By Lucia Bozzola, Nov 28, 2006
In my library is a book containing an essay entitled “James Bond’s Penis.” Nothing like getting right to the point, as it were. I’m not quite sure what it actually says about James Bond’s penis—besides the fact that he has one and uses it often—because the academic jargon tends to make me nod off long before the end. Yep, the writer sucks the life right out of the subject. Nevertheless, the bluntness of said title underlines the fact that the associations that usually spring to mind when one hears “Bond film,” including Bond girls, gadgets, shaken martinis, DB5s, flamboyant villains, and all-around suavity, tend not to include the super spy’s actual goldmember. Granted, we never see it (and really, how could it live up to Bond’s rep?), but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that its presence isn’t really that far from that list of Bond keywords. It’s as vital a piece of Bond’s arsenal as his Walther PPK. He rarely has to shoot the bad girl because he can nail her instead. No wonder the laser-aimed-at-Bond’s crotch in Goldfinger stands as the most memorable torture scene of the series. Until Casino Royale, that is.
Let’s make one thing clear. I love James Bond movies. Ever since I saw The Spy Who Loved Me way back in the hinterlands of the 1970s, I’ve been on the Bond wagon. Yes, Roger Moore was my first, formative Bond, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the finer, more brute force pleasures of Sean Connery. I was a little concerned about whether the Bond franchise would remain as reliable as death and taxes when Timothy Dalton took over, but Pierce Brosnan quickly put that to rest. All of those fab cars, exotic locales, jaw-dropping action sequences, nutty bad guys, and the pun-filled visits to Q’s lab of tricks more than made up for the fact that only girls with names like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder, and Holly Goodhead seemed to be able to infiltrate the Bond world (Question: how did Bond survive 1970s feminism? Answer: Moore made him absurd). That Moore, Connery, and Brosnan all look as debonair as George Clooney in a tux certainly helps. Happily, Daniel Craig turns out to be an excellent Bond as well, but that shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who saw him in Layer Cake—all five of us in the U.S. He has cool to spare and he looks as fine out of his tux as he does in it. Oh, James.
Of course, one of the sequences featuring Craig stripped down is that aforementioned torture scene. Connery’s Bond at least had clothing to protect his dignity when Goldfinger attempted that high-tech castration. Not so Bond 6.0. He only has careful camera angles. Now, there are a lot of zeitgeisty reasons for why the filmmakers may have chosen to remain true to this aspect of Ian Fleming’s source material in this “official” adaptation of Casino Royale, beginning with a story line centering on a French banker for terrorists (ah, the French—the best source for villains when you want to be politically correct). Bond also shoots up an embassy in Africa in search of a bomber, leading to his unwanted appearance in the press as an example of westerners stomping all over the Third World. Oh, the resonance of it all. So why not give the audience a lesson in the horrors of torture? Why not, indeed. The superb, 1960s-style black and white opening number already let us know that this Bond film will cast a questioning eye on the bloodshed that comes with the spy’s brand-spanking-new license to kill, so it’s no surprise horrific violence is inflicted on a most vulnerable Bond. Thus the double-0 sociopath is born.
But that’s not the only thing going on in this scene, or in Casino Royale. After all, getting back to the topic of scholarly essays, James Bond screws as licentiously as he kills. In film after film, he treats willing female bodies as nonchalantly as villainous male (and sometimes female) flesh. And in recreating the Bond origin myth, the makers of Casino Royale actually realize “because he can” isn’t really a satisfactory answer to the “why does he do that” question. Instead, looking back to the first non-Connery Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the source of his ladykilling becomes intertwined with the necessary loss of “soul” his lethal job entails. Heartbreak (not ballbreak) consigns him to his fate of natty suits, sleek weapons, smooth kills, and—I suppose—eventually giving a damn whether his martini is shaken or stirred. Bond’s womanizing becomes part of his killer pathology. Wow. Such an unexpected pre-Christmas gift for the girls who have forever had to roll their eyes at the Octopussys and Plenty O’Tooles that came as an unquestioned part of the Bond package.
