Age of Innocents

Stand by Me is a movie full of universal truths about boys: jokes about mothers never get old, barf is endlessly fascinating, the best part about being outside is getting dirty and not caring, and no one can understand you like the other boys your age understand you. When the movie was released in 1986, I was around the same age as the characters in Rob Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella The Body. Although Stand by Me is set during the era of my father’s childhood (the '50s), I related to the film completely.

At around that age, there was a group of four of us school friends that would hang out all the time, sleep over at each others’ houses, rip around on our BMX bikes and make stupid jokes of the variety we’d never dare utter around our parents. Although we never went on a quest for a dead body or got covered in swamp leeches, we did go exploring in Edmonton’s river valley and come back mosquito-bitten and filthy. We never had an awesome treehouse, in which one could only enter with a secret knock, but we built forts and drew secret plans for traps and weapons we could employ to protect the sanctity of our sanctuary. And, of course, bullies were a seemingly constant threat – in fact, my nose is still a bit crooked from a rock I took to the face when I was about eleven, courtesy of an older kid with great aim.

Stand by Me was the first and probably only film that I saw at that age that I felt spoke to my life. Add in some highly quotable dialogue (“I don't shut up, I grow up; and when I look at you, I throw up!” “And then your mom goes around the corner and licks it up!”), a little action (the white knuckle train trestle scene) and the greatest barf sequence ever spewed across the screen, and the film had it all.

I loved the movie. I had the soundtrack (on cassette, the way it was meant to be heard) and as soon as it hit video, my family endured me watching the pie-eating contest puke-a-thon several times in slow-motion (ha-ha-ha – so good!).

I recently snagged the Stand by Me DVD in a sale bin for about $6, which was about what I wanted to spend to see the movie again. With typical cynicism, I thought I’d see it two-plus decades later and write it off as a manipulative, cheezoid Hollywood star vehicle. It features River Phoenix (Chris), Wil Wheaton (Gordie) and Jerry O’Connell (Vern), who became stars because of it, and it’s full of actors who were already established at the time, such as Corey Feldman (Teddy), Richard Dreyfuss, Kiefer Sutherland and John Cusack (he plays Gordie’s older brother in the flashbacks – yep, like you, I’d totally forgotten about that).

To my surprise, I thought the film was even better two decades later. The rite of passage period piece really is timeless and the characters still ring true.

This time I took notice of how completely realized the performances are from the kids – all the camaraderie, insecurity, posturing and vulnerability of boys that age is there. There’s a 35-minute doc on the DVD, called Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me, that includes all of the major performers (minus Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose in 1993), Reiner and Stephen King. It gave me a sense of a very successful collaboration between a writer who has crafted a story very close to his own experiences growing up (for example, the leeches scene is very close to an experience King had as a boy), a director who was able to make the writer’s journey visually epic yet narratively intimate by spending a lot of time working with his actors (Reiner was famous for playing “Meathead” on Archie Bunker before he found fame as a director), and actors who were naturals (O’Connell, for example, had never acted professionally prior to the film).

In retrospect, Stand by Me hits closer to home for me than the average viewer in my demographic. I couldn’t help but compare the four characters in the movie to my aforementioned group of four friends. We weren’t the same mix of personalities, but there were shades of similarity. There was the tougher, outdoorsy one who was maturing a little bit more quickly than the rest of us physically, a hyperactive daredevil who – yes – loved to make the rest of flinch and give us shots, the bookish one who even had a bowl cut and was carrying around anger stemming from his parents separation, and I was the goofier, chubby one, although mercifully not sack-of-hammers dumb (and I guess being the writer inches me out of Vern territory and into Gordie Land – whew!).

Much like in the film, we grew apart after entering junior high (grades seven to nine, for those with a different provincial system), and one of us died some years later. A little while after high school finished, the daredevil dropped acid and ran right through the window of his fourteenth floor apartment. Sounds like something out of a movie, but it’s true.

Stand by Me is a loss of innocence story, as well, for main character Gordie, who essentially starts the journey to manhood when he finally stares death in the face via the broken body of Ray Brower, and then stands up to Ace (Sutherland) and his gang. I never pointed a gun at a knife-wielding bully, but a year after the movie was released my dad was killed in a car accident. As you’d expect, that childhood innocence – already on its way out – was left reeling and choking in the dust. The next day, I wanted – no, needed – to go to my best friend’s house. He was the tougher, outdoorsy one of the group, and I just had to spend time with someone who wasn't trying to coddle me. I think we even managed to joke around for a while that afternoon, and now I realize that it must've been friggin' difficult for him to deal with the situation, yet he didn't let on. He just  acted like the same true blue friend I'd known for years.

That memory became sharp again when I watched the scene at the end of Stand by Me between Gordie and Chris, where Gordie confronts the death of his brother as his friend helps him through it. It was difficult to sit through, and reminded me again just how honest the movie is in the way it depicts boys dealing with some heavy stuff.

So if you can find a film that really gets inside of you and pushes those buttons you keep hidden far away from the outside world, embrace it. Find those rare stories that speak to you on a deeper level, and give your irony a rest for while. Lo and behold, sometimes even a blockbuster Hollywood movie can dig at a deeper reality. Once in a while, anyhow.

Or just revisit Stand by Me so you can watch the pie eating contest again in slow-motion. That rules too.

 

-Dave Alexander

"F" is for Future, French and Fighting

 

I have seen the future and it looks like… a razor commercial.  In fact, I expected a sleek, multi-bladed Gillette to rocket through Chrysalis at any time while I was watching it. The French sci-fi film (on DVD May 12 from Anchor Bay ) presents one of my least favourite movie-future aesthetics: cold, clean and colourless. Fluorescent lights, plenty of stainless steel, concrete, technological thingies that are gray or black – it’s the sort of look evident in The Matrix, Minority Report, A.I. and any other film where rainbows, Skittles and Technicolour Dreamcoats seem to have been outlawed (for the record, I’m all for getting rid of that last one). It’s like society collectively decided, “Who the hell needs colour and ornamentation when we’ve got all these bad ass holograms – boo-ya!”

That said, the mono-chromatic Ikea showroom look does fit the dour, clinical world of first-time feature director Julien Lecrercq’s futuristic mix of Eyes Without a Face and Minority Report, with a touch of A Clockwork Orange. Just as joyless (or joie de vivre-less, as the film takes place in Paris) and monochromatic is police officer David Hoffman (Albert Dupontel), a guy whose oppressively sullen demeanour stems from the fact that he was unable to save his love and fellow officer during a bust gone wrong. She was stabbed and dumped in the murky water of a sewer tunnel, and he dove in after her but was too late to save her from drowning.

Now, David drifts through the days, beating himself up (he practices holding his breath in the bathtub just in case he may be faced with a similar situation – you can bet the skill comes in very handy later), working out (Dupontel is a buff dude) and hunting the murderer – a shady underworld type who’s been snatching people off the street, named Nicolov (Alain Figlarz). David is grudgingly aided by his new partner Marie (Marie Guillard), who seems suspiciously over her head.

Meanwhile, a prestigious doctor is helping her daughter recover from a horrible car accident that apparently required much plastic surgery and a new procedure to re-implant lost memories, via a Clockwork Orange-like machine, that also kinda look like one of those lame virtual reality helmets from the ‘90s. The storylines slowly merge, and it’s little surprise that some mad science is afoot.

As far as sci-fi goodies go, there are neat gadgets (notably the batons the police carry that project holograms and can verify identity by reading retinas); there’s a technological threat (we’re reminded what evil things could happen if that memory machine got in the wrong hands); and there’s a prescient subtext (if not always clear) about identity in a surveillance society. (You can see the trailer for Chrysalis here, by the way.)

Lecrercq, like many first-time feature directors, tries hard to impress. There’s that slick, if overly T.V. commercial-looking, palette; some fancy, if unnecessary, shots, including one that moves through the floors of the clinic as it follows an elevator; and he goes all out with some highly choreographed fight scenes. Well, make that over-choreographed fight scenes. The movie presents a cohesive world, except when Dupontel is mixing it up with Figlarz – then it turns into a very stage-y martial arts demonstration. Figlarz is a stunt guy with a credit on The Bourne Identity, which could explain why the fights in that film are edited into oblivion; they need to be in order to look real.

