Red Heat (1988, Walter Hill)

Walter Hill really likes to make movies about racist white cops (oxymoron, sorry, racist even for a movie) partnering with unlikely people and having big action sequences involving buses, huh?

The racist white cop in this case is Jim Belushi, who’s never overtly racist (just overtly transphobic in a homophobic way—it’s the eighties after all), but has a lot of dog whistles when referring to the Black street gang villains—the Cleanheads. They sometimes wear berets to remind you of the Black Panthers, those radical militants who wanted to feed unfed people, and they all shave their heads out of fealty to leader Brent Jennings. Jennings isn’t exactly good, but he’s a lot better than most of the performances in Red Heat and somehow his stereotype Black prison gang leader manages to come off less stereotypical than Laurence Fishburne’s police lieutenant, who is a by-the-books tight-ass who makes Belushi’s life miserable.

For being competent while Black, apparently.

Lot to unpack in Red Heat, if it weren’t so boring.

It’s not just the American side of it, there’s also how it’s 1988 and the Soviets are okay enough for Arnold to play one–Red Heat is very much of the era where Arnold didn’t need a last name—and instead it’s the Georgians who are the scumbags.

Ed O’Ross is a Georgian drug dealer who kills Arnold’s partner in Moscow and runs off to the United States. He starts doing business with Jennings’s gang (though not Jennings, who’s running it from Joliet—sadly no Blues Brothers homage, which would probably improve Heat) and eventually gets busted for something so Arnold flies over from Moscow to bring him back.

Police captain Peter Boyle—nothing like late eighties slumming in action pictures is there—assigns Richard Bright and Belushi to babysit Schwarzenegger while he collects O’Ross, but then, of course, everything goes to hell and O’Ross gets ahold of Belushi’s gun and Eddie Murphy’s got to… wait, wrong movie.

But this one ends with a bus chase too.

Only it’s rarely, barely funny, with everything between Schwarzenegger and Belushi falling flat. There are less than five okay jokes in the movie, maybe like one actual laugh and then three or four “not terrible considering.” The considering includes the acting, the script, and the direction.

Really bad music from James Horner, who seemingly shrugs off the assignment, and middling production values in general. Matthew F. Leonetti’s photography isn’t bad exactly, but it’s one of the worst shot Chicago movies ever? I mean. Just out of sheer, green lightning ineptness.

It’s also surprising it took three screenwriters—director Hill, Harry Kleiner, and Troy Kennedy-Martin—to create such hack work. John Vallone’s production design isn’t bad, but Dan Moore’s costumes are terrible. There’s a whole Belushi calling Arnold “Gumby” because of his suit and haircut thing and it’s both desperate and miserable.

Sort of like watching Red Heat.

Unless you want to be amazed at Hill’s boring composition for over an hour and forty minutes. It’s a “good for insomniacs” picture, though most of the cast gets some sympathy for being in such a lousy movie. And Richard Bright, Gina Gershon, and Pruitt Taylor Vince are at least trying.

It’s not their fault Hill and his cowriters but especially Hill are inept hacks on this one.

WarGames (1983, John Badham)

All WarGames really needs to be better is a good script rewrite, a better director (apparently there are some leftover shots from when Martin Brest tried directing it but got fired), and more John Wood. The Arthur B. Rubinstein music is a little iffy too but has its charms.

And WarGames has its charms. Matthew Broderick is often nearly charming in the lead; he’s a teenage computer hacker who tries to impress a girl (Ally Sheedy) by changing her grades only to get them involved in… well, not espionage. Basically Sheedy helps Broderick convince a lonely computer it wants to play a game; she gives him the big clue, which is regular people love their children. Based on Broderick’s parents in the film—an oblivious William Bogert and a nagging vitamin-obsessed eighties working movie mom Susan Davis—it makes sense he wouldn’t know to try the programmer’s dead son’s name.

They play a quick game of Global Thermonuclear War, then Broderick has to go clean up after his dog. The computer keeps playing—they hook it up to a voice box but Douglas Rain it ain’t, though—and I know John Badham had seen 2001, watching WarGames, you’d think he’d proudly declare he hadn’t—anyway. The Feds figure out Broderick hacked them, kidnap him off the street, and take him to NORAD. Where they do regular tours.

We’ve already been to NORAD because the movie opens with this hook—General Barry Corbin, who’s so proudly ignorant and backwards he’s probably an accurate depiction of an Air Force general (when they have him on the phone with the President and you realize it’s Reagan, WarGames becomes absurdist comedy), doesn’t have enough men willing to kill Russian babies. Now, eighty percent will do it, but twenty percent are wusses. So Dabney Coleman says they should let a computer do it. Said computer, housed in Colorado at NORAD, is hooked up to an outside phone line somewhere in California so Broderick can happen across it.

