Posts tagged Action
“The Hurt Locker” A Film of Ultimate Reward
Jul 30th
A Film of Ultimate Reward
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE HURT LOCKER is perhaps the best film on the war in Iraq you will ever see, if not the best film on war itself.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the story is about the day-to-day experiences of an Army three-man detonation team whose job is to defuse any improvised explosive devices that are found before they can be detonated.
This is more than tricky, because an IED can be exploded on contact, exploded by a timer, or exploded by someone watching from safety who can set it off by using a cell phone.
So, a team consists of two men with rifles who scan the area on the lookout for anything suspicious while the team leader dons a heavy bomb suit and walks up to the bomb, which is usually hidden or covered, and tries to defuse it.
The story begins in 2004 in Baghdad, and one such team has just lost their leader in an explosion, when their company has only 38 days left in their rotation before they can be shipped back to the United States.
Staff Sergeant James, played superbly by Jeremy Renner, joins the team, and he is a “cowboy,” a “wild man” as one colonel calls him out of admiration, and he doesn’t always work by the rules. When he comes across a trunkfull of bombs in a car, he takes off his bomb suit, telling his team, “There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I’m going to die, I want to die comfortable.”
You have heard of “black humor”? Sgt. James has a sense of humor that could be called “black-hole humor.”
When asked by an officer what the best way is to defuse a bomb, Sgt. James tells him “the way you won’t die.”
As the days and the defused bombs go by, we get a countdown to the number of days left in rotation, and a sense of foreboding envelopes the team and the audience.
The action is not just bombs and defusings and explosions, however, We see the team at work and at play, plus their interaction with other soldiers and civilians, and the music is haunting.
The title of the film is a phrase that refers to “a place of ultimate pain.”
THE HURT LOCKER is a film of ultimate pleasure and reward.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Public Enemies” Not Number 1
Jul 9th
Not Number 1
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
PUBLIC ENEMIES is a disappointment, but it just might get better over time as some movies do when their reputations grow.
However, it has so many problems that that probably won’t happen.
Johnny Depp stars as John Dillinger, the notorious bank robber in the Thirties whom the FBI classified as “Public Enemy Number 1” until he was gunned down on a Chicago street after coming out of a movie theater.
No, that isn’t a “spoiler alert.” It is a historical fact and one of the problems with the movie: You know how it is going to end, and so where is the suspense?
The film starts in 1933, and we are told that it is the fourth year of the Great Depression. Dillinger shows up at a prison where he had just been paroled eight weeks earlier after serving nine years there.
He leads an escape of some prisoners, and as they head off in a getaway car, he says, “Let’s go to Chicago and make some money!”
Now, he doesn’t mean for them to get jobs in the Windy City. He means for them to rob some banks, even though robbing banks is getting harder than it once was.
Meanwhile, we meet Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis, the special agent in charge of the Chicago field office. He has just shot and killed Pretty Boy Floyd, another well-known gangster.
In the meantime, Dillinger has picked up a coat-check girl named Billie Frechette, played by Marion Cotillard. He tells her right away that he is John Dillinger and that he robs banks, and he impresses her enough that he manages to get her to quit her job and to leave with him.
Now, there isn’t much of a story arc and what little there is, is confusing.
Depp comes from the Marlon Brando School of Acting with his mumbling, scratching, and twitching, and sometimes you can’t understand what he says.
Also, there are so many characters with their own stories that you can’t tell who they are, and they all look so much alike that you have a hard time telling who got killed and who is still alive.
Some well-known actors, you might not even recognize.
PUBLIC ENEMIES is definitely not Number 1, but it still brings a tear to your eye at the end.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Public Enemies – Movie Trailer
Jul 1st
Based on author Bryan Burrough’s ambitious tome Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-43, director Michael Mann’s sprawling historical crime drama follows the efforts of top FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale ) in capturing notorious bank robber John Dillinger. A folk hero to the American public thanks to his penchant for robbing the banks that many people believed responsible for the Great Depression, charming bandit Dillinger (Johnny Depp) was virtually unstoppable at the height of his criminal career; no jail could hold him, and his exploits endeared him to the common people while making headlines across the country. J. Edgar Hoover’s (Billy Crudup) FBI was just coming into formation, and what better way for the ambitious lawman to transform his fledgling Bureau of Investigation into a national police force than to capture the gang that always gets away? Determined to bust Dillinger and his crew, which also included sociopathic Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), Hoover christened Dillinger the country’s very first Public Enemy Number One, and unleashed Purvis to take them down by whatever means necessary. But Purvis underestimated Dillinger’s ingenuity as a master criminal, and after embarking on a frantic series of chases and shoot-outs, the dashing agent humbly surmised that he was in over his head. Outwitted and outgunned, Purvis knew that his only hope for busting Dillinger’s gang was to baptize a crew of Western ex-lawmen as official agents, and orchestrate a series of betrayals so cunning that even America’s criminal mastermind wouldn’t know what hit him. Marion Cotillard, Channing Tatum, and Stephen Dorff co-star.
