Ex-cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for the murder of a small-time criminal. Joe swears that he’s being framed but his public defender, Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell), isn’t sure that she believes him. While Jenny’s boyfriend (Ted McGinley) makes a fortune trading stocks and Joe’s former mistress (Kay Lenz) tries to keep her mobster boyfriend from finding out about the affair, Jenny tries to outsmart prosecutor James Nicks (Ned Beatty) and Joe tries to find the real killer.
Tubi sent me to this film after I finished up RawJustice. When I saw that it was a Burt Reynolds films, I figured that I would take a chance with it but this one turned out to be one of Burt’s lesser films. Joe Paris feels like he might be distantly related to the cop that Burt played in Sharky’s Machine but PhysicalEvidence doesn’t have any of that movie’s style or grit. Burt doesn’t come across like he wants to be in the movie and he and a very miscast Theresa Russell have next to zero chemistry onscreen. This was Michael Crichton’s last film as a director and he directs in a stolid, made-for-television manner.
Supposedly, this was originally meant to be a sequel to the thriller JaggedEdge, with Glenn Close and Robert Loggia reprising their roles from the earlier film. When that fell through, the movie was refurbished into PhysicalEvidence, with Theresa Russell and Burt Reynolds replacing Close and Loggia. I think the film would have worked with Close and Loggia because, based on JaggedEdge, they were believable as people who had a close relationship and would do anything to help each other. Burt Reynolds and Theresa Russell come across like they can’t even stand to be in the same room together. Better get a new lawyer, Burt! This one seems like she might be planning on framing you herself.
When his daughter is strangled, New Orleans Mayor David Stiles (Charles Napier) hires ex-cop-turned-bounty-hunter Mace (David Keith) to keep an eye on the main suspect, Mitch McCullum (Robert Hays). What the mayor doesn’t know is that his daughter’s murder was ordered by Deputy Mayor Jenkins (Stacy Keach) and now, both Mace and Mitch are being stalked by a crooked cop named Atkins (Leo Rossi). Also getting involved in this mess is a hooker with a heart of gold named Sarah (Pamela Anderson), who is angry because Mace earlier stole his clothes while trying to get the jump on a bail jumper. Sarah and Mitch soon fall in love. Mace is good with a gun and Mitch turns out to know karate (because he watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies growing up) but the film’s high point is when one of the bad guys is taken out with a giant novelty dart.
The plot is dumb and David Keith comes across as being a discount version of Patrick Swayze but this film does give the always likable Robert Hays a good role and fans of Pamela Anderson (and you know who you are) will definitely appreciate at least two scenes in the movie. Actually, Pamela Anderson isn’t bad in Raw Justice. She’s mostly there for her looks but she still has a likable and energetic screen presence. Otherwise, this is a typical low-rent David Prior production, complete with action scenes featuring guns that never run out of bullets (unless it’s convenient for the plot) and a score that is pretty much the same guitar riff over and over again. It’s not exactly good but it is entertaining if you’re in the right mood.
This film was also released under the title Good Cop Bad Cop, which doesn’t make much sense because neither Keith nor Hays is playing a cop.
2001’s Strange Frequency is an anthology film. Usually, I hate anthology films because it always seems like the viewer ends up with one good story and three mediocre ones. As well, the anthology format is one that sometimes seems to be specifically designed to bring out the worst tendencies in otherwise talented directors. Often times, they seem to treat the anthology format as a lark, an excuse to show off their technical mastery without really paying much attention to anything else. The results often feel thematically shallow.
