War (part 2)

Aki:

Nobody really found the original Rogue’s body, right? That should be used in the plot. So Rogue vs Rogue II. No, it’s a comedy.

Aki

I should have been clearer. Rogue, the original, is dead. John Lone killed him, shot the rest of his face away, put his own wedding ring on Rogue’s finger, then burned down his house, so that Rogue’s bones would be taken for John Lone’s body.

Ok, here’s what I missed, and it wasn’t long:

Statham gets a call from new-Rogue. I was wrong in thinking Statham had figured it out, he still thinks Rogue is Rogue. Jet Li tells him to meet ‘Where we first met’ so that part was right in my guess: the movie ends in the warehouse by the docks where it began.

Statham and Jet Li have a terrific fight. Jet Li is not wounded; even having his arm half cut off makes no difference to him! Corey Yuen directed the fight scenes, and they are up to his usual standard of excellence.

At the climax of the fight comes a moment of pause and Jet Li reveals who he is. At first Statham can’t believe it but then he does. ‘Look into my eyes, John. They’re the only thing the surgeon can’t change!’

One more flashback, of when Lone set fire to his cabin. Out on the road he finds Rogue’s car, in the trunk is a suitcase with money, guns, passports and presumably everything he needs to take Rogue’s place.

‘Jesus, Tom, is it really you? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It was the only way I could get at Shira. But why did you betray us?’

‘They said they just wanted to rough you up for shooting Rogue in the face. I tried to stop working for him so many times. I couldn’t. Can’t you forgive me, Tom?’

‘Tom Lone is dead. There’s only Rogue now.’

Jet Li aims his gun at Statham. There is no forgiveness in him.

But Statham knows he has stationed a sharpshooter with rifle back there. When Jet Li stands up so the shooter gets a clear shot, Statham leaps up between them. Jet Li fires, but the sharpshooter holds his fire so as not to hit Statham; Statham crumples to the ground. The sharpshooter looks through his scope for another shot but Jet Li, Rogue, Tom Lone, is gone.

A final set of shots show Jet Li getting into his sports car, driving off, and driving away across the Golden Gate Bridge.

…

So I was wrong that he had nothing to live for. The sequel is going to feature Jet Li as Rogue (if there is a sequel) but since we only saw Statham’s body on the ground, he might still be alive. I think they cheated there a little bit, and instead of what I guessed (Jet Li would die but not-die) they did the other way, and Statham died, but they can say in the sequel he was just wounded.

I must say seeing Jet Li drive away was not satisfying.

But one other thing I never made clear: we never see the original Rogue’s face. In the warehouse prologue, before he’s shot in the face, his face is in shadows or offscreen. When he comes to kill Tom Lone and family, he wears a mask; probably to cover the half-shot-up face.

So, the only scenes where we see Jet Li and know it’s Jet Li, he is a good guy, though we think he’s a bad guy.

Ah!

So you got the ending right, almost. You liked the movie, though?

The movie is crap! But I like Jet Li, I like Jason Statham, the stunts are good. Moreover, they use a flashy jump-cut music-video style that usually I hate, but I found it worked for me in this movie. I wish I could tell you why or how it worked. Partly I think it worked because the jump-cuts were not in there only to be flashy, but they sped up the storytelling, moving the story along faster. But I think it goes beyond that.

(5 May 2009)

War (part 1)

Hi Aki,

A couple nights ago I watched War which stars Jason Statham and Jet Li. Statham basically plays a cop in San Francisco. Jet Li plays a professional assassin who is playing the Yakuza against the triads to start a war. And Statham is obsessed with this ‘Rogue’ assassin because ‘Rogue’ killed Statham’s partner (John Lone) 3 years ago.

Nobody has ever seen Rogue, there are no pictures of him.

He has had plastic surgery several times, changing his face.

He was trained by the CIA but years ago he rebelled against them and went to serve the Yakuza (one specific clan) as an assassin.

