GoldenEye

GoldenEye is still the best Bond movie by far (ok, I haven’t seen all of them but I feel very confident in that statement).  It relies less on gadgetry, the plot is fairly simple once you know what’s going on, Pierce Brosnan (Nomads) steps into the 007 role effortlessly and the action sequences are staged and shot better than normal for this series.

For example the car chase that takes place right after the credits is really exciting.  Initially it’s pretty fuckin’ weird because there’s no context to it.  This is where the number two villain is introduced (Famke Janssen (Deep Rising)) but we don’t know why her and Bond are racing each other on a highly dangerous curvy European mountain road.  James is cruising along and she simply pulls up out of the blue.  But the near misses, spin outs and obstacles thrown in their paths are all fun as hell so it wins you over quickly.  Plus it’s got a ridiculous but amazing fucking tune throughout the sequence.  Check this shit out.

You can tell the filmmakers were chomping at the bit to do some off the wall action and they definitely delivered.  There’s another car chase later in the movie but this time Bond uses a tank (!) to pursue the bad guy causing an unbelievable amount of destruction.  And there’s also the nuts opener where James drives a motorcycle off a cliff to catch up to a nose diving plane so he can get inside and fly away in it.  This might be the most impossible stunt to accept but it’s so outrageous I can’t blame these guys for including it.

The shift in tone from the previous Timothy Dalton installments is an appreciated change as well.  Those tried so hard to be so goddamn serious that they sucked all the amusement out.  That version of James Bond is bitter as fuck and angry as hell.  Sounds kinda cool on paper but it just doesn’t work making those films a bit of a slog to sit through.  GoldenEye lightens the characters up the perfect amount to where you actually enjoy spending time with them.  I even laughed out loud at two comic relief moments.

Despite the above, and I’ve said this before, I’m not a huge fan of the series.  Most of the films are too silly for me to get behind with a desperate dependence on gadgets as a tremendous crutch.  Plus I have a lot of issues with James himself.  He’s a smug misogynist womanizer who’s not all that good at his job.  Everyone knows who he is eliminating any meaningful subversion and he always resorts to brute force to solve his problems instead of you know, being a sneaky covert spy.  In short he’s an obnoxious asshole.  And not an entertaining asshole who you love to hate either.  Fuck this character.

But if you’re gonna see one James Bond pic this is it.

The last thing I’ll mention is there was a mini trend during the 90’s of using satellites as weapons.  Under Siege 2: Dark Territory had a satellite that fired a straight up laser beam to destroy shit but Escape from L.A. may have stolen the plot from GoldenEye.  Both use a satellite to deactivate all electronic equipment causing a different sort of destruction and each reference how implementing the weapon will turn back the clock to the stone age.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

Cutter's Way

Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges (Blown Away)) is driving home in the pouring rain at night when his car breaks down in an alley.  As Bone tries to get the engine to start another car pulls up behind him, a man gets out, dumps a body in the trash and drives off almost running over Bone.  The mysterious man didn’t see Bone at first because of the rain and it was dark out.  And Bone doesn’t notice the corpse for the same reasons and he was also busy with his car.  After that whole fiasco Bone decides to abandon his car and walk home.  The next morning the cops tell him what happened and lean on him because he’s their only witness.  The issue is he saw almost nothing.  Later Bone is hanging out at a local parade with his friend Alex Cutter (John Heard (the dad from Home Alone)) and Cutter’s wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn (The Vanishing)) when Bone thinks he spots the murderer, millionaire J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott (Death Wish, Beverly Hills Cop)).  Cutter then becomes obsessed with proving Cord did the deed and taking him down.

The feel of this movie is pretty unusual.  They leave a lot for the viewer to figure out on their own.  Like the relationship between the three leads isn’t spelled out and it took me a while to catch on that Cutter and Mo are husband and wife and Bone is their buddy who stays with them sometimes and he and Mo sorta have a thing for each other.  It seems complicated.

