Tommy Lee Jones is Mitch, a troubled Vietnam veteran who has just lost his job and who can not convince his ex-wife to let him spend any time with his kids. One day, Mitch receives a letter from Mike, a friend who has recently committed suicide. In the letter, Mike explains that he has been stashing weapons and explosives in Central Park. Before he discovered that he had cancer, Mike had been planning to take over the park as a symbolic protest against government bureaucracy. Now that Mike is dead, it is now Mitch’s job to declare, “The park is mine!”
When Mitch takes over the park, he announces that he does not want to hurt anyone. Instead, he wants everyone in New York to spend some time to thinking about their lives. “There’s a lot of people like me, who don’t feel like they have any control over their lives,” he says, “Think about how you treat people and how you want to be treated.” Meanwhile, he will be camping out in the park for 72 hours and anyone who tries to come after him runs the risk of getting shot or blown up. Then he orders everyone to vote for Bernie Sanders and make America great again. Or at least he would if this film had been made today, instead of in 1985.
Deputy Mayor Dix (Peter Dvorsky) is so evil that he makes Ghostbusters‘s Walter Peck look reasonable. Dix is personally offended that Mitch has taken over Central Park. He is so offended that he is even willing to first call out the National Guard and then hire foreign mercenaries to sneak into the park and track Mitch down.
Reporter Valerie Weaver (Helen Shaver) also sneaks into the park so that she can interview Mitch. When Mitch captures her, he shouts at her, “GET NEKKID!” No, it’s not that type of movie. Mitch just wants to make sure that she’s not carrying any weapons on her. (The Park Is Mine was made for HBO. Even in the 80s, HBO understood the importance of getting nekkid.)
One of my favorite things about The Park Is Mine is that, after he goes to all the trouble to paint his face and dress up in camouflage, Mitch still spends the entire movie wearing a blue Yankees cap that would make him an easy target for anyone with a scope.
My other favorite thing is that, after Mitch asks everyone to think about how they treat people, a crowd of people gathers outside the park. When a reporter interviews them, a burly man with a hockey mullet and dressed in denim steps up and says, in a perfect Canadian accent, “My name is Elton Costanza. I’m from Queens!”
I’m not sure if Elton Costanza is meant to be related to George Costanza. He does look like he could be a distant cousin.
The rest of the film’s depiction of New York City is about as plausible as Elton’s accent. For a film taking place in New York in the 80s, the streets are too clean and the people are too friendly. Even when that crowd shows up to support Mitch, they are the most polite crowd that anyone could hope for. That may be because. though The Park Is Mine takes place in New York, it was filmed in Toronto.
The Park is Mine is both thoroughly implausible, totally heavy handed, and stupidly entertaining. Tommy Lee Jones is one of the few actors who can actually sell a line like, “The park is mine!” and Yaphet Kotto provides good support as a policeman who is sympathetic to Mitch. Peter Dvorsky is all too believable as the ultimate example of heartless bureaucracy. The most interesting thing about The Park Is Mine is that it comes down, without a hint of ambiguity, on the side of a domestic terrorist. That probably would not be allowed to happen today. In fact, the entire film feels like a relic of a past age, a celebration of an individualistic philosophy that America once embraced but, ever since the trauma of 911, has been in the process of abandoning. If Mitch was unhappy with America in the 80s, imagine how he would feel about the Patriot Act, NSA spying, too big to fail bailouts, and campus safe spaces.
Like Let’s Get Harry, The Park Is Mine is pure 80s hokum that deserves a nostalgic DVD release.
Hopefully, one with Tommy Lee Jones providing commentary.
Let’s Get Harry opens deep in the jungles of Columbia. The newly appointed American Ambassador (Bruce Gray) is touring a newly constructed water pipeline when suddenly, terrorist drug smugglers attack! The Ambassador, along with chief engineer Harry Burck (Mark Harmon, long before NCIS), is taken hostage. Drug Lord Carlos Ochobar announces that both the Ambassador and Harry will be executed unless the U.S. government immediately releases Ochobar’s men. However, the policy of the U.S. government is to not negotiate with terrorists. As grizzled mercenary Norman Shrike (Robert Duvall) explains it, nobody gives a damn about a minor ambassador.
Remember how, in the 1990s, every aspiring indie director tried to rip off Quentin Tarantino by making a gangster film that mixed graphic violence with quirky dialogue, dark comedy, and obscure pop cultural references? That led to a lot of terrible movies but not a single one (not even Amongst Friends) was as terrible as Mad Dog Time.
If you ever wondered whether a movie would ever be able to capture the excitement of watching a total stranger silently play an uninspired video game, Hardcore Henry is here to answer your question.
You’re the leader of the free world and a masked terrorist has just launched a deadly attack on a major U.S. city. He has blown up a major sporting event on national television. He has killed the mayor. He is allowing a crazy sociopath to preside over show trials. The terrorist demands that you neither send troops into the city nor do you aid anyone who is trying to leave. What do you? If you are the President played by William Devane in The Dark Knight Rises, you say, “Okay,” and then breathe a sigh of relief when Batman turns out not to be dead after all. William Devane also played JFK in The Missiles of October and President James Heller on 24. Neither of them would have backed down to Bane as quickly as the President in The Dark Knight Rises.
Hey, Mr. President, when Snake Plisskin nearly gets killed trying to save your life, you might want to try showing a little gratitude. Escape From New York ends with Snake asking The President who he feels about all the people who died rescuing him from New York. When the President can only mutter a few words of regret, Snake responds by destroying the tape that would have presumably prevented World War IV. Way to go, Mr. President! Would it have killed you to shed a few crocodile tears, at least over the fate of Cabbie?
In a word, overrated. Yes, President Whitmore did lead the army that repealed the alien invaders but he would not have had to do that in the first place if he had prevented the Earth from being invaded in the first place. How many warning signs did the Whitmore administration ignore until it was too late? And how much funding did his administration cut from the military that the Air Force was left in such poor shape that they could get shown up by Randy Quaid in a crop duster? As for Whitmore’s famous speech and the battle that followed, a sequel to Independence Day is coming in June so he must not have done that good of a job of scaring the aliens off.
“What the fuck do you call 125 murders in 5 years?”
Through the Shattered Lens 