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IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! A Terminator Retrospective

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Now that the latest film is available on Netflix, as well as the television series, I’d like to discuss the rise and fall of the Terminator franchise. Examining what worked in the various stories of this mythos and where things went a bit wrong, or a lot wrong, should only take a few minutes. It’s interesting, at least to me, that such examinations don’t happen more often when these stories are getting put together. Then again, calling what happens in “Salvation” an actual story is giving it a great deal of credit. Come along, you’ll see what I mean.

The Terminator

I’ve known grown men haunted by this.

Men in action films were being called ‘killing machines’ before this one came along. Charles Bronson springs to mind. However, James Cameron gave us a literal killing machine. The titular character is a cybernetic assassin sent back in time to murder someone. This target isn’t a genius, or a great warrior or even all that significant. Sarah Connor is a waitress in her late teens who is unaware that she’s in any sort of danger until everybody who has her name starts dropping dead in very violent ways. The only man who can save her, who is even aware of what this killing machine really is, comes from the future and explains why she’s wanted dead: she will give birth to mankind’s best hope for survival in a future where machines are systematically exterminating our race. To prevent John Connor from taking charge of the resistance, the artificial intelligence called SkyNet sent the Terminator to kill his mother before he was even born.

Beyond the action sequences and some high octane nightmare fuel in the form of the skinless Terminator rising from the flames of a wrecked fuel truck, the storytelling’s very tight and the conceptualized time travel is realized rather well. The human characters show depth and real emotion, and Arnold’s star-making role relies on him simply being large and stoic, seemingly unstoppable in his cold rampage. I think a lot of this is actually due to the constraints of the technology of the day. Without CGI or today’s massive effects budget, James Cameron had to use the genius of Stan Winston sparingly. The scene where the Terminator repairs himself is a great example of this. Without a single word and minimal music, Arnold’s actions and the use of a very complex artificial stand-in creates a scene that is both awesome in its execution and squick-worthy in its content. Not only did this film really launch Arnold’s career, it cemented Cameron’s place as the arguable master of the genre.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Look up ‘badass’ in the dictionary. You’ll find this.

Sequels can be dubious creatures. It’s rare for a sequel to not only harken back to feelings created by the original, but also build upon the characters, themes and stories established previously. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Dark Knight are often mentioned in the same breath as this film, in that they do exactly what a sequel should: taking favorite characters and interesting stories and improving on the overall formula. In this, John Connor’s grown into a somewhat precocious and arrogant pre-teen while his mom has been locked up for trying to tell people about killing machines coming back in time to kill her. A new Terminator, the T-1000, is sent back in time to murder John as a child, while John’s future self captures and reprograms an older model and sends it back as a protector.

Everything that made the first film work is here. However, a lot of concepts are taken in new directions or even turned on their heads. Sarah Connor, learning the identity of the man responsible for creating SkyNet, takes it upon herself to go assassinate him, in effect becoming no better than the machines sent to kill her and her son. The T-800, Arnold’s model, begins to explore the nature of humanity as he spends time with the Connors, and John, who begins the movie zipping around on a dirt bike as he hacks ATMs for cash, turns out to be one of the most virtuous and downright heroic characters in the story. And as for nightmare fuel, the vision Sarah has of the nuclear holocaust that is Judgement Day is as realistic as it is chilling. The action is balanced with humor, the horror with good writing & acting, all coming together in a package that actually outstrips the original. Finally there’s the awesome factor of Arnold hefting a minigun with a little smile on his face, tiny little Robert Patrick tossing Arnold around like a rag doll and Linda Hamilton going completely Amazonian and nearly taking down the T-1000 single-handedly while only having the use of one arm. It gave a fantastic movie-going experience and hope that this trend would continue.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Yeah, she’s kinda hot, but not quite right for a Terminatrix.

It’s unfortunately at this point that the Terminator films began to follow the ways of other sequels: rehashing old ideas while not presenting anything terribly new. John Connor, now a young adult and getting by off the grid after the death of his mother, is once again targeted for termination, this time by a female Terminator with highly advanced weaponry and programming under the liquid-metal skin that made the T-1000 so dangerous. Another older model is sent back to protect him. This time, however, Judgement Day’s coming is inevitable, and John ends up in a bunker with his future wife and becomes the voice of the resistance even as SkyNet brings humanity to its knees.

Instead of doing anything new with the storylines or characters, Terminator 3 suffers from being, in essence, a carbon copy of Terminator 2. The Arnie model is already programmed with psychology so there’s nothing for it to learn, the T-X is somehow less menacing since it has an endoskeleton that can be destroyed as an excuse to have energy weapons in the past, there’s no Sarah Connor against which to contrast John and some of the very rules of time travel are ignored for the sake of plot convenience. Still, it’s difficult for me to confidently say that T3 is a horrible movie since some of it does work, if only because it was looking over the shoulder of T2 and jotting down notes. It’s just shallower than the first two films, and while it does offer the eye candy of Kristanna Loken and some amusing moments like the contents of Sarah Connor’s coffin, it can safely be ignored.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

That’s more like it.

That’s exactly what television producers did when they began the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Taking place after T2, Sarah and John stay on the run until a Terminatrix named Cameron appears from the future to help prevent Judgement Day. As the series goes on, the protagonists move into roles of anti-heroes and even terrorists, breaking the law on a regular basis and pushing the envelope in terms of acts committed for the sake of a greater good. The show grew a very dark and edgy beard, and in my opinion, was too good a show for FOX execs to allow to live.

Aside from casting the always delightful and poignant Summer Glau as Cameron, what this show does right among other things is the dynamic of Sarah and John. In T2 we observe that Sarah loves her son enough to go to murderous lengths to protect him, while John loves his mother too much to see her become a complete monster in the name of his safety. The TV series builds on this, showing Sarah struggling to maintain her humanity in the face of everything she has to do while John slowly has to let go of his young idealism and taking on the mantle of leadership. It is, like the first two movies, smartly written and well acted. And then there’s the fan service – dear God, the fan service.

Terminator: Salvation

An action shot from ~~Modern Warfare 2~~ Terminator:Salvation

Reversing the way the TV series handwaved T3, the fourth film follows T3’s take on the story and brings us to 2018 where John Connor is not the leader of the resistance, but rather a subordinate officer whom some people (especially those in charge) deem unpredictable or even unstable due to his claims of his own importance. His cell is infiltrated by an advanced prototype Terminator calling itself Marcus Wright, who believes he’s still human, while trying to save a young warrior named Kyle Reese from termination – and thus becoming the cause for his own conception.

I’ve reviewed this film already so let me just briefly cover the bullet points. The writers and director water down the concepts even further from T3 until it feels more like a generic CG-driven action flick than an heir to the Terminator legacy. While Anton Yelchin does very well as Kyle Reese, and Sam Worthington brings a lot of humanity to his character in the face of a lot of alpha-male swaggering, the whole thing overall just feels more empty and lifeless than the machines themselves. Again, there’s some parts of the film that work while others fall flat, so I can’t really call it a horrible movie but it’s really not something I’m interested in watching again, either. But there’s not a great deal of story here, and the emphasis seems more on the action scenes and big robots with lasers.

That, I think, is the failing of the second pair of films. The humanity of the characters is somewhat dialed down so the cool factor of the robots, gunplay and visuals can be turned up. But what worked in the first two films weren’t just the special effects or the action or the bloodshed. It was the characters, very human and well-realized characters, that drove both the plots and the success of those films. Even the television series, blasted by some as being too cerebral or too dark or too God-awful, managed to get that right, focusing on Sarah and John more than it did on killer robots, laser beams and things that belong more in a Michael Bay flick than it does in something that’s actually got a brain in its head.

So, in conclusion, I recommend you watch the first two Terminator films, and if you find yourself hungry for more, check out The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You can watch the other two films if you want, but I feel they’re pretty weak by comparison. Feel free to disagree, though. It’s not like I’ll be able to send a killer cyborg back in time to kill your parents or anythig. Well, not until I figure out what exactly they’re using to power Dick Cheney.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Battlestar Galactica

January 8, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

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In recent years, for one reason or another, many stories in speculative fiction have been ‘rebooted’. In most cases the ‘new’ versions of the stories have suffered from either not being very well executed, getting called out for disregarding the established histories and characterizations of the source material or both. Transformers, Star Wars and Flash Gordon appear to be the biggest offenders. It’s rare for a reboot or re-imagining to get the aforementioned sticking points right, or for a science fiction TV series to have a strong start. 2004’s Battlestar Galactica does both, and it began with a mini-series that is the subject of today’s review. The series stars Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Tahmoh Penikett and Alessandro Juliani.

As far as the characters go, to keep track of who’s frakin’ who, you might need a flowchart.

