Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Movies

Wrong is Right (1982) a (very) belated review

2 Comments

Back in the 1960’s and at the height of the Cold War, director Stanley Kubrick decided to make a movie that focused on the horror of a nuclear conflict.  I’ve read that as Mr. Kubrick worked on the script for that then upcoming film, he kept finding humor -black humor, but humor nonetheless- in the very real possibility of an accidental nuclear war, a decidedly odd focus given the horror the common citizen felt at the time regarding the proliferation of those weapons of mass destruction.  The end result, 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, proved an absolute masterpiece of jet black comedy and is easily one of Mr. Kubrick’s best films.

So, one wonders, might there be another director out there who, upon looking at the events surrounding 9/11 and the second Iraqi war, might not also look at the myriad tragedies involved, from the thousands upon thousands dead, the loss of national treasure, the inept leadership, the media manipulation, and the very questionable motivations for engaging in the conflict in the first place…and decide that this too might be good material in the creation of a black comedy?

Thing is, someone already did, and they did it a whopping 20 years before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraqi War.

I’m talking about 1982’s Wrong Is Right.  As directed by Richard Brooks, the movie features Sean Connery in the role of Patrick Hale, an intrepid, world famous reporter who, in the process of criss-crossing the globe, comes to realize he’s landed himself smack dab in the middle of machinations involving the CIA, an Arabian leader whose land is filled with oil, a weapons dealer, a terrorist intent on getting his hands on two mysterious suitcases, and a U.S. presidential election.

The various parties involved actively try to manipulate the story Hale perceives and tells, and ultimately what may appear “true” becomes a matter of convenience.  To go into too much detail about the story’s plot would be a disservice.

Having said that, this now 30 year old film is incredibly prescient.  With some minor modifications, this could easily be a black comedy “take” on the buildup to the Iraqi War.  The most eerie element of the whole thing is that the movie’s climax takes place on the roof of the World Trade Center.

Yes, the World Trade Center.

As wild a coincidence -or prognostication- as all this is, Wrong is Right is simply not as good a film as one would have hoped.

Sean Connery, usually a very reliable actor, is strangely ineffective in his performance.  Likewise, most of the actors involved in the movie turn in either bland or forgettable performances.  Robert Conrad is given one of the better small roles as General Wombat, the President’s military advisor.  He’s presented as a wild-eyed yet clear speaking lunatic whose chief advice to the President is to push the button and end the nonsense once and for all.  Alas, we don’t see nearly enough of him -or characters like him- throughout the film and, ultimately, Wrong is Right winds up being a black comedy that simply isn’t as funny as one would hope.

Yet, despite its flaws, I can’t entirely dismiss it.

In the end, I would cautiously recommend Wrong is Right to viewers who are intrigued with the idea of seeing a film that manages to be as prescient as this one is.  Just don’t expect the movie to be anywhere near as good as Dr. Strangelove.

Movies

The Big Bus (1976) a (very) belated review

Another posting from my previous blog.  This one first appeared on March 16, 2011.  It is presented with some minor revisions for clarity’s sake:

Over time I developed a list of films I read/heard about yet hadn’t seen that I was intent on catching whenever I could.  Thanks to the proliferation of cable/movie channels and DVDs, this list of unseen -by me- films grows smaller ever day.  As of yesterday, that list is minus another film, one I heard about years ago and was curious to see.  A comedy that evoked memories of 1980’s Airplane!, yet was made a full four years before that classic.

Would it delight, or would it disappoint?  See for yourselves…

The Big Bus rolled (ugh) into theaters in 1976.  Like Airplane!, the makers of this film apparently looked over the landscape of then popular “disaster” films and decided to parody them.  In the case of Airplane!, the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams took the very serious 1957 film Zero Hour! and essentially remade it as a parody, with nods toward the other Airport films that were, up to the previous year, pretty popular.

In the case of The Big Bus, the producers were far more ambitious.  They decided to parody almost the entire “disaster” film genre while having the “all star” cast face danger while aboard the most absurd moving vehicle they could think of: A giant, nuclear powered bus.

That’s right, a bus.

Even now I’m giggling at the absurdity of that concept.  Too bad the film, in the end, simply wasn’t all that good.  While Airplane! is a comedy classic and could well be my personal all time favorite comedy film, The Big Bus unfortunately disappoints because it just wasn’t as funny as I was hoping it would be.  Airplane! presented wall to wall jokes, from Three Stooges-type physicality to verbal jokes to outrageous sight gags.  There was simply no let up, and the most amazing thing is that it worked.

