Ten Statements About....FAST AND FURIOUS 6 (2013)

There is nothing that says more about this film than this
picture of a man flying through the air from a tank to
a car....

“You know, when I was young, my brother always said, "Every man has to have a code." Mine: Precision. Use what you have, switch them out when you need to until you get the job done. It's efficient. But you? You're loyal to a fault. Your code is about family. It makes you predictable. And in our line of work, predictable means vulnerable. And that means I can reach out and break you whenever I want.
“At least when I go, I'll know what it's for.”

1) I was surprised how much this film demaded an intimate knowledge of the entire Fast and Furious continuity; director Justin Lin does his best to tie in every. single. element from all the five previous films by calling back to all of them and trying to make it all work into a single storyline.  I don’t know if it works completely, but then I prefer the more integrated backstorying to the stop-and-star of Fast 5.

2) Especially given how the search for Lettie was the center of this film, did we really need Elisa Pataky, even for the brief scenes she has?  They don’t do anything for either her or Dom--actually, they end up creating this weird vibe at two points in the film--that couldn’t have been handled better by a couple of lines of dialogue.

3) It’s obvious to me that if Fast 5 was Lin’s take on Ocean’s Eleven, then this is Lin’s take on James Bond.  Hell, I was surprised at how much the plot and climax seems to take a lot of elements from Die Another Day...and actually improves on them!  And speaking of one of those elements...

Getting the band back together for the last time.

4) Gina Carrano is a real worthy addition to the cast.  She gives us two exceptional fights with Lettie, she has a good chemistry with Dwayne Johnson, and works well with the already extant cast.  I just wish she didn’t end up the way she ended up, even if Lin didn’t even bother to conceal where her plotline was going.

5) Lin really works to make sure we have a number of cool chase scenes that are different from each other and, more importantly, makes sure they are more or less clearly defined.  He adheres to many of the rules of storytelling in depicting these set pieces (like the way he used ‘the rule of three’ in the climatic cars v. plane thingie), and avoids for the most part the shakey cam that would have made all the running about incomprehensible.

6) I liked how Lin knew that the street racing aspect of the franchise simply wouldn’t work given the low-rent vibe of the film...so he ends up utilizing that aspect to, of all things, do a character moment between Dom and Lettie.  And it works.

Yep...two tough hot chicks having a catfight.  That is what
life is all about.

7) While I appreciate how leaner this film is, I wonder if we couldn’t benefit from a little more time with Luke Evans’ Shaw and his crew.  We learn almost nothing about the people surrounding Shaw (in many cases we never even learn the names of the characters; I kept referring to them as ‘squinty guy’ ‘blonde girl,’ etc.).  We do get them set up as ‘the anti-Torreto crew,’ but then never return to extrapolating them further.  I wonder if the film as a whole could have taken a break, especially given the crazy pace of the plot, for Lin to breathe and give us some more teeny-tiny character bits.

8) I do think that Christopher ‘Ludacris’ Bridges’ Tej works a whole lot better in the tech role than Jordana Brewster did in the previous film.  It does help that Lin puts Tej in the field, coordinating during the major action pieces and doesn’t keep him sitting in a warehouse clacking on computers.

9) God bless directors who know how to use a MacGuffin correctly.  Lin presents us with the Nightshade device, tells us why it is dangerous...and then gets back to the punchy punchy run run.  We don’t get paragraphs of dialogue trying to tell us every little thing we should know about it; Lin knows we just need a justification of a threat to make the plot move forward.

10) ...and God Bless a director who knows how to give us a post-credit stinger, because not only does this stinger finally resolves one of the biggest F&F continuity questions, it tells us something about what to expect in Fast 7 that makes you want to see it...NOW.

Overall...Yes, it’s still a big, dumb film, but it’s tighter and better paced than the previous entry with a lot of decent action.  A good time waster.

This time I took a trip to the AMC Loews Bay Terrace, a smaller mall theater that I will always appreciate for not giving us some variation of the accursed Firstlook televisual spam.  Among the trailers were ones for Riddick (which seems to have jettisoned the overcomplicated Furian stuff from The Chronicles of Riddick in favor of a semi-remake of Pitch Black), The World’s End (I have yet to see anything Edgar Wright has done I haven’t loved, so I’m down for this Alien-Invasion-Pub-Crawl thingie), and R.I.P.D. (because I always wanted to know what Men In Black would be like with Ryan Reynolds replacing Will Smith.  Wait a minute...no I didn’t!).  But by far the trailer that got me the most worked up was the one for Pacific Rim, where the editors make it clear that they know what we want--namely shots of giant robots hitting giants monsters in the head with oil tankers.  I’m there!

Ten Statements About....AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)

You know, when we use the phrase 'a hole in the head'...we
don't mean it literally, Christian.

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."

1) This is a strange film for a number of reason, not the least of which is how this is a period piece that....well, doesn’t feel very period-y.  There’s a decided artificiality to the 80‘s details in the film, and I wonder if it would have worked better if the whole Reagan-era wankery was dropped.

2) This is the film where I first saw Christian Bale, and it’s a magnificent introduction.  Of course, the magnificence comes from how Bale is playing two different characters--the real life Patrick, and the dream life Patrick--and we don’t know which one is the one we’re following until the very end.  Bale is able to blend these two characters so well that we don’t realize there are two personas for a very long time.

Plus, he runs around naked with a running chainsaw, which is a braver act to me than any stunt he may have done during the Batman trilogy.

3) Boy, are the two women Patrick has a romantic relationship with--Reese Witherspoon’s Evelyn and Samantha Mathis’ Courtney--cardboard in the extreme.  Okay, we’re supposed to see Evelyn as empty and vapid, especially since director Mary Harron seems to rely on her for some of the more overt comic relief of the film (which is curious given this is supposed to be a satire)...but Mathis’ Courtney is equally without heft, which is odd; something terrible happens to her, and I get the impression we’re supposed to feel something for her, but there’s nothing in her time on screen that gives the necessary emotional heft for that to happen.  To be fair, I can’t tell if that’s Mathis’ choices as an actress, or the script by Harron and Guinevere Turner underwrites her character so much there’s nothing for her to bring to life.

THE EIGHTIES!!!!

4) On the other hand, Chloe Sevigny’s Jean is the one female character who fully comes to life...which makes sense, as she is the one who uncovers the dual nature of Bateman.  Jean is a bit underwritten--a lot of what Easton Ellis did to flesh her out in the novel in the third act of the book has been excised--but Sevigny is able to make Jean live, which makes it logical that she’s the only potential victim in Bateman’s world that he restrains himself from killing.  And it’s Sevigny who gives her final scene, where she discovers what Bateman is really about, a real weight without saying a word.

5) I’m not quite sure how I feel about the way Harron treats the frequent discourses on popular music from Bateman in the film.  Unlike with High Fidelity, which made the pop culture stuffage asides to the audience, this film has Bateman go into these discourses with friends, and they come off as odd and pretentious.  It’s made even more ridiculous by the way Harron uses one of Bateman’s monologues as a signifier that he’s switching into murderous mode.  Even taking into account that this film is supposed to be satire, it comes off as clunky and weird.  And speaking of satire...

6) The problem with this film being satire is that’s a satire of something that, by 2000, had become passe’.  There’s a weird feeling of ‘and...so?’ to all the japes about hollow consumerism and yuppie culture and how hollow the lives of Bateman and his friends are.  Of course, I do wonder how much of my ennui with the satire angle comes from the patomine-y approach Harron takes to the 80‘s setting as a whole.

Yep...this threesome is not gonna end well...

7) Considering how grotesquely gory the book was (and yes, I read it when it was first published), I’m surprised how restrained Harron is in depicting the violence.  Not that I wanted to see Christian Bale torturing a woman’s asshole with a habitrail and a rat, mind you, but most of the bloody stuff happens off screen, with only aftermath seen in really brief shots.  There’s so little actual murderousness that it made me wonder if the only murder we see in most of its glory is one that is separate from the other killings in the film.

8) One of the reasons why Bale--and by extension Harron--is allowed to play the ‘who’s the Real Patrick’ game for as long as they do is because of Willem DaFoe’s Detective Kimball.  DaFoe easily slides into the world of Bateman’s delusion, and brings a certain gravitas to his brief scenes that it reinforces one interpretation of the events depicted within the film.

