Noooooo....

[Pancake]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Pelham_1_2_3_(2009_film)

 

Why? I mean WHY for heavens sake!

[jeff leopard]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Pelham_1_2_3_(2009_film)

 

Why? I mean WHY for heavens sake!

 

for money, its that simple

 

I've not seen the original but I hear its very good.

 

I saw the other day that Hollywood is remaking the seven samurai (again) but this time round the noble warriors who defend the village from bandits will be 'blackwater' style military contractors, undoubtedly slaughtering countless evil coloured people for a pot of cold hard cash. I want the bandits to win already.

[Roman]

for money, its that simple

 

I've not seen the original but I hear its very good.

I saw the other day that Hollywood is remaking the seven samurai (again) but this time round the noble warriors who defend the village from bandits will be 'blackwater' style military contractors, undoubtedly slaughtering countless evil coloured people for a pot of cold hard cash. I want the bandits to win already.

 

If you want to know where Tarantino stole the silly names from in Reservoir Dogs, watch The Taking of Pelham 123.

[Scummer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Pelham_1_2_3_(2009_film)

 

Why? I mean WHY for heavens sake!

 

Link doesn't work. Unless you're upset that wikipedia doesn't have a page on this subject.

[Roman]

Link doesn't work. Unless you're upset that wikipedia doesn't have a page on this subject.

 

Basically, Tony Scott is doing the re-make - with John Travolta in the Robert Shaw/Mr Black role I think.

 

Personally, I like Tony Scott, and think that Enemy of the State and Man on Fire haven't got the credit they deserve - so I'm looking forward to it.

[Scudamore]

Link doesn't work. Unless you're upset that wikipedia doesn't have a page on this subject.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Pelham_1_2_3_(2009_film)

 

The bracket is out of place...

[Pancake]

Stupid bracket.

[the stain]

This is madness. Stupid madness. They must all be willies.

[jeff leopard]

Basically, Tony Scott is doing the re-make - with John Travolta in the Robert Shaw/Mr Black role I think.

 

Personally, I like Tony Scott, and think that Enemy of the State and Man on Fire haven't got the credit they deserve - so I'm looking forward to it.

 

I hate to sound like I'm picking on your taste for the fun of it (but hey, this is an inter-net forum) but I think Tony Scott is an awful director, only capable of making adverts and painfully bland and reactionary films.

 

Man on Fire is a case in point, people often say 'its shockingly racist but its really well made', well I think the first half is utterly tedious, a sugary-sweet, soft focus portrayal of Creasy being saved by the love of a little girl. And the second half is just plain nasty. Creasy is a freaking nut-job who should have been locked up in a mental asylum the moment he left the army. He sets fire to a club full of ravers, he conducts warfare on busy streets with no concern for civilian casualties, he tortures, sexually abuses, mutilates and murders his way through Mexico City. The racial ratio of the film is very clear, the life of an All American white girl = a black adult male = a countless number of treacherous filthy Mexicans. And considering it was released just after 9/11 and a year in the War in Iraq, it’s a shockingly pro-Bush piece of Hollywood fluff which argues that this deranged and unstable American who convinces himself he's blessed by God to dish out his retributive justice, that rationalizes the suspension of law in favour of raw violence against Disney like caricatures of Evil, including committing torture and murder. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!

 

Listen to his DVD commentary for a real hoot, 'As a painter and an artist, I approach each film like a canvas'. Dude, you make Michael Bay look like Michelangelo. Admit to yourself that you make bland trash for hicks and yah-hoos, its like someone who works in McDonalds calling themselves a chef.

 

(I don't mean to slate your tastes, Roman, but I (clearly) have issues with this film. I've been bogged down for months trying to write a chapter for my dissertation on US revenge films, in particular, Man on Fire, 21 Grams and The three burials of Melquaides Estrada, all have their faults by I think MoF really is politically dangerous with all the emotional subtlety of a cruise missle at an Afghan wedding party)

[Roman]

That's the beauty of the movies JL, we all think differently about them.

 

I don't agree with much of what you say, although you've summed up the charge sheet from the original reviews, the vast majority of which HATED the film.

 

Creasy is indeed raving - really off his head. And he dies at the end of the movie. So how this fits directly into a pro-Bush triumphalist tract I don't know.

 

It's a revenge movie, as you say - part of a long tradition that predates Bush by several decades. (Countless examples, but Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs is a good place to start) I don't think the racial balance is quite how you describe. Isn't the girl supposed to be half-Mexican?; Creasy's helped by a Mexican journalist and a cop; and the story is set against the backdrop of the drugs and kidnapping business, as well as endemic police corruption, all of which are hardly unknown in Mexico. And hadn't the ravers left the building by the time it goes bang?

 

I struggle to see how MOF is a 9/11 movie - there's even an argument for exactly the opposite. Taking up your allusion to Afghans, the last time I watched this movie I was on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistanis (some of them Pashtuns) I was with all viewed it as fitting in with their own sentiments about the concept of honour. I hadn't even considered that - but in hindsight it made an awful lot of sense. That also rather strikingly demonstrated to me that movies can carry radically different meanings if you make a big culture shift.

 

Oh, and I really like the cinematography.

 

If you want to see a really pernicious film about the awfulness of foreigners, especially Middle Eastern ones, go and see Body of Lies by TS's brother. THAT is dangerous stuff.

Edited 7 November, 2008 by Roman

[jeff leopard]

That's the beauty of the movies JL, we all think differently about them.

 

That is indeed the beauty of films and culture and I guess life as a whole. And here we are, discussing it like adults. And I'll concede that Enemy of the State was alright actually, a kind of unoffical sequal to The Conversation which is amazing.

 

I don't agree with much of what you say, although you've summed up the charge sheet from the original reviews, the vast majority of which HATED the film.

