V For Violence

I'll come right out and say this: I love screen violence. The bloodier the better. Mind you, I can appreciate bloodless CGI enhanced smackdowns a la The Matrix , Spider Man and the X Men flicks. I can dig hyper stylized wire-fu aided battles as exemplified by countless wuxia epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( and given an added patina of poetic elegance by Zhang Yimou's recent forays into the genre), but there's no substitute for honest to goodness blood spattering, brain blowing, flesh searing and limb hacking carnage. Of course, there are movies a plenty whose sole existence is the depiction of gore in its various forms. Slasher flicks like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel are "gore porn" in it's most basic form: regular porn exists for the sole purpose of relieving its actors of their clothing to get them engaging in all manner of sexual gymnastics while gore porn relieves its actors of every vestige of dignity to inflict all manner of pain and torture upon them. The former ends with a violent orgasm while the latter finishes with violent death. While I can watch and even enjoy these films, for me violence for violence's sake doesn't hold any long term appeal.

No sir, for me bloodshed needs to come wrapped inside the familiar tropes of an honest to goodness action flick. I suppose what got me ruminating on this subject is the hotly debated topic in the IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) forums on the possibility that Die Hard 4.0, one of the hotly anticipated summer flicks this year may get a PG-13 instead of an R rating. For those unfamiliar with the antecedents of this much loved action franchise, the above statement would have all the novelty of an announcement that the next Harry Porter flick would feature broom sticks and wands.

For those, like me, who grew up watching testosterone laden action behemoths in the 80's and 90's, the scaled down PG-13 rating for what is easily a landmark action franchise of the late 80s to mid 90s is a slap in the face. A kick to the groins. It's the equivalent of making an Elm Street movie with a de-clawed Freddy. Or a Friday the 13th with a socially well-adjusted Jason who frolics with his camp mates instead of dismembering them with his machete.

Ok..... maybe I exaggerate.

But I grew up on and devoured macho action flicks during an era when Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger strode like muscular kings across a dystopian landscape littered with debris from exploded buildings, burnt out skeletal husks of damaged vehicles and corpses of unfortunate sods who stood in the way of their righteous vengeance.

Stallone, The Governator and their lesser incarnations Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal hacked, stabbed, shot, kicked, punched and cursed their way to R-rated glory and everlasting immortality (at least as long as people like me keep dipping into their DVD collections and customers continue frequenting the action section of Video Ezy).

This was before action movies decided to get brainy and philosophical, before some one decided that Keanu Reeves looked cool doing Kung Fu, before blonde caucasian women went on a roaring rampage of revenge, before CGI heralded the age of comic book violence(even when the source material wasn't actually based on a comic) and especially before studios became obsessed with slapping on a PG-13 to any potentially lucrative summer popcorn flick.

See, it's a matter of simple economics:

This rating ensures that kiddies will flock to see this movie (and their parents who will no doubt be springing for the tickets and popcorn) since the rating does not SPECIFICALLY prohibit them from viewing the film. It merely advices that some material may be inappropriate .

Contrast that with:

This rating on the other hand, prohibits the Under-17s from viewing the film unless accompanied by an adult guardian. That means the majority of parents aren't exactly going to make a movie with this rating their first choice for a family outing at the cinemas. Meaning less revenue, where the studios are concerned.

Such a myopic view precludes the understanding that there's a big enough adult audience out there who can and will pay money to see slightly more mature fare. Sigh!

Out of a sense of nostalgia, I raided my DVD collection over the weekend and had me a jolly old marathon of all 3 Die Hard flicks. While certain elements of it are charmingly anachronistic (check out the brick sized cell phones and cassette players in limos), they still remain, in my humble opinion, dynamite action yarns that pack a wallop.

The first, the original and naturally the best, Die Hard, not only catapulted Bruce Willis from wise cracking TV star to mega movie stardom, but practically invented the Hostage-Terrorist sub-genre within action movies. Subsequent imitators like Die Hard on a train (Under Siege 2), Die Hard on a bus (Speed), Die Hard on a ship (Speed 2), occasionally rivalled but rarely topped this dynamite actioner that managed to be exciting, intelligent, claustrophobic and funny without sacrificing its action movie roots via eye-popping action set pieces while still managing to suffuse its hero with an aura of vulnerability. Willis' John McClane, jet lagged, barefoot and tired, has to play a deadly cat and mouse game with high tech European thieves atop a high rise.