9) I appreciate the fact that Harron interprets the book the same way I did, but chooses to make this interpretation obverse at the very end.  Oddly enough, this move serves to confirm something Bateman says in one of the monologues he has at the very beginning of the film--he has become invisible to the world around him.

10) I’ll admit it--I had a hard time telling Bateman’s investment banker friends apart...but I think that’s part of the point Harron is trying to make, and one of the reasons that final denouement works.

Overall...yeah, it hasn’t aged well and it’s deeply flawed--but it’s still one hundred percent a worthwhile film due to Christian Bale’s magnificent performance.

(Of course, the weird thing is that I’m now deeply curious about the ill-advised DTV sequel American Psycho II: All-American Girl, which features Mila Kunis and totally invalidates everything Harron carefully built up to....)

Ten Statements About....SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD (2010)

Beware Michael Sera's video-game-inspired power!

“Next time, we don't date the girl with eleven evil ex-boyfriends."
“It's seven."
“Oh, well, that's not that bad.”

1) This film has a great, well, texture.  The way director Edgar Wright’s storytelling approximates a video game creates something unique even among comic book movies--namely a movie that looks like a comic book contemporary to the making of this film.  The introductory panels for each character, the way papery graphic sound effects rise from actual sounds, the combat titles, the transitions all help to build the world Wright wants us to dwell in.

2) I know some people didn’t care for Michael Cera, but I think the film needed him as Pilgrim.  Sera has just the right level of insincerity in his performance that it works.  Through his eyes, we understand that Scott is a big dick, which is essential for us to buy into the journey he goes through.

3) You know, I think Elizabeth Winstead is stunning, but her Ramona is, well, a bit of a dick as well, and has less screentime to show any change she may have gone through.  I think that the film needed to give her that to justify the ending it came up with (an ending that was made up before the last issue of the comic came out).

There are so many jokes I could make, but none of them would
paint me in a good light...

4) But what the film really needs to do is more clearly justify and define the story arc for Ellen Wong’s Knives Cho.  Given how she’s treated by Scott in the first act and gets all stalker-y in the second, the argument the film seems to make for her in the third seems so disjointed and strange--and it leads to a denoument at (literally) the film’s end that seems to dispute that third act entirely.  That Wong almost makes it work is a credit to her as an actress.

5) Can I admit to having a slight crush on Allison Pill’s Kim Pine?  Maybe it’s the way she delivers each line with a sort of controlled fury, but she seems to draw the eye with each scene she’s in.

6) One of the things that makes this film work besides its unique look is how much fun so many of these actors, especially those that play Ramona’s seven evil ex’s.  I’m a big believer in the principle that if the people involved are having fun (without breaking the third wall), then that fun will rub off on the viewer, and it works here.

Yeah, it's a Michael Sera film...but don't fight this film's
unique, sugar-coated charms.

7) I really respect the fact that Wright establishes the video game motif of his world extremely quickly, and then sticks to the the rules inherent in such a background.  Hell, the resolution of the third act works only if we buy into his world-as-video-game conceit...and it’s to his credit that the big twist is set up very clearly, yet we might not figure out what went down right away.

8) Every time I see Brandon Routh, I am convinced he needs a bigger career.  His telekinetic (apparently in the world of Scott Pilgrim, veganism gives you super powers) Todd Ingram is one of the highlights of the film, and he makes the most of his screentime.  And apparently Thomas Jane gets to drag him off for violation of the Vegan Code.  And speaking of the Vegan Police....

9)  I do appreciate how, after Wright gives us the prerequisite hyper-kinetic fight scene (because, you know, video game and all), Scott ends up using his head and, in one memorable moment, his musical skills to triumph over each of the exes.  It shows that there are qualities that could raise Scott above his dickishness, and it makes that ultimate rise above his flaws work in that third act.

10) Bless this movie for being shot in Toronto and...being set in Toronto.  Hell, one of the major reasons Ramona becomes an object of desire for desire for Scott is because she’s from the States and, as such, is ‘exotic.’

