Category: Tony Scott

CRIMSON TIDE

By Marc S. Sanders

A little over a year ago, having just seen Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, I shared with friends how it is sadly surprising that a nuclear weapon has not been launched by a super power country since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Those two bombs certainly served their purpose in response to the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941.  I deem it sad that any of us consider this a possibility that can easily be repeated. With all of the threats that continue worldwide with weapons testing, technological advancements and arms trading, it’s frightening to wonder what can ever be expected. Is it easier to execute a command like that again, now that it has been done?  It’s got to be a little surprising that the United States did not respond that way following the 9/11 attacks.  Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide comes close to providing an answer by weighing sound vs unsound reasoning. 

This is not only my favorite of Tony Scott’s films, but the movie also offers maybe my favorite performances from Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman.  The two actors of different generations are equal in measure as they debate what should be done, along with how the submarine they command, the U.S.S Alabama, should respond while in the midst of a revolutionary conflict stemming out of Russia.  

Washington is Commander Hunter, recruited at the last minute to serve as the Executive Officer aboard the Alabama.  Hackman is Captain Ramsey who proudly leads the charge of the sub with an intimidating welcome to Hunter.  Before any kind of real conflict comes their way, Ramsey puts Hunter to the test.  An uncomfortable dinner conversation, wisely written by Robert Towne (Chinatown), has the Captain question Hunter’s stance on using nuclear force to deliver a harsh defeat to the enemy.  Hunter’s position though is the real enemy is war itself.  Ramsey and his commanding staff have no reply to the new member’s observation.

Another moment occurs when Ramsey orders a missile launch drill while Hunter is assisting with containing an on-board fire in the galley.  The Captain has his reasons that Hunter cannot truly debate. Besides, Ramsey precisely tells his XO to “bite (his) fucking tongue,” even if he doesn’t agree with him.

The centerpiece of the officers’ conflict arrives when they receive a fractured message from command.  Ramsey’s instinct is to launch missiles at Russia based on the presumption that the Soviet rebels have overtaken the country’s arms.  Though Hunter cannot deny the concern, he will not agree to a missile launch until they receive the entirety of the broken order.  This occupies the second half of the film, and it becomes a back-and-forth mutiny of power.  The Captain is relieved of command but then retains control and the crew is divided between the leaderships of these two characters.

Having recently seen and reviewed the submarine classic Das Boot, it’s fair to say that film feels much more authentic and maybe it should be much more tense than any other movie of its kind.  Crimson Tide is glossier with outstanding interior cinematography on a studio constructed set designed to tilt like a maritime vessel should.  The dashboards and colored lighting are fancier.  The cast is good looking as Tony Scott obtains close up shots of them beaded in glistening perspiration with no facial hair.  Crimson Tide is definitely a Hollywood picture.  However, the screenplay from Michael Schiffer is razor sharp with not one wasted piece of dialogue.  In addition to Robert Towne’s contribution, Quentin Tarantino also script doctored a portion of the piece as well which includes a well-placed Star Trek allegory. 

There’s a jolt of energy to Crimson Tide that Das Boot has at times, but because of the latter’s three hour plus running time it also slumbers like life should while living on a submarine.  It is the theatrics of Crimson Tide that hold my attention on many repeat viewings.  I’d never want to question a guy like Captain Ramsey, but I’d be grateful that someone like Commander Hunter is around to stand in protest.  

I wish Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington had done another film together.  Their conflicted chemistry is second to none.  You like them both equally in the scenes they share together, or individually.  The timing of their tempos is perfect.  They find just the right moments to be alarming in a quiet way and save other opportunities for shocking outbursts.  The best actors practice their scripts this way and avoid any traps of overdramatizing.

Tony Scott made this film before his penchant for chaotic angles and grainy captions took over much of his other films to come hereafter.  Crimson Tide is cut perfectly from one scene to another with outstanding colors of blue, red and green lights that illuminate the cast while they stand at their posts.  Washington, Hackman as well as a sensational supporting cast (Viggo Mortensen, James Gandolfini, George Dzundza, Steve Zahn, Matt Craven, Lillo Brancato) do fine work and respond beautifully to the director’s camera positions. 

