Bloggit's Journal - Sean Connery as Bruce Willis?!?

That's not really fair. Bruce didn't even play Bruce until 1988, in Die Hard. Prior to that, he tended bars, with a brief (1985-1988) stint in the wonderful Moonlighting. So there's like no chance that Sean Connery was imitating Bruce. Plus this isn't that big a departure from the James Bond characters Sean played, prior to Roger Moore turning them into suave-camp.

Still, this was a fluff-action movie. As such, it had:

• A basic intro. Good vs. Bad People. Bad people have more facial hair and tend to be large but flabby. Good people have problems with their relationships.
  • This seems to apply to real life too.
• The love-interest leaves, increasing the dynamic tension... which must be hard work!
• A good buddy-relationship is formed. (Uncharacteristically, in this movie, it's with a female doctor, but there's no sexual tension, just buddy.)
• The good guy gets injured quickly. In his arm. Which somehow causes a limp. But it's always the left arm, so shooting can still happen. Except that now the weak-and-injured left arm has to support the healthy, sun-tanned, vacationing-in-Bermuda right arm.
• And of course the odds are 4-to-1. Or 40-to-1 for Bruce later. Inflation donchaknow. Later in Hot Shots! Part Deux, Charlie Sheen did around 400-to-1. In a running on-screen count. I'm expecting Zohan to do 4000-to-1.
• The good guy wins. Duh.
• And gets his wife back. Except, remember, she did the leaving. Not him. He was too inthenthitive! So we've weakened-and-humanized him by showing dependency on a capricious disloyal love interest.

  Although in Outland, he simply emails her that he will make it to the ship on time. But this was 1980 or so. Manhood was still measured in chest hairs, gold chains and T-Top Firebird Trans-Ams. (An American car that looked sporty but had the same chassis, engine, transmission and weight as a station wagon.)

Reboot...

On the bright side, it wasn't a comedy romance. We know in the first fifteen seconds the entire plot, which invariably consists of that bullet list above, but at the very least the whole "bad guy in power, outnumbered armed enemies, good guys win" shtick. And we know the character development: Somebody will prove unexpectedly loyal. So the only reason to watch is the battles.

This is why I like the unusual movies. I want to be entertained, but I don't want to watch the same rerun every time.

Oh yeah, and the movie? Uninspiring. The beginning was fine but a major theme throughout the movie was motivation. Specifically is O'Neil (Connery's character) fighting the system and drug-pushers because he wants pay-out (no), because he's trying to do the right thing (unclear) or because he's trying to prove that he's more than a two-bit wash-out space marshall (also unclear.) Typically this would be resolved by his response after taking down the top bad guys. But the movie ends right after their hired henchmen go down. When the credits roll, we know he has decided to leave the station and go to where his family has fled to, but the evil station manager and all corporate heads are still in-place.

Which means the movie lacks any closure. What a let down! At least Bruce tends to shoot the bad guys.