Opinion Stated As Fact: Tony Scott Makes CITIZEN KANE Better

Here's the obligatory "CITIZEN KANE is awesome" post on a film blog. In my defence, it did take me over four months to get here, but I will try to get this out of the way as quickly as possible.

Similar to my RAGING BULL post a while ago, I think the easiest way to do this is just to post a few pictures of how beautiful this film is:

I could go into a whole thing about depth of field and American mythmaking, but the truth is, all of those reasons are secondary to why CITIZEN KANE is a classic.

CITIZEN KANE is a classic because it fucks with the most powerful man in the world and gets away with it. It would be like if next week's HAWAII FIVE-O was about Scott Caan, that cunning investigator of human nature, opening a cold case about a missing kid, only to realize that the kid became a drug runner, fled the island, and grew up to become the President of the United States. That's crazy, possibly litigious (although Rupert Murdoch, that Kane of our times, is looking into it), and would never be allowed to happen. But somehow CITIZEN KANE did happen.

And RKO 281, a made-for-HBO movie, makes the story of how CITIZEN KANE came to be extremely compelling. Liev Schreiber plays Orson Welles, and unlike his recent performance in SALT, he appears to be awake during almost all of the scenes of the film. He turns in an actual performance that appears to bring depth and emotion to a human character. His Welles is alternately proud, brilliant, self-conscious, and obsessed with his legacy. It's actually fairly impressive work for any actor, but for Liev, it's particularly surprising.

James Cromwell is on the flipside of this coin as William Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate that the character of Kane was supposedly based on, and the man who tried to destroy the film. It's quite a sympathetic portrayal, which is surprising, given the power and influence he wielded. John Malkovich turns in a great performance as the similarly-surnamed Herman Mankiewicz, the forgotten man in all of CITIZEN KANE's greatness, and Roy Scheider shows up as the studio boss of RKO. All in all, it's a swell cast. The script moves along at a nice pace and things never feel too biopic-y.

Oh, and did I mention that Tony Scott was an Executive Producer on this? That's how he makes arguably the greatest film of all time even better.

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE allows me to make a tangential reference to a Tony Scott movie!

Have you heard Patton Oswalt's bit on Robert Evans? If that doesn't make you want to watch THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE, I don't know what will. Except maybe that trailer - I mean, look at that exploding glass effect!

Basically, the film is a summary of Evans' autobiography of the same name, and is essentially a two-hour TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY, full of business savvy, sex, and lots of cocaine. Some of the highlights include:

- Evans' claim that he basically invented slacks for women ("I was in women's pants" followed by a knowing pause)

- His reaction to the first time someone suggested Coppola to direct The Godfather ("Are you crazy? 'Cuz that guy is.")

- That he fired Coppola "four times" during the production of Godfather, and that they fought each other viciously for years afterward.

- His constant referring to Roman Polanski as "that crazy Polack."

- An honestly bewildering and astounding montage of the dozens of women he dated.

There's also a weird moment where you start to realize that Evans is pretty much the inspiration for the producer in both WAG THE DOG and TRUE ROMANCE (Tony Scott's debatable masterpiece), even though the performance in TRUE ROMANCE is clearly Joel Silver-inspired.

Evans is a charming and smart narrator, and he's got a few zingers that had me laughing, but there are also quite a few moments of brutal self-reflecting honesty. As a film, I'm not sure that THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE has a ton of merit, but it's a scary and fun look at the excesses of the Hollywood scene.

THE A-TEAM Wants To Be A Tony Scott Movie So Bad

The opening three minutes of Joe Carnahan's hey-we-haven't-remade-every-'80s-property-yet project, THE A-TEAM, had me convinced that I was about to fall in love.

First, there was the Scott Free Production tag. Y'all know what that means, right? My boy Tony Scott had his hands all over this! Or possibly his hack brother. But then came the subtitles, and I became convinced that Tony had come up to Mr. Carnahan at some point and said, "Joe, you know what would be great? If the subtitles mimicked the actors' delivery and we made the word 'blood' appear in red. Blood red. Get it?" To which Joe Carnahan could only drop to his knees and thank Tony for his unrivaled cinematic genius, while Ridley went off and moped about the Robin Hood opening week gross. And then, after the DOMINO-esque subtitle display made me giddy with neo-impressionistic joy, they went and blasted The Game's "House of Pain" on the soundtrack.

Friends, it was at this point that I seriously re-evaluated my expectations for this film. To be honest, I've never seen the show, but it sounds like a redneck version of Mission: Impossible, and my expectations were somewhere around a Brett Ratner Level (a BRL, for those hip to the acronym game). But Tony Scott-inspired visuals and a hip-hop soundtrack? I began to suspect that this film may have been made just for me.

Sadly, Jessica Biel shows up and there's a oddly dated "Three Kings"-ish inspired subplot and Carnahan decides to go to full-out cartoon mode in the third act, and you end up with something that, while certainly not at BRLs of disappointment, is nowhere near the frenzied delirium of a Tony Scott film.

THE A-TEAM does have one remarkable sequence, where the squad jumps out of a plane in a tank when they're shot down, only to have the tank shot down as well. The scene is full of tension, humour, and some insane action beats. There's also some fun stuff with the CIA characters in the film that recalls the more madcap moments of Carnahan's earlier effort, SMOKIN' ACES.

But at the end of it, I just wanted to see a Tony Scott version of this. Or THE LOSERS, which I liked better.