Targets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TARGETS                    C+                                                                                                          USA  (90 mi)  1968  d:  Peter Bogdanovich                         

Targets are people…and you could be one of them!                                                             —Tagline for the film

Peter Bogdanovich, like the young French New Wavers from Cahiers du Cinéma before him, was first a film critic and historian, taking an interest in recorded interviews with earlier directors in the twilight of their careers, exactly how he was portrayed in the unfinished final film by Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind (2018), where he was affectionately known as “the human tape recorder.”  Writing articles for Esquire in the early 60’s while curating film programs at MOMA that showcased early American film pioneers, he moved to Los Angeles in the mid 60’s and began a collaboration with renegade director/producer Roger Corman, as did many other young American directors at the time, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Monte Hellman, Jonathan Demme and John Sayles, finding himself working on the biker flick THE WILD ANGELS (1966) with Peter Fonda, a surprise hit, grossing over $15 million dollars in 1966, which was 15^th overall at the box office that year, where he’s an uncredited writer, cinematographer, and editor, while also working as an extra and assistant director.  In his essay on this film, Targets | New Beverly Cinema, Quentin Tarantino best describes Corman’s unorthodox working methods, cannibalizing existing footage from one film and putting it in another, surrounding it with newly shot material, essentially churning out an assembly line low-budget style of moviemaking that was in stark contrast to the high-powered studio system that existed at the time.  So if Bogdanovich wanted to make his own film, he’d have to meet several seemingly odd Corman requirements, incorporating twenty minutes of footage from Corman’s Gothic horror snooze THE TERROR (1963) starring Boris Karloff (and a young Jack Nicholson), shooting an additional two days (twenty minutes of new footage) with Karloff (time still owed on his contract), while he was free to invent the rest.  Surprisingly, Bogdanovich jumped at the offer, shot by László Kovács, receiving uncredited (free) advice from none other than Sam Fuller behind the scenes, releasing the film between Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969).  Working with his wife at the time, Polly Platt, they constructed a modern day horror film, one that marked the passing of the torch from one generation to the next while accentuating the calamitous horrors leaping out of modern era newspaper headlines, in this case, the story of ex-Marine Charles Whitman, who became known as the Texas Tower Sniper, climbing to the top of the observation deck from the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin carrying a bag filled with weapons, where for the next 90-minutes he proceeded to take sniper pot shots at anyone wandering by, slaughtering 16 people, wounding 32 others, and traumatizing many more in what at the time was considered the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, now surpassed by the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, almost all using semi-automatic weapons, with the U.S. having the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world with 120.5 firearms per 100 people, the only nation in the world with more guns than people. 

Made for $130,000, shot in 23 days, the film is an orgy of gunfire, critically praised at the time of its release for its social commentary on the prevalence of guns (though hardly the masterpiece claimed by some), but the public had little appetite for it.  Although completed in late 1967, it was released the following year after the assassinations of Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. in April and aspiring Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June, not to mention an endless war raging in Viet Nam, coming on the heels of earlier assassinations of President Kennedy’s in 1963 and Muslim activist Malcolm X in 1965, creating a political vacuum and a void in the heart of a surging 60’s leftist cultural ideology, leading to a right-wing law and order purge afterwards with the election of Richard Nixon as President in the fall of 1968.  Opening with a movie-within-a-movie, playing the finale of THE TERROR, the dual storyline has aging 80-year old actor Boris Karloff as horror legend Byron Orlok disgusted with the irrelevance of the film, viewing himself as an extinct dinosaur (appearing in 140 films, including 40 silents, starting as an extra in 1916), with horror films not scaring anyone anymore, retiring right there on the spot after viewing a preview with the studio heads, walking out as a supposedly free man, cancelling all his scheduled appearances, no longer beholden to the studios.  A secondary story follows Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Keefe, bearing a surprising resemblance to Matt Damon), viewed as your typical All-American boy next door, clean cut, polite, and unassuming, still addressing his father as “sir,” yet both have an obsessional devotion to guns, seen practicing together at the firing range, while Bobby has a trunkful of guns in his car.  With such a stockpile, it seems strange that he revisits gun stores regularly for still more rifles and ammunition.  Viewers learn he served in Viet Nam, and despite his passive nature around the house, he seems disturbed about something (“Sometimes I get funny ideas”) and tries unsuccessfully to talk to his wife before she’s off to work on the night shift, spending the rest of the night brooding alone.  By morning, he’s flipped out, losing his grip, crossing over to the dark side.  Bogdanovich plays a scriptwriter, Sammy Michaels (using Sam Fuller’s middle name) who offers a script to Karloff, disappointed that he decides to retire just at the moment he’s written something promising for him, which turns out to be the film we’re watching.  He’s got a fling going on with Karloff’s attractive young personal assistant Jenny (Nancy Hsueh, excellent, very surprising she didn’t have a more prominent career), who may be following Karloff back to England, though Orlok graciously releases her, not wanting to interfere with their budding romance.  Orlok changes his mind, however, and agrees to make one final scheduled appearance at the Reseda Drive-In Theater screening of his film, offering fans one final chance to see him.  Meanwhile, Bobby goes on a shooting rampage, shooting his wife and parents at home in the morning before heading out to a nearby oil refinery and climbing to the top of the tanks, in something of an homage to James Cagney in White Heat (1949), shooting randomly at passing cars on the freeway, with viewers seeing through the high-powered scope of the rifle, intentionally resembling the Zapruder tape of President Kennedy's assassination.  Never receiving permits to make a film along a busy LA freeway, this example of guerilla filmmaking best reflects Roger Corman’s economical style of filmmaking, getting in and out before drawing attention of the police.

