Viewing at the cinema for a wee nostalgia evening, and it’s still incredible in every way and will always remain so.
There’s a surfeit of goodies here: Cage at the start of his insane holy trinity that is this bad boy, Face/Off (1997), and Con Air (1997); Connery oozing nonchalant cool; the frankly mental Marines, these including Candyman and the Gordon Gekko lookalike who played the health inspector in Friends; the San Francisco vistas, and the fact that every moment of this risible scenario works, as in you do believe what is happening.
One of the rare action movies in which the music fits the thrills to a tee, and the images are exquisite, the best version of Michael Bay(hem).
This really was a wasted opportunity, the gift of a premise – two snipers in a dance of death amidst the backdrop of the bloodiest battle in history – compromised by a pointless romance, daft politics, dodgy accents, and a complete misunderstanding of the time and place depicted.
It would have been better to not tackle the complexity of it all and just show the antagonists facing off, with allusions to the wider ideological foes.
The first 10 mins, though. Watch those and then turn it off. Here you go:
TheTruman Show (1998) didn’t capture the zeitgeist; it largely predicted it. Much like how Scarface (1983) birthed glorified Gangsta rap – present hip hop artists unaware that Montana was a satire laughing at the emergence of the culture – it was the Jim Carrey ‘serious role’ vehicle which presaged the Big-Brother-by-choice bantz we now have. The eponymous ‘reality’ TV show, a zillion other ‘hidden camera’ programmes populated by tarted-up bimbos (yes, including The Apprentice), the omniscience of social media, the shameless supervision from the NSA and GCHQ. It’s as if Truman is a summation of 20 years of snooping, willfully and not, but before it happened.
I can’t even count the number of times someone has said to me they feel like they’re living a real-life Truman Show, such has been the ridiculousness of their day. Well, if directed actors and MacGuffins aren’t out there to construct the drama, you can bet you’re being watched, often by choice – think of all the selfies at crime scenes, the Snapchatting of break-ins, check-ins at weddings/funerals.
The Truman Show nailed the lot – the shallowness, the vanity, the essential neediness of modern society to not only feign happiness in its absence but inject meaning everywhere, to create a drama when none is needed.
And that Philip Glass score lifted from Powaqqatsi (1998) is quite the cracker:
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 