Project Stallone: "Get Carter"

Get Carter
By Peter John Gardner

I can sum this movie up with just a few lines.

"Yo...you knew my brother?"
"Yeah...he knew *insert secondary characters name here*"
"Thanks...yo"

Or

"Yo...you knew my brother?"
"I'm not telling you shit!"
*ass beating ensues*
"Yo...you knew my brother?"
"Fine! I'll talk! He knew *insert secondary character's name here*"

That's pretty much all that happens for the duration of Get Carter's 100+ minute running time. Stallone plays a mob enforcer, the kind of guy that you only see when you're in deep shit with the mob. At the start of the film, Carter (Sly) finds out that his brother died in an accident while driving drunk? Or was it a setup? Stallone decides to investigate.

And that's the whole fucking movie. Stallone going from one secondary character to another asking about his brother. This movie is a remake of a 1971 film of the same name which starred Michael Caine in the title role (Caine appears in the remake albeit in a different role). While Stallone certainly looks imposing as a mob enforcer, he never comes across as scary and cold blooded. It must be Stallone's puppy dog eyes. I'm interested in seeing the original now just to see what Caine did with the role because I can't imagine Caine being a cold blooded badass either, though I have to admit I haven't delved too deeply into Michael Caine's body of work.

What I'd like to talk about here is Stallone's facial hair. This is the first appearance of Stallone facial hair since Nighthawks, and it just doesn't work for him. Stallone sports a goatee that looks like it was drawn on with pencil and a Sharpee marker. Seriously, it bothered me throughout the film's running time. Some men just shouldn't sport facial hair...like me!

I've tried to grow a beard a few times over the years. The first few times, I would always cave in and shave after about a week and a half because I couldn't handle the itchiness. Last year, when I finally did let it grow for more than two weeks, it ended up looking like I glued pieces of pubic hair to my face. At times, I wish I had a beard that worked so that even when I'm saying the stupidest things I can think of, I'd still look somewhat intellectual. The other reason would be for laziness. The Italian/Spanish genes in me have taken over my facial hair growth, so it tends to grow back the minute I walk out of the bathroom.

Stallone's goatee symbolizes the start of a new century for Sly, but it's also a metaphor for his bad career choices. Like his goatee, many of his roles are thin, never fully developed, and are as appealing as the bartender at a Jimmy Buffet restaurant whose shoulders are damp from the hair gel dripping off his shoulders.

Project Stallone: "Antz"

Antz
By Peter John Gardner

After watching Antz and Cop Land, I've discovered whole new avenues to use when playing six degrees of separation. Stallone and Dan Aykroyd in the same movie? Who knew that off the top of their head?

Antz is a long overdue and much welcome departure from Stallone's usual fare. A CGI movie for the family that got eclipsed by A Bug's Life upon its initial release, Antz stars Woody Allen (!) as Z, an ant that has grown bored of the day to day conformity and monotony of an ant's life. Z meets a beautiful female ant (Sharon Stone...again) at a bar one night and falls in love. Turns out that the female ant is royalty, so Z hatches a plan to take the identity of his soldier friend, Weaver (Stallone) in order to join army of ants and get closer to the princess. What Z didn't realize is that the army ants are planning to overthrow the queen. Hilarity ensues.

Antz is pretty much a Woody Allen movie that's been simplified and cutesified for kids, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all. Although Allen didn't write the film, it's clear that the writers had him in mind when producing the film. Allen plays the ant version of just about every character he plays, a neurotic and paranoid nerd who is awkward around women in a charming sort of way.

I should've done Project Woody instead of Stallone.

The big message in this film is about breaking out of the doldrums of day to day conformity, and I think that's a healthy lesson for a kid's movie. If I were a parent, I doubt that I would raise my children with the mindset of "that's just the way it is, so deal with it". I'd want my kids to realize that things can be changed and that you don't have to do what everyone else is doing.

It's rewarding in the long run, but it makes for a frustrating childhood. Growing up, I always felt like the black sheep of the family. I wanted to grow my hair long, I wasn't interested in sports or anything like that which bonded the men of the family together. To this day, I still feel the "why can't you be more like your brother?" feeling in my gut when I talk to my parents. I don't know what kind of seed was planted in my youth, but at some point, I stopped giving a fuck what everyone else thought and did what I wanted to do. It gave me a sense of individuality that I don't think I would've gotten had I just followed what everyone else was doing.

