Levon Helm – Podcasting Them Softly

I’ve always loved the absolute hell out of Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter, a mean, violent, very broad and totally enjoyable action flick with a western flavour woven in and some jaw dropping set pieces along the way. The story is like, beyond over the top, Mark Wahlberg is a near invincible force of nature, the villains are so intense they feel like they’ve walked out of a Walter Hill flick and the overall tone is just this side of tongue in cheek territory while still feeling like a legitimate thriller. Marky Mark plays an ex marine sniping guru who lives alone in the Canadian wilderness with his doggo until he’s lured back to Vancouver by his conniving former boss (Danny Glover) for a high profile political assassination. Basically blackmailed into it, he finds himself set up by his own people to take the fall for the job, betrayed, left for dead, the works. Also, as we observed in John Wick, don’t kill the dog of someone who can take out literal armies of goons and will come gunning for you and everyone in your employ. On the run he’s assisted by a rookie cop (Michael Pena) who intuits his innocence and the girlfriend (a smokin hot Kate Mara) of a former army buddy who he seeks shelter with. The villains here are truly spectacular and I must spend a portion of my review on them: Glover is so arch and evil he literally gets to say “I win, you lose” *twice* and he somehow pulls off a ridiculous line like that just because he’s Danny Glover and he’s smirking like he knows damn well what kind of script he’s waded into. His top lieutenant is a despicable, sadistic piece of work played by the great Elias Koteas in high style, all leering stubble, violent urges towards Mara and creepy charisma in spades. They all work for the the most evil US Senator in the country, a tubby, southern fried, amoral, genocidal maniac Colonel Sanders wannabe played by Ned Beatty, who doesn’t just chew the scenery, but strangles it with his bare hands while he’s at it. The cast is off the hook and also includes Tate Donovan, Mackenzie Grey, Rhona Mitra, Lane Garrison, Rade Serbedzija and a cameo from The Band’s Levon Helm. They just don’t make actioners like this anymore and even for 2007 this felt like a dying breed. Classic, melodramatic, hyper violent, neo-western revenge stuff that was huge in the 80’s and 90’s and I miss greatly. There’s a brilliant exchange of dialogue where Beatty and Glover marvel in desperation at Wahlberg’s refusal to back down or stop hunting them. “I don’t think you understand,” he growls at them: “You killed my dog.” It’s a great line sold 100% by Wahlberg and the film is full of spot on moments like that as well as visually breathtaking action sequences (that mountaintop standoff tho), a playful yet deadly tone and villains that would be at home in the Looney Toons. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Fire Down Below might just be the most laidback Steven Seagal movie I’ve seen, and I mean that as a compliment. Many of his seemingly endless outings are obnoxious inner city bang ups, special forces hootenannies or high concept martial arts pageants, but here is a simple, down to earth, rural Kentucky set tale of one tough Fed helping out a small town of disadvantaged folks battle corporate corruption and deeds most foul. An unscrupulous company has been dumping toxic waste into a town’s water supply, lighting the canyons on fire and being a general nuisance in the region, but they really step out of line when they kill Seagal’s research partner and he’s dispatched to investigate by his agency handler (Richard Masur in the quickest cameo I’ve seen in a while). He spends the rest of the film meandering around a backwater county, making friends, getting cozy with a troubled local beekeeper (Marg Helgenberger, ditching the swanky CSI leather for a country girl’s dress) and eventually beating the shit out of underlines who work for powerful industrialist CEO Kris Kristofferson, who spends most of the film elsewhere in the big city ogling dancers at some casino. The one who does make the most trouble for Steven is Helgenberger’s pervy, volatile, very mentally unstable brother played with a high strung psychopathic flourish by Stephen Lang. Others include The Band’s Levon Helm as the local priest, Brad Hunt, Mark Collie, John Diehl, Randy Travis, country singers Alex Harvey & Marty Stuart and the great Harry Dean Stanton, giving the film’s only truly good performance as a simple local guy who gets caught up in the whole mess. This is a low key thing, the action comes in quick jolts and there’s a kickass canyon car chase with giant trucks but a lot of it is just hazy small town hangin’ our, which is fine too. There’s some great music too sung by the numerous professional musicians in the cast and briefly by Stanton himself. The main thing the film has going for it is a hilarious script by Jeb Stuart, who wrote classics like Die Hard and The Fugitive. He pens some precious one-liners here and I have to give a few quick examples because they are priceless: Kristofferson’s son asks pops if he wants him to ‘take Seagal out,’ and Kris dryly retorts: “You couldn’t take out a cheeseburger from a drive-thru window.” Another instance sees some poor fool try and threaten Steven with: “I’m gonna slap you like a red-headed step child!” Amazing stuff.

-Nate Hill