Charlies Angels - Full Throttle (unrated)

Fallen Angel

Charlies Angels 
Full Throttle (unrated)
USA 2003 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Angelic spoilers unleashed.

Okay, I’ve revisited Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle again and, I have to say, I was disappointed that the Blu Ray and various home video releases available in the UK are still the original, cut down and censored theatrical cut of the movie. Well, I wasn’t having any of that so I upgraded from my DVD of the old unrated US edition of the movie to a new US Blu Ray edition of the same, so I could once again watch the slightly sexier version of the movie, including extra blood splashes gushing out of the mouths of the Angels when they are hit in the face (which may not seem like much to some but, hey, I won’t abide censorship). So I’m now finding out that the UK is the only country which doesn’t have the uncut version released in some format so, yeah, if you want to watch this movie properly, make sure you import the unrated edition over from the states (and make sure your player can play the correct zone/region into which it’s been encoded over there) . 

Now, I’m still not sure why this brilliant movie failed at the box office when the first one was so loved by audiences. I remember taking the day off work so I could see this in its first day in cinemas (in the theatrical version, naturally) and I absolutely loved it and assumed it would be a big hit again. I mean, everything seems a tad more than the first film and, well, what’s wrong with that? Clearly, not everyone agreed with me. 

This one starts, just like the first film, with a pre-credits, end of mission action sequence zooming in from the Columbia lady logo, featuring the three angels played by Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz but, unlike the first film, it directly relates to the plot of the rest of the movie. Following both that and a second parody of the old TV series opening credits, we go straight to a scene where Bruce Willis, in a cameo, is shot by a masked assailant... who later turns out to be his already ex-wife Demi Moore playing an ex-Angel... who is the brains behind the whole criminal operation. Add in more fun with an evil ex-boyfriend of Barrymore’s character and absolutely heaps of action and we get what, to me, seemed then and does now, like a rollicking good, highly entertaining, female-centric action movie.

And, like I said, everything seems a little more. The idea of using completely different colour palettes for each scene seems, somehow, much more blatant, for example... the pre-credits scene where Bruce Willis gets killed is lit entirely in blue (or possibly with a blue filter over everything) and a scene later, which is a parody of an episode of CSI, is lit entirely in red like an old photographer’s developing room. And another scene where the lighting is so stylised is in a parody of the prison release scene from the remake of Cape Fear. And, as I’m describing this, you can already see that there are absolutely loads of pop culture references scattered about the movie. 

For instance, the CSI parody scene uses the old The Who song, Who Are You? which I believe was used as the theme tune to one of the variants of CSI and, I believe I’m right in saying Cameron Diaz is made up to look like one of the male stars of that show in this scene? And Bernard Herrmann’s famous Cape Fear theme is also used in a few places in the movie, to push the obsessive nature of Barrymore’s ex-boyfriend’s obsession with killing her in revenge for his long imprisonment. 

Among other such confections, some of the more interesting references include a reunion at Rydell High School (although, sadly, none of the stars of the Grease films turn up for this) and at least two references to Singin’ In The Rain, one with the Good Morning couch gag at the end of the M C Hammer dance number near the start of the movie and the other is, for people who know the 1952 musical well, a parody of the “Zelda! Oh, Zelda!” moment at the film premiere scene at Hollywood. 

There are also quite a few cameo appearances by a whole host of people including Pink (who is in scene while one of her songs written for the movie is played in the background), Carrie Fisher as the Mother Superior where a back story origin of the popular villain from the first movie, the ‘creepy, thin man’ played again by Crispin Glover, takes place (the Playboy Mansion stands in as the building used for the convent here) and John Cleese as Lucy Liu’s father. Of course, one nice apparition of a cameo is actress Jaclyn Smith, reprising her role as original TV Angel Kelly Garrett, to offer a bit of advice to Drew Barrymore when she’s in trouble. 

And speaking of returning Angels, I can’t find any mention of it now but my understanding is, one was asked to return and definitely didn’t. I remember reading at the time that Kate Jackson was asked to reprise her original TV role as Sabrina Duncan, as the rogue angel gone bad... but she didn’t want to show her old character in a bad light... so the name was changed and Demi Moore (who to be fair, does look a little like her in this movie), took the role instead. Again, I don’t have any evidence now that this was the case but I certainly remember reading this back in 2003 at some point. 

Whatever the case, catching up with this now, I’m amazed that this one did so poorly at the box office. I was waiting for another sequel for a while before I realised this one must have bombed... it’s a great shame because McG directed two absolutely stunning Charlies Angel’s films and, frankly, Full Throttle certainly doesn’t let the first movie down in any way. I loved it then and I love it now. This one will always be on my top tier Hollywood action movie recommend list, along with the first. Don’t turn your back on this one, it’s fantastic. 

Charlies Angels (2000)

 

Angel Delight

Charlies Angels (2000)
USA 2000 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when I first saw the first Charlie’s Angels movie at the cinema back in 2000. I’d remembered I half liked the TV show as a kid back in the 1970s but nothing had prepared me for this particular experience, which is easily one of the greatest American action movies of the decade coupled with art design which elevated it far beyond the expectations of its target audience. I think I saw it about five times at the cinema and, I’m glad I did because, you can’t see that cut anymore, it turns out. I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so the film opens with an earlyish example of company logo vandalism where, after the Columbia torch lady comes up, the camera pans to the side and around her into the sky next to her, before transforming into the sky around a passenger aeroplane to establish the setting for the first scene. Now cinema adaptations of old TV shows were not always successful and hadn’t quite gotten into their stride in terms of the new ones around at this time. We’d had Mission Impossible at the cinemas (which I didn’t see for at least another fifteen years, you can read my review of it here) but director McG obviously knew there would be a certain amount of cynicism attached to a remake of Charlie’s Angels, loved by so many people back in the day.

So he deals with it all right out of the starting blocks, in one of the most riveting and silly opening sequences of the year, completely winning over this audience member and, judging by how successful this first movie was, quite a lot of people. He cleverly starts it off in a slow journey with the camera around the interior of an aircraft with not an Angel in sight. Then we follow a character played by L. L. Cool J, who makes contact with a minor villain for this segment. The rich colours of the aircraft include a lot of red and the look of the film is all important in terms of bombarding the audience with some eye popping designs. Then the script does a very clever thing, after the villain reveals he has a time bomb strapped to him which is counting down... he starts watching an inflight movie which is a fake remake of the old TV series T. J. Hooker and, the two chat briefly about how they hate stupid movie remakes of TV shows. So, yeah, McG already undermines any audience reaction that the film is not, at the very least, self aware and then, he suddenly speeds everything up and piles us into an action sequence... as L. L. Cool J opens the plane doors, throws out the villain and jumps out after him. He’s joined by Lucy Liu’s Angel character called Alex mid air and, the two of them manage to get the bomb off the bad guy and then drop him, with themselves, into Cameron Diaz’s waiting speedboat, Diaz playing Angel Natalie. 

It’s at this point that L. L. Cool J takes a voice changer out of his mouth and pulls his face off, to reveal it was a mask used for the third and, behind the scenes, most important of the Angels, Dylan, played by Drew Barrymore. It was Barrymore who had already bought the rights to the show before the film went into production and it was her who stood to make a fortune from the success of the movie (and its sequel, which she did to the tune of $40 million for the first one and, although not confirmed, $80 million for the less successful but, equally fun sequel).

Then, in a brilliant move to get fans on the side of the movie even more, we hear the voice of John Forsythe, the original voice of Charlie, who is reprising the role for this and the next one, as McG takes us on a parody remake of the original TV show title sequence, including some nods in scene reconstructions from the original show. It’s brilliant, uses a new version of the original theme music over some of it and, yeah, this is the way you overcome a reluctant audience... with sheer brilliance. 

And then the film somehow manages to keep going even stronger, as it reveals the new Bosley (played by Bill Murray), a red herring villain played by Tim Curry, a brilliant action henchman, The Thin Man, played by Crispin Glover (his real life dad tried to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, reviewed here), Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, Kelly Lynch and the truly brilliant Sam Rockwell. 

And it’s a nice enough story of industrial espionage disguising the true intentions of the villanous antagonists of the film, who really were a fairly good twist reveal about two thirds of the way through the movie. It’s another old story but any weaknesses in the script (which went through at least thirty drafts by numerous writers because they wanted to get it right... there’s a reason why this film seems so polished at all levels), which are few and far between, are more than carried by the combinations of criminally good acting, imaginative fight choreography, some amazing dance sequences and some beautiful set designs with every different scene bringing in a strong, themed colour palette significantly different from each preceding scene. 

It’s also quite innovative in terms of what they do with the camera in this one... so, for instance, those amazing high speed push/pull Vertigo-like zooms during the off circuit racing car chase or, during that same sequence, the way lorries rushing in front of each car in a side view are used as very fast transitions to cut between the two cars. It’s amazing stuff and the film is full of little jolts of brilliance like this, giving the whole production a very highly stylised feel, almost like a comic book. The director himself, if I’m remembering correctly from the time, said the film takes place in ‘Angel time’, a kind of heightened, beautiful alternative to real life... which would explain, I guess, why opening the plane door to save all the passengers at the start didn’t result in all the passengers getting sucked out to their death.

I have one big criticism with the movie plus, a fair few criticisms of the home video releases of the film. Let me get started on the thing which totally popped me out of the film and my seat when I saw this the first time at the cinema. There’s a big, bold cue at one point in the film and it’s composer Akira Ifikube’s Godzilla leitmotif. As soon as I heard this my mind was like, “No way” and I was expecting a sophisticated joke based on one or more kaiju eiga. Instead, it becomes clear after about five seconds that it’s just been used as an opening and sample base for a piece of modern techno music, which the director was using from one of many (probably no comparison for an original score where this movie goes) needle drop musical selections. So yeah, that was disappointing.

Now, the 15 rated version of the movie as released in UK cinemas is longer than any other country’s versions and stuff like a full on sequence involving nunchucks never made it to home video, which is a damn shame and should not be censored, especially since the UK always had a ban on the weapons being included in films until around about this period (yeah, you can guess what looking at a UK home video version of Enter The Dragon was like before this point... this is why God invented mulitregion players). I also happen to remember.... although nobody else I know seems to (perhaps they didn’t do multiple cinema trips like I did) that the drive through hamburger scene near the start of the movie included an exchange of dialogue with a bit of a put down by the Angels directed at the burger seller... I remember it being the only false note/crack in the ‘nice gal’ facade of the Angels and felt it was just out of place. Well, if I didn’t imagine that scene (and I’m pretty damn certain I didn’t), then I guess somebody on the film also realised it didn’t promote empathy with the angels and, the scene is significantly shorter on the home video version, for sure. 

Those minor grumbles aside though... I’d have to say that Charlie’s Angels by McG is still a pretty great art/action spectacle with some beautiful, innovative sequences which I think a lot of today’s modern film students could learn a lot of lessons from. An absolute classic which is maybe a little dated already in some of the attitudes on display but, yeah, who cares about that kind of stuff when it’s put together so well. My one warning to viewers is... don’t waste your money on the cheapo, UK Blu Ray double pack edition as I did... as the version of the sequel, Charlie’s Angel’s Full Throttle, is not the proper, full on unrated US cut of the movie, but the standard theatrical, ‘sans blood spraying every time someone gets hit in the face’ version of the film. If you want the full, unrated version of the sequel on Blu Ray, you need to pay out the extra for the US edition of the film which clearly states it has both cuts on there (as I have just done, once I discovered which print of the film was on the second disc). This is disgraceful behaviour by the UK distributors based, I would suspect, on the fact that they don’t want to shell out the cash to resubmit the longer cut to the admittedly evil UK film censors at the BBFC.

The Box

Button Dressed As Lamb

The Box
2009 USA 
Directed by Richard Kelly
Icon UK DVD Blu Ray B

Warning: Spoilers for the source novel and previous TV adaptation.

The Box is a movie that I meant to see at the cinema at the time of its release due to the intriguing premise presented in the trailer. Unfortunately, I don’t think it played around my local cinema long enough for me to be able to physically get there while it was on but a cheap, second hand Blu Ray made its way into my possession recently and so... here we are.

The premise, which had so intrigued from the trailer and which, I might add, doesn’t even begin to give you the true flavour of this movie, is very simple and it’s based on a short story called Button, Button. This was written by famous science fiction writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, I Am Legend) and it’s now been filmed twice, once here and once as one of the 1980s run of new Twilight Zone episodes. However, by all accounts, all three versions differ somewhat and so I feel it’s okay to give away the endings of those first two versions here in order to talk about the way this movie makes use of Matheson’s material and the way the director, very much an auteur after his breakthrough hit Donnie Darko, has chosen to extend the premise beyond Matheson’s original source.

The central hook of all three is a parcel which arrives one morning at the front door of a husband and wife. They open it to find a box with a button under a glass dome and a note that Mr. Steward will be coming to see them at 5pm. When Mr. Steward does arrive, he has with him an envelope which holds the key to release the dome with the button. He tells them that they have 24 hours to choose to use the key to open the glass dome and press the button. If they choose to press the button, two things will happen. Number one is that someone they don’t know will die. Number two is that, when Mr. Steward comes to retrieve and reset the box the next day, he will bring with him a million dollars in cash, tax free. So there’s your moral dilemma right there... do you ease the pain and struggle of your life with a big cash injection and not care that someone you don’t know will die for it?

Now, of course, this wouldn’t be a story unless somebody presses the button and the wife in each case does so. Now this is where the short story and the Twilight Zone episode apparently differ in their conclusion and, I have to admit, I kinda prefer the Twilight Zone ending myself, although Matheson himself apparently didn’t like it so much.

In the original story, the wife has pressed the button and her husband is found dead on train tracks. Mr. Steward’s words to the wife are something along the lines of... “Do you ever really know your husband?” In the Twilight Zone episode the husband is fine but, as Mr. Steward leaves the couple to reset the box and pass it on, he makes the point that he will, of course, be passing it on to someone who, he assures them... doesn’t know them.

Now for me the implied threat of that version is much stronger and, in fact, it’s the option that Richard Kelly goes for in this movie but, the thing is, we get to this point fairly quickly in the running time, it has to be said. Probably no later than half way through the film. What the director/writer then does is take the premise further and start exploring both the reasons why such an interesting proposition has taken place in the first place and also what the aftermath is for the various people who find themselves unwillingly participating in this deadly game.

Now, a strong opener like that was probably better off with no meaning behind it because, after the initial trauma of the idea, nothing you say is going to explain it adequately enough to match the simplicity of the initial proposition. I’m sure Richard Matheson understood this and I’m guessing so did Richard Kelly. However, it does give Kelly a chance to explore what could possibly happen next and, I really don’t want to give away too much here except to say...

The film does get a whole lot bleaker as the narrative continues on towards the ending. This is not a feel good film and the intensity and dark places that it goes to reminded me, at least in terms of atmosphere and the kind of way in which the nagging claustrophobia of the main protagonists’ daily milieu is presented on screen, of Alex Proyas’ Dark City. Fans of that movie wil probably like the trip that this director takes them on here.

Like I said, I don’t want to put any spoilers into play here but there is a certain significance in the fact that Cameron Diaz’ character Norma is married to James Marsden’s character Arthur, who is part of NASA and worked on a project involving a probe which was sent to Mars. They, like many families inadvertently taking part in this chain of events, have a young child. There is a lot of conspiracy happening in this movie and, like the old TV show The Invaders, there’s also a tell for the audience, and the central characters, as to whether or not someone in the movie is already taking part in this particular “programme”.

What I will say is that, if you’re expecting a movie which is a set up to a thriller with an upbeat sense of closure, then you’re in the wrong genre. It’s both more and, to some people, probably less. This is a science fiction film, it turns out, and it’s very much tapped in to the old school 1950s style sci-fi movies and this one comes across as almost a mish mash of The Day The Earth Stood Still and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, in some respects. It takes the initial concept and takes it into new areas and, near the end, to a new moral decision on the part of the one of the characters. A decision that we realise, at this point, has been asked of people a lot of times before the involvement of Norma and Arthur.

In some ways I can understand why The Box apparently bombed at the box office. I do think, however, that this movie has got a lot going for it and fans of science fiction will really enjoy it. There are a few nice genre nods, the perpetual sense of impending bleakness is coolly maintained throughout the running time and it really doesn’t cop out at the end. Certainly, a movie I think is worth a watch and something I feel should have had a lot more success at the time of its release... when it was sold as more of a thriller in the trailer, than as a science fiction/horror movie. Definitely one to watch out for if you’ve not come across it before.