Latest / Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films / Forgotten Remakes and 'Cars' Ripoffs - Jackal (1997) vs. Doc Hollywood (1991)

Transcript

Forgotten Remakes and 'Cars' Ripoffs - Jackal (1997) vs. Doc Hollywood (1991) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, when an infamous
• 0:13
  assassin is hired to kill a high profile target in Washington,
• 0:17
  DC, the FBI turns to another talented criminal to hunt him
• 0:21
  down. Bruce Willis and Richard Gere
• 0:24
  star in The Jackal. Then when a promising young
• 0:28
  doctor heads West to become a Hollywood plastic surgeon, fate
• 0:32
  instead leaves him stranded in a small southern town that
• 0:35
  threatens to steal his heart. Michael J Fox stars in Doc
• 0:39
  Hollywood. It's a star-studded double
• 0:42
  feature, and it starts right now.
• 0:53
  Hello and welcome to meet your double feature, a double-blind
• 0:56
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas.
• 0:58
  Joined today by my brother Frank.
• 0:59
  Frank, how are you? I'm.
• 1:01
  Excellent. I'm.
• 1:02
  Great, excellent, that's good. Usually, he says excited.
• 1:05
  So I think we might be getting better mood than usual.
• 1:08
  I I thought I'd switch it up. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
• 1:12
  Well, welcome back, everyone to our show.
• 1:14
  In case you have never joined us before, the way Meet your double
• 1:16
  feature works is very simple. For tonight's show, Frank and I
• 1:19
  have both recommended a movie for the other to watch and
• 1:22
  review, except that it's a movie that neither of us has ever
• 1:24
  actually seen. We based our picks entirely on
• 1:27
  vibes, essentially just took a look at what we thought the
• 1:30
  other person would enjoy, and we're going to find out if those
• 1:32
  picks were were correct. We're going to give each movie a
• 1:35
  score out of 10, and then whoever gave the better
• 1:37
  recommendation for tonight's episode will be declared the
• 1:39
  winner. Frank, am I missing anything
• 1:41
  there or is that how the show works?
• 1:43
  I mean that, yeah, that makes sense to me.
• 1:45
  We get confused about the rules ourselves sometimes, but.
• 1:49
  It makes so much sense if you listen, but man, is it hard to
• 1:52
  put into an elevator pitch. So we're just going to kick
• 1:54
  right off, yeah. Yeah, let's do it.
• 1:57
  Now again we picked the movies for this episode at the end of
• 2:00
  our previous episode. Frank, you selected for me to
• 2:02
  watch tonight, 1997's The Jackal.
• 2:06
  Now can you refresh us and me 'cause I have forgotten why you
• 2:09
  asked me to watch 1997's The Jackal?
• 2:12
  Well, if you'll remember, it was a backup pick because my initial
• 2:17
  pick was actually. I don't even know if this may be
• 2:19
  in the episode so. I don't think I've edited that
• 2:23
  one yet so we can leave it in. You tried to select a movie I
• 2:26
  had actually already seen that you did not know I had seen.
• 2:28
  Yes, which was the game I believe that one was called.
• 2:31
  Yes, the game. Great movie by the way, still
• 2:33
  representing the game. Please watch the game but
• 2:36
  unfortunately it's not show eligible.
• 2:38
  Yes, yes. So I had to panic and and pick
• 2:44
  something else very quickly. But no, this one, I mean, it's
• 2:49
  90s Bruce Willis and like 90s Bruce Willis like action
• 2:53
  thriller. So that kind of seemed like
• 2:56
  definitely in his wheelhouse for the 90s.
• 2:58
  So and when I I don't even think I'd ever even heard of this
• 3:01
  movie before. So it looked interesting, but
• 3:04
  I'm sure you'll let me know if it was or.
• 3:08
  Not the honest movie sucked, no it I don't remember if I knew
• 3:13
  this because I read a lot about the movie after I was done
• 3:15
  watching it for for tonight. But this 90's The Jackal is is a
• 3:20
  remake of a 1970s film called Day of the Jackal which is much
• 3:24
  more famous and that in turn is based on a book.
• 3:27
  So we are like several adaptations deep with this one.
• 3:30
  It also was remade again as ATV series like last year or this
• 3:35
  year. So you picked, I think the least
• 3:37
  well known version of this story.
• 3:40
  I I'm remembering that now actually that that I had when I
• 3:43
  was looking at this one, I saw that it was based on that
• 3:45
  previous film, but I didn't know there was ATV show now too.
• 3:48
  That's interesting. I think the TV show, the title
• 3:50
  keeps getting shorter because the original movie and I'm
• 3:53
  guessing the book are called Day of the Jackal.
• 3:55
  This one's called The Jackal, and I swear that TV show is just
• 3:58
  called Jackal. We're really running out of
• 4:00
  letters. It's.
• 4:01
  Just going to be called J next time like.
• 4:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Day of the J So Dave The Jackal
• 4:07
  is an interesting one. I'm going to do something I
• 4:09
  don't usually, which is I'm going to open my review with
• 4:11
  some trivia about the movie that I found out afterwards, because
• 4:14
  I think it fits right in with what we were just describing.
• 4:17
  So for this one, 1997's The Jackal, it is not credited to
• 4:22
  the author of the book in the opening credits because the book
• 4:25
  author wanted nothing to do with it and asked that they leave him
• 4:28
  out of. It that's always a great sign
• 4:30
  with great start. You know, he said.
• 4:32
  I want nothing to do with this. But but wait, there's more.
• 4:35
  The person who directed the 1970s film asked them to change
• 4:39
  the title of this one because he didn't want it associated with
• 4:42
  his film either. Wow, like.
• 4:47
  Wait, had they was the movie complete at this point?
• 4:50
  Had they seen it? Like why were they so opposed to
• 4:54
  being associated with this? I don't know, but it's kind of
• 4:57
  funny and I wanted to open with that.
• 4:59
  Mostly to say that The Jackal 1997 is not bad enough to
• 5:04
  warrant this much criticism from the people who made the other
• 5:07
  stuff. Like, not wanting it credited to
• 5:10
  your book could make sense because it is sort of a of the
• 5:13
  Times adaptation that tries to update the story for the 90s.
• 5:17
  And so in many ways, it's just not the same story anymore.
• 5:20
  And I don't know if that was part of it for the novel author,
• 5:23
  but the guy who made the other movie is just being fussy
• 5:26
  because I guess he just thought that his film maybe just didn't
• 5:30
  think it needed to be remade, thought it like stood the test
• 5:32
  of time on its own or just really did not like what he saw
• 5:36
  about this 90s one. So I thought that that was such
• 5:39
  a blowback for a movie that I would confidently describe as
• 5:43
  fine. Sure, sure.
• 5:44
  Yeah. Like you read that and you look
• 5:48
  at the critical scores for the Jackal and it's like atrocious.
• 5:52
  I think the critics scores are like in between 10 and 20%.
• 5:56
  And that's just a little mean. I feel like the Jackal is
• 5:59
  totally fine. It's such a just like Sunday
• 6:02
  afternoon, I caught the beginning of this on TV and
• 6:05
  accidentally watched the whole thing kind of movie.
• 6:08
  I accidentally stayed for the two hour runtime.
• 6:11
  You know what I mean, though? Like we used to because we
• 6:12
  didn't have basic cable growing up, but we would sometimes get
• 6:15
  those like Saturday movies that were on at like 1:00 in the
• 6:18
  morning over the summer. And you'd be like, yeah, I'll
• 6:20
  put this on for 15 minutes. And then you're like, oh, no,
• 6:23
  I've stayed up. I've watched the whole thing.
• 6:25
  I love that, actually. Yeah, those are great.
• 6:28
  And again, those movies were often in that middle ground.
• 6:30
  They were like, somewhat overlooked, usually had actors
• 6:33
  you would recognize but were not their finest work.
• 6:35
  But you'd get to the end and you'd be like, yeah, that was a
• 6:36
  movie. Absolutely.
• 6:38
  Capital M movie right here. Well, these are the types of
• 6:40
  movies. I don't know if we've talked
• 6:42
  about this already on the podcast, but it's the type of
• 6:44
  movie that really gets made today.
• 6:46
  Like those mid budget movies or like like mid appeal movies, you
• 6:53
  know, where it's like this is not a guaranteed box office
• 6:56
  success like and I really appreciate those movies there.
• 6:59
  I feel like there needs to be a place in the current like modern
• 7:03
  filmmaking landscape, at least from the studio system for those
• 7:05
  types of movies. I'm glad when they exist.
• 7:08
  Yeah. And I do think that that for me,
• 7:10
  like movies like that sort of peaked in the 90s because it was
• 7:13
  before you had a lot of technological innovation in how
• 7:16
  films were made that necessitated productions
• 7:19
  becoming more expensive. And over time, that's what
• 7:21
  reached the point where you could only invest in like a
• 7:23
  surefire hit because it became so expensive to make a movie at
• 7:26
  all. Whereas these films in the 90s
• 7:28
  were like peak practical effects, early computer effects.
• 7:32
  And you could still justify something in like the middle
• 7:34
  ground like you're saying. Totally.
• 7:35
  Yeah, absolutely. So to to give more information
• 7:39
  on the Jackal, that's the top down summary.
• 7:41
  Totally fine. Would not turn it off if it was
• 7:43
  put on in front of me, but there's reasons for that.
• 7:46
  I I think you sort of talked about this when you spoke about
• 7:49
  Soldier in episode 4, where the movie didn't really do a lot
• 7:53
  incorrectly. The biggest things you could say
• 7:55
  against it were just it failed to be memorable.
• 7:59
  Like the premise on paper, pretty good.
• 8:03
  I'm going to assume this is pretty much the same initial
• 8:06
  setup as the 1970s version and the book, but it's a political
• 8:10
  espionage thriller where in this case in the Bruce Willis one,
• 8:16
  it's it's the late 90's, the USSR has just fallen.
• 8:20
  And so the American FBI and like the Russian government is
• 8:23
  working together to combat a rising like mafia influence in
• 8:29
  Russia. So they're trying to take down
• 8:30
  like a Russian mafia syndicate. And as part of that story, this
• 8:35
  Russian mobster guy whose brother gets murdered at the
• 8:37
  beginning, hires Bruce Willis, who plays this famous assassin
• 8:41
  called the Jackal and basically gives him some sort of high
• 8:44
  priority political target in America.
• 8:47
  And so we spend the movie following Bruce Willis preparing
• 8:50
  and dealing with the logistics of setting up this assassination
• 8:52
  attempt while the FBI and the Russian equivalent of the FBI
• 8:57
  try to hunt him down. Like that's our, that's our
• 8:59
  format for the story. Oh wait, so he's a famous
• 9:03
  assassin like he's. Famous in that nobody knows it.
• 9:06
  Like there's, it's that classic. Like he's a name on the winds,
• 9:10
  but we all know the name and it's Jekyll.
• 9:12
  Got it. Got it for John Wick.
• 9:14
  Yes, the the main quality about the Bruce Willis characters that
• 9:18
  supposedly no one's ever seen his face.
• 9:20
  Some thought he wasn't real, but they get credible intelligence
• 9:23
  that this person is going after who at the beginning of the
• 9:26
  story, I think they believe. I think they believe that Jackal
• 9:30
  wants to kill the director of the FBI.
• 9:33
  Oh, OK. So that is kind of the framing
• 9:36
  device that we get. Part of this that I find funny
• 9:40
  is that the opening of the movie suggests what I think is maybe a
• 9:44
  more interesting story than we actually get, because the scope
• 9:48
  of what's happening really narrows into just be about Bruce
• 9:50
  Willis past a certain point. But the opening's actually kind
• 9:53
  of cool. The actual opening credits of
• 9:55
  the movie, you would assume it would play out the way that like
• 9:58
  a Jack Ryan movie would, you know, kind of like classic like
• 10:01
  military March sounding music and just basic information dump.
• 10:05
  And we do get the classic like newsreel montage.
• 10:08
  But instead of being set to like a generic song, we get this
• 10:11
  music written by a band called Massive Attack who like a really
• 10:14
  influential like trip hop band and it kind of sounds like the
• 10:17
  intro song to Batman Beyond. Oh wow, that's fun.
• 10:22
  It's. Super fun, like the whole angle
• 10:25
  that 90s Jackal takes as it tries to make it very 90s.
• 10:28
  There's a lot of music that's different.
• 10:30
  There's a lot of random time period appropriate technological
• 10:34
  stuff that Bruce Willis character makes use of.
• 10:36
  But this intro is like peak. If you told me that the movie
• 10:39
  was over after the opening credits, that would have been
• 10:41
  like 10 out of 10 because you get this awesome music,
• 10:44
  including possibly my favorite drop in music history.
• 10:47
  Where we're getting all this audio about like the fall of the
• 10:50
  USSR and then the build up to like the drop in the song is
• 10:54
  Reagan saying like Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall
• 10:58
  finishes saying it and the music like pops in really loud.
• 11:00
  And I was like, that's the best thing I've ever heard.
• 11:05
  I think I've heard that used like that sound clip used in
• 11:08
  other songs before too, that's it's just a very timely like
• 11:12
  it's good audio. It's a great clip to use.
• 11:14
  It's a good clip, and the music here is legitimately very good.
• 11:18
  It's such an interesting, stylish opening to the movie
• 11:21
  that gives you the impression that it's going to be, you know,
• 11:23
  like a little bit of a different approach to like the political
• 11:26
  thriller. It settles past a certain point
• 11:28
  and becomes a little bit more by the book.
• 11:30
  But I do really want to give them credit for an awesome
• 11:32
  opening. Like I said, it's a 10 out of 10
• 11:33
  movie until it starts. Until the movie starts and then
• 11:39
  you're like, I'm done. Turn this off.
• 11:39
  Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I. Got to go to bed.
• 11:41
  It's one in the morning. The other element to the
• 11:44
  introduction, and I'll cover all this because none of it comes
• 11:47
  back around past a certain point, is that again, there's a
• 11:50
  Russian mafia guy whose brother is killed in a sting by the FBI
• 11:55
  and whatever the Russian equivalent of the FBI is.
• 11:57
  And we cut to him with his band of like cohort in, I think like
• 12:02
  just outside of Helsinki at some sort of like ski resort.
• 12:05
  And they have this classic like villain moment where the guy
• 12:08
  who's reporting to him about how his brother dies was there.
• 12:11
  And he's like blames the dude and like kills him with an axe.
• 12:14
  And he's just like, if anybody else fails, you're going to end
• 12:17
  up like this dude. And then that's the guy who
• 12:19
  hires Bruce Willis. He basically puts out a revenge
• 12:22
  hit to make a statement against the Americans for interfering in
• 12:25
  Russian mafia business. And the whole setup feels like
• 12:28
  that guy's a really pivotal part of this story.
• 12:30
  But after he hires Bruce Willis, he never shows up again.
• 12:33
  He's not in the rest of the movie.
• 12:34
  None of these characters are in the rest of the movie.
• 12:36
  This entire framing device about the Russian mafia and their like
• 12:40
  rise to power dealing with post Soviet Russia and the power
• 12:43
  vacuum there non factor. It immediately pivots.
• 12:46
  The rest of the movie takes place in various locales and
• 12:49
  countries, but we never go back to Russia and we never see those
• 12:52
  guys again. Whoa, that seems like such an
• 12:55
  obvious setup for this guy to be like the main villain of the
• 12:59
  movie. I know like he could have had
• 13:01
  influence over the story but now?
• 13:03
  And that maybe is them being beholden to the original plot of
• 13:07
  the novel or the 1st movie. But I just thought that was such
• 13:09
  a swing and a miss. Like, they really go out of
• 13:11
  their way to set up almost like, you know, the movie Key Largo,
• 13:15
  the Humphrey Bogart movie. Yeah.
• 13:18
  Yeah. So it that was not really the
• 13:20
  same thing. But it's like a cast of
• 13:21
  characters all trapped in this, like, resort hotel because of
• 13:24
  this typhoon outside. And like, some of them are
• 13:26
  criminals. And it's a very, like, bottled
• 13:29
  premise story with a lot of interesting dialogue.
• 13:31
  And I thought that some element of Jackal was going to be these
• 13:34
  like, Russian mob guys who basically couldn't leave this
• 13:37
  building in Sweden because they were going to get killed by the
• 13:42
  FBI if they did. Just like, reaching a boiling
• 13:45
  point and bickering and eventually like, turning on each
• 13:47
  other. But no, just not part of the
• 13:50
  story at all. Oh yeah, no, that sounds really
• 13:54
  interesting. But none of those characters
• 13:56
  come back at all beyond that early scene, no.
• 13:59
  None of them. We occasionally reference that
• 14:01
  they exist. The story is essentially not
• 14:03
  about that. It instead pivots to being about
• 14:07
  Bruce Willis as the Jackal, going through the very detailed
• 14:12
  step by step process of how to break into another country and
• 14:17
  build this like weapon and stage an assassination.
• 14:20
  It it it it essentially tries to give you the villains
• 14:23
  perspective on executing a Grand Master plan rather than just
• 14:27
  showing you the heroes chasing him and then finding out what
• 14:29
  his plan is at the end. Well, that's not a bad pitch
• 14:32
  either, but I liked the earlier movie you pitched better too.
• 14:36
  I liked the earlier one too. I wanted Key Largo in Helsinki
• 14:39
  with the Russian mob. I just thought that was funnier.
• 14:41
  And maybe you could say if the other day that Jackal didn't
• 14:46
  exist, that the version they gave us is more unique.
• 14:48
  But again, it's literally a remake of a movie that exists,
• 14:51
  so we definitely could have added new plot elements if we
• 14:54
  were going to be making another version.
• 14:56
  But yeah, very strange. Maybe that's why the writer and
• 15:00
  other film makers didn't want anything to do this.
• 15:01
  Maybe the other versions are all about those Russian characters
• 15:04
  and then this one was just like Nah first.
• 15:06
  What they were like. But guys, what about the Russian
• 15:09
  plot in Helsinki? And he's like the what?
• 15:12
  No way, man. This is a movie about Bruce
• 15:14
  Willis in disguises. That's the whole movie.
• 15:18
  Easy turtle enough for the turtle club.
• 15:20
  Dude straight up, he's doing master disguise level, like
• 15:24
  number of and absurdity of disguises.
• 15:27
  Like his entire plot revolves around to him having like four
• 15:31
  or five persistent disguises and identities that he goes back and
• 15:35
  forth between and they're so silly.
• 15:38
  Like one of them. He looks like Guile from Street
• 15:40
  Fighter with like the weird like flat top haircut.
• 15:44
  What are they like a fat guy? Yeah, these are.
• 15:48
  Is he doing like voices? Is this like like character
• 15:51
  roles he's playing? Essentially, yeah.
• 15:54
  I mean, they're not too over the top, but he tries to play it off
• 15:58
  as like, these are real people that he is routinely assuming
• 16:03
  the role of because he'll have different like, phases of his
• 16:06
  plan in different locations. Like, for example, part of his
• 16:09
  plan is that he wants to build a like fancy sniper rifle turret
• 16:16
  gun that can like fire explosive rounds and he can control via
• 16:20
  remote. And so he hires a character
• 16:22
  played by Jack Black to like build it for him.
• 16:24
  And anytime he interacts with Jack Black, he's in one of the
• 16:27
  set disguises. And then we never we we see him
• 16:30
  use different identities for like different parts of the
• 16:32
  plant. Oh my God, no.
• 16:34
  This is, this is this really is master of disguise.
• 16:37
  It is. It's absolutely Dana Carvey's
• 16:40
  master of disguise. Except slightly less silly.
• 16:44
  Not even a lot less silly. What was that weapon you
• 16:49
  described? A turret sniper rifle with
• 16:51
  explosive rounds like. It's like a super high-powered
• 16:56
  gun that you mount on like an arm, like something you would
• 17:00
  mount on like top of like a like a truck in like a combat
• 17:03
  scenario. And he just wants it so that he
• 17:06
  can like, control it remotely and point it at something and
• 17:10
  essentially just like blow it up, you know, with these super
• 17:13
  high caliber rounds and like machine gunfire.
• 17:15
  He's just going for overkill on this assassination he has
• 17:18
  planned. Wait, so just for my
• 17:20
  clarification here, Bruce Willis 'cause I'm looking at the poster
• 17:23
  and it's he's advertised opposite Richard Gere.
• 17:27
  So is Bruce Willis the bad guy? But he's the character we're
• 17:32
  following. Is that the situation 'cause
• 17:34
  he's the assassin here? Bruce Willis is the assassin
• 17:37
  when the movie starts. I was wondering if this was some
• 17:40
  sort of like undercover op and that he was secretly a good guy.
• 17:43
  He is not. He is like legit just the
• 17:45
  assassin and you follow him for legitimately like half the movie
• 17:49
  and you're intercutting sort of evenly between what he's doing
• 17:53
  and Richard Gere working with the FBI to track him down.
• 17:56
  OK, wow. Because like you just saying
• 17:58
  like he wants this turret gun that even that is just sounding
• 18:02
  like that's like like doctor evil ish like.
• 18:07
  It is because I think the only justification you're given is
• 18:10
  that this is supposed to be a very public execution so that
• 18:14
  people know that the Russian mafia, like, has power to flex
• 18:17
  and it'll try to convince America to like back out of
• 18:20
  Russia and stop trying to police them.
• 18:22
  OK, sure. Yeah, I.
• 18:24
  Mean So that's the that's the Bruce Willis half of the movie.
• 18:27
  It's unbelievable how many of his scenes don't have other
• 18:31
  characters present in them or have, like, no dialogue or in
• 18:34
  some cases, have dialogue but with no conflict.
• 18:37
  Like, you know how like, a scene in a movie is supposed to have
• 18:41
  conflict? Yeah, Yeah.
• 18:44
  I like any piece of dialogue in a movie should be about a
• 18:47
  conflict of some kind. Bruce Willis has entire
• 18:49
  conversations with people that just go so swimmingly.
• 18:52
  Like, even the scene where the Russian mobster who we thought
• 18:55
  was going to be part of the movie and never returns hires
• 18:57
  him to do this hit. They do the angle where Bruce
• 19:01
  Willis is like setting the terms.
• 19:02
  He's saying, you know, I want half of my money up front and
• 19:05
  half upon completion of the job. This is going to force me to,
• 19:09
  like, basically go into hiding when I'm finished because it's
• 19:11
  so high profile. So I want like $70 million.
• 19:14
  I'm going to need access to all of these resources.
• 19:16
  And you know what the Russian mobster guy says?
• 19:18
  He says OK. And Bruce Willis is like, thanks
• 19:23
  bro, I love you. Literally, Oh my God, Later.
• 19:26
  No, no, no. But so close, as close as you
• 19:30
  can get in a way that the movie doesn't realize how dumb it is.
• 19:33
  Like later on, one of the aspects of Bruce Willis plan as
• 19:36
  the Jackal is he needs fake IDs. And so we cut to him having
• 19:40
  stolen somebody's ID and he brings it to a forger who's
• 19:43
  going to like replace it with his photo and all this other
• 19:45
  stuff. And they have this whole scene
• 19:48
  where the forger shows up, and she's like, hey, I finished
• 19:50
  making this for you. And he's like, oh, OK, this, you
• 19:52
  did great work. And she tells him the price, and
• 19:55
  he says, I'm going to give you even more than you asked for.
• 19:58
  And then she goes, wow, that's nice.
• 19:59
  And then he says, OK, see you later.
• 20:01
  I hope your baby's doing well. That's a scene in the movie.
• 20:08
  Now it's now it's kind of how do we keep comparing this other
• 20:10
  movies, but now it's kind of giving like the room type
• 20:12
  dialogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 20:14
  Well, hi, Mark. That's that's basically where
• 20:17
  Bruce Willis is half of the movie goes.
• 20:19
  And I think it's the part that most shows the kind of like
• 20:22
  ineptitude of how the movie is constructed.
• 20:24
  Like, if you're going to have half of your story be a
• 20:27
  character who barely speaks to anybody, is off and off on his
• 20:30
  own, and is just doing a lot of logistical stuff, you need like
• 20:33
  competent direction and dialogue to frame those parts, or else
• 20:36
  you need to just not include them.
• 20:39
  Like that scene with the forgery, We don't need a scene
• 20:42
  for that at all. I can buy that super spy Bruce
• 20:45
  Willis can fake an Idi. Don't.
• 20:47
  I don't need justification for that part.
• 20:49
  Especially if you clearly had nothing else to add to the scene
• 20:52
  beyond that. Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:55
  You're not. The audience is not asking those
• 20:57
  questions. Yeah, exactly.
• 20:59
  It baffles me. And and most of those egregious
• 21:02
  parts are at the beginning. And so as the movie was like
• 21:04
  carrying into the first act, I was like, this is awful.
• 21:07
  I was completely on board with the people who thought the movie
• 21:11
  was garbage because it starts in such a low point, but it does
• 21:15
  once Richard Gere finally shows up, even out into a much more
• 21:18
  like normal movie. Wow, so but it's but he's only
• 21:23
  like what? Like halfway into the movie is
• 21:26
  where you get his first appearance.
• 21:28
  It's not that long, but it's too long.
• 21:30
  Like the movie. I'll get into Richard Gere's
• 21:33
  back story here in a second. But just structurally, we really
• 21:36
  needed to open the movie with Richard Gere because we explain
• 21:39
  as the movie goes on that he has this back story.
• 21:41
  He has a connection to Bruce Willis, and we don't see him at
• 21:45
  all for the first like 15 minutes.
• 21:47
  And it results in a very, like, meandering opening where you're
• 21:51
  not even sure who your POV character is for that half of
• 21:54
  the story. And eventually he shows up and
• 21:57
  you're like, where has this guy been?
• 21:58
  This guy needed to be like opening scene on him.
• 22:02
  And instead we just follow the FBI.
• 22:05
  The only notable character on the FBI side is that Sidney
• 22:07
  Poitier is in it as like, the high-ranking FBI dude and what
• 22:10
  is apparently his final film role.
• 22:12
  So that's interesting. Oh.
• 22:13
  That yeah, that is interesting. But I mean, yeah, this almost, I
• 22:17
  was just going to say this almost sounds like maybe in in
• 22:20
  editing issue. Like I don't know if it's in
• 22:23
  like this came in the editing or the script.
• 22:27
  But yeah, that seems like such a layup to to frame this story.
• 22:31
  Like especially like if Bruce Willis is like this super secret
• 22:37
  assassin guy, I feel like his appearance is the one that you
• 22:39
  delay. And then like you said, Richard
• 22:43
  Gere is who you show from the beginning.
• 22:44
  And that's how you frame the whole story as like, oh, we're
• 22:48
  tracking this guy down. Like you build up to the reveal
• 22:51
  of the Jackal, not the other way around.
• 22:54
  I agree, I don't mind the general rhythm of showing so
• 22:58
  much of what Bruce Willis is doing because it's fairly
• 23:00
  complicated and does propel a lot of the movie because there's
• 23:03
  not a lot of twists and turns in the FBI chasing him down.
• 23:07
  It's not like The Fugitive or something where it's all about
• 23:09
  the hunt, it's more so just what's he up to?
• 23:11
  Like how is he going to pull off such a high profile
• 23:13
  assassination? And I think if Richard Gere got
• 23:17
  equal screen time in the opening like first act of the movie, you
• 23:21
  could have been on to something. So I agree it's totally a pacing
• 23:24
  problem. There's nothing wrong with this
• 23:25
  on the page, it just is really sluggish in how the story
• 23:29
  actually gets moving. Yeah, especially with like
• 23:32
  unnecessary stuff like you're saying like.
• 23:35
  I can't believe the scene with the Russian guy did not have any
• 23:38
  sort of underlying tension where it's like, is Bruce Willis going
• 23:40
  to ask for too much? And this off the rails Russian
• 23:44
  mobster who just killed a man with an axe is maybe going to
• 23:48
  have something to say about it. And instead he's like, Nah, man,
• 23:50
  you do you. You're the best.
• 23:52
  Yeah, He's like. That's super reasonable.
• 23:53
  Thank you. That guy's super cool.
• 23:55
  His name's the Jackal. Nobody does it though.
• 24:00
  He's got a famous nickname and we've never heard of him.
• 24:05
  But also the scene with like the fake ID too.
• 24:07
  It's just like, how much innocuous detail do we need to
• 24:10
  get into here with Bruce Willis? It's like, see those shoes?
• 24:13
  He's I bet you're wondering where he got those shoes.
• 24:15
  Let's follow him, the Payless. And let's follow him going
• 24:18
  through the entire interaction of buying the shoes at the
• 24:20
  Payless, making small talks, saying good day.
• 24:23
  And then maybe the guy being like, do you want your receipt?
• 24:25
  And him being like, yeah, I'll take the receipt.
• 24:27
  And then he leaves. And then he kind of leaves and
• 24:29
  he's like, I don't actually need the receipt.
• 24:30
  And then he throws it out anyway and.
• 24:33
  Then he says out loud, I was just doing that.
• 24:35
  It would be nice because otherwise we might wonder why he
• 24:40
  did that. Why did he do that exactly?
• 24:41
  It's just like we can't leave the audience asking all these
• 24:44
  questions. Again, I promise I'm getting to
• 24:46
  the Richard Gere half because that'll help finish the story,
• 24:48
  but Bruce Willis is killing me in this movie.
• 24:51
  I like Bruce Willis. I want to put that out there
• 24:54
  front page. I like Bruce Willis.
• 24:57
  I know he doesn't act anymore, but I think he was a good actor
• 25:00
  but he does not have effortless charisma on screen to the point
• 25:06
  where you can put him in this role where he's like super muted
• 25:09
  and not saying or doing anything.
• 25:11
  It makes him come across as like inert and just not interesting.
• 25:15
  Like, Bruce Willis can do a great performance if he has
• 25:18
  dialogue and like characteristics, but they'd make
• 25:22
  him this super intentionally flat character and then hinge
• 25:27
  half the movie's runtime on scenes of him doing nothing.
• 25:33
  Yeah, no, I I could see that not landing at all.
• 25:35
  Like he's just like he's like resting heart rate is too low.
• 25:40
  He's just. Like there's a scene part of his
• 25:45
  montage at the beginning too. He goes to some fancy bank and
• 25:48
  talks about transferring funds and then asks to go into a back
• 25:51
  room so that he can use a computer to like, order the
• 25:54
  parts he needs for this doomsday gun off the dark web or
• 25:58
  something. And he starts talking to like a
• 26:01
  robot voice instead of typing things in.
• 26:03
  And then we get this dialogue scene where he's, they're trying
• 26:06
  to show you that he knows about guns.
• 26:08
  So he's like, I need something that's under this weight that
• 26:10
  can deliver this high caliber of a round.
• 26:12
  But then the other half of that conversation is literally like
• 26:15
  the silly 90s robot voice. Like, you know, the bit from
• 26:19
  like red versus blue where he's talking to the computer.
• 26:21
  Yes, yes, it's that same voice. It's it's literally the like,
• 26:27
  OK, Sir, this is what you need. And I'm like, we can't be
• 26:31
  spending two minutes on this conversation with him and a
• 26:33
  robot. Just make this a montage.
• 26:37
  Yeah, yeah. You know, and again, this, I,
• 26:39
  this feels like editing that feels like weird, like this
• 26:43
  needed to be trimmed, like somebody needed to like tell the
• 26:48
  director or whoever was making these choices.
• 26:52
  It's like we don't need this or this needs to be shorter like
• 26:54
  this. You need to move on from this.
• 26:56
  This is not interesting. Especially when framed against a
• 27:00
  character on the other side. This is me talking about Richard
• 27:03
  Gere, finally, who needed more time to develop who he was and
• 27:07
  what his relationship was to Bruce Willis.
• 27:10
  So in case you're wondering why Richard Gere is on the cover for
• 27:13
  this movie about Bruce Willis and his alone time, the reason
• 27:17
  he factors into the story is that the FBI and the whatever
• 27:21
  the Russian thing is, they're not KGB.
• 27:23
  They call him something else. They're wondering how they're
• 27:25
  going to track down the Jackal because they get word that a hit
• 27:27
  has been placed on what they think is the FBI director.
• 27:30
  So they're asking has anyone ever seen this guy and can
• 27:32
  confirm his identity? There's only two people that
• 27:35
  they know who are still alive that have any connection to the
• 27:38
  Jackal. 1 is a woman named Isabella who lives in the states
• 27:42
  somewhere but they don't know where.
• 27:44
  The other is Richard Gere who is an incarcerated IRA terrorist
• 27:51
  who is in America somewhere. You know, like the like the
• 27:56
  conflict between like Ireland and the UK or like in England.
• 28:00
  Yeah, everybody knows that. Everybody knows history.
• 28:04
  This is very much a thing in 90s espionage movies.
• 28:06
  There's a Jack Ryan movie that touches on this too.
• 28:08
  It was essentially like violent conflict between Ireland and I
• 28:12
  think just England at some point in the 90s because the land
• 28:17
  dispute, I don't know. I don't know something about the
• 28:19
  Crown. Uh huh, Uh huh.
• 28:21
  But it was something that even though from the perspective of
• 28:24
  people in the IRA, they were like at war, I think a lot of
• 28:27
  them were just framed as like terrorists and and imprisoned.
• 28:29
  And, you know, that's supposedly what happened to Richard Gere.
• 28:32
  He in his mind was like, or he says he was like defending his
• 28:37
  country, but because he was accused of being a terrorist and
• 28:40
  like setting off a bomb or something, they just sent him to
• 28:42
  prison in America. But he, they believe, could lead
• 28:45
  them to the woman who knows how to identify the Jackal.
• 28:49
  So it's kind of like a 2 steps removed connection.
• 28:52
  That gets us to Richard Gere, who, if you're wondering, is
• 28:55
  doing a very bad Irish accent. You know, I wasn't even thinking
• 28:59
  about that, but I'm glad that it happened.
• 29:00
  I'm glad that he is. It's not the worst I've ever
• 29:03
  heard. It's not like cartoonish.
• 29:04
  I think the worst is, oh gosh, I'm going to forget the name of
• 29:07
  the movie, but there's a movie with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee
• 29:10
  Jones where Tommy Lee Jones is like an IRA guy and he does the
• 29:13
  worst Irish accent of all time. I think the movie is just called
• 29:15
  Blow Up or something, I don't know.
• 29:18
  Anyway, a side to side, Richard Gere tries to do the Irish
• 29:21
  accent. He can kind of handle it so long
• 29:23
  as he doesn't talk too loud. So his performance is very
• 29:25
  whispery, but he bargains with Sidney Poitier and the FBI and
• 29:31
  this Russian agent who they have with them and basically says,
• 29:34
  like, I need you to let me out of here and I will accompany
• 29:37
  you. Like I'm still incarcerated, but
• 29:39
  I'm going to accompany you on this mission to go find this
• 29:41
  woman because she and I like were a couple and I need to go
• 29:46
  check in on her. And then I'll convince her to
• 29:48
  tell you what she knows about the Jackal.
• 29:50
  That's how we get Richard Gere into the movie.
• 29:52
  Legitimately like 15 to 20 minutes in when we probably
• 29:55
  should have opened the movie with how he got arrested would
• 29:57
  be my best. Pitch Yeah.
• 30:00
  You know, I wonder if it was just a case of, like, Bruce
• 30:02
  Willis was the bigger star at the time.
• 30:05
  And so they're just like, we need to have him on screen as
• 30:09
  much as possible. Like that's like one of the only
• 30:13
  justifications I can think of for like framing the story this
• 30:16
  way. I did read.
• 30:17
  I don't know if this is true, it just sounds like something
• 30:19
  someone made-up, but supposedly they were both offered the other
• 30:22
  part at one point and like both asked to play the opposite role
• 30:26
  or something. He just traded like.
• 30:29
  Supposedly. I mean, I don't know if there's
• 30:31
  any truth to that at all, but maybe at one point in time it
• 30:34
  was supposed to be Irish accent. Bruce Willis.
• 30:36
  He was like, I don't want to do the accent.
• 30:38
  I got to play the bad guy. But then he wound up doing like,
• 30:41
  silly characters, too. He did do silly characters and
• 30:44
  again with no charisma behind them at all because they don't
• 30:47
  suit his acting range. Anyway, Long story short, Bruce
• 30:51
  Willis makes me frustrated. But Richard Gere, for what
• 30:54
  little he's given, does carry the other half of this movie.
• 30:58
  His scenes are pretty good and you feel some connection to his
• 31:04
  struggle because even though they don't really exonerate that
• 31:07
  he clearly did a war crime or something to get sent to jail in
• 31:10
  the 1st place, he still has feelings for this woman Isabella
• 31:13
  and is trying to keep her safe. He clearly has some sort of beef
• 31:16
  with Bruce Willis that goes a long way back, and he does form
• 31:19
  the emotional core of the story when we're following his side of
• 31:22
  it. Yeah, OK.
• 31:24
  Once he's introduced, is it evenly weighted between the two
• 31:27
  of them? I assume this leads to some kind
• 31:29
  of like confrontation between the the these. 2 characters Once
• 31:33
  Gear is in play there's a brief scene where he goes and finds
• 31:37
  this woman Isabella who he was with and we later found out like
• 31:41
  had a was going to have a child with but then they lost the baby
• 31:44
  because she got shot by Bruce Willis.
• 31:45
  There's a lot going on with the back story that you don't find
• 31:47
  out until way too late. But he gets a scene with her
• 31:51
  where he finds out that she remarried and is like living
• 31:54
  happily somewhere else in the United States.
• 31:56
  And he gets to have the kind of scene where like they have this
• 31:58
  big embrace, but then he puts aside his feelings because he
• 32:01
  knows that she'll be safe here and he just doesn't want to
• 32:04
  interfere. We get a good guy Richard Gere
• 32:06
  moment where he does not in fact try to steal back this now
• 32:09
  married woman that he used to know.
• 32:12
  We need a term for that in movies because it happens too
• 32:14
  often. That happened in Soldier.
• 32:17
  Like it. Did that's true?
• 32:18
  We need it, yeah. We can't have like, a prop
• 32:20
  husband who's just there to create distance between the
• 32:24
  actual romantic pairing for the story.
• 32:26
  Yeah, like it's like a pre built family that the main character
• 32:29
  just come in, comes in and like steals by the end of the movie.
• 32:33
  Very weird. You're right, that does happen a
• 32:34
  lot, but Richard Gere doesn't do that.
• 32:36
  He's a nice guy and we get what is probably supposed to be a
• 32:39
  very emotional scene of him coming to terms with this.
• 32:41
  But again, in the edit that we got, we met this guy like 5
• 32:45
  minutes ago. So it does, it's misplaced.
• 32:47
  We if we built to that, that could have been pretty good.
• 32:51
  It's acted well, but you just met these two and so you have no
• 32:55
  reason to care about what they're doing, and you're still
• 32:57
  missing critical lore that you don't get until like the third
• 33:00
  act of the movie. Yeah, yeah, that's a really
• 33:04
  weird place to put a scene like that so early on, like before
• 33:07
  you know, the back story between the two of them or know him at
• 33:10
  all. Really.
• 33:11
  Like that's, that's very odd. Yeah, because to restate, I know
• 33:14
  I'm I'm all over the place because the movie is all over
• 33:16
  the place. Richard Gere was working in
• 33:19
  Ireland doing IRA stuff with his then girlfriend Isabella, who
• 33:22
  was pregnant. Bruce Willis was, I think,
• 33:25
  working a job with them that he was hired on, but he set them up
• 33:28
  to be captured by the police. In doing so, he got Isabella
• 33:31
  shot, who then miscarried, and he got Richard Gere sent to
• 33:34
  prison and then he escaped. And that's why there's beef
• 33:37
  between the two for when they finally meet, I think an hour
• 33:40
  into the movie. Oh, OK, so Bruce Willis wasn't
• 33:43
  the one who shot her. He.
• 33:45
  I don't. Remember, indirectly, I don't
• 33:48
  think they make it clear, but he's definitely, in Richard
• 33:50
  Gere's mind, responsible for what happened to both of them.
• 33:53
  And so that's why there's this revenge element to the story.
• 33:57
  And that's something they question about Richard Gere.
• 33:59
  Are they like, are you here to help us or are you here to get
• 34:01
  your own revenge? Oh yeah, yeah, again, why are we
• 34:05
  not like this is? This is the movie.
• 34:07
  I can't believe how much time we spend on Bruce Willis's acting
• 34:10
  class when we should be following the plot of the movie.
• 34:17
  Like Oh my gosh, yeah, his acting class.
• 34:20
  He charges too much for it and then doesn't act.
• 34:24
  He doesn't. It's unbelievable.
• 34:25
  I mean, he the most interesting thing that Bruce Willis does in
• 34:28
  his many, many disguises is that at one point he's trying to make
• 34:32
  a connection with someone who works in the capital in
• 34:34
  Washington because that's where the assassination's going to
• 34:36
  take place. And so he goes into one of his
• 34:41
  disguises, goes into a gay bar in DC and like picks up this
• 34:46
  dude and just to get his home address and business card, but
• 34:49
  actually like kisses this man. And then later in the movie, the
• 34:54
  only reason he did that was so that he could like, do his final
• 34:58
  preparations at this guy's house.
• 35:00
  But it's like a weird scene in the sense that I kept waiting
• 35:02
  for that shoe to drop and the whole thing to turn like really
• 35:04
  homophobic. And it actually doesn't to the
• 35:07
  point where Bruce Willis characters almost like just like
• 35:09
  actually gay coded. Like they do nothing to
• 35:12
  counteract that impression. It's like he could have done
• 35:15
  this with a woman who works in DC.
• 35:17
  But no, we just get this scene of him seducing a man at a gay
• 35:20
  club and then he does later kill that guy, but it's just because
• 35:24
  he doesn't. The guy starts to figure out
• 35:25
  that something's up with him. It's not like a weird like I'm
• 35:28
  not actually gay. And then he shoots him.
• 35:30
  Yeah, yeah, I was just wasn't, you were like, well, I did kill
• 35:33
  him, I mean, but. He did murder the guy also
• 35:36
  pretty bad I guess. And surprisingly, again, IMDb
• 35:41
  trivia not to be trusted. Supposedly, Bruce Willis
• 35:44
  actually asked them to change details of that scene so that it
• 35:47
  was more clear that he killed the guy to maintain his cover,
• 35:50
  and not just because the guy was gay.
• 35:52
  Oh, he didn't want it to be misinterpreted as like,
• 35:57
  homophobic. I think, yeah, the implication
• 35:59
  was to not create this, like, weird loose end where Bruce
• 36:02
  Willis had to kind of take revenge on that guy.
• 36:04
  It was just, and then a news thing came on and the guy
• 36:07
  started to connect the dots. And so Bruce always had to kill
• 36:09
  him, which I was like, you know what?
• 36:10
  For a 1997 that's so tasteful, you almost earned a whole point
• 36:14
  back for that. I I was going to say too real
• 36:17
  quick. Speaking of the IMDb for the
• 36:19
  Jackal, like IMDb does this thing where it, it like kind of
• 36:22
  charts things that are trending in terms of popularity.
• 36:26
  And for some reason the Jackal is trending pretty high right
• 36:29
  now. I assume it's because a lot of
• 36:32
  Bruce Willis movies are because there's been a lot of news about
• 36:35
  him recently and like his issues with his dementia and like not
• 36:39
  acting anymore. But yeah, whatever it's worth.
• 36:43
  Like other people are looking at the Jackal IMDb for some reason.
• 36:47
  Well, it's because it's a perfect Sunday afternoon movie.
• 36:50
  You know, if you just want a movie that you don't have to
• 36:53
  remember the details of or really follow the plot of
• 36:55
  because it's fairly straightforward.
• 36:57
  The Jackal. Yeah, the Jackal.
• 37:01
  I've barely, I really, I've talked about this for like 35
• 37:04
  minutes. I have not gotten into the
• 37:05
  actual beats of the chase at all, and I might even leave a
• 37:08
  lot of that out in case people want to go watch a perfectly
• 37:10
  good Sunday afternoon movie. But my beef with the story is
• 37:14
  clear. It's poorly paced.
• 37:17
  It does not give enough time to Richard Gere and gives us far
• 37:20
  too much time following. The misadventures of Bruce
• 37:23
  Willis. Yeah.
• 37:24
  I mean, that seems like the pros and cons of the movie.
• 37:28
  Like, I guess, does it lead to any kind of satisfying
• 37:32
  conclusion? Like, does Bruce Willis die?
• 37:34
  Does he get, I don't know, comeuppance for being a a Jackal
• 37:38
  man? For being a bad actor yeah.
• 37:42
  The most interesting beats. This is more hit spoiler heavy
• 37:46
  so skip ahead if you want to not get any spoilers about the
• 37:49
  Jackal. The most interesting beat in the
• 37:51
  movie to me is like the bottom of the second act because after
• 37:54
  Richard Gere realizes that his former love is with someone else
• 37:58
  and he needs to move on, he starts to sort of develop a
• 38:02
  romantic interest in the Russian F not FBI person lady who is on
• 38:08
  their team named Valentina. They have a couple of scenes
• 38:11
  throughout the story that show that they have some layer of
• 38:13
  connection. And then in the second act of
• 38:16
  the movie, Bruce Willis just kills her in a way that I was
• 38:19
  genuinely not expecting because it's a very drawn out sequence
• 38:22
  of him taking out these other like, FBI dudes, and you assume
• 38:25
  she's going to get away. And then she just does not,
• 38:27
  which was actually an interesting turn.
• 38:30
  Wow, so this guy really keeps killing or injuring Richard
• 38:35
  Gibbs love interests. That's exactly what the point of
• 38:38
  that is. Like no joke, they the whole
• 38:41
  movie. You could argue some of this is
• 38:43
  kind of just boring or an interesting, but it does have
• 38:45
  character arcs and like proper foreshadowing and setups and pay
• 38:48
  offs. There's a point in the middle of
• 38:50
  the story where Richard Gere is talking about how the jackals
• 38:53
  like untraceable. He's like the best assassin
• 38:55
  ever. But Valentina says like people
• 38:58
  like him always make one mistake.
• 39:00
  And she points to Richard Gere saying like you must have made a
• 39:02
  mistake. That's how you ended up in jail.
• 39:04
  And it ends up being that Bruce Willis does give a clue to her
• 39:09
  after he shoots her because she's bleeding out.
• 39:13
  And it's actually a very, like, upsetting scene where Bruce
• 39:15
  Willis is very kind of clinically saying, like, well,
• 39:18
  based on the color of your blood, I think you have about 20
• 39:20
  minutes left. It appears to have hit your
• 39:21
  liver. If you put pressure on it,
• 39:24
  you'll last longer. If you want to go quick, you
• 39:25
  better let go. And it's very upsetting.
• 39:27
  It's like, good heat on. Bruce Willis is the villain.
• 39:30
  But then he tells her to tell Richard Gere exactly what you
• 39:33
  just said, which is like tell Declan he can never protect his
• 39:37
  women. Which is a weird line, but it is
• 39:40
  relevant. What like relevant?
• 39:44
  How to to like does she tell him this?
• 39:47
  Like does this reveal something to him?
• 39:49
  This is where I get back into criticism mode because this
• 39:51
  scene is actually very upsetting and implies that she's going to
• 39:53
  slowly bleed out like all alone before anyone can reach her.
• 39:57
  And that's very sad. But then you find out that she
• 39:59
  survived just long enough for Richard Gere to catch up and
• 40:01
  like hear her dying words. And she does repeat this to him
• 40:04
  and he clues in. Based on this and some other
• 40:07
  information you have by now that they have the wrong target in
• 40:11
  mind for the assassination. The whole time they thought that
• 40:14
  he was going after the director of the FBI and then Declan
• 40:18
  Richard Gere pieces together that he's actually trying to
• 40:21
  kill the first lady of the US. Because of the can't protect his
• 40:25
  women line, that's what. That's it.
• 40:28
  It's loose, but it's like that and a couple of other pieces of
• 40:31
  info where he's just curious about some other stuff that
• 40:35
  Bruce Willis has been doing. He's basically like, why would
• 40:38
  he set up this assassination this way if he's going after
• 40:40
  this guy and make it so obvious that we have time to like
• 40:43
  prepare to protect the FBI director.
• 40:45
  And then they eventually correctly find out that he it
• 40:47
  was all a red herring and he's trying to kill the first lady at
• 40:50
  this like, public speech that she's giving.
• 40:53
  So there was a point to all of that.
• 40:55
  There was a point to having Bruce Willis get Richard Gere's
• 40:58
  original girlfriend shot, get his second girlfriend killed,
• 41:02
  talk about how he can't protect the women in his life.
• 41:04
  It's all kind of awkward. But it is like proper film
• 41:07
  storytelling structure, you know?
• 41:10
  Sure. Yeah, Yeah.
• 41:11
  That's yeah. That's fair, perfectly fine.
• 41:13
  And then in the end, we get the third act action scene is that
• 41:19
  they do successfully foil his assassination attempt.
• 41:22
  Bruce Willis runs away into the, like, subway system in
• 41:26
  Washington and it ends up being just Richard Gere chasing after
• 41:29
  him. They have this lengthy scene
• 41:31
  where they're like trekking through the subway tunnels.
• 41:34
  And then at the end, Bruce Willis has the advantage.
• 41:37
  He's going to kill Richard Gere. But then Isabella shows up and
• 41:40
  she stops him and she shoots Bruce Willis.
• 41:42
  So we get a fun inversion where one of the women that he hurt in
• 41:46
  the 1st place is the one who ultimately stops his plan.
• 41:49
  Does he die? Does she kill him?
• 41:51
  There's 2 beats to this and once again I keep trying to give the
• 41:53
  movie credit before I tear it down.
• 41:55
  But this is where he should die. And instead, he fakes that he's
• 42:00
  already dead and then tries to do like, the last chance thing
• 42:04
  to shoot Isabella again. And then Richard Gere has to
• 42:07
  grab the gun and shoot him, which in their minds, like,
• 42:10
  writing was probably like, well, this pays off what we just said.
• 42:12
  Richard Gere finally protected one of the women that he loves.
• 42:15
  But I do think it's like a more interesting ending if Isabella
• 42:18
  just actually killed him, You know, like, it almost takes
• 42:22
  away. It's like the movie was afraid
• 42:24
  they gave a woman too much agency.
• 42:26
  And so they were like, no, no, no, no.
• 42:27
  This needs to be about Richard Gere's insecurities.
• 42:31
  Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:33
  I mean, that's like, that seems like, yeah, like you said, they
• 42:38
  kind of wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
• 42:40
  They're like, it's like you just got to do one of those things
• 42:43
  like. Pick one.
• 42:43
  Agree and really the first one was the right one.
• 42:45
  I think in multiple cases they had interesting plot choices and
• 42:48
  then undermined them with like too much follow up.
• 42:52
  But again, it is a perfectly normal movie.
• 42:55
  I think the movies I think it was really bad are the ones with
• 42:58
  like, nonsense plots and just missing components for telling a
• 43:02
  complete story. And The Jackal is a perfectly
• 43:05
  normal ass movie. It tells a complete story.
• 43:08
  There's an arc for the characters.
• 43:09
  The ending ending for Richard Gere is that throughout the
• 43:13
  movie, he's had a minor rapport with Sidney Poitier, who's like,
• 43:15
  the, you know, beleaguered old FBI guy.
• 43:19
  And at the end of the movie, Sidney Poitier is out talking
• 43:22
  with him because they're at, like, a cemetery where they just
• 43:24
  buried Valentina. And he basically intentionally
• 43:29
  let's Richard Gere escape because he's like, you know, I
• 43:32
  said, I was going to try to get you freed from prison for
• 43:34
  helping us with all this, but I wasn't able to.
• 43:36
  But I'm going to go get us a coffee.
• 43:39
  I'll be back in, say, 30 minutes.
• 43:41
  And then he's like, oh, I get it.
• 43:42
  And then the end of the movie is just, Richard, you're like,
• 43:44
  leaving to, like, go on the run on his own, which is fine.
• 43:48
  It's not. There's some set up for this.
• 43:51
  Again, the movie doesn't give you nothing.
• 43:52
  This is properly set up, but still leaves you with this
• 43:55
  feeling of just like, OK, yeah, I guess.
• 43:58
  Yeah, that was nice. The ending of shot is nice.
• 44:02
  We often talk about on the show movies ending like endings
• 44:05
  playing out for too long or too short.
• 44:07
  This is like right in the middle.
• 44:08
  We get that dialogue between them and then the last shot of
• 44:10
  the movie is we see Sidney Poitier walking over to get
• 44:14
  their coffee and Richard Gere heading off in the other
• 44:16
  direction. And the camera just starts to
• 44:17
  pull back and we see like the DC skyline as he kind of just
• 44:21
  recedes into the distance. It's like the right amount of
• 44:23
  time to absorb the ending. And then we get more cool trip
• 44:27
  hop music for Massive Attack to close this out.
• 44:29
  So we kind of, we end on a good note.
• 44:31
  Oh, that is good. Was there any more of that music
• 44:34
  throughout the rest of the film, or is it just the beginning of
• 44:35
  the ad? Not specifically Massive Attack
• 44:38
  music, but tons of weird weird music.
• 44:40
  Like the movie is trying really hard to 90s it up the whole
• 44:44
  time. And I don't I can't even
• 44:46
  pinpoint like who the artists were for these other tracks, but
• 44:48
  it's a ton of really random very like of the time sounds that
• 44:54
  none of which are still popular. So it's really a time capsule of
• 44:57
  the soundtrack. That's OK, I'm OK with that.
• 45:01
  Yeah, that that sounds fun. That sounds like one of the most
• 45:03
  fun elements of the whole movie, actually, is the music.
• 45:07
  There's I actually read a list because I was thinking about
• 45:09
  this throughout, that they clearly wanted to 90s up the
• 45:11
  movie and Bruce Willis does make use of several pieces of 90s
• 45:15
  specific text that the guy in the 70s one definitely wouldn't
• 45:19
  have had access to. For example, at one point he has
• 45:22
  to get some information on a computer, so he goes to a cyber
• 45:24
  cafe. OK, cool, cool.
• 45:29
  He has a whole plan at one point that involves sneaking into a
• 45:33
  house, grabbing a stereo, and setting a timer on the stereo to
• 45:37
  start blaring loud music to distract people.
• 45:40
  Yeah, stereos, very 90s. The whole pay off to his
• 45:43
  interaction with Jack Black is that his big ass gun has like an
• 45:47
  auto targeting system and he has to like manually control it from
• 45:52
  a distance with like a joystick and a button.
• 45:54
  And there's a lot of like repetition to show you that he
• 45:56
  has to hit the big button and that's what's going to make the
• 45:58
  gun go off. All very like movie tech heavy
• 46:03
  stuff That really feels like we need to prove that this is like
• 46:06
  the new version of the Jackal, the definitive version of the
• 46:09
  Jackal. The Jackal.
• 46:13
  Yeah, we don't need the day of. It's the life of the Jackal
• 46:16
  every day. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, we, we show
• 46:20
  him go home from the Payless. He watches friends.
• 46:22
  It's. Watches friends, he says out
• 46:24
  loud, in case we're confused. I've seen this one I.
• 46:27
  Think Bruce Wilson was on an episode of Friends if I'm not.
• 46:30
  He was. That's true.
• 46:31
  That's the joke at the end of the movie is that it's him.
• 46:33
  But he's like. Just another disguise for the
• 46:36
  Jackal, like one of his many identities is movie star Bruce.
• 46:42
  Willis Well, that's kind of like, what was that, Ocean's 12?
• 46:46
  Where do they do that with? Oh, and Julia.
• 46:50
  Roberts, it's Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts.
• 46:52
  Yeah. Oh, shoot.
• 46:54
  Well, prophetic anyway. That's the Jackal bit of a kind
• 47:01
  of So what ending to this part of the review.
• 47:03
  But that's what the movie is, so that's what it gets.
• 47:07
  You know, I that was kind of my concern.
• 47:10
  After I picked it I was like what the hell is this?
• 47:13
  What are? We.
• 47:15
  The Jackal. I really think you're gonna like
• 47:17
  this movie. The Jackal turns off.
• 47:18
  Like this guy's not gonna like the Jackal.
• 47:22
  You know, if you just hadn't seen the game, OK, if you hadn't
• 47:24
  seen the game, that would have. Been a great pick, you would be
• 47:26
  getting such high marks for the game right now.
• 47:28
  It's really unfair that I had already seen.
• 47:31
  It it's OK, I got a pick for this week and I got a whole
• 47:33
  backup list, so we're. Whole backup list far more.
• 47:36
  Prepared. Yeah.
• 47:38
  No more jackals. No more.
• 47:40
  But again, before anyone gets the wrong idea by me mercilessly
• 47:44
  mocking this movie for about 47 minutes, it's pretty OK.
• 47:48
  It sounds like it. It sounds like yeah, I like I, I
• 47:52
  feel like I wouldn't mind watching no.
• 47:55
  Nobody would mind. That's the take away.
• 47:57
  It's a warmer movie. If it's on a If you're on a
• 48:00
  plane and it's somehow 1997 and they're trying to show you The
• 48:03
  Jackal, watch The Jackal. Yeah, yeah, if you ever find
• 48:06
  yourself in that situation. You'll completely forget about
• 48:08
  the movie. Like if you're like having an
• 48:10
  insomnia about and you just need to fall asleep with the TV on,
• 48:13
  Boom. The Jackal, 1997.
• 48:15
  That's yeah, exactly. That's that's what they should
• 48:18
  put on the cover. Night of the Jackal and it's
• 48:21
  just him going back. Oh, OK, that's fine.
• 48:27
  Yeah, could be worse. Nothing wrong with The Jackal
• 48:29
  other than all those things I mentioned, and that'll do it.
• 48:33
  So we're going to head into our intermission and then when we
• 48:35
  return, Frank, you're going to walk us through, is it 1991's
• 48:38
  Doc Hollywood? Yep.
• 48:44
  I hate that that's your thing on the show.
• 48:46
  This is the way it responses. All right.
• 48:58
  Back from the break. Frank, we hand things over to
• 49:00
  you now for your review of 1991's Doc Hollywood.
• 49:04
  First question, is it from 1991 or am I misremembering?
• 49:08
  No, it is. It is from 1991.
• 49:11
  Awesome. What do you want to know?
• 49:15
  Next question. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 49:17
  yeah. What's it?
• 49:18
  What's it about? Who's it?
• 49:19
  No, I should probably re explain for anyone who didn't catch the
• 49:23
  end of our previous episode why I selected Doc Hollywood.
• 49:26
  I saw this film at my local library in the movie section and
• 49:30
  I was just looking at the back cover out of curiosity.
• 49:32
  And for some reason my wife took one look at it and just gave
• 49:35
  this absolute look of disgust because I think in her mind, she
• 49:38
  she flagged this as some sort of problematic 90s movie.
• 49:41
  And I was like, yeah, well, I know who's someone who can
• 49:44
  check. I mean, realistically it's,
• 49:49
  it's, it just looks like a kind of interesting, relaxing little
• 49:54
  comedy movie. You know, nothing too
• 49:56
  challenging. I gave you deep cover last time,
• 49:57
  which sounds like a really serious movie and I thought this
• 50:00
  would be a nice break. Oh yeah, this was this was a
• 50:03
  swing in a completely different direction and not problematic.
• 50:06
  I don't think that like I could see how it would read that way
• 50:09
  from like the cover. There was something on the back
• 50:12
  cover like a pull quote. That was something Michael J Fox
• 50:14
  said in the movie that just made the whole thing read.
• 50:16
  Is very, like, lame. And I think she just saw that.
• 50:19
  But I had a feeling it wouldn't be that bad.
• 50:21
  I mean, Michael J Fox, I don't think I've seen him in anything
• 50:24
  outside of his Back to the Future roles, but I had a
• 50:27
  feeling this might be better than than she maybe guessed.
• 50:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:31
  Totally. Why don't we?
• 50:34
  I think I said that the basic premise of the movie is a lot
• 50:36
  like Pixar's Cars, was my impression.
• 50:38
  Did did that end up being the case that the movie is basically
• 50:42
  Michael J Fox does Lightning McQueen?
• 50:44
  So it's funny to bring that up because first of all, there's a
• 50:47
  section on the Wikipedia page for this movie that just says
• 50:52
  like comparison to cars. That's.
• 50:56
  Really funny. It's like because I guess almost
• 51:01
  beat for beat, it's the same story, but also the way that I
• 51:05
  would pitch this movie is like, you know that like meme from the
• 51:10
  office where it's like, tell us the difference between these two
• 51:13
  photos and it's the same photo. It would be this movie and
• 51:19
  northern exposure because it is literally northern exposure.
• 51:24
  It's maybe also literally cars, but it is like.
• 51:26
  OK, see now for for the folks at home, Northern Exposure.
• 51:30
  If we were doing forgotten 90s television series, I would spend
• 51:33
  every episode talking about Northern Exposure.
• 51:36
  Nobody talks about it. I don't think it's easily
• 51:38
  streaming anywhere currently. It's awesome though, and it's
• 51:42
  possibly the most underrated TV show of my lifetime.
• 51:45
  Yeah, no, it's a good show. I mean, I think I've only seen
• 51:47
  the first season, but you've told me a lot about it as well.
• 51:51
  But I mean, I even saw reviews of this movie comparing it to
• 51:55
  that show because they came out right around the same time.
• 51:59
  I I think it was either like like within like 3 months of
• 52:04
  each other maybe. And it's a.
• 52:06
  Trending idea. Yeah, it's the same story.
• 52:08
  It's the same exact thing. So so.
• 52:10
  Let me see if I can tell you this story because I haven't
• 52:12
  seen Doc Hollywood, but I've seen those other two things, so
• 52:14
  I'm going to guess Michael J Fox is a doctor.
• 52:19
  How am I doing? He's.
• 52:21
  Actually a Hollywood. Unfortunately so.
• 52:25
  His name is Doc. He lives in Hollywood, no.
• 52:28
  No, no, you're right. He is a doctor.
• 52:30
  OK, he's a Doctor Who's building a time machine.
• 52:34
  No, I'm going to assume he is trying to he he's a doctor from
• 52:39
  Hollywood who ends up having to go be a doctor in some podunk
• 52:43
  town and he doesn't like it and he doesn't fit in and he
• 52:47
  complaints about home. But then eventually he like
• 52:50
  learns the, you know, kind of down to earth community spirit
• 52:53
  of the whole place and like stays forever.
• 52:56
  Yeah, you got it. But also, I mean, little, little
• 53:01
  just notes. He's not from Hollywood.
• 53:05
  That's I guess like. Insane.
• 53:08
  How'd they get to that title? Well, so he's on his way to
• 53:12
  Hollywood and this like in terms of the the like actual narrative
• 53:16
  is a little odd in a way, because he's like the film opens
• 53:22
  and he's doing doctor stuff and it's actually a really cool
• 53:25
  shot. The opening shot is like this
• 53:27
  tracking shot that kind of like follows through this like busy
• 53:30
  hospital and then it lands on Michael J Fox.
• 53:33
  And then we kind of get a reverse tracking at like as we
• 53:36
  follow him back through that same space.
• 53:38
  OK, so I'm like right away. I'm like, oh all right, cool,
• 53:41
  good camera. Moves like direction, yeah.
• 53:43
  Totally. But he's like doing his doctor
• 53:46
  stuff and then like through some, you know, expositional
• 53:48
  dialogue while he's talking to his other people there.
• 53:50
  He's moving to Hollywood for a job interview.
• 53:56
  So he doesn't have the job yet, but he's like going to Hollywood
• 54:01
  to be like a cosmetic surgeon and like the people that he's
• 54:03
  working with are like basically like you're selling out, you
• 54:07
  know, like you're not like going to be a real doctor anymore.
• 54:12
  You're just going to be like a rich plastic surgeon and do
• 54:14
  these kind of he's. Moving, even though he doesn't
• 54:17
  know he has the job yet. Yes, that's exactly what I
• 54:20
  thought too. I was like, why is this the
• 54:22
  setup? Why are you?
• 54:24
  Are you dumb, Michael J Fox? Like, are you stupid?
• 54:29
  Yeah. And he's like moving in.
• 54:30
  Like he has this sports car because that's kind of like his
• 54:32
  character, you know? And it's like this tiny little
• 54:36
  convertible. And I'm like, you didn't even
• 54:37
  move with stuff Like, what are you?
• 54:39
  Where are you going to go? Like.
• 54:41
  This doesn't. This part doesn't make sense,
• 54:43
  but I feel like it's. Over thought premise it just.
• 54:49
  It led to like kind of a small beat near the end of the film,
• 54:53
  but it almost seemed like all of that seemed kind of unnecessary.
• 54:57
  But I don't know. I mean, this was another book
• 55:00
  movie. It was adapted.
• 55:02
  To was it? Yeah.
• 55:04
  What was time to book? Did you figure it out before the
• 55:06
  movie said? I think it was another one where
• 55:09
  it's set it in the opening credits, so I didn't.
• 55:13
  Just take the fun out. Yeah, I know, I know.
• 55:15
  It didn't even give me the chance to to guess if it was a
• 55:18
  book adaptation or not. I might not have though, because
• 55:21
  of it's so by the numbers in terms of like it's, you know,
• 55:26
  storytelling. Yeah.
• 55:28
  So I don't know. I don't know if there there was
• 55:30
  that was more of a thing in the book or whatever, but that that
• 55:32
  was just an odd kind of little setup to me that he was honest
• 55:35
  that he didn't have this job yet.
• 55:37
  So whatever. I guess it's to maybe they just
• 55:40
  were like, well this way he'll have the option to live in where
• 55:45
  does where does he end up instead?
• 55:48
  Podunk. I don't know like.
• 55:50
  Podunk, What state is he in? It's, it's some like southern
• 55:57
  state. It doesn't matter.
• 55:58
  It's it's it's like a, it's. Like New York, NY, it's just PO
• 56:01
  dunk, PO dunk. Yeah, who cares?
• 56:04
  The Woods. What, like he's living with the
• 56:08
  Keeblers? Yeah.
• 56:10
  Yeah, Michael J Fox is short, by the way, speaking to Keebler
• 56:12
  Elves, he. Oh my goodness, hot take.
• 56:16
  It's just it stood out right away.
• 56:17
  I mean, like, he's a great actor.
• 56:19
  He's very charismatic. He carries a lot of this movie.
• 56:21
  But it's almost like, because I'm like you, I haven't seen him
• 56:24
  in a lot outside of Back to the Future.
• 56:28
  I mean, I know him and Bruce Willis actually both were like
• 56:32
  successful like sitcom actors, but I haven't really watched
• 56:35
  either of their shows. That's a good point.
• 56:36
  They had a similar trajectory because I I know from reading
• 56:39
  trivia that Bruce Willis was still making his TV show
• 56:42
  Moonlighting when they filmed Die Hard, which was his movie
• 56:44
  breakout and he had to basically shoot the TV show during the
• 56:48
  daytime and then film for the movie at night.
• 56:50
  And Michael J Fox did the same thing with Back to the Future.
• 56:52
  He was so bent on making sure he could get his film career going
• 56:56
  that he basically worked like 2-2 different production jobs
• 56:59
  simultaneously. Yeah, Yeah, it's true.
• 57:01
  Yeah. That seems really difficult.
• 57:03
  I mean, for Bruce Willis, it's more so because, like, for
• 57:06
  Michael J Fox, Back to the Future, he's far more comedic
• 57:10
  than Die Hard. I mean, Bruce Willis is funny in
• 57:13
  Die Hard, but he's still an action hero, so.
• 57:16
  And then from there he went on to only take certain kinds of
• 57:19
  roles for the most part, like Jackal, Right?
• 57:21
  Exactly. Yeah, but it's almost harder for
• 57:23
  me to picture him in a traditional sitcom.
• 57:27
  I actually do want to go back and watch his show at some
• 57:29
  point, at least some of it, just to kind of get a sense of what
• 57:32
  that was for him, for sure. But anyway, Michael Fox is
• 57:36
  short, so. Anyway, the most important thing
• 57:43
  here? He ripped off Lightning McQueen
• 57:46
  and he's short as hell. He just just stood out to me,
• 57:50
  you know, cuz it's like you take like it's like people talk about
• 57:53
  it with like Tom Cruise that he's always like standing on
• 57:56
  apple boxes or something to make him look taller in scenes.
• 57:58
  They don't do that with Michael J Fox and like for for it just
• 58:01
  fit better. I think because he's he's like
• 58:04
  young and like in back to the future.
• 58:07
  It like didn't you know, it made more sense, I guess.
• 58:11
  Well. He's a high school kid when Back
• 58:13
  to the Future starts. Yeah, so I'm short shaming right
• 58:16
  now, but I was just like. So many people just reached up
• 58:22
  way above their heads to turn off this contact.
• 58:28
  If they could reach that switch, they would be.
• 58:30
  That'd be so bad so. He's to bring it back to Michael
• 58:41
  J Fox. He is good.
• 58:43
  He carries this movie really, because it's like I was saying
• 58:46
  before, it's pretty by the numbers.
• 58:48
  And you nailed the plot, essentially.
• 58:50
  I think the part where people compare it a lot to the movie
• 58:53
  Cars is because he's on his way from, I don't even know if they
• 58:58
  say where he starts, but he's on his way to Hollywood and he is
• 59:01
  driving through this rural area and he, yeah, I don't know, He's
• 59:06
  like fussing with the radio or something.
• 59:07
  And then there's somebody in the road and he, like, has to swerve
• 59:09
  off the road and he crashes and he breaks somebody's fence.
• 59:12
  Like he runs it over with his car and it's like turns out to
• 59:17
  be like the judge of this like small town.
• 59:20
  So the judge like sentences him to community service in this
• 59:25
  town as like the town's doctor. And that's how he gets stuck.
• 59:29
  He doesn't have to fix the fence.
• 59:31
  No, I think he like, he's trying to like talk his way out of it
• 59:34
  at the beginning and he's like, Oh, my insurance company will
• 59:36
  take care of the fence or whatever.
• 59:39
  And he's like, I just got to get out of here.
• 59:41
  But like now his car is damaged, so he's got to get his car fixed
• 59:44
  like before he can leave. And you know, so no, it's not
• 59:47
  that he has to rebuild the fence.
• 59:48
  It has to be a doctor in town which.
• 59:51
  Classic. Got it.
• 59:52
  It'd be it'd be really unfortunate if he wasn't a
• 59:54
  doctor and that was the community service he got
• 59:56
  assigned just. Figure it out I guess.
• 1:00:00
  Good luck. Damn it, Jim, I'm a fence
• 1:00:02
  builder, not a doctor. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah, So yeah, I mean, it's just like from there it's it's just
• 1:00:12
  his big city vibes being at odds with this, like small town, you
• 1:00:17
  know, he has he develops a romantic interest with Julie
• 1:00:21
  Warner. Woody Harrelson is in the movie
• 1:00:24
  and. Oh, interesting.
• 1:00:26
  He is actually the best part of the movie.
• 1:00:29
  He's hilarious. Like, oh, OK.
• 1:00:32
  They do a lot, I think, with his character to kind of subvert the
• 1:00:37
  trope of his character because it's basically like Michael J
• 1:00:43
  Fox immediately falls for Julie Warner.
• 1:00:47
  And it's, again, so simple. This is this is the main thing
• 1:00:51
  where I was like, this is just Northern exposure again, because
• 1:00:53
  it's like he's the town doctor now and you'll have to help me.
• 1:00:57
  I don't remember the name of the character, but the romantic
• 1:00:59
  history, romantic interest in that TV show where she's like a
• 1:01:02
  helicopter pilot. Oh, yeah.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah. Maggie.
• 1:01:04
  Yes, yes, Julie Warner is the ambulance driver.
• 1:01:09
  So like they like that is. Similar.
• 1:01:13
  Yeah, it's similar, but like, it's the same thing where like,
• 1:01:15
  he kind of flirts with her right away and then, you know, she
• 1:01:17
  kind of shuts him down. And then they kind of have this,
• 1:01:19
  like, antagonistic relationship where he's interested in her,
• 1:01:23
  but they're forced to work together.
• 1:01:25
  And, you know, she doesn't want any part of that.
• 1:01:27
  But then Woody Harrelson is like who she is dating, you know, so
• 1:01:32
  he's kind of like who they put Michael J Fox at odds with.
• 1:01:36
  And you think that he's going to be this like kind of small town
• 1:01:40
  bully type character because that's kind of the role the
• 1:01:43
  story slots him into. But then he's he's like not at
• 1:01:46
  all. He's like really great.
• 1:01:48
  Like he's like, there's like a few scenes where it's just they,
• 1:01:56
  they go out of their way. Like it's like they know that
• 1:01:58
  that's kind of almost what you're expecting him to be.
• 1:02:01
  And they like subvert that. Like this jumps ahead a bit, you
• 1:02:04
  know, But near the end or the middle, I guess, where it's like
• 1:02:07
  Woody Harrison kind of realizes that she's more interested in
• 1:02:10
  Michael J Fox. And he kind of saw them kissing.
• 1:02:12
  Like he shows up at the cabin again, just like Northern
• 1:02:16
  Exposure. They put him in this cabin that
• 1:02:18
  he has all this trouble with. He doesn't like living there.
• 1:02:20
  That is the same. Yeah, it's just the same.
• 1:02:23
  And he shows up there and Michael J Fox thinks he's there
• 1:02:25
  to, like, fight him. So he, like, tries to, like,
• 1:02:28
  pull out a weapon. And Woody Harrelson's just like,
• 1:02:31
  what are you doing? It's.
• 1:02:34
  Just like I'm not here. To fight you.
• 1:02:36
  What are you talking about? I'm just here to talk.
• 1:02:39
  So it's just great. And his performance is great.
• 1:02:42
  There's also this other really funny scene where it's like
• 1:02:44
  they're having a little town festival or whatever that this
• 1:02:48
  town does. And like, you know, since just
• 1:02:51
  like amazing at doing like the carnival games where you're
• 1:02:54
  like, shooting stuff with like little pellets.
• 1:02:57
  Oh yeah. He's just like shooting like
• 1:03:00
  behind his back and not looking and like over his shoulder and
• 1:03:02
  he's like hitting every shot. And I'm like, this is so funny.
• 1:03:04
  What an unnecessary thing to add into this movie.
• 1:03:07
  But like. Just like.
• 1:03:09
  Add so much to like Woody Harrelson and him being like
• 1:03:12
  charismatic in this role. I mean, that's perfect side
• 1:03:16
  character building for a comedy. It's so effective to just like
• 1:03:20
  the movies arc is not to be especially dramatic, so you can
• 1:03:24
  kind of just fill time, which is like cute little bits that move
• 1:03:27
  the story along. Yes, yes, exactly.
• 1:03:31
  And it's interesting too because like, like I said, it's very
• 1:03:34
  much a family movie, you know? But like, I was reading the IMDb
• 1:03:38
  trivia and it was rated R at one point because Julie Werner's
• 1:03:43
  character, like the first time you see her, she's like bathing
• 1:03:46
  naked in like the lake. So she like, you know, has this
• 1:03:49
  full like nude scene. Oh, it's like the there's that
• 1:03:53
  really famous scene. What is it?
• 1:03:54
  The Fast Times at Ridgemont High scene.
• 1:03:56
  The woman stepping out of the pool.
• 1:03:57
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's it's, it's like that and
• 1:04:00
  so. We just ripping everything off.
• 1:04:03
  It is, yeah. It's not.
• 1:04:04
  It's not winning a lot of points for originality, except for
• 1:04:06
  Woody Harrelson that gets all the points.
• 1:04:08
  Yeah, they put all their creative effort on this one
• 1:04:12
  charming Woody Harrelson side character.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah, but there was that and then I think they dropped like
• 1:04:20
  2F bombs. So they were like one over what
• 1:04:23
  you're supposed to be to get like a lower rating.
• 1:04:25
  Oh, weird. Yeah, yeah, it was either the
• 1:04:28
  two or three or something like that.
• 1:04:29
  But Michael J Fox himself, like the role he had done just before
• 1:04:33
  this. Again, this is all IMDb trivia
• 1:04:35
  so be taken with a grain of salt, but I guess the movie he
• 1:04:39
  had just been in before this was an R rated film and it didn't
• 1:04:42
  perform as well at the box office cuz less people could go
• 1:04:45
  see it. So he fought really hard for
• 1:04:48
  this movie to get a PG13 rating. And then it did.
• 1:04:53
  And then some people after it came out were like, what the
• 1:04:55
  heck? There's like a full nude scene
• 1:04:57
  in this movie and they're swearing like this shouldn't be
• 1:04:58
  ABG 13 movie. But outside of that, real nice.
• 1:05:02
  Yeah, it's it's very family friendly though, you know, like
• 1:05:06
  outside of those like couple things.
• 1:05:09
  That is weird. That puts that in a very weird
• 1:05:11
  place. I think nowadays you would never
• 1:05:14
  get the flexibility with that. It literally sounds like he just
• 1:05:17
  asked politely and they were like, OK, you know, they kind of
• 1:05:20
  patted him on the head because they were so much taller.
• 1:05:25
  You got it, little boy. Whatever you say, chief.
• 1:05:30
  Here's your dad. We got to stop.
• 1:05:35
  We got to stop short shooting. He's probably not even that
• 1:05:38
  short too. Probably not.
• 1:05:40
  He's just not movie star tall. Yeah, no, exactly.
• 1:05:43
  Exactly. But I mean, who's a big star at
• 1:05:46
  the time, too, you know, He's great.
• 1:05:49
  Not so he had enough sway, I guess, to make that happen.
• 1:05:53
  But yeah, it's just interesting because other than that, yeah,
• 1:05:55
  it's like, you can show this to anybody, really.
• 1:05:58
  But yeah, I mean, he is great in the movie too.
• 1:06:03
  Like, he's funny, he's charming, like, and that is kind of what
• 1:06:07
  carries the whole thing forward because outside of that, there's
• 1:06:10
  not much to it, you know? I'm sure.
• 1:06:12
  That's very simple. Yeah, like I'm sure if you you
• 1:06:14
  could keep guessing the rest of the story like it's just I'm.
• 1:06:18
  Trying but the only thing that I can't picture is how the movie
• 1:06:23
  reaches like its third act sequence because obviously Cars
• 1:06:26
  ends in a race and Northern Exposure ends every 40 minutes
• 1:06:30
  because it's ATV show. So I don't know how this movie
• 1:06:33
  actually like builds to a finale.
• 1:06:37
  Well, actually that's a good, that's a good question because
• 1:06:40
  that is the ending almost seems like a little bit off in terms
• 1:06:47
  of like how they really wanted to wrap it up because you can
• 1:06:51
  tell like it's leading to this end of second act point where
• 1:06:57
  it's going to seem like he's leaving.
• 1:06:59
  But you know, then he's actually going to come around and like
• 1:07:02
  the way that that plays out, it just feels a little odd because
• 1:07:05
  it's like at that point he's his car's fixed up.
• 1:07:10
  Like he's like, OK, I'm going to go to Hollywood now.
• 1:07:14
  Like, you know, I'm going to leave this potential
• 1:07:16
  relationship behind with this person I'm interested in and
• 1:07:20
  like this whole town or whatever.
• 1:07:21
  And like the whole town has this big goodbye for him.
• 1:07:25
  Actually, no, I think I have this.
• 1:07:27
  See, it's there's like too many steps in the ending here because
• 1:07:30
  I know at one point he yeah, he tries to leave in the middle of
• 1:07:34
  the night because he doesn't want to, like, say goodbye to
• 1:07:35
  anyone, tries to leave in the middle of the night.
• 1:07:38
  And as he's driving out of town, there's these kind of side
• 1:07:42
  characters that, you know, he's been interacting with throughout
• 1:07:44
  the story. And one of them, like, they're
• 1:07:47
  like a couple and the woman's pregnant and like they're pulled
• 1:07:49
  off on the side of the road and she's like giving birth.
• 1:07:52
  And so he like, drives past them at first, like not my problem.
• 1:07:56
  Like Peter Parker, Like yeah in. This department, that's my
• 1:08:01
  problem and so. Then he like, he's like, no, I
• 1:08:06
  got to go back. So he turns, you know, he turns
• 1:08:08
  around and he helps this woman give birth.
• 1:08:10
  And then like he leaves his car in the middle of the road while
• 1:08:14
  he does this. And then, like I mentioned
• 1:08:17
  earlier, there was a scene where there was like a want to say
• 1:08:20
  circus, but it was like a, you know, the, the yearly festival
• 1:08:24
  that they do. Carnival kind of Fair thing.
• 1:08:26
  Exactly. And like these trucks had come
• 1:08:28
  in and brought all that stuff with them.
• 1:08:30
  And so his car's in the middle of the road and then these
• 1:08:33
  trucks are like leaving town and like, for some reason the truck
• 1:08:36
  drivers like falling asleep. So he just crashes into Michael
• 1:08:40
  J Fox's car while it's in the road.
• 1:08:42
  So it's kind of like it was like he made the decision to go back,
• 1:08:46
  but then it's like then his car got wrecked.
• 1:08:49
  So like at that point I was like, well, now it's not really
• 1:08:52
  his decision to stay anymore because now his car is wrecked.
• 1:08:55
  But then like he winds up leaving anyway because like the
• 1:08:57
  town like pulls their money together.
• 1:08:59
  They get him a plane ticket to LA.
• 1:09:02
  And then he goes and does that. And we see him, you know, kind
• 1:09:05
  of a montage of him like doing the like cosmetic surgery stuff.
• 1:09:11
  And actually before that is when the whole, like, interview thing
• 1:09:16
  comes up because throughout the story, he's like, he keeps
• 1:09:19
  having to call and be like, hey, can I push my interview back a
• 1:09:22
  few days? Because he does want to stay in
• 1:09:23
  the town a little bit longer with these people.
• 1:09:25
  And then when he finally gets to Hollywood, the guy who hires
• 1:09:30
  him, he was like, oh, you know, we weren't going to hire you.
• 1:09:32
  But then this doctor from this small town who, like the person
• 1:09:38
  who taught me how to be a doctor or something, called and
• 1:09:40
  recommended you. And it was like the small town
• 1:09:43
  Doctor Who he had kind of been at odds with earlier in the
• 1:09:46
  film. So I was like, I guess that was
• 1:09:49
  the reason why. This is a lot.
• 1:09:51
  This is like a lot to follow in summary.
• 1:09:54
  I can't. I feel like actually letting him
• 1:09:56
  go to LA is like an overcomplication in a plot this
• 1:09:59
  simple. Totally how I felt too.
• 1:10:01
  I was like why are we here? Why did we get this far like
• 1:10:04
  into him leaving this whole situation?
• 1:10:08
  Sorry, this is like a left field comparison, but you know, in The
• 1:10:10
  Phantom Menace, how we're on Tatooine like the whole time and
• 1:10:14
  then for some reason we go back to Corazon to talk to the Jedi
• 1:10:16
  Council for like half an hour and then just go back to or
• 1:10:19
  sorry, Naboo. And it's just like one location
• 1:10:22
  too many. Like this is the same.
• 1:10:24
  No, I agree. Actually, that's a good
• 1:10:25
  comparison. It's like we didn't need to do
• 1:10:28
  this. Like this was A and it goes on
• 1:10:30
  for a while too. And I'm like, OK, what are we
• 1:10:34
  doing here? So he gets he gets the job
• 1:10:37
  because he was recommended, I guess, from this doctor in this
• 1:10:41
  small town that for some reason knew this guy who worked in
• 1:10:44
  Hollywood. And then we get like the montage
• 1:10:47
  of him like not liking doing this and like being sad because
• 1:10:52
  he misses like his love interest and.
• 1:10:55
  He's just not paying attention to work.
• 1:10:57
  He's botching people's plans. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:59
  At one point he's like flipping through the channels in his like
• 1:11:02
  nice Hollywood apartment and like, It's a Wonderful Life
• 1:11:06
  comes on and I'm like, OK, let's just show a better movie with
• 1:11:09
  similar themes in the middle of this one.
• 1:11:12
  Now if. Northern Exposure came up.
• 1:11:13
  That would be interesting. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:11:16
  Yeah. And then because he had left
• 1:11:21
  without his car, which like as the person watching this, I'd
• 1:11:25
  forgotten about at this point because his car got totalled
• 1:11:28
  back in the other town. Like, Woody Harrelson and one of
• 1:11:31
  the other characters from the small town brought the cart to
• 1:11:34
  him in Hollywood. And I was like, Oh yeah, I guess
• 1:11:38
  he needs his car like. Well, you know, LA is a famously
• 1:11:41
  walkable town. Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  Yeah, he does have a line where he says he's just like, oh, I'm
• 1:11:48
  going to, you know, I'm going to Hollywood.
• 1:11:49
  What do I need a car for? And honestly, I don't know
• 1:11:52
  because there's AI watched who friend Roger Rabbit recently and
• 1:11:56
  there's a lot like there's that like same line almost verbatim
• 1:11:59
  as in that movie. But it's intended as a joke
• 1:12:01
  because it's like, you know, LA and Hollywood used to be a very
• 1:12:06
  walkable city because they had like trains and trolleys going
• 1:12:09
  through before they built the highway system.
• 1:12:11
  Like that's what like Roger Rabbit all is.
• 1:12:13
  Anyway, I don't know why he said it in doc Hollywood because it's
• 1:12:15
  1991. And yeah.
• 1:12:17
  That's weird. Like, I don't know, he was too
• 1:12:19
  busy ripping off random movie scripts and they left something
• 1:12:22
  and it. Didn't.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah. I don't know if that was
• 1:12:24
  intended to be a joke. It didn't sound like the joke
• 1:12:26
  you always said. Then he said, the force be with
• 1:12:27
  you it. Was really weird.
• 1:12:29
  Was it going home? The entire third act is Michael
• 1:12:35
  J Fox speaking as Jar Jar Binks from a movie that comes out
• 1:12:38
  eight years later. That would be 10 out of 10 Talk
• 1:12:41
  Holly. Oh.
• 1:12:42
  My God, yeah, this would. If this just was The Phantom
• 1:12:44
  Menace, that would be good. If you can show me a movie on
• 1:12:47
  this show that I've not seen that is The Phantom Menace, I
• 1:12:50
  would really like to. Be that instead.
• 1:12:54
  Anyway, I don't know. So they bring him the car and I
• 1:12:56
  was like, oh, yeah, I guess he means that.
• 1:12:58
  But then he he was expecting it to be, you know, Julie Warner's
• 1:13:01
  character. And then it wasn't her.
• 1:13:03
  It was like Woody Harrelson. And he was like, okay, well, I
• 1:13:09
  guess I'm gonna go back to that town now.
• 1:13:12
  This is like what makes him decide to go back.
• 1:13:14
  So it's like that whole ending is just convoluted.
• 1:13:17
  And that to me feels like remnants of it being a book
• 1:13:22
  adaptation. Oh right, I forgot, I forgot the
• 1:13:25
  book element. This.
• 1:13:26
  I have so much beef with film adaptations of books for this
• 1:13:29
  exact reason. They totally get lost in the
• 1:13:32
  sauce talking about how everybody feels and they ignore
• 1:13:35
  like huge plot elements that in action in a film would just take
• 1:13:39
  up too much time or be too complicated.
• 1:13:41
  Like in a book that's like 1 chapter, whereas in the movie
• 1:13:44
  you're completely changing spaces and it just requires so
• 1:13:48
  much more momentum in the storytelling to justify.
• 1:13:51
  Like, let's send him to California and then bring him
• 1:13:54
  back. I just can see that being kind
• 1:13:55
  of frustrating. Yeah, I was, that's, that's how
• 1:13:57
  I felt watching it. And it's, I guess it's only
• 1:13:59
  retrospectively because at the time I wasn't thinking about
• 1:14:02
  this, but now that I'm I'm like, yeah, that's, that's got to be
• 1:14:05
  something that came from the book, because otherwise this
• 1:14:06
  would have been much cleaner. You know, like there's a there's
• 1:14:09
  a simpler way to structure this and still fit in that film
• 1:14:14
  language 3X structure as opposed to the way that they did execute
• 1:14:18
  it. Because the the thing that he
• 1:14:20
  does like this entire product is covered in the pilot episode to
• 1:14:23
  Northern Exposure, which you should all go watch instead of.
• 1:14:27
  But you already zoned in on the same thing that he's like kind
• 1:14:31
  of a selfish guy, but in the end, his sort of the doctor's
• 1:14:36
  oath to take care of people in need overwhelms him and he just
• 1:14:40
  stays behind because he realizes he can do good.
• 1:14:42
  That's exactly what happens in Northern Exposure.
• 1:14:44
  And he had that scene with helping with the pregnancy on
• 1:14:47
  the side of the road. And and then I feel like, I
• 1:14:50
  don't know, you could just build around something like that as a
• 1:14:53
  bigger deal instead of stacking several more plot beats after.
• 1:14:57
  That. Yeah, totally.
• 1:14:59
  Especially because it's like then he just, it goes back.
• 1:15:03
  Like we have this scene where he, you know, I guess, realizes
• 1:15:07
  ultimately that he doesn't want to be there in Hollywood
• 1:15:09
  anymore. And then we just cut to like,
• 1:15:12
  Julie Warner, you know, walking out of the doctor's office where
• 1:15:16
  they've been working previously, and he's just there.
• 1:15:18
  And so it's just like, oh, OK. I also don't like that because
• 1:15:23
  it undermines to some extent the fact that we know for sure he's
• 1:15:27
  not happy in Hollywood, makes the decision a lot more just
• 1:15:30
  like, yeah, there's one clearly better option.
• 1:15:33
  Whereas having somebody choose to forgo a very promising
• 1:15:37
  opportunity because of what they know they would lose by taking
• 1:15:41
  it like that makes for more interesting character sacrifice
• 1:15:44
  than him actually getting to try both and then just decide he
• 1:15:47
  likes one better. Yeah.
• 1:15:48
  Oh, absolutely. I yeah, I agree.
• 1:15:50
  I agree. And it's like, is that what your
• 1:15:52
  book was about, buddy? Because might want to rethink
• 1:15:54
  that. That's funny.
• 1:15:59
  I yeah, I so I definitely this movie sounds like it was exactly
• 1:16:03
  what I expected when I picked it and everything except for that
• 1:16:06
  third act, cuz man, that it it they might as well have just
• 1:16:09
  finished ripping off cars and had him like win a race or
• 1:16:12
  something. Well, again, cars came out in
• 1:16:14
  like I think 2006, so. Well, we who's to say?
• 1:16:18
  Back to the future gigawatts. You can't say that.
• 1:16:22
  You can't say that. I think it has pulled off the
• 1:16:26
  air faster than the short jokes about Michael J.
• 1:16:31
  Yeah. So like, yeah, that would have
• 1:16:33
  been funny. Actually.
• 1:16:34
  I don't know how they would have made this be about a race, Maybe
• 1:16:36
  races Woody Harrelson's character for some reason.
• 1:16:38
  Maybe he has to use his fixed up car and then they have to inject
• 1:16:41
  it with like Nos from the Fast and Furious.
• 1:16:44
  Yeah, well. That was just that was the
• 1:16:45
  thing. It was like he wrecked his car
• 1:16:47
  at the beginning, but then there was the whole thing where his
• 1:16:48
  car got wrecked again. Then that was only like, I guess
• 1:16:53
  a setup for them to bring him his car so that he could decide
• 1:16:58
  to go back. And it was just like, what are
• 1:17:00
  you saying here? Why did this?
• 1:17:02
  It's like. Also that feels like a rule of
• 1:17:04
  threes gag. Does his car get totaled again
• 1:17:06
  at the end of the movie? No, it just should have.
• 1:17:10
  Been end of the movie should have just been him like winking
• 1:17:13
  at his new girlfriend and then inexplicably his car gets like
• 1:17:16
  totalled again. It just explodes.
• 1:17:19
  Bruce Willis shoots it with his sniper machine gun and.
• 1:17:25
  Then he says like, looks like this car needs a facelift doc.
• 1:17:30
  He's like, yeah, you know what? I should go back to Hollywood.
• 1:17:32
  You're right. I just can't make up my mind.
• 1:17:34
  If somebody shows up in a car and then takes me back there,
• 1:17:37
  I'll do it. I don't have any agency here,
• 1:17:41
  just just tell me where to go. Where to go?
• 1:17:43
  I am not old enough to drive. All right.
• 1:17:47
  Well, I feel like I have a beat on Doc Hollywood.
• 1:17:50
  Is there anything any other major points you wanted to make
• 1:17:53
  or should we move into final scores and wrap up?
• 1:17:57
  I mean, yeah, I guess that's it. I, I, I know I like again, just
• 1:18:02
  spent that whole time making fun of it in some ways, but it
• 1:18:04
  wasn't bad. Well, that's not our fault.
• 1:18:07
  Like we always try to highlight the things that are most
• 1:18:09
  interesting to us. And very by the numbers, movie
• 1:18:12
  making stuff is so easy to summarize.
• 1:18:14
  It's like, yeah, whatever, it's a movie.
• 1:18:15
  But then those those little quirks are so much more
• 1:18:17
  interesting to like, hone in on. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:20
  And it like, you know, again, it did a lot of things really well.
• 1:18:23
  The performances were good. The cinematography was good.
• 1:18:27
  I mean, like the the DP on this film had done some, some of the
• 1:18:33
  other movies he worked on were like Major, he did Bridging
• 1:18:35
  Bull, which we talked about recently, Yeah.
• 1:18:38
  We did with camera, yeah. He's GP on the fugitive Space
• 1:18:42
  Jam. OK, come on in, Slam.
• 1:18:45
  Now we're on. A yeah, exactly.
• 1:18:46
  So it was like, yeah, it's like, it's like I don't have as much
• 1:18:49
  to say about those other things because they weren't errors, you
• 1:18:53
  know, it was just like they were done.
• 1:18:55
  Yeah. Confidently enough that it was
• 1:18:57
  just like, OK, yeah, this is this is fine.
• 1:18:59
  That's a that's an area we keep falling into.
• 1:19:01
  I mean, we're trying to seek out films of the 90s that didn't
• 1:19:05
  really make a strong impact. And people don't talk about much
• 1:19:08
  now. And the main way you get to that
• 1:19:10
  is by being perfectly OK. Like if the movie's really bad,
• 1:19:13
  you're on to something. And if it's really good, people
• 1:19:15
  will like, still want to talk about it.
• 1:19:16
  But some of these just fall right in the middle of like,
• 1:19:19
  yeah, it's fine. It's a movie.
• 1:19:22
  Which again. Is not bad.
• 1:19:23
  No, that's hard to do. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:19:26
  Like to, you know, because they're still, I mean, movies
• 1:19:29
  are still really hard, hard to make.
• 1:19:31
  And I'm sure a lot of effort went into making this and to
• 1:19:34
  make something that wasn't bad and was, you know, relatively
• 1:19:39
  entertaining to sit through. Like I, I, I wasn't like, that's
• 1:19:43
  like grifters where I was like halfway through and I was like,
• 1:19:45
  can I not be here? But like, like, I don't want to
• 1:19:51
  turn grifters off. I just want to leave.
• 1:19:52
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's not that.
• 1:19:55
  And it's not me. Like hate watching a Woody Allen
• 1:19:57
  movie for two hours, just stewing on that.
• 1:20:00
  I was just like, OK, talk Hollywood bet cars and stuff.
• 1:20:03
  Sure. Cars and stuff.
• 1:20:05
  Lightning between. That's fine.
• 1:20:09
  His car even looks like me by the way.
• 1:20:11
  It's red and like. That's so funny, A car and a
• 1:20:15
  car. See, I feel like we're putting
• 1:20:18
  all the blame here on the movie that came first.
• 1:20:20
  Maybe whoever wrote Cars was just like, guys, I need
• 1:20:23
  something. And he was sitting there
• 1:20:23
  watching Doc Hollywood because it was a perfectly OK movie.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah, like, that is like, that's the Wikipedia section on this
• 1:20:30
  movie. It was like, hey, by the way, do
• 1:20:32
  you know cars, like, stole this? Weird, right?
• 1:20:35
  Weird. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:37
  That's it. That's it.
• 1:20:39
  OK, all right, well, we we're going to move into final scores
• 1:20:46
  and wrap up. I guess I'll go first.
• 1:20:48
  Since I did the first review, I know I I'd spent a lot of time
• 1:20:52
  talking about things in Jackal that made me mad and how Bruce
• 1:20:55
  Willis made me mad and how he had too many disguises and they
• 1:20:58
  were really dumb. But again, it's a perfectly good
• 1:21:01
  movie. I would have never I didn't feel
• 1:21:03
  bored watching it. I was still relatively engaged
• 1:21:05
  in what was happening. I just had so many like
• 1:21:08
  constructive notes for how to make the story more succinct and
• 1:21:12
  engaging. So I'm going to say overall
• 1:21:15
  score out of 10. I'm going to give the Jackal of
• 1:21:18
  five. Oh, OK, yeah, that's that's
• 1:21:21
  better than I thought, actually it.
• 1:21:23
  It could have easily been higher than that.
• 1:21:25
  It just didn't do enough. Like you were saying that Duck
• 1:21:28
  Hollywood gets credit for having some interesting cinematography.
• 1:21:32
  The Jackal just didn't have any particularly strong dialogue or
• 1:21:35
  lighting or cinematography or music.
