A Snapshot Mini-Review: Rapid Fire

Scanning my reviews you’ll notice I use a lot of pictures. I like pictures. You can look at them and stuff. And because I was pressed for time when expressing my thoughts on this movie, I decided to up the ratio on visuals to accompany text. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Also, I’m lazy.
 
When most people recall the short lived legacy of Brandon Lee, they think of him in The Crow. I can understand the sentiment. It was the film that indirectly took the actor’s life. And not just any film, but a rock-gothic comic book fantasy about a musician who is killed then reborn – heavy on pathos and romance and spiritualism, with Lee’s ghostly image forever engraved in celluloid. In retrospect the film and its star seemed fated for one another. I really like The Crow. It’s silly but equally sincere and made stylistically memorable by director Alex Proyas. But I’m not here to talk about that film. In his brief career Lee managed a B-action movie called Laser Mission with Earnest Borgnine, which he then followed up with the homoerotic Showdown in Little Tokyo opposite Dolph Lundgren. After signing a multi-picture contract with 20th Century Fox, Lee’s first tailor made vehicle to stardom was the 1992 Rapid Fire.

Two apposing drug lords, Chicago mafia boss Antonio Serrano (Nick Mancuso) and Chinese opium kingpin Kinman Tau (Tzi Ma), go to war over power. Serrano makes the first strike when he and his goons pay a visit to Tau’s west coast associate in Los Angeles and assassinates him at a Chinese democracy pro-activist party. The murder is witnessed by Jake Lo (Lee), a college student attending the party who, after being rounded up by the FBI, is blackmailed to testify against Serrano in Chicago. Soon after his arrival to the windy city, Jake himself is targeted by corrupt federal agents turned hit-men. He kills one in self defense but none-the-less ends up on the run from local law enforcement, until he comes under protection by a hard-ass cop Mace Ryan (Powers Boothe). Jake is recruited by Ryan and his partner Karla Withers (Kate Hodge) to help bring down once and for all both Serrano and Tau.

I have yet to decipher the meaning of the film’s title. Lethal Weapon refers to Mel Gibson’s de facto registered status. Steven Seagal was Hard to Kill after waking from a seven year, gunshot induced coma, then later Marked for Death by voodoo Rastafarians. Wesley Snipes was Passenger 57 aboard a hijacked commercial airliner. How the title Rapid Fire relates to its plot or Brandon Lee’s character is beyond me. What exactly is being fired rapidly? Guns? I reckon that makes well enough sense, though considering the film’s weapon of choice is punching and kicking, maybe they should have called it Rapid Striking or Rapid Punching and Kicking or Delivering Foot to Guy’s Face Rapidly. Whatever. I have nothing to bitch about, because Rapid Fire is a pretty rad title. And you know what? This is a pretty rad movie.
 
There’s nothing quite like a no fussy streets of Chicago action flick where mobster thugs still sport ponytails, where boozy middle-aged detectives screech corners in their late ‘80s Ford Crown Victorias and where a foot chase eventually leads to someone jumping an ‘L’ track. The plot to Rapid Fire is crudely abridged and has more holes than something that has a lot of holes in it. But it also has a scene where Brandon Lee drives his motorcycle through an art gallery, so fuck you, Syd Field!

Lee does all kinds of cool shit in this movie. Of course, I’ve always thought tragic the actor’s untimely death, though usually on a more objective level. But only after revisiting this film and being reminded of his then potential does the tragedy fully register. The guy was a natural born action star – an incredible fighter on screen, charismatic, hansom as hell and quick with the one-liners. Lee was one of those rare birds who succeeded as an action hero with charming personality instead blank-faced excessive testosterone. The usual lead in these type films are ex-special forces or rogue cops, but Lee’s character is just this nonchalant art student who scores points with hot nude models by drawing them next to dragons.

Still, when the time comes to throw down, the guy is a one-man Jeet Kune Do factory, and his distribution is this:



Checkmate, motherfucker.

Rapid Fire has lots of guys pointing shotguns.

