You're So Stressed Out, Do You Want Some Pot?: Crank (2006)

I know that whoever might come across this blog would seem to find my taking the time to even blog about Crank a bit curious.  A film that appears to be a completely action oriented film starring Jason Statham that could very well have been shot entirely as a result of a couple of guys drinking way too much Red Bull before doing an equal amount of cocaine.  Crank is a movie that on paper would be everything I despise about the movie industry, because it appears to be filtering out normative fare about cool white guys running amuck in a city with little or no consequence to their own bodies or those around them.  Crank, however, proves almost immediately to be the singular exception to this rule, becoming something much more in lines with Tom Twyker's Run Lola Run or the maddening cinematic sporadical nature of a Terry Gilliam film.  Crank emerges off of the screen as some sort of larvae that had been festering in the open wounds of the post-modern cinematic structure, wherein the likes of referential filmmaking and only the most moderate of attempts to merge new filming technologies with narrative were being explored.  Here, in the frantic pace of 88 minutes the directorial team of Neveldine/Taylor offer up a cocktail of special effects, music and every other possible element that is as lethal to the eye sockets of the viewer as the drug with which the film borrows its title.  It is not to say that this sort of execution should be the singular approach to action filmmaking, because if done so with even the slightest of a misstep it becomes nauseating, foolish and frankly a bit grating.  Crank, however, manages to take the concept of the frenetic filmic possibilities of post-modernism and move the camera within the diegetic space in clever ways, both breaking the fourth wall and the very understanding of temporal progress in cinema to result in something that is far more enticing that it is disconcerting.  Crank has the feel of being a rather fun experimental film project that has been stretched to its absolute limitations, always at the point of cracking, but never losing its tension.  Indeed, if there is anything to find fault in with Crank it is the fanboys who have appropriated the film as their point of reference without doubly understanding the moral implications at play in the film or how the function as part of a larger commentary on the nature of dilmmic language and action cinema.  Crank is a gift, one that is both acknowledged by a large audience, but also quite overlooked by many for its layered critical possibilities.

Crank focuses on the character of Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) a hired hand for various criminal organizations in Los Angeles who happens to awake one morning to find himself in a dizzied frenzy and barely able to walk.  It is not until he approaches his television and discovers a DVD explaining his situation that things become much clearer.  Chev's former boss has exacted one of his henchmen, Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) to see to Chev's death, but given the warped sense of how to go about murdering a hired hand, Verona chooses to inject him with a cocktail of various drugs that put his body into a state of slow nerve and arterial arrest.  Panicking, the maniacal Chev attempts to contact his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) with no success, leading to his turning to his 'doctor' and medicinal advisor Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam).  It is explained that the drug's affects can be slightly altered if Chev is capable of keeping up his heart rate and adrenaline to their highest points, as it will keep him functioning and prevent his body from shutting down.  At first completely concerned with sustaining his own well-being Chev begins a rampage about Los Angeles that includes him obtaining and snorting crack on a bathroom floor before getting into a fistfight and even driving through a packed mall in order to evade police in pursuit.  In between, all of this Chev continues to load himself up with various drugs and sources of caffeine, all the while attempting to contact Eve, while also obtaining information regarding Verona and his lackey through his friend and informant Kaylo (Efren Ramirez).  When Chev is finally able to catch up to Eve, her generally blasaie attitude, paired with her constant pot smoking lead her to be rather oblivious to the going-ons, although when she sees Chev's body falling apart she is willing to sacrifice both mind and body (in a very obvious way) to assure his safety.  Eventually, Doc Miles is able to meet with Chev and help control the substance running rampant through his body, but it proves only a means to slow down the decay, thus causing Chev to execute in his last hours alive the most wild and aggressive of revenge acts, all culminating with him falling as his body slows to its final beats.

