Legends of the Ball

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

Once every 4 years…it’s basically the plot to Mortal Kombat, but on a huge scale

I’m going to do something I basically never do in this blog and talk about sports.  If you came here hoping to tune into another deep dive analysis of a piece of media you may not know about, don’t worry.  Regularly scheduled service will resume later this week, this is just a bonus.  Light summer fun is just a few days away.  But amidst global chaos, a group of nations has assembled squads to come together at the epicenter of that chaos for the first time since 1994 and play a game.  But somehow through this assembly of 22 men running up and down a patch of grass, so many compelling storylines emerge that go beyond just the nations’ pride.  It’s the biggest event in world football and perhaps the biggest event in sport.  And yes, I’m going to call it football throughout; as someone who wakes up early 38 weekends a year to watch the English Premier League, the terminology has stuck.  So lace up your boots and get on the pitch, I’m putting on the armband to lead you through this.  Let’s get into the World Cup.

Defending champions Argentina and their talisman Lionel Messi are back for more [photo from last World Cup]

It’s a new format for the once-every-four-year football tournament, but I’m not going to bore you with the details of how the tournament is organized.  There are plenty of sports outlets who are more than capable of explaining all that to you and more about who’s in it.  They’ll undoubtedly talk about the controversies, from astronomical ticket prices to ICE presence at the stadiums (well, maybe the sports outlets might ignore this part), to the use of video-assisted refereeing (VAR, or replay review), to the water breaks.  I won’t go into any of those either, that’s a conversation I want to have, but right now I want to focus on the positive.  I don’t even want to talk about the usual poor choice of commentators by Fox, bringing people who try to make it sound like a hockey game (no offense to hockey, but you guys have your own sport; and if I’m being honest, most of the commentators have been pretty good so far).  But I will say that water breaks are fantastic and necessary for the health and safety of the players, but the way they’ve been implemented in this World Cup is disgraceful.  Only in America has it been turned into a commercial break, that’s far longer than necessary, for the good of the advertisers and broadcasting companies only.  And if you want a real deep dive of the emotional conflict of being a football fan during the World Cup, I will direct you to John Oliver’s segments about it, because he’s done it the best and I sign on to just about every word he says about FIFA.  And I’ve gone pretty deep into the crimes of FIFA; I even wrote a paper about FIFA corruption and the World Cup in law school.  But this isn’t about FIFA.  It’s about football and the stories that make it what it is.

Raul Jimenez scored his first goal for Mexico in a truly touching moment

In 2020, Mexican striker Raul Jimenez was on top of the world.  An underrated striker, in my opinion, he had just signed a new contract, a four year deal, with Wolverhampton Wanderers, at the time a Prem side.  But shortly after, in a clash with Arsenal’s David Luiz, he split his skull open and had to be stretchered off for life-saving surgery.  His road to recovery was long and never fully complete, as he still has to wear protective headgear to play.  Jimenez is 35-years-old, ancient in footballing terms, especially for a striker.  And on the opening night of this tournament, he scored his first World Cup goal.  This in itself was a joyous moment, one that I was happy to have witnessed.  I always rated Jimenez and he seemed likable, at least from his on-the-pitch persona.  So it felt great to see that for him.  The opening match was held in Mexico, in front of a crowd of 80,000 people (more than half the population of Curaçao, the smallest nation to ever be in the World Cup), all screaming and cheering and chanting for him as he not only scored his first World Cup goal, he also became Mexico’s joint second highest ever goalscorer.  And then legendary player and now-commentator Thierry Henry (Ted Lasso) pointed out that when Jimenez scored, he looked straight to the stands.  And when he didn’t see the person he wanted to see there, he looked up to the sky in tears.  Henry was in tears himself as he explained this and shortly after, so was I.  Jimenez was looking for his father.  His biggest fan.  But his father passed away three months ago at just 62-years-old.  What a moment of pure humanity.  The unleashing of emotions, the feeling of joy tempered by the pain of joy not shared with the ones who are gone.  It was a moment that made me call my mom, just to talk.

Robbo’s always a goofball who gives everything. How can you not love that?

I need to take you back to England now, but we’ll end up in Scotland (well, Boston) in a moment.  I found a player in FIFA, a left back playing for Hull City.  I needed a backup, so I got him.  And he was good.  And then I started talking about him.  About how Liverpool (the club in the Premier League that I support) needed to go and get him in real life because I thought he had incredible potential.  Then in July of 2017, Liverpool did exactly that and signed Andy Robertson for a paltry £8m.  That seems like a lot, but in the world of club football, that’s pocket change for a top team.  Over the years at the club, he rose to not only be arguably the best left back in the world in his prime, but also one of my favorite players.  He was a leader on the pitch and goofball off it and he always played with more passion for the game and the club and the fans than I can comprehend.  He’s left the club now, but that doesn’t change how I feel about him.  He’s Scotland’s captain.  Liverpool’s former vice captain. 

