Dean Norris

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-06-282023-03-18 Movie Review

(Second Viewing, On Cable TV, June 2019) Growing up geek in the early 1990s, The Lawnmower Man ended up becoming a reference to my group of mid-nineties Computer Science student friends even despite being the farthest thing from a good movie. Watching it again today, I can offer no defence of the result: The plot is pure unprocessed cliché, while its main claim to fame—the digital special effects—have aged terribly and are only impressive as a snapshot of what was then state-of-the-art. The premise borrows liberally from Frankenstein, Flowers to Algernon and Tron, what with a cognitive scientist boosting the intelligence of a dim-witted manual labourer, and said super-intelligent antagonist turning irremediably evil. A murder spree predictably ensues. The only twist here is that this is all taking place thanks to virtual reality, with early-era CGI portraying now-grotesque chunks of the plot. (I’m such an early-nineties geek that I still remembered that some of the CGI sequences were repeated from the video compilation The Mind’s Eye.) The obsession about Virtual Reality is also pure early-1990s stuff, ridiculous except for the fact that I lived through it at the time. My nostalgic feeling should not be confused for any kind of appreciation for the result, which is alternately dull or actively irritating depending on how often that exact same cheap take on technology has been repeated before or since. Behind the camera, I have to acknowledge the work of writer-director Brett Leonard, grafting minimal elements from a Stephen King story onto a statement about VR as it was perceived then—not only would he also write and direct the slightly-better VR thriller Virtuosity three years later, but he would remain active at the cutting edge of movies and technology until now. Those who like actors rather than technology will be amused to see Pierce Brosnan is the leading role as an obsessive scientist and a few scenes with Dean Norris as a menacing figure. Still, much of the appeal of The Lawnmower Man today is as a snapshot of the wild expectations and easy plot possibilities of virtual reality at the earliest possible moment when it became possible to think of it. It’s irremediably dated, and that’s part of the point.

Movie Review

Beirut (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-05-202023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2019) Catch me on a bad day, and I will talk your ears off about how grown-up adult cinema has been evacuated from the multiplexes and shuffled off to art-house cinema, minor streaming releases and the corners of the cable channels. I’m not even talking about meditative character studies, here—I mean geopolitical thrillers such as Beirut, heavy in suspense and action but somehow a bit more complex than the save-the-world Manicheism of modern blockbuster films. Beirut doesn’t do anything outlandish—it simply takes us back to early-1980s Lebanon, near the peak of the unbelievable civil war that took it from a world-class city to loosely arranged rubble. In this complex environment, with half a dozen factions fighting each other under the watchful eye of two superpowers and the powder-keg environment of next-door neighbour Israel, comes a negotiator being asked to secure the release of an American hostage. There are several complications, not the least of them being that the protagonist knows both parties to the hostage exchange and is returning to the city ten years after tragic events involving him. Beirut has the heft of a good thriller, with a flawed world-weary protagonist unsure of who’s trying to help or kill him in an environment where there are no certitudes. Every year, you can read about a dozen similar novels … but you’ll be lucky to find even one movie with that kind of ambition. Of course, there’s Tony Gilroy writing the script, one of the few Hollywood screenwriters with the clout and chops to tackle such a project. Director Brad Anderson has an uneven filmography, but he handles the material well, backed with capable production design taking us credibly to 1982 Beirut. More crucially, he can also depend on a good script and decent actors: Jon Hamm is great as the bruised negotiator, Rosamund Pike is fine as his local liaison (she even gets to have some well-delivered French dialogue) and there’s Dean Norris with a hairpiece in a secondary role. The ending is suitably satisfying—with characters more or less getting what they wanted, but with the impending irony of the 1983 bombing just around the corner. The plot is a full order of magnitude more complex than the usual blockbuster, so it will take some sustained attention to follow. Beirut is the kind of film in my wheelhouse, the kind of film I wish I’d see more often. It’s not a slam-bang thriller, but it’s engrossing enough to be worth a look—especially if the modern blockbusters have let you down.

Movie Review

Death Wish (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-12-082020-08-13 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2018) Ho boy, do I have mixed feelings about this Death Wish remake. For one thing, I’ve been watching a lot of urban-decay movies of the early 1970s lately, including the original Charles Bronson film. For another, well, I’m Canadian—my nearest metropolitan area is in the midst of an unprecedented murder wave and yet our yearly total barely exceeds what the city of Chicago alone experiences over two weeks (although Chicago’s own wave of violence seems to be receding after a particularly bad 2016). Seeing Death Wish isn’t just like seeing a very American nightmare given form, but one that seems to be coming back from the past. You already know the story, or at least can grasp it in a few words: A peaceful man turns vigilante after a brutal attack leaves his wife dead and his daughter in a coma. The rest is pure predictable plot mechanics to complete the cycle of revenge, making sure our hero develops the skills, evades the cops, tracks down the responsible parties and executes them in a way that leaves him in the clear. The first step in such a by-the-number reactionary thriller is to clearly establish that its world is a far more dangerous place than ours—and the film does have to lie quite a bit in order to get there, reaching for racial stereotypes and vilifying its targets. Poachers attack a farm just to make a convenient point, statistics are grossly inflated, and a Greek chorus of radio and social media voices is there to half-heartedly make and dismiss objections. Meanwhile, Bruce Willis broods his way through a role very much in-line with much of his indifferent 21^st-century screen persona. Director Eli Roth may want to make a social statement (although I doubt it—his horror-movie instincts come up whenever there’s even a faint chance to put gratuitous gore on-screen) but Death Wish is, far more than its predecessor, an NRA-approved exploitation picture designed to make fearful people feel comfortable in their twisted version of the world. It would be a pretty reprehensible picture if it wasn’t for one thing: It’s actually executed decently. Roth has the budget to go for clean impressive cinematography, feature good actors even in thankless roles (Dean Norris once more takes on a familiar persona, but he’s sufficiently good at it that emerges intact from the deplorable results), and flex his directorial skills honed on much nastier pictures. He doesn’t stray that far from his roots—plot-wise the film hinges on convenient coincidences and at least one ridiculous Rube-Goldberg contrivance. But Death Wish, for all of its considerable problems, does actually work at what it intends to be: a gun-powered revenge fantasy, slickly made and updated to the current era.