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Take 17
One of the worst weeks in my existence concluded tonight. I managed to finally fix my computer. My sister Alex managed to break it a week ago. I almost ripped her head off. Thanks to a little expertise from a few friend we managed to save it. Today, we have Hollyfeld's take on Takedown. If not for computer problems, we would have that online before another certain website. No worries, we also have one of the first reviews of Elijah Wood's Try 17.
Takedown Script Review
"According to last April’s Hollywood Reporter, Johnny Depp is currently signed to star as Luke Zitto in Takedown. It’s very easy to understand why. Luke Zitto is the kind of character all movie stars would love to play - cool as ice, tough as nails, and the proprietor of a decidedly warm heart. Sadly, it seems so much energy was spent on making Luke Zitto into a franchise-worthy character that other concerns, like plot, character development and everything else a screenplay needs to be memorable (or at even effective) have apparently fallen by the wayside. The result is a script that, based on the draft in front of me (revised by John Lee Hancock), plays out like an unnecessarily complicated two-part episode of a cop show... the kind that you’d find on Fox.
The good news, which is in somewhat short supply, is that this is a very early draft: August 10, 2000.
Johnny Depp would star as Luke Zitto, a youngish U.S. Marshal who for some reason is the coolest cat in a world of refrigerated felines. No one really knows why. The script describes his sense of perception, intuition, his reflexes and marksmanship as nothing short of superhuman. As the obligatory bullish cop sidekick Grizzly (think Tom Sizemore in most every Tom Sizemore movie) puts it: 'And boys and girls, when you’re lucky enough to have a guy like that on your team, well, you don’t ask how and you don’t ask why.' The villain of the piece (Danny Trejo - no, it hasn’t been cast yet, but trust me - Danny Trejo), has similar abilities, along with the power to 'turn invisible' with a special white powder. But the script eventually insists that there really isn’t anything that special about it. They just had good training. Remember those cryptic ads for Backdraft which made the movie out to be some kind of horror movie about living flame? Same kind of letdown here.
Oh yeah. The bad guy’s name is Crow, but he never says, 'Eat me.' The writers of this screenplay are obviously in denial. The script is filled with pages of dialogue describing plot developments we never see, and have no direct importance to the actual events we see. Crow is killing people - the rationale is a long, complicated ordeal to explain, involving renegade army rangers, a Brazilian coup d’etat, drug dealers, lawyers, blah, blah, blah. But since the script dedicates no time to any of these other people, we don’t care about them. And because we don’t care, it doesn’t matter why he’s doing what he does. He could be doing it just because he was an asshole for all we care - the long, drawn out discussions in a room filled with files and people looking at computer screens feel like filler, an overly-complicated means of getting us to Action Sequence B from Action Sequence A. Someone please put something fun in there instead. Don’t make plot development seem like an ordeal.
So why does Luke Zitto care? Because Crow raped and assaulted his ex-girlfriend, fellow U.S. Marshal Aurora. Why do we care? Certainly not because of any attachment we have to her as a character. Aurora and Luke are introduced together in a flashback to an early manhunt, their relationship seeming platonic, if they had any relationship at all. The screenplay then cuts to several years later, after their affair, after she has married someone else. So the audience would rather conceitedly be asked to care about a relationship we never see on-screen, and never develops further than where it is on page 20. Come to think of it, no relationship develops further than it is on page 20. Every character (who survives) ends the story unchanged, in exactly the same place they were when the story began. I mentioned above that Takedown feels like an episode of a TV show - a filler episode, as well. No one’s life is propelled by the events the story. Things happen, people get hurt, people survive, people move on. This draft’s notion of set-up and pay-off is establishing that one character plays a shoot-‘em-up videogame, then re-enacting a moment from said game in the climax. There’s no dramatic tension to this development... it just shows that the writer can take an element from earlier in the script and revisit it later.
But in spite of all this, I predict that if made, Takedown should be fun to look at. When it isn’t bogged down with clunky plot developments, it does portray a series of chases and murders and other bits of Bruckheimer that sound like a hoot to watch. The scene in which the killer is fleeing the scene of the crime in a stolen car is memorable because Depp’s character almost catches up to him... on foot. That’s pretty insane. What is even more insane is that the screenwriter almost makes it seem plausible. It also has an amusing tendency to take typical action moments and turn them on their ear, like going to kick down a door and kicking through it instead. Little unexpected moments like this should make Takedown something of a hoot to see the first time - the script’s other problems will probably do nothing more than ruin its potential replay value. Unless massive script changes are or have been made to this draft, I predict very low DVD sales numbers.
So yes, I had my problems with this draft. Many, many problems. But allow me to redirect you to this review’s second paragraph, which was limited to one sentence so as to call attention to its message. This is an old draft. Thank God. With any of luck, at least some of the necessary changes have been made to Takedown, and the result could be a mindless wonder of the same caliber as Con Air or Gone in Sixty Seconds (a pretty under-rated film, I thought). If nothing else, I have faith in Johnny Depp to make the right choice - the man has great taste in projects (The Astronaut’s Wife not-withstanding), and if he’s signed on there must be something there now that wasn’t there in this draft.”
(Review submitted by Hollyfeld.)
Greatness and Foolishness
"The Toronto Int'l Film Festival hosted the World Premiere of Elijah Wood's new movie Try Seventeen. This is the first movie Elijah has been in since the blockbuster The Lord of the Rings. This movie was certainly more low-key but none-the-less still entertaining in many ways.
The movie deals with a young man struggling to find his place in the world. Jones (Wood) starts the movie enrolled as a freshman in college only to fulfill his dying Grandfather's wish. With no desire to attend, he finds his own apartment and quickly gets entangled in the lives of fellow tenants (Mandy Moore & Franka Potente). Feeling a sense of loneliness and sexual frustration his mind wanders into thinking both girls 'want' him. Jones' wild imagination and fearless thoughts provide much of the movie's comic relief such as facing off with the school bully and his sexual fantasies. A hilarious moment with a character played by Deborah Harry flashes us back to the director's favourite movie The Graduate. Jones expresses his thoughts via the letters he types to his long-lost father.
The movie was a coming-of-age movie unlike others. It was very well directed and did not date itself in any way so the movie will be as true today as it will 20 years later. The ending perhaps was a bit too Hollywood but the great acting and exciting characters surely made up for that."
(Review submitted by Mark Greeno. Please check out his Yahoo Club.)
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
