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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
 Posted - 06/12/2006 : 12:33:56 AM
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Time to shoot my foot off. The Apollo Movie Guide has a review of The Manhattan Project that covers most of what I’ll say here, and it’s a lot more concise. (They give it a rating of 62 out of 100, “decent but has significant faults,” but the review itself is far more negative.) Feel free to use this link — http://apolloguide.com/mov_revtemp.asp?CId=4308 — and take a look. If my rambling gets tiresome, well, You Have Been Warned.
The movie opens with Dr. John Mathewson (John Lithgow) demonstrating his new gadget to the Army. It’s a superty-duperty laser that somehow refines ore into, in Mathewson’s words “the purest plutonium in the universe.” 99.997% is damned pure, all right, but the universe? Kind of an exaggeration, eh, Doc?* Anyway, the plutonium is portrayed as being tiny slivers of metal suspended in a green gel that looks a lot like lime Jell-O (Mmmm, tasty!) that’s contained in a plastic half-gallon jar. Now, I know next to nothing about nuclear physics, but all of this rings false, sounding like typical movie pseudo-science (if anyone out there knows different, feel free to correct me). But I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and go with it — for now. The Army guys like what they see, and the government suits agree to outfit Mathewson with whatever he needs to start a secret lab. Mathewson and his colleagues toast their success, and the camera angle seems to try to make him look like a mad-scientist type villain. Actually, he’ll end up being another cliché — the Misguided Scientist Who Knows Not What He Does. Joe Morton did it better in Terminator 2, but he had a better script. I’ll give credit to John Lithgow right now. He’s been in lackluster movies before, but you’d be hard-pressed to see him give a really bad performance. He’s good enough here to almost make you like this guy. The script will undermine him quite nicely, though.
*[By the way, there’s a subtle, but telling, warning sign here. How does Mathewson back up his claims? He takes a spectrograph that has a peak over Pu-239 and draws a lazy circle around the peak and writes in “99.997” with a fountain pen. Not a ballpoint, a fountain pen. This is just careless, and it smacks of laziness and/or contempt on the filmmakers’ part. Not a good indication of things to come.]
So, the trucks start rollin’ transporting all the equipment to the new lab, which is disguised as a med-tech facility called Medatomics, just outside Ithaca, New York. The credits roll over the trucks going through town, revealing that The Manhattan Project was co-written, co-produced, and directed by Marshall Brickman. You don’t need to remember it, as I’ll bring it up again; after all, this was his baby. As the credits end and the trucks pass by, we center on a certain house, where a teenage boy, Paul Stephens (Christopher Collet), wakes up. His mother, Elizabeth (Jill Eikenberry) is also up, reading a novel. I’ll assume she’s a mild insomniac. She’s surprised to see Paul awake at 4:30 in the morning, even though later dialogue will reveal he does this all the time. Paul makes some hot chocolate, and they have a tiny bit of chitchat, which is supposed to be an introduction but is more of a time-killer (Paul’s next scene does a lot more to introduce him). I was a little bothered by the way Paul acted around his mother; unfortunately, I was proven right.
The trucks pull into the facility just before dawn (meaning it took a good hour for them to travel a couple of miles out of town), as Mathewson stands outside the door, looking like a proud papa. I wondered what he was doing there. The movers certainly wouldn’t need his help, and I’d think the military’s new Golden Boy would want to get his rest. So far, though, the movie’s been okay overall. Not great, but nothing really insulting.
It’s all downhill from here.
Cut to a science classroom. While waiting for the science teacher to come in, Paul mixes up a little concoction: a liquid that, when dried, is highly volatile (another student spells it out for us idjits in the audience: “When you touch it, it explodes!”). When someone tells Paul he’s crazy, he answers, “You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.” He then puts the liquid on the door of a lab drawer belonging to Roland, a classmate. Roland is played by an actor who is clearly older than 16; he is painted in very broad strokes as a self-centered twit so we won’t hate Paul for what he’s doing (it doesn’t work). Roland continues to put his stuff in his drawer after the class begins (!) but he pauses when the science teacher asks for a brief description of how an atomic bomb would work. (Convenient exposition, no?) Roland answers with some ten-dollar words, then shuts his drawer. BANG! We see a flash and some smoke — about the force of a small firecracker — and Roland understandably jumps out of his skin. He points the finger at Paul, but there’s no evidence (other than the half dozen students who saw Paul do it, and cheered him on). And Paul shrugs... and smirks.
Oh my God.
Roland didn’t close that drawer very hard. Had he touched the door in the right spot, he’d’ve probably gotten a couple of fingers blown off.
Paul is this movie’s de facto main character. And its hero. Is it me, or did the room temperature just drop twenty degrees?
After class, Paul starts hitting on another classmate, Jenny (played by a very young Cynthia Nixon). We learn that Paul has a photographic memory and knows how to pick a lock (the exposition here isn’t too bad); we also see that Paul has no remorse over his dangerous prank. He and Jenny agree to get together Sunday night to, uh, study.
Paul drops by his mother’s real estate office to see Mathewson looking for a place to rent. Here we learn it’s been six weeks since he moved into town, and it’s established that Elizabeth is separated. Mathewson starts putting the moves on Mom, and Paul’s hostility meter starts climbing to 11, leading me to wonder what Freud would make of him. Elizabeth turns Mathewson down. Now, he may be a shy and awkward nerd, but Mathewson seems to be a nice guy, and John Lithgow ain’t Brad Pitt, but he ain’t scary-ugly either. Elizabeth can’t be the only available lady in town. But Mathewson just so happens to see a book Paul has on lasers. He makes an offer: Elizabeth will go on a date with him Sunday, and he’ll take Paul to Medatomics to show him the “one of the sexiest lasers in the entire free world.” I buy Mathewson calling a laser “sexy”; the guy’s a science geek and proud of it. But inviting a 16-year-old kid inside a secret bomb factory to get a date with his mother?! Sound ridiculous? Well, it’s early yet.
So, a few days later, Paul shows up at the lab, and the personnel let him right in. Uh huh. There’s some Basil-Expositioning about how the corridors are lined with motion detectors, and Paul is shown into the main floor. We see only two pieces of equipment in the lab. The first one is the laser. Mathewson shows off to Paul, lighting his cigar on the laser (I think a lab like this would have a strict no-smoking policy), then using the laser to burn a hole through a plate of steel. The second part of the lab we see is a big plexiglass chamber lined with cubbyholes containing (uh-oh) jars of lumpy lime Jell-O (or maybe it’s liquid Soylent Green). A robot arm is at work moving the jars around. Note that Paul sees this, but doesn’t get up close to the robot or the chamber. He asks Mathewson about the green stuff; Mathewson bluffs his way out of it, but we all know what’s in there, don’t we kiddies? (It’s made of PEOPL-L-L-L LE!!!)
Later that day, Mathewson and Paul skip stones on the pond outside the lab. Weird place for it, but this scene gives some info on Paul’s absent father, and it’s one of the few times Paul acts somewhat human. Mathewson remarks that Paul’s mother is “quite an unusual woman.” Actually, other than a bit of insomnia, she strikes me as perfectly ordinary. But this gives Paul the opportunity to repeat, “Very unusual,” but have a different meaning: he’s spotted what is supposed to be a five leaf clover. I picked a five-leaf clover when I was about ten years old, and it looked nothing like what the filmmakers try to fob off on us here.
Now it’s early Sunday evening. Mathewson, Elizabeth, and Paul are in a restaurant, finishing dinner. I would think having the lady’s son along for the ride would kinda kill the first date, but I’m not Mr. Romantic. Mom’s had a couple of drinks in her by now. Paul hasn’t touched his wine, saying he doesn’t drink it. Mom asks him why not (!) and Paul does not say, “Because I’m sixteen, dammit!” He says, rather snidely, “It impairs my judgment.” Because the script requires Paul to go out to Mathewson’s car, Elizabeth feels a chill, and he goes to get her coat — not before glaring at her for asking him to leave her all alone with Dr. John; Paul, you got serious issues, boy. While at Mathewson’s car, Paul picks the glove compartment lock to find all of Mathewson’s lab key cards there for the taking(!). He closes it up and returns to the restaurant. He makes to leave (going to Jenny’s to study, wink wink), and Mathewson, still trying to win him over, gives him a gift: a brain-teaser an MIT buddy “invented.” (I’ve seen this thing; it’s been around long before this movie was.) Mathewson says that if you can solve it in less than two minutes... and Paul solves it in five seconds, gives Mathewson a look of contempt (ya know, I really don’t like this little snot) and leaves.
There ain’t no studying going on at Jenny’s. Paul and Jenny’s little brother play with a remote-controlled truck (plot point alert!) while Paul rants about the lab making plutonium. Jenny argues that Paul has no hard evidence (and she’s right), that he’s jumping to conclusions (right again, the only reason he’s right is because It’s In The Script), and that he’s dealing with paranoia and more than a little Oedipal jealousy. Ding ding ding ding ding, we have a winner!! Paul shoots back, “Does THIS look like Oedipal jealousy?” and shows her the clover, saying that he looked up the odds against a natural mutation, and “There are none, it’s like a billion to one.” Wrong. I checked. Five-leaf clovers are rare, but they do occur in nature; the odds are nowhere near a billion to one. (Oh yeah, and I remember picking one. Doesn’t occur in nature, eh, Paul?) Jenny rightly shrugs it off, until Paul pulls out a handful of clovers — supposedly five leafed, though we never get a good look at them. And some thunder sounds in the background. Oooooo, scary! (What was Paul doing, keeping them in his pocket like Frodo and the One Ring until he could make a big show out of—? Actually, that’s exactly what he did.) And although a bunch of weird clovers doesn’t exactly have “Weapons-Grade Plutonium” written all over it, Jenny is instantly convinced.
For the rest of the movie, Jenny is strident, self-righteous, naïve, and very gullible. I’ve seen 16-year-old girls who are like that, but it doesn’t make for a sympathetic character. For what it’s worth, Cynthia Nixon plays the part well, making her believable, if not likeable. Anyway, now she wants to blow the whistle on the lab (she’s into journalism; I guess she’s been taking courses at Billy Jack’s Freedom School). Paul resists for about ten seconds, until he gets an idea: a storm is coming in, and it might mess with the lab’s all-electric security system. That’s r-i-i-ight, he wants to break in and steal some of the plutonium. He comes up with a plan in five minutes, putting some glitter in a bottle of green shampoo (if you don’t get this, you will), and packing up the toy truck and a couple of frisbees. I don’t think MacGyver needs to worry about any competition here. Jenny decides to initiate a little making out before they hear her parents pull up. They get back into “studying” mode, then Jenny tells her folks she’s taking Paul home (remember this). By the way, The Day the Earth Stood Still is playing on Jenny’s TV throughout this scene. Uh, Mr. Brickman, when you’re making a bad anti-war movie, you don’t want to remind people there are good anti-war movies out there.
They stop off at Paul’s place, where Mathewson’s car is parked outside. Paul breaks in and steals Mathewson’s cards and heads back... But not before peeking in to see Dr. John wooing his mom. He tells Jenny about it, comparing Mathewson to Dr. Strangelove. Sigh. Brickman’s doing it again. I’m surprised he didn’t make references to Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Threads as well.
Now it’s on to the lab. By this time, the storm is in full swing. Paul gets out and sneaks in while the single guard is distracted by Jenny pulling a lost-girl-with-flat-tire bit. This distraction plan depends on the guard being quite dense, as is the rescue worker who comes in later. The rescue worker seems to have the hots for Jenny. I would remark on the movie not making anything about a guy being interested in an underage girl, except I’m not too surprised; Brickman co-wrote the similarly-titled (and highly overrated) Manhattan, whose hero is a 42-year-old man sleeping with a 17-year-old girl. (I know, Woody Allen probably thought that part up, but still.) By the way, Jenny snaps some pictures of the lab during this bit. I couldn’t help but wonder why. First of all, it’s what’s in the lab, not the lab itself, that’s a big secret. Second of all, it’s nighttime in the middle of a storm, and the camera’s shutter speed is pretty fast; those pictures would never develop. Some photojournalist!
While Jenny distracts the rather stupid personnel, Paul goes in and steals the plutonium. The whole sequence runs about twenty minutes, is technically well done, and seems to pay meticulous attention to detail. It is also done with no music or dialogue. There’s gotta be one or two readers out there who just said the magic word: Rififi (If you didn’t realize this scene rips off that movie, then you haven’t seen Rififi. Go and rent it first chance you get. You’re welcome.) The difference: Rififi showed a carefully-planned jewel heist from a private store with a security system that was high-tech then but would be very primitive today, done by four professional thieves. The Manhattan Project has a high-school kid, however brilliant, coming up with a plan out of the blue, then carrying it out against a government lab. So how does Paul pull this one off? Well, he has the following going in his favor:
- The video monitoring system doesn’t have any backups (nor does any of the other equipment). It can be shut off by pressing one button on a console in a cabinet at the security desk — which Paul has no trouble with, thanks to his trusty lock pick. Also, the cameras are not hooked up to a video recorder of any kind; otherwise they’d tape Paul coming in.
- Although it is storming outside, Paul doesn’t track in a single wet footprint. I think that would give him away right quick. Unless the guard’s too dumb to notice, which he is.
- The motion detectors aren’t much better than you’d see in a home security system. They set off an alarm the first time they sense motion... and do not detect any movement after that. A nuclear lab, and its security is fooled by a couple of Frisbees.
- The lab is lit well enough to find one’s way around, and all of its equipment is up and running... even though no one is there.
- Paul is able to operate the robot arm like a seasoned pro, switching a jar of plutonium and lime Jell-O with his own mix of shampoo and glitter, even though he has seen the robot (and the Jell-O) once... and not up close.
- There are spare jars and warning tape sitting on a tray right next to the robot assembly. (In my best Church Lady voice) How conve-e-e-e-nient!
- Paul has brought the glitter-shampoo mix in a regular-size shampoo bottle. The stuff just so happens to look exactly like the mix in the jars, and Paul has exactly the right amount.
- The jar just so happens to fit perfectly onto the toy truck. (A few more “just so happens” phrases, and this’ll start looking like a review for Crash.)
- The warning tape is strong enough to hold the jar to the truck.
- The lab is located along the building’s outside wall. All that separates it from the outside is a rather thin sheet of steel and some insulation that can be cut with a pocket knife.
- Paul is able to aim the laser well enough to cut a toy-truck-sized hole out of the outside wall. (I buy him being able to operate the laser; he got a good look at it earlier, and one can assume he’s a very quick learner. But he’d never be able to aim it as well as he does.)
- The idiot guard has conveniently shut that motion detector off completely, as Paul walks right out of the lab.
- The guard happens to leave his post just when Paul needs him to, so Paul can sneak in, restart the cameras, and make his escape. (By the way, Paul decides to have some fun before he leaves. He adds some more sugar to the guard’s coffee. Just because.)
- Paul can clearly see the toy truck and pilot it out of the fenced-in area it’s in. Also, Paul has a convenient hiding spot when the guard comes to look around.
- The storm ends exactly when it needs to. If it continued, Paul wouldn’t be able to see that toy truck from his post.
- Remember how I said the guard was dense? He’s neutron-star dense. He hears the toy truck moving around, but he never realizes something’s up.
- There is a perfect little trail for the truck to drive down, and a convenient storm drain under the fence for Paul to reach in and get it out.
Good Lord, that was a page and a half I just typed. I might be able to buy one or two of the items on that list. But read it over again. If even one of those things didn’t occur, Paul would walk out of the lab empty-handed — or in cuffs! (And I didn’t cover everything. Read on for a coupla more points.) Finally, Paul’s facial expressions during this sequence make it clear that he’s enjoying this.
Well, now that they’ve got the hot property (sorry ’bout that), Jenny drives Paul home, planning to contact a science professor to get confirmation that the stuff’s really plutonium. She has a point; all we have is Paul’s lucky guess as to what the Jell-O really is. But Paul has a better idea. Are ya ready? He’s going to enter the National Science Fair in New York... with a functioning atomic bomb.
Jenny’s first reaction: “Paul, that’s very sick.” Damn right, girl, and then some. But Paul has little trouble convincing her to go along with this scheme. Jenny drops Paul off and heads home. We will learn in time that Paul was in the lab for about forty minutes. That plus at least ten minutes’ drive time to and from the lab, and Jenny has spent a full hour driving Paul home. Also, we will learn that they didn’t get home until almost midnight. But if Jenny’s parents are wondering what the hell she was doing all that time, we never hear about it.
Oh yes, my brothers and sisters, it gets worse.
The next bit is a montage of the next month. Bartender, another round of bullets, please!
- Paul presents his science teacher with his project idea: something to do with the effects of light depravation on hamsters. Teacher likes it, gives Paul the go-ahead.
- Paul rents a storage space, so no one will intrude and see what he’s really up to.
- We have a few moments showing business as usual at the lab, and a couple of scenes showing Mathewson and Elizabeth seeing each other regularly.
- There are several technical manuals and journals Paul looks through, which, I guess, were put there to show how “realistic” this all was. Yes, you can build an A-bomb with the things you have at home! All you need is some plutonium!
- One manual notes that the shape of an atomic bomb’s explosives and core are “well-kept secrets,” but Paul has no trouble figuring it out: mold the outer expolosives in the shape of a soccer ball.
- During this whole sequence, no one — not Paul’s teacher, not his mother, no one — bothers to check on Paul’s progress. The stuff he has to buy isn’t exotic, but it would run a pretty nice-sized bill for a high-school kid, even one as well-off as Paul (one piece of equipment he buys has a price tag of $450 in 1986 money). No one questions this. Also, the computer guy who helps Paul map out 2-D drawings of a soccer ball never asks what Paul’s trying to do.
- And then comes the capper. Paul somehow talks a friend in the Army into selling him a supply of C-4! I swear I’m not kidding. Hey, private! Does the term “court-martial” mean anything to you?! [Future Brad: there’s a continuity error here, as well. The second half of the movie will take place over about twenty-four hours, meaning Paul will wear the same set of clothes throughout. And they’re the same clothes — exactly — that he wears in this scene.)
- Finally, Paul makes the core. He starts by opening the jar and pouring the Jell-O out into a bowl. (This is all done in that $450 container, which certainly doesn’t look like it could block radioactivity.) Then he, uh, stirs it until the Jell-O has evaporated and the glitter is all that’s left. He then spoons it into a metal sphere and seals it up. Voila!
But the astonishing thing about this montage is the tone they give it. This could have been played to have the audience gulping in apprehension. Instead, the music that plays through this sequence is very light-hearted and sunny, something that would fit into a James L. Brooks-type family comedy, ending with a triumphant flourish when Paul completes the core. I didn’t detect a hint of irony here, either. Come to think of it, this sequence did have me gulping. It’s obvious that Marshall Brickman meant for us to be rooting for Paul. That says a lot about Brickman, none of it good.
Meanwhile, back at the lab.... The eggheads there finally discover — four weeks after the fact — that someone switched one of their bottles of nuclear Jell-O with some shampoo and glitter.* Rather than declaring an emergency and going on full alert, they show mild concern, until Mathewson learns his card was used to log in and out. (It wasn’t. Paul used it to get in, but he simply pushed a button to let himself out.) It took them four weeks to find out about a pretty damned serious break-in... and it takes Mathewson four seconds to figure out that Paul was behind it. He must have the same ESP that told Paul there was plutonium at the lab.
*[Another aside. When Paul burned that hole in the wall, he hid the evidence by... placing the insulation back in its place and putting some equipment in front of it. And no one has moved it or found the cut insulation — or noticed a draft when the wind blows — for a full month. Right.]
Okay, Mathewson must be feeling really stupid about now. After all, between that guided tour and his key cards in the glove compartment, he made it pretty easy (in this movie, anyway) for Paul to break in. And the lab’s failure to catch on to the burglary is just as bad. Mathewson begs his colleagues not to report this. Hard to tell whether he’s trying to protect Paul or cover his own ass, but it doesn’t matter; he looks like a coward either way.
Paul poses with his finished Do-It-Yourself A-Bomb for Jenny’s camera. Genius or not, that thing looks awfully sophisticated — and expensive — for Paul to have built it on his own. Again, Jenny uses a fast shutter speed in low light, with no flash. Now, this movie has a professional sheen to it; it was made by people who knew which end of a camera was which. Someone must have known enough camera basics to— You get the idea. This smacks of deep contempt for the audience. (I’m blaming Brickman. This was his movie to screw up, and little things like this tell me our esteemed co-writer/director didn’t have a clue what he was doing.)
