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.

State of Grace

“You ever see a dog explode?”  That’s one of the first lines of dialogue in State of Grace.  I was kind of hoping that it would be an indicator of how the movie would progress --- weird, morbid dialogue is usually pretty fun, right? ---  but doesn’t really come up again.  Instead, this film turns out to be a story about deception and loyalty.  Eh, I guess that's okay, too.

Terry Noonan (Sean Penn) hasn’t been in Hell’s Kitchen for years when he finally shows up in a bar and surprises his old best friend, Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman).  Jackie is a soldier in the Kitchen’s Irish mob; he’s not too bright, but he is funny, forever drunk, and very dangerous.  And he’s loyal to a fault.  Jackie welcomes Terry home with no reservations, and pretty soon he talks his brother, Frankie Flannery (Ed Harris), the head of their gang, into letting Terry work for them.  Being back in the Kitchen throws Terry into his old rut of trouble-making and drinking; more importantly, though, it reignites his childhood romance with Jackie’s sister, Kathleen (Robin Wright), who wants nothing to do with her brothers’ scene.  While Terry and Jackie are doing strong-arm work on the streets, Frankie is busy trying to negotiate a deal that would ally his gang with the big boys, the New York mafia.  Little does Frankie realize that his newest hire, Terry, is actually an undercover cop intent on bringing him down.

State of Grace is, for all intents and purposes, a showcase for the three main actors.  Sean Penn loves to play characters that are wracked with guilt, and Terry Noonan’s duplicitous role is right up his alley.  Penn’s performance is about what you might expect from him; he is good, but likes to overact in scenes where his character is sad or feels guilty.  Ed Harris does a much better job, internalizing most of his character’s conflicts.  I wish he was a more charismatic leader, but I’m not going to fault his performance on what the screenplay demanded.  The real star here, though, is Gary Oldman.  Nobody plays “dangerous” like Gary Oldman; his character just oozes sweat, grease, whiskey and blood.  In the hands of a less capable actor, Jackie Flannery might have come off as a gunman with a dark sense of humor (which is still pretty cool), but here is charismatic and magnetic.  Oldman makes Jackie into the center of every scene, whether by being playful, scary, or just drunk.  This certainly isn’t Oldman at his subtlest, but he's an actor whose most memorable performances are often the most over-the-top.

Is he about to punch you, or order some whiskey?  I'll give even odds.

Being a crime drama, there are a lot of characters that pop up, some with more substantial roles than others.  Robin Wright was decent as the conflicted romantic lead, but neither her acting nor her character were anything special.  John Turturro was better as Terry’s unsympathetic police contact, but this is definitely not a Coen Brothers-style supporting role; he plays his part pretty straight.  R.D. Call, an actor that I was unfamiliar with, did a very good job as Frankie’s quiet but businesslike right hand man.  A surprisingly skinny John C. Reilly shows up as a luckless gambler, and he was pretty good.  After the past five or six years of mostly comedic roles, it can be easy to forget that Reilly was once one of the best dramatic supporting actors in the business.  Burgess Meredith also had a bit part, although it wasn’t exactly a scene-stealer.

Ennio Morricone composed the score to the film, but it was far from his best work.  Unlike his stellar work with Sergio Leone in the Man With No Name trilogy, this score was very much in the background of the picture.  When I saw Morricone’s name in the credits, I hoped for more, but this was just your stereotypical, boring score.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Phil Joanou’s direction, but it was decent.  I didn’t like the choice he made to keep Terry’s undercover status a secret for so long (almost 50 minutes!), when it was pretty obvious from the get-go.  Obviously, Joanou must have a decent touch with the actors, because he got some pretty strong performances.  I just wasn’t terribly impressed with the way the story was told.

Unfortunately, the story was the weakest part of this film, and it needed all the help it could get.  The last act of the script is just plain dumb, testosterone-fueled action, completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.  I don’t think Kathleen’s character added much of anything to the overall story, and I would have preferred Terry’s friendship with Jackie be the focus.  Splitting Terry’s devotion between the two characters made his inevitable betrayal less interesting, because there was always the slim chance that Kathleen might forgive him for arresting her brothers.  Oh, and the whole waiting-an-hour-to-reveal-Terry-is-a-cop thing?  Completely unnecessary.  It was implied in the very first scene and was beyond obvious.  Really, the only surprises this movie has are what Frankie is willing to do to clinch his deal with the mafia.  Unfortunately, the focus of the story is on Terry.

State of Grace isn’t a bad movie, but it definitely underachieves.  With the talented actors here, most directors would be able to make a classic.  Instead, what we have is a less complicated version of The Departed.  Gary Oldman’s performance, though, is certainly worth watching.  It’s just too bad it was spent on an otherwise mediocre movie.