Blood,
Guts, Bullets and Octane
Rated
R
Opens Friday, April 16
Near the closing sequence to Blood, Guts, Bullets and
Octane, Joe Carnahan, the film's writer, director and
lead actor sputters to his partner: "Do me a favor, shut
up or start saying something that makes sense. Do one or
the other. It's getting old." Our sentiments exactly, Carnahan.
You might want to cut the $8,000 Blood, Guts, Bullets
and Octane some slack for not appearing as polished
as a big-budget feature, but the film is inexcusably bad
all over.
The plot is simple. A couple of fast-talking used-car salesmen,
Sid (Carnahan) and Bob (Dan Leis), are offered the unbelievable:
If they keep a red 1963 Pontiac Le Mans on their lot until
the right person picks it up, they'll get $250,000. Desperate
for the extra cash, they agree, but not without some hesitation.
After they scheme to hold the car for ransom, things begin
to spiral out of control. Random people whom we couldn't
give two beans about start getting shot, and bodies start
showing up in dumpsters. Bob and Sid are in much deeper
shit than they ever imagined. This is made clear by the
stenciled title cards that appear before each vignette.
"Man in Black" (a tough guy in a black beret tells a Johnny
Cash story) and "White Trash Trigger" (a loser in an army
coat gets shot) evoke all the anticipation of eating old
tuna salad. The director uses this technique to tighten
his movie while appearing cool, but this method only works
if the preambles are worth announcing. Woody Allen can do
this, and Gaspar Noe (I Stand Alone) can do this,
but in Blood, Guts, Bullets it's just embarrassing.
And then there's the dialogue, the most important part
of a small feature. It's the cheapest thing to create (all
you need is a clever brain, a piece of paper and a pencil)
yet one of the hardest to succeed at. This movie is filled
with crappy, self-conscious zingers that make one cringe
at their overly obvious references. Nicking the likes of
Rodriguez and Tarantino is bad enough, but do we really
need to see another poorly written diner scene where tough
guys talk about trivial matters with the ironic assuredness
of drunken frat boys? And how many more of central casting's
grunting, grimacing Mexican-Americans do we have to see
toting big guns around? They're supposed to look like tough
pisteleros locos, but their expressions seem more the
result of weariness and constipation. And please, no more
sub-sub-par David Mamet imitations. We all know you love
Glengarry Glen Ross (for good reason), but that doesn't
mean you're able to come anywhere near its straightforward
yet complex rapid-fire lingo.
In Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane's opening montage,
a bunch of car salesmen banter in a sluggish rat-a-tat-tat
homage to Mamet that sounds like Droopy Dog doing James
Cagney. It's like throwing a "Wherefore art thou?" or two
into a script and expecting viewers to think it's Shakespeare.
The film also has the audacity to mess with another master,
James Ellroy. Carnahan sounds as though he just finished
reading Ellroy's Black Dahlia; he throws the term
"hinky" into his blowhard-boiled repartee without caution.
Ellroy, the master of private dick lingo, is about the only
person who can use this word (except for Tommy Lee Jones,
who asks what the hell it means in The Fugitive).
Then there is that dreaded Johnny Cash segment. A "man in
black" shows up at the lot and tells a story about that
other man in black. His supposedly funny line is that he
knew a guy who "had" Cash in Folsom Prison. ("Johnny was
the bitch of the cell block.") Here Carnahan has gone too
far--if you're going to make jokes at the expense of Johnny
Cash, you'd better do something really funny or people are
going to get pissed.
Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane ends with a predictable
Mexican standoff, but it should have ended differently.
My suggestion is to film Johnny Cash going to the set, finding
each and every actor and kicking the shit out of him. Some
real tough-guy action would suit them right.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 14,
1999 |
