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Gator (1976)
An odd movie, maybe worth watching if you've nothing better to do
"Gator" is an odd movie, and for more than one reason.
First is the identity of the main character, Gator McKlusky, played by Burt Reynolds. We first met Gator in 1973's "White Lightning," in which he was also played by Reynolds. He's a tough redneck southern moonshiner with a prison record in both movies. But there are some glaring continuity problems between the two films. "White Lightning" was apparently set in Arkansas, where Gator and his family live and where he was in jail, while "Gator" is pretty clearly set in Georgia. Gator's father is a vastly different character (and played by different actors): In "White Lightning" he's a tragic figure, in mourning over the loss of his younger son, while in "Gator" he's a comedic figure. Gator's mother from "White Lightning"-also grieving over the death of Gator's brother-is nowhere to be found in "Gator." And in the latter film, Gator has a young daughter, while in "White Lightning" there's no mention of a daughter or of any relationship that might have produced her. Finally, there's disagreement between the two films over exactly how many times Gator's been in prison.
Taken in isolation, all of these changes except perhaps the last can be explained away (e.g., his mom died in the interim, his father eventually got over his grief, the family moved, etc.), but as a group they suggest that this movie is more of a reboot than a sequel. Adding to this sense is the fact that Reynolds himself is very different in the two movies. In "White Lightning" he (like the film as a whole) has a genuinely good old boy, rough-around-the-edges feel to him. By the time "Gator" was filmed, Reynolds had adopted a slicker, more conventionally Hollywood image, with a styled haircut and mustache and sharper clothes that seem very out of place for the Okefenokee. Even his southern accent has been muted. To top it all off, there are no clear references in "Gator" to any of the events in "White Lightning."
My guess is that the explanation for all of the changes is that the producers wanted to take the regional popularity of "White Lightning" mainstream, so they essentially re-shot it with a similar plot and more generic (though still somewhat southern) feel. Certainly the plot is VERY similar: Tough moonshiner, in order to get/stay out of jail himself, reluctantly makes a deal with the law to bring down a bad guy under federal investigation by infiltrating bad guy's operation. Along the way he finds himself at least a little conflicted because he's ratting out/dumping on either decent people just trying to get by or a childhood friend. But he comes through in the end and personally kills the bad guy and assorted henchmen while picking up a woman in the process.
I like sequels, and would prefer this to be one--I like to see characters as they move through different storylines and settings. If you like them too then you can pretend that that's what this is, but both the continuity problems and the extreme plot similarities make it hard to do so.
The second reason that "Gator" is a strange movie is that it can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it's a comedy or an action/drama film. Certainly, either way, there's a good bit of action: the opening chase scenes are great fun, which are made even more so by the obvious comedy. Jack Weston's Irving Greenfield and Alice Ghostley's Emmeline Cavanaugh are purely comedic figures, as is Gator's father in his minor role. Jerry Reed's henchmen are played almost entirely for laughs: Even when Bones beats up Greenfield (off-screen) it's more funny than dramatic. But there are some very sobering moments in the film as well that simply spoil the light mood. We feel the weight of poverty, for instance, on one of the women having to pay protection money to Jerry Reed's Bama McCall. Darker still-much darker-is the gritty conversation between Gator and Bama in which Bama unapologetically justifies how he uses people, with a drugged-out underage prostitute in the scene as an object lesson in exactly how he likes to use them. Bama's cold-blooded murder of Greenfield, and the tragic death of Emmeline (and her cats!) are further blots on the overall comedic feel of the movie. "White Lightning" was a somewhat dark and serious movie, essentially a revenge flick, with some lighthearted moments, which generally played well. Here it's the reverse: We have a comedy that occasionally has not just serious but (at least in the case of the young prostitute) downright ugly moments, and unlike the "White Lightning" approach the formula just doesn't work. In a drama or a tragedy, some brief humor can give the audience a breather. But if they go to see a comedy it's to escape the downers, and it's a bad idea to interject serious stuff while they're escaping.
There are certainly some fun moments and characters in "Gator." The boat chase is one such scene, and Jerry Reed steals the show both when he's enjoying himself being the bad guy or seriously explaining why he doesn't give a damn about being the bad guy. And there are a few other scenes that never get old (such as when the obviously straight Gator is approached by the just as obviously gay henchman Smiley). But overall it hasn't aged well, and because of the fundamental issues discussed, it can never be more than diverting at best. Maybe it's worth watching if you don't have anything better to do.
