Great Book, Appalling Movie

Original DVD Cover Image, 1998

Review: Starship Troopers with Casper van Diem, Michael  Ironside vs. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Challenged to name a movie that fell disappointingly short of its source, my first reaction is Starship Troopers, out in a 20th anniversary edition this month.

Two decades ago, I was tremendously excited when I learned they would make this book into a movie, even as I doubted they would capture its flavor in full. The problem is internal dialogue. Truly interesting books take us into the inner life of their main characters; in revealing those meditations and self-recriminations, they expose their souls. 

Without that insight, fictional characters are as intellectually interesting as rock-em-sock-em robots.

Typically, movies substitute external dialogue and narrative for these inner debates. An example of this done well can be seen in the 1984 version of Dune. Without the narrative voiced by Gurney Halleck (Patrick Stewart) and Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) in that film, its story would be impenetrable. With it, and by dint of voicing much of the book’s mental dialogue, it succeeds as an adaptation.

So I knew it would not be impossible to capture the philosophy- and social-commentary-laden substance of Heinlein’s novel. Then I saw it in the theatrical release, and was sorely disappointed. This is simply not Heinlein’s story.

Oh, the bugs are there. The sneak attack by this alien hive-dwelling race that wipes out Johnny Rico’s home city is in the movie. The Mobile Infantry are there, with their armored suits complete with heads-up displays, pocket nukes and jump jets. What didn’t survive the cut? Only the reason why Johnny joins the service in the first place.

Heinlein’s novel hinges on two social differences in the world of Starship Troopers. First, only veterans—those who have chosen to place their lives “between their loved home and the war’s desolation”—have the right to vote. Civilians do not have that right, and neither do serving troopers. Heinlein justifies this very succinctly:

Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. “You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?” ”The difference,” I answered carefully, ” lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”

Second, it is anyone’s choice to enlist at any time after their 18th birthday. The services will find something for the enlistee to do, to allow them to earn the franchise. But if they then go AWOL, resign, or are drummed out for any reason, they never have the opportunity to try again. Politicians from dogcatcher to President must, under this system, be veterans, and there are no “reserves”.

The movie barely mentions either of these two critical concepts. Worse, the main source informing Rico’s choices, his high school “History and Moral Philosophy” teacher, Col. DuBois (who pointed his stump at Johnny in the quote from the novel), is barely there in the first scenes, and not mentioned again. These ideas are presented in hit-and-miss fashion, as if they are part of the recruit training after enlistment, instead of why recruits choose to enlist in the first place.

Moving the important motivation to enlist into the recruit training has another consequence—we do not get a real sense of the conflict between Rico and his father. As a result, his reaction when his home city is attacked is shallow. He’s now an orphan, okay, move on. This robs the viewer of one of the most poignant scenes Heinlein has written, when as an officer, Rico is relying on his master sergeant.

Lieutenant Rasczak (Michael Ironside) is given most of the lines that Col. DuBois has in the novel. So we get a tepid, PC-diluted “Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn’t solve anything is merely wishful thinking at its worst,” instead of

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that “violence never settles anything” I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

If this was the only shortcut, I would not complain. It is not. Sergeant Zim is another crucial character whose best lines from the book are given to Lt. Rasczak, or simply omitted. Rico’s relationship with training sergeant Zim is formative for him. Again, the movie simply ignores this part of the story.

In addition, the movie completely omits Juan Rico’s choice to go to officer training, and how this perspective changes his assessment of his life and responsibilities. I can see leaving this out to save time (and provide grist for a sequel). I suspect, however, that the movie’s creators were simply in a hurry to confront Rico with the alien bugs.

The other changes are minor, and do not, in my opinion, ruin the story. In Heinlein’s novel, women do not serve in the Mobile Infantry; Heinlein was a product of his time and served as a Naval officer in the 40s. He does give women a unique role that men cannot, for the most part, perform as well. In addition, Johnny’s best friend Carl does not end up as a commanding colonel in the novel—to describe where he does would be a spoiler. But these are minor changes, and I can roll with them. 

What I miss are the thoughts about why defensive war is necessary, and how best to conduct a war once one is begun. Once again, the words are those of Col. DuBois:

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?… Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it would be just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force.

Dune has been remade, and the second version has qualities that the first did not. I cling to the hope that Starship Troopers will be remade by someone with the vision to see past the great special effects opportunity to create a movie worthy of the power of Robert Heinlein’s novel.

In the meantime, skip the movie. Read the book.

Tough-Guy Tango with Tolerance

Review: Flawless with Robert DeNiro and Philip Seymour Hoffman

I’ve learned over the years that any Robert DeNiro movie role will have much in common with other characters he’s portrayed in his distinguished career—not to say he is limited, but in every role, we see the real DeNiro shining through from beneath. He shares that quality with other icons. Think John Wayne or Al Pacino.

So the first time I watched it, I was a bit tentative about the story in Flawless, a 1999 film in which he starred opposite the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. I hadn't seen it for a while, but when I caught the film in a cable rerun last night, I was struck again by that ineffable quality.

DeNiro plays Walt Koontz, a tough-guy retired fireman who works as a security guard and lives in a seedy walk-up apartment across the airshaft from a room that always seems filled with flamingly-gay drag-queens. The film quickly establishes Koontz as physically-oriented (he dances Argentine Tango with a woman he regards as a girlfriend, but pays as a hooker), and more than slightly homophobic.

Thus far, classic DeNiro. Then, in responding to a shooting in the apartment building, Koontz suffers a stroke that paralyzes his right side. This strong, self-sufficient man is reduced in an instant to a dependent cripple. He can’t work, he can’t dance. His speech is slurred to the point of incomprehensibility. He can’t bear to have his friends learn of his disability. Recommended to get singing lessons as an aid to speech therapy, he reluctantly decides to take up an offer for lessons from the gay singer who lives opposite him. DeNiro’s portrayal of the loneliness of stroke-victim Koontz, and his struggle to return to his former ability, is flawless.