• 1:21:38
  I mean, the music was a highlight, but it was a lot of
• 1:21:41
  it was good, then a lot of it was super jarring.
• 1:21:42
  So that kind of equals out. It just didn't do enough to fall
• 1:21:46
  on either side of the fence and it ends up just kind of being
• 1:21:49
  right in the middle of the five. Yeah, yeah, 5 is the new 7.
• 1:21:53
  It's. 5 is the new 7. What does that even mean?
• 1:21:58
  It's just. Whatever, it's A5, No, that's
• 1:22:07
  valid. Like I think that actually like
• 1:22:11
  again, it's, it almost seems higher than I thought you would
• 1:22:13
  give it based on how you described it, but it seems.
• 1:22:16
  I got more mad the more I the more I lingered on it, but none
• 1:22:19
  of that was my feeling when watching the movie.
• 1:22:21
  OK, that's good. That's good.
• 1:22:22
  Yeah, Yeah. All right, Doc.
• 1:22:25
  Hollywood Final Thoughts Doc. Hollywood, I'm going to give it
• 1:22:30
  a six. I'm, I'm in the moment making a,
• 1:22:34
  you know, a fair assessment here.
• 1:22:36
  I think it's a six out of 10. OK, I I think it's like again,
• 1:22:42
  just like fine, it's. Just like it's all right.
• 1:22:48
  It's all right. I was like, yeah, OK, this is
• 1:22:51
  fun. And it had just enough to kind
• 1:22:55
  of push it over the edge in some ways to being like memorable
• 1:23:00
  and, you know, like Woody Harrelson's performance and
• 1:23:02
  character, like the way he, that he was written and, and the way
• 1:23:07
  Woody Harrelson handled it, I was like, oh, that's
• 1:23:09
  interesting. You know, and Michael J Fox is
• 1:23:14
  like, honestly great. Like, you know, he, he, he
• 1:23:17
  played this mostly comedic, but he did have a few scenes where
• 1:23:19
  he had to be kind of like dramatic Dr. Man.
• 1:23:21
  And he, he kind of switched between those two pretty
• 1:23:23
  seamlessly. So he gets a lot of credit for
• 1:23:27
  me for that. And I, I think this is, you
• 1:23:31
  know, right before he kind of started, you know, having a
• 1:23:37
  downturn in his acting career because of his Parkinson's too.
• 1:23:40
  So this I think was like a later like Prime, like Michael J Fox
• 1:23:46
  movie. I, I know a bit about this
• 1:23:48
  because there was a very good documentary released a couple
• 1:23:51
  years ago about his career and relationship to developing
• 1:23:54
  Parkinson's. And it was actually surprising
• 1:23:56
  how long he went without letting anybody know that he'd been
• 1:24:00
  diagnosed with it. So there's a montage in that
• 1:24:04
  documentary of shots from all of his films from a certain point
• 1:24:07
  onward where you can see that he has like hand spasms that he's
• 1:24:13
  trying to hide that go all the way up until like the early
• 1:24:16
  2000s before he really felt comfortable explaining that that
• 1:24:20
  that was happening to him and that he needed to like, kind of
• 1:24:22
  change his life around it. So it's really interesting that
• 1:24:25
  he might have had some small signs of it already even in the
• 1:24:28
  early 90s, but he just nobody knew about it.
• 1:24:31
  He just continued on with his career for quite a long time
• 1:24:33
  while already dealing with that. Well, this, I mean, that's
• 1:24:35
  actually in line with what I read as well.
• 1:24:37
  According to I think this was maybe not in the documentary,
• 1:24:40
  but I, you know, he did a a biography of his or something,
• 1:24:44
  but it literally started while he was filming this movie is
• 1:24:49
  like he's from his own recollection.
• 1:24:52
  It was like his finger would like twitch pretty
• 1:24:55
  uncontrollably. Oh, wow, that's really
• 1:24:57
  interesting that that's, that's like an interesting little piece
• 1:25:00
  of legacy for this work of his. Yeah, because there was, there
• 1:25:03
  wasn't. There was somewhere in the
• 1:25:06
  trivia for this film, there was a note that there are several
• 1:25:08
  scenes where you can see him, like keeping his hand in his
• 1:25:12
  pocket. And it was like, like you said,
• 1:25:14
  to kind of like keep that private.
• 1:25:18
  That was actually the, some of the, I don't know, kind of more
• 1:25:21
  like artful takeaways from the documentary was that a lot of
• 1:25:26
  his roles, specifically Back to the Future, were playing
• 1:25:30
  characters that were kind of always in motion already.
• 1:25:33
  Like even before he had to work around the Parkinson's issue.
• 1:25:38
  And then as he went on, he started to do what you just
• 1:25:40
  said, but like more and more, he would make sure to be like,
• 1:25:43
  playing with something in his hands or have his hands in his
• 1:25:46
  pockets, anything to make it less obvious that he was having
• 1:25:49
  trouble controlling the movement.
• 1:25:50
  But coincidentally, he just kind of become known as this
• 1:25:53
  character that was always in motion anyway.
• 1:25:55
  And it played a little montage of him, like doing the
• 1:25:57
  skateboarding scenes and Back to the Future or how I think the
• 1:26:01
  first scene of him on this sitcom he made later in his life
• 1:26:03
  starts with him like rollerblading through like an
• 1:26:05
  office building. Like there's just kind of an
• 1:26:07
  interesting legacy for his performance that he was always
• 1:26:11
  full of so much. He's always been full of so much
• 1:26:13
  like energy and and just kind of ceaseless motion.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah, no, totally. And I mean, he had a great
• 1:26:18
  career, like and and like well deserved too.
• 1:26:21
  Like, he is like a great actor and he's great in this, like
• 1:26:25
  this, like could have been a much worse movie if it wasn't,
• 1:26:28
  you know, led by. Him, I think that's probably, I
• 1:26:31
  mean that's what that's what gets you above the the five out
• 1:26:34
  of 10 is to have a strong performance or just a couple of
• 1:26:37
  interesting quirks. And this one, as unoriginal as
• 1:26:41
  you could argue it is, seems to have found something to to kind
• 1:26:46
  of latch onto there. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah. Ripped off cars 15 years
• 1:26:51
  earlier. Cars.
• 1:26:52
  Ripped off Jar Jar Binks, I don't know how they got away
• 1:26:54
  with that. OK, so that's a 5 for the Jackal
• 1:26:59
  A6 for Doc Hollywood, which means that I have won the
• 1:27:02
  episode, just barely by by one point difference.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah, yeah, the close one. It was a close one.
• 1:27:09
  There's still even looking at the Season 1 totals, it's really
• 1:27:12
  close. I think there's a 5 point
• 1:27:14
  difference in cumulative scores for the movies I've recommended
• 1:27:16
  to you versus ones you've recommended to me.
• 1:27:19
  So definitely still time. I will say as far as plotting,
• 1:27:23
  you know where the show's going. I think we're going to do 12
• 1:27:26
  episodes in Season 1, so 12 movies each for this 90s theme,
• 1:27:30
  which means that this is the end of the halfway .0 halftime.
• 1:27:33
  All right, great halftime report.
• 1:27:36
  You're down by 5, which is a kind of a football Y score to be
• 1:27:39
  down by. Well.
• 1:27:40
  I'm going to go give myself a pep talk in the locker room.
• 1:27:46
  He's just drawing diagrams, just like we got him.
• 1:27:49
  Got to hit him from the side. Enough of this Jackal stuff,
• 1:27:52
  yeah? It's just a big X over Jackal
• 1:27:55
  like. Yeah, we'll see.
• 1:27:58
  So by the end of 12 episodes, we'll see who is the overall
• 1:28:01
  winner. That person will get a prize.
• 1:28:03
  We have no idea what it is. We'll.
• 1:28:05
  Figure that out. Oh, fun.
• 1:28:07
  All right. Cool.
• 1:28:08
  But for now, why don't we move into our selections for the next
• 1:28:12
  episode, which will air in two weeks?
• 1:28:14
  Because my movie won the day today.
• 1:28:15
  I will go ahead and go first, which I wish I didn't have to
• 1:28:18
  because I'm kind of stumped. I have a couple of different
• 1:28:20
  movies that I think you would like and I kind of just got to
• 1:28:23
  pick one out of a hat, I think. Phantom Menace.
• 1:28:26
  Phantom Menace? Yeah.
• 1:28:27
  Have you ever seen that one? I know that a couple episodes
• 1:28:33
  back you gave me a martial arts movie to watch, which is super
• 1:28:36
  fun. I know we're both such big fans,
• 1:28:37
  but you have not had 1 yet. And even the action movie I gave
• 1:28:40
  you, Soldier, is kind of light on action.
• 1:28:42
  So I think I'm going to remedy that today.
• 1:28:44
  So your next movie Frank for episode 7 is 1993's Shoot
• 1:28:49
  Fighter Fight to the Death. Whoa, shoot, fighter.
• 1:28:53
  Shoot Fighter fight to the death, which I know is going to
• 1:28:55
  pique your interest because it was made in 1993 and stars both
• 1:29:00
  Billy Zabka AKA Johnny Lawrence from Karate Kid and yes and
• 1:29:07
  Martin Cove AKA Crease from Karate Kid.
• 1:29:11
  What? So it is both Johnny Lawrence
• 1:29:16
  and Sensei Crease in a mid 90s low budget martial arts film
• 1:29:21
  that I'm pretty sure just has like the classic Mortal Kombat
• 1:29:26
  esque Tournament of Death premise.
• 1:29:28
  Oh my gosh. All right, we can just skip next
• 1:29:29
  episode 11 out of 10. 11 out of 10.
• 1:29:33
  Moving on, this is in the Cobra Kai verse somehow.
• 1:29:36
  Like as close as you could get without literally being part of
• 1:29:39
  The Karate Kid lore. I have no idea how I didn't know
• 1:29:42
  this existed. I found it today.
• 1:29:44
  Oh, wow. All right.
• 1:29:45
  I just had to shoot right to the top of the list.
• 1:29:47
  So again, that's shoot fighter fight to the death.
• 1:29:50
  That is, it sounds like a like an arcade game title almost.
• 1:29:55
  It does. Oh also it didn't list him in
• 1:29:57
  the cast, but I I kind of like poured over the trailer.
• 1:29:59
  I swear Bolo Young is in this one too.
• 1:30:02
  Oh, dude, Bolo Young. That's my guy.
• 1:30:04
  That's my guy. Bolo Bolo fan in the house.
• 1:30:10
  That's awesome, I hope he is. I'll be eagerly awaiting his
• 1:30:14
  appearance. All right, so that's, that's
• 1:30:17
  your selection for our next episode.
• 1:30:19
  What do you have for me to try to to try to start the
• 1:30:23
  second-half strong? Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  Oh, shoot. I didn't have time to give
• 1:30:26
  myself pep talk or yell at myself.
• 1:30:29
  What was I supposed to do? You're.
• 1:30:31
  Supposed to break yourself for your inadequacy.
• 1:30:36
  Get out there and do better. You got 1990 fives fallen
• 1:30:42
  angels. 95 fallen angels. I am not familiar with this one.
• 1:30:46
  Good. That's the point.
• 1:30:53
  Are you new? No.
• 1:30:56
  The I think I mentioned last time maybe that I wanted to
• 1:31:01
  recommend a foreign film. OK, so that's what I hope this
• 1:31:07
  is. It's.
• 1:31:13
  Yeah. So Fall of Angels is, according
• 1:31:16
  to Wikipedia, a Hong Kong neo noir crime comedy drama.
• 1:31:22
  So just check all the boxes please.
• 1:31:26
  Yeah, a lot going on there. Crime comedy.
• 1:31:30
  OK, that sounds awesome. I'm so on board.
• 1:31:33
  Yeah, but you may have heard this director like his bigger
• 1:31:37
  film that he had done just before this one actually was
• 1:31:39
  Chunking Express. I don't know if you're familiar
• 1:31:41
  with that one. I've definitely heard that title
• 1:31:44
  that has been like a watch list item for me for so long and I
• 1:31:47
  never saw it. But that that informs what I
• 1:31:49
  what I think about Fallen angels.
• 1:31:51
  I I'm I'm sensing a winner. Yeah, me too.
• 1:31:55
  It looks good. I hope I am down by 5.
• 1:32:01
  Did you hear the pep talk? No.
• 1:32:04
  Yeah, no, it looks cool. It's like, I guess this was one
• 1:32:06
  that he did right after that. That isn't as I think it has
• 1:32:11
  similar critical acclaim, but not as much like mainstream
• 1:32:16
  awareness as Chunking Express because it's like he did that,
• 1:32:20
  then he did this one, and then he kind of moved on to like
• 1:32:23
  other films. I think he went to go do like
• 1:32:26
  more movies in the US Actually this was one of like one of his
• 1:32:29
  last ones that he did like in China.
• 1:32:31
  Perfect. That's a perfect fit for the
• 1:32:33
  show. It's an overlooked 90s movie.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah. Awesome.
• 1:32:36
  OK Fallen Angels 95 we got Shoot, Fight or fight to the
• 1:32:41
  Death 93 So far we have picked movies from every year of the
• 1:32:44
  90s except for 1994 and 1999. So Phantom Menace.
• 1:32:51
  Chucky Express came out in 1994, so.
• 1:32:54
  Oh, OK, awesome. Well, that sounds exciting.
• 1:32:57
  I want to say thank you everyone for joining us as always.
• 1:33:00
  And before we go tonight, Frank is going to give you that pep
• 1:33:03
  talk for himself, uninterrupted for 5 minutes.
• 1:33:08
  You didn't do very good out there or.
• 1:33:10
  Ever. Really.
• 1:33:14
  Why is he so nervous? Really reconsider a lot of
• 1:33:31
  things that you have done and plan on doing.
• 1:33:35
  Oh. No wonder they're losing.
• 1:33:40
  He's the worst coach. What was this supposed to be?
• 1:33:44
  There was a pep talk. It was like.
• 1:33:50
  A sad book report. Coming up next, it's Shoot
• 1:34:00
  Fighter Fight to the Death, followed by Fallen Angels on
• 1:34:04
  Meet Your Double features.