Instead of a musical score, scattered throughout the film are lengthy stretches of loud radio noise playing during Bobby’s many car rides and banal, mind-bogglingly dull family conversations at home, drowned out by an always turned on television, adding a mindless tone to each sequence, lending an air of shallow superficiality to his psychological mindset, as endless layers of brainless mush are drummed into his head, suggesting the dumbing down of America.  While this doesn’t play a part for his gun obsession, it does weigh into his thoughtlessness and lack of remorse, as he simply doesn’t question what he’s doing, as if led by voices in his head, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality.  With endless violence capturing the television replays and newspaper headlines, author Tom Wolfe coined the phrase “porno-violence,” suggesting viewers were becoming addicted to even more violence, adopting the point of view of the shooters instead of the victims, dulling one’s senses for empathy.  This film exploits that mentality, allowing the shooter to dominate the film, all done so casually, as if he’s at a sporting event picking off targets, overshadowing any link to an otherwise genuinely affecting performance by Karloff.  After evading police during his first shooting rampage, Bobby plans yet another, this time arriving early at the Reseda Drive-In Theater, eventually wandering to a sniper’s position behind the screen and shooting indiscriminately at cars, apparently attracted to lights, offering him an easy target, turning the evening’s events into utter chaos and bloody mayhem, with Karloff’s film playing on the screen, a symbol of Victorian horror that has been outdated by a prevalence of graphic war and violence imagery, becoming a link to our historical fascination with violence.  Even after the first few shots, the drive-in continues uninterrupted, with business as usual (there is a lovely tribute to another dying breed, the projectionist), as viewers have no idea what’s happening unless a body happens to fall nearby.  Downplaying the victims, always viewed in a detached manner, never accentuating the graphic horror, instead viewers see a collecting body count laying on the ground.  The focus, however, remains the shooter, which is a disturbing aspect of the film, as he’s a blank slate, learning next to nothing about him, seemingly without any real motive, where he could be anybody.  Even 50 years later, this is a difficult film to endure, watching him repeatedly load and reload, accompanied by an incessant sound of gunfire, a reminder of all the senseless shootings, over one-and-a-half million American gun related deaths since the release of the film, more than all those lost in wars since the Revolutionary War, with our nation failing to learn how to prevent these devastatingly traumatic events from happening, where there were more mass shootings than days in 2019, rarely even mentioned on news reports anymore unless they reach epic death count proportions.  What this suggests is that as a nation, we have built up a tolerance for these heinous sorts of activities, where the regular loss of lives is deemed acceptable, not out of the ordinary, requiring no lawful cure or remedy.  This era of filmmaking in the late 60’s and early 70’s opened the floodgates not just to excessive violence permitted onscreen, but an overtly stylized realism, exacerbated by these young American directors who were equally enthralled and fascinated by what they could get away with, which is starkly different than the previous generation.  Later surpassed by Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974) and a host of other films, this film was largely forgotten, drowned out by the mainstream commercial success of The Last Picture Show (1971), placing the director among the Hollywood elite. 

American Sniper

Bradley Cooper (left) portrays Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (right) in the adaptation of Kyle’s 2012 autobiography American Sniper

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle

AMERICAN SNIPER             C              
USA  (132 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Clint Eastwood                    Official site

This is a perfect example of utterly conventional Hollywood filmmaking, as it takes a simplistic, one-dimensional approach to war, patriotism, and serving one’s country, becoming a jingoistic portrayal of an American warrior who thinks he knows what his country stands for by asking no questions, where no reservations are expressed, instead it typifies the gung-ho spirit of the armed forces in much the same way as pro football player Pat Tillman was made the military poster child for enlisting in the Army in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  His idea was to kick some terrorist ass in Afghanistan and Iraq, filled with an ideological certainty that borders on brainwashing, much like the nation’s bullheaded approach for invading Iraq in the first place, where it was inconceivable in Tillman’s eyes that America wouldn’t prevail.  Unfortunately, as the Amir Bar-Lev documentary The Tillman Story (2010) points out, it’s much more complicated than that.  This glorification of heroism is a throwback to Howard Hawks’ SERGEANT YORK (1941), released just months before America’s entrance into World War II, the story of a World War I sharpshooter that became a war hero, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I even as he was a devout pacifist, which won Gary Cooper an Academy Award for Best Actor.  Even Gary Cooper, however, was reluctant to play a “too good to be true” character, but reconsidered after meeting Alvin York, the real person the film was based upon.  Interestingly, according to Eastwood himself, that was the first movie he ever saw, so it obviously left an impression on him, just as the images from movies and historical photographs leave impressions on other young soldiers about how to behave during wartime, where they often emulate what they see.  Similarly, a bulked up and more bland, ideologically toned down Bradley Cooper is excellent in the real-life role of Chris Kyle, a down-home Texas cowboy who rode the rodeo circuit early in his twenties, but when he witnesses the 9/11 attacks, he reconsiders his future, enlisting in the Navy SEAL special operations force at age thirty (age 24 in real life, initially rejected by the Navy SEALS due to rodeo injuries) where he also excels as a sharpshooter and is sent to the front lines in Iraq.  As a military sniper, his job is to protect the Marines on the ground by providing an overview vantage point they don’t have, picking off anyone suspected of initiating attacks against the Marine operations.  Adapted from Kyle’s 2012 book written three years after his military discharge, American Sniper:  The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, even the title leaves little doubt as to what the focus will be, though his modest, single-minded claim is always that he was simply doing his job by protecting the lives of others. 

While the film takes the viewer into the heart of ongoing military operations, almost exclusively seen through a guy’s perspective, it also has a stateside component where Sienna Miller as Kyle’s wife Taya offers a near-cringeworthy performance, though her character is horribly written and is equally one-dimensional, where she seems to have little sympathy or understanding for the unique adjustments soldiers must make upon returning home, as unfortunately they bring a bit of the war back with them.  Instead she nags at him continuously to be the person she married, telling him “I need you to be human again,” expecting him to adjust to her concept of a normal family life, while picking at him when he’s less than forthcoming about describing the horrors that he experienced.  Keeping much of his emotions locked in, it is only a matter of time before he is called back, as he is needed on the battlefield, eventually serving four tours of duty.  Easily the most overwrought and hysterical scenes are the ones when Kyle is in his sniper position in a moment of calm, casually talking to his wife back home, when suddenly a firefight will break out, cutting off normal communications, while she’s left whimpering on the other end of the line wondering what’s happened to her husband.  This guy is in special ops, for Christ’s sake, assigned the most dangerous missions, specially trained to be battle hardened, calm in the face of a storm, yet she doesn’t get it, remaining scared out of her wits and clueless about what this guy does for a living.  These scenes drain much of the energy from the picture, and there are several of them, where she becomes too much of a distraction, as it’s inconceivable to the public back home that wives would want to be on the phone with their husbands “during” military operations.  That’s exactly what could get them killed as it takes away from their primary focus at that moment.  The relationships with fellow soldiers may not get the same amount of screen time, but they are much more acutely drawn, as these guys understand each other, where they are trained to have each other’s backs, instilled with the same warrior mentality, yet they can also laugh in quieter moments, as they’ve each been through hell and back.

