I'm going to put a price on your head so big, that when you look in the mirror your reflection's gonna want to shoot you in the face.

The Mechanic

(2011)

Are the Stath and Simon West the new Scorsese/Di Caprio? In a B-movie, not very exciting sort of way? First came the above title. Then, in quick succession, The Expendables 2 and next a remake of forgotten ‘80s Burt Reynolds-starrer Heat (from William Goldman both times out, no less). Maybe great things beckon for the duo. Nah. The Mechanic is also a remake, from the now departed auteur Michael Winner and the Olivier of his generation Charles Bronson. Clearly West and Jason Statham had a lot to live up to.

The original script for Bronson version made play of a homosexual undertone between Bronson’s hitman and young apprentice Jan-Michael Vincent (his character is the son of a boss-man Bronson has just offed). It didn’t make it to the final film, and one would be hard-pressed to argue for more than a passing suggestion of its presence in the remake (Sutherland suggests that the Stath needs companionship, and soon after he takes Foster under his wing; when the two discuss going underground, it briefly seems as if they may elope together). That said, it’s baffling why the Stath’s super professional Arthur Bishop decides to take on Ben Foster’s head-case Steve except out of guilt over having topped his one-time mentor (and Foster’s dad) Donald Sutherland. The closest the movie gets to assigning supressed undercurrents to all this machismo is during Steve’s first job, where the target is a gay hit man with whom Foster must inveigle himself. The messy altercation between Steve and this contract killer (Jeff Chase) is the high point of the movie.

Foster’s an under-appreciated actor, and he’s the best thing here, even if his part isn’t up to much. He makes the Stath seem more nuanced than he is, no small feat. I like the Stath, of course, but the B-movie Bruce Willis label only applies as a mirror to the later, humourless Bruno. Stath’s a straight man action man; funny stuff can happen around him (see Crank) but if he tries to crack wise you the tumbleweeds start gathering in earnest.

Along for the ride is Tony Goldwyn who, when he isn’t directing, has a side-line in TV and movie villains. Which is to say, casting him is a massive giveaway if the initial intention is for his character to seem honest or friendly.

But Simon West has somehow made profit from a career of crashing insensitivity to plotting, pacing, staging and editing. Still he keeps going. His debut Con Air is a horrible mess of a production that retains a certain cult appeal due to the array of great actors, and Scott Rosenberg’s script. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a big hit, in spite of proving that he had no idea how to make a coherent movie. In the last few years he’s staged something of a comeback with medium budget (meaning, expected to make their dough back in rentals) fare, although The Expendables gig may have been a boost to his bankability. He’s probably ascended to the league of a serviceable helmer; sub-Michael Bay, without the inventiveness (not really a compliment) to create that kind of deranged spectacle. There are a few effective set pieces in The Mechanic, but where it works it is due to the plundering of the reasonably solid the original script and lucking-in with Foster. West’s advertising background has never left him, which means his scenes always feel as if they are composed of unconnected shots rather than meshing together organically. And his tin ear is there for all to hear during the musical montages, which are more than faintly embarrassing.

The Stath keeps churning them out, movies with brief titles than meld into one when you see the posters or read the plot synopsis. But you have to credit him with knowing his core audience. The Mechanic is an agreeable time-passer, but it’s no Transporter 2. Then again, few movies are.

***

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

The Apartment (1960) (SPOILERS) Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out ’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“ boy forgives girl and all’s well ”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve?

Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists!

Don’t Look Up (2021) (SPOILERS) It’s testament to Don’t Look Up ’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

Doctors make the worst patients.

Coma (1978) (SPOILERS) Michael Crichton’s sophomore big-screen feature, and by some distance his best. Perhaps it’s simply that this a milieu known to him, or perhaps it’s that it’s very much aligned to the there-and-now and present, but Coma , despite the occasional lapse in this adaptation of colleague Robin Cook’s novel, is an effective, creepy, resonant thriller and then some. Crichton knows his subject, and it shows – the picture is confident and verisimilitudinous in a way none of his other directorial efforts are – and his low-key – some might say clinical – approach pays dividends. You might also call it prescient, but that would be to suggest its subject matter wasn’t immediately relevant then too.

You ruined every suck-my-silky-ass thing!

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) (SPOILERS) Warner Bros has been here before. Déjà vu? What happens when you let a filmmaker do whatever they want? And I don’t mean in the manner of Netflix. No, in the sequel sense. You get a Gremlins 2: The New Batch (a classic, obviously, but not one that financially furthered a franchise). And conversely, when you simply cash in on a brand, consequences be damned? Exorcist II: The Heretic speaks for itself. So in the case of The Matrix Resurrections – not far from as meta as The New Batch , but much less irreverent – when Thomas “Tom” Anderson, designer of globally successful gaming trilogy The Matrix , is told “ Our beloved company, Warner Bros, has decided to make a sequel to the trilogy ” and it’s going ahead “with or without us”, you can be fairly sure this is the gospel. That Lana, now going it alone, decided it was better to “make the best of it” than let her baby be sullied. Of course, quite what that amounts to in the case of a movie(s) tha

You just threw a donut in the hot zone!

Den of Thieves (2018) (SPOILERS) I'd heard this was a shameless Heat rip-off, and the presence of Gerard Butler seemed to confirm it would be passable-at-best B-heist hokum, so maybe it was just middling expectations, even having heard how enthused certain pockets of the Internet were, but Den of Thieves is a surprisingly very satisfying entry in the genre. I can't even fault it for attempting to Keyser Soze the whole shebang at the last moment – add a head in a box and you have three 1995 classics in one movie – even if that particular conceit doesn’t quite come together.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

It’s always possible to find a good moral reason for killing anybody.

The Assassination Bureau (1969) (SPOILERS) The Assassination Bureau ought to be a great movie. You can see its influence on those who either think it is a great movie, or want to produce something that fulfils its potential. Alan Moore and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen . The just-released (and just-flopped) The King’s Men . It inhabits a post-Avengers, self-consciously benign rehearsal of, and ambivalence towards, Empire manners and attitudes, something that could previously be seen that decade in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (and sequel Monte Carlo or Bust , also 1969), Adam Adamant Lives! , and even earlier with Kind Hearts and Coronets , whilst also feeding into that “Peacock Revolution” of Edwardian/Victorian fashion refurbishment. Unfortunately, though, it lacks the pop-stylistic savvy that made, say, The President’s Analyst so vivacious.

This guy’s armed with a hairdryer.

An Innocent Man (1989) (SPOILERS) Was it a chicken-and-egg thing with Tom Selleck and movies? Did he consistently end up in ropey pictures because other, bigger big-screen stars had first dibs on the good stuff? Or was it because he was a resolutely small-screen guy with limited range and zero good taste? Selleck had about half-a-dozen cinema outings during the 1980s, one of which, the very TV, very Touchstone Three Men and a Baby was a hit, but couldn’t be put wholly down to him. The final one was An Innocent Man , where he attempted to show some grit and mettle, as nice-guy Tom is framed and has to get tough to survive. Unfortunately, it’s another big-screen TV movie.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog