The phrase, “High-concept film,” carries a certain negative stigma, and with good reason. If you can boil down a movie to its most reductive, implausible elements, then chances are it lacks some measure of subtlety, nuance, originality. Off the top of my head:
1. A street-smart seven-year old teams up with a grizzled cop to solve a murderer. BULLSHIT.
2. A single father tries to get closer to his children by posing as their elderly British nanny. BULLSHIT.
3. A team of roughneck oil drillers stands between life and total annihilation in their efforts to destroy an incoming asteroid. BULLSHIT.
Of course, in high-concept films, as in life, there are always exceptions. A reclusive billionaire becomes engaged in a life-or-death battle against a grizzly bear. Two career criminals with hostages in tow find themselves holed up in a vampire-run strip club. A team of globetrotting thieves steals corporate secrets from the recesses of the human brain. The Secret Service agent who failed to save JFK has to unravel an assassination plot against the current president.
That last one is the premise of In the Line of Fire, which remains one of the great high-concept romps of the last twenty years. Is the film believable? Not remotely. Does it matter? Not a whit. The film is made with such flair that it’s easy to suspend disbelief; it does what it wants to do so well that you go along for the ride without hesitation. In its own way, In the Line of Fire is a perfect film.
It’s the conviction of the film that sets it apart. Essentially, it follows that old standard, that great and venerated and hoariest of action movie conventions—the aging hero given a second shot at redemption—and yet director Wolfgang Petersen and his crew approach the topic with…something resembling dignity. Characters seem…smart. The script doesn’t make them act out of character for convenience’s sake or to kick the plot into overdrive.
I keep coming back to a scene late in the film. Clint Eastwood’s douchebag commanding officer has booted him from the assassination investigation following a very public snafu. Unsurprisingly, Eastwood discovers a key piece of information at the zero hour, and we viewers expect a scene where his CO dresses him down and ignores the intel, forcing Clint to go rogue to save the day.
Except that doesn’t happen. Eastwood lets his boss know what he’s found out, and his CO immediately grants him access back to the case. The film constantly sets up its audience like that, promising a cliché before doubling back with some genuine human behavior.
Even the most potentially-groan worthy subplot, the budding romance between Clint Eastwood’s Frank Horrigan with fellow Secret Serviceman Rene Russo, has spark and grit and humor. It’s not Tracy and Hepburn, but it’s closer than most similarly minded subplots get.
Petersen frames his Secret Servicemen (and one Secret Servicewoman) with crisp professionalism. He peppers the film with little behind-the-scenes asides, showing us how they prep an area for a Presidential speech, or how they delegate duties down the chain of command, and those bits of business lend a welcome verisimilitude to his heroes. They respond intelligently to all the implausiblities chucked at them, and should they falter…well, then they weren’t playing the game as well as lead psycho Mitch Leary (John Malkovich).
However, if In the Line of Line gerried all that and only nailed the interactions between Eastwood and Malkovich, it’d still be pure pleasure. Both men are so good, their interactions so tense and primal and funny, that they elevate the whole piece.
Watch the scene where Leary badmouths JFK’s favorite poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” in taunting conversation with Eastwood’s Frank Horrigan. There’s so much to feast on here, Malkovich’s improvisatory wit mingling with genuine menace, Eastwood’s subtle disgust and agreement with Leary’s put-down, and it’s emblematic of their whole screen-relationship.
Malkovich gets the most credit these days, and it’s not hard to tell why. His Academy Awarded-nominated ex-CIA spook-turned-off-the-reservation-whackadoo competes with Alan Rickman’s Die Hard baddie for Most Influential Action Movie Villain of The Last Fifty Years.
But rewatching Eastwood was revelatory, especially given this role’s place within the context of his career. Not only does he turn in a bonafide STAR PERFORMANCE, the kind of thing we used to expect from Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart or Sean Connery, but he hits some notes he’s never sounded before, or since. His Frank Horrigan invites comparison with all the taciturn badasses he’s ever played, from Harry Callahan through Walt Kowalski, but there’s a subtle change here. Horrigan is jaded without being cynical, tough without being brutal, quiet without being taciturn, funny without dipping into gallows humor.
There’s a real lightness to his work, a nimbleness of character, that is utterly delightful, almost as if Clint is sending up his Badass Persona while simultaneous painting another shade on the real thing. The effervescence in his performance is especially astounding when one considers he shot this film almost back-to-back his tortured work as Will Munny in Unforgiven.
This is the film The Rookie should have been. Smart, funny, thrilling, and utter bollocks.
In short, a delight to teach.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Cinema Interlude: SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD
What a piece of work this is.
Scott Pilgrim Versus The World is a one-of-a-kind experience. It is unpredictable. It is visually stunning, with constant wonderments both large and small. It is well acted across the board, and there are a couple of new faces here that are destined for big things. At times, the volume of gags recalls a Mad Magazine foldout; it’s that dense. Spaced/Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz writer-director Edgar Wright has achieved some kind of tour de force with this film (his third). If I’m being honest with myself, I have to recommend that you see it, and on the biggest, best screen you can.
And if I’m lucky, I’ll never have to see it ever again. For all its many, many strengths, the film is, ultimately, about as useful as tits on a steer.
It’s hard to explain. The film does nothing "wrong.” Every element of the film has its own logic and works within the overall context of the film. After a while, I guess I just stopped caring.
In fact, I think it was right about the time Scott’s band went up against Evil Exes Five and Six (a pair of Asian electronica musicians) that I checked out for good. I saw a Forbidden Planet-esque Id Monster spring from the sheer power of the Sex Bob-ombs rock and do battle with a pair of twin dragons that the twins’s trance-pop beat unleashed, and I thought, "Well, this is pointless."
Essentially, you have two movies here. The first is a whimsically absurdist indie romp. Think Garden State, but with a sharper comic edge and zero sentimentality (actually, I’ll revise—think Wright’s TV show, Spaced). For all the movie/music/video game/comic book references in this first movie, its heart lies in the interactions of a bunch of (mostly) aimless Canadian twenty-somethings as they shoot the shit with each other.
And I am fine with that. The pleasures in this part of the film are modest, and Wright and Co. seem to be quite content, for about forty minutes or so, at producing this wry, de-caffeinated vibe. The little bursts of visual and sonic flare (noxious pink fumes emerging from Scott’s teenage girlfriend’s mouth at her declaration of love for him, a ‘60s Batman-style “Bang” appearing besides the band drummer’s head when she pantomimes shooting herself) add just the right amount of surreal emphasis to the deadpan performances of the cast. It’s a good thing.
And then an Indian dude crashes through the ceiling to attack Michael Cera in a fight scene equal parts inspired by Dragonball Z, Final Fantasy X, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Super Smash Brothers, and a Bollywood musical, and I began to check out.
From minute forty-one until the end, the film becomes one, long, relentless stretch of bouncy combat scenes as Scott brawls his way through the roster of his new (more age appropriate) girlfriend’s ex boyfriends. The quality of these scenes is still top-shelf, and I’d wager that, taken out of context, they’d make for thrilling viewing (this movie will play like gangbusters on You Tube, neatly chopped into five-minute chunks). But strung along, they begin to wear on you. The delights of this new film—the music, the fight choreography, Chris Evans’s knowingly dopey action movie star, Jason Schwartzman’s brilliant turn as the Big Bad of the movie—come at you fast and hard, and they overwhelm everything that was sly and low-key and knowing about the first forty minutes.
It becomes too much, and, strangely, it doesn’t fit. Even though Wright has established his world as one where anything can—and does—happen (this isn’t a dreamscape a la Inception), the fight scenes don’t sync up with the whole picture. Part of that is surface glare; we go from watching a movie that looks like it cost maybe two grand to a multimillion dollar mega-blockbuster in a split-second, a surefire move to create tonal whiplash if I ever saw one.
But that surface disparity stands indicative of a bigger issue. This is a movie that, at its core, concerns itself with small matters of the heart. How to give love, how to receive it, how to deal with love’s past scars, and how to gain the personal responsibility necessary for struggling through all that pain.
And gosh, I can’t think of a better way to dramatize those sensitive issues than by making a frenetic video game farrago where characters emulate fighters from Tekken as they beat one another into literal coins.
I get what Wright is going for. Both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had the same aim—to use fantasy as a means for depicting emotional growth—and they succeeded marvelously. The difference in both those instances? Wright kept the stakes high on both fronts. Shaun desperately needs to grow up, and he’s got to gain maturity while evading zombies that want to peel the flesh from his bones. Sgt. Angel has to make an emotional connection to the world, and people are trying to shoot him/stab him/drop-a-church-spire-on-his-head at every step of his inner journey.
The over-the-top video game mechanics of Scott Pilgrim ruin that balance. I get that all the fights are literal, that if you die enough times, you really are dead. I get the figurative significance they have as well—Scott working through his girlfriend’s/his baggage. But the fight scenes never feel real, even in the unreality Wright has worked so hard to define. They never feel dangerous. And they are so outlandish that they obliterate the delicate emotions they should be elevating.
End result: what you’ve got here is a gorgeously wrought, thrillingly executed Jack-in-the-Box. Works beautifully and has zero lasting emotional power, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t want to, you know, have lasting emotional power.