But Mathewson shows he has some guts now. After he calls Paul’s mom to learn Paul’s already left for the science fair (more about this in a bit), he comes clean with his superiors. The Army and the FBI get involved. About bloody time, if you ask me. They go to the storage area to find that Paul has stashed the empty Jell-O container inside a globe. It still has the Geiger counters going haywire. (The words radiation poisoning are never mentioned in the movie.) When Mathewson sees the schematics Paul has drawn up, he breaks into an impressed smile. Yikes.
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/12/2006 : 12:37:40 AM
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So, we hop on down to the Science Fair. I’ve read that the filmmakers used a real science fair as the backdrop for this scene, and it’s pretty cool, at least for an old science fair geek like myself. Paul finds out where he needs to put his exhibit, and Jenny reveals she has the keys to the hotel room (I’m gonna unload on THIS part of the flick in a moment). They pass by Roland, who also has a project here, and Roland steps back and tells Paul to get away from him (can’t say I blames him). I don’t know if Roland’s project was created for the movie or if they borrowed a real student’s set-up, but it’s very impressive: “Total Access to All Knowledge Through Computers”—and it centers on a “Universal Communications Network.” Sound familiar? Remember, this was 1986. (Seriously, this was one hell of a good project. Unfortunately, it undermines our “hero” all the more—apparently, Roland really IS as brilliant as he thinks he is.) I’ll go a little further and pay the movie one compliment: its makers seemed to try and get its science right... when it was convenient for them. Hey, I didn’t say the compliment wouldn’t be back-handed.
We focus in on four nerds. The movie doesn’t make them anything more than that, so why should I? They have a listening device which they use to eavesdrop on people’s conversations, and they center in on Paul and Jenny; the nerds are completely smitten by Jenny, although in all honesty she’s not much more attractive than most of the young girls there. Paul’s plan: to get the exhibit ready, go to the car and get the bomb out at the last minute, unveil it, and he’s a shoo-in for first prize. Jenny notes something Paul forgot: “The part where we get shot for treason.” I wish this movie had more moments like this, where Jenny thought for herself and wasn’t Paul’s puppy-dog.
And why the hell does Paul think he’s gonna win first prize? An atomic bomb doesn’t make for much of a project. As I understand it, an A-bomb is basically a regular bomb, except that the explosives are arranged in a sphere around a core of radioactive material (usually uranium or plutonium). They are set to go off in such a way that they will explode inward, compressing the core until it reaches supercritical mass. After that, it’s E=m-c-squared and one big-ass kaboom. This isn’t exactly a secret. I read about it in the World Book Encyclopedia when I was 12. Add to that, Roland explained it in class before Paul tried to put him in the emergency room. No, the only thing that makes Paul’s “experiment” so different is that he has real explosives and real plutonium — stolen plutonium at that. This doesn’t come out of a science text; it comes from the Anarchist’s Cookbook!
Okay, side trip’s over for now. Back to the story. Paul starts setting up his “hamster project” near where the nerds are gathered. They make some small talk, and the nerds are stereotypical paranoid scientists. In contrast to the REAL projects going on around them, these guys’ exhibits are eye rollingly bad. I won’t comment too much on them, but one of them notes that his project involves freezing toads in liquid nitrogen; when Paul asks him why, he says “Why do YOU want to know?” I’m gonna call these characters the Paranerds. The only one of them who seems to have something on the ball is the Asian guy. When Paul gives the old “It’s not if you win, it’s how you play the game” line, Asian guy says, “No, it’s if you win.” This is one of the few honest moments in this movie.
Mathewson lands in New York and meets with Lieutenant Colonal Conroy (that’s all we get on his background: surname and rank). Conroy will be the movie’s villain, but he sure doesn’t act like it. John Mahoney plays Conroy as being stern and no-nonsense but fairly reasonable given the circumstances. It is also revealed that Paul’s little homemade bomb could pack a 50-kiloton wallop if set off (Hiroshima times three, give or take).
Now we see Jenny and Paul in the hotel room. Since the movie just keeps pilin’ it on, it’s time for yet another edition of Bullet Time, courtesy the Wachowski Brothers!
- As I said, I was a science fair guy myself. You have local competitions, then regional, then state. I’ve never heard of a fair where you go straight to national.
- Paul’s teacher isn’t there. Neither is his mother. Paul is completely unsupervised....
- ....and Jenny is with him. We’ll learn in a moment that she drove him here. So the movie would have us believe she got permission from her parents and the school— You can complete this one.
- Ready for this? They’re sharing the hotel room. It has one bed. I repeat, two unsupervised 16-year-olds are sharing a bed on a school-sponsored trip. What the hell is Brickman trying to tell us, here?! Oh, man, shades of Manhattan! I’m surprised he didn’t have Mathewson be the one going after Jenny and say it was perfectly all right! I’m gonna break off here, before I start foaming at the mouth.
Back to the story. Jenny reads the opening for her article to Paul:
Jenny: (reading her article) “Paul Stephens, a high school student from Ithaca, New York, unveiled a homemade atomic bomb at the 45th Annual Science Fair today, thereby becoming the first private citizen to join the Nuclear Club, an exclusive group whose other members include the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China.”
Paul: If I’m in the Nuclear Club, do I get a jacket?
Jenny: You get anything you want.
Paul tells her, “I never thought I’d say this to anyone.... I have to go get the atomic bomb out of the car.” (and I shudder) But Jenny decides to do a little more kissing... lying down on the bed.
And this is when the military and feds burst in, Mathewson in tow. There’s some Immortal Dialogue which was supposed to be funny, but it makes Paul and Jenny look really stupid. Jenny starts mouthing off (and she just won’t shut up) how she wants to talk to a lawyer, and Paul.... Paul acts like Bugs Bunny facing Elmer Fudd for the first time. Except this isn’t a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Conroy shows he’s no wimp, and Mathewson... wimps out. But Conroy gives Mathewson the benefit of the doubt, letting Dr. John take Paul out into the hall to try and talk some sense into him. During the whole scene, the Paranerds are in the next room, listening in with their little eavesdropping gizmo.
Out in the hall, Mathewson is more than reasonable with Paul. Paul is the opposite. Brickman airs his anti-military bent by having Mathewson refer to the Army as “gorillas,” but Mathewson follows that with a good line, saying, “You try toughing it out with them, and they’ll lock you up in a little room somewhere and throw away the room.” And Paul’s reaction? He continues to be a smart-ass, demanding to be allowed to enter the bomb into the science fair! He still thinks he’s sure to win, as all the other exhibits are “junk.” Hey, Paul, your whipping-boy Roland’s exhibit was a very accurate prediction of the rise of the internet. That’s not my definition of “junk,” you egotistical jack-ass. But Mathewson finally convinces Paul to come clean.
