Sabotage

Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, Actor,

There’s a very simple binary way to judge your latest post-Gubernatorial comeback flick, Sabotage. And it only takes about ten seconds:

1. The opening shot of the film is perfectly representative of why it doesn’t work. 
2. The second shot perfectly represents why it should have worked. 

Coming from director David Ayer – fresh from the (sort-of) success of his found-footage cop thriller, End of Watch – it makes sense that the film begins with a grainy video clip, hissing and popping, striated with static, colors bleeding bright. In it, a middle-aged woman is bound and tortured by a masked assailant. She begs for her life. Weeps. We hear noises: loud ripping sounds. It’s not exactly clear what these sounds are, but they make the woman scream even louder. 

In this unpleasant manner we are introduced to the world of Sabotage: a sadomasochistic, obscene, hyper-violent, obnoxious, inhumane, dim-witted, turgid, and generally unpleasant place to spend an hour and forty minutes.  

Of course, lots of films are unpleasant. Who would want to spend time in the nameless any-city of Seven, or the dilapidated farmhouse of Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Those films, however, used dark places and darker moods to create tension with the wants and desires of their characters. Sabotage, on the other hand, treats its moral and behavioral ugliness like a thrill. 

The second shot of the film is a close-up of you, Arnie. Slumped and swollen-eyed, looking worn-out in a way that we rarely see. Clearly you’re watching the grainy video clip, and clearly the woman being tortured means something to you. The shot doesn’t last long, but quickly establishes that isn’t the usual wisecracking, invincible Schwarzenegger hero we’ve come to expect after four decades. The knock on you has always been a lack of range, but that’s less about your acting abilities than it is about your career choices (you haven’t popped up in a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson flicks). Working with Ayer seems like a bold choice for you. His films are abrasive and kinetic in a different style than many of your past collaborators. If there was ever a chance for you to do something different – to redefine the Arnold mythos for a new generation – this would seem to be it. 

But, alas, the ugliness representative in that first shot is too overwhelming. 

Sabotage can’t seem to decide whether it’s a genre film or something different. Despite what is implied by that second shot, it turns out that you are, more or less, that wisecracking, invincible Schwarzenegger we know so well (though the wisecracks are a bit more filthy and the invincibility a bit less easy to believe). There’s even a scene where the grumpy chief pulls your badge and gun out of his desk drawer and puts you back on the case. But soon after there’s a sequence in which your arrival at a crime scene is intercut with the crime being committed – a sort of Silence of the Lambs-style misdirect – which gives us a sense that the film thinks a little too much of itself. Which is a shame, because Ayers has assembled a rather impressive all-star cast of shoulda-beens, briefly-wases, and almost-ares, including Olivia Williams, Harrold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, and Sam Worthington looking like the bassist from a Korn cover band.

You’re no stranger to these kinds of squandered opportunities, are you? I sat down a few weeks ago to fill in one of my biggest blind spots in the Schwarzenegger filmography, Last Action Hero, and even that magical convening of some of my favorite filmic elements (you, John McTiernan, parody,1990s action excess) somehow resulted in a thing that was far less than the sum of its parts. Just like Sabotage.  

Yes, it seems that your long career has finally caught up to the obscene action movie aesthetic of modern times, and the result is kind of a bummer. I prefer you in your natural state: toting absurdly large machine guns, smirking to let us know that you’re in on the joke. 

Sincerely, 

Jared Young

Status: Return to Sender (1.5/5)

The Running Man

Dear Andrew Davis, Fired Director, 

It’s not as embarrassing as you might think to have been fired a week into shooting The Running Man and replaced by Detective David Starsky from Starsky & Hutch. 

Despite his camp origins, Paul Michael Glaser brought just as much experience to the director’s chair as you did: in the preceding few years, he’d been behind some of the most seminal episodes of Miami Vice, as well as the Michael Mann-produced television pilot Band of the Hand, which, after it wasn’t picked up by the network, was released into theaters. But there’s no question that The Running Man would have been a much different film had you stayed on board. Even Arnold Schwarzennegger thought so; he lamented in his autobiography that Glaser “lost all the deeper themes” of the film.

