Merit Coba

“One thing is for sure.. they’re all better of dead..” Kristl repeated the lines.

Kristl and Henry were having a cup of tea in their garage-turned-movie-theater while the movie credits rolled past. They had replayed that last part of the movie because they both liked the movie.

“Yes?” Henry said, looking at Kristl trying to figure out where she was going with those lines, quoted directly from the movie.
“Pity they just forgot to finish the job properly and kill of the whole cast including Bruce Willis.” Kristl said.

“Uhmm” Henry was somewhat distracted by the exit sign that was flickering at the edge of his vision. He suspected that the lightbulb would fail in the near future.

“I mean, there is nothing against remaking a movie. And this is, I heard, the official remake of Yojimbo, the classic movie made by Kurosawa, which was redone some years later as a Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. But it has turned out to be a completely superfluous movie done by the numbers that does not compare in any way to either movies. There is simply nothing memorable about this movie unless it is the totally ridiculous fighting scenes where Bruce Willis somehow survives getting shot at by ten men armed with guns, shotguns, dual pistols, despite them fellows firing first and firing from distances down to ten paces.” Kristl said.

“Well.. it was a nice try… and was entertaining.. I mean it has Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken. Walken is always a nice bad guy and he does that again, considering that he is only to be seen for a few minutes. And William Sanderson is in it. I always liked William.. He should get better roles.. maybe a main lead in a Coen brothers movie.”

“I just got the feeling his role resembled the one from Blade Runner a bit too much. Like somehow he is good at playing slightly retarded people.. or seemingly retarded people. And it is this role he plays here, again.”

“Heh.”

“When I try very hard, i mean really really hard, then what I can come up with, is that the music at the end is nice and some of the landscape shots, the few there are, are nice. The rest is just.. plain nothing. The whole story line stumbles along and nothing remotely interesting happens.”

“I am sorry.. I can not remember anything else, except it is a decent action film.” Henry shrugged.

“When I try to think of what wrecks the film the most I have to either choose: the utterly ridiculous setting: a mob war in western town set in the mid-twenties, or casting mr smith(nobody) as a film noir guy that talks with an boring overvoice. I mean.. the overvoice simply wrecks the whole character because we know what he is thinking and through this thinking we know what his motives are.. and this is exactly that we do not know in the other two movies because we are left to wonder whether the destruction of both gangs by nobody is either the result of good intentions or bad intentions. This is an anti-hero.. ambiguous.. unknown. The overvoice simply kills that.”

“But what probably undoes the whole movie is that the movie does nothing remarkable with the new angles.. If it has to be a mob movie, then do something with it.. and if the character is a film noir character it is more than drinking whisky, having an overvoice and being beaten up.. and having someone vaguely act as a femme fatale. The dialogue is superior uninteresting.”

“Uhm.” Henry said under the waterfall over sentences.

“But actually it is not surprising because the director, Walter Hill, has never made any remarkable movie. In fact he makes middle-of-the-road-action movies and when he gets the possibility to remake a classic movie and actually show he might be able to do more with the material he gets, he chickens out and makes another middle-of-the-road-action movie.. which is what the last man standing basically is.”

“Quite. You know the music is from Mr.Ry Cooder?”

“Oh.. That explains why I like it.”

“…Say, Kristl?” Henry said after a few moments of silence.

“Yeah?”

“What would you have done if you had been ask to make the movie?”

“Uhm.”

“Well.. considering you never made a movie in your life.. what would you have done?”

“Well you do not need to have made a movie to judge it..”

“Yes, i know.. but what would you have done? I am curious.”

“Well. maybe it would..perhaps.. have taken William Sanderson character as the main or the undertaker.. or maybe… have them merged.. So that the whole story is from a different angle.. perhaps have the mob war really take place in a city.. where the mob is and have cut out the over voice and make the hero Sanderson, a really film noir guy.”

“Ah.”

“And used an expressionistic movie style.. because I like the third man.”

“And have everyone die in the end?”

“Yeah.. “

“Will be an arty movie, I suppose.”

“Probably. Not a middle of the road action movie.”

“No..and probably one that lost money.”

“Yeah.. but it would be memorable.. hah” Kristl said.

Because someone lost a lot of money or because it was arty? Henry thought in over voice.

“Either way..” Krislt said with a smile, “or both..”