Wanted (2008)

Wesley Gibson is a loser.  When he Googles his name, nothing comes up.  His best friend, a co-worker in his office, is having an affair with his bitchy, live-in girlfriend.  Their boss loudly and repeatedly demeans him at his cubicle.  And he’s not exactly rolling in the dough.

Everything changes when he gets a prescription refill at his local pharmacy.  (He’s quite anxious.)  It’s here he meets the appropriately named Fox.

We already know Wesley’s dad abandoned him when he was a baby.  Fox informs him he’s recently been murdered.  Moments later, the man who killed him is firing in their direction.

So begins Wanted, a film I’d originally screened with a friend during its original theatrical run in the summer of 2008.  Unfortunately, the idiot projectionist forgot to turn on the sound.  There was dead silence for the first few minutes as someone rushed out to alert an usher.  Eventually, the problem was resolved.  The only sound we heard in those opening moments came courtesy of the morons seated behind us reading the opening graphics out loud.

Needless to say, I was pissed and essentially threw out that screening.  (I’ve not been back to that particular theatre since.)  Last year, I borrowed a Blu-ray copy from my local library but never got around to screening it before it was returned.  Thankfully, earlier this month, I spotted a DVD edition and picked it up again.

So after more than a decade, what did I miss?  As it turns out, an overrated movie.

James McAvoy plays the downtrodden Wesley, a man of inaction recruited into a secret society of assassins led by Sloan.  No, not the great Halifax band, but creepy Morgan Freeman.  Founded a thousand years ago to prevent the world from descending into chaos, they’re able to hide in plain sight by masquerading as textile workers.  Sure.

How do they know who to bump off?  The loom!  What the hell is that?  It’s this big contraption that manufactures code through yarn that, once deciphered, reveals a name.  Uh huh.

After being rescued by Fox at the pharmacy, Wesley substitutes one mind numbing routine for another.  Instead of working on numbers in an office and being reamed by his jerky superior, now he gets repeatedly pulverized by Sloan’s underlings as they prepare him for revenge.

I have to admit the recovery room gimmick is pretty cool.  After every merciless beating and stabbing, Wesley is placed in a bath looking like Han Solo at the end of Empire.  Once he shatters free of his temporary prison, he’s given some vodka and sees his wounds heal in mere hours rather than days.  Because he’s a slow learner he will return here again and again.

Then he gets his first assignment:  kill some guy sitting in a fifth floor office while on top a speeding train for reasons that are never, ever explained.  When the moment of truth arrives, understandably Wesley backs down.  What did this guy do to anybody?

Then, while once again recovering, Fox tells him the story of what happened to her dad, a federal judge with a reputation for not selling out.  Some thug lured him into a trap and beat his ass to death while young Fox watched in horror.  Then, he branded his initials on him using an uncoiled wire hanger.  Discreet!

Employing logic that Dick Cheney would heartily endorse, Fox lectures that had the thug that assassinated her father been assassinated himself when his name was selected weeks earlier by the loom, none of this would’ve happened.  Cut to Wesley back on top of that speeding train finally killing that mysterious guy in the office window.

Wanted is based on a comic book series not unlike the Kick-Ass franchise where a number of scenes uncomfortably mix humour with bloody violence.  There’s only one really funny moment in Wanted.  Everything else is just cruel.

Consider the scene where Wesley goes back to his office after being introduced to The Fraternity, the secret assassin society, and finally flips out on his abusive, donut-loving boss.  He’s just as mean.  Or his explosive reaction to Barry (Chris Pratt in an early film role), his treacherous best friend boinking his shrill girlfriend.  He doesn’t punch him in the face.  He drills him with his ergonomic keyboard resulting in a knocked out tooth and a spelled out punchline.  (Barry’s eventual respect for him is weird and unpersuasive.)

We never see the inevitable break-up scene with his ex.  (She inevitably shacks up with Barry.)  But Wesley does go back to their apartment to retrieve a gun he has hidden in the toilet while getting another earful.  When Fox walks in, here comes the “slut” shaming and a kiss to shut her the hell up.

Halfway through the film, there’s the famous train derailment sequence (which is really well done) where Wesley finally catches up with the man he’s been chasing since his recruitment.  But an unexpected revelation at the last moment undermines his whole purpose within The Fraternity.

Wanted was directed by Timur Bekmambetov who would go on to make the surprisingly good Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  With numerous slowed-down action sequences clearly inspired by The Matrix, Wanted ultimately lacks its cleverness, originality and genuine excitement, bullet detours notwithstanding.

