Point Blank

Shit, don’t cross Walker (Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen)).  If you happen to rip him off after a routine robbery on abandoned Alcatraz Island and shoot him and leave him for dead he will come after you for sure.  He wants what’s his.  He wants $93K.  So promise me you won’t ever do that, ok?  Good.  Thanks.

But there were a couple of stupid bastards who didn’t do such a thing.  Friend Mal (John Vernon (Ernest Goes to Camp)) and wife Lynne (Sharon Acker (Happy Birthday to Me)) think they’ve gotten away with an easy score.  Mal needs the money to settle a debt with some sort of organized crime outfit so he takes Walker’s share.  Lynne doesn’t love Walker anymore and decides to go along with the double cross.  When Walker recuperates he focuses like a laser beam on looking for these two so he can claim his money and be on his way.

The beauty of this story is the simplicity.  It truly is only about the money.  Walker never expresses a desire for revenge.  If he gets some pleasure out of beating up and bullying the scumbags he comes across we’re never clued in.  It’s weird to imagine but I suppose if Mal gave him the $93,000 immediately the movie would be over in like fifteens mins.  Of course it’s not that easy.  In fact it seems impossible.

Walker has to go up against not only Mal but the entire syndicate that’s backing him.  He works his way up the chain to get to the heads and shows them the same level of insolence and impatience he would to any low level asshole.  He slaps them around, shoves a gun in their face and plainly states in the first ten seconds upon meeting them that if he doesn’t get his money he’ll kill them.  He doesn’t take shit from nobody.

This is such a badass character but the thing is he’s not terribly interesting.  The combination of knowing so little about Walker and his robotic single minded approach makes him seem inhuman.  He even uses his sister-in-law as bait to get at Mal with little regard for her safety or feelings.  Afterwards she tells him “you died at Alcatraz alright, goodbye Walker” and he barely gets out a hurried “yeah, goodbye” before coolly moving on to his next target.  Walker’s driven but that’s pretty much all he is which is a shame.  They could’ve given him a touch more personality and it only would’ve helped.

With that said Lee Marvin is fantastic in the role.  He was born for this one.  His hulking build and weathered face are perfect for someone as humorless as Walker.  Marvin’s searing stare and stoic performance are really what make the character fun to watch.  You can’t wait to see him shoot a mean ass look to the next guy he encounters and watch that sucker squirm.

However I do have to say I’m not totally into the arty way this picture is sometimes edited.  Director John Boorman (Deliverance, Exorcist II: The Heretic) may have felt he had to make up for the incredibly straightforward plot by using lamenting voice over, characters staring off into space or aimlessly drifting around a room and cutting in different, and sometimes alternate, shots of other scenes at various points like Walker’s dreaming.  And maybe that was the intent, like this is Walker’s dream of revenge as he lays dying.  I prefer not to believe that though because the it-was-all-a-dream stunt is such bullshit in movies.  It’s a cop out.  Stand by your vision filmmakers.  It isn’t explicitly stated either way in Point Blank but still, the editing gives a fantasy hallucinatory tilt to the whole thing and I don’t think it needed that.  What’s even more frustrating is this technique isn’t used consistently either with heavy employment during the first and last thirds and leaving the middle of the film relatively normal.

So what should be one of the best most grizzled action thrillers ever made and a slam dunk recommendation becomes muddied by stylistic choices and perhaps an attempt to elevate the material.  But look I’ll give it to ya point blank, I definitely think you guys will enjoy it because the plethora of badass shit is undeniable and inescapable.  Actually, it’s a must see.

As an aside this is based off a book called The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake which was the first in a series featuring the protagonist Parker.  Payback starring Mel Gibson (What Women Want) was the second film adaptation.  I re-watched that to see how it holds up and to compare to Point Blank.  It’s not great but not too terrible either.  They go for a surprising amount of jokes that aren’t very funny and the villains are even bigger slimy assholes than in Point Blank.  Although they did give Porter (this version’s Walker/Parker) some emotional background and made him less of a Neanderthal at times.

Brian Helgeland (42, writer: L.A. Confidential) wrote and directed but had the project taken away from him during editing.  He put together his own cut called Payback: Straight Up which is better than the theatrically released version.  The pace is tighter, a lot of the jokes are cut out and the entire third act plays out differently including a simpler and more satisfying ending.  If you haven’t seen Payback you aren’t missing anything but if you’re curious then try to seek out the Straight Up version.

Mish Mash 14 (Boomerang, Wind River, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Killing Zoe)

Boomerang

What a funny and touching forgotten gem in Eddie Murphy’s repertoire.  It’s about a player who gets played.  Murphy does whatever deceitful action he feels necessary to get a sexy woman into bed and then tosses them aside like a pair of socks.  So naturally when he falls in love with the lady who takes over his position as head of marketing for a cosmetics company she (Robin Givens (Blankman)) turns out to be just as cruel as he is when playing with people’s emotions.

There’s real good drama with Murphy’s job dilemma where he faces possible termination.  He also gets pressured by the figurehead of the new company, who’s a much older woman (Eartha Kitt (Ernest Scared Stupid)), to sleep with her if he wants to keep his job.  And there’s some…dare I say it?…cute romance stuff like the brief fling David Alan Grier (Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby) and Halle Berry (The Last Boy Scout) have.

The highlight though might be the incredible cast of wacky side characters.  Tisha Campbell (Martin) plays Murphy’s neighbor who’s so apoplectic over his deplorable behavior that she hopes he gets a disease where his dick falls off, Chris Rock (New Jack City) in an early role delivers the mail in the building where Murphy works and steals the show every brief moment he’s on camera, John Witherspoon (Friday) is Grier’s embarrassing father who shows up to Thanksgiving in a mushroom patterned suit and I already mentioned the unsubtle seductress Eartha Kitt.

