New Jack City, or Ice T: The Movie is a great gangster film. I call it Ice T the movie because it might as well be. His persona is so cool, so high, so dominant, that I don't even remember anyone else in the film. Oh yeah, Wesley Snipes plays the bad guy, an gangsta wannabe who gets effortlessly owned at every turn. Didn't he know Ice invented gangsta? Chris Rock is also in the film, playing a crack head loser who accidentally helps Ice T and the white guy bust Nino. He's sort of like the Jar Jar Binks of this film.
Ice T is supposed to be playing a cop, but is really just playing Ice T, and not even trying to be anything else, and why not? It really carries a film that's otherwise filled with brooding killers and drug dealers. It turned the film into a comedy for me, because he wears the same wide-eyed glare throughout the whole film, and watching him shephard Pookie through his crack addiction with that almost supernatural, saintly and serious expression is comical. He also wears a variety of hats and pimp clothes, further removing any notion that he might possibly be a cop, even undercover. There's quite a good story to the film as I recall, with plenty of good scenes, and did I mention Ice T and his variety of hats?
I watched Skyfall a while back, and I thought it was crap. I hated the serious plot. I hated the bland BBC drama style cinematography. I hated how topical it was, all about hacking and leaks and national security. I couldn't bring myself to hate Daniel Craig because he was so bland, so grim and so dour that I didn't really notice him in the mix. I think he's the worst James Bond, and his films are the worst of the franchise, simply because for me James Bond is Roger Moore spouting one-liners, stuffing a midget into a suitcase, dangling from the golden gate bridge and being really suave and sophisticated. I just find the older films so much more fun, and I prefer older action films in general, I guess because before 9/11 there could be films about planes blowing up and huge buildings falling and it was awesome instead of tragic. There hasn't been a single ridiculous plane hijacking action thriller like Air Force One or Executive Decision since before 9/11 because America is apparently really sensitive about it, and now the whole world is sensitive about terrorism. Those terrorists sure know how to spoil fun, right? Or is it just as much to do with our attitude to it? I mean if we're all sharpening our knives and looking over our shoulders and brandishing pitchforks aren't we giving in to evil? Now I'm not saying the Pierce Brosnan Bond films were great (Die Another Day was incredibly stupid and bad), but they still retained some of the colour and style of the older films. Roger Moore is my favourite Bond precisely because he doesn't take the role seriously and sort of plays Bond as a smug English gentleman who can't lose and always has a line.
I haven't read any Bond books, but apparently Fleming wrote Bond as a hard-nosed, callous anti-hero. When Casino Royale came out, one of the selling points was that it was a new, rough and tough, gritty Bond, and they took every opportunity to show him as such. I think the classic opening was even changed to show Bond beating a guy to death in a bathroom. I didn't really like the film much. It wasn't the Bond I knew. Not only that, it wasn't the first time there was a hard-boiled Bond. Timothy Dalton married the suave, elegant Bond with the direct, hard-nosed Bond perfectly, although he only did two films. He was a brilliant Bond, and starred in probably my favourite Bond film next to A View to a Kill, License to Kill.
License to Kill was a violent, realistic Bond film done in style, John Glen's last Bond, a great action film that doesn't feature any of the camp of the previous films but is still colourful, funny and light hearted. It sees Bond go after a Mexican drug lord who kills his CIA buddy Felix. He is fired from the secret service by M for getting revenge on a corrupt CIA man (Everett McGill from Twin Peaks), by feeding him to a shark, and then goes after the drug lord played by Robert Davi who had Felix fed to a shark. There are so many great villains in this who die violent and horrible deaths, including Benicio Del Toro in one of his first roles. It's almost like a Peckinpah Bond film. There are great action sequences, from Bond wrestling with a guy for control of a plane full of millions of dollars in mid flight, to a a bar room brawl in a very 80s kind of bar, to a chase through the desert in explosive fuel trucks. Desmond Lewelynn actually helps Bond in his escapades, and there are two great Bond girls, a CIA agent and a Mexican who is tired of being spanked by an Iguana. Robert Davi makes a great and menacing villain. The actions scenes are so spectacular it's hard to believe they had budget constraints. Timothy Dalton is tough but also likeable and charismatic. For me it's the absolute best Bond film and my favourite of the series.
The Firm is a great Star Wars film. It stars Tom Cruise as Biggs Darklighter McDeere, a hot shot young moisture farmer fresh out of law school in Boston who dreams of someday making it big and joining struggle of good against evil by becoming a lawyer. His wish is granted by a tight-knit family law firm that appears perfect, giving him a new house, a new Mercedes and a salary. His wife is played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, who is pretty hot. They go to Memphis where his new job is and they settle in. Gene Hackman plays his wise old mentor, who drinks a lot. Soon he finds out that everyone in the company is a crook working for a crime family in Chicago, but he can't leave because they'll track him down and kill him, and they have his house and phones bugged. He consults his brother in jail, played by the smooth guy from LA Confidential, and he leads him to a smuggler played by Gary Busey who gives him passage to the inner core of the company, along with Holly Hunter. The FBI soon track him down and try to make him work for them, getting evidence to put the evil firm behind firm, rigid bars of metal. Both the FBI and the firm have tractor beams on him so he can't escape, so he uses the force and lets go, getting leverage over both sides so he can get his life back and blow the firm in the exhaust port. He succeeds and leaves to go back to Boston to teach more Jedi how to do it.
Tom Cruise using the force in "The Firm."