How many times have we seen stories about a wuss who eventually discovers his inner badass and stands up to his bullies?  How many times have we seen stories about the hero being deliberately misled into doing something awful only to belatedly learn he trusted the wrong people?  And how many times have we seen stories where one guy improbably destroys a well-armed multi-manned institution singlehandedly?

You know the answer.  More importantly, you know you’ve seen better executed examples of this concept.

What’s startling about the film is its open embrace of fascism.  The Fraternity doesn’t take out unrepentant Nazis like Perry King’s pacifist teacher in Class Of 1984 or serial killers like Dexter or even serial rapists like Lisbeth Salander in the Dragon Tattoo movies.  No, they take out mystery men not formerly accused of anything.  They’re the CIA with a lamer cover story.

And how are they able to get away with any of this when they are caught on surveillance cameras (the photos are then published on the front page of major newspapers with the headline “Wanted”) and blasting away during the day in public with a whole lot of witnesses and innocent, dead civilians left behind?

Angelina Jolie is far more interesting than the generic McAvoy (who made a much bigger impression on me in Split), her undeniable charisma casting a long, tattooed shadow over everybody else.  She has that rare mix of grit and grace that makes her such a compelling performer.  What a miscalculation to limit her scenes and not make her the central character.

Terence Stamp is good as well playing a weapons supplier who provides Wesley with all the missing details he didn’t know he needed.  But the casting of Morgan Freeman was a mistake.  When the truth is fully revealed I didn’t really hate him or understand his motives.  Maybe pick a better fake business to run.

And maybe not train the guy who will completely destroy your life’s work.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, April 29, 2019
8:13 p.m.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Nearly four years ago in this space, I announced I was done with watching movies in the theatre.  Too loud, I complained, and too expensive.  Besides, DVDs & Blu-rays have closed captioning.  And rewind and pause buttons.  Best of all, I can pee and eat whenever I want for as long as I want without missing anything.

Yeah, about that.  I caved.  Hey, when an old friend you haven’t hung out with in a couple of years wants to get together, and you have this long, collective history of moviegoing, you reconsider your boycott.

I’m glad I did.  Too bad the movie we screened wasn’t as much fun.

I saw the original Pet Sematary on a dubbed VHS tape when I was a teenager.  Based on the famous Stephen King novel, it tells the tale of a young family relocating from the big city to a small town to start a new life.  Their pet cat gets killed and is buried not in the actual, misspelled pet cemetery but in an ancient Native American burial ground nearby.  When it comes back, it hisses more than usual.

Then the family’s young son dies.  Same drill.  But he’s even more vicious.

I had a hard time accepting the dad’s insistence on making the same mistake over and over again despite being repeatedly warned of the inevitable consequences.  As a result, I never got into the premise and wasn’t particularly frightened.  (Gene Siskel gave the film zero stars out of four.  It’s not that awful.)  Hard to believe Stephen King himself thinks this is his scariest story.

30 years later we have this remake which is only slightly better despite making some significant changes to the plot.

Jason Clarke (who was excellent in the overlooked First Man) plays Louis the patriarch, a burned out ER doctor from Boston hoping for a slower pace in the sleepy forests of Maine.  Amy Seimetz plays his stay-at-home wife, Rachel.  They have two cute kids, toddler son Gage (played by Hugo & Lucas Lavoie) and eight-year-old daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence who has a bright future).

As the family settles into their new home, curious Ellie notices a bunch of kids wheelbarrowing a dead pet near their extended property.  They’re wearing animal masks.  A little later on while her mom is preoccupied, she goes out and follows the trail.  She discovers a pet cemetery and a large barrier mostly comprised of discarded barks and branches.

As she climbs it, she’s startled by her new neighbour Jud (a bearded John Lithgow who has now officially graduated to grandpa parts) and gets stung by a bee.  He’s a widow and the opposite of a crotchety old git.  They become fast friends.

Louis likes him, too, and Jud immediately becomes a grandpa figure within the family.

Then poor old Church, Ellie’s beloved cat (named after Winston Churchill for some reason), is discovered all bloodied up by the side of the road.  Before that happens, though, there’s a scene where Louis and Rachel try to explain death to the young girl.  Mom favours the bullshit heaven theory, dad is more honest about the end truly being the end.

Rachel has a very good reason for not accepting finality.  In flashbacks, we learn about her older, terribly disfigured sister Zelda.  With a fucked up spine and ugly-ass feet, she’s not what you’d call a happy camper.

Young Rachel used to dread sending meals up to her room (Zelda resented her healthy body), so one day she decides to send a tray of grub up the old dumbwaiter (which is risky since it doesn’t always work properly).  As Zelda lumbers across the floor to ultimately reject her food, suddenly she falls right down the open shaft.  Adult Rachel still feels guilty all these years later.  Why feeding her sister was her responsibility though is never explained.

Worried about how Ellie will take the news of Church’s death, against all common sense, Jud convinces Louis later that night to take his hairy body past the not-so-effective bark & branch barrier to that same sacred Native American burial ground that destroyed the first version of this family.

And, what do ya know, the next day Church is back and at first Ellie is thrilled.  (Louis & Rachel told her he ran away.)  But now he’s a little cranky.  And a bit of a biter.  (Poor birdie.)  It’s not long before Ellie doesn’t even want him in her room anymore.  Furthermore, she wants to go back to Boston.  She’s the smartest character in the film.

At his new job in the local ER at a nearby college, Louis is mostly bored looking after kids with sore throats.  Then a real emergency is dropped into his lap.  A student (who resembles a young Diddy) is barely surviving after being brutally struck by a car.  (His brain is exposed.)  After he quickly expires, he suddenly sits up, spooking Louis who never wanted to go through losing another patient again.  So begins a series of hauntings warning the good doctor about burying anything in that sacred Native American burial ground.  Like his predecessor, Louis is a bad listener.

There’s a moment during Ellie’s 9th birthday party where the entire audience is bracing for the inevitable.  A blindfolded Louis is playing hide and seek with the kids.  Having not been able to kill off heel Church, in an earlier scene a resigned Louis drops him off near a no trespassing gate.  But, sure enough, here comes the little furry bastard strolling up the road.  Did he really think he’d stay put?

Meanwhile, a distracted truck driver is fiddling with his phone when both of Louis & Rachel’s kids are in the street watching Church come towards them.  What happens next is a swerve and would’ve been more effective if we didn’t already know how this part of the story will play out.

Thanks to the monstrous success of the ghastly It two years ago (the concluding chapter will be out this fall), Stephen King adaptations are all the rage again.  (Doctor Sleep, the sequel to the brilliant Kubrick version of The Shining, is coming later this year, as well.)  I have always believed that if you’re going to remake something, particularly in the horror genre, fix a bad movie and make it better.  (It worked for 2014’s Godzilla.)  This updated Pet Sematary has improved performances and better make-up & special effects, but sadly the finished result is pretty much the same.  It’s just not scary.

How many times do the filmmakers think they can get away with False Alarms involving trucks?  How many times can they let a scene go on and on in near complete silence before something or someone pops out not resulting in a genuine scare but a cheap jump?  Where’s the creativity?

Jud tries to justify leading Louis down this inevitable path of self-destruction by claiming that sacred Native American burial ground messes with your mind and convinces you with cloudy reasoning to keep burying loved ones in its rotten soil.  (It also causes Rachel’s dead sister Zelda to make an unwelcome return visit.)  Because Church was a loving housepet, he incorrectly figures it would be resurrected with the same chill personality.  (Jud’s twice-deceased dog was already a bit of a dick before going through this exact same process.)

At the plot drags on, the family temporarily gets separated (mama needs a timeout), and Louis, reeling from a tragedy and increasingly susceptible to the supposed lure of the sacred burial ground, makes a series of questionable decisions that will irrevocably change everything and not for the better.

You know, a funny thing happened as the screening was drawing to a close.  As the final scene was rolling, the picture cut out.  Despite still hearing everything, an unanswered question lingered.  Were we getting a Sopranos-like ending, all mysterious and ambigious?  Nope.  The projectionist was asleep at the switch and we all missed the last shot.  The dead giveaway was the absence of a final credit roll.

As a few of us complained to staff, we learned there was some sort of technical glitch, something involving wind hitting the projector fans which cut out the picture or some bullshit, I don’t exactly remember because the explanation was so strange and hard to understand.

The good news is those who stayed behind got courtesy passes.  The bad news is the unseen ending was the best part of the movie.

(Special thanks to Dave Scacchi.)

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, April 15, 2019
2:20 a.m.

Pathology (2008)

In the gonzo Pathology, bored med students don’t just play God, they reinvent Clue.  Led by the smug, overly hammy Jake (Michael Weston), this small, insular group of young sadists routinely fail to stump each other with their not so carefully hidden methods of execution.  Because everyone is complicit, there are no rats.  And because this movie never lives in the real world, they have zero worry about getting caught.

Milo Ventimiglia plays Ted, the new recruit.  On the verge of marrying the very rich Gwen (Alyssa Milano), he immediately butts heads with Jake and his obnoxious colleagues.  But just as quickly, he’s suddenly invited into their inner circle.  During a fateful get-together at a local bar, Ted is asked a pivotal question.  His answer changes everything.

