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.

Would you believe this was my first time seeing SCHINDLER’S LIST? It’s getting toward 20 years old and I remembered I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet. It’s kind of a heavy decision to make one day: hey, I got 3 hours before I gotta leave for work, maybe I should watch SCHINDLER’S LIST? Never had the urge I guess.

But recently I did just that and I gotta admit it didn’t bum me out as much as I expect, because it left me high on how good the movie was. It’s a great movie, and all the more impressive to watch right after HOOK. Spielberg must’ve felt real guilty about that one to follow it up with the JURASSIC PARK/SCHINDLER’S LIST one-two punch. And after years of avoidance I gotta say SCHINDLER’S LIST is not what I expected. Of course it’s really emotional, but it’s not at all a chore to watch. Is it bad to say that this is an entertaining movie?

It begins with Spielberg’s mastery of imagery. A candle dissolves into what looks like a smokestack – a horrific sight in a WWII movie, but as the camera pulls out – phew, it’s just a steam train. But oh shit, wait – trains are usually bad too! In this case it’s bad, but not as bad as I feared for a second there. It’s Polish Jews arriving at the Warsaw ghetto. The beginning of the horror. They don’t realize yet how bad it’s gonna get. (Later they even have discussions about it, and there are varying levels of optimism.)

Next we see a man getting ready for a night on the town. No face, just glamorous closeups of him putting on his watch and jewelry, his cufflinks, money clip, lighter. This is some suave motherfucker. Then the last thing you see is his swastika pin. Ah shit, cinema tricked us into thinking this guy was cool! Now we feel like assholes.

But of course it’s Liam DARKMAN Neeson as Oskar Schindler, future list-writer, current player, schmoozer and businessman. As the movie and war begin he’s hatching a scheme to buy a pot and pan factory and use it to become the king of black market goods. He finds a brilliant Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and convinces him to use his connections in the community to find investors and employees. In a way it kind of feels like a crime movie like GOODFELLAS, AMERICAN GANGSTER, KILL THE IRISHMAN or anything where you watch a charismatic outside-of-the-box-thinker ingeniously build an empire. Obviously the difference is he never feels like a bad guy or an anti-hero. He’s a criminal against the fuckin Nazi regime. He’s dealing in goods that are only black market because the place got invaded. It’s nice suits and stuff. ‘Cause he likes that stuff. Same thing Diddy would do.

So he’s a good guy, but he’s not exactly Superman or Robin Hood because the only reason he’s sheltering Jews is he thinks it’s “good for business.” Just a convenient part of his money-making scheme, more like a paying-illegal-immigrants-under-the-table type of deal than an intentional good deed. His accountant Stern (Ben Kingsley) is the one that starts claiming old amputees as essential workers to save their lives. But hey, the boss man doesn’t stop him. So he’s a good guy.

Man, what about that scene where Stern doesn’t have his work permit with him and gets put on a train, and Schindler has to threaten the soldiers in charge with getting them fired, then run along the side of the train yelling for Stern until he finds him? It’s an intense struggle to rescue an important man that’s ultimately gonna save hundreds of lives, but at the same time it’s so cold-hearted and uncomfortable – he’s looking past all these people who are gonna be put to their death, searching for the other guy to save. Sorry folks, just looking for my accountant.

Of course this and other experiences lead to a gradual awakening and eventually his activities do become completely about saving lives at great risk to himself. It’s not a business anymore, it’s a front. He even turns it into an ammunition factory for the war effort and then intentionally makes defective ammo. Straight up sabotage. He’s brilliant at justifying his actions with logic that will make sense to Nazis. For example he claims he needs children in his factory because their tiny fingers are the best way to polish the inside of .45 shells. Nazis are assholes, they must love child labor so he’s throwing it out there for them.

And in some sense he is Superman, because there’s something unrelatable about his specific type of heroism. Schindler is not an Everyman. We’re not in his position of power, and even if we were we can’t imagine ourselves ever encountering an evil on the level of the Holocaust. Still, what he does is relevant to any time, ’cause there’s always gonna be business people that could grow a conscience and some balls and use their resources and connections to try to do the right thing and make the world a better place. In some cases it might even be like Schindler at the beginning, it might be “good for business.” There could be profits in getting us off fossil fuels, in letting gay people have weddings, whatever. Or even if there’s not, still you can “Go home to your families as men, not murderers” for doing what you knew in your heart was right.

Ralph Fiennes as the Nazi commandant Goeth is a hell of character too. He’s an evil fucking bastard – some mornings he likes to go out on the porch shirtless and pick off random prisoners with a sniper rifle – but like Verhoeven did later in BLACK BOOK Spielberg dares to give him the monster a few human qualities. His lust for a Jewish woman makes him fantasize about running off with her after the war, and that in turn makes him stand up for Schindler when he gets in trouble for kissing a Jewish woman. It almost seems like they’re building a real friendship, but of course it’s more of a working relationship. Schindler’s gotta butter this guy up to get what he needs out of him, just like buying drinks for the officers in the opening scene. He’s gotta become sort of buddies so he can spray the train cars with hoses (to get much needed water to the prisoners) and make Goeth think it’s a funny, cruel trick. Ha ha, let’s spray ‘em with hoses.

This guy is one of history’s biggest monsters, but in his mind he’s just a hard-working joe who never catches a break. In one amazing scene he complains to Schindler about what a pain in the ass it was to build a concentration camp. I mean, have you ever worked with barbed wire? You don’t really think about how hard it is to string that shit up. It’s hard to imagine somebody being so oblivious to whine about something like that, but of course if somebody was gonna do it it would be the fuckin Nazis. Something felt really horribly true about that scene. I believed that he probly really felt that way.

SCHINDLER’S LIST is obviously a story about an exceptionally heroic operation, but I think it’s comforting just to know there were some people in Germany and Poland who tried to do something, didn’t just go along with the program. The Bad Germans, maybe you’d call them. I read that Adi Dassler of Adidas did a little bit of that, giving jobs in his factory to Jews in order to shield them. Obviously not on the same level as Schindler, but I wonder how widespread that was? It’s nice if alot of places were doing it. I mean, what do we sacrifice these days to try to make the world better? Maybe drive a Prius?

There are a hundred little details in the filmmaking that work brilliantly. In the opening, as hundreds of Jews are brought to the ghetto on trains, he starts to focus in on a bureaucrat’s preparations of pen and ink, so he can put their names on a list. Of course this is later reflected with the preparations of the titular list to save as many of them as possible. Another great early scene – one that feels very loose for Spielberg – has a bunch of Jews standing around talking about life in the ghetto, offering different opinions of it, because none of them really realize how bad it’s gonna get. I swear it’s like a Spike Lee scene, like Mother Sister or Da Mayor talking to Martin Lawrence and the other kids in DO THE RIGHT THING.

I don’t know specifically why Spielberg went with the black and white, but it’s perfect. When people use it now black and white can be very stylized, another step away from reality, and a way to emphasize shadows and contrasts, create a dreamy film noir type of atmosphere. That’s not what this is at all. This looks raw and real, like a newsreel maybe. Spielberg tried out more stripped down documentary type of camerawork, but not the kind where it shakes around and looks like crap. I guess he didn’t use cranes or steadicams and did almost half of it with handheld cameras, so it looks different from his other movies. I think subconsciously it feels a little more “real,” but without sacrificing his usual clear visual storytelling and energetic cuts.

Some day if somebody wants to humiliate me they could confront me with all the movies I have publicly admitted to crying at part of. And alright you assholes, you can add this one to the list. I gotta admit I was unprepared for the little epilogue at the end where real life surviving “Schindler Jews” visit his grave. I thought I was through the woods with my manhood intact and that fucker snuck up on me. It could’ve ended with the ol’ onscreen text telling you how many lives Schindler saved, but it takes the next step and makes you actually see real live people who would not exist if not for the events depicted in the movie. I mean, I thought Neeson was really good in DARKMAN too, but it didn’t end with actual saved lives.

Nothing against DARKMAN, I also like DARKMAN. Part 3 is pretty good too. SCHINDLER’S LIST is not very much like the DARKMANs in my opinion but I still recommend it highly.

But if I saw this without knowing anything about it I would definitely guess that it was a John Landis movie. It has that type of deadpan but broad comedy with a huge cast of great character actors and little cameos and all kinds of side characters that keep popping up. It has both Blues Brothers and various Animal Housers in it. Most of all it has huge, expensive, elaborate, excessive mayhem in the service of laughs. Chases, stunts, fights, riots, crashes, chain reactions, jokes.

Look at this damn cast, man: Toshiro Mifune. Christopher Lee as a Nazi. Belushi, Aykroyd, Candy, Joe Flaherty. He doesn’t really get to do anything, but Mickey Rourke is in there, his first role. Eddie Deezen and a ventriloquist dummy. Nancy Allen. Ned Beatty. Slim Pickens as a constipated redneck Christmas tree salesman who refuses to give up the location of Hollywood under torture. Sam fuckin Fuller is in here. Warren fuckin Oates is in here. Treat The Substitute 2 Williams is in here. And Robert Stack. Laverne and Lenny and Squiggy. Dick Miller, John Landis, the guy that directed HITCH, James Caan. Pretty much everybody but R2D2 or Dr. Joyce Brothers is in this movie somewhere.

They all play people on the California coast when America is reeling from the attack in Hawaii and bracing for the possibility of another one. Sure enough, a Japanese sub helmed by Mifune (and with Lee on board) has gotten lost, found California by accident and has decided to attack Hollywood. If they can find it.

But there’s an American lost too: drunken, clearly insane Belushi flies a jet over canyons, to dusty gas stations, between buildings. When he does land he happens to meet up with a general just as crazy as him played by Warren Oates. The story is credited to John Milius – maybe he wanted to top Colonel Kurtz by having two of him.

Today 1941 almost plays like a parody sequel to PEARL HARBOR. It’s about the same length and has a similar structure: young soldiers and the women who love them try to hook up and go to dances and shit, meanwhile a Japanese attack is imminent, racial tensions rise, and everybody checks in for a scrappy attempted defense against an attack involving excellent dogfight special effects. But while PEARL HARBOR has a weirdly goofy tone for a while it does try to get serious, something 1941 never even comes close to.

Both John Wayne and Charlton Heston turned down roles in the movie, and Wayne tried to convince Spielberg that it was offensive to make a joke out of this. He had a point. I mean, DR. STRANGELOVE is an obvious influence, and that’s about as dark of a topic as there is, but it didn’t involve an actual historic incident where lots of people died. That made it easier to laugh at, I think.

On the other hand there’s something really powerful about taking such a serious moment in American history and portraying everybody as a bunch of goofballs. It reminds us that we can and do take ourselves too seriously and that just because shit is real doesn’t mean we’re not being idiots. Or that there’s not something funny about us. It says that even in our nation’s most trying moments we can be doofuses. And it’s okay to laugh about it.

It’s hard to even explain the plot, it’s a complicated series of events, but along the way many women’s garters are exposed, crotches are shoved into faces, a tank drives through a paint factory causing beautiful candy-colored explosions, a Rube Goldberg style chain reaction knocks over everything in a dance hall and wakes up unconscious Treat Williams. There’s a general (Stack) who makes several major military decisions based on the fact that he wants to be left alone to watch DUMBO. Karen Allen has an extreme fetish for sex on airplanes. Deezen’s ventriloquist dummy can always be counted on to be in a crowd shot having a funny reaction to a speech, or to pop his head out of the water gasping for breath while Deezen is apparently drowning. Aykroyd has a great moment where he tells Beatty that the government has decided to set up a big gun on his property. He can’t contain his smile, like he thinks he’s telling him he won the lottery. And in fact Beatty is excited about the news! Pickens has quite a battle with the Japanese when he swallows a Cracker Jack compass so it won’t help them attack Hollywood, then tries to outsmart them while they wait for him to shit it out. “This has not been honorable,” Mifune later says about the whole shitting thing.

One motif I get a kick out of is all the bad dancing in the movie. My favorite is the cook in the diner kitchen prancing around, even cracking eggs to the beat like he thinks he’s in a big musical number. Spielberg shoots it like it might be the real thing, but of course it’s amateur hour. It’s all off and he looks like an idiot.

I have to take a moment to compliment the visual effects on this movie. There’s this whole airplane chase between buildings that looks amazing, and doesn’t have any of those black outlines you usually see on that type of stuff. I assume they did it sort of like the space battles in STAR WARS, but it wasn’t Industrial Light and Magic that did it. It was actually the guys who did effects on TORA TORA TORA and APOCALYPSE NOW. They got an Oscar nomination on this one but honorably lost out to ALIEN.

Also the music by John Williams is very catchy and patriotic-sounding and I’m pretty sure it’s what they were trying to imitate with the POLICE ACADEMY theme. So, influential.

I can see how 1941 could be too long or too broad or too too-soon for somebody, but it makes me laugh. Comedies with this level of technical complexity and production value are pretty rare – it really is an epic – so it’s impressive when you come across one. I like it.

note: I watched the extended version. I can’t compare it to the other one since I haven’t seen it, but it sounds like the way to go since the studio made Spielberg cut it shorter than he wanted to and he later went back and added stuff back in before it started playing on television.

This movie is designed as the ultimate nerd fantasy, like one of those Charles Atlas guy-kicking-sand-in-your-face ads adapted into a movie. In the first chunk, state of the art special effects are used to turn musclebound actor Chris Evans into a skeletal, 5-foot tall weenie. He also has asthma and other ailments glimpsed listed on a form, I didn’t catch if he was allergic to peanuts or not. He doesn’t know how to talk to girls or dance. But he fuckin believes, man. And he wants to join the military not to kill Nazis but because “I hate bullies.” Every time he tries to sign up they reject him on the grounds that it would be wiser to mail a bunch of potato chips in an envelope than to send this fragile little snowflake of a man into a war zone. So he keeps going back and re-applying under fake names. Fortunately Stanley Tucci as a scientist (and therefore a member or affiliate of the nerd community) sees what a good person he is and chooses him for a secret government program where they inject him with comic book shit that turns him into non-digitally-altered, musclebound Chris Evans, super soldier. Also he can jump high.

Because of his new body he’s able to talk to and get it on with a super hot and cool human female (Hayley Atwell). But don’t worry, Steve Rogers deserves some credit here, we can’t give it all to performance enhancing science. You gotta be a good person for this super soldier treatment to make you Captain America. This guy Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) is the leader of Hydra, he had an early version of the treatment but he was just such a dick that it made him into a monster instead of a super hero. I’m not sure what he’s supposed to be exactly, he’s not a skull. He has no nose but he has ears, and when they show him in extreme closeup you can see the black painted on cheekbones like Halloween makeup.

Fortunately the fantasy goes beyond the nerd wish fulfillment, so it ends up feeling pretty universal in its appeal. It’s also an idealized version of war heroism, where he gets to go prove himself fighting against guys who are even worse than Nazis. He gets to rescue his best friend, work with his girlfriend, not only does he win over the hard-bitten colonel (Tommy Lee Jones, a nice addition to the movie), but inspires him to come into battle himself and personally rescue the Captain while driving an awesome car. While Captain America is wearing his American pride on his sleeve (not to mention his pants, his chest, his head and his shield) he also represents diversity and world unity by putting together and leading an elite platoon that includes a Japanese-American, an African-American, a British guy, a French guy, and Neal McDonough.

Captain America’s powers work good for an action movie. No flying, morphing or shooting magic beams, just exaggerated strength, which most guys have in action movies anyway. That combined with Mr. Rogers’s never-give-up, can-do attitude means lots of punching, motorcycle jumping, jet plane commandeering, even a barefoot foot chase through New York City.

I was impressed by the wide variety of forms of transportation that the Captain ejects Hydra soldiers from. Off the top of my head I remember a truck, some motorcycles, a car I think, a train, two different types of aircraft and even a submarine (my favorite). That’s a good way to keep the action interesting when you got land, sea and air. Hopefully THE AVENGERS will allow him to throw people off a subway, a Segway, maybe a space ship.

There’s alot of fun action with Captain America and his team, the Captain Americans. Some of it is kind of rushed through in montages to show that time is passing. I wish they took the care to have a more elaborate sort of WHERE EAGLES DARE type of attack on a Nazi compound or something, but oh well. It’s pretty good stuff, and there’s one thing that’s unique about how he fights.

Because America at its best likes to think of itself as a defender and not an imperialist, Captain America’s primary weapon isn’t a gun, it’s a shield. It’s a really good one made out of “the rarest metal on Earth.” He uses it to deflect but also to bash things open. He throws it like a boomerang or a Frisbee. I’m sure it would work well as a sled, an umbrella, a water bowl for bald eagles to drink out of. In one great moment he tosses it down a hallway to jam some closing metal doors open, but immediately wishes he had it because a motherfucker comes after him with a blowtorch. I got kinda nervous actually when he had to leave his shield behind during one fight. I didn’t want him to lose that thing.

What is it about these Old Timey Throwback Adventure Movies, like this and THE PHANTOM? I guess if they were coming out a couple a year we’d hate them but they’re infrequent enough that they always seem refreshing. Do you remember the old pulp magazines and radio plays? No, we remember people remembering them. Instead of nostalgia for the actual time period we have nostalgia for the nostalgia of the time period. It’s made to remind us of the movies and things we’ve seen before about that time. This one is a little different because on the surface it pretends to be about war and patriotism. But it’s not so much filling an American’s heart with pride about what it means to be an American as reminding us of the kitschy fun of the progaganda they used to have, remember how we read that they used to have that? What a fun time! USA! USA!

Luckily you can get away with that because Nazis are the ultimate bad guys. I mean, who doesn’t hate Nazis? Only Nazis don’t, and fuck those guys. So you can watch a fun WWII movie and not have to feel bad about the bad guy soldiers getting shot or tossed off planes or whatever. It worked for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, obviously, but after SCHINDLER’S LIST Spielberg allegedly decided he wouldn’t do Nazis in a “fun” movie anymore because it’s too serious of a subject. Tarantino and Verhoeven have since made fun WWII movies, but not light like this. Those were hard-R movies that dealt specifically with the horrors of the war. Obviously neither Captain America or director Joe Johnston are ever gonna go that route, so they kind of go in between – it’s still WWII, it’s still Hitler, but swastikas are replaced by this Hydra symbol, and the bad guys actually separate from Hitler. So you can be content that the Red Skull is a fun bad guy that we gotta stop from ruling the world and hopefully not think too much about genocide or concentration camps. (Not that either of those things ever came up in an Indiana Jones movie. Or should’ve.)

In fact, Johnston shows us specifically where to locate Captain America on the Indiana Jones map. There’s a line about Hitler’s people being out in the desert looking for artifacts – but while those chumps are out digging up arks and getting their faces melted Hydra are the guys who have actually had success acquiring occult mcmuffins like The Glowing Cube of Whatever It Does. Johnston was the art director for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK as well as the second and third STAR WARSes, and he’s definitely going for some of that “Remember Good Old Fashioned Fun?” type nostalgia, with some success. There’s a motorcycle chase reminiscent of the speedy bike chase, there’s a mid-air battle that reminds me of tie fighters, the Hydra soldiers even wear masks kinda like the tie fighter pilots. (Yeah, I know about Star Wars stuff. I’m an American.)

