Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday, August 11th, we’ll be watching RUNNING SCARED (1986), starring Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, Steven Bauer, Darlanne Fluegel, Joe Pantoliano, Dan Hedaya, Jon Gries, Tracy Reed, and Jimmy Smits.
The plot:Two street-wise Chicago cops have to shake off some rust after returning from a Key West vacation to pursue a drug dealer who nearly killed them in the past.
Peter Hyams directed RUNNING SCARED, and it’s one of the very best “Buddy Cop” films out there. So, if a night full of action and laughs sounds good to you, join us on #MondayMuggers and watch RUNNING SCARED. It’s on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and PlutoTV! I’ve included the trailer below:
When it comes to unfortunate and dumb ways to die, getting electrocuted while standing in a puddle of spilled milk would seem to rank fairly high on the list. Unfortunately, it’s exactly what happens to the wife of Cal Jamison (Martin Sheen) during the first few minutes of 1987’s The Believers.
Traumatized by his wife’s death (and probably also by all of the people asking, “Wait a minute, she was standing in milk?”), Cal relocates from Minneapolis to New York City. Accompanying him is his young son, Chris (Harley Cross). Upon arriving in New York, Cal starts a tentative new relationship with artist Jessica Halliday (Helen Shaver) and he also gets a job working a psychologist for the NYPD.
And several members of the NYPD are going to need a good psychologist because they are investigating a series of brutal and ritualistic murders. All of the victims are children around Chris’s age and the murders are so grisly that even a hardened cop like Lt. Sean McTaggart (Robert Loggia) finds himself traumatized. When Detective Tom Lopez (Jimmy Smits, in one of his first roles) discovers one of the bodies, he has an apparent mental breakdown and starts to rant and rave about an all-powerful cult that Tom claims is committing the murders.
After Tom commits suicide, his ravings are dismissed as being the product of a mentally ill man. However, Cal is not so sure and starts to investigate on his own. What he discovers is a cult made up of a motely mix of wannabe gangsters and members of high society. While his friends and lovers either die or lose their minds around him, Cal discovers that the cult is actually closer to both him and his son than he ever realized.
An odd film, The Believers. On the one hand, there’s plenty of creepy scenes, including one in which Jessica gets a truly disturbing skin condition. The scenes in which Cal discovers that his friends have lost their minds as a result of the Cult are frequently sad and difficult to watch. Robert Loggia has scene that brought tears to my eyes. The mix of street witchery and upper class power lust is nicely handled and, as always, Harris Yulin makes for an effective villain. The Believers creates an ominous atmosphere of paranoia, one in which you really do come to feel that no one in the film is quite who they say they are.
And yet, it’s obvious that director John Schlesinger — whose previous films included Darlingand the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy — had more on his mind than just making an effective Omen-style horror film. He also tries to deal with Cal coming to terms with the death of his wife and Chris coming to terms with the idea of Cal dating someone new and all of those scenes of straight-forward domestic drama feel out-of-place in what should have been an energetic and grisly B-movie. In those ploddingly earnest scenes, Schlesinger seems to be trying almost too hard to remind us that he’s not really a horror filmmaker and they just feel out of place.
If there was ever a movie that called for the unapologetic and wickedly sardonic directorial vision of David Cronenberg, it was The Believers. As it is, The Believers is an intriguing but frustratingly uneven mix of paranoia, witchcraft, and domestic melodrama.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, we learn who Tubbs really is and one scene changes television forever.
Episode 1.2 “Brother Keeper: Part Two”
(Directed by Thomas Carter, originally aired on September 16th, 1984)
The pilot for Miami Vice originally aired as a two-hour made-for-TV movie but, when it was released in syndication, it was split into two separate episodes. That’s the way it’s usually aired on the retro stations and that’s also the way that it’s featured on Tubi. And, as you can tell, that’s the way that I’ve decided to review it for this site.
Picking up where the first half ended, Brother’s Keeper: Part Two finds Sonny and Tubbs searching through the deceased Leon’s apartment. Calderone’s men obviously visited the place and ransacked it before Sonny and Tubbs arrived but Sonny still manages to find Leon’s collection of important phone numbers. Tubbs is surprised to discover that Leon lived in a very nice apartment but that’s the way things work in Miami. Cocaine means big money and any one willing to take the risk can live like a king. While the cops and the regular people go home to small apartments and houses that they can barely afford, the successful criminal lives a life of relative luxury. The question is less why so many people are dealing drugs as why so many people aren’t.
