Yes, Jon Peters, apparently upset about the failed Superman Lives film, made sure to get plenty of mileage out of his giant spider concept. We see Spider Canyon, two mechanical spiders, a plan about designing a flying machine involving a wasp eating spider somehow, and plenty of spider motifs. Nearly the entire movie was built around the giant mechanical spider bot, despite it's clear and obvious weakness of "Why don't we just shoot at the open deck the driver is standing on?"
Seriously guys. It's right there.
Technically speaking, the film also "stars" Salma Hayek. Her role seems to consist entirely of being a trophy for the male characters to argue over for no purpose whatsoever. She is a football, to be passed between the men to reiterate just how horny they all are. That's not hyperbole. This movie is very obsessed with Loveless's(Branagh) sexual frustrations. More on that in a moment. When I say Hayek's Rita Escobar character does nothing, she really does nothing. She ends up in various stages of near rape, begs people to save her father, tags along to help, does the opposite of help one time, resulting in their capture, and in the end is reunited with her husband, because she is female, and the only thing a woman can offer a man is apparently the promise of sex.
So that segues nicely into the role of women in this film. All of Loveless's female minions are done up in burlesque outfits. Aside from Miss East, a Chinese woman because of course she is, the other women barely speak. Although they have similar ridiculous names describing their duties. Munitia holds the gun. Miss Lippenrieder reads lips. Seriously. Who wrote this shit?
I just checked. Predator 2 and Tremors. So not really the greatest writers around, but halfway through the movie I was imagining the writing crew was replaced by Elcor. Dialogue is stilted and repetitive. West(Smith) and Gordon(Kline) repeat their mission, the current situation, and what happened last over and over, just in case the audience fell asleep and missed a scene. When they aren't repeating themselves, Branagh is hamming it up with a ridiculous southern accent, constantly falling all over himself to remind everyone just how angry he is that he lost his penis but still has needs. Wait. His name is "love less". I just got that. Hilarious. Was "legless" too on the nose?
The general plot itself makes very little sense. There's a lot of talking about sex. West starts the movie off having sex while on a stakeout for some baffling reason. I guess so we can see his butt? It's good that they made some effort to appeal to a female audience. But just one. Tailing his target, he arrives at a brothel where Gordon is undercover as a prostitute. Dressing in drag will be a running theme in this film, so I hope you like Little Britain. After thoroughly fouling everything up, their target escapes and West heads to the White House to report in. Which should be several days away, but according to Jon Peters, the United States is the size of Rhode Island. Later in the movie they go from New Orleans to Utah in what seems like a few hours.
Here we find Gordon disguised as President Grant. This pointless joke allows them to use the same actor in two roles! It also allowed for a twist where Gordon takes Grant's place in the finale, that works for all of no time at all, as the obvious answer from Loveless is to grab both of them. If this is supposed to be a parody, I'm not sure what it's parodying.
The two mismatched federal agents are sent after Loveless, who has some nefarious plan in place. This is done by ham fisted dialogue that sounds like a satirical sketch, but again played completely straight. We cut to them on the train heading for New Orleans, where Gordon goes over all of the cool gadgets he has, along with the modifications to Smith's suit. Guess how often these are used? Let's see.
Belt Buckle gun? Never used, despite featuring in two separate framing scenes.
The shoe knife? Used in two jokes, never in a useful manner.
The pool table trap? Never used.
The billiard balls? I guess they get used twice.
The fake boob flamethrower? Oh wait. They never foreshadow that. The only other thing they actually use, and it comes out of nowhere.
The rubber rope that doesn't do much is shown at the party in New Orleans, where we come upon the most disturbing theme in the film. See, this film is rated PG-13. The MPAA is run by a bunch of old white guys. Back in 1999, that meant one thing: You do NOT portray actual racism in a PG-13 film. Much is made of the fact that West is a freed slave. Lip service is paid to the fact that people don't like this. One character starts to call him a nigger but is cut off. And yet, despite all this, Gordon's plan to distract everyone at the party involves getting West lynched.
Gordon, and the writers, make the assumption that this is going to involve hanging West. And allowing him to stand on the platform alone and put the noose on his neck himself, apparently. So the rubber rope will simply stretch and put him safely on the ground, where everyone will surely allow this black man who just upset them enough to murder him to go free. And here is where the film just gets offensive. Lynchings were awful and terrible things, that generally involved torture. They weren't just hangings where they accept one attempt and no more. West wouldn't have been calmly walked out and allowed to make a speech while standing on the platform unmolested. He would have been brutally murdered, probably after being tortured for a while. Gordon's "distraction" involves the death of his partner, and nobody thinks this is awful.
So, if you're able to continue watching the film, the duo plus Rita the sex football escape and head for Utah to stop whatever Loveless's plan is. In the meantime, Loveless murders an entire battalion of soldiers loyal to him to test out his tank, because technology is king. Problem is, tanks as a concept have existed for hundreds of years. The key problem aside from sinking into the ground was that they simply could not outmaneuver infantry. Loveless is able to slaughter the troops because they let the tank get close, thinking it was an ally. In any real battle, it would be immediately flanked without infantry to support it. The ones he just killed.
The tank eventually goes after our heroes, riding on the train tracks. I should point out that armored train cars also existed at this time. Wild shenanigans ensue in which Football, I mean Rita, uses the sleeping gas billiard ball to knock the good guys out because... I'm not real clear on that. There's a lot of "And then"'s in this movie, and very little "Therefore" or "But".
