Category: Emilio Estevez

YOUNG GUNS

By Marc S. Sanders

In the late 1980s a novel idea hit the screens.  An MTV interpretation of the Old West with a rock anthem soundtrack of electric guitars and drums. A far separation from Ennio Morricone’s unbeatable spaghetti western approach.  

The film was Young Guns, featuring handsome stars like Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, and Lou Diamond Phillips.  They were each different kind of gunslingers in their own right while delivering stand out personalities.  The film has some problems in editing, and some sequences do not work.  Yet, it remains stylish with impressive set designs, props, costume wear, and an especially appealing array of performances from the whole cast.  

Billy The Kid aka William H Bonney is one of the most notorious outlaws in American history.  Emilio Estevez brilliantly turns the gunslinger into a quick draw joker with an addictive cackle and an adorable smile.  William is taken in by the mentoring John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) who already oversees a collection of orphaned young men.  He’s teaching them to bear responsibility on his farm while they learn proper manners at the dinner table and how to read.

A neighboring industrial enemy, L.G. Murphy (Jack Palance) commissions his men to gun down Tunstall.  Billy and the rest of the gang are then deputized by the local Sheriff to issue warrants for the arrest of the killers.  However, Billy repeatedly exercises his own form of justice by killing one guy after another with his pair of six shooters.  Soon after, the boys are on the run by horseback while creating a whole bunch of mayhem.

I never considered Young Guns to be a perfect film, but I like it a whole heck of a lot.

There are moments that serve no purpose, like when the men get high on peyote, introduced by the Navajo, Chavez Y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips).  It’s not amusing.  It’s not quotable and the scene runs too long as we watch the cast walk and talk while in daze.  Frankly, most movie scenes of just watching people get high are boring.  Often, they go nowhere and I’m not sure how to respond. It’s like I’m the designated driver fiddling with my car keys at a drunken binge fest. This is no different.

As well, there seem to be gaps within the body of the story. I know it is inspired by the Lincoln County War, but it’s never entirely clear why Tunstall and Murphy are at odds with each other.  We just have to accept that the two elderly men of equal proportions are against one another.  Still, Palance versus Stamp is a very inviting conflict to look at. (Supposedly, the real John Tunstall was only in his mid-20s.)

Young Guns has a very cool polish.  These cowboys are downright attractive, sexy like Hollywood movies tend to offer, and I love how they handle each other, their horses and their pistols.  Every time a six shooter whips out of a holster and clicks, the movie becomes more alive.  The guys look well-worn within this environment, close to the Mexican border of the 1870s.  The image is just as effective as Clint Eastwood appears in his various assortment of westerns.  

Billy The Kid, over this film and its sequel, is Emilio Estevez’ best role of his career.  The actor has such a cocky, nervy way about him and his over-the-top laugh is impossible to forget.  A favorite scene in all of movies emerges when Billy toys with a bounty hunter in a saloon.  Estevez delivers much fun before gunning the guy down. I never tire of watching that moment.

Kiefer Sutherland is second in line with a graceful sensitivity as the educated and poetically romantic Doc Scurlock.  You worry about him and his courting affair with a young Chinese concubine that is owned by Murphy.  Lou Diamond Phillips specializes in knife throwing as Chavez, the token Navajo.  His presence belongs here as an unpredictable sidekick.  

The best surprise is delivered by Casey Siemaszko as the virginal, boyish illiterate Charlie.  Some gunslingers were afraid to ever become outlaws.  Charlie is ugly and dirty, bumbling and sweet, reminiscent of Fredo in The Godfather films.  Siemaszko never became as established as the others in the cast, but he’s a good performer who delivers panicked fear and brings the glamour of Young Guns down to a semblance of reality.  

Young Guns is a style over substance product.  It has potential for a stronger storyline, but the dialogue works and the cast is stellar, which also includes Dermot Mulroney, Terry O’Quinn and Charlie Sheen.  The sequel is actually better as it commits closer to the intrigue of Billy The Kid.  

Not perfect, but this is a fun escapist western experience.