I don’t think we’re told how Bone and Cutter became friends in the first place either.  They’re a bit mismatched which gives their rapport some serious tension.  Bone is handsome, neatly dressed, sleeps round a ton and is more discrete while Cutter is a war vet missing an arm, a leg and an eye, is constantly scruffy, audacious and blurts out every thought in his head.  They see something in each other though and are almost like two halves that together make one full remarkable human.  In that sense they remind me of the killers from In Cold Blood.

All three like to booze a lot and that could be another uniting factor.  Misery loves company and they know they can drown out their personal demons in each other’s presence without being judged.  They can be their true selves with an unspoken understanding and acceptance.

These characters are already interesting with enough tragic drama between them but then this conspiracy theory gets thrown in and it goes off in a different dark direction.  We don’t know for sure that Cord perpetrated any crimes at all so to go down a rabbit hole where Cutter conducts his own investigation, uses blackmail and plots against this man is truly insane.  And it’s even weirder that Cutter takes on this cause when it’s his buddy who got unexpectedly swept up in a fucked up situation.  However, Bone doesn’t remain on the sidelines.  He doesn’t know what to believe so he keeps going back and forth on joining Cutter and rejecting his crazy bullshit.

The film takes you on a bizarre journey that flirts with film noir but doesn’t fully commit.  It rides the line just enough so you don’t know what’s real and what’s not.  Is Cord an evil person doing evil acts or is it coincidence or a total misunderstanding?  It’s all open to interpretation.

Everyone does a fantastic acting job here but the definite standout is John Heard as Cutter.  He’s like a pirate with his missing limbs, eyepatch, scraggly voice, mysterious ramblings and cocksure attitude.  Heard completely transforms into this character and had to internalize the rage this guy was carrying around with him for who knows how long.  He’s repulsive, bombastic, impulsive, charismatic, sad, sarcastic, venomous and damn intriguing.  It’s an incredible performance.

Newton Thornburg wrote the novel this was based on (called “Cutter and Bone”) and I wonder how faithful this adaptation is.  I might have to check that out one day.  He’s only had one other book turned into a picture, Beautiful Kate, which came out in 2009.

Ivan Passer (Silver Bears, Haunted Summer) directs and I haven’t seen anything else he’s done.  He presents the events very matter-of-fact without tipping his hand too much.  There isn’t a specific visual flair to the film but it’s all put together perfectly fine.  It’s the handling of the material that shows nice restraint and makes you feel kinda helpless.  Like these characters are already drifting aimlessly and then they dig a strange and scary hole for themselves.

This is a fascinating little picture that makes me think.  Pieces of it stick with me.  I honestly don’t know if I believe Cutter but at the same time I want him to be right.  He obviously needs that validation in his life and to a lesser extent so does Bone.  Someone really did kill a woman and someone’s gotta pay.  Cutter will make sure of that.

Thelma & Louise

It’s interesting when a movie blows up big enough to infiltrate pop culture for a bunch of years.  You’ll hear and see references to it everywhere so you’ll think this one’s gonna last forever.  But then five to ten years after the initial release it’s completely out of the public’s consciousness (until the sequel).  Speed and Avatar were like that.  Remember “pop quiz hot shot” and the Na’vi?  Thelma & Louise is in this category too.  If you weren’t around when it came out you have no idea how big it was at the time and how often that famous ending was mimicked and satirized.

Truth be told I never got around to it until now.  It had dogged me for decades that this picture about badass chicks doing badass shit kept getting bumped on my watch list and it would constantly go on and off streaming services.  Finally the stars aligned and I let it wash over me in a blissful moment of satisfaction.

Housewife Thelma (Gena Davis (The Fly)) and waitress Louise (Susan Sarandon (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)) decide to go on a weekend getaway to the mountains.  They never get the chance to do this because Thelma’s husband, Darryl (Christopher McDonald (Best of the Best 3)), is a self-absorbed possessive cheating asshole who won’t let her go anywhere (she skips town without telling him) and Louise is always working at the local diner.  They’re very giddy about the whole thing and can’t wait to let loose a bit.  Unfortunately when they make a pit stop for a few drinks at a bar a scumbag piece of shit takes advantage of a drunk Thelma and tries to rape her.  Louise forces him to back off at gunpoint and shoots him dead when he makes one disgusting remark too many.  Now the two of them are on the run and go from one awful situation to another as they make their way towards Mexico.

This entire thing hinges on the main characters.  Thelma is the happy go lucky child-like one who met her husband at fourteen and got married at eighteen.  The insinuation is she’s been sheltered most of her life and doesn’t have a lot of street smarts.  This contrasts with Louise who’s a bit more rough and tumble.  She isn’t married, works, smokes, doesn’t get fooled by the rapist’s charm when he first introduces himself and probably got raped herself in the past (it isn’t explicitly said).  They’re more or less opposites but you get the sense right away they’re really good friends even though it seems they haven’t known each other very long.  They get to learn about themselves and one another during the trip and their relationship develops into an unhealthy enabling codependency.  It’s didn’t have to be this way but their friendship becomes doomed as soon as Louise kills a dude and Thelma decides to stick by her side and not call the cops.  There’s no going back after that.

What’s weird though is the handling of the dark turn the characters take.  It happens too quick and too soon into the story.  There isn’t any buildup really which feels like a mistake.  And I think the escalation of the corrupt behavior and all consuming madness would’ve worked better if some scenes were rearranged.  Instead of the first incident being second degree murder they should’ve started with robbing the convenience store after all their cash is stolen, moved on to teaching a foul mouthed trucker a lesson by humiliating him and messing up his rig (blowing it up, even if it was an accident, is extreme) and then climaxing with the homicide of a rapist.  We don’t know enough about the characters to initially understand what’s behind the killing.  That’s why this event feels out of place at the start of the trip and I had a hard time getting on board with their plan to not only flee the scene of a crime and not tell the police but also escape to Mexico.

Spoiler for this paragraph.  That finale of Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff is the only way it could’ve ended so I’ll give full credit for making the right choice there.  They’re more free than they’ve ever been or ever will be in their lives and wouldn’t be able to tolerate anything less so suicide was an easy call to make.  Strangely the filmmakers must’ve thought it was too much of a downer so in an effort to lighten the scene as much as possible they fade to white as soon as the car plunges over the side of the rockface, an upbeat song plays and they cut to a montage of earlier scenes where the two of them are laughing and having a good time.  So they effectively removed most of the emotional weight the movie had been building up to that point.

But I wanna mention some positives.  As per usual with Ridley Scott (Black Rain) the picture looks great.  Adrian Biddle (Aliens, Judge Dredd, Event Horizon) does a fantastic job with framing, lighting and capturing the gorgeous American southwest landscape.  This is one of those where you can pause the film almost anywhere and have a beautiful shot to admire.

The casting is a huge part of the movie and Gena Davis and Susan Sarandon are excellent together.  You can tell they feed off each other’s excitement, sadness and anxiety.  Their personalities compliment and balance out nicely with Davis playing it naive and Sarandon being tougher at first.  But then there’s a shift where Davis becomes more take charge while Sarandon tries to keep up with the steep increase in immorality.  Even with my gripe above about the speed of these transitions Davis and Sarandon still successfully pull them off.

And while the entire supporting cast is very good (Harvey Keitel (Bad Lieutenant), Michael Madsen (Species II), Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life), Stephen Tobolowsky (Single White Female)) Christopher McDonald almost steals the show.  He’s such a doofus and a jerk and McDonald’s performance is so exaggerated you can’t help but love the guy.  I mean he’s a total slimeball who tries really hard to project strength but since he’s actually completely nutless it’s pretty damn funny to see him basically get his comeuppance in just about every scene he’s in.

Now I know I didn’t talk about feminism and how this film was a big deal for a lot of women but that’s because I’m out of my depth on that.  The only thing I can say is I don’t think we’d seen this type of female power duo before.  It was always a heterosexual couple going on a crime spree like in Bonnie and Clyde or Badlands.  And when it was a cunning group of women the circumstances were more innocent like dating guys only for their money in How to Marry a Millionaire or sticking it to your boss like in 9 to 5.  Thelma & Louise may have been a cathartic scream for many because it took the indecencies and crimes that have been done to women since the beginning of time and fought back against that terrible shit in an epic revenge fantasy.