Battlestar Galactica originally aired back in 1978 and was ambitious for its time. Despite being accused of ripping off Star Wars, the series seemed more interested in borrowing the ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ notion from Star Trek. The million dollar budgets the show required per episode and the slowly declining quality of the stories – within the show’s only season – both contributed to its cancellation in 1979. The coffin seemed nailed pretty securely shut with Galactica 1980, a spin-off so bad some Galactica fans don’t even acknowledge its existence. Creator Glen A. Larson would recycle the look & feel of the show for Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, but as far as Galactica was concerned, it seemed the journey had ended once and for all, until more than two decades after the last episode aired.

Ronald D. Moore, veteran writer & producer for Star Trek series The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, was approached by David Eick, who was having a little trouble getting a reboot of Battlestar Galactica off the ground. Ideas to restart or continue Galactica‘s story had been pitched by Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer, and original series star Richard Hatch, but nothing had stuck. Ron & David not only constructed a mini-series that could stand on its own but could also serve as the launching point for a series on what was then called the Sci-Fi Channel, back before they re-branded themselves to gather more hits on Google since that’s what telling science fiction stories is all about. Anyway, the result of this reboot aired in 2004, and the response was overwhelming.

Arguably the most badass museum piece in the known galaxy.

Among the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, the Cylons were created by man as servants and laborers. Eventually, they got a little sick and tired of shoveling coal and giving massages, so they took up arms against their creators. The war was bloody, and ended in a draw. The Cylons left to make their own way on worlds far from the colonies, and a space station was established for communication purposes. 40 years have passed since the armistice, and the Galactica, one of the oldest battlestars remaining in the Colonial fleet, is due for retirement as a museum. Her commander, William Adama (Edward James Olmos), is also something of a relic, wary of computer networks and maintaining discipline aboard his ship despite its age and somewhat antiquated design.

His paranoia’s somewhat justified, though, as the Cylons have evolved and can masquerade as humans. One of the humanoid models, Number Six (Tricia Helfer), has managed to infect the Colonial defense network thanks to her relationship with resident genius Gaius Baltar (James Callis). Baltar, rather than being a cartoonish malevolent hand-wringing mustache-twirling villain as he was in the 70s is, here, an unwitting dupe in the Cylon plan to eradicate mankind in a surprise nuclear attack. When the attack happens, there’s no warning and absolutely nobody is prepared. The Cylons not only nuke the hell out of all 12 colonies, they hack the networked systems of the Colonial warships, from the mighty battlestars to the Viper fightercraft. Only one ship is immune to this form of attack, and Galactica becomes the shepherd of a fugitive fleet containing the remnants of the human race, on the run from their would-be exterminators and held together by the hope that the mythical 13th colony exists out in the darkness of unexplored space – a colony known as Earth.

Three hotter toasters you would be hard-pressed to find.

Overall, the mini-series was praised, and rightly so, for smart writing, good direction, multi-dimensional characters that gain our loyalty and sympathy relatively quickly, Bear McCreary’s haunting music and revitalizing an old premise in a new and interesting way. Any one of these aspects of the show is worthy of a full review in and of itself, so suffice it to say that all of them work together to create an experience that is, on the whole, absolutely astounding. It wasn’t without its detractors, however, most of whom said that this new vision of an old favorite had completely destroyed anything that had come before and was a travesty unworthy of the name of their beloved franchise. Wait. Does that seem familiar at all to anybody else? Gee, I wonder where I’ve heard that before…

In any event, Battlestar Galactica is well worth the watching. The mini-series is the logical place to begin, and while it runs longer than most feature films, the time is not idly spent. Pick it up from Netflix, or Best Buy, or any place to you can pick it up – it’s definitely worth it. The series that follows is good on the whole, with some missteps here and there. I’ve been accused of universally loving this series and every single episode of it, but that really isn’t the case. Like all science fiction television series, it has episodes ranging from the very good to the very bad. I’ve played with the idea of doing episode reviews in the great tradition of sfdebris or Confused Matthew, but I wouldn’t want to waste everybody’s time.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Mutant Chronicles

January 1, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

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Adaptations are a good way to cull an established audience from one medium and transplant them into another to generate more revenue and attention for a given work. Just look at the success of The Lord of the Rings, Iron Man and even Twilight. Novels, comic books, even toys have had some success moving from some iteration of the living room to the big screen. Tabletop games, on the other hand, have had a rougher time, and given the disappointment of The Mutant Chronicles, it’s not getting easier any time soon. The film stars Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Devon Aoki, Sean Pertwee, Anna Watson and John Malkovich.

“We’ve got the Punisher, Hellboy, a ninja whore, an elf princess and Cyrus the Virus. We can’t miss!”

