But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like.

Just like everybody always said, this is an extremely well made movie. But I also shoulda known it was important for me to watch as one of the key originators of our current low point in action filmatism. Much like JAWS accidentally unleashed decades of expensive summer movies this great sequence convinced a thousand lesser directors that if the camera isn’t steady the action is automatically more thrilling. Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski (COOL AS ICE [seriously, look it up]) shot the battle like a combat photographer, putting our point of view on shaky ground right in the thick of it. Bullets and shrapnel whiz by our ears, things explode all around us, at least once blood gets on the lens, acknowledging that we are watching this through a camera.

But of course this is Steven Spielberg, he’s a professional. He has pride. He’s not gonna just whip the thing around at random and pretend he was filming something good. Even while intentionally creating chaos he’s secretly being careful, maintaining the audience’s sense of geography. We feel like we need to stay on our toes to know what’s going on, but we do know what’s going on. The soldiers repeatedly use and discuss the meaning of the word “fubar,” so it’s only right that the style be called fubar style. But when Spielberg uses it it’s not beyond all recognition. It’s only when other people use it.

It’s also telling that even after the huge popularity of this scene Spielberg didn’t keep using the handheld style. For example WAR HORSE has big battle scenes (SPOILER) and they use the more traditionally Spielbergian smooth crane shots. He obviously considered it to be the right way to shoot this particular movie, not every action scene made for now on. I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding there, I hope it gets cleared up.

As great as the scene is I have to think I missed out on some of its power by seeing it all these years later after many imitators and hearing all about it. At the time it was considered so shocking they sent out warnings to the theaters, and there were reports of veterans not being able to handle it because they’d never seen their experience depicted as accurately (or as horrifyingly?) on screen. There are guts spilling and way too many people dying and shit, but I guess I’m desensitized.

What I really like about this sequence is the look on the face of Tom Hanks as everything goes south. It could’ve been some grizzled Tom Berenger type, and it would’ve made alot of sense, but putting Hanks in the role changes it. He’s not a traditional movie warrior, he has vulnerability. It makes sense when he says he’s a school teacher back at home. He’s a professional, he’s good at his job, he stays quiet until something needs to be said, and they all respect him for it. But also when he gets on that beach and sees human bodies exploding all around him – his men, that he led there – he looks horrified. He’s Tom Hanks, not Rambo.

Man, this cast is a real who-was-about-to-be-who of late ’90s Hollywood. I knew Vin Diesel was gonna be in there in his first not-directed-by-himself role – didn’t know what a big part it was, though. Matt Damon fresh off of GOOD WILL HUNTING. Paul Giamatti the year after he blew up in PRIVATE PARTS (he mainly did movies with “Private” in the title). Giovanni Ribisi before, uh, THE OTHER SISTER. Tom Sizemore before DTV and sex tapes. Did you know the wrong Private Ryan they find first is that guy Nathan Fillion that the internet loves? And I noticed Max Martini from REDBELT. And of course Jeremy Davies from Justified, Barry Pepper from THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA, Ed Burns, Adam Goldberg, Dennis Farina, Leland Orser (the guy who freaks out in ALIEN RESURRECTION), Harve Presnell, Bryan Cranston… even Ted Danson? Shit man, everybody’s in this movie. Unless they’re a woman, then they’re pretty much for sure not in it. Sorry ladies.

They put together a good group of characters and put them in an interesting situation. First we see the worst nightmare of combat, a total massacre. Then we find out how back home this poor woman has lost all but one of her sons. We see concern about this old lady somehow make its way through the bureaucracy to the top and become a mission: go find this Private Ryan dude and get him the fuck out of there in one piece for the sake of his poor mother. I mean they signed up for it and everything but we don’t want that on our consciences.

It’s a nice idea: war is hell, save this guy’s ass, this family has sacrificed enough, cut them a small break. But when the idea is actually put into motion it brings up alot of questions. What about these guys on the mission, what if a bunch of them die trying to save one guy? What about their mothers? And of course when they actually find him what do you think he’s gonna do, is he gonna want to go home? No, he’s there to fight. If his brothers have all died for the cause he has all the more reason to stubbornly keep going. So nobody’s exactly happy with this situation. There is some complaining, some arguing, some learning, some intense sniper attacks reminiscent of FULL METAL JACKET.

To me Davies has the most tragic character. He’s the one that hasn’t been burned by war yet. He holds onto his pre-war values. He has a sense of honor. Instead of killing an enemy soldier he lets him go, with the idea that his threat has been neutralized and it’s better to save a human life, and what if the tables were turned, what would he want to happen to himself. But then that’s the guy that ends up shooting Hanks. So this kid’s whole code is crushed. The lesson he learns is the same one that Diesel learned too late: don’t do “the decent thing” (in his case trying to carry a little girl to safety). So at the end this guy’s a total mess, his decency proven unsuitable for the world. He’s the one I want to see in the graveyard at the end, because what the hell happened to that poor guy?

You know, I I used to always confuse Jeremy Davies with Henry Thomas. It would’ve been kinda cool to see Elliott show up in other Spielberg pictures. Maybe Thomas turned it down so they decided to hire a lookalike and he turned out to be good. I don’t know that to be true but maybe I’ll go ahead and submit it to IMDB trivia.

Another missed opportunity for a Spielberg self-homage is when they talk about the same plane li’l Christian Bale was so excited about in EMPIRE OF THE SUN. “They’re Tankbusters, sir. P-51s.” Would it have killed ‘im to say “Cadillac of the Sky”?

I know some people think the wraparound scenes of elderly Private Ryan visiting the cemetery are corny, but it seemed to me like they make the movie’s point. Without those scenes it’s another story of things that happened a long time ago, removed from our lives. With them it connects “the war” to our everyday lives back home, the grey faded film stock to a sunny afternoon. It shows us how everybody that survives a war is a person with a life and a family.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is all about the horrible math of war: Miller tells himself that every man that dies under his command is being traded for more lives saved. And they worry that the Germans they don’t kill could go on to kill other Americans. Ryan is left his whole life worrying about whether he lived a life that justified that equation. And that also asks those of us who aren’t veterans to live lives that justify all those sacrifices. Shit, I gotta get going.

chapter 7

released June 22nd, 2001
10 years ago today!

Wow, I never would’ve predicted this: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS has aged well. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it back when I first saw it. Skimming over my intentionally pretentious and off-topic original review I can see that I saw it as an attempt to exploit a fad. This is supported by all the old dvd extras (now on blu-ray) which make a huge deal about it being based on a Vibe article about street racing, and how they went to watch races and ran from the cops and all the cars and extras in the car show scenes are real racers who responded to a web posting. They wanted us to know this “street racing” was a real thing happening somewhere at night, and director Rob Cohen and friends are on the front lines ready to show us what’s going down.

That shit (and the music on the soundtrack – “Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit!?) is still goofy, but watching it with ten years and four sequels of distance it seems like the street racing is a relatively small part of the movie, not worth fixating on. It’s a story about these men who happen to be obsessed with fixing up cars to go fast, and who use those skills to hijack shipments of DVD players. But it’s more about them as characters than about the specifics of their engines. It’s way more based on POINT BREAK than on that Vibe article, and I never got hung up on the portrayal of surf culture in POINT BREAK. It’s just the world that the story takes place in.

There’s one major street racing scene, the one where Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) puts his $80,000 car on the line and loses it to Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). I always thought it was a funny idea, they’re just driving in a straight line and their winning seems to mainly depend on pushing the button that kicks in the nitrous oxide, or as I would call it “the go-faster button.” Cohen tried to come up with a new way of showing speed on film, so it’s all very artificial, the actors driving fake cars with blurry, pulsating surroundings, and the famous camera-move-through-CGI-engine that was in a couple of these and then became standard in movies for a while in the early 2000s.

Watching it now it’s more of a special effects sequence than an action one. It reminds me of the speeder bike chase in The Return of the Jedis. But in my 2011 wisdom I can just smile at that silliness and appreciate the scene for its place in the story and characterization. I like it for Brian smiling like a stoner (or like Keanu?) after the catastrophic loss of his car, because he knows he’s earned some kind of respect with his impressive showing; for Dom’s macho and overly-competitive rebuttal to Brian’s claim of “Dude, I almost had you!”; for the way the outcome of the bet sets up their relationship and the perfect ending to the movie.

The stunt coordinator and second unit director is Mic Rodgers, director of UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN. Alot of his career has been spent with Mel Gibson, as his personal stunt double, stunt coordinator on alot of the movies he was in, and second unit director on APOCALYPTO, among other things. He also performed stunts in ROAD HOUSE and ON DEADLY GROUND, making him an important part of our nation’s great cultural history. And he does his job well here. Despite the digital slickness of that street race scene the rest of the movie feels very organic. It’s real car stunts, lots of crazy car flips and people climbing on and off of speeding vehicles, getting shot at. They’ve made this type of scene more elaborate over the course of the series, but the original ones still work great, sold by great stuntwork and the conviction in Diesel’s face and arms.

