BEFORE: The work on my screenplay has begun, I'm determined to finish it this time, even if it turns out to not be good, at least I can say I accomplished it. I made a servicable outline the other night, which cleared my head and allowed me to concentrate on other things again for a while. Now I think of little story bits or dialogue bits during the day and I write them down, when I get home I type up the bits, clearing out my brain again. Hopefully if I get enough good bits all I'll have to do is put them in the right order, and putting things in the right order is something that I'm quite good at.
Variations on a theme tonight, with another post-apocalyptic film that was released just 2 months after "The Road". This is also the start of my second Denzel Washington chain - the first was in 2010. Of all the other actors I built theme chains around - DeNiro, Streep, Nicholson, Schwarzenegger, Travolta - I think this will be the first time an actor gets a second theme week. I'll have to double-check that...
Linking tonight is easy, since Robert Duvall from "The Road" co-starred in "John Q." with Denzel Washington (last seen in "Mo' Better Blues", I think).
THE PLOT: A lone man fights his way across post-apocalyptic America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.
AFTER: Yes, this is still similar to "The Road", but with better fight scenes. There's a good bit of "Mad Max" in here too, with bands of marauders and warlords fighting over the last bits of food and fuel left. Denzel's character gives as good as he gets, being armed with an old-school machete, as well as some killer moves.
Many of the concepts are the same - the world is perpetually getting grayer, the vegetation is mostly gone, and food and water are in short supply. As a result, the population is drastically reduced, and people are encouraged to go green, as in Soylent Green.
But the other advantage this film has over last night's competition is that it has a Thing. Not a plot twist, since I'm trying to maintain a mostly spoiler-free zone - if there WERE a plot twist, I would hesitate to even mention it. (See, now you don't know if there's a twist or not...) A Thing is more like a gimmick, something of an "Ah-HAH!" moment. For comparitive purposes: "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" had a plot twist, and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" had a Thing. It's more like what you saw in "The Sixth Sense" or "Fight Club" - something that's inherently woven into the fabric of the film, and once you realize it, you may want to go back to the beginning of the film and re-watch what went before, so you can wonder how you missed it. (Psst - it's because you weren't looking for it.)
It's not the identity of the book - that was pretty easy to figure out. What book can bring hope to the masses, but can also be corrupted for purposes of controlling those masses? This concept also evoked Ray Bradbury in a way - so if you've never read "Fahrenheit 451", please do so. You can watch that film, but reading the book is way better. And more ironic, if you think about it.
Also starring Gary Oldman (last heard in "Planet 51"), Mila Kunis (last seen in "Date Night"), Jennifer Beals (last seen in "Devil With a Blue Dress"), Ray Stevenson (last seen in "Thor") with cameos from Tom Waits (last seen in "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"), Michael Gambon (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1").
RATING: 8 out of 10 canteens (would have been a 7 without the Thing)
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