Mister 8

Recently, we’ve gone through another bout of sickness. Regular readers might note that I’ve spent much of the past few months falling in and out of wellness. For the record, I’m generally a healthy person, and chalk the illnesses up to two factors: (1) my wife is a special education pre-school teacher, and her classroom is a petri dish of germs and bacteria that no amount of cleaning and sanitizing can stop completely, and (2) this is our first northeastern winter after living most of our lives in the temperate part of the southern United States. This week, my wife brought home pink eye. Huzzah.

One of the upsides of the recent virus that I’ve been through has been that I took time off from working so much to catch up on both much-needed sleep and much-needed movie watching. In the past week, I’ve watched a handful of films for the first time and thought I might share my thoughts on them with you. I won’t get too much into the details of the plot, because frankly, I’m a latecomer to this and most of the movies I’ll be talking about here today. These reviews are not so much to convince you to see these movies, but rather to initiate conversations about them.

So please, please, please, leave your comments below.

In the order in which I watched them….

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Burn After Reading 2008 (Coen Bros.)

The Coens wrote this in alternating days with the screenplay for No Country For Old Men, and it seems as though Burn began as a light-hearted response to the bleakness of the other film, although by the film’s conclusion, some of those gruesome bits bleed over.

The film is an ensemble piece, sort of the Coen version of a Robert Altman film, that begins when Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich, amazing as usual), loses his job with the CIA. Cox’s response to this is to take time off to write his memoirs, and this, combined with the fact that his job loss gives his wife (Tilda Swinton, amazing as usual) the impetus she needs to begin divorce proceedings. She’s intent on leaving Cox for her married lover (George Clooney, amazing as usual), a treasury agent, and by the end, two local gym employees (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, both amazing as usual) are wrapped up in a…not really a plot, actually, but a perceived plot…that ends with a pile of dead bodies and lives and marriages destroyed.

My first perception of the film was that I wasn’t sure how it fit into the rest of the Coen Bros. oeuvre. Of the films for which they’ve provided screenplays, there seems to be a common element of an unnatural, creeping evil in the world over which we have no control. It began with the M. Emmett Walsh character in Blood Simple (actually, if I have my timeline straight, their assistance on Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead), and continued with the John Goodman character in Barton Fink, the bounty hunter / alter-ego of Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona, the lawman in O Brother Where Art Thou, and culminating in No Country’s Anton Chigurrh. The striking thing about Burn is that there’s not a villain, there’s not really any sort of evil either, and everyone involved is implicit in their own downfall.

I’m tempted to match the characters to the seven deadly sins, and it almost works: McDormand is envy, Malkovich is wrath, Swinton is greed, Pitt is pride (his narcissism leads him to be oblivious to most things going on around him) Richard Jenkins (amazing, as usual) might qualify for lust…but I’m not sure where to map Clooney (perhaps somewhere between sloth and lust?). And that still leaves gluttony without a match. In any case, the damage done in the film seems at first to not be because of that unstoppable evil, but due to the randomness, the coincidence that ties all of these seemingly unrelated people together. Here, the destructive element is not personified, but is the tendency for these people to fall into patterns that lead to mutual annihilation — is this the Coen take on chaos theory?

A few other points:

1. I loved the meta commentary on spy films that is especially made by McDormand’s character. She manifests the espionage plot from bits of pop culture: her demand that Pitt wear a suit to the meeting with Malkovich, her trip to the Russian embassy, her knowledge of spycraft — even the method in which she profiles her potential dates and meets them incognito in the park. This mirrors her desire for plastic surgery. She craves another life, one based around her interpretation of media. That the Coen Bros. demonstrate this without ever having McDormand so much as turn on a television shows their opinion of the audience as intelligent people.

2. I was incredibly saddened at the fate of Richard Jenkins as McDormand’s manager. I was drawn to him the way I was drawn to Robert Forster’s character in Jackie Brown, and wish his story had ended in the same way.

3. I have perhaps never laughed as hard as when Clooney debuted his handcrafted furniture piece, unless it was when he was chopping it up with an axe later.

