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The Running Man (1987)

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fourstar

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In honor of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s induction into the WWE Celebrity Hall of Fame, it seemed appropriate to revisit 1987’s The Running Man, a pro-wrestling meets dystopian sci-fi film that helped cement the actor as a cultural icon.

Some action movies feature exploding heads, but few include them by the end of the opening credits. In this violent video game of a movie, human heads are not only exploded in the opening sequence, they’re also burned, shot, impaled and electrified later on. All of this head-squashing takes place around Ben Richards, a former soldier being framed for the deaths of innocent women & children, as he becomes an unwilling contestant on a sadistic gameshow. Richards must fight his way through a gauntlet of assassins (each with their own wrestling-friendly gimmick personas like Fireball, Buzzsaw, Dynamo and Subzero) as bloodthirsty spectators, including grandmothers and children, watch on eagerly. The dystopian hell of Running Man is set in 2017, but thankfully the game shows of today have not sunk to the depraved levels predicted in the film (if you don’t include Fear Factor).

The original host of Family Feud, Richard Dawson, plays the show’s sleazy, always inebriated host in a performance that doesn’t feel far removed from how Dawson himself acted on his real-life gameshow (where he shamelessly kissed & fondled contestants). Dawson chews the scenery every time he’s on-screen, but is just one of the many memorable cameos in the film. Mick Fleetwood, the infamous drummer for Fleetwood Mac, also makes an appearance as a coked out revolutionary. Then there’s the former governor of Minnesota & pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura as Captain Freedom, who pummels Richards inside a steel death cage in the film’s best scene. As well as being the best, the death cage scene is also the film’s most violent, because in Running Man the two are one in the same.

Truth is, although Arnold’s protagonist in the main attraction, The Running Man never feels like his film. Easily upstaged by the bigger personalities around him, Ben Richards is one of the weaker roles of Arnold’s career. For most of the film he is simply there, acting like a dick until he has to step into action and kill something. He does have a few good one-liners, though, like the Arnold staple “I’ll be back” and my personal favorite, “I’ll tell you what I think of it: I live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I’m going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine!” Despite the one-liners, even María Conchita Alonso (as Arnold’s standard girl-he-kidnaps-who-then-falls-for-him) gives a fiery performance with what little room she is allowed, sometimes outshining Arnold’s.

According to Wikipedia, Arnold stated that the director “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes.” He is right in that The Running Man never really delves into the social satire that was present in the 1982 Stephen King novel the film was based on. Instead, the film is highly entertaining because of its over-the-top violence, breakneck pacing, and great cameos. I doubt King is a fan of professional wrestling, but the film adaption of The Running Man is like an ultra-violent WrestleMania. Vince McMahon would approve even if King & Schwarzenegger didn’t.

-James Cohn

Hercules (2014)

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twohalfstar

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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the great WWE success story. When the juggernaut wrestling promotion tried its best to launch Hulk Hogan’s movie career with its first foray into film production, 1989’s No Holds Barred, the results were mixed. Hogan remains the most widely known household name in wrestling, but his movie career, which featured long-forgotten titles like Suburban Commando & Mr. Nanny, didn’t exactly pan out as planned. The Rock, on the other hand, basically launched WWE’s movie-making division all by his lonesome. His first three starring roles in The Scorpion King, The Rundown, and Walking Tall basically built WWE Studios from the ground up. The Rock’s world-class shit-talking skills & excessive mugging in his wrestling promos translated well to action stardom & he’s been the sole wrestler who’s been able to make a long-term career for himself on the big screen (though Bautista may be next in line).

The secret to Johnson’s success? He’s actually a damn good actor. He has a lot of weird, mostly untapped energy that can reach far beyond the limited roles he’s been landing. With early parts in action shlock like Doom & The Scorpion King, he’s proven himself to be one of the last Schwarzenegger-type muscle gods who manage to look convincing while kicking ass & dispensing pun-heavy quips indiscriminately. He’s perfectly suited for action movie roles, but he’s also being underserved in them. Riskier projects, like the more unhinged Southland Tales and Pain & Gain, have unleashed a different Dwayne Johnson altogether, one completely independent of the Schwarzeneggers & Van Dammes before him. He has a manic beast lurking under that confident exterior, just waiting to out-weird any other action star in the world, Stallone & Cage included.

Unfortunately, Hercules does not employ the offbeat wild-man Dwayne Johnson, but instead opts for the cookie-cutter action star The Rock. He’s in full Scorpion King mode here, hitting so many familiar Schwarzenegger beats that I assumed it was secretly a Conan the Barbarian remake that couldn’t secure the rights. Hercules’ opening narration plays like a trailer to a much better film, The Rock slaying a succession of giant, mystical beasts with ease. It slows down from there, limiting the action to a single episode of Hercules and his rag-tag crew of super-warriors leading an army into an epic battle, the exact kind of narrative you’d expect from vintage Conan the Barbarian story record. The movie has a sort of charm in its limited scope, especially in its lighthearted approach to mass violence and in The Rock’s natural magnetism. Most of Hercules’ best moments arise from The Rock’s inherent coolness. He just looks like a total badass as he wears a lion’s head as a crown, defeats wolves & charging horses with just his bare hands, and smashes a hooded executioner to pulp with a smaller, less talkative rock. Hercules makes for a much more convincing, enjoyable superhero adaptation/reboot than the similarly reductionist films I, Frankenstein & Dracula Untold, but in the end a lot of your enjoyment will hinge on how much you enjoy spending time with The Rock, as opposed to how much room Dwayne Johnson is given to be his enchanting self.

The transition from babyface wrestler to action hero makes total sense. Both roles require a convincing “good guy” to put the world’s depthless “bad guys” in their place. The Rock has had a few great action roles over the past decade or so, and with the exception of a couple missteps like The Tooth Fairy, he’s managed to avoid the pitfalls of Hulk Hogan’s career path. It’s just that after watching what a stranger, more nuanced Dwayne Johnson can do, it’s worrisome that he’s still making something this close to The Scorpion King at this point in time. Hercules can be a fun, one-time viewing for the audience, but let’s hope it’s not a damning career-trajectory indicator for Johnson. He can do so much more when given the chance.

-Brandon Ledet

Thief (1981)

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threehalfstar

“I am the last guy in the world that you want to fuck with.”

With the recent passing of Edgar Froese, founding member of influential German electronic band Tangerine Dream, it seemed appropriate to revisit one of the first films the band scored: the hardboiled crime thriller Thief. Thief follows professional safecracker Frank as he agrees to do one last high-risk diamond heist for the Mafia. Tangerine Dream’s score, with its layered soundscapes and pulsating synths is one of the first aspects of the film that jumps out at you. While not fashionable at the time (the film was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Musical Score), the moody soundtrack has an 80’s John Carpenter/Goblin vibe that has thankfully become trendy again and utilized in recent films such as Drive and The Guest.

The film’s score isn’t the only thing that feels ahead of its time. With Scarface & Die Hard several years away, the film’s violence, antihero protagonist, highly stylized cinematography, and overall bleakness are pretty revolutionary for 1981. Heavy praise for this effect should go to both director Michael Mann and cinematographer Donald Thorin. Mann knows how to make a damn good thriller and is helped tremendously by Thorin’s dark, brooding images. Thief was Mann’s’ directorial debut, but it is shot with confidence & style that makes it feel like a precursor to his later films Heat, Manhunter, and Collateral.

Heightening the neo noir style of Thief’s cinematography, the film’s screenplay is tense, gritty, and smart. James Caan gives a scenery-chewing performance as the film’s titular thief, Frank. Key scenes like a dazzling diamond heist and a shockingly candid diner conversation between Frank and a woman he barely knows are iconic. Caan himself cites the diner scene as the all-time personal favorite of his career.

The film is not without its misfires, mainly an underserved subplot involving Frank’s criminal father figure Olka (played by Willie Nelson) that doesn’t really go anywhere. James Belushi as Barry, Frank’s longtime partner, and Tuesday Weld as Jessie, Frank’s lover, both give flat, but passable performances that are easily overshadowed by Caan’s crazed, manic Frank. Viewers might also be put off by Frank’s nasty temper & casual racism and feel that he is undeserved of any potential happy ending (rightfully so in my opinion, which is partly why the film remains edgy today), but if you’re a fan of gritty crime movies that have brains & balls as well as slimeball protagonists, Thief is a flawed masterpiece that you should definitely check out.

Thief is currently streaming on Netflix.

-James Cohn

Marks & Smarks: No Holds Barred (1989) & The Wrestler (2008)

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Definitions pulled from Wikipedia’s glossary of professional wrestling terms:
-“Mark”: a wrestling fan who enthusiastically believes that professional wrestling is not staged.
-“Smark”: a fan who is aware of and interested in the backstage and non-scripted aspects of wrestling; a portmanteau of “smart” and “mark.”

Last night I attended my first live pro wrestling event, a months-long goal fulfilled. Despite the distinctly tame vibe of the crowd, I decided to misbehave. Couldn’t help myself. I got drunk, cheered for heels like a jerk, and shouted things that disturbed the 10 year old boy sitting in the row ahead of me. A few rows behind me, another ten year old was also yelling ridiculous taunts, but his were much funnier & more insightful than mine. I was thoroughly upstaged. Around a third my age, this kid had a preternatural comprehension of the sport that he thankfully shared with the neighboring crowd in short, high-pitched bursts. The kid ahead of me would be genuinely upset if he were in earshot. I know I upset him myself. I was sandwiched between a young mark and a smark, two different wrestling worlds clashing on either side of me.

I think it helps to appreciate both sides of the coin to experience the full potential of pro wrestling. Losing yourself in the characters & the soap opera drama is just as important as the in-the-ring athleticism. The violence wouldn’t mean as much without the camp. On the other hand, the context of the practical, behind-the-scenes operations of the sport gives deeper meaning to the in-the-ring storylines. It’s a scripted sport, but scripted in the style of reality television: the reality & the fiction are inseparable. One feeds off the other. A well-rounded fan needs a solid admiration of both.

Searching for this balance in pro wrestling cinema leads me to the bookends of the modern wrestling movie. 1989’s Hulk Hogan vehicle No Holds Barred perfectly captures the nature of mark mentality in the infancy of the current Vince McMahon era. 2008’s The Wrestler, by comparison, is a smark’s dream: an authentic look at the brutal truths of pro wrestling as a career. Together, help paint a complete picture, the fiction & the reality, one feeding off the other.

No Holds Barred (1989)
Although No Holds Barred was far from the world’s first pro wrestling picture, it was the first film produced by the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE). It would take over a decade after its release for Vince McMahon’s juggernaut wrestling promotion to form its own movie studio, so in this way No Holds Barred was ahead of its time. This was the only way it was ahead of its time. Miming the late-80s Schwarzenegger action movie format as much as the budget would allow, No Holds Barred was a blatant attempt to launch the movie career of Hulk Hogan, who had already dominated the “sports entertainment” world and was looking for his next conquest. The first sounds you hear in the film are the voices of Jesse “The Body” Ventura & “Mean” Gene Okerlund, who had come to define the era’s ringside announcing. The film’s head villain is character actor Kurt Fuller testing an almost exact prototype of his career-defining role as a television network scumbag in Wayne’s World. No Holds Barred is in every way a product of its time.

Keeping in line with the 1989 perspective of pro wrestling, before the internet’s obsessive nitpicking of the sport, No Holds Barred is firmly on the mark side of the mark/smark divide. Hulk Hogan’s character Rip Thomas is a superhuman beast in the ring and out. He leaps to incredible heights, destroys cars with his bare hands, and dismantles “bad guys” to an 80s “rock music” soundtrack, all while wearing a costume befitting of a superhero biker. In a world devoid of subtext he is a hero without flaw, an incredibly smart brute who’s dedicated to his charity work, the kind of guy who inspires lines like “Rip’s word is his bond” even when he’s not in the room. The entire movie exists to make Hulk Hogan look impossibly good. He’s a saint, a “good guy”.

Objectively, the movie is not very good. In fact, it’s awful. There’s some guilty pleasure to be found in its campy action movie spectacle, like when Rip force-feeds a rejected bribe to Kurt Fuller’s television executive and quips “I won’t be around when this check clears.” It’s also funny to think that Vince McMahon produced a film that indicts the evil nature of megalomaniac network executives, because, well, he’s a megalomaniac network executive. For the most part, though, the movie is shoddily made of generic kids’ stuff: jokes about “dookie” and slobbering hillbillies, world-class mean-mugging from immense muscle men, “good guys” beating up “bad guys”. It’s a movie you have to love for its savage idiocy, not in spite of it.

More importantly, it’s a document of a different time, a swan song for the era of the mark.

The Wrestler (2008)
A drastically different approach, Daren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler is an objectively good movie. I’d even go as far as to call it a masterpiece. Applying the modern online smark mentality to pro wrestling, Aronofsky turns the backstage repercussions of sports entertainment into a Greek tragedy. Unlike Hogan’s Rip Thomas, Mickey Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” Robinson is a real human being outside the ring. Well past his glory days, Randy struggles with health, finances, and personal relationships badly damaged from years spent on the road. In-the-ring injuries have increasingly severe real life consequences. In one particularly gruesome scene medics remove staples, glass, etc. from Randy’s skin as the camera cuts back to show how they got buried there in a horrific hardcore match, a bloodthirsty crowd chanting “You sick fuck!” in the background. As the pain periodically hits him throughout the film, the intense sound design cues you in with high-pitched noises to match his wincing. Referring to himself, Randy “The Ram” says “I’m a broken down piece of meat. And I’m alone. And I deserve to be alone.” Time proves him right. This is far from the marked-out world of Rip Thomas.

Aronofsky’s attention to authenticity is a remarkable achievement here. As I said before in my list of top pro wrestling documentaries, Randy “The Ram” feels like wrestlers we know, wrestlers like Scott Hall & Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Smarks would take particular interest in the way the movie depicts wrestlers planning spots before matches, laying out a basic framework within which they can improvise. The movie also addresses blading/juicing, steroid abuse, boozy bouts of self-medication after matches, shady promoters and minuscule pay. Randy directly refutes claims that wrestling is “fake” and shows off his scars as proof. Part of why it hurts to watch him despair over the old action figures, Nintendo games, and 80s monster ballads that serve as relics of his former fame is that it feels all too real. There are people who live like this.

Of course, an accurate portrayal of pro wrestling is seated somewhere between these two extremes, just as I was seated between two wildly different children last night. Without the glam showmanship, juvenile humor or outrageous superheroics of Rip Thomas, Aronofsky’s version of wrestling is a grim, lethal ordeal. The wrestling of No Holds Barred is an idealistic child’s macho fantasy. From The Wrestler’s viewpoint, it’s more like assisted suicide. To take in the full scope of the bizarre, idiosyncratic, self-contradicting superhero spectacle of the brutal sport, you have to appreciate both perspectives. You have to look through the eyes of the mark and the smark. Drunken yelling also helps.

-Brandon Ledet

I, Frankenstein (2014)

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Reading over Wikipedia’s plot synopsis of I, Frankenstien makes me feel like a cinematic amnesiac. All the talk of “Gargoyle Order” weapons wielded to “ascend” and “descend” demons & gargoyles sounds vaguely familiar, but the particulars of what Bill Nighy, Dr. Frankenstein’s book or the supermodel scientist were up to are fuzzy at best. Mostly I remember Aaron Eckhart testing out his gruff Batman voice as if his former role as Harvey Dent was a consolation prize. There was some fun to be had in the climactic good versus evil fight scene (especially in the detail of costuming the evil demons in business suits) but for the most part the whole affair felt grim & indistinct.

I, Frankenstein is definitive proof that this post-Dark Knight era of sad sack superhero movies is reaching its nadir. Reinventing the monster movie by fusing it with the superhero genre is an idea loaded with fun potential, so (to quote a popular, hideous dorm room poster & t-shirt) why so serious? After all of I, Frankenstein’s ridiculous trailers & nominations for Worst Film of 2014, it at least gave the impression that it could’ve been amusing. Outside of minor details like the business suit demons, I get the sense that I was promised more goofy antics than were delivered.

