Duck You Sucker

February 25, 2018February 16, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

Duck You Sucker (1971)

Dir. Sergio Leone

Written by: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone

Starring: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli

I can’t believe I hadn’t watched this great Western until today. I’ve been a big fan of Sergio Leone since I was a teen, but his final Western, Duck You Sucker, had eluded me until a few years ago. I fell in love with Leone when I was 17 and I saw The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for the first time. I was taken by the grandiosity of the film, its famous, epic Ennio Morricone score, Leone’s unique approach to montage and framing, and the performances of its titular trio as three outlaws whose paths are set on a collision course. I instantly wanted more films like this one, and I sought out the rest of Leone’s “Dollars trilogy,” Leone’s first three films which all starred Clint Eastwood in one of his early signature roles. I eventually tracked down Leone’s last two films, as well, Once Upon A Time in the West and Once Upon A Time in America, with the former becoming another of my very favorite films of all time, along with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Duck You Sucker, however, was a film that I didn’t even know existed until I was in my early twenties, and it was introduced to me as a somewhat “lost” Leone classic. Unlike Leone’s other films, this film was not as well received outside of his native Italy, so it didn’t gain wide distribution, and was difficult to screen until a series of remasters of Leone’s catalog in the 2000s led to its restoration and re-release on home video. I picked up a copy of the film on DVD at an FYE store that was going out of business in 2014 and it sat on my shelf, unwatched, for the next few years. When I conceived of the idea for this project, I just decided to wait until Duck You Sucker’s time came up for my initial screening. I’m glad to have finally gotten around to it, because this is a movie that I’d been anticipating for a long time, and I wish that I wouldn’t have waited so long to watch it because it is every bit as entertaining as any of Leone’s other masterful films.

Duck You Sucker, or A Fistful of Dynamite or Once Upon A Time in the Revolution, depending on which version of the film you’ve seen and where, is set in the 1910s during the Mexican Revolution. It opens with Juan Miranda (Steiger), the head of a family of bandits, waylaying a stage coach and robbing its wealthy, Anglo occupants of their belongings and money. While the family are counting their spoils, they hear a series of explosions in a nearby canyon, and a masked rider on a motorcycle emerges from the smoke and rubble. The rider is John Mallory (Coburn), a former bomb maker for the IRA, who has fled his home country and sought refuge in Mexico. Seeing John’s proficiency with explosives and noting the similarity of their names, Juan suggests that their meeting must be destiny, and attempts to convince the Irishman to help him and his family break into the National Bank in Mesa Verde. John is committed to the revolutionary cause in Mexico, and sees an opportunity to use Juan in service to the revolution, so he allows him to believe that he is on board with the robbery. When the unlikely pair of allies arrives in Mesa Verde, they find it occupied by the army and meet with other revolutionaries, led by Dr. Villega (Valli), who is orchestrating a coordinated attack in the town. Juan and John hit the bank, along with Juan’s family, as a part of this attack, but when they start blowing open vaults, they find them stuffed with political prisoners instead of cash and jewels. Juan is incensed at being tricked, but finds himself lauded as a hero of the revolution when the attack is over for his role in freeing hundreds of prisoners. With the revolutionaries on the run after the attack, Juan and his family stay with John, although the former expresses some distaste for revolutions in general, noting that though it is academics who theorize social revolution, it is the poor who are actually called to enact it with violence and loss of life. Despite these reservations, Juan helps John to destroy an army detachment by blowing up a bridge, but while Juan is away from his family, they and dozens of other revolutionaries are slaughtered by the army. Juan is heartbroken, and strikes out on his own, though he is quickly captured and is facing a firing squad. John arrives just in time to save his friend, with a well-placed stick of dynamite, and his trademark cry of, “Duck, you sucker,” and the two escape on John’s motorcycle, recommitting themselves to the revolution, and to vengeance for Juan’s murdered family.