Overall...this is one of those films, like Speed Racer and Josie And The Pussycats, that will get the following it deserves with distance.  Wright creates a world, sticks to it, and is unafraid to give us an unsympathetic lead (who becomes sympathetic through what he learns from the events of the film), and presents a unique moviegoing experience.  While the ending is a little sour, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a very good film.

Ten Statements About....THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS (1982)

Yeah, yeah..you think you know why she was
cast, but you'd be surprised how good she is...

“Well, I always just thought if you see somebody without a smile, give 'em yours!”

1) We can debate on whether Dolly Parton was an actress or not, but what’s not up for debate after watching this movie is that she was a movie star.  The camera loves her, her personality shines through the film, and she is one of those weird rare birds that seems to have chemistry with anyone she steps into a scene with.  She’s a delight to watch, and every moment she’s on the screen in this film, it’s a little brighter.

2) And here’s the thing about her co-star...yes, Burt Reynolds seems a touch past his sell-by date with his very artificial tan trying to hide his very obvious wrinkles in this film.  But after a few opening scenes of him trying to coast on his charm, Reynolds hunkers down and endeavors to make his Sheriff Ed Earl into an actual character with nuances and emotional problems he has to solve on his own.  And the funny thing is once that kicks in, Reynolds rises to the occasion and becomes genuinely good.

3) Maybe it’s because this was made in 1982, but some of the actual, you know, whores working in the whorehouse seem really...out of place?  There are a number of new wave-y types that seem really out of place when it comes to a story about a southwestern whorehouse with a country/western book.

4) Even though I worried that Theresa Merritt’s Jewel was going to be an embarrassing stereotype when I first saw her, I was pleasantly surprised at how she was developed.  You get the impression that Jewel is not a servant, but a full partner in the Chicken Ranch’s day-to-day, and is a true friend and confidante to Parton’s Mona.  Plus she ends up kicking ass when it comes to the big ‘home invasion’ set piece that ends off Act Two.

"Well, Burt, I thought I'd come into this movie to remind you
of what a broad cartoon character you usually play..."

5) I think that the film benefits from the participation of original writers Larry L. King and Peter Masterson.  While there is a third writer responsible for the script, King and Masterson keeps the story from being overcomplicated in the name of opening it up.   Thus there’s still a sense of true intimacy to the film, that this is still just a tale of a small Texas town under moral siege.

6) Thank the Lord this was made at a time when it was okay to aim for an R rating, because I shudder to think how weird it would have felt without its profanity and mild smuttiness.

7) Okay, there is one performance that really doesn’t quite work, and that’s Dom Deluise’s Melvin.  Deluise makes the caricature too broad, and his gurning and mugging seems out of place in a place where everyone is doing this at a less frantic pitch.  And on top of that, he seems incapable of singing effectively.  He’s a necessary evil (this is the period where if you wanted Burt, you had to take Dom), but his every appearance is jarring.

"Can I sing?  Maybe not.  Am I having fun?  Hell, yeah!"

8) On the other hand, the big surprise is how wonderful Charles Durning’s Governor is.  He only has one extended scene with a musical number, but Boy Howdy does the film just pick up an extra dollop of energy when he’s around.  And while, like Deluise, he can’t necessarily sing, Durning makes it work for him; he talk-sings his number, ‘The Sidestep,’ but does so enthusiastically and unselfconsciously...and the sheer joy he seems to be taking in doing this number is infectious.  His presence is one of the high points of the film.

9)  Look, I know that Parton wrote 'I Will Always Love You’ before Whitney Houston co-opted it, but damn does it still feel weird when, towards the climax, she sings the song to Reynolds toward the end.  Her version is more stripped down and plain, and that makes the sentiment all the stronger.  One can certainly believe Reynolds making the decision he makes after this number.

"BROADWAY, BAY-BE!"

10) The aforementioned ‘Side Step’ aside, I’m not a big fan of Carol Hall’s book, which seems to be in love with repetition...although I will admit that ‘Hard Candy Christmas’ has been stuck in my brain for the last twenty four hours.  This is probably the show’s legacy song--even though I find it fascinating that it’s become a Christmas song solely for the word ‘Christmas’ in the lyrics, as it’s not a seasonal number whatsoever.

