BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Exterminator 2 (Mark Buntzman & William Sachs (uncredited), 1984)

Four years after his first rampage, John Eastland (Robert Ginty) returns to arbitrarily murder random gang members. 

When his new love interest is attacked by a gang led by X (Mario Van Peeples), Eastland/a stuntman in a mask turns his flamethrower on the gang of Mad Max-inspired bad 'uns.

While I do enjoy some of their output, I do not have a soft spot for Cannon Films. That being said, there is no denying that - unlike a lot of studios of the time and today - there is something distinctive about eerie output.   

There is a cartoonish quality to Cannon movies that have given them a cult audience. And it is always fascinating to see how their films - no matter whoever writes or directs - always share the same simplistic view of the world. In a way, their reductive approach to action movies in particular feel like unintentional commentary about the American audience they sought to reach - the villains are always racial stereotypes; their victims straight out of Reagan campaign commercials. They are so on-the-nose they could almost pass for parody. 

Like other studios, Cannon Films needed product that they could sell to investors. While this is necessary in the studio system, there is a something almost frenzied about Cannon's output, in terms of both variety and execution. It is almost like they wanted to grab every audience with every kind of movie you can think of (sometimes in the same movie; see the Flashdance-meets-The Exorcist mashup Ninja III - The Domination). To grab easy box office, they bought best-selling books, ripped off past hits and made innovative attempts at adapting different kinds of intellectual property such as toys (Masters of the Universe) and comic books (Captain America; the un-produced Spider-Man). They also made a lot of sequels to movies made by other companies.  

One of these films was a follow-up to a sleeper hit from 1980, The Exterminator.

The original Exterminator is a curious mishmash of Vietnam vet drama and vigilante picture — the sequel is a cartoon of ultra violence. I tried to watch the original, and could not make it 15 minutes in. While it aims for a similar gritty style, Exterminator 2 is so hyperbolic in its execution that it feels more of a piece with Cannon's Death Wish sequels than the original.

It almost did not come to the screen.

This movie went through a major overhaul in post-production — writer-director Mark Buntzman was fired after he went way over-budget and ‘movie doctor’ William Sachs was brought on to re-shoot large portions of the movie. Unable to secure leading man Robert Ginty for the re-shoots, Sachs came up with the ingenious idea of turning the Exterminator into masked flame-throwing anti-hero. Freed from having to show his hero’s face, Sachs shot various scenes with Ginty’s stand-in torching various gang members and Mario Van Peeples as the villainous X, the gang leader after the Exterminator’s blood. 

The plot is pretty simple — John Eastland (Ginty) spends his nights torching gang-bangers and his days accompanying his friend Be Gee on his route as a garbageman. When the woman he loves is attacked and injured by X’s gang, Eastland goes over the edge. 

This transition is less obvious in the finished movie. The movie opens with a scene of a masked Eastland torching a group of sadistic robbers, implying that he has already resumed murdering people (or never stopped in the first place). 

Once his girlfriend/plot device has been attacked, the movie is peppered with other scenes where Eastland torches other gang members — this means there is no real sense of escalation (or even justification) since Eastland never gave up being the Exterminator.

As far as the acting goes, the movie's stitched-together nature might have worked in its favour. In the lead role, Robert Ginty is a snooze. I do not like writing that, but the scenes with him and the masked stuntman playing him in the reshoots carry the same lack of personality. Frankie Faizon briefly appears as one of his friends, and the disjunct in acting styles has to be seen to be believed.  

While Ginty is a black hole, Van Peeples is pretty fun as the villain - with his build and physicality, there were a few moments where he reminded me of Tom Hardy's Bane (there is one scene where he kills an underling that is very reminiscent of that masked villain). Due to Ginty's absence for the reshoots, he took more of the spotlight and gives the movie more of a centre. Plus, this is a b-level action movie: without Van Peeples, this movie would be much harder to watch. 

By the look of the Ginty footage, the Buntzman version of Exterminator 2 would have been fairly underwhelming. Thanks to the intervention of the Cannon bigwigs, and Sachs’ reshoots, the final movie is the perfect example of the Cannon action flick: unpretentious, fast-paced and cartoonishly violent.

BITE-SIZED REVIEWS: Cocoon & Cocoon: The Return

These movies might not have been a good idea to review. 