While searching the apartment, Tubbs suddenly realizes that Sonny Crockett used to be a football star with the University of Florida. (“You were a funky honky!” Tubbs exclaims.) Apparently, Sonny was one of the best but a series of injuries ended his NFL dreams and, instead of going pro, Sonny did two tours of duty in Vietnam. (The South Asian conference, Sonny calls it.) Myself, I’m wondering how a semi-famous former football player can also be an undercover detective, working under a false name. Wouldn’t he always be worried that a drug dealer would recognize him from the college days and figure out that Sonny Burnett was actually Sonny Crockett?
Sonny’s co-worker and girlfriend, Gina (Saundra Santiago), takes a break from working the undercover prostitution detail and lets Sonny know that she did a background check on Raphael Tubbs and he’s dead! Raphael was a New York cop who was killed in shootout weeks before the other Tubbs landed in Miami. When Sonny confronts him about this, Tubbs admits that he’s actually Ricardo, Raphael’s younger brother. Raphael was a decorated Brooklyn detective. Rico Tubbs, on the other hand, was a Bronx beat cop who forged a lot of documents in order to come down to Florida and convince Vice to allow him to work the Calderone case. Sonny isn’t happy about being lied to but he has a lot more to worry about because, the night before, he apparently rolled over to Gina and whispered his ex-wife’s name in her ear! Needless to say, things are a bit awkward between just about everyone.
Actually, awkward doesn’t even begin to describe what happens when Tubbs suggests that Lt. Rodriguez could be Calderone’s mole. Sonny refuses to consider it until he overhears Rodriguez talking about enrolling his son in a pricey private school. Fortunately, Rodriguez is innocent and the real mole’s number is found in Leon’s apartment. Unfortunately, that number belongs to Sonny’s former partner, Scott Wheeler (Bill Smitrovich)!
After getting Wheeler to confess and turning him over to Rodriguez, Sonny and Tubbs drive down the dark streets of Miami at night, heading towards a rendezvous with Calderone. They don’t say much. Tubbs loads his shotgun. Sonny stops and makes a call to his ex-wife, something that his former partner Eddie didn’t get to do before he was killed. The neon of Miami glows menacingly in the darkness. Meanwhile, in the background, Phil Collins sings In the Air Tonight….
And it’s an absolutely beautiful sequence. Between the surreal menace of Miami at night, the atmosphere of impending doom, and the moody song playing in the background, this sequence plays out like a surreal dream. Both Tubbs and Crockett know that they are quite possibly driving to their death but, at this point, they have no other choice. Too many people have died to turn back. Neither Sonny nor Tubbs has anything in their life at that moment, beyond arresting Calderone.
And they do manage to arrest Calderone, along with killing quite a few of his associates. However, Calderone is released by a crooked judge and flies away in a private airplane while Sonny and Tubbs can only stand on the runway and watch. Sonny says that Calderone will return eventually. Tubbs replies that he probably doesn’t have a job anymore. Sonny asks Tubbs if he’s interested in a “career in Southern law enforcement.”
The second part of the pilot was dominated by that one scene of Tubbs and Sonny driving down the street. And that scene was so strong and it made such an impression that it’s easy to ignore that the rest of Brother’s Keeper Part Two was not quite as exciting as Part One. If the first part of the pilot set up Miami as a hedonistic playground of the rich and corrupt, the second part felt a bit more conventional in its approach. Or, at least, it did until Phil Collins started to sing and play the drums. One cannot understate the importance of that one scene. That one scene, done with next to no dialogue, pretty much told the viewer everything that they needed to know about the show, about Miami, and about Crockett and Tubbs as partners. In that scene, the show reminded us that no one is guaranteed to get out alive.
Next week: Crockett and Tubbs infiltrate an undercover pornography ring and Ed O’Neill appears as an FBI agent who may have gone over to the dark side.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
Legend has it that Miami Vice was originally pitched as being “MTV Cops.” That may or may not be true but what is known is that it was a show that, for many people, continues to epitomize the 80s. Its cynical and frequently surrealistic portrait of life in Miami continues to be influential to this day. With Florida currently being at the center of so many discussions, it just seemed like a natural pick for Retro Television Reviews.
(Up until a few days ago, the mayor of Miami was running for President and two other Florida residents are currently the front runners for one party’s presidential nomination. As I sit here writing this, national politics are often described as Florida vs California. Even more than in the past, America revolves around Florida.)
