Buddy-bonding flicks

Patricia's original comments
My flippant rejoinder
More on the eroticization of injury
The sniper in contemporary action flicks

Patricia's original comments

I just finished watching the tv-edited version of Lethal Weapon (the first) with my son. Seeing it again made me realize what a classic American boy-bonding flick it was. I don`t know if this is the first example, but what comes to mind as a template is Huck Finn. The elements in the relationship between Huck and Jim provide a model for so many of these type of films:

The relationship is either cross generational or cross racial (or both)
There is an element of ``rescue'' where one of the heroes helps out the other and in this process, ends up being rescued from his personal demon as well
There is always a break away from the civilizing agent where the two are ``apart'' from society or outside the boundaries in some obvious way
Women are clearly problematic, either catalysts for further trouble, or reasons for escape, but in any role, they exist more as an impetus for action than as flesh-and-blood characters and are quickly whisked in and out of the narrative as needed (or not).
Finally, there is usually some brother-like bonding between the two characters that is often interestingly intimate, especially considering the clearly heterosexual orientation of such narratives.

Ok. A quick run through and comparison. Like Huck and Jim, the relationship between Glover and Gibson is obviously cross racial, and it initially appears that Glover is helping Gibson overcome his suicidal urge (rescue). Both are liminal characters because Gibson is nearly psychotic while Glover is just about to retire. (Compare to Huck and Jim---orphan and runaway slave) This sets up a convenient rationale for their actions which take them outside legal protocol (outside of the civilizing process). No need to bother with the woman-thing, as it is obvious. Finally, with the brother-like bonding there are a couple of scenes that come to mind in Lethal Weapon: In the end, after Gibson has beat the blond dude to near death, he collapses in Glover`s arms, with Glover saying to him ``I gotcha. I gotcha.'' Then, as the blond guy tries one last shot, Glover and Gibson turn simultaneously around and the camera goes to slo-mo as we see them fire their weapon at the same time in a poignantly violent display of masculine bonding: they are one. Then Gibson collapses back into Glover's arms again and the tender words are repeated. I find it interesting that in these movies the tenderness between two men is almost always embedded in a context of violence. The violence provides a justification for tenderness between the two characters. In the second Lethal Weapon we get Glover stuck pants down on the toilet-bomb and Gibson pulling him with him into the tub to rescue him. Interesting.

[There is in some movies (Stallone, for example) an erotic display of the male body through the vehicle of violence (take Cliffhanger where he gets the hell beaten out of him and we get to see every quivering muscle emphasized by his shiny sweat and blood).]

But I digress. So, I would be interested in hearing others' opinions about the above, including examples which support or negate my theory. I'm wondering, for example, what True Lies does with this template. Are there any American movies which show a different sort of male intimacy? Do we have to go outside the U.S. for something like The Crying Game?

cheers,
-patricia

Patricia Wahl / pwahl@cs.buffalo.edu

My flippant rejoinder

I see what you're getting at! Let's apply this to another such buddy-bonding action film:

Cross generational, check.
Cross racial, check.
Rescue, check. (one character from illiteracy, the other from loneliness and isolation)
Break away from the civilizing agent, check. The scene with the Alabama highway patrol.
Women problematic... uh, no. Fails this one.
Brother-like bonding, check, although it's a little more filial than fraternal.

The film: Driving Miss Daisy. See! A simple formula can be applied anywhere! Let's try this on another masterpiece of buddy-bonding action cinema, "The Ten Commandments".

Cross generational, check. One guy is like 40 years old, and the other one is eternal and immortal.
Cross racial, check. One's Jewish, the other isn't.
Rescue, check. Persecution in Egypt.
Break away from the civilizing agent, check. 40 years of wandering in the Sinai.
Women problematic. Yep, we have all this stuff with harlots and so on, and not one of the major prophets is female.
Brother-like bonding. This one fits too.

More on the eroticization of injury

For more examples of the eroticization of injury, you might check out Die Hard, for the sensual and almost poetic wounds that Bruce Willis receives. He goes through a transformation during the film. At the beginning he's dressed in shirt and tie, a passenger on an airliner, a 20th century shnook like any of the rest of us. By turns he loses first his shirt, then his shoes, and becomes progressively more savage as time passes, in contrast to the calm, unflappable villain who never loses his Continental veneer of civilization.

Look at the scene in the computer center where the villain snaps ``Shoot the glass!'', forcing McClane to run across thirty feet of shattered windowpanes in his bare feet. He is next seen in a restroom bandaging his feet, which is also the scene where he shares some bonding intimacy with his buddy Sergeant Powell (who, true to form, is cross-generational, cross-racial, and gets rescued from his personal demon in exactly the same way that Murtagh gets rescued in Lethal Weapon). It may even be the same Big Blonde Guy who gets shot.

Snipers

Most of the guys in the movies shoot a lot. A real lot. One whole hell of a lot. It's part of our traditional American obsession with firepower; death on an industrial scale. From the electric six-barreled Gatling gun of (first) Blue Thunder, and later Predator and Terminator 2 to the non-withering crossfires laid down by The A-Team, we Americans think the more we shoot, the more likely we are to hit. Kind of like an Iraqi AAA battery; the magic BB theory.

