4 ms·

Unpopular opinion: The Fugitive is not a particularly good movie and Harrison Ford is not a particularly good actor. I mean if one wants to write an article ab

Unpopular opinion: The Fugitive is not a particularly good movie and Harrison Ford is not a particularly good actor. I mean if one wants to write an article about the good action movies of the time maybe write about Heat? And while I agree with the observation that we are seeing way too many entirely predictable movies made by the same patterns, I would argue The Fugitive was one of them at the time. Still from time to time something very different comes along. I just watched "Everything, everywhere, all at Once". That is definitely not your typical Holywood fare, and was extremely surprising and enjoyable.

chadcmulligan 4y ago
A24 (the production house behind "Everything, everywhere, all at Once") is one of the few shining lights as far as movie production goes these days.
- 50 4y ago
  Kelly Reichardt's First Cow (2019) distributed by A24 is a favorite of mine of recent years. Not from A24 but I saw Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) by the Brothers Quay a few weeks ago and thought it was interestingly good.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Brothers Quay are visually amazing and creative, even if plodding at times.
bambax 4y ago
Heat wasn't a very good movie. It was full of clichés, esp. the female characters. The cop's wife cheats on him with a loser, to make her husband notice. The wife of a gangster is obsessed with kids and family. And of course the love interest of the protagonist doesn't have a clue about what he does or whohe is, she's an innocent white dove completely, well, clueless. Morals are also very loose, which makes the protagonists hard to relate to. The Fugitive has very bad guys, which may be a little cliché too, but there is this ambiguous central character of the Marshal who has a great arc. At the beginning he's just doing his job and isn't interested in the least in the details of the case. He only digs into them because he thinks they may help with the chase. And as the movie progresses he warms up to the protagonist, until he saves him at the end. That's great. One way to entirely ruin the movie would have been to insert scenes with the Marshal's wife where she would ask why he's never home, and scold him for missing his son's football game, etc.
- rvieira 4y ago
  Honestly, I love Heat and Michael Mann not because they are great movies all around, but because I love Michael Mann's aesthetics. I'm totally ok with the cliches and basic stories and just appreciate the glossy atmosphere.
- prawn 4y ago
  "One way to entirely ruin the movie would have been to insert scenes with the Marshal's wife where she would ask why he's never home, and scold him for missing his son's football game, etc." Heat was specifically about their personal relationships, so in that context it made sense.
- saberience 4y ago
  I have to say, I don't agree that any of the items you point out as clichés are really clichés. A cop's wife cheating on her husband with a "loser" is a cliché? Are you sure you know what a cliché even is? Loose morals are a cliché? One wife of one of the gangsters in the movie is obsessed with family, aren't some people out of most people you meet obsessed with family? That's kind of a normal thing. I would say, when compared to most action/suspense/thriller movies, Heat is one of the all-time greatest mostly because it defies most of the genre conventions. When I saw Heat, it amazed me because even 20 years later, it still seems incredibly fresh and original and unlike 99% of other movies of the same genre. Heat is incredibly realistic, there are no out and out "pure" good guys or "pure" bad guys, very much like reality, everything is shades of grey. There is no winner in the story nor solely happy or bad ending, and the mechanics of the story both on the cops and robbers side is strongly grounded in reality and indeed based on real life stories from the police. The cast was extremely well trained by people experienced on both the "bad guy" side and the "good guy" side. The gunplay and heists are also extremely realistic, to the point that many elite armed forces use the gunplay and tactics in heat as training tools!
  - bambax 4y ago
    > That's kind of a normal thing. Yeah, sure, "normal", therefore cliché. Soccer moms are the bane of the movies. Just because you place a soccer mom in a gangster flick doesn't make it original, or courageous, or anything. It's boring and ridiculous. Also, as a moviegoer, I really don't care how long the actors trained, how well, or by whom they were trained. I care about the result. The result is a bunch of loud fighting, with boring and predictable domestic scenes in between. It glorifies violence and doesn't even do it well.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
The popular/ist opinion is that movies are good if a lot of people like watching them and actors are good if people like them and like watching them in movies. And most people generally like predictability too, at least in some form or another. Movies and acting as high art doesn't really make an actor or movie good, by some objective standard. I really can't stand Tarantino's stilted, artificial "dialogue" (read: tiresome monologues) for example, but people love the movies and love hearing about what the french call a quarter pounder. So they're good movies and it's good dialogue, despite my curmudgeon old ass muttering about how nobody speaks like that.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  If the audience is missing out on the high art part, they would be humiliated, so experience is standardized to the lowest standard.

chadcmulligan 4y ago

A24 (the production house behind "Everything, everywhere, all at Once") is one of the few shining lights as far as movie production goes these days.

50 4y ago
Kelly Reichardt's First Cow (2019) distributed by A24 is a favorite of mine of recent years. Not from A24 but I saw Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995) by the Brothers Quay a few weeks ago and thought it was interestingly good.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Brothers Quay are visually amazing and creative, even if plodding at times.

bambax 4y ago

Heat wasn't a very good movie. It was full of clichés, esp. the female characters. The cop's wife cheats on him with a loser, to make her husband notice. The wife of a gangster is obsessed with kids and family. And of course the love interest of the protagonist doesn't have a clue about what he does or whohe is, she's an innocent white dove completely, well, clueless. Morals are also very loose, which makes the protagonists hard to relate to. The Fugitive has very bad guys, which may be a little cliché too, but there is this ambiguous central character of the Marshal who has a great arc. At the beginning he's just doing his job and isn't interested in the least in the details of the case. He only digs into them because he thinks they may help with the chase. And as the movie progresses he warms up to the protagonist, until he saves him at the end. That's great. One way to entirely ruin the movie would have been to insert scenes with the Marshal's wife where she would ask why he's never home, and scold him for missing his son's football game, etc.

rvieira 4y ago
Honestly, I love Heat and Michael Mann not because they are great movies all around, but because I love Michael Mann's aesthetics. I'm totally ok with the cliches and basic stories and just appreciate the glossy atmosphere.
prawn 4y ago
"One way to entirely ruin the movie would have been to insert scenes with the Marshal's wife where she would ask why he's never home, and scold him for missing his son's football game, etc." Heat was specifically about their personal relationships, so in that context it made sense.
saberience 4y ago
I have to say, I don't agree that any of the items you point out as clichés are really clichés. A cop's wife cheating on her husband with a "loser" is a cliché? Are you sure you know what a cliché even is? Loose morals are a cliché? One wife of one of the gangsters in the movie is obsessed with family, aren't some people out of most people you meet obsessed with family? That's kind of a normal thing. I would say, when compared to most action/suspense/thriller movies, Heat is one of the all-time greatest mostly because it defies most of the genre conventions. When I saw Heat, it amazed me because even 20 years later, it still seems incredibly fresh and original and unlike 99% of other movies of the same genre. Heat is incredibly realistic, there are no out and out "pure" good guys or "pure" bad guys, very much like reality, everything is shades of grey. There is no winner in the story nor solely happy or bad ending, and the mechanics of the story both on the cops and robbers side is strongly grounded in reality and indeed based on real life stories from the police. The cast was extremely well trained by people experienced on both the "bad guy" side and the "good guy" side. The gunplay and heists are also extremely realistic, to the point that many elite armed forces use the gunplay and tactics in heat as training tools!
- bambax 4y ago
  > That's kind of a normal thing. Yeah, sure, "normal", therefore cliché. Soccer moms are the bane of the movies. Just because you place a soccer mom in a gangster flick doesn't make it original, or courageous, or anything. It's boring and ridiculous. Also, as a moviegoer, I really don't care how long the actors trained, how well, or by whom they were trained. I care about the result. The result is a bunch of loud fighting, with boring and predictable domestic scenes in between. It glorifies violence and doesn't even do it well.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

The popular/ist opinion is that movies are good if a lot of people like watching them and actors are good if people like them and like watching them in movies. And most people generally like predictability too, at least in some form or another. Movies and acting as high art doesn't really make an actor or movie good, by some objective standard. I really can't stand Tarantino's stilted, artificial "dialogue" (read: tiresome monologues) for example, but people love the movies and love hearing about what the french call a quarter pounder. So they're good movies and it's good dialogue, despite my curmudgeon old ass muttering about how nobody speaks like that.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago
If the audience is missing out on the high art part, they would be humiliated, so experience is standardized to the lowest standard.