Though Miami Vice is often describe as being a Michael Mann production, the show itself was actually created by Anthony Yerkovich, who felt that Miami in the 80s had become the American equivalent of Casablanca during World War II. Mann served as executive producer and he played a big role in creating the show’s trademark visual style. And, of course, the theme song was provided by Jan Hammer:
Episode 1.1 “Brother’s Keeper, Part One”
(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on September 16th, 1984)
Though the show is considered, to this day, to be the epitome of the Southern Florida aesthetic, Miami Vice actually begins in New York City.
On a dark and wet New York Street, a detective named Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) sits in his car. When a group of young men approach the car and demand that Tubbs give them some money, Tubb responds by coolly pointing a shotgun at them. The men take the message and leave.
Tubbs is staking out a Colombian drug dealer named Calderone (Miguel Pinero). Tubbs follows Calderone and his associates to a club, the type of place where even the neon lighting seem to be shadowy. When Tubbs gets into a fight with some of Calderone’s bodyguards, Calderone flees into the dark night.
The action moves to Miami, which is as bright and sunny as New York was cold and dark. Undercover vice cop Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson), wearing a white suit and a green t-shirt, gives advice to his partner, Eddie Rivera (a young and charismatic Jimmy Smits, making his television debut). Eddie talks about how his wife is nervous about him being a cop. Sonny tells Eddie to call her after they get finished dealing with a local drug dealer named Corky.
Corky knows Crockett as “Sonny Burnett” and he believes Eddie is a buyer from California. When Corky arrives, they drive out to an underpass. Corky and Eddie walk over to another car to check out Corky’s product. Sonny spots the bomb that’s been taped under car’s hood but he’s too late to keep it from blowing up both Corky and Eddie.
When Lt. Rodriguez (Gregory Sierra) arrives on the scene, he’s not amused to discover two of his detectives — Stan Switek (Michael Talbott) and Larry Zito (John Diehl) — joking about how the police dogs are going to get hooked on all of the cocaine residue. However, he’s even more annoyed with Sonny, who is quickly established as being the type of cop who does not “do it by the book!” Rodriguez also says that Sonny hasn’t changed since his “football days.” Sonny says that Eddie was killed by a mysterious dealer known as The Colombian. Rodriguez replies that Sonny can’t even prove that the Colombian exists. Rodriguez is particularly angered when Sonny says that there must be a mole working in the department.
While Sonny tells Eddie’s wife the bad news and then heads over to his son’s birthday party (it’s established that Sonny is divorced), Tubbs lands in Miami. Hanging out at a strip club and doing an elaborate dance to Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me, Tubbs is approached by a man named Scott Wheeler (Bill Smitrovich). Pretending to be a Jamaican named Teddy Prentiss, Tubbs arranges to meet a drug dealer that Wheeler claims to know.
What Tubbs doesn’t know is that Wheeler is an undercover DEA agent and that he’s also Sonny Crockett’s former partner. Sonny is the “dealer.” That night, Sonny and a real-life drug dealer, Leon (Mykelti Williamson) show up at the meeting with Wheeler and “Teddy.” Unfortunately, Zito and Switek show up earlier than expected and they end up arresting everyone before Leon can lead Sonny to the Colombian. Tubbs makes a run for it, jumps into the boat that Sonny drove to the meeting, and speeds away. Sonny jumps into his own car and chases the boat while the Miami Vice theme song plays in the background. (Trust me, it’s a supercool scene.)
Finally confronting Tubbs on a bridge, Sonny reveals that he’s a detective. Tubbs produces his own badge and introduces himself as Raphael Tubbs of the NYPD. He explains that he’s in Miami because he’s after a Colombian drug dealer named Calderone. Sonny explains that he’s too busy searching for the Colombian to worry about Tubbs’s search. Finally, Lt. Rodriguez shows up and helps them to understand that they’re both looking for the same guy. Rodriguez suggests that they work together but Sonny refuses.
The next morning, Tubbs tracks Sonny down on the houseboat on which he lives. It’s a tense meeting, with Sonny punching Tubbs for suggesting that he wasn’t a good enough cop to save Eddie’s life. Sonny apologizes afterwards and Tubbs accepts the apology and then punches Sonny so that they’ll be even. Sonny then introduces Tubbs to his pet alligator, Elvis. It’s male-bonding, 80s style!
Sonny and Scott head over to the courthouse so that they can be “arraigned,” along with Leon. I really liked the performance of Howard Bergman, who played the eccentric judge, Clarence Rupp. At one point, the lights went out in the courtroom and when they came back, everyone from the judge to the bailiffs to the court reporter had drawn a gun. After mentioning his appreciation of the second amendment, Judge Rupp announces that Leon is free to go without bail because he’s cooperating with the police. A panicked Leon yells that he’s not cooperating.
