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Just Buried (2007)
A Comedy Of (Homicidal) Errors
Just Buried is another pot of comedic gold at the end of the Canadian rainbow, starring our favorite go-to woobie Jay Baruchel and the prolific Rose Byrne of Bridesmaids fame. The long and short of it? Watch it.
Just Buried was released in 2007, so I'm nearly a decade late to the party on this one, but I had high hopes for this pairing, having seen both actors progress in their more recent careers. Baruchel's most known for his collaborations with fellow incognito-Canadian Seth Rogen in films like Knocked Up and This Is The End, where he plays a lovable guy who gets kicked around by fate (and Just Buried is no departure). Byrne's a little harder to pin down – she'd played in everything from super-hero flicks to horrors like Insidious, with a smattering of indie thrown in for good measure – so I was delighted to discover a new facet of her skill-set in Just Buried, where she plays an obsessive mortician with a ludicrous but lovable knack for accidental crime.
At its heart Just Buried could be compared to a number of other David-Goliath underdog comedies like Dodgeball or The Longest Yard, but it goes further than that. It's a buddy-tale between protagonist Oliver (Baruchel) and Roberta (Byrne) in the same vein as I Love You Man, featuring two very different but surprisingly compatible strangers who form a fast friendship (plus, later on, the inevitable wish-fulfillment fantasy typical of these sorts of films, where the nerdy nervous hero takes a corner in life and finds himself at the absurd center of a number of women and their rapidly escalating sexual advances).
But first and foremost, it's a comedy of errors.
Oliver, in town for his estranged father's funeral, expected a quick in-and-out visit; that is, until the will is executed, and Oliver inherits his father's funeral home. It's only later that he's informed his own father is the home's first 'customer' in a year. The business has been ailing ever since sleaze-ball Wayne Snarr (Christopher Shore) opened a rival funeral home, interdicting which his greasy marketing all the 'clients' from the retirement home which had been a goldmine for Oliver's father. The setup for the underdog comedy is obvious, but it's a trope viewers seemingly never tire of, and I daresay a funeral-home is a fresher take on the genre than a dodgeball team (or any sporting team, for that matter).
While command of the funeral home, Oliver meets Roberta, the young, somewhat creepy mortician as well as the local coroner. Nervous Oliver (who suffers a nosebleed every time he gets nervous, often to hilarious effect) bumbles through their encounters until Roberta takes pity on him and takes him out for drinks.
It's here the film takes a turn into the absurd, which predictably is when the comedy kicks in.
After their cocktails and beers Oliver insists he probably shouldn't be driving. Eternally upbeat Roberta insists "everyone around here does it", and they hop in the truck and take backroads. Everything's going fine, and we're starting so suspect some unlikely romantic undertones, until Oliver looks away from the road for a moment
And just like that, the funeral home's got another customer.
For once, things seem to go right for Oliver. His first official funeral as director is a smashing success, and the dearly-deceased had the decency to be relatively loaded. But naturally, we can assume all is not well. And as the pair go to greater and more absurd lengths to keep the truth hidden, the bodies start to pile up. The repo-men are at the funeral home for the furniture, rival Snarr is offering low-ball buyout deals, and – short of engineering more 'accidental' deaths – the pair struggles to keep the business afloat, hide their crimes, and keep their heads above water as various townsfolk grow suspicious (including Roberta's own father who, in small-town tradition, just so happens to be the sheriff).
Just Buried revolves around a funeral home, and as you'd expect, death is a central theme. It speaks to director-writer Chaz Thorn's skill that he's able to wring maximum laughs out of a dark theme, but I wouldn't even go so far as to call this one a 'black comedy' (or a dark comedy, since I'm not sure what the official PC-stance on 'black comedy' is). Just Buried is ultimately light-hearted in tone, and with the number of accidental deaths and their varying degree of unlikelihood, it's clear that the movie doesn't take itself too seriously. If we're going to call films like The Lobster a black comedy, then Just Buried is a romp, a lark. The stakes are high, but that's only a plot device to give skeleton to the film's muscle and fat: the laughs and character dynamics.
Baruchel, naturally, kills it. I don't think I've ever seen a movie of his I didn't like, so maybe I'm biased. But the true credit goes to Byrne; 'whacky' female characters, no matter how well written, can tend to skew towards Manic Pixie Dreamgirl in the bad cases, to annoying, to downright unbelievable in the worst instances. It's not an easy role by any means, but Byrne riffs off the theme perfectly, balancing just the right amount of ridiculous and relatable, snark and serious. Roberta provides Oliver a perfect foil while maintaining her own depth: she has her own stakes and motivations critical to the plot.
I wouldn't say Just Buried is my favorite from either actor. Baruchel's best role remains himself in This Is The End, and I like Byrne's dramatics better in films like The Place Beyond The Pines. It's not even in the running for best recent Canadian comedy (of which there are too many to compare).
But for a film about a funeral home, it's far more hilarious than I'd have thought possible.
Kill and Kill Again (1981)
Producer Montoro Finally Made A Watchable Film!
Before watching Kill And Kill Again, the sequel to Kill Or Be Killed (which I haven't seen), I'd suffered through three productions by Edward Montoro: Day Of The Animals, Grizzly, and Mutant. Each film left me with that unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach that started cropping up sometime in my late twenties: the knowledge that I'm definitely going to die one day, that feeling that life is short, and the suspicion that – partially because of movies like the three aforementioned – I've all but wasted my allotted span hitherto.
So it's not difficult to imagine my mindset when Kill And Kill Again's opening credits rolled, and there was Montoro's name plastered across the screen. I'd already paid good money for the thing, which represents work and arguably falls into that time-wasted category. Then again, if I watched what I was sure would be an atrocious movie, that would be another couple hours of my inevitable race to the grave spent on yet another horrendous Montoro film. Do I cut my losses now, or truly shame myself by letting Montoro fool me a fourth time? Obviously I chose to watch it. Buried beneath my existential nihilism is, in fact, an optimist. My findings? You heard it here first: Kill And Kill Again is kung-fu gold.
Well, OK, silver. But for Monotoro it might as well be platinum.
It's obvious he missed his calling: after watching three of the worst horrors ever shot on film, I watched Kill And Kill Again, an eighties kung-fu flick, and realized Montoro as a producer missed his calling. Don't get me wrong, 'derivative' still (as always) applies, and I can't judge whether Montoro's was intentionally satirical – maybe my modern sensibilities mistook an actually genuine attempt at a serious kung-fu movie for a tongue-in-cheek romp – but maybe, just maybe, Montoro (without a miraculous accident) actually turned out exactly the sort of film he wanted to make, and it was actually good.
James Ryan stars as Steve Chase, a world-renowned martial artist who (presumably in the first film) is no stranger to getting dragged into contests of a nature that's decidedly more lethal than your average cage-match. Model/beauty-queen Anneline Kriel plays Kandy Kane – I swear this isn't a skin-flick – who drags Chase on a quest to save her father, who's been abducted by the evil genius Marduk. Together they assemble an A-Team style crew of the usual typecast-oddballs and token-whatever's, who set out to karate-chop and roundhouse-kick their way to Dr. Kane.
Marduk – who's as comically villainous as you'd expect with a comic-book name like that – kidnapped Dr. Kane to work on his latest mastermind scheme for world domination. He's cooked up a potato-based obedience serum, and needs Dr. Kane to perfect it. Seriously, he's taking over the world with potatoes, and if that isn't intentional comedy I don't know what to call it. Marduk's got an entire campus full of brainwashed youths already on the drug, who he's raising as his personal karate army. Once Marduk's plan ripens (heh, get it, because potatoes?) he'll enthrall the entire world, assuming Chase, Kane and their sidekicks don't stop him.
Nothing about this movie, when viewed superficially, should have been enjoyable. It's got a white South African, James Ryan, all but parodying Bruce Lee (I could never figure out whether I was supposed to believe Ryan was actually Asian). The voice-acting sounds like a racist's interpretation of Native American mannerisms. Sexism is blatant, even for an eighties movie, although I'll give Montoro this: Kandy Kane is a far more active heroine than any of his others female leads. She'd critical to the plot, in fact, and gets in a few badass moments herself.
Kung-fu movies have a reputation for being cheesy and over the top; it's an inverse relationship between the realism of the kung-fu, and the awesomeness of the movie, and Kill And Kill Again wisely doesn't deviate. There's an obvious bit of realism beneath the choreography, but their ultimate goal was entertainment rather than believability. It's got everything we've all come to expect from these sorts of martial-arts movies: spinning kicks, backflipping as a valid means of daily transportation, parkour inspired wall-flips, and outright absurdism when it comes to how many (supposedly well-trained) combatants our heroes can fend off and defeat all on their lonesome.
As a matter of fact, Kill And Kill Again broke new cinematic ground, which isn't something I thought I'd ever say about a Montoro production. My jaw literally dropped a couple inches when I saw it. You'll recall the slow-mo spinning-bullet shots in The Matrix, I'm sure; turns out KAKA was the very first instance of that now iconic shot. Even more impressively, they accomplished it all without the modern technology The Matrix and other imitators relied on. A dolly, a camera, some plexiglass and clever lighting were basically all they used for the setup.
Innovation? Montoro? My core beliefs are thoroughly shaken.
Kill And Kill Again is, slow-mo bullet sequence aside, nothing new. It isn't plowing deep into fresh narrative territory; the minimal character development isn't masking any biting social commentary; the cinematography's impressive, but it's an action movie, so I expect nothing less.
But it's fun. It's enjoyable. You can laugh at the over-the-top kung-fu (or karate, whatever it's supposed be). You can dig the eighties nostalgia which is ultimately the genre's hallmark. You can turn your brain off, kick back, and prepare to be entertained with the comfortable knowledge that Kill And Kill Again won't require an iota of your upper-level cognitive function to fully enjoy what it has to offer.