4. J.K. Simmons has limited screen time, but every bit of dialogue he has is both brilliant and hilarious. In other words, he’s amazing as usual.

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The Assassination Bureau 1969 (Basil Dearden)

Speaking of Anton Chiggurh, after seeing No Country for the first time, the only comparison I could draw to the uneasy fear his character inspired in me was the first time I watched the musical Oliver! as a kid, and experienced Oliver Reed’s portrayal of Bill Sykes. Because of that, I’ve always had a hard time taking him seriously as anything other than a villain. The only times he’s been able to overcome my perception have been when the “good” characters are really a little rotten on the inside, such as Athos in The Three Musketeers, or as Ivan Dragomiloff in The Assassination Bureau.

From the video above, you can sort of draw the basis of the plot. Reed is the head of the titular Bureau, which will dispatch immoral despots and brigands for a small fee. Diana Rigg plays his sort-of foil in the film, a journalist trying to uncover the machinations of the Bureau for newspaper editor Savalas, unbeknownst to her the assistant director of the Bureau and an out-and-out villain. Rigg secures the services of the Bureau to dispatch an interesting prey: Reed himself. Reed informs the board of directors that he intends to use the challenge to assassinate each of them. His father founded the Bureau to always ensure that it was used to subtract truly bad people from the world, but the profits gained through the Bureau’s work have turned the directors themselves into some of the worst.

If this film had a body, there wouldn’t be a serious bone in it. Based on a seed of a novel by Jack London that was later finished by Robert Fish, the movie is a globe-trotting black comedy that culminates with a  sword fight aboard an exploding airship. It’s interesting to see Rigg paired opposite against another Edwardian gentleman, quite different than John Steed. Patrick MacNee diffused Steed’s deadliness with wit and refusal to take any situation seriously. Reed sharpens the danger of Dragomiloff with every glare, every grin that spreads across his square jaw. It also feels strange to see Rigg subjugated to the traditional female sidekick role, sometimes being manhandled by Reed. Still, an enjoyable flick.

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The Tenth Victim 1965 (Elio Petri)

Speaking of assassinations (yes, I have a segue for each of these), the Italian film La decima vittima, aka The Tenth Victim, deals too with the concept of murder as a playful, social affair. Not a straightforward spy film, but definitely influenced by the period (for more, see Spy Vibe’s recent entries on Tenth Victim set design, and costume design), The Tenth Victim comes out of the mold started by Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” and may have inspired subsequent ludic murder films like Death Race 2000 and The Running Man. It definitely had a major influence on superspy Austin Powers, whose band Ming Tea took their band name from the film.

The Tenth Victim doesn’t really aspire to make any deep philosophical statement on killing, and if anything, the genuine cool demonstrated by the hunters and victims in the film make me wish that the hunt actually existed. More than anything, this film is a pop (poppier?) version of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, with Marcello Mastroianni dealing with the life of the constantly-under-public-scrutiny celebrity in both. In 8 1/2, he plays the artist-director with creative block; in The Tenth Victim, he plays the artist-assassin who has grown weary of the routine of killing. As the victim in the ultimate match of the hunt, he’s constantly looking over his shoulder to figure out who his hunter is. He suspects that it’s the American Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), but can’t be sure. And to complicate matters, he’s falling in love with her. Granted, it’s in a slightly aloof manner that still means he can shoot her in the end if he has to, but you know how love is.

If you followed my advice, and clicked on the Spy Vibe links, you’ll see that the best thing about The Tenth Victim is its style. This is a beautiful movie, and not only because of Andress (though that helps), and defines an era of cool that I wish I’d lived in, but doubt ever really existed in the first place. It also made me desperately want to watch CQ again, but I can’t find my copy. Such is life. Maybe Daniel Faraday will be on Lost tonight, and I can just pretend.

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Deadlier Than the Male 1967 (Ralph Thomas)

Speaking of media in which characters wash up on the beach (hey, you get your own blog, and you can decide how far is too far), watch this:

Unlike what I’m assuming is the opinion of my esteemed spy-blogging colleague Tanner (see his review of Deadlier, which kicked off his series of “My Favorite Spy Movies”), I think our hero Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond made the right choice by kicking Elke Sommer out of his bed, but not spurning Sylva Koscina’s advances.

Ahem. Now that I’ve gotten a bit of puerile commentary out of the way, let’s take a peek at the film from a much more grown-up point of view. My viewing of this film was colored by another piece by Tanner, Lipstick Feminism: Gender Roles In Deadlier Than The Male (Or: When Is A Speargun Just A Speargun?), and I was thinking of issues of feminism while watching. I agree with many of the basics of Tanner’s argument, but feel that much is undone in the last minutes of the movie. Spoiler alert.

First, the wicked women, the ones who assert independence, are destroyed for their efforts, and the woman who gives in, Grace, has her traditional role reasserted by being stripped naked by the hero.  The fate of the woman who violates the hegemony is death — it’s an element still common in fiction, sadly. Second, the villainesses’ death is brought about because she switches hairpieces with Grace — her vanity, a trait associated with the traditional female role, is what prevents her from being empowered.

Other things:

1. I’m a bit conflicted on the nephew character. He brings a bit of unneeded goofiness to the movie, a bit of Frankie Avalon in an otherwise continental cool flick. I do like the effect that his presence has on the establishment of the Drummond character, especially in the scene where his nephew’s girlfriend is trying to seduce him. This scene, more than any other, separates his character from that of James Bond.

2. Nigel Green is a great villain here. I enjoy every time I see him in anything 60s-spy related: IPCRESS File, The Avengers, Danger Man, The Wrecking Crew….

3. When I am rich, I’m going to have a life-sized chess board. And I’m only going to use it to play life-sized checkers.

4. The Scott Walker opening song is fabulous.

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Taken 2008 (Pierre Morel)

When titling movies in 1963 (or poems in 1911), they surely couldn’t have imagined the character Liam Neeson plays in Taken (segue success). This is an interesting film, because it provides little in the way of characterization, plot, theme, message, or any of the other elements of film and literature that one normally discusses in a review. After an introduction in which we learn nothing about the characters other than that Liam dotes on his daughter and wishes he was in her life more, and his daughter resents his over-protectiveness.

Of course, then she gets kidnapped by sex slave traders, and doesn’t mind as much when Dad comes to France to kick ass all over the place. We go from action scene to action scene with little in the way of connecting material. In fact, if I needed a metaphor, I’d say that this movie is a tiny bone with a big fat muscle wrapped around it, and that muscle is so big and flexed that it doesn’t need tendons. And if you have a problem with that, then I’ll send Liam Neeson after you.

One might expect, with a plot involving modern slave trade, that some sort of political message might be made, but this film is having none of it. Neeson doesn’t flinch when a heroin-addicted young lady accidentally runs in front of bullets meant for him, doesn’t bother to stop to free other captives, and I don’t even know that they explained what happened to the one young female whom he coaxed out of addiction long enough to give him the location of the house where his daughter was held. Neeson is on a monomaniacal quest and nothing will get in his way, not even innocent housewives who have just served him dinner and put their children to bed. He will shoot them without remorse.

All of this makes it sound as though I didn’t enjoy the film, but I liked it immensely. The filmmakers are fairly transparent in their lack of interest in creating a deep narrative. They go through the motions of constructing a world, flimsy to be sure, but solid enough to create a backdrop for Neeson to kick ass for an hour and a half. In other words: the film is exactly as advertised.

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Other COBRAS discussions of these films:

Burn After Reading:

Bish’s Beat highlights a bit of music from the film

Double O Section review

Assassination Bureau:

Apparently, I’m the only person who saw / enjoyed this one enough to talk about it.

Tenth Victim:

Permission to Kill review

Spy Vibe costume design discussion

Spy Vibe set design discussion

Deadlier Than the Male:

Double O Section feminist critique

Double O Section review

Taken:

Bish’s Beat preview thoughts

Double O Section review

Permission to Kill review