Tango & Cash - 12th June 2011
It has wild shifts in tone that give it the appearance of an action heavy, mismatched buddy cop movie when really it teeters on the edge of being a spoof of that genre, with it's wise cracking, oddball array of secondary characters and, in one scene, cross dressing.
It has a paper thin set up that has plot holes a-plenty, no ending and darts from one scene to the next happily abandoning any pretense of structure or explanation, everything has to be taken on face value and everything, no matter how implausible is simply there to push us on to the next implausible thing. Basically it's one of those 'check your inner film snob at the door' type films, for this you should just sit back, laugh and enjoy.
Especially at some of the 'meta' or 'knowing' jokes that are in the film like Stallone, early on, saying "Rambo was a pussy".
It is for the reasons above that explaining the plot for this cheese-ball fest that ricochets from gags to garottings, is a bit like trying to explain the appeal of Kurt Russell's mullet. On him, it just works.
However, very quickly, it involves an underworld king pin played by Jack Palance who has an evil villain warehouse lair with a maze for his mice (evil mice presumably) in the top of his bar, a wall of televisions and red haired, pony tail wearing hard man with one of the worst British accents to appear on screen since The Van Dykester in that Poppins movie. Wouldn't you know that his elaborate drug smuggling plots are aways foiled by either the scruffy, fast talking, cowboy boot wearing and mullet sporting Gabriel Cash, who has a very nifty gun with a glaringly obvious laser site or by Raymond Tango, the Armani suit wearing, stocks and shares dealing, bespectacled tree-trunk of a cop who does the job purely for the thrills and not the cash.
Despite being able to orchestrate a fairly obvious, yet curiously successful, frame up of the two troublesome coppers and through, what must've been some fairly hefty string pulling, manage to get them into a prison for hardened criminals, most of whom they have put away, he still refuses, even when he has them in his grasp, to just, I don't know, shoot them in the face, for reasons neither I nor James Wong will ever understand.
Through an even more massive contrivance the two narrowly escape from prison, Cash hooks up with Tango's sister, while dressed as a woman (because he's that much of a man or maybe she is a bit bi-curious) and that leads to some hilarious indignant posturing from Tango. This goes on for a while until everyone decides to be friends, take a super truck thing from Cash's weird Q (from James Bond) like friend and storm the gates of the evil hideout and blow everything up. Which presumably, if they wanted to, they could've done this months ago and saved the tax payers the cost of an expensive trial.
Still, it all works out in the end, sort of.
Well it actually has an A-Team like ending but then just when you expect to see some postscript of maybe Tango and Cash strolling down the beach playing ball with a strangers dog while Terry Hatcher, Tango's sister, struts around laughing like an idiot in a bikini, instead you just get the credits with little to no idea whether these two on-the-lam cops will be sent back to prison or what. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that the entire city is now safe and they all have a lovely holiday in Rio for a month.
Maybe for all these reasons it's a bit of a lost gem. While you can hardly call yourself a fan of Stallone or Russell's without having seen it, I think, for the masses, it has been lost through the years under a pile of Die Hard's, Lethal Weapon's, Stallone's own franchises of Rocky and Rambo and even 48 Hours which seems to be more fondly remembered than messers Raymond Tango and Gabriel Cash.
It's a shame because it's pretty out there, pretty funny, well performed by both leads, atmospherically directed and one of the lucky few that bares the credit - Score by Harold Faltermeyer, no it's not going to win any Oscars or even points for good plotting from the Marlon Brando school for incomprehensible gibberish spouted by drunk bus drivers but if you disengage your brain and switch on your dopey man grin then you'll be in for a good 90 minutes of hilarity, bad hair and bonkers kick assery.
7 out of 10 slices of surreal man cake
Points from The Wife - 6 out of 10
You can hear me discuss Tango & Cash and more Stallone/Russell films on episode 2 & 3 of The Podcast from the After Movie Diner which can be downloaded from iTunes or http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/110745
or just listen to it here on the site using the Talkshoe player on your left
or go to http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com
Breakdown - 29th May 2011
Still back to playing catch up and reviewing the movies I have mostly had the pleasure to watch over the last month and a half.
We return with Breakdown which is a little remembered, predominantly road based, action thriller with the superb Kurt Russell going up against thieving murderous truckers headed up by the man who always relishes the chance to play evil, the late and most certainly great J.T. Walsh.
It has a simple set up, a hero you can root for a bad guy you love to hate, the action comes on thick and fast and it's a pretty fantastic viewing experience all round to be honest. The acting is top notch and the direction and production valuesare great and perfectly suited to the subject, which is odd because everything else Jonathan Mostow has done has been completely bilge.
Kurt blows the bland bad actor Chuck Norris, the Sluggish and lumbering Seagal and the incomprehensible and silly Van Damme out of the water in the action stakes. This film is very much in the same ball park as their outputs only better. Much better. It's the film all their films want to be.
Russell is not a kick boxer, he's not a martial artist, he's just an East Coast yuppie on his way out West pushed to extremes by some rednecks.
If you have ever been attacked (and I hope that you haven't) but after a couple of days of nursing bruises you start to picture what you would've done if only you had the guts or the opportunity, it's a very common scenario or if you have ever watched a horror or action movie and said 'now this is what I would do...' well this film lives out that wish fulfillment for you. That's its entire premise.
Forget these wannabe exploitation/retro/B-Movie action films of recent years that try so hard but 9 times out of 10 fail, Breakdown is the real thing, a simple action thriller that doesn't have to make everyone aware of it's 70s influences to be good, it just IS good. Now-a-days the only way to make a film like this again and for it to be any good is not to get Tarantino to do it but it would be to hire Jason Statham.
I would say this was the last great movie Russell has done, it happily stands alongside classics like Tombstone and Escape from New York for me, just obviously not as iconic but either way, well worth a watch.
9 out of 10 dusty road side cantina burgers
Points from the Wife 8 out of 10
Escape from New York - 17th May 2011
For film snobs there maybe more duds than greats, but they rarely know what they're talking about, for the average viewer the quality may vary slightly but mostly I think they find them enjoyable and for the hardened fan, I would say that Carpenter barely put a foot wrong during this period.
Even if you like some of the films more than the others, it can't be denied that he has one of the most creatively interesting, diverse, artistic and fascinating resumes since Hitchcock.
Escape from New York is his second collaboration with Kurt Russell and both of them have spoken about how Snake Plissken is a character created by and very close to both of them, sharing their attitude, strength and political beliefs. Russell plays him like Clint Eastwood's futuristic 80s love baby with a chip on his shoulder. Every single one of his mannerisms is an education in purposeful cool. The one thing you can say about Snake is Russell is playing him as a hard man without a care rather than necessarily being a hard man without a care. It's almost a pastiche of a performance but I think that's maybe one of the in-jokes, especially considering everyone else in the film from Lee Van Cleef to Issac Hayes comes up to his level nothing feels out of place and the whole film plays like the greatest B-Picture ever made.
It's got the futuristic setting mixed with the decay of the past, it's got the lone gun man with an iconic look who rides into town to do a job he doesn't want to do but he has no choice, it's got ball busting militarised police, crazy sewer dwellers, a bad guy called The Duke, a strong, gutsy leading lady with a low cut dress, a cast that includes b-movie and genre icons Donald Pleasance, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and it's all filmed with a slightly hyper-real comic book style where the fact that everyone is taking it so seriously is the biggest joke in the movie. It's often been imitated and never ever bettered.
As Carpenter's career moved forward so, often, did his role. Occasionally he was just a director for hire, other times he maybe wrote, maybe did the score and in the quintessential, pure Carpenter flicks he did all three. Well just as Escape maybe the best modern example of the B-Movie it may also be the most all round John Carpenter film of them all. From the cast and crew of friends to the oh so recognisable brilliant Carpenter synth score, Escape from New York is perfectly crafted, beautifully shot and interestingly written with intentionally cliche and familiar dialogue set against an original and creative plot.
The thing you realise watching it again is it gives itself time to breathe, it's pace is deliberately slower and more artistic, allowing you to create an eerie, unsettling mood and take in the incredible art direction and set design but maintains interest, intensity and drive by using the time-running-out element.
Nowadays this film would have 50 cuts a second, a charmless non-entity in the title role, utterly redundant action scenes and a hero who, deep down would really care. A modern day Escape from New York would suck big hairless balls.
Unfortunately John Carpenter's films were raided by studios unwilling to fund a Carpenter original and instead made atrociously shitty remakes from his staggering body of work. Why? nobody knows, it makes little to no sense. I could rant, kick and scream right now but I am too tired and I hope, now that the whole Gerald Butler *shudder* remake is not going ahead that they leave this one well alone because it is just brilliant, visually interesting, amusing and cliché while at the same time being seriously original and inventive.
Nothing about it needs to be remade, it looks incredible, yes it says the future is 1997 but that's part of its charm, we don't need to update things for children, they can understand the concept of a film from '81 considering '97 the future, what are we going to do, reprint all the covers and re-do the title sequence of Space 1999 to read Space 2099?