Miami Vice: Smuggler's Blues (1985)
Vice at its best
The plot of "Smuggler's Blues is either well-known to the reader, having been written of in many other places, or else shouldn't be spoiled, so I won't cover it again here. Instead I'll just critique it-and the critique is that it's one terrific episode.
A fair amount of humor found its way into the first couple of seasons of Miami Vice-for instance, the scene in "Brother's Keeper" in which the lights go out in the courtroom, or many of the scenes involving Elvis-but there's none to be found in this iconic first-season episode. It's as cool as a polar bear on ice skates and gritty without being nihilistic, as many of the later episodes are. The tropical vibe is in full force, thanks in part to the trip to Cartagena (shooting location stand-in was actually San Juan).
Some of the typical Vice ingredients are downplayed or entirely absent here. There's very little glitz and glitter and conspicuous consumption, aside from Crockett's and Tubbs's wardrobe and a gorgeous '60s vintage Mustang convertible seen briefly in their getaway from Cartagena. There's no sex (aside from a shot or two of Trudy's thigh), and in fact practically no women. Trudy's role is brief and essentially passive, and Gina has only a few seconds of screen time and one or two very short lines of dialogue. Despite this, the episode is pure Vice, focusing entirely on the "shady characters" and "dirty deals" that underlie all the usual glitz. Crockett and Tubbs, not distracted this go-round by the party-and-sex scene, are all business here, edgy and dangerous, a fact underscored by the great blocking, camera work, and scoring.
Speaking of scoring: Glenn Frey's iconic song was written before Miami Vice and in fact inspired the episode. Michael Mann heard the song on the radio and had Miguel Piñero (aka notorious first season drug dealer Esteban Calderone) write the episode around it. (Piñero wrote very little else for Vice, and one can only wish that he'd done a lot more.) Nevertheless, the song worked so well as an inspiration that it could have been made with the series in mind, and the producers wrung every advantage out of it in this episode. Frey, in his debut acting appearance, fits the Vice vibe perfectly and would have been a great regular addition to the series.
In short, the episode is pure dynamite. As Miami Vice goes, it doesn't get any better than this.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Rejoined (1995)
Boldly going yet again
Star Trek has never been afraid of controversy. In the 1960s it was race relations, including the (allegedly) first televised interracial kiss. Here we have a relationship between two women. The genius of science fiction is that you can get away with things like this when they would otherwise be taboo by constructing science fiction-based workarounds. In "Plato's Stepchildren," Kirk and Uhura kissed because they were under alien compulsion. In "Rejoined" Jadzia and Lenara kiss because in a past Trill life one of them was a man.
The interesting thing is how much objection and hate mail the episode drew. I myself don't recall hearing about it when the episode first aired, and I have only recently rewatched it. During my recent viewing, the thing that struck me most was the amazing chemistry between Terry Farrell and Susanna Thompson. They really made it work (under the directorial guidance of Avery Brooks). Without this chemistry, the whole episode could have been a train wreck about same-sex kiss rather than about a relationship. With it, the episode is about two people who are obviously deeply (and yes, passionately) in love with each other, a love that has literally survived death (of Trill hosts).
The only weak point of the episode was the abrupt ending. By Act 4, both Jadzia and Lenara were ready to throw themselves into the relationship without reservation and without regard for the consequences. Indeed, one of the nice dramatic elements of this episode was how of Jadzia's normally sound judgment could suddenly be overwhelmed by her love for Lenara. Hey, it happens in real life, so why not in Star Trek? But in the episode's final five minutes Lenara, in a discordant break with her character development, abruptly changes course and pretty much walks out on Jadzia with no fanfare. While obviously the two couldn't stay together without radically altering the series's direction, or at least Jadzia's role, the writers chose a very jarring way to avoid that. The episode feels like it didn't really resolve; it just ends by hitting a brick wall.
That weakness aside, this was a powerful and well-acted episode that doesn't deserve the hate that some have directed at it over the years. Chill, guys, it's Star Trek.