Granted, “because he can” is still part of the equation. It’s no accident that weepy-eyed torturer Le Chiffre goes after Bond’s testicles, taunting him that he’s going to deprive Bond of his reason for living. But the joke is as much predicated on our knowing the many previous movie lives of Bond as on anything he does in Casino Royale. Bond does have the requisite encounter with the married lady who can give him information (although he doesn’t finish the project). Yet his comment to true love Vesper Lynd that Vesper isn’t his type because she’s single suggests that he’s had at least five seconds of deep thought, nay, regret, about his prior fatal conquest. And when Vesper chides him that she’s not his type because she’s smart, well, we know that makes her different from many a Bond maiden (Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist? “Dr.” Holly Goodhead? Seriously?), including the unlucky married lady. That Eva Green seems reasonably intelligent certainly helps sell Vesper’s line. She makes Bond woo her, as far as a spy involved in a high stakes poker game with a murderous criminal mastermind can woo anyone. And when he comforts her after she witnesses him kill a thug with his bare hands, it’s a rare, exceptional moment of tender emotion in a franchise that usually eschews such things.
But alas, if Bond were to have a soul, and a soul mate, then he wouldn’t be the Bond we all know and love. Vesper has to be as elusive to Bond as the little girl in red who may or may not be haunting the alleys of Venice in Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 ghost trip Don’t Look Now. Unfortunately, Bond has to take down a Venetian palazzo in the process of figuring out whose side Vesper is really on. That’s almost as upsetting as the outcome of that battle. Yet, despite his agony, Bond still isn’t convinced that Vesper really was who he thought (hoped? dreamed? no way) she was. Leave it to Judi Dench’s tough MI-6 mama M to deliver that lesson. She’s a married woman who understands women, and she figures out what was really going on with Vesper while Bond was having his balls battered. But she’s no softy. She essentially assures Bond’s heartbreak when she tells him what Vesper did for him. She teaches him something about life and puts the finishing touches on the rock-hard surface Bond needs to do his job. Ouch. Yet, no one cries for Bond even though Craig ably communicates his inner grief. Instead, we cheer for his signature introduction in Casino Royale’s final moments. That would be disconcerting if the steely-eyed, heavily armed Bond, James Bond weren’t so damn entertaining.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
"Casino Royale": Bond Has Feelings Too
"Blood Diamond" and "The Departed": Boyz To Men
By Lucia Bozzola, Dec 12, 2006
It’s been nine years since Leonardo DiCaprio stood on the bow of that boat and declared himself king of the world, i.e. teenyboppers’ hearts. Quite a burden that title was. How on earth could he be taken seriously as an Ahc-tor when he was most renowned for single-handedly inspiring millions of blushing girls to part with hundreds of millions of dollars at the multiplex? He had certainly worked hard pre-Titanic to establish the thespian cred that lay behind the very pretty face. Getting abused by Robert De Niro in This Boy’s Life.
Playing a mentally challenged teen with dubious personal hygiene in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Getting down and dirty and strung-out in The Basketball Diaries. And when he did go the heartthrob route, hey, he did it with Shakespeare in postmodern style. This was no Corey Haim, people. DiCaprio meant business. Beauty be damned. Or rather, youthful delicate beauty be damned. Then Titanic chugged into the record books and Leo became that most dreaded symbol of immature, unserious masculinity: a teen idol (oh, the horror). After that, he practically disappeared from the movies for several years. Smart boy. He needed time to finish adolescence.
Still, it hasn’t been a smooth transition to adulthood. DiCaprio made a sporting first effort with Gangs of New York (let’s all forget The Beach, shall we?). When you’re still more convincing as a teenager in Catch Me If You Can, though, it’s rather hard to claim full-blown screen manhood even if you’re in your late twenties. In this regard, his choice to do The Aviator next was inspired, and not just because he brought Martin Scorsese on board for another collaboration. Not only did he get to strut his actorly stuff as the legendarily neurotic (and priapic) Howard Hughes, but DiCaprio also got to age. On screen. He got to evolve from the boyishly enthusiastic, Jack Dawson-esque Hughes who shot Hell’s Angels in the 1920s to the tortured genius who could get it together long enough to manfully tell the Senate to go stuff it in the 1940s. The nervous breakdown interlude in between—you know, the one with all the urine bottles and the cave man hair—was like a prolonged fuck-you to the Dawson/Titanic prettiness. The adult Ahc-tor had at long last arrived.
Indeed, DiCaprio’s current turns in The Departed and especially Blood Diamond are primers on how much he is not that boy anymore. Physically, he’s no longer so wispy, and all the years of smoking and carousing have finally paid off in a few rough edges on his face. But it’s more than just looks. He’s a man, man, and don’t any of you forget it. Herewith, then, is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Guide to Achieving On-Screen Mandom in Five Easy Steps (as illustrated in The Departed and Blood Diamond):
1. Shoot Guns. As undercover cop Billy Costigan, DiCaprio packs some mean weaponry in The Departed. I mean, really, how else could he fully take over as Scorsese’s new De Niro if he doesn’t excel in one of Scorsese’s bloody mobster ballets? His facility with guns is even more impressive in Blood Diamond. Not only do we learn that smuggler Danny Archer was trained as a soldier in Angola, but we also get to see DiCaprio’s Danny in action. A lot. He manages to escape the massive rebel attack on the Sierra Leone capital, and save Djimon Hounsou’s Solomon, with the aid of only his training and a pistol. He also uses a big-ass machine gun with equal adeptness—and he never seems to waste any bullets. Yes, he can drive like hell, fight with his fists, and handle a knife, but above all, Danny possesses that one supreme movie machismo skill: he has the best aim.
2. Be a Fighter, Not a Lover. If you’re trying to overcome an image as a heartthrob, this one’s a no-brainer. Yes, DiCaprio has love interests in both films in the figures of Vera Farmiga’s Madolyn and Jennifer Connelly’s Maddy (are they mad, mad, mad to love DiCaprio?). And both play the kind of women who have no problem standing up to DiCaprio’s men before succumbing to emotion and sex. But these relationships are strictly secondary to the main conflicts (and both are neatly tucked away to the sidelines before the final showdowns). Madolyn knows that Billy suffers as a fake mobster under Jack Nicholson’s whacko boss man thumb, but he isn’t going to stop until he brings down Nicholson and/or captures Matt Damon’s fake cop Colin. Journalist Maddy gets Danny to rediscover his nearly non-existent conscience, but he isn’t going to stop until he finds that friggin’ pink J. Lo special, regardless of how many rebels armed with AK-47s and machetes he has to kill. A man’s gotta do what a, oh, you know. Nevertheless, that privileging of fighting over loving leads to…
3. Have Mental Anguish, But for God’s Sake, Don’t Dwell On It. This is interesting, because in a recent interview, DiCaprio revealed that the scenes in which he thought he did the best acting in each film were the ones in which this rule came into play. His men have emotional depth, which makes them interesting. His men don’t like to talk about it too much, which makes them men. Billy and Danny also don’t shut themselves up in dark rooms, grow their hair and nails to freakish lengths, and pee into rows of milk bottles like Howard Hughes. In The Departed, Billy visits police psychiatrist Madolyn (who knows her job is something of a paradox) because he has to, and proceeds to tell her in no uncertain terms why she should give him Valium instead of making him talk. Then he leaves and does his best to get on with his work. In Blood Diamond, Danny chokes back a few tears as he confesses to Maddy that he thinks God left humanity behind to slaughter each other long ago. Then he bucks up, gets himself together the next day, and does his best to get on with his work. Of course, since DiCaprio’s men have emotional depth, they only have one end in store.
4. Die a Noble Death (but not before nailing the bad guy). Okay, so Billy’s death in The Departed is more sudden and appalling than noble. But the motivations that got him into that sorry position were noble. Yes, he wants to catch the mole and he has to return to that dreaded rooftop because he has to continue playing his undercover part. But he’s out for blood and justice because his good paternal figure Queenan was just eliminated, and there’s no way he can let that go by. Danny’s end in Blood Diamond, though, is larded with far more golden-lit nobility. He sacrifices himself so family man Solomon and his son Dia can live. He calls Maddy to say goodbye and to tell her to publish her story. He gazes at the African soil he’ll never leave. And why can he have such closure? Because he just shot the bad daddy who made him into a venal soldier and smuggler—the kind of man who keeps the blood diamond trade going—a few moments before. Mission accomplished.
5. Use Accents. This is why this list is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Guide to Mandom, and not simply A Guide to Mandom. Whether by design or accident, Leo’s been talking funny a lot since Titanic—far more than he did before. Billy has quite the Bahston brogue, while Rhodesian-born Danny educates Maddy about “bleeng bleeng” and “bleeng baang.” Indeed, DiCaprio’s taste for accents inspired a New York Times writer to describe him as the “Meryl Streep” of his generation. Granted, being likened to a female actor may not seem like an obvious route to screen manhood. But that leaves out the full meaning of that comparison: Meryl Streep does accents and she’s really good at it. She has the ability to make you forget about the technique and focus on the character. If DiCaprio is a male Streep, then he can do that too. He’s talented and skillful enough to make Billy’s and Danny’s vocal styles a mere fact of their beings. That’s the final sign that DiCaprio has succeeded in his long transition from boy to man. He gives great performances in all senses of the word in both The Departed and Blood Diamond. He’s getting better at his craft as he gets older.
If that’s not a sign of maturity, I don’t know what is. Now let’s all hope he doesn’t age into knee-jerk hamminess like, um, Nicholson and De Niro.
"Babel": A Tower of Bombast in Any Language
By Lucia Bozzola, Feb 14, 2007
My mother told me that when she was living in Italy in the late 1950s, one of the favorite pickup lines among Italian men was stating that they read Proust and listened to Wagner. This was supposed to demonstrate their formidable intellect and, thus, their appeal as a superior male. Oh, how times have changed. Anyway, one of the many reasons my mother liked my father was because he did not tell her that he read Proust and listened to Wagner. He didn’t have to. He listened to Miles Davis.
This was one of the many thoughts that popped into my head while watching Babel recently (in between “I’m bored,” “Who’s going to be lethally idiotic in this scene?” and “I shouldn’t have eaten all those fries at dinner”). I wasn’t just amusing myself with a stroll down memory lane, either. The only reason I had gone to see Babel was because it had just been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and as someone who participates in the occasional Oscar pool, I felt the need to see the one Best Pic candidate that I’d avoided. And you know, there’s nothing more depressing than finally seeing a movie you’ve avoided because you think you know what it’s going to be, and it turns out to be precisely what you’d feared. Babel is a movie that reads Proust and listens to Wagner. And no, that’s not attractive.
It’s also not a sign of intelligence. It’s fake brilliance. It’s the blowhard at the cocktail party who tells you he went to college “in New Haven,” because everyone should just know that’s the location of Yale. It’s the Diane Keaton character in Manhattan pronouncing “Van Gogh” like she has a chicken bone stuck in her throat. While such posturing is a mere irritation or fodder for a giggle in daily life, in a movie, it’s lethal. It also seems to be heroin for Oscar voters trying to look smart despite their near complete intolerance for anything genuinely innovative or radical or risky, and their occasionally not-so-secret wish just to be entertained. The Academy screwed itself forever when they got rid of the two de facto Best Picture categories after its first year of giving awards. Had they kept “Best Artistic Quality of Production” as well as “Best Production” (eventually renamed Best Picture) after 1928, movie critics probably wouldn’t be asked, “What’s the worst movie ever to win Best Picture” quite so often. Both Goodfellas and Dances With Wolves could have won, for instance. And this year, a movie that listens to Miles Davis or Eric Clapton or Kurt Cobain or Paul McCartney could win the top prize alongside the Proust-and-Wagner Babel.
Before anyone starts yammering about how those artists do not appear on the soundtracks of Letters From Iwo Jima, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen, or Babel for that matter, I’m not trying to be literal. It’s just another way of saying that given the choice between (pop) art and Ahhrrrt for their single Best Picture prize, the Academy tends to err on the side of pomposity these days (unless the movie makes over a billion dollars and doesn’t feature Johnny Depp as an alcoholic, sexually ambiguous pirate). And Babel is nothing if not pompous. The title alone is enough to make one run screaming to the soft, straightforward embrace of such titles as, well, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. It’s just so symbolic. So deep. Sooo…meaningful. Like Crash. If you’re an ignoramus who doesn’t know the Biblical story about the Tower of Babel, then the title is meaningless. Then again, given that two and a half of the film’s four stories are set in cultures whose primary religious text is not the Judeo-Christian Old Testament, it would appear that choosing said title is another act of precisely the kind of Western cultural deafness that the film so adamantly deplores. Oops.
Nevertheless, even if it were called Shit Happens, it would still be insufferable. That’s a shame, because as virtually all of the critics, con and pro, have observed, director Alejandro González Iñárritu has talent to spare. Babel looks and sounds fabulous, and the performances have an intensity the schematic roles don’t deserve. Is the ham-fisted edification screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s fault, then? He certainly deserves some blame, but his non-Iñárritu collaboration The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada showed that believable, complex life could be breathed into his characters. No, it’s the Iñárritu-Arriaga combination that’s toxic, and their current beef with each other over who is the true author of Babel sounds like a petulant battle over who has the bigger…genius. Here’s an idea: stop working together, and see who creates the better film.