BOBBY (2006)

By Marc S. Sanders

There’s the distinguished doorman who is retired now but returns each day to play chess with a colleague in the hotel lobby.  There’s the open-minded girl who is inspired to prevent a young man from getting drafted into the Vietnam War by marrying him.  Her hairdresser is married to the hotel manager, who happens to be having an affair with the beautiful switchboard operator.  As well, the dining manager is a bigot who will deny his Mexican employees enough time to leave work and exercise their right to vote.  A busboy will have no choice but to miss what will likely be Don Drysdale record breaking sixth shut out game in a row.  A drunken night club performer can hardly stand up straight while she is completely dismissive of her caring husband.  A wealthy man is ready to introduce his trophy wife to an eventful evening in modern politics.  Two young campaign workers sneak away to drop acid for the first time.  A black man is at a loss following the recent assassination of Dr. King. Though he has hope that at least Bobby Kennedy will uphold his faith for a promising future in America for African Americans to carry equal rights. 

So, what does any of this have to do with Robert F Kennedy?  Not much I’m afraid.  Writer/Director and star Emilio Estevez tells us that all of these stories occur in the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful night when the Senator was assassinated in the hotel kitchen by Sirhan Sirhan.  In Bobby, the only character that is not a character is Bobby Kennedy and that is unfortunate.  More to the point, all of these short stories and other characters are precisely boring.

Estevez committed himself to grinding out stories that occur in the Ambassador that would lead up to Kennedy’s tragic death.  He’s admitted that they are all fictional. Based on his research and photographs, these characters are very loosely inspired by those that were there that night.  Before gathering in the ballroom to hear Kennedy’s victory speech after winning the California primary, these people were going through own personal ordeals.  If Emilio Estevez was not so personally inspired and researched in Robert Kennedy’s purpose to American history and politics, then perhaps Arthur Hailey (Hotel, Airport) would have pieced together this script of anecdotes and vignettes.

I commend Estevez’ efforts here.  The film looks great and even though the Ambassador was being demolished at literally the same time as this film was being shot, the scenic designs are very authentic.  The cast is even more impressive as the director reunites with many co-stars that he’s worked with before including Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater and his real-life father Martin Sheen, a lifelong loyalist to the Kennedy family.  The “importance” of this movie seems to sell itself.  Yet, everything is incredibly mundane and of little interest.  When your cast and your characters are just items on a grocery list to check off, there’s not much that’s interesting beyond the coupons.

The juicy gossip that surrounds the real-life actors is more captivating. Estevez cast Ashton Kutcher (Demi Moore’s real-life husband at the time) to play the drug dealer who provides acid to the campaign workers (Shia LeBeouf, Brian Geraghty).  Moore is also Estevez’ ex-girlfriend.  Yet, to watch Kutcher, LeBeouf and Geraghty experience an acid trip with weird visions they see when they open a bedroom closet is unfunny and not captivating.  Emilio Estevez is not living up to the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski).

A tryst with the boss (William H Macy) and his young, attractive and naïve switchboard operator (Heather Graham) is nauseatingly hokey.  The aged wife who works in the hotel salon (Sharon Stone) turns it all into squeamish soap opera tripe.

Bobby has an alarming opening.  A false alarm fire call is wrapping up at the Ambassador Hotel and you may feel like you are entering the middle of a panic storm, but things quickly calm down and the film resorts to cookie cutter editing to introduce its all-star cast.  None of what they say matters.  This is a game of who you can recognize.  Joshua Jackson, Nick Cannon, Harry Belafonte, and eventually the guy with the most significant role, Laurence Fishburne, is given his moment, the best scene of the whole film.  Fishburne is the kitchen chef who allegorically uses his creations in cuisine to compare the black man’s experience to the brown man’s, or Mexican. 

Having finished a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, I wanted to show my wife the under-the-radar and captivating film, Chappaquiddick, which covers Ted Kennedy’s personal story of controversy.  (My review of that film is on this site.) To continue on the Kennedy parade, we were motivated to follow up with Bobby.  Yet, this picture offers very little to the significance of Senator Robert F Kennedy.  There are samples of news reports complete with Cronkite.  Plus, the Senator’s own words ring through the epilogue of the picture.  Yet, I felt cheated of learning nothing new about the historical figure. 

