This movie is as hypnotic as any DePalma film, with the added advantage that it is straightforward and to the point. Maybe it is just good guys versus the bad guys, but when the Good Guys are lead by Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, I don't know how anyone can turn away. Throw in DeNiro as Al Capone and you have a heavyweight fight that would break pay per view records if it were a boxing match.
Even before the first scene, the movie is pulling you in with a haunting and propulsive theme played over artistically rendered Titles. Ennio Morricone was Oscar Nominated for the score of this film and it should have been his. The background themes are great at accentuating the heroes in their glory moments, and the action scenes are supplemented with exciting motifs that come up in various sections of the film. There are plenty of opportunities for the music to make an impact on you.
The botched opening raid is a nice way to set our expectations at a different place. Later, when the group of Untouchable Law Enforcement agents swoop down on smugglers at the Canadian border, we are amped up to see the results after the earlier futile effort. The key set piece is the train station shootout with the slow build and all the closeups. DePalma has studied the Serio Leone films meticulously and lets those beats play out at the same agonizing and tension filled pace as we got in the Spaghetti Westerns. Every complication adds to the suspense, every effort to get the accountant and keep him alive makes our anticipation of Andy Garcia as Stone worthwhile. Costner plays it so cool in this scene in comparison to some of the early moments of the film. You can see the character arc in his demeanor here.
Of course Sean Connery is the lynchpin for the film. His world weary folksiness and Chicago cantankerous nature were a perfect realization of the character. The combination of his story and that of Charles Martin Smith gives license to Eliot Ness to get a little dirty, in spite of his white knight image. Charlie Martin Smith and Billy Drago are the unsung heroes of the cast, one showing the exuberance of a puppy dog and the other reflecting the darkest elements of the Capone organization. Maybe Capone doesn't go flying to his death, but we know that his empire has crumbled because of the turning of his own tactics against him.
Filmed in the 80s, DePalma and Company make Chicago look like fifty years earlier, and the soundstage sets match up so well with the exteriors, you can believe it was all shot in the time and place depicted. This movie is just a lot of fun. Fidelity to the real story is lacking, and the conclusion in the court is a bit baffling, but you won't care because everything else is so rousing.
This is the kind of treat that might keep me from moving out of Southern California in spite of the traffic, social culture and politics. You just don't get to see "John Carpenter's The Thing" in 70mm most other places.I'm a fan of the American Cinematique at the Egyptian Theater. While some of my blogging colleagues are dismissive of the programming [one said it's great if you want to see Lawrence of Arabia four times a year (which I do)], there is a lot of programming that would not be the same in the smaller Aero Theater on the Westside. Tonight's experience means more because it was shared with a sold out audience, a group of standby folks queuing up in the hopes that there are some cancellations and a sound system that does justice to the film in an audio space made for it.
The one drawback of the screening was that the film stock is a bit faded. Seeing how this 70mm print is one of the few in existence and that the film is thirty-five years old, that was a small price to pay to see this horror classic. The six track stereo sound more than compensates for the slightly red hue of the print. Listening to Morricone's haunting electronic score while watching the images of Antarctica swirl by is a definite treat. The sound effects also benefit immensely from the complex sound design combined with the multi-track recording.
There are so many things to appreciate about this film that it is hard to stay focused. I will try to concentrate on three or four elements that always impress me whenever I watch this film. The first "thing" that jumped out at me tonight was how creepy the film is before we even know what is happening. The supposedly mad Norwegians tracking the sled dog across the snow and shooting at it without much effect is just the start of a disturbingly effective canine performance. When the husky reaches the American compound and Clarke scratches him around the neck to reassure him, the dog is sort of cute. Subsequently though we see that the dog is watching everything. It stares out the window at the search party that goes back to the Norwegian installation. It quietly observes the goings on at the American base with a steady eye. As it moves from room to room and encounters a figure that we only see in shadow, it seems to be acting so deliberately and thoughtfully that it can't be a normal dog. Finally, as the dog is lead into the kennel with the other dogs, it's approach is awkward and not dog like at all. This is all part of the methodical set up that builds to action rather than having action fill the screen constantly.
Once the dog is introduced to the kennel, the second great "thing" about the film that everyone who loves it talks about gets introduced. This movie is filled with special effects shots and monster creations that are not just on screen. This film was made with practical effects that the actors interact with and . Their presence in each scene feels so much more normal than the CGI creations that are found in the inferior prequel from 2011. The slime covered "thing" that is morphing into the dogs is disgusting to look at but we can't look away either. The tendrils that penetrate the other animals wave in a manner that was not created in a computer but looks like it is organic as they flip around like so many air hoses without nozzles. When Copper applies the defibrillator to Norris, we get a real shock with blood and sinew and bones being snapped. Rob Bottin and his crew make these effects dramatic, disgusting and at the same time believable. When the legs sprout from the dismembered head of one of the scientists, after that head has used an elongated tongue to pull itself to safety, you might be tempted to say the same words that come out of Palmer's mouth, except we know Carpenter is not kidding, he wants us to laugh sure but mostly to be horrified, task accomplished.
Since it is my daughter's birthday at the end of the month, I gave her the gift I picked out a little early, it is a design from this scene on a great t-shirt provided by a company called Fright Rags. One of my online correspondents works for this company and they have licensed images from this movie that show how the practical effects look so much better, even when they are being rendered artistically.
One final topic to include in this brief post on what many would consider the greatest horror film of the last half century, the star Kurt Russell. R.J. MacReady is an intemperate iconoclast that somehow manages to be a figure that all the other men at the station look to. Part of the reason may be that they trust his competence as a pilot, after all he makes two hazardous trips to the Norwegian camp and returns with more information each time. Also, he has a cool demeanor as the crisis gets hotter and he manages to best them all when their paranoia turns on him. Any of those things might inspire confidence in him as a leader, but the biggest asset he has is that he is played by Kurt Russell. Russell is in full badass mode coming off a previous Carpenter film, "Escape From New York" just the previous year. He has a thick mane of hair, much like the king of the jungle, and his machismo is indicated by the awesomeness of his beard. Only a guy with this much charisma can carry off the weathered and bent out of shape sombrero that he wears in the film.
There are dozens of other little moments of perfection spread through the film, but I will leave most of them for a more elaborate post, maybe in my series "Movies I Want Everyone to See". It is a good film that shows how quickly character can be created on screen. There are a half dozen good laughs in the movie that would put some of today's comedy films to shame. The cast of actors also deserves praise and credit that I simply don't have time for today. There is at least one more screening this week at the Egyptian. If you are within a fifty mile radius and don't go to see this, you will hate yourself later.
Big films on the Big Screen, that's why I love going to the Egyptian Theater!!!
There are fans of Quentin Tarantino who will love everything he does and have an issue with any criticism. There are critics as well, who find his approach to film making to be infantile and sensationalist without much discipline. Lovers and haters, welcome to the latest film from the man who re-invented independent cinema and has copied himself repeatedly ever since. "The Hateful Eight" is exactly titled. There are no characters that are redeeming in the main cast, and the secondary characters may have sufficient drawbacks for you to dislike them as well. This three hour plus version of the movie is as indulgent as anything in the "Kill Bill" films but without the same level of bravado as those movies. The camera does not make itself an extra character, the violence is standard for a film from Tarantino, and there are long passages of dialogue that lack the wink and smile that made earlier films such a treasure. There are still plenty of things that make it worth seeing, but it may be the first film of his since "Deathproof" that cinema fans may not see as essential.
