The ‘Spy Thriller’ is a tricky thing. You can get it wrong a billion different ways, or you can duplicate a ‘Bond’ film (and be accused of plagiarizing), you can fill a movie with car-chases and shooting but ultimately bore people, or you can actually get it right. There’s little in-between the reaction “YES!!!” and an urging to take your smelly two hours of programming on a 75-foot long tour of the nearest 50-foot pier. Cold? Callous? Un-caring? Oh yeah; t’is the way of the secretive operative of a foreign government.

Gorky Park (1983)

Gorky Park could actually be called a ‘murder mystery’ really, but I’m going to call it a spy thriller because it involves the KGB, plus US citizens, plus a bunch of other things. Also, basically I’m going to call it a ‘Spy Thriller’ for reasons that involve revealing too much of the plot. Besides, I just plain feel like it! So there!

It’s odd in its casting: William Hurt plays a copy who’s equally able to run around and punch people, as he is to contemplate various contradictory and seemingly un-connected evidence. At this point he wasn’t known for anything other than a couple of things on Kojak of all things, as well some work in The Big Chill which only came out two months earlier in the cinemas. Meanwhile, Brian Dennehy plays a more sensitive and analytically-inclined guy than he had up to this point, mostly playing punching / shooting / cussin’ / whoring / neanderthals (or partial ones at the very least). Meanwhile, Alexei Sayle shows-up for the first time, and clearly impressed everyone, including me, because he’s always awesome (but what a waste it was with him in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade… however more on that one in a later post).

I’d really like to examine the plot and its twists and turns in all their surprising detail… but I can’t. Because of spoilers. Which is a shame.

Look, just watch the film. Even if you have seen it before, if it’s been longer than a decade since then, and especially if you saw it in all its dis-jointed glory as a television broadcast, I’m willing to guarantee you’ve forgotten at least one major detail near the end. No, don’t think about it right now, just watch the film and let it wash all over you.

The characters are fully realized, with all of them being complex in a way we’re un-used to typically in a spy thriller. Especially intriguing is the number of sides to the… oh, damn, here we go again. Crap.

It’s really good. Trust me.

[heavy sigh]

Sneakers (1992)

In order to avoid getting a “G-rating”, which was considered to be the surest way to be over-looked by ‘grown-ups’, oddly Sneakers ended up adding some swearing to an other-wide brilliant script. The result is seeing Sidney Poitier call someone a “mother fucker” and David Strathairn mention oral sex. Not their proudest moment, but you do what you have to in order to make things work in the marketing department.

This is much more of a ‘Thriller’ in the ‘Tech’ category, as we’re dealing with a computerized universal decoding / decryption MacGuffin that – unsurprisingly – everyone wants, but telling who actually is who is never something that’s easy. Asking for some ID is never reliable, even if people are co-operative. Those ‘secret guys’ seem to have this aversion to revealing stuff. Funny that.

The characters are less complex here than in the earlier film but, given the complexity of the action involved, it would be pretty difficult to cram that in there as well. They’re still more complicated than you’d expect in a thriller, though, and a fair number of their motivations and decisions are surprising when revealed. Hooray!

I wish Dan Ackroyd got more roles like this, though: “Mother” is a kinda nerdy conspiracy theorist who knows his way around wiring and complicated hardware the same way most people can handle a corkscrew*. “Mother” is ‘thinky’, and funny, and intriguing. He’s a really good actor, and an extremely good writer, and I like his work. 

Mildly disturbing to some may be the fact that all of the technology in the film was available to the common man for reasonably low prices before the film came out. Viewed today it looks really tame. Having already read David Gurr’s An American Spy Story, satellite and electronic monitoring potentials were well-known to me when originally seeing this in the cinema, and that was back in the days before these here interweb-tubes.

Sneakers is more light-hearted than Gorky Park, but is just as satisfying over-all, owing to the calibre of the actors and the quality of the writing.

…and I can’t really say much more than that without giving something away again. Blast.

So… watch that one as well.