Well, guess what? I liked Strange Frequency. It was a lot of fun. Each of the four stories mixed horror with music. The first story features two heavy metal fans (Erik Palladino and Danny Masterson) who, after a car accident, find themselves in a club where disco is played nonstop. For them, it’s Hell. For me, it sounds like a fun afterlife. (Yes, it’s not easy to watch Danny Masterson nowadays but he does suffer in this story.) The second story is about a middle-aged serial killer (Eric Roberts) who targets younger hitchhikers, specifically because he dislikes their taste in music. However, when he picks up a young grunge fan (Christopher Kennedy Masterson), he suddenly finds himself being targeted. It turns out that this hitchhiker targets old people who won’t shut up about Woodstock. They then meet an older man who has never forgiven the baby boomers for rejecting big band music. In the third story, a rock star (John Taylor) who enjoys destroying hotel rooms is confronted by a maid (Holland Taylor) who can literally clean up any mess. (“I want my headlines!” the rock star shouts as he realizes he’s never going to get credit for destroying his current room.) Finally, the fourth story stars Judd Nelson as an A&R man who has the ability to find up-and-coming stars but whose discoveries inevitably end up dying.
All three of the stories were well-done and genuinely clever. My favorite was the second story, which featured Eric Roberts giving an enjoyably unhinged performance as the Woodstock refugee with a hatred for Lollapalooza. The story was both clever and suspenseful and it actually had something to say about the cultural differences between the generations. As you get older, you really do come to hate whatever music came after the artists you grew up listening to. Eventually, all the Swifties will be in their 40s and 50s, wondering why the younger generation doesn’t appreciate good music about feelings.
Strange Frequency was a pilot for a series that aired on VH-1 in 2001. How come I don’t remember this show? The pilot was actually really good! Thank you to Australia’s own Mark V for telling me about this pilot and letting me know that it was on YouTube! Check it out if you get a chance.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
The first time I ever remember seeing Hong Kong actor “Sean” Lau Ching-Wan on the screen was in the Jet Li film, BLACK MASK. I was watching the film because of Jet Li, who had recently hit it big in America as a bad guy in LETHAL WEAPON 4, but I remember thinking that Lau’s cop character was pretty darn cool too. I didn’t think of him again for awhile, but then I bought a book about Hong Kong movies called “Hollywood East: Hong Kong Movies and the People who Make Them,” from author Stefan Hammond. This book was Hammond’s follow up to “Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the Head,” one of the books that truly educated me on the cinema of Hong Kong. “Hollywood East” spent a whole bunch of pages discussing Lau Ching-Wan and his movies. I connected the dots between this very interesting actor I was reading about and that cool cop in BLACK MASK. So I did what I do. I bought one of his movies, and then another, and then another. Soon I was obsessed with watching all of his movies. One of those first movies I remember reading about in “Hollywood East” was THE BIG BULLET.
In THE BIG BULLET, Lau Ching-Wan is the badass cop-with-an-attitude, Sergeant Bill Chu, who doesn’t take crap off of anyone, including his superiors on the force. After belting one of his so-called superiors following a botched raid, Chu finds himself transferred to the Hong Kong police force’s “Emergency Unit,” a clear demotion for a man of his experience and arrest record. Here, the loner must work as part of a team to answer the various calls that come their way on a daily basis. This isn’t always easy, as one of the fellow cops on the unit is the extremely by-the-book Inspector Jeff Chiu (Jordan Chan). They clash immediately. Other members include the spunky Apple (Theresa Lee), the nerdy gun nut (Cheung Tat-Ming), and the old guy (Spencer Lam). This somewhat ragtag group finds themselves in the uneviable position of trying to stop an extremely dangerous group of thieves, led by The Professor (Yu Ronguang) and Bird (Anthony Wong). We’ve seen their willingness to kill at the drop of the hat, and the Emergency Unit doesn’t seem to be a proper match for these criminals. Or are they??