For fans of Leone’s films, Duck You Sucker should feel familiar, as it borrows elements from his previous Westerns, and is dripping with Leone’s unmistakable directorial aesthetic. Leone’s unique vision of the American West (primarily captured through substituting Italian and Spanish locales), is evident from the first shots of the film. The sun-drenched landscape, and the sunbaked people who exist within it are similar to the ones we’ve seen in Spaghetti Westerns before. Juan and John form the same sort of unlikely duo that we’ve seen in For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, teaming up to achieve a certain goal despite their differences in motive, and their initial distrust. Leone’s films are often peopled by outlaws, grifters, and malcontents, and these two feel right at home in that world. Juan is essentially a stock Leone character, one that would often by played by Eli Wallach, and John is a variation on the Man With No Name character made famous by Eastwood, although Coburn does put a unique spin on the trope. I don’t say all this to make Duck You Sucker seem derivative, because it takes these familiar elements and uses them in service of a narrative that is more nuanced and cynical than those of Leone’s earlier films, but to say that it is yet another example of a masterful filmmaker having established, and honed, his cinematic voice. Where Leone’s famous close ups and quick zooms were once mere stylistic tricks, highlighting the grimy, gritty nature of his version of the West and helping to create kinetic effects within his often still visual compositions, here they are often used in ironic counterpoint. Leone is retaining his visual style, but flipping its intended meaning on its head in service of a larger narrative argument that he’s making throughout the film.

Though he claims that he did not intend to make a political film, I don’t see any other way of reading Duck You Sucker. From the outset, the film asks its audience to consider issues of race and class, as they pertain to political revolution. Even setting aside the film’s epigraph, a quote from Mao about the necessity of violence in revolution, which was, predictably, excised from the film’s U.S. release, Duck You Sucker is still the most overtly political of all of Leone’s films. The opening stage coach scene, in which Juan is racially abused and mocked by a coach full of well-to-do Anglos, including a priest, is a perfect example of Leone using his trademark style in the service of this politically motivated criticism. The scene is shot in typical Leone fashion, utilizes a lot of quick cuts and eyeline matches, and a camera framing that is steadily bringing us closer and closer to the subjects. As the racial animus that the wealthy passengers are directing towards Juan starts to reach a head, Leone opts to cut to close ups of their mouths, gorging on food, spitting flecks of it from their lips with each invective. Leone visually links the ugliness of their attitudes and speech to their disgusting manners, undercutting the veneer of polite society that they pretend to live within. Also, in predictably Leone-ian fashion, Juan gets the better of his fellow passengers through some underhanded trickery. He allows them to hurl their insults, and plays the role of the stupid Mexican well, knowing that just around the bend, his sons are waiting to ambush the coach and turn the power dynamic on its head. After being called an animal and a brute by the racist travelers, Juan is happy to oblige their stereotypes as he callously robs, beats, and strips them, leaving them for dead in the desert.

While the film, and by extension the filmmaker, doesn’t make an overt political statement, there are more than enough indications throughout as to where the audience’s sympathies are intended to lie. We are repeatedly shown the suffering of the individual and of the oppressed at the hands of the wealthy and those in positions of state-sanctioned power. Though I do believe that Juan’s rejection of revolutionary action, which convinces the intellectual revolutionary John to throw away his Bakunin, should be taken as the sentiment closest to Leone’s own feelings about war and revolution, I think that in this narrative the film is clearly favoring one side of the conflict over the other. The film has the highest body count of any Leone film, by far, and it depicts scores of both soldiers and citizens being killed, but only affords opportunities for pathos in the killings of citizens and revolutionaries. When an entire army battalion is dispatched of in the bridge explosion, they are as ants, crushed underfoot and easily forgotten about, but when Juan’s family and the rest of the rebels are murdered in their beds, the camera makes it a point to linger on their faces, humanizing the dead and evoking strong pathos and sympathy within the audience. Leone said that he didn’t intend anyone to read the film literally, and that the Mexican Revolution should be considered allegorically, but the repeated evocations of revolutionary conflicts across the globe doesn’t really allow for any reading of the film aside from a political/social one.

