BEFORE: Just five films to go after tonight, and this Movie Year comes to a close. I think these days I get more excited for capping off a "perfect year" than I do for watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve. Screw Dick Clark anyway, and screw Guy Lombardo while I'm at it. The only thing worse than having to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade is watching a promo-filled, network sponsored New Year's Eve show, where nothing happens for two hours and 57 minutes, and they'll do ANYTHING to kill another 5 or 10, then you'll probably fall asleep and miss the thing that you've been trying to stay up to see. Actually, the only thing worse than THAT is probably going to Times Square live, and really have nothing to do for hours but stand in one spot, without any bathroom break or you'll lose your "great" spot, and then you slowly freeze to death. No thanks, I've got my movie countdown to keep me warm. Not even last year, when only a few people were allowed in Times Square, socially distanced and all that. Hey, if this is your thing, more power to you, but please, consider seeking professional help.
Sean Bridgers carries over from "The Whole Truth". I'm not making any changes from here on, the linking is going to drive the bus. If I were a marathon runner right about now I'd be running on fumes, hoping that momentum alone would get me over the finish line, where I'll probably collapse, that's just how I feel. But what a delight to get to the end via a film like this, which might be a shitty movie, for all I know, but with a title like THAT, how could I possibly say no to this one? I'm all in.
THE PLOT: A legendary American war veteran is recruited to hunt a mythical creature.
AFTER: Well, we all know what happened to Hitler, or at least what history SAYS happened to Hitler, how he shot himself in his bunker on April 30, 1945. Please refer back to "Downfall", which I accidentally (?) watched on Hitler's birthday in 2020, 75 years after his death. But we all know by now there are no accidents, right? Because the Russians got to the bunker before the Americans did, and you never can trust those sneaky Russians, rumors persisted for years that maybe Hitler didn't die after all, he moved to Argentina and hung out with Eichmann, or he couch-surfed with his family on Long Island (that's right, they're out there, and they probably voted for Trump, twice.).
But now along comes a movie that says that's right, Hitler didn't die in 1945 in the Berlin bunker, he died some time BEFORE that, and was replaced by a look-alike for several years after that, because the Germans couldn't back down from the war, they'd come too far and there was an impetus to keep the dream going. Right. And the man who killed him acted alone, he was an American spy who passed as a German officer in order to get close, and apparently all he needed to do was look the part, speak German and then just walk right in to headquarters. Again, right....
Clearly these are "alternative facts", but these days, what isn't? Aren't there several accounts of everything these days? There's always another take, on everything from the pandemic stuff, to the BLM movement, the George Floyd killing, abortion, gun control, voter fraud and the 1/6 Insurrection. There were "good people" on both sides, remember? How is this possible, how did we get here, why isn't there any agreement on what the facts of the matter are - on EVERY matter up for debate?
We didn't get here overnight - history is written by the winners, after all, so the key to looking like a winner is to get your story out there, so that people can start believing it. Columbus discovered America (umm, no he didn't, Vikings and Native Americans were here first) and the South shall rise again (let's hope not) and manifest destiny, slavery, women's suffrage, all through U.S. history, we're still finding "facts" or things that seemed like good ideas at the time, only now we look back on them and realize that most historical figures were full of crap, or at least willing to overlook moral wrongs or to not even recognize them as such.
We also have a rich alternate history that comes from storytelling, the inability to distinguish fact from fiction. Was the moon landing faked? What about the UFO that crashed in Roswell, is it kept in Area 51? Did BatBoy serve as a White House advisor to the Clintons? And what's that Loch Ness Monster been up to, lately? Bigfoot himself is a perennial moneymaker, how many shows on the "History" Channel are devoted to people tracking him, or feature "experts" on alien landings, Illuminati activities, or what Jesus did or didn't do? I understand this channel needs ratings, just like any other, but they focus on real history about as much as MTV (MUSIC Television) focuses on music. And maybe this is how we got where we are, because it's not THAT much of a leap from believing in Bigfoot, aliens and chupacabras to some of the Q-Anon theories about celebrities and Democrats drinking baby blood in DC pizzerias, is it?
What we really should be worried about is how easy it was to get so many people on board in believing lies about politicians, lies about the vaccine and lies about voter fraud. It turns out that if you can just get a message out there, 10% of people will believe it, right away, no questions asked. Sometimes it's not even intentional, the misinformation used to come from folk tales, urban myths, even jokes that passed through the brains of people who don't understand humor, and/or don't bother to take the time to research things to find out if they're true before they pass them on. (Show me ONE person who's against vaccines and claims to "prefer to do their own research" who actually HAS done any of that research.). So this film is probably pretty dangerous, because there will be a faction of people, somewhere, who might take all this as fact, or start to think that California wildfires are set by the U.S. government to control the migration of the Sasquatch population.
There's more - this film, released in 2018, goes on to suggest that Bigfoot is real (again, as implied by the title) and is also the carrier of a deadly virus that's killed every creature within 50 miles of his lair (umm, or perhaps Bigfoot was hungry) and if left unchecked, this virus could create a global pandemic - sure, like THAT could happen. So a joint task force of U.S. and Canadian government agents, after investigating an old man who somehow took down three muggers in a parking lot, then realizing he's THAT guy, you know, from World War II, see fit to enlist him to infiltrate the woods and take Bigfoot down to save the world.