Reader, you may tell me to kick dirt and go find another movie or read a book.  Fair!  However, this is film is called Bobby, and if I’m not going to learn about Bobby Kennedy from the man himself, then allow me to get to know the man through the eyes of these individuals.  Who hates him?  Who loves him? Who has a crush on him?  Who is inspired by him?  Who wants him dead and why? 

Estevez’ script does not allow enough material to describe what Kennedy meant to these campaign workers or hotel workers or guests.  They are primarily self-absorbed in their own personal battles to think enough about the fact that Bobby Kennedy is expected to make an appearance later this evening.  Again, their personal concerns for each other is very dull.  I don’t want to be around a drunk and obnoxious Demi Moore.  I don’t want to drop acid with some guys who hide behind a façade for caring about the candidate they are supposed to be serving.  I feel sorry for the busboy who will miss that big game, but that’s not enough to get me engaged in the entirety of the picture.

Bobby lends very little to the confusing times of the late sixties when an unwinnable war was persisting and championed leaders were being killed for others’ agendas.  Any of these stories could have been yanked from this script and slotted into a disaster flick like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno. 

Bobby only picks up momentum when it arrives at its end that many of us learned about in school or witnessed firsthand in documentaries or directly from that very sad and unfortunate evening, June 4, 1968.  This day in history is so much more important than a Helen Hunt character trying to convince her Martin Sheen husband to let her buy a new pair of black shoes.  Bobby Kennedy deserves more recognition than what Emilio Estevez offered.

THE OUTSIDERS

By Marc S. Sanders

As we are about to embark on a trip to New York City to celebrate my wife’s half century milestone (wish her a Happy Birthday, please), we decided to watch the film adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s celebrated novel The Outsiders, read by many high school juniors and seniors, and now a beloved Broadway musical.  The play has to be better than the movie.  It truly would not take much.

Francis Ford Coppola is the director of this very amateur piece that is best known for introducing a who’s who of the brightest actors that would go on to occupy some of the biggest films of the 1980s and 90s.  One of these guys, someone named Tom Cruise, is still a money maker elite. Ironically, he’s got one of the smallest roles in this film.

I can see the potential talent of C Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze (age 29 here), Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.  Diane Lane is likely giving the best performance in a next to nothing role as a could’ve been puppy love interest.  However, I said potential.  Had they been directed with just a little bit of passion, it’d be nothing but apparent. Coppola didn’t put enough work into getting this cast into shape.

Hinton’s story focuses on two factions of kids from small town Oklahoma, the greasers dressed in jeans with slicked back hair and tough guy attitudes all portrayed by the gang listed above and the Socs (pronounced Sosh), who are the spoiled rich kids dressed in school letterman jackets and khakis.  Their leader is Leif Garrett, the only known celebrity name at the time of this film’s release.  The antagonism between the groups is as evident as the Jets and Sharks.  The greasers flash their switchblades, curse and strut, particularly Matt Dillon as the fearless tough guy leader Dallas. Yet, within this screenplay, and among the performances by the whole cast, Coppola often relies on hokey, cornball drama that is on par with an after school special.  This is a lousy, rejected Hallmark card come to life. I’ve cried more at “Deep Thoughts With Jack Handy.”

The edits of the picture hide much of the bloodshed until a climactic rumble in the pouring rain presents itself with many endless, overdramatized punches and kicks that clearly don’t make contact.  Yes.  I heard Tom Cruise broke his teeth from a slug to his jaw. Otherwise, the ballet boxing of West Side Story has much more threatening smacks and cracks. 

C Thomas Howell is Pony Boy and Ralph Macchio is Johnny – the sixteen-year-olds who are overtaken by the Socs in the middle of the night. One of the prep kids turns up dead as the two young greasers defend themselves.  They hop a freight train and hide out of town, only to be brought into the spotlight when they rescue a group of little kids from a burning church. Pictures are smack dab on the front page.

The Outsiders is a very brief ninety-minute film that does not do enough to establish relationships among these kids.  Howell has the most fleshed out role.  With his two older brothers (Swayze and Lowe), Pony Boy dresses the part but his appreciation for literature and poetry by Margaret Mitchell and Robert Frost says that his life as a greaser is not for him.  His current situation does not allow for any other opportunities, though. Howell is just mediocre in his performance.  I cannot say I related to his supposed anguish and conflict.  He’s a body saying the lines and standing on his mark for the camera.

Just as in The Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio is an annoying over actor.  His character has an abusive relationship with his parents. However, we never see the parents. Frustratingly speaking, I’d question if this kid Johnny is simply a storyteller looking for attention. Why would Coppola leave out this dimension of one the main character’s home life that is frequently mentioned? Macchio looks more concerned with making sure the collar on his jean jacket is popped up with his bangs hanging down just right for a cover photo on Seventeen Magazine.  The profile that has the cute scar imbedded in his tan complexion is front and center. He always looks like he’s posing for a still shot in front of Coppola’s movie camera.  Macchio delivers the final monologue of the piece, and it’s near impossible to believe the actor truly embraced any of the dialogue of the script.  His performance appears mechanically memorized. 

Matt Dillon looks like he was genuinely trying to turn in a tough guy performance, but his moments on film, especially his final scene, look terribly edited and off kilter.  The cutaways that Coppola uses are awful, like a TV movie that is interrupted by commercials.  Only someone axed the ads from the final print and did not tape the film reel properly together.  

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age story hinged on tragedy and the yearning for a better life, particularly for Pony Boy.  Hinton’s book remains essential reading for young adults needing to relate to characters their own age.  It also serves as an effective homework assignment.  Francis Ford Coppola’s film though offers little focus on what makes any character tick or why there’s a conflict between the rival groups.  Where’s the history and backstory?  Most of the actors, especially Estevez and Cruise, come off as if they are high on sugar with incomplete sentences for lines. What are you guys doing here if not to look anything but hyperactive?

West Side Story and Stand By Me quickly found their footing for adolescent boys with insecurities and uncertain futures.   The respective settings of those films knew these misfit kids, and they in turn interacted within the environments. Coppola went the wrong route because there is hardly any bond between the kids and the other folks who reside in this picture.

From a technical standpoint, The Outsiders is a muddled mess of poorly timed original scores, from Carmine Coppola, wedged into scenes that do not call for anything to enhance the emotional heft.  The director often puts one actor’s close up at a zoom in, while a buddy will be in the foreground. This technique looks like an Olan Mills family photograph you get in the mall.  It’s cringey.  It’s hard to take seriously as well.  

The Outsiders simply does not work to acquire an emotional punch of despair and loss.  These pretty boy tough guys have no effective humor even with Tom Cruise behaving like an ugly, incomprehensible wild man and Emilio Estevez donning a Mickey Mouse t-shirt with his signature cackle.  There’s just too little to relate to anything in this picture that S. E. Hinton magnetically achieved within her pages.  Her book was published when she was age seventeen by the way. What an amazing accomplishment!

Regrettably, the filmmaker who upped the scales of the war picture (Apocalypse Now) with terror and disillusionment, and successfully delivered two of the greatest, most operatic films of all time (The Godfather movies), not to mention his smaller but shocking films like The Conversation offered little attention to what S.E. Hinton captured and impressed upon young readers.  If anything, Coppola was more concerned with shooting picturesque, midwestern sunset landscapes that honestly have an artificial texture to the eye.  Nothing from the music to the photography to the editing to the overt contrivances or the acting seems natural here.

The Outsiders is equally regarded as assembling one of the most impressive groupings of eventual male box office stars, as it is for Francis Ford Coppola’s lazy and uninspired film work.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

By Marc S. Sanders

The outcry of teen angst in the 1980s comes through predominantly in the dramatic talking piece called The Breakfast Club.  I look at the film as a mature interpretation of Charles Schultz’ Peanuts Gang actually, and maybe an extension of some of the themes found in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.  The children are heard.  The adults are present but are mostly muffled and out of consideration.  Writer/Director John Hughes wanted the five teenagers destined to occupy a Saturday in the school library for detention to completely undo their armor.  With adults in the way, kids can never truly be themselves.  Lies, exaggerations and attempts at acceptable image come first but as his script progresses, the teens are reduced to expressing how they value themselves and each other. 

