A great starting point for new listeners!
Thomas and Frank discuss Bruce Willis' strange remake of a classic thriller and Michael J. Fox's charming "pre-make" of Disney's "Cars."
First, Thomas reviews "The Jackal" (1997). Then, Frank reviews "Doc Hollywood" (1991).
It's a star-studded 90s Double Feature, and it starts right now!
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Meet Your Double Feature is a double-blind movie review podcast hosted by brothers Thomas and Frank. Thomas is an event producer and broadcaster from Chicago. Frank is an independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
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Music for tonight's show licensed through Soundstripe
"The Shakedown" by Dresden, The Flamingo
"Soul Tonic" by Cast of Characters
"Sophistikitty" by Cast of Characters
(00:00) Intro
(00:53) The Jackal (1997)
(48:54) Doc Hollywood (1991)
(01:20:41) Final Scores and Wrap-Up
(01:33:56) Outro
00:00:09
Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, when an infamous
00:00:13
assassin is hired to kill a high profile target in Washington,
00:00:17
DC, the FBI turns to another talented criminal to hunt him
00:00:21
down. Bruce Willis and Richard Gere
00:00:24
star in The Jackal. Then when a promising young
00:00:28
doctor heads West to become a Hollywood plastic surgeon, fate
00:00:32
instead leaves him stranded in a small southern town that
00:00:35
threatens to steal his heart. Michael J Fox stars in Doc
00:00:39
Hollywood. It's a star-studded double
00:00:42
feature, and it starts right now.
00:00:53
Hello and welcome to meet your double feature, a double-blind
00:00:56
movie review podcast. My name is Thomas.
00:00:58
Joined today by my brother Frank.
00:00:59
Frank, how are you? I'm.
00:01:01
Excellent. I'm.
00:01:02
Great, excellent, that's good. Usually, he says excited.
00:01:05
So I think we might be getting better mood than usual.
00:01:08
I I thought I'd switch it up. Yeah.
00:01:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
00:01:12
Well, welcome back, everyone to our show.
00:01:14
In case you have never joined us before, the way Meet your double
00:01:16
feature works is very simple. For tonight's show, Frank and I
00:01:19
have both recommended a movie for the other to watch and
00:01:22
review, except that it's a movie that neither of us has ever
00:01:24
actually seen. We based our picks entirely on
00:01:27
vibes, essentially just took a look at what we thought the
00:01:30
other person would enjoy, and we're going to find out if those
00:01:32
picks were were correct. We're going to give each movie a
00:01:35
score out of 10, and then whoever gave the better
00:01:37
recommendation for tonight's episode will be declared the
00:01:39
winner. Frank, am I missing anything
00:01:41
there or is that how the show works?
00:01:43
I mean that, yeah, that makes sense to me.
00:01:45
We get confused about the rules ourselves sometimes, but.
00:01:49
It makes so much sense if you listen, but man, is it hard to
00:01:52
put into an elevator pitch. So we're just going to kick
00:01:54
right off, yeah. Yeah, let's do it.
00:01:57
Now again we picked the movies for this episode at the end of
00:02:00
our previous episode. Frank, you selected for me to
00:02:02
watch tonight, 1997's The Jackal.
00:02:06
Now can you refresh us and me 'cause I have forgotten why you
00:02:09
asked me to watch 1997's The Jackal?
00:02:12
Well, if you'll remember, it was a backup pick because my initial
00:02:17
pick was actually. I don't even know if this may be
00:02:19
in the episode so. I don't think I've edited that
00:02:23
one yet so we can leave it in. You tried to select a movie I
00:02:26
had actually already seen that you did not know I had seen.
00:02:28
Yes, which was the game I believe that one was called.
00:02:31
Yes, the game. Great movie by the way, still
00:02:33
representing the game. Please watch the game but
00:02:36
unfortunately it's not show eligible.
00:02:38
Yes, yes. So I had to panic and and pick
00:02:44
something else very quickly. But no, this one, I mean, it's
00:02:49
90s Bruce Willis and like 90s Bruce Willis like action
00:02:53
thriller. So that kind of seemed like
00:02:56
definitely in his wheelhouse for the 90s.
00:02:58
So and when I I don't even think I'd ever even heard of this
00:03:01
movie before. So it looked interesting, but
00:03:04
I'm sure you'll let me know if it was or.
00:03:08
Not the honest movie sucked, no it I don't remember if I knew
00:03:13
this because I read a lot about the movie after I was done
00:03:15
watching it for for tonight. But this 90's The Jackal is is a
00:03:20
remake of a 1970s film called Day of the Jackal which is much
00:03:24
more famous and that in turn is based on a book.
00:03:27
So we are like several adaptations deep with this one.
00:03:30
It also was remade again as ATV series like last year or this
00:03:35
year. So you picked, I think the least
00:03:37
well known version of this story.
00:03:40
I I'm remembering that now actually that that I had when I
00:03:43
was looking at this one, I saw that it was based on that
00:03:45
previous film, but I didn't know there was ATV show now too.
00:03:48
That's interesting. I think the TV show, the title
00:03:50
keeps getting shorter because the original movie and I'm
00:03:53
guessing the book are called Day of the Jackal.
00:03:55
This one's called The Jackal, and I swear that TV show is just
00:03:58
called Jackal. We're really running out of
00:04:00
letters. It's.
00:04:01
Just going to be called J next time like.
00:04:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Day of the J So Dave The Jackal
00:04:07
is an interesting one. I'm going to do something I
00:04:09
don't usually, which is I'm going to open my review with
00:04:11
some trivia about the movie that I found out afterwards, because
00:04:14
I think it fits right in with what we were just describing.
00:04:17
So for this one, 1997's The Jackal, it is not credited to
00:04:22
the author of the book in the opening credits because the book
00:04:25
author wanted nothing to do with it and asked that they leave him
00:04:28
out of. It that's always a great sign
00:04:30
with great start. You know, he said.
00:04:32
I want nothing to do with this. But but wait, there's more.
00:04:35
The person who directed the 1970s film asked them to change
00:04:39
the title of this one because he didn't want it associated with
00:04:42
his film either. Wow, like.
00:04:47
Wait, had they was the movie complete at this point?
00:04:50
Had they seen it? Like why were they so opposed to
00:04:54
being associated with this? I don't know, but it's kind of
00:04:57
funny and I wanted to open with that.
00:04:59
Mostly to say that The Jackal 1997 is not bad enough to
00:05:04
warrant this much criticism from the people who made the other
00:05:07
stuff. Like, not wanting it credited to
00:05:10
your book could make sense because it is sort of a of the
00:05:13
Times adaptation that tries to update the story for the 90s.
00:05:17
And so in many ways, it's just not the same story anymore.
00:05:20
And I don't know if that was part of it for the novel author,
00:05:23
but the guy who made the other movie is just being fussy
00:05:26
because I guess he just thought that his film maybe just didn't
00:05:30
think it needed to be remade, thought it like stood the test
00:05:32
of time on its own or just really did not like what he saw
00:05:36
about this 90s one. So I thought that that was such
00:05:39
a blowback for a movie that I would confidently describe as
00:05:43
fine. Sure, sure.
00:05:44
Yeah. Like you read that and you look
00:05:48
at the critical scores for the Jackal and it's like atrocious.
00:05:52
I think the critics scores are like in between 10 and 20%.
00:05:56
And that's just a little mean. I feel like the Jackal is
00:05:59
totally fine. It's such a just like Sunday
00:06:02
afternoon, I caught the beginning of this on TV and
00:06:05
accidentally watched the whole thing kind of movie.
00:06:08
I accidentally stayed for the two hour runtime.
00:06:11
You know what I mean, though? Like we used to because we
00:06:12
didn't have basic cable growing up, but we would sometimes get
00:06:15
those like Saturday movies that were on at like 1:00 in the
00:06:18
morning over the summer. And you'd be like, yeah, I'll
00:06:20
put this on for 15 minutes. And then you're like, oh, no,
00:06:23
I've stayed up. I've watched the whole thing.
00:06:25
I love that, actually. Yeah, those are great.
00:06:28
And again, those movies were often in that middle ground.
00:06:30
They were like, somewhat overlooked, usually had actors
00:06:33
you would recognize but were not their finest work.
00:06:35
But you'd get to the end and you'd be like, yeah, that was a
00:06:36
movie. Absolutely.
00:06:38
Capital M movie right here. Well, these are the types of
00:06:40
movies. I don't know if we've talked
00:06:42
about this already on the podcast, but it's the type of
00:06:44
movie that really gets made today.
00:06:46
Like those mid budget movies or like like mid appeal movies, you
00:06:53
know, where it's like this is not a guaranteed box office
00:06:56
success like and I really appreciate those movies there.
00:06:59
I feel like there needs to be a place in the current like modern
00:07:03
filmmaking landscape, at least from the studio system for those
00:07:05
types of movies. I'm glad when they exist.
00:07:08
Yeah. And I do think that that for me,
00:07:10
like movies like that sort of peaked in the 90s because it was
00:07:13
before you had a lot of technological innovation in how
00:07:16
films were made that necessitated productions
00:07:19
becoming more expensive. And over time, that's what
00:07:21
reached the point where you could only invest in like a
00:07:23
surefire hit because it became so expensive to make a movie at
00:07:26
all. Whereas these films in the 90s
00:07:28
were like peak practical effects, early computer effects.
00:07:32
And you could still justify something in like the middle
00:07:34
ground like you're saying. Totally.
00:07:35
Yeah, absolutely. So to to give more information
00:07:39
on the Jackal, that's the top down summary.
00:07:41
Totally fine. Would not turn it off if it was
00:07:43
put on in front of me, but there's reasons for that.
00:07:46
I I think you sort of talked about this when you spoke about
00:07:49
Soldier in episode 4, where the movie didn't really do a lot
00:07:53
incorrectly. The biggest things you could say
00:07:55
against it were just it failed to be memorable.
00:07:59
Like the premise on paper, pretty good.
00:08:03
I'm going to assume this is pretty much the same initial
00:08:06
setup as the 1970s version and the book, but it's a political
00:08:10
espionage thriller where in this case in the Bruce Willis one,
00:08:16
it's it's the late 90's, the USSR has just fallen.
00:08:20
And so the American FBI and like the Russian government is
00:08:23
working together to combat a rising like mafia influence in
00:08:29
Russia. So they're trying to take down
00:08:30
like a Russian mafia syndicate. And as part of that story, this
00:08:35
Russian mobster guy whose brother gets murdered at the
00:08:37
beginning, hires Bruce Willis, who plays this famous assassin
00:08:41
called the Jackal and basically gives him some sort of high
00:08:44
priority political target in America.
00:08:47
And so we spend the movie following Bruce Willis preparing
00:08:50
and dealing with the logistics of setting up this assassination
00:08:52
attempt while the FBI and the Russian equivalent of the FBI
00:08:57
try to hunt him down. Like that's our, that's our
00:08:59
format for the story. Oh wait, so he's a famous
00:09:03
assassin like he's. Famous in that nobody knows it.
00:09:06
Like there's, it's that classic. Like he's a name on the winds,
00:09:10
but we all know the name and it's Jekyll.
00:09:12
Got it. Got it for John Wick.
00:09:14
Yes, the the main quality about the Bruce Willis characters that
00:09:18
supposedly no one's ever seen his face.
00:09:20
Some thought he wasn't real, but they get credible intelligence
00:09:23
that this person is going after who at the beginning of the
00:09:26
story, I think they believe. I think they believe that Jackal
00:09:30
wants to kill the director of the FBI.
00:09:33
Oh, OK. So that is kind of the framing
00:09:36
device that we get. Part of this that I find funny
00:09:40
is that the opening of the movie suggests what I think is maybe a
00:09:44
more interesting story than we actually get, because the scope
00:09:48
of what's happening really narrows into just be about Bruce
00:09:50
Willis past a certain point. But the opening's actually kind
00:09:53
of cool. The actual opening credits of
00:09:55
the movie, you would assume it would play out the way that like
00:09:58
a Jack Ryan movie would, you know, kind of like classic like
00:10:01
military March sounding music and just basic information dump.
00:10:05
And we do get the classic like newsreel montage.
00:10:08
But instead of being set to like a generic song, we get this
00:10:11
music written by a band called Massive Attack who like a really
00:10:14
influential like trip hop band and it kind of sounds like the
00:10:17
intro song to Batman Beyond. Oh wow, that's fun.
00:10:22
It's. Super fun, like the whole angle
00:10:25
that 90s Jackal takes as it tries to make it very 90s.
00:10:28
There's a lot of music that's different.
00:10:30
There's a lot of random time period appropriate technological
00:10:34
stuff that Bruce Willis character makes use of.
00:10:36
But this intro is like peak. If you told me that the movie
00:10:39
was over after the opening credits, that would have been
00:10:41
like 10 out of 10 because you get this awesome music,
00:10:44
including possibly my favorite drop in music history.
00:10:47
Where we're getting all this audio about like the fall of the
00:10:50
USSR and then the build up to like the drop in the song is
00:10:54
Reagan saying like Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall
00:10:58
finishes saying it and the music like pops in really loud.
00:11:00
And I was like, that's the best thing I've ever heard.
00:11:05
I think I've heard that used like that sound clip used in
00:11:08
other songs before too, that's it's just a very timely like
00:11:12
it's good audio. It's a great clip to use.
00:11:14
It's a good clip, and the music here is legitimately very good.
00:11:18
It's such an interesting, stylish opening to the movie
00:11:21
that gives you the impression that it's going to be, you know,
00:11:23
like a little bit of a different approach to like the political
00:11:26
thriller. It settles past a certain point
00:11:28
and becomes a little bit more by the book.
00:11:30
But I do really want to give them credit for an awesome
00:11:32
opening. Like I said, it's a 10 out of 10
00:11:33
movie until it starts. Until the movie starts and then
00:11:39
you're like, I'm done. Turn this off.
00:11:39
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I. Got to go to bed.
00:11:41
It's one in the morning. The other element to the
00:11:44
introduction, and I'll cover all this because none of it comes
00:11:47
back around past a certain point, is that again, there's a
00:11:50
Russian mafia guy whose brother is killed in a sting by the FBI
00:11:55
and whatever the Russian equivalent of the FBI is.
00:11:57
And we cut to him with his band of like cohort in, I think like
00:12:02
just outside of Helsinki at some sort of like ski resort.
00:12:05
And they have this classic like villain moment where the guy
00:12:08
who's reporting to him about how his brother dies was there.
00:12:11
And he's like blames the dude and like kills him with an axe.
00:12:14
And he's just like, if anybody else fails, you're going to end
00:12:17
up like this dude. And then that's the guy who
00:12:19
hires Bruce Willis. He basically puts out a revenge
00:12:22
hit to make a statement against the Americans for interfering in
00:12:25
Russian mafia business. And the whole setup feels like
00:12:28
that guy's a really pivotal part of this story.
00:12:30
But after he hires Bruce Willis, he never shows up again.
00:12:33
He's not in the rest of the movie.
00:12:34
None of these characters are in the rest of the movie.
00:12:36
This entire framing device about the Russian mafia and their like
00:12:40
rise to power dealing with post Soviet Russia and the power
00:12:43
vacuum there non factor. It immediately pivots.
00:12:46
The rest of the movie takes place in various locales and
00:12:49
countries, but we never go back to Russia and we never see those
00:12:52
guys again. Whoa, that seems like such an
00:12:55
obvious setup for this guy to be like the main villain of the
00:12:59
movie. I know like he could have had
00:13:01
influence over the story but now?
00:13:03
And that maybe is them being beholden to the original plot of
00:13:07
the novel or the 1st movie. But I just thought that was such
00:13:09
a swing and a miss. Like, they really go out of
00:13:11
their way to set up almost like, you know, the movie Key Largo,
00:13:15
the Humphrey Bogart movie. Yeah.
00:13:18
Yeah. So it that was not really the
00:13:20
same thing. But it's like a cast of
00:13:21
characters all trapped in this, like, resort hotel because of
00:13:24
this typhoon outside. And like, some of them are
00:13:26
criminals. And it's a very, like, bottled
00:13:29
premise story with a lot of interesting dialogue.
00:13:31
And I thought that some element of Jackal was going to be these
00:13:34
like, Russian mob guys who basically couldn't leave this
00:13:37
building in Sweden because they were going to get killed by the
00:13:42
FBI if they did. Just like, reaching a boiling
00:13:45
point and bickering and eventually like, turning on each
00:13:47
other. But no, just not part of the
00:13:50
story at all. Oh yeah, no, that sounds really
00:13:54
interesting. But none of those characters
00:13:56
come back at all beyond that early scene, no.
00:13:59
None of them. We occasionally reference that
00:14:01
they exist. The story is essentially not
00:14:03
about that. It instead pivots to being about
00:14:07
Bruce Willis as the Jackal, going through the very detailed
00:14:12
step by step process of how to break into another country and
00:14:17
build this like weapon and stage an assassination.
00:14:20
It it it it essentially tries to give you the villains
00:14:23
perspective on executing a Grand Master plan rather than just
00:14:27
showing you the heroes chasing him and then finding out what
00:14:29
his plan is at the end. Well, that's not a bad pitch
00:14:32
either, but I liked the earlier movie you pitched better too.
00:14:36
I liked the earlier one too. I wanted Key Largo in Helsinki
00:14:39
with the Russian mob. I just thought that was funnier.
00:14:41
And maybe you could say if the other day that Jackal didn't
00:14:46
exist, that the version they gave us is more unique.
00:14:48
But again, it's literally a remake of a movie that exists,
00:14:51
so we definitely could have added new plot elements if we
00:14:54
were going to be making another version.
00:14:56
But yeah, very strange. Maybe that's why the writer and
00:15:00
other film makers didn't want anything to do this.
00:15:01
Maybe the other versions are all about those Russian characters
00:15:04
and then this one was just like Nah first.
00:15:06
What they were like. But guys, what about the Russian
00:15:09
plot in Helsinki? And he's like the what?
00:15:12
No way, man. This is a movie about Bruce
00:15:14
Willis in disguises. That's the whole movie.
00:15:18
Easy turtle enough for the turtle club.
00:15:20
Dude straight up, he's doing master disguise level, like
00:15:24
number of and absurdity of disguises.
00:15:27
Like his entire plot revolves around to him having like four
00:15:31
or five persistent disguises and identities that he goes back and
00:15:35
forth between and they're so silly.
00:15:38
Like one of them. He looks like Guile from Street
00:15:40
Fighter with like the weird like flat top haircut.
00:15:44
What are they like a fat guy? Yeah, these are.
00:15:48
Is he doing like voices? Is this like like character
00:15:51
roles he's playing? Essentially, yeah.
00:15:54
I mean, they're not too over the top, but he tries to play it off
00:15:58
as like, these are real people that he is routinely assuming
00:16:03
the role of because he'll have different like, phases of his
00:16:06
plan in different locations. Like, for example, part of his
00:16:09
plan is that he wants to build a like fancy sniper rifle turret
00:16:16
gun that can like fire explosive rounds and he can control via
00:16:20
remote. And so he hires a character
00:16:22
played by Jack Black to like build it for him.
00:16:24
And anytime he interacts with Jack Black, he's in one of the
00:16:27
set disguises. And then we never we we see him
00:16:30
use different identities for like different parts of the
00:16:32
plant. Oh my God, no.
00:16:34
This is, this is this really is master of disguise.
00:16:37
It is. It's absolutely Dana Carvey's
00:16:40
master of disguise. Except slightly less silly.
00:16:44
Not even a lot less silly. What was that weapon you
00:16:49
described? A turret sniper rifle with
00:16:51
explosive rounds like. It's like a super high-powered
00:16:56
gun that you mount on like an arm, like something you would
00:17:00
mount on like top of like a like a truck in like a combat
00:17:03
scenario. And he just wants it so that he
00:17:06
can like, control it remotely and point it at something and
00:17:10
essentially just like blow it up, you know, with these super
00:17:13
high caliber rounds and like machine gunfire.
00:17:15
He's just going for overkill on this assassination he has
00:17:18
planned. Wait, so just for my
00:17:20
clarification here, Bruce Willis 'cause I'm looking at the poster
00:17:23
and it's he's advertised opposite Richard Gere.
00:17:27
So is Bruce Willis the bad guy? But he's the character we're
00:17:32
following. Is that the situation 'cause
00:17:34
he's the assassin here? Bruce Willis is the assassin
00:17:37
when the movie starts. I was wondering if this was some
00:17:40
sort of like undercover op and that he was secretly a good guy.
00:17:43
He is not. He is like legit just the
00:17:45
assassin and you follow him for legitimately like half the movie
00:17:49
and you're intercutting sort of evenly between what he's doing
00:17:53
and Richard Gere working with the FBI to track him down.
00:17:56
OK, wow. Because like you just saying
00:17:58
like he wants this turret gun that even that is just sounding
00:18:02
like that's like like doctor evil ish like.
00:18:07
It is because I think the only justification you're given is
00:18:10
that this is supposed to be a very public execution so that
00:18:14
people know that the Russian mafia, like, has power to flex
00:18:17
and it'll try to convince America to like back out of
00:18:20
Russia and stop trying to police them.
00:18:22
OK, sure. Yeah, I.
00:18:24
Mean So that's the that's the Bruce Willis half of the movie.
00:18:27
It's unbelievable how many of his scenes don't have other
00:18:31
characters present in them or have, like, no dialogue or in
00:18:34
some cases, have dialogue but with no conflict.
00:18:37
Like, you know how like, a scene in a movie is supposed to have
00:18:41
conflict? Yeah, Yeah.
00:18:44
I like any piece of dialogue in a movie should be about a
00:18:47
conflict of some kind. Bruce Willis has entire
00:18:49
conversations with people that just go so swimmingly.
00:18:52
Like, even the scene where the Russian mobster who we thought
00:18:55
was going to be part of the movie and never returns hires
00:18:57
him to do this hit. They do the angle where Bruce
00:19:01
Willis is like setting the terms.
00:19:02
He's saying, you know, I want half of my money up front and
00:19:05
half upon completion of the job. This is going to force me to,
00:19:09
like, basically go into hiding when I'm finished because it's
00:19:11
so high profile. So I want like $70 million.
00:19:14
I'm going to need access to all of these resources.
00:19:16
And you know what the Russian mobster guy says?
00:19:18
He says OK. And Bruce Willis is like, thanks
00:19:23
bro, I love you. Literally, Oh my God, Later.
00:19:26
No, no, no. But so close, as close as you
00:19:30
can get in a way that the movie doesn't realize how dumb it is.
00:19:33
Like later on, one of the aspects of Bruce Willis plan as
00:19:36
the Jackal is he needs fake IDs. And so we cut to him having
00:19:40
stolen somebody's ID and he brings it to a forger who's
00:19:43
going to like replace it with his photo and all this other
00:19:45
stuff. And they have this whole scene
00:19:48
where the forger shows up, and she's like, hey, I finished
00:19:50
making this for you. And he's like, oh, OK, this, you
00:19:52
did great work. And she tells him the price, and
00:19:55
he says, I'm going to give you even more than you asked for.
00:19:58
And then she goes, wow, that's nice.
00:19:59
And then he says, OK, see you later.
00:20:01
I hope your baby's doing well. That's a scene in the movie.
00:20:08
Now it's now it's kind of how do we keep comparing this other
00:20:10
movies, but now it's kind of giving like the room type
00:20:12
dialogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:20:14
Well, hi, Mark. That's that's basically where
00:20:17
Bruce Willis is half of the movie goes.
00:20:19
And I think it's the part that most shows the kind of like
00:20:22
ineptitude of how the movie is constructed.
00:20:24
Like, if you're going to have half of your story be a
00:20:27
character who barely speaks to anybody, is off and off on his
00:20:30
own, and is just doing a lot of logistical stuff, you need like
00:20:33
competent direction and dialogue to frame those parts, or else
00:20:36
you need to just not include them.
00:20:39
Like that scene with the forgery, We don't need a scene
00:20:42
for that at all. I can buy that super spy Bruce
00:20:45
Willis can fake an Idi. Don't.
00:20:47
I don't need justification for that part.
00:20:49
Especially if you clearly had nothing else to add to the scene
00:20:52
beyond that. Yeah, absolutely.
00:20:55
You're not. The audience is not asking those
00:20:57
questions. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:59
It baffles me. And and most of those egregious
00:21:02
parts are at the beginning. And so as the movie was like
00:21:04
carrying into the first act, I was like, this is awful.
00:21:07
I was completely on board with the people who thought the movie
00:21:11
was garbage because it starts in such a low point, but it does
00:21:15
once Richard Gere finally shows up, even out into a much more
00:21:18
like normal movie. Wow, so but it's but he's only
00:21:23
like what? Like halfway into the movie is
00:21:26
where you get his first appearance.
00:21:28
It's not that long, but it's too long.
00:21:30
Like the movie. I'll get into Richard Gere's
00:21:33
back story here in a second. But just structurally, we really
00:21:36
needed to open the movie with Richard Gere because we explain
00:21:39
as the movie goes on that he has this back story.
00:21:41
He has a connection to Bruce Willis, and we don't see him at
00:21:45
all for the first like 15 minutes.
00:21:47
And it results in a very, like, meandering opening where you're
00:21:51
not even sure who your POV character is for that half of
00:21:54
the story. And eventually he shows up and
00:21:57
you're like, where has this guy been?
00:21:58
This guy needed to be like opening scene on him.
00:22:02
And instead we just follow the FBI.
00:22:05
The only notable character on the FBI side is that Sidney
00:22:07
Poitier is in it as like, the high-ranking FBI dude and what
00:22:10
is apparently his final film role.
00:22:12
So that's interesting. Oh.
00:22:13
That yeah, that is interesting. But I mean, yeah, this almost, I
00:22:17
was just going to say this almost sounds like maybe in in
00:22:20
editing issue. Like I don't know if it's in
00:22:23
like this came in the editing or the script.
00:22:27
But yeah, that seems like such a layup to to frame this story.
00:22:31
Like especially like if Bruce Willis is like this super secret
00:22:37
assassin guy, I feel like his appearance is the one that you
00:22:39
delay. And then like you said, Richard
00:22:43
Gere is who you show from the beginning.
00:22:44
And that's how you frame the whole story as like, oh, we're
00:22:48
tracking this guy down. Like you build up to the reveal
00:22:51
of the Jackal, not the other way around.