Certainly one aspect of war this film attempts to convey is the sense of urgency, where Kyle reflects the military mentality when he tells his wife that his family has time to wait, while the frontline soldiers don’t, which is what continually compels him to return.  Embellishing the mythic picture of an American hero, only Hollywood would come up with the storyline about a fellow sniper on the other side, a Syrian soldier fighting for al Qaeda named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) who is actually an Olympic medalist in shooting.  Each is the best in their field, where the storyline continually pits one rival against the other, where much of it breaks down into a mind game, maintaining the psychological advantage, where these men become mythical legends within their own ranks.  Kyle is actually called “The Legend” by his fellow soldiers, where stories of his prowess spread throughout the military branches, where there’s a price on his head, dubbed the “Devil of Ramadi (Shaitan Ar-Ramadi),” placing a bounty on his head that eventually climbs to $80,000, which distinguishes him even in the eyes of the enemy.  This elevates his importance, as it reveals how essential it is militarily for each side to knock out the other’s best sniper.  Both are capable of inflicting huge casualties and altering the success or failure of significant missions.  Much of this is oversimplified, playing out like a western in the American West, inevitably leading to an ultimate shoot out, the winner being the anointed hero.  In Eastwood’s film, however, it nearly brings his unit down, as it exposes their position, subject to an unprecedented attack.  Taking place in a sandstorm, it has a dreamlike quality about it, turning into a battlefield of the dead, as men around them keep dropping like flies, but more continue to storm ahead, taking the place of those fallen beside them.  It offers a feeling for the senselessness of war, yet it’s also combined with the solemn tributes paid to those making the ultimate sacrifice, as Eastwood’s depiction of a military funeral is easily the best thing in the film, perhaps the only scene that touches the right grace note, (2014) soundtrack - Ennio Morricone -The Funeral - YouTube (2:05).  Kyle’s successive returns back home become more detached, told with little fanfare, yet the war continues to intrude into his life, where one of the Eastwood touches is Kyle continually hears the sounds of war taking place even when sitting comfortably on his couch back home, thoughts and sounds he wants to tune out and forget, where he can barely make eye contact or even acknowledge a soldier who graciously thanks him for saving his life.  The brief glimpse in hospitals of wounded veterans in recovery feels essential, even though it’s barely touched upon, preferring instead to dwell on the more dramatic war footage, where only at the end does the Hollywood depiction take a turn into vintage archival material, showing the actual funeral of a fallen hero, leaving the audience in the solemnity of a hushed silence, where the closing credits play with no accompanying music.

While the film attempts to honor and eulogize fallen soldiers, but in idolizing this figure, what the film overlooks are the actual hate-filled views expressed by Kyle in his book, as his zealous American fervor is spewed with xenophobic and racist venom, where killing Iraqis is the answer to his own effusive bitterness and contempt, as he is unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy.”  “I hate the damn savages.  I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis…The enemy are savages and despicably evil.  My only regret is that I didn’t kill more.”  Chris Kyle is actually a younger version of the grizzled old Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski portrayed by Eastwood himself in GRAN TORINO (2008), where his prejudiced views separate him from the changing and more complicated world around him that he can’t begin to understand, as in his mind he’s narrowed it down to overly simplistic, black and white perceptions of good or evil.  In other words, we are right, and they are wrong.  Intentionally or not, much like John Wayne in a John Ford western, most particularly THE SEARCHERS (1956), this film makes a hero out of Kyle, a special ops patriot that took pleasure in killing and dehumanizing the enemy, recalling the frontier spirit of Ford’s westerns where “the only good injun is a dead injun,” which has now evolved into “the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi,” where there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world who believe in God and country and the American flag, while anyone questioning this view is looked upon with traitorous suspicion and contempt bordering on hatred, equivalent to aiding and abetting the enemy, reminiscent of the derisive and often violent sentiments expressed in the pro-war slogan “America, love it or leave it” during the Vietnam era of the 60’s.  In the unquestioning eyes of the true believers, Kyle’s unambiguous belligerence represents not only the embodiment of America’s cowboy mentality (The Cowboy Myth, George W. Bush, and the War with Iraq), but may also explain his considerable success on the battlefield, as there is no soldier remorse, no guilt or crisis of moral conscience about the act of killing when he regrets none of his actions, where in this case his complete lack of subtlety or imagination is what makes him particularly emblematic of today’s American military hero.  When faced with the choice between depicting the truth or the myth, however, Eastwood decided to go with the myth, which should come as no surprise to anyone, as peddling myths is the very foundation of what Hollywood does for a living, which is also what makes the film so predictably conventional.