THE SUBSTITUTE is not necessarily a great action movie. It doesn’t have any particularly memorable action scenes or anything. But I really like this movie for the simple fact that the idea behind it – combining a mercenaries/drug gangs action movie with a DANGEROUS MINDS style white-teacher-makes-a-difference-in-the-big-city movie – is flat out brilliant, a once-in-a-cinematic-history opportunity. Seriously, I sit around trying to think of genre combinations this absurd and yet this natural. There aren’t many left.

Tom Berenger plays Shale, a just-disavowed covert ops badass looking for work when his old girlfriend (Diane Venora), a teacher of the toughest class at a gang-infested Miami high school, gets knee-capped. He figures her students are responsible so he has his computer expert friends whip him up various fake degrees and a background in education, then he becomes the substitute teacher for her class, undercover.

Some filmatists might’ve made this movie but pussied out and not gone all the way with the concept. Not these filmatists. They stay true. It turns out the biggest troublemaker in the class (Mark Anthony – the guy that’s married to Jennifer Lopez!) is also the #1 lieutenant in a drug gang. And the big boss man is the school’s principal (Ernie Hudson), which explains why he was timid about kicking guys like that out of school. They store coke by the kilo in the floor of the school’s boiler room. And there’s a big transaction going down after the parent-teacher conferences.

As a side note, my spell check apparently doesn’t know there’s a past tense of the word “pussy.”

From there the movie could move to some exotic locale, like Miami Beach, or some swamp or something. But still it stays loyal to being a school-based action movie. Shale and his merc buddies (Luis Guzman, William Forsythe, Raymond Cruz, Richard Brooks) take on the gangs and a team of rival mercenaries inside the school at night. In fact, Shale has his showdown with the lead merc inside his own class room, which we know by the 100 misspelled punishment sentences on the chalkboard. Shale explains that it’s a remedial class before he shoots the guy – my one regret is that he doesn’t tell him he failed.

During the climax I was thinking it was funny that nobody heard gunshots and called the cops, but then our heroes actually address that as they walk off into the sunset. They also feel bad that they had to blow up parts of the school. But since earlier they stole drug money and used it to buy sports equipment and school supplies I figure it sort of evens out.

This would’ve made a funny Seagal movie (it’s got the black ops background, the old computer expert friend, the learning, and I’m sure he would’ve thrown in some Spanish or ebonics) but it’s perfect for Tom Berenger. He has just the right cold stare and unemotional responses. I believe he would be the thing that finally scares some of these gangster kids. When he’s writing on the chalkboard and somebody throws a can at the back of his head his reflexes are so fast he catchs it and throws it back in the kid’s face. Ninja shit. In fact, later on he stocks up on ninja stars. So don’t go saying the American education system isn’t up to snuff. We got ninjas. And they bond with students by comparing ‘Nam scars to gang scars.

It’s just enjoyable to watch him dominate these people, like when a bunch of guys ambush him in the library but he is prepared and makes them put their guns in a library cart and rolls them away. And tells them not to talk in the library. I like Tom Berenger.

I like that all those guys are on his team too, even if they don’t get to do a huge amount. Forsythe does get to be the psycho on the team, the guy who enjoys it too much, who goes overboard and shoots people unnecessarily. At one point he has a guy tied up and kicks cocaine in his face like that cartoon bully kicking sand in the wimp’s face on the beach.

Raymond Cruz might not be a name that means anything to you, but if you watch alot of ’90s action movies you’ll recognize him and he’ll make you feel at home. He was in OUT FOR JUSTICE, UNDER SIEGE, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, BROKEN ARROW, THE ROCK, ALIEN RESURRECTION and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2, plus others. In this one he looks like kind of an idiot because he’s got a ponytail on the top of his head, like a topknot. But that’s just what mercenaries do I guess.

They use a couple of the well-traveled but lesser known action tropes that I enjoy:

* the American flag gets shot down in one of the classrooms. In Seagal movies you often see symbols of knowledge or spirituality (books, statues) get accidentally hit in a shootout. A flag getting shot is a similar idea.

* class tensions – Shale goes after a rich asshole on a jai alai court. He chases him into the locker room and keeps beating on him. The two guys whose job it is to weave the xistera (jai alai scoop thingy – special thanks to Wikipedia) watch but don’t give a shit and just sit there weaving.

The director is Robert Mandel, who did F/X and SCHOOL TIES. But I was surprised to learn that the writers are names I know from being a horror fan. The credits list the team of Roy Frumkes & Rocco Simonelli, plus Alan Ormsby. (Not sure which ones wrote the first draft and which ones rewrote it.) Frumkes is the guy who wrote STREET TRASH, but I recognized him as director of DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD, that awesome documentary where they followed the making of DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD. Ormsby was a regular collaborator with the late Bob Clark. He wrote and starred in the cult favorite CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. To be honest I am not a member of the cult that it is a favorite of, I couldn’t get through it, partly because of Ormsby playing this obnoxious fucker:

But I forgive him because he wrote the uncomfortably funny Ed Gein movie DERANGED and the war-themed zombie movie DEATHDREAM. Also I just learned that he invented a creepy doll:

From the creator of Hugo comes THE SUBSTITUTE. That’s two good ways to get into Heaven.