But in a few films lately, there has been an opposite trend. In contrast to the get-your-blood-pumping madness of a machine-gun gunfight, some films use snipers, who will wait all week for a single shot.

First, and most obviously, is the film Sniper, in which Tom Berenger teaches Billy Zane the craft of backwoodsmanly killing at a distance. They spend half the day sneaking up to a firing position, they wear incredible camouflage that hides them very effectively in plain sight, and they shoot from ranges of thousands of yards. Very sinister; seeing the target through the gunsight, walking around, unawares, is an old familiar suspense-builder.

Next would be the infantry engagement that takes up the last half-hour of Full Metal Jacket; an entire platoon of U.S. Marines are held off for an hour by a single sniper who seems able to kill at will. They fire back countless times, pouring ammunition out like water and blasting away with grenade launchers, and still their leader falls. They learn that you can't kill a sniper by being stronger (bigger, louder, more ammunition); in the end they sneak around the side of the building under cover of smoke grenades and find that the sniper is a single teenage girl, who accepts death rather than capture. This film is about the loss of innocence, and a sniper is never innocent.

Another sniper occurrence was in Point of No Return, which is the American remake of La Femme Nikita. In the gunfight at the drugstore at the beginning of the film, Maggie's friends stand up blazing away like the Clantons at the OK Corral. But a cop sneaks up with a sniper rifle. Three shots, three kills. (In the original the cop used some kind of night-vision equipment; we got a gun-camera viewpoint with superimposed crosshairs and such.)

Contrast the youth and fire of the street gang with the calm detachment of the police. The street gang are angry, primitive and fight like animals; they smash the lock rather than use the key. The police are technically-proficient and kill with professional detachment. Maggie learns that professional detachment is more effective than brute animal rage; when she tries to break out of the government installation by holding Bob hostage, she is surrounded by a team of snipers; transfixed by laser sight beams holding steady on her forehead, neck, and chest, she cannot escape.

Later in the film, when she does the killing job out the hotel window in New Orleans, Maggie is devastated, and part of the reason is that she has become the sniper. No longer an honest predator who kills for hunger, she is now the modern technical killer who kills without remorse, for no visible reason.

Niagara Falls

Witness the following examples of the Niagara Falls method of ammunition consumption:

The A-team. To get that volume of fire they used the standard Cowboy Movie Inexhaustible Ammunition.
Aliens. They take advantage of supposed advances in weapons technology. Their rifles hold 100 rounds each (present-day rifles tend to use 30-round magazines) and they use full-auto all the time.
Predator The 5.56mm minigun; a Gatling gun, electrically-driven and man-portable. This is the epitome of volume firepower. BRAAAAAAAAAAP! Arnold never got to use the Minigun in Predator. He eventually killed the alien with his bare hands. Well, with a big log he chopped down with his bare hands, wrapped around an ax actually. But no guns! All muscles!
Terminator 2 Arnold gets to use the Minigun this time, but he doesn't kill anyone with it, having a newfound respect for life.

Notes

``Shoot the glass!''
Actually, first he says ``Schiess dem fenstern'' to his henchman who doesn't understand, not being a German Hired Killer like most henchmen, but instead being a defected Russian ballet dancer. It's also for the benefit of the audience, and for a cheap laugh to show the contrast of Hans Gruber's Teutonic refinement with the big blonde dude's (funny how we seem to have a lot of those) big blond dumbness.

The A-Team
This one is distorted by the influence of network standards & practices; the A-Team wanted to be an action show, so they did a lot of shooting, but because they were a network action TV show, they weren't allowed to hit anyone. I can remember precisely one occasion where someone actually got shot on the A-Team; it was a special rehash our old shows by means of flashback episode, where Murdock gets shot and spends most of the episode delirious -- so delirious he affects the passage of time. Just what you'd expect from Ensign Barclay (Broccoli), right? Or is that J. Robert Oppenheimer? There is always a bit of the madman in any genius.

Innocent
A lot of hunter-gatherer tribes apologise to the soul of the game animal they have just killed. But modern technical man slaughters hundreds of cows in an hour with a pneumatic hammer; the parallels to the Holocaust are less distant than we might wish.

Some warriors try to remain pure like the hunters; I remember a story of an American pilot who was flying home over Germany in his P-47 Thunderbolt, alone, low on fuel and out of ammo. A German Messerschmitt closed in on his tail and there was nothing he could do; dodging would use up his meagre fuel supply and fighting was out of the question. The German pilot fired; the American hunkered down behind the armor plate in the back of his seat as bullets riddled his aircraft.

The Thunderbolt kept flying. The German pulled up into formation position to examine the damage, and then moved back into a trail position, firing again. The American realized that the German could just target his canopy and kill him at any time. Again a stern-only firing pass, again he hunkered down behind his armor plate, and again the German pulled up alongside to examine the damage. The Thunderbolt kept flying. The German (shaking his head in wonderment) saluted, and turned for home, not wanting to kill any more that day.

[send From: boyd@hydra (pts/45) at 16:09 2/10 To: milun@obelix ()
I think we should see a traditional CSGeeks type film tonight.
Your average Hollywood blockbuster thing.
I mean, the Amherst is a nice place, but...
Damn it, I'm FED UP WITH QUALITY CINEMA!
CRAP!  I WANT CRAP!
End of Message]

Daniel F. Boyd / boyd@csgeeks.org