Cocoon (Ron Howard, 1985)

Released in 1985, Cocoon was Ron Howard’s first film after he hit it big with Splash the previous year. 

Basically The Exotic Marigold Hotel for stars of Old Hollywood, Cocoon is a sweet, simple little movie that offers the likes of Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn and Wilford Brimley a chance at centre stage. 

Ameche was considered a lightweight heartthrob in his day (despite strong performances in the likes of Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait), and Cocoon cemented his comeback after his great double-act with Ralph Bellamy as the scheming tycoons in Trading Places (John Landis, 1983). 

Hume Cronyn, one of the great character actors, had been delivering great performances going back to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and the classic noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946). His on- and offscreen wife, Jessica Tandy, had played Blanche in the original production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and would go on to experience her own late-bloom resurgence with Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989).

The main star is Steve Guttenberg. Fresh off Police Academy, Cocoon helped him consolidate his run as an 80s leading man. His everyman hero feels like a studio note - an add-on to appeal to a younger audience. While he is an entry point for the audience, there has always been something a little pointless about his subplot. 

The story is relatively simple — a group of people living at an old folks home get a second chance at youth when they sneak into the neighbouring property for a swim and find that the new owners have filled the pool with the cocoons of the title — the cocoons contain aliens who have been in hibernation — the neighbours, led by Brian Dennehy, are of the same species, and have come to Earth to retrieve their brethren.

Eventually the secret spills out to the rest of the retired community and they all get into the pool. With so many bodies, the cocoons’ energy is drained and the sleeping aliens die.

Their mission having failed, the aliens prepare to leave. The movie ends with the old people joining the aliens on their return home...

This movie should be silly and mawkish — it should be completely and utterly ridiculous. And it is. 

But it is also a testament to good casting and Ron Howard’s unironic approach to the material. In terms of drama, Cocoon is fairly light, considering the sci fi trappings and special effects. In this respect it is closer to ET, in that it is based around relationships between benevolent aliens and a small group of humans sympathetic to their cause.

While it is not straight-out classic, the focus on the relationships of these characters, and how they deal with age, makes it stand out from other major studio sci fi fare.

Cocoon: The Return (Daniel Pertrie, 1988)

After the cocoons’ resting place is disturbed, the aliens have returned to secure their sleeping brethren. Our octogenarian heroes hitch a ride back to re-connect with their old lives.

Complications soon arise when one of the cocoons is discovered by a government laboratory. While the aliens try to figure out how to save the captive, their elderly friends begin to lose the vitality their extra-terrestrial sojourn has granted them, and they forced to reckon with their own mortality (again).

Released three years later, Cocoon: The Return is a prime example of a redundant sequel.   

Cocoon is a small, simple story built on a simple premise that can really only work for one story. Bringing back most of the original cast, Cocoon: The Return undoes the story of the original and runs through variations of scenes from the first movie, without adding anything that new or interesting.

Cocoon 2 adds its own version of ET’s military alien hunters, but it never comes off like a genuine threat. Possibly, the filmmakers felt that a subplot about scientists experimenting on the cocoons was too dark. Certainly, the sequences in the lab feel a little jarring.  

The one scene that feels genuine and hits the same emotional high as the original is Hume Cronyn’s final scene - it helps that Cronyn is playing opposite his real-life spouse. There is an emotion and verisimilitude that the rest of this movie cannot match

In the end, while never actively terrible, Cocoon: The Return is a rote, copycat sequel that never justifies its existence. Stick with the original.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: How To Be A Human Being (Glass Animals, 2016)

This review was originally published in 2016

Glass Animals return with their new album ‘How To Be A Human Being’. As an instructional manual, it is flawed. As an album of music, it’s more compelling.

The album starts strong — ‘Life Itself’ takes its time with an extended instrumental intro that draws the listener in. It’s the kind of cinematic intro that is not that common these days (it’s what Quincy Jones calls ‘ear candy’).

Surreal songs like ‘Pork Soda’, ‘Mama’s Gun’ and ‘Poplar St’ waft about without ever coming together in a traditional pop sense. It’s not an unpleasant sensation. This is an album that would probably work as mood setting during a long drive.

The album continues in this vein, blending psychedelic imagery with strange sound design. it almost sounds like what you would get if Weezer fell through a worm hole into 1967 and discovered LSD. Overall, it’s a hard vibe to describe — you get modern nerd references mixed with distorted vocals, repetitive choruses, processed instruments and stuttering dubstep-like beats and loops. It’s a real smorgasbord of sounds and styles. 

There’s a weird sense of drive to the music, although I will admit to dropping out a few times. It could use some judicious re-writing and re-editing — songs go on a mite too long, and you never really get a grasp on what the underlying purpose of it all is.

If you are looking for something different for your ‘music for monotonous tasks’ playlist, this might be right up your alley.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Bad Vibrations (A Day To Remember, 2016)

This review was originally published in 2016.

Opening with the punishing assault of the title track, A Day To Remember coming storming back with their new album Bad Vibrations.

Comprising 11 tracks, this a quick, heavy hit. No bloat, no mucking around. These guys are here to turn that space between your ears into a mosh pit.

Not that the assault is completely unrelenting — ‘Paranoia’ flirts with a hummable melody while pulverising your eardrums with heavy riffs and drum fills. It’s all very unpretentious and to the point. ‘Naivety’ is surprisingly melancholy for a song filled with chugging guitars and drum beats, with singer Jeremy McKinnon looking back on how much he has changed since his youth (considering he is 30, it can’t be that much). 

Other songs like ‘Exposed’ are more straight-ahead death metal barnstormers, with Cookie Monster vocals and every aural touchstone of that genre you can think of.

The album juggles between these two tones on an almost song-to-song basis, which means the overall pace never flags. One minute you are listening to the anthem ‘Bullfight’, and then onto the barrage of ‘Reassemble’. It’s a rollercoaster of an album, and far more enjoyable than the title would suggest.

The content belies the collective age of the band — the lyrics deal with age, and regret, and nostalgia. It’s this lyrical maturity which adds a real dimension to the crunch of the music. It feels more real and relatable than the empty navel gazing of so many post-punk bands.

Overall, Bad Vibrations is a strong album from the veteran band. Sonically, it doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but that does not detract from the strength of the material they have developed here. New listeners will find a lot to enjoy here.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Jumanji - The Next Level (2019)

When a group of old high school friends - Spencer (Alex Wolff), Anthony/Fridge (Ser'Darius Blain), Bethany (Madison Iseman) and Martha (Morgan Turner) - reunite a couple of years after the events of their previous adventure in the video game Jumanji, they find themselves sucked back inside the old video game. 

Only this time, their grandparents, Milo and Eddie (Dannys' Glover and DeVito, respectively), have also been sucked into the game. They have to work together to complete the game so that they can return home. 

A sequel from the school of 'the same, but different', this sequel to the surprise hit Jumanji - Welcome to the Jungle maintains the simplicity of the previous film's concept, but throws in a couple of new elements that make it just different enough to be a pleasant time-waster.

Following the Arctic nothingness of Hobbs and Shaw, I was starting to see the ceiling on Dwayne Johnson's appeal.

Watching this movie (and thinking about the last one), it is bizarre that these movies feature Johnson's most... vulnerable performances. Is it because he is playing a fictional character within the movie? Is it because the first one was successful?

It is a strange set of affairs when Johnson allows himself to be vulnerable only when he is embodying the pixelated avatar of a nerd. 

Aside from pondering the thought processes of its leading man, there is not much to chew on. The movie does not reinvent the wheel, but it is refreshing.

I am pretty sure that you could watch this one without having to see the last one. So many sequels are obsessed with world-building. Here, you have a premise that allows for future add-ons but does not require them. 

While it has a certain melancholy to its resolution, The Next Level continues to mine the basic conflict between the personalities and the characters they are saddled with. 

jEach of the key cast members have new conflicts that are exacerbated by their new avatars. The main storyline is built around our heroes' grandparents (Dannys Glover and DeVito), former friends who have a long-standing resentment that they are forced to confront inside the game.

Akwafina joins the cast as Spencer's new avatar, and fits in pretty seamlessly. The original cast are still fun. The one questionable choice was Black playing Fridge's avatar, although he does avoid falling into a caricature. 

Johnson and Hart, playing the bickering old friends, are weirdly invigorated. It is truly bizarre how committed they are to these characters' relationship. I am not saying this is a Michael Leigh-level drama, but there is a gravitas there, and they play it without tongue in cheek. 

While it is no masterpiece, there is something noteworthy about how skilfully this movie manages to avoid screwing up the original (sequel's) simple premise. I cannot say I am looking forward to a third movie, but it is more intriguing than any of the Rock's other upcoming vehicles.

Related

Jumanji - Welcome to the Jungle

Shazam (David F. Sandberg, 2019)

Teenager Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has been in and out of foster homes most of his life, ever since his mother disappeared when he was a child. Determined to be re-united with her, he has been willing to break any and all rules to find her.

Out of options after his latest gambit failed, Billy has to deal with a new foster family, a new school, and - after an encounter with a dying wizard (Djimon Hounsou) - the fact that he has transformed into a super-powered 30-something (Zachary Levi) and an angry bald man with a glowing eye (Mark Strong) wants to fight him for some reason.

It might be an effect of my disdain for prior DC movies, but I found this movie to be a delight.

There are no other words for it. After all the nonsense of the Zach Snyder trilogy, this movie feels like a great response to the relentless monotone of Man of Steel - here, the tone is multifaceted to reflect the subject matter and the story.  

Zachary Levi, so winning in Chuck, is great as the boyish superhero. Is he playing way younger than his childhood counterpart? Yes. Did I care? No! It is great to see him finally get a vehicle for his talents.

I also loved how clear the movie's theme was. Dr Sivana (Strong) and Billy are searching for acceptance from missing parental figures - Sivana's search is ultimately about power - having the ability to finally have supremacy over his domineering father. 

Meanwhile, Billy is searching for his mother, the only family he wants to be a part of. 

Sivana's quest is a tale of machismo pushed to its most monstrous extreme, while Billy sees the limits of being a loner when his fantasy of reuniting with his mother crash into reality. The movie is ultimately about the families we make for ourselves - when Billy finally accepts his new family, he is able to defeat Sivana.

The movie's style and tone were interesting: there is a brutality to some of the violence that surprised me - the opening car crash is horrifying - yet it fits as part of the story-telling.

 The diffference with something like Zack Snyder's entire filmography, is that the choices here felt like a way for the filmmakers to translate the comic book's origins in the Great Depression into contemporary terms.

It means the movie feels more grounded, which makes Shazam the character stick out more.

The presentation of the foster home and Billy’s new family really won me over - there is a sense of community and shared history to these scenes, with each of the kids given their own personalities and arcs. While the story is centred around a single super-powered being, the film places an emphasis on the importance of familial and communal bonds. Alone, Billy is lost - with his family, he can overcome anything. 

Overall, I loved this movie. Time to deploy the dreaded 'But...'

While the disconnect between Levi and Asher Angel's performances did not bother me, it would have been to the film's benefit if there is a unity between their performances - there is little of Billy's wounded stoicism in Shazam's child-like glee.

The one thing that I did not like was the presentation of the family's super-alter egos, particularly the transformation of Billy's foster brother and confidant Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) into whatever the Shazam version of Captain Marvel Jr is (Adam Brody).

Freddy has a physical impairment and is bullied by other kids at school. It is a part of the conflict between Freddy and Billy. His character is the one who I felt was the most short-changed by the transformation. When Brody's version of Freddy appears, he is sans impairment. 

Freddy does refer to himself in ableist terms - he is frustrated by his impairment, and frames Billy's lack of responsibility as Shazam in terms that emphasise how much Freddy desires to be not just a superhero, but non-disabled. And in the end, he ends up living out that fantasy.

While it's always great to see Adam Brody in things, but the fact that Freddy's ideal self does not have a disability is disheartening. I have an impairment similar to Freddy's - I have certainly had frustrations and times of self-loathing in my life. But so does everybody, regardless of ability.

My frustration with Freddy in Shazam is that the character falls into the same trope of a disabled person who desires to be free of their impairment. 

This is not an issue specific to Shazam, however it is depressing that a movie like this - that places such an emphasis on the diversity of its cast - should uphold the trope of the muscular physique as a signifier of superheroism without any comment. It is just a given that superheroes look like this. Sadly, Shazam's emphasis on a family of people of different backgrounds has to boil them down to the same familiar archetypes (on a related front, critic William Bibbiani has a great Twitter thread on the fat phobia of Hector's transformation into the herculean DJ Cotrona). 