Plus just a little bit more on remakes because John Carpenter's films have been victim to this current irritating disease (as have friend and colleague George A Romero's) so it is sort of relevant. If you must remake films and I have no idea why you must, you creatively bankrupt bunch of childhood rapers, remake old bad films with good ideas that didn't have the money first time round to realise the idea don't realise established classics.
I, for one, will not be allowing my children, if I ever have any, to watch remakes. They will watch the originals as they were intended to be seen. So that there is someone left to spread the word, it's already depressing having to add either the date or the words 'the original' to a film now when you're discussing it, lets not let these remakes take over and re-write a whole history of amazing art for future generations.
There are three main exceptions to this rule: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 70s Don Sutherland version), John Carpenter's The Thing (because it draws mainly from the book and not the original film) and the Coen Brother's True Grit. The reason these ones are exempt from my wrath should be obvious.
Anyway, back to Escape From New York, it's a really great movie, one of my faves, one of Carpenter's best and one of Russell's best. With heaps of independent spirit, a great little politically charged twist ending and even a cameo from Tom Atkins, what more could anyone want? oh and I also like the sequel, haters of the sequel are stupid and have forgotten what it was like to be young and not so judgmental.
9 out of 10 snakes in a baguette
Points from the Wife 8 out of 10
The Thing - 7th January 2011
The print for this particular version was excellent and I have never seen the film looking so incredible.
The wife and I are huge John Carpenter fans and apart from Ghosts of Mars and the last part of Vampires (I always fall asleep) I have watched and can watch everything he's ever done. When John Carpenter works with Kurt Russell, it's particularly brilliant and the two of them have created some of the best fantasy cinema available. While Big Trouble in Little China might be a lot more fun and The Escape movies may have the real cult classic status with an iconic character, The Thing is probably their best film together and the one that can stand head to head with any other Horror or Sci-Fi film out there. Based on the short story 'Who goes there' it is a deceptively simple and expertly executed plot about a research centre in the South Pole that unwittingly invites a shape shifting Alien into their midst and the hunt is on to find out who has been infected and who hasn't. Along the way there are shocks, surprises, twists and turns all complemented in a jaw droppingly inventive and innovative fashion by a 22 year old Rob Bottin's special effect work.
At the time it was released audiences and critics were turned off by the incredible effects accomplishment, that and this dark tale of mistrust in the Antarctic came out the same year as ET. Read what you want into the fact I have seen ET probably once when I was young and have had literally no desire to ever see it again and The Thing I have seen repeatedly and it still surprises, amuses, interests and amazes me every time.
After its initial failure I think, actually, it was the effects that helped it gain in notoriety and find its audience, especially after the acceptance of other effects heavy horrors like Nightmare on Elm Street. I think, when I first got into genre pics it was certainly all I heard about in relation to the flick.
Actually, the effects aspect may have overshadowed what is at the core of this film's staying power and that goes right back to the original story. The idea that there's a group of people, one or many of them maybe your enemy and you don't know which one. The mystery aspect of the film and the subsequent surprises it kicks up is by far what is the most entertaining and important part of this film. The fantastical effect sequences, the likes of which have rarely been seen before or since are what help with constant repeat viewings as they are just so wonderfully artistic and surreal in places but even with repeat viewings I can never 100% remember who gets changed and who doesn't.
The ensemble cast are terrific and it's no one person's movie, yes Kurt Russell gets the cool hat and the cool name but everyone in the film plays their part perfectly. The direction too is fantastic. It's subtle, never showy, always on the mark and builds the tension, telling the central story, perfectly. Also, you'd have no idea watching the film that the interiors were filmed on refrigerated sets in LA, such is the perfect blending of interior and exterior filming.
One surprising thing, for all Carpenter fans is that the music credit goes to Ennio Morricone. Known for writing his own scores to a lot of his films and having a very signature style of doing so, it's incredible that with a composer of Morricone's stature that the score comes out sounding like Carpenter himself could've done it. It's also unusual that Carpenter didn't write the screenplay either and was essentially brought on as a director for hire and yet it is completely and utterly a Carpenter film and, not only that, one of his most beloved and celebrated these days (hindsight, what a wonderful thing).
I guess I don't have to reiterate this but if you ever get a chance to see this eerie and exciting film on the big screen, drop what you're doing and go see it because it's a masterpiece.
I spoke before about Die Hard being the perfect film, the perfect action movie, a film that just came along, did what it said on the tin but did it with style, panache and incredible creativity, well, The Thing is to Horror/Sci-Fi what Die Hard is to action movies, routinely imitated but never bettered.
10 out of 10 frozen dog burgers and a shot of J&B over a game of computer chess
Points from The Wife 10 out of 10! It's one of her favourite films of all time.