Are we gonna fight or are you planning on boring me to death?

Bullet to the Head

(2013)

Stallone’s attempt to get back in the game with an original starring vehicle appeared to flounder from the first. In the last decade he’s staged something of a career comeback with sequels to his best known roles (Rocky Balboa, Rambo) and a new franchise leading an ensemble of aging action stars (The Expendables). Bullet had the veneer of a Stallone aspiring to be relevant; an adaptation of a French graphic novel, a director (Wayne Kramer) who had previously delivered a surprisingly great crime movie fairy tale (Running Scared, which even managed to make Paul Walker look good). So how did it end up as an uninspired reheat of 48 Hrs’ mismatched cop/criminal pairing, complete with Walter Hill calling the shots?

The answer most likely lies somewhere in the creative tunnel vision of its producer Joel Silver and Sly. Stallone is fairly well-recognised as a nightmare for fledgling directors (poor Danny Cannon on Judge Dredd, for example). As a writer-director he has just enough talent to make life difficult for those without clout on set and, as a star, too much ego not to be a prima donna. Kramer reportedly clashed at a fairly early stage (he wanted a darker vision), so he was mercifully spared the traumas involved with Crossing Over (at the meddling hands of the Weinsteins). Silver, not the name he one was, but in full possession of the sensibility of his ‘80s/’90s self, also needed to make his presence felt.

The plot sees Stallone's hit man team up with Sung Kang's cop to bring down the gang who double-crossed Sly and killed his partner. Pretty much any '80s buddy action movie you can think of (48 Hrs, Red Heat, Tango & Cash) is vastly superior to this. At a meagre 90 minutes it is pared-down but looks as if there was never enough story to make a more substantial version. This is a perfunctory affair, competently made but going through the motions of what Sly thinks a Stallone action movie should probably be.

He looks ridiculously ripped for a 66 year old, with the kind of body only the best steroids can buy. Sly monotones his way through the entirely leaden dialogue and has zero chemistry with the charisma-free Kang (Han from the Fast and Furious movies). I'm not sure original choice Thomas Jane would have made matters a whole lot better, but Silver's decision to recast the role with an Asian actor seems to have been predicated on the lazy idea that racial tension would serve as a replacement for fleshed-out characters. So Stallone makes dodgy references to Confucius and Odd Job; there's no reason for this other than that Silver thinks he should be a bit like Nick Nolte (but on the other side of the law).

Hill handles the action as efficiently as you'd expect, but employs annoying visual clichés (a black and white introduction, orange-hued flashes and fades). A fairly annoying bluesy score also evokes an earlier era. The gratuitous nudity and violence cement the '80s throwback vibe, but the rain of CGI blood announces its true vintage. Hill had been absent from cinemas for a decade prior to this, and this kind of pointless exercise that makes you think he shouldn’t have bothered returning. He was no doubt considered a safe pair of hands as he’d delivered on the genre for Silver several times before (48 Hrs, Red Heat), but the result only goes to underline the question of why anyone thought it would be a good idea. It would be nice if this got Hill more work, but Bullet crumpled at the box office.

There's a suitably heavy-duty fight with fire axes between Stallone and Jason Momoa at the climax, and the latter has a good time playing the bad guy. As does Christian Slater as scumbag lawyer. But the script is so clumsy that Slater is required to tell Momoa the entire plot about 20 minutes in, even though he will be aware of this information anyway. The faux hardboiled dialogue is so consistently risible that there’s a point where you begin to assume it’s intentional.

Quite possibly Sly will have to settle on co-star status for the remainder of his career; he’s has pairings with Arnie (Escape Plan) and De Niro (Grudge Match) on the way, as well as Expendables 3. And Silver has nothing to aside from the Sherlock Holmes films as a claim to latter day success. Add to the pile the failure of Arnie’s comeback vehicle and, outside of the ensemble nostalgia flick, it looks like the ‘80s action movie star is well and truly dead.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

A ship is the finest nursery in the world.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) (SPOILERS) An odd one, this, as if Disney were remaking The Swiss Family Robinson for adults. One might perhaps have imagined the Mouse House producing it during their “Dark Disney” phase. But even then, toned down. After all, kids kidnapped by pirates sounds like an evergreen premise for boy’s own adventuring (more girl’s own here). The reality of Alexander Mackendrick’s film is decidedly antithetical to that; there’s a lingering feeling, despite A High Wind in Jamaica ’s pirates largely observing their distance, that things could turn rather nasty (and indeed, if Richard Hughes’ 1929 novel had been followed to the letter, they would have more explicitly).

Duffy. That old tangerine hipster.

Duffy (1968) (SPOILERS) It’s appropriate that James Coburn’s title character is repeatedly referred to as an old hipster in Robert Parrish’s movie, as that seemed to be precisely the niche Coburn was carving out for himself in the mid to late 60s, no sooner had Our Man Flint made him a star. He could be found partaking in jaundiced commentary on sexual liberation in Candy, falling headlong into counter culture in The President’s Analyst , and leading it in Duffy . He might have been two decades older than its primary adherents, but he was, to repeat an oft-used phrase here, very groovy. If only Duffy were too.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

Just wait. They’ll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

Contagion (2011) (SPOILERS) The plandemic saw Contagion ’s stock soar, which isn’t something that happens too often to a Steven Soderbergh movie. His ostensibly liberal outlook has hitherto found him on the side of the little people (class action suits) and interrogating the drugs trade while scrupulously avoiding institutional connivance (unless it’s Mexican institutional connivance). More recently, The Laundromat ’s Panama Papers puff piece fell fall flat on its face in attempting broad, knowing satire (in some respects, this is curious, as The Informant! is one of Soderbergh’s better-judged films, perhaps because it makes no bones about its maker’s indifference towards its characters). There’s no dilution involved with Contagion , however. It amounts to a bare-faced propaganda piece, serving to emphasise that the indie-minded director is Hollywood establishment through and through. This is a picture that can comfortably sit alongside any given Tinseltown handwringing over the Wa

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog