Article: Rewatching The Hitcher

Roger Ebert hated The Hitcher. His zero-star review shows more disgust with it than a finger in French Fries. But Ebert's abhorrence is why I find The Hitcher effective. It stands within the transgressive space, which Ebert sometimes had little time for. His review shows frustration at Robert Harmon’s film for its murderous antagonist having no perspective. Believing there is something gross between the symbiotic relationship that quietly grows between Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell), the young motorist whose life takes a catastrophic turn when he decides to pick up John Ryder (Rutger Hauer), the titular Hitchhiker. But the unrepentant and transgressive identification with evil that the film has brings an unsettling allure to the viewer. Provoking the idea that evil is far more seductive than we may like to think, and we often do well not to succumb to it.

With certain films, I don’t feel that forces of nature need a motive. The desire for clear-cut intention can often be cloying. A quiet need for control amongst chaos. Something to explain away so we can all be safe when the book closes or the credits roll. I’ve always loved how The Hitcher eschews this. It keeps you off kilter. Installing more fear than a multitude of slashers released around the same time. The Hitcher’s screenplay was the brainchild of writer/director Eric Red, who had a successful run of notable screenplays such as Near Dark (1987), Cohen and Tate (1988) and Blue Steel (1990). His stories often have a knack for having people relate to the seductive nature of violence. The Hitcher has this idea in perhaps its purest form. Its story is distilled to that of a Grimm fairytale. In the Momentum Pictures Region 2 DVD release of the movie, the extras disc features Red talking about The Hitcher in a documentary entitled: How do these movies get made. Red labels Ryder as a “tough and resourceful” murderer who wishes to pass on to this impudent youth a “sense of survival”.

Red’s fascination with the allure of violence appears throughout The Hitcher in complicated guises. It’s easy to contemplate a lesser film with Rutger Hauer as a more simple-minded psychotic. Roaming around with the typical bloodlust, no different from many horror movies. However, Hauer’s Hitcher is constantly throwing strands of ambiguity, even empathy, to his character. Huger pushes scenes of this character into areas of discomfort. Not romanticised but almost bordering on something like understanding. He loads the character with a myriad of unexpected expressions which fracture our expectations of such a character. Whether it was Ryder’s impressed smirk when first thrown out of Jim’s car, the look of distain Ryder has for Jim when he threatens him with an empty gun, or the pained look of fear and resignation late on, when about to kidnap Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a trusting young waitress who believes Jim’s story of the disturbed traveller stalking him like the angel of death. Hauer’s performance is disturbing due to how Hauer quietly manages to make his maliciousness strangely enticing. From the film’s first moments, it’s clear that Jim doesn’t want to murder anyone. Yet this aggressive fight for survival with Ryder slowly unlocks something primal within him. Eerily suggesting that Jim isn’t too far removed from John. What's scary isn't just the grisly nihilism on display, it's the unsettling idea of how well Jim, and by extension us, start to identify with such torturous despair.

The Hitcher was a debut feature for Still photographer Robert Harmon, who quickly moved into T.V. not long after. Hard not to see this as unfortunate, as The Hitcher does a formidable job of showcasing Harmon as a genuine creator of atmosphere. Shot by Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer John Seale, The Hitcher is hideous in theme but beautiful in its visualisation. It’s early, tightly framed car shots are suitably claustrophobic. When the film allows the beautiful Californian vistas to enter the movie, there’s a feeling that you might be able to breathe again, if the film weren’t so relentless. It is as propulsive as it is repulsive. Shifting gears from existential horror to full-blown action western with little trouble. While its set pieces, even now, are still eye-widening. The jewel in the crown is still the grisly, often-noted sequence involving a character bound between a truck and its trailer hitch. The moment not only subverts the expected outcome but stages the set piece in an almost Hitchcockian manner. Harmon mines the tension so well that people believe they’ve seen more than they do.

