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.

Michael Biehn plays a second generation con man whose world falls apart when he accidentally shoots his dad (James Coburn) during a con. Looking through his dad’s things he finds out his dad had a brother (James Coburn) so he goes and starts working for him. It’s a typical convoluted con story but for some reason they decided they needed Biehn reading lots of stiff narration explaining everything and pretending to be in-the-know. And let’s just say Ricky Jay doesn’t show up in this one. In other words the dialogue is not written by David Mamet, in my opinion.

Cage plays Eddie, the uncle’s drugged out, dangerously crazy henchman, or bad lieutenant if you will. It’s possibly his most ridiculous performance ever. He has a wig like Anton Chighur, mustache and shades like Tony Clifton, and mumbles in some weird Spanish-esque accent. He’s maybe not as funny as in VAMPIRE’S KISS, but he has several hilarious moments:

1. His introduction, sitting casually behind Biehn and making his presence known by loudly shuffling cards for a magic trick.

2. When his car won’t start until he yells “FUCK!” and twirls one finger in the air as if winding it.

3. When he’s doing a con involving his girlfriend supposedly losing a bracelet, and he takes off his glasses – his eyes are red like he’s been crying (or coked out of his mind). Just completely overdoing it for the con.

4. When he comes home and announces someone’s trying to kill him while doing Mick Jagger poses.

Eddie’s not the only weird touch in the movie. There’s also Charlie Sheen as a hotshot pool shark, giving a really showy high roller performance, but not quite convincing due to his sloppy facial hair and jacket that looks like a Hugh Hefner Halloween costume. (An unofficial one, so it would be called “Mansion Playboy” or “Grotto Guy.”) Not strange enough for you? How ’bout Mickey Dolenz as a pretzel seller/bookie? He and Clarence Williams III are on the con man elite team, but unfortunately neither of them do much in the movie.

Oh, I got one: Angus Scrimm (you know, the Tall Man from PHANTASM) as a diamond appraiser/crime boss with a Guillermo Del Toro-esque pair of scissors in place of one of his hands – he’s in there. And Peter Fonda. And Talia Shire.

Also, I gotta give credit to the guy who tails people wearing the most obvious fake beard of all time (see end of below clip).

But the whole thing is so low rent and forced and the dialogue is terrible, and sometimes when they’re not spouting cliches I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about (for example, why does Cage start yelling about Sam Peckinpah at the bar?)

Here’s an example of how awkward the movie is: When Coburn got shot at the beginning I thought damn, so it’s only a cameo. Then Biehn finds out he has an uncle and goes looking for him. When he first sees the uncle it’s from behind, and if you don’t recognize the back of his head of course you still know it’s James Coburn because of the distinct voice. But when he turns around it’s sudden, like the movie thinks it’s a big, shocking reveal. Oh my God, he also has James Coburn’s face, not just his voice! Then, to make matters worse, they have a flashback of the dad dying. Like you forgot Coburn played his dad too. Man, we’re not that far into the movie yet. You really thought I would forget? Is my bad memory really that notorious?

The director is Christopher Coppola, who is coincidentally Nic Cage’s brother. I’m sure Nic still had to audition. This movie really shows you the mixed blessings of being a Coppola. On one hand, I’m not sure if he was just Christopher Whateverson that he would’ve been able to make a movie. On the other hand he has to live with your uncle directed THE GODFATHER, one of the greatest movies of all time, and you’re making this shit? I don’t want to be an asshole like that, it’s not fair to put that on him. Not everybody can be Francis Ford. Some people gotta be Christopher. At least he gave us the magic of his brother playing Eddie. So he comes out ahead.

[ratings]

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]

That’s what it’s all about.

I think this movie was inspired by TOP GUN. It’s one part action movie, two parts lifestyle magazine. It wants to show that Navy SEALs are elite warriors and heroes, but mostly it wants to show what a fun time they have just hanging out with their bros when they’re stateside. Just some men, going around together, being men. Hoo rah, best buds for life. Dennis Haysbert is the only one in a serious relationship, he’s about to marry S. Epatha Merkerson, but as she’s coming down the aisle their SEAL pagers beep and they all leave. Sorry Toots, maybe next time.

So they go on a mission overseas, there’s some shooting and handsignals and what not, but as soon as they get back they go to city hall and make the marriage official. Just kidding, they all go to the golf course together and drive the carts around real crazy and say WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!! SEALs will be SEALs and all that. At least they do allow S. Epatha to be the only woman in attendance, and she doesn’t say anything about how the wedding was ruined or anything like that, she just smiles and watches their crazy SEAL golf. It’s actually pretty surprising how long this scene about golf course hooliganism goes on, and it leads directly into some more Sheen shenanigans. It turns out that he parked his convertible on the green, so it got towed, so he chases after the impound truck on a bicycle, climbs on and liberates his vehicle on the highway.

It should be mentioned that Sheen’s character is a real prick, I mean who the fuck parks their car on a golf course? He’s like one of those assholes who’s real paranoid about his car getting scratched so he parks it diagonally between two spaces. Oh boo hoo, must be such a hard life having to go to such lengths to protect your car that costs more than my organs are worth. Fuck you.

But if that’s not enough Sheen’s character is also a total racist, he talks about “ragheads” and “Japs” but it’s supposed to be part of his roguish charm, just real adorable, like when he has Michael Biehn paged so he can steal his dinner date, drive her to some makeout spot and tell her to have sex with him. He smiles when he says it though so it’s not bad, it’s cute.

Meanwhile there’s probaly something going on overseas with some sort of Egyptian terrorist who has some plan or something. I don’t know, it was last night that I watched it so there’s no way I’m gonna remember what that was all about. But they wanted this guy real bad I bet so there were gunfights and etc. Haysbert is older, black, and engaged to be married so I will not give away whether he dies tragically or whether he dies heroically. This is a no spoiler review.

Biehn is pretty much the main character, with Sheen in a close second but hogging the limelight on the cover because he’s more famous. Bill Paxton is also on the team and has a cool mustache but unfortunately doesn’t get much to do in the movie aside from a couple decent Hudson-esque moments.

I never had much of an interest in a Charlie Sheen SEAL movie, but when I realized co-writer Chuck Pfarrer did DARKMAN and HARD TARGET and that he was a Navy SEAL himself it seemed worth checking out. Unfortunately this one doesn’t deliver the sweet action movie honey the way those other two do, but it’s more realistic if you’re into that. For what it’s worth the operations seem pretty real, lots of firepower and battlefield chaos, but not disorienting like movies they make in the 2000s. I didn’t really give too much of a shit about the story, but the action is above-competently directed by Lewis Teague of CUJO fame.

U.S. SEALS might be a ripoff of NAVY SEALS. I haven’t seen it and my video store doesn’t have it. But they do have U.S. SEALS II: THE ULTIMATE FORCE, unrelated sequel by Isaac Florentine who in case you missed it is for my money the best director in DTV. This is a Nu Image movie, and even the very best of their catalog like this is gonna be a different kind of cheesy than a studio action movie like NAVY SEALS. The budget is much lower, the cast less experienced, the action not based in reality. But I enjoyed it way more.

While Florentine’s SPECIAL FORCES was a cartoonified version of what it must be like to go on special ops missions, U.S. SEALS II doesn’t even pretend to be based in military reality. It’s not a war movie but a martial arts picture in the post-DIE HARD vein. A psychotic ex-SEAL kidnaps a hot nuclear scientist (with glasses), brings her to an island and threatens to launch his two Russian stealth missiles if the army doesn’t pay him a billion dollars. (Come to think of it I’m not sure why he needed to kidnap the scientist.) Russian scientists abandoned the island due to methane leaks, so nobody can use guns or they’ll all blow up. So this should be good.

The elite U.S. SEALS II team going in to save the day consists of another ex-SEAL out for revenge because the bad guy caused his sensei to commit seipukku, the daughter of said sensei, a convict, a biker, a contract killer and an armyman (Marshall Teague, the grizzled star of SPECIAL FORCES) who gets to go because he has a powerful air gun that can blow holes in people without blowing up the island. (Nobody ever asks why nobody else gets one of those. Maybe it was made in a limited edition of 1.)

So if you’re expecting lots of slogging around in scuba gear at night forget it, this is more of a proudly outlandish type of action movie. There’s lots of surprising guards from behind, climbing through vents, trying to get within 25′ of the bad guy so they can air-shoot him. Most of the good guys die, but not before at least briefly spinning around some kind of sword, staff or chain weapon. The villain has an asskicking girlfriend played by the stunt double for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show, not movie). When she duels the good guys’ Japanese swordswoman they get so into it they both slice off chunks of each other’s hair. And I guess this is a pretty big spoiler but in my opinion any movie where the villain is bisected lengthwise is automatically better than most DTV. Now there’s a scenario where you don’t have to check to make sure he’s dead. But maybe they should’ve had a shot of them just staring at the mess they made. I doubt even a U.S. SEAL II has seen that too many times before.

This one’s from 2001, in between BRIDGE OF DRAGONS and SPECIAL FORCES, and has some of the same qualities I enjoyed in both of those. Once again the characters move faster than wind, so every time they turn their heads there’s a whoosh sound effect. There’s also a laughably corny ending to rival even SPECIAL FORCES: as they leave they remember all the brave soldiers who died along the way through nostalgic slo-mo footage from happier times earlier in the movie. The montage includes a guy who died so early I forgot about him and also the guy who turned on them for money and had to get a sword through the brain or he would’ve killed them. So this is a very Christ-like montage of forgiveness.

The real question is not whether it’s better than NAVY SEALS, but whether it’s better than SPECIAL FORCES. Both have the Marshall Teague factor and great action. The advantage of SPECIAL FORCES is Scott Adkins, who has more of a movie star presence than anybody in U.S.S.II and definitely performs the most impressive martial arts sequences of the two movies. But I gotta say overall I liked this one better. The story is more fun and the action is more consistent. It doesn’t get bogged down in repetitive gun battles. You know my prejudice against gun action – I prefer fists and blades, and so does this island.

Bottom line: if you like cheesy action movies you could watch NAVY SEALS. If you like DTV you must watch U.S. SEALS II.

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PREAMBLE

Here in the US these two movies were designed and released as a double feature with trailers for fictional movies in between. They were released under one unifying name that starts with a ‘G’ that is a word used to describe the shitty theaters that used to churn out sleazy horror, sexploitation, kung fu and blaxploitation movies back in the day.

I am not going to be using the g-word in this review, because I am sick and fucking tired of hearing it. It’s a perfectly legitimate title for this concept, but here is the problem. Mr. Tarantino is a huge fan and expert on these types of movies, he is the human IMDb judging from some of those interviews. So I don’t mind seeing him talk about it in every article about KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and then KILL BILL VOLUME 2 and then when they announced this g-word movie, and then while he was filming it and now to promote its release. Tarantino can use the g-word all he wants, he has earned it. So I don’t mind him and the trailers for his movie trying to explain to the kids what the g-word means.

That’s him, that’s his thing. But it makes me want to jump out a window to read the guy from the local newspaper or the dumbed down weekly entertainment magazine deciding that he too has to explain to you what it is.

You know what man, we know what it is. If we didn’t know what it was, we could look it up on the internet like we did when they put out those ads for DISTRICT B13 that pretended like everybody knew what “parkour” meant. The point is, we can handle this without you, we don’t believe that you have any personal knowledge of this subject. So shut the fuck up.

A couple years ago you could’ve read 150 articles about the same movies being referred to as g********e today, and you wouldn’t see more than a handful of uses of the g-word. You would see them called B movies, exploitation movies, drive-in movies, cult movies, genre movies, midnight movies. Sometimes they’d use words to describe them like slashers, sleazies, cheapies, no-budget, grade-Z, and yes, every once in a while, g—-house. You’d probaly even see “psychotronic” or “video nasties” used at least as often as g********e. Now Tarantino drops the word in enough interviews, all the sudden it’s g this and g that. G this that and the other. This was already bugging me after KILL BILL, now it’s the fuckin bubonic plague. I’ve seen reviews by my internet colleagues where the word is used as many as ten times. Come on, man. If Tarantino used the phrase “jump off a bridge” too many times would you use the phrase “jump off a bridge” too many times? I hope not. Let’s put that bitch to rest, please.

