Film Review: CONGO (1995, Frank Marshall)

Stars: 3 of 5.

Running Time: 109 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew: Laura Linney (THE TRUMAN SHOW, TALES OF THE CITY), Dylan Walsh (NIP/TUCK, ARCTIC BLUE), Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS, THE CROW), Tim Curry (CLUE, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW), Grant Heslov (TRUE LIES, ENEMY OF THE STATE), Joe Don Baker (CAPE FEAR '91, CHARLEY VARRICK, MITCHELL), Mary Ellen Trainor (DIE HARD, THE GOONIES), James Karen (THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, MULHOLLAND DR.), John Hawkes (DEADWOOD, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN), Peter Jason (THEY LIVE, PRINCE OF DARKNESS), Bruce Campbell (EVIL DEAD, ARMY OF DARKNESS), Taylor Nichols (METROPOLITAN, BARCELONA), Delroy Lindo (MALCOLM X, CLOCKERS), Joe Pantoliano (MEMENTO, THE MATRIX, THE SOPRANOS), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (LOST, OZ), and a special appearance by Jimmy Buffett. Music by Jerry Goldsmith (ALIEN, GREMLINS). Edited by Anne V. Coates (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE ELEPHANT MAN, OUT OF SIGHT). Based on the novel by Michael Crichton (JURASSIC PARK, ER, WESTWORLD). Screenplay by Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley (DOUBT, FIVE CORNERS, MOONSTRUCK).

Tag-line: "Where YOU are the endangered species"

Best one-liner: "Are you serving that ape a martini?"

In a familiar, darkened alleyway:

"What are you smiling about?"
–"CONGO, man. CONGO."
"I don't get it."
–"1995 was a magical year. The stars aligned. You see, in 1993, Michael Crichton's JURASSIC PARK was a runaway hit. In 1994, Crichton's ER took television by storm. Also in 1994, THE LION KING became the highest-grossing animated film of all time.  Therefore, a Michael Crichton action-adventure piece, featuring a character named "Dr. Ross" (though here, it's Laura Linney, not George Clooney), involving prehistoric creatures and African wildlife should have been the blockbuster of the year... Yes, indeed, the stars aligned on behalf of CONGO. But they did not create box office gold. No, they aligned to give us a cyborg gorilla named "Amy" who wears a No Fear backpack. And I'm more than okay with that."

"This looks like a tough sell to me."
–"Aren't you always claiming to be an intellectual?"
"I don't really see how that pertains–"
–"Don't you enjoy the dramatic word, courtesy of Academy Award, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley?"
"Sure, but–"
–"Then buckle up, cause Shanley has brought an advanced toolbox of dialogue-writin' skills, and he's not afraid to use 'em. You like alliteration? You got it, brother.

There were plenty of other ways to put that potted pleasantry, but none had the proper pithy, pompous pizazz."
"Okay, you can stop."
–"They're a regular Tracy and Hepburn over here. 'Are you a pound of sugar?'"

'No, babe, I'm a primatologist.' Are you taking notes?"
"I'll not have you poking fun at a giant of the American stage on my watch."
–"I'm not poking fun. I'm praising him. For instance, only a giant of the American stage could imbue a speech about monkeys in heat with such fluency and pop-culture poetry..."




"What's going on here? Is that Ernie Hudson? What are you trying to do to me?"
–"I'm not trying to do anything. Ernie Hudson, however, is trying his damnedest to save this picture. And, somehow, with his jocular demeanor and that measured twinkle in his eye––he almost succeeds.

As the dashing freelance adventurer 'Munro Kelly,' he uses Cary Grant-inspired over-enunciation and Clark Gable-ish flair to saturate the film with old Hollywood flavor.

Don't you just want to hang out with Ernie Hudson? Maybe he deserves a spin-off film that doesn't traffic in 3-D glasses and cyborg gorillas."

"Tell me there are good action sequences, at least."
–"I think any '90s action-adventure film is defined by its setpieces. Who can forget the storm drain chase from TERMINATOR 2, the hospital climax in HARD BOILED, the Keanu vs. Swayze foot race in POINT BREAK...? Well, in CONGO, who can ever forget the heart-stopping hippo-attack scene?"


"Okay."
–"Or this setpiece, which is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the Xenomorph perimeter attack scene from ALIENS, complete with automated gun turrets that are dangerously low on ammo?"





"So you've amply demonstrated CONGO's mediocrity. So what? I'm fairly certain everyone knew that already. Now you're just slandering John Patrick Shanley and making me feel bad for Ernie Hudson. What's the point of all this?"
–"You know me better than that. You know I devote myself to the subtle beauty of things like... Joe Don Baker screaming 'I NEED THOSE DIAMONDS!'"

"I can see that sort of thing in MITCHELL, JOYSTICKS, or CAPE FEAR '91."

–"But can you see an ape drinking a martini on a transcontinental flight?"

"Uh..."
–"Can you always see a soupçon of well-meaning-but-disappointed James Karen?"

"Well..."

–"Or Joe 'Joey Pants' Pantoliano in a silly, uncredited, Hawaiian shirt-heavy role that essentially paraphrases Hunter S. Thompson?"

"Er..."
–"Or Bruce Campbell being terrorized by a camera-angle, straight out of EVIL DEAD?"

"I must admit, I'm intrigued."

–"Good. Let me raise you one bug-eyed, unbridled Tim Curry."

"My God. Are you ser–"
–"With an inconsistent Romanian accent, no less. Perhaps you'd like to see him eating sesame cake like a boss while an uncredited Delroy Lindo vocally disapproves?"

"This movie is a veritable roller coaster of human emotion."
–"Then you'll simply love this tender moment between Whit Stillman-standby Taylor Nichols and Bruce Campbell just prior to their horrific deaths at the hands of prehistoric albino gorillas."

"I'm speechless. Does this fit into the Stillman-verse? Is it supposed to be post-LAST DAYS OF DISCO?"
–"That'll be a question for the film historians. Finally, how do you feel about journeyman character actor and eventual Oscar nominee John Hawkes showing up for one scene where his only purpose is to wake up and scream 'AHHHH!' before he expires?"

"That's not even an 'under-five,' I don't think."
–"You're darn tootin', it's not. So how do you feel about CONGO now?"
"Eh, honestly, I think I'll just stick with JURASSIC PARK."
–"Alright. I have one last concept for you to wrap your narrow mind around. What about a Laura Linney action-movie one-liner?"
"It'd have to be a pretty good one-liner. Shanley would have to bring his A-game. It'd have to be as morally complex as DOUBT, with the pastoral poignancy of OUTSIDE MULLIGAR, and the quiet desperation of PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS."
–"Sure, sure. What if I told you there was a not only a Linney-zinger worthy of all that, but that it was accompanied by an albino gorilla-blasting laser gun?"
"I'd want to hear it spoken aloud."
–"Okay. So during a climactic moment of quiet desperation, mid-prehistoric-albino-gorilla-onslaught, Laura Linney brandishes a diamond-powered space laser. Ernie Hudson asks her what she intends to do about the prehistoric albino gorilla situation.

And then Linney, with a poetic sensibility worthy of the American stage that brought us Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill (or at least Golden Era Schwarzenegger) says:


PEWWWWWWWWWW

Now what do you have to say about that?"
"Fine. You win. We can watch CONGO."
–"That's all I ever wanted. Now how's about a double feature with another great '90s primate flick, MONKEY TROUBLE, with Harvey Keitel and Thora Birch?"
"Don't push your luck, pal."

Television Review: ROADRACERS (1994, Robert Rodriguez)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 95 minutes.
Tag-line: "Rent all the action!"
Notable Cast or Crew: David Arquette (EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS, SCREAM), John Hawkes (DEADWOOD, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN), Salma Hayek (DESPERADO, FRIDA), Jason Wiles (KICKING AND SCREAMING, THE STEPFATHER '09), William Sadler (BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY, DIE HARD 2, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE MIST), Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, INNERSPACE), Mark Lowenthal ("Walter Neff" the insurance salesman on TWIN PEAKS, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS). Co-written by Robert Rodriguez and Tommy Nix (a Rodriguez crony who appears as himself here, and has cameos in DESPERADO, SIN CITY, PLANET TERROR, etc.).
Best One-liner: "Little dab'll do ya."

