"Violence that Hits Too Hard, Laughs that Fall Too Flat"
"A sampling of critical responses to this week's new movies. Does Fifteen Minutes commit the very sins it condemns? Are Get Over It, Company Man, and Blow Dry the kind of comedies that make you laugh, or cry? Are the folks in When Brendan Met Trudy too cru"
Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 3/01/2001 12:00AM
If the question had an easy answer, it wouldn't keep coming back. Is onscreen violence teaching people how to behave, or is it merely reflecting the reality of a violent society?
The answer is, probably, "Yes." As our media becomes saturated by slow-motion bulletfests, bloody wrestling rings, and talk-show fistfights, impressionable viewers seem more likely to go back to high school and shoot their classmates. But at the same time, it is difficult to make relevant contemporary art about reality on the streets, in schools, in big business without in some way portraying the violence there. What can be done? Perhaps a solution lies partly in portraying violence responsibly rather than indulgently. And it would make a difference if immature audiences did not have easy access to movies with such severe subject matter; after all, many young viewers don't know the difference between exposing violence and condoning it.
This is a problem I'll explore in more depth in a future edition of this column, but its severity is made brutally clear with the release of the new action thriller Fifteen Minutes.
Hot from the Oven
Fifteen Minutes, directed by John Herzfeld, stars Robert DeNiro and Edward Burns. It follows the antics of two foreign criminals who hope to achieve their "15 minutes of fame" by coming to America and televising their spree of murderous mayhem. They believe their inevitable celebrity will be their ticket to freedom once the law picks them up. Remind you of any recent celebrity-murder scandals? The subject is certainly relevant. Does Herzfeld give us a movie that has anything new to say? Or is he merely exploiting a hot topic?
Preview's family-oriented review says that the film "makes not-so-subtle social comments about the sometimes questionable actions of journalistic media to satisfy viewers' morbid and voyeuristic curiosity." Preview insists the film is not suitable for family viewing on account of the violence, noting, "the dialogue is bluer than the police uniforms." Ted Baehr at Movieguide observes that the film is possessed of a "moral worldview." In spite of its violence, he is impressed with "literate dialogue which illuminates the good and bad of our camera-happy society" and "provides a fascinating, sometimes humorous, exploration of television hype, fame, and the criminal mind."
But David Edelstein of Slate is repulsed. "The message is: 'Bad media—forshame.' The film itself, meanwhile, is shameless enough to make those TV blowhards look like mewing Teletubbies. It all adds up to one of the most brazen pieces of blame-shifting in exploitation-picture history." J. Robert Parks of The Phantom Tollbooth adds his own criticisms: "The final act of Fifteen Minutes is a ludicrous, over-the-top exercise in excess. Herzfeld's movie thinks it has something to say about our nation's obsession with crime and celebrity, but it's merely a muddled disaster of conflicting ideas and outright hyperbole." And the U.S. Catholic Conference claims that "The dark social commentary … is eventually lost amidst the film's nonsensical plot and excessive brutality." Michael Elliott at Movie Parables finds that the movie belabors its message. "The film's much too obvious point … is beaten into our collective skulls with the subtlety of a jack hammer." He praises DeNiro's performance, but concludes, "The difficulty with the movie lies not in the talented cast … but rather in the script which places their characters into implausible situations."
I too found Fifteen Minutes manipulative, self-defeating, and prone to oversimplifying the problems it addresses. On one hand, it points an accusatory finger at our appetites for violence and trashy sex, but then it tries to heighten its impact by force-feeding us loud, rapid-cut, over-the-top scenes of violence and naked prostitutes. It also asks us to believe a responsible law enforcement officer (Burns) would fall for one of the prostitutes almost immediately. "It will look bad," he is warned, but the department's reputation is the only concern. No one questions whether falling for an illegal-alien prostitute within an hour of meeting her might be just plain stupid. That same hero later resorts to vigilante justice, building up to a typical Hollywood revenge moment when we are supposed to cheer an act of violence.
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