Poffy Hussein
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Ford
Power.
by
Jon Dunmore © 30 Jan 2004.
Not since Marky Mark replaced Charlton Heston in Tim Burton's remarkable film
about ape-poo, has there been such an inadequate, impotent re-imagining of a well-known
filmic character. Jack Ryan, CIA gadfly, has morphed from Alec Baldwin's Runway-Model
Ryan (equivalent to Roger Moore's Bond), to Harrison Ford's Real Man Ryan (a presence
to be reckoned with - definitely the Shatner of the set), arriving at the Girl-Child
Ryan of Ben Affleck, who tries to shoulder a character which he has not the imagination,
let alone the acting prowess, to flesh out, trying to command respect by keeping
his hairstyle trendy. This
movie's storyline is predicated on the callousness which pervades all levels of
U.S. Government, the field of nuclear weapons being no exception. This attitude
- more than any plot contrivance of "losing" a nuke in desert sands,
only to have it found by a mercenary and sold to the highest oily-complected bidder
- should be the actual cause for alarm amongst America's populace. Lusterless
institutions such as the U.S. Postal Service merely underscore the reality of
that attitude's pervasiveness. But
would anyone feel an inkling of reassurance in the case of a nuclear strike with
Affleck's dandelion Ryan swishing about yapping counterstrike measures in that
girl-scout alto squeal? As in Marky Mark's Planet
Of The Apes, we have the unpopular guy at school being made classroom
monitor and having shoes thrown at him when he asks for quiet. Liev
Schreiber sneaks about as one of them infallible "covert" guys, James
Cromwell is The President (and let's face it - visually, he's all over it like
stank on backwater Louisiana Blues), and Morgan Freeman is, as per his
idiom, one of those know-it-all presidential aides who speaks to everyone with
an authority that makes you wonder whether he has taken orders from anyone in
his life, ever.
Though Harrison Ford had a full-fledged family in his
Ryan movies, in this film, Affleck is yet child-less and free to engage in "steamy"
embraces with his plain girlfriend (Bridget Moynahan) to disprove the theory that
he really is Jennifer Lopez's lesbian love-interest - but there's more heat in
the iceberg that rammed the Titanic. I'm
still trying to figure, with Ryan being such a young-un, whether these events
took place before or after the first attack on the Death Star? During
the nominally more interesting second half of the film (mainly because there's
more running and - surprise - a nuke is actually detonated!), Ryan composes many
exciting Instant Messages while stealing a truck, and shouts into a cellphone
a lot, trying desperately to grow into the mantle of action hero which has been
thrust upon him. And makes James Cromwell look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the
process. Ultimately,
we are being made privy (albeit by Hollywood standards) to this insular world
which we hardly care about anyway: political "leaders" all making threats,
weaponry, war-gamery for their own agendas, caring nothing, doing nothing
for the rest of us in the trenches, only involving us when things blow up and
it's reported by CNN. To make a movie about nuclear threat even remotely interesting
these days…. don't make it. It's boring. It's pointless. It's not
even original - yet another re-telling of Macbeth (do unto your
neighbor before he does unto you). At
movie's end, specifically for the Great Unwashed, The President delivers a wildly
original, ineffectual speech about eliminating nuclear weapons, obviously to quell
fears that were aroused during the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the American
World Trade Center - yet, I seem to remember no nuclear weapons were used in that
attack…. (No one quite "gets it." As Michael Corleone tells us:
"If history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone,"
which propounds that even the fairytale eventuality of No Nuclear Weapons will
not curb Mankind's bloodlust and religious superstition - meaning that even if
you take away all the drugs and booze and guns and terrorists, people will still
find excuses to kill each other and ways to do it.) 27,000
nuclear weapons. One is missing. Who cares? The
Sum Of All Fears: that Ben Affleck will be the next James Bond.
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