Having grown up watching The Breakfast Club by myself on many Friday nights after some challenging weeks of school, I was always looking to sit on the floor with this pack and share my own demons and fears.  Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes I felt as if the brain (Anthony Michael Hall, as Brian), the athlete (Emilio Estevez as Andrew), the basket case (Ally Sheedy as Allison), the princess (Molly Ringwald as Claire) and the criminal (Judd Nelson as John) spoke back to me and told me when I was wrong or when I was justified for having felt like I did. 

Nearly forty years later, some of the thought processes the five endure of themselves seems outdated and inappropriate, however.  For example, in Hughes’ film the female characters are sexually harassed, harshly criticized and/or they succumb to stepping outside their comfort zone and changing their appearance to please a male character.  Had this film been released in a post Me Too era, I think both sides of the political aisle would protest its content.  The Breakfast Club is certainly a movie of its day where it’s treated as comedic escapism to have Nelson’s character commit a fellatio act upon Ringwald’s panty covered crotch.  Do not mistake me.  I am not crying foul and demanding censorship or calling for torches and pitchforks.  The contents of The Breakfast Club should certainly remain preserved and viewed upon as what was a mindset of films in the 1980s, and perhaps how the opposite sexes treated one another then.  Sadly, it is still happening all too often.

The success of the film relies upon the differences in the characters.  None of them have the same interests.  Yet, if you allow them to live among themselves without any outside influences, they will open up to one another.  Hughes’ film begins where the characters hardly speak.  John gets the ball rolling as the troublemaker looking for shock value as he attempts to urinate on the floor in front of the others and then succeeds in unifying the students when he causes the library door to remain shut keeping Mr. Vernon (Paul Gleason), the teacher/antagonist, out of reach of them.  Why should the five work together against Mr. Vernon?  They don’t know or have respect for each other.  Why?  Because one generation will stand arm and arm against another generation, specifically a domineering entity. 

Now that they are isolated, Hughes writes in set ups allowing the five to shed their skin.  In one scene, the ladies empty the contents of their purses while the men’s wallets are exposed.  John sleeps around.  Allison may be mentally ill.  Claire lives off the vanity that comes with makeup and perfumes.  Brian’s middle name is revealed.  (“Ralph, as in puke.”)  The kids lie about their sexual conquests only to be cornered into telling how little experience some of them actually have.  Maybe the most common plane they share are their home lives.  Each uncovers how they relate to their parents and none of them have an ideal upbringing.  Rather, they are disregarded or abused or forced into an appearance they really are not passionate about.  Before the film ends, the five will have their battle cry of dancing individually first, and then lined up together, unified, to a song titled, We Are Not Alone. 

Hughes even allows enough time and subtlety to demonstrate how Mr. Vernon seems to suffer.  There’s a quick moment, where Vernon commits John to two months of detention.  As Vernon storms out of the room, John screams out “Fuck You!” and Hughes keeps a closeup on Vernon letting out a weary sigh.  His exhaustion of being the authoritative adult is wearing on him.  Yet, after twenty-two years of teaching it is also the only pedestal he has left to stand on; to rule over five misfits on a boring isolated Saturday.  Later, he’ll only feel his most powerful when he has John imprisoned away from the others and he can antagonize and threaten him with the intent of elevating his stature over a punk kid.  (Ironically, this moment also reveals how weak John is and not the intimidating bully he holds himself to be in front of the others.)  Later, Vernon tells the janitor how he’ll have to worry about these kids growing up to look after him when he is elderly.  He’s been so occupied with being sadistically cruel, he has not allowed time to carve out a balanced future.

