The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Director: Tony Scott
Writers: Shane Black, Greg Hicks
DOP: Ward Russell
Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Taylor Negrons

An LAPD detective's protected female witness is murdered, prompting him and her boyfriend to investigate the crime that leads to a corrupt politician and a crooked football team owner.

The film had a lot riding on it on the back of Bruce Willis' success with the Die Hard films and Shane Black's script being at that point of time the most expensive one to be bought. It apparently had lot of production difficulties with Tony Scott clashing with Bruce Willis and Joel Silver, the producer. The script also underwent a lot of rewrites and you do feel that while watching the film. It begins quite well establishing the extremely cynical character played by Bruce Willis. He ends up reluctantly teaming up with the banned quarterback character played by Damon Wayans. It is another one of those odd couple films with lots of over the top action and violence filmed in the 90s style. The script that is quite clever in the first half of the film turns quite shit with blatant expositions and tonal shifts by the end. It didn't do well at the box office and that put an end to the sequel idea that they had planned for it at the end of the film.

Overall it begins as a fun watch which becomes quite ridiculous, in a bad way, as the film progresses. Bruce Willis has plenty of funny lines and some cringe-inducing ones as well. Early 90s had plenty of experiments going on with the ways films looked and edits were done. Some of them, like Natural Born Killers, haven't aged well at all. But I did like the look of this film.

Rating: 2.5/5

ഞാന്‍ ഗന്ധര്‍വന്‍ (Njan Gandharvan) (1991)

Director: P. Padmarajan
Writer:    P. Padmarajan
Cast:       Suparna Anand, Nitish Bharadwaj
Language: Malayalam

The film is an esoteric fantasy about a girl and her passion for a celestial lover, who keeps appearing from a wooden statue that she found on a beach but is invisible to others. In Hindu mythology, gandharvas act as messengers between God and humans. They are usually depicted as singers in the court of Gods and also acts as guards for the Somas (intoxicating drink served for Gods). In Hindu law, a Gandharva marriage is one contracted by mutual consent and without formal rituals. In the film, the nameless Gandharvan (Nitish Bharadwaj) tells the girl that they are governed by very strict rules of heaven. They are usually banished to Earth when Gods catch them on their flings with Apsaras, and on Earth, they are ought to take virginity of the girls that they encounter after which they are supposed to forget about each other. Gandharvan in the film is a rebel who wants to break the rules and become a human after being smitten by the human girl. 

Both the main characters in the film are non-Malayalees and I am not sure about the exact logic of such a casting decision but Padmrajan might have thought that familiar faces would get in the way of convincingly portraying what are very odd characters in mainstream cinema. Mythical fantasy set in contemporary times is not a common genre in Malayalam cinema and only other film I could think of which came before this is 'Pappan Priyapetta Pappn', which was a comedy with Yaman. King of Death, in it. To be fair, casting Nitish Bharadwaj must have been a no-brainer since he was of course famous for portraying the role of Shri Krishna in the TV series epic 'Mahabharatha'. 

When it comes to enjoying the film, dubbing involved with the two main characters do get in the way sometimes in the film. The basic story is very flimsy but you do get the typical feel that Padmarajan manages to get in his films aided by a haunting theme music. I am not sure exactly what Padmarajan is going for since the Gandharva in it is very much real as he is seen interacting with other characters in the film. Maybe what he is trying to convey is that Heaven is very much a totalitarian regime governed by strict rules to control its inhabitants. Compared to that, the Earth is miles better, and the girl's family is portrayed as a very practical one which does not mind to go by her choice. I am not really an expert on Hindu mythology and don't know whether he is giving an alternate view on things and if so, it could very well be worthwhile, but I didn't find it all that interesting. But there is a novelty factor because of the fantasy elements which makes it a good enough watch overall.

Padmarajn met with an untimely death within a week after its release. Film was not very successful at the box office but was very well received when it was aired on TV. Out of all the Padmarajan films that I have watched this one is my least favorite. Wim Wender's 'Wings of Desire' also had a story of an angel coming down to the Earth but there is not much similarity between the two films. The script for Njan Gandharvan is not adapted from any other literary work of Padmarajan and was an original screenplay for the film. The three songs in it are very good and in context but you do get the feel that Padmarajan is doing it because he is hamstrung by limited actors.

Rating: 3/5

                                                                       

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Director: James Cameron
Writers:  William Wisher Jr. , James Cameron
Cast:       Arnold Schwarzenneger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her young son John Connor, from a more advanced cyborg, made out of liquid metal. So we've got Arnold back, but this time as a hero, and it is explained away as: John Connor from future was able to reprogram it and sends it back in time to protect a young John Connor.

In the first terminator film, the terminator and the human soldier comes back in time using a time machine which was supposed to be destroyed. So that was the last chance for the things from future to affect the outcome by tweaking the events in the past. In T2, it is not explained how they were again able to come back in time. Only possible explanation is that both machines and humans have a set of time-machines each with which they are trying to affect things in the past. That kind of sucks because why can't they just go back to 1984 and try to kill Sarah Connor again. Things happening in T2 will be just one such attempt of many meaning that at the end of the day it doesn't amount to much in the large scheme of things. 

The version I watched was about 154 minutes long while the theatrical one was 137 minutes. The extra 17 minutes includes among other things a dream sequence involving the father of John Connor. The film can be divided into three halves: first one with Arnold saving John and helping John save Sarah from the mental institution she is in, second one in which they are on the run and goes to south where Sarah and John had stayed earlier training to fight, and the last sequence involving the assault at the cybernetic corporation who were developing the Skynet technology out of the things recovered from the terminator in the first film. Basically the first and last are kickass action set-pieces while the middle third is painfully boring stuff linking the two. Cameron tries to pull of some humor between John and Arnold which doesn't always work and Sarah is a nagging presence throughout. Sarah decides that she is supposed to alter the nuclear war fate, logic of which is presented in the film in a very underwhelming manner, and decides to kill the scientist who is developing the chip that will lead to Skynet and details about him are provided by Arnold. 

Overall it is a good watch but the film as a whole is uneven. They could have done away with the melodramatic parts and decided to go for all out action. I don't know whether the shorter theatrical cut might have changed this a bit. The story was anyway not going to be as interesting as the first. You do get a very early 90s vibe in the way it was filmed and I was kind of reminded of Natural Born Killers, maybe because of the desert. The kid playing John Connor is not very good, partly due to script,  and Home Alone vibe doesn't go well with The Terminator franchise. All that said, the action sequences were great making use of the whopping $94 million budget and the CGI was cutting edge stuff for early 90s. Shame that Cameron got a hard-on for CGI and went on to make thoroughly average films like Titanic and Avatar since then. I haven't seen 'True Lies' which came after T-2. As for the Terminator franchise, two other films came out both of which were supposedly crap. Another one, titled 'Terminator Genisys, featuring Arnold is slated for release this year and I have not interest in watching that. 

Rating: 3.5/5