For this lagniappe episode of The Swampflix Podcast, Boomer, Brandon, and Alli discuss the Canuxploitation bank heist thriller The Silent Partner (1978), written by Curtis Hanson and starring Elliott Gould.
One of the biggest adjustments in my life recently has been getting used to getting around without a car. It’s been fine. Between bikes, buses, streetcars, and long walks, I’ve been able to access pretty much everything I want or need within New Orleans city limits . . . with one major exception. The weekly screenings of Indian action movies I used to catch at AMC Elmwood are now prohibitively far away, so I’m a lot less likely to make that expensive trek out to the suburban multiplex unless it’s for a major hit, like the recent high-octane spy thriller Pathaan. Despite the ongoing pop culture phenomenon of RRR, the two lone theaters in Orleans Parish (The Broad & The Prytania) have yet to take a chance on programming the Indian action blockbusters I love & miss. Even the recent EncoRRRe “fan favorite” screenings of that breakout hit were all held at AMC Elmwood, the exact venue where I first saw it a full year ago. And so, I’m now relying on at-home streaming services to provide access to Indian action content, which isn’t quite the same as being obliterated by their explosive sound & spectacle on the big screen, but at least they’re sometimes quick to the punch. The Tamil-language bank heist thriller Thunivu popped up on Netflix only one month after it screened at AMC Elmwood this January, so if I had any lingering FOMO from the missed opportunity it didn’t last very long. And hey, I’m pretty used to watching these obnoxiously loud action flicks in empty theaters anyway, so there really wasn’t all that much difference in watching it on my couch.
In Thunivu, middle-aged action star Ajith Kumar plays a mysterious bank robber who pulls off a heist of a smaller, scrappier heist that’s already in motion. Through a never-ending supply of preposterous flashbacks & plot twists it turns out that that heist was also sub-heist under a much grander, more complex theft being pulled off by the real criminals of the modern world: investment bankers. So, Kumar’s anonymous Dark Devil persona is hijacking two different groups of thieves—gangster & corporate—by lumping them in with the usual crowd of everyday hostages typical to a bank-heist plot. It takes a long time for him to assert dominance over this convoluted triple-heist, quieting the room with a relentless storm of machine gun bullets until no one dares stand against him. He feels laidback & in control the entire time, though, cracking wise and impersonating Michael Jackson dance moves to win over the common people watching news coverage at home. And then, when he has the world’s attention, he narrates a lengthy flashback that explains in great detail how the bank itself is the biggest thief of all, scamming working-class customers out of their hard-earned money without any legal consequence. Thunivu starts as a standard bank heist thriller (complete with a “Here’s the plan” montage for the scrappier bank robbery that never comes to fruition), but eventually evolves into the DTV action equivalent of The Big Short. It’s trashy, brutal, earnest excess featuring an action hero lead with self-declared “charismatic presence” and a healthy disgust for banking as an industry.
If that heist-within-a-heist-within-a-heist plot description was kind of a mess, it’s because the movie is too. It’s at least a stylish, entertaining mess, though – one that remains excitingly volatile even when it defaults to infotainment monologues about the evils of modern banking. There are some wonderfully explosive action scenes, some childish cornball humor, and a jolty, hyperactive editing style that plays like the modern CG equivalent of an overcranked nickelodeon projector. If Thunivu starred Liam Neeson and was directed by Neveldine & Taylor it would be celebrated as a cult classic for decades to come by action movie nerds everywhere. Instead, it’s mainly a victory lap celebration for Ajith Kumar’s adoring fans in India, now over 60 titles deep into his career as an action star & a “charismatic presence”. As with all the leads of the Kollywood & Tollywood actioners I’ve been seeking out in recent years, Kumar’s Dark Devil persona is celebrated in Thunivu as the coolest dude to ever walk the earth. He’s constantly adorned with sunglasses, a wind machine, and a hip-hop theme song declaring him “the gangsta”, living the full music video fantasy as a rock star bankrobber while everyone on the other side of his machine gun is blown to bits. The movie goes out of its way to modernize this populist action hero archetype with CG graphics of cybertheft & corporate thuggery and with the Dark Devil taking on a masked Anonymous avatar when dealing with the press, but it’s all pretty basic, classic action hero machismo. He’s a hero of the people, fighting back against the villainous slimeballs in suits who hold us down.