The next night, Jake invites Ted out for more boozing.  Big mistake.  Back in class the next day, Ted knows what Jake did.  The corruption has begun.

With Gwen temporarily out of the picture as she prepares to take the bar, Ted is easily tempted by Jake’s sexually fluid paramour Juliette (played by Frankie Drake herself Lauren Lee Smith).  And this is where the movie gets incredibly silly.

When it’s Juliette’s turn to play “the game”, she selects a seemingly despicable character.  Once the deed is done, instead of just leaving the scene of the crime, she suddenly gets busy with the suddenly voracious Ted right there in the man’s living room.  (They also find autopsy tables wildly stimulating.)

Then comes the pay-off.  The vic wasn’t really who she said it was.  Are you really this stupid, Ted?

As the bodies pile up (and then get incinerated without anyone outside the circle noticing), out comes the meth pipe.  When she’s not easily and repeatedly breaking down Ted’s once devoted vow of monogamy, Juliette also makes out with Catherine (Mei Melançon) and has kinky autopsy table coitis with Jake.  (Are those acupuncture needles?)  Juliette is in the wrong movie.  She belongs in Cronenberg’s Crash.

With the madness increasing as the med students continue to chase ever more paraphelic highs, a tormented Ted visits Gwen in her family’s rather large estate.  When she surprises him by announcing she’s going back with him for a couple of months, you can tell by the look on his face that he’s completely thrilled.

When they return, Jake has completely lost it.  He’s getting sloppy.  Bored with attempting to shadow his murderous techniques (which Ted always guesses correctly), he’s devolved into becoming a low-grade slasher.  (Those sex workers deserved better.)  Ted walks into the old, abandoned crematorium (where the group secretly gathers to determine the cause of death of mostly innocent people) to witness the aftermath of a bloody scene.

Pathology is loaded with gross, unsympathetic characters doing and saying gross, unsympathetic things for the sake of shock value and dark titillation.  Ted’s sudden descent into this world isn’t believable.  While I can understand his attraction to the out there Juliette, why is he willfully interacting with the repugnant Jake?  For a guy smart enough to figure out every single murder the group commits, how does he not know he’s always being manipulated by sociopaths?  Shouldn’t it take one to know one?

John de Lancie (best known as the mischievous Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation) plays the professor.  He’s also a bit of a weirdee.  He has a huge jones for Gwen (he’s known her since she was a kid) and makes an incredibly inappropriate remark to her during a big party which she laughs off.  (He makes another one to her fiancé later on which inspires an unintentional laugh.)  Somehow he knows that Ted has been dabbling but not that a lot of his students are spree killers.

Speaking of inappropriate behaviour, at that same party, Jake has a big fight with Juliette.  A really loud fight filled with cursing and the usual “slut” shaming.  (For his part, Ted also smears her outside the elevators to his apartment building after cutting her off from pleasuring little Ted.)  Earlier on, while the students are working on corpses in class, Jake makes a curious, impromptu speech about how much he hates humanity for reasons that only a mass murderer would applaud.  Screaming red flags, anyone?

As Ted attempts to pull away from the group, an increasingly unhinged Jake tries to pull him back in.  That sets in motion a rather standard revenge plot.  In the end, almost no one, including Ted’s hero-worshipping classmate Ben (Keir O’Donnell), is innocent.

Pathology peppers its dialogue with the usual, sometimes impenetrable medical jargon heard in a million hospital dramas to make its characters seem ridiculously smart.  But strip away all the nerdspeak and all that’s left are tedious villains who make so many bad decisions, in the real world they would’ve aroused immediate suspicion and been caught a whole lot sooner.

If any movie can convince you to say no to meth, it’s this one.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, April 14, 2019
11:58 p.m.

Ernest & Celestine (2014)

Every year since 2002, the Motion Picture Academy has insisted on selecting nominees for Best Animated Feature, a category long overdue for abolishment.  Why?  Because far too often they embrace mediocrity.

During the years they choose five films instead of three, they more or less follow a basic nominating formula: pick the Pixar/Disney hits, throw in another major studio release, single out a title or two from Japan and save the remaining spot(s) for a traditional entry from Europe or South America.

As a fan of Akira and the Ghost In The Shell releases, I’ll never complain about the academy heaping love on anime (even though they snubbed all three).  But in this disappointing era of uncanny valley 3D, the more crude offerings from countries like Brazil and France pale even more than usual.

