1) I was listening to a podcast last week…might have been the Dana Carvey/David Spade podcast, but don’t hold me to that…and someone mentioned iconic lines and iconic speeches from action movies. The premise was, that the most iconic speech from an action movie is Liam Neeson talking to one of his daughter’s kidnappers in TAKEN.
You know the speech:
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Of course, the kidnapper doesn’t listen to Liam, and so begins a movie franchise. But I always wondered…
What if Liam’s character had leaned into the “I don’t have money” piece rather than going into “particular set of skills?”
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have is crippling debt. I’m talking, near-six figure credit card debt. Plus, medical bills that have been turned over to collection agencies. Also, possible foreclosure on my condo. You want to talk about poor? I have to hide my car at a friend’s house to keep it out of the hands of repo men. Probably going to have to sell the baseball cards my dad gave me just to stay afloat another month. I don’t see any way out of this financial hole I’m in.”
I wonder if he had gone that way, if the kidnapper would’ve said,
“Jeez, dude, okay. Here, we’ll let her go. You’re bumming me out. Maybe, you know, talk to a bankruptcy attorney or something.”
2) A few years back, maybe a little longer (who the hell knows), back when I was still on social media…
People would post some stupid hot take about something. Some of it, I’m sure, is real. And I’m sure much of it is to generate clicks and comments. You still see much of the same stuff these days, although now most people are posting political stuff.
Anyway…
Somebody posted something on Facebook about how DIE HARD was not a good movie. They said it was boring and repetitive. Now folks, you can talk shit about any of the DIE HARD sequels. Some are better than others, but all of them have many, many points with which you can criticize. But the first one? Nah. Come on.
So I responded to his post and said I wholeheartedly disagreed, and laid out my reasons. I don’t remember my exact wording, and I no longer have a FB account, so this is all from my spotty memory:
DIE HARD, the first one, changed the landscape of action movies. It came out at the tail end of the 1980’s, after a slew of action movies with buff heroes mowing down armies of cardboard villains. Most of them Russian.
Note: For those too young to remember, in the 1980’s, Americans (mostly Republicans) vilified Russia, and wanted to do business deals with China. That’s apparently all reversed now because I guess we’ve slipped into the dark mirrored universe or something. But I digress.
So action movies back then were heroes who rarely got hurt or broke a sweat, could take on an army with nothing more than a Bowie knife, some well-placed karate kicks, and maybe a bow and arrow. The villains were straight from central casting: foreign, probably communist, and maybe a Nazi, too. The heroes fought them because it was the right thing to do. The American thing to do.
Along comes DIE HARD, and here was the reluctant action hero. He was the average Joe, the everyman. Sure, he was a cop, but nothing special. Balding, little bit of a gut, and probably someone who would have been happy to stand back and let someone else take the hero role. Except his wife, the mother of his two kids, is in danger.
Bruce Willis’s character took hits. He got hurt. He barely makes it to the end of the movie. He wins by luck, mostly.
Oh, and the villains were cool. They had personality, especially the leader, Hans Gruber. Alan Rickman played that character well, and infused him with charisma, charm, and a dark sense of humor. All stuff that makes a memorable villain.
DIE HARD was a surprise to audiences. Most people knew Bruce Willis only from his goofy, comedic roles, and nobody had heard of Alan Rickman before. I would also argue that DIE HARD redefined action movies for the next decade, so much so that pretty much every action movie for the remainder of the 80’s and into the 90’s were imitations of it. Even the sequels.
Writers would pitch their scripts using DIE HARD as a reference:
“It’s Die Hard on a boat!” “It’s Die Hard on a train!” “It’s Die Hard on a bus!” “It’s Die Hard in an office building!”
I’d argue that action movies didn’t get redefined again until the late 90’s when THE MATRIX came out. Then, everyone started trying to copy that film.
So what did the FB guy say to my response?
“I saw Die Hard in the theater when it first came out and found it boring then. And The Matrix was also boring and repetitive.”
Yeah, obviously this guy wasn’t going to let me convince him he’s wrong. I also got the sense that he’s the guy you don’t want to invite to parties. A real-life Debbie Downer.
I was going to ask him which films he thought were great, but figured he’d come back with names of French films or some other nonsense.
3) Still thinking about the 4-episode show ADOLESCENCE. Great acting and great writing. Loved the concept of setting each episode in real-time at various points in the timeline, and focusing on different characters each episode. I’m willing to bet, like DIE HARD, we’ll see some imitators of this over the next couple of years.
I read a few critical posts about the show, about how it completely ignores the victim. But that wasn’t the point of the story. I’ll argue here that we’ve seen plenty of shows and movies that detail the victim’s side.
The point of this show wasn’t about the tragedy of someone losing their life. It was about the people who’d say, “Oh, not my kid. My kid would never do something like this.” It’s about the generation of kids being raised on social media while their parents think everything is fine. It’s also about the family of the perpetrator and the immense guilt they have to deal with, being torn between the family member they love, and the idea that maybe they could have prevented the crime.
I had a discussion with someone about Stephen Graham’s character, the father of the perpetrator. They saw his character as someone who was angry much of the time and treated women as being a bit stupid. Perhaps it’s a testament to the quality of the show’s writing that I had a different interpretation.
My view of Graham’s character was that he was a man under a lot of stress, both before his son is charged and (obviously) after. He’s a man who was raised by a physically abusive dad, and he’s so determined to not be that way towards his own children, he goes to the other extreme. He’s emotionally closed off to his kids, focusing on being a good financial provider instead.
He’s so afraid of losing his temper, that he doesn’t allow any of it to leak out. Until, sometimes, it explodes. But not at his family. Never at them.
Graham’s character is someone who thinks being a good dad is being stoic and strong. He didn’t have a good male role model himself, so he’s doing the opposite of what his father did. He’s a “hands off” parent, but takes it to the extreme where he’s practically ignoring his son.
His son, on the other hand, senses the stress his father carries and interprets it as constant anger. He’s desperate for his father’s approval, taking the standoffishness as a lack of affection. He’s looking for guidance on being a man, on masculinity, but his father is giving him nothing, so he takes his cues from social media and his friends.
After his son is charged, the father is trying to maintain a stable, normal life, at least for his wife and daughter, but that’s impossible now. His name and face are plastered all over social media, along with conspiracy theories. His neighbors look at him like, “How did you let this happen?” and he has to deal with harassment and vandalism to his property. The wife wants to move, but to do so is to admit he failed. Failed as a husband and father.
He did fail. Not because he was a bad person, though. Sometimes these things happen despite people’s good intentions.
That’s your Dispatch for the week.
Slade Grayson is a writer who relies on the kindness of strangers. And readers. And sometimes strange readers. You can buy his books here, or buy him a coffee here.