FILM REVIEW 

Blue Streak (1999)

A not so memorable entry for this week’s Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

There is perverse satisfaction in doing the very things that you don’t want to do, like watching a Martin Lawrence film, Blue Streak (1999), and making it worse by watching a Vince Vaughn movie, The Break-Up (2006), soon after. But then, those are the perils of taking a month-long break from blogging and having free access to the remote. You do all kinds of silly things. It’s not as if there’s nothing more worthwhile to do. As Groucho Marx would say, “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

Lawrence is a funny actor though he’s not so funny when he makes faces and big eyes while talking. It might be his trademark but if you eat with your mouth closed, you ought to talk without twisting your face, unless you’re Rowan Atkinson or Jim Carrey. Comedy suits Lawrence though not as well as it does Eddie Murphy whose Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and The Distinguished Gentleman never fails to amuse even today.

I can’t think of a Lawrence film I’d watch twice with the exception of Wild Hogs (2007), a riot of a film whose singularly impressive feature is, incidentally, not Lawrence but the combined performance of all four including his three road-hog buddies, William H. Macy, Tim Allen, and John Travolta. Of this crazy lot Macy steals the show, Travolta proves he can do comedy, and baddie Ray Liotta sneers like a hyena till curtains down.

Blue Streak is an average film which, barring a few one-liners and a hyperactive Lawrence, fails to live up to its “comedy” tag. The story is unconvincing but passes muster because I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously.

Miles Logan (Lawrence) and his cronies are burglars who steal a large diamond but their near successful heist is marred at the last moment following double-cross by one of the crooks and the arrival of cops. Just before his impending arrest, Logan hides the diamond in the air vent of an under-construction building and makes a mental note of the place he hid it in. Two years later, Logan returns to the site of the old building, to retrieve his precious stone, and is shocked to find a swanky LAPD police station in its place. Now the only way to go after the diamond is to pose as a cop. 

Martin Lawrence and Luke Wilson in a scene from the film.

This is where the plot defies logic: Logan gets an elderly acquaintance to forge documents and produce an authentic shield (police badge) and walks right into the police station, suckering everyone including police chief Rizzo (Graham Beckel) and fellow detectives Carlson (Luke Wilson) and Hardcastle (William Forsythe) and going on to head the homicide division, a dubious position he earns because, rather unintentionally, he uses his own experience as a crook to catch other crooks.

One reason I did not like Blue Streak, directed by Les Mayfield, is the use of needless profanity which I have come to associate with a Martin Lawrence film. Here’s a sample:

Logan: “Hey, this is the police. Move your busted-ass vehicle. Move, move, move, move. This is the LAPD. We'll pop one in your ass. We got guns and shit.”

Tulley (his accomplice): “I'll rip your lips off, and kiss my ass with them shits. I'll rip your tongue out, and lick my balls with it.”

Logan: “What are you gonna do with one shoelace? Floss your ass with it!”

Now that last line might actually seem funny but it isn’t. The next time I have the remote, I am going to remember Grouch’s words and promptly act upon them.

Slaughter, Cronin, and Shute

Ron Scheer, an authority on early western books and films which he reviews on his fine blog Buddies in the Saddle, has written about his search for a copy of The Mantle of Red Evans (1914) by Hugh Pendexter. So far the western novel has been elusive. A copy of the book will eventually turn up.

In my own experience, a hard-to-find book often shows up unexpectedly, sometimes right under my nose. Three such examples are the voluminous The Penguin Book of Comics by George Perry and Alan Aldrige (1967) and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favourite Comic Book Heroes by Les Daniels (1995), and the western paperbacks of Sudden by British writer Oliver Strange. These books are never easy to find in India.

Ron’s search for Pendexter’s book got me thinking about some of the books I have been looking for. Regular visitors to this blog will be familiar with my predilection for the novels of Frank G. Slaughter, A.J. Cronin, and Nevil Shute. For some time now, I have been looking for three specific novels written by these gentlemen. As far as I know, they are not available online, in the copyright-free domain. I should, however, like to read hard copies of all three, especially Slaughter and Cronin. 

Frank G. Slaughter is an American writer and physician who is best known for his historical (mainly biblical) and medical novels. His The Thorn of Arimathea (1960) ranks among my favourite Slaughter books yet. It is the romantic story of a sceptical Roman centurion who finds love and faith in Galilee and how he and his petite consort, Veronica, spread Christianity in England. All his dramatic and inspiring stories are written in old-school English. His descriptions of places and landscapes will leave you spellbound. His style reminds you of Lloyd C. Douglas, his predecessor and another great writer of historical fiction whose The Robe and The Big Fisherman were made into successful films.

The Slaughter novel I am looking for is That None Should Die (1941), his first work of fiction, which examines the healthcare system through his own experiences as a doctor. 

I was introduced to Scottish novelist and physician A.J. Cronin by an uncle who demolished my plans to read Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace at the age of 16. “Wait till you are 20 before you read those authors. Read Cronin, instead,” he said to me. I nodded and like an obedient schoolboy borrowed Beyond This Place (1953) from a circulating library. It is the dark and touching story of a son who fights against the odds to prove his father is innocent of the murder he has been convicted for. I read this novel in the early 1980s and liked it a lot and I want to read it again. 

British author Nevil Shute’s novels are associated with everyday people whose fictional lives are set in the backdrop of aviation and aeronautics, his vocation during WWII, on one hand and the Australian outback on the other. He has a simple and effective style and it is easy to identify with his portrayal of middle class families. The last of his books that I read was Beyond the Black Stump (1956) which got me interested in his most famous work, On the Beach (1957), which is about the horrific effects of nuclear war. I may or may not have read this book earlier. Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner starred in the 1959 film adaptation. 

In addition to my perpetual hunt for books by Frank G. Slaughter, A.J. Cronin, and Nevil Shute, I don’t think twice before buying the early paperbacks of several authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Paul Gallico (who wrote The Poseidon Adventure), William Faulkner, Oliver Strange, Henry Denker, C.S. Lewis, George G. Gilman, Alan Sillitoe, Louis Auchincloss, Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, and Erle Stanley Gardner. 

Who are the early authors whose books you have been seeking out? And how successful have you been in obtaining them? I am hoping to educate myself with your feedback on your search for the elusive book. I bet it’s one I have never heard of before.

The Next Three Days, 2010

For links to more overlooked films and television this Tuesday, check out Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

It’s a coincidence that this post about Russell Crowe’s The Next Three Days (2010) coincides with his 49th birthday tomorrow, April 7. It was one of many films I watched on television during my recent leave of absence from blogging. I had never heard of this movie before and when I saw it, on STAR Movies last month, the New Zealand-born actor climbed still higher in my esteem. I’d rate his role as John Brennan, the distraught husband of Lara Brennan (Elizabeth Banks) who is arrested and convicted for the murder of her boss, as one of his best. This is a relative term for one whose performance never fails to captivate the viewer.

Like most actors Russell Crowe has a trademark screen persona: he is niggardly with words, he has a quiet intensity about him, and he is awkward. He is no different in The Next Three Days made by Canadian director Paul Haggis (of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and Casino Royale fame).

In this film, Crowe’s character, John Brennan, is a family man who loves his career wife Lara and their little son Luke. Everything is fine until one morning when the police swoop down on their happy home and whisk Lara away. She is charged with killing her boss and is sentenced to near life imprisonment in Alleghaney County jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The evidence against her is clinching or so we are told. John and Lara await the verdict on the appeal even as their lawyer tells them that there is no hope.

Over the next three years, John raises their son, with the help of his father George Brennan (played by the ageing Brian Dennehy) and mother Grace Brennan (Helen Carey), and teaches English at a local college. Between his personal and professional obligations, John never misses a chance to visit his wife in jail and tell her all about their growing son.

As the months pass into years, emotions run high, tempers flare up, and a depressed Lara attempts suicide. In one poignant moment, Lara, who can’t accept her fate, tells John what if she really did kill her boss. John stares at her in disbelief. On his next visit, he tells her that he knows she didn’t murder the woman and nothing she says will ever make him feel otherwise and vows to get her out.

A large stretch of the film has John planning Lara’s escape from the airtight prison. But, before he carries out his elaborate, and often reckless, scheme, he seeks guidance from Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson), an ex-convict who tells him what he stands to lose…should he, god forbid, fail.

“But before you do anything, you have to ask yourself if you can do it. Can you forget about ever seeing your parents again? Can you kill a guard? Leave your kid at a gas station? Push some nice old lady to the ground just because she gets between you and the door? Because to do this thing, that's who you have to become. And if you can't, don't start, 'cause you'll just get someone killed.”

