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LOCAL Review :: Media

Another set of radical reviews by CIMC film critic extraordinaire JJ

Films reviewed: The Transporter 2, Underclassman
Documentary reviewed: Mad Cowboy: The Documentary

Mad Cowboy: The Documentary will be screening Sunday, Sept. 11, 6:30 pm at Unity Church, 3434 Central Ave, Evanston. The other two are showing at theaters throughout the city.
I apologize for the small review section this week. Next week's will be as huge as the pimple I've got between my shoulderblades right now. peace, JJ p.s. Have you seenThe Constant Gardener yet?

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Trasporter 2

"Respect the man's car."


In Unleashed, Luc Besson had Jet Li play a manimal of sorts that was collared, literally, and raised to be an enforcer for Glasgow thug Bob Hoskins whenever his collar was taken off. He escaped and met up with a family that saw nothing weird in his totally inhuman behavior and mannerisms. While the plot in The Transporter 2 might not be as ridiculous as Unleashed, the wholly unbelievable action sequences more than make up for the very remote semblances of plausibility found elsewhere in the film. The preposterous premises for Besson’s films are rarely the liability one would think they should be. The nuttiness is always played straight but without any pretense of realism that would weigh down the film.

As in The Transporter Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a guy who safely escorts people or things for a fee, no questions asked. Filling in for a friend as the driver for the son of wealthy government official Mr. Billings (Matthew Modine), Martin thinks that he’s in for an easy gig but a certain villain (Alessandro Gassman) has other ideas. Martin’s efforts to protect the child lead to impossible scenes where he; uses the hook of a crane to knock a bomb off the undercarriage of his car while upside down and airborne, makes a missile out of stuff at a doctor’s office, conjures a seemingly infinite length of fire hose to combat a very healthy plural of henchmen.

With the above, a rather clever crime plot, a mascara addict, and competent acting, The Transporter 2 delivers the goods. A largely pointless but nonetheless very entertaining bit of action fluff and viewing of The Transporter is not required, in any way at all, to follow the story. Trying to get hold of and explain Besson’s bizarre world I tried to put myself in his shoes during the screenwriting process. Here to expand your comprehension and close this review is a supposed sequence of dialogue during the writing.

Some guy in the room: Ok so they’re fighting in that guys house now right?

Luc Besson: Oui.

SGITR: So how is that villain going die?

LB: She will be kicked and impaled on a spike wall.

SGITR: In the guys house?

LB: Oui.

SGITR: There’s a spiked wall in the guys house?

LB: Of course there is!

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Mad Cowboy: The Documentary

"There's not a bad bone in these cows' bodies."


There are plenty of important issues surrounding farming and ranching. Environmental concerns about pesticide use and groundwater pollution, large agribusiness displacing local farmers, animal cruelty and waste runoff at factory farms, hormones, GMO and so much else can and needs to be discussed and acted upon. Somewhere towards the bottom of that list is vegetarianism. It’s unfortunate then that Mad Cowboy: The Documentary spends so much time trying to make a case for it.

Opening with Howard Lyman, “The Mad Cowboy” meeting and discussing the current state of small-scale ranchers, we’re introduced to the problems of large agribusinesses and they effects they have on local producers. The film continues as somewhat of a biography of Lyman weaving in his political awakening and development as an activist including his move to Washington, D.C. and his famous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that lead to a lawsuit against him. These are the most interesting parts of the film as he recounts how lobbying in D.C. was totally unsuccessful and how change only began to happen with grassroots organizing.

