Stryker

I did not just fall off of the turnip truck. I've lived in a lot of different places, with people of many different backgrounds, and have experienced situations that the average person will never see. And yes, I spent quite a few years on the "wrong" side of the law, although I'm all better now. I will admit to not having spent any time in the North End of Winnipeg, but based on my experiences in life, I find it hard to believe that people really act like the supposedly gritty-realistic characters in Stryker do. The characters in this movie were so over the top as to be cartoonish, buffoonish. Some of the dialogue, well let's just say that I felt embarrassed for them. Nobody talks like that - I don't care if you are an angry Ojibwa or an LA banger or a wannabe. The dialog was simply ridiculous. I don't know how else to put it.

The settings that the film took place in and the situations that the characters found themselves in were equally ridiculous. People simply do not talk and they do not act like they do in this film. Being that the film is supposed to be a documentary of sorts, although fictional, this is not a good thing. I am not aware of any gang bangers that spend most of their time partying with, and trying to get in the pants of, transvestite prostitutes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as the saying goes, but still. Most of the rest of the situations are equally absurd. The gang leaders turn out to be male strippers? The toughest of the drug lords wears a big red feather boa tiara-type thing and serves drinks, shirtless, in a male strip club but gets mad when it is inferred that one of his cronies may have had a homosexual affair? Not getting it? OK, then, there's this. The leader of one of the gangs in the movie owes a large amount of money to the drug lords. They give him a day to get the money - or else. Or else what? They posture and pull out guns and laugh and say that they are going to make him dance. Of course the viewer assumes that they are going to make him dance by pumping him so full of lead that his body will dance - or some such thing. The next day comes and he does not have the money. They're gonna make him dance, and they do. At a male strip club. They literally make him dance on stage at the strip club. He gets tips. Seriously - WTF? Hell, I'd never pay those guys either. What happens next time - he doesn't pay so they rub him all over with feathers while naked women fan him?

Violence is inherent in any gang banger flick, and it's here too. But based on this movie alone, if I were still leading the life I might choose to head on up to the North End and take over. Seriously - what a bunch of punks. Guns made an appearance once or twice but for the most part it was like fifth graders in a playground brawling over who gets the swing set next. It was quite silly, silly being the word most proper to describe it. These people wouldn't throw fear into my ninety year old grandmother. I'm serious. She lives in SoCal, near Eagle Rock. She would have told these punks to get lost quick before she beat them with her cane.

Then there is the acting. I'll be easy on these kids because most of them are amateurs. It shows, to be sure, but if you suspend disbelief then they are not -that- bad. But some of it can be quite painful. The scene where the transvestite prostitute Daisy Chain is talking to the new girl in a café is painful to watch. And towards the end, where one of the Asian gang members quits the gang - it's too awful for words. It's beyond painful. It made me want to invent a time machine, just so I could go back in time to stop the guy before he tried to act. It's that bad.

This is not a well made film, nor is it realistic. That's all well and good, there is a place for movies like this. But in this case, the filmmaker sets himself up to be a serious documentary filmmaker and seems to feel that his film is art. And apparently it was being shown in the New York art houses to upper middle class twits who undoubtedly thought that it was the art that they were told that it was and that now they are experts on the whole disenfranchised Ojibwa scene. I'm not Canadian, nor am I Ojibwa or indigenous at all, but if I was I would want to kick Noam Gonick's a**. I gave the film a halfway decent rating of five because I must admit to being entertained - surely not in the way that the filmmaker intended, but we take our thrills where we can get them.

The problem with a lot of recent Canadian cinema (at least anglophone Canadian cinema) is that the filmmakers are stuck in an idiotic post-modern frame of mind. If they aren't trying to create inferior copies of other Western films, they've got their heads hopelessly rooted in the notion of indie, small-market culture.

That and, I suppose, a general lack of talent is the problems.

"Stryker", from Noam Gonick, the director of the delirious "Hey Happy" comes like a breath of fresh air, a glistening golden exception to prove that depressing rule.

The film showcases a slice of life that most people would throw out with the tin dish -- the aboriginal subculture of Winnipeg's troubled North End.

No, Gonick is not himself aboriginal. But we are told that Nicholas Ray spent weeks cruising with L.A. street gangs in preparation for the brilliant "Rebel Without a Cause", and Gonick has certainly outdone that feat, apparently spending much of his time with the kind of gangs he showcases.

But unlike Ray's cosmic vision, Gonick's Winnipeg gangsters live virtually meaningless lives, and their tragic desperation is never far from sight.

But hold on, here comes the shocker. This Canadian indie "issue" film is actually great entertainment. That's right, a Canuck filmmaker with social qualms for once has the cinematic good sense, and a considerable amount of talent, to make his movie enjoyable.

"Stryker" is funny and demented and sometimes completely off-the-wall. It is personalised to an extent that makes it an amusement park ride of a film, but with smiling good spirit, without the destructive impulse to take the bizarre seriously that has made "prarie cinema" a curse word.

"Stryker" is a spaghetti Western gang war flick about a native kid without a past or a name or much of a vocabulary who moseys into a turf war between the true-to-life "Indian Posse" and the rather over-the-top "Asian Bomb Squad". The developments of the gang war and the mute hero's journey take on a kind of mythic resonance through Gonick's sheer narrative enthusiasm, with plenty of interesting characters popping up along the way.

And when the final frame rolls, a message has emerged, almost covertly, about the native people's predicament, a message that (as the opening credits hint) stretches back to colonial roots.

It is a thought-provoking "issue" film to be sure, but one with a great hip-hop score and gay Asian stripteases. The exuberance, excess, and undeniable originality of this picture make it a totally absorbing experience, with Ed Lachman's wonderful cinematography providing a lingering, gritty beauty to wrap it in.

"Stryker" is one of the best Canadian films of recent years.