Blogorium Review: The Outlaw Josey Wales

 When you finish watching The Outlaw Josey Wales, it's common to think "damn, now that was a great movie," whether it's the first time you've seen it or the fiftieth. There's a good reason for that, and that reason is Clint Eastwood. Sure, that whole stand up routine at the RNC two years ago made some people think that "Old Clint is just senile or becoming his character from Gran Torino," and I'm not saying it wasn't a horrible idea on the part of the scheduling department - it was - but now people feel like they have a license to just forget that he made some of the best damned movies in the last fifty years, and a lot of them he did it in front of and behind the camera.

 Some people remember the cop movies, some prefer the westerns, and others like the oddball ones, like Kelly's Heroes, Any Which Way You Can, or, uh, Paint Your Wagon. I tend to prefer the westerns, if only because he's been in or made so many iconic ones that when you start listing them, it quickly balloons into a big list. Go ahead, I'll spot you Leone's "Man with No Name Trilogy" and Unforgiven. But there's also The High Plains Drifter, Two Mules for Sister Sarah, The Beguiled, Hang 'em High. Hell, some people even like Pale Rider. I don't really (it's a little too much like High Plains Drifter with a dash of Shane), but what many folks tend to agree on is that their favorite Clint Eastwood western is The Outlaw Josey Wales, and with good reason.

 (It actually starts out as a "Southern," as Quentin Tarantino called Django Unchained, picking up in Missouri and moving southwest into Texas, but we'll stick with Western.)

 Eastwood does something really interesting, possibly even precarious, with the film (and the character) Josey Wales: he makes you sympathize with a Confederate solider who refuses to admit the Civil War is over. Now, there are some good reasons that Josey Wales might not feel like his score has been settled, chief among them is why he joined up with the Southern army. Slavery doesn't come up in the film at all, as I recall, and Wales doesn't really seem to have any vested interest in which side wins the war from a philosophical standpoint*. He was just a normal man living in Missouri, working on his farm with his wife and young son, when a group of "Red Legs" came pillaging and raping through, and Wales loses his wife and child in one fell swoop, along with his house. I mean, what's the point of pillaging and raping if you don't also burn down a man's house for no reason?

 The leader of the Red Legs, Terrill (Bill McKinney) also gives Wales a nasty scar on the right side of his face by slicing him with his sword and leaving Josey for dead. After he buries his wife and child, Wales teaches himself how to shoot a pistol and silently swears revenge (Eastwood doesn't say much early in the film), and when a group of Bushwackers find the remains of his farm, he joins up with Anderson (John Russell) to chase the down the Red Legs, who happen to be raiding in the name of the Union. During the opening credits, there's a montage of their battles to give you a better idea of time passing (it's not really clear how long it takes for Josey to learn to shoot accurately before the posse arrives) and that Anderson didn't make it. Then the film proper picks up at the end of the Civil War where, at least for Josey Wales, justice has not been served.

 In fact, it's being openly mocked, in a sense, because the Union Camp they're just outside of is one being run by Senator James H. Lane (Frank Schofield) and his Red Legs are there. Not only that, but he's promoted Terrill to Captain, and is promising that any Confederate soldier who comes down and swears and oath of loyalty to the Union will be spared. Fletcher (John Vernon), a member of the crew that Wales rides with, is tired of fighting and talks the men into going down to end things. But Wales, he's a stubborn sort, and this isn't over for him. He and Fletcher part on good terms, with Fletcher warning him what's to come - that he'll be hunted all over the country - and Wales saying "I reckon so." Fletcher wishes him good luck and goes down to the camp.

 But you can't trust Lane or his Red Legs hooligans, and if it sounds too good too be true or just like it's a trap to gun down some more Confederate soldiers in cold blood, you'd better believe it is. Fletcher didn't know that he was being set up when negotiating with Senator Lane, or that Terrill was even with the camp, but when Wales rides in and wipes out the Union soldiers with one of their own Gatling guns, he becomes the Outlaw Josey Wales. He saves Jamie (Sam Bottoms), a kid who didn't want to surrender, and leaves thinking that Fletcher betrayed them all. For all his good intentions, Fletcher is consigned by Senator Lane into joining Terrill in hunting down Wales, and the great showdown is set in place.