Martin Lawrence (Bad Boyses) and David Allan Grier play Murphy’s best buds and their dynamic is great together.  While Murphy is the suave one, Grier is the awkward shy one and Lawrence is the brash extrovert that sees racism in everything.  And while this is meant to be funny as he even thinks the game of pool is racist with the white ball dominating all the other balls, especially the black 8 ball (this theory is fascinating actually), his outlook is justified when they’re all confronted with an asshole white dude in a high end clothing store who thinks they’re gonna steal shit.

But definitely the funniest part of the whole thing is Grace Jones (Vamp) as the French fashion icon Strangé (pronounced Strohn-jay).  She’s in your face, crass (to use one of the movie’s favorite words) and committed to bringing cosmetology to its knees.  At a pitch meeting she throws out names for her new perfume like “Steel Vagina” and “Love Puss”.  Her TV ad for the perfume is her in a crazy ass enormous wood weaved dress stomping the ground with her bare feet while giving birth to the new fragrance bottle in some apocalyptic caveman setting (!?).  The character is one for the ages and Jones plays her perfectly.  She has a natural mystique about her that fits so well with this tacky yet brilliant giant in fashion.

So if you want a nice romantic comedy that has a touch of outrageousness to it this should fit the bill.

Wind River

This thriller about a hunter/tracker (Jeremy Renner (Arrival)) and FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen (Avengers: Age of Ultron)) that team up to find out who killed a teenage girl is pretty ok at best.  There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before and what’s there isn’t done exceptionally.  This is a bit frustrating because modern day stories about crimes on Native American reservations, particularly those of rape and murder, are something that really need to be told.  The laws are apparently so convoluted in terms of jurisdiction and authority that the crimes become very difficult to investigate properly and litigate thoroughly.

I applaud the film for taking up this topic full on and for shining a light on something that I’m sure most people have never thought about, including myself.  But unfortunately this isn’t a great film.  It’s too much of a by-the-numbers predictable mystery picture.  Taylor Sheridan wrote this (he also directed) and it’s not as good as either Sicario or Hell or High Water.  I guess it should come as no surprise that those aren’t the best either.  I’ll still keep giving Sheridan shots though.  Hopefully he’ll get better.  I mean hey, at least someone’s out there writing thrillers which we could certainly use more of.

But what I would really like to see is a movie (any kind of movie) involving Native Americans without a white lead or the intervention of white characters.  Those have to exist out there, right?  I goddamn hope they do.  Can anyone point me to a good one?

Spider-Man: Homecoming

I got so burned out on superhero movies a long time ago but the reviews for this Spidey were very encouraging so I wanted to see it.  Plus besides Batman Spider-Man is the only other superhero I really dig.

And man this was fun.  Just a lot of damn fun.  Surprisingly they went for pretty much a straight up comedy with some fairly well done superhero action thrown in.  From what I gather this is supposed to be the most faithful representation of Spider-Man done to date and even though I’ve only read maybe one comic book of his in my life this seemed accurate.  Somehow on a gut level it just felt like “oh yea right, this is how the character’s supposed to be”.

Everyone was cast well, especially Tom Holland (In the Heart of the Sea) in the lead, and the mix of comedy and huge spectacular action with characters flying around doing impossible shit was well balanced.  But most importantly this one has heart.  It didn’t feel like they’re simply churning out yet another Marvel movie because they have a quota to meet.  They really did a nice job.  Give this one a shot even if you think you can’t stomach another comic book picture.  You’re in for a treat.

Killing Zoe

Seedy underbelly urban crime thriller, fuckin’…a-alright?  Ok, that’s a bit harsh.  The thing is this one had been brewing in my mind almost since it came out in 1994 and I’m just getting to it now.  The bar was set high with Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino’s old buddy who co-wrote Pulp Fiction and True Romance, writing and directing his first feature.  It doesn’t have quite the finesse I was expecting.  Instead it feels like what it is, a movie frantically written in two weeks because Avary lied about having a script concerning a bank robbery when he didn’t.

The scenes are a little too disjointed where Avary seems to keep running into a brick wall and has to insert a new element into the story to get himself over the obstacle.  He probably didn’t map out the entire plot before starting to see how things would fit together and it shows.  Although it’s remarkable the film works as well as it does which is a testament to how talented Avary is as a filmmaker.

Putting the uneven storytelling aside there’s plenty of cool shit in here to sink your teeth into.  The idea of two pals who haven’t seen each other in a long time doing a boatload of drugs and robbing a bank is fantastic.  Eric Stoltz (Anaconda) does a nice job as the smooth calm safecracker new to Paris.  He looks very comfortable in the role and that confidence is impressive.  Jean-Hugues Anglade (Maximum Risk) as the mastermind behind the robbery is the star of the show though.  He doesn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone including himself.  Like he’ll impulsively pull Stoltz’s prostitute (Julie Delpy (The Three Musketeers (1993)) out of the shower and toss her out of the hotel room buck naked and then later shoot heroin in the middle of a club.  And of course he has no qualms about killing folks that get in his way.  A total maniac if there ever was one.

Now there’s the typical pop culture references and quirks you would expect like Captain America, Nosferatu, Billie Holiday and our motley crew having a penchant for Dixieland jazz, but it’s not overabundant like in a Tarantino picture.  There’s enough to give some personality but not so much that it becomes a defining trait.

So overall it’s a good first effort.  It would’ve been interesting to see what Avary would’ve come up with if he had continued directing more.  Anyway, you’ll probably like it.