Fact: Iran is building missile bases in Venezuela so that they can launch a nuclear weapon towards the United States.

Fact: Active members of the Muslim Brotherhood are working in the US government and control the CIA, DHS, and the even the President

Fact: Did you know there are twenty billion people on the planet? One third of them are terrorists, and the other third are Mexicans!

Fact: The government puts microchips in the firing pins of all the guns and gives the information to Hamas, and Hamas makes a spreadsheet about your life, and sells it to telemarketers in India who harass you by saying their name is “Walter” and trying to get you to upgrade your satellite package. And we all know who owns the satellites, Vladimir Putin. Putin’s favorite food is chips, which is coincidentally short for “microchips,” which are in your guns, remember!?! Then, the satellites beam down space diabetes into your body and you die at fifty-five years old. And it’s all because of the government, the liberals, and the terrorists, who all want to control you, but also want to kill you, which seems counter productive, but it’s not because of FACTS!

Fact: Glenn Beck films are just horror movies for crazy people

(documented photo from space of the giant flag Hezbollah built in St. Louis as a testament to the Prophet Mohammed)

So yeah, as you can gather, I just watched a Glenn Beck documentary called Rumors of War III. My aunt (whom I do love dearly) sent it to my mom with a note saying she was trying to warn us of our impending deaths. Now my aunt eats like a child who got locked inside a movie theater, so I’m pretty sure the good people down at Hershey’s are going to murder her way before Mohammed Khalid Honkeykiller procures a dirty bomb. But whatever, I had some time to waste so I decided to give this DVD a look see. The most unsettling and glaringly obvious misstep of the movie was the huge leaps in logic.

Someone says Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization. That someone is automatically a terrorist. That someone coincidentally works at a university. Terrorists and invaded our education system! It’s a…. wait for it…..yup….FACT!

(note: Glenn Beck cries so much because they dipped Obama’s birth certificate in hot sauce before they shoved it up his ass)

I could go on and on and just tear this documentary to shreds, but I won’t do that. I imagine if you’re reading this, you must be literate. And if you are literate, you don’t take Glen Beck seriously, and if you don’t take Glenn Beck seriously, you don’t have enough canned goods in your house, and if you don’t have enough canned goods in your house, what will you trade with at Bartertown after the apocalypse? Your anus, that’s what you’ll barter with, you commy fagget.

I’m not knocking Glenn Beck’s hustle at all; he’s built more bomb shelters than schizophrenia. And I’m pretty sure the Bomb Shelter Factory Worker’s Union loves him. Sike, there are no more unions. The Bomb Shelters are built by illegal Mexicans. Oh yeah, you know what else about illegal Mexicans? They are also terrorists!

FACT: Terrorists come across the Mexican desert into the US all the time? Don’t believe me, well Fox News showed a dusty old cattle rancher holding up a crusty blanket with a fancy pattern on it. It was probably a Muslim prayer blanket. A Muslim terrorist left it. Guess who smuggles everyone through the desert? Mexicans! So you see: the Mexicans are helping the terrorists, which now make the Mexicans terrorists themselves. Bam! Let. That. Settle.

It goes on like this for what feels like hours. Another cool thing I really liked was when they said all the Islamic States were on the verge of uniting against the West and raging a religious war. A united Islam? Really? They can’t even agree on the best way to mutilate their women’s genitalia. I doubt the Shiites, Sunnis, and other factions are going to invade Alabama in lockstep and smear hummus all over Lynyrd Skynerd’s headstone. It’s clear, the people who believe this, have to want to believe this.

FACT: Being an American is boring. No matter how stupid or poor you are, you almost always have enough food and water. You crave excitement and stimulation! And fear is the bored man’s orgasm. It’s actually kind of sad: many of Glenn Beck’s supporters peaked one morning about eleven years ago when they watched some buildings from their postcards burn down on TV, and they’ve been chasing that high ever since. The Muslims, the Mexicans, the Religious War, the Race War, they will always be right around the corner! Arm yourself now! Educate yourself with the truth, and the truth will set you…back around 50 grand, 60 if you want the bunker that comes with a dojo.

One of the movie’s main flaws is that it supposes that there are thousands of threats every year that the government isn’t telling us about, yet they are constantly stopping them, catching dirty bombs, thwarting suicidal plots, and apprehending weaponized chemicals. The same government that is controlled by terrorists… is stopping terrorism. I don’t think you get to have it both ways, but I guess you do if you’re the kind of person who wants the government to keep its hands off your Medicare.

And just to add hilarity to insanity, the movie suggests that if you do not believe in these threats, then you have been brainwashed by the liberal media. It then fellates the egos of Beck’s true believers, making it their patriotic duty to spread the word. Go libertarians, warn your countrymen: one if by united healthcare, two if by evolution taught in schools.

Make no mistake; this is a movie, not a documentary. If this is a documentary, then so is Transformers II. And I don’t even recommend watching Beck’s movies for laughs because after the first thirty minutes, everything just morphs into the same drivel by “experts” telling you that you’re going to be killed by Islam soon… it’s a rare film, and awkward, but so is a left-handed butt wipe on a leap day. I wouldn’t waste your time. Instead of watching this, you know what you should do? First, turn off all the lights in your house. Then play some really loud techno music, and not the crappy kind they play in the skating ring, I’m talking about the quality techno that they play in a Bosnian sex club. Then, put a Glenn Beck DVD on mute, drop some acid, and just start writing down all your thoughts.

FACT: That’s what Glenn Beck does when he’s writing a new movie.

So, how was The Avengers?

You know how in boxing they have weight classes, but then also “pound for pound” rankings in an attempt to sort out who is the best quality fighter, regardless of size advantages? On a pound for pound basis, I would say The Avengers is quite good. In the heavyweight division, I would say it is a deserving champion, perhaps warranting a place in the pantheon of greats. I don’t want to get into boxing too much, but the analogy holds a lot of water here.

Are you going to go on about the Klitschko brothers or something? For the love of God…

Hear me out! If you don’t know, the Klitschkos are these giant Ukrainian goofballs who have Ph.D.s in P.E. and dominate the heavyweight division with ease. A lot of people would say that this is mostly because large African American guys who are great athletes pursue other sports these days, leaving the heavyweight division barren. It is undeniably true that this is the case, and I think something similar can be said of blockbusters. We can speculate on what has caused it, but if you watch Transformers or something, it’s pretty clear that the nobody involved is even really trying to make a good movie in any traditional sense. This creates a competitive void in which someone with big time talent who is actually willing to venture into this field, ie Joss Whedon, can take all of the competition to school.