00:22:54
I agree, I don't mind the general rhythm of showing so
00:22:58
much of what Bruce Willis is doing because it's fairly
00:23:00
complicated and does propel a lot of the movie because there's
00:23:03
not a lot of twists and turns in the FBI chasing him down.
00:23:07
It's not like The Fugitive or something where it's all about
00:23:09
the hunt, it's more so just what's he up to?
00:23:11
Like how is he going to pull off such a high profile
00:23:13
assassination? And I think if Richard Gere got
00:23:17
equal screen time in the opening like first act of the movie, you
00:23:21
could have been on to something. So I agree it's totally a pacing
00:23:24
problem. There's nothing wrong with this
00:23:25
on the page, it just is really sluggish in how the story
00:23:29
actually gets moving. Yeah, especially with like
00:23:32
unnecessary stuff like you're saying like.
00:23:35
I can't believe the scene with the Russian guy did not have any
00:23:38
sort of underlying tension where it's like, is Bruce Willis going
00:23:40
to ask for too much? And this off the rails Russian
00:23:44
mobster who just killed a man with an axe is maybe going to
00:23:48
have something to say about it. And instead he's like, Nah, man,
00:23:50
you do you. You're the best.
00:23:52
Yeah, He's like. That's super reasonable.
00:23:53
Thank you. That guy's super cool.
00:23:55
His name's the Jackal. Nobody does it though.
00:24:00
He's got a famous nickname and we've never heard of him.
00:24:05
But also the scene with like the fake ID too.
00:24:07
It's just like, how much innocuous detail do we need to
00:24:10
get into here with Bruce Willis? It's like, see those shoes?
00:24:13
He's I bet you're wondering where he got those shoes.
00:24:15
Let's follow him, the Payless. And let's follow him going
00:24:18
through the entire interaction of buying the shoes at the
00:24:20
Payless, making small talks, saying good day.
00:24:23
And then maybe the guy being like, do you want your receipt?
00:24:25
And him being like, yeah, I'll take the receipt.
00:24:27
And then he leaves. And then he kind of leaves and
00:24:29
he's like, I don't actually need the receipt.
00:24:30
And then he throws it out anyway and.
00:24:33
Then he says out loud, I was just doing that.
00:24:35
It would be nice because otherwise we might wonder why he
00:24:40
did that. Why did he do that exactly?
00:24:41
It's just like we can't leave the audience asking all these
00:24:44
questions. Again, I promise I'm getting to
00:24:46
the Richard Gere half because that'll help finish the story,
00:24:48
but Bruce Willis is killing me in this movie.
00:24:51
I like Bruce Willis. I want to put that out there
00:24:54
front page. I like Bruce Willis.
00:24:57
I know he doesn't act anymore, but I think he was a good actor
00:25:00
but he does not have effortless charisma on screen to the point
00:25:06
where you can put him in this role where he's like super muted
00:25:09
and not saying or doing anything.
00:25:11
It makes him come across as like inert and just not interesting.
00:25:15
Like, Bruce Willis can do a great performance if he has
00:25:18
dialogue and like characteristics, but they'd make
00:25:22
him this super intentionally flat character and then hinge
00:25:27
half the movie's runtime on scenes of him doing nothing.
00:25:33
Yeah, no, I I could see that not landing at all.
00:25:35
Like he's just like he's like resting heart rate is too low.
00:25:40
He's just. Like there's a scene part of his
00:25:45
montage at the beginning too. He goes to some fancy bank and
00:25:48
talks about transferring funds and then asks to go into a back
00:25:51
room so that he can use a computer to like, order the
00:25:54
parts he needs for this doomsday gun off the dark web or
00:25:58
something. And he starts talking to like a
00:26:01
robot voice instead of typing things in.
00:26:03
And then we get this dialogue scene where he's, they're trying
00:26:06
to show you that he knows about guns.
00:26:08
So he's like, I need something that's under this weight that
00:26:10
can deliver this high caliber of a round.
00:26:12
But then the other half of that conversation is literally like
00:26:15
the silly 90s robot voice. Like, you know, the bit from
00:26:19
like red versus blue where he's talking to the computer.
00:26:21
Yes, yes, it's that same voice. It's it's literally the like,
00:26:27
OK, Sir, this is what you need. And I'm like, we can't be
00:26:31
spending two minutes on this conversation with him and a
00:26:33
robot. Just make this a montage.
00:26:37
Yeah, yeah. You know, and again, this, I,
00:26:39
this feels like editing that feels like weird, like this
00:26:43
needed to be trimmed, like somebody needed to like tell the
00:26:48
director or whoever was making these choices.
00:26:52
It's like we don't need this or this needs to be shorter like
00:26:54
this. You need to move on from this.
00:26:56
This is not interesting. Especially when framed against a
00:27:00
character on the other side. This is me talking about Richard
00:27:03
Gere, finally, who needed more time to develop who he was and
00:27:07
what his relationship was to Bruce Willis.
00:27:10
So in case you're wondering why Richard Gere is on the cover for
00:27:13
this movie about Bruce Willis and his alone time, the reason
00:27:17
he factors into the story is that the FBI and the whatever
00:27:21
the Russian thing is, they're not KGB.
00:27:23
They call him something else. They're wondering how they're
00:27:25
going to track down the Jackal because they get word that a hit
00:27:27
has been placed on what they think is the FBI director.
00:27:30
So they're asking has anyone ever seen this guy and can
00:27:32
confirm his identity? There's only two people that
00:27:35
they know who are still alive that have any connection to the
00:27:38
Jackal. 1 is a woman named Isabella who lives in the states
00:27:42
somewhere but they don't know where.
00:27:44
The other is Richard Gere who is an incarcerated IRA terrorist
00:27:51
who is in America somewhere. You know, like the like the
00:27:56
conflict between like Ireland and the UK or like in England.
00:28:00
Yeah, everybody knows that. Everybody knows history.
00:28:04
This is very much a thing in 90s espionage movies.
00:28:06
There's a Jack Ryan movie that touches on this too.
00:28:08
It was essentially like violent conflict between Ireland and I
00:28:12
think just England at some point in the 90s because the land
00:28:17
dispute, I don't know. I don't know something about the
00:28:19
Crown. Uh huh, Uh huh.
00:28:21
But it was something that even though from the perspective of
00:28:24
people in the IRA, they were like at war, I think a lot of
00:28:27
them were just framed as like terrorists and and imprisoned.
00:28:29
And, you know, that's supposedly what happened to Richard Gere.
00:28:32
He in his mind was like, or he says he was like defending his
00:28:37
country, but because he was accused of being a terrorist and
00:28:40
like setting off a bomb or something, they just sent him to
00:28:42
prison in America. But he, they believe, could lead
00:28:45
them to the woman who knows how to identify the Jackal.
00:28:49
So it's kind of like a 2 steps removed connection.
00:28:52
That gets us to Richard Gere, who, if you're wondering, is
00:28:55
doing a very bad Irish accent. You know, I wasn't even thinking
00:28:59
about that, but I'm glad that it happened.
00:29:00
I'm glad that he is. It's not the worst I've ever
00:29:03
heard. It's not like cartoonish.
00:29:04
I think the worst is, oh gosh, I'm going to forget the name of
00:29:07
the movie, but there's a movie with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee
00:29:10
Jones where Tommy Lee Jones is like an IRA guy and he does the
00:29:13
worst Irish accent of all time. I think the movie is just called
00:29:15
Blow Up or something, I don't know.
00:29:18
Anyway, a side to side, Richard Gere tries to do the Irish
00:29:21
accent. He can kind of handle it so long
00:29:23
as he doesn't talk too loud. So his performance is very
00:29:25
whispery, but he bargains with Sidney Poitier and the FBI and
00:29:31
this Russian agent who they have with them and basically says,
00:29:34
like, I need you to let me out of here and I will accompany
00:29:37
you. Like I'm still incarcerated, but
00:29:39
I'm going to accompany you on this mission to go find this
00:29:41
woman because she and I like were a couple and I need to go
00:29:46
check in on her. And then I'll convince her to
00:29:48
tell you what she knows about the Jackal.
00:29:50
That's how we get Richard Gere into the movie.
00:29:52
Legitimately like 15 to 20 minutes in when we probably
00:29:55
should have opened the movie with how he got arrested would
00:29:57
be my best. Pitch Yeah.
00:30:00
You know, I wonder if it was just a case of, like, Bruce
00:30:02
Willis was the bigger star at the time.
00:30:05
And so they're just like, we need to have him on screen as
00:30:09
much as possible. Like that's like one of the only
00:30:13
justifications I can think of for like framing the story this
00:30:16
way. I did read.
00:30:17
I don't know if this is true, it just sounds like something
00:30:19
someone made-up, but supposedly they were both offered the other
00:30:22
part at one point and like both asked to play the opposite role
00:30:26
or something. He just traded like.
00:30:29
Supposedly. I mean, I don't know if there's
00:30:31
any truth to that at all, but maybe at one point in time it
00:30:34
was supposed to be Irish accent. Bruce Willis.
00:30:36
He was like, I don't want to do the accent.
00:30:38
I got to play the bad guy. But then he wound up doing like,
00:30:41
silly characters, too. He did do silly characters and
00:30:44
again with no charisma behind them at all because they don't
00:30:47
suit his acting range. Anyway, Long story short, Bruce
00:30:51
Willis makes me frustrated. But Richard Gere, for what
00:30:54
little he's given, does carry the other half of this movie.
00:30:58
His scenes are pretty good and you feel some connection to his
00:31:04
struggle because even though they don't really exonerate that
00:31:07
he clearly did a war crime or something to get sent to jail in
00:31:10
the 1st place, he still has feelings for this woman Isabella
00:31:13
and is trying to keep her safe. He clearly has some sort of beef
00:31:16
with Bruce Willis that goes a long way back, and he does form
00:31:19
the emotional core of the story when we're following his side of
00:31:22
it. Yeah, OK.
00:31:24
Once he's introduced, is it evenly weighted between the two
00:31:27
of them? I assume this leads to some kind
00:31:29
of like confrontation between the the these. 2 characters Once
00:31:33
Gear is in play there's a brief scene where he goes and finds
00:31:37
this woman Isabella who he was with and we later found out like
00:31:41
had a was going to have a child with but then they lost the baby
00:31:44
because she got shot by Bruce Willis.
00:31:45
There's a lot going on with the back story that you don't find
00:31:47
out until way too late. But he gets a scene with her
00:31:51
where he finds out that she remarried and is like living
00:31:54
happily somewhere else in the United States.
00:31:56
And he gets to have the kind of scene where like they have this
00:31:58
big embrace, but then he puts aside his feelings because he
00:32:01
knows that she'll be safe here and he just doesn't want to
00:32:04
interfere. We get a good guy Richard Gere
00:32:06
moment where he does not in fact try to steal back this now
00:32:09
married woman that he used to know.
00:32:12
We need a term for that in movies because it happens too
00:32:14
often. That happened in Soldier.
00:32:17
Like it. Did that's true?
00:32:18
We need it, yeah. We can't have like, a prop
00:32:20
husband who's just there to create distance between the
00:32:24
actual romantic pairing for the story.
00:32:26
Yeah, like it's like a pre built family that the main character
00:32:29
just come in, comes in and like steals by the end of the movie.
00:32:33
Very weird. You're right, that does happen a
00:32:34
lot, but Richard Gere doesn't do that.
00:32:36
He's a nice guy and we get what is probably supposed to be a
00:32:39
very emotional scene of him coming to terms with this.
00:32:41
But again, in the edit that we got, we met this guy like 5
00:32:45
minutes ago. So it does, it's misplaced.
00:32:47
We if we built to that, that could have been pretty good.
00:32:51
It's acted well, but you just met these two and so you have no
00:32:55
reason to care about what they're doing, and you're still
00:32:57
missing critical lore that you don't get until like the third
00:33:00
act of the movie. Yeah, yeah, that's a really
00:33:04
weird place to put a scene like that so early on, like before
00:33:07
you know, the back story between the two of them or know him at
00:33:10
all. Really.
00:33:11
Like that's, that's very odd. Yeah, because to restate, I know
00:33:14
I'm I'm all over the place because the movie is all over
00:33:16
the place. Richard Gere was working in
00:33:19
Ireland doing IRA stuff with his then girlfriend Isabella, who
00:33:22
was pregnant. Bruce Willis was, I think,
00:33:25
working a job with them that he was hired on, but he set them up
00:33:28
to be captured by the police. In doing so, he got Isabella
00:33:31
shot, who then miscarried, and he got Richard Gere sent to
00:33:34
prison and then he escaped. And that's why there's beef
00:33:37
between the two for when they finally meet, I think an hour
00:33:40
into the movie. Oh, OK, so Bruce Willis wasn't
00:33:43
the one who shot her. He.
00:33:45
I don't. Remember, indirectly, I don't
00:33:48
think they make it clear, but he's definitely, in Richard
00:33:50
Gere's mind, responsible for what happened to both of them.
00:33:53
And so that's why there's this revenge element to the story.
00:33:57
And that's something they question about Richard Gere.
00:33:59
Are they like, are you here to help us or are you here to get
00:34:01
your own revenge? Oh yeah, yeah, again, why are we
00:34:05
not like this is? This is the movie.
00:34:07
I can't believe how much time we spend on Bruce Willis's acting
00:34:10
class when we should be following the plot of the movie.
