windows, which was portrayed as violence and a legitimate reason to spray tear gas and shoot rubber bullets at all the thousands of other people. I was suspicious because I’d seen kids get beat up by cops before and then watched them call it a riot on TV. But I wasn’t there, I was just guessing.

Then the next day they declared a “No Protest Zone.” Basically there was a small square where you were allowed to still have the first amendment, and the rest of downtown you would be arrested if you had a sign or accidentally chanted or played a drum or something. During the Bush years this became a regular part of protests. If Bush comes into town they square off a little cage of fence where you’re allowed to protest out of the sight of Bush and the media, and the rest is off limits. I’ve heard people credit Bush’s people for starting this technique but this is one thing you can’t pin on him. They already did it for Clinton when he came to town for WTO.

Anyway, I am one of those guys who believes in freedom and America and what not, so when I heard about the No Protest Zone (which is not explained in the movie) is when I decided to go downtown and see what was going on with my own eyes. When I got there it was pretty surreal. Quiet, not alot of activity, but lines of militarized riot cops blocking off numerous streets, standing there like stormtroopers under the Christmas lights.

In the afternoon I was talking to some friends on the corner when a relatively small group of marchers burst out of the Pike Place Market stairway, coming back downtown after a labor rally. These were the friendliest, happiest group of protesters you ever saw. Hippies, union members identified by their jackets, people in turtle costumes like Andre 3000 wears in the movie, and everybody was dancing and chanting to the beat of a percussion band. They were gesturing for innocent passersby like ourselves to join them. My friends and I looked at each other and shrugged. Why not? I like drums. I like turtles. I don’t like the priorities of global capitalism taking precedence over our local beliefs or whatever.

So we marched for a little bit and it was pretty uplifting and then as we came around the corner we saw another crowd of marchers coming from a different direction. Two relatively small groups combining to form one larger one! What poetry! As the crowds merged we cheered. But I remember seeing fear on the faces of the other crowd. They were not happy to see us and were gesturing back in the direction they came from, like “No– you don’t understand…”

And then I noticed the battalion of riot cops behind them. They were firing concussion grenades into the air, basically like a firework that makes a loud bang to scare and disorient people. There were white clouds wafting around – this was the CS gas I believe. Even nowhere near the clouds your eyes and nasal passages began to burn. They had some sort of tank-like vehicle, and a loudspeaker repeatedly announcing that everyone must disperse immediately or be arrested.

I gotta be honest, the whole thing pissed me off, but my friends were more interested in getting away from tear gas and pepper spray than in fighting the man. Which was not a bad idea, so I went with them. This was not our fight. Sorry, turtles.

The problem we found then was that dispersing was easier-said-over-a-loudspeaker-than-done. Every direction we went there were more cops, more chemical clouds, and lines of National Guard. And it’s hard to see when you keep rubbing your eyes. The Guard are mentioned in the movie but, as far as I noticed, never shown. In the media they were always referred to as “unarmed National Guard,” although in reality they each held a large wooden bat that in my opinion would’ve hurt if they chose to use it on you.

I went up to a line of them who, obviously, would not let me pass. I asked them which direction to go. “We’re trying to disperse, but every way we go is blocked.” They not only wouldn’t answer, they wouldn’t look at me. I’m sure that was what they were told to do to avoid being tricked or distracted by the wily anarchists of Eugene, Oregon. I don’t think I ever heard anything about National Guard getting out of line, so good for them. But let’s just say it was not comforting to have them there. I did not feel it was people they were guarding.

We eventually found an unguarded alley to sneak out through and got the hell out of there. But it was sobering to be caught in the middle of this very minor skirmish in the several days of cop vs. protester battles. Alot of people have a kneejerk reaction against any protest, assuming whoever does it is a crazy extremist or is just trying to show off or something. If you think I should be beaten, gassed and arrested for the crime of stupidly joining a hippie conga line for a few minutes then so be it, I will accept your wise judgment. What disturbed me though was seeing elderly people bent over coughing at the bus stops. Look, I don’t agree with some stupid kids breaking windows and spraypainting shit. But is that worth pepper spraying an old lady waiting for the bus out of town? I’m against it.