Consider Ernest & Celestine, a 2014 nominee that wasn’t even in theatres until after it got nominated.  (It was originally released in French before being shown here in English.)  Based on a series of childrens’ books, it’s about an unlikely friendship between a bear and a mouse.  Not only is it heavyhanded at times with its belated moralizing, it’s also quite predictable and completely unfunny.  According to Rotten Tomatoes, most critics loved it.  Once again, I am the voice of reason in a sea of sycophants.

Celestine (MacKenzie Foy), the mouse, lives in a home for orphaned girls.  Lauren Bacall voices the house mother who terrifies them all with her bogus propaganda about Big Bad Bears.  She asserts with a straight face that satiating their boundless hunger goes beyond food.  They even devour lamposts!  And bicycles!  And benches!  And buses!  And bridges!  Not to mention entire buildings!  Uh huh.

Oh, and they can’t get enough mice in their stomachs, raw and cooked.

That doesn’t stop Celestine from imagining being friends with one.  Always drawing, she is the only individual in this conformist, underground society.  It must be noted she is not a good artist.

There’s a weird recurring gag involving mice who lose teeth.  Even if you’re down to just one, you suddenly become incomprehensible.  That’s why the little ones are assigned the thankless task of secretly infiltrating the bears’ world to steal their considerable chompers which will be used as replacements.

How do they achieve this?  By apparently pretending to be the tooth fairy or rather, the mouse fairy, as one bear mom puts it to her young cub.  Celestine observes this family of three but then gets caught.  The dad chases her around her son’s bedroom until she jumps through a window softly landing into a garbage can on the sidewalk below where she’ll have no choice but to spend the night trapped inside.  At least she got the kid’s tooth.

The next day, she’s discovered by Ernest (Forest Whitaker) the bear who is starving and desperate.  Having already fought with nosey birds over mere crumbs in his cabin in the woods, he has already annoyed passersby with his one-man band routine.  I’m convinced he gets fined by the bear cops not because busking is illegal but because he is that bad.  You’re literally begging someone to feed him so he’ll stop performing.

After unsuccessfully finding something edible in about half a dozen cans, he spots the sleeping mouse after removing all that crap on top of the lid.  Celestine slaps him for even thinking of eating her.  She points him in the direction of a candy store owned by the same dad (Nick Offerman) who tried to kill her the previous night.  A thankful Ernest dozes off in the store’s cellar having made up for lost time.

Meanwhile, Celestine returns home to an unwelcome reception.  She didn’t collect enough bear teeth and now has to go back to retrieve more.  Back up top in bearworld again, she observes the candy store owner flipping out on Ernest.  Now about to steal his van to make his getaway, a concerned Celestine climbs into the passenger seat and Ernest manages to steer them both out of danger.

Before the unexciting car chase, Ernest is actually arrested and put in the back of a paddy wagon.  Celestine rescues him on one condition.  She needs a favour, a big one.

Nick Offerman’s real-life wife Megan Mulally runs a denture clinic directly across the street from her bear husband’s candy shop.  Their young cub is not allowed to eat any candy.  Why?  Because they both know that it’s bad for your teeth.  The cubs who become addicted to the sweets will later seek out Mulally to replace their absent incisors, a not-so-well thought out scam that can only pay off after years of patience.  The kid doesn’t care.  He’d rather have the candy.  I would prefer actual laughs since there are none in this overrated movie.

Celestine needs Ernest to break into the store and steal as many teeth as he can carry.  He’s not exactly discreet but then again, bears are sound sleepers.  You would be too if you read the script.

Now a hero for the huge haul of treasure she’s brought home, that moment of rare glory is cut short once Celestine’s entire mouse community becomes aware of Ernest (How can they not?  He towers over all of them.) who tires easily and foolishly rests in the orphan house.

Chased out and banished, the two misunderstood loners, who don’t get along at first, of course, are now forever joined at the hip and have more in common than they realize.  Stuck in his cabin because it’s covered in snow, Ernest encourages Celestine to keep drawing and painting from the inside until the Spring.  The radio in his cellar continually reveals they have not been forgotten by the authorities.

It’s hard to watch Ernest & Celestine without thinking about better films like The Jungle Book and Shrek which previously covered this very familiar terrain with more memorable characters, superior songs, more laughs and actual heartfelt moments.  Jungle Book, in particular, has such an effortless charm about it that you’re always smiling while you’re watching.  The unlikely pairing of a jazzy bear and a lost Indian boy is so lovely and sweet even this cynical adult was moved.

On the contrary, E & C is such a dour release, you can’t wait until it’s over.  The friendship between the title characters feels very forced and unnatural.  When they inevitably get arrested and put on separate trials (what’s with the harsh punishments for petty theft and property destruction?), there are the usual cries for tolerance and understanding which, of course, go unheeded until catastrophe erupts and heroism becomes the only reason for softened attitudes.  Why does one have to do something extraordinary to finally be accepted by dickheads?