It’s impossible not to feel the tension accompanied with the progression of this film.  It serves as a motivation to wonder if we act on what we know or don’t act on what we don’t know.  As taut and dramatic as Crimson Tide is, you find yourself considering if those with access to the real-life red button consider all that could come of their decisions.  

Crimson Tide may tidy itself up after two hours, but the movie still makes me ponder if this planet’s military forces are thinking each and every day about if we are preventing nuclear war or if we are on the cusp of waging a nuclear holocaust.

This is one of my most favorite films. 

UNSTOPPABLE (2010)

By Marc S. Sanders

An adventure of the unexpected needs to start with urgency. 

“Let’s say there’s a runaway train that’s barreling through the state of Pennsylvania and no one is on board to stop it.”

“Not bad.  What else you got?”

“This train is a half mile long. So, it’s a roller coaster of a beast.”

“Go on.”

“How about there’s another train on the same track and the two are going to collide with each other?”

“It’s got potential.  Anything else?”

“Oh yeah.  The train is carrying toxic chemicals that could cause mass destruction and casualties of epic proportions throughout the rural area.”

“Okay.  Now we’re talking.  Any guns?  Can we find a way to get machine guns into the mix?” 

“Yes!  I got it.  How about if the people try to derail it and the only way to make that happen is the cops shoot at this tiny button on the bottom of the engine, and this button is located between the gas tanks?  So it’s gotta be a direct hit while the train is in motion.”

“Okay.  Okay.  That’s genius.  Let’s green light it.”

Now this might have been how Unstoppable, director Tony Scott’s final film, got put into commission, but what is especially fascinating is that this is based on a true story. An out-of-control locomotive actually went off with no one on board to control it.  It happened within the state of Ohio about fifteen years prior to the release of this film.  Only it was not as dramatic or suspenseful as Tony Scott and his crew assembled their movie.  Unstoppable is a pumped-up, steroid enhanced reenactment of the actual story.

The director recruited his most common go to lead, Denzel Washington, for the role of Frank Barnes.  He’s an engineer with over thirty years’ experience who is wiser than the big wig suits on the top floor.  He can bring this potential disaster to a halt before it happens.  Frank is also a mentor to the fresh, young conductor, Will Colson (Chris Pine). 

Will is cranky because his wife is upholding a restraining order against him and the two are at a standstill of hashing their problems out over the phone.  Frank is in a bad mood because the young guys like Will are being brought in to replace the grizzled fellows who are being pushed out.  Frank is also a widower with two estranged daughters. Though, he gets a kick out of telling Will the girls are paying their way through college by working at Hooters.

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine make a good pair.  Buddies who antagonize each other at first, they later share what’s eating at them personally and professionally. Then they work well together to resolve the crisis at hand.  Their characters are not very dimensional, nor should they be.  After all, it’s all about the train.  Yet, I believed them as train engineers/conductors.  Either of these guys could be operating a merry go round and I’ll believe they know some serious shit about how the carousel operates and moves in a circular motion.  My point is these actors really work at it to appear like guys who are well trained within the freight train industry, and I buy all of it.

In the control center, staring at large monitors with high tech maps is Connie (Rosario Dawson).  She’s communicating on the CB with Frank and Will and giving them updates on the status of when their engine will be within hookup range with the one speeding out of control.  She’s also the figurehead with the smart mouth, needed to stand up to her bubbleheaded corporate boss (Kevin Dunn) who threatens to fire all of them.  In other movies, this guy would be the angry police captain in a cop movie.  He’d be the government official who believes he can protect the President while Kevin Costner or Clint Eastwood knows that’s not how it works.  This is a slot role.  Use the same dialogue for a guy like this no matter what the picture is about because it’s all standard stuff. 

On paper, Unstoppable sounds ridiculous and quite ordinary for an adventure.  A runaway train.  Isn’t there anything else?  Yet, Tony Scott applies his quick edits and aggressive zoom in and zoom out shots to the movie’s breakneck progression.  He’s also got those curved Steadicam movements within Connie’s control center accompanied with glowing bright lights of greens, reds and blues. 

