Hey folks, Harry here with Quint and his predilection for weirdness... Cool shit like Miike and Argento. Two great tastes that should taste great together. I mean, put in DEEP RED and AUDITION and let the blood fly, ya know? Let's see if ZEBRAMAN and THE CARD DEALER were up to that sort of challenge and history. Here's Quint...
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here, finally back in Austin from a whirlwind trip filled with many great flicks, undercover spy antics, some real stinker piles of crap movies, blackjack, craps and test screenings. Here's the last of my film coverage from the American Film Market! Here's hoping my sneaky scheme works again next year!
THE CARD DEALER
I love Dario Argento's flicks. I even really dug SLEEPLESS when most shit on it. I thought it felt a whole helluva lot like him returning to his BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and CAT O' NINE TAILS days. So it was that I didn't pay any mind to the mixed and negative reviews of THE CARD DEALER when they started popping up online... I should have listened...
But then again, I wouldn't really have believed that Argento could make a movie as crappy as this without having seen it with my own eyes. The acting is horrible, the direction dull, the characters unremarkable and the ending boring. It makes me sad to say that about an Argento flick, but it's the truth.
The basic set up is a little crazy, but could have been milked for some decent entertainment... There's a serial killer out there... He loves risk above anything else, so he kidnaps people, then contacts the cops. He sets up a chatroom where online poker can be played and he challenges the cops to a best of five hands deal. If the cops win, he lets the victim go. If he wins, he kills the person. Throughout the card game there's a small video window up showing the gagged face of the kidnapee, so the cops can see the stakes of the game the whole time.
That's a bit convoluted, but it could have been really intense... The only problem is you never really see all 5 hands in each of the 4 or 5 times they play in the film. There is no build... No dramatic tension that is inherent in a game of risk like Poker. You get the first hand, then the cops talks and all of a sudden you get the last hand and all tension is lost.
I've heard that the two main actors (Stefania Rocca and Liam Cunningham) kinda bulldozed Argento... rewriting their dialogue, not listening to Argento's direction... If that's true, it's a shame, but it does say something that Argento let them do that to the production.
There is only one area where THE CARD DEALER rises up and that's in the corpse effects... There are two dead bodies we see early in the film and both are note-perfect. Realistic and disturbing... It actually gave me a small bit of hope that the movie was heading in a more Argento-like direction, but it wasn't long before that hope went back down to wishing the movie would just hurry up and end.
Ultimately, the worst critical slam I can give the film is this: If I hadn't seen the opening credits I wouldn't have known Dario Argento had anything to do with the movie. There is no trace of his fantastic use of colors, his mastery of tension, his great score or even entertaining kills. It's as if Argento didn't direct this film at all, just slapped his name on to a pile of dogshit because he lost a bet or something. Sad day, indeed.
ZEBRAMAN
To totally change gears, let's go from the sadness of shitty Argento to the jaw-dropping "What the fuck did I just see" world of Takashi Miike. Miike directed ONE MISSED CALL, my favorite flick from this year's AFM... That film was his mainstream horror flick, combining elements of films like THE RING and JU-ON: THE GRUDGE... ZEBRAMAN is Miike's take on the POWER RANGER-esque world of Japanese children's television.
I'm not kidding. There are Power Ranger fights throughout this film, but through a Miike filter you get something unbelievable... I mean, on one show early on we see these guys in their Power Ranger-esque suits taking on the chick from THE RING... long black hair covering her face... she gets out matched and then does about 50 backflips ending in a giant jump back into her well! No shit!!!
The flick is about a school teacher and family man who is an introvert. He's a failure in life. His family walks all over him, his students walk all over him, his colleagues walk all over him... But in his heart, he is a fighter. He loves a classic show called ZEBRAMAN. It ran for less than a season in the '70s, but the central character always appealed to him. In his spare time he sews a Zebraman costume for himself.
Somehow, somewhere evil aliens (who are transparent green CGI fetuses) are massing their strength and are planning on taking over the world. Of course, at some point this man is put the test and takes on the mantel of ZEBRAMAN! Somehow he gets superhuman powers and off to kicking the green asses of the alien horde he goes.
The film is cheesy, over the top and perfect fodder for you die hard Miike fans out there (like me). I don't know if there's much more to say... Green CGI fetus aliens Vs a man with the powers of a zebra? Not to mention the Bush bashing, Godzilla rip-off moments and fantasticly over the top lines like, "Thank you... Ze-bra...man!" What else do you need?
Anyway, that's it from me on this one, squirts. I'll be back soon with my views on KILL BILL v. 2 and the beginning of my coverage of SXSW! Until that day, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
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