One doesn’t realize how awful something like Darkness Falls truly is until one stumbles across it on cable television, where its thousand hues of black descend into a murky stew. As directed by Jonathan Liebesman, it’s a reductive of tale of the vengeful spirit of the tooth fairy… OK, fine. Naturally, this means all sorts of jolting musical cues from composer Brian Tyler, and a little kid in peril.
What I didn’t anticipate was just how wholly uninvolving the fright sequences would be, not the least of which because I could scarcely make out a damn thing in the jumbled mass of dark images. In a move that doesn’t bode well for the forthcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel, Liebesman piles grey on black on grey, using cross-cutting shadows that damage both spatial relationships and simple visual clarity. There’s no depth to the darkness. And while the color on my TV is balanced fairly well, what I watched of Darkness Falls had me squinting unsuccessfully to make heads or tails of its ghostly antagonist. It’s proof that while even good movies can be butchered on the small screen, already bad movies become far, far worse.
A friend of mine once amusingly proposed a festival of wholly
mediocre films — think of the most entirely passable yet still utterly
forgettable movies possible, like Intersection,
movies with absolutely no kitsch value — and we proceeded to kill a beer or two
coming up with the perfectly nondescript lineup. Since then I’ve on occasion thought
up other bizarre, commercially nonviable festival lineups (movies in which the
leads hooked up off screen, films with multiple Arquettes, a retrospective of
Daniel Baldwin), and it occurred to recently me while watching British import Johnny Wasthat it could be programmed
alongside Johnny Suede, Johnny Mnemonic, Johnny English, Johnny West
and Johnny Skidmarks to create a whole
festival of rotten Johnnies.
that
bad, but Johnny Was is certainly no
great shakes, despite its wildly eclectic cast. Penned by Brendan Foley and
directed by Mark Hammond, the film is set in the bare-knuckle London
burgh of Brixton, where the titular ex-thug (darkly charismatic toughie Vinnie
Jones, above right) is trying to escape his violent past. Johnny’s poorly chosen place of idyllic
settling, though, is a flat sandwiched between a crime den run by a Jamaican
gangster (Eriq LaSalle) and pirate radio station operated by a Rastafarian
deejay (former boxer Lennox Lewis, above left). When Johnny’s ex-partner (Patrick Bergin,
awakened from sleeping with the enemy), freshly escaped from prison, comes
knocking on his door, looking to pull Johnny back into his old ways and finish derailing
the Irish peace process, Johnny must try to play both sides in an effort to
stay alive and protect the ones he loves.
Johnny Was belongs
easily to the modernist tradition of grubby, mashed-up British urban crime tales that
have trailed in the wake of Guy Ritchie’s one-two debut punch of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
and Snatch. Thing is, it’s not quite
as colorful and fleet of foot. The cast has enough intrigue value — Samantha
Mumba also costars as Rita, Johnny’s new flame, and rocker Roger Daltry plays
Jimmy, his former boss — to make for some interesting clashes, but Foley’s
script telegraphs its intentions, Hammond shoots with a small frame, and the
action sequences are less than thrilling. For more forgiving fans of this oeuvre,
there are a few delights to be found within, but for general audiences there’s
little of essentiality. The film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an
English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track and optional Spanish subtitles. The only supplemental extras are a clutch of preview trailers for other First
Look home video releases. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)
A throwaway line of dialogue from School for Scoundrels is attracting attention for its perceived tabloid deliciousness, as detailed in this item from FilmStew. The line, uttered by Billy Bob Thornton’s character to Jon Heder’s character after the latter recounts in dewy, positive-minded fashion the manner in which things are proceeding between he and a girl (Jacinda Barrett) on whom he has a crush.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re days away from adopting a Chinese kid together…” says Thornton, who of course was once married to (among others) Angelina Jolie, who in 2002 adopted her son Maddox from Cambodia, and later daughter Zahara from Ethiopia. Thornton is strongly denying any dig at Jolie, but one has to wonder if the subtext of the joke really flew completely over his head, as he’s claiming. It certainly didn’t for the audience with which I viewed the film.
that