Pretty soon Broderick’s not only got to convince the adults he’s not a Russian spy, he’s also got to find a way to stop World War III. Luckily he’s got his best gal Sheedy, though they have very little chemistry and their kisses on the cheek are the most natural parts of their relationship, and she’s got enough money and her own car to keep the plot going. Also Broderick is able to MacGyver his way out of any situation thanks to his hacker skills. Though he doesn’t know anything about anything except those things. We see his grades and he’s ever ignorant of things he’d know from watching any modern television drama.

Though it’s a little better than Sheedy, who seems to be around to decorate and be decorative.

Outside a flashing light sequence at the end, William A. Fraker’s (surprisingly Oscar-nominated but so was the script so whatever, she don’t lie, cocaine) cinematography is fairly tepid, which matches Badham’s direction. Tom Rolf’s editing is not an asset either. Again, WarGames just needed a better director and a good script rewrite.

Broderick and Sheedy are fine. They both have solid moments, Broderick more but because they stumble upon how to make Broderick a movie star and occasionally repeat.

Besides the surprisingly effective third act and trying to figure out what computer programmer Wood is thinking when he’s acting so goofy, the most amusing part of WarGames is spotting the character actors in the cast. I’m going to miss a few because I don’t recognize their names just their faces but this movie’s got… John Spencer, Michael Madsen, James Tolkan (didn’t that guy ever have hair, sadly he doesn’t call Broderick a slacker), Jason Bernard, Alan Blumenfeld, Maury Chaykin, Eddie Deezen, Stephen Lee, and Art LaFleur. I’m leaving out a bunch of the military guys but it’s like, Michael Ensign from Ghostbusters (but not Raiders, so I’m confused). But the listed folks, those I’m sure about.

Oh. And Broderick’s joke at teacher Blumenfeld’s expense is great, actually.

Bastille Day (2016, James Watkins)

Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Except Bastille isn’t even a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. It’s a buddy flick, only without any of that fun chemistry between the buddies.

Bastille’s buddies are top-billed Idris Elba, as an American CIA lifer who is more a blunt instrument (it doesn’t matter, director Watkins and co-writer Andrew Baldwin’s espionage details suggest they didn’t even bother checking Wikipedia), and Richard Madden, as an American ex-pat pickpocket in Paris. If Elba and Madden had okay American accents, it wouldn’t matter they’re not, except their accents are terrible. Occasionally the most amusing thing about Bastille is wondering what they must’ve sounded like between takes, when they aren’t retching out Watkins and Baldwin’s insipid dialogue with their very shaky accents. Elba seems more like he’s doing an impression of an American actor than giving a performance, which is a bummer because he comes in late enough to save the movie from Madden and then doesn’t.

Madden’s performance isn’t even serious enough to call a performance so no time on that aspect, sorry. Though it is also fun watching him strain to emote as you can watch him consider making that decision, then not doing it.

It’s impossible to say, of course, how much is director Watkins’s fault. Watkins is really, really bad at the directing. So maybe Elba and Madden would be great if they’d just had the petty cash buyer or graffiti artist take over directing. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse.

Though I do suppose neither Madden or Elba get anywhere near as bad as Kelly Reilly, who hopefully locked her agent in a metal box and dumped them in the ocean after this one. She’s atrocious. And paired with Anatol Yusef, who’s so bad as the Paris station chief (they don’t have station chiefs, the writers didn’t Google deep enough), I spent the movie wondering if he was the producer’s nephew or something. He’s not. He’s a professional actor. He does dramatic moves with his glasses professionally. It’s rough.

The story involves Madden getting involved in a terror attack—Bastille’s politics are dumb but also occasionally, unintentionally insightful—which leads to Antifa (or are they) getting involved with CGI-enhanced demonstrations before, you guessed it, Bastille Day. Elba is the super-agent saving the day without involving the French, namely bureaucrat José Garcia.

Throw in a damsel in distress (presumably native French speaker Charlotte Le Bon, who’s better at delivering her lines in English than Madden for sure) and a scary bad guy leader (Thierry Godard) and you’ve got a movie.

Though Bastille Day is a long ninety-two minutes. It gets even worse after the action sequences start and it turns out they did actually hire someone who can choreograph big guy Elba in fight scenes, Watkins just can’t direct them. At all. There are a couple potentially, actually good fight scenes and Watkins sinks them both. Though editor Jon Harris tries hard to mess them up too. Harris’s never any good at the cutting but during the action scenes he’s downright annoying.

Bastille Day is dumb and even if you’re sympathetic to the actors, it’s not like they haven’t given better performances elsewhere. A still photograph of Madden, for example, probably exhibits a lot more depth than anything in this movie. It’s a bad, dumb script, with some truly incompetent direction from Watkins.

Enola Holmes (2020, Harry Bradbeer)

Enola Holmes is a solid vehicle for the proposition of lead Millie Bobby Brown as a movie star—she infrequently narrates to great effect, in a manner far more Ferris Bueller than John Watson (more on the infrequently in a bit). But as almost anything else the movie fizzles.

Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes? He’s not very smart even though he’s supposed to be super-smart and he’s likable but not good. He actually doesn’t have enough to do to be good or bad, so likable is about as much as Enola allows.

Most of Cavill’s scenes are opposite Sam Clafin—as brother Mycroft (so basically Enola Brown is Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes’s previously unmentioned younger sister)—which is good for Cavill, because even though his performance is broad and based on him being charming and having a good smile… Clafin’s just a caricature British jackass. He’s not even smart in Enola continuity.

Holmes family mom Helena Bonham Carter—in a somewhat pointless cameo, mostly in flashbacks—kicks off the present action when she abandons Brown as a kind of sixteenth birthday present. It doesn’t make sense and it’s not supposed to make sense because then you won’t show up for the sequel. Enola is based on a young adult novel series by Nancy Springer, which is swell, but screenwriter Jack Thorne does a terrible job plotting a two hour movie.

It’s like Thorne doesn’t understand how subplots or vignettes work so there’s a very herky-jerky plot involving mean boarding school teacher Fiona Shaw (who’s weirdly hot for Clafin) trying to turn Brown into a proper lady and not the badass proto-inclusive feminist Bonham Carter has been raising her to be and then Louis Partridge’s young lord.

So, Partridge—who’s generally fine, albeit mostly because Enola has got Brown in a movie star performance and then a lot of mediocre performances—has run away from his life of luxury and Brown ends up helping him on her way to London to solve her mother’s disappearance. Except then Brown—and the movie—decide since Partridge is in trouble, let’s focus on him so the second half (right up until the sequel-set up epilogues) is all about Partridge and his family troubles.

In other words… it’s all about the dude. And Brown mooning over him is awkward.

Everyone except Clafin and Shaw have a good scene—including Frances de la Tour, who doesn’t end up doing so well after a strong start, and especially Susan Wokoma, who’s fantastic if literally used as a diversity token.

Bradbeer’s direction is mediocre at best. It’s often like he didn’t tell Brown when to look at the camera for Ferris narration and when not to look at the camera for it, so she’s always glancing directly into the lens. You’d think editor Adam Bosman might edit around it but no, he leans into it. Though, technically, Bosman’s editing is easily the worst thing about the filmmaking.

Giles Nuttgens’s photography is fine. Boring but fine. Okay music from Daniel Pemberton. Great production design from Michael Carlin and costume design from Consolata Boyle.

Enola is a bad star vehicle for potential great star Brown and okay enough a potential sequel wouldn't be unwelcome. Just less about the boys.

The Old Guard (2020, Gina Prince-Bythewood)

The Old Guard is better than any of the Highlander movies (to date, I suppose) but sadly not a success. It gets relatively close to passing at least, but then the epilogue is forced, predictable (screenwriter Greg Rucka’s really obvious, he’s really episodic and he’s really obvious–Old Guard is based on Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’s comic of the same name so the episodic makes sense. The obvious also makes sense (I’ve got many the Rucka comic under the reading belt). But the epilogue’s pretty bad. At one point during Old Guard, when I’d given up on this entry actually being good, I got hopeful for the sequel.

Epilogue kinds of ruins it.

But not as much as the soundtrack; Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O'Halloran are credited with the score, which I think is maybe three minutes of actual music. The rest of the time there’s the best accompanying song soundtrack Netflix was willing to pay for, which apparently was less than it would take to download some public domain recording of classical music.

All of the action sequences in Old Guard have a really annoying, not well-chosen song going with them. Maybe I just don’t like my ears to bleed, maybe the songs really are good, but then editor Terilyn A. Shropshire should’ve cut the action to the songs better. They’re not synced, it’s just accompaniment. So they apparently didn’t have to pay Bertelmann and O'Halloran anymore.

Highlander 1 had Queen and Michael Kamen.

The Old Guard has Bertelmann, O’Halloran, and the full versions of songs you can probably excerpt for free. It’s dreadful. Particularly because otherwise the action scenes would be good. There’s a solid fight scene for Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne; they’ve got to have their pissing contest after all. Old Guard follows the eighties action movie tropes well enough if it’d embraced them more it might’ve endeared.

Though it’s hard to endear with such a bad soundtrack. It’s really profoundly bad. It’s something else.

Anyway. Theron is playing Sean Connery, while Layne is the newest Highlander. She’s not Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod however, because Matthias Schoenaerts basically fits that part. Layne’s new and unexpected, the first new Immortal in two hundred years, which is ostensibly ominous but the comic’s got—sorry, sorry, the movie—the movie’s got profound logic problems. Rucka.

Theron has been alive since “Xena” times at least and has always battled on the side of good, saving this village or that village for thousands and thousands of years. But it’s 2020 and she no longer sees any evidence of the good she’s done for 4,000 years. Theron and her fellow Immortals Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, and Luca Marinelli do nothing but fight. And in the last few decades, they’ve been mercenaries for the CIA, doing rescue operations. You know, all those rescue operations the CIA does with the good people. Thankfully there’s no government conspiracy for Rucka’s script to be naive about, instead there’s an evil big Pharma company out to steal the secret of immortality.

Harry Melling plays the head of the company.

It’s singularly one of the worst villain performances ever. Melling is playing the young Pharma bro evil mastermind only he’s dressed like Pee-Wee Herman (“Playhouse” not South Trail Cinema) and he’s so silly it’s hard to believe anyone could keep a straight face during the scenes. Though most of Melling’s supporting cast is bad. Actually, all of them.

Head of security Joey Ansah is a martial arts guy. He’s never good but at least he can do his fight stuff in the end. Whereas evil scientist Anamaria Marinca is just… bad.

What’s disconcerting is how the casting is otherwise good.

Layne’s fellow Marines—Mette Towley and Natacha Karam—they’re solid. Until that plot line goes bad—Rucka—a movie with them in it more had a lot of potential.

So the leads.

Theron’s as close to bad—due to abject disinterest in anything other than her hand-to-hand scenes, not even the gun fight scenes, which are fine other than that terrible soundtrack–that disinterest is even more concerning given Theron produced the film (which means she’s hit that stage of Eighties Eastwood stage of career)—without every actually being bad. She shows some personality a handful of times, but there’s really no call for it because there’s not really any significant character development because….

Rucka.

Layne’s got some really good moments and she’s always appealing but Old Guard isn’t supposed to be a pilot movie or even a TV movie to test out how Layne does on Netflix, it’s supposed to be a good part. And it’s not a good part. No one’s got a good part.

Well, Schoenaerts. Except his performance is the same Schoenaerts head-shaking and looking off into the distance thing he always does, just immortal this time. He’s likable though. Be fun to see in the sequel. Maybe.

Kenzari’s great. Marinelli’s fine. Chiwetel Ejiofor hopefully bought something nice.

Prince-Bythewood’s direction is fine. The action scenes would’ve been good without the terrible soundtrack. The Old Guard’s not her fault (I mean, I don’t know about the soundtrack but I sincerely hope it wasn’t her idea); the direction’s fine otherwise. The action scenes are anomalies. When scenes otherwise go wrong, it’s because of the script.

Though there are a handful of nice moments in Rucka’s script; until the third act, it really seems like Old Guard’s going to make it through. And then it doesn’t.

Because Rucka’s cheap and obvious, Melling is atrocious, and the soundtrack is painfully exasperating.

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020, Tony Tilse)

At no point does Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears introduce viewer unfamiliar with star Essie Davis’s television show, to which this film’s a sequel, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” The movie opens with an action sequence setting up Davis as an exquisitely dressed combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The action—a title card tells us—starts in 1929 Palestine, where the British are mucking things up for the native people… Crypt of Tears is anti-British Imperialism… but from an Australian bent.

Davis rescues Izabella Yena, who’s in British jail for snooping around the destruction of her village ten years before. During the rescue sequence, Davis evades police in a rooftop chance and has a bunch of costume changes. It’s overindulgent and flamboyant but enthusiastic. It’s fun to watch Davis get to do an exaggerated character schtick thanks to the bigger movie budget.

Until they get to the CGI train sequence and it’s clear while Crypt of Tears might have a “movie budget,” it doesn’t have anywhere near a big enough one. The film tries and tries with the desert visuals, which does showcase Margot Wilson’s costuming, albeit not so much in the digital extreme long shots, but they’re always just there. Production designer Robbie Perkins does well, so at least Tears always looks good.

Until the end, which is more cinematographer Roger Lanser and director Tilse’s fault.

Anyway. After Yena’s rescue, the movie goes through some plot hoops to bring series love interest and Davis sidekick Nathan Page to England. There’s a single scene in Australia with the TV show’s cast, but since the movie’s not really a direct sequel to the series… they’re all just doing forced cameos. The movie’s not going to involve the TV cast (save Page, and him in very supporting role), though it’s fun seeing Miriam Margolyes if you’re a TV fan.

Once Davis and Page are reunited, there’s a laborious setup with the… residents of the house where Davis is staying in England. It’s as exciting as it sounds, as Tears becomes a traditional location-bound mystery, kind of a protracted, but somewhat suspect limited Agatha Christie.

Somehow the movie, with its TV show-experienced director and screenwriter (Deb Cox), manages to avoid all the show’s familiar tropes and go instead with bland mystery movie ones. Page being background would be understandable if they were spotlighting Davis as an action hero, but they don’t. We get a bunch with the suspects, who are extremely flat.

Maybe because they’re shooting Australia for England? Rupert Penry-Jones is the single Brit in the cast. Or is it just the suspects aren’t movie dynamic enough? Yena seems like she’s going to have a very obvious woman’s empowerment arc with Davis as her mentor but then she’s just… around. The movie doesn’t do anything with her. There aren’t any subplots for the suspects, if any questions do get raised outside the main plot, they don’t get answered.

The mystery is… blah.

To someone unfamiliar with the show, Tears is just going to be a confusing and often very charming—it’s not like Davis isn’t great or Page isn’t adorable—not great period mystery with TV movie CGI special effects (think CW, not HBO), but as a “big screen” effort from the show creators… it’s a disappointment. It’s like they targeted a very specific audience and gave them something intended for the general audience they decided to exclude.

Also most frustrating is how the fumble is probably going to kill any sequel possibilities. More Davis and Page isn’t going to ever be a bad thing, you just wish it had been a good thing in Tears.

Solo (2018, Ron Howard)

Solo: A Star Wars Story is juvenile, which might be what manages to save it. It’s got nothing but problems—a troubled production (director Howard took over from fired “executive producers” Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and shot seventy-percent of what’s in the film), an uninspired screenplay (by Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and his son), the worst Star Wars music since A Day to Celebrate (“courtesy” John Powell), and a hilarious miscast “lead,” Alden Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich is playing young Han Solo, almost forty years after Harrison Ford originated the part and became a megastar. Howard never directed Ford in anything—they did fight over Shirley Feeney in 1962 Modesto—and maybe it would’ve helped if Howard had any experience with him. But the script is so talky—the Kasdans write Ehrenreich is a cocky jabberer (and I’m not sure they realize with juxtaposing him with whiny Mark Hamill from the original Star Wars is a bad idea)—and Ehrenreich so bland he can’t even figure out how to get his hair to do the acting for him, which means he couldn’t have worked in the seventies, it was never going to work. Solo tries to ignore itself instead of embrace itself and ends up rotting on the vine.

The only performance the film needs to have right and has right is, arguably, Donald Glover, who’s playing Billy Dee Williams playing Lando Calrissian. Glover doesn’t mimic Williams’s mannerisms, but the voice inflections are spot on. And Glover manages to have a sincere subplot. Not in the script, but in his performance.

Miscast or not, Ehrenreich shouldn’t be getting shown up as far as sincerity goes. Especially not after now bad girl ex-girlfriend Emilia Clarke tells Ehrenreich he’s secretly the good guy. If we’re finding out Solo is going to come back and save them at the Death Star, we need to see it. We don’t see it anywhere.

Though Solo’s particularly bad at showing things. Cinematographer Bradford Young is anti-contrast; everything looks a little muddy, a little muted. Whatever Young and Howard thought they were doing with the colored lighting doesn’t work either. Especially not when the movie starts pretending it’s Empire Strikes Back, which leads to some okay spaceship flying shots and some really bad attempts from composer Powell to integrate John Williams music for nostalgia’s sake.

But at least they’re trying something.

And the trying is what “saves” Solo; albeit conditionally.

The movie opens with thirty year-old teenagers Ehrenreich and Clarke growing up in a Star Wars version of Oliver Twist. When they finally get to escape, only Ehrenreich can make it. He’s going to come back for her, he promises.

