THE CROW (1994)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

It's axiomatic that adventurous stories of vengeance give rise to more measured dramas about the problematic nature of revenge. Euripides' CHILDREN OF HERACLES wrought social commentary out of the violent myths of the Son of Zeus, while Shakespeare's HAMLET undermined the uncomplicated revenge-plot of the medieval "Amlethus" tale. 

THE CROW, based on James O'Barr's underground comic book, is not the same kind of serious drama as those older works. But both as comic and as movie, it counterpoints the violent action with intense sentiment about what it means to lose friends or family members to the specter of death.

The Detroit of the film is practically a "city of dreadful night," with few signs of life or light. Gangs of murderous thugs rule the city, committing theft and murder as they please, with the broad implication that the Detroit PD has been paid to look the other way. Yet a few good people still persist. An ersatz family-feeling arises between rock musician Eric Draven (Brandon Lee), his girlfriend Shelley (Sofia Shinas), and a little girl, Sarah (Rochelle Davis), whom the couple watch over in the absence of her cocaine-addicted mother. Good cop Albrecht (Ernie Hudson) becomes loosely allied to the trio under tragic circumstances, investigating the case when a gang ruled by the evil Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) has Eric and Shelley killed.

One year later, on "Devil's Night" (the night before Halloween), Sarah still lives with her addict-mother but mourns for her lost family by visiting the graves of Eric and Shelley. When she leaves, a mysterious crow lands on Eric's headstone. Eric breaks out of his own grave, fully restored to a quasi-living being. Confused, he returns to his deserted loft, and there he dons black clothes and his only "superhero mask," white clown-makeup with black markings. He finds that he has an empathic link with the crow, from whom he divines his mission: to wreak divine vengeance upon Top Dollar and his gang.

Director Alex Proyas brings a fine sense of style to the battle-scenes, in which Eric, now immune to permanent physical harm, takes out various freakish gangbangers as the avenger works his way up to the leader. But THE CROW is most distinguished by its displays of honest sentiment, as both Sarah and Albrecht become aware that the dead man they knew has come back to life. Moreover, Eric's powers are not limited to violence. After killing the gangbanger with whom Sarah's mother is entangled, Eric purges the woman of her addiction, making it possible for her to be a mother to Sarah again. That said, the main villain gets the chance to undermine his undead foe's advantage. Top Dollar's skanky sister Myca (Bai Ling) has noticed the presence of the crow that accompanies Eric during his crusades, and so finds the hero's Achilles heel. Yet Eric triumphs in the end, in part by using his emphathic power in reverse, infusing the villain with the same drug-agonies he removed from Sara's mother. The undead hero survives to fight again, although the first film was the only one to do justice to the concept's dramatic themes.

Eric was the role of a lifetime for the son of Bruce Lee, who had only played a handful of roles before landing this part-- and unfortunately, his lifetime was cut short by the mishandling of a prop gun during filming. (Strangely, on a DVD voiceover for the film, the two speakers barely address the subject of Brandon's on-set demise.) Hudson and Davis are excellent, but Wincott scores as one of the best villains of the nineties, in that he's not motivated by mere gain, but by a Sadea desire to wreak chaos. But for the most part, later adventure-films, with or without costumes, made few if any attempts to emulate the mordant poetry of THE CROW.

LUPIN III: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY (2019)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Animation director Takeshi Koike followed up on his 2012 teleseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE with a 2014 OAV, JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE. Both of these iterations of the Lupin III franchise were considerably more serious in tone than the original comics of Lupin's creator Monkey Punch. After roughly five years, Koike got the chance to follow up on his follow-up with two more OAVs focused on selected Lupin characters: GOEMON'S BLOOD SPRAY in 2019 and FUJIKO'S LIE in 2020. 

Structurally BLOOD SPRAY has a strong plot-similarity to GRAVESTONE. In both, the spotlighted character is hired to perform a job unrelated to any of his criminal outings with Lupin. But a formidable opponent appears, using special skills to offset those of the protector. Each character is shamed by his failure but gets a second chance to duel his adversary to the death, this time with Lupin's crew in attendance.

The BLOOD SPRAY script changes up some details. Goemon is hired to protect a yakuza boss from possible assassination while the boss and his gang are aboard a steam ship. Hawk, a red-haired giant of a man wielding twin axes, boards the ship and destroys its engines. However, Hawk isn't after any of the yakuza, but after Lupin and Jigen, who are, apparently without Goemon's knowledge, aboard the ship to rip off the gangster's loot. (Fujiko is aboard ship as well, but her role here is as minor as it was in GRAVESTONE.) The yakuza boss perishes when the ship catches on fire, and the other gangsters blame Goemon for failing in his mission. Goemon accepts the blame and swears to slay Hawk.

Zenigata, who was barely in GRAVESTONE, learns of Hawk's mission and plans to arrest him as well as the Lupin gang, though for some unstated reason the cop's superiors want him to leave Hawk alone. (Since Hawk was an American soldier at one point, he may have become involved in black-ops, so that someone in the American spy-networks ordered "hands off.") Hawk tracks Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko to their hideout. They flee into a nearby forest, but just when the man-mountain has them cornered, Goemon appears and challenges Hawk. To the samurai's shock, Hawk's unique axe-weapons counter Goemon's katana, so that the samurai is both wounded and defeated. By dumb luck, Zenigata appears and gets the drop on Hawk, and the giant refuses to fight a lawman, allowing himself to be taken prisoner. Lupin and his friends escape with the wounded Goemon in tow.

Goemon is doubly shamed and subjects himself to a special cleansing ritual, and though his allies feel for him, they can't empathize with his warrior-ethos and end up leaving him behind while they try to figure who hired Hawk to kill them. In their absence, yakuza gangsters make the mistake of messing with Goemon. Ironically, their interference sparks in him the "sixth sense" he seeks to bring forth in order to combat Hawk. The gangsters die bloodily, except for one Goemon spares, to reaffirm the samurai's intention to continue his honor-bound mission. Hawk breaks out of jail and pursues the Lupin Gang, with Zenigata on his heels. But Goemon gets his second chance at vengeance, and no one needs guess who wins. 

There are no concessions to goony humor here as there was, very briefly, in GRAVESTONE, and Zenigata is played utterly straight, rather than as the comic fall-guy. And even though Goemon is the gang-member being spotlighted here, he remains a fairly standard stoic samurai, used largely to contrast his honorable conduct to the ruthlessness of the yakuza. The "sixth sense" is less a marvelous psychic ability than a temporary boosting of Goemon's already-superlative senses. And the best character-moment stems not from Goemon but from his partners, as they watch him undergoing his mystic ordeal. Clearly, despite their patina of tough indifference, Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko are worried about their comrade, even if Fujiko disengages by refusing to recognize male standards of shame, claiming, "Men are stupid." Lupin and Jigen agree with her but remain to watch the samurai for some time longer, being no less implicated in the masculine codes of honor.   