I still carry that mindset into adulthood but with reservations. Now, I only give a fuck what certain people think. I think it's more fun and entertaining to just be myself rather than what society expects me to be. Myself might not be what society wants or needs, but here I am, like it or not. Sadly as I grow older and arguably wiser, my sense of individuality has diminished once I realized my place in the world. I'm just a worker ant, a cog in the machine, a function, a job title, a paycheck, a statistic, a SWM, a 'that one guy'. It's difficult to maintain a feeling of uniqueness when I don't feel like society needs me in any sort of way. After 27 years, I'm still trying to figure what I want to be when I grow up, and if I can bring anything to the world that is uniquely me, but since it's been taking so long, I'm beginning to have doubts if I even have that in me. I feel invisible and insignificant. For now, I'll just remain "that one guy".

Project Stallone: "Cop Land"

Cop Land
By Peter John Gardner

Sensing that his career was going down the toilet and that his choice in roles has grown stale, Stallone took on a challenge for "Cop Land". It's a gritty New York cop drama that could almost pass as a Scorcese film if it had a better script and soundtrack, but as it stands, "Cop Land" is a damn good movie and a wise career move for Stallone.

Remember Sly's big breakthrough was Rocky, which was not an action film but a character driven drama. Stallone can act when given the right role, and "Cop Land" suits him well. Stallone gained 30 pounds of fat for the role, and the only thing worse than having to see Stallone's ass over and over again is seeing Stallone wearing only boxers, writhing around in his bed just so the producers can show you that it's not a pillow under his shirt. He plays a half-deaf sheriff of a small New Jersey town across the river from NYC. Many NYC cops have taken up residence there, and since they're lead by Harvey Keitel, you know they're the ones actually running the show in the small town. Stallone must decide between covering up for his cop friends living in his town or doing the right thing and reporting their shenanigans to Internal Affairs.

Stallone's role is kind of like if Rocky never made it. Sheriff Freddy Heflin isn't the sharpest cookie in the world, but he means well, and here's where casting Stallone helps. Stallone's got a natural sad look in his eyes (Stop laughing), and it works well for a role about a guy that never quite made it.

What also helps this movie is that it has a script that's, while not perfect, miles above previous Stallone movies. The story is a little stale and predictable, but it's neat to hear dialogue that sounds believable coming out of Stallone's mouth. He's also surrounded by honest-to-god good actors in the film. Besides the aforementioned Harvey Keitel, this movie also co-stars Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Janeane Garafalo (?!), the T-1000, and, hey, there's that guy from Deep Blue Sea. It's fun watching Stallone actually hold his own against the likes of DeNiro.

The character of Sheriff Freddy Heflin is a sad one. Here's a guy that had all the right chops to become a real cop, but his career was derailed due to the loss of hearing in one of his ears, which he lost while trying to save someone's life of course. He's accepted his fate and just kind of lives out his days accepting himself as someone who will never be and is letting himself go. That's precisely the kind of self-loathing attitude that I fall victim to as well. Many times, when I find that I don't succeed or get what I want upon first try, I usually just give up and just accept it. The problem with that philosophy is that it stagnates one's life, and you just sort of pass the days accepting what you can't do instead of trying to prove otherwise.

Stallone did that here. After being stuck in the same couple of action movie formulas for the past decade or so, he chose a dramatic role, and it worked. It's time I did something different with my life. Or maybe I should just prove I can do something that people said that I couldn't do...such as finishing this silly project.

Project Stallone: "Daylight"

Daylight
By Peter John Gardner

This movie is about a rescue worker, played by Stallone, with some unresolved issues from his past that is forced back into action when a catastrophe occurs. He must set his selfishness aside and risk his life so that others may live.

Sounds kind of like Cliffhanger, right? Of course it does. Stallone seems to have four types of movie formulas.

a) Rescue worker with skeletons in his closet that must save the day (Cliffhanger, Daylight)
b) Underdog that achieves against all odds (Rocky, Victory)
c) One man army (Rambo, Cobra, Lock Up)
d) Comedies that have the polar opposite of the intended effect (Oscar, Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot)

In a nutshell, a truck with bad guys stealing diamonds crashes into a truck with bad guys illegally disposing of toxic waste (Hey, there's an environmental message here!) collide which causes a bunch of shit to collapse and a group of people get trapped in a tunnel in New York City. The events leading up to this scenario are as unlikely as a chimp wearing a tutu showing up at my doorstep to award me with $1,000,000 for being a great guy, but I've come to stop expecting realism from Stallone movies. It's just not worth it.

