K is for… Killer Elite
Killer Elite, directed by Gary McKendry, is different from the other files I’ve reviewed in that it is based on a true story, specifically the book The Feather Men by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Surely the other films I’ve looked at—minus G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Face/Off—have factual elements or could conceivably occur in the real world, but Killer Elite is based on true events. Well, “true events” that the parties in question deny and no one knows what actually happened, so the story is basically fiction, anyway.
That’s fine with me, because action films based solely on true events might not be as entertaining as ones where Castor Troy and John Matrix exist.
Anyway, Killer Elite stars Jason Statham as Danny, an ex-British special ops guy, who spends the movie doing a mercenary job to free his long time mentor Hunter, played by Robert De Niro. The film opens in 1980 with the two of them on an op, killing their target with the help of a couple other members of their crew, Meier (Aden Young) and Davies (Dominic Purcell). Danny killed the target in front of his son, and got badly wounded himself, and immediately says he’s done with that line of work. Cut to a year or so later, and Danny receives in the mail a picture of Hunter being held hostage. He treks from Australia to Oman, and learns that Hunter is being held captive by Sheik Amr (Rodney Afif). Amr’s sons, minus Bakhait (Firass Dirani), were all killed by British special forces—SAS—soldiers. Hunter had agreed to take on the job of killing the soldiers in retaliation but later refused, and Danny has to complete the job in order to free Hunter. He’d still get the six million dollars initially offered to Hunter.
Danny rounds up Meier and Davies again, and they help him narrow down targets with the help of Agent (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the one who assigned them jobs in the first place. Experts that they are, the job should be a fairly easy one once the targets are identified, but on their tail is former SAS agent Spike (Clive Owen). The Feathermen, an ex-SAS member secret society, has him tracking Danny’s group after Davies is recognized as asking too many questions about the battle where Amr’s sons were killed. Also making the job difficult is that Danny must get the men to confess on tape to killing the sons, and also the deaths must look like accidents.
The first target, Harris (Lachy Hulme), is killed easily enough by making it look like he fell in the shower, though Danny’s group is spied on and thus Spike knows what they all look like. The second target, Cregg (Grant Bowler), is killed on an SAS training march, and his death is made to look like hypothermia. The final target, McCann (Daniel Roberts), is killed in what appears to be a vehicle accident but is actually Meier controlling a truck that forces McCann to crash into it. Meier also dies tragically on this final leg of the mission due to friendly (inexperienced) fire of his new protégé Jake (Michael Dorman). Davies also soon dies as he’s chased by Spike’s men into traffic and is hit by a truck.
Seemingly the job is done, but it turns out Harris wasn’t actually guilty of killing the sheik’s son. Ranulph Fiennes (Dion Mills) was another soldier in the battle, and he has written a book about his experiences, including killing Amr’s son. Danny is forced into action again when his girlfriend Anne (Yvonne Strahovski) is threatened. He works with Jake to fake an assault on Spike and other agents, and pretends to kill Fiennes in order to save Anne’s life. Anne, meanwhile, is in Paris being watched over by Hunter, after giving Danny grief over not knowing anything about him and his past.
Spike takes Danny hostage but is in turn assaulted by a British government agent who explains the events of the sheik’s son’s deaths were all a play to control the sheik’s oil reserves. Spike winds up killing the agent and Danny escapes. He and Hunter return to Oman to show Amr their photos and get their money, but Spike gets there first. He explains the pictures of Fiennes are fake and kills the sheik, though since he’s obviously on his deathbed it’s a token act. Bakhait doesn’t care at all and gives Spike the money put aside for Danny.
After a chase through the streets, with Danny and Hunter chasing the sheik’s men that are chasing Spike, Spike, Danny, and Hunter wind up in the desert. Hunter takes some of the money and he and Danny leave Spike.
Cue the last scene being Danny meeting up with Anne so they can start their life together.
The film is entertaining and doesn’t spin into strangeness the way it might if it weren’t based on a true story. It seemed a little long but I seem to say that about every film I’ve reviewed save Commando, which I think everyone can agree can be another fifteen or twenty minutes longer to give Arnold more time to blow up more stuff.
There are a number of interesting things about the movie, so let’s get into the criteria.
A is for… Accents
I started to keep track of accents before I realized every single person in the movie has a non-American accent except for Robert De Niro, but considering his New York accent he can be described as having an accent as well.
Everyone has an accent because the movie takes place in a slew of foreign countries: Mexico, Australia, Oman, England, and France.
B is for… Bad Guys
Killer Elite is one of those films where either everyone is the bad guy, or no one is. Danny and Hunter are the protagonists and the audience roots for them, but they are assassins who by definition kill people. Amr is a villain for making Danny kill people, but he’s only avenging the deaths of his sons. Spike is the antagonist getting in Danny’s way, but he’s only operating for the Feathermen, who are only trying to keep their SAS members alive. By the very nature of them being a secret society they seem to be morally ambiguous and are prepared to make Spike take the fall should anything go awry, and describe themselves as businessmen and bankers, and get other people to do their dirty work. Spike is described as having no job and keeping odd hours, which makes him suspicious but not necessarily a bad guy. But then throw in Agent and the British government, who orchestrate the whole thing from the beginning regarding Amr’s sons, so “government” is the evil force even though outside of one agent and the slates at the beginning of the film, it’s not mentioned.
C is for… Chases
Danny’s group spots the photographer taking pictures of them in the desert and chase him into and then through a series of underground tunnels. He’s able to get away by unleashing a swarm of some kind of large insect, which distracts Danny’s men.
Spike recognizes Danny from the photographer’s pictures of Davies and chases him as Danny leaves the hospital. The chase looks almost slow motion in cars from the ‘70s on narrow streets. Danny guides Spike back to the hospital and slips inside to hide. Spike sees his footprint in a recently washed floor and is able to follow him. They wind up fighting in what looks like an operating room, and Danny ends the fight by catching the leg Spike tries to kick him with, and punching him in the groin.
After McCann’s death, Meier and Jake are chased by McCann’s minder. They wind up at a storage yard of some sort and before Davies can get there Jake shoots the minder in the back of the head, somehow not realizing the bullet would travel through him and into Meier, who was standing right in front of him.
Some of the Feathermen find Davies in a motel room with a prostitute and he runs away. Unfortunately he runs into the middle of the road and his hit by a truck. Spike is mad about that because now he can’t get information from him.
After Danny pretends to kill Fiennes, he runs and Spike chases him through the building, across the roof, back down again, and it’s a really entertaining suspenseful chase.
The second to last sequence in the film is Amr’s men chasing Spike and Hunter and Danny chasing them. Hunter is able to break it up by slamming his car into theirs, and then he and Danny go after Spike.
D is for… Damsels
Anne Frazer is the least engaging type of action film damsels by being not only a target for the bad guys, and harping on the hero for his sketchy past and lack of proper attention to her, but also serving no useful purpose at all aside from those two things. She could be sliced out the film entirely and it would make no difference. Which is sad considering how much I adored the actress on Chuck, and know she’s much better than her role in Killer Elite. Yes, she’s beautiful, but she can also be so much more. Ironically her accent sounds fake, but the actress is actually from Australia.
The backstory between them is that they knew each other as children, and she lives nearby where Danny is fixing up a house, so he must have returned to his home or somewhere he knew very well. She’s another incentive for Danny to quit being an assassin, as if killing people and getting shot weren’t enough. The more she knows about him the more she realizes she doesn’t know, and she even drops on him, “You go away and I realize I know nothing about you.” He’s trying to do one last job to save his friend and later her, and she gives him nothing but grief. Understandably, what with her becoming a target and all, but still.
The only other woman in the film with memorable screen time (aside from the prostitute and Harris’s girlfriend) is a woman who sees Danny fall through scaffolding and catch himself right outside her window. He has his gun, and she looks at it and him and he tells her not to “do it.” The film cuts back and forth between them and Spike, and when Danny turns his head away from her is when she chokes out an awful scream that alerts Spike to Danny’s presence.
E is for… Explosions
The film is more thinky than explodey, so there aren’t many explosions.
Meier explodes the sedan in the opening scene so Danny can go in and make his kill.
A trap is set for Danny where Fiennes is being kept, and the door explodes. However it’s Jake that takes the brunt of it.
Lastly a pipe of some sort on the roof of the building explodes when Spike shoots it while aiming for Danny.
F is for… Flashbacks
A lot of Danny and Anne’s relationship is explained through the use of flashbacks, including when they met as adults and him slowly building his house. There’s a flashback of them at New Year’s where she fires a rifle into the air, so maybe she has potential to be part of the action plot, but nothing ever comes out of it.
While readying to shoot Fiennes, Danny flashes back on the kid of the man he killed in Mexico. It may be what stops him from killing Fiennes, but maybe not as Danny didn’t want to return to the op anyway.
G is for… Guns
Details at the IMFDB.
The film is about assassins and ex-soldiers, so everyone has a gun.
In Mexico Hunter uses an assault rifle.
Amr’s palace guards have handguns that prove useless because they never get the chance to fire them when Hunter and Danny try to escape. Some even have machine guns.
Agent of course has his own handgun.
Harris has his own handgun that he and his girlfriend use to shoot bottles.
The photographer in the desert has a rifle.
Anne has her New Year’s celebratin’ rifle.
Jake shoots the minder and Meier with a revolver.
Hilariously Danny pitches a handgun at a guard and it smacks him in the face, knocking him down.
There are various shootouts as well:
During the Mexico scene Hunter and Danny get into one with a cop.
Hunter and Danny storm through Amr’s palace.
The photographer and Danny’s team in the desert.
Hunter and Amr’s men.
Let’s also not forget Hunter’s shot through the subway that gets Agent right in the leg.
H is for… Helicopters
During C Company’s rest day Harris buzzes the troops on the beach in a military helicopter.
The “Motherfucker What’s In Charge” has a chopper.
I is for… Improvisation
Danny and his crew mostly just use their guns, though they did have to get creative with the killings, like making a club using bathroom tile, faking hypothermia, and using a remote controlled truck. Danny does have to get a little creative while fighting hand-to-hand with Spike, including using a tray as a blunt instrument. He’s also able to use the chair strapped to his back later in the movie to his advantage in a fist fight.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Danny smashes Spike into numerous glass cabinets in the operating room.
During the chase scene through the buildings, Danny leaps onto scaffolding and proceeds to fall through several levels of it.
Danny throws himself through a window, using the chair strapped to his back to break the glass.
K is for… Kill Count
Danny of course kills the man in the sedan in Mexico, but that’s before the story even really starts.
Meier kills Harris with the bathroom tile club, though it looks like there was more of a struggle than anticipated. Of course, Harris wasn’t actually guilty.
Davies kills the battle photographer/painter in order to get an address.
Danny kills Cregg by drugging him then injecting him to make him go into shock, then watches him die of hypothermia on the march.
Meier kills McCann by forcing him to crash his car.
Danny doesn’t actually like killing, especially people not on the list to kill. He’s angry Davies kills the painter, and doesn’t kill Fiennes himself.
L is for… Limitations
Davies actually outlines the group’s limitations on the operation quite nicely:
The SAS is “a paranoid bunch. Always got their back up.”
Oman is a black hole: “You need info on Oman. No one talks about Oman.”
They have to get the soldiers to confess, but they’ll be trying to resist torture, so they’ll say nothing.
The SAS is the “best special forces regime in the world. They make the Navy SEALs look like cupcakes.”
They also have to make the murders look like accidents, and even Amr doesn’t know who actually killed his sons. So, there’s a lot of recon and planning that has to be done. By the end Danny doesn’t have his team, is worried about Anne and Hunter, and really doesn’t even want to be doing the job at all.
M is for… Motivation
Amr wants revenge for the SAS killing his sons, Hussain, Salim, and Ali. Bakhait wasn’t in the war and is exiled. Amr wants Bakhait to go home to the desert after his death. Amr needs the SAS killers dead so Bakhait can return to his tribe.
Danny obviously only wants to save Hunter, and later Anne. He doesn’t even have any interest in taking the money, though six million went a long way in 1980.
N is for… Negotiation
Danny has to get Meier and Davies on board, though it doesn’t take much negotiation especially once he says he doesn’t want the six million and they can split it between them.
Danny makes Hunter agree to get out of the business if he gets him out of there.
Hunter tells Agent, “You go after them, I’ll find you. Everybody gets found. Even you.”
I suppose there’s not so much negotiating as there are ultimatums and statements about the future.
O is for… One Liners
Danny: I’m done with killing.
Agent: Maybe killing’s not done with you.
Meier: Would you like a lolly?
Davies: I’d love a lolly.
Meier: Strawberry or fuck you?
Featherman: I’ve got no problem with blood. What worries me is ink.
Guard: You can’t stop here, mate.
Davies: I didn’t stop, the truck did.
Danny: The first think you should buy is a pair of balls.
Davies: I’ll have a hooker for him. He’d like that.
Featherman: He had this on him.
Spike, sarcastic: Oh a phone number. Great work.
Hunter: What’s the plan?
Danny: Get out of here.
Hunter: Sounds good.
Hunter: So how are the Yankees doing?
Hunter: Life is like licking honey from a thorn.
Hunter: Relax, I only killed the car.
Hunter, taking the sheik’s money from Spike: I got to cover my expenses.
Spike: So where are you going?
Danny: What, you planning a visit?
P is for… Profession
Danny and Hunter kill “assholes.” It’s clear they’re assassins but it’s not initially evident if they are “good” guys or “bad” guys, with only knowing Jason Statham is the lead letting the audience know he’s the hero to root for. After the mission in Mexico, Danny retires to Australia, but gets pulled back in to rescue Hunter. Clearly he’s a highly trained killer if Hunter is hired for a job and he’s hired to get it done once Hunter refuses.
Hunter ran from the job of killing the sheik’s son’s killers and was taken hostage to get Danny to finish the job.
Danny is depicted as being good at his job as an assassin, mercenary, whatever, such as when he steals the bathroom tile to make the club for Harris’s death. He doesn’t actually like his job, and doesn’t like when his team members kill people without needing to or don’t stick to the plan they agreed to. All three assassinations go off pretty smoothly, and if Davies were a better actor the Feathermen might not have realized what was going on at all.
The SAS is described as “top class professional assassins.”
Q is for… Quagmire
By the end of the film, Danny is alone except for Jake the new kid, fighting someone else’s fight for a cause he doesn’t believe in for people he doesn’t trust, while his girlfriend is a target. He and Spike get tied to chairs with seemingly no way out.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
Considering the film is based on a true story, however loosely, it better stick pretty close to reality! And it does, with notably fewer massive explosions, massive chases, ridiculous firefights, and fewer giant action sequences in general.
S is for… Sidekicks
Meier and Davies are the obvious sidekicks. They’re clearly important members of Danny and Hunter’s team. Outside of them Danny doesn’t have anyone helping him.
T is for… Technology
Because the film is set in 1980, the technology—or lack thereof—is quite noticeable.
Everyone has to dial on rotary phones, and it’s actually pretty distracting to see. Any kids watching the movie aren’t going to know what those are. 1980 was a strange middle period where it’s too far in the past to have clunky versions of modern technology, but not old enough for those crank phones in movies set in the ‘50s.
Meier uses a giant remote to control the truck; it’s roughly the size of two shoeboxes put together.
Danny has his video confessions on videotape, and no wonder he doesn’t have a problem faking McCann’s confession. Who had camcorders in 1980? It all looked amazing back then, even though the footage would most likely be considered unwatchable today.
Danny also uses what looks like a 35-milimeter camera with no fancy lenses or anything, just a point-and-click on which he’ll have to wait to get the film developed. Such a thing—not being able to see a photo right after it’s taken—is such a foreign thing even to me, and I’ve only had a digital camera for a few years.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Because there are no women other than Danny’s girlfriend, there is no unexpected romance, just their annoying and predictable one.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
There’s a lot of running around in the film, and a lot of traveling, but because it’s grounded in reality there aren’t too many scenes with stand-out vehicles in them. The very final chase with Amr’s men has Hunter and Danny using their SUV to cut off/smash into Amr’s men’s car, and Hunter uses the SUV to ram into Spike’s car. I’d say run him off the road but they aren’t really on a road so much as they’re in the middle of the desert.
W is for… Winning
Once McCann is dead, Danny believes the mission is over and Hunter is released and they can both go home. But because Harris wasn’t actually guilty, Danny has to go back into the field after Fiennes. Danny is able to fake Fiennes’s death and get his pictures for Amr, though Spike is able to take the camera and give the pictures to Amr and get the money. Danny meanwhile evades Spike and meets up with Hunter.
They all go back to Oman, where Spike shows the pictures to Amr then stabs him. Bakhait could not care less about his father because he doesn’t have any interest in going back to the desert to run the oil empire. Bakhait gives Spike the money reserved for Danny and Hunter.
Spike gets chased out of the palace by Amr’s guards, who chase him by car through the streets, and Danny and Hunter chase them. Hunter knocks the guards out of the chase and follows Spike through the desert. He and Danny disable the car by crashing into it and shooting out the tires. They all kind of agree to disagree, Hunter takes some of the money, and then he and Danny leave Spike there and tell him they’ll call him a cab.
The film ends of course with Danny picking up Anne.
X is for… X-rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
During the final chase/fight sequence against Spike, Danny falls through several layers of wooden scaffolding, gets beaten up, gets tied to a chair and has to fight for his freedom with said chair tied to him, and throws himself through a window and lands on a truck. The aftermath of all of this isn’t really seen, so maybe he does see a doctor, but if he’s a typical movie hero, he’s fine and just walks it off.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
It’s unrelated to Danny and Hunter, but the SAS killing Amr’s sons sets everything in motion and they get caught up in it. Had the SAS not killed the sons, there wouldn’t be a job. Also if Danny hadn’t tried to retire, perhaps Hunter wouldn’t have said he’d take the job he then refused to do. Also Danny might be out of shape after having retired.
Z is for… Zone, Being in the
Because so much of the job is team-oriented, no one is really in a “zone.” Especially Davies and Meiers, and Hunter is locked up through most of it. Danny is great at his job, but he has his team to help him plan and get things together.
Killer Elite has a lot of good in it, even though it’s hard to understand what’s happening because of everyone’s accents. Watching with subtitles actually really helped a lot. For a “true story” that happened in 1980, the story and action are both good. Definitely worth a re-watch.
As usual, here are a few final thoughts:
There are a couple of pat-downs done by Amr’s men on Danny that are extremely weak and ineffective. They didn’t seem to check the small of his back.
Like any good action movie, there are a lot of choreographed fist fights, with numerous headbutts.
Danny has a great fight while strapped to a chair, which isn’t something I’d ever thought about being awesome before seeing it in Marvel’s The Avengers.
Amr has a large bird of prey that wears some sort of pointed helmet, and it was awesome.
The moustaches were really distracting and it made it harder to tell the tall white men with brown hair apart.
The end credits had a really interesting and pretty light/lens flare design. Usually end credits are just black, or are stylized for only the first part, but these were really pretty the whole way through.
Killer Elite definitely has a gritty feel to it, and it works on a lot of levels by having good acting/casting, good writing, and interesting fights and plot points. Its main failing seems to be the sheer number of characters to keep track of, but obviously they can’t be cut out if they actually existed. But since the Feathermen are such a mystery, who knows what’s true and what’s not?
J is for… The Jackal
The Jackal, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, is a remake of the 1973 movie The Day of the Jackal, which in turn was based on a book of the same name by Frederick Forsyth.
It’s a loose remake of the 1973 movie, though not as loose as some reviewers claim.
I’ll admit part of my reasoning for choosing The Jackal is my never ending love for Bruce Willis. He does a good job in it, between playing the nice guy people forget, and the crazy guy people wish they never met.
The film starts off with American FBI agents in Moscow killing a member of the Russian mob, and his brother Terek Murad (David Hayman) declares war on the FBI by hiring The Jackal (Bruce Willis), a nameless/faceless assassin whom no one seems to be able to prove exists, to kill a target important to the FBI.
Once the FBI learns that The Jackal has been hired, FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) and Russian Police Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora) realize there’s only one person who can help them find The Jackal. But, the only person who knows where she (Isabella) is is an ex-IRA member who’s in prison for small arms dealing. Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere) admits he also has seen The Jackal and can help the investigation, and agrees to help if the FBI tries to free him, and if Isabella (Mathilda May) is kept safe.
Meanwhile, The Jackal uses a series of false identities to purchase the pieces for and build a huge Gatling gun, and make his way to Washington, DC. Mulqueen and The Jackal finally meet again while The Jackal attempts to shoot his target, which leads to a confrontation in the subway. Of course Mulqueen is victorious, and Preston upholds his part of the bargain by allowing him to escape.
That seems like a watered down version of the plot, but considering a lot of the plot seemed unnecessary, I think it does the movie justice.
Let’s dive in.
A is for… Accents
Another action movie where the hero, Mulqueen, has an accent. What stands out is Mulqueen is Irish.
The film opens in Moscow, so a lot of people have Russian accents. In a nice nod to the real world, everyone is actually speaking Russian and there are subtitles to read, rather than everyone speaking heavily-accented English.
Of course, later on in Helsinki everyone has an accent, as do the people The Jackal converses with in Britain.
Koslova has an accent, one that hindered my comprehension of what she says throughout the movie.
Isabella also has an accent.
Pretty much everyone except Preston and The Jackal has an accent, and even The Jackal fakes a Canadian accent for his false identity.
B is for… Bad Guys
Considering the film’s open credit montage is a series of clips about Russian communism, it’s a little strange that the villains in the movie aren’t, in fact, Russian. Aside from Murad hiring The Jackal, the movie has nothing to do with Russia.
But, if Murad is the one pulling the strings, he’s worth mentioning. Murad, upon learning one of his men didn’t kill any American agents, splits the man’s head open with an axe. He explains to everyone else that the man was like a brother to him and he got no joy from killing him. So, what would he do to the other men? Murad views the FBI killing his brother as an act of war, and so hires The Jackal to kill a target very important to the FBI. Initially they think it’s the head of the FBI, but it turns out he’s targeting the First Lady. He’s also in touch with The Jackal throughout the mission, because he informs him that Mulqueen is on the case.
The Jackal himself is an American with military training who has spent his professional career killing people and creating false identities in order to do it. He’s very methodical and displays absolutely no remorse for killing anyone. He and Mulqueen crossed paths in the past, when The Jackal wounded Isabella and she miscarried Mulqueen’s baby.
C is for… Chases
It can be argued the whole film is a chase scene, because the FBI and Mulqueen are trying to hunt down The Jackal. …it’s a very slow chase scene, with not a whole lot of chasing going on all the time.
Mulqueen briefly chases The Jackal through the harbor in Chicago, but it’s on foot and The Jackal is able to get away pretty easily.
After The Jackal fails to kill the First Lady, he escapes to the subway, where Mulqueen is able to follow him. They run down the tracks and up to another platform, where they have their final stand off.
D is for… Damsels
The movie is thankfully light on Damsels. There’s Koslova, the mannish Russian police major, who seems to have her act together yet when faced with The Jackal shooting other agents in Isabella’s house she shoots randomly and ineffectively, then gets shot through the couch. She had explained to Mulqueen that she never had time for a husband or family, using the burn on her face as an excuse, or maybe it’s just a representation of her duties to her job and country.
Isabella, Mulqueen’s partner and former lover, is able to help with information on The Jackal and never becomes a hindrance. She winds up helping Mulqueen more than any of the federal agents. She has a husband and family, though still may love Mulqueen.
E is for… Explosions
While testing his new Gatling, The Jackal explodes a station wagon.
During the assassination scene, a Marine shoots the gas tank on the minivan housing the Gatling, then shoots it again so it explodes. It’s certainly an effective way to stop the weapon from firing.
F is for… Flashbacks
There aren’t any flashbacks, but it can be argued they would have helped to establish Mulqueen’s and The Jackal’s past together.
G is for… Guns
The IMFDB has details.
The SWAT guys storming the club in Moscow have their weapons.
Murad’s henchman is shot with what appears to be a nonlethal beanbag so he can be interrogated for information. He’s the one who lets the name “The Jackal” slip.
The Jackal orders—through a computer—a 7.62mm M134 Electric Gatling gun. He settles on a Polish ZSU-33 14.5mm, which fires 1400 rounds per minute. He mounts it in the back of a minivan. It’s controlled by a computer that can be operated remotely using a cellphone connection, and has a camera with a long range zoom lens on it to help with aiming. The weapon is long-range and rapid fire, which The Jackal wants because he wants the assassination to be “public and brutal.” It’s overkill, really. So to speak. Especially considering he doesn’t hit his target.
The Jackal also has a handgun he carries with him.
Mulqueen uses a high powered rifle while in the Marine helicopter, and also while on a building. He uses it to shoot the camera off of the Gatling. Surely he was trying to shoot the actual gun, but it stops The Jackal long enough that he can’t finish the job.
Mulqueen and The Jackal face off in the subway with handguns.
Shootouts include the opening scene in the club, Koslova and The Jackal in the harbor, Koslova and The Jackal in Isabella’s house, and the final confrontation in the subway.
H is for… Helicopters
Preston and Mulqueen hop an FBI helicopter for a ride to Isabella’s house once they realize The Jackal will be targeting her. Do they not try to call the house to let Koslova and the other agents know The Jackal knows where they are?
Mulqueen rides an awesome Marine helicopter to DC.
I is for… Improvisation
This movie is pretty straight forward with its use of guns, but the Gatling is pretty impressive.
I wish there had been more of Mulqueen doing awesome things. He seemed like a really with-it guy, and also one who could be really creative when he had to be.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
There is, sadly, no falling or leaping through windows, walls, doors, floors, etc in The Jackal.
K is for… Kill Count
Generally the kill count is supposed to be for the hero picking off henchman and such, but Mulqueen doesn’t kill anyone and The Jackal, for all he’s supposed to be a shadow, leaves a trail of bodies in his wake.
Ian Lamont (Jack Black), who engineered the Gatling and mount for The Jackal, basically gets blown to pieces by it when The Jackal objects to Lamont trying to get more money from him. Notably, had the sighting not been off (three millimeters to the left) he might have been allowed to live. Instead he gets his arm blown off and then gets shot multiple times.
Once The Jackal learns where Isabella lives, he heads to her home and kills all three agents protecting the place. The one gets shot through the stairs while The Jackal is in the closet underneath them. The other gets shot in the head. And of course Koslova wastes her rounds shooting into a bookcase, only to be shot through the only possible barrier The Jackal had in the open living room.
He goes back to the home of the guy he picked up in the gay bar and shoots him when he recognizes him as the guy in the drawing on TV. It’s never really explained why he chose him and used his home in the first place.
He kills a guard in the subway while storming through it to get away from Mulqueen.
L is for… Limitations
If the entirety of the FBI is counted, the obvious limitation is that no one knows what The Jackal looks like or who he is. Instead, an ex-IRA sniper who’s in an American prison is the only person that knows anything.
Mulqueen’s limitations include he has to listen to the FBI agents and not make waves. He’s also not seen The Jackal in years, and so has to age him mentally in order to recognize him. This isn’t stated in the film, but it has to be true. He also may be hampered by his love of Isabella.
M is for… Motivation
Unsurprisingly, The Jackal is motivated by money. He’ll seemingly get enough from killing the First Lady that he can retire. Especially in 1997, $70 million goes a long way.
Mulqueen’s motivation is his personal feelings towards The Jackal, and if he helps he may get his freedom.
The FBI of course wants to save the life of The Jackal’s target, be it the head of the FBI or the First Lady.
N Is for… Negotiation
Part of the Jackal’s success seems to be the professional way in which he does things. He always negotiates half a payment up front with the balance due upon completion.
Isabella is offered a pardon and no one learns of her whereabouts if she helps find The Jackal.
Mulqueen’s negotiation requires a few steps. At first he’s only offered transfer to a minimum security prison, and he says he’ll do it only if Isabella is kept safe and he’s let go back to Ireland a free man. He settles on getting Preston’s best efforts to get him free. To help in his bargaining he admits he’s seen The Jackal himself and knows his face and methods.
In a separate conversation with Preston, Mulqueen wants to get out of prison and promises he won’t take off. He also wants to get the chance to see Isabella, and get a decent razor.
Lamont gives The Jackal a price for the gun mount, and The Jackal negotiates for a lower price with simply a glare.
Lamont tries to negotiate for more money to keep him quiet about whatever The Jackal plans to do with his assault canon he built for him. This was not a good idea.
O is for… One Liners
Preston: It’s never easy taking a life, but you saved one, too. Mine.
Mulqueen: The entire government wants me dead. Yet here I am.
Mulqueen: Pardon my language. I’ve been in prison.
Preston: Go along, and we’ll get along.
Koslova, to Mulqueen: They always make a mistake somewhere. Isn’t that how you got caught?
The Jackal, to Lamont: I told you it was off.
P is for… Profession
The Jackal is a professional assassin who is said to be very good at his job, and throughout most of the movie he seems to be good at his job. He uses many IDs, disguises, and bank accounts, and is always moving. Mulqueen clarifies that The Jackal always uses four false identities, three of which he keeps on him and one that’s in a dropbox. He has quick-change paint to disguise his minivan and keeps extra sets of license plates. He puts himself into his roles entirely, including affecting accents and picking up guys in bars. The problem is that he goes kind of crazy at the end, which seems totally at odds with the way he’s described and depicted throughout the entire movie.
Declan Mulqueen was an IRA sharp shooter, and he’s serving time for small weapons. He knows Isabella and her whereabouts, which is why he’s needed on the case, but because he’s also seen The Jackal he can be used. He is viewed as a terrorist not to be given freedoms. He seems to be a rather likable terrorist, in any case.
The FBI is hunting The Jackal using the Social Security Numbers he’s been stealing, and identity theft he’s been doing. It’s Mulqueen who points out that the FBI must have a mole, who proceeds to put Isbaella’s name and address in the file, which leads to The Jackal going to her home and killing the agents there. He tells Koslova to tell Mulqueen he can’t protect his women, which leads Mulqueen to realize The Jackal’s target is the First Lady, not the head of the FBI.
Q is for… Quagmire
At the end, with Mulqueen and The Jackal on the subway platform, Mulqueen has no gun, no backup, and of course can’t expect mercy as The Jackal stands above him ready to shoot his own gun. As movie watchers the audience expects something to happen to interrupt The Jackal, but Mulqueen obviously can’t expect that.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
Overall the film is fairly real-world without a lot of fantastical elements to the action. However, it does seem a little easy for the FBI to track down The Jackal with SSNs and such, considering he’s been a shadow for so many years.
S is for… Sidekicks
If Mulqueen is the hero, that makes the FBI his sidekicks, but they’re all pretty useless.
Isabella is a much better sidekick, even though she doesn’t have a big part in the film. She knows The Jackal well enough to describe him as “ice with no feeling.” She also knows he’s American. She tells Mulqueen of a locker with a passport and ten thousand dollars for him to use to run away. She ultimately, of course, also saves the day by getting into the subway and shooting The Jackal.
T is for… Technology
The Jackal uses a computer that has voice recognition software to order his supplies. He also uses a cybercafé to instant message someone, perhaps Murad. He logs on using a modem.
The Gatling is controlled using a cellphone.
It’s notable that the film takes place before surveillance was seemingly everywhere, before 9/11, before it was hard to move through a city without being on camera somewhere.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Mulqueen seems to have a thing for Koslova, but it could just be that she’s likely the first woman’s he’s interacted with in a long time. He also seems to have chemistry with everything. There doesn’t seem to be a happy ending with Isabella, considering she’s married and has a family, though if they could have one together, they likely would.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Usually this category is for cars being used to run people over, motorcycles being used to light things on fire, stuff like that, but it’s worth mentioning that a regular minivan is turned into an assault vehicle when that Gatling is mounted in the back. Imagine The Jackal driving around the city while firing that thing.
W is for… Winning
Mulqueen and The Jackal face off in the subway. The Jackal—absolutely losing his established “cool” —takes a hostage and prepares to shoot Mulqueen. After Mulqueen puts down his weapon and the hostage is released, Isabella comes up and shoots The Jackal in the throat. While going down he shoots Mulqueen. As Isabella and Mulqueen have a weepy moment, The Jackal pulls out another gun to use to shoot Mulqueen, but Mulqueen beats him to it and shoots him multiple times.
In a personal victory, Preston gives Mulqueen the chance to escape.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
The Jackal gets shot in the leg, but of course he keeps going. Mulqueen actually follows the blood trail to find where he went.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
The FBI, CIA, NSA, whoever would be responsible for locating The Jackal, has failed miserably. Had he been apprehended earlier, perhaps when Mulqueen had initially fought with him, he couldn’t shoot the First Lady.
Had The Jackal not hurt Mulqueen and Isabella in the past, perhaps they wouldn’t have been motivated to hunt him down this time. Or go all the way and kill them, rather than toy with them if that’s what he did. The story that could be told about The Jackal’s first run-in with Mulqueen and Isabella would probably be more interesting than the story actually told in The Jackal.
Z is for… Zone, in the
Mulqueen is shown to be at least somewhat in the zone throughout the film, as he pieces together what The Jackal is doing.
The Jackal is not a terrible movie, but it seems to be one of those examples of a good idea with a bad execution. I’d rather the story focus more on Mulqueen hunting down The Jackal, with the FBI angle maybe cut out entirely. You know the way in which John McClane is brought in to deal with Simon in Die Hard With a Vengeance? Perhaps a story like that would have been more engaging. Richard Gere is great as Mulqueen, and it would have been nice to focus more on him without Preston and Koslova getting in the way.
Just a few more points:
What the heck is with the communism montage during the credits? Mulqueen isn’t fighting Stalin in the movie, and it doesn’t take place during the Cold War. Just because it opens in Moscow and a Russian mobster orders the hit doesn’t mean it’s all about communism.
I really, really wanted subtitles to read while taking notes, because the first time through I had trouble understanding what was being said. Partially this was because of the accents, particularly Koslova’s, but also because the audio just seemed muffled on the DVD. Somehow, though, the DVD didn’t have subtitles, which was rather disappointing.
After The Jackal buys his boat, there’s a sequence of him unfurling the sails, enjoying the water, whatever he’s doing, with this strange triumphant music playing. Why on earth is there triumphant, happy music as we watch an assassin hang out on his boat?
Randomly, at 01:50:50 into the movie, as Mulqueen is stalking down the subway platform and people are running for cover, there’s a woman running into a newsstand back behind Mulqueen. While she’s the one that drew my attention, it’s the guy jogging back after her who then nonchalantly slows down and turns to find his place in the newsstand that made me want to mention it. I can almost hear him thinking, “Okay, I ran into the newsstand like I was told, so my part in this scene is done. Let me take my seat.” I guess no one told him to act like a scared commuter facing down gunfire until the director yelled “cut.” It was just amusing, but drew me away from the scene.
All of this being said, the movie is better upon a second viewing when it’s more clear what’s happening. Gere really is good as Mulqueen, and Willis gets to play a bad guy, which he doesn’t often do. They’re so interesting the movie should really focus more on them in a cat-and-mouse situation rather than involve the Russian mob and the FBI and everything else.
I also watched The Day of the Jackal to compare the two movies. It’s true the 1973 film is more engaging in many ways, and really shows the methodology behind what The Jackal and also the lawmen are doing to complete their jobs. The aspects of The Jackal using multiple identities, stealing identities, constantly moving, and going to a gunsmith and id maker, and doing the “half now, half upon completion” payment method are the same. The Jackal also makes some bizarre choices like sleeping with a woman at her home, and giving his (fake) name out to a lot of people. Unlike in The Jackal, in The Day of the Jackal there don’t seem to be extraneous characters that could be cut out for simplicity’s sake. It was also really interesting to see Scotland Yard and the French police figuring out The Jackal’s past and future steps by analyzing his identification documents he falsified, and downright having some lucky breaks. All in a time before computers and online databases.
Other than long shot times that were more common if not customary at the time the movie was filmed, the only complaint I have is that even though the film takes place mostly in France, everyone speaks with an English accent, so it’s impossible to tell where anyone is or who they are. When someone with a British accent is talking about the people from Scotland Yard as if they’re foreigners, and the term “working abroad” is used with respect to France and England, it’s very confusing.
I will end on this question regarding The Day of the Jackal: what the heck is up with The Jackal’s cravat/neckerchief/bandana? It was the most distracting thing I’ve seen in a movie since the explosion of lens flares in 2009’s Star Trek. I kept noticing when he had new ones, and repeated previous ones, and wasn’t wearing one at all. Such an odd costume choice. If it’s part of his disguise as Duggan, why not choose something less strange like suspenders or hats? Unless it was to draw attention away from what he looked like by giving people a removable feature to focus on and remember. But then if someone says, “It was the man with the cravat,” he’d be easily spotted.
I is for… I Don’t Have an “I” Movie
I tried to have an “I” movie. I really did.
But then Interceptor was pulled from Hulu and unavailable from the library, and Ice Station Zebra had some interesting moments but didn’t have near enough action. It was also difficult to tell if the main character was the captain of the submarine, or the submarine itself. It did support my theory that a contemporary “action” movie is very different from an older action movie (which in my head is pre-1980). Modern movies have a lot more violence and guns, and generally move at a much faster pace. The first five minutes of Ice Station Zebra were music. There were “Overture” and “Intermission” titlecards, which would certainly never be in a contemporary action film!
So, I shall be moving on to The Jackal, which I’ll have posted in a day or two.
If there are “I” action movies out there that I’d be able to get my hands on, please let me know!
H is for… Hard Target
Hard Target was one of the few action movies I could find that started with H. It’s also the first on my list to have a repeat director (John Woo) and a repeat villain (Arnold Vosloo, who was in G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra).
Coincidentally, it has a fairly unoriginal plot; it’s a modern rehashing of Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” Natasha (Yancy Butler) seeks her father and learns he’s homeless, and befriends a man named Chance (Jean-Claude Van Damme) to help her navigate New Orleans to look for him. They stumble upon a service wherein rich people pay a company run by Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) to hunt homeless veterans, and one of their victims was Natasha’s father. Fortunately, Chance grew up on the bayou and is able to navigate the hunters through the wilderness and lead them to a warehouse of Mardi Gras floats. A massive shout out occurs, and with the help of Natasha and his Uncle Douvee (Wilford Brimley), Chance is able to kill all of Fouchon’s men (including Vosloo’s Pik van Cleef).
That seems like… not a lot of plot for a 97-minute movie. Half of the move is spent developing the Fouchon/van Cleef business, and Natasha getting saved from thugs by Chance, and then getting him to help her look for her father. It’s quite a long build up considering the viewer is most likely watching for the action scenes.
That said, there is plenty with which to round out the categories!
A is for… Accents
Chance of course has Van Damme’s Belgian French accent, which really just sounds kind of strange in New Orleans.
Van Cleef has Vasloo’s South African accent.
Uncle Douvee has what I’m guessing is a French accent, to match Van Damme’s.
B is for… Bad Guys
Like with the film Commando, we see the villains before we see the hero (in G.I. Joe the viewer doesn’t know who the bad guy is at first).
At first the villains are dark shapes chasing a homeless man, and they eventually shoot him with arrows. Scenes of Fouchon, van Cleef, and their associate Randal (Eliott Keener) are intercut with scenes of Natasha and Chance searching for Natasha’s father. Van Cleef and Fouchon aren’t above torturing Randal, who provides them with the homeless veterans, when he doesn’t provide them with the proper victims. His job is to find war veterans with no human ties, but instead provides Natasha’s father, and she of course realizes he’s missing.
Fouchon’s base seems to be out of a beautiful planation home. He plays the piano and watches himself in the mirror, and wears saddle shoes. He and van Cleef offer the “opportunity to kill with impunity” to private citizens who are in their own “unhappy little corner of the planet.” Fouchon’s company has bought the cops and the doctor who does autopsies (Marco St. John).
Fouchon is actually very compelling, which is all due to Henriksen’s presence and deep growly voice. He’s much more interesting to watch than Chance, as he’s personally invested in what he’s doing and ensuring they don’t get caught at it. Ultimately Fouchon’s own pride is his downfall; he refuses to shoot Chance from a helicopter because it wouldn’t be a challenge. Forcing the confrontation happen on the ground is what leads to his death.
Van Cleef isn’t very well developed, though he is suitably creepy as Fouchon’s right-hand man. It’s notable that at one point he wants to give up, but Fouchon refuses.
Fouchon’s company charges $500,000 for each hunt, during which the clients are provided with a guide, trackers, and their weapon of choice. Fouchon’s men will also dispose of the body and provide an out of town, airtight alibi. The clients can’t talk over Telex or the phone (Telex being a precursor to fax machines and email). During the hunt the prey is given a satchel with $10,000 and is told he has to carry that satchel ten miles through the city to the river, and if he makes it he gets to keep it. He’s given a five minute head start.
C is for… Chases
Not surprisingly, there are numerous chases in this film about hunting, including Chance and Natasha being chased on foot through the bayou.
The film opens with a chase, as a homeless man is chased by bad guys both on foot and on motorcycles, which doesn’t quite seem fair.
Another veteran (Willie C. Carpenter) is chased through a cemetery, and after he escapes his hunters there they follow him through the city (him on foot, them in cars and motorcycles) and kill him in the middle of the street.
While van Cleef and his men are shooting at Chance, Natasha, and the police detective (Kasi Lemmons), Chance steals one of their motorcycles, and the bad guys pursue him, firing at him the whole time.
In a more diversified chase, Chance is riding a horse and is being pursued by a helicopter. He leads the bad guys to an old warehouse, and Fouchon and his minions follow in Jeeps and motorcycles.
D is for… Damsels
Natasha originally comes to New Orleans to look for her father, Doug Binder (Chuck Pfarrer), only to learn that he’s recently been homeless. She hires Chance to help her, to the tune of $217 for two days.
What’s really notable about Natasha is that while she doesn’t really help Chance a lot, for the most part she stays to the side and doesn’t get in his way. She’s rather undeveloped, but considering her storyline drags on unnecessarily and isn’t really required for the overall concept behind the film, that’s fine. Honestly, the movie drags through its first half, when it’s Natasha and Chance wandering around, up until they’re actually being hunted.
E is for… Explosions
During the opening chase scene, a building explodes when bullets intended for Doug Binder hit it.
During the chase with Chance stealing a motorcycle, another motorcycle explodes for no reason. Chance of course does a wheelie to pop over it.
Chance fires his acquired gun into a Jeep, and it of course explodes. It explodes a second time when it gets shot again by the bad guys.
When the snake gets shot in the head, its head explodes.
In John Woo style, bullets fired from the helicopter explode in a shower of sparks on impact with the ground.
Uncle Douvee blows up his own moonshine and home with dynamite.
Chance throws a gas tank into the air, which then explodes when he shoots it.
A grenade gets thrown at the pelican float that Chance is dramatically riding, and it explodes.
Chance shoves a grenade down Fouchon’s pants, and while he is able to get it out and disassemble it, it still sparks and ignites.
F is for… Flashbacks
Chance has a flashback to all the good guys who died during the course of the film, including Binder, the other homeless vet, and the detective.
G is for… Guns
Details at the IMFDB.
What’s interesting about the film is that the first weapons shown are actually a bow and arrows with three edges. This movie would be all the rage now considering the massive upheaval in the interest in archery thanks to movies and shows like The Hunger Games, Marvel’s The Avengers, Arrow, and Revolution.
One of the bad guys fires arrows from what looks like a gun, not a crossbow.
The men assisting with the hunting also have machine guns, which also seems unfair.
Another interesting but not gun-related use of weaponry occurs when Chance is attacked while investigating Binder’s murder; the minions attack him with a rope on a stick (like a catch pole) and a baseball bat.
Van Cleef fires a silenced gun through a peephole to kill the medical examiner.
Fouchon’s client Zenan hunts with what looks like an assault weapon. The tables are turned when his prey gets a hold of it and shoots him with it.
Van Cleef uses the butt of his rifle as a club to break Randal’s car window. He then shoots him with an explosive result, all over the car’s windshield.
Van Cleef and the police detective engage in a shootout, him with his rifle, her with her service weapon. More and more bad guys with machine guns join in as Chance fights back by snagging the service weapon and more and more of the bad guys’ weapons as they drop.
Fouchon has a notable single shot pistol that he aims by steadying it on his forearm, and he carries the bullets in a belt around his waist. It’s, frankly, a little strange compared to the amount of automatic weapons around him.
Uncle Douvee has kept Chance’s old shotgun in his home, though it’s quite dusty because he hasn’t seemed to be taking care of it.
The bad guys open up a storm of bullets on Uncle Douvee’s shack. Needlessly.
Uncle Douvee also uses a bow and arrows, and uses them to ignite his moonshine and ignite dynamite.
As Chance escapes his uncle’s shack, the bad guys fire at him, and hit an outbuilding instead. It proceeds to explode.
Chance seems to be a fairly accurate shot while on horseback, even though the men in the helicopter can’t seem to hit him.
The last 20 or so minutes of the movie is basically a shootout.
Hilariously, Chance strips a pistol off of a bad guy and doesn’t bother to turn it around before firing it, so he unloads the magazine into another bad guy with the gun upside down.
Natasha steals a gun and shoots a bad guy with it multiple times, which makes Uncle Douvee angry. He seems to like the finesse of quieter weapons.
Fouchon has Natasha load his gun for him as he’s holding her hostage, as Chance charges him. The confrontation becomes gun versus flying kick, and somehow the flying kick wins.
H is for… Helicopters
Fouchon has a helicopter he can call on to drop off more hunters and track prey by air.
I is for… Improvisation
Chance has to use what he can get from picking up bad guys’ weapons and vehicles. Jumping onto the train to escape the bridge is clever, though exiting the train in a muddy area was not.
An arrow is used to ignite Uncle Douvee’s moonshine, which itself is used to kill some bad guys and distract them from Chance’s escape.
Chance uses the floats in the warehouse to great effect.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Doug Binder falls through the dock early in the movie.
In the initial fight where Chance meets Natasha, he kicks a thug through a window.
At the warehouse, Chance leaps through a window, then does it again in a totally different position. Did no one in the editing room notice that at all?
K is for… Kill Count
Chance pretty much kills every single one of Fouchon’s thugs, with Douvee’s and Natasha’s help. They get shot, blown up, burned, or some combination thereof. For some reason Chance shoots most of them in the groin first.
L is for… Limitations
Other than being severely outnumbered, Chance doesn’t seem to have any limitations. He obviously has combat training, and knows the area better than the bad guys. Up until the very end, his uncle and Natasha don’t even get in the way.
M is for… Motivation
As usual, the bad guys’ motivation is money. Fouchon charges $500,000 per hunt, and $750,000 for the hunt against Chance.
As the film progresses, Fouchon is motivated to eliminate Chance at all costs.
Natasha wants to find her father, then solve his murder.
Chance wants money to help Natasha, but once they’re being hunted they want to live, which involves taking out Fouchon and all of his men.
N is for… Negotiation
Chance negotiates with Randal; he wants info about the homeless men, and threatens him for it.
Fouchon takes Natasha hostage to force Chance to put down his weapons.
O is for… One Liners
Maybe it’s the accent, or maybe it’s the writing, but a lot of Chance’s lines come out as sounding like one liners.
Thug: Why don’t you do yourself a favor?
Chance: I think the favor gonna be done for you.
Chance: You know it’s a shame. This used to be a nice part of town.
Chance: Would love to help you, but I’m gonna be out of town. (thinks about job on ship) Way out of town.
Chance: Maybe I’m sticking around to run for Mayor.
Detective: You have a real talent, Mr. Boudreaux, for attracting violence.
Chance: What are you going to arrest me for, getting beat up without a license?
Natasha: You look awful.
Chance: You hurt my feelings.
Detective: The wheels turn slow around here.
Chance: Real slow.
Fouchon: This is New Orleans, Mr. Zenan, not Beirut!
Fouchon: God, why didn’t he go fishing?
Fouchon: Now you understand why we insist on payment up front.
Chance: Looks like we missed the party.
Fouchon: It appears we’ll have one last hunt after all.
Natasha: Shouldn’t we be worried about alligators or something?
Chance: If it’ll make you feel better, yeah.
Chance: I’ve got some people after me.
Uncle Douvee: I know. I can smell them.
Uncle Douvee: Drink. But don’t spill. Kill the grass.
Van Cleef, to Fouchon: It appears your trophy is ripping you a new orifice.
Fouchon: He’s an annoying fucking insect, and I want him stepped on. Hard.
Uncle Douvee: Now we put arrows into everyone that’s not Chance.
Natasha: Can you get up?
Uncle Douvee: I cannot dance. But I can get up.
Fouchon: What made you want to complicate my life like this?
Chance: Poor people get bored too.
Chance: Hunting season…is over.
Uncle Douvee, about his flask with a bullet hole in it: This real catastrophe. This real bad.
