As far as I can tell Maverick
has two major problems (spoilers in this
whole thing, but do you really care?):
1. Plot confusion. On
the surface it all seems so simple, Maverick (Mel Gibson (The Man Without a Face)) needs $25,000 to enter a lavish poker
tournament but keeps running into trouble getting the money together. Sounds fine to me but they muddy things up
with some sort of scam that Maverick and his father, Coop (James Garner (Victor Victoria)), cook up.
Just think about this for a minute. Maverick and Coop go through everything you
see in the movie, including almost getting killed several times and breaking
who knows how many laws, in order to discourage one single solitary card shark
(James Coburn (Eraser)) from playing
again west of the Mississippi. Not even
the entire country or world, but half the US.
That motivation doesn’t make any sense to me but maybe you have to be a
card player?
So in the end it wasn’t about Maverick truly digging deep to
see how good at poker he really is. It’s
not really about money either. Those things,
along with Maverick falling in love with Annabelle (Jodi Foster (Elysium)), are byproducts of the journey
and not the end goal. Pretty fuckin’ weird, right?
2. SuperMav. Maverick is
indestructible in this film. He survives
a confrontation with a notoriously brutal gunfighter, an explosion from a bank
robbery, a runaway stagecoach, dangling off the side of a cliff, going up
against six armed thugs, being shot at by a bow and arrow and a gun at pretty
close range, being hanged and left for dead in the desert with venomous snakes. And with most of the situations it’s pure
dumb luck that gets Maverick out of trouble, like when the tree branch breaks
off during his hanging.
I understand that the filmmakers wanted to have exciting and
dangerous situations to put Maverick in but he just looks like an asshole and
not a formidable character. It’s not his
lightning fast gun draw or his wits or his brute strength that get him out of
trouble. It’s almost always some deus ex
machina bullshit that comes to the rescue.
Gorgeous scenery |
There are a bunch of good things about this picture
though. For one, it’s gorgeous to look
at. Director Richard Donner (Scrooged) always does a good job with
his clear and straight forward manner.
But I gotta give it up to cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. He’s got so many ridiculous movies under his
belt including Deliverance and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(arguably Spielberg’s best looking film) and he goes to town on this one. He fills the screen with incredible sweeping
shots of the American west and beautiful imagery that any western movie would
be jealous of. This is one helluva
pretty picture.
As I just mentioned Donner knows what he’s doing. Even though the story is mostly dumb he
treats it with care and definitely puts some fun action scenes together. The part with the stagecoach is probably my
favorite sequence where they do pretty much everything you can with that setup
including hanging off the side of the coach, being dragged and jumping from
horse to horse.
The acting is decent with Mel giving a charming
performance. Of course, this is
considering you can stand the man (you know because of the whole anti-Semitic,
racist, sexist, alcoholic thing). He
does his usual goofball/intensely serious routine but this is much more on the
goofball side. It’s an action comedy
after all. I know I can still enjoy him
in shit but he’s certainly an acquired taste.
It was an interesting choice to cast Jodi Foster as the
sultry southern belle love interest. I’m
gonna go out on a limb and say that most folks don’t think of Foster as a sex
symbol. Sure, Taxi Driver and The Accused
but I think we all see her as Clarice from The
Silence of the Lambs, intellectual, reserved, stoic, etc. Not as a flirty gregarious thief. Foster does surprisingly well in the role
though and shows that she can almost pull off a character like this, almost.
But out of everyone Alfred Molina (Species, Boogie Nights) gives the best performance. He’s one of the most underrated actors ever
in my opinion and shines as the cold-blooded Angel here. I could watch a whole movie of just this
character. Not only is he one mean
sonuvabitch that’ll kick the shit outta you if you look at him funny but he’s
also an unbelievable card player. I mean
the guy comes in second at the poker tournament at the end. I love everything about this character and
Molina’s take on him. He’s big and
imposing, his accent is flawless and his facial expressions are spot on. Good work.
Here’s some other crap I noticed:
- One thing the audience should always be aware of is how much
money Maverick currently has and therefore how much more he needs to get to
$25,000. But this basic plot point gets
pretty damn unclear. It’s really when
Joseph, Maverick’s Native American friend, asks to see Mav’s $22,000 because
he’s never seen that much cash before.
Maverick then has a breakdown because he discovers that Annabelle
swapped his dough for newspaper. So at
this point we’re led to believe that he lost everything. He should have zero dollars right now. Ok, Joseph gives him $1,000 but still
Maverick essentially has to rebuild his whole stash, right? Well after the Russian hunter scene we find
out that Maverick only needs a couple more thousand to bring him up to the full
$25,000. What the fuck just happened? Either Mav lost his shit over a couple of
thousand, which doesn’t make a lot of sense considering he’s been down that
much since the beginning of the picture, or he really did lose everything and
they didn’t show how he got tens of thousands of dollars back. Whatever it is the filmmakers fucked up in
post putting that part of the movie together.
- There are at least two messages the film puts out
there. One is about how white people
stole land from the Native Americans.
Another is about how money isn’t the most important thing after Coop
steals the $500,000 from the poker tournament.
Unfortunately with that last one they negate it almost immediately by
having Maverick go after Coop later and steal the money back.
- Cameos, cameos, cameos.
Putting aside James Garner (because he stars in this), who was the
original Maverick from the TV show, Danny Glover might be the biggest. He and Mel have a Lethal Weapon moment where they almost recognize each other and
Glover even says “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit”. It’s cute ‘n all but kinda distracting honestly. And there are a lot of country music artists
that appear in the background and there’s Margot Kidder and etc.
To wrap this up, the film has a real sense of adventure and
I love that they crammed in a ton of western movie tropes like poker, gunplay, wise
Native Americans, a runaway stagecoach, a bank robbery, etc. You can tell the filmmakers are fans of the
genre (particularly American westerns from the 50’s, makes sense since the TV
show inhabited both of those qualities) and their enthusiasm tends to rub off. And the well done genre tinged Randy Newman
score puts a nice cap on it. The
happy-go-lucky attitude actually works a lot of the time but the danger factor
is significantly reduced as a result. I
know it’s a family friendly western but I still think the balance is off.
I really wanted to like this film but it’s just not that satisfying. It’s not the worst thing ever though. It’s still fairly enjoyable if you can get
past the messy script (a little surprising considering William Goldman wrote it
(The Princess Bride, Marathon Man)).
You need to revise your comments on how Brett Maverick got the $25,000 after his encounter with Joseph. We are only led to believe Annabelle has stolen his base $22,000 when Joseph tosses Brett the sachel from the saddlebag and it is filled with newspaper to look like money. However, shortly thereafter Joseph hands him the real money back and says that he was only kidding, wherein Brett chokes Joseph for doing so. Brett let's go, and Joseph procedes to hatch a scheme involving the Russian Archduke to get Brett some of the cash Joseph owes him. Guess you missed that one important detail.
ReplyDeleteShit! Your're absolutely right. I went back and watched the scene and I can't believe I misinterpreted it. When Joseph hands Mav the money I always thought that was the $1,000 he owed him and didn't realize it was the $22,000 that Joseph took out of Mav's satchel as a joke. I guess that also explains why Mav doesn't kill Annabelle as soon as he sees her on the riverboat later. That's a big miss on my part. Thanks buddy.
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