I do not enjoy writing about this, but I really liked this movie - which makes this element sting worse. It is hard to dissect something you like so much, but it is important to bring it up. It is rare that I am faced with a movie that strikes so close to home - that rarity is itself an indictment on portrayals of disability in cinema, but that is a rant for another day.

The transition to the final endorsement is going to be awkward as hell.  

I really enjoy Shazam - it is a lot of fun (I had so much fun I even stuck around for the mid-credit scene, and the reveal of another Shazam foe). And while it is aimed at a slightly younger audience than previous DCEU movies, it boasts solid characterisation and a great theme. Whereas Man of Steel and BvS were self-absorbed in gloom with no sense of hope or purpose, Shazam is mature, funny and empathetic.

I just wish that sense of empathy did not come with qualifications.

 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random. 

In the latest episode we review the 1963 film From Russia With Love, starring Sean Connery. Subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts!

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: The Debt Collector (Jesse V. Johnson, 2018)

An indebted martial artist, French (Scott Adkins), gets a side job as a debt collector for a local mobster. 

Working with the veteran leg-breaker Sue (Louis Mandylor), French spends his first weekend running around LA after various parties.

As the pair learn to work together, they realise that they are pawns in a power play between their employer and other parties...

Despite dabbling in the genre with the Marine franchise, I am still finding my way into DTV action films. It is a little embarrassing, considering how much of this blog is taken up with action movies, that I still have not done a deep dive. 

Like many genres in the age of streaming, the lo-fi urban action picture has migrated from the big screen to the DTV market, where stars like Scott Adkins have succeeded in keeping the genre alive, with a focus on real stunts and violence.  

 One of the leading lights of the genre, Adkins has been on my radar for years, but I did not find a way into his filmography until I spied The Debt Collector on Netflix.

A hard-nosed 'buddy' movie in the no-frills, brutal style of Walter Hill and Don Siegel, The Debt Collector is a tight little action movie that does not aim high, but achieves all it sets out to, with a no-nonsense style and a welcome sense of humour. 

While it is not an action comedy, there is a vein of sardonic wit running through the movie that makes its cheese and tough-guy posturing more bearable, with the movie's various set pieces acting as literal punchlines.

I have not seen Adkins in many things - I think the only one of his star vehicles that I made it the whole way through was the first Ninja movie. It was fine, but I did not have any desire to check out more. 

As French, Adkins gets to straddle the everyman and the superhuman - he has a skillset that makes him formidable, but he has no experience with the LA underworld, and has to rely on a series of painful encounters with Sue to figure out how to navigate it. Adkins was a bit too wooden in Ninja, but that was a decade ago, and in this movie, with his natural accent, he is far more relaxed, and shows far more range as the rookie collector.

As his mentor/partner/insult trading partner, Louis Mandylor (most famous for his role in My Big Fat Greek Wedding), does the emotional heavy lifting as a gangster struggling to pull himself together and find some measure of redemption. He also possesses a rugged, brute physicality which provides a neat compliment to Adkins' athleticism. 

The story is pretty rote, but is peppered with a couple of weird characters and enjoyable set pieces. Jesse V. Johnson shoots the whole thing with a steady hand, and a some visual wit to season the brutal action. It is a good-looking movie, and has some decent location work.

On the basis of The Debt Collector, I am keen to check out some more of Scott Adkins' work. If you are in the mood for an efficient action flick, you could do worse than check it out.

Lilith (Robert Rossen, 1964)

War veteran Vincent Bruce goes to work at local institution and quickly falls under the spell of one of the patients, Lilith. As their relationship grows more intimate, roles blur and Vincent's own demons begin to bubble to the surface...

Emotionally explicit and quietly devastating, I have not stopped thinking about Lilith since I saw it earlier this year.

The reason I checked this movie out was Jean Seberg. I had heard this was considered her best performance, and since the last Seberg movie I saw was Bonjour Triestesse, I was eager to see it.