I think they do fine skirting any potential WWII tackiness issues, but I’m a little iffy on the (ENDING SPOILER) climactic scene where Captain America chooses to sacrifice himself by forcing down a jet that’s headed to New York City on a kamikaze mission. Maybe nobody else was thinking United 93, but I was, and that took me out of it. But I can see how you could defend that. It’s sampling heroism instead of just tragedy, like TRANSFORMERS 3 did with its visual allusions to the Challenger explosion and people jumping out of the WTC towers.

Despite that somewhat ballsy move I think Johnston is about as bland of a director as has ever been created. He’s made few terrible movies and no great ones. People always like to dig out THE ROCKETEER – yeah, I remember that being pretty good too. But it was twenty years ago and it wasn’t exactly MAD MAX. Other than that his best movie is, what, HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS? I’d probly guess HIDALGO was pretty good, except I can’t because I saw it. He had old west Viggo Mortensen in a cross country horse race to unite the countries in the middle east, how the fuck did he make such a snoozer of a movie out of that? Nothing about it is real bad, but nothing about it is real good either. It has everything and nothing that a great movie needs. That’s also how we got JURASSIC PARK III and THE WOLFMAN. It’s the Joe Johnston touch.

He was a good art director, but the ones he actually directs don’t tend to look so hot. I guess WOLFMAN had some nice shots. This one is gloomy and colorless, with settings surprisingly similar to those of the widely hated low budget CAPTAIN AMERICA made by Friend of Outlawvern.com Albert Pyun. For the thumbnail at the top of the review I really tried but couldn’t find a still that I thought made Captain America look cool. It’s a director with an art background adapting drawings into a movie and somehow it’s not all that visual.

And there are little beats that aren’t quite there. Like there’s a funny part where Captain America is chasing a Nazi through New York and the guy throws a kid in the water. The Captain looks over the edge and the kid says “Go get him! I can swim!” Great joke, good timing and everything but why doesn’t the Captain look like he’s about to dive in to save him, don’t you need that to set up the joke? Johnston’s got the words but doesn’t know how to deliver it quite right.

Oh well. It works. It’s not as beautifully directed as BLADE or IRON MAN. It doesn’t look as stylish, it doesn’t feel as new. But it does follow the Marvel pattern of having a strong cast centered around a charismatic lead. Maybe not quite on the level of Thor, but I thought the story and action were better. There are lots of two-dimensional but fun characters, some funny lines and moments, a good pace. Red Skull is only an okay villain, but at least Weaving uses an accent partially based on Werner Herzog’s (that’s what it sounded like to me and then I read that really was his intent).

There are the really visionary, interesting comic book movies like BLADE 1-2, the Nolan BATMANs and HULK, and there are the also rans. This is for sure in the lower category, but as far as those go it’s one of the more entertaining ones. Like a pretty solid western as opposed to a great one.

It’s a nice fairy tale of a naive human stickbug who, through will power, science and jumping, saves lives and inspires his entire country. Like most super heroes you get a scene of kids running around dressed as him, to show that he has inspired them. It’s nice to see the kids of all races playing together like Captain America and his team. Although it sucks that the white kid has to be in front carrying the garbage can lid.

EVEN MORE ALL-AMERICAN END SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

If it wasn’t a setup for THE AVENGERS I’m sure it would’ve ended on that sweet but obvious note. It would’ve stayed in WWII which would be nice because I’d like to see those characters like Peggy, the Colonel and Neal McDonough again. But they wanted to get him to 2012 in his own movie so it wouldn’t seem silly when they do it in THE AVENGERS. So they worked it into the structure, a wraparound story about him becoming The First Avenger.

I like that they don’t overexplain it. We learned earlierr that his metabolism works so fast it’s impossible for him to get drunk. We can assume this is why he crashed in Antarctica and woke up 70 years later, no need for Nick Fury or somebody to give him a speech about it.

The reason the wraparound works for me is it turns Captain Nerd’s Greatest Fantasy into a uniquely tragic figure. Not even like Batman, because there’s nothing to avenge. The movie ends with this poor bastard realizing that in the blink of an eye he skipped 70 years, so he lost the girl he (in his mind) just fell in love with. In fact everybody he knows has disappeared. We never heard about a family, but we saw all the friends and allies he made, all gone. Now some guy in an eyepatch is yelling at him and he’s gonna have to work with the smartass son of the guy who used to build his weapons. Music has gotten terrible, he missed the V-Day celebration, and also free love and all that shit. And the Rambo and Rocky movies. He was just in WW2, now they’ll probly ship him off to Afghanistan with no peace time in between. Damn, he’s probly still getting used to his new body, now this shit. He’s Ripped Van Winkle.

And the weirdest part – maybe the ingenious part – is that he responds with one line that plays like a cute little joke, and then it slams into the credits. It pretends it’s saying “HOORAY!” but really it’s horribly sad. I say maybe it’s ingenious because I love the weird contradictory feeling it gives me, but I suspect that wasn’t what Johnston was going for. I’m not really sure. And it doesn’t really matter.

Loosely based on Disneyland’s Skyway and Matterhorn rides, WHERE EAGLES DARE is the story of a team of British commandos (Richard Burton, others) and one American (Clint) sent on a mission to infiltrate the Nazi-infested castle and rescue a captured general before he’s enhanced-interrogationed into giving up the Allied war plans or something. So they have to skydive, go on a snow trek, mountain climb, sneak in wearing Nazi uniforms, fit in, drink German beer (which Clint was against in THE ROOKIE, saying it has no aftertaste), and all kinds of dangerous shit.

Burton is the man with the plan. He does most of the talking and instructing. He also has two (2) hot mamas he meets up with, one (Mary Ure) already a bar maid in the castle, the other (Ingrid Pitt) pretending to be the fake bar maid’s cousin. He’s sneaking around behind the others’ back and could be a traitor himself, you never know. Or just a lady’s man.

There’s a whole lot of intrigue in this thing: An Aryan douchebag who seems dangerously close to discovering the plot. Word of a mole somewhere in MI-6. A long, convoluted monologue explaining who’s really who and what they’re up to. But there’s also a ton of action: ski lift stunts, shootouts, bombings, truck crashes, a bus with a snow shovel on the front. While it takes its sweet British time getting there it eventually gets to an epic series of uninterrupted action sequences. What makes it so awesome is the quiet, confident professionalism of these characters. When Burton blurts out an instruction they know exactly how to do it, they don’t gotta ask questions. More often than that he doesn’t even have to say anything. They know exactly what to do without having to tell each other with more than a glance or a nod. When it comes time to quit ducking bullets in the bus, stand up and shoot back they do it without hesitation, without flinching, without showing much emotion. And this includes the women. Equality, man.

(The irony of movies using women to do more than stand around looking hot is that it makes them way hotter. I mean, look at this:

Don’t you think?)

