Film Friday: Enter The Dragon (1973)

In the 1970’s, martial arts became all the rage. There was one reason for this: Bruce Lee. Something about Lee was intensely compelling and audiences just could not get enough. When he died at the peak of his popularity, he became immortal. His peak came with Enter the Dragon, though without Lee, Enter the Dragon really isn’t a very good movie.

Plot

Enter the Dragon opens by introducing us to Bruce Lee. Lee is a Shaolin monk, of sorts, in Hong Kong. His order uses philosophy to give them greater martial arts ability, and he is the best fighter among them.

Lee is asked by British Intelligence to attend a martial arts tournament being given by Han, a drug dealer who owns his own island near Hong Kong. Han has invited the top fighters in the world to come compete and the British want Lee to join them and investigate Han’s island for missing girls. Han addicts them to heroin and then uses them as prostitutes. Lee agrees. He then learns that Han’s henchman, O’Hara, killed Lee’s sister.

Lee’s competition appears to be mainly Roper (John Saxon), an American businessman and compulsive gambler who has blown his fortune gambling and must flee the mob, Williams (Jim Kelly) a black radical who impliedly fights for the poor, and an assortment of others.

After a series of vignettes showing the fighters arriving, we are treated to one of Han’s parties. The fighters are offered food and women. Later that night, Lee begins his investigation. In the meantime, Han kills Kelly because he believes Kelly is spying on him and he offers Saxon a chance to join him. This all leads to a series of showdowns in which Saxon changes sides and helps Lee while Lee is in the fight of his life against Han and his private army.

What Made This Film Special

The Hong Kong film industry has turned out a bazillion martial arts films but few of them have ever reached any level of popularity with general audiences. Enter the Dragon is the notable exception. Enter the Dragon has become a classic. And make no mistake, it is Lee who gives Enter the Dragon its reach with general audiences and its staying power generation after generation.

Indeed, let us be honest: Enter the Dragon is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed mess that would be utter crap if given to another actor other than Lee. The lines are laughable. The dialog is primitive. The martial arts moments are ridiculous; they are the equivalent of wire fighting today. The acting is stiff on the one hand and Captain Kirk over-the-top on the other.

Through all of this, though, three things stand out which elevate this film. The first is Jim Kelly who is just badass. Kelly is three parts cool and one part ass-kicking machine. His tough guy appeal is the appeal of manufactured heroes like Jason Statham and Vin Diesel, only he does it without stylized close-ups, without faked whispered dialog, and without elaborate too-perfect one-liners. He is a man you don’t mess with, not a man who calls a stunt double.

Then you have John Saxon. Saxon is hard to believe as being a genuinely good martial artist, but that’s not really his role. His role is the corrupted fighter who redeems himself by finding his moral center again and then dies a martyr of sorts. Saxon is believable in this because it feels like the actor in a nutshell. Saxon is a wannabe action hero who just never felt right as a hero, and that works to his advantage here.

But Kelly and Saxon alone are not enough to elevate this to more than a B movie. That takes Lee. Lee is the reason you watch this film. He is the man who makes it real and makes it interesting. Indeed, stick any other actor in Lee’s role and this film collapses.

What Lee brings is believability first and foremost. Lee makes us believe that the fighting monks of his order are real. How? By believing his own fortune cookie lines (“don’t look at the finger or you will miss all that Heavenly glory”) are genuine philosophy and selling that philosophy as the key to a higher level of martial arts. Indeed, this film feels like you are getting a look into the actual training methods Lee used to make himself such an incredible martial artist.

He brings personality too. Lee does martial arts tricks with such cool that we believe he can do the impossible. He’s funny too. His humor is subtle, but genuine. It’s also very much “common man” humor like when he asks why someone doesn’t just get a gun and shoot Han. This makes him very relatable.

Lee also presents himself as the guy we all want to be. He knows he can’t rely on the government, so he doesn’t: “If I get in trouble, you make a phone call.” He’s moral too. He fights for the people who need help. He’s not cruel either; there isn’t a moment in this film where you think Lee will regret what he did. He takes down bullies, like the New Zealander. He’s clever, as seen in how he takes the New Zealander down.

All of this makes Lee out as a superior being with superior skills, but at the same time someone who strikes us as very much us. In effect, Lee is the person we want to be. That is why we relate to him. And when he tells us this is all real, we believe him in a way we would never believe another actor.

And that is the reason this film is remembered.

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Film Friday: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Let’s talk about John Carpenter’s second film: 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13. This is one of those films that film-buffs love, and deservedly so. Indeed, this film is fascinating in so many ways. What interests me, however, is just how deeply conservative this film is, especially given the fact that Carpenter is rather liberal.

Plot

Heavily influenced by Howard Hawks’s westerns, particularly Rio Bravo, Assault on Precinct 13 involves exactly what the title suggests. As the story opens, newly promoted Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is ordered to oversee the Anderson Police Precinct in the Anderson ghetto of Los Angeles for the night. The station has been moved and only a handful of staff remain at the Anderson Station to shut it down.

As background, we are told that a ruthless gang, who call themselves Street Thunder, has stolen automatic weapons and is now in a war with the police. After seeing a group of gang members gunned down, we see the multiracial leaders of the gang swear a blood oath and then drive around looking for people to kill.

Meanwhile, we see two other subplots unfold. First, a group of prisoners, including multiple-murderer Napoleon Wilson, are being transported from one prison to another so he can wait on death row. One of the three prisoners becomes sick and their bus stops at the Anderson Station.

The second subplot involves a man who takes his daughter into the Anderson ghetto with the intent of asking their housekeeper to move in with them. I suspect Carpenter makes a gay reference here but I have no proof (the man and his daughter plan to tell the housekeeper that they have a spare room now that his male roommate is dead). As the man stops to call for directions, his daughter sees an ice cream truck. She goes to get ice cream, but the gang leaders stop and kill her and the ice cream peddler. The girl’s father races over, grabs the gun the ice cream peddler had in his truck, chases the gang bangers, and kills one of them. They then chase him until he runs into the Anderson Station.

A siege begins, with the gang cutting off the power and phones to the Anderson Station and periodically trying to rush the building. It is a hopeless fight the defenders must win, though they are short on ammunition and people.

Why This Film Works

This is such a fascinating film to me on many levels. For example, on a purely technical level, this film is awful. Much of the writing is stilted and ridiculous. The actors are often wooden. The action is poorly staged. The plot is far-fetched. And so on. Yet, this is a really good film.

What works here are the “buts” to each of the complaints I just listed. The visual style is muddy and pedestrian and the action is poorly staged, but it makes the film feel honest in a way that smoother choreography and artistic shots of doves flying through windows as the heroes draw their guns in slow motion simply cannot provide. The actors are often wooden, but at other times they are brilliant. Co-leads Austin Stoker and Darwin Joston in particular provide some very subtle, excellently done moments that say so much more than the dialog conveys. A good example of this is how Joston, who goes through the whole film asking for cigarettes, conveys subtle shock when Stoker becomes the first cop to apologize for not being able to provide a cigarette. His shock at being treated with respect tells us reams about Stoker’s character as a genuinely good guy.

Continuing, the plot is definitely far-fetched, but it’s not implausible or so unlikely that you doubt it. What’s more, the plot is streamlined and provides just enough explanation to understand the film, but not enough to make the film feel convoluted. The writing is interesting too. Much of it is stilted and kind of silly:

Convict: “Aren’t you going to wish me good luck?”
Cops: “Good luck.”
Convict: “Two cops wishing me good luck? Now I know I’m doomed.”

But much of it is rather clever and much of it is funny. Joston in particular tells good stories throughout and he has some witty lines, such as when the woman who falls for him asks what to do with her final bullets:

Leigh: “I have two shots left. Should I save them for us?”
Joston: “Save ‘em for the first two assholes that come through that vent.”
Leigh: “What do I use on the rest of them?”
Joston: “Then you have to wing it.”

What really makes this film work, however, is the three male leads. Each of these guys Austin Stoker (Lt. Ethan Bishop), Darwin Joston (Napoleon Wilson) and Charles Cyphers (Special Officer Starker) are treated as leading men rather than supporting actors. Each has a strong back-story, gets solid screen time, and has lines which make them the focus of the story when they are in it. And each actor takes these opportunities and handles them perfectly. The result is that you end up with three strong stories that intertwine to form the main story rather than one story with some minor characters providing filler. This makes for a strong film because you are constantly interested in what is happening.

Conservative? Oh Yeah!

For those who haven’t followed Carpenter’s career, there is a definite liberal bent, particularly as it relates to the issue of feminism. This came in large part from his producer Debra Hill, but Carpenter ran with it voluntarily. He’s also done some anti-Reagan work, some pro-environmental work and he’s done some bizarre smears against religious conservatives. So one would assume that his film about a multiracial gang arising in the ghettos of Los Angeles would tread heavily into liberalism and liberation theology. Interestingly, however, it doesn’t. Instead, it presents full-on conservatism. Observe...

The story involves a mixed-race gang of “youths” who have gotten their hands on automatic weapons and are now considered a menace. This gang arose in the ghetto. The standard liberal treatment for this is that the gang was formed because of a combination of white oppression and economic hopelessness. None of that is the case here, however. Instead, the only clue we get as to why the gang formed is that several of their leaders dress in Marxist garb similar in appearance to what Che Guevara wore. That’s highly unusual because (1) it fails to imply that the gang was forced to turn to crime by evil rich whites, and (2) it implies that Marxists are indeed dangerous. With this being the 1970s and Liberation Theology and “root causes” policing being so prevalent, this is a significant jump to the right.

What’s more, compare the gang to what is going on inside the station. Bishop is black and he too came from Anderson. Liberation Theology says that such people must be on the side of the revolution, only Anderson is presented as firmly pro-law and order. He is even shown to believe in heroism, another thing the left was trying to eliminate. What’s more, the police side is a multiracial group who mix freely, never judge each other on the basis of race, and let a black man lead the group. These are all things leftists tell us cannot exist in the real world.

Moreover, as a direct blow to the root causes argument, we are told clearly but indirectly that the reason Bishop is such a sterling character despite growing up in a ghetto is because his father instilled in him strong values including respect for his mother. Again, liberals routinely claim that minorities cannot overcome their root causes. Carpenter says the opposite here. Bishop even notes that “no one got me out of Anderson, I walked out on my own.” Again, self-help is an illusion in liberal circles.

Further, the gang appears to be leftists. Yet, they are interestingly shown to be vicious and without any noble principles. They kill blacks, as well as whites. They kill a little girl for no reason at all. Their first killing is an ice cream truck driver, i.e. a working man. At the police station they kill cop and crook indiscriminately even though liberals would tell us that the crooks are only locked up because the police are an occupying army used by the privileged elite to keep order.

Finally, Napoleon Wilson becomes a hero in this film, but there is no suggestion that his crimes should be forgiven just because he proves to be a good guy. Nor does he ever disclaim his own actions or their significance. In fact, he doesn’t even bother to explain them even as people ask: the message to that is that intent doesn’t matter, only the act matters. That’s highly conservative.

It’s interesting to me that a leftist director could create a film that is perfectly set up to be very liberal, but ends up being strongly conservative in values.

Thoughts?

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Guest Review: Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971)

by Rustbelt

Well, it’s time for Earth Day. And so I’d like to recall the adventure of the largest green warrior of all time, (though his skin is actually charcoal gray)…Godzilla! He fights for Gaea and smelly tree-huggers in the aptly-titled, Godzilla versus the Smog Monster. Now we witness the ironic fight between a behemoth born of man’s tampering with nuclear power, and a leviathan created of man’s callous destruction of...

Ok, ok. Let’s not kid ourselves. With its environmental preachiness, bizarre (and often grotesque) imagery, and lack of anything resembling focus, this black sheep of the Godzilla kaiju canon (11th in the original, or Showa series, 1954- 1975), is hard for even diehard G-fans to stomach.

Plot Summary

A strange ‘tadpole’ is caught in the waters off Japan. The investigating scientist, Dr. Yano. is then wounded by a larger ‘tadpole’ while scuba diving. He realizes the creatures are made out of minerals and sludge. Even worse, these creatures can unite and form larger ‘tadpoles.’ And while the police are busy interrogating Hoggish Greedly and Sly Sludge, a creature dubbed “Hedorah” (based on the Japanese word for “mud” or “vomit,” depending on the source), morphs into a froglike creature and ends up fighting nuclear nightmare-turned-savior-of-Earth Godzilla in Tokyo.

Eventually, Hedorah grows larger, becoming a flying-saucer-like monster, (no explanation given, though Dr. Blight was implicated), and spreads sulfuric acid mist all over southeast Japan, killing thousands. Dr. Yano (well, actually, his son) figures out that since Hedorah is mostly sludge, they should just dry him out.

The film climaxes at Mt. Fuji where a now-bipedal Hedorah again fights with Godzilla while a group of teens hold a bonfire party. (They’re gruesomely killed by Hedorah.) After getting the better of the fight, Hedorah is drawn to a pair of super-sized electrodes set up by the army. Godzilla helps capture Hedorah and uses his flame to power the electrodes, partially dehydrating Hedorah. What’s left of the sludge fiend tries to flee, only to be caught when Godzilla puts on his Planeteer rings and uses the powers of wind and fire (in the form his breath) to fly- yes, fly!- and catch up with the beast. And as the Big G and the Army let their powers combine, Godzilla uses his atomic breath to charge the electrodes again and finish off the titular smog monster. Thus, the environment is saved through the use of atomic radiation…as Verminous Scum and Looten Plunder shake their fists in the distance, promising to get Captain Plan- er, uh, Godzilla next time!

OK, Let’s State the Obvious

Director Yoshitmitsu Banno came up with the idea for this flick while standing on deadly ground in Yokkaichi and staring at some polluted waters. At the time, (1971), the environmental moment was at its peak and Banno thought there were things more dangerous for Godzilla to fight besides aliens and rogue villains bent on enslaving humanity. (Interestingly, this was the first G-movie in years to use almost no recycled footage form earlier G-films.) Godzilla goes into full superhero mode to combat man’s foolish exploitation of nature and it’s about as subtle as using dynamite to blow up a tree stump. Plus, with executive producer/Godzilla creator Tomoyuki Tanaka hospitalized for a severe illness, Banno was free to do he pleased.

But, honestly, it’s not Banno’s over-the-top environmental diatribe that drives most viewers and G-fans crazy. It’s something else…

Who was this made for again?

Exactly what kind of film Banno wanted to make is anyone’s guess. Is this a kids’ movie? A family movie? An adult movie? Just what kind of tone was the director going for? It’s hard to say. (In a 2014 interview, Banno said he wanted to make a kids movie that adults could also enjoy. Hmm…) Banno was under orders from Tanaka to make the film applicable to then-modern youth culture. The director thus added all the trappings of the late 60’s/early 70’s- drugs, environmentalism, and psychedelic rock ‘n roll. (The flick even has an opening Bond-style theme song! –“Save the Earth” in early English versions; “Give Back the Sun” in Japanese versions.) Unfortunately, the results are uneven, (to say the least), leading G-fans to believe Banno either succumbed to reefer madness or got a bad case of happy feet and went bats*** insane. Consider the following…

What is this doing in a Godzilla movie?

This flick is loaded with shock and terror- and not the good kind. There are just plenty of “WTF?!” moments, such as:

-The scientist’s son, Ken, (a required character name for all Japanese B-movies), plays with Godzilla toys at the start of a Godzilla movie.
-The first time Hedorah goes on land, he crawls up a factory and breathes in smoke from a chimney. (The requisite Grateful Dead music was apparently too expensive to license.) Remember, pollution feeds monsters!
-At the same time, Ken’s family’s friend, Yukio, either drinks too much or does some brown acid (it’s not clear which), at a night club (complete with psychedelic liquid light show), and has a freakout where everyone turns into blue aliens! Just kidding. He suddenly sees everyone wearing fish masks. (Did I mention his girlfriend, Miki, dances in a nude suit as the club is invaded by some of Hedorah’s sludge in a scene that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Blob?) Remember, pollution ruins parties!
-And in case you forgot the movie’s stated intentions, Dr. Yano gives several dogmatic speeches, Avatar-style, to Ken about the dangers of sulfuric acid, the making of sludge, and nuclear power. (It’s a wonder a test wasn’t added to the end credits.) Remember, pollution leads to boring lectures!
-As Hedorah “evolves,” bizarre animation sequences (that Monty Python look like Pixar by comparison), are used to debut his new forms. And you thought Hanna-Barbara was stiff! So don’t forget, pollution gives bad animators undue attention!

-Death, death, death… This was the first film in the series to show human casualties since Godzilla’s original 1954 appearance. Most of the time, the victims collapse from Hedorah’s smog and quickly decompose (albeit in a psychedelic light show kind of way). At other times, like at the Mt, Fuji fight, Hedorah simply sprays victims with sludge, leaving 40 to 50 partially rotted teenage corpses in the grass- and all in front of young Ken’s eyes. In other words, pollution- like this movie- ruins childhoods!

Good Grief...

This movie goes from scenes of slapstick to images of outright horror in seconds. One moment, Godzilla swings Hedorah around by the tail in Tokyo. The next, some of Hedorah’s sludge smashes through the window of a gambling den, leaving the men inside (whom we saw alive and healthy only a few seconds before), covered in muck and frozen in agonal death poses.

There are countless other instances of these bizarre tonal shifts. As noted above, there’s plenty of drug imagery and gratuitous violence to confuse the kids the film was supposedly made for. (As a side note, the infamous ‘flying Godzilla’ scene was intentionally added by Banno to lighten the film a little.)

Aw, Son of a Banno!

One of the better-known stories of this film’s production involves a classic case of on-set surgery. Kenpachiro Satsuma, the actor who portrayed Hedorah inside the suit, began to suffer from fire down below during filming and was quickly diagnosed with appendicitis by the film’s doctor. The condition was so serious that the medical team couldn’t wait for Satsuma to take the suit off before surgery, so they operated on him on set and through the Hedorah costume. During the appendectomy, Satsuma, likely to his chagrin, learned that painkillers have no effect on him. Ouch...

Fortunately, Satsuma was a trooper. He recovered and finished the film. He even went on to play the monster Gigan in two of the next four Godzilla movies. He also played the Big G himself in all seven of the Heisei series (1984- 1995) of Godzilla films.

What? There Are Two of These Things?!

Believe it or not, this movie has been dubbed into English twice. The first English version came out in 1972 and was released by American International Pictures. It ends with Godzilla saluting Ken as he walks into the rising sun. (This one contains the English theme song, “Save the Earth.”) After the turn of the millennium, Toho declared, “The power is OURS!” and commissioned a new dub track by Axis International for the first DVD release. This time, another Hedorah rises from polluted water with “The End?” as the credits roll. (The theme song in this one is the Japanese, “Give Back the Sun.”)

It’s possible that few movies can better show the difference between good and bad dubbing. The AFI version was clearly handled with care. The dialogue was translated and re-written into conversational English, Also, the voice actors sound appropriate and put a lot of effort into the characters’ voices and behavior. The Toho-Axis version, on the hand, apparently rose form the same sludge that spawned Hedorah. The dialogue was translated directly and comes off like a poorly-written comic book adaptation. The voice actors here, well, um…they made an effort. (The same effort you would expect from work-a-day actors who showed up, mumbled into the mic, got their check, and then sped off for fear of being late for work at Taco John’s.)

Sadly, Toho only uses the Axis dub for DVD’s, Blue-Rays, and TV showings of this film. If you want the good version, it’s off to eBay to bid on a VHS copy of the AIP dub.

Aftermath and Legacy

After getting out of the hospital, producer Tanaka saw the film, hated it, declared that Banno had “ruined Godzilla,” and made it clear that Banno would never work on a Godzilla movie again. (And he didn’t; meaning Banno’s plans for a direct sequel also fell through.) However, Banno was a consultant on the 2014 Godzilla movie. Roger Ebert liked it. Michael Medved put in his book, The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time.

Hedorah has only appeared in only one other G-movie, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). In a cameo appearance, he and Eibrah (a giant lobster) are vaporized in one blast of Godzilla’s atomic breath. (The Smog Monster has, however, become quite popular among fans of horror author H.P. Love craft.)

Hedorah was also referenced in the movie, Godzilla vs. Destroyer (1995). Godzilla’s opponent of the title went through a similar evolution, albeit through means unrelated to pollution.

So, remember everyone, give a hoot. Don’t pollute. Because, due to the environmental movement’s suppression of nuclear power, there just aren’t enough giant, mutated monsters with atomic breath to save us from alien* monsters that thrive on the toxic output of our cruel, nasty technological progress.

(*-What? Didn’t I mention that Hedorah originally came to Earth via a meteor? Well, it was a throwaway line in the movie and if Banno didn’t really care, then neither do I.)

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Film Friday: Blue Thunder (1983)

Have you ever run into a movie that is just stupid on so many levels and yet the film still rocks? No, I’m not talking about Captain America 2, I’ll talk about that next week. I’m talking about Blue Thunder, a movie that I just can’t resist. And do you know what it is that makes Blue Thunder so great? I have no idea. Let’s see if we can figure it out.

