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.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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