Editorial
Front Page - Friday, March 12, 2010
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
When you go to sleep at night, how certain are you that when you wake up, the world will be the same as you left it? That there will be clean water coming out of your faucets, that the shelves of the grocery store will be full, that there will be plenty of gas at the filling station and that your job will be waiting for you? If you’re like me, you feel fairly certain that everything will be fine.
We had a rude awakening a couple of years ago, though, when our economy started hemorrhaging jobs. Now the idea that we could someday find ourselves without basic amenities doesn’t seem far-fetched. The upside to this depressing notion is that Hollywood is good at cashing in on our fears.
Case in point: “The Crazies.” The movie opens on a beautiful day in a small Iowa town, with everyone gathered together to watch a high school baseball game. As the sheriff scans the horizon, he can see for miles, nothing but golden wheat obscuring his view of a pale blue sky. Correction: Nothing but golden wheat and a farmer walking across the outfield with a shotgun.
That’s how fast things can change. One minute, you’re watching a slider slip past your third cousin for a strike, and the next, your neighbor is trying to shove two barrels down your throat so he can pull the trigger.
“The Crazies” is rather brilliant in the way it introduces this sudden, unexpected terror into the lives of its characters and in how it keeps the reason for the outbreak of violence a secret until the right moment. I also like how the film’s creators skipped the ritual of character development and jumped right into the action. After all, when your hero is the sheriff of a farming community, what else do you need to know about the guy? And I enjoyed how the action builds toward a gut punch of a climax.
There are several nicely done set pieces along the way, the most memorable being the one in which the sheriff has to escape a team of government officials and run across town to save his wife from a pitchfork-wielding zombie (for lack of a better word).
There’s no need for me to describe “The Crazies” in further detail. All you need to know is that it’s a smartly made thriller with good action and characters about whom you will care. There are a few loose ends, but if you like horror movies, it’s one of the best to come along in a while.
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There were only a few things about the ‘80s that I liked, and none of them were buddy cop films. The idea of watching two men with nothing in common argue and slap each other around while they chased the threads of a flimsy plot didn’t appeal to me.
Most of those movies were made out of the same overused pile of bricks and mortar: the straight-laced white cop, the hip black cop, the grumpy boss, the evil drug lord, the legions of bad guys who couldn’t hit an elephant with an Uzi from ten feet away and so on.
Sadly, every one of these clichés is on display in “Cop Out,” the new film from director Kevin Smith of “Clerks” fame. Judging from “Cop Out,” Smith should consider resurrecting his career in the convenience store business.
The wafer-thin story follows two NYPD cops as they try to recover a baseball card stolen by a memorabilia-obsessed gangster. With me so far? Don’t worry; that’s as far as I’ll ask you to go.
Starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, “Cop Out” contains one or two chuckles at most. Willis spends most of his time looking like he was planning on having a long, sad talk with his agent after wrapping up his work on the film, while Smith gave Morgan free reign to say and do pretty much whatever he wanted. What other explanation is there for the scene in which Morgan’s character describes, in stomach-churning detail, the epic nature of his time on the toilet after work?
“Cop Out” is billed as a homage to buddy cop flicks, but I don’t remember “48 Hours” being THAT bad, and the first two “Lethal Weapon” movies were actually pretty good. “Cop Out” is so lazy, though, it would have us believe New York’s most notorious drug lord would leave his house unguarded for several hours, allowing Willis and Morgan to break in through a window facing a busy street in broad daylight.
If you’re feeling nostalgic for the ‘80s, rent “Die Hard,” which also stars Willis and happens to be a great action movie. A word of warning, though: while watching, you might have an overwhelming desire to have a long, sad talk with Willis’ agent.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad @hamiltoncountyherald.com.
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