The Fan

Fuckin’ Snipes and De Niro man.  What a combination.  When this came out I was pumped.  And I was also very disappointed by it.  But you know what?  It just needed to age a little.  Watching The Fan now brings a huge smile to my face.

Alright to get the plot summary out of the way here a goes.  A very passionate and deranged San Francisco Giants fan wants his favorite player to do well.  So he tries to help him by doing a not very nice thing but when the fan doesn’t get a “thank you” then he really goes nuts.  It’s a great story and almost any movie involving sports, especially thrillers or action films, is uniquely entertaining.  And I could go on and on about this film but I’ll try to restrict myself because this is definitely a film where you’ll wonder to yourself how far everything is going to be taken and I wouldn’t want to spoil that too much.  But I do have to get my point across that this is a cool fucking movie.

Since this is a Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance) joint you would think that it would have a bunch of action.  But actually there really isn’t any.  He decided to make another thriller after having success with Crimson Tide.  By the way Tony Scott has become pretty unbearable these days.  His shit used to be charming and now it’s just become…well…shit.  But more on that later.

Anyway De Niro plays Gil, a knife salesman.  His sales have been terrible recently and he tries whatever he can to make a sell.  This includes shaving his own legs with one of the knives to prove how sharp they are.  I don’t know about you but that wouldn’t entice me buy a knife.  If he threw it at a bullseye on the wall then maybe you got something but shaving is not what I’ll be using my knives for.  Gil is also divorced and has a ten year old son.  He treats him pretty badly too.  Like he took him to opening day but then left him there because he had to go meet a client.  His ex-wife knows he’s a bit of a loose cannon so she’s suspicious every time he’s around.

At opening day they see their baseball hero in action, Bobby Rayburn played by Wesley Snipes (New Jack City, Passenger 57, Blade).  Rayburn starts this movie as an arrogant and superstitious guy.  Well I guess having John Leguizamo (Calito’s Way, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Numar (which Snipes is also in oddly enough)) as your agent must be a pain in the ass and I’m sure he takes out his anger on everyone else.  Snipes’ character is almost like who Willie Mays Hayes from Major League grew up to be.  By the end of that movie he became a pretty good ball player and after years of success he’s now playing centerfield for the Giants while hassling Benicio Del Toro (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Traffic) to get his old number back.  However I’ve come to realize that Snipes isn’t very versatile as an actor but he’s just so fucking cool in everything that it doesn’t matter.  I mean sure he’s a little different in Demolition Man and maybe Blade but can you really see major differences between his characters in Murder at 1600, Passenger 57, Rising Sun, King of New York, White Man Can’t Jump or Money Train?  Neither can I.  But I would love to see another Snipes Harrelson picture ‘cause their chemistry together is pure magic.

So Rayburn is a fairly simple character but De Niro’s is really fucked up and complex.  Gil is pushed off of an emotional cliff and he thinks that he’s always in the right.  For instance when he goes to his son’s little league game he yells instructions at him on how to bat.  Gil then takes the bat out of the kid’s hands to show him how to do it properly.  The son’s stepfather tries to come to the rescue but Gil starts waving the bat at him.  He does crazy shit like this all through the movie and I think it’s supposed to be really dramatic and heartbreaking but it always comes off as kinda amusing and extremely entertaining to watch.

Gil is also completely delusional.  He tells his son about how he used to be a pitcher in the minors or something and decides to pay his old catcher a visit.  But when we meet his former catcher Coop, played by the great Charles Hallahan (The Thing (1982), Grace Under Fire, Dante’s Peak), we can see that they haven’t seen each other in a long time.  But because Coop realizes that Gil is kinda fucked in the head he humors him by having a catch.  Then we find out that they actually only played together in little league and Gil beats him to death with a fucking baseball bat.  And the movie keeps doing things like this.  We know Gil is unstable but you never think things are going to get that out of hand.  Then all of a sudden he beats a childhood friend that he hasn’t seen in probably 30 years to death with a bat.

There’s a lot that leads up to the scene that I just described and you’ll have to trust me that the lead up is just as good.  I mean Gil does so many insane things.  He never thinks twice about doing any of it either.  This is a man without a conscience we’re dealing with.  We see at first that Gil tries to make things work but just can’t juggle anything anymore and snaps.  I mean you can tell that he was a little crazy to begin with but he can’t keep himself in check any longer.  Gil is like an even crazier version of De Niro’s character from The King of Comedy, Rupert Pupkin.  I would even say he’s a little scary but like I said before it’s so over the top that it comes off as kinda funny.  Like the way he says “Bobby” or the way things escalate so fast whenever he’s around.  One minute he’ll be cheering his team on and the next he’ll be knocking people out of the way (including his own son) to try and catch a foul ball and then when he doesn’t catch it tell the strangers around him that the wind took it.  This guy wants everyone to listen to him, be impressed with him and agree with him but then also kill them when they don’t listen or see eye to eye.  This energy is mostly focused on Bobby Rayburn and his son.  De Niro was the perfect choice for this role.  He’s so great at seeming like a normal guy but then will fucking carve some dude up with his knife as soon as there’s a disagreement.

Snipes is also the perfect choice for this movie because he looks like an athlete.  He also doesn’t have a ton of emotional baggage to carry around here so he can do his usual thing.  It’s great that they were able to get guys who are the right ages for the two leads.  Rayburn is supposed to be a big time ball player that’s been around a while and may start be losing his skills.  Snipes was at a similar point in his career.  After Drop Zone and Money Train it looked like Snipes may not have another great picture left in him.  The Fan didn’t do well either so maybe no one wanted to see Sinpes anymore.  But he had one last break with Blade and similarly Rayburn eventually gets his swing back in the middle of the season.

As for the way this film was shot Tony Scott’s style has changed a little over the years and it’s mainly been his quick edits.  He’s always had his scenes be pretty choppy but it’s become unwatchable ever since Man on Fire.  The film he did after The Fan was Enemy of the State and that started to get a little too choppy and messy but it wasn’t full blown yet.  The Fan was his last normally edited film and therefore his last tolerable one.  I mean Enemy of the State wasn’t terrible but it certainly wasn’t good either.

Also with The Fan there was still some smoky residue left in the frame.  Scott’s earlier films always looked like there was a ton of smoke in almost every shot of every scene even if no one was actually smoking on camera.  In the ones that took place in daylight there was always a lot of glare from the sun like it was constantly setting outside.  It’s a trademark style and I like that his films used to look so sleazy.  Because that’s what smoky, glarey movies look like and The Last Boy Scout and True Romance are prime examples of this.  But he got rid of that look later opting to go for ultra clear deep colors and a bit of a gritty texture.  And this was the first film where he went for that look but again, there’s still a little smoke and constant sun setting here and there.

Scott also likes to film a scene from as many angles and distances as possible.  This way he can constantly cut between them.  He never holds a shot for longer than five or six seconds.  It’s actually not as distracting as you might think but it’s still kinda noticeable.  This technique somehow doesn’t make every scene seem to grab you by the arm and say “isn’t this the most exciting fucking thing you’ve ever seen?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?”  Surprisingly you can tell when something is supposed to be exciting and when something’s not regardless of the editing. 

So overall this may not be the best sports movie but it’s still a helluva lot of fun and it’s the last good Tony Scott picture.  Snipes and De Niro do well in their roles and it’s also just great to see them together on screen.  But the thing is they really only share two scenes together out of a two hour film (well there is a third but they don’t talk to each other).  I mean Gil is supposed to be talking to him on the phone or at some of the games but they never show them together on screen during that.  When we do finally get the two of them together exchanging lines then it’s pretty interesting.  I mean we can see that De Niro really dove into this character and is giving it his all.  Gil has such a twisted way of thinking about the world and going about achieving things.  Then we see Snipes does what he does and he can’t really keep up.  I think you can see that he’s trying a little harder than usual to act like a baseball player just shootin’ the shit with some guy but De Niro is clearly winning the race.  But I still love ya Snipes.  I’m a big fan.