Many of these “deeper themes” orbit the core idea of exploitation as entertainment. That The Running Man preceded the Golden Age of Reality Television by a decade makes it feel, even today, rather portentous—if not prophetic. The Stephen King novella upon which the film is based is focused on different dystopian ideas: urban decay, totalitarian rule. But what the filmmakers chose to focus on instead is what makes the film a rather unique artifact of mid-1980s action excess—and perhaps proves why, despite what many (myself among them) might consider your superior craftsmanship and aesthetic instinct, you probably weren’t the right man for the job. 

See, The Running Man is a all about television, and that it was written and directed by two of some of the biggest names in television (Glaser, writer Steven E. de Souza) lends it credibility as a satire that seems, as a studio action flick, beyond its mandate. Sure, the action scenes are lazily choreographed, monotonously shot, and laconically edited. Sure, the pacing is rote, waxing and waning to the arrhythmic beats of an hour-long network drama. Sure, some of the cinematic mistranslation is laughable, like the “security camera” footage of the Bakersfield Massacre which is shot-for-shot and edit-for-edit the opening scene of the movie. Yet there’s a strange sort of authenticity to the film; the scenes that work best are those that take place in the production offices and control rooms of the nefarious ICS Network, as The Running Man’s smarmy presenter, played by real-life game show host Richard Dawson, conspires with the Attorney General and berates his underlings (Dawson, it is well worth noting, gives the film’s best performance; his comedic timing is a reminder that long before he was hosting the Family Feud he was famous playing a charming conman/cardsharp on Hogan’s Heroes). 

Schwarzenegger later complained that Glaser shot the film like a TV show. But the fundamental absurdity of grown men in bright-yellow neoprene suits grappling with low-rent super-villains like Dynamo (if you’ll recall, he’s the cyborg opera singer who shoots lightning from his fingertips) seems best expressed in the flat, colorful style that Glaser employs. To be frank, the very premise of the movie seems at odds with the procedural style that you would go on to apply to such great effect in your later work.

But it all worked out, didn’t it? You may have failed at making a film about the farce and debauchery of network television, but managed, just six years later, to make one of the best television-to-film adaptations in the history of cinema. One could trace the cause-and-effect of being fired from The Running Man to directing The Fugitive (Harrison Ford reportedly saw Under Siege and demanded that producers offer you the job, and Under Siege was the apogee of your collaboration with Steven Seagal, which began with Above The Law—the film you made instead of The Running Man). But the machinations of the Hollywood system are, I think, a bit more complex than that. Glaser’s version of The Running Man remains, deservedly, a minor piece in the Schwarzenegger oeuvre, overshadowed by more proficient vehicles for his particular brand of monosyllabic gladitorialism. Like Terminator, like Predator, like Total Recall.

All three of those films were made by directors with real cinematic vision. Which begs the question: where would The Running Man rank among all these cult classics if it had been an Andrew Davis film? 

Impossible to say. But I prefer you on the wintry streets of Chicago. Let Glaser have his paper-thin hockey-rink sets and perfectly plain primetime sensibility. 

Sincerely,  

Jared Young

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

Escape Plan

Dear Alixandra Petrovich, Assistant Property Master, Second Unit,

The efficacy of the escape plan at the heart of Escape Plan hinges on an important choice made by one of the supporting characters, a prison doctor played by Sam Neill. We get a scene of him late at night, sitting alone at his desk, throwing back a shot of whiskey, peering with tired and troubled eyes at one of your props: an open book. When he closes the book (having come, we assume, to a difficult compromise), we a cut to a close-up of the cover. The title of the tome he’s been contemplating? Medical Ethics.

This says pretty much everything you need to know about this Stallone/Schwarzenegger prison-break shoot-em-up. It’s simple. Simple to the point of being stupid. Case in point: 50 Cent plays a computer hacker.

But it’s more than that. The one-liners are sub-puerile, the characters zero-dimensional, and the plot twists (identities revealed, traitors uncovered) feel like surprises the same way buying yourself a Christmas gift feels like a surprise; you may briefly forget that you ordered it, but when it arrives you know exactly what’s in the box.

Yes, Alixandra: Escape Plan is a bad movie. But there’s something endearing about its badness. Something refreshing about it, even. A self-awareness, maybe. A quality of nostalgia. An admirable competence in its deficiency.

I called it stupid, but that’s not accurate. Any film brave enough to rest the framework of its story (all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about Stallone, an expert jail-breaker, being hired to test the security protocols of a brand-new state-of-the-art prison), and millions of dollars of explosions and helicopter stunts, on a simple prop like your Medical Ethics book is utterly convinced of its virtues.