Gorky Park (1983)
Eagle Associates

Director:
Michael Apted

Writers:
novel by Martin Cruz Smith
screenplay by Dennis Potter

Sneakers (1992)
Universal Pictures 

Directed by
Phil Alden Robinson

Writing credits
written by Phil Alden Robinson and
Lawrence Lasker & Walter F. Parkes

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

* No, I haven’t any idea what that means either. [ RETURN ]

Only ten years apart and yet yet both seem to be brilliant, it’s difficult to understand how these two men keep creating such incredible work so consistently. Somehow, they’re able to write, direct, and edit a film nearly every year and make all of them – well, nearly all of them – worth running across the street through heavy on-coming traffic. Plus, during the shooting period, there are no re-writes. None. Zero. Those script pages stay white. 

The Big Lebowski (1998)

While this has become a cult classic, I still don’t think it’s that incredible. Yes, it’s fabulous, but I wouldn’t declare it “87 out of ten stars!!!!” as some have. I’m not sure what I would change, but it’s so anarchic that it’s tough to identify anything as either “not sufficiently developed” or “extraneous”. The one section which I wouldn’t remove is the dream sequence, oddly, as it’s such a fabulous reflection of Hollywood’s musical montages, as well as the idyllic nature of The Dude’s notion of life. 

I might take out the character Jesus Quintana, as it really has nothing to do with anything in the story, but he acts in the same way as the gravedigger in Hamlet or the Night Porter in “the Scottish Play”. Besides, the basis for taking out that character would then have to equally apply to the character only identified as “The Stranger”, played by Sam Elliott, and he is possibly the only consistently normal person in the entire tale, so we need him. Hmmm… tricky…

Like Fargo, the movie the brother released two years earlier, The Big Lebowski is what may be best described as “minimalist noir™”. Basically, ‘how much can you do with a noir mystery or thriller to follow its rules, yet make it about as non-depressing and cynical as possible?’ Everyone in both of those films, plus Burn After Reading, is entirely out for the betterment of no one but themselves, and are willing to do anything in order to get it. The one individual who is an exception to this is the police officer Marge in the earlier film, but that’s getting a bit away from the two films we’re really examining here.

With The Big Lebowski, the questions are “why is this loser getting confused with someone else?” plus “where’s this ‘Bunny’ Lebowski, and what does Jackie Treehorn have to do with it?” An obvious additional couple of questions are “where’s The Dude going to get a decent run that really pulls the room together?” as well as “how are they going to fare in the league standings after all of this shakes down?” but those are more by the way sorts of things.

Burn After Reading (2008)

In Burn After Reading, however, the questions are more straight-forward: “who’s going to pay the most for these secret files?”, as well as “how did they get those secret files?” Again, everyone is out for their own betterment, whether they’re the author of a memoire, wanting – no, needing, dammit – cosmetic surgery, or simply looking for a bit of sex to warm them up for another run. The number of selfless people in this story are about as many as you would expect to find in Washington, DC: zilch.

The number of excellent performances from people you hadn’t expected to do real solid comedy yet are pretty damned good thank you very much, however, is “all”. There’s a moment when Brad Pitt’s character needs to be ‘sneaky’, and only ends-up looking completely self-conscious instead. And yet, if you really deconstruct what Pitt does, it’s such an incredibly subtle yet entirely clear bit of body language adjustment, but the guy makes it look effortless. 

Somehow, the Coen boys get the best performances of their careers out of everyone in their films. In some cases, the actors go on to continue their careers with increased skills in every genre of film, but they never quite match their achievement without a script written by them.

Typically, each of their scripts are filled with excellent dialogue which demonstrates a love of and un-matched facility with language. They also have a love of the movie-making business, as their ability to turn stereotypes and predictable scenarios on their proverbial heads is a high-water mark in cinema.

Damn, they’re awesome!

The Big Lebowski (1998)
Polygram Filmed Entertainment
Working Title Films

Directed by
Joel Coen & an uncredited Ethan Coen

Written by
Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Burn After Reading (2008)
Focus Features presents
in association with Studio Canal
in association with Relativity Media
in association with Working Title Films
Mike Zoss Productions

Directed by
Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Written by:
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

Admittedly, this isn’t something that needs analysis, except for that fact it’s so damned easy to get a mystery very wrong if you’re not careful. Especially tricky is the “locked room” variety of mystery. This is pretty much the ‘go to’ destination for anyone needing an example of how to make this work.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Somehow everything in this has either been carefully finessed or is responsible for creating the impression of “this is how things were”. The music, the speaking styles, and the decorum of people in general all appear to be so evocative of the age and body of the time that one gets suspicious of its veracity. From the outset, the whole film is so evocative of the era, it’s entirely possible that everything it does has come to represent that period specifically because of it being done so well here, and not that it is faithful to the reality itself. Given the number of things spotted which I know to be spot-on, it’s probably safe to say the rest of it is too; especially given Sidney Lumet’s reputation for getting things correct in every detail.

The characters are a bit one-dimensional, but given there’s so damned many of them, and their equality of time-involvement in the plot, plus the length of the film being finite, it’s tough for this not to be the case. The detective Hercule Poirot (played by Albert Finney), does have a variety of sides to him, but there lacks a transitory experience in the performance, no matter how excellent the work is. 

The story itself has all of the possible twists, plus a few more one doesn’t expect. As a mystery, all should be there for one to see and analyse, and, frustratingly, you see at the end that it all is. There are a few gigantic leaps of faith that Poirot’s logic takes – I swear his explanation and analysis of the crime takes longer to navigate than the crime itself took to execute, which is never a good sign – but as it holds up to scrutiny, it’s tough to fault it.

The film’s beginning in the story proper, following a sequence explaining a background event which took place five years earlier, is a wonderful introduction of the characters and a mirror of the tale to come. Each personality is equally presented to us in importance, and we get to see the hero’s boredom with ‘normality’: intellectual stimulation is what he craves, problems to solve are his principle interest. The other individuals are merely passing through the scene with little interest in engaging with it, or even each other. Granted, the others also have destinations in mind, whereas Poirot enjoys the journey; the solution isn’t as enjoyable as the actual doing of the solving.

Watch this, do not blink, and you’ll have both an entertaining and fascinating two hours or so.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Nat Cohen presents for EMI FIlm Distributors Ltd.
G.W. Films

Directed by
Sidney Lumet

Writing credits
screenplay by Paul Dehn
based on the novel by Agatha Christie (who isn’t credited for that specifically)

PLEASE NOTE: the above is not in any way the official trailer for the movie. It is, however, pretty fun.

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

While it may seem odd to deal with both of these at the same time, when I realized they both came out within months of each other, as well as both dealing with Alien Space Invasions, well, it’s tough to resist doing a “compare and contrast” examination of Independence Day and Mars Attacks!, especially as there’s an incredible number of similarities in the way they approach that plot which is common betwixt them. Credits and trailers appear at the end of this post for both of them.

Independence Day (1996)

Directed by Roland Emmerich, purportedly because he wanted to blow-up the White House, Independence Day is the story of how America comes together to defend itself and the world from the attack and liebensraum-like occupation of an Alien Force. On the other hand, Tim Burton-directed Mars Attacks! (based on a series of Topps Trading Cards I actually recall from my youth) is the story of how the attack and liebensraum-like occupation of an Alien Force causes America to join comes together to defend itself and the world. See how different they are from each other? No?

Okay, they’re not. 

Looking at the two trailers below, you would get the sense that Independence Day is a doom-and-gloom-filed, dark, terrifying, thrill-ride of suspense and fear. However, when watching it, you realize it’s not at all, and is far closer to the tone of Mars Attacks! than depicted in the promotional material. They’re both light-hearted stylistically, but the latter one really works toward a comedy, while the other merely lets the comedy come from the reality of the characters with an even handed approach. Yes, there’s some really funny-looking stuff in Mars Attacks!, and there’s some really exciting explosions in Independence Day, and those are about the only things that distinguish the one movie from the other. No, really. It might be easier to argue that they’re re-makes of each other than to specify their distinctness-es.

Admittedly, there is some double-casting in Mars Attacks! which almost perfectly echoes Doctor Strangelove…, but this would rely on Peter Sellers having not broken a bone which prevented him getting into the bomber for his scenes, thus resulting in Slim Pickins taking the role of the pilot.

