The Punisher (1989)

"Who sent you?"

"Batman!"

I was pleasantly surprised by this film, I have to say. Not that it's any good, of course; it's a trashy '80s action film starring Dolph Lundgren and is neither big nor clever. What it is, though, is highly entertaining in all it's glorious trashiness throughout. A melodrama may be all it is, but it works.

The film starts with a crude but efficient combination of set piece and exposition which introduces us to Frank Castle, what he does and his backstory. The character isn't very deep, so an actor like Lundgren is all that's required and, moreover, the opening set piece features a doomed baddie who is portrayed with enormous quantities of ham. But the film soon settles down into it's entertaining Mafia vs Yakuza plot, with a bit of buddy buddy cop stuff thrown in there too. The film is well enough shot in its Australian locations and Jeroen Krabbe is also good enough as the mob boss forced to work with Castle. Even the child actors are mostly adequate.

It's all very late '80s, of course, from the music to the hardline attitude to crime, and one thing that really dates it is the subtext (probably not intentional; the film isn't that clever) of Japan gradually overtaking the USA economically, as everyone seemed to think was happening at the time. There's lots of martial arts action, with even the opening titles looking a bit like a martial arts film.

I like Snake too, a much needed comedy character and someone there to remind us of the extremely dodgy ethics of vigilante murder and how it's victims are not only the guilty; the film is hardly philosophical but it avoids presenting the Punisher as a hero, and I like that. The film is what it is, but for me it was both enjoyable and, ignoring small details, a more or less faithful rendering of the comic book character. This is more worth watching than you probably thought.

The Living Daylights (1987)

"We've nothing to declare!"

Before I go on to praise this splendid film... I may get one last blog post out tomorrow on the train- we will see- but after that there won't be anything more until after my big exam on Tuesday 3rd May. It's a week of hardcore revision for me to look forward to. Still, expect a flurry of new blog posts in the couple of days after the exam, probably.

Anyway, I loved The Living Daylights even if it didn't feel much like a Bond film when watched in context. It's a strange thing to say for a series of spy films, but Bond hadn't done a proper Cold War thriller before and only now, in 1987, the very last opportunity there would ever be, do we get one. And yes, I know we have an American chief baddie as a fig leaf so they can deny that this is a straight ahead Cold War spy film with the Russians as the baddies so as not to offend the real world USSR but, well, they're fooling nobody.

And so we have a tale of defections, crappy police cars, secret police arresting pretty girls in the exotic surroundings of, er, Bratislava, and that classically Cold War locale that is Vienna and a Ferris Wheel that immediately evokes The Third Man. Mind you, nothing has dated quite as much as showing the Afghan Mujahideen as the good guys. I'm no useful idiot, far from it, but Najibullah (not a nice man but no one deserves to die like that) was much better for Afghanistan than what came after.

Timothy Dalton... let's actually mention him, shall we? He's obviously a fine actor, easily the best so far, far more technically competent and nuanced in his portrayal than Connery or Moore. I like him. And yet... he's genuinely charismatic, yes, but less so than either of the two aforementioned, both of whom oozed it, and for me he doesn't quite convince as a ladies' man- well, womaniser. He's too sensitive. Still, a promising debut. 

Maryam d'Abo makes a good, and refreshing Bon-bimboesque, Bond girl, and we get good performances from John Rhys-Davies, Art Malik and the ever-reliable Desmond Llewelyn, in a good film for the gadgets.

This is the best film of the '80s so far, let down only by a mildly disappointing theme song from a-Ha, even if it isn't as awful as Shirley Manson of Garbage notoriously said it is. After the problems of A View to a Kill we now have a younger Bond and a witty script, and as a result there's not a lot wrong.