Hostage Week Episode V: The Trials of Young Nash Bridges
Good day all,
It’s good to get word out to you again, but I have to admit that the shelf-life of my freedom may be coming to its best-before date. I noticed that the Pizza Pops were down to the last row in the box this morning, suggesting I have a day, maybe two, before the Dark Queen returns and I have to start watching movies about young transvestites coming to terms with their traditional Samoan family obligations. I essentially have two choices: allow my last hours to be clouded by fear of her return or use them to watch one of the most bizarre movies I have ever seen. I’ve watched some weird shit people, I mean Man Bites Dog has been so horribly seared into my brain that I can still smell beef jerky, but A Boy and His Dog creates a vision of the future that is so wonderful that I can only introduce it with a big, Michael Bay style trailer (you’ll have to imagine Linkin’ Park blaring a shitty riff in the background, and a lot of explosions). Here’s my best attempt:
(Morgan Freeman narrates, but he sounds really angry. Shia “The Beef” stars as young Nash Bridges)
“In a time of destruction . . . . . . A land ravaged by nuclear war . . . . maybe by like Robots or something, with big explosions and thousands of really hot chicks dying, the world needs a hero. One young man, ravaged by hormones . . . . trying only to scratch out his meager survival, makes a legendary journey in the endless pursuit of trim.”
(The Linkin’ Park builds in volume, juicing an absolutely terrible guitar solo, the lead singer crying softly in the background that his dad never hugged him)
“Now. Young Nash Bridges will stand with his only friend, a telepathic, misogynistic police dog. And humanity’s only hope is that Nash can rape the surviving women before he is captured and turned into breeding stock.”
(Big climax in the music to silence, a heartbeat behind The Beef as he and his telepathic dog (a racial stereotype voiced by Chris Tucker) stare off into the distance looking real serious).
The release date shows as the heartbeat continues, and explodes to the sound of a sexual assault occurring.
Wow! I would totally see that movie, coming to me in the summer of whatever year this is; sidebar, living in an underground bunker, much like living in solitary at Guantanamo, keeps you from calculating the time of day and passage of time (is June 2012 close?). The first issue I have with this little nod to the Women’s Rights movement is that the whole point of young Nash’s existence is to achieve “sexual release”, meaning true freedom is the ability to wander around with a dog that sounds an awful lot like KITT from Knight Rider and use your bond to rape any women you’re lucky enough to run across. I will concede that the underground world, the last remaining vestige of civilization filled with the classic future evil where you have no liberty, is not the place for young Nash to be; basically they’ll use a machine to extract his seed for thirty-five women and kill him. I’m sure the director had great ideas about how the uncertainty of the world above was still a better option than the underground world of Christian rules, restraints and a small group that control every aspect of your life, but the reality is that the message never comes through. Essentially this movie is trying to be A Clockwork Orange with a nuclear wasteland twist that seems to have spaced on the point it’s trying to make (more on that after the spoiler alert) I guess the point is that the more I think about this flick the less I like what I find; ladies catch me on Camera 3:
Howdy ladies. First off I would like to say that I am a big supporter of the whole “Womens’ Lib.” thing, and I have to apologize on behalf of the penised portion of the population. See, those of you that read regularly will know that I work in an industry (sorry, used to work) that is full of guys that realized school is boring, there isn’t anything worth learning there anyway and that they could make a ton of money, without a ton of world experience, in the oilfield. Now I’ve mentioned the homophobia that exists in the industry and, sadly, misogyny runs wild as well. It’s not that these guys are stupid, because they really aren’t, they’re just ignorant. The common response to 9/11 at my work was “why don’t we just nuke all those brown fuckers” (their words not mine) so you understand the worldview we’re dealing with. Those guys would love this movie, because the whole key is that survival depends on a man maintaining his independence control of his domain (these guys are the type that would tell a guy to “keep his wife in line”). I guess what I’m trying to say, ladies, is that I’m sorry you’re the last group it is socially acceptable to discriminate against. Tell a racist joke in a room full of strangers today and most will be disgusted with you, tell a joke about God hating homosexuals and you’ll get the stinkeye from most, but tell a group of buddies about how much your wife bitches at you and the majority of the room will nod along with you. We blamed you for the whole garden thing, you know, all pain and evil in the world, and this flick is just another brick in the wall.
Sorry about that fellas, I needed a little private time with the girls (but you probably read anyway you snoopy pricks). It just bugs a cracker that a movie about a man’s quest to embrace his freedom, an idea I chose it for, becomes a thinly veiled suggestion that freedom means “bros before hos” and dominating any woman who could be a real companion.
Spoiler Alert for the next paragraph.
I guess I should talk about the movie itself for a bit, rather than the disturbing message I took away from it. The world they create is really interesting, but the story just doesn’t do it justice. The idea of a dude and his telepathic dog trying to survive is pretty cool, but there are a bunch of good ideas that just seem to get forgotten; there are people called “screamers” that everyone is scared of, and appear briefly as a green light, but are never mentioned again, a “promised land” that the dog knows about and seems to have a need to teach Nash about the old world for when they get there and a group of rovers introduced as the “real” bad guys that disappear after being scared off by a green light. All of those ideas are way more interesting that what we get. The fact that Nash is an inept rapist, he gets interrupted trying to rape her by the local gang and doesn’t bed her until she invites it, seems to suggest that we should cheer for him; I guess the kid that sucks at rape is better than the band of roving pros, but it’s hard to cheer for him, and see him as a hero, when he whines that they “wasted” their latest victim by killing her before he could weasel a turn. We see the horrors he would face underground, getting no pleasure because of the machine that extracts his seed and eventually rescued by the girl that led him into the trap, and start to think that Nash may have made a real connection (worm in the message that a free world full of danger and hard-living can be conquered by people that care about each other). Instead he kills the girl that saved his life for the second time (admittedly after betraying him once) and feeds her to the dog so that they can keep walking. I know he has a better chance of surviving by saving the dog, but it ruins any coherent message I’m supposed to walk away with. This thing is a mess and you have to leave thinking the director hates women.
On a final note, some of you my wonder why, with all of the rich performances Don Johnson’s illustrious career, that I chose Nash Bridges to refer to the character in the movie (Vick/Albert is the real name). You see, I’ve had a realization about the nature of old people and television. My grandpa loved Nash Bridges, and I remember an episode where he had a killer on the roof, a killer that got on of his crew (must’ve been sweeps) and the crook is taunting him because here are rule for cops (see The Untouchables, cliches from), but Nash is so sure of his conviction that he shoots the guy (because he deserves it). Grandpa looked at me and said “you see, we need more cops that know how to deal with scum.” I replied that it works as long as the guy works alone and grandpa let me know there was an underworld boss he worked for that Nash had been after for a while. The look of pure hatred on my grandfather’s face when I suggested that, rather than shooting the guy, they should have interrogated him to get dirt on the boss, cut deeply. Every era seems to have a show that old people love because a take no shit character doesn’t worry about things like letting the law work as designed. Matlock would solve the crime under the nose of the whipersnapper cops, David Caruso would take off his glasses and give lame puns until the bad guy was caught, and the Law and Order crew would always get the right man in the end (interestingly, it was always the least likely character at the beginning). The show of the old folks today is NCIS. Seriously, ask anyone over fifty who their favourite character is and they will give you a season by season rundown. Mark Harmon is the guy that stretches the rules to do what he knows is right and the world would be a lot better if we treated real criminals and terrorists that way. I’m not sure if there is a point to the observation, it just suggests why Fox News does so well. I guess that world view, black and white, is how I feel about the comment on freedom here. If the key to your freedom is stripping others of theirs, no matter how certain you are that you are right, you can’t be seen as a true protector of freedom.
Well folks it’s been a blast and I hope the fare I put before you was delicious. I know I’ll be watching something in the near future and get a whiff of gas, wake up tied to something sturdy and have to accept that my brush with freedom has come to an end. The key to me, and what this flick misses, is that the blessed freedom I’ve enjoyed is fixed firmly in my mind and can be pulled up to get me through the bad times to come. I may not have actual freedom, but I’m not marching along, trying to steal others’ from them.
Until the next time, admit that a little bit of freedom done right is better than a whole world of freedom done wrong,
The Hostage
P.S. The other suggestion is that old people are stupid, just not quite as stupid as kids are.
K. Harker
stew37
The Errant Cinephile and her Vocal Hostage 