I get why this movie was a massive hit.  However, the structure of the plot and the character development is off in my opinion.  Even with these issues it gets better the more I think about it.  Davis and Sarandon’s performances alone make this worth watching.

Best of the Best 4: Without Warning

We just keep getting further and further into weird ass territory in this series.  This time the cops think Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee (Silent Assassins)) is involved in a counterfeiting ring (Tobin Bell (Saws), Thure Riefenstein (12 Monkeys TV show), Jessica Collins (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Sven-Ole Thorsen (On Deadly Ground)) so he must go on the run while trying to clear his name and rescue his kidnapped daughter.

While this is a standard action movie plot it’s the second sequel to not showcase a kumite.  That’s fine but I can’t quite put my finger on why this particular story is hard to swallow.  Maybe it’s because Tommy is only a martial arts competitor and teacher and not a cop or anything like that so getting caught up in something as elaborate as a funny money operation feels out of place.

Anyway, by far the strangest decision made was to give Tommy a six year old daughter.  He was never married or had kids in the previous films and the closest he came to a girlfriend was the school teacher from part 3 so this new development throws any sort of continuity out the window.  A close friend could’ve been kidnapped instead and would’ve worked fine but I guess Phillip Rhee felt the daughter from the original script before it became a Best of the Best had to remain.

There’s also a very poor setup of making you think this hard boiled cop played by Ernie Hudson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Crow) is working for the villains.  The movie leans so hard into making you wanna hate this bastard with his insensitive remarks and flippant behavior that it’s obviously a ploy.  So naturally when a different mild mannered cop that Tommy is friendly with turns out to be on the take it comes as no surprise whatsoever.

The ending though is the stupidest part (spoiler for this paragraph).  Tommy races to the airfield to try to catch the plane that the bad guys are on and he’s carrying with him a bomb in a gym bag (sorry, too much to go into right now on how Tommy acquired a bomb).  He lifts himself up in the bucket of a fire engine and throws the bomb into the wheel compartment as the plane is taking off!  The plane explodes.  The end.  Now the movie has pulled some shit up to this point but I laughed out loud at this particular moment.  And what’s even crazier is they set up Tommy’s throwing accuracy earlier in the film by having him chuck paper towel into his kitchen trash bin.  He does the whole basketball announcer shtick too, you know “he’s only got three seconds left in the game, can he make it?!” etc.

This installment is probably on par with part 3 but at the same time it’s weirder.  Like Tommy gets in a scuffle with some henchmen in a bodega and the entire store gets wrecked and one of the bad guys gets shot in the face and everything.  His friend’s daughter also gets killed in the crossfire and it’s a heavy moment because this scene gets Tommy tangled up in the plot proper.  But Tommy goes home, bakes a cake for his daughter and goofs around with her as if nothing had happened.  He can certainly keep his emotions in check when he wants to.

Generally you know you’re not dealing with the smartest film when a lot of innocent people die in it.  A move like that is extremely tricky to pull off because it alienates the audience and makes the film seem careless and disrespectful.  But that’s one big thing they went for here by having the bad guys mow down whoever’s in front of them without consideration and it doesn’t work.

Another bland subtitle, another weak Best.  The first half of the series is good though with an undeniable work of genius in part II.  We’ll always have that at least.

Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back

In a small midwestern or southern town (we’re never told where specifically but it was filmed in Indiana and Ohio) there’s a group of white supremacists wreaking havoc.  They just murdered the local pastor and burned down his church.  They also hassle the other residents, recruit the aimless youth and generally make life miserable for everyone.

So how the hell does Tommy Lee figure into this?  He strolls into town to visit his sister, Karen (Anzu Lawson (lots of TV shit)), who also happens to be married to the sheriff (Christopher McDonald (Dutch, Happy Gilmore)).  The neo-Nazi assholes attack Karen and plan to overtake the entire township so now Tommy must stop them.

By the third film Phillip Rhee is the only original cast member left.  He also produced each one so he used his leverage to put himself in the director’s chair.  The results aren’t, shall we say, the best.  Number three is cheap looking and feeling.  This isn’t necessarily an automatic negative though and Rhee does what he can to squeeze the most out of what he has.  The action has enough of a mix with martial arts, a motorcycle chase and a shootout finale.  Rhee even manages to put himself in a clown costume for one fight scene with the red nose, large shoes and everything.  He also likes to throw his adversaries into objects like tables, bookcases and windows which adds value, impact and fun to the brawls.  The ending has a fair amount of explosions and puts forth a nice effort to make it exciting.  All appreciated.

However, there are definitely some problems.  The movie’s views on racism are sorta child-like.  The townsfolk are either hardcore racists or totally against racism without any shades of gray.  And the worst scene in the film is during a townhall where the local school teacher (Gina Gershon (she did this the same year as Showgirls)) gives an embarrassingly oversimplified speech about how racism is bad and racists don’t understand the true spirit of America.

Unsurprisingly the script was for a different movie until Phillip Rhee made it part of the Best of the Best franchise.  The only time when a character mentions something from a previous installment is when Tommy confesses to the aforementioned school teacher/love interest that he killed a man years ago (Brakus) which is why he quit teaching martial arts.

And this brings up an interesting development for Tommy.  In the first film he was afraid of his own abilities because he knew he could kill Dae Han if he let himself.  Then in part II he commands Brakus to stay down during their fight but of course the brute doesn’t listen so Tommy is forced to take his life (spoiler).  Now in Part 3 he still holds back on killing anyone for a while but by the third act he seems to have gotten over this because he murders a number of folks.

That final fight is bullshit too.  Tommy is a world champion martial artist but some asswipe neo-Nazi can go toe to toe with him?  I don’t think so.  And those other neo-Nazis rallied around the two of them would never let Tommy walk out of there alive.

So yea, the whole thing doesn’t really come together.  Apart from not being as good as its predecessors and taking on a generic subtitle they switched from roman numeral numbering to Arabic numbering and that’s just silly.  You had a good thing going Bests but you fucked it up.

Best of the Best II

Cocky loudmouth Travis from the first film (Chris Penn (To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar)) tries his luck at an underground fighting venue called The Coliseum.  It’s disguised as a dance club located in a Vegas casino and get this, Mr. Vegas himself Wayne Newton is the maniacal host who juices up the voracious patrons dressed in fancy suits while they gamble on the outcome!  The mighty behemoth Brakus (Ralf Moeller (Gladiator)) is the reigning champ who shows no mercy to his opponents.  He kills Travis in the ring but Alex’s son Walter (Edan Gross (Ren & Stimpy, Empty Nest)) witnesses this from the rafters (sorta long story) and tells his dad what happened.  Alex (Eric Roberts (The Pope of Greenwich Village)) and Tommy (Phillip Rhee (Kentucky Friend Movie)) want revenge but they also go on the run because Newton and Brakus want Walter dead.

What an awesome direction for the series to go in.  Instead of an official legal tournament we shift to an illegal kumite which is generally always the way you wanna go with these.  The Las Vegas setting is a great call too because the greed, shallowness and vanity of the villains completely suits the town.  C’mon, you know there’s some shit like that happening there right now.

Understandably only Travis, Alex and Tommy are brought back this time.  Sonny and Virgil were weaker characters from part 1 and weren’t very good fighters either.  Alex and Tommy were the ones that formed the tightest bond so to continue to see that friendship flourish is wonderful.  They all moved out to Vegas together and support each other and hang out at the Mexican buffet and it’s just so touching.

And I absolutely love that the bad guy from the previous film, Dae Han (Simon Rhee (Showdown in Little Tokyo, Lethal Weapon 4, The Substitute: Failure is Not an Option)), travels all the way from South Korea to attend Travis’ funeral and show reverence for a fallen comrade.  He even teams up with Alex at the end to help kick ass.  Dae Han fuckin’ rocks man.