And for once, the DeNiro beneath the role is harder to discern. He’s still there, but Koontz is more apparent than DeNiro.

Hoffman, a standout in a secondary role in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, had already had experience holding his own opposite a screen icon—Al Pacino, who starred in that film. (Interestingly, Pacino also danced Argentine Tango on screen in that film.) Hoffman’s performance as Rusty Kimmerman, a pre-surgery transsexual who leads DeNiro’s crippled cop to understand that attitude and character are more important than superficial perfection, is nuanced, understated—flawless.

The two work together, not only to help Koontz recover some of his pre-stroke grace, but also to discover the murderers who shot up the apartment house the night of Koontz’ stroke. Touches of buffoonery and sexual innuendo offset the violence of those killings to provide a flawless balance.

Each time I watch this movie, I see more of value in its story, and in DeNiro’s performance. It’s definitely worth adding Flawless to your movie library.

Liner Notes:

Philip Seymour Hoffman played an another, far more subtle gay character in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Hoffman blackmailer Freddie Miles was a match in petty villainy to the whining schoolboy he played in Scent of a Woman, but each role was clearly a different persona. Contrast that with the gentle, and completely hetero, writer Joseph Turner White in 2000's State and Main, or the all-but-closeted gay writer of Capote.

Choose Wisely

Review: Hobson's Choice with John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Charles Laughton

What makes a "classic" movie classic? For me it goes beyond the black-and-white film, and the stars, directors and screenwriters of the 40s and 50s. It has more to do with a philosophy, the sense that binary values exist. Call them good and evil, or right and wrong, but classic movies in my library tell the story of what happens when people must choose.

My favorite example is named for that choice: Hobson's Choice. Superficially, the titular choice belongs to the Charles Laughton character, a boot-seller in Old Salford (near Manchester).

The very common, Mancunian-accented widower Henry Hobson has three daughters, a modestly prosperous boot-shop, and a drinking problem, made worse by living over the shop—and across the street from the local pub. So the choice might be his, to drink or be sober.

Each of his daughters are also Hobsons, though, at least until they marry. His two younger girls have selected prosperous—and teetoal—beaus, and shifted to as posh a fashion as they can afford for courting. Despite their obvious steps to escape the influence and lifestyle of their father, however, the thick Manchester accent reveals the thin veneer of their change. Their choices have not challenged the limitations of their upbringing, so much as painted over them.

Then there's Maggie Hobson (de Banzie). Henry's oldest daughter knows exactly what she wants: the best bootmaker in Manchester, Willie Mossop (Mills)—and in that sense Mossop is also Henry Hobson's "choice". Hobson pays him pennies, and gives him a place to stay "down cellar" in the workroom under the shop. When a local dame finds Mossop's boots superior, Maggie siezes her chance and gives Mossop a choice: he can marry her and make a success in their own shop. Or he can stay and make boots for pennies for his sot of a boss for the rest of his life.

This movie might have been grim, filled with defeated people barely clinging to their dreams in a gritty industrial town. Instead, it is filled with lovely images of romance growing well-fertilized from the common soil of effort and discipline. I can watch it often, and never fail to be uplifted by its message: Success in marriage and business—and life—require the same commitment. 

It's your choice. 

Soaring, Stunning, Exhilarating!

Review: The Eagle Huntress, documentary film by Otto Bell

From the opening scenes, breath-takingly beautiful scenery and uplifting emotions carry to the skies this lovely film about a young woman in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia who seeks to follow her father's and grandfather's footsteps, and become an eagle hunter, despite long tradition that limits this role to men only.

Director Otto Bell and his film crew have done an outstanding job of letting the harsh landscape, the demands of life on the mountains and steppes, and the stunning courage of 13-year-old Aisholpan and her family, inform every part of this incredibly moving story.

I actually teared up at the beginning, watching an eagle hunter (Aisholpan's grandfather) release an eagle back to the wild after seven years of hunting with it. Then the tears struck again at the memorial credit at the end of the film.

In between, the thrilling saga of the girl's dream—and her work—to capture an eaglet, train it and herself, and compete in the national Eagle Hunters Festival in Ulgii is told simply and with little pontificating. Like all successful dreamers, Aisholpan doesn't let the negative feedback from more traditional-minded Eagle Hunters keep her from pursuing her goal.

The choice of a Sia song for the closing credits, Angel by the Wings, is totally appropriate:

You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything
You can, you can do anything, anything
You can do anything
Look up, call to the sky
Oh, look up and don't ask why, oh
Just take an angel by the wings...

This film is only in "art cinemas" rather than a wider release, so we drove in pouring rain to a neighboring town and climbed three flights of stairs to watch it in a local cinema. Ken Cummings, who suggested the film, and I, with our respective spouses joined three other people to watch the matinee showing in the tiny theater.

Despite these drawbacks (limited release into smaller venues, English subtitling, lack of Hollywood "names" being involved—although Daisy Ridley, "Rey" of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, provides the narration), I predict the film will do well. It deserves to. And with a G rating, this is a much better choice for family viewing at Christmas than some films in theaters over the holiday (Rogue One, and Assassin's Creed, to name two), and if the word gets out about it, it may even hold its own against heavyweights like Disney's Moana and J.K. Rowlings' Fantastic Beasts and Where to FInd Them.

I believe adults who take their children will also thoroughly enjoy The Eagle Huntress, which is more than I would commit to for either of the other two kid-friendly films.  