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Just as the stand-alone movie ROGUE ONE came out between Parts 1 and 2 of the Sequel Trilogy, the second and last standalone appeared between Parts 2 and 3. But unlike ROGUE, SOLO flopped, becoming notorious as the first STAR WARS film to lose money.

I'd very much like to believe the prevalent fan-theory that Rian Johnson's equally bad LAST JEDI damaged the SW brand so badly that audiences turned away from SOLO. But that notion wouldn't accord with the fact that RISE OF SKYWALKER, just a year later, made almost three times its budget-- though that was an underperformance compared to JEDI, which made four times its budget before negative reaction set in. 

I'm sure the Kathleen Kennedy regime did nothing to improve Han Solo's status by killing off the character in FORCE AWAKENS. The bean-counters were perhaps impatient to eject a character who could only be played by the high-ticket Harrison Ford, but it's certainly possible that doing so diminished the heroic dimensions of said character. That said, SOLO also had other problems.

The original script was commissioned, like the script for ROGUE ONE, by George Lucas before he sold the franchise to Disney-- though there wasn't a lot of time between the SOLO commission and the franchise-sale. Lawrence Kashdan, celebrated for his earlier contributions to the SW saga, started the script but then turned it over to his son John-- though I surmise that the basic ideas were all assembled by the time of the torch-passing.

The real fault of SOLO-- and I felt this in my theatrical viewing as well as my recent re-watch-- is that it gave audiences a "space western" with too little emphasis on the "space" part. Possibly the Kashdans thought that, because Han Solo was supposed to be a charming rogue, they ought to follow the example of the "spaghetti westerns" from the sixties and seventies. The heroes of those European oaters were almost entirely mercenary, doing good only incidentally if at all. 

Of course, Han Solo wasn't meant to be quite that dark. All the minutiae about his earlier career gleaned from the original trilogy-- his meetings with Chewbacca and Lando, his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon, and even the Kessel Run-- are on display here, and all the details are meant to prefigure Han's later conversion to the forces of altruism. But though the script constructs a lot of action set-pieces, they prove even more hollow than those of LAST JEDI.

As played by Alden Ehrenreich, Han is a rogue without demonstrable charm. On his homeworld he and girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) break away from a gang, but only Han escapes Correlia while Qi'ra is captured by the occupying Stormtroopers. In quick order, Han joins the military, leaves the military, joins a criminal gang, fails to steal a supply of valuable coaxium, and finally undertakes a larger heist to compensate gang-leader Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Oh, and Dryden's lieutenant is none other than the long missing Qi'ra, so now there's suspense about whether she'll remain loyal to Vos or switch back to her former boyfriend.

I imagine that viewers in the right mood may have been okay with all these pedestrian twists and turns. But I also think it likely that the movie was so ordinary that it never generated any good word-of-mouth. More oddly, SOLO is the least colorful STAR WARS film. Somehow, director Ron Howard and his team managed to make SOLO look much like Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. It's not that bright colors don't exist, but that they're all muted by lots of black and brown hues. And with the exception of Woody Harrelson as Han's sort-of mentor, none of the performers manage to put across anything but very basic acting. The best thing about SOLO is that its failure may have spared audiences more botched "solo" efforts from the regime of Kathleen Kennedy.

ASTERIX AND OBELIX: MISSION CLEOPATRA (2002)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This, the second live-action ASTERIX movie, adapted the comics album ASTERIX AND CLEOPATRA. The album was adapted into a 1968 animated film, reviewed here, and since I summed up the plot there, I won't repeat it here.

Like the albums, and like the previous live-action entry, the plot is kept thin so as to work in more jokes. The heroes, dull witted Obelix and clever Asterix, are once again essayed by Gerard Depardieu and Christian Clavier, although Clavier would be replaced by another actor for the third live-action outing. New writer-director Alain Chabat (who also essays the role of Julius Caesar) replaces the writer and the director from the first film, and if anything he piles on the jokes even more extravagantly than his predecessors. In fact, though in my review of the animated CLEOPATRA I said it was funnier than the album thanks to the use of animated action. But Chabat doesn't let live-action stand in the way of a gag. A notable scene (not in the album or cartoon) pits a hulking male warrior against a petite young girl who's taken the Gauls' magic strength-potion. The result is that she slams her opponent around and spins him over her head just like Popeye vanquishing Bluto.

That said, Asterix and Obelix are a bit like guest-stars in their own movie. Their "mission" is to help the Egyptian architect Edifis build in record time a grand new palace for Cleopatra, (Monica Bellucci). Yet this time the guys don't have any character-arcs of their own, aside from a very minor romantic dalliance for Asterix. (Perhaps this was to make up for Obelix getting a doomed romance in the first film.) The heroes' other main function is to protect the construction site against both the enemy of Edifis (rival architect Artifis) and the Gauls' usual antagonist Caesar. Even the most extensive fight-scene belongs to Edifis and Artifis, who both take the strength-potion and have a bout like something out of DRAGONBALL. I didn't follow how Edifis got hold of the potion, but the fight is one of the movie's high points.

One curious thing about the subtitled version of MISSION that I saw on streaming is that sometimes one can make out the French actors uttering different proper names than the names used by the captions. In one sense this sort of thing happened when the first albums were translated into English, where the French name for the Gauls' druid friend, Panoramix, was changed to "Getafix" for the English speaking audience. Similarly, both Edifis and Artifis have different names in French than in the English subtitles. This quirk isn't bad in itself, but sometimes it makes it hard to look up what actor played what character, going purely by subtitles.

I also commented in my review of the cartoon film that both album and animated flick avoided the adult relationship of the historical Caesar and Cleopatra. But MISSION, though it's mostly clean fun, throws in a quick shot of the two rulers starting to get in on in Cleo's new palace, which was also a pleasant, and reasonably funny, surprise.

LUPIN III: FUJIKO'S LIE (2020)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Technically, the final entry in Takashi Koike's trio of LUPIN III projects continues the plotline in which Lupin and his gang find themselves targeted by assassins-- though not in the usual fashion, since no assassins chase the thieves this time. Instead, by a far-fetched coincidence, one of Fujiko's many moneymaking gambits coincidentally leads the gang to a middleman responsible for abetting, and in some cases, creating specialized assassins. Fair warning: though the Lupin gang naturally comes out on top in dealing with the middleman, his henchmen and his assassin, the mastermind is not disclosed, apart from the vague allusion seen at the end of JIGEN'S GRAVESTONE. Given that allusion, it's possible that Koike never had any intention of executing a final story with said mastermind. Koike may have meant to imply that the brains behind the assassins meets his fate at the end of this film, which *may* take place chronologically after these three short films, as well as Koike's teleseries A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE At any event, in the four years there has been no news of more Lupin III projects by Koike, so FUJIKO'S LIE-- which was completed slightly after the death of Lupin-creator Monkey Punch-- may be Koike's last word on the franchise.

