Escape from New York (1981)

Director: John Carpenter
Writers: John Carpenter, Nick Castle
DOP: Dean Cundey
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton

In 1997, when the U.S. President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.

Well, I guess it is a film of its time which essentially means that it has not aged well. There are films like 'The Warriors' from 1979 which has enough going for it so that it is still a great watch despite being quite campy. Escape from New York is not one such. I only checked it out because I quite liked 'The Thing', the only other John Carpenter film that I have watched and have no interest in watching other famous films of his like 'Halloween'. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is a former US forces personnel, apparent from the line that 'You flew the gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?', which also means that US was recently at war with USSR. The President was due to attend a meeting with the Russians and the Chinese  and it is of paramount importance that he is freed to do so within 24 hours. Lee Van Cleef ( The Bad from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) forces Snake to take up the mission in exchange for Pardon after injecting something which will kill him in 24 hours time if he doesn't come back with the President. John Carpenter supposedly wanted to capture the cynicism people had with politics post Watergate scandal. The Manhattan shown in the film is quite like a Terry Gilliam sort of place.

It was interesting to see a suicide mission involving a hijacked plane crashing into a building in Manhattan. It was not World Trade Center buildings but they do feature in the film. It is overall a dry watch. It did get a sequel titled Escape From L.A with Kurt Russell reprising his role as Snake Plissken.

Rating: 2/5

കള്ളൻ പവിത്രൻ (Kallan Pavithran) (1981)

Director: Padmarajan
Writer:    Padmarajan
Cinematographer: Vipin Das
Cast:         Nedumudi Venu, Bharat Gopi, Adoor Bhasi, Beena
Language: Malayalam

Pavithran (Nedumudi Venu) is a small time thief with two families, one with his official wife and another with his mistress. A rich mill owner (Bharat Gopi) accuses him of stealing some utensils from his home. As he starts to snoops around Pavithran's mistress' home, he begins a relationship with her. Meanwhile, Pavithran meets a mysterious merchant from town while trying to sell the utensils who shows him his huge utensils warehouse which he doesn't care to lock because of the notoriety of snakes in there. Affected by this meeting, Pavithran moves back in with his official wife but slowly his fortunes starts turning with him becoming rich and driving his nemesis' business down to the ground.

The film is an adaptation of Padmarajan's short story with the same name and it is the first commercial hit of his career as a director. Film is basically about the base instincts of male and female genders, which is largely driven by evolutionary factors. Sex doesn't cost males much and it is the opposite for women. So males tend to think with their dick while females place a lot of importance to financial security. People can complain and wallow about this or this stereotyping but that is how we're predisposed to behave. All the main characters in this film behave in this manner and Adoor Bhasi's character can be seen as The God in the proverbial biblical sense. He gives Pavithran the complete freewill by showing him the warehouse lacking solid security and hanging it like the Apple from Eden. Or maybe he is the devil but it doesn't matter. Anyway it is unabashedly a morality tale with a surreal twist. Padmarajan even puts the moral message in text format at the end in a light fashion.

It is a great watch with very raw characters. Performances are excellent and Bharat Gopi is cast against his type. You would normally expect Gopi and Venu to switch places in such a story. It seems the early Padmarajan films and the ones he wrote for other directors primarily dealt with base human desires.

Rating: 4.5/5 

കോലങ്ങൾ (Kolangal) (1981)

Director: K. G. George
Writers:  P.J. Antony, K.G. George
Cast:         Rajam K. Nair, Menaka, Nedumudi Venu, Thilakan
Language: Malayalam

Film is an adaptation of P.J. Antony's novel 'Oru Gramathinte Almavu' which translates as 'A Village's Soul'. It is set in a central Kerala village and basically got all types of characters that will be there in a traditional village. The main storyline is about two neighbouring families run by two matriarchs who are at loggerheads with each other due to garden-variety neighbourly reasons. Both these matriarchs encourages gossips about each other's daughters which ultimately proves to be self-destructive.

