Split Second (1992)

The year is 2008, Global Warming has left much of London flooded, rats are everywhere, and Detective Harley Stone (Rutger Hauer) is on the trail of a killer.  He arrives only moments before the murderer strikes but fails to catch him.  Playing to the cliché of such faire, Captain Thrasher (Alun Armstrong) blasts him with a profane harangue before returning his gun and badge and sending him to the streets.  However, he must now work with Detective Dick Durkin (Neil Duncan).

"I work alone."

Ha!  Talk about clichés!  What kind of name is Dick Durkin?  Sounds like he belongs in a porn film.  Dick proves to be the over-educated know-it-all who is nonetheless shown up by the grizzled veteran.  Who cut and pasted this script?  It turns out that - no surprise at all - the murderer had killed Foster McClaine, Stone's previous partner.  Michelle McLaine (Kim Cattrall) was having an affair with Stone at the time of Foster's death.  Awkward.

The murderer proves to be either a demon from hell or a genetic oddity, the story never decides.  It looks kind of like Venom.  It has a fondness for human hearts and painting crime scenes with buckets of blood.  For some reason, it opts not to kill the primary characters despite having multiple opportunities to do so.  It is bulletproof except at the very end when it isn't.

Rutger Hauer has no character arc.  He's a tough guy with a psychic connection to a monster, a cookie-cutter loose cannon.  Neil Duncan goes from a by-the-book straight-laced cop to a pale imitation of Harley Stone.  Sadly, Duncan doesn't sell the transformation and it just comes across as goofy.  Other than going topless during a shower scene, Kim Cattrall brings nothing to this bland and undeveloped role.  She is a mostly overlooked love interest and run of the mill damsel in distress.  There wasn't much chemistry between her and Rutger.  Pete Postlethwaite is wasted in a tiny role as a cop who dislikes Stone, and for good reason.

It is funny to see a film made in 1992 that proposes Global Warming was going to flood the world in the distant future of 2008.  Didn't happen.  Blade Runner (1982) took place in the even more distant year of 2019 when pollution was going to leave LA in darkness.  Didn't happen.  Now Climate Change is going to destroy the world in 12 years.  I was promised a dystopia by now!

An extremely mediocre film with a plot that never congeals.  The ending even offers the possibility of a sequel.  Ha!  I watched this on account of Rutger Hauer's death; not the best choice of films.  Skip this one.

RIP Rutger Hauer

The Boys

Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) is an ordinary guy who works at an electronics store.  He's walking down the street with his girlfriend when she is vaporized when A-Train (this setting's version of The Flash) accidently runs into her.  A-Train is a member of the Seven (think Justice League), which is owned by Vought International.  Vought offer to pay Hughie for Robin's death as long as he signs a non-disclosure agreement.  He declines.  Enter Billy Butcher (Karl Urban).  Billy seeks to recruit Hughie in his vigilante efforts against Supers.  Vought is just a marketing and PR firm that makes the Supers look like heroes when they are, in truth, more like villains.  Hughie agrees and goes way down this rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, Annie January (Erin Moriarty) is a small time superhero named Starlight who works in Iowa.  When a slot opens in the Seven, she applies.  To her amazement, she is accepted!  She has hardly entered the citadel of the Seven when her naivety is pounded into the dirt when another superhero has his way with her.  But things get worse as her heroics become scripted and she is excoriated for rescuing a woman from rape while out of costume.  Most of the Seven have lost their idealism, if they ever had it.

 

Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) is a VP for Vought and in charge of the Seven.  She treats the heroes as products that require branding and marketing.  She has a strange relationship with Homelander (Antony Starr), leader of the Seven.  He is clearly obsessed with her and jealous of her newborn.  Homelander is an ultra-dark version of Superman, having no qualms about killing criminals or even non-criminals who present a threat to his interests.  However, he can be charming, which makes him all the more creepy.

 

Great series and highly recommended.  However, it is extremely violent, painting rooms with blood on more than one occasion.

Good Omens

Crowley (David Tennant) the Demon is given the job of delivering the Antichrist to the hospital, allowing the nurses to swap him out for a newborn.  Though he does his part, he is not keen on the Antichrist's arrival.  He rather likes the world and - despite being a demon - he'd rather have the status quo.  Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) the Angel has been Crowley's rival since the Garden of Eden.  Despite the wishes of Archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) to have a final battle between Heaven and Hell, Aziraphale sides with Crowley in trying to prevent Armageddon.  Together, they try to influence the Antichrist as he grows to adolescence.  It is only a few days before Armageddon and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have assembled when they discover they have the wrong boy.  Yes, the nurse switched the wrong baby.  The series is quirky with tongue firmly in cheek.  Ironically, Aziraphale says "I'll be damned" while Crowley says "For Heaven's Sake."  There is a lot of that.  The end of days are surprisingly comedic.

 

Thumbs up!  It is available on Amazon.

