The Thing (1982)

My first experience with John Carpenter was Ghosts of Mars, which is pretty terrible.  When I left the theater after the movie, I remember wondering aloud why someone would want to put their name above the title of something so obviously bad.  In the intervening years, I have seen many other Carpenter movies, and now know that the man is capable of directing some truly great films and some truly unfortunate ones.  With that understanding and wisdom, I approached John Carpenter's The Thing for the first time.

It is winter in Antarctica, 1982.  Because you need to know what season it is to justify snow in Antarctica.  The American research station down there is taken by surprise when they hear gunfire and a helicopter approaching; it is a chopper from the Swedish research station, and they appear to be trying to shoot a dog.  The dog, being fairly smart, decides to run to the American camp for cover; the Swedes, who managed to miss the dog several times over several miles, despite having a sniper rifle, accidentally crash their helicopter.  Before the Americans can react, a surviving Swede leaves the wreckage of the chopper, tries to shoot the dog, and instead shoots an American in the leg.  That's enough for the Americans to put the Swede down.

Not only are the Swedes crap shots, but their winter clothing choices are very suspect.  Is it ever warm enough for bikinis in Sweden?

So...why were the Swedes trying to murder a dog?  Helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and another researcher, Copper (Richard Dysart) fly to the Swedish research center to find out.  What do they find?  Dead people and signs of attack.  They also find some evidence that the Swedes had found something buried within some very old ice, as well as a mostly burned and at least partially human corpse.  So...what does any of this have to do with a Thing?

Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew wants answers or royalty checks, Carpenter!

Well, it seems that the Swedes dug up a frozen alien that can assimilate any animal and then assume its form.  For instance, it can (more or less) eat/absorb a person and then walk around looking like that person.  So, if you know there's a Thing in your group, you don't know who to trust.  It's not limited to just people, though.  In fact, there will soon be proof that it can disguise itself as a dog...

The Thing is an adaptation of the famous science fiction story Who Goes There? by legendary sci-fi editor John W. Campbell.  It is also sometimes credited as a remake of sci-fi movie classic The Thing From Another World, but the two are pretty significantly different; let's just say they take their inspiration from the same source and adapt it to their needs. 

All right, let's get the obvious stupidness out the way early.  In a movie where you don't know who to trust, the smart thing to do is to stay together as much as possible.  This is a sci-fi movie with more than a little bit of horror thrown into the mix, so it's safe to say that the characters are not that smart.  To be fair, the alien enters their group before they have any knowledge of its abilities, and they do make some efforts to stay in groups, but there are several occasions when the characters go off on their own anyway.  That is, by far, the weakest part of this story, so you might as well know that now.  If you can't get past that, I understand.  However, if you are willing to look past that obvious bit of horror movie idiocy, I think you'll really like this movie.

The cast is all male, which shouldn't be important, but I think it is.  How many survival-type movies throw in an unnecessary romantic interest?  And, since this was made in 1982, there is no hint of a homosexual romance, either, so there's no chance for any whiskey-soaked winter nights with Kurt Russell, fellas.  That gender casting allows this film to focus on the story with no subplots, which is nice.  "But what about Adrienne Barbeau?"  Okay, fine, the old school DOS-wannabe computer in the film is voiced by her, but I don't think that should count.  This movie focuses on suspense, which is exactly what you want when the question is "Who can you trust?"

The acting isn't fantastic, but it is definitely solid for a plot-driven movie.  Kurt Russell is pretty cool as the level-headed lead, and he comes across as believable as someone willing to do whatever it takes to solve this Thing problem.  This was only his second important non-Disney movie role at the time, so seeing him be such a tough guy was, at the time, an impressive stretch for Russell.  Wilford Brimley, who I don't normally care for (unless he's being a curmudgeon), was pretty awesome as the doctor who realizes the whole you-can't-trust-anyone problem early in the film and freaks the hell out.  Plus, you get to see some one knock him the eff out, and that was awesome.

He gets laid out in this movie.  Take that, diabetes!

This was Keith David's first credited film role (he was an extra in the Francis Ford Coppola-directed spinoff Disco Godfather), and I liked him.  David is a pretty solid supporting actor, even if he is often in mediocre movies, but this was a pretty impressive debut.  There are some other recognizable actors in the movie, like Donald Moffat, David Clennon, T.K. Carter (from Good Morning, Miss Bliss fame), and Richard Drysart, but they are mostly just adequate supporting cast members.

I really liked John Carpenter's direction with this film.  I love that he keeps the story taut, I like that none of the actors are too melodramatic (a hard task, when just about every character freaks out in a movie), and I really liked that he was able to step back and let other people handle certain tasks in the film.  Carpenter is kind of a one man film force, often directing, writing, and scoring his films, so it was nice to see him make an enjoyable collaborative movie.  The score is done by Ennio Morricone, and while it's no The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, it's still pretty good.  More importantly, it's not synthesizer-heavy for a change, like so many Carpenter scores.  The script was written by Bill Lancaster, the guy who did The Bad News Bears.  While that may not sound like a good fit for this movie, I thought he did a perfectly satisfactory job.  More importantly, that division of labor allowed Carpenter to spend more time working with the special effects (most of which were handled by The Howling and Star Wars veteran Rob Bottin), which made this movie so noteworthy.

Yes, the special effects in this movie are definitely the main attraction.  Why?  For starters, the dog monster.

These special effects all happen on-camera, which makes them extra awesome to watch.  Are they gross and slimy?  Absolutely.  Are they twisted and weird?  Most definitely.  Do they look good by today's standards?  Let me put it to you this way: The Thing is as good of an argument as you're going to find for good old-fashioned special effects and make-up.  It's that impressive.

