Movie Review: Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992)

Genre: Monster Horror Comedy  

Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui  

Starring: Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, Hilary Swank, Paul Reubens  

Running Time: 86 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, popular cheerleader Buffy (Kristy Swanson) is enjoying a typical teenager's life when she is approached by the mysterious Merrick (Donald Sutherland). He informs her that she is the Chosen One, the latest in a series of heroines with unique abilities to kill evil vampires threatening to conquer Earth. After a period of intense training Buffy starts tangling with vampires led by Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens), while at the same time falling in love with fellow student Pike (Luke Perry).

What Works Well: This anthem to female empowerment benefits from a wicked sense of humour and a steady stream of quotable zingers courtesy of a whip smart Joss Whedon script. The action is buoyed by a bloodless determination to not take anything seriously; acceptance that vampires can mix with teens in Los Angeles; and the natural conclusion that a cheerleader can become a cold-eyed slayer. Underneath it all is a message that girls are more than capable of rising above frivolities and confronting the real challenges of a big bad world. Kristy Swanson bring plenty of zest to the title role, Donald Sutherland anchors the one solemn character, and Paul Reubens finds immortality in an epic to-die-for scene.

What Does Not Work As Well: The limited budget is evident in the short running time, clunky set-pieces, and a lack of courage to venture into coherent universe-building or thematic complexities. One casualty is Rutger Hauer, who is wasted as a superficial villain-in-chief.

Key Quote:

Pike: You know Buffy, you're not like other girls. 

Buffy: Yes I am.

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Movie Review: Ladyhawke (1985)

Genre: Fantasy Romantic Drama  

Director: Richard Donner  

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick, Leo McKern, John Wood, Alfred Molina  

Running Time: 121 minutes  

Synopsis: In a medieval setting, pickpocket Phillipe "The Mouse" Gaston (Matthew Broderick) escapes the dungeon of the evil Bishop of Aquila (John Wood). With guards in hot pursuit, Phillipe is saved by mysterious swordsman Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer), who is often accompanied by a hawk. Phillipe learns that the Bishop's vindictive curse turns Etienne into a wolf from dusk to dawn, just as his lover Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) turns from hawk to woman, so they can never meet. Phillipe and the old monk Imperious (Leo McKern) join forces to help the lovers break the curse.

What Works Well: The unique vision of a doomed romance carries a serious but lively tone, and unfolds under brooding skies. Director Richard Donner and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro wrap an evil regime within beautiful countryside vistas and dominant citadels to create a grounded aesthetic pierced by rays of legend and magic. Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer are suitably morose, while the action scenes are rationally edited and arrive at regular intervals courtesy of the Bishop's dogged guards and mercenary pursuit agents. Alfred Molina makes an appearance as a weathered wolf hunter. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The inability of the romantic couple to interact as humans is a natural barrier to passion, leaving the less inspiring Matthew Broderick as the go-between. His conversations with God are fun and his strained relationship with the truth adds personality zing, but Phillipe Gaston is clearly a tertiary character thrust into a lead role. The synthesizer-dominated music soundtrack by Andrew Powell and Alan Parsons is an unfortunate anachronistic flop.

Key Quote:

Phillipe: Are you flesh, or are you spirit?

Isabeau: I am sorrow.

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Movie Review: Nighthawks (1981)

Genre: Terrorism Thriller

Director: Bruce Malmuth

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Nigel Davenport

Running Time: 99 minutes

Synopsis: After bombing a retail store in London, brutal terrorist-for-hire Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer) relocates to New York and targets a United Nations meeting. Undercover street-level detectives DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Fox (Billy Dee Williams) are recruited into an anti-terrorism unit being trained by Hartman (Nigel Davenport). Wulfgar continues his terror campaign with a Wall Street bombing, and is then joined by equally ruthless associate Shakka (Persis Khambatta). As the detectives give chase, the duel between Wulfgar and DaSilva becomes personal.