If you’re looking for a strong action film, and you’ve never seen it before, I present THE BIG BULLET. Director Benny Chan was emerging as a top notch Hong Kong film director, and THE BIG BULLET seemed to announce that he was throwing his hat into the ring as an action specialist when some of Hong Kong’s best action directors were taking their talents out west. There’s a sequence about 25 minutes into the film where our heroes find themselves in a shootout with the main villains that will leave your heart racing in the same manner as some of John Woo’s or Ringo Lam’s best work. And the actors are the very best that Hong Kong has to offer. Lau Ching-Wan, while not a dashing star in the mold of Chow Yun-Fat, easily carries the film on his shoulders with his natural charisma and tremendous screen presence. Even now, almost 30 years later, Lau Ching-Wan continues to dominate the Hong Kong film industry from an acting standpoint. He is nominated in 2025 for the Hong Film Award for Best Actor for his role in the film PAPA (2024). The excellent Francis Ng has a small, but pivotal role as Chu’s friend and colleague on the police force who helps him save his job at the beginning of the film. I also like Jordan Chan as the by-the-books member of the team who comes to realize that there are times when you may have to bend the rules to stop dangerous criminals. In a role that starts out extremely unlikable, he wins us over as the film progresses. As far as the criminals go, it would be hard to get much better actors for the parts than Yu Rongguang (IRON MONKEY) and Anthony Wong (BEAST COPS, THE MISSION). These excellent actors are cool and evil and we definitely want to see them get their comeuppance before the credits roll.
Overall, THE BIG BULLET may lose a little bit of steam in its second half, but it’s still a great example of how strong Hong Kong action films were in the late 90’s. It’s also an example of the excellent talent in Hong Kong films even as Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li, and John Woo had already moved on to Hollywood. THE BIG BULLET has a special place in my heart since it was one of those formative Lau Ching-Wan films in my life. But nostalgia aside, it’s still a damn good action film, and I recommend it without any reservations!
In this 33-minute short film, we watch as Edie Sedgwick appears to have a conversation with herself. She’s not, of course. Instead, she’s sitting next to a television monitor that is showing a video of Edie having a conversation with an off-screen someone who was to the right of her. Meanwhile, the “live” Edie is having a conversation with an unseen person who is sitting to the left of her. This creates the illusion of the two Edies having a disjointed conversation with each other whereas, in reality, we’re really not sure who either Edie is talking to or what they’re even talking about. As was typical with Andy Warhol’s Factory films, the soundtrack is notably muddy. As well, the video below is actually a film of the film, which I think Warhol perhaps would have appreciated as long as he got paid.
Okay, it’s not for everyone. Obviously, if you’re not a fan of Warhol’s films, this experimental piece is not going to change your mind. In fact, it’ll probably make you a little bit angry. But, for me, it’s a fascinating time capsule, a true product of the era from which it came. Warhol’s experiments might not seem spectacular today but that’s because we’ve grown use to experimentation. Experimentation has become a mainstream concept. Warhol, on the other hand, was making his underground films at a time when the term “underground” actually meant something.
As well, this film features Edie at the height of her fame. It’s a bit sad to watch now, knowing how fleeting her obvious happiness would be. Warhol’s films always framed Edie as being just slightly out of reach, from both the viewers and the filmmaker. With the muddy soundtrack, one watches the multiple Edies in this film and wonders what is going through their mind, This is a film that embraces the enigma of existence and image.
Eric Roberts, Phillip Rhee, Simon Rhee, and Chris Penn all return for more martial arts action in 1993’s Best Of The Best II!
In the years since the American team’s quasi-victory over the Korean team in the first Best Of The Best, Travis (Chris Penn) has fallen on hard times. While his former teammates, Alex (Eric Roberts) and Tommy (Phillip Rhee) attend to the day-to-day operations of running a martial arts studio in Las Vegas, Travis spends his time fighting in underground “colosseum” matches. These matches, hosted by Weldon Mardano (Wayne Newton), are modern-day gladiatorial contests where the fighters often battle to the death while a bunch of rich people watch and cheer. (We can tell they’re rich because they all wear tuxedos). “There are no rules!” the crowd shouts as Travis defeats opponent after opponent.
Travis is convinced that he can defeat the colosseum’s German champion, fearsome Gustave Brakus (Ralf Moeller). It turns out that Travis is wrong. Travis loses to Brakus and is promptly killed after the crowd starts to chant, “Die! Die! Die!” (In Brakus’s defense, he may have thought they were just chanting, “The! The! The!”) (Actually, don’t ask me how that works in Brakus’s defense. I really didn’t think that joke through.) Travis’s death is witnessed by Alex’s young son, Walter (Edan Gross). Travis, Walter, and Tommy go on the run, ending up at Tommy’s boyhood home. Tommy, it turns out, is half-Native American and his bitter uncle, James (Sonny Landham), trains Tommy and Alex for their inevitable fight against Brakus. Dae-han Park (Simon Rhee) also shows up, saying that he owes Tommy a debt for not killing him at the end of the previous film.
