The Screengrab : Snatch

The Best & Worst Get Rich Quick Schemes In Cinema History! (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS (1998) & SNATCH (2000)

The Guy Ritchie formula seems deceptively easy: mix several colorfully bemonikered, slang-slinging con men, lowlifes, and petty criminals with a couple of scary sociopaths, a handful of intersecting scams and a hundred thousand bullets and beat to a pulp. And yet, as deeply uneven films like Smoking Aces (and Ritchie’s own Revolver) have demonstrated, good-natured ultra-violence can be just as tricky to pull off as the doomed get-rich-quick schemes favored by the sub-genre’s hapless anti-heroes. First, there needs to be a good Maguffin, like the antique shotguns in Lock, Stock or Snatch’s 86-carat diamond. Next comes a solid rooting interest (like the indispensable Jason Statham) and a credibly scary criminal kingpin like P.H. Moriarty’s murderous pornographer “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale or Alan Ford’s psychopathic pig enthusiast, Brick Top. From there it’s all about delaying the inevitable showdown with as many undercard bouts as possible between interesting supporting characters like Vinnie Jones’ relatively nice bad men Big Chris and Bullet Tooth Tony and various allies, enemies and enemies-turned-allies (and vice-versa) played by the likes of Goldie, Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Farina and Brad Pitt's memorably mumbling pikey brawler, Mickey O'Neil. The real trick, though, is taking the material just seriously enough to maintain dramatic tension, while never quite taking it seriously enough to require tortured method acting from, say, Jeremy Piven. (AO)

THE STING (1973)

While The Grifters made the life of a con artist look bleak and despairing, as fit the work of a born cynic like Jim Thompson, The Sting – a smash hit when it first appeared in 1973 – made it look like quite a dreamy little profession, all natty outfits and colorful slang and snappy patter with your partner, accompanied by the rollicking ragtime strains of Scott Joplin. Of course, no one ever accused George Roy Hill of going for realism in The Sting; what he was trying to do was recapture the dynamite charisma his leads, Robert Redford and Paul Newman, had shared in their previous outing, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Amazingly, he captured lightning in a bottle twice, and even if audiences had a hard time following the big-payoff swindle that Redford and Newman had planned against the sting’s intended target, Robert Shaw, they didn’t seem to care. It all looked like such a lark, who cared about the details? (LP)

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

Explaining his reasons for lighting out from his dishwasher's job in Texas, Joe Buck (Jon Voight) says that there's "a lot of rich women back there beggin' for it -- payin' for it, too. And the men are mostly tooty fruities!" Not long after arriving in the big city, Joe beds Sylvia Miles, which settles any doubts you might have had about how hard he's willing to dedicate himself to his craft. However, he ends up paying her, a sure sign that he may lack the management skills necessary to be successfully self-employed. Luckily, Ratso (Dustin Hoffman), the slimy, crippled greaseball with the tubercular cough takes him into his apartment in a condemned building and offers to pimp him to the best of his abilities. The film doubles as a snapshot of the Times Square New York of the pre-Giuliani cleanup era; anyone who sees it and still professes feelings of nostalgia for the good old days is seriously ill. (PN)

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956)

Jean-Pierre Melville was the high priest of French noir, and Bob le Flambeur was one of his crowning achievements, a heist film so expertly orchestrated that, along with the preceding The Asphalt Jungle, it helped set a template still employed half a century later. The set-up involves aging, dapper gambler and thief Bob (Roger Deuchesne), who’s so well-liked that he’s friends with the chief of police, and who – after finding himself down on his luck – endeavors to change his fortunes by recruiting a crew for a lucrative casino score. Bob’s day-to-day existence revolves around taking chances, meaning that his eventual decision to pull off one last robbery is simply an example of a man recognizing his inherent nature. If Bob remains true to himself until the end, so too does Melville, whose expressionistic direction magnificently set the stage for the forthcoming French New Wave. Dark, sumptuous shadows, stunning iris shots, and on-location cinematography breathe melancholic life into this portrait of the romantic allure of a big score, and of the inescapable hand of fate. (NS)

CHRISTMAS IN JULY (1940)

By the standards of Preston Sturges's later, wilder films, the dreams on display here are rather modest, but they manage to inspire an impressive amount of damage anyway. Dick Powell, at his most ingratiatingly sappy, is the luckless young striver who wants to secure a solid enough place for himself that he can marry his girl, Ellen Drew. Dick decides that his best chance is to win the $25,000 top prize for the Maxford House Coffee Slogan, a shot in the dark that becomes a major point of his masculine pride when Ellen casts doubt on his submission: "If you can't sleep, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk!" (She persists in not liking it even after he's explained it to her, which he does at some length.) In perhaps the most straightforward plotline Sturges ever conceived, pranksters trick Dick into believing that he's won, Dick somehow gets his hands on the money and plays Mr. Big Spender, his boss forces a promotion on him in recognition of his previously unsuspected genius for concocting advertising slogans, the truth is revealed, Dick is chastened, and then of course it turns out that he really did win the contest because nobody sent in anything better. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

Transported: The Jason Statham Think Piece

John Constantine — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

I had traveled half-way across the country to spend some quality time with my father. We were drinking Tomintoul scotch whiskey in his Colorado cabin. It was snowing outside and we were quiet, watching a movie, entranced. I turned to my dad and shared with him the undeniable truth I had gleaned from the film: "Transporting is the greatest job on earth." He sipped his drink, reflected on his years of wisdom, and nodded: "Yes. Yes it is."