I don’t want to complain too much here about the programming at The Broad & The Prytania, which between them offer just about every new release I’d want to see on the big screen. Just about. Even when explosively over-the-top Indian action blockbusters like Thunivu play out at the suburban multiplex (which has 20 screens under one roof to play around with), they often play to near-empty rooms. I guess what I’m most lamenting is that the recent successes of films like RRR & Pathaan have yet to drum up much of an appetite for other Bollywood, Kollywood, and Tollywood action epics, despite their routine delivery of the most exciting populist entertainment on the market, Hollywood be damned. These crowdpleasing genre pictures are still treated like a niche interest in America, an esoteric cultural novelty that you can only access via a 90-minute bus ride or, if you’re patient enough, a subscription to Netflix.
By now, Heathers has surely gotten its full due as a cult classic in terms of its delicious visual aesthetics & eternal quotability. It’s even earned its own Broadway musical adaptation, so there should be nowhere left for its “cult” legacy to go. I still don’t think we’ve fully reckoned with how well balanced the tone of Heathers is, though, especially as a feat of screenwriting. Daniel Waters’s playful, sardonic cruelty is a deceptively tricky balancing act to properly execute, which is glaringly apparent when you look at the film’s dark teen comedy imitators in the late 1990s & early 2000s. Drop Dead Gorgeous is the most accomplished imitator to the throne, with the biggest laughs & most keenly pointed satirical eye of any post-Heathers high school cruelty comedy. It’s also a film that chooses some hideously misjudged moments to punch down, particularly at the expense of anorexic teens & the mentally disabled. For its part, Jawbreaker evolves the highly stylized visual whimsy of Heathers into a candy-coated fantasy all of its own, but its callous humor about sexual assault & physical abuse leaves an unignorably sour taste. However, neither of those examples conveys the high wire balancing act of the post-Heathers teen cruelty comedy quite as succinctly as Sugar & Spice.
Sugar & Spice is an absurdly bubbly, flippantly cruel teen comedy about bank-robbing cheerleaders. Its 1960s Archie Comics stylization is infectiously fun & energizing, complete with collage-style pop art screen wipes that nearly push the film into surreal, dreamlike territory. Its story of teen sweethearts whose rosy vision of the world harshly clashes with reality when they unexpectedly become pregnant offers a great satirical core for its humor, and the transgression of high school cheerleaders robbing a bank to solve that problem is sublime. Best yet, the movie is only 81min long, cramming as many goofs, gags, and one-liners as it can into every beat without wasting the audience’s time on superfluous details like thoughts or feelings. The only problem, really, is that the film is viciously homophobic. This is a mainstream, PG-13 comedy where f-bombs are carefully avoided so as not to upset the schoolmarms at the MPAA, but homophobic slurs are tossed in every direction like confetti. The only gay character in the film is a one-note visual gag: a male cheerleader who occasionally catapults into the frame to be called a “fag” and promptly dismissed. And then come the flood of prison rape jokes as the girls research their bank heist schemes among inmates at a women’s prison. Hilarious!
At first, the film’s tonal missteps seem to result from a poor choice in narrator: a small-minded rival of the bankrobbing teens who rats them out to the FBI out of petty jealousy. Watching a room full of middle-aged men listen to a bratty child endlessly monologue about the intricacies of cheerleader squad drama is hilarious, but choosing the least likeable character in the film to narrate often tilts the tone into sour territory, especially considering that character’s raging homophobia. You can’t blame all of the film’s misfired cruelty on the villain, however. The girls we’re supposed to be cheering for eventually prove to be just as guilty, calling the film’s politics into question not the characters’. The weirdest thing about that POV is that Sugar & Spice is otherwise perfectly calibrated for a dedicated queer fandom. It’s already practically a mash-up of Point Break & Bring It On, which sounds like a mad scientist experiment to create the perfect Gay Movie Night go-to. This is a film where James Marsden is ogled as a star-quarterback himbo, Madonna lyrics are treated as literal gospel, and teenage girls commit crimes while wearing knock-off Barbie masks. It’s also a film that frequently dehumanizes the exact target audience who would find those details fabulous for the sake of a cheap gag (or ten).
So yes, Sugar & Spice gleefully shares in the Jawbreaker & Drop Dead Gorgeous problem in that it can be a little too mean in spots; it may even be the meanest picture of the three. It’s also like those movies in that I love it anyway, which only makes me cringe harder when it spectacularly fucks up the balance of its tone. It’s certainly no Heathers, although over-written one-liners like “It was like he was a piece of chocolate and the entire school was on the rag” suggest that it very much wanted to be. If I’ve learned anything from loving these flawed teen cruelty comedies over the years, it’s that Heathers, although enduringly popular, was much more singularly skillful than could ever be fully acknowledged, especially in its mastery of tone.
