THE PHANTOM: Take the Girl, She’s Our Phantom Insurance

The Phantom (1996) – Directed by Simon Wincer – Starring Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Treat Williams, James Remar, Bill Smitrovich, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Patrick McGoohan.

Simon Wincer’s THE PHANTOM is a quietly great movie that’s perfect for a Saturday afternoon.

THE PHANTOM is exactly the kind of movie I want to relax with after a hard week at work. I want to plop on the couch and be transported into another world for some really good, enjoyable, fun action and adventure, and THE PHANTOM delivers this in spades. Well-paced, full of good (if simply rendered) characters, exciting action, beautiful locales, and infused with something akin to innocence.

It’s that last but that really makes THE PHANTOM stand out – there’s no ego here, no shame about what the material is they’re presenting to the audience, and Simon Wincer and Company have embraced the idea of a fun, all-ages romp and that’s what they deliver. The very idea of romance between Kit Walker/The Phantom (Billy Zane) and Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson) is handled in such a chaste manner that when she asks him to take off his mask so she can see his face, she has to assure him that she already knows who he is.

Wincer quickly moves through the origin story – a group of pirates kill a kid’s dad and he bails, washing up on shore where the Bengalla islanders take him in and train him to be the Phantom. For generations, the legacy is passed from father to sun, but no one outside of the tribe realizes this is the case. Instead, everyone thinks the Phantom is immortal, giving him the “ghost who walks” nickname. We meet the current Phantom when a few archaeology thieves led by Quill (James Remar) steal one of the three Skulls of Touganda for Xander Drax (Treat Williams).

Remar, Williams, and Zane are perfect examples of the excellent casting done for this movie. Remar has that shady, tough guy vibe down so we don’t need to spend a lot of time with his characterization. We get that he’s a bad dude, and that he’s evil enough to make a little kid drive a truck over a rickety bridge, but he’s not so evil that he’ll shoot the kid afterwards like his henchmen want.

Treat Williams is the best part of the film, completely embracing the over-the-top aspect of his villainy. He’s slick, smooth, and deadly, willing to be completely charming a second before he puts a knife in your back. He walks through the world like it’s here for his pleasure, but he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty when the time comes. Interestingly, it’s not more Phantom vs. Drax action that I would have preferred to see, but more between Drax and the film’s other villain, Kabai Sengh (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the head pirate. It’s this villainous showdown that has the most energy in the film, as Drax’s slickness comes up against Sengh’s harshness. Watching them spar back and forth in the film’s tensest moment (Drax has two of the three skulls and Sengh has the third) renders everyone else’s involvement momentarily moot.

“X-A-N-D-E-R-D-R-A-X,” he says easily, spelling out his name for Sengh. “It begins and ends with X.”

After Quill steals the first skull, we jump back to New York and meet Diana, the go-get-’em society girl who’d rather play in the world than sit safely at home. Her Uncle Dave (Bill Smitrovich) is a big shot newspaper publisher (for kids watching THE PHANTOM for the first time – newspapers used to allow people to make gobs of money) and encourages Diana’s adventure streak. When Dave is convinced that Drax is up to supernatural no good, he sends Diana to Bengalla to look for evidence. On the way there, her plane is highjacked by female air pirates, led by the hot and dangerous Sala (Catherine Zeta Jones).

Bits like this really make me dig PHANTOM. I mean, hot female air pirates, you know? What’s not to love. And then when they come aboard and demand Diana Palmer to show herself, Diana immediately steps forward.

It’s hard to watch PHANTOM and not wonder why Swanson didn’t have a bigger career. She’s got an easy toughness on display here; she gets forced into playing the damsel on occasion, but she’s never in distress. I love how the film doesn’t oversell the whole idea of, “I’m a woman and I can do it on my own,” because Diana so clearly is a woman doing it on her own in nearly every scene she’s in.

Zane plays the Phantom with that same kind of easy toughness, but there’s also a vulnerability here. He sees the ghost of his dead father (Patrick McGoohan) every so often, and the old man delights in giving his kid a hard time over losing the first skull and later when he seemingly lets Diana get away from him.