And, like me, you can say you finally watched an enjoyable Montoro film.
Blood Is Blood (2016)
Twisted Family Dynamic, Solid Thriller Storytelling
*Contains Minor Spoilers Of Inciting Events* Staged amidst upper-crust opulence and scored with deliciously ethereal electronica, Blood is Blood orbits a quartet of orphaned but affluent siblings on a sliding-scale of derangement. Think Game of Thrones' House Lanister (minus the incest) meets Ted Bundy, wrapped in a psychological-thriller package reminiscent of Black Swan. It refreshingly abstains from the Fight-Run-Exposition plot typical of sub-par thrillers, favoring instead a dark exploration of a small cast of supremely screwed up siblings.
I'll admit I spent a good portion of Blood Is Blood wondering whether there was any underlying logic at all. Tempted to buy into the narrative- wanting to believe- but agonizing over whether it would let me down with some cop-out. It's the danger of smart entertainment: I know I'm not the only one who shouted bloody murder at their television after Lost took seven seasons to deliver what amounts to one of the biggest middle-fingers ever flipped in the history of mankind, and even the power-combo of Ryan Gosling and Ewan McGregor wasn't enough to redeem Stay, which aimed for 'artsy and intellectual' and instead hit 'pretentious and contrived'.
The second I catch a whiff of possible chronological tomfoolery, unreliable point-of-view, or possibly mentally-ill protagonists- all of which are present in Blood Is Blood within the first fifteen minutes- I'm hearing klaxons. So I'll save you the trouble of agonizing over whether it's worth your time.
Blood Is Blood delivers, and then some, largely on the backs of the four featured siblings.
There's Daniel, who I applaud for unabashedly embracing his inner-women but must condemn for simultaneously embracing his inner torturous psychopath. Jessica stands out as the only (probably) sane, emotionally stable number of the brood, starkly contrasted to Crew, the older brother who moonlights as a masked, fratricidal maniac...
Right up until the moment he inexplicably attacks our protagonist, his adoring sister Brie, who stabs him in the neck, repeatedly, about ten minutes into the film.
In the vein of Hemingway "less is more" storytelling, the driving force propelling Blood Is Blood is what's left unsaid, and all in a succinct seventy-five minutes (less credits). The viewer is constantly questioning not only the characters' demented motivations, but their reality. Are any of these people sane? Are we getting the full-story? What are we missing? Considering the intentional chronological confusion, we're not even always sure what happened when, or frankly whether it even happened at all.
Disturbing imagery abounds, and the chilling score ratchets the tension to eleven. The action is jarring, unexpected, but never over-saturated. There were enough jump-scares to spill my popcorn (twice). But the most frightening aspect of Blood Is Blood is ultimately cerebral.
The entire jigsaw's there for anyone to solve- many of the most important clues crop up in the first fifteen minutes- but the pacing and measured revelations keep the average viewer guessing right up to the climax. I wouldn't say it hits every mark it aims for, but if it isn't a consistent bullseye, it all at least lands on the target.
Fiona Dourif (Brie) brings unexpected nuance to a her second top-billing roll. Tormented by her dead brother Crew- or someone impersonating him, barring an outright paranormal explanation- she flees the sanatorium she's been in since she was forced to kill him in self-defense. With characters whose perspective I can't entirely trust, it takes some serious acting chops to get me invested, but Dourif meets the challenge admirably, and debut writer-director Stuart Sauvarin provides solid, balanced material for an active protagonist and strong female lead. From the outset, Brie's presented as a woman of action with strong will, a survivor's resourcefulness, and a depth which even a relatively unengaged viewer will recognize as hinting towards far more than meets the eye.
While Brie's joined up with little-sis Jess to try and figure out who's terrorizing her from behind Crew's old mask, the narrative splits several times. We follow Daniel and his crossdressing-torture fetish for a while, which breaks up the main arc nicely. As a villain he's enjoyably demented, shifting dramatically from a charming young socialite into a sadistic murderer as he dolls up for his evening in the mansion's basement-cum-dungeon (a spine-tingling set which, unfortunately, doesn't get as much attention as it deserves).
He's also developed a stalker-ish infatuation with Sarah, Crew's fiancée, who's on the brink of total mental breakdown. Apparently she hasn't quite reconciled her charming fiancée with the fact that he was, well, traipsing around in a leather mask and trying to kill his sister. It's made clear from the get-go that she hasn't let Brie off the hook for killing him- even in self-defense- and Brie (who was never Sarah's biggest fan) has her own suspicions about Sarah's roll in the intrigue quickly spiraling towards the final, bloody confrontation. Weave in the origami motifs- you'd never think a paper fox could inspire this much dread, but the film nails it- and what you're left with satisfies both the intellectual mind with its puzzle, and the darker, lizardian id with its horror.
Blood Is Blood hasn't reinvented the wheel. It hasn't broken any new ground in the psychological-thriller genre. But it dishes out exactly what it promised- terrifying thrills in an intelligent package- and your own family dynamic's bound to look a lot healthier after you've seen Blood Is Blood.
Everyman's War (2009)
Disjointed But Decent Narrative
*May Contain Minor Spoilers* Fallen Not Forgotten tells the tale of Sergeant Don Smith, who at 19 volunteered for the Army and in 1944 participated in the Battle Of The Bulge, one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two and the final mass German offensive of the war.
At the center of the film is Sergeant Smith (Cole Carson), an everyman stand-in for everything we think of when we picture the sort of clean-cut All-American boys who volunteered for duty before the draft caught them. As he confronts the horrors of war he longs for Dorrine, the bright-eyed red-headed singer who is (hopefully) waiting for him back home. Beyond his survival, the budding romance he left behind is the key stakes for Smith, who can't help but wonder how the world and his place in it will have changed by the time he returns home, if ever.
Fallen, however, falls distinctly within the genre of a comrade war-film like Saving Private Ryan or the Band of Brothers miniseries. Smith gets the most limelight, but Fallen tries to split the focus otherwise equally among his friends in the 94th Infantry. Two in particular grabbed my interest. Pvt. Benedetto, a down on his luck miscreant who took Army service over jail-time; and Pvt. Heinrich, an enlistee of German heritage who – after confronting anti-German bigotry back in the states – was compelled by patriotic pride to assert undeniably his Americanism by enlist and fight. While Smith pines for his love back in the states, Benedetto struggles under the disciplinarian Army regimen, at one point abandoning his post to meet an opportunistic Frenchman and trade rations for a cask of brandy. Heinrich, meanwhile, has to work and fight twice as hard as any soldier in the 94th to earn the respect of his brothers in arms, who predictably haven't taken any special liking to the man in their midst with the heavy German accent.
The split narrative was one of the highlights; my concern for these two characters and their survival sometimes even overshadowed Smith's everyman story (which, while engaging, has been told many time before). With better editing and a tighter script, they could have made for an amazing movie.
But the split narrative was also, unfortunately, one of Fallen's primary weaknesses.
Like the Battle of the Bulge, Fallen Not Forgotten is, technically, a victory. It was enjoyable as a war film, and the romantic thread interwoven was sufficiently dramatic enough to keep me engaged and rooting for Sergeant Smith. The acting was in a few instances applause-worthy; it wasn't entirely cringe-free, and Tom Hanks and the rest of Private Ryan's cast aren't going to be handing over any of their awards, but for a war film they passed the bar.
But the Battle of the Bulge was, despite being the final nail in the Nazi coffin, hardly the huge success the Allied generals would have wanted. They barely held on. American troops spent a month entirely surrounded by Germans, cut off from their supplies, starving, freezing in the snow, low on ammunition and even lower in spirit.
Fallen Not Forgotten, I'd say, barely held on. As an indie production it took risks your usual blockbuster studio war film wouldn't even contemplate, and while they didn't fail, I can't honestly say they succeeded.
Early disorganization was one of the hardest hurdles to overcome for me as a viewer. Within the first few minutes there's a * double * framing device; the first shot presents Smith narrating as an old man, only to them zoom to 1944, with a battle-hardened young Smith now serving to frame with another, sometimes hokey narration. Then we flash-back to before the war, or at least before our heroes joined, to learn how they all got into the Army.
Then we flash forward again, or I think so anyways. By then I was thoroughly confused. The introductions of each character come one after the other, prolonging the relatively boring first act setup without ever giving me enough time to get to know these characters (I remained uncertain about some of their names well into the film).
Fallen held my interest long enough to get me into middle act, though, which redeems the sloppy introduction and flows relatively seamlessly thereon. The action sequences are what you'd expect from an independent production: don't hold your breath for any huge cinematic shots or dazzling special effects, but it holds its own. Nor does it suffer from any excessive gore, or over-glorification of violence, which should make it more accessibly to a wider audience.
Scoring isn't great, and the narration detracts from immersion, but the cinematography is decent, and Cole Carson's acting improves once the plot gives him more to work with. His struggle with being promoted to Sergeant provides good plot juice, and for a novice actor, he delivers well the emotional turmoil of the sudden responsibility for his men, their survival, and his own leadership, whether it's integrating German-born Heinrich into the company or curtailing Benedetto's recklessness and criminal tendencies. At times, though, I got the impression they'd shoehorned the romantic subplot in to emulate the success of the likes of The Notebook and other war films which featured heavy romantic elements.
My recommendation for Fallen depends entirely on who I'm addressing. The die-hard war-drama fans won't love it, but it scratches the proverbial itch if you're looking for a decent WWII tale. If you're in it for the sweeping battle-shots and hyper-realistic war tale, though, it falls short. Conversely, wider audiences will enjoy the dramatics, and possibly appreciate a war movie that doesn't overly focus on blood and guts.
Tighter editing would have been nice, and the screenplay probably looked better on paper than screen. It certainly isn't anything new for the Battle of the Bulge.
But Fallen Not Forgotten, in the end, is enjoyable enough to warrant getting past the mishandled opener.
Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe (2008)
Dirty But Brilliant
Cards on the table, biases laid bare: I loved 'David Choe: High Risk' for the same reasons I hate most documentaries.
Before we dive into the actual subject matter – Choe, an American graffiti-artist of Korean descent who rose from rags to riches on the gamble of a lifetime – it's important to note that the subject matter in any documentary is secondary to its execution. We've got the likes of Michael Moore, who's objective is to bash you over the head with superior intellect, or Warner Herzog, who (despite his enchanting voice) can draw a few eye-rolls when he tries to wring water from the proverbial rock and find deep, fundamental meaning where there's none to be found. Either approach can come off as pretentious, and between not wanting to be verbally bashed by some fat guy and not trying to find the meaning of life in every little moment, I've my appetite for documentaries is lean at best.
Generally, I need a flock of people telling me it changed their lives. That, or a guy stuffing himself on McDonald's for thirty days straight or otherwise self-abusing for my entertainment pleasure. The big names' styles just don't connect with me enough to take a risk.
And then there's Harry Kim: unpretentious, honest, and intimately connected to his subject matter in a way these topic-hopping professionals could only dream of.
Harry Kim is (and I hope remains) David Choe's best friend. Back when nobody gave two pence for what an unknown street artist was up to, Kim recognized the budding genius behind Choe's irreverent art. He spent ten years documenting Choe's life; living with him, accompanying him to the 'work site', and capturing over a decade those seemingly meaningless moments which provide the most intimate insight into Choe's life.
The footage is often shaky. Grainy, low-quality. It's raw. It might have amounted to nothing.
And in its edited version, 'High Risk', gave me goosebumps throughout. It wasn't some massive buildup for a single chilling quote at the end: High Risk, like its subject, is unrelenting.
Eat your heart out, Herzog.
David Choe's story is a rag-to-riches underdog tale. As a teen in LA he lived a delinquent but harmless life, diving into the graffiti scene and developing his early style, which could be best described as * irreverent * (were I to describe the vast majority of his art, it wouldn't pass any site's obscenity restrictions). His early start is typical of an aspiring artist, bashing his head against a wall with rejection after rejection, submitting a never ending stream of art to various magazines before discovering the lowest common denominator: uncensored sexuality.
Illustrating for various porno's provided an outlet for Choe's obvious inner turmoil. Later in life he'd run the full gambit of 'troubled artist', even doing a stint in a Japanese prison for an assault on an officer, but even early on his art reflected a unique but dark mind. Kim, the documentarian, excelled in presenting this facet objectively, free of judgment, and for that I – as a fellow creative type with what some might consider a darker than average imagination – have to applaud him. These days there's a fine line between artistry and psychopathy, a subject upon which countless articles and times have already been penned; it's easy to examine weird, sometimes even upsetting art, and think the artist himself is violent or somehow mentally defective. Choe, undoubtedly, falls into that category of artist who may have turned to more extreme outlets but instead vents those emotions and thoughts into art that is sometimes offensive but always enthralling.
There is however a potential criticism to be made that Kim, having been Choe's friend for so long, could not possibly have cut an objective portrayal. The evidence in High Risk is all to the contrary. Kim doesn't pull any punches, and while I'm sure he would have cut some content if Choe had asked him, he doesn't sugarcoat his subject. Some of the most entertaining and enlightening sequences are of Choe verbally riffing, displaying in oratory form his darkest fantasies. At one point while discussing his trial in Japan, he admits to fantasizing and even considering jumping the barrier between himself and a witness and 'murdering him in front of all those people', which – had Kim's aim been to soften Choe's ragged edges – certainly does Choe no favors.
The narrative line Kim constructs from the chaos of a decade of struggle is the exact sort of story audiences can't get enough of. There's plenty of artifice in the rags-to-riches subgenre (one thinks of Drake, who supposedly 'started from the bottom' but in fact came from a comfortable Canadian suburb). Choe's story is the real deal, and if you doubt it, consider this: his career rocketed immediately following his incarceration in Japan, where he'd for months spiraled slowly into madness painting prison-art with * urine * and * soy-sauce *.
Since it's presented at the documentary's opening, I'm not spoiling anything when I disclose Choe's artistic pinnacle. In fact, you've probably heard of him before.
A small Silicon Valley startup hired Choe to paint their offices. They offered sixty-thousand dollars, or stock options.
Choe took the stock options.
That company was Facebook.
Hundreds of millions of dollars and a single crushing victory could have been the pointed climax of this tale. But Kim doesn't sugarcoat anything: no amount of money would have made the story behind Choe.
Kim gives you the full tale. He does it in an astoundingly brisk 45 minutes guaranteed to keep even the most inattentive viewer engaged. At times it's by the subject's own nature crass, but – like Choe's art – never needlessly so.
But more than anything, the story and version of Choe which Kim gives us is raw, unvarnished, and all the more awe-inspiring for it.
The Night Never Sleeps (2012)
Grit And Aesthetic Wins Big
If there's one word to describe my enjoyment of The Night Never Sleeps, it's aesthetic.
Trust me; I'm well aware of how hipster that sounds of me. But nothing else can explain the success. The acting's good. The writing's solid. The theme's freshly spun
but nothing award winning. The characters, while highly engaging, have been done before.
Before we dive into the plot and aesthetic itself, try and recall the first time you saw Law And Order's opening sequence. Try and remember that buzz of anticipation it engendered. Treating you to sweeping New York city-scapes; black and whites of NYC law-enforcement and criminals; grainy hand-held footage; those red and blue filters. The synthesizer's foundation beat, the weeping electric guitar dueling with that riffing clarinet, the driving but restrained drums competing with the siren's wail.
Yeah? You jazzed? Me too.
That's what The Night Never Sleeps nailed. Not to imply they ripped anyone off, mind you, but it's that tone, that mood, which (unlike L&W's intro) pervades every facet of the film.
Detective Cavanaugh (Dan Brennan) is a cop of the old-guard coming to terms with a newer, PC-friendly police force. He's not above beating a perp that deserves it, and he'll bend the rules for a lead on a case, but he's no dirty cop either. He's got a deep connection with the community, and while he holds the so-called Blue Line and looks out for his own cops when it comes to relatively harmless infractions, he keeps the citizens' interest at top priority. As Never Sleeps opens, he takes under his wing Officer Rourke (Stephanie Finochio): she's not a rookie per-se, but she's new to the beat and Cavanaugh's team.
After an arrest the pair are doing their usual cop routine – stopping around for coffees, driving around town aimlessly, casually discussing backstories (hey, they're movie cops, they haven't got all night to explain where they came from) – when a murder initiates what's a standard * Longest Night Ever * plot line. They've got a dead cop, zero leads, and a rapist and cop-killer on the run, along with an aggressively pragmatic Internal Affairs agent barking at Cavanaugh (played by Armand Assante, who brings three minutes of brilliance to an otherwise middling acting situation).
The villain, however, steals the show. The so-called 'Iceman' is played by Russ Carmada, who with his dark looks and sharp goatee was all but born to play a baddie. Normally I'd complain about the over-the-top antagonist, and Iceman's definitely over the top; cartoonish, even. But there's a balance to the character in the writing and dialogue. Nearly every scene he's in eventually devolves into a sort of verbal thrashing where Iceman channels his inner Hannibal Lecter to viciously jab at his target, whether that's restaurant owners, detectives, his own crew, or – in one particularly enlightening scene – his own reflection in the mirror. Iceman breathes pure menace, exudes perversion, and somehow skips right over the Villain's Uncanny Valley and into the other end of the bell curve, which is populated entirely by terrifying people you'd never want to so much as pass on the street much less interact with.
The clock is ticking. It's Jaded Veteran and The Rookie versus the Remorseless Psychopath. In other words, it's a standard setup, and even the Iceman isn't a strong enough character to freshen up an old plot line. There's one fairly shocking twist about halfway in which caught me with my pants down, but that alone isn't enough to elevate the film to my current rating. (There's also, as a warning, some nudity and an instance of sexual assault, so viewers with sensitivities to those subjects should think twice.) When I asked myself why I enjoyed Never Sleeps so much, it all came down to aesthetics.
I'm going against the grain, here judging by Never Sleep's current ratings on IMDb and other review sites. But for me – someone who doesn't particularly care for cops, much less cop-based dramas – aesthetic might be the only thing capable of gripping me for a cop film.
Everything about The Night Never Sleeps is raw grit. The acting frequently falls short of realistic portrayals, but that didn't bother me in the slightest.
It's the sub-HD film, with its graininess perfectly in line with the dirty street-life and criminal elements portrayed as we follow Iceman and his gang on a murderous spree during an impromptu turf-war with rival organizations. It's that crooning tenor sax, growling in the background, sliding up and down the blues-scale, a perfect pure audio manifestation of the futility and hopelessness of fighting crime in such destitute conditions. It's the 'extras' in the background, who for all I know were just actual, normal people who happened to be at on-location sets the night of shooting: grinding and downing shots in the club, picking at greasy-spoon fare in the diner, striding down the sidewalk in the background and bent against the chilly wind.
The writer – Michael Lovagio, a career cop – weaves enough reality into the screenplay to pass believably without crossing into the procedural arena. This isn't your Law And Order "how they do it" sort of film, and considering the larger than life antagonist, it isn't playing within the strict realms of realism either.
The Night Never Sleeps captures the feel better than anything. It's the texture of city life on the wrong side of the tracks; a cop up against the odds who cares too much to color within the lines; a villain who lives and breaks the law for the pleasure of it more than anything.
Most of the time I walk away from a cop flick with the mental equivalent of a shrug. But in this case, The Night Never Sleeps gets a recommendation.
Freeway (1996)
Trigger Warning: EVERYTHING
FREEWAY *Minor Spoilers* Within the first few minutes of Freeway we learn of the "I-5 Killer", a serial-killer on a murder spree targeting young women. If we can assume the filmmaker knew their business, we can also assume they listened to Chekov: if you hang a gun on the wall in Chapter 1, you'd better be ready to use it by Chapter 3.
Then there's the literal gun the heroine receives in the opening act.
Have some faith in Freeway. Both these guns are going off soon enough.
Nobody told me before I watched it that Freeway flopped in the box-office or that it developed a ravenous cult-following (read as: had more to offer than your average mindless film). Nobody told me anything about it all: I flipped through a slew of listings, mistook it for a road-film, and settled back for what I thought would be a Kerouac-ian adventure.
So when the opening rolled to a backdrop of hyper-sexualized Little Red Riding Hood paintings, with the likes of Reese Witherspoon and Keifer Sutherland on the credits, I didn't know what the hell to think. How was it that in twenty-six years of existence I'd never once heard of this movie, with big names (that my generation grew up on) starring in the lead roles? And what does Little Red Riding Hood have to do with it? Which gets back to the title of this review. Trigger Warnings: Everything.
Reese Witherspoon stars as Vanessa Lutz, a teen with a sub-kindergarten reading level and the worst sort of home life. "Troubled" doesn't begin to cover it. Her mother's a prostitute; her step-father's an ex-con on parole with an obvious predilection for pedophilia. Both are addicted to narcotics (crack or meth, I assumed, though I'll be the first to admit my absolute ignorance of hard drugs and associated paraphernalia). Vanessa's boyfriend seems to be the most positive, stable influence in her life, and he's a gang-banger. We're rammed straight into this degradation, and if anything the degeneracy and crudity only amplify throughout the story, dropping without any consideration for the consequences the exact kind of four-letter words which land you in hot water with the ratings board.
Watching the backdrop unfold left me with that sick feeling you get when you step barefoot on dog crap: technically you've not been harmed in any way, but you're violated and soiled regardless.
And despite all that, Witherspoon already brought a fiery effervescence to the role. Not to say Vanessa's bubbly about her life, but she rolls with the punches without becoming a punching bag. Case in point: when her step-father (fresh off a hit from the crack-pipe) tries to fondle her, Vanessa snaps at him without hesitation, and then calmly resumes watching television as if nothing happened.
So when the cops raided the house and hauled her parents off to jail, it didn't come as any surprise when Vanessa – slyly, but with an almost naive contrition and genuine innocence – cuffs the child-services agent to a bedpost and skips town.
When Vanessa hastily packs her get-away bag, it's all a red basket. And she's wearing her red jacket. And off to see her grandmother.
Kiefer Sutherland stars opposite as Bob Wolverton, a seemingly kindly, well-intentioned counselor who Vanessa meets during her getaway. When her car breaks down, Sutherland pulls over to offer assistance, and when it's clear the car is donezos even offers her a ride up to LA. He's dressed in a professorial tweed jacket, elbow patches and all. For a moment I thought we'd seen our Lawful Good character at long last. Someone who'd shine a light on all this filth surrounding Vanessa, who'd offer her a way out. When he begins to counsel Vanessa and she opens up about her challenging childhood and abuse, it seems someone at last has taken a keen interest in Vanessa's wellbeing.
Well, I was right about half of it, anyways. We had Little Red Riding Hood. And we had the grandmother.
There's only one other character in the fairy-tale, folks.
In the drama that ensues, Sutherland and especially Witherspoon bring a complexity and skill to their respective roles that I'd never have expected in a million years. I know Witherspoon best from Legally Blond, which my mother must have watched on VHS a hundred times throughout my childhood, and Sutherland of course will always be Agent Jack Bauer in my eyes. Not to detract from either character, actors, or productions – I enjoyed Legally Blond as much as any male pre-teen could, and I ate up 24 even in its worst seasons – but I didn't expect anything Oscar-worthy from Sutherland or Witherspoon.
The American public wasn't ready for it, and neither were the censorship ding-dongs, but Freeway is nothing short of dramatic gold.
Sutherland and Witherspoone play two characters taken to 11, larger than life personalities, and they leave it all on the field in these performances. Two titans (albeit very different people) pitted one against the other as the plot twists and turns through the sordid affair. There wasn't any other obvious reason I should be enthralled by Freeway – nothing special about the cinematography or scoring, and the sets are LA backlots in typical Hollywood fashion – and if I'm being honest, my inner snob wanted to hate Freeway for its crudeness.
But I couldn't not like it. Witherspoon and Sutherland, whether you like or despise their characters, are too demanding of your emotional investment to truly hate Freeway.
At the box-office Freeway failed to bring in more than a tenth of its modest budget, estimated at around 3 million. By commercial standards, it was a failure. Maybe audiences in 1996, hip-deep in the prosperous dot-com bubble, couldn't connect.
But when they write the textbooks for film students of the future, this is one they'd do well to include.
Night Shadows (1984)
Montoro's Last Turd
*Minor Spoilers*
Let me tell you a story about Edward L. Montoro, the worst film producer in American movie history, and Mutants, the movie which – along with some heavy duty litigation and a nasty divorce – spared American audiences from any further 'entertainment' on Montoro's part.
The mystery of Edward Montoro is far more compelling than any of his movies. His company, Film Ventures International, cut its teeth in 'soft-core adult entertainment'. Unsurprisingly, the first film *Getting Into Heaven* found a ravenous audience among smut-starved moviegoers in 1968, turning $13,000 budget into a profit over 20 times the expenditure. Thus emboldened, Montoro went onto expand FVI and produce such stinkers as Grizzly and The Day Of The Animals. The bald-faced Jaws ripoffs somehow kept FVI in the black, and apparently the public found no problem with derivative storytelling... but Montoro flew too close to the sun. Courts decided Great White, Montoro's final Jaws derivation, was legally too close to Jaws, and yanked the film from theaters on its opening week.
To this day, nobody is sure what happened to Montoro. Things were looking bleak; with a divorce threatening to ruin his personal finances, and his final flop tanking in the box-office (and torpedoing FVI), Montoro embezzled a million dollars and disappeared. Most suspect he fled to Mexico; nobody knows if he survived the journey, or whether he lives today.
So what was that final turd Montoro foisted on American audiences? Mutants. What was it about? Goo-zombies, for lack of a better title. Imagine Day of the Dead and Deliverance had a lovechild, which grew up to disappoint both parents beyond their wildest fears, and that's Mutants.
And the real tragedy is that Mutant was, by far, the closest thing to 'watchable' Montoro ever produced (besides maybe Getting Into Heaven; smut is smut and generally we aren't watching for character arcs or storyline, so I can't imagine he would have butchered it that bad).
The film opens as Josh and Mike (Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery), two brothers from the city, motor down the highway in their fancy convertible. After a posse of oddly aggressive rednecks run them off the road, they're forced to walk into town. Conventional wisdom tells me this is yet another variant of the 'stranded in a cabin in the middle of nowhere' horror trope, and I'm not wrong. Within a few minutes of their wandering into the one-street podunk, it's made abundantly clear that they'll be lucky to escape the town alive. Complications arise in quick succession: the same rednecks who ran them off the road ambush them in the town's one bar (and only open establishment), there isn't a gas-station or mechanic for miles, and within a few minutes Josh and Mike have already discovered the first body. By the time they get around to calling the cops – they stop for aforementioned bar-brawl, first – the body is already gone, but it kicks off the sluggish plot in typical Montoro fashion.
Enter the sheriff, Will Stewart, played by Bo Hopkins. Provided by Montoro's crack writers with a passable backstory and suitably sheriff-y dialogue, Hopkins' honest attempt at acting stands in stark contrast to the remaining cast. I assume everyone else said "Screw it, it's a Montoro film" and phoned it in for principal photography. The astute sheriff, upon discovering some mysterious goo related to the murder, kicks off the sluggish plot and investigation after dropping Josh and Mike off at a not-so-subtly creepy old lady's house.
Josh promptly goes missing. Mike and the sheriff team up. Approximately ninety-seven pointless scenes later, Whoa! Goo zombies are running rampant in the town! Our characters move from the inciting event. People die. Through building action and multiple complications, people die and reanimate. Onto the climax – did I mention that most of the characters exist for the sole purpose of dying? – and at long last, after ninety awful, unsparingly painful minutes, we get the resolution.
Roll credits. Contemplate your life. Ask yourself how your time came to be so valueless that you sat through Mutants of your own free will.
My usual complaints with Montoro's films still stand in Mutants, his final gift-wrapped turd. Not a single woman in this film exists for any reason besides the principal three in shallow horror. Either they're hot eye-candy, or plot advancement tools used to create dangerous situations for the protagonist, or character advancement tools to be brutally murdered in order to motivate the hero. Sex appeal, tripping on their heels, getting eaten. Montoro, to his credit, never bothered masking this fact in any of his films. Audiences of the seventies and eighties, one must assume, weren't all that discerning. Modern moviegoers will likely be nothing short of insulted.
Was the cinematography good? The scoring, lighting, casting? Maybe the dialogue was decent? Surely something about this movie was redeemable, one may posit.
Sure. The makeup was pretty decent. They aimed for goo-zombies, and that's what they got.
