Tank Girl - 1995

"Tank Girl" - 1995
Dir. by Rachel Talaley - 1 hr. 44 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I can't help but think that if "Tank Girl" had been the exact same film that is, but with a credit that read "directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky," it might have been received rapturously, and praised as a surrealist masterpiece.  The reason I say this is that, having seen "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain," some of the content of "Tank Girl" isn't that far off.  The only real misstep here is that there's a little too much traditional story, and not quite enough insistence that the experience of taking in this film is going to have to be enough narrative for the audience to live with.  For a film that's regarded as a disaster and a bomb, re-watching "Tank Girl" for the first time in at least a decade was somewhat of a revelation.

"Tank Girl" is based on a comic book by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett (probably better known for providing all of the visuals for the "Gorillaz" project, with Blur's Damon Albarn).  In the film, we're in the year 2033, and the world's in the middle of a decade-long drought.  Water & Power, controlled by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell), runs everything.  Rebecca, A.K.A. Tank Girl (Lori Petty), is part of a band of squatters who have been diverting water, and are raided by W&P's troops.  Pretty much everyone is killed, including Rebecca's boyfriend, with the exception of her, who is captured, and a young girl named Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower), who is auctioned off.  Rebecca refuses a job with W&P, and instead vows to break out and save Sam from whatever trouble she's ended up in.

"Tank Girl" is a very weird film.  I don't have any doubt as to why people responded to it in the manner that they did.  1995 was definitely before Hollywood knew what to do with comic book material.  One could argue that they still have difficulty with idiosyncratic material (of which the comic definitely is), but this didn't stand a chance.  But what resulted is so unbelievably 1995, kind of in the way that "Repo Man" or "Heathers" are like the 1980's, or the aforementioned Jodorowsky films couldn't have come from any time except the 1970's.  "Tank Girl" is 200 proof, triple distilled 1995 on a DVD.  At the time, people might have shrugged and moved on; removed from it's context, this film is insanity.  Part of that has to do with the soundtrack, which is a rock solid representation of what that period in time sounded like.  But when factors like popularity or trendiness are removed, things get really weird.

Imagine, if you will, a strip-tease scene set to a Bush song.  You don't remember Bush?  They were that British band that everyone hated because they sounded like Nirvana, but then everyone secretly bought the album anyways.  That's a pretty weird soundtrack to a seduction that includes safety scissors.  Maybe you'd prefer to imagine a world where people have to work in a coal mine (or whatever), but they have to do it while listening to Hole.  You know, Courtney Love?  But not the cleaned up, smoothed out, radio-friendly Hole that had hits like "Malibu," the weird baby-doll dress-wearing, screaming, bereaved widow Hole.  Can you imagine if you had to work in a place like that?  It's Hell.  Literally Hell.  Demoralizing, soul-devouring Hell.  Never mind that there are tons of scenes here that also look like an underpopulated Burning Man (and one is soundtracked by a Sky Cries Mary song).  I'm old enough to remember the context that these songs existed in originally, but enough time has passed that I know how weird this world sounds out of that context.

There's also an entire, separate essay that could be written on how "Tank Girl" portrays the messed-up sexuality of the early 90's.  I won't get that deeply into it, but it's how you get things like a "shower scene" with Rebecca (where she's fully clothed, and is doused with de-lousing powder instead of water), or a scene where you have an entire brothel doing a Busby Berkeley song-and-dance number to a Cole Porter song.  "Tank Girl" isn't a de-sexed film, but nearly all sexuality portrayed is either a threat or is undercut by Rebecca's girlishness (there is a reason they are called riot grrrls, not riot women).  While "Tank Girl" is rated R, it's strangely dicey in this department.

One word that you could use to describe "Tank Girl" is "frenetic," which is both its charm and its failing.  Lead actress Lori Petty is probably doing the female equivalent of a Pauly Shore character here, which works for this movie, but is also unlikely to endear "Tank Girl" to like eighty-five percent of movie-goers.  Director Rachel Talalay also throws pretty much everything at the wall, including a hallucination scene and animated transitions between segments.  It's a visually-rich approach, but can be overwhelming if you're not prepared for it.  And the entire film is built on shaky legs; the story is pretty stock (TM Lars Ulrich).  It falls into a no-man's land; not rich enough to be interesting on that merit, and not non-linear enough to really build on the strengths of this film (which, to be clear, are Petty's energetic performance, a surrealist streak, and being so 1995 that it's at one hundred twenty percent of capacity).  "Tank Girl" is not a great movie.  It is a weird movie, an interesting one, a crazy one, and that's more than enough if you're not going to make a big deal out of it's flaws.

3.5 / 5 - TV

Point Break - 1991

"Point Break" - 1991
Dir. by Kathryn Bigelow - 2 hrs.

Theatrical Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I guess Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel really liked this movie.  Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why "xXx" uses elements of this film and especially "The Fast and the Furious" use the exact same plot.  I'm not saying that "Point Break" is the first film to explore the idea of someone going undercover, but the similarities are striking.  But this film might be more recently familiar because of it's mention in the excellent "Hot Fuzz."  So what I'm saying is that people have seen "Point Break."

"Point Break" is an early starring role for Keanu Reeves, who plays Johnny Utah, a former college football star whose career was derailed by injuries.  He is now an FBI agent, paired with Pappas (Gary Busey), working bank robberies.  There is one crew, called the Ex-Presidents, that have been very successful in this endeavor.  Pappas' pet theory is that the unusually disciplined bank robbers are surfers, who use the loot to spend the rest of the year chasing waves.  As to whether or not that theory holds up, I'll refer you to the film's poster for a clue:

Utah has to go undercover (since he's twenty-five, and Busey is in his fifties, possibly in dog years), and a chance encounter with a woman named Tyler (Lori Petty) provides him an in.  At this point, there have been a few films that use this plot, so I don't think that I'm spoiling anything when I saw that Johnny falls for Tyler, gets too close to Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), who is leading the crew he's after, and that he jumps out of a plane without a parachute and survives.  Wait, what?

Yeah, he really does that.  There are a number of pretty spectacular action sequences and natural vistas (since the surfers are adrenaline junkies, they surf and sky-dive almost constantly, which provides ample opportunity to wallow in natural beauty).  There are car chases, bank robberies, house parties, beach football games...  The one thing that the characters have in common is that they're kind of restless, and incapable of sitting still.  And all of that works pretty well for the basis of an action film.

For a lot of the film, the real story is Johnny Utah's search for his own identity.  He's a young man, fresh out of Quantico (which in itself was a back-up plan when his athletic career went up in smoke), and it makes sense that he'd be susceptible to the charms of Tyler, Bodhi, and the ocean.  And as long as the Ex-Presidents stay disciplined, it's all kind of harmless fun.  No one gets hurt, the banks are insured, and the surfers get to live out their Endless Summer.  But when the pressure starts bearing down on Bodhi, he cracks, and things aren't harmless anymore.  It is at this point when the real tension begins to mount for Johnny Utah; he understands the lifestyle and the appeal of it, but when things turn deadly, the Ex-Presidents cannot be allowed to continue on.

A lot of jokes are made about Keanu Reeves' acting chops, but at this point in his career, the role of Johnny Utah was a nice transitional role between his "Bill & Ted's" character and an attempt to do more dramatic work.  All of the quirks of his style are perfectly suited to a movie about surfing (despite him not knowing how to surf before this film was made), and aren't a distraction at all.  Gary Busey is a good supporting actor, and Patrick Swayze knocked his role out of the park.  It's not hard at all to see why other people would want to be around him and follow his lead, which is a prerequisite for this kind of character.  And when his dark side starts to emerge, it's plausible.  I even liked Lori Petty (and yes, I loved "Tank Girl"); she's not a conventional lead actress, but she's easy to warm up to.

Is "Point Break" a good movie?  Well, it's pretty good.  There are things to recommend it (the action, the surfing scenes, a reasonably good plot), and things that work against it (how you feel about Reeves and Lori Petty as actors, the languid pacing at points in the first half of the film), but it's pretty watchable.  I've seen it a few times now, and I'm still not sick of it.  That's probably the best thing that I could say about it.  And plus, Busey's character drifts a 80's sedan around a turn at one point during the big car chase.  What's not to love about that?

3 / 5 - Blu-Ray