KWIF: Decision to Leave (+4)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. All watched this past Saturday. It wasn't even a sick day.

This Week.
Decision To Leave (2022, d. Park Chan-wook - Crave)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999, d. John McTiernan - AmazonPrime)
The Brood (1979, d. David Cronenberg - AmazonPrime)
The Double (2013, d. Richard Ayoade - Tubi)
Payback: Straight Up (2006, d. Brian Helgeland - AmazonPrime)

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I have recently come to describe myself as a "pop culture tourist". After a few months of adopting this moniker, I realized that some might think it to mean I go out into the world, traveling to places to visit sets and locations from movies or going to theme parks or whatnot. While that sounds lovely and all, I'm not that adventurous, nor do I have the liberty or finances to do so at this time.

Instead it means I like to visit pop culture domains, spend some time there, see the sights, hear the sounds, and then move on to somewhere else. I resist becoming part of any particular community of fandom, and while I might gain more knowledge or awareness on a particular popular culture aspect, I am by no means an expert. I adopted the "pop culture tourist" ideology as a way to absolve myself of not having to know everything on a topic, of being up to the level of a lifelong or die hard fan.

I write this all to denote that I'm not nearly well-versed enough in Park Chan-wook's filmography to comment on how this film deviates from his previous efforts, nor can I really say I went into it with any particular expectations.

Looking back on my recent reviews of older Director Park films watched about a year ago, I recall had intended to tour his entire filmography along with the Blank Check podcast, but I fell off their pacing and couldn't catch up. So I come into Director Park's latest film pretty cold. Like, I'm not even expecting his "Vengeance Trilogy" level of violence or uncomfortableness. I literally had no expectations.

Within minutes of the film starting, I had a big smile on my face. Director Park (I use this honorific as a result of the various Oscar wins for Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, where cast and crew, upon accepting their award, would refer to him as "Director Bong". It seems fitting to do the same for Park Chan-wook) is an incredible visual stylist, both very playful and intentional. Insomniac Busan police detective Jang Hae-jung (Park Hae-il)  and his partner are on the case of a death that appears to be accidental, a rock climber found at the base of a mountain. Among the many different, unusual shots Director Park cycles through, one is of ants crawling over the dead man's face, including across his eyeball. Then the camera cuts to the POV of that eyeball, and the underbelly of the ant as it crawls across. 

If it's even a two-second-long shot I'll be amazed, but it's just one of dozens in the first ten minutes, and one of hundreds throughout the film. Before we even know what the film is, Director Park is setting a tone that tells you this isn't going to be your standard murder mystery, and to expect the unexpected.

A few minutes later, the dead man's widow is in the police interrogation room and Director Park delivers a shot with the woman, Song Seo Rae (Tang Wei), in the foreground, her face in profile obscuring two-fifths of the frame, with Hae-jung partially obscured in the the middle, and his partner in the background. Only Hae-jung is in focus. It's a striking image, and I'm sure other directors have produced such shots before, but it's a striking image that I could have just stared at like a photo hanging at a gallery for a very long time.

The pacing of the opening act of the film is pretty breakneck, and even when it slows down, it's still dispensing an incredible amount of information that is kind of hard to process, and would probably be just as intense even without having to read subtitles. Even though he's dispensing information at such a rapid clip, he does so with intention, such that every bit of information appears relevant to what we're watching. And every bit of information is relevant. Even if you didn't catch it, or don't retain it, when the information does become relevant again, Director Park gives you a prompt without making it feel like he's spoonfeeding you the film or insulting your intelligence. It's usually through conversation and the character understanding the context of something he or she saw earlier in the film, such that the audience is realizing something the same time as a character. It's so impressively savvy in its storytelling.

At it's heart, Decision to Leave is a romantic noir. Hae-jung is married, but he works in Busan while his wife lives and works in Ipo. They mainly see each other on weekends. They have conversations about how their arrangement works for them, and in some ways make them a better couple than others. They are familiar with each other, contented in their own way. But with this latest investigation, with the widow Seo-rae, he is immediately fascinated by her, and his interest in her as potential murder suspect begins to turn into something else altogether.

Seo-rae is a femme fatale in this rather vibrant noir, and while her backstory may read like a textbook femme fatale, Tang Wei's performance sidesteps all the cliches. She has a harrowing backstory as a Chinese immigrant, permitted to stay because of Korean heritage. She has a career taking care of the elderly, as she did with her grandmother, whom she helped commit suicide in the late stages of her illness (which is why she had to emigrate). Her husband, the dead man, was an immigration officer, and her hero knight in shining armor, ensuring she didn't get deported, except he was also abusive and marked her as his property, having his monogram tattooed upon her as it was stencilled on so much of his property. It's pretty clear where the detectives would see a motive, but her alibi is rock solid. 

Hae-jung isn't convinced that she is what she presents herself to be and blurs the line between investigating and stalking her, however unlike The Dual (see later in this post), it's absolutely clear in Park Hae-il's incredible performance that his sleep-deprived mind is so addled that he's not even really that clear on his own motivations for tracking Seo-rae so persistently. But Seo-rae is very aware of the attention he gives her, and, takes a strange comfort in his attention, rather than offence. It's clear from Tang Wei's performance that she understands this isn't the proper response she should have, but she can't help it.

The film twists, it time jumps, then twists and twists again, but not in a Shyamalan-style. The transitions are much, much smoother. While there is a detective bit to this noir, it's really all about the relationship between this man and woman. The chemistry is electric, but it remains unfulfilled until deep into the movie, and is ever the sexier for it. There are sex scenes with Hae-jung and his wife, but they are perhaps the most staid and unerotic moments of the film. They are scenes that tell us much about Hae-jung and his wife as a couple, as well as provide some curious (and funny) insight into how his mind is constantly working.

At 139 minutes, it is a fairly long film for a noir, but it's never boring and earns its runtime bolstered by two incredible lead performances. It's like the film has its own built-in sequel where the time jump midway is a natural break point if you need it, but the two sides of the film make for a tremendously fulfilling whole. The ending is a real all-timer, wickedly potent in concept and visual execution.

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What spurs me on to watch the films I watch? What prompts this tourist to visit these cinematic locales? Sometimes it's a stupid boy project, like my Go-Go-Godzilla series where I watched all the Godzilla series (soon to be a Ga-Ga-Gamera series), sometimes it's just pattern programming - whether it's films from the same actor, director, composer etc or similiar titles or themes or original+remake - and often, since I discovered it, it's following along with the Blank Check podcast as they go through a director's filmography film-by-film.

I've not been great about following along consistently, as witnessed with Director Park above, and with their follow-up series I only got through the first phase of David Fincher's career before I hit a stumbling block that I've yet to get back to. They're currently on John McTiernan, a director who has the greatest action movie of all time under his belt (that'd be Die Hard) and a few other incredible classics (Predator, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard With A Vengeance) and more than a few massive swings and misses (The Last Action Hero, Medicine Man, Rollerball).  

The Thomas Crown Affair I recall in 1999 was a pretty big, buzzy hit, featuring Pierce Brosnan as an art thief and Rene Russo as an insurance investigator out to prove he did it. It was the steaminess between the two that had audiences flustered and nodding and winking at each other as they exited the theatre.

But, it was 1999, and I was all about The Matrix and The Phantom Menace and Fight Club and Toy Story 2 and The Sixth Sense and Austin Powers and Galaxy Quest and Go and Three Kings and and and.... The Thomas Crown Affair seemed to me a film for the Boomers and not a nerdy kid who was leaning heavily into this new school of filmmakers.

But as a middle aged person, I'm now in the target demographic for The Thomas Crown Affair, and, well, is not aping Brosnan's James Bond in any way, which is the thought I've long held about the film. But that's neither a positive nor negative sentiment.

The story is largely told with Catherine (Russo) as our POV character but it is overloaded with the male gaze. Russo and Brosnan are hottt tttogether, with some mega-sttteamy scenes, but the movie never seemed to know what, tonally, it wanted to be. I could never tell what the film wanted us to think about this couple, if they were playing each other or falling for each other or both. And what were we supposed to get from Leary and Russo's dynamic? The film doesn't seem to know what it wants the audience or the characters to feel about what's going on, and that would works so well if the intention were to put us in Catherine's confused emotional mindstate, but it's too busy ogling her to do so. I mean, yes it was kind of a revolutionary thing for a Hollywood picture to ogle a 45 year old woman in the 90's, but it loses its focal clarity every time it does so.

A large part of the blame on the film's nebulous tone is the Bill Conti score. It's too playful and at times total grated Parmesan, confusing the intention of scenes more than it enhances them, and rarely locking into any particular emotion.

The Dunaway therapy sequences seem like they're from another movie altogether, especially considering the POV is so heavily leaning to Catherine's. These are the only real attempts to get in Thomas's head and each one felt jarring. I'm assuming they were late-stage additions to accommodate the stunt-casting of the female lead from the original 60's version.

While liking parts, I didn't really enjoy this as a whole. As Denis Leary's police detective points out in the end, it's all kind of Rich People BullShit and I think our collective tolerance for RPBS has gone down dramatically in the 25 years since the film came out.