And a little under a year ago, teammate Diogo Jota died in a car accident with his brother.  Robbo, as we affectionately call him, was incredibly close to Jota.  Liverpool retired Jota’s number.  Robbo tried to play on.  I know he thinks about Jota every time his boots touch a blade of grass because he’s said as much in interviews.  The club struggled all season for a number of reasons and he eventually departed at the end of the season.  But on Saturday he took to pitch once again, this time wearing the captain’s armband for his nation as he led them to their first World Cup in 28 years.  They have never advanced beyond the group stage.  And like he always did in a Liverpool shirt, Andy Robertson ran up and down every blade of grass on that pitch as he and his teammates won their opening match 1-0 against a marauding Haiti.  I don’t know if Scotland will make it past the group stage this year, it’s a tough group they’re in.  But when that scrappy John McGinn shot went into the back of the net for Scotland, I painted my face blue and white and screamed and swung a giant sword around like goddamn Braveheart.

Curaçao lost 7-1 to Germany, but they came out like the riders of Rohan

And as I’m writing this right now, I’ve just watched World Cup giants Germany handily dispatch of Curaçao, a nation that has had a baseball player get to the Hall of Fame before they, as a nation, got to the World Cup.  Germany has outclassed them on almost every level, as to be expected.  But Curaçao did something nobody expected them to do, certainly something I never expected them to do.  They scored a goal.  People like to rag on football for being low scoring and that can be fair sometimes when two teams come out and the whole game plan is to just not concede a goal.  But that’s not what this match was.  It was two attacking teams, two teams representing their homes who came to play on the biggest stage they’ve ever seen. 

The Curaçao squad is nearly 0.02% of the nation’s population

During the match, one of the commentators mentioned that since arriving in the United States, some of the Curaçao players have seen freeways for the first time.  And they stepped into the ring with heavyweights and punched them in the nose.  Sure, they lost the fight.  But they stood up and took the fight to the four time World Cup winners and they drew blood.  It’s further proof that succeeding is nowhere near as important as trying and Curaçao put on an inspirational fight against insurmountable odds and unlike the movies, they lost.  There was no miracle for them like the US hockey team.  They didn’t beat 5000-to-1 odds like Leicester did when they won the Premier League.  But they took to the pitch with heads held high and they didn’t let the size of the spectacle freeze them in place.  They didn’t let the quality and talent of the German opposition put them in their shell.  They fought.  From the first whistle to the last.  For 17 amazing minutes, they held the line.  1-1.  And for the rest, they stood up.  And if that doesn’t make you want to do the same, well, I’m not sure what to tell you.  But if ever I can say, in the face of defeat, that I fought from the first moment to the last, then I will count myself proud.  As should every single player who wears the shirt for Curaçao and the roughly 155,000 people from this tiny nation.  Because the scoreline didn’t matter in this match.  Not Germany’s half, anyway.  But that little “1” next to Curaçao on the scoreboard, well, that matters a great deal.  It’s that little “1” that makes football great.

Flo Balogun, no relation to Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads

And even here, in this nation now steeped in turmoil, when many seek to divide and build UFC octagons where there used to be no UFC octagons, a young man called Folarin Balogun scored a brace in the US’s opening match.  Two goals.  Flo, as they call him, was born in the United States to Nigerian parents and grew up in London.  The way eligibility works, Balogun could have played for the United States, England, or Nigeria.  But he decided to commit to the United States, a nation of immigrants and their children.  And in doing so, at this World Cup, in front of fans paying exorbitant prices for tickets and $6 a gallon for gas, a populace more divided than ever in my lifetime, this birthright citizen became the first American to score more than one goal in a World Cup match since 1930.  Nearly a century since an American scored a brace and it was this young man, with family all over the world, who has faced racial abuse from so-called USMNT fans, who did it.  For those with a sense of history, 1930 was the first World Cup.  So from the first one until now, it hasn’t been done.  Until this child of three nations came here and did it.  He was assisted by Malik Tillman, an American player, born and raised in Germany to an American serviceman and a German mother.  Also assisted by Christian Pulisic, USMNT’s golden boy from the home of American chocolate, Hershey, Pennsylvania.  My own backyard, the place where I went on my first rollercoaster.  A testament to the power of sport to unite even in the face of truly insidious divisive acts.

Balogun and his teammates celebrate history being made on the laces of his boots

Look, it’s true that I’m slightly embarrassed by much I love football and the World Cup, but I do love it.  It matters to me, it’s special to me for some reason, the same way the Olympics are special to people.  Maybe it was ambitious to set out and try to get some of you to love football the way I do.  But I love movies and shows because the stories they tell are so human and so real, even though they’re fake.  They remind us that what it means to be human has nothing to do with our jobs, our income, how tall we are, or any of the other inconsequential and meaningless things we value too much in the world.  There’s so much beauty in film because ultimately, the movies are about us and we can be pretty damn beautiful to each other when we try.  And here, on the grandest sporting stage in the world, there are compelling stories of humanity everywhere you look.  If you’re already a football fan, you know what I’m talking about.  If you’re not, it’s my sincere hope that this turns you into one, though I admit that’s a very long shot.  That’s aiming for the moon with a paper airplane, I know.  But if I can’t do that, then I hope you at least give the World Cup a try.  Watch it with friends or alone, watch it at a bar, watch it in a hotel lobby in Bucharest like I did once.  But let yourself feel what they’re feeling; the players, the fans.  Soak it all in.  Because there’s a lot of beauty here too.  And when you really let yourself experience it, it’s a wonderful feeling.

And while writing this, Japan, my home away from home, came back to get an unlikely draw against the Netherlands.

Also, while I’m here, since I may never talk about sports again in this blog, congratulations to the New York Knicks for winning their first NBA title in 53 years.  From me to all you New Yorkers out there, that’s quite an accomplishment.  I’ll be checking the headlines to see if you party as hard as we do when the Eagles win though.

Seriously, Thierry Henry. Stop making me cry.

Drag(on) Race

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

It’s been a couple of weeks, but captions are back! Let’s see if I can write any funny ones this time

Nothing says summer quite like an island getaway, does it?  Think about it; when you’re on an island, there’s a beach in every direction.  You could spin around blindfolded, stop and walk a straight line, and you’d eventually hit the ocean.  Take the blindfold off before you start walking though, it would be hazardous otherwise.  Picture it.  The wind in your hair, the sand in your boots, and your dragon’s saddle freshly conditioned beneath you.  Last week we had one last day of school for the grown-ups, this week I present to you a show you might have missed that will keep both you and your kids entertained this summer.  It’s even a property you’re likely to recognize.  Let’s get into the How to Train Your Dragon spin-off series, Dreamworks Dragons: Race to the Edge.

My morning commute has never been this exciting. Well, there was that one time I was stuck in traffic behind a helicopter, that was interesting

You know How to Train Your Dragon already, I’m sure.  I remember seeing it for the first time in undergrad and going back to the theaters to see it again.  I hadn’t seen an animated film that was so imaginative and gorgeous up until that point, it demanded repeat viewings.  In case you need a crash course, there are vikings (who mostly sound Scottish as adults and American when younger) and there are dragons and they were enemies for a very long time.  Cue young Hiccup, a slight boy who never really fit in and couldn’t bring himself to kill a dragon, inadvertently befriending one, a Night Fury called Toothless, and then changing the relationship between vikings and dragons forever.  Lovely set of movies, really worth watching if you haven’t already.  I don’t normally tell you to watch something you’ve already seen, so why Race to the Edge?  Well, it’s a Netflix spin-off series based on the beloved film series based on the beloved novel series by Cressida Cowell and it takes place between the first and second movies.  So you still get all your favorite characters and their dragons, while enriching the world of the series.

Saved by the Night Fury: The College Years

What this does is give the series incredible and noticeable connection and continuity with film series.  Which isn’t always easy to pull off.  The Penguins of Madagascar series was almost entirely unrelated to the Madagascar movies (although I did find it more entertaining than the movies, the penguins were the best part; but strangely the Penguins movie was just okay).  The Last Wish is an incredible movie, but Netflix’s The Adventures of Puss-in-Boots series was borderline unwatchable.  Camp Cretaceous and Chaos Theory were pretty damn good cartoons in their own right, with lots of redeeming qualities and surprisingly much more cohesive storytelling than the Jurassic World movies on which they’re based, but, rightfully so, they felt nothing like the movies. There are new villains and a slew of new dragons, sure.  However, Race to the Edge doesn’t feel like a spin-off to the movies, it doesn’t feel like it’s inspired by the movies; it feels like more of the movies.  And for me, since I love the movies, it’s a really welcomed addition.  The animation quality isn’t as good as the films, of course, but it does improve as the seasons progress and it’s never really an issue (whereas some of these animated spin-off shows can have animation quality and frame rates that make my eyes feel like they can’t focus).  So while it won’t look as crisp as the films, it still feels like them.

If it’s got wings, he’ll fly it, but I’m not sure a sword’s crossguard counts

A lot of that has to do with the returning and replacement cast.  Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder, Man Seeking Woman) returns as Hiccup, of course, and so does America Ferrara (Barbie, Superstore), reprising her role as Astrid.  As does Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fright Night, Role Models) as Fishlegs.  That’s really exciting, to hear that core cast of characters in their movie-accurate voices.  As for the rest of the dragon riders, it’s a little more mixed.  TJ Miller also returns as Tuffnut, but I’d have been happier had he been replaced.  Subbing in for Kristen Wiig is Andree Vermeulen (Angie Tribeca) as Ruffnut, Zack Pearlman (The Intern) for Jonah Hill as Snotlout, Nolan North (Nathan Drake in Uncharted) for Gerard Butler as Stoick, and journeyman VA Chris Edgerly as Gobber instead of Craig Ferguson.  And they all do excellent jobs standing-in, to the point that it took me some time to parse out who was new.  With enough of the film actors doing voices here, any slight differences are hard to get bothered about.  The show also adds the voice acting talents of Mae Whitman (Arrested Development, Good Girls), David Faustino (Married…With Children, The Legend of Korra), and even Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Show Me a Hero), and others through the series.  It’s not like you’ll be dazzled by the big names, but when I heard Alfred Molina’s voice for the first time, it was a real treat.  Suffice it to say, the voice acting across the series is top notch.

It’s true; Vikings did invent laser light shows

But more important than all that is how well the show is written.  I really shouldn’t be surprised considering the strength of the films, but I don’t really have the best relationship with DreamWorks properties (don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they’re Illumination).  The writing is surprisingly mature, while still being fully kid-friendly.  But because it tackles actual stuff, it’s still an engaging series for adults.  Sure, some of the humor might appeal more to younger brains, but there’s still compelling story here for the characters.  Unlike shows aimed at very young audiences, like the underrated and good for kids Young Jedi Adventures, Race to the Edge doesn’t just aim to teach kids about kindness, empathy, and acceptance, but also tackle the hardships that kids will face as they grow up through adolescence.  Hiccup isn’t perfect.  He doesn’t always win, he doesn’t always make the right decisions, he’s not always perfectly even-keeled.  He loses, he loses his temper.  He has flaws.  Of course when confronted with them, he admits his mistakes and makes changes to his behavior.  In short, he learns lessons when he’s wrong, which is something that not only kids could learn from, but just about every adult I know could benefit from learning to admit they’re wrong and taking steps to rectify them as well.  Hiccup deals with failures and when he’s out of his depth, he’s not afraid to seek help and take the advice given to him.  I didn’t realize I was coming to this conclusion when I started writing, but Hiccup kind of is an amazing role model and represents a kind of masculinity that isn’t toxic.  The world could really use more Hiccups.

Discovery of the “Dragon Eye” leads Hiccup and the riders to new horizons and new enemies and a series of cool new bachelor pads

And the rest of the crew is similarly realized; at least in line with the size of their role.  Astrid is the biggest character after Hiccup and she has some pretty good character arcs centered on her and she has to learn and change as well.  But not everyone gets the exact same treatment; it’s proportional.  Ruffnut doesn’t get the same character growth as Astrid, but she does get character growth.  For a kids’ show sandwiched between the confines of two movies, it does an impressive job in the writing department.  If Agents of SHIELD were written half as well as this, I wouldn’t still be ragging on it years after it went off air.  Hiccup and co. face real hardships and difficulties and they get put in real peril and have to make hard decisions.  Don’t worry, it’s still a kids’ show, it’s not like Hiccup has to decide whether to cure the genophage or not.  And ultimately, as they do in kids’ shows and much less often in real life, the good guys do win out.  But along the way, the riders face antagonists of completely different styles and approaches and challenges that they have to contend with.  It’s not just them finding one small would-be despot after another; there’s real care and variation to whom Hiccup has to go head-to-head with and each one provides new lessons for them, and any viewers child or adult, to learn.

I’m not sure they nailed the album cover shot

That’s one of the things that really impressed me; how the main antagonists change over the course of the series.  A lot of times villains in series are much of a muchness; the character design changes, the voice changes, but the behavior largely stays the same.  Look at how many big bad small time megalomaniacs the crew from The Walking Dead face.  But here, each antagonist brings differing aims and personalities.  And sometimes some big names; perhaps the most memorable villain is Alfred Molina’s Viggo Grimborn, the head of a group of vicious for-profit dragon hunters.  He’s an experienced tactician, the consummate chess player, and he is properly menacing at times.  Viggo’s a better, more fully fleshed out villain than most in the MCU.  And this is a kids’ show.  By DreamWorks.  The same people who made it so I can break out into the first few lines of Smash Mouth at any given time, fully against my will.  But this show is great!  I mean, look, it’s not Severance, but compared to most kids’ media out there today?  This has to go up there with in the vaunted Bluey tier of great shows that are appealing for both kids and adults.  It’s really that good.  And it doesn’t forego the fun for the lessons.  There’s plenty of silly humor and exciting dragon action to keep things light.  It’s been a real pleasure jumping back into the show to write this post because, well, I like it.  I remain a big fan of the movies, I have the LEGO Toothless sitting on my shelf, and well, it’s good stuff.  On every level.  Race to the Edge is the well-balanced meal you’re going to want to eat.

