Die Lamer.

John McClane against terrorists at Dulles International in Washington DC. DIE HARD at an airport! That was the pitch. It sounded better on paper.

In DIE HARD 2, Bruce Willis returns in High Smug as New York cop John McClane, in Washington to meet his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) flying in. Why? Who cares? Writers Steven E. de Souza (DIE HARD) and Doug Richardson (his first feature, he would go on to BAD BOYS) seem to just throw cliché after cliché into this stunt-action-boy’s-movie and hope that director Renny Harlin keeps the shooting and explosions loud enough for us not to notice.

A terrorist leader, General Esperanza (Franco Nero), is landing at Dulles under heavy guard, to be transferred to American authorities. Esperanza’s military minions, led by Colonel Stuart (William Sadler in High Buff), take over the airport’s computer control system remotely to demand that Esperanza be handed over to them instead of authorities, also demanding a jumbo jet for their escape. While the airport authorities (led by Fred Thompson and his harried brow) fumfah over what to do, McClane is busy crawling through basements and elevators again throwing a spanner in the terrorists’ works.

The filmmakers are once again trying to isolate McClane and force him to be a lone unwilling hero, and we can understand he has to get to that place for the story to be compelling, however some of the plot points and reactions of the characters around McClane are idiotic. The lackluster directing and editing doesn’t help. Movie’s first scene loses our empathy as a beat cop tows McClane’s car, even though McClane identifies himself as a cop. What kind of cop does that to another cop? Later, there’s gunfire exchanged, McClane identifying specialized German guns on the bad guys, and again the cops (led by none other than Dennis Franz) refuse to shut down the area and investigate. And people wonder how 9-11 happened. (By the way, one-note Dennis Franz as an airport cop? All I can think of is Will Sasso’s impression on MAD TV.)

Silliness continues: McClane fights off bad guys in the conveyor belt room. He finds himself without a weapon – suddenly a golf bag goes by on the conveyor, complete with golf clubs all loosely hanging out of it. (Yeah, that’s exactly how people pack their golf clubs on planes, especially when they want John McClane to birdie a bad guy.) Later, a guy is running from McClane. McClane looks around and sees – a group of bicycles (none of them locked or packed or tagged in any way), one of which he steals to pursue the bad guy. I will stake my little cucumber booties there is nothing so contrived in the novel that inspired this story (Walter Wager’s 58 Minutes, 1987).

The terrorists force a plane to crash by recalibrating the ground level, so the pilots think the ground is 200 feet below where it really is. And not one fire truck or ambulance thinks to drive out onto the landing strip to signal the plane? Only McClane is out there like a battered lamb waving a burning torch. Yeah, we know he needs to be painted as the hero, but does everyone else need to be painted as dumbasses?!

McClane’s wife (Bonnie Bedelia) is on one of the circling planes – stakes up! Reporter from DIE HARD (William Atherton) also on that plane – plot convenience plus comic relief.

When McClane starts talking to himself, reminding us of DIE HARD, it’s pretty much over – and it’s only the second act: “I can’t believe this: another basement, another elevator; how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” It’s so unnatural and inauthentic, I expected someone to answer him from offscreen: “The box office, of course.”

Art Evans plays Barnes, a control tower supervisor who over-enunciates and over-emotes until even Fred Thompson tells him to dial it down to Yosemite Sam. Look carefully for Robert Patrick (the T-1000 from TERMINATOR 2, 1992) and John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET 1996), both in one-liner terrorist roles. Sheila McCarthy  plays the annoying reporter who redefines the word vapid. Sergeant Al (Reginald VelJohnson), the cop on the ground at Nakatomi Tower, makes a cameo specifically to raise the level of smug. John Amos is a SWAT guy who brings the GOOD TIMES.

In this movie, we see the first intimations of McClane’s distrust of technology, as he can’t even understand a fax machine; a distaste that will be highlighted in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007).

Shooting, explosions, a snowmobile chase, fisticuffs on the wing of a plane, and the Tom Cruise Stunt Award goes to the scene where McClane ejects out of a cockpit just ahead of all the exploding grenades in there (which took so long to explode he could have actually thrown them back out of the cockpit… but who’s paying attention by now anyway?…) At least they kept the R-Rating. Yippie ki-yay, motherfucker!

END

The SYSTEM is the conspiracy!

We’re gonna put the SYSTEM on trial!
— Jim Carrey, THE CABLE GUY.

If you were wondering why director Robert Redford would re-litigate Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination on film (how many times can they sink the Titanic, right?), then defer to Redford’s rationale: “It’s a story that no one knows about, connected to a story that everybody knows about.”

You mean Lincoln wasn’t assassinated by Nicolas Cage’s ancestors?

THE CONSPIRATOR recounts the tale of Mary Surrat (Robin Wright), the lone female amongst a cadre of men, accused of conspiring in President Lincoln’s assassination. The government wants a scapegoat, the public wants a hanging, and the slanted military tribunal declares her guilty, the “trial” just a formality. Only a young, idealistic lawyer (James McAvoy) clings to the American constitution to try her fairly, against the machinations of the lawless mob (aka, the court itself, made up of – you guessed it – angry white guys; did we expect anything more from a gaggle of Republicans?).

Masterful director Redford (with writers James Solomon and Gregory Bernstein) actually pulls together a multitude of post-assassination details that make THE CONSPIRATOR a compelling courtroom drama. It starts with visualizing how soldiers must have slogged through packed, panicked streets, carrying Lincoln’s body immediately after being shot in the Ford Theater by John Wilkes Booth; details like the conspirators initially wanting to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom; details like the politics behind Mary Surrat being held with no evidence and slated for hanging, overlorded by a sadistic Secretary of State, Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline, unrecognizable in makeup and manner) who shared the same swinish ancestral blood as Dick Cheney.

McAvoy brings his big, honest, pretty pretty eyes as Fred Aiken, an ex-soldier who is outraged that the Constitution he has fought to uphold is being so prejudicially compromised by the very courts that should be adhering to it, telling them that this case – where minds are made unclear due to public opinion – should be the exact instance where constitutional procedure should be upheld, rather than discarded. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Or Dick Cheney. The prosecuting attorney (Danny Huston) tells him later, almost as an excuse for the court’s petulant boneheadedness, “In times of war, the law falls silent.”

And that’s why THE CONSPIRATOR resonates through the ages. This film has exposed a recurring theme in American judicial history: the courts decide only what the people with the most political power want. Like the Nuremburg trials, like the Rodney King beating trials, like the Bush administration kidnapping and torturing whomever they wanted, like the Obama administration letting torturers go unpunished…

Kevin Kline’s Stanton is the political powerdog here, single-minded on revenge for Lincoln, not justice. (Kline asked Redford about Stanton, “He’s a pretty heavy guy. Are we talking Cheney?” Hah! The former VP has become a trope for unreasoning sadistic assholes!) It makes us think about the architect of the Kennedy post-assassination meme: someone in political power deemed there would be a single scapegoat to represent the conspiracy behind that presidential shooting. This movie comes 150 years after Lincoln’s death, able to declare previously little-known facts without vilification, retribution or political upheaval. Will it take another century before the facts behind Kennedy’s assassination are revealed? Another century after that for the facts behind “9-11”?

All history is gossip.
— Clare Booth Luce, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1953.

Aiken, like the American population at the time, comes into the case believing the furious narrative that Mary Surrat is as guilty as all the other conspirators who roomed at her boarding house (which included Booth and her son John, the only two suspects who escaped being rounded up). It becomes apparent to Aiken that there are more nuances to this case than meets the eye (and that the blinkered military tribunal would rather pay off witnesses to spout indictments, than dig for the truth), and he is outraged to his pretty-eyed soul that the men representing justice are more fanatical, bloodthirsty and conspiratorial than the conspirators they are sending up the river; subverting justice in order to enact what they alone deemed justice.

Evan Rachel Wood is Mary’s daughter, Colm Meaney is the blinkered judge, and Justin Long is improbably cast as a soldier friend of Aiken, faking a British accent almost as abominable as Don Cheadle’s in OCEAN’S ELEVEN.

Mary Surrat was the first woman in history to be hung. Not counting Chaz Bono.

Fred Aiken would leave his law practice and become the first city editor of the newly-formed Washington Post. Trace a direct line to Woodward and Bernstein taking down Nixon. Fine pedigree.

Redford succeeds in telling us something new about something old. Nicolas Cage wept.

END

Going Greek: it only hurts if you’re sober.

Drugs, bitches, rock stars, alcohol poisoning – geez! GET HIM TO THE GREEK is like one of my regular Tuesdays.

In this Judd Apatow-produced road movie, Aaron Green (Jonah Hill, looking like a grounded zeppelin) has three days to get British rock legend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, intensity of a charged defibrillator) from England to Los Angeles, for a 10th anniversary concert at the Greek Theater.

Sean Combs (or whatever his fad name is now: P-Diddy, Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy, Poffy, et al.) brings the pain as the record executive and self-proclaimed “mindfucking expert” Sergio, who orders Green to escort Aldous to the Greek, and then turns up mid-journey to stroke the furry walls with Green when Aldous slips him a Jeffrey.

You don’t wanna know.

Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, GET HIM TO THE GREEK is a delicious slice of rock and roll madness and simultaneously a vacation from the thinking part of your brain. The hedonism and gauche antics of Aldous may be drawn from rock star mythos, but the simplistic idea of a concert at the Greek Theater being staged a few days from its inception is patently brainless.

Yet that is the ticking clock: get the rock star from England to America in three days for a gig which we just brainstormed last week; no need to call agents, licensing companies, production personnel or band members; no need for rehearsals, soundchecks, hiring gear; no need for contracts, negotiations, safety regulations; no need to even call the Greek Theater to see if they’re booked – just plan the concert and everything magically falls into place. In this movie world, the hardest part about putting on a concert is having the artist actually appear, whereas in the real world, just negotiating the blue M&Ms on the rider is a three-week blood-letting ordeal.

Party animal Poffy

Deliberately British Russell Brand (known to American audiences since FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, 2008, and his devilish standup special RUSSELL BRAND IN NEW YORK CITY, 2009) is fierce, a pacing animal, twitching and gyrating and lip-licking in low-slung trousers; Jonah Hill was the charging beast when he was let loose in SUPERBAD – here Brand pummels him with salacious energy; it’s the exact relationship Aldous shares with Aaron Green – slipping him mickeys, loose women, injecting him with adrenaline, and eventually convincing Green to patch up his shaky relationship with his girl (Elisabeth Moss, MAD MEN) by having a threesome with them.

Brand’s performance reminds me of a quote from The New Yorker Apr 2007, Sasha Frere-Jones writing about Prince: “When he simply cocked his head and smiled, it seemed like an act of public lewdness.”

We are witnessing the launch of a superstar.

Like every Apatow piece, GREEK takes strange dark turns and creates sweet captured moments that seem all the more amazing for their randomness. After the banal, laugh-out-loud scene of Green shoving heroin up his bumhole to smuggle it onto a plane for Aldous, there is sudden silence in the audience when Aldous cusses out Green for destroying the heroin, demeaning Green for not understanding addiction and yet demeaning himself for being a slave to it. Scenes like this keep Apatow miles above the usual fare of lowbrow comedies that are his closest rivals, yet nowhere near him.

Though it’s done in the spirit of irresponsibility, Aldous takes a detour to visit his dad (Colm Meaney), a musician in Vegas, and through their eternal bickering, there is a moment where we sneak up on them sharing a song together – and then get right back to bickering. Again – Judd Apatow, you maniac genius!

There are the formulaic moments, when we realize Aldous’s arc involves reconciling with his girlfriend (Rose Byrne) who is sleeping with Lars Ulrich (playing himself), and that he necessarily must get off the drugs. Only by pleasing the craven hypocritical witchfynders who call themselves the MPAA will the film gain distribution; the beige activists at the Motion Picture Association of America literally blackmailing mediocrity into each and every American film release.

Creative direction, split-screening establishing shots, a thousand one-liners that you will miss from laughing so hard in the frenetic middle act with Diddy attacking everyone while stroking the furry walls. And whenever T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy is launched onto a soundtrack, it takes any movie to another level.

Apatow has maintained GET HIM TO THE GREEK is anti-drug and anti-excess – but the message is lost somewhat when the coolest cats in the movie are having this much corrosive fun roaring, rogering, gorging and puking while on drugs, drink and dames. The message to some might just be: We should all be so lucky to try a little excess sometime.

Just drop by my place any given Tuesday.

END

…and Justice for none.

Just as every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints.
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer / ‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint…
— “Sympathy For The Devil,” The Rolling Stones.

Handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser, I see a poster for LAW ABIDING CITIZEN and overhear the officer in the driver seat comment to his partner, “Seen that movie? Awesome.”

Law Abiding Cukizen

Of course he’d think it was awesome. We all know that cops are bottom-rungers, trained watchdogs, the lowest cog apprehenders of the lowest cogs. They only know enough about “The Law” to apprehend without discernment. And they know nothing about “Justice.” Now I could’ve tried to dissuade this bacon burger of his ignorant opinion, but a) I was busy exercising my right to remain silent, and b) he would not possess the mental capacity to comprehend me; which might have led to c) a nightstick to the throat.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is about a vigilante, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), who takes revenge on the men who murdered his wife and child. Clyde is apprehended by the police (see? “apprehend without discernment”) and from his jail cell he terrorizes lazy, despicable attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) to teach him a lesson. Nick let the murderers walk on a plea bargain, instead of taking it to trial and risking losing a case.

CITIZEN starts as a very satisfactory, righteous vigilante story and an indictment against the criminal “justice” system, and turns into a one-dimensional vendetta that involves Clyde blowing stuff up, Hollywood style.

