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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani

Release Year: 2002
Country: India
Starring: Manisha Koirala, Sunny Deol, Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Arman Kohli, Raj Babbar, Aftab Shivdasani, Rajat Bedi, Sharad S. Kapoor, Ali Khan, Shahbaaz Khan, Johnny Lever, Sonu Nigam, Nikita, Aditya Pancholi, Rambha, Payal, Amrish Puri, Kiran Rathod, Mohini Sharma, Siddharth, Upasna Singh, Arshad Warsi
Writers: Naveena Bhandari, Raj Kumar Kohli, Rajendra Singh "Atish", K.K. Singh
Director: Raj Kumar Kohli
Cinematographers: Damodar Naidu, Thomas A. Xavier
Music: Anand Raj Anand, Anand Chitragupth, Milind Chitragupth, Sandeep Chowta
Producer: Raj Kumar Kohli

That some of Bollywood's worst sins have been committed in the name of nepotism is a fact which anyone who has borne witness to Karisma Kapoor's early career can sadly attest to. For the Hindi film industry's directors, stars and producers, dynasty building seems to be a top order of business, right alongside the practice of their chosen craft. For a fearsome reminder of this, one need look no further than director Raj Kumar Kohli's 2002 film Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, as terrible a monument to a father's love for his son as has ever been erected.

Kohli made his initial mark on Bollywood with a pair of supernaturally-themed blockbusters during the seventies. The first of these was 1976's Nagin, just one in a long line of Bollywood movies concerning the dark escapades of snake spirits who are capable of taking human form. Reena Roy starred as a female snake whose lover is mistakenly killed by a group of hunters. Vowing revenge, she sets about eliminating the hunters one by one by seducing them under a variety of human guises before killing them. Under Kohli's guidance, the film came to exemplify two prominent strains in 1970s Bollywood cinema, both of which the director seemed to have taken very closely to heart. One is the trend for "multi-starrers", which was in full force at the time (and which, in America, resulted in the type of films whose posters featured pictures of the stars lined up in little boxes along the bottom). To this end, Kohli packed Nagin's cast with an impressive assortment of name brand talent, including -- in addition to Roy -- Feroz Khan, Sunil Dutt, Jeetendra and Rekha. In addition to that, Nagin seemed to take 1970s Bollywood's tendency toward fanciful design and blinding displays of color to a retina-rending extreme, adopting the look of a lurid cinematic comic book, complete with dreamily artificial-looking sets cast in florescent primary hues and woozily melding pastels.

For his next big hit, 1979's Jaani Dushman, Kohli followed much the same pattern, stuffing the cast with as many big names as it could take -- Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Sinha, Rekha, Reena Roy, Sanjeev Kumar and Neetu Singh among them -- and adopting a similarly narcotic palette. This time, the film focused on a werewolf-like creature who murders brides on their wedding day. While not quite as much fun as Nagin, Jaani Dushman was not without its moments of effectively creepy atmospherics, and boasted the added attraction of featuring a young Amrish Puri as its monster.

The hits kept coming for Kohli throughout the eighties, but the dawn of the following decade would see the director take on a project that, in retrospect, seems to have sent his career careening irreparably off the rails. That project started with 1992's Virodhi, and had as its goal the elevation to stardom of actor Arman Kohli, who also happened to be Raj Kumar Kohli's son. Virodhi, unfortunately, was an utter failure -- both in terms of box office receipts and as a vehicle for Arman -- and two successive attempts at the same prize, 1993's Auland Ke Dushman and 1997's Qahar, didn't fare any better. Kohli, however, remained committed to furthering his son's career -- to the extent of limiting his directing output exclusively to films starring Arman -- and, by 2002, seemed to have come to the conclusion that the key to success lay in forging an association between his son's name and those beloved hits that had cemented his reputation as a director. To this end, the story of Nagin was updated, but then, in a curious touch, fitted with the title of Kohli's other big seventies hit. The result, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani (translation: "Beloved Enemy: A Strange Tale"), turned out to be not only a resounding box office dud, but also a film that would come to be widely considered one of the worst ever produced by Bollywood.

I recently found myself trying to defend Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani against this particular judgment, arguing that, while the film was indeed searingly bad, it was also very entertaining, a fact which I felt should place it above other Bollywood films that were comparably bad but also boring. On second thought, though, I had to reconsider that opinion, because the truth is that there is not one element of Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani that is not misjudged -- a pretty impressive feat that makes an extreme distinction like "worst ever" well earned. This is not the only thing that makes the movie special, however. For one, it accomplishes the seemingly impossible by achieving a sort of surplus of deficit -- by which I mean that it abounds with so much evidence of poverty of imagination on the part of its makers that its very unoriginality comes to take on a kind of uniqueness, and its insubstantiality a kind of heft.

Kohli's approach to making JD:EAK seems to have been to simply make the same movie he would have made back in the seventies -- complete with cartoon color scheme and outrageously phony-looking, stage-bound sets -- and then update it for a young audience by awkwardly grafting onto it elements taken of a piece from every major Hollywood action blockbuster of the last ten years, regardless of how those elements did or didn't fit in with the story that he was trying to tell. What saves the film is how Kohli so often spectacularly stumbles in duplicating those elements. After all, if executed competently, Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani would have ended up being just one of many bloated, special effects-driven blockbusters with a cast of blandly attractive but ultimately unlikeable young stars. As is, it works as a brilliant parody, lampooning all of those Hollywood excesses that it seeks to carbon copy with an effectiveness far beyond that of any of the Scary Movie-type films currently being turned out by the American studios (or, for that matter, Tropic Thunder). In fact, I firmly believe that, if every producer in Hollywood were forced to watch Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, many would be shamed away from ever using any of the tropes that it so clunkily borrows again.

Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani boldly puts its worst foot forward with an opening scene containing computer effects of astonishing ineptitude. To be fair, not all of the film's effects will be as bad as what you'll see here -- and at times they even approach mediocrity -- but it's so difficult to wash the taste of these particular effects out of your mouth that those later scenes that rise above the bar they set end up coming across as the exceptions rather than the rule. The scene takes place after the wedding of Rajesh (Rajat Bedi), one of the many depressingly interchangeable young people that make up the film's cast of characters, and we join Rajesh in the honeymoon suite just as he is about to lift the veil from his bride's lovely face. Only hers is not a lovely face at all, it turns out, but rather a giant skeleton head animated with all the precision and detail you'd expect to find in a handheld video game from the eighties. As Rajesh recoils in horror, his bride morphs completely into a cartoon skeleton so lacking in any illusion of physical depth that it could have been lifted from an episode of South Park and proceeds to beat him up, all the while cackling crazily like a drunken old prospector. Interestingly, those in charge of rendering the skeleton appear to have felt that the idea of a skeleton that was actually, you know, skeletal beating up the beefy Rajat Bedi placed too much of a tax on credibility, and so made the ill-advised decision to provide that skeleton with something akin to muscle mass. The resulting creature is nothing if not otherworldly, boasting exaggerated, Popeye-like bulges in the bones of its legs and upper arms. Then again, it could just be that no one involved knew how to draw a skeleton.

After sending Rajesh's broken body flying out the window of his suite and crashing -- much to the consternation of his gathered friends -- onto the floor of the ballroom where his reception is still in progress, the terrifying, one dimensional cartoon skeleton makes its way jerkily to the shadowy ruin of an old fortress. Here it assumes the spectral form of Divya, a young woman played by the talented Manisha Koirala (here doing penance for god knows what karmic infraction). Divya was not always a spook with the ability to turn into a bulked-up cartoon skeleton, however, and a flashback handily appears to show us how she came to be in such a state. It seems that, not all that long ago, she was just a normal college student with a large assortment of depressingly interchangeable yet uncommonly scrubbed and blandly attractive looking friends. Two of those friends, however -- specifically the aforementioned Rajesh and another fellow named Madan (Siddharth) -- were also rapists, it turns out. And, as we see, they almost succeeded at raping Divya in her aspirational poster-laden dorm room, but for the fist-y intervention of Divya's beau, Karan, who is played by Sunny Deol.

Now, like the earlier Raj Kumar Kohli hits that it's modeled on, JD:EAK is a movie in the old multistarrer tradition and, as such, boasts a large cast that features some of the most big-ish Bollywood stars of its day, not the least of whom is Sunny Deol. No stranger to the benefits of nepotism himself, Sunny is the son of Dharmendra, one of the industry's biggest stars of the sixties and seventies. Like his dad, Sunny got a lot of mileage out of puffing out his chest, pointing a finger, and booming out defiant proclamations at people before punching them -- and his brief introduction here -- before summarily jetting off to London for some business that, we're told, will take him several months -- clues us in right away that, whatever the conflict in JD:EAK is going to be, its resolution is going to involve Sunny Deol coming back to town to shout and punch it into submission.

Before jetting off, though, Sunny/Karan takes Divya's would-be rapists to the dean of the school, Joseph (Raj Babbar), who tells the now penitent young men that, before he can decide on a course of action, they must ask Divya for forgiveness. Divya's large assortment of depressingly interchangeable friends prove to be a big help in this matter, as they unanimously and as a group browbeat her into accepting Rajesh and Madan's apology, saying, among other things, that to do otherwise would make people think that she is "too proud of her beauty". After all, says her friend Atul (Akshay Kumar -- and I believe it's pronounced "A Tool"), the two are healthy young men and she's a hottie, so what could she expect them to do other than get rapey with her? It's all pretty heart warming, really. Little would anyone suspect that Divya's well-meaning and not-at-all-worthy-of-being-systematically-murdered-by-a-malevolent-otherworldly-force friends were advising her to make what would turn out to be a pretty bad decision.

But before that startling revelation, Divya awakes one evening to the sound of an eerie call that summons her to a Banyan tree in a park that lies just outside her dorm. A CGI explosion heralds the arrival of a poorly animated cobra that morphs into Raj Kumar Kohli's son Arman in the role of Kapil, a centuries old snake spirit. Kapil tells Divya that she, too, was once a cobra -- his cobra girlfriend, in fact -- and that they are destined to be together once more. To quell any of Divya's doubts, Kapil transports her back in time, where we see the two of them in happier days, dancing against a rapidly shifting backdrop of flat-looking computer generated fantasy vistas. The end effect is kind of like those tourist videos you used to be able to get where it looked like you were sitting on a flying carpet.

This aforementioned scene, along with providing yet another example of JD:EAK's woefully behind-the-curve computer effects capabilities, puts in stark relief yet another of the film's glaring shortcomings. And it's not Anan Raj Anand's songs, either -- which are merely generic and forgettable -- but rather Ganesh Acharya's choreography, which is truly awful. This is even more apparent in the film's many party scenes, where the hypnotic repetition of head shaking and methodical shuffling from foot to foot on the part of the young cast comes across like a kind of hoochified Hokey Pokey. Whether this is in part due to the dancing abilities of the cast is another issue. But I think it's telling that, even in the case of Manisha Koirala, who has shown herself to be an able dancer in other films, you feel like you can actually see the actors counting in their heads while performing these numbers.

Divya and Kapil end their happy dance by stomping up and down on top of a cave which happens to contain Amrish Puri as a dirt-encrusted old shaman type. Amrish is royally pissed at being woken from his long meditation, and places a curse on the two snake people that causes olden-times Divya to die pretty much immediately. Kapil begs the sage to reverse the spell, but the old guy tells him that it's too late for that. However, Amrish is moved enough by Kapil's anguish to append his curse with a provision that will allow Divya to be reincarnated as a human many years hence. All Kapil must do is live inside that Banyan tree for however many centuries it will take for that to happen, at which time he will be freed to reunite with her. The plus side is that, when released, he will be invincible to all but those with divine powers.

Back in the 21st century, Divya, her snake memories restored, takes all of this in stride for the most part and quickly gets back to the routine of college life -- which, of course, means parties. Unfortunately, the predatory Rajesh seizes the opportunity of a party thrown by Atul at the old ruined fortress to lay a trap for Divya, impersonating his other friends in the course of doing so. At his direction, Divya unwittingly shows up for the party an hour early, only to find just Rajesh and Madan waiting for her. This time the men's rape attempt is successful, and it's just about as nasty as Bollywood standards would allow -- not graphic, but still shocking in its brutality, and leaving no doubt as to exactly what's going on. In keeping with the film's Jurassic sexual politics, Divya -- who, in the wake of Rajesh and Madan's failed rape attempt, was given no choice but to forgive her attackers -- is now given no choice but to commit suicide, and so impales herself on a convenient tree branch. The rest of the distressingly indistinguishable crew then shows up and, though someone makes noise about calling an ambulance, quickly find themselves content to bicker with the rapidly dying Divya over who exactly was responsible for her getting into this predicament. Finally, the centuries-old snake spirit Kapil happens to casually stroll by just in time for his long awaited lady love to die in his arms.

