DVD Review: The Mechanic

Statham and Foster spin their wheels in the remake of a Seventies crime genre favorite.

A decade ago, around the time of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake, someone involved with the film (maybe the director himself) said you can more easily remake a mediocre film than you can a well-made one. It’s a good theory: presumably the audience is more forgiving of mistakes made in the retrofitting of the story material, and at the same time possibly more eager to embrace improvements. American culture is proudly all about the upgrade, and for better or worse consumers are predisposed by tradition to equate the new with the improved, whether the connection proves true or not.

The target audience of director Simon West’s The Mechanic, a thunderous and messy remake of the little but fondly remembered 1972 Charles Bronson actioner of the same name, won’t give a shit if the film improves or denigrates its predecessor. Why should they? Within the narrow scope of shoot-em-up action films it’s neither remarkable nor terrible, and largely indistinguishable from star Jason Statham’s franchise of Transporter adventures. If you like those films, here’s more of the same.

Statham takes over Bronson’s role as Arthur Bishop, a contract hitman employed by an international company that contracts assassinations, murders, and vengeance killings to its stable of operatives. As Bishop explains, some killings need to be staged to resemble accidents and some need to send a clear message. Both kinds seem to require meticulous planning and preparation, including the opening set piece execution of a vaguely defined South American millionaire: Bishop kills the man in his tightly guarded mansion and then stages an unnecessarily elaborate escape.

Returning to his New Orleans base of operations, he meets with his mentor and friend McKenna (Donald Sutherland) but shortly thereafter learns the company has marked the older man for termination. A company executive (Tony Goldwyn) tells Bishop that McKenna sold information about a mission to a third party, resulting in the deaths of several operatives. Bishop reluctantly agrees to execute McKenna himself, carrying out the hit but staging the event to look like a carjacking.

Mulling over his guilt, he’s reunited with McKenna’s estranged son Stephen (Ben Foster), a ‘neer-do-well with a bad temper and, thanks to his father’s death, an aimless wellspring of rage. Bishop stops Stephen from executing a small time criminal and agrees to train him as an assassin, a regimen that includes buying a chihuahua and loafing around an Uptown coffee shop.

The revelation of those instructions’ hidden purpose, along with the final triple-cross conclusion, offer the only true – if moderate – surprises of the film. The rest is go-through-the-motions shoot-em-up, albeit motions handsomely and engagingly staged by West and his stunt team. Statham has done this enough by now to make it look easy, and the gunfights have a kinetic brutality to them that’s reminiscent – most likely deliberately so – of the early films of John Woo.

Wikipedia tells us the critics reviewing the 1972 version noted both the father-son rivalry between Bishop and Stephen and also a “latent homosexual bond.” But West and this latest version don’t bother with infusing the 2011 version with a murky subtext; the script lets the two men keep their thoughts to themselves tough-guy style; even when Stephen willfully disobeys instructions Bishop is slow to criticize, and their final confrontation outside a gas station is played with a minimum of pathos. It’s a lucky thing Statham and Foster have the laconic acting tradition to fall back upon – watching them open up might prove embarrassing.

As for the performances, as noted above Statham is an old hand at this. Foster, though improved since his dreadful performance in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma, doesn’t often do more than smirk or act cocky on-camera. Yet his mugging, meant to telegraph detached, contemptuous cool, comes off as bratty next to Statham’s reserved-to-the-point- of-boredom swagger. Swedish actress Mini Anden gets the only substantive female part, playing Bishop’s prostitute love interest; their sex scene early in the film is a textbook example of “gratuitous nudity.” (I’m guessing her character is a prostitute, though she sometimes acts like a girlfriend; Bishop gives her money and she doesn’t know his name.)

Eventually The Mechanic doesn’t amount to anything more than a place-holding link in the careers of its two stars.  Statham will certainly make more action movies, and for whatever reasons Foster seems on his way to becoming a durable screen presence as well. The Mechanic isn’t a bad film: it’s not a disappointment or travesty to the original, and it’s not a good film or improvement either. It’s just in the middle all the way around, until the last five minutes when things get very hairy and very unpredictable all at once. Now with its home video release you can watch those first, skipping to the best part. Everything else will be the same when you go back.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Due Date

Robert Downey, Jr. and Zack Galifianakis in a road comedy that never gets up to speed.

Mismatched-buddy comedies are a long and vaunted tradition in Hollywood, dating at least as far back as the Abbott & Costello/Laurel & Hardy films of the 1940s and continuing most notably, at least to Gen-X audiences, with John Hughes’ 1987 Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Director Todd Phillips’ follow-up to The Hangover borrows the structure of that beloved Steve Martin – John Candy effort, teaming an uptight professional with an easygoing, misunderstood slob on a cross-country trek with a clearly defined deadline involving the straight man’s family.

Comparisons between the two films are unavoidable, and that’s bad news for Due Date, which relies too much on co-star Zach Galifianakis’ weirdo schtick without building enough jokes around it to lend the story any comic vitality. Robert Downey, Jr., continuing his streak of always playing the smartest guy in any given room, lends his acerbic poise perhaps too much, inadvertently weighing the already-dark script with too much straightman snark. That’s not to say there aren’t occasional funny moments, but like highway rest stops they always seem too far apart when you need them and perpetually available when you don’t.

Architect Peter Highman (Downey, Jr.) is desperate to return to Los Angeles from a business trip to Atlanta before his wife Sarah (Michelle Monaghan) gives birth to their first child. But a preflight mixup with wannabe actor Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) gets them both kicked off the flight and placed on a no-fly list. Highman somewhat incredibly leaves his wallet on the plane; while attempting to steal a rental car from the airport lot he’s reunited with Tremblay, who offers to drive him to Los Angeles by way of apology.

A whirl of fuzz in layers of 1990s-era fashions and a delicate hair perm, Tremblay is a gentle if self-sabotaging soul, the owner of a Two and a Half Men fansite who admits to once running himself over with a car and pronounces Shakespeare as “Shakesbeard.” But he’s also grieving for a recently diseased father whose ashes he carries in a can of coffee grounds, seeking closure but putting off several opportunities to get it. Conversely, Highman is all white-collar privilege and suburban entitlement. You can imagine him readily enjoying the same amenities as George Clooney’s similar road warrior from Up In The Air while sneering at the slobs flying business class.

The two are severely underqualified to attempt a 3000 mile drive separately, let alone together, and the interpersonal friction as they reach strange locations ought to propel the comic give-and-take. Yet the script from former King of the Hill writers Alan R. Cohen and Adam Freedland (with additional work by Adam Sztykiel from Phillip’s story) doesn’t have the duo go very many places, with the ensuing result that the story… doesn’t really go any place. Instead, the stops they make are long, protracted, and disjointed: a trip to a vendor of “medical” marijuana in Alabama; a Western Union branch in Louisiana; incredibly again, the Mexican border and the Grand Canyon. Despite the time-table crucial to the plot, there’s seldom any sense of urgency, despite Highman’s frequent, panicked calls home.

One of Planes, Trains and Automobiles‘ most endearing – and enduring – virtues rested in the commonality of its situations: Martin’s yuppie snob and Candy’s blue-collar lummox negotiated the impersonal, indifferent hurdles of cross-country travel over a grueling three-day odyssey, facing soulless hotel rooms, numbingly incompetent customer service, and many, many other small setbacks that seemed incomprehensible in their banality. But where that film mined the everyday, the shock value of Phillps et al.’s script explores only the less ordinary, and frequently for shock value: Highman is busted for drugs at the Mexican border; Tremblay forgets his own name as the two try to receive a wire transfer; Tremblay’s dog masturbates alongside his owner.

Stalling things even further is a wasted, unnecessary subplot involving Highman’s college friend (Jamie Foxx) and the possibility that he’s actually the father of Sarah’s child. It’s an unexplored, inert distraction from the rest of the story, and the payoff at film’s end is mostly flat as a result. An earlier gag involving a crippled war veteran (Danny McBride) beating Highman with a club for his arrogance is almost painful to watch; meant to be outre, it’s just mean-spirited to both characters. Finally, a late revelation from Tremblay will seem to anyone who’s seen The Hangover as too derivative by half of another plot twist also involving Galifianakis’ character in that film.

Ultimately, Due Date is an unfunny comedy that’s possibly more rewarding on home video than in the theatre, and maybe then only for devoted fans of its several stars. But in one sense it doesn’t matter: the director and performers will make better films, many of which will likely look just as good within their previews, too. (Due Date is the epitome of a film whose best moments appear in its ads.) By the time these things happen we’ll have forgotten all about this misfire. Honestly, we’ve already started.

- Michael Kabel

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New On Blu-Ray: This Is Spinal Tap

Groundbreaking mockumentary goes high-def with some classic extra features.

How many movies introduced a phrase into the Oxford English Dictionary? Co-writer/director Rob Reiner’s seminal faux-documentary This Is Spinal Tap invites high definition audiences to go “up to eleven” all over again this week, with a Blu-Ray debut that includes most of the plentiful special features on its 2000 DVD release. Though almost all the bands that the film gently, shrewdly satirized are forgotten now, Tap‘s brilliant set pieces and hilarious dialogue keep it as fresh as new vinyl. It’s a bona fide classic, included on the National Film Registry and seen as a major influence on any number of films since, most nobatly co-star Christopher Guest’s quartet of similar escapades.

Yet Spinal Tap, true to the rock and roll archetype, came from humble beginnings. Filmed on a shoestring budget, composed largely of improvisational setups and sometimes buoyed by unexpected cameos, its was something of a flop upon its release in 1984, only subsequently gaining fame on cable TV, numerous home video releases, a guest spot on The Simpsons, and a 1992 “reunion” album titled Break Like The Wind. But originally the cast – Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Guest - may have gone into character a little to much: at the time of its release all three actors were relatively unknown (except McKean, and then only from his role as goofball Lenny on Laverne & Shirley) so a perception that the film was “real” and genuine dogged its box office performance.

Reiner appears as Marty DiBergi, a semi-fictionalized version of himself – how fictionalized is never really made clear - attempting to film the group’s Tap Into America tour, a comeback meant to support their latest album, Smell The Glove. But accidents, miscommunication and bad luck keep getting in the way, thanks in no small part to the members’ cherished delusions and hubris. To quote a review itself quoted in the film, “They are awash in a sea of adolescent sexuality and bad poetry,” with no particular desire to find their way out. They’ve got their own dynamic, and it  works for them: “I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that,” bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer) says while comparing the others to fire and ice, ”kind of like lukewarm water.”

Things gets worse for the hapless Tap quickly. Performance engagements are cancelled with no notice, their record label hates their proposed cover art (its all-black cover presaging Metallica’s eponymous LP by six whole years), and personality clashes drive a wedge between band leaders David St. Hubbins  (McKean) and guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Guest). There’s even a Yoko Ono character in the form of St. Hubbins’ girlfriend (June Chadwick), who pronounces Dolby as “doubly” and suggests the group perform in masks denoting their astrological symbols. The breaking point comes as they attempt to play a dance at an Air Force base while radio signals from the runway control tower overpower their instrument receivers.

Equally hilarious – and just as squirm-inducing for audiences in on the joke – are the original songs the cast composed: titles like “Sex Farm Woman,” “Rock and Roll Creation,” and the epically pretentious concept piece “Stonehenge” nailed metal’s goofy preoccupation with sex and mysticism in the 70s while remaining oddly, imminently hummable. The songs aren’t meant to be great, but they’re not any worse than what they reflected, either. And in a case of life imitating art, heavy metal acts have spent the last 25 years alternately comparing and distancing themselves to Tap’s sound and misadventures. Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, and Eddie Van Halen have all admitted to having events depicted in the film happen to them as well.

Also appearing in hilarious but often brief roles are Fran Drescher, Howard Hessman, Paul Shaffer, Patrick Macnee, Angelica Houston, Dana Carvey, Fred Willard, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley, Jr. and many others, most notably Billy Crystal in a scene-stealing cameo as a ruthless mime waiter. Highlights of the extra features include in-character commentary tracks by McKean, Shearer and Guest, a featurette entitled “Catching Up With Marty DiBergi,” four music videos, two short films, and miscellaneous promotional materials. Fourteen deleted scenes, also included, almost comprise a second movie by themselves. The set’s second disc features the band’s Live Earth performance and a National Geographic interview with Guest, as Tufnel, about Stonehenge.

Now live, direct from Hell, is Spinal Tap performing their classic “Stonehenge.” It’s comic platinum, but it’s not SFW.

- Michael Kabel

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