During the truck chase they just get out, set up bombs, keep going, blow up the bridge behind them. Like clockwork. It reminds me of a heist movie, a carefully rehearsed plan. They know exactly what to do.

Watching this now you definitely gotta notice the influence on INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Not just the drinking and trying not to seem phony in their shitbag uniforms, not just the unflinching assassination of any S.S. fucker that gets in their way, but even the expository mission briefing scene that seems awfully similar to the Mike Meyers one in BASTERDS. Of course, Tarantino cites this movie as what he was trying not to do by having all his characters speak their own languages. EAGLES uses the more common and less Mel-Gibson-approved method of just having everybody speak English, and doesn’t even bother with the commonly accepted rule German-accented-English = German. This is the movie’s one big weakness.

I don’t care about the lack of realism. This is imagination and fun. But I have to admit I got a little lost during the crucial scene where Burton lays out his scheme to a table full of guys in Nazi uniforms. Since the movie doesn’t really spend much time developing the other team members besides Burton and Eastwood and since they’re all wearing Nazi uniforms and since they all talk the same I had a hard time remembering who was real Nazis and who was fake ones. Especially since one of them is now claiming to be a fake fake Nazi. So that was a problem, but I got past it.

Clint’s part is pretty different from usual because he’s kind of the sidekick or supporting badass. But he’s one of those supporting characters who seems very present in the scenes even though somebody else is talking. You always wonder what he’s thinking, except when you can clearly tell what he’s thinking. You see him skeptical of Burton, but playing along, or waiting patiently to see where this is going. He’s kind of an American ideal (stoic, cynical, bomb expert) teamed with Burton as more of a British ideal (articulate mastermind) as a tribute to all the great things the British and Americans have done together over the years such as Monty Python, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the publication of Seagalogy.

The script is by the novelist Alistair MacLean (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE), not as an adaptation of a novel but as a movie-book-combo in the tradition of such cinemaliteratical works as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and MR. MAJESTYK. The whole thing is a really well put together production, a real epic feel with a great Indiana-Jones-exciting score by Ron Goodwin and snowy locations nicely shot by Arthur Ibbetson. The director was Brian G. Hutton, whose KELLY’S HEROES is also coming up on my list of Clint movies to review. But it sounds like alot of the credit for this one has to go to an individual by the excellent handle of Yakima Canutt, who was a stuntman and occasional director going back to the silent film days. Here he was second unit director so he shot most of the action scenes (something he also did for BEN-HUR and SPARTACUS.)

As a Clint-centric viewer I gotta admit I don’t place this as high on the list as most of you guys seem to. It’s much more of a European thriller sensibility than the American grittiness I appreciate him for. But it’s a real enjoyable movie of its type that uses him well for extra flavor. It has some satisfying twists, is well structured to keep getting more exciting as it goes along and definitely has some of the best action sequences of its era. But again, there are not any birds in it, so the title doesn’t make any sense.

Oh wait, that’s a metaphor I bet. Good job, brave eagles. May your wings fly and then you kill other more hateful birds with courageous talons of justice, or whatever.

[ratings]

For the cons it’s a good deal too. They get to go outside. If it’s true they like killing, here’s their chance for more. They get to postpone their executions, or kill some time before their executions. And if they do a good job and survive they might get pardoned, maybe, if fuckin Ernest Borgnine sees it in his heart. If they die in the line of duty, well, maybe they’d rather die that way than on a rope.

Their major is the hated-by-the-brass Reisman (Lee G.D. Marvin). He has to train a crew of fuckups including Jim Brown (not fond of whites), John Cassavetes (adverse to authority), Telly Savalas (rapist who thinks he works for God), Donald Sutherland (young), Trini Lopez (on guitar) and Charles motherfuckin Bronson. If some of them gotta be murderers in order to bring a team like that together then, well, break a few eggs I guess. That’s a good lineup.

There are alot of sections to this movie: first he goes in and talks to them in their cells, convinces them to join. Then he starts training them, and has to get them to form bonds and work together as a unit, which isn’t easy. Then they form a rivalry with another squad and have to humiliate them in war games or their mission will be cancelled and they’ll go back to death row. Then they finally have the mission.

Of course, most of the dozen are sympathetic. Kind of a cheat. Almost all of them had honorable reasons for killing. Only Savalas is really despicable and dangerous. They put him on lookout duty when they have a party with prostitutes, because he can’t be trusted around women. He seems to think of any woman as a whore, who knows what he’s gonna think about an actual whore.

But they’re these scrappy outcasts who disdain authority, discipline and military order. So this is kind of like THE BAD NEWS BEARS as a WWII movie. You laugh as they fuck everything up, then the gruff major/coach who plays by his own rules (PBHOR) slowly whips them into shape. They bond, they have an underdog competition against another team who are so arrogant you want to see them lose bad and run home crying like babies. And the Dozen do beat them, they get to rub it in their faces. And even though the characterization isn’t all that deep you almost feel like you’re on their team too, becoming friends with them.

It’s also kind of like another movie by the same director, Robert Aldrich: THE LONGEST YARD. If you haven’t seen the original pre-Sandler one it’s a real broad comedy where inmates get to play (American) football against the screws. All these movies have an idea that we Americans like to think is very American, but that probaly transcends all cultures: the team of individuals. They’re all rebels who stand alone and PBTOR, but then after they hang around each other long enough they accidentally bond and next thing you know the loners are a team, united in one goal.

They’re also rebels that are part of the system, that’s another way they have their cake and yet also eat their cake. They reject the military and yet are military heroes. The Dirty Dozen are soldiers like Dirty Harry’s a cop.

THE DIRTY DOZEN is a fun movie, it’s not a gloomy war movie, but it also has some parts that were very graphic for the time. I mean, they really massacre those Nazis at the end. It was obviously an influence on Mr. Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and a reason why some people might think the Basterds are wimps. They’re all Donald Sutherlands with no Charles Bronsons or Jim Browns. That’s alot to live up to.

I love these types of premises, so I was surprised to learn from the extras that this was inspired by a real thing. It’s based on a book and the author of that book claims it came out of research and stories he heard about an actual group of condemned soldiers sent on a secret mission in WWII. The DVD also talks about some group called “The Filthy 13″ who were so dedicated to the art of war that they didn’t have time for grooming, so that’s where he got that idea.

Wouldn’t it be cool if when they were fighting the Nazis the Nazis kept looking like they were gonna puke and saying, “Holy God what is that smell!?” That’s one thing people tend to forget about the Dirty Dozen. They smell like ass.