Within this recurring motif is a totally awesome scene where Lee dodges one 12-gauge blast by back-flipping over a stooge-turned-human-shield then delivering a pump action deathblow of his own.

  

Being the two coolest guys in the movie, Lee and baritone drawl Powers Boothe inevitably become conflicting buddies; the dutiful senior man against the iconoclastic youth. Rest assured, one ends up punching the other, but it all works out in the end.

Also throw into the mix Kate Hodge as the mediator. Lee doesn’t draw her any dragons but he does stop by her place to show her his venerable side (his paps got wiped out at Tiananmen Square) as ‘Can’t Find My Way’ by hair-rock band Hardline creeps up on the soundtrack. Rest assured, the deal is closed:

 

Let’s see, what else is there… Oh, yeah, action movie cult legend Al Leong plays Tau’s No. 1 hench, Minh, who announces the film’s biggest fight scene à la Darth Maul. Short compact Asian dudes are to be feared and, being one, Leong is not just sneaking candy bars from behind the counter or delivering electroshock sponge baths this time around. No, sir. The famed Fu Manchu-stached stuntman takes center stage and gives Mr. Lee a serious run for his money. These kinds of fight scenes are what it’s all about. The two men exchange a complex, blink-and-you’ll-miss vocabulary of inside strikes, blocks and counterstrikes, and they do so without ever saying a word.

What follows shortly thereafter is a game ender between Jake Lo and Tau that takes place on the Chicago ‘L’ track I mentioned earlier. Need I say more? It doesn’t take a psychic to predict the outcome of such a fight. One of two things will happen: 1) the bad guy is gonna get electrocuted, or 2) the bad guy is gonna get creamed by a train. Well, that’s what make’s Rapid Fire a real treat: we get both.

I'll let you imagine the rest.

This movie closes accordingly with a bunch of emergency vehicles gathered out front and where one wounded good guy, Boothe, gives a thumbs up as he’s loaded into an ambulance and the other good guy, Lee, throws his arm around the girl and the two share some quick banter and everything’s peachy – roll credits to ‘I’ll Be There’, yet another song from Hardline.

I really wish Brandon Lee hadn’t bought the farm so young. The ‘90s could have been for him what it was, up to that point, for chaps like Stallone and Seagal and Van Damn. But I think he, much like is father before him, had even more to offer in terms of acting talent and may very well have ascended to the ranks of weightier dramatic performances. Or maybe he would have burned-out on coke and inflated ego by ’95. Who knows such things? For what’s worth, Lee made his mark. RIP.

Your Highness

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who laugh at Minotaur penis jokes and those who don’t.

For those who count yourself in the latter, ask me not to explain, let alone justify, why we the former find humor in such things. That is like asking someone to explain why people fall in love; that’s right, I just equated Greco-mythological monster genitalia to the feelings you have for your significant other. Your Highness is…exactly what it is. No more, no less. Well, maybe a little less. David Gordon Green and Co. have fashioned themselves an accumulative 1980s fantasy adventure and then skewered it with the crudest, most tasteless and most juvenile sense of humor imaginable.

This film builds nothing in the way of lasting insight, comedic parable or snarky commentary (like the recent and backhandedly obnoxious Paul). It is 100% pure relegation. Surface content aside, it offers nothing except (and here comes the brilliant part) the sweet refuge of nothingness itself; because Your Highness is also 100% pure excursionary – a chance to get away from everything, even one’s own nagging intellectual ego. This film proposes the theory that all the stupid shit we thought was funny at age 13 never really leaves us, but lies dormant, every ready for the second cumming of a $50 million budget fantasy spoof. <~ see what I did just there? Exactly.

Fabious (James Franco) is the young, dashing and heroic warrior prince to the kingdom of his father King Tallious (Charles Dance). Thadeous (Danny McBride) is the squandering black sheep brother who trifles about much to his father’s disappointment. Upon returning from yet another victorious quest, Fabious and his band of knights bring with them the virgin Belladona (Zooey Deschanel) whom Fabious loves dearly and plans to wed. But on the day of their ceremony the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) crashes, wreaks havoc and kidnaps Belladona before escaping; his master plan, to impregnate her during the twin lunar eclipse, thereby fathering a dragon that will help him rule all the kingdoms of the world.

As Fabious and his knights, captained by best friend Boremont (Damian Lewis), set out to rescue his bride and destroy Leezar, Thadeous and his waifish servant Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) are forced by the king to join the quest, or else face banishment from the royal family. Fabious and Thadeous first seek the counsel of the Great Wise Wizard who gives them a magic compass that leads to the hidden Sword of the Unicorn, an enchanted weapon that can slay Leezar. Soon after, the brothers uncover a plot of betrayal conspired by Fabious’ own knights, from whom they barely escape with their lives. The road then brings many perils and the brothers eventually but hesitantly join forces with a mysterious warrior woman named Isabel (Natalie Portman), who has an agenda of her own.

         

                                                
Before we go any further I think it best to provide some context that might help many of you understand why I and certain others of my ilk enjoyed this movie. As any average cinephile could guess, Your Highness homages everything from the original Clash of the Titans to Dragonslayer, Krull, The Dark Crystal, Willow and every other ‘80s fantasy production in between. Yet I should also address the behind-closed-doors geekdom that accompanied this era and genre: fantasy role-playing games. I myself am a role-play gamer, or at least I used to be. I was a casual but consistent gamer over the stretch of a decade, often averaging one or two weekends a month, usually a Saturday night, with a small 3 to 4 man group of friends including my older brother. People unfamiliar with such an event might picture a gathering of sheltered, overweight (or conversely scrawny) man-boys hunched over a table of dice and character sheets, each bearing deadly serious concentration as if reciting Othello or defusing a bomb.

I won’t deny the luster with which we performed as our characters and there was indeed some definite geeking-out over stats and critical hits. But, truth be told, Game night was really just a variation of Poker night. We’d all come together after a typical lousy work-week and relax at the dining room table with beer and chips and maybe some leftover pizza. Your average RPG narrative was always intermixed with a steady stream of loose jokes and bullshitting, both on topic and off, because none of us ever took it that seriously. And on some nights when the cheap booze and after-hour silliness got the better of us, so too would our characters and their adventure slide into full blown immaturity, complete with aimless detours and homophobic wisecracks.

The correlation with Your Highness is uncanny. The film has been heavily criticized for supplanting thoughtful, well written humor with lowbrow raunchy gags and anachronistic fowl language – an accurate enough observation, but the verdict is a bit unfair methinks, largely due to misplaced standards. Many have complained to waiting and waiting for the film to make them laugh via clearly defined setups and punch-lines. I don’t understand this mindset. Never wait for a joke. Never wait for something to be officially "funny". Comedy doesn’t always have to be this clockwork mechanism that dispenses increments of consensual humor in equal measure. Moreover, not every joke has to be the funniest joke you’ve ever heard in your entire life. The trick to watching a movie like Your Highness is far simpler: just give in to the stupidity.

This movie only has one real joke which is the initial conceit, the singular unified lampooning of all things fantasy quests and sword & sorcery; all the sex pranks and crude language that follow are not so much the point or even the details, but rather the symphonic process, the holistic effect, the sum that is greater than its parts, but not a sum that aspires to any notable greatness on its own, because the lack of ambition is kinda’ the film’s central charm to begin with. Not every movie playing at your local theater must deal high concepts within high concepts. Some of those darkened auditoriums are just places to kick back and crack a smile at half-assed heroes acting a fool. If some of it happens to strike you as being hilarious, great. If not, who cares? Of course, all I’ve really accomplished here is a roundabout reiteration of my opening claim.

The Danny McBride shtick works for me. I get this guy; this mullet haired, ineffectual smartass who spear-tips the film’s anachronisms. Tactless rural white Americans make great idiots, especially when thrown smack-dab into the middle of a figurative China shop. McBride’s Thadeous further echoes my aforementioned RPG nights analogy in that I too was the younger brother who, while in character, would often usurp the adventure, a specific conversation or round of action with some bawdy gesture or lewd remark [i.e.,"I’m just gonna pull out my dick and see what happens."] and I can’t help but laugh at the very fact that such a dire magical quest has been rested primarily on the shoulders of this pickup-truckin’ scallywag persona. An obvious gimmick, but I like it.

James Franco continues from Pineapple Express his huggable sweet nature, but this time as the hopelessly romantic overachiever. Fabious is the ever loving, never judging older brother who has been rendered borderline retarded by his extreme sense of knightly chivalry, in a way that makes Franco more than just the straight man to McBride’s funny man. The two end up foiling each other equally in that respect; Thadeous, the inept buffoon to Fabious’ princely heroism; Fabious, the naïve dork to the many uncharacteristics of the fanciful world including Thadeous’ partying lifestyles. When the former starts freaking out on wizard weed, the latter calmly checks him: "You making a fool of yourself. Handle your shit, Fabious, please."

Justine Theroux plays Leezar as a sexually awkward mama’s boy and chews a bit of scenery with a mock English accent. Much of his screen time is shared with Zooey Deschanel, who, unfortunately, is given the least amount to do save heaving her bosom and playing up reactions to her captor’s bizarre come-ons. Supporting cast members Damian Lewis and Toby Jones as the sniveling spy Julie take a break from their usual dramatic work for a chance to ham around on the sidelines while Rasmus Hardiker goes almost thanklessly as the dainty choir boy sidekick to pig headed Thadeous.

Natalie Portman is the film’s real straight man. This might be the first completely derogative role in the Oscar winner’s 17 year career, and there’s something admittedly refreshing about that. I doubt there was any substantial creative or emotional investment in the part of Isabel, yet Portman keeps it pro and delivers quack-comedy lines like "burning beaver" and "to stop people from fucking to make dragons" with deadly perfect composure. She also looks good, older now for the first time, like a real woman instead of the baby girlish demeanor that followed her well into her 20s. And, yeah, I dig the thong scene.

Regardless of the spoofing, Your Highness dishes a number of delightful fantasy tropes where one set piece after another has been lovingly articulated with topnotch art direction and giddy-like special effects, and where much of it was shot amidst the rocky forested countryside of Northern Ireland. David Gordon Green, his writers Danny McBride and Ben Best, and their extensive FX team prove themselves to be quite inventive – the examples run amok: at one point our heroes are lured by naked, powdered sugared nymphs and trapped in a Thunderdome style arena where the evil overlord Marteetee, a sort of maniacal diapered baby Huey, pits them against a giant hand shaped, five headed hydra that he summons and controls with his own hand by plunging it into a pot of yoke. The Great Wise (and pedo) Wizard is a classic Jim Henson puppet but with an added CG effect that makes his translucent brain sparkle with pinks and golds. Both Leezar and his clone witch mothers can cast upon their enemies proton pack particle beams.

There’s an impressive, massive scaled lake-side village with a complex grid of wooden planks and rafters. There’s a cool-ass labyrinth with a Unicorn Sword at its center, which Thadeous shatters free as did Conan back yonder ’82. A spiraling tower fortress, magical holographic transmitters, fairies grounded into cocaine, a chirping mechanical bird companion, a dwarf lynching mob …tasty chicken fingers …and if you can call your attention away from its erection, the Minotaur is a fully realized, bang-up job prosthetic worthy of any serious minded fantasy epic. There’s also plenty of fast action involving sword fights and carriage chases and warrior on wizard showdowns, the works.

