Retro Review: Midnight Run

 I've been watching Midnight Run with the intention of breaking it up into 15 Minute Review segments, but I found myself caught up in the film itself and thought I'd put it into a Retro Review instead. I can't say for certain when I saw Midnight Run for the first time, but I'll venture a guess and say it was on video not long after its 1988 theatrical run. Let's also assume I was probably younger than I should have been for a film where 80% of Robert DeNiro's dialogue consists of the word "fuck."

 Midnight Run is the kind of movie that seemed like it was always playing on cable during weekends, in pan-and-scanned / "edited for content" versions. It's a "road" picture, in that Jack Walsh (DeNiro) and Johnathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin) as bounty hunter and bounty, respectively, try to get from New York to Los Angeles by Friday so that Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano) doesn't miss the bail bond he posted. Jack's attempts to bring Mardukas back are thwarted by the Mafia (who "The Duke" stole money from), the FBI (who want Mardukas to testify), rival bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton), and Mardukas himself. He won't fly, complains constantly, and tries to escape more than once. All Walsh wants it to bring the fugitive back, collect his hundred grand, and find a new way to live his life.

 In addition to the leads, there a host of familiar faces playing people contributing to Walsh's headache: there's Yaphet Kotto (Alien) as FBI Agent Alonzo Mosley, who Jack spends a bulk of the movie impersonating; Dennis Farina (Out of Sight) is Jimmy Serrano, the mob boss who ruined Jack's life as a Chicago police officer and who wants Mardukas all to himself. His consigliere?  Phillip Baker Hall (Magnolia). You'll probably also recognize Robert Miranda (Heat, The Untouchables), Wendy Phillips (Big Love, Touched By an Angel), and Batman's "Bob the Goon," Tracey Walter, although Reno 911 fans might know him better as the Sheriff of Revo, Nevada.

 Directed by Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop, Gigli), written by George Gallo (Bad Boys, Double Take), and with an atypically saxophone heavy score by Danny Elfman (Forbidden Zone, Mars Attacks), Midnight Run is a cracking action / comedy that is frequently hilarious and makes the best of DeNiro's prickly, acerbic wit and Grodin's wry comic timing. It's weird to think about, but there was a time when he wasn't just the guy who had been in those lousy Beethoven movies - he's the secret weapon of Midnight Run, often playing the straight man to DeNiro's perpetually frustrated tough guy, but then he'll sneak in every now and again with a line that really brings the laughter.

 The film takes Walsh and Mardukas from New York to Chicago to Texas to Arizona to Las Vegas and finally (SPOILER) Los Angeles. Along the way there are all sorts of ridiculous contrivances, car chases, trickery, double crosses, explosions, and lots of yelling. It really shouldn't work, but Midnight Run was just as entertaining to me as it was the first time I watched that VHS tape. It's probably the same tape, a worn out, pan-and-scanned copy (I don't know that I've ever seen Midnight Run in its proper screen format), but when I decided to stay on the treadmill until the movie was done, I grossly underestimated how much of the film was left and ended up sticking it out for the last 50 minutes. I had forgotten that the helicopter chase with Jack, Mardukas, Marvin, and the Mafia assassins was in the middle of the movie and not near the end.

 Oh well, I had fun watching the movie again. I think I'll rent the DVD some time later this year to see what it's supposed to look like. I doubt I'll be checking out the three made for television sequels: Another Midnight Run, Midnight Runaround, and Midnight Run for Your Life. I didn't even know they existed, and by most accounts, that's probably for the best. The important part is that if you're in the mood to see Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin in a comedy before they both became... well, not-so-funny, Midnight Run holds up. Check it out all over again.

Blogorium Review: Killer Elite

 I like Jason Statham movies to a fault; whereas most times when I see a movie that has bad (or worse, no) buzz like Killer Elite, I'll just ignore it. Cranpire will ask me if I saw it and I'll say no because why would I? It's going to be a letdown. But put Jason Statham in that movie and suddenly I'll rethink that wisdom. Add Clive Owen and despite the fact that I KNOW nothing good can come from this movie because Robert De Niro is going to be in the movie, I will choose Killer Elite over Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Captain America, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Contagion at the $1.50 theatre*.