In any case, LIE is also one of the best Lupin iterations thus far.

Fujiko's caper this time is like many others she's pursued separately from Lupin, Jigen and Goemon. (Indeed, Goemon is entirely absent, and no one speaks of him, though logically the only possible outcome of the samurai's confrontation with Zenigata at the end of BLOOD SPRAY would have consisted of Goemon stunning the cop and escaping.) For a period that must be over the course of months, Fujiko works as a maid to Randy, an accountant who works for the firm of rich CEO Codfrey. Fujiko apparently learned somehow that Randy was embezzling huge sums of money from his employer, which the accountant then funneled into a Swiss bank account. In many previous incidents Fujiko ingratiates herself with a mark in order to seduce him and take his riches. But that's not possible this time, because Randy's motive for embezzling is to pay for a heart operation to save the life of his ten-year-old son Gene. Therefore, Fujiko successfully wins the trust of both Randy and Gene (who never knew his deceased birth mother) -- so much so that when Randy learns that Codfrey's henchmen are coming to get their money back, he charges Fujiko with protecting Gene. 

Fujiko and Gene escape Randy's house just before it blows up, and Gene realizes he's just become an orphan. Fujiko then finds out that Codfrey has a unique assassin in his employ: Bincam, a gangly, gray-skinned individual who can't be harmed by bullets and can hurl what looks like clouds of dust from his hands; clouds that can stun or even mesmerize those that breathe in their contents. Fujiko has a brief fight with Bincam and is defeated. However, Lupin and Jigen, who have been investigating Codfrey for their own reasons, show up and help Fujiko escape with Gene-- who, incidentally, is the only one who can access the Swiss bank account now that his father is gone.

Fujiko temporarily holes up with Lupin and Jigen, and Gene, still tormented by the loss of his father, offers to give Lupin the entire fortune if Lupin avenges the death of Randy. Lupin respects the child's attempt to honor his parent, and when Fujiko protests, Lupin wonders if her only reason for helping the child is to make sure she gets her hands on the money.

Lupin, suspecting that Bincam is similar to the assassins sent after his gang (which will be indirectly confirmed), tries to lure Codfrey into a trap, but the affair goes south. Fujiko takes Gene to a cheap motel to hide out. 

The script skillfully plays Fujiko down the middle. At times she seems genuinely concerned with Gene's fate, both because of his bereavement and his medical issues. At other times, she seems totally focused on wheedling the account information out of him. Some reviewers didn't like a scene in which Fujiko bathes with the young boy in a tub. But as far as I can tell, the idea of a mother bathing a child in this way would be entirely appropriate in Japan, even if Fujiko is seeking to play on Gene's need for maternal care. Gene finally does disclose the account number. Fujiko then leaves, claiming that she plans to come back. Gene is left alone in the room, wondering if he made a big mistake.

Fujiko does come back, for reasons not entirely clear until the story's end. However, Japanese police discovered Gene alone, took him away, and (very improbably) remanded him to the custody of Randy's former boss Codfrey. Fujiko infiltrates the CEO's HQ and is captured by Bincam, though she does have the chance to use her sexual attractiveness to confuse the zombie-like specter. Lupin and Jigen show up, battle Codfrey's henchmen, and liberate Fujiko and Gene. But Bincam is still on the loose-- and what happens to the money?

I won't give away all the beats of the ending. Yet any experienced Lupin-watcher should know that all four of the tricky thieves have at times been capable of acting altruistically, though rarely without losing sight of their own monetary bottom-line, so the conclusion won't be a total surprise. Nevertheless, as Lupin himself points out, Fujiko undertakes a mission-- totally unrelated to her scam-- to research Bincam's strange power and to take him down, for no reason but to keep him from ever getting back on Gene's trail. In other words, her act of playing "mother" may have awakened a "mama bear" instinct in her that runs counter to her acquisitive nature. Bincam's supernatural-seeming power is explained as something akin to the old Persian story of "poison maidens" whose bodies get saturated with poisons so as to make them lethal to normal humans. But Fujiko only relates this observation during her solo fight with Bincam-- which is fairly long in comparison to most of the lady thief's blink-and-miss-them combat-scenes. She does triumph mostly through her feminine wiles, but that seems entirely in line with her normal proclivities.

Since I've already referenced THE MYSTERY OF MAMO above, I should add that one of the technical accomplishments of the villain there was cloning, and it's strongly implied that Bincam was a clone, who from childhood has been altered by some technology into a "poison man" killer.

SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Well, if I ever wanted to say that I'd found THE kung-fu film that was most thoroughly out-of-control and incoherent, SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN, directed and adapted (from a Chinese novel) by lead actor Tien Peng, seems to win that honor.

Even a lot of the details of the film's title and character billing are erratic. Of course, a lot of HK chopsockies have many alternate titles. But while the HERMIT title is fairly accurate-- the main hero, in the dub I watched, is named "Silver Hermit"-- an alternate title, THE SILVER SPEAR, seems to combine the first part of the hero's name and the second part of the villain's name, that of "Shining Spear." As for character billing, going by a couple of different online reviews, there must be an alternate dubbed version out there, since it seems that that one cites a totally different English version of the hero's name, while changing the villain's to that of "Silver Spear." But there's still not a good reason to emphasize one of the bad guys, because he happens to be a stooge to the main evildoer.

The first 20 minutes of the film provides the overall setup and is the only comprehensible section before the movie devolves into chaos. A noblewoman named Green Jade, mistress of the Green Jade Villa in "Shaolin Valley," wants to find the greatest martial artist to marry her daughter and inherit the land. Four candidates venture to the valley and meet one another while waiting for a royal entourage to show up. Shining Spear (Tien Ho) offers water for all to drink, but only Silver Hermit (Peng) declines to drink. A strange woman comes bounding through the valley but then disappears, after which the three who drank succumb to poison in the water, though Shining Spear manges to live. When the courtiers arrive, they immediately assume that Silver Hermit poisoned everyone to dispose of his rivals. The accused man goes on the run.

Since Shining Spear survived the poison, Silver Hermit shows up at the former's house to ask for help. There Shining Spear reveals that he was totally responsible for the poison, having taken countermeasures to survive. He also frames the Hermit for the killing of Spear's wife. The royal courtiers show up and attack Hermit, who fights them off and flees. After he leaves, the mysterious bounding girl shows up, and it's revealed that she's the sister of Spear, and that both of them are servants of a master who has some sort of grudge against Green Jade. To serve his cause, the unnamed villain wants Spear to be the one to marry the young heiress.