In the mid-90s, Debra Hill (HALLOWEEN, THE FOG), William Kutner, and Lou Arkoff (son of the legendary Samuel Z.) produced ten made-for-TV movies for Showtime, each intending to pay homage to 50's and 60's American International pictures, the kind of teensploitation populated by greasers, good girls gone bad, rock n' roll bands, biker gangs, and other sorts of juvenile delinquents. The directors were given $1.3 million and twelve days to shoot their work with a minimum of studio interference. I've seen all ten of these now, and they definitely vary wildly in quality––there are highs like SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROCK! (Allan Arkush's prequel to ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL) and RUNAWAY DAUGHTERS (some Joe Dante silliness that sort of functions as a HOWLING reunion), lows like COOL AND THE CRAZY (Ralph Bakshi tries live-action while Jared Leto tries very hard to be simultaneously "cool" and "crazy" while achieving neither), and oddities like JAILBREAKERS (William Friedkin directs Adrienne Barbeau and Shannen Doherty in a 'cheerleader-gone-bad' tale?!). Of all of these films, I must say that the best of them is probably ROADRACERS, by then-up-and-coming action maverick Robert Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, fresh off of his debut (EL MARIACHI), strives for what none of the REBEL HIGHWAY veterans does: he injects his episode with style. It's legitimately cool, in a rockabilly Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Jarmusch-in-a-leather-jacket kind of way.

(Come to think of it, why didn't they ask Jarmusch to do one of these?  Or John Waters?)

Squealin' rockabilly saxophone works wonders

As a REBEL HIGHWAY episode, ROADRACERS is unique in almost every aspect. The plot is very free-form, nearly Linklater-esque, and Rodriguez meanders between the scenes, ideas, and locales (diners, gas stations, clubs, movie theaters, etc.) that most fascinate him. I suppose, abstractly, it's a film about musicians and dreams, though it's also about teen love and impulse, rural malaise and the thrill of escape, small-town weirdness and bloody revenge. In the latter two respects, it has an almost Lynchian specificity, helped along by the fact that the characters are idiosyncratic and feel very "lived-in."
 
Take David Arquette's sassy bad-boy greaser, for instance––a little more bizarre and nihilistic than your traditional lead, the character's not particularly likable, but he's unpredictable, and always compelling. Oddly, he's a little more Jean-Paul Belmondo than James Dean.

In a scene of typically gleeful Rodriguez excess, David Arquette piles some pomade in his hair that looks more like ectoplasm, or the xenomorph Queen's saliva:




Then there's John Hawkes as Arquette's sidekick/Sal Mineo, a character who gives a poignant diner monologue about a school of philosophy best described as "French Fry Existentialism."

ROADRACERS ain't playin' it safe, pally!

Or observe William Sadler's vicious small-town cop (who still lives with his mother), introduced while giving a monologue (to Mark Lowenthal, a TWIN PEAKS bit player) about pigs-in-a-blanket:




It's fuckin' creepy, and really sets a tone. Whether he's doing sinister, naked tai chi, taking on Bill & Ted at Twister, or murdering the exonerated for The Cryptkeeper's amusement, Sadler is one of the great cinematic villains.

We also have Jason Wiles as an antagonistic, "Do you know who my father is?!" sort of small-town brat.

I really enjoyed him as a lovable goofus in Noah Baumbach's KICKING AND SCREAMING, so it was especially fun to see him here dripping ominous n' whiny sleaze.

Salma Hayek, in her American debut, is given a bit of a short shrift; ostensibly she's here to be Arquette's love interest, though she gives the character quite a bit of weight in a relatively small amount of screentime.

Additionally, she's the only Latina (with adoptive white parents) in this entire backwater town, and consequently there are a number of opportunities for piercing social commentary and Sirk-style melodrama, and while the film briefly explores these, we're left with the feeling that most of it was left on the cutting room floor.

In any event, it was enough to snag her the lead in DESPERADO, so there's that.

Ultimately, Rodriguez, working within The System for the first time, does manage to make the film his own. There are Mexican stand-offs with switchblades:

a drag race, puncutated by the surreal imagery of a woman's hair on fire:

a cameo by Kevin McCarthy (I wonder why he didn't pop up in Rodriguez's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/THE THING/SCREAM mash-up, THE FACULTY?) appearing as a fourth-wall-breaking theater-goer during a screening of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS:

You're next?

and finally, in the manic, LOST HIGHWAY-prefiguring conclusion, we reach peak levels of cheerful Rodriguez nihilism. I like to image that Arquette drives straight out of this movie and into RIDING THE BULLET.

All in all, I really enjoyed this thing, and additionally got a big kick out of the DVD's cover art, which pretends that all of this is somehow a missing chapter of SIN CITY (?!):

I wholeheartedly recommend. (Also, check out J.D.'s illuminating review over at Radiator Heaven!)

–Sean Gill