Growing Up, Growing Better

Review: Annapolis with James Franco, Tyrese Gibson, Jim Parrack; Greenfingers with Clive Owen, Helen Mirrin, Danny Dyer

Life after the semicolon; what changes in us after a disastrous life-turning event depends on what follows after. Do we wallow in victim-hood, or do we move on, up, and out of the pits life has landed us in?

Good films with this theme are not hard to find; it is a common story for us all. I was particularly inspired by two movies that share this theme by telling two very different stories: Annapolis (2006) and Greenfingers (2000).

Annapolis 

This is the tale of a ship-fitter, Jake Huard (played by James Franco), working for his father's construction crew on the docks across the river from the prestigious Naval academy. Jake's dream is attend Annapolis, but he was wait-listed when he applied. So he fills his days with the hard work of a welder and riveter, and his leisure with training as a boxer.

We first meet Jake as he prepares to go into the ring against co-worker AJ, a taller, heavier boxer. (AJ is portrayed by Jim Parrack, who was a main non-vampire character in the HBO True Blood series.) Jake refuses to fight as directed by his father, closing with the larger boxer and defeating him despite multiple knock-downs. The naval officer in the crowd of dockworkers, conspicuous in his whites, has come to offer him a place at Annapolis. Lt. Buxton (Donnie Wahlberg) comments on how unusual it is for an application to come from someone in Jake's position. We get another glimpse of Jake's persistence thereby: he had apparently pestered a Senator daily for over a month to help.

   People who live in Arkansas, you know what their favorite state is? Mississippi. Cause Mississippi's the only thing that keeps Arkansas from being the worst state in the whole country.
   I'm Mississippi.
   Well you sure as hell ain't California. Listen, Cole and Whitaker are so busy tryin' to run you out they forgot about me. As a matter of fact, they've forgotten about every other plebe in this whole company.

For Jake, the "semicolon" is not just leaving the comfortable environs of family and friends to join the company where he will be "boxing over his weight". It is facing life-crippling bias. Jake grows his life in the direction he chooses by feeding his habit of persistence in the face of prejudice, and staying true to his dreams. 

Some of you have only known success your entire life. But this year, your plebe year, you will know failure... because failure is a far greater teacher than success.

And that's the point. Failure is not a stopping place; it can be a launch-pad to success. One only has to survive, and persist.

Greenfingers

The theme I'm exploring, improvement over one's past, might seem to be belied by the opening scenes of Greenfingers, in which we see Colin (Clive Owen) stealing a bouquet of yellow roses and being reincarcerated in a British prison. But all is not as it seems in this movie based on a true story.

Immediately after the initial looting scene, we flash back to Colin's life in prison just one year prior. Facing his parole board, he learns that he is eligible for transfer to a new program in a lower-security prison. He's become resigned to his imprisonment, and tells the board, "If you don't mind, I'd just as soon not change."

Fergus: [Waking up and seeing the flower on the nightstand, then seeing Colin, who had received the flower as a parole gift] What's that old thing doing back here?

Colin: It wasn't ready for the outside world.

Nevertheless, he is transferred, and assigned a roommate, Fergus (David Kelley), and a grim job dealing with the prison toilets. For Colin, there is little to choose between his work and Fergus, whose cheerfulness in the face of life is an affront to Colin's pessimism. He tries, but Fergus refuses to be shut out. Eventually, they bond over the planting of a packet of violets in the snow, and protecting the fragile flowers that bloom despite Colin's conviction that they are doomed.

Like the violets, Colin and the other convicts who become involved in building the prison's formal garden bloom in the regard of professional garden-writer Georgina Woodhouse (Helen Mirrim).

The moral is that just as winter and death are inevitable, so too are spring and the flowering of whatever seeds we plant. The path to improvement for the convicts of Greenfingers was to choose which seeds to plant, and then tend then carefully.

One need not be a gardener to see the truth in that.

Shearly Wonderful with Absolutely No Message

Review: Shaun the Sheep Movie with Shaun, Bitzer, and The Farmer

I was really happy to see this clay-mation comedy turn up in the Amazon Prime movies list, just in time for my anti-election-returns movie binge. My spouse and I watched it on the 8-inch Fire Tablet, and enjoyed every goofy sight-gag, fart and manure reference, and running joke in the show.

For those who missed the Shaun the Sheep TV series—me among them—a quick recap is provided at the beginning of the movie, showing the lamb Shaun tenderly tended by The Farmer, gently gambolling with the puppy Bitzer, and generally enjoying life on Moist Bottom Farm.

Quick transition to present day, in which Shaun sleeps in a shed-sized barn with a fat spider overhead, and The Farmer follows a deeply-rutted routine of feeding, then shearing, his sheep. Shaun recruits the other sheep to assist in a plan to disrupt the routine by fooling The Farmer into staying in bed all day so they can have a day off.

Plans, as they tend to, go awry, and The Farmer winds up in The City, an amnesiac "Mr. X" with a thriving hair-dressing business (due to his long-honed skills at shearing), and it's up to Bitzer and the sheep to rescue him and bring him home.

Best thing about it? Absolutely no words. Not even from The Farmer and Shaun's human nemesis, the Animal Containment guy. Murmurs, shrieks, baas and barks, but no words. For zany antics and a complete lack of message—even "there's no place like home"—it is hard to beat Shaun as an antidote for the sturm-und-drang angst of election returns. 

And the doo-wop sheep chorus near the climax? Shearly brilliant.

Zeitgeist of the 80s

Review: The Secret of My Succe$s with Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, and Richard Jordan

Remember the 80s? Those of you who were alive and aware then recall a time when the question wasn’t “will I ever find a job?” but “how fast can I get promoted?” Distilling the cream from the corporate life was a strong theme in the 80s—and since this was when I began my own checkered career, it resonates strongly with me.