Here’s another idea: tell the story in order and see if it still works. No, I never found Babel’s fractured, globe-trotting time structure confusing. I knew that as sure as somebody would misunderstand or ignore somebody to obnoxious and/or horrific effect every five minutes, I’d eventually see Brad Pitt’s end of his teary phone call home to the angelic children and saintly Mexican housekeeper in San Diego. I understand why Iñárritu and Arriaga get all fancy with their plot time. How else could they overload the climax of the film with so much pain and suffering? (In case it wasn’t already clear from the first two hours that We’re All Doomed — except for the cute American children and their pretty absentee parents. Tsk, tsk, isn’t that just always the way?). Slicing and dicing stories is also a potentially effective means for hiding the fact that a lot of what goes on is overblown and preposterous. Everyone seems to have an uncanny talent for saying or doing precisely the wrong, moronic thing in every single situation, whether it’s the Moroccan father sending his boys out with a bazooka of a rifle they can’t handle, Cate Blanchett asking for non-fat food and Diet Coke in a country that clearly doesn’t have the luxury of indulging in American dietary nonsense, or the housekeeper getting into a car with her snockered, volatile nephew. It would be very easy to think that Babel is really about the tyranny of fools.
But, oh, it’s not. How do I know? Rinko Kikuchi. Because really, three stories about disconnection through bad communication aren’t enough to make the point that we all should really, truly listen to each other. You need a deaf mute Japanese girl with underwear issues as well. You need a deaf mute Japanese girl going commando who has nothing to do in and of herself with the other three tightly connected stories. (I know, dad gave the Moroccan guy the gun — why, that’s not contrived at all.) Is there a better way to show the negative effect of not being able to hear what people say than having a character who can neither hear nor speak? Why, no. Have other filmmakers made better movies about the strange solitude of over-crowded, over-stimulating Tokyo even for people who can hear and speak? Um, yeah. Now, the sleek, neon-lit, high-tech contours of Tokyo certainly do stand in distinct metaphorical contrast to the dirt and dust of Morocco and Mexico. But so does Brad Pitt’s luxurious house in San Diego. That visual point is made before we get to Tokyo, making this a rare case where Japan isn’t worth the trip. As much as I enjoyed looking at Tokyo, I would have preferred to have that half hour of my life back instead of being told yet again that global ignorance is bad and parents need to take care of their children.
Granted, no one can say for certain (except for those Price-Waterhouse guys) who will win the Best Picture Oscar until the envelope is actually opened. The writers, actors, producers, and directors guilds have been showing the love only to Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed. Who knows? Maybe this year the Academy will reward a film that has something to say about ignorance or families or violence, but in a context where cool, snappy entertainment takes precedence over self-important, utterly humorless sanctity. I’m not too confident about that, though. I’ve been carefully listening to the Academy for a long time — and I keep hearing Wagner when I’d rather have Miles Davis.
"Zodiac": Harry Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
By Lucia Bozzola, Mar 5, 2007
Ah, serial killers. Such a cinematic subject. All that murdering, all that investigating. You have clear heroes, villains, conflicts, and, when the plot starts to lag, you can always throw in another bloody homicide tableau. As an added bonus, real life provides some mighty tasty source material if you can’t think of another creative way to link killings to the Bible or body part fetishes or family woes on your own. Real life also often provides a story complete with a Hollywood ending. Charles Manson, Son of Sam, Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos: all caught and convicted. The End. But what if you have a camera-ready killer who never gets caught?
David Fincher has one answer: you make a character study about the men who try for two decades to nail the killer. Don Siegel and writers Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, and Dean Riesner had another: you make a wish-fulfilling fiction about a rogue cop who won’t stop until he kills the killer in 1971. Then again, considering that Dirty Harry first came into being during the Zodiac murder spree, and Zodiac makes its debut more than three decades after the fact, it’s easier to forgive the former’s flight of ideologically questionable fantasy. If you want to sell tickets, don’t send the audience home certain that they’re next on the murderer’s list and there’s no hope he’ll ever be stopped. Now? With the prime suspect dead and the case long dormant, why not go back to just the facts, ma’am. It’s the past. It’s over. Fincher and his gang, however, still have a bone to pick with Dirty Harry’s anti-Establishment fascist hero Harry Callahan.