But after that, everything goes to pot, and Peng's direction becomes aimless and frenetic. For once, it's clear that some of the incoherence stems from Peng trying to adapt sections of the novel, though his inability to be selective results in lots of incidents that go nowhere and characters who seem important but never appear again. For one quick example, a benefactor helps Hermit hide by pretending to be a merchant running a store. But he's also given a "wife," who's a woman without a memory, though she's pretty sure Hermit's not her husband. And then-- that plot vanishes into the ether.

A little interest is generated by the revelation of Spear's master: a vampiric being from Persia who goes by the name "Immortal." His grudge against the Villa is never revealed, though late in the film he has a brief fight with Green Jade, since Immortal says something like, "We meet again." I think that fight is the last time Immortal appears in the story but if he was defeated maybe the scene was omitted from my copy. 

Assorted scenes stitch the rest of the film together, but even the ones with a goofy feel just feel rather pathetic, like a scene where some guy chows down on nothing but raw eggs for some medical reason. Some kung-fu fights are filmed in darkness and hard to see, as if Director Peng was rushing through them. I assumed that "Doris Chen" (often billed as Lung Chung-erh) played the athletic sister of Spear, but HKMDB says she played "Petite Jade," which I suppose might be an alternative name for "Green Jade," since I can't remember any single actress being identified as the prospective bride. The only goofiness for which Peng's not responsible is certainly the creation of the dubbing people: when a Buddhist priest, who is apparently supposed to be speaking the sacred name "Amitabha," says something that sounds like "Amee-tofu."  

I just screened HERMIT yesterday and I've already forgotten the climax. This film makes the nutty FIREFIST OF INCREDIBLE DRAGON look positively linear by comparison.

HONOR ROLL #247

 WONG PING is somewhere in this confused movie, but is she in this poster? Quien sabe?

Perhaps the spookiest Lupin villain ever is the ghoulish-looking BINCAM, but he's not man enough to take out the woman called Fujiko Mine.

CHRISTIAN CLAVIER kicks Asterix.

It might not be all AARON EHRENREICH's fault that movie audiences didn't want to "go Solo" with him.

Once again, GOEMON ISHIKAWA cuts a caper.

A fantasy about overcoming Death took the life of BRANDON LEE.

 

KICK-ASS (2010)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I don't have much more to say about the movie KICK-ASS than I did about the original Mark Millar graphic novel. Millar presented a very schematic idea-- that of an ordinary high school boy who decides to play superhero-- and director/co-scripter Matthew Vaughn followed the schema very faithfully, only riffing a few new scenes along the way.

Though KICK-ASS is replete with the same sort of bloody ultraviolence one might find in a hardboiled adventure movie, the movie like the comic book has enough wry humor thrown into the mix that I judge it to be a comedy. It's one of the most visceral comedies ever made, but it is not, as one ad claimed, "black humor." Black humor is the domain of the irony, the literary locus where most if not all nobility has vanished. There's considerable absurdity to be found in the green-clad Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson) and his more skillful comrades, Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz). But at base, their desire to fight back against the forces of organized crime remains admirable.

In keeping with Millar's design, Kick-Ass is only to function as an amateur crusader because an accident screws up his nervous system, so that he doesn't feel much pain, and replacement of many of his bones with metal rods makes him somewhat more resilient than the average human. Big Daddy, who has a vendetta against a New York drug-dealer, raises his daughter Mindy, eleven years old as the film begins, to become a prodigy in terms of martial combat and weapons-use. The sight of a pint-sized girl-child as a superhero was naturally formulated by Millar to undercut the usual image of heroes who were either teenagers or adults, and Vaughn delivers the combination of bloody action and absurd excess with great elan. 

Johnson and Moretz are the key players and accordingly deliver the best performances. Cage's depiction of Big Daddy seems somewhat off, as if he wasn't all that involved in the character. Most of the support-characters, both high-school teens and ruthless gangsters, are as underwritten here as they were in the graphic novel.

Like the graphic novel, the film is a decently executed formula-work, memorable mostly for Moretz's energetic embodiment of Hit-Girl.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

The creators behind RISE OF THE MACHINES-- director Jonathan Mostow and three writers-- had the very unenviable task of following up the two Cameron movies. To be sure, Cameron himself considered working on a third movie, but no deal materialized, though he advised Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign up if he liked the script. 

Certainly there was nothing wrong in reworking the ending of TERMINATOR 2 to make room for a new storyline, since Cameron had rewritten the ending of the first TERMINATOR to make room for the sequel. My understanding is that after RISE, most iterations referenced only the Cameron movies as "canon." 

RISE takes place ten years after the events of T2, and arguably T2 casts a long shadow over RISE. The plot re-uses the basic idea of two Terminators squaring off, one seeking to kill John Connor, future savior of humanity, and the other seeking to protect him. In both movies the protecting cyborg is of the same model that sought to kill Sarah Connor in the first movie (all said cyborgs being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), but both protectors had been re-programmed to counter an assassin sent by the intelligent computer system Skynet. RISE copies T2's idea that the killing-droid can change its shape due to being made of liquid metal (To be sure, in the first version of RISE's story, the murder-robot had a different set of powers.) This time, instead of John teaming up with his mother Sarah and the protector-cyborg, this time John (Nick Stahl) and the Schwarze-cyborg team up with Kate Brewster (Clair Danes). John, who's remained off the grid since the events of T2, is rather surprised to learn from the cyborg that Kate, a woman he only knew from high school, is his future wife. (John does have an amusing line after seeing Kate shoot down a robot attacker, saying that she reminds him of his mother.)

I think the script delivers lots of good skull-bursting violence, and some of the scenarios are as good as Cameron's best. Like the other films RISE is primarily a chase film, but it puts together a good "third act" when the Terminator reveals that Kate's father, a military man, is involved in the implementation of Skynet. Where RISE dwindles in comparison to the Cameron films is that the character interaction is not as rich. Stahl and Danes have good chemistry, but their arc isn't as strong as the reconciliation between John and his mother (who has passed away prior to the film proper). As for the third Schwarze-cyborg, "he" of course has none of the emotional bond thst the second one, destroyed at the end of T2, sustained with John. Still, Schwarzenegger still imbues the mechanical man with touches of humanity. This Terminator even possesses a touch of existential angst. He doesn't literally care about either John or Kate, but he feels that if he fails in his protective mission, his existence will become meaningless.

The FX-artists succeed reasonably well with all the tricks they give the T-X kill-droid (Kristanna Loken), but this automated assassin never becomes as iconic as the Robert Patrick version. Loken can do all the blank-faced expressions that Patrick could do, but the script didn't give her any comparable moments of quasi-humanity. Since it sounds as if the earliest script focused upon a female assassin, I wondered if this too came about as a reaction to T2. After all, T2 emphasizes how the assassin can unleash many powers to compensate for the superior size of the Schwarze-cyborg. So why couldn't a female assassin also outclass another bulky-bodied warrior, given that Patrick proved that "size did not matter?"  

WARCRAFT (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

I probably would have been moderately entertained had I seen this film in its theatrical run, despite knowing nothing of the video game. The filmmakers spared no expense in bringing this basic D&D project to life, so there was lots of fantastic eye-candy, albeit nothing strikingly original. I can believe the claim by director/co-writer Duncan Jones that the original script was "stale." The trouble is: all he and his co-writer were able to do was pump up the three main characters with little bits of character elaboration, as opposed to reworking the basic conflict to make it more imaginative.

In the dimension of the huge green humanoids called "orcs"-- which I *think* was supposed to harbor a human-like race as well, based on the backstory of the Garona character-- the dominant ogre-like beings are in danger of having their own world destroyed, so with the help of their sorcerer, they invade the human-dominated world of Azeroth and begin seeking to conquer it. Two main male characters, war-chieftain Lothar (Travis Fimmel) and fledgling wizard Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) -- become among the first to alert their fellows to their peril. In due course, the humans gain intel from a "half-orc" woman, Garona (Paula Patton), who looks mostly human except for green skin and a prominent underbite. Having learned of the orcs' desire to take Azeroth for themselves, the humans and their wizards muster defenses, resulting in a lot of swords and a fair amount of sorcery.

One problem with the script is that it broadcasts early on that the very magic the orc-sorcerer is using may rebound upon his people-- and thus, there's not much suspense about this revelation. Lothar, Khadgar and Garona are all mildly appealing, and the actors comport themselves well in these limited roles. But most of the story feels well-worn, and a depressing ending-- possibly meant to set up a sequel-- ensured that WARCRAFT wasn't going to be any sort of competition for LORD OF THE RINGS. I only grant the film "fair" mythicity because it does seek to work out the dynamics of the orcs' warrior-based society, however inadequately.

A MAN CALLED DAGGER (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

The explosion of the superspy genre gave rise to dozens of transitory flicks seeking to coast on the meteoric success of the James Bond franchise.  Most of them are resoundingly mediocre, but if I catch even the cheaper Eurospy films when I'm in the right mood, they have a modest charm, as seen in these two quirky products. However, had I desired to find the decade's most charmless spy-flick, it's probably the American-made A MAN CALLED DAGGER.

Directed leadenly by Richard (STUNT MAN) Rush, DAGGER feels like it was the product of writers who were trying to duplicate the major appeals of the Bond films but had never actually seen one of the pictures. Agent Dick Dagger (Paul Mantee) tries to project an insouciant air, and he comes armed with a few gadgets (an infrequently-used laser beam in his wristwatch supplies the film's only marvelous content). Three or four gorgeous ladies swarm around him, anxious to give evidence as to the superspy's enormous animal magnetism. There's an evil mastermind with some sort of vague world-conquering plan, and he's even served by a hulking henchman, played by Richard Kiel, who would later take on the original superspy in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. But the attitude of the director and the scripters project an utter lack of interest in their material. They were just going through the motions, and didn't care who knew it.

Though Mantee makes a drab secret agent, the film's biggest problem is unquestionably the casting of Jan Murray-- a comedian whom I personally never found funny even in outright humorous works-- as the mastermind Koffman, who was a former Nazi officer but somehow can't put across a decent German accent. I've forgotten Koffman's master plan, though it involved turning human beings into packaged meats. Koffman spends most of the film in a wheelchair until the end, where he suddenly gets out of the chair in order to fight Dagger. Just as he can't come up with a decent master plan, he can't contrive a believable reason as to why he stayed in a wheelchair most of the picture. Murray plays the role in a hammy fashion, perhaps under the impression he was doing some sort of "camp."

I can't think of any good reason to watch A MAN CALLED DAGGER unless one happens to be interested in seeing a particular actor or actress.

VALENTINE THE DARK AVENGER (2017)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

If anyone doubted the influence of the Batman franchise upon cultures outside the sphere called "The West," VALENTINE THE DARK AVENGER would refute that skepticism. Not only in this Indonesian film does a character tell the titular heroine to jump from one moving vehicle to another "like Batman," one of the villain's henchwomen inexplicably wears a Bat-emblem on her shirt.

Of course, imitating Batman doesn't mean that the producers get anything right about the formula. VALENTINE is supposedly based on a character published by "Skylar Comics," which I assume is also Indonesian. The film's introduction of its hero takes place in an Indonesian metropolis named Batavia City (Bat-avia?) and in the same timeframe as the film's genesis, since there's a reference to an event taking place in 2010.

Sri (Estelle Linden) lives with her widowed mother and grown brother. She holds down a job as a waitress while attempting to win roles as an actress (though she's never seen attending casting-calls or the like), and she practices the Indonesian martial art of silat, taught her by her late father. When she defends another waitress from some rough customers, she's spotted by a man named Bano. Bano claims to be a film director, though Sri never sees him with any other personnel but a hair-stylist who doubles as a camcorder-operator.

Bano has a weird proposition for Sri: he wants to make a superhero film, with Sri playing a masked vigilante named "Valentine." However, as publicity for the film before it's even shot, he wants Sri to run around Batavia City in a mask and costume, thwarting minor crimes with her silat-skills. One would think that any sane person would reject such a crazy proposal. But Sri has to agree in order for the script to work, so she does, without even a hint of psychological motivation. Had Sri been shown to be a "danger junkie," that would have provided a very weak justification for her decision, though it wouldn't make her decision any more believable.

Sure enough, the vigilante Valentine spends the next few weeks cleaning up crime in Batavia City, always facing down just two or three thugs at a time and never crossing the path of police. It takes a really long time for Sri to figure out that the two goofballs have an ulterior motive and that they don't plan to make a film at all. Bano, who lost his sister Valentine in a car crash with escaping robbers, wanted to create a real-life superhero in his sister's memory. Sri is understandably honked off by this revelation and quits.

Now, some superhero films have a villain crop up in reaction to a hero's appearance. However, long before Sri dons the costume of Valentine, a villain in black armor, name of Shadow, begins a campaign of terror. Accompanied only by three martially trained henchwomen, he slaughters the occupants of a sex club. Later, Shadow and his lady-thugs take a bank hostage and strap bombs to three of the citizens just to draw the cops out. The innocents don't get blown up, but unbelievably, the high armed city cops invade the bank, and the four evildoers beat them all with their kung fu. 