 Actually, before I begin, can I mention how sad it is that the mere presence of Robert De Niro in a film is now an indicator that it's not going to be good? Really, there was a time when I'd see a movie with Robert De Niro because his body of work was so varied and so interesting that appearing in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie seemed like a stroke of genius. But since (and I'm being generous here) Analyze This, there's been a steady decline in quality in his films. I'm going to name the good movies and then the bad ones. Good: Machete, The Score, The Good Shepherd (which he directed and is only kind of in). Bad: Analyze This, Flawless, Meet the Parents, 15 Minutes, Showtime, City by the Sea, Analyze That, Godsend, Meet the Fockers, Hide and Seek, Stardust, What Just Happened, Righteous Kill, Little Fockers, and Limitless. There are a few other movies like Stone that I didn't see but seem to be neither here nor there, and the "Bad" movies are in varying degrees from "disappointing" to "rotten" but the end result is I now groan when I see Robert De Niro is going to be in a movie (likewise Al Pacino).

 So where does Killer Elite fit into that category? Well, if you somehow didn't get the idea from the first paragraph, it's not in the "Good" pile. To be fair, it isn't De Niro's fault if only because he's really not in most of the movie - just at the beginning and near the end. Killer Elite sucks - it's a grade school version of an action movie. Over and over we're given needless scenes of exposition where characters say things like "As you all know, we're former SAS members, and since we are no longer SAS members we are bankers." Why are we subjected to this unnecessary information? My suspicion is that writer Matt Sherring didn't want any audience members to be confused during the film, so he overexplains everything and director Gary McKendry didn't bother to cut out the redundant (and embarrassing) extra dialogue.

 Killer Elite is an unnecessarily complicated film, apparently based on Ranulph Fiennes' book The Feather Men, which is a memoir about Britain's Special Air Services' involvement in Oman and about hired killers or some crap. To be honest, if the book is anything like the movie, it doesn't surprise me that the British government denied everything that Fiennes claims happened. If the book is half as poorly written as the movie I'm amazed they acknowledged it exists at all. It is also a remake in name only (maybe) of Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite, which makes it similar to the servicable but also not-very-good The Mechanic, another Statham vehicle I watched begrudgingly.

 The long and the short of it is that in 1980 and 81, Danny (Statham) and Hunter (De Niro) are hired killers who travel around the world doing dirty work that no one else wants. Danny kills some Mexican official in front of the guy's daughter and "quits," which we all know means he'll be back for one more job. Sure enough, a year later he is summoned from his new home in Australia by Agent (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the man who handles these kills, to help Hunter. Hunter accepted a job for Sheikh Amr (Rodney Afif) to kill three SAS soldiers responsible for the death of his sons, but then he chickened out and is being held prisoner. Danny now has to kill the three soldiers to save Hunter, so with his team - Davies (Blade Trinity's Dominic Purcell) and Meier (Aden Young) - he sets out to do the impossible and murder three special forces badasses.

 If that were the movie, okay, I'd be interested. But then, because that isn't enough movie, the SAS guys are all friends of Spike (Owen), who works with the shady SAS guys who are now bankers. They want him to keep a lid on things, so now we have an American Gangster like dual story except that neither protagonist is really that good of a person and they both enjoy beating the shit out of people. Despite an attempt to develop a love story between Danny and Australian native Anne (played by Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski) and Spike's wife who is in literally one scene and is never heard from again (couldn't find her name), we never really care about either character.

 The fight scenes are edited in the usual blur of motion, shaky cam style that prevents audiences from being able to follow anything that's happening, so at least there are some decent chase scenes (on car and on foot) to balance that out. Dominic Purcell is pretty funny as Davies, a character so bad at impersonating an SAS veteran that other SAS vets immediately see through his ruse. Considering how unimpressed I was with his Drake in Blade Trinity, I felt it was worth pointing out that he's the highlight in an otherwise stupid movie. Robert De Niro is not bad, but he doesn't really make much of an impression - Hunter mostly walks around and threatens people but doesn't kill them, even when he should. Statham and Owen do the best they can with basically useless dialogue.

 Half the time, you wouldn't know the film takes place in the 80s because Killer Elite is also full of sloppy anachronisms - for example, if you have a title card that says "The Year is 1980" and then one that says "One Year Later," you cannot use a newspaper obituary that claims the SAS member killed after the second title card died in 1980. You also cannot use modern earphones, motorcycle helmets, or new $100 bills in your period film. It's REALLY lazy and brings further into question the flimsy logic the film hopes to pass by with. Why do Jason Statham and Clive Owen continue fighting when the MFWIC (which stands for "Mother Fucker What's In Charge," one of the arguably best lines in the film) reveals that he's actually the bad guy both of them are fighting? Why does the film even suggest that Spike might still come after Danny even though there's NO good reason to keep this going?

 Look, I understand that on some primitive level this film exists because some stoned asshole said "what would happen if Crank fought Shoot 'Em Up?" I get that, but the end result is convoluted and feels twice as long as it actually is. I really stopped caring after Danny killed the third SAS guy, and that's maybe the halfway point on Killer Elite. By the time Clive Owen is in Sheikh Amr's palace / house and delivering photos of a fourth SAS soldier, I'd tuned out. I'll tolerate action movies that try too hard to a point, but Killer Elite can't decide whether to be overachieving or lazy, so it's both. And it sucks.



* It's actually two dollars now, but that doesn't have the same ring to it that "dollar fifty" does when spoken, so let's keep it as it was.

Retro Review: Taxi Driver

Editor's Note: Like many Retro Reviews, this piece contains SPOILERS which may impact your viewing enjoyment. By all means, watch Taxi Driver first (now available on Blu-Ray and low priced, to boot) before diving in.

Taxi Driver and the Cap'n go back a ways: arguably Martin Scorsese's "best known" film*, Taxi Driver was one of the first movies I had a VHS copy of (okay, literally a "copy," as in from one I rented), and sat comfortably on the tape next to Shaft. At the time, I enjoyed watching Robert DeNiro's slow descent into insanity, his isolation feeding a misplaced sense of rage, until his explosion of violence takes out a few low level pimps (notably Harvey Keitel) and he becomes an even more misunderstood hero for "rescuing" Jodie Foster's teenage prostitute. I didn't really understand Taxi Driver's place in the film noir tradition, or the influence of post-Vietnam rage and disillusionment, but I appreciated the gritty, forthright story, the embittered voice-over of Travis Bickle, and the ambiguous ending.

The violence also appealed to me in high school, although Taxi Driver is more about attitude than actual outbursts. I've seen the film so many times now that I can't actually remember how I felt about the lack of violence for most of the film (unlike Shaft, which I distinctly recall being underwhelmed by), but I can only imagine the bloodbath that closes the story made up for the mis-communication between characters for the bulk of Taxi Driver's 113 minute running time.

It was only later, when I came back to Taxi Driver after years of simply taking the film on a surface level, that I had the opportunity to rediscover the film in context. Considered by many to be the first major "Neo-Noir**," a spin-off of the Film Noir period of the 1940s and 50s, Taxi Driver both borrows from and expands upon themes of the movement (crime stories based around a down-on-their-luck antihero, a femme fatale, and a profound sense of angst, suspicion, and impending doom).

In an essay for my Film Noir final, Taxi Driver was a central piece when dealing with a shift in "noir" protagonists from "morally ambiguous" to a "psychotic and suicidal impulse," a shift that occurred in late noir and reaches its apex (arguably for the last time) in Scorsese's film:

Where Taxi Driver becomes the “watershed” noir for the psychotic action and suicidal impulse lies within Travis’s inability to do anything but destroy (himself or others). Bickle is, to put it simply, a weapon without a direction to point in. His disgust with New York is exacerbated by driving all over the city at night and dealing with the very worst it has to offer. In his spare time he stews, going to porno theaters without release or stewing at home, a veritable sty of fast food and garbage.

Travis Bickle does not have a femme fatale to draw him in, so he creates two: Betsy, a campaign volunteer for Senator Charles Palantine, and Iris, a child-prostitute. His “Madonna/Whore” complex becomes the catalyst for a purpose, although in both cases it is wholly destructive. Travis alienates both women, but directs his anger at the men they represent.

Without any interest for his own well-being, Bickle pushes forward to realize his goal of being a psychopathic killer. His rage at Betsy redirected at Palantine, Travis comes to believe that his act will have major repercussions, fixing a world he has no use for (and evidently no cure for). When he fails, instead of trying to adjust his mindset, the suicidal Bickle storms into the brother where Iris stays, killing Sport, her pimp, his boss, and the john with Iris in an outburst of blood and severed limbs.

Bickle, who sustains injuries in the shoulder and the neck, fully intends to kill himself as Iris screams beside him. Her salvation was not part of his plan, if he truly had one, and a lack of ammunition is his salvation, though he clearly has no use for life. The police, storming into the aftermath of Travis’s rampage, find him “shooting” himself in the head with his finger. Bickle, the suicidal psychopath, has finally lost it.

If there is any question that the epilogue to the film, which finds Travis back in good health and lauded as a “hero”, sullies this climax, consider the final moments of Taxi Driver. Bickle, who appears back to “normal”, drops Betsy off in his taxi and drives away. He catches something in the reflection behind him, and the “normal” façade drops. Adjusting the mirror, Travis sees only himself. His rehabilitation was not complete; the cycle will begin again, and next time it may not end happily.

A curious side effect of the psychotic action hero occurs less in neo-noir and more to this day in action films like The Punisher or Death Wish. The lone hero, which traces itself back to pre-noir detective films and has its own watershed moment with Dirty Harry, is a spin-off of this psychotic action and suicidal impulse. It continues to appear in neo-noir or noir pastiches like Sin City, but the current crop of post-classical directors seem to be more fascinated with revisionist takes on pre-1950s noir conventions.

I include this because of an ongoing argument about whether its ideal to enjoy a film on its own merits or if there is a greater benefit to understand a film beyond what is simply presented onscreen. I contend that there is a healthy middle ground, one that doesn't require a film school degree to "appreciate" classic films, but one that does provide audiences with a new lens with which to revisit old favorites.

Is it absolutely necessary to know everything in the italicized paragraphs above to enjoy Taxi Driver? Certainly. I would be the first person to concede that one needn't know what a "pastiche" is to "get" the film. On the other hand, there's something about seeing Taxi Driver's place in film history that does enrich the experience, that opens new questions about the film, about specific camera angles, editing choices, or snippets of dialogue. While I'm not forcing anyone to consider these new ways to experience a film, my own history with Taxi Driver is an example of growing with film, of seeing an essentially unchanging piece of art in another way, and of the knowledge that the relationship between audience and film is constantly evolving. For me, that's what being a film fan is all about.



* What else falls in there: Goodfellas? The Departed? The Last Temptation of Christ? Casino?
** Not to be mistaken with a sort-of arbitrary association of "Post-Noir" that covers films like Touch of Evil, Blast of Silence, Point Blank, and Ace in the Hole.

Blogorium Review: Machete

This summer, I worried about Predators. I anticipated Inception. I decided to "wait and see" about The Expendables. I mostly didn't think about The Other Guys. I hoped Piranha 3-D would back up Aja's boasts of "gore and nudity". I politely tried to ignore Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But there was one movie that I gave no second thought to, no pause: Machete. After Robert Rodriguez slapped that faux-trailer at the beginning of Grindhouse, there was no question that if it ever came to fruition, Machete would be pure exploitation through and through.

And folks, Rodriguez and co-director Ethan Maniquis deliver all the gore, guts, gratudity, and irreverence that the trailer promises, and then some. If you're not interested in seeing a movie where Danny Trejo uses a guy's intestines to swing from one floor of a hospital to another, then Machete isn't going to be your cup of tea. That's really the tip of the iceberg, too: expect numerous decapitations, Cheech Marin being crucified, Michelle Rodriguez losing an eye, threesomes, telephones hidden in vaginas, seppuku, defenstrations, electrocutions, and Lindsay Lohan.

Despite anything you were expecting, Machete does actually have a plot. In fact, it has several: Federale Machete (Danny Trejo) is trying to take down Mexican Drug Lord Torrez (Steven Seagal, doing the worst Mexican accent imaginable, until he drops it mid-movie), when he's betrayed by his chief. Torrez kills Machete's family and leaves him for dead. Three years later, on the other side of the Texas / Mexico border, Immigration Agent Sartana (Jessica Alba) is keeping an eye on illegals that formed the Network, led by Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) out of her taco stand. Meanwhile, a vigilante border patrol led by Lt. Stillman (Don Johnson) is hunting down and shooting anyone who crosses illegally, with the approval of Senator James McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro), who is running for re-election.

Following me so far? Okay, so Machete resurfaces in Texas as a day-laborer and is hired by Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate Senator McLaughlin, but it turns out to be a trick since Booth is McLaughlin's campaign manager (none of this is spoiling anything since all of this set-up is in the trailer). Machete turns to his brother, a Padre (Cheech Marin) for help, and also seduces Booth's wife June (Alicia Marek) and Meth-head daughter April (Lindsay Lohan). Booth sends his sniper (Shea Washington) and bounty hunter Osiris Ampanpour (Tom Savini) after Machete while trying to maintain a massive conspiracy to re-elect McLaughlin so he'll build a border fence that only Torrez can smuggle drugs through. Sartana and Luz try to keep Machete alive while he seeks vengeance against Booth, McLaughlin, and Torrez, who he doesn't realize are connected (at first).

Still with me? That gets us to the halfway point of Machete and doesn't properly cover the less than subtle immigration subtext in the film, how the Crazy Babysitter Twins from Planet Terror figure into the film, or Booth's henchmen, or the reporter from Exactamundo Television, or the day-laborer army that the Network brings together to help Machete (including Spy Kids and World's Greatest Dad alum Daryl Sabara) or any other subplots that may involve Lindsay Lohan shooting people while dressed as a nun.

