John Travolta Swordfish (intro)
You know what the problem with Hollywood is?
They make shit.
Unbelievable, unremarkable shit.
Now I'm not some grungy wannabe filmmaker
that's searching for existentialism
through a haze of bong smoke or something.
No, it's easy to pick apart bad acting, short-sighted
directing,
and a purely moronic stringing together of words that
many of the studios term as "prose".
No, I'm talking about the lack of realism.
Realism; not a pervasive element in today's modern
American cinematic vision.
Take Dog Day Afternoon, for example.
Arguably Pacino's best work, short of Scarface and
Godfather Part 1, of course.
Masterpiece of directing, easily Lumet's best.
The cinematography, the acting, the screenplay, all
top-notch.
But... they didn't push the envelope.
Now what if in Dog Day, Sonny REALLY wanted to get away
with it?
What if - now here's the tricky part - what if he
started killing hostages right away? No mercy, no
quarter.
"Meet our demands or the pretty blonde in the
bellbottoms gets it the back of the head." Bam, splat!
What, still no bus? Come on! How many innocent victims
splattered across a window would it take to have the
city reverse its policy on hostage situations? And this
is 1976; there's no CNN, there's no CNBC, there's no
internet!
Now fast forward to today, present time, same
situation.
How quickly would the modern media make a frenzy over
this?
In a matter of hours, it'd be biggest story from Boston
to Budapest!
Ten hostages die, twenty, thirty; bam bam, one after
another.
All caught in high-def, computer-enhanced, color
corrected.
You can practically taste the brain matter.
All for what? A bus, a plane?
A couple of million dollars that's federally insured?
I don't think so. Just a thought. I mean, it's not
within the realm of conventional cinema... but what if?