VALENTINE depicts a world where guns don't count for much, like one of the old modern-day Hong Kong chopsockies. Inevitably Sri puts her concerns over safety aside and dons the Valentine costume again. We also get a subplot about why Shadow's got a hate on for Batavia City, but the villain's motivations are even dumber than Valentine's-- as is the revelation of his true identity.

There's nothing worth seeing about this film but some decently staged fights. If anyone tries to give this VALENTINE to a loved one, the recipient is likely to deem it a poison-pen letter.

Note: though there are no marvelous phenomena here, a coda suggests a sequel with some sort of superhuman character, but I doubt any such film was made. There's also a weird assertion that there's been a catastrophe in VALENTINE's world where many countries have suffered drought and the glaciers have melted, but this may just be one character's wishful thinking, since there's no evidence of such calamities.

WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD (1983)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

In terms of excitement, WARRIOR isn't any better or worse than a half-dozen other post-apoc movies. But writer-director David Worth gets points for taking the usual story in a slightly different direction.

To be sure, Worth was probably largely a hired gun, since the main idea for the film came from Italian producers, and the finished film was first released in Italy under the title, "Vigilante of the Lost Earth." Because a lot of scenes in WARRIOR are fairly loopy-- while all the American films I've seen with Worth as director are very straightforward-- I think it's likely that the Italian producers instructed the American director to stick in various scenes designed to stoke the audience, whether the incidents depicted made much sense or not.

The post-apoc adventure-template provided by 1979's MAD MAX comes down to "Indians vs. settlers," in that the apocalypse-world has been reduced to small enclaves of people, often farmers, whom some band of evil ravagers constantly raid until a hero appears to defend the weak and the meek. WARRIOR is another apocalypse caused by a war involving "radiation," though radiation is only mentioned in the opening crawl and only once does the viewer see "mutants" who were presumably the victims of fallout. Otherwise, this time the destruction of civilization engenders a conflict more like "good mystics vs. Big Brother."

In some desolate part of the future U.S., a tyrant named Prosser (Donald Pleasance) has organized his subjects into "Omega," a dictatorship based on total mental control, either by propaganda or by brainwashing. Not far from Omega is a mysterious realm rendered invisible by a illusory cliffside-wall, where dwell the Elders of the New Way. The head of the New Way, an older man named McWayne, is kidnapped by Prosser's forces and held in Omega, presumably for purposes of brainwashing.

Along comes the unnamed man known as "The Rider" (Robert Ginty), riding his talking motorcycle and fresh from kicking the asses of a gang of wilderness marauders. He crashes into the illusion-wall and breaks into the base of the New Way. When he wakes up, Rider is informed that the Way-ers (including an unnamed character played by Fred Williamson) think that he's "pure of heart" because he was able to pass through the wall at all. They ask this guy they've never seen before to help rescue McWayne. Rider refuses until McWayne's hot daughter Natassia (Persis Khambatta) points a pistol at his privates. Rider then agrees to the mission but asks what he gets out of the arrangement. Natassia's response comprises one of those loopy moments that may've meant more to Italian audiences: she lifts the gun and fires it straight up. Is it her promise to sex up the hero if he cooperates? Who knows?

So Rider and Natassia both don the outfits of Omega's menial laborers and travel through an underground tunnel to infiltrate Prosser's domain. After the brief aforementioned meeting with some mutant scavengers, the heroes enter Omega. In short order they watch an erotic dance by male and female performers, which is apparently a reward to workmen for their service, and then end up watching the execution of two rebels against Prosser's regime. However, when McWayne is brought out to suffer the same fate, Rider and Natassia grab a couple of machine guns and start sbooting guards. With the help of a small plane, Rider escapes with McWayne. Natassia though is captured, and Prosser subjects her to his brainwashing machine.

Here's Loopy Moment #2: McWayne somehow persuades Rider to take him to an area where a bunch of colorfully costumed warriors are fighting one another to be top dog. McWayne also talks Rider into joining the free-for-all, and when he's last man standing, he becomes the de facto leader of the raffish crew. They attack some of the outposts of Omega while Rider makes a frontal assault on Prosser's fortress with that talking motorbike (which, since I've not mentioned it, utters hipster-phrases like "tubular" and "hold on hotshot.') Prosser sends forth an invincible automated battle-truck called Megaweapon, and although the talking motorbike is destroyed, Rider manages to short circuit the big assault-vehicle. 

Somehow Rider rendezvouses with McWayne, and the two of them find their way to Prosser's office. Prosser engages the heroes in banter for a while. During this scene, the viewer may note that Prosser wears one black glove, not unlike Doctor No in the Bond film of that name-- thus providing a slight reminder of Pleasance's own status as a former Bond villain.

Then Prosser unveils his ace in the hole: the brainwashed Natassia. Prosser commands her to shoot both her father and her possible future-lover. Rider, she shoots without hesitation, though by dumb luck she does not kill him. But when faced with the possibility of killing her dear daddy, Natassia empties her gun into evil Prosser.

Omega is thus instantly overthrown and all the New Way-ers celebrate with balloons and confetti (?) But Rider, being the archetypal loner-hero, won't settle down. So he settles for sucking face with Natassia for a couple minutes, and then rides off into the sunset on his rebuilt motorbike, which isn't heard to utter any sassy chat. However, Worth also filmed a coda establishing that Natassia only killed a clone of Prosser, so that the villain is still alive to "strike back" in a sequel-- which never came about.

Kinski is sexy, Ginty displays his laid-back charm, and Pleasance utilizes his silky-smooth voice to convey absolute villainy, so all of those are pluses. The action scenes are anemic and convey no excitement, but in this case at least, I prefer the emphasis on wacky stuff.

HONOR ROLL #246

 PERSIS KHAMBATTA, being combative.

No one would want to be ESTELLE LINDER's Valentine.

PAUL MANTEE, Double-O Dull-Dagger.

So far no dentist has been willing to work on PAULA PATTON's perilous mouth.

It's another Terminator on the loose, with only NICK STAHL to forestall the monstrous mechanism.

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON has no reason to kick about his fame.

INVINCIBLE, SEASON ONE (2021)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I didn't follow Robert Kirkman's INVINCIBLE series, so prior to beginning to watch the Amazon TV show, I read a handful of the earliest comics. and found them to be nothing more than a routine "decompression" comic book.

As soon as I began the first of Season One's episodes, I soon found that the show, helmed by one Simon Racioppa, was at least innocent of the charge of decompression, which would have meant that plotlines unreeled in the slowest manner possible. From that first episode, it's obvious that the producers meant to take full advantage of the animated format. INVINCIBLE fills all eight episodes of its first season with big, honking fight-scenes, which I'm sure Racioppa and his fellows think is all that superhero fans really want. And we're not talking pristine Jack Kirby punch-ups. Body parts go flying, and copious blood flows.

INVINCIBLE, on the face of things, reproduces the archetypal superhero setup of comics' Silver Age, where the daily routine of contemporary Earth is interspersed with the almost constant battles of superheroes and supervillains, with a few alien invasions thrown into the mix. But I said "on the face" because that's all INVINCIBLE replicates: the surface setup. If I were inventing thematic titles for my reviews, I'd have called this one, "No Time For Wonder." Whether it's the title hero, his faux Justice League allies, or villains with colorful names like Doc Seismic and The Mauler Brothers, all lack any emotional context. They're all just gaudy chess-pieces, and they exist to support a pedestrian, badly-structured melodrama.

The title character is Mark Grayson (Steven Yuen), teenaged son of Deborah and Nolan Grayson (Sandra Oh, J.K. Simmons). Though his mother is a mortal human, his father is also the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man. He's also an extraterrestrial, so even though the Graysons were able to interbreed, they're not sure Mark will inherit his father's super-powers. Of course, if he didn't, there would be no story. In due time Mark gets his powers, is trained in superhero-ing by his father, and takes on the persona of Invincible.

Almost as soon as Mark's made his debut, tragedy strikes. All of the Earth's foremost protectors, the Guardians of the Globe, are slain by none other than Omni-Man. Cecil Stedman, director of the Earth-agency that liases with the Guardians, suspects Omni-Man's guilt, but keeps his own counsel due to the killer's almost insuperable powers. With the Guardians gone, a group of adolescent heroes, the Teen Team, must step up and become the new Guardians. Patently, this came about partly so that Invincible would have a bunch of adventure-seeking peers, not least Atom Eve, who in her secret ID goes to the same school as Mark.

All of the characterizations of the main character and his regular cast are, as I said above, "pedestrian." The only one I liked a little bit was Teen Team leader "Robot." Though his fellow crusaders think he's just an intelligent automaton, the body of "Robot" is actually a surrogate for a genius with a deformed body, and a minor arc is devoted to how he tries to make himself a new body, and the romantic course he charts for himself.

The "badly structured" complaint applies to the whole Omni-Man arc. The scripts never give any reason as to why the false hero chooses to eradicate his former allies at that particular time, though his proximate motive is that he's actually an agent of the alien Viltrum Empire. He kills the superheroes with the general idea of softening up Earth for conquest, though there's no indication that Omni-Man's people are anywhere close to invading. Of course eventually both Debbie and Mark find out his true nature, and this leads not only to loads of emotional angst, but also a bloody battle between father and son. Invincible loses the contest, but his father can't quite exterminate the seed of his loins, so he departs Earth, though he comes back for a new arc in the second and last season.

INVINCIBLE is like a huge, intricate ice-sculpture. It looks good on the surface, but there's no heart beneath all that ice.

WRATH OF THE NINJA: THE YOTODEN MOVIE (1987/2003)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

This medieval ninja-movie has a complicated history. It's not a bad little story, but I did rather wish it had been better, to justify reading up on its twists and turns.

Under the name YOTODEN, this narrative originally appeared in Japan between 1987 and 1988 in the form of three separate OVAs, each about forty minutes long. In 1989 the story was cut down to 90 minutes for an English dub, WRATH OF THE NINJA, which saw general release. The dubbed version I watched online was from 2003 and its subtitle indicates that this edition worked in four extra scenes not present in the 1989 version. Not having seen the other versions, I can't draw any comparisons.

WRATH takes place in the historical Sengoku period of Japan, and includes a famous historical personage, Oda Nobunaga, but makes him into a sort of demon-lord. Nobunaga and his allies bring a ninja clan, the Oboro, under their command, and they wipe out three other historical ninja clans. Three individuals from each clan survive and pledge themselves to destroy Nobunaga and his demon hordes.

Roughly the first half hour deals with the three survivors making common cause, though of the three, Ryoma never seems to develop well, though that may be the result of cuts. The other male hero, Sakon, is the first hero seen on screen, just before he engages in battle with the third survivor, female Ayame, though their short fight is broken up when the Oboro attack both of them. Eventually the three gather their forces and meet with other warriors allied against Nobunaga. 

Though there's some decent action and characterization here-- with the latter focused mostly on Ayame-- the edited version I saw often seemed to be marking time until the climactic conflict. One stratagem used-- probably the same as in the OVA format-- was to run down the list of seven badass Oboro villains, all with different forms and powers. Frankly, I was more invested in a subplot in which Sakon showed some romantic interest in Ayame, even though I suspected there would be no happy ending for any of the principals. And indeed, Ayame alone survives the climax. And since the video's advertising spotlights Ayame rather than all three ninja warriors, it could be argued-- for anyone who cares-- that she's the central character here.

INFILTRATOR (1987)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

About a year after director Corey Allen collaborated with Scott Bakula on I-MAN-- an attempt to market Bakula as an eighties TV-superhero on NBC-- the duo tried again, this time on CBS. INFILTRATOR was the better of the two attempts, at least partly because it was shorter and had a better potential romantic arc, but it only became available to the public thanks to being one of several unsold pilots that aired on the CBS SUMMER PLAYHOUSE.

Paul Sanderson (Bakula) is more of a fun-loving eccentric this time in comparison to the solid citizen of I-MAN. Both and a female colleague, Kerry Langdon (Debrah Farentino), work on separate projects at a research facility owned by eccentric genius John Stewart (Charles Keating). But while Kerry's project, that of an advanced space-probe, is going well, Paul's about to lose funding for his invention of a teleportation-technology. 

In addition, Paul's been trying to get friendly with Kerry for some time, but implicitly she regards him as a child-man and refuses to let him get close. Paul, wanting both to impress Kerry and to get her testimony about his project, invites her to see that he's finally succeeded with his invention, but she turns him down, being preoccupied with her own work.

Paul then takes a rash act that makes the scientist of THE FLY seem rational; he teleports himself from his lab into Kerry's lab. He succeeds, but he merges with the space probe known as Infiltrator. Unlike the FLY-guy, Paul initially does not seem to be physically changed. But it doesn't take long to reveal that at times of stress, Infiltrator's computer-brain reacts to stimuli independently of Paul-- such as feeling threatened while driving through busy L.A. traffic. Infiltrator can also change one of Paul's arms into a robot-arm-- one able to shoot lasers, which Infiltrator uses to disable a tailgating truck.

