Skip to main content

All this weirdness that I got sucked into tonight, it rebuilt my mojo!

Stretch
(2014)

(SPOILERS) I should know by now what to expect from a Joe Carnahan film. Narc, which was rightly regarded as in impressive calling card (I’ll ignore his actual debut which sounds more like his subsequent fare; Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane), has proved to be the exception to the rule. As a director Carnahan is more than accomplished, with a talent for pacing and narrative drive, even if he too often resorts to sensory overload. As a writer he resembles a sub-Tarantino hack who probably comes up with all his best ideas after an enormous bong hit. So it is with Stretch, a dependably energetic piece of filmmaking with the occasional moment of real flair but based on a script infused with adolescent excitability and a belief that it is much funnier than it actually is.


The chief problem with Stretch, which anyone who has seen Smokin’ Aces (or, for that matter, the heavy-handed and self-regarding The Grey) would be aware of, is that it’s one of those pictures that is far, far too pleased with itself. It’s certainly done nothing to earn such smugness. Unless you’re a hyperactive teenager who gives anything with tits and blow and snickering crudity a free pass, in which case this might be the best movie ever.  It’s probably also ideal for stoners who rate goofy, crazy shit and think From Dusk Till Dawn is Tarantino’s best movie. Actually, I get the impression Carnahan has been on a Shane Black binge (Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in particular) and asininely thinks he’ll approximate some of that.


Stretch might have worked if the gags and plotlines landed, but Carnahan’s choices have a tendency to try the patience and provoke rising annoyance. Stretch (Patrick Wilson), a stretch limo driver (presumably his name is intended to be all existential like Walter Hill’s The Driver but funny), is an ex-coke fiend and gambler, dumped by his girlfriend for a quarterback, who is told he needs to pay off his $6k debt before the end of the day while competing with a rival limo company, interacting with deceased fellow driver Karl (Ed Helms) and attempting to hook up Pink Minx (the date he has met on the Internet). 


Stretch is beset by troublesome clients (including David Hasselhoff and Carnahan regular Ray Liotta in cantankerous spoof versions of themselves) until call centre operative Charlie (Jessica Alba) tips him that an old fare of Karl’s, billionaire Karos (Chris Pine), could be his generous benefactor for the evening. Stretch agrees to do Karos’ bidding, but it quickly becomes evident the financier is involved in some very shady business (a pyramid investment scheme that went belly-up) and is wanted by the FBI.


Carnahan’s construction and characters are ramped up but still manage to be over-familiar. Stretch’s incessant voiceover should be engagingly stoical but instead has an aggravating, insistent conceitedness. It’s too much noise in an already over-noisy picture. Lines like “Starting today I am putting the goddam shovel down” may be meant to make Stretch a bit of a self-aggrandising dick, but Carnahan doesn’t seem to know the difference between mockery and veneration. It’s the elusive Downey Jr in Kiss Kiss factor. 


I usually like Wilson, but he seems unable to make Stretch much of anything. It’s not really his fault as Carnahan lacks an all-important lightness of touch; he’s utterly charmless, so his characters follow suit. While he’s a good kinetic director, he tends to over-indulge and over-edit. During the first 20 minutes or so, Stretch looks like it might downright stink, so it’s a small compliment that Carnahan gets it moving in spite of the mediocre screenplay.


The one long night into disaster is well-mined territory and sort of writes itself (see Into the Night for a great example of the genre); all you have to do is to keep up the eventful encounters and have a destination in mind. Stretch’s destination can be seen coming a mile off (it’s evident halfway through that Charlie must be Pink Minx, but Carnahan still treats it as a big reveal), yet it is actually quite sweet and Alba – who has been consigned to the dustbin of Robert Rodriguez dreck lately – makes a winning object of affection. It helps that Carnahan throws so much at the screen, some of it is bound to stick; he sets up several ticking clocks and recurring antagonists (in that sense it mirrors After Hours), and charges on regardless through the frequent bumpy spots.  


