Film

Rip It Up, Issue 201, 1 May 1994, Page 46

Film

ONCE WERE WARRIORS Director: Lee Tamahori

Lee Tamahori launches his first film playfully; what looks like a scenic vista becomes a motorway billboard, reminding us of his background in the commercials industry. But once the credits are out of the way, there’s no time for jesting in this bleak vision of domestic hell in South Auckland. Modified from Alan Duff’s controversial novel, Once Were Warriors is the story of Jake, a Maori family man who’s a volcano of resentment, and how this impacts on his wife, Beth, and his family. And the dynamism of the film comes very much from the fiery playing of Temuera Morrison and Rena Owen as Jake and Beth. They both deliver very physical performances, and a scene in which Beth is thrown like a rag-doll across the kitchen is horrifying. The narrative of the original novel has been streamlined and simplified making the film a powerful piece of agitprop, even if it offers no more solutions for the problems than Duff does. Beth’s faith in the traditional virtues of family and marae seem idealistic, even sentimental, aided and abetted by some ravishing Stuart Dryburgh images. There are a few jarring moments. Although I liked the utterly naturalistic family sing-along to Southside of Bombay’s ‘What’s the Time Mr Wolf’ (Tangata soundtrack coming up), I wasn’t so convinced with Beth’s friend proferring advice like ‘You’re going to have to take a chainsaw to those apron strings, girl'. A scene in which Jake’s eldest son is initiated into a brotherhood of tattooed, leatherclad gang-members seemed to have strayed in from another film.. WILLIAM DART

THE GETAWAY j Director: Roger Donaldson •. . j ? < I

In the second re-make of his American career (his first being Mutiny on the Bounty) Roger Donaldson updates Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway for the 90s. The tale is courtesy of novelist Jim (The Big Easy) Thompson: a slick professional crim (Alec Baldwin) and his partner (Kim Basinger) get involved with one last heist, a psychotic accomplice (Michael Madsen) starts the plot rolling and everyone’s suddenly on a headlong rush to Mexico..

The new film is a crisp enough thriller although its intermittent sex scenes are pretty forgettable (I found myself transfixed by a mole on Basinger’s right breast in one and fascinated by the felicitous framing and choreography that protected the modest Baldwin in another). Although Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw were a more brooding twosome in the original, Baldwin and Basinger and their cast are reliable.

Although transferring the heist to a dogtrack is clever, the remake lacks the rich and quirky detail of the Peckinpah original, a feature that was there from the complex intercutting of its credits. In 1972, the scene with McQueen and McGraw in a garbage crusher was edge-of-the-seat material, with loving close-ups of driving pistons. Baldwin and Basinger are barely a minute in the bin (perhaps garbage crushers are not the novelty they once were) while much more is made of automobile mayhem and the final shoot-out in an El Paso hotel.

There are many other fascinating points of comparison: we learn more about the old man who provides the truck to Mexico, and there is some significant toning down of the scenes involving the veterinarian’s wife who is comandeered by Madsen as a sexual plaything. (In the original Sally Struthers played the role on the edge of hysteria; in 1993 Jennifer Tilly is much cooler and compliant). One change is particularly significant. At one point McQueen pursues a bag-snatcher the length of an Amtrak train until he catches him,knocks him out and disguises him as a sleeping passenger. A young boy comes up with a water pistol and stages a mock holdup. In the remake, Baldwin simply dispenses the beating in a lavatory, missing out on the potential of the scene. A couple of bored children mugging for Basinger in the railway station are no substitute for Peckinpah’s characteristic images of ironic innocence. WILLIAM DART

Laws of Gravity Director: Nick Gomez

‘You got cable?’ a character asks in Laws of Gravity. ‘This is Brooklyn’ replies his host sardonically, and Nick Gomez’s first feature certainly shows us the daily grind on the streets of New York, through the midemeanours and miscalculations of some

minor would-be hoods. It’s a virtuoso debut for Gomez, put together on a staggering $38,000, using hand-held camera and brilliant ensemble playing to feign naturalism. But naturalism it is not. Laws of Gravity is a very mannered work, with constant black-outs between the scenes, culminating in the final ‘Fuck off over a blank screen. There’s a momentary sensation of cinema verity, but the bedlam in the streets as the young men tussle is intricately staged, with a tangle of dialogue that would have Robert Altman’s head spinning. The professional skill of the actors shines through, too, especially in the playing of the two women (Edie Flaco and Arabella Field). Field — whose character looks set up for a life of domestic violence like Beth’s in Once Were Warriors — has the radiance that can light a screen. Gomez points out that he is an observer and simply wants ‘to put a face on some of the problems of these seemingly dysfunctional people’; as with Once were Warriors, there are no explanations and certainly no answers. Laws of Gravity is supported by Coffee & Cigarettes, a new Jim Jarmusch short which took away the short film’s Palme d’Or at the same Cannes that saw The Piano honoured. A laconic Tom Waits and a distinctly sly Iggy Pop banter about coffee, cigarettes . . . and even the occasional aside on musical matters ... it’s inspired programming. WILLIAM DART

| TRUE ROMANCE Director: Tony Scott ;J

This movie is a humdinger, fast, tense, violent and funny, but what else would you expect from writer Quentin (Reservoir Dogs) Tarantino. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette star as Clarence and Alabama. He works in a comic shop and she’s been a call girl for four days. They meet at a Kung Fu movie, they make love, they get married the day after. So much for romance. The rest is action as they take to the road with a suitcase full of cocaine stolen from Alabama’s pimp, his henchmen hot on their trail and I mean hot — the violence is spectacular, choreographed like a bloody ballet, a technicolour symphony of gunshot and gore. The mafia men are reptilian evil personified, the policemen are goons, and the cameo roles are filled by your favourite low-life actors — Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt and Gary Oldman. When you’re not grooving on the carnage, soak up the white trash ambience, smile at the romance ("You’re so cool” Alabama writes Clarence on a napkin while bodies are being wasted all around them) and marvel at Alabama’s taste in clothes — almost as violent as the action.

Trivia note: before he made it as a director/ writer, Quentin Tarantino was an actor appearing in numerous small roles on TV shows, including The Golden Girls. DONNA YUZWALK