Anyway I wouldn’t say this is a masterpiece, but I do consider it a classic, and I think if for some reason you haven’t seen it you should add that to your to-do list.

[ratings]

(SPOILER GENERAL’S WARNING: I wish I had gone in knowing less, so you probaly shouldn’t read this before seeing the movie. To be safe though I’ll try to be vague.)

You always kind of know what you’re gonna get with Tarantino, and yet, you never know what you’re gonna get with Tarantino. Every movie he’s made after PULP FICTION seems to throw people for a loop at first. Why isn’t JACKIE BROWN more like PULP FICTION? Why isn’t KILL BILL more serious, like JACKIE BROWN? Why is KILL BILL VOLUME 2 all this character and shit instead of all the killing like part 1? Why does he take so long to make his movies, what an asshole. Why did he make DEATH PROOF as a quickie just-for-fun movie, what an asshole.

I don’t know what the conventional wisdom will be on this one, but the advertising is definitely gonna mislead some people. They try to act like it’s gonna be a bloody, nihilistic action movie, but the electric guitars and blood splatters are liars. It has a couple scenes of ultra-violence but even more than any Tarantino movie except maybe RESERVOIR DOGS this is a movie all about long conversations. In a way it kind of reminds me of Jim Jarmusch’s challengingly uneventful THE LIMITS OF CONTROL. It’s not as deliberately repetitive, as minimalistic or as strict about its structure, but it is mostly built out of a series of conversations that repeat the same motifs. In almost every scene there’s one party trying to hide a secret, like that they’re a double agent, that they’re not the nationality they say they are, or the location of the other troops. And the other party engages them in a long conversation, pretending to be friendly, trying to draw out information to be sure of their suspicions, or trying to convince the other party to do what they want. And usually the secret is revealed and some violence happens.

The characters are always proud to know that their reputations precede them, but they still want to listen to their own legends. I assume you’ve heard about me? Yes, of course I’ve heard about you. What have you heard about me?

Meanwhile there’s a plot in the works, a slow, almost DePalmian build toward a secret operation that if successful would mean some very satisfying Jewish revenge against their Nazi oppressors. And Tarantino has the balls or poor taste to go much further into exploitation than any other American World War II movie. So it’s a slow slog but with a nice warm bath at the end. (note to self replace analogy with good one)

I also thought a few times of Spike Lee’s MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, which is not very similar either but it’s another case of a director with a distinct, idiosyncratic style that I’m surprised to see applied to a WWII movie all the sudden. In Tarantino’s 1941 you still get pop culture references, but instead of FRIDAY FOSTER they talk about MATA HARI, and there’s alot of G.W. Pabst references. I’m not joking. But believe it or not it’s all very organic. The assassination plot takes place at the premiere of a German propaganda film, so some of the main characters include a theater owner, some actors and Joseph Goebels (portrayed like a Hollywood studio honcho). In one scene a soldier who is also a film critic briefs Winston Churchill on German film movements.

In fact, the fake and the pretend seems to be one of the main themes of the movie. People pretending to be on the other team, pretending not to be Jewish, pretending to be different nationalities, playing a game where they pretend to be a famous person, actors playing roles, real people acting as themselves in a propaganda film which is a fake version of his true story (true within BASTERDS, but not in the real world), BASTERDS itself being a propaganda movie with a fake version of history… Pitt’s character Aldo has to pretend a few times, but he’s not very good at it. He doesn’t like it. One of his obsessions is making sure that Nazis can’t just take off their uniform and pretend not to be Nazis.

Taking place in France, with plenty of subtitled French and German dialogue, and with the historical context, BASTERDS has a bit of a European arthouse feel. But Tarantino doesn’t seem to feel at all restrained stylistically. He still recycles Ennio Morricone cues (and Lalo Schifrin and others), he has chapter titles like in KILL BILL, some goofy hand-written captions now and then, some blaxploitation freeze frame character introductions, a montage set to a David Bowie song (which made people laugh when I saw it), even a celebrity third person omniscient narrator. These seem like occasional indulgences though, not a constant barrage like NATURAL BORN KILLERS or CRANK or something, so they’re kind of charming. Usually WWII movies try to be so reverential. This movie’s pretty funny.

Tarantino misled people about the movie with all those years talking about it being “my men-on-a-mission movie.” I think it must’ve evolved as he was writing it, because it’s not anything like THE DIRTY DOZEN or the original correctly spelled INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. The Basterds aren’t even really a team of badasses. I guess Pitt is playing tough, and Eli Roth (who does surprisingly fine in his role) put on some muscle. For most of the other guys they just cast weiners. The only guy that seems genuinely tough is Hugo, played by Til Schweiger. He has a great introduction but doesn’t do much after that.

The Basterds are also only inglorious to their Nazi foes, they’re not outcasts from their own side like in those other two movies I just mentioned. Unless maybe we just didn’t get their backstory. Aldo does have a scar on his neck, maybe he was facing execution. Anyway, the Basterds are only one component of the movie, they’re on screen maybe half of the movie. There’s alot of other stuff going on.

The most memorable character and performance is definitely Christoph Waltz as the lead villain, Hans Landa. He’s a classic villain, a murderous Nazi with the job of tracking down Jews hiding in France, who fancies himself a master detective. He’s an unusual portrayal of a Nazi because he’s a goofball, a dork. You want to laugh at him but you know how dangerous he is. He plays with his victims by pretending to be friendly, but not in that usual “I’m saying friendly things but you know I’m really threatening you” kind of villainous way. He makes it so you almost believe him – maybe he really doesn’t know? And sometimes he doesn’t.

Tarantino takes full advantage of the ultimate bad guy status of Nazis. By definition Nazis are horrible people. Any other group, you’re gonna feel kind of bad seeing them beat to death with a baseball bat, maybe they don’t deserve it. Not so much with a Nazi. This Landa guy, he’s infuriating because he doesn’t seem as hateful as your usual movie Nazi. He’s almost worse because he seems like he just found something that he’s good at and sees no reason why he shouldn’t choose that as his vocation. He’s playing a game, he has no idea that he’s the bad guy. And you wish you could fucking convince him.

But still, they’re human beings, that’s the weird part. There’s another major Nazi character who, from what you see on screen, is mostly a nice guy. And when SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER THIS IS THE BIG ONE a crowd of unarmed Nazis are running in panic while being machine gunned it really messed with my emotions. My face smiled but my brain thought oh Jesus, they’re scurrying around like rats. That’s harsh.

