Montessi (Kim Coates) and his men have taken over a water filtration plant, are holding hostages, and keep threatening to poison the water supply. Rogue cop David Chase (Jeff Fahey) and Melissa Wilkins (Carrie-Anne Moss) sneak around the plant and try to stop the terrorists. David Chase is set up to be a John McClane type but instead, he only kills one terrorists and then lets everyone else do most of the work. Of course, the whole water filtration hostage situation is just a distraction so Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) can steal a bunch of bonds. Busey sits behind a computer for most of the movie, lending his name but not much else.
A good cast is wasted in what is definitely one of the worst of the many DieHard rip-offs to come out in the 90s. There’s not enough action, with Jeff Fahey as a passive hero and even the great Kim Coates reduced to standing around and doing a lot of yelling for most of his time on screen. Gary Busey is the big star here but it’s obvious that he was only on the set for a few hours and his plan for stealing the bonds never makes sense. Whenever anyone questions his plans, he says that it involves computers. In the 90s, I guess that was enough.
Watching this last night, I realized that I had seen it on Cinemax back in the day. It didn’t make much sense back then either.
The 1992 Best Picture winner, Unforgiven, begins as a story of frontier justice.
In Kansas, a young and cocky cowboy who calls himself the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) rides up to an isolated hog farm. He’s looking for Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), a notorious outlaw with a reputation for being a ruthless killer. Instead, he just finds a broken down, elderly widower who is trying to raise two young children and who can barely even manage to climb on a horse. Will Munny, the murderer, has become Will Munny the farmer. He gave up his former life when he got married.
The Schofield Kid claims to be an experienced gunfighter who has killed a countless number of men. He explains that a group of sex workers in Wyoming have put a $1,000 bounty on two men, Quick Mike (David Mucci) and his friend, Davey Bunting (Rob Campbell). Quick Mike cut up one of the women when she laughed at how unimpressively endowed he was. While Davey didn’t take part in the crime, he was present when it happened and he didn’t do anything to stop it. The local sheriff, a man named Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), had Davey give the woman’s employer several horses as compensation. The Kid wants Munny to help him collect the bounty.
At first, Munny refuses to help the Kid. But, when he realizes that he’s on the verge of losing his farm, Munny changes his mind. He and his former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), join with the Kid and the three of them head to Wyoming. Along the way, they discover that the Kid is severely nearsighted and can hardly handle a pistol.
Meanwhile, in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, Little Bill ruthlessly enforces the peace. He’s a charismatic man who is building a house and bringing what many would consider to be civilization to the Old West. When we first meet Little Bill, he seems like a likable guy. The town trusts him. His deputies worship him. He has a quick smile but he’s willing to stand his ground. But it soon becomes apparent that, underneath that smile and friendly manner, Bill is a tyrant and a petty authoritarian who treats the town as his own personal kingdom. Little Bill has a strict rule. No one outside of law enforcement is allowed to carry a gun in his town. When another bounty hunter, English Bob (Richard Harris), comes to town to kill the two cowboys, Little Bill humiliates him and sends him on his way but not before recruiting Bob’s traveling companion, writer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), to write Bill’s life story. Bill’s not that much different from the outlaws that he claims to disdain. Like them, Bill understands that value of publicity.
Unforgiven starts as a traditional western but it soon becomes something else all together. As the Schofield Kid discovers, there’s a big difference between talking about killing a man and actually doing it. Piece-by-piece, Unforgiven deconstructs the legends of the old west. Gunfights are messy. Gunfighters are not noble. Davey Bunting is the only man in town to feel guilty about what happened but, because he’s included in the bounty, he still dies an agonizing death. Quick Mike is killed not in the town square during a duel but while sitting in an outhouse. Ned and Munny struggle with the prospect of going back to their old ways, with Munny having to return to drinking before he can once again become the fearsome killer that he was in the past. And Little Bill, the man who says that he’s all about taming the west and bringing civilization to a lawless land, turns out to be just as ruthless a killer as the rest. A lot of people are dead by the end of Unforgiven. Some of them were truly bad. Some of them were good. Most of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone’s got it coming, to paraphrase Will Munny.
With its violent storyline, deliberate pacing, and its shots of the desolate yet beautiful western landscape, Clint Eastwood’s film feels like a natural continuation of the Spaghetti westerns that he made with Sergio Leone. (Unforgiven is dedicated to both Leone and Don Seigel.) Unforgiven was the first of Eastwood’s directorial efforts to be nominated for Best Picture and also the first to win. It’s brutal meditation on violence and the truth behind the legends of the American frontier. Eastwood gives one of his best and ultimately most frightening performances as Will Munny. Gene Hackman won his second Oscar for playing Little Bill Daggett.
Unforgiven holds up well today. Hackman’s Little Bill Dagget feels like the 19th century version of many of today’s politicians and unelected bureaucrats, authoritarians who claims that their only concern is the greater good but whose main interest is really just increasing their own power. Unforgiven remains one Clint Eastwood’s best films and one of the best westerns ever made. Leone would have been proud.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on Tubi!
So, after two months, I guess it’s time to finish up reviewing T and T.
I have to admit that I had to remind myself just what exactly this show was about before I watched the 13th episode of the third season. It’s not a show that really sticks in your mind when you’re not watching it. In case you need a refresher, the third season of T and T finds T.S. Turner (Mr. T) working for lawyer Terri Taler (Kristina Nicoll), who is apparently the sister of Amy Taler, the crusading lawyer that Turner worked with for the previous two seasons.
Episode 3.13 “The Curse”
(Dir by Patrick Loubert, originally aired on March 31st, 1990)
When T.S. demands that Alfredo (Sam Malkin) pay an outstanding bill for Terri’s legal services, Alfredo reacts by putting a gypsy curse on T.S. T.S. does what anyone would do. He fakes his death and has his friends hold a fake funeral in order to guilt Alfredo into paying the bill.
What?
Again, it’s been nearly two months since I last watched this show. When I was taking care of my Dad, the last thing that I was thinking about was an obscure Canadian comedy/action show from the late 80s. So, I guess I had forgotten just how silly T and T actually was. And really, I can’t fault the show for being silly. I mean, it’s a show that stars Mr. T. Of course it’s going to be silly! That said, you know that a show is running out of ideas when they trot out a gypsy curse. The idea of T.S. Turner faking his own death had potential but the episode itself just kind of fell flat. By the third season of T and T, it was obvious that Mr. T was so bored with the show that there really wasn’t much difference between Turner pretending to be dead and Turner being alive.
The majority of the episode is taken up with Turner’s “funeral,” which is held at Decker’s gym. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, especially when you consider that T and T was in its final season. Joe Casper returns and so do three of the show’s recurring crooks. But not present are Turner’s Aunt or his niece, both of whom were key characters during the show’s first season. And, needless to say, Amy Taler does not attend the funeral of the man she got out of prison and worked with for two full seasons. It really does leave the viewer wondering, once again, just what happened to Amy’s character and why the show’s third season insists on acting as if Terri has always been Turner’s partner.
Anyway, the scheme works. Alfredo pays his bill. Turner reveals that he’s not dead. The funeral turns into a party. That’s kind of nice.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!
This week’s episode of Friday the 13th is …. well, it’s not that good. Let’s talk about it.
Episode 1.14 “Bedazzled”
(Dir by Alexander Singer, originally aired on February 22nd, 1988)
With Jack and Ryan out of town to attend an astrology convention, Micki has got the antique store to herself …. or, at least, she does until she agrees to babysit a bratty kid named Richie (Gavan Magrath). Even worse than Richie are Jonah (Alan Jordan) and Tom (David Mucci), who claim to be telephone repairmen but who are actually at the store because they want to retrieve a cursed lantern that was taken from them by Jack and Ryan.
(Incidentally, they kill the real telephone repairman before showing up at the store. The real repairman is played Timothy Webber, who played Mo in Terror Train. Meanwhile, Dave Mucci played Wendy’s thuggish boyfriend in Prom Night. So, if nothing else, this episode is a footnote of sorts in Canadian slasher history.)
The cursed lantern is probably the lamest antique that the show has featured up to this point. Using the lantern, undersea divers can find hidden treasure. But after finding treasure, the lantern then has to set someone on fire. (Basically, after hidden treasure is found, anyone who is touched by a beam of the lantern’s light will burst into flames.) The man problem is that the lantern is so big and bulky that Jonah just looks silly whenever he picks it up and aims the lantern’s fiery light at anyone. It is a seriously awkward and rather impractical weapon, one that appears to not only be impossible to aim but also next to impossible to run with as well. Add to that, it turns out that the beam of light can diverted by a mirror so it’s not only a lame item but an easily defeated one as well.
It’s a shame that this episode isn’t better. Micki may have the best hair and the best fashion sense of anyone on the show but it’s rare that she ever really gets an episode all to herself. But this episode saddles her down not only with forgettable villains and an impractical cursed item but it also forces her to deal with a bratty kid. The kid survives his night at store and, by all logic, he should be traumatized for life. Instead, he tells his mother about everything that happened and his mother laughs about what a great imagination he has. Seriously, though, shouldn’t Micki have some magic wand that she could use to erase Richie’s memory or something? It seems kind of dangerous to let a kid that bratty know that the store is full of magic items.
Anyway, this was a forgettable episode so I’m keeping the review short tonight! Fortunately, next week’s episode will be much better.
Montessi (Kim Coates) and his men have taken over a water filtration plant, are holding hostages, and keep threatening to poison the water supply. Rogue cop David Chase (Jeff Fahey) and Melissa Wilkins (Carrie-Anne Moss) sneak around the plant and try to stop the terrorists. David Chase is set up to be a John McClane type but instead, he only kills one terrorists and then lets everyone else do most of the work. Of course, the whole water filtration hostage situation is just a distraction so Mr. Turner (Gary Busey) can steal a bunch of bonds. Busey sits behind a computer for most of the movie, lending his name but not much else.
Through the Shattered Lens 