The Last Candle

I’ve not been churning through the Netflix rentals as much as I’d hoped: Three weeks, and I’ve only rented four movies. Still, that’s four chapters of entertainment waiting for the Chow Yun-Fat Meter treatment.

Since I watched (and enjoyed) Casablanca in a college film class several years ago, I’ve been looking to watch The Big Sleep, Bogart’s second most popular film after the aforementioned classic World War II story. Making this rental the first to kick-off the Netflix subscription seemed appropriate enough. <p/> And happily The Big Sleep turned out to be a pretty good movie. It almost goes without saying that the acting was excellent: Bogart is the smoothest and most brilliantly low-key cool actor I’ve ever seen, by a long shot. The script was snappy enough, and the atmosphere was nice and thick to lend credibility to the private eye plot. <p/> About that plot…it wasn’t so great. The film overall lacked a focus and almost seemed to change story scene-to-scene as the events unfolded. While things moved well per scene, having little idea what’s happening or where the film is even heading after several scenes allows little potential for intensity or impact that a film with a tighter telling might have had. <p/> In spite of the plot shortcomings, The Big Sleep was still overall a very good film — cool and sharp, like viewing a vibrant painting through thick curls of smoke. <p/> Given the complexity and breadth of the Clancy novel, I was wondering how the book would be translated onto film. I didn’t expect the writers and directors to be able to capture the scope and detail of the original work, but since The Hunt For The Red October’s flick turned out pretty well, I had fair hopes for the movie — even if I thought the book was pretty damn slow for the most part. <p/> Patriot Games not only failed to capture the detail of the book — the expected part — it failed to make the reconfigured telling of Clancy’s work compelling or very interesting at all. <p/> Chalk this failure up to lack of character development. Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan is the best of the lot, but he acts too much like…well, Harrison Ford, with the chin out and the Han Solo angry-face/happy-face thing going on. The wife and kid are pretty much completely ignorable due to not having any interesting or involving facets at all (the kid is excusable for the common reasons: she’s a kid actor); Sam Jack’s Robert is a far cry from the warm, brusk comrade of the novel; and enemy Sean is thrown so quickly into the ring of revenge that it’s difficult to see what exactly he’s doing there. <p/> Even the important parts (read: action or real plot movement sequences) didn’t make it onto the script in decent form. In the book, the opening bombing sequence occurs suddenly, and the reader is thrust from a walk in the park to the scene of a violent terrorist crime within a few words; in the movie, the terrorists are shown before the event taking part in the operation, losing much of the dramatic effect caused by the sudden outburst in the book. Later on, the highway scene was an awful spectacle, of course, but still somehow ineffectual considering the consequences. <p/> And the climax? I’m pretty sure I saw that scene in an Indiana Jones film before. It was better then. <p/> I’ll give it to you straight, Jimmy: I thought Cinderella Man was okay. I liked it about the same as the epic but over-stuffed Gladiator, but not as much as the glorious Master and Commander. And them’s the news. <p/> The movie was composed and presented very well, no doubt due in part to Ron Howard at the helm. Still, the film lacked impact (no pun intended). The only scenes I felt fairly excited or moved by in the movie were the boxing matches — especially the finale, a more nerve-racking scene than anything I’ve seen recently — with everything else seeming slick and polished but still missing an emotive connection. Russell Crowe, who I usually think as a pretty good actor, played an acceptable performance, but seemed to pull a Brad Pitt and display the same face and monotone attitude for the duration. Bo-ring. <p/> And now, more about that ending. <p/> (Minor spoilers ahead — nothing major, but it will ruin some of the surprise.) <p/> The lead-up tension towards the end of the film is that Braddock is entering the bout for the heavyweight championship against a guy who’s said to have “murdered two opponents” in his career. Baer, the carnivorous opponent, is made out prior to the fight to be someone the audience wants to lose: He’s a prententious jerk, covered in money during the Depression while the rest of the squalid masses writhe in poverty, a bawdy playboy, and then there’s the killing a couple of people without mercy or remorse. How can the viewer not want to cheer, Go, Braddock! Knock ‘im to the ground! <p/> Baer shows up about halfway into the film, but there’s something about his anatagonist position that seems forced and false from the moment you see his half-sneer half-smile features. He just barely fits in as a guy who really seems bad. Rich? Well, okay, we’re in the middle of the Depression, but so what? How about being a prententious jerk? Not cool, but smacking around a sassy fellow doesn’t make for a very lofty climax. <p/> Killing other boxers without remorse or mercy? Yep: That ranks as pretty evil and makes for a good target for Braddock’s ole’ one-two, to the great satisfaction of the audience. That’s what Cinderella Man makes Baer out to be for the most part — when Braddock steps into the ring for the heavyweight belt, he’s risking getting his brain pounded out of his skull. <p/> Using Wikipedia and other sources, I learned that Baer did indeed mortally wound a man during one fight and hurt another boxer so badly that the boxer died in a subsequent match. Notwithstanding, there is no mention of him attempting to commit the injuries, at least as far as boxing is concerned, and certainly far less than the madman killer than Cinderella Man makes Max Baer out to be. As far as I can tell, Baer’s intentional demonization in Cinderalla Man is entirely to manufacture an anxious climax. That’s cheap, explotative writing — a low blow by the film’s writers and directors, indeed. <p/> Still watching it, but it’s as good so far as everyone’s been saying an’ a little bit better. <p/> I didn’t like the original GITS film at all because of the strenuous, completely overbearing philosophizing, but Stand Alone Complex meshes the mind-machine themes and meanderings much more fluidly and subtlely than the original film’s head-pounding narration. (I haven’t seen the second film, Innoncence).

I’d easily give the series four stars on what I’ve seen so far, but since that’d be only two episodes out of an entire 26-episode series, final judgement will be allayed for a while.