Later, a fearful Leon calls Rodriguez and offers to cooperate in return for protective custody. Leon is hiding out at the beach, where Tubbs is keeping an eye on him. When Sonny arrives, he’s not amused to see Tubbs there. Meanwhile, a hitman who has disguised himself as a woman shoots and kills Leon while Girls Just Want To Have Fun plays on the soundtrack.
And so ends part one of Brother’s Keeper. And you know what? Even after all this time, it’s still easy to see why Miami Vice took off and why it continue to inspire a slew of imitators. The pilot was genuinely exciting, with the perfect mix of music, visuals, and charismatic performances. Jimmy Smits broke my heart in his tiny role. Mykelti Williamson made Leon into an almost sympathetic character as he realized that the cops were willing to sacrifice him to get at his boss. From the start, Don Johnson’s gruff performance as Sonny feels like a perfect match for Philip Michael Thomas’s more earnest portrayal of Tubbs. If Sonny is a cynic, Tubbs seems to feel that he can make a difference by taking down men like Calderone. We’ll have to see how long that lasts.
Next week, we’ll finish up the pilot with part two of Brother’s Keeper!
Lin-Manuel Miranda brings his Hamilton magic to Washington Heights, New York. Under the direction of Crazy Rich Asians’ Jon M. Chu, In the Heights looks to be a sweet summer film. Just look at this cast:
Anthony Ramos (She’s Gotta Have it)
Melissa Barrera (Starz’ Vida)
Marc Anthony (No introduction needed)
Jimmy Smits (Come on, should I even try?)
Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent, Wild Things)
Dascha Polanco (The Irishman, Orange is the New Black)
Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, One Day at a Time)
Corey Hawkins (Kong: Skull Island, Straight Outta Compton)
Of course, having directed both Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D, Chu looks like he makes easy work of handling the dance numbers and musical arrangements. You couldn’t ask for a better pairing between him and Miranda.
The film is an adaptation of the Tony Award Winning Best Musical by Miranda, based off of Quiara Alegria Hudes’ novel. If this works out, here’s hoping we get a theatrical version of Hamilton as well.
Kim Basinger is Maggie, a nurse who has adopted her autistic niece, Cody. Her sister, Jenna (Angela Bettis), used to be a junkie but now she has cleaned up her act and married a former-child star-turned-cult leader, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell). Because Jenna’s daughter has supernatural powers and Eric is a Satanist, they want the little girl back. Christina Ricci is Cheri, a junkie goth who used to be a member of the cult and who tries to warn Maggie before getting her head chopped off. Jimmy Smits is John Travis, the FBI agent who helps Maggie out when Jenna and Eric kidnap Cody. Mostly, though, he’s just Jimmy Smits, a TV actor who looks out of place whenever he appears in a movie.
Bless the Child was one of two movies that Kim Basinger made after winning an Oscar for L.A. Confidential. She also made I Dreamed Of Africa, which probably did the most damage to her career but the box office and critical failure of Bless The Child probably did not help either. Bless The Child was an overlong rip-off of The Omen films. The only suspense is whether Cody is the antichrist or the reborn messiah. Basinger and Jimmy Smits both look lost amid all the theological chaos raging around them. Even Christina Ricci is wasted in a role that could have been played by anyone willing to dye her hair black.
One final note: Rufus Sewell is not terrible in Bless The Child, even if the majority of his lines sound more appropriate for Darth Vader than a former child actor. (He even tells Maggie to feel the hate growing inside of her, like Vader trying to draw Luke over to the dark side.) Sewell is still a busy actor but it seems like he has never really gotten his due in Hollywood. Most of the good Rufus Sewell roles now seem to go to Jude Law.
Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines!) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal!!!) are two tough detectives in Chicago. All they want to do is three things: retire, open a bar in Florida, and bust Chicago’s most ruthless drug dealer, Julio Gonzalez (Jimmy Smits). Their captain (Dan Hedaya) wants them to leave for Florida as soon as possible but they are determined to take down Julio first.’