It’s not a deal breaker if you’re looking for a decent sci-fi renter, but, like so much of the Chrysalis, it’s a smidge too slick and empty. Gentlemen, may I suggest something a little less razor commercial-like, and a little more fun and Parisian next time, like perhaps two mimes on bicycles jousting with baguettes?

That could totally happen in the future.

-Dave Alexander

Observing and Reporting…

Mall cop is the ultimate Rodney Dangerfield job, because a) you get a shirt with an ill-fitting collar – perfect for tugging at – and b) you get no respect. With two mall cop movies in one year mocking the profession, you can bet there’s never been a worse time to hold what Maclean’s magazine recently dubbed “the ultimate fake job.”

Ouch. If you’re looking for experience in law enforcement before applying for the police force, mall security seems like a perfectly reasonable step in your career path, and for the sake of debunking the dangerous oaf stereotype, I wish I could say the one person I knew to hold such a job was completely normal.

But that would be a lie.

His name was “Billy” (of course, it wasn’t, but, you know…) and I worked with him in construction several years before he kept the shoppers at a certain Edmonton mall safe from harm. He was a hard worker and generally a nice guy, if not a brainiac. He was also very muscular and prone to flashes of aggression. This, of course, is what happens when you’re taking twice the normal dosage of steroids – a fact he was very open about. After a typical ten to twelve hour day of labour, Billy would go to the gym for a couple of hours and wail on his pecs and whatnot. He also ate lard sandwiches for lunch to bulk up. And he yelled a lot. Eventually Billy left the company and became a male stripper; a few years later I saw him at the mall in uniform, a wild stare in his eyes – like he would snap a man’s neck for spilling an Orange Julius in the planter.

This is the stare Seth Rogan sports for much of Observe and Report, the second mall cop film after Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Like Kevin James’ Blart, Seth Rogan’s Ronnie Barnhardt is as doughy as is dedicated, but this is not a Farrelly Brothers type of slapstick scenario. Comparisons of Cable Guy-meets-Taxi Driver are apt, as this is truly a journey into the food court of darkness. Ronnie is the socially-retarded, achingly non-self-aware head of security at your average North American mall. He longs to be permitted to pack heat, loves his free coffee from the cinnamon bun place, and runs a tight ship with his four equally eccentric underlings.

When Brandi (Anna Farris), the aloof makeup counter bimbo he’s in love with, is traumatized by a serial flasher, Ronnie springs into action, promising to “murder” the trench coat Casanova. But when the real cops, led by Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta, master of the asshole cop role), are brought in to solve the case, he gets in a territorial pissing match that gives him the courage to finally try out for the force. With his newfound confidence, he asks out Brandi, confides in a co-worker with a secret and goes off his meds. Ronnie’s at the top, but his escalator’s going down. His delusion and rage lead to a streak of violence that’s shocking but funny, disturbing but triumphant, and in the end, tough to reconcile.

Ronnie is one of the roles where a comedy guy gets to cautiously stretch his dramatic chops. Rogan has become a star on the strength of multi-dimensional everyman characters beat down with self-doubt and pathos, however, this is a much darker version of that usual lovable schlep. Here he plays a guy who isn’t self-deprecating, who – like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver or Jim Carrey’s title character in The Cable Guy – lacks the self awareness to really fit in, and whose frustration turns violent. Ronnie is a genuine outsider, not a character that the average viewer can relate to, which is ballsy.

One of the beautiful things about Observe and Report is writer-director Jody Hill’s knack for unexpected twists. He’s one of the creators of Eastbound and Down and the guy behind the Foot Fist Way, both vehicles for Danny McBride (who has a small role in this film as a white trash gangsta). As in those shows, O&R’s protagonist is an obstinately clueless narcissist who is both difficult to root for but also full of surprises. The plot of Observe and Report is full of surprising 180s that manage to stay true to the protagonist because Ronnie is so unpredictable himself.