Airplane!’s secret ingredient, and one of the keys to its success, was that it took a bunch of “serious” veteran actors and stuck them in decidedly idiotic roles.  Despite the absurdities, the “serious” actors delivered their lines seriously.  Thus, you laugh out loud when Leslie Nielsen responds to the “Surely you can’t be serious?” line, or when Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges mentally crack up while bringing the wayward airplane in for a landing, or when Peter Graves makes decidedly inappropriate comments to a young passenger.

The Big Bus, on the other hand, presents us with a large and fairly familiar cast that simply isn’t charismatic or zany enough to pull off the idiotic elements presented.  Perhaps the film’s best joke is presented early on, when we find out the man who will be driving the big bus on its maiden trip was involved in a previous bus trip that ended in disaster (and cannibalism!).  For those curious, the sequence is presented below.

I wish the rest of the film could have been that (dare I say it?) biting.

Sadly, the movie lumbers along, not unlike a real bus, with little momentum before reaching its climax.  Incredibly, it is there that the film seems to finally find some spark as the bus balances precariously on a cliff’s edge.  That sequence proved both surprising and visually exciting.

The bottom line: If you’re in the mood for a disaster movie parody, stick with Airplane!

Movies

Southern Comfort (1981) a (very) belated review

It’s been a while since last I posted some of my old blog entries.  Here is my (very belated) review of Southern Comfort, originally posted on July 27, 2010.  I have updated and clarified some of my thoughts:

For the most part, I love the films of director Walter Hill.  To the very casual movie-goer, his name probably doesn’t evoke much of a reaction, but his first seven films as a director, starting with his 1975 feature Hard Times and working his way to 1984’s under-appreciated Streets of Fire, this man was…well…on fire.  Those films firmly tread on the concept of myth and his characters, both heroes and villains, were always larger than life.  Today, he may be better known as the producer of the Alien films, and yes, he is listed as a producer on the highly anticipated Prometheus.

Coming out in 1981, Southern Comfort appeared the year before Mr. Hill’s biggest hit as a director, 48 Hours.  I recall, albeit vaguely, it was at best a modest success.  A few of the critics pointed out that the film was very similar, at least thematically, to the 1972 film Deliverance.  In fact, if there was a reason to dismiss Southern Comfort, that was it.  Deliverance, both the novel and the subsequent film, were (and still are) considered classics.  And when you decide to tread in the shadow of classics, you damn well better bring your “A” game.

I don’t know if I saw the film when it was originally released, but if I did, the only lingering memory of it was the climax, and this could well have been a result of a subsequent televised viewing.  Being a fan of Mr. Hill’s and seeing the film being shown on a cable channel (uncut), I set the DVR and, some four or five months later, I’ve finally had a chance to see the film all the way through.  It was the last of those seven original Hill films left for me to see, and I was eager for the opportunity to gauge it against my favorite Walter Hill films (The Driver; The Warriors, and the already mentioned Streets of Fire).

So, how did it stack up?

Not all that badly, as it turned out.

To begin, yes there are strong echoes of Deliverance throughout Southern Comfort.  And, to be very blunt, Deliverance is the superior film.  Far superior.  If similarities in themes between films bother you and you’re also a fan of Deliverance, there is a good chance that you may not enjoy this film.

Like Deliverance, Southern Comfort presents us with a group of weekend warriors (in this case, they quite literally are weekend warriors…they’re National Guardsmen).  As with Deliverance, our group travels off into the dark places just outside civilization.  And as with Deliverance, the group faces off against both the forces of nature and the shady locals.  This place is their playground, and our protagonists are clearly out of their element.

The biggest difference between the films is that while Deliverance was a story about self-confident city folk who head out to the woods with their brand new shiny state of the art hunting gear (in other words, they are poseurs) and find themselves quickly in over their heads in their rural location, Southern Comfort delivers more of a parable of the United States’ war in Vietnam.  The “weekend warriors” head out to the woods on a training mission and are equipped with fearsome weapons…all loaded with blanks.  They intrude into a land with its own rules, where the people speak their own language and have their own culture.  As the terrain shifts and these testosterone filled individuals get lost, things quickly become muddled.  The National Guard group unit we follow are barely a cohesive unit.  The individual members push things this way and that and, ultimately, the troubles they encounter are of their own making.  Going along with the whole Vietnam analogy, they have no real mission other than survival and the enemy is literally as much a part of the scenery as the deadly swamps they’re stuck in.