P is for… Profession
When we first meet Chance, he has no money and playing with his food—soup or stew of some kind—in a dingy diner. However he’s clearly a skilled kick boxer, as demonstrated when he takes out the four goons trying to harm Natasha. During this scene he pulls aside his jacket as if to reveal something on his belt (like a badge or gun), but it’s just empty. Perhaps this shot—in slow motion—was to increase audience expectation that Chance was a member of law enforcement, then slam home the fact that he isn’t.
He stands on the dock tying a rope, and it’s then revealed that he’s a merchant seaman waiting for assignment. He had a problem with a prior captain, who was smuggling opium, and Chance broke his jaw. He owes $217 in dues before he can get back to work.
Fouchon learns that Chance, his new prey, was awarded a silver star and was a member of Marine force recon. He was also raised in the bayou by his uncle, and Fouchon describes the bayou as being Chance’s country. All of this, and Chance knowing the truth about what’s going on, makes Chance the perfect prey for Fouchon’s final New Orleans hunt.
Q is for… Quagmire
This is another one of those movies where the hero doesn’t have enough limitations for the viewer to ever think he’s truly in danger. Fouchon’s men can’t hit anything with their guns, Chance is ex-military and knows the region, and even while being grossly out numbered, he doesn’t seem to even break a sweat while killing all of the bad guys.
R is for… Reality
Perhaps it’s just that the idea has been used countless times since Connell’s story, but the overall plot doesn’t seem too far-fetched at all. It’s almost too easy to believe there are people out there who organize hunts of other people.
I will, however, call nonsense on the way Chance is able to shoot accurately while standing on the seat of a moving motorcycle.
S is for… Sidekicks
As I’ve mentioned, Natasha is a sidekick in the sense of she at least doesn’t get in Chance’s way and in fact kills a guy in the warehouse. He’s even more her sidekick as she tries to find her father. But she’s definitely more of the “damsel” than a full-fledged sidekick.
Uncle Douvee is an amazingly amusing man who obviously loves Chance and is willing to do just about anything for him, including blow up all of his possessions and moonshine. He participates by getting Chance and Natasha horses, giving Chance a gun, distracting the bad guys with explosions, and bringing his bow and arrows to the warehouse to help kill some bad guys. He has a thick accent and says the funniest things while helping Chance and Natasha.
T is for… Technology
Unlike John Woo’s epic masterpiece Face/Off, there is very little technology in Hard Target. There are no computers, the movie is pre-Internet, and the plot doesn’t lend itself to gadgets and electronic toys, or at least not in a rundown area of New Orleans.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
The future relationship of Natasha and Chance is left utterly open. The film ends with Chance, Natasha, and Uncle Douvee leaving the warehouse. There was no overt romantic or sexual interaction between Natasha and Chance, and odds are they part ways after explaining everything to the authorities. They don’t even live in the same city, and Chance is probably going to go back to his merchant marine job.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
The opening chase scene has a motorcycle being used to knock Doug Binder off a fence.
Most of the rest of the vehicles seem to become weapons on their own after they catch fire, while not necessarily being intentional weapons driven into people or objects.
W is for… Winning
In one motion, Chance runs, slides under a table onto his back, and shoots up into van Cleef’s legs, ultimately killing him. Likely many times over.
Chance shoves a grenade down Fouchon’s pants, after kicking him and knocking his weapon away. Fouchon is able to get it out and try to dismantle it, but after taking the top off he kind of chuckles at it instead of throwing the pieces in opposite directions. The grenade of course proceeds to explode.
The entire hunting organization seems to be destroyed at this point; there’s certainly no indication that Fouchon was part of a larger project.
X is for… X-rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
Chance is injured but not too badly. His uncle actually patches him up. I don’t think he’s hurt at all during the final fight.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Randal using the wrong homeless guy led to Natasha looking for her father, Chance getting involved, his own death, and ultimately the downfall of the entire organization. Fouchon needed to hire somebody better.
Z is for… Zone, in the
In order to demonstrate how much of a badass Chance is, he has to fight four thugs without weapons, and does so neatly.
He also manipulates the floats and the warehouse like he owns the place, so perhaps he’s been there before or is really good at assessing locations and how things work in them.
So, that’s Hard Target. It takes quite a while to get started, but once Chance and Natasha are finally being hunted it’s quite entertaining. Lance Henriksen is extremely convincing and creepy as Fouchon, and Vasloo adds a sinister second-in-command in van Cleef. I’ve read reviews ragging on Van Damme’s acting, but considering the part, he seems fine. He has a lot of cheesy lines, though. Natasha was an okay character, though her thick, dark eyebrows were kind of distracting.
I do want to point out the ridiculousness of Chance punching out the rattlesnake, because such a silly thing deserves mention. It may not even be the action, but the sound effect used, that’s so amusing.
The final battle scene in the warehouse full of floats is unique, and provided a lot to look at.
But oh my God, the SLOW MOTION. The movie probably could have been five minutes shorter if there wasn’t slow motion trying to lend gravity to so many seemingly inconsequential things. We get it, there’s action or something happening here. Hopefully. Slow motion is not a way to add edginess and severity to action scenes! It loses its effectiveness when used too often. But yes, along with birds and the split screen standoff thing, it’s obviously a Woo trademark, as Face/Off had some of it, too.
Hard Target has a lot going for it, but it could have been streamlined, and Chance more developed. Henriksen’s Fouchon is excellent, though.
G is for… G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Let me preface this analysis of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (directed by Stephen Sommers) by explaining that the only knowledge I had of the “G.I. Joe universe” before watching the movie is that the action figures were fully articulate, “G.I” stands for “government issued,” and something about a Cobra. And oh yeah, someone at this year’s Halloween party was dressed as someone named “Snake Eyes.”
So I had to rely solely on the movie for story and characters.
…this was, shall we say, an unfortunate circumstance. But one I was expecting considering one of the production companies listed in the beginning was Hasbro. If I seem ignorant and like I missed something, it’s because I am and did!
But I will admit, if I’m in the mood for some explosions, cheesy dialogue, and special effects creating establishing shots that look like Microsoft sample wallpapers, and wondering just why Dennis Quaid needed money this badly, I may turn to G.I. Joe. I may even make it a holiday tradition, considering that this year valuable holiday movie time resulted in G.I. Joe eclipsing A Christmas Story. For shame, I know.
Let’s see, how to describe the plot… The movie opens, strangely enough, in 1641 France, where a Scottish guy named McCullen (David Murray) gets a mask burned onto his face due to him being slimy (not literally, he was found guilty of treason). Cut to the “not too distance future,” whatever the heck that means, and another McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) is presenting weaponized nanomites concealed in four warheads to a group of military professionals. Once activated the nanomites take apart whatever they touch until they are deactivated. An Army unit is given the job of transporting the warheads but they are ambushed by a UFO full of soldiers and a chick in tight black clothes. But wait, mysterious people with futuristic weapons intervene, and the bad guys fly off. Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are the only Army guys to make it through, and the mysterious people take them with them.
To… Egypt. There’s a super-sekrit base called The Pit underneath the desert, and that’s where the “Joes” have their home base. Duke and Ripcord undergo a series of tests to prove that they’re worthy of being Joes, and they become part of the Joe team. Meanwhile, it’s revealed that the chick in tight black clothes (Ana, former romantic partner of Duke) works with McCullen, who’d been trying to steal his own warheads back. Which Ana (Sienna Miller) does for him during a raid of The Pit, with the help of Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). A group of Joes—Duke, Ripcord, Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Snake Eyes (Ray Park), Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Breaker (Saïd Taghmaoui)—tracks them to Paris.
Meanwhile, McCullen’s other sidekick is The Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an expert in nanomite technology who has perfected the technique of using nanomites to take over people’s bodies and use them as slaves, or “nanovipers.” The nanomites can also change a person’s appearance as necessary so another person can be replicated (or replaced), and this procedure is done to Zartan (Arnold Vosloo).
Back in Paris, the Joes engage in a chase of Ana and Storm Shadow, eventually realizing that they’re heading to the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately they don’t get to them in time—more on why not in the Chase section—and the tower is destroyed by the nanomites before they can be deactivated. Also, Duke is captured by Ana and brought to McCullen’s super-sekrit fortress under the North Pole.
The Joes are ordered by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) to return to The Pit, but he agrees he never said when or what route to take, which encourages them to go find Duke. He makes it easy for them by engaging the tracking beacon on the suitcase housing the warheads. The Joes engage a full assault on the fortress, while Duke learns that The Doctor is actually Rex, Ana’s younger brother, whom he failed to keep safe as he promised when Rex was in his Army unit. It’s also revealed that Ana’s personality changes since their relationship are the result of having nanomites in her body, courtesy of Rex.
During the climactic fight sequence, Snake Eyes kills Storm Shadow, The Doctor puts a nano-mask onto McCullen and declares he is now Destro, Ana gets shaken out of her nano-stupor, and the fortress is destroyed, but not before the three remaining warheads are launched towards Moscow, Washington, DC, and Beijing. Snake Eyes blows up the Beijing one right away using the rocket launcher on one of the Joes’ snow mobiles. Ripcord gets to demonstrate his flight skills by stealing McCullen’s jet and chasing after the other warheads. He’s able to shoot them down before they cause too much damage.
The film ends with Ripcord and Scarlett in a relationship, Ana and Duke in a relationship, The Doctor—now the self-proclaimed Cobra Commander—and Destro in Joe prison, and Zartan in the Oval Office, impersonating the President.
If that sounds confusing, that’s because it is. There are too many characters and too much expectation that the viewer knows anything about G.I. Joe in general. The flashy special effects are also distracting. There is, however, plenty of action and plenty of stuff for the criteria, so let’s begin.
A is for… Accents
Because the movie opens in 1641 France, everyone in that scene has an accent. Why they couldn’t have actors speaking French and the viewer reading subtitles, I don’t know. It’s a little jarring.
McCullen is Scottish, so, and I hate to say it, everything he says sounds slightly more maniacal than it’s meant to.
Ana’s husband the Baron de Cobray (Grégory Fitoussi) is French.
Storm Shadow is Japanese.
Duke actually comments on the Joes clearly not being Army because of all the different accents represented. Heavy Duty is British, and Breaker is from Morocco.
B is for… Bad Guys
McCullen is depicted as the main villain, with The Doctor and Ana as his sidekicks. McCullen weapons dealing goes back to the McCullen in the opening scene, nicknamed “Destro the destroyer of nations.” Of course, this is exactly what current day (or future day) McCullen is doing, by developing weapons for the military and then stealing them back. It’s explained that MARS (Military Armaments Research System), McCullen’s company, builds 70% of all the arms on the planet. The tools are divided into sword (weaponry) and shield (defenses). Overall McCullen is depicted as the power-hungry schemer, while The Doctor is really the brains and craziness behind the operation.
The Doctor is actually Rex, Ana’s younger brother who was also in Duke’s Army unit. Rex was told to go into a bunker and Duke and Ripcord would follow him in five minutes. Unfortunately the air strike was early, and the bunker got bombed. Believed dead, Rex was buried and Ana grieved and didn’t forgive Duke, which is one reason they broke up.
However, before the bunker got destroyed, Rex saw the nanomite technology at work, changing someone’s appearance. He also met Dr. Mindbender (Kevin J. O’Connor), who promised if Rex didn’t kill him, he’d show him how to use the technology. Somehow, the combination of Rex getting horribly burned in the bombing, seeing the tech, and learning how to use it made Rex insane for power—or something, it’s kind of a tenuous link—and resulted in him ultimately donning a mask and declaring that the Cobras will now call him “Commander.” Big words considering he ends the movie locked in a cell.
Ana is Duke’s former fiancée, and seems to only be “bad” because of the nanomites in her system. She had no idea The Doctor was Rex. Nanomites or not, she’s quite capable at hand-to-hand combat and weapons.
By the end of the film, the President of the United States is replaced with Zartan, which was part of McCullen’s plan for controlling the world—having the President under his power.
In my analysis I refer to the bad guys as “bad guys” because if you don’t know they’re supposed to be “Cobra” you wouldn’t from this movie. The Doctor does love cobras but there isn’t any sort of unified organization.
C is for… Chases
There’s only one major chase scene designed as mid-film action, and while it’s rather entertaining, it’s also incredibly stupid.
In Paris, Storm Shadow and Ana have the warheads, and they’re driving a black Hummer. The Joes—Duke, Ripcord, Snake Eyes, Heavy Duty, Scarlett, and Breaker—are driving a grayish van. Snake Eyes almost immediately leaves the van and chases the Hummer on foot. He actually catches up with it and hangs onto its roof, which allows the Joes to follow its progress because he has a tracking bug on him. Duke and Ripcord also give chase on foot, but they’re in specialized accelerator suits that allow people to run faster, be stronger, and jump further, and have weapons built in and can withstand a lot of damage. (Yes, add some repulsors and they’re basically Iron Man suits.) Scarlett also steals a motorcycle off a passerby and chases using that.
The problem with this chase is multifold:
A) too much of it is clearly CGI and/or extremely fake, which is distracting. This is most noticeable when the villains’ Hummer “explodes” and the flames originate away from it. There are also a lot of cartoony background shots and cars flipping.
B) A lot of cars get flipped over. Yes, the Hummer has a specialized cowcatcher on the front, and various explosions are happening between it and Duke and Ripcord, but if someone played a drinking game every time a car flipped a dozen or more feet in the air, he’d be drunk in no time.
C) Scarlett’s bike moves in a serpentine manner. Seriously, that thing skids around using non-mechanical movements for a bike.
D) The Hummer is driving through rush hour traffic, which even the Joes comment on as they wonder why the Hummer would go through so much traffic if it were trying to get away from them, which is when they realize it’s not trying to get away, it’s trying to go somewhere, yet Duke and Ripcord can’t seem to catch up with it. Yes, guns are being fired at them. But if they’d paid more attention to where they were going, they should have been able to catch up because they’re more maneuverable than the huge Hummer. Especially considering Snake Eyes caught up with it on foot. Maybe they shouldn’t have spent so much time screwing around before actually starting the chase.
E) Eventually Snake Eyes drops off the Hummer because he knows—somehow—a train is about to smash into it. Ripcord and Duke go through and over the train respectively, as the Hummer flips into the air, crashes, and explodes, killing the driver. Ana and Storm Shadow have to run the rest of the way to the Eiffel Tower (well, the lab nearby where they’re going to have her husband activate the warheads) on foot. Which they do. So why the heck don’t Duke, Ripcord, and Snake Eyes chase after them? Snake Eyes totally disappears during all of this, and Duke and Ripcord sort of lie in the street for a while bantering before remembering they’re supposed to be chasing after the warheads.
Why?!
And where the heck is Scarlett during all of this?
Another chase is Ripcord flying McCullen’s jet after the missiles. He catches the one from Moscow fairly easily, but of course has trouble chasing down the one headed for Washington, DC. Cue a lot of banter and dizzying special effects.
D is for… Damsels
Yet another action movie with distractingly useless or stereotyped female characters.
The viewer is first introduced to Ana, as she and her men try to steal the warheads from Duke’s men. The second he recognizes her, the viewer surely groans as he or she anticipates a poorly executed romantic subplot. She’s quite a peach as she flirts with McCullen and reveals she’s married, but the manipulation is okay because she’s only married to her husband for his particle accelerator. …no, that’s not a euphemism. Ana is quite capable in combat, as demonstrated during the raid of The Pit. Her evil tendencies are later explained as being caused by The Doctor’s nanomites in her system controlling her actions. Somehow they also turned her from a blonde into a brunette. I wonder if they’re also responsible for her awful, cheesy attempts at one liners and snarky dialogue.
The other damsel is Scarlett, who always seems to be wearing less clothing than the other Joes, up until the final raid on the fortress, anyway. It’s explained she graduated college at 12, holds the record on the marksman challenge, and is reading a textbook while running on the treadmill. Ripcord immediately starts flirting with her. She launches into an argument for how emotions, because they can’t be quantified, aren’t real. She’s quite the peach too.
Of course, both damsels end up involved with one of the Joes by the end of the movie. All of the women (there’s a blonde Joe corporal who gets slaughtered during the raid on The Pit) have long hair.
E is for… Explosions
During the ambush of the Army caravan, all three Apache helicopters get blown up.
The Army uses grenades.
The Pit gets blown up in many places while Ana and Storm Shadow try to get the warheads.
Duke has a flashback to Africa where the bunker Rex is in gets blown up.
During the chase scene in Paris, the Hummer fires many missiles/rockets into the street traffic.
The Hummer explodes when it hits the ground after being hit by the train, though the flames are clearly generated not from the Hummer but from underneath the cars next to it.
Snake Eyes, the only character with any sort of situational awareness, grabs a snowmobile and launches a rocket at the missiles carrying the warheads. He’s able to take down one.
The Joes have “sharc” underwater craft that have missiles/rockets on them.
McCullen has a pulse cannon on his fortress that causes a lot of damage.
McCullen’s men have underwater craft that look sort of like manta rays, and one of them smashes into a wall.
The Doctor orders the ice pack above the fortress to detonate, which causes a series of explosions.
The fortress itself explodes in pieces, conveniently behind Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Breaker as they run through the place, and conveniently in front of Duke and Ana to dramatize their escape and chase of The Doctor and McCullen.
F is for… Flashbacks
Upon first viewing, it felt as if half the movie was told in flashbacks. I suppose that’s necessary, considering the sort of character building that had to be done, but again, if a phenomenon can be turned into a drinking game (take a drink when there’s a flashback), it might be overkill.
-“Four Years Earlier” Duke and Ana are celebrating, and he proposes. We also see Ripcord and Rex.
-When Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fight, there’s a few seconds of a flashback to the two of them fighting as kids.
-“Tokyo – Twenty Years Earlier” depicts Snake Eyes as a street urchin, eating food out of the trash. He sneaks into a kitchen for real food, where Storm Shadow catches him and proceeds to fight him. This fight scene is the best in the movie and one of the best I’ve seen in a while, as it harkens back to old kung fu movies with its improvisation, use of facial expressions, and real choreography not close ups. Storm Shadow is angry when his master (Gerald Okamura) wants to take in Snake Eyes and train him to fight properly.
-Duke flashes back to “East Africa, Four Years Earlier” to a scene of warfare. He tells Rex to go in and he’ll be in in five minutes. The airstrike comes early and blows up the building Rex is in. Cut to Rex’s funeral, sparsely attended, with Ana holding a folded flag. Duke drives by on his motorcycle. Also, it’s pouring rain.
-Storm Shadow flashes to another fight between himself and Snake Eyes as kids in Japan. Snake Eyes gradually improves from a white belt to red to black. He receives praise from their master, whom Storm Shadow proceeds to kill and then runs away from the scene.
-Ana gets a glimpse of her former blonde self kissing Duke.
-The Doctor flashes back to his moments as Rex in the bunker before it explodes, where he sees the nanoviper tech. He seems enamored and downloads information from the computer. Dr. Mindbender tells him, “If we live, I’ll show you everything.” Rex perfected Dr. Mindbender’s research.
-Ana gets another, longer glimpse of her past self with Duke.
-Rex flashes to Ana being depressed after his perceived death and Duke leaving her, and Rex injects her with nanomites. He explains to Duke outside the flashback, “I gave her purpose.”
G is for… Guns
Check out details at the IMFDB.
The Apache helicopters have guns.
The Army members have their service weapons.
The bad guys during the ambush have some sort of sonic weapons.
Scarlett uses a crossbow with a video screen.
Honestly the sword fights between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are far more interesting than the guns.
The accelerator suits have guns attached to the arms that can fire fifty rounds a second.
McCullen’s men use their guns as clubs against Duke in the arctic. There’s something especially entertaining about guns being used as blunt objects.
McCullen has a huge pulse cannon on his fortress that causes a lot of damage to Joe ships.
In the Presidential bunker where the President hides from the missile, his secret service agent (actually working for McCullen) shoots the other people in the room.
Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow also use throwing stars, which are more interesting than any of the guns.
Shootouts include: the opening ambush that surely takes place in the dark so less attention has to be paid to choreography, the raid on The Pit, Duke’s flashbacks to Africa, the Joes storming the fortress, and the “sharcs” versus the Cobra ships.
H is for… Helicopters
There are three Apache helicopters working with the transport caravan.
The bad guys in the ambush have UFO-looking aircraft.
The Joes also have futuristic aircraft.
Ana and Storm Shadow escape onto one of their craft in Paris, Duke with them (after performing an impossible leap from the roof into the sideways moving craft).
I is for… Improvisation
Other than the amazing Storm Shadow/Snake Eyes fight scene in the kitchen, there isn’t too much improvisation because everyone has toys. There are tools to do everything. Though Storm Shadow does throw spaghetti sauce into Ripcord’s face while trying to get away from him.
Snake Eyes does use his knife to disable to fortress door rather than do whatever electric tweaking Breaker was going to have him do. Somehow it’s extremely satisfying having the guy who doesn’t talk get in the final word.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
During the Paris chase scene, Ripcord and Duke repeatedly get flung through buildings and windows.
Noteably, Ripcord goes through the train windows in slow motion. Then he runs through a glass partition. Then through a window and hall of the building while chasing Storm Shadow. This is all capped by smashing through a wall with Storm Shadow.
After firing the warhead at the Eiffel Tower, Storm Shadow crashes through a window and onto the aircraft Ana is in.
In the fortress, one of McCullen’s men gets kicked by Snake Eyes through a window and then falls into a large electrical current that vaporizes him.
Storm Shadow shoves Snake Eyes through a window. (one has to ask why an underwater fortress has all of this glass separating its sections.)
K is for… Kill Count
There’re so many explosions and shootouts and so much gunfire it’s almost impossible to keep track of how many bad guys the Joes kill, but a notable moment is Ripcord impaling a guy in The Pit with a forklift.
The only named villain to die is Storm Shadow, but because his body is never shown after going under the water he may be alive.
L is for… Limitations
Other than the usual “the good guys split up” and “new technology is being used,” the Joes don’t have many limitations. They have plenty of toys to get the job done, and there’s never a moment of “Are they gonna make it?!” for the viewer. There’s no work put into making the viewer even feel sorry for any of them. Except maybe for Ripcord, but not in a “good” way.
Duke’s former relationship with Ana may hinder him a bit.
M is for… Motivation
McCullen says he wants “complete control,” and to be the most powerful man on the planet. He also wants money for research for The Doctor. He specifically says he wants to “strike fear into the hearts of every man, woman, and child on the planet. They’ll turn to the person with the most power.” This is later revealed to not be him, but the President of the United States (who by the end of the film is of course one of McCullen’s men).
Destroying the Eiffel Tower is retaliation for what the French did to “clan McCullen” in 1641.
The Doctor—later Cobra Commander—seems to just want power and to play with his nanomites.
The Joes want to keep the warheads safe, then want them back when they’re stolen, then want to apprehend McCullen.
N is for… Negotiation
There really isn’t much negotiating going on. Everyone knows what he wants and how to get it. Even the President says there haven’t been any demands regarding the warheads, which means the villains that have them intend to use them.
Duke does try to negotiate with The Doctor to let Ana go or fix her, but he of course doesn’t agree to that.
O is for… One Liners
Duke, after Ripcord talks about wanting to be a pilot: You want to be up in the air? I’ll buy you a trampoline.
Ripcord: I sent in an application.
Duke: They accept those in crayon?
Ripcord, trying to impress Scarlett: We are tough. But we’re also sensitive.
Shoutouts to the G.I. Joe cartoon/toys:
Ripcord to Heavy Duty: You have some real life-like hair, and a kung fu grip.
Ripcord: Duke wasn’t born, he was government issued.
Scarlett, about Snake Eyes: He doesn’t speak.
Ripcord: Why?
Breaker: He doesn’t say.
(later it’s explained his silence is because he took a vow of silence when his master was killed)
Scarlett: If you’re gonna shoot at something, kill it. Otherwise take up knitting.
Ana: How are we gonna get out of here?
Storm Shadow: Follow me.
[He leaps over a 20-foot high railing]
Ana: Like that’s gonna happen.
Ripcord, about Ana: “Baroness”? She really traded up.
Ana: That redhead is really starting to piss me off.
Ripcord, on Storm Shadow: Damn, that ninja’s fast.
Ana, after ordering a woman to get out of her way: Nice shoes.
Ripcord: Dead guys don’t breakdance.
Ana: Everybody’s sorry about something.
Ripcord, after Scarlett explains the math behind finding the arctic fortress: That’s why I missed that class.
Ripcord, in his snowsuit in the arctic: Long way from Miami.
Ripcord, trying to guess the voice command to fire missiles: Fire! Shoot! Blast away! Bust a cap!
