"Well, I won't argue that it wasn't an action-packed, adrenaline-fueled thrill ride. But there is no way you can perpetrate that kind of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork." - Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), Hot Fuzz
Last week was lousy. I was physically ill, and down in the dumps. I was in that weird place where you're not quite sick and tired enough to sleep all day, but you're still sick and tired enough to not want to do anything. All I wanted to do was watch things go boom, and what began as an innocent one-off somehow morphed into a long weekend of, well, watching things go boom....with very fun results.
First up was Hard Boiled (1992), a Hong Kong classic that pretty well sums up leading man Chow Yun-Fat's work with legendary director John Woo, the man who can be blamed (or credited) for everything subsequently made by Michael Bay. A steamy tale of undercover brothers, triad gun-runners, and office romances, Hard Boiled stars Yun-Fat as an in-your-face, lone wolf detective named - I am not making this up - Tequila. Co-starring Tony Leung (Infernal Affairs, In the Mood For Love) as Tequila's buddy, this film is the pinnacle of the genre so lovingly sent up in Hot Fuzz. Like all Hong Kong flicks I've seen, Hard Boiled bounces between over-the-top seriousness, earnest seriousness, and ribald or unintentional humour with abandon. I don't think Tony was supposed to be joking when he said the superintendent told him that Tequila never wastes bullets, and yet.... Ah, well. In my opinion, anyone with the intestinal fortitude to zip-line into a warehouse full of people armed with automatic weapons, or to zip-line down electrical wiring out of an exploding hospital while holding a baby, has the right to use as much ordinance as they please. Packed with scenes of Tequila shooting two guns whilst jumping through the air, Tequila shooting two guns whilst sliding down railings, and Tequila shooting two guns whilst dangling from a height, and, yes, lots of things going boom, the only thing Hard Boiled is missing is Woo's trademark flock of doves, substituted here with a poster in the hospital. Watching Hard Boiled is kind of like watching the complete works of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich, with The Transporter and any film starring Keanu Reeves or Steven Segal as a cop playing in the background.
Random fun fact: the scene in Hard Boiled in which Tony Leung receives a birthday gift was re-enacted virtually word for word ten years later in Infernal Affairs...with Leung again being on the receiving end of that transaction.
Next up came Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare (1968), a film I mistakenly had cause to believe was great in the way Unforgiven is great, as opposed to great in the way The A-Team is great. Fortunately, Corey insisted we have some friends over to watch it with. Friends who would've made worthy co-hosts on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I believe Where Eagles Dare was on an Entertainment Weekly list of "Manliest Movies", and it certainly wasn't made for the rest of us. For one thing, Clint excepted, this film has to have the single ugliest bunch of special forces apes this side of The Dirty Dozen, and if there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's that the special forces only accept recruits who can make at least twelve women swoon simultaneously. Packed with double- and triple-crosses, double- and triple-agents, and the only car I've seen explode before it hit the bottom of a cliff, Where Eagles Dare is a film best watched in good company and a good mood. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it on my own - while at the higher end of the B-movie spectrum, it's no A-Team.
Then, The Transporter 2 was on TV. This may very well be the single most ridiculous non-spoof action film I've seen to date. Fortunately, it takes nothing seriously, making the film unashamedly funny and fun. Jason Statham's Frank is a champion of mid-air automobile maneuvers, launching full-on anarchic assaults on those boring laws of physics - there's a reason why he's the transporter. A classy fellow, Frank's good with kids, removes his suit jacket before every (very well-choreographed) rumble, and is the only man I've ever seen use watermelons as boxing gloves. Yes, you read that correctly. Throw in a completely gratuitous female assassin who can't actually hit anything despite wielding two machine-pistols, and spends the entire film wearing nothing but boudoir lingerie (ah, Luc Besson!), and...well...this film is absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely, positively, entertainingly ridiculous.
After that, we were at Blockbuster to buy Corey a late birthday present, and it struck me that the Wachowski brothers' live-action take on Speed Racer could really tie the whole weekend together. Perfectly nailing the show's anime style in terms of both look and storytelling, Speed Racer is supremely entertaining. However, I couldn't shake the jarring sense that something wasn't right - because it is so perfect, and I couldn't reconcile the feeling of watching anime with the presence of live actors. This film is a textbook example of why different mediums are used for conveying different visual and storytelling styles, and my enjoyment of it was tempered somewhat by the constant awareness of how much time and money was spent for the purpose of making something into something that it's not. But, it was fun, and it gave a lot of animators several years of gainful employment, no matter how much they whined about it in the featurettes. It's almost enough to give the Wachowski's clemency for their last three cinematic monstrosities. Also, Speed Racer includes a role so small it could probably be called a cameo - a cameo by the Twilight Samurai himself!
And there you have it: the most action-packed Labour Day weekend in Elly history. This is the stuff traditions are made of...
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