Hits and contract killing

 

The following from the August 2, 2021 issue of the New Yorker, page 8, written by Richard Brody:

"Film Forum's ongoing Humphrey Bogart series includes the idiosyncratic 1951 film noir The Enforcer (which is also streaming on many services). . . the movies originality is in its script which gives Bogart the role of a district attorney named Ferguson who -- hours before Mendoza (Everett Sloan), the head of a murder ring, is set to be released without charges -- searches his investigation files for overlooked evidence.  As Ferguson's interrogations of garish underworld characters are shown in flashbacks, the action that they relate is seen in flashbacks within those flashbacks.  The intricate structure lays bare a tentacular network of killers for hire whose members are driven literally mad with fear of Mendoza, but the movie's frenzied psychology is also historically fascinating: Mendoza's chilling and cunning criminal enterprise is presented as an innovation -- as are the terms 'contract' for killing and 'hit' for a victim."

I'd like to read a more extensive discussion of these matters.  It seems we have an assassin genre within the film noir genre nowadays -- maybe the term "film noir" needs to be abandoned.   Just last night I watched Ava.  Simon (Colin Farrell) is the current "head of a murder ring."  The previous head, Duke (John Malkovich) in a subordinate role runs the assassin Ava (Jessica Chastain). 

Ava's "sin" is that she questions the people she is about to assassinate about what they did that elicited someone to order a hit.  This sin is unforgivable and Simon orders "hits" on Ava, but they don't succeed.  Finally he attempts to kill her himself and is instead killed by her.  The ending suggests that there may be a hierarchy above Simon.  As Ava in the last scene walks away to go into hiding, Simon's daughter, an assassin in training follows her."

The acting in Ava struck me as excellent.  I did initially question whether the 5' 4" fragile looking Jessica Chastain could pull it off, but she does.  Collin Farrell 5' 10" but in their fight scene they seem comparable somehow. 

Despite being an alcoholic and drunk when Simon enters her apartment, Ava manages to fight him to a draw.  His phone rings to alert him that the police are on their way, so he doesn't resume the fight.  He merely tells Ava that if he ever sees her again he will kill her.  Ava however, knows better than that so she assembles her gear in a matter of seconds and hurry's after Simon.  His gun was dismantled during his fight so he is unarmed.  She catches up to him and shoots him in the head. 

Even though at the end when Simon's daughter follows Ava, one doesn't (at least I didn't) assume that she will be successful in killing Ava, if that is what she intends to try to try.  Ava has conducted 41 successful contract hits and Simon's daughter has yet to conduct her first . . .

Media studies and Gunpowder Milkshake

 

An obituary on Fiske is available from U Wisconsin: https://commarts.wisc.edu/in-memoriam-john-fiske/

I had not heard of John Fiske nor was I aware that the media was being formally studied.  I have however for a long time suspected that Hollywood had a lot to do with my desire to enter the Marine Corps.   Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941 when I was seven.  I don't recall timing or details but can still recall the emotional content of some of the war movies.  I recall being pumped up by them.  I tried to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1951 when I was 16 and the war in Korea was still active.  The USMC found out how old I was and told me to come back when I was 17 if I could get my mother to sign for me.  My step-father insisted that I finish High School first.  Thus, I enlisted in July 1952 when I was almost 18.  By the time I got to Korea truce talks had begun.  I was over there for the last two battle seasons and on Cheju Island next to a prison camp shortly after North Korean prisoners were released and some climbed Cheju mountain instead of making there way back North.

Thinking back I don't have any regrets. The Marine Corps was part of my education.  Even though I didn't see actual combat, I was trained for it and before I got out was a rifle instructor training others:  grammar and high school from 1939 to 1952.  USMC from 1952 to 1955.  College from 1955 to 1959.  Engineering from 1959 to 1998.  Retired from 1998 to the present.   Susan once commented that one of our nephews especially looked up to me because I was the only one in our families that was squared away, or something to that effect.  In thinking back, any squaring originated in my desire to follow examples I found on the silver screen.  I set out to become a Marine and became one, but I didn't really want to become a career Marine and so got out and went to college. 

So you can see that I've given one particular media a lot of thought over the years.  In more modern times I've noticed that "Hollywood" [if that is a proper term in media studies] has been busy creating larger-than-life women heroes ["heroines" appears to be a moribund term].  I just the other day watched Gunpowder Milkshake -- tongue in cheek, follows Wick a bit but women are shown as being able to do it all.  Good stuff.  Back in 1952 in Boot Camp we were ushered out onto the side of a hill one night where we were shown High Noon -- also good stuff.  I wonder if Marines going through boot camp today could benefit from being shown Gunpowder Milkshake instead . . . or in addition.

Thus, without ever having studied any of this, I have been aware of movement. I can't bring to mind any complaints at present.  I do enjoy a good "shoot-em-up" movie or TV series, and if it involves some larger-than-life heroine, I can root for her as well as I once did for Gary Cooper.  Good stuff :-)

Heinlein and The Tomorrow War

This is a pretty good movie; however, it doesn't match in power Heinlein's Starship Troopers in my opinion.  The writers of TTW will disagree saying the father/daughter/grandfather Foresters have power not seen in Heinlein.  But Heinlein does a much better job in hypothesizing what such a war would realistically involve from a military standpoint.   ST resonates for anyone who has been in the Marine Corps or Army infantry.  If you've only seen the very-bad movie, Starship Troopers, then you won't know what I'm talking about. 

Heinlein's novel deals with a galactic war.  The aliens, which are pretty much like the aliens in TTW, are unstoppable by normal means. [Although the aliens in TTW are more like the aliens in the Aliens movie and not like the Predators who use the aliens for sport.  Presumably the creators that operated the space-ship that crashed into a volcano in the Middle Ages were a bit more like the Predators].  So the humans have invented suits of armor and weaponry that movie-makers haven't found the means to simulate.  Heinlein's aliens defeat humans on planet after planet until human scientists find a way to kill the alien queens.  After that the war turns in favor of the humans.  Alien queens on TTW are much tougher than in ST, but I suspect Heinlein's queen is closer to a conceivable hive-organism.  Queens don't need to know how to fight. 

In Heinlein's novel, the humans are organized by a bureaucracy that trains and functions much like the Marine Corps.  And like the Marine Corps, one must volunteer and then go through a difficult boot-camp in order to fight.  In TTW, there is a vague conspiracy-theory-type military-scientific organization "drafting" appropriate humans to go into the future to fight the aliens.  Somehow all the Tomorrow War draftees, without boot-camp type training (glossed over in the movie) by instinct fight as though they've been properly trained.  I don't believe humans can or would do that.  

As I began watching TTW I wondered if movie makers had been influenced by the recent acceptance, seemingly, that there are a tiny percentage of UFO sightings that can't be explained.  Perhaps the writers were stirring up a martial spirit just in case the aliens were hostile.  However the movie soon disabused me of that idea.  It seems to have also (at least in the fight scenes) have been influenced by zombie apocalypse as well as Predator and Terminator movies.

The acting in TTW is very good, better than in the other movies I've mentioned or alluded to.  And the action moves quickly enough so that one doesn't have time to compare this movie to movies very much like this one that were made in the past.