But, even if one chooses not to consider the film’s larger arguments and political implications, it’s a masterful Western in the Italian style. Though he certainly wasn’t the first Italian filmmaker to evoke the American West, Leone firmly established the Spaghetti Western aesthetic, and the genre found its Platonic ideal in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Once again, Leone perfectly captures the Spanish countryside, filming breathtaking vistas and deserts that stand in for Mexico. His images are, as usual, underscored by Ennio Morricone’s breathtaking music, providing perfect accompaniment and counterpoint to the images. Morricone has scored some of my favorite films, and the themes in Duck You Sucker rank among his finest work. And, of course, the film features some strong performances from its leads. Despite not always seeing eye-to-eye with Leone, Steiger turns in a great performance as Juan Miranda, allowing an intellectualism and cunning to shine through the character’s motivating greed and avarice. Coburn plays John Mallory as a world-weary, but not resigned, intellectual. He often seems bemused at the circumstances that have led him halfway around the world, but he rarely wanes in his principled dedication to revolutionary action. The two actors play off of one another well and make the unlikely bond between Juan and John feel not just realistic, but deep and true. By the film’s end, it’s clear that these characters have grown not just to respect one another, but to feel a close affinity and kinship with one another, despite their differences. Leone has maintained that the film is ultimately about their unlikely friendship, and that the revolution is just the setting that allows that story to take place, and if one wants to read the film that way, he or she certainly wouldn’t be disappointed, either.

I really can’t say enough good things about this movie. I’m kicking myself for not watching it sooner, because I think that I would have more insightful criticism to provide if I had a couple more screenings under my belt. I’m still trying to figure out exactly where Duck You Sucker should fit in the larger context of Leone’s filmography, and of the Western genre, as a whole. It’s a film that sees a legendary director starting to expand his palette while truly refining his signature style. Once Upon A Time in the West, the film that directly precedes this one in Leone’s body of work, is truly an elegy for the American Western, and felt like it was closing a chapter on the director’s career. So what, then, is Duck You Sucker? I think that it’s an example of Leone trying to work out other artistic and narrative concerns within a familiar milieu. If the West of his earlier films represented a filter through which to understand Americanism from the perspective of an outsider, then should we read Mexico and the Revolution in Duck You Sucker as a filter through which to explore and understand human relations and power dynamics, generally? I’ll need a few more viewings to truly settle my own thoughts on this movie, and I’m sure that I’ll take that opportunity as soon as I’m able, which makes me really happy. Part of what I was hoping to do in this project was to potentially reassess my relationship and understanding of movies with which I was intimately familiar, through unfamiliar juxtapositions, or meeting a film text at a totally different point in my life. In this case, watching a new movie has helped me to reexamine my thoughts in regards to a filmmaker that I felt I was already intimately familiar with. Finally introducing myself to Duck You Sucker was a real pleasure, but the most fun thing about it was how it started the process of helping me rethink my own understanding of Leone’s cinema. It felt like putting in a final puzzle piece and completing a picture. Of course, now I have the inspiring challenge of making sense of what that overall picture means to me.

Drunken Master

February 18, 2018February 15, 2018 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment

Drunken Master (1978)

Dir. Yuen Woo-ping

Written by: Lung Hsiao, Ng See-yuen, Yuen Woo-ping

Starring: Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu-tien, Hwang Jang-lee

Drunken Master is one of the seminal classics of the kung fu genre. I didn’t see the movie until after I had already become enamored with Hong Kong martial arts films and decided to trace the lineage back to some of the great films of the early period of the genre, but it’s still a favorite of mine. Like many Americans getting into kung fu movies, my journey began with the films of Bruce Lee, and then jumped forward to the modern kung fu films of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, whose American films were becoming very popular around the time that I started high school. After I tired of their late 1990s and early 2000s era Americanized martial arts films, I started seeking out Chan’s earliest work, and discovered a treasure trove of classic Hong Kong cinema. Jackie Chan has become a household name, and in many ways has come to signify a certain type of martial arts cinema. The roots of his particular blend of slapstick comedy and martial arts can be found on full display in Drunken Master.