Fast forward three years and Ehrenreich hooks up with Woody Harrelson’s intergalactic thief crew. It’s Harrelson, Thandiwe Newton, and Jon Favreau voicing the CGI action figure. Harrelson initially seems like he’s having fun and it’s not translating to a good performance. Then it seems like he’s not having fun and it’s still not translating to a good performance. Newton’s okay but she’s got the nagging girlfriend part–Solo goes out of its way to fail Bechdel and its “equality for droids” subplot is problematic and the slavery stuff is icky too. It’s not malicious, just exceptionally thoughtless.

Though, obviously, the whole thing is exceptionally thoughtless. It’s not like there’s some gem of a chase sequence or the big redeeming action set piece.

In not trying, however, Solo manages not to fail. Occasionally. There’s the broad fail of the concept, the broad fail of Ehrenreich, but Glover’s… captivating in his impression or performance or whatever. Clarke’s got a thin part written a piece of fortune cookie paper but she’s sympathetic.

Even if she apparently said no to Star Wars costumes and just wears a dress.

Paul Bettany’s villain isn’t… good but Bettany’s not sleeping through the performance. He’s not Harrelsoning it. And Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s droid activist really does seem to be there for a bunch of White men to laugh at civil rights, but Waller-Bridge’s great. And her comedy timing is better than anyone’s, though she presumably recorded the droid’s voice in post-production and didn’t have to suffer the set.

Solo is bland, long, boring—the first act is particularly dreadful, mostly because Ehrenreich’s so prominent and so disappointing—but it’s also not… predictable. The Kasdans’ script does make a lot of bad narrative decisions but they are decisions. And there are a lot of them. Event-based plotting might be the way I’d have described it as a teenager in an effort to justify liking it.

Plus there’s an Elder God.

Also… and I didn’t manage to work this anecdote in anywhere because I didn’t trend mean enough… Ron Howard? Bringing in the guy who infamously failed with Willow is a choice. Bringing in the guy who caped for Jake Lloyd’s performance in Phantom Menace is a choice.

And none of it even matters: Solo never had a chance. You might be able to recast Harrison Ford, but you can’t recreate Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

Though maybe they should’ve let Donald Glover try.

Rogue One (2016, Gareth Edwards)

Sadly, the Writers Guild of America does not publish their arbitrations for writing credits, because the one on Rogue One has got to be a doozy; I desperately want to know how they go to this script. Did it actually start as a video game or did director Edwards really have no idea how to do action scenes not out of a video game? Was there ever a satisfying conclusion to the various characters or was it always going to be amid the biggest Star Wars action sequence featuring the toys—sorry, spaceships–from the Original Trilogy ever mounted.

Because you know how they do all the rest. They do it with CGI. They even bring Peter Cushing back in CGI and credit some guy named Guy Henry who… stood in? Got CGI’ed over? Cushing doesn’t look real, he doesn’t even look alien (though the alien designs in Rogue One are like sixty percent good and forty percent perplexingly odd). He kind of looks like a video game character but maybe a little better… whenever he’s on, I wish I was just watching CGI further adventures of the Original Trilogy cast. I mean, probably not anymore because I wouldn’t want to see what the do with Carrie Fisher but still. There’s a novelty in it.

There’s no novelty in CGI Cushing in Rogue One because they still haven’t gotten the acting down. The face makes expressions but pointlessly. Kind of like the James Earl Jones cameo. His inflections make no sense. Partially because the exposition-full dialogue plays worse onscreen than George Lucas’s. Again, that Writers Guild arbitration has got to be some great reading. Like who wrote the Darth Vader cameo, which I’m not going to consider a spoiler because you should be able to get a “Rogue One Darth Vader” playset, complete with the bigger looking, Darth Helmet homage perhaps helmet.

The reason the dialogue is so bad is because they’re targeting a younger audience. There’s this really silly “Rosebud” running throughout the movie and it gets repeated time and again before it finally comes into play and then they even explain it. Because they’ve got to hit the eight year-olds, which is nice, right? It makes an eight year-old feel smart… which is kind of Star Wars in a nutshell.

Anyway.

The big space and land battle plays with all the good toys. There are ships from various movie periods fighting each other and whatnot, there’s AT-ATs, there’s… a samurai. There’s everything you could want. And lots of callbacks to the original movies, both in shots and dialogue.