BestoftheBestII is an improvement on the first film, if just because it doesn’t take itself seriously at all and it cheerfully embraces and celebrates the absurdity at the heart of the storyline. Just the fact that one of the film’s villains is played by Wayne Newton should tell you everything you need to know about this film’s style. This is a pure Vegas film, full of glitz and neon and plenty of tuxedos. Eric Roberts even wears a tux at the end of the movie. Just as in the first film, Roberts does most of the acting while Phillip Rhee supplies the action. Roberts is a bit less emotional in this film. If he spent the first film continually on the verge of tears, he spends the second one trying not to smile at the silliness of it all. Towards the end of the film, you can actually see him starting to laugh at Wayne Newton’s over-the-top performance and it’s actually kind of a nice moment. Don’t take this too seriously, the film seems to be saying, We’re not! Just enjoy the fights!
BestoftheBestII is definitely an improvement over the first one, even if it is unfortunate that neither James Earl Jones nor Sally Kirkland returned. (Then again, if you were the Tony-winning, widely-celebrated, universally-beloved, and very much in-demand James Earl Jones, would you have returned?) BestoftheBestII doesn’t take itself too seriously and, as a result, it’s far more entertaining than you might otherwise expect.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
There aren’t that many times in your life when you watch a movie that completely catches you by surprise. My initial viewing of the GOD OF GAMBLERS circa 1997 is one of those times in my life. Up to that point I had only seen Chow Yun-Fat in the John Woo classics THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED, and I was beginning the process of trying to find and watch as many of his films as possible. When my Tai Seng VHS tape of GOD OF GAMBLERS arrived in the mail, I was very excited to pop it in the VCR and watch another badass Chow Yun-Fat classic! I wasn’t quite prepared for what I was about to see…
The film’s opening credits feature Ko Chun (Chow Yun-Fat), the world famous, mysterious “God of Gamblers” in Tokyo for a match with Ueyama, (Yasuhiro Shikamura), Japan’s top gambler. Ko Chun looks unbelievably cool in his dark suit and slicked back hair (Killer style), as he strolls into the casino, accompanied by the film’s rousing main theme, flanked by his beautiful girlfriend Janet (Sharla Cheung) and his personal assistant and friend, Ko Yee (Fong Lung). After being soundly defeated by Ko Chun, Ueyama asks the God of Gamblers to take on the dangerous Singaporean gambler Chan Kam-sing (Hon-Lam Pau), the Demon of Gamblers, in a high stakes poker match on his behalf. It seems the “demon” had beaten Ueyama’s father in a gambling match a few years earlier by cheating, ultimately driving the man to suicide. Ko Chun agrees to help Ueyama get his revenge. Knowing it could get dangerous, Ueyama assigns Dragon (Charles Heung), a former Vietnamese special forces soldier, to be Ko Chun’s bodyguard. The stage seems to be set for badass action and tricky gambling and then….
Walking home a night later after besting another group of duplicitous gamblers, Ko Chun falls into a booby trap that was set by Knife (Andy Lau) to screw around with his Indian neighbor who’s been getting on his nerves. Ko’s resulting fall and bump on the head causes him to have amnesia and revert to the mental level of a small child. Knife and his girlfriend Jane (Joey Wong), take him in and try to figure out who he is. The couple soon learns that the only thing that can calm him down and keep him from screaming is giving him his favorite chocolate treats. Knife, who’s obsessed with gambling, but is not very good at it, soon enlists “Chocolate,” his nickname for the stranger, to help him with some of his get-rich-quick, gambling schemes. Along the way, Knife discovers that Chocolate has amazing gambling skills even though he acts like a child. At first he tries to exploit him for his own purposes, but over time Knife begins to care about Chocolate and decides he will try to get him some help.
Will Chocolate get hit by a car, smash his head through the driver’s side window and turn back into Ko Chun? Will his friend Ko Yee, who’s always been jealous of Ko Chun’s success, align himself with Chan Kam-sing and murder Janet? Will Dragon turn out to be one badass bodyguard? Will Ko Chun / Chocolate grab two pistols and kill a group of assassins in slow motion? Will the God of Gamblers face off against the Demon of Gamblers in international waters and win? Will he remember Knife who has turned out to be a good friend to him?
For the first 30 minutes of GOD OF GAMBLERS, I was getting the exact Chow Yun-Fat I was expecting with his unmatched charisma completely dominating the proceedings. And then he hits his head. When I first watched this film I had never seen Chow in a comedy so I wasn’t expecting how over the top he would go. Watching the “coolest actor in the world” scream uncontrollably and beg for chocolates was something I wasn’t emotionally prepared for at the time and I specifically remember that “WTF” feeling that came over me. I had also never seen a “Wong Jing film” so I didn’t understand the extreme changes in tone that the film would undergo, one of the trademarks of his films. One minute I’m watching a suave Chow Yun-Fat, the next minute I’m watching crude, goofy comedy with Andy Lau and Shing Fui-On, and a little later there’s a man raping a corpse. What I soon realized was that in the world of 1980’s Hong Kong cinema, the rules are much different than American films and you never know what you might see next. That unique nature of Hong Kong cinema hooked me completely and it became my obsession for the next several years with Chow Yun-Fat as my favorite leading man. GOD OF GAMBLERS gave me an entertaining film while opening up a whole new world of entertainment.
GOD OF GAMBLERS was a huge box office hit and started a new craze in the Hong Kong film industry for gambling films. Stephen Chow, another huge star in Hong Kong, released the movie ALL FOR THE WINNER just a year later in 1990 where he would play the “Saint of Gamblers.” It would be an even bigger hit than GOD OF GAMBLERS. The Saint of Gamblers and the God of Gamblers’ protege Knife (Andy Lau) would join forces in Wong Jing’s proper sequel GOD OF GAMBLERS II (1990). Gong Li would even join the fun with Stephen Chow in GOD OF GAMBLERS III: BACK FROM SHANGHAI (1991). Chow Yun-Fat finally returned to the role of Ko Chun in 1994 in THE RETURN OF THE GOD OF GAMBLERS. While not as strong as the original, it was another crazy entry in the series and another huge box office smash.
The last things I want to mention about GOD OF GAMBLERS are its two main stars, Chow Yun-Fat and Andy Lau. Chow Yun-Fat is incredible in the role of Ko Chun / Chocolate. He’s so cool and he’s also genuinely funny. He’s so charming in the role and it’s no shock that Hong Kong audiences and critics were completely enamored by him. When this film was made in 1989, Chow had won the previous two years Hong Kong Film Awards (the Hong Kong Oscar) for best Actor for John Woo’s A BETTER TOMORROW (1986) and Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE (1987), a film that would heavily influence Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (1992). Chow would get nominated twice for his 1989 movies GOD OF GAMBLERS and ALL ABOUT AH-LONG, winning the award for the latter. Dominating both the box office and awards shows, Chow Yun-Fat was the unquestioned greatest leading man in Hong Kong cinema at the time. Andy Lau is another huge star in the world of Hong Kong entertainment. A dual threat, Lau was not just a leading movie star in the industry, he was also one of its biggest pop stars, where he is known as one of the “Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop.” To this day, Andy Lau is still a huge star in Hong Kong cinema. With that said, I’ve never thought that his character of Knife was one of his best. He’s a pretty selfish asshole for much of the film before having a change of heart near the end. He was so good in the following year’s A MOMENT OF ROMANCE (1990), as well as later films like RUNNING OUT OF TIME (1999) and INFERNAL AFFAIRS (2002). He’s incredibly talented, but his shallow character ultimately suffers in comparison to Chow Yun-Fat’s incredible performance in this film.
