Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset 01 - Tony Vision

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Welcome to Movie Mindset! In this inaugural episode, Will and Hesse guide you through two of the collaborations between director Tony Scott and star Denzel Washington, Man on Fire (2004) & Deja Vu (2006). Join us as the ultimate auteur of the action-thriller meets the ultimate American leading man in these two propulsive explorations of justice, time, duty, depression, vengeance, destiny and sick-ass explosions. This first episode of Movie Mindset is available for free anywhere you get podcasts. Subsequent episodes will be released exclusively for Chapo Trap House subscribers on Patreon at patreon.com/chapotraphouse.

Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a drink. Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a drink. Hello friends, I'm Will Menaker, and welcome to the inaugural episode of my new podcast that I'll be doing with my fellow movie sicko, Hesedene. Hello. To christen this voyage into movies, we've selected for our first episode two films that highlight one of the most powerful partnerships between a director and a leading man of our times. Today, we're talking about Tony Scott and Denzel Washington and two of their collaborations, Deja Vu from 2007 and Man on Fire from 2004. The ultimate auteur of the action thriller meets the ultimate American leading man. Now, Tony Scott is often talked about in connection to his older brother Ridley.

In the past, he's been considered the more sensationalistic, less mature version of his older brother. But for our purposes, Tony's films stand on their own, and we don't need to engage in the canned debate about which brother is better. Tony. Indeed, critical consensus on Tony Scott has evolved beyond the shadow of Ridley, and certainly since his death in 2012, people rightly have come around to regarding him as one of the true auteurs of big Hollywood action entertainment. Unfortunately, any discussion of his body of work is bittersweet and colored by his suicide and the question of just how much more he could have done. On a personal note, I've visited Tony Scott's grave at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles several times. His gravestone is a remarkable slab of marble that on its rough, uncut plane features a sculpted figure of a mountain climber scaling the face of an enormous cliff with just one rope tethering him to his ascent. It's a striking memorial that also features on the smooth side, chiseled into the slab of marble itself, a full list of his directing credits, beginning with one of, if not the first sexy modern vampire movie, The Hunger in 1983.

And then, of course, the homoerotic military mega blockbuster Top Gun in 1986. Scott used an eye hone directing TV commercials and music videos to redefine big budget studio filmmaking and create lush, dreamy pop action entertainment on the biggest possible scale. His style of movie maximalism has always been sensational and dedicated to pushing the limits of just how fun, sexy and entertaining movies can be, while always staying very much grounded in the present and in the real world and real people who find themselves in the danger zone. His movies can be cynical, dark and even nasty at times, while always maintaining a sense of humor and a certain warmth in humanism. And to that end, it's in Denzel Washington that he finds his perfect collaborator, an actor that defines a kind of approachable American everyman. I think our generation's Paul Newman. But one whose performance is still convey a rye humor and often hidden fissures, darkness and vulnerabilities that he lets his audience in on. Starting with Crimson Tide in 1995, the Scott Washington collaboration would lie fallow until 2004's Man on Fire, which we'll be discussing today.

Following that in an almost rapid succession, the two would make Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, and Scott's final movie, Unstoppable, in 2010. It's over the course of these films that we see Scott fully develop and define the distinctly hyperkinetic style that would come to define what Hessa and I call Tony vision, or going Scott mode. In a marked departure from the dreamier visual grammar of his earlier films like Top Gun or The Last Boy Scout, we see in the two films we're going to discuss today, Scott's fully idiosyncratic and even experimental style, one marked by extremely high contrast and severely saturated colors, along with a whole host of processing tricks on top of the visuals. Double exposures, flash frames, rolling, strobing exposures, and most importantly, those deep fried overcooked colors. It's this constant evolution of style and use of the biggest, most expensive canvas possible to perfect it that makes him such an interesting and awesome filmmaker and the subject of this episode. As for Denzel, what more can I say? He's the man. He's great in everything and sorry to Malcolm X and Training Day heads out there, but my personal favorite Denzel role is John motherfucking Creasy. Born January 4th, 1956, died January 16th, 2003. Without any further ado, this is Movie Mindset.

It's a phenomenon known as Déjà Vu. It's a phenomenon known as Déjà Vu. You arrive at a place you've never been, but it feels familiar. You look into the face of a stranger and you feel like you've known her all your life. Have we met? Yeah. Yeah, we have. He has been shown a secret.

It's a brand new program. We can look anywhere. Four days in the past. The government doesn't want you to know. This is not surveillance. This is the actual past. Yes. This Thanksgiving, the key to stopping a disaster. You think you know what's coming? You don't have a clue. Starts by unraveling the mystery of Déjà Vu. What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?

I tried. Tessa, just to begin, how would you describe the works of Tony Scott? I think Tony Scott has a very sexual kind of style in a weird way, especially his earlier works. The Hunger, his first movie. Very sexual. Very sexual. There's a homoeroticism that underpins a lot of his movies that I think is really wonderful. Top Gun being the object example there.

Yeah, the literal example of a homoerotic movie. Playing with the boys. And I think, and like Days of Thunder, obviously, and I think that he's like a fantastic craftsman and like director of action, especially. I think he's definitely an action director. Whereas, you know, like, I don't know, like Ridley Scott is more he can direct action, but he's more focused on the characters and or Christopher Nolan, who is more focused on the science and the, you know, the minutiae of things. Like if you compare like Tenet and Déjà Vu, which I'm sure we will at some point during this, they're they're two very, very different movies. There's a lot more explaining going on in Tenet and a lot more action.

Even we'll talk about it when we get to the movie. But in Déjà Vu, there's this brilliant thing where like the explaining and the kind of the explaining and the narration of what's going on becomes the action because they're kind of controlling this camera in the past. But yeah, I think he's very action minded and he does it in a way that no one else really does. And he's so responsible for the way a lot of movies look today. Absolutely. And like the other thing, like, I mean, look, like he's always going to be compared to his older brother Ridley. I have been on record saying that he is the more talented Scott brother. But we don't we don't Tony Scott Tony Scott's movies can stand on their own.

They don't need to be compared to Ridley. But like another major element of his movies is like like an action thriller. Is this really like lightly worn humanism and warmth that I think they all have. And another thing, another key thing is that his action heroes are always ordinary guys. Like there are there's really good. Blessedly, his movies are mostly free of CGI. Like most of his effects come from his editing techniques and like the film saturation techniques he uses. But I would say that like his films are always grounded in the real world and there are there are there are ordinary men who do extraordinary things, be it, you know, Pete Maverick Mitchell and Top Gun.

Or as we see here in the perfect match of director with star is like the like the the archetypal sort of American every man in Denzel Washington. So like as a what do we make of like Denzel like Denzel his acting persona as a whole and then like his particularly fruitful collaborations with Tony Scott of which he's made five films with Tony Scott. Most of them in the 21st century. Well, I think like Denzel is he is like kind of an everyman, but he's like the or like the uber mensch every man kind of in the way that I think like Hitchcock saw Cary Grant as, you know, this guy who could be any of us but with a little bit more swag. I think that Denzel is so it's who we all want to be. Exactly. But it's an attainable goal. Exactly.

Rather than someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise. Yeah, like in, you know, there's like certain parts where he there's a part in deja vu where he asks where the coffee pot is. And I remember the first time I saw that scene. I was like, God damn, this guy is so cool. How do you ask for a coffee pot in a way that cool? It's crazy. And I think that that's like really put to use so well in like these movies and like unstoppable where he's just like a cool older train engineer and like, you know, taking of Pelham one, two, three where he's a cool older train. Yeah.

And but there also I feel like there's this theme with Denzel in Tony's films where he's we don't really see it in deja vu, but where he's a man who in the past has done something wrong, you know, like in in unstoppable. I think he's like demoted in taking of Pelham one, two, three, he takes a bribe in Japan and gets demoted in Man on Fire. He has like a hunted past. He's killed hundreds. Yeah, he's killed hundreds and hundreds of people. Yeah. And I have a fun revelation from Man on Fire that I can't wait to tell you how I figured out. Well, let's get into them because, you know, we're going slightly out of order here deja vu is from 2007 Man on Fire from 2004.

But I want to begin with deja vu. We're usually going to do unstoppable because of the, you know, unbeatable news hook of trained derailment action thriller movie. But I'm actually really glad we ended up doing deja vu because this is sort of a I slightly like slept on Tony Scott movie. And it's also a movie that I think like as the first movie we're going to talk about on movie mindset. This was like a really, a really pleasant bit of kismet that has to you suggest that we do this one instead of unstoppable because I had sort of forgotten about this movie. But as I was watching it, I was like, here's my thesis. Yeah. This is the thesis of movie mindset laid bare.

This is a movie about how watching movies can change the past and that through art, we can even attempt to possibly even succeed in sending a message from our present into the past, thus changing our future. Changing the world by watching movies. Exactly. Changing yourself and changing the world for the better through watching movies. Oh, and for like we were going to do unstoppable because like that's my favorite. I think Tony Scott Denzel collaboration because I love like a good train like process movie. But then I was watching Man on Fire and I was like, we got to do deja vu because they these two kind of connect so well. There's so many like, I don't know, the editing style of Man on Fire and the editing that happens as part of the story in deja vu.

I think it's very like it's a good pairing. Yeah. And like I just like a final thought on Denzel Washington before we start with deja vu. I remember the the film critic Pauline Kale once described Paul Newman and what made him a great actor. And she said something along the lines of that he is able to allow his audience to like without without dialogue or like without like in character. He is able to like allow his viewers access to a private vulnerability of the character he's portraying. And I've always thought of Denzel Washington as sort of like our generations. Paul Newman as this like, you know, like pretty naturally handsome, like classic American guy.

And like in deja vu, like Man on Fire is a little different because he's playing a less likable character. But we'll get into that. And but both these movies, I think are a great vehicle for the great Denzel Washington and like the perfect match in his director, Tony Scott. I mean, people always talk about Denzel Washington and Spike Lee, but it is really all about Tony Scott and Denzel Washington. Like they are like each other's perfect muse and they've done such great work together. So let's just jump into it with deja vu. I will I will I should mention that both deja vu and Man on Fire have the same cinematographer Paul Cameron, Canadian guy who also did the cinematography for collateral. So like we're seeing in Man on Fire like like Tony pushing Tony vision to like as far as it'll go.

And then a couple years later in deja vu, he is I think a little bit more constrained by Jerry Brachheimer. But he is going to give you like just just enough of the Tony Scott vision and make a movie that is really about what if technology could allow everyone access to Tony mode. And I I looked up the editors of these movies to see if they had the same editors and they're two different editors. But they're the like the only two editors Tony Scott has ever used. Every single one of his movies is one of these guys or the other one pretty much. For the most part, I think there's like one or two outliers, but I thought that was really interesting that there are like two like editing muses that he uses. And they both, you know, created Tony vision in such a wonderful way. I mean, like and you've got to be like you got to be a high level editor to work with Tony Scott because when he cranks up Tony vision.

Oh, yeah. The cuts come like it's like a friggin. It's like a fucking blender. It's just but like I said, like usually that sort of like highly kinetic editing style is usually like evidence of a bad movie that like doesn't edit together well. But Tony Scott, like you mentioned how influential he is like the other directors. You can see like when the wheels come off that kind of style, but Tony is always in complete control. No matter how like completely spastic and perhaps a Caesar inducing his movies can be at times. And you know, we'll we'll start with deja vu. This is back when movies are cool and they didn't they they didn't warn you.

They didn't warn epileptics before starting watching it. And I don't know if you noticed this. We get to see the the classic lightning hitting a tree Jerry Brackheimer logo and it rewinds. It restarts. It restarts. It restarts halfway through it. And folks have that you are now you are now in deja vu. You're having deja vu.

You're having deja vu. You've seen that logo before just five seconds ago. So the movie begins and it takes place in New Orleans. And this was actually the the first they originally they had started production on this movie right before Katrina happened. And then they shut it down for like a year or two. And this was the first movie filmed back like the first big Hollywood production in post Katrina, New Orleans. And we were treated in the opening images of this movie like the opening credits of this movie are the most Tony vision part of the movie. Yeah, it's like another key element of Tony vision is his love of helicopters and like having them on a sweeping and then filming things with helicopters.

There's a famous story about he filmed this scene in spy game between Robert Redford and Brad Pitt where they're having like coffee together on the roof of some building and Prague. And then he was just like, All right, we're gonna need a helicopter to just get a full 360 panorama panorama around them. And the studio was like, Why? There's no point in that. He's like, OK, I'll pay for it out of pocket. So he just he paid for his own helicopter to film a totally extraneous scene of just two guys talking on a roof and it was just like sweeping around. He's so cool. So like the movie begins and we're treated to the happiest images imaginable.

Yeah, this opening is wild. It's very reminiscent of the face off opening where a kid gets fucking domed. So he went like this week came out in 2007. And I think I want to note of note of these two movies as a double feature is I think that they're both in their own way. Very interesting sort of cultural receivers for what the George W. Bush era was about. Oh, absolutely. And this movie déjà vu obviously does a terrorism, but also this kind of like on the present surveillance state that rises around it. Crucially, though, this is 2007. This is like right as the surge is still have the surge is happening.

The surge was working back then. So he's giving you like this is like this is a sort of a resurrected New Orleans. But the most important part about the imagery he's showing you in the beginning of this movie is that it is just hundreds of sailors piling on to a fairy. And it's Fat Tuesday and Marty is not only sailors but children. Yeah, there is like a two dozen children, like women, happy couples. Yeah. But it's mainly like it's like it's like it's like VJ day or something. Yeah. All right, boys. It's Fat Tuesday. Sailors. Sailors love boats of any kind.

And like they're like, all right, boys, like they're on time. We got to get these boys to a brothel. It's Fat Tuesday and New Orleans like 500 horny sailors. Jack Nicholson from the last detail. Yeah, exactly. So like, you know, and then keep in mind that like this is all being filmed like they're piling on to this huge fairy. And then like and Tony Scott is filming this in his like double exposures. He's zooming in. He's zooming out. You know, like you've got like like the smiling children.

But oh wait, what's this? A girl drops her doll into the drink. A bad omen of things to come. And of course, they're like, they're pulling that awesome fairy horn. They pull out there in the middle of the Mississippi River. Was it like a train or like Mississippi River? I don't know. I'm not I'm not in New Orleans. Yeah, please, please don't write in.

But all the good, you know, like these these sailors and all the children with them, they will not be making it to the brothel because the fairy is blown the fuck up. And this is a really impressive piece of like pyrotechnic filmmaking. They blow the shit out of this fairy in the middle of New Orleans. And it's a fucking enormous fireball. And then like it goes from like the good times of, you know, backscrap and sailors and children being like, look, we're in New Orleans to just bodies on fire being thrown like fucking ragdolls into the drink of the Mississippi River. And cars are being dumped in the water. Yeah, it's nuts. And even before that, there's like another Tony Scott thing that's in both of these movies, which is like crazy use of diagetic sound and like pop music like being deployed, which like where the Beach Boys Don't Worry Baby is playing in the in the truck with the bomb in it.

And a guy's like, Oh, what's that sound? I better check it out and then boom. And keep in mind, once again, like a lesser filmmaker would have like, yeah, you'd see something blow up. But because Tony had, I think more helicopters than in the ride of the Valkyrie scene in apocalypse now filming this explosion. You see it from every conceivable angle. The camera is sweeping around. It's their carnage everywhere. Okay.

Enter our hero Denzel Washington, ATF agent Doug Carlin. He is there to survey the wreckage and the bodies that got, you know, they got there. They're zippered up by the they're stacked up like cordwood on the dock. We get another helicopter shot. But, you know, Denzel shows up, you know, he's in his element. He's a, you know, he's an explosives expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But I mean, bombs aren't involved in that. I don't really know what his job is.

But we also learned that like he investigated the Oklahoma City bomb. Yeah, they say Oklahoma City, right? And he's like, uh-huh. He participated in that cover up. He's evil. So like, you know, he's been here before. He's seen, you know, terrorist bombings blow up a ton of people. And they're sort of like, well, we still don't know if it's terrorism or not.

It could just be something caught fire and very exploded. And then he's like, not so fast. I found like, you know, the bomb wiring. And then I've got like, I've smelled the residue, bomb residue everywhere. I mean, he's a vet. He's a pro. But here's the interesting thing. Unlike the other scenages of terrorist carnage that Denzel has been up before,

he notices some sort of a nerd looking gentleman walking around the crime scene with what looks to be VR goggles, like a VR goggle helmet at the scene of the crime. But, you know, doesn't think too much of it. He doesn't think too much of that. He's got a job to do. All right. This is where we get the coffee pot scene.

Yeah. Well, this is, yeah, he shows up and he's just like, how do you tell who's in charge of a massive multi federal agency investigation? The guy who knows where the coffee is. And then we were introduced. Like he's up under the Crescent City Bridge. He's scoping out the scene. He needs the surveillance footage of the bridge.

But who shows up at this point? Another great reunion for Tony Scott. It's Val Kilmer back again. It's Iceman back in a Tony Scott movie. He is an FBI agent who's looking for like a, like a local, a local guy to sort of liaise with this investigation. And he goes back like, so Denzel goes back to the ATF. Aha.

Important. He's asked by a co-worker, did that girl ever get in touch with you? Someone left a message for him on his voicemail and he calls back the number. They watched the CTV footage of the bridge explosion up on the Crescent City Bridge. And they noticed a guy on a motorcycle just sort of standing watching, watching the explosions. They're like, good chance that's, that's our perp. We're then introduced to Bruce Greenwood is the lead FBI,

FBI agent in charge of looking into just to kill these 404, 543 men, women, children and sailors. And I like, I like at this point though, they're like, okay, where's Agent Carlin? And then like his co-worker says, he's riding the street cars. It's help. It's part of his process. It helps him think.

So New Orleans, then just like being like, we love your city. Let's get these street cars in here. So, and then like he's riding around on the street car doing his, doing his agent thing, just sort of taken in the city, you know, like the, the, the lifeblood of the city. He has to, he has to breathe. It has to be on the streets to do his job. And he gets a phone call.

The phone call about they discovered another burned up body that's washed up on the shore. But it's the butt due to the tides. They know it's, it's someone who was burned up kind of like in a similar way, but they washed up before the explosion. So, uh-huh. Then he goes to the morgue and we're introduced to the, the corpse of Paula Patton. The beautiful corpse.

The, the sexiest victim of a burning ever, ever, ever portrayed ever. She's missing in, she's missing fingers on her right hand. They say the, the killer like doused her in like diesel and set her on fire. But her, her gorgeous face is perfectly maintained. And Denzel is just like, you know, there's something about this burned up body that I just can't cook my finger on, but I feel a connection to her in some way. Yeah. Did you notice in this scene Denzel tastes her forehead?

He didn't. He's like, he's like, yep, that's definitely diesel. Definitely come. So yeah, this is the best looking corpse of all time, Claire, played by Paula Patton. He then goes to interview the, uh, the father of the, uh, the hot dead woman. He gets a keys to her apartment. He learns that she was supposed to meet someone the night before. And as he's going out, he's like, uh, Agent Carlin, I want you to take these.

And he's like, no, I have a picture of your dead daughter right here. We took it to the morgue. And he's like, no, I need, I need, I need her to matter to you. And like, she looks even hotter in these photos. Well, yeah, he goes to her apartment. Her apartment keys from like, uh, from her dad. And her apartment is in odd shape. There's like a bunch of bloody bandages in the trash.

There's a glass of water on the mantle. There's, um, magnets on the fridge that say you can save her, which curious. He basically checks her messages. She has a message from her dad being like, Hey, pick me up tomorrow. A message from her friend, which, um, she's like, Hey, worried about you. Can you call me back? And then she picks up the line and is like, is this a joke, Beth? And she's like, no, uh, no, this isn't.

And then she's like, someone's here. I got to go. And then a message from the ATF agent, Doug Carlin, Denzel Washington going. Hi, hi. This is a Denzel here and just calling to see how you're doing. And it was like, what? Okay. Like he, so he, she was the woman he calls earlier.

Yes. Like he, like the, the, the woman who called him at the ATF left her number. He calls back. He hears his own voice on the answering machine. I think it'd be good if there was like, um, so like, yeah, he has you, there's, you can save her spelled out in refrigerator magnets on her fridge. But I think it'd be cool if she had some like, those like cards against humanity, refrigerator magnets.

So it was like, you can save her. And like, and Frank's pussy is just like, uh, yeah, like, uh, what if, uh, what if you say freaking Hitler too? So, uh, Denzel heads back to the FBI field headquarters in which a Val and hipster scientist, Adam Goldberg, my, my note here says Adam Goldberg is looking sexual as hell. He's, yeah, he's a hipster scientist and he tells them about Claire like in Bruce Greenwood and he's like, look, the guy who blew up the fairy killed

this woman like in a couple of hours before. So if we solve her murder, like we can solve this whole, the whole damn case. And then he goes, oh, like, uh, my, my partner, he's supposed to be on vacation, my ATF partner. Uh, he's on vacation. So, uh, why is his car parked here with all the other dead people's cars? And they're like, ooh, yeah, about that. Uh, these are the cars from the very parking lot.

They're all the vehicles of the victims. So he's just like, oh shit, my partner, I guess he's, I guess he's not on vacation, but the important thing is Val Kilmer and Bruce Greenwood. They're like, I like this guy. Let's bring him on the team. Yeah. Val goes up to Denzel and he's like, I'm putting together a team. We want, uh, we need to know what to look at, where to look.

And most importantly, what trails to follow. And also he says, quote, we've got some unique time constraints. I need someone who can take one look at a crime scene and tell us everything we need to know. Okay. Sure. Whatever. So they drive Denzel to what I'm calling the medium sized hadron

collider facility. This set is so sick. It's like a bunch of screens. Wire is exposed everywhere. He's in the nerd hive. Now this is like, this is another Tony Scott touch that's in a lot of his movies. Like for instance, an enemy of the state.

They're always like in these kind of like, uh, techno dystopian views of like surveillance and like law enforcement. There's always like the nerve center of like the tech guys who have headsets and they're clacking away on tight on keyboard looking for Jason boring. Yeah. Oh my God. That's Doug Carlin.

That's ATF agent Doug Carlin. So like, yeah, like Tony, he always says to show you show you the tech. So they sit him down in this room and they're interested. Like they're watching on like multiple different monitors. Um, what appears to be, um, the, the fairy dock, um, before it exploded, but it's something, something interesting about, um, this surveillance footage of which they're calling project snow white, uh, they seem to have like God's eye view of the past of like anything that happened

before this bombing took place. But what I love about the project snow white is that project snow white like the means that will be revealed later in the plot basically allows the federal government to create Tony Scott movies to spy on people. Literally. Literally. Cause like it has the same 360 panorama helicopter.

Zoom in, slow down, double expose that frame. They play the nine inch nails music. There's like literally one part where they were Denzel is like, if it's just playing at one speed, why does it move really fast? Sometimes it really slow other times. And they're like, that's just us messing with the camera. He's like, okay, okay. These are just our sort of flashy editing tricks that we use to sort

of enhance the personal style of projects. No way. Wait, wait, wait. If, if we're looking at what happened in the past, why are the colors strobing and why is the, why is the saturation really crazy and the contrast really high? So Denzel, you know, agent Doug Carlin, he wasn't born yesterday. He knows that there's something, something, there's something going

on here with this project snow white and they, the way they explain it to him, yeah, yeah. Is they say that like, oh, through like, you know, a network of satellites, we can like, sort of like create a digital simulation, like like a combination of like satellite surveillance and then like closed circuit TV, we can like, in real time edit together this kind of like digital approximation of what a four and a half days ago, but we can only go back like four and a half days.

So we're always on that, that timeline. You can't look, you can't look 10 minutes ago and you can't look like five weeks ago. You only have this like four and a half hour time frame to do projects no way. And once, and it's going like in real time four and a half days ago, it's moving. So if you're looking at one thing and you were like, oh shit, we were

looking at the wrong thing. Let's go back and look at the other thing. You can't, you've already locked it in. That's the only thing you can see from that like place. And like the problem that the reason they bring in Denzel Washington is because like enough time is transpired now that like by the time they bring him into projects, no white, they have about, of what they're watching, they have slightly less than, or slightly more

than three days before what they're watching will reach the point when the bombing happens. So, you know, they don't know who they're looking for. What do you do? They need an expert director. Exactly. To know where the action is. Yes.

They need someone to go Tony vision. Yeah, literally. And that's what Doug Carlin is there for. So they don't know who did this bombing. They don't know what to look for. So, so where do you look? And Denzel is like, I just met the body of this really hot woman. I would love to see.

I want to see you take a shower. Take a shower. She looked real clean. So I know she took one in the past few days. So to solve the case, they have to spy on a dead woman. So what I love about this is the, like they, they saw the case not just by watching movies, but by making them. As you were saying, it's all a question of like, where to edit?

What to focus on? What performance do you highlight? What gets left on the cutting room floor? And he's like, this stuff with the fairy, like none of these sailors are really characters to me. I think we're going to need to make an executive decision to focus on our love interest here in this murder investigation. Yeah, we need a woman in this movie.

We need to follow that. So yeah, like they can, and like they can record what they're looking at, but they can't like rewind it, you know, another sort of tell, like maybe perhaps this is not just the CGI trickery that they're dealing with. One of my, one of my favorite lines in this part is he's like, okay, if it's, can someone, can one of the seven dwarfs tell me why, how their sound for this?

And they all just like kind of look at him. They're like, oh, you know, anyway, cell phones record everything these days. We got their sound everywhere. We just had it all together, you know. So yeah. And then of course they do spy on her getting in the shower. Yeah.

Like, you know, like the, the nerd hive is a buzz with them. The one nerd is like, hubba hubba. And they're like, can you move the camera away? And the one nerd is like, hang on. The one woman in the office is like, is there any forensic importance to us watching this woman take a shower? And then he's like, all right, all right. No, one of them, one of them actually says, we got to make

sure she gets clean. So, I mean, like the, the, the, so they're, they're watching this dead woman in her apartment. And they notice that she writes in her diary that she goes, I get that feeling that I'm being watched. And she sleeps with a gun under her pillow. So she's like, there's something going on here. She's a little bit paranoid about like, uh, yeah, like,

I always feel like someone's watching me. And then she gets out of the shower when they're like looking around her apartment and she starts being like, hello is someone there? And they're like, huh, oh my gosh. Maybe she Denzel is like, can she, does she know that we're there with this like camera shit? And they're like, no, that's a, that's ridiculous.

Listen to what you sound like right now, man. Uh, there was one more detail like they, they, they keep watching her and she goes to bed and she gets up in the morning and I like the, her character Claire, uh, praise before eating breakfast. You know, it's a good girl. That's why, that's why Doug Carlin likes her so much. She's a good girl.

She prays before eating breakfast. Uh, Lord, thank you for making these Cheerios, honey nut. Amen. And then, uh, so like, you know, uh, so after spying on this dead woman, uh, Agent Doug Carlin Denzel goes to, uh, Paula Patton, Claire's funeral. And you know, it's, it's, it's a New Orleans funeral. And her dad is just like, you know, she used to ask me

like, how come they only play the good music when people die? Well, Claire, honey, they're playing for you now. And Denzel's just like, God, if only there was a way I could stop this woman from being killed. So, uh, so he goes to her funeral and then we're, uh, back to, uh, Project Snow White and he's like, continues to spy on her life. Like, you know, then now like two and a half days ago,

like two nights ago, she goes out, uh, with her friends to like a bar, she's out socializing, having a good time. And then she gets a call, uh, earlier in the, earlier when they were spying in her apartment, there was a circled classified ad for like her red Ford Bronco that she was selling in the classifieds. And, uh, she, she picks up the phone and who is calling her, but the bomber to buy her Ford Bronco.

And then they do some good old fashioned police work in combination with this because they figure out where that call is coming from. They find out that it was coming from a pay phone that is right across from an ATM. And then they like grab the footage from that ATM, zoom in on it. And then this part was very funny.

They use facial recognition software on a bag that the guy is carrying. Yeah. And they're like, run it to see if that bag is every bag in New Orleans. Yeah. And they find it in 10 seconds. So yeah, like now, now they're on,

now they're onto the bomber Denzel's instincts to spy on this hot lady, get naked, pay off. The bomber, of course, is played by Jim Caviesal coming off the passion of the Christ. And I was just reading a little bit in the, you know, I like to tap over to the trivia section of IMDB on a movie that I'm going to talk about on this movie. Apparently Val Kilmer created t-shirts for the entire

casting crew that said, we've got Malcolm X, Jesus Christ and Jim Morrison. We can't lose. Yeah. And then there was another moment about Denzel saying Jesus. They, apparently in the first screening of the movie, they, the first time Denzel sees Jim Caviesal's face, he says, Jesus.

And the entire audience burst into laughter because of course he plays Jesus in the last temptation of Christ, or not blessed. The passion of the Christ. The, the crazy one. And the one that doesn't bless him or Lord. Yeah. And because it's like Denzel's realizing that it's actually

Jesus Christ or Lord and savior who did this bombing. And they, so they took that line out of the movie, but I really wish they kept it in. So even, even though they're onto the, the bomber, Denzel is still feeling a little depressed because he's like, you know, I'm watching a dead woman here. I feel like I'm getting more involved in her life, but like we can use this technology to help capture the man

who killed her. But at the end of the day, no matter what, we still lose her. So, so like he's, there's no waiting again and they're, they're creeping on Claire back into her apartment. And here, agent Denzel, aha, he gets an idea. So while the, while the nerd hive is like, you know, zooming in and scrolling around and spying on her, he gets an idea.

He takes a laser pointer at, and he points the laser at the screen they're watching. And then immediately, snow white collapses and the entire city of New Orleans blacks out. But right before the monitors go down, the laser pointer that he points through the screen shows up on the wall of Claire's apartment two nights ago and she notices it.

And she sees it. She sees it. And then here we, okay, it's not surveillance folks. It's time travel. The project's no white. They can fold space back onto itself. And here we get, we're treated to a great, a great scene of Denzel,

Denzel doing his normal guy routine. When he's being, having to be told about science, like the Einstein bridge wormhole. And he's just like, what does that mean? Just because someone speak English to me, please. And he's like, is she dead? Is she alive?

Yeah. And he goes, is she dead? Or is she alive? We're like, we're watching a woman who's alive. But so is she alive or is she dead? He goes, come on people. Am I asking a hard question? And it's like, yes, you are.

You're asking probably the hardest question that anyone ever has. And then I like to see, Adam Goldberg, the hipster scientist character, says at these very heady conversations, he says, I picked the wrong week to stop snorting hash. Yeah. So. Which is a very 2007.

It's like time travel nerds who wrote this movie. Like, did they just not understand how drugs, which drugs work? I don't think so. I think this is like one of those things like, in Touch of Evil when they're like, all the weed fiends show up and they're like, wearing leather jackets.

Swiss players. Yeah. They're leering to do rapes and whatnot. Yeah. So that, you know, then he starts to wonder about the implications of this. The obvious one being, why can't we just go back and send someone back?

And in this movie, they sort of set it up like it's the opposite of Terminator. Like you can't send any living thing back into the past. So because it dies immediately. It hits the Weinberg, Rosenbridge. Yeah. The firm of Einstein,

Weintraub and Rosenbridge. It hits that and then the heart stops. No electrical signals can get through. And, you know, like, and Denzel as normal guy is talking to these scientists and he goes, what if there's something more than physics involved in all this? What if there's something spiritual?

And Adam Goldberg says, it doesn't matter because what you're talking about now, God has already made up his mind, which I thought was a very good line. Like whatever happened in the past, like, like, whether you can change it or not is irrelevant. Like these things are settled. God has already decided on them.

So like anything past that is just like, is just speculation. And he says, my whole career, I've been catching people after they do something horrible. And then like one of the other, one of the other people in projects, No White introduces the branch universe theory.

The idea that if you could like, like the time is like a river and if you throw a big stone into it, it'll redirect the path of that river and then negate the other flow of it. And Adam Goldberg is like, thinks this is, he rolls his eyes. He's like, this is science fiction.

This is like throwing a pebble into the Mississippi. And I was like, that he's just like, this is crazy science fiction talk. It's just like, let's go back to, you just signed a laser into a woman's apartment who has been dead for two days and she saw it. So he can't send anything alive back into the past. Here we get into a movie mindset.

Denzel gets the idea. What if we send a note back into the past? What if we send a handwritten note in the Snow White time cube core? And it literally is a time cube when they open up this large Hadron Collider. And Denzel writes a note to himself and like they put it in the time cube.

Terrorist surveilling docs at this time. Yeah, he gave himself a note about where the bomber, like the time and place that he's going to be. So they use Snow White to like scan this note and literally like move it back in time to a specific time and place. Denzel's desk. So they do that like,

and then they're watching Denzel and his partner have an argument where he's like, you know, he's like, if I bust someone on a hunch, that's good police work. And then he's just like, you're playing too fast and loose, Agent Carlin.

Turn in your badge and your gun. So like, they're having a fight. Denzel had alluded to this, like about having some trouble with my partner. And like Denzel is just like, enjoy your vacation and stalks out of the office. What happens? The note materializes on his desk,

but his partner is the one to get the note about this terrorism suspect. He heads out to catch the suspect and is murdered by him. So like they created, this begins to get into like the time travel logic of this. God's already made up his mind. God has already made up his mind,

like in seeking to alter the past, they have created the conditions for what has already occurred, i.e. the murder of his partner. So they watch Jim Caviesal kill his partner. And then like, Project Snow White only has a certain radius of like an area of space

in which they can like do Tony vision in. And Caviesal, the terrorist gets into his car and starts driving away. And they're like, okay, we're going to lose the feed. We're going to lose the feed. We can't lose them. We need to know where he is.

And they're like, well, and they go into like, can we still, can we use the rig? And Denzel is like, yeah, give me that rig. And they put the VR goggle headset like in a car. Yeah, the rig is a hummer. Big ass Humvee. A Hummer H1 with a VR headset inside. And Denzel is like, give me that.

I got to go right now. So, yeah, Denzel peels out in a Humvee and he's treat like he's tailing a car from two nights ago on the New Orleans streets of the present moment. Yeah. And there are some great practical, like Tony car accident shit.

Oh, yeah. Of just cars getting like just tossed around. Denzel is gunning it down the highway, wearing a VR headset. Exactly. Like the traffic that he's looking at is the traffic of two days ago. Yeah.

And I really love just like the convention of like a time travel car chase. Oh, yeah. Which is very creative, very cool. So sick. And they do this picture in picture thing where you can see like, because Denzel has like one lens from the VR

and one looking at the road. I have a headache just thinking about it. Yeah, yeah, truly. I'm having a panic attack thinking about dropping a car like that. And it's like really fantastic because it really looks like it's going to be a near miss with every single car he passes.

And he does hit like. Oh, he hits several many cars. Yeah. He hurts a lot of people. So like, but, but the Humvee and the power pack works and he trails the sort of time ghost of Jim Caviesel and his car

back to his sort of like bayou hideout. You know, it's like, it's like, he's going to the bayou. He's going to the bayou. And then like, okay, like he, and he's got, he's got the power, you got the power pack on. He's got his eyesight and he's looking around

and then like, oh, two days ago, his partner was still alive in the back of this guy's back of Jim Caviesel's car. And he sees him pull his body out of the car, douse it with gasoline and then shoot him in the head. Yeah. And the nerd, there's like, the nerds back home watching with projects in a way.

They start crying. He's like, brace yourself. Yeah. You're about to witness a murder. Yeah. And they have to see his partner just get like executed in cold blood right in front of him. And, but before that even when Denzel shows up,

he's in the future, they're watching it in the past. They can't see what he sees. And he's like, it looks like there was a huge explosion on this like compound. And there's an ambulance kind of driven through this one building. Yeah.

So like, like, he's, he's interacting with the wreckage of something at the terrorist hideout. Like as he's looking at the, as he's looking pensively at the charcoal stain on the pavement of what used to be his partner, the rest of his body is with the gators. Cause look, you can't have a terrorist by you hide out

and not have like a body alligator body disposal system. Yeah. And also in doing this, they created this scenario where the bomber needed Claire's truck. So not only has he doomed his partner to be murdered. He's doomed Claire as well. He's also doomed Claire to be murdered because his car

is now covered in bullet holes and blood. And he needs something. He needs a similar make, i.e. Ford Bronco to get that bomb on the ferry. So then he calls Claire to ask for, to buy her car, setting up her murder. So in the present, we get,

we get a great scene of Jim Caviesel being arrested on a fan boat. And you know, Tony loves his vehicles. And anytime you can have fan boats included in the movie, you know, you know, it's going to be good shit. Oh yeah.

And he, as he's getting arrested, he does a Nazi salute, which I thought was very interesting. Well, I mean, here's an interesting part of this movie. Like I said, like this is 2007. It's very much a movie about the war on terrorism.

I remember some people chirping about it when it came out, because it was like, how come it's not an Arab terrorist? Oh my God. And like, you know, Jim Caviesel is very much playing like a, the Oklahoma city bombing is referenced in this. And he's very much playing like a,

a white nationalist, sort of like an anti-government, like a Christian white nationalist terrorist. And I gotta say, Caviesel is very good in this. He's very frightening. He's awesome. Yeah.

So they arrest Caviesel and Denzel interrogates him. And he does the classic interrogation technique of going, you know, I'm with the ATF and I just gotta say, your precision, your bomb making, it's incredible.

The whole thing about your plan, just top notch work. And if you, and you're really handsome too. And if you don't mind, I'd like to use this recorded interrogation as sort of like a textbook for like, how to,

how to train our ATF agents to be better at catching genius criminals like you, who like, obviously have a good reason for what they're doing. And he's like, yeah, the tree of liberty needs to be watered

with the blood of horny sailors. Yeah. And their children. Yeah. So like, you know, he tells her,

he tells Denzel about murdering Claire. And, you know, and then like, he gets into this whole thing about like, you know, like, you don't understand,

like there's not going to be a trial. Like I have a fate. Like I have a fate. And, you know, like you need divine intervention to stop me. The way that he's talking,

it does kind of imply this throughout the movie. It's kind of implied that like Jim Caviesel is so insane that he understands that time travel not only is real, but that Denzel Washington's going to try to use it to stop him, which I thought was really cool.

And then he says a line to him, something like, um, Satan reasons like a man, but God thinks of eternity. And like, you need divine intervention to stop me. And then we get a classic cop moment where he goes,

you're going to, yeah, he's like, I need divine intervention. It's like, you're being raped and prison. So then they shut down the investigation. It's over.

The guy confessed to the bombing. He confessed, but however, they can't charge him withoben because then they would have to say in court how they obtained the evidence. Yeah. But like,

I don't understand like wouldn't that also applied to his confession of the terrorist bombing? Like, like how he was arrested in the first place? No, no, no. Okay, whatever.

They'll use projects. No why. Yeah, We can't use projects. No white anymore. They're like, no, no, no, we have to you Don't get it because like we need more evidence and he's the guy is like you turn in your badge And you're you turn in your time travel helmet. Yeah, you turn in your turn in your ring. You're But then you know like he's wanted by this idea of Claire's still dead all those people on the ferry still dead, you know, I mean like this is the classic thing like

You know, what if you were on that plane when 9-11? Yeah, what if you were Mark Wahlberg, but new due to projects in a way what was gonna happen? Oh, they should remake those Now this whole movie is like I said like in like in 2007 the kind of like Tail end of the bush year is an America's like obsession and fear over terrorism Like this is this is very much a movie version of like what if you could stop 9-11? Oh, absolutely You go back in time to stop 9-11. Mm-hmm So think back he goes back to her apartment one more time. You can save her What that obviously implies is look if I'm gonna take my shot to save Claire and these people

If I have a chance to stop 9-11 from happening just prosecuting or killing Osama bin Laden. That's not enough Mm-hmm, and Adam Goldberg the hipster scientist is very easily just yeah He calls sense still just like allowing him to do this. Yeah, he calls Adam Goldberg He's like, why don't you warm that thing up for me? And then Adam Goldberg it cuts to Adam Goldberg hanging up the phone Val Kilmer's there And he's like just turn off the lights on your way out Yeah, which is funny because they've already caused like a nationwide blackout. Yeah using So I originally said that like this movie was anti-terminator rules because nothing alive can go back

But then when they send Denzel back It goes back to terminator rules because he says you've got to get naked to keep the mass slow And they're like you keep you keep your underwear on. Yeah You keep your underwear on you can still preserve some dignity as you crawl in the time cube So like this is a really funny part of this movie like to send Denzel back in time. He literally just gets in a box Yeah, he crawls in a box in his underwear. It's like primer. Yeah. Yeah, and How does he solve the problem about? Being dead upon arrival. Oh, he writes revive me on his chest

They send him back in time To a hospital and then like a blackout happens in the past because he gets sent there and the lights flicker on the hospital There's just like another body seizing on a girl right next to this guy having like open heart surgery Which I thought is so funny if they're if you're sending him to a hospital It's so funny to write revive me on his chest Like they're gonna see him and be like well, nothing we can do now So like yeah, he wakes up in the hospital. He's seeing news coverage They're like as fat Tuesday celebrations begin the entire city of New Orleans is filled with fun and sailors

