Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) is a dorky high-school kid with only one friend in the world, jock Dennis (John Stockwell). Arnie is the type of kid who gets pushed around by bullies and has his glasses stamped on while teachers look the other way as they think it'll probably do him some good. Things change when Arnie stumbles upon a run-down Plymouth Fury and decides to buy it, against the wishes of his parents and Dennis himself, who feels an uneasy presence within the car. The car is named Christine, and as Christine's appearances improves, so does Arnie's - he slicks his hair, wears cooler clothes, and is generally more confidant and cocky. But when Arnie starts the date the school's hot newcomer, Leigh (Alxandra Paul), the car is thrown into a bloodthirsty fit of jealousy.
Made on the back of a hot streak that helped turn John Carpenter into a horror icon, Christine is a relatively minor work by his early standards, but is still infused with Carpenter's sense of style and atmosphere. Based on the novel by Stephen King, which went to lengths to explain Christine's psychopathic behaviour, the film instead establishes the red hunk of auto-porn as evil from the get-go as it kills someone before it's even off the assembly line. Perhaps trying to explain why a car was killing people in cold blood and how it possesses the ability to repair itself would somewhat remove the façade, choosing (or hoping) instead to let the audience simply enjoy the movie without the need for clunky exposition. And it works - Carpenter has it play out with a straight face and the film is very enjoyable for the majority of its 100 minute running-time.
The film takes time to develop its story and a supporting cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Prosky and Roberts Blossom helps things move along nicely. When heads begin to roll, Carpenter delivers a couple of visually arresting set-pieces involving an attack on some bullies at a gas station and the chasing-down of a fat kid, both of which see Christine attack her sweetheart's aggressors with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. There's only so much you can do when your killer is a car, and it naturally takes a lot of bone-head's to let themselves be killed by it. No-one seems to move sideways, run up some stairs or enter a building (unless it's a flimsy gas station). But Christine does manage to somehow take on a personality of its own, and there's always something oddly satisfying about watching metal scrape, crash or burn on screen. It pales in comparison to the likes of Escape from New York and The Thing, which came the two years before, but Christine is a perfectly well-executed horror.
The 1980's seemed to define what is to be expected of a crime movie. It was an era of machine guns, tooth-picks and body oil, with little attention paid to the all-important details. Michael Mann's Thief was an ultra-slick, ice cool and, most astonishingly, highly realistic alternative, which is very impressive given that this was Mann's feature debut. The film revolves around James Caan's safe-cracker Frank, a career criminal looking for one big score before retiring. We meet him mid-job, using a specially-designed drill to steal the diamonds locked within. We are given little background to his character, but, like the rest of the film, the history is embedded within every frame.
Mann, wanting the film to be as close to real-life as possible, employs real cops and criminals as actors, reversing their roles to further blur the line between the 'good' and 'bad' guys. John Santucci, a recently paroled jewel thief, plays a corrupt cop, and Dennis Farina, in his first movie role, was a real-life ex-cop and here plays a criminal henchman. The idea that the cops and robbers are merely two sides of the same coin was explored further in Mann's 1995 masterpiece Heat. With Thief, it feels like we are thrust into this very real but secret world of crime, where Frank, who works alone when possible or employs his entrusted friend Barry (James Belushi) when necessary, agrees to work for shady crime boss Leo (Robert Prosky, who, along with Belushi and Farina, makes his film debut).
With so much time spent with Frank (he appears in every scene), a lot rests upon Caan's shoulders, and he thankfully delivers what is undoubtedly his greatest performance. He's the typical tough-guy loner, but he brings so much to his character that we see much more in him than a mere brute. In the diner scene, where he seduces cashier Jessie (Tuesday Weld) and lays out his plans to start a family, Caan's marvellous monologue further layers his character. But Thief is also an exciting thriller. Thanks to the plausibility of it's characters, it's easy to become concerned when a spanner is inevitably thrown into Frank's plans. If there's a criticism to be had, then it's in the formulaic plot. But when a film seems to know it's characters so well and is filmed so stylishly by cinematographer Donald E. Thorin, it's hard to avoid becoming completely immersed.