It is common for Malayalam films from recent times to glorify village life and project them as models of goodness. Indian reality is such that these villages are, more often than not, bastions of conservatism and petiness. They tend to be tyrannical for its younger generation who don't want to conform. You have all sorts of people keeping an eye on your lives and dictating it in direct and indirect manners. The village characters in this film are: Nedumudi Venu- Goon and a peeping Tom, Thilakan- Rich drunk guy, a professional gossiper, Sreenivasan- tea shop owner, a sensible village elder and the goodish boatman. It all might sound very clichéd but they are done very well rooted on reality. Panchavadipaalam did an exaggerated take on political happenings in a village and Kolangal does the same on normal village life in a not very exaggerated manner.

It would have been jarring if it was the male characters who were solely destroying the lives of the younger daughters but it is alright as it is their mothers who are doing the worst with their petiness. Another thing which makes the film stands out is that most of the characters in it are Christians and from a poor background which is not a usual combination in malayalam films. Cinematography and the frames are quite great, which is also unusual for malayalam films from those era. The background music when Nedumudi Venu does his peeping Tom routine is pure genius. A minor gripe I have with the film is that some of its characters are a bit cartoonishly goodish in nature and there is an element of compensating for its other perennially cunning characters. Rajam K. Nair deservedly won a state award for her portrayal of the working class matriarch. It is also an early film from Thilakan's career who is unsurprisingly excellent as the drunk guy with Hitler moustache.

Rating: 4.5/5

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Director: George Miller
Writers:  Terry Hayes, George Miller, Brian Hannant
Cast:       Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston

In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline rich, community escape a band of bandits. The film begins with an explanation on how the apocalypse came about, which was not done in the first Mad Max film, and how Max became 'Mad' by giving a synopsis of what happened in the first film. Funny thing is that the synopsis was all we needed instead of the shitfest that was the first film. To be fair, the success of it was what generated the sequel which is vastly better than the former. I don't think I have seen another franchise in which there is such a vast difference in terms of quality, in a good way, between the first film and the second. 

Mad Max 2 is everything that Mad Max 1 is not. It comes with vastly superior characters, coherent plot which is engagingly slow-burn, superior writing despite minimal dialog (only 16 lines for Mad Max), on-screen violence and a  jaw-dropping set-piece at the end. The much higher budget is very well used and the widescreen cinematography is exquisite. As for the title character, Max, he is not much different from the first film and maybe he is slightly more anarchic and cynical. The 'Mad' bit in his name is an oxymoron since he is totally logical in his actions considering the circumstances. The bad guys in the film is also vastly better with perfectly logical reasons for their behavior. One could even question whether they are that bad at all. They just want some gasoline whereas the people whom Max is helping are hoarding the oil at a facility that they are protecting and they want to take some of it to go 2000 miles north where it is much more inhabitable. On the way out they are planning to destroy the facility which is kind of a dick move from their part. It can of course be seen as a metaphor for the big oil companies (seven sisters) who extracts everything from places like Africa leaving the natives without anything good. 'Seven Sisters' reference is thrown in the film with it being the logo of the tanker with which final escape is made. The Feral kid who doesn't utter a single line in the film is also particularly great and he could be very much in the new Mad Max film that is coming out later this year with Tom Hardy. I am totally excited about that now. 

Film was made on a budget of A$4.5 million, ten times that of the first one, but was not as successful as the first one because of a botched up release. It still made considerable amount of money, $35 million, but that should be put into context of first film making $100 million. First one was made in 1979 but had only got a limited release in US close to the time second one got released. So they went with the title Road Warrior, dropping Mad Max from it, so as not to confuse people and underestimating its popularity in North America. So many in US didn't even realize that it was a sequel to the original Mad Max since the brief black & white shots from the first one in it is quite easy to miss. 

Overall it is a great watch and I would recommend people who are planning to get into Max Max films to skip the first film and go directly to watch this one. The third one is supposed to be not this good but I am certainly gonna watch it since it cannot be any worse than the first film. It being PG-13 is a huge turn-off though. There is a strange and uneasy eroticism to the whole thing which is also true for the first film. Mad Max 2: Road Warrior is certainly one of the best in this genre and the soundtrack reminded me of one used in Matrix Reloaded during that famous freeway chase sequence. Film is not all about Mel Gibson and rest of the cast are also good. Another great thing about Max in this is that he is not 'always right in decision-making' kind of lead and is prone to fuck-ups from his side also.

Rating: 4.5/5