Plot

Blue Thunder is the story of Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) who got sick of fighting sharks in Amity, changed his name to Frank Murphy and decided to become a divorced police helicopter pilot for the LAPD’s Astro Division. Roy plays things fast and loose and is constantly in trouble. In fact, he’s just been called in again for a psych evaluation because a great many people suspect he’s crazy because he suffers from PTSD from Vietnam.

As our story begins, Roy gets introduced to his new partner, Officer Lymangood (Daniel Stern). Roy takes Lymangood around town and shows him the sights, which include a motorcycle cop having an affair and a model who strips naked and dances in front of her window and is apparently deaf to helicopters inches outside her window. Her neighbors are not and Roy and Lymangood get in trouble. They get in extra trouble too because while they were peeping, a city councilwoman was killed in an apparent rape attempt a few blocks away. Roy, however, suspects it wasn’t really an attempted rape because there was an abandoned car in the area that disappeared. Makes sense, right?

Anyhoo, Roy and his partner are chosen to be the test pilots for a new program the federal government is testing in Los Angeles. Under this program, the cops will be armed with one kick ass helicopter called “Blue Thunder,” which will patrol the skies of the city. This thing has a canon on the front which shoots very precisely, except when it doesn’t, and the feds admit that they want to use the chopper for “crowd control from the air” during the upcoming Olympic games. Roy smugly tells them that “crowd control from the air” didn’t work so well in Vietnam.

It soon turns out that the feds are working with Malcolm McDowell, a Brit, who commanded Roy in Vietnam and wanted to have him up on charges for refusing to commit war crimes. Malcolm warns the feds that Roy is “totally unsuitable” for their purposes, but then tells them not to ask for his removal from the program. Instead, Malcolm tries to kill Roy... but fails.

Roy then goes on his first patrol with Blue Thunder. Fortunately for him, the feds are having a midnight meeting with their brigade of killers while Roy is in the air and they speak openly about wanting to use Blue Thunder for crowd control. Oh, and they talk about killing Roy. Roy makes a video of the meeting using Blue Thunder’s recording equipment. At the same time, Roy discovers that the supposed rape of the council woman is connected to Blue Thunder because Blue Thunder is part of something called “Project Thor,” and the “rapist” dropped a note at the scene which included the word THOR.

Roy decides to steal Blue Thunder and take the video to the press. The rest of the movie is a sort of three-dimensional chase scene where Roy is chased by choppers and F-14s while protecting his girlfriend’s car from the pursuing police.

Why Blue Thunder Rocks!

Hmm. Ok. Let me start by admitting that this movie is nonsense. It is packed with key points that are flat out stupid and seriously flawed. Consider these issues:

● Roy is a troublemaker and is viewed as crazy enough to need psychological evaluation. Yet strangely, he gets chosen to be the lead pilot in this impressive new program with its ultra-expensive new chopper? Who made that decision?

● Roy determines that the council woman wasn’t raped because he saw an abandoned vehicle in the area and it later vanished. He assumes this means it was a professional hit. But, um, why? Why would a professional drive a beater but a rapist wouldn’t?

● At the scene of the rape/assassination, they find a paper with the word THOR written on it. This is the name of the government’s secret project. Why would a competent hit man carry around such a paper? Also, Roy later connects this to prove that the council woman was assassinated. This is meant to vindicate Roy, only Roy was just guessing about the rape and his crime was peeping instead of working, not guessing wrong about the rape.

● How can the naked dancer not hear a helicopter right outside her window? Those things aren’t silent. And again, why would Roy get this plum Blue Thunder assignment after getting caught messing around on the job?

● Malcolm McDowell was in Vietnam? Really? He’s British.

● If Malcolm and the feds thought Roy was unsuitable, presumably because he won’t stop insulting Malcolm and complaining that the program is immoral, then you would think it would be easy for them to pick a different pilot. Why risk putting him on the project? And why not put a federal observer in the chopper instead of Roy’s buddy?

● Why are the feds holding a meeting at night? Why are they meeting with their assassins?

● Finally, the reason we (and Roy) are supposedly outraged by Blue Thunder, i.e. the thing that motivates the entire movie, is that Roy discovers that the government wants to use it to quell riots at the Olympics. And supposedly it is Roy’s discovery of this which causes him to steal and destroy Blue Thunder. But the feds actually tell this to Roy right at the beginning when he tells us that “crowd control from the air” didn’t work so well in Vietnam. In other words, they are up front with him the whole time, and everyone just acts like this is still a secret.

What’s more, what riots? There aren’t any in the film and America hadn’t seen riots in nearly 20 years at that point. Also, as an aside, nothing of the sort actually happened in Vietnam as the US military never got involved in riots or crowd control.

Arg. What a load of stupidity! So you have a guy who is given a key assignment no sane person would ever give him. He is given that assignment by the bad guys who then decide to kill him when they discover that he’s been assigned to their project... a project for which they no doubt had the power to select the pilots. He freaks out about something he already knew an hour earlier in the film, after watching the stupidest meeting ever between the bad guys and their hired killers, and a running shootout begins.

This is a stupid film.

And yet... it’s fricken awesome. Yes, it is.

What I love about this film is that it is an unapologetic action film. All the stuff above is basically just flavor that you aren’t supposed to think about. McDowell works, despite being British, because he’s an odious villain. Roy gets the assignment because we like Roy. We like his personality. We trust the actor, even if we would never trust the character, and that trust washes away the character’s flaws for us. Moreover, he’s anti-establishment enough to be the rebel this movie needs, and his kind of crazy is risk-taking, which is what makes it believable that he has extraordinary skills.

