Category: Film Review

The 1993 oddball comedy Mad Dog and Glory is a truly fun and special little movie, but that’s been underrated director John McNaughton’s stock-in-trade for his entire career: Make films that fly just a tad under the radar but then become huge genre influences down the line. His brilliant and utterly startling 1986 debut Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is still one of the most chilling examinations of evil ever put on film, and which introduced the world to the amazing actor Michael Rooker. Five years later, he followed up with the sci-fi curiosity The Borrower, which I’ve not seen, but which sounds VERY interesting. Then, two years later, he dropped genre-bender Mad Dog and Glory, which really announced the mark of a majorly unique voice.

There’s only one problem; audiences aren’t receptive to the quirky mix of violence, comedy, and pathos. Despite strong critical support (Ebert and Canby were notable supporters), the film died in theaters, but has over the years found a well-deserved cult following. Executive produced by crime genre master Martin Scorsese and written with the usual sense of tough guy banter and attention to character and plot detail by Richard Price (Clockers, Ransom, Sea of Love, The Wire), the film tells the story of a lonely and depressed cop (Robert De Niro), who saves the life of a NYC gangster (Bill Murray), and who become unwitting frenemies through a variety of circumstances. Murray wants to repay De Niro for saving his life in the form of female companionship, so he offers one of his girls to him as a “gift,” the beguiling, radiant, impossibly young Uma Thurman, thoroughly lovely and exceedingly funny and pre-face-destruction.

What follows is an unconventional romance between De Niro and Thurman, an unconventional friendship between De Niro and Murray, and scene after scene of inspired comedy and drama. The notion of casting De Niro as the hapless guy and Murray as the confident gangster was a stroke of genius, but for whatever reason, people didn’t buy into the idea. Which is a pity, because Mad Dog and Glory works so well, and would go on to inform later De Niro movies like Analyze This and the misbegotten Showtime, which paired him with Eddie Murphy. It’s a bummer that De Niro and Murray haven’t worked together since because the two of them shared great, natural, and easy-going chemistry, bouncing off one another with great comedic timing and scene-balancing generosity.

McNaughton deftly mixed graphic violence with big laughs in a way that few are able to do, and despite the film having a compromised finale (rewrites and reshoots were required which delayed the final product by a full year), so much of this movie comes up aces so often that it’s easy to look past the traditional ending to what was otherwise anything but traditional as a whole. The fantastic supporting cast includes David Caruso, Mike Starr, the recently deceased Tom Towles, Kathy Baker, Jack Wallace, and Richard Belzer, with screenwriter Price making a cameo as a detective. After Mad Dog and Glory slipped in and out of theaters, five years would pass with McNaughton working only in television before his next feature, the notorious and wildly entertaining neo-noir high-school-sex-romp Wild Things, which would reunite him with Murray, and still stands as a juicy, sexy, hot-blooded genre entry.

Directed with a hefty, grinning dose of chuck-it-all, piss-and-vinegar-abandon, Bob Fosse’s All the Jazz is movie magic. Exasperating, nasty, lighting-fast, dark-hearted movie magic but movie magic all the same. Using the framework of a heightened, pseudo-autobiographical narrative with diversions into fantasy and utilizing the trappings of the movie-musical in exciting ways that are rarely ever attempted, this is a sensational piece of storytelling and filmmaking, with Roy Scheider dropping an Atomic Bomb of a performance as a stressed out, over-sexed, over-drugged, loose cannon of a director, a man simultaneously mounting a large-scale Broadway show and putting the editorial touches on his latest movie. Things aren’t going correct with either project, women keep coming and going at the worst of times, and his young daughter clearly needs her father for support. Alan Heim’s frenetic yet coherent editing in this film is spectacular, all jagged patterns that underscore the fragility and hostility of Scheider’s fractured mental and spiritual psyche, while the frenzied, energetic cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, filled with extreme close-ups and doc-style jitters, added a level of vitality to every single sequence.

Clearly a personal statement about the artistic process and what it can do to the artist in question, this is a film that could only have been made by Fosse, and All the Jazz serves as his celebration of both mediums, film and stage, and as his own cautionary tale for everyone else to follow in his artistic footsteps. This is a film that’s about the rush and excitement of success, about how some people have a burning fire raging inside that can never be extinguished, and because Scheider’s performance is so completely full-throttle at every moment, you get the sense that Fosse found exactly what he was looking for in his choice of leading man. The restoration wizards at The Criterion Collection have done an utterly superb job with their 4K transfer, stripping away any blemishes and pictorial imperfections, but still allowing the Blu-ray disc to have that special, old-school filmic quality that I adore and miss in relation to modern films, which increasingly look less and less like actual movies, and more like video games. The sound pops with clarity and balance, and the special feature line-up is a treasure trove of goodies.

