What this is is Bob Dylan's son decided to direct a completely retarded pot comedy starring Method Man and Redman. Now those names may sound like a couple of cartoon comic strip heroes but really they are just two rappers who found that music was too limited a form of expression to communicate their message. Now they are speaking in the language of Cinema, and the dialect of Friday.

Or that's what they're trying I think. The mentality is more along the lines of worthless attempted-comedy garbage like Revenge of the Nerds and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. This is one of those movies where established adult music stars are playing teenagers, like House Party or Purple Rain, the movie where Prince is driving around on a motorcycle wearing fluffy scarves and purple leather coats with tails, but still lives with his parents. This is also one of those movies where the stuffy college dean and rich boyfriend and nerdy hall monitor dude either a) are the butt of some outrageous joke and they get so mad steam practically starts sprayin out their ears or b) get stoned, lose the starch from their collar and show that, believe it or not, they really know how to party!

Along the way don't be surprised if people who are races other than black (i.e. white, asian, etc.) try to use ebonics, but fail.

The plot is about how Method Man is a genius at growing different kinds of pot which can be smoked to cure many ailments homeopathically. Then one day his educated friend Ivory catches fire and dies, so instead of just pouring one on the curb he decides to grow one out of his ashes. The result is the Ivory plant, which when smoked contacts the ghost of Ivory so that he can give you answers if, say, you and Redman are taking a test to get into college.

Next thing you know Redman and Method Man are going to Harvard, using the pot ghost to help them on tests, but otherwise acting like Method Man and Redman. Sample joke: they crash their car into the Harvard sign. I mean who knows what these guys will do!

Now this may surprise you but I never went to Harvard. Please take a moment to let that sink in. Anyway I don't know for sure but I think this is probaly the most realistic depiction of Harvard life since AT LEAST Legally Blonde. Redman and Method Man both have specific women they are after and of course there is the captain of the boat rowing team to contend with. And you fuckin KNOW that guy is gonna get a wacky comeuppance! I can't wait until you see it.

I have tried to stop using the adjective retarded, out of sensitivity to retards. Unfortunately there is no other way to describe the stupidity of this movie. In a way it is much stupider than Jay and Silent Bob but I enjoyed it alot more, because it seems like Method and Red men have no illusions that they are making even a competent movie, and are only trying to make a home video that they will be able to laugh at with their friends later when they are stoned. I mean I already told you the premise so you can imagine, this is a script that was either Written in one night at a party and/or bar, or that was never Written at all. Most of the jokes that made me laugh were the ones that were so fuckin stupid I couldn't believe they actually used them. Like for example the dean's last name is Cain, so he is always referred to as Dean Cain. Which is some guy who played Superman on tv. That's why it's funny. The other things that made me laugh are just completely random touches like the cameo by Mike Epps and some other dude as a pimp and "assistant pimp", or when Redman worries that they are running out of Ivory to smoke and Method Man says "We'll just dig up some smart motherfucker and smoke his skeleton ass." (Next thing you know they are putting a decomposing hand into a blender, and you have to admire the length these rappers will go to make themselves and their friends laugh.)

They even got Spalding Gray to do a cameo as the African-American History professor, which is pretty weird. I guess it's because it's from Jersey Films, "the acclaimed producers of Get Shorty and Erin Brockovich" (that's what it says on the box to the screener I watched).

Anyway, yeah, this movie is terrible, and all you fuckin potheads will probaly enjoy it. At least you're not smokin cigarettes I guess.

HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (2001)

Some of you will wonder why I choose to watch this kind of crap. The answer is because of the French.

This one is from a series of movies made for cable called Creature Features. They have special effecting by Stan Winston (director of A GNOME NAMED GNORM) and are all based on the premises or titles of old movies produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff. They got SHE-MONSTER, DAN AYCKROYD VS. SPIDERMAN and many others. The one I'm waiting for is actually TEENAGE CAVEMAN directed by Larry Clark, the pervert who did KIDS and BULLY and ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE where the main kid wears his pants so low you can see his fuckin pubes. Jesus, Larry!

I read somewhere that TEENAGE CAVEMAN is basically a Larry Clark picture with a monster jumpin out at the end, and that sounds like just about the best thing you could possibly find on cable. You see this is all based on the Auteur Theory invented by the people of France, which states that if Larry Clark directed one movie, and you liked it, you might want to see his remake of TEENAGE CAVEMAN. But that one doesn't have a release date yet, and I only have illegal basic cable, not illegal expanded cable. So using that same European principle, I found myself watching HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER as a TEENAGE CAVEMAN warmup. This one is directed by George Huang, and due to my keen eye and street smarts I remembered that this was the same dude who directed a pretty good independent picture called SWIMMING WITH SHARKS which I guess was pretty popular at the time and probaly plays on Bravo occasionally.

Anyway, I'm betting HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER has no connection to the original, even though I haven't seen it. The reason I think this one is different is because it's about fuckin video games. And nobody cared about that shit back then because a) it hadn't been invented yet and b) people had better things to do, like runnin numbers, doing kitschy dances, taking naps, etc.