So as bizarre as it may sound, the unbelievably of this film is precisely what makes it believable.

Beyond that, shooting this thing was an amazing technical challenge. For example, to get many of the air shots, Director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, War Games) actually placed stuntmen with cameras on the outside of helicopters to get the right shots. That makes some of the flying scenes second to none. Check out this photo...

The writing is superior too in that the film does an amazing job of ratcheting up the tension in every scene. And the payoff is very strong because the film skillfully builds the hero (Roy) and villain (McDowell) as equals, which makes Roy’s victory all the stronger, not to mention that Roy must do what we are told is impossible to win. Compare that with modern films where the villains turn out to be mindless cowards or nut jobs. None of that is true with McDowell, who is skilled and rotten. And that creates real tension in the final challenge.

Ultimately, what sells this film however is the presence of Roy Scheider... and the helicopter. Almost every screen minute is dominated by Roy. Fortunately, there is just something about Roy that makes you like him. Roy is loyal, courageous and morally right. He is the underdog. He is the everyman who is crapped on by everyone else, but keeps rising above by giving as good as he gets. And he blows things up. And do you know what else? The helicopter is fricken cool!

What more could you want?

Check this one out if you haven’t. You’ll like it.

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Film Friday: Divergent (2014)

The formula for success in Hollywood (and the publishing industry) is simple: when you find something that works, do it over and over and over until it stops working. The Hunger Games worked. So what happens when you apply the formula from above? You copy it. That brings me to Divergent. I actually liked this film a good deal better than The Hunger Games even though it was clearly a knock-off. Let’s discuss.

The Plot

As with The Hunger Games, Divergent is the film adaptation of the first book in an international best selling young adult science fiction series. Also like The Hunger Games, Divergent is the story of a reluctant heroine living in a dystopia who gets called upon to save her people. There are key differences however. For example, in Divergent, the government isn’t evil, like it is in The Hunger Games. For another, the heroine, Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley), isn’t presented as a hopelessly naive outsider who struggles even to grasp the world around her. Instead, Beatrice is a rather savvy young woman who understands the world around her, but just hasn’t found her place in it yet.

Indeed, the reason the film is called Divergent is because Beatrice has divergent traits from the rest of her society. In the future in which she lives, the world somehow has been destroyed and the survivors now live in Chicago, behind a massive electrical fence. Their society is organized into different factions, based on different dominant personality traits: Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the soldiers), and the Erudite (brainiacs).

When a child reaches their appointed age, they are tested to discover which faction fits them best. Then they are asked to declare which faction they choose for their affiliation for the rest of their lives. Most people have the traits of their parents and go into their parents’ factions. But some small percentage have the traits of other factions and switch factions when asked to choose. Still a smaller percentage are what is called “divergent.” Basically, these people have different traits than everyone else and they don’t fall into any one group when tested. These people are considered threats to society because they are independent thinkers.

Beatrice’s parents are part of the Abnegation faction and it’s expected that she will follow them. But when she gets tested, she learns that she is a divergent. Fortunately for her, this is kept secret from the government. She is then asked to choose a faction and she unexpectedly chooses Dauntless.

Following the selection process, Beatrice joins her new faction and must pass a series of tests to be accepted. In the process, she meets another divergent who guides her and she uncovers a conspiracy that threatens her entire society.

Why This Worked Better Than The Hunger Games

This film was a total knock-off of the Hunger Games formula, but I liked it a lot better than The Hunger Games. Why did I like this better? A couple things come to mind.

First, unlike The Hunger Games, this film doesn’t feel like it’s merely setting up sequels. Throughout The Hunger Games, I felt that much of what I saw had no real purpose in that film, but would become relevant in some future film. This wasn’t as bad as other films, such as The Golden Compass, where they introduced characters and story arcs that vanished from the present film with the narrator all but telling you that they would matter in the sequel, but The Hunger Games still felt like an introduction only to the real story. Divergent does not. Up until the very ending, Divergent feels like a complete story. It’s only in the last few minutes that you get the sense they are setting up for a sequel.

Secondly, I like the fact that Beatrice takes control over her own destiny from the beginning and never chooses to give up that control. Katniss from The Hunger Games, by comparison, is essentially a passive heroine who only responds to everything that happens and never chooses to take control over her own life. To me, this makes Beatrice a genuine heroine whereas I see Katniss as simply an accidental heroine. I prefer Beatrice for two reasons.

First, it makes the character feel more worthwhile that she is charting her own course because it means that she is showing traits like courage, strength, nobility, compassion, etc. because they are part of her nature. By comparison, a reactive heroine shows none of those things as she acts mainly out of fear and the need to survive, e.g. any bravery she shows is forced upon her events. Moreover, it gives the story a much stronger adventure feel because the heroine is out looking to achieve her goals. This brings a level of excitement and enthusiasm to the story which makes you interested to see what will happen next and what hurdles Beatrice must jump. A reactive heroine, by comparison, is merely pushed by the waves and the story has a rudderless feel to it. Indeed, a reactive heroine gives you little to cheer about because the heroine tends to wait helplessly as crises toss her where she needs to go to win the film.