Compare and contrast with the fifth Die Hard film, which came out earlier this year. The faux-Greengrassian shaky-cam madness and hyperactive editing style made it virtually unwatchable. Even Bruce Willis’ natural charm was deadened by how seriously the film took itself. Like all the recent comic book adaptations that eschew the four-color pop-artistry that inspired them in favor of dreary false-profundity, it wanted to be something more than it was.  

Escape Plan, though not quite a parody, is a bit more content to sit back and deliver on its easy promises. And, besides that vital book, your props play an important role throughout. Stallone, the master escapist, uses pens and eyeglasses and milk cartons to build all sorts of gadgets and increasingly goofy booby-traps. It seems almost like you guys shot the film chronologically, and, two-thirds of the way through, recognized the absurdity of it all and decided to abandon what little devotion to rationality remained.

And so, late in the film, as our heroes are (of course) racing against time, Arnie has one of his classic Arnie moments, which involves nothing more complicated than a look in his eyes and one of your props cradled in his arms. Seeing this scene with an audience fully invested in the nonsense made that five seconds almost worth the price of admission.

I guess that’s the trick to enjoying Escape Plan: accept that it isn’t interested in exploring ethics any further than showing it on the cover of a book, and just go along for the ride.

Sincerely,

Jared Young

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

The Last Stand

Dear Jacob J. Yoo, Screenplay Translator,

Hollywood has a wonderful tradition of attracting the world’s biggest film stars. The biggest proof has to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite an incredibly awkward early career and this new, strange, career twilight phase you’re a party to. But he’s far from alone. In fact, The Last Stand is equally notable for being South Korean genre specialist Kim Jee-woon’s English language directorial debut, despite his not speaking any English. So the task fell to you to make sure nothing was lost in the translation of this all-American themed action-western adventure that essentially pits the Terminator against The Good, The Bad and the Weird. The result is a big messy mash-up that harnesses awkward charm to meet entertaining ends.

The casting alone personifies the film’s warm embrace of the bizarre. Schwarzenegger plays a small town sheriff enjoying the quiet life after a bloody drug bust went sour in Los Angeles. His deputy is played by the always enjoyable Luis Guzmán, who can out-funny talk almost anyone who calls English a second language. That is, until Peter Stormare graces the town with his obscure accent and dubious plan to smuggle (read: violently shuttle) a Mexican drug lord across the border. Schwarzenegger must, therefore, round up a rag-tag of heroes that includes ex-solider and current jail-house lock-up Rodrigo Santoro, who boasts the sexiest ill-command of English in the bunch. The film might as well include the subtitle In the Land of Funny Accents, but that probably wouldn’t sell. Instead, the posters make a big deal of Johnny Knoxville’s presence, but your script is much less interested why his character is included, beyond a nominal plot purpose at the end.

Ironically, a film like this may never have been designed for American audiences. A lot of clumsy nuance can be forgiven when subtitles are slapped over a performance. If the story works, the action is convincing, and the pacing feels right, a lot of nitpicking would be lost on foreign audiences (that ever-growing box office market). And to that end, the film gets a lot of things right. The early escape sequence in Las Vegas is impressive, the characters are given time to process and react to what’s happening, and a number of the action sequences (namely the cat-and-mouse chase in the cornfields) feel inspired. All of these elements play well to the genre, and feel like they’re working on an appropriately exciting, but not wildly over-the-top scale. Well, at least by American movie standards.

For that reason, I’d say you did a pretty good job. The director obviously understands the universal film language of shooting underdog action picture. Even if the rest of production is working from a very basic translation.

진정으로

Christopher

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

 

Christmas in Connecticut

Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, Director

I’m back. Yup, our Early Arnold series is over, but how could I resist this important oversight in your oeuvre? Christmas in Connecticut (1992) is not some embarrassing got-to-get-paid mistake from your pre-Conan the Barbarian days. You’re the muscle behind this made-for-TV mess that came out at the peak of your prime. The question is why? WHY? I’m guessing the answer begins and ends with your unparalleled ambition. That’s why imagining your stilted direction behind every scene gave me a perverse pleasure, like watching the Christmas equivalent of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.