The year is 2707. Cataclysmic events on Earth have transformed it into a wasteland, where what resources still exist are fought over by four mega-corporations: Bauhaus, Capital, Imperial and Mishima. An artillery exchange between two of these forces causes the unveiling of an ancient, massive and evil machine that turns the dead and dying into vicious mutants. The horde of the machine’s creations spill out onto the world and soon it’s apparent that conventional warfare can’t stop them. Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), a senior member of a secret religious order on guard against the emergence of the mutants, assembles a small squad of brave men and women to travel into the heart of the machine and put an end to its evil. In exchange, the volunteers are given visas for family or loved ones to depart the Earth for one of the mega-corporations’ colonies on Mars or beyond. To keep a promise made to a battlefield brother, Sergeant Mitch Hunter (Thomas Jane) volunteers for the holy suicide mission, despite the fact he’s the polar opposite of Samuel. While the warrior-monk is courteous, penitent and hopeful, the soldier is apostate, sarcastic and brutal. Still, before the end Mitch shows that he’s a good man, or at least good enough to be chosen by God.

“Right, so my motivation for this scene is ‘Finish it so I can go back to pretending to whore myself instead of doing it for real.’ Got it.”

From my perspective, The Mutant Chronicles had a lot going for it. The aesthetic is an interesting mix of World War I and post-apocalyptic steampunk, and it works in giving the film a feel that is at once unique and familiar. The cast is, by and large, character actors who turn in good performances. The film’s opening sequences, with Ron Perlman’s always excellent narration followed by the trench warfare scene, seemed to indicate the movie was aiming high and might hit the mark. And there’s also the fact that you have Anna Watson and Devon Aoki together in the same flick. It can’t go terribly wrong, right?

“Devon, I don’t know if they’re going to go for this.”
“Anna, honey, you’re a luscious action babe who doesn’t talk. Trust me. They’ll go for it.”

Unfortunately, as the film goes on, the CG gets progressively worse, the writing takes a bit of a nose-dive and every character killed off takes some of the viewer’s enthusiasm with them. The ending is somewhat predictable, there’s no major character growth or even much character exploration, and the novelty of the aesthetic wears off once the team is in the old city and it becomes another expedition into your standard-issue dark rocky corridors. A lot of this, in my opinion, can be chalked up to bad direction. The director, Simon Hunter, makes the mistake of trying to focus on the spectacle rather than the story. Now, in this case, the story isn’t that great either, but it bears mentioning that even movies with huge budgets in comparison to The Mutant Chronicles fall into this insidious trap.

Let me take you on a tangential example. Say you have a couple of script-writers. They write two different scripts, which get made and released in the same year. One is lambasted by critics despite being a commercial success, and the other is lauded by audiences and the majority of critics alike. Logically, this cannot be the fault of the writers alone. Yes, both scripts have some issues and similarities in style that can have critics calling both films “poorly thought-out and kinda stupid.” However, the first film in our example is directed by someone who is known – perhaps even infamous – for distracting the audience from the weaknesses in the story with massive explosions and slender, panting actresses. The second is directed by more of an auteur, his visions on both the small and big screen noted for their innovation, strong characterization and level of mystery. The latter focuses on the characters, the situations they are in and works to have the audience invested in what happens to them. The former, on the other hand, goes the “tits and explosions” route. The Mutant Chronicles isn’t quite that blatant, but it does fall into the former category.

That’s a shame, really. There are good things about the film, and while I did feel it was overstaying its welcome towards the end, I didn’t consider having watched it a complete and utter waste of time. If nothing else, it’s reinforced my opinion that the good things about a film, be they actors, the script or the overall concept, can be let down when they’re put in the hands of someone inexperienced or incompetent. I’ll elaborate more on these points in tomorrow’s post, but for now, I will say this. If you like any of the listed actors, or want to see a dark future where capitalism is shown to be pretty damn evil, or if you like the idea of steam-powered flying machines, queue up The Mutant Chronicles in Netflix. On the other hand, if you’ve played the tabletop game, you might want to skip this. You might find things to like about it, but on the other hand, you might be like those fans who went to Stark Trek this summer and declared it RUINED FOREVER.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The House Bunny

December 26, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

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I’m going to begin with a confession. This is not the sort of movie that finds its way onto my Netflix queue. However, when I find myself at my parents’ house for the holidays, I tend to be more at the mercy of what’s on their big-screen TV. The House Bunny ended up being on during Christmas Eve, and rather than treat it the way I do most modern American comedies – with cynicism and contempt – I thought I’d give it a fair shake. Seemed only fair, since on more than one occasion the ladies were shaking things themselves. The film stars Anna Faris, Colin Hanks, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Christopher McDonald, Beverly D’Angelo, Katherine McPhee and Hugh Hefner.