What worries me is that I found myself entertained by this movie during its two hours, and I can't figure out if the movie is actually enjoyable, or if I've just become so desensitized towards Stallone flicks that the mediocre ones look like Citizen Kane to me. It's kind of fun watching Stallone act with an ensemble cast of stereotypes survivors that includes a pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen.

I was planning to take a "What would I do if Stallone came to rescue me?" angle on this piece, but my reaction would be the same as an old SNL sketch that I recall seeing. It had Norm MacDonald bleeding to death in a wrecked car and when he finds out that Stallone is the one trying to save him, all he can do is tell him how bad his movies are. I tried finding this clip on Youtube but to no avail.

Instead, let me share this little gem of a thread from the Daylight page over at imdb.com:

"Would anyone agree that this movie is an allegory of the Christ story?

Perhaps a stretch, but Stallone could be a type of Christ, in that he descends (from heaven) into an undesirable place, but he comes humbly from under the road, and then he is not highly regarded by those whom he is trying to save. And at the end he is buried and resurrected.

All of that could be coincidental, except that the chapel scene gives a very clear message that the only way out is by Christ, and it's the lowly ones - the rats - who are first to realize that truth.

Watch it again with those goggles. You'll pick up on a lot."

Stallone as Christ, eh? So....when Christ is resurrected, he'll be an Italian-American that comes across as slightly retarded, and instead of saving us from ourselves and performing miracles, he makes shitty action movies. Maybe Stallone is Christ, and this is my test in life. Stallone/Christ wants to see if I'm willing to suffer for the world's sins by watching his movies, thus ensuring my ticket to the great boxing club in the sky. Instead of standing on a hilltop and preaching his word, he's hiding his message through these movies.

Stallone...my own personal Jesus.

Project Stallone: "Assassins"

Assassins
By Peter John Gardner

Leave it to Stallone to follow up two movies (excluding Judge Dredd) that display his ass with a movie called "Assassins". Thankfully, we don't see Stallone's butt in this one. "Judge Dredd" sank Stallone's career in the mid-90s, so this one completely slipped under my radar when it came out in 1995. This movie was actually pretty decent. Well, as decent a movie as one can get about two guys with loner jobs and silenced pistols.

The movie was written by the Wachowski brothers, who would later go on to write The Matrix, and then completely fuck up that great idea with two dreadful sequels. It was directed by Richard Donner, who helmed the Lethal Weapon films, as well as Superman and The Goonies. The movie belched out by this team is your paint-by-numbers two-rivals-going-after-one-target film, which pits Stallone vs. Antonio Banderas both going after hacker/voyeur Julianne Moore, but it's rock solid, and it's surprisingly easy to buy Stallone as a professional assassin, probably because he isn't given a lot of dialogue in the film. Stallone is so good at his job that when he loses the trail of Banderas, he hijacks a taxi cab, listens to cab radio, hears a call for a guy wanting a ride to the airport. When Stallone arrives, that guy just HAPPENS to be Banderas. What luck, plot hole, skill! Most of the banter comes from Antonio’s character, who should portray sociopaths more often instead of cute kittens in boots.

Somewhere around the age of 12 or 13, I quit playing sports. I had been playing baseball, soccer, and basketball since I was old enough to hold a ball, but I was gradually losing interest as I got older. I loved playing, but I didn't like competing. "We've got to WIN, WIN, WIN!" coaches would say. Fuck that. I just want to throw the ball around and have fun.

I still hate competing, especially when it comes to winning over a woman when several other guys are trying to do the same, but now I realize that competition breeds better work. Stallone steps up his game when Banderas comes into the mix, so why don't I? I know a thing or two about a thing or two, and there are times where I'm reading something or watching a film while thinking to myself, "Jeez, even I can do better than this". With Project Stallone, I'm my own rival. Usually I start these off by thinking, "How can I make this funnier than the last?" before I crap out something that I'm not happy with but others seem to like.

With women, my best friend Abel used to be my competition. See, Abel is a very attractive, charismatic, and downright funny individual. While we were both living in Vero Beach, we were inseparable best friends. When we'd go out though, girls would immediately flock to Abel. He was the Hall to my Oates (he's the good looking one with pretty eyes, I'm the goofy looking one). Being around him forced me to step up my game. I had to sell my personality, which was really hard to do since he's one of a kind, but I still tried. Since we went our separate ways to Orlando and Gainesville, I started to slack off. My thinking was, "Well, now that I don't have constant competition, I don't have to try as hard".

Sometimes I don't think things all the way through.