The one thing that we know won't happen today is a horrible bombing The hundreds So like yeah, then he he like basically he robs some guys like a like a oh what an ambulance Steals an ambulance or some s workers take some security guards gun I don't know if you notice this but one of the EMS guys he robs is I don't know the name of this actor But he's the pickup truck guy in unstoppable. He's the welder guy. Oh shit I like like trails the the train and his yeah, yeah f-150 welding pickup truck. Yeah You guys

Yeah, so he steals the ambulance and then he just drives straight to the bayou Mm-hmm. The bayou hideout and it's cutting between Jim Cavieslo. It's about to kill Paul. Yeah, he's like he's dousing her in gas She still looks great though. Oh, yeah, she's still she's even with a bag She's great So like there's all he drives the embo in like just in time right is it but he's about to cut off her fingers with like You know some garden shears or something and then we see the whole place blows up This is how his hideout got torch. This is how the ambulance is there so he manages to save Paula Patton from Jim Caviesal, but Caviesal gets away and

From there like a he's shot in the process. Where do they go to Paula Patton's apartment? Which is you know on the way to the ferry and then we get to see How he touched everything and covered it in blood. Yeah from when he originally goes to her apartment The gauze covered bandage or the blood covered like gauze and also like earlier They're like the CSI guys would be like is this the first time you've investigated a murder because your fingerprints are all over this Lady's house and we saw when he first go in there. He had the latex glove. Yeah, he's like, I'm not thinking about that I'm not gonna think too hard about that So then like yeah, like we see like all of the the circumstances that led to it like him finding like those bloody bandages

And then he does the fridge magnets. Yeah You can send some self a message in the future, but here's the thing as this is going on He seems to like he keeps portraying that he knows a great deal about this woman and yeah And give me some of your your house is on the way. Let's stop there You can give me some of your ex-boyfriends clothes in the thing and change your dress because that dress that's that dress is bad news Yeah, and she's like, okay She clearly gets the impression that this guy's been stalking her. Yeah, so she pulls a gun on him and And in like in doing so he says like, you know, call the ATF like I'm an ATF agent like call the call the ATF office

She calls the ATF office. That's the call that he gets that he missed in the beginning of the movie And he calls her back and he calls her back. Yes, and then he now in front of her with the gun He here is her friend Beth call and her pick up and go bet. This is a joke Yeah, because he says your friend Beth is about to call. Yeah, she's worried about you She's gonna say that she's worried that you didn't call her last night you're gonna pick it up halfway through the message and Then it happens obviously and then she's like, okay, maybe this guy is for real and then also she also said he also says An important line for a call back later

He's like what if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world and you knew they wouldn't believe you and she says I would try I mean, it's difficult to explain time travel. Yeah I'm just talking about it. So she calls the ATF agent and asked him to describe Denzel Washington He's like like about six foot three but pretty handsome black guy, and then I'm just like, yeah, that's Denzel. Yeah All right, this checks out So he's like you know like like the guy who tried to kill you is gonna blow up this ferry So we need to go to the ferry they arrive they need to go the ferry dock and she says what are you gonna do? And he says defuse the bomb. Well, there is a there's a moment where he realizes cuz he like put his fingerprints all over everything

He's putting like the glass of water on the mantle and he realizes suddenly. Oh, I haven't changed anything Everything's still the same. Yeah, so something must be wrong there must be something still like that's gonna go wrong and So he tells Paula Patton like he kind of panics and is like Okay, you better come with me to the to the dock so that you you'll be safe with me You know it's just like, you know if those other 500 people die fine, but at least I will save one person Mm-hmm, and they show up to the ferry dock as we see like as the beginning of the movie starts And we see all these like happy horny sailors and they're like we're gonna get late

And he tells her to like okay go to that go to that cop Once the ferry leaves and I'm on it and tell them that there's a bomb on it Like you'll be okay. Like like don't worry about it And then like right when he leaves her gives her a kiss. So time travel Does God made up his mind? Can you change the past? I don't know but he kisses her once so it was all worth it Mm-hmm, but Cavizel is also there at the ferry because he knows something's not right as well because an ambulance just plowed into his yeah I guess no one had any idea who he was or what he was doing and this guy just randomly shows up and starts

Driving up ambulance through his house and shooting at him and it kind of implies that he just gets like a feeling because he's there He checks on the bomb like walks away And then Denzil gets on the ferry and then Polapattons watching and then Polapattons sees him like running up the thing to get on the ferry before it leaves So it's like he just was like no something's not right and he like runs gets on the ferry and then Polapatton is like Okay, I got to get on this ferry too. I gotta do the one thing he told me not Yeah, yeah So they're down on like the lower level of the ferry where all the cars are and you know

Cavizels there and then like some security guards like oh, sorry You can't be here right now like he's already done this to Denzil and he's sort of like walked up and taken like a more stealth Approach to get back down to where the bomb is This is the second time the security guard does the same thing to Cavizel He's not so lucky because he's just blows them away immediately and then like you know like they know something's up They shots are fired all the security comes down and we get a great scene of Cavizel Dual-wielding MP5. Yeah. Yeah, just going to town going to town It's pretty awesome and then like like when Denzel faces off with Cavizel

He spits all the stuff that Cavizel told him in the future in the interrogation about man and God and fate Yeah, and then Cavizel's like oh shit this guy's spitting facts Yeah, he's like yo talking about God reasons and eternity That's that's what I've been thinking to myself as I built this bomb to kill all these people. This guy gets white nationalism This guy really gets it So like you know like there's a cool face off between them Paula Patton like she like floor like she she's handcuffed inside the car Cavizel got the drop on her. She's handcuffed in the car with the bomb

But like Denzel like he gets the keys and he starts the car and he's like florid and she just like slams into him He like the fender of the car hits him square in the middle of the waist Mm-hmm It's close man some sandwiches in between another car and is like the torso is like leaning over it And he's like still still trying to pull that MP5 trigger, but Denzel just domes him. Mm-hmm. He's all done terrorist Compromise to a permanent end. Mm-hmm, but however There's not really enough time left to diffuse the bomb and all the security on the the ferry thinks that they're the bombers

And yeah, the car and he goes only one thing to do floor it again They drive the car with the bomb in it off the ferry and Like as it sinks and like the ferry it's a very cool like underwater scene of like there's very going over the car Like and there's such a cool shot of like when the car hits the water of like Denzel's face going like forward in the car like they just hit something but it hits a plane of water and like Goes under what it's like really I mean, yeah, it's like like Tony like Tony this is this is like the Tony vision thing like in action or anything like There's no angle into like any kind of like dynamic moment of action

Like there's no angle that he won't film from there's nothing that he won't show you like he is trying to show you The most at all times. Yeah, and like that is really like like the key component of his like later style And like I said this kind of maximalist filmmaking that he really goes for and we see it in this great climax of the movie so Denzel is underwater. He manages to get the steering wheel off the column. I guess it's a Tesla or something. So he just pulls So he saves Claire she goes out through the windshield she like narrowly avoids the propellers of the ferry in another very like tension moment tense moment So but Denzel is still in the car as it sinks to the bottom of the river and then blows up So he's in the car Denzel Denzel is dead

But Paula Patton he does he does change at least one thing about the past in addition to saving all the other people on the ferry He saves the hottest woman in the state of Louisiana. Mm-hmm, and Paula Patton is mourning all the people are rescued on the side It's like all these people that we saw earlier who were like, where's my daughter? Where's my daughter and then it cuts to the daughter like showing up and being like I'm okay and And then he still lost her stupid doll though. Yeah. Yeah, her dollars are like fuck this I'm going to the French Quarter trying to get a hooker. Let's just have sex with each other. Let's go back to the hotel So like you like she's sitting down she's rattled and then like you know like a cop is like Oh, the cop at the very end of the movie is another character actor. I'm forgetting him at this point

He's been in a lot of movies, but he has one line in this movie He goes, oh ma'am. We're gonna need you to just sit tight here for a second Someone's gonna come by and take your statement. Who comes by to take your statement It's our old friend ATF agent Doug Carlin from four days ago from the past from the it's it's Denzel mark Two who is still alive has not and the cool thing about this is the way that Denzel Prime Dyes ensures that there's like never like an autopsy where they're like, yeah, can you explain that? Hey, why are you dead? Did you have a twin that you never told us about a body for you to identify? Yeah, that's me, huh?

So it's probably like yeah like destroyed beyond all recognition, you know Like they're not even gonna bother to look at the teeth, you know, like yeah Yeah, the bottom of the Mississippi River after like an Oklahoma City style bomb just like It's decimated every atom in his body. It looks like the like underwater nuke test that when the bomb explodes. Yeah, truly So, uh, then, you know, we've met before haven't we? Yeah and You know, like then they get in the car and Denzel has a moment as they drive away of and I like this because they never say never say They never say it, but like he has this like he's he's such a good actor. You can tell

Yeah, no, it's perfect. It's perfect. There's what I mean about like giving these audience access to these unspoken moments of sort of privacy and And yeah, Paul Patton goes like what is it? And he's sort of like the beach boy song is on the radio. Yeah, don't worry. Don't worry, baby Everything is gonna turn out. All right. He sort of pause us for a second and then goes nah He's like the feeling I'm experiencing right now is called deja vu since that you've been somewhere before or You experience something already and you know the Beach Boys plays they drive off and then The ending like the end title card says this film is dedicated to the people of New Orleans

The brave and enduring spirit of the people of New Orleans Which will be a perfect segue into our next movie Man on Fire, which also ends with tribute to the people of another city Okay, we are back and now now we move on to 2004 is Man on Fire This was the first move This is the like the the first movie that Tony Scott did with Denzel since Crimson Tide in 1995 so it's like I don't was a and then he would go on after Man on Fire to work with Denzel in a rapid succession of like four other movies Apparently Him being cast in this movie came about because they were both at the same dentist's office in LA and hadn't seen each other in 10 years

And he was like oh Denzel I would love to work with you again. Yeah, you heard of Dakota Fanning. I think she's great So this is 2004 is Man on Fire. There were 24 kidnappings in Mexico City in the last six days Have you protected a lot of children before Mr. Creasy Bodyguards got to be close to people, you know, I'm no good at that The things happen to you crazy. Yeah, my boy Like me Creasy, you're smiling Run

You know, we talked about in deja vu some examples of Tony vision or going Scott mode and Man on Fire is the one is the movie in which he pushes all of these tendencies and like I said his hyperkinetic like action Auturus like idiosyncratic style he like they let him just open the throttle in this movie and like he goes for broke on all of it Like a lot of these techniques that we're talking about sometimes He was very risk. He was like way more restrained in deja vu both in the subject matter and like I said the in going in going Tony vision but I like that like to begin by talking about Man on Fire as I would rate it as very much the best of The George W. Bush era of a specific kind of action movie that I guess well I was simply called dad action movies taken with Liam Neeson being another

Prime example of this and like oh, yeah They're very much a reflection of like war on terror America because they are all about how the world is a Terrifying place and very specifically so unfair and evil to Americans in particular Yeah, and so like how do we respond to that? We we don't like we need people we need men who are past middle age We need past middle-aged men to go back to taking care of business the way they did You know back in the back when America was strong They need to take care of business and how do you take care of business?

What's the most important thing protecting our beautiful white daughters from these Mexicans? Immigrants terrorists ill immigrant immigrants and you know what sex trafficking. Yeah. Yeah woke mob. These guys aren't angels, okay? They've killed hundreds implied maybe even thousands of people in the past for God knows what reason a reason that makes them try to kill Them like for the CIA. Yeah. Yeah, but um, you know what when when the penny drops They they they answer the call if you're if your angelic daughter is kidnapped Mm-hmm. Who do you want? Who do you want on the case if the whitest Hispanic daughter in the world is kidnapped? Do you do you want some some touchy-feely a millennial a CIA assassin to kick her back? You want Adam Goldberg on this? really

So This man on fire was a written by Brian Hedgeland and another bit of a right to be trivia from this movie apparently He wanted to remake this movie or write a new version of it because he was inspired by when he first saw the original man on fire This is a remake of a movie from the late 70s with Scott Glenn in the lead role He went into the video store that Quentin Tarantino worked at in the 80s and asked hey What's a good movie to watch and he recommended the original man on fire? I'm I also looked at the trivia and I really hope you missed this one piece of trivia that I I think I think I know the one you're talking about

When we introduce this character, we will discuss probably my favorite IMDB trivia for a movie so This movie begins Yeah, another another Scott mode technique use in this movie is the use of like dynamic subtitles and Title I love like stay on screen for like a long time to like emphasize the line But this movie begins a little a little factoid and that fact is that in Latin America? There's a kid they're having once every 60 minutes. Yeah, which though by the time you listen this episode two kidnappings will have happened in Mexico City alone and And I it really reminds me of the opening title card of Den of Thieves where it's like yes every 45 seconds There's a bank robbery in the United States of America. It's like, I don't know if that's

Every 45 seconds, there's a freaking bank bailout in America. That's a real robbery folks So the opening credits of man on fire if you want to give people if you would like to show to someone or demonstrate to them like the most distilled the most uncut crack of like the Scott mode Tony vision style of movie making the first Oh, the opening credits of this movie are the most Tony Scott thing ever because we get basically a very condensed storyline of A kidnapping taking place in Mexico City We see like this nice young couple the man is just like grabbed off the street thrown in the car His family gets the the ransom call they arrange the money drop off his ears. Yeah, they cut off his ear But like this is all done and like this like totally saturated films like desaturated film stock

It's just like strobing like lights and then like zooming in super high contrast It's it's like if you've seen that meme where it's Squidward from SpongeBob and his face shrinks and it's like All the effect happen on it all at once. It's shot like that But with a strobe effect also at I mean, it's funny because like like Tony Scott's visual style I think can be compared at least just is like a still image to like really deep-fried SpongeBob memes Yeah, literally memes that have been like copied and copied and recopied like Thousands of times over the original image quality is like so degraded But then like you can still see like yeah, you can still see SpongeBob smoking a blunt or something

Yeah, like SpongeBob dry shrunk up in Sandy's tree dome and it says my face when My face when my my boyfriend gets kidnapped in Mexico City So like yeah, we get this um Sort of like a mini movie that will give us like a sort of like a rehearsal for events to happen in this movie and we're introduced to The villain of the movie the the voice as he's called in the movie was like Sir, let me ask you. Do you love your family? Do you love your family is everything? What would you pay to get your son back? So and then in the credit sequence? Yeah They cut off this guy's ear they give instruction for the money drop

But thankfully this is a happy ending because they leave this newly earless young man on the highway Yes, be collected by his family and the opening credits also revealed that like Something I had totally forgotten that like four of my favorite actors ever are all in this movie and it's down Denzel Christopher Walken Nicky Rourke and John Carlo Janini John Carlo Italian guy like he's he's eating a lot in his career playing a Latin character Oh, yeah, like oh, yeah But isn't it as like the the coolest looking like older Italian guy ever like, you know weren't Mueller's muse Yeah from the 17 literally like if you want a guy to look cool smoking cigarettes in a movie

Yeah, Carlo is your go-to if you want a puppy dog eye guy who? Becomes a socialist to get pussy in like a movie in the 70s That's your guy you might remember him from he was the Italian cop that tries to blackmail Hannibal Lecter to Quite nasty and for himself and really Ridley Scott's Hannibal one of the worst movies ever made But he was also James Bond's contact in Monaco and Casino Royale mm-hmm or Montenegro rather I should say Um

So we're we're treated to this like like you know mini movie in Like the most Tony vision that you're ever gonna see and when this was like This movie is like it's almost kind of like nausea inducing But I say that in a good way like it like if you if you suffer from epilepsy like definitely do not watch this movie Yeah, it's like It calms down a little bit But especially in the opening credits and then whenever whenever shit is about to get real Tony Scott's camera is like never not moving. Yeah, like it is just like it is constant movement constant energy like a like

And then like he slows it down at times to like give the plot and characters some room to breathe But then like at a moment's notice He will just crank that dial back to 11 and put you in this like seizure inducing fugue state of action and Sort of ominous portents. It's like he did salvia once and it ruined and it ruined his life truly And it's like and in this movie though like it's crucial like it's crucial to Tony vision is that he also pushes Like music editing and like sound. Oh, yeah, like like he like he not just double-exposes like like a film Does double exposure a film? He like lays two different songs over each other in this like wall of noise And yeah salt on your senses. There's a part where four different songs play within like a 30 second period

And it's really incredible But yeah, I like I want to like hopefully we can edit back in the Nine Inch Nails music that they keep playing Yeah, oh my god And then like when things get serious they play like the type of music that usually always plays in Hollywood Whenever you're in a foreign country and something profound is happening because it's always like Anya core type thing Um, so after the opening guys enter a very unshaven Denzel Crossing the border at El Paso heading to visit his friend to play by Christopher Walken in

Juarez, everyone looks like a crumpled paper bag Really crazy. So like yeah Denzel's like, you know, he seems like a broken guy. He's a drunk and now like Here's what I'm gonna do is like I think I think man on fire is Is probably like it's up there like this or last Boy Scout for me would be like Tony Scott's two best movies Mm-hmm, and it's hard. It's difficult in assessing Tony Scott's like Canon of films as a director I like I regard this as like maybe his most personal film It seems that way to me. I'm like it's hard to say because like I don't he definitely has interests in his movies But his interests are like a technical and like in service of like action and story

I don't like I don't know how much of like himself he puts into these movies But like maybe this is a little too easy given what we know about the end of Tony Scott's life But Denzel's character in this movie has a real melancholy to him And I just like you know as we'll see later on the movie like is suicidal as well Tony Scott did famously kill himself in 2012 by jumping off a bridge in San Pedro I can't help but read into like the very the broken and melancholic portrayal the character that Denzel Washington plays in this movie like perhaps something about like Communicating kind of like an inner pain in Tony Scott's own life or something. I mean like

Like I said, maybe that's a little too cheesy and on the nose But like this is a this is a performance by Denzel in a movie for Tony Scott There really is infused with like a lot of a lot of pain and like like emotional agony Yeah, and I think it's like interesting because he's pretty much done this movie before Almost more or less with the movie revenge. Have you ever seen revenge? It's probably my least favorite. That's the worst movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, his worst movie For those who don't know revenge is the movie he made right after Top Gun and it starts Kevin Costner Madeleine Stowe and Ricardo month. No no Aiden Quinn. Okay, Aiden Quinn And Kevin Costner is like a hotshot fighter pilot who retires and goes to hang out with his friend

Who's like this rich land barren in Mexico and then immediately falls in love with his wife and has an affair with her That's buddy. That's the one thing you don't do to a rich Mexican guy And basically it's just about how Aiden Quinn like cuts his wife's face up and then whores her out And then like nearly it's like Kevin Costner having to save Madeleine Stowe from a Mexican whorehouse basically Yeah, it's a kind of a nasty movie, but you know, and it's kind of boring for the first like hour. It's very very slow Costner has no juice. I'm yeah, you know You know, I mean compare Costner to like Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington. Yeah, Tony Scott mode crazy. Yeah, it's nuts So we see like we see Denzel we see Denzel who's paying a visit to his old pal

Rayburn played by Christopher Walken who's an ex-pat living in Mexico. He's got a Mexican wife He runs a security business where he like ferries Japanese businessmen from like the Japanese car industry like two and fourth from El Paso And he's Loaded he has a Jeff Kuhn statue in his pool. He literally yes, he's living like a king down in Mexico now Another bit of another another interesting factoid from the IMDb trivia section apparently Almost every scene with Denzel and Christopher walk in this movie. They improvise. That's so cool And it's just like too cool guys. Yeah a good time together These are two old pros who are like they're just they're just mixing it up together

They're just like they can just hey, oh, you need to know like this your old friends with a haunted past Yeah, about it, and then they're just like perfect nailed it first time So yeah Denzel he likes to drink every now and again He's been moving around probably like doing wet work for Christ knows what else and you know He says to Christopher walk in, you know, do you think God will forgive us for what we've done? And it's just like I don't know, but maybe maybe there's a chance you can forgive yourself Mm-hmm, so then basically walkins like look you can get work as a bodyguard basically and then we then we cut to the introduction of

My favorite actor Mickey Rourke Mickey Rourke and Mark Anthony the the singer Mark Anthony is also a very good actor too He was very good in bringing out the dead the Martin Scorsese Paul Schrader movie Mm-hmm. Mickey Rourke is the lawyer to like every prominent Mexican family They own it they own a like an auto plant in in Juarez and they're trying to they're trying to like make some deal with the American car companies and get on the Japanese so like Mickey Rourke is letting up a cigar and he's telling them about the kidnapping We just saw in the opening credits of the movie and he's saying look like for insurance purposes You have to hire a bodyguard. Okay

Apparently Tony Scott had been like looking for a project to do with Mickey Rourke for a long time It seems crazy. This is I think their first movie together right after this He would do Domino starring Mickey Rourke and Kira Knightley But would you like to say is this the IMDb trivia that that I know actually? Oh my god. Thank God This is the best. This is the best IMDb trivia for a movie. I've ever seen all it said is Denzel Washington Did not get along with Mickey Rourke while filming this movie Which is really funny because they have no scenes together and Mickey Rourke is in the movie for like five minutes Yeah, like the one day he was on set

He was maybe was like such an asshole. He said something racist like under his breath and Denzel heard it like literally But look Mickey Rourke I think what Mickey Rourke will be the subject of our next movie mindset episode you're treated to just enough work in this But I really wish there was more work in this movie Apparently there's a deleted scene where Mark Anthony cuts off his head with a sword Yeah, and they I was really upset that that guy. How did that end up cutting the floor? I think it's because Mark Anthony is not I mean He's great in bringing out the dead but in this I didn't you know, I mean like he's doing his best

He's I mean like I mean like he worked as like a very pathetic awful man. Yeah, like so basically like they're like Oh, he's like look you don't have to hire a good bodyguard Just hire a cheap one and then like your insurance policy will be up and then you can just fire him So hey cheap bodyguard Denzel. That's easy work for you So like the next scene he's clean-shaven and he's like he's taking the job wait before that There's a part where you see very briefly inside Denzel's file and Mark Anthony's like very impressive And this is the piece of trivia that I Inside the file and we know that

Denzel's birthday his character's birthday in this. Oh, yes. I have it here. It is January 4th, 1956 Mm-hmm, and it says in his file that he worked in Marine Force recon or army recon at Camp Lejeune, so he's eligible for a significant financial compensation Only he had gotten that Selena style settlement for whatever toxic shit He wouldn't have had to take in this job, but then well then that would have been very bad for a sweet little Dakota Fanning Yes, yes, so he's looking. Yeah, he's looking at his resume and they're like, um, you know assassinated Patrice Lumumba I don't know like yeah, he's not old enough for that But yeah, like he's he's been doing he's been doing wet work for the CIA for like a long time and Mark Anthony's like

Well, you have an impressive resume, but like, you know, why are you so cheap? Like what's the catch? And he's like, yeah, I'm a drunk like I yeah, we then are introduced to the the Ramos family and the Mark Anthony's American wife played by Rada Mitchell who is I thought a very good actress who like you know had some juice and the I made I remember mainly from a pitch black. She was the hero in pitch black with a diesel Yeah, and she was also in the Woody Allen movie Melinda and Melinda. I think I think she I think she's great she's she's his American wife Lisa and She immediately likes Denzel's character, which by the way right now I should we should introduce that his character's name is one of my favorite character names of all time

John Creasy and it's really weird To have the name Creasy Creasy It's one letter away from greasy. It's really makes me uncomfortable And like before Mark Anthony is like, okay Like if you like to drink drink on your own time But like like my wife can never know about you being a drunk I don't bring it up in front of her don't drink in front of her Rada Mitchell when he when he she introduces herself to him Goes would you like a drink and he goes? Yeah, Jack Daniels neat

And he just drinks it out of a pint glass just dreams it in front of her But she likes him immediately because he's not Mexican. Yeah He's an American and here we are introduced to the precocious daughter of all precocious daughters Peter played by Dakota Fanning. This was really her breakout role and really like I mean Dakota Fanning like isn't in movies at all anymore But this is like a movie that like everyone noticed her because of how good a performance from a child actor really really goes out Within this movie like apparently Denzel was blown away by her like he felt like he wasn't acting with her

And she like avoids the trap of like overacting like as a child actor and so she he meets Pita played by Dakota Fanning She is precocious is as precocious as all get out now Hessa. I know what you're thinking listener. I know what you're thinking There is absolutely no way that this adorable little ragamuffin will melt the callus tart of this hired killer Mm-hmm. The chance of that happening slim to none. Mm-hmm slim to none. He tells her that right off the bat He's like, you know what? I'm not gonna you're not you're not gonna woo me. Your charms will not affect me Here's something I'd like to note about the The the two main performances in this movie between Dakota Fanning and Denzel Washington

Listen, I mean about what an impressive performance it is from Dakota Fanning because there is something Distinctly flirtatious in Dakota's performance and the way she plays her relationship with Denzel like she's Immediately taken by this like, you know sort of like morose older man And there's a certain quality to her character of like A child who like spends way too much time around adults and not enough around kids her own age So she sort of like acts older than she actually is In an attempt to like sort of relate to and be friends with adults instead of kids and there is something like

Not sexual but like definitely she's in love with him from like the minute they yeah, there's like a chemistry I wouldn't call it sexual chemistry, but definitely like Like a fatherly daughterly or even like older brother type But I think like that's what like how he comes to yeah, yeah about it But I think on Dakota's part. I think she is like in love with him in a romance. She has a real crush on him She's like in love with him in like kind of both as a better father figure than mark anthony But also is kind of like, you know her boyfriend really yeah, she keeps asking him like Do you have a girlfriend or stuff? You have a girlfriend greasy

Um, she says he's like a big sad bear and then throughout the rest of the movie She names her teddy bear after him and she starts calling him her crazy bear Her greasy bear. Yeah, she loves hanging out with a big greasy bear and also um when Denzel first sees his like room in this um like compound He sees that there's like this bird and they're like, oh, yeah, that was the last bodyguard Emilio's bird. So have fun Have fun taking care of this bird forever. So, you know Denzel, he's uh, Like, you know, he's he's happy to have work, but he's like, you know, still a like a completely depressed

Basket case. Um, so like what are you doing? You're what do you do your first night on the job? Just you know, drink a bottle of jack Daniels stare at a parrot and take a gun apart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Just play with a gun. You know, that's what you do when you're like every night for him is the beginning of apocalypse now Oh, literally exactly Um And then like he lets the parrot go almost immediately. I also love I have to mention here The house in mexico city that the ramos family lives in is so dope

It's just like this is like some high level property porn going on. They have a gorgeous pool in the backyard It belongs to a real cartel first. Yeah, probably. Yeah, like every mexican businessman There also needs to be a gigantic room that's like the household shrine to the version to guadalupe with like 8 000 candles in it Yeah, there's um a stuffed zebra in the living room and like an incredible chandelier and like main foyer Like it's it's a gorgeous house and oh also in the scene where creasy gets his room Dakota Fanning says to him, what's your favorite music and he's like, I don't like music And that that'll come into play later. But there's no way there has a there is no way that this guy's ever gonna like music He really doesn't like music. He really doesn't and he never will