Scarlett: Ripcord!
Ripcord: Didn’t I ask you not to yell at me?
Ripcord, as he lands and the secret service surrounds him: Good. Because I think I’m about to get arrested. Again.
P is for… Profession
Everyone’s profession seems a bit underdeveloped, strangely enough. Duke and Ripcord are probably Army, explicitly described as “special ops,” the catch-all designation for “we need some military guys, but don’t need to be specific about what they do.” Their mission is to protect the caravan of warheads, and Duke refuses to hand the suitcase over to Hawk.
Ripcord is stated to be an expert marksman, second in his battalion, a weapons specialist, and jet qualified.
Duke realizes the Joes can’t be Army because so many of them have accents.
Duke had been recruited to G.I. Joe at some point in the past.
The “Joes” are “the top men and women from the best military units in the world. The alpha dogs. When all else fails, we don’t.” Hawk’s line here reads like the back of an action figure box.
Q is for… Quagmire
Duke gets kidnapped and brought to the North Pole.
The problem is there isn’t enough attachment to him to be too worried about him, and there’s a huge group of people equipped to get him back. He’ll be fine.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
The entire movie requires suspension of the knowledge of current military technology, so that’s fine.
The first major problem is the fact that Ana and Storm Shadow raid The Pit using drill vehicles and no one realizes it. Somehow The Pit has no radar, no defenses, no sensors, no cameras or internal surveillance, and no one working or walking around, so no one even knows they’re there until they get to General Hawk’s office. Storm Shadow does kill a guy with his sword on the way there, which means that guy is either blind and deaf or has no means of radioing the attack to anyone. General Hawk is able to sound the alarm only because Storm Shadow chooses to wound him rather than kill him. So basically G.I. Joe has all the top experts, but can’t figure out how to defend its own compound.
From the chase scene, again:
-Scarlett’s motorcycle just doesn’t move right during the Paris chase. It’s very distracting.
-The Hummer explodes from the outside in.
-Duke and Ripcord just hang out not doing anything while Ana and Storm Shadow get all the way to her husband’s lab. And Snake Eyes, who wasn’t thrown or hurt, disappears instead of following them.
S is for… Sidekicks
The cast is basically an ensemble, even though Duke is seemingly supposed to be the main character. The other Joes do more than he does, though.
T is for… Technology
Because the film takes place in the future, the advanced technology is basically a given, but I’ll mention some of it.
The MARS Industries nanomites eat anything from a single tank to an entire city, but the warheads need to be individually deactivated for them to stop.
The nanomites used by The Doctor to control people inhibit the self preservation reflex, so the men feel no pain, fear, regrets, or remorse. The nano-ed men are called neovipers.
Ana and her crew have sonic weapons, and glasses that can be fully opaque or fully transparent.
Scarlett has a crossbow with a video screen to target bad guys better.
People communicate using lifelike holograms instead of video conferencing.
The Joes have a camouflage suit that takes pictures of whatever is behind the person wearing it and places the images in front of him
The accelerator suits make the wearer faster, stronger, jump higher, and have weaponry on them.
Storm Shadow and Ana escape The Pit with the aid of a jet pack hang glider thing that looks awesome.
Breaker has a tool to stick into dying brains to convert neural impulses to video, to record recent memories.
Scarlett, Breaker, and Snake Eyes have to traverse a hallway where the floor is pressure plated and laser detected, and nothing bigger than a quarter can touch it. Snake Eyes defeats this technology by walking on his fingertips.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
One of those movies where the “unexpected” part is up to the viewer.
Ripcord flirts with Scarlett right away, even though she brushes him off. She eventually gives in to the emotions she denies having, and even kisses Ripcord as he prepares to take McCullen’s jet.
Ana saves Duke from having nanomites injected in him, and kisses him. At the end of the film he says he won’t give up on her, even though the nanomites can’t be removed from her body. They kiss again.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Ripcord uses a forklift to kill someone.
The Hummer in Paris has a cowcatcher on it, all the better to push people and other cars out of the way.
The Hummer is also scraped against other vehicles to try to dislodge Snake Eyes.
The Hummer drives into a train, which is what finally stops it.
W is for… Winning
All of the Joes fight with McCullen’s people, and the fortress gets infiltrated. The arctic base is destroyed, Ana is put in recovery, and The Doctor and McCullen—now Cobra Commander and Destro—are in Joe prison.
But, considering the villains aren’t dead (the first movie I’ve reviewed in which this is the case), the President isn’t the President, and there’s a sequel, how much winning truly happened?
X is for… X-Rays, or Why Don’t You See a Doctor?
Everyone seems fine. I can’t even recall anyone getting a paper cut, though surely there are some bumps and bruises.
Z is for… Zone, the
No one is in any sort of zone. Everyone is an expert, and teamwork brings everything together.
So that’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It’s basically a mess, but for someone who wants something light and explodey to watch, it’s fine. The ensemble of heroes is nice to see, too, rather than just one or two people trying to take down a villain.
There are, however, many miscellaneous points I’d like to make that bothered me throughout the film.
-The description of “In the not too distant future” seems a little strange coming after a scene that specifically takes place in 1641. Because the “not too distant future” from 1641 could be 1651. I know the point is to set the movie a few years into the present day’s future, but they could clarify by having the title read “The present day, plus a few years” or something like that.
-Ripcord is horribly stereotyped. I’m not a black man, but I’m still offended that Marlon Wayans’ character is reduced to the bumbling fool who can’t get the girl (until he does) and has all the comic relief lines. If he’s a Joe, why does he need to be the comic relief? Nothing intelligent comes out of his mouth, and that’s a shame.
-I mentioned this in my introduction, but for a movie that relies heavily on special effects, the CGI establishing shots, notably of the desert, are absolutely terrible. They really look like the wallpapers that come with Microsoft computers. This also goes for that poor polar bear in the artic. They could have found footage of an actual polar bear and superimposed it with the footage of the ship coming from underneath. Speaking of which, if the ice is ten stories thick, how’d the ship come up from underneath it?
-I couldn’t help but wonder about Joseph Gordon-Levitt acting with the mask, and how difficult it must have been, and then if he gave any tips to Tom Hardy when they were working together on the set of The Dark Knight Rises. I can’t remember if they had scenes together, but surely Joseph Gordon-Levitt spoke with Tom Hardy about it. How many people have to act in a big budget action blockbuster while wearing a mask that covers the bottom part of his or her face?
-Scarlett and the blonde corporal don’t wear undershirts beneath their fatigues, yet all the men do. Ana wears a push-up bra. Stop sexualizing the women!
-What the heck is Brendan Frasier doing in that cameo? Super distracting. All I could think was, “Is that Brendan Frasier? Why is he here?”
-Duke and Ripcord go through a series of tests in order to prove they are Joe material. How long do those tests take? Everything seems to take place in the same day, considering Ana hasn’t stormed The Pit yet. But surely becoming a Joe takes longer than that!
-When the Joes (sans Snake Eyes and Duke) get arrested, Breaker speaks to the guards in English. But his native language is French, they’re in France, and the guards are French. Why wouldn’t he speak French? Can’t American audiences handle six seconds of subtitles?
-The surface portion of McCullen’s arctic fortress is eerily reminiscent of both the Fortress of Solitude and Hoth. I don’t know much about arctic architecture and engineering, but surely there’s got to be a design suitable for the arctic landscape that isn’t “huge slabs of ice at irregular angles.”
-Just wanted to point out the convenience that McCullen’s missiles travel at Mach 5, and he fortunately has jets that can travel at that speed and greater, when the Joes don’t. And oh yeah, Ripcord happens to be an expert pilot.
-The fight scenes in the fortress are reminiscent of Star Wars, especially the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow fight. That place might as well be the Death Star. I seriously expected Snake Eyes to cut off Storm Shadow’s hand (I know that was in Cloud City, but go with it). The underwater craft having separate wingman areas were reminiscent of R2-D2 being Luke’s wingman, and while I know that’s not a new design, the whole scenario was just very Star Wars-ish.
-That fortress, that Scarlett claims was ingenious because it’s easy to defend, sure falls apart quickly/easily. Were there no measures to ensure it was structurally sound in case of an attack? Someone would eventually find the place!
So, hey ho, G.I. Joe. It has some enjoyable elements, but I don’t think I’ll be reaching for the DVD any time soon, unless I want truly mindless entertainment. With sonic guns. Maybe faithful fans of the toys and cartoons have a higher opinion.
F is for… Face/Off
Oh, Face/Off. You silly, silly film.
I’d seen Face/Off a couple of times since it came out, but of course never bothered to think about it too closely. Perhaps that’s because if someone does look closer, he or she will realize that the film makes absolutely no sense.
At all.
In any consideration.
That being said, the film is quite entertaining, with its silliness contributing to the enjoyment.
Face/Off (directed by John Woo) stars John Travolta as Sean Archer and Nicolas Cage as Castor Troy, an FBI agent and a terrorist-for-hire who have seemingly been each other’s nemeses for a long time. The film even opens with Troy trying to assassinate Archer but accidentally killing his son Mikey (Myles Jeffrey) instead. Six years later Archer’s team tracks down Troy and his brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola) as they’re trying to escape in an airplane. In a scene that would be the climax in another movie, there’s a huge shootout, a plane crashing through a building, and Castor getting knocked unconscious—by a jet engine.
But wait, there’s more! Castor Troy is actually an unresponsive vegetable, but he and Pollux had planted a bomb full of nerve agent and only Pollux knows where it is. So it’s suggested that Archer swap faces with Castor and go to the prison where Pollux is being held and try to trick Pollux into giving Archer the location of the bomb. After some initial doubts, and by “doubts” I mean “refusing harshly,” Archer agrees to undergo the surgery in order to find the location of the bomb from Pollux. It’s a super secret operation, with the only people knowing about it the doctor, Archer’s partner, and another agent close to them.
Everything goes smoothly and Archer is even able to get the information out of Pollux, who spills the location of the bomb pretty quickly for a guy who’s described as sociopathic and paranoid. But….back at the surgery center, Castor is actually not a vegetable! He’s able to walk around, call his flunkies, and smoke a cigarette, and then convinces Dr. Walsh (Colm Feore) to put Archer’s face on his body. This leads to a rather powerful scene where Archer-as-Castor gets a visitor at the prison, only to have the door pull back and reveal Castor-as-Archer leaning against the doorframe. Archer’s spirit is broken, Pollux is released from the prison because Castor-as-Archer negotiated a deal, and Castor had killed the only three people in the world who knew what was going on.
Motivated by Castor diffusing his own bomb and the world therefore rejoicing at “Agent Archer,” Archer escapes from the extremely maximum security prison…somehow (details later in this post)… and somehow gets back on land, as the prison is in the middle of a body of water. He makes it back to town and tracks down Castor’s friends, whom he’d interrogated earlier in the film. He learns Castor has a son. Pollux, who’d been spying from the building across the street, lets Castor know where Archer is, and Castor calls in the FBI. There’s a massive shootout and Pollux winds up dead.
Archer makes it back to his own house and scares the crap out of his wife Eve (Joan Allen) but eventually convinces her that the man she’s been sleeping with isn’t her husband. She’s still suspicious, but takes a blood sample anyway (as Castor and Archer have different blood types). Fortunately, she’s a doctor, so she’s able to compare the samples and confirm that yes, the crazy-sounding man in front of her is actually her husband, and the man who’s been living in her house for a week is actually her husband’s greatest enemy and the man who killed their son.
Meanwhile Archer’s boss (Harve Presnell) has a heart attack, made deadly by Castor punching him in the chest, so “Archer” and his wife have to attend the funeral. For some reason this is where Archer decides to face down Castor. A shootout at the church leaves Castor’s goons dead, and Archer’s daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain) a hostage. She shoots her dad because she doesn’t realize they’ve switched and then Castor grabs her so she stabs him in the leg as he taught her, and she runs to her mom while Castor runs away.
Castor and Archer wind up stealing speedboats and having a full speed chase in the harbor. Eventually the boats crash and the final confrontation takes place in the sand. Archer ultimately gets the killing shot off, and his fellow agents ask if he’s okay (Eve had called to let them know what was going on).
The film ends with the surgery successfully being reversed, and the Archer family taking in Castor’s son, Adam (David McCurley), who’s about the same age as Archer’s son had been when he died.
Laying it all out like that, I do appreciate the actually simple plot and its rather linear aspect. A leads to B leads to C, without anything overcomplicating the storyline. The film tells the tale of a man who needs to get his life back after things go horribly awry.
And there are a lot of guns along the way.
A is for… Accents
The major players are all American, so no one has an accent. Pollux speaks strangely, but it’s not an accent.
B is for… Bad Guys
Castor Troy is introduced as he lines up a killing shot on Sean Archer. The bullet goes through Archer and hits his son, killing him instantly. Castor actually looks somewhat upset at Mikey’s death, or perhaps he’s upset he didn’t kill Archer. Of course, one can also ask him why on earth he chose a moving target if he’s such a good assassin. Is he too confident of his skills to shoot Archer as he’s standing still instead of on a carousel? He’d have to get off the carousel at some point. Maybe the carousel is being used to illustrate that for all he’s a good assassin/mercenary/whatever—other than “terrorist” he isn’t fleshed out very well—he’s not too bright.
Other than being a ridiculously poor assassin, if that opening scene is anything to go by, which it has to be because it’s all the viewer has, Castor is also depicted as being flashy. One would think a showboating assassin isn’t a good thing, but, you know, that’s not how Castor rolls. When he’s planting the bomb as the LA Convention Center, he’s dressed as a priest, presumably because there’s a church choir performing. But he sings loudly, drawing attention to himself, and also dances and swears. He’s also a womanizer, or at least gets a perverse thrill at groping women’s posteriors; he grabs a choir girl after planting the bomb, and one of Archer’s coworkers after the transformation, and he hits on and makes out with the flight attendant on the plane before she reveals she’s an agent.
He also, for some reason, doesn’t seem to like other people swearing, if his order of “watch your mouth” is any indication, which is silly considering how often he swears.
Pollux is nervous and paranoid, while Archer calls him a “paranoid sociopath.” He’s also depicted as being childish, such as when Castor has to tie his shoes. It’s unclear whether this is Pollux needing his shoes tied because he’s can’t do it himself, or Castor being a creepily protective older brother.
Which begs the question, who on earth names their kids “Castor” and “Pollux” if they aren’t twins? Or are these codenames? Maybe the characters are the same age, but they certainly don’t look it.
C is for… Chases
The opening climax of the movie has the Troy plane trying to take off while the FBI chases it down with their cars and Archer’s Jeep getting in the way and playing chicken.
While escaping the prison, Archer is chased on the roof rather half-heartedly by a helicopter that gives up once he jumps off into the water.
After the funeral shootout, Archer chases Castor to the docks, where they steal speedboats. This leads to the climactic speedboat chase through the harbor, which involves a lot of explosions somehow. The chase drags on a little, but that may be because by this point the film has dragged on and Castor just needs to be apprehended already.
D is for… Damsels
Ooo boy. The most obvious damsel in the film is Eve, Archer’s wife. In her first scenes she’s rather unhappy and resigned to being that way. She’s elated Castor is out of the picture, and excited Sean will be home again after he tells her he’s asking for a desk job.
She’s a doctor, which becomes crucial to the plot.
She’s also… rather slow if she can’t figure out that this man—who actually drives by their house because he doesn’t know which one it is—isn’t her husband. He doesn’t know what “final mission” she asks about. He’s flirty and romantic and doesn’t care about work, which is clearly not how Archer behaved. Castor even reads in her diary about the failure of their recent date night. How can she believe this utterly different man is her husband? Okay, there’s denial. There’s also the inability to imagine that Sean’s been body swapped or body snatched or face offed, but even given that science fiction isn’t real, shouldn’t there be some level of doubt and suspicion in her mind? She even acknowledges he’s acting differently, and that he’s crazy for not remembering Mikey’s birthday and the annual trip to the cemetery.
And this is all the stuff that the viewer sees. What about the other day-to-day stuff that Castor would never know? Like where the dinner plates or glasses are. What Archer’s nightly routine is. Heck, Castor says he sleeps with her—does he make love the way Archer does? Is Eve turned on by the new technique? None of this makes sense.
Archer -as-Castor scares the hell out of her as she’s coming out of the shower, but his behavior is enough to cause some doubt in her mind. Because she’s conveniently a doctor she can take a blood sample from each man and type it, which proves that the man with Castor’s face is actually her husband. There’s also the long sappy story he tells about their first date. All of this and it seems to be the stupid hand-down-the-face gesture that Archer always does that finally convinces her.
Another damsel is Archer and Eve’s daughter Jamie. Funnily enough, she does doubt Castor-as-Archer at first because he doesn’t even know her name. He also smokes. He says she’ll see a lot of changes, which maybe is enough to keep her from thinking too much about why her dad is acting weird. Castor at least seems more engaged in her life than Archer was; her boyfriend starts getting handsy and Castor beats him up and gives Jamie a knife and a lesson on how to use it. Of course this comes back to haunt him because she uses the knife on him when he takes her hostage. The viewer can also ask why the heck Eve didn’t tell her daughter that her dad isn’t her dad. Seriously, no one thought to tell her? That Castor wouldn’t go for her? It makes no sense.
The final damsel is Sasha (Gina Gershon), one of Castor’s friends and former (or on-again off-again?) lover. Archer tries to get her talk by explaining the FBI can have her son taken away if she has further involvement with Castor or hides information. Archer-as-Castor goes to her and her brother Dietrich’s (Nick Cassavetes) place. Here he learns that her son Adam is actually Castor’s. The problem with this is that A) Castor is supposed to be in jail, so why isn’t anyone more concerned that he’s there? And B) this is the night she tells Castor the kid is his? Really? Not only that, she tells Adam that Castor is his dad. Knowing how badly things can go at any moment with a known felon and fugitive in the room, why on earth did she choose that moment to tell anyone anything? Of course the place gets blown to hell when the FBI shows up, and Sasha guns down a lot of agents herself. Great environment for the kid, who’s watching everything while listening to headphones to block out the noise, which means he’ll be deaf anyway if the headphones are up loud enough to drown out gunfire that’s right next to him. And oh yeah, he was playing with Castor’s guns before that. Nice. Sasha is gunned down at the church, on top of Archer -as-Castor. Very romantic for this manipulative woman. She seems to promote peace while being surrounded by and contributing to the violence around her.
E is for… Explosions
When the airplane crashes into the hangar at the beginning of the film, there’s of course an explosion, similar to the way there’s one when Archer shoots out the engine.
For some reason all of the gunshots look like explosions, with the bullets raining sparks whenever they hit anything. It makes the shootout scenes look extra flamey.
The prison escape has either a lot of small explosions or a lot of gunshots-that-look-like-tiny-explosions.
During the final boat chase, Castor’s gun hits propane tanks on the dock, causing a large explosion.
Archer runs his boat into a police boat and then into a barge, and both times there’s an explosion.
The red boat flips up, lands in the water, and then explodes everywhere. These boats clearly have a lot of fuel in them.
F is for… Flashbacks
The opening scene where Castor shoots Archer and Mikey almost plays as a flashback, because a lot of it is in slow motion and it’s got a soft filter on it.
When Castor is describing destroying the lab where the surgery took place, there’s a flashback to his goons pouring gasoline on everyone and burning the place down.
When Archer meets Adam, he has a flashback to Mikey on the carousel.
G is for… Guns
The IMFDB has full details.
The film opens with Castor using a sniper rifle.
The viewer later learns Castor uses his own gold plated matching pistols that get presented to him in a case. When he and Archer get into the shootout in the hangar, he doesn’t know his gun is empty and tries to shoot Archer. Wouldn’t he know he’s out? Or is it just a ploy to get Archer closer so he can stab him?
Archer of course has his service weapon, as do all the other agents.
The prison guards have their own weapons.
When the FBI storms Sasha and Dietrich’s place, they use grenade guns. There’s also basically an all-out war and it seems like almost everyone involved dies except for Castor and Archer.
Jamie picks up a gun and winds up shooting her dad. Castor also makes a crack about how his daughter wouldn’t miss so wide.
Shootouts in the film include the FBI and Castor in the hangar, Archer and the prison guards as he takes their weapons for his use, Sasha and Dietrich’s place, Archer and Castor at the church, then Archer and Castor’s crew at the church which is filmed so poorly it’s unclear what’s even happening because it’s all close ups and slow motion.
Considering there are so many shootouts, Castor is depicted as an assassin, and Archer is a skilled agent, it’s amazing the movie is as long as it is. The two of them should have killed each other early on.
H is for… Helicopters
The FBI eventually brings its helicopter to the airport to chase the Troy plane, which is especially notable considering the only FBI vehicles up to that point are trucks, which wouldn’t be able to do much once the plane gets in the air.
This helicopter is also used to break the flap on the plane’s tail, which is an awesome way to use the helicopter as a weapon.
Another helicopter brings Archer-as-Castor from the FBI building to the prison.
The prison helicopter chases Archer on the prison’s roof, but gives up once he leaps into the water to escape.
I is for… Improvisation
Archer has to be clever in order to escape the super maximum security prison, where the prisoners wear metal boots that are magnetized to the floor. He asks around and the only time the boots are removed is when the prisoners are given electroshocks. So, he picks a fight to get taken to the shock room, and while waiting his turn he asks for a cigarette. After his boots are removed he uses the cigarette to burn a guard, and the other prisoner in there (a former enemy) helps him escape. From there, from using the table as a sort of shield, to getting the computers in the control room to give him information, to getting to the roof, everything is basically improvisation.
Doves flocking around the church are used to distract Castor.
During the speedboat chase, Castor uses the anchor as a club. Similarly, once the boat crashes, various pieces of it are used as weapons.
Ultimately, Archer uses a harpoon gun to kill Castor, but first he simply stabs him with it, apparently realizing he wouldn’t be able to get off a shot.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
The Troy airplane crashes through the hangar wall.
After the surgery, when seeing his new face, Archer smashes the mirror with his IV rack.
One of Castor’s friends throws himself needlessly through a plate glass wall or door during the shootout at Sasha’s.
Pollux gets thrown through the window of the roof and crashes through a floor.
K is for… Kill Count
It’s unclear who Archer kills or wounds in the prison. Of course it would go against his training, but no one knows he’s him. He also may shoot FBI agents at Sasha’s; it’s hard to tell. He definitely kills Castor’s two goons in the church.
L is for… Limitations
Archer has to get used to the changes to his body that make him appear to be Castor, such as shorter hair, less weight, less body hair. It must take some time. Same for Castor trying to get used to Archer’s bulkier body shape after his surgery.
Archer is also on a timeframe; once he’s in the prison he has two days to get the information from Pollux. This isn’t a lot of time to practice being Castor, and he almost blows his cover by telling the first person who talks to him at the prison that he—“I” corrected to “Archer”—put him away. Pollux is immediately wary, so Archer has to think quickly on his feet to convince him he’s Castor, which includes a lot of “Whoo!” and a “Watch your mouth” when someone swears.
Hugely limiting of course is the fact that after Castor kills everyone involved, there’s no one who knows that Archer is actually wearing Castor’s face. No one. He’s stuck in the prison with no hope of help. Once he escapes, he doesn’t have shoes or money.
M is for… Motivation
Initially Archer’s motivation is apprehending Castor to both stop his terrorism and also avenge Mikey’s death. Later he needs to find out the location of the bomb. After things go so horribly wrong, he wants to get back his body and his life, and apprehend Castor. Maybe not even apprehend, maybe just finally kill him.
Castor seems to enjoy his life of crime; there doesn’t seem to be anything personal he’s doing, he’s just causing mayhem and Archer is the one trying to put a stop to it. It’s unclear why Castor takes the shot at Archer in the beginning. Once Castor is wearing Archer’s face, he clearly wants to just play with Archer’s life. He diffuses his own bomb to make Archer appear to be a hero, and he uses this new power and leverage to take out his terrorist competition, or as it’s put, the “whole gamut of global terrorism.” He wants to use the protection and resources of the government to get his rivals. Archer’s boss doesn’t like the new methods, and wants to terminate the operations, which is why Castor exacerbates his heart attack.
N is for… Negotiations
Maybe as a further illustration of the characters, there isn’t a lot of negotiation that goes on in the film.
Archer tries to get Castor’s associates including Dietrich and Sasha to give up the details of the bomb, but all he gets is that something will happen on the 18th. Once Pollux is back in custody they try to get him to open up, but Castor can just discuss the plans with him in secret.
O is for… One Liners
Castor to Archer: Try terrorism for hire. We’ll blow shit up. It’s more fun.