The film casts Chan as the folk hero Wong Fei-hung, a revolutionary kung fu master who lived at the turn of the 20^th century, and a common figure among popular martial arts media. In the film, young Wong is a troublemaker, who is only beginning his journey towards becoming a hero and martial artist. Wong is more interested in causing mischief with his friends and in picking fights than he is in learning the disciplines of kung fu, so his father, Kei-ying (Lam Kau), recruits the feared and legendary master Su Hua-chi (Yuen Siu-tien) to mentor the boy and mold him into a kung fu master. Master Su introduces Wong Fei-hung to a rigorous training regimen, meant to strengthen the pupil’s mind and body in preparation for his learning of Master Su’s secret style of kung fu, “drunken boxing.” Though he initially bristles at the torturous training, Wong eventually falls in line after suffering an embarrassing thrashing from Thunderleg (Hwang Jang-lee), a local contract killer and bully. Wong masters drunken boxing just in time to save his father from Thunderleg, who has been hired to kill him by a business rival to whom the elder Wong will not sell his land.

Drunken Master wasn’t Jackie Chan’s first hit in Hong Kong, but it, along with its predecessor Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, also directed by Yuen Woo-ping, were Chan’s true breakthroughs. The films established the comedic style of kung fu that the actor would become synonymous with, and ushered in a sea change in the genre. The films also helped Chan to step out from Bruce Lee’s shadow, as he had been groomed as a potential successor to Lee as the next big star of Hong Kong action cinema. While Chan would go on to experience major success both at home and internationally, likely earning a place on the Mount Rushmore of modern action stars, he would do it through establishing a potent blend of comedy and action. Chan’s unique style of martial arts, acrobatic and lithe, is on full display in Drunken Master, and his comedic timing is enhanced by the film’s plot device that drunken boxing can only be optimally performed when under the influence of alcohol. Throughout the film, Chan glides through his fight scenes, displaying an oxymoronic graceful clumsiness and the sort of effortless physical timing that denotes a master. He nails his spots and his stunts, while maintaining the engagingly charismatic persona that makes him a star. Though the film doesn’t feature the daredevil stunts that would become Chan’s calling card later in his career, the seeds of his slapstick style of action comedy are clearly already on display.

Chan isn’t the only engaging martial artist in the film, however. Drunken Master is full of great fight scenes that are entertaining, exciting, and funny. Yuen Woo-ping began his career with Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and used that film and this one to cement his style, going on to further his credentials by working with several legendary martial arts actors and further the blend of comedy and martial arts. Though much of his cast in Drunken Master is not as famous or accomplished as the actors who he would make his name with, Yuen helps his performers stand out in unique ways during their fight scenes. Hwang is the perfect villain in the film as Thunderleg, and Yuen uses the actor’s physicality perfectly, crafting him as a traditionally one-dimensional, cruel and punishing villain. Though the Korean actor would continue to work in Korea and Hong Kong into the 1990s, Thunderleg is probably his signature role, and his unique fighting style in the film is memorable. Dean Shek, who had already been making films for Shaw Brothers Studios for a decade, stands out as Kai-hsien the assistant instructor at Wong Kei-ying’s school, whom Wong Fei-hung and his friends bully early in the film. He provides a lot of comic relief early on and is a good foil for Jackie Chan. Yuen Siu-tien, Woo-ping’s father and an established martial arts star, steals several scenes as Master Su. He plays the role of the drunk and the warrior equally well, snapping into action in the film’s fight scenes, while he dodders around, casually abusing Wong, during its many training montages. The many different styles of kung fu on display, and Yuen Woo-ping’s ability to excellently choreograph fight scenes that highlight those stylistic differences, make for a varied fight-fest that doesn’t get bogged down in the repetition that can befall some lesser martial arts films.