Only one problem: the bomb ain’t in the car anymore. Conroy is understandably pissed, but Mathewson believes Paul when he says he doesn’t know what happened to it. Paul is honestly confused and scared in this scene. Savor it; it’s the last time we see him like this.
Paul is taken to a room in the hotel (!) for interrogation. The government spooks don’t believe him when he says he doesn’t know where the bomb is, and they prepare a truth serum. Are we supposed to be scared by this? It’s not exactly on a par with dental drills and “Is it safe?” And Paul’s not that worried; he continues to be a smart-ass and even threatens the interrogators. They’ve had enough of this dummy, and they inject the truth serum....
And the lights go out! It’s the Paranerds to the rescue! They shut the power off, overpower the feds with a fire extinguisher (!) and get Paul outta there. We don’t ever learn how they get Jenny out; we just see her running along with one of the nerds. The Paranerds stole the bomb from the car. They found the car by running Jenny’s name through the DMV computer, meaning (1) the car is in Jenny’s name, not her parents’ (the Paranerds make this very clear), and (2) the Paranerds were able to run Jenny’s name through the computer (accessing it instantly; remember, this was 1986), track down her car tag number, and find her car before Paul led the feds to it; five minutes, max. Yeah, right. They know it’s a bomb, but they’re willing to help, “Because there is more to life than raising toads.” I swear I didn’t make that up. Oh, yeah, one shot of the Paranerds seems to suggest that ROLAND is working with them. This is a real jaw-dropper, especially since we’ll learn soon that he has no sympathy for Paul whatsoever. Introductions all around: Marshall Brickman, Continuity. Continuity, Marshall Brickman.
The Paranerds give Paul the bomb, which Paul has hidden in a wooden box marked LIVE ANIMALS. Paul and Jenny make their escape; Paul is clearly high from the truth serum, and he makes “funny” cracks through the sequence. Finally, they get on a bus back to Ithaca. Paul says, “Jenny? I love you, Jenny. I want to be your wife.” Oh, my sides! Please stop! And he passes out. Once again, the music throughout the escape is that of a light comedy.
A quick thought about the music. The score is built entirely around two themes; almost all of the cues are variations on them. One is the “scary” theme that plays during the opening credits. It isn’t great, but it’s decent. The other theme is this light-comedy bit, which is much more inappropriate... and is used much more often. I remember this movie’s composer, Phillippe Sarde, writing great scores for Quest For Fire and The Bear. But he really dropped the ball on this one.
Early evening. Elizabeth is at home, and she hears a helicopter land outside. The feds swarm in and set up base there. The faux-Dragnet bit a couple of the suits pull with Elizabeth must’ve had Jack Webb spinning in his grave. Mathewson stands by and looks ineffectual. Enough of this. I’ll talk about Jill Eikenberry’s acting in a moment.
Back on the bus, Paul awakes and sees another rider with a portable TV. The rider has conveniently fallen asleep, and that TV’s getting GREAT reception; it shows a local news report crystal clear. And the report? “Teenage Terrorist.” Looks like Paul’s got his headlines. There’s a very badly staged interview scene with Roland, who comments: “Stephens? Very disturbed person. Definitely the criminal type.” We’re supposed to laugh at him, but he’s right! (Here’s a drinking game for all movies with a Designated Hero and Villain: whenever a “bad guy” says something you’re supposed to laugh at, but instead you say “He’s right,” take a drink. You’ll be well oiled by the time the movie’s over, which is the best state for enjoying crap like this.)
It’s never explained how people found out that Paul had stolen plutonium from a lab. But one thing occurred to me. From this point on, Paul has nothing to protest. He’s won. It’s just a matter of time before people start asking questions about the lab. But he’s not about to let that slow him down.
Paul and Jenny get off the bus outside of town and make their way into a barn. Jenny’s ready to turn herself in before things get even worse, but Paul talks her out of it, telling her to think about the future. She says, “If we get killed, we won’t have any future.” His response: “Of course we will, we’ll always have a future.” WHAT?!?! Stupid movie. They share an apple (they’re on an apple farm) and bunk down for the night.
Fade up, early morning. Back at Casa del Stephens, Elizabeth is wigging out. Mathewson’s wishy-washy responses aren’t helping. He gives a half hearted reminder that Paul’s not exactly innocent here, saying, “Well, he did do some things that are against the law.” That’s an understatement, Doc. A moment later, he says, “He [Paul] has a gift, and he wants to use it.” The logical question — “Use it how?” — is not addressed. Elizabeth starts throwing out some sarcastic barbs about Mathewson and about the military. She’s preachy and high-handed, but coming from Elizabeth, it’s understandable. After all, she is a mother coming to her son’s defense. Credit Where It’s Due (hope ya don’t mind me borrowing this, Pip and Patrick): Jill Eikenberry gives the best performance in this film by far. In a straight-up comparison between her and John Lithgow, Lithgow is the better actor — lots more versatility. But she can certainly hold her own, and she has an advantage here: hers is the only character who is actually normal or likeable. Elizabeth is an ordinary woman thrown into a pretty tense situation, and Eikenberry plays the part very well.
Paul and Jenny wake up, hotwire a truck (!) and get outta there, adding Grand Theft Auto to the list of charges. Let us take another pause while I air this out. If you’re like 99% of the population, you’re gonna look and feel pretty rough when you get up in the morning. And if you wake up after spending the night in a barn, in the same clothes you wore yesterday, and you’ve had only an apple to eat in the last sixteen hours, you’re gonna look rough rough. (Did a dog just go through here?) Paul and Jenny? They look like they’ve had breakfast, showered, brushed, and changed into clothes right out of the dryer. This is a small thing, but it’s a pet peeve I have with a lot of movies.
Paul and Jenny make their way to a phone booth. Paul calls up Mom and is surprised (!) to learn the military has set up shop back home. As clairvoyant as this kid has been so far, wouldn’t he have figured out the most logical place for the gubmint to go at this point would be his own house? He gets Mathewson on the phone and demands a typewritten tell all statement about the lab “for starters” in exchange for the “gadget.” (The movie never calls it a bomb from here on; after all, if it were honest, we’d see Paul for the menace he is. If we didn’t already.) Paul demands that they meet at the lab in one hour and that he be allowed inside to take photographs, then he makes the following threat:
Paul: Tell your pals, no funny stuff. I’m very tense, and there’s no telling what I might do. (Again, Paul doesn’t look tense here; he’s clearly enjoying this.)
Mathewson: Take it easy, you’re fine.
Paul: No, I’m a terrorist! Haven’t you been watching television?
And with that, Paul and Jenny take off, leaving the phone off the hook. Of course, the gubmint is a buncha idjits; they don’t think to trace the call to find out just where Paul was.
Mathewson gets on the typewriter then starts for the lab. He and Conroy have the following exchange:
Mathewson: Look, he trusts me. Let me do it. I’ll get it back! That’s what we want, isn’t it?
Conroy: How do we know this thing won’t be armed?
Mathewson: Armed?
Conroy: That’s right, he used the phrase “I’m a terrorist.” (reading back Paul’s words) Here. “No, I’m a terrorist. Haven’t you been watching television?”
Mathewson: You people really live in your own world, don’t you.
Conroy: Well, we don’t have the luxury of living in yours.
I assume the audience is supposed to scoff at Conroy as Mathewson does, but Conroy is absolutely right. (If you’re playing the game, take a drink now.) Conroy can’t take a chance that Paul’s statement was sarcasm. Add to that, I imagine the military would have questioned some of the students at the science fair, and Roland would certainly have told them about Paul’s interest in blowing stuff up and his willingness to hurt others for fun. Again: Paul is the hero, and Conroy’s the villain. But Conroy is the one who can justify every single action he’s taken; Paul can’t.
Jenny drops Paul off a short walk from the lab grounds, then goes to a phone booth to start Phase Two of their plan. She calls up a classmate, Max (played by Robert Sean Leonard!), with an assignment. He is to call all the local news, then start a sort of ghost-to-ghost hookup (don’t know what that is? Click here: http://www.3investigators.homestead.com/files/inventions.htm and scroll down about halfway) to get as many people as possible out to the lab.
So Mathewson waits for Paul at the main gate. Conroy has called in a SWAT team, including snipers. Paul comes up with his bomb-in-a-box, collects the typed statement from Mathewson, and demands that they go inside. Paul continues to rattle off smart-assed remarks. Mathewson rightly chastises him for treating this like a game, and Paul says he’s not enjoying it; he’s scared to death. Bull. Paul went into this whole mess looking for trouble, and he’s gone out of his way to make things as bad as possible every chance he got. So you’ll forgive me for not playing the violin for this creep. By the way, Paul is certain the soldiers won’t let him live, knowing what he knows; if Paul were in their position, he’d shoot to kill, too. Now that’s something I believe.
They go inside and enter the corridor outside the lab, passing a sort of radiation detector. The thing sounds off, sending an instant X-ray to the security desk, where Conroy stands ready to give orders. The thing is, that detector only went waist high. Meaning that Paul didn’t have to go through all that business with the laser and the toy truck. He could have held the jar over his head and walked out with the stupid thing. Anyway, the X-ray shows that the bomb is in sections; Paul can’t threaten them with it as it is. Conroy orders men in to get it.
And how do they do this? One FBI shooter goes in, brandishing a rifle, pointing it at Paul. Uh, how’s about this for an idea? Send in four or five guys, let them rush Paul and tackle him, and get the bomb away from him! Idiot. I’ll give the movie this much: it shows Conroy clearly disapproving of the shooter’s actions. So Mathewson rushes the shooter, the gun fires into the ceiling, and Paul makes a break for the lab. The shooter orders Mathewson to freeze, throwing out a gratuitous f-word so the movie will get a PG-13 rating.
Paul gets into the lab and finds a perfect position: he makes sure the plutonium chamber is between him and any shooters. It is made clear that the shooters (one of ‘em played by John Mahoney’s future Frasier co star, Dan Butler) can’t get a shot.
I hope you’re sitting down for this.
Now that he’s relatively safe (and knows people from town should be coming in before too long), Paul takes out the bomb, puts it together, arms it, and sets the timer for two minutes.
Read that last part again. This is Our Hero. Holy s%(#.
Conroy arrives in the corridor and watches it all through binoculars, despite the fact that Paul can’t be more than fifty feet away. Once Paul is finished and ready to commit a terrorist act, Conroy and Mathewson have the following tete-a-tete:
Conroy: Okay, here’s the deal. We have an irrational child down there with an armed device. He seems to trust you, so you get down there.
Mathewson: And do what?
Conroy: Disarm him. Get him to take it apart.
Mathewson: And if he won’t?
Conroy: Well, then, just separate him from it, and we’ll do the rest.
Mathewson: I can’t do that.
Conroy: And why not?
Mathewson: Because I’m not a—
Conroy: What? Killer? Is that the word you’re groping for, Doctor? And what the bloody hell do you think you’ve been working on all these years? What do you think all this is for? Your own personal amusement?! To stimulate you intellectually?! You are what you are, Doctor, a son-of-a-bitch like the rest of us. Now for God’s sake, take some responsibility and do what has to be done!
Slug back a bottle of beer for this “He’s RIGHT” moment. Considering what’s going on, all I could say was, “You tell him, Colonel!”
Mathewson goes in and sits down a few feet away from Paul. He tries to make some light banter about what Paul used to make the bomb. Paul has a little smile on his face the whole time, and he’s clearly proud of his new toy. I know I’ve said it before ad nauseum, but this little prick makes my skin crawl.
Mathewson finally gets to the point: give up the damned bomb. Paul refuses, of course, comparing the situation to the arms race, speaking of deterrence. The comparison doesn’t work at all when you think about it. Then Paul says there’s one problem: he’s not crazy enough to push the button. Hey, Paul, look at all you’ve done so far. Believe me, boy, you’re crazy enough. So he puts his best puppy-dog face on, and Mathewson is converted. He persuades Paul to give him the bomb... then he threatens to set the thing off if Conroy doesn’t let them both walk out scot free! In a real way, Mathewson has just proved to be worse than Paul, as we’ll see in just a bit. And this time, that grin on his face really is scary.
Mathewson and Paul go down the corridor. Now that Mathewson’s on Paul’s side, Paul makes a half-hearted apology for destroying the man’s career. Um, yeah, right.
Conroy has had enough. He orders the snipers to take both of them out before they can reach the main gate. We’re supposed to recoil in horror at the sight of Paul in the crosshairs (Nooooo! He’s just a boy!!!). But considering that the two of them have just threatened to commit mass murder, I found myself siding with the snipers. Hey, guys, if you can get both of ’em with one shot, I’ll give ya a cigar!
And just at the moment when it looks like the snipers will shoot.... The bomb sets itself to 1,000 hours and starts counting down. Mathewson says that the radiation from the core screwed up the timing circuit, which I guess I could buy, except that this has IITS written all over it. Since the bomb doesn’t respond when Paul tries to turn it off, they call Conroy in to help them. Now they gotta disarm the thing.
Cut to a brief scene showing the townspeople going out en masse, heading for the lab (including Elizabeth, who evades the feds in the house way too easily). Nice one, Mr. Brickman, remind us that Paul and Mathewson just threatened everyone in this town! There are a couple more scenes like this intercut with the bomb-disarming sequence.
Back to the lab. They bring the bomb in right next to the plutonium chamber (!) and set it down. Conroy does have one bit of good news: he just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance by switching WHONK WHONK WHONK WHONK!!! Dated Joke Alert! Dated Joke Alert! Sorry. No, his good news: they have 999 hours (about six weeks) to figure out what to do. Au contraire, Kernel. The timer is speeding up, apparently another problem with using timers around radioactive material. I guess I’ll buy this; they wouldn’t have cooked this part up just to— Well, maybe they would.
