Die Hard : With a Vengeance

Note : this review is my contribution to the Beach Party blogathon hosted by Speakeasy and Silver Screenings.

Die Hard : With a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995)

John McClane and a Harlem store owner are targeted by German terrorist Simon Gruber in New York City, where he plans to rob the Federal Reserve Building.

This is the third instalment in the Die Hard franchise and my favorite one. Based on Hercules’ twelve labors and helped by Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson), John McClane (Bruce Willis) has to stop a terrorist in the biggest city of America; New York City. After the criminal bombs a commerce he plays a game of Simon says asking for McClane who is alcoholic and suspended to achieve every tasks he is asking him.

With director John McTiernan back on board, Die Hard : With a Vengeance is a fun ride of action film sequences and mind games. Set during summer, the opening with The Lovin’ Spoonfull track Summer in the City gets us into the mood. Then Michael Kamen embarks us on a great soundtrack with a use of When Johnny Comes Marching Home that fills some of the best scenes of the film. Some bits of his score from the first two film are reused but they all blend together to get us on the edge of our seats.

I remember going to the theater on May 19 1995 with two of my friends, I was eleven years old at the time and I was only one who haven’t seen the other films from the franchise. However, I was becoming a Die Hard fan. Even if the first film of the now five entries is by far the best and one of the best films of all time, Die Hard : With a Vengeance is my favorite one. The setting, my favorite city and almost my second home; New York City does do something in the whole. The fact that they did not visit tourist locations and included inside local places does it for a lot. It makes us feel as we know the city from the inside. It is a nice rally race that reminds us of the first NYC action films of the 1970’s like The Taking of Pelham 123.

All in all, he third instalment in the Die Hard franchise might not be as well praised as the first one but I wanted to highlight it as a summer blockbuster entertainment. And it is everything I’m looking for when I want to catch this kind of film. It has a dear place into my film lover memory and I tend to revisit it almost every year.

La Haine

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

After local youth Abdel is beaten unconscious by police, a riot ensues on his estate during which a policeman loses his gun. The gun is found by Vinz who threatens he will kill a cop if Abdel dies.

This major hit from the wunderkind director of the time in France, Mathieu Kassovitz and the now established star Vincent Cassel, La Haine might be one of the most notorious French film of the 1990’s. Almost twenty years later, still actual and even more right on its telling of the racial, social, political context in modern France, this black and white drama is, by far, its director’s best offering.

With a bright black and white cinematography that can relate to some early Jean-Luc Godard films, the mise-en-scène and visual effects calls for a sheer admirer of Martin Scorsese and a bit of Mikhail Kalatozov. Sometimes it is a little annoying when watching a young filmmaker and being able to pin point his influence and homage. They are clear and well executed in La Haine even if they feel a bit forced and like a homework to show that he can too do those tricks.
Surprisingly, I tend to like the first half of films and sometimes I think that the second half never quite delivers from a great original idea. However, with La Haine, Kassovitz throws a better second part than his first half. Once, the camera tricks are out of the way, the plot gets subtler and the characters are getting more and more into it.

In the francophonie, La Haine left a bunch of lines that are as important as some Pulp Fiction lines. For the teens of the time of its release in 1995, it was a groundbreaking movie that was talking to them and about them. It depicted without any filter a reality that too many immigrants and French were living. In France, there’s a long record of police brutality, riots, and racial crimes. It did not solve the problems that are presented in the movie but it reflected a reality that eventhe media were not able to present to the public.

It is a difficult genre because it is hard to not fall into the cliché and also to be too partisan of a side. However, the three lead characters are not really sympathetic and yes we are on their side, we know that they are teenagers who make mistakes and do the best they can with what they have. Kassovitz doesn’t try to make them look like they are saints. At the end, it is anyhow difficult to not have a certain contempt for the French policemen.

After all, Kassovitz was a young and inspired filmmaker on the rise and he probably got the best film he ever did with La Haine. Even if he could have tone it down on the visual trickery and let the strong story resonate with long takes and a subtler mise-en-scène. Still, it is very efficient and will definitely leave a mark in any cinephile’s mind.

Mighty Aphrodite

Mighty Aphrodite (Woody Allen, 1995)

There are those directors that do nothing for you as a person and there are those who are a big deal for you because you can connect with them at a level that only a few are able to do. Amongst the vast variety of directors and filmmakers out there, Woody Allen could easily be the director that could write and direct my life. Not because I think that my life is like a Woody Allen movie or that I live a life like his, but it would be his touch and his color that I would like to have on my biography. The other possible directors are Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and obviously Stanley Kubrick.

The Usual Suspects

The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995)

Holding the spot of number 25 on IMDb's Top 250 voted by regular voters, this movie couldn't be more of an impostor than it actually is. Stealing from every cheap film noir that preceded it and using one of the most lazy plot twist of the mystery plot: the whodunnit. Lazy because almost anybody can make a whodunit. It is a film form that besides involving a main mystery doesn't really involve a character examination and more often than not uses stereotypes and worn out techniques of dissuasion and cover up. It is, for a younger audience a very entertaining film filled with many suspenseful elements and a detective oriented plot. When observed with a cinematic eye and appreciation this Bryan Singer picture looks pale and very 1990's television. Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie should have get some Agatha Christie novels beforehand and learn a little more about the whodunnit and its mastery.

I know I'm being rude about this and there are probably hundreds of its fans who'll disagree with my opinions but I would recommend another Noir inspired film like Rian Johnson's Brick ten times before I would recommend The Usual Suspects. One can compare this kind of film like a sweet bubble gum. It tastes good at first sight but after a little while it is tasteless more than anything else and you throw it away without really ever thinking about it.

Dead Man

Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)

The films of Jim Jarmusch have this European contemplative quality. They also can be categorized as pretentious, mob mocking, and condescending. Jarmusch often uses cinephilic references to distance the masses or to "cast them out" and contempt the mainstream Cinema. Anyway, I like his films but I'm far from being his biggest fan.

In the case of Dead Man, his unique Western, shot entirely in a beautiful black and white starring Johnny Depp we understand that he uses two popular elements of mainstream Cinema; the western genre and a popular name: Depp. We are in the presence of a great film, but the distance is taken with the use of the black and white. Jarmusch off beat and black humor gives a light touch to the heaviness of the film. The photography is clear and recalls the beautiful westerns of John Ford (see The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).

The story of the Indian taking care of the reincarnated William Blake (Johnny Depp) is interesting and original. Although once again Jarmusch is working around a central concept and he manages to make an entire movie with it. You get the feeling that he is a true author and he never takes any compromise to attain his goal as a story teller. he builds his atmosphere around his central concept the whole thing is working really well.

Despite being pretentious, his films are really simple to follow and sometimes too simplistic in their content. Their rhythm are slow, if not off beat and they bring us as far as Jarmusch wants them to go.

Dead Man is a very enjoyable little film set in the Western genre but garmented with philosophical amplitudes.