Archer, after Castor tells him he kills his partner, superior, and Dr. Walsh: You killed them?
Castor: Beats paying the bill.
Castor, to Pollux, trying to get him to like the new plan: Think about me—this nose, this hair, this ridiculous chin.
Castor, impersonating Archer on TV: Interception. Now our side’s got the bomb. Sorry.
Dietrich, after the needlessly long “I want to take his face…off” discussion with Archer-as-Castor: No more drugs for that guy.
Castor-as-Archer to Jamie: Dress up like Halloween, and ghouls will try to get in your pants.
Dietrich: Damn, my place is getting fucked up.
Castor, after a less-than-friendly visit with Eve at the hospital after she knows about the swap: Lies, mistrust, mixed messages… This is turning into a real marriage.
Castor-as-Archer at the church: I’m Castor. That’s Archer.
Sasha: And I’m bored.
P is for… Profession
Sean Archer is an award-winning member of the greater Los Angeles FBI anti-terrorism team. He’s obviously been chasing Castor for a long time; they’re even on a first name basis. He has “lived and breathed [Castor] for years.” He works with a supportive team that tries to celebrate Castor’s capture with him.
Having said that, and knowing he must be good at his job, he makes several mistakes once he’s wearing Castor’s face. He plays his hand to Pollux awfully quickly; he gets the information from him and thanks him and walks away, so of course Pollux is going to know his suspicions about him not really being Castor are right. He also calls Castor to let him know he escaped from the prison. Um…why? Hasn’t Archer ever heard of “element of surprise”? He also—for an unfathomable reason—tells Castor’s associates the passcode to his security. Archer endangers his whole family and for what reason?
Q is for… Quagmire
The conversation between Castor and Archer at the prison nicely illustrates just how much trouble Archer is now in, considering Castor’s using his body and no one knows about the switch, and Archer is stuck in the high security prison surrounded by guys who hate Castor. It’s not even clear if Archer would have come up with his escape plan so quickly if Pollux hadn’t been released and rubbed it in his face as he left.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
Basically this is one of those films where the viewer’s comprehension of reality has to be checked at the door when the ticket is purchased. You know those bins to collect used 3D glasses? Have one of those set up for people’s brains as they enter the theater.
To begin with, Archer is way too close to the Castor case to even be on it anymore. There’s no way he can be an objective, thinking agent about a terrorist that shot him and killed his son. Another specialist should have been brought onto the case and Archer moved on to something else.
Obviously the surgery is the centerpiece of the film, and it’s the part of the film that makes no sense whatsoever, and has no sort of grounding in reality.
First off, face transplant surgery is almost impossible. It’s been tried in the real world, and it doesn’t work very well. Absolutely advances have been made, but certainly nothing like seen in the film, with a seamless transplant. This all pushes the film slightly into science fiction.
The part where Dr. Walsh discusses the “easy” parts of the surgery is where everything that makes no sense is kind of highlighted. First off, Archer is hairy. The backs of his hands are even hairy. They’d have to put hair plugs all over Castor and hope that they grow in time, or implant hairs one by one. They’d have to shave Archer’s body so he can pass as Castor, or maybe Nair off the hair on his hands. Walsh also describes Archer as having “love handles,” so he what, puts those onto Castor’s body so he can pose as Archer?
Also, Castor is described as being an unresponsive “turnip” but then proceeds to take over the entire place. He even sits bolt upright in the bed. Miraculous recovery or terrible medicine?
Walsh mentions the blood type difference, and says Pollux won’t notice that discrepancy, and of course the blood type is what finally convinces Eve of the switch. But if the blood types didn’t match, there’s basically no way the face transplant would work at all.
The surgery is totally off the books, so no one outside of three people know about the swap. That’s obviously a terrible idea. Also, how do Archer’s partners plan to free him once he learns the location of the bomb? How would they get the clearance to free “Castor” from prison? Would they tell everyone about the surgery?
There was no time for a trial; Pollux and then Castor were thrown into that maximum security prison just because. Even though they’re obviously guilty, there would still have to be a trial before being placed in a prison like that. And would they put Castor into a prison with so many people he’d once screwed over? Maybe it’s only the two, but that seems like two too many considering how many prisons there are to choose from to keep him away from people.
Let’s face it—Nicolas Cage and John Travolta look nothing alike. Okay, they’re both tall white guys with brown hair and light eyes. …and that’s it. Dr. Walsh says something about bone structure, but it’s even visible on the monitors during the surgery that Archer’s face and neck are much broader than Castor’s. In order to get them to look exactly alike, there’s a lot of bone reconstruction that would have to happen. Futuristic technology or not, it’s ridiculous.
No doubt Archer and Castor have different teeth. Walsh doesn’t seem to mention that at all. Most people probably wouldn’t notice the teeth difference, but Pollux and Eve should. Teeth are unique, which is why they’re use to identify bodies. Either Castor or Archer has got to have a filling or space or crooked spot that someone close to them would realize is no longer there.
Would Castor have been given pain meds as a turnip? He doesn’t seem to be in pain at all when he wakes up, but acknowledges it later.
The process is stated to take only a few days—maybe as little as two—for recovery. But Archer only has two days to get to Pollux. So how quickly does Castor heal that he can be posing as Archer before Archer has a chance to attempt to contact his partners? (which, again, how would he convince anyone to give him a phone call, or would they somehow be able to check in with him every so often?)
Archer’s coworkers don’t seem to realize that Archer doesn’t care about the death of his partner and that he gloats about diffusing the bomb. One coworker even comments on the stick being taken out of his ass. So….a room full of highly trained agents wouldn’t become at all suspicious, especially after the married man gropes a coworker? Similarly, this man in his cold marriage puts the President of the United States on hold rather than his wife. These actions are (obviously intentionally) 180 degrees from a similar scene early in the movie, and no one seems to notice.
Archer is able to use the control room in the prison to help him escape, but how does he know what anything does?
I’ve mentioned it twice already, but why on earth does the helicopter outside of the prison give up on finding Archer-as-Castor? He has to come up for air eventually, the water seemed clear and not too rough, there wasn’t a storm, and a helicopter can sit and wait as much as it wants. So why not wait for “Castor” to come to the surface to breathe? Even if he swam under the support beams and to the other side of the prison, he’d still be visible against the water for the helicopter to see eventually. There’s no foliage for him to hide under while out in the water.
Eve explains that a “top surgical team from DC” is on the way to reverse the surgery so Archer can have his face back, but wasn’t Walsh’s technology and technique the only way to successfully complete the surgery? Especially after Castor tries to cut Archer’s face off when he realizes he’s about to lose. There should be scarring or something, at least.
I don’t understand why Archer just walks into his house at the end, with his family barely anticipating him. His family wasn’t present when he was released from the hospital or wherever he was? Do they not care or were they not allowed? Or has he already been home and we’re seeing the reception for Adam?
It’s also unfathomable that he brings with him Adam—from where, isn’t Archer recovering from surgery?—and offers the kid Mikey’s room without discussing anything with his wife and daughter. They all loved and miss Mikey, of course they do, but this child of their greatest enemy can’t replace the boy who was lost. They know nothing about the kid—who no doubt will have a lot of psychological scarring considering the environment in which he was raised—and he knows nothing about them. Insane that there would be no discussion beforehand. What if Archer had already promised the kid a lot of stuff and Eve told him no? It would crush Adam. How would he even be given custody of the kid? See the first point up there about Archer being too close to the case, let alone taking in his enemy’s kid.
S is for… Sidekicks
Other than his family, Archer doesn’t have any sidekicks. He’s totally on his own until he convinces Eve of the swap, and even then she doesn’t really do anything. Jamie does more by wounding Castor when he takes her hostage.
T is for… Technology
State-of-the-art futuristic technology is needed for the plastic surgery for it to be successful.
A microchip is used to match their voices.
The prison has a magnetic field with location-sensing boots to isolate individuals. The boots can be locked in place.
Jamie mentions email, which is notable only because the movie was made in 1997 but had to have been filmed earlier, when email was still a fairly new thing for anyone not involved in IT.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Fortunately there’s no surprise lovin’ in the film, though Castor does take a liking to Eve, and it doesn’t seem to be just because he’s supposed to be her husband.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
The FBI Jeep in the beginning is used to try to slow down the plane, but they play chicken and the Jeep veers off.
The FBI helicopter is used to land on the plane’s tail flap, causing it to break. Ingenious.
An honorary mention goes out to the rolling table Archer uses in the electroshock room to both shield himself from bullets and also ram into a guard.
Another honorary mention goes out to the birds outside the church, which are nudged into flight to distract Castor.
The speedboats during the final chase scene are repeatedly crashed into each other and used to cut each other off.
W is for… Winning
Archer winds up throwing Pollux through a roof window, and he eventually smashes into the bottom floor.
Castor and Archer are reduced to hand-to-hand combat using pieces of the smashed boat as weapons, until Archer picks up a harpoon gun and stabs Castor in the stomach. Castor has his hand around the harpoon so it can’t be fired into him, but eventually Archer prevails and is able to shoot Castor with the harpoon.
Meanwhile Castor had tried to cut Archer’s face off so he couldn’t get it back.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
In a movie with so many guns and shootouts, Archer manages to survive basically unscathed except for a wound in his side and getting shot by Jamie. Even Castor only gets a knife to the leg.
Of course, Archer does go see a doctor, but it’s his wife, and he’s only getting blood samples drawn until they prove he’s him, and then Eve offers to treat the wound in his side.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Obviously, if Castor had been apprehended sometime after Mikey’s death, he wouldn’t have been able to plant bombs and share secrets with Pollux. Pollux doesn’t appear to be able to function in the real world without Castor.
Also, even though he’s a turnip, is it really not policy to restrain the crazy assassin/murderer/terrorist in Walsh’s clinic? Strapping him down just as a precautionary measure would have probably kept him from getting free and demanding the surgery and then killing everyone.
Z is for… Zone, In The
Honestly, no one really seems to be in any sort of professional-and-plotting-zone. Archer makes terrible decisions and is only lucky Castor doesn’t come out on top.
So yeah. Face/Off.
It’s an action film that makes utterly no logical sense, but it’s still surprisingly entertaining. Unique elements include the opening fight between Castor and Archer that would be the climax in another action film, and of course the face swap versus a body swap.
There is also some weirdness, such as the FBI agents in the beginning never actually shown being shot; there were just cuts away that wound up just looking awkward. Archer’s leap from the prison roof to the water took six separate shots/camera angles to show. The “face…off” exchange between Archer and Dietrich was unnecessarily long, maybe to show how much Archer is tripping on the drug Castor’s friends make him take? Or maybe in case the audience still by this point didn’t understand the title of the film relative to the actions of the film? There’s a lot of slow motion during the fight scenes, which while used for effect really just, well, slows things down.
The pacing of the film also slows way down towards the end. The scene in Dietrich and Sasha’s apartment feels as if it goes on forever. The whole thing with Adam being Castor’s kid makes it drag more, and needlessly. Archer’s conversation with Eve about their first date is long and also unnecessary. The church scene is enormously unnecessary considering it makes no difference that the boss dies; Archer and Castor could have a confrontation literally anywhere else and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The slow motion and close ups in the church likewise make the scene interminable. At least twenty minutes could be knocked off the movie and the end result would be pretty much the same.
But, reality and pacing aside, it’s not a bad film. Travolta and Cage are great, and if a person is in the mood for a lot of guns and some fun, Face/Off is a good movie to choose.
For another take, check out the review done by The Nostalgia Critic.
E is for… Executive Decision
Way back about a decade and a half ago or so, I remember my mom and I renting Executive Decision and enjoying it. So when I decided to skip The Expendables in my viewing list, I wondered what would replace it. And of course I remembered back to Kurt Russell and an airplane and thought Executive Decision would make a good contribution to my list.
In some ways, it does. It’s got some action, and some terrorists. It also veers a little in that it seems equally as suspenseful as action-filled, which wasn’t quite the intention of this site. Blame a memory fogged by fifteen years.
That’s fine, because Russell’s character, David Grant, does some heroing, and there’s a lot of good things in the movie. …and plenty of bad, one being John Leguizamo talking out of the side of his mouth as if he’s whispering—badly—to someone off camera, and two being the movie dragging on for another fifteen or so minutes after it should have wrapped up.
Anyway, Executive Decision (directed by Stuart Baird) opens on a failed toxin (DZ-5) bust led by Steven Seagal—I mean Lt. Colonel Austin Travis —and his crew. Cut to Beckings Research Institute Consultant to Army Intelligence David Grant (how does that fit on a business card?) taking flying lessons. See where this is going yet? To make a needlessly complicated story short, Middle Eastern terrorists take over a plane headed for Washington, DC. Grant is called in because he knows the most about the terrorist in charge, Nagi Hassan (David Suchet). Hassan is trying to ensure the release of El Sayed Jaffa (Andreas Katsulas) by threatening to blow up the plane. The catch is that Grant strongly suspects that Hassan has on board with him the DZ-5 and assumes he has enough to take out at least the entire population of DC. So, Hassan has to be taken down before the plane lands. Cue Travis and his men and their engineer friend Cahill (Oliver Platt), who happens to have an experimental stealth jet, the Remora, that can attach to a plane in motion and men can travel from it to the other plane.
In the process of boarding the 747 as Operation: Hail Mary, there are some difficulties that result in the bomb expert, Cappy (Joe Morton) getting severely injured, Cahill boarding instead of Travis, Travis getting sucked out into the sky, and the Remora blowing up. The team also has no way of communicating with the outside, so they can’t let the Pentagon know they made it aboard. Knowing they have only a few hours to take down Hassan, the current leader of Travis’s team, Rat (Leguizamo and his sideways mouth), organizes cameras around the plane so they can see what’s going on. He seems to take Grant under his wing as well to make him less useless. They also get one of the flight attendants, Jean (Halle Berry), on their side so they have some hands up top as they’re underneath the passenger area in the avionics room. They find the bomb and Cappy and Cahill work to disarm it, Cahill extremely reluctantly and Cappy strapped to a makeshift backboard with duct tape. After Cahill makes a mistake and the bomb doesn’t blow up in their faces, Cappy realizes the bomb has fake systems in it, and also that it must be controlled by someone outside, someone no one but Hassan knows is there. Grant and Rat and Jean try to figure out who it is, before this “sleeper” runs another check on the bomb and realizes it’s been tampered with.
Meanwhile, because the Pentagon hasn’t heard from Operation: Hail Mary, it’s decided that the 747 should be blown up (because Hassan won’t reroute it), and the government will have to cut its losses rather than risk the entire eastern seaboard if the DZ-5 really is on the plane. Fighter planes are dispatched and the pilots of the 747 are told to change course, which of course they can’t do, and one of the fighter pilots has his hand on the trigger of his missile, ready to fire. Just in the nick of time, Baker (Whip Hubley) is able to manipulate control of the 747’s tail lights and communicate in Morse code to the fighter pilots. The team is given ten minutes to complete its task, after which the 747 will be too close to Dulles to risk Hassan getting his way and blowing the plane over a populated area.
Hassan eventually makes clear once Jaffa is released that he’s still intent on his mission, which is now a suicide mission for Allah, and will continue to have the plane flown to DC. This of course means Grant and the commandos absolutely have to disarm the bomb and take down Hassan. Jean figures out who the sleeper is and Grant and Rat go to stop him. Only it’s not him! Grant looks around and realizes who it must be, and shoots him, but the sleeper still has time to activate the bomb. But wait, Cahill’s habit of chewing on plastic straws now becomes crucial to the plot, because he can wedge the straw between the contacts of the bomb, stopping them from connecting. In the commotion, terrorists including Hassan get shot, a hole in the plane opens up and sucks out a terrorist and a bunch of loose stuff, Rat gets shot, and the pilots get shot. So—shockingly—Grant has to use his limited knowledge of flying and apply it to an enormous passenger plane and rely on Jean’s assistance as she reads the flight manual so he can land the plane. He overshoots Dulles but conveniently recognizes the airport he uses for his lessons. So all is well, Grant saves the day, and rides off into the night with Jean.
I honestly feel that the movie would only be improved by trimming a lot of the fat and having a much closer focus on the “Die Hard on a Plane” feel the filmmakers were going for, by having the hero already on the plane, and working more alone (as it was, Grant is barely in the forefront as “hero”; it’s really a group effort), and cutting the stuff about Hassan wanting Jaffa freed. All of this would cut a lot of the extra time that slowed down the movie, and there could still be the “Can anyone fly this plane?” sequence at the end but maybe it wouldn’t be so gratuitous.
All of that having been said, let’s check out the criteria.
A is for… Accents
Ensuring that Executive Decision will never be shown casually on television, if it ever was, the terrorists taking over the plane and threatening an American city are all Middle Eastern. They of course therefore have an accent.
B is for… Bad Guys
Naji Hassan—initially referred to as Al th’ar, or “Revenge”—is Al Sayed Jaffa’s Deputy Director. It is emphasized several times in the film that he does not negotiate for anything. Ever. Grant informs everyone that Hassan is an extremist to be taken at his word.
In general the terrorists don’t seem to work together well; Hassan kills one of his own men, and didn’t share with his men his intention of making the mission a suicide mission.
Perhaps because there are a number of terrorists under Hassan, and ten other people on which the film has to focus, there isn’t as much time spent on Hassan as there could be. He’s rather one dimensional and not terribly compelling or interesting, as far as villains go.
C is for… Chases
Because the majority of the film takes place on a 747 and the bad guys don’t know the good guys are there, there aren’t really any chases. The fighter planes coming up alongside the 747 and threatening to shoot it down sort of count, but since the 747 can’t exactly get away, it doesn’t really.
D is for… Damsels
Flight attendant Jean is another undeveloped character. She’s depicted as being close friends with the flight attendant who is soon murdered by a terrorist. She’s also shown to be fairly intelligent because she realizes her friend must be hurt or dead because she hasn’t come back. Also, she knows there’s an armed air marshal on board (Richard Riehle) so she hides the passenger manifest, and even hides it in a rack of magazines rather than in the trash, which is of course the first place Hassan looks when he realizes it is missing.
It’s nice for once that the “damsel” in the movie isn’t also a lone hostage/target, as has been the case in the other films looked at so far. This pushes Jean’s later actions straight into “sidekick” territory.
E is for… Explosives
The opening raid uses an explosive device to open a door.
A suicide bomber in London has a rigged vest that destroys the entire restaurant.
One of Hassan’s men uses an explosive to blow out the cockpit door.
Part of the tension in the film revolves around the DZ-5 bomb on the plane (first its initial existence, and then trying to disarm it and beat the clock, then the immediate threat of it going off).
F is for… Flashbacks
There’s a weird and unnecessary flashback that depicts Jaffa being abducted by Americans as Hassan watches. It’s weird because A) the relationship between Jaffa and Hassan isn’t yet established, so the viewer has no reference point for the looks the men are shooting each other, and B) why not make this a real scene and not a flashback? If the movie is supposed to take place all in a day or two, then make the opening raid scene a flashback as well. The sudden cut from Grant to this grayed out scene without dialogue is very confusing, considering the events happened the day or two before, not months ago. Okay, great, Grant gets to say his line about Jaffa being guilty of fifteen years of unrestrained world terrorism, but making the scene a flashback is unnecessary.
G is for… Guns
Full details here at the IMFDB.
One of the very first shots of the film involves guns as Travis’s crew takes over the Italian house suspected of holding the DZ-5. There are lots of guns in the scene, mostly machine guns. All the bad guys get shot, and Travis’s men are so quick there’s barely even a shoot out. The scene also is used to illustrate the cohesive team Travis and his men are, which is of course the set up for how they work together on the 747.
The terrorists bring their guns aboard the 747 in pieces that they then assemble. The subtitles refer to them as Skorpion 9mm AKM/FNCs. Yes, I had the subtitles on because the characters mumble so darn much.
And, because terrorists are idiots, guns on the plane means there’s a huge risk of holes being shot through the fuselage, which depressurizes the plane, which ultimately causes a big mess and almost kills everyone. Not that there’s exactly room on an airplane for some kick-ass, well, ass-kicking martial arts and knife fights, but there’s got to be a way to not risk everyone on board by shooting holes through the only thing keeping depressurized and pressurized regions from each other. It’s stupid. It doesn’t matter that Hassan’s plan is to blow up the plane anyway; guns increase the risk of the plane being damaged over the Atlantic Ocean and not the target.
H is for… Helicopters
Another sad showing for helicopters; I need to find some movies that use them more. The only helicopter shown is the one used to get Grant and Travis’s team from the Pentagon to Andrews Air Force Base, and it’s a military craft.
I is for… Improvisation
Considering Travis’s team is missing Travis and gained two guys who don’t know what they’re doing (Grant and Cahill) they seem pretty well prepared. Okay, so they have to steal a camcorder from the luggage area (which Rat seems so very angry at for some reason), and get a little creative with their reconnaissance, but they seem to do pretty well. It’s got to be at least in part because there are so many guys on the team.
Baker taking over the tail lights to communicate with the fighter jets is of course genius.
Cahill saves the day with his chewing habit, and hopefully none of the passengers on the plane learn the only thing protecting them from exploding is a thin soggy piece of plastic from an unqualified engineer’s mouth.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
Sadly, no windows, doors, tables, or any other solid surfaces get jumped through or fallen through. Kind of hard to do on an airplane; they’re kind of designed so that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
K is for… Kill Count
Considering Grant is around solely for his knowledge, it’s not surprising he doesn’t kill anybody while trying to save the day. Travis’s team does all the killing, with Rat taking out Hassan.
L is for… Limitations
Grant is extremely far out of his league when it comes to taking on terrorists. He’s a knowledge guy, not an action guy. He can’t even improv his way out of the tuxedo he’s wearing when he’s called in for the briefing.
As for the rest of the team, their leader is dead, Cappy is hurt, they’re missing equipment, and they have to fit two new guys—Grant and Cahill—into the team with no prep time, which can’t be easy. Also, they’re completely cut off from the outside with no hope of help, so they have the added stress of knowing they’re all on their own.
M is for… Motivation
Hassan’s motivation is initially depicted as being the release of Jaffa, but he is actually on a suicide mission for the glory of Allah. He doesn’t seem to have told any of his crew this.
Grant’s motivation, as well as his team’s, is to save the hostages and make sure the bomb isn’t detonated. There’s also got to be some satisfaction in getting to take down Hassan, whom he seems to have been chasing for a while.
N is for… Negotiation
There’s a lot of negotiation, actually, in a movie where the main villain is said to not negotiate.
1) On the terrorist’s tape recording played over the phone, it’s explained the hostages on the plane will be held until Jaffa is released onto a private jet.
2) There’s an offer of half the passengers exchanged for fuel and 50 million in gold bullion. Also, if Jaffa is not in communication, another bomb will be set off in London.
3) Hassan says no to the negotiations, which seems to just make people try to negotiate with him even more.
4) Cahill says they should tell Hassan the plan to disarm his bomb and then negotiate, while Grant reminds him Hassan doesn’t negotiate.
5) There’s a senator (J.T. Walsh) on board the plane who offers to help Hassan get what he wants if no one gets hurt because it’ll make him look good for the upcoming election. Hassan later shoots him in the head to prove to the Pentagon that he means what he says and does not negotiate. Maybe it’s only because the President, whom the senator promised would talk to Hassan, is out of town.
6) A man at Gatwick Airport says if Jaffa can get Hassan to land the plane at an isolated base and release the passengers, Hassan will get what he wants.
7) Hassan keeps going even after Jaffa is free, and after knowing the US’s plans, which illustrates that he doesn’t care what anyone wants, he’s doing whatever he wants.
8) Hassan’s own second in command challenges him over the mission, and gets shot for his trouble.
9) The fighter pilots tell Hassan to divert the plane to Thule or they will shoot it down.
Frankly, for a film where it’s stated several times that the terrorist does not negotiate, there’s far more negotiation here than in anything I’ve reviewed thus far.
O is for… One Liners
Rat, when he sees Grant in his tuxedo: “Who’s this, 007?”
Rat (abridged): My Latin ass is gonna be raining all over Greenland.
Rat: I hope there’s a good movie on this flight.
Rat, when Grant needs to climb: Lose the shoes, pretty boy. Whew, hope the smell doesn’t give us away.
Cappy: It’s looking up the ass-end of a dead dog but we gotta try.
Secretary of Defense: Call the President. It’s an executive decision. (notable only because the viewer half expects the line to be delivered while the guy looks directly into the camera because it’s the title of the movie)
Grant, referring to Cahill’s chewed straw before he attempts to disarm the bomb: If things really get desperate, use your magic wand. (foreshadowing!)
