In the dark of the bridge the sonofabitch nance rogue deputy cop Charlie Rakes takes three bullets and a knife deep in his viscera and that almost begins to make up for the carnage what he brought.
Lawless (2012) is Nick Cave channeling Dick Tracy energy & John Hillcoat catching it in the shadows that connect us to a time & place wrought from bloodfeud and bottled lightning.
Fire in the blood indeed.
"What can we expect from the 'reformed' Frank White?"
Christopher Walken smiles that nervous little needle-toothed grin, an aw gosh spasm of mirth, and the lines around his eyes are swept away by the seriousness of inspiration.
"Do you, know what I want to do to you, counselor?"
The counselor laughs, feeling glamorous as Kim Basinger cast as Vicki Vale-- there's a wallpapered poster just off Times Square covered in the Tim Burton Batlogo and she's wondering how long 'til it peels and starts to tatter and pretty soon junk ad tickertape parade for the paving over of the porno theatres --and she jousts with the freshly showered, freshly sprung mobster.
"What's that?"
"I... want to take you... on, the subway."
And he does. Because, after five years being escorted cage to cage to cage, he can. And when the hoods come they don't come in a dozen, they're kids prowling, not real criminals. Three to one eraserheaded cracker with a piece. The counselor covering her bare breast almost as an afterthought.
Her eyes on Frank. Everyone's eyes on Frank. The grip angled like a hardon. The lady or the tiger.
Frank pulls his money clip with an underhand toss and the wad spins into the skinny kid's damp palm.
"Come down to the Plaza. I got work, for you."
Frank smiles his preferred Trump hotel customer smile. Winks. The kids backing away, eyes big, feeling the luckiest they've ever been, to be able to retreat. Rich, healthy, pants freshly pissed. Feeling wild and a little outta breath, not high. Weirded out.
Thinking 'That piece was real. This money's real. Wazzat motherfucker actually real?'
There's no evidence Abel Ferrara ever gave a fuck about Dick Tracy. But his little electric blue and goldlit epic paen to Christopher Walken's face, it's a Dick Tracy kinda vibe. So this one goes here.
Cut to title card:
Behind the wheel, the weary detective in his trenchcoat races to the scene, police beacon signaling like a defective halo. Inconstant light barely touching his eyes.
The further the D.T. influence spreads, the less identifiable Tracy becomes, the more diluted. Gould's influence circuclates like the very air. Coolly alive, in the flow & pulse of water. In the spark & flicker of fire, as secret and plainly exposed as the very devil. The influence, mutable, immutable, evanescent yet beyond transmutation, inveigling everything like a plague or conspiracy of ghosts.
He arrives. The villain from nowhere.
"All the things that used to be inside me, now they're outside. So I can see all the things inside you.... But the inside of me is empty."
The curious, plodding, sleepy-looking young man with wiry hair walks seemingly in place, growing ever-larger in the mind & eyes of his captive audience. He emerges as if from the horizon itself, a swelling born from the collision of earth, sea and sky. A point against all geometric reason encompassing, absorbing, linearity. The enigmatic villain seems to only speak in questions, his somnolent, placid voice ever on the verge of collapse into ellipsis.
"The detective, or the husband? Which is the real you? Neither one is the real you. There is no 'real you'. Your wife knows that, too."
His only identifying trait, the name sewn into the lining of his coat. Mamiya.
The detective knows who the Killer is: but the detective finds it impossible to Know the man. The killer is a missionary from an occulted past. His methods are inferential, at best; insidious. Involuted. The killer may not be pursued beyond the boundaries of his crimes. Secure in the hollow he's carved inside himself, the killer looks out on the detective with contempt bordering on transcendence.
The killer within looking down on the killer without.
Triggered by the word fate, the detective fires three times.
"Remember now?"
Kiyoshi Kurosawa pivots, abrupt as the final day torn from a calender, from gangster flicks to weird serial murder tinged with hypnotic menace. It's 1998, and the filmmaker is bored by the philosophical quandaries of V-cinema with its inbuilt limitations of commerce and pop genre fiction.
"People like to think crime has meaning. But most of them don't."
Nemesis frees the detective to free the killer. The killer, freed, returns to his origins; origins he can only recognize through inference. The killer does not know who he is, only where he is: in the world, walking up and down, to and fro. Waiting to be found in the hearts of the men whose lives he touched with fingers stainless as unwritten law. Waiting for deliverance.
The gun fires five final exclamation marks. One for each finger on his healing hand.
Eight bullets, total, to kill a man beyond life. Snuffed by an abundance of fortunate death, the dying arc of the murderer's bloody finger paints a ceremony in the expectant air. Evokes something where there is nothing. Falls, use extinguished.
The detective looks around the space of the shrine, mute, his curiosity at its end.
Inner peace restored, the detective takes his dinner. Opting against his trademark trenchcoat, for a change. Retired to the dry cleaners, to exorcise Mamiya's splatter. Leaning away from his table the detective looks spiritually sated. Coffee the perfect companion to a postprandial smoke, he orders from a nearby marionette. The waitress stiff and formal as her uniform. She does not walk so much as obey an invisible mechanism, faultless, guiding her toward the cutlery.
Plate clean, appetite restored, the detective extracts a cigarette and lights it, drawing the smoke into his lungs. Ember tip flaring like a caution signal over the industrial heart of Tokyo.
Wipe to credits.
Death Becomes Her (1992) - dir. by Robert Zemekis
Rabbit Trap (2o25) - dir. & written by Bryn Chainey [disappointing as folk, to coin a phrase, but nice effort on the production end, and definite points for introducing me to the music of Lucrecia Dalt, so hardly wasted. just... not what Sig & i ordered]
Predator: Badlands (2o25) - dir by Dan Trachtenberg [disney made a predator movie and it's a star wars style tie-in to the aliens hulu seri who fucking CARES this is the worst predator movie i've seen and i watched THE predator. started. didn't finish. only made it 38 minutes in]
Weapons (2o25) - dir. & written by Zach Cregger [perfect]
Keeper (2o25) - dir. & written by Osgood Perkins [you already know my thoughts]
The Monkey (2o25) - dir. & written by Osgood Perkins [great comedy. great prop. "I took liberties like a motherfucker," quoth the director, and King onscreen has never been funnier. top perkins]
Removal (2o1o) - dir. Nick Simon / co-written by Osgood Perkins & Nick Simon [quite simply did not like this. a first movie that shoulda been a student thing. obvious debt to fight club with none of the charisma]
Cold Comes The Night - dir. Tze Chun / co-written by Osgood Perkins & Nick Simon [ruled]
The Girl In The Photographs (2o25) - dir. Nick Simon / co-written by Osgood Perkins & Nick Simon [i like some of the intent and certain of the execution but the Nick Simon partnership feels like a weight, creatively, like maybe there's some overwriting; too many scenes, too much indulgence. also, opens with a william s. burroughs quote. pretentious, and i say this as a pretentious ass]
Gretal & Hansel (2o2o) - dir. & written by Osgood Perkins [maybe my favourite? will return...]
Wake Up Dead Man (2o25) - dir. & written by Rian Johnson [started it, twice, never finished it. didn't even get halfway. couldn't fuckin' care less]
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2o21) [started it, ate cookies, tuned totally out, then my husband came home and we watched Plur1bus, attentively, instead]
Gretal & Hansel (2o2o) - dir. & written by Osgood Perkins [watched it with Siegfried. he dug the art production. it's one of the most visually stylistic things i've seen in a minute. it's got some joan of arc, it's got some jodorowsky, it's got some cosmatos. it leaves me feeling really tuned into a thing that's been made almost wholly by hand. like i know there's digital in this but i'm not trying to pick the digital out. mostly it's the practical sets and the unheimlich configuration of the witch's house that make me love this as much as weapons, or eggers' own vvitch, even though it's slower & less bogged down by plot mechanics than either. it's aspirational, as horror does, and it makes longlegs look like a mistake]
O Fantasma (2ooo) - dir. João Pedro Rodrigues [unexpected. best DVD i have ever found in a little free library. full stop. siegfried quite honestly couldn't have been more rapt. we never knew where the movie was going next. not a likeable protagonist but compellingly watchable. absolutely gorgeous night photography too]
