Please . . . just walk away

I've sat through some pretty terrible movies in my time. I once watched "The Bodyguard" - from beginning to end - and even pretended to like it. Although that was hoping to impress a girl, so I'm not sure it should count. Here's a better example - in 1992 Forcey and I went to see "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" - a film best described as a vehicle for Sylvester Stallone and the eldest of the Golden Girls - and again stayed through to the closing credits. (www.rottentomatoes.com gives it a rating of 6%, with reviewers quotes like "Being shot might be preferable to sitting through this" and "Stop! making lousy comedies or you'll permanently damage your career.")


What I'm trying to say is that I don't give up on a movie easily. If I've spent the time and money to go to the movies - or even the video store - I'm going to give something every chance to succeed. I reached my limit last night though watching "Miami Vice" - after about an hour I turned it off.

The original plan was to grab "Rest Stop" - a horror movie recommended to me by a colleague. But by the time I got to the video store I wasn't in a great mood, and didn't really feel like watching random people being murdered. I looked around for a while but nothing was jumping out at me - it was one of those times where you can't really find anything you want to see, but hate the idea of going home empty handed. So you talk yourself into something you never really wanted to watch in the first place.

Anyway . . . I get home and pop the movie into my DVD player, and it jumps straight into the action. So much so that it feels like I've started in the middle of the movie. After about ten minutes, I take the disc out, check to see if it's a double sided disc that I put in wrong, and realise I had been watching the start, they just neglected to include anything like opening credits. Or a proper introduction of the characters. As far as I could work out, they were undercover agents trying to infiltrate a drug ring. And they drove a Ferrari, and had a very fast boat.

The film was directed by Michael Mann, whose made one great movie in "Heat" and another pretty good one in "Collateral", and to be honest, it did look great. I just honestly had no idea what was going on with the plot. And when you can't follow the plot of an action movie, there's either something very wrong with you, or with the film. I'm going with the film.

So next time you're in a video store, and you talk yourself into seeing something you never really wanted to, do yourself a favour and walk away. Just walk away. I wish I did.