Miami Vice: Back in the World (1985)
An excellent, slightly off-beat, episode of Vice
"Back in the World" is a bit offbeat for the first seasons of Miami Vice, but outstanding nevertheless. What's different? Here, instead of giving us the usual dose of unadulterated '80's culture, Vice mixes in a generous amount of Vietnam-era content, ranging from newsreel footage of the Fall of Saigon to in-country lingo to the music of the Doors. Even the drug is old (literally), decomposing heroin rather than '80's cocaine (is there a message in that somewhere?) The plot is well-known by now. The teaser shows the chaos of 1975 Saigon through archival clips, and then cuts to soldier Sonny Crockett (youthful-looking due to being clean-shaven and having his '80's cut obscured by a helmet) as hip, ace reporter Ira Stone shows him a dead soldier's body, in its body-bag, stuffed with China White for shipment to America. After the credits, we're back in the present-day (and the world, Vietnam-era soldiers' slang for the USA) as Stone catches up with Crockett and Tubbs as they complete a drug bust. The story Stone is working is that the heroin is now being distributed, apparently out of South Florida. It's the stash of the exporter Stone was investigating ten years earlier, a shadowy figure known only as The Sergeant. Stone knows it's the same stash because it's tainted with embalming fluid, and he wants Crockett's help in ferreting out this mysterious figure from their shared past, and winning Stone a Pulitzer in the process.
Together, the two seek out former army colonel William Maynard, an old comrade-in-arms, who may have some information on The Sergeant. Maynard was suspected by Crockett and others of being an intelligence agent: he was known as "Captain Real Estate" because anywhere he went in Vietnam, the action got hot. Maynard passes off The Sergeant as a myth, which enrages Stone, who in turn tells Crockett he made up the whole story. But Crockett knows otherwise: he'd seen the heroin in 1975, and just hours before the meeting with Maynard he'd discovered a junkie sick from the old stash. (The episode, to its credit, spends a bit of time sympathetically examining the plight of Vietnam vets.) Now investigating Stone, Crockett and Tubbs find that he is out of money and on the edge of divorce, and, further, that he's meeting with The Sergeant, threatening to expose the heroin operation unless he receives hush money. Tubbs gets a look at The Sergeant, Crockett puts two and two together, and after showing Tubbs an old photo for identification, realizes that The Sergeant is Maynard and that Stone knew it all along. Stone wasn't after a story, but money.
Crockett and Tubbs learn from Maynard's wife that Maynard and Stone are meeting in a remote location in the Keys and rush to the rescue. In Maynard's getaway, surrounded by mangrove and jungle, Stone again threatens Maynard with exposure: Stone's manuscript will be put in the mail by an associate in twenty minutes if Maynard doesn't pay. With that, Maynard pulls the manuscript from his briefcase: his Vietnamese henchman Hmung had killed Stone's wife and taken the manuscript from her. With that, Maynard shoots Stone, but the thick manuscript prevents the bullets from killing him.
Crockett and Tubbs proceed to hunt Maynard and Hmung through the jungle: Crocket kills Hmung, but Maynard escapes in a boat. The episode ends with Crockett comforting and forgiving the wounded Stone.
There are several standouts in this episode, which is Don Johnson's well-done directorial debut for the series. First and foremost is Ira Stone, played to perfection by Bob Balaban. Edgy, stuck in the Vietnam era, perhaps suffering from PTSD, Stone is the embodiment of the late '60's/early '70's culture that runs throughout this episode. Perhaps the best scene is when Stone and Crockett are conferring at night aboard Crockett's speedboat somewhere off Miami Beach. In the middle of the conversation, with only the slightest whispering sound to alert the viewer (and then only if he goes back and listens for it), Stone maniacally begins screaming "INCOMING!" as Johnson jump-cuts to a close-up on him. Stone isn't in the boat; he's got a thousand-yard stare that is looking straight back to the jungles and rice-paddies. Then (of all things) mortar fire starts falling around the boat as Crockett, finally reacting, cranks up and bugs out, with Stone now photographing him and laughing. It's one of the most surreal scenes in all of Miami Vice (and that's saying something), and it's done perfectly. Stone's reaction when he's shot is similar: screaming "MEDIC!" his expression and body language show that he's somewhere very different than the Florida Keys.
Another standout is G. Gordon Liddy as Maynard. Not much acting here: Liddy simply had to be his ultra-nationalist and intimidating self, which again works very well for the episode. The scene in which he shoots Stone is chilling for the very reason that you're pretty sure Liddy could do it for real (and possibly has) without a second thought. Following the shooting, as Crockett and Tubbs stalk Maynard and Hmung—and Maynard and Hmung are stalking them—Johnson does some very good camera work (e.g., Tubbs moving slowly into the camera, close-up shots of different pairs of eyes reacting to gunshots and premonitions—think the cemetery showdown in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) set to The Doors's surreal and evocative "My Eyes have Seen You." The déjà vu parallel between the keys and the jungles of Southeast Asia are too obvious and need no further comment.
All in all, an outstanding Vice episode that would be revisited in the Season 3 episode Stone's War, another fine episode.
Miami Vice: The Prodigal Son (1985)
An interesting take on Vice
---------SPOILERS---------- "The Prodigal Son" is Miami Vice's Season 2 opener, a two-hour special. By this time the show was a red-hot hit and the producers accordingly decided to do something special, so they took it on the road. Most of the episode is set on location in New York City (with the teaser being set in the jungles near Bogotá).
In brief the plot is simple. A pair of Indian brothers from Colombia, the Revillas, have managed to establish a cocaine operation that controls every aspect of the trade from production to street distribution, and along the way they've compromised the DEA, likely through bribery, thus knowing the name of every federal drug agent on the east coast. The feds thus turn to Crockett and Tubbs, whose names aren't in the compromised files, to travel to New York to bust the drug ring. While there, Tubbs reconnects with NYPD Detective Valerie Gordon (introduced in Season 1) and has some thoughts of remaining in the Big Apple after the assignment's conclusion, while Crockett falls in with an enigmatic allumeuse he spots in not one, but two different nightclubs (what are the chances?).
Beyond this synopsis, the plot is convoluted and (in Crockett's words from "Brother's Keeper," the series pilot) "you can't even tell the players without a program." Valerie is under cover to try to get dirt on a local crime boss by serving as his mistress. The crime boss is somehow connected to Crockett's woman Margaret, who in turn has connections to Wall Street bankers who've lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Latin America and thus want the "major cash crops" of same to be protected at any cost, who in turn are pressuring local law enforcement to lay off the Revillas. Crockett and Tubbs are apparently attempting to cut in between the Revillas and their buyers with the help of a mid-level dealer played by Penn Jillette, who is either working for the Miami duo or for the Indians (it's hard to tell even by the time he cashes out). Crockett and Tubbs tee off the local authorities, who (pressured by the bankers) deny them all aid even though the DEA wants them to stay on the case (but doesn't offer any aid of its own). Shootouts happen, sex is had, action scenes occur, betrayal rears its head, and all somehow leads to the inevitable showdown between the Indians and our vice cops, who save the day with an assist from Valerie. After a final fling in the sheets with Valerie, Tubbs decides to return to Miami with Crockett after all (was she really THAT bad in bed?).
I must have watched this episode a dozen times over the years (including the original airing), and I still can't get the details straight. No matter: This is typical Vice faire, and it's best not to try to follow the plot too much. But there are some standouts here, most good, some pretty bad.
On the bad side: the women. Valerie, who had been arrested when we last met her and is on probation by now, is reinstated as a detective? Hard to believe, especially since she seems to have fallen for the crime lord she's supposed to be investigating. And Margaret is even worse. She's simply unattractive, if not physically, then personality-wise. Crockett himself describes her as "a nut job with an attitude problem" (an impression we easily agree with and never see any reason to reconsider), and after their first night together she departs after stealing his gun. Why Crockett would, after that, fall hard for her requires total suspension of disbelief, especially since she doesn't show any redeeming features after that.
On the good side: it's interesting to see New York portrayed and shot in Miami Vice style. This is the episode, more than any other, that shows directorial style, cinematography, and production values, at least as much as location, is what the Vice vibe is all about. (Nevertheless, seeing New York portrayed in this way still causes me some cognitive dissonance even after seeing the episode so many times; it's sort of like I imagine watching Star Wars with a ragtime musical score would be like.) Along these same lines, the episode features Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City," which he wrote specifically for Vice. It plays while Crockett wanders aimlessly through the city, ironically a fish out of water in the Big Apple.
