MOVIE REVIEW: BOILING POINT (1993)

 

Written and Directed by James B. Harris

Adapted from the novel Money Men by Gerald Petievich 

Starring

Wesley Snipes as Jimmy 

Dennis Hopper as Red

Dan Hedaya as Brady

Viggo Mortensen as Ronnie 

Lolita Davidovich as Vikki

Valerie Perrine as Mona

Jonathan Banks as Max

Paul Gleason as Transaction Man

Seymour Cassel as Leach

Tobin Bell as Roth

Tony Lo Bianco as Dio

. . .

"You just look for the happiest redhead in the whole world!"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Boiling Point . . . another movie with the title Boiling Point . . .

This one is about Jimmy, a U.S. Treasury Agent who is trying to figure out who killed his partner during an undercover sting operation over some counterfeit bills. The details of the investigation are engaging moment to moment, but I think the motivations of the characters will probably be what sticks with you when it's all said and done. 

Jimmy's under threat of reassignment due to the fact that someone died under his watch. Jimmy's work has ruined his relationship with his wife and child. All this has got him questioning his commitment to his job. Jimmy tries to be an at-a-distance father to his child. His ex-wife has already moved on to another man, and this is a reality Jimmy can't quite accept. The night that his partner is killed, Jimmy hits up his ex for a comfort bang-well, things could be complicated even back before social media, y'know?

Jimmy's partner was killed by a criminal named Ronnie, a callous young man under the influence of a con artist named Red. Red owes a gangster named Dio lots of money, and so Red is under some pressure to elevate his hustle before he gets zapped. Ronnie killed the undercover agent more or less on Red's behalf, although Red himself is averse to violence. That's what's amusing about Red: he's such a nice guy in person. He's clearly a bullshitter and out of step with the world with his off-the-rack suits and fancy wingtips, but you would be charmed by him for a few minutes at a time. You would have to be a brain-damaged psychopath like Ronnie to bet your entire future on Red, tho'. 

Red hits up a crooked lawyer named Max, who's known for circulating funny money, but Max knows Red's underwater, and tells him to fuck off-which is why Red has the younger guy Ronnie on the leash. Ronnie hits up Max for a similar deal on Red's behalf with Max being none the wiser.

That's Red's con. He has Ronnie as a kind of spare self to do things with, and it's intriguing to watch how this all operates. If Ronnie were less inclined to shoot people to death with his sawed-off shotgun it would almost be cute. 

Jimmy, meanwhile, is able to talk his way out of reassignment, and puts pressure on a couple of other underworld operators to see what shakes out, but his desire is for vengeance, not justice. Jimmy's head is in a bad place. The job has ruined his family and gotten his guy killed, and for what? Jimmy's no longer interested in putting his quarry in a cage. It’s body bag time!

What keeps all this interesting is that Jimmy doesn't know what Red and Ronnie look like, and Red and Ronnie don't know that Jimmy is even after 'em. Red and Ronnie don't even know that they killed an undercover Treasury Agent! They think they just waxed a fellow criminal in a motel room. The film has some fun with Jimmy and Red obliviously patronizing the same late night food counter, pissing in the men's room urinal at the same time, and even hiring the same call girl-tho' that last one is for separate dates. Presumably, a threesome would be out-of-bounds for a middle-aged crook who likes 1940s swing music and an uptight federal agent. 

Like many crime movies, the main idea here has to do with the conflict between appearances and reality. Red is a hoot to bullshit with, but he’s a delusional liar with blood on his hands. Ronnie is young and handsome, but also stupid and murderous. Max is an outwardly prosperous lawyer whose wealth comes primarily from dirty deeds done not so cheap. And our hero Jimmy isn't so much interested in serving justice as he is fixated on lethal payback. 

This is all fascinating to watch. It ends about how you expect it will end. At least it did for me. This is not an action movie, tho' there are a few sequences of mayhem. This is more in the tradition of hard-boiled crime fiction mixed with a police procedural. We have the line between law and crime, cops and crooks, but as for what's right and wrong . . . that's trickier. Our sympathies are no doubt with Jimmy, but he definitely makes some questionable choices. 

The dialogue is sharp. Red's effusive, self-aggrandizing speeches are the highlights. 

I also liked the interrogations Jimmy conducts with the criminal operators he has to handle. These end up being negotiations over who and what and where and how much time spent incarcerated and how much time free-I found it more or less convincing. 

The cast is solid. Look for future horror villain Jigsaw in a memorable supporting bit. Hopper was born to play a grifter like Red. Snipes is convincingly disillusioned yet determined as Jimmy. Viggo Mortensen is creepy as Ronnie. Dan Hedaya plays Brady-Jimmy's partner-and gets to run from an explosion in one scene. Lolita Davidovich plays the nicest person here-the call girl, Vikki, who is also the least dishonest in her way. Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks gets to play Max, the lawyer, in good times and bad. And I always appreciate Seymour Cassel. Cassel plays a crook named Leach, and I like to imagine he told stories about working with John Cassavetes between takes.

Boiling Point . . . it's another movie with the title Boiling Point. 

I had a good time with it.

MOVIE REVIEW: BOILING POINT (1990)

Written and directed by Takeshi Kitano 

Produced by Kazuyoshi Okuyama

Cinematography by Katsumi  Yanagishima 

Edited by Toshio Taniguchi 

Starring 

Yurei Yanagi as Masaki

Beat Takeshi as Uehara

. . .

"You should've swung your bat at least once. "

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Boiling Point is about a man who struggles to live up to the expectations of being a vengeful protagonist in a violent, harrowing crime movie. 

But we start things off in Act One real casual, kinda goofy, kinda like The Sandlot but with adults . . .

Masaki is a minor league baseball player who struggles to hit the ball. He doesn't really want to be at practice. He hides in the baseball field's restroom pretending to take lengthy shits in order to avoid the scorn of his teammates. Maybe he's constipated. Stress can do that to you. After getting struck out for the umpteenth time, Masaki goes off to sit by his lonesome in some tall grass. 

We find out that Masaki works at a gas station. Pumping gas. Wiping down windshields. Vacuuming interiors. Dumping ashtrays. Washing mud off tires. He has no zeal for this job, and can barely be bothered to show up on time.

Is Masaki depressed? Is he dissatisfied with his rut in life? He seems to feel trapped. 

One day, a gangster rolls into the gas station expecting full service only to be left waiting for an unreasonable amount of time by Masaki, who is supposed to be on duty as an attendant. The gangster lashes out with verbal abuse and violence. Masaki punches the gangster. This is the fatal mistake. The gangster has a whole gang of goons ready to lean on the gas station. Which they do. The rest of this film follows Masaki in his winding, often half-assed, quest for vengeance. 

Now, Masaki has the right idea. That yakuza guy was an asshole, and yakuza, generally, are crooks and exploiters, so there's no reason not to fight back . . .

. . . except for the stark reality that everyone else at the gas station is afraid to stand up to the gangsters, and prefer the safety of apology, appeasement, and self-abasement.

Also, Masaki isn't really a tough guy. Although he exists within a film with genre elements-gangster intrigues, vigilante justice, three act structure-Masaki is closer to being a person from real life than a genre protagonist. He's justifiably outraged, but he’s not someone with a capacity for violence. Masaki has no military training, nor is he inherently attracted to bloodshed. The guy is barely able to maintain normal conversations-perhaps due to shyness or social anxiety-let alone crack one-liners as he slaughters bad guys. In movie protagonist terms, Masaki is a loser. In real life terms, Masaki is just trying to get by like billions of other people on the planet. 

This is Masaki's dilemma: can he-a Real Life Person-survive ordeals that usually call for a Violent Movie Protagonist? 

Well . . .

Masaki and one of his baseball bros decide to leave the sticks for the big city of Okinawa. The plan is to purchase illegal firearms so they can go shoot up the bogus real estate offices where the yakuza bullies hold court. Masaki and his friend don't divulge specifics to We the Audience of how they hope to buy guns which are severely restricted by law in Japan. It seems like a bit of a fishing expedition. Big cities are places of crime and guns. Want a gun? Go to the big city! I also wasn't clear if we're just supposed to be aware that it's common knowledge that you can purchase firearms from American military personnel stationed in Okinawa. This was a surprise to me, in any case.

But before Masaki and his bro can buy the illegal guns, they need a hookup. This hookup is a gangster named Uehara. Uehara is in big trouble with his boss for spending money recklessly, and drinking to excess. Uehara is also a walking timebomb who revels in torture, rape, and murder, but the boss is just like, "The money, Lebowski!"

Uehara hijacks the Second Act. Masaki and his bro go out 'partying' with Uehara and his sworn bro . . . and it's a wonder any of them survive. Complete tonal shift. The slackery vibe of Act One is gone, and we are on a nonstop death trip with the frightful demon beast that is Uehara. The situations of Act One induced a certain anxiety. Uehara's pitiless, stony gaze may induce panic in some viewers who stay through Act Two. 

Now, Uehara's problem is that he's too good at being a Violent Movie Protagonist. Uehara makes Charles Bronson look like Mr. Belvedere. Uehara makes Frank Booth-the Dennis Hopper villain from Blue Velvet-look like Tickle Me Elmo. Uehara makes Chuck Norris look like a Teletubby. Hell, Uehara makes John Wick look like Keanu Reeves. 

Uehara has no problem making the necessary moves to buy military grade hardware from an American soldier. Uehara has no hesitation when it comes to obliterating his own boss and those who stand with the boss. Uehara cares not for any innocent people who get caught in the crossfire. Hey, disregard for civilian deaths is kinda baked-in to any form of warfare including gang warfare. But Uehara also seems to relish his own destruction which is where the guy kinda seals his doom. In a completely amoral universe, you can live a life of total depravity, but if your appetite for destruction consumes even your own life . . . 

. . . well . . .

. . . guess that means Masaki's carrying the baton for Act Three. 

I suppose it's a spoiler to say that Masaki survives as long as he does. Although after his ordeal with Uehara, he might wish he had been killed with the others massacred in Okinawa. 

Don't get me wrong. My heart is with Masaki on this one. But this is a guy who's barely equipped to hold down his gas station job let alone confront the heart of madness that drives Boiling Point to its jaw-dropping climax. Yes, there is a helluva payoff to this elliptical, confounding, and punitive film experience. The pettiness, stupidity, and sadism that suffuse the asinine conflicts demand some spectacle of mayhem, I suppose. We begin in a world without any moral order, and Masaki, in his blundering, imposes . . . something . . . upon this mess-

-unless he doesn't. 

The end returns us to the baseball field's restroom, wherein Masaki lingers over his phantom bowel movement. Was it all a B-Movie phantasia in the mind of an anxiety-ridden minor leaguer? Did Masaki carry over his Save Data into New Game+? Does Masaki-at long last-get to drop a fat shit? 

Maybe we need a cartoon owl to start licking on some lollipops to find out for sure.

Boiling Point fucks with you like that. 

Sometimes I watch a horror movie or a spooky TV show . . .

 . . . and a character will see the image of someone's death right before they die.

And then they're interrogated by the cops or a civilian investigator or whatever and they say, "I saw their corpse in a dream!"

And the investigator is like, "You mean you saw them dead before they died?!"

"Yes! That’s what I'm trying to tell you!"

And then-this never happens-I want the investigator to say, "Oh, so you’re some kind of a 'death hipster' or somethin'?"

Hasn't happened, yet.

But I live in hope . . .

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #-1: THE QA TEST RONIN

. . . sword too sharp

slices the fabric of reality

way beyond parameters 

even if this fuck-up in and of itself 

suggests a far more interesting game

that level of insight

is not what we provide you a life for

we already catch

like

a billion genius accidents a second

it's nothing we didn't already anticipate 

we filter this shit

rigorously 

the ronin

never had such an interaction 

too rogue-cop-motherfucking-the-chief 

to be a real life thing

but the ronin iterates on this fantasy nonstop

fuck you

your games are garbage

your executives are all rapists and capitalist exploiters 

i'm burning this motherfucker to the ground

i don't need money or property

my stats are maxed

i live in a zone of inertia where dumbass action movie fantasy does not work

i-

parameters 

of work from home

could fall down any day

rough timeline gives comfort

but it's gone lights out before

harrowing six months:

am I safe in my home?

will I be evicted?

could I just wander like Yojimbo?

Mifune just throws a stick in the air

stick lands

Mifune walks in the direction that stick points

what will I do instead of depression meds once scrip becomes unaffordable?

do I chew stoically on a toothpick?

does placebo effect touch the depression?

would wandering outdoors be good for my overall health outlook?

that was a harrowing six months

loose talk of unions

"pandemic changes everything"

the ronin tries to stay out of it

here's the internal static:

i have just enough

when you ask for more in this world

that's the signal

for the power to give you less,

maybe just take what you already have,

maybe just make you have zero,

and I got that harrowing six months inside me,

i sometimes call that

"my graduate and doctoral school"

i am finally certified disposable 

call me 

Dr.Non-For-Nothing-Here-Just-A-Minute-Ago-Nope-Never-Was 

suits me

i . . . earned it?

sure

the way of the ronin 

unlike the way of the samurai 

lies not in death

but in the never was

-November 2014-January 2022

Two words . . .

 . . .BALLISTIC POLYPS . . .

This is one of the most sought after special attacks in Original Recipe ReDumption Earth.

Basically, this devastating maneuver broke the game in the original release, and was replaced by the Host Displacement Party Combo, which was considered a low point of ReDumption Earth: DX: Death Xtra Edition. 

The Host Displacement Party Combo involved spending time as the writing staff for a late night talk show host. You've got to mine monologue materials from the depths of a snorted Adderall mania tunnel; you gotta grind out an appropriately dense number of topical jokes and one-liners to keep pace with the spiraling coruption of an increasingly idiotic and authoritarian political fuckedscape; add in just a dash of self-awareness to lampshade the host's preening narcissism; make sure the diction is friendly to the alcoholic slurring people have been noticing of late; weave in some plugs'n'panders for the network's various garbage fire sitcoms, cop shows, and talent contests that just go on and on and on season after season; and, most importantly, contain your bile at being forever below the line while the hack-master catches all the glory-

If you can do all of that, and not get fired for a five year stretch then you unlock the Host Displacement Party Combo, which allows you-via teleportation-to switch places with the host during filming hours in order to unleash a devastating salvo of burns'n'roasts upon your Enemy. 

Now, these attacks don't do damage, per se, and it's not actually possible to attain victory over Enemy with this special attack. However, certain Enemies have unusually high Media Consumption stats, and so the shock of recognition of being mildly razzed by someone from TV that they've watched clips of on YouTube causes them to rank down in various obscure effectiveness metrics. The rumor has long been that these systems are actually non-functional in the official release, but the surrealistic spaghetti code revealed by hacking tools has neither confirmed nor debunked anything for certain.

The only thing that can be said for certain is that the Host Displacement Party Combo is a very poor substitute for the beloved, if game-breaking, Ballistic Polyps of Original Recipe ReDumption Earth. 

And it wasn't a cakewalk to unlock Ballistic Polyps. 

Oh, no, friend.

In fact, you had to walk the Ripped'N'Torn Doom Colon Path. Not a cake in sight anywhere along this desolate stretch. 

First of all, you had to get your Cussed, Ornery, and Irascibility stats maxed out. Secondly, you had to willfully skip doctor appointments and annual check-ups. Thirdly, amp up your intake of jet fuel analogue grain alcohol, raw red meat, and bitterness over relationships gone bad. The bitterness is difficult to track precisely, but a good rule of thumb is that anytime a dialogue choice involves saying, "She fucked me," or "That asshole fucked me over good" or "This whole world is run by assholes that fuck you nonstop" you're on the right path. Fourthly, you had to adamantly refuse every single colonoscopy opportunity. If you get even one buttscope then all of your other efforts are for nothing. You may as well start eating right, swear off the sauce, and embrace forgiveness of all the people that done you wrong 'cause everybody's got their reasons in this life. 

But if you remain true to the Ripped'N'Torn Doom Colon Path, then you will eventually be offered the Ripped'N'Torn Sheriff of Spite questline, where you must bring Law and Order and Shotgun Headshots to the mean old Texas town of Spite, wherein you must blast and buffalo your way through a tangled tale of Mexican cartels and gringo gunrunners and ex-CIA hitters gone bank robbin' and the one seniorita who stole your heart once upon a sultry August moon and if you survive all of that . . . a strange sensation shall be abornin' inside your asshole . . . something's just gotta cut loose, pardner!

The elaborate Kingsglaive level cutscene that ensues basically involves a counterattack by the leftovers of the ex-CIA bank robbing gang, a bunch of gunsels looking to get deep into the payback. But you're so done with this town of Spite. You just drop your pants and shotgun those reprobates with a load of self-sharpening polyp shrapnel. Maybe one of the gnarliest depictions of grotesque full body obliterations since the original Parasite Eve.

The Ballistic Polyps are yours, pardner!

Now you can start walking that cake forever!

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #21: ULTIMA: EXODUS (NES VERSION) (1989)

 

This is another one

where you wander all over the land

getting killed 

not being able to afford resurrection 

you probably don't have the instruction manual or the official hint book 

you get to a point where you start fighting smart 

grinding it out close to the save point

if you're 8-bit authentic

or working those save states

if you're contemporary 

you start socking away those golds

buy horses for your crew,

so now you can get around quicker 

and you did manage to get a seaworthy vessel

you're excited to escape the continent 

but the sailing's just too realistic

you feel like you're constantly fighting the wind

you seek the land, all over again 

but then you were surrounded by pirates

before you could dock 

and it went poorly for your people 

killed to the last hero 

back to the character creation menu

I suppose I could've stuck with the save

but I wanted a fresh crew

a fresh reality

you can do that right-quick in these sorts of role-playing games,

y'know,

delete the old family

roll up a new one

if only something something real life something something 

. . .so I download a PDF of the hint book, and I discover that the first sixteen pages are a beautiful sorta watercolor looking comic book summary of the 'story so far' in the Ultima Franchise, featuring vivid depictions of a messiah wandering between dimensions via mysterious woods and gatherings of stalwart heroes and onslaughts of slobbering beasts and swirling undead miasma hordes and tyrannical villains Mondain and Minax wielding terrifying sorcery and I just wanted it to go on and on-

-but it doesn't. 

The rest is a perfectly functional, if incomplete, guide to the equipment the weapons the classes the differences between the Magic Power system and the Will Power system-like just have one magic system, okay? This is an NES cartridge. Don't overtax shit, all right?

Let me quote

what ended up being

the most consequential line

for me 

from the Hint Book: 

"Four great adventurers challenging Exodus by order of Lord British. What is Exodus? Is it human? Is it a monster? In order to prevail, the adventurers must solve many mysteries and increase their own natural abilities." 

Oh. 

That's what I'm about.

Okay.

I thought that EXODUS was an event,

but in this game it's an entity,

a . . . final boss, even?

Well, now.

The hint book is just a stripped down walk-through with no story content beyond the comic book 'Previously on Ultima' opener. I gather from its pages that I should talk to priests, talk to prisoners, learn to bribe, learn to pray, and visit holy sites suffused with mystical power in order to learn how to pray and/or bribe . . . or do I learn how to bribe by bullshitting my way past the jailhouse guards? I might've got some of that confused. 

Oh, yeah! You can also bet on games of Rock-Paper-Scissors! That's what passes for gambling in the mystical realm of Sosaria. (Now I want Paul Schrader to write and direct a gritty film about an isolated loner who develops a perfect system for winning just enough at Rock-Paper-Scissors so as to contain a mysterious trauma from the past, but not so much winning as to get hustled out the door by the pit bosses. Call it . . . The Finger Counter.)

This is one of those games where important items of mystical potency have been brought into being that can vanquish Ultimate Evil . . . except they've been scattered all throughout the land, and, on top of that, people's awareness of them seems spotty, like different people have been told different things about what's actually going on . . . even though the method of vanquishing Ultimate Evil is relatively straightforward and procedural to the point where it would've had to have been a protocol established by a group of engineers-

Look, Exodus is an evil computer. That's the twist. Okay. Even though this is a sword and sorcery reality, it's a computer running the show. In order to shut it down, you gotta collect punch cards to insert into the four terminals that comprise Exodus, and these punch cards crash the system-so to speak-and all is well in the land. 

I guess this could be a 'breaking out of the program' moment like in The Matrix, or a 'fictional character busts loose of the fiction' like in those Grant Morrison scripted Animal Man comics. Ultima:Exodus got there a bit earlier, in any event.

I was going to criticize the usual video game absurdity of having the punch cards scattered all throughout the land. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the punch cards all in one place? Or, um, you encounter an engineer who worked on the Exodus project at one point? They've still got a bunch of junk in their garage from when they hired on with Mondain and Minax? 

But maybe it makes more sense that the punch cards are scattered all to hell. 

Video game companies are notorious for discarding source code. They grind out a product, ship it, clear the deck for the next cycle. Maybe Mondain and Minax were similarly sloppy once they finished Exodus. Mondain and Minax were the villains of previous Ultima games, and presumably they built Exodus as a way to carry forward their legacy of evil in a rationalized, fully automated form. This suggests that they concealed the punch cards to maintain control over Exodus . . . but maybe they just got lost in the shuffle. 

Or maybe Mondain and Minax lost interest in their pricy mechanical boondoggle once it was all designed and done and, in the end, disappointing. 

Perhaps, Mondain and Minax saw their own obsolescence wthin the machinery of Exodus, and therefore scorned it, even as they let it operate, a pitiless doomsday cheat in the event of their deaths at the hands of party-pooping heroes. Sorcerers make mistakes, lose battles, are all-too-human . . . but an evil machine just keeps on grindin'n'cyclin'-

-until it, too, gets trashed by heroes.

The ending is worth reheating.

I think it is.

In the NES version, the Exodus terminals are called 'altars' . . . oh, so these psuedo-mediavalist Advanced Dungeons and Dragons types-your player characters-don't grok computers but apprehend them as sites of religious offerings, a way to interface the divine or the diabolical or what have you,

I think that’s an amusing detail.

You input the punch cards in just the right sequence,

and the altars sink into the ground,

an ankh appears, which you must collect so it can be all significant in the sequel Ultima: Quest of the Avatar,

the castle housing Exodus shakes and shudders as it collapses all around you,

pulling a total Dracula’s Castle Routine,

now's the time for a horseback escape by the skin of your teeth,

ABRUPT-ASS CREDIT ROLL.

If you played the game with no reference to external sources, you might very well be perplexed. 

If you played the game with reference to external sources, you might very well be perplexed.

If you are unfamiliar with Ultima:Quest of the Avatar-

If you don't know what an ankh is-

An ankh is that cross looking thingy with a sorta oval teardrop shape at the top. If you were a goth kid in the 1990s, you probably read the Neil Gaiman scripted The Sandman comics, and you probably remember that Death was personified as a goth girl who wore an ankh necklace. 

See . . . it's ironic . . . because an ankh is popularly understood as an ancient Egyptian symbol . . . for life . . . and Neil Gaiman has Death wearing it . . . that shit is so fucking deep I want to start screaming!!!

Look. Gaiman's got millions in the bank. Who am I to criticize his touching simplicity? Alleged grown-ups-if they are reading anything-are mostly fucking with Harry Potter and a bewildering array of creepy BDSM wealth porn fairy tales . . . 

Gaiman's not so bad, I guess . . .

Hey, I wasn't even a goth kid in the 1990s, so what do I know. 

I did read a lot of Doom 2099 and Hellblazer . . .

. . . okay, so . . .

. . . you destroy the evil computer Exodus 

. . . you get a symbol of life, the ankh

. . . and the ankh goes on to become your symbol as an avatar of virtue in the next game . . .

Shutting down the program of evil was just the beginning. 

Now you must make your way in the world, cultivating your righteousness by dealing with people and situations as they cross your path. There is no more mechanization of evil. No more centralized villain or villainy.

Just a lot of perplexing shit.

You're never quite sure if you're right or wrong.

People stop wanting to join your party.

You've given some offense.

It remains obscure.

And you never quite got to the end of it,

even with the online walk-through, 

and you think back to the conclusion of Ultima: Exodus, 

"Fuck. That was the True Ending. I broke the program, and I shoulda just kept on riding outta the cartridge, away from the incomprehensible intrigues of Sosaria, and into the Perplexing Meaty Now. My confusion remains, but I am always moving forward, even if it is just Pitiless Time hustling me ever closer to the grave. I can vary up the scenery. I'm already better off beyond the clutches of Exodus . . ."

. . . and then along came COVID-19 . . .

"Fuck this shit, I'm getting back in that cartridge! Get the fuck outta my way-!"

ABRUPT-ASS CREDIT ROLL.

-November 2021-January 2022