One of the funnier things about one of my favourite (alas now defunct) podcasts, 2IGTV, was its treatment of Michael Bay’s 2005 sci-fi actioner The Island. Derided in no uncertain terms on its cinema release the combination of Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, a bunch of exploding stuff and…Scarlett Johansson it seems the years have been more than kind to this runt of Bay’s litter of blockbusters for bozos. As a piece of late-show popcorn fluff I thought it did its job rather well and it seems the world has slowly come around to this view, eventually echoed by 2IGTV, where actual arguments broke out over who enjoyed it more in hi-def. Bless.
So, taking the reappraisal of The Island as inspiration, I decided to put together a list of five mainstream movies that, through no fault of their own, faltered on the big screen. No cult classics here, just some modest flicks that deserve a break.
1. Equilibrium
Hard to imagine serous ac-tor Christian Bale would be caught dead in another cartoon dystopia but hey any movie that finds a way to combine martial arts, statics and gunplay into a single discipline ain’t that bad.
2. Friday Night Lights
Dubbed ‘the Black Hawk Down of sports movies’ the comparisons are actually pretty close. Unrelentingly brutal the action on the pitch is almost matched by the sense of entrapment felt by some of the young protagonists. For many of these kids it won’t matter if they win games, their lives off the pitch will still suck the big one. Not that this is a perfect work by any stretch. Gone is the casual racism that permeated the book along with the practice of assigning girls to members of the football team, regardless of the athletes’ ‘availability’.
I’m not familiar with its bastard son TV offshoot but something tells me it doesn’t address the harsher aspects of the source material.
3. Stir of Echoes
Released within weeks of The Sixth Sense, and using many of the same conceits, David Koepp’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s urban gothic really didn’t real get a fair shake by audiences all ghosted out by M. Night Shyamalan’s second feature. Kevin Bacon delivers a great performance as a blue collar schmoe who finds new purpose after a night of heavy drinking and hypnosis. It also has a ‘where are they now’ factor in the shape of Ileanna Douglas, who was all set to be the next great character actress before Naomi Watts started getting all the good roles.
4. Right at Your Door
The idea of a dirty bomb going off in LA might be manna from heaven for rednecks and all-purpose haters but for the locals…not so much. The action here takes place in a sealed suburban home as a man (Rory Cochrane) on the verge of marital breakdown deals with his own prejudices and relationships in a bid to maintain his homestead on levels physical and emotional. A small cast gives RAYD a chamber piece feel and the ending isn’t a cop out – if still a little tidy.
5. Can’t Hardly Wait
Derided in some quarters, Can’t Hardly Wait is a relic of the pre-American Pie era when the teen comedy had really lost its way, still working on the assumption that the default emotional setting for teens was ‘goofy’. As an exercise in dramatic structure, each scene is constructed with a coherent beginning, middle and end. It works to a tight dramatic unity and seems to have every popular actor in the world in it – or at least a healthy chunk.
Cliched, badly directed and just plain awkward this is not exactly John Hughes but it retains a certain heart-on-its-sleeve charm. Actually this clip is awful but I couldn’t find the trailer.