The movie tries to address this issue with Charlize Theron’s character. She doesn’t know anything about the protests except that her husband (Harrelson) is a cop and has to work overtime. She works downtown but when she’s sent home she gets caught in the crossfire. To get around the crowd she tries to cut down an alley, where she sees protesters running out of a cloud of tear gas, gas-masked cops chasing after them. I was surprised how much this reminded me of actually being there (even if Charlize’s alley was in another country).

But here’s the thing (SPOILER)… her character is pregnant. That’s the kind of thing that spooked me when I was in the middle of that, thinking of how many random pregnant women or asthmatic elderly people might’ve been stuck there. But in the movie (seriously, SPOILER) a cop runs up and hits her in the belly with his club, and she loses the baby. The audience gasped. It hurt to look at. I have no doubt that something like this could happen. But on the other hand… it didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. My blood still boils at some of the fucked up shit some cops did. The only officer fired for excessive force during the protests was a King County Sheriff’s Deputy named John Vanderwalker. He saw two young women in a parked car videotaping. He knocked on their window and when they cracked it he said “Tape this, bitch!” and sprayed pepper spray into their car. A separate videotape showed a medic, clearly labelled with a red cross armband and holding a first aid kit, crouching on a sidewalk. Vanderwalker ran up behind her and kicked her in the back. He denied that it was him in the video but they were able to enlarge the image and read the name on his helmet, so he was fired. The next year an arbitrator found that it could not be proven that he had lied, because he might have forgot that he ran up and kicked a lady in the back for no reason, so he was reinstated with back pay. He got a free vacation out of it.

That’s the one guy they tried to hold accountable, and that’s just the stuff he did on tape. Who knows what else he forgot about doing? But if he had hit a pregnant lady and caused her to miscarry, well, I think we would know about that. So to attribute something that horrible to a police officer seems like cheating.

I think that’s the biggest problem with the movie in getting its message across. There’s alot of truth in the movie, but by mixing it with typical movie phoniness you kind of dilute it. For example:

* They mention that the police tried to get the fire department to spray the protesters with firehoses, and they refused. That’s true (it’s verified in the REPORT OF THE WTO ACCOUNTABILITY REVIEW COMMITTEE SEATTLE CITY COUNCIL) but will people who don’t know that believe it? I mean, it sounds pretty over-the-top, like clubbing a pregnant lady.

* There’s a scene where an anarchist breaks a store window and Henderson and other protesters try to stop him. He thinks vandalism doesn’t constitute violence, they try to convince him it’s still giving the media exactly the images they need to make the whole demonstration useless. This kind of thing really did happen, but it seems phony when it turns into Rodriguez melodramatically calling Henderson a coward, and when the anarchist is played by Joshua Jackson of DAWSON’S CREEK.

* They also have a subplot about a local news reporter having her eyes opened over the course of her coverage. I felt like this really did happen as I saw local reporters trying to smear the whole protest because one dumbass vandalizing the Nike store was wearing Nikes, but eventually as the police started firing tear gas into bars on Capitol Hill they started to become more sympathetic toward the people getting beat up and visibly upset about what was going on. But in the movie they have her join the protest on live TV when she’s supposed to be reporting from a press conference. Do you really have to manufacture stick-it-to-the-man moments when you’re telling the story of a real one?

* It is also true that there were undercover police pretending to be protesters as Channing Tatum’s character does. I’m not sure if any of them got beat up by other cops, but I’ll let that one go. I liked what they did with his character so I hope people don’t think it’s just made up.

To me it seemed like the most crucial turning point was Capitol Hill. The mayor had declared a curfew, and the police had forced a small group of lingering protesters out of downtown and up the hill. Capitol Hill is a neighborhood with alot of young people, hipsters, gays, artists, punks. There are many bars and restaraunts and a lively night life. It’s where Sir Mix-a-Lot was talking about in that old song “Posse On Broadway.” He wasn’t lying, there’s always a long line for burgers at Dick’s even late into the night.