Finally, the best scene in the episode by far is when our vice cops confront the banker J. J. Johnston, Esq., played by the controversial actor/poet Julian Beck in his only television role. A gaunt, skeletal, sinister figure, Mr. Johnston explains, as if to two children, the facts of life to Crockett and Tubbs: Money, including dirty Wall Street money, makes the world go round, and vice cops can't change that. Beck's performance is haunting; he seems a 1980's mixture of Gollum and Darth Vader, wasted by greed and desire for wealth and power and having been completely corrupted by it. (In fact Beck was suffering from advanced stomach cancer at the time of filming, and died shortly before the episode aired.) It's a tremendously dramatic moment, not at all diminished because of its brevity.
All in all, then, typical Miami Vice, albeit with some rather atypical elements that make it well worth watching.
Miami Vice: Little Miss Dangerous (1986)
Miami Vice at its best
Spoilers: A darker and grittier episode than a lot of the previous ones, set almost entirely at night, "Little Miss Dangerous" nevertheless boasts several of the elements that made Vice one of the defining aspects of '80s culture. Fiona guest stars as the winsome titular character, a prostitute/dancer-cum-serial murderess. From start to finish, she does a top-notch job of mixing sexy, street-smart, childlike, wounded, vulnerable, and deadly. Philip Michael Thomas gives a low-key, sensitive performance as Tubbs sets out to save Jackie (Fiona) from the seedy sex-club world she inhabits, unaware that she's the serial killer for whom the police are frantically searching. Larry Joshua as Cat--murder suspect, Jackie's dance partner, and her boyfriend and would-be husband--is a tough guy who's genuinely in love with her and willing to do literally anything for her. He gets a nice rock video sequence as he wanders Miami's back streets by night in search of Jackie. Don Johnson's best moment comes when Crockett, also showing a sensitive and even gentlemanly side, charms a bag lady who has crucial information. The rest of the Vice crew is largely in the background for most of the episode.
The gist of the episode is that the Vice crew are on a desperate hunt for a serial killer of prostitutes' tricks. Initially suspecting Cat, they overlook Jackie as just another prostitute--all except Tubbs, who's troubled by her youth and sets out to help her. He sees in her a reminder of some vaguely-described events he lived through in New York that ended badly for the girls in question (regrettably, we never learn the details). The eighteen-year-old Jackie has clearly been psychologically damaged by being handed around and perhaps unloved for the whole of her childhood. At one point she matter-of-factly declares herself unworthy of being loved, and twice she fatalistically describes herself as "just a physical substitute" for what her foster families and her tricks really want. While we know from the outset that she's a killer, we can't help--don't want to help--feeling for her, just as Tubbs does. As Tubbs reaches out to Jackie, she mistakes his attention and his attempts to rehabilitate her for romantic love and opens up to him, seeking love and a personal connection for perhaps the first time in her life. When Tubbs gently parries her sexual advances, her feelings of rejection set the episode's final tragedy in motion.
The music is perfectly suited to the episode, even by Vice standards, and fits the subtleties of the story, which has some masterful touches. The opening scene, in which we see Jackie vamping a handcuffed Cat during their on-stage act, is played to Ted Nugent's hard-edged "Little Miss Dangerous" (from whence the episode's title is taken, duh). The music (also restated later in the episode) is paired to the opening sequence like a fine wine to an exquisite dinner; together, they deftly set up Jackie's character and tell you much of what you need to know about her. This opening sequence also foreshadows the final scene, which consists of some of the best five minutes in the entire Vice canon, as Jackie drugs Tubbs, then handcuffs him to his safe house (ironically) bed. As Crockett, having leaned Jackie's secret, races to save Tubbs in a classic but abbreviated Ferrari-by-night scene (with a twist at the end), Jackie begins her murder ritual, which involves flames, drawings produced by her tortured mind, disrobing, and Tubbs's revolver, all to Public Image Ltd.'s haunting "The Order of Death," with its lyrics "This is what you want . . . this is what you get . . ." repeating hypnotically throughout the sequence. (This song goes so well with the scene that it's as if it was written just for Vice. Jan Hammer patterns some of the episode's incidental music after the song--a nice touch.) All of this comes together with utter perfection--you'll not find a better, or more shattering, five minutes in the whole series. It just doesn't get any better than this. I was shattered when I first saw it at first airing in 1986, and it's just as powerful for me today.
If you're a Vice fan, you're sure to love this episode. If you're not a fan but looking to be introduced to the show, this might be a good one to try out. You won't be disappointed.