The first time I felt your hand was during the hilariously inept mountainside rescue by Jefferson Jones (Kris Kristofferson) that kicks off the story. He digs a kid up from the snow, drops him a few times, and stumbles through one of the fakest storms I’ve ever had the pleasure of laughing through.  “Dats great, yah! More esspresion! Show da snow you a man!,” I pictured you saying. From there, the world’s most clichéd producer (Tony Curtis) ropes Jeffereson into a Christmas special with fraudulent cooking show host Elizabeth Blane (Dyan Cannon). A mixture of zany antics and adultery follow, both of which you’re all too familiar with.

There’s no point in analyzing things too closely, though—you obviously didn’t.

As the biggest movie star in the world, failure must have seemed completely out of your reach. Or did it?  It’s no doubt a calculated choice to remake a 1940s semi-classic in the relatively safe confines of a Christmas TV special. But unlike the characters you play, who never miss a shot, shooting a scene as the director is not nearly so easy.  I’m sure you felt confident though, having worked with top talent from the time: James Cameron (twice!), Paul Verhoeven, John McTiernan, and even two comedies with Ivan Reitman. None of that seems to matter though, since your only inspiration seems to be that dorky film you made before breaking into the big-time, The Villain.

From the half-hearted humour to the wildly inconsistent performances, it’s no surprise this film isn’t part of the annual holiday season TV rotation.  It might, however, have a chance at being a midnight movie classic if we organize a call-and-response crowd participation version. Imagine: theaters full of people screaming out your presumed direction in Austrian accents. This could be the catalyst for the comeback you’re looking for. We can start with the Mayfair Theatre in Ottawa – what do you say?

See you there,

Christopher 

Status: Junk Mail (1/5)

The Villain

Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, Handsome Stranger

I’m actually nervous writing this. During my most impressionable years, you were the hero that loomed largest in my imagination. A diligently glued together Terminator 2 poster-sized puzzle hung proudly on my wall for years. Arnold-themed action figures, trading cards, and books filled my room while I excitedly worked my way through your back-catalogue of R-rated adventures. I never understood how my parents seemed to give any VHS tape with your face on it a free pass, even though so few of your films were suitable for a child. Maybe they somehow only saw The Villain, and forever associated you with harmless, over-the-top slapstick humour, and misguided attempts at bringing cartoon sensibilities to real-life.

It’s very unlikely. Most people – and many fans – have never seen or even heard of this film. By the time your stardom hit my personal orbit, your authorized biographies gleefully started your career (and myth) with Conan the Barbarian. In fact, that’s what inspired the Early Arnold series on Dear Cast and Crew – my selfish desire to finally, truly, see all your films. I remember some early films being mentioned in those books without significant information or images, like Hercules in New York (which at least sounds macho and on-brand) and the documentary Pumping Iron. In the past weeks, I’ve learned why the first film is better remembered for its funny title, and why the latter is a cult classic and critical success. Stay Hungry was lost in the middle, even though it allowed you to play a laid-back version of yourself and co-starred both Jeff Bridges and Sally Fields.

Then came The Villain.

This film is the last time you could ever survive a huge flop or career misstep without any real consequence. After all, when Kirk Douglas – Spartacus himself! – is the lead, you had someone to hide behind. He plays Cactus Jack, a Wile E. Coyote-inspired villain trying to catch Charming Jones (Ann-Margaret). It’s a Western in look, but owes more to Looney Toons, where Jones’s tactics include dressing up as silly characters, pushing paper-mâché boulders down hills and painting a black hole in the side of a mountain (which Jones, of course, nonsensically rides right through). You play her companion on the journey, literally named Handsome Stranger. And at this point, you still were a stranger to most of America (not sure about the handsome part).

The reasons the film doesn’t work are probably also why you seemed so uncomfortable every time the camera was pointed at you – nothing seems to fit. The sets are large and impressive, but never exploited for their full potential (the opening shots are worthy of a John Ford film). You have Oscar-nominated actors going through the motions of a serious film while taking whiskey shots through their eye balls. In fact, nothing can save the film’s lazy commitment to genre. I kept mirroring that pained look you have on your face every time you needed to be “act” without dialogue or in reaction to someone.

The other actors all seem game to create a live-action Saturday morning cartoon, but Hal Needham’s direction is just too slow and lethargic (when he’s not speeding up the footage for ‘comedic’ effect). Even your own movements never feel natural in that super human body, constricted by a tight cowboy shirts and ten-gallon hat. You clearly do your best work in a Speedo or loincloth. Glad you figured that out sooner than later.

