John Wick

This has been the busiest October I can remember in years. A ton of stuff has happened and much of it was not good. As a result, I've fallen several weeks behind on the "30 Years On Project", and it has been three weeks since I went to a movie (my last two posts were a week late). That being said, when I finally did get a chance to see a film, I pigged out on a low brow action film instead of a high profile prestige movie. It was a very satisfying meal and the popcorn chaser was excellent, uhmm, I've missed popcorn almost as much as going to a movie. Keanu Reeves entertained us today in the revenge story of "John Wick".

I'm sure I've said this in some other post about a film with these sorts of characters, but it appears that the most in demand job is not physical therapist, engineer, or administrative professional. According to the movies, professional hitman is the career of the decade and Keanu as John Wick happens to be the most dangerous. The storyline has him retired and grieving his lost wife. He manages to feel some hope because she has left him a puppy to help him get through his mourning. Dumb-ass Russian gangster types make the mistake of both stealing his prized Mustang, but killing the dog as well. That may be a spoiler if you have not seen the trailer, in which case I'm sorry, but I think everyone headed into see this, knows that Wick is pulled back into his vocation by the injustice of this act.

Earlier this week, I invented a quote to use in my class for an Impromptu speech topic, "Never trust a man who doesn't love a dog." I know I can't ever forgive Michael Vick and while I don't dislike people who don't care for dogs, I do not understand them. An addendum to the invented quote should also be "Don't ever screw with another man's best four legged friend." Dirty Harry got downright nasty when someone kicked his dog, John Wick goes even further, the Russian mobsters go down like [insert tasteless cheerleader joke here]. I'd like to see this again, just to engage in my own tally of dead crooks that Wick leaves in his wake. I know that a dozen get killed in the first main confrontation, and that is only twenty minutes or so into the movie. This is the sort of over the top violence fantasy that can only exist in a movie that is not really all that good but is as entertaining as hell. If I ever have the time, I might try to reproduce the splendid statistical analysis my on-line friend Dan Fogarty did on the Schwarzenegger classic "Commando". Wanton death on a scale like this deserves it's own special kind of foolish attention.

There are a host of actors in the film that are almost always a welcome addition to a movie. Ian MacShane, John Legazamo and Willem DeFoe all lend a hand to make this a little better than it has any right to be. We also enjoyed the fact that the guy who plays "Mayhem" in all those insurance ads that run during college football season, got a chance to have a few more lines, even though in the end, he gets treated a lot like he does in those ads. Michael Nyqvist, the guy who is the journalist hero in the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" films (the Swedish Originals), is the main Russian mobster in this movie, it is his son who does the stupid crime that sets off  mobster killing time. He also does a pretty good job being a loathsome character that deserves what he gets.

If you are a regular reader of this site, you know that I am a sucker for revenge based films. Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington have lead the way in the last few years but I'm happy to add Mr. Reeves to the pool of killers of miscreants that I enjoyed spending time with. I may be one of the few people to see "47 Ronin" much less actually like it. This role requires the deadpan delivery and mopey expression that Keanu Reeves is known for. He also gets to use the physical skills that he has been employing for the twenty years since "Speed" made him an action hero. There is not any subtlety or surprise in anything that happens in this story, but it is efficiently told and cathartic for all of us dog lovers who would like ten minutes with Mr. Vick tied to a chair and a baseball bat in our hands. It is a fantasy, not a serious film and that's exactly the sort of stuff I was in the mood for. 

Cuban Fury

I looked at two other blog sites today that both reviewed this movie. That is something I do not usually do before seeing a film. I want my perspective to be untainted as much as possible. The thing of it is though, I had no plan to see this movie before today. I'd only heard of it a day or two ago, and I knew next to nothing about it except that it featured dancing and Nick Frost. I let my curiosity get the better of me and I peeked at what others had said. It was not promising. The reviews that I saw were not terrible but they were at best lukewarm to the movie. They did however fill in enough details to let me know that this might be a movie I would appreciate.

Since I have the week off at one of my work sites, I thought I'd be able to take some time and sneak in several films. No such luck and to be honest I was not excited about anything I'd not already seen. I took my AMC Stubbs points, marched down and caught the matinee of this movie. I'm 56 years old and I was the youngest person in the theater. It was on one of the four big screens at the multiplex with 17 screens. There were maybe a half dozen of us there so the house seemed cavernous. All that said, everybody had a pretty good time. I heard the 70 year old ladies a dozen seats down from me laugh several times and I was doing the same. The film was a little predictable, but all romantic comedies are. What sets this apart from most of the others is the salsa-dancing background and the star.

For some reason I have usually enjoyed movie dancing. From the classic Hollywood musicals of the golden age, to the 80's revisionism of Fame, Flashdance and Footloose (the three big "Fs" of the 80s), a little fancy footwork seemed to do it for me. This film takes a big dose of "Strictly Ballroom" and crosses it with a goofball comedy sensibility to entertain for the nearly two hours that it ran. A dancer who has lost his way and seems to have settled for a more mundane existence, gets a chance to reconnect with his roots. All the while being slighted by an obnoxious co-worker and romantic rival. I liked the dialogue that reveals what a pig the rival really is and the performance of Chris O'Dowd  as the odious Drew was at least a third of the fun in the movie. So it is an underdog story set in England centered around salsa dancing.

The underdog here is Nick Frost, as Bruce, the man who gave up salsa as a child when bullied by a group of other boys. His sweetheart of a sister was his dancing partner and she still bravely faces the world with her own quirky way of coping. It is the arrival of a pretty new American woman who stirs Bruce's romantic inclinations, and when he discovers that she also salsas, he returns to the art, twenty-five years out of practice. Frost is best known to me as Simon Pegg's counterpart in the "Cornetto Trilogy"(there is a "blink and you'll miss it" appearance by Mr. Pegg in this film as well). He is a sweet faced, overweight, lump of an actor, who manages to bring real personality to his roles and sweep aside the stereotypes of his visual image. In this film, the whole goal is to subvert those sterotypes while also exploiting them for laughs. It worked really well for me.

It is not a classic that you will want to return to over and over again, but it has it's moments. There are some great scenes with an effeminate Persian man who encourages Bruce that are very funny. The showdown between Bruce and Drew is hysterically staged and full of mad ingenuity. The peripheral characters, including Ian McShane as Bruce's old salsa coach, fill the movie with little bits of charm and mild laughter. It was better than I was expecting and the credit has to go to Nick Frost, who manages to make us care that a dumpy guy might have bigger dreams than what he seems doomed to live out.