And it is at this point that something strange and wonderful happens to Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani -- something that will leave those who found the movie's first hour incomprehensible pining for the relative coherence that it provided. Because nothing that will happen in the film from this point on will make one lick of sense.

In time honored fashion, Kapil throws his arms out and cries in anguish to the heavens, at which point lots of CGI lightning thunders down upon him, and the brief, Egyptian-style garb that he is wearing morphs into a sculpted, form-fitting, head-to-toe leather ensemble very closely based on that worn my Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix. Then, with the aid of more CGI, his mouth opens unnaturally wide and he emits forth a raging sandstorm, just like the mummy in The Mummy. Finally, with all of Divya's other former friends apparently blown out the door, Kapil -- in a manner somewhat more appropriate for a centuries-old snake spirit -- turns into a snake and bites Madan to death.

With their first act of revenge out of the way, Kapil and the now spectral Divya hold a powwow, during which Kapil informs Divya that it should be he who carries out the lion's share of payback against that amorphous mass of humanity that is her circle of friends. This is because Divya, being just a spook, can only act by possessing the bodies of others, while Kapil, being invincible and able to transform into anything he wishes to, is limited only by the imaginations of the filmmakers -- which, as we'll see, are actually pretty limited. Nonetheless, he sets about the task of picking off Divya's crew with enthusiasm. Of course, each must die in reverse order of his or her star power, and so it is Victor, played by Sharad S. Kapoor, who is next to go.

The sequence in which Kapil chases down and kills Victor turns out to be yet another dizzying mosaic of clumsy visual quotes from 1990s action movies, starting with a fight in the woods during which Kapil's sudden and inexplicable transformation into some kind of killer robot/mummy/virtual reality guy is completed by the sudden accompaniment of Robocop-like electronic buzzing and whirring sounds effects. Much wire-assisted flying and kicking follows, which manages to vividly evoke memories of particular scenes in The Matrix while at the same time falling drastically short of them in terms of execution. Finally, Kapil chases after Victor's car while mimicking the stiff-limbed high-speed gait of Terminator 2's T-1000, eventually somehow producing a motorcycle from his lower torso to complete the pursuit on wheels. Victor's end comes at the conclusion of a stunningly phony, digitally-assisted motorcycle jump by Kapil that plants the front tire squarely on his victim's collarbone.

Now having assumed the form of Victor, Kapil goes about his next order of business, which is to -- as if in response to popular request on the part of the audience -- eliminate the gang's resident comic relief guy, Abdul (Arshad Warsi). This is accomplished by Kapil throwing Abdul into a swimming pool and then summoning the awesome force of computer-generated lighting bolts to electrocute him. This scene is gratifying on many levels, but is most memorable for how, Abdul, despite having zillions of volts of electricity pulsing through his body, is somehow still able to deliver a moving farewell speech to his friends gathered poolside before giving up the ghost. Sadly, this does not leave us viewers in the clear, because the filmmakers, seeing a comic relief vacuum left in Abdul's absence, decide to fill the gap with the subsequent introduction into the cast of migraine-conjuring Bollywood yuk-meister Johnny Lever.

Eventually the gang gets the notion that they must somehow defend themselves against Kapil, and so turn to Joseph, the school's dean. Joseph -- though probably not considerably older than most of the 30-something "students" in his charge -- is something of an all-purpose adult in JD:EAK, serving not only as dean, but also science teacher and, as we'll see in a later scene, boxing referee. Providentially, he also happens to be some kind of master of the supernatural arts, which leads to one of the film's most indelible set pieces. Convinced that the gang are innocent of the crimes for which Kapil and Divya are punishing them, Joseph sets about conjuring forth the spirit of Divya so that they may plead their case to her. When Divya makes her appearance, it is for all intents and purposes in the person of the miniature, holographically-projected Princess Leia from the beginning of the first Star Wars movie. While initially awed by this otherworldly phenomenon made manifest before them, the kids are quick to devolve into bickering with the intransigent mini-Divya as if they were so many Real World contestants arguing over the allotment of refrigerator space. That is until Akshay Kumar, having had enough of Divya's ectoplasmic lip, empties a handgun into her spectral visage. Take that, stupid apparition.

So now, naturally, it's time for Atul/Akshay to feel the bitter sting of Kapil's pixilated sword of vengeance. This takes place during a sequence that is obviously intended to be JD:EAK's version of an action tour de force, featuring motorcycles, speedboats, massive explosions, jet skis, and Kapil running across water like some black leather-clad, Michael Bay version of Jesus. Plagiarism-wise, the scene is a mash-up of equal parts T2 and The Matrix, with Kapil going from dodging rounds in bullet time to simply letting those rounds pass through him to leave chrome-dripping, perfectly round holes in his body which rapidly seal themselves. This peaks with a replay of the bit from T2 where an explosion reduces the T-1000 to puddles of liquid metal, from which he reassembles himself into silvery humanoid form -- although, in this case, the result is so sad looking that you kind of wish that you could just give the movie a hug.

Now, a lot of other stuff happens in Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani. It is, after all, a long movie, and brim-full of visual wonders and momentous events, most of which involve shudderingly terrible CGI effects emulating scenes from bloated Hollywood blockbusters of the nineties. I'm sure, once this review has been posted, I'll hear from some of you who have seen the movie, asking why I failed to mention some favorite scene. For instance, you might ask, "What about Sunil Shetty's interminable green screen fall down the face of a not-all-that-tall building, complete with gratuitous air swimming and Mr. Bill facial expressions?" Or: "What about the big explosion where the devices used to catapult the cars into the air are clearly visible?" Or: "What about the scene where Divya possesses Akshay Kumar's girlfriend and tries to kill him by making him dance off a cliff during an upbeat musical number?" Or... Oh my God, shut up! Shut up! Shut up! The fact is that, as much enjoyment as I got out of this movie, to take the time to describe all of those events in detail would be giving it far much more time than it deserves. Besides, if you are, like me, the type of idiot who would watch a movie like this, you're already sold. (I know: "Sniff... You had me at the Popeye-armed, ColecoVision skeleton, you big lug.")

Let's just suffice it to say that eventually the character Vivek, played by Sonu Nigam, calls his big brother in London and tells him of his fear that he'll be the next in line on Kapil's hit list. Vivek's big brother, I should mention, is Sunny Deol -- or, excuse me: "Karan", as portrayed by the actor Sunny Deol -- so you know where this is going. Sunny Deol really loses his shit big time at this news and starts shouting and pointing at everything, then slams the phone down and hops on the next plane back to India. Soon Sunny and Kapil are in a foundry beating the stink out of one another in exactly the manner decreed by the mere fact of Sunny Deol's presence in Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani. Finally, just when you think that he's about to bite it, Dean Joseph says an incantation that fills Sunny Deol with magic, enabling him to fatally impale Kapil on a girder, even though earlier scenes have demonstrated that Kapil is made of liquid metal exactly like the T-1000 in T2. In a last, conciliatory nod to that film to which JD:EAK owes so much, Kapil is thrown into a vat of white hot something-or-other and sinks Arnold-like into nothingness -- at which point we fade to Divya and Kapil, now reunited, dancing happily in a garish and shoddily computer animated version of an idyllic afterlife.

An interesting and/or perhaps sad thing about Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani is that, in casting his son as basically the locus for a lot of bad CGI effects, Raj Kumar Kohli wasn't exactly providing him with the best showcase for whatever acting talents or star quality he might have possessed. The only way that I can think that this might have seemed like a good idea would be if Kohli was actually trying to convince people that his son could really do the things he was shown doing in the film. (I can hear the producer now: "Get Arman Kohli. He can turn into a motorcycle!") As is, those scenes in which Arman is required to do anything beyond glare robotically and assume stylized Matrix poses -- mainly those in the first hour of the film in which he is required to interact with Manisha Koirala and do some tortured emoting -- don't leave much of an impression. The sense you do get is not so much of a bad actor, but simply of one not obviously possessed of those ingredients necessary to Bollywood superstardom.

Whether this finally dawned upon Kohli pere is unclear, but the fact remains that he has not returned to the directing game since helming JD:EAK over six years ago. Of course, it is just as likely that he has simply opted for retirement, seeing as he is now in his late seventies. It also could be that he has faced difficulties in obtaining funding to make another film. After all, despite all of its flaws, JD:EAK was clearly a very expensive film to make, and no doubt left in its wake a good number of investors who were not eager to make the same mistake again.

This last fact makes it hard not to wince a little bit as your laughing at Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani's excesses. There's a stink of naked desperation to all of its overkill Clearly, people had a lot riding on this movie, and at some juncture it was decided that the best way to recoup was to create a product that was not only spectacular in itself, but also derivative on a spectacular scale. As such, the pursuit of unoriginality in JD:EAK is striking in its aggressiveness, evidencing an unyielding determination on the part of its makers to make sure that absolutely nothing contained within it would be untested or challenging to expectations. It is by virtue of this that the movie ultimately serves to reveal with tragicomic accuracy the mindset behind the blockbusters that it seeks to duplicate, as if it were some kind of hideously mocking picture of Dorian Gray to be locked away in Hollywood's attic.

The shame here -- or at least one of the many shames -- is that, with films like Nagin and the original Jaani Dushman, Raj Kumar Kohli demonstrated a genuinely quirky sensibility, while at the same time proving that he could draw in a popular audience. Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, on the other hand, demonstrates the culmination of a gradual grinding down of that sensibility. All in all, it's a pretty sad portrait of compromise. But if one were looking for some kind of redemptive tidbit within it, it might be found in the fact that Kohli was apparently motivated by a love of family, rather than any desire for mere material gain, in making it. Love really is a bitch, isn't it?

Labels: Bollywood, Horror: Just Plain Weird, Stars: Amrish Puri, Stars: Manisha Koirala, Year: 2002

posted by Todd at 1:54 PM | 15 Comments

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Death Factory

2002, United States. Starring Tiffany Shepis, Lisa Jay, Karla Zamudio, Jeff Ryan, David Kalamus, Rhoda Jordan, Jason Flowers, Alyson Beal, Michael O'Karma. Written and directed by Brad Sykes. Buy it now from Amazon.com.

Time once again to visit the fertile crescent of microbudget horror film making that is the imagination of Brad Sykes. And by "fertile," I largely mean "spread over with manure." Sykes directed two films that were touched on in brief during our recent spat of micro-reviews, but this is the first time I'm giving the full treatment to one of his feature film endeavors. I figure if he took the time to make a feature-length film, then I should take the time to write a feature-length article about it.

The previous films mentioned here, Goth and Bloody Tease, represent the state of Sykes' filmmaking talent as of 2003 and 2005 respectively. If nothing else, comparing the two films shows at least some sort of progression in that Bloody Tease wasn't as completely boring and illogical as Goth. Plus, Bloody Tease was about vampire strippers, which is always an improvement over a film about pretentious Goth rockers named Goth who can't stop talking about what it means to be a true Goth. As well all know, anyway, being a true Goth means you wear furs, carry a big-ass battleaxe, and sacked Rome. And no one in that film sacked Rome, while some of the vampire strippers in Bloody Tease at least stripped their tops off.

Death Factory is a 2002 effort, which means it is potentially even worse than Goth provided that a filmmaker gets better with each round of experience. This is obviously never the case, not with microbudget filmmakers making movies with their friends, for their friends, and not with Francis Ford Coppola. Good for Death Factory and bad for Goth, Brad Sykes follows in the footsteps of Francis Ford Coppola (Sykes, if you ever read this, I agree to let you use the quote, "Follows in the footsteps of Francis Ford Coppola" in any promotional material you might generate) by having an older film that is much better than more recent efforts. Death Factory is still a phenomenally stupid movie thanks to -- and let's say this all together, to make sure we learn -- a bad script, but at least this is a bad script in which things continually happen and the microbudget film-sinking tendency to indulge in endless, badly acted dialogue is kept to a relative minimum. Plus, you have Tiffany Shepis, one of my favorite microbudget horror stars, flailing about in metal fangs, a thong, and a loose-fitting tank top, and that's gotta count for something.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, I can't call Tiffany a close friend, but she is a friend. She engaged in immoral activities with Enrique Camacho, who is is a close friend, right before he got his head chopped off. In the case of Death Factory, however, I don't think my acquaintance with her is going to color the review much, since her primary job is to make rolling-eye monster faces and rip open chests.

At this point, I think you should assume that a shot-on-video horror film's script is poorly written and the story horrendously derivative and predictable unless otherwise stated. And I'm not statin' anything otherwise for this movie. We open with the "two pointless characters get killed" prologue, and Sykes clues us in that, while he may not have the money for good mutant make-up or a convincing location, at least he paid enough money to get some chick to show her boobs in the first couple minutes of the film. Since another chick shows her boobs later on, I will assume this is where pretty much all of Death factory's budget went, and while I would have liked to have seen it spread about a little more liberally to non-boob-showing causes, I'm also not going to be one to fault a guy for throwing a little extra cash someone's way in exchange for some gratuitous nudity.

What we establish in the prologue, besides the presence of bare breasts, is that there is an abandoned factory on the edge of town, and people go in there to fool around but usually just wind up dead. I've made out in some strange places, and I've snuck into my share of abandoned buildings, but even I have to stop and declare that "the old abandoned biochemical plant where people keep getting murdered" is a little hard to swallow as a nookie spot -- and this is coming from someone who once made out in the high school vocational school auto garage. I snuck with a girlfriend into an abandoned, haunted tuberculosis hospital in Valley Station, outside of Kentucky (Waverly Hill -- you can see it on an episode of Ghost Hunters if you watch that sort of thing), but that's a Louisville teen tradition (I did it, my sister did it, and our parents did it before us) and we didn’t combine the sneaking with snogging, mostly because the insides of abandoned, haunted buildings are a tad squalid. Not to mention, you know, mostly empty. Also, we were scared -- of ghosts, of cops, and of the rumored gun-toting mercenary night watchman who prowled the grounds looking for teenagers sneaking into the place.

But then, I'm willing to give the factory a pass because, though I may have stuck primarily to fooling around in the back seat of a car (unfortunately, not a Camaro or a GTO or a boss custom van, but a white Olds with red vinyl interior -- kind of chilly on frosty autumn nights) the way proper American males are supposed to, I also worked for a summer as a movie theater usher and once busted a couple teens getting it on in the front row of King Ralph. Yes, I know. I, like some of you, did some fondling in a movie theater back in the day (including while employed as an usher), but I was smart enough to 1) pick the movie no one wanted to see, and 2) sit in the back corner seats). Who goes to the second-run dollar theater on a Saturday night and sits in the front row of King Ralph, a movie that was, at the time, packed with nothing but dads and their ten-year-old sons looking for some good fart jokes and scenes in which John Goodman teaches stuffy British royals how to lighten up and have a little fun! And it's not like they were exhibitionists; they were just stupid kids, and they were totally shocked and embarrassed when, after a couple complaints, I had to wander down and tell them to knock it off. They got so embarrassed, in fact, that they soon packed up, slunk out of the auditorium and, I assume, found themselves a nearby abandoned chemical factory to finish what they'd started.

So yeah, I guess teens will do it just about anywhere, especially if they're surrounded by arousing conditions, such as grimy old factories haunted by buxom mutants or with a giant 35mm projection of John Goodman singing "Good Golly, Miss Molly" in front of them.

Luckily, the abandoned biochemical factory of this movie is not only relatively clean as far as these places go, it also comes fully stocked with old couches (miraculously bug-infestation free) and even a goddamned four-post bed with clean linens. And there are no cops or grounds watchmen, and really, considering that the place was once a bio-weapons factory, very little in the way of locks and other obstructions to free entrance.

With our two pointless prologue victims handily dispatched, we get to meet our core cast of players, and yes, this will be yet another "group of kids go to an isolated location and are preyed upon by a killer" movie. This time around, we have the virginal good girl, her noble and hunky boyfriend who is somewhere between a prep and a nerd, the smart-alec tough girl, the metal and/or punk dude, and the black couple. As is often the case with these groups of people, there's no real logical reason why they would be friends with each other. Why does the fun-loving black dude hang out with the wet blanket white dude? Why is the virginal mousy girl friends with the obnoxious dyke? Oh well, friendships aren't always easy to explain.

They have big plans for the last day of their first year of college, and those plans involve going over to the black guy's parents' house and having a party. Except that his parents end up not leaving town, which is big of them considering how expensive it is to cancel or reschedule airline tickets these days (eventually, screenwriters are going to have to face financial reality and stop using "Oh no! My parents canceled their trip/came back early" as a plot point). And so our intrepid group of young heroes come up with the next best thing: let's all go to the abandoned factory on the edge of town, which is supposedly haunted, where people get killed, where there was a massive chemical disaster, so on and so forth.

Now, let's review. They're in college, but not a single one of them has their own apartment yet? Lame, man. And when one location falls through, their immediate option B is the abandoned factory? Not someone else's house? Not a bar or a club? Hell, they could just go to the park. Nope, it's straight to the abandoned factory, which would even be acceptable if they were just looking to goof off and do some property damage and spraypaint "Ozzy' on some crumbling walls. But their chief reason for getting together is to fool around and drink beer. Hell, if it was just drinking beer, even that I could understand. It's fun to break into places and drink beer. But the fooling around? In a factory? A DEATH factory, no less! Oh well -- at least the stupidity of our cast has been established early, so we won't be surprised later when they do things like split up and explore the dark hallways after they know a killer is hunting them down.

Inside the factory, pretty much exactly what you'd expect to happen, happens. Couples go to fool around, and they die. People "split up" to explore the factory and find a way out, and they die (and rightfully so -- if people are still pulling that "let's split up" jive at this point, they deserve to be picked off, one by one). The metal dude uses his special metal mental powers that give him total recall of all events having to do with mayhem, death, the occult, government cover-ups, and what Eddie was doing on the cover of each Iron Maiden album and fills everyone in on the history of the factory. The monster turns out to be a mutated former worker, and you can add child labor law violations to the long list of grievances against the factory, because if she was working there years ago, then she must have been all of fourteen on the first day of her employ.

Some mutants get green pustules all over. Some grow extra limbs and slobber gelatinous goo. The monster here, played by the aforementioned Tiffany Shepis, apparently got splashed with a chemical that makes you wear a thong, metal claws, thigh-high black stockings, and a loose, side-boob revealing t-shirt. What kind of factory was this, again? The mutation also makes her crave human blood, which accounts for all the throat and chest ripping that goes on. Death Factory delivers on the blood, but once you've splashed a fair amount of it about, what's the point in doing it again and again? After the first couple ripped throats and slashed chests, seeing a couple more ripped and slashed in exactly the same fashion isn't all that interesting. Still, at least Brad Sykes throw some gore on screen fairly often. While death factory be derivative and unimaginative and feature an abandoned factory where a couple finds a fully-made four-post bed in one of the rooms, but at least once the scenario is established, we don't waste a whole lot of time. We waste some time, but in terms of the average micro horror film, at least Sykes seems to have trimmed much of the fat. The end result is like micro horror McDonalds. It's not good, you know exactly what's going to happen, but at least it doesn't beat about the bush.

I think we've established the shortcomings of the set, which seem to be a recurring theme for Sykes' films (Bloody Tease featured a strip club that looked suspiciously like someone's basement with some sheets hanging up and a coupe rows of metal folding chairs). The building could certainly pass for abandoned, but not for an abandoned factory, as it lacks any and all factory stuff. Instead, there are drywalled rooms with couches and beds and some broken chairs strewn about the place. And it's not like these are industrial couches or chairs or beds. They're wooden and look like they came from someone's grandparents' house. And the doors aren't metal; they're flimsy wood (or cardboard -- I can hardly tell). I guess, as I reasoned earlier, Sykes spent all his money on fake blood, gratuitous boob shots, and a completely inexplicable cameo by Ron Jeremy as a homeless dude who wanders in at random and gets killed. Thus, he had no money left for proper and convincing set dressing.

As if often the case with this type of film, acting is wildly inconsistent. Shepis has demonstrated previously that she's a decent performer. Here, however, she has no lines other than gurgling and snarling, and her role consists mostly of flashing a steel-fanged grin (what the hell kind of mutation is this, again?) and doing that sort of writhing gait I can only call "goblin stride." If you've ever seen the way goblins caper about in fantasy films, then you know the walk to which I refer. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable. None of them are so egregiously awful that they stick out as being something special. They're just blandly "somewhat incompetent."

Likewise, Sykes' direction could be called "blandly competent." He doesn't really have much to offer beyond pointing the camera at the scene and filming it, which is OK. Better than over-direction, anyway. It does leave one with little to criticize or commend, so the direction is succinctly summed up by saying that things are staged for the movie, and Brad Sykes successfully records these things. Special effects consist mostly of the usual spurting blood and fake entrails, both of which are delivered in generous quantities but, as I said, never in a way that makes their presence all that special or imaginative. There is a pretty good eye gouging scene, though. The editing is better than we see in most micro films, and while some tedium and overlong moments still exist, death factory is mercifully trimmed of much of the padding and fat that makes other micro horror films so intolerable. All in all, it's an all right effort.

The biggest problem facing Death Factory is that, while it executes the tired old formula in a fairly energetic manner, it's still executing tired old formula with nothing new to offer. There's nothing wrong with trafficking in cliche; you just have to make sure you do it better than other people who are doing the same thing, and on that count, Brad Sykes both does and doesn't deliver. He delivers better than a lot of the other micro-budget horror films, but not against other films in general -- and this is a point on which budgetary constraints don't matter as much, so no free pass there. I can watch plenty of other "group of people gets hunted down and killed" movies that are better. There are plenty that are worse, too, but mediocrity isn't really something to which a film should strive. But that's what Death Factory achieves. The third-act revelation might explain why at least one member of the cast was anxious to go to the factory, but it's hardly an unexpected twist (in fact, I'd just seen the exact same twist a couple films earlier in another micro-budget horror film, Blood Oath -- though it was more of twist there, not to mention more nonsensical in terms of the plot -- and I'll take "happily nonsensical" over "pointlessly predicatble" any day). The characters are the usual bunch, and to their credit, while they are all so cliche that they could have been summoned straight from the mind of Jon Triton in order to fool Ol' Scratch (if you don't get that reference, you really should), at least they aren't completely unlikeable. In fact, the "black couple" seemed like they'd be sort of fun to hang out with, though I still wonder why not a single one them had their own apartment or knew anyone with their own apartment.

Compared to the other Brad Sykes films I've seen, and compared to the bulk of micro horror films floating around, Death Factory is pretty good. But that's relative to the likes of Goth and Blood Gnome, mind you. If you have a soft spot for micro-budget horror films, or if you are simply in the mood for something that is predictable but still gory and adequate, Death Factory stands up all right. I can't imagine anyone getting overly enthusiastic about the movie -- I'm certainly not -- but I can't imagine anyone getting completely vitriolic about it, either. It just sort of exists, does some things well, does a lot of things poorly, and is sort of like, to steal a description from a friend, eating oatmeal. It's not really something to get excited about, and it's not something to which you look forward, but it's OK while going down.

Labels: Director: Brad Sykes, Horror: Microbudget, Horror: Zombies, Year: 2002

posted by Keith at 3:05 PM | 2 Comments

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Ghost in the Shell II/Patlabor III

Ghost in the Shell: Innocence -- 2004, Japan. Starring Akio Otsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Koichi Yamadera, Tamio Oki, Yutaka Nakano, Naoto Takenaka. Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Written by Masamune Shirow, Mamoru Oshii. Purchase from Amazon.com

Patlabor: WXIII -- 2002, Japan. Starring Katsuhiko Watabiki, Hiroaki Hirata, Atsuko Tanaka, Ryunosuke Obayashi, Mina Tominaga, Toshio Furukawa. Directed by Takuji Endo, Fumihiko Takayama. Written by Tori Miki. Purchase from Amazon.com

Sorry if this review is a little dense on technical info, as opposed to being dense int he way my reviews usually are.

There isn't a lot of anime reviewed at Teleport City, and I'm not entirely certain why. The dearth of anime reviews is certainly not an accurate reflection of my viewing habits. I'm not hardcore student of the game, but it's not as if there's never been an anime title flitting across my television screen. I guess I just always figured that so many more knowledgeable people were already writing about the stuff that there was no real point to adding my voice to the chorus. There was, for the most part, very little of significance I would have to add to the discourse.

But then, it's rare that I have anything significant to add to any sort of discourse, and since I tend to watch a lot of titles that have fallen out of favor or been all but forgotten as the eternal sands of time shift ever forward and bury everything under the advancing mountain of Naruto episodes, I figured there was no real point to avoiding such reviews. It's important, after all, that crusty old dudes like me dedicate ourselves to reminding the younger generations about Golgo 13, Wicked City, and of course, Odin (you will bow to Odin). There have been a couple anime reviews on Teleport City in the past -- both of Leiji Masumoto creations -- but those reviews were written a long time ago, when the world was young and the site was still in its infancy, and both are of particularly poor quality and thus not entirely worth the time it would take you to find them in the archives. So just as 2006 is the year for increasing the amount of Bollywood representation on Teleport City, so too shall it be the glorious year that I review a couple more anime titles.