Tarantino is both renowned and notorious for his dialogue. Sometimes maybe he goes overboard. I think there’s more going on in the conversations in DEATH PROOF than some people give it credit for, but he does get excessive there. BASTERDS I think must have his most precise use of dialogue. The conversations are the movie, they’re the characters, they’re the suspense, they’re the action (most of it). I mentioned DePalma before – think of the bucket of pig’s blood in CARRIE, the way he draws that scene out in slow motion. You know what it’s leading up to, but you have to watch it go down veeeeeeerrrry slowly, all the pieces coming together, all the people who are there, the looks on their faces, the bucket, the rope, who sees the bucket, who tries to stop the bucket, Carrie doesn’t see the bucket… the grueling wait is the beauty of it. Tarantino’s BASTERDS conversations are the same way. You know what the secret is. You know that the one side is probaly gonna figure out the secret. And you’re gonna have to sit there as they slowly pull it out in conversation, word by word. It’s a bunch of individual scenes of suspense that seem somewhat disconnected until you find yourself at the climax, all the characters are there, are the plans are in motion, and you’re wondering how this is all gonna come to a head.

A NOTE TO THE INTERNET:

I don’t want to lecture anybody, but I just want to say that I wish the internet hadn’t covered this movie the way they did. Before the movie was made the script got leaked and everybody from Ain’t It Cool, Chud etc. couldn’t restrain themselves from reading it. I didn’t read their reviews because I didn’t want to know anything. But I still couldn’t avoid the spoilers because they all had to constantly drop the names and nicknames of the characters, the name and significance of a film-within-the-film, and all that kind of shit. If there was a story about Brad Pitt they had to drop in “who plays X in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, nicknamed Y because of Q.”

Yeah, we get it, you’re on the inside, you’re in the know, you’re ahead of the curve, whooptee fuckin doo. If it was “the watchmen” and everybody read the comic already then yes, you can show off that you know who Dr. Manhattan is. But I purposely didn’t read any spoilers and still knew the names of every fuckin character. It felt like going to see THE LION KING on the first day and all the kids say “Simba!” at the first sight of a lion. Man, can’t I just see the thing and find out for myself?

And there’s a pretty unusual thing Tarantino does in the movie, I’m sure it has been spoiled by many sources but for me it was spoiled before the god damn thing was filmed by somebody writing that he wouldn’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say (then goes on to make it very clear what happens but then pretend he didn’t ruin it for you because he didn’t say it in so many words). And as much as I enjoyed the movie it would’ve been much better if I watched it not knowing where it was going.

So, thanks alot, fellas.

WRAPPING THIS SHIT UP:

In case you don’t know already, I should say that my record of enjoying Tarantino-directed movies is unblemished. I love all of them – yes, even DEATH PROOF (although I think it’s his weakest). I’m not sure if I have a favorite, but the KILL BILLs (and especially part 2) are my most rewatched and beloved movies of the 2000s so far. So if you’re one of the people who hates some of his movies you can mathematically divide my praise of this movie by the number of Tarantino movies I like that you don’t like in order to get the probably level of enjoyment you’ll get out of this. I think that’s the equation.

Walking out of the theater my instinct was that BASTERDS was great, but low on my list of Tarantino favorites, maybe just above DEATH PROOF. It hit me, but I don’t think it hit me as hard as his other ones did the first time I saw them.

My complaints are all minor. Brad Pitt is really funny in the movie and gives a good physical performance, so I’m not complaining too much, but I don’t think it’s as good as the casting Tarantino usually does. I was always very conscious of it being Brad Pitt doing a funny accent and a funny face and acting tough. Most of the great Tarantino characters are more natural than that, not as much of a broad comedy character. I think it could’ve been even better with an actual (or more naturalistic) Southern tough guy in the role.

I also don’t at all get the casting of Mike Meyers. It’s a small part and he does fine but there’s no way to not think “that’s Mike Meyers” the entire time he’s on screen. It’s not shocking or anything, just distracting, kind of confusing. What is the point? The scene would work better if it was a generic British character actor.

Also, some of this is not historically accurate in my opinion. And I believe some of the spelling in the title could have been improved if he hadn’t been rushing to get it ready in time for Cannes.

But you know, those are the things I could quibble with, the list of the things I loved would take me a while. It’s like criticizing an ice cream flavor or something. Saying it’s a lesser ice cream is not saying it’s not delicious. I just don’t like it as much as the Snoqualmie Ginger, the Ben and Jerry’s Creme Brulee or the Haagen-Dazs Caramelized Pear and Toasted Pecan. (Don’t worry, that’s an analogy and not product placement, although if you are an ice cream manufacturer willing to pay me money to mention ice cream flavors in movie reviews please drop me a line).

That’s what I was thinking as I left the theater. But then I started thinking back to the beginning of the movie, the first dramatic scene with the man trying to bravely stare down and wait out Hans Landa, and I just wanted to go right back and watch the movie again. I have a feeling I’ll end up re-watching this movie every couple years or so, and whatever my misgivings about the casting probaly won’t even occur to me anymore, and there will either be something else that bothers me or something I love that I haven’t even noticed yet. We’ll see.

I’ve already noticed that like DISTRICT 9 last week I liked the movie but then gained more respect for it as I started to write about it. Because the more I think about it the more I see going on beneath the surface. With these two movies coming out now at the end of August it looks like the summer movie season is finally kicking off. Should be a good one!

[ratings]

Maybe you read about all those teenage Iraqi christians who went on a long journey hidden between boxes in the back of a truck to escape persecution and find freedom in America, and Uncle Ashcroft thanked them by throwing them in prison on unspecified “immigration violations” with no charges or plans to ever release them. Well this isn’t as bad, but I think most americans are still pretty ashamed of how we rewarded all the Hong Kong directors seeking asylum in Hollywood with the Curse of Van Damme. Anyway, if anybody could’ve overcome it we all thought it would be John Woo.

And there are different schools of thought as to how much John Woo has Totally Lost It at this point. I think I stand in the majority in saying that FACE-OFF could proudly sit on a shelf not exactly alongside his Hong Kong work but, you know, not that far below it. Maybe across the room or something but still, within the same basic section of the house, in my opinion. It was a movie that brought american style action to ridiculous new levels, while backing it up with way more sincere emotion than most americans thought they wanted. And you also gotta admire some of the gutsy choices he made, like doing this ridiculous face switching concept in a not-futuristic setting, and casting Joan Allen in a role that any other director would’ve given to a young blonde model who wants to try acting. She even gets a buttshot with suggestive bass guitar. It was definitely a John Woo movie, but it also tried some new things he hadn’t done before, like sci-fi concepts and actors playing multiple roles. I think Nic Cage was more impressive here than in the one he won the oscar for, NIGHT OF THE DRUNK or whatever it was.

