Yeah, THE ROCK is Michael Bay’s best movie, but MONEY TALKS is Brett Ratner’s, and nobody gave him a Criterion Edition. But watching THE ROCK again I think I get it now, it’s an enjoyable enough overblown Bruckheimer & Simpson version of the ’90s prestige action movies like AIR FORCE ONE, THE FUGITIVE and IN THE LINE OF FIRE. It’s one of those movies, like UNDER SIEGE or EXECUTIVE DECISION, where they have the Pentagon brass standing around debating and overseeing the mission. They got this guy John Spencer that I remember was on The West Wing, so I kept expecting Martin Sheen to be the president. As long as it’s slickly made I’m kind of a sucker for this kind of movie, it’s not at all my favorite type of action but it’s a type that’s usually gonna be enjoyable.

And then you gotta figure in that it’s an early example of Nic Cage smuggling a little of his roach-munching weirdness into a big mainstream movie. And even more importantly it has a really good performance by and character for Ed Harris, a terrorist villain who’s entirely different from the ones in the other DIE HARD sequels and wannabes. So this is worthwhile.

Pretty much all of Bay’s worst sins – sloppy action, terrible jokes rudely interrupting scenes that are apparently supposed to be dramatic, gay stereotypes – are already evident, but he (and action movies in general) have gotten so much worse in the 15 years since that all that doesn’t seem quite as bad as it used to. Yeah, it’s embarrassing when he cuts to a shitty joke about a cartoonish gay hairdresser in the middle of his dramatic escape sequence, but it seems restrained next to the machine gun barrage of quips and mugging he sprays all over pretty much every scene in BAD BOYS 2 or the TRANSFORMERSes.

Harris plays Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel. Like Tommy Lee Jones in UNDER SIEGE or Eric Bogosian in UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY he’s a disillusioned military asset; unlike those guys he’s not a maniac or an asshole, and the government didn’t force his hand by screwing him or trying to kill him. He’s an honorable man outraged by a betrayal of the soldiers under his command. He’s tried to handle it other ways, even testifying to Congress (like Seagal at the end of ABOVE THE LAW). He probly wrote some letters, went on some cable news shows, sent out some mass emails to his friends and family saying to write their senators. But now “to protest a grave injustice” he’s taken some elite marines, stolen some chemical weapons and set up shop at Alcatraz with 80 tourists as hostages. (What happens to the hostages, by the way? Did they ever show them again in the movie? Was there a whole other movie going on about them trying to escape? Even at the end Cage tells the brass that they’re all okay, but I don’t think he actually lays eyes on a single one of them. Kinda weird.)

Cage plays FBI chemical weapons expert Stanley Goodspeed, pushed into going on the Alcatraz rescue mission with the Navy SEALs because of his expertise (just like Kurt Russell in EXECUTIVE DECISION or Ripley in ALIENS). Sean Connery plays John Patrick Mason, an S.A.S. agent who’s been unjustly imprisoned for 30 years by the U.S. government because he knows too much about Roswell and the Kennedy assassination. (Hilarious visual storytelling: in his cell he has two books, “The Complete Works of Shakespeare” and The Art of War.) They offer him a pardon because they need his knowledge of the maze of tunnels, vents and mine carts (?) beneath Alcatraz, ’cause he’s a master of escape and got out of there once and there are no maps or blueprints of that part but also it has not changed at all in three decades and also he totally remembers it, don’t worry.

Cage does get to go mega a couple times, and got to make his character goofy. It’s obvious that he made up the part where he gets a Beatles record in the mail and says he didn’t want it on CD because “First of all it’s because I’m a Beatlemaniac, and second these sound better.” I thought it was that cliche for establishing that he’s an old school guy (like Will Smith’s Chuck Taylors in I, ROBOT), but Cage explains on the commentary that it was partly because he had been concerned in real life about vinyl sounding better than CDs. So he got that in there just like Seagal gets his environmental messages in his movies.

I like when Cage is flying in with the SEALs and he’s so nervous he’s wiggling his legs like he needs to piss real bad.

Another part where Cage comes uncaged is when he almost gets burned alive by chemicals at work (a nice way of demonstrating the deadly effects of the weapons they’re trying to stop) so he goes home early to have a glass of wine and play guitar naked. In GQ’s recent “An Oral History of Transformers Director Michael Bay,” Bay brought up that scene:

“One day I showed up on set and Cage came out for a scene in his apartment dressed in a purple Speedo. And I’m like, ‘Oh, I get it. Okay. You don’t want to wear the wardrobe because you want to show your muscles. OK, let’s just get it all out in the beginning of the movie.”

Bay tells the same story on the commentary track, as an example of what an insightful director he is and how good he is at dealing with these dumb, self-involved actors. So it was revealing to see the movie again and realize that he’s wrong. No, dude, you don’t get it. He’s not doing that to show off his muscles, he’s doing it because it’s funny. I know it’s not about a straight dude being mistaken for gay or a black person yelling hysterically, but I contend that it is funny and does not seem to show very much muscle anyway.