Conroy has a good question: why the hell did they bring the stupid thing back inside? Mathewson asks if he has a better idea. Paul suggests a rock quarry outside town. He says it’s a couple of square miles and should be perfect. Again, words like “radiation” and “fallout” are not used. Then Mathewson lets the other shoe drop: this stuff is really bad, capable of causing that 50-kiloton blast described earlier. Well done, Mathewson, you threatened to set it off, and you knew exactly what it could do. Conroy asks how long they have; the timer is going faster and faster (admittedly a fairly effective idea; it’s eerie seeing the hours counter hurtling down toward zero). Mathewson whips out his handy-dandy pocket calculator, does ten seconds’ worth of calculus, and announces they have about three minutes until the thing goes boom.
Someone asks about evacuating the area. Conroy retorts that they’d have to evacuate the whole Eastern Seaboard. Uh huh. The bomb is just that powerful. Of course, he doesn’t give the right response — that they have three minutes until detonation, and they have no time to evacuate.
Man oh man, Brickman really screws this up. The pacing, editing, and acting are very, very leisurely and casual. Any real suspense in this scene is completely stripped away. Everyone here seems to take the fact that they may be about to have the worst disaster in American history in stride. I know Conroy and the soldiers should be cool under pressure, but not this cool.
So they go through idea after idea, failing to disarm the bomb at every step. I did smile at one joke: Paul asks for a screwdriver and six screwdrivers are shoved up at his face. There is one — count ’em, one — moment of suspense when Mathewson realizes Paul has made a mistake that could set the bomb off. His panicked, “No no NO!” gives a brief moment of unease in all the yawning. Also, when he tells everyone to wait a moment, Conroy says, “I’ll wait. It won’t wait!” with appropriate tension.
They finally figure on a plan: cut all the firing circuit wires simultaneously. There’s one good moment when they look for some wire cutters and Conroy gripes, “You mean I’m gonna die because some a$@%*!@ didn’t bring a pair of pliers?” So anyway, they get enough cutters, get set, Matthewson counts down, and they cut the wires. Bomb’s disarmed.
No, I’m not trying to take anything away from this; that’s exactly how exciting or tense it was. It did not impress.
Mathewson heads for the door, followed by Paul. Conroy yells at them to freeze, as that dumb-ass shooter from the corridor trains his weapon on them. Mathewson says, “Forget it, Colonel! We blew it!” Amen, Doc. “What are you gonna do, make us all disappear? Me and him? (Pause) And all of them?” And the crowd from town arrives outside the main gate, exactly on cue. Of course, Conroy may not have been threatening to kill them; he may have just wanted to arrest them. After all, he does have them dead to rights on terrorism charges. But they’re the “heroes,” and he’s a military guy, so we’re supposed to side with Paul and the good Doctor.
Paul and Mathewson go outside! The crowd is waiting for them! The military cuts and runs, escaping in a helicopter! Paul and Mathewson are reunited with Mom and Jenny! The music swells! All’s right with the world! Fade out!
And we don’t see what will happen when the crowd finds out that Paul and Mathewson threatened to incinerate every one of them to save their own skins. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/12/2006 : 12:38:27 AM
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AFTERTHOUGHTS
Pardon me while I throw some cold water on my face. Thank you. Whew!
The Manhattan Project was one of a small sub-genre of films that cropped up in the mid-80’s: the anti-nuke film. Most of these were pieces of garbage that followed standard criteria: They would take a strong stance against nuclear war — not realizing that no one in their right mind would be for a nuclear war. The message was the movie; it was sermon time, and heavy-handed was the order of the day. The movies ranged in politics from leftist to ultra-extreme-leftist. The message would be extremely simple-minded, and the story would follow suit.
Only one of these movies was a hit with critics and audiences alike. Wargames broke the rules:
- It made no secret of its politics, but they took a back seat to telling an entertaining story.
- The military was shown to be a bunch of regular joes doing their jobs. The good-ol’-boy General, not the civilian, was the one who ended up trusting the hero.
- There were only two overt bits of preaching. One was from the hero, as he tried to convince another character to help him. The other was from the villain, the computer system that was blindly putting us on a path to war. And there was motivation behind the preaching.
- David, the hero, was far from perfect. He was shown at the beginning to be an underachieving slacker who stupidly broke into a military computer, setting off a chain of events that could end with World War III.
Marshall Brickman was clearly trying to capitalize on Wargames’ success when he made The Manhattan Project. But he failed to see why Wargames worked so well: the gimmicks and messages served the story. Brickman made a movie that was all gimmicks and messages in search of a story. First, he co-wrote a script that was peppered with “clever” references to the original A-bomb tests... starting with the very title of the movie (I won’t bother listing the others, I’ve gone on long enough with this thing). Then, the script carried logical holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through. But that wasn’t the capper. Project’s big problem: a Designated Hero who is a true monster.
Let’s take another look at Wargames’ hero, David, as played by Matthew Broderick. Even early on, when David is a smart aleck who has no problem with cooking his report card or cheating on the phone bill, Broderick gave him an aw-shucks charm. This was clearly a shy kid who had trouble making friends, and we got the feeling he’d never dream of actually hurting anyone. When he realized what he’d done, David was horrified. Then, when he learned he could do something about it, David took responsibility and started trying to undo the damage he’d done.
Paul is a polar opposite. He seeks out trouble, and though he’s given a way out time after time, he deliberately makes things worse. Just take another look above. And it doesn’t stop at the writing.
Overall, the acting in the movie is much better than it deserves. I don’t know if the principals actually believed in this dreck, or if they were collecting a check and wanted to be professional, but most of the performances are as good as you could possibly expect, with one exception — maybe.
I’m not sure whether Christopher Collet’s performance is Oscar-worthy or Razzie-worthy. It depends on whether he meant to give the impression he gave. As it stands, his portrayal of this character is the icing for the script’s cake. As Paul, he is superficially charming, but he rarely shows any real humanity, and he never shows a trace of genuine warmth, empathy, humility, compassion, or remorse. He is smug, arrogant, manipulative, and hypocritical. He has no problem with putting others in danger for his own purposes. There’s a word that describes Our Hero perfectly: sociopath. And that’s how Collet plays him.
It’s possible Collet knew exactly what he was doing. If he did, then this performance was nothing short of brilliant. It would be one of the best villains I’d seen in a long time.
But I don’t think this was his intent. I think he was playing it straight, trying to make Paul sympathetic, and he couldn’t pull it off. I say this for two reasons. First, Collet was nineteen when The Manhattan Project was made, and he didn’t have a lot of acting experience. I find it hard to believe he could pull off a performance like that right under the nose of its director, even someone as careless as Brickman.
