THE FOOT FIST WAY
2006, Rated R
Written by Ben Best, Jody Hill, and Danny McBride
Directed by Jody Hill
Starring Danny McBride and Ben Best
The way I see it, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who get Danny McBride, and those who don't. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It's 9pm, and for the first time in more than two weeks the kids are in bed before midnight. Thank God for the end of winter vacation.
My wife sits at the dining room table checking her e-mail and I stand before my DVD shelf scanning titles. I'd pick something for the both of us, but she hasn't even checked Facebook yet today, so if I pick something short, it should be over before she hits the couch.
Searching for something to watch is always a conundrum. Before I approach the DVD shelf I have to have some idea of what I'm looking for or I'll end up standing there for the better part of an hour before giving up and checking Netflix. So the question is, what am I looking for.
I decide that, first and foremost, I want to watch something new. This isn't to say I want something I've never seen, just something I haven't watched since I bought it. That narrows the selection down to about 200 titles. In case you hadn't guessed by the fact that I'm just now getting around to posting a review of something I watched on January 2nd, I'm a procrastinator. On top of that, I'm a collector. When I buy a movie it's more about having it to watch whenever I want than about actually watching it. That and sharing it with people. I love nothing more than saying to a friend or family member or stranger on the bus, "What? You've never seen it? Okay, we're watching it right now!" This is why, if you check my DVD shelf, you'll find HD-DVDs that I bought only a few months after the format was introduced, and still haven't opened (You can bet your sweet bippy I was pissed when that format tanked after I spent $75 on the Bourne trilogy!). Don't hold it against me. I'm a slave to my compulsions.
I'm not a holiday person. The idea of a holiday as innocuous as Arbor Day fatigues me, so you can imagine how spent I am after the one-two punch of Christmas and New Year's. I need a pick-me-up. Something to revitalize me. Lift my spirits. I need some funny.
And there it is. Jumping out from halfway down the shelf like a kick to the face. The movie that gave us Danny McBride. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
Remember what I said about those two kinds of people? Those who get Danny McBride and those who don't? Well, my wife is the second kind. Nothing against her. She's a great lady. Probably the greatest I've ever known. But when it comes to comedy, it's like we were born in different countries.
No problem. Like I said before, she hasn't even checked her Facebook account today. At a scant 82 minutes, the movie will be over before she's gotten past the post our mutual friend shared of the 25 funniest autocorrects of 2011.
As the movie begins I realize two things: 1. This is a great pick-me-up movie. And 2. It's a good thing my wife is busy on the computer.
For those who haven't seen it, The Foot Fist Way is basically a coming-of-age story about a psychotic tae kwon do instructor (Danny McBride) whose dream world collapses when he discovers his wife has been cheating on him. Due (I'm assuming) to budget constraints, the filmmakers apparently couldn't afford to hire professional actors, so - with the notable exceptions of McBride and co-writer Ben Best (as Chuck "The Truck" Wallace) - the performances are pretty bad all around. The dialogue could have been good if the actors had delivered their lines as if they weren't reading off cue cards, but between the wooden performances and weak cinematography, the writing feels flat and haphazard at best.
The film's secret weapon - and what made this a must-buy for me when I saw it on the shelf at Hastings last year - is Danny McBride. The Foot Fist Way lives or dies on how much you like McBride and whether you get his swaggering-moron sense of humor. If you do, this film will have you in stitches from frame one. If you don't, there's really not much else to recommend it. Even when the writing really shines in the supporting characters, it's just an outgrowth of that basic, delusional-confidence-run-amok sensibility. This is Danny's show. Love it or leave it.
My wife, as I said before, doesn't love it. Apparently she never checked the 25 funniest autocorrects of 2011, because thirty minutes into the film she turns off her computer and sits down on the couch next to me. Instantly, I start to sweat.
"We can watch something else if you want," I say.
"It's okay," she says, but I just know she's hating it.
To her credit, she doesn't say a single bad thing the entire time. And she doesn't get up and leave. All I can think is that she must either really want to spend time with me, or she's watching as a sort of anthropological study. Maybe this will give me some clue as to why my husband is the way he is.
When the credits finally roll, I work up the nerve to ask, "So, what did you think?"
In her best I-don't-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-but-you-asked-for-it-so-here-goes voice she says, "I think that was the unfunniest thing I've ever seen."
Like I said, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who get Danny McBride, and those who will hate this movie.
1995, Rated R
Written and directed by Michael Mann
Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, and Tom Sizemore
So there sits my wife, fresh from the latest disappointment being married to me has yielded, and I just have to do something to lift her spirits. Unfortunately, the only thing I know how to do well - and my wife might argue that I don't even do that very well - is watch movies.
