Ntuple Indemnity

Yesterday I wrote a reasonably thorough dissection of a problematic revenge-themed action flick more verbose than said movie deserved. In stark contrast, words are not enough to praise the concluding five chapters of the already-bisected Kill Bill.

When a movie delivers a forties-style rear projection driving scene, a Samuel L. Jackson cameo and an Ennio Morricone cue from the Man With No Name Trilogy in the first five minutes, you know it’s going to be good. What you don’t know, at this point, is that Vol. 2 is in same ways a world away from Vol. 1. This is not to say that the two parts do not cohere; they do, and quite brilliantly so, once the chapter structure falls into place and the jigsaw that is the Bride stands complete. But Vol. 2 has nothing akin to the Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves, no visceral lessons on the many ways to dismember the human anatomy with an example a second; by my count, the body count remains in the single digits. For those of you keeping track, that’s a whole two digits less than Chapters 1 to 5, never mind how it’s stated at one point that there aren’t actually eighty-eight Crazy 88s.

Instead, the second half of Kill Bill is progressively more literary in its writing. This is not in any way a cakewalk like Uma Thurman’s Bride – whose name is finally revealed – fighting her way up to and killing her remaining victims, Budd (Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and Bill (finally revealed onscreen as David Carradine). After plunging headfirst into Japanese cinema in the O-Ren chapters of Vol. 1, now we have a return to America’s Wild West, and even an all-too-brief stop in China. As with the first half, Tarantino treats his material with precise visual acuity true to the visual flair of his influences. By the end of it all, Kill Bill is like a film studies course in a box, taking the techniques of the great filmmaking dynasties from around the world and putting them in one four-hour package; all it’s missing is a Bollywood musical number on the streets of Delhi.

I cannot say enough about the China sequence – Chapter 8, “The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei”. It stands as a towering tribute to classic Hong Kong cinema, with the same zoom-in, zoom-out photography and the beard-stroking of the legendary White-Eyebrowed Monk, Pai Mei – here portrayed by Gordon Liu, who also played Crazy 88s leader Johnny Mo in the first part. His scenes miss nothing. One of my recurring gripes about American films with brief forays in Hong Kong or China is the careless indifference to the gulf of separation between the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects, often resulting in inconsistent banter where you would see alternation between the two in the same conversation, banking on the fact that the audience won’t notice. Tarantino knows better; he even goes out of his way to mock this from the beginning – as an aside, with Pai Mei reminding this reviewer that he still understands Cantonese in the context of martial arts movies. In this chapter in particular, we see a display of something Tarantino executes remarkably well: a balanced juxtaposition of scenes goofy and serious.

Budd and Elle Driver are valuable additions to the Tarantino canon, and complement well the half of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad we have already seen. Budd, like Vernita Green, left his past behind to start anew, only he is anything but well-adjusted to being a Texas bar bouncer who lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. In seeing his wreck of a life, one observes an important parallel with what is revealed about the Bride’s own path in life. Elle, on the other hand, followed O-Ren’s path in that she never gave up being a Deadly Viper, and she is every bit the same assassin as in her brief appearance in Chapter 2: someone who wears an eyepatch, carries a cell phone, is never content with settling with second place, and resorts to the most vile techniques to express her dissatisfaction. In many ways, she is perhaps the most villainous character in the saga.

Kill Bill is one film, with its separation in two an afterthought of release strategy, and it never lets the audience forget that. Neither part stands alone, and the most impressive thing about the work is just how well the two parts fit together. The second part, however, distinguishes itself right off the bat; no longer is the Bride’s name concealed by a censoring beep, and no longer is Bill a faceless entity. Both of them drop their anonymity over the course of Vol. 2 and blossom to completion as two of the deepest original characters in recent cinema. What we see most of in this movie are revelations of motive through character interaction in a way that takes the chaos of the “roaring rampage of revenge” and sets it in order.

But when it comes to motive, most revenge films – even the good ones – stop right there. Kill Bill goes beyond. It dares to pose the question of why the perpetrator and counter-perpetrating victim resort to violence, and what it is in the nature of these individuals, or human nature itself, that drives them to commit their actions. The film realizes that as far as full-on action spectacles go, it already reached an asymptotal limit at the House of Blue Leaves in Chapter 5, and takes a different developmental path that favours depth over death. As it works its way towards a grand finale that may not be a spectacular boss battle, but is anything but anti-climactic, it shows a progressive level of maturity. To boot, this maturity never precludes it from being outright fun.