As bland as the action direction, Edwards does pretty well with the pseudo-main plot, involving the creation of the Death Star (the first one, so pre-Star Wars; the movie assumes you’re very familiar, because otherwise why would you be watching Rogue One). Empire scientist Mads Mikkelsen tries running away but gets brought back by bad guy Ben Mendelsohn (who’s great but has to play second-fiddle to CGI Cushing, which is a choice); Mikkelsen’s wife dies and their daughter is rescued by Forest Whitaker. Jump ahead fifteen years and now the daughter is Felicity Jones and Whitaker’s an old man (so they can make prequels to this prequel, which would still be sequel to the prequels), and they’re estranged. Blah blah blah, needlessly complicated plot to get Jones and Whitaker reunited, bringing in Rebellion spy and secretly soulful assassin Diego Luna, who, with his trusty reprogrammed attack droid (voiced by an over-enthusiastic given the writing Alan Tudyk), will reunite father and daughter and hopefully save the universe.

Along the way Luna and Jones team up with Jedi Temple protectors but not Jedi Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen. They’re like Jedi groupies. Yen gives what’s probably the best performance… and there are good performances. Not just Mendelsohn. Luna’s a strong lead until Jones takes over for… ten minutes or so. She’s good. It’s a silly part, but she’s good. Riz Ahmed’s really good as the Imperial spy. Forest Whitaker’s good. Until they get to the direct prequel to Star Wars stuff, it certainly seems like it might add up to something for its cast. But once Threepio and Artoo show up… it’s just a countdown to their suicide mission overtaking them and clearing the board for the actual heroes to show up.

The ginned up martyrs all get their big exits but they play trite, mostly because the script, some Edwards. Michael Giacchino’s score almost, almost, almost finally makes it work but then he doesn’t because he never makes it work. Giacchino’s score is middling when it’s not aping or anti-aping John Williams and much worse when it does.

Rogue One is a successfully executed Star Wars prequel slash midquel, which says nothing about it as a good use of $200 million or two hours and ten minutes…. In those terms, it’s an abject, even desperate fail and a complete waste of its (human) actors’ time.

I assume CGI Peter Cushing has nothing better to do.

The Enforcer (1976, James Fargo)

The Enforcer is cheap in all the wrong ways, both in terms of budget and narrative, which probably ought to be clear in the first scene, when the movie opens on a butt shot of Jocelyn Jones in Daisy Dukes. She’s hitchhiking but it’s all a setup for the villain reveal—Jones is in an ostensible militant beatnik organization with a bunch of Vietnam vets (Enforcer’s politics are a whirlwind trip of anti-Vet, pro-Cop, anti-Government, anti-taxpayer, anti-equality, before you even get to the low-key racism and high-key sexism) and they’re about to ransom the city. The bad guys—led by a terrible DeVeren Bookwalter and a mediocre Michael Cavanaugh—ransom the city two times without anyone really taking much notice because the budget isn’t high enough for big set pieces. So instead it’s all smaller action stuff on location; The Enforcer has an A (enough) cast, an A crew (minus director Fargo), great San Francisco shooting locations, and at best B action sequences. Even when they’re on great locations, they’re never good enough.

Because Fargo, mostly. Fargo rarely directs a good scene and he often seems disinterested when the film actually gets reasonable as far as character development goes. Of course, Enforcer has multiple instances of the cop actors having to remind themselves to point their guns straight so no one’s particularly invested. During the action-packed (for Enforcer) showdown on Alcatraz, Clint Eastwood seems particularly bored. Or maybe I’m projecting. The Enforcer is ninety-six long minutes.

This Dirty Harry sequel features some more players from the original, Eastwood’s commanding officer, Harry Guardino (who’s absolutely disinterested in every scene but still has way more charm than he should given the material), and partner, John Mitchum. Mitchum is not good. Fargo’s direction of Mitchum is godawful, but Mitchum is… rough. Especially during the liquor store hold-up where Eastwood first encounters uppity minorities, in this case a rather terrible Rudy Ramos. Look fast for Joe Spano as Ramos’s (uncredited) accomplice.

Wish Joe Spano was in more of the movie.

Anyway, once Eastwood saves the day and costs the taxpayers a bunch of money, bureaucrat captain Bradford Dillman (in a particularly lousy performance in a particularly lousy role), busts him down to personnel where Eastwood meets Tyne Daly. She’s being promoted through affirmative action. She’s never had an arrest, never been on the street, so they’re going to make her an inspector. And once Eastwood’s on the terrorist case—though it actually turns out Bookwalter’s not about the beatnik peace stuff; he’s a common thief—anyway, once Eastwood’s on that case, Daly’s his new partner.