News reporters’ updates, along with footage from helicopters, are spliced in between the scenes that Washington and Pine share together in the cab of their train engine.  The glue holds up well.  There’s time allowed for Frank’s girls to cheer daddy on while at Hooters. Will’s wife played by Jessy Schram holds their young son while nervously fidgeting and tearing up watching the news.  I don’t think she has any dialogue beyond the line “C’mon Will!” Soon, she’s live on the scene staring straight ahead for the final act of the film.  That’s a problem.   I’m questioning why she’s looking in the same spot straight ahead if this train barrels on and on.  It’s certainly not in a stationary position.  She’s not watching a baseball game.  No bother.  It’s not fun to question a picture like this with such semantics. 

The exhilaration comes in how Tony Scott sets up his action pieces with daring leaps on and off the train and running sprints on top of and in between the cars.  Guys hang from helicopters with attempts to board the train.  Cop cars turn their sirens on and speed parallel to the locomotive, and yes, as in any Tony Scott film, a handful of cop cars bang themselves up real good in some gritty pile ups. A gorgeous red pickup truck works its way into the story too.

Screeching sound effects are also necessary.  They were nominated for an Oscar. 

Perhaps my one complaint that’s hard to accept is that in some shots, the train, which is supposedly going at over 70 mph, doesn’t look like its going fast enough.  Urgency is important in a film like this and when I get the impression the train is not traveling at a high enough speed, well then the threat doesn’t feel so threatening.  It’s when there are shots underneath from an on the track perspective that you really get an idea of the exhilaration.  In a movie like Speed, the bus always looked like it was accelerating and never slowing down.  Here, the train seems to move slow enough at times that anyone could have just leaped on board, but as Miguel always says, “Then there would be no movie.”

Don’t go into Unstoppable with your Neil deGrasse Tyson laws of physics.  Don’t get hung up on the wife who can see everything that’s happening by staring straight ahead when this speeding train is racing past her from right to left.  Don’t worry. Move on.  It may not look like it, but this train is going faster than it appears. 

Just enjoy the ride, and relish in what set Tony Scott aside as a well-equipped and capable action director.  Sadly, he left this world too soon.  There were more fun action movies to be made by him.  Unstoppable at least reminds you why he is still so sadly missed.

MAN ON FIRE (2004)

By Marc S. Sanders

A movie that has eluded me until now is Man On Fire featuring Denzel Washington in another Tony Scott film.  I say eluded because with this director/actor combination I’m usually satisfied with the finished product.  That wasn’t the case here, though.

Washington portrays a hard drinking bodyguard named John Creasy.  He’s recruited by his war buddy, played by an uninteresting Christopher Walken, to protect a young girl named Pida (Dakota Fanning), daughter of an automobile industrialist and his always fashionable wife (Mark Anthony, Rahda Mitchell).  Creasy is a cold fish at first who refuses to accept Pida’s friendship.  Jump to a couple of quick scenes later and he’s become her surrogate father and swimming coach.  In a matter of seven minutes of running time, I’m supposed to accept that this guy has turned into a cuddly teddy bear for this kid.  As soon as that happens, Creasy is ambushed and Pida is kidnapped following her piano lesson. We are not even a quarter of the way through the picture, but the remaining hour and forty minutes play like an awful how-to documentary on effective means of torture for bad guys before ruthlessly killing them.

Tony Scott is a director who always seeks to demonstrate that glossy film styles are more significant than the screenplays he directs or the characters who reside within.  (Two exceptions come to mind though, Crimson Tide and True Romance.  Maybe some of Top Gun too.)  Man On Fire is a frustrating watch as Scott’s camera performs like a narrator with attention deficit disorder.  It can never sit still.  The movie jerks around so much with ridiculous quick cuts and deliberately grainy and distressed cinematography.  Just when I’m trying to comprehend a new player who enters the fold, the camera jumps to something else like a street corner or a moving car or Denzel Washington’s sunglasses. There are subtitles for the Spanish speaking characters that appear in a block letter font that looks like it came from a karaoke machine.  There’s also subtitles for what somehow appear to be “important” or “powerful” statements.  A line like “pass the salt” might read like “PASS the SaLt…PLEASE!!!!”  Tony Scott is obviously going for some kind of MTV music video approach, but it’s awfully distracting and downright annoying.  As well, I must ask why.  Why go through all this effort? The cameramen must have been getting motion sickness while fumbling and shaking around their equipment to shoot this picture.  So why bother?

