The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - John Wick (2014), directed by David Leitch

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Baba Yaga", by Lily of the Valley

     The major complaint that I hear tossed around the film forums these days, and it’s a complaint I’ve had myself in the past, is there are no original IP’s anymore. Everything is adapted from a comic book or some other property, everything is a sequel, everything is a reboot, it’s all the same things constantly being recycled every year. In this new modern world of film, how can one truly be excited? Where is the tension when you know all the protagonists are going to live, because they have to show up in films until 2028? Where is the motivation for seeing a movie you’ve seen before in a new coat of obvious CGI? When you add the exorbitant prices for theater tickets, the issues with theaters themselves, and it certainly doesn’t paint a good picture of the future of cinema. When it comes to genre films at least.

     Of course not all licensed films are bad, just as not all original IP’s aren’t great, but when a good one comes along seemingly out of nowhere we tend to latch ourselves onto it. Your Pacific Rims (a past Marathon inductee), your Get Outs (a possible future inductee), and so on. Of course only a few of these original properties, beloved though they were, have the right combination of critical success, commercial viability and story potential to make the transition to a proper franchise. For that, you need to go to John Wick.

     A man by the name of John Wick (Keanu Reeves), has just recently lost his wife to a terminal illness. For a brief moment his grief is assuaged by the arrival of an adorable puppy, the last gift from his departed wife, and he starts to believe that he’ll be able to move on, pick up the pieces and rebuild his life. However, that hope is quickly and brutally dashed after a home invasion by some Russian mafia leaves him with a bruised and battered body, a stolen car, and a dead dog. Like a ten year old Bruce Wayne fresh off of a Zorro movie, John Wick’s entire being is dedicated to vengeance.

     What those Russian punks didn’t understand is that John Wick isn’t just a man, he’s an assassin. One of the deadliest, most efficient killing machines in the world, which in a world that has a very wide-reaching and powerful assassin organization is really saying something. You can’t run from John Wick, you can’t hide or try to pay him off. All you can do is try to kill him or hope he kills you quickly. Either way, you’ve just walked into hell.

     Action-wise, I think John Wick takes a bit more from The Raid than it does from films like Jason Bourne, combining quick, high tension gunplay sequences with longer, tightly edited fight scenes. Which is good, as even though the action is never as over the top as it is in The Raid, there’s a certain shocking viciousness and brutality to it that you don’t get all that often. When Wick is using CQC on somebody, although there’s a certain flashiness to it, you really get the impression that these two folks are trying to kill each for realisies. At least for the fight scenes, the gunplay never seems as bloody and gorey that it should be, despite the fact that John shoots about 60 people directly in the fucking face. Earn that R-rating folks.

     I think the reason for Wick’s success is not so much in the action scenes, good as they might be, but rather in the world that David Leitch has presented to us. Who is John Wick, beyond the little we are given about his past? What is this mysterious organization of assassins and just how wide-reaching is their influence, given the power they seem to wield in the film, with their own hotels and nightclubs? What is the significance of the gold coins that members of this organization trade between themselves? John Wick is a movie that leaves you with a couple answers but far, far more questions, and it’s that desire to dig deeper and deeper into the world of Wick that really gets you invested. I don’t know how good John Wick: Chapter 2 is as a movie, but I do know that immediately after finishing John Wick, I wanted more of it.

     John Wick is weird, as darkly violent as it is darkly comedic, and it’s one of best action films I’ve seen recently. If you’re in that kind of mood where you want to see people who deserve to get hurt get hurt, then this is the thing you’re looking for. Unless you’re a dog fan I suppose, but Halloween is all about facing your fears, right? And if you hate dogs, you better watch your fucking back. You never know just who is going to take offense to something like that.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: A Scanner Darkly (2006), directed by Richard Linklater

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Ain't It Funny", by Danny Brown

     Philip K. Dick. In the world of science fiction literature there are few names which carry the same level of respect outside of that specific genre. From his first work written in 1950 up until his last in 1982, Dick, in the tradition of H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft before him, helped to capture the unique nature of the society and channel it in new and interesting ways. Questions of identity and the role of the individual, the increasing power of faceless corporations and the rise of the military industrial complex in the wake of the first major American/Soviet conflict or what you M*A*S*H fans might know as the Korean War, all of these (including his increasingly deteriorating mental state in later years, as a result of an untreated mental illness) helped to inform Dick’s distinct view on life and thus his writing. To some critics it might be considered exercises in paranoia, a latent schizophrenic managing to maintain his increasingly erratic thoughts long enough to bang out some stories. But to those who are receptive to it, myself included, his stories are filled with fascinating ideas and chilling possibilities for mankind, even if they leaned more towards the speculative rather than the scientific.

     There have been a number of films based on works by Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner (directed by Ridley Scott), Total Recall (helmed by Robocop director Paul Verhoeven, later remade in a lackluster 2012 effort by Len Wiseman), Minority Report (directed by Steven Spielberg) and of course A Scanner Darkly, directed by Richard Linklater, whose film Bernie appeared in last year’s Marathon. Notable at the time for it’s all-star cast, including Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, and its distinctive art style. Seven years from now, in Anaheim, California, the city, and perhaps the entire country, is being racked by illegal narcotics, the deadliest and most prolific of which is known as Substance D. To combat this ever-growing threat, the Orange County Police Department have become an entity unto itself, with narcotics agents, aka ‘scanners’, so deep undercover that they don’t even know who each other are, due to the ‘scramble suits’ they wear, which completely obfuscates their appearance. However, what happens when the person you’ve been assigned to monitor is yourself? What happens when you’ve taken so much Substance D you’re not even sure who the real ‘you’ is meant to be? Such is the case with ‘Fred’, also known as Bob Arctor, who finds himself pulled into a mind-bending conspiracy where, to abuse a cliche, nothing is as it seems. Especially the aphids.

