‘Broken Arrow’ flies straight into toilet bowl

‘Broken Arrow’ flies straight into toilet bowl

Movie shortchanges Hong Kong action fans

Natural language cannot begin to communicate the titanic
disappointment of John Woo’s latest film, "Broken Arrow." (The
title will doubtless soon enter the language as a veiled metaphor
for flaccid and bankrupt imagination.)

Michael Horowitz’s excellent Feb. 9 review in The Bruin
("Thermonuclear disaster") succeeds admirably in alluding to the
film’s chasm of faults, and to the fact that its trailer’s promise
("A John Woo Film") requires a great deal of tragic
qualification.

For a Hollywood action film, "Broken Arrow" exceeds a "Cyborg
VI" or "Last Boy Scout" in quality. But such comparison does not
ease the pain, and given the nature of the latter works, it means
absolutely nothing. Enthusiasts of the action genre get what they
deserve, right? In addition, those seriously committed to using
Travolta, Chrispin Slater or Samantha Mathis as a qualitative index
deserve to be hit in the face with raw fecal matter. It was
precisely such casting that "Arrow’s" production team undertook
with such simian ebullience.

What I offer is less another review of the film (what more can
be said?) than a critique of the film-going community it implies:
Who are the poo-tossing monkeys here, and what can we do to get out
of range?

Several months before Woo made his American debut with the
patently ridiculous (but nonetheless entertaining) Van Spamme
vehicle, "Hard Target," he had already attracted a widespread
following in this country with the Hong Kong masterpieces, "The
Killer" and "Hard Boiled," both starring the magisterial Chow
Yun-Fat.

One must refrain from the epithet "cult" in reference to this
new audience; can a film like the (Asian) box office
record-breaking "The Killer," nearly half of which is composed of
stylized gun battles, be properly labeled a "cult" phenomenon?

In a post-Cobain, post-Tarantino, postmodern and postmortem age,
the "alternative" and "cult" stereotype should strike any thinking
person as unforgivably offensive. For the prophet said,
"Underground is where they bury you."

When Ice T and Henry Rollins can star in the same lame-ass
movie, such "punk" concepts as "selling out" obtrude with all their
awkward juvenility and embarrassing obsolescence. A nasty pox upon
those artists who willfully characterize their work in such a way,
and to their like-minded critics, also. Let them rot in the same
waste tunnels as the hundreds of unemployed critical theorists at
the "margins" of academia! Overly zealous efforts to steer away
from "the mainstream" too often lead down those treacherous
irrigation canals, straight to the maelstrom of "the toilet."

Woo’s producers and writers have been subjecting the director’s
most ardent followers to mass execution in a shallow lavatorial
grave, and with a vengeance. The marketing behind "Hard Target" and
"Broken Arrow" assumes an audience "not ready" for Hong Kong
action, one that feels comfortable in the loving arms of Jean
Claude, or secure only within the confines of an "Under Siege
XII"-worthy plot.

One of the most depressing anecdotes concerning Woo’s Hollywood
debut revolves around "Hard Target’s" producers hiring some
paramilitary buffoon to tutor the artist in how to handle a gun,
ostensibly because his protagonists seldom seem to run out of
bullets at the right moment. Woo, who had never handled a firearm,
never felt the desire to learn. And why should he? Does that make
his American films more "real?" The artist should be teaching us
how to vicariously delight in an immaculately choreographed,
fictional gun battle instead.

Top secret Directive T (Tarantino) was evidently faintly grasped
by the makers of "Arrow," but also hopelessly misunderstood. The
best they could offer was Travolta as villain (whose performance
admittedly put the "cock" back in cocky), and a shitty script –
worse even than "Target’s" ("Iz zat your boyfhren?"), insulting
homeless person subplot notwithstanding. The real lesson to be
learned from "Pulp Fiction" is that transformation of (as opposed
to slavish adherence to) static genres can garner not just
confusion, but enthusiasm.

Quite unlike Tarantino, the Hong Kong Woo, at his best, does not
indulge in the alchemical and flippant mixture of many genres, but
in the antithetical striving toward the ultimate tautness of one
(in this case the cop/crime buddy flick). Woo works on a sublimely
simple level: Constantly violating his own "it only takes one
bullet" precept, his films’ victims seldom attract less than a full
clip from one of Yun-Fat’s mighty pistols.

And by extension, one need no longer ponder which black costar
best functions as a foil for Bruce Willis’ infinite charisma, or
read some goon’s dissertation as to who was the "bitch" in the
regrettably overly-probed Gibson/Glover relationship, because
Yun-Fat and Tony Leung are all but making KY love right there on
the screen.

Common to both writer/actor/directors (sadly, Woo now works only
in the latter capacity, and under stifling conditions, at that),
however, is a profound and sincere respect for the moviegoer (movie
as distinct from film here). And emerging logically from this
respect is a true romance with the lowly, "pulp" genres which they
attack with such relish.

There is a conspicuous and refreshing absence of postmodernist
revisionism (the artist-rapist’s easy cop-out) that unexpectedly
mars such horrid spectacles as the oafish Austrian’s "Last Action
Hero."

Sadly, our critical apparatus (especially in its East Coast
varieties) is itself partly responsible for the volitional
marginalization of Hong Kong action. Content to discuss its success
as an art house or film fest phenomenon, many critics approach such
films as if they were inherently and irreconcilably opposed to more
comprehensible American actioners (like anything about "Waterworld"
makes any human sense).

It takes a naive Volvo liberal or perplexed New Yorker critic of
considerable obtuseness to watch an action film and then ponder why
it is "so violent" (an all-too-frequent approach to the
"inexplicable appeal" of the genius of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and
Jet Li) – just as it is quite absurd to condemn such films for a
lack of "depth." So much for the criticism of our
intelligentsia.

In a sense, a much more succinct and accurate review of "Broken
Arrow" was articulated by late-night blockhead Jay Leno. In a
Friday chat with the former Mr. "Saturday Night Fever," Leno keenly
observed that in most movies, the nuclear bomb "doesn’t blow up,"
while in this one, "it blows up," hence the freshness and
originality.

While it would be silly to quibble with the esteemed Leno, who
makes bank precisely for his capacity to promote every bowel
movement ever taken by a somewhat popular actor or actress, I would
take the opportunity to point out the essential bunkness of this
Stalinist, "bigger is better" aesthetic.

Yo! It takes a lot less talent and more money to ignite huge
gasoline explosions (four helicopters detonate in "Broken Arrow")
and digitally animate Ford Taurus-looking jet planes than it does
to stage legitimate action. The opening teahouse sequence in "Hard
Boiled" is worth more to a true action fan than a hundred bulbous
stealth bombers captained by Hollywood’s ham-of-the-month.

For the readers good enough to bear with me this far, I must
apologize for the superabundance of scatological imagery herein. If
I may be permitted one final indulgence, I would allegorically sum
up the essential points by the following caveat: Why wait for a
vulgar and unscrupulous plumber to mend the toilet of popular
culture?

Demand the highest quality porcelain and let its exquisite
surface beauty both reflect and transform the sorry bathroom of
your reality! As for "depth," this idealized commode should have
plenty: The beauty of action is its industrial-strength sucking
power, but it will take no shit. Only definitely articulated "the
shit" will be accepted, like the heaviest-of-heavy shit that was
once John Woo.

Colbath is a graduate student in Russian literature. His column
appears on alternate Tuesdays.

Christopher Colbath

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