Having prefaced this entire piece with the proclamation that I watch mostly old stuff that the bulk of anime fandom has no interest in exploring, thus leaving it relegated to the ranks of a few aging bums who can't figure out what the hell thing it is people at conventions have with cat ears, I now intend to undercut that entirely by reviewing one of the higher profile anime feature films to make the rounds in the United States. Trust me, though, in the next week or so I'll review both Golgo 13 and Odin, and the elation you will feel shall cause you to run triumphantly up and down boarding ramps, high-fiving your fellow travelers as soaring glam metal plays in the background. It just so happens, however, that the wheel of fate that controls my Netflix queue served up two of the more well-known titles before the onslaught of nostalgic classics lined up behind them.

Normally, I would hesitate to link two reviews together so closely, as it short-circuits their stand-alone long-term lifespan once they're filed away in the archives. But Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII not only showed up at the same time, but also share a number of traits that makes combining the two titles into a single review logical, at least from the viewpoint looking out from the twisted sinews of my brain, soaked as it is in rum and whatever addictive pixie dust they sprinkle on Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints.

Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII made the arthouse circuits around the United States at more or less the same time, give or take a year. Close enough for atom bombs, anyway. Both were received well by critics. Innocence was received well by fans. Patlabor somewhat less so, for a number of reasons. Chief among those reasons would be that Ghost in the Shell enjoys a much higher profile in the United States, either because the darker cyberpunk edge is more appealing to American fans, or because it features a hot, nearly-naked cyborg chick with a huge rack (of guns, I mean), while Patlabor has the merely cute, fully-clothed Noa Izumi. Both films took the bold step of eschewing the characters with which the series is most strongly identified in favor of focusing on previously supporting or entirely new characters. And both films are essentially detective stories that apply an old-fashioned approach to science fiction in which the technology and gee-whiz futurism is scaled back in favor of a plot centered primarily on characters -- which is nt entirely unexpected given the tendencies displayed in the overall body of work associated with both franchises.

We'll delve into the thematic similarities in greater detail shortly, but I also want to mention, for those who don't know (and even for those who do, since you've already read this far into the sentence, and there's no point in turning back now), that Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor share several common links behind the camera as well. To bring up to speed anyone who may not follow the ins and outs of the Japanese animation and comic book world, here's the gist of things. Ghost in the Shell, like pretty much most Japanese cartoons, started life as manga (Japanese comic book) written by a cat named Masamune Shirow. Shirow wrote all sorts of stuff that got plenty popular during the eighties and nineties, including Black Magic M-66, Appleseed, and Dominion: Tank Police. When it came time to turn Shirow's Ghost in the Shell comic into a feature film, director Mamoru Oshii was tapped to sit in the seat. Oshii was best known at the time as the director of the Patlabor series, based on comics written by Yuki Masami. Oshii also directed the first two Patlabor feature films, as well as a host of other projects with substantial followings, including Jin Roh, some of the Urusei Yatsura (Lum) movies, and the live action/computer animation hybrid Avalon. If you ask the average casual fan of anime to name a few directors, there's pretty much a 95% chance that if they can name anyone, they're going to say Mamoru Oshii and Haiyao Miyazaki. If you are lucky, they may be able to trot out Katsuhiro Otomo, but more likely they'll just say, "Oh, and that guy who made Akira."

Because, presumably, Oshii was occupied with Innocence, he was unable to serve as director for the third Patlabor film, which was instead directed by the team of Takayama Fumihiko (who has previously directed Gundam: War in a Pocket and the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV) and Takuji Endo (a first-time director whose only previous experience was as a second unit director for the TV series X -- it never even occurred to me that an animated film would have a second unit, but I guess it makes sense, even if you're just sending them across the room to shoot the animated establishing shots and landscapes). Not being able to rely on Oshii to direct the third film might have seemed a hindrance to carrying over the tone of the first two films, which were fairly dark and serious, in contrast to the series which had relied as much on comedy as it did action and tension to create and hold onto the huge fanbase that followed Patlabor throughout its entire television and OAV run. But Fumihiko seemed a decent fit even if he wasn't the superstar Oshii was, and he did come from an eighties background that suits the feel and fans of Patlabor.

Of the two titles, Patlabor definitely came with more baggage than Ghost in the Shell. Besides the manga, there was the much-beloved television run and two OAV series, not to mention the two previous films. Patlabor has never enjoyed the soaring popularity in the United States that I thought it deserved, but even so, there were more than enough fans to put the pressure on the third film, especially since the original two had been so good. Ghost in the Shell, conversely, had the manga and only one other movie. Since the average -- and I'm referring to this proverbial person a lot -- anime fan doesn't read very much manga, we can almost discount its influence in both instances. Ghost in the Shell also had a television run in the form of Stand Alone Complex, but at the time of Innocence's release in the United States, very few people had seen the television series, and even so it was only in its first season.

You could argue, of course, that Patlabor never aired on American television, nor did it get a VHS release. Therefore, that body of material is as viably dismissed as the manga. On the one hand, I'd say you have a point. On the other, I'd say that it's because none of it aired that it becomes that much more valuable. The only people who had seen Patlabor, for the most part, were hardcore fans, people who had taken the time to seek out fansubs when no other alternative existed. Their affection for the show was pretty intense. So the people who would be seeing a Patlabor movie would be, presumably, well versed in and dedicated to the series history, where as Ghost in the Shell, with its higher profile name and less back material, would tend to attract a more casual viewer.

Thus, parting ways with the main character from the first Ghost in the Shell film was less of a gamble than parting ways with the entire core of characters established in the Patlabor titles, at least as I see it. But both films are notable for their willingness to shift attention to other characters. In the case of Ghost in the Shell, Innocence concentrates on cyborg cops Batou (voiced by Akio Otsuka) and Togusa (Koichi Yamedera, who has a tendency to show up in bit parts in Godzilla movies but is probably best known as the voice of Spike Spiegel on Cowboy Bebop or as Captain Harlock on all the more recent Matsumoto titles).

Batou is pretty familiar as he plays a pretty big role in the first film as Major Kusanagi's partner. Togusa gets a fair amount of attention in the Stand Alone Complex series, but fans who saw Innocence before Stand Alone Complex will be fairly unfamiliar with him, though because of the TV show he became my favorite character and emerges as an obvious counterweight to Kusanagi, who shows up in Innocence only at the very end, and then only as a disembodied consciousness downloaded temporarily into a body. Incidentally, Kusanagi is voiced by actress Atsuko Tanaka, who among other credits, appears as Saeko Misaki, one of the main characters in Patlabor: WXIII.

Where Kusanagi is so dedicated to technical modification of the human that, by this film, she has ceased having a body at all and exists only as a "ghost" in cyberspace, Togusa is the least cybernetically enhanced member of Section 9, the special police force to which he, Batou, and formerly Kusanagi belong. Togusa has cybernetic implants in his brain, as all police do, but that's it, and even that he seems to have solely because it's a requirement of the job. Somewhere between the two extremes stand Batou, heavily modified but also perfectly happy maintaining his existence as a physical human being.

Similarly, Patlabor: WXIII does not focus on the ensemble cast that makes up Special Vehicles Unit 2, the focus of all the previous entries in the series (though the second movie focuses less on the unit as a whole and more on a single character, their captain Goto), and instead concentrates on two police officers, the aging Detective Kusumi (who I assumed was the same character as aging Detective Matsui from the first Patlabor film, but I'm pretty sure I was wrong about that, though they might as well be the same) and the younger Detective Hata. Kusumi is voiced by Katsuhiko Watabiki, who has surprisingly few credits to his name but did appear in Junya Sato's 1988 historical epic The Silk Road, which I haven't seen in a good dozen years or so. Hata is voiced by Hiroaki Hirata, who has done some work in the new Galaxy Express but seems to spend most his time doing work on Digimon. He also did the voice of Koga in Innocence. See, these two ventures really ought to just do a cross-over at some point. You wouldn't even have to hire much additional cast.

The plots of the two movies are neither entirely similar or dissimilar, and what they do share is as much a product of ongoing thematic links between the two titles as it is the simple result of there being a few pervading themes that run through the greater bulk of Japanese science fiction anime. Let's begin with Innocence, which kicks the action off by informing us that Major Kusanagi has more or less disappeared entirely into the net, leaving her former partner, Batou, to team up with Togusa on a case involving the tendency of a particular model of "doll" -- basically a life-size, computerized humanoid robot that can be employed for a variety of purposes (you can guess some of them) -- to go on the fritz and murder their owners before self-destructing. As with the first film, and as with much of Shirow's writing, the film dwells heavily on popular anime themes such as the merging of man and machine and the difference in human versus machine intelligence, and when does the latter start to become the former -- or in the case of increasingly cybernetically enhanced humans, vice versa. Batou and Togusa follow the trail of clues through the yakuza underworld and finally to the doll manufacturing plant itself for the final revelation as to why these robots are killing their masters.

Innocence is served well by a thoughtful, expertly paced story that relies heavily on identification with the two main characters, which it pulls off remarkably well. Sad, in a way, that animated cartoon characters are often more fleshed out and better written these days than their live-action film counterparts, who rely increasingly on flashy visuals and computer animation to carry flat scripts and thin characterization. There's a Masamune Shirow penned story in there somewhere. Although Innocence isn't exactly lacking for action (anyone who has seen the previous film or episodes of Stand Alone Complex knows that it's rarely an action-oriented show anyway), the sublime moments come in the down time between shoot-outs. Batou's interaction with his dog is particularly strong, albeit it simple, at making you warm to his character. I think it was a wise decision to place the weight of the story on his solid shoulders. As a man who is equal parts futuristic cyborg and old fashioned flesh and bone lug, he proves to be the most compelling of the Ghost in the Shell characters. Even though Togusa may be my favorite, he's too far to one end of the spectrum to effectively embody the push-pull between technology and biology that sits at the core of Shirow's entire Ghost in the Shell universe. Batou, on the other hand, is perfect for this.

When the film does shift to action, it's executed remarkably well. A mix-up in a yakuza bar and a hallucinogenic freak out in a supermarket are warm-ups for the finale though, which is both exciting, sad, and hypnotic as Batou and Kusanagi (or at least, her consciousness downloaded into one of the doll bodies) fight their way through a labyrinthine factory en route to uncovering the truth at the core of the case. The interaction of image and music is, as with the first film, dramatic, and Kenji Kawaii provides another stellar score for this film, same as the first and with obvious common elements to tie them closely together.

Even though it isn't an action scene per se, there's one scene in particular that is almost overwhelming in how well it's pulled off, and although the rich texture and detail of the animation (which is, as is often the case these days, a mix of perfectly realized cel animation and so-so computer animation) can't be denied, it's really the use of Kawaii's music that makes it so effective. This would be the surreal parade sequence that occurs as Togusa and Batou hunt down a potential informant. Absolutely stunning sequence, though I don't know if I could really explain why. It's one of those scenes that just really sticks with me because it works so hard at creating a completely unreal world that is also completely real and recognizable as something not all that far off base.

I've always thought, though it wasn't my original thought, that both horror and science fiction are at their most effective when they take realty and tweak it just enough to make it feel at once comfortably familiar and unnervingly alien. Blade Runner excelled in this capacity, and its no surprise that a film like Blade Runner became the inspiration for so much Japanese animation -- especially Ghost in the Shell, which seems to understand how to be influenced by Blade Runner more than most movies do. Meaning, that is, that Ghost in the Shell takes pointers from Blade Runner's art design, which many movies do, but also knows how to tie it in with similar but not identical questions about the future.

Anyway, it's a great scene. The first tour we get of Neo Tokyo in Akira is another such scene that sticks with me even though it's almost a throwaway establishing shot. But it's another hyper colorful blend of intensely detailed art and expertly conducted music that lets you glimpse a world both completely outrageous yet imminently believable.

The finale of Innocence is similarly haunting, both in the action sequences involving the battle with wave after wave of unblinking, flailing dolls and in the final revelation, which unlike many revelations, makes perfect sense placed within the overall theme of Ghost in the Shell. The movie at this point is transfixing through and through, but it obtains an even higher level here, one that is really flat-out mind-blowing. Suddenly, the horror and beauty of everything you've seen -- from garish Chinatown parades to twisted laboratories, twitching half-dead gynoids, Batou's apartment -- comes crashing you’re your head, and you, or rather I, realized just how gorgeous and powerful Innocence was. It's almost a Stendahl Syndrome sort of experience -- there is so much to absorb, everything is so detailed, so rife with meaning and theology and philosophy, that at some point you simply can't take it all in. I watched Innocence spread out over two nights, then watched it again in its entirety a night later. Still, even as I'm writing this epically long-winded review, the main thought in my mind is, "I want to watch it again right now." It's like heroin, or maybe Girl Scout cookies, which are even more addictive (and delicious) than heroin.

Its central questions remain vital as we advance toward a future that may not be exactly like Ghost in the Shell in the details, but certainly bears some considerable likenesses. We may not be downloading our consciousness William Gibson style into the internet, but we're certainly uploading more and more of our personal lives and social interactions. Our party invitations, friend networks, personal diaries -- these things have all become part of a colossally confused and often nigh unintelligible jumble, but this is really only a decade or so into this new medium we call the Web. The potential for it to play an ever-increasing role in our lives exists, even if it still seems like the stuff of Ghost in the Shell and Neuromancer at this point.

If we've proven anything as a race it's that we're absolutely wretched at accurately predicting the way technological advancement will shape our future. There are simply too many variables and unexpecteds that come form left field. I mean, who, when Henry Ford hopped atop his first automobile, could see that the invention of the car would not only change the face of transportation, but would be a direct cause of the rise in the importance of Middle Eastern nations, which in turn means we take an active interest in places that were previously nothing but backwaters visited by religious pilgrims and pipe-smoking British archaeologists who needed some more mummies. Look at how network technology has transformed society in just a few short years, and then try to imagine what it could do with another fifty. This isn't to imply that the change is either good or bad, simply that it has happened and will continue to happen, and that impossibly far-fetched things have a nasty habit of becoming run-of-the-mill realities if you give them a few years.

Likewise, Ghost in the Shell pokes at the question of what becomes of us, morally and spiritually, as the convergence of technology and biology advances. The Gynoid (all female in form, obviously fromt he name) dolls that are going berserk are regarded as malfunctioning machines, but at what point do increasingly human machines become the moral equivalent of increasingly mechanized humans? Where is the line that divides a gynoid from Batou, or from Kusanagi, who is still considered human even though she has forsaken her body and become a completely digital lifeform. Is it the heritage of having once been human? In that case, then what of machines that are infused in some way with human consciousness? Or human babies that are given cybernetic modifications shortly after birth?

This may seem like waxing philosophic on hypothetical questions invented purely so we could wax philosophic about them, but science fiction usually adds a layer of the fantastic on top of something otherwise real. Think of online crime, something with which we're still attempting to learn how to grapple. Not credit card fraud, mind you, but something like online stalking. At what point does an act committed in a virtual, digital environment deserve to carry the same weight as a similar crime in the real world? And the more time we spend online, doesn't that legitimize it as an equally real world as the physical world? Can you cheat on a spouse online, and how is it the same and different from doing it in person? We may not have implants and cybernetic eyes and arms, but we're an increasingly mech/tech oriented society. As machines continue to become increasingly commonplace as the conduit for our communication and interaction, at what point does our online presence become as liable for our deeds as our physical body?

Exploring these questions in general, and in particular the ever-evolving relationship between humans and the machines we build, is certainly nothing unique to Ghost in the Shell. It is, I would say, the prevailing theme in most science fiction anime from the 1980s on. Masamune Shirow's stories just happen to be the most literate in ruminating on these topics, though he stops short of ever really making a definite proclamation about the future, which is wise. Speculative fiction's job is to pose questions, not provide answers. This isn't just an excuse for vagueness, however. The world is stuffed with sci-fi that tries to pass its ill-conceived and half-baked plots off as speculative or "open ended" when in fact they're just bad. Innocence asks the questions, but it remembers to ask the questions in a way that makes you actually want to ruminate on them a spell after the film is finished.

Patlabor: WXIII does the same thing differently, or maybe it's something different the same way. I'm not sure. Patlabor has always been somewhat less fanciful in its vision of the future (which was, at the time, 1999). The basic science fiction premise is that a variety of large robots are commonly employed in a variety of heavy lifting tasks such as construction. But these aren't Gundam type super robots. For the most part, they're ugly, functionally designed, pieces of construction equipment. Only within the realm of police and military work to these robots -- labors -- take on a more anthropomorphic appearance. With the rise of labors, there was also a rise in labor-related crimes, most of which consists of crackpots in bulky construction labors smashing things up. Sort of like joyriding through Manhattan on a backhoe. To combat this new type of crime, the police began using the patrol labor - patlabor, for short.

But other than that, the future of Patlabor looks pretty much like the present, even more so than Ghost in the Shell, which also stays close to reality, or at least presents its fancier elements in such a way as to make them seem perfectly integrated in a world that is still full of convenience stores, apartments, and droopy faced dogs. But Patlabor really is just the present, but with fancier construction equipment.

So now you have the basics, and you can pretty much forget them because labors, patrol or otherwise, play an exceptionally tiny role in the plot of WXIII, which seems to ask many of the same questions as Innocence, but as relates to the continuing evolution of artificial biological life forms rather than electronic ones. Strange things are afoot in Tokyo Bay. Fish populations have plummeted, and construction labors working around the bay keep turning up smashed, with the drivers either missing or gorily splashed across the scene of the crime. Detectives Kusumi and Hata are called in to investigate the murders and presumable acts of sabotage, which may or may not be related to a controversial artificial land mass being developed in Tokyo Bay, which has been the source of much protest and trouble for much of the Patlabor series, film and television. The two cops quickly discover that all the labors were manufactured by Schaft Enterprises, or at the very least were running on Schaft motors.

Eventually, however, they discover that the crimes have nothing to do with the labors, and that there is, in fact, a monster in the Bay. It may seem a bit weird if all you've seen is the Patlabor movies, but the television series never shied away from paying homage to old giant monster movies. Kusumi and Hata then begin to trace the origin of the monster in hopes that discovering where it came from will help them figure out how the heck to deal with it, especially since it seems to boast incredibly regenerative powers.

The story that serves as the basis for WXIII was, some have said, not written to be a Patlabor story. However, it's not hard to retrofit it for the Patlabor universe, even if it isn't about the familiar Patlabor characters. Series regulars Noa and Shinohara make a brief cameo, and SV2 captain Goto has a couple brief scenes, but for the most part, no one from the previous Patlabor titles shows up until the very end, when the nature of the monster has been revealed and SV2 is called out to deal with subduing the thing. Fans were pretty evenly split on this approach to the movie, but it seems to me to be a natural progression based on the previous two films. The first one deals pretty normally with the SV2 crew. The second film, however, relegates every character but Goto to cameos and centers almost entirely on the enigmatic captain who seems to be a lazy bum but has far more going on in his head and his past than anyone would guess. In the third film, then, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that Goto himself becomes a cameo appearance and the story focuses on characters even further removed from SV2. As with Patlabor II, the story itself is very compelling, so that once you get over the absence of your favorite characters, you are quickly drawn in. Then, when the familiar faces of SV2 do show up at the end, it's like a reunion with old friends you're much more excited to see because of their absence up to that point.

I don't think WXIII realizes Kusumi, Hata, or Professor Saeko Misaki quite as well as Innocence does Batou and Kogusa, but both are still interesting. They just don't come with as much philosophical baggage. Kusumi is old and Hata is young, but that's not really something that plays a large role in their dynamic. It's not as if Kusumi is some old dude who can't deal with all this crazy new stuff. He's pretty competent, though hindered by a bum leg. And Hata isn't some hothead who chafes the old man. He just a good understudy. Where the philosophy of WXIII comes into play is with Professor Misaki and the creature lurking in Tokyo Bay. It's asks the same questions, in many ways, as Innocence. At what point do our biological experiments become living creatures entitled to the rights of other animals? When does something stop becoming an experiment? It never really meanders into the "tampering in God's domain" admonishment, and seems to basically say that, one way or the other, biological advances are coming. They may hit stumbling blocks, like moral opposition to stem cell research, but that doesn't mean they aren't coming. And when they do, when we start making breakthroughs, are we going to be ready to deal with the results? The safe answer, based on our track record, would be, "probably not." And while these things may not manifest as a giant creature grown from cancer cells, their impact on society could be no less dramatic.

WXIII is a slow film. There is very little action, and most of what we get is a police procedural. Fans of the Patlabor series probably won't be surprised by this though. The series was already well-known for being a giant robot anime that often had nothing to do with giant robots. The labors could disappear for several episodes as the series explored characters or simply took time out for a ghost story. In fact, some of the best episodes of both the television series and OAVs were the ones that didn't feature the labors (I'm thinking, Goto and SV1's Captain Nagumo have to spend the night in a love motel, or the Kanuka vs. Kumagami drinking contest episode), so the absence of labors until the very end is no big surprise. In pacing and tone, WXIII plays out much less like sci-fi action anime and compares more favorably to features like Tokyo Godfathers or Millennium Actress, only with a giant monster lurking in the bay. Slow doesn't mean boring though, at least not to me, and while some fans thought the double whammy of no SV2 characters and so little action was enough to sink the film, I still found it entirely compelling and quite thoughtful, not to mention tense and exciting when the action does make an appearance (as with the wonderfully done first meeting between Hata, Kusumi, and the monster).

Artistically, WXIII represents a perfect example of the quantum leap in quality that Japanese animation is capable of. As with Ghost in the Shell and some of the other mentioned titles, this is a realist approach to animation. There are no wacky faces or other familiar tropes of popular anime (although some of those did appear frequently in the Patlabor television series, but not in the Stand Alone Complex series). As with Innocence, backgrounds are richly detailed and character designs are true to real life. It may not be Oshii directing the action, but his protoges certainly don't let the master down. And once again, Kenji Kawaii supplies an evocative and effective score to accompany the stunning art and thoughtful script.

I don't think, in the end, that WXIII is quite as good a movie as Innocence, but it's still a damn fine example of just how good Japanese animated films can be. If it had spent a little more time in getting us to warm up to Hata and Kusumi the way we warm to Batou, it would have been flawless. The two films work very well together, and though viewing them side by side certainly isn't a requirement, it was a fulfilling experience for me. I don't think you need to be overly familiar with the mythology of either franchise, though it wouldn't hurt to bone up on the basics, especially since the Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell material represents, for me anyway, some the absolute best material film and television has to offer (and possibly comics, but I've never really read any of them), regardless of country or whether or not it happens to be live action or animated. Along with a few other choice selections, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence and Patlabor: WXIII stand up as sublime triumphs of anime features.

And then there's Odin...

Labels: Anime and Animation, Country: Japan, Netflix Diary, Science Fiction, Year: 2002, Year: 2004

posted by Keith at 6:33 PM | 0 Comments

Sunday, August 01, 2004

Bourne Identity

2002, United States. Starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Gabriel Mann, Walt Goggins, Josh Hamilton, Julia Stiles, Orso Maria Guerrini, Tim Dutton, Denis Braccini, Nicky Naude, David Selburg. Directed by Doug Liman. Available on DVD from Amazon.

Hey, how did those sleazy gay exploitation films get sandwished in between 300 Spartans and The Bourne Identity? You know though, I'm much happier having my name associated with homosexual grindhouse nudies than I am admitting that I watched that crappy erotic vampire movie, and besides, there are worse places to be than sandwiched in between 300 glistening Greek warriors and Matt Damon.

Y'know, this is one of those movies people told me I would like, which usually means I'm not going to like it. They said the same thing about those Matrix movies and something else I can't even remember now. But boy did I not like it, whatever it was. That said, I was still interested in seeing The Bourne Identity because I generally make an effort to see just about anything with spies in it, and I have nothing against Matt Damon. But well, you know how it is. One thing leads to another and ticket prices rise above $10, and it really takes a lot to convince me that I want to part with $21 plus the price of a box of Raisinetes (I know they're a rip-off, but it's a tradition) to sit in a theater that smells like a dumpster and is full of jabbering buffoons who still haven't figured out that they should turn off the goddamned cell phone. And then, before you know it the movie is out of theaters, and I'm even worse about getting around to renting a movie than I am about seeing them in the theater.

But even without me The Bourne Identity, based on a book I've never read, went on to become the number one DVD rental of 2003, or something like that. So when the sequel came out, I figured yeah, it really was about time I got around to seeing that first movie. And despite the fact that people told me I would like it, I ended up liking it.

Wait - Swing Kids. Someone told me I would like Swing Kids. What the hell were they thinking? Did they really have so low an opinion of me as to think I'd like that movie. Anyway, that wasn't the one I was trying to remember earlier, but I think it's even worse.