Poker night gets especially contentious when someone forgets the cards

There can be some spooky moments; in one episode, Astrid comes upon a ship full of the dead and dying.  It doesn’t get too explicit, but it’s obvious what’s happening.  There are a number of offscreen deaths; it’s not as if they’re mowing down people left and right, but occasionally there is death and it’s impactful to the story.  There’s plenty talk of death as well though, so maybe kids unfamiliar with the concept are tad bit too young.  Streaming exclusively on Netflix, it’s rated TV-Y7, so, you know, do with that information what you will.  It ran for six seasons, thirteen episodes each, so there are plenty of hours of entertainment for the whole family when the kids are done playing outside.  Do kids still play outside?  Or do they go to like a virtual Topgolf version of the outside?  Toplawn?  I don’t know what kids do.  When I was a kid, I always made excuses to stay inside where it wasn’t 90F+ and I would have loved to watch a show like this one.  Blue skies and coastlines, there are worse ways to spend a summer.  Especially from your air conditioned living room.  Oh yeah, dragons too.  What more could you want?

Someone is getting breaded and fried

And a bonus photo! Apparently this was criticized for being too cute, but can Toothless ever be too cute?

To Kill a Mocking Word

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

Every once in a while, an underdog story comes along that inspires you and makes you feel like anything is possible.  Your Rudy, your Remember the Titans, your Average Joe’s Gym.  Something that takes your spirits, hoists them on its shoulders, and lifts them high into the air.  An inspiring tale of an against-all-odds run at the Golden Quill Spelling Bee, taking its place alongside playing for Notre Dame, winning the state title, and beating Globo Gym at their own game as worthy prizes at the end of a hard-fought journey.  Maybe there’s a movie like that.  But this is not that movie.  Sun’s getting high in the sky and the temperatures are rising, but before we can go on our summer holiday, we have to go back for one last day of school.  Let’s say some Bad Words.

Bad Words is a 2013 film streaming on Prime Video and starring Jason Bateman (Game Night, Arrested Development) in his directorial debut as Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old middle school dropout who enters a series of spelling bees in order to reach the finals.  By exploiting a loophole in the rulebook stating that the only requirement to enter is not having completed the 8th grade by a certain date, he manages to squeak into competition after competition among heavy protests by everyone involved: parents, admin, even the child contestants themselves.  So we have an Air Bud situation here because nothing in the rulebook says a dog can’t play basketball and this 40-year-old is in a spelling bee with a bunch of tweens.  Luckily he’s really good at spelling stuff.  His bedside manner could use some work, though; as the title promises, it sports an R rating.  So this one isn’t for the kids, even though there are a lot of kids in it.

Guy is everything you don’t want in a protagonist.  He’s harsh with people, he’s mean to kids, he picks on insecurities, he’s incredibly rude, incredibly vulgar, a misanthrope, mildly racist (and I mean mildly even by 2013 standards, the year this was released; by today’s standards, he’s downright saintly), and just generally across the board unlikable.  To sum up Guy Trilby in one word, it would be, and you know I don’t like to swear in this blog, a doodoohead.  Just a real doodoohead.  I don’t use that term lightly, but jerk just isn’t strong enough.

So yeah, Guy’s an asshole, board certified, with distinction.  But maybe it’s because Arrested Development changed my life, but Jason Bateman somehow manages to make Trilby sympathetic in a way.  Sure, he’s a foul-mouthed interloper ruining the spelling bee for dozens of children who have probably had to forfeit significant portions of their childhood to sate their parents’ need for vicarious success, but the way everyone immediately hates him makes you want to root for him.  I mean, they didn’t know he was such a doodoohead right off the bat and they didn’t even give him a chance.  From the moment the shock of a 40 year old man entering a children’s spelling bee starts to subside, their first conscious reaction is anger and insults thrown his way.  They place every obstacle in front of him, do everything they can to get him kicked out.  On stage, off stage, within the rules, without them.  Sometimes the so-called standup citizens, parents who pat themselves on the back over how right they’re living and how strong their reputation is and administrators who pride themselves on their integrity, get very nasty with Guy and do many of the things they accuse him of.  On another day, I would go into what this movie is trying to say about the kind of people to whom appearances are more important than anything else.  But this is the last day of school, so nothing too heavy.

Sponsoring Guy is Jenny Widgeon, a reporter for an online news publication.  Guy needs the sponsorship to be able to enter the bee.  Jenny is played by Kathryn Hahn (Parks & Rec, Agatha All Along) and she is very, very curious about Guy and is paying his way through the spelling bee circuit in addition to sponsoring him.  She’s pinning a lot of hope and money on his story being an interesting one and he’s playing it very tight-lipped.  Guy is on a crusade and Jenny wants to know why.  Her role is pretty tertiary here, but she does well enough with what she has, playing the quirky and at-wits’-end reporter.  Hahn is a really talented comic actress, so part of me wishes she had a more significant role to leverage that talent, but the movie doesn’t pay much mind to her character and as such, Jenny’s characterization is pretty thin.  Allison Janney (The West Wing) is also criminally underused in the movie, but it’s always a pleasure to see CJ Cregg out in the wild (but I’m not watching Mom; no one can make me).  The standout of the supporting cast, though, is young Rohan Chand, who plays fellow spelling bee contestant and actual child Chaitanya Chopra.  Now, Chaitanya is pretty much on his own and under a lot of pressure from his parents.  Of course, more than just the prestige that comes along with winning the spelling bee and the ability to basically choose your own college are on the table; there’s also a significant cash prize.  So for the kids, there’s a ton at stake here.  A future and a means to pay for it, with soaring college costs and celebrity kids faking applications, navigating admissions seems like a minefield.  For Guy, it’s something else that he cares about.  Which you’ll have to watch the movie to find out, I’m not telling you.  But Chaitanya is absolutely hilarious as the innocent young kid who makes an inappropriate friend.  Of course there’s a good amount of corrupting a minor here, but it only gets properly criminal towards the end of their montage.  However, it’s Chaitanya’s role in this film that makes this movie worth writing about.  Their relationship is the heart of the movie; it’s what separates this from truly mindless crap like Sausage Party or Movie 43.

Bad Words is not great comedy.  It’s not incredibly clever, even though it has its clever moments.  It’s not that smart, even though it’s about a smart person.  But it’s funny.  If you’re the kind of person who can’t help but laugh when someone walks into a screen door or when someone swears around or to kids, then Bad Words will leave you with as many laughs that you feel just a little bad about as I had when watching it.  I find people being irreverently foul-mouthed around kids so funny.  I don’t know why, but it gets me.  Maybe because I can’t do it myself; I do swear quite a bit outside of this blog, but I try not do it arounds kids.  So watching someone with absolutely no filter just say and do whatever he wants regardless of who’s around is almost freeing in a way.  So when Guy and Chaitanya’s friendship grows, as inappropriate and worrying as it would be to see in real life, in the film it’s really funny.  You have to suspend a good amount of disbelief (for example, Chaitanya is 10 and his father has him staying on his own in the hotel because he wants him to grow up, which seems highly unlikely for the type of helicopter parenting that turns a kid into a spelling bee champion), but if you do, it’s very fun.  There’s a whiff of Bad Santa to their relationship and it definitely feels like it was a bit of an inspiration for the story structure here.  But through all this vulgarity and storm of swears, there’s a wholesomeness to this movie that is somewhat irrepressible.  I’m not saying it’ll particularly tug at your heartstrings, but the movie has a warmth to it that’s in complete contrast to Guy’s character.  It’s a tightrope walk sure, but Bateman is the one to do it.  I don’t think this role could have worked as well with many other actors, but he’s got the right mix of smarmy and aww shucks about him as a person that leaning into the smarmy here works really well.

What we end up with is a movie that feels vaguely like a cross between Bad Santa and Air Bud, with the requisite irreverent comedy and enough wholesomeness to make it worth watching.  Bad Words isn’t going to change your life.  It’s probably not going to become your favorite movie.  It won’t even become your favorite R-rated comedy.  It’s not even close to the best R-rated Jason Bateman comedy I want to analyze this summer.  But if it’s the kind of raunchy, inappropriate comedy that makes you laugh, then Bad Words is a definitely a good way to spend the scant 89 minute runtime before the kids are home all day everyday.  There are definitely gags that would not work today and that I do not endorse, but I did laugh consistently through the film.  And sometimes that’s enough.  I know I am guiltier than most when it comes to overanalyzing film and TV and looking for the deeper message, but it’s also okay to put your feet up, crack open a nice cold drink on a hot day, and just be entertained for almost an hour and a half.  Everybody needs that sometimes and Bad Words provides it.

We’ve also somehow crossed over from May into June, which even though time moving forward has literally happened every day of my life, I’m still surprised when I notice it.  That means this month is Pride Month and I would be remiss to let this occasion pass without mentioning it.  Happy Pride Month to everyone in the LGBT+ community and especially to everyone for whom the LGBT+ community’s existence is upsetting.  Whoever you are, whoever you love, you are valid, wanted, and the world is better with you.  This blog is a place where you are welcomed, safe, and valued.  In today’s world, just existing can be an act of bravery and I want you to know that I stand with you.

The Death Collector

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

I was hoping that last week’s The Punisher: One Last Kill would give me the opportunity to pay tribute to the holiday here in the US this weekend.  But since it was a major disappointment, I found myself reaching for a movie that I’d seen once before and have been holding off on a rewatch until I had a chance to share it with you.  Memorial Day is the traditional curtain raiser for the summertime, so don’t worry, we’re going to get to light summer fun starting next week.  But before we get to the more family-friendly fare, the things to distract your kids with, and, well, probably some R-rated comedies for the grown ups, since we’re in the midst of another war, and Memorial Day is a day to honor those fallen in service, I think it’s time we talk about 2023 R-rated war movie Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, streaming on Prime Video.  Let’s get into it.

We start in Afghanistan in 2018.  Master Sergeant John Kinley, played by Jake Gyllenhaal (Prisoners, Nightcrawler), meets his new interpreter Ahmed Abdullah, played by Dar Salim (Game of Thrones).  Ahmed tells Kinley he’s doing the job for the money, but in reality, he has an axe to grind with the Taliban.  The job, by the way, entails being the person who takes point in every conversation with Afghani locals, which is something Kinley and his squad have to do a lot because they’re on the very dangerous hunt for Taliban munitions.  They’re looking for caches of weapons and explosives, and what they call IED factories.  Every encounter is tense, including ones between Kinley and Ahmed.  There isn’t a lot of trust between the two and it gets tested time and time again.   Ahmed is smart, intuitive, and deliberate, and above all else, he trusts his own judgment.  This causes the two of them to butt heads on more than one occasion; the chain of command isn’t something that the military takes lightly and when Ahmed challenges Kinley’s authority, it isn’t taken very well.  It’s hard to be frictionless in a military structure when you’re not so good at taking orders.  But they make a good team, despite the difficulties.  Kinley isn’t what I’d call by the book, but he seems to care about getting the mission done and getting dangerous explosives out of the hands of the Taliban.

Three minutes.  All it takes is three minutes.  It doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but in the span of three minutes, a successful mission turns into a hellish nightmare from which many of Kinley’s soldiers will never awake.  They call in for backup, but in the time it takes for the QRF to arrive at their location, 3 hours away by Humvee, it’s all over.  Dozens are left dead, Kinley and Ahmed are nowhere to be found.  In those three minutes from the moment a fuse is lit to the moment it goes off, Kinley and Ahmed end up desperately on the run from overwhelming Taliban forces.  Stranded, alone, and over 100 kilometers over rough terrain away from safety.  All while hundreds of armed men are hunting them down.  They are in extreme danger, suffice it to say.

There’s a moment when Ahmed has a chance to get away from everything.  They’re ambushed after trying to find some shelter for the night.  Kinley is gravely wounded and captured.  Surely better off on his own, in his own country, Ahmed could easily have shed his military uniform and tried to disappear.  But he doesn’t.  He doesn’t slip away.  He doesn’t try to disappear.  He doesn’t leave Kinley to the Taliban for a better chance of survival.  The thought doesn’t even cross his mind.  He rescues Kinley, tends to his wounds as best he can in the field, builds a stretcher, and starts on the arduous journey to Bagram Air Base, their only safe haven.  This is a journey fraught with enough dangers that you would expect some sort of Fellowship to undertake it, but instead it’s just one man, dragging behind him the barely living body of a man he doesn’t even seem to like.

In my notes, I usually mark when the acts end, but I found something strange about the narrative structure of this movie.  This might be my film nerd coming out, but there’s something about The Covenant that feels like it doesn’t follow a standard three act structure.  Rather, it feels like a movie of two halves.  The first half of The Covenant is in Afghanistan.  The second half takes place later, after Ahmed drags a barely alive Sgt. Kinley back to base and he recovers and goes home.  The US pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban took over almost immediately.  There’s something I neglected to mention at the top, which the movie illustrates through a series of chyrons at the beginning; interpreters for the US military were promised eligibility for special visas for them and their families to the US.  These are people who put their own lives and their families’ lives in danger to help the US fight the Taliban; even without the Taliban’s resurgence, staying in Afghanistan would be very dangerous for them, as the movie notes at the end.  When the movie was released, over 300 interpreters and their entire families have been murdered by the Taliban, with thousands more in hiding, waiting for their visas.  And news filters to Kinley that Ahmed and his family are one of them.  He spends weeks on the phone, running into wall after stonewall and it’s eating him alive.  Kinley got a medal.  Kinley went home to his family.  Kinley sleeps in a warm bed and kisses his children goodbye as he sends them to school in the morning.  He is safe.  His family is safe.  The man who brought him home is living in a hole somewhere, with his wife and infant child, not knowing if he’d see the sunset on any given day he’s lucky enough to wake up.

Kinley can’t take this.  Call it honor, call it duty, call it a good man doing the right thing, but he calls it a debt.  A debt that can only be paid one way.  After weeks of being stonewalled, Kinley decides the only thing he can do is go get Ahmed himself or wait for confirmation of his death.  He has no question about what needs to be done.  He will stop at nothing to get Ahmed and his family to safety.  Gyllenhaal gives a moving speech about what it means, about what is killing him day by day, and when push comes to shove, he can’t live without doing something about it.  So he goes.  He leans on his military contacts, they hire a PMC to support his operation (played by Antony Starr, whom you may recognize as Homelander from The Boys), but at the end of the day, he’s on his own.  He has to walk into enemy territory where he is a wanted man because Ahmed’s tale has turned them both into folk heroes for those who oppose the Taliban and a symbol of failure for those who support the Taliban.  A mistake.  An embarrassment.  What follows is a breathless race against time, against certain death that can come at any moment.  There is no time to waste, every single moment is borrowed and past due.

