The Warrior Class

The underlying structural basis of this film is a dry legal procedural. Our hero is a young lawyer who's so green that he's never questioned a witness before. He has a remarkable success in his first try, however, so he gets assigned to a big-league case, a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against a major corporation in which he will be on the corporation's defense team. The case itself doesn't involve all that much drama. In fact, the major legal issue hinges on a technical point of law, whether a key employee was dishonest or incompetent. If he was dishonest, the corporation itself was the victim, and is not liable. If he was incompetent, the corporation is legally liable and loses the case. Yawn. Argumentation about technicalities have never made for a great spectator sport. I was on the debate team in high school and college, and I noticed that we never had any cheerleaders at our tournaments.

In order to give the case a bit of color, the writer/director made the defense team's key witness a junkie, and therefore unstable, undependable, and in need of constant supervision. You're still bored? Well, then, the young defense attorney falls in love with her and, oh yeah, she's also the estranged wife of the world's biggest crime boss, who doesn't want her to testify. Talk about stretching the concept of "economy of characters." If she had also been the opposing attorney they could have done a two-character play like Sleuth.

I suppose the author thought the material was still too colorless, so he added some bizarre background elements like a yard full of glow-in-the dark swordfish carcasses. He also made the corporation's CEO an ex-general who wears an eyepatch and wields a samurai sword in his office. When the general first sees how young his attorney is, he says "welcome to the warrior class" and gives the lad his own super-sharp sword. Considering the principle of scriptwriting economy, I'll bet you can guess how the mob boss will meet his death.

By attempting to gussy up a too-dry legal case, the author went overboard and made the whole thing just too darned silly. If you're going to do this kind of thing you have to go all the way and take it over-the-top, ala Luc Besson, but this film held back from that commitment and ended up like the Oxygen Network's concept of a Tarantino film, with the best-scrubbed and best-behaved junkies, hookers, and mobsters ever seen.

The film was lensed three years ago, and the investors pinned their hopes for a theatrical release on the possible emergent stardom of the lead, Anson Mount, who is a very handsome guy and very likeable on camera. Mount's star status never arrived, so the film languished in limbo until finally going straight to DVD, which is the fate it deserved based on its merit.

Erica Leerhsen. She kept herself as completely covered as possible. In one of her nude scenes she seemed to be wearing tape over her tiny breasts. In the other she kept her hands on her breasts at all times! Her bum is seen clearly but all in all the nudity is not very satisfying.

Hollywoodland

 

I've already written about this at length. It's the film in which Ben Affleck plays George Reeves, TV's Superman. The short version of the review is this:

* The basic plot about Reeves is excellent. Early TV was fascinatingly primitive; old Hollywood was intriguing; Reeves was a charming guy; and Affleck portrayed him remarkably well.

* Unfortunately, the filmmakers chose, for some incalculable reason, to devote as much screen time to the private eye who was investigating the Reeves case, who was a boring sleazebag, and was a completely fictional character in whom I had no interest.

So it's half a good movie.

Diane Lane. I guess that's probably Diane because ... well, why try to blur a body double? She still has a great body to flash, and we know she's not shy, but - fair warning - it could also be a body double.

 

Age of Consent

Today the Time Machine, with the help of Scoopy's film clips from yesterday, goes back to 1969 for a very young and sexy Helen Mirren in "Age of Consent."

You would have to say she was hot.

See No Evil

A solid B-movie horror flick with a good story and competent acting, and co-produced by World Wrestling Entertainment, 2006's See No Evil stars WWE wrestler Kane as a psychotic killer who has been on the run for years. His trademark is that he gouges out the eyes of his victims before killing them. A group of youthful offenders from the county detention facility are sent on work release to an old abandoned hotel to renovate it for use as a homeless shelter. What they don't know is that the hotel already has a very sinister occupant. What happens next is pretty predictable, as the group gets picked off one-by-one, but the production is good and the movie stays enjoyable throughout, if you're a horror fan. A very worthwhile effort, with a real funny final scene after the credits start to roll.

Samantha Nobel

Images

First: The Big Turn-On

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