So it is good by default?

Well, that’s the question. See, with the Klitschkos, some people say they are only good compared to the tomato cans currently populating the heavyweight division and that they would barely be competitive in past eras. Others say that they are indeed great fighters, unfortunately fighting in an era of mediocrity. I fall into the second camp with the Klitschkos and I’m inclined that way with the Avengers as well. The dilemma of these scenarios is, when you do nothing but talk about how much better everything was in the past, you sound like a bitterly nostalgic old dickhead. But at the same time, if it is not the case that Transformers and Iron Man are objectively worse films than Raiders of The Lost Ark, then my basic faculties are called into question to the point where maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

So one reason I responded so well to The Avengers was that it provided a sense of relief. It’s not just my imagination. A big budget action movie* can have characters who have clear motivations. The fact that I found many of the quips in this movie to be funny proves that I wasn’t just being a spiteful old man by never laughing at the jokes in similar films.

*I’m excluding movies for children, Pixar movies in particular. For reasons known only to the movers and shakers of Hollywood, movies can be intelligent and funny if they are made primarily for six year olds, but not if they are made for anybody older than that. 

Motivations? What are you talking about? Bad guys are motivated by being bad and good guys are motivated by being good!

Aha! You’ve played right into my hand. It’s almost as if I’m writing these questions myself! Simply identifying one character as “bad” and the other as “good” only goes so far. And when all of the smashing begins, it’s much more effective if we know why things are being smashed. I don’t have access to the exact lines, but there are consecutive scenes, involving the death of that one guy who collects Captain America trading cards. First he says to Loki, something like, “you’re going to fail.” And Loki is like, “WTF, I’m a badass with all of the advantages, why would I fail?” And the dying guy says, “because you lack conviction.” And Loki, and the audience, sense that this is probably accurate. Then, before he checks out, Dying Trading Card Guy says to Sam Jackson something like, “It’s OK, they needed something to bring them together.” So very quickly, we know what is motivating this guy and why he feels like he can die in peace, we get a plausible rallying point for The Avengers, and an indication of why Loki’s desire for power for the sake of power is not going to end well for him.

Then there are little touches. Like, a little bit earlier, when The Avengers are all at eachothers throats beyond any rational point, the direction lets us know that Loki’s scepter is influencing them. I really appreciate the effort, though it shouldn’t be anything special. But normally in these movies, if the heroes need to have an irrationally heated argument, the filmmaker will just be like, “oh well, I’ll just have them escalate a petty squabble to the point where it is more important to them than the survival of earth for no reason.” Most of the stuff that happens in The Avengers is driven by some kind of cause. Contrast that with Iron Man 1. Since the day that film opened, I’ve had a standing offer of $1 million to anybody who can explain what is motivating Jeff Bridges’ character in any way that makes sense. The prize remains unclaimed.

Alright, so why is The Hulk suddenly able to control himself and understand who is who and interact with the other Avengers in a productive way, half way through the movie?

Because he is always angry? I don’t know. It’s a movie about superheroes fighting aliens, so there are going to be a few leaks in the story, but they did a great job of plugging as many as they could, where most just ignore them. And I think that the fact that the build up to the big conflicts is coherent made many of the action scenes entertaining, while normally I just see these CGI dust ups as glossier versions of Roadrunner cartoons. It’s true that I’m bitter, old and incapable of fun, and that there were some fight scenes during which I just got bored, but I did feel a little bit of the old Star Wars juice flowing during some of the climactic scenes.

You said it was funny. Tell me, how the fuck is it funny?

Yeah, it is. Again, I think that this has a lot to do with the story and characters being coherent and relatively believable, which provides the platform for the comedy. Here’s a script excerpt that covers eleven minutes of screentime from Transformers: Bark At The Moon

Transformer: Woooooosh. Blam!

Transformer (making transforming sound): Wwwoooowawawawawawawa

Something esplodes

Transformer: Fart!

Transformer: Imma gets me sums robot watahmelon. I sho’ do hate books. Holla!

Something esplodes

The Avengers has physical comedy too. When Loki lectures The Hulk and The Hulk just grabs him and smashes the shit out of him, I laughed out loud. A lot of attention obviously went to making the visual effect look funny, and I’m sure gifs of the scene will become an internet staple. But it is even more funny because of the way the characters are set up.

There’s more subtle humor too, like how someone makes a Wizard of Oz joke and Captain America is like, “now that’s a reference I get!” Or how Cap is trying to describe a piece of technology to Stark and is like, “it seems to be powered by some sort of electricity,” which is a play on both dialogue cliches and Cap’s character being out of touch and not very adept with technology.

I’ve heard a lot about how Scarlett Johansson is not very good in the movie. How bad was she?

I’m not going to say she’s actually a great actress or anything, but coincidentally or not, the performance she gave was right for the part. She plays an Avenger called Bow And Arrow Man’s Girlfriend and, apart from generally being good at fighting, her superpowah is using passive aggression to manipulate people into spilling the beans. Therefore, she is usually kind of a blank page, allowing her adversary to dictate most of their interaction because, in doing so, he reveals things about himself. I do this all the time when I play poker. If you can understand your own image in the other person’s mind and understand what drives the other player, by allowing him to dictate the narrative you will know what his expectations are and have a very good idea of what he is up to. Then you can pull the rug out. This is exactly what Bow And Arrow Man’s Girlfriend does. So, while the performance could easily have been the result of an accidental lobotomy during some kind of plastic surgery, it worked. Since it did work, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and just say she did a good job. Maybe she learned these tricks from the guy who got her to agree to those nude pictures.

I love that guy they found to play The Hulk.

Holy fuck, that is Mark Ruffalo, who has been one of the best actors in the world for like fifteen years and starred in the best film of the past decade. It’s hardly surprising that he is great, yet again. Speaking of narratives and stories, I think that is why Downey is so overrated. Remember when he was partying too much and every single article was like, “what a waste of an enormous talent.” Maybe they meant that in the Milton Berle sense, but it just kind of took on a life of his own and now, every time some hack mentions Downey, they talk about how talented he is. They always use that word, too. Talent. Like they do with black athletes. So I guess by comparison, Ruffalo is a white athlete. Gritty, hard working, determined, gets the job done. I have no idea if he’s actually hard working or not, but he wins all of his scenes with Downey or anybody else and I want to marry him. Ruffalo is perfect for the Hulk because his acting super power is being this low key guy who is still able to convey his emotions effectively, and then when he is drawn into intense conflicts, freaks out a little bit because he is not really wired to deal with that shit.