The most interesting plot point happens in the first three seconds of the movie.  A statistic pops up describing how often kidnappings occur in Mexico (one every sixty seconds), and how as many as seventy percent of those incidents end up with a dead victim.  That’s a shocking dilemma, worthy of attention. Through his career, Washington’s selection of scripts has allowed him to tackle important issues with moments of debate and smart dialogue, as well as suspenseful action if there is a call for it.  However, Tony Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland are not interested in using these facts as a springboard with Man On Fire. 

Once the expected kidnapping occurs, and following a very quick healing – as in less than two days – of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back, John Creasy goes on a war path of revenge when he learns that Pida is dead.  Creasy doesn’t get to perform with much intellect here.  Having only a partial license plate number, he’s able to follow the breadcrumbs that lead to a crime syndicate notorious for winning millions in ransom demands.  Creasy simply goes up the food chain from one member to the next until he gets to the top of the pyramid.  That’s the movie!  That’s it!

He’ll cut a guy’s fingers off and cauterize them with a car cigarette lighter.  He somehow has access to a rocket launcher to use within the city.  Sadly, the most novel technique is to stick a rectal detonator (yes, I said rectal) up a man and set a timer for the guy to come clean with information before it goes off.  We can thank Tony Scott for putting up a countdown digital clock on the screen to gauge how close this thug is to his demise.

My past experience with movies like these have taught me that there’s always a traitor.  Someone set the plan in motion to abduct the little girl.  That’s not hard to figure out.  Once the character appears on screen, it could not be more obvious.  The motivation is just as ridiculous.

Man On Fire is only imaginative in how the protagonist dispatches one guy after another.  It lacks any effort in creativity towards its hero.  The guy drinks. He torments his enemies.  He’s got nothing interesting to say.  There’s a neglect for a very real and common problem within the country of Mexico.  The only design that is given attention is “artistic style” that Tony Scott adopts to mask away what is not there in any of the writing or character development.

I’d like to learn more about how the Mexican government responds to these kidnappings and maybe the experience that survivors endured.  Show me the torment that the families go through.  Can I see the method to the kidnappers’ plots or how they select their next target?  A very real predicament was offered with Man On Fire, but then it was tossed aside so I could see the effectiveness of an explosive suppository.  Now, is that really a movie that any of us want to see?

TOP GUN

By Marc S. Sanders

For a movie that focuses a lot on showers, men’s locker rooms and bare chested sweaty and chiseled volleyball players, it’s a wonder that it is called Top Gun.  Maybe the title has another indirect meaning to it, other than a moniker for a Navy fighter pilot school of the elite.  Maybe these guys are elite for a different reason.

The Tony Scott film that is supposedly about the top one percent, the best of the best, American fighter pilots in the Navy is arguably the most important film in Tom Cruise’s career.  It launched the actor into a superstar sensation that has hardly faltered since the movie’s release all the way back in 1986.  But is it a good movie?  Well, yes and no.

I’ve always loved Tony Scott’s filmmaking technique.  Sure, his sun-soaked film shots are constantly repeated.  He always relishes in enhancing the beaded glow of sweat drenching his actor’s faces, arms and chests.  It’s seen in nearly every moment of Top Gun, as well as other celebrated pictures like Crimson Tide, Beverly Hills Cop II and True Romance.  Orange sunlight blankets palm trees and beach lined streets.  Bar saloons and military headquarters are lit in sexy blues and greens.  It may lack originality after seeing a few of his films, but it just makes the movie all the more sexy. 

Tony Scott is also a well-versed director in action sequences.  He’ll get your pulse racing and Top Gun is the best example.  The fighter jet sequences in this film are masterful in editing, sound and speed.  It’s fantastic to see how the planes will twirl around and then shoot themselves straight up into a vertical trajectory in the sky and finally cut in on actors Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer for a “WOO!” moment in the cockpit.  This stuff still holds up.

Yet, unlike other modern-day films that focus on cadets or students in our armed forces, Top Gun doesn’t concern itself with the discipline of what it takes to serve in the Navy.  This is the informal, class clown version of An Officer And A Gentleman.  You only need look as far as Tom Cruise’s character’s pilot call name, Maverick.  The name itself is a one-word thematic description of what you are watching.  So, the kid who learned to say “what the fuck” in Risky Business, went on to do daredevil flybys while disobeying orders.

Maverick’s real name is Pete Mitchell.  He has no family except that of his co-pilot, Goose (Anthony Edwards).  The disappearance of his Navy pilot father remains a mystery…because it is sexy and cool to have a mystery for your handsome hero in a film like this.  Call it DRAMATIC HEFT!!!! 

When Maverick and Goose get the opportunity to attend “Top Gun” – a fighter school specializing in training the best pilots in the world in aerial dog fighting – they are intent on getting their names on the plaque for the best of the best of THE BEST.  Competition comes in the other prettiest of the pretty boys with Iceman (Val Kilmer).  These are all great likable characters.  Yet, even when I saw this film at sleepaway camp at age 13, I couldn’t help but notice how distracted it gets with the abundance of erotic machoism on display here.  What would serve as dramatic dialogue in another film is presented in a steam room area allowing opportunity to see the male cast wrapped in towels around their waists with wet spiky blond and black hair.  It truly doesn’t matter what they are talking about in this scene.  When you are watching it, all that you are hearing is the sound of Charlie Brown’s unseen and indecipherable school teacher.  “Waa waa.  Waa waa waa waa!”

That’s not enough though.  The infamous volleyball scene keeps you awake.  I don’t care if you are hetero or homo or bi or pan or plus, the beach volleyball scene keeps you alert as one of Kenny Loggins’ many movie songs plays in accordance.  Tony Scott doesn’t just go for tossing the ball around.  Slow mo captions are offered of each guy just posing with their chiseled arms and chests.  You may not take your eyes off of it, but oh my…what does this have to do with the discipline of attending Navy fighter pilot school training?????

The romance is second to none.  Truly!  These days, people talk about Jack and Rose in Titanic or Ross and Rachel on Friends.  For me, it’s Maverick and Charlie (Kelly McGillis).  Cruise and McGillis really light up their scenes together.  It’s an absolute perfect pairing of sex appeal and it is really when Top Gun performs at its smartest level.  The dialogue is strongest during their scenes.  The romance isn’t rushed but nicely flirted with, and when tragedy strikes within the thin storyline of the overall film, the relationship goes in another supportive and appreciated direction.  When I was a kid, with hormones being discovered for the first time, my buddies and I would elbow each other during the midnight blue sex scene between McGillis and Cruise with the Oscar winning song “Take My Breath Away” from Berlin playing.  I look at this scene now and it is modern romance at a beautiful best.  A fantastic scene from Tony Scott. 

Charlie is the unexpected, well-versed contractor for the Navy giving counsel to the pilot students on how best to operate the jets.  In the 1980s, action blockbusters normally held the women as the barely dressed damsels to be rescued, and nothing more.  The female characters didn’t have brains and the only brawn to go around was saved for Princess Leia or Marion Ravenwood (Raiders).  Charlie is an exception though.  McGillis plays the character as someone who is aware that these testosterone-filled guys will regard her as a piece of meat, until they realize otherwise.  The irony of Top Gun is that the nearly all male cast, Cruise included, are the pieces of meat.  The one main female role is actually the brains of the whole operation.  McGillis was a marvelous actress back in the day.  Go look at Witness and The Accused to see what I mean.  With her help, Cruise elevates above the hokey dialogue of the Top Gun script. Kelly McGillis really could act well in almost anything.  I wish her career went further, honestly. 

Top Gun remains a mainstay in 1980s pop culture.  If the VH1 channel is doing a documentary on the decade of Madonna, Michael Jackson, parachute pants and neon pastels, Top Gun is also brought up in the mix with a close up of Tom Cruise’s toothy grin and his aviator sunglasses.  We were never watching Oscar winning material here, but somehow the film that introduced all of us to Tom Cruise still feels like a day at the beach with the twenty something boy toy in his tight jeans and leather bomber jacket riding his Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle at top speed or breaking the sound barrier in his fighter jet with his shiny navy-blue helmet on his head.  Top Gun and Tom Cruise demonstrated that it’s a party to serve in the Navy.  Why not?  Vietnam was behind us and the decade was not embroiled in war.  Join the Navy!!!!  It’s fun and you get to shower with the best-looking guys in the world.  You’ll even get to play volleyball with them and date your sexy flight instructor.