Rat, when Grant is attempting to communicate with Jean: I just hope you have better luck with women than I do.
Grant and Baker, trying to read the seat number Jean wrote on her hand: 2-1, K. (together) 21K! (they’re just so excited that it’s amusing)
Grant, after landing the 747: These things almost land themselves, don’t they?
Cahill: Right now I need a drink. A big drink.
P is for… Profession
David Grant is introduced in an on-screen graphic as being the Beckings Research Institute Consultant to Army Intelligence. Granted there are numerous on-screen graphics introducing locations and people, but that may be necessary because there’s no other way to explain all of the set-ups for the needlessly complicated plot. I would think picking up with Grant’s introduction when he is called away from the party and writing it into his conversation at the Pentagon a little would be clear enough. And of course cut the stuff at the end with him landing the plane. It’s unnecessary. The very fact that his character is introduced while learning to fly the plane means there’s a good chance he’s going to need to apply that skill during the movie, which considering viewers probably go into the movie knowing it involves a plane, only foreshadows the film’s climax needlessly.
The movie actually has eighteen minutes of story and introductions before Grant is needed to do anything at all, which is a pretty long time considering he’s supposed to be the hero here.
Finally Grant’s importance is realized as he comes to the conclusion that Hassan is planning a major attack, that Hassan kidnapped Jaffa himself, that Jaffa has the missing DZ-5 from the opening raid, and that therefore Hassan has it on the plane. He’s obviously very good at his job, otherwise the other men in the meeting wouldn’t believe these leaps of logic. There’s a lot of tension between Grant and Travis over the events in Italy. Grant says that the DZ-5 was there but Travis was late, but Travis says Grant’s intelligence was wrong.
Interestingly Grant is reluctant to take a gun while on the plane, so firearms training isn’t a requirement for his position in the government. He seems to become the point person on motivating Cahill to diffuse the bomb, so he’s obviously much more comfortable dealing with people.
Travis’s men are Army Special Forces, but we don’t really seem to know much about them. The opening scene seems to serve as some sort of illustration of their teamwork ability. I also suppose here is a good place to point out that the casting people seemed to go out of their way to create a culturally diverse group: Baker is white, Cappy black, Rat Latino, and Sergeant Louie (BD Wong) is of Asian descent. It’s just very weird and noticeable. I’m almost surprised Baker isn’t a blonde or redhead considering both Grant and Cahill are white guys with brown hair.
Q is for… Quagmire
Overall the Hail Mary team is in quite a mess. Their radio is dead, there are terrorists, hostages, and a bomb above them, and the Pentagon will shoot the entire plane down if given reason to do so. At the beginning of their mission they have slightly less than four hours before they hit the point of no return, so to speak (US air space), so they’re also on a timeframe. Half of their equipment is gone or broken, and their leader dead. The bomb with the DZ-5 attached is very sensitive, can take out the entire eastern seaboard, and can be controlled by a sleeper with the trigger. Even Grant hasn’t seen a picture of Hassan in almost three decades, so he isn’t sure what he looks like, which means any of the terrorists could be Hassan until Grant is able to point him out.
Basically it’s only the individual skills of the remaining Hail Mary team, the fact that Cappy is only injured and not dead, and Jean’s assistance that get all of them through the mission.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
The Remora doesn’t exist, but it could, so that’s interesting.
I do, however, have a lot of trouble believing that the pilots of the 747 don’t feel when the Remora attaches and then stays attached to it until they are already in a dive. The Remora must be an awkward weight on the underside of the plane, so surely there’s either equipment that registers a problem or the pilots can feel it when they control the plane. Unless the Remora really is too negligible compared to the 747, and the pilots are using the autopilot.
S is for… Sidekicks
If Grant is considered the “hero,” because his name is in the credits first, then he has more “sidekicks” than Batman.
Jean the flight attendant is fairly intelligent, but doesn’t really have as big as role as she could if Grant didn’t have a commando squad behind him. She doesn’t reveal Grant’s position to Hassan when she sees him—without warning—in the elevator to the lower floor. She bravely asks Hassan why he’s taking hostages. She digs through Hassan’s jacket pocket and finds the map with Washington DC on it, while everything else is written Arabic. She picks up the phone when it’s blinking but not ringing, and listens as Grant tells her about the camera the terrorists aren’t noticing for some reason (nor do they notice the ones in the floor). She listens as Grant tells her about the sleeper, and does her best to discretely identify who it might be, and writes his seat number on her hand so she can show it to the camera. She also tries to drop a hint to the air marshal that the Army is onboard the plane by handing him a paper with a picture of a military man on it and telling him, “They’re here.”
She does, however, get demerits for continually looking at the camera. She’s only not discovered because the terrorists aren’t paying enough attention to her.
The members of Travis’s commando team obviously have their own specialties, such as Cappy with the bomb, Baker with communication tech, and Rat with being the recon guy. Grant is able to fit into their group and work with them to fill in the blank spots left by Travis, or those blank spots they didn’t know they needed filled.
Cahill gets an honorable mention because he wasn’t supposed to be on the 747 at all, just help get Grant and Travis’s men up there. Even he argues that he’s only an engineer. Fortunately he’s an engineer that chews on plastic straws, which of course becomes the key to saving the plane and everyone on board.
T is for… Technology
While not exactly cutting edge, the terrorist actions are called into the US Embassy using a payphone and a cassette tape, two pieces of equipment that will be unrecognizable to kids born in the last ten years, if not sooner.
Voice recognition software is used to pin down Hassan.
Cahill’s Remora for the ARPA is an experimental jet that can attach to aircraft in flight.
A laptop with plane schematics is used, and possibly the same
one is used to get into the 747’s system.
Travis’s men set up cameras everyone to spy on the terrorists.
The bomb is found with a tool that measures PPM, and is rigged with a microprocessor and sensors to keep people from tampering with it.
The commandos also have night vision goggles.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
I’m not sure how “unexpected” the slight romance is between Grant and Jean, considering he’s shown at the beginning of the film hitting on a woman and asking her if she likes hockey, so we know he’s single. This seems to be his go-to pick-up line for some reason, because he later asks Jean the same thing. He offers to take her to coffee, delivers his line, and she says she doesn’t like hockey, only baseball.
As the male and female leads, in a movie with a cast of twenty or so people, of course they’re going to get together, however improbably. “I loved you since you first startled the hell out of me in that elevator shaft,” you know how it is.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Sadly the only vehicle being used as a weapon is Hassan using the 747 to detonate the DZ-5 bomb over Washington, DC.
W is for… Winning
At the climax of the film, all of the terrorists are dead except for Hassan and the sleeper, and Grant goes out to confront the latter. Rat kills the sleeper, Grant and Hassan face off. Hassan asks him who he is, and Grant informs him he’s no one.
Hassan shoots through the cockpit door/wall and kills the pilots, and Rat shoots and kills Hassan.
The movie should be over, considering the terrorists are dead and the bomb is neutralized, but of course it isn’t because A) there’s a gaping hole in the side of the plane because idiot terrorists shot through the outer hull, and B) there’s no one to fly the plane. Gasp!
So the viewer is treated to an unnecessary sequence of Grant trying to fly and land the plane while Jean reads the manual on how to do so. This of course brings the movie full circle, because otherwise Grant’s intro scene of him learning to fly a plane was pointless.
Cue cutesy scene with commandoes in the ambulance and Jean and Grant getting a ride together.
X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
The only good guy seriously injured in the film without dying is Cappy, who is sadly strapped in place with duct tape. He must be in incredible pain, and still has to try to guide novice Cahill on how to diffuse a bomb while only able to monitor his actions through the use of a mirror. Dude deserves a medal.
Rat gets shot but is likely wearing a bulletproof vest because while slowed down, he seems fine.
Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Had Grant and whoever he worked with over the years not lost tabs on Hassan, or had tried to apprehend him earlier, perhaps none of the events in the film would have happened. Also if Travis and his men had gotten to the DZ-5 in the opening scene, the stakes of the terrorists taking over the 747 wouldn’t have been so high. It might not even have happened at all.
Zone, In The
Grant and even Travis’s men aren’t ever really in the zone, except maybe for Cappy and the bomb. Each man has his specialty, so there’s not really a call for any one of them to commit himself fully and wholly to something. Grant certainly comes close when he decides to disguise himself and take on the sleeper, even recognizing who it must be once Jean’s guess is proven incorrect. At this point Grant is committing himself to something and clearly has no intention of backing down, no matter the consequences to himself.
Well, that’s Executive Decision. It has its moments, and really a good foundational story, it just seems to get lost within its complicated plot and huge list of characters. The film could probably start twenty minutes into it and end fifteen minutes earlier and be almost the exact same movie, just tighter. The large cast is of course fun to see, especially almost twenty years later and realizing who was in it that I’m now familiar with but wasn’t back then.
D is for… Die Hard
What can I say about the Oscar nominated Die Hard that hasn’t yet been said? It’s got action, heart, and humor, it launched Bruce Willis’ movie career, and led to the creation of the movie genre “Die Hard on a [noun].”
In my opinion it also is far superior to the book upon which it was based, Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. Aside from lacking Bruce Willis, the book lacked a lot of the humor and heart that make the film so engaging.
This review was actually difficult to write, because Die Hard has been one of my favorite movies for a long time, so not only have I seen it before (like with Commando), I also am of course very familiar with it. I found it hard to sort of analyze the film the way I could the ones I haven’t yet seen. I’m not an outsider looking in; I’ve seen McClane take down Hans so many times I can recite their last confrontation with them.
I was even John McClane for Halloween this year.
It’s hard to be objective, is what I guess I’m saying.
However, I of course couldn’t leave Die Hard (directed by John McTiernan) off my list of action movies. Not only is it just plain a good, entertaining action movie, it did indeed launch the “Die Hard on a [noun]” genre because filmmakers wanted to pitch ideas similar to what people could already understand and know they enjoy.
As a brief summary, New York City cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) heads to California to his wife’s (Holly played by Bonnie Bedelia) company’s Christmas party at Nakatomi Plaza. However, terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) crash the party and take the guests hostage, all in an attempt to steal what’s in the building’s vault. Fighting the odds—barefoot and woefully outnumbered, and untrusted by authority figures—McClane is of course able to emerge victorious and get the girl (well, his wife; you know what I mean). He’s able to isolate the terrorists one by one, until he finally gets the attention of LAPD Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), who calls in police back up. With Al’s encouragement McClane keeps going, finally drawing the remaining terrorists away from the hostages and going head to head with Hans, who has taken Holly hostage by herself while he steals the bonds from the vault. Hans ultimately plunges to his death, and McClane and Holly share a sweaty, bloody embrace. They ride off into the dawn as “Let It Snow” crescendos over the end credits. See? It’s a Christmas movie as well.
Of course there are more plot details than those, but I think it’ll be easiest just to dive right in and go through the categories.
So here we begin the ABCs of Die Hard.
A is for… Accents
The lead villain Hans Gruber is German, and has quite a lovely accent. Numerous other terrorists are also German.
There’s also the terrorist who manages the reception desk, except his accent seems to be Southern. It’s hard to tell if the accent is fake, or if Hans truly did pick up an American from the south to be part of his crew. We never really learn from where Hans collected his motley team, which makes the team all the more interesting, in my opinion.
B is for… Bad Guys
Hans leads a group of twelve terrorists to Nakatomi to steal from the vault. They are clearly well prepared; McClane even describes them as “well financed and very slick.” They enter the building’s parking garage while hidden in a Pacific Courier truck, and easily take out the building’s guard and take over the party.
Hans himself is well kept and can recognize high quality men’s suits. The fact half of his terrorists are wearing sweats even further puts his own dapperness on display. He was once a member of a radical Volksfrei movement but was expelled. He tells Takagi (James Shigeta) he liked to make models when he was a child because he enjoyed the exactness.
He takes the members of the Christmas party hostage to steal the $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds in the vault. He is able to predict with near perfect accuracy the steps the police will take once they’re alerted to the terrorists. He even tells his team that police action is inevitable and necessary. He makes ridiculous demands to the police to distract them from his actual goals. He’s smart enough to have looked through the directory of the building to learn there’s a “William Clay” who works there, so he has a name to provide when telling McClane (before they’re properly introduced) that he works at Nakatomi and escaped from the party.
Members of Hans’ crew include Theo, the technical expert, Tony, Karl, Franco, Marco, Heinrich, and Fritz. It’s actually really interesting to me that so many of Hans’ crew is actually named. Most of the time villains’ flunkies are nameless and sometimes even faceless.
An argument can be made that Holly’s coworker, Ellis (Hart Bochner) is also a bad guy. He’s clearly sleazy from the beginning, when he hits on Holly. He’s also seen snorting cocaine, to which McClane turns a blind eye. He gives Hans McClane’s name in an attempt to give Hans what he wants. His only redeeming decision in the entire movie is that he doesn’t tell Hans that John McClane is Holly Genero’s husband, but that McClane is actually his friend. McClane tries to tell Hans that he doesn’t know Ellis, and thus isn’t going to give himself up for him (and Ellis can’t give him any more information on McClane because he doesn’t know any), but Hans has no patience and shoots Ellis through the head while he drinks some Coke. Ellis isn’t in league with Hans, of course, but he certainly doesn’t help McClane’s cause at all, and ultimately puts Holly in danger because Hans is later able to piece together the fact that the man killing his men is the husband of the woman he’s been talking to at the party.
Another argument can be made for Richard Thornburg (William Atherton), the television reporter. In order to add more drama to his story, he actually goes to Holly’s house and has her kids on camera. He’s horrible and manipulative, and it’s very satisfying to watch Holly punch him in the mouth at the end of the film.
C is for… Chases
Because the film takes place almost entirely inside a building, there aren’t any of the traditional action movie chase scenes. An argument can be made that the entire film is a chase scene as Hans and his men hunt throughout the building for John, but that’s more cat-and-mouse than cars-hitting-curbs.
The one scene I think that most closely resembles a chase is when McClane is on his back underneath the conference room table with the terrorist Marco firing at him and taunting his seemingly cowardly actions as McClane crawls and Marco stalks. Of course, we all know that McClane takes Marco’s advice—Next time you have a chance to kill someone, don’t hesitate—to heart.
D is for… Damsels
There’s barely a female presence in the film other than Holly Gennaro, McClane’s estranged wife who brought his kids out to LA so she could pursue her own career while John stayed with the NYPD. She doesn’t even use his last name any more, and explains it as her being part of an old fashioned company. Their relationship seems particularly strained from the get-go, considering she asks him if he has a place to stay, then tells him that she can have the spare room made up for him. How bitter is this short separation that they’re going through, that he flew 3000 miles to spend Christmas with his family and he wasn’t even guaranteed a bed (even a couch) in her home. There’s general awkwardness, and when Holly says she misses him, he makes a dig at her not missing his last name when signing checks. This is not a happy relationship, which makes everything he does to save her seem kind of silly other than while watching through some sort of “love conquers all” veil.
Takagi describes Holly as “made for business” and “tough as nails,” which she does show when she has to interact with Hans regarding the needs of the staff, and also when she challenges him at the end and calls him a common thief (which he does not like).
At the end of the film all of McClane’s efforts seem warranted, as they drive off into the sunrise together arm in arm. Holly isn’t the worst damsel in an action movie, but—especially knowing the fate of their relationship—it’s sometimes hard to imagine putting oneself through the trouble McClane does. Except, of course, he’s “that guy,” so no matter what he’s going to try to save the day. He also saves the other hostages, of course, but his main objective is to save her.
E is for… Explosives
Initially the terrorists are armed with grenades that kind of resemble hockey pucks, and they roll them to within range of the target. One grenade gets the second guard by the elevators, and another contributes to the damage of the glass office in which McClane tries to hide.
Hans brought explosives with him to blow up the roof, but McClane gets his hands on them. He uses them to blow up the elevator shaft to both distract and kill some of the terrorists. There are enough explosives for Hans to blow the roof as planned, which was to hide his escape and take out the FBI helicopters that were circling the roof, as he explains: “Well, when you steal $600, you can just disappear. When you steal 600 million, they will find you, unless they think you’re already dead.”
F is for… Flashbacks
Not applicable in this case. The whole movie takes place in one night with no time diversions.
G is for… Guns
Full details over at the IMFDB.
The terrorists bring a slew of machine guns. McClane happens to have his service weapon on him (even on the airplane, which is so interesting to see nowadays, likewise McClane lighting a cigarette in the airport).
Interestingly, Hans doesn’t seem to have a gun on him—certainly one isn’t drawn—when he and his crew initially take over the party. He makes his minions use them. He does, however, use his handgun to kill Takagi, and eventually Ellis. He also stashes one on the roof when looking at his explosives, but can’t get to it in time when McClane corners him.
The terrorists also have a guided missile in a box, which they do put together later in the film.
McClane of course acquires a machine gun from a terrorist he kills, which he announces to Hans by writing, “Now I have a machine gun. HO-HO-HO” on the terrorist’s shirt. He takes weapons as necessary after he kills terrorists.
A rocket launcher is used to blow up the armored vehicle the feds use to try to breach the building.
In one of the heartfelt moments of the film, Sergeant Powell draws his gun at the end to kill Karl, meaning he was able to get over his fear of shooting someone by mistake.
There are a number of shootouts in the film as well, all ending with John either escaping (such as when he’s on the roof and is able to make his way inside) or being left to suffer (after the glass surrounding him is shot out and he must crawl away from the wreckage).
H is for… Helicopters
There is a sad lack of helicopters in the film, though the DVD menu features a helicopter for some reason. I suppose because the menu itself is designed to look like the top of the building.
The FBI agents Johnson and Johnson attempt to land a helicopter on the roof to get to the terrorists and rescue hostages, but fortunately they get blown up. (They were jerks.)
I is for… Improvisation
Unfortunately, McClane doesn’t have a whole lot to improvise with. But he does make the best of it a few times.
He does evade the terrorists by getting past a fan then escaping through the elevator shaft, using the strap on his acquired machine gun to help him down. Though Hans does say to leave him because the elevators aren’t working, so this escape may not have been successful in other circumstances.
When leaping from the exploding roof, John ties the fire hose around his waist to catch him as he falls, so he doesn’t wind up on the street. He just smashes into the side of the building instead.
The crowning moment of the climax is also a clever improvisation. John has zero bullets in the machine gun and only two for his service weapon, so he pretends to give the weapon up when confronted by Hans, only to reveal his service weapon is strapped to his back using holiday themed tape lying around from the construction. He takes out Hans and the other terrorist, and McClane’s silent communication with Holly illustrates the closeness their relationship once had at some point in time.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
What really stands out in Die Hard, compared to the other films I’ve reviewed thus far, is that the glass making up the windows is real. Or at least if it’s not real, it breaks a heck of a lot more realistically than movie glass usually does.
A lot of glass breaks in the film:
-McClane uses a chair to shatter the window in order to throw Marco out of it to catch Powell’s attention.
-Marco smashes Powell’s windshield when he lands on it.
-McClane smashes the glass on the fire ax.
-in a reversal of the “glass shatters instantly upon contact” trope, when McClane leaps off the building with the fire hose, he swings back towards the building and crashes into the glass and it doesn’t break. He has to push himself off of it with his bloody feet and shoot at it with his gun.
-The window behind Hans is shot out, allowing him to fall through it after McClane shoots him.
K is for… Kill Count
McClane gradually kills all the terrorists in the movie with few exceptions.
-He breaks Tony’s neck when they’re falling down the stairs.
-He shoots a blonde terrorist.
-He shoots Marco through the table then throws him into the street to get Powell’s attention.
-Powell tells him he got two of the terrorists with the explosion he creates in the elevator shaft.
-He shoots another terrorist with a machine gun.
-He strangles Karl seemingly to death with a chain (only for Powell to have to finish him off).
-He shoots the terrorist who’d eaten the Crunch bar earlier.
-He shoots the terrorist with the southern accent right in the head.
-He drops Hans out of the window.
L is for… Limitations
By listening to the weirdo on the plane who tells him to “make fists with your toes,” McClane is caught shoeless when Hans and his men take over. Yes, McClane, “better than being caught with your pants down,” but it still leaves you vulnerable. Also, McClane tries to take the shoes of the first terrorist he killed, so why not any of the others afterwards? Did they all have small feet?
Also, John has to cover several floors of the building all by himself, at first with no help at all, then with only the help of Powell, who’s is basically moral support as the other cops just make things worse. McClane can’t simply go in and rescue the princess, so to speak, he has to get rid of all the terrorists first to ensure the safety of everyone at the party.
M is for… Motivation
As much as Hans is “very slick,” at heart he really is just a thief who is after the $640 million and treasures in the vault. His demands given to the FBI are just to keep them guessing and distract them.
McClane’s goal is to save Holly above all, and of course save all of the other hostages, which he does except for Takagi and Ellis.
N is for… Negotiations
Hans has his fake demands to stall the FBI.
Ellis wants McClane—aka John Boy—to give himself up to Hans so Hans can just get what he wants and leave everyone alone. Or so Ellis can be the hero, which is more likely.
After McClane steals Hans’ detonators, he tries to negotiate to get them back, but of course McClane refuses.
Powell spends a lot of his time trying to get Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (Paul Gleason) to listen to him, which while not necessarily a negotiation, is still Powell trying to get what he wants.
O is for… One Liners
Die Hard, and McClane specifically, is known for the one liners and clever bits of dialogue.
Theo: You didn’t bring me along for my charming personality.
Tony: There are rules for policemen.
McClane: Yeah, that’s what my captain keeps telling me.
McClane: Nine million terrorists in the world and I had to kill one with feet smaller than my sister.
McClane write’s onto Tony’s shirt: Now I have a machine gun. HO-HO-HO.
McClane, sarcastically: Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs.
McClane, standard hero-talking-to-himself monologue: Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.
McClane, watching the fire trucks summoned when he pulled the alarm: Come on baby, come to papa, I’ll kiss your fuckin’ dalmatian.
McClane, watching Powell drive around the parking lot: Who’s driving this car, Stevie Wonder?
Hans: Thanks for the advice.
McClane: Welcome to the party, pal!
McClane: Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change?
(this one is more notable for Hans’ nonverbal reaction after he says it)
McClane: I was always kind of partial to Roy Rogers, actually. I really liked those sequined shirts.
McClane: Yippie Ki Yay, mother fucker.
Hans, actually starting to be shaken, or maybe is experiencing disbelief: He had the detonators.
McClane, explaining to Powell what the terrorists were packing: Enough plastic explosives to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I’m mostly including this line because of the Arnold reference.)
Hans: What idiot put you in charge?
Holly: You did, when you murdered my boss.
(some of the “tough as nails” attitude she’s described as having)
McClane: Call me… Roy.
Powell, to McClane, trying to get him to be quiet for a bit: If you are what I think you are, you’ll know when to shut up, when to listen, and when to pray.
Theo: The quarterback is toast!
McClane, arguing with Robinson: Glass? Who gives a shit about glass? Who the fuck is this?
And then: I’m not the one who just for butt fucked on national TV, Dwayne.
Hans, sardonically to Ellis: You’re amazing, you figured that all out already.
Powell: Why don’t you wake up and smell what you shoveling?
Hans: I read about them in TIME Magazine.
Holly: He’s still alive… Only John can drive somebody that crazy.
Hans: The circuits that cannot be cut locally are cut automatically in response to a terrorist incident. You asked for miracles, Theo, I give you the F.B.I.
Powell, explaining to McClane what’s going on: They got the terrorist playbook and they’re running it step by step.
McClane, about Holly: She’s heard me say ‘I love you’ a thousand times, but she’s never heard me say ‘I’m sorry.’
McClane, to Karl: You should have heard your brother squeal when I broke his fucking neck.
Special Agent Johnson: Just like fuckin’ Saigon, eh, Slick!
The other Special Agent Johnson: I was in junior high, dickhead!
Robinson, after Johnson and Johnson’s helicopter is blown up: We’re gonna need some more FBI guys, I guess.
Hans: This time John Wayne does not walk off into the sunset with Grace Kelly.
McClane: That was Gary Cooper, asshole.
McClane: Happy trails, Hans.
Robinson, as Hans falls to his death: Oh, I hope that’s not a hostage.
Argyle: If this is their idea of Christmas, I’ve got to be here for New Years.
P is for… Profession
John McClane has been a New York City cop for eleven years, as revealed to his seatmate on the airplane when his service weapon comes into view. He has a nasty looking scar on his right shoulder.
