Thunder Rocks

We enjoyed TROPIC THUNDER. Asses were duly laughed off. I guess there was a little malaise with the pleasure — I found the gory stuff slightly off-putting, even the bits that were meant to be movie FX gore. And I like gore in gore films. I think the military setting made it a bit harder for me to laugh at.

And there’s a weird thing about it — mostly the film respects the A-Teamconvention of not really hurting anybody with its pyrotechnics and stunt fights. The bad guys torture Ben Stiller, but he kind of deserves it, and then he’s not really allowed any pay-back. The bad guys suffer a bit of property damage and maybe some bruising. The bridge that blows up doesn’t take any of them with it, as far as I could see. Arguably the most extreme bit of slapstick, the hurling of a small Asian child, is followed by a traditional A-Team “mercy shot” that shows the homicidal sprog alive and well having landed in some undergrowth.

But there’s one death. Does this constitute a spoiler? It’s early enough in the film that I think not, but stop reading after the picture if you’re fearful of entertainment-loss.

Steve Coogan, the film’s incompetent director, first seen reenacting a movie explosion joke from Blake Edwards THE PARTY (the idea of a giant special effect that nobody remembers to film dates back to the famous “Ready when you are Mr. DeMille,” joke, and came true for Sergio Leone on the set of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY — they had to blow that bridge up twice). Coogan gets mercilessly bullied by Tom Cruise’s ferocious studio boss, and together with Nick Nolte (an interesting screen pairing) hatches the idea of planting the movie stars in a “real” combat scenario.

Then Coogan is bloodily blown to smithereens at the onset of the comic war. This serves a definite narrative point, since it signals the moment the war movie becomes the real thing (without some of the characters realising it). I actually found the severed head that results rather unpleasant, partly I think BECAUSE it was so unconvincing. Strange. Strange too that Coogan is picked out for death, when his character, an incompetent and arrogant Britisher, is clearly no worse than most of the main characters. In fact, the film only really started to get laughs for me once the movie stars were placed in situations where their self-obsessed antics conflicted with their self-preservation. One theory of comedy suggests that inflexible, or mechanical behaviour is the key element, and this film is predicated on the humour of a junkie, a method actor and an over-serious action star trying to remain consistent in the face of a situation that demands they adapt or die. (The rookie and the rapper are actually fairly able to respond appropriately to the changing environment.)

So, although it’s good to see Steve Coogan playing with the big boys, I think it’s a shame his character was deemed disposable. I guess it’s just because there’s nothing to do with a director figure once the narrative acquires its own momentum. The movie director can’t pretend to be in charge anymore.