The film is, admittedly, fairly light on plot, but I don’t think that that is necessarily a bad thing. I don’t really watch kung fu movies looking for intricately plotted narratives, and Drunken Master delivers on the promise of a fun, action-packed two hours of entertainment. The film’s plot will be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the archetypal narrative of the hero’s journey, generally, and intimately familiar to anyone who is familiar with kung fu films. It uses the traditional narrative of some outside force threatening the protagonist’s village/family/martial arts school, and the protagonist having to train to defeat that outside force, and becoming a kung fu master in the process. While some of the specifics of this narrative are unique to Asian cultures, the narrative itself is universal and bears a great deal of similarity to the classic American Western. I have always felt that the Western and the Asian action genres of martial arts and samurai films have had a great deal in common and have regularly been in cinematic dialogue with one another. There are obvious examples of crossover with The Magnificent Seven being a direct adaptation of Seven Samurai, and with A Fistful of Dollars being adapted from Yojimbo, but I think that overall the genres are constantly influencing and informing one another. Specifically in Drunken Master, I think that Yuen Woo-ping shows the influence of Sergio Leone early in the film, particularly in the way he has characterized and chooses to frame Thunderleg. The sort of primal, direct narratives that Westerns and martial arts films traffic in are cut from the same cloth, despite cultural specificity, and the focus on “men of action,” while perhaps outmoded, is certainly familiar. I guess it isn’t surprising that these two genres are among my favorites, and that I’ll generally be pretty satisfied to watch any Western or martial arts film.

Drunken Master is the sort of genre cornerstone that anyone who is interested in getting into kung fu movies, or Hong Kong cinema generally, should see. It is an early career classic from some of the central players in the New Hong Kong Cinema that would emerge in the 1980s, and its influence on the modern martial arts genre should not be understated. I don’t know that I personally love the slapstick style of Jackie Chan and the extreme emphasis on comedy in his early kung fu films as much as the traditional wu xia inspired kung fu films of the Shaw Brothers, but Drunken Master is too fun not to enjoy. The film’s fight choreography stands up to modern films, even 40 years after its release, thanks to the work of Chan and Yuen Woo-ping, both legends in the world of martial arts cinema. The film’s injection of humor makes it a perfect starting point for people looking to start watching more kung fu movies, and the presence of a mega-star like Jackie Chan make it fairly easily accessible, as well. Martial arts films had already reached a high level of artistic accomplishment by the release of Drunken Master, but the film’s success helped to reinvigorate the genre after the death of Bruce Lee, and helped to keep it relevant, if somewhat disregarded as “low art,” with international audiences. The film’s innovations wouldn’t be fully realized until Chan broke through as a star in Hollywood in the early 1990s, bringing along with him a wave of Hong Kong action stars and American releases of their films, but without Drunken Master, it’s arguable that this boom period for martial arts cinema wouldn’t have happened. If you’re only going to watch one kung fu movie, this might not be the Platonic ideal to choose, but if you want to explore the genre and seek out some of the more unique entries to its canon, Drunken Master can’t be missed.

Drug War

February 11, 2018February 9, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

Drug War (2013)

Dir. Johnnie To

Written by: Ka-Fai Wai and Nai-Hoi Yau

Starring: Honglei Sun and Louis Koo

Drug War is the perfect action thriller to follow up last week’s movie, Don’t Say A Word, and to help wash that viewing experience out of my consciousness. Drug War is a great action movie, suspenseful, stylish and original, perfectly paced and shot. I’ve written before about my fondness for Hong Kong action cinema developing early in my teens when my friends and I would borrow tapes from one of their fathers. During those early years, I associated Hong Kong cinema, and Asian action cinema, in general, with the kung fu movies of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. It wasn’t until college that I discovered the wide array of films that were common in Hong Kong cinema tradition, including beautiful ghost stories informed by Chinese mystic traditions, the aforementioned kung fu classics and wuxia epics, and, of course, gritty police procedurals, which became some of my favorites. Over the last decade, or so, my appreciation for Asian action cinema, in general, hasn’t waned, with some of my favorite recent action films emerging from Hong Kong and Korea. I’ve found these imports to routinely be more unique and of a higher quality than the Hollywood action fare that is currently clogging the multiplex from April to October, and Drug War is certainly no exception.

