Great soundtrack? Yup. Aging actors rescued from obscurity? Yes, indeed. Dialogue so quotable you could print bumper stickers from every other line in the script? Oh, yeah.

But back in 1994, when the film first rocked movie houses, ‘Pulp Fiction’ was simply Tarantino’s entrance into the upper echelon of movie makers. The film hasn’t lost its zip in its new Blu-ray incarnation. If anything, the giddiness Tarantino fuses to the action genre is more appealing in an era of shaky cams and uncertain plot twists.

‘Pulp Fiction’ defies knee-jerk categorization. It’s a series of interlocking stories with a chronological hiccup or two to keep us guessing.

The main story involves a pair of chatty thugs doing the bidding of the mysterious Marsellus (Ving Rhames). Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) crack wise in between blood-thirsty assignments. Vincent seems more interested in cultural differences across the pond than doing Marsellus’ dirty work, while Jules has a speech for nearly any occasion.

But Vincent gets more than he bargained for when Marsellus asks him to escort his lovely wife (Uma Thurman) on a platonic date.

Travolta brought his career back from the ‘Look Who’s Talking’ abyss with ‘Fiction.’ Whether it’s acting unsure of his desires around Thurman’s character or tearing up the dance floor with moves inspired by Adam West, Travolta reaffirms his movie star status in spades. His scenes with Thurman crackle with temptation, as Thurman twists Vincent around her manicured finger just for the thrill of it.

Yes, their ensuing dance sequence is worth rewinding, but it’s how their conversations evolve that cements their bond.

Jackson, arguably the best conduit for Tarantino’s rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, makes Jules a fearsome presence no matter how wide the actor’s grin grows.

The second half of ‘Pulp Fiction’ cannot measure up to the first. Bruce Willis’ turn as an aging boxer who refuses to throw a fight is a hoot, but it lacks the panache of those early Travolta sequences. Even when the story heads back to the diner where it all began the film can’t quite recapture that fizzy sense of the unknown.

One can quibble that Tarantino is being too precious with some of the film’s now-iconic moments, like the retro diner where Elvis impersonators mingle with wannabe Jayne Mansfields. But Tarantino’s control of the material is masterful – there’s not a wasted gesture or syllable.

The Blu-ray edition comes packed with six-plus hours of extras, including cast interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, a Tarantino interview on ‘The Charlie Rose Show,’ still galleries and a retrospective on the director’s career featuring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

Why it’s a left-wing film

Though based on a true story, what you have here is Hollywood once again cherry picking the true stories they choose to tell in order to reaffirm a political agenda. In this case you have a sleazy ambulance chaser emerging as selfless hero in the fight against big, arrogant corporate attorneys and uncaring multi-national corporations. And if that’s not bad enough…

In the end, after our intrepid personal injury lawyers are unable to beat the big bad corporate America wolf with anything more than a face-saving settlement, in comes the ultimate left-wing hero to save the day. Enter, bum, bum, bummmm… BIG GOVERNMENT! Yes, whatever would we do without the benevolent Environmental Protection Agency.

Again, “A Civil Action” is based on a true story and by all accounts, unlike the bogus “Erin Brockovich”  suit, the facts of this case stand true. So my argument is not with the movie itself or this specific case. By all accounts this was a real tragedy, where due to toxic poisoning in the groundwater, a lot of people got sick and died, including children.

My argument is, however, with Hollywood’s relentlessly out-of-context, choosing of only these kinds of stories to build up the drip-drip-drip effect necessary to craft an unfair and dishonest narrative that always portrays corporate America as homicidal maniacs. As an example of how out of whack Hollywood’s lack of context is, I know of no American corporation responsible for as many deaths as the EPA’s politically motivated decision to ban DDT in 1972.

Where’s the movie about that?

That’s a rhetorical question. And here are some more…

Where are the David and Goliath films about the man who built his business up from nothing only to have it destroyed by a feeding frenzy of greedy trial lawyers bankrupting him with frivolous environmental and discrimination lawsuits? Where are the movies about the family businesses destroyed by bullying unions and an overbearing federal government led by predator attorneys, soulless bureaucrats, and self-righteous Marxists disguised as environmentalists?

People love David and Goliath stories and if the stories are based on real events, all the better. At least that’s Hollywood’s rationale for the never-ending treadmill of films making corporate America out to look serial killers in search of profit. What Hollywood willfully ignores, naturally, is that there are other underdog stories out there to be told, stories to remind us that when you’re a small to mid-size business owner, one of the good guys creating jobs and helping others to realize the American dream, the EPA, Greenpeace, and the IRS are frequently the ruthless Goliaths to your David. 

Why it’s a great film

Though far from a box office hit and not even widely praised by critics upon its 1998 Christmas Day release, in my seemingly lone opinion, “A Civil Action” is one of the last great left-wing narrative films to come out of Hollywood. Over the years I’ve expected its reputation to grow, but I still seem to be the film’s sole champion, writing and talking about the under-appreciated gem whenever the opportunity arises.

Directing only his second film, Steve Zaillian (one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters and winner of the Academy Award for his work on “Schindler’s List,” one of the greatest screenplays of all time) wisely gathered together legendary cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and a truly remarkable cast of actors for roles both big and small to put his screenplay (based on Jonathan Harr’s book) in the very best of hands. John Travolta, The Mighty Robert Duvall (who was nominated for his performance), William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan, James Gandolfini, Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack, and the great character actor Dan Hedaya are all given memorable moments to shine in the story of Jan Schlichtmann (Travolta), a selfish, self-involved, cold, calculating and successful personal injury attorney whose small firm is eventually run out of business after filing wrongful death lawsuits against two corporate giants responsible for a tragic series of fatal illnesses caused by toxic poisoning.

Critics who would normally be friendly to the film’s agenda might have been put off by what they saw as a fairly formulaic narrative. The story of a mercenary attorney regaining his soul and humanity is certainly nothing new, nor is the leftist trope of the underdog vs. capitalism. But I’ve personally always seen the story as something a little more complicated and richer than that. Those dots certainly do connect, just not in as straight of a line as respectable but unremarkable films like “Class Action.”

Due to a close proximity to the raw emotional anguish felt by clients who have lost children, there’s no doubt Schlichtmann becomes a better human being during his journey through the class action suit that will ruin him financially. What ultimately brings him down, though, is not as simple as a reformed man trying to make his way through the eye of a needle by going all in financially on behalf of his clients. What makes Schlichtmann fascinating is that as his heart softens his pride hardens, and ultimately it’s the pride of misguided idealism that keeps him from accepting settlement offers that in some cases are more than double the amount he’s ultimately forced to accept when he finds himself out of resources.

Travolta’s dynamite in the lead role, a live-wire of contradictions; a man yearning for respect and dignity in a profession where such qualities don’t pay the bills. A greedy man who also wants to do the right thing but — because acceptance feels like a defeat — he’ll still counter-intuitively refuse settlements that would satisfy both of those needs The new Schlichtmann doesn’t want money, he wants the respect that comes with overwhelming victory on behalf of his deserving clients. Zaillian never allows you to crack the code of this character and in the end, in the memorable final scene where Schlichtmann himself is unable to explain what happened to his life, you at least know you’re not alone.

Robert Duvall, as Schlichtmann’s chief nemesis, attorney for the defense Jerome Facher, is also a wonder to behold.

Duvall wraps his ruthless, wily shark in a quirky, sometimes spacey Red Sox fanatic who on first glance comes off as your doddering old grandfather, the one no longer employed as a bookkeeper but can’t end his habit of dressing the part and eating a packed lunch out of his old briefcase in the park every day. Just as good is William H. Macy as the money man playing every conceivable angle to keep the small firm alive as the bills for discovery bury everything he and the partners have worked for.

But not only do you have remarkable performances and a deceptively complicated protagonist filling out what’s arguably a fairly formulaic story, you also have a dozen-plus amazing scenes used in the telling of that story, and these are the moments that really sell the film for me. A majority of the best scenes involve Duvall but watching Sydney Pollack’s passive-aggressive character psychologically destroy Schlichtmann with patronizing kindness during a lawyerly sit-down is just a great piece of cinematic storytelling, especially in the department of screenwriting.

Great movies have a few great scenes. “A Civil Action” is loaded with them.

Finally, I’m a bit of a sucker for stories involving imperfect fools who lay everything on the line in the quest for something noble, be it the love of a woman, a righteous cause, or whatever — especially when they fail. Though I’ve always believed the concept of “quiet desperation” is a bullshit one spread by damaged types who need to believe everyone is as unhappy as they are, we do only have one life and it is meant to be lived. Sometimes you have to risk the money and pride and the threat of humiliation in the knowledge that living with failure is easier than living with regret.

