Madness: It's A Rule Now

The Crazies is probably the best movie that can be made out of the modern horror formula, you know, the one I keep talking about that's as stale as a brick that went through the wash but sat in the drier for days. Oh, you don't know the formula, liar? It's about a capable, resourceful man who has to take charge of a band of survivors when his hometown is overrun by a grotesque threat (it's almost always zombies). A second threat, almost always human, is introduced to up the stakes and answer the cynical modern horror audience's calls to see humanity played as a bunch of bloodthirsty opportunists. The hero and his love interest are the only ones to survive at the end, but the cynical end credits usually blow them up or sick a Rancor on them or something. The audience masturbates through the rest of the end credits.

Any regular readers (are you there?) know that I like genre films (stop reading at any time), and The Crazies is exactly that: a genre film polished to a mirror shine, then rubbed with diamond cream and vampire sparkles. I know I've spent the last month bitching about how boring modern horror is, and The Crazies represents everything that's boring and antiquated about the genre, but it does it with excitement, good characters and a reasonably involved story. Oh yeah, and some very pretty visuals. Really, way too pretty for this film. So pretty, in fact, that it makes me think this is just a genre effort from an extremely talented filmmaker who hopes to use a simple genre film to break out onto the mainstream. He goes through all the motions, but everything about this film is absolutely better than it has to be. The standard-issue jump scares are still there, but they're mostly there to make the film palatable to 14-year-olds giving each other awkward, raw handjobs in the back of the theater while the projectionist records it to splice into the second reel of Alice in Wonderland and make that film more nightmarish.

So yeah, the story fits straight into that mold like some sort of script girder. A sheriff, his wife, her secretary and the deputy are one of only a handful unaffected by a disease that makes the infected illogical, violent and veiny. The military shows up and starts killing everyone and our heroes try to escape.

I think the reason this film works so well is that, while it advertises itself as a horror film, has some jump scares and zombie-like things that vaguely define it as a horror film and otherwise fits into the mold of a horror film, it's really a thriller. It's a pretty straightforward thriller with people sewing each others' eyes shut instead of people frantically deleting files from a computer, and it's sort of cheating, although it's effective cheating. Like most thrillers, there's more emphasis on character and plot, but with the streamlined story of a horror film. Good for it, but now you're a dime-a-dozen thriller instead of a dime-a-dozen horror film...which actually leads to some interesting overlap in the horror-thriller venn diagram.

Let's start with the sheriff. He's a pretty standard protagonist for these sorts of films. First of all, he's a sheriff, which means he has a gun and can kill the bad guys by making their brains fall out. Second, he's a hard-driven man of principles and action, and presumably the only person in town with a Bowflex. Again, that's a pretty standard character description for the hero of a zombie movie, so let's discuss something that's pretty miraculous about the character, despite being something that we should expect of every movie. He's pretty realistic. Obviously he gets into some wacky situations, but the way he deals with them is at once realistic and totally understandable. Rarely does he get into a situation where he's engaging more than one crazy, and he's pretty excited to just run away screaming whenever he can. The one time he gets action hero 'roid rage is when he's watching his wife be tortured, and I'm pretty cool with him pulling a knife through his hand in that situation. He only seems relatively experienced with a gun, like a small-town sheriff who spends all his time getting cats out of trees would (unless he's an insane Western sheriff) and his gung-ho deputy is really just a lunatic. And the women aren't really that interesting, as usual. One of them is pregnant, which is as close as you can get to a personality trait with women, I think.

I really like the structure of the film, too. Most of the film is written around specific setpieces, and they're all pretty spectacular (although the one in the morgue isn't nearly as great as the others), with a special shout-out to the showstopping bedroom setpiece. And they're not necessarily action sequences! It's better to define them loosely as setpieces or conflicts and they're spread very well throughout the film. Like a conflict or [action] setpiece should, they're built from the bedrock of interesting characters and designed to get into their heads while keeping the film exciting and visually dynamic.

It's a great example of genre filmmaking, but I don't really want to see more films like it. I'm happy with The Crazies and now I want horror to move on. I know that won't happen, though, and thrillers in horror masks is about as good as we're going to get. It's a formula, and it's simple, and it's almost forgettable and it really isn't something that I thought about or reminisced about too much after I saw it. Also, it's sort of a lie. A good lie, but come on, it's lying through its teeth.

7/10

Lie To Me

When I mentioned that Cameron's films get lite and poppy after The Abyss, I specifically had True Lies in mind. While it is made with consummate professionalism and has some really swell performances, it's the sort of film that can only disappoint you if you've just watched four films of such high quality as The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2. But who could keep that up?

If it weren't for Cameron behind the camera this would be an utterly disposable, forgettable mid-90s Schwarzenegger vehicle, but it's to Cameron's credit that the film works so well. Specifically his rapport with Schwarzenegger and his natural ability to direct women. Frankly, though, it strikes me as the first film since Piranha II that Cameron didn't give his heart and soul to. The action is too similar to Terminator 2's for me to get too worked up over it, featuring lots of car chases with exploding cars and big ol' shootouts, but it lacks the sci-fi angle of T2 that made it so unique and ultimately loses a lot of its value. It just becomes more mundane.

So the story goes something like, Schwarzenegger is Harry Tasker: Secret Agent, but his wife, Helen Tasker (Curtis) thinks he's a boring computer salesman. When their marriage seems to be on the rocks and Helen appears to be having an affair with a used car salesman pretending to be a secret agent, it can only be rescued by some sitcom-style antics and some high-flying adventure.

The angle Cameron seems to have approached this film with is "comedy", which brings me to the movie's biggest fuck-up: Tom Arnold. He plays the comic sidekick and holy shit do I hate Tom Arnold. Tom Arnold is listed as a natural disaster and every time he releases a movie the National Weather Service issues a warning. Tom Arnold can't tie his shoes and every morning has to visit the knot store. The #1 presser of Tom Arnold DVDs are craft rooms at nursing homes. If Tom Arnold were a planet, he would be the sun, expanded to red giant and sucking up Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Tom Arnold is one of history's (and Middle-Earth's) greatest villains.

Phew. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let me talk about the things that do work. Aside from Tom Arnold raining Hellfire on the film, most of the actors are really funny, and oddly enough, none of them are noted for their comedy work (unlike Tom Arnold, noted for his comic terrorism). Schwarzenegger, Jaimie Lee Curtis and Bill Paxton are great, Paxton in particular giving a performance only topped a few years later by A Simple Plan. These are the only two performances where I don't think his presence is a detriment to the movie. I always laugh when we're first introduced to him in this film, where he's dolled up like a sex offender with his mustache and over-combed hair. He makes a great counterpoint to Schwarzenegger's cartoon secret agent as a cartoon secret agent in the same tradition, but with an added sexual predator and somehow less credibility.

Best in show is clearly Jaimie Lee Curtis, who gives an inspired comic performance. She has the perfect look for a mid-90s, unsexualized, middle-aged office worker and her appearance perfectly encapsulates the word "goofy" for me. She's clumsy and physical without being an inane comic figure and she's snarky and sarcastic without coming off as an insufferable bitch. She's given all the best lines and the best arc, and sometimes she threatens to overshadow Schwarzenegger's domineering screen presence and Tom Arnold's fuckmouth.

And Schwarzenegger himself obviously handles the action in the same way he always does: like he's ordering a sandwich. It rarely works in more serious movies (and your enjoyment of a classic like Commando specifically depends on the sort of mileage you get out of standing behind Schwarzenegger at a Jimmy John's) unless he happens to be playing an emotionless robot. Thanks to Cameron, though, Schwarzenegger pulls off what is easily the best performance of his career where he isn't powered by hamster wheels. He plays a James Bond figure but with that trademark Austrian awkwardness. Look, if Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't a huge star and was a cook at IHOP or something, he would still sort of catch the eye. He's not exactly inconspicuous and if you needed to quickly hide him it would be hard to find a broom cupboard that he would fit in. He would make a shitty spy, and the movie knows that. He could never pass as a regular family man or a computer salesman - he looks totally out of place at a dinner table. And the movie knows that. I suspect Schwarzenegger doesn't, though, and the entire juxtaposition becomes very funny.

The action is pretty standard 90s fare, making it a bit disappointing that Cameron was behind the camera. There are a few scenes that stand out, usually when the film gives itself over to physical gags that work surprisingly well.

Can I talk about Tom Arnold again for a minute? Of course I can. I don't see any other bloggers around. Imagine if James Bond had a sidekick named Reginald Bagley, whose gut hung out over his pants and none of his teeth faced the same direction. And imagine that he seemed to love that Bond made him look like a blubbering fuck-up by going into space, banging a dozen moonladies and stopping a world-threatening crisis without ever setting down his martini while Reginald sat on his ass and gave him helpful hints from inside an oversized bag of Cheetos. And Reginald has no impact on the plot. And imagine that this character isn't meant to appear totally pathetic and worthless next to Bond, and you'll get a good idea of the character Tom Arnold plays BEFORE Tom Arnold the war criminal even becomes a factor. It's a personal issue that kept me from enjoying large parts of an otherwise highly enjoyable film.

And that's pretty much all there is to say about True Lies. It's fun, well-made, features some great performances and just doesn't hold up to the crazy ambition of Cameron's last four films. I can't help but feel like he's floundering here, even if it's just momentary. It will only take three years for him to release the most expensive movie ever made up to that point, a film of such crazy ambition and such unbelievable success that it begs me to watch it again for the first time since it was released (when I was seven).

8/10