The Covenant is also a wonderful acting vehicle.  It’s true that some of the writing, especially in the first half is a little clunky.  It’s full of matter-of-fact toxic masculinity, with the soldiers getting into each other, but I would struggle to say it feels inauthentic.  Obviously, I’ve never been in the military, so I can only judge off the movies I’ve seen and veterans I’ve known, but this kind of banter among the men seems normal, even if it is a bit cliched.  And there were a couple of moments where I would’ve used a contraction to make it seem more natural, but Ritchie decided to go for impact instead.  But overall, the acting in this movie is top notch.  There isn’t much to do for the supporting cast; most of them die in the first half and you get to know little of them beyond their nicknames like “Chow Chow” and “Jizzy”.  But Jake Gyllenhaal continues to impress over and over again.  I mean, look at this guy’s CV and you’ve got great performance after great performance.  Nightcrawler, a movie I probably would never watch again because it’s just a little too honest about society, was made irrepressible by Gyllenhaal’s performance.  Brokeback Mountain, Prisoners, End of Watch, Zodiac, Donnie Darko, hell, even his role in Spider-Man: Go Home, You Can’t Go Home Again was acted very well.  So this this doesn’t come as a surprise if you’ve been paying attention to his career, but it’s so nice to see him pulling off a military role after the absolute snoozefest of Jarhead and being so good at it.

But the true hero of this film is Dar Salim.  In a way, being a relative unknown really helps you lose the actor in the character.  IMDB tells me that he was in Game of Thrones, but so many people were in Game of Thrones and didn’t make an impact because the cast was so big and many of the roles were so small, it’s impossible to remember him.  I might have been in Game of Thrones at some point and not even known it.  But whatever he’s worked on in the past, The Covenant makes me wish I could see more of him.  It also reminds me that in Hollywood, seeing an actor who looks like him in a starring role as a protagonist is exceedingly rare and I may never get to see him again in a role anything close to this quality in a world where billionaires melt down over the casting of non-white actors for mythological roles.  Case in point, he was in the spin-off of The Terminal List, a show that was so bad I gleefully took it down and offered alternatives way back in 2022.  Now, I haven’t seen Dark Wolf, but I’m wagering it’s not a series commensurate with his talent.  But fixing racial bias in Hollywood and the world at large is out of the purview of this particular blog post.  Maybe I’ll get to it after the summer, but for now I’ll just try to enjoy the fantastic performance of Dar Salim in this movie.

This is a surprisingly quiet film.  Even the action sequences are scored with operatic music that ratchets up the tension.  No silly, mismatched music to undercut the danger of the scene here.  It has great action, but it’s not about the action.  Even the explosions lack that bass punch you’d expect in a modern action film.  The sound of a crying baby pierces through the air more sharply than the crack of a gunshot.  And even though they do sneak in a few shots that look like that one Call of Duty mission where you’re in the AC-130 Spectre gunship, this movie couldn’t be any less interested in the ins and outs of the gunplay.  Rather, it wants you to feel the tension, the fear, the dread, the apprehension of these men.  It doesn’t care about blood and gore, even if there is brutality in survival.  All that matters is the debt; what is owed, who we owe, and what we are willing to do to pay what we owe.  The Covenant is Ritchie’s most ambitious and best project yet.  I grew up on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Shakespearean tragedies written as comedic films about modern day London gangsters.  I love those movies.  I endured the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes films.  I watched him flounder trying to get his style back with The Gentlemen and its spin-off series.  I saw him experiment with bleakness with the well shot, but narratively unsatisfying Wrath of Man.  But this is new for him.  Depth.  Contemplation.  Hope.  And it’s a damn good look for Guy Ritchie.

So as the barbecues cool down and the cookouts come to an end, if you want to take 2 hours and 3 minutes to reflect on the meaning of this particular day off work and think about what it means in regards to the sacrifices soldiers have made, The Covenant is a fantastic movie to sit with.  We can disagree about war, we can hate that we go to war, we can hate the reasons we go to war, but we can still honor the sacrifices of those asked to give it all, whatever the reason.  I wanted The Punisher: One Last Kill to do this, but it ignored the deeper parts of that story in order to deliver hollow violence.  The Covenant does the opposite; its use of violence punctuates its message, it doesn’t replace it.  We are all connected and all life matters.  Not just these two.  Not just because Ahmed saved Kinley’s life.  When I was a boy, my mom would tell me that her mom said it was a sin to go to bed with a full stomach if your neighbor has an empty one.  And fundamentally, The Covenant is about that idea.  It’s about decency and humanity; about what it takes to be able to sleep at night when others are in peril and you can do something about it.  Especially if you contributed to the cause of it.  Society is a constant push-pull of the individual and the collective; the need for a single person to remain singular and still part of society is hard to reconcile not just in media, but in your own personal life.  The Covenant is a worthy film that looks at what we owe, not only to those who sacrifice, but to each other in general.