[ratings]

Like

Unlike

I love the original CARLITO’S WAY, but I haven’t seen it in years, so that probaly helps. I never knew this but DePalma’s movie was based on the second book in a series. The book was called After Hours, but they didn’t want it confused with the Scorsese movie of the same name so they called it CARLITO’S WAY, after the first book in the series. RISE TO POWER is actually adapted from the book Carlito’s Way, according to legend. (I haven’t read the books so who knows.)

Like in DePalma’s movie, this one starts out with Carlito Brigante fresh out of prison, but he goes right back into crime, he doesn’t make any effort to stay out of it. The story is about the heroin trade in New York some time in the late ’60s or early ’70s or so. Control of the city is split between black gangs in Harlem, Puerto Rican gangs in spanish Harlem and Italians in some other part, I don’t know. The genius of Carlito’s operation is that he works a triumvirate with his two former cellmates, the Italian Rocco (Michael Kelly, DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) and Earl (Mario Van Peebles, everything). Each of them deals with the hotshots in one of the territories, so Carlito deals with the Puerto Ricans, Earl with the blacks and Rocco with the eye-talians. Strangely, you don’t see Carlito’s deals as much as you see the other two. Earl has to negotiate with the oppulent priss Hollywood Nicky (Sean Combs, “anything can happen”) who runs Harlem and Rocco has to deal with some standard mafia types, and both of them give alot more trouble than Carlito’s buddy Colorado (Casper Martinez, CARLITO’S ANGELS).

I should mention that poor Rocco doesn’t even get pictured on the cover. What the fuck. I understand you gotta put Puffy Diddy on there and you gotta put Luis Guzman, but this is one of the main characters, he goes on there too.

Anyway it’s kind of a SCARFACE type of story but with less struggle. Carlito is actually portrayed as a nice sensitive guy and alot of it is about him falling in love with a coat check girl. And of course he can’t die at the end so you don’t get the tragic going out with a bang ending that these type of stories usually have. But I thought it was a pretty good (mostly unoriginal) crime story and it kept me involved. And they do a good job getting a period feel on a low budget. I think the music goes a long way toward creating the atmosphere. The score itself (done by the same guy as the original, I think) is cheesy but they did a good job choosing songs by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Delfonics, the Dramatics and people like that. None of the same obvious songs you hear in every movie to tell you the time period. No Superfly in this one.

The weak link in this movie, unfortunately, is Jay Hernandez playing Carlito. I didn’t care so much for this chump in HOSTEL and taking on Carlito Brigante is a pretty big task. I understand it’s gonna be hard to replace Al Pacino no matter what your budget is. And for Jay Hernandez, Jay Hernandez does a damn good job. I was able to put up with him for most of the movie. I got past it. But you can definitely see him struggling. Maybe it was a deliberate choice to make Carlito not as confident when he’s younger, but it’s kind of a shame at times. The movie would be alot better if they could find a guy that had more of a presence, who takes charge of every scene without saying anything. I didn’t really buy that this particular guy could lead a criminal empire.

You also got Sean Puff Diddy Combs of MTV Movie Awards hosting fame as Hollywood Nicky. This is a perfect character for a jackass like that to play. The premise of the character is that he wears fancy white suits, drinks out of a gold tea set in his vintage Rolls Royce, and that kind of bullshit. So he is basically playing himself. His acting is not really terrible or good. He doesn’t really pull off the menace but he’s not laughable. He’s probaly better than you should expect from DTV, at least.

Luis Guzman is also in here, playing a different character than he played in the original CARLITO’S WAY. It’s hard for me to believe there could be two people in the world who look like Luis Guzman, but oh well. He’s got a couple funny lines here and it’s always good to see him in a movie, good or bad.

By far the best thing about this movie: Mario Van Peebles. I have given him alot of shit over the years for how many DTV movies he appears in, but I would like to take this opportunity to take it all back. He is fucking great in this movie, he elevates it with his performance. Remember how cool he was playing his pops in the otherwise overrated BADAASSSSS!? That’s what he’s doing here, wearing the badass ’70s collars and hats, smoking a cigar and scowling. I actually wish the movie was EARL’S WAY: WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT CARLITO. He oughta keep the beard, man. He looks fuckin tough. I almost could’ve forgot I was watching Mario Van Peebles and start thinking it was Fred the Hammer Williamson.