 And that's the first thirty minutes! We haven't even met most of the really interesting characters and the stakes are already high. Jamie is, alas (SPOILER), not going to be with us for the long haul, as he took a bullet in the shoulder from Terrill, but he sticks around long enough for Josey to show a snake oil salesman (Woodrow Parfey) what a "Missouri River Ride" looks like. By the way, the salesman is only given the name Carpetbagger in the credits, and his other primary attribute is getting his suit dirty. It's the first time in the film that I really noticed that Josey Wales is always spitting tobacco, but not the last. After a run in with some would-be ransom collectors (Wales has a $5000 price on his head), Josey and Jamie head for "Indian" territory, but only one of them makes it. And the movie isn't called "The Outlaw Jamie Whose Name I Don't Know."

 (Wales tries to qualify using Jamie's dead body to distract a cavalry campsite by saying "they'll give you a better burial than I ever could," but I have to say it's still pretty cold to use your dead buddy like that.)

 It's highly possible that the reason you forget that The Outlaw Josey Wales is about a Confederate soldier is that Eastwood and screenwriters Philip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus shift the focus to the plight of Native Americans before, during, and after the Civil War, drawing parallels between Southern and Native attitudes towards the Government. Once Wales passes through into Native Territory, he encounters a series of instances of subjugation and trickery on the part of the United States, through members of the Cherokee, Navajo, and later, Comanche tribes. Wales meets Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), a member of the "civilized" Cherokees, who tried to dress "like Lincoln" and were repaid for it by being sent down the Trail of Tears. Chief Dan George is the first indication that the film isn't going to be grim and gritty all the way through, as he's consistently funny without being the butt of the joke. It's also where we start seeing the actual structure of the film, which is more episodic in nature than the opening would lead you to believe.

 That's not actually a bad thing, because Wales doesn't talk much, so it's nice to have other characters for him to react to. Without meaning to (or really wanting to, either), he ends up creating a new family of misfits that he picks up along his trip south through Texas and into Mexico. First it's Lone Watie, then Little Moonlight (Geraldine Kearns), who he saves from unscrupulous types at a trading post. Later he rescues Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman) and her granddaughter Laura Lee (Sondra Locke) from Comanchers, and they come along too, heading for a ranch Sarah's son owned outside of Santa Rio. Well, Santa Rio turns out to be a ghost town, so they pick up a few more stragglers on the way, and it's a big, happy family of characters living in a ranch with Josey Wales keeping an eye on them. They even have a mangy dog that Wales doesn't seem to like and is constantly spitting on, which is funnier in context than it sounds.

 The episodic nature of The Outlaw Josey Wales tends to make you forget that Terrill and Fletcher are still on his tail, and you don't see a whole lot of them, but you always remember that our hero is a wanted man. Nearly everywhere they end up, Wales a) meets somebody who joins up with their traveling band of misfits, b) runs into somebody who wants to bring him in and gets gunned down, or (more often) c) both. I don't think there's anywhere that Wales stops along the way where he doesn't kill somebody, if not several somebodies, usually because he's recognized at an inopportune time. The Carpetbagger shows up again while they're picking up supplies, and in his infinite wisdom, he decides to say "It's Josey Wales!" out loud in front of four Union soldiers. Wales has to drop his purchases, taunt the boys, and eventually kills three of them (Watie gets the other one, so Josey "paid him no mind"), but it takes a while because they're clearly not sure they want to get in a gunfight with the outlaw.

 Josey Wales has a kind of mythic quality to him throughout the film; he's almost a Snake Plissken of the Reconstruction. Everybody knows who he is or has heard of him, and while that usually doesn't help him in civilized society, it really comes in handy late in the film. Josey Wales is the kind of person who could ride into the middle of a Comanche camp and negotiate with their Chief, Ten Bears (Will Sampson of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest fame) and not immediately be killed. In fact, Ten Bears already knows who Josey Wales is, the "grey rider who would not make peace with the Bluecoats", and tells him "you may go in peace" before they've even started talking business. Wales had been preparing the ranch for a Comanche raid, but decided he'd go to them first, and he offers Ten Bears the "iron of life or death." By the end of the conversation, they're in agreement as blood brothers: like Mark Renton at the end of Trainspotting, these dudes choose life.