The third thing I liked better about Divergent was the messages it sent. Some have argued that The Hunger Games is a conservative political tale about an oppressive, tyrannical central government, with Katniss playing the macho-Libertarian heroine who stands up to the elite of her world. As I’ve noted before, this is largely wishful thinking as none of that can really be found in the film. And even if it can be read into the film, contrary messages can be read too. Not to mention that this muddled message has rather limited application, especially combined with her being a passive heroine.

Divergent, on the other hand, has a clear message throughout: it is better to be a truly independent, free thinking individual than it is to be part of the herd. That’s a vital message to send and makes an even stronger, more useful libertarian message than the idea of bringing down a corrupt government through revolution. Indeed, this is the kind of message that leads people to demand greater and greater freedom from their governments, and it provides support to the very people who will make the world better, whereas the idea of finding oneself leading a revolution by chance is a pipedream.

Ultimately, these differences raise Divergent head and shoulders above The Hunger Games. These differences give the story more life, more philosophical punch, and made the story stronger.

Lastly, by way of clarification, let me point out that while this was a film I enjoyed, I can’t say this is a fantastic film. It is exactly what it appears – a Hunger Games knock-off aimed at teens. But is a better film than The Hunger Games.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Riddick (2013)

I’m a huge fan of Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. Though different, both are excellent. I love Vin Diesel too. Hence, I had a lot of hope for Riddick, the third in the series. Unfortunately, try as I might, I just can’t like this film and I’m not surprised the film bombed badly.

The Plot

Before I outline the plot of Riddick, it’s worth revisiting the prior two films. Although both were written and directed by the same man, David Twohy, and both star the same actor playing the same character, they are remarkably different films. Pitch Black is more traditional science fiction with a narrow story taking place in a confined area. It is a character study as a handful of stranded characters struggle against an enemy that exists only in science fiction – a flock of blood-drinking, flying creatures who live in the dark, with the first half involving discovery of the creatures and the second half escape. This story was well written, well acted, well shot, and all around created a truly immersive experience for the audience, who had no problems believing what they were seeing.

The Chronicles of Riddick, by comparison, was a much more expansive tale. This one involved a marauding army of religious fanatics who want to wipe out or convert every non-believer the universe, and they do it by destroying planets. In this story, Riddick travels to multiple planets, engages in any number of fights or battle scenes, and ultimately destroys or saves millions of people. There is little introspection, no mystery, and less science fiction than action. Nevertheless, this film too was well shot, well acted and well written, and the result was a different but nearly equally enjoyable film.

As these two films were so different, the question became: would Riddick be more like Chronicles or more like Pitch Black, or would it be something else entirely?

Well, the story opens with Riddick getting betrayed by the Necromonger army he conquered at the end of Chronicles. He finds himself stranded on a desolate, hostile planet as a result. At first, he works to heal his significant wounds and master his environment. He befriends a dog creature. Then he essentially summons mercenaries (bounty hunters) to the planet so he can escape. Two different groups arrive, and when they do, Riddick warns them to flee, but to leave him one of the ships.

Naturally, they refuse.

From there, the film turns into a three-way struggle as the two groups of bounty hunters compete to get Riddick for their own reasons and Riddick works to eliminate them so he can take one of the ships and leave... at least until they realize that a storm is coming and once the storm comes, blood-sucking creatures who live in the rain will come try to kill them. Sound familiar?

Why This Film Didn’t Work

On the surface, I should have loved this film. The story itself was well written, the design of the film is excellent, and it was all well shot. Diesel remains an excellent actor and Riddick remains an excellent character. Yet, somehow, the more I watched this film, the less I liked it. And by the time the ending came, I really had come to dislike this film. But why?

I think the ultimate answer to why I didn’t like this film was that it felt like a cliche of the entire franchise. No new ground was broken anywhere and, to the contrary, everything you saw was stolen from one of the prior two films. For example, the set up for this film mimicked that of Pitch Black, with bounty hunters replacing the random passengers of Pitch Black. The monsters who attack them in the end are virtual clones in every substantive way of those in Pitch Black. The bounty hunters feel like total knock-offs of the bounty hunters (minus the charismatic Toombs (Nick Chinlund)) from Chronicles. What's worse, none of these characters had a real personality. They just stood around acting tough by standing very still and whispering death threats at each other. That got old fast.

More fundamentally, however, Riddick featured a change in Riddick's character that suddenly made him very hard to like: he became arrogant.

When Riddick was first introduced in Pitch Black, he blew me away. Here was a character who made the toughest of tough guys look soft, but at the same time, he was awash in traits we like. For example, Riddick never blew his own horn by telling us how tough he was. Instead, his nemesis Johns told us how tough he was. For his part, Riddick downplayed his own toughness. Riddick also demonstrated right away that he wasn't the cold-blooded killer his character was presented as. To the contrary, he offered help, guidance and moral support to the other characters. Indeed, he quickly became their leader because he had such strong leadership traits. Combining this with his desire to remain isolated and the other characters' fear of him created a wonderfully ironic situation where they needed him on many levels, but no one knew if he could be trusted except you the audience. That built a lot of trust and pulled you into the character; it made you like him a lot.

Even in Chronicles, where they raised Riddick's profile by declaring him a sort of dark messiah as the last of the Furian race and as the one destined to destroy the Lord Marshall and bring down the Necromongers, Riddick still remained self-effacing. In comment after comment, Riddick disclaims any desire to be involved, points out his own lack of education and his lack of ability to change the world. And the few times he was called upon to prove his toughness, he did it with his actions and a minimum number of words. This gave him a sense of humility and continued his reluctant hero character, both of which are traits we like in our heroes.