What I remember of her performance in Bonjour Triestesse was memorable but for the wrong reasons. Seberg had a tortured relationship with the filmmaker who discovered her, Otto Preminger. Preminger discovered her and made her the lead of his adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's St Joan. Preminger is infamous for his temper and inability to work with actors (baring a few exceptions).

Bonjour Tristesse is hard to watch because you can see the effect of Preminger's abuse on Seberg. The film is filled with extended takes, and Seberg - lacking the technique and experience to sustain - visibly dries up in the middle of shots, sometimes in the middle of line-readings.

It is a strange, troubling performance, and hard to forget.

Watching Lilith, I was struck by how different this performance was. Preminger had hounded Seberg, determined through two punishing shoots to draw out her talent, yet lacking any of the patience or empathy that could have given her the comfort and space to deliver.

Generally speaking, I try to judge a performance on its own, but here I could not help watching Lilith in the context of her career: Hypnotising, knowing, teasing, weirdly sympathetic yet still mysterious, Seberg's portrayal of Lilith is night and day from what I knew of her. Free of Preminger and post-Breathless, Seberg seems so free and confident. She is - was a star. 

Warren Beatty feels believably cowed in her presence. At first I found Beatty a little flat - it took a while but his understated performance works well with filmmaker Robert Rossen's more lyrical approach. His disaffected feels increasingly unsettling as his relationship with Lilith progresses.

Speaking of the filmmakers' approach, Rossen accomplishes most of the key emotional and relationship dynamics non-verbally - there are hints of the French New Wave to the editing style, but it is far more overtly narrative-driven. His approach to editing is almost impressionistic, hinting at things rather than battering you over the head with them.

The film reminded me of Claude Chabrol's late 60s films, particularly in their reluctance to reveal motivation.

The film is mostly from Vincent's point-of-view, yet the film never feels truly subjective. Vincent is searching for purpose, and seems to find it in a relationship with Lilith. While it is clearly based on obvious attraction, there is something else underpinning their union - a shared unspoken trauma.

There is a hint of incest to Vincent's infatuation, a subtext internalised when it is revealed he keeps photos of his mother and Lilith on his bedside table. As the film progresses it becomes harder to differentiate between patient and staff member - the key difference is that Vincent represses that which afflicts him, while Lilith expresses it in the way she interacts with other people.

Naming the character Lilith conjures up different ideas: Adam's first wife; a demon; an independent woman; unknowable; uncontrollable. I have never studied the semiotics or theory surrounding the name, but with regards to this movie I do not think you need to know.

The film juxtaposes the institution with Vince's one external relationship with Pam (Jessica Walter),  the woman Vincent previously loved. She is now a housewife to a boorish chauvinist (Hackman). The scene when Vince meets Laura at home is the funniest and bleakest sequence in the film.

Laura's husband blusters through conversation, attempting to be friendly and reinforce his own masculinity. In a sign of his own weakness, he draws a line from Vincent's job to his mother's mental illness.

A gross betrayal of trust, it also illuminates a level of intimacy between Vince and Laura that exceeds his relationship with Lilith. When Norman leaves, Laura attempts to seduce Vincent and he declines. She leaves in shame.

The filmmakers leave plenty of air in these conversations, constantly cutting between the participants. The lack of a score only emphasises the awkwardness, and the superficiality of these characters. Unable to express how they truly feel, there is little to seperate them from the people at the institution.

I spent the movie questioning and by equal turns marvelling at the film's take on Lilith - the camera seems both repelled and obsessed with her. The movie portrays her sexuality as an expression of her condition. There is something almost lecherous about Lilith's fixation with touch. The film's revelations about her relationship with a woman, and her encounters with young children feel questionable - is the film painting non-heterosexual attraction with paedophilia?

The film, in its elliptical way, is focused on the blurring of boundaries and breakdown of power between the supposed patient and staff.

 As a showcase for Jean Seberg, Lilith is worth a look. As a film in its own right, it is a strange, elliptical, and weirdly empathetic character study that I am still trying to puzzle out. I almost want to leave this review as a Part One and come back to it. 

 

Watch this space...

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Eraser (Chuck Russell, 1996)

John Krueger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is the star agent of the covert agency WITSEC, responsible for giving federal witnesses new identities.

