Welcome to the 7 Levels of Tubi - I am your host Jordan Smith…your poet Virgil on this journey into the underworld of publicly available streaming movies. Joining us this week are Andrew, Tim, Erica, Brad, Kyle, Peg and Bekah
Our movie this week is a remake of an adaptation of a short story so we’re off to a *great* start.
Originally written for a magazine short story check and under a pseudonym Howard Breslin’s Bad Time at Honda eventually became one of the first “Neo-Westerns” ever made. A “neo” western takes place in any era and is defined as a Western by other traits.
Looking to wring the genre towel for another round of money-making; producers thought Spencer Tracy was too old to play a commanding officer wounded in Italy and looking to pay a debt but John Sturges wanted him so Sturges got him. He then surrounded him with Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan and Anne Francis - and put him to work finding the father of his slain soldier. A man named Komoko.
What he does and does not find adds up to a pretty damning portrait of a certain type of “patriot” and a certain time in post World War II America.
Bad Day at Black Rock fits snugly into the Neo-Western canon by bringing in the lone stranger who cannot be deterred. His single ambition is to find a Japanese man that everyone - sweatily - insists they’ve never heard of. He is told in no uncertain terms he should just move on. The cycle of antagonism grows as Macreedy’s dogged persistence provides a growing, looming threat to these big fish and their small, desolate (if gorgeous) pond. It’s a really well done movie and you should seek it out.
Conspiracy on the other hand…
Conspiracy (2008) had a smaller budget (6 mil) than the original Black Rock when adjusted for inflation (1.3 mil in 1955 would have spent like 10.5 mil in 2008) but I think you could have piled another 10 million onto this script and cinematography without getting anywhere close.
For the first 40ish minutes Kilmer takes us through the paces of a few scenes in the life of mostly mute killing machine “Spooky” MacPherson. MacPherson is a special killer as shown when he exceeds mission objectives in an Iraq related operation and kills the target solo. However, in the aftermath, he and his good friend Miguel - who he barely speaks to - get caught in the blast of a tiny child’s backpack bomb. Predictable tragedy, no doubt. After he insists on saving Miguel’s life by evac’ing him first (and a few hokey hospital moments) we pick back up some time later with a shell-shocked Kilmer staring, sweating, and having uninspired sex with a very anonymous Russian woman.
Soon, however, Watership Down devotee Miguel is putting up the bat signal via persistent phone calls and messages. Soon Val is walking away from this empty life and apartment to get on a bus instead of a beautiful steam engine. We’re treated to mute shots of him (yes, staring blankly as usual) in a bus interior instead of sweeping vistas of the American west hurtling by to a huge Andre Previn orchestral score…
You begin to get the sense that everything about this version of the Bad Day narrative is just going to be smaller and chintzier and “less than.”
A small example: Tracy’s ruined arm was present in every moment - defining his obligation, his limitation, and ultimately his heroism for his willingness to lay down hatred. Kilmer’s MacPherson is similarly maimed although he’s lost his leg - not an arm - and they save the big reveal for a cheap jail shower and digital dong moment this writer did not see coming. Even with that (ahem) sizeable moment Kilmer’s leg never feels defining or symbolic.
Note also that Conspiracy’s script chooses to forego the layer of the father character, Komoko, entirely. In the original film and story Komoko’s son actually died saving Macreedy’s life - providing the cinematic sacrificial transcending of the race crisis via blood. Instead, Miguel (a non-citizen soldier of the Marine Corps and hispanic) lives through the war saved directly by Kilmer’s MacPherson. The movie becomes a different and more long-standing racialized narrative about the Southern border and migrant labor exploitation in Conspiracy than it was in Black Rock.
It’s not entirely bad as Conspiracy grabs a few breaths when Gary Cole shows up as John Rhodes (replacing Ryan’s earthier Reno Smith) and inspires a moment’s life out of a really, really, bland script and up till now Kilmer performance. He is up there in caricature territory as a modern company town boss and when we first glimpse him on the street he smiles and waves at us as though to say “I’m here now, let’s try to get something watchable out of this.”
The plot, however, has other ideas and suffers an ever more formulaic and nonsensical descent through the tropes of z grade action from here on out:
Hackneyed escape from jail on one leg
Val leaving himself no out other than to get shot and fall off a cliff
Joanna shows Spooky a secretively acquired snuff film of Miguel and family being killed by Rhodes and crew
An insane level of knife killing (thwarting an ambush at Joanna’s) but done with a sub USA Network daytime MacGyver budget and directorial style
A late reveal that the guy who shot him off the cliff is actually Jennifer Esposito’s (in thankless exposition deliverer mode as Joanna) brother and that he knew Kilmer was wearing body armor so he shot him in the chest on purpose knowing he’d live
A final gun battle with below high school production choreography and editing but finally and importantly it is where they spend a couple nickels and allow the guns to be fired on screen
After all is said, killed and done he decides to live there
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“You tell John Rhodes I’m bringing Hell to God’s country.” “Spooky” MacPherson (Val Kilmer)
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7 Levels of Tubi: Conspiracy