Black Gate

So there’s this network, Comet TV, that shows old sci-fi shows and movies and such. As I live in a media cave without cable or Netflix I sometimes catch said old movies there. A couple of weeks ago I caught the 1991 Bruce Willis vehicle Hudson Hawk — a movie both loved and reviled! An action/comedy that is, in most senses, the final word on action comedies.

Most people absolutely HATE this movie. Especially snobs whose jobs depend on them hating movies. Can I provide examples? Oh yes:

Terry Cliffored, writing for the Chicago Tribune notes:

Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad.

Kenneth Truan scribbling gloomily for the L.A. Times had this to say:

The saddest thing about Hudson Hawk is that director Lehmann and co-screenwriter Waters were previously responsible for the clever, audacious “Heathers,” a film that represented all that is most promising about American film, while this one represents all that is most moribund and retrograde. Perhaps they both earned enough money here so that they won’t be tempted to indulge themselves in similar big-budget fiascoes. Here’s hoping.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t include Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers trying to be cool by bemoaning it thusly:

A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop.

You know what? Screw them! There are some movies that are simply beyond the grasp of tiny minds — and this is one of those movies, if not the king of such movies.

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I’ve been reading Black Gate over the last month waiting for a Mad Max Fury: Road review… I guess that, if you’re anything like me, after watching the movie all you can manage is to light up a cigarette and take some time to recover.

So! It looks like I need to fire up my modified combat wagon (a ’78 Gremlin with a 79 Fiat Bertone welded on top) and GO TO VALHALLA VIA THE FURY ROAD!

It has taken me a while to come up with a review of Mad Max: Fury Road (MMFR) that isn’t simply “its f-ing awesome!” or “Hell yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” or even “Oh what a love-eh-lee daay!”

It is a two+ hour fever dream! Modified dragsters and their support motorcycles tearing across a hellscape, bent on destruction! Ah, what the hell, throw in the pack from Gas Town, the Bullet Farmer, the Hedgehogs, and multiple biker gangs while we’re at it!

You know how the original Mad Max was mostly bad things happening and then like a 10-minute chase? Then Road Warrior (Belated Review #4) was bad things happening with like a 30 minute chase? And Beyond Thunderdome (Belated Review #5) threw a curveball by having weird things happen and then a 15 minute chase? Well Fury Road has like 10 minutes of bad things happening, and then IT IS ALL CHASE.

Sometimes they have to find excuses to actually stop chasing for a bit. Mostly so bad things can happen. Sometimes they manage to shout over the screaming engines and groaning metal long enough to engage in the absolute bare minimum of character development. It is so refreshing!

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Among the genre of world-gone-mad movies, The Road Warrior (TRW) is pretty much the standard by which all others are measured — for good reason! Easily the best of the Mad Max trilogy, it doesn’t suffer from the technical issues and slow plot of Mad Max, nor the excesses of Beyond Thunderdome. TRW is a movie lathed down to a simple gleaming core: good guys inside the refinery, bad guys outside. And, for a bit of a spark, Max is also on the outside and like the bad guys, he wants in to get that fuel.

Whereas MdMx drops the viewer straight into a world going to hell, TRW includes a bit of a voiceover that gives all the introduction that you need — and really, it is mostly the background of the world. An interesting thing about TRW is that you don’t even have to see Mad Max for it to make sense, and even though that intro touches on Max’s history it almost doesn’t have to. Max Rockatansky is defined almost entirely by his actions.

Did I say action? I meant ACTION! Max vs. Wez! Max rescuing the scout! Max retrieving the rig! Max making his getaway in the last V8! The Big Chase!

A thing they do in this movie, and do well, is that although Maxis the MC, the movie is really about Papagallo vs. The Humungus, and Max is just drawn in and plays his cards close to the vest, and [spoiler alert] he never actually picks sides. He just says he’ll drive the tanker, not that their plan or goal way of life is any better than anyone those of the people outside.

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