Overall...a very well done musical that keep the feel of the original show and doesn’t seek to ‘open up’ the story with unnecessary complications.  On top of that, it features some rather good performances from actors who we wouldn’t normally think of as good actors (or, in the case of Reynolds, think of as good actors who take lazy choices).

A Parting Glance At...Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen was one of the major architects of my fantasy life.

Hell, he was one of the reasons why I became what I am today.

When I was a small child, I remember watching many of Harryhausen’s films when they appeared on The ABC 4:30 Movie, including such gems as Mysterious Island (featuring what is arguably my favorite monster of his--namely the giant crab), First Men In The Moon, and the classic Jason and The Argonaut.  When my parents bought a Super 8 movie projector, I somehow managed to convince them to buy a small black and white reel of monster footage from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.  When his second Sinbad film, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, moved into the old Crossbay Theater on Woodhaven Boulevard, I pressganged my natural father into taking me; even when he tried to tempt me with the R-Rated forbidden fruit of The Longest Yard that was playing on the other screen, I stayed my course.  One of the first films I saw on my own was the third Harryhausen Sinbad film, Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger.  As I became interested in maybe making movies of my own--an interest that waned when I realized I was a better storyteller than director--I tried to make my own stop-motion epic in emulation of Harryhausen’s style.  In particular, there was a decidedly overambitious version of King Kong that never quite worked out.  Many of my earliest stories I wrote as a child featured monsters inspired just as much by Harryhausen’s Cyclops and Talos as by Godzilla.  Seeing this man’s work come alive helped shape my decision to write about the fantastic and the heroic, and there’s at least two stories in the book I’m finishing up right now that feature creatures that could easily have been brought to life by Dynamation back in the 60‘s.

The thing that strikes me about Harryhausen is how he spent the bulk of his life just doing what he loved.  According to all reports, he would wake up every morning, have breakfast with his wife, then head next door to the house of his partner Charles Schneer.  Then the two men would spend the day planning out movies, talking about movies, making deals to make movies, and otherwise making up new projects for them to do together.  When a project was placed with a studio, Harryhausen then retreated to his studio in his garage and began building and animating his creations.  A day when Harryhausen produced fifteen seconds of usable footage was deemed a success, but it didn’t matter.  He was having fun, and that was all that mattered.

While I always regretted his decision to retire after the release of the original Clash of The Titans, I respected him for doing so.  He claimed in interviews that he recognized his time had passed after that, and it’s hard to argue against that; shorn of the patina of nostalgia, Clash did feature some of his lesser work.  And it wasn’t like retirement meant Harryhausen hid himself in a cave for the rest of his life.  He was famous for devoting his time to speaking at colleges and sharing his knowledge with aspiring animators, and was always gracious with his fans and admirers.

Ray Harryhausen’s mortal clay may have ceased to exist yesterday, but much like his lifelong friend Ray Bradbury, who died before him, I like to think that his spirit will never die.  Every time a father shares a Sinbad movie with his son, every time a burgeoning special effects artist realizes the charms inherent in stop motion, every time a revival house decides to run The Valley of Gwangi or 1,000,000 Years BC, the spark that motivated him to spend all those hours in his garage will burn all the more brightly.  And I think that the fact that he will inspire and enlighten people for decades is something to be celebrated.

Ten Statements About....IRON MAN 3 (2013)

There's narcissism, and then there's this...

“My suit was never a distraction or a hobby. It was a cocoon. And I'm a new man now."

1) Even though the bulk of the plot is taken from Warren Ellis’ ‘Extremis’ story and we get a couple of head nods to John Byrne’s Telepresence Armor, there is no doubt that Shane Black is channeling David Michiliene and Bob Layton’s landmark runs on the book.  So many elements from the story are from that run, even if some of them are tweaked a bit.  In fact, the whole film has the feel of those issues where Michiliene and Layton concentrated on how cool and resourceful Tony Stark is by depriving him of his armor for long lengths of time.   Hell, there’s even a shout out to Mrs. Arborgast in one scene!

(Although I am surprised that the list of comic creator thank yous didn’t include Len Kaminski, who created not only War Machine, but the Hulkbuster armor.)