You don’t like Robert Downey Jr.?

I like him fine. I just don’t think he’s Robert De Nero simply because he is an addict. I’m glad he’s not too, because it would be a shame for a historically great actor to be wasting his peak years doing stuff like Kung Fu Sherlock and Iron Man almost exclusively. In addition to its many objective deficiencies, one reason I dislike Iron Man was a subjective distaste for Downey’s Tony Stark. I realize that the character is meant to be a smug bag of penis holes, but enduring that from a “hero” becomes pretty tedious over two hours. The Avengers still uses the “super genius” device that is so popular in contemporary blockbusters, where the principals can fall out of bed hungover, peruse a couple of abstracts on the subject at hand and run circles around a room full of MIT professors, catering to our disdain for hard work. But one reason The Avengers works so well is that the Supermen are all there so they can check each other. All of the qualities that make a particular Avenger tedious or annoying over the course of a full film, are also tedious and annoying to the other Avengers and, being Avengers themselves, they are not afraid to say so. It’s easier to enjoy Downey’s smug bag of penis holes, for example, when he is repeatedly called out on it, rather than just being put on a pedestal. So all of the personality traits of The Avengers are set in relief when contrasted to the others. It’s almost as if interpersonal conflicts between well defined characters make for better stories than a bunch of robots or freaks zooming around for no reason.

Consider the three sisters of this O’Neill-inspired journey – Joey (Mary Beth Hurt), Renata (Diane Keaton), and Flyn (Kristin Griffith) – all uniquely equipped to handle impending adulthood, yet similarly paralyzed by the tyranny of an unchanging godhead. She of the immovable marble, this Eve (Geraldine Page), a first woman only in her eternal stranglehold on humanity’s progeny to follow, swoops and snarls her way through the lives of her daughters, not through patience and acceptance and an instinct to receive, but judgments and impositions that hold her own perspective as the insidious, inflexible benchmark. She’s as remote and unfeeling as one of her prized vases, yet as lacking in the necessary shading of humanity. It’s fitting that Eve earns her bread as an interior designer, for it is control she seeks; inflicting her opinions on the unwitting with the finality of death itself. All must be in its place – all coordinated, structured, and fixed – not out of creative passion, mind you, but out of its direct, murderous opposite. For her, the world entire is a museum display; a butterfly under glass to be monitored by her eyes alone. It is as she wants it, with any and all movement an utter impossibility. Her children, then, are indistinguishable from the very furniture she pushes from wall to wall, united in the diminishing cocoon of voiceless inertia.

And while united by a blood tie too often assumed to be binding, the sisters are also soldiers in an undeclared war against their own best interests. Mother dear should be the target at which the spite and resentment of the ages is directed, but instead, Eve’s unseen hand has them dizzy with cannibalistic fury. We eat our own, it seems, to avoid the implications of matricide. One wonders how many of life’s backbreaking tribulations would have been lifted by a single snuffed candle in childbirth. At least we’d have the opportunity to idealize all out of proportion. Moms can be saints, then, if they lack a track record. Reality, via the day-to-day extractions of flesh, has a way of changing the story to feature a much less satisfactory resolution. In fact, it’s not even a resolution, for as long as Eve remains alive, Joey, Renata, and Flyn are prisoners of fate.

Flyn is the least defined of the trio, though her response to the unrelenting pinch has been an escape to flightiness, where her identity is the very lack of one. It’s no mistake that Woody has made her an actress, surely the most contemptible figure in the canon, and prime to be cast at the shallow end of the pool. Renata, the most intellectual and thoughtful sister, is suffocating under a pillow of unfulfilled longing, using poetry to cover her basic self-loathing. She writes to express, yet her expressions are mere approximations of her totality. She’s a partial creature; an ill-defined ghost among the living who sees her stunted gift as confirmation of her inability to act as a whole being. Still, she has her talent to mask her ultimate fears, and when the truth becomes too unbearable, she can open her veins not in fact, but on the page, a suicide by proxy that betrays her waiting game with mother. She could leave this mortal coil, but doing so before Eve would grant the old battle axe a victory she surely doesn’t warrant. And then there’s Joey, the mouse of the bunch, a young woman so steeped in feeling she substitutes tears and moans for actual personality. She yearns and feels like an idealistic college student, so her ultimate sin is the lack of ability beyond desire. “I feel the need to express something,” she drips, “But I don’t know what it is I want to express…Or how to express it.” Woody’s jab at a creative class more desirous of vainglory than lasting contribution, yes, but also the stand-in for anyone trying to break free of maternal shackles. The juices ebb in direct proportion to the vivacity of the monster who gave you life. Vanquished, the flow may continue.

“At the center of a sick psyche is a sick spirit,” Joey reasons, a realization that as mental illness offers an explanation, it fails necessarily to provide an excuse. “You’re not just a sick woman, that would be too easy,” she spits, facing her demon on a long, final night. “The truth is, there’s been perverseness, and willfulness of attitude in many of the things you’ve done.” At last, the burdened child holds the holy mother accountable, not for the stops and starts we’re all guilty of in the end, but rather the violations of an unseen contract between parents and their children. Expectations of fulfillment might be naďve at best, and self-destructive at worst, but they do in fact exist, creating a life-long dance with inevitable disillusionment. Eve, at bottom, did worship talent; she favored excellence and beauty and deference, and when violated, the cloak of maternity was yanked clean, leaving her brood bereft and confused.

Again, the only true and lasting exit is the grave. One’s own will do, of course, but it’s mom who must make the initial sacrifice. Eve seems to recognize this near the end, but her final act of self-slaughter seems less a tribute to her girls than a final gasp of narcissism; an “I’ll show you” display that gives a brutally selfish woman the last word. Eve walks into the sea after being replaced, so to speak, by a woman of generosity and inclusion, but more than that, it’s Joey’s final statement that seals the deal: “And we have no other choice but to forgive each other.” No, that won’t do. True forgiveness requires a full accounting; not an obligatory exchange of meaningless dialogue, but a cleansing unseen in all but the direst circumstances. In essence, what’s required is a death bed conversion, though one motivated not by the fear of eternity, but a need to embrace truth. Eve doesn’t have the stomach for such a journey, and would rather excuse herself from the table entirely than face the harsh light of interrogation.

