Our Flick of the Week is “Godzilla,” and given the inherent drama of making a movie about the world’s most terrifying giant lizard, “Godzilla” should have been scarier than it is.
The last thing I expected to demand of this film is for it to be more violent. Too often the violence is communicated verbally rather than pictorially. Characters scream in reaction shots rather than having their heads knocked off by the lizard’s tail.
In one bit of dialogue, we are told, as Godzilla trashes Manhattan, that looters have emptied out the Disney and Warner Bros. stores on 57th Street. But we never see that happen, thus blowing a naturally comic sequence — Godzilla mauling assorted plush toys.
Indeed, Godzilla’s entire destructive jaunt through Midtown Manhattan is tossed away without pictorial reference to commercial icons. Only a sequence involving Madison Square Garden approaches the potential of this film.
But still, even there, obvious jokes about the incompetence of the New York Knicks are not exploited. They could have had Patrick Ewing or John Starks attempt to throw a bomb down Godzilla’s mouth . . . and miss.
The story breaks no new ground by blaming nuclear testing for the new virulence of Godzilla. The French government turns out to be responsible. Indicative of the routine nature of the screenplay is that jokes about French and American coffee are repeated endlessly.
Of course, the bottom line must be: Just how scary is Godzilla, the monster?
Clearly, he ranks below the shark in “Jaws” and the creature in “Alien” in terms of inspiring fear. Morphing special effects might wisely have been employed to present the monster as a more fluid, omnipresent threat.
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In a form of myopic revenge, producer/co-writer Dean Devlin has included a hackneyed couple of characters, New York Mayor Ebert and sidekick Gene, because he told USA Today that the critics haven’t liked his previous work. I’m not amused, and the reference seems petty within the context of this huge enterprise.
“Titanic” succeeded because it balanced romance and terror. “Godzilla” has precious little of either. Rated PG-13. (star) (star) 1/2
– BULWORTH. Twenty-three years ago, Warren Beatty established his reputation as a powerful political filmmaker by producing “Shampoo,” a groundbreaking picture that framed personal hypocrisy and loose morals against the American political process. At the time of the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon was shown to have the moral backbone of a Hollywood hairdresser.
Beatty strikes again and more savagely with “Bulworth,” a film that states as clearly as the street signs in Los Angeles that America is going the WRONG WAY. “What we used to call America,” says Senatorial candidate Jay Billington Bulworth, “is going down the drain.”
Flushing our national soul down that drain is a political process built on payoffs and an electorate that responds only to sensationalism. In making that last charge, “Bulworth,” a most entertaining screed, aligns itself with another fine film from this most remarkable season of American political filmmaking, “Primary Colors.” In neither film is any issue taken seriously by either candidate, although “Bulworth” does speculate seriously on why there is precious little leadership in the African-American community.
Beatty, who co-wrote and directed the picture gives a top-flight performance, excelling midway through his campaign when he displays a bone-crushing physical exhaustion that asks us who in their right mind would go through any of this. He may be a winner, but he is in deep pain.
Also standing out in the cast is the fine character actor Oliver Platt playing a principal aide to the senator. Platt is instantly credible in any role he plays, a most unusual talent.
The TV ad campaign for “Bulworth” presents the candidate as an outrageous speaker who offends every ethnic and special interest group. But more often than not, Bulworth is simply saying the truth about how the political game is played these days, and in that way, by ripping apart a cultural institution, the film that “Bulworth” most recalls is not a politically oriented one but Paddy Chayefsky’s slam-job on television, “Network” (1976) . R. (star) (star) (star) 1/2