Truth be told, I’ve never been the greatest admirer of Paul Verhoeven’s US films. Sure, there are Robocop and Flesh & Blood, but even those I respect rather more than I do love them. My problem with this phase is its excessiveness, or rather, its excessiveness in exactly those aspects I least enjoy in a movie: camp so thick and aggressive it is basically weaponized, sledgehammer satire loud and shrill and aimed at all the easiest targets, usually paired with some of the old ultra-violence and the sleaze I do enjoy to just shout down anything about the films that might be subtle. The problem with this kind of excess for me is how tiresome it quickly becomes. Sure, the first half hour of Verhoeven shouting incessantly into my face is entertaining in a freakshow kind of way but afterwards my mind and attention start to wander, and after an hour, I find myself actually bored by all the noise.
Despite probably being the most controlled of Verhoeven’s film of this time, I can’t say I feel terribly differently about this adaptation of a (very) short Philip K. Dick story. For my taste, the film’s Dickian moments are drowned out by Verhoeven’s excess, the tendency to shout plot beats instead of simply hitting them, the terrible action movie one-liners Schwarzenegger spouts (like the constructed everyman he’s supposed to be, right?). There is, to be fair, a lot of imagination on screen when it comes to production design and worldbuilding, and the SF action movie meets spy conspiracy thriller plot is well enough constructed, it is just all drowned out by the soup of visual and aural noise Verhoeven builds up. That situation is of course not improved when what should be the film’s human anchor is represented by Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of an actor. Schwarzenegger’s line delivery is at its worst here, and his attempts at presenting as a human are deeply unconvincing.
The action is of course as competently realized as possible, but I can’t say I ever felt emotionally or viscerally involved (re-)watching any of it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment