Running Scared
Maybe anything is possible if you hope hard enough. Maybe Wayne Kramer’s idiotic film can mean something. Just maybe, and grab your saltshakers here if I slug it up, maybe it represents the lost cause of regaining past cinema disguised in a rapid, violent race of meaningless thrills a mask of the very thing being argued against. “ I don’t like cowboys,” comments Oleg, the boy next door in the most significant scene not long into the first half of the film. The opinion-less old man living with Paul Walker’s Joey Gazelle representing a distant past. Ansor, the neighbor, representing golden age , his son the new. “ Don’t you walk away from the duke” yells Ansor in this same scene referring to John Wayne. Paul Walker representing cinema itself, chasing after his gun…which can only mean safe haven ( or hope from future dangers of movies). The prostitute, who calls Oleg ‘papa’ would be his guardian, the element of poison that relates or protects the viewer from reality. The chase its self, with overacted antics throughout, representing the traditional poisons nudity, violence, profanity. The gangsters maybe representing the older loud mouths who gang up to rant on and on without giving this new cinema a chance. Most importantly Joey’s son representing the more impressionable youth between him and Oleg. While Armond White’s praise and comparison to DePalma (one of my favorite directors) is a bit extreme (this is just a movie to think about when you’ve passed after the puff), his point of a search for humanism dials in to what I saw. This very well could just be a chase movie….but if what Joey was looking for was hope….why cant I?
Maybe anything is possible if you hope hard enough. Maybe Wayne Kramer’s idiotic film can mean something. Just maybe, and grab your saltshakers here if I slug it up, maybe it represents the lost cause of regaining past cinema disguised in a rapid, violent race of meaningless thrills a mask of the very thing being argued against. “ I don’t like cowboys,” comments Oleg, the boy next door in the most significant scene not long into the first half of the film. The opinion-less old man living with Paul Walker’s Joey Gazelle representing a distant past. Ansor, the neighbor, representing golden age , his son the new. “ Don’t you walk away from the duke” yells Ansor in this same scene referring to John Wayne. Paul Walker representing cinema itself, chasing after his gun…which can only mean safe haven ( or hope from future dangers of movies). The prostitute, who calls Oleg ‘papa’ would be his guardian, the element of poison that relates or protects the viewer from reality. The chase its self, with overacted antics throughout, representing the traditional poisons nudity, violence, profanity. The gangsters maybe representing the older loud mouths who gang up to rant on and on without giving this new cinema a chance. Most importantly Joey’s son representing the more impressionable youth between him and Oleg. While Armond White’s praise and comparison to DePalma (one of my favorite directors) is a bit extreme (this is just a movie to think about when you’ve passed after the puff), his point of a search for humanism dials in to what I saw. This very well could just be a chase movie….but if what Joey was looking for was hope….why cant I?
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