The filmatism is better than what I associate with Cohen. Although I don’t care for the song I like the musical montage of the police raiding Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) and his people. Busting in, humiliating a guy in front of his family, the guy’s father slaps him. And he didn’t even do the crime. (Although he did blow up the car Dom won from Brian, and later shoots one of their friends.)

One thing that hasn’t changed in ten years: the movie lives or dies on Diesel’s charisma. His type of macho confidence was a rarity in the pop culture of 2001 and arguably even moreso now, although averaging in THE EXPENDABLES might fuck up the statistics on that one. Dom is introduced behind chain link fencing in the back room of Toretto’s, the cafe and mini-mart that his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) runs. Brian sits there eating his tuna fish sandwich and sees Dom’s bald head and muscular shoulders from the back. He doesn’t get to meet him until getting in a fist fight with Vince (Matt Schulze) and Mia begging Dom to intervene.

Dom is a great character, or at least Diesel makes him great. Brian’s boss, in a car movie variation on the “just how badass is he?” scene, says Dom’s “got nitrous oxide in his blood and a gas tank for a brain.” But Mia describes him as “gravity,” attracting everyone to him. We see this at the street races, where he doesn’t really have conversations, more like makes speeches to the crowd, like he thinks he’s Maximus from GLADIATOR, or Cyrus from THE WARRIORS, or The Humungus in MAD MAX 2. They hang on his every word, “ooooooohhh” on his every dis, cheer for his macho proclamations like “Ask any racer, any real racer. It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning’s winning.”

I mean really, is that supposed to be a great piece of real racer wisdom there? Why would you cheer for that? Because Dom said it, that’s the only reason. He can sell it like a preacher.

Not many actors could’ve pulled that part off. I know there’s a long list of all the people who were supposedly considered for Brian (Academy Award winner Christian Bale) and Mia (Academy Award winner Natalie Portman). I’m not sure who else was up for Dom, but I know Diesel had to leave John Frankenheimer’s REINDEER GAMES to take the part. You can describe that kind of presence, but you can’t simulate it. If it was phony the movie would be nothing. Obviously Diesel returning to the series is a big part of its growing success, but I think if it hadn’t been him in the first place there never would’ve been any sequels anyway, because nobody would’ve gave a shit.

There’s been some talk lately, some positive talk, about this series being “post-racial” and admirably diverse, the way it brings together all different races and nationalities in its cast. FAST FIVE has a super team of African-Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, some Samoan in The Rock, and one white guy. I would add that TOKYO DRIFT has a hick from Alabama who tries to graciously ingrain himself in Japanese culture, doesn’t drag his feet about it, doesn’t complain about having to take his shoes off.

But I gotta credit part 1 (and the Vibe article) for this approach. The street racing culture seems to be primarily Asian. You’ve got an Asian team, you’ve got a Hispanic team, and you’ve got our lead team which is 3 white guys, Jordana Brewster and Vin Diesel. They all have rivalries, sometimes with machine guns, sometimes with deadly results. But nobody ever calls anybody a racial slur, or seems like they have a problem with race, or notices it. Nobody even brings race up, it’s not about that.

This becomes more interesting when all the racers converge for a big convention that’s called “Race Wars.” That’s what they fucking call it! And you gotta wonder… didn’t they know what that sounds like? They had to’ve. Or maybe not. To them “race” means cars driving fast, what else would it mean? They’re not whites or blacks or Asians, they’re not a race, they’re people who race cars. Racists.

In a way it’s the same as that scene that had to be explained to me in the Coen Brothers version of TRUE GRIT. The little white girl and the little black boy talk about what a great name “Little Blackie” is for a pony, and it’s sweet because they’re both too innocent to be uncomfortable about any racial connotations in this conversation. Race Wars is the same thing. People from all walks of life can come together and have a Race War and still be brothers.

But then again they’re not all good people. Some of them are killers. Dom and his friends are behind a string of truck hijackings, that’s the whole reason why undercover cop Brian had to get acquainted with them in the first place. But why are they doing these robberies? What are they spending the money on? Mia isn’t going to medical school like she wishes, Jesse isn’t going to MIT like Brian says he should, the house is not real fancy. In a deleted scene we learn that Vince is paying medical expenses for his mom or grandma or somebody, but I’m not sure that counts since it’s not in the movie. As far as we know all this money goes into their cars. If so that’s kind of an accidental condemnation of the sport, isn’t it, if that’s what you gotta do to afford the equipment? You don’t gotta commit grand larceny to play basketball. You just gotta beat up somebody your size and steal their shoes.

Despite their crimes you like these guys because they’re like a family, and Dom is like their dad. He even brings them together for a fried chicken backyard picnic and he makes them say grace. Afterwards they lay around in the living room and watch DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY.

(By the way, I wonder whatever happened to Leon [Johnny Strong]? He was the guy on the racing team who didn’t get anything to do. He wasn’t Vin Diesel, he wasn’t the guy who’s jealous of Brian, he wasn’t the ADD computer expert, he was the other guy. They should bring him back in part 6, have him do something.)

Watching it now it doesn’t seem like a movie about racing (or “racism”) as much as it’s about macho bonding. The family doesn’t always take care of each other. Dom gets abandoned and almost picked up by the cops and can’t believe it when it’s Brian that saves him. He comes home and the people that should’ve been looking out for him are having a party. Vince is playing guitar. Lettie is playing video games. Girls are making out. Nobody gave a shit about Dad, except Brian, so he’s in.

Of course, he’s an undercover cop, he has ulterior motives to get in with Dom. So the key moment is toward the end when Brian and Dom are in a field tending to the wounded Vince, and Brian calls for a medevac, calling himself “Officer Brian O’Conner” right in front of Dom. Dom gives him the ice cold “you motherfucker” stare. At this moment he could easily bash Brian’s skull in with a wrench like he did to the guy who caused his dad’s death. But he has to eventually come to understand what Brian has done. He found out when Dom was going to hijack a truck, didn’t want the cops to catch him or for the truck driver to kill him, so he went to help. He had Dom’s cell phone traced to get his location. Why didn’t he just call him and say the cops were onto him? I don’t know, but I’m glad he didn’t because everybody had failed to get Vince safely off the side of the truck, but Brian swooped in and did it. And Vince fucking hated him, so this is a supreme act of grace, like Babe saving the pitbull that tried to kill him in Babe part 2: Rise of Babe.

In summary, O’Conner has blown his cover, betrayed his people, risked his life and performed incredible stunts, all to save the life of an asshole that tried to beat him up and (at first) refused to even eat chicken with him. Brian did that because the guy was Dom’s friend. And all of that’s in the air while he’s looking down at the wounds trying not to blush from Dom’s “I’m gonna fucking tear your throat out” stare.

A whole lot of movies have squeezed drama out of the undercover cop forming a bond and then feeling like Benedict Arnold. Sometimes they just relate to the guy, sometimes they actually switch sides like this, and now they’re a rat to the crooks and to the cops. We’ve seen it a million times. But somehow this dumb racing movie pulled off a really good one, an almost mythic take on this classic situation, and not with dialogue – just with the expressions and physicality of two actors whose skills are generally shat upon.

Something occurred to me about the title. I always thought of “the fast and the furious” as being a lurid description of this group of people, or this subculture, or this generation or something. Like “the young and the restless.” But could it have been intended like THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY? Brian is “the fast” because of his driving, Dom (despite being equally fast) is “the furious” because of his anger about what happened to his father and what that did to his life. I don’t know, maybe that’s not what they meant, but I kind of like it.

This one cost about $38 million, less than half a MUMMY RETURNS, but they got way more for their investment. It’s a hi-octane thrill ride, a rubber-burning action vehicle, a nitrous-injected race car thingy, and other Peter Travers type quotes. This isn’t the type of movie I think of when I’m talking about the sons of JAWS and the Big Summer Popcorn Movie and all that shit, but it’s by far the best and most entertaining movie in this retrospective so far. It’s silly and it’s derivative of a better silly action movie, but it’s got heart, it’s got screen presence, it’s got codes of honor, and it’s got a hell of a car crash. That poor Dodge Charger, man. It’s been through so much over the last decade.

Happy birthday THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. And many more.

* * *

legacy: 4 sequels so far and giving inspiration to other movies such as TORQUE.

Summer ‘01-’11 connections: the best movie of the summer so far is FAST FIVE, sequel to this sleeper hit of ‘01, and reuniting most of the original cast (even Matt Schulze).

would they make a movie like this today? The music would probly be better. And I would say the stunts would be more digital, except FAST FIVE has gone back to the glory of the real car stunt. FAST FIVE has also drifted away from the souped up Japanese cars to the classic ’70s muscle cars many of us prefer to see on screen (here just used as Dom’s dad’s car).

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.

REINDEER GAMES is not a Christmas movie in the sense that it’s about Christmas, or about somebody coming to a realization about the meaning of Christmas, at least not a very convincing one. But I can guarantee you this much: it takes place in December, with a heist planned for Christmas Eve, and with the participators all dressed as Santa Claus. So there are some discussions of cranberries and what not. Maybe a mention of sugar plums, I can’t remember for sure. (Have you ever had sugar plums? They’re actually really fuckin good. I wish I knew a place that sold them. I might have visions of them dancing in my head now that I remembered them.)

Ben Affleck, in an early draft of his grimacing tough guy character from THE TOWN, plays Rudy, convicted car thief, about to get paroled, same with his cellmate and best friend Nick (James Frain), who’s extra excited about it because he’s gonna hook up with his penpal girlfriend Ashley, who he knows from many photos and love letters is Charlize Theron. Unfortunately Nick gets shivved protecting Rudy, so when Rudy sees poor Ashley waiting outside the prison he gives in to the little devil on his shoulder and introduces himself as Nick. Pretending to be Nick does achieve the important goal of access to Charlize Theron’s classified zones, but also gets him mixed up in a plot where some dangerous dipshits are gonna force him to help rob an Indian casino they mistakenly think he used to work at.

Sinise’s Monster is the leader of the villains, with an all star cast of henchmen: Donal Logue (BLADE) as Pug, Danny Trejo (everything) as Jumpy, and Clarence Williams III (everything else) as Merlin. The first two don’t get much to do, except Trejo has one funny part where he suggests that because of Christmas’s importance to the economy “an intelligent country would legislate a second such gift giving holiday. Create, say, a Christmas 2, late May, early June, to further stimulate growth.” CHRISTMAS 2 would actually be kind of a good title for this movie.

Williams gets a few more good lines, like after they ambush and brutally assault Rudy in his hotel room Merlin isn’t really paying attention to all that and observes, “They got a shitload of cookies in here.”

I always avoided this because it had a bad reputation, and I wasn’t sold on Affleck, and etc. But I knew it was John Frankenheimer, and they eventually come out with his director’s cut (he’d been pressured to shorten it, even the sex scene with Charlize! What the fuck!?) Actually I think this is a pretty good movie, not too much in the “trying to be Tarantino” feel, more of a neo-noir, what with this whole mistaken identity plot. And there’s some Elmore Leonard in there, I think. The bad guys are dumb but scary, the hero is not exactly a mastermind either, he’s just smart enough to catch that these guys don’t know what they’re doing, and to try to bullshit them when he realizes they’ll kill him if they understand that he’s the wrong guy.

And I like that the crime is small time – a failing Indian casino, almost empty because it’s almost Christmas. He says there’s $5 million in the safe, but he has no idea, he’s just making shit up. He’s a good noir protagonist – self aware enough that you like him, unlucky enough that he’s always digging the hole deeper and getting the shit beat out of him. Theron is good too, way too naive, way too in love with this guy, you kind of feel sorry for her, if you trust her.

It’s a good tone. Not too jokey really, but funny sometimes. Dennis Farina has a small part as manager of the casino. In a meeting with tribal leaders, defending the quality of the club, you might be thinking he’s some kind of hot shit mafia type or something. But you start to have suspicions when he arrogantly says, “By the way, you show me another buffet that offers both Coke and Pepsi. Don’t even bother looking because it doesn’t exist, okay? So now what else do you people want me to do?”

This was Frankenheimer’s last theatrical release, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s solid old school filmatism that passes for a 2000s movie. Not losing his magic, not bending over backwards to appeal to stupider generations, just finding a good balance. The script is by Ehren Kruger, who wrote a couple pretty good things (this, the American THE RING) and some really bad ones (TRANSFORMERS 2, SCREAM 3, also he’s threatening to remake VIDEODROME).

There are some stories about this movie because Vin Diesel originally was cast in it, but is not in the movie. There’s a famous story that supposedly Frankenheimer wanted him to wear a muscle shirt but he said “I only show my guns in a Vin Diesel film” and got fired for this defiance. When I finally saw the movie I couldn’t help but notice that Gary Sinise is wearing a muscle shirt through alot of the movie. I thought holy shit, did a then-unknown Vin Diesel really get replaced by Academy Award winner Gary Sinise? But researching this theory I came across an interview with Danny Trejo where he says Diesel was just playing Pug, a flunky to the Sinise character who ended up being played by Donal Logue. According to Trejo’s version of events Diesel left the movie of his own accord to star in THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, but was very loyal and had a hard time making that decision. It’s interesting because here they are about to release a fifth FAST AND FURIOUS movie, and I honestly don’t think that first one would be popular enough for a sequel without the raw power of Diesel’s charisma. Although maybe if things had been different he would’ve turned REINDEER GAMES into a monster hit and THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS would be an underrecognized oddity starring Donal Logue as a macho street racer.

But back to REINDEER GAMES. Unfortunately I gotta tell you I hate (SPOILER) the twist at the end. It didn’t make me retro-actively hate the entire movie like the twist in (SPOILER) HIGH TENSION, but it’s pretty ridiculous. It’s that same blues theory, you just gotta play the song well, you don’t gotta put on the Peter Pan wires and fly over the audience doing an Eddie Van Halen solo at the end. This is a perfectly enjoyable crime story when taken at face value, it doesn’t need to have something secretly going on, in fact that showoffy bullshit takes away the small-time down-to-earthness that made the story appealing in the first place.

(BIGGER SPOILER) It doesn’t need a secret mastermind, a surprise betrayal, a faked death. When you find out what supposedly really happened it really doesn’t make any sense. He put on an act for six months in prison, faked his death, knew this would trick his cellmate into pretending to be him so he could trick some other guys into forcing this guy to rob a casino. It’s just not a good plan, it’s a miracle it even came anywhere close to working, and it would’ve been way easier just to rob the damn place himself.

And plus, the whistling! I despise that shit. In the opening the character in question is whistling “Let It Snow,” so when he shows up alive again at the end he’s whistling it again in what’s supposed to be a menacing context. One of those whistling bullies we’re all terrified by, I guess. I understand why he’s whistling it for us – to tell us “remember, this is the guy from the beginning.” But in his mind, within the world of the movie what is he thinking? Hey, he’ll remember that I was whistling this that one time when we were in the yard the day before we got out. That’ll really fuck with him.

I blame the ’90s. After SCREAM there was a wave of these things, all the horror movies had to be whodunits. And THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Always gotta be a reveal at the end. Stupid. But it’s Christmas, I’ll forgive it.

Well, I think he might get things rolling again, but we’ll see. And even if he doesn’t, it turns out he’s got one role under his belt that fits that “more than meets the eye” hype and shows that he’s got more range than just the differences between Riddick and Dominic Teretto (hint: Riddick wears goggles).

He has a bad back and has to sleep in a La-Z-Boy, that's why he's in that chair. Don't worry, it's not some lame movie poster humor.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, FIND ME GUILTY is a true story about a New Jersey mobster who got pissed at his lawyer and decided to represent himself in a RICO Act case so huge it had something like 20 defendants and ended up being the longest criminal trial in U.S. history.

Diesel plays Jackie D’Norscio, who we first meet laying in bed getting shot by his own cousin. He refuses to cooperate with police because of a family values version of the “stop snitchin’” ethos. He says, “We don’t rat out those who love us” and insists his cousin is just a junkie who’ll see the error of his ways. This philosophy of love and forgiveness will drive him for the entire movie. Also it will screw him over since his fuckin cousin is the star witness in the case against him.

In this one Diesel has hair, with a receding hairline. The poster informs us that his nickname is “Fat Jackie,” but in the movie I wouldn’t exactly call him fat. Diesel hides his muscles under thick clothes, but it doesn’t really look like he did the RAGING BULL/donut-eating thing. He definitely looks different, though. With his distinct, gravelly voice I thought it might be hard to accept Diesel as this guy, but it wasn’t.

Jackie is tough but vulnerable. Always seeking acceptance whether it’s from “the fellas,” the screws at the prison, the lawyers or the jury. He never made it out of elementary school, so he doesn’t have Diesel’s usual thing of outsmarting everybody around him. He’s kind of whiny. He likes to tell jokes and laugh. He says things like “youse guys.”

The head defense lawyer is Peter Dinklage, who is wary of Jackie defending himself because it could screw over all of the defendants. But instead of trying to stop him (like the Don… er, I mean alleged Don… wants him to) he tries to help him. Dinklage is pretty much the co-lead, and of course he’s good in it. Nice to see him get an opportunity like that.