     I guess if I were to say anything negative about A Scanner Darkly, it’s that during the second half, when things are falling into place, it feels like the movie hits a wall and then you’re just waiting to see things play out. In that, I think the original story probably does it better. Other than that, I think Linklater manages to capture that near nihilistic, end-with-a-twist-and-leave-’em-thinking kind of science fiction that writers like Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury and of course Philip K. Dick were known for and adapting it film just as well if not better than Verhoeven or Truffaut managed to do, although personally I can’t help but feel the ‘age’ of the material despite a modern sheen . The cast really work off each other well, RDJ and Harrelson in particular really carry those scenes in the first half, although you could argue whether Keanu’s ‘Keanu-ness’ is a low point or an effective performance of a perpetual burnout. The animation style could be seen as a gimmick at first, but on the other hand it is an effective way to not only give the audience the feel of heightened reality but also to easily convey concepts like the scramble suit and Arctor’s hallucinations. Overall, and I don’t mean to sound insulting, but it’s a really firm B movie for me. It looks interesting, I like the concept and some of the characters, but as a whole I think it never really grabbed me like Blade Runner grabbed me, or entertained me like Total Recall entertained me. Maybe on a second viewing or after reading the original work I’d feel differently, but first impressions wise I’d say it falls short of a must watch, unless you love the work of Richard Linklater/Philip K. Dick, in which case you were going to watch it anyway. Even if it’s not a must-watch though, it’s still a good movie, so I have no issue with recommending it this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: The Matrix (1999), directed by The Wachowskis

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Firestarter", by The Prodigy

     Although time, a series of disappointing sequels and whatever the Wachowski’s were smoking when they made Jupiter Ascending has diminished its legacy somewhat, one cannot overstate the importance The Matrix had on the film industry. Just as Star Wars and Raiders reinvented the adventure movie, and Alien and Blade Runner redefined science fiction, it was The Matrix that really informed how action movies were made afterward. If you ever got annoyed of the preponderance of white guy karate or unnecessary slow motion (looking at you Watchmen, you piece of shit) in today’s action films, a little of the blame has to go to the Wachowskis, but at the time it was revolutionary. Huge martial arts fights straight out of your favorite animes, mind-bending special effects, and a concept that instantly grabbed the minds of the moviegoing audience, paranoid schizophrenic and otherwise. Cyberpunk may have already been an established literary genre, and cyberpunk stories may have already been adapted to film before, but when The Matrix came along, with it’s level of scale and technical polish, it was the only girl in the room. And this lady loves black leather.

     That being said, this is a movie that lives and dies by its action scenes. While the concept of the Matrix, that life as we know it is actually a computer simulation run by an advanced A.I. that almost all of humanity is trapped in, is fantastic and raises a lot of question about the nature of perception, the given purpose for the Matrix’s existence is rather silly and the story seems more interested in trying to replicate Star Wars’ quasi-mystical horseshit in a medium that doesn’t really need it. The characters are forgettable at best (aside from Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving, who really bring it home), especially Keanu ‘Am I Watching Techno-Jesus or the Board He Was Nailed To’ Reeves, who seems to be taking the approach that you’ll never be able to tell who’s a human and who’s a machine when he’s around. A distinction which seems to revolve around constantly dropping koans like we’re a fucking Shaolin temple. Yes Matrix, we get it: they’re big into prophecies and mess with reality all the time, and so you expect a bit of ‘these characters know what’s up but can’t just say it for whatever reason’, but does the dialogue have to constantly dip into this vague nonsense that tries to sound deep in the moment but isn’t saying anything at all? Maybe if I felt Neo were absorbing this information, learning from it like some cyber-bodhisattva and gradually getting better, but Neo seems even more clueless than we are, and his sudden ascension to computer god in the third act seems like a leap considering he was some Office Space desk jockey living in a pod a day ago. It seems like something that would really grab you when you were an impressionable teen (which I wasn’t at the time of release), but once you get older you really notice the plasticity of the whole thing.

     That also being said, a lot of those problems can be forgiven due to the sheer fact that this movie is exciting. Not just with the slo-mo and dodging bullet stuff, your mileage may vary on that, but every fight scene, every shoot-out, every chase seems to radiate this frenetic energy that draws you into the action, which seems like another facet of The Matrix that has wormed its way into modern filmmaking. Say what you will about the plot of any Wachowski product, as I demonstrated earlier they’re not story-driven directors, but in terms of visuals and artistic design they’re definitely above the norm. You may not get why the machines keep people in pods or why Cipher is a total shitlord, but to see it play out (especially on a big screen) is fascinating.to behold.

     Like drinking a glass of expensive scotch, it’s a totally smooth.experience.

     Which is why I recommend watching The Matrix at least once, if you’re a fan of action films or science fiction, likely a large crossover appeal. As ridiculous as it can be and essentially is, it’s nevertheless a cool movie. Dare I say it, a fun movie, one to drink a cold beer to with a selection of friends and loved ones. So I have no problem recommending it to you this Halloween, where that situation is very likely to play out. I’d avoid it if there are kids around however, that cyber-silverfish scene freaked me the fuck out back then.