The old complaint that 'we don't make them like we used to' is tiresome. Writers like me need to refrain from saying a phrase so tedious. But watching the remake of The Hitcher many moons ago, I sharply realised how much secret sauce that made the original idea exhilarating seemed to have disappeared. Movies like this work due to their weirdness. Their resistance to playing by the rules. The otherworldliness they bring. Studios sense money like the smell of blood to sharks. And when the reboots, remakes and sequels come calling, that strange essence is first to go. The Hitcher feels like lightning in a bottle. Is it a surprise that the glossy Platinum Dunes retread is little talked about? The 1986 Hitcher draws from so much. An unbridled nature is developed between Eric Red, Robert Harmon and Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher that other movies cannot compete with. But most movies aren't looking to become an urban legend cum mythical neo-western actioner, this movie is. In the eyes of Robert Harmon, The Hitcher isn't even a horror story.  He's not even interested in the genre. Despite this, Harmon has crafted one of the films that has helped define the genre for many. That’s some feat.

The Hitcher is available on various streaming platforms. 

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Article: Looking back at Better Luck Tomorrow

Better Luck Tomorrow is a little-seen gem that if not for its presence, the Fast and Furious franchise would look very different if it would even exist. The film is the sophomore feature of director Justin Lin who would go on to direct 5 of the Fast and Furious movies, including Fast Five, considered by many as the franchise's crown jewel. The moment the series sheds the skin of whatever it was for 4 entries and becomes the corona-swigging, family heist square dance we now know it to be. Without Better Luck Tomorrow we may not have got Dwayne Johnson lumbering after sports cars inexplicably speeding away with a huge metal safe.  Without Better Luck Tomorrow, we do not get Han, the much-loved rouge who makes his fast debut in the third film but makes his first appearance in this lesser-known criminal coming-of-age caper. If Justin Lin ever returns to the Fast Franchise, every fan and his dog will inform you about it. If Better Luck Tomorrow ever gets better streaming rights or a physical release, I’ll probably be letting those same fans see that they should try this.

The late 90s/Early 00s were a boon time for a certain kind of teen movie. Films were aimed at the adolescent market, because that’s where the money was, but with more bite and sexiness than what had passed before them. Granted Tom Cruise was cavorting in his undies and getting off with hookers in Risky Business (1983). In the 1980s the slasher movie had fun connecting sex and death, while John Hughes at this point had teen teenage angst all sewn up, defining much of a generation with his influential coming-of-age movies. African American coming-of-age drams gave things a shot in the arm in the early 90s, but it was the likes of Scream (1996) and American Pie (1999) which re-defined things for Hollywood. There was a smattering of post-modernism, irony and spiciness sprinkled on a batch of teen flicks. A place where 20-year-old actors would get cast as high school seniors in films with “grown-up” plots. The style was notable, and for those in Tinseltown, the money was good.

Of course, save for the odd sprinkling of casting, these teen movies were overwhelmingly white. Two decades on, the cinematic melting pot has got a little better, but the default to whiteness still feels like a thing to many. A glance at the teenage titles coming out in the early 00s is a strong reminder of such a perspective. It’s this which makes Better Luck Tomorrow feel so striking. Not only shifting the focus of the coming-of-age movie to a group of Asian Americans but complicating the image of the reserved, nerdy Asian American stereotype. Bringing forth a murky, morally ambiguous tale centred around a group of academically sound, yet bored High Schoolers who swap A grades for cheat sheets and scams. The clique soon delves into the world of petty theft and drugs before things take a murderous turn with the introduction of a rich yet smugly disaffected interloper.

The subversiveness in Justin Lin’s take on American suburbia draws from a background which felt remarkably conventional for the time. Much like Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguiz, Lin maxed out his credit cards and spent his life savings to fund the film. Cast and crew quit their jobs to go all in on the project, while MC Hammer became an unlikely benefactor towards the film. Funding $10,000 for the production after meeting Lin while the director worked at the Japanese American National Museum. However, Lin’s devotion to representation led to the director turning down funding from investors who wanted the film to be made with Macaulay Culkin in mind as the lead.

 

Such dedication to his vision not only made Lin and his cast stars in Hollywood, but it also created a small cultural milestone in Asian American representation in Western cinema. Lin's crime film is full of the visual tics that mark the look of coming-of-age/teen cinema at the time. The fact that MTV films have a hand in the production is obvious. The introductory quick cutting of still images, the time-lapses, the blown-out highlights and camera shots through fish tanks and on shopping trolleys are a clear hallmark. Yet the Asian representation gives everything an elemental shift. The gang don’t imitate much from Far Eastern Cinema, although the film alludes to John Woo’s 1986 Hong Kong feature. The cultural touchstones come from not only the whiter suburban features of the time but also the likes of Goodfellas (1990). This may be known unconsciously to the characters but it’s conscious to the audience. The film’s cold open is lifted directly from Scorsese’s mob epic.