The Next Three Days, an allusion to the last three days before Lara Brennan is transported to another prison hundreds of miles away, is Russell Crowe’s film all the way. No other actor, not Elizabeth Banks, not Brian Dennehy, nor anybody else, matter in this extraordinary film. You think you know what the end is going to be like and yet you are not quite sure. Not when John Brennan buys a gun for the first time in his life and says, “Show me where the bullets go.”

Watch it.

A life beyond blogging

It is 10 days since I put out the “no blogging” sign and it might well be another week or 10 days before I decide to return to active blogging. I am enjoying my freedom. The dental work is not yet fully complete though I can chew from both sides of the mouth. It is nice to be able to do that again, feels like a rebirth. I still need to recharge my batteries some more. I am working on it, by meditating and staying positive as is humanly possible, listening to music, keeping away from the computer after office, watching a little television and an occasional movie, having an early dinner and going for a walk, reading a page or two from a book every night, and turning in early.

Speaking of books, I am still reading the three books I was reading last month and I have now added The Phantom Lady by Carter Brown to the lot. At this point I still don’t know which book I am going to finish first. My reading of books has taken a backseat but as long as I enjoy doing what I am doing I don’t mind. I have allowed books to hold me to ransom for long and it’s time to call a page a page. The books always win.

I also revived my interest in short stories during this period. They are easier to read. You read two or three stories consecutively and you, indeed, feel like you have put a novel out of the way. The flavour of the week has been P.G. Wodehouse beginning with The Man Upstairs and Other Stories—something to smile and laugh about—and a few stories by Rex Stout whose mystery novels I am guilty of having never read. I read these during the office lunch break though I can read them any time from 10 am to 6 pm, between writing a news report and editing copy and “doing” the pages. Journalism comes with a lot of incidental perks. 

I also watched Jack the Giant Slayer in the theatre. The family had the knives out for dragging them to watch this ridiculous film where Bill Nighy looked equally ridiculous as the near two-faced giant chief and where the talented Stanley Tucci tried hard to resurrect his flagging career as the evil-minded royal advisor and betrayer. I think his character died before interval, I don’t remember. The original plan was to see Zero Dark Thirty, hence the knives.

On television, I watched Crimson Tide (for the third time) because I liked the standoff between Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington, inside a US nuclear submarine under water; Wrath of the Titans which had most of the Greek gods pouring out of it, starring Liam Neeson as Zeus, Ralph Fiennes as Hades, Sam Worthington as Perseus, Bill Nighy as Hephaestus, and Rosamund Pike as Andromeda; Enchanted, a rather silly fairy tale with Susan Sarandon, Patrick Dempsey, Amy Adams, Timothy Spall, and James Marsden also trying, in vain, to revive their careers; Unstoppable, a runaway train with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine on board; and Ratatouille, the most beautiful animated film I have seen this century. It’s also probably the best culinary film in many decades, not that I remember seeing many, though Chocolat starring Juliette Binoche, Alfred Molina, Judi Dench, and Johnny Depp was an excellent film. 

Until now it’s been easy to hammer out 564 words and saying little of substance. I will make up for the inanity by leaving you with some of the finest lines I have heard in an animated movie, intoned by Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), the terrifying food critic in Ratatouille. It’s also a fine piece of writing. Check it out.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the "new". The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook." But I realise, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist "can" come from "anywhere". It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."

Hooray! No blogging!

I won't be blogging for a few days owing to a protracted dental treatment and the need to recharge my batteries. However, I will be visiting blogs and leaving comments as often as I can. And I will be back before you know it.

FILM REVIEW

The Descendants and The Dilemma (2011)

Released in 2011, these two films strictly don't make the Overlooked Films grade at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom this Tuesday. If they do it's because I overlooked them.

Sunday night, I went to bed after watching Matt King (George Clooney) agonise over the secret affair of his dying wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) and the gulf between him and his two daughters in The Descendants. I thought I’d wake up just before 6 am, Monday, do yoga, have a cup of tea, and catch the Oscars live. I overslept, though the milkman rang twice. Instead, I watched a recording of the Academy Awards at 8 pm and missed out on a rerun of the very enjoyable Everybody Loves Raymond at half past eight.