In one of the first shots as Lyman is sitting around the table with some farmers from New York, the group states that in order for their undefined campaign to work they have to get the facts out. Correctly castigating those who would use hyperbole or outright falsehoods to move forward their agenda, MC:TD then proceeds to use Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Mad Cow to try and present a scare case for vegetarianism. It’s true that CJD will likely kill you if contracted but even among meat-eaters it’s easily avoidable. You don’t eat beef that’s been fed animals. Pretty simple really. If the film wanted to use dietary considerations to get across a point it would have made much more sense to point out that over 500,000 Americans die every year due to heart disease, largely as a result of American dietary habits. Too much meat, or bad meat, is the problem, not meat. Portraying CJD as potentially “a disaster of biblical proportions” is absurd. Such a claim is tame however, in comparison to a regrettable statement made by a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto who compares the treatment of animals at slaughterhouses to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. I always feel a little awkward correcting or admonishing Holocaust survivors. It’s kind of like when you correct a parent for the first time, sure you may be right but it just feels weird. Nonetheless saying that cows should be treated better than Nazis treated Jews leaves quite a bit of room for animal cruelty and two, the Nazis were not going to use us for mazon ok haver? Another speaker later makes a dubious claim that vegetarians have about 16 extra IQ points than the meateaties. If that’s true, wouldn’t you think they’d have been able to come up with a better argument?

The blame for this lies with director Michael Tobias mostly. When focusing on Lyman and Lyman’s campaigns with Voice for a Viable Future, the film bounces along with his easy-going charisma. His down-to-earth arguments have much more strength than the hysterical claims made by others in the film and his history as The-Cattle-Rancher-that-Became-a-Vegan makes him an interesting subject. Scenes of animals packed into small pens at factory farms do outline the need for a change towards free range animal husbandry and the copious dialogue about Mad Cow should convince even the most obtuse carnivores that the standards for animal feed need to be raised. Bringing up, however briefly, the many issues surrounding modern agriculture might be what this film ultimately succeeds at. As Lyman says early on, “Maybe my ideas are not all right but we gotta get the people eating the food involved in this debate.” That’s grassroots baby.

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Underclassman

Pretty persuasive argument for a career change


***Spoiler Warning!***

After seeing Pretty Persuasion I thought that director Marcos Siega was perhaps overly ambitious in his attempt to meld a black comedy with social satire and teen alienation. A more restrained film could have made a real mark on this year’s cinematic landscape. Too much ambition is not at all Siega’s problem in Underclassman. In fact, there is no hint of ambition here. None. That’s a huge problem considering that an effective police story can be done in considerably less than one hour on television. At 95 minutes it’s nearly twice as long as an average episode of Law & Order and that added padding is not time well spent.

This debacle opens with Chris Tucker-impersonator Nick Cannon trying to do some undercover work. Of course it doesn’t go as planned and after the destruction of a four-wheeler, multiple vendor stands, a few bicycles and a truck, wouldn’t you know it, Cannon has still not recovered an allegedly stolen BMX. Jump to a mild scolding at the hands of father figure Cpt. Victor Delgado (an either bored or sedated Cheech Marin) and we see that Cannon is a cop with good instincts but unconventional methods, the kind that get you balled out by the Captain on a regular basis. This is formula at its absolute worst. It has all the innovation of a Police Academy sequel. Even going through the motions seems to be a struggle of sorts. Instead of trying to flesh out a weak story it was felt necessary to add scenes of Cannon: playing basketball, playing rugby, jet skiing, and generally doing nothing to add to the story.

Poking holes in this story is kind of like trying to poke holes in air. Nonetheless I persist, for posterity’s sake. Cannon’s undercover assignment is bizarre. He’s sent to a school when the police don’t actually think anything is wrong? The career high school principle there knows international drug dealers and car fences? One of the students steals cars and helped cover of the murder of a journalist yet the police are on his side? During a gun battle a car is hit on the side by a large round but explodes straight up into the air? Cannon dropped out of high school to become a bike cop? I guess all of this ridiculousness should be expected from a script that lets us know that learning Spanish “is like school.”

In a really unimpressive way using school as a metaphor for learning a school subject is quite novel. Throw in a odd halfhearted defense of Benedict Arnold and you’ve got yourself 1.5 wasted hours. Skip this and give to the Red Cross instead.
 
 

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