OK, a couple of things. The two missions here are very, VERY different - why would the agents think that the same man who posed as a Nazi to kill Hitler would also have the skills to survive in the woods and track down Bigfoot? I mean, the character's played by Sam Elliott, and if anybody could do both things, sure, probably him. But one on level, he's just an old guy, and maybe his best years were back in the 1940's, and since then he's been worn down by life and out of shape. Ah, so the writer throws in an extra little bit of information, that statistically he's one of only THREE people known to be immune to this particular virus, and the other two are a baby and a deceased person, so it's up to him, unless the baby's got hunting skills. NITPICK POINT, this is clearly a case of a screenwriter covering his tracks, finding a longshot way to make the unbelievable believable, I mean, come on, who tests a BABY for viral immunity to a thing that isn't even spreading yet? Did they somehow test everyone on the planet for this, and now, here in 2021, we know just how long it takes to give every single person a shot, especially when some of them don't even want it, so how did they test so many people?
I know, this film's clearly not meant to be taken seriously, I mean, the odds of this scenario taking place are incalculable, even the parts that might be somewhat factual, and there sure aren't a lot of those. Between the two incidents, this man's run-ins with famous figures, real and unreal (in a way, he's like the "Forrest Gump" of World War II and cryptozoology) we do get to see a lot of his daily life, as he visits his brother, gets a haircut, and turns in a winning scratch-off ticket he found, although he doesn't claim the money, because that wouldn't be right. OK, so he's honest and moral, to a fault. I guess that's the guy you'd like to think killed Hitler? He even regrets doing that, and how many of us have posited that we'd be willing to kill Hitler ourselves, given a time machine and the opportunity?
This is assuming, of course, that the incidents portrayed here are "real", or as real as anything can be within a movie. There's a good chance that our hero is old and senile, and has made up his own back-story for what happened during the war, in order to cover up some other tragic loss. There are flashbacks of him dating a teacher before serving in the war, and since he's not with her as an old man, either she took up with someone else while he was killing Hitler or perhaps she died, as some people tend to do. There's a bit of an implication that the U.S. government kept him in seclusion after killing Hitler, that they couldn't allow him to interact with society, let alone get married, lest he become too famous or put others in danger if the enemy should choose to retaliate. Either way, he seems to have been unlucky in love, and now as an older person, he may have some regrets.
I do try to learn something, however small, from every film, even a silly throwaway one like this. There was a time when I didn't think I could live on my own, but after I got divorced, I had to, and I had to believe that better days were ahead. While I didn't like living by myself, dining alone and all that what-not, I proved that I could do it, if only for a few months. And as we see here, if you're lucky enough to live a long time, that could easily mean living on your own once again, after all your friends and most of your family are gone. And again, that's if you're LUCKY. I had two aunts who lost their husbands fairly young, and neither one remarried, I guess there's a part of me that never really understood why, and maybe I still don't. We're meant to be social animals, I don't think we're meant to live alone, I know I can't do it without going a little crazy.
It's also important to have a routine, visit the friends and family you have left, take care of a pet, something that's life-affirming, instead of just getting older and bogged down in the memories you have, because you'll just end up rehashing your mistakes and then maybe regret will eat you alive. Or you could end up remembering events differently from how they happened. Our hero has a routine, every day he pulls out that box from under his bed and considers opening it, only he never really gets around to it - saying that, well, there's always tomorrow. We the audience might wonder what's in this box, but you might as well ask what's inside the glowing box seen in "Pulp Fiction". It's a movie "MacGuffin", a thing that helps drive the plot, even if we don't know exactly what it is. In this movie, it could be anything from a German gun to maybe the Holy Grail, but it doesn't really matter, because nothing seen on screen could be as powerful as whatever's in our own imagination. Still, it might be nice to know that the screenwriter had something specific in mind, otherwise it's just another narrative cop-out.
But it does make for an odd pairing, to draw any kind of analogy between Hitler and Bigfoot, in both cases the main character here takes a life to stop the spread of a disease, it's just that Hitler's disease is an ideological one. In both cases, The Man is willing to take a life only if it can save the life of millions of others - but still, he's filled with regret, which makes him a decent guy at the very least. What's the difference between Hitler and Bigfoot? Well, one's a reclusive legendary monster who probably smells very bad, and the other one, of course, is Bigfoot.
Also starring Sam Elliott (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Aidan Turner (last heard in "Loving Vincent"), Caitlin FitzGerald (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Ron Livingston (last seen in "The Professor"), Larry Miller (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Ellar Coltrane (last seen in "Barry"), Rizwan Manji (last seen in "Equals"), Mark Steger (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Rocco Gioffre, Joe Lucas, Alton Fitzgerald White (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Terry Holland, Dean Neistat (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), David Armstrong, Nikolai Tsankov, Kelley Curran, Dianne Bischoff.
RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of candy from the barber's jar
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