The same can be said of the character of Virgil (Jason Tobin), who spends much of the film channelling the same combustible energy as Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito. Both characters meet similarly tragic circumstances only separated by ages, yet there’s an unexpected yet universal nature to the two counterparts. But Tobin’s Virgil stands out. He is the prototypical, primitive ego of the story. Much like Pesci’s volatile Tommy is so many ways often only separated by age, however, his race discombobulates things. His braindead horniness and overcompensating anger seem so “normal” if this were focused on the typical bored, white affluent teens usually seen in such a story. The fact that he’s Asian American raises an eyebrow and tilts the head. It’s the point. Assimilation is complete.

Roger Ebert, who championed the movie at Sundance, at the time noted that Better Luck Tomorrow is a “disturbing and skilfully told parable about growing up in today’s America.” And this writer fully agrees with him. Better Luck Tomorrow is fascinating in showing how much of a façade racial stereotypes are when so deeply entrenched within the more amoral aspects of American culture. Virgil and Tommy are the same. They’ve both been swallowed and chewed up by the dream of the United States only to succumb to the drama. The same goes for O-dog in Menace 2 Society (1993) which appears a decade before Justin Lin’s feature. So often stereotypes are used as handy scapegoats to inhibit ethnicity. They help placate people into the idea that groups of people can’t or won’t do certain things as it’s “not in their DNA”. Better Luck Tomorrow negates such thinking, having its casual amorality, born from capitalism and boredom, breed like the Covid virus. Many people won’t believe it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a thing.

Justin Lin is so assured with his storytelling, and it shows here. Better Luck Tomorrow swings from high school hi-jinks into murky darkness effortlessly. Moments of poignancy flip to humour or seriousness within scenes without the sense of whiplash that could have easily occurred. Midway through the movie, Ben, played affably by Perry Sheen, loses his virginity to a sex worker on a trip to Vegas. At first, the scene teeters from sleazy to pathos, before switching back to sordidness and dark humour and finishing with a tense violent confrontation. Never once does the pitch feel out of whack or jarring. Another moment features the four gang members driving home after an allocation with school colleagues at a house party. In one of the film's most arresting and heartbreaking scenes, the camera fixates on Virgil in a close-up. A high school senior torn between both agony and ecstasy upon him and his friends beating on some prejudiced white kids who have been hounding them for the first half of the movie. Making bigoted remarks insinuating what was mentioned in my earlier paragraph. Virgil smiles and grimaces through tears in a moment of retribution and realisation. Angry at the remarks, but joyful at not only getting the jump on the perpetrators but also being noticed. It’s a testament to Lin’s direction, as well as Tobin’s performance in how it doesn’t signpost to the viewer what to feel.  

It's amusing to watch Lin become one of the figureheads of the Fast and Furious saga. A franchise that started as a humble yet vapid Point Break rip-off, before becoming Universal Studio’s largest franchise, amassing 7 billion dollars worldwide. After the John Singleton helmed sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious, the reigns were handed over to Lin who helped maintain its board multicultural appeal. The films are still rather superficial and yet their multicultural representation is stronger than many other blockbuster franchises it contends with. This is an extension of what Lin does in Better Luck Tomorrow, which digs beneath the surface level of its straight-A, Asian students. Characters such as Daric Loo (Roger Fan) and Steve Choe (a pre-fame John Cho) are slippery in their appearance. Promoting themselves as accomplished students at first, before revealing their sociopathic and nihilistic tendencies. Han (Sung Kang) who is the canonical link to the Fast and Furious series, also reveals hidden depths, shifting from the prototypical muscle to something more sensitive. That Han becomes a well-loved member of the fast family by audiences only helps to cement this.

Roger Ebert’s passionate defence of the movie against hecklers who were vocal about the amorally of the Asian leads, touches on something that has slowly become more important in conversations on racial representation. Lin’s characters are complicated by the stereotypes expected of them and the amorality they have an allure for. Many characters of colour are never drawn well enough to be interesting. When they’re shown as sidekicks and villains, they can feel cheap and tacky. Better Luck Tomorrow is strong with building the interiors that make these characters alluring. Ben’s conflict is felt throughout the film. He desires what most high schoolers his age desire. He just never expected it to come from nefarious means. This of course is where the drama lies. Better Luck Tomorrow is a film I’ve enjoyed viewing multiple times because of how it tucks into this. It’s a film that allows its Asian characters to be complicated, even a little amoral, because it would be more offensive if it didn’t do anything like that.   

The film’s final moments end with a succulent piece of uncertainty involving the future of two of the film's characters. The two characters look at each other in a way that suggests they are both sure of something that has happened, but only one person knows. It’s a small yet ambiguous moment which feels closer to The Graduate (1967) than any of the teen fare that Better Luck Tomorrow was competing with. Despite seeing Better Luck Tomorrow more than once, this moment caught me unaware this time around. For all the progression found within the heavyweight franchise Lin become a cornerstone of, it’s doubtful that you would find anything as subtle as within Better Luck Tomorrow’s last couple of moments. 

Better Luck Tomorrow is currently streaming on Apple TV

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Article: Sleaze on the streets - A first viewing of Cop

 A grim neo-noir which is as blunt as its name. Cop (1988) is a morbid curiosity which only matches its bloody violence with absurdity. Roger Ebert’s review of the movie notes the film becomes an essay on the “Cop” genre; with its final shots slamming the book shut. Cop which certainly borrows from the likes of Dirty Harry (1971), certainly feels like a full stop on a certain type of cop drama. While of course, films like Cop have never stopped being made, its release coincides with the final Dirty Harry entry: The Dead Pool (1988). A film which had the cracks more than starting to show with the series. Cop also comes out the same year as Die Hard. Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel appeared soon after in 1989. Looking back at this moment, it feels like subconsciously there’s a crossing of the guards. It might be harder to get away with films like this in the future.  Once Silence of the Lambs and Seven appeared in the '90s, it felt like the book Ebert talks about had been rewritten. Cop now feels even more like a relic. That doesn’t stop it from being an entertaining watch though.

The cop of the film’s title is deliriously played by James Woods, who portrays the role with the intensity and odious sleaze that only an actor like him can provide. Woods plays Lloyd Hopkins, an unorthodox police detective who, like Dirty Harry, doesn’t play by the rules, but damn sure gets results. However, while Harry Callahan's dubious morals are built towards a black-and-white view of justice, Woods Hopkins is a grubbier prospect. He is happy to rely on graphic stories of the scumbags he arrests/murders to his eight-year-old daughter, while his wife pleads with him to go to therapy for his troubled mind. The issues Hopkins has become quite apparent when he takes on a murder case of a young woman. He believes the murder is one out of a string of similar killings which have been occurring for almost two decades. Hopkins is a good detective, but his evidence in this case is flimsy. Therefore, Hopkins executes all the tricks of his playbook. Take note early one, Hopkins blows away a criminal suspect in a shower of bullets before making the moves on the dead man’s date before the split blood has even cooled. Lloyd Hopkins is a particular kind of asshole.

This is what makes Cop a fascinating watch. Hopkins’ talent as a detective is formidable. Shown early in the film’s second scene in which he shows a greener cop the ropes of what to pick up on when a call comes through. Yet why he’s a Cop seems to be for the sport, with little care for upholding the law. He puts on a front that he’s part of the thin blue line stopping L.A. from being overrun. Hopkins displays his little bedtime story to his daughter as something to prepare her for the scum she may have to deal with in her life. All the while, Hopkins’ objectification of women is as dubious as the hypothetical crims he claims that he is preparing his daughter for. Another litmus test for his values is his behaviour when canvassing a feminist bookstore for leads. Here he meets the owner, Kathleen; a woman who may hold the key to finding the culprit of the case. Here Hopkins pulls out his inner James Bond, putting on all his sleazy moves to seduce her. This is also while being wholeheartedly dismissive of her as a survivor of sexual assault. Seeing her as merely another object that can hurtle him towards his goal.