Does Kill Bill, Vol. 2 have flaws? On a trivial, “nobody’s perfect” level, arguably. An encounter with a Mexican pimp (Michael Parks) near the end comes a little late, and could be construed as an aberrant drop in the pace. With the amount of screen time devoted to Budd and Elle in this volume and O-Ren in the first, of the Deadly Vipers, Vernita Green is shafted in terms of development – though some balance is restored given that her brief appearance in Chapter 1 has a symbolic value that is made ever more evident in the second half, when we find out more about the Bride herself. As far as Budd goes, a lot of his fractured relationship with his brother Bill is left ambiguous, but the tensions there make enough sense to avoid being too unsatisfying. By itself, Vol. 2 seems as light on action as the first seemed light on Tarantino’s trademark soliloquies, but again, the two have to be regarded as a unified product.

These reservations can be put aside in the face of what Quentin Tarantino has achieved with his project, an attempt to create the ultimate cult film, and one that could be dubbed successful. Kill Bill, when considered in its entirety, is the quintessential movie for people who love movies.

I know, I know. I still haven’t written up my detailed analyses of how The Passion of the Christ can or cannot be approached objectively, the gall of bathing Omar Sharif in the two hours of mediocrity that is Hidalgo, and a valiant attempt at deciphering the villain-side plot of the otherwise entertaining Hellboy – but a man’s got to have priorities.

Step up to the witness stand, Jonathan Hensleigh: you have to answer for The Punisher.

Let’s get this out of the way, first of all: The Punisher is not the sudden and untimely demise of Marvel’s cinematic renaissance, nor is it the coming of the apocalypse with respect to comics on film, as a lot of websites out there would have you believe. It has some pretty bad moments, but by no means are they, say, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen bad. Unlike that particular “movie”, I will not be making fun of The Punisher in every subsequent weblog entry I write concerning comic book adaptations. It has some very serious problems, but is not without merit.

In the spirit of being critical, let us first examine the problems.

The biggest issue with The Punisher is tonal inconsistency. To frame it more comprehensibly, it is in all likelihood impossible for anyone to enjoy the entire movie, given how certain sections of the film are diametrically opposed in their ideological approach. The first act of the film, which sets up the revenge tragedy with the obligatory family-killing that happens in every piece of this sort, does everything in its power to avoid being a comic book. The destruction of Frank Castle (Thomas Jane), played straight-up, comprises some of the work’s most brutal and genuine moments of high tension. There is some good filmmaking going on for a few patches here, completely removed from the costumed heroics of the Marvel Universe.

Within minutes, we are suddenly an intederminate period of time ahead of ourselves, when Hensleigh and co-writer Michael France suddenly decided to fast-forward and reveal that like this here reviewer, yes indeed, they have read a Punisher comic – specifically, the Marvel Knights Punisher #1: Welcome Back, Frank by Garth Ennis, complete with Castle’s new neighbours Joan the Mouse (a very miscast Rebecca Romjin-Stamos), Spacker Dave (Ben Foster), and Mr. Bumpo (John Pinette). Without interruption, at this point the hitherto decidedly un-comical film places itself in the midst of three individuals straight from a two-dimensional arrangement of inked and coloured panels – which, incidentally, are the three most human characters in the whole 123-minute sittting. That should not be mistaken for saying much. The worst is when The Punisher exists in a void where it is unsure of whether it should be comic-like or not, and softens itself up to ostensibly be less offensive; for instance, there is no “death by Bumpo” in sight. That’s a minor adaptation complaint that this here author is unqualified to make, but the inconsistent waffling is more than fair game.

Then there’s the matter of story construction, which is, for lack of a better descriptor, illogical. Without spoiling too many of the details, here’s how it goes: Castle makes his intentions of vengeance known to chief villain Howard Saint (John Travolta) via standing around, throwing money out a window and mouthing off to the cops. This results in a death toll of roundabout two. Before you know it, Saint is in a rage about Castle ruining his life and immediately sends out heavy-hitters such as a guitarist who fails to be sufficiently ominous and a hulkster known as “The Russian” (Kevin Nash) – the latter straight from Ennis, minus the superhero obsession and the “suffocating” demise. Then after a lot of sneaking around and double-crossing not really characteristic of an angry guy with a white skull on his shirt out for blood, Castle starts gunning down trivial henchmen in nontrivial quantities.

There is a problem here. The proper order for a back-from-the-dead revenge story is: raise a lot of hell to make yourself known, then reap the hard-earned ire of the chief villain, then start fighting the minibosses and getting really nasty. It’s called a “linear progression”. Case studies: Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator fighting, nay, earning his way up to the bout with Tigris of Gaul. Mike Sullivan in Road to Perdition having a properly ominous miniboss meeting with Jude Law’s crooked photographer. The Bride slicing her way through the Crazy 88s at the House of Blue Leaves before taking on O-Ren Ishii – but let’s save the Kill Bill discussion for later, shall we.

So we are left with a weak and inconsequential villain whose closest associates dress like the Men in Black, but act like they have no idea they are in a comic book adaptation. You can’t have it both ways, folks. We have a story that suffers from what is quickly becoming something that can be termed “Marvel Syndrome” – a severe imbalance between the origin story and the pilot-episode story, and with an unclear dividing line between the two, to boot. By having no secrecy of identity in place, a lot of conventional assertions about the hero mystique fall flat.

But I think I’ve punished this movie enough; time to look at its better aspects. Thomas Jane is a well-cast Frank Castle. He plays the role with the composure of a broken man and the voice to match his ruthlessness. As was mentioned earlier, the first act of the movie has some terrifying moments; there is a very real sense of fear for the lives of doomed characters in the critical scenes where they meet their ends. One would think that of all the overdone revenge-flick conventions, the inciting incident that triggers everything – particularly when it involves the deaths of a wife and child – would be the most stale. Here, the opposite is true. While Joan, Dave and Bumpo seem very out of place in the context of much of the rest of the movie, the interaction between the three and their relationship to Castle are an enthralling dynamic to observe.

The end product: a wishy-washy adaptation of an already trashy comic that intermittently tries not to be so trashy, and instead ends up without a clear sense of identity. It is far from disastrous, but considering its position at the nexus of several subgenres that have been done far better, The Punisher has nothing new to add.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2, on the other hand, is a different story.

Those with loaded guns, and those who dig – dig a certain movie, that is.

Yes, I know. I’m behind on my movie reviews. I usually don’t move ahead until I’m all caught up but tonight’s cinematic experience cannot go that long without comment. Here’s my capsule attempt to catch up on what I’ve seen in theatres lately: Seabiscuit is very much worth your time; Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is not worth your time at all, but at least it’s a real movie, unlike its eyesore of a predecessor; Whale Rider was a refreshing break from multiplex fare; and American Splendor, albeit imperfect, is in many ways a shining example of what a comic book movie should be.

Good. Now let’s move on.

One of Edmonton’s redeeming qualities – in fact, one so redeeming that it can be said to be clearly to the city’s credit – is a little place called the Metro Cinema down at the Citadel. After missing the screenings earlier this weekend for various reasons, I finally straightened out my priorities and decided that no degree of homework or studying could justify missing a theatrical absorption of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo – better known as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I see little need to speak of the film itself. It is the best Western of all time, period. Some will point to The Searchers, the first two films in the Man With No Name trilogy or Unforgiven, and those claims are not without merit; but it was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly that served as the pinnacle of the genre, the one Western that became a historical epic. Certainly it lacks Unforgiven‘s emotional depth, but one should consider that Eastwood’s tribute to the genre that made him was directly spawned from his earlier work in the spaghettis. Leone’s film is the genre’s seminal exploration of immorality and greed, and if you haven’t seen it, drop what you are doing and see it right now. In the meantime, I will elaborate on tonight’s screening itself.

For the most part, the transfer was almost as pristine as the DVD, full of that high-contrast Technicolor look and all the vibrance it brings. The print quality was not always consistent, and degradation was noticeable in some shots, but aside from that minor complaint the experience was immersive. There really is nothing like seeing Clint Eastwood’s trademark Man With No Name trudge through the desert, a broken man on the edge of death, sunburnt and blistered to all hell, in the context of a big screen and an audience full of fellow film lovers such as myself who knew every shot in the piece, but never quite so intimately. The scene where Blondie and Tuco take on Angel Eyes’ goons amidst the shelling of an abandoned town is a magnified thrill. In a darkened theatre, the final shootout has an aura of suspense much greater than how it looks on a television set. As it cuts from eyes to holster to holster to eyes, it holds the audience captive. There are no distractions from Leone’s patient strokes, so effective in the face of the paradigm of rapidity that envelops today’s action flicks.

But there’s more.

When I went to the cinema tonight, what I didn’t know was that they were showing the three-hour Extended English Edition that I had only heard about in rumours about a reissued DVD.

As the first of the re-inserted scenes appeared – Tuco talking to a dead chicken before he rounds up the gang with which he takes on Blondie in the inn – the audience was in shock. There are some other transitional sequences, including a critical one that shows how Angel Eyes found out about the prison camp on his search for Bill Carson. This, and some of the other scenes, are present on the current DVD but only with the Italian dialogue track. There are others that are not – not just entire scenes, but little nuances here and there that were never in the original. The best one is a lengthier sequence that shows how the One-Armed Man identified Tuco and stalked him, as the latter readied a bath – a welcome prelude to the classic “Shoot, don’t talk” scene.

However, the Extended cut in its current state is a far cry from being a permanent and definitive replacement for the theatrical version to which we are all used, unlike similar extended incarnations of films such as Almost Famous, Blade Runner and The Fellowship of the Ring. The reason is that the re-inserted scenes lack a certain polish. It is most evident in the ADR work; simply put, a good number of the English dubs are poorly done and make the scenes look out of place with the rest of the movie.

The most intrusive of the lot is Tuco, who has most of the lines in the added sequences. Eli Wallach re-dubbed his lines himself, but his voice has aged considerably, and is significantly croakier than how Tuco sounds in the rest of the movie. A more rigorous sound editing process might have ironed it out, and I hope that is done before this cut sees a Region 1 DVD release. Eastwood fares a little better; he has few new lines, but only a handful of them have the gruffer sound of the Eastwood of today. As for the other voice actors who dubbed over the Italian, there are some major synchronization issues that were never present in the original film despite its having Italian extras dubbed over as well.

Despite the fact that some of the restored sequences do not fit into the movie as well as they could, watching this film in a cinema setting was something to be glad about. Unfortunately, today was its last day at the Metro; however, if it ever pops up anywhere accessible, do not miss it by any means.

Rowan Atkinson’s performance as the title character of Johnny English is among his better work. The film itself is not.

There is no doubting that the former Mr. Bean is a gentleman’s Jim Carrey, a master of physical comedy, and it shows as he plays the role of a bumbling, incompetent secret agent. Atkinson is the primary draw of the film and its solitary heart and soul; true to form, he delivers fine comedy that acts as a magnet for laughter. He plays the role with a total lack of debonair suavity, and proves himself the perfect anti-Bond. His delivery of verbal humour is similarly commendable, and hearkens back to its Blackadder zenith.

Unfortunately, that is where Johnny English starts and ends. It is in effect a solo performance, or maybe not enough of one, as everything other than Atkinson’s comedic moments is completely forgettable. The screenwriting team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the pair who worked on the last two James Bond films, does well enough in constructing the occasional witty snippet of dialogue for Atkinson to deliver, typically relying heavily on well-executed dramatic irony; however, not as much can be said in the way of story. One does not expect a showcase of Atkinson’s talents to string an evenly-paced plot together, but low expectations do not excuse the paper-thin transitions from joke to joke, which often go on far too long. Whenever Johnny English is offscreen, the movie is a thundering bore. Even John Malkovich’s appearance as the uber-Frenchman Pascal Sauvage, over-the-top accent included, is a gag that gets very old very fast.

Most of the blame can be laid directly on director Peter Howitt, whose impressive curriculum vitae features such highlights as AntiTrust and Sliding Doors. What Johnny English lacks is a sense of style, an atmosphere of pulpish cool – elements critical to what it aspired to be. The movie almost never feels like a spy flick; we are only led to believe it is because we are told. In addition to being funny, a comedy movie – especially one of a spoofy nature – still carries the responsibility of being a movie. English is one of the many films that neglect this requirement, and does so much to its own discredit. There is very little that separates it from merely being television fare.

The moral of the story is that Atkinson alone is not enough to sustain an hour and a half on the big screen, let alone the ticket price. Actually, theoretically he is – but Johnny English is such a mishmash of clearly identifiable good parts (with him) and bad parts (without), you really couldn’t tell. English is enjoyable, but only in bursts, and it never comes close to demanding silver-screen presentation as a necessity. We learn nothing new about Atkinson as a performer, and there is far too much extraneous material that gets in his way. Until someone knows how to make use of him as the star of a feature film, his television work, with its thankful brevity and superior knack for timing, will suffice. He is an actor best described as silly and fun, but more often than not, this movie is silly and stupid.

Director Stephen Norrington must be truly extraordinary: somehow he has managed to make The Pagemaster look like a tour de force of literary studies.

A more appropriate title for Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be Cliff Notes: The Movie, though that hardly does justice to the film’s absurd superhuman ability to take characters out of eighteenth-century literature remembered for the complexity of their tales, and water them down to one-note, one-joke self-parodying caricatures that are more like Pokémon than people. We see Allan Quartermain as the poster-headlining retired adventurer, played by Sean Connery in his best what-kind-of-lines-are-these look. The Invisible Man (Tony Curran) is invisible. Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) is somehow immortal by way of the peculiarity with his portrait. Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) is the brute strength of the team when in his egregiously outfitted Mr. Hyde form. A certain Special Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West) inexplicably shows up from America and delivers “witty” wisecracks about the British. When you begin to describe characters by a single trait or ability as if they were merely weapons, you know there’s a problem.

Conceptually, the idea of uniting iconic literary characters and making use of their special powers – the novelty behind the comic book on which this film is based – is something with great cinematic potential. It would ideally play out like a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure of fiction rather than history, only serious and bullet-ridden. The problem is that James Dale Robinson’s flaccid screenplay acknowledges that the heroes of the piece are pre-established, and uses this as an excuse for forgoing any degree of coherent exposition.

But it was never intended to be anything more than a thrilling adventure movie, right? At least we could expect it to deliver on its promises to be high-octane visceral escapism? Nope. The League wants to be campy fun at every turn, but ends up as merely campy. The fight sequences are for the most part choppily edited; one early conflict switches characters and fights every second, moving from close-up to close-up, lacking any degree of continuity. The way these battles were staged, they must have looked really good live on set; however, they are muffled by poor editorial choices rather than amplified, as they should be.

A similar complaint can be made of the overall look of the film. Given The League‘s comic book roots, the Batman-esque gothic darkness of the sets and costumes is one of its high points. The way the production looks on the screen, however, is a different story. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen seems to misunderstand that the effect of darkness is most expressed with the contrast between light and shadow, and goes solely for the shadow. I suppose this is in line with the movie’s apparent philosophy that the audience should not have any idea what is going on, but this only highlights (pardon the pun) Conrad L. Hall’s superior work in Road to Perdition as the textbook on how to light a dark graphic novel adaptation. Granted, comparing Laustsen’s work in The League to Hall’s pedigree is akin to juxtaposing crab apples and Florida oranges, but that does not change the fact that the commendable design values go to waste.

With more coherent editing and smarter photography, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could have been great, despite a horrendous screenplay. Add a better script and it could be marvelous, though it would be a completely different movie – namely, a watchable one. It has a lot going for it: the production design, a talented cast that does what it can, and most of all, the concept. There are even some very cinematic moments in the film, the briefest flashes of brilliance, as in a pivotal scene when our heroes listen to a staticky recorded message from the villain, which is shot like a grainy vintage reel. The unveiling of the movie’s Standard Diabolical Plan is the best-edited montage of the entire piece; it is a pity that the rest of the movie never comes close to that level of achievement.

For The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the nail in the coffin is that it is not even a whole lot of fun. It’s a bad movie, but not quite farcical enough in its badness to merit watching in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, or disastrous enough to leave permanent and visible scars to show your friends afterwards, à la 1998’s The Avengers. It fails because it is the worst kind of disappointment: one with tremendous promise. Even the League of Nations was a greater success.