Short, bone, and beef cuts: Pawno (2015), Rams (2020), The Bone Collector (1999), The Expendables 3 (2014)

 

Pawno (2015), written by Damian Hill and directed by Paul Ireland, unfolds in the orbit of a pawn store in Footscray, Melbourne. A multi-character network film, its ensemble of characters include straight-shooting pawn store owner Les (John Brumpton); his assistant Danny, a burgeoning artist in recovery (writer Hill); a distraught mother (Kerry Armstrong); Les’s Thai girlfriend (Ngoc Phan); Danny’s object of affection (Maeve Dermody), and others. Pawno brushes shoulders with rather than probes themes like addiction, family, community, friendship, suicide, and mental health, and the majority of characters are thumbnail sketches, some more effectively drawn than others. That’s part and parcel of the genre—and on Pawno the number of characters and brief runtime—but each actor gets a moment or two (or more for major players) to shine. As an example of the genre, it’s perched well below Lantana and Look Both Ways, but I’ll take its amiable and genteel grit over the calculated overwroughtness of Australia Day or American brethren like Crash.    

Michael Caton’s film Strange Bedfellows was notably remade as an Adam Sandler/Kevin James vehicle, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. In turn, Caton recently starred in Rams (2020), a remake of a 2015 Icelandic feature. I was not aware of the foreign origins of this film on its theatrical release—about rival sheep farmer siblings (Caton and Sam Neill) whose lives are impacted when a deadly disease sweeps through their flocks in a Western Australian farming community—and based on its poster initially rejected Rams as a schticky Australian comedy in the vein of The Flip Side, The BBQ, and other dodgily-postered comedies. But there’s more anger and melancholy here than its promotional art would suggest, giving the film a heft consistent with director Jeremy Sims’ previous features (Last Train to Freo, Beneath Hill 60, Last Cab to Darwin). Caton and Neill are predictably solid in the leads, with the delightful Miranda Richardson (a friend of Australian cinema: see Rage in Placid Lake) adding further value.

Looking at the movies populating Phillip Noyce’s filmography in 1990s, I’m struck by the fact all were, in some way, predicated upon earlier popular successes: Blind Fury was based on the then-26-film-strong Zatoichi series; Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger were sequels to The Hunt for Red October; Sliver shared its star and screenwriter with Basic Instinct and was clearly enabled by that film's success; The Saint followed in the footsteps of TV-to-movie successes The Fugitive and Mission: Impossible; and The Bone Collector (1999) followed earlier housebound sleuth- (Copycat) and African-American star-led (Seven and Kiss the Girls) serial killer thrillers [1]. Moreover, all of the above were very much products of the 1990s, in both their headlining stars (Rutger Hauer, Sharon Stone, Val Kilmer) and as products of genres largely put out to pasture in recent decades, at least as mainstream and generously financed features: talky adult espionage thrillers, saucy adult erotic thrillers, TV show adaptations, and serial killer flicks.

I’d put The Bone Collector in the upper echelon of those works of commerce alongside Noyce’s Tom Clancy films, perhaps because it’s likewise built on the sturdier frame of a well-oiled airport thriller. Adapted from Jeffery Deaver’s novel, the plot centres on the investigation of grisly murders committed by a New York taxi driver. Leading the investigation is Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington), a paralyzed detective extraordinaire. His eyes at the crime scenes are Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie), a gifted younger officer. In addition to its strong leads—Washington has gravitas on tap even when immobile and bed-bound—the procedural is performed by a colourful character actor cast of sleuths doubling as suspects, albeit ones easily vetoed through process of elimination (scratch Michael Rooker because he played a cop/killer already in Sea of Love; scratch Ed O’Neill because the theatre would laugh; and so on). This was the first of two Noyce/Jolie collaborations (see also the tasteless Salt), and Jolie’s first of three collaborations with DP Dean Semler, whose compositions fall short of the baroque best of the genre (e.g. Darius Khondji’s work on Seven) but are in line with its commercial aesthetics.

Like Denzel Washington, Sylvester Stallone is an actor whose screen presence and clout make him the overriding auteur, for good or ill, of any production he headlines. Many of the films Stallone has written and/or directed are markedly autobiographical, from the Rocky films—which chart his own rags to riches trajectory and professional travails—to Staying Alive, his sequel to Saturday Night Fever in which he remakes John Travolta in his own muscular image. Stallone co-wrote The Expendables 3 (2014), directed by Australian Patrick Hughes, and it’s easy to see Stallone reckoning with a changing film industry and mythologizing his vintage of action heroes in the screen story, about a mercenary (Stallone as Barney Ross) who disbands his long-serving team and brings in hot new blood (Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Kellan Lutz, Victor Ortiz), who in turn fail their mission and need to be rescued by the grizzled old guard (Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Wesley Snipes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Antonio Banderas, Harrison Ford, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture).

Horror stories abound of Stallone trampling over collaborators: in Nick de Semlyn’s excellent new book on Stallone’s generation of action stars, he writes that Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra director George P. Cosmatos “rolled over on every argument, so much so that crew members nicknamed him George Comatose”, and relitigates Stallone and Russell Mulcahy’s dueling stories about the latter’s firing from Rambo III (Stallone says because Mulcahy cast effeminate models as Russian heavies, Mulcahy retorts because those heavies were all taller than Stallone). By all accounts, The Expendables 3 was a smoother ride for Hughes, whose prior filmography was significantly slighter than Noyce’s pre-Hollywood credits, comprising nifty outback thriller Red Hill and several shorts, including the sweet Signs. In this respect, Hughes was in the same mould as Marco Brambilla (Demolition Man), Luis Llosa (The Specialist), Danny Cannon (Judge Dredd) and Jim Gillespie (D-Tox), all cats who'd made an interesting feature or two or produced impactful content in another medium before becoming Stallone directors. Hughes has also fared better than those directors, making bank (if not art) with The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel.

The Expendables 3 is mostly unspectacular as action spectacle. It’s serviceable and likeable, and objectively speaking it’s better shot and cut than the Stallone-helmed original. Having said that, there was a left-handed, gut-driven charm to the first film’s extreme close-ups and muddier compositions, and I’ll take that personality over the slick but anonymous work here. The original also contended better with its smaller ensemble, whilst here some of the stacked cast—including Statham and Lundgren, both VIPs in the original—are lost in the shuffle. Pawno does a better job of handling its large gallery of characters, though in fairness Pawno doesn’t have action set pieces to mount and costly stars with high salary quotes dictating compressed screentime. Of the players, Stallone, Banderas, Snipes, and especially Mel Gibson (pressing into his late career pariah status as the film’s villain) fare best.

Ben

 

[1] Noyce would balance out this six for them, none for me streak following The Bone Collector with The Quiet American and Rabbit Proof Fence.

[2] Kurt Russell also insists he ghost-directed Cosmatos' Tombstone.