BEFORE: I had this programmed for the last day in January, since I thought the title would close out the month properly - I started the month with "Into the Woods", I figured I'd end it with "Into the Night" for a bit of symmetry. But then I realized that I didn't have a direct link between the Bruce Willis chain and the Michelle Pfeiffer chain, only an indirect one - the film I'll be watching on Feb. 1 to start the romance chain, as it turns out.
So I scanned the cast lists for this week's films one more time, hoping for someone I didn't notice at first that appeared in two films - and there he was, Bruce McGill, who carries over from "The Last Boy Scout". I switched Thursday's film with Saturday's, and the chain is unbroken.
THE PLOT: A middle class man with a boring job, a case of insomnia and an unfaithful wife goes out for a drive and finds himself at LA airport, where he encounters a beautiful young woman on the run from criminals.
AFTER: Yep, I inadvertently programmed the same film three nights in a row. Not the exact same film, mind you, but when you break movies down by their core plots, you realize there are only so many working formulas, and one of them is "everybody wants that thing". "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", "The Maltese Falcon" - of course the concept takes many forms, but the inner skeleton is the same. In "Hostage" everybody needed that information, in "The Last Boy Scout" it was the evidence, and tonight it's gems.
Throw in a boy-meets-girl plot and a look at the nighttime underworld of L.A., and you've got "Into the Night". The villains here are well-dressed Iranians, because this was made at a time after the hostage crisis, before anyone knew who this Al Qaeda guy was. And by the end of the film the cops are involved, plus federal agents, immigration, and who knows how many other parties, leading to a somewhat confusing climax, after which it seems like even the writers gave up. When the response to "Hey, where did this bag of money come from?" is "You know, it's best not to ask questions like that..." it's awfully convenient, bordering on downright lazy.
There are films with more cameos, sure, like "Around the World in 80 Days" or "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", but not many. But this film's cast list reads like a "Who's Who" of 1980's Hollywood. The film's director, John Landis, appears as one of the Iranian gunmen, and it looks like all of his DGA buddies came along for the ride. I met Landis a couple years ago at Comic-Con, but I forgot to ask him about "Babs".
Also starring Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "Up Close and Personal"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"), David Bowie (last seen in "The Prestige"), Richard Farnsworth, Jake Steinfeld, Kathryn Harrold, Paul Mazursky, Roger Vadim, Carl Perkins, Vera Miles, John Landis, Irene Papas, with cameos from David Cronenberg, Rick Baker, Paul Bartel, Jim Henson, Amy Heckerling, Lawrence Kasdan, Jonathan Demme, Clu Gulager.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Elvis posters
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