it has been a fair while since i have done one of these forgotten cinema thing. a few years, look you see. but, we are here now. and, as many (perhaps all) of you will have ascertained, the film at the very heart of this post is one called gunmen.
there is a case to suggest that gunmen is not quite so much forgotten cinema as it is a film that never really got a fair or decent release. why this is so, i do not know. maybe it did, but for some reason didn't find a suitable audience at the time. should that be so, that's a shame, as it really is quite the gem of a film.
my own first encounter with this film was not really a conventional exhibition of it, as such. a very dear friend, sylvia, had a brother what got a pirate video of it. as the film features one denis leary, who back in the early 90s (and today) i was a staunch admirer of, she felt it was quite important that i borrowed the tape and watched it as soon as possible. which i did.
some 27 (or maybe just 26) years later i happened to stumble upon the one and only dvd of it which i had ever found for sale. as provenance of my stuff appears to be a big thing for many of you, it was bought as part of a "3 for R99" deal in some shop in south africa. ostensibly it cost me R33, then, which at time of writing translates to £1.51 in real (as in british pound sterling) money. or $1.88 in american money. for european readers in certain zones €1.68 is the value you seek, and 202.46 for those of you what do the japanese yen thing. let us move on, though, as up to now i would seem to have spoken more of exchange rates rather than this film.
but, that said, i suspect the producer of my copy of the dvd simply used a variation of that pirate video what i had to make the disc. every now and then as the disc plays there are those telltale sort of white line "static clicks" on the image, associated with a dirty head or damaged vhs.
plot, to get back to the film? well, here goes. someone has stolen $400,000,000 (presumably in the american version of the dollar currency) off of a quite bad criminal type (not sure but probably some kind of drug dealer). they have done gone hidden it on a boat, in south america. whereas the authorities (here embodied by mario van peebles) know the name, they do not know the location of it. which is problematic, for if we are honest south america is pretty big, and surrounded by water. as it happens, the brother of him what stole the money (portrayed by christopher lambert, or him out of highlander) knows the port where it can be found.
with each holding a piece to a tricky two part puzzle, then, the copper and the scoundrel form an uneasy alliance, lacking trust and characterised mostly by double crossing and shooting each other. making things somewhat more tricky is the fact that the ipso facto legitimate owner of all that money, the mr big of the criminal world (patrick stewart out of space travel kids and mutant kids or whatever it was those films and tv things were called) would rather like it back. so he sends his evil, wicked and rather funny henchman (the excellent denis leary) off to get it, with extreme prejudice.
if the plot sounds a little contrived, tired, cliched and "seen it all before" but for a little bit of variation, well, it probably is, then. so are the overwhelming majority of films made, be it in this specific "action buddy thriller" genre or in the wider realm of cinema. making a success of stuff which has been done before relies on a decent, engaging execution of it all. as far as i am concerned, and hence me writing this, gunmen does so really rather well.
you know what, i have uploaded far, far too many pictures here for what i have to say on the film. basically the rest of this will be a lot of drivel and what have you, so know for now that it really is a decent film and it is worth hunting down a copy of. for the rest of this, then, to be safe, please take note of me putting a *** POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING *** sign up.
let me start off with what kind of drew me to the film, then. actually, no, the reason why a good friend passed on a copy of it and suggested (or rather insisted) that i watch it. the early 90s (and 93 could be considered early 90s) saw a (very wise) attempt to make denis leary a "thing", which is to say bigger than just an extremely good stand up comedian. with this in mind he was cast in several films. it cannot be denied that of these demolition man was the finest, and best played to the strengths of his persona, but this one comes close to doing so.
but, you know, this one comes close. the general anti-hero, shock tactic nature of his stand up comedy made him something of a natural, i suppose, to cast as the affable, get away with evil bad guy. it works very well indeed in this cavalier, gung ho, foul mouthed and violent film. the same can be true of the other film in which he played a bad guy released in 1993. it is likely that the other such film, the very good judgement night, was also not seen by all that big an audience.
whereas i really, really like denis leary, at no stage have i ever felt obliged or compelled to retain or otherwise seek out a copy of every film what he has been in. this would be because he did a lot of rubbish. but, as you have no doubt worked out already, gunmen and indeed demolition man are two that i keep and treasure. and now that i have thought about it, let me have a look for judgement night too, as that was class.
since the subject of the bad guys (and there is a particularly vicious bad lady, too) is here, patrick stewart as the head honcho, then. by this stage it is, of course, true that patrick stewart had that iconic cult status what any actor gets if they play a sustained and decent part in any of the big budget star trek (there that was what it was called) series. for what reason he took on the quite minor and not particularly pivotal role in this, i know not. money, perhaps. it very much was a "thing" for american films to have a prominent english actor play the villain in action films at the time. well, anyway, much of the seven or eight (ten at most) minutes he is in the film feature him sat in a chair, watching people get buried alive. not his finest hour, but i have not seen enough of what he has made to comment if it is his worst.
on, then, to the "heroes" of the film, which would be christopher lambert and mario van peebles. two actors that i guess one could say i liked, if not to any particular great extent. off the top of my head, christopher lambert was boss in highlander, if somewhat overshadowed by clancy brown and sir sean connery. not sure if it was before or after this film, but i always thought that posse which mario van peebles was in was class. pretty sure he was in heartbreak ridge, too, which was also smart.
any sort of "action buddy thriller" film needs a smart level of "chemistry" between the buddy element to work. there must be a plausible "bromance" thing for it to work, for the audiences to be interested enough to watch. it is sort of (kind of) so that this is in place in gunmen. the dynamics of the plot, or film or story or whatever, are such that they are usually more apart than they are together as the action all unfolds. which is fine, as they are interesting enough as separate characters. but yes, it all works as it should.
but what of all the essential, requisite aspects, features, commas, components and what have you of such an action film? does gunmen have them all? oh, yes, in abundance. for the action bits, there is plenty of running, jumping, shooting and hanging off of (or out of) helicopters and that, with the latter not always by choice. there is also some lovely nudies, and an entirely needless, unnecessary and reasonably explicit that sort of thing (sex) scene. it is as foul mouthed a film as it is violent, which is a lot, and also entertainingly funny. or amusing.
in answer to your question (and remember the spoiler warning), if we assume that yes, of course, the ostensible "good guys" win, is it so that the baddies have an interesting demise? well, yes, indeed they do, or for sure. whilst patrick stewart has a "reap what you sow" ending, it is left to denis leary to have a quite lovely "break the fourth wall" departure.
the question posed by this is how, or why, did the film "fail", and why does it remain in a failed state. from what i can work out off of information available on the web, it was made cheap (south of $10 million budget, which in 1993 would not have even got you 25% of schwarzenegger or stallone to be in your film), yet only recuperated some 50% of that cost.
my basic understanding continues to the extent that the film did not have a general, or widescale, cinematic (theatrical) release. in a lot of places it was "DTV" (direct to video). maybe at some stage it did make the money back, as this film is totes one of them class word of mouth spreads that it is worth the rental fee type. or it could be that, like was the case for me, the only reasonable distribution of the film came via the video pirates, and that distribution model does not usually see the studio who made the film see too much return on investment.
yes, as has been written here, tracking down a copy of gunmen is something that i would consider to be worth your time. assuming you are an adult what likes watching action films. from what i can work out, it is available in long deleted, tres expensive dvds, reasonably priced second or third hand vhs copies and that is not. i wouldn't say i did too much extensive research, but from what i can tell it is not on any of them "streaming" or digital services, at least at time of writing and as far as those available in the uk goes. undoubtedly though them pirate types have put it somewhere on the internet, for those eager to see it but unable to locate it.
should for some reason you wish to have a read of other editions (or episodes) of what i, if not now then certainly at the time, considered to be forgotten cinema, then here you go -
nighthawks
the party animal
who finds a friend finds a treasure
king frat
moving on then, would be to say that this is all at an end. well, this post is. my thanks for reading, nice one if you are familiar with the film too, and good luck to all those who feel interested enough to go and find it. hopefully you have some success!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment