2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT: My God, It’s Full of Stars

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) – Directed by Peter Hyams – Starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, Elya Baskin, and Dana Elcar.

“Dear Caroline, The first part of this journey is coming to an end. We are about to rendezvous with the Discovery. The race will be on now. We’re going to send a boarding party over to climb inside this 800-foot long shipwreck floating over Io to see if she can be rescued before her orbit gives out. There are nine years of secrets inside, including a sleeping computer who knows the answers. My past is also inside, and I want those answers.”

-Dr. Haywood Floyd (Roy Sheider)

In watching 2010 for the first time, I want to remind people who wished Prometheus was a little less vague to be careful what you wish for.

2010 is a perfectly decent film, but it’s also the kind of film for people who can’t read comics without wanting to know all of the characters’ RPG stats. What 2010 does is attempt to explain the mysteries of 2001. That is not, in and of itself, a horrible idea, but where 2001 is a visual feast and an experience in the importance of sensation over logic, 2010 treating you like your five and continually telling you what’s happening because it thinks you’re stupid.

While I am not interested in basing my overall judgment of 2010 on how it compares to 2001, the structure and execution of 2010 seems to be clearly designed to counter the “problems” with 2001. Stanley Kubrick’s film had no set narrative structure, but was rather composed as four separate sections that link together, but not in a classic beginning-middle-end manner. Structurally, 2010 walks over common ground and comes off like a cross between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien.

Watching 2010 in the wake of 2001 is a bit like going back to a restaurant where the previous dining experience was a 12-course tasting feast prepared by Eric Ripert, and this time it’s reheated meatloaf.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of meatloaf, of course. The advantages of meatloaf (even a reheated meatloaf) is that it’s comfort food. You know what to expect and it’s not challenging. The disadvantage is that while it may be comfortable and thus never sink to the tastebud-driven lows of the charred octopus a la plancha, it also never reaches the heights of the Baked Lobster Goulash. (Yeah, I have no idea how good either of those things actually taste. I’m just menu-diving for examples. No offense, Le Bernadin.)

The most damning part of 2010 is the low regard it holds you in. That quote up top? It’s hardly the only infodump quote in the film. Time and again, we get someone’s voice walking over the footage to tell us things that are rather obvious. It’s incredibly difficult to watch 2010 and not think it was made by someone who was utterly befuddled by 2001 and was determined not to let that happen again, and it’s a shame because if you remove those inane voice overs the film has room to breathe. It is a rather slow-paced film and if all that, “Hi honey, I miss you. We’re about to do something important so let me explain it to you as if you were here instead of 400 million miles away and will get this as a recorded message.”

When a story – be it a film, a novel, a TV show, a poem, etc. – has to continually tell you what it’s doing, it’s a clear sign the creators have little confidence in either themselves or you.

It’s been nearly a decade since the events of 2001 and we enter this movie with the world on the brink of war. The Americans and the Soviets are rattling sabres and moving battleships around the globe like it’s a big ol’ game of Risk. Heywood Floyd was the head of the NCA and took the blame for the failure of the events of the Discovery mission. He’s visited by a Russian who suggests that Floyd attempts to broker a deal with the U.S. government to allow American scientists to board a Soviet mission to the the Discovery. Floyd is successful and they go on the mission.

We get the standard “people waking up out of cryo sleep” sequence, and there’s clear mistrust between the Soviets and Americans. Writer/Director Peter Hyams does a good job creating relationships between Floyd and the Soviet captain (Helen Mirren), American engineer Dr. Curnow (John Lightgow) and the low man in the Soviet pecking order, Max (Elya Baskin), and Hal’s creator, Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban) and Hal (voiced by Douglas Rain).

The best sequence of the movie is when Max and Curnow have to space walk from the Soviet ship they arrived in over to the abandoned Discovery. Does it go on too long? Yup. Is turning the volume of Curnow’s rapid breathing up to 11 annoying? Yup, but there’s also something right about it. For all the trumped up drama of the United States and Soviet Union being on the brink of World War III, it’s in moments like the space walk that 2010 delivers real drama. Curnow is incredibly nervous and Max is not, and both men are adults and professionals about what’s going on. I love when characters are willing to admit their own shortcomings and then attempt to overcome them, and the interplay between the confident Russian and the nervous American is top notch.