If nothing else, now I know how people who don't like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou felt when they first saw it.
Scott Pilgrim Versus The World is a one-of-a-kind experience. It is unpredictable. It is visually stunning, with constant wonderments both large and small. It is well acted across the board, and there are a couple of new faces here that are destined for big things. At times, the volume of gags recalls a Mad Magazine foldout; it’s that dense. Spaced/Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz writer-director Edgar Wright has achieved some kind of tour de force with this film (his third). If I’m being honest with myself, I have to recommend that you see it, and on the biggest, best screen you can.
And if I’m lucky, I’ll never have to see it ever again. For all its many, many strengths, the film is, ultimately, about as useful as tits on a steer.
It’s hard to explain. The film does nothing "wrong.” Every element of the film has its own logic and works within the overall context of the film. After a while, I guess I just stopped caring.
In fact, I think it was right about the time Scott’s band went up against Evil Exes Five and Six (a pair of Asian electronica musicians) that I checked out for good. I saw a Forbidden Planet-esque Id Monster spring from the sheer power of the Sex Bob-ombs rock and do battle with a pair of twin dragons that the twins’s trance-pop beat unleashed, and I thought, "Well, this is pointless."
Essentially, you have two movies here. The first is a whimsically absurdist indie romp. Think Garden State, but with a sharper comic edge and zero sentimentality (actually, I’ll revise—think Wright’s TV show, Spaced). For all the movie/music/video game/comic book references in this first movie, its heart lies in the interactions of a bunch of (mostly) aimless Canadian twenty-somethings as they shoot the shit with each other.
And I am fine with that. The pleasures in this part of the film are modest, and Wright and Co. seem to be quite content, for about forty minutes or so, at producing this wry, de-caffeinated vibe. The little bursts of visual and sonic flare (noxious pink fumes emerging from Scott’s teenage girlfriend’s mouth at her declaration of love for him, a ‘60s Batman-style “Bang” appearing besides the band drummer’s head when she pantomimes shooting herself) add just the right amount of surreal emphasis to the deadpan performances of the cast. It’s a good thing.
And then an Indian dude crashes through the ceiling to attack Michael Cera in a fight scene equal parts inspired by Dragonball Z, Final Fantasy X, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Super Smash Brothers, and a Bollywood musical, and I began to check out.
From minute forty-one until the end, the film becomes one, long, relentless stretch of bouncy combat scenes as Scott brawls his way through the roster of his new (more age appropriate) girlfriend’s ex boyfriends. The quality of these scenes is still top-shelf, and I’d wager that, taken out of context, they’d make for thrilling viewing (this movie will play like gangbusters on You Tube, neatly chopped into five-minute chunks). But strung along, they begin to wear on you. The delights of this new film—the music, the fight choreography, Chris Evans’s knowingly dopey action movie star, Jason Schwartzman’s brilliant turn as the Big Bad of the movie—come at you fast and hard, and they overwhelm everything that was sly and low-key and knowing about the first forty minutes.
It becomes too much, and, strangely, it doesn’t fit. Even though Wright has established his world as one where anything can—and does—happen (this isn’t a dreamscape a la Inception), the fight scenes don’t sync up with the whole picture. Part of that is surface glare; we go from watching a movie that looks like it cost maybe two grand to a multimillion dollar mega-blockbuster in a split-second, a surefire move to create tonal whiplash if I ever saw one.
But that surface disparity stands indicative of a bigger issue. This is a movie that, at its core, concerns itself with small matters of the heart. How to give love, how to receive it, how to deal with love’s past scars, and how to gain the personal responsibility necessary for struggling through all that pain.
And gosh, I can’t think of a better way to dramatize those sensitive issues than by making a frenetic video game farrago where characters emulate fighters from Tekken as they beat one another into literal coins.
I get what Wright is going for. Both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had the same aim—to use fantasy as a means for depicting emotional growth—and they succeeded marvelously. The difference in both those instances? Wright kept the stakes high on both fronts. Shaun desperately needs to grow up, and he’s got to gain maturity while evading zombies that want to peel the flesh from his bones. Sgt. Angel has to make an emotional connection to the world, and people are trying to shoot him/stab him/drop-a-church-spire-on-his-head at every step of his inner journey.
The over-the-top video game mechanics of Scott Pilgrim ruin that balance. I get that all the fights are literal, that if you die enough times, you really are dead. I get the figurative significance they have as well—Scott working through his girlfriend’s/his baggage. But the fight scenes never feel real, even in the unreality Wright has worked so hard to define. They never feel dangerous. And they are so outlandish that they obliterate the delicate emotions they should be elevating.
End result: what you’ve got here is a gorgeously wrought, thrillingly executed Jack-in-the-Box. Works beautifully and has zero lasting emotional power, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t want to, you know, have lasting emotional power.
If nothing else, now I know how people who don't like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou felt when they first saw it.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: UNFORGIVEN
Was Will Munny ever saved?
That’s the question at the heart of Unforgiven. I don’t think the film is as perfect as many seem to find it—Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel calls Unforgiven the greatest Western ever made, a hyperbolic statement if I’ve ever heard one, given a) the quality of the best Westerns and b) the deliberately understated tone of Eastwood’s final Oater (it means to elegize the genre, not top it)—and it is that central question about Munny’s true nature that (intentionally?) gives me most pause when assessing my own feelings about the film.
One could argue that Eastwood has elided an important stage from Munny’s development. As it stands, the antihero has two faces: contrite and vengeful. The former face takes up roughly 110 minutes of the 130-minute film. The operative word here is “reformed”; Munny talks, and talks, and talks about how he isn’t the same man, how his dearly departed wife saved him from a life of drinking and mayhem, how the monster that killed “just about everything that walk[ed] or crawled at one time or another” is no more.
His reformation permeates every atom of his being—being good has made him impotent. Munny can barely shoot, passively suffers a vicious beating at the hands of Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett, and, most literally, refuses a complimentary roll in the hay courtesy of the prostitute whose scarred face sets the plot in motion. Our first good look at Munny—he’s crawling around in the mud, trying valiantly, and failing, to control the livestock in his beyond-hardscrabble pig farm—could not better depict the degradation that the wages of sin, and of redemption, have cost him.
And then Munny gets word that Daggett has murdered Ned Logan, his only real friend and the closest thing Munny has to a conscience, and Munny transforms into the Angel of Death. Strides into Big Whiskey like a spirit. Kills everyone that needs killing without so much as suffering a scratch. Intimidates those still breathing through sheer force of will. And then, vanishes. Maybe back to his farm, maybe to San Francisco, maybe to whatever plane of existence that loosed The Drifter from High Plains Drifter or Preacher from Pale Rider, who knows. Whatever the case, Munny is gone, his last (?) bloody shootout an affirmation of his true nature, of the sins of the Old West.
It goes without saying that Eastwood is splendid in both facets of the character. That much is certain. Redeemer Will is a pathetic deflation of the Western icon we expect; the Angel of Death inflates that icon to the point of abstraction—his brutal precision is as alien as it is exciting.
But there is no in-between. Whatever bridge one might normally expect, Eastwood perversely denies us. One minute, Munny is decrying killing to the battle-shocked Schofield Kid, and the next, he’s coolly savaging six people. We don’t see the progression, the return of one man from another. We see one man. Then we see the other.
The more I process this, the more I respect it. Clint has oft trafficked in ambiguity, and this might be the most complex iteration of it in his oeuvre. Was Munny redeemed? Is he trying to force it—his constant proclamations of his lack of wickedness ring the “Me think he doth protest” bell loud and hard. If he reverts back to his old self at the end, does he stay that way, or does he start a new, happier life with his children in San Francisco? Is that final epigraph more than a rose-colored conjecture? Is Munny even “bad” in the final shootout—he is spurred on by the death of the most morally sound character in the film, after all.
It’s a slippery resolution for a slippery character. Everyone else in the film is at a certain peace with his or her contradictions, from Little Bill through Strawberry Alice. Will Munny seems to exist outside his ambiguities, and his distance from himself obfuscates matters irrevocably.
With Eastwood’s film, we get a view of violence and death unlike any I have ever seen. I don’t know if it is as narratively and emotionally satisfying as a (slightly) more concrete take on Munny might be—seeing Will evolve into the man he was would have a savage inevitability. As it is, the film lacks the weight of tragedy. Nothing is inevitable. It just is.
There’s something much more disturbing about that, I reckon.
That’s the question at the heart of Unforgiven. I don’t think the film is as perfect as many seem to find it—Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel calls Unforgiven the greatest Western ever made, a hyperbolic statement if I’ve ever heard one, given a) the quality of the best Westerns and b) the deliberately understated tone of Eastwood’s final Oater (it means to elegize the genre, not top it)—and it is that central question about Munny’s true nature that (intentionally?) gives me most pause when assessing my own feelings about the film.
One could argue that Eastwood has elided an important stage from Munny’s development. As it stands, the antihero has two faces: contrite and vengeful. The former face takes up roughly 110 minutes of the 130-minute film. The operative word here is “reformed”; Munny talks, and talks, and talks about how he isn’t the same man, how his dearly departed wife saved him from a life of drinking and mayhem, how the monster that killed “just about everything that walk[ed] or crawled at one time or another” is no more.