He is known only by the very particular bullets he uses (yeah, right!).

Statham is one of those tough cops who know it all, can speak Japanese at least, maybe Mandarin as well. He lives for his job, which caused his wife to divorce him years ago, shortly after his partner was killed, with all his family, by Rogue (after a raid they show as the movie prologue, Statham and Lone break into a smuggling operation where Rogue is killing people, a fact Statham and Lone learn when they find the special spent cartridges only Rogue uses, on the floor. Lone manages to shoot Rogue in the face, Rogue falls into the water of San Francisco bay, presumed drowned, though no body is found. A few days later, Statham is driving to Lone’s cabin in the hills for barbecue, when Rogue breaks into Lone’s house, shoots Lone in the face, and then shoots Lone’s wife and kid in front of him. By the time Statham arrives, the house is a burned down, smoking ruin, the police and fire department are there, only bones of the bodies – but Statham does find one of the special bullet cartridges there.

It’s suggested that this even tore up even Statham, leading to his wife divorcing him.

Now Rogue is back, and he seems to be playing Statham against the Yakuza, the Yakuza and triad against each other.

The climax comes when Rogue kills the triad boss, but lets his wife (improbably, a Latina!) and little girl go, contrary to the orders of the Yakuza leader. The Yakuza leader learns of this betrayal, and orders Rogue killed – but nobody can kill Jet Li. Even when the Yakuza boss wounds him horribly, Rogue has the upper hand, and is about to kill the Yakuza. ‘Why are you doing this? Why?’

Rogue answers, ‘Because 3 years ago, you ordered a hit.’

‘I order many hits!’

‘This one … was different!!!’

So flashback: we learn that after Rogue killed Lone’s wife and daughter, Lone got free, turned the tables, killed Rogue.

In the three years since, Lone has masqueraded as Rogue, having plastic surgery to look like what Rogue would have looked like (remember both of them have just been shot in the face). And all this time he has worked to create this war and lure the Yakuza boss to San Francisco (the clan boss of this Yakuza group has always stayed in Tokyo for some reason too complicated to get into. And for some reason Lone finds it easier to engineer this 3-year campaign to set triad against Yakuza instead of doing what you or I would do and buying a plane ticket to Tokyo!!!)

In response, the Yakuza guy tells Rogue/Lone: it was your partner. He was working for me. he’s the one who’s really responsible!

Cut to Statham in the park, looking mournful. He is not only the kind of cop who knows the underworld, he’s smart to boot: he has been asking, ‘Why would Rogue start a war between the triads and Yakuza?’ Now, it seems, he has his answer: it seems as though he knows who ‘Rogue’ really is.

The showdown is all set up, when…

…when the cable box changed channels! We have the recorder set to record a comedy show every Thursday night at 9.30.

So I didn’t see the end!!!

Now, how does it end? This is another puzzle like Gossip (remember that one?).

We know everything going up to the climax. It looks like the toughest cop is up against the toughest bad guy (who is not a bad guy after all, but who has done horrible things, though only to criminals, for revenge).

Who will win?

• Will both survive and make peace? (No – not in a violent movie like this!)
• Will both die? (maybe, but isn’t that a downer?)
• Will Statham defeat Jet Li /Lone and find some sort of redemption? Does he have some sort of explanation for what he did? Something that Lone/Jet Li might forgive? (I don’t know about this one. It really doesn’t look like anybody could beat Jet Li, but he’s had one arm just about hacked off by the Yakuza boss, so he’s not 100 percent here)
• Will Jet Li / Lone defeat and kill Statham? But then what’s left for Lone? This is the sort of character arc that ends only in death.

(This is how you tell about that: if along the path of vengeance the guy meets a girl, or a child, or an animal – something to save, something to give him a personal relationship, a reason to live – then he can live on after achieving vengeance. But if he finds nobody, then he will die, always, 100 percent of the time. The only people who fit this bill are the triad widow and child. But Jet Li has had no real relationship to them; he is his usual cold, distant self with the little girl.)