The movie asks more from the viewer than a standard underdog story, such as Blart, and it pays off. Of course, Observe and Report won’t make a fraction of what that film raked in (nearly $170 million worldwide), but it’ll definitely help foster the Cult of Rogen while earning Hill respect as relatively fresh-faced director.

So here’s to not playing it safe. In the words of Ronnie Barnhardt, “The world has no use for another scared man. Right now, the world needs a f**king hero.”

 

-Dave Alexander

Expanded Horizons

There was a time when you could judge one’s value as a human being by his opinion of widescreen. DVD firmly entrenched the proper aspect ratio as a normal part of the viewing experience, and now it’s rare to find fullscreen – or idiotscreen – discs in places other than the sale bin at Wal-Mart (I recently spotted a fullscreen copy of Spider-Man in one such bin for $5 – whoo-hoo!). But when widescreen/letterbox was first introduced on VHS in the mid-‘90s the concept of widescreen could turn otherwise intelligent people into mouth-breathing philistines when faced with the concept of watching a movie in its proper aspect ratio.

When companies started releasing letterbox special edition VHS version of movies, it was a big deal for movie geeks who finally were able to see, say, John Carpenter’s Halloween in its proper format instead of the pan and scan version, which loses much of its tension in some of the key scenes. I collected loads of these special editions, filled with joy at the prospect of being able to see a movie the way it was meant to be seen. Or at least closer to the theatrical version.

According to this Wikipedia entry, “widescreen image “is a film, computer or television image with a wider and shorter aspect ratio than the standard Academy frame developed during the classical Hollywood cinema era. Or, in, uh, layman’s terms, “Those black bars on the screen.” In the late ‘90s I worked at a video store in Edmonton, and learned quickly that nothing turned one into a jaded, Clerks-style asshole movie snob quite like explaining to flummoxed customers that, “No, the video didn’t break your VCR.” Or, “This is the original format, like you’d see in the theatres – no really, it is.” And the classic, “You’re actually seeing more of the film, not less of it.” It was that last one that seemed to break brains, as way too many renters were unable to comprehend the idea that the image could be shrunk slightly to allow for all of its rectangular goodness to fit on their oh-so square television. I figured out that the most effective appeal wasn’t to common sense but to greed: “Heck, why would you pay to watch only two-thirds of a film? You’re getting ripped-off with pan and scan. Widescreen gives you the whole film! You want to watch the whole film and not just two-thirds of it, right? RIGHT?!” It was so tempting to tell them to just close their eyes a little bit to compensate and it would look normal.

Some of these withered souls came around and got into widescreen, but many would balk, make a comment about their TVs being too small, then pee themselves and run out into traffic while smashing themselves in the head with a hammer. (I may be remembering part of that incorrectly…).

Back to the now; what started this rant is Phillips’ new Cinema 21:9 LCD TV. As the press release states, it’s “the world's first cinema proportioned television screen.” While it’s the latest move towards making each of us build mini-theatres in our homes to avoid interaction with the outside world, it’s also a leap forward in terms of the average person wanting to watch a movie the way it was shot. (Of course, not all films are this ratio, so John Carpenter or Sergio Leone stuff will still require some black bar action, I assume.) I have no plans to seek out one of these TVs, as I’ve become quite fond of both those black bars and living within my financial means, but there’s no denying that it’s, y’know, totally friggin’ cool.

And just to acknowledge that Panasonic’s marketing is indeed effective, I’m going to link to the site, here, where you can see the two-minute, nineteen second, film one Adam Berg shot to prove the visual sexiness of the 21:9 screen (or see it on YouTube, here). Titled Carousel, it’s a moment frozen in time during an epic shoot-out between cops and guys in clown masks pulling a heist on a hospital (because apparently hospitals have so much cash lying around). The camera moves throughout the frame with much digital trickery, making it look like a single shot exploring a three-dimensional space to tell a story through a “single” image.

So where the hell was this TV when I was trying to explain to mental renters that you did not, in fact need to buy a special set to watch a widescreen movie? If the 2:19 screen was around then, inevitably some of them would’ve purchased such a magical television without knowing much about it and lamented the fact that someone had “cut off” the sides of their TV shows. And I just would've kept on being a judgmental dick.

-Dave Alexander

The Breaking of Pelham One Two Three

New York City was a dirty, dangerous hellhole in the 1970s, and that’s just the way I like it. At least on film. Cruising (technically released in 1980 but still a product of the ‘70s), Death Wish, The French Connection, Serpico, Superfly, Taxi Driver, and The Warriors are all examples of classic NYC-set/shot films with an aesthetic of gritty realism anchored firmly in the Big Rotten Apple. These are movies with narratives as tough ‘n’ ugly as the landscape they depict.

Add The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) to that list, as well. Based on the novel of the same name by John Godey, it stars Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber of the New York City Transit Police, who is caught in the middle of a hostage situation on the Pelham 123 train. Robert Shaw co-stars as the criminal mastermind behind the ransom scam, in which a group of men take over a subway car, isolate it in a tunnel and demand a large fee for the safe release of the passengers. With time running out, Garber must try to meet the kidnappers’ demands, deal with the bureaucracy of city hall and keep the police with itchy trigger fingers at bay. It’s a gripping film with an original, well-paced story and an amazing cast – only in the ‘70s does a guy like Walter Matthau star as an action hero (sort-of). You want grit? This film’s got more grit than a face plant at the beach.

Pelham is one of those films no one seemed to have heard of, even though Quentin Tarantino ripped off from it the idea of the criminals using colours for names for Reservoir Dogs (and Pelham was remade for TV in 1998 with Edward James Olmos, Vincent D’Onofrio and Donny Wahlberg). The original is great example of American cinema hitting its artistic peak in the ‘70s. (See the trailer here.)

And now Tony Scott is going to going to keep that reputation in intact by directing what will most likely be a very crappy remake. Scott, who is all high-octane Hollywood (Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Spy Games), is about the worst guy to remake this movie. The original is all character, performance, story and that NYC atmosphere, whereas this version, as far as the trailer indicates, is explosions, Hollywood stars, guns, cars getting smashed and leather jackets. Denzel Washington (who starred in Scott’s Man of Fire) is the lead here, filling Matthau’s shoes, while John Travolta chews through scenery like a shark through rowboat made of Spam. The editing is unnecessarily slick, things go boom a lot and the soundtrack is equally obnoxious. (See the trailer here.)

I’m a big fan of True Romance, which Scott also directed (although Tarantino wrote it, so that may be why I likey lots), and before I damned him for remaking one of my favourite ’70s movies, I decided to give one of his newer (and crime-themed) films a watch: Domino. Made in 2005, it’s loosely (about as loosely as possibly) based on real-life model-turned-bounty hunter Domino Harvey and stars Kiera Knightly as the title character. Here’s the plot: rebel girl becomes bounty hunter, causing an exceptional number of people and things to crash, get shot and/or blow up – all in a very sexy and stylish way, while totally awesome music plays.  

Bad films are everywhere – they surround us like the force – but films this aggressively awful aren’t that easy to come by. I don’t think I’ve hated a film for being such a meaningless, obnoxious Day-Glo dog turd since xXx came out. (If you think I’m exaggerating, look no further than the scene where Domino proves her value as a bounty hunter by diffusing a tense stand-off via a lap dance. A LAP DANCE!) A manipulative, mindless music video where everything seems aimed at horny, Grand Theft Auto-addled fourteen-year-olds, it’s everything sucky about mainstream American cinema – and, to generalize, the antithesis of American movies of the 1970s.

I don’t think The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is untouchable, though; in fact, the premise seems ripe for an update, and given all the technology that exists now that didn’t 35 years ago, I can see the possibility for a decent remake, with that sort of stuff playing heavily into the narrative. But that hopeful feeling took a cannonball out the window with Scott in the director’s chair – and, according to the IMDb, he’s also remaking The Warriors (NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!). The guy that should’ve been given this job is Joe Carnahan, who made the very gritty, very ‘70s cop movie-influenced Narc in 2002. That’s the kind of sensibility Pelham demands.

Instead we got the guy who put Tom Cruise in a fighter jet and Kenny Loggins on the soundtrack.