Chances are Montoro never reached his destination when he fled. His movies don't strike me as particularly intelligent, and neither does the man himself. After Mutant flopped, he was probably thinking something similar himself.
I, having watched Grizzly, Day of the Animals, and Mutant, have now given Montoro and his films approximately five hours of my life which I shall never get back. So I like to tell myself Montoro perished alone in the Mexican desert with only his satchel of ill-earned cash to comfort him in his dying moments. But there's one other acceptable fate.
If Montoro – who would be in his eighties by now – is somewhere in hiding, reading these reviews, that would warm my heart.
Across the Line (2000)
If It Crosses The Line, It Had Good Reason
*MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS OF INCITING EVENTS* Back when Across the Line released, there was a surprising amount of controversy over whether it crossed a line itself. Some heralded the film as a sympathetic portrayal of illegal immigrants, humanizing an underrepresented demographic much-maligned (not only in America but across the globe). Others lambasted the film for turning a profit off the misery of a vulnerable population.
Someone claims on the film's Wikipedia page that it isn't an 'overtly' political film. I suspect that 'someone' was directly involved with the movie itself, either on the marketing or production end. Maybe the heat scared them; maybe they didn't think it was the sort of controversy which sold movies.
Let me state now that this is an overtly political film.
Across The Line revolves around split narratives which inevitably collide. The first follows Miranda (Sigal Erez), a young woman fleeing into Texas after her home-country's corrupt military forces her into exile. Miranda faces double-dealing coyotes (smugglers who specialize in transporting people) along with trigger-happy border patrol, and of course the grueling desert terrain itself. The men who wanted her dead back home are hot on her trail; her single desire and hope is to escape their reach in America, and forge a new life for herself.
Sheriff Johnson (Brad Johnson), conversely, is a small-town lawman caught up in borderland violence and up for reelection in just a few days. He's no stranger to the hinterland drama, and we get the impression that the Everyman is strong with this one: his only desire is to serve and protect his constituents, and unlike some of the border patrol officers who operate in his jurisdiction, he takes no joy in the unsavory duties of apprehending and arresting migrants.
Right off the bat I wanted to hate Johnson. Speaking personally as a reformed hippie, retired hitchhiker, and lifetime pedestrian, I've had far more unnecessary encounters with small-town sheriffs than one would think possible for a white male not actively engaged in any criminal enterprise. But the filmmakers, in a clever case of plausible deniability, dispelled my own personal biases with a single stroke of startling genius.
The moment Johnson trots onto stage, he's smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Is there something a little wackier than tobacco in there? I'm sure the filmmakers would say it's open to interpretation.
But me, I'm sold.
This guy isn't like other sheriffs I know. My bias is immediately overcome with one innocuous image. Throughout the film, it's subtle moments like these which defeat our own preconceptions and prejudices, often with surprising emotional nuance.
Miranda, while struggling through her ordeal on the border, witnesses a brutal murder. Though she survives and escapes, managing to blend in Texas thanks to her hiccup-free English, her guilt and internal struggle are obvious from Erez's every expression. She endangered the victims by leading her pursuers to them, but coming forward endangers her on every level. Not only would she blow her one shot at building herself some semblance of a normal life, but she'd expose herself to these very dangers she's fought so hard to escape. I was surprised to find Erez's Wiki and IMDb pages all but empty; she unfortunately falls into that category of actors who brought brilliance to an indie production like Across The Line, which never quite materialized into any wide success, anywhere else. As a strong female lead, she deserves nothing but the highest accolades.
As Sheriff Johnson investigates the murder (and the two story lines converge towards their eventual intersection), we can't help but root for him. Again, there's little love lost between myself and law-enforcement, but the realistic, full-spectrum portrait of Texas LEO's further softened my repulsion. In the border-patrol we've got the naive rookie along with the gung-ho insensitive veteran, balanced by a few in-between, and then there's Johnson himself. He's got multiple murders on his hands, a killer on the loose. The sleazeball running against him in the election sees the blood in the streets as a perfect opportunity to launch an attack on everyman Johnson's incumbency.
And all he wants to do is what's right. Johnson doesn't give a damn about the election. In his eyes, there's right, and there's wrong. We aren't wrong in expecting he'll apply that same morality to Miranda and her situation once they meet.
Johnson struggles with intrusive media, dangerous criminals, his own trigger-happy forces, and his looming reelection campaign as he tries to solve murders and bring killers to justice. Without spoiling anything, I can say that the moment when the story lines finally meet is silently explosive. Johnson and Miranda, two characters from very different backgrounds, have both had their lives upended by these events, and the payoff when their paths crossed is profound. Writers, directors, actors - everyone involved - worked magic to bring emotional complexity to a story which some big Hollywood producers would have happily butchered in the name of 'mass appeal'.
I cannot refute the film's detractors in strong enough terms. The material is anything but exploitative. They could have gone Michael Bay with this one; they could have played to the lowest common denominator; they could have made more money by softening the political edges.
But they didn't, for which they are owed, in my eyes, our highest respect as viewers.
Across The Line forced me to honestly reevaluate my own beliefs. It sheds light on a topic shrouded in darkness, and sometimes actively pushed out of the American dialogue. It humanizes illegal immigrants who've been dehumanized across the globe by powerful, moneyed interests, often for nothing more than cheap political points. Above all, it tackles this subject while never failing to entertain, and never preaching.
Basil (1998)
Literature Hasn't Been Slaughtered, But A Middling Adaptation
*Minor Spoilers*
Basil, starring Jared Leto and Christian Slater, isn't a movie most film-buffs will recognize. Even fewer people know that it was an adaptation of a nineteenth century novel by English novelist Wilkie Collins, which – unlike the vast horde of ignoramuses who also never saw the movie – I happen to have read.
So if you're wondering whether I'm gonna be that guy, the answer is 'Heck yes', but with a crucial caveat.
Most filmmakers, tasked with converting a novel from the 1800's to a film palatable to today's viewers, take the low road. The easy way out. They "Bay-ize" plots, modernize characters, and in doing so strip the themes entirely. The end result is at best a somewhat decent movie which shares many similarities to an amazing novel, but with a lot more zing. Sometimes they just literally throw in explosions, or zombies, or whatever, which if you ask me (nobody has) might be the better way of going about it. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, at the very least, does not purport to be a straight take on Austen, nor does it affect any high-class bearing.
That isn't what happened with Basil. They either didn't change enough, or changed too much, without adding anything useful. It's a failure in adaptation, since they're taking a novel several hundred pages long and condensing it into ninety minutes. Obviously some fundamental changes are required to trim the fat and focus on the meat of the story. If you don't, you end up with the '98 adaptation of Basil: a flat, obtuse take on nuanced literature (whose themes, quite frankly, didn't have a lot to offer your average 21st century moviegoer in the first place).
The eponymous hero is played by Jared Leto, of recent (undeserved) acclaim for his minuscule role in the latest Superhero crapfest, Suicide Squad. The first sequence, however, features Basil's boyhood and a series of traumas brought on by his over-bearing aristocratic father. The father's shown browbeating any sign of creativity or independence from Basil, culminating when he exiles and disowns Basil's older brother for the crime of loving a woman below his station.
The very next scene reveals his hypocrisy and the root of his prejudice: yup, you guessed it, fornicating with one of the serving girls out on the manor grounds.
By the time Jared Leto steps into Basil's shoes it's obvious he's on the path to rebellion. A chance meeting with mysterious John Mannion from London (Christian Slater) kicks Basil's rebellion into full gear. John introduces Basil to a common man's world, an experience utterly foreign to the sheltered nobleman which culminates when John introduces Basil to Julia Sherwin (Claire Forlani). Despite her cold reception, Basil's instantly infatuated by Julia, and to add fuel to the narrative fire, she's the daughter of a London merchant. Sure, her house makes mine look like a refrigerator box in an alleyway, but a London merchant is to an aristocrat what Burger King is to a five-star steakhouse. The forbidden love blossoms over the course of several scenes, delving into a world of intrigue and betrayal which Basil's father wouldn't have approved of even if it was all roses and daisies, which it's anything but. Julia Sherwin, one way or another, is bound to be his ruin.
(Sidenote: I racked my brain for a specific example in the above metaphor, but I guess I'm just a classless pauper: the nicest steak-house I've ever set foot in was a particularly well-appointed Longhorn with a killer porterhouse.) Radha Bharadwaj ambitiously produced, wrote, and directed Basil, and I think it's obvious he was in over his head. They Bay-ize some of it, sure, replacing a few of the novel's turning points and climaxes with scenes more likely to appeal to the modern audience who won't settle for anything less than over-the-top. But it's not as if Bharadwaj butchered the thing; I can't point to any single example so egregious as to claim they've fundamentally, irreparably ruined the story.
What Basil lacks is depth and nuance. Wilkie Collins worked in the realm of literary prose, utilizing a set of authorial tools entirely separate from those in film. It might as well be the difference between a water-color painting and *opera*. So much of the nuance of character and story is lost when it's compressed into a film of any length, and Bharadwaj's take is continually flat. The relationship between Basil and John Mannion – despite the underrated Slater's noble attempt to carry the weight of the entire film on his shoulders – ends up looking more like a Buddy Movie or Bromance in the first half of the flick, abandoning novel-Basil's infatuation with a more enigmatic John Mannion.
Furthermore, Wilkins was a master of the serial and is often cited as singlehandedly inventing the modern detective story. His style is apparent even in a novel as early in his career as Basil, relying on chapter-by-chapter suspense and all the hooks and cliffs you'd expect of his more famous contemporary, Dickens. There's nothing about any single scene in Basil's adaptation which hooked me or left me on a cliff; it drags ponderously, even for a historical drama. The twist is predictable even to someone unfamiliar with the work.