I have to admit I’m not a fan of older Sean Connery. He was a good James Bond but even in his INDIANA JONES I don’t find him as charming as everybody else seems to. Of course DRAGONHEART and THE LEAGUE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN didn’t do much for me either. I forget, was he any good in ENTRAPMENT? I guess I don’t remember much about that movie. I mean there’s one or two scenes I can remember off the top of my head. Actually, just one.

I’m not sure why it stuck in my head, just a random part. It’s funny the things that stick with you, isn’t it? No rhyme or reason to it, really.

So I guess I feel about Connery the way he did about THE MATRIX and LORD OF THE RINGS: I don’t get it. I mean it’s a pretty good character, he has an interesting background, does a couple cool tricks. I like when he gets cleaned up like a James Bond. (Sorry CJ, the long hair looks terrible on him.) And actually I dug the part where you realize he escaped from custody not to try to get away but to see his daughter for a minute. And I like the nice thing that Goodspeed does to help him save face in front of her. See, you can see that Bay has changed over the years, because back then he actually put one genuine moment of emotion in a movie. He probly cringes every time he thinks about it. But other than that part I don’t see alot of chemistry between this pair. And the guy’s a chemist, he should know how this works.

I remember seeing THE ROCK years ago, before I really started to analyze movies. All my buddies thought it was awesome, I didn’t get that into it, I wasn’t sure why. When I saw ARMAGEDDON that was the first time I became aware of fast editing and how disorienting it is when done badly, and I wondered if maybe that was my problem with THE ROCK. So it was interesting to go back and see the movie again to find out.

The most memorable action scene is the car chase when Connery escapes to meet his daughter. Sure enough the editing is fast, but I think the real problem is a lack of fluidity. In some shots you can see where the cars are located and which direction they’re going, but the next shot won’t show them or will have them obscured or not flow smoothly. There’s just not a clear continuity. And it keeps cutting to wobbly seaskick closeups of the actors inside the cars.

The chase is pure Bay: they “wrecked half the city,” a yellow Ferrari chases a Humvee, the Hummer even plows through a VW Beatle with a peace sign on the side. Yeah, fuck you, hippies. You’re probly the reason that army guy had to steal those missiles somehow, I bet.

There are some weird little details, almost FREEBIE AND THE BEAN style, like a shot of three guys in wheelchairs crossing the street, and somebody wearing a really fake old lady Halloween costume almost getting run over. But because the chase is already so sloppy I think these details confuse things as much as they add flavor. They’re shot just as messily as the rest of the chase and as if of equal importance. I do like the part where one of the cars plows down a row of parking meters, causing splashes of quarters to fly through the air. That’s a cool image.

Maybe the other biggest action scene is when they’re under Alcatraz and they have a shootout on a big set with rolling mine carts and little things that hang off like an amusement park ride or a video game. It reminded me of the Goonies or something. Not my kind of thing. So even though this has some of the things I look for in an action movie, good action is unfortunately not one of them.

When John Spencer’s character knows he has to deal with this terrorism he calls in the experts, the best people he knows of to get the job done. So there’s the SEALs and the chemist and the guy that knows Alcatraz and a backup team from the Air Force and even still they run into alot of problems. Bruckheimer and Simpson (this was their last movie together; Simpson died during post-production) take a similar approach. They don’t want an artist telling a story, they want a team of experts putting together a package. So they have this script by David Weisberg, Douglas Cook and Mark Rosner that nobody’s satisfied with, they let Cage rewrite his part, let Connery bring in his writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, get Jonathan Hensleigh to do an uncredited rewrite, and also Aaron Sorkin, and also Quentin Tarantino.

Unlike in CRIMSON TIDE it’s hard to tell which parts Tarantino wrote. I guess people assume it’s the adrenaline shot to the heart and the Mexican standoff, but those seem too generic and obvious. If that’s all he did then he was really cashing in there.

With Sorkin I think I can guess. The speech Ed Harris makes to his soldiers and the one the president makes before authorizing bombing the island are vintage heartswelling West Wing type shit. He probly wrote that they’d be walking down hallways while saying them, but Bay doesn’t read stage directions unless it’s “the camera spins dizzily around them as they say this.”

The cast of supporting actors is a hell of a compilation too. They got David Morse (16 BLOCKS), William Forsythe (OUT FOR JUSTICE), Michael Biehn (ALIENS), John C. McGinley (ON DEADLY GROUND), Tony Todd (CANDYMAN), Bokeem Woodbine (BLADE: THE SERIES), Marshall Teague (SPECIAL FORCES), Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER), Jim Caviezel (HIGHWAYMEN), Xander Berkeley (T2), Raymond Cruz (THE SUBSTITUTE), John Enos III (MISSIONARY MAN) and Philip Baker Hall (HARD EIGHT). And probly one or two other guys.

