No.222 : The Iceman (2012)

The Iceman at the IMDb

No, it’s not a spin off from ‘Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends’ instead it’s a bio-pic of mob hit man Richard Kuklinski, starring blog second favourite Michael, Mr Shannon.

The film opens with an aged and beardy Shannon being asked if he has any regrets. Before he can answer the film morphs back to 1964 with a younger Shannon on his first date with soon to be wife, Winona Ryder. She admires his tattoos and slow drawl, and even believes his story of being employed as a voice actor for Walt Disney. In fact he has a slightly seedier job copying porno films. He plays pool for cash in a bar and we get a quick taste of his temper when he slashes a man’s throat for giving him some lip.

Meanwhile at the porn lab he takes a slap himself when gang boss Ray Liotta wants to know why his order of porn isn’t ready yet. Ray sees a steely coolness about Shannon and offers him a job as a hit man. Shannon is keen to please and shows his loyalty, and psychopathic tendencies, by gunning down a random beggar. Things go well for a while and Shannon, Ryder and their two daughters move to the suburbs. His cover story is that he’s a currency trader, but it’s more whacks than Marks that he’s into.

Liotta has issues of his own when big boss Robert Davi wants him to kill his idiot henchman David Schwimmer who has stolen some drugs. This causes Liotta to lie low and this puts Shannon out of business. Despite being warned off, he decides to go freelance and hooks up with Captain America’s ‘Mr Whippy’ hit man who uses an ice cream van as cover.

The two soon pile up the bodies, keeping them frozen to disguise their crimes and the dates of death. After one loose talker too many, we are back at the start with Shannon reflecting on his worthless life and lack of regret.

I had high hopes for this film but it dropped off quickly and became a bit dull. It was confusing in places as the double crosses racked up and it was hard to care for a mass murderer whose only redeeming feature was supposedly his loyalty to his family. They touched briefly on his abusive childhood for his motivation but you need some excuse to pardon over 100 confirmed kills.

They did try to sugar coat the character of Richie, but reading the real life accounts it’s clear he was nothing but a murderous and wife beating psycho.

The cast was mostly good with thin material with the likes of James Franco, Chris Evans and Winona all underused. Chris Evans was hidden in a big wig and beard and his casting seemed largely pointless. Better than Franco though, who only got one short scene.

60s/70s New York was well realised with lots of classic cars and brown clothing on show. The film did one of my pets hates in that they had captions for dates of certain events at the start but they quickly disappeared, even when years had clearly passed in terms of fashion. Do it consistently or not at all!

Shannon was OK in the lead with his usual quiet menace. I didn’t really buy the character however and if he was seeking sympathy he got none from me. You could dress this up as a morality tale but ultimately it’s a bloke killing loads of people for money and getting caught. THE END.

THE Tag Line : Will Leave You Cold  - 56%

No. 132 : The Hand (1981)

The Hand @ the IMDb

 “What a pile of shit” Michael Caine declares midway through this schlock horror nightmare - whether he was talking about the production is unclear but such words would be a bit harsh. Just a bit though.

Caine plays Jon Lansdale a successful newspaper comic strip artist whose creation ‘Mandro’ pays for a nice life with an unfeasibly young, and new age wife. Lansdale is a bit of a dick from the off and enjoys yelling at his wife whilst she is driving him to the shops. This ends badly for him however as his drawing hand is lopped off by a passing truck as he tries to wave a car back. This scene was fantastically realised as the hand goes flying and Caine, covered in blood, starts screaming - possibly at his agent.

Time passes and soon the stumpefied Caine is getting fitted for a prosthetic that looks like it has been salvaged from a terminator. He suspects his wife is getting a bit too close to her yoga instructor and his agent is keen to let a young artist take over his strip. Caine meanwhile is having trouble adapting to his new single hand life and has flashbacks about the incident whilst pondering about the fate of his hand, that was never found.

With wife trouble escalating Caine heads off for a teaching job in California where he can talk to bored students and brood in his lonely log cabin. Things look up however when a young student shows up at his home and takes her clothes off - clearly a wavy hair / stump fetishist.

Despite trading the wife in for a younger and less annoying model Caine keeps spiraling further into madness and we wonder if the black and white flashbacks of the disembodied hand killing a tramp are for real or just his frenzied imagination at work.

With the wife ready to take their daughter away and his bit on the side having gone missing we have to guess if Caine is doing all the murders or is the disembodied hand really the culprit?

Despite my better judgement I enjoyed ‘The Hand’. It’s rubbish but it knows it’s rubbish and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Caine is manic throughout with his hairstyle getting ever madder as an insight to his mental state. The hand is well done and despite people clearly holding it on whilst it strangles them it’s a good laugh to see it scuttling about the place.

The film does stretch itself somewhat with a final wrong foot but as a study of madness and loss it is well done and it has a few unintended laughs peppered throughout, which adds to its appeal.

This was an early directorial outing for Oliver Stone before he got all political and for pure enjoyment purposes I’d put it up there with his best. Caine is of course working for the pay cheque but he gives it his all and is happy to go deep with the murder and sex scenes, despite the ridiculousness of each.

THE Tag Line : Give it a big hand! 68%

No.109 : The Raven (2012)

The Raven at the IMDb

John Cusack stars as Edgar Allen Poe in this film, which isn’t so much as a bio-pic as a sexed up fantasy depiction of the writer’s final days.

We open with the Victorian era Baltimore police breaking into a locked apartment. They know a killer is in the room as the door was just locked, but find no one apart from a couple of dead bodies. After scratching their heads a young detective finds a hidden switch on a nailed down window frame, which causes it to open and reveal the killer’s means of egress. The detective reveals his moment of inspiration came from a book he’d read, but who had written it?

