U.S. Marshals

U.S. Marshals (Stuart Baird, 1998) A sequel to The Fugitive, but where that film's Dr. Richard Kimble had been captured and cleared of the murder of his wife, it would seem a little silly to have him go through the same situations, innocent of another horrible crime with which he's charged. 

Talk about "Double Jeopardy!"

But, Tommy Lee Jones received a much-deserved Oscar for his portrayal of U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard, so if the success of The Fugitive dictated a follow-up, best that it concentrate on Gerard and his team of dedicated if eccentric agents working with him, that made so much of an impact in the earlier film. So, along with Jones, came back Joe Pantoliano, Daniel Roebuck, Tom Wood, and LaTanya Richardson Jackson, their wise-cracking timing just as smart-alecky and operating just enough off the rails for "Big Dog" Gerard to rein them in.

But, whereas Gerard in the first film is the active member of a squad seeking to run down a fugitive from justice, here he stumbles into the assignment, accidentally becoming involved in the case in a situation not unlike how the character—with a different first name—was directly, and personally, involved in the escape of the TV "Fugitive." He's part of the deputized contingent escorting prisoners when the transport carrying them suffers a catastrophic accident.

How did he get there? A fugitive-round-up that goes a bit South leading to "excessive force" complaints puts him in dutch with his commander (Kate Nelligan), and as "punishment" he's assigned to escort his prisoners to their holding facility by plane.

Too bad that he doesn't know that the movie's been following a parallel track of following an unrelated investigation into the murder of two Diplomatic Security Service agents trying to stop an exchange of diplomatic secrets. The main suspect of that case is one Mark Roberts (Wesley Snipes), who has been posing as a truck driver but was arrested following a traffic accident. Roberts' fingerprint was found on the scene of that double-murder and now he's being transported on that same plane. Trouble is, he's been targeted for assassination, and that attempt led to the plane crashing. Roberts escapes and Gerard leads the investigation to find him.

He's not alone, though. Along with his usual squad, he's saddled with DSS agent Royce (Robert Downey Jr.), who's a special kind of cocky that just rubs everybody the wrong way, and who's in a big "hurry-up" to apprehend Roberts, even if it means disobeying procedure and going all-cowboy, moves that turn Gerard twenty-five shades of cranky.

While Roberts is working underground to find out why he's been framed, Gerard and crew go to the source to find out about their quarry. Security footage of that double homicide shows two things—that Roberts' actions were self-defense and that he was wearing gloves, contrary to the fingerprint evidence he'd been assured of. But, Gerard being Gerard, he still pursues leads leading to Roberts, while also wanting to find out what the story is. Complications arise to make him double-down on his efforts to find Roberts—who he learns is actually a CIA operative named Mark Sheridan, suspected of trying to sell U.S. intelligence to the Chinese.

Director Stuart Baird started his career in film as an editor—and a great one, at that--editing Tommy, Die Hard 2, and several films of Richard Donner's including The Omen, Superman, and the first two Lethal Weapon films. His first film as director, the Kurt Russell starrer Executive Decision, was a Warner Bros. programmer that proved to be a trial by fire with quarreling actors—only slightly mollified by million dollar pay-checks—and he was able to deliver a fast, furious hijacking drama that had the momentum to keep plot-holes pushed to the backs of audience's minds.*

U.S.Marshals was his second stint in the director's chair** and he had big expectations to fill. The Fugitive had been a big action hit and Baird and his scripter (John Pogue) stacked the film with chases, a couple of spectacular stunts, and shifting narratives and divided loyalties. He also had a bigger canvas--Executive Decision was claustrophobically centered around the interior of a 747 Boeing passenger jet--and he took advantage of it, not only employing varying urban environments, but also Louisiana swamps, even a massive grain freighter.

But, the highlight stunt is one that parallels the "Kimble jumps the dam" sequence in The Fugitive—although appearing much later in its respective film—is Sheridan's jump from the roof-ledge of a building to catch a moving train. It is absolutely ludicrous in imaginable consequences and injuries, but Baird's set-up and editing makes it look plausible...and thrilling...even if Gerard is slow in firing his pistol.

This is the second film for much of the cast and they're all uniformly great.  The only exception being Robert Downey jr. who, frankly, "protests too much" in his role as the square peg in Gerard's posse. Downey is a miracle-worker as an actor, no one could dispute that, but, here, he works against the movie as much as he seems to work against bringing this fugitive in. Where someone in his position should be a bit more low-key, Downey's performance is a grand-stander that immediately puts him in the audience's cross-hairs as somebody "not right." And for all the tsuris his character causes Gerard, you wonder why Deputy Marshal Sam doesn't just keep him out of the way by assigning him clerical work.

 

U.S.Marshals is almost a very good movie, if it didn't stumble so much trying to be as good as The Fugitive, but, unfortunately, it takes a very simple formula and complicates it to no good effect. In raising the stakes, it instead just diminishes the returns.

* For example: Sheridan heals awfully fast—his auto accident at the beginning of the film breaks his arm and puts him in a neck-brace, yet that doesn't seem to slow him down any; "Mythbusters" proved that a Smith & Wesson pistol couldn't shoot out the window of an passenger plane, so a less-powerful zip-gun CERTAINLY shouldn't, which would've stopped the movie in its tracks; and although I appreciate Irène Jacob (as Sheridan's girlfriend) running around in a little black dress, it's absolutely ludicrous that Sheridan would attempt to go on the run with her in the cemetery scene—even if she was wearing sensible shoes.

 
** Baird's third--and so far last—directing effort was the fourth--and last—film featuring the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" cast, Nemesis. He has continued to edit films, most notably two James Bond films of the Daniel Craig era, Casino Royale and Skyfall.

"What Dreams May Come" and Frequent Cryer Miles

I can't believe I've never transplanted this one over here, and it's one from a long, long time ago. I'm different now, but I doubt if my reaction to the movie might have changed. I've experienced a lot of loss since then. 

But, a recent conversation brought it back to my mind's surface (which I'll explain later) and, not seeing it published here, I figured it was due for an update.

 

What Dreams May Come (Vincent Ward, 1998) One cannot divorce oneself from who we are when we see a movie. Our day-to-day existence informs but also colors our perceptions. 

It's like recording a sound in an environment. My other job is as a sound designer. Recording a sound takes a certain kind of awareness; you must keep in mind that when you record the sound of something in the world, you are also recording the world it is in. I can't calculate how many people have approached me with a recording they made and asked "can you take out the echo?" No. You can't. "Where did you record it?" "My kitchen." All those reflective surfaces. It would have been much better and easier (not to mention more possible) to have taken the recording out of the kitchen than to take the kitchen out of the recording.   

So, too, with watching movies. Our environment, both spatial and emotional, at a particular moment in time in our lives affects the perception of that movie, changing it in our eyes and our minds. It is another example of the Observer Effect, and one who watches a lot of movies (or writes about them) would do well to try to hit "reset" in one's expectations before seeing a film.

But one can't always do that.  I first encountered What Dreams May Come—an adaptation of Richard Matheson's fantasy/psychological novel by New Zealand director Vincent Ward—on an airplane while on a long polar flight to Copenhagen, the first leg of a trip to Scotland with my wife. 18 hour airplane rides are brutal—you're trapped in a tube mere inches from instant death, doing something humans don't naturally do in an area of space where they don't naturally survive.  If something goes wrong, pffft. But, things rarely go wrong, in less proportion than highway accidents do, and the vast majority of people get where they want to go. Competence with small measures of brilliance improve our odds.  So planes, which are constantly in the air, rarely crash...which is what makes it news when it happens.

But the vulnerability must weigh on you.

So, this film, What Dreams May Come: Dr. Christian Nielsen (Robin Williams), a pediatrician, meets and marries Annie Collins (Annabella Sciorra), a painter. They have a couple of kids and live an idyllic life, until the children are killed in a car crash, sending Annie into a crippling depression that institutionalizes her and threatens the star-crossed marriage of "soul-mates." Christy's dedication to her pulls her through, but when he is also killed, she spirals into a suicidal fugue state. Christy's spirit monitors her for awhile but, sensing he's doing more harm than good, moves on to Heaven...or his version of Heaven.

It is a vision shared between his painter-wife and himself—landscapes that she has created—and, initially at least, it is made of paint. 

It's a vivid sequence* (for no small reason What Dreams May Come won that year's Oscar for Best Visual Effects), a combination of photo-realism and impressionism: flowers are crushed and dissolved into gooey oils, foot-prints smear into mud-consistency rainbows, the sky is filled with moving van Gogh-style clouds.

But one man's Heaven... In the land of the living, Annie cannot cope with the loss. In a heart-breaking sequence, she paints a single purple-tinged tree with appears in Christy's after-life, then, despairing, she destroys it with solvent, and Christy watches, horrified as the tree sheds its blooms and dies.

Annie ultimately, in her grief, commits suicide, which condemns her to her own Hell, and Christy risks everything to, Orpheus-like, rescue her from her fate. The smearing of real-life and various after-life myths may have been too many leaps of disbelief for modern audiences to hurdle and the film, despite its many visual splendors, did poorly at the box-office.

Truth is, it's something of a wallow, a morose contemplation of life, death and mythic love. Seeing it now, one notices the ardent manipulation and contrivance that informs the scenario, however masked it is with wonder and amazing conceptual imagination. It borders on the hysterical—the sort of film that I usually dismiss with a churlish "Why doesn't everybody get a good night's sleep and start fresh in the morning?" Or, that's what I say when my feet are planted on terra firma.

But, in the sky, in the lower stratosphere between 29,000 and 39,000 feet, it had a different effect. Both my wife and I were reduced to choking, burbling sobs as the struggles of the souls on-screen turned us to puddles of goo—not unlike the flowers Christy squeezes in his hands. You'd think someone had really died as we were inconsolably grieving in our little pity-party in coach, tears streaming down our cheeks, noses running, tissues shredding, and hearts breaking—and this was the last film shown before landing. We were going to be hollow-eyed, snuffling little woe-be-gones getting off the plane—and, indeed, when the lights came up, a stewardess glanced at us in a way that suggested there wasn't enough glazed peanuts in the world she could give us to cheer us up.

I have been thinking about this off and on the last ten years, wondering why What Dreams May Come was so powerful in-flight and not so much on the ground, when an episode of Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life" recently offered up some anecdotal evidence of elevated emotionalism on flights in a segment entitled "Contrails of My Tears." In it, frequent flyers talk about the incidents of crying at sentimental movies, making mountains out of mole-hills, and generally acting like they'd just had a hit of steroids...or any performance enhancers. That may be the answer. It might not, but I'll take an explanation of why this film had such an effect that one time...and that one time only.

 

Beautiful movie, though.

Post-script: The issue of emotional movies on flights has not gone unnoticed. Virgin Atlantic now offers "weep warnings" before the showing of "emotional movies." The last time I felt really emotional during a movie was when I realized I'd spent $28.00 on a 3-D double bill of Cars 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Wonder if that qualifies...

 

Reminds me of a story of a man who took a flight with his wife who was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. At one point during the in-flight, she leaned over to her husband. "If you don't like this movie," she said, "we can always leave." I'm just glad they weren't seated near the exits.

PPS (2022): I had a talk with a friend who'd been going through some tough, tough chemotherapy and there have been complications. At one point, during a recent surgery, something had gone wrong with the oxygen. A nightmare scenario, and he was deprived of oxygen for a minute and a half. Permanent brain damage can occur after 4 minutes—death 4 to 6 minutes after that. But, a minute and a half—90 seconds—was what happened to him.

He recounted having vivid dreams during the procedure, startling extraordinary visions. I asked what they were like and he paused. "You ever see What Dreams May Come?"

Yes. Yes, I had.

"Exactly like that."

 

"But without the dog."

* Part of the reason for that vividness is the film stock that Ward used making the film, Fuji
Velvia film, known among photographers for its color reproduction properties. The colors pop out on the screen and are some of the most beautiful, fanciful images ever to grace a theater screen, an extreme example of what can be accomplished with the twin media of art and science. Isn't that what photography, boiled down to its basics, is?

Don't Make a Scene: The Truman Show

The Story: One thing I haven't missed about going to movies during this pandemic (although I miss the experience badly) is that discomfort one feels after going to see a bad movie. "I wish I had those two hours back," I'd think. I feel it strongly these days as I can no longer deny that I have more yesterdays than tomorrows.

 

And this week I find myself thinking "I want the last four years back!" This has been nuts, the natural conclusion to the influence of television, advertising and public relations into public affairs and politics. In the past, we've had politicians elected because they looked better on camera, we've had politicians' reputations buffed and polished by media specialists. Polls are taken seriously, even as gospel...we're surprised when the statisticians get them wrong. Elections are staged like beauty pageants and election night is always a race to see which network can predict the winner first, whether the polls have closed or not. News is not news but entertainment because...numbers. And if opinion—however crazy—generates numbers to impress the advertisers, then foment and foam is the order of the day.

And the internet generates the illusion to its users that any slob can be a star. All you need is clicks. For its users, this is some sort of democratization, when all it really is...is anarchy.

But, is that any worse...or better...than politics being manipulated by the "hidden persuaders" of professionals in advertising and public relations? Is Ed Harris' Christof right when he says "there's no more truth out there than in the world I created for you"?

All I know is that for the last four years we've had the manufactured product of a "reality show"...which (if anyone knows how those things are produced) is a contradiction in terms...in charge. The carefully groomed and edited image of affluence and competence just can't substitute for the true reality, and for someone who appreciates the checks and balances baked into our system of government and who works with them, rather than trying to subvert them. That system was initiated to replace a monarchy, however flawed the original incarnation was, and, in that "spirit", we shouldn't be welcoming a return to kingdoms.

So, this scene, with the caveat that freedom isn't free, you have to work at it. Nor is it absolute. And if it is, you may be doing it wrong.

And..."In case I don't see ya...Good Afternoon, good evening, and good night!" (Yeah). 

The Set-Up: Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) has lived his life like anybody else...but like no one else. Unbeknownst to him, his life has been lived in a bubble of manufactured circumstance. He is the star of a nationally broadcast "reality" show and the town he lives in a set, his friends are all actors, and his life has been carefully plotted and controlled by the show's creator, Christof (Ed Harris). But, Christof can't control everything. Truman begins to suspect that the life he's living is bizarrely "off-kilter" and that something's wrong—for example, during his "college" years, he fell in love with one of the show's extra's, Sylvia (Natascha McElhone) instead of the intended love-interest, Meryl (Laura Linney) played by actress Hannah Gill. Sylvia had attempted to tell Truman the truth of his life, but was fired from the show. Now, Truman has taken the step of leaving his little town and, has arrived—after Christof's attempts to stop him—at the edge of the dome where the series has been recorded.

Action.

CHRISTOF: Truman...

[Truman turns, startled]

CHRISTOF: You can speak.

CHRISTOF: I can hear you.

TRUMAN: Who are you?

CHRISTOF: I am the creator...of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions.

TRUMAN: Then who am I ?

CHRISTOF: You are the star.

TRUMAN: Was nothing real?

CHRISTOF: You were real. That's what made you so good to watch.

[Truman turns to leave.]

CHRISTOF: Listen to me, Truman.

CHRISTOF: There's no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you.

[Truman turns back slightly toward the voice.]

CHRISTOF: The same lies, the same deceit. 

CHRISTOF: But in my world, you have nothing to fear. 

CHRISTOF: I know you better than you know yourself.

TRUMAN: You never had a camera in my head!

CHRISTOF: You're afraid. That's why you can't leave. 

CHRISTOF: It's okay, Truman. I understand. 

CHRISTOF: I have been watching you your whole life. I was watching when you were born. I was watching when you took your first step. 

CHRISTOF: I watched you on your first day of school.

[Christof laughs]

CHRISTOF: The episode when you lost your first tooth. 

CHRISTOF: You can't leave, Truman.

[Cut to Lauren watching on TV]

LAUREN: Please, God.

CHRISTOF (V.O.): You belong here.

LAUREN: You can do it.

CHRISTOF: With me. 

CHRISTOF: Talk to me. 

CHRISTOF: Say something...

[He drops all pretense of being the creator.]

CHRISTOF: Well, say something, goddammit, you're on television.

CHRISTOF: You're live to the whole world!

[Truman turns and faces the camera]

TRUMAN: In case I don't see ya...

TRUMAN: ...good afternoon, good evening, and good night.

[Truman laughs mockingly]

TRUMAN: Yeah.

[He bows and steps through the soundstage doorway.]

The Truman Show

Words by Andrew Niccol

Pictures by Peter Biziou and Peter Weir

The Truman Show is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Home Entertainment.