Rambo

"Rambo" ain't got time for character development.

Well, I guess it does, if you count an evangelical Western doctor realizing that, sometimes, you've just gotta bash a man's head in with a rock. Or Rambo getting in touch with his inner ... Rambo. But other than that, this movie's all about the viscera, man.

Here's the deal: John Rambo's a snake wrangler in upcountry Thailand (I'm gonna guess somewhere near Chiang Mai, where one of my sisters-in-law lives. She tells me it's quite nice. They have a Dairy Queen, a Home Depot, and a muy thai boxing instructor I think she has a crush on. But that's neither here nor there.). He lives rather a solitary life; just him, his two employees, and his steroid connection. When a group of medical missionaries asks him to take them upriver to savage Burma, he tells them to blow: they can't handle the horror, the horror. But when one of the missionaries, Fay Wr- no, Naomi Ca- no, Julie Benz tries to talk him into it, can beauty get through to the simple beast Rambo has become? Well, when the power of pheremones compels you, there's not much you can do. Soon, Rambo's taking the group upriver, slaying some pirates, and sending the missionaries on their way.

Rambo thinks nothing of it when he never hears from them again, but then The White Shadow himself, Ken Howard, shows up on his makeshift doorstep to tell him that the missionaries have (predictably) disappeared. This leaves Rambo with a tough decision: does he keep to himself and let the world go by, or does he forge himself up a new combat knife and get involved? Well, I'm here to tell you, when The White Shadow tells you to drive to the hoop, you drive to the f*in' hoop. And thus, John Rambo chooses to embrace his destiny as a killing machine and find comradeship with other killing machines.

That's, like, the first twenty minutes. The rest is carnage. So much carnage, such a ridiculously enormously unbelievable amount of carnage, that I laughed out loud at Stallone's wilingness to go so far over the top that I half-expected him to kill the big villain through ultimate arm wrestling. Is it entertaining? If you like to watch things go "Boom!" Is it engaging? If you want to lay odds on the number of barrels of Kensington Gore used in its making. Can it be the centerpiece of an evening with the guys, a couple of pizzas, and a case of Bud? You betcha.

So, yeah, I'd see it again. Under the proper circumstances.

Eastern Promises

What a pleasure to watch a great artist at the top of his game.

David Cronenberg is one of the filmmakers who showed me that the medium could be used for more than assembly-line product. From VIDEODROME to THE FLY to DEAD RINGERS to NAKED LUNCH, here was a guy who was willing to tackle uncomfortable and difficult subjects through characters who felt like real people. Cronenberg made honest, artful but not artsy, films of which anyone could be proud.

He didn’t always connect with popular audiences, however, and it seems that he tried to appeal to mainstream adults with his last two films, the brilliant A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and his most recent, EASTERN PROMISES. Thing is, for a guy as skilled as Cronenberg, appealing to a mainstream adult audience and selling out are not the same thing. Rather, he has figured out how to make challenging, adult fare with broad appeal. These last two movies are as serious, as legitimate, as anything he’s done. They also pop, keeping the viewer engaged and enrapt from beginning to end.

With EASTERN PROMISES, he kept this viewer engaged and enrapt even after the end. Though this film tells a complete story, that story is one of a chapter in the lives of its characters. But these characters, played by a stellar cast including Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel, are so compelling that I’ve been spending much of the last 18 hours thinking about how they came to the beginning of the film, and where they went after the ending.

Here’s the hook: Watts is a midwife in a London hospital. When a young Russian prostitute dies on the birthing table, Watts finds the diary in the prostitute’s handbag. Hoping to find the girl’s relatives and place the newborn infant, she has the diary translated. But young Russian prostitutes are not independent, and soon Watts has the attention of the Russian mob. Enter Mortensen, a low-level driver in the organization, and we’re off.

Watts gave a masterful performance. I completely bought her as a lower-middle class Londoner, just as I completely bought Mortensen (also brilliant in HISTORY) as the Russian driver. Speaking of performances, both Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel, both cast against type, absolutely shine in this film. If you’re going to perform on this stage, you’d better bring your A game. They do, and the doubt and unpredictability created by going against the viewer’s expectations of these actors pays off wonderfully well.

I started these comments with my closer, so I can only reiterate it. I would, however, like to add a small explanation of my choice of words. Mr. Cronenberg has worked with the same people for years. The same crew, the same costume designer, the same composer. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all great. There are so many talented people involved in creating a film, however, that it’s easier to anthropomorphize the entire process in the form of one individual, the director, than to detail the individual contributions of all those involved.

Perhaps I should have written that it’s a pleasure to watch great artists at the top of their game. It’s just as true. EASTERN PROMISES is well worth seeing.

Undertaking Betty

UNDERTAKING BETTY is a thoroughly inoffensive, moderately amusing, ultimately forgettable trifle of a romantic comedy. It rocks along pleasantly enough for an hour and a half, ends on an up note, succeeds in everything it tries to do.

The whole movie gets set up in the opening scene: a girl at a school dance attracts the notice of a shy young boy. Before the boy can work up the courage to ask her to dance, a more confident boy steps in and sweeps her away. Since Movie Law demands that whomever catches our eye in our preadolescence is destined to be our One True Love, she still pines for the boy, now all grown up and played by Alfred Molina. She (Brenda Blethyn) married the confident one, who grew up to be a jerk who's playing around with Naomi Watts. There's your romantic comedy framework, and here's your twist: Molina is the undertaker in their quiet Welsh town, and he's in dire competition with an evil American interloper who wants to "put the fun back in funeral." Christopher Walken plays the American, and he has great fun hamming it up.

And there really isn't much to say beyond that setup. UNDERTAKING BETTY never elicited so much as a chuckle, but it was reasonably nice, reasonably fun, and entirely pleasant. Should you go out of your way to see it? No. But you may enjoy having it on in the background while you're folding laundry.

King Kong (2005)

Jackon's KONG summoned my inner carnie: "See the Amazing Shiksa! Her ligaments are made of industrial-grade rubber! Her spine is of pure titanium! She can run for miles without breaking a sweat; she doesn't bruise; and she's impervious to cold!" I'm all for suspending my disbelief, but KING KONG wanted me to believe that Anne Darrow was a frakking cylon, for Pete's sake.

The other elements of the movie didn't fare much better. Rather than capture my imagination, Skull Island made me wonder how a necrocentric civilization could possibly sustain an economy sufficientely vibrant to support all those major construction projects. The CGI had me wishing for more practical effects. The carnage reduced the sense of fun while drawing a sharp distinction between redshirts and stars. The whole long mess had me looking at my watch time and time again.

What a colossal disappointment.