Some critics have noted that the dialogue-heavy, stylistically dialed-down Zodiac is a “repudiation” of Fincher’s career-making murder porn Se7en. Don’t get me wrong. I liked Se7en, and not just because Gwyneth Paltrow’s head ended up in a box. Nevertheless, the main attraction was the imaginatively grotesque murders devised by Kevin Spacey’s even more grotesque Bible-thumper in a fabulously dank and shadowy Any City. In Zodiac, all of the murders happen early and horribly, but not quite as stylishly. Yes, we get up close and personal with Zodiac’s knife work on the couple by Lake Berryessa, but that’s not the reason that scene haunts my dreams. It’s more the way Zodiac simply appears in broadest sunny daylight, and easily could be just another nature lover until he puts on his deceptively silly ninja disguise. And yes, Fincher does make one of his signature virtuoso gestures with the overhead shots following the doomed cab through the streets of San Francisco, but again, he doesn’t linger as much over the gore. After these deaths, though, the film is two hours of conversation and neurotic obsession by a quartet of handsome distressed men. No wonder I loved it.
Less noticed, however, is how those two hours of dialogue and obsession become a repudiation of Zodiac’s first cinematic incarnation via the thinly disguised killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry. It isn’t just the fictional “happy” ending that comes under fire, either. It’s also the image of violent male potency embodied by Clint Eastwood’s iconic Callahan. Now, Callahan does fall prey to the same soul-draining obsessiveness that seeps into Zodiac’s investigators. There’s a world of attitudinal difference between the jaunty delivery of his “Do you feel lucky” speech to a downed bank robber early on, and the way he angrily spits out the final “Well, do you, punk?” through clenched teeth at the denouement. But then he gets to blow away Scorpio because he had indeed fired only five shots prior with his .44 Magnum revolver. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edward’s police detectives Toschi and Armstrong, though, never get that satisfaction in Zodiac. Heck, they don’t even get to pull their guns. We learn that Toschi’s gun holster style inspired another icon of late 60s manhood Steve McQueen to wear his the same way in Bullitt, but we never see him actually use it. The only non-Zodiac man we do see fire a gun? Robert Downey Jr.’s fey, alcoholic crime reporter Paul Avery. At a firing range. Badly. Thus endeth the crime-solving efficacy of the most powerful handgun in the world.
This isn’t to say that Zodiac is about how Toschi and Armstrong are hapless cops. They are effective in that they do (as far as anyone knows) identify and track down Zodiac. They even get to sit in a room with him and manfully fix him with that “we’re on to you” stare that’s repeated every week on the Law & Orders and CSIs. Yet they never bring him down because of, yep, Callahan’s biggest pet peeve: bureaucracy. Evidence gets lost in the low-tech shuffle. Other jurisdictions want to protect their turfs. Still, Fincher and company make a point to show that even with those impediments, Toschi still won’t be wild about Harry. For when Dirty Harry opens in San Francisco shortly after Toschi and Armstrong learn they can’t arrest their man, Toschi happens to see it the same night as Avery’s fellow Zodiac-fixated colleague, Jake Gyllenhaal’s doe-eyed Robert Graysmith. When Graysmith tells Toschi how it ends, Toschi scoffs in disgust, “So much for due process.” Toschi may not be all that broken up about Zodiac’s rights, but he knows better than to become a vigilante.
Still, the movie doesn’t end there. It could have, and some bladder-challenged people with the attention spans of gnats probably think it should have. But that would miss the point that starts percolating beneath the surface with the casual revelation that it’s a married couple of professors who initially crack the Zodiac’s cipher. It comes up again when Avery can’t quite believe that shy cartoonist Graysmith’s accurate insights into the case arise from his taste for library books and puzzles. It hovers around Avery’s ability to root out salient facts that the police miss. And it comes to full fruition in the last third of the film when Graysmith takes Avery’s dismissive comments to heart and decides to research the case himself. Yes. When cops can’t do the job, then it’s best to let the bookish, non-macho types take over—especially when the target believes he’s smarter than any cop. Nerds of the world, unite! Toschi is rogue enough to do a Deep Throat and point Graysmith in the right direction (the vague resemblance of the San Francisco Chronicle’s cinematic newsroom to the Washington Post’s in All the President’s Men: discuss) because he knows that Graysmith can do things he can’t.
His investigation doesn’t turn Graysmith into a Callahan, either. Granted, no one will ever mistake Gyllenhaal for a young Eastwood (whom we never see in Zodiac), but as Graysmith, he remains resolutely stooped, reserved, and prone to fits of fear and anguish. Reading is his weapon of choice. Paperwork and neurotic dedication get him farther than any guns or knives could. And in case we didn’t notice that he’s still a dweeb, Fincher throws in a scary red herring visit to an ominous…repertory film projectionist (oh, the chills) that ends with Graysmith fleeing out of a shadowy basement rather than trying to kick some ass with a movie canister. His gut impulse is flight, not fight. It’s easy to see why. He has a powerful brain. Body? Not so much.
