ATOMIC BLONDE (2016)

When the trailer for John Wick was released, no one expected much. It didn’t particularly sell that film in the way it deserved to be sold, focusing more on the dog and goofy carnage rather than the exceptional choreography and the clever world building. I was in from the start because Keanu—I’ll watch him in anything (I even somehow sat through Knock Knock)—but I wasn’t expecting the well made, sincere, and very fun film that John Wick was.

Its two directors, former stunt men Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, soon split off in diverging paths: Stahelski committed to John Wick: Chapter 2 and Leitch to Atomic Blonde. If there was ever any doubt that one director was the secret weapon of John Wick's success, John Wick: Chapter 2 was step one in dispelling that notion. Atomic Blonde is step two.

Atomic Blonde has been meticulously designed and Leitch proves he can absolutely hold his own as a director working solo. Despite how it was marketed, it’s not the female response to John Wick, instead taking its page from paranoid spy thrillers of the ‘70s but reinvented with the neon-loving flamboyance of Nicolas Winding Refn. David Leitch directing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind instead of George Clooney offers a pretty broad but helpful means of warning the audience what kind of film they’ll be getting. Don’t get me wrong, Atomic Blonde does have a handful of extremely impressive action scenes on display—one in particular is presented in the form of a minutes-long unbroken take and rivals anything seen in either John Wick flick—but the film is more interested in cloak-and-dagger espionage, double- and triple-crosses, political Cold War unrest, and hewing at least a little closer to reality by presenting Lorraine Broughton as a bad-ass but entirely human and fallible character. Even after rolling down a hundred concrete steps, John Wick can get up and have a drink. Broughton doesn’t bounce back so quick—her body, which Theron isn’t shy about showing off, is her personal roadmap of pain.

And speaking of Broughton, between the obvious Mad Max: Fury Road and now Atomic Blonde, Charlize Theron is having a grand old time kicking everyone’s asses. On top of looking good while she’s doing it, she excels at it. She looks well suited to this kind of material, and even when she engages in the most painful of action set pieces, it’s evident she’s having the most fun out of everyone. Atomic Blonde tries to strike a similar tone to the Craig era of the Bond franchise by injecting a cheeky sense of fun into an otherwise serious story, but where Bond’s generally light tone was more conducive to that kind of balancing act, Atomic Blonde can be very dark at times, and also violent, even grisly, so when the film opens with a John Wick-ish chase scene set to an iteration of Blue Monday, but later on a minor character is violently beaten in the face with a skateboard, Atomic Blonde can seem very tonally confused. Despite that, it’s extremely well made, and all the actors commit, obviously including Theron. It’s still undecided if Atomic Blonde, based on the graphic novel Atomic Blonde: The Coldest City by Antony Johnston, will birth a second franchise for her, but it’s certainly worthy of one.

THE SEVEN-UPS (1973)

Gritty cop thrillers from the late ‘60s and ‘70s are among some of my favorite films. The French Connection, Bullitt, Dirty Harry — hell, I’ll even throw a bone to the Dirty Harry-inspired John Wayne flick McQ, even if it’s the weakest of the bunch. Put McQueen or Eastwood in a trench coat; give him a cynical attitude, fast car, and a talkative gun; mix in a little Lalo Schifrin jazz flute; and I’m yours. The Seven-Ups hails from this same school, this time seeing JAWS’ Roy Scheider in the lead role of Buddy Mancino, leader of a secret police force investigating organized crime. It presents with the same kind of gutsy gusto as it predecessors, this time with the novelty of seeing Scheider in a lead role — a rarity for an actor who was usually part of an ensemble, or as director William Friedkin once called him, an actor more appropriate as “a second banana.”

The Seven-Ups was directed by Philip D’Antoni, who had previously produced Friedkin’s classic crime thriller The French Connection, though that’s not the only commonality between them. In fact, The Seven-Ups feels like a French Connection spin-off, this time focusing on Popeye Doyle’s partner, also named Buddy (and played by Scheider). There’s also the New York setting, along with, again, the grittiness of the real New York; the expertly executed car chases choreographed by legendary stunt driver Bill Hickman; the extremely atypical musical score by Don Ellis; and the essential presence of writer/former NYPD detective Sonny Grosso, whose exploits would go on to inspire the aforementioned films.

The Seven-Ups occasionally gets derided by critics for its loosey-goosey plot, which isn’t unfair; there are many moving parts within its running time, including lots of double-crossing, duplicity, and the eeriest car wash you could ever visit, and I can’t say with confidence it all comes together into one streamlined story. But, being that 1968’s Bullitt has an even more nonsensical plot and is even more celebrated, I’m totally fine with celebrating The Seven-Ups — warts and all. 

What’s most important is that The Seven-Ups is absolutely entertaining as hell, and Roy Scheider excels in this kind of role, along with the immensely talented and underrated character actor Tony Lo Bianco. In terms of D’Antoni’s presence, The French Connection may be the more well-regarded and more confidently plotted crime classic, but give me The Seven-Ups any night of the week. It’s viscerally thrilling in the same way as its counterparts, aided by a score by Don Ellis that’s so unexpectedly eerie you’d think he were instead scoring a horror film. And the car chase scene — holy shit. If Bill Hickman doesn’t have a lifetime achievement award, posthumously or otherwise, shame on the entire Academy.

ROAD GAMES (1981)

Director Richard Franklin was known in his native homeland of Australia as “Australia’s Hitchcock,” and that’s not because he was a filmmaker who made notable genre fare, but because, like another noted genre filmmaker, Brian De Palma, Franklin was fascinated by Hitchcock’s techniques and sensibilities and adopted them into his own work. His most direct tie to Hitchcock was his helming of Psycho 2, a belated sequel following 18 years after Hitchcock’s landmark horror shocker. A few years later, Franklin would take a script by well-known Australian screenwriter Everett de Roche (Razorback) and bring it to life as a Rear Window-meets-road-movie hybrid, imbuing it with Hitchcock’s famous themes of paranoia and isolation, along with his use of dark humor and quirky supporting characters.

Road Games gets mentioned a lot when notable 1980s horror titles are being rattled off, especially when that conversation is based around all the horror flicks Jamie Lee Curtis did in her youth to earn the moniker “Scream Queen,” but not only is she not present in a majority of the film, the horror is actually toned down quite a bit in favor of thrills, mystery, and black humor. And despite Road Games being an Australian production which happens to feature some American actors, along with being an obvious homage to Hitchcock, the film also fits right in with ’70s American cinema, unofficially known as the paranoid thriller era. Films like The Conversation, The French Connection, Marathon Man, and more were direct results of the Nixon/Watergate scandal, and the cinematic response was one that would also soon be revitalized by The X-Files, whittled down into one core lesson: trust no one. 

The reason Road Games fits in well with this movement is that for a good portion of the film, Stacy Keach’s Quid is doing nothing more than following his paranoid instincts on what he may have witnessed. It’s not a slam dunk for him from the beginning; he’s not convinced that he’s witnessed anything nefarious, or if he is convinced, he doesn’t have enough evidence to back it up. What he does figure out pretty quickly is that law officials are no help, and all the blokes and sheilas who overhear his frantic demands for help on the bar payphone are not only not overly concerned, but they look upon him with suspicion. There’s an indirect subplot involving a worker’s strike going on in Australia which has resulted in meat becoming scarce, but also leaving natives incredibly wary of people they don’t know. Obviously this doesn’t help matters — not only is Quid American, but he’s a long-haul truck who happens to have a trailer full of meat. Simply put, no one is eager to help him.

Where Road Games falters is with its pace. The first act unloads at a purposeful but ever-intriguing pace. Through Quid’s observations, we “meet” all the other characters on the road around him, and this isn’t for throwaway comedy, but because we will cross paths with these characters again later. It’s through this observational behavior (because what else is there to do on the road besides stare straight ahead and talk to a dingo?) that Quid thinks he may have witnessed a murder — or, at least, a potential murder. Quid fixates on the maybe-killer (Grant Page), who will be personified by his dirty black hippie van for most of the film. It’s when we’re approaching the middle of the second act, after Jamie Lee has hitched Quid for a ride (her nickname is “Hitch” throughout — which serves two purposes: character nickname and Hitchcock homage), where the pace starts to slow. Keach and Curtis have reasonably good on-screen chemistry, and watching them get to know each other is charming, but once Hitch mysteriously vanishes, and Quid begins to question what’s really going on is when Road Games slows to a near halt. After having built such good will with the audience, and provided them with reasons to be as intrigued with the plot as Quid is with that dirty green van, the air is let out of all the goings-on; even as Road Games struggles to get back on track, and it eventually does, too much time is spent waiting for that to happen.

Still, what allows Road Games to speed across the finish line as an overall entertaining contribution to the genre is its identity, helped by the quirky sensibilities of Richard Franklin. Had Road Games been just another slasher flick, but plagued with the same second-act slowdown, it would be just a footnote in the genre timeline. Even though Franklin’s intent was to homage one of the horror greats using an open-road concept, it’s his likeness — far less known to American audiences — that make Road Games a film that’s not willing to be outright dismissed. It’s a flawed film for sure, and some viewers might not have the patience to spend most of their time watching a man riding around in the cab of a truck, but there’s a reason why Road Games has stuck around for so long. Equal measures of mystery, thrills, intrigue, and black humor make Road Games stand out from the rest of its ’80s colleagues, even if it doesn’t play as well as some of them.

Road Games is an offbeat title and definitely not for everyone. The Hitchcock flair is certainly present, both in construction and realization, but also in its usage of black comedy. Though its considered one of the many titles that made Jamie Lee Curtis a “Scream Queen,” her appearance lasts no more than 25 minutes, leaving Keach to carry most of the screen time. (Okay, him and his dingo.) Its pace might be too glacial for some, and its odd tone may turn off those more used to traditional genre fare, but there’s something undeniably quirky about Road Games that makes it easily watchable. 

‘THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK’ AND THE PARANOID THRILLER

Distrust peaked during the 1970s across a variety of arenas: domestically, societally, and politically. Multiple facets of life had been disrupted by the scathing publication of the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, the ongoing Cold War, fallout from the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family, and the list goes on. Trust in the individual and the institution was at an all-time low, and art on the screen began imitating life on the street and in the home. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is a modern production, but it’s cut, utterly, from the 1970s paranoid thriller. And there’s been no better era in which to resurrect the sub-genre than right now: current trust in the government is at the lowest it’s ever been. And it’s not just the White House we can’t trust, but the very news media that reports on it -- peppered with the president’s constant slogans of “Fake News!” and “Witch Hunt!” -- as well as the people who subscribe to their reality of choice and sell it as truth to someone who might not know any better. We live in an age where the news media you consume determines the philosophies and ideologies you align with, but it also determines that the people who watch those other kinds of news media already have a preconceived notion of you: if you’re a hard-right conservative, you watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal; if you’re a hard-left liberal “snowflake,” you watch MSNBC and read the New York Times – these are the new “rules.”

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek was likely inspired by the 2016 Bundy standoff, which saw a family-led militia taking control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 40 days over a dispute regarding a million-dollar payment to the government. Militia culture had been prevalent in U.S. culture at least since the Clinton Administration, although there seemed to be a spike during the Obama era due in part to the disinformation campaign accented with the constant proclamations of “they’re coming for your guns!” (Raise your hand if you still have your guns.) (You should be raising your hand.) Doomsday Preppers, though not militia-based, shares the same militia mindset, which is that the government and/or civilized order is going to collapse, and once that happens, it’s very man for himself. 

Interestingly, The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays twice with the concept of paranoia. That the men have joined a militia at all, choosing a dilapidated warehouse as a home-base cache for their firearms, explosives, bottled water, and CB radio, is the first touch of this. The second, which embodies the main conflict, is that one of their numbers has attacked a nearby police funeral, killing several attendees, and it’s a race against time to out the shooter among them and turn him over to authorities before they all go down in a hail of gunfire. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays out like a clever combination of Quentin Tarantino’s first low-fi feature, Reservoir Dogs -- about a group of robbers whose diamond heist goes wrong and leads to belief of an undercover cop among them -- and John Carpenter’s The Thing -- about a group of men marooned by the elements and forced to locate the shape-shifting alien lifeform hiding behind one of their faces. There’s very little trust among the men of The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, not helped by their overly radical philosophies, their former professional ties to the police, and the fact that some of them are just friggin’ weird. Take a group of men already paranoid enough to join a militia, insert a reason for them to suspect each other, and you’ve got yourself a situation that’s rife with conflict and wholly removes predictability from the table. 

Director Henry Dunham presents The Standoff at Sparrow Creek as realistically as possible, bringing together a parliament of personalities to embody the different kinds of people who would be attracted to joining a militia: a former cop disillusioned with the system, a man whose daughter suffered a vicious attack and for whom the government provided no justice, and a young man so detached that he keeps a manifesto of anger scrawled between the printed lines of Catcher in the Rye.  (A weird mystique has always hung over this particular novel, likely due to it being found in the homes of John Hinkley, Mark David Chapman, and Robert John Bardo.) Certain members of the militia are more eccentric than others, while some are more bloodthirsty. One of them, which the film subtly suggests is the leader, comes off as more of a crime boss than a redneck good ol’ boy with a burly beard. What unites them is the belief that not only do they have the right to assemble arms and prepare for conflict, but that it’s their duty to do so. “We always knew this was going to happen,” says one of the more unhinged members of the militia regarding the massacre at the police funeral, which visibly sets some of the other members at unease. Their similar philosophies has brought them together, but their unique dedications to their philosophies is going to be what tears them apart.

 A conceit of the paranoid thriller is the isolation of the main protagonist, who is forced to act alone to shed light on the truth of the conspiracy afoot. Francis Ford Coppola did this masterfully with 1974’s The Conversation, about a CIA surveillance expert who becomes convinced he’s the one being surveilled. 1976’s infamous Marathon Man, directed by John Schlesinger, permanently bequeathed to the world two mainstays: fear of the dentist, and “Is it safe?” Next came the game-changing, real-life All The President’s Men, about journalistic duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chasing down leads and consorting with shadowy men in parking garages to irrefutably prove President Nixon’s ties to the Watergate Hotel break-in; however, the reporters are soon the ones being investigated, themselves followed and their home phones bugged. 1977 was an ideal time for Philip Kaufman to remake Invasion Of The Body Snatchers; the amassing pod people were perfect metaphors for so many things that the American people felt were threatening their society: the Soviets, gay culture, the sexual revolution, the hippie movement (the film is set in San Francisco), all worsening the ongoing alienation caused by urbanization. The list of paranoid thrillers continues, with George A. Romero’s The Crazies, Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green, Sidney Lumet’s Serpico, James Bridges’s The China Syndrome, and Franklin J. Schaffner’s bizarre Nazi tale The Boys From Brazil.

 

Following its birth in the ‘70s, the paranoid thriller has never gone away, and has since been explored in every genre. In the ‘80s, we had Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (one of the all-time best), George Lucas’s THX 1138, and Richard Badham’s Wargames. In the ‘90s came Oliver Stone’s JFK, Richard Donner’s Conspiracy Theory, and even comedy satires like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and the All The President’s Men spoof Dick, directed by The Craft’s Andrew Fleming. The 2000s gave us Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, a redo of The Manchurian Candidate by Jonathan Demme, Chan-wook Park’s wicked Oldboy, and the most unnerving sequence in Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds involving an unhinged Tim Robbins. Echoes of this continued in the 2010’s with Martin Scorsese’s underrated Shutter Island and Dan Trachtenberg’s Ten Cloverfield Lane. And let’s not forget the juggernaut that dominated the ‘90s before returning just a couple years ago – the pop culture phenomenon heavily inspired by All The President’s Men and The Andromeda Strain known as The X-Files.  

Mistrust is part of human nature. We exist in a cloud of paranoia where there’s plenty of reason not to put trust in anything or anyone. On personal levels, we’ve been betrayed by those we love. On professional levels, especially for those of us still existing in work landscapes that haven’t quite bounced back from the 2008 recession, the threat of being unceremoniously laid off feels constant. And as for the government, forget it: we can only see so many clips of the president saying something incriminating, only for him to later on swear he never said it, before we totally give up on putting our faith in him, his administration, or in the loyal congregation who reject reality just to believe him. In the age of “fake news,” disinformation campaigns across social media, and the ensuing threat of video manipulation techniques known as “deep fakes” (Google it if you’re not familiar, and be terrified), there’s never been less trust to go around. If the 1970s were any indication, we’ll soon be inundated by films in which the principle cast exists entirely in their own self-made isolation, grasping their guns, peering out of their fortified homes between the slats of their window shades, and asking….“Is it safe?”

 

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]