Consider the final shot, where the sisters stand before a window, looking upon a new world without the very thing that has defined it for the entirety of their lives. This is the first real encounter with freedom; not merely the absence of tension, as Dr. King might have said, but the presence of justice. Life on its own terms, without an anchor or sense of permanence. In many ways, so long as Eve took breath, life could be deferred; kicked down the road until an undefined day took hold. That day is now here. And, in Woody’s radical vision, the ills that most define us, almost always, as they are, inflicted by the ones meant to shelter us from any manner of storm, have been cured at last by the only real thing that remains unchanging. Joey, Renata, and Flyn – average and ordinary in many respects, if more privileged than most – cannot be faulted for making the most common mistake of all, but with eyes now open, they can take responsibility at last.

Yes, we expect far too much from our parents – mothers most of all – and so many just try to make do in whatever way they know how, but when we come to believe in the heroic, or that they always have our best interests at heart, we take that first misstep towards misunderstanding. And when we look to them for love without conditions – the most wicked lie of all – we can never really go back. It’s always there, lurking about, waiting for any number of opportunities to color our thinking. Eve was a sinister woman; a lousy wife, an obnoxious friend, and yes, a bad mother. It happens. Our problem is thinking she could keep the roles separate and distinct, compartmentalized with undue complexity. As Pearl, the heir apparent, states during dinner, “You could live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to.” It’s the most damning thing she could have said to Eve’s children. For in the end, Eve wanted only to hold on – power for the sake of its exercise – and as such, she had nothing to give up save the grip she had on her girls. Upon release, she was no more. Lost at sea, having died to give life. “Yes, it’s very peaceful,” whispers Renata, gazing upon the Eve-free shore. More, perhaps, than she now realizes.

Captain Harrison — the button-upped, starch-collared Brit who just happens to be Canadian; a snow-capped peak of pitiless moral rectitude and righteous indignation. Don’t tell him his business, but faced with the cheek of the unknowing, he’ll cling to his rule book, knowing damn well the whole enterprise is destined for a watery end. But there’s no fight left in him; hundreds will – and should – die, not because he’s dizzied by bloodlust, but rather, well, there’s a point to be made. It’s this modern age, after all, where captains have had their ultimate authority chipped away by bureaucratic meddling and armchair expertise. In centuries past, the captain could flog, humiliate, dispatch, and destroy anyone he wished. Now, he’s just some shadow of a man on a foolish pecking order, yielding to more than just the ocean’s idea of justice.

So had Harrison been granted the dictatorial relish he craved, the S.S. Poseidon would, at this very moment, be safely retired, with passenger and porter alike remembering the grand adventure of that final New Year’s cruise. Picture it: Rogo and Linda bouncing any number of wee ones on their third set of knees, Martin a power-walking dynamo defying the perils of age, and Manny and Belle, well, perhaps no more, but having hugged that beautiful Jewish grandchild until it shat matzo. And that beautiful brother, playing his music for any number of oceanic sunsets. But what could have been never was, and few but the damned would point an accusatory digit in Harrison’s direction. Rightfully martyred, yes, but blameless, and damn the idea that the lives of the innocent are but pawns in a corporate race to break speed records. 

Needless to say, safe and sound is the captain’s way, and anything short of such a noble goal will end in tragedy. Harrison was, in many ways, the last of his kind; a guarded, slightly jaded cap-tipper of the old school who read the writing on the wall. He saw it all coming down, like the very wave that bled the ship dry. Never again would young lads be welcomed on the bridge, nor would a captain’s bars elicit the awe and reverence of those sepia-toned days of old. They would be figureheads evermore, what with ships that practically steer themselves in this sad age of humorless technology. More than just the honor of sitting at the captain’s table died that late evening; the very notion of leadership went gurgling to depths unknown.

It’s the line that lives on more than any other, despite a treasure trove via the mouth of the good Reverend – “You irresponsible bastard.” In the writing, it conveys little of the disgust and embarrassment that Harrison feels right at that moment, and no font yet exists to register the dripping contempt he spews at the object of his scorn, one Mr. Linarcos. Ordered to run full ahead by a man who wouldn’t know a ship from his own shriveled sack, Harrison retorts, for the ages: “Goddammit man, the Poseidon is too fine a lady to be rushed to the junkyard on her last voyage.” Too fine a lady. You can practically see Harrison running his fingers along the stern with the tenderness of a gentleman lover. He knows, at long last. He just knows.

Linarcos, by contrast, is a corporate shill; a simpering toady without the guts to live by his choices. And Harrison knows it. You irresponsible bastard. The words of a dying man, as well as a dying age. A shift from responsibility to chaos, from manhood to effete evasion. Three words that gave us Watergate, gas lines, malaise, and the rise of the Right. Tax cuts along with spending surges, wars without end. If the Titanic was our hubris, the Poseidon was what remained of our dignity. For when Harrison casually, off-handedly remarks on the New Year, he does so knowing it will be the last of its kind. And why celebrate the transition into a darker, more foreboding time? It would be like wishing happy birthday to a dead man. The dead man he’s become in the blink of an eye. The crest of a wave. The voyage of the damned.

When we first meet Jody – just Jody – he is humorlessly running a grocery store in the middle of a flower child uprising. Moonies, Hare Krishnas, and deadbeats alike swarm his den of overpriced iniquity; the sort of place where a sign stating “Credit is Dead – Don’t Ask for It” threatens to overtake the displays. But when a cute little number sporting a white woman’s version of the Angela Davis can’t afford her groceries (Victoria Principal!), he steps in – Colonel Sanders tie and all – and gives her a pass. Generosity in the midst of a tough recession? Hardly. He knows, as we all do, that this being Los Angeles, it’s only a matter of time before the Big One hits and he is given the opportunity to exploit mass chaos and bust a long overdue nut. He has a thing for faces, and he’ll remember this young lady through flood and fire alike. In an instant, though, he hears radio chatter about the need for National Guardsmen in the wake of a tremor. Thank the stars he has just such an outfit at home – the very home where women in bikinis plaster the same wall as hundreds of naked, muscle-bound men. Within seconds of his arrival – and his parting the sea of bigots who call him “faggot” and hit him with trash – he has shaved both his head and moustache and is ready to hit the streets as a keeper of the peace.

