All aboard....choo choooooo.....for two train movies that not only come from different decades, they appear to come from separate universes altogether......
Emperor Of The North (1973) may be one of the finest, most perfectly realized films of director Robert Aldrich, the very epitome of Aldrich's worldview and cinematic storytelling.
Aldrich films were always gaudily melodramatic, brutal, in-your-face with a vengeance with actors performances dialed up way into the red danger zone.
This is the guy who gave us "Kiss Me Deadly", "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", "The Dirty Dozen", "Flight Of The Phoenix", "The Longest Yard"....(and one of my favorite guilty pleasures, the demented 'Vertigo' goes Hollywood "The Legend Of Lylah Clare") (see the post of 3/15/18)
Aldrich favored tough-as-nails stories and the characters to go with 'em......and never shied away from peppering his films with cruelty and violence that bordered on nihilistic.
For "Emperor", he takes us back to 1930's Depression-stricken America. Poverty reigns. Jobs are scarce, nearly non-existent. FDR's trying to get the country back on its feet while calming everyone on the radio.
And a burgeoning population of homeless, jobless hobos have established their own sub-culture, travelling around by hopping on to railroad cars for free rides from place to place.
The acknowledged legendary King of the 'Bo's' is "A # 1" (Lee Marvin) a seasoned survivor of hard knock rail-riding. To his infinite annoyance, he comes across "Cigarette" (Keith Carridine), a hot-tempered young blowhard whose empty bragging betrays his inexperience at every turn.
Together, they take on the most life threatening challenge a hobo can dare to attempt......bumming a ride on "No. 19", a freight train policed by 'Shack',(Ernest Borgnine, popping his eyes in perpetual rage) its insanely brutal guard and conductor.
(In case anyone didn't get the premise here, the film starts off with Shack literally hammering a hobo off his train, sending the poor bum underneath the wheels and on to a quick, instant bisection.)
A #1 wearily schools the ever obnoxious Cigarette as they torment the frenzied, enraged Shack by managing to hide on his train.........which ultimately leads to a marathon Duel-Of-The-Titans between Borgnine and Marvin, having at each other with chains, lumber planks,, fists and and ax. It's one corker of a battle, brilliantly staged and edited.
And as with all Aldrich productions, his cast is heavily populated with the most reliable, familiar and memorable character actors of the era.....Charles Tyner, Malcom Atterbury, Simon Oakland, Matt Clark, Elisha Cook Jr., Liam Dunn, Sid Haig, Karl Lukas, John Steadman, Vic Tayback, Dave Willock and loads more.
Another bonus.....pre-CGI, so all the trains are real.....but Aldrich's best special effects were always his actors.....and Borgnine, always ready to self-detonate at any give moment, dominates the proceedings
"Emperor Of The North" stands as pure 100 per cent Aldrich, whose films could never be mistaken for any other director's.....4 stars (****).
And now, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Let's jump off the Aldrich express and hop on the crazy train of "Bullet Train" (2022), which parked itself in mult-plexes a few months ago as the latest noisy, brainless, over-digitized CGI junk-fest
Yes indeedy, the film unfolds on one of those Japanese speed-of-light trains, with a passenger list consisting almost entirely of chatty, quirky professional assassins.
And in true re-heated, warmed over Tarantino fashion, they're all fully armed, not only with firearms but with endless blah-blah-blah conversational pop culture quips. Pardon me, while I suppress a deep yawn here.
Please don't expect me to remember why or how all these pseudo-witty hit-folk are all on the train together......I've forgotten already. And it's a given they'll all start killing each other for reasons I've already forgotten as well.
Amid the non-stop chaos and carnage, a few of these lethal loons stand out, starting with Brad Pitt as 'Ladybug' the film's designated lead. Ladybug hopes to conduct his mission (don't ask, I forgot again) with mellow non-violence, so we're all free to mutter "good luck with that..."
If you're willing to switch off all thought processes (or undergo a lobotomy beforehand), the film does deliver all the fast-and-furiously paced action wham-bams you'd expect from something called 'Bullet Train'.
The main problem here......with its slavish devotion to Tarantino-like snark, the movie is never as clever and funny as it apparently thinks it is. The exhausting, failed attempts at ironic repartee reminded me of those sad, gasping, unfunny "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs that flooded theaters and video stores after 1994 and beyond.
So how much you enjoy the ride given here will strictly depend on your tolerance (or love of) over-edited fight scenes, and absurdly apocalyptic action rendered by the usual 4,000 digital animators toiling for multiple visual effect houses with all sorts of fanciful, amusing names. (All of whose names you can read during the 15 minute credit crawl....)
Well, at least I was never bored.....(and certainly that lobotomy came in handy for enjoying it) 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)
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