He has to stay one step ahead of them while figuring out a way to rescue his hostage wife and convince bone headed police and FBI officials that he's one of the good guys. Via walkie talkie McClane establishes 2 relationships, a warm camaraderie with Al Johnson, the sole cop who believes he's trying to help and an antagonistic repartee with chief crook Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, an actor who should come with a sign saying "Warning! I may steal the movie away from the lead!"). McClane and Gruber are evenly matched, one armed with streewise cunning, the other suave intelligence but both ruthlessly efficient in dispatching impediments to their progress. Their banter, with Willis' American idioms puncturing Rickman's German inflected classical musings is rib tickling stuff. In an era of invincible muscle men,Die Hard dared to let its protagonist get increasingly beaten and bloodied as the movie hurtles towards an explosive finale. In an age of laconic he men who only opened their mouths to spew the odd one liner, Die Hard gave you a verbose and wise cracking hero. For its time, it was an original. And it's rarely been bettered.

Not even by its sequels.

Die Hard 2 piled on twice the action and plot twists galore in an equally enclosed environment, this time an airport where our intrepid hero races against time to stop a band of lethal mercenaries from flying off with an extradited drug baron while ensuring his wife's flight lands intact. It's audacious set pieces includes an horrific plane crash and a final showdown that takes place on the wing of a moving airliner! It's never dull, yet Willis' lack of vulnerability and the absence of a charismatic villain like Hans Gruber makes this a lesser effort in the series.

Die Hard With A Vengeance(DHWAV) opens up the claustrophobic confines of the previous 2 movies by having McClane race around New York city but recycles the original formula of having Euro thieves as its villains, with yet another Brit thespian made to mouth lines in a German accent. Jeremy Irons' character is even made to be the brother of Rickman's Hans Gruber! DHWAV even pays a nod to that other enduring action franchise of the 90s, the Lethal Weapon series, by having the white McClane team up with a black Samuel Jackson. With a few re-writes, they could be Riggs and Murtaugh!

Violent and profane , the Die Hard movies earn their R rating. With a vengeance.

I await with bated breath for the new installment. With the PG-13 tag bound to neuter much of its action scenes, one can only hope its plotting, pacing and intelligence isn't watered down along with the blood letting.

And the swearing. What's McClane gonna say as he dispatches the baddies now, I wonder: Yip-ee-kay-yay Monkey Fellow??

Oh! What a tangled web they weave!

The success of a super hero tale, be it in the written or celuloid form, isn't so much dependant on an ability to 'shock and awe' us as we stand on the outside gawking at their near celestial powers, but largely on its ability to draw us in by commiserating with an ordinary human being navigating the pitfalls and dangers of his/her new found powers.

The success ( upwards to a billion dollars in worldwide box-office grosses) of Spider Man 1 and 2 with Part 3 set to follow suit,was largely due to the fact that it wasn't so much about high school nerd Peter Parker celebrating his arachnid abilities, but COPING with them. And Sam Raimi's genius, in the opening film , was to depict his hero's transition from young man to crime fighter as a rite of passage to adulthood; after being bitten by a genetically enhanced spider ( an update from the radioactive version in the comics), Parker awakes to find his body undergoing changes and starting to secrete sticky substances, he learns that his great powers come with an even greater responsibilty and he nurses an initial unrequited crush on next door neighbour and high school mate Mary Jane Watson. As Peter Parker juggles crime fighting with completing high school assignments on time, part time jobs to pay the rent and romantic pitfalls over the course of 3 movies, you aren't merely mesmerised by the CGIed sight of a web slinging Spider Man navigating sky scrapers, but sympathising with the all too real problems of an Every Man.

Spider Man

High School science whiz and social nerd Peter Parker is bitten by a genetically altered spider and gains wall crawling and web shooting abilities. Just in the nick of time too, as best friend father Harry Osborne's father Norman experiments with performance enhancers, turns schizo and psycho and riding a jet glider, proceeds to torment our hero. As if he doesn't have enough problems, guilt over preventing the death of his beloved Uncle Ben and a monumentally unrequited love on childhood crush Mary Jane Watson also weigh heavily in our hero's mind...