"So what do you want to watch?" I say, standing once again before my DVD shelf. I don't bother looking at it. Until I know what she does want to watch, anything I suggest will be will be something she doesn't.
"I want to watch a heist movie!" she squeaks with a giddiness that seems at odds with the vacant-eyed boredom she'd displayed only minutes earlier.
A heist movie? Did she actually say she wants to watch a heist movie?
"You want to watch a heist movie?"
I cannot hide my astonishment.
"Yeah! Like Ocean's 11 or Ocean's 12 or Ocean's 13!"
Before she gets to "11" I roll my eyes, disappointment palpable in the air like the odor from my shoes. I like the Ocean's movies. Like. That's it. I'm not buying a ring. I'm not looking to take my relationship with them to the next level. I like them. Needless to say, when my wife said she wanted a "heist movie", they'd been the furthest thing from my mind. I've seen them at least half a dozen times each (her doing, not mine). That's a minimum (at least, I said) of 18 dips in the Ocean's. I feel like I'm drowning in them! But she loves them. So help me God, she adores the increasingly implausible things.
I scramble.
"How about Heat?" I say, frantically reaching for what actually had gone through my head when I'd heard the words "heist movie", despite the fact that I know she won't want to watch it.
"What's Heat?" she says.
I'm momentarily dumbstruck.
"Whaddya mean What's Heat?" I say. "Heeeat! Pacino! DeNiro! Kilmer! Are you serious?!?"
I happen to know for a fact that this is untrue. I grab the disc off the shelf and hand it to her.
"We watched it right after I bought it," I say. "On my birthday last year."
She stares at it blankly.
"I don't remember it at all."
This is a gift my wife has. She can watch a movie and - sometimes after only a few scant weeks - forget it completely. I use the word "gift" because, if this talent were for sale, I'd have done almost anything to acquire it by now. I would literally burn down my own house to have the ability to forget my favorite movies and watch them again for the first time. I'd make sure my family was away on vacation before I did it, obviously, but I'm just saying. I'm jealous as hell.
She scans the back cover and hands it back.
"Sounds good. Let's watch it."
I can barely keep from soiling my pants in a fit of joy-induced diarrhea.
The first time I saw Heat was in a single-screen theater in Eastern Europe when I was seventeen. The theater was one of only three in the whole city (all single-screens) and got one movie a week (subtitled, I should note - I was blessed to live in a country that had never quite taken to the idea of dubbing). The interesting thing about movies in that part of Europe is that the whole country only has one print of any given film at any given time. As new movies make their way across the country, they go from big city to big city, playing in the first run movie houses before re-circling the country's second-run houses. My city happened to have a theater that was high on the list (somewhere in the top ten). The new movies opened on Friday, ran through the following Thursday, and then moved on to the next town. In the case of a really popular movie, the theater might extend its run for a week. Heat was so popular that it ran for four weeks straight. Titanic only ran for three.
Thirty minutes in, my wife remembers the film. Thirty minutes after that she heads to bed, since she has to get up for school in the morning, and it's midnight. I have to get up too. I work evenings, but I take my kids to school at 8:00am. By all rights, I should be getting to bed. But I can't. This is Heat!
What you've got here is a rare bird; an LA crime epic that can hold its own against any of the big NY crime epics. And yes, I said any, because the fact of the matter is, as sprawling and intricate as this movie is, everything about it works. Even the manic Natalie Portman subplot. Everything. It's an epic that lives up to the word.
I've watched Heat several times, as you've no doubt already gathered, but what really stands up and grabs me by the throat this time is the sound. I'm not usually a guy who gets a BVD pup-tent over sound editing, but during the final firefight I find myself shocked at the violence of the gunfire. The sound of M-16s rattling off round after round of high speed death isn't the friendly, big boom of a million action movies. It sounds cruel. It sounds mean. It sounds visceral and scary. Basically, it sounds like a gun should.
When the credits roll, I'm sitting on the couch alone in a now quiet house. The gunfire is only an echo in my memory, but the movie persists. It sticks with me. It's the story of two men who could be brothers - spiritually speaking, in the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" sense, are brothers - destroying each other. It's the story of LA. It's the story of America. It's the story of humanity.
I crawl into bed with the final scenes of the film flitting across my vision in the late night darkness. I wrap myself in blankets and can feel my wife roll over and snuggle against me. As her arm slips around my shoulder, all I can think is, How could she walk out halfway though Heat?!? In the words of the old Tootsie Pop commercials, "The world may never know."
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