Second, and more telling: all of the major actors in this movie have had a good deal of success in movies or TV (note that every one of them was in a successful TV series) — except for Collet. He has done some guest starring work, and that’s it. That tells me that, for once, Hollywood got the message pretty quickly.
They got the message with Marshall Brickman as well. The Manhattan Project was, pardon the pun, a bomb. It grossed about $4 million at the box office. Brickman hasn’t directed since.
IMMORTAL DIALOGUE
(Paul and Jenny make out on the hotel bed, and Conroy, Mathewson, and a group of gubmint suits burst in. Paul and Jenny sit up.)
Paul: Hi, Dr. Mathewson.
Conroy: (pointing at Paul) Is this him?
Mathewson: Paul, what the hell do you think you’re doing?
Paul: Well, I thought we’d start with some kissing then move into the fancy stuff. |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 06/12/2006 : 2:51:45 PM
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I saw that last half of this crap and I couldn't believe that we were supposed to root for Paul. Even by "Teen Movie" standards, he was a JERK!
When Conroy pulled his gun and the two idiots acted all snotty, the old phrase "No jury on Earth would ever convict me!" came to mind.
There was a TV episode (On Hawaii 5-0, I think) where a family of nuclear power plant workers decided to make an "peace" statement by stealing some plutonium and makeing a bomb. They used modeling clay instead of high explosives, but some badguy found out about it and forced then to replace the clay with the real thing. I think they regreted the whole idea after that, but ONLY because their kids were threatened!
Do they always have to make the "heros" in these things self-centered morons?
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2006 : 3:17:03 PM
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Great review Brad. I remember catching part of this on TV once. I didn't make it too far due to the stupidity you describe. The movie might have made a better statement had Paul, after starting out with good intentions, decided to use his newly create power to enrich himself. If he rigged a dead man's switch, he could easily demand pretty much all he wanted. The underlying message would be that no one could resist the temptation offered by such power.
A much better movie could be made from the kid in Michigan who actually built his own breeder reactor from the uranium in smoke detectors and some other supplies. He actually called the relevant gov't agencies who filled in some information he was missing. He was smart enough to realize he had made a mistake when his geiger counter was registering from three houses down.
Greenhornet, Hollywood is really trapped in "The Ends Justify the Means" mentality.
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
Edited by - Terrahawk on 06/14/2006 07:40:26 AM |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2006 : 3:42:16 PM
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From Terrahawk
quote:
He was smart enough to realize he mad a mistake when his geiger counter was registering from three houses down.
That reminds me, did Paul in MP use any SHIELDING? While reading the review, I thoughht about how neat it would be if his hair started falling out and he couldn't "perform" for his girlfriend and they suddenly realise what a huge mistake he made. But of course, in that case it would have been "all about him", not about the danger he posed for others.
quote:
Greenhornet, Hollywood is really trapped in "The Ends Justify the Means" mentality.
*sigh* I know, I know.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2006 : 6:16:47 PM
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Thanks for the compliments, both of you. I like Terrahawk's scenario; I have my own below.
Greenhornet... Nope, no mention of shielding at all, other than that "incubator" he used to make the core. And like I said, it looked woefully inadequate.
Here's what I would have done (and it'll undermine the director's intent completely):
Paul sets the timer for 10 minutes, not two. When Mathewson goes to confront Paul for the last time, he spells out just what Paul is doing: threatening thousands of people to protect himself. He makes it clear that Paul has no standing whatsoever. Then he forces the issue: he tells Paul to hand the bomb over, and Paul will walk off the grounds alive; if Conroy tries anything, Mathewson will personally tell all about the lab (even if this doesn't work, he's shown Paul he's committed to protecting him). But if this means nothing to Paul, and if he really wants to be a terrorist, go ahead and turn the key.
Paul turns the key, then breaks it off. He tells Mathewson, "You don't know what I'm capable of."
Mathewson calls Conroy in. They overpower Paul, keep him in a corner, and THEN we go through the business of disarming the bomb. After they disarm it, Paul is hauled away in cuffs as the townspeople swarm in, protesting Paul's arrest. Conroy and Mathewson watch this. Mathewson muses that closing the lab down won't be such a bad thing, while Conroy says, "They think he's a hero, and some of them will call him a hero even after they realize what he tried to do here."
Final shot: Paul in an interview room with a prison psychiatrist, who tries to make some sense out of what Paul did before it's too late: Paul's hair is falling out.
That's not the only change I'd make, by far, but it's a good start. Anyway, that's how I'd do it. Here's one for the CAT-scan department: Roger Ebert gave this thing FOUR STARS. His review is absolutely clueless. I occasionally like a review he writes, but more often I wonder how he got a job as a critic in the first place. |
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twitterpate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
1026 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2006 : 10:10:37 PM
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Great review, as always, Brad.
You know, this really did have the makings of a terrific film noir look at nuclear weapons. Unfortunate that a layperson such as yourself can come up with so much of a better script than the professionals. The strange thing is the sense that the movie is SCREAMING out for your treatment, while the director keeps dragging it back to "cute teens outfox the eeeevil military". Was the original script more like your version (the introduction of Paul, all Oedipal and seething with hidden resentments seems to imply it), but then watered down to become Wargames Lite?
And yes, I kept thinking that perhaps weapons-grade plutonium would not be the safest thing to be playing with, even if it does look like glitter and green Jello. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 07/04/2006 : 11:41:20 PM
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Thanks for the compliment, Twitter. And I have no idea what the original script may have looked like, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the "teens GOOD, military BAD" mantra was firmly in place from the word go. The movie's intro to Paul may have been a little more subtle than I described it, but all that stuff is there. I think Brickman may have meant it as a weak red herring more than anything else.
And you're right. I guess you could call me a failed screenwriter, and I came up with that storyline in about ten minutes. Really, just about anything would've been an improvement; you get the feeling the filmmakers were TRYING to blow it. The sad part is, this sort of thing is the norm these days. |
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Adam
Altar Boy of Jabootu
2 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2006 : 3:36:26 PM
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Thanks for a great review! I liked your ending much better; it was a very realistic and appropriate bit of poetic justice.
Paul the sociopath was bad enough, but the behavior I found most incomprehensible was that of the Paranerds. I could understand if they had stolen the bomb so one of them could enter it in the Science Fair. It would have been immensely stupid, granted, but not insane. Here, though, they steal the bomb just to keep it from the government! Then they assult and batter an Army officer to free a guy they just met, whom they know nothing about except that he built a working atomic bomb. Finally they return to the drugged Paul his weapon of mass destruction! These actions are beyond any rational frame of reference. I am at a loss as to how any of this is supposed to look like less than lunacy to the viewer. The best I can come up with is that the audience is supposed to somehow accept that ANYTHING the military does is automatically bad and more than worth going to prison to oppose. |
Edited by - Adam on 10/15/2006 8:00:31 PM |
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The Manhattan Project
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