First of all, here’s the commercial:

Okay, admittedly it’s corny that it’s based around a Jay-Z lyric (although it does kinda make it seem like The Rock is playing himself). But I’m sort of mesmerized by this footage. It takes the, uh, strengths (if you want to call them that) of the first movie (ninjas, a dude who wears an all black rubber costume, flipping, explosions, gimmicky vehicles, constant ridiculousness) and adds something new: taste. Stephen Sommers made such an ugly, cheesy-looking movie, already seeming dated when they started advertising it. But these shots look nice:

Nicely designed and composed, striking to look at. I believe that’s RZA on the left, by the way. Same character he played in GHOST DOG, in my opinion.

What I love about this is that despite being 30 seconds, quickly edited and full of action it’s clear what’s going on in every single shot. The camera isn’t static but it always frames everything nicely:

It’s always clear who is in the shot (or at least what color of ninja), where they’re standing (or flying or swinging) and which direction they’re moving, even in edited-down-for-the-Super-Bowl form. Obviously we can compare this to the other filmatic adaptations of the works of Hasbro and see a hell of a difference. I saw that trailer for TRANSFORMERS IN DARK MOON like ten times in theaters, there were still parts of it that I didn’t know what I was looking at. They just dump a big barrel of wiggly shiny crap on the screen and if the sound is loud enough your brain figures it must be amazing. This is the opposite. This is clean. I like it.

I figured since Chu had so much experience shooting elaborate dance sequences he could apply those skills to other forms of movement. I saw an interview where he said he didn’t think dance scenes and action scenes were really the same skill, but if so I guess he must be good at both.

Looks like this one has a little bit of dancing:

…but probly more punching:

I remember the trailer for the first GI JOE picture really showcased the scene where the GI Josephs wear power suits and it’s computer animation of them flipping around and crashing through a subway and stuff. I got a good laugh out of Sommers’s trademark use of really outdated looking digital effects in a big expensive movie, but it’s nice to see that Chu is going the opposite route and trying to do a good job. When I saw that teaser trailer I kind of thought this was a real stunt:

Like maybe a nice digital background but real guys on wires or something. But watching it again I figure the movements and poses are just too cartoon perfect, it’s gotta be fake. But I’m not actually sure ’cause it really looks like live action to me. I dig it.

My preferred form of action movie would probly not be this silly, but it takes all kinds. This looks like a hell of alot of fun. I think style is gonna do inappropriate things to substance in this movie. If not, it will still be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, the RZA, Ray Stevenson, Walton Goggins, Byung-Hun Lee, Arnold Vosloo, Ray Park, and probly some surprise guest star under the mask of Cobra Commander. Jay-Z, probly. That would tie in with conspiracy theories about Jay-Z and the Illuminati or whatever. And it would be such shock ending ’cause the guy The Rock quotes to pump up the troops was behind the attack all along. He’d be real upset, but, you know. You can’t knock the hustle.

chapter 3

released May 4th, 2001

Okay, now the summer is really starting. Crocodile Dundee, Stallone in a car, those were appetizers. This is the first bonafide Big Ass Summer Movie of ‘01, with the advertising and the toys and what not. It opened huge, and eventually made more than $433 million worldwide. I don’t think I know anybody that likes it, though.

THE MUMMY RETURNS is the second one, the one where the mummy returns for a while, then leaves again. Like the first MUMMY it begins with a narrated prologue that’s better than the movie proper because it doesn’t have Brendan Fraser or a bunch of talking in it. This one tells a little bit about the legend of The Scorpion King (The Rock), a guy who led a bunch of warriors in trying to conquer the world, but they all died of heat stroke so he was bit by a scorpion or whatever, and magic. His part is less than 5 minutes, he speaks one line and it’s not in English, and his narrative purpose is to return as a shitty CGI bug monster at the end. Also to set up a prequel spin-off that’s way more entertaining than the mummy movies, in my opinion.

I never watched THE MUMMY RETURNS before this retrospective because I hated the first one so much. I just remember it being a bunch of loud noises and phony excitement with no sense of rhythm or build. This actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but sure doesn’t give me a reason to give part 1 a second chance.

After the prologue we go to 1933, a year in which Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz’s characters are now married and have a spunky son. They’re exploring an ancient tomb together as a family activity I guess. There are snakes in the cave and he’s not afraid of them, which is obviously meant as a huge ‘fuck you’ to Indiana Jones, and to call him a pussy and make him feel bad about himself, etc.

Anyway it turns out some bandits or tomb raiders are also there, the kid shoots a slingshot, he gets a magic Bracelet of Anubis stuck on his arm, the entire place collapses and that type of shit. The bandits are trying to resurrect the Scorpion King so he can wiggle around and lead an army of dogheaded warriorsb which means they have to first resurrect Imhotep, the mummy from part 1, played by Arnold Vosloo (the small screen Darkman and big screen Billy Zane), because of such-and-such, but what they didn’t count on was that Fraser was wearing a wristband in part 1 and when he takes it off it turns out there’s a tattoo underneath that proves he’s a Magi and by the way his wife is the resurrection of Nefertiti and the son is “The Chosen One” and the snake is probly the Chosen Snake but that never comes up.

I forgot that there was a cool guy with a tattooed face that knows all the ancient secrets and sword fighting techniques, he’s part of an ancient order trying to stop the mummy, and then there’s another ancient order trying to help the mummy I believe. Fraser says “Oh no, not these guys again!” which is the same thing I thought when I saw him and the other main characters. To be fair to the movie though they are far less annoying than in part 3. They play it mostly straight, and they’re supposed to be so in love that the audience should shout “Get a room!” in unison. At one point Fraser says, “If anything ever happened to you I would never forgive myself.” (Like what, if she turned into Maria Bello?)

But as long as Fraser’s not trying to do witty banter he isn’t that bad. Then again he’s not at all compelling in the Indiana Jones way he’s obviously supposed to be. It seemed to me like they also slimmed down the “comedy relief” participation of the sleazy brother-in-law character. He has a few lines like defending his innocence by saying “I haven’t done anything… lately!” (Ain’t I a stinker?) but mostly they force him to sit around and look serious while the other characters talk, which is a fair punishment for how annoying he was in part 1.

I kind of like that the kid leaves behind a trail of sandcastles that tell his parents which archaeological sites to go to next. They also fly around in a zeppelin, which I guess you gotta give some points for because very few movies have zeppelins these days, and they are an important form of travel. The pilot of the airship has an eyepatch at first but then takes it off because he doesn’t actually need it. That’s the kind of comedy that you can only make up on set. How magical.

I gotta acknowledge that Mr. Sommers does make some sincere attempts at human and/or mummy emotion, and there are moments and scenes that might be really cool if not surrounded by two hours of ridiculous bullshit and terrible CGI walls of water with spooky faces in them and that type of business. In this one the stand out “hey, this would’ve worked in an actual movie” scene is at the climax when the events contrast the relationships between the married archaeologists and the mummy and his girl. The boys are falling into a pit of scary fire or some stupid bullshit, I don’t remember what it was exactly and I’m sure no one involved with the movie does either. Brendan tries to get Rachel to run away to safety but she doesn’t, she risks her life and saves him. Meanwhile, the Mummy’s girl takes a look at him, then runs like a fuckin coward, or like Michael Caine’s employee in ON DEADLY GROUND who claims she has to go to the bathroom and tries to drive off.

And there’s a shot of Imhotep crying. Not because he’s dying (he’s been through that a couple times) but because he thought she was a keeper. In the context of a good story with good characters that would be a good scene.

THE MUMMY RETURNS tries to be a rousing, light-hearted adventure, but at its heart it’s a mystery, and the mystery is “how the fuck does a movie this big and expensive have special effects this terrible?” For the most part it’s a nice looking movie, a big production with lots of wide shots of digitally enhanced period scenes and ancient Egyptian palaces and what not. The effects going on in the background are fine.

But there are four different major types of digital characters in the movie and they all look preposterous. There’s the titular mummy Imhotep, when first resurrected he’s a hollowed out corpse. This is a case where it would’ve been nice if they had the motion capture because the way they animate this dumb looking guy has no relation to the personality or posture of the guy playing him when it switches to an actor. This is actually the opposite of the Boris Karloff MUMMY – the monster looks so stupid that it’s a huge relief when it becomes just a dude. There’s one scene where he’s still supposed to be rotten but he’s wearing what looks like an iron mask (turns out to be rubber – not sure why they did that) and he’s so much more of a compelling character that way it’s ridiculous.

Another terrible effect is the dog-headed soldiers of the Army of Anubis, who number in the thousands for huge LORD OF THE RINGS type battles. To be fair it’s more just how stupid the dog-headed cartoon warriors look that is the problem, not as much the fact that they look phony. So I guess I give them a pass. Good boy. You get a treat.

I’d heard for years about people hating the “pygmy mummies,” but I didn’t know why. Nobody told me they were little CGI gremlin guys bouncing around and jibber jabbering.

But by far the biggest offender is the “Scorpion King” character. I actually liked the spin-off movie THE SCORPION KING so it’s sad to learn that the Rock’s likable hero Mathayus not only turns into a one-dimensional evil scorpion monster, but that he fucking looks like this:

(I think I stole this screengrab from Chud’s worst CGI in history list)

For once it’s not exaggerating to say that he looks like a video game. In fact, here is The Rock in an actual video game:

This movie was released ten years ago, you’d think they would’ve finished the effects by now.

I found a quote from Todd McCarthy of Variety saying that the movie “bursts with visual goodies,” which would imply that to at least one professional these effects were considered acceptable at the time. But I remember the other movies that existed and I don’t buy it. This is Industrial Light and Magic, they had already done Jar Jar Binks, and regardless of his controversial politics and comedic style you gotta admit Jar Jar looks pretty real. They’d done digital characters in the Jurassic Parks, DRAGON HEART, MEN IN BLACK…  This was 5 years after they did MARS ATTACKS!, which intentionally looked goofy, but better than these fuckin mummies. I don’t get it.

At any rate, this is a good example of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie that only gets away with it because of our thirst for a Big Summer Popcorn Movie when May rolls around and the sun is coming out. It’s all expensive spectacle, no soul, no skill. If spectacle is all you got in your toolbox you oughta be better at staging it than this. Obviously it’s modeled after the Indiana Jones movies, but only in the most base, superficial ways. Clearly it learned nothing from those movies in storytelling or characterization. It’s embarrassing how much the setpieces in this completely hinge on impressing the audience with effects that weren’t even ready to be shown to the public. In a good movie of this type you could laugh or shrug at a dated effect and the scene would still work because of the way it was put together.

To me this goes in the category of expensive, terrible movies like TRANSFORMERS, BATMAN FOREVER and the works of Roland Emmerich. Some are worse than others, sometimes they’re funny to watch, and I’m not saying I’m not interested in seeing them. But to pretend that’s what we’re hoping for in a summer movie is an insult to movies. And movies will have their revenge on you by making you keep watching this type of crap.

* * *

legacy: in the decade since ‘01 there’s been a tie-in movie ride, a cartoon series, a part 3, a SCORPION KING spin-off, a DTV prequel to the spin-off, another one on the way… I don’t think many people love these movies, but I guess they tolerate them enough to keep them alive. I don’t think there are any plans to return to the big screen, though.

Sommers is still doing these type of movies, but maybe slowed down a little. Back then he could probly get most of the projects he wanted off the ground, now he’s gotta fight for it. Fraser is still a leading man, but mostly in children’s movies (JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, FURRY VENGEANCE). Weisz chose not to come back for part 3, but has maintained a balance between smaller movies (ABOUT A BOY,  MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS) and the genre stuff (ERAGON, CONSTANTINE). And THE FOUNTAIN may or may not count as both.

Most notably of course, The Rock has since fulfilled the MUMMY RETURNS prophecy of becoming a big movie star.

datedness: Those effects look fucking terrible, but I’m sure they looked bad at the time too. Other than that it’s a nice looking production and since it’s a period piece it’s not dated. The scenery looks nice on blu ray.

2001-2011 connections: The Rock (now called Dwayne Johnson) has the standout role in the movie of the summer so far, FAST FIVE. It’s another sequel to a movie where he wasn’t in the first one, but this one really takes advantage of the personality and presence he had in his wrestling days, and lets him say words and shit. Business-wise he’s also spending the summer becoming the go-to “guy to add to sequels to crappy movies,” signing on for upcoming sequels to JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (originally starring Fraser) and GI JOE (originally directed by Sommers).

Would they make a movie like this today? Pretty much. Two summers ago Sommers directed GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, which has all different trappings but the same kind of senseless, random pile of chaotic events, and even with effects that you assume were done on a low budget until you read otherwise. I guess that’s his trademark.

What I love about this series is that they each have kind of a different spin on the material and a different charm to them. I like part 1 for Diesel’s dedication to his ridiculous character, part 2 for its utter silliness and video game plotting, part 3 for its unorthodox leading man and loving tribute to the imagery of urban Japan, part 4 for its hybrid of all the previous entries, its reunion of original characters (including a much tougher version of Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner) and slick visual execution of preposterous concepts like the high-speed gas truck robbery and Diesel-as-Dom’s car-whispering crime scene investigation where he reads skidmarks like a TV psychic reads visions of serial killers.

Now part 5 takes a similar approach but with more returning characters, more action and at least by the looks of it alot less computers. I think this might be the first one not to use the FURIOUS trademark of a CGI camera move through a car engine. Instead the emphasis is on real cars crashing, flipping, falling, exploding, being scraped and smashed and riddled with bullet holes. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a new movie with this many cars rolling or being crushed (I just now read that they destroyed close to 200 cars filming the big climax.) And it’s nice to see so many real-looking stunts of people leaping off structures or hanging off of vehicles. No obvious green screens or show-offy virtual cameras.

But the masterstroke of this one is pretty obvious, it’s casting the motherfuckin Rock Dwayne Johnson as the antagonist (anti-anti-hero?) Luke Hobbs, leader of the paramilitary D.S.S. team chasing our fugitive heroes through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. And luckily it’s not just a gimmick to get the name on the marquee. He gets plenty to do in the movie (both action-wise and tough-talking-wise) and I’m sure we all hope he’ll continue to be a main character in however many more movies they make.

This is not the charming, vulnerable version of The Rock that I always talk up, but it is the first movie to make full use of his old wrestling persona, the blustery, self-promoting superman. He’s a dominating team leader, barking out commands but also personally filling the air with clouds of bullets, punching with fists like sledge hammers and denting the hood of Dom’s favorite car using Dom’s head. (Dom has had to deal with bad things happening to many people close to him, but it might require a whole trilogy for him to avenge what happens to his Dodge Charger.)

Diesel looks more ridiculously burly than ever, but then is dwarfed by The Rock. It’s so unlikely and so perfect that they actually got a man for the role who can match or best Diesel in each of the following categories: star power, screen presence, macho swagger, muscle, baldness. It’s great to see them standing face to face, trying to melt each other’s skulls with the power of hateful staring. It’s like a boxing event poster or one of those historic plot twists in wrestling where Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant or somebody reveals that they’re betraying their long time ally and they stare each other down.

I could be wrong but I think The Rock being in this movie is part of an Expendables Effect. Regardless of the quality of Stallone’s movie, his assembly of a macho action superteam was a dream come true for many movie fans that opened some eyes in Hollywood about casting. I think that paved the way for producers to look for those type of unexpected teamups and facedowns and for the actors to realize that it’s not all about hogging the spotlight, that their star power can be increased in one of these all star lineups. I know there are low budget producers trying to dig up all the ’80s and ’90s icons and sub-icons they can and of course there was Trejo, Seagal, DeNiro, Don Johnson and everybody in MACHETE. And now there’s characters from all four previous FURIOUSes getting chased by The Rock.

I got a half-formed theory that manliness is starting to come back into fashion, too. After a decade-plus of cultural overreach by comic book nerds and skinny kids in tight jeans and eyeliner there’s starting to be some nostalgia for the masculine arts of the ’70s and ’80s. Even the nerds and the tightpantsers want to see dirt on the lens and heroes with scars and deep voices and they want to see actual objects getting destroyed sometimes, not just clean computery flash. Even this series is getting manlier, it’s almost entirely classic American muscle cars or military vehicles, none of the glowy fluorescent pink and green shit that was so big at the beginning.

I know of at least two web-based movie critics who’ve turned their nose up to this series for ten years and finally watched them last week and admitted that at least this latest one is pretty good. Some of the reviews I’ve seen are kind of a condescending “Okay, I guess I see why you people like these things” type of attitude, but at least they’re coming around.

