Reviews

"The Killing" Stanley Kubrick's 2nd/3rd feature. Both are totally relentless, as is "Bad Lieutenant" by Abel Ferrara.

This 10 lines thing is a pain. But whatever, much of life is about pain, we know that if we are on here because we love a movie like "The Wages of Fear." Have I reached 10 lines yet? No? Well...

Consider this the light that will lead us home. I saw this movie again recently after first seeing it once about 10 years ago, in an art-house theater, the Castro I think, in San Francisco. What stuck through the years was of course the suspense, also because it's what the movie is famous for. What my recent viewing of it revealed was the richness of the characters and relationships in the story. The relationship between Mario (Yves Montand) and Jo (Charles Vanel) is the most deeply explored and turns into a clever and ironic mirror of Mario's relationship with Linda (Vera Clouzot), whom he mostly treats like garbage in the beginning of the movie, especially after his new friend Jo has arrived and the two of them become inseparable. Only later, when the two men start to go through hell together, does their relationship take a turn for the worse, and Mario assumes the same dominating, emotionally and physically abusive role he has in his relationship with Linda.

With his Pacific Rim heritage, busted 'rubbah slippah' and surfer's build, John Ta at first glance easily passes for a local of the Hawaiian islands, where his debut feature Balls Deep is largely set. But John (or, at least, the eponymous central character and narrator he portrays in the movie) exposes himself as anything but local with his observation that 'People here are so...unmotivated' and his painful mispronunciation and out-of-context usage of the word 'howzit.' After those revelations, somehow it's hard to picture the guy answering someone's query as to how or what he's doing, with the ubiquitous Hawaiian expression 'cruiseen'.'

On the other hand, the love and wonderment the author feels for Hawaii comes through loud and clear, if somewhat bittersweet. It makes you wonder: is there any difference between the John the protagonist and John the filmmaker? John the protagonist doesn't utter a single complimentary word about Hawaii, the island paradise he lives in, but John the filmmaker allows the Aloha State ample opportunity to tell its own beautiful story with pictures and music.

This audio-visual exposition is one of the ways the movie develops its own particular style. Some may see various contemporary influences like the movies Fight Club and Timecode and the video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication, but we live in a postmodern society after all. For my part, I was at times floored by the visual and aural poetry of the movie even as I recognized these and other influences.

Balls Deep establishes John Ta as a young filmmaker to watch. His command of the medium, especially on an obviously tiny budget, is impressive enough that Balls Deep has a chance of being for him what Reservoir Dogs was for Quentin Tarantino and Sex, Lies and Videotape was for Stephen Sodobergh.