Before I go any further I should mention that this is an above average made for tv movie, meaning I was actually able to watch the whole thing, although it took three sittings. Most tv movies any reasonable person would have a hard time watching the whole thing unless they were in it, and that's only if you were a principle because otherwise you'd turn it off after your scene, in my opinion. This one had enough of interest that I actually watched it and it even had some of the ol' subtext which I felt was worth Writing about, since I am a Writer.

The story is about some company that's tryin to make the scariest video game. The main characters are 1. some asshole who is I guess a video game designer agent 2.-4. three video game designers, each with their own colorful persona and technical specialty 5. an intern who bakes cookies (Clea Duvall from JOHN CARPENTER'S DISAPPOINTING GHOSTS OF MARS). Also Julie Strain has a cameo as a character named "Julie Strain", who is an ugly chick with big tits who has a sword so nerds can jack off to pictures of her.

The video game industry is portrayed as very competitive, and this works both as George Huang's Comment About Society and as a silly way to turn computer nerds into an ALIENS type horror picture situation. You see, there is a $1 million bonus to whichever member of the team manages to make the game scary, so they get very ruthless with each other. Also, there is a high tech security system to keep an eye on them and lock them in if necessary, because they are wary of turncoats and spies from other companies. So of course when their motion control suit comes to life and starts killing people and building itself out of their weapons and pieces of their corpses, they get locked in with the monster. You gotta make sacrifices to stop corporate espionage.

There are many phoney touches to this picture that make the world hard to buy into. I am no computer expert - I mean, you've all seen my web sight. But when movie computer experts start spittin out phoney jargon like "cybergoggles" and referring to fictional companies like "Compurom", even I know it sounds fake. And why would the video game keep make references to being a game, like saying "The game is on!" I don't know about anybody else but it makes me uncomfortable watching movies where some jackass obviously had no idea what he was talking about when he Wrote the dialogue. For example poor Clea Duvall has to keep talking about how she's at this company because she has "a great idea for a dot-com." You're supposed to really think she's got a golden fuckin goose in her head even though 1. almost all of those young fuckers who tried that shit and got rich are back riding the bus again with me 2. how many really original ideas for money making web sights could be left anyway and 3. even back before we knew all this, anybody who called it a "dot-com" instead of a web sight sounded like a fuckin jackass who gets vocabulary words from the "buzzwords" charts in Newsweek.

There was one thing worse than that, though, something that was less believable even than the idea of a video game suit coming to life and killing people. It was the part where one of the characters claimed to be "a big fan of HEAVY METAL 2000". I don't care HOW much of a nerd this guy is supposed to be, there's NO FUCKIN WAY anybody is a big fan of HEAVY METAL 2000.

On the other hand there are touches that are so cartoonish that you don't need to take them seriously. My favorite thing about this film was the performance of Tyler Mane (who played Tiger Man in X-MEN) as the maniac video game weapon designer who had his name legally changed to Hardcore. He is like 8-feet tall and likes to cut himself and suck the blood out, and he leaves a bunch of axes and crossbows and shit laying around his office. (I don't want to give anything away - these MAY or MAY NOT be used by and against the monster later on. I'm not gonna say.)

Mr. Mane plays Hardcore as kind of a lovable giant who might strangle you but you still like him. He is surprisingly charismatic considering that in X-MEN all he did was growl and punch. I think he may have a great straight to video acting career ahead of him much like Roddy Piper, although who knows if he will be lucky enough to have his THEY LIVE. Fans of Badass Cinema, keep your eye on this individual.

Clea Duvall is also good as the quiet, cardigan wearing intern who serves as the video game industry outsider and therefore the moral compass. She doesn't get top billing but you know before the movie even starts that she's gonna turn into the Ripley character. It was nice this time around to have her transformation come not as much from fighting an evil robot made of computer toys and severed body parts as from being sick of being abused by men. Unfortunately the conclusion is kind of a bummer. It turns out that the movie is really about her awakening to the ugliness of the world, etc. etc. She realizes that greed and cruelty will always be here, and the only way to not be a victim is to join in on the humiliation and torture of others. She gets a new hair do and becomes a ruthless bitch video game mogul. Draw your own conclusions.

This is much like the POV of Mr. Huang's first picture, SWIMMING WITH SHARKS. If you didn't see it what it's about is Frank Whaley is the assistant to a hollywood executive named Kevin Spacey. Frank wants to work his way up to become a screenwriter, so he gets a job bringing coffee. This guy he's workin for is a real fuckin asshole though and treats him like shit, so he ties him to a chair and points a gun at him. Kevin Spacey was real good in the movie, he was such an asshole that he seemed threatening even tied to the chair. I wanted to slit his fuckin throat. Makes me mad just thinkin about him in that movie. Asshole!

But if I remember right it was the same deal, the young idealist stands up for what he believes but in the process becomes the monster he hated. But we're not talkin about the ol' stare into the abyss and the abyss stares right back at that ass thing. Because movies like this (and LA CONFIDENTIAL and a million others) present it like yeah, it turns out after all that this IS the best thing to do. Don't be a pussy. Russell Crowe was right after all, police DO need to torture their prisoners, bend the rules, maybe stick a toilet plunger up a guy's ass. In the name of justice! You're so naive.