Let's start with those things that are confusing, wasteful, annoying or just plain dumb about the film. We saw the road show version of the movie and I have great fondness for some of the trappings that go along with such a presentation. An overture and an intermission provide a special feeling to the experience you are undergoing. The Ennio Morricone music during the overture was great, but it took two hours to get to the intermission, and it the first real action beat of the movie. Everything else has been set up of character, story points and setting. It was the right moment to break for the intermission, but it was an odd tone that lead up to it. There is some pretty awful plot development that leads to the moment of action. It is implausible, distasteful and designed to inflame racial animus not only between characters in the movie but for those watching as well. The story is supposed to be provocative, but the language and tone are anachronistic, and the visualization that goes along with it was gratuitous. We are lead to believe that no one in this group will be deserving of any respect, and Samuel L. Jackson makes sure that whatever empathy we might have had for his plight as a black man in a white man's world is dissipated by his lack of any decency or humanity. I saw a couple of younger kids in the theater, and while the violence that comes later is disturbing, the cruelty exhibited in this flashback moment of incendiary personal history was hard to bear. Not so much for an indignity being imposed on a white man by a black man, but for the galling brutality that one human being might be willing to impose on another. It's bad enough to imagine Eli Wallach as Tuco, forcing Clint Eastwood's "Blondie" to cross a desert without water in a Spaghetti Western from fifty years ago, it's another thing to layer on excessive humiliation on top of the torture. Layer that with spiteful and vivid imagery and yes, as Jackson's character says, we start to get a picture in our head. Tarantino makes sure we see that picture, not that we simply imagine it.
The story spools out as if it is going to be a version of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" (and when you know the original title, you will see why Tarantino must have wanted to use t as the basis of a story). It plays out as the long form version of his favorite trope "the Mexican Standoff". From Reservoir Dogs to Django Unchained, Tarantino has filled his stories with faceoffs of antagonists and built tension and suspense with them. The basement sequence in "Inglorious Basterds" is probably the pinnacle of his story telling skills using this tool. That scene played out over a twenty minute time span, not a hundred and eighty seven. He is going to this well too often and too long in this film. While there are some great moments in the process, it feels exaggerated and overdone. The eloquence with which Oswaldo Mobray explains civilized justice is worth listening too but it lacks the same flair that it might have had if the character were played by a Teutonic Christoph Waltz rather than an effete Tim Roth. Kurt Russel inexplicably disappears through the whole set up of the first gunplay in the film and Michael Madsen makes laconic look like an active status. The characters don't get to do anything for the first two hours, they just listen, and many of them, we never see any reaction from. When there finally is some confrontation between characters, it is resolved with some pretty disgusting screen moments. It will provoke a laugh and a gag reflex at the same time.
If there is one perfect vehicle for the dialogue that Tarantino writes, it is Samuel L. Jackson. He conveys the irony and viciousness of the words with great effect. He is given a good run for his money by Walton Goggins. His inflection is almost enough to raise the language to the heights we have come to expect from a QT film. The script though robs him of the poetry that his character in "Justified" might have used. Had the colloquial terminology of Charles Portis been more of a presence, this would have been eloquent and memorable. None of the lines are really quotable, and the impact they have is mostly dependent on the reading provided by the actors. The conversations just do not snap they way they did in any of the previous seven films from Tarantino. They are still better words than you will get in ninety percent of the scripts you will see on the screen, but it feels like a step down.
The last confusing or disappointing element I want to mention is the decision to shoot in 70 mm. I heard Goggins speak about the lenses and cameras used to make the film being the same ones used in widescreen epics like "Khartoum". This would lead you to believe the story will be a spectacular visual treat with David Lean like shots. Instead, it is a stage bound single set piece, which makes the Panavision 70 mm seem like a strange affectation rather than a bold attempt to capture the grandeur of a big scale story.
Ok, now for the stuff that works. Goggins, Russell, Jackson are the jewels in the crown. Jennifer Jason Leigh has to wait until the last hour to sparkle, but when her character gets the chance to become part of the story, it is finally clear why they need to have an actress of her type, tough and intelligent. The shoot outs and special effects eviscera are enough to satisfy even the most demanding gore hounds. There are also some nice twists that are revealed in the non-sequential formatting of the story, another Tarantino trademark, and they work great. The music is also worth wading through the movie to get to hear. There are very few snippets of the music cues that Tarantino is used to relying on, this is a much more traditional score and it is beautiful. There is a sense of closure that seems appropriate to the characters, but you will still want to take a long shower after spending so much time with these types. In the end, I liked it, but it may be one of the least successful of stories in his filmography. Like "Death Proof", you have to meander through a lot of narrative that goes nowhere to get to the stuff you have been waiting for. Take it or leave it, I doubt it will have the repeatability of any of the other seven films from Quentin Tarantino.