A lot of the dialogue and the storyline may sound like an adult, military interpretation of Saved By The Bell, but you can’t break away from the sexy allure of what Tony Scott with Cruise, Kilmer, McGillis and Edwards put on the screen.  It’s always been there and somehow a sequel was never made. 

Wait a second!  WHAT??????

TRUE ROMANCE

By Marc S. Sanders

The structure built into the script for True Romance by Quentin Tarantino, directed by Tony Scott, is like the trunk of a solid oak tree with strong, sturdy branches representing its collection of seedy characters in off color scenes. Tarantino sets it up – an Elvis infatuated boy meets a rookie call girl (Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette). Boy marries girl, and then boy & girl find a suitcase filled with a fortune in uncut cocaine. A simple storyline that now allows a bunch of fun, short vignettes to be played out, all leading to one moment after the other within this universe of outlandish, lurid debauchery.

What works so well in True Romance is that literally from beginning to end, you are always meeting a new and incredibly interesting character. Each scene welcomes someone else into the fold. For that, you need an all-star cast. Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Conchata Farrell, Dennis Hopper, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, Michael Rapaport, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, Ed Lauter, Elvis & martial arts master Sonny Chiba. The list goes on and on. It should be noted that some of this cast were hardly bankable stars before this film, which flopped at the box office in 1993. Before the movie became a cult B movie obsession on home video and cable, it was blazing the trail of well-established careers for much of its talent.

Nearly every character can have a story of their own written about them. Take Gary Oldman in one of his best roles as the vicious looking pimp named Drexel, a white guy adopting a Jamaican gangsta accent with dreadlocks, gold caps on his teeth, a blind eye and wickedly curved scar down the side of his face. His appearance alone makes me beg to know this guy’s background in a whole other movie. Drexel’s introduction comes early when he pumps a shotgun into two hoods. Shortly thereafter he’s conversing with Clarence Worley (Slater), and we know who’s in charge of this scene. Oldman is only given about 10 minutes of screen time, but it’s hardly forgettable.

The same goes for Walken, as a well-dressed mafia don interrogating Clarence’s father (Hopper). This scene has become legendary for film lovers, and it carries into a stratosphere of intelligence and timing in performance duality. It remains one of the best scenes Tarantino ever wrote as we learn a probable origin of Sicilians from a doomed Dennis Hopper. This is an acting class at its finest.

Jeffrey L Kimball filmed the piece showing contrasts of a wintery cold and dirty Detroit versus a sun-soaked Los Angeles. It’s sharp photography of gorgeous colors schemes.

Hans Zimmer scored the soundtrack, deliberately saluting Terrance Malick’s Badlands where we followed a similarly young criminal couple played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Zimmer’s fun, melodic tones to celebrate Arquette and Slater’s adventures is perfectly in tune with the two-dimensional charm of their new and happy relationship. Most of Tarantino’s script is not taken seriously. Zimmer was the right device for that.

A few spare moments are played with dread, though. Slater and Arquette are truly in love. So, Tarantino & Scott threaten what the film treasures. Arquette as a call girl named Alabama Worley is incredible throughout the film. She’s a silly, adorably cute Southern belle dressed in secondhand store accessories, such as a cow spotted patterned skirt with neon blue sunglasses, and red cowgirl boots. This is not someone you’d hire to manage your accounting firm or run a library. However, Arquette’s emotional range really comes through during a brutal beating scene with Gandolfini. It pains a viewer to watch the moment, but it comes long after we’ve grown to love her.

Later, towards the end, our favorite couple is again endangered during a three way Mexican standoff. It’s hilarious, and way off kilter, but then it also gets downright scary.

That’s the beauty of True Romance. It’s a well-organized mess of emotions from comedy to drama to violence and silliness. Tarantino has great set pieces put together in a connect the dots rhythm.

It’s an endlessly quotable film. It’s a visual film. It’s a literal roller coaster of dangerously amusing storytelling told with affection and gratuity. It’s also quite sweet.