So I don’t see how Jet Li can live at the end of this.

I don’t see how Statham can survive either.

What’s your prediction, if you didn’t see it yet? I got to record the end tonight, and I’ll watch it first thing tomorrow morning.

I really don’t know what I predict. Statham has to pay for what he did. Lone has nothing to live for. And yet I don’t see them both dead and the audience looking at two corpses when the credits roll, do you?

Hey, I know your solution! They start kissing in the middle of fighting, and end up going to some state that allows gay marriage!

Haha!

I had another thought as I was walking home: here’s how I would do it.

Big fight between Statham and Jet Li. Reveal that Rogue is Lone.

Statham explains. Wife sick, kid with cancer – something that needed money and the family required he sell out.

Jet Li exacts revenge. But he leaves Statham alive – just maybe shoots him in the face.

Then a sniper Statham’s pal shoots Jet Li. Jet Li falls into the bay just like Rogue did (all this should happen on the scene of the prologue). They are sure Jet Li is dead, but no body is found.

Statham, wounded, leaves flowers on the grave of Lone/wife/child and walks, limps, away.

– this makes Statham pay, makes Jet Li pay, but leaves both men, potentially, alive so we can have War 2 sequel.

I will tell you what really happened when I hear your prediction.

(5 May 2009)

Gossip Concluded

Hi Aki,

The ending to Gossip – we only missed maybe 5 minutes, and the ending was disappointing.

Things were looking bad for Derrick, so he got his passport and packed a bag and was about to flee the country. Meanwhile Jones is kicked out and drinking coffee down the street. She sees Travis buy a guy from some people, looking crazy. She goes to the apartment.

But Derrick is slipping out through the roof exit and there Travis is waiting, blaming him, pulls the gun and forces Derrick down into the loft. Jones bursts in, telling Derrick that Travis is crazy and has a gun – then she sees Travis there holding the gun on Derrick. She tries to talk Travis into putting the gun down. He wavers, looks away–

–that’s when Derrick jumps him, grabs the gun. There is the usual struggle and the gun goes off. Derrick and Travis react in shock, we are not sure for a few moments, did Derrick get shot, or did Travis. Then Travis looks, and we cut to Jones, who has blood on her blouse, and she is sinking down.

Derrick clutches her but she is shaking, going pale and weak. Derrick tells Travis to call 911. Travis does, but then he remembers that the police are downstairs looking for him, they must have heard the shot, he must go tell them. Derrick tells him to wait, they have to get ‘the story straight’ and at all costs Travis must say it’s an accident, that he had the gun.

Travis and Derrick argue over this, and at last Derrick bursts out, ‘Why do you keep talking about Naomi? I raped the bitch but I never killed anybody!’

Behind him we see him on a monitor and just after this the monitor replays him saying the line.

Jones stands up. Travis opens the door and the communications professor is there. Through another door we see the policemen and down the stairs from the roof walk Naomi and Beau. It has all been a plot cooked up by them; even the ‘cops’ are just hirelings of Naomi’s family, not real cops at all. The ‘liar’ Derrick is caught at last.

Jones walks out and turns back to say to Derrick, ‘at last I lied better than you.’

The End.

It was disappointing.

(written around 4 March 2009)

Gossip Part 1

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Gossip from a few years ago. I recorded it off cable. But something, well, more on that later.

Story has three obnoxious college students in New York at some ritzy college having fun and drinking. They share a course in communications or sociology or media studies or something, and they have to to a paper, so they decide to do one together. Since in class that day there was a discussion of the difference between gossip and news, they decide to start a rumor, which is entirely false, and then tell a couple people, and watch it spread across campus to see what it becomes.

