24 HOURS TO LIVE (2017)

The unexpected success of action flicks like Taken and John Wick directly inspired a host of vigilante imitators, all which saw an engaging lead (or once engaging…cough cough John Travolta) taking on hordes of anonymous henchmen with slick style while committing lots of violence. Sean Penn’s The Gunman, Kevin Costner’s 3 Days to Kill, Pierce Brosnan’s The November Man, Travolta’s I Am Wrath, and pretty much every action movie Liam Neeson did post-Taken — not a single one of these was any good. So when Ethan Hawke’s 24 Hours to Live was released, quietly, it seemed like yet another tired John Wick clone, and Hawke’s spotty mainstream action/thriller record wasn’t an advantage. (Getaway is one of the worst movies you’ve never seen.)

Happily, and surprisingly, 24 Hour to Live is pretty fun, showcasing a seldom seen bad-ass Hawke as Travis Conrad, a retired shadowy government agent pulled out of retirement for one last yadda yadda. As you can see, there’s really nothing that makes 24 Hours to Live unique or innovative beyond the time-tabled life thing (although this had been done previously in Crank). Otherwise, you’ve definitely seen this sort of thing before, with the same kind of character machinations and motivations: Conrad lost his wife and son a year prior, so he’s a heavy-drinking cynical mess. Again, this character trope is absolutely nothing new to the genre. Hawke was barely a pre-pube member of the Dead Poets Society when Martin Riggs was garbage-firing it up in his trailer with a loaded gun in his mouth. But, as I’ve said time and time again, I’m totally fine with seeing the same concepts being re-explored, in any genre, so long as it’s executed with a little showmanship, enthusiasm, and sense of excitement.

24 Hour to Live offers all three.

Much of this comes from director Brian Smrz, who, like John Wick’s directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, got his start as a stunt coordinator on big silly action films. Though he gets a little overwrought during the “be sad/dead family” montages, the action sequences work very well and are confidently executed, and for this kind of movie, that’s all that really matters. And the violence — hoooo, boy! Thank you!

Not everything in 24 Hours to Live is a success, whether it’s the hamfisted dialogue, the occasional plot hole, or the severe under-usage of Rutger Hauer (he deserved his own official “Frank” spin-off), but enough of it works that it makes for one of the better quiet Lionsgate action flicks that the studio seems to dump every month. Don’t let this one get lost in the spate of other LGF action releases that showcase a tired Bruce Willis or a bizarre Steven Seagal. 24 Hours to Live won’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s still a fun ride, and will temporarily satiate the action junkie patiently waiting for John Wick: Chapter 4.

NEW YEAR'S WATCHING: ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (2005)

Remakes of John Carpenter’s films so far haven’t really yielded anything considered a total success in that they were both critically and commercially successful. Even though Rob Zombie’s awful Halloween remake somehow has its defenders, the 2005 remake of The Fog is universally derided, and rightfully so (though both made obscene money at the box office). Meanwhile, the maiden voyage of the Carpenter remake trend was 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13, directed by French filmmaker Jean-François Richet (the similarly underrated Blood Father with Mel Gibson) and boasting a pretty excellent cast of Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne, Brian Dennehy, Maria Bello, Drea de Matteo, John Leguizamo, and lots more recognizable faces. It came and left theaters quickly, doing moderately well with critics, who apparently were the only ones who saw the thing, which is a shame, because—remake of a beloved cult film or not—it’s pretty damn entertaining.

Like any good remake should do, Assault on Precinct 13 takes the basic concept of the original, maintaining the setting, the characters, and the siege-like component, and throws it all into a blender along with some shake-ups to the story. This time, instead of gang members descending on a decommissioned police precinct, it’s a horde of corrupt cops trying to assassinate gang leader Marion Bishop (Fishburne), who has done his fair share of dirty dealings with those cops and has the power to put them away for good—if he survives New Year’s Eve and testifies against them in court. (Bishop was the name of the hero in the original, played by Austin Stoker; though Fishburne steps into the villain role, it’s without the name “Napoleon Wilson,” which I guess didn’t sound as bad-ass thirty years later.)  Naturally, once the corrupt cops descend on the police station, which lacks any kind of communication lines since the place is no longer “on duty,” and with a blinding New Year’s Eve snowstorm isolating them even further, the precinct’s cops and crooks must band together if they want to survive the night.

The screenplay was handled by James DeMonaco, who had just written the very successful hostage thriller The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson and then-beloved Kevin Spacey. Interestingly, DeMonaco would become a force ten years later in Hollywood alongside Blumhouse by writing and directing the Purge series, which DeMonaco had said from the very beginning was inspired by Carpenter and his penchant for siege and anti-order films. Obviously, the original Assault on Precinct 13 was a very low budget affair bordering on grindhouse cinema, made by an unknown and untested director (who in typical Carpenter style also wrote, edited, and scored the film) and starred a cast of unknown or obscure actors. Meanwhile, 2005’s remake is big, glossy, and made with as much spectacle as director Richet can get away with while remaining faithful to the claustrophobic setting. Carpenter has admitted over the years that the original Assault on Precinct 13 was a loose remake/combination of Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead, referring to it nearly as a zombie movie, and the redux maintains that same kind of claustrophobic environment where hope for rescue dwindles by the hour.

Appropriately, Richet and DeMonaco are very aware of Carpenter’s overall career as a horror director, even though he’d wandered away from that genre several times to make action-thrillers (Escape from New York), comedies (Memoirs of an Invisible Man), dramas (Elvis), and, as Carpenter likes to put it, “girly movies” (Starman). Because of this, even though this Assault on Precinct 13 is still well within the action-thriller genre, it unfolds almost like a slasher movie, in that several members of its ensemble cast are picked off one by one in violent ways, with many of them not being characters (or actors) you’d ever expect to see bite the big one.  

Ethan Hawke jumps from genre to genre as well, never hanging his hat too long in any one place, though he seldom played the role of action hero even in his youth. Besides the terrible Getaway and the obscure but decent 24 Hours to Live, Assault on Precinct 13 sees Hawke in a rare full-on popcorn action role and you can tell he’s having fun with material that doesn’t require as much psychological pathos as the parts he ordinarily likes to play. (He was phenomenal in last year’s First Reformed, for example.)  Like the geekiest of directors, Hawke respects and enjoys different kinds of films, and he puts in a laudable amount of effort to make his character of Sgt. Jake Roenick more than just your typical apprehensive hero.  As for Fishburne as the “bad guy,” well, as most actors will tell you, it’s always much more fun to play the villain, and he knows it, and he does it well. Fishburne’s intensity and swagger has always cast an intimidating pallor over many of his roles, even when playing the good guy, so it’s not exactly necessary to suspend disbelief when seeing him in this kind of role. 

Carpenter has been sly over the years when asked for his opinions on remakes of his films, saying that though the remakes were based on his movies, those remakes belong to other filmmakers and it wouldn’t be his place to comment. (Me thinks this was mostly his way of having to avoid publicly calling Rob Zombie’s Halloween a piece of shit considering they were friends, even though he basically did that very same thing later on.) Still, Carpenter had kind things to say about Assault on Precinct 13, saying in an interview, “I thought it was terrific. I thought the cast was sensational. I just loved it.” 

He’s not the only one.

FIRST REFORMED (2018)

From its very first minute, First Reformed, from the longest-working man in show biz, Paul Schrader, is never not engaging. The filmmaker responsible for writing Taxi Driver, Hardcore, and Raging Bullmay not have made a film this engaging since 1997’s Affliction. It’s also very unusually made, with the director choosing a 4×3 aspect ratio, a direct call back to a primitive era of film, and very very rarely moving the camera. Except for the gorgeous opening shot, which slowly tracks from the bottom of red-brick steps to the front doors of an old Dutch Colonial church, every shot is static, and they can go on and on without a break in action or dialogue. Oftentimes, if someone calls a film “point and shoot,” that person means the film lacks identity or style, and that the director is workman-like without a sense of making the story come to life with visual flourish. First Reformed purposely goes for the point and shoot aesthetic, but Schrader uses the style to maximum effect, manifesting Father Toller’s growing indifference, isolation, frustration, and severe battle with his faith.

Speaking of, Ethan Hawke has gone from being an actor that I was too quick to dismiss to one of my absolute favorites. Interviews with him (like the one included on this release) show him to be a very pensive, thoughtful, and likable actor who enjoys genre-hopping in an effort to play different kinds of characters in different kinds of situations. For a long time I held high that his work in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy was his best, but then First Reformed came along and left me in total awe of his talent. It’s his work in this that’s made me realize the actor doesn’t receive nearly the amount of accolades he deserves. His work here is staggering, and an absolute career high. The archetype of the priest struggling with his faith isn’t a new concept, but when you’ve got Paul Schrader behind that archetype’s tweaking and finessing, turning him into a somewhat of a Travis Bickle character, it absolutely opens up the character into something new. 

In a sense, First Reformed is a fantastic companion piece to Schrader’s Taxi Driver: two men, at odds with society, become seduced by the idea of shaking up that society and putting an end to the evil and sickness that plagues our world at large. Travis Bickle drives taxi cabs and Father Toller presides over thinly attended masses and is forced to serve as a surrogate tour guide for his famous Underground Railroad church, but both men suffer the same disillusionment and horror with their world and both men, perhaps not all there, want to do something about it. The film also contains aspects of Calvinism, to which Schrader subscribes, and which also appeared in a more obvious form throughout Schrader’s Hardcore. Given its religious themes, one might assume that Schrader is lampooning or satirizing religion at large, but that’s not really the case here. Schrader, instead, is telling a story similar to ones he’s told in the past and imbuing a lot of shared themes of loneliness to the point of mental detriment, but this time it just so happens to be a priest. That sounds like Schrader side-stepping a larger potential, but just the opposite: he’s smart enough to not take the easy bait.

First Reformed is very unusually made, and its very pro-environmental message, even though it has a great deal of reason to be there given its story, will probably turn off some audiences, as they don’t mind being preached to up to a certain extent. First Reformed willfully and purposely ups the preaching levels, and for dual purposes: to enhance and justify Father Toller’s descent into radicalism, and to enforce upon the viewing audience: we’re very very close to being eternally fucked. First Reformed will scare you in more than one way, and regardless of how you feel about the film by its end, it’s a long-term unshakeable experience.

Paul Schrader is 72, and has just delivered among the best films in his directorial career.