His reformation permeates every atom of his being—being good has made him impotent. Munny can barely shoot, passively suffers a vicious beating at the hands of Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett, and, most literally, refuses a complimentary roll in the hay courtesy of the prostitute whose scarred face sets the plot in motion. Our first good look at Munny—he’s crawling around in the mud, trying valiantly, and failing, to control the livestock in his beyond-hardscrabble pig farm—could not better depict the degradation that the wages of sin, and of redemption, have cost him.
And then Munny gets word that Daggett has murdered Ned Logan, his only real friend and the closest thing Munny has to a conscience, and Munny transforms into the Angel of Death. Strides into Big Whiskey like a spirit. Kills everyone that needs killing without so much as suffering a scratch. Intimidates those still breathing through sheer force of will. And then, vanishes. Maybe back to his farm, maybe to San Francisco, maybe to whatever plane of existence that loosed The Drifter from High Plains Drifter or Preacher from Pale Rider, who knows. Whatever the case, Munny is gone, his last (?) bloody shootout an affirmation of his true nature, of the sins of the Old West.
It goes without saying that Eastwood is splendid in both facets of the character. That much is certain. Redeemer Will is a pathetic deflation of the Western icon we expect; the Angel of Death inflates that icon to the point of abstraction—his brutal precision is as alien as it is exciting.
But there is no in-between. Whatever bridge one might normally expect, Eastwood perversely denies us. One minute, Munny is decrying killing to the battle-shocked Schofield Kid, and the next, he’s coolly savaging six people. We don’t see the progression, the return of one man from another. We see one man. Then we see the other.
The more I process this, the more I respect it. Clint has oft trafficked in ambiguity, and this might be the most complex iteration of it in his oeuvre. Was Munny redeemed? Is he trying to force it—his constant proclamations of his lack of wickedness ring the “Me think he doth protest” bell loud and hard. If he reverts back to his old self at the end, does he stay that way, or does he start a new, happier life with his children in San Francisco? Is that final epigraph more than a rose-colored conjecture? Is Munny even “bad” in the final shootout—he is spurred on by the death of the most morally sound character in the film, after all.
It’s a slippery resolution for a slippery character. Everyone else in the film is at a certain peace with his or her contradictions, from Little Bill through Strawberry Alice. Will Munny seems to exist outside his ambiguities, and his distance from himself obfuscates matters irrevocably.
With Eastwood’s film, we get a view of violence and death unlike any I have ever seen. I don’t know if it is as narratively and emotionally satisfying as a (slightly) more concrete take on Munny might be—seeing Will evolve into the man he was would have a savage inevitability. As it is, the film lacks the weight of tragedy. Nothing is inevitable. It just is.
There’s something much more disturbing about that, I reckon.
Monday, August 9, 2010
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: THE ROOKIE
The Rookie is the worst film Clint Eastwood has ever made.
I knew it was bad. I saw it for the first time when I was maybe ten, and I vividly recall a) it doing nothing for me, and b) feeling that, given my relative crassness as a ten-year old moviegoer and my predilection for the film's subject matter, the film's inability to rouse me was more its fault than mine.
Time did not work in The Rookie's favor. If anything, it's worse now. I feel bad for slamming Kelly's Heroes so hard last week. That movie is boring, yes, but it's not offensive. It's not the Anti-God. I'd rather watch it once a year for the rest of my life than sit through five minutes of The Rookie again. Here's the big difference: Kelly's Heroes screws up the treatment of a complex subject, whereas The Rookie handles the single easiest film genre of all time--the violent buddy cop actioner--with all the adroitness of a retard trying to fuck a door knob.
The Rookie is worse than Space Cowboys. It's worse than City Heat. It makes Pink Cadillac look tolerable. My problem with the film are legion:
--If I were the fabulously wealthy mastermind behind a stolen car ring, and I had an army of goons at my bidding, why in Sweet Home Alabama would I participate in the actual car boostings?
--Good-guy female lead: Lara Flynn Boyle. 'Nuff said.
--Buddy cop movies live or die off the dichotomy between the buddies. You can go good cop/bad cop, sane cop/crazy cop, rookie cop/old cop, but you have to delineate things. It makes for interesting conflict. What do we have here? Grumpy cop/grumpy cop. Charlie Sheen, the ostensible rookie, is broody and self-destructive. Veteran Eastwood is gruff and self-destructive. The differences here are staggering.
--Sonia Braga is supposed to be the bad guy's hot, evil squeeze, but she looks like Jaye Davidson and Edward James Olmos got fused together in a telepod. Plus, the scene where she rapes Eastwood (yep, you read that right) is unintentionally ugly on so many levels.
--Lead baddy Raul Julia is wasted. If you've ever wanted to see what happens when great actors can't hide their contempt for their material, check out Julia here. He just looks defeated, and it's an additional shame, considering how he brought such improvisatory wit and grace as a similar-styled heavy in the otherwise-excretable Tequila Sunrise. I also don't get the decision to make him speak with an awful German accent. Julia was Latino. His crew of flunkies in the film was Latino. His character, on the other hand, was German. It does not scan.
--It's not funny but tries too hard anyways. Eastwood's Nick Pulovski feels like an attempt to intentionally satirize his Harry Callahan, except nothing he does/says is funny.
--It's not dramatic but tries too hard anyways. I don't care that Sheen's character is still racked with guilt over his brother's death. I don't care that his rich father still resents him for it. Come to think of it, I don't think Sheen cared either; cocaine is a hell of a drug.
The Rookie is such a grandiose, epic failure that I wonder why it was even included in the Clint Eastwood set. It can't be for completist purposes, since there are only ten films in the set to begin with. It can't be because people other than me like it--its Rotten Tomatoes rating is an admirable 50%. It can't even be because it's so bad, it's good--it's not. There are so many other films from Clint's Warner Bros. canon that were neglected in favor of The Rookie. Of the WB films Eastwood made in the '70s, there are only two: Kelly's Heroes and Dirty Harry. How about putting in The Outlaw Josey Wales or even that fucking orangutan movie in lieu of The Rookie? Fucking none of his 1980s oeuvre is included; why not Tightrope or Honkytonk Man or Bronco Billy or Bird? I'd even take Heartbreak Ridge, and that’s a movie that ends with Eastwood triumphantly liberating Grenada. I’ll reiterate 'cause it bears repeating: a movie that considers our military action on Grenada during the 1980s to be a just and unquestionable moral imperative is more vital than this rancid piece of offal.
Maybe whoever put this set together wants to show what Eastwood was willing to make before he put total faith in his own interests/passions. It's well known that The Rookie was his attempt to reconnect with fans after a string of ambitious but uncommercial failures, most notably White Hunter, Black Heart, a thinly veiled study of John Huston during the filming of The African Queen. That's the reason The Rookie feels so nakedly, contemptuously formulaic; Eastwood was pandering to make those Benjamins, and it shows. There's no care, no engagement, either in elevating the film through technical virtuosity or in using it to parody the buddy cop genre as a whole. Eastwood's character represents a clear regression for the actor/director; he'd publicly denounced playing this kind of violent antihero simply for popcorn thrills, and yet, here he is, chasing after cars and outracing explosions. The engineer of this set might have included The Rookie as a cautionary tale, but if so, why didn't they include White Hunter, Black Heart to help contextualize Eastwood's decision to play below his pay grade?
I'll tell you why: dollars and sense. That’s why The Rookie has resurfaced over a number of far worthier Eastwood vehicles. Dig it:
1)Warner Bros. put out this set.
2)They also own the rights to Two and a Half Men.
3)Charlie Sheen stars in Two and a Half Men.
4)He’s also in The Rookie.
Cross-Promoting 101.
Fuck this movie in the face.
I knew it was bad. I saw it for the first time when I was maybe ten, and I vividly recall a) it doing nothing for me, and b) feeling that, given my relative crassness as a ten-year old moviegoer and my predilection for the film's subject matter, the film's inability to rouse me was more its fault than mine.
Time did not work in The Rookie's favor. If anything, it's worse now. I feel bad for slamming Kelly's Heroes so hard last week. That movie is boring, yes, but it's not offensive. It's not the Anti-God. I'd rather watch it once a year for the rest of my life than sit through five minutes of The Rookie again. Here's the big difference: Kelly's Heroes screws up the treatment of a complex subject, whereas The Rookie handles the single easiest film genre of all time--the violent buddy cop actioner--with all the adroitness of a retard trying to fuck a door knob.
The Rookie is worse than Space Cowboys. It's worse than City Heat. It makes Pink Cadillac look tolerable. My problem with the film are legion:
--If I were the fabulously wealthy mastermind behind a stolen car ring, and I had an army of goons at my bidding, why in Sweet Home Alabama would I participate in the actual car boostings?
--Good-guy female lead: Lara Flynn Boyle. 'Nuff said.
--Buddy cop movies live or die off the dichotomy between the buddies. You can go good cop/bad cop, sane cop/crazy cop, rookie cop/old cop, but you have to delineate things. It makes for interesting conflict. What do we have here? Grumpy cop/grumpy cop. Charlie Sheen, the ostensible rookie, is broody and self-destructive. Veteran Eastwood is gruff and self-destructive. The differences here are staggering.
--Sonia Braga is supposed to be the bad guy's hot, evil squeeze, but she looks like Jaye Davidson and Edward James Olmos got fused together in a telepod. Plus, the scene where she rapes Eastwood (yep, you read that right) is unintentionally ugly on so many levels.
--Lead baddy Raul Julia is wasted. If you've ever wanted to see what happens when great actors can't hide their contempt for their material, check out Julia here. He just looks defeated, and it's an additional shame, considering how he brought such improvisatory wit and grace as a similar-styled heavy in the otherwise-excretable Tequila Sunrise. I also don't get the decision to make him speak with an awful German accent. Julia was Latino. His crew of flunkies in the film was Latino. His character, on the other hand, was German. It does not scan.
--It's not funny but tries too hard anyways. Eastwood's Nick Pulovski feels like an attempt to intentionally satirize his Harry Callahan, except nothing he does/says is funny.
--It's not dramatic but tries too hard anyways. I don't care that Sheen's character is still racked with guilt over his brother's death. I don't care that his rich father still resents him for it. Come to think of it, I don't think Sheen cared either; cocaine is a hell of a drug.
The Rookie is such a grandiose, epic failure that I wonder why it was even included in the Clint Eastwood set. It can't be for completist purposes, since there are only ten films in the set to begin with. It can't be because people other than me like it--its Rotten Tomatoes rating is an admirable 50%. It can't even be because it's so bad, it's good--it's not. There are so many other films from Clint's Warner Bros. canon that were neglected in favor of The Rookie. Of the WB films Eastwood made in the '70s, there are only two: Kelly's Heroes and Dirty Harry. How about putting in The Outlaw Josey Wales or even that fucking orangutan movie in lieu of The Rookie? Fucking none of his 1980s oeuvre is included; why not Tightrope or Honkytonk Man or Bronco Billy or Bird? I'd even take Heartbreak Ridge, and that’s a movie that ends with Eastwood triumphantly liberating Grenada. I’ll reiterate 'cause it bears repeating: a movie that considers our military action on Grenada during the 1980s to be a just and unquestionable moral imperative is more vital than this rancid piece of offal.
Maybe whoever put this set together wants to show what Eastwood was willing to make before he put total faith in his own interests/passions. It's well known that The Rookie was his attempt to reconnect with fans after a string of ambitious but uncommercial failures, most notably White Hunter, Black Heart, a thinly veiled study of John Huston during the filming of The African Queen. That's the reason The Rookie feels so nakedly, contemptuously formulaic; Eastwood was pandering to make those Benjamins, and it shows. There's no care, no engagement, either in elevating the film through technical virtuosity or in using it to parody the buddy cop genre as a whole. Eastwood's character represents a clear regression for the actor/director; he'd publicly denounced playing this kind of violent antihero simply for popcorn thrills, and yet, here he is, chasing after cars and outracing explosions. The engineer of this set might have included The Rookie as a cautionary tale, but if so, why didn't they include White Hunter, Black Heart to help contextualize Eastwood's decision to play below his pay grade?
I'll tell you why: dollars and sense. That’s why The Rookie has resurfaced over a number of far worthier Eastwood vehicles. Dig it:
1)Warner Bros. put out this set.
2)They also own the rights to Two and a Half Men.
3)Charlie Sheen stars in Two and a Half Men.
4)He’s also in The Rookie.
Cross-Promoting 101.
Fuck this movie in the face.
Exploitation Interlude: ROLLING THUNDER
Couple days ago, I caught Rolling Thunder On Demand. This 1977 revenge thriller has a rep longer than my Johnson: William Devane stars as this burnt-fucking-out Vietnam vet who makes it home after seven years in a POW camp and finds a welcome wagon consisting of a wife who no longer loves him, a kid who doesn't know him, and a bar floozy who'd fuck a fence post to get her rocks off. Not that Devane seems to mind--he spends most of his time quietly wishing to be back in country, and he gets the next best thing when a gang of thieves cuts off his right hand and murders his family.
Everything happens pretty much exactly the way you'd imagine from then on out.
The Internet loves this movie. Quentin Tarantino loves this movie. I thought it was pretty much the epitome of all '70s exploitation fare: underwhelming. The action fills maybe fifteen minutes of screentime, and it's brutal as all get-out when it goes down, but you do the math, and you'll find a lot of aimless downtime.
Paul Schrader co-wrote the script; it's a clear spiritual sister to Taxi Driver. Burnt-out vet, alienated from society, uses violence to find meaning, comes up short after climactic bloodbath. Problem is, John Flynn directed this, not Martin Scorsese. Scorsese would slow burn the fuck out of this one--the loneliness, the rage--and make the build-up just as chilling as the actual violence. Flynn is no Scorsese. The movie meanders, briefly livened by moments of graphic violence.
It's a shame, really. I wanted to like this more than I did, and I see why it's well regarded. William Devane is a fucking bear here. I've always thought him one of the great cinematic non-entities, but he is just chilling as Major Charles Rane. In many ways, this is one of the seminal unsung performances of the 1970s. His work is easily the equal of DeNiro's in Taxi Driver; there's a gentle understanding of his own situation. Nothing bothers him--his family's indifference, their deaths, his own handicap--even his revenge comes off as more mandatory than desired.
The standout scene? Rane is talking to his wife's lover (his old best friend, natch) about how he made it out alive. Tells him the Gooks would bind his arms with rope behind his back, then pull his arms up until "the bones start to crackle." Makes the lover treat him like his Vietnamese captors did. Then tells him that you survive such a degradation when you "learn to love the rope."
Learn to love the rope.
At that point, we realize even suicide isn't going to cut it; you can't kill what died a long time ago. The film never lives up to Devane's frighteningly empty performance, but it's more than these films usually offer.
Well, maybe it does provide a little extra. Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as Rane's POW buddy, a younger guy who's twice as damaged and half as comprehending of his psychic state as Rane is. This is a guy so fucked that when Rane tells him he's found the guys who murdered his family, Jones simply says, "I'll get my gear," grabs a duffel pre-filled with a shotgun and shells, and deserts his whole family to join the hunt.
They get to the brothel where the bad guys are holing up, and Rane tells Jones to get inside, go upstairs with a hooker, and wait for the shooting to start. Jones does (and if you've ever wanted to see Tommy Lee Jones getting the least enthusiastic hand-job known to man, this is your film). Rane comes in, starts firing, and Jones calmly assembles his gun. The hooker asks what he's doing, and Jones replies, like a man declaring his preference for butter over margarine, "I'm gonna kill a whole lot of people."
And then he beams with joy and does just that.
Everything happens pretty much exactly the way you'd imagine from then on out.
The Internet loves this movie. Quentin Tarantino loves this movie. I thought it was pretty much the epitome of all '70s exploitation fare: underwhelming. The action fills maybe fifteen minutes of screentime, and it's brutal as all get-out when it goes down, but you do the math, and you'll find a lot of aimless downtime.
Paul Schrader co-wrote the script; it's a clear spiritual sister to Taxi Driver. Burnt-out vet, alienated from society, uses violence to find meaning, comes up short after climactic bloodbath. Problem is, John Flynn directed this, not Martin Scorsese. Scorsese would slow burn the fuck out of this one--the loneliness, the rage--and make the build-up just as chilling as the actual violence. Flynn is no Scorsese. The movie meanders, briefly livened by moments of graphic violence.
It's a shame, really. I wanted to like this more than I did, and I see why it's well regarded. William Devane is a fucking bear here. I've always thought him one of the great cinematic non-entities, but he is just chilling as Major Charles Rane. In many ways, this is one of the seminal unsung performances of the 1970s. His work is easily the equal of DeNiro's in Taxi Driver; there's a gentle understanding of his own situation. Nothing bothers him--his family's indifference, their deaths, his own handicap--even his revenge comes off as more mandatory than desired.
The standout scene? Rane is talking to his wife's lover (his old best friend, natch) about how he made it out alive. Tells him the Gooks would bind his arms with rope behind his back, then pull his arms up until "the bones start to crackle." Makes the lover treat him like his Vietnamese captors did. Then tells him that you survive such a degradation when you "learn to love the rope."
Learn to love the rope.
At that point, we realize even suicide isn't going to cut it; you can't kill what died a long time ago. The film never lives up to Devane's frighteningly empty performance, but it's more than these films usually offer.
Well, maybe it does provide a little extra. Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as Rane's POW buddy, a younger guy who's twice as damaged and half as comprehending of his psychic state as Rane is. This is a guy so fucked that when Rane tells him he's found the guys who murdered his family, Jones simply says, "I'll get my gear," grabs a duffel pre-filled with a shotgun and shells, and deserts his whole family to join the hunt.