The worst part is Tarantino really fucking loves these movies, for real, he sees beauty in them that Joe Local Paid Movie Critic will never see even wearing night vision goggles. But by the time it’s written up in the magazine it comes off like “hey everybody, let’s have some fun wink wink look at these funny old movies, it’s so stoopid I LOVE IT!”

Going to movies on 42nd street is not a part of my life experience. I understand it smelled like pee and a guy was jerkin off or something, I believe is what I read. Apparently the print quality was poor and a rat was fuckin two spiders over in the corner – I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I do like alot of these movies. I had a chance to literally go to the mat for LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and I turned it down, but I would have to say I respect it more than the average joe. Most people don’t get the opportunity to turn down that opportunity. So I understand the nostalgia, the fetish for the look of scratches on film and old fashioned studio logos and the sound of the trailer narrator’s voice. I dig all those things, I want to see them, but I also want to see some good movies. I want to see that really good g-word movie you were hoping to see every time you went into the g-house, not the other ones that you usually got. The carrot on the end of the stick, the light at the end of the tunnel, the light that’s shining on a carrot. Don’t let me down, boys.

First up in the double bill is PLANET TERROR by Robert Rodriguez. This is a cartoony take on a gloomy zombie movie. Bruce has a small role as a special ops badass who, it is noted, killed bin Laden. (Yippee kay yay.) They don’t mention whether or not he let Geraldo bronze the head. Anyway, Bruce is involved in an incident which causes the release of a deadly gas which turns the inhabitants of the nearby Texas town into “sickos,” melty faced cannibal motherfuckers. The story follows a couple different characters as they try to fight off the zombies.

Rodriguez seems like a pretty cool guy, he’s a dude that took the money from volunteering for medical experiments and built it into a multi-million dollar full service movies studio and effects company that he runs out of his house. Holy shit now that I put it that way the guy is fucking Scarface. Anyway, I think he’s one of those guys who’s both underrated and overrated, depending on who you ask. I love his MARIACHI trilogy and some of the others are fun but usually a mixed bag. PLANET TERROR is no different.

This movie is the fetishistic all-surface homage that you expect out of the g-house project. But not so much an homage to the g-word as to my man John Carpenter in his sci-fi mode. The night skies and fog and the helicopters remind you of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And the score (by Rodriguez, he has to play every role like Eddie Murphy in NORBIT or Tom Hanks in POLAR EXPRESS) is mostly retro keyboard blorts and buzzes like Carpenter used to do, with an occasional slice of Goblin. Good stuff. The movie is shot digital like he always does now but then he layers it with all kinds of phony grain, blur, scratches and broken splices. I think he kind of overdoes it but it’s a fairly authentic look.

The characters are .5 dimensional. Rose McGowan’s one-legged stripper Cherry Darling comes the closest to bringing something extra to her cartoon emotions. I like the opening credits of her dancing in the club, ending with her in tears. At the end she gets a machine gun for a leg and uses the same go-go moves to plow down motherfuckers. And when she does that she doesn’t cry.

The other main character is El Wray, played by Freddy Rodriguez (actually, Robert Rodriguez in disguise, another example of how he has to do everything in his movies [just jerkin your chain bud, Freddy is the guy from DEAD PRESIDENTS]). He is some sort of notorious in-trouble-with-the-law local who we sort of find out (although the explanation is purposely missing from the movie) also has a Seagalian past of some kind. The way the character is presented is cool and Freddy does what he can but let’s face it, he’s not Kurt Russell or Roddy Piper, and he’s not even Ice Cube. He’s a 5′6″ baby-faced little fella who is a good actor but just because he does a flip off a wall in one part does not make him a badass presence. Sorry bud just tellin it like it is.

And if you’re making a John Carpenter action movie but you don’t have a Snake Plissken or a Jack Burton or a George Nada, that sort of means you’re making GHOSTS OF MARS, doesn’t it?

I think the problem with Rodriguez is that he’s gone completely digital, but his talents are analog. He’s a guy who grew up making movies on camcorders and editing them together by dubbing from one VCR to another. So he knows how to edit together shots to tell a story well. In my opinion, it’s when he gets into all these green screens and digital whatsits or even old fashioned special effects that he loses control and starts making a mess of those basics he’s normally so good at. I think he’s best when he’s got an actual guy standing in the actual outdoors, with real sun shining on him. He knows exactly where to put the camera and how to edit it later. If you look at all those gunfights in DESPERADO for example, he knows how to put an action scene together, make it thrilling and beautiful, and in the process he invests these ridiculous characters with more emotional depth than should be possible. But ever since SPY KIDS he’s been doing his homegrown cartoon special effects and at the same time the stories get sloppier and less effective and it becomes harder and harder to think of the characters as people.

Actually maybe the best place to trace it to is the pre-digital FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. The first half is what I love about Rodriguez and the second half is what mildly amuses me about him. He puts in some clever gags and it’s kind of fun but it just turns into a bunch of chaos and cartoony silliness and you lose the character and story that you get when he’s more stripped down.

To be fair, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is shot digitally and has tons of effects shots in it, but it LOOKS organic. I had no idea. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, PLANET TERROR is more like the second half of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. It’s a movie that has all kinds of cool stuff in it, which is a plus. They have Bruce in there, they have Tom Savini with a gorey death, they have Tarantino in a vanity role as “Rapist #1,” they have roles for Michael Biehn and even the original Mariachi Carlos Gallardo, they have a scene where a guy falls down and his mouth touches a severed testacle, and he deserves it. But what they don’t have, in my opinion, is heart. You have to really put some effort into it to convince yourself you care about Cherry and El Wray’s love at the end. This reminds me more of Rodriguez’s made for cable movie ROADRACERS than any of his theatrical releases. There’s a part where a little kid dies out of the blue but the context of the story is so un-serious that instead of getting upset you just wonder what that was all about. There’s nothing to make it work as a real horror movie and the jokes (although funny) aren’t enough to make it a real comedy. It’s not a real movie, it’s a nice homage to a real movie.

But Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF is a real movie. On the old double features the second one was supposed to be the B movie, the not as good one. Sure enough this one is smaller and cheaper, but it also happens to be better in every way. It takes some of the structure of a real good, serious slasher movie and it Tarantino-izes it. He builds to scares in a strong, traditional way but he spends most of the movie on dialogue and characters and good acting, the things nobody expects to see in a slasher movie.

Basically, this is a movie about girls hanging out talking, and then they run into a maniac who gets off on killing women in car crashes. Kind of a hard fetish to live with I’m sure, but I can’t really feel sorry for the guy. Kurt Russell is not exactly back in Snake Plissken mode, but man is he great as Stuntman Mike, the car crash pervert. But he’s not the star, he is actually a distant threat for most of the movie, he is the stalker.

The structure is perfect for a slasher story but the balance you expect is thrown off because most of the screen time is given to conversation and much less than usual is given to the actual horror. For the first half it doesn’t seem weird because you establish this car with an unseen driver following, then you slowly establish who Stuntman Mike is, you have him moving in, then suddenly he strikes and there are some deaths in one of the most amazing car crash sequences I can think of. At this point Tarantino brings in his recurring character Sheriff Earl McGraw (he was in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL VOLUME 1, and even PLANET TERROR) for one scene where he acts as the psychologist at the end of PSYCHO, the guy who explains what’s going on here in this sicko’s mind.

In that first half there is all this talk of the girls going to a lake house, which is of course a common staging ground for some slashing. But just like we never saw the movie THE LAKE HOUSE starring Sandra Bullock, we never do see this lake house the girls are going to. Instead we meet another group of girls who Stuntman Mike is stalking (there’s a shot of him photographing that’s straight out of SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE). These girls are in town to film a movie, and two of them are stunt women, played by actual stunt women. [UPDATE: I was wrong, only Zoe Bell is an actual stunt woman, but I'm leaving my fuckup in to show how humble I am.] The most notable one (because she ends up doing some amazing stunts) is Zoe Bell, the New Zealander who was Uma Thurman’s stunt double for KILL BILL, and here she is playing herself. The end of the movie turns out to be about what happens when Stuntman Mike fucks with the wrong group of girls. I saw the movie a couple days ago and just today it occurred to me that DEATH PROOF not only refers to Stuntman Mike’s car, but to Zoe Bell, the world’s luckiest stunt woman.

Now, as a fan of the old slasher movies this structure is a little bit weird to me, and I’ll tell you why. There are two main types of slasher movies, the ones where the girl gets away and the ones where the girl goes back and gets revenge. But usually before the revenge the girl has to go through hell, especially in those movies like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. That one was obviously designed as a feminist story but because you have to watch the vilest shit imaginable to get to the girl power, nobody really believed it was sincere. Even in the good old fashioned rape-free movies you’re gonna see the killer rack up a hell of a body count before he gets an ax in the head, and the girl is gonna be terrorized all over town before she gives the killer what he’s got comin.

That is my one minor complaint about DEATH PROOF. There is one very impressive murder scene, and one very impressive attack scene, and then they immediately turn around and get their revenge. Gleefully. Not psychotic gleeful, but cute gleeful, bloody revenge as girl’s night out. And it’s all so sudden. The way it goes down is definitely fun. Really, I liked it. But I think if Tarantino had put them through some more terror first then the end would’ve been all that more earned, all that more satisfying.

But oh well. It’s clear what Tarantino has in mind. The movie referenced the most in DEATH PROOF is not a slasher movie at all, it’s VANISHING POINT, one of the artier of the g.h. works. True, it’s more of a crowdpleaser than TWO LANE BLACKTOP, but it’s not just a bunch of cars flipping and going off jumps, there’s some quiet brooding and shit in that movie. This is much more upbeat, but it’s the same kind of thing, trying to go a little arty but also have some great car stunts.

I have learned from dipping into the dark underworld of the talkbacks that DEATH PROOF seems to be the less popular one, most people saying it’s boring because it’s all talk and the dialogue is terrible, and occasionally these talkbackers describe the women in the movie as bitches or cunts. Just for a touch of class. Well, more power to you guys but man oh man can I not relate to that. I’m not gonna say this is Tarantino’s best dialogue, and of course there is a bit of a formula to it, you notice any movie reference he makes and it can get self conscious at times. But I like watching these characters talk to each other. I like when Stuntman Mike is going through all the stars he’s doubled for, naming off shows like THE VIRGINIAN and VEGA$, the kinds of references Tarantino likes to make, and suddenly he slows to a stop as he realizes that these girls don’t have a clue about any of these people or shows he’s talking about, and then he goes away and sulks, realizing he’s an old man.

Some people say Tarantino’s dialogue is realistic, which is bullshit. That’s not the point. The conversations are stylized and structured into stories and create an artificial rendition of real conversation. And they slyly drop details that set up what would happen later in a regular slasher movie – and then it doesn’t. So when you get to the second gang of women and you listen to them talk shit to each other you don’t know if this is going to go anywhere or not, but what they’re talking about does indeed set up what you need to know for the thrilling no CGI car stunt finale.

And I honestly wasn’t bored for a second, not just because I think this is indeed well written dialogue but because of some damn good performances. Tarantino does both his “good performance out of somebody you didn’t expect it from” trick and his “good performance out of somebody you never heard of before” one. Rosario Dawson is better than I’ve ever seen her. Sidney Poitier’s daughter Sydney is great. Most amazingly, Zoe Bell is perfect as an actress, then ends up doing these incredible stunts. You become very invested in this character Zoe and then you see her – the character and the real person – hanging on for dear life on the front of a fast moving car. For real. Not since the old Jackie Chan movies have I felt so concerned about bodily harm being done to an actor.