Some have complained that Zodiac ends with a diffused whimper instead of a bang. It seems like it could end with a bang when yet another police detective finally gets the only Zodiac survivor who saw the killer’s face to pick that face out of a line-up in 1991. But then it’s cut to end titles. Oh, boo. Yet, when said suspect drops dead of a heart attack before he can be arrested, how else is the movie supposed to end? Toschi bursts into the funeral home with guns blazing to arrest the corpse? Come on. Besides, it’s already become crystal clear that such action is not what this movie is about, nor what this movie favors. In this vein, the real end is the second-to-last scene. Having done his homework to completion, being the good Eagle Scout puzzle-solver he is, Graysmith gets to do what Toschi and Armstrong had done a decade earlier. He gets to fix the prime suspect with that “I’m on to you” stare when he tracks him to his job at a hardware store. That stare may not be a .44 Magnum. But—unlike the stares from Toschi and Armstrong—it is enough to make the intellectually arrogant killer quake on the inside. He knows that the unassuming brainiac looking him in the eye has beaten him at his game. And he no longer feels that lucky.
"Grindhouse" Lesson #1: A Chick Needs a Gun
By Lucia Bozzola, Apr 13, 2007
First, a preface. Whoever decided that the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse should be released Easter weekend needs to have his head examined. Of course it was a “disappointment.” Easter weekend is Family Time. Didn’t the Weinstein Company realize that Blades of Glory’s gay panic jokes and incest gags are far more wholesome entertainment than zombies and Kurt Russell? I mean, duh.
Not only did such holy day requirements as stuffing one’s face with as much chocolate and ham as humanly (or inhumanly) possible make it difficult to set aside more than three hours for the flicks, but you also couldn’t bring Grandma and Junior to see Bruce Willis sporting gooey pustules and Vanessa Ferlito shaking her booty. Will Ferrell finding new uses for his jockstrap and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler making out like the couple they are instead of the siblings they play? Hey, that’s just good clean fun for all ages. And you’re out (mercifully) in 90 minutes.
Harvey Weinstein should be smacked silly for that miscalculation because Grindhouse deserves to be seen in all its grimy glory in a theater. It’s funnier than Blades (my cat sleeping is funnier than Blades), more impressive technically than 300 (Tarantino even gets in a dig at CGI), and just as prone to blood-gushing ultra-violence as those Spartan hordes. The humor isn’t exactly highbrow, either. When you see the jar of amputated testicles in Planet Terror, you know its contents will be skittering around the ground sooner rather than later. Eli Roth’s hilariously vile faux horror trailer Thanksgiving is the stuff of Johnny Knoxville’s wildest, grossest dreams. In short, it’s just the kind of cheesy exploitation entertainment that the audience apparently loves. And yet…oh, bother. As usual, the mass in the middle of America can’t seem to handle truth in advertising. An exploitation film that actually cops to being an exploitation film? Perish the thought. And then line up for the next iterations of Saw and Jackass.
Unfortunately, that exploitation label, as well as the Rodriguez-Tarantino pedigree, might be turning off a potential audience for Grindhouse: women. Chicks. Gals. That’s too bad. Grindhouse itself provides a clue to why that may be so in the fake trailers that start it off and divide it up. Machete features a one-man killing machine who gets to relax with topless girls. Werewolf Women of the SS features more topless girls. Thanksgiving perpetrates all sorts of grotesque violence on female bodies. Big yuck. Rodriguez’s top half of the bill Planet Terror initially promises to be more of the same as Rose McGowan’s go-go dancer Cherry Darling puts the grind in Grindhouse under Planet Terror’s opening credits. Tarantino’s B feature Death Proof also begins rather inauspiciously with prolonged close-ups of Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s well-manicured bare feet. But then as the movies progress, and the reels that ostensibly contain the naked ladies and dirty dancing are “missing,” the boy directors’ ids let the girls go wild. And wouldn’t you know, the girls come out on top. With a vengeance. In the process, RR and QT deliver a cinematic lesson in female bonding, self-reliance, and kicking ass that puts most “chick flicks” to shame. It all boils down to three things.
1. A chick needs a gun. Tracie Thoms’s stuntwoman Kim says as much in one of Death Proof’s “Tarantino dialogue” scenes. And Planet Terror banks on it. Yes, plenty of heavily armed, if sparingly dressed, ladies join the fight against the zombies unleashed by macho military man Bruce Willis. But we all know what the money shot is: Cherry’s machine gun leg. She doesn’t disappoint. She can shoot that thing from the back of a motorcycle, spinning on the ground, and flying through the air. It isn’t just that she’s a great shot, either. When her shady true love Wray snaps it on her zombie-amputated thigh, he declares that he is giving her what she needs to fulfill her destiny. To be all she can be. And what does she use that tool to become? Why, the savior of humanity, complete in a Cherry of Arabia get-up that covers the Gatling she occasionally needs to wipe out a few leftover ghouls. That’s some destiny. Kim is a bit more small scale in her explanation for why she carries a piece: protection. She wants to do her laundry whenever she damn pleases, and she won’t allow the fear of a laundry room perv to get in her way. Granted, one can take issue with the use of weapons at all. But the lesson of Cherry and Kim is this: when the chips are down, girls, don’t hesitate to do what’s necessary to protect yourself. A girl can use a gun if she needs to—because as Kim notes, a girl with a knife facing a man with a gun is dead. It’s like one of those Ashley Judd thrillers…but clever.
2. A chick needs a sweet ride. Okay, this is more Death Proof than Planet Terror (although Cherry’s “useless” motorcycle-riding skill proves to be quite useful when she’s confronted with a pimped up chopper). Nevertheless, Death Proof is quite clear on this point and it’s the seed for one of the best action sequences to be had since Kill Bill Vol. 1. The two halves of Death Proof cover the same basic storyline: Kurt Russell’s malevolent Stuntman Mike stalks a group of four female friends in his black Dodge Charger because he intends to kill them for reasons known only to Tarantino and his therapist. The groups even consist of the same racial/ethnic mix: one African American woman, one Latina, and two white girls, at least one of whom is blonde. Tarantino is nothing if not equal opportunity in his fantasies of ass-kicking women. But it’s pretty clear that the second quartet (which includes the heat-packing Kim) may have a different fate from the first as soon as we see their car: a Mustang. A Mustang of approximately the same muscle car vintage as Mike’s Charger. Quite a change from the first group’s crappy red Honda Civic. The odds get even better when the girls temporarily trade up to a white Vanishing Point Dodge Challenger with the big block engine. As the adrenaline rush final chase deliriously shows, Stuntwoman Kim in the white Challenger is just as able to raise iron-crushing hell as Stuntman Mike in his black Charger. She, however, has an edge that Mike lacks: the other ladies in the car. Which leads to lesson number 3…
3. A chick needs her girls. This is one of the twists in Planet Terror that is quite refreshing. For all her sexy back, tough girl posturing, Cherry isn’t a catty bitch to other women. She forms a bond under pressure with Marley Shelton’s Dakota that is life-saving. Yes, lesbian Dakota probably thinks that Cherry is hot, but nevertheless, they are there for each other. And when Wray leaves Cherry one permanent companion with whom to take on the world, it’s their baby girl. Cherry may have the big gun, but she also has Dakota and her daughter (besides, men always do something flaky like die or become psychotic zombies). Death Proof takes it one better. It isn’t just the Honda that dooms Jungle Julia and her pals: it’s their eye for guys. Their desire to attract guys, whether it’s for a lap dance or some other assignation, constantly diverts their attention. They do keep their promise to each other for an all-girl weekend away, but by that point, it’s too late. Kim’s friends, including ace stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself and Rosario Dawson as a makeup artist with a secret wild side, aren’t so distracted. They even get their own version of the legendary opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, as the camera tracks around their diner table in long takes while they chew the fat about all sorts of topics major and minor. That’s quite an honor in Tarantino land. They earn that honor as they band together to fight off Mike, with Kim driving, Zoë wielding assorted weaponry, and Dawson’s Abernathy joining in the verbal assault. The final scene is a double-barreled coup de grace for Mike. He’s reduced to shrieking like a girl as the Girls converge on his un-death proofed car. Then the Girls take turns beating the crap out of him. There’s no Thelma & Louise fate for these hard-driving ladies. Why? Because they’re in it together, and they are pissed.
So don’t let the gelatinous gore, copious weapons, teen boy titillations, and muscle car roar fool you, gals. Grindhouse is as much for you as it is for the guys whooping and hollering behind you. Now how cool is that?