A big part of the studio action movie feel is the big ass score by Nick Glennie-Smith (FIRE DOWN BELOW) and Hans Zimmer. Sometimes I wish they would chill out for a minute and let a movie happen, but for the most part I gotta respect this score. It’s one of those action movie scores that makes you feel like you’re supposed to stand up and put your hat over your heart. It has a theme song that’s catchy and emotional in a way that it seems like nobody makes anymore. Almost like a bigger, more orchestral version of the BETTER TOMORROW theme. I had it going through my head all day after watching this.

The best part of the movie, the part most worthy of that theme song, is not either of the heroes – it’s the villain, Ed Harris’s character Hummel. So let’s look at him a little closer.

He’s a very original villain. The movie starts out with him, as if he’s the hero. He gets the same kind of just-how-badass-is-he? explanation as Casey Ryback: “Three tours in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Desert Storm, three purple hearts, two silver stars and the Congressional medal of– Jesus. This man is a hero.”

He’s a real ball buster who shouts “identify yourself!” to people and buries his wife with a tombstone that says “HIS WIFE” at the top. But his sense of honor is the real deal. DIE HARD introduced the fake terrorist, the villains who pretend to be for a cause but are actually in it for money. This continued in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and UNDER SIEGE. The bad guys aren’t really “terrorists” so much as ransomers. Hummel actually is a terrorist, he’s using terror to achieve a political goal. He’s demanding ransom but he really intends to give it to the families of deceased soldiers, fulfilling the government’s broken promise to them.

There are precedents for this type of villain. Gary Oldman in AIR FORCE ONE, for example, is more wicked than Hummel, but is genuinely doing it for a cause he believes in, not for money. What’s truly unique about Hummel (SPOILER) is that he turns out to be bluffing! In most action movies a villain might seem to have some sense of honor, but when the chips are down they’d show their true colors which would turn out to be evil and/or cowardly colors. Not Hummel. He goes as far as he can go without killing people and when it doesn’t work he is prepared to fold his cards. It’s only because he has some asshole mercenaries under his wing (I’m looking at you, Candyman) that the threat turns real. So that makes him a really interesting character. Another thing you can’t expect anymore these days.

After so many years of big and pretty but sloppy and poorly planned action movies I’m able to sort of appreciate this movie better, even though it is the actual specific movie that I think started the modern movement of big and pretty but sloppy and poorly planned action movies. Didn’t Alanis Morrissette sing some song about that? Unfortunately it’s a buddy action movie where I can’t appreciate the action or one out of two buddies. So I can’t agree with its canonization as a ’90s action classic. But with layered Ed Harris, funny Nic Cage and a thick macho tone I can appreciate it as some bullshit that frequently transcends its shittiness. I kinda like it now. I probly won’t even wait the ten years or whatever to watch it a third time.

I don’t think I’d seen this since the ’80s, so it was cool to follow through on my vow to review all the James Cameron movies. I really didn’t remember much. Turns out it’s about a team of deep sea oil drillers roped into helping Navy SEALS check a downed submarine for survivors and bombs. Ed Harris leads the oil workers, Biehn the SEALS, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is Harris’s “iron bitch queen” about-to-be-ex wife who designed their submersibles and claims she’s only concerned about their safety. Also Chris Elliot (CABIN BOY, MANHUNTER) is in it.

In a way Cameron went into the abyss when he made this -he’s never shaken his worship of deep sea diving, of heavy duty equipment or of pushing past the boundaries of visual effects technology and movie budgets. Bill Paxton re-enacts some of this deap sea exploration stuff in TITANIC and again in real life in the Imax documentary GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS. Cameron is worshipful of macho engineer types, of technology (although he also fears it), and he helped popularize the cliche of the quirky science professional (guy with rat here, guy who looks like Harry Knowles in TITANIC, used by others in TWISTER, EXECUTIVE DECISION, etc.) He’s pushing cutting edge technology in the story (the submersibles, the breathing fluid) and in the making of the movie (the CGI water tentacle that led to the T-1000 that led to JURASSIC PARK). But like T2 and ALIENS the humanity shines through the cracks from beneath the pile of machinery. Through all the near-death experiences there’s the ongoing thread of Harris and Mastrantonio’s love-hate relationship, and it really ends up feeling like that’s what the movie’s mostly about. Come to think of it their devotion to each other in the face of watery death is a more three-dimensional version of the romance in TITANIC.

And the death feels like a genuine threat. I actually had a hard time watching the scene where she crushes her head against the ceiling and can’t escape from the rising water level anymore. They must’ve made her really do that. I don’t think they made her stop her heart (union rules prevented that) but the CPR scene sure is upsetting, with her limp, wet body being manhandled like that. It really looks like there’s no life in her, and makes you contemplate the horror of going through that with a loved one. How long do you do CPR before giving up? (I guess now we know to try Harris’s slap her and call her a bitch method of resuscitation before declaring anybody dead.)

So just the water adventure and relationships are enough, but you also have this matter of underwater aliens (SPOILER). The way they handle it is pretty great – they saw this amazing thing and they’re in awe of it. They don’t spoil it by talking too much about the larger implications, or turning it into some thing where they gotta hide it from the government or some shit like that. They do decide that they’re aliens, not Atlanteans or highly evolved super jellyfish. Or weather balloons. One guy describes it as an angel. I’m sure other people have interpreted them in different ways. They may be where we got our idea of sea serpents, mermaids, sea monkeys and Aqua Man.