His latest assignment is to protect corporate whistleblower Leigh (Vanessa Williams). Leigh is in possession of information that could not only bring down her former employers but members of the federal government.

When Leigh is targeted for assassination and Krueger is betrayed by his colleagues, the pair go on the run. Can they survive long enough for Leigh to deliver her evidence?  

The last of Arnold Schwarzenegger's solo hits, Eraser is almost forgotten nowadays. While the movie is fairly by the numbers, that averageness always struck me as bizarre - by-the-numbers action fare is not what I would expect from Ah-nuld, and the lions' share of his filmography (at least the biggest hits) do not fit the same template as other action stars of his vintage - other action stars (Eastwood, Bronson, Norris and Stallone) generally share Schwarzenegger's bodycounts and weaponry, but they rarely blend genres, and the tone of those stars' films did not share the tongue-in-cheek tone of his output. You won't find any robots or aliens in most action movies of the 80s, and only Schwarzenegger built his name on genres outside of police thrillers (Dirty Harry) and war films (the Rambo franchise). 

The big problem with Eraser is Schwarzenegger's big hits were never just action movies. They always feature some unique selling point (Predator and Terminator blend action elements with elements of horror and sci-fi; Total Recall and The Running Man aim for dystopian satire to underpin the action).

By contrast, Eraser has a rail gun. It does feature nods to the familiar tropes of its star's past hits, but it lacks a specific flavour of its own.

In retrospect, Eraser was a transitional work, between Schwarzenegger's most successful period, marrying the ex-strongman to high concepts and talented creatives, with his post-peak work - Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day... 

Since it is basically a generic action movie, the closest movie it resembles is Commando. But the differences are key: 

Commando is a deceptively simple movie that understood how to best utilise its still-green star. Keep it simple, keep it moving, and keep tongue wedged in cheek.

Eraser has no firm idea of what kind of character Krueger is - he is both an intelligent infiltration agent and a one-man-army. One fits for the character, the other fits for the star. Neither really feel complementary. While the story is more complicated, it lacks the clear stakes, goals and obstacles of Commando. 

Simon Brew's Film Stories podcast did an episode on Eraser, detailing a production where the script was constantly in flux. You can feel that indecisiveness everywhere - a burgeoning romantic subplot that is neutered as soon as it is hinted at; a rushed relationship between Krueger and his mentor-turned-villain (James Caan).

Eraser is fun, but there is always a point halfway through (around the point our hero crashes to earth after a mid-air standoff with an airliner) where the movie just feels like its going through the motions. There is no real low-point for our heroes, and there is no real arc or development to their rapport.

It also does not help that the acting is not great. Part of what makes Schwarzenegger's best movies so good is the performances around the star - James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian; Linda Hamilton in the Terminators; heck, even a crummy nothing like Running Man has Yaphet Kotto and Richard Dawson. Arnold has grown to become a solid actor, in specific contexts, but what has always helped is the strength of his casts which has helped to smooth over his (distinctive) wooden-ness.

Vanessa Williams has carved out a respectable career as a small screen villain in Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives. As the pure of heart Leigh, she feels miscast. The character goes through a rollercoaster of intense emotional moments but the movie and Williams' performance never quite hit the mark. 

One thing I got out of Eraser this time was how it increased my appreciation for Rae Dawn Chong's performance in Commando - she is an ordinary woman in a terrifying situation, and she plays the stakes of the situation. Does she go a bit big? Sure, but in a movie featuring this scene it fits. 

With Williams, it feels like a balloon without enough air - her performance will not get this character to float. 

In the bad guy corner, Jimmy Caan can play slimy politico, but there is a slightly blaise quality to him - it feels like the direction he was given was to play a James Caan-type villain, with no distinctive shading. He has no meaningful connection with Arnold, and his character is not formidable enough to make him a strong antagonist. 

No one is the cast are bad. They are just underwhelming in underwritten roles.

If the movie leaned more into the hi-tech weapons, maybe the movie would have more of its own flavour. One thing I thought would have improved the movie was if the corporate HQ our heroes have to break into had been more of a hi-tech fortress, complete with some ridiculous security measures, necessitating more of the Eraser's skills and Leigh's know-how. As is, it is just underwhelming.

 On its terms, Eraser is a fun but forgettable action flick. As a piece of Arnold Schwarzenegger's filmography, it is an inauspicious close to his most successful period, and the portent of what was to come.

MYSTERIOUS DR SATAN: The Human Bomb

For the first three chapters, Mysterious Dr Satan comes across a fairly grounded crime action thriller - there are a few elements of sci-fi in terms of the technology, but most of the action is based on stunts and fisticuffs.

'The Human Bomb' is where the serial really starts to escalate in terms of spectacle, from action sequences that would not look out of place in a western or a crime picture, toward the more fantastical concepts of its pulp and comic book influences.

I really like the start of this episode. Cross-cutting between two related crises (the fight to control the ship; Bob and Lois trying to avoid the rising water), it is a tense, frenetic way to get the action going from the off. While I enjoyed the set piece in the last episode, there was something overtly contrived about the way we are led into it that lets the steam out of it.

Here, the ending of the last episode provides the perfect set-up to this one: While Bob and Lois assess escape routes in an air pocket in the flooded diving bell, on the surface MVP Rose comes to the rescue again. She knocks out one thug and steals his gun.

Turning said gun on the thugs, Rose changes the odds - until the thugs use the crew members as shields. A stalemate ensues.

The writing of these sequences is solid - fight sequences are filled with reversals and constant changes to the situation. Combined with the choreography and the camera-work, the effect is engaging but somewhat invisible. There is a craftsmanship to the filmmaking that prizes effect over style.

I have said it before, but the serial's unfussy staging and emphasis on the stakes of each scenario is terrific. I can imagine Jon English and William Whitney - if they were alive today - would have great careers directing the latest Fast & Furious movie. The technical skill and sense of verisimilitude in this episode is terrific - the underwater models look great, and give this sequence a sense of scope. Republic Studios were apparently the best at visual effects among the studios producing serials, and the sequence of the diving bell beside the sunken ship is pretty simple but effective.

the next set piece is less interesting: Doctor Satan kidnaps Bob's friend Speedy. He has him drugged, straps a bomb with a camera and radio to him, and sends the zombified man into Professor Scott's home, where Doctor Satan commands the Professor to deliver the plans to his remote control device - or else he will trigger the bomb. 

Unbeknownst to the Doctor or his mind-controlled lackey, Bob comes up with a plan to have the police cut the power to the city for 30 seconds, so that the radio link with the bomb can be broken.

Bob follows the pair outside. Once the power cut is made, he tackles Speedy and with the professor's assistance, he removes the bomb vest and throws it away. As it explodes, a trio of Doctor Satan's guns run through the main gate attack them.

This set piece has a few interesting ideas - the POV shot from the bomb vest is pretty cool - but the whole set up, with Bob communicating over Speedy's shoulder via paper notes, drains the tension. I am fine with logic gaps in action movies as long as I am not thinking about them while viewing - in this sequence, I could not help questioning what was going on: why go through with the bomb threat when the three thugs wind up beating Bob up and kidnapping the Professor anyway?

The one thing I will say about this episode is that Bob really comes to the fore here, improvising various schemes to foil the doctor. Aside from the power cut plan, he also shoots a hole in the gangsters' gas tank, giving him a liquid trail to follow.

Realising what happened, the gangsters abandon their vehicle and steal a gas truck from a station. Bob tails them and puts on his mask. I was really hoping he would obscure his vision and crash, but no. 

The car chase is the first set piece where I really started to check out - until the bad guys decide to use the truck's cargo as a weapon against the Copperhead. They set fire to the gas, turning the road behind them into an inferno.

The Copperhead rounds the corner and the car shoots into the flames.

Final thoughts

Up to this point, I have enjoyed Mysterious Doctor Satan. With this episode the formula of the plotting really worked against my enjoyment. The opening is terrific, but the resolution is a little pat, and the plot of the 'human bomb' lacked some stakes - the car chase ends on a fun cliffhanger, but it feels like an add-on.

For the first couple episodes, the constant moving between different locations and set pieces worked well. There is a solid sense of pace and variety, which drew attention away from the threadbare characterisation and narrative development. The same is not true here.

While the ending is terrific, the lead-up lacks the polish and drive of its predecessors. Here is hoping that 'Doctor Satan's Man of Steel' reverses this downward spiral.

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