                     
When one steps back and not only looks at the film but considers its very existence, I think a certain admiration is warranted. They made this thing. They actually made it! Pitched, greenlit, funded, filmed and released in theaters nationwide, worldwide! Did I mention this movie has a Minotaur sporting a giant hard-on? Look, just about every week Hollywood takes up our multiplexes with expensive shitty movies that bear all the traits of prepackaged safeness and repetition. And they do so at the expense of riskier projects, not to mention intelligent filmgoers. And while Your Highness is by no means some rare achievement in cinematic art that challenges the status quo, what I like about the film is that it feels like an unsupervised act of delinquency during its making that somehow slipped under the radar of studio bigwigs, who under normal circumstances would just assume keep locked away like a white bread family does their fourth uncouth, pot-smoking child. It’s like a great big dirty prank at Hollywood’s expense; literally, a movie made with big money but made by a team of outside pranksters – a team of indie-cred filmmaking hooligans who infiltrated a studio board meeting and placed whoopee cushions underneath every chair.

Clear and Present Danger

An American businessman and his family are found murdered aboard their private yacht. The culprits involved are members of a Columbian drug cartel; unbeknownst to them, their victim was an old friend to the President of the United States (Donald Moffat); unbeknownst to the President, his murdered friend was skimming millions from the leader of the cartel, a one Ernesto Escobedo (Miguel Sandoval). Regardless, the President seeks retribution, but leaves the dirty work in the hands of two men, National Security Advisor James Cutter (Harris Yulin) and CIA Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter (Henry Czerny), who secretly organize a black-ops team to wage an unsanctioned private war against the cartels.

When CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence James Greer (James Earl Jones) is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his job is appointed to analyst Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford), who then gives his word to U.S. Congress that all funded operations in Columbia are strictly reconnaissance based. Ryan is then assigned by the President to retrieve the laundered $600 million in frozen assets. Subsequently, and to his dismay, he gradually learns of the covert strikes being carried out against the cartels. Amidst the political and international crossfire, and with an honor bound duty to rectify right from wrong, Ryan must contend with conspirators on all sides, including Cutter and Ritter, a shadowy field operative John Clark (Willem Dafoe) and Escobedo’s right-hand man, Félix Cortez (Joaquim de Almeida), who himself schemes to overthrow Escobedo and his fellow drug lords for total control.

Clear and Present Danger was released August 3, 1994 and ranked in domestically as the 7th highest grossing film of the year with $122 million and in 10th place worldwide with close to $216 million. Remember this? Remember when summer blockbusters weren’t regulated to alien disasters, superheroes or boy wizards? Ages ago, it seems. The target demographic has gotten younger and/or more devoted to the fickle and feverish fanboy generation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against those kinds of film, but after revisiting this third installment to the Tom Clancy-Jack Ryan series, I’m reminded just how thoroughly entertaining reality-based action thrillers can be – movies for adults that aren’t stuffy dramas or art films vying for Oscar gold; just straight-up entertainment for grown men with casually topical interest in real world affairs, who can enjoy said content when fictionalized.

Clear and Present Danger is about as unpretentious as it gets. It is entirely plot oriented, with a rigorous narrative that splits into multiple lanes, intersecting only when to tie-up loose ends or to keep the larger story moving forward at a constant pace; the film never slows, but it doesn’t truncate either. It’s a steady conveyor belt of characters, set-up and action, where virtually every scene exists primarily so that information can pass through it, on to the next. Nothing happens in the film without the audience knowing why. It’s only a question of how Jack Ryan will manage the consequences.

      
The 1992 predecessor Patriot Games told a more dramatic story in that the central conflict was a more personal one between Ryan (and his family) and IRA extremists. Here, the stage is more outwardly political, focusing on the US drug war and corrupt Washington power-players with no regard for congressional authority; though, honestly, it’s really just an action movie. Still, the hefty cast delivers a consummate whole. Think back to when you were a little kid playing Army with your friends...

Your character, so to speak, was not altogether complex. Neither you nor your friends were digging deep into the psychologies or dishing out eccentric performances. You guys were just running around from ditch to ditch, barking orders or speaking in hushed tones when the enemy was near. And yet you were all absolutely wrapped up in the moment, totally committed to the make-believe. It was a game that your imaginations took seriously. That’s how I would describe the cast in this film. Nothing particularly ambitious is happening with the performances, but the actors are playing the adult-modified, political intrigue equivalent of little kid-Army with the same degree of enthusiasm.