The other thing I like about the movie is that it approaches the problem with logic.  Well, aside from letting people wander off on their own, it does.  There isn't an extended period of time where the audience knows what the problem is and the characters keep walking into traps.  The Thing is identified early and treated like the threat it is.  For me, that's the most important part of this movie.  I hate watching potentially good films waste my time with stupid characters.  When things like this show up, the cast of The Thing mans up and gets to killing.

That no-nonsense approach, combined with the amazing special effects and otherwise respectable filmmaking makes The Thing better than perhaps it should be.  And if you really want to, you can look at the film as an allegory between the East and the West during the Cold War.  I don't particularly care to approach it like that, but the subtext is certainly there.  And the ending is as perfect of a guy-movie ending as you're going to find; just about any other director would have copped out a little bit at the end, but Carpenter created a pretty great conclusion that stayed true to the logic of the characters, and that deserves respect.

Dark Blue

Even if you haven't seen Dark Blue, believe me, you are already familiar with it.  This is a good cop/bad cop tale with an experienced cop/rookie cop dynamic to it.  If that sounds like a blend of Tango and Cash and Training Day, it should.  If that sounds like an unlikely recipe for awesomeness, that should, too.

The movie opens with Sergeant Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) pacing in a hotel room, seemingly coming to a decision, and leaving with a shotgun.  The movie flashes back to five days earlier; I find that especially informative as a viewer, because now I know that Sgt. Perry will decide...something...in just five short days.  The suspense is killing me!  What did he decide?!?  He decided to start the actual movie with a convenience store robbery; two thugs (Dash Mihok and rapper Kurupt) appear to be trying to steal the cash register, but in reality are looking for a secret safe.  In the process, these two thugs kill four people and wound one.  Meanwhile, Detective Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman) is across town, defending his use of deadly force to a police board; Sgt. Perry, Keough's partner, backs up his story and they leave with Keough being exonerated.  In and after the hearing, we meet two important characters.  The first is the Assistant Police chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames), who is very suspicious of the shooting and is connected to talks about cleaning up the police department.  The other is Jack Van Meter (the undeniably Irish Brendan Gleeson), Keough and Perry's superior.  In private, Van Meter cuts through the crap with his subordinates and we learn that Perry did the shooting that Keough is accused of; apparently, Keough didn't have the guts to shoot another human, so Perry did the dirty work for him.  It is more or less explicitly stated that Van Meter and Perry are the type of cops that will plant evidence to convict someone they believe is guilty, but only if they can save the taxpayers money by staging an "escape attempt" that turned fatal.  Van Meter is a dirty cop, and the convenience store shooting was ordered by him.  While Perry and Keough figure out who committed the murders, Van Meter flat out tells them to choose another pair of perpetrators to blame for the crime --- and make sure that they don't make it to trial.  Yikes.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where this story is going.  Perry stays loyal to Van Meter, but Keough is new and is confused and disillusioned with his superiors.  Eventually, that disillusionment leads to Keough to agree to help Arthur Holland in his quest to catch crooked cops.

While the story is fairly stock, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the acting.  While this isn't Kurt Russell's best work, it is always nice to see him play someone with an edge.  So much of the time, it feels like he is trying to coast on his Disney-era boyish goo looks and Overboard-era Supermullet, but he can play bad when he want to, and he does so with charm.  Here, he plays a cop that is clearly a bad guy, but at the same time, he still appears to be someone's fun drinking buddy.  Ving Rhames, sadly, is not given much to do here, but he delivers when he gets the chance.  I always like seeing Rhames in scenes that require him to stare down other characters.  I know I would look away from angry Ving, wouldn't you?  Brendan Gleeson was also pretty good here.  He usually plays characters that are much more virtuous, but I liked him as a complete bastard here.  Scott Speedman probably had the most difficult role in this movie, since it was the most emotionally diverse; unfortunately, his role required more than he could deliver.  Aside from possibly playing Scott Stapp in a Creed biopic, I have no use for Speedman as an actor.

The story was equally hit and miss.  Yes, the plot was fairly derivative, but it made a great choice by being set in the days before the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, with the film's climax and the acquittal of the LA police officers involved in the King beating occurring on the same day.  In retrospect, it's an obvious time and locational choice for a movie about police corruption, but it's the only film I've seen that takes advantage of the obvious story parallels.  The story manages to veer away from this tense situation by inserting not one, not two, but three subplots about the love lives of these policemen.  None of these stories is particularly interesting, despite a solid performance by Lolita Davidovich as Perry's wife.  I found both Michael Michele and Khandi Alexander to be underwhelming, at best, and annoying, at worst, as the women in Holland and Keough's lives.  On the other hand, the screenwriter David Ayer's dialogue is pretty good, as are the parts of the story that deal with crime and corruption.  The film takes a noticeable turn for the worse after Kurt Russell's character reaches a turning point; Russell does a good job with his character's progression, but the overall film suffers at his expense.  Director Ron Shelton doesn't try and do much of anything fancy in this movie, opting to let the LA riots do a lot of the work for him.  I am disappointed in Michael Michele and Scott Speedman's performances, though, because they could have really made this movie work.  Neither is a particularly accomplished actor, so Shelton needed to do a better job guiding their performances to mediocrity (or even better).

Honestly, I liked Kurt Russell, Ving Rhames and Brendan Gleeson.  If these guys wanted to make another cop movie, I'd totally be there to watch it.  I thought the framing device (opening the film with Russell in a hotel, which is just a snippet of a scenes toward the film's end) was clumsy and completely failed in its attempt to establish suspense.  The subplots only slowed this movie down, and at almost two hours, it could have used some trimming.  At its core, there is a good story about police and corruption buried here.  It would only take some editing and a fourth halfway decent lead actor to make that happen, neither of which Dark Blue had the benefit of.