True Romance remains one of my favorite films of all time.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (2009)

By Marc S. Sanders

While the remake of The Taking Of Pelham 123 is not the best of the Tony Scott directed/Denzel Washington headlining thrillers, it’s still a good time. I’m a sucker actually for most of their films, though as of this writing I’ve yet to see Man On Fire. Washington and Scott made several action pictures together. You depend on Scott to work in all the fast cuts to wake up your pulse and allow Washington to form a variety of characters. Denzel Washington didn’t have to appear like the macho tough guy with the ripped muscles. In Pelham, it could not be more evident.

Washington plays Walter Garber (first name salute to Walter Matthau of the original film), a dispatch operator for the New York City subway line with years of experience in all facets of operation and management. However, he’s been demoted due to an ongoing investigation that he has accepted bribes. Now let me say that I like this angle. He’s not a typical alcoholic or drug addict that we might have seen a Bruce Willis guy do one too many times. This is something different and unexpected. Washington also appears with a pot belly, glasses and no fashion sense. He’s not a decorated war veteran. This is not an action hero. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland got it just right, with this character at least.

John Travolta is your bad guy known as Ryder, and I’m afraid he’s cut from similar cloths of his other career bad guys. He screams in the same way. He has the psycho meltdown attempts at hilarity. So he’s more of the same really.

Ryder and his crew hijack one car off the subway line that comes out of Pelham Bay, NY. Garber answers the call from Ryder with his demands for money within the hour or a hostage will get killed minute by minute after the deadline.

Now Helgeland and Scott are very aware of the absurdity going on here. When the apathetic Mayor (a welcome James Gandolfini) agrees to pay the cash, it has to be transported all the way from the bank reserve in Brooklyn. This requires Scott’s signature moves of racing police cars and bikes through congested New York City to get it to Ryder before the deadline. Only midway through this long sequence which gobbles up tons of the film’s running time, does someone ask why they just didn’t use the helicopter. Cue my colleague Miguel E Rodriguez: “Then there wouldn’t be a movie!!!!”

As much as I like the action shots, because I’m a guilty pleasure sucker for that stuff, I have to insist that there still could’ve been a movie; a better movie. Helgeland’s script wasn’t imaginative enough, or the producers insisted on more car crashes and things blowing up real good. The original with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw maintained tension for its two hour running time. This remake could have learned a little more from its ancestor. Two great actors are at your disposal, and you might have gotten some good dialogue like that of Clarice & Hannibal, perhaps.

Still, the conversations between Washington and Travolta are serviceable on at least one side with most credit going to Washington. Surprises into the Garber character keep the film interesting. Travolta? Well, I saw this guy in Face/Off and Broken Arrow and Swordfish and on and on.

The Taking Of Pelham 123 always had my attention. Yet, I wish it showed me even more new things than just its unlikely hero. Denzel Washington shouldn’t have to be the only one putting in overtime.

BEVERLY HILLS COP II

By Marc S. Sanders

I know. I know. I SHOULDN’T like this movie, but I do.

Beverly Hills Cop II is a sequel that is really an opportunity to see a wide variety of close ups of an Eddie Murphy who was well in his ‘80s prime, releasing one #1 movie after another. Here the viewer is treated to Murphy’s Axel Foley blowing a kiss to himself in the mirror, laughing to himself, tucking his crotch in his tailor made suit, flipping sunglasses on and off, driving a Ferrari, and shamelessly plugging the Detroit Lions all while trying to stop an “Alphabet Bandit” criminal in Beverly Hills, CA.

So there’s really not much here when all the vanity is on Murphy. Well, then what’s to like?

Considering I’m a fan of director Tony Scott, who uses great cinematography in all of his films with quick, tension filled editing, it’s hard to resist.  Most especially here Scott’s film is accompanied with an exceedingly cool and dangerous soundtrack from Harold Faltermeyer. Just the opening scene alone (without Murphy in it) belongs in a better movie. A robbery at a City Deposit bank and then later at a horse track are so well edited that you might tuck your knees into your chest and chew on your thumbnail. Great stuff from Tony Scott that would eventually carry over in films like Crimson Tide, Enemy Of The State, and one of my very favorites True Romance.

There are other good moments in Beverly Hills Cop II, especially a great scene with Gilbert Gottfried, and a few with Paul Reiser as well as a smirk inducing scene with Hugh Hefner.

I shouldn’t like this movie but sue me. It’s a guilty pleasure for me. However, watch the far superior first installment over this one any day of the week.