I thought alot about THE EXPENDABLES during FAST FIVE because I think this is a movie with a comparable level of testosterone, better execution. It does a good job of having all its macho dudes lined up in one shot, giving them each a specialty, having them work together on different missions, bond and fight and man-hug and all that. There’s no emotion as strong as Mickey Rourke’s tearful monologue, but there are heavy themes of brotherhood, opponents-who-respect-each-other, codes of honor, all the shit I love, the stuff that’s so strong it makes people uncomfortable so they gotta accuse it of being gay.

There’s a more captivating story and characterization than EXPENDABLES, more of a build to a spectacular action climax where you get the thrills and also care about what happens to everybody afterwards. It feels very satisfying.

The one area where it shares the same weaknesses is the fight between Diesel and The Rock. (Yes, they have a fight. I’m not gonna call that a spoiler because if they didn’t fight that would spoil the movie.) It’s a pretty cool scene because there are some good moves and it’s real vicious (although Diesel must be made of rubber considering the lack of visible damage from a fight that should’ve crippled him) but as is standard practice now it’s shot closeup and wobbly and not very clearly edited. But most of the other action scenes are shot better than that.

Man, in this movie, with these characters, if this had been a carefully staged showstopper of a fight sequence it would’ve been the scene of the summer, could’ve even started a new trend of theatrically released movies with good fight scenes in them. You know how after THE MATRIX everybody copied bullet time for a while, it would’ve been like that. “You know what this movie needs? A really great fight scene where you can clearly see what happens, like in FAST FIVE! That’s the newest thing, kids love it!”

The Rock is the best new addition to the series, but the returning vets are a big part of the attraction too. For those of us who’ve enjoyed watching and/or laughing at these movies over the last decade it’s truly enjoyable to see our old chums back together again, in new combinations like Dom finally meeting Tyrese’s character Roman (since he was introduced in part 2 as Brian’s childhood best friend) and even the return of Matt Schulze’s character Vince, who we haven’t seen since part 1 and who’s much tougher and more charismatic now than he was then.

In fact, all of these actors have kind of grown into their roles. I think they’re all better now than when they started. I thought Jordana Brewster was a bland, forgettable main-girl in the first one. Now she’s stunning, she’s jumping off roofs, she’s speeding after her brother’s prison bus barely suppressing a wicked grin. She’s won me over. Not that that was a goal of hers or anything, I’m just saying. Look, it’s a compliment, let’s not make a big thing out of it.

Unfortunately Paul Walker doesn’t call people “bro” very much in this one, if at all. That’s gonna disappoint alot of people. Also I could be wrong, but I don’t think the movie used this great RIGHT STUFF type shot from the trailer, which I assume takes place after a deleted White Shirts Only Beach Party scene:

If the shot really wasn’t used I blame this guy behind Tyrese:

Thanks alot, pal. And that guy to your left, too. You guys’re fuckin it up for everybody.

Rio’s a good location for this too. You have the poverty of the favelas contrasted with the spectacle of the cities and the beaches (alot of it actually filmed in Puerto Rico I guess, but at least it’s not Vancouver). Obviously this doesn’t have the weight or authenticity of a CITY OF GOD or ELITE SQUAD, but it uses the crime lords, corrupt police force and economic divide as an important elements of the plot. The villain played by Joaquim de Almeida even has a monologue about the history of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in Brazil. And I like how it’s not a fish-out-of-water deal, they just adapt to Brazilian life like Lucas Black did to Tokyo. Brian and Mia don’t have a problem staying with Vince and his wife and baby in their tiny shanty. This cross-cultural business is a theme in all the Justin Lin directed sequels as the cast of many races and cultural backgrounds moves through the Dominican Republic and the favelas and instead of treating it like an exotic vacation it’s just a new place to live (and maybe find some good people to race against).

I made fun of some websights for repeating a story that Deadline ran about Universal’s plan to “switch genres” in part 6 and turn it into a heist movie. It sounded to me like some of these reporters had never seen or heard about this very popular movie series, since from the beginning it’s been about a gang of armed robbers who are into street racing. After seeing this I guess I have a better idea what they were getting at because the one actual street race that takes place in the movie is offscreen. You don’t even see the trademark starting line sexy girls. There are some good butt shots, though. Also it’s true that one of the robberies in this is done with a little bit more of an OCEAN’S 11 touch than in previous installments. They’re all street racers doing it but they do some training, disguises and trickery and what not along with the crazy car stunts.

There’s another movie that would’ve been funny for it to lift from. As I mentioned, part 1 was a loose remake of POINT BREAK, part 3 was THE KARATE KID, I would’ve loved if this one was a lift of THE FUGITIVE. Obviously you got this Hobbs character doing his Tommy Lee Jones, with his version of the “outhouse, henhouse” speech, chasing our fugitives. Instead of escaping from a prison train crash it’s a rolled prison bus (although there’s also a train crash in this movie). There’s a part where they jump a car off a huge cliff, that’d be funny if it had the same purpose in the story as the part where Harrison Ford jumps out of the drain pipe. What if Dom was framed for running somebody over, but he knew the person who really did it drove a car with one white tire, and he travels around helping people while trying to prove his innocence? It could’ve worked.

This is a really enjoyable movie, I’d say mainly for fans of the series but it seems like everybody else likes it too. It does a great job of revisiting most of what we enjoyed in previous installments and improving on them in many ways. Most of these sequels have some weakness in the end, this one starts out good and ends way better. It even has the confidence to set up a new installment kind of like they do in the Marvel comics movies. (or, hell, like they did in TOKYO DRIFT. That’s where they got the idea for THE AVENGERS in my opinion. And everything else.)

Best part 5 of all time? FAST FIVE has gotta be up there, at least in the top five part fives. What’s it up against, YOU NEVER LIVE TWICE? Other than that a part 5 this strong might be unprecedented.

In my opinion some movies present an unrealistic body image for men to live up to

FASTER starts out with The Rock just itching for some revenge. It’s the last day of a ten year bid for armed robbery and he’s anxious to get started, pacing frantically in his cell. When they let him out he storms through the gate, takes a look at the desert, and just starts running. After an unspecified amount of travel he arrives at the badass Chevelle that has been prepared for him, stocked with a gun, ammo, leather jacket, hit list and driving instructions (the convenience of GoogleMaps is something that hasn’t been properly addressed in a revenge movie before).

He doesn’t take time to find a girl or eat a steak, he goes straight to some guy’s office, storms past the receptionist, straight to his cubicle and shoots him in the forehead. Doesn’t even slow down to say anything about “This is for betraying us after the robbery and killing my brother.”

Directed by George Tillman, Jr. (NOTORIOUS [not the one by Hitchcock, the one by George Tillman Jr.]), the movie shows the obvious influence of POINT BLANK, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, and KILL BILL. But not in the sense of being a bunch of references (other than a Morricone ringtone). I like that it takes it all seriously, it’s not a bunch of smart alecky shit.

The Rock’s character is just called “DRIVER.” We learn the backstory and some of his relationships as he goes on his killing spree and meets with people, but it’s a pretty minimalistic character, low on words and quirks. The story alternates between him and two other lead characters: Billy Bob Thornton as “COP” and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as “KILLER.”

It’s also a very visual movie, especially in the way it establishes this Killer guy. The camera pans across his wall of photos as he does an impossibly difficult yoga workout (he later tells his girlfriend, the daughter from TAKEN, that he “beat yoga.”) From the photos we learn that he was some kind of young investment hotshot, he climbs mountains, he was a kickboxer (sadly another unfulfilled promise of climactic martial arts duel – somebody’s gotta teach some action movie manners to these modern filmatists).

Killer is like a less creepy Patrick Bateman. He lives in a mansion, drives a Ferrari, is impossibly toned, has a pretty girlfriend who spends her time lounging by their pool. And he’s all the more hatable because he’s not as evil or sadistic as you’d think. He’s just an overachiever that likes a good challenge. And of course that’s what he gets when somebody hires him to kill this Driver. It’s gonna be difficult.

Cop is actually the most interesting character. He’s introduced making a desperate drug buy in a restroom before we see his badge. I expected an over-the-top sleazy dirty cop villain. Obviously Billy Bob could go to town on a role like that. But after we see he’s a junkie and a fuckup and hated by the other cops including chief-expositionist Carla Gugino (who can explain the plot to me any time, in my opinion) we see him in his fucked up home life. You know the drill: he’s late picking up his son, his ex bitches at him, then while he’s driving his son to the baseball game he’s right in the middle of making some promise and gets a call about another shooting he has to investigate immediately…

…but he decides his son is more important, goes to the game and shows up at the crime scene two hours late! No shit! So after that, no matter what he did, I still kind of liked him. ‘Cause he went to the baseball game.