The Breakfast Club is an important piece to watch for uncovering teenage mentality and the subconsciousness.  How do teenagers function by themselves, with outsiders, with their peers, and with their parents?  What’s best celebrated in many of John Hughes’ films are when he allows his characters not to hinder how they truly regard one another.  While I won’t spoil how these five consider each other by the end of this particular Saturday, as an adult and one who analyzes story more carefully than I did at age fourteen, I am disappointed with how Hughes concludes his film.  At least for four of the characters, it doesn’t seem right.  While I’m let down though, that doesn’t mean the movie is wrong. 

Teenagers will not always act upon what is right or more precisely what they know to be right or just.  Our teenage years are an opportunity to commit and then learn from our mistakes.  In our adolescent years, we explore what is forbidden with misbehavior and risk whether it be rebelling against authority, daring to drink and do drugs, acting upon sexual impulse or exacting bullying and peer pressure.  Even sneaking through the hallways around school is a game of cat and mouse where the goal is not to get caught by the teacher.

I’m inclined to recommend that parents watch The Breakfast Club with their kids when they are mature enough for the material.  Yet, I really don’t want to.  The whole point of the film is to cut off these kids from the outside world of parents and teachers and peers who expect something different of them than how they truly see themselves.  If my daughter were to watch this movie with mom and dad sitting right next to her, then she might not unequivocally respond to what Andrew, Claire, Allison, Brian and John really have to say.  To get in their minds, my daughter would have to watch without any outside influence where the conversation she has with the film is private between The Breakfast Club and her.  Perhaps, then she’ll see another teenager’s honest point of view.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

By Marc S. Sanders

Brian DePalma directed the first installment of Tom Cruise’s film adaptation of the Mission: Impossible series. It’s good, but not necessarily the best of the bunch.

DePalma’s approach with a script by screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) & David Koepp opens with last ditch effort at a Cold War setting. (By 1996, Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond had already abandoned that point in history.)

Cobblestone streets in Prague glisten under wet street lamps as a team of spies, led by Jim Phelps (the “Captain Kirk” of the original series) with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt as point man. They are attempting to prevent a buy/sell exchange of a disc containing identities of undercover agents spread across the globe. There are shadows. People walking covertly and other people watching people through cameras on eyeglasses and computer monitors. Everything is going according to plan, until as we expect, nothing goes according to plan, and Tom Cruise seems to be the only one surprised by it all. Now he’s accused of being a traitor having gotten his whole team murdered and he must go rogue (he does this a few times in the M:I films). DePalma’s opening is straight out of a John LeCarre novel. All good stuff.

More good stuff appears in act 2 when Ethan Hunt has to infiltrate CIA headquarters to retrieve another disc and allow himself to cable down into the most high tech secure room in the…well lets just say the world, that is conveniently run by the most incompetent dweeb in the…well let’s just say the world…again. The primarily silent sneak is as beautifully choreographed as a Russian ballet. It’s spectacular.

Even more good stuff occurs in act 3 in a high speed super train crossing through the Chunnel in Europe. There’s a helicopter and Tom Cruise on the roof of the train and even some exploding chewing gum. Act 3 is where DePalma, Towne & Koepp opt to leave the Cold War behind because let’s face it, no spy can remain covert when a helicopter gets tethered to a high speed train in a tunnel.

So yeah, there’s lots of goodies in Mission: Impossible, but it falls terribly short because Tom Cruise produced the film with his ego in the way. For example, he sets up a team of four, all with different specialties. They get properly introduced and then they are given not much to do except watch Tom Cruise “Ethan Hunt” his way out of one dangerous situation after another. Ving Rhames seems like an especially interesting character but all he’s reserved to is typing on a keyboard. Vanessa Redgrave puts on a charming mystery about herself for one short scene as an arms dealer only to do nothing else but sit on the train later on.

Lots of talent was assembled for this film including Jon Voight, Emilio Estevez, Jean Reno and Kristen Scott Thomas but they’re only here to be a live studio audience for Cruise’s heroics.

Compare this film to Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop. Murphy is no doubt the centerpiece, but he does not own every scene. Big moments come from the supporting cast as well. There’s more variety to that picture, which Murphy produced, than Cruise’s production.

A well utilized cast can be the difference between a good picture and a great picture.