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Both films are filled with movie stars, and it may be due to the coming-of-age of the two film-makers, owing to all of the ‘movies of the week’ of the late-’70s being choc-a-bloc with Star Power in every scene; frequently it was the only reason to bother watching. In the case of these films, each actor seems to fit a template of the earlier films, as they provide a “standard character type” and check-off another in the list of “things to get in the film”: black hero, smart but funny guy, romantic interest, noble US President (plus wife), marginally corrupt government official, out-of-control military leader(s), long-shot fighting hero, kids in need of a strong example, and so on. It all works, however, and both of the films present them all with a wink, letting us know that they know we know they’re kidding about it all.

It’s not overtly done, but both are also satires of late-’50s and early-’60s SF films, and seeing clips of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The War of the Worlds show-up on the TV screens of characters or in the background of scenes is an obvious tip-off about it. That said, though, it seems far more of an homage to the earlier works than a mocking finger-pointing critique. The stakes don’t get much bigger than “if you / he / I get this done, the whole world will be saved!” do they? 

Honestly, these two ought to be watched together, and in this order, forever. There’s some common ground in their up-beat nature, but they satisfy distinct bits of your soul in the process of their storytelling. they even tell distinctly different jokes; with only one specific one being repeated, but the reasons for the joke being made is different in each of them. 

In the process of locating a trailer for Mars Attacks! a clip was located for one of my favourite moments in any film, and I wasn’t even trying to find the thing. It’s a study in how to 

WARNING: the link about to be presented to you counts as a massive spoiler of one of the best gags in the movie, to the point that over fifteen years later I recalled the punch-line but got most of the lead-up wrong. The President’s speech is available here for those who have already seen the film.

Independence Day (1996)
Centropolis Entertainment
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Director
Roland Emmerich

Written by
Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich

Mars Attacks! (1996)
Tim Burton Productions
Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by
Tim Burton

Writing credits
screen story and screenplay both by Jonathan Gems
based on the trading card series by Len Brown & Woody Gelman & Wally Wood & Bob Powell & Norman Saunders

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

Tim Burton describes this as “not a re-make, it’s a re-imagining” and, as the director, he ought to know. To describe this as a “re-make” would be wrong, as would be calling it a “re-boot”. That last one remains to be used correctly for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which came out last year and right now I have little desire to see, owing to having had more than my fair share of simian pictures in recent days.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Anyway, the point here is that the film is not a remake, and very little of it is an echo of the 1968 film. There are a few bits of the original film which get us into the reality of the planet – landing in the future, confusion, mute humans, Ape Overlords, no technology – but that’s about it until we see some bits that reflect some points in the second film, and that’s all.

Apparently it’s far more faithful to the original novel’s events, but not having read it I haven’t an opinion here (Jennifer read it, but that was years ago). The intellectual pondering of questions of justice, or equality of all, or the notion that power doesn’t guarantee righteousness of action; none of these really gets the thoughtful consideration they’re due. they appear, certainly, but mostly in a scene around a table at a dinner party, and purely through the statement of opinions without any further development beyond these introduction of positions. If you’re hoping for a fresh run-through of the ‘Scopes “Monkey” Trial’ you better get that older film cued up, Cornelius.

Both Charlton Heston and Linda Harrison have cameos, so the rooting in the past is hardly ignored. Even the original film’s screenplay writers Rod Serling and Michael Wilson get “special thanks” in the credits for their adaptation. The world and the dynamics of the situation and plot are the same, but the way those are employed and juggled are far different.

In a large number of ways, the story is better here, with more surprises and plot development, yet the characters are more one-sided, and the shortage of intellectual contemplation mentioned earlier also contributes to the lack of meat. Yes, it’s a far different film, and expecting it to be “better than the original” is a foolish prejudice. This is ‘different’, not ‘better’ or ‘worse’; merely ‘different’. This is far more action-oriented, and far less dialogue-driven. This alone means that comparing it to the original is a specious approach.

The ending is, in many ways, superior to the original’s. Given how different the set-up to it is, it’s impossible to say more than “it provides far more questions than answers”. The whole film stays true to the notion of time travel’s rules regarding alteration of its details, the ending especially, and it would have been interesting to see what Burton and his team might have done as a follow-up tale to this; probably an adaptation of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, I suppose.

All in all, a good use of your time, even if the dialogue is thinner and the Important Questions getting short shrift.

Planet of the Apes (2001)
Twentieth Century Fox presents
Zanuck Company
Tim Burton Productions

Directed by
Tim Burton

Writing credits
from the novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle
screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and
Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.