Man of the hour Nic Cage plays Frank Pierce, who doesn’t get enough sleep and thinks he sees the ghosts of everyone he’s failed to save. He has a hard time feeling like a hero since most of the calls he gets are DOA or false alarms. He’s always doing CPR on dead babies or begging the hellishly overcrowded hospital to take in a vegetable. He’s so tired of bum-out cardiac arrests (”COME ON, PEOPLE!” he scolds) that he’s happy dealing with the notoriously foul-smelling drunk Mr. O, who calls in every time he’s wasted. The one time Frank does succeed in resuscitating a guy he feels guilty about it and imagines the man telling him to let him die.

The story takes place over just a couple days as Cage gets through shifts partnered with John Goodman (more interested in getting food than taking calls), Ving Rhames (does religious sermons during CPR, calls everybody “young man,” sexually harasses a dispatcher voiced by Queen Latifah) or Tom Sizemore (total nutbag who beats up a patient and chases him around trying to “catch him” for fun. Seems pretty true to life). Frank also runs into some colorful characters like a suicidal lunatic (Mark Anthony of THE SUBSTITUTE) who he convinces to come in by telling him he’ll kill him back at the hospital, and Cliff Curtis (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) as a drug dealer who ends up impaled on a fence 16 stories up admiring the beauty of the sparks as the first responders try to saw him off. You know how that is.

Alot of it plays as very, very black comedy. You gotta laugh at the sight of Nic Cage in the passenger seat wearing an oxygen mask and explaining the cocktail of vitamins and adrenalin he’s cooked up to self-medicate with. Or when they flip the ambulance and crawl out laughing and Cage just leaves on foot, saying he quits. Every day he shows up late and tries to convince his boss to fire him for it, but no such luck.

Adding to the feverish feel is a bag of Scorsese tricks – sped up shots, closeups of Cage’s face as he flies down the streets, shots of city lights that make youre eyes glaze over just like his. There are some disturbing hallucinations (everybody on a block turning to look at him with the face of the homeless girl he failed to save; a snow scene shot with everybody moving backwards and then played in reverse). It’s show-offy but feels comprehensible and controlled, like a Jackson Pollock to Tony Scott’s monkey throwing feces.

It's no Vampire's Kiss, but there are definitely a few moments of the mega-acting

What’s more, the subject matter is genuinely upsetting. The pulse checking, the shooting up, the dying babies, the shocking of dead bodies, the fact that you can understand why EMTs would be like this but then it’s terrifying to think that’s who you’re counting on. None of this is exactly baby ducks and cupcakes, in my opinion. This movie will fuck you up. I can’t help but think about it as I look out at my window where the EMT’s are checking on the drunk who always passes out on the same corner of the same parking lot. One of their long time customers – that can’t be a peaceful life. I wonder if we should start tipping those guys? You know, just as a nice gesture. Thanks for knowing CPR, guys, sorry about the night terrors.

When Latifah’s voice isn’t the dispatcher it’s Scorsese’s voice. And there’s something fitting about the director sending his characters on missions from inside the movie. (I wonder what would happen if the dispatcher went to a bar and got a drink from Mr. Woo who was in HARD BOILED?) Hearing Scorsese’s own voice reading jokey dialogue reminds you that this is an unusual Scorsese movie. But he’s not, you know, radioing it in. It’s a couple long nights in hell, and at the end you want to cry and take a nap.

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Flynn is not a director that has been intensely studied, you’re not gonna find a whole lot of information on him (although Shock Cinema did an interview with him a couple years ago.) I really know nothing about John Flynn the man, but since I’m very fond of three of his movies in particular Moriarty asked me to write up a little something.

Mr. Flynn’s most famous movie, the one every one of you should see, and my number one “FOR GOD’S SAKE WOULD YOU PEOPLE PLEASE PUT THIS OUT ON DVD?” pick since POINT BLANK came out is ROLLING THUNDER. Written by Paul Schrader, this movie is in the vein of TAXI DRIVER if it was a little more of a straight ahead revenge movie. William Devane plays a Vietnam vet who comes home to a hero’s welcome, but becomes very distant and feels nobody understands him. Things get worse when he gets robbed and loses his hand to a garbage disposal. He definitely has more to complain about than John Rambo in FIRST BLOOD. So later there is revenge.

I don’t really know a way to describe the plot without making it sound cheaper and dumber than it really is. This was one of the first movies to deal with Vietnam vets coming home to find that things just aren’t the same anymore, a theme that is unfortunately still pretty potent today. But that’s just one level. More importantly, it works as pure badass cinema. And that’s just about my favorite thing in movies: a real effective tough guy film that underneath also has something to say about the world.

There’s a great scene where Devane goes to get his buddy Tommy Lee Jones to go on a revenge rampage with him. He interrupts the family dinner walking in in full uniform, and Tommy Lee, without hesitation, just gets up from the table and joins him. He just looks at him and he knows. That’s one of my favorite moments in any movie because it’s that great “oh shit, it’s on” moment of badass anticipation, and at the same time it shows how really only another guy who was in Vietnam can truly understand him.

Another favorite (also not on DVD, for crying out loud) is THE OUTFIT. I thought I was about the only guy who cared about this one until I saw Harry mention it a couple times in the last year or so, apparently they played it down there in Austin. THE OUTFIT caught my interest because it’s based on Richard Stark’s third Parker novel. If you’re not familiar with the Parker novels, the first one (called The Hunter) was the basis for both POINT BLANK and PAYBACK. A couple of the later ones were also made into movies – Slayground was a movie starring Peter Coyote, The Seventh became THE SPLIT starring Jim Brown (never on video), the Jugger was the very, very loose basis of a pretty terrible Godard movie called MADE IN USA.

Well, THE OUTFIT is either the second or third best movie based on a Parker novel, depending on how you feel about PAYBACK. Robert Duvall plays the Parker character in this one. It’s actually a pretty direct sequel to The Hunter/POINT BLANK/PAYBACK because in that one Parker pisses off the organized crime corporation called The Outfit, in the second one (The Man With the Getaway Face) he goes on the run, and in this one he gets fed up and convinces his friends to all rob Outfit-run businesses at the same time. No more running. For the movie Flynn (who wrote the screenplay too) added a different motive (they killed his brother) and like most of the adaptations he makes the character more sympathetic. But Duvall is a mean, tough bastard, there’s a really good score and the movie has a real momentum to it. As an added bonus to fans of the books you get to see a few of the recurring characters, including Parker’s long time partner Handy McCay (called Cody and played by Joe Don Baker). Robert Ryan’s character Mailer, by the way, is based on the same character William Devane played in PAYBACK.

The third great movie by John Flynn is – and please, hear me out on this one – OUT FOR JUSTICE starring Steven Seagal. I know you guys are gonna laugh at this one because most of you are not Seagalogists like I am. But it was when I saw this that I looked up John Flynn and made the connection that it was the same guy who did ROLLING THUNDER and THE OUTFIT. Due to my vocation I’ve seen every movie Seagal has ever made several times, and I have long been convinced that OUT FOR JUSTICE is the best directed and most genuinely badass of all of them. In fact, Flynn is one of the very few directors who managed to put his own stylistic stamp on a Seagal picture. It’s not the funniest or most representative Seagal picture, but it’s my favorite.

If this movie starred William Devane or Robert Duvall I’m sure it would be more respectable like those other two. Instead it has my man Seagal struggling to do a New York Italian-American accent, which is admittedly pretty laughable at times. But it has Seagal at his meanest, some of his best fights ever, and the most distinctive story of any of his movies (although I wish they would’ve cut out that epilogue where the dog pees on the guy’s head). It looks and sounds different from all the other Seagal pictures. The score is by the same guy who did the noodly guitars of ABOVE THE LAW and HARD TO KILL but it’s a more ominous and timeless sound that hits you in the balls like Seagal would do if you happened to be in the bar where he comes looking for Richie. Or if you were mean to a dog.

Stylistically the movie is great too. The cinematography is grey and gritty. I love the way they shot the bumpy car chase. With the intense camerawork and the appearance of Jerry Orbach it seems to be the long lost father of all the cop shows they have now. This movie also has hands down, by about a hundred miles, the greatest opening credits of any Seagal movie and most action movies of the era. The scene involves Seagal throwing a pimp by his tie into some garbage, then tossing him headfirst into a car window. There’s a menacing shot looking up at Seagal through the hole in the windshield, it freezes on his mean face and says STEVEN SEAGAL (filling up the whole god damn screen) and then OUT FOR JUSTICE.

Some other Flynn movies you might’ve seen include Stallone’s prison movie LOCK UP and the morbid and in my opinion cheesy horror movie BRAINSCAN, which was the first movie written by Andrew Kevin Walker. Although he was always gravitating to these genre movies, Flynn actually started out pretty serious with 1968’s THE SERGEANT. Rod Steiger apparently plays a macho army sergeant who has to deal with his repressed homosexuality when he realizes he’s attracted to a private played by John Phillip Law. That’s not a movie you’d expect from the director of OUT FOR JUSTICE, or subject matter you’d expect to see in 1968, so maybe it’s another one they oughta put out on DVD. Come on people, you got every season of GOLDEN GIRLS I think we can start getting to some of these John Flynn movies now.

Anyway, it’s too bad. I think we lost an uncharted titan of Badass Cinema this week. But of course some people out there lost a friend and family member, so best wishes to them. Rest in peace John Flynn, and thank you for taking the time to kick our asses.

[ratings]

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But Paul Schrader did make sort of a comeback. After a really terrible Elmore Leonard/Tom Arnold picture called Touch he did Affliction with James Coburn and got some Oscars and what not. Now I am in favor of any picture that gets an Oscar for James Coburn just on basic principle, but I haven’t seen it yet so instead I will review Mr. Schrader’s first work as a director, and still maybe his best, Blue Collar.

You see this picture is important to me because it is one of Richard Pryor’s few great film roles outside of his stand up films. Richard was in many shoddy films made by people with no understanding of his talents or desire to display them properly. So you get the man dressed up as a chicken or running around getting his ass bit by piranhas or what not. The kind of garbage that Robin Williams could even do. And as Richard once confessed to me, by writing his autobiography, he was too far gone in his addiction to really care any more. He just wanted “the moneys” and so would sign on to pictures like Super Man Part 3 that he thought were crap.

So Blue Collar is one of the few pictures where he actually got to play a multi-faceted, dramatic type role where he gets to be funny but also gets to display other emotions convincingly and organically within the story. He gets to change throughout the movie, but not in the, “It turns out I have a big heart after all and love kids” type of way. I mean it’s the other way around, he turns into kind of a villain, he sells the fuck out.

Richard is not the main star of the picture, though, he shares the spotlight with Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. So you see it is a great cast. It turns out that behind the scenes all three were told that they would be the main star, were incredibly jealous of each other and could rarely film a scene together without getting into a fist fight or storming off the set. But in the film they are convincing as friends at an auto factory who attempt to rob their own corrupt union.

This is one of those type of pictures that could only really be made in the ’70s or in the ’80s with Roddy Piper, where it is a political film within a genre film. Today, a political film is usually about one specific topic – tobacco, or a gay guy for one example. Then it could be about a fabric of people or a general feeling or what not. It is about the feeling these people have that they are working harder and getting less every day. It is about trying to get enough money to feed your family and pay your taxes when it’s just not possible. It is about not being able to afford braces for your daughter and she ends up trying to make her own by jamming wires in her mouth. Jesus, that’s some fucked up shit.

At the same time it is not really as preachy as I expected. It just feels natural for these characters because it’s a fact of life you can’t really deny, and it drives the plot. To be frankly honest I used to think Paul Schrader was kind of a jackass. I thought maybe Scorsese had been the dude that made Taxi Driver work and that Schrader had been coasting off him ever since. Schrader seemed really pretentious to me with his obsessions with religious symbolism and the plight of the working class. And he definitely gets obsessed with some of these things, because Light of Day has some of the same plot elements as Blue Collar – Michael J. just can’t pay the rent being a working class Detroit rock musician so he breaks into somebody’s house and steals tools.

But Schrader has a commentary track on the Blue Collar dvd and it made me respect the guy. Turns out he is pickier about this crap than I am, and he winces and gets embarrassed every time the politics comes up. He starts laughing when there is a crucifix on the wall, and says how he tried to talk Scorsese out of having Catholic symbolism in Bringing Out the Dead. “This was okay when we were 22, but now we’re 52.” He seems skeptical about his success as a director on this film, but I think he is being modest. Even if he spent more time breaking up fist fights than setting up cameras, he somehow got great improvisational performances out of these guys. And unlike that cheesy rock n roll film, I like the use of rock/blues music on Blue Collar. Which is saying alot because I am not a fan of the “Bad to the Bone” type of music. But in the opening credits here there is one of the best combinations of music and editing I’ve seen in a while, as both the music and freeze frames reflect the machinery of the assembly line where these dudes work.

Anyway, it’s good. I am happy to point some of you to some of the lesser known works you haven’t heard of. So especially if you want to see Richard Pryor shine as an actor then get thee to a video store motherfucker thanks.

[ratings]

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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.

Now look, I know I’m one to talk, but these here are some dumb fuckin criminals. I mean no offense to the handicapped but this is one retarded fucking crime. The Radio of home invasions. These guys are stealing $2,500, but they bring like 5 guys. If they’re splitting it five ways, that’s only $500 each, right? And the way they choose to go about getting this $500? By torturing a man who is famous for being tortured for years on end. The exact guy that you should probably not want to torture information out of. Because obviously the guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to getting tortured.

Worse, they end up killing his wife and kid, and stuffing his hand in the garbage disposal. So it’s double murder plus, for 500 fucking silver dollars. If they can even carry them. Nice fucking plan, fellas.

Anyway, soon after our guy gets out of the hospital with a hook on his hand he starts tracking the motherfuckers that did this to him, trying to find their whereabouts, so that the revenge can take place. Once he catches their scent he goes out to visit his old war buddy Tommy Lee Jones. This is another great scene because the whole family is there (including brother-in-law Paul Partain, who played the obnoxious Franklin in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE), nobody knows what’s up and they’re all gonna have dinner together. But Devane takes Tommy Lee aside and says, “I found him.” “Found who?” “The sonofabitch that killed my son.”

Tommy Lee doesn’t even hesitate, he says, “I’ll go get some equipment,” and starts getting ready to go kill the motherfucker. And as they’re about to start supper the family is kind of confused because William and Tommy suddenly leave, completely suited up in their uniforms.

It’s a simple movie but it’s a good one. So much tension and so much that is obviously going on that the characters never talk about. It’s a little bit TAXI DRIVER, a little bit FIRST BLOOD. I guess Schrader said that in his version there was no family, the guy was just a maniac because he was so damaged by the war. He seems to think the family was Hollywood bullshit, but I disagree. It creates so much great tension, and if you read up on the divorce rates, domestic violence etc. that happens in military families (not even POW) it is clear that this has a basis in reality. I mean coming home to find out your wife fell in love with somebody else was a common experience after Vietnam, and it will be now. I just read today about a soldier here in Washington State who they think killed his wife and left her in the bath tub. His dad said, “That’s not my son. My son is still in Iraq, and for that you can thank George W. Bush.” I think the major’s dad could’ve said the same thing about his son, although you probably should thank his captors and various other factions. Bush was playing all day water volleyball at that time and obviously cannot be blamed for these problems.

The director, John Flynn, also did the pretty good THE OUTFIT (with Robert Duvall as Richard Stark’s Parker character, who you know and love from POINT BLANK and PAYBACK). And he did OUT FOR JUSTICE, which for my money is Steven Seagal’s grittiest and best directed movie, even if Seagal does a bad Italian-american accent for the whole thing. Apparently his first movie THE SERGEANT, not available on video, had Rod Steiger as a drill sergeant who hides his attraction to new recruit John Philip Law by treating him like shit. Unfortunately other than that the rest of his filmography is pretty uninteresting.

Anyway this a real good one and highly recommended for all those trying to catch up on the ’70s badass classics. Along with POINT BLANK it is high on my list of pictures sorely needing a DVD release.

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