The judge is Ron Silver. That sounds like the ultimate nightmare for a defendant, but somehow Silver removed his usual layer of slime and plays this as a really likable character. He almost develops a friendship with Jackie over the course of the trial. There’s a touching scene where he has to inform Jackie about a death in the family and he really struggles to be gentle and supportive about it. I don’t think this guy’s a hanging judge. He’s a hanging out judge.

One of the big moments in the movie is when Jackie’s ex-wife (Annabella Sciorra) comes to visit him. She yells at him for treating her bad, cheating on her, thinking he can have whatever he wants no matter the consequences, and now for throwing his freedom away in the name of a stupid mafia code. Jackie doesn’t argue back that much because he probly knows she’s right. It’s one of the few times when he seems to feel bad about what he does.

They say that most of the testimony is taken directly from the transcripts, but of course I don’t know which parts. Does “most” mean it’s all real except sometimes the actors would improvise a little or the testimony would be simplified a little, or does it mean there is a 51% majority of it that is not made-up bullshit? I got no idea.

Jackie doesn’t come up with a brilliant legal strategy or anything. He mostly jokes around with corny humor. He keeps saying “I’m not a gangster, I’m a gag-ster.” You see, it’s all a big misunderstanding. Yes, he may have been arrested making a large drug transaction, but really it turns out his only crime is that he loves to make people laugh.

In court he tells dirty jokes. He keeps getting threatened with fines. One of his attempted Matlock moves is just to embarrass a police witness (Anthony Michael Hall) by proving that his statement that he saw a bunch of Italian men somewhere couldn’t be backed up because he couldn’t really know what nationality they were just by looking at them. Of course it puts the cop on the spot for what he said but it also doesn’t make his testimony any less reliable since it’s not really relevant if they’re Italian or not. So it’s kind of this game of spending months and months in a court room distracting people by talking about dumb meaningless bullshit. It’s like a presidential election.

In the end (SPOILER for movie and history) they’re all found not guilty. And the weird thing – or maybe the ingeniously subversive thing, I’m not sure – is that the movie plays it exactly like it’s ERIN BROCKOVICH or something, some David beats Goliath, stick-it-to-the-man crowdpleaser. You’re happy for his underdog victory over the uptight federal prosecutor (Linus Roache). But wait a minute – that asshole is right though! These guys are murderers, drug pushers and extortionists. It seems like the jury let them off because hey, this guy’s funny, I like this guy and because these guys have wives and kids, they can’t go to jail! And the movie, using standard movie devices, tricks us into feeling the same way.

Look at Dinklage’s character. It makes you like him. He’s this wise, eloquent legal mastermind. People tell him to stop Jackie from representing himself, but he has a hunch. He gives Jackie a chance and grows to believe in him. And at the end of the trial he thanks Jackie profusely, a huge compliment. This character is our buddy and our mentor.

But think about it – he’s a fucking scumbag! He knows these guys are guilty as sin and he gets them off with a bunch of bullshit. There’s no hint of “everyone deserves a fair trial” idealism. He’s just a mob lawyer, straight up. He’s Sean Penn in CARLITO’S WAY, but played as a hero.

So if you take the movie at face value it’s blatantly glorifying organized crime and saying that if somebody is charismatic it doesn’t matter if they’re a murderer. It has no obvious “this is fucked up” notes like, say, CHOPPER or BRONSON. So I really can’t tell if Lumet just thought it was a good enough story that he sided with Jackie, and that even bad guys can be sympathized with, or if he’s deliberately trying to fuck with the audience by manipulating us into feeling something that we shouldn’t.

But either way we’re all adults here, we can handle it. This is an entertaining movie that I recommend to all Dieselmaniacs and Dink Finks.

[ratings]

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Part 3 might still be my favorite, with its comprehensive visual tribute to everything that looks cool in Tokyo and its charismatic lead performance by Lucas Black (plus Sonny Chiba bit part, Incredible Hulk car and stupid cameo at the end). I was surprised how much I liked that one and even more surprised how many people I know who have no interest in the series liked it too.

Ah fuck it, I can’t really choose a favorite though. Each one is a beautiful snowflake. The first one I felt like I was laughing at it more than with it, but I gotta admit I fell for Vin Diesel’s performance and Swayzian dedication to macho philosophy. The second one is the funniest and by far most ridiculous and there’s no way John Singleton didn’t know it was hilarious to pimp the Universal logo. The third one is just the most interesting to look at and most likable. The hero is a scrappy well-meaning tough kid instead of some rich boy, cop or thief, and he doesn’t really seem like a part of that whole ridiculous neon car culture from the first two. He’s just a troubled lower class car guy on his third strike who gets into some scuffles. In Japan.

So maybe I’m not coming from the same place as all the people I’ve seen giving this one negative reviews. I really enjoyed it. For me it actually is kind of exciting to see all four original leads return (has that ever happened before? They leave after part 1 and return in part 4?). Diesel doesn’t do as much funny philosophizing, but he’s cool because he’s meaner, he’s out for revenge this time. He keeps his words to a minimum and, unlike in xXx he keeps his outlaw cred intact from beginning to end.

I get a kick out of these movie’s religious faith in cars. They worship their cars and believe they can do magical things. In most movies where a guy is out for revenge, he might chase a guy down in a car but then he’s gonna get out and shoot the guy or whatever, to make it more personal. In a FAST AND (the) FURIOUS movie you stay in your car and run him over, because that is more personal. At one point Diesel uses his car as a bomb, which to a guy of his belief system is a very severe sacrifice. At first I thought his nitrous/dashboard lighter improvised time bomb was a little farfetched. Then I realized he could have planned ahead and optimized the car for that purpose when he prepared it for the mission. But then on third thought I remembered that he lives life a quarter mile at a time, so he’s not allowed to plan that far ahead. So that was some good improv there, Vin.

Because of his strong faith he has some new powers, which is maybe the test of whether or not you’re gonna like the movie. If you roll your eyes at the scene where he investigates an accident site and we see him standing in the middle of the car crash as he pieces together what happened, then this movie is not for you. If that gives you a big shit eating grin like with me then you will like the movie.

Paul Walker is better this time than in the first two. He looks and acts much tougher, like he’s been through more. (He does not mention if he misses Tyrese.) He even has a couple of the best moves:

1. in a foot chase a guy gets over a fence before him so he just rams the fence to knock the guy on his ass as he tries to gingerly climb down the other side.
2. when one of his fellow agent comes up to threaten him about tampering with his case, Paul starts bloodying the dude’s face without even saying a word

It’s especially cool to see these characters return in Justin Lin’s jurisdiction. I know he’s a young guy but he shoots it like he’s some Bruckheimer disciple who refused to take part in the black magic ritual where they all vowed to destroy the language of action cinema and declared war on human brains and hearts. He splintered off and went down a good path, so he’s got all that ’80s action movie stuff that Michael Bay and those guys like – tons of dramatic shots looking up at the heroes posing, nice sunsets, crowds of super hot babes in colorful, tight clothing, shiny cars, busy seemingly-realistic law enforcement bureaus doing their jobs… but then he doesn’t have the Avid farts and jarring cuts and dizzying closeups. He keeps it pretty controlled. He pays homage to part 2 with a ridiculously detailed GPS animation of a race and to part 1 by ripping off POINT BREAK with a great foot chase.

I read a review that complained that the opening action sequence is the best one (fair enough) and that it doesn’t make sense to shoot high speed car chases in a dark tunnel. That second one seems like it would be true but I don’t know, I got a kick out of the unnecessary dangerousness of several cars hauling ass right on each other’s tails in a place where one false move could cause a deadly pileup. Maybe a little more TEMPLE OF DOOM mineshaft theatrics would’ve been even funnier but still. I thought it was a worthy entry in the FAST AND FURIOUS catalog of stupid places to drive cars fast.

I’m not a car guy, but I like them in movies. In this one you get good helpings of cars flipping, rolling, jumping, smashing, sliding, skidding, drifting, exploding. You get people jumping out of cars, onto cars, you get even more high speed backwards driving than in any previous entry. There is less emphasis on the flashy neon colored import cars (Walker’s weapon of choice) and more on the American muscle cars Diesel prefers, which is maybe less hilarious but definitely more pleasing to the eye.

At this point Walker’s character Brian O’Connor has gone undercover as a street racer three times. Once to catch Vin Diesel’s character Dom (failed), once to catch some drug kingpin (successful), and now he’s going after a heroin smuggler. The racers in these movies (with the exception of Lucas Black) piss me off because they can just pour money into their cars and don’t give a shit that they seem to go through them faster than underwear. O’Connor has an excuse though, he has the backing of the government, and in this one he gets to look at three screens full of impounded drug dealer cars, and choose his favorites. I think at this point it would be a good idea to set up a special Car Ops division that would take advantage of his talents as well as other experienced street racing agents like his friend Tyrese or the two reggaeton stars with bit parts in this one (in place of Ja Rule and Ludacris).