The movie’s first half is a rollout of counterintuitive surprises: Clyde carving up his wife’s murderer and then letting himself be taken in – naked, mind you, ladies! (that’s some Sparta-licious booty!); Clyde citing an obscure case number at his hearing and the judge allowing him to walk – then chiding the judge for almost letting a suspected murderer go free and being taken into custody for contempt!; Clyde blackmailing Nick into getting him a Duxiana mattress and a steak dinner in jail…

When Clyde kills his cellmate unemotionally and lies back waiting for the warden peacefully, we realize something is askew – it’s a cool scene, but Clyde is starting to look like Hannibal Lecter, rather than a man bent on righteous revenge for his wife. It astounds me how writer Kurt Wimmer and director F. Gary Gray lost the movie’s message so inelegantly.

At their wits’ end on how Clyde is besting them from his solitary jail cell, Nick wants to break into one of Clyde’s properties to try to discover his secret. A detective asks, “What about his civil rights?” Nick replies, “Fuck his civil rights!” So lemme get this straight: after being lazy enough to let a murderer walk, thereby abrogating his oath on seeking justice and indirectly violating Clyde’s civil rights to a fair trial against his family’s murderers, now Nick decides to proactively violate Clyde’s civil rights even further – and vengefully proclaims it! Nice job, Nick, you “law-abiding citizen,” you.

Is it any wonder cops revel in this movie that offhandedly regards everyday citizens as third-class peons with no rights?

To stop Clyde blowing stuff up and teaching him lessons, Nick decides to go vigilante and blow up Clyde, Hollywood style. Which means he learned nothing from Clyde. Wasn’t Nick the one who whined to Clyde that he shouldn’t be taking the law into his own hands and being all vigilante? All forgotten in the final STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID act. Further, Nick had no proof that Clyde was perpetrating all the vengeful acts from his jail cell – you might “know” a person has committed crimes but before you blow them up, shouldn’t you take them to trial first, or at least read them their rights?

But that cop said this movie was “awesome.” Getting an idea of the shallow mindset of uniformed flatfoots?

It gets tiresome when we can figure the “winner” of the movie by figuring the biggest paycheck. Butler may have carved his name into the A-List with 300, but Foxx (RAY, DREAMGIRLS, THE SOLOIST) is the money here.

Clyde states unequivocally, “Everyone must be held accountable for their actions,” yet Nick is never brought to justice himself when he goes vigilante without evidence. I’ve said it before: Vigilantism is as malformed and unjust as The Law that it thumbs its nose at. Two sides of the same confused coin. This movie chooses to ignore any further consequences of vigilantism or the law or justice after the moneyboy gets his way.

In the DVD Commentary, the filmmakers say Nick Rice is interested in Justice as a concept – but they’ve got it wrong. He’s interested in The Law as a Job. And even then, he is a first-rate slouch at his job. Clyde laments he is a law abiding citizen, thus the law should deliver him justice. So we take it for granted the title pertains to him. But the unrealized irony in this movie is that detective Nick Rice is the LAW ABIDING CITIZEN – the one who suckles at the black teat of The Law for his advancement – and Clyde Shelton is the Justice-Seeking Citizen.

So officer, explain the Justice of why I’m shackled in the back of this police cruiser? Shit, look who I’m asking…

END

Just Another Con.

Nice mullet, Nic!

His pooch hairdo effectively takes attention away from his massively-developed arms and Kirk-body-oiled man-chest.

A prisoner plane, the CON AIR of the title, transporting the biggest bunch of cliched criminals this side of Blockbuster Screenwriting 101, is overrun by said archetypes, led by an exceptionally-maladjusted Malkovich. Elvis comes to the rescue in the form of morose Nicolas Cage (one of the “good” convicts – no rape, murder or listening to Hansen music – therefore the anti-hero), who eventually commandeers the craft and lands it ostentatiously on the Vegas strip amidst traffic.

Written by Scott Rosenberg (with that Blockbuster Screenwriting Guide on his lap): the twisted mastermind (John Malkovich), the quiet serial killer (Steve Buscemi), the Badd Mexx (Danny Trejo), the black guy (Ving Rhames), the gigantor redneck (M.C. Gainey), the gopher (Dave Chappelle), the sick con who is automatically regarded as “wrongfully jailed” simply because he’s sick and a friend of the Anti-Hero (Mykelti Washington), even the obligatory fruity gay guy). Simon West directs with the Michael Bay Handbook on his lap.

The great John Cusack is completely wasted as a Marshall pursuing the hijacked plane and bland Monica Potter has outdone herself – in a career of vapid, unconvincing roles, this is surely the best and blandest in her reel, as Cage’s wife, awaiting him in desperate ambivalence with a daughter who looks like she was cast five minutes before cameras rolled.

Everyone pretends to be really Hard (even the winsome Dave Chappelle!) and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of pretty orange explosions and guys diving in slow motion while shooting big guns, but ultimately this movie is just another excuse to land Nicolas Cage in Las Vegas.

So bad I accidentally grew a mullet.

END