DIRECTED BY Len Wiseman
STARRING Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant
US 2007 128 mins.
TRANSFORMERS ***
DIRECTED BY Michael Bay
STARRING Shia LaBoeuf, Megan Fox, Jon Voight, John Turturro
US 2007 143 mins.
If you lived through the 80s, watch out: you’re about to live through them again. Not literally, of course, but echoes from the decade of big hair and Rubik’s Cubes resound through a couple of big summer movies – one of them based on a kids’ TV cartoon, the other on a franchise that kicked off in 1988 (the first year of George Bush I’s presidency, the last full year of the Berlin Wall). That would be Die Hard 4.0, known in the States as Live Free or Die Hard – a much better title, fitting with the film’s urban-vigilante spirit. This is Bruce Willis as Detective John McClane, saving the world because … well, someone has to. It’s not that he wants to, he explains; it’s just that he always finds himself “at the wrong place at the wrong time”. The result is relentless, maybe a bit repetitive (it could’ve been 10 minutes shorter) and rousingly done, an old-school action movie of the first order.
The film is old-school in a number of ways; first, in favouring stunts over computer effects (CGI). This, of course, is very 80s – it was only with Terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993) that computers started taking over – though admittedly it’s hard to see where physical ends and digital begins. The car that soars off a platform, crashing into a passing helicopter, could be a stunt – but what about the car that tumbles down an elevator shaft (moments after Willis grabs a rope to safety, viewed from above with the car plunging below)? And what about the cars that careen wildly through a tunnel, narrowly missing our hero as they fly through the air? Obviously, stunt men gave way to the techies at some point. Still, there’s a bruising solidity to the film’s action which you don’t always get in blockbusters (compare the cartoonish swoops and dips in something like Spider-Man).
Die Hard is also old-school in its visuals, and its hero. The former are steely, almost dour, with muted colours; the latter is laconic, single-minded and superannuated, “a Timex watch in a digital age” as the villain puts it. He (the villain) is of course a computer geek, bringing the country to its knees with a few mouse-clicks and a bunch of clever algorithms. Like Alan Rickman in the first Die Hard, he has no morals – he even kills his own men when they’ve served their purpose – and no ideals; in the end, it’s all about the money. Willis is different, though his ideology isn’t complicated. He loves his daughter. He won’t be pushed around. And he loves his country.
20 years ago, John McClane was a smart-aleck (at the time, Willis was still best known as the wiseguy detective from Moonlighting), but now he’s mutated into John Wayne – a macho archetype standing against the unmanly, the intellectual and the un-American. He’s not as smart as the villains, or indeed his sidekick, a young hacker played by Justin Long. He covers a webcam with his hand then speaks sotto voce, thinking the bad guys can’t hear him (“Mr. McClane,” says the villain patiently, “covering the camera with your hand does not turn off the microphone”). He’s weary, battered, and frankly old. He’s a fossil in the age of computers. The terrorists are young, multinational – one of them even speaks French! – possibly even Commies (their chief makes a reference to Lenin!); they insult America by broadcasting a derisive collage of past US Presidents. They like to talk – unlike our hero, who merely listens inexpressively then slowly, deliberately tells them he’s coming down there to kick their ass. Does he have a plan? asks the sidekick. “Find [my daughter], kill everybody else,” he replies incontrovertibly.
Die Hard 4.0 is a smashing crowd-pleaser, but it’s also more than that. Everyone who feels out of place in the 00s, everyone who feels left behind, everyone who feels the world’s changed too fast can cheer along with Bruce when he squashes the tech-talk with some no-nonsense one-liner. “It’s not a [computer] system, it’s a country!” he reminds the hackers. “Enough of this kung-fu shit!” he growls, prior to kicking the ass of martial-arts babe Maggie Q. “Help us win!” he implores, thoroughly oblivious to the fact that there’s no such thing as “us” – and no such thing as “win” – in the age of globalisation.
And of course what makes it poignant is the timing – because a political wave that swelled in the 80s (the Reagan years of “Morning in America”) may be playing itself out now, with the war in Iraq. You might say the US was John McClane in that war, stubbornly going it alone with no real plan (it often seems) beyond the equivalent of “Find my daughter, kill everybody else”. Real life, alas, proved problematic, but that’s where Die Hard comes in – a wry salute to the hero-as-cowboy, as well as a self-conscious throwback to a simpler time with room for red-blooded fantasies. Ladies and gentlemen: the 80s.
That was also the age of the boy-and-alien movie – notably E.T. (1982) and Gremlins (1984), and it’s absolutely no coincidence that a Mogwai (the cuddly furry creature from Gremlins) is fleetingly glimpsed on the back of a truck in Transformers. This is also a film about a boy – Shia LaBoeuf, fast becoming the go-to adolescent of the mid-00s, what with this and Disturbia – who bonds with alien beings (the Autobots), and the point when sci-fi fantasy melds with leafy suburbia is hugely entertaining. There’s something irresistible to a goofy teenage hero suddenly surrounded by multi-coloured monsters who intone “You. Hold the key. To Earth’s survival!” – and even more irresistible when he starts arguing with them, and they hide behind the house to avoid being spotted by his parents.
Two-thirds of Transformers is great fun (I should note I never saw the 80s cartoon, or if I did I don’t remember it). The film is long – too long – but mostly played for laughs, cross-cutting between Shia’s romantic troubles and a burgeoning national-security crisis. In the latter strand, Jon Voight looks concerned as a Rumsfeld-like Defence Secretary while soldiers do battle with monsters in the deserts of Qatar; in the former, Shia buys a car which is actually alive (it’s a Transformer disguised as a car), allowing the film to reference cheesy living-car movies – the Herbies, not to mention Knight Rider – and a po-faced Shia to summarise the Plot So Far: “I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot … Who knew?”.
Then, about 45 minutes from the end, something happens – and that something is Michael Bay, the director of The Rock (1995) and Armageddon (1998), master of flashy incoherent action. The climax is a half-hour action scene – a showdown between good and bad Transformers – and it’s awful. It has no spatial cohesion, you don’t know where people are going, you don’t know where they are in relation to each other. You literally (if subconsciously) have to spend a fraction of a second getting your bearings at the start of every shot. It’s exhausting. ‘What just happened?’ you might think – and the answer is a new style of filmmaking, a new kind of popular culture: films got fragmented, media got fragmented (think thousands of TV channels), music got fragmented (think sampling and DJ culture). Transformers is like two different films laid end-to-end, the first a good-natured Spielbergian pastiche, the second one something else entirely – a barrage of images, scrambled, excessive, designed for people with ultra-short attention spans. What is this weird phenomenon that takes over the movie? I call it ‘the 90s’.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titl
es released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few weeks. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
LETTERS TO IWO JIMA and FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2-disc Special Editions): Clint Eastwood’s WW2 double, now in Special Editions with loads of documentaries and special features. [US]
VENUS: Peter O’Toole won an Oscar nomination as elderly actor in slightly maudlin British drama, written by Hanif Kureishi. Includes deleted scenes and a Making Of. [US]
LITTLE RED FLOWERS: Cute (if slightly bizarre) Chinese movie about rebellious 4-year-old at a 1960s kindergarten. Extras include a 45-minute Making Of, showing what it took to get the kids to perform on cue. [UK]
THE ITALIAN: Another good film with a child hero – in this case a Russian orphan on the run. No real extras. [US]
IT’S A BOY GIRL THING: British body-swap comedy for teens, executive-produced by Elton John, featuring “a multitude of pop music from the likes of Girls Aloud, The Sugababes and Black Eyed Peas”. No information on extras. [UK]
OLD FILMS
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (1929): Spicy Silent drama, starring the immortal Louise Brooks, in deluxe edition from the Masters of Cinema label. Extras include a 40-page booklet with essays on the film. [UK]
BALL OF FIRE (1941) and THE GARY COOPER MGM MOVIE LEGENDS COLLECTION: Here’s a strange thing: new Gary Cooper collection has four films – including the splendid ‘Vera Cruz’ (1954) – but not ‘Ball of Fire’, one of his very best. Fortunately it’s available separately, nicely priced at $15. No extras. [US]
RIO BRAVO (1959): Not the first time on DVD for John Wayne classic, but new “Special Edition” includes commentary and featurettes over 2 discs, while “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” includes all that plus lobby cards, a press book and a comic book (!). Also out are new “deluxe” editions of the late Wayne vehicles ‘True Grit’ (1969) and ‘The Cowboys’ (1972). [US]
STRAIGHT TIME (1978): Dustin Hoffman as ex-con trying to go straight in gritty 70s drama. Includes commentary by Hoffman and director Ulu Grosbard. [US]
PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981): Superb cop drama, unfortunately split over two discs in needless 2-disc “special” edition. Still a good movie. [US]