They get to the brothel where the bad guys are holing up, and Rane tells Jones to get inside, go upstairs with a hooker, and wait for the shooting to start. Jones does (and if you've ever wanted to see Tommy Lee Jones getting the least enthusiastic hand-job known to man, this is your film). Rane comes in, starts firing, and Jones calmly assembles his gun. The hooker asks what he's doing, and Jones replies, like a man declaring his preference for butter over margarine, "I'm gonna kill a whole lot of people."
And then he beams with joy and does just that.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: DIRTY HARRY
Why I Love Dirty Harry, or In Defense of the Journeyman Director.
The term “journeyman” carries with it an unfortunate directorial stigma. The “great” filmmakers of the world seem to earn that accolade through a show of creative force. Much like the way you can’t mistake a Picasso for anything else, world cinema favors those men (and women) who manage to turn their own name into a cinematic brand.
A film by Scorsese or Breillat or Lynch or Ray (both ones) or Bahrani or Spielberg or Maddin or Kurosawa or Leone or Truffaut or Kubrick cannot exist under any other such name; there’s an expectation, of content, of style, of tone, of mood, that emerges simply through the invocation of the name. “We’re going to see the new Scorsese,” you say, and that name carries a power more persuasive than any plot description can.
You’ll find no argument from me on that point. We remember the titans (of cinema), and deservedly so.
That said, the greats are in the minority. Only the most devout (and elitist) can thrive off the masters; their works are of rare vintage, and while they plan and create, the space between is filled with…
...well, with everything. Crap, gold, meh, blah. The works of the journeymen, those directors for whom the film comes at the expense of a personal touch. There’s a tendency to denigrate journeymen simply because of that impersonality, but I maintain that cinema would cease to be if not for their efforts. They keep the machine going.
Furthermore, their efforts gain stature over time. Look at any “Best of” List spanning from now to the beginning of cinema, and some of the great all-time movies come courtesy of people like Michael Curtiz and Howard Hawks and John Huston and Sydney Pollack and Victor Fleming and Robert Aldrich, people for whom the Story Is God, for whom every element comes in service of the film rather than for themselves. We remember the movie even if we forget the man behind it.
(Plus, not all filmmakers with a stamp deserve the “great” label. Michael Bay loads his films with his obsessions and interests, and I’m pretty sure calling him great is the best possible way to get yourself indicted for war crimes.)
My favorite of these journeymen is the late Don Siegel. It’s hard to connect one Siegel picture to another. He’s made some of the most famous crime dramas of all time, sure, but he’s also excelled in westerns. And war movies. And horror films. And comedies. About the only unifying thread is a relentless watchability. Everything happens on behalf of the machine, and as a result, most of his films are, by their very nature, propulsive, driving.
That’s not a result of a style, or tone, or theme; I know I’m watching a Siegel picture because I remember he directed it, not because of some flourish that cues me up. It’s an intangible...something.
His masterpiece, Dirty Harry, is the cleanest example of his work, and of journeyman filmmaking at its finest. It’s perfectly paced, funny when it needs to be, suspenseful when it needs to be, sad when it needs to be. There are no unnecessary scenes, no sidebar characters, and no bloated subplots. It is, in essence, as tightly modulated as the title character.
In that regard, it’s a character study, but as that study emerges through Harry Callahan’s actions rather than through pat psychological sermonizing—the film is Callahan’s investigation of the Scorpio Killer and nothing else—it feels much more inconsequential than it really is.
Don’t make the mistake of calling it slight. Dirty Harry remains one of the most deeply disturbing looks at police work ever made. Siegel is so canny is his handling of his subject. It’s Structure 101.
The first half keeps Scorpio (mostly) off-screen. It’s all Harry, and through his pursuit of Scorpio, we see why “Dirty” is such an apt choice of nomenclature. Harry is racist, sexist, and brutal. He’s the prototypical maverick cop, and we find that archetype so entertaining that we overlook (on first viewings) how disgusting he really is. Every police action he takes goes too far, his results not quite justifying his means.
Harry’s iconic “Did I fire six shots or only five” interrogation added a new catch phrase to the lexicon, but people forget the queasy punchline to the line. The downed gunman, clearly and completely incapacitated, asks how many bullets are left in the gun, and Harry shows him by sticking the barrel in his face and pulling the trigger.
I’ve argued with people who think this is less morally unsound than I do; they maintain Harry knows that the gun is empty and just wants to scare the perp. That may be the case, but it doesn’t make Harry’s choice of demonstration any less potently upsetting. We wonder, “God, are there more like him out there?” It throws Siegel’s opening shot, a memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty, into ironic relief.
And then Harry shoots Scorpio in the football stadium, and things change. Scorpio is the Boogeyman: evil, calculating, unstoppable. A great deal of his power comes from his hold over Harry’s department—they let him go because Harry’s excessive brutality flies straight in the face of Scorpio’s Miranda Rights, and throughout the entire second half of the film, Scorpio manipulates the law for his own gains.
During this part of the film, Siegel toys with our sympathies. He’s distanced us from Harry, and logic says we should feel something for the brutalized killer. But Scorpio is a monster, plotting the deaths of children, mutilating himself to harm Harry’s reputation. He needs to be stopped at any cost, right?
There’s the kicker. The violence in Harry that Siegel has seemingly criticized for fifty minutes becomes the only way to stop a(nother) madman in the film’s back end. Pauline Kael famously called Dirty Harry a “fascist masterpiece,” reading into it an endorsement of Harry’s Gestapo tactics, yet I think that’s an incredibly reductive take on a complex situation. Siegel is showing us a world where both cop and criminal are flawed. Harry may get Dirty to stop Scorpio, but that's less an endorsement of his brand of “justice” and more an indictment of a world that uses brutality to check brutality.
Nowhere does Siegel make that clearer than in the final shot. Harry has just killed Scorpio. He stares at the body, bleeding out in a quarry. And then he pulls out his badge, stares at it for a long time, and tosses it next to his prey, disgusted at what he has become, what has become of law and order. Roll credits. It’s a starkly powerful ending, made all the more impressive by Siegel’s blunt, straightforward direction. We can’t believe what he’s pulled off, the questions he’s made us ask, and in such a crisp and unobtrusive manner. If that disbelief means people write the film off as simple fascist exploitation, then so be it.
But that doesn’t mean those people are right.
The term “journeyman” carries with it an unfortunate directorial stigma. The “great” filmmakers of the world seem to earn that accolade through a show of creative force. Much like the way you can’t mistake a Picasso for anything else, world cinema favors those men (and women) who manage to turn their own name into a cinematic brand.
A film by Scorsese or Breillat or Lynch or Ray (both ones) or Bahrani or Spielberg or Maddin or Kurosawa or Leone or Truffaut or Kubrick cannot exist under any other such name; there’s an expectation, of content, of style, of tone, of mood, that emerges simply through the invocation of the name. “We’re going to see the new Scorsese,” you say, and that name carries a power more persuasive than any plot description can.
You’ll find no argument from me on that point. We remember the titans (of cinema), and deservedly so.
That said, the greats are in the minority. Only the most devout (and elitist) can thrive off the masters; their works are of rare vintage, and while they plan and create, the space between is filled with…
...well, with everything. Crap, gold, meh, blah. The works of the journeymen, those directors for whom the film comes at the expense of a personal touch. There’s a tendency to denigrate journeymen simply because of that impersonality, but I maintain that cinema would cease to be if not for their efforts. They keep the machine going.
Furthermore, their efforts gain stature over time. Look at any “Best of” List spanning from now to the beginning of cinema, and some of the great all-time movies come courtesy of people like Michael Curtiz and Howard Hawks and John Huston and Sydney Pollack and Victor Fleming and Robert Aldrich, people for whom the Story Is God, for whom every element comes in service of the film rather than for themselves. We remember the movie even if we forget the man behind it.
(Plus, not all filmmakers with a stamp deserve the “great” label. Michael Bay loads his films with his obsessions and interests, and I’m pretty sure calling him great is the best possible way to get yourself indicted for war crimes.)
My favorite of these journeymen is the late Don Siegel. It’s hard to connect one Siegel picture to another. He’s made some of the most famous crime dramas of all time, sure, but he’s also excelled in westerns. And war movies. And horror films. And comedies. About the only unifying thread is a relentless watchability. Everything happens on behalf of the machine, and as a result, most of his films are, by their very nature, propulsive, driving.
That’s not a result of a style, or tone, or theme; I know I’m watching a Siegel picture because I remember he directed it, not because of some flourish that cues me up. It’s an intangible...something.
His masterpiece, Dirty Harry, is the cleanest example of his work, and of journeyman filmmaking at its finest. It’s perfectly paced, funny when it needs to be, suspenseful when it needs to be, sad when it needs to be. There are no unnecessary scenes, no sidebar characters, and no bloated subplots. It is, in essence, as tightly modulated as the title character.
In that regard, it’s a character study, but as that study emerges through Harry Callahan’s actions rather than through pat psychological sermonizing—the film is Callahan’s investigation of the Scorpio Killer and nothing else—it feels much more inconsequential than it really is.
Don’t make the mistake of calling it slight. Dirty Harry remains one of the most deeply disturbing looks at police work ever made. Siegel is so canny is his handling of his subject. It’s Structure 101.