Drug War is something of a hybrid of a procedural and action film, exploring both the tedious minutiae of day-to-day vice investigations, as well as the explosively dangerous situations that drug enforcement officers in China find themselves in when attempting to apprehend drug traffickers. The film opens with Timmy Choi (Koo), a drug manufacturer and trafficker, crashing his sports car into a shop window while fleeing from an explosion at his methamphetamine factory. Simultaneously, we witness a sting operation led by Captain Zhang (Sun), a vice cop, in which a busload of drug mules are apprehended. Choi is brought to the same hospital that is treating the mules, and Zhang realizes that the man is connected to the trafficking ring, and though he attempts an escape from the hospital, Choi is apprehended and offers to trade information in exchange for his life. With Choi’s help, Zhang goes undercover, impersonating two different figures in the Chinese drug underground, and working his way into the organization. He is introduced to all facets of the drug trade, from manufacturing to distribution and trafficking, and he is gradually introduced to the major players of Choi’s syndicate. Zhang sets up a deal, posing as “Haha” a drug trafficker who operates a port and is looking to ship the syndicate’s drugs across the sea to Korea and Japan, but when it’s time for the deal to go down, the gangsters discover that there’s a rat in their midst, which prompts an epic battle in the streets between the police and the gangsters.

I think what I like the most about Drug War is that it feels authentic. Nothing about is glossy or over the top, and there’s not an attempt to glorify either side of the conflict. The drug dealers aren’t, for the most part, monsters, nor are the police shining white knights. Instead, both groups are depicted, realistically, as two sides of the same coin, having to come to unsteady alliances with one another in order to operate. Though Zhang isn’t sure if he should fully trust Choi, he knows that he needs him for the access that he can provide to higher ups in the drug trade, and though Choi can’t fully trust Zhang, he has to try to keep him happy or he’ll face the death penalty. The pair’s tenuous symbiosis is at the center of the film and it stands in for the larger parasite/host relationship that the drug traffickers share with society generally, as well as the predator/prey relationship that the police and the drug dealers share.

The film is also realistic in its depiction of police work. I’m a sucker for a good, slow-moving procedural, and though Drug War is a bit too action oriented to be a true procedural, I appreciate the fact that To chooses to slow the pace and put a damper on his typically bombastic brand of action cinema. Drug War takes special time to show the surveillance teams tensely listening in as Zhang goes undercover in a room full of dangerous criminals. It highlights the technology that the police rely on to gain information about their targets, as well as the planning and precision timing that are required to execute a successful raid or sting operation. We see teams of officers working in tandem, as a finely-oiled machine or a single-brained organism. This slow pace not only allows the audience to appreciate the complexity of the work that the officers are doing, it also creates a great deal of suspense throughout the film. Early in the film, To chooses to drag out several sequences, ratcheting up the tension as the audience shifts to the front of their collective seats, teasing a disastrous outcome for our protagonists, only to rectify the situation at the last minute, easing the tension and letting everyone take a quick breath. As Zhang gets closer and closer to the top of the Chinese drug underground, the stakes, and the suspense, only raise higher. The film, generally, is a slow build towards its ultimate violent denouement, punctuated throughout by short bursts of action, and the tension/release formula that To has mastered.

The payoff for all of that suspense is the film’s explosively violent conclusion. To is known for his stylish depictions of violence, and the conclusion of Drug War doesn’t disappoint on that front. To makes his film’s big shootout poetic, capturing some two dozen players firing wildly in the street outside of a primary school, ducking in and out of cover, while his camera does the same, zooming in and out of the action, reframing the shots quickly to mimic the disorienting feeling of an extreme adrenaline rush. The camera often tracks out from the scene, affording the audience a glimpse of the whole street, which resembles a battlefield or chess board, reinforcing the idea that the individual players, be they cop or criminal, are the chess pieces in a larger game. Though this climactic gun battle is the film’s most virtuosic set piece, it still maintains the overall gritty, realistic aesthetic of the film. There is none of John Woo’s gun ballet on display here. In fact, To’s decision to shoot on location gives the scene an eerie, news-like quality that drives home its realism. Simply put, the scene is a great action set piece.

Drug War is full of memorable scenes, but one that sticks out especially for me, is the extended scene early in the film in which we see Zhang go undercover as two different underworld figures, “Haha” and Li Shuchang, who couldn’t be further apart in mannerism and personality. In the scene, Sun is asked to play three different characters, and he nails each one of them. Sun slides effortlessly from persona to persona, fooling the characters in the film as well as the audience. He first meets with Haha, where he must impersonate the stone faced Li Shuchang, saying very little, not allowing a glimpse into his internal processing. The scene then requires Sun to flip characters and impersonate Haha while meeting with the real Li, so he completely changes his physicality, loosening his gait and adopting Haha’s gregarious carefree style of conversation. The meetings are all incredibly suspenseful, as the audience waits to see if Zhang’s cover will be blown, but with Sun’s perfect mimicry, there’s never any real doubt. He doesn’t break until after the deal between Haha and Li has been secured, and only then does Sun return to the Zhang character. He’s taken too much cocaine, in order to sell his performance as Haha, and Sun enacts Zhang’s panic and fear of an overdose perfectly. As soon as the real Li exits their meeting room, he drops the pretense of being Haha and collapses to the floor, writhing and screaming. The layers of this performance, with Sun playing Captain Zhang, who is in turn playing two roles in his undercover meetings, always stands out to me. The three performances are all markedly different, and they are all realized in about five minutes of screen time.

I don’t typically go for action movies or thrillers much anymore, because they’re often so derivative and one note, but movies like Drug War remind me that the genre is still quite fresh if you look beyond the scope of the Hollywood mainstream. It was on my top ten list in 2013, and it’s still a pleasure to watch a few years later. Even though I know how the story unfolds and when the action set pieces fall, To’s suspenseful film doesn’t lose any of its effect. Drug War is an expertly timed and acted slow burn, and To’s visual style keeps the audience immersed in the world of the film, typically hanging on the edge of their seats. The payoffs at the film’s end are even more satisfying because the tension has been ratcheted so high throughout the earlier parts of the film, providing an appropriate give and take between the film’s contrasting styles. When the violence does finally erupt in Drug War, it has a more cathartic effect than in a mindless action blockbuster because the film has taken the time to properly set the stage by developing its characters and their relationships to one another. It’s a highly satisfying thrill ride and one that I’ll be signing up for again many times in the years to come.

Don’t Say A Word

February 4, 2018February 4, 2018 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

Don’t Say a Word (2001)

Dir. Gary Fleder

Written by: Anthony Peckham & Patrick Smith Kelley (from the novel by Andrew Klavan)

Starring: Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Sean Bean

I had to write my review of Don’t Say a Word almost immediately after screening the movie, because it is a truly unremarkable and unmemorable film. The movie is the type of paint-by-numbers studio fare that I typically avoid, but somehow this disc ended up in my collection. It isn’t really my movie, having gotten mixed into my DVDs at some point when, I assume, a friend let one of my roommates borrow it sometime. The case has sat on my shelf for over a decade, mixed in among other movies that I’ve loved and watched many times over the years, and I’ve never had the impulse to take it out of the case and watch it until this morning. I have to say that my reticence to watch Don’t Say a Word was probably wise, as it provided an entertaining enough, though thoroughly uninspired couple of hours. Don’t Say a Word isn’t a terrible movie, but its familiar plot has been spun out in better, more original ways more than once.

Don’t Say a Word opens in 1991, with an exciting bank robbery scene, in which a gang makes off with a rare $10 million dollar ruby. However, in the chaos of the aftermath of the robbery, two members of the gang are able to double cross their leader, Patrick (Bean), and make off with the precious jewel, leaving him holding a worthless bracelet. The film then jumps forward ten years, introducing Dr. Nathan Conrad, a child psychologist who has been asked to work with a disturbed teenage girl, Elisabeth (Murphy), who witnessed her father’s murder as a child. Meanwhile, Patrick and his gang are released from jail, and are hell bent on finding the stolen ruby. The gang set up shop in an apartment above Dr. Conrad’s apartment, and proceed to surveille him and his family, before abducting his daughter. Patrick contacts Dr. Conrad and informs him that he has little time to save his daughter’s life, and that the only way to do so is to extract a six digit number that Elisabeth has locked in her repressed memories. It is subsequently revealed that Elisabeth’s murdered father was the member of Patrick’s gang who double crossed him, and that he hid the ruby in Elisabeth’s favorite doll for safe keeping. While Dr. Conrad attempts to crack the safe that is Elisabeth’s mind, a police detective (Jennifer Esposito) is tracking Patrick in connection with a string of grisly murders. Their trails all dovetail at the film’s climax, which occurs in a pauper’s graveyard on Hart Island.

The film starts out promisingly enough. The opening heist scene is exciting, and though its rather conventionally blocked out and shot, it still provides an initial rush that propels the first quarter of the movie. However, when the film starts to downshift and introduce its psychological thriller components, it becomes a bogged down game of cat and mouse. Fleder tries to use dark settings-cemeteries, crumbling state-run mental hospitals-to give the film an eerie undercurrent, but these window dressings rarely serve to distract from the fact that what he’s presenting is largely a cookie cutter ransom film, with few points of specificity to set it aside from the rest of its ilk. The film takes very predictable courses to bringing Conrad and Patrick together for a confrontation, and hits on all the familiar tropes along the way. Even the film’s supposed twists, whether it be the fact that the kidnappers were in the apartment building all along or that Elisabeth’s murdered father was a member of Patrick’s gang, are easy to see coming a mile away. The film features a handful of action set pieces that should help to break up the monotony of its cardboard plot, but none of them are particularly memorable.

The performances are workmanlike throughout, with a pretty good cast having been assembled. No one is doing his or her best work in Don’t Say a Word, but the film doesn’t suffer from poor performances in any way. Douglas is fine as the distressed father, but his performance lacks any sort of immediacy. I felt that he was far more hell bent on getting to work in Falling Down than he ever was on rescuing his young daughter in this film. Bean is probably the star of the show, using his minimal screen time to great effect. He’s particularly effective as a chillingly calm and menacing voice over the phone, giving both Conrad and his wife, Aggie (Famke Janssen), cold instruction.

I do think that the film is to be credited for featuring several strong performances by women and giving its female characters prominent roles. Aggie is bedridden for much of the film, suffering a broken leg in a skiing accident, but when she does get the opportunity to rise and get involved in the action, Janssen delivers ably. She has one of the film’s best fight scenes, viciously dispatching of one of the kidnappers who attempts to snuff her out. Jennifer Esposito does the best that she can with the little amount of screen time and exposition afforded to her character. She plays Detective Cassidy as a tough, no-nonsense cop, and even though her character is an obvious caricature, Detective Cassidy is presented in a more positive light than her male counterparts, who are shown to ineffective, lazy, or both. Finally, Brittany Murphy shines in the movie in a role that she was likely pigeonholed into. Though she spent much of her too short career being typecast in just these sorts of roles, women with psychological issues in crisis, she never failed to deliver compelling, nuanced performances. As might be expected, much of her work in Don’t Say a Word is nonverbal, and she builds a performance on the tics and physical compulsions that drive her character. The film doesn’t have the most progressive view of mental illness, but Murphy’s performance does a lot to soften its rough edges. Her gentleness and longing help to humanize her character and give the film what emotional depth it does have.

Overall, Don’t Say a Word isn’t a bad movie. It’s serviceable in all the ways that it should be, but it lacks any real dynamism, and it’s far too predictable to stand out in a crowded field of similar thrillers. In fact, it serves as a good reminder for me of why I tend to avoid these types of mainstream thrillers. They’re often so derivative that it’s difficult to distinguish one from another. The film’s cast does what they can to elevate the material, but the talented actors just aren’t given a great deal to work with. Fleder shows some flashes of compelling action filmmaking throughout, but rarely carries these over to the film as a whole, leaving the project feeling uninspired. This is probably the first unequivocally negative review that I’ve written so far for this project, and it likely isn’t a surprise that the first film that I’m reviewing that isn’t actually “mine,” in the sense that I didn’t purchase it or choose it to be a part of my collection. I was hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised by Don’t Say a Word, but there just isn’t enough there to make me desire a second viewing. If you’re in the mood for a psychological thriller, there are plenty of better choices.

Drew's DVD Project

12 Monkeys to Zodiac

Month: February 2018

Duck You Sucker

Drunken Master

Drug War

Don’t Say A Word