In the end, even the title characters themselves are all too aware they’re in a bomb.  When Ernest urges Celestine to tell the world their boring story, she notes it’s “too sad”.

When one of your heroes literally does a rewrite of your entire film in seconds, you can’t deny you’ve completely failed.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, April 13, 2019
4:04 a.m.

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

Invasion U.S.A. is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.  Too bad it’s not a comedy.

Released near the end of The Cold War, it imagines a right-wing scare scenario so preposterous and dumb it could only feature Chuck Norris as the hero.  He plays Matt Hunter, a former government agent reluctantly brought out of retirement to singlehandedly foil a Russian invasion.  He stops being reluctant when his Native American friend is murdered and his house in the Everglades is blown up real good.  (At least his armadillo is spared.)

This brazen attack is being led by Mikhail Rostov (the odd-looking Richard Lynch) who has somehow recruited hundreds of multi-ethnic extras to execute hundreds of multi-ethnic extras undetected.  There’s a scene where a bunch of Latinos are congregating outside a dance hall when a couple of cops drive up.  It is pointed out that this is not an unusual occurrence.  They’ve been harassed before.

But have they been instantly gunned down without warning in large numbers like this?  A few are spared because Rostov wants witnesses.  After the fake cops bolt, a couple of real ones show up and face the wrath of the survivors.  An already divided America doesn’t really need Russians to stir the pot like this.

More violence occurs throughout the country but because this is a Cannon Film the small budget only allows for the Miami mayhem to be shown.  There’s the obligatory scene where Rostov and his comrades are watching their work being covered on the local news and someone remarks that because of America’s constant military interference it’s amazing this blowback hasn’t happened sooner.

But Rostov’s motives for mass murder have nothing to do with revenge.  He’d rather punish Americans for their freedom and “decadence”.  Did Dick Cheney and George W. Bush write the screenplay without credit?

There are crazy moments that produce nothing but hilarity.  Set during Christmas, Rostov and company quietly drive into a festive surburban neighbourhood as one family bickers over decorating the tree on their own lawn.  (Who puts a fucking Christmas tree on their lawn?)  When everyone scoots inside, out comes the bazooka.  I’ve never laughed so hard.

But then, when they very slowly drive away, a few residents come out of their smouldering houses unscathed.  How is this possible?

At a bustling shopping mall filled with people making last-minute Christmas purchases, another Rostov stooge tries to leave behind a bomb hidden in a bag of gifts.  But a conscientious citizen, not hearing the ticking, picks it up and chases after him.  Out come the machine guns.

And then, out of nowhere, Matt Hunter drives through the front entrance in his dead friend’s pick-up truck.  How is his windshield not instantly shattered from all those bullets?

Rostov hates Americans so much he wants to blow up parishioners in a church and children on a moving bus.  Both situations end the exact same way.  Innocents spared, ruthless heels obliterated.  To the makers of Invasion U.S.A., good taste is a foreign concept.

That’s especially true of one brutal sequence in particular which follows the sillier one I’m about to describe.  The movie opens with desperate Cuban refugees thinking they’ve been rescued at sea by US officials.  The minute you see Rostov (before he’s ever identified as a Russian terrorist), you know what’s coming.  It’s hilarious because it’s so poorly executed, no pun intended.

Hidden in the bottom of the refugee boat are bags of cocaine.  Later, Rostov takes the stash to a local dealer who appears to be attracted to him.  (Note the suggestive way he samples one with his finger.)  As he approaches the Russian from behind his desk to thank him for the delivery, the drug dealer’s knife-wielding mamacita has already pulled out her coke straw to get her fix.

Rostov makes sure she becomes one with the straw and then throws her out the window.  To further show his appreciation for being hit on, he shoots the dealer in the dick.  Awful.

Meanwhile, Matt Hunter wants answers.  You can tell he works for “the agency” because he loves to torture.  In another ugly scene, he confronts a Rostov goon by stabbing him in his bandaged hand just as he’s disrobing for impromptu nookie.  He won’t remove the knife until he’s told Rostov’s whereabouts.  Oh, and he also hands him a live grenade.  If he lives, he instructs him to tell Rostov, “It’s time to die.”  Gee, I wonder if he’ll get to hear his lame catchphrase in time.

In another silly scene, Rostov appears to be on the verge of executing a US Ambassador with his trusted bazooka.  But then, out of nowhere, a gun is pointed at his head.  It’s Hunter.  He doesn’t shoot, though.  He just kicks him in the head and that jolts the terrified Rostov into waking up from his slumber.  One of his comrades hilariously informs us this is a recurring problem.

Deeply distracted by his nemesis, Rostov is determined to take him out.  When Hunter is apprehended by the authorities, he’s taken into custody and cuts a TV promo on the Russian clearly enticing him to take the bait.  Rostov doesn’t disappoint as he organizes a large battalion to barrel through those pitiful barricades to launch a full-on assault.

There is much laughter as Rostov orders one grunt at a time to kick open a room door and start blasting away at nothing, wasting a whole lot of ammunition.  There’s an even funnier moment when after Rostov realizes he’s been had, the subtitle for one of his Russian comrades reads, “I told you so.”

Matt Hunter must’ve closely studied the Halloween franchise because he loves to come out of nowhere to surprise his enemies.  As a war rages outside between the American military and Rostov’s rapidly dwindling band of terrorists, the startled Russian is jumped by Hunter who flips him over and kicks him in the head a couple of times before suddenly disappearing like Michael Myers.

That leads to Rostov’s worst nightmare coming true.  And, because, this is a Cannon Film, a really bad special effect.  That’s clearly a fake head.

Invasion U.S.A. was released in the fall of 1985, two years before the end of Russia’s ill-fated Afghanistan invasion and President Ronald Reagan’s welcome detente with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.  It takes its xenophobic paranoia so seriously we just can’t.  The premise is beyond implausible and completely insane.  It imagines an America so vulnerable that a guy who looks like a burn victim could easily swoop in masquerading as a government official, gather a wide array of followers in a very short period of time, off a drug dealer without consequence and simply cause mass destruction without any immediate pushback.  It took one day for FDR to declare war on Japan after the Pearl Harbour assault.  One fucking day.

As Matt Hunter, Chuck Norris takes the Eastwood approach: minimal dialogue with lots of brutality in between all delivered in stiff, stoic deadpan.  He has absolutely no fear which defeats the purpose of creating tension.

There’s a weird subplot involving an angry news photographer who keeps popping up to take photos that are never published.  When she’s briefly taken hostage by a Rostov enforcer who looks a lot like Anwar Sadat, she demands Hunter “do something”.  So, once again, he pops out of nowhere to pop the enforcer thereby saving her life.

Is the newsie grateful?  Appreciative?  Politely thankful, even?

Nope.  She’s mad.

“You could’ve gotten me killed!” she bellows. “Creep!”

Is it any wonder Norris himself called this entire film “too much”?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
1:48 a.m.

Gotti (2018)

If John Gotti had lived long enough to see this movie about his miserable life, he’d probably order hits on everyone involved.

As the man alternately known as The Teflon Don and The Dapper Don, John Travolta delivers his worst performance since Battlefield Earth.  He’s just not intimidating at all.  Oh sure.  He has really nice fake hair and always dresses well.  But he’s no Tommy DeVito.  I’ve had farts that were scarier.

Gotti, the movie, has a strange, awkward structure.  It begins with Travolta as Gotti directly addressing the camera.  This provokes two laughs and a serious question.  Why is a dead guy cutting a promo putting himself over for being a lousy criminal who croaked in prison?

Then we jump to 1999.  Gotti’s son Junior is paying him a visit in the pen.  The old man looks like shit.  He’s dying of throat cancer.  Junior needs some advice.  He’s facing a lengthy sentence himself.  He’s thinking of taking a plea for lesser time.  He also wants out of The Life.

But before the elder even gets unstrapped from the correctional facility’s Hannibal Lecter limo service to have this crucial conversation with his anxious son, we’re suddenly transported back to 1973.  A young Gotti agrees to do a hit for the Gambino crime family, revenge for a botched kidnapping.  This leads to a really bad scene in a bar.

The target is drinking and watching a boxing match on TV.  Two of Gotti’s goons approach him, pretending to make an arrest.  The target sees right through their cop act and starts a fight.  Watching this unfold from his seat near the door, the shadowy Gotti suddenly springs into action.  Pop, pop.  Then, he has an unintentionally humourous reaction to the boxing match.  (What’s with that head movement?)  He also tells the barmaid to, you know, zip it.

She doesn’t zip it.  He gets pinched.  But because Roy Cohn is his lawyer, he doesn’t even get half a dime.  Just four years.  He’s out in two.

While in the clink, he manages to convince the officials to allow him to get his teeth cleaned in an outside clinic.  This is all a ruse for him to do another hit for the Gambinos (although he does get a clean bill of health from the dentist).