 He's also kind of mythical to the other people traveling with him, because as best as I can remember, he never tells anybody why he's so stubborn about not giving in. Only the audience knows what happened to his family - Grandma Sarah just thought he was a bloodthirsty savage from Missouri (she really doesn't like people who aren't from Kansas), and Lone Watie never asks (there's just a mutual understanding between them). Laura Lee is kind of crazy, and she doesn't wake up after he has nightmare flashbacks, so it never comes up. As far as I know, Fletcher might be the only person in the movie who has any idea why Josey Wales refuses to submit. For everybody else, he's an enigma.

 Wales is also a mythic figure in that he never has to reload his pistol. It's something I noticed early on, when he's teaching himself how to shoot, but you realize that it doesn't matter. Josey Wales is something out of legend, and Eastwood only makes a point of showing that he's out of ammunition once. It happens late in the film, as a symbolic gesture leading up to (SPOILER) killing Terrill - Wales goes through all of his pistols, firing the empty chambers one by one, until he's right up on Terrill, and then he kills him in either the most appropriate or ironic way possible, depending on which person you are in that fight. At that moment, he doesn't need guns that never need reloading, but don't doubt for a second that he could totally go back to gunning down bounty hunters if he wanted to.

 The final moments of the film are what really cement The Outlaw Josey Wales as a "great damn movie." Yes, we've seen Wales become a little more human at the ranch, and single-handedly talk Ten Bears out of killing everybody, but what we've really been waiting for is the moment when he and Fletcher meet face to face again. After regrouping, Wales promised Jamie they'd go "back for Fletcher," so we know that the Terrill treatment was just a taste of the vengeance to come, right?

  I've spoiled a lot of this movie, mostly because if you're reading this and you haven't seen The Outlaw Josey Wales, you'd better rectify that immediately, but I won't spoil the last part of the movie. I will say that their last encounter is every bit as appropriate as the one they have outside of the Union Camp. Two men who are tired of being what they are but aren't sure how to reconcile the past with the present, forced to cross paths one more time. It's such a great way to end the movie, so appropriate considering where both of them have been, that I'd rather let you see that for yourself. Also I might have left out another joke about the Carpetbagger's suite, and I'm opting not to tell you anything about Lone Watie and Little Moonlight. Some things you should find out for yourself.

 Maybe there needs to be a series on the Blogorium devoted to "great damn movies," but it needs a better name than that. When I think of a good one, there's one movie that deserves similar examination:

                                      The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

 * On the other hand, the author of the book the film is based on, "Forrest" Carter - actually Asa Earl Carter - was a noted segregationist, member of the KKK, and anti-Semite. Eastwood was not aware of this when he made the movie, but it explains quite a bit about the thematic content of the story.

Cap'n Howdy's (Back)Log: Escape Plan

  Escape Plan is a surprisingly good theatrically released DTV movie. Wait, let me take that back. That's a mean way to start the review, and since Escape Plan is actually a (lot) better than either Bullet to the Head or The Last Stand, I shouldn't be diminishing your expectations already by suggesting that it's a non-direct to video DTV entry. Not that you'd be mistaken for thinking that when I get to the cast, a who's who of once-upon-a-time "they're in this?" but now probably more like "oh, that's what they're up to"-ers. Again, I feel I'm being mean already, and I really liked Escape Plan. Maybe DTV is just better than what you'd expect it to be these days (except the ones starring Bruce Willis). Or maybe the average action movie just isn't (A Good Day to Die Hard, I'm looking at you...)

 So if you're ignoring The Expendables, and for the moment let's do that, Escape Plan is the first film co-headlined by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is definitely still a Stallone movie, but Arnold has a crucial supporting part and drives most of the narrative. More importantly, unlike his one-liner joke machine cameos in The Expendables movies, Schwarzenegger is actually playing a character that doesn't rely on the fact we know he's Ah-nuld. It's pretty cool to see him no be quite as larger than life but just be a grizzled criminal who needs Sly's help. Stallone is basically playing any of his non-Rocky / Rambo-types, but that's a good thing. The "man of few words" works for what amounts to a pretty linear plot.

 Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a former prosecutor turned profession jailbreak-er. He works for a consulting firm that helps the Department of Prison Services determine how safe their institutions are from escapes, and as he demonstrates in the first ten minutes, Ray is very good at observing routines, memorizing layouts, and discovering weaknesses in prison security. He's so good, in fact, that Ray literally wrote the book on prison design (we see it several times in the movie). CIA representative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe) comes to Breslin's boss Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio) with a proposition: a secret, non-government sanction super prison is being tested for the worst of the worst, and in order to make sure that it's really as state-of-the-art as they hope it is, they want Ray to try to get out. Despite the clandestine details surrounding his arrival to "The Tomb," Breslin reluctantly agrees, but quickly discovers that someone with an axe to grind intends for him to stay there permanently.

 Now this is already a pretty good "wrong man" setup before we're introduced to Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), who's in "The Tomb" for refusing to cooperate with authorities in locating his boss, an international thief / hacker. Rottmayer turns out to be the only friend Breslin has, even when Ray isn't interested in forging alliances. This prison is, well, different: the cells are plexiglass and elevated, the guards are all masked to hide their identities and use random schedules, and warden Hobbes (Jim Caveziel) built the facility using Breslin's book as a blueprint. Hobbes doesn't know Ray's actual identity at first, but he's bound and determined to keep every "asset" under his thumb, and his number one "guard," Drake (Vinnie Jones) is the muscle that backs that up.

 While Escape Plan doesn't necessarily rewrite the "prison escape movie" playbook (come in, turn enemies into friends, work out the prison, etc.), I will give it credit for little touches that you don't see often enough. For example, there's probably a really good reason most of the people in this high tech prison (one that has a barcode scanner for uniforms) were captured in the first place, but you never think twice when Ray includes some of them in his plan that they too should escape. Partly this is because of how cruel Hobbes is, but also the nature of this "black site" prison - which, speaking of nice touches, is in a novel location - we're already iffy that it should exist when the CIA pitches it to Ray. It doesn't get better when Breslin wakes up from being drugged to see Drake stabbing a prisoner and throwing him out of a helicopter. (To be fair, Hobbes does dock him the cost of the "asset" for doing that).

 This also might be the first American action movie since True Lies and definitely since the year 2001 that I can think of where a character is a practicing Muslim (Javed, played by the President of Elysium, Faran Tahir) and not portrayed as a cartoonish villain but as a man of faith who speaks openly about it. In fact, his prayer becomes a central plot point late in the film, as do his doubts about whether this would offend Allah. Hobbes gets to be even more of a jerk when he replies to Javed's "God is great" by saying "Yeah, whatever" and (SPOILER) shooting him.

 I also appreciated that while it plays out pretty much like you'd expect it to, there are initially some questions about allegiances and who Breslin can and can't trust, mostly due to a twist near the end of the film I must admit I'd forgotten about. This isn't tied to the twist, but to get back to the quasi-DTV casting nature of this, the prison doctor Kyrie is performed by In the Mouth of Madness's Sam Neill, and what I was expecting (or, I should say, dreading) was the long speech about how he ended up in these dubious circumstances. You know the speech, we've heard it a million times. It happens right before he decides to help the hero out, but in Escape Plan, it never happens. Instead of being told, we see it in the look on Neill's face when he tells Ray anesthetic is forbidden by Hobbes, or in a simple shot of Dr. Kyrie reading the Hippocratic oath with a bottle of liquor next to him. It explains the shaky hands when he tried to stitch up Ray. In a movie that could just go the expected route, I'm happy when it doesn't.

 So we've got Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caveziel, Sam Neill, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Vinnie Jones so far, but this alone does not a non-DTV DTV roster make. We need at least two more cast members with name recognition, and luckily, I haven't even mentioned Ray's team. For starters, there's Hush, the ex-con who would go back into prison to help Ray get out if he needed help, and is the computer expert. How about 50 Cent? Done! And what about Abigail, the conscience of the team and hard-to-tell if she's hot for Ray or not (seriously, it's not clear). Let's go with Academy Award nominee for Gone Baby Gone's Amy Ryan. Ladies and gentlemen, let's slap those names on some photoshopped artwork and get this sucker onto Target shelves!

 Or they could not do that and release it in theatres with just Stallone and Schwarzenegger and people don't go see it, just like they didn't see The Last Stand or Bullet to the Head. It's a shame, because Escape Plan is a) really good and b) surprises you with the cast because unless you hit up IMDB first, you probably didn't know anybody else was in this movie. Not literally, of course, but I suspect you wouldn't know there were that many recognizable names / faces in Escape Plan. You probably just thought it was another stupid action movie that nobody wanted to see, thusly making Escape Plan's failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's too bad, because while I enjoyed Furious 6 quite a bit, it doesn't need to be the only high water mark of action movies while we put up with garbage like G.I. Joe: Retaliation. From what I've seen of Olympus Has Fallen, it is arguably more preposterous but not as well constructed as Escape Plan.

 Speaking of which, I was very surprised to find that Mikael Håfström, he who made 1408, directed Escape Plan. Truth be told, this was an improvement in just about every way over that movie, with the exception of no John Cusack, who was probably busy making his own quasi-DTV joint. But anyway, Escape Plan. Rent it when it comes out. Watch it with your buddies. Sly's good. Arnold's good. The rest of the cast is good too. Some nice twists. An interesting setting. Arnold gives an entire monologue in German which is the first time I can think of that happening in a very long time (if at all). Gratuitous sequence in New Orleans because it's cheap to film action movies in Louisiana (seriously, even the Jason Statham / James Franco movie, Homefront*, was filmed there). It's a better movie than a lot of people will give it credit for, and definitely a better action movie than anything other than Furious 6 that I mentioned in this review. If you have to, pretend it's DTV and it'll be even better, but that's not really being fair to the movie is all I'm saying.


 * Written by Sylvester Stallone.

Blogorium Review: The Campaign

 Now that we've come to the end of the 2012 election cycle, it's as good a time as any to look back at The Campaign, a mostly funny, sometimes amusing, but ultimately toothless critique of our current political system. Don't get me wrong about whether The Campaign is funny: you will laugh, and at times loudly, but it aspires to be more than that, and I'm not convinced it succeeds.

  Democratic Congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is preparing to run for his fifth (unopposed) term for North Carolina's (nonexistent) 14th District when the Motch brothers (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) decide they need someone to run against him. The Motch brothers want to in-source Chinese labor for sweatshops in NC, so they turn to the man-child son of Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox), Marty (Zach Galifianakis). Marty runs the tourism center in the small town Brady's 14th District represents* and is, at best, as clueless as he is spineless - in other words, the perfect puppet for the Motch brothers.

   From here on out I think you can figure out what happens as the two candidates clash and the dirt stars flying. If you're familiar with any of Ferrell's post-Anchorman films, you have a strong idea of the filthy jokes and strong language to come, juxtaposed with Galifiankis' awkward phrasing and effete Southern accent (in fact, he's basically playing his fictional brother Seth Galifianakis). The Campaign brings together both styles and the middle of the movie is basically a game of one-upsmanship, and is fitfully amusing. I probably don't need to explain why Huggins' nickname in school was "tickleshits," but if that made you chuckle even slightly, I suspect you'll laugh during the film. You've probably seen the part of the trailer when Cam Brady punches a baby, which you'd think director Jay Roach (Austin Powers) would merely suggest, but no - we get a full on, Neo-punching-Agent-Smith, slow motion baby punch shot. And yes, perhaps shamefully, the Cap'n laughed.

 In truth, while I enjoyed both Galifianakis and Ferrell - who is playing more John Edwards than George W. -  The Campaign's best roles go to Huggins and Brady's campaign managers, played by Dylan McDermott and Jason Sudeikis.While Sudeikis, as Mitch, is mostly reacting to Brady systematically dismantling his own election, McDermott rolls in like a tornado and reorganizes every aspect of Huggins life to make him more palatable for voters, down to the dogs he owns. While the familiarity of The Campaign's leads provide appropriate schtick, the supporting roles make more of a lasting impression.

 As to the thinly disguised Koch brother surrogates or the even less veiled political commentary about money corrupting elections to further corporate agendas, well, it's there. Roach and screenwriters Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell never seem to figure out what to do with the "message" of the film, and the ending is basically a mea culpa, a watered down Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moral stand that sends the film out with a whimper. I don't really know that The Campaign needed to explicitly state its message beyond lampooning how ridiculous the current political system is, but it did. The result is a comedy that's fitfully amusing most of the time but that overreaches as it winds down, probably not to its benefit.

 Since the election's done and hopefully most of the vitriol will have faded from your memory by the time you see The Campaign, it might be a little more palatable, and the film would make for a fine rental if you're looking for a comedy where you know basically what to expect. You'll get that, as long as you don't mind a small lecture near the end. There are plenty of dirty jokes along the way, so that has to count for something, right?




* According to IMDB, The Campaign was filmed in New Orleans, so it's hard to say which North Carolina town it's supposed to be subbing for. Since most of the film's audience doesn't live in the state, it doesn't matter, but the Cap'n - and for that matter, Galifianakis - are a little more familiar with the location, so I thought I'd check.