00:34:17
Like Oh my gosh, yeah, his acting class.
00:34:20
He charges too much for it and then doesn't act.
00:34:24
He doesn't. It's unbelievable.
00:34:25
I mean, he the most interesting thing that Bruce Willis does in
00:34:28
his many, many disguises is that at one point he's trying to make
00:34:32
a connection with someone who works in the capital in
00:34:34
Washington because that's where the assassination's going to
00:34:36
take place. And so he goes into one of his
00:34:41
disguises, goes into a gay bar in DC and like picks up this
00:34:46
dude and just to get his home address and business card, but
00:34:49
actually like kisses this man. And then later in the movie, the
00:34:54
only reason he did that was so that he could like, do his final
00:34:58
preparations at this guy's house.
00:35:00
But it's like a weird scene in the sense that I kept waiting
00:35:02
for that shoe to drop and the whole thing to turn like really
00:35:04
homophobic. And it actually doesn't to the
00:35:07
point where Bruce Willis characters almost like just like
00:35:09
actually gay coded. Like they do nothing to
00:35:12
counteract that impression. It's like he could have done
00:35:15
this with a woman who works in DC.
00:35:17
But no, we just get this scene of him seducing a man at a gay
00:35:20
club and then he does later kill that guy, but it's just because
00:35:24
he doesn't. The guy starts to figure out
00:35:25
that something's up with him. It's not like a weird like I'm
00:35:28
not actually gay. And then he shoots him.
00:35:30
Yeah, yeah, I was just wasn't, you were like, well, I did kill
00:35:33
him, I mean, but. He did murder the guy also
00:35:36
pretty bad I guess. And surprisingly, again, IMDb
00:35:41
trivia not to be trusted. Supposedly, Bruce Willis
00:35:44
actually asked them to change details of that scene so that it
00:35:47
was more clear that he killed the guy to maintain his cover,
00:35:50
and not just because the guy was gay.
00:35:52
Oh, he didn't want it to be misinterpreted as like,
00:35:57
homophobic. I think, yeah, the implication
00:35:59
was to not create this, like, weird loose end where Bruce
00:36:02
Willis had to kind of take revenge on that guy.
00:36:04
It was just, and then a news thing came on and the guy
00:36:07
started to connect the dots. And so Bruce always had to kill
00:36:09
him, which I was like, you know what?
00:36:10
For a 1997 that's so tasteful, you almost earned a whole point
00:36:14
back for that. I I was going to say too real
00:36:17
quick. Speaking of the IMDb for the
00:36:19
Jackal, like IMDb does this thing where it, it like kind of
00:36:22
charts things that are trending in terms of popularity.
00:36:26
And for some reason the Jackal is trending pretty high right
00:36:29
now. I assume it's because a lot of
00:36:32
Bruce Willis movies are because there's been a lot of news about
00:36:35
him recently and like his issues with his dementia and like not
00:36:39
acting anymore. But yeah, whatever it's worth.
00:36:43
Like other people are looking at the Jackal IMDb for some reason.
00:36:47
Well, it's because it's a perfect Sunday afternoon movie.
00:36:50
You know, if you just want a movie that you don't have to
00:36:53
remember the details of or really follow the plot of
00:36:55
because it's fairly straightforward.
00:36:57
The Jackal. Yeah, the Jackal.
00:37:01
I've barely, I really, I've talked about this for like 35
00:37:04
minutes. I have not gotten into the
00:37:05
actual beats of the chase at all, and I might even leave a
00:37:08
lot of that out in case people want to go watch a perfectly
00:37:10
good Sunday afternoon movie. But my beef with the story is
00:37:14
clear. It's poorly paced.
00:37:17
It does not give enough time to Richard Gere and gives us far
00:37:20
too much time following. The misadventures of Bruce
00:37:23
Willis. Yeah.
00:37:24
I mean, that seems like the pros and cons of the movie.
00:37:28
Like, I guess, does it lead to any kind of satisfying
00:37:32
conclusion? Like, does Bruce Willis die?
00:37:34
Does he get, I don't know, comeuppance for being a a Jackal
00:37:38
man? For being a bad actor yeah.
00:37:42
The most interesting beats. This is more hit spoiler heavy
00:37:46
so skip ahead if you want to not get any spoilers about the
00:37:49
Jackal. The most interesting beat in the
00:37:51
movie to me is like the bottom of the second act because after
00:37:54
Richard Gere realizes that his former love is with someone else
00:37:58
and he needs to move on, he starts to sort of develop a
00:38:02
romantic interest in the Russian F not FBI person lady who is on
00:38:08
their team named Valentina. They have a couple of scenes
00:38:11
throughout the story that show that they have some layer of
00:38:13
connection. And then in the second act of
00:38:16
the movie, Bruce Willis just kills her in a way that I was
00:38:19
genuinely not expecting because it's a very drawn out sequence
00:38:22
of him taking out these other like, FBI dudes, and you assume
00:38:25
she's going to get away. And then she just does not,
00:38:27
which was actually an interesting turn.
00:38:30
Wow, so this guy really keeps killing or injuring Richard
00:38:35
Gibbs love interests. That's exactly what the point of
00:38:38
that is. Like no joke, they the whole
00:38:41
movie. You could argue some of this is
00:38:43
kind of just boring or an interesting, but it does have
00:38:45
character arcs and like proper foreshadowing and setups and pay
00:38:48
offs. There's a point in the middle of
00:38:50
the story where Richard Gere is talking about how the jackals
00:38:53
like untraceable. He's like the best assassin
00:38:55
ever. But Valentina says like people
00:38:58
like him always make one mistake.
00:39:00
And she points to Richard Gere saying like you must have made a
00:39:02
mistake. That's how you ended up in jail.
00:39:04
And it ends up being that Bruce Willis does give a clue to her
00:39:09
after he shoots her because she's bleeding out.
00:39:13
And it's actually a very, like, upsetting scene where Bruce
00:39:15
Willis is very kind of clinically saying, like, well,
00:39:18
based on the color of your blood, I think you have about 20
00:39:20
minutes left. It appears to have hit your
00:39:21
liver. If you put pressure on it,
00:39:24
you'll last longer. If you want to go quick, you
00:39:25
better let go. And it's very upsetting.
00:39:27
It's like, good heat on. Bruce Willis is the villain.
00:39:30
But then he tells her to tell Richard Gere exactly what you
00:39:33
just said, which is like tell Declan he can never protect his
00:39:37
women. Which is a weird line, but it is
00:39:40
relevant. What like relevant?
00:39:44
How to to like does she tell him this?
00:39:47
Like does this reveal something to him?
00:39:49
This is where I get back into criticism mode because this
00:39:51
scene is actually very upsetting and implies that she's going to
00:39:53
slowly bleed out like all alone before anyone can reach her.
00:39:57
And that's very sad. But then you find out that she
00:39:59
survived just long enough for Richard Gere to catch up and
00:40:01
like hear her dying words. And she does repeat this to him
00:40:04
and he clues in. Based on this and some other
00:40:07
information you have by now that they have the wrong target in
00:40:11
mind for the assassination. The whole time they thought that
00:40:14
he was going after the director of the FBI and then Declan
00:40:18
Richard Gere pieces together that he's actually trying to
00:40:21
kill the first lady of the US. Because of the can't protect his
00:40:25
women line, that's what. That's it.
00:40:28
It's loose, but it's like that and a couple of other pieces of
00:40:31
info where he's just curious about some other stuff that
00:40:35
Bruce Willis has been doing. He's basically like, why would
00:40:38
he set up this assassination this way if he's going after
00:40:40
this guy and make it so obvious that we have time to like
00:40:43
prepare to protect the FBI director.
00:40:45
And then they eventually correctly find out that he it
00:40:47
was all a red herring and he's trying to kill the first lady at
00:40:50
this like, public speech that she's giving.
00:40:53
So there was a point to all of that.
00:40:55
There was a point to having Bruce Willis get Richard Gere's
00:40:58
original girlfriend shot, get his second girlfriend killed,
00:41:02
talk about how he can't protect the women in his life.
00:41:04
It's all kind of awkward. But it is like proper film
00:41:07
storytelling structure, you know?
00:41:10
Sure. Yeah, Yeah.
00:41:11
That's yeah. That's fair, perfectly fine.
00:41:13
And then in the end, we get the third act action scene is that
00:41:19
they do successfully foil his assassination attempt.
00:41:22
Bruce Willis runs away into the, like, subway system in
00:41:26
Washington and it ends up being just Richard Gere chasing after
00:41:29
him. They have this lengthy scene
00:41:31
where they're like trekking through the subway tunnels.
00:41:34
And then at the end, Bruce Willis has the advantage.
00:41:37
He's going to kill Richard Gere. But then Isabella shows up and
00:41:40
she stops him and she shoots Bruce Willis.
00:41:42
So we get a fun inversion where one of the women that he hurt in
00:41:46
the 1st place is the one who ultimately stops his plan.
00:41:49
Does he die? Does she kill him?
00:41:51
There's 2 beats to this and once again I keep trying to give the
00:41:53
movie credit before I tear it down.
00:41:55
But this is where he should die. And instead, he fakes that he's
00:42:00
already dead and then tries to do like, the last chance thing
00:42:04
to shoot Isabella again. And then Richard Gere has to
00:42:07
grab the gun and shoot him, which in their minds, like,
00:42:10
writing was probably like, well, this pays off what we just said.
00:42:12
Richard Gere finally protected one of the women that he loves.
00:42:15
But I do think it's like a more interesting ending if Isabella
00:42:18
just actually killed him, You know, like, it almost takes
00:42:22
away. It's like the movie was afraid
00:42:24
they gave a woman too much agency.
00:42:26
And so they were like, no, no, no, no.
00:42:27
This needs to be about Richard Gere's insecurities.
00:42:31
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.
00:42:33
I mean, that's like, that seems like, yeah, like you said, they
00:42:38
kind of wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
00:42:40
They're like, it's like you just got to do one of those things
00:42:43
like. Pick one.
00:42:43
Agree and really the first one was the right one.
00:42:45
I think in multiple cases they had interesting plot choices and
00:42:48
then undermined them with like too much follow up.
00:42:52
But again, it is a perfectly normal movie.
00:42:55
I think the movies I think it was really bad are the ones with
00:42:58
like, nonsense plots and just missing components for telling a
00:43:02
complete story. And The Jackal is a perfectly
00:43:05
normal ass movie. It tells a complete story.
00:43:08
There's an arc for the characters.
00:43:09
The ending ending for Richard Gere is that throughout the
00:43:13
movie, he's had a minor rapport with Sidney Poitier, who's like,
00:43:15
the, you know, beleaguered old FBI guy.
00:43:19
And at the end of the movie, Sidney Poitier is out talking
00:43:22
with him because they're at, like, a cemetery where they just
00:43:24
buried Valentina. And he basically intentionally
00:43:29
let's Richard Gere escape because he's like, you know, I
00:43:32
said, I was going to try to get you freed from prison for
00:43:34
helping us with all this, but I wasn't able to.
00:43:36
But I'm going to go get us a coffee.
00:43:39
I'll be back in, say, 30 minutes.
00:43:41
And then he's like, oh, I get it.
00:43:42
And then the end of the movie is just, Richard, you're like,
00:43:44
leaving to, like, go on the run on his own, which is fine.
00:43:48
It's not. There's some set up for this.
00:43:51
Again, the movie doesn't give you nothing.
00:43:52
This is properly set up, but still leaves you with this
00:43:55
feeling of just like, OK, yeah, I guess.
00:43:58
Yeah, that was nice. The ending of shot is nice.
00:44:02
We often talk about on the show movies ending like endings
00:44:05
playing out for too long or too short.
00:44:07
This is like right in the middle.
00:44:08
We get that dialogue between them and then the last shot of
00:44:10
the movie is we see Sidney Poitier walking over to get
00:44:14
their coffee and Richard Gere heading off in the other
00:44:16
direction. And the camera just starts to
00:44:17
pull back and we see like the DC skyline as he kind of just
00:44:21
recedes into the distance. It's like the right amount of
00:44:23
time to absorb the ending. And then we get more cool trip
00:44:27
hop music for Massive Attack to close this out.
00:44:29
So we kind of, we end on a good note.
00:44:31
Oh, that is good. Was there any more of that music
00:44:34
throughout the rest of the film, or is it just the beginning of
00:44:35
the ad? Not specifically Massive Attack
00:44:38
music, but tons of weird weird music.
00:44:40
Like the movie is trying really hard to 90s it up the whole
00:44:44
time. And I don't I can't even
00:44:46
pinpoint like who the artists were for these other tracks, but
00:44:48
it's a ton of really random very like of the time sounds that
00:44:54
none of which are still popular. So it's really a time capsule of
00:44:57
the soundtrack. That's OK, I'm OK with that.
00:45:01
Yeah, that that sounds fun. That sounds like one of the most
00:45:03
fun elements of the whole movie, actually, is the music.
00:45:07
There's I actually read a list because I was thinking about
00:45:09
this throughout, that they clearly wanted to 90s up the
00:45:11
movie and Bruce Willis does make use of several pieces of 90s
00:45:15
specific text that the guy in the 70s one definitely wouldn't
00:45:19
have had access to. For example, at one point he has
00:45:22
to get some information on a computer, so he goes to a cyber
00:45:24
cafe. OK, cool, cool.