The Rock remains the best film that Michael Bay has made. It might not have the action-bombast of Bad Boys 2, the satirical edge of Pain & Gain, or the overwhelming intensity of 13 Hours, but the film simply works on every level as a tremendous piece of audience pleasing, late 90’s, high-concept action filmmaking that has only gotten better over the years as countless genre entries have come and gone. Directed with slick and gritty efficiency by Bay, who was in major Tony Scott mode with his first big-time blockbuster after 1995’s surprise hit Bad Boys, The Rock features a trio of big, brawny star turns from Nicolas Cage (the reluctant hero), Sean Connery (doing a riff on Bond), and Ed Harris (the morally conflicted villain), with a ridiculous supporting cast in tow. Made back when you could make such a picture for a somewhat affordable price tag and far more reliant on practical effects than excessive CGI, this is exactly the sort of movie we aren’t getting in cinemas these days, and that’s a damn shame, because when done correct, you get summer popcorn fun like this.

Successfully merging the buddy picture with formula elements from Die Hard, Bay was able to tap into his lightning-quick visual sensibilities, creating a super glossy San Francisco in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen; while viewing this film on the Blu-ray format, one marvels at the filmic quality to the entire presentation. Bold, saturated colors dominate the endless horizon, almost always seen at sunrise or sunset, a classic visual motif that has been a signature shot for Bay in almost every single one of his features (if not all…), as John Schwartzman’s gorgeous cinematography set a modern standard that so many would ape in the following years. Richard-Francis Bruce’s dynamic editing was in perfect synch with the loaded visuals, while the tremendous musical score by Nick Glennie-Smith, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Hans Zimmer is a bonafide all-timer, becoming sampled by numerous trailers over the years. The action was huge, from a breathless car chase throughout the crowded S.F. streets, to the all-out assault on Alcatraz that comprised much of the second and third acts.

The impact that The Rock has made on the action movie landscape is nearly indescribable, and stands as one the greatest Simpson-Bruckheimer collaborations, primarily because of its script. As written by David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook and Mark Rosner (with additional uncredited work done by Aaron Sorkin, Jonathan Hensleigh, Quentin Tarantino, Dick Clement, and Ian La Frenais), the film presents a semi-plausible yet still over the top scenario that’s just believable enough, but far-fetched to the point that the audience can disengage a bit and watching something extremely cinematic unfold. The decision to ground Harris’s chief baddie, General Hummel, in a fog of moral confusion and militaristic outrage has been one of the key ingredients to the overall success of The Rock, as it gives the film an edge in the character department. Because you’re able to understand General Hummel’s anger, his reason for action is all the more drastic and exciting. Harris brought his usual brand of steely intensity to every scene, and as a result, The Rock bristles with menace whenever Harris appears. But beneath the hostility were shades of confusion suggesting a complexity not normally afforded a gene picture such as this.

And then when you combine the Odd Couple-esque pairing of Cage and Connery, who honor the time-tested tradition of great buddy pairings, the narrative takes on yet another angle and runs with it all the way to the finish line. Cage got all the overtly funny lines, and would pave the way for his ascent into action hero mode with this quirky and sympathetic performance. And Connery, clearly having a blast playing a version of 007 within the more visceral confines of an R-rated picture, was all class at all times, bringing vigor and elegance to his role of an imprisoned spy who gets to use his old skills one more time to save the day. When you look at the list of actors in the supporting cast, the mind does somersaults: Michael Biehn, William Forsythe, David Morse, Tony Todd, Philip Baker Hall, John Spencer, John C. McGinley, Vanessa Marcil, Claire Forlani, Stuart Wilson, Danny Nucci, Philip Baker Hall, Bokeem Woodbine, David Greg Collins, Gregory Sporleder, Brendan Kelly, David Marshall Grant, Xander Berkeley, and Jim Caviezel as F/A-18 Pilot. Bay had all the ingredients here – a disciplined screenplay, a phenomenal cast of actors, producers who knew exactly how to maximize every situation, and a populace of moviegoers who were extremely interested in this sort of decadent, big-budget cinematic pyrotechnics show. It still feels like yesterday that I went to see this film on opening night and then the next afternoon; 20 years have breezed by.