Hard Times answers the call

Just a Break

    Days having passed and a rut has been setting in. The want for movie watching diminishing slowly and steady. Something needed to get me back into the fold. The fold being the groove. The groove of watching a movie. Easy solution. A simple film can knock me back onto the tracks. An American film is wanting. Walter Hill is calling. Hard Times answers picks up the phone.

The Film

    Charles Bronson is Chaney. A wanderer in Depression era Louisiana arriving into town on a train-car with no goal in mind and nothing but six dollars to his name. He wanders around town, gets some coffee, then hears a commotion. He makes his way into a warehouse where a bare knuckle boxing match is occurring. He notices Spencer "Speed" Weed, played by a charismatic as always James Coburn, hyping up his fighter to get the bets higher but as the fight ensues, his fighter loses and he's left with pocket change.

    The two have a meet cute in an oyster bar where Chaney wants Speed to hype him and put his six bucks on him to win. Speed agrees and they go back to the warehouse. Chaney wins and suddenly a booming business agreement occurs.

    The movie then follows the two go from fight to fight. A 2 year medical student addicting to opium by the name of Poe, played by Strother Martin, joins the team to take care of Chaney. The main villain doesn't throw a punch but spends enough money to try and get Chaney to lose the hard way. Ultimately, the final match comes around with Speed being held against his will for being unable to pay off a debt and its up to Cheney to make good.

Before the Film

    This film has always been a personal favorite of mine as well as being one of my favorite Walter Hill films. So let us speak fondly of Walter Hill.

    Walter Hill is a pretty good director. One that would have thrived in the studio systems of the past as he had made the kind of movies that all audiences would enjoy but his career started up during the weirdness of 1975. A shifting year for Cinema for it is the year of Jaws and the end of the low budget B movie receiving theatrical distribution. It is the middle years of the Movie Brats phase where people who have never made movies look back and think 'The artists were truly alive then.' instead of seeing the reality that it was all luck that the movies they made had an audience. Like honestly, who the fuck wasn't going to go see The Godfather?

    Walter Hill though was someone that could be considered kin to those Movie Brats but more so the loner sitting at the table by himself enjoying the vibes of the party while drinking his beer. Influences coming far and wide when it came to films, with Akira Kurosawa probably being the biggest, but also genre. The man loved genre films as he has claimed that every movie he has ever made has been within the context of a western. Maybe this is why his films seem to bleed Americana no matter the subject.

    He starts his career gigging as a Assistant Direct and then moving his way up to screenwriting and sells his screenplay for Hickey & Boggs then gets the job of writing the adaptation of The Getaway. Getting enough juice to get his career off the ground.

Now the Film

    I watch it now and will all bias aside have to consider this a near masterpiece of a debut. There are so many character moments that exist in this film that have nothing to do with pushing the plot forward. All of these scenes though are inherent to the overall structure of the film that to cut one would start a bleed to death by many cuts scenario because if one goes then another has to go and soon enough there ain't much but probably 30 minutes and that ain't a movie. So wonderfully done these scenes are to create stronger outlines around these character types that you have seen again and again in various other sports films. 

    And in the middle of this is Charles Bronson giving one of his better performances that surely can stand strong alongside the very few worthwhile performances he has had over his long career. Everyone in this movie though is giving their best and for the stakes set up in this underworld circle of life of gamblers, hustlers, and people getting by; it all just works.

    Unfortunately, I do have to call the film near perfect because of how it falls short to truly accentuate the strengths of having a lead like Bronson that could have shot this movie to the moon as one of the best boxing films of all time. 

    For you see, it is Bronson's stoicism that strikes the heart of every viewer and the less dialogue used the better off you are. It's not like he can't speak English or grunts to communicate but its the fact that his face is where everything needs to expanded from. All the cracks of a hard life, the rough features, but most of all the eyes. So much power is in those eyes and if you able to work off these inherent traits then you could get yourself a fantastic Charles Bronson performance.

no mustache Bronson is the biggest threat 

    Now, his delivery though can be on point. Just look at how he delivers lines if either that one Twilight Zone episode Two or how he manages to steal every scene he shows up in The Magnificent Seven. The guy can deliver if you work with him and maybe its the fact that Walter Hill was a first time director and Bronson seems like a very rough around the edges kind of guy to interact with but the way he says a couple of lines here hinders the performance. Especially those with Jill Ireland which are the core of the Chaney's want to keep fighting.

    A very peculiar criticism I know but for a film that has hardly anything to criticize about, this was always the small thing that nagged me about the film.

    The camera keeps itself steady and determined with very little movement except for the fights themselves but even then, there is no flash to the fighting. People getting punched. People taking punches. People then getting knocked out. There's no music or nothing except for grunts and groans of the fighters as the blood lust crowd cheers on a winner to win that dollar bet to get something to eat. 

    It all looks great though. You get introduced early on to the idea that all these characters are very small people in a much bigger big world. You get the sights of empty trainyards, New Orleans graveyards, and low quality rooms for rent. There isn't anything superfluous to any of it and that makes the film feel lean. Real lean all throughout. This going alongside the music being real sparse and coming around every so often but mostly as something playing out of a radio or jukebox.

The Night is Coming to an End

    I equate this film to near perfection and to create an image; it is the end of a late night, say around 2 or 3 in the morning, and you are sitting all alone in a booth. All night diner offering the only solitude one needs and a cheap cup of coffee to pass the time with. You stare outside the window and watch the world stand still as the sky starts turning brighter and brighter. There is solace to be had in moments like this when all alone and this is how the film feels. A late night cup of coffee as the world keeps turning.

Out of the Blue and Into the Nosferatu

The End is the Beginning is the Beginning of The End

   It is the end of February and I haven't gotten around to writing anything about a movie. Though to be fair, it has been a challenging month. For the past 3 weeks I have been having to spend every Saturday watching a movie in the Twilight franchise. Sometimes 2 movies in 1 day. IN 1 DAY. That's a lot of subpar movie watching but when in a relationship, sometimes these things are mandatory but don't forget that it is also known in the Geneva convention as; NO ESCAPE.

I saw them all but did i survive?

    So as of yesterday, 2/21/26 JUDGEMENT DAY, after having survived through the last two films that make up Twilight: Breaking Dawn, I was able to regroup today on this holy Sunday and sit down to watch something worth my while. I decided on a vampire movie that would help get the bad taste of the previous 5 vampire movies out of my mouth. Something tough and mean. Something German.

Felt Pretty German to Me

    Now, I had a copy of Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht for some time but never managed to find the right time to give it a watch. Halloween 2025 would have been a good time but I believe it was around that time that I had seen that recent Robert Egger's film Nosferatu.

Spoilers: Pretty Meh

    Now a quick aside; Robert Egger's is a pretty talented filmmaker. His films like The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman are just great so it was a surprise to see how not good Nosferatu was.

    The performances were pretty good overall but man, nothing in the rest of the film offered much to grasp onto. The gray/dead tones all throughout, the bleakness that turned more into boredom as the film goes on, and the critical point of Count Orlok not having any true terror behind any of his actions. 
    Sure, we see that the gray world has turn to a shittier state of gray and people going crazy but goddamn, beyond just being an exercise in style there is just isn't much there.
    I was so affected by this subpar rendition that I forgot that it was Halloween and soon enough I found myself nearing the end of the year watching the Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate. Now, after going through the entire Twilight Saga and critically verifying my hill to die on as being on Team Jacob; I went about in watching Werner Herzog's adaptation of Dracula.

The Film

    The story follows just about the same rhythms of the novel Dracula except with a good chunk of characters and relationship being nixed to shift the focus of the hour and forty something minutes to just the major love triangle of Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula, and Lucy.

    Jonathan and Lucy are happily married but Lucy is having some crazy dreams. Jonathan gets an opportunity to make a real estate deal with Count Dracula in Translyvania from his boss Renfield. He goes out to Translyvania where he meets the albino man to make a deal but it might be one with too high of a price. 

    What separates this from say the other Dracula adaptations from the 1931 Tod Browning film to the fairly modern Francis Ford Coppola adaptation and ending with the Robert Egger's dull gray version is that there is a real sense of grounded reality in this one. I will get more into that later on but what is also drastically different here is with the material having possibly the least amount of time of interaction with Lucy and Dracula. There is not a hint of suave to Klaus Kinski's Count Dracula. He looks like a guy that has been living underground for centuries and shows it by having a single awkward conversation with Lucy and then the movie shifts to her having to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

ay carumba!

    Another change was the character of Dr. Van Helsing becoming far more disinterested and above all useless to the story. Portrayed far more as a man of science that denies any belief of superstitions or folklore dealing with anything that can't be proven with SCIENCE!

    The whole town goes to shit when the Count arrives to town  with some rats who have the plague. Which happens to be right around when Jonathan comes back. He having lost his mind completely as he is unable to recognize any of his friends let alone his wife Lucy. 

     Lucy faints in distress but hunts down an answer and comes across a book that Jonathan received which delves into occult myths and understands immediately that she was dealing with a blood sucker. 

    I don't think there was a mention of the word 'Vampire' in the film. The laws of bloodsuckers stating that its up to a woman with a pure heart to keep the bloodsucker locked down until dawn comes around. 

    Lucy offers herself and the Count takes the bait. Dying as the dawn breaks but what is interesting is that he dies as though it is a heart attack. His body still on the ground in physical form as Van Helsing finds Lucy dead. He shows up and his survival instincts kick in and he goes straight for the hammer and stake to get the job done.
   The twist here is that Jonathan has now taken the role of the villainous vampire. Having whats left as an authority to arrest Van Helsing for killing the Count. With his vampire buck teeth and pale as the moon skin, he rides off into the desert and the most likely destination being that he is heading back to Transylvania to live out his life. Maybe to finish that real estate deal.

What I Got

    With the various differences, it feels more like a straight forward take on the material and leaves you feeling fulfilled when its all said and done. I'm sure its a possible reflection of the original 1922 Nosferatu film but I haven't had a chance to give it a watch so I cannot say yay or nay towards this observation. Regardless, the more streamlined the material gives the story to feel more grounded.

    Now, when I say more grounded I mean that it feels more a part of our world than another world. As we watch Jonathan Harker travel to Transylvania, we find ourselves watching him travel across actually vast landscapes. Real wide plains. Real tall mountains. A real sense of scale that the world Harker lives in to give a far more credible feeling of being real. There are no sets depicting cinematic space distorted landscapes in order to create scale. There is only the real world that these characters live in.

    Also, I want to give a special shout out to that intro credit sequence. I don't know where it was shot but the fact that mummified remains, or at least nearing the end phase of decomposition, are screaming in a silent face of pain is a terrifically horrifying way to not only start the film but also set a tone. Where this tomb was located I can only assume in Count Dracula's massive castle but no answers are given and we are left wondering. 

    What also helps ground the film is the amount of time spent showcasing scenes with actual physical props. A piece of the story deals with the Count arriving to the city while bringing the plague. Now, in the other films this is shown as best as could be with a few amount of rats running around. Maybe even CGI rats with the more recent films. Herzog shows an insane amount of rats running around. Even on a minuscule budget, there is great effort showcasing that the city and citizens are losing a sense of stability and civility as the film goes on with images such as more and more coffins being taken to the cemetery. Reaching a point where coffins are now out in the street with no one around to carry them. We see a family that has the plague sitting down to eat their final meal with the rats. This truly feels like a once prospering society losing it. Also, the way the film was staged and photographed was also visually striking when comparing it to Werner Herzog's other films. Far more stylized than his other work in terms of mood lighting and creating interesting framing for the characters to maneuver and none of it feels awkward or out of place.

    The performances are great but i suppose having to work against Klaus Kinski bringing the heat would require one to step it up. Though Isabelle Adjani is something great. She is able to play like a woman that is both feminine and strong but in a soft way. She isn't running around punching people out or shit. Instead, she is far more proactive in the role of Lucy more so than the other portrayals of the character. She just doesn't become a victim but more so comes to realize that as the world is burning around here and people of authority do not care to listen and so she must do what she has to do to get the job done.
    Lastly, the music is pretty good. Especially that one Wagner piece that plays here and there. 
    

The Beginning is The End is the The End of The Beginning

    I cannot say that I am surprised that the film was good. Werner Herzog makes good movies. I will say that Kinski surprised me since a majority of Herzog's films has him playing characters that are too tough to love but the amount of sympathy I had for this Count Dracula, who didn't say or do much, in that last scene especially was a strange feeling that caught me off guard. Seeing him totally white in the eyes and yet the facial expressions saying so much, goddamn did that crazy sack of shit just know how to act. Though I can't say the film is anywhere near being romantic in the slightest so it cannot reach GREAT status, as a stripped down take on the Dracula story though its pretty solid. 

Blackhat or How Michael Mann Made Another Good Movie That Nobody Saw

A New Chapter

    11 years and a couple days have passed since I first ventured into the new year of 2015. A marker in my life as I moved away from family and friends and had to deal with a world unknown. Time passing since and life hasn't been any easier but at this moment, looking back I see that I had a true sense of pure optimism. It would only be a brief moment where being alive seemed to be going alright for the most part since the world didn't look as though it was on the verge of ending. What also made it exciting was the fact that there was a brand spanking new Michael Mann film coming out.

    Since the last film of his that I reviewed was Miami Vice, I can say from that moment in the mid 2000's to now that I have been a far more involved fan of the man's work. Reading more about him in the few books that I could get my hands on as well as indulging in his filmography. Even checking out some of his early work like the TV prison film The Jericho Mile. Which I also wrote a review on this site. This fanaticism building to this particular moment in time that any film fan would be excited for.

    And so I ventured and saw the film in a small crowd and came out having to ponder but more on that later. 

 

The Teaser Trailer was pretty good

The Film

     Now there are currently three different versions of this film available for watch thanks to Arrow Video. There is the US Theatrical, The International version, and a Directors Cut. For this review, I will discuss the US Theatrical to reflect the movie I saw back in 2015 as well as the recently released Directors Cut that was officially released in 2023.