Powers Boothe, a sadly under-appreciated actor, simmers in the role of Cpl. Charles Hardin.  While his actions within this film aren’t always right, he more than anyone else becomes aware of the gravity of their situation.  Keith Carradine plays Pfc. Spencer, a good-natured “city boy” presented as almost the polar opposite of the more intense Hardin.  In this case, the near opposites form a strong bond and they eventually realize they have to work together or fall apart.

Southern Comfort, in the end, is an enjoyable Walter Hill film, again provided the similarities to the superior Deliverance don’t become too big a burden to the viewer.  While the action comes in spurts, the tension is well maintained and the dialogue is very snappy.  A highlight is the building, and final, confrontation between Boothe’s Hardin and Fred Ward’s Cpl. Lonnie Reece while the movie most fumbles with the way, way too-fast decomposure of Cpl. ‘Coach’ Bowden.

Still, the film is very much worth a look.

Movies

Priest (2011) a (mildly) belated review

So I had a few minutes to spare and looked around some of the DVR recordings I made over the last month or two and found, among them, a recording of the 2011 film Priest.

Why was it there?  I admit, I was mildly curious about the film and was vaguely aware that it was based on a Korean Manga of some note.  Was also aware the film came and went pretty abruptly from theaters.

Wasn’t aware that the film featured Karl Urban in the bad guy role and (really surprising) veteran actor Christopher Plummer in a smaller role as a head priest.

The plot?  Post apocalyptic sideways world where vampire creatures and humans have battled for years.  The Priests are essentially the Church’s badasses, devout vampire killers who, as the story begins, are considered past their prime.  It is believed the vampire menace is over.

It isn’t.

For the first hour or so of the film, I enjoyed the film quite a bit.  The visuals were outstanding and the story presented was a decent “B” movie adventure.  After that first hour, I began wondering why this film was ranked so low on Rottentomatoes.com, where it earned an extremely low 17% approval from critics and an equally poor 36% from audiences (you can read the rankings here).  Could the critics and audiences have been wrong?  Was my taste in movies taking a serious nosedive?

Then came the movie’s second half and those poor ratings were explained away rather well.

For you see, if Priest were a novel, everything presented within the movie would have been a prologue to a (potentially) far more interesting story.  What story we have is, in the end, woefully undernourished, a tale of a one-time Priest turned vampire attempting to assault the “big city”.  His plan is to steal our protagonist’s daughter and force him to chase after him for no real reason at all.  Revenge I suppose, but really…

It all makes little sense in the end.  Karl Urban is wasted as the villain.  He’s by far the most interesting character in the film but when all is said and done is given so little time to do his villain thing that you wonder why they bothered.  Worst example of this?  The bad guy’s face off against three Priests, a sequence that should have been shown in its full glory (Priest is an action film, right?!) and is instead absurdly abbreviated.  I’m not exaggerating when I say this potentially explosive “action sequence” goes like this:  The three Priests meet up with Karl Urban’s bad guy.  One of them runs at him and is killed by  bad guy in literally one second.  We cut away from the fight and, a few minutes later, our protagonist arrives in the town where this fight occurred and sees the fight’s aftermath and the three dead Priests.  What happened to the other two Priests we have to fill in the blanks with our imagination.

Again, this is an action film, right?

Watching Priest, I had the feeling the director felt uncomfortable with showing too much action.

Anyway, by film’s end we are informed that there is some vampire queen out there and that the battle has “just begun”, ie, the real story is coming in the movie’s sequel.

Given the movie’s performance at the box office, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for that sequel to materialize.

Movies

The Skin I Live In (2011) a (very mildly) belated review

Way back in 1988 I was first exposed to director Pedro Almodovar via his breakout hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  That movie was funny, a bit trashy, absurd, and highly entertaining.  The movie also featured then unknown Antonio Banderas in a large role that no doubt helped him make the big jump to Hollywood.  Both Almodovar and Banderas, thus, would go on to very successful careers.  The Skin I Live In, released last year in 2011, represents the first time in many years the two worked together again.

