Midnight Express (1978)
Directed by Alan Parker
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
12 connections found
View:
12 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Midnight Express to
Even the title � referring to a particularly potent blend of marijuana � is bifurcated: the first word suggesting relaxation and tropical fruit, the second evoking the paranoid busted-for-possession drama Midnight Express.
The movie marks Oliver Stone's return to the hyperbolic drug thrillers of his early screenwriting career (Midnight Express, Scarface), and the dualistic protagonists—Kitsch, an Iraq War veteran, helps Johnson, a genial hippie, find his inner beast—are heavily reminiscent of Platoon (though the script was adapted from a novel by Don Winslow).
In turning Don Winslow’s 2010 novel Savages into a movie, the writer-director returns him to his favorite early theme — the wages of drugs, in his screenplays for Midnight Express and Scarface — and the Latin American locations and ambiance of Salvador and his documentaries on Fidel Castro (Commandante) and Hugo Chàvez (South of the Border).
Before he tapped into the boomer subconscious with his Vietnam trilogy and the Lives of the Presidents series, Stone the screenwriter specialized in such rich, lurid material as Midnight Express, Conan the Barbarian, Scarface, and Year of the Dragon.
It's ironic that Stone, whose scripts for Alan Parker 's "Midnight Express" and Brian De Palma 's " Scarface " were a big influence on Quentin Tarantino , should have made a movie that seems like a Tarantino spin-off.
The film consists of two episodes with the same background but different titles: "Chungking House," after the arcade where both stories take place, and "Midnight Express," the name of the fast-food joint.
But it's also a ravishing meditation on life's dance in the shadow of death, featuring a "Midnight Express" flash mob and a young girl gravely shouldering her hot-pink rifle.
Advertisement
The look of the film is muted and somber (it was shot by "Midnight Express" cinematographer Michael Seresin).
Thrown in with a handful of these goons, Ethan Hawke is like a coed virgin at a frat bash, and the movie turns ugly in its sadism, like a perverse cross between ''Midnight Express'' and ''Falling Down.''
Screenwriter Oliver Stone, who had recently won an Oscar for writing Midnight Express (1978), uses the basic narrative structure from Ben Hecht’s 1932 screenplay and most of its major themes, with a particular focus on Tony’s unrelenting need to prove himself; his rise to the top is pathological.
4. Giorgio Moroder (who also scored the Stone-scripted Midnight Express) gives us an immediately recognizable theme � a spaghetti-western sound weighed down by the Miami heat and piles of cocaine.
El convite de Darabont puede basarse en la novela corta Rita Hayworth y la Redención de Shawshank ( Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption ), del querido King, publicada en su recordada antología Las Cuatro Estaciones ( Different Seasons , 1982), un claro ejemplo de su humanismo descarnado y truculento más cercano al drama que al terror estándar, no obstante el director y guionista lee al asunto, en esencia un retrato seco de la mediocridad y el salvajismo de prisión que deriva en cansancio existencial, un proyecto de fuga y una lenta ejecución del plan de turno, como una especie de popurrí con aire de “grandes éxitos” de ingredientes tomados prestados de una retahíla interminable de películas semejantes de encierro, angustia y necesidad imperiosa de evasión, cúmulo que abarca desde clásicos yanquis como Fuerza Bruta ( Brute Force , 1947), de Jules Dassin, Infierno 17 ( Stalag 17 , 1953), de Billy Wilder, Revuelta en el Bloque 11 ( Riot in Cell Block 11 , 1954), de Don Siegel, La Celda Olvid…
Advertisement
That’s especially true in the terrific final act, when the film goes from “Wag the Dog”-type satire to “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Midnight Express”-style tension.
Fueled by Michael Giacchino’s ( Spider-Man: Homecoming , The Incredibles) vital, pulse-pounding score, magnificently shot by the legendary Michael Seresin (Angel Heart, Midnight Express), there’s not a facet of this film that comes off as false or insincere.