I can't call the movie a total fail. Certain audiences would eat it up; it would probably do well on Lifetime or Hallmark. But I, if you couldn't tell, am not the kind of person who'd be caught dead watching anything on Lifetime.
So no, it's not 'The Hobbit' (ugh). Cherished literature hasn't been slaughtered, here. It's a decent movie on its own right. The costumes, scoring and cinematography are all proficient, if not engaging.
Yet in the end it's just another middling conversion, and that's probably the best I can say of it.
Your Mother Wears Combat Boots (1989)
Suspend Disbelief And Just Enjoy It
YOUR MOTHER WEARS COMBAT BOOTS
*May Contain Minor Spoilers*
I can't lie: within the first five minutes of Your Mother Wears Combat Boots, I'd already decided I was going to pan the thing. There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's "Within the infinite realms of the multiverses, this scenario does not exist in a single one." It was easier for me to believe a bunch of little-people and their band of multi-racial buddies went on a quest to destroy an all-powerful evil Ring than it was to buy Your Mother's setup. The short version is as follows: after a middle-aged woman's son enlists in the army, she follows him to paratrooper school and masquerades as a cadet on a hunt for her wayward son, without a single official realizing she has no business being there.
Yeah. I know. Rick and Morty has a deeper rooting in reality than Your Mother Wears Combat Boots.
The humor is the exact sort I detest: clean. It's an eighties flick, complete with equally repulsive hair-do's and shoulder pads. Hector Elizondo is in it, but he's not a butler, which threw my entire world-view into absolute chaos. The military is presented as a corp of clueless comedic buffoons, and the characters – or caricatures, rather – are overt clichés and tropes dressed up as people.
I intended to wage total war in verbal form on Your Mother Wears Combat Boots. And then something amazing happened.
Hell froze over, and I found myself laughing.
Barbara Eden of I Dream Of Jeannie fame plays Brenda Anderson, who the modern lexicon would probably label a helicopter parent. Her husband died in Vietnam, but it wasn't Charlie who killed him. It was a 'parachute accident', whatever the heck that is. Brenda's son, Jimmy, is intent on joining the Army and enlists at the first opportunity, kicking off the entire plot when his mother receives a letter from him informing her "Na-na-na boo-boo, I joined anyways", or something to that effect.
Brenda's character reminded me of Phoebe from Friends: her act of utter ignorance and naivety can't possibly be anything than an act. As with Phoebe, I quickly decided she was possibly the smartest person present, and though she was on a mission, she had to be having a real lark, yukking it up at all the idiots buying her moronic facade. Pushing the envelope, seeing how stupid they could possibly believe a human would be.
Basically she's an 80's live-version internet troll, and her entire life – every word out of her mouth – is an elaborate prank on the legions of the gullible morons populating her fictional universe.
Let's remember the key to literary criticism: the creator's intent means diddly. My subjective experience with the art is all that matters.
So if I say she's Phoebe, she's Phoebe, damnit.
Having accepted this multi-faceted aspect of an otherwise one-dimensional film, I found it far easier to accept as well the cast of flat supporting characters. Besides Hector Elizondo trading in his butler's livery for the facade of a tough drill-instructor, there are more big names and recognizable faces than I'd expected. Megan Fay, easily recognized from approximately ninety separate television shows, plays Edie, Brenda's squadie and roommate. She embodies both the aggressive butch-army-chick role, and the recalcitrant buddy trope. Conchata Ferrell makes some funny appearances as well in a supporting role, employing the same dry delivery and humor she later brought to Two And A Half Men. David Kaufman (playing Jimmy Anderson) has since moved into voice-acting, but it was the eighties and he was young, so I give him a pass on the stilted ridiculousness.
The conflict redoubles when Jimmy inevitably discovers his mother's ploy, and Brenda's squadies wanting to Private-Pyle her when her antics routinely get them all in trouble. Son and mother make a wager of sorts: if she can complete her inaugural jump, he'll drop out of paratrooper school and transfer to the motor-pool. The squadies, meanwhile, do not go Full Metal Jacket on Brenda. Instead she twists their arms to help her get through cadet school, either with good honest elbow-grease or outright trickery.
Will she prevail? Doesn't matter, it's a comedy. We're here to laugh, not to make any sense of a fundamentally illogical plot line.
"Light-hearted romp" definitely fits the bill for describing Your Mother Wears Combat Boots. These days, with Batman being all super-serious and the Joker becoming a tragic anti-hero, I'll admit I can be guilty of the jaded viewer syndrome. I expect every film into which I invest my (not-so-valuable) time to deliver diamond-encrusted gold on every facet. From a comedy I expect a deep social commentary; from a drama I expect mind-boggling cinematography; even our action films are supposed to be more than action films these days.
I'd encourage you to turn that bit of your brain off, here.
Don't read too much into it. Watch it alone when you can really let yourself have a giggle free of any judgment or derision from your peers. Get back in touch with your eighties-child, or meet it for the first time altogether if you were fortunate enough to have been born sometime later.
There is absolutely nothing special about Your Mother Wear Combat Boots. Not a single spectacular angle to it. But it made grumpy old me laugh, and I suppose that's all it ever aimed for.
Christmas Lilies of the Field (1979)
Decent Christmas Special But A Horrible Sequel (Rant)
*Minor Spoilers For Sequel, Major Spoilers For Original* There's this film called Lilies Of The Field you may have heard of. It wasn't a very big deal, except that it explored old themes of pride and isolation with a fresh innovation, wrapped in an enthralling plot, adapted from a novel of the rarest literary value, written about a legendary but purportedly true story... and oh, its star won an Academy Award, and that star just happened to be Sidney Poitier, the first African American ever to take home the prestigious Best Actor award for his leading role, and all this happened while Dr. Martin Luther King was alive and fighting tooth and nail for black rights.
So yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Lilies of the Field broke ground.
And then there's Christmas Lilies Of The Field, it's made-for-TV Christmas special sequel.
I'm not saying that it couldn't be done. That it was impossible to craft a followup which would ever be anything more than an amazing film's sorta-dumb tagalong little-brother. But as moving and groundbreaking as the original was, they probably shouldn't have tried.
If you haven't seen the original, stop. Right now. Go watch the original Lilies before I call you uncultured swine. I try not to reveal any more than the inciting event in any review, but considering this one's a sequel, I can't be held responsible for spoiling anything the original.
If I ruin an American classic that you've never seen before, that's on you, buddy.
The OG Lilies introduces Homer Smith, a vagrant laborer who dreams of becoming an architect. It's a tale of a self-generating destiny overtaking the man. In the middle of the desert he encounters a group of German nuns who, we learn in due time, have hurdled monstrous adversity to escape Soviet-controlled parts of Europe and immigrate to Arizona, where they manage a meager living pulling the proverbial water from the rock and farming the barren desert. Smith stops to help them mend a fence on the hopes he'll be paid, only to meet his match in the iron-willed Mother Superior: they quote a few scriptures, Smith's scripture hinting that he ought to be paid and Mother Superior's suggesting the opposite. Mother Superior gets the upper hand and manages to convince Smith to stay on for another odd-job the next day.
Thus shanghaied, Smith finds himself all but obligated to continue his work. It's a case of worlds colliding when Smith (a Baptist) is immersed in their Catholic world, but an undeniable bond is building. Smith's growing friendship with the nuns culminates in admitting his dream of being an architect and agreeing to construct a chapel so that they and their parishioners don't have to walk miles to the next town's chapel, and despite Smith's obstinate insistence that he alone build it, the nuns and community band together to assist in the mammoth project. Eventually – here comes in the self-generating destiny – they come to believe Smith was sent by God on a mission to help them.
The bittersweet ending revolves around these two indomitable wills, Mother Superior and Smith, who've butted heads throughout the film. Smith completes the chapel, and Mother Superior finally gives thanks to him directly (whereas before she's been careful to thank only God). They and the nuns sing one last Baptist riff together, and Smith quietly departs onto fates unknown, supposedly forever. Mother Superior, knowing he's leaving, makes no further efforts to twist his arm or dominate his choice with any quoted scripture.
You're satisfied with this ending. It isn't 100% happily-ever-after, but it's good enough. After a long struggle these two have finally come to understand each other.
Which brings me at last to why this sequel should not have been made: it's a *freaking Christmas special*.
Lando Calrissian/Apollo Creed (known as Billy Dee Williams to some people) takes over the leading role in Christmas Lilies Of The Field, and I have no complaints there. He's a versatile enough actor to work with what he's given. But let me give you the (somewhat mocking) rundown of exactly what they gave him to work with.
Homer Smith is back! He's been reunited with the nuns after coming to reinspect his work on the chapel and ensure it's still up to spec. But wait; what's this? A busload of adorable children? Not just children- orphans. Thanks for the chapel, Lando, but we need an orphanage now, and it's got to be done before Christmas or the Big Bad State is going to send them all to foster homes.
Oh, and one of the orphans is pregnant. Will the baby be born healthy, and on Christmas Eve? I have a feeling I know the answer to that! Basically, it's a But-The-Children! plot, and it's totally lame.
OG Lilies is a like a five-course meal engineered by a nutritional scientist. It's everything you want out of this sort of drama. It's the porterhouse steak; it's the salad; it's expert wine-pairings; it's a delicious desert you don't feel guilty about.
Christmas Lilies? Christmas Lilies demands a happily-ever-after by its very nature. Christmas Lilies is rock-candy dipped in chocolate, drizzled with caramel, and liberally coated with sugar.
I enjoyed the movie for what it was. I had no delusions going into it. This was a light-hearted sequel which never aimed to break new ground.