When I first heard of The Skin I Live In, I was curious to see how Mr. Almodovar, whose most successful works to my mind are usually humorous or dramatic in nature, would handle a foray into the horror genre.  I approached the film with excitement, interest, and curiosity.  I also avoided spoilers, only reading cryptic hints as to the movie’s plot, which apparently involved a surgeon/skin researcher Robert Ledgard (Banderas) and a most unusual client, Vera Cruz (the stunning Elena Anaya) and their twisted relationship.  That, in the end, was the extent of my knowledge of the film.

When i finally sat down to watch it, I was immediately struck by the thematic similarities The Skin I Live In had to other (very) old-time horror works. Indeed, this film employs what is perhaps one of the oldest horror movie tropes: the mad scientist.

To give away more details of the movie’s plot would be a crime, for this film offers plenty of bizarre –very bizarre– surprises.  At a couple of points in the film I thought I had things worked out, but the eventual story reveals proved a whole lot stranger than anything I came up with.

Having said that, as good and as wicked as the story being told is, The Skin I Live In proved also to be a frustrating experience.  The very gutsy and potentially profound story is undermined by weak, almost soap-opera level characterization and melodrama.  The way the story unfolds, too, is frustrating, starting in the present and then, halfway through, abruptly shifting to the past.  Finally, as an audience member one has to accept too many unlikely things happening between the characters and often involving dumb actions on their part for the movie to actually work.

Without giving too much away, here are a few of the things that didn’t work for me:  We have to accept that a group of veteran surgeons would perform a very major operation on someone without looking into their patient’s background at all.  We have to accept that a character who appears quite grounded would allow a very dangerous individual into her home.  We have to accept that a character would take a disturbed relative to a party, her first foray (apparently) out of a mental institution…and then simply lose track of her whereabouts.

And these are the things I can mention without getting too heavily into spoilers.

Still, the film presented a very strong and mind-bending story.  Perhaps if the script had been worked on a little more, and perhaps if the film had been focused more on Vera Cruz’s point of view and her attempts to uncover the mystery around her, I think the film might have worked a lot better.  Nonetheless, if you’re interested in taking a journey into some genuinely bizarre story directions, The Skin I Live In might well be for you.  Note however, the film is rated “R” for good reason.

Movies, Uncategorized

White Lightning (1973) a (very) belated review

Back in the 1970’s Burt Reynolds was easily one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.  Quite an accomplishment considering some of his rivals included such heavy weights as Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, etc. etc.

Today, he is probably best known for two movies/roles:  The wannabe outdoorsman Lewis in the 1972 adaptation of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance and the 1977 action/comedy Smokey and the Bandit.  But his success in the movies, of course, wasn’t limited to just those two roles.

Perhaps falling a hair under those two films (at least in terms of recognizability) are his “Gator” films, 1973’s White Lightning and its 1976 sequel Gator.  A recent episode of Archer (catch it if you can, it is quite hilarious, an animated spy version of Reno 911) had Burt Reynolds as a “guest”, and one of the more amusing comments by the show’s dazed protagonist was his pitch to Burt Reynolds to make a sequel to Gator, and Burt noting that the movie was a sequel.

Which brings us back to White Lightning.  Watching the film recently was an interesting experience.  The passage of time may have dulled some of the movie’s more exciting set pieces (mostly involving car chases), but the Burt Reynolds charisma shines very bright in this film.  The plot is simple enough:  Gator McKlusky (Reynolds) is “good ol’ Southern boy”, a bootlegger currently in jail serving a small sentence.  He’s due out in a year or two, but when word comes that his younger brother was found dead, he is filled with righteous fury.  And when the rumor comes that his death was the result of the action of Sheriff J. C. Connors (Ned Beatty), he agrees to go undercover with the Feds to take the man down.

What follows is Gator’s attempts to infiltrate the moonshining organization in Connors’ town.  But when Connors gets wind he has a Fed infiltrator in his territory, things go from bad to worse.

I have to admit, while I enjoyed White Lightning, I found Gator an overall better film, if only because the villain in the later film, played by Jerry Reed (who would join up with Burt Reynolds once again in Smokey and the Bandit in a very, very different role!), was soooo much more detestable than Ned Beatty’s Sheriff Connors.