The movie shows a little bit of what a bad situation the cops were in.
They were working over time, not getting breaks, not getting enough water, pissing in bottles, getting piss bottles thrown at them. What it doesn’t mention is that most of them were from out of town. There weren’t enough Seattle police for the job so officers were shipped in from all over the state. So you have these tired, pissed off cops chasing protesters up the hill… I wonder if they even knew where they were? Did they know they had left the “No Protest Zone”? Did they know that the crowds up here were not protesting anything? What did they expect to happen when they started spraying and hitting regular apolitical people and telling them to “disperse” from their own neighborhood?

That night was the most out of control because the police found themselves battling not with WTO protesters, but with Capitol Hill residents pissed off that their businesses and hangouts were being tear gassed. The police wouldn’t leave, so the locals wouldn’t go inside. After being mistaken for protesters many residents went ahead and became protesters, gathering outside the local police headquarters. A city council member showed up and tried to negotiate between the locals and the police. The news crews stopped spreading hearsay about protesters being seen with molotov cocktails and started interviewing various bloodied people about all the horrible things that happened to them. And they kept showing the video of Vanderwalker kicking the medic.

BATTLE IN SEATTLE tries to show some of the chaos that night, but without really explaining the context. And then two of the leads are involved in a pretty ludicrous foot chase. But the thing I felt was really missing was the next morning. After having the police do nothing was a failure, and having the police beat the hell out of everybody was even worse, they tried a new approach. The stormtrooper outfits were put away and protests were chaperoned by un-armored bike police. Suddenly everybody calmed down and there were no more scuffles. This is the approach they’ve used for most political protests since then, with much success. Both Niketown and the old ladies at bus stops have gone relatively unscathed.

I can’t expect Townsend to tell the story I want him to, but to me that was the inspirational part of WTO. That was what showed me that people could take a stand and make a difference. Not activists but regular people who could’ve gone inside to safety but felt the need to stand in the way of an injustice in their neighborhood. And it did force the city to change their tactics. It made a difference.

As for the WTO protests? Well, despite what the trailer for BATTLE IN SEATTLE tells you it is debatable how much effect they had on anything. But in the movie’s one truly great moment it acknowledges this. Hundreds of protesters, including the main characters, are in jail. Henderson’s character is especially glum because he’s on his third strike, and he thinks they’ve failed. But Andre Benjamin’s Django tries to cheer him up.
“Yesterday those people didn’t even know what the WTO was,” he says. “But today…”

And you’re thinking oh come on Stuart Townsend. Let’s not overstate this.

“…well, they still don’t know what it is. But at least they know it’s bad!”

I didn’t mention Benjamin before because I was saving the best for last. He’s definitely the highlight of the movie. As the guy who tries to keep morale high among protesters he gets all the funny lines and few of the self righteous ones. It’s also nice to see a major rap star wearing a cardboard turtle costume. You don’t see enough of that.

I should also single out Martin Henderson. When I saw him on stage I realized “Holy shit, that’s the guy from TORQUE!” (and he was standing next to the stars of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, AEON FLUX, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE – quite a collection). I do not mean that as an insult because to be totally and completely honest I enjoyed the hell out of TORQUE. But he was not very good in it. In this one he is good and I think we will be seeing more of him.

* * *

Like most political movies it’s hard to see this one converting many people. I don’t think those people who instinctively hate protesters will have their eyes opened too wide. In fact, I’m not sure some people are even going to understand what the World Trade Organization is (it’s mostly explained in an opening montage like ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK).

But I do truly believe that Townsend’s heart is in the right place, so I’m glad he was able to show it in Seattle without derisive laughter (except during a climactic scene where a cop tracks down the protester he beat up and apologizes to him – I guess we weren’t ready to believe that one). It kind of reminded me of Emilio Estevez’s movie BOBBY, but it wasn’t as laugh-out-loud corny as that one, and Townsend didn’t even cast himself in the movie. So it’s not THAT embarrassing.

My apologies for the negative review, and I look forward to the intelligent and courteous political discussion that will take place in the talkback.

thanks,

Vern

[ratings]