Falcon Rising JBTF10...
Estimated Read-Time: 17.4 minutes
JBTF10? Worth Watching.
Review synopsis: Well, as noted, two roads now diverge into the cinematic wood for this movie. Will it choose the path less traveled? For the sake of what the filmmakers have chosen to open with, I hope so. I’d love to see this continue on as a story of redemption as opposed to revenge. My hope would be (post its first 10 min) Falcon Rising goes on to be wonderful example of action as story.
And not just because I think Michael Jai White has the chops to make it work. He does. But if modest little movies like Falcon Rising are willing to embrace action as a narrative device, as opposed to sheer kinetic spectacle, it's all the more reason to expect the mega-budgeted Jupiter Rising should do the same.
Stars: Michael Jai White, Neal McDonough, Laila Ali
Directed by: Ernie Barbarash
Written by: Y.T. Parazi
Check Falcon Rising availability via: JustWatch
JBTF10 Review: Falcon Rising
Found by Netflixing: Jupiter Ascending
The Wachowskis’ last and latest film, Jupiter Ascending, premiered in theaters, Feb. 6, 2014 (around the time I first wrote this review), and promised to carry Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis through an eye-peeling, pan-galactic action romp. And it’s a shame they didn’t pull a quote from that last line to promote it. Because romps + pan-galactism = asses in seats. (And here in 2018, as I’m revising this, we now know not many asses ascended into seats during the film’s theatrical run. Oh well, I hear Sense8 is okay…)
Jupiter Ascending led me to Falcon Rising by way of a Netflix search. On the cover, Michael Jai White is mid jumpkick, wielding two silver pistols. Okay. Sold.
Falcon Rising begins with a fish. A yellow fish, swimming in a fish tank that needs to be cleaned. After a moment, the shot tracks and suddenly we find ourselves right the hell up in Michael Jai White’s face. This super close-up is intense, even if you don't know what a badass White is. I don’t feel at all uncomfortable this early in the film as I'm assuming this is either: 1) Falcon; or 2) a guy who will become "The Falcon."
So we're just going to call him Falcon from now on. Less to type.
Cut to a table. Falcon sets three shot glasses down in a row as we enjoy a nice little camera move. He then places one bullet in the second glass. Then two in the third. Each is then filled with whiskey.
He begins counting or praying, gesturing above the glasses with his hand, and we hear him saying last names. The meaning of this little mnemonic will hopefully arrive when the plot does. A quick close-up on some dog tags lying about confirm that, yes, this is Falcon.
This little ritual ends on the third glass, and Falcon drinks. Bullets and all.
But after a moment, Falcon spits the bullets back out. Smart. He then loads each into a revolver, spins the chamber and places the barrel under his chin. Not so smart. Oblivious, the yellow fish swims around gently in the background. Falcon pulls the trigger. Click. There is a pause. Falcon says (almost sadly), “Not your week …” Another pause. Then boom, we cut to aerial shots of New York City.
Okay.
These aerial shots of NYC are pretty, but also pretty generic. After the intensity and intimacy of the last scene, I’m hoping we don’t lose a lot of time on second-unit stuff.
Cut to Falcon walking down the street to, what turns out to be, a liquor store. Despite being a very sunny day, our man is quite subdued. He may not have shot himself (just now?), but he seems pretty serious about making his liver take a bullet instead.
He walks into the store and right up to a perplexing endcap. It’s stocked both with classy hard alcohol and cheap wine. I know this is cheap wine because it looks like the wine I buy. When I am feeling classy and buy wine in a bottle. Now if it were boxed wine Falcon was looking at, this movie would instantly begin operating on another level. Falcon, action hero, known for his jump-kicking and dual pistol–wielding — as well as his appreciation for the cost and convenience of Franzia.
Not this time though. Two guys burst in. Robbers, because that's how casting was asked to dress them. One guy dashes behind the counter to grab at the cash in the register. His partner, holding a shotgun, orders everyone to the ground.
Everyone in the liquor store hits the dirt. But not Falcon. He’s putting a lot of thought into which bottle of booze he’s going to buy and cannot be bothered at the moment. This lack of ground-getting-down-on-ing does not make Shotgun happy. He approaches Falcon, repeating himself in case Falcon did not hear him. That's actually a very considerate thing to do.
Falcon turns and proceeds to channel some Lethal Weapon. Not afraid to die (or hiding it very well), Falcon pulls the end of the weapon to his chest and proceeds to offer Shotgun advice on the best way to kill him.
Unstable heroes and the "Go ahead, shoot me" bit aren’t new. But Falcon, confident and intense, doesn't come across as unhinged, even though we just watched him almost take his life a moment ago. Is this indicative of a character who's seen such horrors in life that armed robbery is just a bother? Or does White just have a hard time showing chinks in the armor of his characters? Maybe he wasn't directed to.
Shotgun is perplexed. We cut quickly to his partner, wearing sunglasses, hoodie up, screaming at his buddy to pull the trigger. It’s a funny cut for some reason. It looks like they just gave this poor guy the hoodie and glasses and said, “There. Now you’re a robber.”
Falcon quickly gets bored, because this is time he could be spending drinking Franzia. Or, better yet, cleaning out that fish tank. He ups the game, placing the shotgun against his forehead and pumping its handle. A shell casing flies out.
This action makes no sense (as a fully loaded shotgun is primed to fire without an initial pump). But, like the Wilhelm Scream, it appears in movies again and again. If you’re holding a shotgun, and you’re in need of making a point, you pump it so that poor, wasted, first shell casing can fly out and hit the floor.
This reminds me of a reddit thread discussing sound design in film and how the use of “real” sounds in a movie (e.g., gunshots, footsteps, punches) are off-putting. They break the spell we need in order to suspend disbelief and enjoy what we're watching. And methinks the shotgun/shell trope is tangled up in some of that spellcraft.
Because here, the shotgun exists to serve the scene and underscore Falcon’s willingness to die. The pump and the shell flying out tell us that our hero is just a trigger-pull away from doom. And the functionality of a shotgun supports this dramatic tension much more effectively than other types of firearms (e.g., bazooka or dart gun). So while this all makes its own sort of sense, I do wish I knew of an example where the shotgun trope was successfully defeated.
While we’ve been thinking here, Falcon’s patience has finally run out. He plucks the shotgun out of the robber’s hands and clubs him upside the head with it.
We cut to Sunglasses who decides to try and stick Falcon in the gut with a knife. This is the martial arts equivalent of pins being set up for you at the end of the bowling lane. Falcon easily disarms the man and lays into him. But not before flashing back on some stressful combat situations. It's clearer now that he was some sort of soldier somewhere in the Middle East. These flashbacks are beginning to feel less like character insights and more like plot setups.
This brief bit of action ends with Falcon slamming Sunglasses up against a shelf of toilet paper and holding him there. In fact, dude is SO slammed against this shelf that Falcon doesn’t even need to look at him. It's a very Bruce Lee way to end a fight scene, pausing in the aftermath to focus on our hero's reaction to what's been done.
This could be a great sign for the fight scenes in this movie. Lee has influenced thousands of actors since his death. Or perhaps, in part, because of it. Sadly this influence is often superficial, manifesting as mere imitation, the aping of his physical and vocal mannerisms. But Michael Jai White seems to be an actor who's internalized a deeper aspect of Lee’s work, the idea that a fight scene is not a just break in the story. A fight can tell a story. Done well, a fight can BE the story.
Lee wasn’t alone in this belief, as it was shared by the late swordmaster Bob Anderson, who ensured Inigo Montoya’s first duel with Westley and Luke’s first duel against Vader were anything but mere action.
Falcon eventually lets the guy drop, grabs his booze, and picks up the wad of cash Sunglasses dropped as he was getting dispatched. As Falcon approaches the counter and the still-stunned clerk, I’m betting even-money he’ll wave Falcon off from paying, saying, “This one’s on the house.”
But Falcon instead quips, “Keep the change.”
And I laugh.
Okay movie, you got me on that one.
And maybe I shouldn’t be laughing? It’s weird as we go back to Falcon’s apartment where he drinks and works out and has more flashbacks and punches a hole through his wall in the process. Firstly, veterans and substance abuse is no joke. In fact, just thinking about this now sidetracked me a bit to find the PTSD Foundation of America. For just $30 you can help one soldier working through PTSD. Check it out. It’s a well-reviewed organization. Do what you can.
Secondly, this film introduced itself with our hero putting a gun to a chin and pulling the trigger. After establishing that he’s suffering, self-medicating and potentially suicidal, he’s now punching holes in the wall. That’s pretty heavy for the first 10 minutes of a movie. It’s built, by this point, a certain tragic equity. How this film goes on to spend this equity will be a true mark of its character.
Point being, using this tragic opening as a foundation to give an action movie some surprising weight and nuance is one thing. Using it as an excuse for our main character to be as violent as our director and writer want him to be is another. The “B-movie” excuse isn’t one to have your cake and eat it too.
After obliterating his wall, we cut to Falcon passed out on his couch. Only his feet are covered by a blanket. And why is this? I don’t know. Just recently on the Today show, they said something like 90% of us sleep completely covered EXCEPT for our feet. Falcon is just that unique? But wait, the blanket is the same yellow color as the fish swimming in the tank behind him, so ... maybe this all comes together in the third act. Probably.
He’s woken by someone pounding at his door. As Falcon wakes and hangovers to his feet, we get a better look at his apartment. There are punch marks all over. The TV has been punched. The mirror has been punched. The poor cupboards ... again, it’s troubling this reads as a funny reveal as opposed to the sanctuary of a tortured soul.
Suddenly a woman walks in, luggage in tow. Uh oh. Although we get the sense that Falcon has just been busted, we don’t get a lover vibe out of these two. Turns out, it’s his sister. He was supposed to pick her up from the airport. (Falcon has a car? If he does, bet it’s a muscle car.) We feel like this isn’t the first time Falcon has let his sister down. We also wonder why she doesn’t comment on how everything in his apartment has been punched. It would only take her looking at those punches, and her then looking at him, and him then looking ashamed or defiant or something, to kind of make it work. But she doesn’t. Instead, we just cut to dinner.
I had dinner in New York once. It was a sandwich in a pita pocket. That doesn’t sound amazing. But it was amazing. Because when you're a kid from Iowa visiting New York, every pita pocket is amazing. And delis have pickles just out on the table. And you can eat as many as you want. It's wonderful.
This restaurant reads as a nice restaurant. Falcon pours himself some more wine. Sis refuses, saying something about having had enough at the wedding. Always a bridesmaid, she adds. With that comment, I conclude she is probably going to die in the next 20-30 minutes.
There is an interesting moment where Falcon snatches a notebook she has with her, noting that if she spent less time on it, she might have more time for relationships. What’s in the notebook, movie?
Conversation quickly turns to Falcon’s well-being. He swears he’s taking his meds and shakes the bottle to prove he has them. Sis snatches them, opens them, then pops one in her mouth. The fuck? For a second, the movie has me completely rethinking her character, but it turns out she’s only calling his bluff. They’re mints. Mints that must not smell very minty. Maybe she has a cold.
Falcon’s been busted again.
And so have we.
That's 10.
