Thu 18 Dec 2008
MADE MEN. Decade Pictures, 1999. James Belushi, Michael Beach, Timothy Dalton, Steve Railsback, Carlton Wilborn, Vanessa Angel, Jamie Harris, David O’Donnell. Director: Louis Morneau.
I found James Belushi’s performance in this fine shoot-em-up comedy crime caper to be a work of art, and I’m not kidding. Rated R for good reason (language and flying bullets), I enjoyed every minute of it. (Well, not every minute, but you have to allow me a small bit of exaggeration in the first paragraph of a review, don’t you?)
Belushi plays Bill “The Mouth” Mannuci, a guy on the run from the mob, and he’s not the only reason the mob’s after him. He took a stash of 12 million dollars with him.
I’m not sure where the small country town is that he’s holed up in, along with Debra, his ultra-shapely girl friend (Vanessa Angel), but it might be Iowa (lots of corn), Oklahoma (crooked small-town sheriff, played by Timothy Dalton), or Michigan (hidden meth labs way out in the sticks), but it probably doesn’t matter. I’m sure you have the idea already.
It is the kind of country where blacks (including Michael Beach as Miles, one of the more intelligent mobsters after him) stick out like sore thumbs and have to mind their manners every step of the way.
One wishes that Vanessa Angel might have had more screen time, but Timothy Dalton in his more immediate post-Bond days is a revelation of his own, playing against type, you might say, in more ways I might have thought possible.
But James Belushi plays his part to perfection: a crook, a liar, a thief, and a guy possessed with a natural gift of gab, talking away incessantly, possessing the mouth of a pure-born salesman, selling his various stories to anyone who would believe him along the way. Including me. He sure had me leaning the wrong way more than once.
In any case, a combination of better-than-average dialogue and production values with a minimum of actual bloodshed (in comparison with all of the shooting) makes this movie the top half of a drive-in double feature by far, not the bottom. If there were drive-in theaters any more.
I miss them.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Your comment about missing drive-in theaters made me start thinking again about how much I also miss them. During the 1970’s there were some periods where my wife and I went to a drive-in every weekend, mainly to satisfy my craving for double and triple feature horror films. I saw just about all the Hammer and Italian type horror films at the drive-ins. And this was before the video revolution which then made these films available to the general public.
For film lovers it’s a great time now because we can accumulate thousands of dvds and build our own movie libraries just like we built our own mystery and pulp collections. However, one negative effect of the video tape was the resulting death of the drive-in theaters. No longer did families have to go outside the home to see their favorite movies. Starting around 1980, they could simply rent a video and stay in the living room.
The Trenton, NJ area had about a half dozen drive-ins I used to frequent but they all started to die off in the 1980’s. Now there are none and New Jersey used to be full of drive-ins. You still hear of the outside theaters being around here and there but for the most part it is not at all like it used to be.
Gone are the days when I could sit in my car on a beautiful summer night, drink beer and eat sandwiches, while watching bizarre films on the big screen. I now do the same thing at home, but watching dvds on the tv is just not the same.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Comparing DVDs against the Drive-In Theater.
One plus: no bugs.
A definite present-day minus: families no longer watch together in the living room.
— Steve
December 19th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Bugs were a problem but in the Trenton area you could buy something at the drive-in called PIC. It came in a box and was in the shape of a coil which you set on fire at one end and it slowly burned like a cigar. The smoke and smell was so bad that it scared away the bugs. Unfortunately the smell would stay on your clothes and hair and you became a giant, walking PIC. This was good as far as the insects but other humans tended to avoid you also.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Our family often went to the Drive-In.
We’d always pop a big bowl of popcorn at home, and bring it along in the car.
I associate drive-ins with those Steve Reeves movies. They’d be set in Ancient Rome, and have what was billed as a “cast of thousands”.
December 20th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Fine memories, both!