From Paris With Love

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:18:00 +0000

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent — Isaac Asimov

Luc Besson is credited with the “story” for this violent comic book of a thriller that is an insult to Paris. Years ago, Besson wrote Le Dernier Combat and The Fifth Element, flicks that are still worth seeing. He either wrote From Paris With Love in one second on the back of a postage stamp, is imaginatively bankrupt, or really needs the money. (All three perhaps?) Here’s the so-called story.

James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), personal assistant to the American ambassador in Paris, dabbles in tame black ops, such as clandestinely swapping license plates. One day, Charlie Wax (John Travolta, gun in one hand, ham in the other) arrives from the States for some extra-special ops, and Reece gets to be his partner. You can tell Wax is a badass because he’s built like a wrestler, has a bald head and black goatee, and cusses out French Customs. Sure enough, Wax is not in Gay Paree two minutes before he annihilates a Chinese restaurant, walks off with a vase full of cocaine, punches out six gnarly Asians at once, and announces plot points (how postmodern!). He proceeds to liquidate Paki terrorists. Yes, “Paki,” because that's how Wax talks, spouting racist jive that we’re apparently supposed to think is jocular because, you know, it’s Travolta, and he can so do glib-cutesypoo-charming-funny while mowing down foreign baddies. That’s acting for you. Hah-hah.

Reese, downright priggish on mayhem and slaughter, reproves Wax’s methods. Not to worry. He is bound to come-on-over to righteous American slo-mo killing. What happens, see, is that Reece gets blood on his face from an offed terrorist and then observes himself in a mirror. (Get it?! He sees himself baptized in blood!) Consequently, he begins to male bond with Wax. In the end, Reece proves he is a pistol-packing man—just like Wax has taught him to be—so much an hombre, in fact, that he can shoot his girlfriend and strut off to play chess with Wax. Yup, that's Reece’s character arc: He changes from being reticent about killing to wholeheartedly embracing it.

Admittedly, the fight and slow motion sequences are crisply edited, but the narrative is just one set piece after another of shoot kill, shoot kill, kill kill kill. That’s why the film exists. The many males and couple of females gunned down are nearly all swarthy or almond-eyed types. Beaucoup spurting blood squibs interspersed with jokes accompany les massacres. Thus the rancidity of the violent, big-American-star, buddy film is on display once again.

You will notice I’m not disposed to speak well of From Paris With Love. Alas, honesty compels me to note that near the end of the second act there is a car chase. From The Keystone Cops to Bullitt and beyond, car chases are a worthy subset of film genres. In this “how-did-they-do-that?” chase, Travolta/Wax, clutching a bazooka, hangs out the side window of a monster silver Audi doing about 150mph (flagrantly effective product placement). Wax needs a clear bead on a car in front so he can blow it to smithereens. The road is a European super highway, so the other cars all around are zipping right along, too. The pursuit swerves between comical and death defying. Whichever, it’s a knuckle-biting gas and up there with the best car chases ever on film.

But is a great car chase a good enough reason to watch a stupid, ugly film that makes yet another spectacle of killing people? Perhaps Luc Besson and everyone associated with this dross may still be perceptive enough to discern a rhetorical question when they encounter one.

Written by: Neil Flowers, February 17th 2010

Grindhouse

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:44:00 +0000

Directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez

Dimension Films

(spoiler alert) It is settled. Grindhouse is officially deemed a feminist film because, well, I say it is. Okay, truth be told, Grindhouse never goes beyond the kind of surface level, individualistic, pop feminism that's all "rah-rah for girl power," but given the history of this directorial duo, that seemed obvious going in. I mean, have you seen the advertisements? Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) kicking some undead ass with a machine gun for a leg? That's, like, sooooo feminist! Don't ya think? And when arrogant stalker Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) feels the wrath of a turning tide after he fucks with the wrong group of fierce and fearless ladies in a car chase that you must see, I was cheering for more than Rosario Dawson's hot legs as she delivers a fatal high kick. Who says feminism can't be heteronormatively sexy? Seriously.

Planet Terror: I'm a huge fan of zombie flicks, especially ones by George Romero (Night of the Living Dead et al.), though I always watch them with a grain of salt. I enjoy the campy humor and the underlying (or sometimes blatant) social criticism that one tends to get from this particular horror sub-genre. Take, for example, the cause of the mayhem in _Planet Terror: _the military kills Osama Bin Laden before the Bush administration was ready for him to die. Since his death takes a chunk of the fear factor out of the so-called War on Terror the Bushies react by using biochemical weapons on the battalion of U.S. soldiers that exterminated Bin Laden in order to prevent them from leaking the confidential and (possibly) detrimental information to the media. Given the complete incompetence of the Bush Administration, it shouldn't be a surprise then that the biochemical exposure actually causes the soldiers to get their undead on and reek bloody havoc. This is classic zombie film anti-government sentiment that I can appreciate since I’m a bit of a cynic.

Speaking of cynicism, our lead character, Cherry Darling, has a healthy dose of it at the beginning of Planet Terror. Throughout the film, she reinforces an internal doubt that her “useless talents” (like the ability to do a backbend) will some day serve a greater purpose. Before all is said and done, they do, of course, which gives Cherry a big boost of self-confidence. The absurd number of subplots pertaining to the numerous semi-major characters in Planet Terror leads me to believe that Robert Rodriguez was trying to cram every zombie cliché in the book into his allotted 105-minute time slot. Fortunately, it works flawlessly, giving undead fans a chuckle every few minutes. (My giggle at a mother’s sardonic advice to her son to shoot a gun “like you do in your video games” turned into a hearty laugh when her second line of advice — "Be careful not to shoot your own face off.” — yields just this outcome.)

Death Proof: One gender stereotype that has been played out in tired movie cliches is the one about guys being obsessed with cars. Death Proof turns this little ditty on its head when the bad-ass dude in a bad-ass car makes the mistake of attacking some bad-ass women, who simply don’t know the meaning of the word victim. Zoe Bell, an amazing stuntwoman who worked with Quentin Tarentino on a few of his past films (including being Uma Thurmond's stunt double in Kill Bill), is featured here in a car chase that has moments that might make your heart stop - literally. Half of the lightning-speed chase features the uber-talented Bell clinging to the hood of the car. Yeah, that shit is crazy! And hence the title of the Tarentino half of this double-feature: it's the girl, not the car, that is death proof.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, April 21st 2007