Cameos include a dreadfully unfunny appearance from Hasselhoff doing a sweary-nasty of himself (“You’re a punk-ass motherfucker! You don’t have any respect for the Hoff!”). Liotta is fine, but he’s more fun in his Muppets Most Wanted cameo. Helms’ ghostly apparition (in Stretch’s mind) is also a misfire, an over-the-top confidante “wearing a moustache he said he grew in Hell” that Carnahan should have pruned (he’s utterly superfluous anyway). I’m quite sure Carnahan was pumping his fist in the air over how awesome all this sounded as he wrote it. But it really isn’t unless your fourteen again, or even for the first time. There’s no irony or distance that might allow actual humour or foster wry observation.


Pine, who played a memorable psychopath in Smokin’ Aces, is enrolled as another nutter here complete with maximum beardage. His character epitomises the director’s “hilarious excess” approach, complete with protruding testicles, whoring, substance abuse and intense/antic disposition. I was put in mind of a much less endearing version of Rob Lowe’s (quite brilliant) Lenny Nero in Californication. There’s way too much bedazzlement by the hedonistic lifestyle in Carnahan’s filmmaking. He may be living the adolescent dream, but “It’s raining tits” and having a “rape party” are depressingly juvenile. 


If Carnahan made a fatalistic meal of Liam Neeson’s existential angst in The Grey, he takes a similarly glib approach to Stretch. He scoffs at fate; “To me, life’s nothing but timing”.  So James Badge Dale’s FBI guy (Dale’s a great actor, but the role, very sub-Aces, doesn’t have enough room to become interesting) tells him “My friend, everything happens for a reason. It has to be that way. It would be too depressing otherwise”). Elsewhere Stretch, a wannabe thesp, repeats the mantra “Own the space” to embolden himself in any given hairy situation but Wilson fails to make us believe that Stretch can do this stuff (far more appropriate is the moment where he boasts “It’s like I’m five steps ahead” as he is removing the limo number plate, only for a young rap hooligan to steal his wheels).


Carnahan throws all kinds of macho bullshit into the mix. There’s no apparent self-censorship here. Sub-Fight Club punching oneself in the face? Why ever not? References to driving Charlie Sheen? A bit passé, no? But as tiresome as Carnahan’s schtick can be, he comes up with occasional winners. The sequence in which Stretch has to regain control of the disabled limo is amusingly desperate. The sight of a tiny disco ball, miraculously appeared in the back, is a nice nutty touch, as are the subtitles of the Eastern European aggressor from the rival firm that appear in… Eastern European.


Stretch ended up bypassing cinemas to VOD, reportedly because Universal didn’t see the point releasing a $5m-budgeted picture that might not recoup its distribution costs. Which is no marker of how good or bad it is; it’s actually neither actively terrible nor great, making their decision a sound one financially. I find it difficult to summon sympathy for the hard done-by artist in this case as I have a feeling Carnahan is a bit of meathead, deluded that his scenarios are dynamite and every line he writes (or snorts) is gold dust. Chances are, if you loved Smokin’ Aces, you’ll adore this. If you though that film was ADD overkill with just a few occasional inspired moments, then you’ve got a good idea of what to expect from Stretch. Steroidal filmmaking on a budget, like a slightly more respectable version of Michael Bay. Carnahan’s movies are exhausting, but not in a good way.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.
Post a Comment
Read more

You're waterboarding me.

The Upside (2017)
(SPOILERS) The list of US remakes of foreign-language films really ought to be considered a hiding to nothing, given the ratio of flops to unqualified successes. There’s always that chance, though, of a proven property (elsewhere) hitting the jackpot, and every exec hopes, in the case of French originals, for another The Birdcage, Three Men and a Baby, True Lies or Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Even a Nine Months, Sommersby or Unfaithful will do. Rather than EdTV. Or Sorcerer. Or Eye of the Beholder. Or Brick Mansions. Or Chloe. Or Intersection (Richard Gere is clearly a Francophile). Or Just Visiting. Or The Man with One Red Shoe. Or Mixed Nuts. Or Original Sin. Or Oscar. Or Point of No Return. Or Quick Change. Or Return to Paradise. Or Under Suspicion. Or Wicker Park. Or Father’s Day.
Post a Comment
Read more

What about the meaningless line of indifference?

The Lion King (2019)
(SPOILERS) And so the Disney “live-action” remake train thunders on regardless (I wonder how long the live-action claim would last if there was a slim hope of a Best Animated Feature Oscar nod?) I know I keep repeating myself, but the early ‘90s Disney animation renaissance didn’t mean very much to me; I found their pictures during that period fine, but none of them blew me away as they did critics and audiences generally. As such, I have scant nostalgia to bring to bear on the prospect of a remake, which I’m sure can work both ways. Aladdin proved to be a lot of fun. Beauty and the Beast entirely tepid. The Lion King, well, it isn’t a badfilm, but it’s wearying its slavish respectfulness towards the original and so diligent in doing it justice, you’d think it was some kind of religious artefact. As a result, it is, ironically, for the most part, dramatically dead in the water.
Post a Comment
Read more

You know what I think? I think he just wants to see one cook up close.

The Green Mile (1999)
(SPOILERS) There’s something very satisfying about the unhurried confidence of the storytelling in Frank Darabont’s two prison-set Stephen King adaptations (I’m less beholden to supermarket sweep The Mist); it’s sure, measured and precise, certain that the journey you’re being take on justifies the (indulgent) time spent, without the need for flashy visuals or ornate twists (the twists there are feel entirely germane – with a notable exception – as if they could only be that way). But. The Green Mile has rightly come under scrutiny for its reliance on – or to be more precise, building its foundation on – the “Magical Negro” trope, served with a mild sprinkling of idiot savant (so in respect of the latter, a Best Supporting Actor nomination was virtually guaranteed). One might argue that Stephen King’s magical realist narrative flourishes well-worn narrative ploys and characterisations at every stage – such that John Coffey’s initials are announcement enough of his …
Post a Comment
Read more

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…
1 comment
Read more

What you do is very baller. You're very anarchist.

Lady Bird (2017)
(SPOILERS) You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/ nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento.
Post a Comment
Read more

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…
1 comment
Read more

Do you read Sutter Cane?

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
(SPOILERS) The concluding chapter of John Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy (preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness) is also, sadly, his last great movie. Indeed, it stands apart in the qualitative wilderness that beset him during the ‘90s (not for want of output). Michael De Luca’s screenplay had been doing the rounds since the ‘80s, even turned down by Carpenter at one point, and it proves ideal fodder for the director, bringing out the best in him. Even cinematographer Gary K Kibbe seems inspired enough to rise to the occasion. It could do without the chugging rawk soundtrack, perhaps, but then, that was increasingly where Carpenter’s interests resided (as opposed to making decent movies).
Post a Comment
Read more

Kindly behove me no ill behoves!

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
(SPOILERS) It’s often the case that industry-shaking flops aren’t nearly the travesties they appeared to be before the dust had settled, and so it is with The Bonfire of the Vanities. The adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s ultra-cynical bestseller is still the largely toothless, apologetically broad-brush comedy – I’d hesitate to call it a satire in its reconfigured form – it was when first savaged by critics nearly thirty years ago, but taken for what it is, that is, removed from the long shadow of Wolfe’s novel, it’s actually fairly serviceable star-stuffed affair that doesn’t seem so woefully different to any number of rather blunt-edged comedies of the era.
Post a Comment
Read more

I don’t think you will see President Pierce again.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
(SPOILERS) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and other tall tales of the American frontier is the title of "the book" from which the Coen brothers' latest derives, and so announces itself as fiction up front as heavily as Fargo purported to be based on a true story. In the world of the portmanteau western – has there even been one before? – theme and content aren't really all that distinct from the more familiar horror collection, and as such, these six tales rely on sudden twists or reveals, most of them revolving around death. And inevitably with the anthology, some tall tales are stronger than other tall tales, the former dutifully taking up the slack.
5 comments
Read more