None of these early films we’ve reviewed fit the one-note character mold that would define your phenomenal success and pave the way for your two terms as the Governor of California. But they do reveal another, more vulnerable and mistake-prone side to you that has come out in other ways over the past year. But now that’s it, there are officially no films left – at least until January 2013 when you attempt a career comeback with The Last Stand. So will I still passionately pursue your film career? Let me put it this way:

When I was 8 years old and saw T-1000 stabbing a man through-a-milk-carton-through-the-mouth, I actually puked. But like a true Arnold-holic, I wiped my chin and came back for more. It only tested my resolve and pushed my personal limits. Seeing The Villain as a younger viewer might have helped me kick the habit of you but at this point, it’s too late. I’m in it for the long haul.

Forever yours,

Christopher

Status: Return to Sender (2/5)

Pumping Iron

Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Himself

As someone who was eleven years old in 1991, I can tell you this: in 1991, every eleven year-old wanted to be Eddie Furlong. Sweet bangs, skateboard skills, a laptop that could hack a bank machine, and his own personal cyborg assassin—he had it all. By the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when (spoiler alert) you sacrifice yourself to destroy the computer chip inside your head that will give rise to sentient digital overlord SkyNet, it’s clear that you’ve become a proxy for young John Connor’s absent father, who, (double spoiler alert) you killed in the first film. 

Throughout your career, that’s what you’ve been to me: a father figure. Even in movies like Predator, there’s a paternal spirit to the way you take control of your strike team when the flayed bodies begin to appear. In Commando, there’s not even a patriarchal analogy to untangle: you’re a father, maiming and murdering and cracking wise in search of your kidnapped daughter. 

But the big surprise of Pumping Iron – the 1977 documentary that chronicles the regimens and routines of a group of bodybuilders as they train in preparation of the Mr. Olympia contest in Pretoria, South Africa – isn’t your youthful exuberance or frightening steroidal girth. 

It’s that you’re the bad guy. More Thulsa Doom than you are Conan; more Bennett than John Matrix; more T-1000 than T-800. Like most films, Pumping Iron is fascinating to watch because it has a fascinating antagonist. 

You have an irrepressible charisma—I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. What other unintelligible man-mountain could get away, throughout his career, playing characters named Alan Schaeffer, Ben Richards, or Howard Langston (Schaeffer, Richards, and Langston: a great name for a 70s prog-rock band). Pumping Iron is the genesis of all that; the film that introduced the world to your gap-toothed smile, ovoid Austrian accent, and the ridiculous wingspan of your lats. When the film was released in 1977, you were no stranger to the big screen. Following in the footsteps of your mentor Reg Park, you starred as Hercules in a low-budget sword-and-sandals flick, and just the previous year played a version of yourself in Bob Rafaelson’s Stay Hungry. So, what was it about Pumping Iron that gave birth to the living legend known today as “Arnie” (aka. The Governator)?

It’s simple, really. While the role of the hero might be more satisfying for the ego, the role of the villain is always more fun. The id, unleashed. And in Pumping Iron you seem to be having a lot of fun. 

You hit all the beats of a great bad guy: the megalomaniacal visions (“I was always dreaming about very powerful people, dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, or even, like Jesus, be for thousands of years remembered.”), the merciless psychological warfare (to your opponents before the Mr. Olympia finals: “You make too much noise! Has to be very quiet in here, like in a Church!”), the cold-blooded backstory (telling your mother that you wouldn’t attend your father’s funeral: “I’m sorry, I can’t come. And I didn’t explain to her really the reasons why…I didn’t bother with it.”)  You even give us an expository rundown of your nefarious plans (“Franco [Columbu] is pretty smart, but Franco’s a child, and when it comes to the day of the contest, I am his father. He comes to me for advices. So it’s not that hard for me to give him the wrong advices.”). 

But that’s not the only surprise in Pumping Iron. The hero of the film (and, yes, documentary films, by nature of the way they manipulate the truth through editing and music and every other filmic choice, have heroes and villains) is a young Brooklynite, born deaf, trained by his overbearing father in a dank local gym that looks like an abandoned Italian restaurant.

His name is Louis Ferrigno. At twenty-two years-old, he’s the sweet, innocent, charmingly awkward foil to your arrogant Adonis. It’s hard not to cheer for him as he makes it his mission to unseat you as champion. 