That’s the clever thing about the movie. It starts out with these exaggerated, larger than life archetype-type characters, but as it goes on we realize they aren’t really good guys and bad guys. Actually they’re all bad, but with a soft spot.

Driver is the most cartoonish. The Rock looks pumped-up to wrestler size again. Honestly I think his muscles are too big for this one. It’s kind of hard to take him seriously, he’s such a monster. I mean, what guy looks like that and then his specialty is driving? I got a hunch he would be better at other things. It’s to the point where it could be a detriment ’cause he’s gonna have a hard time fitting in the car. His arms are gonna bump against the inside of the door and mess up his steering.

And while I appreciate his fearlessness, killing in front of witnesses and staring straight into the security camera, I feel like there’s gotta be some serious incompetence in the police force for him to be getting away with all this for so long. How the fuck are they not finding a giant muscleman who’s making no effort to hide himself, who’s wearing a sleeveless shirt to show his huge, distinctive tattoos, and is driving a badass early ’70s Chevelle with a show-offy racing stripe? In my opinion this should be an easy suspect to locate.

In a flashback we learn that Driver wasn’t always a killing machine, or even a getaway driver. His brother was the criminal, he only went on the job to help him out because his brother was in debt to some dangerous people. (And by the way, hat’s off to this guy Matt Gerald for being able to play The Rock’s big brother.) The flashback is a little goofy because Rock has to act scared to show his earlier innocence, but he looks like he could kill most of these guys just by banging their heads against his biceps. Also because in the post-robbery chase scene he’s mostly driving in reverse. I didn’t really understand why unless it was his audition for the FAST AND FURIOUS movie.

But there are lots of subtle things that make this movie better than I expected. Usually in a movie like this everybody would be hostile to him until he humiliated them. He’d have to show them who’s boss. Think of the scene in PAYBACK where Porter’s trying to get past security to talk to Stegman and this huge dude looks like he’s gonna crush him, but then it cuts to the embarrassed thug walking into the other room with blood dripping down the side of his head. In FASTER he goes to a strip club to kill a guy, nobody knows he’s trouble. The bouncers are nice to him, they joke around with him like he’s their buddy.

Inside the club he ends up with a duel in the restroom, and his opponent tells Joe, the elderly bathroom attendant, to go outside and guard the door. And to not tell anybody what happened here. I love that type of shit.

It doesn’t seem like any type of a Tarantino rip-off, but I bet it was KILL BILL that inspired some of this circle-of-vengeance-melodrama, like the one guy’s son swearing revenge on Driver for getting revenge on his dad, and the multiple characters who seem to welcome their deaths as inevitable justice sort of like Budd did (”That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.”) But I don’t mind if that’s where they got it from. It’s good shit.

The one artistic choice that seems a little cheap to me is the Cop’s slow-motion walk set to “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. It’s a great song but come on man, THE BIG LEBOWSKI owns that one. You can’t use that anymore. Again, you gotta learn your manners.

I enjoyed this movie, and it’s exciting to see The Rock in an R-rated action movie. But to be honest this is not the best role for him at this point, it seems more like an early-in-the-career character before he had proven himself as an actor. I mean he’s pretty much playing a Terminator. When I first saw The Rock in THE RUNDOWN I thought holy shit, this guy is a cartoon superhuman but he’s completely charming. This one just stays at cartoon superhuman, no charisma necessary. He can do that, but it’s not what makes him a great action hero. It’s missing one of his dimensions. There are any number of wrestlers that could’ve done this role pretty much the same.

Also, this is weird but it’s not much of a driving movie. I’m not sure why it’s called FASTER. He does drive from destination to destination, but most of the action is on foot, with guns and a little bit of the 52 style close-quarters combat.

Despite these misgivings I think FASTER is a solid modern action movie with an admirable balance of respecting-the-classics and putting-a-new-spin-on-it. Admittedly I had low expectations based on what people told me about it, but it was better than I expected.

We never did find out what happened with the kid’s baseball team though.

The movie got me from the opening scene where Tyler Mane and a horde of barbarians have some hapless dude who they call “an Akkadian” tied up. They are very proud of all the races and nationalities they’ve murdered but they never bagged them an Akkadian before, so this is a big day. But the Akadian says, “May the gods have mercy on you, because my brother won’t.”

His brother, is, of course, The Rock (registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment) as Mathayis, a long-haired, giant-muscled, bow and arrow toting, sword slinging, rope swinging, cuthroat motherfucker who storms in for a Rock vs. Mane Smackdown, and fires an arrow into Mane so hard he flies out the side of the building and lands five years later in the remake of HALLOWEEN.

After the opening we get a narrated explanation of the mythology of what was going on out there in the desert exactly 3,000 years before Christmas of 0 BC. Some prick named Memnon was the king, he was good with swords and could catch arrows shot at him by Al Leong and he had a sorcerer who gave him visions that made it easy for him to slaughter the fuck out of everybody. So a small band of rebels hires what’s left of the mercenary Akkadian race (Mathayis, his brother and a couple other dudes) to kill the sorcerer and take away Memnon’s power. Mathayis hates that asshole so even though he’s a sleazy killer for hire he offers his services pro bono. Giving back to the community.

When he goes in for the kill though everything goes wrong. First of all the sorcerer turns out to be a girl, so obviously he falls in love with her. Then Memnon kills his brother. So now it’s all about revenge, swords, etc.

The tone of the movie is goofy but straight-faced. The Rock gets to say “Die well, my brother” and “I’ve come for the woman… and your head.” Michael Clarke Duncan gets to ask “Will you stand alone before the fury of his armies?” When the sorceress tells Mathayus he’s destined to die he says, “I make my own destiny,” they kiss and it dissolves to the next morning with them in bed together. It also has that lovable barbarian brand of machismo, so at first Mathayis and Duncan’s character Balthazar talk shit to each other, but then they fight and earn each other’s respect and become allies.

In my opinion the science is questionable. He gets hit by an arrow poisoned with scorpion venom and they manage to nurse him back to health, but they say the scorpion venom will be in his veins for the rest of his life. And I guess that must be why he’s the Scorpion King. In my opinion that diagnosis may not hold up to scrutiny by modern doctors, but maybe it’s for the best because it’s a pretty tough name.

There’s a little bit of bad comedy. Grant Heslov, the Academy Award nominated co-writer of GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, plays the wacky horse thief sidekick. He’s lame but not as painful or racist as the comic relief in THE MUMMY. There’s also some cheesy effects involving snakes and big fire ants (before KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but not as good) but I forgive them because they don’t lean on them too heavily, there’s much more emphasis on sword fights (choreographed by the great Al Leong) and punching. There are alot of shots of dudes reacting to axes stuck in walls very close to their anatomy. Mathayis flies around on ropes, falls off buildings, catapults himself, there’s even a character who manages to invent gunpowder so they can blow shit up.

This is a world where almost everybody is a fierce fighter, including the sorceress and the sexy ladies in the harem. There’s even a little street moppet who gets involved in the battle and it doesn’t get too cute. Grant Heslov might be the only character in the whole movie who can’t kick ass, but he is a trickster so he has some skills such as being able to escape from being buried up to the neck in the brief moment when you have your head turned.

The Rock is great. He has such charisma that he can play a musclebound barbarian and still seem like your buddy. In the climactic showdown they put their weapons down and it becomes a WWE wrestling match complete with something thrown in the eyes (cheating), falling off a ledge into the 3000 BC equivalent of folding chairs, etc. There are alot of good badass moments, like when Mathayis takes an arrow in the back to save his girl – I thought he was gonna die, because I figured he must be a mummy in THE MUMMY RETURNS – but he manages to pull the arrow out of his back and fire it at his enemy. Way to recycle.