I had no idea who up & coming filmmakers The Safdie Brothers were before seeing their most recent collaboration, Good Time, at the cinema, but by the tail end of the opening credits I was already mesmerized by the talent of Benny Safdie in particular. It wasn’t the fact that Benny co-directed (along with brother Josh Safdie, who penned the screenplay) while also making the risky decision to play a mentally disabled thief in one of the central roles that won me over as a fan. It was actually Benny’s sound editing credit that most caught my attention. From the opening frames of the film it’s immediately apparent that the sound design, which heavily features a synth-soaked score from weirdo pop act Oneohtrix Point Never, is the film’s driving force, the main source of its tension & eerie beauty. In Good Time, even the beautiful things are deeply ugly and the way The Safdie Brothers drown their audience in a nonstop deluge of oppressive sounds is just as painful as it is divinely transcendent. Even if every other element at play were dull or uninspired, the film’s synthy soundscape would be enough on its own to push the film into the Best of the Year conversations, which is not too shabby for a couple directors who’ve seemingly come out of nowhere (i.e. documentary filmmaking).
Robert Pattinson stars as an irredeemable scumbag who lands his mentally disabled brother (Benny Safdie) in jail after a botched bank heist. Good Time mostly follows this despicable anti-hero down a complex labyrinth where he schemes to retrieve his brother from police custody. In his desperation he fails to plan ahead for future mishaps, barely evading police custody at every turn himself as he inches closer to retrieving his brother. Any shred of sympathy for Pattinson’s bank-robbing underdog is near-impossible to hold onto as he consistently steps all over old women, children, people of color, and the mentally ill in his single-minded quest to break his brother out. Occasionally this monstrously selfish mission is interrupted by tangents like a long monologue about the worst acid trip in history or an especially unhinged performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh as a wealthy heiress with a violent chemical imbalance, but Pattinson’s scumbag lead will only pay attention to those distractions for as long as it takes him to figure out a way to exploit them. Like Gravity or Mad Max: Fury Road, Good Time is composed entirely of a series of obstacles. There’s an intense moral conundrum at the core of the plot where you want to see the lead succeed in saving his brother from a prison system he’s not mentally equipped to navigate, but also want him to fail for the sake of the marginalized people he hurts along the way. There’s hardly time to wrestle with that conflict in the moment, however, since each obstacle pummels the screen in rapid succession with full, unforgiving force.
Good Time is essentially a mutated version of Refn’s Drive with all of the sparkling romance thoroughly supplanted with dispiriting grime. Filtering an old-fashioned heist plot through Oneohtrix Point Never’s blistering synths and the neon-soaked cinematography of Sean Price Williams (who also shot Queen of Earth) sounds like it’d be a blast, but The Safdie Brothers employ those electric lights & sounds for a much more grueling purpose. Occasionally, Good Time will introduce a stray element of dangerous fun, like an amusement park funhouse or a Sprite bottle full of LSD, but mostly the directors allow their documentary work to inform the tone of the picture. Good Time is defined less by neon glamor than it is soaked in the economy-driven discomfort of state-sanctioned psychoanalysis sessions or the cold glow of television-lit hospital rooms. There’s deeply uncomfortable sexual & racial context to most of the main character’s crimes, but there’s also an economic desperation in his acts of theft, kidnapping, and breaking & entering that inform his decisions to commit them. In one telling scene, he pauses to watch an episode of the 90s reality show Cops, which similarly repackaged systemic economic hardship as an entertainment commodity, only to be disgusted by the pain on display on the screen. Good Time aims to disgust & discomfort in that same way, offering all of the surface entertainment of a film like Drive without softening its real life implications with the fantasy of movie magic the way that the film does so well.
If nothing else, Good Time is an excellent case for each of its individual players as creative powerhouses to be reckoned with. Jennifer Jason Leigh has already established herself as an actor to beware in titles like The Hateful Eight & eXistenZ, so Robert Pattinson’s role here works much better as a breakout calling card performance (much more so than his own Cronenberg vehicle, Cosmopolis), as despicable as it is. The Safdie Brothers also stand a chance to make names for themselves as actors, writers, and directors in what has to be their widest release to date, especially in the brazen way they dare to punish their newfound audience. If Good Time works as a showcase for any one in element in particular, however, its effect is most heavily weighted in its attention to sound. Benny Safdie’s masterful integration of the tireless Oneohtrix Point Never synths in the diegetic sounds of Good Time‘s grimy crime world environments is truly one of the great marvels of the year, something that deserves to be experienced as big and as loud as possible.