President Troll

The Democrats are in the midst of a civil war.  The squad, led by AOC, is accusing Speaker Pelosi of being a racist.  Republicans break out the popcorn.  After all, if your opponent is making a fool of herself, the age old advice is to stand back and watch.  President Trump chose otherwise.  He tweeted that the squad should return to their countries of origin, even stating that Nancy Pelosi would be only too happy to make travel arrangements.  PowerLine holds that this was an unforced error that will haunt Trump.  No, I don't think so.  Why not?

To Democrats and Never Trumpers, everything Trump says or does is wrong.

Trump has sided with Nancy Pelosi over AOC and the Squad.

Democrats who side with Speaker Pelosi will be in agreement with Trump.  Unacceptable.

Democrats who side with the Squad will exacerbate the civil war.

Though beloved by the SJW left, the Squad is viewed unfavorably nationwide.  AOC has a 22% favorability while Ilhan Omar has a 9% favorability.

By siding with the more moderate wing of the Democrats, Trump herds Trump-hating Democrats toward the more leftist side and improves his re-election chances.

The veracity of his tweet is irrelevant.  He's trolling.

The Richest Man in Babylon

Want to be wealthy?  This is the book for you.  Written by George S. Clason in 1926, it provides sound financial advice on how to amass a fortune.  The earlier you get started, the better off you will be.

The ten chapters are parables set in ancient Babylon.  In the first, we meet Benzir, a chariot maker, who finds that despite years of work, he is still living a hand to mouth lifestyle while his childhood friend, Arkad, has become the richest man in Babylon.  He had never thought of Arkad as anything special and yet, in the intervening years, Arkad was doing something right and Benzir wanted to know what it was.  Arkad offers insights in how to save and make those savings earn.  The top advice is to 'pay yourself first' with 10% of your income; that is yours to keep.  More is better if you can afford it.  Live off the remainder.  Other suggestions are to invest in what you know, insure your wealth, work and determination will lead to wealth, do not spend beyond your means lest you be enslaved by your debts, and more.

 

It is an easy read, very engaging, and offers excellent financial advice.  I wish I had followed the advice in my youth.

The Razor's Edge (1984)

Larry Darrel (Bill Murray) is a well-liked rogue from Illinois who volunteers to drive an ambulance in France during the Great War in the days before the US joined the war.  The war has a profound effect on him and his plans for marriage to Isabel (Catherine Hicks) and get a job as a stock broker no longer appeal to him.  Setting out on a voyage of self-discovery, he works blue-color jobs in France before traveling to India and then Tibet.  By the time he returns, the Depression has hit and Isabel is married.  He is fine with this though Isabel still carries a torch for him, so much so that she becomes jealous of Sophie (Theresa Russell), his fiancé.

 

This was Murray's first big venture into serious acting and it shows.  Viewers who loved him in Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, and Tootsie were baffled by this movie.  I know I was.  Even though this is a 'serious' role, he introduced a lot of comedy, some of it quite funny.  I really enjoyed his flight from the children asking for money in India.  The impression of a seal, silliness with Tibetan vegetables, and other flashes of goofiness all undermine the seriousness of the story.  He feels miscast.  In fact, much of the cast is wrong for their parts.  Catherine Hicks is usually a sunny sort and the conniving didn't come naturally to her.  By contrast, Theresa Russell is probably best known for her role in Black Widow as the woman who kills her husbands, managing to shift from irresistible charm to black-hearted murder quite convincingly.  These two should have swapped parts.

 

An interesting footnote in the mostly comic career of Murray.  In order to get funding for this movie, he agreed to star in another comedy.  When The Razor's Edge wrapped, he went to NYC to start filming that other movie: Ghostbusters.

Ross Perot

My political awakening happened during the 1992 presidential campaign.  Prior to 1991/92, I was mostly oblivious to politics beyond a knee-jerk reaction to the story of the day.  When the campaign began, I was in favor of Bob Kerrey, a Democratic Senator from neighboring Nebraska (I lived in Iowa at the time).  Kerrey had a dim view of Governor Clinton and I adopted that view.  As such, I was less than thrilled when Clinton won the Democratic nomination.  Enter Ross Perot.  Perot was a straight shooter who sang one of my favorite tunes: the government spends too much.  His TV infomercial was highly enjoyable though it was more diagnosis than prescription.  He ripped both Bush and Clinton, but more Bush as I recall.  However, he was also a bit of a crank, offering a nutty story about President Bush threatening to ruin his daughter's wedding.  Huh?  But for his inexplicable withdraw and then return to the campaign, Perot might have actually won.  Probably not but when you consider the alternates were Bush and Clinton, it was possible.  And that may be the spark that brought about the Trump Presidency.

 

Ross Perot wasn't a politician or a general, the two sources for presidential material throughout US history.  Even so, he won 19% of the vote in '92, 8% in '96, and started the Reform Party.  Guess who briefly ran for the nomination in the Reform Party in 2000: Donald Trump.  If a man who reminded me of Little Caesar - "Pizza pizza" - could win almost 20% of the vote after having left the campaign then anything was possible.  If Barry Goldwater's embarrassing defeat was a precursor to Ronald Reagan's two landslide victories, then one could argue that Ross Perot blazed a trail for fellow billionaire Trump to win the White House.

 

RIP