He’s depicted as very clever throughout the entire movie, such as as soon as he escapes from the party he immediately learns the floors above the 30th and keeps track of what’s under construction, what’s an office, et cetera. He takes what he can from the terrorists he kills, including searching their pockets for ID and rummaging through duffel bags. He also knows how to manipulate the elevators to stop between floors, and maneuver the shafts themselves. He writes the terrorists’ names on his arm as he learns them, and picks up immediately that Hans is the leader. He also knows how to use C-4. His hinting about fake IDs and some other things is enough to tip Powell off that “he’s definitely a badge.”
It’s arguable that he has military training as well.
Q is for… Quagmire
The most difficult position McClane seems to get himself into is the battle with Hans where Hans has his men shoot out the glass surrounding McClane. Hans knows McClane is barefoot and while his men don’t seem to get it, Hans knows McClane will have to make his way across the sea of glass at some point. He even leaves him there to crawl his way out.
So, barefoot McClane surrounded by nothing but glass shards and no hope of rescue or assistance, and on a timeline to save the hostages and his wife, is a really horrible situation.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
For the most part, Die Hard seems fairly grounded in reality, at least to the point where most of the circumstances and events don’t really raise a mental flag of “yeah, right.” Most of it seems plausible.
Except the elevator shaft escape, where McClane is able to pull himself into that tiny vent shaft with no leverage at all. It might be possible, but it seems unlikely.
S if for… Sidekicks
Argyle is McClane’s limo driver from the airport to Nakatomi Plaza, arranged by Takagi. He’s a former cab driver turned limo driver, and so chats a lot. McClane tells him he’s “very fast” because he was able to discern that John and Holly’s relationship is rocky, and John didn’t expect Holly’s career in LA to work out as well as it did. He offers to wait in the parking garage until he hears from McClane that Holly will take her home with him. He winds up staying for a long time, and doesn’t even realize anything is wrong at the building until he listens to the TV/radio. He bravely drives his limo into Theo as he’s readying his escape, and even punches Theo out. At the end of the film he’s able to snatch McClane and Holly away from the media and drive them home.
Sergeant Al Powell was on his way home to his pregnant wife when he got the call to do a drive by at the plaza. He talks to McClane on the radio and provides to him the only support he has. He immediately trusts McClane, even when his superior is angry about it. He figures out that McClane—or Roy as he asks to be called—must be a cop. He spends the movie talking with McClane and arguing with Chief Robinson, though Powell proves to always be correct about what is happening, such as when he knows the terrorists are shooting out the lights, not firing in panic. He bonds with McClane and explains he’s on desk duty because he accidentally shot a kid, and is afraid to pull his gun. At the end of the film he is able to fight this fear when Karl rises from a body bag and levels a gun at McClane. Powell is able to take him out and save McClane’s life.
The moment where McClane and Powell meet each other face to face the first time is a powerful one. Finally there are faces to go with the voices they’d heard all night.
T is for… Technology
Theo breaks in and locks the parking garage, controls the security, locks all the doors remotely, and in general is depicted as Hans’ technology expert. Tony cuts through the phone lines, while Karl cuts everything with his chainsaw. A computer controls the vault, and the vault itself requires a code for the initial lock, has five mechanical locks, and the seventh and final lock is an electromagnetic seal that cannot be cut locally. Because the film was made pre-cell phone, everyone communicates across floors and with the outside using CB radio, which Argyle can also pick up in the limo.
It’s not until Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and then embellished in Live Free or Die Hard, that McClane is depicted as a Luddite.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Because the damsel in this case is already McClane’s wife, there is of course no unexpected romance. The experience does, however, seem to strengthen their bond, because Holly uses McClane’s last name at the end of the film.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Because the movie takes place almost exclusively inside a building, there aren’t too many vehicles, but Argyle is able to use his limo to stop Theo from helping with the escape by driving into the fake ambulance he was using.
W is for… Winning
As awesome a villain as Hans is, it’s still satisfying to see him drop from one of the top floors of the building. McClane sets this up by pretending to be empty handed, but then lulls Hans and his final goon into a false sense of security by laughing. He gets Holly to duck, and takes the gun taped to his back and fires off his two remaining shots into Hans and his goon. It’s not that easy of course and Hans almost takes Holly with him as he falls, but McClane is able to pop open the watch to which Hans is clinging (a gift from Ellis), so he loses his grip. McClane can’t do a simple shootout, he has to go for improvisation, cleverness, and finally getting Hans to fall out the window to his death.
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
Throughout the film McClane is subjected to falls, beatings, glass in his feet, near strangulation, and is ultimately shot in his shoulder. Yet he still keeps going, knowing he has to get to Holly and stop Hans before it’s too late.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
While not related to Hans, the past events of Holly moving to California and McClane staying behind lead to her being taken hostage. Had McClane been any earlier or later from the airport, he’d’ve been either part of the party or not allowed in the building.
Z is for… Zone, in the
McClane seems to be in the zone or at least near it throughout the entire film. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to strategically take out so many terrorists, get the police involved, live to save the hostages, or taken out Hans with his sleight of hand, so to speak. While not expecting terrorists and only having his service weapon (and no shoes!) McClane is able to derail everything for Hans.
Again, Die Hard is my favorite movie, so it was hard to be objective. But I also don’t think there’s all that much to be subjective about, either; the plot is fairly straight forward and doesn’t miss a beat. The characters are developed well, and Hans is even a villain for fans to love to hate, or even love to enjoy because he’s that interesting. Holly is a little iffy, but because McClane is fighting to save the thirty other hostages and stop Hans from thieving as well, Holly seems like more of a bonus for McClane rather than the total end goal. Al Powell is a wonderful secondary character, the only sane member of the LAPD and FBI with a line of dialogue, except for maybe the “Something about a double cross” guy. Argyle’s brief scenes are amusing and help ground the viewer into remembering that McClane isn’t alone inside the building, even if he can’t get to anyone.
Overall, it’s easy to see why Die Hard, with its well-developed characters, good writing, and solid direction spawned its own film genre and three—soon to be four—sequels.
All I have to say is, predictably, yippie ki yay!
C is for… Commando
Commando.
What can I say about Commando that hasn’t yet been said? (especially by The Nostalgia Critic)
I’m not going to call it a cinematic masterpiece, because that would be silly. But I will say that it is wonderfully entertaining in all of its over-the-top glory. From cheesy ‘80s music, to Arnold’s strange almost-mullet, to so many guns you can’t count them all, watching Commando is simply an enjoyable experience, assuming the viewer isn’t expecting Oscar quality filmmaking.
Commando (directed by Mark L. Lester) stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Matrix (the first of many heroes in my sights named John). He’s an ex-Delta Force Operative, and lives in the mountains with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). She gets kidnapped by a former member of Matrix’s unit, Bennett (Vernon Wells), and Matrix is given the ultimatum to kill the current President of Val Verde or Bennett will kill Jenny. The goal is to get dictator Arius (Dan Hedaya) into power.
Of course Matrix doesn’t take this very well, and wages a one man war against Bennett and his men. Well, one man until he pairs up with Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong), a flight attendant who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets roped into helping him.
In order to find his daughter, Matrix:
- Kills in broad daylight the guard assigned to him, while on an airplane
- Exits the airplane in mid-take off, through the landing gear
- Takes a woman hostage
- Gets into a fight in a mall
- Chases a guy, makes him crash his car, then drops him off a cliff
- Gets in a fight and kills a guy in a motel room
- Steals a bunch of guns and other weapons
- Gets arrested
- Gets help from his hostage—now his sidekick—to escape the police
- Breaks into a warehouse
- Steals a plane
- Kills hundreds of men in what looks like half an hour
- Kills his daughters’ kidnappers
The film’s tagline, Somewhere… somehow… someone’s going to pay, is slightly misleading, because on the road between Matrix’s home and Val Verde, a lot of bad guys pay for helping Bennett and Arius with their crimes. They pay violently.
Rewatching Commando actually put me in a good mood after being exhausted, so it gets bonus points.
But without further ado, let’s dive into the criteria…
A is for… Accents
The beloved Arnold—or “Arnie” or “Ahnold” as he is affectionately known—of course has his Austrian accent.
The villain, Bennett, has an Australian accent.
The other villain, Arius, has a Spanish accent.
B is for… Bad Guys
Bennett used to be part of Matrix’s Delta Force unit, but got kicked out. Arius was the dictator of Val Verde but Matrix led a revolution against him. Bennett wants to get revenge on Matrix by helping Arius and making Matrix kill the President that replaced Arius. In order to throw off his trail Matrix’s former commanding officer Major General Kirby (James Olson), Bennett faked his own death when he had all of the other former members of Matrix’s unit killed.
Bennett feels nothing but hate for Matrix, and he’s rather creepy with it. Though not super evil, the fact that he kidnaps a girl and locks her in a room for 11 hours with seemingly no food or water is fairly mean. He also loses his mind at the end, and is so insanely focused on getting his revenge on Matrix and proving that he’s a better soldier than he is that he makes mistakes and ultimately is defeated. Oddly Bennett also admits to Arius that he’s afraid of Matrix. So why he then makes a point of taking him on in hand-to-hand combat isn’t understood, outside of the craziness.
Bennett gets bonus points for his ludicrous costume:
- Loosely knit vest that looks like chain mail, over a sleeveless black T-shirt
- Big black belt securing the vest
- Black leather pants
He looks like a rejected Sheriff of Nottingham, really. It’s actually quite hilarious, because combined with the porn ‘stache and the crazy look in his eyes, it’s really hard to figure out how capable a villain he is.
Arius seems to mostly just be present, and while obviously helping pull the strings he doesn’t seem to be Matrix’s real opponent.
C is for… Chases
There aren’t any super awesome chases in Commando, but there are a few chases in general.
In the beginning of the film, as Jenny is being kidnapped, Matrix tries to follow in his truck, but the bad guys damaged its engine. So he instead pushes the truck to the edge of the hill and hops in, rushing down the mountainside after the bad guys. I’m not sure if he’s trying to catch up or just slam into their vehicles, but he winds up doing neither and instead flips the truck and gets kidnapped himself.
Matrix hijacks Cindy’s car and makes her follow Sully (David Patrick Kelly), one of Bennett’s/Arius’ henchmen, to the mall. He’d previously been hitting on her and followed her to her car, which is why Matrix knew she knew what Sully looked like and that he was interested in her. Technically this sequence isn’t a “chase,” but there are cars and following involved.
It’s when Sully flees Matrix and the mall that there’s an actual chase, with Matrix driving Cindy’s car. He uses the car to push Sully’s and it eventually flips on its side, while Matrix and Cindy crash headfirst but with no bodily damage into a telephone pole. With Cindy’s car totaled, she and Matrix take Sully’s car, which is undamaged in the shot as they leave the scene of the crash. It’s a mentionable gaffe because the vehicle got smashed into and scraped on its side, and there was a lot of damage as it flipped over!
The last chase is also not really a chase, but it’s interesting because not only is Cindy willing to help Matrix by giving him her car, and stealing weapons, she’s also now willing to free him from police custody. That’s a heck of a lot of trust in him and distrust in the police to gain in a few hours. Especially considering the length she goes to: she blows up their paddy wagon. With a rocket launcher.
D is for… Damsels
The first damsel the viewer is introduced to in Commando is Jenny, Matrix’s daughter. She’s about eleven and is depicted as loving her father very much; truly it seems as if they share more hugs than seen in an episode of Full House. When bad guys show up at her home, she hides under her bed, and it seems strange that Matrix doesn’t have a panic room of some sort. Obviously hiding under the bed wasn’t a big help. Surely hiding in his private armory or a hidden room would have been better.
When Bennett kidnaps Jenny, Matrix is hell-bent on getting her back and will stop at nothing in order to do so, including holding a woman hostage (until she comes around to being his sidekick), killing hundreds of men, stealing an airplane, and robbing a store.
The film doesn’t cut to a lot of shots of Jenny being helpless and crying, which is nice. She also is resourceful and tries to escape by breaking the doorknob and using it to pry away a board from the wall of the room where she’s being held.
The second damsel is Cindy, a pretty flight attendant who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sully hits on her at the airport then follows her to her car, and to get close to Sully Matrix takes Cindy hostage and makes her follow Sully. Of course she’s angry and scared at first, but eventually realizes Matrix isn’t going to hurt her and is indeed the good guy. Overall she’s strong and brave and smart, and without her help Matrix never would have found Jenny. He’d be in jail after stealing from the gun store.
E is for… Explosions
There aren’t as many explosions as may be expected considering the DVD menu has explosions, but there are a few.
Bennett’s boat is blown up in the beginning, when he’s pretending he was killed.
When Matrix guides his truck down the mountain and misses the bad guys, his truck flips over and explodes, which is shown from three different angles. We get it, the truck exploded.
In Val Verde Matrix blows up the entire dock area and everyone in the vicinity.
At the palace Matrix uses many grenades. They’re like fireworks almost.
F is for… Flashbacks
The saccharine, ridiculous opening credit sequence is a series of flashbacks beating the viewer over the head with how much Matrix loves Jenny. They eat ice cream and feed deer and go fishing and go swimming and practice self-defense.
We get it.
But thank you, opening credit sequence, for truly cluing the viewer in to how over-the-top Commando will be. You are cheesy and wonderful.
G is for… Guns
Check out details at the IMFDB.
Matrix has his own private armory outside his home. It’s a shed locked with a passcode. The armory and the movie as a whole is filled with many handguns, rifles, and shotguns. There’s even a rocket launcher that Cindy uses to blow up the paddy wagon.
The villains don’t use their guns subtly, which seems to be a running theme so far on this site. They shoot the one man in his driveway, and there’s the shootout at the mall, and later a dock.
There’s a lot of shooting from the hip and one-handed shooting, and with that in mind it’s no wonder none of the bad guys hit Matrix. How he kills everyone is another question.
In order to conduct his assault on Val Verde, Matrix breaks into a gun store by using a bulldozer and steals a lot of weapons.
While no doubt not the only continuity error in the film, during the final assault on the palace Matrix has a rifle that seems to morph into a handgun between shots.
H is for… Helicopters
General Kirby arrives at Matrix’s mountain home in a helicopter. It almost seems as if the house was designed to look down into that valley to see helicopters approaching.
Kirby also brings his men to Val Verde in a helicopter at the end of the film.
I is for… Improvisation
An argument can be made that all of the movie is improvisation, from the second Matrix is able to escape from the airplane. He has no battle plan, no weapons, no direction, and no hope. But he’s able to piece together clues throughout the movie to get from the airport to the palace on Val Verde.
More concrete examples include using the ribbon banner in the mall as a Tarzan swing to quickly cut the distance to Sully. Matrix also makes use of the tools in a garden shed outside the palace: he smashes a pick into one guy’s chest, scalps a guy with a saw blade, axes another guy in the crotch, and machetes a guy’s arm clean off. Plenty of death and suffering with nary a bullet fired.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
One of the opening scenes in the movie has henchman Cooke (Bill Duke) driving through a plate glass window as he both kills someone and steals a car.
Cooke gets thrown through the adjoining door at the motel.
Matrix drives a bulldozer through the wall at the gun store.
Bennett smashes his way through the boarded up door through which Jenny escaped.
Matrix smashes a soldier face first through a glass table.
Matrix charges through a door of the palace. Yes, half the door is broken glass, but he shoulders his way through the wooden frame.
After Arius is shot, he falls through a window.
K is for… Kill Count
Matrix kills a handful of people before he reaches Val Verde, where it becomes impossible to keep track.
He breaks the nose and the neck of the goon guarding him on the plane.
He drops Sully from a cliff.
He (inadvertently) impales Cooke on a broken table or chair leg, but that fight was to the death no matter what.
He shoots the guys in the Jeep chasing him and Cindy on the dock.
He stabs soldiers, throws knives, and shoots the guy in the tower.
What’s interesting about his kills is that before the dock, Matrix doesn’t have a gun, so the kills are all more personal. He had to be in the person’s physical space in order to kill him.
L is for… Limitations
Other than being totally on his own when he reaches Val Verde and thus unable to rely on anyone for help, Matrix doesn’t seem to have any limitations. He has Cindy to help him piece together where Jenny is, and he seems to be virtually indestructible.
M is for… Motivation
Matrix’s motivation above all is to rescue Jenny. His secondary motivation is to take down Bennett. Thirdly he may want to ensure there is no further revolution in Val Verde, considering there are no more bad guys alive.
Bennett wants revenge against Matrix for being so much better at everything than he is, and helping Arius may be just a means to that end.
Arius wants to be dictator again.
N is for… Negotiation
Bennett captures Jenny so that Matrix will kill President Velazquez of Val Verde. Matrix was the one who helped Velasquez get into power in the first place by overthrowing Arius the Dictator. If Matrix kills the President, Jenny is set free.
Matrix doesn’t want anything to do with negotiations. Once Jenny is taken, Matrix just wants blood.
O is for… One Liners
Commando is full of one liners. Schwarzenegger adds an element of humor to his projects.
Terrorist in chair: You’ve got to cooperate. Right?
Matrix: Wrong.
Matrix: I’ll be back, Bennett.
(Arnie really can’t escape his Terminator roots. Even now we expect his movies to contain the line.)
Matrix, to Sully: I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.
Matrix, about his deceased guard: Don’t disturb my friend. He’s dead tired.
Matrix: Follow him.
Cindy: I knew you were going to say that.
Matrix: A guy I trusted for years wants me dead.
Cindy: That’s understandable. I’ve only known you for five minutes and I want you dead too.
Matrix: Are you all right?
Cindy: I think I’m dead.
Matrix: You’re all right.
Matrix, to Sully, before dropping him off a cliff: Remember when I promised to kill you last? I lied.
Cindy: What’d you do to Sully?
Matrix: I let him go.
Matrix, to Cooke: I eat Green Berets for breakfast. And right now I’m very hungry.
Cooke: Fuck you, asshole.
Matrix: Fuck you, asshole!
Matrix: We’ll take Cooke’s car. He won’t be needing it.
Cindy: Where we going?
Matrix: Shopping.
Bennett: Welcome back, John. So glad you could make it.
Matrix: Let off some steam, Bennett.
Kirby: Until next time.
Matrix: No chance.
(I think he should say “I won’t be back” to invert the usual, expected, “I’ll be back” line.)
I’m sure there are other lines that other people consider to be “one liners” but these are my picks.
P is for… Profession
Matrix is an ex-Delta Force Operative, and a hero of the Val Verde revolution. He is more than prepared to take on his former teammate in Bennett.
A lot of his fighting technique uses his sheer brute strength, which is illustrated in his opening shots by the way he casually carries a tree on his shoulder. No doubt he was trained to use his strength by the army. To win fights he:
Breaks his guard’s nose and neck without much leverage, and without attracting attention.
Rips the passenger seat out of Cindy’s car. (Why, no one seems to know. It certainly doesn’t hide him from view.)
Rips the phone booth containing Sully out of the wall/floor.
Fights off a gang of mall cops, scattering them like they’re Care Bears.
Gets up immediately after being hit by Sully’s car.
Rips a chain and padlock apart.
Rips a pipe off the wall and throws it hard enough to penetrate all of Bennett’s abdomen and the water heater thing behind him.
When prepping to take on the soldiers at Val Verde, Matrix suits up, knowing what equipment he needs and how he can carry it on his person. He is ridiculously decked out, or maybe it only seems that way because his one man ambush isn’t apparent at first.
At the very end of the film Kirby asks Matrix to start up his unit again.
Q is for… Quagmire
The airplane situation—forced to board a plane, under the watch of a large muscular guy, threat of death on any move to escape, looking at eleven hours of wondering if your daughter is alive—would likely be a very difficult situation for anyone else. Matrix simply takes out the guy with an elbow to the face and a snapping of his neck. That must require a ridiculous amount of strength in that position, so surely few people other than Matrix could have accomplished his escape. He also had to know how to get to the landing gear, and get there quickly enough so it doesn’t close on him or the plane get too high for him to jump.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
Basically the entire movie forces the viewer to check his disbelief at the door. From escaping the plane to escaping the police to happening to take as a hostage a woman who knows how to read fuel receipts and fly a plane, to the way none of Bennett’s/Arius’s soldiers can hit Matrix with their guns, Commando makes no pretense of being a somewhat plausible experience.
But that’s part of what makes it so wonderful.
S is for… Sidekicks
Cindy is a flight attendant and is also practicing for her pilot exam, a fact that becomes necessary for Matrix to find Jenny.
Cindy gives Matrix a ride to the mall so he can track Sully; Matrix wants her to come on to Sully to lure him into Matrix’s trap. Instead she goes to the police, but after Sully tries to shoot Matrix Cindy is on Matrix’s side. She even pushes a mall guard who’s about to shoot Matrix so his bullet goes wide. As Matrix chases Sully in Cindy’s car, she runs up to the car and begs him to stop so she can hop in and join him. Matrix apologizes for involving her.
Cindy wants to help get Jenny back. She goes into the motel room Sully had, and even pretends to be a hooker when Cooke comes a -knocking. She helps Matrix steal guns from the store, and when Matrix is arrested she fires a rocket launcher at the paddy wagon so he can escape.
Cindy helps search Cooke’s car and finds the receipt for (and recognizes) the fuel bill for the airplane to get to Val Verde. She is able to fly the plane, and when threatened by the Intercept Officer (Bill Paxton) that she needs to leave the air space, she flies low, knowing the waves will camouflage their signal on the radar.
T is for… Technology
Commando may have simply been too early for the “technology is its own category of villainy” theme that permeates so many action/thriller movies nowadays. To figure out where Val Verde is so they can fly there Matrix and Cindy use a paper map and coordinates and measure them with a ruler. Cindy even comments that the airplane is older than she is and she can’t read the dials.
Amusingly, Matrix’s digital watch, once he sets the 11 hour countdown, beeps every time there’s a close up of it. It only doesn’t beep once, outside the motel. One would think that if it’s actually beeping it would be driving him nuts, but if the beeping is only for the benefit of the viewer, are there really people who wouldn’t understand it’s a countdown?
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Onscreen there isn’t any surprise romance. There’s a gratuitous naked people scene at the motel, but Matrix doesn’t approach Cindy as anything other than a partner. The ending of the film is left open, as if Matrix and Cindy may be interested in each other, but there’s nothing overt. They don’t even seem to really look at each other, though Cindy introduces herself to Jenny.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Cooke uses the vehicle he’s stealing to run over the dealer, and break through the window.
Matrix guides his truck down the mountain in an attempt to crash into the bad guys.
Matrix slams Cindy’s car into Sully’s.
A bulldozer is used to break through the wall of the gun store.
W is for… Winning
Matrix tells Cindy she’ll know when he gets to the palace because “all fucking hell is going to break loose.”
He’s not wrong.
He kills everyone. The grounds are a bloodbath. There must be spent gun shells two inches deep all over that place.
He shoots Arius, who then falls out the window.
He electrocutes Bennett, which barely slows him down, then rips a pipe off the wall and throws it hard enough to punch through Bennett’s abdomen and the water heater thing behind him.
Matrix is then able to carry Jenny to safety, just as Kirby and his men show up.
And, if you want to look at it that way, Matrix gets the girl in the end.
X is for… X-rays, Or Maybe You Should See A Doctor
Assuming it’s morning when Jenny is kidnapped, Matrix hasn’t gotten any sleep in more than 24-hours. He’s also in multiple fist fights throughout the film. During the massacre he gets wounded in the side. Bennett shoots him in the shoulder, in the middle of beating the snot out of him.
How he’s walking at all by the end is a mystery.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Bennet was a member of Matrix’s unit but got kicked out. He harbored and nurtured a hatred of Matrix that ultimately led to his demise. Had he been dealt with earlier, Jenny never would have been taken.
Z is for… Zone, In The
There’s a lovely montage of Matrix suiting up for his attack. He knew what he needed and how to get it on his person. He is ready to take on Bennet, Arius, and anyone else he comes across in Val Verde.
And to reiterate: he. kills. everyone. There is no more “in the zone” than being able to shoot everyone and barely get wounded.
So that’s Commando. It’s ridiculous and campy, but deliciously fun, too. By design it’s simple yet has everything needed for action entertainment: popular star, guns, explosions, fight scenes, hot yet capable woman. It also doesn’t have some of the action film elements that slow things down, like annoying characters or technobabble.
The one thing that dampens the enjoyment is that Matrix is essentially unstoppable. If he weren’t Austrian he could be Superman (which isn’t to say Superman can’t be Austrian, just that everyone knows Superman grew up in Kansas). As the trailer says, “If it’s a mission no man can survive, he’s the man for the job.” Matrix shouldn’t have been able to get off the plane, let alone get to Val Verde and kill everyone without getting killed himself. There is no stopping him at all, and while the viewer expects Matrix to be successful and rescue Jenny, there’s a lot to be said for a hero that shows some human weakness.
