Straight Time

This one follows the hard life of Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman (Mad City)) who’s newly released on parole after a six year stint.  He makes a real effort to do straight time and not get involved with dumb bullshit.  He finds a place to live, gets a legit job at a canning factory and even manages to snag a date with headhunter Jenny (Theresa Russell (Wild Things)).  It’s like a dream things are going so well.  But of course this doesn’t last.  When he reconnects with his old “bear hug” buddy Willy (Gary Busey (Drop Zone)) who likes to shoot heroin shit goes downhill fast.  Max doesn’t partake but the telltale sign of bent up matches are left behind for the parole officer (M. Emmet Walsh (Clean and Sober)) to find.  He throw’s Max’s ass right back in the can.  After a few days the parole officer lets him out because Max tests clean but presses hard for who was getting high.  Max flips out, escapes from the officer and goes on the run returning to a life of crime.

Hoffman is an actor I always enjoy (despite his less than stellar reputation off screen) because he brings so much intensity to his parts and this is a standout.  His stoicism and body language change before and after he gets busted the second time.  He goes from having a contented almost serene demeanor to shutting down and giving up on the world.  He’ll say he’s ok but inside he’s raging.  Hoffman puts on the layers and does a fantastic job.

Everyone else gives good performances as well.  Gary Busey is goofy but dials it back so he’s not bouncing off the goddamn walls.  M. Emmet Walsh is great at playing a bastard and in this one he’s the type that smiles while he’s screwing you.  Harry Dean Stanton (Fire Down Below) joins up with Max because he can’t stand the straight life anymore and Stanton is a lot of fun behaving like a kid in a candy store when he finally sees some action again.  Admittedly I’m not a huge fan of Theresa Russell who’s acting is wooden most of the time but she turns out a little more emotion than usual.  She also looks like she’s too young for the role even though she was twenty one at the time.  I found that to be distracting.

When Dembo looses it and grabs the steering wheel from the parole officer almost killing the two of them is when the movie kicks into a whole other gear.  Up until that point it’s been a heartbreaking tale of a man who made some poor choices for sure, but he’s also trapped in a system he can’t break free from.  He feels he’s left no other choice but to take control of his life despite that resulting in being hunted down by the cops for the rest of his days.  For him it’s better than being kicked around and treated like a piece of trash.

The last stretch of robberies are absolutely incredible sequences involving a bank job and a jewelry store being hit hard and fast.  Dembo and his partner are playing with fire when they stretch the self-imposed time limit to get in and get out.  They’re nail biters and exhilarating because you want to see these guys succeed.  We know their story so we’re on their side.  These crimes almost seem justified for a lifetime of abuse by cops, prison and society.  The issues are complex with no clear answers and criminal shit is all they know so how are they supposed to integrate into the outside world at the snap of a finger?

I get a lot of Heat vibes from this piece so I wasn’t surprised to discover Michael Mann wrote the initial screenplay.  However, other writers were eventually brought in and his name was dropped from the credits.  But the code of a con and the attitude Dembo takes on in the second half where he’d rather die than spend another second of his life in prison parallels Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro).  Stanton also reminds me of Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore) in that they get off on the juice of the score.  The tight and potent robbery scenes are another moment reminiscent in Heat where they basically combined the two ideas into one epic bank heist.

The movie is based on the book “No Beast So Fierce” written by ex-con Edward Bunker while still in prison.  It’s not an autobiography but most of the shit he writes about happened to him at some point.  Bunker’s personal experiences makes the story feel very authentic and tragic.  It gives the film a power that’s difficult to replicate without first hand knowledge.

Interestingly Bunker stuck around in the movie biz and went on to write Runaway Train and act in some big movies like The Running Man, Tango & Cash and Reservoir Dogs (which similarly involves a jewelry store heist, apparently Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of Straight Time).  He also has a small role in this picture as an old associate of Dembo’s turning him on to a poker game score.

It boggles my mind this film isn’t more well known.  I’ve never heard or read anyone talk about it.  Hell, I didn’t even know about the movie until like two months ago.  This thing is criminally underappreciated in my opinion.  It’s kind of one of the best urban crime dramas and character dramas I’ve ever seen.  You should really check it out next chance you get.

Mish Mash 23: Road Ragin' (Unhinged, Changing Lanes, Joy Ride, The Hitcher)

 Unhinged

A brand new road rager is loose on the streets and it goes by the bland name of Unhinged.  It’s about a psychopath named Tom Cooper (Russell Crowe (Virtuosity, The Nice Guys)) who terrorizes a woman (Caren Pistorius (Mortal Engines)) and her son (Gabriel Bateman (Anabelle, Child’s Play (2019))) because they honked at him at a light.  Tom was sitting there for a spell with a green so the honk, while long and therefore aggressive, wasn’t totally unjustified.  Anyway, Coop then starts to murder her friends and family while demanding she apologize for her actions.  The guy’s got a screw loose, as they say.

The main thing to know about the film is it relies on so many goddamn coincidences to unfold the way it does.  The victim’s car needs to be an old model with no security features, the protagonist explicitly states she turned off her passcode on her phone, she needs to have a tablet with her that has a data connection, Tom needs to have a spare flip phone on hand to place in the victim’s car and on and on.  This piling up takes away some of the fun of the concept.  In that sense the script feels like either it was written by someone who doesn’t quite understand modern technology (Carl Ellsworth (Red Eye, Disturbia)) or this thing has been laying around for a couple of decades and was hastily updated.

I have to point out Russell Crowe’s accent.   When he rolls down his window at first he puts on a hilariously thick southern twang.  I was getting very enthusiastic for the potential of the character.  But in a very bad move the drawl is dropped after this scene.  It’s middle of the road American accent after that.

Setting that bit of oddness aside a combination of how Cooper was written and Crowe’s performance takes the movie into a darker place than I think the filmmakers intended.  The character is a vicious out of control murderer who isn’t enjoyable to hang out with.  And Crowe plays him damn mean.  Beside one scene where he pretends to be normal before bashing a guy’s face in he doesn’t joke around or take any sort of pleasure in his torment.  And the material isn’t nearly well written enough to be taken more seriously.  By the end it’s a pretty depressing affair with Crowe pummeling mother and son and it’s just nasty.

I have to admit Unhinged is a fitting title for the harsh messy picture it is.  Unfortunately it’s also kinda ungood.

Changing Lanes

Man, I remember the trailer for this movie like it was yesterday.  Two supercharged individuals get into a car accident, it doesn’t get resolved because they’re both in a hurry and then somehow all of a sudden each of their lives goes down the drain.  Now some of that does happen but those marketing folks pulled a switcheroo on us.  This is way more of a drama than a high concept thriller.

Basically the story’s split between Ben Affleck (TheVoyage of the Mimi, Paycheck) who plays a slimy Wall Street lawyer and Samuel L. Jackson (xXx, xXx: State of the Union) as a insurance salesman who’s also a recovering alcoholic.  Affleck has the more exciting story involving high stakes fraud, courtroom shenanigans and surreptitiously digging up info on his shady bosses.  But Jackson is definitely the more interesting character who struggles to not take a drink while dealing with rage issues.  Plus his wife is divorcing him and moving with their kids across the country to Oregon.  On top of all this he’s got Affleck up his ass demanding he return a very important file that was left behind at the accident.

Out of everyone though Kim Staunton (Heat) who plays Jackson’s wife probably gives the best performance.  She’s angry, frustrated, worried and fed the fuck up with her husband’s bullshit.  So much emotion is carried through so well.  I could’ve had more of her in the movie but at the same time the relatively small amount of screen time makes her scenes stand out.

The only other thing I want to mention is the editing is whacked out in a few spots, most notably the accident that kick starts the whole plot.  I have no idea what the fuck happened.  I think Affleck was trying to change lanes at the last second before an exit and hit Jackson but I can’t be sure.

Changing Lanes isn’t terrible guys.  I guess I wish they picked one character’s story to tell instead of cramming two half movies together.  But as it is there are good messages on class and morals and looking within to try to better oneself (the title has multiple meanings).

Joy Ride

This one thinks it’s some smartass high level thriller but it’s definitely not that clever.  Initially the base idea of a trucker terrorizing a smaller car has an updated Duel vibe.  They flesh out the idea by giving the villain a name, voice, personality and motive.  They also expand the story beyond the road and car related gags.  The first half or so is passable and builds a decent amount of tension but then the last stretch of the movie gets pretty stupid.  What doesn’t help is there’s way too long of a break in the action before the third act deflating any edge that was gained.

I think one of the main things the filmmakers were banking on is the feeling that bad guy Rusty Nail (voiced by Ted Levine (Birth) but psychically on screen by Matthew Kimbrough (The Limey)) is omnipresent so you can never rest easy.  However, it comes off more like he magically appears whenever you need him.  So he’s more of a slasher villain but in a negative way.

I dunno, I have so many issues with the script which was written by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek Into Darkness) and Clay Tarver (Silicon Valley).  Weak characters, pacing problems, the nonsensical reason a CB radio is installed in the protagonist’s car, there are several times when the film seems like it’s over but keeps going and etc.  As the picture drags on the less sense it makes.

Don’t bother with this one.  It’s no joy ride.

 

The Hitcher

Out of the four pictures on this list The Hitcher is the best by far.  In fact this last viewing blew me away.  There are so many elements to love and the execution is impeccable.

To briefly sum up you have a teen named Jim (C. Thomas Howell (Red Dawn)) who’s hired to drive a car across the country but while cruising through Texas he keeps falling asleep at the wheel.  So to help stay awake he decides to pick up a hitchhiker.  His name’s John Ryder (Rutger Hauer (Nighthawks)) and he’s pure evil.  Almost immediately the guy reveals he’s a murderer and toys with Jim all throughout the movie by either trying to run him off the road or killing cops who get in his way so he can keep the game going.

One of the coolest aspects is the whole thing feels like a dream.  And you could interpret this as literal when Jim nods off towards the beginning causing him to nearly smash into a semi.  But of course I like to think that all this is really happening.  The story moves very fast and is constantly changing with Jim encountering Ryder, escaping from him, coming across his handy work at an abandoned car later on, surviving a gas station explosion and finding a severed finger in his French fries all within the first thirty mins!  So much happens.  Every five minutes we’re in some new insane situation.

I could go on and on about the incredible performances, excellent cinematography (John Seale (Mad Max: Fury Road)) and crazy fucking script (Eric Red (Near Dark, Bad Moon)) but it’s better to experience it yourself.  Suspension of disbelief is relatively high but the tradeoff is badass scene after badass scene.  The use of slow mo, the lack of people inhabiting this world, the delight Ryder gets out of the chaos all contribute to the fever dream.  It’s part thriller, action movie, horror movie, Hitchcockian high concept, it’s fucking relentlessness.  You gotta check this one out.

But please seriously, don’t ever pick up hitchers.  It’s sooooo dangerous.