Expanding the action beyond the ring is another stroke of genius.  Newton’s henchmen chase after Walter, Alex and Tommy so they hide out at Tommy’s grandmother’s place in the desert (side note: Tommy is part Native American?  Didn’t see that coming).  This gives them the chance to train with Tommy’s cousin James played by the incomparable Sonny Landham (Predator, 48 Hrs.).  He’s an ex competitive martial artist who stole from the family to fund his overseas expedition in search of greatness.  He got injured by fucking Brakus during that time (what!) which ended his career so now he’s an alcoholic.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when James wasted as a motherfucker in the afternoon eggs on Tommy to fight and gets two roundhouse kicks to the face to which he replies in his gravely ass voice “…pretty good, but you’re gonna have to do better than that boy”.  Every scene with James is some of the most entertaining shit in here.

The finale involves Tommy being forced to run through a gauntlet of challengers at The Coliseum in front an ecstatic mob to get to Brakus.  These fights are gripping because Tommy, Alex and Walter’s lives are on the line.  Each adversary gets tougher and weapons are introduced at one point.  The escalation is remarkable with the ultimate one on one, Tommy vs Brakus, being a nail biter.

No bullshit guys this second installment is a masterpiece.  Like Brakus is a total piece of crap but he actually has a bit of a moral code viewing guns as “unmanly” which gives him some dimension ok I really should stop.  There’s so much incredible shit.  It’s executed pretty perfectly and they seriously upped the ante in every single area.  It also has the rare distinction of being an R rated sequel to a PG-13 original.  Weird whenever that happens.  Anyway, if you haven’t checked this one out yet get right on that.  Best of the Best II truly is the best of The Best of the Bests.

Best of the Best

The US puts together a martial arts team to fight against the Koreans in South Korea for some sort of official title.  A few inner demons are wrestled with along the way and by the end they’re all sorted out.  It’s as straight forward as you can get.

There are a few quirky things about this picture though.  For starters I never understood why America and South Korea are the only two countries competing in this tournament.  It seems like the contest is this one time match up because we see the assembly of the teams.  It would be incredibly weird if other fighters got their respective countries to the final round but then were swapped out for completely different people.

Also, the main characters have this strange mix and match quality to them.  Alex (Eric Roberts (Runaway Train)) is from Oregon but works in a GM car plant, Sonny (David Agresta (never did anything else)) is from Detroit but his Italian heritage makes you think more of NYC, Travis (Chris Penn (Footloose)) is from Miami but a total cowboy with the hat, boots and accent, Virgil (John Dye (two episodes of Murder She Wrote)) is from Rhode Island but a Zen Buddhist more reminiscent of a San Franciscan and Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee (Furious)) is from California and is Korean American.  Ok that last one makes sense but the rest don’t add up.

Another thing is Travis is your token dickhead character who shoots his arrogant mouth off and makes obnoxious remarks including a bunch of racist Asian shit.  What I find odd about this is how can someone this proficient in martial arts have such little respect for Asian culture?  I mean he overcomes it in the end because the movie needs him to but why give him this specific trait?  He can be an asshole in other ways to provide some tension within the team but why all the Asian slurs?

I sorta like how Coach Couzo (James Earl Jones (Three Fugitives)) is handled however.  He’s a serious hard ass who pushes his guys to their limit and for a long while you think he’s simply a miserable prick.  But the reason he trains so relentlessly is because he blames himself for Tommy’s brother’s death in a tournament years ago.  He thinks he didn’t prepare his team enough which led to the worst possible outcome.  Piling on to this is the fact that the man who dealt the death blow, Dae Han (Phillip’s brother Simon Rhee (stunt man par excellence (Blade, Escape from LA, Dark Knight Rises, Birds of Prey))), is who Tommy will face this time around.  Layers, convenient layers, but layers.

What’s kinda funny about the movie is three of the five US fighters end up not doing all that well in the final match.  Alex and Tommy kick ass with Alex even finishing his bout with one arm in a sling!  But the rest of them clearly aren’t up to the task.

This is an ok film.  It’s a light kumite jaunt that’s fun enough but nothing to write home about.