When young Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is given a magic movie ticket by friendly cinema owner Nick (Robert Prosky) at an advance screening of new action movie Jack Slater IV, he is magically transported into the movie and into the car of supercop Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Danny starts to inform Slater about who the bad guys are after seeing them on screen, and the two are paired up as a mismatched investigative duo by Slater's screaming boss. Glass-eyed bad guy Mr. Benedict (Charles Dance) manages to get his hands on the magic ticket, and escapes into the real world, where he finds things are much easier for the bad guys. Slater must leave his action movie cliche of a world where he is nigh on invincible behind, and enter one where things are slightly more difficult.
Last Action Hero had one of the most expensive and turbulent page-to-screen stories in recent cinema history. Originally written as a self-mocking action movie that embraced the cliches of the genre, that was also a proper action movie in its own right. After an unexpected bidding war, the young scribes Zak Penn and Adam Leff were shocked to find that Arnold Schwarzenegger had taken a personal interest in it (the original hero name was Arno Slater). This was to be the turning point. Arnie saw the potential for a franchise as a kid's film and immediately wanted to tone down the violence, so Penn and Leff were fired, and genre legend Shane Black was hired to spruce up the script. Things changed yet again when director John McTiernan was brought in, and, due to the success of his previous films, was given full control.
A few script re-writes, firings, and storm-outs later, the film was shot and ready to hit the market. A toy franchise and a ridiculously expensive and calamitous advertising campaign (they paid half a million dollars to have the film's name on a NASA rocket, only to have the launched delayed till long after the film's release) were put into motion, and the film's release date was announced for the week after Jurassic Park's. Last Action Hero had disastrous test screenings, but the release date was not changed, and naturally, Jurassic Park stormed the box-office and merchandising range, and Last Action Hero was revealed to be an over-ambitious, confused dud of a movie. However, the legend is rather cruel on Schwarzenegger's biggest flop, as although it is a gigantic mess, it has plenty of interesting ideas than are unfortunately spewed out onto the film in ungraceful belches.
The biggest problem is that it doesn't know what kind of film it is. At its heart, its a kid's film, complete with annoying mop-haired child, a kindly old man, magic tickets and, um, a cartoon cat. Yet on its surface, its a rather uninspired action film that is actually rather violent and, once in the real world, is quite grim. The film never seems to know whether it wants to homage, spoof or simply in-joke. The movie world it creates is itself confused - while it has some funny touches such as the police line pairing together various mismatched partners - it also has women walking around in sexy, futuristic costumes, and the aforementioned cartoon cat called Whiskers (voiced by Danny DeVito). Seriously, whose idea was that? I've never seen a cartoon cat in a live-action action movie!
However, the sheer mess that is the complete film does prove Last Action Hero to be a curious little oddity. There have been much finer examples of action-movie send-ups, namely in Shane Black's own excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), so perhaps the producers weren't ready back in 1993 to take on such an ambitious project. Arnie is pleasantly game for sending himself up, and Charles Dance chews the screen with his gloriously hammy British bad guy. But Last Action Hero will ultimately always be a reminder of how the Hollywood system to suck up an interesting maverick project, fuck it over a few times, and bundle it over the finishing line with such unbelievable inefficiency. I did love it as a kid, however.
Made on the back of a hot streak that helped turn John Carpenter into a horror icon, Christine is a relatively minor work by his early standards, but is still infused with Carpenter's sense of style and atmosphere. Based on the novel by Stephen King, which went to lengths to explain Christine's psychopathic behaviour, the film instead establishes the red hunk of auto-porn as evil from the get-go as it kills someone before it's even off the assembly line. Perhaps trying to explain why a car was killing people in cold blood and how it possesses the ability to repair itself would somewhat remove the façade, choosing (or hoping) instead to let the audience simply enjoy the movie without the need for clunky exposition. And it works - Carpenter has it play out with a straight face and the film is very enjoyable for the majority of its 100 minute running-time.