So yeah, I really liked The Bourne Identity quite a lot for a number of reasons. First, I like Matt Damon. Second, I absolutely love Franka Potente. I also appreciate that, in a movie market glutted with outrageously expensive, loud, over-directed, under-thought, and just plain horrible action films, The Bourne Identity dares to be a tightly wound, rather modest in its execution, and almost totally free of CGi trickery, Will Smith dialogue, and other prerequisites of the post Bruckheimer/Bay world of action cinema. It has far more in common with the grittier, more down-to-earth espionage and action films of the 1970s, though with the sharp political commentary skillfully carved out to leave a lean, well-paced film that is ultimately not nearly as smart as it hopes to be but is still a whole hell of a lot smarter than anything else surrounding it.

Damon stars as CIA agent Jason Bourne, except that he can't remember that. He's fished out of the Atlantic with two bullets in his back and no memory of who he is, where he's from, or what he does for a living. Confusing him even more is the fact that although he lacks these memories, he has plenty of others, like a versatile command of multiple European languages and a wide arsenal of armed and unarmed combat techniques. The plot of the film revolves around Bourne attempting to uncover his own past with the help of down-and-out Swiss slacker, Marie (the wonderful Franka Potente of Run, Lola, Run fame). It's not as easy as it sounds, since people who do know who Bourne is are trying to kill him.

So let's continue with the things I like about this movie. It has a classic Cold War era feel to it thanks to the focus on the European campaign of action instead of some Middle Eastern country. It's like visiting a fond old friend, or rather, one of those friendly rivals who you've been fighting for so long you've become old friends who can meet in some lavishly decorated European hotel lobby to sip brandy and laugh about the old times when things were simpler. Yeah, I know, we always get nostalgic for the Cold War era, but really, given the way things are now, can you blame us? Today's game is bloody, confused, ultra-violent, and frequently threatens to kill anyone at any time, and makes good on said threats more often than such things should happen. On the other hand, in the Cold War, everything was full of bluster, posturing, and poker game bluffing but never as threatening as now. Sure, we all figured we'd be blown up in a nuclear war, but that just meant we'd have to put on shoulder pads and drive dune buggies around for a while. Plus, there was something romantic, dashing, and stylish about espionage in Europe. Ahh, yes, those were the days.

Director Doug Liman takes proper advantage of the slick European locations at his disposal, making for a nicely old school feeling espionage adventure that has the benefit of the advances in shooting action scenes. He has a gorgeous film here, but thankfully he's not one of those directors who seems satisfied with getting the faint praise of "cool visuals" attached to his film with nothing else. The dialogue doesn't exactly crackle with wit, but it's at least believable and well-written. And hey! I don't think there's a single wisecrack in the whole movie. I'm a big fan of a lack of wisecrackin' heroes, especially since the wises they're cracking usually aren't very wise or funny.

Anyway, since this is now, the bad guys can't be the Communists, and this is too top secret a game to involve the de facto Commie replacements, the Russian Mafia. Which means we're left with the bad guy of choice, either the CIA or "the evil corporation." Sometimes they work together, of course. Here, it's pretty much just the CIA though, and even they aren't exactly bad guys.

The Bourne Identity keeps a brisk pace without being choppy or refusing to pause. Though the film packs in plenty of action set pieces, it also packs in plenty of slower moments that, again, give it the feel of a smarter, older spy movie. It doesn't rush from one fight to the next, but it doesn't slow down in between fights and chases since the plot remains in constant motion forward. We already know the answer to the puzzle Bourne is struggling to solve, and we know more than he does about who is looking for him, which helps give the film a palpable tension even when it takes a breath. When action does break out, it's pretty well choreographed and shot, which is a miracle in this day and age of "let me shake the camera and hold it five inches from someone's forehead or elbow." There's still that tendency to do that thing where the film speeds up really fast and then kicks back into regular or slow motion, a little trick I think it's about time to retire. But that isn't enough to spoil the fact that, praise the fates, we're watching fight scenes that are free of wires and, with the exception of one scene near the very end, no CGI.

As much as there is to like about this film, and as much as I liked it, it's not without its flaws. Two, specifically, leap immediately to mind. First, the film takes no real time to explore the characters, which is a shame since the entire plot of the film hinges on Bourne exploring his character and finding out some pretty dastardly things about who he was before some fishermen plucked him out of the brine and made him wear ratty cable knit sweaters and caps. We're given only the most superficial glances into his reaction to the pieces of the puzzle that point toward him being a ruthless assassin who screwed up a job. The movie has a great character and doesn't take advantage of it, at least not as much as it should to become the really world-class espionage thriller it was so close to becoming.

My second beef is with the lack of politics. If Liman is modeling his film after the spy thrillers of the 1970s, then he missed out on the fact that politics were central to their success. In his effort to keep the film streamlined and tight, Liman cut away some muscle along with the fat, and the film would have been better had it possessed a little more bite. Again, it seems obvious given the central character's position. Our villain here, ostensibly anyway, is the CIA, or a small group within the CIA, much like we got in Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford. The difference is that Condor wasn't afraid to point some fingers and make some daring accusations. The Bourne Identity treats its antagonists with more sympathetic gloves. They're not even villains, really. I mean, Julia Stiles may be in some crappy films, but she's no villain. The people trying to kill Bourne are actually doing exactly what he'd be doing if he wasn't the one who lost his memory. And the head of the CIA who orchestrates it all isn't really evil; he's just kind of a prick. I don't mind that less black-and-white handling of Bourne's opponents, but the film is hesitant to criticize anything, including the obvious shot at the overall amorality of intelligence organizations. But you know, ya just can't get riled up and hateful toward Julia Stiles, not even when you remember that O movie or the thing where she pesters the dude in swimming trunks. Why do I know so much about Julia Stiles movies? Commercials, my friend. Purely commercials.

Despite these flaws, The Bourne Identity benefits greatly from diminished expectations. Action movies are so awful now, so utterly brainless, poorly made, and worst of all, devoid of entertainment value, that when one comes around that is even halfways decent, it looks like a masterpiece. The Bourne Identity is certainly better than halfways decent, mind you, but just how good it looks is influenced in part by how bad everything else has become. Yet no one in Hollywood seems to get it. Even though people continue to flock to this film, Hollywood continues to think people want bigger, dumber, louder movies with lots of unfunny quips. The Bourne Identity struggles to remain lean and fast-paced and did so not by cutting out non-action scenes, but actually by cutting out action. Someone behind this movie actually gets that non-stop slam-bang action and special effects gets monumentally boring, especially if most of it is CGI-based. The Bourne Identity, buoyed by gorgeous European locations, slick action scenes, Cold War era charm, and a couple of top notch leads, just wants to be a taught, well-spun yarn that, if it isn't exactly brilliant, is at the very least literate.

Labels: Espionage, Netflix Diary, Year: 2002

posted by Keith at 5:45 PM | 1 Comments

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Embrace the Darkness II

United States, 2002. Starring Tristen Coeur D'Alene, Catalina Larranaga, John Maryland, Renee Rea. Directed by Robert Kubilos. Available on DVD from Amazon

So yesterday I dug into one of those "important" films, the sort of thing that makes you happy to be a film fan because it gives you so much to ponder and so many things with which to wrangle. Well, it looks like we're going to plummet pretty low from that lofty perch of just 24 hours ago. I suppose the movie we're reviewing today gives you something to wrangle with, but that's not the sort of thing we care to discuss.

An erotic thriller? Heh heh. How did that get in here? Really, it's not mine. Must be some sort of mistake. No, it's true, and this is a shining example of my honesty, if not an example of particularly good taste. The saner course of action would have been for me to simply skip over this title, and none of you would ever be the wiser. You never would have known. But no - I said I was going to review every single movie I ordered through Netflix, no matter how embarrassing, so now laid bare before you (so to speak) is the shameful truth: every now and then, I peek at erotic thrillers.

Well, so-called erotic thrillers. In all honesty, I haven't seen that many owing primarily to the fact that I'm not going to pay for those premium cable movie channels, but the few that I have seen often employ very liberal definitions of both the word "erotic" and "thriller." In fact, though I've seen one or two that were erotic, I don't think I've ever found one to be especially thrilling, no matter how hard they try to convince me that watching an insurance claims investigator staring at Shannon Tweed through a window is edge-of-your-seat stuff. No, most of them are pretty boring when it comes to the thrilling aspect. And as for eroticism, since most of them feature women with grotesquely swollen fake boobs, it's about as erotic for me as watching some twisted little kid (or grown adult, for that matter) rub a couple of Barbie dolls together. No thanks, baby.

So what causes me to give the odd saucy feature a chance when I would be better off just watching some crazy old hillbilly sex film from Something Weird? I don't know. Bad judgment, I reckon, not that watching hillbilly sex movies is exactly a sign of better judgment. Some people make a hobby out of reviewing erotic thrillers, a task best gone about with a healthy sense of humor since you'll need that far more than a rapidly firing libido. I'm not really interested in becoming an expert on the world of erotic thrillers, partially because I would get tired of constantly typing "erotic thriller." Is there another term for these movies?

Anyway, we proceed with the knowledge that when it comes to these skin flicks, we are on unstable ground. If we're going to review one here, let's say simply for diversity's sake, how could we possibly make things even worse? I know! Let's watch an erotic vampire film! Yes, the erotic vampire film. Almost as popular with no-budget filmmakers as the "serial killer on a spree" film. Both genres usually think they are smarter than they actually are, which is a bad assumption since most of them are dumb as toast. I've seen a lot a vampire films, and I've hated just about all of them, all for the same reasons.

I hate that all the vampires have silly "gothy vampire" names like Galen and Tristain and Validek. Who the hell has names like that? Just once I'd like to see a vampire named Chuck or Steve. I hate that they all have dialogue that sounds like it came straight out of a morose middle school student's fanfic. I hate that the vampires are all rock 'n' rollers and Goths and parade around in leather pants and leather overcoats and those patent leather thigh-high boots that are only worn by comic book super heroines and hookers. I'm sure not every vampire feels the need to dress like Marilyn Manson. Some of them probably want to dress like that dude from The Darkness, or like Bruce Springsteen. Now really, what's scarier? A vampire who adopts the predictable "black leather goth rocker" appearance, or one who comes at you in a shiny spandex "space robe" or a pair of faded Levis and a work shirt?

But more than any of that, I hate that vampires are so often portrayed as whiny, bad poetry-reading (again, of a quality best ascribed to moody high schoolers who do weird spacing and line breaks in their poems) wimps. Even Dracula often gets portrayed this way, Bela and Chris Lee not withstanding. Look, the man was a Romanian warlord who scared the goddamned Turkish army away, which is not an easy thing to do. Apparently it requires lining your borders with the severed heads of your enemies. You don't do things like that if you look like some frail delicate flower from the pages of Propaganda magazine. Give me a vampire with muscles, for crying out loud! And please spare me the pathos. If I have to sit through another "woe the lonely darkness of my eternal soul" speech, I'll go crazy. I always liked Keifer Sutherland in Lost Boys because he really dug being a vampire, which I think would happen pretty often. If I had to be a monster, I'd be a vampire, but one of those vampires who just grows fangs when he vamps out. Not one of the ones that turns into a weird looking bald dude with contact lenses and blue skin. I know if I was a vampire I might be freaked out at first, but I'd eventually get over it and discover the benefits of things like eternal life, flying, hypnotism, and the ability to turn myself into a bat or some mist. And I certainly wouldn't waste away my nights dancing to bad techno music in warehouses that have been converted into industrial dance clubs. I'd be too busy doing things scaring the leader of North Korea and other cool vampire things.

Anyway, it would beat being a wolfman.

So erotic thrillers are usually bad. Vampire films are usually bad. Mix the two together and you have a front row seat to some of the ripest dialogue ever written, if nothing else. Embrace the Darkness II tells the involving story of a young woman who gets turned into a vampire and spends most of her time in a dance club owned by a couple of well-tanned fellow vampires. I guess the ancient legends never got around to addressing things like tanning salons and "Glow, by J-Lo." The head vampire is reformed erotic thriller staple Catalina Larranaga, who has put her naughty past behind her and is looking to build a legitimate acting career on the ol' Hsu Chi model. Well, good luck to her. I think I saw her in a commercial for Office Max or Office Depot. I don't know why all those places have to have their logo in the same font and color. Some day, someone will open an office supply store with a blue and green color scheme in one of those futuristic typefaces, and that'll be that.

If it seems like I know a lot about Ms. Larranaga for a guy who claims not to know very much about erotic thrillers, it's only because she falls into my healthily large category of "guilty pleasure." If I don't watch that many of these films, the ones I do watch often star her, and she's actually kind of worth paying attention to. To get the obvious points out of the way, yep she's hot. But she's hot mainly because she's not a blonde and has no silicone jiggling about and defying gravity. Plus, honest to God, she's a good actress, though that's not so much on display in this film thanks to the "Yea, though we be creatures of the night" style of dialogue she has to spout. Anyway, she has the chops to make it as a real actress in B-movies, though so far her only genre role was in a giant snake movie called King Cobra.

Oh yeah, here her name is Lizzie, because you know, Lizzie Borden and all.

Her plaything is, I suppose, the partial answer to my vampire prayers. Though the actor's name is the thoroughly vampirey Tristen (Tristen Coeur D'Alene, to be complete), his vampire character's name is simply Jack. Good ol' Jack the Vampire. And he's also pretty buff, which is a nice change. Unfortunately, he wears leather pants and a shiny long Matrix overcoat with no shirt (or with a mesh t-shirt from time to time), so he needs to work on his wardrobe. I always figured the best way not to attract the attention of vampire hunters would be to not walk around looking like a vampire. This Tristen fellow seems to be channeling Russell Crowe's voice, though the acting talent and charisma got lost somewhere along the way. Still, as far as beefcake actors in erotic thrillers go, he's not awful and has a better haircut than most of those guys.

The pretty young thing they take under their wing is Renee Rea as Jennifer, who hasn't been a vampire long enough to be issued a cool vampire name. She's not exactly a good actress, but she's not exactly bad either, and she's at least cute and has a silicone-free torso. Together, the trio of vampires hang out in their private goth club, which they keep private so they can invite in good looking "food" while avoiding the proliferation of fat chicks in white face powder insisting you refer to them as Cassandra that tend to pile up in most real goth clubs. It seems to me to be a bad idea to do all your vampiring in the same location night after night, but what do I know? They're at least careful about not killing their victims or turning them into vampires, because they don't seem to want to share their stuff.

Most of the movie consists of scenes of people dancing to generic techno music, then going into an uncomfortably chilly looking back room to have sex and get bitten. In between, awful vampire dialogue abounds, including the inevitable scene where Jennifer hesitates at saying "vampire" and results in Lizzie rattling off the dozen or so names she knows for nosferatu. There's also a grizzled vampire hunter, a Van Helsing of course, who looks like he was hired because he was the bum closest resembling Chris Kristoferson in the Blade movies or James Woods in Vampires. I always get Chris Kristiferson mixed up with Christopher Cross, and it would have been better if they'd tried to hire a guy who looked like Kriss Kross, those kids that made ya jump, jump!

Eventually, since we need some sort of conflict, the happy triangle will be torn asunder by the fact that Lizzie is sort of a vampire snob while Jennifer and Jack are basically nice people who just want to dance to bad music and wear uncomfortable outfits. Low-budget vampires sure are lucky they always live in Los Angeles. It'd be a real pain to wear those assless leather pants if you were a vampire in the northern Denmark. Anyway, the vampire hunter also shows up to talk with a Southern accent and be earthy.

Needless to say, there aren't exactly a lot of scares in this movie. A couple too-close shots of a guy's wobbling scrotum is about as scary as this movie gets, but we'll get to that soon enough. The story is painfully dull and a perfect example of why all these erotic thrillers are so uninteresting. They never push the envelope, not like the old drive-in movies that were often less explicit but far more interesting simply because so many of them were so cracked in the head. This movie, like just about all others of its ilk, does everything you expect it to, or slightly less. This is the sort of thing that gets written in someone's sleep, and even if the movie is just an excuse to show lots of naked people, my response is that there have been other movies with just as many naked people but much better stories. I mean, you have vampires in bad S&M gear. Can't you have them do something more interest tan dance and sit on the couch when they're not having sex? You know, they can fly and stuff, and turn into wolves and bats and, if the old Bela Lugosi Dracula film is accurate, armadillos. Shouldn't the night come when one of the characters says, "You know, I'm actually not in the mood to dance, have sex, then sit on the couch tonight. You wanna go freak out some stoners or something?"

Yeah, I know. Who watches an erotic thriller and complains about the plot? The same sort of guy who complains about how bad the writing in Playboy has become.

Still, some of it is worth watching just for the dialogue alone. It's really quite awful and overwrought. As I said, Catalina Larranaga is a decent actress with her clothes on or off, but there's not much she can do with this stuff but roll with it and collect her paycheck. Like the dialogue in any erotic thriller than yearns to be taken seriously and as something more than just nudity on parade, it's laughably ham-fisted and overblown in its attempt to seem semi-intelligent. Hey, points for trying, but in the end it still sounds like something out of a teenage girl's vampire diary. And the dialogue alone isn't hilarious enough to carry one through the sheer boredom of the "dance-sex-bite" pattern that the film follows. The only real example of interesting "erotic vampire" movies I can think of would be the films of Jean Rollin because, frankly, the man is completely cracked in the skull. Though he often has even less plot than Embrace the Darkness II and has much worse actors, his films are inventive, experimental, and full of psychedelic insanity. He's willing to take a chance, and though you can easily discount his films as pompous, pretentious, or flat-out crappy, at least he's trying something unique.

Speaking of the sex scenes, there are indeed quite a few of them, all surprisingly explicit in what they'll show. You expect full frontal female in these movies, but I was a bit surprised by the number of male genitalia on display here. Don't know if this is common or not, or if it was just this film's attempt to be more daring since wieners somehow equal avant garde art these days. Want to make your arthouse movie seem serious? Show someone's penis. Actually, even what they show of the women and the simulated friskiness is more explicit than what I thought you could do in these movies. The people are attractive, but really, it does get tedious after a while, and I'm not one for reviewing sex scenes. They're all pretty much the same here anyway, with the exception that people are wearing fangs and occasionally drip blood out of their mouths. Which is another thing - vampires always drip blood out of their mouths. Why is that? I've been pretty lusty about some of the food I've eaten, but I've never writhed around and drooled out crème brulee or chewed up bits of filet mignon. But vampires always have to pull away from their victim with blood dripping out of their mouths and smearing their face. If they like blood so much, maybe they should make an attempt to keep it in their mouths instead of getting it all over the place. I've had some nasty cuts in my day, and I know you can suck on a wound (I never knew exactly why we do this, but plenty of people do), even a fairly bloody one, without splattering it all over your face and drooling it all down the front of your new frilly Renaissance shirt. I mean, I don't want sound like a mom, but come on. You think after thousands of years, a vampire would learn how to keep its food in its mouth.

Umm, where was I? Only I could get distracted from talk about explicit sex by ruminations on the lack of basic couth, table manners, and ettiquette among the living dead. So I guess I'm just sort of out of it when it comes to knowing what they're allowed to show in these movies. It's not like I'm a prude or anything, man. I was just taken by surprise. That said, I got more of a charge out of the hint of nudity on display by Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman than I did anything here. Something like that is far more memorable (to the point of becoming almost iconic), where as the stuff in this and any other erotic thriller is utterly forgettable and disposable, hot in only the most plastic and predictable fashion.

Things like vampire manners are more interesting than this movie. I guess erotic thrillers just aren't my thing, even when they contain vampires and a guy faking Russell Crowe's voice. There are at least three titles in the ongoing saga of Embrace the Darkness, but I don't think I'll rush out to find the other two. I really only watched this one because it had Catalina in it. If you're just looking for a movie that will let you touch yourself in special ways and special places, then I suppose this is pretty good for that. It's saucy enough if that's all you want. As far as vampires go, you'd do better with Hammer films, Bela Lugosi, or that scene in Kungfu from Beyond the Grave where Dracula swoops down out of nowhere and flutters around like a moth, much to the annoyance of Billy Chong. And if you want better erotic vampires, well let's see. Jean Rollin is a lot more insane and interesting. You're better off with him, though some may argue that you're never well off with Jean Rollin. And to be fair, his vampires often have even sillier outfits than the vampires here.

So there. We've reviewed an erotic thriller. I could have pretended I didn't watch it, but I did, and I even admitted to it. I don't harbor any ill will toward it, since it was kind of ridiculously amusing - yeah, I know. The old "I watched that porno movie because it was funny." Are there arguments about sexism and objectification? Not to me. All film is objectification, and none of these characters are real, so it' snot an issue with me armed as I am with the ability to tell real from make-believe. And since them men let it all hang out just as much, we can celebrate equality for all. Hooray! This'll probably be the last erotic thriller, though. Just not my kind of thing. Wait, let me check. Okay, yeah, there are some saucy foreign films but no more erotic thrillers, unless you count Spartacus.

Labels: Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Year: 2002

posted by Keith at 10:50 PM | 1 Comments

Sunday, July 20, 2003

The Touch

2002, Hong Kong. Starring Michelle Yeoh, Ben Chaplin, Richard Roxburgh, Brandon Chang, Dane Cook, Winston Chao, Gabriel Harrison, Emmanuel Lanzi, Sihung Lung, Kenneth Tsang, Margaret Wang. Directed by Peter Pau.

I love a good adventure film. In fact, I love an average adventure film, and when it comes right down to it, I'm not all that opposed to even a crummy adventure film. As long as people are hacking through the jungle with a machete or struggling to solve the riddles of an ancient booby trapped temple, I'm probably going to be, at the very least, mildly satisfied. Something about even the most ham-fisted adventure yarns makes me happy, and my tolerance for their peculiarities and short-comings is pretty high. I am, after all, the guy who thought Tomb Raider was a decent amount of fun and even enjoyed myself during Cannon Films fodder like King Solomon's Mines and Treasure of the Four Crowns. It takes a mighty effort like Dark Mission or The Tomb to challenge my ability to enjoy even the lamest adventure film.

It's most likely because those films, even the ones lurking right down there near the bottom of the barrel, appeal to that part of me that always assumed he would be doing much the same thing as Indiana Jones. Swinging on vines while being pursued by angry natives, decoding secret messages hidden in ancient tomes, and of course, wooing some beautiful librarian or professor type as we board the night train to Turkistan or some such exotic locale where men in tight suits and fezzes would attempt to assassinate me in order to protect some terrible secret that has been savagely guarded for a thousand years. It was a given that this would be my life, just as it was a given that those assassins would never actually succeed. After all, no one wants to dream of the day they are successfully murdered by a guy sunglasses and a fez. There was no question that I would never end up as some goofball sitting in front of a computer monitor all day syncing up graphs and slides to droning streaming video about mutual fund management.

And even as I sit here, fund management videos close at hand, I've never fully given up on the hope that one day I'll lead a life of adventure, romance, and intrigue, or at least mild excitement. Call me a dreamer, an eternal optimist, or just pathetic. No matter the mounting evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe that all my life has in store for me is video editing and the consumption of Hot Pockets. Come hell or high water, I will live the sort of life that allows me to regale bored friends and acquaintances with tales of the time I visited the far reaches of the globe, even if I wasn't raiding tombs for priceless artifacts or battling secret sects while riding the Orient Express.

Of course, such dreams also require me to ignore the fact that the world is a far less exotic and mysterious place than it was seventy years ago. The Orient Express is no more, and even the far reaches of the globe tend to afford one easy access to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not that I think the rest of the world should continue to exist as it did in the 19th century purely to provide me with an exotic playground, but there's still a sense of loss anytime you travel thousands of miles and multiple continents only to end up watching Tango and Cash on television.

Much like me, there are filmmakers out there who defy the reality of our world and still crank out the occasional adventure film. Emboldened by her newfound position as the most recognizable female action star in the entire world, Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Yes Madam, Tomorrow Never Dies) decided to become such a person by bankrolling her own big-budget adventure film. Michelle Yeoh took her earnings, invested them in establishing her own production company, and set out to realize what must be one of no more than a few remaining unfulfilled dreams: to make her own movie, at least as producer.

The ingredients she lined up on her counter were impressive. She would star, of course, because she's Michelle Yeoh, and she's cool (my words, not hers). Acclaimed cinematographer Peter Pau (The Killer, Bride With White Hair, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Swordsman) would give it a whirl as director. And her cast would be international, but not with a bunch of nobodies, as is usually the case when Hong Kong films sign up Caucasian actors. No, she'd get some recognizable faces. Maybe not A-List Hollywood actors, but The Truth About Cats and Dogs' Ben Chaplin is at least somebody, and he's certainly proven he's possessed of some skill when it comes to his chosen profession. Richard Roxburgh as the villain would lend additional credibility to the Caucasian cast, having as he does under his filmographic belt hits like Mission Impossible II and Moulin Rouge.

