So a family emergency and a couple of long drives ended up limiting my late-March movie viewing, but here are some quick takes on the three films I did watch in the last couple of weeks…
Baby Face (1933) – Another day, another Barbara Stanwyck flick. Stanwyck plays Lily, a young woman who spends her nights serving beers and getting groped by factory workers in her sleazy father’s low-rent speakeasy. She also seems to engage in a certain amount of prostitution under her dad’s supervision. Baby Face is surprisingly bold for a flick from 1933, to the point of showing Lily’s father taking a bribe from a local bigshot in exchange for letting him rape his daughter. When Lily manages to fight off the bigshot, her father loses his temper and tosses her out of the apartment. She ends up taking the advice of the one male friend she has, an older man who regales her with Nietzsche’s philosophy and exhorts her to “Use men! Use them to get what you want!” Lily and her African-American friend (!) move to New York City, where she quickly starts sleeping her way to the top of the corporate ladder. I mean that quite literally. Stanwyck seduces the hiring assistant at a big company, then works her way through men on every floor of the building until she reaches the penthouse. She tosses aside lovers as soon as someone with more power comes along, without a hint of remorse or feeling for the guys she’s seducing and abandoning. The bald-faced way that the film shows Stanwyck’s sex-fueled rise is pretty shocking and surprisingly non-judgmental for a 1933 movie. I was fully expecting to see Stanwyck’s character crash and burn at the end, with some kind of moralistic finale that shows how awful her actions have been. Without giving away the ending, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with how the whole thing turns out for Stanwyck’s sexy, soulless femme fatale. Baby Face is a pretty decent flick and a great vehicle for the young Stanwyck to showcase her full range of skills, from seduction to pathos.
Timeline (2003) – Have you ever wondered what The Fast & the Furious‘ Brian O’Conner would do if sent back to medieval France? No? Well, that’s a shame, because Timeline is here to answer just that question! OK, so there are some other questions asked, as well. Such as: What accent is Gerard Butler using? Why is Billy Connolly in this movie? How can time travelers introduce new military technology to one side of a war without affecting the general timeline of history at all? As Timeline opens, we learn that some nefarious corporation has been working on teleportation technology and accidentally opened a wormhole to a specific area in 1357 France. Unable to resist a chance to see ancient history for himself, an archeology professor (Connolly) went back in time, only to find himself trapped in the past. Now it’s up to his young students and their military escorts to go back in time themselves and save the professor! Paul Walker and Gerard Butler star as the professor’s son and star pupil, and they turn in some pretty half-assed performances. As I mentioned above, Walker delivers the exact same performance as in the Furious flicks, bringing his laid-back SoCal drawl and grinning, unearned confidence to every scene. This is the kind of movie where all of the medieval characters comment on one guy’s French accent, but no one notices Walker’s totally incongruous San Pedro idioms. Speaking of that French accent, Timeline also makes a big deal about one character being essential to the mission, since he’s the only one who speaks French. But once the group arrives in 1357, it turns out everyone speaks English anyway! I mean, I understand that you’re not going to make a Hollywood thriller in which everyone speaks medieval French, but then why even make an issue of it? The whole thing is kind of dumb, with plot “twists” that you can literally see coming from the moment certain characters are introduced. If you like time travel flicks and indifferently-staged medieval battle scenes, Timeline is an OK way to kill a couple of hours.
Hardcore Henry (2016) – Having seen previews of this “first-person action movie,” I wasn’t exactly excited about Hardcore Henry. It felt like it was probably a one-gimmick flick that would wear out its welcome pretty fast. Based on a glowing recommendation from Popwell’s Dash Rabbit, though, I decided to give it a try. I’m so glad I did! Hardcore Henry is a riveting, unique acheivement in action filmmaking. It uses its first-person viewpoint to create a memorable series of wild action set-pieces, and even manages to weave a crazy backstory about cyborgs and memory manipulation into the mix. Basically, the film is a first-person shooter video game come to vivid life, as the camera shows all of the action from the protagonist’s point of view. What could come across as a deperate gimmick instead becomes a way to revisit classic action tropes from another angle. Every action film fan has seen car chases with characters leaping from one vehicle to another, but seeing this done from the stuntman’s point of view makes for a very different experience. Ditto for the gunfights, foot chases, and other mayhem on display here. There’s nothing wildly original going on, but the way that Hardcore Henry depicts the action gives the whole thing an eye-opening new spin. Writer/director Ilya Naishuller shows some pretty heavy Neveldine/Taylor influences throughout, using some of the first-person/video game tricks the duo used in the Crank films and pushing them to their baroque extremes. There’s also a brief but bizarre musical interlude that plays like an homage to Michael C. Hall’s insane take on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” from Gamer. If they can make it through the stomach-churning slow-motion violence of the opening credits (I almost bailed), action film fans are sure to find plenty to love about the high-pitched craziness of Hardcore Henry.
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