If you're unfamiliar with Luc Besson's Transporter series — or wonder why a father and son would spend a portion of their few, precious hours together watching a movie about a guy and his car — its appeal can be summed up in two words: Jason Statham. The titular star doesn't make transporting look easy, of course. Adhering to a strict moral code while transporting goods for less-than-reputable businessmen is taxing. The guy has to make BMWs perform stunts that would confound a physicist. Cars just don't move like that, and if you're carting around a petite young woman in the trunk, as a transporter often does, you've got to factor in her continued survival as a goal. Plus, the job keeps you so busy — maintaining your pristine black suit and kicking the crap out of nameless thugs — that you don't get much of a chance to enjoy your secret seaside villa. (Incidentally, The Transporter has five named thugs in its credit list — Thugs 1 through 3, Little Thug, and Giant Thug — but Statham seems to brutalize quite a few poor, uncredited thugs, as well.) And getting your work finished in a timely manner is complicated by your nagging sense of honor. Human trafficking? Crap, you can't transport when you know that's going down. A wan model, wearing nothing but an unbuttoned nursing uniform and two uzis, kidnaps the rich toddler you're driving to school? Shit, doesn't look like you're punching out early today. And with all that going on, when does Statham find the time to sculpt his guns?

This is what you think about when you experience Jason Statham movies. You ask the big questions. The biggest of which is: why the hell can't I stop watching him?

Take 2006's Crank and its sequel, Crank: High Voltage, which opens this Friday. That a sequel to Crank even exists is a testament to Statham's rising star power: the original Crank ended with Statham's character falling umpteen-hundred feet from a helicopter, landing on a car, then bouncing onto the ground and dying. (Poster tagline for new film: "He was dead, but he got better.")

Crank is one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life, a brutishly stupid set-piece pileup that finds Statham getting maimed by an army of racial stereotypes. Statham's character, hit-man Chev Chelios, has been injected with the poisonous "Beijing Cocktail" and therefore needs to maintain a constant stream of adrenaline running through his system or he'll die. The plot, in Statham's own words, is: "Run, run, fucking run. I do not stop." It features a sex scene between Statham's and Amy Smart's characters that's (I think) supposed to be funny: when Chelios feels himself flagging at a bus stop, his only choice is to have street-sex with Smart, on a mailbox in front of a gaggle of picture-taking Japanese tourists. It's about as titillating as a porta-john. I couldn't look at mailboxes for a week, I was that embarrassed for them. But now, when I see trailers for Crank: High Voltage, which actually manages to look stupider in two minutes than Crank does in eighty, I think, "Hmm. Yes. I cannot wait to see it. I needed plans for Friday night and thankfully they have presented themselves. Thank you, Mr. Statham."

Perhaps it helps that Statham appears to feel much like I would, if forced to stimulate sex with Amy Smart in front of a large group of strangers: slightly disgusted, but willing to get the job done. Speaking about a public-sex scene in the Crank sequel (we can only imagine), Statham said, "Trying to do an aggressive sex scene is quite difficult, especially in a public place with a crowd of screaming extras with their little camera phones going click-click, taking pictures of your pasty white ass." Statham is the action-star who isn't afraid to tell it like it is, or insult his own ass cheeks.

But where the hell did this sort of self-denigrating hero come from? The twenty-first century rebirthed the marquee action star, but today's dominant, male-fantasy models are a far cry from their Reagan-era forebears. The big-muscle, low-vocabulary Schwarzeneggers and Stallones have given way to the sad, silent, and speedy Matt Damons and Daniel Craigs, intelligent action peddlers who — off-screen — deplore the violence they peddle. Statham doesn't play in their league, though; he's a C-lister. In some ways, he's closer to the Clinton-era, thick-skulled, martial-artist-as-actor tradition of Seagal and Van Damme, but that lineage doesn't quite fit him either; though Statham's acting has never won an Oscar, and his American accent has been derided, he looks like Orson Welles next to the Muscles from Brussels.