Apart from working as an extremely well crafted origins tale, what really makes this first entry into an astoundingly profitable franchise is that, at heart, it's an unabashed love story. And that most beloved of all love stories to boot: that of the shy, inarticulate nerd winning the heart of his gorgeous lady love. And with his boyish looks, voice seemingly on the verge of cracking and wide eyed innocence, Tobey Maguire is the most perfectly cast actor to step into a superhero alter ego since the late great Christopher Reeve. His Peter Parker is a pitch perfect study of adoloscent angst and longing. His furtive declaration of love to MJ in a hospital scene is romantic syrup of the sweetest kind; to be indulged without a whiff of cynicism. Which is why the action scenes, particularly Spidey's increasingly brutal showdowns with the Green Goblin is, for me, a jarring tonal shift to its emotional core. Their final climactic fight is especially nasty, with punches connecting with jaws in blood splattering crunches. But it has an air of lethal intensity which the sequels' CGI heavy smackdowns lack. Kirsten Dunst is a fine actress, and her MJ's emotional scenes with Peter carry genuine heft but it's a character that is written poorly. Amazingly flighty, Mary Jane flits from first bully boyfriend Flash Thomson to Harry, then nurses a crush on Spider Man, cruelly dumping Harry before settling on Peter as her main squeeze. It's a flaw that's never quite addressed in subsequent movies, unfortunately and it's to Dunst's credit that we can still believe (somewhat) that MJ's a girl worth getting your webs and hormones tangled over.

Raimi was still finding his footing with this first movie, juggling CGI heavy action with a story that resounded with real human issues of love and loss. Fortunately he found it in the 1st sequel.....

Spider Man 2

Peter Parker struggles to keep a job, attend college and express his feelings to long time crush Mary Jane Watson. Best pal Harry Osborne hates him as he's the official Spidey photographer, blaming the Web Crawler for his father's demise. The stress is eroding his Spidey powers and if that weren't bad enough, brilliant scientist Dr. Otto Octavius mutates into Dr. Octopus when four tentacle-like steel arms are fused to his body when an experiment goes horribly wrong. Controlled by his artificial intelligence infused arms, Otto's bad, mad and wants Spidey's blood...

Critics and the public went ga ga over this sequel and it's not hard to see why. Striking a near perfect balance between awesome action sequences with enhanced and more realistic CGI (although you never believe for 1 second that it's NOT computer generated figures causing computer generated carnage across a computer generated landscape), and an even more emotionally resonant tale, it never loses sight of the fact, that in spite of it's title, this is very much a story about the man behind the mask.

This, obviously isn't good news for action hungry fans who want more Spidey and less Petey. There are 2 major action set pieces, both involving Spider Man and Doc Ock, including an absolute stunner of a set piece on top and side of a speeding subway train. The rest are minor skirmishes and the climactic duel lacks the hard hitting intensity of the Goblin-Spidey showdown of the first movie.

But Raimi nails the human aspects of the tale with aplomb. No scene feels unnecesarily padded or tagged on. Peter's growing distress in juggling his dual life and it's subsequent impact on his relationship with MJ and Harry and his web swinging and wall crawling abilities are wrenching. Sans the powers, Peter could be any one of us; he struggles to get to classes on time, hang on to a part time job, do laundry without having colours running and smearing his whites, pay rent and muster the courage to tell the woman he loves how he feels.

If I have a complaint, is that there's too much angst. Throughout the film, Peter is scolded, chastised, ticked off and harangued by college professors, landlords, customers, best friend and lady love. As Spider Man, his reputation is frequently besmirched in print by hard nosed Daily Bugle editor J.Jonah Jameson ( a superb performance by J.K.Simmons) . It all gets to be a bit much. And when best friend Harry, in a drunken rage, publicly slaps Peter, twice, at a party , and our boy wonder just accepts it stoically, you long to plant another two upside his head for his sickening passivity. And the MJ character is still in full flighty mode, this time latching herself onto the eligible astronaut son of Jameson's, before dumping him, at the altar ( whoever thought that having a heroine who leaves a groom on the wedding day after his parents' have splurged on the event and run out of church in her bridal dress is romantic needs to have all four of Doc Ock's iron tentacles jammed up their ass) to run back to Peter and mouth this execrable line "I've always been standing in your doorway". Retch!

One may argue that Spider Man 2 takes a full 2 hours to basically expound Uncle Ben's "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" philosophy (something the first movie dealt with in far more effective brevity) and it's "hero willing to give up his powers to lead a normal life" arc is a rip off from "Superman 2", but a multi million dollar big budget superhero franchise willing to ground it's high swinging hero long enough to espouse a human tale of facing up to your responsibilities and sacrificing what you love to do what is right in addition to delivering eye-popping action is a rare beast indeed.

Raimi struck a perfect tone in this movie. And then went a little off key in the third and final installment.....

Spider Man 3

All is finally right in Peter's world. Spider Man is beloved by an adoring public, long time love MJ is finally his girl. But MJ's disastrous Broadway debut and a looming romantic rival in classmate Gwen Stacy threaten to derail his romance. With mass adulation going to his head, a still troubled relationship with best friend Harry Osborne and a relationship heading down Splitsville Road not to mention new found knowledge that his Uncle Ben's killer is still at large makes Peter a walking repository for negative emotions, the perfect host for an alien symbiote to latch onto. Add ex-con turned Super Villain Sandman and the symbiote's next host, Peter's photographer rival Eddie Brock who transforms into Venom and Spidey's in for a busy time.....