If it’s not obvious, I highly recommend GOD OF GAMBLERS to any adventurous viewer who’s willing to simply follow the story wherever it goes. If nothing else, just sit back and enjoy Chow Yun-Fat in one of my favorite performances in Hong Kong cinema, or any other cinema for that matter.
“No!” James Earl Jones says towards the end of 1989’s The Best of the Best, his already deep voice made even more imposing by the use of slow motion.
“No, Tommy, no!” Eric Roberts joins in as he watches martial artist Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) internally struggle with whether or not to strike a blow that will definitely kill his opponent and, if James Earl Jones is all gravitas and stern wisdom, Eric Roberts is all emotion and desperation.
The Best of the Best is a bit of an oddity, in that the script features just about every martial arts tournament cliche imaginable (right down to the other “bad” team having a history of killing people in the ring) but those cliches are all acted out by a surprisingly distinguished cast. I counted four Oscar nominees (and one winner) in the cast. James Earl Jones (nominated for The Great White Hope) plays Coach Couzo, who gets a team of Americans prepared to fight in an international tournament. Sally Kirkland (nominated for Anna) plays their trainer, who worries not just about the team’s physical health but also their mental burdens. Eric Roberts (nominated for Runaway Train) is Alex Grady, the former martial arts champion-turned-auto worker who makes the team despite having a bad shoulder. Louise Fletcher (who won for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) plays Alex’s mother, who looks after his son while Alex is off getting ready to face the Korean team. And then there’s Chris Penn (who seems like, if not for his early death, he would have eventually been nominated for something) as the arrogant Travis, a cowboy who can throw a punch.
(The American team is filled out by John Dye as Virgil, an intellectual Buddhist, David Agresta as Sonny “I’m Italian” Grasso, and Phillip Rhee, who not only plays Tommy but also wrote the film’s script.)
Roberts gets top-billing in this and he does get a lot of important moments, including a scene where he breaks the Coach’s rules so that he can visit his son in the hospital. That said, the story centers around Phillip Rhee’s Tommy. Tommy’s older brother was killed in the ring by the one-eyed Dae Han Park (Simon Rhee) and — wow, what a coincidence! — that just happens to be who Tommy needs to beat for the Americans to win the big tournament. Both of the Rhee brothers actually are martial artists and they are very convincing in the fight scenes, which is good because neither Phillip nor Simon Rhee were particularly strong actors. Eric Roberts is not a particularly convincing martial artist but it doesn’t matter because he acts the Heck out of every scene in which he appears. What happens when you bring method intensity to the type of martial arts film that Jean-Claude Van Damme would later make his specialty? You get scenes of a heavily-bruised Eric Roberts crying but, because Roberts is a good actor, the tears feel earned. Still, whenever I saw Alex’s eyes starting to glisten, I imagined James Earl Jones saying, “Noooooooo!” How can you win the world’s greatest tournament when you’re constantly on the verge of tears? Well, maybe you don’t need to win. Maybe you just need to show that you have more honor than anyone else there.
Best of the Best is a classic of its kind. There’s nothing surprising about it but it’s entertaining in its own dumb way and, in the end, it reminds us that America doesn’t need medals to be the best. It just needs Eric Roberts.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
Actor James Woods is great at portraying attorneys. Whether it be as the real life Assistant D.A. Bob Tanenbaum in the excellent T.V. Movie BADGE OF THE ASSASSIN (1985), the crusading hippie Eddie Dodd in TRUE BELIEVER (1989) or the namesake of the excellent TV series SHARK (2006-2008), Woods knows how to play that unique combination of intelligence, shrewdness, and sneakiness to perfection. In 1995, he further applied those skills when he portrayed real life attorney Danny Davis in the HBO movie INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL. This movie is based on the McMartin day care sexual abuse case that began with horrific allegations in 1983 and ended in 1990 with zero convictions and all charges dropped. During that time, the McMartin Trial became the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history.
I’ll just go ahead and challenge any person to watch INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL and not get filled with righteous anger about the complete failure of our judicial system. Add to that failure the complete breakdown of our media to cover events in a fair and impartial fashion with even the smallest shred of objectivity. Does any of this sound familiar? As good as James Woods is in the central role, the star of this film is the true story itself. We watch as various people in positions of authority and power act completely out of self interest, including Davis himself at first, with the pursuit of the truth or justice not even the slightest consideration no matter what the evidence suggests. In actuality, the truth was hidden by the prosecution in pursuit of convictions that never came. The shit that this family was put through with coerced evidence that had no chance of standing up to the slightest bit of scrutiny is disgraceful. It’s one of the most infuriating films I’ve ever seen and it’s just as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1995. The performances are spot on, beginning with Woods’ central performance as Danny Davis and moving on to Shirley Knight in a Golden Globe winning portrayal of Peggy McMartin Buckey, Mercedes Ruehl as prosecutor Lael Rubin, Lolita Davidovich as child therapist Kee MacFarlane, Sada Thompson as matriarch Virginia McMartin, and Henry Thomas as the odd but innocent Ray Buckey. Produced by Oliver Stone and directed by Mick Jackson (THE BODYGUARD, VOLCANO), this button pushing, thought provoking film would win both the Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe awards for best Made for Television Movie in 1995. It’s truly an excellent film and should be seen by any person interested in a fair judicial system or unbiased media.
It’s Good Friday and I’ve taken the day off from work to relax and spend some time in reflection and prayer on this important day on the Christian calendar. I woke up this morning and wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed, so I started flipping through Netflix’s selection and came across RUDY (1993). I try not to overwatch RUDY because I love the way it makes me feel, and I don’t want it to become so familiar that I lose that feeling. But it’s been a couple of years, so I decided to give it another spin.
As I’m sure most of you know, RUDY is based on the life of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger (Sean Astin), the 3rd of 14 children from a family in Joliet, IL, who dreamed of playing football at Notre Dame. There were a number of obstacles to that dream, namely that his family didn’t have much money, he didn’t have good grades, he was 5’6” tall and he didn’t have much football talent. What he did have was heart, and we watch Rudy persevere as he goes to school at neighboring Holy Cross while trying to get accepted in Notre Dame. Nothing ever comes easy for Rudy, but through determination, hard work, and sheer will he eventually makes his way to Notre Dame, joins the football team’s practice squad, and gets to suit up for one game in his senior year.
RUDY is a movie that affects me deeply. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise as it was written by Angelo Pizzo and directed by David Anspaugh, the team behind HOOSIERS (1986), one of my very favorite movies of all time. While there will never be a movie about my life, I know all too well what it’s like to love something so much, but not really be designed for it. In RUDY, the character Fortune, played by Charles S. Dutton in an incredible performance, tells a discouraged Rudy, “You’re 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years.” Those were basically my specs when I was a senior playing high school basketball in a small town in Central Arkansas (5’7,” 125 and I couldn’t jump). I loved the game so much and put everything I had into it during my pee wee, junior high and senior high years. In 1991, I was named to the Arkansas’ All-State high school basketball team. Due to my lack of athleticism, I would not be able to play at the collegiate level, but I’ve always felt pride that I was able to maximize what talent God did bless me with in the game of basketball. That hard work ethic has served me well throughout my life. It’s so inspiring to watch a movie where a person perseveres against difficult odds, faces disappointments, keeps moving forward, works harder than everyone else, faces more obstacles, and then finally gets to see that work pay off. In a day and time where so many want all the rewards that life has to offer, without putting in any of the work, the story of RUDY stands the test of time and needs to be seen and heard.
Ex-cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for the murder of a small-time criminal. Joe swears that he’s being framed but his public defender, Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell), isn’t sure that she believes him. While Jenny’s boyfriend (Ted McGinley) makes a fortune trading stocks and Joe’s former mistress (Kay Lenz) tries to keep her mobster boyfriend from finding out about the affair, Jenny tries to outsmart prosecutor James Nicks (Ned Beatty) and Joe tries to find the real killer.
Through the Shattered Lens