But then there was MISSION/IMPOSSIBLE. I am still amazed that one hollywood blockbuster series based on an old tv show could get Brian DePalma, John Woo and David Fincher all to do one. It shoulda been great, but Woo just didn’t work out. Maybe he didn’t know how to work with that kind of studio involvement. It’s a really dumb movie but at least he put some John Woo moments in there, like the car chase that was like a dance or the scene where the bad guy disguised as Tom Cruise takes his Tom Cruise face off and underneath he is crying because his lady friend betrayed him. I figured Woo missed on this one, but he still had it in him. I didn’t agree with the people who said he had finally lost his soul.

But WINDTALKERS doesn’t help my argument. This is his World War II drama, about one of those “little known chapter in american history” type deals. Turns out Navajos were used as “code talkers”, broadcasting american military orders in coded Navajo language so the Japanese couldn’t translate it. The premise is that Nic Cage is assigned to protect one of the codetalkers, or more specifically, protect the code. If the codetalker Ben is in danger of falling into enemy hands, Nic is supposed to kill him.

Now tell me that’s not a premise John Woo should be able to hit out of the park. You got the violence, you got the cultural sharing, you got the bonding, honor, betrayal – all that John Woo shit. Obviously Nic is gonna try not to get too close to Ben, then is gonna get too close, then is gonna get in the situation he was afraid of when he tried not to get too close in the first place. You kinda know what’s gonna happen, but you don’t REALLY know what’s gonna happen because who knows where John Woo is gonna take you? Well, that’s what I thought. But John takes that and instead of giving us a John Woo picture he gives us your every day mediocre american war picture.

The movie starts out with Nic’s bad war experience before he gets the codetalker assignment. He follows an order that he probaly shouldn’t have and it ends up getting all his buddies killed. So this sets up that he’s got something to prove and in the very next scene, they’re already zooming in on him and you hear all his buddies yelling in agony. Like we might’ve assumed he was thinking about something else as he sits in a wheelchair at the veteran’s hospital. Half an hour into the movie I think there were already 3 different types of flashbacks used.

Now let me say that although it was wasted, I appreciate that they even used this topic. A while back I was trying to explain to my correspondent Andrew from New Zealand that in american popular culture, native americans barely even exist in a contemporary type situation. With the exception of SMOKE SIGNALS and an occasional big guy in a prison movie, it’s like a meteor came down and killed all the natives when John Wayne started playing cops. In New Zealand it sounds like most people are aware of issues involving descendants of the natives vs. descendants of the settlers. And not just ’cause a Maori guy played Django Fett. But here white people seem to forget that natives even exist outside of casinos and firework stands. Here at least is a movie acknowledging the existence of natives in the 20th century, and they also show that a native can be raised catholic and believe in the US of A and all this business.

Unfortunately there is nothing in this movie that is a surprise, except the part where Christian Slater gets graphically decapitated. Not to give anything away. To illustrate this concept, let me give you a brief quiz.

1. There is a macho character who makes racist comments about “injuns” and picks a fight with Nic’s Navajo partner Ben.

TRUE OR FALSE: This character ends up being saved by one of the Navajo and immediately admits out loud that he was wrong about them.

2. In the inevitable climax, Ben is injured and it is Nic’s duty to kill him before he is captured. Although Ben was angry when he learned of the “protect the code” orders he is now resigned to do his part, and yells for Nic to “Do it! Kill me!” What happens next?

a) Nic kills Ben and must live knowing that he has done right for his country but wrong for his friend. The audience is left to mourn the loss of Ben and contemplate whether to trust your country or your conscience.

b) Nic suddenly puts the gun down, announces “No one else dies!”, and dies heroically saving Ben. In an epilogue, Ben brings Nic’s dog tags to a scenic landscape and performs a traditional Navajo ritual with them.

ANSWERS: duh.

SCORING: 1-2 correct: Spielberg eat your heart out. Hold the popcorn, you’re a Hollywood expert! 0 correct: Move over, Schumacher. Don’t quit the day job fuckwad!

And I’m afraid this doesn’t work on an action level either. First of all, I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure this “world war 2″ was an actual war. So it’s hard to get as excited about the action as you do say in HARD BOILED when it’s a total fantasy, and they’re riding around on gurneys or sliding down banisters shooting through thug after thug.

In the past though that didn’t stop John Woo from achieving. BULLET IN THE HEAD for example has that whole Peckinpah “outraged by the violence I am depicting so beautifully” type feel. I mean that’s what the whole movie is about, a dude who still has a bullet lodged in his head, as a constant reminder that this shit isn’t really so fun. There are some incredibly brutal scenes in a Vietnam POW camp. In fact I saw a double feature of this with HARD BOILED afterwards and a couple people actually walked out in the middle and missed HARD BOILED completely, because they couldn’t take it.

Well the war is pretty brutal here too, with lots and lots of bayonet stabbing, people catching on fire, also I don’t know if I mentioned this but Christian Slater gets his head lobbed off with a sword and you see it laying on the ground there for a second. (Spoiler.) The problem though, is fucking Jerry Goldsmith. This asshole did the score, and he won’t fucking shut up. You know how that gal Lauryn Hill from the Fugees, she does some songs where she’s covering Dionne Warwick or whoever, and she’s singing, and the rapper Fugees have nothing to do. But they don’t want to feel left out so they’re on stage too going “1 2, 1 2, yeah, yeah.” They don’t know how to restrain themselves. Or another example, some bands they got a guy on guitar, he’s always gotta be fuckin soloing, he can’t just do some rhythm to back up somebody else every once in a while. They always gotta be in the spotlight.

Jerry Goldsmith is that guy. All through the battle scenes, all you can think of is TURN THAT FUCKIN MUSIC OFF. There is no way to get involved in the reality of these scenes because Jerry is so busy rubbing up against you trying to show off how triumphant he is. Later on there are a couple scenes where he starts trying to be a little less bombastic and a little more on the majestic side, but even here it pulls you completely out of the movie. This is a problem that only the American John Woo could have. The Hong Kong John Woo would have no problem dealing with Jerry Goldsmith. “Hey Jerry, I want to show you something in this room over here. Sit down Jerry. Oh, hold on, I forgot something. Wait here.” Then he locks the door. They can do that over there, because they don’t worry as much about unions and insurance and shit.

Anyway, it’s not a terrible movie. I’ve seen worse. But I’d rather John Woo stay home with his kids than go to battle just to make movies that Rob Cohen or somebody coulda made.

NOTE: actually turns out it was James Horner who scored it, not Jerry Goldsmith. I would change it in the article but I am too busy. Sorry Jerry.

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