What’s not on the list:

Thelma and Louise (1991): I’m a huge fan of this feminist road trip and have just never agreed that it was either all that political or anti-male. For starters, Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen both play sympathetic males in large supporting roles and while some (maybe even Calli Khouri’s terrific Oscar-winning script) might try to blame a male-dominated society (I wish) on the misfortune of our two vigilante armed robbers, that’s not really the message you’re left with after the ladies drive off that cliff. Thelma’s stupid choices plus Louise’s psychological issues are the duos real undoing, not buffoonish husbands and boorish truck drivers.

Part of Woo’s problem was the advent of American special effects capable of mimicking, with a few mouse clicks, the previously unique style he pioneered via endlessly inventive cinematography and editing. Soon anyone could make what at least superficially looked like a John Woo movie, and they saturated the market with mediocre simulacra of his imagery until it felt old and tired. This is what I suspect Werner Herzog once meant when he condemned the “worn-out images” which imperil our civilization’s collective imagination “because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones.”

Then there was Woo’s catastrophic loss of creative control, resulting from his move to Hollywood soon after he finished Hard Boiled. He once wearily explained his momentous decision to abandon his homeland in this way:

I had been working in Hong Kong so many years, and creatively I felt limited and needed to grow and change. It was an extremely commercial place. All the movies were commercial and entertaining. Action movies and comedies were mainstream, and it was hard to do anything else. Artistic films did not have an audience, and political topics you could not touch.

Given his affinity for American movies and Western sensibilities, Woo found much to like in his newly adopted home. “I felt comfortable right away. When we came to Hollywood I found the people in this country were very kind, polite and respectful. It is a very open country. They are all reaching out their hands to the new talent no matter where you are from. They wanted me to bring my style to their Western movies.” Woo loved the Hollywood crew on his first movie here, Hard Target, and they returned his admiration. However, the demands of both the studio and that lord among thespians, Jean-Claude Van Damme, drove him to despair:

I never knew that the star had so much control over the script, over the co-star. . . Sam [Raimi] and Jim [Jacks] wanted me to make the film in my style, but somebody else wanted me to make Hard Target an action movie, and somebody else wanted me to tone down the violence. People told me than an American hero is not supposed to have flaws and he never cries in a film. He’s a perfect guy. And I thought, wow, that’s kind of boring.

With Hard Boiled in Hong Kong, Woo had crowned his reputation with a movie that, to this very day, remains arguably the most blistering action movie of all time. But with Hard Target in the States — made only a year later! — the MPAA’s passel of clueless, tin-pot bureaucrats forced him to cut his picture seven times just to get an R rating. Chow Yun-fat remembers Woo’s frustration: “They told him that, if he shoots five people in this scene, then he can only shoot two people in the next scene. He cannot kill seven people in one scene and then another seven people right afterward!”

In other words, the American studios courted the singular talent of John Woo — and then refused to allow him to make a John Woo movie.

Fools.

It’s not that he hasn’t been successful in Hollywood. Hard Target made $33 million, Broken Arrow $70 million, and Face/Off — where he finally had director’s cut — earned an impressive $112 million at the domestic box office. But the growing artistic malaise was palpable. By the time his Mission: Impossible 2 raked in $215 million in 2000, Woo’s films had become, to my mind at least, virtually indistinguishable from the work of the average American music-video director. The world-weary gravitas of Chow Yun-fat had been replaced by the empty-headed pseudo-machismo of pampered and coiffed metro-sexual pretty boys like Christian Slater, John Travolta, and (most egregious of all) Tom Cruise, while Woo’s ever-present themes — familial, moral, spiritual — faded under the glare of the Tinseltown klieg lights until they shrunk down to mere stylistic affectations, as moving and genuine as, say, Madonna sporting a crucifix with her concert dominatrix outfits. Most of his later output — a list that includes Windtalkers (2002), Paycheck (2003), and some TV stuff — is a pale shadow of the things that brought me to Woo in the first place.

Thankfully, we live at a time when foreign films are more accessible than ever before, giving us ample opportunity to look at old movies and remind ourselves how brightly those old Hong Kong gems still glow. “If some people see only the action,” Woo once said about his Heroic Bloodshed movies, “I say, fine. But I think if they look, they’ll see more. . . it’s also about me, about what I believe.” There was a time — as an ideologically lonely student in an intellectually stimulating but virulently leftist film school — when I cared deeply about what exactly a movie like Hard Boiled revealed John Woo to believe. It was the kind of movie that I could sense was buttressing my own worldview, even if I didn’t have the words to express why or how.

So what does Woo truly believe, anyway? In his interview with Woo that closes Between the Bullets: The Spiritual Cinema of John Woo, author Michael Bliss leads us to an answer:

Do you think that the traditional values that you cherish — such as honor, devotion, religion, family — aren’t very popular anymore?

“Yes. It seems that many people have lost them. I think it is my duty to bring all of these things back, these things that people have lost.”

With that in mind, would it be fair to say that more than anything else, you’re a religious director?

“Yes. I’d agree with that.”

The traditional values championed so energetically by John Woo should be of intense interest to conservative film lovers. Hard Boiled and its brethren stand virtually alone in modern times as cinematic defenders of what might loosely be described as Christian warriors — flawed heroes (and, in many cases, villains) who eschew cynicism and nihilism for moral codes based on ancient Bible-derived notions of righteousness and chivalry. Michael Bliss makes a wonderfully perceptive remark about Hard Boiled in his book when he mentions Woo’s cameo in the film (italics mine): “Woo plays a former cop, Mr. Woo, who runs the jazz bar, which functions as a haven of aesthetics in the midst of this brutal cops and criminals universe. In this church-like sanctuary, Woo acts as a secular priest.” That’s a revelation that hit me right between the eyes, and something that even Woo himself probably didn’t realize he was doing.

“I’m most influenced by the values of Jesus Christ,” Woo maintains in interviews. “Loving one’s neighbor, forgiveness, patience, kindness, charity.” That statement might seem laughable in light of the incredible amount of raw mayhem that drenches pictures like Hard Boiled blood-red, but Woo is adamant: “I am a Christian. I am strongly influenced by my religion. The church really means a lot to me.” In this Tarantino/Rodriguez-dominated age of treating every symbol and idea as just more grist for their pop-culture mishmash films, it’s refreshing to see Woo daring us to take his explosive action movies seriously. He’s unabashedly inviting a rigorous analysis of the Christian ethics on display in his pictures.

Consider what a film like Hard Boiled asks the viewer. What happens to those peaceful Christian values when they come face-to-face with a thoroughly evil, heartless, murderous, and implacable enemy? What part of that noble and beautiful moral structure gives way, and what replaces it? Is the result still Christian, or only a perilously perverted doppelganger? These are the kinds of questions that continually arise in thoughtful conservative minds whenever one watches A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled.

“I believe the good people always win,” says Woo. “At the same time, we have to understand each other and know the good and bad in all of us. I think that came from my Christian education.” Woo forces his protagonists to navigate their way through spiritual minefields, in a quest to achieve some semblance of morality in a world seemingly bereft of it. “In my movies,” explains Woo, “the hero must conquer his own inner battle between good and evil before he can win the outward battle with the ‘real’ enemy.” That he manages to bring brutal gangsters, self-assured assassins, and trigger-happy rogue cops (each with prodigious amounts of blood on their hands) through hails of bullets and piles of corpses to that spiritual place (and in stories filled with such mesmerizing imagery and visual poetry) is remarkable.

Hard Boiled has more death and destruction in it than any number of American action films, but strangely enough it manages to remain far more morally defensible and intriguing. The issues it raises aren’t just cheap plot points — Woo’s unflinching depiction of the eternal battle between good and evil gives his spiritual themes real teeth. For example, Hard Boiled sports a triad godfather who can’t bring himself to keep up with the demented younger generation of crooks, most of whom long ago abandoned the old code of mafia ethics he grew up with — and he pays for his conscience with his life.

Woo allows another likable villain — the crowd favorite, no less, the cool-as-hell Boba Fett of the movie — to come to an abrupt end at the hands of his merciless boss after refusing to gun down a crowd of innocents. And not only does this deliciously audience-pleasing character die, so do the innocents. On the surface, this seems quite cruel of Woo, almost an expression of anti-heroism: the deaths of the defenseless bystanders seem to render the villain’s noble sacrifice meaningless. We lament that Woo doesn’t even leave anyone behind to respect or memorialize the heroic action we witnessed, until we realize that it is we who are meant to know and remember what happened, that it is our own sense of decency and values that’s been awakened along with the martyred villain’s.

Like I said, Woo delivers spiritual themes with real teeth.