Then, the massive quake hits and Jody disappears for a good hour of screen time. When he’s seen again, he’s walking on patrol, eyes and ears on alert for no-good sons-a-bitches. At last, one appears. It’s that broke-ass hippie girl again, daring to use a broken city as an excuse to steal a donut. Chocolate glazed! She’s damn near shot right then and there, but Jody insists he take care of her. “She’s a friend,” he pleads, and proceeds to push her towards some dark, out-of-the-way rubble where he can paw at her hair and talk about opening a karate school (“There’s a lot of money in karate, you know”, he insists). Suddenly, those same bigots from earlier that day appear, and they’ve been discovered with jewelry in their pockets. This being a catastrophe where a good 400,000 are dead or dying right at this moment, Jody declares that they must be shot. He threatens, pulls back, then jokes, all so he can shoot the men at point blank range. Another guardsman seems slightly upset, but need Jody remind him that thieves and scum, just this sort, are always at his grocery store trying to use green stamps after they’ve expired? His tormentors safely vanquished, he returns to the girl. Oh, and that tight t-shirt, which simply must come off.

Dressing her up with the stolen jewelry and droning on about taking care of her since, well, her entire family just has to be dead and all, Jody tears her clothes, prompting him to roar, “Only a whore would wear something like that!” Kennedy and Heston try to intervene, but Jody keeps them at bay with his trusty rifle. It’s time, and the penetration must commence. Then, in a flash, GK returns, putting a bullet in Jody’s chest before he buttons his trousers. He’s dead. Eyes wide open with that ever-present smirk, but dead and gone. GK comforts the poor girl: “Earthquakes bring out the worst in some guards, that’s all.” Indeed. But never let us forget the ingenuity and wit of our Jody, the sort who, while clearly conflicted about sex and love during peacetime, could not let a disaster pass without channeling his inner deviant. It’s the American spirit that makes lemonade out of lemons, or reaps millions from war and suffering. Damn Jody if you must for impersonating a soldier and satisfying a lust for both revenge and that elusive orgasm, but history is surely more than a tale of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Sometimes, the real nobility is just being true to yourself.

Whenever George Harris Kennedy, Jr. appears onscreen, especially in a decade that was never all that kind to character actors, it’s important to remember that somewhere, in the guest bathroom of your choosing, sits an Oscar. His Cool Hand Luke turn was worthy, mind you, but it set the tone for all future GK performances. You see, Kennedy never seemed all that bright. More lug than luminary, he’s more apt to spit in your face and throw you across a table than utter a snippet of coherent dialogue. Even when he’s donning a priest’s collar for Delta Force, we imagine he’s just a murdering rapist in disguise, not an actual man of the cloth. And while he meant well and cut the mustard as a blue collar champion, it seemed utterly impossible that he’d have the wits to take the controls himself. Yet here he is, having convinced men far wiser than he that when an American company decided to buy a Concorde and send it to Moscow via the City of Lights, the best man for the job would happen to be the one most likely to have a criminal record. Still, like every pilot worthy of the uniform, he treats women like the grit and grime he used to clean from under his fingernails. That is, before the cockpit became his office.

There are two flights in Concorde: Airport ’79, and it stands to reason that each is beset with problems that rarely affect entire fleets over the course of decades. The first leg – from Washington, D.C. to Paris – is targeted by Robert Wagner, not only convinced that Natalie Wood is indeed aboard, but that she has few qualms about exposing his greedy, treasonous arms deals with shady, swarthy men of various nationalities. Rather than simply shoot the bitch, or have some transient attack her in a hotel elevator, he spends countless millions (not to mention an enormous amount of chits) to have the plane downed by fighter jets. How he plans to cover this up is not important – then or now – because Our Man Kennedy has a plan even more outrageous: he will roll down the cockpit window, damn the airspeed, and shoot a flare gun to divert the heatseekers from their target. And if that’s not enough, he sends the sleek airliner into a steep, evasive dive, but only after firing the second flare into the cockpit itself. Now, few can imagine that anyone, even one so reliably masculine as Patroni, could put out a cabin fire while plunging towards the ocean at the speed of sound, but results don’t lie, even if he must be forgiven for getting his hair a bit mussed. The pursuing jet slams into the water, leaving the sea to tell the tale of the fool who dared believe he could outsmart George Kennedy.

The second leg – as if there would ever be such a thing with the exact same plane and pilot – will take our hero from Paris to Moscow, where Cicely Tyson will drop off a heart for her son, while Jimmie Walker plays a sax solo to convince the Soviets to retreat from Afghanistan. Bob Wagner is still lurking about, however, and this time, he’ll resort to the tried and true: bribing a mechanic to set a timer that ensures a cargo door will give way mid-flight. One might wonder how the dirty deed was accomplished, what with two or three mildly disinterested French policemen guarding the jet, but the trap is set, and every last passenger from the first near-death experience will think nothing of climbing aboard once again. Patroni will be ready as well, as his layover is chock full of orgasmic glee, courtesy of the French co-pilot. Later events will prove how necessary it was to send Patroni into a state of complete relaxation, for it would have been more than understandable for him to take a break after being mere seconds from death. But by sunrise, Patroni would be prepped, powdered, and positively glowing. He’d better be, for, in his words, “We’ve got explosive decompression!” And how.

Pausing only to rescue Eddie Albert from a chasm in the fuselage and hand out pillows, Patroni sheds his useless oxygen mask to effect commercial aviation’s only known quadruple barrel roll at MACH 2. Then, with little by way of perspiration or nervous rattle, he kindly informs the cockpit – and hell, the world – that he’ll land this supersonic bird on the fucking Alps. Not near them, by them, or with them acting as a stunning backdrop, but ON THEM. Without a runway. Using a mere snowdrift to slow them down. One might remember that on the first leg, the plane barely came to a stop with wheels and brakes and concrete and several rounds of mesh netting, but Patroni, like all men of fire and sky, lives in the now. The past is for pussies, where dead wives, crying passengers, and burnt husks of metal reside. GK, too flabby by half but defiantly all cheek and jowl, beats that damn mountain, even if the precious plane explodes mere seconds after the last lunatic has disembarked. Wagner, his plot in tatters, commits suicide aboard his own doomed flight. A nation saved, a woman fucked, and a vital organ delivered. All in a day’s work. GK style.

Before you submit to the indignity of a colonoscopy you need to have what is charmingly called a ‘prep’, necessary to allow full and unobstructed viewing of the colon tissue. As the obstructing material is generally loads of shit, that prep is meant to blow that shit right out of you. It is a life-defining experience inasmuch as it tests your capacity for self inflicted pain. After all, you need to drink the gatorade-like juice knowing full well you will be singing in Spanish at the top of your lungs within a half hour, tipping the cup of extraordinary ass spasms into your own already-regretting maw.

When it begins, your intestines begin to quiver, beckoning you from what seems far away, as though innocence is about to be lost forever. Then, as if playing with you, all feels well and under control, and you relax on your notably not-stainproofed sofa. When the explosion hits, you have seconds to reach the bano or other suitable receptacle, and pretty much anything including linoleum would seem suitable when the moment of truth arrives. Thence onward the River Styx flows overeth, and you void what feels like every meal you have ever eaten, every organ within your body, and your hopes and dreams follow. Once the wave has passed, you peer balefully at the rest of the gallon jug of Golytely, knowing that you need to finish it all, and that the saga must continue.

When your actual colonoscopy begins, Medicare regulations stipulate that the gastroenterologist have a smoking hot assistant. As you come to terms with this, you feel the orchestra that is about to occur behind you will gain you a friend and confidante for life. When the scope enters, the operator may say something like “You only need to worry when you feel my hands on your shoulders”, but otherwise the worst is behind you. You are blown up with gas to allow the GI physician to better visualize the meat walls, and several feet of scope march along with the help of the operator’s powerful biceps.

In the aftermath you are given time to reflect, and appreciate that sometimes going through pain can yield rewards in the end, if for no other reason than to make the dispiriting pain of everyday life somewhat more endurable.

No mere article of clothing, Heston’s turtleneck is a supporting player all by itself, and perhaps the only fabric deserving of an Academy Award unrelated to costume design. Chuck is inconceivable without it, and more than making him the pre-eminent stick-and-rudder man of the skies, it speaks so deeply to the character of Alan Murdock that it all but fills in the necessary back story. What we don’t know we should, and what we couldn’t we do, and in an instant, like a bullet to the forehead, we understand that the day we banished such articles from the closets of our heroes, we took that final, ill-fated step towards irrevocable chaos. And here’s to the romantic folly that insists Heston himself is buried in the damn thing forevermore.

It’s important that Mr. Murdock don the attire of a professional heterosexual, as few could ever hope to compete with his purely American sense of entitled masculinity. He’s the lover who will talk about it later, all with cards so close to the vest that they threaten to come out the other side. He’s baffled by dames and their ways, but he needs them for his very breath, as he takes and vanquishes with all the subtlety of a Panzer division on a Warsaw afternoon. And yet, he’s mandated by the very gods who shine upon his ilk to leave his sweetheart with wounds unhealed, so as to save the poor sap from herself. Sure, Nancy can operate a pilot-free plane for a time, but the hysteria borne of woman must eventually yield to manhood. You see, it’s all about finishing, and Murdock is a closer from the old school. Some might even say he sent that artery-clogged pilot into the 747’s path just so he could dash to the rescue. He lives to uphold the creed that destroying a village will in fact save it, and one suspects that he’s willing to risk his life on this occasion not to ensure a successful landing, but rather to mandate eternal devotion.

The true tragedy, then, would not have been the loss of dozens, but Nancy’s inability to gaze upon his marbled intensity once more, what with her being reduced to smoke-filled ashes somewhere over Utah. Hell, he should have been aboard the plane all along, but that would have been too easy; a quick wipe of the brow, a light jog down the aisle, and all fear vanquished. No, he had to remain terra firma, ensuring his phoenix-like rise to the side of quivering femininity, with a quick, firm smack to the skull to knock the cross-eyed kookiness right out of her. She loves him at last, and his lack of an answer is the only suitable slap of good sense her type would ever need.

Even by journey’s end, when Alan is safely aboard and doing what those in tight slacks do best, he’s ignoring the atypical strength that came before. “Go do what you do best,” he commands, which is not taking the controls of a jumbo jet after a lifetime of serving drinks, but soothing weary travelers who still suspect this bird just can’t stay in the sky. She’s a showpiece; a barely articulate replicant of pseudo-humanity who can shake and shimmy until the fasten seat belts sign is turned off at last. After all, he’s the one who can, self-described, “do wonders in thirty minutes.” A sex machine with three acts? Foreplay, fun, and fulfillment, long enough yet nowhere close to overlong? Does she really want to make a counter-argument? He dispenses wisdom, articulates solutions, and sets the course of action, and he’s not above crashing the damn thing on purpose just to show he can survive anything.

“Read me the altimeter,” he roars, again and again because he’s not about to abide a long pause with only minutes to spare. And if he chooses to toss aside “Nancy” like an old magazine in favor of the appropriately condescending “honey” — a term so ubiquitous that were it the center of a drinking game, alcohol poisoning would yield to death in short order – what objection could survive a flash of those maddening teeth? Murdock’s very existence is a rebuke to the whole of the women’s movement, and the definitive statement that were it to succeed in full, planes would crash from coast to coast, their burning husks a laugh-filled lecture to anyone so bold as to declare that equality is progress. “Climb, baby, climb!” is no mantra for a new generation of chicks, seeking corporate parity, nor is it a desperate plea to the airplane itself. He’s in it for the coitus, man, and Moses doesn’t need some goofy pill to remain in character. Just a gal in peril and the opportunity to set things right, be it air travel, the gender gap, or America itself.

The historic oral arguments over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare for short, or Goddamned Socialized Medicine if you happen to be a Tea Party aficionado or a complete idiot) presented before the U.S. Supreme Court in three days of hearings last week brought to the forefront a number of pressing constitutional and policy questions, such as does the individual mandate fundamentally and unconstitutionally alter the relationship between citizens and the government? If the mandate is struck down, does it take the entire law with it? Does the expansion of Medicaid constitute a coercive intrusion on state sovereignty? Did Justice Clarence Thomas ask Solicitor General Verrilli for his autograph, mistaking him for 80s porn icon, Randy West? The constitutionality of the law and its many provisions involve complex myriad of legal questions that attracted a record number of amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs from public interest groups, law professors, and some very lonely and horny Indian and Pakistani men who accidentally thought they were submitting profiles to Plenty of Fish.

So, how will it all turn out and what will the Court do? Based on my reading of the transcripts, countless hours of reading SCOTUSblog, consulting scripture, and getting a very thorough Tarot reading (I’m about to come into some money or die suddenly…she wasn’t really clear. Plus, my prostate is apparently swell) my argument recaps and predictions are as follows:

Question 1: Does the 1867 Anti-Injunction Act, which says that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed” bar any challenge to the Affordable Care Act?

