Movie Formulas

Raymond Chandler, an author of mystery stories in the 20’s and 30’s once said when you’re stuck for what to do next, just have a guy come through the door with a gun.  Chandler, by the way, created Phillip Marlow of “The Big Sleep”.

Hollywood follows a formula when making movies.  If you know something about the director you can make a judgment about the direction the film will take.  Baring advanced knowledge there are some key scenes that will tell you all you need to know.

Star Trek, Beware the Red Shirt

In the distant future society will be as inclusive and idyllic as a twenty first century mind can make it. There are people still out on the cutting edge and untoward events do happen.  But fate can be directed, in a society were rank and function is dictated by the color shirt you wear, beware the red shirt! When the wearer of the red shirt is asked to go on an “away mission” he/she rarely returns.  To paraphrase another movie character. “Don’t get off the ship, never get off the ship”

Body Counts

I’ve seen Dirty Harry, the man with no name, and any number of Clint Eastwood characters kill hundreds of men.  He has shot them, blown them up, and sent them over cliffs.  None of the deaths, that I can recall involved a slow motion rendition.

In most Clint Eastwood movies the bad guy in what ever form posses a threat to the Eastward character or occasionally a potential profit and Eastwood dispatches the bad guys in a workman like manner.

In a film with more liberal pretensions it is sometimes difficult to identify the protagonist. It doesn’t matter who is doing the killing the good guy or the bad guy both are little too involved in their work.  Most killings involved slow motion and multiple camera angles.

On way that you can tell whether a killing is acceptable or unacceptable is the relationship between good guy and the soon to be deceased. A dead buddy can be shook off, a dead third cousin twice removed, revenge.  Apparently liberals can only be horrified by the death of close family members, anybody else is just so much grist for the mill.  Don’t believe me Dr. Alex Cross a homicide investigator in Baltimore (only 450-600 homicides a year) but what winds him up a threat to his family.  Other dead bodies, outside the family, are window dressing.

My point is made when you consider how William Munny reacted to the death of his friend Ned. He wiped out the whole town.

Dirty Harry takes his victims as he finds them. Catholic priest, corrupt union official, pimp, and porno company Harry is there to investigate when they shuffle off their mortal coil.

The final factor in whether you are watching a liberal verses more conservative offering is how the main protagonist gets it in the end.  If he survives and continues to get in the end, then you are watching gay porn.  With a Dirty Harry style ending the main protagonist gets dead, in a predictable way, accompanied by a last word from Harry, “A man has got to know his limitations”.

Liberal bad guys suffer a Rube Goldberg death. For example: first they are shot multiple times, but that does not kill them, they happen to be on the 8th, 17th, 23rd floor (depends on the budget) when they are shot and they fall, still conscious. It’s not the fall but the sudden stop that get’s you.

This is the point the audience has been waiting for, how high on the scumbag meter is this guy going to rate? They have just watched the bad guy commit one hour and forty-five minutes of mayhem, yet there isn’t a single one of them capable making an independent judgment. Will he become a grease spot on the ground? be impaled on a pipe, land in the wet concrete or fall in the fortuitously passing and running wood chipper? How the bad guy sticks the landing will tell the audience where he falls on the moral depravity scale.

Don’t get me wrong I like a good shoot me up. But what I miss is a story that challenges. I like seeing individuals that can act, act. Take away special effects from quentin what’s his face and he couldn’t get a job at Burger King let alone in movies.

Here’s a challenge for a body count film festival “The Big Sleep” (with Bogart), The first “Dirty Harry”  and “Pulp Fiction” from dipshit.  You don’t win anything unless you can answer the question:

Who murdered the Chauffeur?