In the few days since watching Edgar Wright’s latest at the theater, starting almost immediately after the screening, I’ve been suffering a very annoying case of swimmer’s ear. I can’t hear very well from the affected appendage, which is ringing slightly & swollen to the point of discomfort. I also can’t help but think that this sudden affliction is somehow cosmic retribution for not especially caring about Baby Driver, a film everyone seems to love without reservation, but only stirred apathy in me. In the film, a young twenty-something getaway driver with a heart of gold (named Baby, naturally) suffers from a near lifelong affliction of severe tinnitus. To ease the constant ringing in his ears, he choreographs his day around an endless stack of carefully-curated iPod classics, each loaded with just the right song selection to drown out the noise in his head & get him through his reluctant life in crime. Given how (mostly) great the soundtrack Baby selects for himself is (including tracks from artists as varied as T. Rex, Young MC, and The Damned) and the immediately apparent exuberance Wright shows behind the wheel, it’s downright sinful that I couldn’t manage to have fun watching this summertime exercise in action & style. Do not worry, though. My ear seems to have been struck down for the offense.
I don’t want to waste too much server space shitting on Baby Driver, since it’s bringing a lot of people a lot of joy. It’s easy to recognize what they see in it: stylized car chases, a killer soundtrack, playful action movie dialogue, etc. It’s just frustrating to me that a film with such an exciting premise (a babyfaced criminal timing his bank robbery getaways to pop music) ultimately feels so conventional & uninspired. It starts off sublimely committed to its central conceit too. Baby (played by real-life babyface Ansel Elgort) draws attention to himself by drumming on the steering wheel & lipsycing for his life to a blues rock diddy outside an in-progress robbery. His irreverence is immediately infectious. After establishing Baby’s skills behind the wheel in a show-off’s getaway, the movie establishes its main hook up front in the opening credits. While Baby strolls to a local coffee shop to cap off the heist, the music in his earbuds syncs up to the imagery onscreen, to the point where graffiti & street signs echo lyrics from the soundtrack. In this opening adrenaline rush, it’s easy to be seduced into thinking you’re watching a high octane, pop music-driven modernization of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a visually complex musical where every meticulously crafted detail in play is just an extension of the song developing in your ear. That’s why it’s such a letdown when the movie then reveals itself to be a much more conventional, instantly-familiar heist picture.
That’s not to say that a conventional heist picture can’t be a worthwhile mode of entertainment. Even while disappointing in ambition, Baby Driver features some exceptional performances from its actors. Lily James is absurdly sweet in her role as a diner waitress, feeling like a cartoolishly pure distillation of wholesome Americana. Jamie Foxx also steals attention whenever he’s allowed the opportunity in his role as the loose cannon criminal who can’t be trusted not to blow every heist apart into a bloodsoaked catastrophe, an unpredictable element of danger that helps the film’s “one last job” plot feel at least somewhat distinctive instead of mind-numbingly cliché. I’m a lot less hot on what Jon Hamm & Kevin Spacey are doing as Foxx’s criminal cohorts, which might get to the core of why I was underwhelmed by the movie as a whole. It’s not necessarily a fault with the performances, but more to do with Wright’s screenplay. Spacey & Hamm are tasked with delivering deliberately over-stylized, insincerely quippy dialogue that makes Baby Driver feel overall like a return to that deluge of mediocre mid-to-late 90s sardonic crime movies that followed in the wake of Pulp Fiction & Reservoir Dogs. Even back then those overly-jokey, scripted-to-death crime pictures were already exhaustingly redundant & flat. In a 2017 context the effect is even worse, feeling about as try-hard & unfunny as Deadpool.
It’s possible my mood was soured before Baby Driver even began, given Edgar Wright’s snooty pre-screening PSA about how going to the theater is an essential cinematic experience, as opposed to to the slackjawed dimwit slobs who watch Netflix on the couch (i.e. everyone alive). Mostly, though, I just felt let down that Wright abandoned his central Action Movie Cherbourg concept so quickly after following it to its furthest end in the opening credits. Whenever stray gunfire or gearshifts sync to the music in later scenes, it just feels like a distant echo of a better movie that could’ve been. Without its defining gimmick commanding every moment, Baby Driver feels alternately like post-Tarantino slick action runoff & a made-for-TV mockbuster version of the equally mythic, but infinitely more stylish Drive. I probably shouldn’t be saying these things aloud, though, just in case it’s risking hearing loss in my currently uninfected ear. I hope you, Wright, and the pop music gods in charge of my hearing will eventually forgive me for the transgression, lest I need to start shopping on eBay for some secondhand mp3 players.
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