THE PHANTOM is a bright, fun romp. It’s produced and performed with just the right sense of flair. Everything looks good and there’s a point in the movie where I realized just how much fun it would have been to see a host of Phantom movies with our purple-clad hero taking his adventures all over the world. Unfortunately, the world box office did not respond to the filmmakers’ efforts. Despite costing a modest $45 million, THE PHANTOM only managed to bring in a pitiful $17 million at the domestic box office. (Box Office Mojo doesn’t have international figures listed.) SyFy tried their hand at taking Lee Falk’s hero to the small screen in 2010, but I haven’t seen it, and there’s always talk of a new big screen adaptation. I wish the new production well, but watching Wincer’s film it’s hard for me not to think that we had something special here that was not allowed to grow.

THE JEWEL OF THE NILE: The Boat Blew Up

The Jewel of the Nile (1985) – Directed by Lewis Teague – Starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Spiros Focás, Holland Taylor, and Avner Eisenberg.

Ugh.

What was so fun and refreshing a year earlier in ROMANCING THE STONE is now tired, unimaginative, and a chore to watch.

There are flashes of the good stuff in THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, but they are few and far between. Nearly every plot point in JEWEL feels contrived just to give us a bickering Joan Wilder and Jack Colton (Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas). The film opens with Joan unable to finish her book and Jack happy to cruise around the world irresponsibly in his boat that he bought at the end of the previous movie. She’s snippy at him for being so carefree when she’s got work to do, and he subsequently gets snippy with her when he has to go to a fancy dinner.

One unfortunate switch between movies is that where ROMANCING was wholeheartedly Joan’s story that Jack comes crashing into, JEWEL is a shared story with Jack getting to play the role Joan played in the first movie of the serious guy with the annoying sidekick. Upset with Jack and angry at not being able to finish her latest novel, Joan takes Omar (Spiros Focás), leader of an Arab country, up on an offer to go down the Nile with him and see his country. Joan and Jack fight, make weird proclamations about this being the end of their run together, Joan leaves, and Jack is set upon by Ralph (Danny DeVito), who’s still angry about losing the stone everyone was busy romancing in the last film.

This plot maneuver splits our two leads, which means the filmmakers thought that what we wanted to see (or would be entertained by, at least) was to see our romantic leads split apart. Joan goes off with Omar to his desert paradise, only to discover its a desert dictatorship. Jack and Ralph are approached by one Omar’s citizens who tell them that Omar is a meanie and has stolen the Jewel of the Nile.

We’re all off to the Middle East, then, and it’s like Joan and Jack are in two movies. Joan’s plot gets all serious when she realizes Omar is an evil guy and that the Jewel of the Nile isn’t a big honking rock, but a religious leader that Omar has kidnapped. Jack and Ralph hang out with the rebels and bicker incessantly.

It’s the best part of the film.

JEWEL is much more fun when Jack and Ralph are bickering. They’ve greatly expanded Danny DeVito’s role this time around and he’s easily the one shining part of this dreary film. He’s not enough to balance the insipid Joan and Jack Show, however, as the couple continually hurt each other, then regret it while the other isn’t around, and then hurt each other again at the earliest convenience. It can be a lot of fun to watch a couple bicker as they’re also falling in love, but once they’ve admitted and embraced their love for one another, the bickering is weary to watch. There are moments here where Joan and Jack shine again, but they’re all happy moments.

Turner and Douglas have fantastic chemistry and when the film slows down and simply lets them smile and be playful with one another, JEWEL wins me over, but these are rare moments in a film that would rather watch its two leads argue than work together.

A pity.

ROMANCING THE STONE: I Ain’t Cheap, But I Can Be Had

Romancing the Stone (1985) – Directed by Robert Zemeckis – Starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Alfonso Arau, Manuel Ojeda, Holland Taylor, Mary Ellen Trainor, and Ted White.

Maybe ROMANCING THE STONE was a bigger influence on me than I ever realized.

I always liked the film, even if it wasn’t ever a movie in heavy rotation. For me, it was something I watched in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that meant I watched it a few times and that was it. When I watched it again last night, there were only a few parts that I remembered, but what struck a chord with me this time around was closer to the film’s true intentions: the adventure/romance writer forced to live a real life adventure/romance.

