The other day, I pulled (what turned out to be) a most excellent Aussie offering from the DVD collection at the library…”The Rage in Placid Lake” (written and directed by Tony McNamara, 2003). It was hilarious! Basically, it’s about the early life of two people…Placid Lake (played by a young Jordan Brooking and Ben Lee as the older Placid) and his girlfriend, Gemma Taylor (played by a young Eleeza Hooker and Rose Byrne as the older Gemma), who have at least one thing in common…dysfunctional and neglectful parents. To give you some idea of why Placid might be raging, we’ll start at the beginning: Placid’s Mother takes him to his first day of school…dressed as a girl.“Mummy, I can't”.
“Darling, just remember you're challenging their pre-conceived notions of sexuality.” (PSST, Mom…they’re like 8 years old, you twit!)
Three guys immediately kick the snot of him. Lesson well learned…except for one small, teensy, weensy little oversight: these three guys continued to kick the snot out of Placid…on sight…for the next two decades. Thanks Ma….
“Take a deep breath, Placid. Breath in. Breath out. Find the good in this. Anger won’t get you anywhere.” Thanks Dad…
Gemma doesn’t have it much better. One day, when she was around 8 years old, her Daddy gave her two bunny rabbits.
“Oooh, bunnies.”
“Dissect one and put mascara on the other.”
This all nears critical mass, when Placid approaches the bullies one day and, rather than spend the entire day avoiding them, he just asks them
to “get it over with”…. which they do. Critical mass occurs when Placid lands, face down, on the cement after a 20-foot fall. After the full body cast is removed, Placid rages…
You can’t even imagine how crushed his parents (who he addresses as Sylvia and Doug) are when they come home from a month or so of communing with the indigenous people of some obscure island, to find that Placid has, indeed, raged. He has become an insurance salesman…a George Bush haircut, suit and all.
“Where have we gone wrong, Placid?”
This phase of Placid’s rage is one of the funniest segments that I’ve seen in ages. When his prospective boss asks him why he wants to work for the company, Placid answers, “To hide.” His prospective boss responds with, “Okay. This is a good place to hide.” His utter failure to get anything done gets Placid promoted to the Fast Track Program, where he meets another fast-tracker…the steamy Jane (played by Saskia Smith). The first thing out of her mouth was a request for sex in the copy room (“I can’t get all of this work done with all of this tension”). Placid was awkward, yet affable, and slow to respond, as Jane slides her hand down into her skirt. Flip frame to the copy room where the deed was done. They end up going out and while sitting in a club, Jane makes a special request of Placid: when they get home, she wants Placid to inflict a little pain while having sex with her. You need to understand that she wants absolutely no emotional involvement. Just the sex…and now some pain.
“Why?” asks Placid.
“So I can feel something,” Jane replies.
Well, let me tell you something, Jane, you’re taking a big risk here, because Placid is a “feelie” kind of guy. So, as long as you have no problem pleasuring yourself, may I suggest that you head to your nearest video store and rent Antoine Fuqua’s “Tears of the Sun” (also released in 2003). This film will make you “feel something” without the risk of crossing over into the world of real pain that awaits you in a committed relationship (or a spanking gone wrong).
Let me begin by throwing a five at Fuqua for some masterful directing. In his previous effort, “Training Day” (2001), Fuqua unleashed Denzel Washington who released more energy than the first and last scenes in “Saving Private Ryan”, combined. In “Tears”, Fuqua recruited super hero, Bruce Willis, to lead a team of Navy Seals to extract all non-indigenous members (meaning, get the white people out of there before the advancing rebels arrive) from a jungle hospital in war-ravaged Nigeria. But, Fuqua did a terrific job of getting Willis to surrender to the true stars of this gut-wrenching film…the humanity and the lack of it. I gained a lot of respect for Willis in “Tears”.
The realism was intense. In order to help create his vision, he recruited some of the Lost Boys of Sudan to play Africans and did a fine job of explaining this choice in the director’s cut. I’ll bet that the ONLY reason that they accepted Fuqua’s invitation is that the film was shot, primarily in Hawaii, where fantastic and genuine settings were recreated and not in Africa. The actual events were fictitious, but the realities woven into the plot were not.
