The Martian (2015) – I wasn’t expecting to like The Martian as much as I did. Big-budget Hollywood sci-fi typically doesn’t do it for me, as these flicks tend to be test-marketed and audience-reactioned to death. I’ll take a hard pass on George Clooney and Sandra Bullock bickering in zero gravity, no matter how great the CGI is. My son caught the start of The Martian in science class and wanted to see how it ended, though. Thus, I was treated to a pretty decent flick that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen! Matt Damon plays an astronaut who gets accidentally stranded on Mars at the conclusion of a manned exploration mission. The rest of the flick basically just follows his attempts to survive long enough for some kind of rescue mission to be formulated. He’s constantly engaged in a kind of two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of survival, with each new success tempered by a scary new obstacle. What I loved the most about the film is its celebration of science and intelligence – especially in light of our nation’s current trend toward blinkered ignorance. Damon actually says at one point that he’s going to “science the shit out of” his predicament. He’s shown to be a thoughtful, very accomplished scientist, not by just having another character point at him and say “gosh, he’s smart,” but by showing him putting his skills and know-how into action. And because we’ve been watching and listening as he explains his latest experiment or plan, the audience becomes really invested in his success. When the inevitable monkey wrenches get thrown into the mix, we feel the loss and frustration right along with Damon’s character. Because of its A-list, big-ticket nature, I could certainly see things coming that I might not have otherwise. I mean, when Jessica Chastain shows up for a couple quick early scenes and then disappears, you kind of know that she’s going to show up again. She’s Jessica Chastain, after all, and the producers aren’t paying her top dollar to make a cameo appearance. Overall, though, The Martian delivers more than its fair share of unexpected twists and tense thrills. It’s a great pick for sci-fi fans looking for a bit more than space opera shoot-em-ups.
Ride Lonesome (1959) – During the 1950s, director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott worked together on a string of low-budget westerns that have become favorites of genre fans. Boetticher was a true auteur, delivering a series of well-crafted flicks in which Scott’s aloof, taciturn characters do their best to adhere to a dying code of masculinity. Ride Lonesome is one of their later collaborations, and it’s a good one. Scott stars as a former sheriff who is tasked with finding a fugitive killer and bringing him back to Santa Cruz to be hanged. Scott ends up nabbing the murderer, as well as hooking up with a wronged widow and a pair of would-be bounty hunters played by future Cartwright brother Pernell Roberts and a young, rail-thin James Coburn. As the quintet wend their way to Santa Cruz, they are pursued by the murderer’s brother, who’s portrayed by a pre-fame Lee Van Cleef. The Boetticher-Scott flicks are considered by many to be forerunners of the 1960s Italian westerns, and it’s easy to view Ride Lonesome in this context. The film very much anticipates the spaghetti westerns in its low-budget sensibility and its use of unique angles and camera placements. It’s also very much of a piece with those flicks because at its heart, Ride Lonesome is just about a bounty hunter out for vengeance. Scott’s character, like many an Italian anti-hero to come, has no interest in justice or helping spread civilization or law and order. He simply wants revenge for something that Van Cleef’s character did in the distant past. The film also anticipates the spaghetti western in its use of crumbling ruins and abandoned farmhouses as its sets, with these deteriorating structures serving as a metaphor for the end of the romantic American West. Scott is his usual strong, silent self, turning in another of his rigid, tight-lipped performances. In one of my favorite bits, someone tells Scott, “You don’t seem like the kind of man who would hunt a man for money.” Scott’s only response? “I am.” This is very much a de-romanticized vision of the West, in ways that American studios didn’t really begin to embrace for another decade or so. It would take the success of Sergio Leone’s Dollars films to make this kind of Old West nihilism palatable on a large scale. Budd Boetticher’s films not only anticipated these changing attitudes, they helped contribute to the visual and narrative vocabulary of the entire European western milieu.
Parker (2013) – I’m a big fan of Richard Stark’s hard-boiled Parker novels. For me, they’re the ultimate crime stories, no-nonsense tales of a professional criminal with an all-business approach. Nothing gets in the way of his jobs – he never allows himself to connect with the people he works with, and emotion never clouds his nefarious work. The novels describe Parker’s meticulously planned robberies and heists in loving detail, as he methodically puts together the pieces he needs to succeed. Hollywood has tried to bring Parker to the big screen a few times – the novel The Hunter has been filmed as Point Blank in 1967 (with Lee Marvin) and again as Payback in 1999 (with Mel Gibson). This 2013 attempt puts action star Jason Statham in the title role, working from a script adapted from the 2000 Parker novel Flashfire. Statham is fine in the role, delivering a convincingly restrained and glowering performance. The problems with this flick stem from the script. Instead of simply adapting Stark’s well-crafted heist story from the novel, the screenwriters felt the need to “Hollywood-ize” it. Parker can’t just be a world-weary loner who’s out for vengeance. No, he’s got to have a long-time girlfriend patiently waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in and help out whenever he needs a wound stitched. He’s also got to have a gruff mentor played by Nick Nolte who guides him from job to job. All of the tacked-on characters and scenes detract from the main story, which finds Parker in Palm Beach, Florida, trying to track down a gang of jewel thieves who double-crossed him. They’ve rented a house in the area and are planning an elaborate heist. Parker enlists the services of a local real estate agent (Jennifer Lopez) to help him navigate the local waters and. . . well, it’s not clear what she’s doing to help him exactly. In the book, the realtor figures out that Parker is up to something and forces herself in on the action. She becomes his partner in crime and is very much integral to the action. Here, the character has been rewritten as a standard do-nothing female sidekick. She pops up here and there, is forced to strip to her underwear for no good reason, tries to seduce Parker, needlessly puts herself in harm’s way, then is saved by Parker’s quick fists. The whole thing is insulting to women in general and Lopez in particular, who really throws herself into this nothing role. She digs into the part, delivering a believable and winning performance that gives depth and dimension to a character that has none on the page. Lopez seems to think that she’s in a real movie, not just trading lines with Statham as he tries and fails to maintain a Texas accent. I respect the care and craft she put into her work, but it’s in the service of a pretty mediocre flick. The ingenious mechanics of the heists work well, since they’re taken straight from the book. Everything else that the screenwriters tacked on is kind of an unnecessary mess. What a shame. The Parker novels could be the basis for an incredible series of crime films (or a great streaming series), but Hollywood can’t seem to figure out how to do it properly. In the meantime, we’re stuck with stuff like this – b-grade heist flicks that really don’t do the character justice.
Popwell’s Movie Reviews: The Complete List
Another fine piece, but I’m surprised you dismissed “Point Blank” without further comment. That film is essential viewing. It not only provided the visual blueprint for making film noirs in color instead of black and white, it showed Hollywood how the hard-boiled sensibility of those ‘40s and ‘50s noirs could be transplanted into the new America of hippie counterculture without missing a beat. And it’s one of Lee Marvin’s greatest roles!
Heh. Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I find Point Blank to be utterly intolerable. It takes a simple, straightforward story and lards it up with all of the crap ‘hip’ imagery and quick-cutting, pseudo-artsy BS that I hate about 60s films. I got about 10 minutes into it before I felt like throwing my shoe through the screen. Stuck it out until the end, though, largely because the flick has such a good reputation. I find the whole thing to be an irredeemable mess that absolutely misses the spirit and point of the novel. Payback uses the same source material and is 50 times better.