The camerawork and storytelling and whatnot is obviously not gonna be like DePalma, but I thought it was pretty good. Simple and unpretentious, no MTV shit. The director is called Michael Scott Bregman. He’s wet behind the ears as far as directing but he produced the original CARLITO’S WAY and two TV shows starring Luis Guzman. He was even an editing assistant on SCARFACE. Apparently he’s friends with Edwin Torres, the tough guy judge who wrote the books, so that probaly has something to do with how he ended up doing these movies. Anyway, he gets the Surprisingly Good For DTV award, at least.

I think this movie could be important in the evolution of DTV movies, not as much because its one of the best as because of the push they gave it. It had the most advertising I’ve seen for a DTV movie and I’m just guessing, but I bet it paid off. Of course, it’s a unique case because of the specific kind of following of the original. It’s one of those movies that every famous rapper has on DVD if you see them on Cribs. I’m sure they’re trying to figure out how to do prequels to SCARFACE and THE WARRIORS too but this one was easier to pull off.

So I kind of wondered if it was even fair to compare other DTV movies to something like this, but I checked IMDb and it looks like the budget isn’t huge or anything, it was $9 million. My long time favorite DTV sequel FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2 apparently cost $5 million. But that was shot in South Africa which I’m sure is alot cheaper than New York. RISE TO POWER is probaly above average budget for this kind of thing. HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2 apparently was $6 million, FRANKENFISH was $3 million. IMDb doesn’t have figures for the WILD THINGS or CRUEL INTENTIONS sequels, or for BOA VS. PYTHON. But the action pictures are alot higher. Wesley Snipes’s UNSTOPPABLE was $15 million, S. Seagal’s OUT FOR A KILL was $20 million.

RISE TO POWER proves that it is technically possible to treat a DTV movie more seriously and make something of a higher quality. You know, that perfect three little bears “just right” level of quality higher than something you would watch on TV but lower than something you would see in a theater. Theoretically. I guess the question for the ghouls with the money is whether it’s more profitable to make a little more expensive movie that some people watch and enjoy or a cheaper one that makes profit on a technicality because it’s stocked at Blockbustert. I guess we’ll see what happens.

[ratings]

Like

Unlike

Well I’m not sure I agree with that. Sure it’s a little lighter just because it’s not long and it’s got two main characters instead of a whole ensemble. It’s not an epic. It’s smaller than the last two. But it’s his most original, and maybe his most genuine. Now he steps out from the obvious comparisons to other director’s styles and shows you which parts are the p.t. anderson style.

It’ll be funny if people go in expecting THE WATER BOY and get this instead. This is clear in the long, quiet opening scene where Sandler sits by himself in a big garage mostly just drinking coffee and talking on the phone about the regulations of a sweepstakes offer. It’s a less cartoony, much more vivid world than you’ve ever seen Sandler in, but it’s also full of surreal touches and mysteries, like the organ that somebody drops off on the street and he decides to keep it.

Mr. Sandler really is great in this picture but maybe what’s most refreshing is he’s not trying some formula to become a serious actor. He’s not really doing anything that different from what he’s done before. He’s definitely not pulling some kind of Robin Williams tears of a clown bullshit. There are no dramatic monologues or anything. It’s just that Anderson puts this guy in a context where you take his emotions seriously, and you can see the sadness and anger that is just behind those eyes waiting to get out. Well, actually there are alot of parts where it’s not waiting to get out, he breaks alot of shit in this movie. He has kind of an anger problem, in my opinion. It’s played for laughs here like it is in the other Sandler movies but also it’s real sad. You don’t see Bob Barker or anybody.

Mr. Anderson is one of these directors, like the other Mr. Anderson who did ROYAL TENENBAUM, who have an almost ridiculous attention to detail. So there are many great touches in this movie and I would rather not give them away by summarizing the plot. But as this lonely, socially inept toilet plunger salesman finds his first love (Emily Watson!) you find many great things you’ve never seen in movies quite like this before. As soon as you see his sisters, you know exactly why he’s how he is. There are many scenes of loneliness and ineptitude that we can all relate to, like the part where he leaves Emily Watson’s apartment and then tries to come back but has no clue which one he just came from. It’s so true to life, emotionally speaking, that I’d have to say this is more sincere than BOOGIE NIGHTS which is dealing more with problems like “I am doing so much cocaine that I can’t get it up and this is costing me my job,” or MAGNOLIA which has real emotions but seems to pile every possible tragedy besides killer bee attacks onto one small group of characters. Laying it on too thick.

You also see two of the great Anderson regulars in there, Luis Guzman and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Unfortunately John C. Reilly, who was in all three of Anderson’s other movies, is not in attendance.

This movie is a great balance of sad and funny. It has a very unique feel of dark comedy combined with old fashioned romance (made more glamorous by occasional lapses into rainbow colored abstract animation) and stupdendous use of music and car crashes. I’ll definitely watch this one again.

[ratings]