Michael J. Fox was the poster child of those years. With movies like The Secret of My Succe$s, For Love or Money, and Doc Hollywood, Fox seemed to capture the image of the naive newcomer to the corporate ladder, yearning for the big score, but wanting to do it right. Playing off his highly-successful TV role as the conservative son of two ex-hippies in Family Ties, Fox caught the Zeitgeist of an era, and spun it well into the 90s.

Although all three of these movies share some of the 80s spirit, none is so evocative of the time as 1987’s The Secret of My Succe$s, whose tag-line was “There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Brantley Foster took two weeks.” Fox’s Brantley Foster is a college graduate with a fire in his belly, come to make it big in the big city. There he runs into the barriers a farm-boy might have anticipated.

Brantley Foster: No! No exceptions! I want this job, I need it, I can do it. Everywhere I’ve been today there’s always been something wrong, too young, too old, too short, too tall. Whatever the exception is, I can fix it. I can be older, I can be taller, I can be anything!

Interviewer: Can you be a minority woman?

Desperate, he finally asks his uncle, CEO of a large organization, for a job. Working the mailroom wasn’t what he envisioned in his years of college, but he can always work up from there, right? But “you can’t get promoted out of the mailroom—you can’t even get paroled out of the mailroom,” according to the laconic Fred, his mentor at the bottom of the ladder.

The fun starts when Foster, delivering mail, walks into a newly-emptied office and answers a ringing phone. A frantic voice at the other asks for help, and Foster provides it. He’s hooked—he may be paid as a mail clerk, but he’ll do the job he’s trained for, despite them all. The result of this resolution is a wild scramble as Foster assumes a second identity. He will become “Carleton Whitfield,” a suit-wearing executive in “the lofty air of the big cheeses.” Using the knowledge he has gleaned by reading the executive memos and corporate reports before he delivers them, Foster fleshes out his alter ego by creating orders for business cards, his name on the door, and an assistant from the secretarial pool.

The bedroom-chase farce that results from Foster’s need to dress for success whenever he’s masquerading as Carleton Whitfield, but dress down to allay the suspicions of his eagle-eyed mailroom supervisor, is simply hilarious. As his secretary, Jean, says, “I was having fun on this job! You had all this energy, and all these crazy ideas… and you kept taking your pants off.”

The sexual side of things is just as confused, for the same reasons. As “Brantley Foster,” he is assigned to drive an executive’s wife home. They wind up in the sack together before Brantley finds out that she is his uncle’s wife. Fortunately, the sexually aggressive “Auntie Vera” Prescott decides to help Foster up the corporate ladder while she helps herself to his boyish charm. Meanwhile, as “Carleton Whitfield,” Foster has become enamoured of a lovely corporate penny-pincher, Christy Wills—who just happens to be sleeping with his uncle. Coupled with the dual identity Foster is sustaining—which his aunt and uncle know nothing about—this results in a real French bedroom chase near the climax of the movie.

Howard Prescott: Let me get this straight – Brantley is Whitfield?

Brantley Foster: That’s right. Brantley is Whitfield; Whitfield is Brantley.

Vera Prescott: And Christy is the bimbo! Well, now that we’ve all had Mouseketeer roll call, I’m just going to go call my lawyer.

Howard Prescott: [obviously lying] No, wait a minute. Christy is not the bimbo I was screwing around with at the office.

Christy Wills: People better stop calling me bimbo!

This movie is decidedly sweet. Even the hostile takeover—complete with the usually-genial Fred Gwynn in what amounts to a cameo as the “evil investor”—is un-bitter, and merely serves as a springboard for the irrepressible Foster to triumph.

There were real corporate issues in the 80s, and truly hostile takeovers in an era which added terms like “poison pill” and “greenmail” to the language. If you want a glimpse of them, I could suggest Barbarians at the Gate. But for the nostalgic charm of the corporate climb, devoid of the need to do anything but sit back and enjoy, I’d rather recommend this charming comedy.

I guarantee you’ll sleep better afterward.

Who is Most Evil: Yul Brynner or Ed Harris?

Review: Westworld (HBO Series) with Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden —vs— Westworld (1973 MGM Film) with Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin

Based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crickton, the 1973 Westworld film (directed by Crichton) featured a loose-jowled, black-clad Yul Brynner as the cold-eyed gunman robot in a theme park designed to thrill guests with gun-fights, saloon-girls, high-stakes gambling, and outlaw-hunting. Brynner's robot was programmed to be threatening, but unable to kill any human. It was designed to lose in the end to any guest who challenged him.

It isn't until that programming "goes wrong" that robots begin to kill the human guests.

In the HBO series, the gunman who loses is still a "host" (this version's name for the robots), and the shooter is still a human. But this time, the black hat and dead-soul stare over the gunsights belong to the human, Ed Harris. And what an evil fellow he is, too! This nameless guest is determined to find a way to stay in the park, killing with abandon, and indulging all the base appetites a man can possess.

Others have commented about the rich world-building of the HBO production, and the casting of star-class film actors Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and James Marsden, plus small-screen stars like Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, and Luke Hemsworth. If we've seen the 1973 film, we have a general idea of the storyline and its destination. So I'd rather focus on why Ed Harris' gunman is so much more sinister than Brynner's was.

I think the first reason is simple. A robot is amoral by nature; its motivations and goals are not its own. They come from its programming, which is, in the end, a human product. Any "evil by design" host in the HBO series came from the workshop with that vileness built in.

Harris, on the other hand, has chosen to be vile. He can have a dead-soul stare because he had a soul to kill in the first place; he has stepped onto the path to hell of his own free will. As a robot, Brynner had no free will to make a choice. Even his "evil" actions are the result of human error, not his own.

