BEFORE: Harry Dean Stanton carries over again from "Mr. North", and there's an actor who was in a LOT of films, six decades' worth, which is what allows me to jump between a film from 1988 and one from 2013. I can't even get to them all right now, because of my Easter deadline, so even though "Paris, Texas" is running on HBO Max and his last film, "Lucky" is free (!!) on YouTube, they'll have to wait, I just don't have the time. Who knows, maybe they'll get me out of another tough linking jam later this year. That darn future is always in motion...
Right now, after watching three dull films in a row, I really need to get out of this funk. Action movies could not have come along at a better time, what I want right now is to watch a bunch of stuff blow up real good. Also, this film represents the "path not taken" out of the Ingmar Bergman chain, since Peter Stormare had a tiny role in "Fanny and Alexander". But the chains following this film just didn't link up with the start of the February movies, so this got tabled in favor of Lena Olin in "Havana". C'est la vie.
I can do a few more days of Women's History month milestones - today's the anniversary of the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, and the anniversary of the first woman winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race in Alaska - Libby Riddles won in 1985. Also Amanda Clement, the first woman paid to umpire a baseball game, was born March 20, 1888, Amelia Chopitea Villa, Bolivia's first female physician, was born March 20, 1900, and Pamela Harriman, U.S. ambassador to France, was born March 20, 1920.
THE PLOT: The leader of a drug cartel busts out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border, where the only thing in his path is a sheriff and his inexperienced staff.
AFTER: Don't call it a comeback - OK, call it whatever you want, who cares? This wasn't Schwarzenegger's first movie since leaving office as the Governator of Cawl-a-Fonya in 2011, but it was his first leading role, so that counts for something, I guess. First they announced he was planning to be in another "Terminator" movie and remakes/reboots of "Predator" and "The Running Man", but then he went through a very public ("consider it a...") divorce, one that took 6 years to be finalized. The "Terminator" film got made, but they went ahead and made the other two reboots without him, though the "Running Man" one is still in the works. Schwarzenegger made THIS one instead, and it got released in 2013.
I have to say, and maybe this is due to the appalling lack of action in the last few movies I watched (in-action movies?) that this could have been a lot worse. Sure, I've got a list of N.P.'s a mile long, and this basically follows a well-worn formula, with a rag-tag bunch of misfit heroes defending a town from a well-connected criminal while the Feds are basically useless, but the thing about formulas is that they often work. Maybe that's debatable, I don't know, because I was able to predict the big plot twists here, and largely that's just because I've seen so many damn movies by now. But there's pretty much a reason for every little thing, so that implies that this was at least coherently put together, if still very predictable.
Ah-nold plays the sheriff of a small Arizona town on the Mexican border, which got selected as the crossing over point by a Mexican drug-lord (an "El Chappo" type) who gets broken out of prison, and had someone steal an experimental car for him so he can drive to the border at an impossible speed. Also, the car apparently never needs to stop for gas, so there's that, while turning the film into a giant Chevrolet commercial, because the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a Corvette is a good guy with a Camaro. So first NITPICK POINT is - if the villain's car can go 200 mph, how did the sheriff not only catch up with him, but get ahead of him? Did he know a secret short-cut that wasn't on the GPS? Also, how come the feds, with a PLANE, can't get there in time from Las Vegas?
The simple answer, of course, is that this would ruin the story - but combined, these two things just defy the rules of time and space. Instead the Feds send a SWAT team, which started out much closer to the final destination, only somehow the villain takes out two armored vehicles with his Corvette. That's N.P. #2. To be fair, the drug lord has a ton of money, and managed to arrange a whole bunch of help on the outside, which explains how he was able to bust out of custody in the first place. This escape is probably the best part of the film, an elaborate chase scene through North Las Vegas with body doubles, a change of clothing and an FBI agent taken hostage, plus explosives and a cool use of zip-lines.
Bottom line, the Federal government is nearly useless, and now I'm wondering if there's a larger political point being made here. I'm probably reading too much into it, unless Republican Arnold got a dig in - this was filmed during the Obama Presidency after all, but I don't think Schwarzie feuded with Obama like he later did with Trump. In the end, the small-town sheriff who just wanted a peaceful semi-retirement in Arizona has to fix the U.S. government's mistake, along with that rag-tag bunch of deputized misfits (including the one who's getting too old for this shit) and some cobbled-together A-Team-ish weaponry and supplies. You can just tell from the early interaction with the crazy weirdo who collects old military weapons that this is probably going to be important later on, right? Johnny Knoxville, by the way, looks like he had the time of his life making this film - good for you, Mr. Jackass.
You also don't have a team of criminals build THAT thing in the desert unless it's going to be important later on, so there's that to look forward to. And this is so by-the-numbers that you know it's going to come down to a one-on-one face-off between the lead bad guy and the lead good guy, right? And this was still a few years before all the talk about building a wall on the border, and with so much talk about illegal aliens coming from Mexico into the U.S., what's the big deal about letting just one go back? Ah, but that's not how we do things, we need to keep the drug-lord in U.S. prison, even while I.C.E. is deporting all the regular undesirables, right? But is it worth losing so many decent cops and FBI agents along the way? Apparently so.
Standard action-movie NP's here, ones about firing many bullets without reloading, and (most) heroes taking gunshots manage to survive, while villains who get flesh wounds tend to die instantly, because the plot requires them to do so. There are references to Arnold's previous films (that's a Conan-style sword one character picks up, right?) but no stand-out quotes from the Governator, nothing along the lines of "Get to the choppah!" or "Hasta la vista, baby!" or even "It's not a too-mah!" He does say "I'll be right back!" at one point, ooh, and it's so close, but not a match, so the board goes back. In the end there are enough cool stunts and expected plot points to satisfy the old lizard brain, so if, like me, you're coming off a string of inaction movies, it's close enough to count.
Also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "The Rundown"), Johnny Knoxville (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Forest Whitaker (last heard in "Sorry to Bother You"), Jaimie Alexander (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Luis Guzman (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Eduardo Noriega (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Rodrigo Santoro (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Peter Stormare (last seen in "Fanny and Alexander"), Zach Gilford (last seen in "Super"), Genesis Rodriguez (last seen in "Casa de mi Padre"), Daniel Henney (last heard in Big Hero 6"), Tait Fletcher (last seen in "The Kid"), John Patrick Amedori, Richard Dillard, Chris Browning, Christiana Leucas, Rio Alexander, David Midthunder, Kent Kirkpatrick, Mario Moreno (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Kristen DeVore Rakes, Kevin Wiggins, Jermaine Washington.
RATING: 6 out of 10 barricaded cars
No comments:
Post a Comment