 

maybe

 

Creasy is indeed raving - really off his head. And he dies at the end of the movie. So how this fits directly into a pro-Bush triumphalist tract I don't know.

 

We do see the film very much through Creasy's eyes though and the audience isn't given a chance by Scott to question his motives. He obviously wanted to make an emotional roller-coaster of a film for a wide audience and getting them to emotionally validate Creasy's violence is key to keeping them on board.

 

It's a revenge movie, as you say - part of a long tradition that predates Bush by several decades. (Countless examples, but Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs is a good place to start) I don't think the racial balance is quite how you describe. Isn't the girl supposed to be half-Mexican?; Creasy's helped by a Mexican journalist and a cop; and the story is set against the backdrop of the drugs and kidnapping business, as well as endemic police corruption, all of which are hardly unknown in Mexico. And hadn't the ravers left the building by the time it goes bang?

 

Pita's racial mix isn't addressed but her blond hair and blue eyes do mark her out as of Anglo Saxon decent and she's very much her mother's daughter.

And Creasy does get the ravers out of the building but I didn’t buy that, I've tried to get wasted people to leave somewhere in a hurry and it just doesn't happen. There were bound to be people who didn't hear the gunshots, in the toilets or crashed out in corridors

 

I struggle to see how MOF is a 9/11 movie - there's even an argument for exactly the opposite. Taking up your allusion to Afghans, the last time I watched this movie I was on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistanis (some of them Pashtuns) I was with all viewed it as fitting in with their own sentiments about the concept of honour. I hadn't even considered that - but in hindsight it made an awful lot of sense. That also rather strikingly demonstrated to me that movies can carry radically different meanings if you make a big culture shift.

 

It doesn't allude to 9/11 but on the commentary Scott happily admits to basing the kidnapping organisation on Al-Quaida terrorist cells (or the perceived view of them anyway). Mexico City is shown as being a corrupting influence (esp on Pita's father) and the way the kidnappers are protected by the media and police shows that the operation is closely woven into Mexican society to the point that Creasy sees everyone in Mexico as a threat. And the fact that we don’t see The Voice's face until the very end of the film highlights the notion of the faceless enemy, how it could be anyone in Mexico. This of course has parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam before it) where terrorists blend into the background. It comes down to America's fear of the racial other, where as Left wing revenge films argue that Americans must co-operate and communicate with this foreign threat, MoF takes the decision to 'kill them, kill them all'. This 'reach for your gun first and then cover up the mess later' attitude has got America into a real pickle.

 

In a Freudian sense it could also be argued his violence is the result of Creasy's displaced and unfulfilled sexual urges. In similar revenge narratives, the revenger will often fall in love with the mother of the damaged family. But Creasy can't because its Pita who loves him, it could be argued that the mother denies him the old in-out because of his race and his role as family servant.

 

Oh, and I really like the cinematography.

 

If you want to see a really pernicious film about the awfulness of foreigners, especially Middle Eastern ones, go and see Body of Lies by TS's brother. THAT is dangerous stuff.

 

Lest we forget Black Hawk Down. I'm not a fan of Ridley either, Alien and Blade Runner were brilliant but he's done nothing since that’s moved me. He's desperate for an oscar, apparently, which ammuses me.

 

If you've not seen it, I recommend 21 Grams, it’s a very similar story line but done in a completely different way, and Three Burials… which is hilariously anti-American.

 

 

And on the subject of 'Noooooooooooooooo' Speilberg wants to remake Oldboy with (wait for it) Will Smith.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/07/spielberg-smith-oldboy-remake

 

STOP! Hammer time!

[Roman]

Yep, still don't buy it, JL, but unless I go to 16pt caps or something it's really hard to add to this without things getting very messy.

 

Here's a suggestion: google 'Pahstunwali', and then try and see the movie through that prism. (It's the code of conduct that governs life in the Tribal Areas and in the Pathan parts of Afghanistan - including the Taliban. Pashtunwali dates back to Alexander the Great, and so actually predates Islam by a long way. You'll see what I mean about seeing the movie differently. But of course it's hardly the only warrior code out there. Samarai codes can sound very similar)

 

I'm always suspicious of Freudian interpretations of anything, let alone fiction, since his analytic approach was always so circular.

 

And (shall I whisper it?) I like Black Hawk Down - a classic Western transposed. Whether Ridley Scott is desperate for an Oscar is neither here nor there, I think - just as you should never for a moment take seriously how directors describe their own work, because for them most part the crap they talk has little or no bearing on the actual film. Even Hitch**** was prone to embellishing.

 

Agree on one thing though: Spielberg should not even touch Oldboy, and I'm amazed he's even interested in it.

[TheCholulaKid]

And (shall I whisper it?) I like Black Hawk Down - a classic Western transposed. Whether Ridley Scott is desperate for an Oscar is neither here nor there, I think - just as you should never for a moment take seriously how directors describe their own work, because for them most part the crap they talk has little or no bearing on the actual film. Even Hitch**** was prone to embellishing.

 

Agree on one thing though: Spielberg should not even touch Oldboy, and I'm amazed he's even interested in it.

 

Nothing wrong with Black Hawk Down. Haven't seen it for a while but from what I recall it was just a good war film. No moralising involved - plenty of blood and bullets though.

 

I think I might get round to seeing MoF, then. I spent two years living in Mexico City and I'd be interested to see how it's portrayed (although I have a pretty good idea).

[Kadeem Hardison]

It was never Carter USM's greatest song.

[TheCholulaKid]

It was never Carter USM's greatest song.

 

No, that was R.S.P.C.E., or Midnight On the Murder Mile, or Sheriff Fatman, or A Perfect Day to Drop the Bomb.