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Jun. 12th, 2011 08:19 pmSo when I heard they were remaking The Mechanic, I was excited. One of the best Charles Bronson hitman movies remade with a modern sensibility? Fantastic.
The original was on its surface just another gritty 70's action film, but on a deeper level is was an existential parable crossed with a greek tragedy, a battle between the similar but conflicting archetypes of Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch.
In it (and from here on spoilers abound, but the movie is 40 years old next year so I believe the statute of limitations has expired (Rosebud is a sled)) Bronson's assassin is ordered to kill his mentor, Big Harry. He succeeds in making it look like a heart attack. Suffering from both guilt and loneliness, he decides to train Big Harry's son Steve as an assassin as well, and the two characters become close. Bronson's character is then murdered by Steve in turn, but having anticipated (or at least planned for) his demise at Steve's hand, Bronson sets a fatal booby trap which kills his former apprentice.
We learn that Steve didn't kill Bronson's character out of revenge -- Steve thought his father died of natural causes -- but because he enjoyed killing too much to do it solely because he was ordered to, like Bronson did. Bronson, like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith (or at very least his Knight of Infinite Resignation) was free from the structures and strictures of society's mores, but he obeyed his bosses, choosing like Kierkegaard's Knight to put his faith in a higher power. Steve, on the other hand, was free and decided to make his own rules absent any higher authority, as does the Übermensch. It raises interesting questions: Who was more evil? Who was more free? Who was happier, in the end?
The story is psychologically complex, well-acted and interesting on a philosophical and emotional as well as a shoot-em-up level.
The remake, sadly, fucks all that up. I had a brief glimmer of hope that they'd do another take on the original novel, in which the assassin and his apprentice were engaged in a manipulative homosexual romance, but instead they took the Bronson movie as a template, and then dumbed it down to insipidity. Jason Statham does his best as the titular killer, and his stoic intensity actually lends itself well to the emotionally stunted assassin-hero, but gone are the nested oedipal complexes and the philosophical conflict, and all in favor of a typical doublecross/revenge/doublecross/revenge action movie structure where the hero is less ambiguously good so that we can feel better rooting for a soulless murderer. Also, the exposition is spoonfed to us with regrettable lack of grace. For example, we learn that the hero is lonely and emotionally distant when his mentor tells him "you're lonely. You need to let people into your life". Ugh. Hamfisted and subtle as a dump truck (which, incidentally, is used to kill one of the villains by smashing it, and him, into a city bus, which is a fair representation of the film`s level of tact). In the original, conversely, the hero's emotional dysfunction is shown instead of told, with a subplot about a prostitute that Bronson pays to write him love letters in lieu of any genuine relationship.
Yes, the action in the remake is cool and the acting is serviceable enough. There are even brief moments when the brilliance of the underlying material shines through, but overall it's just another Jason Statham action flick -- which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I was hoping for so much more.
The original was on its surface just another gritty 70's action film, but on a deeper level is was an existential parable crossed with a greek tragedy, a battle between the similar but conflicting archetypes of Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith and Nietzsche's Übermensch.
In it (and from here on spoilers abound, but the movie is 40 years old next year so I believe the statute of limitations has expired (Rosebud is a sled)) Bronson's assassin is ordered to kill his mentor, Big Harry. He succeeds in making it look like a heart attack. Suffering from both guilt and loneliness, he decides to train Big Harry's son Steve as an assassin as well, and the two characters become close. Bronson's character is then murdered by Steve in turn, but having anticipated (or at least planned for) his demise at Steve's hand, Bronson sets a fatal booby trap which kills his former apprentice.
We learn that Steve didn't kill Bronson's character out of revenge -- Steve thought his father died of natural causes -- but because he enjoyed killing too much to do it solely because he was ordered to, like Bronson did. Bronson, like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith (or at very least his Knight of Infinite Resignation) was free from the structures and strictures of society's mores, but he obeyed his bosses, choosing like Kierkegaard's Knight to put his faith in a higher power. Steve, on the other hand, was free and decided to make his own rules absent any higher authority, as does the Übermensch. It raises interesting questions: Who was more evil? Who was more free? Who was happier, in the end?
The story is psychologically complex, well-acted and interesting on a philosophical and emotional as well as a shoot-em-up level.
The remake, sadly, fucks all that up. I had a brief glimmer of hope that they'd do another take on the original novel, in which the assassin and his apprentice were engaged in a manipulative homosexual romance, but instead they took the Bronson movie as a template, and then dumbed it down to insipidity. Jason Statham does his best as the titular killer, and his stoic intensity actually lends itself well to the emotionally stunted assassin-hero, but gone are the nested oedipal complexes and the philosophical conflict, and all in favor of a typical doublecross/revenge/doublecross/revenge action movie structure where the hero is less ambiguously good so that we can feel better rooting for a soulless murderer. Also, the exposition is spoonfed to us with regrettable lack of grace. For example, we learn that the hero is lonely and emotionally distant when his mentor tells him "you're lonely. You need to let people into your life". Ugh. Hamfisted and subtle as a dump truck (which, incidentally, is used to kill one of the villains by smashing it, and him, into a city bus, which is a fair representation of the film`s level of tact). In the original, conversely, the hero's emotional dysfunction is shown instead of told, with a subplot about a prostitute that Bronson pays to write him love letters in lieu of any genuine relationship.
Yes, the action in the remake is cool and the acting is serviceable enough. There are even brief moments when the brilliance of the underlying material shines through, but overall it's just another Jason Statham action flick -- which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I was hoping for so much more.
