Review of the Wild Bunch

So, it occurs to me that I forgot to write a review for #80 on AFI's list, The Wild Bunch. I forgot to write the review because the movie sucked. Really sucked.



If I was to say that The Wild Bunch is violent, you'd probably say, "What? A violent Sam Peckinpah movie? Get outta town," in a really sarcastic tone. But no, really, it's violent. I wish I could say the violence was shocking in an artistic way, but it's really not. For one thing, they just didn't understand how to make fake blood in the 70's. It looks awful and subtracts from the visceral power that the violence was intended to inspire.

And yes, the violence was intended as artistic. Sam Peckinpah wanted to shock audiences by presenting images that invoked the Vietnam war, which still broadcast awful things into the homes of Americans every night. It's too bad that, aside from the violence being silly instead of artistic, the plot is also stupid. It basically involves several groups of people trying to shoot each other, successfully and in large numbers.

Rarely in movie history have so many unlikeable characters been collected onscreen. There is seriously nobody for whom to root. Pike Bishop, the film's "protagonist" is the leader of a gang of outlaws in the early 20th Century. He is a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. His sidekick is Dutch, a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. They meet this Mexican warlord, a cold-blooded asshole who cares little for anything but money. Feel free to repeat this process to gain an accurate discription of every character in the movie. The one exception is an outlaw named Angel who, while being a CBAwCLfABM, has mild concerns about the lawlessness of the Mexican Revolution and its effect on his hometown. As such, he is the moral pinnacle of this film's characters, but it's also worth noting that he murders his ex-girlfriend in a jealous rage during the course of the show.

In short, don't waste your time. Excessive violence may have been a cinematic novelty in the 70's, but it's been done many times more successfully and artistically since.

500 dead Mexicans out of 5000

Review of Saving Private Ryan

The action in Saving Private Ryan begins with the amphibious invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944. It is a tremendous, terrifying spectacle that blows your mind, eyeballs and hundreds of GIs out of the water. It is powerful and horrifying. Machine-gun bullets whiz past your ears and kill men struggling in the water. Meat hits the camera. A boy with his guts splashed on the beach screams for his mother. In the end, the Americans exact revenge upon the Germans by murdering them after they've surrendered. It's real, it's bloody, it's all hell. After you watch this scene, you don't want to go to war.




And yet, Saving Private Ryan contains another scene which ruins the effect of the first. At the end of the movie, the Army Rangers sent to find Private Ryan and the Airborne soldiers link up and stage a last-ditch effort to keep the Germans from crossing the only intact bridge left on a river. This too is a powerful scene filled with blood and meaty chunks flying everywhere, but the effect is different. Here, the action makes any red-blooded man wish he could go back in time and kill some Germans.

Why does this happen? I can only assume it's because the later scene is filled with imagery that builds the romance of war. Guys fighting to the end despite all odds, the cinematic nature of the tension built as the advancing armour rumbles and shrieks like some great beast, Captain Miller falling mortally wounded, the return of the released German soldier, all of it was cinematic. Cinematic as opposed to real, like the first battle is. Add some images of fluttering American flags and you have a typical Hollywood-war-is-great-rah-rah-rah picture.



Was this effect intended? If it was intended, then this movie is pretty hypocritical, considering the effect which the first battle inspires in the audience. If I would, I'd like to call your attention to Band of Brothers, HBO's amazing WWII epic about the 101st Airborne Division, Easy Company (Private Ryan's unit, incidentally). As far as I'm concerned, Saving Private Ryan is merely a rehearsal for Band of Brothers. It's made by the same people (Spielberg, Tom Hanks, etc.) It's just better. Why? Because Band of Brothers has the feel of that first scene of Saving Private Ryan and never descends into flag waving and letting flow the Hollywood sap. It's real, and because it stays real, it's more effective. Normal men become heroes not because they gun down Nazis by the thousand, give speeches about freedom and come up with plans so crazy that they might just work. They are heroes because they lived through all war's bullshit so the rest of us didn't have to. When Band of Brothers is over, you want to travel back in time, not to kill Germans, but to share a beer with those paratroopers and thank them.

All that said, despite the hypocrisy, Saving Private Ryan is okay.

4 brothers killed out of 5

Review of The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is, according to the Internet Movie Database, the best movie of all time. It has stayed in that spot on the IMDb's list for most of the database's life, and I suspect it will be there for years to come. How odd that this movie was an unpopular choice with theatre-goers when it was first released.



I saw this film for the first time in 1994 at the long-gone Paradise Theatre in Saskatoon. In those days the Paradise stayed alive by showing double-features, and as I recall the first feature was Legends of the Fall. Let's say that after that particular monsterpiece, I was in barely a mood to enjoy yet another epic. But Shawshank won me over.

This was the movie that established Morgan Freeman as Hollywood's narrator of choice. After this, producers, being an unimaginative lot, could only think of him when they wanted somebody to talk about penguins or parapelegic boxers.

Also making a familiar appearance in this show is the Stephen King villain. In Shawshank, he appears as Warden Norton and Chief Hadley. The way you can identify a Stephen King villain is that he's a character with no redeeming personality traits whatsoever.

There was something about the dialogue in this show that struck me as being very similar to Titanic. It was a clunkiness that comes from uneducated characters waxing poetic when the screenwriter needs them, but saying really obvious, cheesy things at other moments.

You know, looking back on this review, it looks like I didn't like this show very much. But you know what? I did. I don't think it's the greatest movie ever made, but I still remember how the movie thrilled me when we discover what happened to Andy Dufresne the night he smuggled rope into his cell. While the dialogue may seem cheesy at times, there is enough poetry in it to keep me satisfied. Lastly, the ending is very satisfying.

4 rocks that have no business being in a Maine hayfield out of 5

Review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

This film marks the second entry on AFI's Top 100 American Movies list for screenwriter William Goldman, the other being All the President's Men. You also might remember him as the guy who did the screenplays for The Princess Bride, Misery, The Ghost and the Darkness, Marathon Man, and a host of other famous movies. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a great screenplay and it's a great movie too.

The dialogue is witty, Paul Newman and Robert Redford are insufferably charismatic, and the plot is offbeat and fun. Butch and Sundance are two-bit outlaws in a world that is changing. They know they are destined to die bloody and the only thing they can do is choose where. A Superposse is on their trail. Their flight takes them across the American southwest, to New York, and finally to Uruguay. It's a fun adventure that has aged well, except for a bizarre 1970s soundtrack.


I would like to take this opportunity for a digression about the 70's. I once read a screenwriting book by William Goldman entitled “Adventures in the Screen Trade”. Apparently, after BCatSC and AtPM (you figure out the acronyms), Goldman was Hollywood's darling-boy. I may just be engaging in ass-speak, but “Adventures in the Screen Trade” may very well have been the first in a series of recent books written to capitalize on suckers who want to write and sell a screenplay for a million dollars; you know, suckers like me.

Anyway, at the back of the book is included the original screenplay for BCatSC. I read the screenplay before I saw the movie. In some respects, the movie was exactly as I imagined. The obvious exception was the 70's music. In his book, Goldman says he likes the music of the movie, claiming that in many ways, the popular music of today is similar to popular music of the 1900s. I think he's wrong. Nothing, no decade in history was like the 70's. Today, when one views the famous scene in which Butch pedals Etta around on a bicycle, the musical addition of “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” inspires laughter. One expects a feather-hatted pimp in a purple suit to strut past them.

What the hell was up with the 70's, anyway? I may have been born in 1976, but my earliest memory is from 1980. I've asked a few members of the previous generation what was up with the 70's and I've received only knowing smiles and evasive answers. The impression I get is that the boomers are embarrassed of the 70's but loved it while it was happening.

From what I understand, the 70's were a time of unprecedented freedom of expression. It was the triumph of the 60's hippie movement. Many view the 70's as Hollywood's golden age. People could truly “do their own thing” and be respected for it. There was an explosion of weirdness in pop culture. Clothing was outrageous. Musicians explored minimalism and trance. Drugs were cool.

All of this shows in the movies of the time. You want to put modern music in a historical western? Cool, man. You want to end your crime thriller on an ambiguous note? Groovy. You want to go to Peru, spend the film's budget on drugs, waste two years editing it and then sober-up naked by the side of a desert highway holding a rock in your left hand? Here's a million dollars.

Freedom of expression is good, right? Ditto with artistic freedom? So why is it that the movies produced in the 70's have, for the most part, aged so poorly? Even Star Wars, a movie that defined the modern blockbuster, has distracting 70's hairstyles. What went wrong?

I blame the corporate mindset. I believe that, as a result of corporate meddling, North Americans have become more conservative since the days of bell bottoms. While it is true that sexism and racism have diminished significantly since those days, or at least gone underground, we seem to have less tolerance for art and expression which is “different”. When we view the 70's through a modern, conformist lens, of course it looks ridiculous.


In the 70's, the director and screenwriter had control of the picture. Nowadays, movies are conceptualized by producers and committees. Very few blockbusters start with a great screenplay. They start in a board room where a bunch of bigwigs decide which nostalgic toy or old television show they should make a movie about. The screenplay comes later, after Hasbro has been consulted as to which characters and action sets they will be manufacturing. Producers tell writers which action sequences they want featured. Dialogue and action are edited according to the standards set by the MPAA so that more kids can attend. It's a soulless way to make a movie and I believe it has limited our artistic tastes as a society.

So which is worse, the off-the-leash, overly-artistic and bizarre filmmaking 70's hits, or the cynical, greedy and formulaic blockbusters of today? Would you rather watch the interminable Dennis Hopper piece of garbage, The Last Movie, or the shitfest that is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? You decide.

The issue is too hard for me. It all comes back to William Goldman, who said regarding how movies are made and predictions of their financial success, “Nobody Knows Anything”. All I know is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is an amusing show.
4 ½ lawmen on your tail out of 5