Shelly Darlingson (Faris) is a Playboy bunny. She’s not centerfold-worthy despite being sexy, vivacious and in her twenties. At twenty-seven, however, she’s told she’s too old to be a bunny and gets kicked out of the Playboy Mansion. Downtrodden, she comes across attractive women living together in a sorority, but they kick her out because she’s not a student. Shelly washes up at a sorority of misfit girls, and having learned that older women become house mothers for sorority girls like these, takes it upon herself to transform the house to a mansion all its own, and the girls within to beautiful heart-stoppers that become the talk of the campus.

Despite the somewhat generic university misfits becoming awesome plot, this movie works as a fun little comedy most of the time. If it weren’t for Anna Faris’ honest and well-paced delivery of her lines and the way the others play off of her performance, this concept would utterly fail. The buoyancy she brings to the writing and direction has less to do with her ‘assets’ and more with her experience and sincerity. As honest as Faris and her co-stars are with themselves, they’re also smart enough not to take themselves too seriously. While some of the jokes and gags fall flat, which is an inevitability when you’re dealing with ground that’s been tread before in comedy, the ones that work do so well enough to keep us interested long enough to expect the next one – or is it the T&A? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Again, this isn’t the sort of thing I’d normally watch. Sure, sex is funny. To paraphrase Alan Rickman as the Metatron in Dogma, consider some of the faces people make in the midst of coitus. And mixing the inherent comedy of women that get by on their looks alone with the tried & true formula that worked for Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds and PCU sounds like another one of those chocolate/peanut butter combinations. I honestly believe that Anna Faris, the best and most consistent thing about the Scary Movie series, is the reason this movie works as well as it does. It has good things to say about female empowerment not unlike Miss Congeniality and Legally Blonde – the latter film being borrowed from heavily when Shelly needs to, like, learn stuff. In fact this movie is more a casserole than a Reese’s treat – so many things left over from other movies are mixed together to make this one. But it’s a dessert casserole, sweet and decadent and offering a bit of substance, like a cake that’s more frosting than cake but has just enough cake to still be called a cake. If that makes any sense.

I have another confession. I was secretly hoping this movie would be horrible. I was hoping I’d be able to tear it apart the way a lion tears apart a wildebeest. But there’s just enough in The House Bunny to save it from having its dessicated carcass join the likes of In The Name of the King in the back of my little Internet den. It’s not earth-shattering or breaking any new ground or pushing any envelopes, but it’s not utter dross or completely brainless or heartless either. It takes turns being funny, cute and sexy, and while it never completely hits the mark on any of those turns, it’s not a total miss. There isn’t any real danger to our girls of anything horrible happening, and Shelly changes her mind quite a few times in the film’s third act. In the end, though, while it didn’t make me think at all, it made me laugh at times and that’s the goal of a comedy. You’re really not missing anything if you don’t add The House Bunny to your Netflix queue, but if you like your collegiate comedy wearing a bikini and pink bunny ears, you could do worse. And there’s nothing wrong with seeing Anna Faris in that outfit.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Snatch.

December 18, 2009 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

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I’ve stated in some previous reviews that Jason Statham is a badass. I’ve also mentioned him in his work with Guy Ritchie, of which Snatch is the prime example. It’s also arguably Ritchie’s best film to date, often compared to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels the way Pulp Fiction is compared to Reservoir Dogs. But before I start drawing parallels between two directors and lose what few readers & listeners I have, let’s talk about Snatch. The movie, not anything else. The film stars Jason Statham, Benicio Del Toro, Alan Ford, Stephen Graham, Dennis Farina, Rade Serbedzija, Mike Reid, Vinnie Jones, Lennie James, Robbie Gee, Ade and Brad Pitt.

Jason Statham is an underground boxing promoter in London by the name of Turkish. (Take notes, Dr. Boll, as he is not named “Boxer” or “Promoter”.) He and his partner Tommy (Stephen Graham) are trying to get their fighter, Gorgeous George, into the ring for a fair fight with one of the boxers promoted by local kingpin and pig enthusiast Brick Top (Alan Ford). Meanwhile, Frankie Four-Fingers (del Toro) has stolen a gigantic diamond from Antwerp to the delight of his boss Cousin Avi (Farina) and is heading to London to discuss his ill-gotten gains with Doug the Head (Reid). Aware of his arrival is Boris the Blade, aka Boris the Bullet-Dodger (Serbedzija), who taps two guys from a pawn shop to intercept Frankie before he can offload the rock. Brad Pitt is a fast-talking semi-Gypsy bare-knuckle fighter, Jones is a cold-as-ice bounty hunter named Bullet-Tooth Tony and Ade is the world’s largest getaway driver. We never learn the name of the dog.

If you’re not confused yet, I’m impressed. The film juggles these disparate plots while standing on one foot and telling off-color jokes. If you’re easily offended by foul language, particularly the word “fuck,” you probably don’t want to watch this film. Or even be in the next room if it’s playing. The liberal use of “fuck” throughout the film might be explained away by some as a lack of intelligence since smart people find other ways to express themselves, but the adept balancing of the various plots and the three-dimensionality of most of the players indicate that plenty of higher brain functions were being engaged in this film’s creation.

While some movies struggle to cohesively tell one plot from start to finish, Snatch handles quite a few, which begin on separate tracks but slowly begin to weave in and out of each other. As I mentioned, most of the key players are given depth and characterization. Turkish, in particular, shows a gamut of emotions, from grim sarcastic satisfaction to almost palpable desperation. Brick Top is charismatic and even funny while being menacing, especially in a scene towards the middle of the film. The guys from the pawn shop are trying to move a body (I won’t say whose) when Brick Top appears and instructs them on an efficient and organic way to deal with such things: feed the body to pigs. After his informative if somewhat macabre tutorial, he rises from the couch and asks simply, “D’you know what the word ‘nemesis’ means?” Despite the comical tone of most of this film, Alan Ford’s delivery can be downright chilling. We’ve seen how ruthless and unhinged Brick Top can be by this point, so his quiet, understated question has all of the bite and discomfort of a circular saw dismembering a corpse in preparation for a piggy feast.

But as much as I love the characters of Turkish and Brick Top, the film is very nearly stolen entirely by Brad Pitt’s turn as Mickey, the Pikey bare-knuckle scrapper. Pikies are modern-day nomads, living out of caravans as they move from one campsite to another. They speak in an accent that is, in the words of Turkish, “not exactly English and not exactly Irish.” And most of them speak fast. Very fast. It’s part of their plan to pull the wool over the eyes of people with whom they do business, but it has the side effect of being absolutely hilarious. And the way we are introduced to this class of people is the same man who portrayed the dead-eyed reluctant predator in Interview with the Vampire and the gritty, ambitious detective Mills in Se7en. He’s bombastic, energetic, quick-witted and funny, yet also finds time to show a range of emotion from heartbroken rage to cold and calculating. If you don’t think Brad Pitt can act, you should see this movie. Then hit yourself in the face with a cricket bat.

Guy Ritchie’s writing and direction in this film are at their zenith. The jokes are funny, the characters are believable and the stories move along just fast enough to keep us off-balance without being terribly confusing, my condensed recap of the opening act notwithstanding. The action and violence grow organically from the story and setting, rather than appearing out of nowhere. You actually have to think, as the film speeds along, about what is happening to whom as the different plots begin to mix. Even the soundtrack is pitch-perfect, from Massive Attack’s haunting “Angel” to Oasis’ high-energy rocking “Fucking in the Bushes.” We even have great camera angles, fantastic framing and some of Guy Ritchie’s trademark jarring interludes. Pay attention whenever anybody mentions gambling to Frankie Four-Fingers to see what I mean.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, the language might be a little too intense for some people. And the frenetic pace and slightly offbeat nature of both the writing and direction might be a turn-off to others. If these are obstacles to seeing Snatch, however, I consider that a deplorable shame. This is some of the best cinematic storytelling I’ve had the pleasure to watch. The word ‘caper’ doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s smart, funny, gritty, intense and awesome from start to finish. Not one moment or shot is wasted. You may have seen Snatch already if you’re a regular reader or listener of my material. If you don’t own a copy, you should, but if you need convincing, toss it on your Netflix queue. And if you haven’t seen Snatch before, you should not only add it to your queue but bump it right to the top. It’s not just brilliant – it’s fucking brilliant.

Tag: Netflix (page 20 of 24)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! A Terminator Retrospective

The Terminator

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Terminator: Salvation

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Battlestar Galactica

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Mutant Chronicles

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The House Bunny

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Snatch.

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