The Dead Pool (1988)

Director: Buddy Van Horn

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: Never. And now I’ve seen all of the Dirty Harry films.

Did I Like It: I’d been looking so forward to this one, given the absolutely bananas cast on display, all before they became anything that would be featured above the title. Carrey is here before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) made him a permanent light in the firmament, and even before Neeson because “that one guy in cool films who isn’t Bruce Campbell” in Darkman (1990). I honestly don’t think I’ve managed to overhype myself on a movie this much since The Flash (2023).

I was really wanting it to be bananas, all the while knowing that I was setting myself up for a goodly amount of disappointment. It never even occurred to me that Carrey is only here in the role of the guy that they find dead in the first few minutes of a Law & Order episode.

There’s probably a reason that both Neeson and Carrey had to wait for another couple of years before they could be considered stars, and it is probably the same reason that Eastwood swore off the prospect of another entry in the series*. This is not the triumphant conclusion one might think of. It’s not oddly funny like The Enforcer (1976), but it might be unreasonable to expect a part five of a series to reach up to the heights of previous entries. The real damning thing here is that Harry may simply not be the hero that the 80s need. Gone are the days where most Americans felt lost amidst a world that was growing too fast for them, and seemed like it had gone completely insane. That’s where Harry thrived: being grumpy but strangely fair among people he would never understand. Now he just seems grumpy.

*He could have gotten away with—and probably be forgiven for—making the main character of Gran Torino (2008) the Unforgiven (1992) for Callahan.

Hemingway (2021)

Director: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick

Cast: Jeff Daniels, Patricia Clarkson, Mary-Louise Parker, Keri Russell

Have I Seen it Before: No, at the time of this writing, the film is brand new. Is this my first review of a movie released in 2021? Looking over the records, I did post a review of Zack Synder’s Justice League (2021), but as I had no capacity to review such a thing, Lora wrote that review.

Did I Like It: And that should be pretty telling. I’m not sure at what point the prospect of spending four hours with superheroes became a chore, and the opportunity of spending 6 hours with a man of letters who was gleefully awful even to those closest to him. I must have become so fussy.

I realize I have reviewed very few documentaries here on the site. I’ve been watching a lot of them, but as they are part of screening duties for a festival, reviews never find their way here. Gene Siskel said once—and my memory fails, he might have been quoting someone else—that he had long since come to prefer documentaries, as it would be time spent with a better class of people.

Documentaries—even flawed ones—will evade the essential phoniness which will weigh down even the greatest narrative films. And, thankfully, as this comes from Ken Burns, there is hardly a flaw to find. Is there a filmmaker who came onto the scene with Brooklyn Bridge (1982)* and became ubiquitous with the documentary form as of The Civil War (1990)**, and has maintained that level of craft throughout nearly forty years? If there is such a master, their name escapes me.

And yet, am I spending time with a better class of person? The reams of words written—and for that matter, the hours of footage displayed—about Hemingway’s failings are too numerous to have any hope to contribute anything new here. He was a brute, a drunk, and in the last years of his life a hateful paranoiac. You can’t dismiss any of that because he knew how to put together an English sentence. Can you contextualize the man’s flaws and still appreciate the work? 

There are three types of failed people where the question of whether the work still has value despite their less-desirable traits. 

There are those whose political beliefs become—or always were odious. Think someone like Frank Miller. Hemingway’s politics were incidental, but in action nearly always to the left, or at the very least anti-facist.

There are those whose behavior is so fundamentally wrong, that even the work becomes revolting in retrospect. Think Woody Allen. If any of his wives, or his children, or F. Scott Fitzgerald were still alive, I think they would have a legitimate beef. Otherwise, I am willing to label being an asshole in the abstract as a venal rather than mortal sin.

Then there are those who wished to be good, but due to being felled by alcoholism, multiple concussions, and the general makeup of human failures, never succeed in being the good men they would have wished. This is Hemingway. A failure. The film is an inspiration and a cautionary tale in equal measure.

*Which—if I’ve seen it—I have since tragically forgotten it. Must make a point to track it down. With my new account with PBS.org, maybe that will be within reach.

**Which I’m nearly always up for re-watching.