The film’s second best sequence is when Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) makes a return. The question of what happened to Dave at the end of 2001 is on the scientists’ minds and when Max is ordered to take a pod and investigate the monolith, he triggers something in the object and a beam of light shoots to Earth. We see Dave saying goodbye to his widowed wife and comatose mother, and then later he appears to Floyd, telling him they have two days to leave. I actually like the interplay between Floyd and Hal at the beginning of this sequence better than Floyd’s reaction to seeing Dave return, but it’s all intriguing stuff.

It does feel a bit out of place, however, in what has largely been a conventional film, but that actually helps. We know more of the Discovery than the people on this mission, after all, and so it’s actually effective to see the two films collide in this moment.

The ending of 2010 is completely patronizing, however. We get a Jupiter turned into a second sun, which inspires the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to build a campfire together and sing hippie songs, and it’s rather pathetic that the answer to a global crisis is a symbol in the sky. The final message that Hal sends to Earth frames humanity as moronic children who need to be told what to do by their parents:

ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE

Thanks, Cosmic Entity!

I like the ending for Hal much better, with Dave coming to the computer to offer absolution. That absolution is infinitely better than the insipid programming error in the middle of the film that explains Hal’s behavior from 2001. I didn’t need that explanation. I was okay with Hal’s actions being vague and up for debate.

2010 offers none of that ambiguity, exchanging philosophy for politics, and mystery for explanation.

THE PUNISHER (2004): God’s Gonna Sit This One Out

The Punisher (2004) – Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh – Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Roy Scheider, Laura Harring, Ben Foster, Rebecca Romijn, John Pinette, Samantha Mathis, and Kevin Nash.

THE PUNISHER is one of those movies that I enjoy the less I think about it. If I just sit and watch the film, THE PUNISHER is a really solid, really enjoyable action film, but when I start to think about it and pick it apart, the film loses some points with me.

I wonder if, in part, THE PUNISHER serves as something of a Rorschach test about one’s own happiness. When the film came out, I wasn’t all that crazy about it and spent a good amount of time talking about how dumb it was, but now I find I like it quite a bit more than I did back then. Some of this, I think, is a difference in the amount of superhero movies. Now that we’ve gotten all those Avengers’ films, the sheer amount of Marvel movies lessens the burden each individual film has to bear. I would be dishonest, though, if I didn’t acknowledge that I’m a lot happier person now than I was back in 2004. I have a much better sense now of who I am and what I want, and that singular contentment in self means that I’m less reliant on other people to make me happy. If you’re happy with who you are and what your situation is, I think its possible that a movie like THE PUNISHER will allow you to focus more on the positive aspects of the film and less on the negative.

Which isn’t to say I watch THE PUNISHER in some dopey identity cocoon that filters out all of the bad stuff so I can blindly love the good stuff.

The movie takes way, way too long setting up the Punisher’s origin, giving us an elaborate and elongated back and forth that sets up the feud between Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) and Howard Saint (John Travolta). We’ve got to sit through a sequence where Castle is pretending to be a German arms dealer in a bust that goes wonky and ends with the death of one of Saint’s twenty-something sons. We need this scene to establish that this is Castle’s last assignment as an undercover FBI agent, and to give Saint a reason to have Castle’s family murdered, but only after Saint has to identify his son and go to the funeral and ask his goons to get him information and … deep breath … decide to kill Castle until his wife (Laura Harring) says she wants Castle’s entire family killed. That means we’re not just talking Castle’s wife (Samantha Mathis) and son, but his dad (Roy Scheider), his mom, his in-laws, and a whole bunch of other people who are nameless and faceless and simply here to be gunned down. Which they are, in another elongated sequence that has Saint’s men, led by his right-hand man Quentin Glass (Will Patton) kill everyone. Then there’s a chase sequence in which Castle’s wife and son try to get away from Saint’s men, and Frank gets on a bike, and then his wife and son get run over and he gets shot and then punched and then tossed off the pier and then shot again and blown up and … another deep breath … then he washes up on shore and is rescued and gets a crutch and goes back for his dad’s guns which will not play a role in the film whatsoever and tosses his crutch away and heads back to Tampa for some revenge.

Seriously? We need all that just to get to the Punisher killing mobsters? Why? The 1989 Dolph Lundgren-starring PUNISHER film didn’t need that, so why does this movie need all that?

I think it’s because this PUNISHER film is a little ashamed of who the Punisher is and what he’s doing.

There’s several occasions in the film where the filmmakers try to soften the blow. I think they thought we needed all of that set-up so we’d be on Frank’s side when he started killing bad guys.

We don’t.

Well, I don’t. I don’t want to speak for you because that would be rude.

Another problem with this prolonged origin sequence is that Frank is declared dead and then comes back and tells everyone, “I’m alive!” He seriously shows up at the police station and accuses two high-ranking police officers of not making an arrest in the murder of his entire family. Why? Why have this scene? These two characters are never seen from again, so the most obvious reason seems to be that the filmmakers think we need to know that the cops aren’t doing their job, so Frank is even more justified to go on a murderous killing spree. It would be one thing if we were seeing this because Frank was unsure of what he was doing, but he’s not. He knows and we know and even Saint knows that Frank Castle is going to try and kill every single person involved with the Saints.

This elongated origin also mucks up Frank’s living situation. Frank moves into a run-down apartment building that has three other tenants: Joan (Rebecca Romijn), Bumpo (John Pinette), and Spacker Dave (Ben Foster). All three of the existing tenants live their life out of the mainstream, but they’ve managed to put together a nice little family unit here, and Frank’s arrival disrupts that. They aren’t hostile to him, however, but curious, as one usually is when a new neighbor moves in next door. They try to domesticate Frank (especially after he beats up Joan’s abusive ex) and while the scenes themselves are well-written and well-acted, they don’t strike me with much emotion, and that’s because those scenes would work infinitely better with the Lundgren Punisher. The Jane Punisher doesn’t really feel all that disaffected with life; he’s just a guy out for revenge (even if he says he isn’t). The Jane Punisher isn’t unstable, no matter how many shots we get of him sucking down Wild Turkey.

Both the origin and the apartment sequences work on their own, but I don’t think they work very well together.

There’s all kinds of plot holes and plot contrivances here but they’re not offensively present. They’re here mostly to allow both halves of the film to co-exist. The filmmakers could spend more time with the revenge plot, but it’s clear they’ve chosen to over-simplify that plot in order to over-complicate the revenge itself, giving quick glimpses of Frank spying on the Saints and making things in order to pull off a twisted revenge that gets Saint to kill both his wife and Quentin. We don’t get to see much of that planning because Saint sends two different contract killers after Castle, one of whom plays a guitar and the other who looks like a crewman from the Nautilus. The first battle isn’t very good, but the second is, as Castle and the Russian (Kevin Nash) destroy Frank’s apartment in a thunderous brawl.

When it comes time for the final act and the over-complicated plan to go into effect, Frank gets Saint to do most of his dirty work, and then puts a bomb on a weight so Saint’s one remaining son ends up killing himself. The only man that Castle kills (because some flunkies) is Saint himself, and then he does it by tying Saint to the back of a car and setting off bombs that leave the Punisher’s logo burning brightly in the parking lot.

Why? Castle has plenty of chances to kill all of these people but he waits and waits and waits and does something theatrical because that makes for a better film, I guess. Pre-Punisher Frank is given to a bit of theatrics with his undercover work but it’s a long jump from dying your hair blonde and speaking in a funny accident to rigging enough explosives in a parking lot to create the Punisher logo. That’s what I mean about over-complicating the revenge.

When I start thinking of all this, I start having less fun with the movie, and that’s too bad because when I just watch it I do like this film quite a bit. Tom Jane is the best Punisher we’ve seen and it’s a shame that the film was hampered with a smaller-than-usual budget for a movie like this. That doesn’t excuse the burps in the script, but it does suggest more could have been done to take advantage of two great performances from Jane and Travolta. Likewise, the three misfits are all solid and Rebecca Romijn is surprisingly good ringing some emotion out of Joan’s predicament.

I like THE PUNISHER. It’s not the smartest of all the Marvel films, but the performances are good and the action scenes are decent. Mostly, though, it’s Jane’s intelligent, focused, somewhat theatrical conception and execution of Frank Castle that keeps bringing me back.

BLUE THUNDER: If You’re Walking on Eggs, Don’t Hop

Blue Thunder (1983) – Directed by John Badham – Starring Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Stern, Candy Clark, and Warren Oates.

Watching BLUE THUNDER now it’s hard to say what would be more anachronistic if this film popped up in your local 2011 movie house: an action movie starring a middle-aged non-action star like Roy Scheider, or a movie about a helicopter.

BLUE THUNDER is a weird movie; on the one hand it’s a cop movie about a grizzled vet who gets suspended and uncovers a major criminal plot, but then there’s that kick-ass helicopter, which doesn’t really do much ass-kicking. It’s much more a cop movie than an action movie, but nothing about this film feels like it needs to have been made for the big screen. The helicopter is far less interesting than the death of a mayor’s aide, but the helicopter gets the bulk of the screen time.