After all, that was kind of the point of DREAMER’S SYNDROME. I wanted to force characters to confront their fantasies. “Dreams are more dangerous when they happen in the light of day” and all that. (If you want to take a moment to go and order the book, read it, and then come back to this review, well, it’ll be here when you get back. It’s over 400 pages, so it might take you a minute.) Confronting one’s fantasies is what Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is forced to do in ROMANCING THE STONE.

Joan Wilder is a popular romance novelist finishing off her latest book. The film opens inside Joan’s novel as Angelique (Kymberly Herrin) is facing down Grogan (Ted White), the man who killed everyone she cared about, including her dog. Angelique kills him and rides off, where she meets Jesse, the rugged romantic interest. As that story ends on an emotional high point, we cut back to Joan’s apartment where our fantasizer is banging away at her typewriter and crying her heart out. To celebrate her accomplishment, Joan and her cat have a rousing night by the fire with minimal bit of alcohol.

The next day Joan is off to her publishers when she’s given a mailed envelope by a neighbor. Her editor, Gloria (Holland Taylor), brings her to lunch and forces Joan to have a bit of a good time. Gloria is using the opportunity to troll for men and Joan is incredibly uncomfortable by all of this man hunger.

It’s hard not to be worried at this point in the film that Joan is going to be a ridiculous character, but screenwriter Diane Thomas, director Robert Zemeckis, and especially Kathleen Turner continually keep Joan grounded and make an honest-to-goodness character out of her. When it turns out that the package she received from her sister is a treasure map, that her sister Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor) has been kidnapped, and the only way to save Elaine is for Joan to fly to Columbia and return the map.

Joan is in hysterics because she doesn’t really want to fly to Columbia, of course, and Gloria thinks it’s a preposterous idea, but Joan is dead set on going, and it’s moments like this that make her a real character and not just a silly type. Joan is terrified to go to Columbia, but her sister needs saving and so she does it. Turner plays it perfectly; Joan is neither too frightened to go nor too brave to blunder stoically forward.

The main kidnapper, Ira (Zack Norman), sends his cousin Ralph (Danny DeVito) to retrieve her, but Ralph is consistently outwitted by Colonel Zolo (Manuel Ojeda). When Joan gets to Columbia, she’s set upon by Zolo, who steers her onto the wrong bus and far away from Cartagena, where he intends to take the map for himself. Joan’s bus gets in an accident and after everyone bails, Zolo draws his gun on her to get the map.

Enter Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas), a ne’er-do-well who initially refuses to help Joan out, but tells her, “I ain’t cheap, but I can be had.” With Jack on board, he and Joan set out for Cartagena. Wacky hijinks ensue. There’s nothing incredibly unique about ROMANCING THE STONE from this point out, but films like this largely fail or succeed based on the chemistry of the leads and the chemistry between Douglas and Turner is fantastic. It’s a joy just to watch them interact with one another. When Jack chides her for only having heeled shoes, he busts off the heel so she can better walk in the jungle.

“Those were Italian,” she tells him incredulously.

“Now they’re practical,” he shoots back.

On the run from Zolo’s men, Jack puts himself between them and Joan. Instead of playing the scared mouse, Joan decides to try and make her way across a rickety bridge. Joan’s determination is another sign that she’s far more than some weepy romance novelist afraid to leave her apartment; while her novels tap into the feminine fantasy of the handsome rogue, Joan’s drive out in the real world is to do whatever it takes to get back to her sister. Reality has unwittingly cast her in the hero’s role and Joan discovers that she is capable of playing that role for herself.

The two of them begin to fall for each other as they adventure progresses, but Jack is still thinking of splitting with the big honking green emerald.

He doesn’t completely do that, of course, but there’s a bit of will-he/won’t-he at play before he finally comes back for good and chooses to help Joan over getting the emerald out of the crocodile that swallowed it. What’s great about this sequence is that Jack proves that Joan is more important to him than money, and then Joan proves she doesn’t need Jack’s help to get out of the jam she’s in.

Joan heads back to the States, writes the adventure as her latest novel, and then Jack shows up with a big sailboat so they can ride off together on the boat through the city.

It’s a feel good ending for a feel good movie. Douglas, Turner, and DeVito are all fantastic (as is Alfonso Arau as a drug lord that happens to be a big fan of Joan’s books) and Robert Zemeckis keeps everything going at a brisk pace. ROMANCING THE STONE is as good a film as these bickering romances get.