What Works Well: This is a slick, well-paced, expertly constructed, and uncompromising chase thriller, with Rutger Hauer excellent as cold-blooded villain Wulfgar, wreaking havoc on two continents. He is matched by a controlled Sylvester Stallone performance, acing the Serpico look as willing-to-learn protagonist DaSilva. Nigel Davenport adds oodles of class, and director Bruce Malmuth invests in classroom time to dissect a terrorist's psychology. Accompanied by a smooth Keith Emerson music score, the action scenes arrive at regular intervals and always with rational editing, culminating in a suspense-filled centrepiece involving a suspended gondola.

What Does Not Work As Well: The character of Fox deserved more background context, while Wulfgar demonstrates remarkable resilience and short-notice access to all his logistical needs. 

Conclusion: In this deadly chase, brains are as important as brawn.



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Movie Review: Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)

A biography contaminated by an attention-seeking juvenile imagination, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind undermines itself with frivolous distractions.

It's the early 1980s and Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) is despondent and holed-up in a New York hotel room, refusing to open the door for long-term girlfriend Penny (Drew Barrymore). He starts writing his memoirs, chronicling his often futile pursuit of women. By the late 1950s television is a burgeoning industry and Chuck conceives of The Dating Game, although the networks initially reject the idea. He finds domestic bliss with Penny but refuses to consider marriage.

Chuck's memoirs also contain a fictional narrative about his life as a CIA-trained Cold War assassin. Recruited by the mysterious Byrd (George Clooney), Barris is assigned targets in various European cities, and meets fellow agents Patricia (Julia Roberts) and Keeler (Rutger Hauer). When The Dating Game finally takes off, Chuck uses his chaperon cover to complete his CIA missions. An assignment goes wrong in West Berlin, but Chuck finds huge success with a string of tacky television shows.

Chuck Barris left an imprint on the world of cheap television catering to the lowest common denominator and helping create a foundation for the later abominations of reality TV. Despite a seemingly boorish and self-absorbed personality he may provide the basis for an interesting story, but it's not on display in Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.

First-time director George Clooney adapts Barris' autobiographical book but keeps all the hokum about a double-life as a secret agent. Big chunks of the film are therefore preoccupied with an alternative fictional reality, but unlike compelling dramas like A Beautiful Mind, Barris' fantasies dangle as unaddressed vestiges of a troubled psyche, cratering his real story. Meanwhile, his actual life is dealt with in a perfunctory manner, Clooney and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman unable to colour in the man behind the garish shows.

Clooney overcompensates with an infusion of style, the assassination scenes underlining fictionality with a combination of absurd humour and film noir shadings. Meanwhile Sam Rockwell throws himself into the role, fractured and frenzied as it is, in a performance that cries out for more narrative depth and less superficial glitz. Julia Roberts and Rutger Hauer add star power but are wasted in stock secret agent characterizations.

Barris may have had a mind dangerous to himself and to unsuspecting cultural victims of his television shows, but his so-called confessions are best forgotten.

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Movie Review: The Hitcher (1986)

A horror road movie, The Hitcher is a chilling thriller combining suspense with gore, shock, and high revving engines.

On the wide open highways through rural west Texas, Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is a young man delivering a car from Chicago to San Diego. During a stormy night of non-stop driving Jim battles fatigue and almost dozes off behind the wheel. He picks up a hitchhiker (Rutger Hauer) to help stay awake, and immediately regrets it. His new passenger calls himself John Ryder, and his creepiness soon escalates to threats as he darkly talks of death and brandishes a knife.

Jim kicks John out of the car and speeds away, but Ryder displays an uncanny ability to catch up by hitching rides with innocents who quickly become his murder victims. At various isolated eateries and gas stations Jim tries to call for help, but only diner worker Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) believes his story. With Ryder adept at killing then disappearing, the police suspect Jim is behind the mounting body count, and he has to flee and find a way to clear his name and escape the mysterious killer mercilessly stalking him.

Starting with Steven Spielberg's Duel and adding large doses of more explicit horror enabled by the genre's 1980s evolution, writer Eric Red conjures up an unsettling tale of evil most persistent. The inherent danger of picking up a stranger along the side of the road creates a sturdy foundation, and The Hitcher articulates every driver's dilemma: the generosity of offering help set against the minute risk of dismemberment.