-Dave Alexander

A View Askew

If the experience of watching a movie was strictly about the movie itself, than film wouldn’t have much of a film culture. And I’m not thinking about things that take place outside of the time that a film is playing, such as talking about movies after you see them, reading articles about film, listening to a soundtrack, etc. I’m referring to things that occur while watching the film itself that changes movie watching from an exercise to an experience: theatre popcorn, a room full of people laughing, watching horror movies on Halloween to soak up a certain mood, rewinding and pausing good nude scenes, seeing a favourite flick so many times that you can recite the dialogue as it plays (“Give us zah mowney, Lebow-shki!”), and so on.

Of course, we go out of way to manufacture special film-related experiences, as well. There are special theme screenings, film festivals with cast and crew in attendance, film foodies pair a meal with a certain title (e.g. Italian and Big Night), movie drinking games are an institution and it’s almost frightening to imagine the number of joints that have been rolled in anticipation of watching The Big Lebowski. It probably a number so big it could very well break math as we know it.

Sometimes however, a particularly memorable movie watching experience just happens due to the convergence of unseen forces. Here’s a list of five of those instances when the ordinary became special for me.

1. Halloween home alone.

I was working in a video rental house in Edmonton and I’d never seen John Carpenter’s classic slasher film; back in the day when Anchor Bay released it on video in widescreen for the first time it came into the store and I snagged it at the end of my shift. It was late and very stormy, and I was the only one home at my family’s place in the ‘burbs. I watched it on a TV that was right beside a bay window. Flashes of lightning illuminated the leafless tree outside that was being blown against the house, making an eerie scraping noise in the process. I was already bugged out and seeing things in the shadows, so by the time Michael Myers started stalking, I was coming down with a particularly serious case of the willies – aggravated by an outbreak of adult-onset heebie-jeebies. It was such an effective way to experience Halloween for the first time that I purposely put off watching it again for years in order to not sully the memory of having such an effective scare.

2. Glitter on a plane.

My logic was that if one were ever going to experience a monumentally crappy movie such as the ham-fisted Mariah Carey vehicle Glitter, than one should a) not pay for it, and b)see it in the most ridiculous setting ever. Apparently a bunch of people on my flight felt the same way because we watched the film (this was before the screens in the back of the headrests) and had a communal experience bathing in its bedazzled awfulness. Glitter is not quite a so-bad-it’s-good film (like, say, Showgirls), but when viewed on a terrible airplane monitor in pan-and-scan (the way it was meant to be seen!) by a group of weary/giddy travelers, it became something special. At first people were polite enough to not gigle too much, but after a few folks laughed out loud, it opened the floodgates and half the plane was cracking up, glancing at each other with did-you-just-see-that? looks on their faces. This wasn’t that long after 9/11, so perhaps it was cathartic to be able to laugh at a different sort of airborne tragedy.

3. Backdraft by firelight.

Although Ron Howard is a populist hack, Backdraft does have some stunning stunt work and fire special effects worth taking in. In one of the houses I grew up in, our living room T.V. was beside the fireplace, and on the night I decided to watch this script-by-numbers action-drama there was a fire crackling away. During one of the movie’s impressive inferno sequences, the real fire flared up, making the temperature spike while casting an ominous glow around the room. It added an unanticipated layer to the experience, making me feel like I was in the movie in some segments. Of course, if I was actually in the movie, I’d have yelled cut and tried to have the director fired.

4. Very Bad Things with a hangover.

After a particularly nasty night of drinking, I went to a matinee of this flick, having little idea what it was about. An underrated classic, Very Bad Things is the blackest of black comedy, a bombastic narrative example of things going from bad to worse. The hangover had the effect of amplifying the increasingly stomach-churning scenes of violence and self-destruction to the point where I felt that writer-director Peter Berg was physically manipulating me. Sounds like a terrible experience, but by the time it was over I felt an exhilarating buzz akin to stepping off a roller coaster. Hard to explain but satisfying and unforgettable.