Okay, here are our three heroes:

• Cute charming guy who can lie really really well, and is very very rich: Derrick.
• Studious not so rich girl who is beautiful but she has dark hair and wears glasses, so we know she is smart: Jones.

• Artistic guy, who is not so self-assured, somewhat shy: Travis.

These three have become friends somehow, and Derrick lets Jones and Travis live in his million-dollar loft apartment which is so trendy and great it made me sick. Think Beverly Hills 90210 territory, that’s kind of the image they are promoting here. Or Cruel Intentions – though Cruel Intentions was ten times better than Gossip on every level.

The movie is well cast and well shot and quite pretty, but since I hate rich kids like that, well, I was never empathizing with any of our three heroes.

Back to the story: that night Jones and Derrick go to a party. Jones is bumped by rich girl Naomi, and kind of dislikes her, though she doesn’t really know her. Then later at the bar Jones is told a rumor by a girl she knows, who’s friends with Naomi, that Jones is sleeping with the handsome (also obnoxious) media/sociolog/communications professor. Somehow Jones get the impression that Naomi is the source of this rumor, and so she get mad at Naomi.

Later in the party, Derrick is making out with a girl, and they go up to the bathroom upstairs in this fabulous loft apartment of whoever it is who’s throwing the party. They are making out, then the girl starts wanting to puke because she’s had so much to drink. Derrick guides her to the toilet to puke, and goes to get a wet tissue to cool her head and wipe her mouth. But when he steps back out to get the tissue, he sees campus hotshot Beau making out with Naomi on the bed.

Now, Naomi has the reputation of being a virgin who’s ‘afraid of sex’ (another rumor, more gossip – see where all this is heading yet?) but she’s clearly turned on by Beau, but she’s also drunk, and she’s saying, ‘I’m drunk, no, stop.’ Then–

Then the girl in the toilet makes a sound. Beau looks up. Derrick ducks back into the shower and hides. Beau comes looking, and finds only the sick girl sitting on the floor by the toilet, half out of it. He goes back to Naomi, who is now passed out on the bed.

Derrick comes out of the shower to watch what they do. We don’t see what he sees.

Next we see Beau coming back downstairs. He passes his buddy who says something like, ‘I saw you with Naomi, did you get any?’ And he smiles like they had sex.

On the way back from the party, Jones and Derrick and Travis (who’s almost passing out) decide to make the rumor about Beau and Naomi. Actually it’s just Derrick and Jones who decide this, as Travis has in fact passed out on the sidewalk, and they have to drag him back to the loft.

The next day they start the rumor, making it small: Beau and Naomi had sex in the bedroom where the party was.

For awhile it seems fun as the rumor grows wilder and bigger and stranger, and the three chart its course. But when it gets back in horrible form to Naomi herself, she is shocked, and she goes to the police, and says that she’s sure that Beau raped her while she was passed out from being drunk.

Now it’s serious, and Jones (the girl, just to remind you – Derrick and Travis are both guys) says they ought to tell what they know. That Derrick ought to tell what he knows; he saw that nothing happened, after all, and that was the whole point of the project, that the original rumor was not true.

Only now Derrick says he’s not so sure nothing happened at the party that night. He didn’t see everything, he says, and it might have happened, and if Naomi is sure, he doesn’t want to call her a liar.

So they do nothing. ‘it’s just words, it won’t hurt anyone,’ Derrick assures Jones. But since Naomi’s family are very rich and powerful, there is pressure, and the police charge Beau with rape.

Jones goes to the police, after unsuccessfully trying to get Derrick to tell the truth, but the police only think that Jones is in love with Beau and trying to protect him. In truth Jones doesn’t even know Beau, but Derrick has planted this lie/rumor/gossip to make sure even if Jones goes to the cops they don’t believe her – which they don’t.

So Jones goes to Naomi to tell her the truth. Only she does it in roundabout way, asking Naomi, ‘are you sure what you said is true?’ ‘I’m sure,’ Naomi answers. They talk a bit and Naomi doesn’t seem like such a bitch, as Jones at first thought. Then Jones says she is living as flatmate with Derrick, and Naomi screams, ‘what is this some kind of sick joke? Get out of here! Out!’