    Funny enough, this is not the first time in which I have indulged with both a theatrical and directors cut to a Michael Mann film. There is also the pair of DVDs that I had rented late one night of both the theatrical and directors cut of Michael Mann's Manhunter. Though the difference between the two after watching them as a double feature was so minuscule that it was tough to truly say if there was a difference; nonetheless it was worth the time because Manhunter is such a cool fucking movie. Man I love that one.

The Two I Rented

    The film opens up by showing off the big blue world we know as Earth interconnected as the title of the film appears and then we zoom into the world that ultimately becomes a Chinese nuclear reactor. Looking like a normal day for the Scientists at work and then we slowly dive into the computer itself.

    Now, movie hacking has always been the goofiest scene in any movie that went about it in portraying it. From the low lows of the Sandra Bullock film The Net and the forever charming Hackers to the nitty gritty dumbness of Hugh Jackman shaking his ass while hacking himself up a worm that will go about in hacking in Swordfish. It just seems that whenever a movie has to show someone committing the act of hacking that it has always been a challenge for filmmakers to rise up and accomplish filming this in the dumbest way possible. This film though delivers a fresh take on this.

    We do not see the endless finger strokes on a keyboard showcasing the precise and amazing skill of a hacker at work. Instead, we are transported to a fantastic visual treat of data flowing through the microscopic infrastructure of computer chips and wires that all starts with a USB stick being inserted into a USB slot. Traveling through these highly intricate systems and watching a high speed piece of data separate itself and travel into the operating system of the previously mentioned nuclear reactor. Then seeing that its a hack that causes the failure of a turbine and soon the stakes are set with an explosion at the nuclear reactor that rocks the world news cycle. Soon after this, another hack occurs with the price of Soy Bean futures increasing due to the hack. The two seemingly unrelated but are they?

    The mayhem that both these events cause forces Chinese and American intelligence agencies to work together to figure out what the hell happened. After locating how the hackers got their way in the system, it turns out the hack was using a piece of code written by the Chinese office Chen Dawai (Played by Leehom Wang) with a buddy of his from college. Enter Scene: Chris Hemsworth as Hacker Extraordinaire Nicholas Hathaway.

    He's currently doing time and gets a work-pass to help out the FBI and PLA to figure this out and if he helps find the culprit then he gets released from prison. Their investigation has them traveling the world as the team uncovers a global conspiracy involving the want of this hacker mastermind to manipulate the certain destruction of certain areas in 3rd world countries in order to manipulate the stock market once more to make a few more dollars. Rounding out the cast is the always lovely Viola Davis, Holt McCallany, John Ortiz, and Tang Wei.

    What follows is what one expects from a Michael Mann film. People going through a process to figure out the why which then involves gunfights, entanglements of forbidden love, and that slick post 2000 Michael Mann digital sheen to it all but let us save the opinion for later and let us travel onward to the directors cut.

The Directors Cut

    It's always fascinating to see a new version of a film like Blackhat. Re-watching the Theatrical has me feeling like the story I remember was now rushing itself to get to the good parts as soon as possible and set up the high stakes right off the bat. Which now after watching this new version reveals the biggest difference between them.

    The scene that starts off the original version of the film is with the nuclear reactor exploding is now an event that happens later on in the film. The directors cut starts off with solely focusing on the cyber attack of the sudden increase of soy beans futures and the global ramifications of this sudden event. Starting the film at this moment is this strange quiet before the storm. It's a scene that exists but now sets a different tone. Starting off in this eerily empty room with all these screens tracking numbers for various speculation and stocks that you have seen filled to the brim with people selling and buying but now, it just exists. This cold room of brutal capitalism that will never end even as people are not there to be part of it. Sent a real chill down my spine seeing this hacking scene start off the film.

    Obviously not the biggest stakes for a film to start off with but it creates a much more grounded world as an event like this means a whole lot more in our capitalistic driven world where stock market manipulation must be controlled so that those in the know will have access to the profits and not those who cause the manipulations for their own ends whether nefarious or not.

    We are then introduced to the idea of a RAT (Rat Access Tool) being used covertly to manipulate the prices which causes an international partnership to occur between China and the United States intelligent agencies to go about and solve. The tension rising and rising as they travel around the world and get into a gunfight and then BOOM! Reactor explosion. A real big Whoa moment in the middle of all this when this happens because now the stakes have officially been raised Then the movie, for the most part, follows along with the original version as far as moving through the same machinations to reach the same ending. 

    Though the end of this cut seems to fly quicker to the final confrontation between the big evil hacker and Hathaway. No build up and just a simple “You want the money then meet up.” In the Theatrical, there was at least this sense of uneasiness between the two having to meet up since the prearranged site was compromised and now they would have to change location at the last minute. This new location being a place where at the same time was this religious event that I will get into later but that's just gone now and it goes straight to the confrontation. Same ending as the theatrical though with Hathaway and his girl heading off into their future as fugitives on the run.

   With this complete change of structure though comes a film that feels far more natural in telling its story. Gradually, as an audience, we learn more and more about the ramifications of this one event that then leads into the real consequences of these events until we ultimately discover, along with the characters in the film as all good detectives movies have you moving at the same pace as the characters in solving the mystery, the end justification for why hacker mastermind does what he does.  

    This was a real solid version of the film that probably would have worked out better for everyone if this had been released in theaters and not the actual theatrical release. The ramifications of this might have been life altering as 2015 turned out to be a real bad year by November.

What Does It All Add Up To?

    Leaving that theater, I didn't feel like I saw a terrible movie but it wasn't as great as I had hoped. Though it was also strange to see the initial mixed reception of the film when it first came out. Obviously this initial release wasn't necessarily going to set the world on fire but even in this strange form, there was a whole lot here to enjoy. 

    The overall aesthetic that Michael Mann has been working towards with digital filmmaking reaches a strong pivotal moment in this film. The mood that comes across from the visuals along with the music and performances are such that for the most part, it all works. It's all coherent and none of it feels cheap. A lot of digital filmmaking these days looks cheap because it seems that with digital it is easier to cut around corners to not put as much into the surrounding environments. The faux worlds of the digital creation that meanders itself into trying to be something wonderful and extraterrestrial but fails to convey anything but artifice. The difference here is that Mann isn't interested in artificial worlds for his digital vision. He is far more intrigued in whats going on now and wanting to get as close to it as possible with these digital cameras. To create something far more immersive to what we see today which also leaves me wondering about the possibility of the story itself being far too close to real world narratives for audiences to engage with.

    In part, this narrative was inspired by the Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program. This odd unknown origin piece of code that caused insane damage and has been verified but not verified to be a country backed attack on another country. All real cloak and dagger shit. Something like that can't be made without needing the audience to be right there from the start. This isn't a movie that wants to hold your hand. It doesn't want to stop and talk out the plot for you to reengage with the material when you happened to have stopped paying attention. This is crafted for you to either get with it or not but as mentioned before, maybe that was the issue.  

    Stock market manipulation by rogue terrorists whose interests is not contained or drawn from a sense of moral or traditional religious fanaticism isn't one that, at least at the time, American had an interest in. Compared to what came out in wide release that same week, Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, it's not hard to tell how America was more interested in the supposed true story of Chris Kyle running and gunning in the Middle East than anything involving a cyber attack on Soy Bean trading.

