Guest TSMAdmin Report post Posted June 23, 2003 Mini Review Before I start: I got New Found Glory’s From The Screen To Your Stereo which is a small CD of six songs, each being a cover of a movie tune. It’s defiantly worth picking up. Hell, Their cover of “My Heart Will Go On”, that terrible Titanic song, is pretty damn good. Not to mention the “That Thing You Do” cover. All in all, if you see this, pick it up. Suicide Kings The Movie This film, quietly released in 1998, is probably one of the sharpest directorial debuts for any director. Peter O’Fallon had been primarily working in television, working on such successful projects like Party of Five, Profiler, and the short lived Cupid. He was also the man behind the recent Kingpin miniseries. But in 1997, he decided he was gonna make a movie. Suicide Kings was that movie, a film based on the short story by Don Stanford, The Hostage. The movie was originally meant to be a dark comedy, which was apartment in the first trailer, but the direction changed to more of a drama/mystery, which is supremely better. There are still jokes, but their more clever than they would be if it was a dark comedy, as dark comedy’s “humor” is usually seeing how bad something can get, all the while winking at the audience. The premise of the story is that Avery’s( Henry Thomas) sister has been kidnaped and ransomed for $2,000,000. But by who? They don’t know. Oh and by they I mean Avery’s friends: Max(Sean Patrick Flanery), Ira(Johnny Galecki), Brett(Jay Mohr), and T.K.(Jeremy Sisto). Together the friends hatch a plan to kidnap a retired mob boss, Charlie Bartolucci( Christopher Walken), and use his contacts to get Avery’s sister back. The kidnaping sequence in the movie was beautifully shot, deserving it’s own special feature in the...er...special features. So Charlie plays along, all the while delivering great lines and basically mindfucking the boys. But it may not all be lies and games. I don’t want to give up any more, as the film truly unfolds greatly and giving anything away would be a crime. Now, though, there is a great subplot in the movie. Charlie’s number two man Lano searches for his boss, and basically steals the show, in my opinion. Lano is the premiere badass and yet is very human. Think Carter in Get Carter, only better acted. Lano delivers the scene of the movie, which will give you a whole new respect for toasters. To this day, I still say Lano should have his own movie. In conclusion, this is one of the best movies nobody saw, and one of the sharpest “Whodunit” movies. Major props. 10/10 A&V The film is presented in 16:9 Wide-Screen, which is a blessing, as it keeps the directors vision intact. The sound is 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio, and the music by Graeme Revell accents the movie so well. Specifically in the kidnaping scene. 20/20 Special Features All your usual stuff is here: the trailers, production notes, ~Spanish Subtitles. But then they go out of their way to show off how much they love the movie. They have a feature on the kidnapping which allows you to experience it with just the music, dialogue only, etc. It’s a great way to understand how music can really accent a scene. They have a multi-angle scene, which is okay if your into that, but just seems like fluff to me. They also have an alternate ending. Unlike most movies the alternate ending isn’t the main ending because, well, it sucks. But this alt. Ending would have been fine, and was actually the way I thought they would have ended the movie. A nice little thing they also have is the story boards for the movie, which is nice to see if what they wanted actually ended up on screen. There are not “Making Of” or music videos here, these special features are there to help the movie seem even better, if that was possible. The commentary is good, bt I wish they’d have done a commentary with the actors, namely Walken and Leary. Oh well, can’t have everything.10/10 If you haven’t guessed, this is one of, if not my, favorite movie of all time. It doesn’t matter what kind of movie fan you are, if you like movies this film is for you. And it’s cheap! Tony Jaymz Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