Woods’ ability to sink into Hopkins’ grubby nature makes the endeavour immensely watchable. There's a swiftness in how he fornicates with a sex worker witness. A brazenness to the obnoxious tone in his exchanges with his boss. Hopkins is, for lack of a better word, a sleazy prick. However, the amount of concern he gives to this case, along with the fact his hunches keep him on track of the killer, only makes him more compelling. This is Bad Lieutenant (1992) before Bad Lieutenant. The way the film cannily keeps focus away from the killer helps suggest that you don’t need villains around when you have cops like this. In an updated reference, Hopkins is no better than the killer he’s chasing. Seeing people, particularly women, as disposable. He would be a reason to choose the bear.

Despite this, the film applies a certain level of absurdity to the proceedings. Leslie Ann Warren, a feminist book owner comes across as a fierce activist for women’s rights. However, it’s surprisingly troubling how easily Hopkins puts the moves on her; and how swiftly she indulges him. It’s a dynamic that would be more interesting if Hopkins needed to chip away at her defences. However, the weakness within this character and her belief in white knights and happy endings feel underwritten. Although it does bring forth a dark humour to the situation. Albeit one that would perhaps get the stink-eye from folk today. Also, while Hopkins's cop credentials are established well early on, it’s a narrative in which Hopkins rarely seems to struggle in his investigative work. Hopkins is allowed to have some fiery exchanges with his head of department when he’s deprived of resources for the case. However, his hunches are unwavering, a small piece of detective is uncanny, and the conflict within the film never gets as hostile as Hopkins himself.

However, the brutally abrupt finale to Cop is such a ballsy slap in the face, that it’s lingered in my mind for a few days since my viewing. It’s not that the last moments are shocking in any grotesque way. But the film’s ending is so sudden that it forced me to think about the film, as well as parts of the subgenre. It’s commendable that the film's unromanticised finish ensures a sense of nihilism all the way up until the end. Cop starts and ends with a Detective on the edge; who’s so enraptured by sleaze that he’s become addicted to it. He talks a good game about wanting to solve the case, but the disillusionment and emptiness can be seen from the start to the final three shotgun blasts. Copagander this ain’t.  

Cop can be found on various streaming platforms.

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Review: World War Z

Year: 2013

Director: Marc Forster

Screenplay: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale

Synopsis is here

God bless Roger Ebert. He may not have embraced modern video games as art but World War Z reminds me that while Ebert may not have got the appeal, he could see why gamers would value Left 4 Dead over films like this. The amount of engagement in Valve’s apocalyptic Zombie series is paramount to its fear, tension and enjoyment. Marc Forster’s troubled production is a nice enough distraction from the barrage of comic book releases. Yet the film, while chocked full of set pieces, is actually quite in-distinctive  There’s little in the film to make it stand out from the pack.

One of the reasons is despite its globetrotting scale, the social-political components which make the best zombie movies stand out, are mostly eliminated here. Purists have already mentioned how the film deviates from the Max Brooks’ hit book almost entirely. Yet this film version eschews so much of what makes the sub genre what it is, that the film itself is as toothless as one of the nations it references.

When humanity is in such peril, we expect the last remnants of the species to become the horror. One shouldn't expect the sobering mood of post-apocalyptic texts such as The Road (2009), but World War Z does little with its humans. Instead it concentrates on its strangely bloodless set pieces, which contain the visually impressive “river” of the reanimated.  While the argument of fast or slow Zombies still rings in the ears of genre fans, this snarling, gnashing swarm of the undead is quite striking.

World War Z does have an admirable sense of scale as it leaves the U.S to Israel, South Korea before ending up in good old Blighty, but it lacks the smaller, dramatic moments that make up all the films that WWZ borrows from. War of the World had its dysfunctional family to drive its narrative. 28 Days Later had a plague so diseased that even the rats themselves flowed through the empty streets of London trying to avoid the infected.

World War Z does give us a resourceful protagonist in the way of Gerry (Pitt) whose particular set of skills are a cheerful break from the large volume of brooding, yet impervious super heroes.  It is unfortunate that we must wait until the films much debated third act (which was reshot) before the film utilises the more typical tropes of the genre and gains a larger sense of risk. Many have argued about the films change of pace, however, I gladly welcomed the stronger sense of tension that came with the final third.

Despite its troubles, World War Z is nowhere near the disaster many had set it up to be. However, it does little to really leave its mark on the genre, be it blockbuster or B-movie.

R.I.P Roger Ebert: 1942-2013

Film lost a solider. Life lost a lover.