"Buddy cop blocking"

Mild spoilers for The Hurt Locker will follow. Although if you haven’t seen it and aren’t planning on seeing it tomorrow, I’m not going to give away anything that will ruin it, and I might help you understand what all the fuss is about.

Is this familiar to anybody?

Sergeant [JT Sanborn] is an [aspiring] family man and sensible veteran [soldier] just trying to make it through the day unscathed. [Staff] Sergeant [William James] is a suicidal loose cannon [bomb defusing specialist] who doesn’t care if he even lives to see the end of the day. Reluctantly thrown together to solve the mysterious [bombing of a street in Iraq], the unlikely duo [encounters] a dangerous ring of [Iraqi insurgents] employing ex-military mercenaries. After a tragic turn of events, the mission becomes personal and the mismatched investigators must learn to trust one another as they wage a two-man war against [ennui, meaningless death and the inhumanity of neocolonial geopolitics].

Oh, I know where I saw this! It was drawn from an IMDB Plot Summary:

Sergeant Roger Murtaugh is an aging family man and sensible veteran police officer just trying to make it through the day unscathed. Sergeant Martin Riggs is a suicidal loose cannon cop who doesn’t care if he even lives to see the end of the day. Reluctantly thrown together to solve the mysterious murder of a banker’s daughter, the unlikely duo uncovers a dangerous ring of drug smugglers employing ex-military mercenaries. After a tragic turn of events, the mission becomes personal and the mismatched investigators must learn to trust one another as they wage a two-man war against a deadly criminal organization.

Look familiar? Unless you’re one of OTI’s valued younger readership, it should. It’s from 1987’s Lethal Weapon, perhaps the definitive “buddy cop” movie of the last forty years, made back when Mel Gibson was the sexiest man alive.

Yeah, the world has turned upside down several times since then. I hear there’s an iPhone app that can measure the rotational velocity. But one thing has held constant – the buddy cop movie is still close to all our hearts. Oh, except now they give it Academy Awards (or maybe they will – check out the Oscars next weekend).

How far does the similarity between The Hurt Locker and Lethal Weapon go? (Farther than you think) What are the differences? And what does this say about how we’ve changed as people since the salad days of Riggs and Murtaugh? Read on…

You're GODDAMNED RIGHT I ordered the Code Red, and it was delicious!

Galloway (Demi Moore): This past February you received a cautionary memo from the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, warning that the practice of enlisted men disciplining their own wasn’t to be condoned by officers.

Jessep (Jack Nicholson): Well, I submit to you that whoever wrote that memo has never faced the working end of a Soviet-made Cuban AK-47 assault rifle.

This is A Few Good Men in a nutshell. Colonel Jessep feels that the rules do not apply to him, because of the extraordinary danger his soldiers face.

But do you want the truth? Can you HANDLE the truth?

As far as I can tell, no Cuban soldier has attacked an American soldier in more than 50 years. In fact, Guantanamo Naval Base is considered so safe that families are allowed to live there. According to the Navy’s website, Gitmo has a child development center, a youth center, two schools, a Sunday school, a Boy Scout camp, and a Girl Scout camp. It’s probably a much safer place to raise a kid than my neighborhood.

[The "Musical Talmud" is our ongoing series that finds the true meaning behind pop music lyrics.]

Christmas Talmud? Oy vey. That’s our awkward way of wishing you a Happy Overthinking It Holiday Season. Let’s take a deeper look at John Lennon’s protest/ Christmas song, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” Since the meaning behind this song is already well known–it’s a protest against the Vietnam War–I’m going to use this as an opportunity to examine this song as an example of “earony.”

I think one of the things that makes Miyagi so cool is that he’s largely an enigma. Does anyone know how he made the money to afford all those antique cars? And if he’s so rich, why’s he working as a handyman? Then, there’s the allusion to his military service. Personally, the idea of Mr. Miyagi at war always fascinated me.  He’s an unstoppable badass as an old man; how much ass could he have kicked in his prime, if he had something to fight for?

About three years ago, I decided to write a WWII action movie. One of the characters is a young private named Kesuke Miyagi. He’s fighting in Italy when he hears that his wife has died in childbirth. Furious at America for keeping her in an internment camp, he deserts his unit to go drown his sorrows. When the Military Police try to take him in, he lashes out and almost kills one of them. He’s court-martialed and sentenced to death. But a Major who’s familiar with Miyagi’s karate skills offers him a deal: go on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines, and maybe you’ll get a pardon. (Yes, I’ve seen The Dirty Dozen, what of it?)

In the scene below, the Major and Miyagi take advantage of an air raid in Munich to barricade themselves in a bomb shelter with a group of military wives, who they hope can lead them to their target. And now, without further ado, here’s an excerpt from The Man Who Killed Hitler.

It’s right up there with music, poetry and love — since the dawn of time, mankind has heeded a primal calling to construct unstoppable, unmanned killing machines. So, today, during this Terminator week, let’s take a look back at some of those triumphs of ingenuity, the human spirit, and our inborn urge to breathe the words “Hasta la vista, baby” into the Pygmalion-warmed lips of our creations (as well as our misplaced belief they will never turn on us for our hubris).

So I’m reading this film studies article by Linda Williams called “Film Bodies,” which explores the connection between horror films, pornography, and tear-jerkers. She actually makes a pretty persuasive case. Each genre shows us actors experiencing the things we as audience members are supposed to be experiencing (whether it’s terror, horniness, or grief), each displays an excess (of violence, of sex, of emotion), and each focuses on the body engaged in a kind of fit (death throes, orgasm, sobbing) accompanied by inarticulate vocalizations (“NOOO!” “YEEES!” “WAAAH!”) and the fetishized release of bodily fluids (blood, semen, tears). I was a little skeptical about the inclusion of tears in that last one until I remembered this scene from Garden State, which is an emo money shot if I ever saw one. (The salient part appears right at the start of the video*, after the jump.)