This made Riddick really easy to like. You knew he was tough, and the fact he didn't need to tell you how tough he was only made it all the stronger. You also laughed at his jokes and you smirked when the stupid bad guys took his self-effacing comments as an invitation to test him. But in Riddick, that character is gone. In Riddick, Riddick is presented as essentially invincible and he knows it. He comes across as a predator who spouts off smug one-liners and spews arrogance. There is no humor in his approach to others. There is no sense that he wants to help others who find themselves in trouble. To the contrary, his motivation seems to be revenge. He even plays with the main bounty hunter's emotions when he discovers that the man is here to find out what happened to his son, Johns from Pitch Black. This is a cold-blooded Riddick who is very hard to like and who offers little to liven up the story.

This is why I couldn't get into this film. The story and set up are entirely stolen from the first two films; there is nothing original. And what they have copied, they copied in style only but without the critical substance which made it all such fun. Add the lack of any goodnatured bad guy for you to sort-of cheer for along with Riddick, and Riddick changing from self-effacing, funny and misunderstood superhero into cold-blooded, smug predator, and you have a film that lost everything that set the first two film apart. It's no wonder the film made less than a third of the others and just over a third of its budget.

Thoughts?

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Summer of Films: Escape Plan (2013)

Stallone and Schwarzenegger are back together again! It’s too bad their film stinks. Indifferent writing. Indifferent acting. Uninteresting settings. Weak action. Yawn. This was disappointing.

Plot

Ray Breslin (Stallone) has a talent for escaping from prisons. He’s so talented that the Department of Justice hires him to break out of supermax prisons so he can show them their weaknesses and they can correct them. Indeed, the film opens with him doing just that, though his escape stretches credulity.

Soon enough, Breslin finds himself visited by the CIA. Because they can’t “rendition” the worst of the worst anymore, they need a new system to hold the people who should never be allowed to see the light of day. To that end, they’ve contracted with a private sector company to build a prison where they can make these people disappear. Naturally, they want Breslin to attempt to break out of the prison to test their new system.

Stallone agrees even though they won't agree to any of his normal safety protocols. Of course, the minute he finds himself in the prison he learns that he has been betrayed and that someone wants him "disappeared." He also discovers that the warden is cruel and the guards are sadists who maintain control by beating prisoners. What's more, they built this prison using all of his ideas from his book on how to build an inescapable prison. Now he must break out or spend the rest of his life stuck in this prison. Helping him in this regard is another prisoner: renown assistant cyber-terrorist Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Can Stallone escape and regain his freedom? Take a guess.

Why This Film Stunk

In 1989, Stallone did a film similar to this. It was called Lock Up. In that film, he was a minor convict and model prisoner whose time was up, but the warden wanted to punish him after he went to the press about the warden’s treatment of prisoners. This caused the warden to try to set up Stallone to spend the rest of his life in prison, which leads to a sort of prison escape film/revenge film. Lock Up had solid motivations, strong emotions and high stakes. It may not have been the best film ever, but it got your attention.

The problem with Escape Plan is that it never really captures your interest. For one thing, this film is entirely predictable. You know Stallone is being set up the moment he agrees to take the assignment. You know Stallone will eventually escape. It’s just not possible that these things won’t happen. Moreover, throughout, you know when Stallone will be punished. You know when he will learn whatever he needs to learn to escape. You know who his friends will be, who will betray him, who he will kill and how it will all end. There are two twists, but they are so incidental to the plot that they have no impact. It’s hard to feel any tension when you know how each scene will end all throughout the movie.

The characters aren’t very interesting either. Arnold plays Arnold the action hero. He technically has a character, but it’s purely incidental to the movie and it’s nothing you care about, and you know he's never in any danger. Ditto on Stallone. James Caviezel plays the warden. Normally, I’m a fan of his, but here he plays the character so indifferently that he almost seems like a robot at times. There are other characters, but you won’t remember any of them.

The writing is really poor too. There isn’t a clever or memorable line. There isn’t a moment of insight. For a man who supposedly is a master of escaping from prisons, there’s no moment where he tells you something you don’t already know about prison, about the human state of mind as a guard or a prisoner, or even about how he perceives the world. Basically, every line of dialog is transactional: “I need to get into that room.”

The action isn’t very interesting either. For the most part, the action is entirely asymmetrical. Thus, the guards easily beat up the good guys when they want to. When the good guys escape, they easily crush the guards. Then in the final shootout, the good guys mow down dozens of guards without any real risk to themselves. There is never a fight where you don't know the outcome the moment it begins, and at no point is there any fight which feels like a payoff.

So what you have here are characters you don’t care about, a story that means nothing to you, a story you can predict moment by moment, fights with no tension, and an utter lack of cleverness and nothing memorable to take from the film. The end result is a film that is entirely devoid of tension and interest.

Frankly, Stallone can and should do a lot better. Stallone is a capable actor with a good deal of charisma who should be picking much more interesting projects at this point in his career.

Finally, as an aside, this film also has whiffs of politics that aren’t appreciated. It seems to be assumed that the CIA is evil. The CIA tortures prisoners. The prison guards are sadists. The worst of the worst are all Caucasians, with the one Islamist turning out to be a noble heroic character. The “good guy” (Arnold) has invented a plan to destroy the world’s banks. None of this was shoved in your face, but in a film with little else to hold your interest, these little leftist tropes became rather annoying.

Thoughts?

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