The half-hour or so of red carpet stayed true to the cobwebbed script and then the greatest show biz on earth started. Seth MacFarlane, a young man with gleaming white teeth (an Oscar for his dentist, please), came on stage with a quiver full of bawdy jokes and ill humour. I have absolutely no idea who MacFarlane is. I googled and discovered that he is an “American actor, voice actor, animator, screenwriter, comedian, producer, director and singer.” I still don’t know who MacFarlane is. I wonder if he thinks he looks like Gene Kelly. 

Ten minutes into the MacFarlane-Shatner enterprise and I was shattered enough to switch channels. I caught Alexander Payne’s The Dilemma on HBO and this time around found Ronny Valentine (Vince Vaughn) agonise over the secret affair his best friend and business partner Nick Brannen’s (Kevin James) wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) is having with a complete stranger.

Two men torturing themselves over the extra-marital affairs of two of the most trusted people in their lives. Another man tormenting millions of viewers from Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The week had ended and begun on one heck of a note.

Just the previous night, I had seen Clooney, a Hawaiian land owner in half pants and seemingly without a shave or bath for days, trying to come to terms with his comatose wife’s fling with real estate agent Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard). She is off life support, as per her will, and is about to die. Clooney decides that the only way to get over the pain of betrayal is to confront her lover and ask him to say a final goodbye to his wife while she is still alive (who does that? Clooney is nuts!). Instead, his wife Julie Speer (Judy Greer), who I mistook for Tilda Swinton, lands up at the hospital and, between loud sobs, forgives her for sleeping with her husband. 

Give the man a break, will you? I mean, look at Clooney. Inside Dolby Theatre, he looked like he hadn't shaved since attending his ‘wife’s funeral’ and ‘making up with his daughters.’ On top of it, you have MacFarlane (above) jabbing him with sexual innuendos over poor nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis, nominated for Best Actress for Beasts of the Southern Wild, and throwing a small whisky bottle at him.

Clooney was actually smiling. What could he do? He was in the front row. Well, he could have thrown his shoe at MacFarlane. Angry Indians often fling their shoes and chappals at politicians and ministers.

Meanwhile, Seth MacFarlane’s audacious ‘boob’ number, in spite of its deft execution, was enough to make me switch back to The Dilemma where Vince Vaughn, who is living in with Beth (Jennifer Connelly), is fighting his own demons—to tell or not to tell Kevin James the bitter truth about his wife. The delay in opening up to his best friend lands Vaughn in trouble with family and friends.

Vince Vaughn is tall, big, and loud while Kevin James is short, fat, and quiet, but they click together, even though Vaughn grabs all the attention like a spoilt child. They reminded me of that other long-and-short couple, Will Smith and Kevin James, in Hitch. You wonder if director Ron Howard was reliving a successful formula.

The Descendants and The Dilemma with a somewhat common thread are reasonably good films that you can watch if you have a lot of free time or, better still, avoid agonising over Seth MacFarlane’s emceeing at next year’s Oscars.

BOOK REVIEW

The Hessian by Howard Fast (1972)

American novelist Howard Fast is a wonderful storyteller. Like Jeffrey Archer across the Atlantic. Many of their books, especially Fast's, have historical and biblical significance; their stories are plain and simple, yet compelling; their narrative and substance is devoid of hyperbole; and their characters are extraordinary in an ordinary sort of way.

Howard Fast died in 2003 but I refer to him in present tense because of his impressive body of work comprising some 50-odd novels that include the Masao Masuto Mysteries under the E.V. Cunningham pseudonym and a few works of non-fiction and short stories. I haven't read many yet.

I read Howard Fast books many years ago and, I think, The Hessian is his first book I read this century. It turned out to be an educative and entertaining read, a fictional account of what might have been a factual event.

Author Howard Fast
© Wikimedia Commons

The Hessian is set during the American Revolutionary War or the American War of Independence in the second half of the 18^thcentury. The Hessians were German soldiers hired by the King of England to fight against the 13 colonies that revolted against Great Britain’s rule. The Hessians were so called because a majority of the soldiers came from the Hesse region of Germany. They were called “mercenaries” by the American colonists.

The Hessians wore boots and shining black hats and green jackets with bright yellow facings, sported waxed moustaches, and carried bayonet scabbards that slapped against their thighs. The sight of the Hessians, as they marched in tandem with the beat of drums, sent chills down the spines of their opponents.

The story in The Hessian is narrated in the first person by Doctor Evan Feversham, a colonel in the Continental Army (a precursor to the United States Army) during the American Revolution. He is a Catholic from England and married to a Protestant woman. He lives with her community and practices medicine on the Ridge in Connecticut, in the New England region.

