SNAKE & MONGOOSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jesse Williams & Richard Blake as SNAKE & MONGOOSE
The real-life drag racers who partnered with Mattel's HOT WHEELS

Snake & Mongoose (2013) ****
Dir. Wayne Holloway, Writers: Alan Paradise & Wayne Holloway
Starring: Jesse Williams, Richard Blake, Noah Wyle, Tim Blake Nelson, Fred Dryer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Snake & Mongoose is a tremendously entertaining picture about the grand, glory days of drag racing. Focusing on the friendly rivalry between two of the sport's biggest stars, it's a movie's movie that comes jam-packed with all the Kraft Dinner comfort-food-styled-clichés you'd want from a racing picture yet alternately dappled with raw, rip-snorting reality. I suspect it's a picture many people will enjoy - of both sexes - but for those of us who lived through that amazing time, the movie is only going to have oodles of added resonance, but will frankly provide plenty of pure, glistening pools of unadulterated joy.

During the 70s, I seriously doubt there were any little boys in North America who:

(A.) Didn't own a few truckloads of Hot Wheels racing cars;
(B.) Didn't own several sets of Hot Wheels racetracks:
(C.) Didn't fall in love with drag racing;
(D.) and most of all, didn't know who the Snake & Mongoose were.

I was one of those little boys and I sure don't remember any kids I grew up with who weren't obsessed with any and all of the above. I remember counting myself extra lucky since my Dad was a P.R. man for a brewery at a time when promotions were the only way to market beer since advertising booze was against the law (at least in many Canadian territories). Dad sponsored a lot of sporting events and the one I loved the most was drag racing. I practically got to live at our local drag racing track one summer - not in the stands with all the suckers, but in the backstretch and at ground level, with all the manly men in T-shirts, cigarette packs tucked into their sleeves, sporting amazing sideburns and always, ALWAYS, surrounded by a ton of booze and babes: HOT BABES like the HOT WHEELS cars! It was Heaven on Earth: a cacaphonic, kaleidoscopic sensory-overload-sensation brimming to the max with the smell of fuel, burnt rubber and greasy oil, the sound of engines revving, tires squealing, staccato track announcements, babes-a-twittering, flashbulbs popping and LOUD rock n' roll on the speakers. And yeah, there were babes, too.

Have I mentioned the babes, yet? I digress. My bad.

The dazzling and promising feature length directorial debut of Wayne Holloway tells a relatively simple tale that spends twenty years in the lives of the famed California drag racers, Don "The Snake" Prudhomme (Jesse Williams) and Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen (Richard Blake). Friends and rivals since childhood, the two young men follow their dreams early in adulthood. Don is sweet, stable and loyal to his best gal while Tom is a wild man who cheats on his lovely, loving wife, drinks hard, rides hard and plays hard. He's also a whiz at self-promotion and keeps trying to convince his buddy to follow in his footsteps.

Through the two characters we experience how the early days of professional drag racing were full of unscrupulous track owners who make all the money while welching on the full prize money to the drivers. Tom combats this with promotional and sponsorship tie-ins as Don struggles along. When Tom comes up with the brilliant idea to sell themselves to the Mattel company and tie-in with the company's hugely successful Hot Wheels brand of toy race cars, Don decides to jump on board. In no time, Mattel designs toy cars to match the men's own cars and in turn, the guys design cars based upon models whipped together by the toy design team at the kiddie toy empire.

On track, the men are genuine rivals, but off track, they are the best of friends. This is part of their appeal to all the young boys - two men who remain best pals, but who also want to win. They capture the hearts and minds of kids everywhere. As they rise to the top of their game, one rises even higher and the other begins a slow plunge. It's a standard show business trope in narratives of this kind, but it also happens to be rooted in fact and generates a great deal of dramatic conflict throughout the proceedings. The film also focuses on the domestic lives of the men, adding a human element to the picture that eventually trumps a great deal of the macho shenanigans (without leaving them too far behind). There's an especially harrowing subplot involving Tom's leukaemia-stricken son which, goddamn it, moistened my eyes on more than a few occasions and most notably during a "Win one for the Gipper" conversation twixt father and dying son.

What jettisons Snake & Mongoose into a special place amongst racing pictures is how the clearly talented director Holloway captures period detail by expertly mixing straight-up dramatic recreations (chock-full of superb period detail) with absolutely stunning genuine stock/newsreel footage of the back-stretch at the track as well as during the thrilling races themselves. This is expertly bounced about to deliver a seamless tone that keeps our attention glued to the screen.

The film has a gorgeous sun-dappled look, but in the heat of race days, it's especially evocative in terms of the gorgeous grain dancing on-screen from the stock footage and the carefully filtered and beautifully lit dramatic footage that captures the blazing heat and dust of the track and its backstretch. In addition to eliciting terrific performances from the entire cast (especially its two leads and a wonderful supporting turn from the great Fred Dryer), director Holloway displays a vivid and clear voice as a filmmaker who has the kind of gifts that will, no doubt, deliver even more terrific pictures. The movie is jam-packed with a clever, varied palette of technique, but it's also got a ton or two of real heart.

Snake & Mongoose is up there with the best racing pictures. In fact, I'm willing to declare it might be the best of them all.

Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada (along with their U.S. counterpart) has released a stunningly transferred Blu-Ray release which is seldom less-than perfect. Its only flaw is a meagre, short and disappointing added behind-the-scenes feature which feels more like a promo reel. Most egregiously, it features interviews with everyone but the film's clearly gifted director. Whassup wit' 'dat? The movie, however, is more than worth owning in spite of this, especially for racing fans and 10-year-old boys of ALL ages. Feel free to order the film from the Amazon links below, and in so doing, supporting the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, GHOST PROTOCOL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Way Too Much JJA

Though it doesn't hold a candle to DePalma or Woo
Bird's MI is a virtual John Holmes sized schwance
compared to the pathetic J. J. Abrams little flurpy

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) dir. Brad Bird **
Starring: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton

By Greg Klymkiw

If you bother to see the clumsily titled Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, there are three great reasons to see it. First and foremost, the 30-or-so minutes that are shot in the huge-screen format (invented by Canadians with Canadian government support then sold to Americans who now profit from it the most) include the most spectacular footage shot in IMAX to date. Therefore, if you bother to see it at all, you must see it in IMAX as it's a generally mediocre movie that is turned into an almost-good movie because of IMAX.

Secondly, the other great reason to see the movie is Tom Cruise. He gets a raw deal more than he deserves from critics and some contemporary audiences, but frankly, I think he's not only a terrific actor, but he's one of our truly great stars - and then some. What adds to his performance here is that he does all his own stunts, some of which, are utterly death-defying.

Thirdly, the movie is directed by the immensely talented Brad Bird. If I were to bother making a list of my 10 Best animated features of all time, his spectacular The Incredibles would be on that list. Furthermore, my Top 20 list would include The Iron Giant and a Top 30 list would include Ratatouille - both directed by the estimable filmmaker.

You might be wondering, then, with all of the aforementioned plus points why I think the movie is, overall, a failure. Well, compared to the woefully inept J.J. Abrams's Mission Impossible 3, it comes close to being Citizen Kane. Compared, however, to Brian DePalma's taut, astoundingly directed first instalment of the franchise based upon the hit television series from the Cold War period of the 60s, Bird's film slides into a third-best position - by a country mile or two. The reasons? Simple.

When Bird is allowed to flex his muscles in the way he needs to, the movie soars - sequences involving suspense of the derring-do variety are handled brilliantly with an excellent variety of shots and cuts that all have dramatic resonance rather than pure visceral jackhammer power. These include most of the IMAX sequences and most notably, the already-famous sequence involving Tom Cruise - in the flesh, no stuntmen other than himself, climbing the largest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This sequence is breathtaking - literally. My first viewing of it had me clutching the arms of the chair, wincing, gasping and coming close to woofing my cookies. There's also a stunning chase scene through a sandstorm wherein Bird has us on the edge of our collective seats - careening to and fro with every crazed beat.

Sadly, the action sequences involving hand-to-hand combat and gunplay, are shockingly mediocre. They're most done in the annoying herky-jerky-way-too-many-closeups-and-annoying-cuts style. There's no dramatic resonance to these sequences and worse, unlike the aforementioned setpieces, Bird's sense of spatial geography is almost as woeful as J.J. Abrams hack work in M:I-3. Given that Abrams is one of the producers, I suspect Bird became occasionally afflicted with the dreaded Abramsitis. These scenes are insanely disappointing, especially considering that one of them involves a cat fight between two babes. John Woo (M:I-2)can certainly be cutty when he directs action, but every shot is gorgeously composed with an almost painterly John Ford eye and every cut calculated to move us narratively and emotionally forward.

The plot, such as any of them are in this series, is perfunctorily serviceable. Tom Cruise and his team are wrongfully implicated in a bombing at the Kremlin. The entire division is shamed and disbanded, though Cruise launches into a major covert operation to clear the name of his team and their agency. This involves all manner of Russian secret service agents, hit men, hit women, arms dealers and others - racing against time to (a) stop Cruise and/or (b) engage the world in a nuclear war. The ride, is the key element in a picture like this, but due to the erratic coverage of the action sequences, the movie proceeds in fits and starts.

Cruise delivers another stalwart leading man performance and his stunt work is epic. That said, at the beginning of the movie, he poses a couple of times as a Russian and his Russian is DREADFUL. So much so that it's a huge stretch to believe that he convinces any number of Russians that he IS Russian. Light comic leading man Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) is a definite breath of fresh air - bumbling, funny, but always loyal, he's a great addition to the franchise. His Russian is surprisingly good, by the way. The thorn in the side of this instalment is one of the two leading ladies. Léa Seydoux as the vile, villainous Russian hit lady is terrific - gorgeous in that cool-as-ice come-hither way one wants a bad girl to be. Alas, Paula Patton as the leading lady on the MI team is woefully un-photogenic and the scene where she attempts to be sultry and seductive to get some secret codes is laughable. Her line deliveries are also endless thudding to the floor.

In any event, one doesn't see any movie in this franchise for anything other than great action sequences, and thankfully, in IMAX, several of them are so astounding that you'd probably be a bit foolish for not partaking in them. That said, don't bother seeing it in any other format than IMAX. As for Brad Bird, I do hope he loses the J.J. Abrams tin-eye disease for his next movie. He's the real thing.