Meanwhile, both heroes in the film are faced with their own demons, accidentally killing people on their own side and realistically dealing with the mental consequences. “Sometimes,” says Woo, “when you feel a person is bad, there is good in there as well. This is a truth about human beings and a theme in all of my movies. I have always believed that good and evil are not black and white. They co-exist in people.” All of the thrills in Hard Boiled are over the top, of course — in real life any one of the action scenes would have resulted in the army being brought in to quell matters. But it’s meaningful, carrying powerful consequences both in the character’s lives and in the audience’s psyche.

“John Woo is a man of contradictions,” concludes Michael Bliss. “He’s a romantic Christian idealist who loves guns and explosions, he’s a man of peace who choreographs death and destruction better than anyone working in movies today. . . Woo is a difficult fit because he blends Western humanism with Asian attitudes. And like Kurosawa, he’s a man that knows that often, violence and justice cannot be separated.” Judging from the state of the world, our inner war between Old Testament justice and New Testament forgiveness and redemption aren’t going away anytime soon. Which makes me all the more thankful that, over two decades ago, a devout Christian director named John Woo chose for a few short years to explore those themes in such a startling and heartfelt fashion. The Hollywood technicians can mimic the camerawork and the style, sure. But for this bedrock faith in Christianity as a powerful, elevating and ennobling force, you still have to go back to the original.

This concludes our analysis of the potent, Christian-laced action extravaganza Hard Boiled. Come back next Saturday for the beginning of an all-new For Conservative Movie Lovers series, only at Big Hollywood.

Previous posts in the series “John Woo, Chow Yun-fat, and Hard Boiled”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

There have been more than a few versions of Hard Boiled available on DVD over the years, and which one is best remains a debatable matter. The best image by far can be found in the French edition (but alas, no English subtitles). The sound is fairly comparable across all editions (some have a 5:1 DTS remix, but many claim the original mono mix sounds better). Most of the editions use bastardized subtitles that fail to capture the nuances of the original Cantonese dialogue. There’s even a Taiwanese “uncut” version available that adds about five minutes to the final hospital shootout, but the original Cantonese dialogue is dubbed in Mandarin and there’s a different musical score.

For Americans, your best bet is probably the $11.49 Dragon Dynasty edition, which has decent picture, very good sound, and a host of supplements (including a full commentary by Bey Logan, one of the authors used to research this FCML series). UK readers might try the Region 2 disc available from Tartan Asia Extreme, which purportedly has the nicest image transfer aside from the French version.

If you’re one of those people who has never tried a Hong Kong movie, and who isn’t keen on spending an evening watching a twenty-year-old foreign film with subtitles, I’m hoping you reconsider, especially if you are an action movie fan. Every die-hard fan of Hong Kong movies started out as a wary newbie dragged by their friends to see something that they thought would be boring or hard to understand. It’s only after giving it a try that they realized just how much fresh energy, passion, color, and humor is to be found in those pictures. And if you’re the type of person who just can’t abide listening to a foreign language for that long while looking down to read the subtitled translations, you can always click over to the English-dubbed audio track and turn the subtitles off. That’s a purist’s nightmare, but in my opinion a far better option than not seeing Hard Boiled at all.

Part of a good film education is selectively trying out new genres you’ve always avoided. In some cases, the viewing will simply confirm your long-held suspicions, and that’s fair enough. But often you’ll end up discovering some thoroughly entertaining corner of cinema that you’ll wish you had found long before. Hard Boiled is revered as a great gateway drug into the world of Hong Kong movies, a hard-hitting action picture in the Rambo/Dirty Harry/Die Hard mold. If you like those sorts of films, do give it a try.

Bruce Willis has starred in a million of these. The “Lethal Weapon” series wasn’t too different from the concept. But no matter how many times you’ve seen this story done before, there’s hardly a genre more entertaining than an action-comedy taking place amid exotic locales – and the new film “From Paris with Love,” starring John Travolta as a bad-ass CIA assassin named Johnnie Wax who’s forced to team up with a mild-mannered embassy employee played by British actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, is one action extravaganza that definitely delivers. 

“Paris” kicks things off nicely by showing the dual life experienced by James Reese (Meyers), who spends his days as a personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France, an existence in which he’s mostly planning travel logistics and handling paperwork for his boss. By night, or whenever the CIA decides to call him secretly, he is a low-level operative for the spy agency – until he abruptly gets the call one day to team up with Wax to block an assassination attempt on an American official attending a Parisian conference. 

Soon he’s racing through 48 hours of mayhem across Paris in an effort to prevent the killing by Arab terrorists attached to a crime ring. In another genre tradition, he quickly learns that he can’t trust anyone in his normal life to truly be on his side. 

But what makes all this a real blast to enjoy is the fact that “Paris” is done so well, with some of the best hands in the business running the show. French action master Luc Besson (“The Transporter” series, “Diva,” “The Professional” and countless other hits) wrote the story and Pierre Morel directs with the pedal-to-the-metal, high-speed ferocity of his prior film, “Taken,” which was a worldwide smash at this time last year. 

In both “Taken” and “Paris,” Morel’s choice of villains is refreshingly straightforward. Even as most Hollywood action films in the Age of Terror ridiculously posit any group of humanity other than Muslim radicals – even bringing back ex-Soviets! – as the prime threat afflicting their heroes, both “Taken” and “Paris” matter-of-factly address the fact that there’s plenty of Middle Eastern baddies to go around too. Viewers responded viscerally to “Taken,” knowing that there was an underlying authenticity beneath the surface menace – by no means are Muslims expected to be the villain in every movie, but on the other hand, don’t be so ridiculous as to rule them out either. 

“From Paris with Love” has a few jolting surprises, but mostly its buoyant spirit comes from the other end of the human emotional spectrum: not from dark menace but rather the sheer kinetic thrill of finding another challenge or double-cross waiting around every corner. Its two leads bring zest to what might have been tired roles, with Travolta sinking his teeth into the material and eating it with relish, a constant swagger, hilarious line and ever-bigger weapon at his perpetual disposal.

Rhys-Meyers is a little more mellow, humane and relatable, filling the role of the guy the audience will relate to as he goes from everyman to virtual superhero. Following higher-pedigree roles in projects like Woody Allen’s “Match Point” and Showtime’s royalty drama series “The Tudors,” he clearly has fun cutting loose. 

It’s a feeling audiences will share, and hopefully will result in further adventures for Johnnie Wax and his protégé.

In the film, Robin Williams plays Dan, a divorced man who is great friends with his business partner Charlie, played by John Travolta. After Charlie takes Dan out for the aforementioned wild evening, that night becomes fodder for business clients during sales meetings. However, several years after the event takes place, Dan is told suddenly that he has two children that he has to take care of as their mother serves a couple of weeks of prison time for a minor offense. The premise of a father bonding after time apart is nothing new and unfortunately, the movie does not provide a lot of laughs from the idea.

Many of the jokes are crude and most of them fall flat. From the story of the wild night together to tasteless humor about an actual old dog, the comedic bits are tired and disappointing and they are often introduced through ridiculous plot twists. After the first part of the movie, though, there are a few comedic moments that made me and the audience I was watching with laugh out loud, including a funny bit about the comedic side effects of certain pills and penguin attacks from a zoo. However, those few laughs do not compensate for the rest of this film.

The movie, like many family-friendly films before, does feature some positive themes about fatherhood. Eventually, both Dan and Charlie discover the joys that come from having children. Both businessmen realize what the kids mean to them and both develop as characters because of that. The theme is a solid one but the movie wastes it with crude humor and not enough comedy.

“Old Dogs” comes with a solid class of actors including its two leads, Travolta and Williams. Kelly Preston, Rita Wilson and Seth Green also join the fun as supporting characters. These actors have all had solid roles before but they are wasted in this often unfunny picture.

Many families will likely go to see “Old Dogs” this weekend and some will likely enjoy some of the crude humor. However, there are smarter and funnier movies that could have been made with the same overall concept than this and those films would have succeeded far better than. Unfortunately, these “old dogs” have not yet learned any new tricks.

“[T]he system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).

“The 2009 box-office numbers offer the most dramatic evidence yet that the system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

You can read the piece in full here.

Natalie, whoever’s advising you … fire them. If no one’s advising you, find someone who doesn’t carry a small dog in their purse or dates someone who does. Look to the real world for help. Look to someone who’s spent a few years in a land where the zip codes don’t start with “9-0.” Someone who cares enough about you and your career to say (without any “Honey, babys”):

“Nat, past the gates of your community and away from the hills of Hollywood losing your job doesn’t fuel passion, it fuels despair, and working a job you hate is almost as bad because of the big black  permanent ball of dread it plants in your gut. I know you dig Barack, I did too before he targeted my children and health care, but you can’t flak for his recession. That’s what the mainstream media is for. You have to empathize with your audience, build goodwill. Besides, you’re closing on that castle tomorrow, so today wouldn’t be a good time to get all gushy over how exciting Barack’s recession is. And if you do, I quit.”