Um, so like, you know the next day, uh, he drops off pita de kota fanning at her and her beautiful mexico city school Uh, it's you know run by nuns. It's like, you know, uh, it's a catholic school And then he meets a sister ana who's this like, you know, wisened nun And she's like, you know, don't take offense mr. Creasy But like I wish your I wish your profession didn't have to exist And he's like you and me both sister and she says do you ever see the hand of god and what you do? And then he impresses her by spitting some bible shit at her

He's like, oh like I know that bible verse and it's and he says it in spanish. That's like romans 23 17 He's like on the land that got lost. Yeah He goes over overcome evil with good and yeah, I go sister. I'm yeah, I'm the I'm the sheep that got lost madre And so like while she's in school He goes to a street market and buys music for the first time in his life Mm-hmm. He hears the the sweet sounds of lynda wrong. I mean who could pot like The hardest heart could be melted by by lynda runs that he picks up blue bayou And you know, so like he buys he buys the record and then he goes and picks up pita after school

And then she immediately starts drilling him with questions in the way that like kids do when they're being annoying They're like, did you like school? Uh, what was your school like and then she starts getting a little bit more personal He like hates answering questions So she goes she cranks it up even higher and she goes, uh, were you unhappy as a child? Yeah, she's like being black as a bodyguard in mexico city. Is that an advantage or disadvantage? What happened to your hand and his hand is like covered with cigarette Probably self-inflicted cigarette burns and he's like, uh, it's a birthmark and she's like, no, it's not greasy

And then he and then he cuts her down and says look i'm paid to protect you I don't want to be your friend. This is only a job to me and as this is happening Tony vision starts. Yeah, we start blinking into Tony vision a little bit because like, you know, like, uh, There's like squeegee men and it's mexico city. It's like it's scary Someone trying to sell them roses someone else trying to sell them like eggs like yeah their cars swore for the american in 2004 Evil scary shit going on. Yeah. Yeah, mexico mexicans existing and like living in a city He literally pulls his gun and takes the safety off when there's like someone cleaning his windshield with a newspaper Well, you know, you got to you know, you got to stay frosty at all times

And I suppose this would be a good time to bring up the fact that like look if you are mexican or live in mexico city I could very much imagine not liking this movie because it is a Horrible portrayal. It's like worse than cicarii. It's like really bad really horrible portrayal of both mexico city And the entire like nation and people of mexico Yeah, because like with a few exceptions every mexican in this movie is just about the most Like awful venal like someone who would sell their own child for a book Yeah, truly like and like that everyone is just being kidnapped at every moment just like a human life is worthless it's just like

The the anti kidnapping division of the police are the ones who kidnapped and ransom you it's just like yeah a level of Awful evil corruption and like I said like this is very much. This is 2004 This wasn't like this was an iraq war was still going good or people thought it was like if people were starting to turn on it But like this is like the height of like george w. Bush war on terra america We're like everything outside the borders of the united states is just like hell a terrifying nightmare And if you're in america, you will be like spotted Kidnapped tortured the one the one good mexican is an italian yeah

So he's he's sort of he's very cold to pita and then like like while the squeegee men are assaulting the car She gets out of the front seat and he thinks she's liking to run away But she just gets in the back seat which I thought was nice because she was like oh, you're just gonna be my bodyguard Well, I'll treat you like one. Yeah driving miss daisy style How do you like being black now? Then he goes home And he has he talks to the mom the mom is like hey you were kind of mean to my daughter and he's like I don't even care and

Because he's already starting to get a get get loaded. He's getting a buzz on so yeah Like so like Robin Mitchell comes down and she's like um look like, you know pita She just wants to be friends and he's like not gonna happen lady. Yeah, so he's like all right All right, no the because got the this boss has crawled out of my ass time to time for some me time So time to go on an epic bender and now here we get this is crazy here We get like the the this is the most intensely distilled like tony vision moment of the movie. This is peak tony scott Of his career, maybe even it's I mean this and the torture scene later in the movie Because he puts on blue bayou and blue bayou plays normally for about

Three seconds and then he takes a swig of jack and then nine inch nails hit and then it becomes nine in blue bayou nine inch nails remix Literally Linda Ronstadt collab just like the hardest craziest industrial music as you see these like strobing images of densels like agonized face is like Like let's say cleaning a gun when you're depressed is means one thing and one thing only So we see him just start playing with this bullet. He's like, oh, what if I put the what if I put it in the pipe? Okay, I'm doing that. What if I cock it? If I cock him put it up to my head and pull the trigger

What if I cock it put it to my put it to my head and pull the trigger he pulls the trigger He pulls the trigger which is like a very like you really see that in a movie and like uh, but here's here's the deal The bullet miss fires. It doesn't go off. It doesn't go off failure to fire and I love this He's like like basically a ghost like he was like he was expecting to be dead like 10 minutes ago And he's certainly Tony vision turns off right at that moment because he's like what the fuck dude Like what was I doing? You know, they say people who like survive suicide attempts They say like their last conscious thought before going under was regret

So he's like maybe this is a wake-up call for for Creasy And I love this. He calls walk-in in the middle of the night and he's like, um, hey, uh, just real real curious Um, have you ever fired a gun and the bullet didn't go off? Just just randomly. I just wondering if that ever happened It's like 4 a.m. Yeah And then we're all just like It's rare, but I guess it happens called failure to fire or you know like never lies the dimple on the pin And he's like, uh, he's like Creasy. Um, what were you shooting at? And he's like, uh I gotta go don't worry about it. You gotta go and then and then we get and then we get like the um, the uh, like

Rashid Wallace quote of the movie the ball don't lie in this movie It's a bullet always tells the truth So he's just like well the the bullet didn't lie like I guess apparently I have to keep on being alive Yeah, and I have to start taking my job seriously And like and he does because the next day as they're driving to school He notices a car is tailing them and he writes down the license number Or he tries to but he can't because um of the crazy traffic and Max goes they don't know how to build roads over there. So they um

The crazy traffic, um, he doesn't get the number down But Dakota Fanning notices what he's doing and gets the number down in her diary Mm-hmm And apparently there's another little like method acting thing apparently Dakota Fanning That's actually all her real handwriting and like she did as part of her character movie wrote a diary where she wrote I love Chrissy over and over. Yeah, I love Chrissy bear. I love Chrissy bear like 600 times um, and then we're just the fact that um Pita is a swimmer, uh, but she's not very good. She's too slow off the block

Well, she's fastest in the water too slow off the block and you know like Chrissy sees this But I bet he doesn't give a shit. It has no interest in getting involved in the yeah No, no, no, nothing's gonna go that oh wait. Oh wait. No. No, he's helping her and like he becomes her swim coach Her big swim meet is in three weeks. That's hardly enough time to heal his wounded traumatized heart So at this point like uh, when he now that he's no longer suicide a suicidal alcoholic anymore We see some news footage and we're introduced to the character of the crusading Mexican journalist played by Rachel Tickerton who you may remember from, um, Um, total recall. She's the uh, this the quote to quote Arnold. He likes some sleazy. Oh, yeah racial

Tickerton is uh, the the cool rebel the cool rebel in total recall She was also in falling down. She plays a cop in that movie and in this movie. She is a uh, crusading journalist who's like trying to shed some light on this epidemic of kidnappings in Mexico and the Corrupt police and government that are covering it up if not profiting from it. Mm-hmm. So then um Oh, uh, Chrissie's parrot comes back Uh, pita says good night to him There's a scene where she dances with and kisses her Chrissie bear like I said like there's this sort of like yeah

There's a real romance going on. I'll say it's like a one-way romance Like yeah, like I don't read Denzel's character like he's on some such shit or anything But like yeah, yeah, but but the coda fanny is Cooley like it like in love with him Yeah, it's like a high old crush, you know, like we're gonna get married someday. Yeah, exactly And the next day her dad and mom go on a business trip to Detroit and what do you do when you're rich? You go away on business and you leave your young daughter with an unstable alcoholic assassin who has now become her swimming coach Uh-huh And we got a city where they say at one point there've been six kidnappings or there've been 24 kidnappings in the last six days

like okay Um, so yeah, he becomes her uh her swim coach and he teaches her this is the most important part about swimming If you're afraid of gunfire don't even try to be in track and field or swimming because it's all about that gunshot And there's a great scene There's a great training montage where he teaches her how to like get fast off the block and he makes her yell The gunshot holds no fear the gunshot holds no fear Yeah, no, no, you're not afraid of the gunshot the sound sets you free The gunshot sets you the gun releases you from that block

You're a prisoner on the block and that sound sets you free. You love it guns will set everyone free truly We're all prisoners that a gun will set us free And uh, you know, there's a great scene that like gets into more of this. Um, another apparently improvised scene Where she's doing homework and she goes creasy. Can I ask you a question? He goes? Yeah, sure. And he goes What's a concubine? And he's like, well, it's sort of like, you know, it's like a wife, but in the old time days Yeah, she's like then she starts asking him about is like, you know, if he has a girlfriend and he's like, yeah

I got Nunya none of your business do your homework and she's like creasy. You're smiling and there's a very like nice moment Where they try to get each other not to smile they're arguing about who smiles first. Yeah. Yeah, it's they have such good chemistry Yeah, no, that's really a fantastic. They're really great. I mean like that's this movie like because you know, it is You know kind of a ridiculous like revenge movie that we've seen a lot of times before it's this like kind of very 2004 american view The world. Yeah, it's very reactionary But I think like what really like anchors this movie and makes it like much better than the sum of its parts is I think Denzel Washington and Dakota Fannings Like their chemistry and the way like their performances. I think are great and Dakota Fanning is such a good child

I mean from also from this era the movie Uptown Girls if you've ever seen it I haven't seen that one shot by Michael Ballhouse And it's like Dakota Fanning and Britney Murphy and that's really good. This is a Hesse recommendation If anyone wants to see Uptown Girls the opposite of this movie in many ways so, um Yeah, she's like do you have a girlfriend creasy then they're like they're training to swim again and then like He makes her say i'm trained creasy and he goes There's no such thing as tough. There's only trained and untrained. Which are you and she goes i'm trained creasy

So he goes to her swim beat It's been three weeks and like he's already become both her father and boyfriend And then even like sister Anna from the school is like send you a creasy like today you are her father and he's like No way And what does she do she wins her swim? So as her reward for winning her big swim big swim meet She gets to hang out with two broken old men denzel washington and christopher walken And she like she loves it. She loves just hearing these two old guys talking about like just talk shop

And she gets him a present. She gets him a bear and he opens it up and there's a little saint jude medallion inside It's saint jude, of course being the patron saint of lost causes And then he's back at the house and like he gets this this heartfelt gift from his new daughter slash underage girlfriend And he's like looking at that bottle jack daniels. He opens it and he puts the cap on puts it down and picks up the bible instead Yeah And then um pita tries telling mark anthony that um She's just like look dad

I don't want to do piano lessons. I want to swim and he's like it's not for discussion honey You know like you have this audition with this great teacher and he's like a world He's in a world to claim piano with teacher and if he takes you on you'll be a wonderful concert pianist And she's like but I want to swim. I want to be trained by creasy bear So the next day denzel takes her to piano lesson And he tells her to like how to get out of it by like belching and being rude and kind of like He'll he'll drop you and then you'll be back in the will offend his sensibility. It'll be back in the pool in 24 hours So he drops her off at the piano lesson. She gives him a little flower to put in his lapel

He's looking at it He he takes her new dog out for a walk and he's like having a Having a nice sit on the park bench and he's thinking to himself Hey, maybe my life isn't totally fucked and I can be a human being again And then cop car rolls by Slow motion. Nice piano music is playing in the background. There's a loon a belt. Yeah, exactly. Debussy is playing in the background And then uh, and then you hear a bell toll and it's just like oh no, oh, Tony vision

We got Tony vision. It goes real high contrast all of a sudden. You know, all the colors it's drained out of it Everything gets deep fried You're in that you're in the bad place. You're in you're in Tony vision again So bad shit is about to happen The cop car rolls by as soon as he gets out of a piano lesson the kidnapping goes down Um, like he he fires in the air like the starting block to get her to run And she runs away, but like there are cops involved in it. He just like he kills like four guys He domes two of them cops. He just like two of them are cops

He kills two of the other kidnappers, but he gets shot. He gets shot like four times air hold He gets he gets blown away like he gets shot like four times in the chest And as the cone of fittings running away like she could get away But she sees her creasy bear and he's going down And she runs back to him. She runs back to try to save him. And of course she gets taken Denzel he's nearly dead. He wakes up in a mexican hospital surrounded by cops in the media He's been charged with the murder of several cops and is blamed for the kidnapping That's when uh, rachel ticatin shows up to ask the corrupt police chief about

Hey, um, could you comment on the fact that of the two officers involved in this? The two dead officers involved in this kidnapping, um, how come they were in uniform but off duty at the time? And they were driving a patrol car at the scene of a kidnapping. That's really weird He has like all I know is they died bravely. Yeah, he does gensaki mode. He's like, yeah We're not going to speak on that at this time Then we get our boy young carlo gianni shows up and like he has like a previous relationship with rachel Rachel ticatin because he feels her ass. He grabs her ass and gives a little he's a little pinch, you know He's like they were corrupt cowards. Yeah, now they are die as heroes and the the whole press pool laughs

They somehow heard him even though he whispered it They're like our country is so evil and corrupt Our cops are kidnapping little girls and for money the guy giving the press conference is like anyways, the memorial will be held so, uh Back at home, um, you know, the the the house is a you know, beehive of activity rata mitchell is obviously a mess Her daughter has been kidnapped Uh, mickey roark is back a jordan calphus is the name of mickey roark's character. Yeah, he's back to negotiate the ransom Now, uh, he's a really good guy and a really good lawyer. You can tell listener. Listen. Let me ask you this

um, when mickey roark shows up in a movie wearing a $5,000 suit and like sort of Of laboriously lighting cigars smoking a cigar everywhere smoking a cigar everywhere as like the lawyer who's going to negotiate the Ransom of your kidnapped child Would you bet that he's a good guy or a bad guy? I have nothing to worry about mark anthony. Don't worry. Let's leave it to me We don't need the police info Look, so and then we see um, uh, a cop that we saw in the opening, uh, scott mode montage the sort of like the Fat mexican mustache cop who's like with the anti kidnapping division and mickey roark tells him like hey Like thanks for showing up or anything