I realize this benefits from low expectations, being kind of the Hollywood studio version of a B-movie. But man, this is how you make a fun dumb movie. Let me count a few of the ways it’s better than THE MUMMY. First of all, an appealing star. The Rock may or may not be this generation’s Laurence Olivier, but he’s not any worse than Brendan Fraser. Meanwhile he he’s way more likable, his voice is not annoying, he knows how to deliver jokes properly and sounds like he understands the meaning of the sentences that he says, and obviously he’s a more interesting physical specimen. He’s both a larger than life cartoon and a down to earth dude you would want to hang out with. And then there’s the action. In THE SCORPION KING it’s all better orchestrated. It doesn’t feel much slower paced than a MUMMY movie but it has rhythm to it. It builds to crescendos. It doesn’t feel like the same BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG for the whole movie.

The Scorpion Kingdom (or whatever this place is called) is a land where you become king by proving yourself as a warrior. Too bad, because in a democratic society I would totally vote for Mathayis for Scorpion King. Long live the Scorpion King! And I’m sure if I ever watched THE MUMMY RETURNS I would root for him to win. But that ain’t gonna happen any time soon.

[ratings]

Then he wrote DOMINO, one of my most hated movies of the last several years. But I blamed Tony Scott. I figured there could’ve been a good script in there, Tony Scott just ax murdered it to unrecognizable bits with his Guiness Book of World Records All Time Worst Editing Ever In the History of Cinema. But after seeing SOUTHLAND TALES I’m not so sure Kelly is clean on that one. In fact I bet he specified alot of that shit in the script.

SOUTHLAND TALES takes place in Los Angeles, in the near future, after a nuclear attack on Texas. It involves intrigue between an amnesiac action star, a senator, a porn star/talk show hostess, left wing radicals, a Homeland Security type Big Brother department of the US government, twin brother racist cops, the inventor of an alternative fuel, some dwarves, and a weapons dealer in an ice cream truck played by Christopher Lambert. The plot also hits on time travel, dimensional travel, the human soul, psychedelic drugs, kidnapping, blackmail, staged murders, slam poetry, and a zepellin piloted by Kevin Smith wearing old man makeup but talking exactly like he did in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. The cast also includes Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Curtis “Booger” Armstrong, Zelda Rubinstein, Janeane Garafolo in one shot of a crowd scene, and the guy who apparently played Seagal on MAD TV. Also your mom is probaly in there somewhere.

Obviously that sounds like a big crazy mess, but whenever I heard about it I just laughed and looked forward to seeing it, naively assuming that Richard Kelly was a smart guy with a clear idea of how to wrangle all of this madness into a story. Nope, not at all. Not only is he not trying to do that, I don’t think it ever occurred to him to consider doing that.

As far as I can tell this is not a story. It’s a long, convoluted explanation of the background details of some other story that you will never see and not really feel like you are missing out on after you’ve watched this. If there was a real story in there it would be an entirely different movie, and this would be the ambitious DVD extra that you would be excited for but then turn off after a couple minutes when you realize it’s duller than you imagined.

Most of the actors in the movie do a decent job. I would single out Gellar as the best for her character, she gives the closest thing to a funny performance in what the extras repeatedly claim is a comedy. There are actually a few parts that intentionally made me laugh, but overall it does not feel like it’s supposed to be a comedy, except when The Rock cartoonishly twiddles his fingers and somebody eats a bunch of Cheetohs.

There are ideas sprinkled here and there that I like. He’s trying to hit on that media saturation/corporatism theme that Paul Verhoeven did so well in ROBOCOP and STARSHIP TROOPERS, and he doesn’t do it nearly as well but I do like that sort of thing. So I liked seeing the Hustler logo on the side of a tank and the car ad where two CGI Humvees fuck doggystyle. But that’s about it. The vast majority of the movie doesn’t click at all. You don’t give a shit about any character or what they are doing. You’re not sure where the movie is going, and when it suddenly ends it turns out the reason you didn’t know was because it wasn’t going much of anywhere. (I thought it quoted”this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper” about 25 times so that must’ve been on purpose. You see, it’s supposed to be not entertaining. In order to be a whimper. It’s deep. But a reader kindly reminded me that the movie intentionally misquotes it as “not with a whimper, but with a bang.” So I guess you could say it mis-misquotes it.)

The characters, who by the way have some of the worst names since Desolation Williams (Vaughn Smallhouse, Martin Kefauver, Dr. Soberin Exx, Dion Element, Fortunio Balducci, etc.), mostly talk in slow, “dream-like” nonsense about how they wrote a screenplay about babies not having bowel movements or a dream they had last night as Moby’s keyboard drones try to imply some sort of deepness. Imagine some of the dipshits from WAKING LIFE trying to talk to you like The Architect in THE MATRIX RELOADED. There are words coming out of their mouths but that doesn’t mean they’re talking.

Kelly has made a movie exclusively for those DARKO fans in the bunny costumes who will take every weeeeeeeird line of dialogue and quote from the book of Revelations and study it for years. You gotta do the research. One post on the IMDb actually criticized “The ones who can’t be bothered to read the graphic novels so they can actually understand the film and unlock all of it’s secrets.”

Yep, it turns out this 2 1/2 hour (cut down from 3 after it flopped at Cannes) movie is only chapters 4-6. Maybe that’s why I didn’t know it was a comedy – I didn’t study hard enough to know what was funny. You have to stay up all night doing your homework and then come in and try to stay awake through this god damn lecture. The teacher is Justin Timberlake, who narrates constantly throughout, explaining all the concepts that would come out in the story if at some point Richard Kelly (for now on R. Kelly) decided to include one.

I’m not gonna get into one of those “You just don’t get it / Oh yeah, ’cause there’s nothing to get, the Emperor has no pants” type arguments. If some people on the IMDb message boards have figured out ways to enjoy this horse shit then good for them. We don’t want to waste our precious resources such as electricity and John Lovitz. I’ve seen people who love SOUTHLAND TALES on the internet but I doubt I’ll ever encounter one in the wild. If you’re gonna be one of those people you will have to be more interested in studying symbolism and puzzles than in watching movies. Do all the paperwork and apparently the hidden entertainment value will reveal itself to you. Well that’s fine but to me the trek to the Holy Mountain should not be a prerequisite to enjoying a movie.

And speaking of which, let me just say that I can take weird. On the weirdness scale HOLY MOUNTAIN makes SOUTHLAND look like SWEET HOME ALABAMA. “Your sacrifice will complete my Sanctuary of 1,000 Testacles.” But it’s still captivating, it ends up having a structure, it brings you along on a journey with these characters and has a conclusion. It also makes stronger satirical points and is funnier than SOUTHLAND TALES. So it can be done, at least by a mad Chilean mime/Tarot expert. Not as easily by a frat boy armed only with some poetry books, a Bible, and a collection of David Lynch DVDs.

After watching the making of featurette on the DVD I really realized how much they failed. They keep saying “it’s about the end of the world – and it’s a comedy!” like some Amish guy who’s never heard of DR. STRANGELOVE or various comedies of the 1980s is gonna be impressed by that. The only shocking part is that they think they have made a comedy. Then they say it’s an action movie, though there’s no action in the movie. They say it’s a musical – there is one musical scene for Justin Timberlake. I’m no fan of his singing or dancing but I have to wonder why they would cast him in a movie and then have him do a musical number where he doesn’t dance or sing, but merely lip synchs somebody else’s song. Don’t you get it? They’re going out with a whimper!

And they say that it addresses many important issues of the modern age, which is the biggest failure as far as I’m concerned. Hearing Kelly list all the things it’s supposed to be about is a pretty good way to understand why it ends up not being about anything. But just look at the basic premise: left wing militants are messing with a politically connected celebrity to try to change the outcome of an election and pass a proposition that will add reforms to a PATRIOT ACT type bill. Of course I get the part about encroaching on civil liberties, but this is not the world we live in. When was the last time you heard of left wing radicals trying to do anything? Other than those kids who burn down buildings every once in a while to save the environment there is no such thing. There is no Weather Underground of the 2000s, no SLA, no Black Panther Party. I’m writing this on the fifth anniversary of this godforsaken war and what does the real life counterpart to the “Neo-Marxist Movement” (as they’re called in the movie) have planned? Some more marches. Writing some letters to the editor. I bet there will be an online petition. Some anarachists will put up a bunch of fliers. Maybe even graffiti!

The world of the movie just doesn’t ring true. Nobody, even crazy stupid people like this, have the balls to fight that way. You can’t picture any of this happening. If this was good satire it wouldn’t be using this setup that Kelly knows from movies about the ’60s and ’70s. It would follow the actual world we live in where people are either too apathetic to care or too overwhelmed to know what to do about it. Good satire has to come out of the reality of the world you’re looking at and not just out of the way stories are expected to go. You know what, the photography and effects may be classier in this movie, but IDIOCRACY is a way more entertaining movie that is also way more accurate as a satire about the world we live in right now. Unlike SOUTHLAND TALES it’s constantly funny, and in fact the thing dampening the laughs is that the jokes paint such an accurate portrait of our culture that you get kind of sad watching it.

But if it wasn’t spot-on satire it could still be fun to watch. Here’s the best analogy I’ve come up with to explain this movie: George Lucas was a huge nerd who spent years compiling notes about the world he used in the first STAR WARS. But then he went and made STAR WARS. He didn’t make a slide show about all those notes. If you watch STAR WARS you might love it and then go and read up on everything about yodas and chewbaccas and get wrapped up in that whole world outside the movies. With SOUTHLAND TALES you’re asked to do all of that without the movie to inspire it.

I learned more about the world of the movie from the set decorator talking about one of the sets than from watching the movie. I think it’s great to put all that thought into the sets, but then you gotta put something in front of them. That’s what Kelly forgot.

Sorry R. Kelly but until further notice you are persona non grata. As a buddy of mine said after watching SOUTHLAND TALES, “He just went from being the director of DONNIE DARKO to being the writer of DOMINO.” If you have a good debut but then follow it up with two of the worst movies of the decade then I’m afraid the math doesn’t work out in your favor. Richard Kelly, I sentence you to life imprisonment in Movie Alcatraz. If you figure out a way to swim off I’ll look the other way. But I’m not holding my breath.

[ratings]

Holy shit, how are you reading this with your eyes closed? I didn’t say you could open them. This is weird. Well, I’m not sure exactly what to say about these amazing powers of yours, so instead I will ignore them and just go ahead and review the movie. Even if you don’t close your eyes, if you make a list of everything you expect to happen in a movie like this, you’d probaly get to cross off everything on the list.

You got the visionary coach who talks The Man into supporting his program. The higher-ups who don’t believe in him at first but are ultimately won over. The disastrous first game where they lose and want to give up. The lovable fat kid who needs to learn to believe in himself. The guy who is too much of a fuckup so they don’t let him on the team but he shows up anyway and proves himself. The part where the coach is too much of an asshole and disillusions the team. The parts where the program gets shut down and the coach has to figure out how to bring it back from the dead. The fights with loved ones who at the end silently show that they’ve changed their minds by showing up to watch the game. And it goes without saying that you have the tense clock-beating come-from-behind-at-the-last-possible-second victory against a bitter rival. And the explanations at the end of what happened to each character (although in this case The Rock narrates it instead of it being written on the screen). And there’s an insipid score that redundantly tells you how triumphant and heartwarming this all is. Now THIS is a movie that could’ve used a soundtrack by RZA.

But one unexpected thing does happen during the end credits: they start showing footage of the 1993 TV documentary that the movie is based on, and you realize that they weren’t lying about this being a true story. Maybe they just chose the clips well, but you see these scenes and exact dialogue that seemed corny and cliche in the movie, and it turns out that they really happened in real life, and there’s footage to prove it. Even the boy-faced token white kid who I assumed was a Hollywood invention turns out to be a real guy, who really looks like that, and really gets emotional talking about how the football team improved his relationship with his mom. The real coach doesn’t look much like The Rock (he’s a white dude with a mustache) but he has a similar tough-guy motivational speaker vibe and makes the exact same speeches that The Rock made.

So why the fuck make a movie based on a movie? This documentary already exists, apparently, put it out on DVD and I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it more than the fake re-enactment. Well, there’s exactly one reason to make this movie: The Rock. To showcase The Rock, and to inspire The Rock.

Apparently they’ve been trying to make this movie for years, at various times starring Bruce Willis, Nic Cage or Sylvester Stallone. And I like all those guys but I can’t imagine any of them pulling it of like The Rock. This is a guy who sweats positivity. Now days most of our heroes are cynical tough guys with a pessimistic view of the world. And I’m not complaining. But here is a good old fashioned “believe in yourself” cornball hero, the Mr. T type of hero who is gonna come in and save the community center and get the kids off the street and help an old lady carry her groceries home. It used to be that was expected of heroes, so you saw it too much and it was phony. But now it’s kind of a risk to play a character like that. Luckily, The Rock is exactly the guy to make it believable. I have read that the movie is very personal to The Rock because he got into alot of trouble with the law when he was a teen and he feels that his high school football team is what turned him around.

But I don’t think you’d need to know that about The Rock to see that he really believes in what this movie is saying, it’s not just a job to him.
At his side you also have the rapper Xzibit as the assistant coach. Although he is best known to America for facilitating the pimping of rides (and to me for providing vehicles to Ice Cube in XxX STATE OF THE UNION) this is another tough cookie who came from a violent background and he is very believable in the role. He doesn’t get a huge amount of dialogue though (they even cut out some of what you see in the trailer) but he looks good at The Rock’s side.

Speaking of looking good, I don’t want to sound gay, but it’s 2006 so who gives a fuck if I sound gay. The Rock is the best dressed former wrestler of all time. I’m not criticizing any other former wrestlers, but the world of wrestling has its own sense of fashion that looks silly to the outside world (just like funk music, Serenity, anime, or the evil clowns with the giant pants) and most of the guys retain some of that when they move on. But not The Rock. There aren’t very many musclemen that can not look ridiculous in a suit or a nice shirt, but The Rock pulls it off with class. He’s like George Clooney crossed with He-Man.

Anyway, that’s not important, and neither is this movie. Of course I like the message, and it’s always moving to see two rival gangbangers working together and becoming bros. It’s just like that part in INDEPENDENCE DAY where the Israelis and Palestinians work together to fight the aliens, except not stupid. But the one and only unique ingredient in this movie is The Rock. And it proves that The Rock is a winner.

You can do it, The Rock. I believe in you. You’re good in crappy action movies, as the hero or the villain. You’re good at comedy, like that role in BE COOL. Now you’re good in a serious drama that means something to you personally. I think you’ve gone through the 36 chambers of Shaolin now, you’ve proven your skills. Now it’s time to live up to your potential. It’s time to start making truly good movies. Even great ones. Go the George Clooney route, figure you have enough money and now only do roles you really believe in. Some of them should be action movies though, because you’re good at that. Just make sure they’re topnotch.

When you die, do you want people to say, “THE RUNDOWN was surprisingly good, he was great in it, although I hate Sean William Scott”? Or do you want them to list off their ten favorites from the long line of classics you did?

You can do it Dwayne. Believe in yourself and knock us on our asses.

[ratings]

Yeah yeah, I know my movie history, so you don’t have to flood me with emails pointing out that the great visionary McG already connected the first shot of C’S As 1 to whichever studio logo it was. But this is a different thing because the movie has already started, and then we get the logo within the movie. If we are to follow our understanding of standard cinematical language, there may really be giant letters orbiting around Mars within the reality of DOOM. It all takes place indoors, so there’s no way to know if there are giant UNIVERSAL shaped shadows dripping across the landscape.

The number two clever sequence is the one you maybe already heard about, the climax of the movie. It’s a five and a half minute sequence that is a continuous shot from the point of view of the hero (Karl Urban), running through space colony corridors shooting monsters that pop out like it’s a Halloween haunted house. Alot of his opponents are just dumb zombie dudes but there’s also a variety of monsters from rubber costumes to computer animation, and weapons including guns, grenades and a chainsaw. (Apparently the video game the movie is based on is famous for being first person like this, so that’s where the idea comes from. they sure have come a long way since Pac-Man in my opinion, although the stupid thing about the POV concept is that you can never do a MS. DOOM, because how are you gonna know if you’re wearing a bow and lipstick?)

Number three, the end credits, the type that seem like they were designed for the opening but tagged onto the end instead so the movie can get down to business faster. These are computer animated and are also a continuous POV shot going through corridors shooting things. Only instead of shooting monsters, you’re shooting the credits, blowing the letters to bits. This was maybe a little redundant after the other POV shot but I still thought it was the funniest credits since FREDDY VS. JASON was carved into flesh and then exploded. And it raises the same questions the Universal logo did. If the characters had stuck around longer, would they have eventually been attacked by flying letters? Maybe that’s why they travel to Mars using a portal called “The Ark” instead of space ships. All the manned missions to Mars kept colliding with giant flying letters. Those things are big enough to wrap around Mars, you don’t want to bump into those.

Unfortunately all three of these sequences I’ve talked about were probaly directed by somebody other than DOOM’s director Andrzej Bartkowiak, and his chunk of the movie doesn’t seem to be making the same effort to be inventive. Bartkowiak is the cinematographer who previously directed the Joel Silver Players Trilogy of ROMEO MUST DIE, EXIT WOUNDS and CRADLE TO THE GRAVE, which were all done in a similar ridiculous style. Here, since he doesn’t have Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson in the cast (they were the R2D2 and C3PO, or the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or the Salt and Pepa of that other trilogy) he creates an entirely different visual universe. One that is probaly trying to seem legitimate and tasteful. But what it really is is just subpar ALIENS ripoff number three hundred and sixty seven. No wonder James Cameron thinks he’s king of the world when a damn sequel he made has squirted out an entire genre.

I wasn’t surprised that this wasn’t a real solid sci-fi action spectacular, but I guess I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t completely ridiculous. Remember, this director’s last movie had a sequence involving a search for a ring, gladiatorial combat in a cage, a midget, Jet Li, parking garages, and an entire team of uniformed professional motorcross drivers trying to get a 4-wheeler back from DMX. So I thought he might bring that same insanity to the sci-fi genre. Unfortunately, it turns out, he knows how to make a normal movie.

The Rock plays Sarge, the commanding officer of a group of marines sent to the quarantined section of a scientific outpost on Mars to figure out what happened to some dead scientists. I guess alot of weenies (which is what serious video game players call themselves, I’m told) were upset that the marines fight scientists mutated into monsters instead of DEMONS FROM HELL. I’m pretty sure demons from hell would not have saved this movie, but I guess it would’ve been a little more different from ALIENS. They coulda had some more horns and fire and shit. Maybe a goat head.

If you’re one of these people upset because the movie isn’t exactly the same as the video game, keep in mind that this is by far the most faithful adaptation Bartkowiak has ever done. You want a good laugh, read the gritty police corruption novel Exit Wounds by John Westermann and then watch the Steven Seagal movie Bartkowiak made out of it. CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE was originally supposed to be a remake of Fritz Lang’s M. And I am not shitting you, look it up.

Anyway, the marines go in there and all the things you expect to happen happen. Some monsters appear behind them in the dark, some of them get tossed around, some of them get infected and turn into zombies and/or monsters. Some of the supporting characters are really annoying, especially the cynical asshole character, sort of a poor man’s Gary Busey standing in for Bill Paxton. You gotta wonder, if they’re going on an important mission like this shouldn’t they take a team of fully trained, non-asshole marines? There must be some other ones to choose from than just these fuckups. In ALIENS Bill Paxton is an asshole but you like watching him because he’s a funny character. This guy you wish could die before the movie starts. At one point he announces “I have to take a dump” and it seems like in the grand tradition of Elvis and the lawyer in JURASSIC PARK he’s gonna die on the john. But then he doesn’t and they drag the scene on, keeping you in suspense about when we’re finally gonna be spared of this fucker.

You know what, this is a movie that could’ve used LL Cool J.

The Rock is good though, as always. Poor The Rock. He could set the world of cinema on fire but instead he does DOOM. I’m sure he had fun though, he finally got to do a rated-R movie. He fights monsters. A couple times he uses a gun almost as big as his torso. He turns into a bad guy who talks mean and does things that are morally indefensible. And at the end he has a fight scene while slowly transforming into a monster. That seems like it’s supposed to be a surprise twist, but since The Rock talked about it in every interview I saw of him promoting it, I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s like I always say, “If The Rock don’t give a shit, I don’t give a shit.”

Unfortunately, there’s not really much reason to give a shit about this movie. It’s not good enough and worse, it’s not bad enough. Even the makers of the movie realized this because there’s an option on the menu to just watch the “first person shooter” scene, kind of like how the Friday the 13th dvds have a “jump to a kill” option. I woulda included the Universal logo and end credits in there too but maybe we’ll have to wait for the Unrated Second Unit Director’s Cut.

[ratings]

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Unlike

(John Travolta, as badass loanshark turned movie producer Chili Palmer points this out and says, “You know what I have to say about that? Fuck that.” And if only he had repeated “fuck that” again for emphasis I guess he would’ve gotten the R and I could’ve seen this movie in a quiet theater full of adults and not a fuckin high school cafeteria. But that’s a subject for a separate rant.)

Anyway that’s kind of how GET SHORTY was though and most of it works here, it’s fun if not exactly a fresh new idea. There are a couple of fuck ups though where they got celebrities playing fictional characters who make references to trademarks of the actual celebrities, and that shit just doesn’t fly. The Rock for example keeps doing his famous eyebrow movement (oh jesus, I can’t believe there is even such a phrase as “famous eyebrow movement”), and that’s just not funny. That belongs in the scrap pile with the part in SCREAM 3 where some asshole tells Carrie Fisher she looks like Princess Leah. That’s not a joke, that’s a reference. Stop it kids.

Also, they got a scene where John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance together, and you’re supposed to be excited because remember, they danced together in PULP FICTION. But in PULP FICTION you were supposed to be excited because remember, he danced in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. I mean how many fuckin times we gonna get excited because the man dances? At some point it’s gonna occur to America that John Travolta’s a dancer. So by definition he ends up dancing at some point. It’s not really that big a fuckin deal, in my opinion.

Anyway this time Chili gets caught up in the music industry, becoming the manager for a promising young singer, stealing her away from a wannabe gangster manager (Vince Vaughn) and getting caught up with debts to a heavily armed gangsta rap group and the russian mafia. I haven’t read the book on this one but there’s a cast of characters with the scent of Elmore Leonard all over em, including Vince Vaughn’s white pimp/manager Raji, who “thinks he’s black,” and his gay Samoan bodyguard who wants to be an actor (The Rock). Cedric the Entertainer is also in there as a bourgeious businessman turned thug rap producer, the rapper Andre Benjamin is the ridiculous leader of the gangsta rap group the Dub MD’s. Uma Thurman is the love interest, widow of James Woods, and Harvey Keitel is in there too. Pretty good cast now that I think about it, although they don’t all seem like they’re in the same movie.

And I’m gonna lay the blame on F. Gary Gray, director of FRIDAY and SET IT OFF. The movie is exactly like he’s been since FRIDAY: good but not great, impressive but not consistent, serious but not serious enough. Always showing promise but never quite living up to it. But not completely disappointing. Just in the middle there somewhere, that area where we’re all gonna forget about it pretty soon.

Now I liked GET SHORTY but I think it’s a little too cartoony for Elmore Leonard. It doesn’t take a genius or me to tell you that the two best Elmore Leonard movies are JACKIE BROWN and OUT OF SIGHT. Those are movies that can be funny at times but only in the way that real life and real people are funny. They are still serious crime stories with dangerous people and consequences.

(I also love MR. MAJESTYK but that’s more of a Charles Bronson vehicle with a great Elmore Leonard premise than it is pure Leonard. He wrote the script, didn’t really like how they played it in the movie and wrote the book afterwards.)

(Oh and by the way when the fuck are they gonna put out KAREN SISCO on dvd? Come on home video market, I know you fuckers are reading this. Get me a KAREN SISCO dvd.)

For some reason when I heard F. Gary Gray was doing this one I thought he might give it a little more grittiness than the last one, treat it a little more serious. But he’s actually kind of in FRIDAY mode here. Which I guess is okay, FRIDAY is a funny movie and a dumb silly GET SHORTY sequel is what America wants. But if anybody ever decides to ask me, I’ll say he plays it too broad at times and loses the effect. The main mistake is the way Vince Vaughn plays Raji. Either Vaughn or Gray or both thought he was supposed to be in another wacky comedy with the ol’ “white guy talks in black slang” joke that we all adore. What could possibly be funnier than a white dude saying “homey,” ha ha ha, etc. But without having read the book, I’m 200% positive that in Elmore Leonard’s version, this is a character quirk to a dangerously stupid thug. It should be played like a real guy, not like a character in a Will Ferrell movie. I’m gonna do a SPOILER here so be ready. There’s a scene where Raji is talking to a hitman he doesn’t like that’s supposed to kill Chili for him, and the hitman starts choking on a ham sandwich. Suddenly Raji turns on the hitman and beats him to death with an aluminum bat that the guy made fun of earlier. This is pure Elmore, because it makes no sense for him to do this, but he’s a violent idiot and that’s why he’s dangerous. He’s fucking himself by doing it but it’s his chance to impress himself by killing the guy. As Chili later says, “It’s impossible that you’re this dumb.” But really he knows it’s not impossible. It happens every day.

Unfortunately because Vaughn has played this character like this is just a silly comedy and not a real guy, you don’t take the scene seriously at all. It’s a cartoon. Compare that to the scene in JACKIE BROWN where DeNiro’s funny pothead character loses it in the parking lot. You see the whole slow process of him going from room temperature to boiling over, and it’s fuckin dynamite. It makes you squirm. You feel it in your gut. I choose feel it in your gut over a brief chuckle.

The Rock and Cedric the Entertainer are a little over the top too but I think they work a little better. The Dub MD’s are pretty funny, they’re like a whole gang of Deebos (Tiny Lister’s character in FRIDAY), gigantic monsters but strapped and always wearing kevlar vests like they’re at war. They drive around in a convoy of hummers playing, I’m guessing, their own album at full volume. Which is kind of like a band going on stage wearing their own t-shirts, I think. Andre Benjamin is pretty funny in this.

The most important supporting performance is by The Rock, because as previously discussed this guy is the future of cinema, etc. He treats his character with respect if not dignity. He gets dressed up in a silk cowboy outfit and sings Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” with a straight face. His best part is the look of intense pride on his face after performing a dialogue from BRING IT ON for Chili. He’s playing on gay stereotypes but I don’t think it’s homophopic. You’re supposed to like this guy. But as usual, you watch this with a PG-13 audience going “eeeeewwww” at every wave of the wrist and it becomes a pretty different movie, you start to feel bad about it.

Anyway, it’s a good step for him to do this comedic supporting role. Somebody give this guy a truly great role and it will be over. 100% guaranteed The Rock could be a beloved movie actor as long as he escapes from dumb movies like WALKING TALL and THE SCORPION KING. Where the fuck is Steve Soderbergh? I got a job for him. I’m serious.

Okay, so the movie is forgettable. But there’s some good news too. For the two hours of this movie, John Travolta is cool again. Who ever thought that miracle could ever happen again? Definitely not me. Let me share a few words and phrases with you:

The General’s Daughter.
Battlefield Earth.
Lucky Numbers.
Swordfish.
Domestic Disturbance.
Basic.
etcetera

Admittedly, I thought he was surprisingly restrained in THE PUNISHER, especially considering he was playing a villain in a comic book movie. But that’s not the same as this. Playing Chili Palmer again he reminds you what we as a country once loved about John Travolta, for a little while. He lets go of the crazy overacting bullshit and becomes just a slab of undilluted swagger squeezed into a nice black suit. He even looks good in those suits! Maybe his face is a little rounder than it used to be, but the spirit is still there, still pure inside. It’s about his confident posture, his menacing smirk, his complete lack of fear. It’s about sitting comfortably in a chair with a gun pointed in his face, showing no trace of concern, knowing he can come out on top of any situation. Walking out from around the corner after his friend and his car have just been gunned down, then stopping to light a cigarette two feet in front of the killer, not even looking at him. Because he’s Chili Palmer.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance to say this again, so I’ll say it now: good job John Travolta. Thank you for this performance, bud.

[ratings]

This is a documentary about the real lives of professional wrestlers, and I will tell you straight off the bat this movie is great even for those of us who don’t watch wrestling or south park. I mean I like the Roddy Piper pictures as much as the next guy, I’ve watched a little grapple here and there, but I don’t know what the fuck a mankind is or the rock or whatever. I mean who knows. It doesn’t matter.

Right at the beginning the movie explains yes, wrestling is fake, no, wrestling fans don’t think it’s real. But then it goes on to show just how devastating this “fake” sport is on a man’s body and in some cases his soul. It is a business that even more than football or prostitution chews up your body and when you’re old spits you out like a loogie never to think about you again. Because I mean think about it, how long do you think about a loogie after you spit it out, not very long.

There are about four major storylines in this movie. One is about Mick Foley who I guess wrestles as Mankind, Dude Love and Cactus Jack. But in this movie he’s a normal chubby guy who lives with his wife and adorable daughter and son. He is very nice and even normal and he always dreamed of being a wrestler. But it scares his family to always see him drenched from head to toe in his own blood after a match, saying, “Daddy’s okay, daddy’s okay, don’t worry about daddy.”

Another storyline is about the legendary Texan wrestler Terry Funk, whose knees are barely functional. He continues to wrestle while his family believes he should have retired 5-10 years ago. When we first meet him he groggily wakes up in his underwear, then stares at himself in the mirror looking like the saddest motherfucker that ever lived. He’s got that old problem that many in my own former occupation feel, which has been summed up in Hollywood cop movies as “we’re getting too old for this shit.” I mean you know you’re losing your touch, you’re getting slower, your leg is probaly gonna fall off next time you try to knee drop a guy but you just can’t stop. Throughout the movie we get to see Terry struggle with whether or not to retire.

But the saddest storyline by far is about Jake “The Snake” Roberts. I remember this motherfucker, he was skinny and plain for a wrestler, but he was a superstar because he had a cold look in his eye, he brought a boa constrictor into the ring and he brought Alice Cooper with him when he wrestled in front of like 90,000 people at a wrestlemania. Well that was in the ’80s, now Jake is living in crappy hotels, addicted to crack, performing for some independent league in front of a few dedicated fans. He is much scarier looking now, his face wrinkled, belly bloated, voice gravely, body sheathed in a leather trenchcoat and his eyes giving a pretty good indication of how much horror he’s seen in his life.

Part of Jake’s problem is his past as a wrestling superstar. He says that in the days when he had to wrestle every day, board 8-9 planes a week, it was impossible to function without sleeping pills and cocaine. He also became addicted to sex with groupies which he makes sound a lot less pleasant than I might make it.

But the real demons haunting Jake were there before the wrestling. Turns out this motherfucker has a backstory like Freddy Krueger or somebody out of one of my prison stories. He was conceived when his father raped a sleeping 13 year old. His father was a wrestler who treated him like shit, he got into wrestling not out of a passion for the Art but to prove he could do it better than his father. Well he pulled that one off, but he’s doing no better in the fathering ring, which you will see in a heartbreaking reunion with his neglected, angry daughter.

What’s great about this movie is that it’s about these guys in these ridiculous outfits doing this silly theatrics and what not, but it’s full of genuine emotion. I dare you motherfuckers to not be affected by Jake’s visit to his father’s house, or the scene they’ve been showing clips of to promote the movie, where Mick Foley’s family cries as he is bashed over the head with a steel chair, and the wrestling fans around them look at them like, “What the fuck?”

There is even some sweetness in there. Mick Foley wonders if the crowd got their money’s worth as he looks in the mirror at a huge, dripping gash in his head. As he lays on the ground, medics wrapping bandages around his freshly stitched head, his daughter says “Daddy looks cute.”

All of the people in this movie are fascinating, even the people that just make cameos. I wanted to see more of Jake and Mick and Terry. I wanted to find out more about Koko B. Ware, this flamboyant black dude who used to be on top but still tries to stay upbeat in his tiny hotel room putting on a sequin jacket and talking about his parrot Franky like he’s a person.

I also wanted to see more of the sleazy guys. Vince McMahon, the billionaire owner of the WWF, made me laugh as he tries to pump up a guy who he’s hiring just for his ability to puke, or casually insults the wrestling skills of two auditioning newcomers. But later he is shirtless and blood drenched like the rest of them, because he too has the need to perform.

The character I most want to see more of though is this weasely fat dude who runs a small wrestling school. You know who he looks like, tony clifton from last year’s big wrestling picture the man on the moon. He’s got this gigantic belly and he tells two musclemen they need to watch their diets and stay away from the jack in the box. Later he laments that one of his wrestlers is “too big to be a flyer, but to small to be a heavyweight.” It looks like a tear is about to come out of his eye even as he rolls a toothpick around in his mouth. I mean this motherfucker is hilarious.

This is not a documentary about how wrestling is done. It does not answer any of the big questions, like if Jake the Snake is holed up in the Ramada then where the fuck does he keep that boa constrictor. What it is is a brief and amazing glimpse into what it’s like to be a regular guy who willingly destroys his own bones and muscles for a living.

[ratings]