Okay, here's the deal. I am the first to admit that everybody has needs in life. Whether they're imagined or true, everybody needs something. Therefore, students, it only stands to reason that there are certain things that everybody doesn't need. You know, stuff that we have way too much of now, but folks just keep heaping on us, and we're supposed to feel graced by the gesture.
I could live a happy man's life if I never get another piece of mail telling me that I "may already be a winner" of some ridiculous amount of cash, or a car, or whatever. I would giggle well into my 99th year if Kathie Lee Gifford never appears on a cathode ray tube again, 'cause I need another story about her rugrats and how cute they are like I need a corkscrew through the back of my skull. There's no plain need to give me a "very special" episode of any show on television, or a Sunday paper that weighs more than a medium-sized dog, or the extra 9/10 of a cent tacked onto my unleaded premium price (If you want to charge 95.9 cents for gas, go ahead and charge 96 cents, jerkwad....) I have no need for tabloids that predict the end of the world coming in six months, but sell 2-year subscriptions for $30. And I need another El Niño news story like I need another "the history of our family" letter masquerading as a Christmas card.
Oh, yeah, Hollywood Suits, I ain't forgot about you, either. Keep the "limited release" crap to yourself. If you want people to see it, release it to more than three cities. Quit cramming all the quality movies into the two weeks before New Year's Eve, hoping that The Academy will forget everything else that happened during the year and pay attention to your shiny plate. (If it's quality, it'll be remembered all year. Remember Silence of the Lambs and Forrest Gump?) And, feel free to stop fartin' out Die Hard movies at any point you wish.
And don't start with me on the "But, Doc, there've only been three Die Hard movies." Horse hockey. Passenger 57? Die Hard on a plane. Turbulence? Same thing. Executive Decision? Ditto. Speed 2? Die Hard on a boat. Under Siege? Same thing. Under Seige 2: Dark Country? Die Hard on a train. Daylight? Die Hard underground. I never thought I would say this, but, maybe, just maybe, Die Hardwas the best action movie of all time. Don't get all bent about that, 'cause I don't think so, either. But, why, then, is everyone trying to make the same movie? Lone hero, chasing down bad guy/guys in a confined area, must get bad guys before everyone is safe, get bad guy/guys, roll credits. Okay. Not the best...but certainly the most influential.
And, now, we've run out of modes of transportation for settings, and we're back to buildings. No Nakatomi Plaza, mind you, that would be too obvious. Let's make it a hospital. But why would a villain be in a hospital? Hmmmmmmm..... That would seem like a desperate measure to make, just for the sake of some box office money, wouldn't it? Well, folks, the Hollywood Suits are grinning like a possum eatin' a sweet potato, 'cause they are that desperate, and they hope you are that desperate too. The new movie Desperate Measures rivals only As Good As It Gets as the most aptly-named movie of the year. Sad, but true....
Get this. Andy Garcia is a San Francisco cop named Frank Connor. Frank has a little son, Matthew (Joseph Cross) who's dying of leukemia. Only a bone-marrow transplant is gonna save this kid. So, Connor hacks his way into the FBI computer system to find a donor for this operation. (I had no idea that the FBI kept bone-marrow records, but, hey, I ain't too old to learn.) Well Connor finds hisself a perfect match, only there might be a catch. Seems the match is in the bones of one Peter McCabe, Psychopath First Class, and guest of one of the crack penal institutions of our fair land.
So, Connor gets the warden to bend the rules like a Bavarian pretzel maker, and McCabe gets transferred to the hospital so he can donate his marrow to this kid, for some leniency down the road. Cool, no? Guess what? McCabe manages to escape (NO!), and Connor has to capture him while he's still in the hospital, and capture him alive. If Connor, or anyone else, kills McCabe, they are also killing Matthew. Pray tell.
I must confess, this plotline was a little intriguing to me when TriStar announced it forever ago. Then they kept postponing it and putting it further back in the shuffle, and I forgot about it. Finally they decided on a release date and stuck to it, and by doing so, proved a theory that was running through the gossip mill for a while. The postponing was because the movie was, shall we say, less than perfect, and they were trying (desperately?) to fix it. Director Barbet Schroeder has always been attracted to the theme of morality and the shades of grey that go with it. Look at the good guy-bad guy dilemma of Reversal of Fortune, or the parent-child bond of trust in Before and After. This "bargain-with-the-devil" idea behind this movie was a grabber.
But, allass, there's a big handful of nothing once you've grabbed. Breaking glass, fire tricks, random chase scenes and small-scale explosions (as compared to the Bruckheimer Theory, at least) are supposed to be substitutes for plot intricacies and tension builders. The whole "bring-'em-back-alive" idea is silly after a while, even to the characters within the movie. Bryan Cox's character, Cassidy, even says it plain out, "How many more people have to die so your son can live?" Unfortunately, most of us in Real Life have been asking this for at least fifteen minutes or so.
Garcia has always been a mystery to me. I may be one of the few folks in the world that didn't like him all that much in The Godfather Part III. I thought he did a fine impression of James Caan, circa 1970, but, other than that, zippo. I also may be one of the few in the world that liked his work as twin brothers in Steal Little, Steal Big. He was actually good in both roles, and the duality made the movie a neat little kick in the pocket. Here, though, he's back to the squinty eyes for Emotion A, clenched jaw for Emotion B, and milky tears for Emotion C. He's so stiff he's like a Hispanic Millard Fillmore from Disney's Hall of Presidents.
Keaton, on the other hand, is always a much better actor when he plays against type. He plays the dark side much more watchable than he does the light. He's fun to watch 'cause he gets the point that sociopathic behavior is not that far removed from comedy itself. It's all working against the norm, mocking the mainstream, and rebelling against handy authority. He managed to make some genuinely humorous moments in Clean and Sober and My Life, two of his best roles and two of the most serious movies he's ever made, and he was positively creepy in Pacific Heights. Here, he does well with what he's given, and he may be the lone saving grace of this dismal excuse for a movie.
All others in the cast are merely functional expository hingeheads. Marcia Gay Harden is a doctor who conveniently has a ridiculous case of fear of heights; Bryan Cox is his usual cigar store Indian-self; Joseph Cross, the little boy we're all supposed to be rooting for, is one of those obnoxious angelic kids, who can find the breath to spout philosophy and forgiveness, all the while "fading fast." Deliver me from another dying kid who can still drip out dialogue like, "I just want you to know it's OK, Dad. You did your best." Crap like this ranks right up there with the wounded soldier that can lie there bleeding long enough to make sure his buddies tell his girl Norma he loves her, or to go on without him. (Insert vomitous sound effects here.)
On the whole, let's just put it plain and simple. Desperate Measures is just that -- a desperate attempt to cash in on some action movie premise that should have petered out about five years ago. The whole idea should go to the Zucker Brothers, for a nice, tight parody, like Airplane! and Top Secret. Most of Hollywood has turned the idea into a parody, anyway. Alright, Hollywood, hear me roar. Go beat the dead horse somewhere else. We don't need another one.
Copyrighted image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
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