Such transformations pretty quickly trash Paul's easygoing attitude, but ironically, they cause Kerry to become more attentive toward him-- though Paul's not sure who she cares more about: him, or Infiltrator. Paul appeals to Stewart to attempt a separation. However, the blueprints Stewart needs to reverse-engineer Infiltrator's merger have been stolen by a disgruntled scientist, Markus (Michael Bell). So INFILTRATOR follows the same basic plot as I-MAN: newly-minted hero is directed to penetrate the compound of an evil mastermind to neutralize his control of stolen tech. But this time his potential romantic interest goes along, supposedly to monitor the Infiltrator-probe, though as the story proceeds, it's evident that she's begun to have feelings for her alienated colleague.

The actual action of the good guys battling Markus isn't much to speak of; the emphasis is on the horror of Paul transforming fully into a robotic entry. Bakula and Farentino pull off this drama well, and then the story ends with the promise that someday Paul will be cured of his affliction. Two years later, Bakula enjoyed his breakout success with QUANTUM LEAP, and he no longer had to subsist on failed pilots.

WATERWORLD (1995)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

In its day WATERWORLD only made back its high production costs over a long haul, which means that in its general release this "Mad Max at sea" concept would have been deemed a box office failure. Still, it made enough money not to be one of the all-time flops, so I tend to think the project got about the level of success it deserved.

The WATERWORLD script devotes as little attention as the "Max" films did to the reasons for the world's apocalyptic transformation, except for a quick mention that the polar icecaps melted and deluged all of civilization. As in most post-apoc films, only isolated enclaves have survived, this time in the form of artificial "atolls" inhabited by ragtag survivors. The more law-abiding communities keep up a system of trade with "drifters," individuals who uses sailboats to range out into the trackless seas looking for valuable resources or relics from the previous order of things. Many of these atoll-dwellers nurture a myth of "Dryland," a surviving continent not entirely subtmerged, but no such place has ever been discovered.

One such drifter, known only as The Mariner (Kevin Costner), visits an atoll looking for trade. He's meant to be a rough, insular figure, wanting to mingle with other humans as little as possible, even after he meets lissome Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn). Unknown to the Mariner or the other atoll-dwellers, a child named Enola (Tina Majorino), under the guardianship of Helen, bears a tattoo on her back that may be a map to the location of Dryland. A spy for the Smokers-- pirates outfitted with speedboats-- learns Enola's secret and relays it to the pirates' leader, The Deacon (Dennis Hopper).

Under complicated circumstances-- which, among other things, reveal that the Mariner is a mutant who can breathe water-- Helen and Enola join The Mariner on his trimaran when the Smokers attack the atoll. The better part of the film focuses on the slow process by which The Mariner is socialized by being stuck with two females on his sailcraft, while at the same time all three seek to ward off attacks from the Deacon's followers. Eventually, the Mariner and the Deacon face off, one against a small army of raiders, and things blow up real good. Perhaps inevitably, Dryland is indeed found, though the script doesn't deal with just how much land there is, and what may happen when the inhabitants of the atolls start migrating en masse to the flourishing continent

The FX and the action-scenes are WATERWORLD's best features, and probably can be largely credited to director Kevin Reynolds, though reportedly Costner threw his star-weight around on directorial choices and caused a rift between the two creators. But one thing Costner could not alter: he simply was not able to bring off the "antiheroic" aspects of the Mariner's character. The actor tries with might and main to look as if he's bristling with feral attitude, suspicious of everyone, at least partly because of his mutant heritage. Yet even though The Mariner suggests drowning Enola to save on resources, and even though he does throw her overboard in a fit of pique, there's never really any doubt that he'll turn back the trimaran to rescue her. There's no doubt that the Mariner's cold, cold heart will eventually be warmed by the insertion of two females into his isolation because Costner was just not able to project real spiritual darkness. That said, Tripplehorn and Majorino bring a lot of verve to their simple roles, and Majorino was particularly good in her ambivalent reactions to a potential "father figure" in her young life-- though someone, be it Costner or a scripter, couldn't resist recycling the ending of SHANE here. And just to spread some of the blame for the film's failures elsewhere, Hopper's Deacon is no prize either, as he utters assorted phrases so anachronistic that they took me completely out of the world-of-water.

Once or twice, the Mariner seems to possess a certain affinity with the ocean that goes beyond the limitations of the average post-apoc hero. It might have worked better to have portrayed the hero as someone as being divorced from the standards of commonplace humans because of his seagoing nature, rather than just trying to put across ceaseless bad attitude. But you don't always get what you need.

SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER (1975)

 

Going to the other extreme is Gene Wilder's first effort as both writer and director, 1975's THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER. The premise is that the Great Detective didn't have just one other brother-- (the well-chronicled older brother Mycroft, who makes frequent appearances in Sherlockiana-- but also a younger one named Sigerson. Sigerson (Wilder) has also taken up the role of a consulting private detective in imitation of his more famed brother, but he hasn't precisely set the world on fire.

Sherlock himself, in concert with Doctor Watson, seeks to protect a valuable item, the Redcliffe Document, from falling into the hands of the evil Professor Moriarty. The Wilder script doesn't trouble itself with the threat presented by the document-- which is no more than your basic Hitchcockean "MacGuffin." In any case, Sherlock decides to use Sigerson as a decoy by sending him a case: music-hall singer Jenny (Madeline Kahn), who knows more than she admits about the blackmailer who plans to sell the document to Moriarty. Sherlock also sends Sigerson his own assistant, Orville Sacker (Marty Feldman),

In the tradition of the Mel Brooks comedies that had contributed to Wilder's fame, SMARTER is filled with wild slapstick scenes, many of which spoof the tropes of Sherlock-fiction. Overall the film holds together better than most Brooks-imitations-- including many of those Brooks himself made in his later years. The best scenes take place between Wilder, Khan, and Feldman-- who had worked together in 1974's YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN-- and to Wilder's credit, his portrait of the frenetic, overcompensating Sigerson remains persuasive.

On the negative side, other performers have little to do but to mug and to beat on each other, a particular example being an overlong scene between Leo McKern (as Moriarty) and Dom DeLuise (as Gambetti, an opera-singer who's also the blackmailer with the document). As might be expected, in the end Sigerson manages to remove himself from the shadow of Sherlock, engaging the Great Detective's arch-villain in a spirited swordfight.

There's only one element in the film that qualifies it for metaphenomenal status: a scene in which Sigerson and Sacker are imprisoned in a small room which has been rigged with a moving buzzsaw, set to chop any inhabitants to ribbons. However, while some versions of Moriarty have used assorted uncanny devices, like the trap-filled house in SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK, this "guest room" is actually the possession of Gambetti. Wilder's script does not explain why an opera-singer would just happen to have a buzzsaw-execution room in his domicile.