I could never fully embrace BLUE THUNDER, but what makes the film worth watching is the performances of Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern (with a shout-out for Warren Oates, who plays one of the most stereotypically grizzled captains you’ll ever see). Scheider doesn’t fit the mold of today’s action star, but he’s an engrossing performer at this point in his career, able to walk that fine line between being the best and being unhinged, and he does his best to make Frank Murphy an engaging character. More comfortable in the air then on the ground, Murphy (Scheider) is a compelling figure, but Bruce Willis will do this role a hundred times better when DIE HARD comes along five years later. Murphy is a Vietnam vet who maybe is going a little bonkers; he can’t get past what happened in Nam on a helicopter he flew, so when he sleeps he dreams about it and sweats. Nothing from that earlier moment really plays an important role in the film, other than the fact that one of the soldiers who tossed the Vietnamese dude out of the copter to his death was Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell).

Cochrane ends up being the current pilot for Blue Thunder, and Scheider is brought in because the army is throwing the locals a bone and letting them get involved. These two hate each other, which manifests with McDowell trying to kill Scheider by monkeywrenching a helicopter Frank is going to pilot during a tryout.

The tryout, it should be noted, takes place over the city of Los Angeles, which means Cochrane isn’t that smart – if Scheider crashes the copter and gets killed, or kills civilians, there’s going to be an inquiry, which will bring more heat than his governmental band of thugs should want.

BLUE THUNDER’s biggest problem is that the plot is too fragmented and coincidental; it probably should have either concentrated on the murder of the mayor’s aide or the personal vendetta between Murphy and Cochrane but by combining them, by making Cochrane involved with the people who are behind the murder, the film tugs in two directions – Murphy solving the crime and Murphy getting vengeance on Cochrane. Murphy finds out about halfway through the film that Cochrane is involved in the crime, which robs us of that mystery, and then doesn’t adequately bring the Murphy/Cochrane rivalry to a head because it’s so black and white.

The film also does really silly things, such as having Murphy and Lymangood (Daniel Stern) gather this big piece of incriminating evidence against Cochrane and his buddies while inside Blue Thunder as they hang silently outside and office building’s window (and McDowell’s look of “oh sh*t!” surprise, but then landing the bird and going through a convoluted cloak and dagger bit to get the video tape of the incident to the media. It’s stupid – they’ve already kept the copter out longer than they were supposed to and this info they’ve gathered is incredibly powerful, so why they don’t just take Blue Thunder right to the news station and hand deliver the tape is beyond me. Well, it’s not beyond me since the movie still has a good half hour and the bulk of the film’s action to go, but it’s a dumb decision.

The movie also spends a lot of time building Blue Thunder up, but then fails to capitalize on the helicopter’s awesomeness. We see it do little things, but given that Cochrane comes after Blue Thunder is a small, dorky helicopter that looks like the one TC uses on Magnum, P.I., how awesome are we really suppose to think it is?

Why the filmmakers thought Cochrane in a dorky helicopter would provide adequate villainy for the film really is beyond me. They should have had Red Thunder or Black Thunder or Mauve Thunder waiting in the wings so we’d get an appropriate battle and a real nemesis battle. Instead, at the film’s most climactic moments, we’ve got Murphy in the most advanced helicopter in the world, and Cochrane in a bubble copter with machine guns. It’s not a good fight.

We get a scene early on when Murphy and Lymangood fly out of their area so they can spy on a naked woman stretching because …?

Because the movie wanted to show some ass and boobs, I suppose. How tough would it have been to have them spying on the mayor’s aide and then watch her get attacked from their weaponless copter, unable to do anything? Doing so could have condensed the plot in a meaningful manner and offered a tighter narrative push.

Murphy also cares so little for public safety that it’s hard to think he hasn’t come undone, but we still root for him because Cochrane keeps saying, “Catch you later” in the most annoying manner possible. When the military sends some F-16s after him with heat seeking missles, Murphy tricks the missiles into detonating in an OFFICE BUILDING! Nice one, Officer Bin Laden.

Scheider does what he can to make Murphy compelling and when he’s on-screen the film is a long way from terrible, but he can’t do anything about the rest of the movie, which fails to ever … wait for it … get off the ground. Oh, snap!

BLUE THUNDER is worth a watch for Scheider and Stern, and the helicopter is undoubtedly cool, but the film feels more like a missed opportunity than an enjoyable watch.