I haven’t seen a single entry in the Underworld series, which shares writers & producers with I, Frankenstein, but from what I understand they’re just as bleak. To an outsider, the most bewildering aspect of the vampires/werewolves “action horror” series is that there are four of the damn things. Despite the lackluster critical response and general sense of drudgery, Underworld found enough of an audience to justify 7 hours of celluloid. Building off that hubris, I, Frankenstein all but offers an “Until Next Time” promise after the credits in its conspicuous aspirations of launching a new franchise. The problem (besides its uninspiring box office performance)? It’s not the only self-serious “action horror” Frankenstein product in the works.

2014 also saw the release of Universal Studios’ first entry in the planned Shared Universe® for its classic monsters characters: Dracula Untold. For the most part the movie was Dracula Unremarkable, but there were some (underutilized) bright spots: the vampire deaths were surprisingly gruesome considering the PG-13 rating (a heap of melted flesh instead of I, Frankenstein’s more symbolic “descending”) and Charles “The Man” Dance made the most out of his limited role as the head vampire. Just as I, Frankenstein felt like little more than dull goth superhero franchise kindling, Dracula Untold was mostly a “this is just the beginning” letdown of a story. One of the other goth superheroes on the Universal docket, waiting to join Dracula’s ranks: Frankenstein’s monster.

Given the unlikely longevity of the Underworld series it’s possible that Lionsgate will ignore the Universal Studios famous monsters universe and we’ll live in a world with two dueling Gritty Reboot® Super Frankenstein franchises nobody asked for. Hopefully an I, Frankenstein, II would ditch the self-serious tone and work in more business-suit-demons humor, but I wouldn’t hold your undead, crime-fighting breath. Seriously, don’t hold it. It’s criminal for movies this ridiculous in premise to be so severe, but they’re unlikely to change their ways as long as they’re making money. Or in I, Frankenstein‘s case, at least breaking even.

I, Frankenstein is currently streaming on Netflix & Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

Jack Reacher (2012)

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three star

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Imagine a world without Scientology, a world without Katie Holmes, a world without Oprah’s couch. In this alternate universe Tom Cruise’s decade-old public meltdown never happened. Cruise is still top gun in all of our hearts. Every film he stars in is a major success. Beautiful women throw themselves at his feet. He merely needs to show up & wink at the camera to win us all over and collect his giant paycheck.

This isn’t a world we get to live in all the time, but we are allowed to visit. For instance, last year’s surprisingly entertaining Edge of Tomorrow saw Tom Cruise in full movie star mode, smooching ladies & killing space aliens in a violent version of Groundhog Day. Even Edge of Tomorrow is a little too eccentric to recall vintage Tom Cruise, though. If you’re looking for purely smug, top-of-the-world, Days of Thunder Cruise you have to go back to 2012’s Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher is a straight-forward Tom Cruise vehicle. It’s not stylish. It’s not cool. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is: a loud & dumb action movie. Think less The Guest and more Face/Off or Road House. Cruise, who of course plays the titular Jack Reacher, is so deliciously full of his smugly sexy self here. He drives maniacally, flirts with co-star Rosamund Pike like she owes him something, has the problem solving skills & inherent knowledge of an omnipotent god, and delivers smartass one-liners before every inevitable kill (those one-liners take a nastily sexist left turn in a particularly anachronistic bar fight scene). If you have any affection or nostalgia for Cruise before Oprah’s couch outed him as a total weirdo, Jack Reacher is a sight for sore eyes.

Bonus Points: All of this Tom Cruise talk is truly burying the lede. The real Jack Reacher story is that auteur director Werner Herzog plays the movie’s villain. Herzog’s role is minimized in the film the same way it’s minimized in this review. He doesn’t appear onscreen until nearly an hour in and delivers maybe one or two speeches, but the potency even a couple lines from Evil Herzog is something to be cherished. If you have no affection for vintage Cruise (or loud, dumb action movies in general) you owe it to yourself to at least watch Evil Werner Herzog perform here in the film’s best two minutes.

–Brandon Ledet

Jack Reacher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.