There are two strange things about this otherwise formulaic crime film. First off, the two tough cops are played by Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. According to the film’s Wikipedia page, director Peter Hyams realized that Running Scared‘s plot was nothing special so he decided that the only way to make the movie stand out was by doing it “with two actors you would not normally expect to see in an action movie.” The other strange thing is that Hyams’s gambit worked. Gregory Hines may have been best known as a dancer and Billy Crystal as a comedian but both of them were surprisingly believable as Chicago cops. Running Scared is actually one of Billy Crystal’s best performances. For once, he’s believable as being someone other than a version of himself. Even his frequent one liners seem like something that a detective would say instead of Crystal recycling punch lines from his act. Whether they are chasing down perps and firing their guns at a moving vehicle, Hines and Crystal are never less than credible as action stars. LorenzoLamashas gotnothing on the team of Hines and Crystal.
Predictable though it may be, Running Scared is one of the better late 80s cop films. The action scenes are exciting and Hyams does a good job capturing the grittiness of Chicago. Jimmy Smits is a good villain and Joe Pantoliano, Steven Bauer, and Jon Gries all shine in supporting roles. Keep an eye out for the always underrated Darlanne Fluegel, playing Danny’s ex-wife.
The evil Galactic Empire spent what had to be billions of Imperial credits to build the greatest weapon in the universe. It was known as the Death Star and it housed a laser so powerful that it could blow up a planet with just one shot. And yet, for all the effort and all the years that were spent building it, the Death Star had one glaring vulnerability, an exposed exhaust valve that the Rebel Alliance twice used to the destroy it.
For years, fanboys debated why the Empire would go to the trouble to build a super weapon with such an obvious design flaw. I have to admit that I was often one of them. No one else seemed to care but, to us, this was a huge deal. If the Empire could figure out how to blow up a planet with one super laser, why couldn’t they figure out how to protect that one valve?
Now, thanks to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, we have an answer. We not only know why that valve was there but we also know what was meant in New Hope when the rebel general said that the plans to the Death Star had been stolen at great cost.
Rogue One is a fan’s dream, one that answers questions while expanding on the Star Wars mythology. Unlike the previous prequels, it adds to the story without cheapening the original films. In fact, of all the Star Wars films, Rogue One is the first to make the Death Star into a believable weapon of mass destruction. When it appears over one planet, it blots out the sun. When it blows up a rebel base, we see the destruction from inside the base instead of observing it from the safety of Death Star. Director Gareth Evans does for the Death Star what he previously did for Godzilla.
Unfortunately, like Godzilla, the action and the special effects in Rogue One are usually more interesting than any of the film’s characters. Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen, Alan Tudyk, and Riz Ahmed are all good actors but they’re all playing underwritten parts. No one steps up like Harrison Ford did in the original trilogy. Commander Kennec, played by Ben Mendelsohn, has a little more depth than the typical Imperial villain but, for better or worse, the film’s most memorable performances come from a CGI Peter Cushing and James Earl Jones providing the voice of Darth Vader.
Despite the underwritten characters, Rogue One is still the best Star Wars film since Empire Strikes Back, a return to the grittiness, the thrilling action, and the awe of discovering new worlds that distinguished the first two movies. For once, a Star Wars film seems to have more on its mind than just selling toys. Though we already know what is ultimately going to happen to the Death Star at the end of New Hope, Rogue One is a frequently downbeat film. There are no Ewoks and, to great relief and rejoicing, Jar Jar is never seen. The closest that Rogue One gets to comic relief is Alan Tudyk providing the voice of a cynical robot. The emphasis is on the horrors of war and even the rebels are troubled by some of the things that they have done. For once, the Rebel Alliance actually feels like a rebellion and the evil of the Empire feels real instead of cartoonish.
Rogue One is projected to be the first of many “Star Wars stories,” stand-alone film that will expand the universe and hopefully clarify some of the points that were left unclear by the original trilogy. I think it’s going to be very successful very Disney. I’m just dreading the inevitable Jar Jar origin story.
The year 2005 was a dark time to be a fan of Star Wars.
The first two parts of the highly anticipated prequel trilogy had been released and had left fans feeling as if millions of voices had cried out in terror and suddenly been silenced. No sooner had fans started to recover from the trauma of The Phantom Menace then Attack of the Clones was unleashed and they were stunned to learn that a movie could be even more pointless than The Phantom Menace.
The summer of 2005 promised the release of Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith. Fans were excited because they knew that Anakin Skywalker would finally be transformed into Darth Vader but they also knew that he would still be played by Hayden Christensen. Many of us who went to see the movie on its opening weekend did so with low expectations and mixed feelings.
“WAR!” the opening title crawl of Revenge of the Sith declared, as if it was trying to reassure those of us in the audience that it would not be another boring Star Wars prequel. There was nothing in the crawl about taxation or trade routes. Instead, it was all about how the Galactic Republic was at war with separatists and how Chancellor Palpatine was being held prisoner by General Grievous. After an exciting battle on Grievous’s flagship, Anakin not only rescued Palpatine but also decapitated Christopher Lee’s Count Dooku, despite the fact that Dooku had surrendered and was unarmed. That’s when those of us watching knew that Revenge of the Sith was not going to be like the other two prequels. Revenge of the Sith was going to be darker and edgier and not just for kids. A headless Count Dooku action figure would not be sold at your local toy store.
Looking back, it is easy to forget how relieved many of us were that Revenge of the Sith was not terrible. After the bitter disappointment of the first two prequels, we were happy that Jar Jar Binks only appeared during one shot towards the end of the film and he did not speak. We were happy that Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman both finally got to give performances that justified casting actors of their caliber as Obi-Wan and Amidala. We were happy that, since Anakin and Amidala were secretly married between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, we did not have to sit through any more scenes of them falling in love. Many of us had found Hayden Christensen’s performance to be petulant in Attack of the Clones and, intentionally or not, Revenge of the Sith seemed to validate our suspicions by having both Yoda and Mace Windu say the same thing about Anakin. After the embarrassment of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, this was a prequel that we felt we could get behind.
And we were really happy with the climatic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin. After Anakin had gone over to the dark side, he and Obi-Wan dueled on a volcanic planet. “You were supposed to be the chosen one!” Obi-Wan shouted after chopping off Anakin’s legs. After being left to die by Obi-Wan, Anakin was rescued by Emperor Palpatine. It was only after being encased in that famous black armor that Palpatine told the new Darth Vader that Amidala had died. Darth Vader’s “Nooooooooo!” would go down in history.
At the end of the film, Jimmy Smits was seen giving an infant Luke to Owen and Beru Lars and Darth Vader and the Emperor were seen standing on the bridge of an imperial ship and looking out at the skeleton of the Death Star. For the first time since the prequels were first released, some of us applauded at the end of a Star Wars film.
When, ten years later, I rewatched Revenge of the Sith for the first time in a long while, my immediate impression was that it was nowhere close to being as good as I remembered. Without a doubt, it was still the best of the prequels but how much was that really saying? Of all the prequels, it came the closest to capturing the sense of awe and excitement that made the original trilogy (even Return of the Jedi) so entertaining but, at the same time, it still had many of the same flaws that afflicted Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Hayden Christensen was as stiff and inexpressive as ever, as was George Lucas’s dialogue. (When Obi-Wan tells Anakin that Palpatine is evil, Anakin actually replies, “From my point of view, the Jedis are evil!” He shouts this in the middle of a light saber duel.) Even the movie’s most shocking moment, when Anakin murdered a group of children, was no longer effective because everyone in the movie insisted on calling the children “younglings.”
Throughout the entire prequel ordeal, George Lucas would insist that it was necessary to see all three of the prequels to really understand the story he was trying to tell and how it fit in with the original trilogy. However, of all the prequels, Revenge of the Sith is the only one that feels as if it adds anything to what we had already learned from watching the original trilogy. Nor is there anything to be gained from having seen the first two prequels before watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time. The main accomplishment of Revenge of the Sith was to prove that The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were entirely unnecessary. (Revenge of the Sith actually works better if you have never seen Phantom Menace because there is no way that the Anakin played by Jake Lloyd could have grown up to be the Anakin played by Hayden Christensen.)
Why, when we originally watched Revenge of the Sith, did so many of us think that it was so much better than it actually was?
In the year 2005, we were just happy to have a Star Wars film that did not totally suck.
Kim Basinger is Maggie, a nurse who has adopted her autistic niece, Cody. Her sister, Jenna (Angela Bettis), used to be a junkie but now she has cleaned up her act and married a former-child star-turned-cult leader, Eric Stark (Rufus Sewell). Because Jenna’s daughter has supernatural powers and Eric is a Satanist, they want the little girl back. Christina Ricci is Cheri, a junkie goth who used to be a member of the cult and who tries to warn Maggie before getting her head chopped off. Jimmy Smits is John Travis, the FBI agent who helps Maggie out when Jenna and Eric kidnap Cody. Mostly, though, he’s just Jimmy Smits, a TV actor who looks out of place whenever he appears in a movie.
Running Scared is weird but good.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
The year 2005 was a dark time to be a fan of Star Wars.
Through the Shattered Lens 