And here’s where we get to see Eastwood practice abuser tactics—being mean to Daly, then being nice to her, over and over. He’ll go on to do something similar with Black organizer Albert Popwell, who’s rather likable. Sadly, the best scenes in the movie—by far—are when Eastwood and Daly are palling around (in the apparent lead-up to a cut romance) or when he’s being a dick to Popwell. It’s kind of ironic it takes the minorities—Daly and Popwell—to get some effort out of Eastwood, which he can’t be bothered with when he’s in scenes with his fellow White man.

Though Eastwood’s delivery of one-liners is all right.

The film’s technically solid enough—Charles W. Short’s photography of the San Francisco locations is gorgeous, even if he doesn’t do anything to help Fargo with the action sequences (Fargo manages to bungle a chase across San Francisco rooftops)—so it seems like it might just skate through. Then the third act, which brings back in showstopping bad M.G. Kelly, crumples fast. The exciting Alcatraz finish is a snoozer.

Pretty good Jerry Fielding score and Daly’s good in a crap part.

Enforcer starts a why bother and ends a don’t.

The Boondock Saints (1999, Troy Duffy)

What’s so incredible about Boondock Saints is how David Della Rocco’s atrocious performance distracts from lots of other terrible things going on in the film. At least when Della Rocco is onscreen. When he’s off… well, then the omnipresent deficiencies proudly scream their presences.

Della Rocco gets all of the film’s racist jokes and I think all of the misogynistic ones, unless there’s some sexist jokes during the Willem Dafoe sequences. Dafoe’s an apparently self-loathing gay FBI agent—you can just hear writer and director Duffy telling someone it’s not homophobic because the character’s gay so it can’t be—and the performance is weird combination of horrifying and exhilarating. Dafoe plays it to the nth degree; sadly because Duffy’s a terrible writer and terrible director, none of it’s successful but the scene where Dafoe acts out an action movie scene is the closest to “good” Boondock ever gets. If only it weren’t so stupid.

Identifying when, how, and why Dafoe’s scenes are offensive is fodder for a doctoral thesis. Not even getting to the transphobia.

Boondock Saints tells the story of brothers Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus. They don’t have the most successful Irish accents but aren’t actually particularly bad… because the roles are absolute nothing parts. They discover they’re really good at killing gangsters and go Frank Castle, only with godawful banter and lousy action scenes. Dafoe’s ostensibly on their trail but he’s having a crisis of conscience because he deep down thinks they’re right.

Della Rocco is their low level gangster friend who ends up joining their crusade but without any of the moral imperative. He just wants to kill people. And hit women.

Though given the film introduces Flanery and Reedus beating up a female coworker because, hey, they’re Irish guys and why can’t she take a joke, it’s Saint Paddy’s Day. Or something.

I understand Boondock Saints is low budget, but they really didn’t think to get any actual news footage of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in Boston? Like, the scene of it in the movie is seven or eight guys at the bar in an otherwise empty establishment.

Anyway. Most of Della Rocco’s most offensive stuff is in his solo scenes or at least solo shots, like Flanery and Reedus’s agents were like, maybe don’t be in the room with him and Ron Jeremy deciding how to be the most racist or the shot where he assaults a woman. There’s also this thing, which has less to do with Della Rocco and more to do with Duffy, about how Della Rocco’s girlfriend is a druggie… who’d do anything for a “dime bag” (of weed). Because… those pot addict women really are… something.

Like everything in Boondocks any thinking about it is overthinking.

Technically, the least incompetent feature is probably… the editing. It’s not well-edited and the action sequence editing is silly, but Bill DeRonde’s cutting isn’t noticeably bad. Duffy’s composition is lousy but Adam Kane’s photography still manages to make it worse. The lighting is bad. Jeff Danna’s music is bad. Robert de Vico’s production design and Mary E. McLeod’s costumes, they’re bad. But the cutting’s okay. It doesn’t make an impression, which is the best you can hope for with this one.

Performances… I mean, Dafoe’s doing a tour de force no doubt, but it’s not one worth seeing. Even if it weren’t problematic, it’s still not worth suffering the bad direction and script. Flanery and Reedus seem to get better as the film progress, which is more Della Rocco being in it more and being so amateurish. Billy Connolly’s cameo is… the nearest the film gets to actually funny. David Ferry and Brian Mahoney might actually give the most solid performances as a couple local detectives. Otherwise the cops are all bad.

The gangsters are all bad.

Everything’s bad. And never in interesting ways. Because interesting would be too much for Duffy and Boondock Saints.