    Which looking back now to the two films, the all too real Blackhat has shown the true ramifications of stock manipulation as seen the 2016 Administrations failure of protecting Soy Bean farmers as well as various narratives of stolen elections via hacked voting terminals and such. Data security is one topic that has become far more enduring and everyday for everyone now than it ever has been while the popularity of American Sniper has dwindled into one of those 'We really liked this?' kind of movies but I digress.

    Blackhat is a film that doesn't have a happy ending. Nobody wins. There is no exit. A small group of cyber terrorists lose but that doesn't mean that it won't happen again or that all crime has stopped. It's just this one particular story. Though even with my enjoyment of the film, I have to admit that there was a problem I had with the film.

Issues 

    As mentioned before, the end sequence to this film is really great. Shot on site in Jakarta and involves this religious procession where all these people with torches march together all the while the main characters are walking the opposite way. Its a great set up with no real conclusion. 

    The villain in the film isn't one that has any other motive beyond trying to make a few dollars. A couple more million from the original heist he pulled off in the beginning. And I suppose this is truer to life as we watch billionaires with seemingly dead eye stares and terrible taste parade on television screaming about the beautiful virtues of capitalism but for a movie, I think there needs to be something more. What makes a great villain in a movie compared to a movie counterpart to a real capitalist.

    Though this wanting of more could be seen as needing to create a facade and inauthentic character to fulfill this void I have in the film. It's a tough call because the way this movie is tells me it should be this but staying true to the film, it is what it is.

     An aside, I remember there was this thread on forum for this film on IMDB that made fun of the fact that Hemsworth had magazines wrapped around him with tape and it goes to show how education is a fundamental flaw in the average American moviegoer. Any American should know that in prison the tradition of having thick multi-paged atlas books and such wrapped around your body is for protection from knives and knife like weaponry. I only say that this should be a fundamental piece of knowledge for all Americans as we have a higher chance of going to prison statistically than graduating college.

    A lot of people seem to be confused as to why Chris Hemsworth is playing the role of a hacker but I like the performance. Following in the vein of those characters that we have seen before in previous Mann films such as Thief and Heat where there is a struggle to be striving for a place in the world and unable to completely understand how to get there. Maybe it was the whole Thor thing that fucked him up because honestly, I would have rather seen him go into meatier roles in the vein of this character instead of the hulking facade of a troubled past character we saw in those Extraction movies. God those were terrible.

Final Thoughts

    Michael Mann has always been a top 5 director for me. Something about them speaks loudly to whatever lurks within me and I will go see his next film when it comes out. I did actually go see Ferrari and I liked that film as well even though it had a very similar reaction to this film. His next film is going to be a sequel to Heat, based on the novel he wrote which was pretty good as yes, I did read it, and at the age of 82, it might be his last. If this be the case then I can't wait to see it in theaters. 

 

Gonna Need Some Dice

 The World Therein 

    There are a lot of movies that I haven't seen. It feels as though there are more movies coming in and I'm losing more and more time each and every day in my ability to observe these movies. To be able to sit down with a nice cup of coffee and give them their proper due. To see the beauty of cinema through the dogshit dribble that seems to be all that fuels the soul. That and coffee. 

    I need to quit my job. I need to stop wasting so much time eating, using the bathroom, and interacting with my family. All of it a waste but the guilt that fuels my morality prevents me from giving movies my first and foremost attention. Though I did get around to re-watching a film I hadn't seen some time. Probably wasn't the smartest move to make but it looked to be the only move I had.

pretty cool poster I think

    It was a particular Memorial Day in that I still didn't have a car and I had even less motive as to trying to get through the day but I figured in-between the hours of waking up from sleep and having to go back to sleep, I should probably watch a movie. The idea traveling through my body after igniting in my brain flowed through my veins with a need for a genre and the only one to fall from my tongue was a single word: CRIME. But what kind of crime? 

    Instantly when I think of crime the first thought that comes to mind is the Michael Mann film Heat. Goddamn that's a solid crime movie but its also a very loud crime movie with the centerpiece of the film being that famed Los Angeles shootout and I didn't want to watch something loud even though that seems to be a big trend. Big Loud Crime Movies should be its own genre as the most recent sequel to that not great but alright movie from years before had come out recently and was very loud. Mostly the loudness came from Gerard Butler and his talking beard.

I bet you guessed correctly that it was this film

 

    Loudness wasn't what I needed and so I searched for the calm and cool. I need characters that smoked constantly and talked in conversational tones while some crime shit happens. I had just recently bought that beautiful Blu-ray of John Dahl's Red Rock West but unfortunately I bought the film during Vinegar Syndrome's Half Way to Black Friday sale and the shipping time of having just bought and now would take about 3-4 weeks according to the FAQ. 

    The wait wont kill me but I will admit that it was a bummer to not have the cash on hand to buy that new 4k of Billy Friedkin's Jade. A tumultuous movie where Joe Esterzhas vehemently refuses to take credit for the script that Friedkin had promised not to change a single word and did just that as well as the confusion that Friedkin had over the reception and box-office of the film since he considers it to be strong work. God, I need to go about and procuring a copy of that. Though to be honest, I did have the money but just didn't go about in buying the movie since it would have blown out my wallet and I rather get the most bang for my buck these days when it comes to movie buying.

    Regardless, I had to look through the collection of movies and sifting through I came across two that sort of the fit the form of calm crime and between Rounders and Hard Eight, I decided I wasn't interested in poker at the moment but was feeling lucky on dice rolls and so Hard Eight it goes.

 

What a Poster!
 

Now Showing; The Film as Best as I can Remember 

 

    The film starts off with John, played by the always great John C. Reilly, sitting outside a diner without a cent in his pocket when out of thin air appears Sydney Brown played by the always cool Philip Baker Hall. He offers him a cup of coffee and a cigarette for his troubles and soon Sydney learns why he's down and out. John just tried to win six thousand to pay for his mom's funeral by gambling. Though Sydney can't offer John the money to pay for the funeral, he can instead offer him a way to get back on his feet.           He accepts under the condition that Sydney recognizes that he isn't a prostitute and Sydney agrees. What then sets off the first twenty minutes is Sydney teaching John the basics of the rate card scheme for hotels. 

    Probably an antiquated technique that probably doesn't get much traction these days since Vegas no longer uses coins and physical representations of monies inside of their casino when it comes to payments. It's all digital. All bullshit. Or maybe I'm wrong. I haven't been to Vegas in years.

    John keeps this scheme going on of trading in a hundred bucks over and over again on his rate card to then get a room for the night. Sydney is a proud teacher but he keeps it close to his chest. No real emotion but giving off a feeling as though he had showed him the way. 

    A couple years pass and Sydney and John are professional gamblers living their days in a casino. Sydney meets a waitress by the name of Clementine, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and the two form a sort of bond similar to that of the parental that he has with John. Their brief conversation giving off the feeling that this was the one of many that they had in the past.  She leaves right when John swings by and introduces Jimmy, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who doesn't get on Sydney's good side with the ensuing conversation. 

    The big highlight being that Jimmy had seen Sydney back in day put a two thousand dollar bet on the hard eight. This being the numbers 4 showing up on both dice after rolling them down the table. Sydney laughs it off and their conversation goes bad and soon after, John and Jimmy head out and Sydney takes a walk around the casino.

    Heading out for some fresh air, he meets up with Clementine who apparently works a side hustle being a prostitute. Sydney doesn't care much for it but he cares for John and asks Clementine up to his room to clean up. She thinks they are about to have sex but Sydney ain't interested and offers instead the bed for her to sleep it off. The next day, everything seems cool with John taking Clementine out for a day out and Sydney is just chilling until he gets a call

    A real fucked up situation where Clementine doing her side hustle as a prostitute but not getting paid and then having John knock the guy out in this sleazy motel room and handcuffing him into the bed frame. Shit goes sideways fast and the more and more they tell the story to Sydney, the less patience the guy has with the two but then his heart opens when he hears that they got married. 

    I mean, he still doesn't care much for the situation that they put him in but his heart opens up and through his old school criminal ways, figures out a solution to the problem the best way they can. Sydney gives John and Clementine some cash to go to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon and it looks like the narrative is starting to wrap up until Jimmy reenters the movie.

    Jimmy knows some stories about Sydney about his time in Atlantic City. Sydney doesn't care to hear them until Jimmy pulls out a gun and tell him that he wants money or else he'll let John know that it was Sydney that killed his father. Shot him in the face he says. Sydney agrees to pay him but only with what he has on hand and they have to go to his hotel room where the final conversation between the two occurs. 

     Now this conversation is a strange one. It's one that you really see or hear in crime movies because not a lot of crime movies have a character like Sydney Brown. Sure there are shades of his character in other movies but here is something wholly original. 

    There is no cool slick dialogue being said but what he says and the way he says it if following through of this undertone that has been present all throughout the film of you either take it or leave it. Though he sounds like he's begging for his life, its not really begging. He's talking about the situation and what the situation means for him as an individual and how Jimmy needs to understand what the money really means when he takes it. Sydney has gotta close his heart again and that's going to be the ultimate cost of this transgression but Jimmy doesn't see it that way and after they make the money exchange, Sydney goes about in doing what he needs to do.

    John calls him up and thanks him and tells him that he loves him. Sydney says he loves him as well and when he hangs up the phone, its done. Sydney is back to that dude he didn't want to be but now he doesn't have to choice if he wants to survive. 

    He sneaks over to Jimmy's house and finds his stash of guns then waits. Jimmy comes in and without saying a word, shoots Jimmy till he stops breathing. He grabs his money and goes.

    The last scene of the movie taking place at the same diner that he picked up John in the beginning. Enjoying his coffee as best as he can but then sees blood at the cuff of his sleeve and tries to cover it. Then the movie ends.

 

A Few Words 

    I remember watching this debut of one Paul Thomas Anderson a couple months after having seen The Phantom Thread in theaters. That was a cool movie and building up the anticipation for his debut resulted it not being as great but re-watching it now, it really feels like something special. 

    A lot more of a character drama and just throwing these character in a situation that resolves itself in such a way that then a secret is revealed that seems to be on the edge of breaking a man's identity. The main character of Sydney is a man with walls surrounding him. He doesn't let anyone near that he doesn't need near but the people he does, its tough to say what the motivations are. Does he create this paternal relationship with John out of the fact that he had killed his father? Is it guilt that is motivating this man to raise a son without a father? What about with Clementine? He does what he does out of nicety or some sense of nobility? 

    There's a lot of questions to be derived from the actions of this character but regarding internal monologue or some outside force being there to answer them, its nonexistent.

    Its just such a well done character drama about a man who was one thing and tried to be another but got pushed back to be who he really was.

    There was a mention in the summary of the Jimmy talking about Sydney making a two grand bet on the hard eight. The morning after John and Clementine go about in their date, Sydney goes to the crap tables and watches a gambler, Philip Seymour Hoffman, goddamn this movie has a great cast,  a true blue lout mouth gambler antagonizes Sydney. Sydney doesn't reply and just puts down a two thousand dollar bet on the hard eight. The gambler doing all the talking and Sydney just watching him making a fool of himself. It's such a not important to the plot but says so much about the character. 

    When I was sifting through the collection, I came across two Jean Pierre Melville films. I held these films and felt real close to putting one of them in the Blu-ray player but they already existed vividly in my mind and I had picked out Hard Eight beforehand.

 

 

the two fantastic films in question

 

    After watching this, its easy to see the influence of these, or at least Bob Le Flambeur more so than the other, on this film. These similar vibrations of the criminal element with characters negotiating their way as best they can through a destiny that they have to play through to the end. I can't say for certain its as great as these two but at the moment I'll be lenient as say that this is just as good or at least as good as an American film can get to something as great as either one of these films.

 

Final Few Words Equaling a Paragraph

 

    As can be read from the review, I liked this movie. That's why I wrote these worthless paragraphs about it. It's such a simple and solid debut film. One that any struggling filmmaker should give a watch to just see what can be done with something small and minuscule but come out with something so strong. There's no rush in the way it moves and you can tell already the techniques that would grow to be a part of this guys repertoire. The characters are solid enough to be believable but I can't just give it a complete FANTASTIC kind of rating. The music isn't there at all. Everything that hits doesn't necessarily hit as strong as the scene I was watching but other than that the movie is truly worthwhile.

Fahrenheit 451 - 31 = 420

Lets A Go   

    What maybe surprising to those that have read any of these reviews, the amount of readers this is indicating is certainly being near or is absolute 0, is that I try to do as much reading as possible to balance out the amount of movies I try and watch. With the following text being one of the few that I will get around to writing something, I wouldn't call it an essay but a half full glass review would be more indicative, that reflects two adaptations of a novel that I just finished the other day. 

The Recommendation

    A person close to me had put a gun to my head and demanded that I go about in reading Fahrenheit 451 if I knew what was good for me or else. I had actually planned on watching Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor that very Saturday afternoon but my plans changed and so dear readers, I went about in reading the book. 

 

what the heart desired but was denied

Quick Thoughts

    I finished the book and I can kind of see why its important and all the love for it but, for lack of a better word, the structure of the fucking thing doesn't really do the material justice. From what I learned reading about the writing sessions that Bradbury had with this novel, he had gone about in grabbing various pieces from other various stories he had written and stitched the pieces together to come up with the basic novel. Adding a couple thousand more words to make it truly novel length and in the end the final book we have today.

    Reading this factoid after reading the book goes about in explaining the strange patched together feeling the overall novel has. It's pieces that sort of fit together but feel more awkward than it should be. Uneven flow all throughout for me personally. Not a perfect novel but it is pretty solid science fiction about censorship and more importantly, the prescient vision of the decay of our societies willingness to engage in material that may or may not be up to their liking

The Recent Adaptation

    So I read the book and thought that was cool then I saw Shock Corridor and goddamn is that movie real fucking great. Hard hitting and pulls no punches. Sam Fuller always delivers even when he doesn't like a film that I will talk about later or never depending on how I feel. 

 

what a trailer for what a movie

    Now after having seen Shock Corridor, I saw that it was only around 1:40 am and had time to try and squeeze one more movie before heading off to bed. In this span of time lasting seconds but feeling like years, I  had the inkling to try and see if there were any adaptations available to check out and lo and behold, I see one for immediate viewing on one of those terribly overpriced streaming services that I have been forced to indulge in.

 

Pretty rad poster I will admit

     And so it goes with the advent of terrible streaming platforms, I was given the opportunity of watching this and I did to my dismay.

The Movie

    To be fair, the material in the book doesn't necessarily need to be a one to one adaptation into a film since there some stuff that probably can't be pulled off unless it was animated. The biggest hurdle is the concept of the Mechanized Hound in the novel. This sentient machine dog that would chase down these book readers and drug them before the cops came to arrest them. The big chase in the novel is fueled by the mechanical hound tracking down Guy Montag and while it works great in the novel, there is no way to pull this off in a film. This recent film goes about in jettisoning that material which is fine but also makes some other changes/modifications that I see as far more detrimental to the overall film and ultimately not only make it a bad adaptation but also a pretty bad movie in general.

    In the future, Firemen no longer stop fires but instead start fires. They start fires for this totalitarian government that is suppressing people being able to have this knowledge. For this knowledge is too cumbersome and causes too much pain but there's a revolution going on maaan. One that nobody can see. And there is only one man to lead the revolution or as the film plays out, fumble his way into the revolution and ultimately destroy it. That man is Guy Montag. Also, the Ominus is something to look out for. A poor man's MacGuffin and so we shall call it the McGuffy.

    Though the summary isn't necessarily the most serious write up, its the most honest. Guy Montag is no longer a clean slate from which his interest in books breaks his brain. Instead, this Guy Montag is one that is haunted by the memory of his father's books being burned. Though i'm pretty sure his dad doesn't die or anything really tragic as that but I can't be sure since the movie does a pretty bad job of being able to commit to the tragedy itself that is haunting Guy Montag. 

    Fire Chief Beatty is no longer the man who can accept willingly and with gusto that books should not exist but instead is also a man haunted by the job he does and the books that he has read. Everyone is haunted.The world is haunted. I am haunted. By the ghost of Dennis Hopper which is actually a pretty good time overall.

    Clarisse is no longer a girl that lives her life completely opposite of how everyone else in society lives. As she was a character that saw everyone else stagnate themselves in this state of distraction while she lives in the moment. Wanting to do nothing more but exist in the world instead of exuding her life force by watching television. Modern day Clarisse is instead a haunted woman along with all the other haunted members of society who was part of a revolutionary cell, or I suppose THE revolutionary cell, but is now a informant for Fire Chief Beatty as she can do nothing else but fink to get by.

    The characters and their motives are vastly different and honestly vastly inferior to those of the novels with the wholly original constructed revolutionary party seeming to be the most disappointing aspect of it all. They are creating a super hard-drive called the Omnius. In the Omnius, all information will be stored. The value of this information? Pretty important I guess. At least that's what the movie is trying to tell me again and again instead of showing me but then again, books are made to be read by the individual and who are these individuals that will benefit from these books? A lot of effort is placed on the Omnius but nothing really seems to placate that the thing is actually worthwhile. Also, how do we store this information? In the DNA of a bird that needs to reach Canada.

     Guy Montag reads a book, I think it was Notes from the Underground, and it breaks his brain and he sneaks out into the night going undercover to reach out to Clarisse and they then become friends and read to each other and its all very not good because beautiful people reading books always seems to give off a clip art vibe and ultimately Guy Montag gets in touch of the revolutionary cell while being tracked down by Beatty and inadvertently destroys the entire revolutionary cell. 

    It's a pretty funny plot contrivance of needing to have this big showdown between Guy and Beatty that ends up being nothing more than a wet fart. Montag letting go the super smart bird from the burning farm and Beatty screaming in agony as he has to burn Montag alive. Why? Some sentimental nonsense is the feeling I have but maybe it was meant to be a genuine sense of sacrifice. To become a martyr even though he fumbled the ball and destroyed the revolution. I mean other members are killed and some get arrested so maybe the revolution lives on. The bird flies away though. 

    Its hard to say how much of the book is in the movie since they got rid of one of the most important aspects which was the Montags wife Mildred Montage. She was supposed to be the central example of what this society was as well as the example of what the destroyed individual strives to be in this repressive society but maybe the character stuff was too boring? I've been trying to figure out a good reason as to why to jettison her out of the movie but I suppose they wanted a love story of Clarisse and Montag to be the true heart of the movie.

    I can't remember much regarding the cinematography except the never ending dreariness of how the world was since books don't exist and regarding the music that played, I sure can't remember a tune so maybe there wasn't anything worthwhile in the first place to listen to.  

    As the credits were rolling, the feeling of hollowness came over as I started to process what I just saw. Truly amazing to see a film have just a complete lack of worthwhile characters and having to fatten up the film with all this additional material that truly added nothing like the social media stuff of the firemen streaming their raids, the revolutionary cell trying to do something to save the people or something and just all the modifications to the overall material that go nowhere. 

    Lackluster to the fullest. Dull to the core. Nothing good came out of this except for Michael Shannon. I don't know what it is with the guy but he never seems to disappoint. Even when he plays a real stupid character like this because there really doesn't need to be a Fire Chief with a sense of ambivalence at what he is doing. There isn't enough of a character in the novel to deal with this dual sided nature because the character in of itself is one that has accepted wholeheartedly the idea that books needn't not survive. What a swing and a miss of a movie. 

The Search for Another...

    I was in despair after enduring that movie. I needed something to dull the pain of such a not so good movie. There had to be something else. The book was 72 years old and in that time someone must have gone out of their way to make an adaptation. I searched through the ancient scrolls like Gandalf did for 20 years after catching sight of that gold ring. Just like him, I was smoking some of the finest weed of the shire and in what felt like 20 years but was actually 20 minutes later back in the past before the present that I realized there was another.

    I had a VHS tape. One from childhood that I never really got around to watching. As a child, I only saw a handful of VHS tapes over and over again and this one I remember vividly since when I first started watching this particular tape, I got really bored at everyone not talking so I didn't care much about finishing it. I knew the title though was Fahrenheit 451

Can't forget a cover like this

     I searched through my library of tapes but unfortunately, I did not see it. I was distraught and in being distraught over a movie I never got around to watching, I looked online to see if there was any post-VHS physical release of the film and lo and behold I found a what seems to fairly uneven quality Blu-ray for cheapie and then my eyes exploded the moment I saw this credit: Directed by Francois Truffaut

 

a reaction akin to this

    Apparently the dude had gone about in making his own adaptation back in the mid 60's and with me immediately buying the film because I knew I would forget to do so the next day from all that shire weed, I bought it and waited for delivery and it came and I saw it from the beginning to the end and so let us begin.

Flashback Chain Reaction to the First Adaptation

    Immediately I was hooked. The opening montage is that of photographs showcasing those old ass analog antenna's while a narrator speaks out the credits. The film already starting off on a strong note by throwing the viewer for a loop compared to what the 2018 adaptation does which contains opening credits that look as though they belong to a television show. I digress.

    The movie opens with firemen charging with their loud firetrucks, which look pretty nice in the now retro future look everyone expected the future to look like since they were all high as fuck, towards a location that is filled with books. A man in an apartment receives a phone call and immediately books it out of the house and has to go on the run for the rest of his life.

    The firemen rush into the building and start taking out every book they could find. Destroying the place as they toss all the furniture over to find as many books as they can and throw them out in handfuls over the balcony. All them landing into a pile like trash growing outside. Guy Montag suits up and burns the pile of books where a group of bystanders watch in enjoyment. This is done in relative silence which was interesting. Just this silence in their due diligence in doing their job. Like silent soldiers doing their duty without a question as to why.

    As the movie goes on, it follows the novel for the most part. Guy Montag has interactions with Clarisse who is back to being a neighbor as well as his wife Linda taking up a lot of his anxiety and pain. Here though is an interesting take on the material by having one actor, Julie Christie, play both roles. An idea that a producer or so suggested that they both be two sides of the same coin and I like the way it plays out. Clarisse being the woman that can enlighten while the wife Linda is here to make sure that the standards of conformity are always met with every invention that comes to existence.

    Guy Montag slowly starts to become a reader all the while Fire Chief Beatty is there on the outskirts watching. Him and this other Fireman goon that I can't remember. The two always seeming to be aware of what Montag is up to and goes about in creating a lesson for him that he will need to toe the line. That to become a reader will be something that will not matter in the end as there is nothing to gain from books. Or at least that is what they believe. For Montag though, he can't get enough of the books and this becomes this downfall. 

    He has a manic breakdown with his wife Linda that she sees that the only reasonable thing to do is fink on Guy and just at the point of his professional and personal lives are collapsing, the firemen all drive down to burn his house down. Guy going through the motions of finding all of his books and then being given the task of burning them. He ends up snapping and burns the fire chief and the goon then goes on the run. 

    The interesting part here is that he doesn't run to the resistance. There is no resistance. There are only the bookkeepers who have to wait for the time when books will be allowed then. They did do away with the whole notion of the bombs about to drop but I like this. Guy Montag running till he hits the outskirts of the city where the book-readers are. Meeting everyone that recognizes themselves as a book. Feels more natural here than in the modern adaptation. 

    Guy Montag is given the task of having to memorize his book so that they can burn it as no one there has a book on hand but just remembers the one book. As the movie ends, snow begins to fall and every book-keeper is walking around and reciting out loud the books they have mesmerized. No interaction with one another as they walk past each other. People alone with a book they love and put to memory. That's how I take the ending at least. It does leave room to take it another way but for this, I love it. Just absolutely fantastic.

   Just a few notes of interest though that maybe only interest me. The jettison of the old man. A sort of teacher for Montag that becomes a person for him to search for near the end of the novel but his disappearance shows that his character wasn't necessarily the most needed and his absence isn't as greatly felt. The Mechancial Hound not existing is no surprise. Probably would of looked like that dog from Sleepers. 

a mechanical hound

    I also like the fact that the romantic element seen in the modern movie is just non existent. Clarisse and Guy are just two people wanting more for themselves and could find them in a book compared to some techno crap being sold to them. The Fire Chief works better here since they took away the tortured element that seems so important but was ultimately unimportant in the modern movie.     

    Overall, this just felt far more truthful with the original material than the 2018 adaptation but also it feels less forced in the way the drama plays out. All those abundant and unnecessary changes to a novel that didn't need it. Whats there works for the most part and if you could navigate through the necessary and unnecessary then you can get a good movie as seen here.

All There Is and Shall Be

    It's not much of a contest when it comes to the more interesting adaptation. Truffaut has just about everything working in his favor. The music is great because Bernard Hermann was one of the greats. The world that this society exists is far more interesting since it takes place the previously mentioned retro-future world of the 60's. Looks better overall just because everything doesn't look so goddamn dark and moody like the most recent film. It just works out better so go see it. It's pretty rad. 

The Remake of The Assault on Precinct 13 That Happened To Be An Insult To Me

 

Flash Back To The Future Present

Back in my younger days, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 was one of the first DVD's that I purchased with my low paying minimum wage job of receiving 4 whole dollars for every 2 hours. This occurring during the turbulent time in which I too believed that if I grew a mustache and had my MiniDV camera that I could create masterpieces alongside my heroes like Sergio Leone and Uwe Boll. 

One of the first DVD’s to ever enter my library

Obviously my first mistake was that I actually needed a full grown 3 foot beard and a 16mm camera with black & white film to create masterpieces but I had neither and so I wilted away. Becoming a shell of a man by watching more and more movies, listening to too much hip hop, and my final vice being the amount of time spent trying to track down a reasonably priced uncut release of Salo. 

 

this shit was running upwards of 200 dollars back in my day

 

Years wasted and in all that waste, I refused to transcend into the holier being that I could be but never getting around to it but now, JUST NOW, I saw a movie that reminded me of this origin story.

Why I Remember

In the year 2023, I have just seen the 2005 remake of Assault on Precinct 13 and was in complete shock at how boring it ended up being. Nobody on screen was doing anything to separate themselves or rise above from the trivial and seen before characters they were playing and the moments of action were some of the least suspense/thrilling scenes I have ever seen in a film in all my film watching years. It was amazing that when the credits started rolling and the KRS-ONE song was playing that I couldn't remember the last time where I had seen a film that made the tremendous effort to show so much of nothing.

The main character of this film is Sergeant Jake Roenick played by Ethan Hawke who has a pretty good opening prologue involving a drug deal gone wrong to give a strong introduction to his character and his state of mind but that ultimately loses any and all steam as the movie goes on. His own personal dilemma of being a drug addict/alcoholic to cope with his trauma is pretty much thrown aside as the film goes on and the corrupt cops show up.

What's this about corrupt cops? On paper, they are just the replacement for the gang members from the original but in execution, the replacement becomes the central problem as to why the film becomes so streamlined and diluted.

The character of Marion Bishop, they went about flipping the name of Bishop from the cop of the original film, is now the person that takes over the original bad guy Napoleon Wilson of the original movie, who was just a murderer being sent to death row, but in this film Bishop is a Detroit crime lord that gets caught by Detroit's finest on New Years Eve and because this story takes place on New Years Eve, the character immediately gets sent to prison because the cops wanna party but on the way to the prison, the Sheriff's transferring him and other criminals get caught up in a snowstorm that detracts them from their original destination and towards the only place around, Precinct 13. 

The criminals get placed into the rusting cells and the Sheriff’s stick to the plan of waiting out the storm till the morning before proceeding to the prison. And so, the cops in the precinct start to party it up while the criminals sit around doing nothing but that's when the corrupt cops show up.  

Why are these corrupt cops corrupt in the first place? The reasons remain unknown but having no other reason but to be corrupt, they show up with their super tactical force teams to take down Bishop before he has a chance to end up on the stand and testify that he is working with some dirty ass cops as well as ruin the corrupt cops' reasons for existing.