So Clea Duvall and George Huang think they've seen it all and learned their lesson and that we need to wake up to the real world. What they don't see is that that's NOT the real world. George Huang used to be a cog in the Hollywood machine until DESPERADO director Robert Rodriguez convinced him to quit and go make his own movies. So you can understand that if this guy was some kind of movie studio executive, of course he doesn't see things clearly. But in the real world, you don't want to die and have an obituary that says "She made alot of money from some stupid video game about a devil guy with a sword. It was called 'Evilution', get it? 'Evil', not 'Evol'." Or, "He was a millionaire because he greenlighted a hit movie... but it was BATMAN AND ROBIN." Or, "He inherited his dad's oil company and presidency." Characters in movies always lust for this kind of power, and smirk at you and tell you that everybody knows it, that deep down inside that's what they want.

But I mean, I don't want to be that asshole. Do you? Sure, everybody wants money, but do you really want to kill your way to the top of some fuckin video game company? Maybe Huang was using the video game company as a metaphor for something bigger, but even then. Do you want to be some asshole unelected president responsible for the deaths of millions, but rich and admired in some american circles? Seriously, think about it. Would that be fun?

No, I think for most of us the real world is meeting interesting people, goin out for a few drinks, gettin laid, watchin BLADE II too many times, eating garlic fries, uh, listening to John Coltrane, and, you know, stuff like... I don't know. etc. Being an asshole really isn't the way to be happy. I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but what this made for cable Samuel Z. Arkoff remake co-starring an ex-pro wrestler is telling you about life is WRONG!

Let's see if Larry Clark can do better.

THE HOWLING

If you ask me, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the best werewolf picture mankind has developed so far. But watching THE HOWLING again reminded me there's at least one giving a little friendly competition, keeping AMERICAN WEREWOLF honest. Even if it's not as good.

THE HOWLING is directed by Joe "GREMLINS" Dante, so it has his usual Cormanite monster nerd business: Dick Miller in a supporting role, cameos by Roger Corman and Forrey Ackerman, some black humor here and there. But the tone is more serious than AMERICAN WEREWOLF and way more serious than anything else Dante's ever done. Filmatically I would say it's his best directing job by far. Instead of AMERICAN WEREWOLF's contemporary twist on urban gothic THE HOWLING starts out as straight up sleazy urban noir, werewolves in the world of serial killing and bondage porn. At times it feels more like a David Cronenberg than a Joe Dante.

The creepy opening has Dee Wallace (not yet Dee Wallace Stone) as a news anchor going to meet a possible serial killer in a booth at a porno theater. Of course she's wired, but the connection goes out as she's walking through early '80s L.A.'s equivalent of Times Square (shot on location). Wallace's character is very straightlaced and naive - she's in local news - so this is a scary alien place for her. Plus she's meeting this weirdo. And then the lights go out and he turns into a werewolf.

Most of the movie takes place at The Colony, a place her famous author psychiatrist runs. It's kind of a resort - you hang out outside at night under strings of lights, drinking locally brewed beer and listening to people play fiddle. A good way to live for a while, I bet. There are weirdos, though - everybody's a patient. There's the old guy who tries to end it every night by jumping in the campfire. And there's this nymphomaniac who's after Wallace's husband (who, by the way, looks kind of like Charles Bronson, I noticed). I mean if you were staying here it would be fun at first, and you probaly wouldn't suspect werewolf activity like you do as a viewer. But you would start getting a creepy WICKER MAN (original) type feeling pretty quick. Even before the cattle mutilations begin.

Now, if I gotta pick the best man-to-wolf transformation sequence, again I gotta go AMERICAN. Because I'm patriotic. That scene is so brilliant the way it's put together, that poor bastard screaming his lungs out, you know it hurts like a bitch. And the use of the music, "Blue Moon" I believe. Hilarious and awful. Perfect. But again, very admirable silver medal for THE HOWLING effects by Rob Bottin, who I know is a genius because he did THE THING. I believe he's also the guy who designed the Robocop suit. His approach on this (apparently with consultation by AMERICAN WEREWOLF's Rick Baker) is more traditional scary than Baker's, without the dark humor. But it's a similarly slow and detailed look at different parts of the body bubbling and stretching and making subtly disgusting sounds. What these two scenes did for latex makeup effects has not yet been done for the digital equivalent. I'm not sure digital could ever have the same weight, because your brain knows it's not looking at a physical object. But you could do something cool, I'm sure, instead of the usual quick morphs. Take your time with it like this one.

The music is by Pino Donaggio, an Italian I believe, and for sure the guy who did CARRIE (I have the record of that one). The script is by John Sayles, fresh off of RETURN OF THE SEACAUCUS SEVEN. And the character of Chris is played by Dennis Dugan, director of YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN. So it's class all around. And it has an ending great enough to hold its own against Landis's diabolical punchline.

And now that I'm finished with this review I feel like an asshole, because that was almost 30 years ago that these two werewolf movies came out in the same year, and I'm still comparing them. But really it's not because they came out close together, it's because they're both so damn good in a genre that is generally not high on my list of priorities. So let me be clear, THE HOWLING is not an also ran. It's some good shit.

10/11/08

This is a story about the dude who Wrote BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and how if that movie alone didn't prove that he was some kind of demented genius, then this one does. HUMAN NATURE is the story of a woman with a hormonal problem causing her whole body to be covered with hair, who lives among the animals until she falls in love with a scientist whose life work involves teaching mice the difference between a salad fork and a regular fork. Together they try to civilize a feral man who grew up in the woods thinking he was an ape.

Sounds completely silly and random, right? But what surprised me, a film expert, was the amount of Substance in there. If this were just a regular, make you laugh kind of comedy it would still be the most original, and funniest, in a long time. There were less than ten people at the showing I went to and I was embarassed because I was laughing harder than anyone else. But believe me, I'm the one that's right. This movie is fuckin hilarious.

At the same time it's pretty fuckin sad. Like in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH the characters all think they know what they want, and where they belong, but when they get it it doesn't make them happy, or it turns around to bite them on the ass. And they all play a sort of relationship musical chairs, switching partners in repeated acts of betrayal that never turn out well for anyone involved. And they all try to get what they want by pretending to be what they think the other person wants them to be, and then they get stuck pretending. Holy jesus this Charlie Kaufman dude must be fucked up, but I'm glad he is able to Write about it. Hey Charlie if you need somebody to talk to about it, I would talk for a little while a guess, if you tell me a couple jokes or something.

But it was actually the civilization vs. living in the woods crap that impressed me the most in this movie. Mr. Kaufman and his accomplice, the video director Michel Gondry, show the preposterousness of both. You have to laugh at hairy Patricia Arquette, living in the woods, singing about squirrels, getting pelted by rain storms at night and Writing bestselling books about it. But it's a much better life than Tim Robbins' character Dr. Bronfman lives, obsessing over senseless human rules about salad forks, substituting references to canonical type works (Moby Dick, Monet) for real life or appreciation of culture. In his simple mindset, you either read Moby Dick once and you're cultured or you haven't, and you're a savage. No grey area there.

More than anything this movie reminds me of the works of Mr. Bunuel, who we last discussed in my review of Van Damme & Rodman's DOUBLE TEAM. But I think Kaufman and Gondry's target is bigger than just the bourgiouse - it's humanity itself. (That's us, boys.) There are parts in this movie where you feel like you're laughing at other people, but to be frankly honest some of it made me very uncomfortable. The sight of Patricia Arquette's body covered in hair is repulsive, but it has to occur to you at some point in the movie that shaving it all every day is completely unnatural and tragic. I mean honestly I don't like to look at a woman with hairy legs or a gigantic bush, but why they fuck should they be shaving that much hair anyway? Isn't it a waste of time and effort, a daily failed attempt to thwart nature? What is wrong with us people?

Well maybe it's human nature to try, and fail, to defy human nature. Once he's completely "civilized", the feral man Puff spends his days in a tuxedo, making presentations and receiving honorary degrees, and his evenings drinking, compulsively buying porn and screwing whores. Dr. Bronfman uses shock therapy to teach Puff to control his sexual urges (so he won't masturbate in public or dry hump a stranger's ass) but he himself can't stop from having an affair with his assistant.

But I must reiterate that all this is real fuckin funny. There are so many stupid little details that make you laugh. Like the solitary, pathetic tree inside Puff's plexiglass cage that apparently is supposed to represent his natural habitat. Or the artificial fireplace that's added to his cage to represent a more civilized lifestyle. There's also alot of playing with movie conventions. A childhood flashback shows how Dr. Bronfman got his obsession with proper fork etiquette, but when his psychiatrist points out the connection, the doctor completely denies it. A character narrates from beyond the grave, but has very little insight to offer. Other characters tell their story to police interrogators and the United States Congress, but none of them seem at all interested. Rosie Perez plays that standard supportive friend character for Patricia Arquette, but she spends most of her scenes pulling hairs out of Patricia's back or feet.

If you can't stand movies where the main characters aren't completely sympathetic, you might want to sit this one out. Also if you are pretty stupid, I mean not to put too fine a point on it or whatever, but this one ain't for you either. There is masturbating and what not but this is definitely a smart people comedy. It's a movie that not so much pushes the envelope of standard comedy as just tears open the envelope, spits in it, reseals the envelope and marks it return to sender. Kind of like FREDDY GOT FINGERED, but way smarter, funnier and with better filmatism. The point is, HUMAN NATURE is the best comedy I've seen in a real long time. It is destined to make no money and be discussed and dissected for years to come.

THE HUNTED

After reviewing Franco Nero in the white ninja movie ENTER THE NINJA, I got some suggestions to check out THE HUNTED. I'm pretty sure at least one person tried to get me to review this a long time ago, so I hope you will enjoy this and forgive me for taking so long.

Christopher Lambert plays a white businessman who, along with his colleagues, has just wrapped up a big sale one night in Tokyo. Don't get too excited, he's not a ninja businessman, just a regular one in a suit and tie. Christopher decides not to go utilize some geishas with his buddies, instead going to a bar to drink by himself. But he sees Joan Chen (ON DEADLY GROUND), drinks some sake with her, ends up going back to her hotel with her. At first he's very shy and polite, doesn't go inside, but she invites him in for traditional Japanese hot tub sex.

What he doesn't know is that the leader of a deadly ninja cult played by John Lone and some other ninjas were waiting for him to leave so they could come in and chop off Joan's head. Christopher accidentally takes the wrong hotel key with him so he comes back just in time to get hit with a poisoned ninja star and watch his new love get decapitated. Pretty much one of the worst ends ever to an awesome night of sex.

But what the ninjas didn't count on is that Christopher survives. You might say that he's hard to kill. Ninjas aren't used to not killing a guy, especially a sissy white guy like this, so there is alot of turmoil and controversy within the cult. Heads do roll. Or at least, some guys get killed. I wish I could say heads roll literally, but if I remember right they don't. Sorry.

In the hospital Christopher is visited by a badass samurai who insists on being the protection instead of the police. What I forgot to mention is that he saw the ninja leader's face, which is a no no, so he's pretty much a dead man walking. A police inspector tells him all that ninja shit is bullshit, but as he's explaining this he is suddenly killed by an arrow. The samurai's argument starts to seem more convincing.

I didn't have as much fun with this as with ENTER THE NINJA but on a technical level it's a better movie. The most memorable thing is the sequence on a bullet train where the ninjas try to massacre all the passengers just so Christopher doesn't have a crowd to hide in. Even though he's the action star, the movie is smart enough to keep him cowering and getting lucky, the samurai is the one who does most of the fighting. He kills all the ninjas on the train, and the police allow him to leave, but they ask for his sword as evidence. He's so offended at the idea of somebody touching his sword that he stabs it into the ground and breaks the end off before giving it to them. Those guys love their swords, I guess.

The writer/director is J.F. Lawton, best known as the writer of PRETTY WOMAN. But he also wrote UNDER SIEGE and seems to lean more toward these action movies. UNDER SIEGE is not a clever twist kind of movie, it's just a real solid version of a certain type of formula. But this one does kind of defy your expectations, or at least mine. They have a good twist where the samurai turns out to be a little more flawed than you thought (he is stubbornly using Christopher as bait to finish off a centuries old blood feud, and therefore is responsible for the innocent people killed on the train) and the bad guy is not quite as bad as you thought he was (he decides it was wrong to kill Joan Chen so he goes and kills the guy who hired him to do it).

At the end Christopher finally has to samurai up and fight a bunch of ninjas. There are many casualties. Then the camera pulls up to show an ancient temple and it goes to the credits. It's a classy ending, but I think it would be funnier if it showed Christopher in his normal life, either back at home or on the plane going back. And he's all beat up and bruised, but wearing some kind of touristy Tokyo t-shirt or hat.

What really struck me about this movie is that it starts out pretty much the same as that Bill Murray picture LOST IN TRANSLATION. Bill is not a businessman, but he's an actor in town to do a job, he's lonely and drinking by himself in the hotel bar, he meets a hot young woman. Bill's situation is not the happiest, he is married and too old for this girl, but obviously has a connection with her and is going to miss her when he leaves. But wouldn't it be worse if ninjas decapitated Scarlett Johansen in front of him and then came after him? He got lucky, if he had hooked up with the wrong girl in that bar he very well could've been THE HUNTED instead of Christopher.

To be fair to Bill though, I think he could've handled the ninja cult just as well or better than Christopher. Christopher does all these action movies but he's not a martial artist, maybe just a swordsman at best. In the movie he is not supposed to have any supreme skills, he just learns a little bit of sword technique when he becomes drinking buddies with the Hatorri Honzo type making a new sword for the samurai. I think Bill would've made buddies with this guy too, in fact I think they would've gotten along even better, he might've given the good sword to Bill instead of the samurai.

Yeah, I'm sure of it. Bill could've done just as much fighting as Christopher does. Plus, Bill clearly has more anger in him. He is dissatisfied with his life. That is a double-whammy for sword fighting, in my opinion. On one hand, he has nothing to lose. On the other hand, he's hungry, because if he turns out to be good at killing ninjas, he will find a new purpose in life. The more I think about it the more I know in my heart that Bill Murray would've fuckin skinned these ninjas alive and torn out their hearts with his bare hands. So really it's not Bill who's lucky he met Scarlett instead of Joan. It's the ninjas. You ninjas lucked out. You're dead now, but it could've been worse. Don't ever fuck with Bill Murray.

Also there's a pretty cool score by the Japanese drumming group Kodo.

Early in William Friedkin's THE HUNTED we are introduced to its hero, L.T. Bonham (Steven Seagal), an expert in tracking, knife fighting and wilderness survival who used to train special ops soldiers in these skills. As he learned that the guys he was training were being sent to assassinate people for purely political purposes he grew disillusioned and quit. So now he's in the BC wilderness where we see him track an injured wolf through the snowy woods, get the trap off of his paw, chew up a root and rub it on the wound as a homeopathic healing agent. Then he tracks the responsible poacher down at a tavern, bangs his head against a table and tells him never to do it again.

Oh wait, did I say Steven Seagal? Actually L.T. Bonham is played by Tommy Lee Jones. I was surprised how much of this movie reminded me of Seagal, though. The story is about a special ops badass (Seagal-- er, I mean Benicio Del Toro) who comes back from Kosovo totally wacked out and kills some guys, and Tommy Lee Jones (UNDER SIEGE) is the guy who trained him so he has to help catch him. So I thought it was gonna be like FIRST BLOOD meets THE FUGITIVE. Not Steven Seagal meets Steven Seagal.

Unlike FIRST BLOOD there's not alot of build to this guy snapping, not alot of pushing him too far. There aren't circumstances back home that make him go crazy, it just happens because Kosovo was so bad. Friedkin pretty much depicts Kosovo as Hell, the whole place lit orange from flames. It's kind of a surreal opening because it starts with Johnny Cash's voice reciting a poem about God and Abraham. And it throws you off balance when some action movie starts out narrated by Johnny Cash. He could be the voice of God, or of the movie's narrator, or of Uncle Jesse from DUKES OF HAZZARD. Whatever he is he's a weird person to welcome you to an action movie. But he's Johnny Cash, so you trust him.

When Benicio gets back stateside he of course hides a Bible in a tree and lives in the woods and then slaughters a bunch of heavily armed killers using only a knife and maybe some mud or leaves or something. Friedkin cleverly leaves it up to you to decide whether the dudes were actually government "sweepers" there to take him out, as Benicio swears, or innocent deer hunters with overly powerful weapons, as the FBI will later claim. At any rate the FBI guilts Tommy Lee into going after him because he's the world's best tracker. He's the best guy for the job even before he figures out that the killer was one of his students. He taught him this wilderness survival shit, he taught him stealth and tracking, and worst of all he taught him some badass knife fighting techniques where you kill a guy like 9 different ways in five seconds.

And I wasn't joking about that wolf tracking scene. You tell me that's not a Steven Seagal character. It could be William Lansing, Seagal's character from OUT OF REACH, who is retired from the game, disillusioned, and tracks an injured bird through the woods. But that was a year after THE HUNTED so instead I will cite the precedent of Dr. Wesley McClaren of THE PATRIOT, which came out 5 years before THE HUNTED. McClaren is retired from the game, disillusioned, helping animals and people in Montana. In the opening he tracks a sick pony and gives it homeopathic medicine.

And I love that followup where he confronts the poachers. When the guy's buddies jump up for a fight Tommy Lee holds out one finger so commandingly that they all back down. And you don't blame them. I mean, if you digitally put Seagal's face onto Tommy Lee, you could take this scene and put it anywhere in ON DEADLY GROUND and it would seem right at home. It's also vaguely reminiscent of the end of OUT FOR JUSTICE, where Seagal tracks down the guy who threw a dog out of a car and kicks him in the nuts.

Del Toro's character has some Seagal in him too. He's like THE GLIMMER MAN, trained to be deadly and invisible, considered to be "off the reservation," framed and hunted by the agency that created him because he knows too much, has a relationship with a woman and a little girl. That's about the only thing that keeps it from being a Seagal movie is that you have two of these type of characters, evenly matched, facing off for the entire movie. Seagal has to have the pyramid structure where he works his way through many bad guys and gets to the top. He doesn't do a one-on-one. If it was a Seagal movie he'd be forced to play both characters, they would have to rewrite it so they're twins or something.

I wonder if anybody told the Oscar winning director and the two Oscar winning stars that they were making a Steven Seagal movie? Even stylistically, early on, it has a bit of the feel of those European espionage DTV movies Seagal does. And Del Toro does a couple weird things that are easy to imagine in a Seagal movie. For example when the sweepers/hunters are confronting him in the woods he hides somewhere and loudly whispers "If you kill with your bare hands there is a reverence" as if some spirit in the woods is reciting warrior cliches.

Because it's a Friedkin movie though it's inspired by a real guy who really has that job, who worked as a consultant on the movie. So the tracking scenes are pretty cool. Friedkin does it the old fashioned way, using pictures to show things in a movie instead of the new way where you wave the camera around and make sure you can't tell what is happening but then maybe somebody explains verbally what's happening. With this one Tommy Lee will be in a woman's house, she claims Benicio is not there, Tommy Lee looks at the sink and there is a closeup of a little bit of soap with hairs in it from shaving. (don't worry, it appears to be stubble, not pubes)

Unfortunately, because they do it this way they have to exaggerate it so that we non-master-trackers know what we're looking at, and this is one of the movie's weaknesses. Benicio is so obsessed with tracking that he teaches a little girl how to read squirrel tracks, and he knows he is being chased by the world's best tracker, the guy who taught him. And yet he leaves perfect muddy shoeprints on the kitchen floor of the place he's hiding out at. When he climbs out of a manhole he not only leaves the lid open, he throws his construction helmet on the sidewalk, showing which direction he went. Can't even be bothered to throw the helmet into a garbage can or across the street where he's not going.

Del Toro is a brilliant actor and a lovable weirdo. He's pretty convincing both at being a deadly knife fighter and at being crazy. But something about him here, I don't know. He's so weird and distant it's hard to really empathize with him, but he's not evil so you don't want to root against him. Tommy Lee is much more sympathetic, an interesting character somewhere in the middle between the blowhards he used to play and the quiet guys he plays now. When he's tracking he's kind of a hunched over weirdo scurrying around like a man-sized mouse, looking for clues. Then when he's threatened his entire physicality changes and you believe he could stab a guy to death even if he forgot his knife.

Which brings me to the knife fights in this movie, which are classics. There are a couple different fight scenes and they are topnotch, especially considering how much of it Jones and Del Toro seem to really do themselves. Catching up with this movie four years later I'm surprised to realize it's one of the best action movies of the 2000s. That doesn't mean it's a classic, because the competition ain't that fierce, but it's a pretty good one. There are some interesting characters and ideas here but even if you don't like them you will love the action. There's even a William Freakin' Friedkin car chase to add to the list with FRENCH CONNECTION and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. Okay, it's not on the same scale as those two but it's got a great gimmick where he gets stuck in gridlock and has to ram his way out.

So don't write off Friedkin yet, and don't write off action movies. THE HUNTED may not be perfect but it's something more important: hard evidence that good old fashioned action movies are still possible in the 21st century. No CGI, no Avid farts, no jokin around and muggin. Just a couple interesting characters chasing each other and trying to stab each other, just like it oughta be.

But don't worry - remember the theory of badass juxtaposition. It just happens that the juxtaposed element outweighs the badass element in this particular case. But no matter what you say about his personal lifestyle choices, the dude is still a bounty hunter so after some wackiness he goes to hunt some bounty. He mostly works for parents who made the mistake of putting up the bail for their punkass kids. For example some poor couple is gonna lose their restaraunt if their dumbass kid doesn't show some respect for his elders and turn himself in. In one case Papa goes to the sherriff and asks for custody of a prisoner, but the sherriff won't give it because the guy is his nephew. So Papa goes and knocks the dude out with a beanbag, throws him in the car and forces him to call his uncle and apologize.

We find out that Papa is getting old, having a tougher time doing his job, and also worried about being a real papa. He resists going to Lamoz class with his girlfriend, and seems to want to throw himself into his work to avoid real life. But at work he keeps running into some bullshit like having to drive a Trans-Am, which pisses him off. Or having to steal a tractor to chase some dude. Plus, Tracy Walter is stalking him, keeps calling him telling him he's gonna kill him. Nobody knows what a bounty hunter feels.

The directionist is nobody special, just some dude, Buzz Kulik. He directed Bad Ronald and Brian's Song and some other TV crap. But he did pretty good here. It was Steve McQueen's last movie, released the same year he died (1980). And it's not a bad last role, getting to do action and comedy and family man and Clint Eastwood style aging vulnerability all in one entertaining package. Maybe it's kind of a silly mixed bag for a while but you know the movie's a keeper when Papa chases a dude onto an elevated train and the guy starts shooting and takes a hostage. It reminded me of the subway chase I saw recently in Spider-Man Part 2 but this one is done without computers and strings and fancy fake shit. Papa has to climb onto the top of the train to escape the bullets, one thing leads to another and next thing you know he's hanging from a pole extended off the roof of the train. And just like the famous motorcycle jump in The Great Escape I'm sure this is a stuntman and not Steve McQueen, but it doesn't matter because you can clearly see that some poor sap really did the stunt, hanging off the pole, kicking his feet around. And you're looking straight down onto him and you see that there are no nets below him, just cement and cars driving and people walking around. I mean it's too bad, I love people flying around on ropes and pretending to do fancy matrixy shit as much as the next guy, but it's just not the same as the simple thrill of some dude actually risking his life to give us the cheap thrill of pretending Steve McQueen is hanging off a moving train.

Well eventually Papa chases the guy off the train. The guy steals a car so Papa steals a tow truck and they have a high speed chase through a parking garage until the chump drives his stolen car off the garage and plummets to his death. (No word on whether that means mom and dad get to keep their restaraunt.)

What a fuckin day, right? So Papa takes a cab home and he's exhausted. But before he gets to even kick one, let alone both, of his feet up he discovers Levar Burton beaten to a bloody pulp on the kitchen floor. (story of my life) Turns out his girlfriend has been kidnapped by Tracy Walter. So poor Papa has to run to the school for a shootout/fiery explosion and save his girlfriend. But wouldn't you fuckin know it? The VERY SECOND that gets wrapped up, he realizes his girlfriend is going into labor and he has to drive her at Mach 5 to the hospital.

So basically, the last 30-40 minutes of this thing the guy can't even catch his breathe. After you watch this movie you will feel like an asshole complaining about having a long day at work.

I had a good feeling about this movie from right about the time the title came on the screen. It was a shot of a pimp (Terence Howard) and a ho (Taryn Manning) driving in a car, and it freeze frames to write the title in yellow '70s style lettering.

I always like Terence Howard but I've never seen him in a lead role before. He's always the supporting role that steals the movie. Here he has a lead role that steals the movie. I haven't seen GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN but I would be surprised if Terence Howard's performance in this movie doesn't run a hundred circles around his co-star in that movie, both as an actor and as a rapper. True, he does mumble alot in this movie (you almost need subtitles) but I still feel his enunciation is better than Fifty Cents.

What I am doing here is starting a feud with Fifty Cents. Apparently he told GQ that if he wasn't a felon he would've voted for Bush because "he's a hustler" and blah blah blah. I think that's enough to write the motherfucker off forever. If a grown man says that kind of retarded fifteen year old street hustler horse shit that means he is 100% lifetime chump. That pretty much proves what I was saying about how today's so-called rebels have the same values as the corrupt bastards that they would be rebelling against if they actually were rebels. This guy might as well be fuckin Pat Boone. But he's not in this movie fortunately so let's get back on topic.

Anyway, this movie is about a small time pimp and weed dealer in Memphis who starts to question what he's doing with his life. He says he's having a mid-life crisis. Then he is inspired to become a rapper. Sounds simple and it is, maybe sounds stupid, but it's not. It's an underdog story, an unlikely dude chasing a dream and also becoming just barely a little bit more enlightened (like BAD SANTA maybe, but this isn't a comedy).

I can't remember another movie that shows such a detailed look into the process of songwriting and recording. There's a scene in the movie where he uses the phrase "it's hard out here for a pimp" in conversation, then he says, "It's hard out here for a pimp. I like that," pulls out his notepad and writes it down. Most movies would cut from there to a completed song called "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." For this movie it's only the beginning. You see him putting the song together with the producer (Anthony Anderson) and the programmer (DJ Qualls), making one of his hoes his backup singer, showing her how to sing the chorus, etc. Making a song piece by piece. There's even a part where he's rapping and the producer cuts him off because the microphones are too shitty and they have to go buy a new one that won't distort.

You're definitely rooting for this guy but they don't completely whitewash the fact that he's a pimp. At one point, after he already seems to be changing, he throws a ho with a little baby out on the street. One of his other hoes, the likable and childlike Nola, he forces to have sex with a shop owner to get his fancy microphone. And it's not played for laughs. Okay, so he's not whipping bitches with coathangers and telling them to walk between the rain drops. (Iceberg Slim reference.) If they're able to make his relationship with Shug (Taraji P. Henson, who's fucking great) seem sweet - and they do - it's obviously not a 100% realistic portrayal of a pimp. But at least they don't make pimps seem funny or glamorous. There's no cheetah skin or giant hats in this movie.

I don't know if you remember Anthony Anderson, he's the goofy fat guy in the ROMEO MUST DIE/EXIT WOUNDS/CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE trilogy. He was also in BARBER SHOP and some worse movies. There's something about him, I don't know. He can be obnoxious and unfunny but he has some kind of charisma. Here he's playing a serious role and he does a real good job. It's almost too bad because his next movie is Scorsese's remake of INFERNAL AFFAIRS. It would've been funny to see him jump from MY BABY'S DADDY into Scorsese. Anyway, he does a good job. Also some white kid named DJ Qualls who, ironically, is not a DJ but a keyboard player. Come to think of it, Terence Howard's character is named DJay but is not a DJ, he's a rapper. There isn't even a DJ in this movie at all. What the fuck is going on here man, I'm confused.

If I heard DJay's songs out of context I wouldn't give a shit, but watching the movie makes you love "WHOOP THAT TRICK" and "IT'S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP." They make you cheer and chant along. You can understand how they make a pregnant ho pump her fist. Both of these songs should be THE VERY DEFINITION of a "Best Original Song" Oscar. No fuckin way there's another song in any movie this year, including musicals, that is as crucial and as perfect for the movie. The ONLY thing that is arguable is whether WHOOP THAT TRICK or HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP is more deserving. The first one is the thrilling first song that he writes and the one that's more important in the end. But the second one has better lyrics and the catchy chorus that stays in your head for two weeks after the movie. I even saw some interviewer lady on the red carpet at the Golden Globes singing it. But of course it wasn't even nominated for the Golden Globes, that award went to a song from THE END CREDITS of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. In other words, the song that is only heard by the kids that have to clean up all the shit you left on the floor in the theater after you left. From what I've seen, the less important song "Hustle & Flow" is the one that is a favorite for an Oscar nomination, which means one thing: fuck those motherfuckers. They chose that song because they didn't want to admit that the SCIENTIFICALLY UNDENIABLE BEST SONG OF THE YEAR was called "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." Easier to just pick something out of a hat.

This is a great movie. Simple, not obvious, original, great acting all around, perfect non-showoffy direction, makes you feel good, etc. I will keep an eye on this writer/director Craig Brewer who seems to know what he's doing so far.