Argument Recap: Like everyone else who watched or heard these overly technical arguments, I fell asleep. But I think the amicus attorney invited by the Court (since the other two sides aren’t arguing that the law precludes any challenge) argued that the 1867 law is jurisdictional, so no one can challenge the mandate in this or any other case, until it is actually enforced against a specific individual. The government argued that while the 1867 Act is jurisdictional, it does not apply to the mandate and its penalty because they do not fit within its specific terms. The mandate is not a tax, but the tax penalty it imposes does fall within Congress’ power to tax. Furthermore, a donut without a hole is not a donut, but a danish. Gregory Katsas, arguing on behalf of the states challenging the law and dressed in a kilt while wearing blue face paint, argued that the 1867 Act it is not jurisdictional, so it is not a barrier to these or other moronic challenges. He frequently responded to questions from the judges by screaming, “FREEDOM!”

Prediction: Part one of the Court’s decision will be unanimous (9-0), holding that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply. None of the Justices want to punt this late in the game, and neither the federal government nor the states were asking them to. I anticipate at least two or three concurring opinions representing both the liberal and conservative blocs on the Court. This will be the Court’s only “kumbaya” moment. It will also be the part of the opinion that is less widely read than the Farsi translations of “The Satanic Verses” and “The Feminine Mystique.”

Question 2: Is the individual insurance mandate and its attached penalty an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause?

Argument Recap: This was the one that everyone was waiting for, camping out the night before like it was a new “Star Wars” movie. The government argued that Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act to address a crisis in the national health care market and this is simply a commercial regulation. The individual mandate and its enforcing penalty play a critical role in that comprehensive regulatory scheme by regulating how health care consumption is financed. In other words, people without insurance fuck it up for the rest of us, so this is a way to mitigate the fiscal risk all around. The states challenging the law argued that the individual mandate rests on a claim of federal power that is both unprecedented and unbounded, namely the power to compel individuals to engage in commerce in order more effectively to regulate commerce. This asserted power, they argued, does not exist in the Constitution. Only the Lord thy God can compel individuals to engage in commerce and he will strike down with furious vengeance those who attempt to poison and destroy his brothers with unnecessary government regulation. There were several questions from the Justices about broccoli and cell phones, indicating either a strange sexual fetish, a preview of their lunch order, or doubt over this particular exercise of Congressional power.

Prediction: Part Two of the opinion dealing with the individual mandate will be 6 -3 in favor of upholding its constitutionality. Roberts, along with Kennedy who will sign on to the very narrow plurality opinion, will find that the unique nature of the health care market and the widespread direct effect that non-participation has on costs necessitates this somewhat radical exercise of Congressional power…but only for this market and only to the narrow ends that the law defines. The four liberal members of the Court (Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) will all concur with the result but write separately to say to hell with limited power, Congress can and should do this, and even if they didn’t have the power, we’d let it slide anyway because it allows poor people to secure the blessings of liberty via low deductibles and co-pays. Justice Scalia will, naturally, dissent. His dissent will consist of thirty pages of “fuck you!” written over and over and several doodles of Obama wiping his ass with the Constitution. These doodles will later be stolen from the National Archives and sold to a private collector in Montana for an undisclosed amount, part of which will be used to finance an unsuccessful Texas secessionist movement during Obama’s second term. Justice Thomas will join this dissent and also write separately presenting an impassioned critique of the Court’s acceptance of what he will view as unlimited Congressional power to regulate using the commerce clause. He will write at length about how this ruling will allow mandatory participation in a number of markets, but with an emphasis on the adult film industry. Thomas’ dissent will be unique for its crinkly dried wet spots and odd discolorations. Justice Alito will also join Scalia’s dissent and will also write separately. No one will pay attention to his dissent because, let’s face it, he’s just too goddamn creepy.

Question 3 – Is the individual mandate portion of the law severable from the other parts of the law, and, if the Court strikes down the individual mandate does this effectively invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act?

Argument Recap: The government argued that only the two closely related portions of the law must fall if the individual mandate is held unconstitutional. The mandate should be severable allowing the remainder of the law to be upheld, no matter how fucking shitty and incomprehensible it may be. The states challenging the law argued that if the individual mandate falls, then the rest of the shitty and incomprehensible Act must be deemed unconstitutional as well. The amicus attorney invited by the Court argued that the rest of the shitty Act can stand even if the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional. Much of the questioning centered on how the Court should determine the shitty parts from the non-shitty parts, with Scalia comparing the task of reading any piece of Congressional legislation to cruel and unusual punishment. Shortly afterwards, the Mississippi legislature added “reading” to its capital punishment options and executed six inmates.

Prediction: Part Three of the opinion dealing with the question of severability will also be 6 -3 and it will take the majority one plurality opinion and three concurring opinions totaling 50 pages to say they don’t have to decide this issue. Scalia, Alito, and Thomas will dissent. Scalia’s dissent will be 30 pages of calling Congress a bunch of incompetent assholes who couldn’t write a piece of legislation if their lives depended on it. It will join the Bible on the Tea Party’s preferred reading list and give Libertarians orgasms for decades to come. Ron Paul will request to be buried with a copy of this dissent.

Question 4: Does the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provisions constitute an unconstitutional form of coercion under Congress’ Spending Clause power that violates state sovereignty?

Argument Recap: The government argued that Congress has the constitutional authority to fix the terms for handing out money to the states under the “fuck bitches, get paid” standard. Accepting federal money does not amount to coercion, it only makes you a dirty whore, especially since the states have been going down on their knees for highway, school, and a host of social services funding for decades. The states challenging the law argued that the individual mandate tax penalty provides an incentive for people to get insurance and that this will push the poor onto the state Medicaid rolls. Congress providing 100% of the funding to the states to help pay for services to the poor violates the states’ Tenth Amendment rights to let the poor starve and die in the streets.

Prediction: Part Four of the opinion concerning the expansion of Medicaid will be 7-2, with Scalia reluctantly joining Roberts’ plurality opinion. Scalia will concur, but will write separately to discuss how the exercise of an enumerated power in conjunction with an enumerated constitutional duty should be upheld despite the coercive burdens placed on the states. He will then spend the rest of his concurring opinion taking potshots at Congress for being too stupid for such power, but since the Constitution gives them the power, he really can’t take it away even though he wants to. Thomas and Alito will dissent. No one will care.

Final predictions:
The final decision will be a four-part, plurality opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, who upon realizing the historical significance of the moment will use his Chief Justice superpower of calling “shotgun!” to assign himself the task of writing the controlling opinion, cementing his place in history at the expense of the other Justices. Not content to allow Roberts to hog the limelight, every single Justice will write either a concurring or dissenting opinion. The entire opinion (including all concurrences and dissents) will weigh in at a record shattering 450 pages, which is still shorter than your average Stephen King novella. However, it will be far less read, save a few college campuses and isolated pockets in the Northeast; in the south it will be used as kindling to start cross burnings and as wadding in Civil War re-enactments. It will be woefully misreported by every single news outlet in all mediums which will cherry pick statements out of context in an attempt to make it sexier. And it will be horribly misinterpreted. Fox News will call it the beginning of European-style Socialism fueling at least five more seasons of the National Geographic channel’s “Doomsday Preppers;” Congress will invariably overreach with their next piece of legislation in an attempt to force fat people to just stop fucking eating already; and millions of citizens will think they now have automatic insurance coverage leading them to continue to shun preventative care and avoid going to the doctor until they show up in the emergency room with something strange lodged in their ass.

If Gareth Evans’ hyperkinetic Indonesian import The Raid had not been the handiwork of shifty foreigners, it would be a perfect candidate for the 80s Action canon. The plotline is moronic in its simplicity: Cops Must Brave 15 Stories of Machete-Wielding Thugs. There’s a decidedly fascist kill-’em-all approach to crime fighting accompanied by plenty of Stupid Political Content, consisting of various interchangeable characters railing against police corruption; a Stupid Chief Lieutenant, a soaring body count that approaches triple digits, and most importantly, dozens of sweaty, well-built athletic men thrust into intimate close-quarters combat with one another, grunting and gasping and grappling moistened bodies with enormous phallic knives thrusting in and out of orifices, lubricated with enough bodily fluids to saturate the gutters of Jakarta for weeks on end.

There’s a lavish surplus of Novelty Deaths to go around, too. Men are body slammed face-first into splintery wooden planks, contorted into unnatural forms after having their spines shattered, thrown out of high windows (landing on rusty fire escapes several stories below), stabbed in the larynx with shattered florescent light bulbs and burned to a crisp by exploding refrigerators, to say nothing of the dozens who are shanked, strangled, or shot in the face repeatedly at point-blank range. Even an unarmed child gets a bullet in the throat and a gooey slow motion death scene. What’s more, the action is lovingly staged without the faintest hint of Paul Greengrass Seizure-Cam to nullify the dedicated work of countless Indonesian stuntmen or sully your appreciation of their efforts. While there’s nary a witty quip to be found, The Raid makes no bones about its single-minded dedication to grisly violence.

All of this seems tailor-made to appeal to the less judgmental part of me, but suffice it to say I was not drunk and did not have the foresight to smuggle a bottle of rotgut into the theater. As the film wore on, dispatching the majority of the cops with carefree ease and leaving only the inhumanly skilled “rookie”ť Uko Uwais with his lightning fists and lethally efficient blade skill comparable to a food processor, I began to feel more and more like I was watching highlights of a video game, and less and less like I was watching a narrative unfold. The Raid isn’t one of those next-gen games with 30 minute cut scenes and impossibly convoluted storylines, it’s more of an early 90s side-scrolling arcade brawler.

Most of the action sequences consist of Uko strolling down a corridor with goons obligingly popping out of doors one or two at a time and being dispatched just in time to be replaced by two more goons, ad fucking nauseam. Seeing as how they have an obvious strength in numbers, wouldn’t it be more prudent to coordinate their efforts and surround him? If you were one of these thugs, and you were fortunate enough to have a gun, wouldn’t you try to claim the free-rent-for-life bounty by being stealthy and shooting Uko in the back, as opposed to running into the hallway with gun arm extended, screaming your retarded ass off and giving him a perfect opportunity to break your arm like a breadstick? Shouldn’t the Final Boss, with his wall of monitors surveying the entire building, be able to figure out Uko’s location and send all his men into one or two floors and hit every room at once, as opposed to sending a single underling to methodically search them one at a slow-ass time? While this provides a humorous attempt at suspense, any tension that could possibly be wrung from this material is undermined by the fact that the protagonist is a fucking human Cuisinart who can withstand cartoonish amounts of punishment.

There is never a sense of danger instilled, never a sense of urgency or a feeling of escalation. Sure, Uko is literally escalating up the building’s crumbling stairwells, but any stakes that could be raised by introducing his brother in a baffling plot twist are deep-sixed by the characters’ nonexistent personalities. We know nothing about our protagonist, other than that he is a Muslim, has a pregnant wife, and is in peak physical condition. These facts alone are not reason enough to care about whether he lives or dies. We know even less about his brother: he’s been in the gang for six years and he’s about to be an uncle. What little could be gleaned about their relationship during this single confrontation is through purely expository dialogue. Every scene that doesn’t involve spewing arteries has been chopped to within an inch of its life in favor of relentless forward momentum, just like the cursory “story scenes” between levels in any given arcade game.

The Raid blows its load prematurely during a seemingly never-ending battle in a soundproof torture chamber lined with steel, a locale more than a little reminiscent of the flamethrower execution room in Don’t Go in the House. While the endless technical displays of pencak silat are invigorating for the serious martial arts practitioner (marvel at how the combatants switch between various disciplines without apparent effort, going from using bladed weapons, to a fluid form of kickboxing involving use of and extensive damage to elbows and knees, to brutal compound-fracture-intensive grappling at will), by the time you’ve witnessed Face Punch #500 or so, things begin to feel more than a little monotonous. There’s a plot twist telegraphed from about 10 minutes in and an anticlimax that would incite genuine rage in an audience that wasn’t already in a stupor from an hour and a half of mind-numbing carnage. No bonus points if you guessed that the corrupt police department might actually be corrupt.

I should have bolted for the exits the minute Stupid Lieutenant informed Uko that they could not call for backup because “It’s a Secret Raid!”ť So if they called into HQ anyway, they would have been told to go fuck themselves and have fun getting hacked apart by machetes? What about calls from tenants in the building or neighboring high rises? The fucking teeming pile of dead cops on the sidewalk wouldn’t have been sufficient to alert innocent passers-by that something was rotten in the city of Jakarta? What about the father/son sniper team, introduced with much pomp and circumstance to the pulsing strains of the atonal synth score, who decapitate two cops and are then never seen or heard from again? In a video game, such shit can easily fly by the wayside, but writing this sloppy is inexcusable even in a brain-dead action movie. How I longed for the narrative panache of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs.