This great overlooked revenge movie was one of if not the first movie to deal with the effects of the Vietnam War. With a script by Paul Schrader (rewritten by another dude) it works on two levels, as a raw exploitation picture and as a depressing statement about the mess our country was in at the time. Fortunately we never repeated those mistakes ever again so this movie is completely irrelevant now and only good as a curiosity.
The picture opens with corny music as heroic Vietnam POWs arrive home at an airport, among them William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones. Mr. Devane will be our protagonist this evening, and as he pretends to enjoy the ceremony honoring him as a great american hero, you can tell right off the bat that he’s not quite there. He’s got a wife and kid waiting for him, and the kid doesn’t even remember him he’s been gone so long. Some guy named Cliff is there to give them a ride home. “You remember Cliff?” the wife says innocently, and you fuckin know what that means.
The wife left the house exactly how it was, to make the return more comfortable for him. And that makes you think how fucked up it would be to be locked up for years and all you want to do is come home, but then when you get there you don’t even recognize it. That would suck, and he didn’t get this. But what also sucks that he did get is his wife immediately tells him she’s been fuckin Cliff and they’re gonna have to get a divorce. There is a great scene where Cliff tries to have a man to man talk with him, and brings him a beer. You expect the major to chew Cliff out but he’s just real nice about it, which makes it so much creepier. Instead of beating up Cliff he makes him uncomfortable by pressuring him into pulling up his arms behind his back like his torturers did to him in ‘Nam. And the major almost seems to enjoy it. Making Cliff uncomfortable. Then all he does is tell him, “I’d appreciate it if you don’t call my son a runt.”
Now I already mentioned there’s gonna be some revenge involved in this picture, but it’s actually not against Cliff. Instead, there is a ceremony where a department store awards the major with a silver dollar for every day he was locked up – somewhere around $2500. Afterwards, a bunch of rednecks (including Roscoe P. Coltrane from the Dukes of Hazzard) show up at his house to try to force him to give them the coins. (more…)
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BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is Martin Scorsese at his most nightmarish and hallucinogenic, a movie almost entirely in helicopters-overhead-paranoid-end-of-GOODFELLAS mode. That’s ’cause it’s about night shift EMT workers, which I think we can safely assume is probly a pretty stressful job. The movie is written by Paul Schrader based on one of those “this job is fucked and we’re all on drugs” type exposes, like Kitchen Confidential was for chefs.