You gotta love the way Henry Czerny’s smarmy Ritter sneers with satisfaction at every upper hand or the way Sandoval twirls his aluminum bat with deadly intent, or even Moffat’s portrayal of a President who, at times, behaves almost as if he’s mentally retarded – a Commander-in-Chief with the emotional state of a child. Anne Archer returns in good form as the quintessential ‘loving wife’, though she has little to do this time around (this film, even more of a boy’s game than the previous) other than look concerned or smile consolably to her husband. Willem Dafoe may not fit the physical descript of John Clark from the novels but he does make for a rugged, well tanned and convincingly dangerous live-action version in his own special way, with that signature feral mug and thin gravely voice. Dressed in a camo jacket and blue jeans, and sporting submachine gun, Dafoe makes for a pretty intense looking dude.

Clear and Present Danger stands as a reminder of what action scenes used to look like before frenetic editing/shaky-cam and Snyder-like digitized slow motion. The film’s best example, and probably its best scene, involves a convoy of SUVs carrying US diplomats and security through downtown Bogota, Columbia that comes under ambush by cartel soldiers. Director Phillip Noyce (who also helmed Patriot Games) does proper by establishing the geography of the scene early on as the convoy is led down a narrow side street and we the audience are given clear perspectives from street level, the pillaring rooftops and the men inside the targeted vehicles. The attack comes fast and vicious, and made palpable is the intense panic as these guys find themselves at the ass-end of a tactical deathtrap.

Of course, the dramatic success of the sequence hinges on the main character involved, which brings up the film’s overall ace: Harrison Ford. In continuing this review’s theme of ‘remember when?’ remember when leading men action stars were, in fact, men? Not boys, not heroes filtered through feminization i.e. self-absorbed, glistening hard bodies, pirate eyeliner. Ford deserves credit for landing not one, not two, but three different franchise characters in which he seemed born to play. Ford is Jack Ryan, as unceremoniously American as apple pie. And as an action star, Ford has always distinguished himself from the rest with an intrinsic realism he brings to the table.

Here’s a guy who never resorted to muscle flexing or balletic slow motion while wearing shades or flavor-of-the-month Asian choreographies such as Bourne Filipino fighting or Woo-Ping wire antics. Ford’s physicality translated perfectly the pulpy (and often comedic) fisticuffs of Indiana Jones. Here, in the real world of Jack Ryan, he traverses the action with rattled awkwardness, too caught-up in the inertia of the scene to pose for the camera in perfect form. Watch closely during the convoy attack as Ford’s performance emphasizes the haphazard chaos: “Back up! Back up!” he shouts to oncoming rocket fire – the way he scrambles from backseat to steering wheel or his desperate attempt to get car a door open to save his fellow man.

And Ford is genuinely acting during all of this, emoting palpable fear and a heightened state of distress. He also does an admirable share of his own stunts. That’s actually him driving a flaming car, diving foreground from an explosion or, in the film’s climax, jumping onto the landing skid of helicopter. Lastly, the very concept of Jack Ryan epitomizes the thinking-man action hero in that the character never once touches a gun throughout the film but, instead, walks alone into Escobedo’s Columbian fortress armed only with a business card and a tape recorder.

Clear and Present Danger may be an easy target for today’s cynics. Its pre 9/11conflicts are unfairly dated and James Horner’s score hits you upside the head with a hammer every time something “patriotic” happens. But the film does skewer US administrative power with a critical eye and there’s a certain anthem of justice in the final scene when Ryan confronts the President and tears into him with steely reserve; cathartic for an audience (particularly an American one) all too familiar with the bureaucratic bullshit that permeates this nation all the way up to its oval office. But I’m simply entertained by both the film and its star for reasons mentioned. It’s a good and clean, straightforward genre film with an everyman hero worth rooting for. I would rank it 2nd best among the Tom Clancy adaptations. Coming in at No. 1 would be The Hunt for Red October, one of my all time favorite films.



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