00:45:29
He has a whole plan at one point that involves sneaking into a
00:45:33
house, grabbing a stereo, and setting a timer on the stereo to
00:45:37
start blaring loud music to distract people.
00:45:40
Yeah, stereos, very 90s. The whole pay off to his
00:45:43
interaction with Jack Black is that his big ass gun has like an
00:45:47
auto targeting system and he has to like manually control it from
00:45:52
a distance with like a joystick and a button.
00:45:54
And there's a lot of like repetition to show you that he
00:45:56
has to hit the big button and that's what's going to make the
00:45:58
gun go off. All very like movie tech heavy
00:46:03
stuff That really feels like we need to prove that this is like
00:46:06
the new version of the Jackal, the definitive version of the
00:46:09
Jackal. The Jackal.
00:46:13
Yeah, we don't need the day of. It's the life of the Jackal
00:46:16
every day. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, we, we show
00:46:20
him go home from the Payless. He watches friends.
00:46:22
It's. Watches friends, he says out
00:46:24
loud, in case we're confused. I've seen this one I.
00:46:27
Think Bruce Wilson was on an episode of Friends if I'm not.
00:46:30
He was. That's true.
00:46:31
That's the joke at the end of the movie is that it's him.
00:46:33
But he's like. Just another disguise for the
00:46:36
Jackal, like one of his many identities is movie star Bruce.
00:46:42
Willis Well, that's kind of like, what was that, Ocean's 12?
00:46:46
Where do they do that with? Oh, and Julia.
00:46:50
Roberts, it's Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts.
00:46:52
Yeah. Oh, shoot.
00:46:54
Well, prophetic anyway. That's the Jackal bit of a kind
00:47:01
of So what ending to this part of the review.
00:47:03
But that's what the movie is, so that's what it gets.
00:47:07
You know, I that was kind of my concern.
00:47:10
After I picked it I was like what the hell is this?
00:47:13
What are? We.
00:47:15
The Jackal. I really think you're gonna like
00:47:17
this movie. The Jackal turns off.
00:47:18
Like this guy's not gonna like the Jackal.
00:47:22
You know, if you just hadn't seen the game, OK, if you hadn't
00:47:24
seen the game, that would have. Been a great pick, you would be
00:47:26
getting such high marks for the game right now.
00:47:28
It's really unfair that I had already seen.
00:47:31
It it's OK, I got a pick for this week and I got a whole
00:47:33
backup list, so we're. Whole backup list far more.
00:47:36
Prepared. Yeah.
00:47:38
No more jackals. No more.
00:47:40
But again, before anyone gets the wrong idea by me mercilessly
00:47:44
mocking this movie for about 47 minutes, it's pretty OK.
00:47:48
It sounds like it. It sounds like yeah, I like I, I
00:47:52
feel like I wouldn't mind watching no.
00:47:55
Nobody would mind. That's the take away.
00:47:57
It's a warmer movie. If it's on a If you're on a
00:48:00
plane and it's somehow 1997 and they're trying to show you The
00:48:03
Jackal, watch The Jackal. Yeah, yeah, if you ever find
00:48:06
yourself in that situation. You'll completely forget about
00:48:08
the movie. Like if you're like having an
00:48:10
insomnia about and you just need to fall asleep with the TV on,
00:48:13
Boom. The Jackal, 1997.
00:48:15
That's yeah, exactly. That's that's what they should
00:48:18
put on the cover. Night of the Jackal and it's
00:48:21
just him going back. Oh, OK, that's fine.
00:48:27
Yeah, could be worse. Nothing wrong with The Jackal
00:48:29
other than all those things I mentioned, and that'll do it.
00:48:33
So we're going to head into our intermission and then when we
00:48:35
return, Frank, you're going to walk us through, is it 1991's
00:48:38
Doc Hollywood? Yep.
00:48:44
I hate that that's your thing on the show.
00:48:46
This is the way it responses. All right.
00:48:58
Back from the break. Frank, we hand things over to
00:49:00
you now for your review of 1991's Doc Hollywood.
00:49:04
First question, is it from 1991 or am I misremembering?
00:49:08
No, it is. It is from 1991.
00:49:11
Awesome. What do you want to know?
00:49:15
Next question. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
00:49:17
yeah. What's it?
00:49:18
What's it about? Who's it?
00:49:19
No, I should probably re explain for anyone who didn't catch the
00:49:23
end of our previous episode why I selected Doc Hollywood.
00:49:26
I saw this film at my local library in the movie section and
00:49:30
I was just looking at the back cover out of curiosity.
00:49:32
And for some reason my wife took one look at it and just gave
00:49:35
this absolute look of disgust because I think in her mind, she
00:49:38
she flagged this as some sort of problematic 90s movie.
00:49:41
And I was like, yeah, well, I know who's someone who can
00:49:44
check. I mean, realistically it's,
00:49:49
it's, it just looks like a kind of interesting, relaxing little
00:49:54
comedy movie. You know, nothing too
00:49:56
challenging. I gave you deep cover last time,
00:49:57
which sounds like a really serious movie and I thought this
00:50:00
would be a nice break. Oh yeah, this was this was a
00:50:03
swing in a completely different direction and not problematic.
00:50:06
I don't think that like I could see how it would read that way
00:50:09
from like the cover. There was something on the back
00:50:12
cover like a pull quote. That was something Michael J Fox
00:50:14
said in the movie that just made the whole thing read.
00:50:16
Is very, like, lame. And I think she just saw that.
00:50:19
But I had a feeling it wouldn't be that bad.
00:50:21
I mean, Michael J Fox, I don't think I've seen him in anything
00:50:24
outside of his Back to the Future roles, but I had a
00:50:27
feeling this might be better than than she maybe guessed.
00:50:31
Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:31
Totally. Why don't we?
00:50:34
I think I said that the basic premise of the movie is a lot
00:50:36
like Pixar's Cars, was my impression.
00:50:38
Did did that end up being the case that the movie is basically
00:50:42
Michael J Fox does Lightning McQueen?
00:50:44
So it's funny to bring that up because first of all, there's a
00:50:47
section on the Wikipedia page for this movie that just says
00:50:52
like comparison to cars. That's.
00:50:56
Really funny. It's like because I guess almost
00:51:01
beat for beat, it's the same story, but also the way that I
00:51:05
would pitch this movie is like, you know that like meme from the
00:51:10
office where it's like, tell us the difference between these two
00:51:13
photos and it's the same photo. It would be this movie and
00:51:19
northern exposure because it is literally northern exposure.
00:51:24
It's maybe also literally cars, but it is like.
00:51:26
OK, see now for for the folks at home, Northern Exposure.
00:51:30
If we were doing forgotten 90s television series, I would spend
00:51:33
every episode talking about Northern Exposure.
00:51:36
Nobody talks about it. I don't think it's easily
00:51:38
streaming anywhere currently. It's awesome though, and it's
00:51:42
possibly the most underrated TV show of my lifetime.
00:51:45
Yeah, no, it's a good show. I mean, I think I've only seen
00:51:47
the first season, but you've told me a lot about it as well.
00:51:51
But I mean, I even saw reviews of this movie comparing it to
00:51:55
that show because they came out right around the same time.
00:51:59
I I think it was either like like within like 3 months of
00:52:04
each other maybe. And it's a.
00:52:06
Trending idea. Yeah, it's the same story.
00:52:08
It's the same exact thing. So so.
00:52:10
Let me see if I can tell you this story because I haven't
00:52:12
seen Doc Hollywood, but I've seen those other two things, so
00:52:14
I'm going to guess Michael J Fox is a doctor.
00:52:19
How am I doing? He's.
00:52:21
Actually a Hollywood. Unfortunately so.
00:52:25
His name is Doc. He lives in Hollywood, no.
00:52:28
No, no, you're right. He is a doctor.
00:52:30
OK, he's a Doctor Who's building a time machine.
00:52:34
No, I'm going to assume he is trying to he he's a doctor from
00:52:39
Hollywood who ends up having to go be a doctor in some podunk
00:52:43
town and he doesn't like it and he doesn't fit in and he
00:52:47
complaints about home. But then eventually he like
00:52:50
learns the, you know, kind of down to earth community spirit
00:52:53
of the whole place and like stays forever.
00:52:56
Yeah, you got it. But also, I mean, little, little
00:53:01
just notes. He's not from Hollywood.
00:53:05
That's I guess like. Insane.
00:53:08
How'd they get to that title? Well, so he's on his way to
00:53:12
Hollywood and this like in terms of the the like actual narrative
00:53:16
is a little odd in a way, because he's like the film opens
00:53:22
and he's doing doctor stuff and it's actually a really cool
00:53:25
shot. The opening shot is like this
00:53:27
tracking shot that kind of like follows through this like busy
00:53:30
hospital and then it lands on Michael J Fox.
00:53:33
And then we kind of get a reverse tracking at like as we
00:53:36
follow him back through that same space.
00:53:38
OK, so I'm like right away. I'm like, oh all right, cool,
00:53:41
good camera. Moves like direction, yeah.
00:53:43
Totally. But he's like doing his doctor
00:53:46
stuff and then like through some, you know, expositional
00:53:48
dialogue while he's talking to his other people there.
00:53:50
He's moving to Hollywood for a job interview.
00:53:56
So he doesn't have the job yet, but he's like going to Hollywood
00:54:01
to be like a cosmetic surgeon and like the people that he's
00:54:03
working with are like basically like you're selling out, you
00:54:07
know, like you're not like going to be a real doctor anymore.
00:54:12
You're just going to be like a rich plastic surgeon and do
00:54:14
these kind of he's. Moving, even though he doesn't
00:54:17
know he has the job yet. Yes, that's exactly what I
00:54:20
thought too. I was like, why is this the
00:54:22
setup? Why are you?
00:54:24
Are you dumb, Michael J Fox? Like, are you stupid?
00:54:29
Yeah. And he's like moving in.
00:54:30
Like he has this sports car because that's kind of like his
00:54:32
character, you know? And it's like this tiny little
00:54:36
convertible. And I'm like, you didn't even
00:54:37
move with stuff Like, what are you?
00:54:39
Where are you going to go? Like.
00:54:41
This doesn't. This part doesn't make sense,
00:54:43
but I feel like it's. Over thought premise it just.
00:54:49
It led to like kind of a small beat near the end of the film,
00:54:53
but it almost seemed like all of that seemed kind of unnecessary.
00:54:57
But I don't know. I mean, this was another book
00:55:00
movie. It was adapted.
00:55:02
To was it? Yeah.
00:55:04
What was time to book? Did you figure it out before the
00:55:06
movie said? I think it was another one where
00:55:09
it's set it in the opening credits, so I didn't.
00:55:13
Just take the fun out. Yeah, I know, I know.
00:55:15
It didn't even give me the chance to to guess if it was a
00:55:18
book adaptation or not. I might not have though, because
00:55:21
of it's so by the numbers in terms of like it's, you know,
00:55:26
storytelling. Yeah.
00:55:28
So I don't know. I don't know if there there was
00:55:30
that was more of a thing in the book or whatever, but that that
00:55:32
was just an odd kind of little setup to me that he was honest
00:55:35
that he didn't have this job yet.
00:55:37
So whatever. I guess it's to maybe they just
00:55:40
were like, well this way he'll have the option to live in where
00:55:45
does where does he end up instead?
00:55:48
Podunk. I don't know like.
00:55:50
Podunk, What state is he in? It's, it's some like southern
00:55:57
state. It doesn't matter.
00:55:58
It's it's it's like a, it's. Like New York, NY, it's just PO
00:56:01
dunk, PO dunk. Yeah, who cares?
00:56:04
The Woods. What, like he's living with the
00:56:08
Keeblers? Yeah.
00:56:10
Yeah, Michael J Fox is short, by the way, speaking to Keebler
00:56:12
Elves, he. Oh my goodness, hot take.
00:56:16
It's just it stood out right away.
00:56:17
I mean, like, he's a great actor.
00:56:19
He's very charismatic. He carries a lot of this movie.
00:56:21
But it's almost like, because I'm like you, I haven't seen him
00:56:24
in a lot outside of Back to the Future.
00:56:28
I mean, I know him and Bruce Willis actually both were like
00:56:32
successful like sitcom actors, but I haven't really watched
00:56:35
either of their shows. That's a good point.
00:56:36
They had a similar trajectory because I I know from reading
00:56:39
trivia that Bruce Willis was still making his TV show
00:56:42
Moonlighting when they filmed Die Hard, which was his movie
00:56:44
breakout and he had to basically shoot the TV show during the
00:56:48
daytime and then film for the movie at night.
00:56:50
And Michael J Fox did the same thing with Back to the Future.
00:56:52
He was so bent on making sure he could get his film career going
00:56:56
that he basically worked like 2-2 different production jobs
00:56:59
simultaneously. Yeah, Yeah, it's true.
00:57:01
Yeah. That seems really difficult.
00:57:03
I mean, for Bruce Willis, it's more so because, like, for
00:57:06
Michael J Fox, Back to the Future, he's far more comedic
00:57:10
than Die Hard. I mean, Bruce Willis is funny in
00:57:13
Die Hard, but he's still an action hero, so.
00:57:16
And then from there he went on to only take certain kinds of
00:57:19
roles for the most part, like Jackal, Right?
00:57:21
Exactly. Yeah, but it's almost harder for
00:57:23
me to picture him in a traditional sitcom.
00:57:27
I actually do want to go back and watch his show at some
00:57:29
point, at least some of it, just to kind of get a sense of what
00:57:32
that was for him, for sure. But anyway, Michael Fox is
00:57:36
short, so. Anyway, the most important thing
00:57:43
here? He ripped off Lightning McQueen
00:57:46
and he's short as hell. He just just stood out to me,
00:57:50
you know, cuz it's like you take like it's like people talk about
00:57:53
it with like Tom Cruise that he's always like standing on
00:57:56
apple boxes or something to make him look taller in scenes.
00:57:58
They don't do that with Michael J Fox and like for for it just
00:58:01
fit better. I think because he's he's like
00:58:04
young and like in back to the future.
00:58:07
It like didn't you know, it made more sense, I guess.
00:58:11
Well. He's a high school kid when Back
00:58:13
to the Future starts. Yeah, so I'm short shaming right
00:58:16
now, but I was just like. So many people just reached up
00:58:22
way above their heads to turn off this contact.
00:58:28
If they could reach that switch, they would be.
00:58:30
That'd be so bad so. He's to bring it back to Michael
00:58:41
J Fox. He is good.
00:58:43
He carries this movie really, because it's like I was saying
00:58:46
before, it's pretty by the numbers.
00:58:48
And you nailed the plot, essentially.
00:58:50
I think the part where people compare it a lot to the movie
00:58:53
Cars is because he's on his way from, I don't even know if they
00:58:58
say where he starts, but he's on his way to Hollywood and he is
00:59:01
driving through this rural area and he, yeah, I don't know, He's
00:59:06
like fussing with the radio or something.
00:59:07
And then there's somebody in the road and he, like, has to swerve
00:59:09
off the road and he crashes and he breaks somebody's fence.
00:59:12
Like he runs it over with his car and it's like turns out to
00:59:17
be like the judge of this like small town.
00:59:20
So the judge like sentences him to community service in this
00:59:25
town as like the town's doctor. And that's how he gets stuck.
00:59:29
He doesn't have to fix the fence.
00:59:31
No, I think he like, he's trying to like talk his way out of it
00:59:34
at the beginning and he's like, Oh, my insurance company will
00:59:36
take care of the fence or whatever.
00:59:39
And he's like, I just got to get out of here.
00:59:41
But like now his car is damaged, so he's got to get his car fixed
00:59:44
like before he can leave. And you know, so no, it's not
00:59:47
that he has to rebuild the fence.
00:59:48
It has to be a doctor in town which.
00:59:51
Classic. Got it.
00:59:52
It'd be it'd be really unfortunate if he wasn't a
00:59:54
doctor and that was the community service he got
00:59:56
assigned just. Figure it out I guess.
01:00:00
Good luck. Damn it, Jim, I'm a fence
01:00:02
builder, not a doctor. Yeah, exactly.
01:00:07
Yeah, So yeah, I mean, it's just like from there it's it's just
01:00:12
his big city vibes being at odds with this, like small town, you
01:00:17
know, he has he develops a romantic interest with Julie
01:00:21
Warner. Woody Harrelson is in the movie
01:00:24
and. Oh, interesting.
01:00:26
He is actually the best part of the movie.
01:00:29
He's hilarious. Like, oh, OK.
01:00:32
They do a lot, I think, with his character to kind of subvert the
01:00:37
trope of his character because it's basically like Michael J
01:00:43
Fox immediately falls for Julie Warner.
01:00:47
And it's, again, so simple. This is this is the main thing
01:00:51
where I was like, this is just Northern exposure again, because
01:00:53
it's like he's the town doctor now and you'll have to help me.
01:00:57
I don't remember the name of the character, but the romantic
01:00:59
history, romantic interest in that TV show where she's like a
01:01:02
helicopter pilot. Oh, yeah.
01:01:03
Yeah. Maggie.
01:01:04
Yes, yes, Julie Warner is the ambulance driver.
01:01:09
So like they like that is. Similar.
01:01:13
Yeah, it's similar, but like, it's the same thing where like,
01:01:15
he kind of flirts with her right away and then, you know, she
01:01:17
kind of shuts him down. And then they kind of have this,
01:01:19
like, antagonistic relationship where he's interested in her,
01:01:23
but they're forced to work together.
01:01:25
And, you know, she doesn't want any part of that.
01:01:27
But then Woody Harrelson is like who she is dating, you know, so
01:01:32
he's kind of like who they put Michael J Fox at odds with.
01:01:36
And you think that he's going to be this like kind of small town
01:01:40
bully type character because that's kind of the role the
01:01:43
story slots him into. But then he's he's like not at
01:01:46
all. He's like really great.
01:01:48
Like he's like, there's like a few scenes where it's just they,
01:01:56
they go out of their way. Like it's like they know that
01:01:58
that's kind of almost what you're expecting him to be.
01:02:01
And they like subvert that. Like this jumps ahead a bit, you
01:02:04
know, But near the end or the middle, I guess, where it's like
01:02:07
Woody Harrison kind of realizes that she's more interested in
01:02:10
Michael J Fox. And he kind of saw them kissing.
01:02:12
Like he shows up at the cabin again, just like Northern
01:02:16
Exposure. They put him in this cabin that
01:02:18
he has all this trouble with. He doesn't like living there.
01:02:20
That is the same. Yeah, it's just the same.
01:02:23
And he shows up there and Michael J Fox thinks he's there
01:02:25
to, like, fight him. So he, like, tries to, like,
01:02:28
pull out a weapon. And Woody Harrelson's just like,
01:02:31
what are you doing? It's.
01:02:34
Just like I'm not here. To fight you.
01:02:36
What are you talking about? I'm just here to talk.
01:02:39
So it's just great. And his performance is great.
01:02:42
There's also this other really funny scene where it's like
01:02:44
they're having a little town festival or whatever that this
01:02:48
town does. And like, you know, since just
01:02:51
like amazing at doing like the carnival games where you're
01:02:54
like, shooting stuff with like little pellets.
01:02:57
Oh yeah. He's just like shooting like
01:03:00
behind his back and not looking and like over his shoulder and
01:03:02
he's like hitting every shot. And I'm like, this is so funny.
01:03:04
What an unnecessary thing to add into this movie.
01:03:07
But like. Just like.
01:03:09
Add so much to like Woody Harrelson and him being like
01:03:12
charismatic in this role. I mean, that's perfect side
01:03:16
character building for a comedy. It's so effective to just like
01:03:20
the movies arc is not to be especially dramatic, so you can
01:03:24
kind of just fill time, which is like cute little bits that move
01:03:27
the story along. Yes, yes, exactly.
01:03:31
And it's interesting too because like, like I said, it's very
01:03:34
much a family movie, you know? But like, I was reading the IMDb
01:03:38
trivia and it was rated R at one point because Julie Werner's
01:03:43
character, like the first time you see her, she's like bathing
01:03:46
naked in like the lake. So she like, you know, has this
01:03:49
full like nude scene. Oh, it's like the there's that
01:03:53
really famous scene. What is it?
01:03:54
The Fast Times at Ridgemont High scene.
01:03:56
The woman stepping out of the pool.
01:03:57
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's it's, it's like that and
01:04:00
so. We just ripping everything off.
01:04:03
It is, yeah. It's not.
01:04:04
It's not winning a lot of points for originality, except for
01:04:06
Woody Harrelson that gets all the points.
01:04:08
Yeah, they put all their creative effort on this one
01:04:12
charming Woody Harrelson side character.
01:04:15
Yeah, but there was that and then I think they dropped like
01:04:20
2F bombs. So they were like one over what
01:04:23
you're supposed to be to get like a lower rating.
01:04:25
Oh, weird. Yeah, yeah, it was either the
01:04:28
two or three or something like that.
01:04:29
But Michael J Fox himself, like the role he had done just before
01:04:33
this. Again, this is all IMDb trivia
01:04:35
so be taken with a grain of salt, but I guess the movie he
01:04:39
had just been in before this was an R rated film and it didn't
01:04:42
perform as well at the box office cuz less people could go
01:04:45
see it. So he fought really hard for
01:04:48
this movie to get a PG13 rating. And then it did.
01:04:53
And then some people after it came out were like, what the
01:04:55
heck? There's like a full nude scene
01:04:57
in this movie and they're swearing like this shouldn't be
01:04:58
ABG 13 movie. But outside of that, real nice.
01:05:02
Yeah, it's it's very family friendly though, you know, like
01:05:06
outside of those like couple things.
01:05:09
That is weird. That puts that in a very weird
01:05:11
place. I think nowadays you would never
01:05:14
get the flexibility with that. It literally sounds like he just
01:05:17
asked politely and they were like, OK, you know, they kind of
01:05:20
patted him on the head because they were so much taller.
01:05:25
You got it, little boy. Whatever you say, chief.
01:05:30
Here's your dad. We got to stop.
01:05:35
We got to stop short shooting. He's probably not even that
01:05:38
short too. Probably not.
01:05:40
He's just not movie star tall. Yeah, no, exactly.
01:05:43
Exactly. But I mean, who's a big star at
01:05:46
the time, too, you know, He's great.
01:05:49
Not so he had enough sway, I guess, to make that happen.
01:05:53
But yeah, it's just interesting because other than that, yeah,
01:05:55
it's like, you can show this to anybody, really.
01:05:58
But yeah, I mean, he is great in the movie too.
01:06:03
Like, he's funny, he's charming, like, and that is kind of what
01:06:07
carries the whole thing forward because outside of that, there's
01:06:10
not much to it, you know? I'm sure.
01:06:12
That's very simple. Yeah, like I'm sure if you you
01:06:14
could keep guessing the rest of the story like it's just I'm.
01:06:18
Trying but the only thing that I can't picture is how the movie
01:06:23
reaches like its third act sequence because obviously Cars
01:06:26
ends in a race and Northern Exposure ends every 40 minutes
01:06:30
because it's ATV show. So I don't know how this movie
01:06:33
actually like builds to a finale.
01:06:37
Well, actually that's a good, that's a good question because
01:06:40
that is the ending almost seems like a little bit off in terms
01:06:47
of like how they really wanted to wrap it up because you can
01:06:51
tell like it's leading to this end of second act point where
01:06:57
it's going to seem like he's leaving.
01:06:59
But you know, then he's actually going to come around and like
01:07:02
the way that that plays out, it just feels a little odd because
01:07:05
it's like at that point he's his car's fixed up.
01:07:10
Like he's like, OK, I'm going to go to Hollywood now.
01:07:14
Like, you know, I'm going to leave this potential
01:07:16
relationship behind with this person I'm interested in and
01:07:20
like this whole town or whatever.
01:07:21
And like the whole town has this big goodbye for him.
01:07:25
Actually, no, I think I have this.
01:07:27
See, it's there's like too many steps in the ending here because
01:07:30
I know at one point he yeah, he tries to leave in the middle of
01:07:34
the night because he doesn't want to, like, say goodbye to
01:07:35
anyone, tries to leave in the middle of the night.
01:07:38
And as he's driving out of town, there's these kind of side
01:07:42
characters that, you know, he's been interacting with throughout
01:07:44
the story. And one of them, like, they're
01:07:47
like a couple and the woman's pregnant and like they're pulled
01:07:49
off on the side of the road and she's like giving birth.
01:07:52
And so he like, drives past them at first, like not my problem.
01:07:56
Like Peter Parker, Like yeah in. This department, that's my
01:08:01
problem and so. Then he like, he's like, no, I
01:08:06
got to go back. So he turns, you know, he turns
01:08:08
around and he helps this woman give birth.
01:08:10
And then like he leaves his car in the middle of the road while
01:08:14
he does this. And then, like I mentioned
01:08:17
earlier, there was a scene where there was like a want to say
01:08:20
circus, but it was like a, you know, the, the yearly festival
01:08:24
that they do. Carnival kind of Fair thing.
01:08:26
Exactly. And like these trucks had come
01:08:28
in and brought all that stuff with them.
01:08:30
And so his car's in the middle of the road and then these
01:08:33
trucks are like leaving town and like, for some reason the truck
01:08:36
drivers like falling asleep. So he just crashes into Michael
01:08:40
J Fox's car while it's in the road.
01:08:42
So it's kind of like it was like he made the decision to go back,
01:08:46
but then it's like then his car got wrecked.
01:08:49
So like at that point I was like, well, now it's not really
01:08:52
his decision to stay anymore because now his car is wrecked.
01:08:55
But then like he winds up leaving anyway because like the
01:08:57
town like pulls their money together.
01:08:59
They get him a plane ticket to LA.
01:09:02
And then he goes and does that. And we see him, you know, kind
01:09:05
of a montage of him like doing the like cosmetic surgery stuff.
01:09:11
And actually before that is when the whole, like, interview thing
01:09:16
comes up because throughout the story, he's like, he keeps
01:09:19
having to call and be like, hey, can I push my interview back a
01:09:22
few days? Because he does want to stay in
01:09:23
the town a little bit longer with these people.
01:09:25
And then when he finally gets to Hollywood, the guy who hires
01:09:30
him, he was like, oh, you know, we weren't going to hire you.
01:09:32
But then this doctor from this small town who, like the person
01:09:38
who taught me how to be a doctor or something, called and
01:09:40
recommended you. And it was like the small town
01:09:43
Doctor Who he had kind of been at odds with earlier in the
01:09:46
film. So I was like, I guess that was
01:09:49
the reason why. This is a lot.
01:09:51
This is like a lot to follow in summary.
01:09:54
I can't. I feel like actually letting him
01:09:56
go to LA is like an overcomplication in a plot this
01:09:59
simple. Totally how I felt too.
01:10:01
I was like why are we here? Why did we get this far like
01:10:04
into him leaving this whole situation?
01:10:08
Sorry, this is like a left field comparison, but you know, in The
01:10:10
Phantom Menace, how we're on Tatooine like the whole time and
01:10:14
then for some reason we go back to Corazon to talk to the Jedi
01:10:16
Council for like half an hour and then just go back to or
01:10:19
sorry, Naboo. And it's just like one location
01:10:22
too many. Like this is the same.
01:10:24
No, I agree. Actually, that's a good
01:10:25
comparison. It's like we didn't need to do
01:10:28
this. Like this was A and it goes on
01:10:30
for a while too. And I'm like, OK, what are we
01:10:34
doing here? So he gets he gets the job
01:10:37
because he was recommended, I guess, from this doctor in this
01:10:41
small town that for some reason knew this guy who worked in
01:10:44
Hollywood. And then we get like the montage
01:10:47
of him like not liking doing this and like being sad because
01:10:52
he misses like his love interest and.
01:10:55
He's just not paying attention to work.
01:10:57
He's botching people's plans. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:59
At one point he's like flipping through the channels in his like
01:11:02
nice Hollywood apartment and like, It's a Wonderful Life
01:11:06
comes on and I'm like, OK, let's just show a better movie with
01:11:09
similar themes in the middle of this one.
01:11:12
Now if. Northern Exposure came up.
01:11:13
That would be interesting. Yeah, exactly.
01:11:16
Yeah. And then because he had left
01:11:21
without his car, which like as the person watching this, I'd
01:11:25
forgotten about at this point because his car got totalled
01:11:28
back in the other town. Like, Woody Harrelson and one of
01:11:31
the other characters from the small town brought the cart to
01:11:34
him in Hollywood. And I was like, Oh yeah, I guess
01:11:38
he needs his car like. Well, you know, LA is a famously
01:11:41
walkable town. Yeah.
01:11:42
Yeah, he does have a line where he says he's just like, oh, I'm
01:11:48
going to, you know, I'm going to Hollywood.
01:11:49
What do I need a car for? And honestly, I don't know
01:11:52
because there's AI watched who friend Roger Rabbit recently and
01:11:56
there's a lot like there's that like same line almost verbatim
01:11:59
as in that movie. But it's intended as a joke
01:12:01
because it's like, you know, LA and Hollywood used to be a very
01:12:06
walkable city because they had like trains and trolleys going
01:12:09
through before they built the highway system.
01:12:11
Like that's what like Roger Rabbit all is.
01:12:13
Anyway, I don't know why he said it in doc Hollywood because it's
01:12:15
1991. And yeah.
01:12:17
That's weird. Like, I don't know, he was too
01:12:19
busy ripping off random movie scripts and they left something
01:12:22
and it. Didn't.
01:12:23
Yeah. I don't know if that was
01:12:24
intended to be a joke. It didn't sound like the joke
01:12:26
you always said. Then he said, the force be with
01:12:27
you it. Was really weird.
01:12:29
Was it going home? The entire third act is Michael
01:12:35
J Fox speaking as Jar Jar Binks from a movie that comes out
01:12:38
eight years later. That would be 10 out of 10 Talk
01:12:41
Holly. Oh.
01:12:42
My God, yeah, this would. If this just was The Phantom
01:12:44
Menace, that would be good. If you can show me a movie on
01:12:47
this show that I've not seen that is The Phantom Menace, I
01:12:50
would really like to. Be that instead.
01:12:54
Anyway, I don't know. So they bring him the car and I
01:12:56
was like, oh, yeah, I guess he means that.
01:12:58
But then he he was expecting it to be, you know, Julie Warner's
01:13:01
character. And then it wasn't her.
01:13:03
It was like Woody Harrelson. And he was like, okay, well, I
01:13:09
guess I'm gonna go back to that town now.
01:13:12
This is like what makes him decide to go back.
01:13:14
So it's like that whole ending is just convoluted.
01:13:17
And that to me feels like remnants of it being a book
01:13:22
adaptation. Oh right, I forgot, I forgot the
01:13:25
book element. This.
01:13:26
I have so much beef with film adaptations of books for this
01:13:29
exact reason. They totally get lost in the
01:13:32
sauce talking about how everybody feels and they ignore
01:13:35
like huge plot elements that in action in a film would just take
01:13:39
up too much time or be too complicated.
01:13:41
Like in a book that's like 1 chapter, whereas in the movie
01:13:44
you're completely changing spaces and it just requires so
01:13:48
much more momentum in the storytelling to justify.
01:13:51
Like, let's send him to California and then bring him
01:13:54
back. I just can see that being kind
01:13:55
of frustrating. Yeah, I was, that's, that's how
01:13:57
I felt watching it. And it's, I guess it's only
01:13:59
retrospectively because at the time I wasn't thinking about
01:14:02
this, but now that I'm I'm like, yeah, that's, that's got to be
01:14:05
something that came from the book, because otherwise this
01:14:06
would have been much cleaner. You know, like there's a there's
01:14:09
a simpler way to structure this and still fit in that film
01:14:14
language 3X structure as opposed to the way that they did execute
01:14:18
it. Because the the thing that he
01:14:20
does like this entire product is covered in the pilot episode to
01:14:23
Northern Exposure, which you should all go watch instead of.
01:14:27
But you already zoned in on the same thing that he's like kind
01:14:31
of a selfish guy, but in the end, his sort of the doctor's
01:14:36
oath to take care of people in need overwhelms him and he just
01:14:40
stays behind because he realizes he can do good.
01:14:42
That's exactly what happens in Northern Exposure.
01:14:44
And he had that scene with helping with the pregnancy on
01:14:47
the side of the road. And and then I feel like, I
01:14:50
don't know, you could just build around something like that as a
01:14:53
bigger deal instead of stacking several more plot beats after.
01:14:57
That. Yeah, totally.
01:14:59
Especially because it's like then he just, it goes back.
01:15:03
Like we have this scene where he, you know, I guess, realizes
01:15:07
ultimately that he doesn't want to be there in Hollywood
01:15:09
anymore. And then we just cut to like,
01:15:12
Julie Warner, you know, walking out of the doctor's office where
01:15:16
they've been working previously, and he's just there.
01:15:18
And so it's just like, oh, OK. I also don't like that because
01:15:23
it undermines to some extent the fact that we know for sure he's
01:15:27
not happy in Hollywood, makes the decision a lot more just
01:15:30
like, yeah, there's one clearly better option.
01:15:33
Whereas having somebody choose to forgo a very promising
01:15:37
opportunity because of what they know they would lose by taking
01:15:41
it like that makes for more interesting character sacrifice
01:15:44
than him actually getting to try both and then just decide he
01:15:47
likes one better. Yeah.
01:15:48
Oh, absolutely. I yeah, I agree.
01:15:50
I agree. And it's like, is that what your
01:15:52
book was about, buddy? Because might want to rethink
01:15:54
that. That's funny.
01:15:59
I yeah, I so I definitely this movie sounds like it was exactly
01:16:03
what I expected when I picked it and everything except for that
01:16:06
third act, cuz man, that it it they might as well have just
01:16:09
finished ripping off cars and had him like win a race or
01:16:12
something. Well, again, cars came out in
01:16:14
like I think 2006, so. Well, we who's to say?
01:16:18
Back to the future gigawatts. You can't say that.
01:16:22
You can't say that. I think it has pulled off the
01:16:26
air faster than the short jokes about Michael J.
01:16:31
Yeah. So like, yeah, that would have
01:16:33
been funny. Actually.
01:16:34
I don't know how they would have made this be about a race, Maybe
01:16:36
races Woody Harrelson's character for some reason.
01:16:38
Maybe he has to use his fixed up car and then they have to inject
01:16:41
it with like Nos from the Fast and Furious.
01:16:44
Yeah, well. That was just that was the
01:16:45
thing. It was like he wrecked his car
01:16:47
at the beginning, but then there was the whole thing where his
01:16:48
car got wrecked again. Then that was only like, I guess
01:16:53
a setup for them to bring him his car so that he could decide
01:16:58
to go back. And it was just like, what are
01:17:00
you saying here? Why did this?
01:17:02
It's like. Also that feels like a rule of
01:17:04
threes gag. Does his car get totaled again
01:17:06
at the end of the movie? No, it just should have.
01:17:10
Been end of the movie should have just been him like winking
01:17:13
at his new girlfriend and then inexplicably his car gets like
01:17:16
totalled again. It just explodes.
01:17:19
Bruce Willis shoots it with his sniper machine gun and.
01:17:25
Then he says like, looks like this car needs a facelift doc.
01:17:30
He's like, yeah, you know what? I should go back to Hollywood.
01:17:32
You're right. I just can't make up my mind.
01:17:34
If somebody shows up in a car and then takes me back there,
01:17:37
I'll do it. I don't have any agency here,
01:17:41
just just tell me where to go. Where to go?
01:17:43
I am not old enough to drive. All right.
01:17:47
Well, I feel like I have a beat on Doc Hollywood.
01:17:50
Is there anything any other major points you wanted to make
01:17:53
or should we move into final scores and wrap up?
01:17:57
I mean, yeah, I guess that's it. I, I, I know I like again, just
01:18:02
spent that whole time making fun of it in some ways, but it
01:18:04
wasn't bad. Well, that's not our fault.
01:18:07
Like we always try to highlight the things that are most
01:18:09
interesting to us. And very by the numbers, movie
01:18:12
making stuff is so easy to summarize.
01:18:14
It's like, yeah, whatever, it's a movie.
01:18:15
But then those those little quirks are so much more
01:18:17
interesting to like, hone in on. Yeah, yeah.
01:18:20
And it like, you know, again, it did a lot of things really well.
01:18:23
The performances were good. The cinematography was good.
01:18:27
I mean, like the the DP on this film had done some, some of the
01:18:33
other movies he worked on were like Major, he did Bridging
01:18:35
Bull, which we talked about recently, Yeah.
01:18:38
We did with camera, yeah. He's GP on the fugitive Space
01:18:42
Jam. OK, come on in, Slam.
01:18:45
Now we're on. A yeah, exactly.
01:18:46
So it was like, yeah, it's like, it's like I don't have as much
01:18:49
to say about those other things because they weren't errors, you
01:18:53
know, it was just like they were done.
01:18:55
Yeah. Confidently enough that it was
01:18:57
just like, OK, yeah, this is this is fine.
01:18:59
That's a that's an area we keep falling into.
01:19:01
I mean, we're trying to seek out films of the 90s that didn't
01:19:05
really make a strong impact. And people don't talk about much
01:19:08
now. And the main way you get to that
01:19:10
is by being perfectly OK. Like if the movie's really bad,
01:19:13
you're on to something. And if it's really good, people
01:19:15
will like, still want to talk about it.
01:19:16
But some of these just fall right in the middle of like,
01:19:19
yeah, it's fine. It's a movie.
01:19:22
Which again. Is not bad.
01:19:23
No, that's hard to do. Yeah, exactly.
01:19:26
Like to, you know, because they're still, I mean, movies
01:19:29
are still really hard, hard to make.
01:19:31
And I'm sure a lot of effort went into making this and to
01:19:34
make something that wasn't bad and was, you know, relatively
01:19:39
entertaining to sit through. Like I, I, I wasn't like, that's
01:19:43
like grifters where I was like halfway through and I was like,
01:19:45
can I not be here? But like, like, I don't want to
01:19:51
turn grifters off. I just want to leave.
01:19:52
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not that.
01:19:55
And it's not me. Like hate watching a Woody Allen
01:19:57
movie for two hours, just stewing on that.
01:20:00
I was just like, OK, talk Hollywood bet cars and stuff.
01:20:03
Sure. Cars and stuff.
01:20:05
Lightning between. That's fine.
01:20:09
His car even looks like me by the way.
01:20:11
It's red and like. That's so funny, A car and a
01:20:15
car. See, I feel like we're putting
01:20:18
all the blame here on the movie that came first.
01:20:20
Maybe whoever wrote Cars was just like, guys, I need
01:20:23
something. And he was sitting there
01:20:23
watching Doc Hollywood because it was a perfectly OK movie.
01:20:27
Yeah, like, that is like, that's the Wikipedia section on this
01:20:30
movie. It was like, hey, by the way, do
01:20:32
you know cars, like, stole this? Weird, right?
01:20:35
Weird. Yeah, yeah.
01:20:37
That's it. That's it.
01:20:39
OK, all right, well, we we're going to move into final scores
01:20:46
and wrap up. I guess I'll go first.
01:20:48
Since I did the first review, I know I I'd spent a lot of time
01:20:52
talking about things in Jackal that made me mad and how Bruce
01:20:55
Willis made me mad and how he had too many disguises and they
01:20:58
were really dumb. But again, it's a perfectly good
01:21:01
movie. I would have never I didn't feel
01:21:03
bored watching it. I was still relatively engaged
01:21:05
in what was happening. I just had so many like
01:21:08
constructive notes for how to make the story more succinct and
01:21:12
engaging. So I'm going to say overall
01:21:15
score out of 10. I'm going to give the Jackal of
01:21:18
five. Oh, OK, yeah, that's that's
01:21:21
better than I thought, actually it.
01:21:23
It could have easily been higher than that.
01:21:25
It just didn't do enough. Like you were saying that Duck
01:21:28
Hollywood gets credit for having some interesting cinematography.
01:21:32
The Jackal just didn't have any particularly strong dialogue or
01:21:35
lighting or cinematography or music.
01:21:38
I mean, the music was a highlight, but it was a lot of
01:21:41
it was good, then a lot of it was super jarring.
01:21:42
So that kind of equals out. It just didn't do enough to fall
01:21:46
on either side of the fence and it ends up just kind of being
01:21:49
right in the middle of the five. Yeah, yeah, 5 is the new 7.
01:21:53
It's. 5 is the new 7. What does that even mean?
01:21:58
It's just. Whatever, it's A5, No, that's
01:22:07
valid. Like I think that actually like
01:22:11
again, it's, it almost seems higher than I thought you would
01:22:13
give it based on how you described it, but it seems.
01:22:16
I got more mad the more I the more I lingered on it, but none
01:22:19
of that was my feeling when watching the movie.
01:22:21
OK, that's good. That's good.
01:22:22
Yeah, Yeah. All right, Doc.
01:22:25
Hollywood Final Thoughts Doc. Hollywood, I'm going to give it
01:22:30
a six. I'm, I'm in the moment making a,
01:22:34
you know, a fair assessment here.
01:22:36
I think it's a six out of 10. OK, I I think it's like again,
01:22:42
just like fine, it's. Just like it's all right.
01:22:48
It's all right. I was like, yeah, OK, this is
01:22:51
fun. And it had just enough to kind
01:22:55
of push it over the edge in some ways to being like memorable
01:23:00
and, you know, like Woody Harrelson's performance and
01:23:02
character, like the way he, that he was written and, and the way
01:23:07
Woody Harrelson handled it, I was like, oh, that's
01:23:09
interesting. You know, and Michael J Fox is
01:23:14
like, honestly great. Like, you know, he, he, he
01:23:17
played this mostly comedic, but he did have a few scenes where
01:23:19
he had to be kind of like dramatic Dr. Man.
01:23:21
And he, he kind of switched between those two pretty
01:23:23
seamlessly. So he gets a lot of credit for
01:23:27
me for that. And I, I think this is, you
01:23:31
know, right before he kind of started, you know, having a
01:23:37
downturn in his acting career because of his Parkinson's too.
01:23:40
So this I think was like a later like Prime, like Michael J Fox
01:23:46
movie. I, I know a bit about this
01:23:48
because there was a very good documentary released a couple
01:23:51
years ago about his career and relationship to developing
01:23:54
Parkinson's. And it was actually surprising
01:23:56
how long he went without letting anybody know that he'd been
01:24:00
diagnosed with it. So there's a montage in that
01:24:04
documentary of shots from all of his films from a certain point
01:24:07
onward where you can see that he has like hand spasms that he's
01:24:13
trying to hide that go all the way up until like the early
01:24:16
2000s before he really felt comfortable explaining that that
01:24:20
that was happening to him and that he needed to like, kind of
01:24:22
change his life around it. So it's really interesting that
01:24:25
he might have had some small signs of it already even in the
01:24:28
early 90s, but he just nobody knew about it.
01:24:31
He just continued on with his career for quite a long time
01:24:33
while already dealing with that. Well, this, I mean, that's
01:24:35
actually in line with what I read as well.
01:24:37
According to I think this was maybe not in the documentary,
01:24:40
but I, you know, he did a a biography of his or something,
01:24:44
but it literally started while he was filming this movie is
01:24:49
like he's from his own recollection.
01:24:52
It was like his finger would like twitch pretty
01:24:55
uncontrollably. Oh, wow, that's really
01:24:57
interesting that that's, that's like an interesting little piece
01:25:00
of legacy for this work of his. Yeah, because there was, there
01:25:03
wasn't. There was somewhere in the
01:25:06
trivia for this film, there was a note that there are several
01:25:08
scenes where you can see him, like keeping his hand in his
01:25:12
pocket. And it was like, like you said,
01:25:14
to kind of like keep that private.
01:25:18
That was actually the, some of the, I don't know, kind of more
01:25:21
like artful takeaways from the documentary was that a lot of
01:25:26
his roles, specifically Back to the Future, were playing
01:25:30
characters that were kind of always in motion already.
01:25:33
Like even before he had to work around the Parkinson's issue.
01:25:38
And then as he went on, he started to do what you just
01:25:40
said, but like more and more, he would make sure to be like,
01:25:43
playing with something in his hands or have his hands in his
01:25:46
pockets, anything to make it less obvious that he was having
01:25:49
trouble controlling the movement.
01:25:50
But coincidentally, he just kind of become known as this
01:25:53
character that was always in motion anyway.
01:25:55
And it played a little montage of him, like doing the
01:25:57
skateboarding scenes and Back to the Future or how I think the
01:26:01
first scene of him on this sitcom he made later in his life
01:26:03
starts with him like rollerblading through like an
01:26:05
office building. Like there's just kind of an
01:26:07
interesting legacy for his performance that he was always
01:26:11
full of so much. He's always been full of so much
01:26:13
like energy and and just kind of ceaseless motion.
01:26:16
Yeah, no, totally. And I mean, he had a great
01:26:18
career, like and and like well deserved too.
01:26:21
Like, he is like a great actor and he's great in this, like
01:26:25
this, like could have been a much worse movie if it wasn't,
01:26:28
you know, led by. Him, I think that's probably, I
01:26:31
mean that's what that's what gets you above the the five out
01:26:34
of 10 is to have a strong performance or just a couple of
01:26:37
interesting quirks. And this one, as unoriginal as
01:26:41
you could argue it is, seems to have found something to to kind
01:26:46
of latch onto there. Yeah, yeah, totally.
01:26:48
Yeah. Ripped off cars 15 years
01:26:51
earlier. Cars.
01:26:52
Ripped off Jar Jar Binks, I don't know how they got away
01:26:54
with that. OK, so that's a 5 for the Jackal
01:26:59
A6 for Doc Hollywood, which means that I have won the
01:27:02
episode, just barely by by one point difference.
01:27:05
Yeah, yeah, the close one. It was a close one.
01:27:09
There's still even looking at the Season 1 totals, it's really
01:27:12
close. I think there's a 5 point
01:27:14
difference in cumulative scores for the movies I've recommended
01:27:16
to you versus ones you've recommended to me.
01:27:19
So definitely still time. I will say as far as plotting,
01:27:23
you know where the show's going. I think we're going to do 12
01:27:26
episodes in Season 1, so 12 movies each for this 90s theme,
01:27:30
which means that this is the end of the halfway .0 halftime.
01:27:33
All right, great halftime report.
01:27:36
You're down by 5, which is a kind of a football Y score to be
01:27:39
down by. Well.
01:27:40
I'm going to go give myself a pep talk in the locker room.
01:27:46
He's just drawing diagrams, just like we got him.
01:27:49
Got to hit him from the side. Enough of this Jackal stuff,
01:27:52
yeah? It's just a big X over Jackal
01:27:55
like. Yeah, we'll see.
01:27:58
So by the end of 12 episodes, we'll see who is the overall
01:28:01
winner. That person will get a prize.
01:28:03
We have no idea what it is. We'll.
01:28:05
Figure that out. Oh, fun.
01:28:07
All right. Cool.
01:28:08
But for now, why don't we move into our selections for the next
01:28:12
episode, which will air in two weeks?
01:28:14
Because my movie won the day today.
01:28:15
I will go ahead and go first, which I wish I didn't have to
01:28:18
because I'm kind of stumped. I have a couple of different
01:28:20
movies that I think you would like and I kind of just got to
01:28:23
pick one out of a hat, I think. Phantom Menace.
01:28:26
Phantom Menace? Yeah.
01:28:27
Have you ever seen that one? I know that a couple episodes
01:28:33
back you gave me a martial arts movie to watch, which is super
01:28:36
fun. I know we're both such big fans,
01:28:37
but you have not had 1 yet. And even the action movie I gave
01:28:40
you, Soldier, is kind of light on action.
01:28:42
So I think I'm going to remedy that today.
01:28:44
So your next movie Frank for episode 7 is 1993's Shoot
01:28:49
Fighter Fight to the Death. Whoa, shoot, fighter.
01:28:53
Shoot Fighter fight to the death, which I know is going to
01:28:55
pique your interest because it was made in 1993 and stars both
01:29:00
Billy Zabka AKA Johnny Lawrence from Karate Kid and yes and
01:29:07
Martin Cove AKA Crease from Karate Kid.
01:29:11
What? So it is both Johnny Lawrence
01:29:16
and Sensei Crease in a mid 90s low budget martial arts film
01:29:21
that I'm pretty sure just has like the classic Mortal Kombat
01:29:26
esque Tournament of Death premise.
01:29:28
Oh my gosh. All right, we can just skip next
01:29:29
episode 11 out of 10. 11 out of 10.
01:29:33
Moving on, this is in the Cobra Kai verse somehow.
01:29:36
Like as close as you could get without literally being part of
01:29:39
The Karate Kid lore. I have no idea how I didn't know
01:29:42
this existed. I found it today.
01:29:44
Oh, wow. All right.
01:29:45
I just had to shoot right to the top of the list.
01:29:47
So again, that's shoot fighter fight to the death.
01:29:50
That is, it sounds like a like an arcade game title almost.
01:29:55
It does. Oh also it didn't list him in
01:29:57
the cast, but I I kind of like poured over the trailer.
01:29:59
I swear Bolo Young is in this one too.
01:30:02
Oh, dude, Bolo Young. That's my guy.
01:30:04
That's my guy. Bolo Bolo fan in the house.
01:30:10
That's awesome, I hope he is. I'll be eagerly awaiting his
01:30:14
appearance. All right, so that's, that's
01:30:17
your selection for our next episode.
01:30:19
What do you have for me to try to to try to start the
01:30:23
second-half strong? Yeah.
01:30:25
Oh, shoot. I didn't have time to give
01:30:26
myself pep talk or yell at myself.
01:30:29
What was I supposed to do? You're.
01:30:31
Supposed to break yourself for your inadequacy.
01:30:36
Get out there and do better. You got 1990 fives fallen
01:30:42
angels. 95 fallen angels. I am not familiar with this one.
01:30:46
Good. That's the point.
01:30:53
Are you new? No.
01:30:56
The I think I mentioned last time maybe that I wanted to
01:31:01
recommend a foreign film. OK, so that's what I hope this
01:31:07
is. It's.
01:31:13
Yeah. So Fall of Angels is, according
01:31:16
to Wikipedia, a Hong Kong neo noir crime comedy drama.
01:31:22
So just check all the boxes please.
01:31:26
Yeah, a lot going on there. Crime comedy.
01:31:30
OK, that sounds awesome. I'm so on board.
01:31:33
Yeah, but you may have heard this director like his bigger
01:31:37
film that he had done just before this one actually was
01:31:39
Chunking Express. I don't know if you're familiar
01:31:41
with that one. I've definitely heard that title
01:31:44
that has been like a watch list item for me for so long and I
01:31:47
never saw it. But that that informs what I
01:31:49
what I think about Fallen angels.
01:31:51
I I'm I'm sensing a winner. Yeah, me too.
01:31:55
It looks good. I hope I am down by 5.
01:32:01
Did you hear the pep talk? No.
01:32:04
Yeah, no, it looks cool. It's like, I guess this was one
01:32:06
that he did right after that. That isn't as I think it has
01:32:11
similar critical acclaim, but not as much like mainstream
01:32:16
awareness as Chunking Express because it's like he did that,
01:32:20
then he did this one, and then he kind of moved on to like
01:32:23
other films. I think he went to go do like
01:32:26
more movies in the US Actually this was one of like one of his
01:32:29
last ones that he did like in China.
01:32:31
Perfect. That's a perfect fit for the
01:32:33
show. It's an overlooked 90s movie.
01:32:35
Yeah. Awesome.
01:32:36
OK Fallen Angels 95 we got Shoot, Fight or fight to the
01:32:41
Death 93 So far we have picked movies from every year of the
01:32:44
90s except for 1994 and 1999. So Phantom Menace.
01:32:51
Chucky Express came out in 1994, so.
01:32:54
Oh, OK, awesome. Well, that sounds exciting.
01:32:57
I want to say thank you everyone for joining us as always.
01:33:00
And before we go tonight, Frank is going to give you that pep
01:33:03
talk for himself, uninterrupted for 5 minutes.
01:33:08
You didn't do very good out there or.
01:33:10
Ever. Really.
01:33:14
Why is he so nervous? Really reconsider a lot of
01:33:31
things that you have done and plan on doing.
01:33:35
Oh. No wonder they're losing.
01:33:40
He's the worst coach. What was this supposed to be?
01:33:44
There was a pep talk. It was like.
01:33:50
A sad book report. Coming up next, it's Shoot
01:34:00
Fighter Fight to the Death, followed by Fallen Angels on
01:34:04
Meet Your Double features.