But after OG Lilies, that just wasn't enough. OG Lilies deserves better.
My message to filmmakers? If a sequel can't at least match its original, don't bother.
My message to viewers? If you're the kind of person who likes Christmas Specials, have at it. If you're here for that same fulfillment you found in OG Lilies, though, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Grizzly (1976)
Grizzly In All The Wrong Ways
Somehow I found myself watching Grizzly, a mid-70's monster-horror featuring a giant grizzly bear. The promotional original tagline was "18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror." Well, it was grizzly, all right, but not the kind of 'grizzly' the producers aimed for.
The film opened with some promise as one of the main characters, Don/'NamMan, helicopters some sightseers over the unnamed national park which serves as the film's setting. We get some beautiful shots of tree-clad mountains and valleys which 'NamMan claims are virgin and untouched since before Europeans came to America. I'm thinking "Hey, maybe we've got an environmental message!", and the long shots in the title sequence - along with the recommendation of a previously trusted friend - make me think Grizzly was headed to be something more than just a monster movie.
Act 1 quickly dispelled those naive notions.
After some confusion with who the heck the protagonist is, we find out it's Michael Kelly. I'll be calling him Chiseljaw, though, since that's all he is: a beautiful jawline meant to attract reluctant female movie-goers. Chiseljaw runs Unnamed Park as the direct supervisor of its many inept rangers. The majority of his job involves babysitting hikers and making sure they don't go about setting wildfires or getting lost. He has a romantic interest who's cast as the "Strong Female", but there's no point in even assigning her a nickname, since she's completely irrelevant to the plot. As a matter of fact, there isn't a single female in Grizzly who exists for any reasons besides fodder for the aforementioned giant bear. Oh, and cleavage/midriff, which I suppose passed for racy back in the 70's.
The only characters who matter - as much as any character matters in this sort of film- are Chiseljaw, 'NamMan (Don, the obligatory Vietnam veteran who I thought was the protagonist when he flew us over the forest), and BearDude, whose name I forget but was maybe Scott but doesn't freaking matter because all you need to know is that he's a naturalist and cosplays as a bear, or deer, or something.
I dunno. He's got a massive fur cape, and he digs bears.
Anyways, some sexy ladies get merc'ed by the bear, which sets off an investigation and a killing spree of approximately nine-thousand people. Plot juice, but it's cheap plot juice. Seriously, it's like they figured out they only had thirty minutes of actual film, and the director just said "Oh, it's cool, sprinkle in a bear-murder between every scene until we've got a movie." And I'm not using 'murder' flippantly, either. This is basically a serial-killer movie, only the serial-killer is a big dumb animal lacking the psychologically twisted aspect of a good serial-killer villain, and instead of cops, the good guys are park rangers. We even get the obligatory gun-and-badge scene we expect from that sort of cop movie, where Chiseljaw begs his 'Chief' (or park supervisor, whatever) "Let me do my job," to which the Chief responds "You're in over your head" and threatens to fire him. Not those literal words, but you get my drift. I'm not unconvinced that the writer didn't simply deconstruct the worst murder-spree movie ever and rewrite everything with a bear-centric focus.
The irony there is that it's not even a good monster movie. I was unsurprised to discover Grizzly released hot on the tails of Jaws, which I suppose they wanted to emulate. Knowing that, the blatant ripoff was pretty obvious. But it still felt closer to a dozen cop movies I've seen than to Jaws.
Trudging right along, Chiseljaw, BearDude and 'NamMan form the least effective power-trio in cinema history. Later on I started to like 'NamMan, who probably would have made a better protagonist than wet-blanket Chiseljaw, and BearDude was OK too in the lovable-weirdo sense, but we all know the best buddies are only there so they can die late in the game anyways. Their bumbling is only offset by the Chief, who is playing politics by bringing press to the park and hoping to attract more visitors, or a cushy job offer for himself, by illogically highlighting the fact that two million and counting visitors have been viciously mauled and devoured by a ginormous prehistoric bear.
The worst aspect of Grizzly, though, is ironically the freakin' grizzly. Many of the shots of its feet (before the not-so-big reveal) are clearly a black bear. At one point, an adult black bear is trotted onto the set and a bunch of hunters think it's the grizzly's cub, which ends in some hilarious bear-on-bear violence. When the grizzly attacks, it never once bites its victims: its killing move, as far as I can tell, is split between either a lethal bear hug and a swing of its mighty claws, which at one point decapitates a horse in one swipe.
I wish I had something good to say. I wish I could post a review that wasn't entirely comprised of ridicule and mockery. But the unfortunate fact is that ridicule and mockery are more than Grizzly deserves.
It should have languished in ignominy, forgotten in the dusty halls of crappy films. It doesn't deserve a Wikipedia page. It should have withered and died on the vine anonymously, unreleased, and - barring that - nobody should have been talking about it one year later, much less forty.
Instead my idiot friend recommended it to me, which is the only reason this review exists. I'd like to publicly declare that Jon "Bingo" of Fort Lauderdale, FL is an ignoramus, knows nothing about good film, and should consider checking into a mental institution if he thought a single scene of Grizzly was worth watching.
To me, the real lesson in Grizzly is Be Careful Who You Trust. Oh, and if you're going to make a bear movie, you should know something about bears.
Day of the Animals (1977)
Unintentional Laughs Redeem Another Jaws Ripoff
Take a deep breath, stop drinking and eating, and let me lay out the premise of Day Of The Animals for you: big-haired women of the mid-70's have depleted the ozone layer with all their hairspray, and now UV radiation is turning animals into vicious kill-bots bent on human destruction.
My impression is that they meant for this to be an ecological-horror. Quite contrary! Though it reunites producer Edward Montero and Christopher George- whom I've only just yesterday finished ripping a new one in my review for Grizzly- there's another star, the true hero of the story, who just so happens to be playing the villain: Leslie Nielsen.
And yes, for you younger people, that is the guy from the Naked Gun series, and yes, he is freakin' hilarious. Which is how Day Of The Animals, quite unintentionally, put me in the correct mindset to receive it as comedy gold. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, accept that reality.
Montero and his buddies wanted to make another Grizzly, which was them making another Jaws, and as South Park taught us, "If you french-fry when you should have pizza'd, you're gonna have a bad time." But if you accept the accidental comedy, you might actually enjoy it.
I've never reviewed a comedy, but I'll do my best!
Christopher George resumes his roll as Chiseljaw from Grizzly, which is to say his beautiful jawline probably drew in more women than would otherwise ever watch this garbage. I forget his character's actual name, but the comedy starts right off the bat with his overstated, quasi-country accent. He's leading a group of hikers out into wild high-country, despite the fact that his boss has been getting weird reports of crazed animals. Montero & Co. had a helicopter left over from shooting Grizzly, so they go ahead and pile all the tourist in those – that's my theory anyways – and we're really running with a few unintentional caricatures right off the bat targeting Native Americans and New-York accented whining women (come on, people, I thought the seventies were better than that).
But all is not well in Camelot. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark. There's been a disturbance in the Force (and this one goes to 11). Birds of prey surround the hikers at their very first stop as they hoof it up the mountain, squawking and screeching and generally reminding me more of Bigbird than serial killers. Being something of a raptor aficionado myself, I can't help but oogle at the cute little condors, redtails, and turkey-vultures. Back at base-camp... or town, or wherever it was the ill-fated hikers departed from... a mangy-looking dog growls menacingly, to add to the growing sense of unease (or in my case, the growing sense of amusement).
Oooh! Now the hawks are stalking the hikers? Sweet! We've got a regular Jeffrey Dahmer here.
I'd based my expectation off Grizzly, so I was actually surprised at how long we go before the first fatality. You'll have to wait nearly half an hour for the first animal attack. Not to worry: once we get the first body, the hilarity ensues in rapid succession. Leslie Nielsen moves to center-stage, rapidly evolving into the human antagonist with racist jokes and venomous one-liners.
Is this an actual plot element I detect? Is it possible that the ozone-radiation induced madness turning the animals into murderous gangbangers is also going to turn the humans into raving lunatics?
We've got hawks dragging people off cliffs, complete with Wilhelm scream. We've got Lone Wolf attacks- no, not that kind, literally a lone wolf- which somehow turns one victim's face not into hamburger meat, but rather leaves the attractive starlet with superficial red streaks. Meanwhile, solitary cougars have formed hunting packs, which has my inner naturalist guffawing at the reversal. We've got viking-inspired rats pillaging pantries, and then, faces! Supposedly vicious dogs, tails a-wagging out of lovable glee as they sew havoc and destruction.
By now it's 10PM and I'm a little drunk. Which is how I discovered Day of the Animal's true value: as a drinking game. Going forward, I'll highly recommend the film and the drinking rules as follow:
Drink whenever
1) You laugh at Chiseljaw's ridiculous accent 2) Leslie Nielsen calls the Native American guide "hotshot", makes fun of another hiker/delivers a one-line zinger, or does anything remotely racist (careful, you'll be drunk by about mid-film) 3) The supposedly menacing critters make you "ooh" and "ah" at their adorableness 4) You spot a fishing line attached to a leaping critter 5) The totally not a Jewish stereotype mom flips out
You can imagine how my night ended. Maybe the movie was hilarious, maybe I was just three sheets to the wind. I lasted to the credits, at least, at which point I proceeded to worship the porcelain throne face-first.
Was this movie a good horror film? Absolutely not. Was I too drunk to objectively determines its quality as a comedy? Probably. Was it the film's constant glare or my bargain-bin vodka responsible for my pounding headache afterward? God knows. Are the women- including the lead- there as anything but eye-candy, damsels in distress, and gore-fodder? Not really, but it was the seventies. How is it that the animals only target humans, but never each other? Come on, folks; we're talking about the people who made Grizzly. Don't go dragging logic into this equation!
I can't in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone who isn't ready to down a fifth of bourbon while watching. If interpreted as intended – as an eco-horror – it misses the mark entirely.
But if you watch it as an unintentional comedy, and you're the sort of person who gets off on truly horrible film, this one's right up your alley.
William Kelly's War (2014)
David Budget, Goliath Story
*Minor Spoilers*
William Kelly's War suffers from a single drawback, in that it's essentially two stories: soldiers fighting in WWI on the western front, and the drama back home in Australia. Pacing suffers, and it sets the viewer up with expectations which either don't pay off at all, or too late. Having gone into the movie cold- not one blurb or review read, not one glance at Wikipedia or IMDb- I'm not sure if I'm watching a family drama or a war movie. One half is bound to turn off those viewers looking for a Hamburger Hill or Private Ryan type of experience, while the war-violence possibly disenfranchises viewers who'd otherwise enjoy the drama.
That said, it's worth a watch, assuming one manages their expectations.
William Kelly lives with his brothers, sister, and cousin on a cattle farm in pre-war Australia bush-country. In the preamble we learn he's handy with a rifle: their father provides them with a single bullet for their kangaroo hunts, and the siblings rarely come back empty-handed. Narrated by the younger sister, we're treated to a picture of turn-of-the-century rural Australian life, which is actually a lot less dangerous (at first glance) than most of us expect from the land-down-under, where everything you see is actively plotting your demise. Despite some heavy-handed acting and stilted portrayals from the supporting cast, I'm digging it, and- considering it's set right before the outbreak of WWI- it's not too difficult to guess where it's going.
Billy's handy with a rifle? All hell's about to break loose in Europe? These boys are obviously getting shipped off. We assume they'll be lucky to come back in one piece, if at all. If that wasn't enough, their sister's narration informs us in no uncertain terms that things are not going to be roses and daisies, either on the front or back on the farm.
So now I'm thinking it's a war-film. Which it isn't.
There's certainly 'war violence', but the instances are episodic. There isn't any continued narrative besides the three of the boys- William, brother Jack, and cousin Paddy- and their experience as the war reshapes their characters and strengthens their bond. We aren't on a hunt for a missing private, or a mission to take some useless hill, but neither is it a For Whom The Bells Toll narrative, condemning the uselessness of war. Combat is presented in a realistic fashion. Minimal focus on the gore in favor of a higher concentration on the individual experiences and even slice-of-life episodes of daily life on the front (when they aren't busy sniping machinegunners, skewering charging Germans with bayonets, or getting shot at themselves). I got the impression they might have gone bigger on the special effects had their budget been larger, but they work well with what they have.
The true narrative (and my "aha!" moment) kicks in far too late. A band of rough-looking men ride up on the farm and find William's sister and father alone. The tension amps up as they hint at wanting to buy the father's herd of cattle, but then reveal in quick succession they own no land on which to graze said cattle.
Armed ruffians in the cattle market without any property to their name? All the young men are busy off fighting the war? Father's the only one there to defend the homestead if anything goes wrong?
OK. Now I get it.
From here my investment in the film skyrockets. We're presented with all the ingredients of a tragedy, something far more heartbreaking than the statistical slaughter of millions of men in France and Belgium. At the exact moment three strapping lads well-trained in the art of war are needed, they're thousands of miles distant, struggling to survive.
William Kelly's War doesn't bring much to the table in terms of acting, besides from William himself (Josh Davis). Nothing egregious, but some of the dialogue was cheesy. I found myself questioning character's reactions several times, and some of the intra-cast dynamics came off as incredibly awkward. I cringed twice, which isn't indicative of anything good, but the plot and unanswered questions held my attention enough to finish the film.
Will the boys survive the war and return home in time to deal with these cattle-wranglers? Will there even be a home left for them to return to? The sister was narrating, which left me with the uneasy feeling that she was the lone survivor of the building bloodbath sure to come.
William Kelly's War is nothing if not ambitious. Director Geoff Davis worked cinema magic to pull off both the war and farm sets in rural Victoria, Australia, utilizing limited resources and an indie budget. My appreciation doubled after learning it was essentially a one-man production, and when recommending it, I'm careful to point that out. Too many indie films take ninety minutes to give us pensive loser protagonists staring off into the distance, wrestling with inconsequential themes of puerile self-discovery. The tone (including the non-HD shooting and the retro-style voice-over) lends the aspect of a much older movie, and the pace doesn't do it any favors, but it stands on its own two legs regardless.
For what it aimed to achieve and what it had to work with, I can't call the movie a failure. Far from it. But I can't say it was a total success.
William Kelly's War gets points for a small team tackling a bold project, and perhaps that's the highest praise I can offer. See it, but know what you're in for: a David-budget wrestling with Goliath-content.
Shotgun Stories (2007)
Not Actually About Shotguns, Turns Out
***Some Minor Spoilers***
Shotgun Stories takes a while to bust out the shotguns. I was feeling a little itchy waiting.
I'll save you the trouble of wondering: it was worth it.
This tragic indie-drama focuses on a blood-feud which spirals toward the clash of two sets of half-brothers. Son, played by the underrated Michael Shannon, and his younger brothers, Boy and Kid, were abandoned by their drunken father early in life. After the separation, their father went on to sober up, find Jesus, and raise a Mulligan-family of four brothers born of his second wife. His new family (the Hayes), operate a successful farm, which the reformed father built once he crawled out from the bottle and into Jesus's hands.
Son, Boy, and Kid are impoverished - Boy lives in his van, Kid in a tent outside Son's trailer - so it's no surprise that they hate the Hayes and the life their father built for them. Then one night their vengeful mother shows up at Son's house to inform the three brothers that their father is dead.
Hitherto we've only seen Son as a quiet, relatively pacifist protagonist. The turning point is when he interrupts the funeral with his brothers in tow, demanding to speak.
With all the Hayes family in attendance, he basically calls their father a piece of crap. He caps it off by spitting on the old man's casket.
That's when I busted out the popcorn.
The second wife intercedes to prevent an outright brawl, and Son and his brothers depart without any violence, but there's not a doubt in my mind that this is only the beginning. The Hayes brothers, befuddled by grief for the good man they knew as their father, are out for blood, and Son, Boy, and Kid are happily willing to unleash their lifetime of rancor for the man they knew as a violent drunk.
Writer-director Jeff Nichol's impressive debut is unmistakably indie in tone and theme. There's a lot of 'negative space' here: a character stares off into the distance, and the audience must decipher a tick of the eyebrow or quirk of the lips. Son's character carries the majority of the weight there: a lesser actor might have sunk the project, but Michael Shannon packs marvelous punch with his limited dialogue, and he manages the 'simple man' affect without seeming dumb. Au contraire. His long pauses and nuanced expression deliver the exact opposite: we see an intelligent man who's slow to speak his mind (and is even something of a doormat when it comes to confrontation) but - once the tension and violence amp up - doesn't hesitate to defend himself and his family.
Plot-wise, the violence is brutal and gut-wrenching, but it isn't the focus. The worst of it all occurs off-screen, and the gamble pays off. Shotgun Stories' global themes specifically deglorify violence.
Most of us haven't incited a familial feud by spitting on our deadbeat dad's casket, but the themes of senseless division and reckless hate are more prescient than ever. Whether it's Shiites and Sunnis or Republicans and Democrats, we're all too aware of the cultures of division, partisanship, and sectarianism. The viewer will undoubtedly connect to Shotgun Stories and its overarching theme. While you won't find any Juliet to Son's Romeo- besides perhaps his wife, who's just left him at the film's opening scene- there are definite parallels between the age-old Capulet-Montague dynamic. Considering the self-defeatism the film portrays as inherent to such a conflict, one might argue it reaches back to Shakespeare's own source material, the Greek tragedy. The deeper Son and his brothers delve into the conflict brewing with the Hayes clan, the more we come to understand that nothing good can possibly come of it.
Besides Shannon, the acting is good but not noteworthy, excepting perhaps Son's wife (Nicole Canerday), the criminal but likable Shampoo (G. Alan Wilkins, an apparent nobody who I'd love to see more from), and Cleaman Hayes (Michael Abbot Jr.). Cleaman's character stands out especially as the single reasonable Hayes brother, and Abbot's acting delivers a convincing portrait of a brother trying to keep the peace but unwilling to let his brothers fight a war on their own.
Aside from Cleaman, however, the Hayes closely resemble human-shaped turds. I spent a decent portion of the film hoping Son would go grab that promised shotgun and finish them already, even knowing the film wasn't headed that direction. If I had any major complaint with Shotgun Stories, it's that it didn't fully convince me that the majority of the Hayes didn't deserve to be wiped from the face of the earth, which is clearly not what the film aimed for. Aside from Cleaman, two of the brothers are all but villainized, and the final brother has the screen-presence of a wet noodle. Though Son is the unquestioned protagonist, Nichols wanted me to sympathize with the Hayes brothers as the other side of the same coin, which I simply couldn't do. Regardless of the fact that Son did spit on their daddy's casket, I couldn't see the Hayes as anything but instigators and 'the bad guys' until the end, which was too late a reversal for me to buy in. I'll give Nichols a pass, though, since he met, and sometimes surpassed, the mark he aimed for everywhere else.
Overall I'm glad a TRUSTED friend recommend this; otherwise, I might have bailed early on an amazing film. While the themes and acting are powerful, the opening is slow, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It's a little more in-your-head than the average American viewer might want from even a drama. Regardless, I'd stand by it as a recommendation for anyone looking for a character-driven story heavy on themes of family loyalty and the hopelessness of hatred.