Event Horizon
with Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Written by Philip Eisner
by Adam Haynes
The new Lawrence Fishburne vehicle, Hoodlum, is the marginally true story of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson from the time of his release from Sing Sing, to his rise to the top of the 1930’s Harlem number’s racket empire.
Right at go, we’re given a declarative to read which explains what the numbers racket was (emphasis on lottery over scam) and then for the benefit of those less inclined to read, this information is repeated by different characters over and over throughout the rest of the film.
What about the other elements of organized crime, like drugs, prostitution and gambling? Apparently too complicated, too cumbersome. Not a bad idea considering the reception given The Cotton Club. I can hear the producers now: “Cut it down, keep it simple.”
Here is how Hoodlum keeps it simple: Vanessa Williams plays a woman of ultimately good moral fiber. So she wears white.
Here is how Hoodlum cuts it down: All of the characters except Bumpy are cartoons. Bumpy’s best friend is fat and goofy (which also makes it a given with this kind of storytelling that he will die horribly, just like his woman, who is also fat and goofy). The bad bad guy (Tim Roth) swears a lot. The good bad guy (Andy Garcia) is an impeccable dresser who reminds us of this when he puts down the bad bad guy for being a slob, which in turn also signals bad bad’s badness.
And there’s nothing wrong with any of this once you get that the script by Chris Brancato is your better basic shake-and-bake blaxploitation product, and a good director would have played it up and had fun – putting punch in the punch and delivering the real dope so Quentin Tarantino will have something to steal from in fifteen years.
What’s wrong, and so wrong that it makes this material both dull and unbearably so, is that director Bill Duke has no idea what he’s doing, most particularly when it comes to his leading man.
From the beginning, the desideratum is to present Bumpy as both morally vacant and morally sympathetic so that he can have a BIG FEEL of an end where we get him on the steps of some church in the throws of a sudden epiphany of moral anguish.
Had Bumpy been played as just a cold-hearted killer then the end would accomplish what it wants – hey, he might have a soul after all – redemption. Dig it. Likewise, if he were presented as an okay guy forced to do awful things by way of circumstance, then the inner conflict would churn all the way through the story which would give the end a REAL sense of classic drama – some serious bite.
Instead, something more middle of the road is groped for and, since it is done without any intuition or skill, Bumpy is reduced to pure arbitration and displays the director’s real intentions: plebeian pandering (which ultimately disses both the material and the audience).
What is terrifying is that Bill Duke’s other Fishburne vehicle, Deep Cover, fails for the exact same reasons as Hoodlum, making Duke the most dangerous kind of director; one who doesn’t learn from his mistakes and somehow gets money to keep making movies which will always suck in the same way (this puts him in the same category as Peter Hyams, Oliver Stone, and Abel Ferrara). This is your warning.
Lawrence Fishburne, being the ungodly talented actor he is, naturally still nails every scene and manages to put cool fire into even the most expository dialogue. Tragically, this also makes the movie holistically less enjoyable. His technical precision only makes the material even more clunky, another piece that doesn’t fit. The more he attempts to rise above, the more he sinks in the mud.
Conversely, Tim Roth and Andy Garcia end up being the only successes (especially Garcia, who hopefully has given up on being in classy movies all together) in this clunker, precisely because they’re making no attempt at anything great. Ironically, they seem to be the only members of the cast who’ve actually seen Disco Godfather and The Mack and know what’s expected.
Like some cinematically intertextual Frankenstein Monster, Event Horizon– also starring Lawrence Fishburne – is constructed from a random selection of older science fiction and horror film corpses.
Generally:
A crew of search and rescue astronauts headed by Fishburne fly out into the depths of the solar system to uncover the secrets behind the sudden reemergence of the Event Horizon, a top-secret spaceship designed to fold space and go beyond the furthest reaches of the galaxy which disappeared without a trace. Sam Neill, who built the thing, goes with them (2010, Aliens).
Once they get on board they find the crew dead and start having strange and horrible hallucinations. The ship must be alive (Solaris)!
Fishburne and Neill in particular, because they are the leads have hallucinations which directly relate to a fuck-up from their past (Flatliners).
Neill flips his noodle and starts creatively vivisecting the search and rescue team (The Shining, Alien).
The murders gets progressively more kinky and horrific which sort of ties into the nasty place the Event Horizon has been visiting all these years, the place which made it so evil (Hellraiser).
Etc.
Given this method of story construction, Event Horizon bars itself from being a truly great movie because no matter how much skill the filmmakers possess, they are still only recycling without adding any thematic twists or redefinition to the material.
The fun of Event Horizon is that unlike Hoodlum, it understands that while TOTAL DRAMA (movies like The Shining and Solaris being paramount examples for this kind of genre) is best, good camp is still better than dull drama.
Instead of mendaciously trying to deny its derivation, director Paul Anderson (helmer of the wildly underrated Mortal Combat) wisely decides to joyfully revel in it. Such a crucial decision pushes the experience past mere schlock and “unintentional humor” into something hiply funny, whose goo goo thrills and spectacle become as guiltless as they are noncaloric.