5. Inside press screening.

Last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, I’d heard about this absolutely insane French film that was very well made, tense as hell and way, way over-the-top gory. I went to the press screening and sat at the top of the nearly full theatre. As one atrocity followed another, press types scrambled out, fully disgusted and/or nauseous. Even during the final fifteen minutes, viewers were still hitting the wall as the jaw-droppingly bloody violations to (and by) a pregnant woman just kept on mounting. By the end of the screening there was probably around a third of the crowd left. Although the film is something to behold (I even ended up giving it an encore performance last year for my monthly movie night), the spectacle of stuffy reviewers breaking for the exit was just as entertaining. It was then that I knew Inside (a.k.a. À l'intérieur) was somethin’ special indeed.

What was your favourite movie-watching experience?

-Dave Alexander

These Movie Stars Are For Throwing

How much of your day do spend thinking about ninjas? Probably not nearly enough, which, of course, is part of their power – to get you when you when you’re not thinking about ‘em. “Hey, I could really go for a Booster Juice right abou— ACK! Blow-dart…in my…neck!” THUD…

 

If you were a boy with growing up in the ‘80s with access to a video store, a Nintendo and G.I. Joe toys, however, chances are you spent too much time thinking about ninjas. Not only was there the VHS oeuvre of Chuck Norris to experience (ever enter… The Octagon?!?), there were all those other videos with amazing covers that beckoned – masterpieces of the black pajama such as Enter the Ninja, American Ninja and my favourite: Revenge of the Ninja (because that’s what a ninja does best, people). Of course, everyone who had Joe action figures knew that Snake Eyes was the best character, and that his nemesis (ironically dressed in white!), Storm Shadow, was the second best. And if you weren’t watching blow-darts fly on video or trying to get your action figures to hold those tiny little plastic swords, you were probably playing Double Dragon or Ninja Gaiden on your NES.

 

Of course, just as grunge killed glam, ninjas went out of fashion in the ‘90s. Although they live fondly in the memories of every kid who got in crap for making a throwing star in junior high shop class, they crept back in the shadows. Blame the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies, Steven Seagal’s hairpiece and one too many head injuries caused by a pair of flea market nunchukas for making ninjas uncool. By the time Chris Farley’s Beverly Hills Ninja rolled around in ‘97, the assassins in the dark footy pajamas were, well, a big, fat joke. The internet turned them, along with pirates, into a pretty awesome punch line.

 

But, like all things from the ‘80s, ninjas are at the beginning of a renaissance me thinks. I base this on a) the upcoming big budget G.I. Joe movie (currently slated for an Aug 7 release), which will, you can bet, heavily feature both Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow; and b) Mask of the Ninja, a serious 1980s-style made-for-TV ninja movie (out April 14^th). So far, a teaser for the Joe flick played during the Superbowl and that’s all we’ve seen, but I stealthily got my hands on a copy of MotN last week.

 

First off, in the tradition of many a great ninja movie, this one’s got an amazing cover. The black mask is actually a cardboard sleeve that slips off to reveal a bunch of sword-wielding ninjas mid-battle, including one riding a dirt bike (I don’t think that actually happens in the film, but how perfectly ‘80s is it?). Of course, like so many of those ninjas movies of years past, the cover is hard to live up to.

 

Starring a man whose career has become a direct-to-DVD dojo, Casper Van Dien, as a cop, it’s a classic ninja plot. When the head of a security company is murdered (you guessed it, by ninjas), Detective Jack Barrett (Van Dien) has to solve the case and protect the man’s daughter – from ninjas! Along the way he befriends a ninja, searches for a hidden key sought by an evil order of ninjas and fights all kinds of… ninjas, sometimes on motorbikes, sometimes in broad daylight, and in the best sequence, at the police station, where the ninjas murder literally scores of armed cops. (Of course, Van Dien fought giant bugs in Starship Troopers, so his character survives.)

 

The movie plays it totally straight, which is a shame because if it was a little more over-the-top it’d be a helluva lot more fun. It doesn’t have the charm and awesome ninja-y mythology and weaponry of the classic ninja movies, but as a Sunday afternoon timewaster, you could do worse.

 

Despite the fact that Global Warming is a serious detriment to anyone wearing black, full-body PJs, it is perhaps indeed time a new generation enters the ninja movie. HYAAAA!

-Dave Alexander