That the plot doesn't necessarily resolve itself should surprise no one, but there's plenty of mayhem and insanity to keep you occupied. At the center of it is Danny Trejo, who makes even the most implausible moments seem possible with his squinty-eyed, "I don't give a shit" attitude and genuine bad-ass presence. Jeff Fahey is on the opposite side as a sleazy, perverted politico willing to do anything to make money with a morally dubious boss (an over-the-top Robert DeNiro). Cheech Marin has fun as the confession taping, pot smoking Padre that wields dual shotguns, and somehow avoids his Nash Bridges co-star Don Johnson for the entire film.

Johnson and Savini are pure moustache twirling villains that chew up every scene they're in. Michelle Rodriguez acquaints herself to the film better than Jessica Alba does, but only because Alba seems so silly trying to rally Machete's army or fighting a Luchadore Hitman. And then there's Steven Seagal, who plays, well, Steven Seagal as a Mexican Druglord. I'm not kidding when I say he gives up on his terrible Mexican accent about halfway through the film, and I love his death scene, which may be the most ridiculous thing in an already over-the-top movie. Oh, and I guess there's Lindsay Lohan, who spends most of the movie naked but strategically placed in such a way that she's not really naked, unlike Alicia Marek, who spends most of the movie entirely naked. Just like Myra Leal, who is credited as Chica (Naked Girl) on IMDB.

I'm reasonably certain that most of the trailer was actually integrated into Machete, save for a handful of changes in the story between 2007 and 2010. As it is, Machete is a wildly offensive movie to just about all types, but what did you really expect from the trailer? Remember, this is the same Machete where the line "they just fucked with the wrong Mexican" is only slightly changed to incorporate the voiceover into actual dialogue. Machete is pure exploitation, and if it's not as knowingly goofy as Planet Terror, it's because of the earnest (if ridiculously delivered) anti-anti-immigration message. Plus, the film ends promising not one, but two sequels: Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again.

So needless to say that seeing Machete won't necessarily enrich your life or increase your standing among film snobs; I doubt that's going to linger in the minds of groups that go to see this wanton display of violence, nudity, gore, and hammy acting. Even if you try to give this a serious walk-through of intertextuality or critical analysis, you do so trying not to admit that you enjoyed a movie that promised nothing more than exploitation and delivered accordingly.

An Obstruction I Wouldn't Mind...

I may end up eating crow later on if this turns out not to be true, but the idea of Lars von Trier pulling a "Five Obstructions" on Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro is too wild not to mull over.

For those of you who aren't familiar with The Five Obstructions (and didn't bother clicking on the link above), Lars von Trier challenged Jørgen Leth to remake his own short film, "The Perfect Human", five times with various impediments (or, as the title suggests, "obstructions").

The rumor du jour coming out of the Berlin Film Festival is that von Trier has challenged (and Scorsese and DeNiro have accepted) a similar challenge to remake Taxi Driver 34 years later. Personally speaking, I find this fascinating because the long standing rumor on the part of director and actor was that they were mulling over revisiting Travis Bickle - much older, but no more stable - someday.

As sequels go, it was a "probably never going to happen" but "wouldn't that be neat" idea. In all practicality, there's almost no way a sequel to Taxi Driver could work (although it could be argued that if anyone could do it, Scorsese could on the roll he's been lately) but then again it wasn't even a real consideration. Kinda like a full length cut of Metropolis.... oh.

But I have to say, this idea is even crazier. With von Trier egging them on, and dictating the rules of the game by which they have to play, I can only wonder what this Taxi Driver would look like. It has all the potential in the world to be a disaster commercially, but the artistic ramifications are fascinating. I can think of a handful of directors who remade their own films (Ozu's Floating Weeds, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, DeMille's The Ten Commandments, Haneke's Funny Games), but there's something so iconic about Taxi Driver, so quintessentially 70s neo-noir that I wonder how to approach the film in 2010.

Certainly, von Trier will have a number of peculiar obstructions set in place, one of which - I hope - is that it cannot be temporally the same. I can only imagine what New York (assuming it is New York) a 67 year-old Travis Bickle would find himself in, or how DeNiro would play the seething rage in the body of an older man. It's almost like Peter Boyle in Joe, but almost twice as old.

And yet, there's something compelling about the idea of the same film playing out with such wildly different variations. Bickle's misplaced rage, no longer the folly of a young man, but embodied with greater life experience, more time to simmer. I should imagine that some stipulation would include most of the surviving cast (hopefully in different capacities) - Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Cybill Shepherd. It would be funny if von Trier insisted on playing the Scorsese role in the film. Too many possibilities to mull over.

The concept is ripe with possibilities, and while I suspect that something so audacious will never come to pass, even with the star power pull involved, this is at last a remake with some drive behind it that transcends the cheap and easy methodology of contemporary studios.