Let's ignore the magnet blades and collars. Really. I'm willing to accept a suspension of disbelief sometimes, and assume the writers were thinking of some sort of propulsion system, and somehow think you can change the polarity of magnets through hitting them. That's acceptable. What's not really acceptable is that this scene served no purpose at all. They still arrive on time, and the problem caused by Gordon not having his toolkit is solved by... Gordon having a second toolkit. That's not a problem writers. That's the equivalent of stopping the movie so you can scratch yourself for ten minutes.
Oh wait, so this is where the shoe knife comes into play. In a slapstick scene where it gets stuck to the collar. And never again. What was the point of foreshadowing it just for a useless time waster?
Anyways, they find Loveless's base nearby, and we see the giant mechanical spider that is really not that unstoppable. We hear Lovless's master plan and it makes no sense at all. Let's talk about that for a moment. Loveless plans to hold the president hostage until he surrenders and gives back the United States to Mexico, France, Spain, and England, plus he gets all the stuff left over. This plan makes no sense for many reasons. First, this is 1869. The United States is a hundred years old. The Civil War just ended. Do you know what would happen if they suddenly handed the US back over to other countries?
NOTHING. Because shockingly, the government consists of more than one person. All four of those countries would have to go to war with the current US army and state militias to gain control. And in Britain's case, they'd just have the same colonies and people that fought a revolution and won already. Also, the idea that the president would hand over control of the country if threatened is absurd. First, he doesn't have that kind of power. Second, he'd probably just point that out and tell Loveless to fuck off. Remember that time the president was assassinated and the whole country fell apart? No? That's because we've had presidents assassinated before, and we have a system in place for just such an occurrence. This is like someone saw that GI Joe episode where Cobra stole the Declaration of Independence and said "You're right! That would work!".
"But Loveless has a giant mechanical spider", you say. Well, first lets get physics out of the way. That spider is going to sink into the ground and fall over once it starts hitting wet areas, even if you give it a pass in the desert, where it still shouldn't be able to move. Like, say, the swamp that Washington DC is built on. Also, it has to get all the way from Utah to DC to pose a threat. It's not exactly stealthy. And its crew consists of about ten people, it seems. One special ops team can take it over on the first night. Assuming you don't just shoot the people standing in the open driver's area.
But of course West and Gordon manage to screw that up. West is shot and falls to the ground. But his life is saved by Gordon's chainmail shirt! I forgot about that foreshadowing. Problem is, I don't see how that helps falling 60 feet and bouncing. Yes, he bounces. His bones should be pulverized. Instead we get the Jesus pose that Peters loves so much before he comes back to life... Or wakes up I guess. From his 60 foot fall on to rock capable of supporting a giant mechanical spider.
Gordon heads for the Union Pacific railroad ceremony to save Grant. He does the disguise thing, and yet again we have a twist that accomplishes nothing, as Loveless just grabs both of them. West heads back to their now cleaned out train to retrieve weapons, where we see the belt buckle gun again, despite it not being used later. Instead, he dresses up in drag, and we are treated to a long scarf dance that really did not need to be that long. Really. Please stop Will Smith. This is painful and kind of a problem with black actors being emasculated.
Everyone gets out because West steals the keys to everyone's cuffs (Because why have cliches if you don't use them) and Loveless escapes. Also flamethrower boobies. The duo rush to stop Loveless before he makes it to Washington. They only have.... well they actually have a few weeks, really. I'm not sure what the hurry is. They could phone ahead and set up a trap. Instead, inspired by the spiderwasp they saw in the desert, they decide to invent a flying machine that they build in what seems to be a few minutes. It catches up to Loveless, where they proceed to take out his henchmen without any guns. Because despite being in his base, and despite the destination being weeks away, they couldn't take the time to grab any weapons.
Gordon effortlessly defeats the burlesque dancer minions, which is easy because only one has a weapon. Are guns banned in this universe? Is this some kind of gun control statement? West drops into the innards of the Spider, where he is attacked by guys with knives for hands. Because again, who needs guns? He beats them, choking one with a chain and throwing him off the side of the Spider. He is then faced with a man made of metal, and the most confusing scene in the movie occurs. We see West about to fall off the Spider, when the metal man jerks up and sparks. I've watched the scene over and over and I cannot tell what is supposed to be happening. Was this the belt buckle gun's big reveal? Because it's not in the scene.
Loveless and West proceed to fight, with Loveless growing mechanical spider legs, because why not? West starts to lose, and Gordon is forced to make a choice between his morals and shooting Loveless.... wait, why is that a choice? You're a federal agent. You're telling me you aren't going to shoot someone trying to take over the country? Hey, wait, is that the belt buckle gun? How did you get it? What was the purpose of the spring loaded belt buckle if you were just going to hold it normally?
God dammit Gordon. He shoots one of the legs and Loveless falls over. He and West fall out of the spider, where we get a painfully long scene of Loveless threatening to detach them from his legs, which are caught on a rope. Of course West just throws the switch, because the hanging guy from before is right there. West survives, Loveless dies, and this painfully stupid movie enters it's conclusion. Grant decides to take their train home, because you know there's only one train on the Union Pacific Railroad at all times, apparently. The duo take the giant mechanical spider home, which they now all acknowledge is really, really slow and a terrible way to get across the continent. I guess the US now has a giant mechanical spider tank? That's pretty sweet. Too bad machine guns and grenades are being invented as we speak.
No comments:
Post a Comment