A couple questions do come to mind throughout the film:
Do motel room keys have the room number on them?
Why does Matrix strip to a speedo for the raft ride between the plane and Val Verde? If the answer is “fan service,” I’m not sure which fans the service is for. I don’t honestly know how big the female audience is for Arnold. Maybe it was part of his contracts then that he had to have a scene to show off his body.
The end credits of older films are always interesting—in the first half or so of the twentieth century, credits lasted for a handful of static screens and listed maybe a hundred people.
Later decades have credits that last for a few minutes of rolling text.
It seems like anything made in the last decade or so has insanely long credits listing hundreds and hundreds of people for every conceivable thing and it takes forever.
Commando’s credits list 54 stunt people. (that’s it?)
And 6 helicopter pilots.
The special visual effects are attributed merely to a company.
To sum up, Commando is great for action and for laughs, but if you’re in the mood for realism, go check out something else.
B is For… Bad Boys
Bad Boys is a movie that was highly recommended to me, and it was, shall we say, an experience. Of course, I went into it already not being a fan of director Michael Bay, and this film did not exactly endear him to me.
Frankly it proved my usual points regarding his films. It wasn’t quite explosionexplosionexplosionplotdialogueexplosionhelicopterexplodingbreastsgunfightexplosion, but that probably would have been more entertaining.
I did go in with an open mind. I do enjoy The Rock, and though science is clearly not applicable in Armageddon, that movie does have Bruce Willis and Steve Buscemi, and it’s hard to go wrong with them (even when the writing is incredibly stupid, they’ll do their darndest to make it work).
But Bad Boys. Yeah. Good for my site, at least.
The film opens on family man Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and womanizer Mike Lowery (Will Smith) arguing in Mike’s expensive Porsche. They talk for quite a while, until two guys try to carjack them. It’s then revealed that these guys—Marcus and Mike—are police officers.
It’s eventually revealed that these guys are actually narcotics detectives. Be afraid for Miami.
Anyway, a hundred million dollars worth of heroin is stolen from the evidence locker at the police station, and Marcus and Mike are assigned to get it back because it was initially their case. They don’t have a whole lot to go on, but they do find some clues and work from there. One of the leads they try to tap into is a friend of Mike’s named Max. She’s an escort, and brings her friend and roommate Julie (Téa Leoni) along on an outing. It turns out that Eddie —a former cop who hired her— took some of the heroin from the bust, which pisses off the guy who went to the trouble of stealing it. The guy—a long time later revealed to be named Fouchet—shoots Eddie and Max while Julie watches from the mezzanine (she’d gone to the bathroom).
Knowing Max only trusted her friend Mike Lowery, Julie insists that she be helped only by Mike. Unfortunately Mike is unavailable because he’s lying on the ground concussed after pursuing a lead alone, so Marcus pretends to be Mike. Hijinks ensue and Julie stays at Mike’s apartment with Marcus, and Mike stays with Marcus’s wife and family.
The chain of events to track down the killer/thief begins with Julie recognizing the mug shots of one of the guys working with Fouchet, leading to Mike and Marcus going to the club he owns, then there’s a ridiculous shootout and a more ridiculous chase scene, then the bad guys find Mike’s apartment and steal Julie, Mike and Marcus have to shake down another lead, and it all ends up—after another chase scene—at the airport.
There’s explosions and a shootout and then a final chase scene, and Fouchet winds up dead on the runway as Marcus, Mike, and Julie celebrate victory.
There’s more to the story than explained in my brief summary, but so much of it is infuriating that the summary will be longer than any of my discussions of the criteria, except for the especially infuriating parts.
I’m just going to stop here and jump right in, starting with…
A is for… Accents
Unsurprisingly, the villain Fouchet has an accent. The name is French but I can’t quite tell if the accent is French or not.
There’s a convenience store clerk that has a horrible stereotypical accent. He gets scared by Mike’s and Marcus’s service weapons, and he pulls his own gun on them and swears in a weird sort of broken English.
The drug lord purchasing the heroin from Fouchet seems to be Latin American.
B is for… Bad Guys
Fouchet is… alarmingly undeveloped and completely forgettable. He isn’t even referred to by name until over an hour into the movie, and he isn’t even in that scene. His lackeys get more screen time and actually do more than stand around trying to look threatening.
We’re introduced to him as he’s pulling off the heist to steal the heroin from the police station. A member of his crew is all excited to be the decoy cop in the heist, until Fouchet kills him and throws him out of the truck. The man is indeed the decoy, as the station empties as cops try to hunt the killer before realizing the victim is not really a cop. Mike actually comments on the villain being clever because he knew a full on manhunt would erupt if an actual cop had been killed.
Fouchet overall does seem smart, between the ease with which the heist took place, and his plans to cut the heroin with ether to make it more valuable by at least 100%. He’s also just so…blah. While I can answer “who is the villain?” I can’t really say much more than he wants to sell drugs. His only motivation is money and making sure nothing stands in his way, be it a witness, or thieving partner, or environmental conditions in his lab slowing down the timeline, and he has no qualms at all about killing whoever needs to be killed in his judgment.
Interestingly, when Fouchet realizes he’s done for, he tries to goad Mike into shooting him, and even presses his eye up against Mike’s pistol.
But yeah… Overall, blah. Even his henchmen are blah, and pretty stupid because multiple times they engage in shoot outs in the middle of public places. Granted Fouchet “silences” his shot of Max with only a pillow, which doesn’t silence it at all because the audio is of a full gunshot. Clearly there’s no sort of drug dealer stealth school.
C is for… Chases
Three chase scenes stand out. The first is as Mike, Marcus, and Julie are escaping Club Hell after Julie tries to shoot Fouchet. For some reason—even Julie asks, “Why are we running?”—they take the truck parked out front, which just so happens to be Fouchet’s truck. This truck, which looks like a bread truck but our heroes describe it as an ice cream truck, happens to contain a dozen or so barrels of ether. The three musketeers are then chased by two of Fouchet’s men in an old sports car. Rather than the bad guys, say, shooting the truck’s tires, or somehow forcing it off the road, or doing something to cause the flammable ether to ignite and toast the good guys, they fail just long enough for Mike to roll the barrels of ether at them and shoot it with his gun, engulfing them in flame.
Lots of flame because more barrels join the ones already toasting the car.
And it’s Michael Bay, so the more explosions the better.
The second chase is asinine. That’s right. How something as pure and beautiful as a chase scene can be corrupted into something laughable is managed only through complete and utter lack of attention to logic. The chase occurs after Fouchet and his goons show up at Mike’s apartment building and kidnap Julie. They drive off extremely recklessly, crashing into a bicycle, trash cans, and ultimately a parked car. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Of course they were driving recklessly, because Mike and Marcus were no doubt chasing them in their own vehicle.”
Nope.
Mike was chasing them on foot. As in running after them. As in had the bad guys driven normally, even under the speed limit and obeying traffic rules, they’ve have gotten away. Instead they drive like they’re playing bumper cars, giving Mike half a chance to catch up to them.
They exit the car and the chase continues on foot through some buildings, including through a photo shoot and beauty parlor. Mike, who is wearing an unbuttoned button down shirt to add some sexy into the movie, continues to chase them. One of the bad guys actually fires his gun through the window of the beauty parlor at Mike, who dives to the floor. This gives the bad guys enough time to steal a cab. From somewhere, Marcus arrives on the scene and leaps on top of the cab. Again, rather than driving carefully the bad guys drive recklessly and crash, which causes Marcus to be thrown from the cab. Fortunately Mike, who’d been running in slow motion somewhere behind the cab, miraculously leaps from the left of the screen and grabs Marcus to pull him out of the way of the cab.
So, Mike seems to warp the space-time continuum by not only catching up with the cab by running in slow motion, he also comes at it from the side when he appeared to have been behind it.
The final chase occurs at the airport after Fouchet’s exchange is interrupted by the cops. Fouchet escapes from the flame engulfed hangar in his buyer’s Shelby Cobra, and Marcus takes the time to hop into Mike’s Porsche and then stop for Julie and Mike, and the three of them chase Fouchet down the runway. The road narrows and Marcus is able to catch up with Fouchet and bump him, causing him to crash.
D is for… Damsels
There are several damsels in Bad Boys.
Unfortunately they are all useless or shrewish.
The woman I thought was going to be the “damsel” because I didn’t pay enough attention to the opening credits is Maxine, a friend of Mike’s. She has a boyish name (it’s shortened to Max), and is a boxer, or at least works out in a gym. She’s seemingly introduced to be a love interest for Mike even though they’re currently friends. She’s an escort, which is ultimately her downfall because her job led her to Eddie and Fouchet, who shoots her. She’s pretty and seems fairly intelligent, and it’s rather unfortunate she gets killed brutally. She seemed like an interesting character, which is why it’s so upsetting to me she isn’t the main female character in the movie.
Instead we get her best friend/roommate, Julie, who is extremely, horribly, unbearably useless. She’s an unemployed photographer, which doesn’t seem at all relevant to the plot except to explain why she’s living with Max. Who must’ve made a lot of money because the apartment they share is huge and gorgeous.
I had to actually start an extra page of notes to keep track of all the stupid things Julie does in this movie, yet the viewer is supposed to not want her killed:
- When the bad guys spot her watching them kill Maxine, Julie of course runs upstairs rather than trying to find stairs going down. Though since this happens to everyone running from someone in a movie, I’m willing to overlook this. She’s just lucky the pool was there to break her fall.
- When hiding from her would-be killers, she hides in her own apartment, with the lights on. Her first instinct isn’t either to go to the police, get the hell outta Dodge, or at least hide in the dark. It’s to sit there, by herself, no bag packed, dogs wandering around, lights on. Yep.
- It’s never really explained why she refuses to be brought to the police station for protective custody. I understand that Max told her that if she were ever in trouble, she’d only ever trust Mike Lowery, but Julie doesn’t even know Mike. Did something happen in Julie’s past to cause her to fear the police, or being confined? In an already weak character, not explaining this massive issue is a major flaw. Except of course this flaw seems to be driving the plot.
- At one point she says, “I’m a major glitch.” I can only agree.
- When Mike and Marcus go to Club Hell to track one of Fouchet’s men (after Julie finally agreed to look at some mug shots and recognized one of the henchmen), she follows them. I understand wanting to take matters into her own hands. But not telling Mike and Marcus just puts all of them in danger.
- She has a gun and fires it at Fouchet. From a distance. Through a window. With one hand. And has never fired a gun before. I don’t know what the odds of her actually hitting him are, but I would say pretty darn small. Like less than a full percentage small.
- She actually says, as they’re escaping Club Hell after she botched their mission and the bad guys are chasing them, “You call this protective custody?” I know it’s supposed to be a joke, but considering their having to escape in a stolen vehicle is all her fault, and of course it’s not protective custody because she turned that down, the line just makes her sound whiny and even more needy. It makes me want to throw something at her.
- To try to develop her character, she’s given traits such as being against animal testing, and being a vegetarian. Which would be fine if she weren’t trying to not be killed. She just holds everything up. Stop distracting Marcus, and stop slowing down getting back to safety.
- For some horrible unknown reason she hits on Marcus (still thinking he’s Mike) by lying in bed with him dressed all scantily and showing her stocking clad legs. To manipulate him even further she tries to make him jealous by praising Mike (who she thinks is Marcus). It’s just… Gah. I can’t even.
- Theresa, Marcus’s wife, knocks on the door to Mike’s apartment and Julie doesn’t look through the peephole or ask who it is. Why is she even answering the door to Mike’s apartment?
- SHE LEAVES THE APARTMENT when the deception of who Mike and Marcus truly are is revealed. Protective custody only works when you’re actually in the custody of the people who are trying to protect you. Twit. So what if they lied? You’re alive, right?
That’s a whole page of notes right there on why Julie is a terrible female character.
But there are three other female characters with relevance to what’s going on:
Marcus’s wife is the stereotypical nagging wife who doesn’t accept her husband’s profession and its demands, and she also doesn’t listen to anything he says or ask for explanations. She makes him sleep on the couch, makes him feel bad for having to go to work, and chases him down at Mike’s. If she were more understanding, perhaps he wouldn’t have to lie about his whereabouts. For some reason she wears a really revealing shirt around the house, which is just weird for someone who’s so upset when she thinks her husband is cheating. Is she trying to hit on other men or make him jealous?
The secretary at the police station, or whatever she does, Francine, was connected to Eddie, the former cop, because they used to be involved. He blackmailed her to keep quiet. Had she not lied to Mike in the first place, all of the events of the movie might have been wrapped up more smoothly/quickly with fewer deaths.
The female police captain is constantly at odds with the male police captain who’s trying to organize Mike and Marcus. In another movie I don’t think this would warrant mention, but in a movie already filled with lousy female characters, I thought I’d mention it.
This also isn’t to say that the male characters were all perfect and wonderful. They certainly weren’t. But would it be too much to ask that of the five female characters, the interesting one isn’t the one killed in the first few scenes?
E is for… Explosions
Considering this was Michael Bay, there weren’t too many explosions. At least, no gratuitous ones.
There is the car chase scene with the ether getting ignited, which does of course turn the bad guys’ car crispy.
The ether in the hangar at the end is of course ignited.
A villain gets electrocuted and starts to spark.
The whole hangar goes up, which is of course completely expected considering the circumstances.
Perhaps Michael Bay had promise to not be known as the director who needlessly explodes things, but alas, he became typecast, so to speak.
F is for… Flashbacks
There are no flashbacks in Bad Boys; everything takes place in a few days and we don’t see inside anyone’s head.
G is for… Guns
Check out details at the IMFDB.
There are a lot of guns in Bad Boys, but nothing too crazy as far as types are considered.
Mike and Marcus have their service weapons, and the villains have their own handguns and an assault rifle thing they use in Julie’s apartment.
What stands out as far as guns are concerned is how poorly they are used:
- Fouchet attempts to silence the gun he uses to kill Max by putting a pillow over it. This doesn’t even muffle the sound effect used in the movie, let alone an actual gunshot in real life.
- The henchmen use a huge assault rifle when they try to kill Julie in her apartment, and the shootout spills over into the street as the bad guys shoot into some sort of café. No other cops get called onto the case after this? Maybe shootouts in the street are common in Miami.
- For some reason Mike and Marcus leave a gun with Julie. This leads to her almost getting them killed in Club Hell. Did they even ask if she knew how to use a gun?
- The convenience store scene didn’t seem to have a point except to allow more guns to be pulled so the camera could get some nice stationary close up shots of them.
- Many times people try to shoot two guns at once, one handgun in each hand. That can’t be productive.
- There’s a massive shootout in Mike’s apartment building as Fouchet kidnaps Julie when she runs away, and more shooting during the chase scene.
- Obviously the climax of the movie includes an even huger shootout in the hangar. Bullets fly everywhere.
H is for… Helicopters
Sadly there weren’t as many helicopters as I was expecting. Maybe the bad guy didn’t have the right connections.
There was, though, a police helicopter during the opening heist scene. …it was actually on the screen for thirty uninterrupted seconds, across different shots. 30. Seconds. Maybe it was just to provide a visual while the credits rolled—the next shot after the last of the helicopter proudly proclaimed Michael Bay as the director of the film—but it was a little tiresome, and this is coming from someone who loves watching helicopters do cool things in movies.
There’s also a news helicopter at one point, but it wasn’t particularly interesting.
I is for… Improvisation
There isn’t too much improvisation in Bad Boys, and all of it there is involves that pesky ether. Mike and Marcus use it to blow up the bad guys chasing them from Club Hell, and it’s used to blow up the hangar at the film’s climax.
J is for… Jumping Through Solid Objects
A lot of glass gets broken in the film. Maxine falls through a glass coffee table when she’s shot, Mike falls through a glass door at Maxine’s Madame’s place, and Marcus is pushed into a fish tank (which seems to break before he touches it). Honestly my concern was for the poor fish now flopping all over Club Hell.
K is for… Kill Count
Mike and Marcus don’t seem to make a lot of kills on camera until the end shootout, which is just a free-for-all. They do kill two of Fouchet’s top men during the escape/chase from Club Hell, but their goal wasn’t necessarily to kill versus just getting away from them and igniting the ether to do it.
L is for… Limitations
Mike and Marcus don’t seem to have any limitations other than their own incompetence. Mike is hindered a bit by his feelings for Max. Marcus not insisting on bringing Julie back to the police station led to all the violence happening in the film. Though I suppose Marcus’s wife is a limitation considering how screwed up she makes him. There’s also a timeframe limit—Mike and Marcus need to figure out what is going on before Fouchet sells the heroin in four days.
M is for… Motivation
Mike’s motivation is revenge for Max’s death. He and Marcus also want to save Julie, and of course get back the heroin and stop its sale.
Fouchet’s motivation is money. He wants to kill Julie because she witnessed him killing Max.
N is for… Negotiations
Mike and Marcus don’t seem to negotiate for anything. Yet Fouchet knows to use Julie as a hostage so Mike and Marcus don’t kill him.
At the end of the film Fouchet begs for Mike to kill him, which he eventually does. With a lot of bullets.
O is for… One Liners
Because Bad Boys is trying to be a buddy cop comedy, there are several one liners that attempt to be humorous.
The ubiquitous “I’ll be back” is uttered.
Mike: Now let’s hear one of those jokes, bitch. (said to the hijacker in the beginning who claims to be a comedian)
Mike: Why don’t you add some chimps, we can have a carnival. (after finding out Julie has been staying in his apartment with her dogs)
Mike: Everyone wants to be like Mike. (I think this had more of a punch in 1995)
Julie: This is protective custody? (the line that truly made me hate Julie, said during the escape from Club Hell)
Mike: Don’t ever say I wasn’t there for you.
Julie: This has been a shitty week.
Marcus: You forgot your boarding pass.
Some of the lines are funny, but some of it just sounds like Will Smith delivering lines; it’s hard for me to really distinguish here between Mike Lowery, James Edwards, and Captain Steve Hiller, though to be fair I’m much more familiar with those latter characters than Mike Lowery.
P is for… Profession
The opening scene establishes—painfully blatantly—that Mike and Marcus are police officers. It’s later clarified that they are narcotics detectives. It’s also easy to assume, as the film goes on, that Mike and Marcus did indeed buy their badges at that convenience store like the clerk suggests.
Mike and Marcus seem to be terrible cops, as much as the movie tries to tell us they’re good ones:
- Mike and Marcus argue constantly. Do real police detectives bicker like old married couples? If so, it’s a wonder any crime gets solved. They can’t agree on anything and fill a lot of potential crime solving time with badgering each other.
- When tracking down the ventilation company employee after the initial heist, Mike and Marcus do many stupid things:
- They enter without a warrant and without probable cause, meaning any evidence they collect will be inadmissible in court.
- They move the victim’s corpse and they touch everything including the corpse, which both disturbs the crime scene and gets their DNA all over everything, so the evidence is contaminated.
- Marcus doesn’t seem to know Mike’s apartment at all, which, considering how much time he must spend there assuming their relationship is solid enough for Mike to be considered a part of Marcus’s family, seems odd. Detectives are supposed to be observant.
- JoJo the tire salesman/former drug seller says he should put Mike and Marcus on Hard Copy, a show known for its use of scandal and sensationalism.
I’m not an expert on police procedure, but it’s pretty clear throughout the film that the movie should be called Bad Cops, not Bad Boys.
And good God, what are they wearing most of the time? They constantly look as if they’re going clubbing, not working on solving cases!
Q is for… Quagmire
There isn’t really ever a huge mess into which Mike and Marcus get themselves. Other than the lies leading to Julie’s kidnapping, everything kind of works out. They’re almost in a bind after Julie gets kidnapped and they don’t know what to do, but they’re never totally stuck.
R is for… Reality/Suspension of Disbelief
I can buy the drug theft, I can buy Julie not wanting official protection, I can buy the bad guys being utterly unsubtle when trying to shoot the witness.
I cannot buy detectives handling a corpse before homicide is called and does a proper evaluation of the crime scene. If they’d found Fouchet that night and brought him to court, the man would walk free.
S is for… Sidekicks
Because Bad Boys is a buddy movie, Mike and Marcus are each other’s sidekicks. Even though they don’t seem to like each other very much.
T is for… Technology
As ever during a heist, the criminals are able to intercept the security camera feed and loop it to hide their activity. One of the bad guys also has a laptop with the building’s schematics. Interestingly some sort of sled device on a winch (or something) is used to transport the thieves and the heroin.
Mike has Francine try to hack into the police database, with no luck. He and Marcus recruit a prisoner to hack into the database for them, and because he’s not lying to them, he can get in and find the connection between Francine and Eddie.
A cellphone is used to triangulate position.
U is for… Unexpected Romance
Other than Julie hitting on Marcus when she thinks he’s Mike, and then sort of hitting on Mike at the end of the movie, there isn’t any romance in the film at all.
Thank God.
I’m not sure if I could have handled that.
V is for… Vehicles as Weapons
Sadly there are fewer examples of vehicles being used as weapons than I guess I was hoping for. A garbage truck is driven into the hangar. A car is used to ignite ether. Marcus uses Mike’s Porsche to sideswipe Fouchet’s Cobra.
Nothing terribly exciting.
W is for… Winning
I think the viewer wins when the movie is over.
But, to summarize: the hangar explodes, killing or at least severely wounding the remaining criminals. Fouchet is driven off the road, so to speak. He and Mike converse, and then when he tries to shoot Mike, Mike shoots him. Many times. He’ll-have-to-fill-out-a-heck-of-a-lot-of-paperwork number of times.
Mike and Marcus are both injured, but they’re able to figuratively walk into the sunset with Julie tagging along behind.
Though I think all the evidence—the criminals, the heroin, the ether—is gone, so that’s kind of a letdown. Is there even a case anymore?
X is for… X-Rays, or Maybe You Should See a Doctor
The film ends with Marcus shot in the leg, and Mike shot in his police vest (which yes will protect him from a bullet, but the impact will still bruise). Marcus stumbles away from Mike and Julie. Mike also had a concussion earlier (when he fell through the glass door), but he still went to work.
Y is for… Yesterday’s Problem Becomes Today’s Problem
Francine’s fear of exposure led to a lot of the problems in the film. Had she never been involved with Eddie, or had she confessed earlier, a lot of death and trouble could have been avoided.
If Mike had been involved romantically with Max, maybe she never would have gone on that call to Eddie.
Z is for… Zone, In The
Neither Mike nor Marcus seem to be in any sort of private zone of contemplation and reflection. They work together and with other people in order to plan and figure out what to do. It’s not even clear what they’d’ve accomplished without their captain looking out for them.
So, that’s Bad Boys. I assume it’s obvious I was not impressed. I thought the characters were a mess and the story could probably have used another rewrite in order to make things flow less stupidly. Mike and Marcus obviously had a lot less leeway than a lot of other action movie protagonists because they’re basically following orders and aren’t allowed to go sort of lone wolf. They have each other and an entire police station helping them. Yet things still become confused. The female characters are horrible. I’m not sure anyone at all has character development; a proper coda might have helped, but as the movie ends there is no growth. Mike doesn’t stop womanizing. Marcus doesn’t have a happier home life. Julie is still useless. The villain is woefully poorly developed. I understand Bad Boys is supposed to be a buddy comedy, but there isn’t enough comedy for this to come across. One liners and attitude don’t make comedy by themselves when nothing about the circumstances around them is funny. The rest of the movie is too serious for the comedy to be center stage.
Interesting fact: the roles of the protagonists were originally written for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. Try picturing them in what the movie became.
Another thing: I want my action movies to have action. Drama. Suspense. Thrills. But Bad Boys had way too much talking. A talky movie in itself obviously isn’t a problem. His Girl Friday is a wonderfully entertaining and intentionally dialogue-heavy movie. But in Bad Boys scenes of nothing but talking really slowed down the pace. The scenes were Mike and Marcus arguing. Or Marcus and Julie arguing. Or Marcus and his wife arguing. The police captain arguing with Mike and Marcus. So. Much. Talking. The film was honestly a little hard to follow because a scene pertinent to the plot would happen, but then instead of building from there and moving forward, the film would stop for another scene of talking. Talking is fine, but there’s got to be a better way to film it than two people sitting there instead of stuff actually happening.
Bad Boys suffers from a poor script, poor direction, and lousy characters, though there are some funny moments and some decent action scenes.
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