I found myself often wondering about Thomas' manservant Paul (James Saito) and what his life was like outside of Thomas Crown's household. What does he get up to in his days? Does he know about Thomas' illicit activities? Does he like Thomas or is he just hired help and is resentful of this uber entitled prick? Paul is such a non-character, yet such a presence, it was odd we get no sense of who this guy is.

I also wanted much more Frankie Faison. Is there a warmer presence on screen than Franke Faison. Every time he left a room the temperature went down. But there were other thing going on here putting the temperature back up, if ya know what I mean.

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The Blank Check crew have not done David Cronenberg yet, but it's only a matter of time. Cronenberg's films are purposefully lurid and uncomfortable, making them simultaneously attractive and off-putting. I have seen many (but not all) of his films over the years, and there are those that I like, a couple that I really like, a few that disturb me, and maybe one or two that don't work at all.  I would love to step through them all chronologically, but that's a pretty heavy investment that would likely take a dramatic toll on anyone's brain to watch too much Cronenberg in concentrated doses.

I saw C-berg's first two films, Shivers and Rabid, back in the late 90's on cable TV. I was weirded out by both of them and have been meaning to watch them both again ever since. I hadn't seen The Brood before, and to be honest, between these three titles, I keep forgetting which story applies to which title.

The tale here finds a single father, Frank (Art Hindle) picking up his daughter from the wife Nola (Samantha Eggers) he is separated from.  She lives in an experimental psychiatric clinic where the chief psychiatrist, Dr Hal (Oliver Reed) a fully accredited doctor, runs experimental "psychoplasmic" treatment on his patient. When Frank discovers bruises all over his daughter's body he blames the wife and the clinic, and prepares for a legal battle.

It's the 70's so taking a child away from their mother is a tough road to hoe, so Frank starts reaching out to former patients, where he learns that psychoplasmosis turns negative emotions into tumorous lesions which the body tries to expel, but some patients are left hideously deformed. While Frank is away Nola's mother and later her father are killed by a snow-suited child-sized troll-like creature, but when Frank is attacked it kind of "runs out of gas" and dies. The autopsy scene is sans the Cronenbergian gore, but the sheer delight on the medical examiner's face as he dispenses all the weird inhuman details of the creature is so in the director's wheelhouse.

I'm sure in the 1970's the shocking revelation in the final act would have been truly horrifying, but for a modern audience, we see what Cronenberg is telegraphing by the end of the first act. And yet...when it gets to that actual reveal... well it's still shocking. For everything you might have been expecting (and you're probably pretty close to being right) you still weren't prepared for the visuals.

On its surface, it's a pretty silly movie, especially when it comes to the murder sequences, which are anything but intense or scary. It doesn't help that Howard Shore, very early in his scoring career, apes elements of the Psycho soundtrack so blatantly as to feel pale and derivative. 

And yet, it's not a picture so easily dismissable, despite the kind of cheesiness it has. Cronenberg is poking at and peeling away scabs with this one. He's talking about childhood trauma, about parental abuse and an early conception of its cyclical nature. He's talking about mental health and in its nascent years how it is perhaps exploitative (he will come back to the subject again). It is dealing with the intensity of having a partner who is having psychological issues, and what that does to one's own mental well being.  It's not exactly saying anything concrete, but it's opening up the topic for conversation in the midst of a very odd horror film.

The Brood feels entirely a part of Cronenberg's early efforts (or what I recall of them), as if is a member of a loose quartet with Shivers, Rabid, and Scanners. He goes Hollywood after Scanners with Videodrome and The Dead Zone, the Fly and Dead Ringers, which, along with Naked Lunch again feel like a different age of Cronenberg, a bolder, more audacious, still steeped in genre yet less pulpy, more psychological. He's a director that continues to evolve in different phases, and I really need Blank Check to give me the impetus for that start-to-finish watch of his filmography.

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At some point I need to do a stupid boy project watch/rewatch of doppleganger movies. Enemy, Us, Dual, and The Double being the ones that come immediately to mind. I love stories where people discover an alternate version of themself.

British comedian/panel show guest/travel show host/actor/writer/director Richard Ayoade's The Double is less about the discovery another version of themselves than the alternate version descending upon them as a better, more confident, more outgoing, attractive and successful version of them. 

Jesse Eisenberg is an actor I traditionally dislike quite a bit, but I've been finding of late I've been appreciating him much more. He definitely has tendencies in his performances, twitches and quirks and a general way of being that, in larger-scale movies, drives me up the wall. But in a smaller picture like this, or the Art of Self Defense, or Vivarium, I've been pretty comfortable with his performances, maybe even positive towards them.

Here he plays Simon James, the ultimate of ultimate sad sacks. Charlie Brown as a 20-something in the working world, only less self aware and even more depressed, insular and isolated. Everything that can go wrong will when he's around, and he's completely incapable of expressing himself, so he just accepts it. He may be bothered by the world around himself, and his inability to affect change in his own life, but the only regret he seems to have is being unable to talk to the girl at work, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). And then James Simon shows up at work, wearing his face, taking credit for his work, drawing all the attention and respect and admiration, he's the complete opposite of Simon, and yet everything he wishes he could be...until he spends time with James and realizes that James is the worst version of himself, not the best. Like a huge overcorrection, confidence-gone-nuclear.

Aesthetically, this film is 100% my thing. Every frame of it. With the inspiration of Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, this turns to brutalist interiors, severely cold and sterile environments full of archaic-looking technology with limited use, scant buttons, and lots of oversized cabling protruding from it.  It's retro-futuristic but as if Russia won the Cold War in the 1970s and left it to the oligarchs to keep society running.

My biggest hang-up with the film is the trop of the socially awkward introvert obsessing over, stalking and creating a narrative in his head about a girl, and then winning over that girl? It's problematic wish fulfillment. Ayoade seems aware of this problem, even has Hannah call it out explicitly, yet Simon doesn't really achieve any self-awareness of his behaviour or express genuine remorse for it. I get that Simon thinks he sees in Hannah, through his telescope, someone sad and lonely like him that he can relate to- another ghost of a person- but that's the fantasy a socially awkward introvert does build within their mind when they start obsessing over someone else they don't truly know because they've never truly interacted with them in any meaningful way. I've been that guy (to a much lesser and creepier degree) so I understand Simon pretty well. But here, in presenting Simon's illicit observations of Hannah's persona as truth, and it becomes a dangerous cliche to uphold, validating the idea that obsession from a demure introvert is harmless or comes from a place of good intentions. The film denies Simon a lesson in how his behaviour, as innocent and innocuous he believes it to be, should have actual consequences.

I liked it a lot but with complex reservations.

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I talked about reading Darwyn Cooke's adaptations of certain volumes of Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)'s Parker series of novels when I reviewed the most recent adaptation of the character into an ill-fitted Jason Statham vehicle. Payback, written and directed by Brian Helgeland, imagines Mel Gibson as Westlake's tough guy with a moral code.

The film was originally released in 1999, but in a heavily compromised form. A simple search of it all finds that Gibson, an Oscar-winning director, was asserting his then mega-watt starpower over Helgeland and ultimately had the writer-director removed once principle shooting was completed. Rewrites were made and reshoots were done, and a compromised film was released that much less resembled Westlake's The Hunter. It was still a modestly successful film at the box office, but I don't know that it left a lasting impact on anyone.

But Helgeland somehow managed to get control back a half decade later, with a re-edit and tightening of the picture getting it close to his original intent and much, much closer to Parker as a character and The Hunter as a story.

This "Straight Up" edition is actually fairly remarkable in its faithfulness to the rhythms of the story (as I know it at least through the Cooke graphic novel adapataion). There may be some tweaks for it's setting 40 years in the future of the late-1990s but it feels in spirit with the story.

It finds Gibson's Porter (not "Parker" as Westlake notoriously refused anyone using the name without committing to multiple pictures, something his family should have posthumously kept true to for the awful Statham picture) having just returned to New York after 5 months away. He was betrayed by his wife and his partner after a job, shot in the back twice and left to bleed out and die. 

Hale and healthy, he's back for his cut of the money his partner stole, but the man used it to pay his way into The Outfit, the top tier of organized crime in NYC. It doesn't matter to Porter who has his money, he's going to collect it from someone. The film finds him weaving his way through his past life and the networks of New York, with one singular goal in mind.

It's a very brisk and enjoyable production. I read up on the differences between the "Straight Up" edition and the 1999 cut, and it seems worlds apart. Parker is a man of a very specific code of conduct, and he's also a man of little emotion. Porter is the same, only a bit more emotional. Where Parker is very cunning, tough-as-nails, and a bit of a hulking brute (and a total prick), Gibson's Porter is a bit more of a stumbler, less cunning, tough, but not hulking (Gibson is not a big man). Gibson strives for the emotionlessness of the character from the page, but can't help but emote. It's in his nature as a performer, so he reveals more of a softer side to Porter, but in facial expression only.Porter is also less of the tank that Parker is, and he feels more like a loose cannon than a man fully in control. It's just what Gibson brings to the role.  It does get pretty uncomfortable watching Gibson slap his wife in the film around. Very uncomfortable. It's true to Parker, but also true to Gibson, so, ick.

But, stepping out of that meta-aspect, good movie. I would love a stupid boy project marathon of all the other Parker adaptations from the 60s and 70s but none are readily available to stream or rent, except maybe Gross Point with Lee Marvin (who seems like a total Parker to me).