In addition to the philosophic difference, the truth is that the Westworld of the HBO series is darker than the one we saw in the 70s. Even the "white-hat" guests are encouraged to indulge vices. None of them are expected to be saints, and the park is designed to offer darker and darker "narratives" to accomodate their slide from virtue. Thus, the evil espoused by Harris needs to be crueler, more heartless, than the ordinary sinners who pay to live out dark fantasies for a few days.

Finally, Harris is tall and lean, sharp-cut, a steel knife of a figure. He is physically more menacing than Brynner could be in this role. Coupled with the human evil he represents, the dire threat offered by the gunman in black is as obvious and bone-chilling as a rattler's warning. 

Or perhaps more so, in this playground where rattlenakes are mere scenery, and "only man is vile."

Liner Notes:

1. Listening to the the player-piano music in Episode 1, I was surprised to hear the classic "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden (one of my favorite pieces of music), followed by the Stone's "Paint It Black." By Episode 2, I was listening intently during all the saloon scenes, and was rewarded with Radiohead's "No Surprises." 
2. It was nice to see actor Jimmi Simpson in Episode 2, playing the nebbish part he has done so well in multiple TV shows before this. He seems more balanced in it than the similar role played by Richard Benjamin in the MGM movie version.
3. Keep an eye on the young boy character who has shown up several times now. Is he a human guest? Or a memory of Anthony Hopkin's character, made flesh?

Big Fun in Little China

Review: Big Trouble in Little China with Kurt Russell, Kim Catrall, James Hong

Traditional wuxia, films in a martial arts fantasy genre that originated in Hong Kong, feature melodramatic acting and slapstick humor, along with silly story lines interspersed with elaborate fight scenes in which the combatants can literally fly, or pause midair in slo-mo. John Carpenter took these crucial elements of Chinese film-style, coupled them with a goofy American hero (Kurt Russell), an abrasive and clumsy activist lawyer (Kim Catrall), staged it in San Francisco's Chinatown, and had an American hit on his hands.

Is this gonna get ugly? I hope not cause I thought what we were, racial differences notwithstandin', was all friends here, all Californians.

The interesting thing is, this movie came out in 1986, 14 years before the critical cross-over success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and 13 years before the state-of-the-art special-effects blockbuster, The Matrix.

Little China has all the necessary components for wuxia: magicians and ghosts, monsters and flying sword fights, gods of storm and lightning, virtuous maidens and their heroic lovers, and wise old-men teachers masquerading as peasants. Chinatown provides a colorful venue for these adventures, with white-slavery rings, gambling, tongs and tea parlors as extra spice.

Even at its age, the movie is hardly dated, mostly because it is actually set in the romantic past. The era that informs Little China is the 40s, a time when the "yellow peril" could be discussed without any snickering or PC outrage. (In fact, a radio talk show in the background over the opening credits features a caller arguing that "Chinese immigration" imperils the American worker.) This, despite Russell's Jack Burton character, who seems hardly to notice the ethnic of his gambling buddy Wang Chi.

While hardly as athletic as a Jackie Chan movie, or as beautifully scripted as Jet Li's Hero, Little China is one of the few movies of its kind that I can watch over and over again. This is an underrated classic—even in its adopted genre—which continues to succeed because, despite the wild action and fantastical plot, the main characters are likeable and we can identify with them.

You just listen to the ol' Pork Chop Express an' take his advice on a dark and stormy night when some wild-eyed eight-foot tall maniac grabs your neck an' taps the back of your favorite head up against a barroom wall. An' when he looks you straight in the eyes and asks you have you paid your dues? Well you just stare that big sucker right back in the eyes and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this. "Have you paid your dues Jack?" "Yessir, I have, the check's in the mail."

Some Like It Drag

What is the appeal of a guy in a dress? Comic and pathetic by turns, movie transvestites (as opposed to your everyday TV) possess some magic that can turn a drab story around, or sink a poorly-conceived flick into B-movie oblivion. Donning a dress can gain an actor kudos, or haunt his life ever after with innuendo and rumor.

Director Ed Wood (Glen or Glenda, Plan Nine from Outer Space) was a real TV in the most classic sense. To borrow the campy tagline from his transvestite mystery Glen or Glenda, Wood “...Loved Women So Much, He Dared To Dress Like One!” Johnny Depp was able to portray the disturbed director, complete with cashmere cardigans, without significant harm to his acting career. (Although Depp seems Teflon-coated in this regard, having also survived the raised eyebrows from wearing beaucoup mascara in several outings of the  Pirates of the Caribbean.)

The thoroughly-camp Rocky Horror Picture Show makes a dark hero out of the gender-confused alien Doctor played by Tim Curry. Thousands of otherwise-straight men around the world have put on his gartered-stockings-and-bustier-corset costume, and sung—in public—his paean to muscle love. Some of them have even returned their costumes to the shop afterward.

In one of its darker themes, Rocky Horror first makes the TV an alien, then reveals the allure of transvestitism to even the squarest among us. Cross-dressing, we learn, is about “absolute pleasure.”

In a far more traditional men-in-dresses theme, it’s actually about disguise. For Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, going drag in Some Like It Hot, a girl’s band was the one place their pursuers would never look for them. Comically-gentile antics of guys in dresses are predicated on these men's simon-pure-straight sexuality; it isn’t funny unless Curtis's drag-disguise conflicts with his desire to woo Marilyn Monroe, or if Lemmon is not trying to stave off the advances of Joe E. Brown.

Dustin Hoffman? Or Jane Fonda?

In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman took the disguise theme in a different direction. It’s not gangsters he’s trying to escape, but his own reputation. Here, again, is the conflict with the outward face and the inner desires, as Hoffman’s Dorothy character melds both the would-be-lover of a woman (Jessica Lang) with the object of a man’s affection (Charles Durning).

Some movies showcase the abilities of their actors by having them play both masculine and feminine roles. Diedrich Bader is genially goofy as Jethro Bodine of The Beverly Hillbillies, but truly hilarious as his cousin, Jethrine. And without the exquisite gay drag of three of George Hamilton’s five roles in Zorro, the Gay Blade, that movie would have been fatally overwhelmed by the all-caps dialog of Brenda Vacarro and Ron Liebman.

Like Jethrine Bodine, sometimes the guy-in-a-dress role is meant to be all female. The classic case is Divine as the coarsely-obese mother in Hairspray (1988). (Divine also had a male cameo as the high-school principal.) In 2007's remake, the musical Hairspray gave us John Travolta in the role as a rotund, yet surprisingly nuanced and nimble, Edna Turnblad. Travolta got the role after it was offered to Robin Williams, who turned it down. Perhaps Williams thought that his three gay/transvestite roles in three years (1993, 1995 and 1996²) were enough.

Nathan Lane used his dress-up performance to poke some fun at the stereotypes of masculine and feminine in The Birdcage. Interestingly, Robin Williams’ gig as the “masculine” partner of this gay couple was equally powerful and ambiguously-gendered. Where La cage aux folles, the film’s French progenitor, was focused on the conflict between family values and gay partnerships, The Birdcage moved this debate to the battle between image (especially political image) and substance.

The best (and worst) drag-queen performances portray these men as what they are. To see what I mean, watch the amazing performances that give us the lonely but coping-with-life Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) and Chi-Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) in To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Then contrast them with the scuzzy, sleazy, conflicted, lost men¹ of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the movie that spawned To Wong Fu.

Hugo Weaving's outing as a desperately lonely drag queen didn't stall his career at all. After Priscilla, he was the scary-stern Mr. Smith of The Matrix, and the scary-stern half-elven Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. And I’ve commented before on the fact that neither Snipes nor Leguizamo appear to have been hurt by their roles in To Wong Fu, but that Patrick Swayze’s star seemed tarnished by his stint as Vida Boheme. This is despite the fact that, even in a dress, Swayze managed to get in some bare-knuckle fighting and rescue a woman—perhaps the problem is that, as in Pretty Woman, “she rescues him right back.”

Not elfin at all, Mr. Smith in drag: Hugo Weaving (R)

To Wong Fu gives us the beauty and fun of life in drag, but reveals its secret heart of alienation, and yearning for something that can never be. In a more-brutal way, Priscilla does the same thing, minus the glamour and a (somewhat) happy ending. 

And if one is Hollywood and trite, and the other Australian and bitter, these are the usual two faces of transvestitism in the movies.

Now, I know I’ve left some out. Y’all jump in here and tell me about them!

Liner Notes:

1. Terrence Stamp in a dress has to be seen to be believed.
2. Robin Williams has escaped entirely any stigma from three roles where he plays gays, and one—Mrs. Doubtfire—where he appears, not just in drag, but in frumpy drag. His greeting to the three drag queens in To Wong Fu is perfectly gay: “Oh, my God! I’m like a compass near north.”

Defence of Innocence

Review: Primal Fear with Gere, Norton

I ignored this movie for nearly two decades because of the trite hyperdrama of its title, but once I watched it, 1996’s Primal Fear made my “buy it on DVD” list.

Richard Gere is astounding in his role as a traumatized one-time prosecutor who has become a cynical defense attorney. He’s slick and naive by turns, in an utterly believable way. Gere’s a veteran, with a lot of experience in playing exactly this kind of likable cad—and yet newcomer Edward Norton blows him away with his performance as a shy altar boy, caught up in the political and judicial grindstone of a media-circus trial.

Norton’s Aaron Stempler is a stuttering, quiet nonentity until he is found unconscious at the scene of a brutal murder. The victim, beloved local celebrity Archbishop Richard Russman (played by Stanley Anderson, who also appears with Norton in Red Dragon), has been repeatedly stabbed and mutilated, with a cryptic message carved into his chest. Stempler’s bloody footprints lead police from his unconscious body directly to the crime scene, and his clothing is drenched with Russman’s blood.

Yet his attorney, Martin Vail (Gere), is ready to believe him when he says he doesn’t remember the crime, but that a third party was in the room the night Russman was murdered. Stempler’s painfully shy mannerisms, sweet appearance and general air of innocence contribute to Vail’s conclusion that this young man is being railroaded. And it doesn’t take long for supporting information to emerge.

For one thing, the Archbishop was directly responsible for a loss of millions of dollars to a development project in which District Attorney John Shaughnessy (John Mahoney) was heavily invested. The DA has assigned Vail’s ex-wife, Janet Venable (Laura Linney), to prosecute—perhaps believing that she, of all people, will be able to see through his razzle-dazzle—and there are hints of potential defense witnesses being sequestered or removed from the city.

Other altar boys, residents of a charity shelter, and Stempler’s girlfriend have vanished, all at the same time. Each person Vail considers as a possible source of information or testimony—or the mysterious third party who was present that night—seems to have disappeared. As Vail’s frustration builds, he lashes out at everyone. Reporters, assistants, and especially his icy-calm ex-wife opponent bear the brunt of his rage as Vail struggles to find a way out for his victim-client.

If the story seems to lag a bit whenever the action moves from the holding cell or courtroom, I believe this is due less to plot weakness than it is to the strength of Norton’s and Gere’s performances. Certainly, Linney’s “raging calm” would be considered a stellar performance without the overwhelming brilliance of the two men. Instead, her controlled tension serves to support their strength. Likewise, Frances McDormand uses an understated precision to portray the psychologist who examines Norton, revealing with carefully nuanced expression and body language her evolving assessment of this jailed altar boy.