Speaking of Tyrese, I thought he was supposed to have a cameo, but he doesn’t. I would’ve liked to see Lucas Black in there too, but at least they have his friend Han, who implies (I think) that the events of TOKYO DRIFT have not yet taken place. So maybe there’s a chance for FAST/FURIOUS: RETURN TO TOKYO DRIFT.

By the way, I don’t usually have much interest in the ol’ box office, but I was pretty impressed that this thing made 100 million dollars worldwide in its first weekend. Just imagine how much it could’ve made if I would’ve posted my review earlier. It woulda beat TITANIC already. Anyway, the sweet justice is that my fellow movie nerds made fun of Vin Diesel for coming back to the series that he left, saying it was desperate and pathetic. But I looked it up and it’s his biggest opening ever by a margin of about $25 million. Doesn’t prove it’s a good movie (that’s what this review is for), but does prove it was a good move. Looks like Mr. Giant Pecs won that particular game of Dungeons and Dragons. His prize is he gets to keep talking about doing another Riddick movie, and nobody is allowed to say the usual snarky shit about it.

[ratings]

So I’m surprised to be sitting here telling you this, but this movie is actually kind of good. I mean, unlike Vin Diesel’s character, who does a flip on a snowmobile in one scene, the movie doesn’t stick the landing. The conclusion borders on silly, the storytelling becomes pretty muddled (possibly due in part to those studio cuts, I’m not sure) and I was not sure I really understood the point of how it ended up. But as a whole it’s so much better than I had been led to believe. Aside from some corny Riddick-style opening and closing narration Diesel is a cool action movie character inhabiting a fleshed out, believable world of chaos not too far in the future.

The movie opens with a pretty spectacular show-off camera move, zooming from space onto the earth, through the clouds, down to the United States, to the Northeast, to New York, to New York City, to a particular block, down onto the street, onto Vin Diesel who is kneeling on the ground, and into his face, into his eye, in which we see reflected a fiery explosion coming in his direction…

Man, I hope they got that explosion right on the first try, would’ve been a real pain in the ass to go all the way back up into space.

That was cool but the movie really got me with the more mundane scenery immediately following that. Diesel’s character Toorop wakes up, stumbles through his filthy New Serbia apartment in his boxers, swigging on bottled water as he glances out the window at refugees rioting for food. Later he goes down to beat up a dude for selling him a lemon of a handgun and to get himself some rabbit meat, which he butchers himself and fries up with some onions. When he hears someone at his door he plants his face right in his lunch – not sure if he’s protecting his food, his head, or both. (I like if it’s the head because usually in movies they act like wearing a vest protects the whole body.)

The movie is based on a book that I haven’t read. Maybe the hero is not supposed to be a Vin Diesel badass type, I’m not sure. I suspect Diesel is very protective of his persona and made sure to get it into this movie, and that that might be part of why Kassovitz was unhappy. But I think the two styles make for a good combination. When a paramilitary force comes to abduct him Toorop recognizes their leader’s voice, calls him by his first name, kills him, then pleads with the others to mind their own business since he was settling a personal score, and willingly goes with them. He just wants a moment to get his shit, including a winter jacket and the frying pan with the meat in it. Now that’s badass.

Meanwhile Kassovitz holds up his part of the bargain, giving the movie a more natural look and less bombastic feel than I expected based on those reviews. It mostly avoids that digital, artificial feel of so many modern sci-fi movies – it feels organic. And it’s not always trying to wow you like, say, a Jason Statham movie. It’s content to linger on interesting images like Toorop trying to light his cigarette while being transported in a car hanging from a helicopter’s magnet.

Toorop, a mercenary, is hired by an ugly Russian gangster who I did not recognize as Gerard Depardieu to smuggle a girl from Russia to New York. He doesn’t think it’s possible, the way borders are closed in this world, but Depardieu gets him a passport which is an implant he has to inject into his neck. In exchange he goes to a convent and picks up this girl and her adopted mother, played by Michelle Yeoh. Most of the movie is about the experience of transporting her, although things get a little weird once they get to New York and discover who exactly she is.

Along the way are some pretty inventive action setpieces. Admittedly these scenes tend to seem a little more cartoonish than the rest of the movie, but they’re alot of fun. One takes place in a dance club where people dance beneath a bloody cage match going on in a plexiglass cube suspended above. I would give the movie points just for including that concept at all, but then it finds a way to get Toorop locked inside the cage (therefore challenging a huge UFC dude to a duel) while Michelle Yeoh is below fighting DISTRICT B13’s David Belle and his parkour team. Yeoh plays a nun in this movie but does more fighting than she did as an ancient witch queen in THE MUMMY 3. I hope Vin Diesel calls up Rob Cohen and gives him some shit about that.

There’s also a pretty intense snowmobile chase, although I have to admit it seemed better after I watched the featurette about it and learned that all the flips and jumps were real and not effects. (Apparently there is some team called “Slednecks” who did them. And by the way, these guys call them “snowmobiles,” not “snow machines.” Sarah Palin was lying to us.)

I guess if you drop all the pins at the end it doesn’t count as good juggling. So you may disagree with calling this “kind of a good movie.” But the fact is that for most of the running time I found it enjoyable, and not even in the stupid sort of way I expected. It’s not CHILDREN OF MEN, but it’s above average intelligence for modern sci-fi, it’s more serious than most, but also more fun than many. It showcases Mr. Diesel’s particular talents well, it has some real nice production design (New York City of the future has a little BLADE RUNNER in it but more seems like it’s turning into Tokyo), a strong atmosphere of modern chaos, and even some of the more ludicrous FIFTH ELEMENTy ideas in the last stretch are kind of clever.

I mean, it doesn’t succeed in the end, but I don’t see how you get “terrible” out of watching this. So how do I explain the hatred toward this movie? Is it nothing but Diesel envy? Anti-Furyianism? To me BABYLON A.D. seems undeniably superior to many 2007 and 2008 action, sci-fi and adventure movies that were not reviewed with nearly as much venom, including HITMAN, ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM, GHOST RIDER, TRANSPORTER 3, THE MUMMY 3, 10,000 BC, and fucking DOOMSDAY. Even the god damn SPIRIT managed to eke out 15% on the Rotten Tomatoes.

But they reviewed the theatrical cut, which probaly made less sense than the ten minutes longer one on DVD. And even in this version it’s got a little bit of that SILENT HILL feel of suddenly starting to explain too much through dialogue when it’s time to wrap up. Poor Toorop, who has been pretty stoic throughout the movie, suddenly has to say the line, “You tried to corrupt mankind by creating a fake virgin birth.” Watching the extras I got confused when there was a whole featurette about the making of a chase scene I didn’t remember even seeing. Sure enough it’s included as a deleted scene. I have no idea why they cut it. When you’re almost to the end and Diesel narrates, “I thought I saved her…” I recommend going to the special features menu, watching the “Deleted Hummer sequence,” then going back to the last scene. Then the ending seems slightly less awkward.

When this came out in theaters it seemed like another nail in the coffin of Vin Diesel’s career outside of children’s movies. But actually now that I’ve seen it I think it might help him. I like him in this movie. Even if the movie’s a failure it’s nice to be able to like Vin Diesel for something he’s actually done instead of something he has the potential to do.

[ratings]

Then in the other group we have the commercial or “hack” filmatist who goes from one project to the next just looking for something that might be successful, or that seems cinematic, or that might capture that fuckin zeitgeist thing the germans are always so interested in. Some of these guys might even be decent at the directation of films but they just don’t put that strong of a personal stamp on them. For example you got your John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Dracula [1979], Short Circuit, Point of No Return) or your Randal Kleiser (Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Big Top Pee-Wee, Honey I Blew Up the Kid). Occasionally they make a good picture like Saturday Night Fever but you still have no idea what these clowns are trying to do artistic-wise. They’re just doing a job, like plumbing or washing windows or passing out pizza coupons and gum samples on the street corner. They punch the clock and then they go home.

I like Rob Cohen better than I like those individuals but I think he’s in the same category. He even produced three of John Badham’s movies. His best movie was DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY. That one’s about Bruce Lee. But he followed it up with crap like DRAGONHEART and DAYLIGHT. The ONLY thing these three pictures have in common is that they have the letter A in them. And MAYBE the letter D but even that’s being generous.

Now this dude seems to have suddenly hit a stride making commercially successful PG-13 movies with up and coming actors that are widely considered to be surprisingly entertaining at least on an unintentional level. The first in this series was THE SKULLS, and he hopes to continue in that vein with the Vin Diesel bungee-jumping-James-Bond movie XXX and of course THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS PART 2: THE FASTER AND THE FURIOUSER.