Given the fact that it was an unholy fascination with piling multiple villains into a superhero flick that practically guaranteed the demise of the earlier Batman franchise (thank you Christopher Nolan for so brilliantly resurrecting this dark Lazarus 2 years ago) , it's odd why Raimi chose Joel Schumacher's fatally flawed concept of "more is better" for this third and probably last installment, (at least for this director) . Given the preponderance of baddies and sub-plots and sub plots, I can only write a cohesive review of this review by breaking it down to its various plot threads.

The Sandman

Thomas Haden Church is an actor I've long admired, from his brilliantly narcissistic turn in short-lived sit com Ned & Stacy to his hilarious potrayal of a womanising soon-to-be married actor in the marvellous Sideways. And he gives Flint Marko's Sandman an aura of melancholia that is almost tragically touching. The Sandman robs banks to finance his estranged daughter's medical bills. And his transformation from flesh and blood man to granular particles is an eye-popping special effects achievement of the highest order. It's easy to see Raimi and team spending a great deal of time and moolah on this character, an acknowledged favourite of the director's. Ditto Sandman's battles with Spidey, stunningly executed set pieces. But with Sandman invested with such gravitas, it's hard to cheer our web-crawler during their many showdowns. If you feel not hate, but sympathy for the baddie, it robs the fights of much needed tension. And re-writing Uncle Ben's demise to involve the Sandman was a mis step even if it feeds into the overall forgiveness theme this movie is built around.

Green Goblin 2

Foreshadowed at the end of Spider Man 2, it was inevitable that Spider Man 3 would see Harry Osborne don daddy's digs to take on Spidey/Peter whom he still blames for his father's death. The first major action sequence is between Gobby 2 and Spidey and it's first rate roller coaster stuff although it sets an unhealthy precedent of having Spider Man unmasked most of the time in subsequent fights. Spider Man 3 brings closure to the Harry Osborne character albeit through a ridiculous contrivance: had a certain character opened his mouth sooner, the whole Harry-Spidey misunderstanding could have been averted way earlier, like in Part 2, leaving this flick a little less cluttered with super villains.

Venom

Pressured by fans and studio in including this much liked baddie, Venom makes an appearance only in the last 20 minutes and his showdowns with Spidey lack serious bite.A clear indication that, unlike the Sandman, Venom wasn't a labour of love for the director. As Venom's alter ego Eddie Brock, Topher Grace is effective but isn't given much material to work with.

Dark Spidey

My favourite bit in this plot crammed movie. After seeing Peter relentlessly bullied over the course of 2 movies, sit back and enjoy as Peter gets in touch with his Dark Side:

• Upon being harassed by his greedy Polish landlord for the rent he snarls, "You get the rent when you get the door fixed". Go Peter!


• Kicks the crap out of Sandman reducing him to pasty non-solid goo. Go Dark Spidey!


• Finally gives Harry the well deserved beating his bratty ass has been asking for. His parting shot to a beaten up Harry "What're you gonna do now Goblin Junior? Cry?" is priceless. Go Peter!


• Humiliating Eddie Brock after the latter uses underhanded tactics to cheat Peter out of a full time gig at the Bugle. Go Peter!


• Finally shows MJ she ain't the only fish in the pond by unleashing some nifty dance moves in front of her with romantic rival Gwen Stacy. You show her Peter!

Not so cool: Dark Peter's ridiculous Hitler style comb over and Saturday Night Fever John Travolta swagger on the sidewalk.

The Women

Bringing in Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy, MJ's romantic rival was a clear mistake. Not only is her character barely there for a couple of scenes, she provides nil dramatic tension whatsoever, neither as Peter's date nor as Eddie Brock's girlfriend. Oh well, there's always another Night Shyamalan movie for her to look forward to I guess.

And MJ.....predictably she flits from current squeeze Peter to ex-flame Harry at the first ripples in the romantic pond. Apparently a failed Broadway stint and petty jealousy at your boyfriends' hot class mate is all it requires to dash off for breakfast with an ex. Sigh!

Overall, I liked the action and the pace and the darker shades to our mild mannered hero. And I enjoyed the sense of closure Raimi brings to many of the ongoing story lines carried over from the previous movies. But a movie crammed with so many plots show tears at the seams and prevents this last installment from ending on the high note this consistently watchable series so richly deserved.