Now I don’t mean to pick on Natalie (much), but this goes to a larger problem facing both Hollywood and those of us who love movies: The death of the movie star.

One of the big entertainment stories this year is how well starless films like “Star Trek,” “Up,” “The Hangover,” and “District 9” did while Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, John Travolta, Jack Black, Eddie Murphy, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Steve Martin, Robert Downey Jr., etc… fizzled in blockbusters and mainstream films aimed at a wide audience.

Once upon a time stars worked as a kind of insurance. No matter how good or bad the product, a strong opening weekend or two was assured followed by home video sales that pretty much guaranteed the film would at least break even. Once upon a time people wanted to see a INSERT NAME HERE movie.

No more.

Some will float excuses like the “Twitter Effect,” but that doesn’t explain crashing DVD sales or historically low ratings for the Academy Awards’ telecast. Spin it any way you want, thanks to a decade-plus of arrogant unforced errors and self-inflicted stupidity, we are no longer enamored with … The Movie Star.

The problem isn’t each individual star – who doesn’t love them some Denzel? – the problem is those damaging the brand as a whole. Airheads and insulting big mouths like Portman, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Streisand, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins…

Year after year after year the bad apples have so soured so many of us that we no longer look at the name above the title. We don’t care who’s in it. Instead it’s, “What’s the concept, is it safe or familiar?”

In other words, “I’d rather have my intelligence insulted than who I am or what I believe in.”

For those of us in love with the movies, this is an awful trend. We love being in love with movie stars. And we don’t care how they vote or live their lives… There were all kinds of liberal stars during the Golden Age who supported all kinds of causes. No one cared. I don’t care now.

The difference between John Garfield and Sean Penn isn’t talent or politics … it’s a little thing called “class.”

Just shut up and be awesome.

Denzel Washington is Walter Garber, a longtime civil servant in the New York City MTA who started at the bottom and worked his way into an administrative position until a scandal hit. An investigation’s underway, and until Garber’s name is cleared (or not), he’s demoted back to dispatcher. His skill and knowledge of how New York’s intricate subway system operates is obvious and impressive, but nothing in his career or life prepares him for the call he receives from the manic, ruthless Ryder (John Travolta), the leader of a small team who have just hijacked a subway car loaded with innocent passengers.

Ryder wants money. $10 million (and one cent), to be exact, and wants it in cash in 60 minutes or he’ll kill a passenger for each minute it’s late. Unfortunately for Garber, Ryder takes a shine to him, forcing the civil servant into the unenviable position as the only person the hijacker will talk to or deal with. Aiding him is NYPD hostage negotiator Camonetti (John Turturro), who helps Garber through the tense moments but also has to worry if this man, who’s facing an investigation where a prison term could be the outcome, isn’t the inside man.

The “retelling” works as far as keeping those of us familiar with what came before from knowing what will happen next, but even so there’s not much suspense. What made the original so riveting was the believability of it all. Robert Shaw’s quiet, shark-like efficiency and Walter Matthau’s clever but cynical civil servant were characteristics we recognized from our everyday lives; these people seemed to inhabit a real world that, thanks to a remarkable cinematography, was perfectly captured in a familiar time and place.

Tony Scott’s signature kinetic editing and an actual ticking clock which dramatically freezes the action every few minutes, feels surreal not real — and intrudes upon, rather than increases — what little tension there is. Hyper-visuals makes the familiar unfamiliar and never allows you to ”feel” the City. It’s hard to relate to what’s happening because it’s set in a strange land called Planet Scott. Travolta also drains the suspense playing the exact same villain he did in “Swordfish” and “Broken Arrow.” Obviously, Ryder is written to be off-balance and unpredictable, but Travolta’s portrayal is so familiar, he’s anything but.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland’s idea of an “update” is only an update as far as what the latest Screenwriting 101 courses are offering. Garber’s now saddled with a backstory, and an ever so convenient one that allows Ryder to get under his skin, and naturally the story beats must be found that allow for Denzel to run around Manhattan wielding a gun for a little man-to-man.