Meanwhile Poe is having a hard time. His newspaper editor refuses to print his review, the barman denies him credit and the father of his new love chases him off with a gun. It could be worse though - he could be the bloke getting chopped in two by a fragging great pendulum.

With the bodies piling up the detective realises that someone is killing people in the manner of deaths from Poe’s books. He enlists the help of the manic author and the two manage to deduce the likely location of the next murder - the masked ball hosted by Poe’s lover’s father - good old Brendan Gleeson, on moderate shouty form.

Things don’t go as planned and the mysterious killer achieves his true aim - to kidnap Poe’s love in a bid to coax more works from him. What follows is a series of clues that lead to more deaths and dead ends. All the while Poe’s lover is buried underground and only Poe’s daily stories in the paper can keep her alive until the puzzle is solved.

I quite enjoyed this film despite it being really farfetched. It was almost like CSI Victorian Baltimore with a steam punk Poe in the lead. I always had Poe down as a quiet bookish man but how wrong I was - he chases villains on horseback while shooting his pistol gangsta style!

The film opened well and like I liked the central idea of a killer employing Poe’s macabre methods of death to gain the scribe’s attention. It did however go downhill once the kidnapping took place and towards the end it was like a ‘Comic Strip Presents’ version of his life with Hollywood demanding more heroics at every turn.

The deaths were pretty good although the majority were only seen after the fact. The unmasking of the villain didn’t make a lot of sense and you have to wonder where he got the means and indeed time to set up his elaborate murders.

I felt Cusack was miscast and too tall and dashing for the role. His usual mania was present and correct and although he was playing a drug addled drunk, I never got beyond the feeling he was hamming it up. Gleeson was a bit better, but his character’s 180 degree turn in his feelings for Poe was misjudged. The Detective character needed a bit more presence and again he went from contempt to hero worship in his feelings for Poe in 30 seconds.

The effects were largely OK although I don’t know why they needed a ‘follow the bullet’ shot that seemed incongruous with the rest of the film. That said it was directed by ‘V For Vendetta’ helmer James McTeigue which also explains the shot of the baddie jumping from the roof which was lifted wholesale, hat and all, from that much better film.

‘The Raven’ is a decent enough distraction but it fails to be the equal of its parts and the whole thing seems more than a bit silly long before the end.

THE Tag Line : You Won't Rue (Morgue) Watching It  - 65%

No.9 : The Zodiac (2005)

The Zodiac at the IMDb

Wait, wait , wait comes the cry - that David Fincher film staring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. was called ‘Zodiac’ not ‘The Zodiac’ what a con - I want my money back.

Well, dear reader, you are bang wrong. This 2005 movie is indeed ‘The Zodiac’ and stars the library detective out of ‘Seinfeld’ and one of the lesser Culkin children. Yes the cast list is that starry and it does have a TV movie sensibility but let’s have a look and see if it competes with its behemoth brother.

Both films follow the case of ‘The Zodiac’, a serial killer who plagued San Francisco in the late 1960’s and was never caught. His elusiveness creates a problem for the film makers as there is no resolution to the tale. This to me leaves the whole thing a bit unsatisfying and I did feel slightly cheated after three hours of the Fincher version to be basically told ‘that’s all folks’.

Obviously they can’t make up an ending or pin it on some dead guy but if there isn’t an ending you have to wonder if it’s a good subject for a film in the first place. Both films go for the same approach and that is to follow the detective angle. This is fair enough because all the killers actions and motivations can only be speculated on whereas the investigation is a matter of public record.

In the Fincher film they follow amateur cartoonist sleuth Jake Gyllenhaal whose character, although based on a real person, isn’t touched on in ‘The Zodiac’. This film follows the investigations of Inspector Matt Parish who is charged with solving the case by his library detective boss who presumably had some fine to collect. He follows a few angles and soon gets so obsessed that he undoes his collar and forgets to shave.

We also see the impact the case has on his family with his creepy son seemingly allowed free access to the evidence locker to trawl through the grizzly snaps on his own. There is also an ambitious reporter whom I think is meant to come across as sleazy but in fact seems to be doing a bang up job of keeping the public informed.

The killings themselves are seen from the Zodiac’s P.O.V. and are clumsily handled. The fear and terror he would have carried are totally missing and the murders seem like a Crimewatch re-enactment rather than a slaying in progress. As the years pass the film shows stock footage of the moon landings and race riots as the murders rack up. The Inspector pins all his hopes on one suspect and when that fizzles out it’s hard not to feel that you’ve wasted your time.

The lead actor Justin Chambers, whom I’d never heard of but is seemingly a big noise in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, is very poor especially in the scenes where his obsession threatens to derail his marriage. When we are meant to think he’s going overboard he just comes across like a boozy jerk.

The case is an interesting one and the unanswered questions and unsolved picto-grams make for interesting reading but for a film it just doesn’t work for me - in either version. In it’s favour ‘The Zodiac’ is only 90 minutes and they cover more or less the same plot points as the bloated big budget effort. It is let down by its cheap production however with 1960’s San Francisco never less convincingly evoked - I especially liked the establishing shot of the university sign with a big bit of tape stretched across the area where its web address presumably was.

As a TV movie it may spark some interest that’ll lead you to looking up the details of an interesting case but as an entertainment I’d give the whole Zodiac movie franchise a wide berth. Which is best? Probably ‘The Zodiac’ but only because we’re biased and it’s half the length of its rival.

THE Tag Line : Whodunit? Dunno 56%