But the family has chosen this to handle it themselves and he goes uh, senor I'm sorry, but like there are two cops are killed in the commission of this kidnap So we have a mandate from like the mexican attorney general that we have to participate this investment. Yeah, sorry homie But we've got to steal the ransom. I mean We have to help you make sure they get the ransom and then he tells them like, you know Follow their instructions and he says if you don't there's a funny one here He says you'll if you don't you'll find yourself in a real mexican hell No mariachi no tequila and no pita and no siestas

no tacos So then like, you know, the family gets the do you love your daughter phone call and we see like clips of the voice like the archvillain in this movie like the head kidnapper who's calling he's like, you know, like sort of like, uh Gubriously smoking cigarettes as he lounges in his house surrounded by like all his kids or yeah There's someone's kids, but it's a real contrast because they're all having hap They're having they're having fun and playing and he's just hanging out by the pool and he's like because he has a bunch of kids We see him later. Yeah, not now. Not now. Daddy's doing business on the phone. Daddy kidnapped a kid. Yeah Yeah, but she's just like you but we're gonna cut her ear off that actor who plays the voice is so good

He's like barely in it But he really does like a really good performance the call later on the next call. He's on is even better like Yo, that's really good. Yeah, it's like Uh, and I like that. Um, uh, he's like he's like a look He's like i'm a professional If you just like like if you give us the money, we'll give you your daughter back unharmed But if you deviate from my instructions in any way, I swear by the version de guadalupe Like you will never see your daughter again, and then I'll love more again. Then he's like, oh, he's like, sir, sir

I I also worship the version de guadalupe. I just want to say like, uh, I like I feel you're Catholic Me too They're like dumbass. We're mexican Get out of here So, uh, while this is going on, uh, crecy, of course, is in bad shape in the hospital and giancarlo giani Moves him from a hospital to like a private residence because he's like, you know, you killed two corrupt cops Like the hospital would be the easiest place to kill you Oh, also before we move on when the police are like setting up inside, um, the ramos family's home

They have like sticky notes all over like and they put like all these sticky notes on the stuffed zebra Did you notice that? Yes Hundreds of sticky notes that probably say like kidnapped a daughter daughter question mark the on a zebra So the ransom is for uh, 10 million dollars uh, mickey roark takes instructions, uh for how they're going to pull off this money drop but

Oops the money drop gets robbed. Mm-hmm. Um, and they got to take This is a bad phone call to houses. Yeah, this is a really bad phone call. Look look look look look Like Really, sorry, but please So they got it. They get the call back and they're like not only not only is has the money been robbed But the the voice the head kid not for his nephew was killed during the robbery of this. So he's just basically like Uh, your pita is dog food. Yeah Like and this is what about a Mitchell like screams. She's like everyone get out

She grabs the phone away from her dipshit A feckless husband and she's like pleading with this guy like please like just like don't hurt my daughter And he says like, you know, I wish we could have ma'am. I'm sorry. I wish we could have talked earlier Yeah, I wish you could have talked earlier. Maybe we could have avoided this but it's too late now. Yeah Hangs up and it's really good because you know you're like he says in Spanish God be with your daughter and like the dynamic subtitling it stays on the screen And it's just like the dead phone line dead daughter

Oh, that just brought a Mitchell slaps every single cop in her house. Yeah, and is like get the fuck out of my house and Yeah, now it's uh, it's falling on walk in to deliver Yeah, walk is gonna Like, you know, he's recovering in like a like a like a vet veterinary clinic or something. Yeah walking has to tell him Yeah, pita's dead like your reason for living. She's been brutally murdered by you know a kidnapping gang um, so You know, he's like he's like look I have a range for you to go home

Like you're out of the hospital Like they're not going to charge you because you know that would raise too many questions But he's like is he going to go home? Nope, he's going right back to the crime scene where the the journalists rachel ticatin Approaches him and tells him that the the kidnapping gang has put a curse on him. Yeah. Now apparently this was uh perhaps mirror is something that actually happened to the uh The film crew pretty like filming this movie in mexico city They were told that they had been targeted for kidnapping. Yeah a lot of michael's driver was

Carjacked at gunpoint during the filming of this movie and denzel went everywhere in mexico city with like six bodyguards surrounding him. Yeah Yeah, mickey roark, didn't he bodyguards? Yeah No one recognized The mexicans respect mickey roark. Yeah. He's the wrestler He's the luchador. Mm-hmm. So, uh, they believe and then he gets like he gives walk in the shopping list Yeah, which I love. He's like, okay. He's like, can you can you help me? And he goes, yeah, and he goes i'm gonna need these and he goes Are you going to war and he's like, yeah, i'm thinking i'm going to war

Yeah, yeah, you go to my like probably like one of my two favorite scenes in this movie where uh creasy comes home It's like now the emptied emptied like sort of a villa of the the ramos family comes to get his stuff and Which is just basically like his bible and gun. Yeah, and his jack. Yeah Yeah, and you know like is you know confronted by uh, the grief ruined mother to like, you know bond over this horrible loss And she goes like she's sort of like, you know, I don't know what i'm gonna do or like, you know Like how i'm gonna go on and she goes like, uh, what are you gonna do? And he goes

What I do best i'm gonna kill him Nine Inch Nails music kills. Let's fucking go Yeah, you hear the nine inch nails slowly well like up in the background Boom and he goes. Yeah, like i'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him Yeah, anyone who was involved anyone who profited from anyone who opens their eyes at me And she and then she just Kisses him on the cheek and goes kill them all you says you kill them all and then we're treated to One of my favorite things that you can have in any action movie a weapon buying montage

Oh, yeah, and like, you know, he's he's he's the like the the mexican gun store Yeah, the mexican gun dealer and he buys him. He's at a bodega and he's like can you hand me that a game Yeah, we got a rocket launcher hockey style Yeah, he's buying like cell phones detonators a fucking rocket launcher. Yeah And so the first guy, uh, he goes after um, he like he he gets the journalist to run a license plate number for him The license plate that he uh, he wrote down earlier in the movie and the like with a With like missing the final digit, but they like they narrow it down to the guy I'll call sunglasses man who was the dude who actually like carried out the kidnapping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

So tony vision hits he like uh sunglasses man gets up in the morning Uh, yeah, it pours himself a cup of coffee. What a great day puts on his sunglasses He's like time to go to the kidnapping factory. Yeah. Yeah. It gets in his car. Denzel's already there with a gun to his head And so like basically duck tapes his hands to the wheel He drives him to a dump Duck takes his hands to the wheel and then cuts off his fingers and ear as aya komo one by one And hey mickey, you're so fine plays over the radio. Yeah, this is one of the moments where it's like five songs within a minute because um

And this this part is so good. This is another like tony scott pop music utilized to supreme effect, you know Tarantino style where he basically cuts off the guy's fingers and oya komo vase playing and it's like so fucking sick This is one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie. It's so brutal and like yeah He's got his like he's got his fingers up on the steering wheel and he's like, yeah Like he's like, you don't tell me what I want to know I'm going to cut off your fingers one by one and then he takes this cars cigarette lighter And he goes this is to cauterize stop the bleeding when i'm done

So it's like if you think you're going to pass out think again. Yeah, we're stopping the bleeding And he cuts off his fucking ear and Okay, here's what I want to talk about like This is the role and movie that like people think training day is Yeah, because like this is denzel playing like unlike training day where he is like, you know, like a Like an arch villain that's just like he's too He's too badass and villainous to really be like believable in a way Whereas this he's like he seems way more like a real person who has also killed hundreds of people

Yeah And like there's something about like because in training day. He's just badass and he's just constantly spitting like insults And he's just always like quick on the draw. He's like tom cruise and collab. Yeah, yeah, exactly He's just like like the coolest evil guy ever Yeah, and in this movie, like I said, he's a very like broken like melancholy person But like someone who's even scarier than denzel in training day And in the torture scenes in this movie and like three of them in a row the way like denzel's sadistic

Kindness to the people that he's going to execute is so terrifying and it's like crazy Like I think in this one the guy says something smart asked to him and he has no reply He just like smiles and laughs and then just cuts off the first finger He's like and then at the end we're like sunglasses, man He's like he's he's divulged everything that like he has to tell about the voice and then like the second layer of kidnapped of the kidnapping scheme or what they're called the guardians That's like like he's like he like I get the order. I take I kidnap the person Then I hand him off to these like the middleman who will sort of keep them safe and like no

And each of these like each of the divisions of big kidnapping LLC are sort of compartmentalized No one knows who anyone else is Yeah, he's like who's at the top and the guy is like knows that he's about to like die and get all his fingers cut off So he's just like fucking slamming his head Yeah, yeah, fucking um horn and then and then at the end he's like he's like, you know, uh, Can I just have a cigarette and he's like you want a cigarette? Sure. All right, buddy Yeah, very nicely. Like he's like missing several fingers and an ear Lights up a cigarette for him and he's like, well, let's take two puffs

They come to you. I feel his lungs of syndicating feeling pretty good. Then he's just like, well, that's it for you And then he just shoots you down and straight in the head Yeah, and then pushes the car off a cliff and it's it pans back and this dump is on the edge of a loony tune style clip The car flips in midair and lands like upside down and then it's like explodes in a huge fireball In the middle of like a kid's soccer field. Yeah, there are children playing soccer below and then it cuts into denzel and he says Revenge is a meal best served cold He's like, all right, man Yeah, it seemed pretty hot to me. I don't know but he is very cold in the way and then like he gets

Oh, yeah, he gets his next target, which is a rave and It's here where like he finds out that like the welcome to the rave agent 47 And you know, it's here where he finds out that like The cops like the anti kidnapping cops are the ones who robbed the money drop in the first place And so like the the fat mustache cop of the anti kidnapping unit. You see actually they should call that the kidnapping unit Yeah, literally the um Also, when he sees some more of his sadistic kindness

He goes into the rave and he's in like the back room or whatever And um, there's like an american guy there and he's like, where you from and the guy's like, i'm from new jersey and he's like, you're from new jersey Me too He's like, did you say goodbye to her before? Oh god. Yes before you killed her He's like this is like this fat sweaty guy. He's like, I don't know man. He's like you're making me really nervous right now And he's like, well, he didn't say goodbye to her. Go ahead and say goodbye now and holds up a picture of her He's like, no man. All right. They're just executing. Yeah. Yeah. And then he like, uh, but there there's like another girl Yeah in their kidnapping closet that uh, he has to see he has to save and then rip densel kills the club

He gets everyone out by blowing off a shotgun a few times in the air like opens up the gas line pours gas everywhere No one stops dancing. I love it when like the first time he raises the shotgun and blows it off in the air Everyone just cheers He does it like four times and they cheer every single time they don't stop dancing Everyone gets out to like the the street in front of the club then the whole club blows up everyone cheers again Yeah, it's like this is the best rave ever yo Mexico's so cool the club will just explode

Like they act like it's something that happens all the time And they're so crazy Yeah, once again, this movie's portrayal of mexico is it's like very very bad. It's like the entire nation of mexico is just like The saw movies. Yeah, it's like if you're in a children's soccer game in mexico There's a chance that a looney tunes car will fall and explode on the field with a man with no fingers duct tape too but um, he gets his next target, which is of course the quote-unquote anti kidnapping cop And then we get the great scene with christopher walken and uh, yanni

Where walken does the the great walken line where he's just like uh, young carlo He's like he's a member of like the mexican feds or a former interpol. He's like yeah, he's sort of like uh He's uh, he's the federal agencies that are of course one good cop in mexico above could be incorrupted. Yeah So he goes like, you know Senor Rayburn, he's like I just want to uh I want to understand like who this man is because they're like they beginning to understand that like Look, we can't get at this like what's called the brotherhood of like corrupt cops and politicians. That's hermana dodder That's hermana dodd

And but but crecy is like, you know, he can go places We can't like we can basically just use him as like a battering ram for our larger investigation And he asked rayburn like so What's this crecy guy's deal? Yeah. Yeah, and walking. What's what the hell's going on? We got a great. We got we got great like prime like laden his career, but prime walken where he says A man a man can be an artist. It could be food. It's just it depends on how good he is at it Crecy's aunt is death and he's about to paint his masterpiece I got nothing else to say

It's like if look if you're smart, you'll stay out of his way and Janini is like Okay Yeah, no, don't worry. I will so then like they're like, okay How are you gonna get at this cop? He lives in like a judicial district and travels by motor travels everywhere by motorcade Like the Mexican president has less security than this guy. Is there three guys guarding? He takes he takes out the motorcade with a rocket launcher He fires it from like a second story window and then just walk like they're like, oh We just got hit with a rocket launcher

Then he just walks into the street and just starts shooting the guys as they pour out of there the clown car of Yeah, the mexican security detail. Well, my um, I also love when he's setting up with the rocket launcher he's in this like building and he's like setting up this like rpg and um It like the camera pans over and there are two of the oldest people in the world sitting on like a couch and they're just like Why are you gonna kill someone? Don't you think you should forgive them? And then um, he says one of the best lines in this movie if not the best line He says, um, it's god's job to forgive him. My job is to arrange the meeting And I was like, yeah

So, uh, he he kidnaps the anti kidnap and cop and we get to what I think is The best scene in the movie. This is so my favorite scene in the movie So imagine this uh, your motorcade has just been uh blown up with a rocket launcher You've been summarily grabbed off the street, uh blindfolded like knocked out And then you wake up to find yourself, uh naked Spread eagle and handcuffed to the uh hood of your car And you feel I don't know, uh some pressure in your lower abdomen Shall we say and then Denzel explains to him that he has given him a I feel kind of horny for some reason

The guy is like wakes up. My prostate feels great. Yeah. Yeah Denzel has given this guy a c4 suppository He is like he's loaded like uh, what's called that like a charger and he's like convicts use this to like, you know Keaster drugs and money into prison So you're probably aware of that But you got one up your ass hole right now with uh a brick of c4 and like a timer on it Yeah, and he goes like, you know, this is a cheap watch here since it said pages in four and a half minutes

It's it's going to send a page to that bomb in your asshole. So you better get start talking and the guy spills his Shit, and then he's like and then the onscreen This is one of my favorite examples Yes, yes He has an onscreen countdown clock to this guy's asshole exploding. It's like two minutes 40 seconds one minute 30 seconds Yeah, so like this guy, um, he spills like, you know, as you imagine you would this guy is very cool under pressure for What's going on right now in his life? This guy spills everything and also I really love this scene. Um

Uh as he's explaining to him his um asshole bomb, he's cleaning off his hands with wet wipes. Yeah He's like, yeah, he takes it cuts to him and Denzel's like looking at the highway when it first cuts to them and he's wearing rubber gloves and he like latex gloves and he takes them off and it's like it's Kind of funny the idea that he would keep those on for like a while after He's going back to his uh the agent Doug Carlin. He's like Oh, yeah, yeah, that's come that's come So like uh, he spilled like the the the fuentes the corrupt cops spills everything on on the voice But not before divulging him divulging to him that the money they stole we stole the money

But it was it was not 10 million dollars. It was 2.5 million dollars The money was already stolen before The drop by Mickey Rourke, which once again Folks don't let Mickey Rourke handle your finances or yeah, or any legal matter. Just Anyone other than Mickey Rourke, please. Yeah Um, so like he spills on him and we get a great my favorite moment of the movie where he's like Senor, Senor right now and he goes like and he goes like nothing nothing now I'm walking away. You got about 40 seconds left and he goes I last wish and he goes

I wish I wish you had more time And he walks away and it's like the best moment of like badass guy walking away from an explosion This guy's asshole explodes and I'm like, that's the man on fire the whole time I think you see him just walking away framed in like the flames of this guy exploding That's the man on fire. That's the man on fire. Then we cut to like my favorite Sort of like dynamic subtype on this movie where it just goes Jordan Calphus residents. Yeah Yeah, like oh shit Jordan Calphus's house and this is the scene that got cut Like Denzel shows up there and Mickey Rourke is already dead headless

Floating in the pool in his swimming pool and this also this whole time it keeps intercutting to a Dakota Fanning swimming in um, like an olympic swimming pool And Denzel also swimming in the same swimming pool with blood just gushing from all the bullet wounds. Yeah Yeah, well, you know, he's a bodyguard. He's not a pool. He's not a pool cleaner, you know But it's like someone else's problem a fun symbolic like, you know It's like the music video type stylings of this movie where it's like, you know This symbolic like he's drowning and like dying and yeah

Like and Tony Scott directed a lot of music videos too And I think like his music videos and commercials are really where he honed like the Tony vision Oh, yeah, and then like use it as a means to like like experiment with a style that he would then introduce to his feature films And like, you know like this movie is like the prime example of that of this like yeah Like of this kind of like hyper modernist like kind of pop consumerist style But then transposed into these kind of like like yeah, like I said the very idiosyncratic and like dark dark and kind of like Grounded action films. Yeah, so then uh back at the Ramos residence another really awkward conversation between husband and wife here because uh surprise surprise

Is dad mark anthony set up his own daughter to be kidnapped and ransomed with mickey rourke because he's like Honey, you don't you don't understand how hard it is to be a rich guy in Mexico Yeah, he's like you don't get it. My dad used to pray here every day Yeah, she's like I don't give a fuck like mark anthony's like after he's admitted that he is responsible for the death The kidnapping and murder of his own daughter and he goes Do you have a wife greasy and he goes no then you don't know how hard it is to kidnap a child with your lawyer And I I really love um in this scene like weird because it takes place in the shrine area and you see uh mark anthony and his wife and like literally fucking in the shrine area earlier in the movie basically

and there's this like weird ever presence of this like religious element where mark anthony's like No, no, I love like you don't get it. This was all for like good. Like I thought she would be watching cartoons and like He'd drinking juice boxes all day it's like well Didn't you read all the news stories about all the other kidnapings that go down in Mexico like and another rarely is someone returned and be like

Oh, it wasn't so bad. I was hanging out by the pool. They let me watch them tell the novellas. It was great because another important thing is that like it's um It's kidnapping insurance is where the money came from the 10 mil and so he's like stealing it I don't know how they don't really explain how they were going to get the kid back After giving them didn't give the money in the first place. Yeah, a fourth of the money Folks, he's a bad rock is so convincing. You don't know the way you pitched it Dude, when you see a guy with cuff links that big smoke a cigar that coolie you tend to believe them

Let's not pay. We don't pay. It's going to be fine. Don't worry We'll have instead of paying we'll have instead of paying the kidnappers. We didn't pay them and get the money So and then we get the kid back. We'll still get the kid back. We don't get the money. We get the kid back Okay, all right um, so, uh Roda Mitchell is obviously Uh upset by the revelation that her husband murdered her daughter. Yeah, so how do they solve this problem? Kreece is like look

Once again, I'm gonna kill him with kindness. He's like, I'm not gonna brutally murder you like the last couple guys I've just ran through Uh, I'm gonna give you an empty gun and I'm gonna give you the bullet that didn't work on me And I'm gonna leave you two alone and you guys like you guys just sit with that for a little bit And you and the bullet and the gun figure out what you need to do this I feel like there's a deleted scene here because he the bullet is in Dakota Fanning's diary. Yeah Why did he give her a bullet? What did dad shit?

Okay, boyfriend boyfriend slash dad shit. It's like, um, those paper weights that are bullets that like right wing company So yeah, like a lighter that looks like a hand grenade. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Um, so yeah, like a mark and then he gets the picture. He kills himself in front of the uh Version de Guadalupe. Basically Denzel is officially Dakota Fanning's father now. Yeah, even though she's dead Or or maybe wait, okay Uh, so Denzel is obviously not done yet because they're still the voice. Um, I forget how but they like Track that like through the atm card that like the guy the the guy from the jersey gave him when he goes to the rave He gets the atm card then. Um, the reporter gives it to Janini and he like they printed in the newspaper

So they put this guy on blast like yeah, they put his picture in the newspaper She gets threatened too before that. She's they're like Don't publish this picture and in the very next scene She's like by the way Denzel check the front page of the newspaper. You'll see a picture of the guy He's like, all right. Okay. Well, yeah so, um getting to the end here like Denzel, uh He basically he kidnaps, uh, the voices a younger brother like he gets the address. He goes to his house Um, he gets shot in the process, but he makes his younger brother. He makes the younger brother

Uh call his kidnapping older brother and he's like hold on your brother wants to talk to you And he's like, oh, uh, and then he blows off his fingers with a shotgun while he's on the phone with him Yeah, and you know then Look, not so fun to be on the other end of that call. Is it mr. Kidnapping man, you know Yeah, literally. Yeah, he's like and he's also there with the kidnapping guy's pregnant wife and like six kids Yeah, and he's like, oh, maybe you should uh, give me what I want. He's like, which is you I want you to be dead And he goes like he's like, how much money do you want? That's when he blows off the guy's fingers

Yeah, and he like hangs up. He calls him back and you know Denzel. He doesn't want his money. He wants him Yeah, like that's the trade he's gonna make but the voice still has one big bargaining chip left And that is that pita is still alive And wants her creasy bear and they use the creasy bear as like a proof of life Yeah, yeah ask her what she calls her teddy bear and tell her to tell me And it's creasy bear. I was looking because why they kept her alive at this point Yeah, he's like he's like, he's like, I'm a businessman like a dead kid is the We could still

But it's like isn't it just a huge liability to have this girl still alive around like crazy like senator to aiden quinn's whorehouse What are they gonna do for the next like wait till she's 18 and then let her go They just saw young jacuzzi fanning. They're like, she's a star. Yeah, she's got she's got it. She's got the magic touch So uh, they arrange a life for a life swap But it's actually two lives for one like because he's he's gonna give him his younger brother and himself Yeah in exchange for like we want to torture you to death Honestly creasy because you're annoying is how like you've killed you fucked up our whole kidnapping operation

Now there's only one kidnapping every two hours in latin america. Yeah. Thanks to you and So they go to the bridge like he gets rotted michel and he's like he tells her that her daughter is still alive And she's like i'm so sick of this bullshit He's like no, no i'm being for real He's like i can't take it anymore So she's alive um

They like they they they're reunited with each other and uh, you know, he goes, you know And i think at like at this point denzel knows he's dying Yeah, it's like it's it's not really an unfair trade because they're not even gonna get a chance to kill him to death I think he's been a dead man walking like since the kidnapping honestly. Yeah, like he's like he's on borrowed time Yeah, yeah, yeah Um, and then to kota fanning and denzel wash it always Always cheer up a little bit at the end. Oh, it goes she goes. I love you creasy and she goes you love me Don't you and he goes. I love you pita. Yeah, and then like they say they're goodbyes and he walks through to his own

execution as as pita is Reunited with her mother. Um, they get away and he gets he gets into the car with the kidnappers and just sort of Goes to sleep kind of clutching his saint jude metallion and then he drops it and then you're like He drops it and he floats off into death in tony vision as as he is like double exposed and like Colors get desaturated and then we get two of the funniest opening. Yeah closing credit cards So like yeah, uh, I I would like to imagine that this is what death is like. You just go into tony vision Yeah, and you know, absolutely But yeah, two of the well fake anya plays

I know I'm like, oh, maybe it's not so bad. Yeah Then the movie ends and as you said has it two of the most insane and hilarious like end title cards in a movie I've ever seen the first one is like in memoriam. It's on the screen. We see John W creasy January 4th, 1956 to December 16th, 2003 an obituary for a fictional character It's so great. It's like gravestone kind of R. I. P. This movie is dedicated to lands corporal jesus, age christ killed during desert storm

And then we see like and then we see uh, jean carlo, jean any uh, jeannie He kills the voice and then we get another title card the end card That says the man known as the voice was killed during the course of his arrest. Yeah, he was just executed by jean carlo Yeah, and then like 12 times in the head before he falls over. It's really the best end title card of like any movie I've ever seen so passive-aggressive And you you sit you spit it here the last thing we see closing out a man on fire is Okay, a special thanks to mexico city a very special place Yeah, it's the kidnapping capital of the western hemisphere that paired with the opening title card is of like there's a kidnapping every hour a year

A special thanks to mexico city Sorry for portraying you as like the ninth circle of hell and like yeah every mexican as like a corrupt child murderer Who would gladly sell their mother for like $20 and honestly? I think like the trivia thing of like yeah, you're you and your filming crew were targeted for kidnapping I think that was probably the police playing it up a little bit like trying to be like trying to like try to try to like Try to try to like fleece some more money from Hollywood film productions kidnapping. It's so real here. Yeah. Oh, I'd be ashamed of someone kidnapped you Unfortunately, we do offer quite a wide host of kidnapping insurance. By the way, here's our lawyer mcky roe So yeah, that is a man on fire and deja vu

Tony scott and denzel washington But no need to stop there because there are many other denzel washington and tony scott movies For you to take advantage of starting with crimson tide as you already mentioned Yeah, you got denzel and hackman Facing off with each other. Oh, that is a very good movie. Yeah crimson tide is often then you get Taking a pillow in one two three another amazing movie and then and then tony scott's final movie Unstoppable the train movie, which is yeah, I I think they take a pillow one two three is probably like the off one for me like I enjoyed it

But like the original is just so good that like it's hard for me. I still haven't seen the original We got to watch that. Yeah, it's the bet. It is the best new york city movie ever made. Oh, yeah It is the original take a pillow one two three is that's that's a five-bagger masterpiece But I guess like uh has any any closing thoughts on tony vision and god denzel I think that all these movies are sick and you'd be well Well-served watching all of them I think like I think like crimson tide is kind of the cold war one You know man on fire is kind of the iraq war one

Deja vu is kind of the 9-11 one. Yeah Uh taking a pillow one two three is kind of the like financial crisis. Yeah, my financial crisis economic crash Yeah, the occupy wall street one and then unstoppable is about yeah, like our current crisis of just like degraded infrastructure Yeah, and uh derailed trains. Yeah. Yeah, so we get like at the tony scott's movies in the 21st century like very much like me were the kind of um The dream like fantasia of like american paranoia and disaster And um best of luck try to stay out of tony vision as much as possible Yeah, unless you're getting ready to kill someone unless you are a middle-aged dad type figure who's

About to about to get real. Yeah, who's shit is about to get real for yeah But yeah, like tony scott like I said like uh just to see his evolution as a director and like Just how much his style as like a truly evolved ball like never never really like just Developing and like pushing further like techniques that like he advances in each movie and like yeah, you know He remained like tony scott remains. I think like the the true auteur of Popcorn like action thrillers. Yeah and denzel washington like one of the most Reliably great leading men of our era. Oh, yeah, and like the two of them and their collaborations together I think like it really reached like some true heights of movie magic in the 21st century

Mm-hmm true movie mindset movies final thought. I remember I watched crimson tide with my grandfather Who was a navy officer in world war two in korea and he was very offended by the ending because he was like They wouldn't let someone like gene hackman to be the captain of a nuclear submarine. He's too unstable and racist And I'm like, I've heard the way you talk about japanese people All right that does it for tony scott denzel washington this has been movie mindset But stay tuned because I think next time we're returning to one. We're going to rock mode. We're going rock mode We're turning again to the films of mickey roark. So till next time stay watching movies. Bye You