But it’s even harder not to cheer for you. Despite the profound hubris, the Machiavellian scheming, you’re the one we want to see onscreen. Whether as a golden god coasting through Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach or as a leather-jacketed cybernetic killing machine dedicated to protecting a foul-mouthed twelve year-old.  

There’s a reason Lou Ferrigno didn’t go on to star in high-concept Ivan Reitman comedies and James Cameron blockbusters. And the reason is clear in the final moments of Pumping Iron. As the winner of the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest is about to be announced, it’s not the earnest, hard-working underdog we’re pulling for. We’re hoping the bad guy wins. And, for the next three decades, he will.  

Sincerely, 

Jared Young

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

Stay Hungry

Dear Arnold Schwarzenegger, Actor,

So here we are, seven years after the release of Hercules in New York. It looks like the, shall we say, “interesting” way that film turned out forced you to rethink your Hollywood career trajectory. Instead of rushing headlong into leading roles, it seems you dialed it back and looked for roles that were not only a good fit, but also provided the opportunity to work with some big name directors. Roles that required more than just your Mr. Universe credentials.

First, and maybe due to your experience being overdubbed in Hercules, you took a very minor and speechless part in Robert Altman’s classic neo-noir The Long Goodbye. Sure, the uncredited role of “Hood in Augustine’s Office” probably didn’t turn any casting agent heads, but working with the hot, post-MASH, post-McCabe & Mrs. Miller Altman must have been its own reward. This was the 70s, after all, and directors were Hollywood’s new stars. If nothing else, it had to have been a master class on the new way to make films.

After that, we come to Stay Hungry.

Working with Bob Rafelson must have been a similar no-brainer. And you even got a speaking role to boot—the first in your own voice. Best known for the classic Five Easy Pieces, Rafelson was another director with a knack for showcasing actors in his decidedly character-driven stories. 

Indeed, Stay Hungry operates almost as a Five Easy Pieces in reverse. Where Jack Nicholson’s Robert Dupea returns to his family’s wealthy estate after abandoning it for the blue collar world, Stay Hungry’s Jeff Bridges flees his business and societal obligations to become part of a new culture. Gym culture, to be precise. Your culture.

Of course this is where you slide so naturally into the picture, and why it plays like such a smart career move on your part. No longer saddled with the terrible, ridiculous dialogue required of a Greek demi-god, you’re able to give a relaxed, and charismatic performance as Joe Santo — the Austrian-born, aspiring Mr. Universe (you still were at the career stage where your accent had to be explained). Along with the impressive body-building, though, Santo is also versed in literature, plays a mean fiddle, and is referred to as the curling champion of Austria. If you weren’t already aiming to be titled “Mr. Universe,” you would have had to settle for “Superman.”

If only the rest of Stay Hungry had the same easy charm you provide as Santo. While it does boast a number of acutely-observed scenes and performances—Bridge’s and Sally Fields’ relationship comes immediately to mind—the film suffers from a schizophrenia, as it can’t decide whether it’s a character study or an exploitation film about body-building. But really, any film that climaxes by intercutting between you, wearing only a speedo, running to the rescue, and another 15 similarly dressed bodybuilders storming the streets and then holding an impromptu pose-off, can’t be all bad, can it?

Just more bad than I wanted it to be.

Flexingly yours, 

Casey

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

Hercules in New York

Dear Arnold Strong (née Schwarzenegger), Actor

The fact that your voice is no longer dubbed on the DVD release of Hercules in New York shows how far Americans have come. The United States of 1969 could not accept (much less understand) the cardboard delivery coming out of a muscle-brained 22-year-old Austrian bodybuilder. It just shows us how much the world has changed­. In many ways, you have helped change it. Too bad there’s no going back to undo the disaster that is your first ever film role.

But change has to start somewhere. In this case, it starts somewhere awful. Just terrible. The entire plot is driven by your oft-repeated refrain: “Because I’m Hercules.” That mindless phrase takes you from Olympus to New York City. It takes you from a ship to a pretzel man on the docks, to some college athletes, to some gangsters, to… a television event? It makes no sense, and nobody probably cared. There are little moments where the dialogue raises above the muddle, and it makes me sympathize with the writer. But only a little bit.

I am not sure how you survived this film. The whole history of cinema is littered with the aborted careers of people who tried to break into film. Success is rarely about whether they got a chance; it’s what they did with it once they got it. The choice of each film in a fledgling career can make or break you. So if this was your first big shot, your agent should be shot. Or maybe you didn’t’ care. Maybe you were capitalizing on past success. It’s like you took the smooth, smiling psychopath you would eventually play in Pumping Iron and made him a demigod. That may be a historically accurate Hercules, but not a very interesting one.

Apparently the studio said that Hercules in New York “was not met with an overwhelming response from the public,” and tried to sell the rights on eBay years later. 

You should have bought them, Mr. “Strong”, to keep it out of circulation forever. Instead, maybe it will show some future Governator how one can rise from the ashes. Stinky, stinky, silly ashes.

Best,
Cory

Status: Junk Mail (1/5)

The Expendables 2

Dear Brian Wentzel, Key Armourer

The movie opens, the gunfire begins, and I can already see problems. You have a star-studded cast of machine guns, rifles, pistols, and hand weapons, wielded by their equally-famous action hero counterparts, and there is no discipline, no control. Everything you, the person responsible for arming these muscleheads, should stand against. As a fan of guns and action, even I know “spray and pray” is the wrong approach in almost every situation. You just make a huge mess and accomplish nothing.

In that first sequence your .50 caliber heavy machine guns and rocket launchers make the bad guys practically explode. That’s probably pretty accurate. But then the assault rifles join in, and they make guys explode. Then the submachine guns do. Then the pistols. Even punches. To the untrained eye, these sleek embodiments of testosterone may all seem similar. But as connoisseurs, we know each has unique characteristics and ideal theatres of combat that make them truly shine. Too bad this movie just treats these icons, both machine and man, all exactly the same.

Take, for example, one of the stars, the Noveske Rifleworks Diplomat with M68 Aimpoint red dot scope and Surefire M900 weapon-light fore-grip (used by Jet Li and Sylvester Stallone). This is a very compact, precise, and reliable weapon. Built for moving fast in tight corners, it gets quickly discarded for a frying pan in close combat, and later its shooter just stands in the open, spraying away at armored targets hundreds of feet away. Did you ever step in and say “Hey, you are doing it wrong”?

Then there are great big guns like the AA-12 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Benelli M4 Super 90 (Terry Crewes). Firing them non-stop at distant henchmen in body armor is pointless.  Then there are modern classics like the HK416 (Bruce Willis), G36C  (Chuck Norris), M4A1 (Randy Couture), and UMP45 (Dolph Lundgren) that just sort of wander around, shooting off indiscriminately and without joy.

The plot itself is set in motion by a stupid misuse of the Barrett M107 sniper rifle (played by Liam Helmsworth), which is sent up alone, without a spotter, in unknown terrain. This inevitably goes badly, and the fire team has to seek revenge to alleviate what must be guilt for such terrible tactics. It turns out to be part of a larger plot to turn five tons of secret Russian plutonium into the most abused weapon of them all.

To your credit, there are some better, more intimate moments, performed by knives, brass knuckles, and fists. Those are pretty special, with notorious human weapons like Jet Li and Unstoppable II’s Scott Adkins bringing the film’s best fights. The most suprising scenes involve even more exotic weapons, like a jump-knife-kick to the heart (Jean-Claude Van Damme)  or a sturdy thurbile (Jason Statham).  There are even some emotions (mostly Nan Yu), which seem to disarm the human characters almost immediately. Still, as soon as the bullets start flying in earnest, it’s back to Heckler & Koch for most everyone.

You do give a great summary of the conceit of The Expendables 2 in your choice of handguns: making a desperate case for old-fashioned tools that have already had their day. I’m referring, of course, to the Custom Kimber Gold Combat IIs and that short-barreled Colt Single Action Army (played by Sylvester Stallone). You have to force their continued relevance amidst today’s firepower with implausible success. You simply can’t kill a man at 50 yards, shot from the hip, while running, with one of these things. Lying about it will alienate anyone who cares.

It would have been so much more interesting if the realities of the weapons and the actors were given more than a quick and dismissive nod. But the people who make the movie make the rules, and they clearly have a different idea of fun. A lot of people won’t like this movie because it’s murderous, loud, poorly written, and a little bit boring. But being a weapons guy, I wonder whether this really loaded your chamber, either. The more you know about all these amazing guns, held by all these fun actors, the more it seems the movie turns against for its own selfish goals of pretending to be relevant.

Gunning for you,

Cory

Status: Return to Sender (2/5)