Despite the riveting performances, though, one thing nagged at me throughout the film. Why Primal Fear? The title (which is appropriate once you’ve seen the film, if not before) does a great disservice to all involved. Perhaps it refers to the terror that the producers felt when they had to cast a relative unknown in such a pivotal role as Aaron Stempler. (Leonardo DiCaprio and Wil Wheaton both turned down the chance to play Aaron.)

Primal Fear is a crime-drama feast. Don’t make the mistake I did—ignore the lame title, this movie is miles better than its name.

Swaze Fights the New Cold War

Review: Icon (2005) with Patrick Swayze, Ben Cross, Peter Bergin

I was excited to see the re-outing last night of a TV-movie made in 2005, starring Patrick Swayze, and adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s excellent Icon. Okay, it would be broken up by commercials, but—Patrick Swayze! And Fred Forsyth!

After playing a drag queen in To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar in 1995, Wesley Snipes stepped into the ultra-macho Blade Daywalker character. (Then he stepped in a pile of problems with the IRS. But that's a different horror story.)

After To Wong Fu, John Leguizamo went right back to playing (or voicing) complex oddball characters in movies and on Broadway. Leguizamo's meat had always been those supporting parts.

But Patrick Swayze almost vanished for several years following his drag-queen turn. After so many sweet, sensitive—but essentially masculine—starring roles, the sweet sensitive Vida Boheme of To Wong Fu may have been just a bit too close to the edge.

Oh, he got cameos and supporting roles. Donnie Darko, for example, has a great Swayze moment or two. He appeared in a couple of films as a dance instructor. But I’d heard Swayze really wanted to play bad guys, and those roles didn’t seem to mesh with his Latin motion.

Then came Icon. To start with, the “icon” of the film and that of the book are totally different. The movie never really develops the icon idea, in fact. But Swayze gets to play Jason Monk, a somewhat-bad guy, a secret agent who abandoned his Russian wife and child in that country when he was “made” by really-bad guy Anotoly Grishin (Ben Cross of Chariots of Fire and Exorcist: The Beginning). The novel thoroughly explores the troubled past and poor decisions of Monk; the movie reduces them to the single sin of abandonment. We also don’t get to see the reasons behind the CIA double-cross that is central to the plot; it just happens.

The best bad guy in the film is a Russian Presidential candidate, vaguely post-Putin. Igor Komarov (excellently played by Patrick Bergin) runs a pharmaceutical firm, and has secret yearnings to commit genocide. They’re not secret enough, though. When his company is burgled and a vial of a nasty super-Ebola bug is taken, the game is on. Swayze is unable to track down the thief before the virus is released, but with the help of his daughter and a comely Russian KGB agent (sorry, that’s FBS now, I think), he manages to stop Komarov.

There are a couple of other wonderful casting choices. Jeff Fahey plays a slimy Russian campaign manager, using US-style spin-and-dodge to help his man Komarov win at any cost. And Joss Acklund, who usually plays a nasty fellow, or at least a genial boob, is the good-guy candidate General Nikolayev. Together with Swayze and Bergin, they keep the film from descending to a hopeless waste of air-time. Barely.

So my recommendation is, if you’ve read the book, don’t expect the film to match it. If you’re a Swayze fan, it’s definitely worth the time. If neither is true, skip the movie. Buy the book.

Liner Notes:

DrPat is a Swayze fan, in case that wasn't clear. I enjoyed him as the sensitive romantic, and dug all the bad guy roles of his later career—right up until his terminal outing in The Beast on TV, which I watched at the time it originally aired. Like nearly everyone, I was stunned when Patrick Swayze died in September 2009. 

The First Race Across America

Review: Horatio's Drive, documentary by Ken Burns

In late May 1903, Horatio Nelson Jackson, a doctor from Vermont eating in a restaurant in San Francisco with his new bride, overheard a statement made at a nearby table, to the effect that automobiles were a fad that would not last because they could not carry a man across the country. 

On a whim, Jackson laid down a $50 bet that he could drive to New York City in 3 months or less. He bought a "slightly used" Harry Winton car, hired a bicycle racer/mechanic named Sewall Crocker to come with him, and three days later, they left San Francisco on the trip. 

Jackson's wife "gave him his independence" to do this, but declined the chance to accompany him. She returned to Vermont to await his arrival and keep the rest of his family posted on his progress. 

In addition to the bet, Jackson would have competition. Unknown to him, the Packard and Oldsmobile companies had well-planned manufacturer-funded and -supplied expeditions, one starting a few weeks later from San Francisco, the other from Pasadena. These entries in the race would find advance supplies along their routes, including guaranteed petrol caches. Jackson, on the other hand, turned down the offer from the Harry Winton factory to sponsor him (made only when he had reached the Mississippi), rather than lose the independence of making his own way.

"Nel" Jackson's commentary (voiced by Tom Hanks) comes from the many letters and postcards he wrote to his wife. Reactions to the arrival of an automobile crossing the country are garnered from newspaper clips, memoirs, and the PR efforts of the other two competitors. 

The documentary by Ken Burns detailing this first trans-continental road trip is poetic and thrilling. Using clips supplied from archives, plus a realistic "Horatio Cam" view crafted by Alan Moore, the film gives us a real sense of what it might have been like to travel any distance by automobile at a time when the roads were little more than cart tracks and game trails, and there were no roadside inns, restaurants or filling stations. 

The final thrilling note comes almost as an afterword. All three cars drive the entire way in 1903; the Oldsmobile even goes the extra distance to dip its front wheels in the Atlantic (touting its trip as the "only true sea-to-sea transit of the United States"). But that same year, two bicycle mechanics in South Dakota were making history with another kind of vehicle, as Teddy Roosevelt sent the first telegraph "message sent 'round the world". 

And in October 1903, two things happened. Harry Winton drove a car from his factory to set the world record speed of 68 mph. And Horatio Nelson Jackson, behind the wheel of the same car he had driven across the country that year, was pulled over to receive a speeding ticket—for driving faster than 6 mph. 

Sweet or Bitter Desires

Review: Blood & Chocolate, with Hugh Dancy and Agnes Bruckner

The werewolf, fighting a dual nature, troubled by the demands of both human hungers and pack loyalties, is a theme that has been played by many, notably Herman Hesse in Steppenwolf. The novel Blood & Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause, on which the film's screenplay is based, was even titled in reference to a Steppenwolf quote: "I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, one as hateful as the other."

The teen loup-garou of Klause's novel adds puberty and normal teenage angst to her troubles. The novel has Vivian Gandillon living in a suburb in Maryland when her father dies, leaving the pack leaderless. 

In the movie, set in Bucharest, Bruckner's Vivian is an American ex-pat whose parents were killed by a human mob in the States. We get some clues that Vivian blames herself for their deaths. Living now with her aunt in Romania, she is being groomed as mate to Gabriel (played by Oliver Martinez), the much-older pack leader. who trades in each wife for a new one on a 5-year cycle. (This behavior, so un-wolf-like, is never explained. It appears to serve mainly to show that Gabriel is more of an animal than a "civilized man.")

In both stories, additional conflict is supplied by the advent of Aidan, a non-werewolf ("meat") boy near Vivian's age, whom she meets and falls in love with. In both, a rogue loup-garou who has given in to his wolf nature commits a murder that threatens to expose the pack.

Vivian's feelings of guilt about the death of her parents, her confusion about her feelings for Aidan, and her determination not to kill in the persona of the wolf, are presented in such a light-handed way that the viewer might miss the deeper conflict going on here. It is the same as Hesse's Steppenwolf fought: the desire not to allow the animal in our natures to rule the human spirit.

Liner Notes:

• There are apparently many wolf images to be seen in Bucharest. The film includes a number of them; some in the foreground, and some as fleeting glimpses. 
• Multiple members of the cast and crew were named Vlad or Radu; single instances of Zoltan, Bogdan, Silviu, and Razvan also scrolled past in the end credits. Obviously, the location shots in the city of Bucharest were not the only thing giving local "flavor" to the film.

In the End, It Killed Him

Review: The Man With Three Wives, with Beau Bridges and Pam Dawber

Last night I got sucked into a 1993 made-for-TV movie, The Man With Three Wives. I cannot explain why this sleaze even caught my eye sufficiently to cause me to turn it on—perhaps it was the concept that it was based on a true story. 

Maybe it was just the opportunity to see Pam Dawber again.

Whatever my initial motivation, I was thoroughly hooked by the first commercial break. Beau Bridges, who played Dr. Norman Grayson, the polygamist of the title, presented a complex character with confused motives. Genuinely caring, a truly good doctor, Grayson suffers because he really does love all three women.

Yet he lies to them constantly, by omission and by action, covertly and overtly deceiving everyone for whom he supposedly cares. He complains of stress in his life; his solution is to marry a third woman. He even juggles two wives who live in the same community, managing to keep them separate. Wife #1 (Lillian, played by Kathleen Lloyd, a veteran TV-movie actress) is the mother of Grayson’s three adult children. Wife #2 (Katy, played by Joanna Kerns, familiar to wide-screen audiences from Girl, Interrupted) owns her own business; Katy’s father is another doctor at Grayson’s hospital, and his good friend.

The unbelievable cojones required to keep up this balancing act can be encapsulated in one scene. About four years into their marriage, Katy arrives at the hospital and asks Grayson to take her to lunch at the mall. She knows Lillian (whom she believes to be her husband’s ex-wife) is participating in a bicycle safety event there. Grayson not only consents to introduce them to each other (by first name only, needless to say), but stands there with a gentle smile on his face as the women exchange guarded greetings—he even invites Wife #1 to lunch with him and Wife #2! (Fortunately for Grayson’s adrenals, Lillian cannot leave the booth she’s tending.)

Bridges’ Grayson never breaks a sweat in public—but at night, as he weaves his pattern of false emergencies and late hours to sleep with both local wives for a few hours each night, the years of bigamy begin to take their toll. Increasingly, he wakes in a cold funk, and needs to gobble antacids to return to sleep. When Grayson helps Robin (Pam Dawber) through her divorce, this woman with whom he has a long history of friendship becomes first a refuge from his stress, then a new source of it when he marries her, as well.

The third marriage escalates his problems, as Grayson begins to lose some control in this incredible juggling act. He “forgets” to make several mortgage payments on the house he is buying with Katy, in order to pay the income taxes for his household with Lillian. Checks are being returned NSF from all the accounts he’s opened for the three homes. His marriage to Robin entails travel every other weekend, and when he rejects Robin’s offer to come visit him at the hospital, saying he “can’t afford to put her up in a motel” there (which is probably true on several levels), her suspicions are aroused.

Robin, unlike either of Grayson’s long-term wives, is sufficiently worried to hire a private detective. What she learns sends her storming into Grayson’s office with a full annulment, and a restraining order to keep him away from her daughter. She does, however, consent not to tell anyone else about her “husband’s” infamy.

Throughout the movie, I was engrossed by the narrow escapes and the effrontery of this man, whose three wives could say, even after his bigamy was revealed, “But I still love him!” I knew his artificial world would eventually come crashing down. The grace of this movie (which, given the topic, could easily have been as sleazy as its title implies) is that we want Norman Grayson to succeed, even while we know that he deserves, and is ultimately doomed, to fail.

Liner Notes:

• This review was first published in 2005 in my blog Paper Frigate. It also appeared in Blogcritics and was republished in print in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
• The real-life polygamist, Dr. Norman Lewiston, lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay area. Wife #3, Robyn Phelps, met him when she worked at the same hospital, but married him after she had moved to San Diego.