BEFORE: Switching from Brad Pitt films to Tom Cruise films - I did a Tom Cruise chain back in December, but more films have come into the collection since then. Wrapping up American frontier week with this one - and Tom Skerritt provides the link from "A River Runs Through It", since he was also in "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise (last seen in "All the Right Moves").
THE PLOT: A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her father to seek land in America.
AFTER: This is actually three movies in one - you've got your tempestuous relationship film, a boxing film, and then a frontier plotline. That's kind of ambitious.
What it says about America, and this is great timing coming up on July 4 weekend, is that immigration was the ultimate opportunity. If people were in trouble for, say, trying to kill their landlord, or for stealing from their parents, they could just strike out for America, where all men (sorry, ladies) were created equal. Except for black people, of course, that came later. Oh, and the Chinese, since the Chinese slaves were used to build the railroads after the black slaves were freed. And Mexicans, Native Americans, and let's see, who am I forgetting... oh yeah, the Irish.
The point of the film is that the Irish had it tough in America (maybe not as tough as those other groups, but I digress again) but at least if an Irishman was willing to roll up his sleeves and work hard, he could at least succeed enough to be in debt for the rest of his life. Here the main characters are saving up to make it to the frontier, working menial jobs until they realize that they can make money faster by boxing and dancing in a skimpy costume. (That last part refers to Nicole Kidman's character - and her real-life career, if you think about it...)
Cruise's character gets a golden opportunity that sounds a bit like this - "We saw you starting all those fights with your co-workers at the chicken-plucking factory. How'd you like to become a champion boxer?" "Sure, that sounds good - hey, wait a minute! Do I still get to pluck chickens?" And then his boxing career really takes off after he invents ducking (Really? No one thought of that before - don't get hit?). Plus he gets to work off all that tension that's built up from not banging Kidman's character. (Make your own joke here, I'm too tired.)
More tragedies befall the "will they or won't they" couple, but they eventually find themselves on the verge of the great Oklahoma Land Grab in 1893. This is where people backed their wagons up to Kentucky to get a good running start, then all raced across the border at the same time to stake their claims. Even back then, there wasn't a single activity that Americans couldn't turn into a game show somehow. I know, I know, years later people would be fighting each other to get OUT of Oklahoma. Am I right, folks?
Still, this turned out to be the most uplifting film of the week - a little corny at the end, but I'll take a glimmer of happiness and hope after the last few downers.
Also starring Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Golden Compass"), Robert Prosky (last seen in "Mrs. Doubtfire"), Thomas Gibson, Colm Meaney (last seen in "The Last of the Mohicans"), with cameos from Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Michael Collins"), Jared Harris and Clint Howard.
RATING: 5 out of 10 kidney punches
Last scene: Tom Cruise is standing triumphantly on his plot of land, holding his Claim Flag high, his head swimming with thoughts of the tortuous adventure that had brought him and his beloved there and of the future that they and their children and their children's children would have in this land of endless opportunities. It is an exceptional moment, this, and he cannot help but to savor it.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm watching this, I imagined someone else leaping off a horse and STABBING his own flag into the plot while Tom Cruise is lost in thought.
("Get. The. LAND. You can get all Ron Howard about it AFTER you plant the flag.")
I'm puzzled by my own reaction to most Ron Howard movies. I like them. They're well-made and they're entertaining. But I'm usually left thinking "That could have been so much better" and not really understanding why I think that. As with nearly all of his work, I saw "Far And Away" and then thought "That was lovely" and put it out of my mind.
I can't put my finger on it. It definitely has something to do with his highly conventional choices; his movies are like TV shows writ on a large canvas.
Well, I'm not sure I'm prepared to make a blanket statement like that about Ron Howard. Having now seen 15 of his films, I'm hard pressed to say that most of them could have been made better.
ReplyDeleteI certainly didn't think that about "Splash" at the time. Or "Parenthood", "Apollo 13", or "Ransom". And while I had my quibbles with "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons", they sure made a ton of money.
If anything, maybe there's an obviousness to his films, for lack of a better term? They don't seem to have a lot of subtext, or subtlety, or a bunch of hidden meanings. You sort of just take them at face value, and later on you don't find yourself going, "Oh, THAT's what that meant!"
As opposed the films of someone like M. Night Shyamalan, which might leave you scratching your head, wondering what that was all about...
I do like his movies. But (for me at least) his flicks tend to defy signature. And it's hard to single out a shot that really grabs you, and it's almost impossible to single out a shot where you think "Now THAT was a risk..."
ReplyDelete(Such as Spielberg's decision to put a flash of red in "Schindler's List," or Scorsese's fearlessness with cliches and tricks that at this stage have only a 1% chance of being powerful and effective.)