From the point of the corrupt cops showing up, the siege throughout the majority of the nearly 2 hour running time is pretty dull. People shoot here and there. People die here and there. Nobody who dies is interesting or developed enough to really give a shit about whether they die or not but the director spends a lot of time making sure that the dead are seen with a bullet hole in their head and the camera staying with them to sell the image that this shit is brutal. But it's not. It's just violence for violence sake. 

The film ultimately limps its way to a final confrontation in some woods near the precinct and that's when the film gets EVEN dumber. Corrupt cops and cops that were playing straight but ended up being corrupt show up. Night vision goggles are added to the mix and Bishop tries to play off like some real bad dude but never gets a chance to show that off. This movie needed Larry Fishburne not Lawrence Fishburne. Then when its all said and done, the two leads walk away exacting justice and getting away with murdering cops/fellow officers. 

To say that it's a worthless film would be too hard for there are exactly 2 moments in the film that are worth merit to be mentioned. 

 

The Only 2 Moments of Merit

One involves a police officer who had no plans to show up for the late night celebration at the shitty precinct and ended up showing up in the middle of night as all this shit pops off. A moment occurs where they can't tell if the guy who just appeared out of nowhere and survived all these bullets flying his way did so out of his own free will to try and get laid or is a plant sent in to tell the corrupt cops the plan that they have. This moment felt more akin to John Carpenter's The Thing than this film felt in any way like John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. A real tension driven scene where Bishop and his fellow criminals had their guns pointed at this goober and the other cops with Ethan Hawke and his cop buddies pointing guns at Bishop and his criminals. It doesn't last long but the scene was pretty great in the middle of all this banality.

The other moment is in the beginning regarding Ethan Hawke's character. He wakes up 8 months later as a drug addict/alcoholic after what has happened in the drug bust gone wrong. He ain't right in the head and is coping. 

There is a shot of his back to the camera while he is in the bathroom then he leans over to spit in the sink and in the mirror, he rises and we see his reflection of the mirror looking straight into the camera. This moment felt so thought out and actually out of place for what I expected so I got my hopes up. Then the film cuts with him driving out into the tundra of Detroit in December and it's amazing. This dilapidated city rusting still in time as just this frozen hellscape. 

I thought this was just such a solid start to the film that I ended up fooling myself into believing that the rest of the film was going to be able to achieve some more of this but it just sort of crashed into being a generic action movie. Possibly one of the greatest bummers I have had with a film in quite some time. True blue D grade entertainment masquerading as a B movie throwback all the while striving to be something but never being able to achieve anything outside of the tried and true cinematic idea of bullets flying around. 

It's one film that has been on my radar for quite some time and beyond that, there's not much else to say except for the music. The music is just there to telegraphic the emotions that the scenes fail to carry. Nothing more. Nothing less. EXCEPT for: 

The Comparison

It’s easy to say that this film is a failure in of itself more so than it just being a failure at being able to do something original/interesting in comparison to the original film but what if…this film had Zero chance of being good?

For a time, the film has been playing in my head about how lackluster it all came together in the end. I then had to re-watch the original 10 times in a row to make a complete analysis of the two films and what I came back with will BLOW YOUR MIND*.

Comparison Commence

The biggest change between the two films are the main antagonists. In the 2005 adaptation, which will be now written as Ass05, they were corrupt cops. Nothing beyond the notion that they are corrupt is their reason for existing and what drives them to be villains is that Bishop is the key to them getting indicted and going to jail. Simple run of the mill stuff all around and to be honest, there isn’t much to do here. The film doesn’t take much effort to show off corruption and instead relies on the notion that the setting of Detroit and that they are cops are enough to justify their behavior.

Now in the original, which will be written as Ass76, they were gang warlords/members. The film starts off with some of their brethren getting killed in an alley by police and the next scene is of the gang warlords all getting together in a Los Angeles hellhole apartment and taking a blood oath to fuck shit up. And they do by terrorizing then killing an ice cream man then killing a little girl that just wanted some ice cream. The film doesn’t hold back from this and shows the murder which creates this sense of doom and uncertainty towards these gang warlords and ultimately what seems to be their never ending number of henchmen as the film goes on. Creating an actual villain that brings terror to screen instead of what the remake fails to offer.

For the entire siege in Ass76, there is an aesthetic all throughout that nobody is safe from being killed and a guarantee that not everyone will be making it to the morning. The set up to how insane these gang persons are is strong enough of a reason as to why that tension exists in the first place but an added layer to their overall menace is for the fact that these antagonists seem to be otherworldly. Many upon many of them get shot again and again but there just seems to be no end to them. Even when the last standoff occurs in the basement, they are running up and dying left and right with another 2 to replace those that just died. In Ass05 though, it’s the complete opposite. It seems like the narrative is chugging along as corrupt cops are getting knocked off left and right with an end in sight. We just have to wait for the movie to hurry up and get to this final confrontation that doesn’t exist in the original because it has nothing else to do. Sure, people die and the director makes sure you know but who cares?

That leads to another difference between Ass05 and Ass76 are the characters. Somehow, and this may be my own skewed perception and so forgive me, but the characters in Ass76 manage to actually be characters. The biggest failure on the remake was the super duper mastermind criminal Marion Bishop (Lawrence Fishburne) having absolutely no presence in any of his scenes. There’s all this hype revolving around him and besides knowing how to shoot a gun, there isn’t much of anything there for the viewers to react to. Sure there’s that scene where he stabs a guy in the throat but other than that 1 scene, he's whole aura is just like Ethan Hawke’s character intro which goes nowhere in the long run. Lawrence Fishburne has presence and he can do a lot with a whole lotta nothing but damn does he disappoint in being able to bring nothing to this particular role. 

Compared to Ass76 and the character of Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston).

 

true presence
 

A murderer being sent to death row without a hint of remorse. The guy doesn't do much of anything besides reacting to the characters around him but it's enough. Enough to set a tone to the guy and when the bullets start flying and he has to do his part to survive, his brutality in what he needs to do is what keeps his character interesting to watch. 

There is one scene though that I would like to mention in regards to his characterization. It’s where Special Officer Starker is trying to have a conversation with him on the prison bus. The conversation just mingles along with the office trying to get some info and Napoleon responds with a rewritten monologue that stems from the greatest film of all time; Once Upon A Time in the West. 

 He starts talking about how ever since he was a boy, there was just something to do with death hanging around him. Like something outside of his control and just a part of his destiny. Just that small piece of characterization leads you wondering as to what he meant by that if you don’t know what he means and leaves you smiling when you notice the reference.

I could go on but I feel as though I have done my duty and should go watch John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 one more time just to be sure that its a good one. 

Conclusion

The remake of Assault on Precinct 13 could have been something truly fantastic. The script wasn’t probably the best but it had a far better cast than it deserved and a director that would go off to make some pretty good crime films with the 2 Mesrine films and Blood Father after this production. 

    Maybe me pondering on its potential to be something more is of speculation than fact but damn, what a shame all around that this didn’t manage to get out of the shadow of the original. 

*most likely will not blow your mind at all