The first half keeps Scorpio (mostly) off-screen. It’s all Harry, and through his pursuit of Scorpio, we see why “Dirty” is such an apt choice of nomenclature. Harry is racist, sexist, and brutal. He’s the prototypical maverick cop, and we find that archetype so entertaining that we overlook (on first viewings) how disgusting he really is. Every police action he takes goes too far, his results not quite justifying his means.
Harry’s iconic “Did I fire six shots or only five” interrogation added a new catch phrase to the lexicon, but people forget the queasy punchline to the line. The downed gunman, clearly and completely incapacitated, asks how many bullets are left in the gun, and Harry shows him by sticking the barrel in his face and pulling the trigger.
I’ve argued with people who think this is less morally unsound than I do; they maintain Harry knows that the gun is empty and just wants to scare the perp. That may be the case, but it doesn’t make Harry’s choice of demonstration any less potently upsetting. We wonder, “God, are there more like him out there?” It throws Siegel’s opening shot, a memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty, into ironic relief.
And then Harry shoots Scorpio in the football stadium, and things change. Scorpio is the Boogeyman: evil, calculating, unstoppable. A great deal of his power comes from his hold over Harry’s department—they let him go because Harry’s excessive brutality flies straight in the face of Scorpio’s Miranda Rights, and throughout the entire second half of the film, Scorpio manipulates the law for his own gains.
During this part of the film, Siegel toys with our sympathies. He’s distanced us from Harry, and logic says we should feel something for the brutalized killer. But Scorpio is a monster, plotting the deaths of children, mutilating himself to harm Harry’s reputation. He needs to be stopped at any cost, right?
There’s the kicker. The violence in Harry that Siegel has seemingly criticized for fifty minutes becomes the only way to stop a(nother) madman in the film’s back end. Pauline Kael famously called Dirty Harry a “fascist masterpiece,” reading into it an endorsement of Harry’s Gestapo tactics, yet I think that’s an incredibly reductive take on a complex situation. Siegel is showing us a world where both cop and criminal are flawed. Harry may get Dirty to stop Scorpio, but that's less an endorsement of his brand of “justice” and more an indictment of a world that uses brutality to check brutality.
Nowhere does Siegel make that clearer than in the final shot. Harry has just killed Scorpio. He stares at the body, bleeding out in a quarry. And then he pulls out his badge, stares at it for a long time, and tosses it next to his prey, disgusted at what he has become, what has become of law and order. Roll credits. It’s a starkly powerful ending, made all the more impressive by Siegel’s blunt, straightforward direction. We can’t believe what he’s pulled off, the questions he’s made us ask, and in such a crisp and unobtrusive manner. If that disbelief means people write the film off as simple fascist exploitation, then so be it.
But that doesn’t mean those people are right.
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: KELLY'S HEROES
And, just two movies in to this little experiment, we hit our first snag.
Not a snag of film acquisition, or a snag of technology. No, no, nothing that simple.
It's the film itself. That's the snag. Kelly's Heroes is the first real clunker in the makeshift Clint Eastwood set. Its biggest sin?
Ungodly boredom. Almost nothing happens for like thirty minutes, and then, when shit does start to go down, it happens in such a relaxed, low-key fashion that I stared at the TV for like twenty minutes, unsure that the plot had actually begun to kick in. I've never seen a movie struggle so much at moving itself into first gear.
I hear Kelly's Heroes has become a perennial Thanksgiving Day-classic, and it doesn't surprise me--this thing crawls along at the same druggy, bloated, self-satisfied pace that you feel after a bout of turkey-gorging. There's something comforting about a movie willing to match you beat for tryptophan soaked beat.
Unfortunately, it leaves you lacking the other 364 (or 365, for all the Leap Year babies) days of the year.
If you're at all interested in catching Kelly's Heroes, here's what you do:
1) Rent a copy of the DVD/Blu-ray.
2) Smash it into a million pieces.
3) Reimburse your video rental joint for destroying their movie (or, if you use Netflix, lie and tell them it was "damaged in shipping").
4) Buy a copy of Three Kings and watch it instead.
I'm serious. Three Kings feels like David O. Russell attempt to fix everything that sucks about Kelly's Heroes. Three Kings has great performances. Three Kings has brutal action and tension up the wazoo. Three Kings has a wealth of political satire and black humor backing up the action.
Kelly's Heroes doesn't.
I'm loath to give it a proper write-up; I'd be exerting more energy towards it than Kelly's Heroes gave me in 142 de-caffeinated minutes. Basically, Clint Eastwood rouses himself from a coma long enough to go after Nazi gold during WWII. Don Rickles, Telly Savalas, Harry Dean Stanton, and Carroll O'Connor figure into his plans. Or something. Don't really care.
You can see the makings for a good movie. You've got these soldiers so disenchanted by all the death and the tragedy and the constant incompetence of their superior officers that they break rank and desert in order to squeeze something worthwhile from the whole shitty endeavor. And again, let me stress---YOU CAN MAKE A GOOD MOVIE FROM THIS IN FACT THEY DID IT'S CALLED THREE KINGS AND IT'S ONLY ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF THE PAST TWENTY YEARS IT'S FUNNY AND VIOLENT AND SAD AND CYNICAL AND GEORGE CLOONEY IS THE FUCKING MAN IN IT AND ANYONE WHO WILLINGLY CHOOSES KELLY'S HEROES OVER IT DESERVES TO GET AIDS AND DIE.
...ahem.
But again, this ain't a good movie. Brian Hutton, who directed Where Eagles Dare the year prior, can't even tickle the same "so bad it's good" button he did in the previous film. Part of him wants to make a biting satire a la MASH or Catch-22. Part of him wants to make a crowd-pleasing, Dirty Dozen-style "men on a mission" movie. He ends up shitting the bed and directing the film after commencing Happy Hour. Richard Schickel claims that the studio cut the guts out from the film. I maintain that had Warner Bros. given Hutton the freedom to make fucking, I don't know...Dr. Strangelove 2, he would have given it the narrative pace and forward momentum of an elderly couple walking laps at the shopping mall. In fact, were I to compare Kelly's Heroes to any other film, it'd be the Rat Pack version of Ocean's Eleven. Same apathetic pace. Same self-satisfied air. Same sense you're getting hoodwinked watching talented guys paid to slack off for two hours-plus hours.
But, end of the day, Kelly's Heroes is all wrong. The elements in play just don't work. Donald Sutherland was criticized, at the time, for playing his "Oddball" character as an 1960s hippie stuck in 1940s Germany. That seems like a bullseye on the wrong target. I take issue with Sutherland but because he's not funny. I could give a shit about the anachronisms. If he brought a little of that MASH mojo I'd have something to recommend. But he doesn't, so I don't.
Even Clint can't make this work. He's miscast, really; people refer to past capers of his, painting him as a rakish scrounger akin to James Garner in The Great Escape or George Clooney's Danny Ocean in Ocean's Eleven. In reality, he mopes and prods himself back into semi-consciousness. They give Rickles a line explaining Kelly's moodiness as a result of accidentally fragging a bunch of his own men, but my guess is Eastwood knew the film was a dog and couldn't force himself to give a shit.
I can't fault that, but I can fault him not entertaining me for not one of the flick's 142-boobless minutes.
In a way, though, I'm glad this happened so soon. I know it's not going to be all wine-and-roses with Clint; I learned that the hard way watching Blood Work. After all, I can't go branding the whole "Untouchable Auteur" label on him without deluding myself about what's to come.
After all, I can see The Rookie waiting for me, beckoning me with its pasty Sheen cheeks and its savage Sonia Braga talons like some mythical Greek monster of yore. That flick requires nerves of steel.
Anticipation of it haunts my dreams.
Not a snag of film acquisition, or a snag of technology. No, no, nothing that simple.
It's the film itself. That's the snag. Kelly's Heroes is the first real clunker in the makeshift Clint Eastwood set. Its biggest sin?
Ungodly boredom. Almost nothing happens for like thirty minutes, and then, when shit does start to go down, it happens in such a relaxed, low-key fashion that I stared at the TV for like twenty minutes, unsure that the plot had actually begun to kick in. I've never seen a movie struggle so much at moving itself into first gear.
I hear Kelly's Heroes has become a perennial Thanksgiving Day-classic, and it doesn't surprise me--this thing crawls along at the same druggy, bloated, self-satisfied pace that you feel after a bout of turkey-gorging. There's something comforting about a movie willing to match you beat for tryptophan soaked beat.
Unfortunately, it leaves you lacking the other 364 (or 365, for all the Leap Year babies) days of the year.
If you're at all interested in catching Kelly's Heroes, here's what you do:
1) Rent a copy of the DVD/Blu-ray.
2) Smash it into a million pieces.
3) Reimburse your video rental joint for destroying their movie (or, if you use Netflix, lie and tell them it was "damaged in shipping").
4) Buy a copy of Three Kings and watch it instead.
I'm serious. Three Kings feels like David O. Russell attempt to fix everything that sucks about Kelly's Heroes. Three Kings has great performances. Three Kings has brutal action and tension up the wazoo. Three Kings has a wealth of political satire and black humor backing up the action.
Kelly's Heroes doesn't.
I'm loath to give it a proper write-up; I'd be exerting more energy towards it than Kelly's Heroes gave me in 142 de-caffeinated minutes. Basically, Clint Eastwood rouses himself from a coma long enough to go after Nazi gold during WWII. Don Rickles, Telly Savalas, Harry Dean Stanton, and Carroll O'Connor figure into his plans. Or something. Don't really care.
You can see the makings for a good movie. You've got these soldiers so disenchanted by all the death and the tragedy and the constant incompetence of their superior officers that they break rank and desert in order to squeeze something worthwhile from the whole shitty endeavor. And again, let me stress---YOU CAN MAKE A GOOD MOVIE FROM THIS IN FACT THEY DID IT'S CALLED THREE KINGS AND IT'S ONLY ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF THE PAST TWENTY YEARS IT'S FUNNY AND VIOLENT AND SAD AND CYNICAL AND GEORGE CLOONEY IS THE FUCKING MAN IN IT AND ANYONE WHO WILLINGLY CHOOSES KELLY'S HEROES OVER IT DESERVES TO GET AIDS AND DIE.
...ahem.
But again, this ain't a good movie. Brian Hutton, who directed Where Eagles Dare the year prior, can't even tickle the same "so bad it's good" button he did in the previous film. Part of him wants to make a biting satire a la MASH or Catch-22. Part of him wants to make a crowd-pleasing, Dirty Dozen-style "men on a mission" movie. He ends up shitting the bed and directing the film after commencing Happy Hour. Richard Schickel claims that the studio cut the guts out from the film. I maintain that had Warner Bros. given Hutton the freedom to make fucking, I don't know...Dr. Strangelove 2, he would have given it the narrative pace and forward momentum of an elderly couple walking laps at the shopping mall. In fact, were I to compare Kelly's Heroes to any other film, it'd be the Rat Pack version of Ocean's Eleven. Same apathetic pace. Same self-satisfied air. Same sense you're getting hoodwinked watching talented guys paid to slack off for two hours-plus hours.
But, end of the day, Kelly's Heroes is all wrong. The elements in play just don't work. Donald Sutherland was criticized, at the time, for playing his "Oddball" character as an 1960s hippie stuck in 1940s Germany. That seems like a bullseye on the wrong target. I take issue with Sutherland but because he's not funny. I could give a shit about the anachronisms. If he brought a little of that MASH mojo I'd have something to recommend. But he doesn't, so I don't.
Even Clint can't make this work. He's miscast, really; people refer to past capers of his, painting him as a rakish scrounger akin to James Garner in The Great Escape or George Clooney's Danny Ocean in Ocean's Eleven. In reality, he mopes and prods himself back into semi-consciousness. They give Rickles a line explaining Kelly's moodiness as a result of accidentally fragging a bunch of his own men, but my guess is Eastwood knew the film was a dog and couldn't force himself to give a shit.
I can't fault that, but I can fault him not entertaining me for not one of the flick's 142-boobless minutes.
In a way, though, I'm glad this happened so soon. I know it's not going to be all wine-and-roses with Clint; I learned that the hard way watching Blood Work. After all, I can't go branding the whole "Untouchable Auteur" label on him without deluding myself about what's to come.
After all, I can see The Rookie waiting for me, beckoning me with its pasty Sheen cheeks and its savage Sonia Braga talons like some mythical Greek monster of yore. That flick requires nerves of steel.
Anticipation of it haunts my dreams.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: WHERE EAGLES DARE
Good lord, what a stupid movie.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Quentin Tarantino lists this as one of his favorite films, but as QT has demonstrated time and time (and time) again, his favs are usually just fodder ripe for him to successfully overhaul. Where Eagles Dare is Inglourious Basterds with a trans-orbital lobotomy. The dialogue is crassly functional, the plotting needlessly overheated, the acting logy perfunction.
I know I shouldn't be surprised--any film centering on an elite cadre of WWII spies trying to infiltrate a Nazi castle nestled into the Alps isn't sitting with the smart kids at the lunch table--but the stupidity on display here is of rare vintage. This is a movie where as Richard Burton sleepily explains the double and triple crosses to a room of Allied and Axis spies alike, we the audience get the distinct pleasure of watching Burton's strangely nonplussed audience collectively roll their eyes at him.
So, was it worth my time? Absolutely.
Here's the thing about Where Eagles Dare: it is the inverse of The Dirty Dozen. Dirty Dozen has a great first two-thirds. You got a team full of the baddest badasses ever to swap testosterone (if Al Lettieri showed up, the film might be considered a threat to ovulating women), their tough-guy banter as dangerous as the weapons they use in their preparation to storm a Nazi chateau. All the getting-to-know-you chit-chat and mission prep is top-shelf. And then they storm the chateau, and the action grows uninspired, and the characters sprout stereotypes, and I stop caring.
Where Eagles Dare flips that. From the jump till the final hour, I defy you to find one interesting, or even functional, character, or a plot twist that isn't inane, or a suspensely exchange, or anything resembling honest human behavior, or anything resembling exciting dishonest human behavior.
Can't be done.
But then Burton finishes explaining the plot to the numb-nuts in Middle America, and the movie turns into this great, gaudy celebration of violence and destruction. Every ten seconds, you get either something huge blowing up or Clint Eastwood mowing down truckloads of Nazis with his machine gun.
A word about that last bit: I think Clint must kill more people in sixty minutes than he does in all his other films combined. I'm not kidding. There's an extended sequence where he's holed up at the end of a hallway, the whole German army at his heels. His buddies can't help him--they're too busy trying to radio for air support.
So what does Clint do? Mows down every last Nazi motherfucker that enters the hallway, their bodies stacking three, four, five men deep in front of him. By the time he's done, you wonder how Hitler ever managed to amass the strength required to watch his car in a bad neighborhood, let alone wage a two-front campaign.
And the beauty of it all? That's Clint's sole purpose in the film! Richard Burton is saddled with the nominal star duties; all the boring wooing and monologuing and backstory-ing. They even give him an (ostensibly) thrilling hand-to-hand combat fight on top of a moving ski lift to showcase his character's physical prowess, but Burton's so visibly jaundiced by that point that you want less for him to win and more for his assailants to back down, hail him a cab, and check him into Betty Ford for alcohol abuse.
Eastwood does two things the whole movie: growl and shoot things. I think he speaks, and this is a conservative estimate, thirty-fives lines of dialogue over the two-hour and forty minute runtime, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
As they say, a star is born.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Quentin Tarantino lists this as one of his favorite films, but as QT has demonstrated time and time (and time) again, his favs are usually just fodder ripe for him to successfully overhaul. Where Eagles Dare is Inglourious Basterds with a trans-orbital lobotomy. The dialogue is crassly functional, the plotting needlessly overheated, the acting logy perfunction.
I know I shouldn't be surprised--any film centering on an elite cadre of WWII spies trying to infiltrate a Nazi castle nestled into the Alps isn't sitting with the smart kids at the lunch table--but the stupidity on display here is of rare vintage. This is a movie where as Richard Burton sleepily explains the double and triple crosses to a room of Allied and Axis spies alike, we the audience get the distinct pleasure of watching Burton's strangely nonplussed audience collectively roll their eyes at him.
So, was it worth my time? Absolutely.
Here's the thing about Where Eagles Dare: it is the inverse of The Dirty Dozen. Dirty Dozen has a great first two-thirds. You got a team full of the baddest badasses ever to swap testosterone (if Al Lettieri showed up, the film might be considered a threat to ovulating women), their tough-guy banter as dangerous as the weapons they use in their preparation to storm a Nazi chateau. All the getting-to-know-you chit-chat and mission prep is top-shelf. And then they storm the chateau, and the action grows uninspired, and the characters sprout stereotypes, and I stop caring.
Where Eagles Dare flips that. From the jump till the final hour, I defy you to find one interesting, or even functional, character, or a plot twist that isn't inane, or a suspensely exchange, or anything resembling honest human behavior, or anything resembling exciting dishonest human behavior.
Can't be done.
But then Burton finishes explaining the plot to the numb-nuts in Middle America, and the movie turns into this great, gaudy celebration of violence and destruction. Every ten seconds, you get either something huge blowing up or Clint Eastwood mowing down truckloads of Nazis with his machine gun.
A word about that last bit: I think Clint must kill more people in sixty minutes than he does in all his other films combined. I'm not kidding. There's an extended sequence where he's holed up at the end of a hallway, the whole German army at his heels. His buddies can't help him--they're too busy trying to radio for air support.
So what does Clint do? Mows down every last Nazi motherfucker that enters the hallway, their bodies stacking three, four, five men deep in front of him. By the time he's done, you wonder how Hitler ever managed to amass the strength required to watch his car in a bad neighborhood, let alone wage a two-front campaign.
And the beauty of it all? That's Clint's sole purpose in the film! Richard Burton is saddled with the nominal star duties; all the boring wooing and monologuing and backstory-ing. They even give him an (ostensibly) thrilling hand-to-hand combat fight on top of a moving ski lift to showcase his character's physical prowess, but Burton's so visibly jaundiced by that point that you want less for him to win and more for his assailants to back down, hail him a cab, and check him into Betty Ford for alcohol abuse.
Eastwood does two things the whole movie: growl and shoot things. I think he speaks, and this is a conservative estimate, thirty-fives lines of dialogue over the two-hour and forty minute runtime, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
As they say, a star is born.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
You Got To Work That Clint-orus: Introduction
First, let me begin this entry with a lesson in Best Laid Plans.
Warner Bros. recently put out a Blu-ray box set of ten Clint Eastwood films. It is, by no means, a comprehensive hi-def record of his cinematic oeuvre (it's even lacking in his years with the Brothers Warner--a little under a third of his WB pictures are here), but it's a decent overview all the same. I confess there's even something brutally attractive about the kinds of films in the set. One could easily imagine a collection of Clint's Best, yet a number of real stinkers take up real estate. If nothing else, the variance in quality from film to film mirrors the quality shifts throughout Eastwood's fifty-plus years in film, and I like that some of his least inspired cinematic excursions made the cut. What else could explain the inclusion of Where Eagles Dare, Absolute Power, and, the creme de la crap, the Charlie Sheen-co-starring excretion The Rookie?
That said, seeing The Outlaw Josey Wales, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Honkytonk Man, Tightrope, Bird, White Hunter Black Heart, A Perfect World, True Crime, and Invictus would make for an even more satisfying survey set, but like the song goes, "You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have The Facts of Life."
It's an good start for Eastwood on Blu-ray, and I thought it'd make a good column--review all ten, in chronological order.
Here's where that whole "Best Laid Plans" lesson comes into play: the United States Postal Service gerried my copy, losing it to the mysteries of Route 66, and so I sit, dick in hand.
Nothing like a good challenge. The game's still on. The catch: I procure the ten films in the set by hook or by crook. When I review 'em is when I see 'em. I'll try to establish some order, but as I'm culling titles from many different sources, the only constant I can promise is Clint himself.
And really, isn't that enough?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Funny Doesn't Shit Gold.
Comedy and the Academy Awards don't play in the same yard. Not a huge shocker, I know. I'm trying to think of the last time a comedy really scored big at the Oscars. Tootsie, maybe? Moonstruck? Does Babe count? That got nominated for a bunch, I remember. I suppose I could verify specifics at IMDb, but that would a) require more work than I'd like to apply, and b) could invalidate this blog.
Bottom line, since the late 1960's/early 1970's, comedy hasn't pulled much weight at the Oscars. The good ones get a nomination here and there, but they're nominated in the same spirit Meryl Streep gets nominations; why award great work when you can declare it not great enough?
I know this shit doesn't matter. Hitchcock never won an Oscar other than the old "You're About to Die, so Here's Something So We Can Say We Honored Ya Before You Keel" Award. Three Six Mafia and Martin Scorsese are tied for number of Oscars won. Sandra Bullock has won more acting awards than Matt Damon. Signs and wonders. It's High School Prom Drama, and yet its sheer scope lends a certain air of importance. Something so big must be important, right?
So then, why does it still hurt that In the Loop lost to Precious for Best Adapted Screenplay? Or that a jury of celebrity peers thought American Beauty funnier and more original than Being John Malkovich? And why, For The Love of God, did the casts/crews of The Big Lebowski, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz receive ZERO love at Oscars '99, '05, and '08, respectively? Not even a handjob, man. Nothing.
Same thing will happen, is happening, with the films produced under the Apatow regime. Judd Apatow gets a lot of shit. Some of it is well deserved (got my eyes on you, Drillbit Taylor and You Don't Mess With the Zohan), but the fact remains that his is the most reliable brand of comedy since the Reitman/Ramis days of the 1980s. Heck, were I a mite more audacious, I might could say Apatow has bested that earlier period, but I don't want to fly off the handle or anything. The reason folks get so mad when he misfires (I'd rate that at once every three films) is that he's set the bar so high, so many times.
Thanks to Apatow, we've had (and this is just off the top of my head) The Ben Stiller Show, Heavyweights, The Cable Guy, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Anchorman, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Zero Effect, Talledega Nights, Superbad, Knocked Up, Walk Hard, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers, Funny People, Get Him to The Greek, and some of the best episodes of The Critic and The Larry Sanders Show. This is a guy who respects comedy, plain and simple, and while others might favor the less populist stylings of The Lonely Planet or The State alums, Apatow reminds me of a smuttier Billy Wilder, and that is a very good thing, indeed.
Now, I figure when he's fucking a hundred and riddled with tumors, they'll wheel him out for a Lifetime Achievement Award. Least they can do. That doesn't mean, however, that in ten-plus years the Oscars have not missed the boat many, many times. By my count, here are the nominations (if not awards. I'm trying to be realistic) that should've gone Team Apatow's way.
1) Adam Sandler for Funny People. A perfect performance. Sandler is magnetic here, as funny and angry and subtle and heartbreaking as anyone who's ever won an Oscar. I can't blame people for not liking the film; it is, by no means, as consistently good as its star. The opening ninety minutes, a cynical and brutally funny study of celebrity that I'd mention in the same breath as Sunset Boulevard, give way to a self-indulgent last act over-stuffed with pat psychological insight that all-but drains the humor from the film. A little more script polishing, a little less Leslie Mann, and we'd be looking at Apatow's Annie Hall instead of his Celebrity. Even with the movie's faults, Sandler never falters. His George Simmonds should be mentioned in the same breath as Olivier's Archie Rice.
2) John C. Reilly for Walk Hard. Here's the genius of Walk Hard, the most underrated film of Apatow's career: Reilly doesn't just lampoon, with idiot grace and dignity, all the conventions of the modern musician biopic--tearing his clothes off and flipping over cars; methodically bending all his forks out of shape in a drug/depression fueled rage; loudly exclaiming "This is a dark fucking period" during the downslide portion of Dewey Cox's life--but he sells the reality of all this nonsense. Reilly is as committed and believable as Joaquin Phoenix is in Walk the Line that you begin to realize he'd be an even better choice to play Johnny Cash! His performance straddles that fine line between parody and imitation so deftly that the only reason you don't forget you're not watching a drama is because you're laughing so hard.
3) James Franco for Pineapple Express. Another case of "Great Performance, Flawed Movie" Syndrome. I wish I liked the film more. It's well made, well written, and very funny at times. The pacing of the film is so damn lethargic, though, and it is far more content to emulate all the '80s action movie tropes that inspired it rather than to mock them. Compare against Hot Fuzz, which functions as both a brilliant action movie parody and a damn good shoot-em-up in its own right, and Pineapple Express feels like an even bigger letdown. I've got no criticism of Franco's Saul Silver, though. It's such a canny performance--there's such a wonderful mix of stoner stereotyping and keenly observed human behavior on display. You feel the comedy informing the humanity, and vice versa. It's the best work Franco has ever done. This is what happens when one applies the Method approach to comedy. If only Apatow would pair up with Daniel Day-Lewis...
4) Jonah Hill for Superbad. I think it was The New Yorker that praised Hill's work here as being akin to early Richard Pryor standup, and the comparison is so apt. Rage powers the best of Pryor, and that same terrible anger fuels Hill in the film. He's mad at being fat, mad at being smarter than anybody at his school, mad at being so lonely. This could easily be the stuff of high school tragedy, and in some ways, it is in the finished film (Hill's longing "last glance" at best friend Michael Cera is painful to watch), but like Pryor, Hill mines all his hurt and anger at being alive into comedy gold. Probably the funniest and most dangerous film in Apatow's oeuvre. Thank Jonah Hill for that.
5) Paul Rudd for Anchorman. Picking a favorite performance in Anchorman is like trying to pick a favorite non-Zeppo Marx Brother. That's not surprising, considering the film is the best Marx Brothers Movie Never Made. My money has to go with Rudd's "Action News Field Reporter" Brian Fantana. Reason 1--Surprise factor of the part. As funny as he was in Wet Hot American Summer, the film's fairly limited (but rabid) cult following limited its, and Rudd's, exposure to most of the free world. Anchorman, therefore, was Rudd's Red Carpet Comedic Coming-Out Party, the film that announced to the universe, "You'll Believe a Handsome Man Will Make You Cry Laughing." It's a full-scale, full-length comic performance, designed to cover Rudd's whole spectrum of humor--Look! He can do subtle! Now he's going broad! Here's some goofy wordplay! But wait! That looks like perfect physical comedy!--and it surprised a lot of folks (myself included) who pigeonholed him as the pre-McDreamy McDreamy. Reason 2--He enriches repeat viewings of the film all on his own. Anchorman is one of the most rewatchable comedies ever made. It probably would be even without Rudd, but he elevates future viewings in a very special way. You can have a complete movie experience just by watching him. Even if he's not the focus of the scene, he's always busy, always working some little bit of business in the background, and it's always hysterical. Mind you, he's not trying to upstage the main action--I saw the movie maybe twenty times before I realized this--he's just weaving in humor on an almost subliminal level. In this regard, the whole film takes on the texture of a Mad Magazine spread. Not many films can successfully claim that. Then again, not enough cast Paul Rudd.
That's what I've got. Disagree with me, agree, I could give a fuck. I've got Freaks and Geeks to watch.
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