Jones, shaken, goes to Derrick to confront him. He swears that he never knew Naomi, they might have gone to high school together the way Naomi said, but he didn’t know her. He starts kissing Jones, and she at last succumbs to his handsome charm, and they have sex.

But the next day Jones still can’t get it out of her head, so she takes a taxi to danbury connecticut to the private prep school where Derrick and Naomi attended. She finds the old yearbooks and in there are photos of Derrick and Naomi together. She also speaks with a woman who works in the school office, who tells her that Derrick raped Naomi when they were in high school together, but it was all hushed up, she didn’t press charges.

Jones confronts Derrick with the information, and he admits yes he dated Naomi, they were in love, and one night they almost did it, but she suddenly pulled back and pushed him away. After that the rumors/gossip/lies started circulating that he had raped her, and this ruined his life – he was almost kicked out of school, lost his friends, his family just left him with a trust fund but won’t speak to him anymore.

After this Beau is arrested for rape. Again Jones makes efforts to get the truth out, to no avail. She even calls Naomi again to try to get at the full truth, but Naomi just hangs up on her.

One night Derrick goes to see Naomi. He meets Beau along the way, now out on bail. Beau starts beating Derrick because he has heard that Derrick raped Naomi in high school. ‘well did you rape her?’ Derrick counters. ‘we are both in the same place Naomi is crazy, she told a lie about you, she told a lie about me.’ Beau is confused, seems to believe Derrick. Then Derrick hits Beau, kicks him, beats him up.

Derrick goes on to Naomi’s. He forces his way in, and they talk about the past. He finally says, ‘you ruined my life, with that lie, and now We’re even, because I ruined yours. I was there in the bathroom and I saw you and Beau and nothing happened, but I told everybody that he raped you, now your life is ruined like mine was.’

Naomi freaks out, attacks Derrick, scratches him. He takes a picture of her from high school and leaves. As he goes, Travis is there watching outside the dorm building, though Derrick doesn’t see him.

Next day Derrick and Jones start to reconcile. ‘why should I let Naomi ruin my life?’ asks Jones. But then Travis comes in. he tells them Naomi is dead – she took pills or something and killed herself last night.

Now the police come and see Derrick when he’s alone in the apartment. Derrick lies and says that while he knew Naomi from high school, he didn’t go to her dorm room. ‘Beau says he saw you going into her dorm last night.’ ‘Well Beau has been charged with raping her, and he will say anything.’

Derrick later persuades Travis to lie for him, and to say that he took the picture of Naomi from her room and that she was still alive, after Derrick left. Travis seems to agree.

With no one else to listen to her, Jones goes to the communications professor and tells him the whole story. The next class, the professor lays out the whole story and accuses Derrick. Derrick defends himself. When the other students call him a ‘murderer’ for spreading the rumors, he answers that they all spread the rumor more than he did, they are really responsible, not him. He leaves.

At the apartment Derrick finds the cops, with a warrant, searching everywhere. Derrick asks Jones what she told them. She says she told them he went to Naomi’s dorm room, and if he had told the truth, it wouldn’t matter what she said.

Frustrated, Derrick shows the cops Travis’s room where there are pictures of Naomi all over the wall. Throughout all this time, Travis has been taking pictures of Naomi and blowing them up, to make a visualization of the gossip/rumor campaign for their project. Now Derrick tries to convince the cops that these pictures prove that Travis is unstable, a psycho, and more likely to be the killer. Travis runs out of the apartment.

But the detective says, ‘We will find Travis and ask him about all this. But meantime we have a dead girl with skin under her fingernails and I bet the hair on your hairbrush will match dna with that skin, and your fingerprints are all over the dorm room, and we found this picture of Naomi in your sock drawer, so don’t leave town. I can’t take you in without a warrant, but I don’t think that will be hard to get, so I’ll be back.’

