John Flynn
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Connections, in both directions
Only I'd be more prone to describe it as a 70s rather than 80s action film since it's storyline and violence harken back to films like "The Outfit" (1973), "Charley Varrick" (1973), and "The Long Goodbye" (1973).
For example, I had originally missed the clever tribute to fellow revenge movie classic Rolling Thunder in the infamous Cheddar Goblin scene - the Kraft-like company it's from is named Devane, which almost has to be an intentional nod to that film's star.
Along the way, we are treated to a are-they-really-gonna-go-there homage to the semiclassic and thoroughly disreputable '70s revenge thriller "Rolling Thunder" (two words, kids: garbage disposal), an urgent lesson in chemistry (if you wanna kill a guy with an adrenaline overdose, he can't have been doing ketamine before you hit him with that stuff; bet you didn't know that, did you?) and a lot of no-messing-around, intense action.
Writer/director Boaz Yakin, who debuted with the gritty coming-of-age crime drama Fresh, and somewhere along the line detoured into fluff like Uptown Girls, relies too much on the swooshy hand-held ‘chaos cinema’ camerawork of recent vintage to generate mayhem, but the film also has a distinctly old-school Steven Seagal-circa-Out for Justice vibe that makes all that easier to tolerate.
Possibly inspired by the tense robbery sequence that begins the excellent thriller Best Seller (1987), where all the culprits wear Richard Nixon masks, the Ex-Presidents wear masks of four former U.S. presidents during robberies, Reagan, Nixon, Carter and LBJ.
For all the action pyrotechnics, this gritty throwback feels more like Point Blank or The Outfit than it does anything current, making “Better Call Saul” star Odenkirk the shockingly perfect choice to slip on this single-minded killing machine’s comfortable shoes.
Even if he has to kill every single person in "The Outfit," he is determined to get the money back.
And with characters named Carter (a nod to 1971's original Get Carter) and Bronson (a nod to Charles Bronson, the star of many a '70s crime/revenge thriller), references to the Outfit (a nod to John Flynn's 1973 crime-thriller, The Outfit, which is also based on a Westlake novel) and a bar named Varrick's (a nod to Don Siegel's 1973 crime gem Charley Varrick), Payback is a tough, entertaining homage to the kind of gritty '70s crime film that long ago gave way to a slicker yet tamer form of action movie.
In another direction entirely, I remember hearing Donald Sutherland explain, more than 20 years ago, how he set a new gold standard for character actors in the 1989 movie “Lock Up.” Sylvester Stallone wanted Sutherland to play the sadistic prison warden that his character would battle against, but the esteemed Canadian thought the picture sounded dreadful and didn’t want to do it.
Its thematic lineage is from Taxi Driver and Rolling Thunder and others, brought into the '80s to give lie to Reagan's optimism ("Have a Coke and a smile," advises the billboard outside the shattered building) until Rambo's climactic peroration introduces the hawkish switcheroo.
Bruce Dern did it in “Coming Home” and William Devane in “Rolling Thunder”.
It sounds like a variation on "First Blood," but it's actually a 1977 film written by "Taxi Driver" scribe Paul Schrader and starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones.
Before The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and First Blood, there was 1977′s Rolling Thunder.
Mark Rylance, who was incredible in this year’s The Phantom of the Open and The Outfit , is outstanding as Sully.
Though he is primarily celebrated for his low-key performances in “Bridge of Spies” and this year’s “The Outfit,” when he wants to go big, Rylance goes giant (“Don’t Look Up“).
"Elle and I" (a title which has further resonance at the conclusion, which contains the long-awaited Battle of the Blondes, has the seedy milieu of Southern-fried revenge films along the line of the original "Walking Tall" and "Rolling Thunder."
The first fight, one-on-one in a grubby and decrepit living room, aligns the movie’s approach to action more with Rolling Thunder and Vigilante than your average sci-fi thriller.
John Wick (2014)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced by Rolling Thunder (1977), Out for Justice (1991)
Themes Plot
With long greasy hair and wispy facial hair, Reeves isn’t nearly as tough or intimidating as your typical revenge-movie antihero, but his star persona helps to make the film more fun — or at least a lot less bleak — than downbeat classics as “Rolling Thunder” and “Get Carter.”
You don’t go to John Wick for plot any more than you’d go to Raw Deal or Out for Justice for the same back in the day.
Tras haber visto las adaptaciones de novelas young adult como Bajo la misma estrella y Todo, todo , es el turno de adentrarnos en la adaptación del best seller Five Feet Apart , escrito por Rachael Lippincott con Mikki Daughtry y Tobias Iaconis, y convertida en la cinta A dos metros de ti .
Además, claro, de cierta curiosidad por lo que podía hacer Hollywood (de la mano de un director inteligente) con una nueva versión de un best seller literario que ya tuvo una primera versión en el cine de su país de origen.
The screenplay, which originated with Paul Schrader, the writer of "Taxi Driver," is miserably vicious, a hybrid of "The Wild Bunch" and "Death Wish" in which a returning P.O.W., an Air Force major who spent eight years imprisoned in North Vietnam, sets out to massacre a gang of hoodlums who break into his home, shove his right hand down a churning garbage disposal and shoot his wife and son.
The screenplay, which originated with Paul Schrader, the writer of "Taxi Driver," is miserably vicious, a hybrid of "The Wild Bunch" and "Death Wish" in which a returning P.O.W., an Air Force major who spent eight years imprisoned in North Vietnam, sets out to massacre a gang of hoodlums who break into his home, shove his right hand down a churning garbage disposal and shoot his wife and son.
The screenplay, which originated with Paul Schrader, the writer of "Taxi Driver," is miserably vicious, a hybrid of "The Wild Bunch" and "Death Wish" in which a returning P.O.W., an Air Force major who spent eight years imprisoned in North Vietnam, sets out to massacre a gang of hoodlums who break into his home, shove his right hand down a churning garbage disposal and shoot his wife and son.
Co-scenarist Paul Schrader translated Taxi Driver to Tex-Mex with 1977's Rolling Thunder, in which Major Charles Rane ( William Devane , impenetrable behind aviator shades) touches down in San Antone, after 2,555 days as a POW, to a wet-blanket countrypolitan theme song, a wife who didn't wait, and a USA that can't manufacture convertibles.
It sounds like a variation on "First Blood," but it's actually a 1977 film written by "Taxi Driver" scribe Paul Schrader and starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones.
Since Rolling Thunder was at least partially penned by Taxi Driver ‘s Paul Schrader, you can probably guess what that might be.
The screenplay was co-written by Heywood Gould and Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver"), and has the same kind of troubled vet-vigilante protagonist but goes in a different narrative direction.