Before They Were Stars: Ruthless People

Hey there boys and girls!  Back again with another series of films to bash or bask in and one film truly come to mind in 1986.  With all the Brat Pack associated, touchy feely films of this time showing us teenage to mid 20’s angst, a movie by Airplanes’ Jim Abrahams stood out.  With an amazing collective cast, wild story arcs and in general bizarre looks into the varied human psyche; this would also be Bill Pullman’s first feature length movie.   So drop your tuckus in that chair, have some bon bons and maybe a refreshing New Coke.   This is Ruthless People.

Spoilers strike without provocation….

Director Jim Abrahams (Police Squad, Airplane, Top Secret, Hot Shots and Jane Austen’s Mafia) and writer Dale Launer (Blind Date, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Cousin Vinny and Love Potion No. 9) team up to modernize short story novelist’s O’ Henry’s “The Ransom of the Red Chief” into a warped, fun romantic comedy drama.  

The story is thus: Sam Stone (Danny DeVito of Taxi, Romancing the Stone, Head Office, Batman Returns, Tin Men, Other People’s Money and L.A. Confidential) is a ruthless slimeball clothing manufacturer whose business is afloat in a soft market of clothing design is hell bent to do in his heiress wife Barbara (Bette Midler of The Thorn, Divine Madness, Bette Midler: Art or Bust, Outrageous Fortune, Beaches, Stella, For The Boys, Get Shorty, The First Wives Club and What Women Want) and claim the wealth entitled to his wife as the grieving husband.   Sam schemes, plots and preps for the event all the while he relays his plans to his buxom mistress Carol (Anita Morris of Maria’s Lovers, A Masterpiece of Murder, Blue City, 18 Again! and Bloodhounds of Broadway) fooling around with her in her bed.   Unbeknownst to Sam, Carol and her bumbling, inept boyfriend Earl (Bill Pullman of Spaceballs, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Accidental Tourist, Going Under, Independence Day, Lake Placid) plan to tape the murder and blackmail Sam and then it is off to Haiti.   Tahiti Carol corrects.  Oh..I knew that.  

Fate plays as strange hand as neither party gets what they want when Sam gets a call from a unanimous person who claims to have kidnapped Barbara and for the sum of 500,000 US he can have her back.  No cops’ involvement, he has a deadline and if all demands are not met Sam will find his wife in the morgue.   

Joy and rapture fills Sam’s heart that soon his wife will be out of the picture and his hands will be clean of it all.  Barbara’s evil abductors are two middle class people struggling to make ends meet after Sam had screwed them on a deal prior.  Ken Kesseler (Judge Reinhold of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Zandalee, and Baby on Board) is a stereo salesman and his wife Sandy (Helen Slater of Supergirl, The Secret of My Succe$s, City Slickers, The Steal, and No Way Back) is a gifted designer whose creations Sam nicked given they had no proper license to them and is using them as his own.  These are the type of people that cannot cheat on their taxes, have to pay a parking ticket and simply could not conceive the notion of wrong doing and yet arrive at this slippery slope.

Here are a few quick notes on the film.  The style of cinematography is phenomenal as it is director Jan de Bont (Die Hard, Black Rain, Lethal Weapon 3,  The Hunt for Red October) for car chase scenes and fight scenes, the lighting is exquisite and double entendre is the name of the dialogue.  The humor can be a bit low brow but it is displayed well in the disgust of the cops, the endless griping of Sam and the easy corruption of innocence.  To this day I cannot say who had the best lines.  Between DeVito’s rants, Midler’s foul comments and Reinhold just being decent, it is a gem I would highly recommend.  Pullman is an absolute doofus/gigolo and his scenes are to die for.

Ridley Scott Week: Black Rain

So begins the Ridley Scott week.  Who is Ridley Scott you may ask?   From TV directing, movie director and production he has been in TV and Movie since 1967 from the ground up and into main feature length films.  So kick your shoes off and sit a spell.  This is Black Rain.

Spoilers are everywhere!!!

Diving into a thriller starring Michael Douglas (The Chyna Syndrome, Running, Romancing the Stone, Falling Down, Basic Instinct, The Game and Wonder Boys) as Nick Conklin, a hardnosed, rough and tumble cop that breaks the rules to get the job done.  He and his partner Charlie Vincent (Andy Garcia of The Untouchables, The Godfather: Part III, When a Man Loves a Woman, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Desperate Measures and Ocean’s Eleven) are under investigation by Internal Affairs based on theft charges occurring in their department when they witness a high ranking Yakuza get blown away by Sato (Yusaku Matsuda of The Detective Story, Home Sweet Home, And Then and The Rage of Love) and Conklin busts him. 

This little feather under his cap allows Nick and Charlie to travel to Japan to extradite to their authorities only to be jumped by Sato’s men and freeing their leader.  Given the less than stellar standing on handling of prisoner transfer, the Japanese police department allows Conklin and Vincent to stay in Japan and assist finding Sato but they are not allowed to carry their sidearms and they get a chaperone with Masahiro (Ken Takakura of The Yellow Handkerchief, Never Give Up, Station, Antarctica and Yasha) a by the book, dots every I and crosses every T cop and the animosity ensues.  Charlie has to be a buffer between Conklin and Masahiro to calm the waters. 

Delving into the underground our heroes find out that Sato should end up taking over the main Yakuza families due to flooding the market with counterfeit his own money.  The main appeal to this film is the clash between cultures from anything of on the fallout of WWII to how Masahiro and Conklin view each others’ level perceived decadence.  Honor of course has a great precedence in the movie representing Japanese culture and the title itself is described survivors in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .   The film is clearly Scott due to lots of smoke filled rooms, men roaming around in trenchcoats, scenes feeling very claustrophobic streetscapes, lots of steam rising from the streets for reason and of course neon lights.  

The karaoke scene with Mas and Charlie is actually amusing and apt and didn’t feel inappropriate.  This film got a lax standing on from the audience, there was not a lot of love for this movie and I felt it got past over.  Far too many sub-characters and incoherent subplots like the nightclub owner Joyce (Kate Capshaw of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, SpaceCamp and Just Cause) as the love interest of Douglas’s Conklin.  I personally do not view this as Scott’s best work but I truly believe this is worthy to but put up with the likes of 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, The Hidden with a dash of The Lost Boy Scout.   This is a worthwhile film, folks.  Give it the once over.