*SPOILER ALERT*
(2012. dir: Paul Sampson) Aristotle said, "If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person." If there'd been cinema back then, he'd have included it in his caution, and I'm beginning to wonder if, as I dig down into the dregs of Reedus' resume, I might be slowly mutating into some older, more troglodyte form. Certainly I'm cursing more than I used to. That's all preamble to my warning to you: even the keenest Reedus fans may have some trouble with this one.
You know how sometimes at a party someone will ask what was the worst movie that you ever saw? and the question covers too much ground, it's too huge, you can't even begin to answer it? I'm not saying this is the worst movie I've ever seen, but I guarantee it'll be one of the select which pop into my head next time someone asks.
First of all, it's a vanity project. This guy Paul Sampson wrote it, directs it, stars in it. That should set off your crap-detector right there. Nobody but Woody Allen should try all three at once, and, for the last thirty years, not even him. We'll allow Warren Beatty his Reds, and Orson Welles his Citizen Kane, but those pieces of genius are the exceptions, not the rule.
It's a double story, jumping back and forth in time. It begins in the 14th century, with a band of Crusaders led by their own Percival, a blood-smeared, holier-than-all-of-thou guy named Gregoire. Lord Morris (possibly Maurice?) McGuirk Gregoire of Reading, to be exact. Reading is in England, not far from London; Ethelred and Alfred the Great fought the Vikings there in the 9th century, and lost. McGuirk is an Anglicized version of a Gaelic name which shows up in Scotland and Ireland from the late 13th century. So is this cat Scottish (and,if so, what's he doing in Reading, for crying out loud?) or did his family come over from France with the Conqueror? he has a modern American accent, with some Bronx in it, I think, although he tries to soften it by throwing in the odd "'tis"; he says "pureness" when he means "purity" and "prophesized" instead of "prophesied". I don't know. I'm just saying.
Anyway, you have a band of Templars, some of whom turn treacherous, sell their souls in exchange for "ten lifetimes of excess," assassinating poor, pure Gregoire in the meantime, who vows, with his dying words, to return at the end of the allotted lifespans to wreak his vengeance upon each and every one. The other half of the story is set in modern day, in a medieval castle, where the reincarnation of Gregoire has been hired as "events coordinator" for an assemblage of disparate folks gathered to experience the Weekend of Their Dreams. Never mind that the dream of one is to rape all the women, which might easily interfere with the dreams of the women. None of that matters, because in truth these are the reincarnated Judas-Templars at the end of their given stretch, and it's time to pay the righteously angry piper.
This is where things get dodgy. First of all, we're on theologically shaky ground, since Thomas Aquinas will tell you (with rage in his voice) that the Catholic Church holds no truck with metempsychosis, and the Templars were unequivocally Catholic soldiers, so what's up with the reincarnation? unless you want to argue the Templars were worshipping some other god, like the notorious Baphomet, or belonged to some Manichean strain of pseudo-Christian heresy, but it's evident from the basics of the story as told that these good Knights certainly thought they were fighting for the Pope and the Catholic Church.
Alright, that's nitpicking, granted. The real crux of the moral problem lies elsewhere: since only a few of the victims recall their true identities and so know they're walking into battle, what we end up with is the piecemeal slaughter of unarmed women and weaklings. Henry Flesh (Reedus) is one of the latter. He's a sensualist (ie: a chain-smoking, sex-fiend, rapist guy who enjoys some kind of "animal thing" which is never explained), a fellow who's looking for a big fuckfest and who winds up instead on the skewery end of a Crusader sword, splattered all over the barkdust. Is that really holy revenge? Ten incarnations past the wrongdoing, defenceless and unprepared, and the wrath of God descends in the form of a hardened warrior to, what, cut a woman's throat while she's drawing a bath? What kind of God is this, again? I don't know. I'm just saying.
I'm talking about these things because I don't know what else to talk about. Some movies make you feel like a bully just for reviewing them, because they're so far subpar they don't even count as real movies.
To his credit, Reedus throws himself with glee and enthusiasm into the role. He's wearing old-school Keds on his feet, or are they Converse All-Stars? it's endearing, and kind of funny, and they figure into his death scene. He gets to say things like, "You see her? I'm gonna do some dirty shit to that one," and, during a blow-job, he takes off his belt and wraps it around his neck, which would normally seem an inspired choice, except that this is David Carradine's last movie, and so it seems creepy instead.
I want you to wrap your mind around that. This was David Carradine's last hurrah. What kind of foul luck is that?
Rating: zero stars
Reedus Factor: one and a half stars
No comments:
Post a Comment