The story’s also “updated” to include a nod to the Internet and Rudy Giuliani, but what’s completely stripped away is what might have been the most interesting part of an update — a look into the municipal guts of a big city political machine. This is one of the more fascinating elements in both the novel and the 1973 film, the thing that lifted both just above pulp, but to its detriment, Helgeland limits his narrative scope only to the hostage situation. Even the Mayor (James Gandolfini) spends most of his time in the MTA dispatch center. The whole of New York City gave the original tremendous flavor and a real personality. Without this, other than the budget and stars, the update gives off a television-movie vibe.

Also hurting the story is a lack of emphasis on questions that would draw us in — like just how in the hell these guys plan to escape a subway tunnel surrounded by the entire NYPD — and an unnecessary emphasis on what doesn’t matter. An awful lot of dialogue is chewed up piecing together who Ryder really is and one of the Mayor’s better moments comes when he puts a final piece into place. But in the end, knowing who Ryder is adds nothing to the plot and has nothing to do with the climax. It’s just filler that serves as distracting misdirection because you keep waiting for a payoff.

The biggest misfire, however, is the score, a mix of techno, thundering effects and heavy metal that never creates an emotion, unless “garbled” and “jarring” qualify as emotions. Had director Scott borrowed heavily from David Shire’s driving, diamond-hard original, his movie would’ve improved by at least 20% without changing anything else. 

That’s not to say “Pelham” is in any way a failure. What it is, though, is nothing special. Even though the climax is more sound and fury than excitement, what’s going on does hold your interest thanks mainly to Denzel who’s always watchable doing what he does better than anyone: portraying an everyday competence that doesn’t strain credibility as his character finds himself deeper and deeper in a world he knows nothing about.

So take it in, you won’t be bored, but in five years you’ll go back to watching the timeless original as though no retelling ever happened.

Creepy, right? I have not seen Haunting and will probably wait for DVD or pay cable, but that is a weird, startling, attention-grabbing image. As a movie junkie, I love good movie art. The best movie posters are evocative. They capture what a movie is all about without giving away the mystery. There are certain movie posters that instantly put me back in that theatre experiencing the film for the very first time. The best movie posters are not just promotional tools. They stand as a work of art on their own. These are my favorites, buit it is by no means a definitive list. Feel free to add your favorites (and subtract any of mine).

#1 – JAWS
I saw this all-time classic as a 9-year-old on opening day, and saw it a second time at the Saturday matinee. To this day, I am afraid to swim in the ocean. That shark is always there in my imagination. The poster is literal, but haunting.

#2 – CHINATOWN
This is truly a work of art. The smoke shrouding the ultimate mystery of Evelyn Mulwray, and the stylized version of Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), the hard-boiled detective who unravels it all.

#3 – THE DARK KNIGHT
Impossible to separate Heath Ledger’s death from his remarkable interpretation of The Joker. This is an amazing image. In 30 years, I will look at this poster and immediately feel the impact of Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece.

#4 – BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
You can almost hear Audrey Hepburn warbling “Moon River” at the sight of this iconic poster. Every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

#5 – SECRETARY
The 2002 cult classic about a sadomasochistic relationship between a demanding lawyer (James Spader) and a submissive secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The movie is an under-appreciated gem. The poster may be even better.

#6 – UNFORGIVEN
This is my favorite poster made for Clint Eastwood’s masterful revisionist Western. Simple. Classic. Tells you everything you need to know about Clint’s Bill Munny character.

#7 – AMERICAN BEAUTY
A beautiful image that suggests the perversity that lies just beneath the surface of the suburban neighborhood created by screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes.

#8 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
“You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?” You can almost hear Dr. Hannibal Lecter say it. The Death’s-head moth “lodged” in Clarice Starling’s throat. Brilliant image.

#9 – VERTIGO
An ode to acrophobia as Detective Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) battles his fear of heights while becoming obsessed with Madeleine Elster (the stunning Kim Novak). This kaleidoscopic design immediately brings the strains of Bernard Hermann’s amazing score into my head.

#10 – PULP FICTION
Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in all her swagger. Yes, she does wind up with a sharpie circle on her chest and a shot of adrenaline, but the whole gritty movie is captured with this image.

HONORABLE MENTION
- in no particular order -
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
SWEENEY TODD
MEAN STREETS
AMADEUS
GONE WITH THE WIND
METROPOLIS
KING KONG (1939 Fay Wray version)
CLOVERFIELD
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.