It is obvious that Fuqua spoke through many of the actors. As the Seals were leaving the village with their “package”, the Priest waves and shouts, “Go with God!”
A.K. (Willis) mutters, “God already left Africa.”
Before they even set out on their journey, we have already seen a good amount of horrendous wounds, dripping blood and sweat. Feeling anything yet, Jane?
Well, you just have to be feeling something, because A.K. is feeling something. On their perilous journey through the jungle, they happen upon some good, old-fashioned ethnic cleansing being perpetrated on the people of a small village by the rebel forces. And we get ringside seats. This isn’t part of the plan, but Willis screws his silencer onto his side arm.
“Lieutenant! Rules of engagement!”
A.K.: “We're already engaged.”
Then the slicing and dicing begins. At the bowels of this humanity/inhumanity, they barge in on a woman who is having her breasts cut off. (Psst, Jane…Fuqua puts this right in your face. If you look away, that’s proof positive that you just felt something).
Danny 'Doc' Kelley (played by Paul Francis): “How can they do this?”
Patience (played by Akosua Busia): “This what they do. They cut off the breasts of nursing mothers... so that they'll never again feed their own babies. This is what they do!”
This changed everything...
Lt. A.K. Waters: “Here's the deal: it's been strongly suggested that we (spoiler deleted) and abandon these refugees out here in the bush. I'll tell you right now: I'm not gonna do that. Can't do that. Broke my own rule - started to give a fuck. And brought you guys along with me. We're about to walk into some serious shit. Before we do, I just like to hear what you guys have to say about it. That's all. Speak freely.”
Kelly Lake (played by John Messner): “My opinion, Sir: we cut our losses. This isn't our fuckin' war. As far as me being in or out, you know the answer to that.”
Danny 'Doc' Kelley: “Let's get these people to safety. Let's finish the job.”
Demetrius 'Silk' Owens (played by Charles Ingram): ”I can't leave 'em, Sir.”
Jason 'Flea' Mabry (played by Chad Smith): “I'm good to go."
Lt. A.K. Waters: “What 'bout you, Red?”
James 'Red' Atkins (played by Cole Hauser): “I can't look at 'em like packages anymore. I'm gonna get 'em out or I'm gonna die tryin'.”
Ellis 'Zee' Pettigrew (played by Eamonn Walker): “Those Africans are my people too. For all the years that we have been told to stand down and stand by, you doin' the right thing.”
Lt. A.K. Waters: “For our sins.“
Ellis 'Zee' Pettigrew: “Hooyah.”
Lt. A.K. Waters: “Hooyah.”
Jane, you just have to be moved by the humanity of all of this.
The “spoiler deleted” will explain why, during the course of the night, the Seals were tracking (with a satellite up-link) beaucoup bad guys closing in on them and the shit they are about to get themselves into. Well, the shit is deep and the fighting ferocious and up-close.
(Anyone wanna tell me if half a dozen Seals would walk upright, side-by-side, on full automatic, into enemy fire? I wouldn’t. But, one of the aspects of “Tears” that was employed to add realism was two weeks of Navy Seal training. During the entire making of the film, the actors portraying the Seals were only allowed to refer to each other by their screen names. Man, they were good. Jane, you had to love all that sweat.)
I’m not gonna tell you exactly how it ends, but there are some Navy Hornets, each with a whale-sized incendiary bomb. I don’t know about you Jane, but there’s something about killer jets firing their after burners, speeding them to save the day, that get me all choked-up.
Now, we haven’t yet discussed “the package”, have we? Her name is Dr. Lena Kendricks. He real name is Monica Bellucci and she is Città di Castello, Perugia, Italy’s gift to the world. She graciously adorns this page. (Come one…how many times did YOU scroll back up to gaze back into Monica’s eyes?)
Come to think of it, Jane, it no longer seems important whether “Tears of the Sun” made you feel anything or not. All that matters is that Monica Bellucci made me feel something. But, if she did make you feel something too, you might consider dumping Placid for Gemma.
PS: Gemma is pretty hot, too…
This page is dedicated to The Evil Conservative. (I predict a huge spike in visits to Wiseguy’s RIA page)