Still, one has to admit that watching White Lightning you see the very beginning of things that were to come.  Turn the movie’s plot a little this way -and into comedy with even more car mayhem- and you have Smokey and the Bandit.  Turn the film a little that way -and make it more of a drama- and you have Justified.

So, if you’re interested in movie history and would like to see something that may well have influenced works that even today entertain us, you could do a lot worse than check out White Lightning.

Movies, Uncategorized

Edge of Darkness (2010) a (mildly) belated review

Way back in the mid-1980’s and while looking through a newspaper I found a very positive review for Edge of Darkness, a mini-series that was scheduled to air on PBS.  The premise was intriguing:  A British police officer’s daughter is murdered and, in his subsequent investigation of the matter, discovers a toxic cesspool of government corruption linked to nuclear research.  I watched the series when it aired back then and though my memories of it are vague after the passage of time, I distinctly recall liking it quite a bit.  I also really, really liked Joe Don Baker’s performance within the series as Darius Jedburgh, a shady CIA operative/fixer who, over the course of the series, became a delightfully unpredictable wild-card.

Years passed and, in 2010, I heard that the mini-series’ original director, Martin Campbell, was working on a movie remake of the mini-series with Mel Gibson in the title role.  I was intrigued.  I’ve been a fan of Mr. Gibson’s work since first seeing him in the incredible Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior when it first hit theaters way back in 1981.  Of late, I’ve been equally shocked by some of the lurid details regarding his personal life.  Still, I was interested in seeing the film but, of course, didn’t find the time to do so when it was initially released to theaters.  Yesterday, I finally had a chance to see it and did just that.

The 2010 film version of Edge of Darkness retains the same general plot involving police officer Thomas Craven’s (Mel Gibson) search for his daughter’s murderers and the way it eventually ties in to a shady nuclear research facility and equally shady politicians.  The movie’s setting has been changed, transplanting the story for no discernible reason from England to Boston.

While watching the film’s first half, I thought things were unfolding quite well.  The central mystery was set up and Mr. Gibson does well providing a Boston accent and acting both filled with equal parts grief and rage as he investigates his daughter’s murder.  Unfortunately, in the film’s second half the story suffers from compressing too much material to fit the parameters of a theatrical release.  The original Edge of Darkness mini-series had the luxury of five and a half hours to tell its story.  The movie, which clocks in at just under two hours, simply doesn’t have enough time to flesh out characters and situations and provide a good wrap up in that short a period of time.

The character who suffers the greatest from this compressed storytelling is, unfortunately, the character that to me was the most intriguing in the mini-series: Darius Jedburgh.  In the movie, the role is played with considerable menace by Ray Winstone.  Unfortunately in the movie he isn’t given anywhere near enough time to develop.  In the mini-series, Craven and Jedburgh meet many times and become something of an odd-couple while pursuing the mystery of Craven’s daughter’s death.  In the movie, they meet up a total of two times.  There is more story presented with Jedburgh, but it involves his own reactions to his “bosses” and isn’t nearly as compelling as it could have been.  Anyone who hasn’t seen the original mini-series and therefore isn’t aware of how important the character of Jedburgh was in it can be forgiven for wondering just why he was present in this film at all.  He simply isn’t as necessary to this version of the story and, sadly, could well have been cut out entirely in favor of more time with Mel Gibson’s Craven.

In conclusion, what you have with the 2010 version of Edge of Darkness is a movie that starts well but simply can’t present as much plot as the original mini-series, devolving into a rather standard “good guy takes on the bad guys” story before reaching its admittedly very emotional conclusion.  Two stars out of four.

And here’s Jedburgh and Craven’s first meeting from the original mini-series:

Movies

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) a (mildly) belated review

If you need any further proof of the directorial genius of Steven Spielberg, just look at some of the incredible set pieces/adventure sequences to be found in his first computer graphic movie The Adventures of Tintin.

That’s not, however, to say to that the film as a whole is a complete success.  But let me backtrack just a little.

When I was very young, I was absolutely charmed by the works of Georges Remi, aka Herge, in the twenty three Tintin graphic novels he produced over his lifetime.  I know there were previous animated and live action features based on the graphic novels, but Steven Spielberg’s film is the first time I would see Tintin and his world in something other than the original graphic novels.

When the film was originally released, I was curious how audiences in the United States would react.  While Tintin is a beloved fictional character in Europe, Canada, and other parts of the world, Herge’s work never seemed to rise above cult status in the United States.  Would audiences here give this film a look despite the lack of familiarity with the character and books?

As it turned out, the movie proved a mild success in the United States and a big hit oversees.  The film was generally viewed positively by audiences here (Rottentomatoes.com has the film scoring a very good 74% among critics and 78% among audiences).  I was eager to see the film in theaters, but the crunch of time proved too much and I simply couldn’t.  Instead, I waited for the eventual video release and quickly got the movie into my BluRay player.

As I mentioned at the start, there are some scenes in The Adventures of Tintin that are simply astonishing.  These scenes follow one after the other at roughly the middle of the movie to close to the end.  First up is the escape from a freighter and subsequent airplane flight to the desert.  These scenes are both hilarious and suspenseful.  Soon after that, there is an incredible flashback sequence involving the Unicorn, a ship from the 1700’s whose fate is central to the story we’re presented.  This flashback features some of the very best pirate action you’re likely to ever see in any film, live action or animated.  Then there’s the sequence -all presented in one “take”- featuring a mad dash between the protagonists and the villains to gain control of three pieces of paper.

Each of these sequences are great and guaranteed to make your eyes pop.

…But…

Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be…too much.  To me, some of the greatest works of fiction know how to balance out “quiet” scenes with “action” scenes.  A few years back, while watching (of all things) Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I came to realize that when every sequence in the movie is presented as if it is a big set piece (action or otherwise) with all the bells and whistles (swelling music, frantic editing, solemn dialogue, etc. etc.), then after a while the “importance” of the sequence you’re watching becomes…less so.  I had been so assaulted by one supposed big earth-shaking scene after the other that by the time Hellboy II reached its actual climax, it felt like just another sequence instead of what should have been a rousing conclusion.

So too, unfortunately, it is with that second half of The Adventures of Tintin.  While the first half of the film -dare I say it- allows the story time to “breath”, when we’re finished with those wonderful sequences I noted above, we are unfortunately not quite at the film’s climax.  We’re close, mind you, but because those sequences I pointed out are so damn good, when we actually do reach the movie’s climax and the villain and hero face off that one last time, it proved to be rather…dull.  By that point I was mentally exhausted with the all that good stuff that came one after the other just before.  Granted, Mr. Spielberg and company tried to fashion something great with that last confrontation between villain and hero, but it just didn’t live up to what came right before.  Even worse, the sequence involving the chase for the three pieces of paper could easily have served as the movie’s climax…and it would have worked very well there.  Had Mr. Spielberg done so, the film’s dénouement could have just as easily followed.

Regardless, I still admire what Mr. Spielberg and company did with The Adventures of Tintin.  While I can’t say that the film was a complete success, particularly during that exhausting later half, I nonetheless was very impressed with what they did get right, from the incredible computer animation (some of the best I’ve ever seen) to those very successful action and humor sequences.  Overall, I’d give this film a very solid three stars out of four.  Recommended.

Movies

The Thing (2011) a (mildly) belated review

When I first heard about the 2011 film The Thing, the studios were out front and open about the fact that the film would be a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter directed The Thing.  That movie, by the way, was a remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World and all three films were based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. short story Who Goes There?

Hearing that the 2011 film would be a “prequel” to the John Carpenter film, I (along with pretty much everyone else familiar with the film) instantly knew what it was about:  A look at what happened to the Norwegian station.  In the opening scenes of the John Carpenter film, a helicopter carrying a pair of Norwegian men chases and shoots at a fleeing dog.  The dog reaches the American’s Antarctic base and the Norwegian hunters, whom the Americans cannot understand and fear are dangerous, are killed while the dog is “rescued”.  Afterwards, crew members of the American station go to the Norwegian station and find it in shambles.  They come to realize that something very wrong happened here.

Familiarity with those brief scenes in the John Carpenter film effectively cut any surprise one might experience while watching The Thing prequel.  After all, from the Carpenter film we know what’s going to happen to the Norwegian station:  Everyone within it dies, it burns almost to the ground, and some strange dead creatures are found lying about.

What else is there to know?

That, in the end, proves to be the undoing of this prequel film.  While it has been many years since the original John Carpenter release and perhaps the film’s makers felt this material would mostly be “new” to most young theater goers, for someone who was exposed to (and is a fan of) the John Carpenter film, watching this prequel felt like an exercise in filling in information that didn’t need to be filled in.

Having said that, the film isn’t terrible.

It was reasonably well made and the effects were, for the most part, pretty good, when they weren’t too obviously CGI.  The acting was generally good even thought the writers failed to give many of the ancillary characters much of a character beyond victim-hood.  The movie’s protagonist was played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and, given the macho-centric John Carpenter original film, her choice as the lead was decidedly different.

There were a few other interesting things to be found, such as the way this group came up with their test for who might be a creature without resorting to what was used in the Carpenter film and the way they replicated the time (the film is set in 1982) and equipment we would see in the Carpenter film.

Overall, the film left me feeling that it was nothing more than a decent time killer.  Not terribly bad, but neither was it something that was worth revisiting.

And about that whole prequel thing…I couldn’t help but think it would it have been much more clever on the part of the studios to feed the public misinformation about the film rather than admitting from the beginning this was a prequel.

Think about it: The studios could have insinuated this film was a “remake” or “re-imagining” of the Carpenter classic.  Fans would have howled…how dare they remake a classic!  How could they?

When the movie is released, it could have hidden, to some degree, the fact that the action took place on a Norwegian station and instead had a couple of Norwegian characters involved in the story.  Then, when we reach the end and come full circle with the beginning of the Carpenter film, instead of giving audiences familiar with that movie something they knew would come, they are instead pleasantly surprised to realize they were watching a prequel rather than a remake.  At least that might have offered something new and original to this ultimately all too familiar mix.

Ah well.  As they say, hindsight is always 20-20.

Movies

Grosse Point Blank (1997) a (belated) review

I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies, mainly because they tend to operate under a story “formula” that, to my eyes, has become all too predictable.

To begin, we have our main two characters (male and female). They meet, they fall in love with each other, sometimes right away, sometimes over a few minutes of screen time.  Sometimes, they hate each other on the outset, but that’s only delaying the inevitable.  They will fall in love with each other.

But there are complications. One of them, for example, may be engaged.  Perhaps to the other’s best friend.  Or maybe their meeting and love is some kind of con. Perhaps one of them was looking for a rich score, or trying to prove they could seduce anyone.  In the end, they (say it all together now) truly fall in love. In the movie’s later acts, the truth of this deception comes out and it looks like the young lovers are destined to go their separate ways. Then, in the film’s final act, one or the other or both realize their love is true and they make up and live happily ever after.

The End.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the 1997 film Grosse Point Blank.  As I mentioned before, I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies.  But like many things in life, there are exceptions.  If there’s one romantic comedy that I can sit through multiple times, it is this film.

I’ve seen it several times, most recently over the weekend, and still get a chuckle out of it.  Yes, the film follows the typical romantic comedy plot, but it is the unusual elements brought into the more standard ones that makes this film work so well.

To begin with, we’re not dealing with your typical protagonists.  John Cusack is Martin Blank, hired killer, who is currently on a losing skid.  We first meet him on one job where he’s hired to protect someone from a killer.  He succeeds in his assignment…temporarily.  His next job, a killing in Miami meant to look like a heart attack, is instead  botched.  He is forced to kill his target by far bloodier means.  We further find that Blank is burned out with the job.  He sees a (justifiably terrified) psychologist (Alan Arkin in what amounts to a cameo role, yet he is quite hilarious in his sparse scenes) and is being pressured by a psychotic fellow killer (Dan Aykroyd, also very funny in a someone bigger cameo role) to join his union…all while watching out that he doesn’t shoot him in the back.

Added to this mess is the fact that because of his botched jobs, Blank is being pressured to take on a “make up” job in Detroit, where he happens to have his 10th year High School Reunion coming up.  Did I mention that Blank is obsessed with Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver, quite excellent as the grounded Yin to Blank’s highly eccentric Yang), a woman he abandoned on the night of their prom ten years before?

So the elements are all there for a truly oddball (and bloody!) romantic comedy.  Old flames return to each other while Blank has to hide (in plain sight!) his job while avoiding assassins and CIA agents tasked to take him out, all while trying to set things right with the one time love of his life.

Grosse Point Blank isn’t Casablanca or Citizen Kane, but then again, very few films are.  What this movie is is a funny and ultimately very satisfying variation on the romantic comedy formula.  Sure, the elements outlined above are still there.  But it is the outrageous outliers (the hired killers) that make this film strand out from so many in the pack.  Recommended.