This movie is a lot of things in a matter of very little narrative space.  It is rather clear that the filmmakers had a great time creating the film and by extension Statham seems to clearly enjoy the general off-the-wall nature of his characters' rampaging.  What is lost in the visceral styling of the film and the latent coolness of such a unchecked push through rage is a larger look at the male power figure in the action film and the ways in which he too is capable of going on rampages in the name of his own self-interests, even if not quite as intense as is on display in Crank.  This male action figure as body that can overcome all obstacles has its most classic connection to the iconic works in the James Bond franchise, primarily those tied to Sean Connery.  What makes Crank so absolutely scathing in this regard is the noted emphasis on Chev's own survival being predicated on filling his body with chemically vile materials, all the while breaking and plowing through everything in his path in rode to save himself.  Indeed, his relations to the other characters around him are also stretched by his own fight or flight mentally, here drawn out to a very literal level.  In a way, Chev is a Bond or, in fact, another Statham action character, but here the sense of good versus evil becomes far murkier, when indeed his only willingness not to flee for his safety and the though of taking Eve with him is challenged by the realization that even if he continues to rampage and destroy accordingly he will only do so in a futile sense.  This awakening all plays back on his ultimate decision not to go through with an assassination, which led to his being injected with the Crank in the first place.  Wherein a previous masculine action hero is playing into the execution of military orders or the saving of his daughter from an unseen kidnapper, Chev is solely doing things for his own fruition, taking and giving to others as it enables him to further on his desires.  This would all make for a great film, but what takes the film to the next level is the moment when Chev must encounter his own mortality in the death bed of a patient at the hospital.  The existential implications in this, one of two paused and slowed down moments in the film is highly evocative, as it is not until he is plummeting to his own death where the futility of his own actions and the larger masculine hero as harbinger of unchecked power crash to the ground, here very literally.

Key Scene:  It is tough to pick out of something that is so heavily invested in a strung out narrative, but one can see many of the elements at work well in the mall chase scene through its entire fruition.  Also the subtitles scene is pretty great.

Crank is rather easy to come by on bluray and must be seen in HD.  I was glad to become aware of this film through a blog some time ago of underrated bluray releases.  I cannot emphasize the deserved place of this film on that list.

Time Never Stands Still, Especially Happy Time: Tears Of The Black Tiger (2000)

I am fully willing to admit that Thai cinema, amongst a ton of other regional cinemas has proven to be one of my most under viewed areas, and while I have seen at least one Thai film to date I do not recall being in the right frame of mind to appreciate its deliberate pacing and focused narrative, which is a shame because I am certain that with a different frame of reference I would have absolutely adored the work.  Nonetheless, when I discovered Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger hiding in the deep caverns of Netflix watch instantly it looked far too excellent to pass up as an inclusion on my entire month of westerns.  Of course, I fully expected it to be a traditionalist work within the framework of non-western bodies, but what I got with this film was something wildly its own and visually captivating, possessing what may well be my new favorite color palette for a film.  It is a highly pastel based backdrop, almost indicative of the sixties era east asian post-cards and album covers that involve light green and pink patterns to a high degree, a style that would become embraced by the punk movement only years later.  Furthermore, all of the love for Django Unchained, deserved as it may be, often forgets to remember that all Tarantino really does is copy and paste his films together based off of a ton of crazy things he has already encountered in his vast and surprisingly well-rounded film diet.  It is easy to see where a filmmaker like Tarantino, as well as many Korean and other contemporary East Asian auteurs would have borrowed from Sasanatieng's cult classic, both in its decided embracing of the non-linear narrative, while also making decided use of the glossy, high cinema respect that comes with the western genre.  Each rawhide fueled swelling of the soundtrack pairs magnificently with the simple, yet earnest, love story that emerges within Tears of the Black Tiger and never seems forced or repetitive, despite being a film that essentially recreates encounters between specific characters over a varied length of a couple of decades.  Suffice it to say, if this is what I have been missing out on by not engaging with Thai cinema, consider it a new point of reference and the next area of focus when I do one of my marathons reflecting on works that I have failed to catch up with up until this point.

Tears of the Black Tiger is not exactly the most straightforwards of narratives, but it nonetheless does have a degree of linear structure.  The film focuses on a rural area in Thailand that is subject to a particularly rough group of bandits that have been very frequently and very violently scouring the hillsides for money.  Their main figure is that of Dom (Suwinit Panjamawat) a reluctant bandit whose only real passion in life is to make a name for himself in order to assure a life with the upper crust Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi) of whom he has been quite fond of since childhood when the two took a canoe ride together.  In a particular shootout between Dom and a group of police officers, wherein Dom is attempting to make contact with his love, he is trapped by the  officers and dealt with personally by the lead officer, who indeed is slated to marry the young woman, per the bequest of her father who sees the upstanding officer of the law a much more ideal fit for his daughter than any lowlife, and impoverished thief.  Already facing the trouble of authorities down his back, doubly so when his intentions with Rumpoey are fully acknowledged, things are made far worse for the suffering Dom when his own gang members suspect him of engaging in duplicitous behavior and in the process turning their own guns against him.  All the while Dom is dealing with apparent deja vu as he finds himself defending Rumpoey against a group of wily men who mock him for his aspirations with such a woman, but the difference between their initial encounter in Dom's youth and their recent one is a decided disconnect from concerns for harming those antagonizing him and he proves himself an ideal match for Rumpoey in his willingness to sacrifice himself for her well being.  Of course, no amount of establishing his love for Rumpoey, nor her returning of such feelings, can allow for Dom to find solace, because he is still forced to deal with his maniacal gang members and in a poetic final shootout, Dom attempts to reach for a picture of Rumpoey to explain why his actions have been so unusual, only to be shot by a member assuming that he was reaching for his gun.  Dom dies and in the closing moments all that is left is a visual memory of the bond between the two star-crossed lovers, one that was never to be based solely on unjust class divides.

This film is a visual experience, between its heavy use of pastel colors and fiery, almost incandescent lighting, Tears of the Black Tiger fails to have any visual competitors, maybe with the exception of the equally stylized Pedro Almodovar, who films are very much cinematic pop art.  Furthermore, it is precisely in this comparison that I want to talk about the manner with which Tears of the Black Tiger deals with the trope of violence within the western.  Almodover, a well-established director, often uses his highly stylized and comic stripe style visual elements to suggest something humorous, if not out right absurd about sexuality and gender performance.  This sort of detachment allows for viewers to become comfortable with the topic only to have the director eventually slap a very real and ethically fueled dilemma into the discussion, one that refuses to embrace conservative values.  I would extend this frame of reference to Sasanatieng's film, especially considering that it is a film that makes heavy, if not excessive, use of egregious and gratuitous gore.  Although given the pastel wash that lays upon the film it is, like Almodovar, quite humorous and almost laughable when men's heads explode into pink ooze, only to be completely ignored and moved away as though a simulacrum or virtual experience completely detached from human loss.  The notion of death and loss is quite frequent within the western as a genre and what Sasanatieng does within Tears of the Black Tiger is not new per se, he is simply the first one to do it in such a sensational and absurd manner.  Yet, if this violence were to merely go unchecked I would find this film to be far more problematic, but that is far from the case and, again, like Almodovar, Sasanatieng makes sure to incorporate the reality of loss beyond the corporeal within the final moments of the film, depicting the images of both Dom and Rumpoey in picture frames and the credits begin to roll.  Sure viewers are allowed to revel in the excess and violence while the film rolls, but it is not a reality which one should subscribe to for any reason, and the closing credits suggest that violence in cinema, most notably westerns has a degree of falseness about it, but memories do linger and for many in the world they are very much a result of an insane and unwarranted act of violence.

Key Scene:  Shooting a bullet through coin.

Again this is available on Netflix watch instantly, you should bump it way of in the queue immediately.

It's Easier To Pull The Trigger Than Play Guitar: Desperado (1995)

It is only fitting to include this hyper neo-western on my viewing docket for the month, because, after all it is a complete embracing and rejection of the traditional western that preoccupies itself with white, male issues and often passively incorporates Mexican characters as a means to create narrative cohesion, usually in an exploitative manner, reflect on my recent discussion of Rio Bravo for an example.  While the character of Carlos is certainly not out-and-out exploitative, one cannot help but question his relevance to a plot aside from filling a narrative gap.  What one is provided with in Desperado is a complete and highly visceral consideration of the experiences of, next to Native American persons, the most othered bodies within the traditional western, the Mexican/South American identity.  Robert Rodriguez's pseudo-sequel to El Mariachi (A film I absolutely adore) Desperado is in some ways better than its predecessor, while also lacking a considerable amount of its gritty low-budget honesty.  Robert Rodriguez, much like his filmic compatriot, Quentin Tarantino creates films that are so heavily invested in multiple genres and references as to almost not be any specific style, yet the nature of Desperado is, if anything, wholly a western that also happens to be a film about the drug trade.  Desperado stands as an excellent reminder that Tarantino, while a rebel and provacateur of a filmmaker, does not exist on a spectrum all his own, and very much exists in the same world as Rodriguez.  In fact, I know this will seem sacrilege to fans of this style of film, but in many years in which the two have released films in the same relative space, I would contest that Rodriguez has offered the better product.  Rodriguez, unlike Tarantino, manages to continually surprise, such was the case with Machete, a film I dismissed only to find it absolutely engaging and appropriately excessive.  Desperado is a cinematic fiesta that is tightly paced, while being slow and introspective when necessary, borrowing from a melodramatic tradition integral to Spanish cinema, while also embracing the b-movie world where Rodriguez clearly learned his film language.  Many genres formulate, instersect and explode on the screen in one of the globe's most criminally underrated auteurs work.  I would call Desperado a minor Rodriguez film, but even that makes it stand far above its counterparts.

Desperado preemptively follows the character of El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), I say preemptively because he is introduced through a tale told by barfly and "brother" of El Mariachi Buscemi (Steve Buscemi) who informs a local bar, that is a knowing front for corruption and drug trafficking about his presence and killing at another bar, particularly his unusual means for carrying weapons via a guitar case.  El Mariachi is introduced within the context of a performance, one that is excellent, but goes unappreciated by the mostly white patrons.  As a result, El Mariachi goes on a quest to end the evil reign of Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida) whose evil ways have led to a border town turning into anything but habitable.  El Mariachi moves about the town, almost like a shadow, searching for Bucho and destroying all those who seem to get in his way, yet viewers are also provided a glimpse into the world of Bucho as he ruthlessly exploits everyone around him, regardle
ss of loyalty or family ties.  When El Mariachi finally discovers the bar which much of the trafficking takes place it results in an intense shootout with countless deaths.  During his retreat from battle El Mariachi is chased by one of Bucho's men and shot, only to be rescued and nursed back to health by bookstore owner Carolina (Salma Hayek) who sees El Mariachi as a hero her town desperately needs.  After engaging in a fiery night of passion El Mariachi uses information provided by Carolina to hunt down Bucho, only to discover that he has implemented every single member of the community into his drug ring, including children and even Carolina, using a back room of her bookstore to hide drugs.  Initially furious at the discovery, El Mariachi attempts to take on Bucho's men alone, a task that proves troublesome at first, especially when he is simultaneously attacked by the elusive and seemingly non-partisan Navajas (Danny Trejo).  Eventually, El Mariachi gets Bucho in his scope with a chance to kill him, which leads to the realization that Bucho is his brother, causing him to hesitate in his attack, much to the anger of Carolina.  After stepping over his fraternal boundary issues, El Mariachi recruits the help of his band, whose instrument cases also double as weapons, to take on Bucho's men and eventually Bucho, which is yet another bloody affair, although both El Mariachi and Carolina survive, and even if it is tumultuous the closing scenes suggest that their relationship will do the same.

Desperado, as noted in the opening paragraph, is a film that not only rejects white patriarchy and its power within the western genre, but turns it inside out, in fact, reversing the entire notion of who controls the space of the western, especially in a post-colonial world.  While Rodriguez's films would certainly evolve to consider the issues of navigating a border in a post-9/11 world, Desperado does not have the same concern, because its presence right in the middle of the 90's proved to be a culturally diverse and open to exploration.  Rodriguez however is not idyllic or optimistic about this sort of movement between borders, because as he sees it through the narrative of Desperado, the movement is only that of white tourists coming in and invading the cultural spaces of Mexico.  Think of the particularly frustrating scene involving a few American tourists critiquing Cheech Marin's character and his methods of bartending.  Granted, he is a terrible bartender, but their dismissal is based entirely on their constructions of American service industries.  Similarly, Rodriguez dismisses the carefree evasive attitudes of spring break college kids who move into Mexico expecting it to instantly become a party palace for their every whim and completely void of the violence and despair present in many border cities.  I know that it might seem as though such a set up would absolutely undermine the possibility for any tropes being discussed, but that is far from the case.  The idea of the "stranger" is quite prevalent in the western genre, however, it usually involves a dark, mysterious individual coming into a town and while El Mariachi certainly serves as the first example of this within Desperado, he is also not the stranger, especially since he is the person with whom viewers are to share with experientially.  Instead, Rodriguez has the moments of white invasion serve as a sort of example of how the stranger really exists within contemporary Mexico, especially when they double as a former colonizer.  The white bodies, including Buscemi to a degree, move through the space as though it is their own, while also fearing every alley.  In fact, I would say that the entire opening scene to this film sets up Rodriguez's idea of what non-Mexican bodies represent to the Mexican cultural community and, trust me, it is far from endearing.

Key Scene:  The big bar shootout is action scene magic

This is a cheap film to obtain and probably less recognized than it should be.  I would suggest picking up the bluray double pack paired with Rodriguez's earlier film El Mariachi.