The detectives leave and then –

– and then –

– and then the recording stops, because the time scheduled on hbo was a mistake!

So I didn’t get to see how it turned out.

The film is also broadcast tomorrow though so I have it set to record that, and I’ll report later, but in the meantime:

Who did it? Can you guess correctly? Can I guess?

I don’t think it was Jones, she is the nice one. But it would be a big big shocking twist if it turned out to be her all along.

It could be Travis, maybe he got obsessed with Naomi with all these pictures, what was he doing outside her dorm thenight Derrick was there and she died?

It could be Derrick, but that’s the way it’s all heading, so I doubt that, but maybe?

It could also be Beau – he was there outside the dorm that night also, after all.

And finally, the detectives have not said conclusively that it was murder. it’s rather vague. She was drinking that night, and had pills. It might have been suicide, or it might have been accidental overdose.

– or –

– or maybe Naomi isn’t dead after all, maybe this is just a game she is playing to turn the tables and get back at Derrick for the rumor? We didn’t see her body or anything, we don’t even know these ‘cops’ are real cops, and even if they are, we know Naomi’s family has political pull, and might just be pushing the cops to do this to teach Derrick a lesson and learn the truth about whether Beau really raped Naomi and if anything happened that night.

(Of course, medical evidence is never mentioned, because that would spoil it. Naomi is said to be – another rumor, no more than that – a girl who’s a virgin, afraid to have sex. So if she was raped in high school, there would be evidence of that. If that rape never happened, there would be evidence if Beau had raped her. But that is skipped over in the movie, because the point is that ‘you can never tell the truth of what happened’ where rumors, gossip, are concerned. What do you really know, and how do you know it?)

So – what is your theory?

I lean toward Naomi being behind it.

Number two after that would be Travis.

And I think Derrick will end up dead, or in jail, and we won’t feel sorry for him, because he has been such a lying bastard through the whole movie. But all the same the charges against him will be false. He will be the victim of lies and rumors and gossip – a fitting end.

Oh yes, here is the cast, as that can give you some clues as it does me:

• Derrick is James Marsden.
• Jones is Lena Headey
• Travis is Norman Reedus
• Beau is Joshua Jackson

• Naomi is Kate Hudson.

The movie was made in 2000.

Naomi as Kate Hudson is the odd one. Kate was a bigger star than any of these others, as far as I can see. Her part was smaller, and she doesn’t even get a juicy death scene? that’s one reason I lean toward thinking she is not dead and is pulling the strings, maybe using Travis, maybe not, but she is manipulating all these rumors to get the cops after Derrick.

But what’s your conclusion?

I’ll tell you what I find out tomorrow after I see the end.

(written around 3 March 2009)

Fight Club

Hi Aki,

We saw Fight Club tonight.

The first time I saw it I didn’t like it at all and didn’t even watch all the way.

Then I saw something that gave away the ending. I watched it again and really liked it.

My dad ordered it so I saw it for the third time – second time all the way. I liked it a lot still.

But you know, it’s funny – the film is really dated now. it’s basically a rejection of a world that is now passed. Such stories and ideas can’t survive the things they reject.

But positive stories and ideas that are a celebration of some ideal can live on long after the world they sprang out of has died. Even though these ideals are formed as the opposite of the world they are born in.

Fight Club is nihilistic in that all it can manage to offer malcontents is the pleasure of destroying the world that oppresses them. It doesn’t offer them any answers or any way forward past the destruction. As such maybe it actually helps the world continue: we destroy the world through the movie, through the book, so we feel better about our oppression, and we don’t move to actually destroy the world. We just watch a movie and rent the dvd and watch it again.

Now that world is destroyed, and we all have bigger and better things to think about than childish temper tantrums.

(written around 12 February 2009)