One complaint I’ve seen is that these two were made with a combined budget of $50 some million, which is alot more than it cost to make BLOODSUCKING FREAKS. Well, it seems to me you guys are missing the point. This is not supposed to be some Dogme exercise, it’s a tribute. Please point me to the guy who expected STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES to be made with the budget constraints of the serials that inspired them. These guys are like every generation of directors, they get all nostalgic for the movies they grew up on but they turn it into their own thing. John Carpenter is always trying to make a Howard Hawks movie, but nobody gets mad at him for having a bigger budget, using color film and not putting Kurt Russell in a cowboy hat. Because that would be stupid.

Not that I would be against seeing what they would do using low budgets again. But keep in mind that H.G. Lewis’s BLOOD FEAST had more than three times the budget of EL MARIACHI, not even including inflation. So it’s not like they have anything to prove. Plus, wouldn’t it almost be an insult to the g-house directors if they tried to follow some kind of budget and schedule constraints to make it authentic? Hello, we are making movies with the same limitations they had back then, but because we are of the 2000s and are big time Hollywood directors ours will be really good and you should pay $9.50 to see them.

Anyway, the one drawback to this being a double feature is that it might make me hesitate to see it again in a theater. Maybe I’ll still do it but it’s really DEATH PROOF I want to see again. Still, it’s a fun night at the movies and a good value for the cash-strapped individuals like myself who would’ve paid separately to see both anyway. The fake trailers and vintage intros are great too. I do wish they hadn’t hyped what the different trailers are because they’re all pretty funny but would be better if you didn’t see them coming. They got one by Eli Roth (the narrator sucks but otherwise it seems 100% authentic as a low budget horror movie) Rob Zombie (the weakest but amusing), Edgar Winter or whoever (the funniest one) but my favorite was actually the one at the beginning, Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE. Basically, this is a low budget action movie built around the scarred face of Danny (MARKED FOR DEATH) Trejo. Like a blaxploitation movie they work in themes specific to his ethnic background – references to day laborers, immigration etc., and he’s an assassin with a coat full of machetes who gets set up and then seeks his revenge.

The good news is Rodriguez has wanted to make a real MACHETE for years and is apparently planning to shoot it as a DTV release, expanding from the scenes he already shot to make the trailer. Now that’s the movie I want to see from Rodriguez. Let’s hope he really goes through with it.

In conclusion, PLANET TERROR is a fun warmup, DEATH PROOF is a great movie. If you like stunts, cars and Kurt Russell– well, you already saw it, so you can back me up on this.

[ratings]

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Cherry Falls is the story of a killer in a small town who kills only virgins. In a small town called Cherry Falls.

You know what I mean? Virgins. In Cherry Falls.

I’ll let that one sink in. Anyway this one is a bit different from the current crop of teen slasher type pictures. It is made by australians, for one. The tone is a little darker and less jokey. Most of the actors look like they are really high school aged instead of in their mid to late twenties. And instead of not killing virgins, the killer kills ONLY virgins. So of course the gimmick is that the kids decide to have a big orgy so they can all a) not get killed b) get laid.

Unfortunately not much of interest is made of this premise. And it’s not THAT different from your urban legend the final cut or your scream 3 or your I know what they did for the summer, etc. Just like those pictures it is all leading up to some stupid surprise ending where it turns out one of the characters you thought you could trust is actually the killer. what I’m getting at is that Jay Mohr is not just a teacher, he is also a guy who dresses up as his mom to kill virgins.

There aren’t any real knock you in the balls scares or chases or gorey type material. Even the sexuality of the picture is very unthreatening. This is the only orgy I’ve ever seen where everybody stays in their underwear.

I will say two things for this picture. First of all, I liked the young gal Britney Murphy who starred in it. She has the old non traditional type of beauty. She seems a little crazy, she makes her boyfriend bite her toes, etc. I like that in a young gal.

Number two, there is one scene where the killer shows up at the orgy, and all the kids run away scared, and so many of them are piling down the stairs that they get stuck.

If there was even one other thing in the movie as great as that, I would have no choice but to recommend this picture. but no dice folks. Sorry. I know you never heard of it, well don’t hear of it. not worth it friends. they don’t send ‘em straight to video for nothing it turns out.

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