By the way, I only remembered the part with the water tentacle thing – I totally forgot the luminescent jellyfish people. Now days you’d see that and just know it was CGI. This one I know can’t be CGI, so I don’t know how the fuck they did it. These are some topnotch creatures. They are not only the best water aliens in a movie (fuck off COCOON) but would even be in a high percentile when held up against land-based aliens.

With all that equpiment and lingo and everybody seeming to know what they’re doing, and the way it goes from accident to rescue mission to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and 2001 to heroic sacrifice and peace between worlds, I’d have to say this is a huge movie. But it rolls out so naturally, one problem leading to the next until he’s sitting at the bottom of that fuckin abyss, completely abyssed, nowhere left to go (he thinks). It doesn’t feel like a typical blockbuster structure trying to force excitement. It has that confidence I’ve talked about, where it convinces you to just hold on and trust that it will bring you places, and you do and you don’t regret it.

I like the writing too – the way it brings things up casually that come up again later. My favorite is when the bearded guy is bickering with somebody and threatens him with his fist, saying, “I used to call this ‘The Hammer’.” A good 90 minutes later there’s an incredibly satisfying punch that made me yell out “The Hammer!” But the movie has enough respect for us to not point it out.

And man, what about that bit where Harris throws his wedding ring in the toilet, then immediately regrets it and fishes it out? That turns his hand blue for the rest of the movie, so much later if the camera shows his blue hand it reminds you he hasn’t give up on his marriage.

This is a great movie filled with all of Cameron’s strengths and obsessions (technology, underwater, strong women, marital problems) and it never could’ve happened without the studio having faith in him and giving him a ton of money to do whatever the fuck he pleases. He not only had Final Cut, he also was Licensed To Go Hog Wild. But I have to admit, the suits were right about the ending. This was my first time seeing the director’s cut, and I’m afraid I draw the line at that corny DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL alternate ending. In the theatrical version the water aliens rescue Harris from drowning and, through questionable underwater technology, replay to him one of his text message to show that they’re repaying his willingness to die to save them. In the director’s cut they also show him a montage of war-related stock footage and a live news report about a giant wave about to engulf civilization. But then the wave peacefully subsides because they were so impressed by what he did.

In other words, “Man, I’m glad you came, because we were just about to destroy mankind to stop war! Don’t worry, we’re putting away the wave right now. No hard feelings, right?”

Was it a coincidence, just real lucky timing? Or was the wave plan a response to the submarine crash, like one of those international incidents? Or was it payback for Biehn putting that bomb there, and if so why weren’t they trying to do something about the bomb themselves? Seems like if they knew about the bomb they’d try to do something about it. But maybe I just don’t understand their culture.

I noticed a couple odd things on the credits. The first assistant director was Newt Arnold, the director of BLOODSPORT. The stunt coordinator was Dick Warlock, who played Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN II. The water tank they filmed most of it in was located at Earl Owensby Studios in North Carolina, same place where crappy movies I watched last month like FINAL EXAM and HOUSE OF DEATH were filmed.

Another interesting bit of trivia, the crew has one of those Garfield dolls suction-cupped on the window of their submarine or whatever it is. Those were real popular on car windows in the ’80s, but this was actually a little in-joke from Cameron. Alot of people remember that he had the rights to Spider-Man for a while, he was developing that and supposedly Leonardo DiCaprio was gonna star. At that time though he had his eye on an even more beloved work of comic strip art, the American classic “Garfield.” Cameron worked very closely with Jim Davis to stay faithful to the original strips in his script and storyboards, but I’m sure he also had a real Jim Cameron spin on it. Although I’m sure all that research is what led to the technology of AVATAR, they never quite cracked Garfield and gave up before it was finally made by a much more capable team, and motion picture history was changed forever.

That last paragraph was bullshit I made up, by the way, but all that about Michael Meyers and Earl Owensby and everything was true.

I don’t really know whether or not when you gaze into THE ABYSS, THE ABYSS gazes also into you. All I know is you should gaze into it regardless because it’s a good movie and we all could stand to gaze into some more good ones.

[ratings]

If the cast was just nobodies it might not work, instead we got Ed Harris (also director) as Virgil Cole, Viggo Mortensen (not director) as trusty sidekick Everett Hitch. Virgil has aspirations to become a legitimate lawman, Hitch has an 8-gauge shotgun. They come into the town of Appaloosa to work for the elected officials who’ve been shoved aside by Jeremy Irons, a tyrant whose big shot status comes from claims he’s friends with Chester A. Arthur (come on, everybody uses that one). Him and his gang run the town, everybody’s afraid of them, the usual. So our boys become marshals and to everybody’s shock they have the balls to start arresting people, and the shit and fan quickly become intimates.

Now here’s the problem: Renee Zelweger. I don’t get it. I know she must’ve done some good performances at one time, but she’s usually not appealing. She has a pinched little face and an evil vibe, but tends to play characters who are supposed to be lovable beneath their cold, bitchy shells. To me this is not believable. I thought it was just me since she keeps getting cast in movie after movie and winning all kinds of awards, but an informal poll found that 100% of males hate Renee Zelweger in their movies. Because of this you lose respect for Virgil when he immediately becomes smitten with supposedly-innocent-seeming piano player Allison French.

But never fear! This is not like LEATHERHEADS, which made the unfortunate assumption that the audience too would be charmed by Zelweger. She quickly makes a pass at Everett, among other activities that mark her as a despicable ho, and threatens to become the less talented Yoko Ono of the old west. I would have to say the movie is sexist (the only other female character actually is a whore) but as a story it works. The best part is that the trailer, the DVD cover and your experience as a person who watches movies all lead you to think this will be a love triangle. Everett will fall for the girl too, or Virgil will think he has, and this will break up the team. All signs point to that as the last act, but the movie has other plans.

And that brings me to the political part. I don’t know what the author of the book (Robert B. Parker, creator of Spenser For Hire) intended, but this story definitely plays to me like a commentary on the Bush era approach to homeland security. Cole and Hitch come into town with a set of laws already written up and tell the officials they either have to sign it now or forget it. That’s gotta be the USA-PATRIOT ACT, right? Maybe it could be called the APPALOOSA-COWBOY ACT. The town officials are uncomfortable with the idea but sign without reading it.

So the marshals pretty much run the town, they can do whatever they want. In a way this is good, because they’re the good guys, and can use this to stop Jeremy Irons. But on the other hand, Virgil’s judgment is not always the best (for example, he’s building a house with Renee Zelweger) and at times he could be seen as abusing his power. And even worse, the guilty Jeremy Irons (SPOILER) gets set free because his trial was unfair. It’s Guantanamo Bay or Freddy Krueger all over again.

I really liked that about the movie and I figure that’s part of the reason why Viggo would want to take the role (another part being that Ed Harris asked him to). But it’s not even the best part of the story – the best part is the camaraderie between these two gunmen. Viggo is the rare superstar leading man humble enough to play the quiet sidekick without it seeming like a stunt. He’s smart enough to know this can be a great character and talented enough to make sure it turns out that way. He communicates more with his face than with words – the “oh geez, maybe I should’ve told him his girlfriend was a ho” squint as Virgil trades their prisoner for Zelweger, the uncomfortable stare at the dirt after passing the binoculars so Virgil can see his girl frolicking naked in a river with Lance Henriksen (long story).

If you would enjoy a quiet, simple western with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen, then you would enjoy this movie. Otherwise forget it.

[ratings]

This is basically a smart thriller, a simple one, nothing complicated, no crazy twists. It’s short and sweet although it moves at a somewhat deliberate pace (which is code for “some assholes will say it’s too slow but they’re wrong”). This is pretty much the most “normal” movie Dave Cronenberg has ever made. But it’s intense, intelligent and serious so it doesn’t feel like some kind of sellout movie. Just a rare moment where the guy is working on a wavelength that normal humans might be able to relate to. I’m sure his next movie will have vaginas growing out of people’s arms and machines made out of tongues and crap like that and you and I will enjoy it but I think it’s nice that once every ten or fifteen years he is willing to invite the rest of the neighborhood in for a show. Just tell them it’s the guy that did THE FLY and DEAD ZONE. But this one is less weird. Actually tell them it’s HIDALGO.

If you saw the trailer you pretty much know the first part of this movie: Viggo is Tom Stall, a family man in a small town, runs his own diner, beloved by the community, etc. Then one day some drifters try to rob him, he jumps over the counter and blows their fuckin heads off, etc. This makes him a local hero and media sensation, but you know, you don’t get moves like that from pouring coffee. That’s clear to Ed (KNIGHTRIDERS) Harris, a mobster from Philadelphia who shows up at the diner sporting a creepy fucked up eye and calling Tom “Joey.” I like Ed Harris, like in that Alex Cox movie WALKER. So I forgive him for stalking poor Tom and his family, seeking retribution on behalf of that fucked up left eye.

So you got a good suspense story about how Tom is gonna deal with these thugs that insist he’s Joey from Philly. But then it gets even better when it becomes clear to everybody that he really is Joey from Philly. This is kind of a problem because he probaly shoulda filled in his wife and kids on all this. So they don’t take it that well.

I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the same thing I was thinking. I thought this was gonna be a complete history of violence, starting with a caveman beating some guy with a conch shell or something, and ending with some shit that went down in an alley somewhere earlier today. So the title may be misleading to some of us but it is a good double meaning type title. Literally, Viggo has a history of violent acts, but also it is indeed an exploration of attitudes toward different types of violence. You got your self defense, your revenge, your punishing kids, your rough sex. Tom has all these things inside him in the form of Joey, but he really wants to leave them behind. So in a way this is a second cousin of one of my favorite types of movies, the “I’m a pacifist and I hate violence but jesus I really gotta kill this fucker” movie. (Think UNFORGIVEN, BILLY JACK, much of the Seagal ouvre, etc.) But I think it is a little more serious about the pacifism than those movies usually are. You can tell because it doesn’t brag about it. He never has to say out loud that he’s against violence.

This movie has the same dilemma that DANNY THE DOG UNLEASHED had. As compassionate human beings you’re rooting for this guy not to have to resort to violence, but as a moviegoer you’re rooting for him to break a motherfucker’s neck. This is no action movie but there were 3 or more scenes in here that had the audience cheering loudly as some fucker got what he, you know, deserved. And come to think of it that’s part of Cronenberg’s point I think.

For me this movie worked on every level. Great job by Cronenberg and the dude who wrote it (best known for his work as art department production assistant on MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE). But the real highlight is Viggo Mortensen in what is in my opinion the best performance in his career so far. Which is saying alot because this dude is always great. There’s no show offy overacting so he probaly doesn’t have to clear any space for an oscar. I mean he’s not playing a retarded math genius or nothin. He does get stabbed in the foot but I don’t think that counts as being disabled. Anyway he is great as this quiet, timid guy who, if you push him real hard, will take the gun out of your hand and break your nose with it. But he’d rather not. He gives the character much more humanity and dimension than somebody else would’ve.

About ten minutes into the screening, some lady asked out loud “What is this guy from?” So if anybody else is wondering, he is the guy from CARLITO’S WAY. Also, I don’t know if any nerds read this web sight or not but he was in RETURN OF THE KING. You’ll notice him, he plays the guy who is returning. So that is what he is known for but after this movie I think many women will remember him as the ruggedly handsome man of their dreams who enjoys going down on his wife. There’s a couple sex scenes in here that mix it up from the usual Hollywood formula. A certain hilarious two digit number is paid tribute to for example. And there’s no candles or Santana songs.

William Hurt is in here too, not sure if he is generous in bed or not, they don’t make that clear. But he is hilarious. This is a grim movie but there are some good laughs every once in a while. By Cronenberg standards, it’s fuckin AIRPLANE!.

Fans of Cronenberg’s movies will notice alot of little allusions to his greatest works. For example, tell me that opening scene doesn’t remind you of some of the shit that sicko pulled in NIGHTBREED. And there are many cold-blooded mobster/hitman type characters reminiscent of his character “Man by Lake” in TO DIE FOR. I didn’t notice any references to THE STUPIDS but I’m gonna have my eyes peeled for that if I see the movie again.

Also it’s apparently based on a comic book, so you guys are gonna like it. It is alot like Batman, Snoopy, etc. The one and only problem I had was in the very end (spoiler) when a Top Gun type jet made out of human skin flew down and vomited a bunch of phallises onto Viggo and he moaned in erotic pleasure as some creepy she-males gave him gratuitous reconstructive surgery. But I mean you know how Cronenberg is. He loves that kind of shit.

Actually I’m just bullshitting, that doesn’t happen in THIS movie. Or does it? There’s really no way to know until you see it on Friday.

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=21373

[ratings]

Now this is a suspense thriller and the way it unfolds, it almost reminds me of a less flashy Brian DePalma. It even has the old DePalma voyeurism. But what I’m talking about is it takes its time setting up all the pieces and giving you the information you need a chunk at a time.

See, first Clint is in a museum sketching a painting. Right off the bat we know something is wrong because aren’t you supposed to make up your own picture, not copy somebody else’s painting? What the shit. Still, this is a clear indication that Clint agrees with me on my Theory of Badass Juxtaposition, giving his character a love of art.

Then we see Clint’s house, where he has a lot of art hanging on the walls. But some pretty fucking fancy art. Old stuff. Hmmm.

Then he drives out to a rich guy’s house and breaks in. This is when we learn that he is a burglar. Because of the fact that he is currently burgling.

Clint is not in a hurry at all, he seems to know for sure these people aren’t coming home any time soon. He’s wrong though, so he ends up hiding behind a two way mirror in the jewelry vault, watching as the lady of the house carries on a drunken affair with Gene Hackman, that asshole from the movies. This takes a while but eventually things get out of hand, Hackman slaps the girl, she slaps him back, he starts to strangle her, she stabs him in the arm with a letter opener, suddenly he yells “Help!” and a bullet goes through the girl and two armed guards run in.

(oh shit.)

Then Judy Davis comes in and as Clint sits there wondering what kind of shit he’s in, they all try to figure out what to do about this dead body. Gene Hackman is obviously an important pillar of the community type person judging by this support team, but right now he’s a pathetic drunk curled up on the bed whimpering. Only later do we see him introduced as “Mr. President” and realize, oh shit, that drunk’s the president. (I figure Clint must’ve known this while he was watching the murder, but he didn’t say anything because he was hiding.)

The presidential team cleans up the scene and make up a cover story involving a burglar, then as they’re on the way out they realize they forgot the letter opener (with Hackman’s blood and fingerprints on it). Going back in, they spot Clint rappelling out the window and realize that there really WAS a burglar. Good guy to pin this all on, since he’s the only one who knows the truth, etc.

It turns out the dead woman is the wife of the president’s best friend, a famous philanthropist who also funded the president’s political career. This is not usually how donors are treated in real politics but hey man, that’s the magic of cinema.

Clint is a great thief but he’s also an old man, and he’s never gone up against some fucking president guy before. He figures he’s out of his league, so he makes preparations to leave the country. But in the airport bar he happens to see a press conference where President Hackman puts his arm around the dead woman’s husband and pretends to be comforting him. And this pisses Clint off.

I mean look, every one of us has experienced this sort of thing at least 250,000-300,000 times since the year 2000 alone. You see the president saying some unbelievable bullshit on TV and you can’t believe that he somehow was able to top the one he said yesterday, and you feel like either your forehead is gonna pop a vein or you’re gonna reach right into the set like a reverse Nightmare On Elm Street 3 maneuver so you can throttle the motherfucker. It’s a familiar scenario to us, right? And all we do is we end up yelling at the TV or turning it off. But that’s us. We can’t do anything. This is different. This is Clint.

So it’s at exactly this moment that the movie steps over the line from suspense thriller to the territory of Badass Cinema. ‘Cause Clint burns a hole through the TV with his squinty eyes and says, “You heartless whore – I’m not running from you.”

Next scene, he’s on the White House tour wearing a fake beard. I’m sorry, United States Government, I regret to inform you that you chose the wrong motherfucker to fuck with.

Because this is Clint’s movie, there is also a whole subplot about his strained relationship with his daughter, played by Laura Linney. She’s still angry because he wasn’t there for her, always off stealing or in the can or something. But then she discovers that he actually was there, sneaking around in the shadows of her life, looking out for her, even checking her refrigerator to be sure she’s getting enough nutrients. This is one of many forgivably phoney elements of the story. It’s also hard to buy that the president doesn’t have a bigger security team, and alot of the press coverage seems fake, and when he gets what’s coming to him it’s kind of hard to believe it could really happen that way. But oh well.

I gotta say, I almost prefer this type of Clint Eastwood movie to the Serious ones. By which I just mean I like it better than Mystic River. What they do, they set up this clever old man disguise wearing thief, and the bad situation he gets in when he just happens to see the president have rough sex and then have his lady friend killed. Then they set up the secret service guy who wants to silence him (Dennis Haysbert, from the tv commercials), and the other secret service guy (some other actor) whose intentions are ambiguous, and the old man who thinks Clint killed his wife, and the assassin hired to kill Clint, and the cops (including Ed Harris, Knightriders) who are trying to catch him because they think he did it. And then you watch all these different factions line up and collide and you feel all suspensed and it’s an explosive whiteknuckle thrill ride or whatever.

Well I guess that’s how suspense movies always work so I’m not telling you anything new here. But when Clint does it it’s something special.

[ratings]

Now I have been tallying and calculating votes for the top 100 Badass Films of All Time and this picture has not received one vote. And I’m not complainin because this is not a Badass picture per se. It is more of a drama than an action film and is more about feeling and sentiment than about attitude and breaking a motherfucker’s arms or whatever.

The name of the picture is Knightriders, a film directed by George A. Romero in 1980. It was one of those movies that did very poorly at the box office and was never heard of again…. until it came to dvd and most people discovered that it was the BEST FUCKIN MOVIE EVER.

The picture opens with a whisp of mystical medeival flute and a black raven flying through a forest. A young Ed Harris and a pretty gal wake up naked in the woods. Ed bathes in the pond, meditates on his sword. He puts on his armor, the gal puts on her crown. She stands behind him and embraces him. The music grows triumphant as he pulls down his face shield and revs up his motorcycle.

Yes, this is a picture about knights who ride motorcycles. And that is only one of the reasons why it is the BEST etc. etc.

Ed is King Billy or Sir William, the leader of a troupe of individuals who travel around the country and hold renaissance fair type deals. This is where everybody dresses up like knights and monks and shit and pretend its hundreds of years ago. They sell swords and maces and wine and all this type of garbage. It is basically the same as Star Trek conventions only without action figures or that fucking kid from Trekkies with the camper shaped like a spaceship.

The reason why this type of behavior is considered acceptable to ol’ Vern is on account of the motorcycles. You see the main attraction is that they joust on motorcycles. There is a whole lot of motorcycle stunts in this movie – people crashing into cars, flying into lakes, going off of ramps. They even got a motorcycle that gets loose and smacks right into a gal in the audience. This is good stuff as far as knights on motorcycles type stunts go.

And yet, like I said, this is not an action picture. It is really a melodrama and a poem about living by your ideals. Most of these characters are just a bunch of real good friends, a bunch of hippies and bikers who like to dress up in armor and joust together. But the King takes it a little more to heart. He is an individual who really stands up for his beliefs. He refuses for example to pay off the cops who threaten to shut down the show if they don’t pay him off. Instead he tells them to shove it up their ass. Then he willingly goes to jail until things are straightened out and makes a solemn vow to the cop that some day he will kick the shit out of him. And King Billy lives by his word.

The code of honor theme really starts rolling when a little kid shows the King a motorcycle magazine with pictures of the knight riders and asks for his autograph. Billy refuses to sign it and says that he is not about that.

Afterwards the queen argues with the king. The troupe is running out of money. Embracing fame does not mean compromise. Why couldn’t he be nice to that kid who idolizes him.

“That kid… that, that kid… thinks I’m Evil Kneivel!”

“That kid thinks you’re Billy Davis. Sir William the knight. You’re his hero.”

“I’m not trying to be a hero! I’M FIGHTING THE DRAGON!”

This is when you first realize that the King is a little bit, uh, fucked in the brains. He’s one nut short of a sack. But maybe you have to be crazy in order to be a purist in this world, in order to really do what is right for your heart and what not.

The story is mainly about how a sleazy entertainment agent discovers the troupe and tries to turn them into a hot “act”. A group of disillusioned knights led by Sir Morgan (Tom Savini, who was so great on the commentary track for Maniac as well as this one) takes up the offer and we see the clash between the ones who “get a spiritual fix” out of the knightrider lifestyle and the ones who are willing to give that up if it means glamour and money and floating around smoking pot in swimming pools with hot chicks (and one fat one).

But it’s not what it sounds like. Hell I am a Writer but I don’t know how to do justice to this one with the words. It’s not an exploitation movie and its not really funny. It is 145 minutes long and it is sad and moving and reaffirms everything I believe in and reminds me to stand up for my ideals 24-7.

You know how all those dudes feel about Braveheart? You know who I’m talking about. Well that is how I feel about Knightriders. One reason why it is the best fuckin movie ever is because of its sincerity. It is sort of like how Billy Jack is an action movie with all those corny left wing ideals mixed in. Well this is the same kind of thing with better writing and acting and directing and especially singing, and not quite as corny. And with knights on motorcycles.

George A. Romero obviously made this film as a reflection of his life as an independant filmatist. The cast and crew were living this lifestyle and enjoying it. It becomes very personal and real and if you listen to the commentary track on the dvd you can tell that they really believed in this. And hell, they should.

Most people start out life with dreams of all the great things they want to do. They want to write movies or do ballet or be the first bank robber to be widely accepted by the mainstream or whatever. But then as they get older and they realize that they’re not as talented as they always thought and things aren’t as easy as they had hoped they give up and settle in to their 9-5 and forget about chasing dreams and even resent people who do. This movie is about doing the opposite.

The character Merlin is a doctor who quit medicine to become a mystical healer and storyteller for the knightriders. The backgrounds of the other characters is not revealed but I think King Billy may be a former pro motorcycle racer who quit the life to follow this dream. Fight Club says that we’ve been raised to believe we’ll become rock stars and movie gods, but we won’t. This movie says that we can, but FUCK THAT. Why would we want to? Instead we should carve out our own lifestyles. We should dedicate our lives to the things we like best, regardless of money. We should be knightriders. Outlaws.

The movie plunges us into this lifestyle and shows us why it’s so good. These are people who like to joust and swashbuckle and build weapons and sit around the campfire singing “Sygnifyin’ Monkey.” They like to chase the bikers that steal their rubber axes and trick them into crashing their bikes. By the end you have so much invested in the lifestyle that anything that threatens to fuck with it upsets you. Sir William is a symbol for the true outlaw hero we should aspire to be, because he lives his entire life by his own code of honor. He refuses to buckle down to pig oppression, to sell out for money, to live any other way. He takes all of the substance of being a knight of camelot and gets rid of all that sissy horse riding shit because he is so good at riding motorcycles instead. And unlike Fight Club or The Beach the Knightrider Club does not go sour, and will live on forever. God damn I love it.

This is a truly beautiful and poetic knights on motorcycles movie, one of the best you will ever see and god damn it if it didn’t make ol’ Vern cry. I love this fucking movie. I mean it, I love the shit out of this movie. It is the BEST FUCKIN MOVIE EVER. Take this movie, add in a couple of Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen’s best, and you have everything I know and believe about what it means to be a man. Minus what I learned in the can.

I don’t want to give away anything else but please, if you are in the mood to see a GREAT FUCKING MOVIE please rent this bitch and let me know what you think. Hell, I’m gonna put it all on the line – if you rent this movie, and you think it sucks, I give you my 100% guarantee that I will call you a retard.

“I mean it’s real hard to live for something that you believe in. People try it and then they get tired of it, like they get tired of their diets, their exercise or their marriage. Or their kids. Or their job. Or themselves. Or they get tired of their god. You can keep your money you make off this sick world, lawyer, I don’t want any part of it.”

Hell, the other knights have a point when they talk about ways to earn some money to help the group survive. I sure know how they feel. But I would like to live by Sir William’s code. If you think I’m getting tired of it, or leaving my ideals behind, please let me know. Send me an e-mail or throw a brick through my window I don’t give a fuck. I want to live by the outlaw code. I’M FIGHTING THE DRAGON.

Knightriders forever

thanks,

Vern

[ratings]