2) Boy does this film move.  Unlike with its predecessor, Black makes sure that even the slow moments feed directly into the plot, keeping everything clicking along.  This creates a smoother viewing experience and avoids the clunky start-and-stop feeling that Iron Man 2‘s second act had.

3) I’ve said it when Iron Man 2 rolled around, and I’ll say it here--Don Cheadle was 100% an upgrade over Terrence Howard.  Not only do the two feel like friends throughout (the scene of them hanging out in the first act has a casualness that Rhodey and Tony never had in the first film), but Cheadle is absolutely bad-ass when the third act rolls around, coming off as a hyper-cool Felix Leiter to Tony’s Bond.

4) The reworking of The Mandarin--arguably the furthest away any element from the comic gets in this film--actually makes a lot of sense, even if that reworking ends up being played for laughs at one point.  Ben Kingsley manages to make both aspects of the character make a lil’ sense...although I will admit I find it hard to accept that the character is as oblivious as he is portrayed at one point.

"Who said I wasn't hot?"

5) Another character who seems to have two (if not more) aspects is Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian.  Pearce manages to disappear into the role to the point where I didn’t recognize him throughout (although, to be fair, it’s not like Pearce has been in much of anything in the last handful of years), and I find it amusing that he acts more like Justin Hammer than Justin Hammer did in the last film; the scheme he’s enacting is extremely in keeping with Michiliene’s version of Hammer in the 90's.

6) I respect how Black manages to shear away a lot of the ‘Phase Two’ excess (save for the end-credit stinger) so he can concentrate on the core group of Tony, Pepper, Rhodey and Happy.

Yes, Happy.  Maybe because he’s no longer directing, Jon Favreau gets a real sorta story arc, and for the first time we feel that he’s more than just an employee, but a friend.

7) ...and speaking of the core group...man, is Gwyneth Paltrow hot in this film.  Freed up from the weird bickering-for-bickering’s-sake of the last film, Paltrow is able to build on the chemistry with Downey, making their relationship feel truly real.  It’s also refreshing that Tony and Pepper actually talk about significant things, and not stuff like whether she’s allergic to strawberries or not.  Granted, there’s that weird thing they do to her that is sort of swept under the rug in the coda, but the bulk of her appearance in the film bolsters the relationship between the two of them.

8) Since I raised the subject of humor, I’m pleased that the humor in this film is organic, coming from the characters and what we’ve learned about them.  Black allows Tony to be a lil’ bit of a dick--sometimes really extremely when it comes to his interaction with the young boy who’s his sorta sidekick in a major part of the second act--without letting him get Joe Quesada level out of hand.  And he also has fun with Stark’s celebrity status.  But these jokes are natural, and never get to the forced level of the previous film.

If you were a fan of David Michiliene' run...you'd know why
I mark out at shots like this....

9)  I appreciate the fact that Black does give Tony’s story arc, an arc that’s been building since the first film, a satisfactory resolution.  If it turns out that this is the last Iron Man solo film, or the last solo film to feature Downey in the lead role, at least there’s a sense of closure to the trilogy.

10) I enjoy how Black finds many ways to create action sequences with Stark where he has limited access to the suit.  All of these fight scenes are creative, and leads up to the whizz-bang finale which evokes a major part of the Michiliene/Layton run and provides us with a massive adreneline rush of fun in the end.

Overall...while I did enjoy Iron Man 2, this is an improvement.  Shane Black manages to create a successful film that builds on th previous entries while giving us somthing new in the spectacle department.  Recommended.

I ended up going to the Atlas for an 11 a.m. show that was, well, packed to the gills.  Among the eight trailers we were assailed with were ones for The Great Gatsby (which I truly do want to see, and not just because there’s Carey ‘Sally Sparrow’ Mulligan in flapper gear), Man of Steel (which encourages me in that it seems that Zack Snyder is playing Superman as a bright light in a dark world), After Earth (where I’m positive M. Night Shamalyan is going to pull the same trick with Will Smith he pulled with Bruce Willis), Star Trek: Into Darkness (I don't care if Benedict Cumberbach is the bad guy; fuck you, J.J. Abrams) and Catching Fire (which is obviously not for me, but I am so grateful that this teen series has more to say beyond ‘hey, it’s important to have a boyfriend, even if he’s dead’).

Ten Statements About....GET CARTER (1971)

Michael Caine' gone a'hunting.  Better run and hide.

“You know, I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Pissholes in the snow."

1) Anybody who thinks of Michael Caine as a soft actor who plays variations of himself needs to see this performance.  Rarely smiling, struggling to control a seething rage within, Caine is a veritable Angel of Death come a’calling.  His ice cold performance holds the film together by sheer force of will.

2) Looking at it now, there’s a strange sadness in the interactions between Caine and Ian Hendry’s Eric.  Seeing both men, who were in the throes of alcoholism at the time, and knowing that Hendry’s life was close to ending because of it makes their scenes feel different than director Mike Hodge intended.

3) Even though she’s not the best of the handful of women in the film (none of which really has enough screen time to justify being called the female lead), Britt Eklund’s Anna does take the thankless job of being the sexual plaything/’fiance’ of Caine’s Carter and makes the best of it.  Her performance, along with the one she gives in The Wicker Man, does add to my suspicion that there was a genuine actress buried in that sex symbol wrapping of hers.

4) If I had to choose a favorite of the number women Carter has his way with, I’d have to go with Dorothy White’s Margaret.  Maybe because she’s a ginger, maybe it’s because of her pronounced accent, maybe it’s because of that one scene in the car where she couches Carter’s situation in fairy tale language (‘You’re going to meet the Demon Lord’), but she’s wickedly cool, eminently watchable and sexy as all Hell.  And because of how Hodges presents her to us, her final fate--something that throws Carter’s behavior towards her in the later second act in question--is truly shocking.

Michael Caine is naked, and he still is going to kick
your lilly white ass!

5) Hodges’ directorial style is very distinctive, particularly when it comes to action scenes.  Frequently, he will cut to an overhead long shot so we can see different planes of action.  It’s an interesting choice which distances us from what’s going on in the shot while also giving us a great deal of comprehension as to what is happening.  In the day of getting too close when it comes to fight scenes in an effort to ‘get the viewer into the action,’ this method actually makes the action much more comprehensible.

6) ...although it should be mentioned how violence, when it comes, does so shockingly and very, very suddenly.  Even though Hodges doesn’t engage in smash cuts and other tricks that are used in modern filmmaking, the sudden changes narratively from the slow, deliberate pace of most of the story and the abrupt way the violence intrudes upon it--as if the brutality invades the film from the movie playing on the screen next door--unhinges the viewer and disorients them.

7) This is yet another film I don’t think could have been made today (although it does make me curious as to how botched the Sylvester Stallone, Seattle-set version was).  Beyond a certain point, particularly when we are introduced to the concept of ‘L’--it’s hard to call him an actual character--there is a sense of inevitability to Carter’s journey and where it will end up.  And even though we sort of understand what Carter’s fate ultimately be, it still ends up as a shock when it happens.

Michaek Caine is so hardcore he gets Britt Ecklund off with
phonesex...before phonesex was even invented!

8) There is one wordless scene where we learn why Carter’s brother had to die that is magnificent.  Primarily focused on Caine sitting on a bed, it’s a magnificent moment because he retains that weird stoicism, his facial expression never changing--and yet we can feel the white hot rage building up in Carter.

9) The cinematography here is interested, especially in the way everything seems designed to make Carter look separate from everyone else in Newcastle proper.  The simple choice of giving Carter a black trenchcoat that makes him pop out from the amongst the uniformly grey and drab background works.  It emphasizes that Carter has become something apart from the city he grew up in and at certain key action moments he comes off as the Angel of Death stalking these grimy little streets.

Michael Caine just caught you looking at him funny...RUN!

10) Hodges really seems to love these sequences where he transposes the main action with something else.  Most of them are the expected ‘here’s the normal life, and here’s the shit Carter’s knee deep in,’ but there’s this one moment where he intercuts between Carter being ridden towards a meeting and the sex he’s going to have with the driver later that’s really striking and peculiar.  It’s the sort of playing with time and space that future directors like Tarantino and Soderberg will embrace that I wish would happen more often.

Overall...a brutal and brilliant crime film that’s as dark as the soul of its protaganist, and evidence that Michael Caine was, and always will be, hardcore.