At one point, he’s also visited by his family.  Travolta’s real-life wife Kelly Preston plays Gotti’s long suffering spouse Victoria.  Her thick Staten Island accent is so bad she puts the broad in overly broad.  They get into a verbal argument.  But then, time’s up.  The visit is cut short.

“I love yous!”

“I love yous, too!”

After going back to 1999 for a short time, we ride a mental DeLorean to 1980 to witness the worst moment in Gotti’s life.  His 12-year-old son is accidentally killed by a passing car while riding around in the street on his mini-bike, a weakly constructed sequence, it must be noted.  Victoria is inconsolable.  The driver is later pummelled to death, thankfully unseen.  A witness is harassed until he sells his business.  So much for laying off “civilians”.

Other key moments are briefly touched upon: all the times he was acquitted (which inspired the Teflon Don moniker even though it was undeserved; Gotti, the narrator, openly admits to bribing one juror to acquit him in one case), Junior joining his crew and getting into physical confrontations backed by his own, and of course, December 16, 1985, the night Paul Castellano is executed outside a steakhouse, a coup that leads to the promotion of Gotti as the new Gambino crime boss.

Now firmly in charge, he openly courts media attention (his flamboyant attire inspiring his other nickname, The Dapper Don).  This, of course, increases needless scrutiny on his criminal enterprise hence all his court appearances which deeply irritates worried associates and rivals.  And he allows two government informants to get too close, most notably Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the man whose testimony and cooperation would ultimately put him away forever.  Thanks to audiotape, Gotti’s worst enemy is his own arrogant mouth.

Another close associate, Angelo, a childhood friend, is also wiretapped by the feds saying a bunch of incriminating things which are never revealed.  After Castellano’s assassination, there’s retaliation against Gotti who never cops to the power move.  But Angelo decides without prior consultation to do a hit on his own.  Murder is only acceptable when it’s authorized, you see.  We’re not monsters!

You know how Scientologists have this heartless policy of “disconnection” when ex-members decide to speak out forcing their families to cut off all contact with them?  In the mob world, when you fuck up, it’s called putting a guy “on the shelf”.  In other words, instead of bumping him off, he’s ostracized and forced out of the game.

When Gotti learns about Angelo’s violent actions, he confronts him in private.  Putting him on the shelf spares him from the more traditional punishment for going rogue.  A year later, Angelo is dead of cancer anyway.

Back in 1999 again, Gotti warns his eldest son to not back down in his endless fight with the government.  He correctly notes that once they get you, they won’t ever let go.  (Junior subsequently faces five straight trials.)  Worried about never seeing his young family again, Junior takes the plea thinking he’s shortening his ordeal.

But his father is right.  Now facing an additional century of prison time, Junior tells his rather excellent attorney he’s done.  No more “earning”, no more incarceration.  They win and there’s a family reunion.

Gotti is a bad imitation of a mob movie.  Dig beneath the usually coarse tough guy talk and there’s not a lot of substance or coherence, not to mention originality.  (Gotti has been the subject of a number of previous films and TV shows going back 25 years now.  Why did we need another one?)

The constant time jumps don’t serve any real purpose other than to keep you alert, I suppose.  As played by the seriously miscast Travolta, Gotti is reduced to a contradictory caricature, a violently devoted family man.  The movie doesn’t hide his homicidal misdeeds but it sure seems to sympathize with him and his son to a point that’s highly questionable and flat out unseemly.

Among many bad creative decisions, the movie intercuts fictional recreations with real-life news footage.  These transitions are far from seamless.  Sometimes the filmmakers slip up showing the real Gotti’s face, albeit from the side and behind, as he comes and goes from the courthouse.  Not that it matters that much anyway since Travolta isn’t even remotely convincing as the fictional version.

Other archival footage features journalists like CNN’s Jeanne Moos (before she was goofy) and CBS’ John Miller (in between law enforcement stints) covering various relevant stories while local residents vouch for Gotti’s character especially after his death from cancer.  The movie never really explains or even convinces us why he was loved by so many stupid people.  By the end, not even mob figures are singing his praises, only he does as he pops up again directly addressing the audience to puff himself up one last time.

At one point, someone claims that Gotti’s presence lowered street crime.  Don’t they mean he replaced it with his own?

Besides an absence of heel heat, Travolta’s performance lacks charm and wit.  His facial expressions make me wonder if he was experiencing intestinal problems at the time of filming.  There’s no forceful presence when he enters a room as his underlings suddenly stand to attention.  His flashes of anger aren’t scary at all, either.

The silly moments are mostly relegated to the first act.  Based on the universal loathing of this movie, I was expecting a lot more.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
1:38 a.m.