I haven’t seen any of those but I have seen THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS PART A and this is my essay about it, one of the most important film Writing works of the 21st century so far, in my opinion. (If it turns out as planned anyway. I am only on the fifth paragraph here. Those of you who can count will back me up on this one).

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS is a hollywood vehicle about “the underground culture of street racing”. Basically, in many urban and especially non-urban (i.e. boring) areas there are groups of rich kids who spend thousands of dollars jacking up their mom’s car and then they have drag races for money, which if they win they will spend on new engine parts. Somebody Wrote an article about it in Vibe or Cigar Afficianado or somewheres so Hollywood said “It is our duty to exploit this.”

They did it with breakdancing, they did it with skateboarding. They did it with BMX, lambada, pirate radio, cockfighting, snowboarding, “extreme sports”, rollerblading, hacking, low budget filmmaking, nintendo, rave, grunge, rap, “the cocktail nation”, karaoke, luge, solar car racing… Basically, if you’re young and you have a wacky hobby, it’s gonna be a movie some day, most likely about 3-6 months after everybody you know stops doing it. If Hollywood had been on their game, they woulda had Unicycle: The Movie and Pogo! and Hula Hoop Nation. They woulda had animated pet rocks and tamagotchis and one about “wilding” in New York or collecting star wars dolls and selling them on e-bay. I’m sure they came inches from making movies about Tai Boe and country line dancing and your momma jokes, or even made up fads like street yoga or freestyle bowling. If you do some stupid shit, Hollywood wants to know, so they can dress it up in neon colors and spiky hair and call it a phenomenon.

Cars. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but alot of men love their cars. Kids grow up with their hot wheels cars and model cars and go carts and posters of Ferraris and Corvettes. Some of them even watch race cars on tv or watch kids on tv with beds shaped like race cars. There is even a cartoon based on NASCAR racing. There are kids with subscriptions to Motor Trend magazine and Hot Rod. When they get older they still like pictures of cars, especially with women in bikinis next to the cars or, better yet, on top of the cars. Riding them. The cars are bigger than men but they know what to do. Cars will take good care of their women. Car commercials fill magazines and play on tv all day and sometimes equate the quality of a car to the size of a man’s dick.

On TV, it’s all about owning expensive cars. Rappers want their Lexuses or their lowriders with hydraulics. They mention them in their lyrics and they rent them and show them in their videos and pretend that they own them. This goes back a long ways. You can read in Iceberg Slim why Cadillacs were an important status symbol to people who couldn’t afford to buy a house. But the bar has been raised and now you can’t have just one solitary car as a status symbol. I don’t care if it’s a gold plated Knight Rider, you need a fuckin armada to be really impressive. Many actors and music stars collect armies of expensive cars, or give them away, or ask for them as payment for doing movies. You know, like we used to use cigarettes inside, or marbles or sandwiches on the playground. The heroes on TV shows and movies always drive expensive sports cars no matter what. Even the cops drive sports cars instead of cop cars, like cops drive. The only time their cars don’t work is if they are being chased by a maniac. Otherwise their cars are perfect and they don’t have to wait five minutes for them to warm up or for the windows to defrost and they don’t have that problem that they can’t drive on the freeway because the old piece of shit can barely make it above 40.

I have not driven in a while due to lack of car type difficulties. What I mean by that is, I don’t have a car. I don’t even ride anymore. And I want to say right now that I have decided to abandon cars altogether. This will not decrease the size of the penis and I encourage all men and women with penises and breasts of all sizes to do the same.

Fuck cars. All you do in cars is take years off your life. I live in Seattle and we have some of the worst traffic in the country. Alot of people spend half as much time in the car to and from work as they do actually at work. If they don’t give themselves high blood pressure they might get that road rage shit. It’s like mad cow disease but on wheels. One time a guy took somebody’s poodle and threw it across a couple lanes of traffic. Another guy crashed his car through the side of a Jack in the Box, got himself one hamburger and took off. Another guy in a car chased the hamburglar but got his car rammed. Even if you’re a good car guy like the guy trying to catch the hamburglar, it’s too much trouble.

And that’s the thing, people feel like because they have a car they are entitled to something. Entitled to not get cut off in traffic. Entitled to not stop for somebody to cross the street, even at a crosswalk. Entitled to just be a big fuckin asshole, just because they’re wearing what amounts to giant mechanical pants.

If they almost run over you on a crosswalk they don’t apologize or even look embarassed after they slam on the breaks. They won’t even make eye contact. One time a guy actually hit me on a crosswalk while talking on his cell phone, and his first reaction was not to gasp or apologize, but to honk at me! If you step out into the road before your light turns green, then decide not to cross and get back on the sidewalk, they still honk at you, because you gave them an opening. If the cars are way down the street, so you jaywalk, thirty seconds later they pass you on the sidewalk, and they honk (I’ve seen this happen especially to young black men). They live 2 blocks from the grocery store, they still drive there, even if it takes longer when they have to find parking, because why the fuck would you walk? There are young people that use a car like an old dude uses a Rascal.

Riding the bus to work in Seattle is expensive because of this fucker from Bellevue named Tim Eyman. He’s some Lexus driving asshole who got rich selling engraved watches to fraternities on the internet. Then he started a company that creates initiatives to lower the taxes on expensive cars, taking money away from transit. So there are less routes than there used to be and the buses come less often and the schedules at the bus stops are not up to date, if there are schedules there at all. After this year’s initiative the city announced that they’d have to close the Seattle Public Library down 2 months out of the year. Which is more important to you – low taxes on expensive cars, or reading? Washington had to make that choice, and they chose cars.

That was before the recession. Yesterday I read that they’re closing down alot of the parks too. So I guess these nice little parks will become overgrown weed patches piled up with garbage, fenced off and occasionally combed with flashlights at night to make sure people aren’t buttfucking in the bushes. Pretty soon I think they’ll shut down the animal control department and we’ll have wild dobermans roaming the streets like in Suburbia, getting into Westlake Mall and eating people on the escalator. If an elephant escapes from the zoo and starts hunting for elephant trainers, we’ll have to wait for a team to come up from Portland. And they better take the bus if they want to make it through traffic.

(In a happier note, Tim Eyman will be shutting down too now that the newspapers found out he had taken more than $150,000 of donated money and put it in his own account. On the list of things his supporters paid for: car repairs, a donation to the Republicans, and “stuff”.)

Despite all this, the bus is still better than driving. You almost never get stuck in traffic. You don’t need insurance. You don’t buy gas. You don’t even have to drive. So you don’t risk damaging your car or somebody else’s car or getting a speeding ticket or a parking ticket. You don’t have to find a parking space. You don’t have to pay exorbitant parking fees to some asshole entrepreneur that bought a square and put cement on it, some lines and numbers and a metal box (what a fuckin scam!)

You can doze off on the bus. You can read Iceberg Slim books. Sometimes you can meet real pimps on the bus, or crack dealers, or punk kids straight out of Larry Clark movies, holding skateboards, talking about crystal meth and blowjobs. You can stay in touch with youth culture or see a man suddenly pull a stack of quarters out of his mouth.

You meet interesting people on the bus. Like the young man from Alaska who, high on life, told me I was “sucking Bill Gates’s dick”. Or the gentlemen the other day who suddenly announced, “Okay – trivia time!” and quizzed no one in particular about the history of professional boxing.

When a cop gets on the bus he’s not there for you, unless you’re on the nod or knifing somebody or something. It’s not like when you get pulled over – then you know it’s you they want.

When you’re riding the bus, you’re not contributing to traffic congestion. Unless your bus drives off a bridge, but that’s not regular. One time a guy shot the bus driver and the bus drove off a bridge into a small artist’s community. But most of the passengers survived.

Then there’s the whole moral thing. I’m not some “tree hugger” or “flower child” or “cocksucker” but I think every one of us has to admit we’re really fuckin pushin it as a species. There were only so many dinosaurs and there is only so much oil. We are polluting our air. If you have air conditioning (not that I ever did, you luxury car owning fucks) you’re eating away the ozone layer. I know it’s easy to forget about but I read that thing is 3 times the size of europe now. And you europeans can testify, that’s pretty, you know, that’s pretty big in my opinion.

If a climate that’ll fry us like beer battered onion rings doesn’t do it for you, what about the political climate? George Bush (both of em in fact) came from oil. They would not be in office if they didn’t make money off of all you fuckers buying oil. Cheney comes from oil. Most of Bush’s regime comes from oil. The troubles in Venezuala recently are about oil. The short-lived military coup that the White House praised as a victory for democracy, that seems to have been at least partly about oil. Bush part I’s war in Iraq was mainly about oil. The FBI was pressured not investigate bin Laden or the Saudi royalty for terrorism because of oil. Cheney threatened to go to invade Afghanistan if they didn’t let us build an oil pipeline through their land, next thing you know we got planes crashing into buildings.

I mean, fuck oil. I know we can’t escape it yet but as much as we can, shouldn’t we? I’m not saying that just because it’s morally reprehensible to drive if you don’t have to, that you HAVE to stop. I’m just saying that you SHOULD. Remember when black people stopped buying gold because it was funding apartheid in south africa? How about everybody cuts down on oil because it’s fucking up the whole world?

Anyway, this movie doesn’t explore those issues, really, at least not on a literal or metaphorical level. It just explores racing cars. Sort of. I don’t know if the filmatists would admit it, but racing is not inherently cinematic. They try hard but the racing scenes in here are not that exciting. You got two cars driving in straight lines, trying to go the fastest. That’s not exciting. Why do you think in the olympics, they ski somewhere and then they pull out a gun and start shooting targets and shit? Because racing is boring. I mean think about it. If regular racing wasn’t boring, why would they have invented Wacky Racing? If racing was worth watching then the Wacky Racers would be out of a job. People would just think, I like the way they race, but they are too wacky. There would be no need to spice things up with hot air balloons and contraptions and tying ladies to train tracks and teaching dogs to drive. That would be seen as a distraction.

I mean how many examples do you need here? Nothing that goes in a straight line is exciting. In skiing, you got slalom. In rollercoasters you got loopty loop. Water skiing only makes it on tv if it’s a squirrel. What would you rather watch? A toad race or a chicken fight? And even toads hop. They could hop high or low, long or short. They could hop crooked and go off the track. Who knows how they’ll hop? Nobody. But there’s no room for this type of variation in this straight-line style of racing because the cars don’t hop. They just go fast and the two people try to go faster than each other. It’s all about who has the most money and knowledge to build the most powerful engine and maintain it. And the only thing more boring that a movie about driving a car really fast in a straight line is a movie about people preparing their cars to be able to drive really fast in a straight line.

But anyway this is not about actual driving skill. So there’s not much to depict here. The race itself is so boring they have to have buttons on the wheel that make the car go faster. Uh oh, the other guy is in the lead. I know! Push the button that makes it go faster!

Because of this, they had no choice but to make this car racing movie not really about car racing. So the exciting scenes are the police chases, where you actually get to turn corners and crash through stuff and maybe even jump. Throw some motorcycles in there and they can really jump, and do little sideways kicky things. A few machine guns can pepper things up too. Also you gotta throw in a whole plotline about an undercover cop and some robberies. This bothered some people but I mean, at least they’re not driving in straight lines the whole movie is all I’m saying.

I think I’ve established that theory but you can e-mail me for more information on why racing in straight lines is boring. At least let’s see some side wheelies!

Mr. Cohen depicts this racing world as a multi-cultural underground dressed up by Urban Outfitters, painted neon green and orange with purple stripes. It is inhabited by a charismatic cast who we will call the chassis, because they are the only thing holding this shit together. Most notable is the promising new Badass Vin Diesel, from the robot cartoon and Pitch Black.

There are many reasons why Vin Diesel is popular and why that will only grow. First of all, he’s a deep-voiced muscleman who broke into the industry by directing short films. (Please refer to my THEORY OF BADASS JUXTAPOSITION, which has never ceased to be relevant.) And then there’s this whole multi-racial thing. In Pitch Black I thought he was black. He sounds like it and he looks like it at a glance. On closer inspection he could just be some italian guy, who knows. He could play a number of races believably and he refuses to reveal his true origins.

He’s also got a machismo that you don’t get much these days. I’m not saying I want everybody in Hollywood to be some fuckin self obsessed oaf but let me relay to you this anecdote about his work on John Frankenheimer’s REINDEER GAMES, where he was cast as some kind of supporting thug. Mr. Frankenheimer asked Vin Diesel to take his shirt off to show his muscles in a scene. Vin Diesel refused, saying, “I only take my shirt off in a Vin Diesel film.”

So Frankenheimer fired him. I don’t know if Vin was saying that he’d be headlining movies soon (which was true) or if he was saying he would only take his shirt off in a movie he directed. Either way, good story.

Another good story, which I think is probaly phony, is about how he got started acting. Supposedly he and his friends were caught vandalizing a theater as teens, and the owner agreed to drop charges if they would come in and study acting.

Also, remember, we’re talking about a guy who named himself VIN DIESEL. I mean that pretty much explains him.

Diesel’s character here is typical of his roles so far. He is basically a cult leader – an egomaniacal asshole who has some kind of charm that makes everyone gravitate to him, and always want to please him. And it’s convincing. He is the best racer, the best mechanic, and the ringleader of illegal enterprises. And he’s Vin Diesel. In one scene, Vin zooms along the highway right next to a truck that his friend happens to be clinging to the front of, in mortal danger. Things haven’t gone as planned and the buddy really needs to get into Vin’s car somehow. So Vin, one hand on the wheel, flying down the road at maybe 100 mph, pokes his head out the window like a dog, holds out one muscular arm and yells, “JUMP!” And you look at the guy, and you look at Vin, and you look at Vin’s arm, and you really believe that he thinks this will work. That the buddy can jump, and maybe Vin will hug him against the side of the car and be able to pull him in, and Vin’s arm won’t break off or anything.

Luckily, Vin’s friend doesn’t do it. But you gotta admire Vin for offering.

But Mr. Diesel is actually not the main character here. Neither is Outlaw Award Winner Michelle Rodriguez, who still acts tough, and fights to belong in a male dominated world, but mostly is just the girlfriend character except in one scene where she gets to punch a dude in the face.

The star is actually Paul Walker who worked with Rob Cohen in THE SKULLS PART 1 and who was surprisingly good in JOY RIDE. He’s racking up a big collection of roles as whitebread hunks wearing tight shirts. He has that quality of the football player who is so nice you can’t hate him as much as you hate the other football players. He sounds kinda slow and stiff but has some kind of weird hidden charisma that makes you like him anyway.

Like all the fad movies alluded to above, this one pretends to show the gritty reality of the underground street racing culture. Mr. Cohen did manage to get real street racers and their cars as extras in the big tournament at the end. But somehow I can’t imagine the real people who do this are much like the people in the movie, wearing the same designer tank tops every day, exchanging Freudian stories about the first time they drove, making little speeches about the gasoline that runs in their veins.

On the other hand maybe I can imagine it, because this is a hobby that only the richest of the rich could ever get involved in. I mean there is some major equipment involved in this one. Like for example, CARS. In the movie, Paul Walker bets away an $80,000 car the first time he meets the other racers, and nobody thinks it’s suspicious.

You stupid rich fucks.

At least they’re out there on the streets, though, instead of in the board rooms and the white house.

thank you

[ratings]

Personally I thought the movie wasn’t so hot. It starts out good but the aliens just aren’t all that convincing or scary and I lost interest after a while. But this Riddick character, played by the then unknown Vin Diesel, was a cool idea and memorably played by Mr. Diesel. The great Keith David is in there too playing a preacher named Imam, but I guess not as memorably, since I forgot he was in it until I saw him in this sequel.

I don’t know what the deal is with the title. It seems to refer to the whole series, like STAR WARS. They even re-released PITCH BLACK as THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: PITCH BLACK so I guess this one should be considered THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. Anyway, what they did here is pretty admirable. Instead of making a traditional sequel where the same characters face the same monsters again, or different characters face the same monsters, or the same characters face the same monsters plus a thrilling new variation on the same monsters where they are much bigger or smaller or can take over human bodies or fly spaceships or something… instead, they took the main characters and put them into a completely different type of story, an epic fantasy type deal with multiple planets and races and armies and prophesies and all that sort of crap. And at the center of it all is Riddick, the notorious killer who Judi Dench (long story) wants to save the galaxy or whatever.

In the opening scene, Riddick is rocking a John Walker Lind and a head full of dreads, running from bounty hunters. He traces the bounty back to Keith David on the Keith David planet, shaves his head and ends up trying to stop an invasion by the evil Necromongers, a race of uptight death obsessed religious fanatics who fly to different planets in giant religious statues and try to force their beliefs and fashion on everybody. This brings him on a big adventures fighting against armies, busting his old friend Jack (who passed for a boy in PITCH BLACK but now is some Denise Richards type babe) out of an underground prison and facing down the king of the Necromongers.