Here the hitchhiker is barely defined. His name is generic, his background nonexistent. He could be anyone or no one, a man with a death wish who thrives on killing while desperately seeking to die. Ryder also works as a metaphorical outcome for perilous human behaviour. By pushing through the fatigue limit and risking falling asleep behind the wheel instead of taking a break, Jim is foolishly dancing with death. So here comes the grim reaper invited into the car, challenging Jim to vanquish death or have his life destroyed.

The Hitcher does take a couple of prolonged detours towards 1970s redneck police chase flicks, Jim and Nash escaping numerous inept cop cars, with the predictable outcome of spectacular wrecks and highway carnage. Director Robert Harmon handles the action scenes well, but for all the kinetic energy the film works much better as a slow burning tale of Ryder leaving a bloody trail to incriminate Jim and force him to understand what must be done.

Most of the gore is hinted at rather than shown, Jim's stomach churning reactions often sufficient to convey the horror unseen by the cameras. Two scenes do stand out for shock value. The first involves a misplaced digit and the second a couple of large trucks, and both earn their place as punctuation marks in the genre's history.

The film is a visual treat, Harmon creating a desolate aesthetic of empty highways, sun-baked desert and dry shrubbery under the immense Texas sky, the only hints of civilization arriving in the form of lonely diners dotting the landscape. And of course when help does arrive in the form of local police authorities, they misunderstand the threat and are no match for the unfolding butchery.

Building on his classic tragic role in Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer again nails the misunderstood monstrous presence, here adding a layer of merciless joy in doling out agony onto others. C. Thomas Howell is adequate, and Jennifer Jason Leigh marginally underutilized.

For Jim Halsey, survival is a matter of finding a path through rapidly dwindling choices while he still has some elemental control over his fate. Since death maintains ultimate dominion, The Hitcher is both cautionary and inevitable.

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The Movies Of Rutger Hauer

All movies starring Rutger Hauer and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Nighthawks (1981)

Blade Runner (1982)

The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Ladyhawke (1985)

The Hitcher (1986)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992)

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)

Sin City (2005)

Batman Begins (2005)

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Batman Begins (2005)

A superhero origins story, Batman Begins kicks off the trilogy with an engrossing and cerebral character-centred experience.

In Gotham City, a young Bruce Wayne has a traumatic encounter with bats, then witnesses his parents' murder during a mugging. Wracked by guilt, Wayne (Christian Bale) abandons his family's wealth and heads out into the world, living a life of squalor and crime. Dumped into a remote prison in Central Asia, he is rescued by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who oversees his combat training and inducts Wayne into the League of Shadows, an organization of elite warriors led by the mysterious Ra's al Ghul. Once Wayne learns the League's real agenda, he abandons them and returns to Gotham to fight crime on his own terms.

With help from long-time family butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), head of the Applied Science Division at Wayne Enterprises, Bruce gradually adopts the crime-fighting persona of Batman. He keeps his mission a secret from childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), now an idealistic Assistant District Attorney. Wayne embarks on a quest to both reclaim control of Wayne Enterprises and rid Gotham of corruption, starting with violent crime lord Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). He recruits honest police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and uncovers a vast psychotic drugs conspiracy involving psychologist Dr. Crane (Cillian Murphy), a villain known only as Scarecrow, and an unexpected powerful mastermind.

A big screen reboot of the Batman mythology, Batman Begins is an exquisite effort from director and co-writer Christopher Nolan. Committed to a surprisingly bright palette and an emphasis on people rather than action, Nolan creates a seminal example of what a smart comic superhero adaptation can achieve. Batman Begins first and foremost engages the mind and forgoes cheap thrills, and the origins story goes a long way towards grounding the film in the person of Bruce Wayne rather than the antics of a man in a costume.

The 140 minutes are surprisingly brisk, and despite some jumping around in time Nolan tidily breaks down the narrative into three parts. The backstory is the longest and best, rich in the details of a young Bruce experiencing the trauma of being trapped in a well, triggering a close encounter with bats, with a direct line from that experience to the death of his beloved parents. His formative years are then scattered on a life in search of any meaning in the company of other lost souls, until the intervention of Ducard and subsequent training as an elite warrior.

The second act focuses on Wayne defining his mission in life, buttressed by Alfred and supplied by Lucius on his way to assembling the raw material for what makes a Batman. Both Alfred and Lucius carry echoes of the past with strong links to the legacy of Bruce's father, and a large part of Batman Begins' appeal resides in the continued multi-generational commitment to do right. The finale is what can be expected, the true villains making themselves known and triggering an opera of mayhem with Batman improvising on the fly to save his beloved Gotham.

On the way to the transition Nolan has plenty of fun providing backstories to everything from the Batcave to the Batmobile, with detours to explain the origins of the suit, the mask and the emergency light signal. This is a true beginnings story, and nothing is left undefined.

Christian Bale slips into the role comfortably, displaying enough emotional depth to play up the emphasis on the individual rather than the role. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer (a slimy executive at Wayne Enterprises) and Cillian Murphy ensure that every key role is bolstered by a serious talent boost. Only Katie Holmes is overwhelmed, with a difficult, underwritten role and an unconvincing performance.

Batman Begins is a storytelling masterpiece, a fascinating crime fighter finally receiving his deserved high quality big screen production.

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Movie Review: The Osterman Weekend (1983)

A muddled thriller and the final film directed by Sam Peckinpah, The Osterman Weekend has a weak script and distracted execution.

CIA agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) loses his wife to an assassination. His subsequent investigation leads him to uncover a Soviet spy network known as Omega, consisting of three former college classmates: plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper), stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon) and television producer with radical tendencies Bernie Osterman (Craig T. Nelson). Fassett convinces CIA director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) that he can turn at least one of the spies into a double agent, with the help of controversial television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer), also a former classmate of the men.

Fassett and Danforth lean on Tanner and cajole him into helping out with the plot. On a weekend when the Omega three are converging at Tanner's secluded house with their wives, Fassett wires the place up with numerous cameras and microphones. From a command post in the woods Fassett then orchestrates mind games against the spies to try to unhinge them and get at least one of them to consider becoming a double. But all is not what it seems, and before the weekend is over Tanner's family will be endangered.

Other than a top notch cast in decent form, not much about The Osterman Weekend works. Based on a Robert Ludlum novel, the film was a B-production that gained unexpected, and as it turned out, undeserved cachet when Peckinpah signed on as director, despite his failing health. By then considered a washed-up force, Peckinpah accepted the opportunity to restart his career, which led to many star names signing on to the project.

They need not have bothered. The script is mostly stuck in the early 1970s (the book was published in 1972), when the theme of surveillance was fresh and scary and captured in a spate of films like The Conversation and The Anderson Tapes. Here Peckinpah takes advantage of one more decade of sexual liberation on the screen by injecting plenty of scenes of bedroom frolicking as captured by hidden cameras, but it's all a sideshow that serves to needlessly distract from an already convoluted premise. Merete Van Kamp (Fassett's wife), Meg Foster (Tanner's wife), Helen Shaver (Tremayne's frequently drugged wife) and Cassie Yates (Cardone's wife) take turns appearing in various stages of undress, and it's almost all gratuitous.

But at least the sex and nudity are understandable as exploitation. The spy versus spy script is almost beyond comprehension, a victim of a lazy adaptation by Alan Sharp, perhaps grappling with weak source material. The reasons behind the central assassination of Fassett's wife are glossed over. The actual crimes committed by the Omega threesome are never explained. What proves to be incredibly sloppy approval from Danforth for Fassett to proceed with his high-risk, well-resourced mission turns out to be an inexcusable gaping hole.

When the bullets start flying and the violence escalates, the film offers middle-aged white collar men who are suddenly experts at combat and exceptional survival skills. And Tanner's profession as a hard-hitting, in-your-face journalist and interviewer exposing military cover-ups awkwardly mixes in an altogether dissonant tone that simply does not fit with the rest of the film's theme.

There is enough talent in the cast to ensure that The Osterman Weekend is not a total loss, with John Hurt committed in the most complex role as the emotionally wounded agent Fassett. Rutger Hauer, in the midst of his career purple patch, Craig T. Nelson, despite a bit of a ridiculous moustache, and a stodgy Lancaster are all serviceable.

True to form the project ended with Peckinpah embroiled in a battle with the producers, who wrestled control of the final cut and re-edited the film to try and improve legibility. By the end of 1984 Peckinpah was dead, aged 59. The Osterman Weekend is mess of a final note to end a career on, but perhaps also a most appropriate one.

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Movie Review: Blade Runner (1982)

A triumph of visual style over narrative substance, Blade Runner is a magnificent sensory achievement. Director Ridley Scott creates a sombre future Los Angeles that is all too believable, and the stunning images enrich the otherwise standard story of a hunt for rogue replicants.

In 2019, the world's cities are polluted and overpopulated, and many humans live and work on other planets.  Human-like robots, known as replicants, are manufactured by the dominant Tyrell Corporation to help perform specific functions, but the powerful Nexus-6 models, built with a four-year limit on their life, are specifically prohibited from Earth due to violent tendencies. Retired Los Angeles police officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a "Blade Runner", a specialist in tracking down and "retiring" rogue replicants. With the help of the mysteriously dark Gaff (Edward James Olmos), police chief Harry Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) recalls Deckard to help in finding and eliminating four Nexus-6 models who have arrived illegally on Earth.

Led by Batty (Rutger Hauer), Leon (Brion James), Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) are searching for a way to overcome their four-year life limit. Deckard meets Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) the main designer of the replicants, and Batty's primary target. Tyrell's latest experiment is Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant unaware of her status and injected with fake memories to help her believe that she is human. As a romance develops between Deckard and Rachael, Deckard tracks down first Zhora then Leon, but Batty and Pris find their way to J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), a genetic designer who can lead them to Tyrell.

Based on the Philip K. Dick short story Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner is working with limited source material, effectively a glorified but quite linear detective chase. Scott successfully fuses together a depressingly bleak future with basic film noir characteristics to create a memorably artistic tableau, rendering the actual plot quite secondary.

Blade Runner's dazzling achievement is a rich extrapolation of the present into a credible but horrendous future recreation of a large Earth city. The Los Angeles of 2019 is an overpopulated urban nightmare bathed in constant darkness, never-ending rain, persistently rising steam from unidentified cavities, and washed with the sickly glow of incessant, oversized neon corporate advertising. Mammoth, super-dense buildings dominate the cityscape, the population is mostly Asian, every inch of sidewalk is congested, and the police presence is pervasive in hovering "spinner" vehicles, their yellow beams of light adding to the suffocating environment. Every external scene in Blade Runner re-emphasizes this grim future, Scott making use of shadows and light to create a hallucinatory, recalibrated but frighteningly believable reality.

The film plays with several themes related to the essence of being human. The replicants are struggling against their unalterable built-in four-year life span, expressing the hopelessness of an existence that is certain of a termination date. Humans of course suffer the same certainty of death, but without knowledge of the expiration time, and the screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples questions the fairness of human-like creations, designed to express human emotions, but sabotaged in their ability to hope and dream, that most essential of human attributes. There are also puzzles related to Deckard (is he human or a replicant), and, ultimately, what does the future hold when the line between natural and man-made humans is blurred beyond obvious recognition.

With the film's appearance dominating the plot and characters, the performances are understandably subdued. Harrison Ford, looking to expand from the Star Wars universe, has little to work with, Deckard hard boiled enough but without the edge or wit afforded to classic film noir investigators. Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty emerges as the most dominant character, physically and emotionally imposing, a replicant who understands his role and fallibilities all too well. Sean Young wears the same sad and puzzled expression throughout, a not-so-fatale femme, Young as unassured about her performance as Rachael is about her humanity. Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, Brion James, William Sanderson and Edward James Olmos are colourfully good fits for their bizarre surroundings, but in limited roles none can benefit from any character evolution.

Blade Runner set a new standard for what a serious science fiction film could look like, in a universe where reality is not so much newly constructed as imaginatively stretched from the more austere elements of the present. It's an enduring cinematic achievement, the routine story compensated for by a dazzling package.

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