A detachment of 16 Hessians preceded by a youthful drummer boy named Hans Pohl and their commander Wolfgang Hauser disembarks from a British frigate and marches towards the Ridge. They belong to the Jäger Regiment, a German light infantry unit.

Hessian soldiers
© Wikimedia Commons

As the troops make their way towards the Ridge, they meet Saul Clamberham, an orphaned and oversized halfwit, and hang him to a tree. The lynching is witnessed by Jacob, the 12-year old son of farmer Raymond Heather, a Quaker, who lives on the Ridge with his family.

The news of Saul Clamberham’s killing spreads through the Ridge. In no time Squire Abraham Hunt, the rigid and influential Yankee aristocrat and chief of the local militia, leads a band of armed men in ambush of the Hessians and kills them in cold blood, even as Doctor Feversham, his medical kit in hand, watches in horror and helplessness.

In the mayhem, Hans Pohl, the drummer boy, is seriously wounded but manages to escape and is eventually sheltered by Raymond Heather’s courageous and compassionate Quaker family which, apart from his son Jacob, includes his wife Sarah and 16-year old daughter Sally.

As Doctor Feversham treats and heals the drummer boy, he realises the enormous sacrifices made by the Quaker family in protecting Hans Pohl, the surviving Hessian. He is nursed back to health by Sally who falls in love with him. This is their story.

Meanwhile, Squire Hunt, who has certain differences with Doctor Feversham, is desperately hunting for the drummer boy so they can try him for murder of Saul Clamberham and hang him. The Squire and the small New England community he represents believe in an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth because they know no other way in war. Theirs is a land without mercy.

If I go any further, I’ll have to sound a spoiler alert.

This period image shows Hessian soldiers as heartless warriors.
© www.ushistory.org

While the hunt for the sole survivor of the brutal Hessian massacre on one hand and a beautiful girl’s love for the drummer boy on the other form the main plot of The Hessian, there are several elements in the story that I found interesting.

For example, narrator Doctor Feversham has seen the worst of war and he is in a perennial state of mental conflict over what is right and what is wrong, frequently brooding over the “desolate wasteland” of his life and the “meaningless fragment” he has become on the Ridge. The Heather family’s kind attitude towards Hans Pohl and their willingness to take him as their own reveals to him the goodness in people, in this case the Quakers on the Ridge.

Feversham, a Catholic, is unable to come to terms with the Protestant community’s hunger for Hans Pohl’s blood even as his wife Alice tries to clear his misgivings by stating, “We are not barbarians, Evan, we are plain Christian people who were persecuted and driven for a hundred years before we came to this land.” A bitter Doctor Feversham remains unconvinced.

Squire Abraham Hunt is determined to hang the surviving Hessian even as he battles his conscience, indicated subtly in the overall narrative.

Doctor Feversham’s unspoken and undeclared love for Sarah Heather adds to his emotional conflict but he remains loyal to his American wife, Alice, who knows he continues to harbour feelings for the Quaker woman.

At 219 pages, The Hessian is a poignant and compelling story but it lacks the intensity, particularly the avowed passion between Hans Pohl and Sally Heather, which one might expect at the start of the book. Instead, the narrative focuses more on Doctor Feversham’s inner battles that rage in the backdrop of a war that has thought man to hate and to kill. Although the story moves at a fairly dramatic pace, you can guess the events as they unfold right up to the end. Nonetheless, Howard Fast has written The Hessian in his inimitable style, a unique historical story told in a beautiful way.  

Notable lines from the book

“Believe me, there are no better soldiers in the King’s army than the Hessians and it was no great risk for them to come up onto the Ridge with sixteen muskets.”

“God damn that,” I cried. “Every soldier who set foot from a ship onto our soil killed for hire—Hessian, British, French, Scot! What damn difference does it make? They all kill for hire! This whole filthy game is played for hire! I’m only asking you not to make us like them, to show some Christian mercy!”

“No one in his right mind wants war in his back yard, and since the war was down in Virginia now, only a damn fool would take measures to introduce it into Connecticut.”

“What eats you, Feversham? You were a soldier, I was a soldier. When we fought the big battle on the other side of the Ridgefield, there were ten times that many dead, and not Germans either but our own kids. You want me to weep for them?”