Jason Statham's early life seems as oddball and awesome as some of his roles. The son of a lounge singer and a dancer, he was on Britain's National Diving squad for twelve years, which led work modeling for the French Connection. To bankroll his scuba-diving hobby, he hustled perfume and jewelry on London street corners. This, plus his modeling and his martial-arts training, led him to his acting debut in Guy Ritchie's hipster-faves Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch at the turn of the century. He played one-named roles, guys called Bacon and Turkish, swarthy Cockney con men who spent their onscreen time doing everything to avoid violence, not dole it out. But how did he go from skinny, balding Brit spouting witticisms to becoming the Transporter? And why do I like him so much as the Transporter?

Let's be honest. Statham's never as cool as Craig, but no one can be. No man has that many smooth things to say and, even if they did, no random woman on a beach is going to respond when you say them. He's never as collected as Damon, but Jason Bourne is a government-made super-spy. Chev Chelios doesn't jump off a bridge because it's the strategic maneuver he's been trained to take. He jumps off a bridge because, well, that's about the only choice he has. He's hassled and busy, annoyed by the demands of survival, but will do whatever it takes to survive.

Maybe it's that hint of everyman exasperation that makes Statham so irresistible, that, counterintuitively, makes his most outsized exploits (flipping luxury sedans onto moving trains, etc.) seem plausible. When Statham's interrupted while transporting, or he's given a drug that's going to make his heart explode, he responds with a begrudging sigh. A rolling of the eyes. God, why did it have to be today? I have things to do! That hint of reality establishes that for all his toughness, Jason Statham is One Of Us. If I gave up carbs and worked out eighteen hours a day, he suggests, I, too, could live his golden life. And if I did, I would feel about life the way his characters feel. (There are differences, I suppose. I, for one, would gently caress Ms. Smart in the comfort and safety of the mail truck.)

I was wrong. Transporting isn't the greatest job on earth. Being Jason Statham is.

No Shit, Sherlock: Guy Ritchie Reimagines Holmes

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Here at the Screengrab, we’re not philosophically opposed to a “re-imagining” of Sherlock Holmes. After all, the ace detective has been through a lot in his century-long career on the silver screen. He’s been played by Peter Cook, Peter Cushing, Peter Lawford and Peter O’Toole. He’s even been portrayed by actors not named Peter, including Christopher Lee, Christopher Plummer, John Cleese, Michael Caine and someone named Hugo Flink. But we’re pretty sure even the great Basil Rathbone would turn in his pipe and deerstalker hat at the news out of Hollywood this morning.

Guy Ritchie, the man behind such meticulously crafted mysteries as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, will spearhead the Holmes revival. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Ritchie has signed on to write and direct a reimagining of super sleuth Sherlock Holmes for Warner Bros. Lionel Wigram and Dan Lin are producing the movie, which takes its cues from a forthcoming comic that Wigram wrote as a selling tool for a new take on the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character. The concept sees the character be more adventuresome and less stuffy than previous screen incarnations and mines on more obscure character traits.”

The phrases “selling tool” and “less stuffy” certainly have me salivating at the prospect of a hip new Sherlock for the 21st century, how about you? Can I get an “Elementary, my dear Watson”? No?

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2008: First Quarter Wrap-Up

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It’s not that I didn’t see this coming.

By my reckoning, 2007 was a pretty solid year for movies, so I suspected 2008 would bring a cyclical downturn in cinematic quality (accompanied by a distinctly fishy, low-tide smell wafting from our nation’s multiplexes). And, yes, I know we’re in the Horse Latitudes of the movie-going year, before the summer blockbusters and the fall Oscar contenders...but, seriously, has anyone seen anything really good yet?

By this time last year, I’d already seen four of the movies that wound up on my 2007 Top Ten list: the fine, Oscar-neglected Zodiac, a sneak preview of Knocked Up at the South-By-Southwest Film Festival, along with two outstanding documentaries, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and the lesser-known but equally awesome roller derby-umentary Hell On Wheels.

Even the first quarter cheese I saw last year was pretty entertaining: the silly sexploitation of Black Snake Moan, the gay-panic-at-the-disco iconography of 300, and the A.D.D. chaos of Smoking Aces, a fake Guy Richie movie I enjoyed at least as much Snatch.

So far, at the quarter-mile mark of 2008, the only truly Top 10-caliber flick I've seen is Full Battle Rattle, a SXSW Special Jury award-winning documentary (reviewed here by Mr. Von Doviak on March 17) about a simulated Iraqi province in California’s Mojave desert, populated by Iraqi-American citizens and U.S. Army “insurgents” in a full-immersion training scenario where soldiers practice both their combat and diplomacy skills before heading off to the real war in Iraq.

As for the rest of the year-to-date...feh. Cloverfield had moments, but no characters. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Penelope and 21 were all pleasantly unobjectionable but instantly forgettable, and I Am Legend’s deserted Manhattan streets were compelling until the director filled them with boring video game ghoulies.

But, hey, maybe things are looking up for 2008...only three more shopping days ‘til Zombie Strippers!