Finally, taking a note no doubt from many of Jackie Chan's more recent productions (including Who Am I and Mr. Nice Guy), and a lot of recent Hong Kong films in general, the movie would be made in English with an eye on overseas success. Filming in English seems more and more popular these days in Hong Kong, perhaps because their films are far more popular with overseas cult crowds than they are with the local folks. Just when we thought the Hong Kong film industry could get no sicker, 2002 handed them one of their worst years ever. The film Psychedelic Cop was supposed to be a big deal. It was pulled from theaters after one week when no more than ten people went to see it - and that's ten as in ten, not as in I'm exaggerating to make a point. With so little interest on the home turf, it's no big surprise that a lot of people making Hong Kong films are banking on overseas distribution and putting success in the US DVD market above the seemingly hopeless scenario presented at home.

Anyone who has struggled through Gen Y Cops or China Strike Force will tell you that Hong Kong films shot with primarily English dialogue can be a nightmarish affair. The dialogue, for one, is often painfully awkward and obviously written by someone who doesn't speak English as a first language. Often times, despite the presence of English words, the sentences still sound like a foreign language. Why the native English speakers mouthing some of the dialogue don't correct it on the fly I do not know, but the end result is sometimes amusing, usually stupefying. The second problem is that many of the actors speaking the words are, to put it lightly, pathetic. In the case of Chinese stars struggling with English dialogue, we can forgive them. For all those native Americans and Canadians, on the other hand (and this includes the Asian ones), there's no excuse for some of those readings. Daniel Wu, I'm looking in your direction.

The Touch avoids the problem of misunderstanding its English by being written by - or at least corrected by -- people who have it as their primary tongue. The scriptwriting duo of Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud (who also collaborated on the superb Running Out of Time and the, shall we say less than superb, Black Mask II) hail from France, but they at least have English language actors who bother to make sure the dialogue doesn't come out sounding like some bizarre moonman language. This is Michelle Yeoh's film, after all. She's proven herself not just fluent in English, but also able to act quite well in the language. And the white actors are real actors, not some Caucasians they picked up off the street on the way to the shoot. Chaplin and Roxburgh and most of the supporting cast can do the job. Unfortunately, there's also Brandon Chang. When looking for the most laughably awful actor in both Cantonese and English, people often cite poor old Michael Wong. Well, Daniel Wu makes Michael Wong seem like Daniel Day Lewis. Brandon Chan, then, makes Daniel Wu seem like, well, Michael Wong I guess. They get more painful with each step down the ladder.

There is one unfortunate side effect to Michelle surrounding herself with competent Caucasian actors -- her own acting comes across as fairly wooden. When she's in action, she's fine, but when she's dealing with the dialogue, she invests very little emotion into most of it -- which is especially painful during her soul-searching romantic scenes. But we'll come to the romance soon enough.

Making the film seem more like a sure thing, at least as Saturday matinee fun fare, is the fact that Michelle decided to go with a rousing Indiana Jones style adventure full of sweeping locales, hair-raising action, and a hint of mysticism. She'd done this once, early in her career with Magnificent Warriors. Though uneven thanks to some ill advised drama and some even worse comedy, Magnificent Warriors delivered Michelle in top form as a swashbuckling kungfu heroine. If it wasn't Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was at least better than High Road to China.

Sadly, if Magnificent Warriors was on the level of High Road to China, The Touch, at it's best, is a good episode of Relic Hunter.

Now I confess that I actually enjoy many episodes of Relic Hunter, if for no other reason than Tia Carerre in her bust-enhancing adventure woman outfit can brighten even the grayest of Saturday afternoons. But I would never put even the best episode of Relic Hunter on the list of things that need to be made into sweeping full-feature adventure films. They work because they remain on the small screen. The Touch takes the same short-comings and silliness present in Relic Hunter, then magnifies them tenfold by sticking them on the big screen.

Michelle Yeoh stars as Yin, an accomplished circus performer who's ex (Ben Chaplin) dabbles in tomb raiding, if you will. A series of events lead her and Chaplin on a quest to recover a sacred treasure before it falls into the hands of the evil Karl. Richard Roxburgh plays Karl, and while he chews all the scenery required to turn in the standard satisfying over-the-top villain, I can think of a lot better names for your main villain than Karl. Nothing against the Karls of the world. I know quite a few, and all of them have been pretty nice guys. But Karl sounds more like a guy who will come over and help you fix a tire on your car than it sounds like the name of someone bent on wielding magic power beyond the comprehension of mere mortals such as we.

Maybe I'm wrong, and the Karls al have a secret plan to one day rule us all, but in the end I'm much more apprehensive about your Fritzes and your Napoleans and any of those guys who have names that resemble something menacing, like Victor von Doom or Sidney Scythe or anyone called Damien. You know guys with names like that are just itching to accidentally get super powers and then lust after domination of the entire planet. They never seem to realize that ruling the planet isn't all jewels and harem girls. They're also going to have to deal with trade disputes and coming up with a workable prescription drug plans for the seniors of the globe. Just once I'd like to see Doctor Doom have to delay his plans to build a universe-warping death ray because he has to attend a meeting with the head of the Department of Sanitation.

Karl seems at least partially aware of the fact that his name isn't entirely menacing, so he makes sure to spell it with a "K." That increases the menace somewhat, but with his distinct lack of a goatee, Karl is still not all that imposing.

Karl, despite his friendly working-class name, is one of those grade-A prick type of villains who always yells at his henchmen and calls them idiots in front of the other henchmen. I never understood how these guys get ahead in the villain world. For starters, they always seem to hire incompetent boobs. Maybe these villains wouldn't have to shriek at their underlings so much if they were able to pick decent underlings in the first place. It's your own fault for hiring idiots. But even if you're saddled with a bunch of bumblers, how does it advance your chances of success to constantly remind them of what losers they are? It's not like any of these criminal masterminds do it in a way that translates into "tough love" or would inspire their minions to try a little harder next time. No, they just yell, "Pathetic fool!" in their shrillest Cobra Commander voice. I'm surprised more of these guys don't find themselves with a bullet in the back of their head.

At least some of Karl's men are adept at the job of being evil, and the ones who aren't are actually somewhat funny. Of course, competent or not, they all get their asses handed to them by Michelle as she and Karl race one another to an ancient hidden temple full of booby traps. Complicating matters is the fact that Karl has taken Yin's astoundingly dense little brother as a hostage. And they get his girlfriend as an added bonus.

So okay, nothing terribly original in the plot department, but I've forgiven that countless times and am always willing to do it again. A story can be old and formulaic as long as it's told with a dash of style. The Touch doesn't entirely succeed in that aspect. Peter Pau, who remains a cinematographer at heart, captures some gorgeous scenery, but I'm always hesitant to compliment the cinematography of a film set in places like the Gobi Desert or the plains of wild Africa. I mean, it doesn't take a maestro to set a camera up on an epic vista and capture images of an epic vista. Instead of praising people who let the scenery do all the work for them, I think we should give out an award for cinematographers and directors who shoot in dramatic places but manage to really screw it up.

No, the film's dramatic scenery certainly doesn't let it down. Nor does the cast. The problem is all in the script, which is tired and predictable and not entirely thought out. No, let me backtrack. The problem is mostly the script. The eye-poppingly awful CGI effects during the finale also contribute a hearty portion of laughable badness to an otherwise average adventure film. The main aspect people look for in a Michelle Yeoh film is fun action and fighting. There's a decent amount of fighting here, some of it pretty good and some of it leaving a little to be desired. Michelle we can all buy as a kungfu bad-ass who can sail through the air, but poor Ben Chaplin looks out of place as an ass-kicker. Sometimes an action film is full of people who struggle through dramatic scenes in anticipation of their next action sequence. Ben is the opposite. With each awkward punch, he looks like he's just biding his time until he can toss out another impish quip. He's a good actor, and he acquits himself fine in the acting department in this film, but the man is no action star.

Choreography comes courtesy of Phillip Kwok, aka Kuo Chui of Five Deadly Venoms fame. He seems to be building a solid career as a guy who can make white people look good in martial arts action (working recently on Brotherhood of the Wolf). And I suppose technically he succeeds here. It's not that Ben Chaplin looks terrible when he breaks out the martial arts. It's just that he looks like, well, Ben Chaplin. He's too recognizable as "the nice guy" to be believable as a fighter, and the script isn't meaty enough to make the casting work. It is, however, smart enough to let Michelle handle most of the foot-to-ass action, and she looks good as always. She certainly doesn't show her age, and the wires only interfere with the action from time to time. Most of the action is martial arts based. There are no car chases or anything like that, and contrary to nearly every other "exotic locales" type of adventure film, no one knocks over a street vendor's fruit cart.

Comedian Dane Cook is the real surprise in the film as Karl's bumbling brother. It's a stock character, and one that generally proves more painful than funny, but Cook performs well and gets quite a few chuckles even with slightly tired material. The rest of the cast has to look wise and troubled or evil and angry. Chaplin and Yeoh are both charming performers, but while they have ample "buddy film" chemistry, they have zero romantic chemistry. Their tired role as "former lovers thrust together for a wild adventure" feels as unrealistic as it is painfully overused in films. Why is it that folks in film can't go ten minutes without finding themselves reunited with a former flame in order to conquer some zany obstacle? They're simply not believable as star-crossed lovers brought together once again by a fabulous adventure, and as much as I hate to say it, most of the blame lies on Michelle. Even though we've all seen her flex considerable dramatic muscle, she looks much more comfortable jumping off a trailer to kick some guy in the head than she does in her supposedly tender scenes with Chaplin.

The music was composed by none other than Basil Pouledouris, best known for his incredible Conan the Barbarian score. It's good stuff, but hardly as memorable as his classic barbarian brass.

One of the things that really serves to undermine the film's effectiveness is the atrocious CGI during the finale. Bad special effects are fine and all, but these are really bad, and not even in a fun way. The film's international release was pushed back because distributors didn't want to release a movie with computer effects that would make people long for the realism of The Last Starfighter. It doesn't help that the entire finale is devoid of any emotional impact at all. Bad effects can be saved by a fun yarn, after all. A lack of any emotional impact means that there's very little around to redeem the awful effects, which look like something you might be able to produce after half-assing your way through the beginner's tutorial on whatever CGI effects program they used. The story meanders on with such thinness that it becomes impossible to feel engaged by any of the characters. The film's finale drums this in as what should have been a major dramatic twist elicits nary more than a second of "Nooo!" style screaming before everyone seems to forget about it entirely. If the characters don't care about the characters, why should we?

And that's what really keeps the film from being the adventure romp it was meant to be. There is no emotional engagement. The characters are not unlikeable, but they're pretty bland. There's no lovable rogue like Indiana Jones nor tough woman like Marion. Heck, there's not even anyone as compelling as that bald Nazi with the mustache who got chopped up by the plane propeller. Aside from all that, your heroes and villains need to dress cool. Most of the people here look like they just stepped out of a J Crew catalog, and while J Crew clothes may be fine for yachting and reading GQ, they're not suitable attire for globe-trotting adventure. Michelle gets it right once they get to the desert, but everyone else still looks like they just got off their job as a waiter at some hipster restaurant in the East Village. The Touch, for a lot of reasons other than garb, never becomes more than another in the long line of films that imitate Raiders of the Lost Ark without understanding how to work with the elements that made that film such a fantastic and enduring adventure.

The pacing is wildly uneven. It takes a while to get things going, and once they are in motion, they sort of sputter along like the jalopy Michelle and Ben attempt to drive across the desert. The big budget bloats the film, but the script can't keep up with the size. Thunderball was a bloated action-adventure film, but it still kept a brisk pace and wry wit that helped it avoid being crushed by its own weight. Not so, here. The Touch can never rise above its own contrivances. I understand it was a labor of love for Michelle. All I can do is say that it was a nice effort, and I wish her better luck next time. She knew how to collect all the pieces. Now she has to learn how to make them work together.

Ultimately, The Touch as a whole never lives up to its individual parts. So many wonderful ingredients went into the film, but the end result was more of a mess than a grand confection. The film just feels flat and uninspired despite the charm of the cast and the beauty of Pau's camerawork. The end result of The Touch is a movie that should have been great, and instead is just sort of okay. I certainly didn't regret watching it, and it has some decent moments. In a movie like this, though, the flashes of fun only serve to make the lackluster quality of the rest of the film all the more evident. It's definitely not going to be the international hit they were probably hoping for. Instead, it's a mildly entertaining adventure film that stumbles over it's own weak story and doesn't offer up enough high-energy elements to make you forget that what you're watching isn't very good. It's not Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's for sure, but at least it isn't Treasure of the Four Crowns.

Labels: Action: Adventure, Martial Arts: Kungfu, Year: 2002

posted by Keith at 1:31 PM | 0 Comments

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