This is not a great sci-fi movie for the history books like ALIEN or something. A guy told me, “I’m sick of half-assed sci-fi movies,” but I was quick to tell him that actually this one is more like 2/3 assed. It didn’t knock my socks off but you know, I could feel my socks getting loose at some points. I gotta admit I enjoyed it. I liked the basic story of it, the idea behind the bad guy’s culture, and the idea of the mass murderer chosen one. I liked the way the necromongers space ships look like gothic statues, and their armor has knives built into the back like they’ve all been stabbed. I liked the ALIEN RESURRECTION type bounty hunter that keeps failing to outsmart Riddick. But most of all, I cannot lie, I liked Riddick. This growly voiced muscle bound dude with an iconic look (shaved head, dark goggles, glowing eyes), who can apparently get out of any tight situation with a couple of knives and/or a rope. He gets alot more to do than he did in PITCH BLACK, and only once does he face monsters. (When this happens he doesn’t react the same way as in the first picture. His response is more like what DMX would do if a bunch of dogs ran after him.)

I do have some complaints though. Riddick is a cool character, but he could be cooler. He needs some better lines. The dialogue in this movie is just plain dumb. They try to make him super cool and on top of things like Blade, but they don’t give him a “motherfuckers always tryin to ice skate uphill” type line. They don’t even give him a “Just out for a Sunday stroll. I guess it’s not Sunday” (Steven Seagal, FIRE DOWN BELOW.) The guy needs to talk more clever. And while we’re on the subject of talking, he should do less of it. He has such a great voice, I think we would appreciate it more if he would shut up more. Be like Clint Eastwood. Omit needless words. Make it count.

I think also it might’ve been a good idea to earn this one an R-rating, not a PG-13. For all the talk about Riddick being a bad guy, he doesn’t do a whole lot of bad stuff. I guess Hollywood are the experts on what makes money, but I’m pretty sure kids were able to see the TERMINATOR movies, the ALIEN movies, the PREDATOR movies, and, uh, PITCH BLACK, all of which were R-rated. I don’t know what they’re worried about they have to keep it PG-13. Whoever is the executive responsible for keeping this thing kiddie safe, I want them to face the music. I wanna see heads roll for there not being any heads rolling in this movie. I like heads in movies, they are good when they roll.

I guess it is a motif in Mr. Diesel’s work, though, that he’s always a fake bad guy. In XXX he is a menace to society turned secret agent who reluctantly saves the world. In THE FAST AND THE FUCKING FURIOUS he is a criminal who ends up convincing the good guy cop to let him go, because he’s so cool. And in PITCH BLACK he’s a killer turned monster killer. But he never really does anything too bad in any of these movies. He’s not Parker. He’s not a total bastard. He’s never all that threatening but the movies tell you he’s a bad guy, and then proceed to make him a good guy. In this one luckily he doesn’t repeat the mistake of XXX and sell out at the end. I won’t give away what happens but I think even some people who don’t like this movie would watch a sequel just to find out what happens next.

And the bottom line is I had fun watching this guy. I like how ridiculously cocky he is. There is a part where out of the blue he starts narrating in his growly Vin Diesel voice and explains his plan, and it makes it hard not to root for this goofball with the glowing eyes. If he will narrate to you like that, then you almost owe him something. Give him a chance.

Now as most of you know, I have a theory that alot of the best popular movies reflect the politics of their era, whether intentionally or not. Everything from PLANET OF THE APES to MINORITY REPORT, to X-MEN 2 and even the STAR WARS prequels have themes that strongly parallel what was going on in the world at the time of their release. Unfortunately I think CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK has the exact wrong politics for our time. The premise is that in dire times, you don’t send good to fight evil, you send “a different type of evil.” Yeah, tell that to Rambo III, helping out the mujahadeen. If you think about our old buddy Osama bin Laden, our old buddy Saddam Hussein, the tremendous success of the butt pyramids in Abu Ghraib, etc., it is pretty clear that our country has worn out the tired notion of “it takes evil to fight evil.”

It’s still cool in movies though so have at it Riddick. Next time let’s see you earn that evil label though. Let’s have a little more HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and a little less XXX.

[ratings]

XXX is completely asinine. And I loved that about it. For about half an hour. Then it just got boring in the exact same way all the modern James Bond movies are boring. It takes a special type of standard lowering to enjoy ANYBODY driving around dreary european villages on motorcycles shooting machine guns and blowing things up in the usual ways. You can only watch a henchman shot into the air by an explosion so many times before you start to ask for more from your badass cinematists. I don’t care if you had a young Clint Eastwood riding piggyback on Steve McQueen, you’d still get bored with this movie before it got to the climax.

Vin Diesel plays Xander Cage, an “action sports” legend on “underground web sights.” In the opening he steals a Corvette from a senator at a country club. While the cops chase him he makes a video saying that the senator tried to ban rap music and video games. Then he jumps the car off a bridge and parachutes out. So he’s a terrorist folk hero to all pudgy 13 year old suburban kids in Slipknot t–shirts. Those kids who you see on the bus wearing big headphones to hide from the world until they are physically capable of growing their first soul patch.

The movie is obvious about playing to the fantasies of these kids. He mentions Playstation at least once, and knows how to use a gun from playing “first person shooter games”. The extreme sports angle is as humorous as you’d expect. My favorite touch is the scene where he is pointing at a map going over tactics with a team of special agents, and he’s holding a can of Amp.

Of course, the pro-rap and video game stunt gets Xander in trouble with Samuel L. Jackson of the NSA. Samuel wants to use him as an agent so he first runs him through some tests, kidnapping him and leaving him in dangerous situations. This is the fun part of the movie, when Vin gets to show off how smart he is and jump motorcycles sideways over barbed wire fences in an ESPN2 tribute to Steve McQueen’s jump in THE GREAT ESCAPE. We learn that he can perform death defying stunts, and that he likes to call people “monkeys” and talk in lists. (”#1, blah blah blah blah. #2, blah blah blah. And #3, blah blah BLAH blahblah.”) Then somebody tells him, “This isn’t one of your stunts!”

You also get a little glimpse into his lifestyle, which involves doing a stunt then going back to party with a bunch of tattooed white guys who enjoy skateboarding and co-opting black slang.

But then he gets his mission, and you spend the rest of the time waiting for the god damn thing to end. Part of the reason THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS was watchable was because the villain was so charismatic. Because he was Vin Diesel. In XXX you gotta watch Vin in a giant fur coat (admittedly a nice touch) trying to get in good with some scruffy guy in a long coat who talks in a Boris Badenov accent. The villains all have the distinct lack of presence and personality that you expect from a lesser Jackie Chan movie. They hang out upstairs in a dance club and then their plan just involves chemical weapons on a little submarine. And they call themselves “Anarchy 99″. There are more imaginative villains in POLICE ACADEMY sequels.

In Europe the least boring character is Dario’s daughter, Asia Argento. She’s just right for this type of movie but all that means is she’s real hot. And it’s not like they would’ve hired somebody that wasn’t real hot so that’s not getting the filmatists any points from me.

The story is completely generic, and so are the one-liners (except one real bad one: “Welcome to the Xander-Zone!”) I did appreciate the way the NSA aren’t COMPLETELY portrayed as good guys. They do save the day but they’re not as selfless as Xander ends up being. They are willing to let one city die instead of ten. He doesn’t want any city destroyed. Even though he likes to snowboard. Wrap your mind around THAT. The NSA follows the “gotta break a few eggs” philosophy, he sticks with “never leave a man behind”. But otherwise there’s not much clever are thoughtful here.

Which should be fine, right? In this type of movie. But you can’t just say yeah, this is XXX, it’s not supposed to have good parts. True, you don’t need to be smart or original. But at the VERY least you gotta do something memorable in the action department. I liked the stupid idea of using a dinner tray as a skateboard, and the snowboarding in front of an avalanche scene was okay I guess. But all the motorcycles and skydiving are old hat – the movie’s really not as different from James Bond as it thinks it is. And just like the car racing in THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, the whole “action sports” fad is not as inherently cinematic as Rob Cohen probaly thinks it is. When you see those videos of people flying down stairways on bicycles or rolling down impossibly steep mountains and ending up on their feet, its amazing because you know it’s real, and you can’t believe some fuckin moron actually did that on purpose. When you see Vin Diesel do it in a movie you know it’s not real, so all you feel is that itching feeling that you’re supposed to be thrilled.

I mean he does a decent enough job being the new highly paid action hero guy. Even if the character doesn’t have as much appeal as his supporting roles. But he really needs a more interesting movie surrounding him. Maybe the sequel will be better.

P.S. (I added this later)

The sequel oughta be like the first DIRTY HARRY sequel, questioning the values of the first movie. For all the talk about not selling out in the first part of the movie, XXX sure sells out fast and questions it little. I’d like to see all those guys who risked their lives helping him throw a senator’s car off a bridge react to their hero who now works for the man and flies around with a red white and blue parachute. Yes, he saved the world and that’s the right thing to do. But this is hollywood cheating, because the system he stands up against really isn’t trying to save the world, that’s why he stands up against it. I wanna see the system turn against XXX, and vice versa, or I don’t wanna see a sequel at all. End of story. No, there is no negotiating. Sorry.

[ratings]