Women with Guns: Thelma & Louise On Its 20th Anniversary vs. Hit TNT Series Rizzoli & Isles

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Thelma & Louise, Matthew Brennan’s latest “Now and Then” compares and contrasts Ridley Scott and Callie Khouri’s groundbreaking road trip and TNT’s police procedural/buddy series Rizzoli & Isles.

Louise (Susan Sarandon) pulls no punches, but she’s fastidious, too. She pins her hair back tight and tugs her jacket on as snugly as she can; her kitchen is spotless enough to be a makeshift hospital room. Thelma (Geena Davis), on the other hand, is slovenly, loud. She skitters around in a floral housedress, surrounded by so many coupons, newspaper clippings, telephone bills, and other ephemera you’d be hard pressed to tell kitchen from master bedroom. She’s also charmingly nonchalant, dropping a silver gun in her purse like an extra shade of lipstick. In Thelma & Louise , a real pistol crack of a feminist caper, the gun’s the thing.

Indeed, when a slithering cowboy named Harlan rapes Thelma in the parking lot of a roadside honky-tonk, the gun, which she’s passed off to Louise in the interim, proves pivotal. His invective is so virulent that the spit swings down in great gobs from his mouth — a primal hatred he turns on Louise when she arrives, weapon drawn. “We’re just havin’ a little fun,” he leers.

Sounds like you have a real fucked up idea of fun!” she replies. And then, her voice cracking slightly as the emotion rises up inside her: “In the future, when a woman’s crying like that, she isn’t having any fun!”

What he says next is so despicable it’s not worth printing, but needless to say it’s all the justification she needs. She shoots him dead, and her fierce retort when Thelma suggests they go to the police gets at the heart of why the movie remains so powerfully perceptive two decades on. “About a hundred goddamn people saw you dancin’ cheek to cheek with him all night!” she yells. “Like they’re going to believe that [you were raped]! We don’t live in that kind of a world, Thelma!”

Thelma & Louise is risky, hard-nosed, and freewheeling, passing through desert landscapes and low-slung towns on the way to freedom. Brilliantly, Sarandon plays Louise high-strung and nervous, dragging on every cigarette as though it’ll be her last; Davis elevates Thelma above a funny femme fatale with the merest inflection. “Somethin’s crossed over in me,” she tells Louise, her voice flickering between exhilaration for her new life and regret for wasting her old one. “I can’t go back. I couldn’t live.”

The world we do live in falls short — unfortunately, it’s still one where an attractive woman who has one too many drinks and dances cheek to cheek “had it coming to her.” Our heroines rightly give ’em hell anyway: a sleazy truck driver learns his lesson, Brad Pitt obliges us with some male objectification by baring his backside, and the police see that happiness is more than a little tract house on the prairie. I’ve always felt ambivalent about Thelma & Louise, uncertain whether it’s unquestionably happy or unbearably sad. I’ve never had the same ambivalence about Thelma and Louise themselves, because in the end their facility with a gun is less important than seeing their hands clasped together in a kind of communion, grabbing control of their destiny. Sink or swim, they’re in this thing together.

Read the entire post here:

https://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/2011/08/01/women_with_guns_thelma_louise_on_its_20th_anniversary_vs._hit_tnt_series_ri/

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Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong. Watching Captain America was the most fun experience I’ve had at the movies all summer.  Set in WWII era New York, Steve Rogers, played by the oh-so-yummy Chris Evans in a miniaturized form, attempts to join the Army only to have his dreams crushed due to his laundry list of physical ailments. If you’ve seen Evans in other roles (like Human Torch in Fantastic Four), you’re aware that this hunky star is far from scrawny, yet in the early part of the film Evans is nearly unrecognizable thanks to a special effects display that rivals that of the Armie Hammer duplication in The Social Network. Upon the news that Steve’s best friend, Bucky, has received his orders of shipping out to fight the Nazis, an Albert Einstein double named Abraham Erskine (subtle, no?) overhears Steve revealing the reasons he so desperately desires to join his friend in the fight despite his physical challenges. It just so happens that Erskine, played by Stanley Tucci, is looking for a person with such a heart and will as Steve’s for an experiment he’s been working on. Steve then steps in to Erskine’s laboratory and is bitten by a rogue radioactive spider… oh, wait… wrong movie. Why don’t I just let the trailer do the talking:

Click here to view the embedded video.

While the film is strong all the way around – from effects and score to script and cinematography – one character is a bona fide scene stealer. Hayley Atwell plays British ex-pat turned Army Special Agent Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers’ eventual love interest. I’ve gotta give the writers some serious kudos on this one. Peggy is strong, smart, beautiful, tough and incredibly classy.  Simply stated, she’s the perfect female movie icon.  Her 1940s hair and makeup make this gun girl long to have been born about 5 decades earlier. Her interactions with Tommy Lee Jones’ Colonel Phillips highlight the fact that Peggy is years ahead of her time and has been forced to break through a glass ceiling or two to attain her position. What 21st century chick doesn’t appreciate that contribution? The amazingly well cast Atwell glides through this role as if it were written for her. She also happens to know how to handle a gun and leave the boys jaws on the table as she walks out of the room. Basically, she’s everything I want to be when I grow up. Atwell’s performance alone is enough to make me buy a second ticket. Ok, ok, fine. Chris Evans’ pectoral muscles might have something to do with it, too.

Now for the gun report: you’ll see plenty of WWII-era Army standard issue handguns, rifles, shotguns and tank artillery. I can’t help but think that the prop department must have had some fun creating the look and feel of the futuristic rifles and modified Nazi Lugers that harness the earth-destroying, human-vaporizing power of The Tesseract. Incidentally, Hugo Weaving is spot on as Johann Schmitd, the head of HYDRA and Captain America’s Nazi megalomaniac rival who seeks to conquer the world with these weapons.  Disappointingly, Evans (or perhaps, the stunt coordinator) gets a thumbs down for his gun handling in the train sequence.  I swear, if I see one more actor with his or her finger on the trigger before he or she is ready to fire I’m gonna call up Freddy Wong and get him to lay the smack down, if ya know what I mean. I’ll let Chris Evans off the hook this time because his primary weapon is a big metal disc, not a gun, so his firearm training might not have been that extensive and also because, well… he’s hot.*

Don’t miss this film in theaters. It’s definitely a summer must-see. I give it two big shiny gold guns up for style, script, casting and general awesomeness.  It’s a great patriotic flick that’s perfect for the whole family. And be sure to stay all the way through the end credits for a little Easter Egg that they leave you. Gotta love Marvel for upholding that fun tradition. Until then, enjoy these little snippets of raw interview with the oh-so-classy Miss Atwell:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*For the record, if Chris Evans was using a real gun as opposed to a movie gun and displayed poor handling, I definitely would lay the smack down, despite his hotness.

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I’m too young to have seen the original so you won’t see any comparisons here, but based on my opinion, this movie is absolutely Oscar worthy.  From the first moments in the film, the viewer is drawn into a world of the Wild West, led by Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, a 14 year old forced to take care of her father’s affairs and find his murderer when the law won’t do it for her. This young lady is one to watch.  I imagine very few young actresses could hold their own and then some with the likes of veterans Jeff Bridges & Matt Damon, and she did it stunningly. In the course of trying to avenge her father’s death, she is aided by the aforementioned Bridges as US Marshal Rooster Cogburn and Damon as Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, men who each in their own way show they have true grit.  Oh yeah, and Josh Brolin is in it as the bad-guy murderer, but in my humble opinion, should not have been given third billing (yeah yeah I know he got it not for his role but for his family name).

Steinfeld, Damon & Bridges star in True Grit

Why would this be a movie for GG to review, you might ask?  It doesn’t feature a butt-kicking, gun-wielding heroine like some of our other favorite movies… at least not in the typical sense.  But let me tell you, Mattie Ross is a young woman who is empowered because of her circumstances and instead of leaving business to men, takes things into her own hands.

The movie opens with the following Bible verse:

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth” Proverbs 28:1

Miss Ross decides to pursue thus not allowing the wicked to flee (so perhaps the quote should say “when no WOman pursueth”!).

I don’t know much about what life was like back then, but I imagine a 14-year-old girl showing as much “grit” as Mattie Ross did were frowned upon (there’s an unforgettable scene between LaBoeuf and Ross that, when seen through today’s lens, might be considered appalling, but I imagine back then it was not uncommon). And, of course, she does get two shots off her father’s Colt Walker 1847 by the end of the film.

Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross

Not surprisingly, these two shots knock her on her ass, as this gun is much too large for her.  This leads to a great exchange between Steinfeld and Brolin who plays Tom Chaney, Mattie’s father’s murderer. He says something about Mattie playing with guns instead of dolls when she was a child, to which she responds, “If I knew about guns, I would have chosen one that didn’t miss.” That might be one of the best movie lines ever written (and, by the way, I realize I didn’t get it exactly correct – please forgive me this one – the quotes are not up on imdb.com yet but as soon as they are, I will update it with the correct one!).

I don’t like to give away too much in my movie reviews, but I give this movie two, shining guns up. And if I don’t see these actors on stage at the Oscars this year, I will be very disappointed!

And if you’d like to see Miss Steinfeld talking about some training she did for the movie, including going shooting for the first time, check out this interview on imdb.com: https://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi888838169/

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Bruce Willis is retired CIA agent Frank Moses- a lovable cold blooded ex-killer who is bored out of his wits. The most exciting thing going in his life is the occasional chat with his his phone-crush, Mary Louise Parker, and tending to his budding avocado seed-in-a-jar. Of course, within the first ten minutes he’s ambushed by three bad guys outfitted with automatic weapons and night vision goggles.  Since he is a retired-CIA-Marine-Corps-badass, he easily takes down about 40 of these guys and the adventures begin.  Again, feel free to throw realistic out the window.  Soon old cronies including Morgan Freeman, as Joe Matheson who would be a dirty old man in the film if he weren’t, ya know, Morgan Freeman; John Malkovich, who boosts the comic relief as the paranoid government experiment gone wrong, Marvin Boggs; and finally, the incredible Dame Helen Mirren as Victoria. Yes, Ms. Mirren is such a badass girl with guns that she only needs one name.  And it just happens to be that of a Queen. We’re just sayin’. With the help of Brian Cox as Russian accomplice Ivan Simanov, they work against the ‘bad guy with a heart o’ gold’, agent William Cooper (played by New Zealand actor Karl Urban) who just happens to want Frank dead. Sort of.

We don’t want to give away too much of the movie, but we will say this: we agree with Bruce Willis. Helen Mirren looks amazing in her scenes while she’s kicking ass using guns!  In fact, Bruce Willis apparently told producers that if they removed scenes where Helen Mirren wields a .50-caliber in a ballgown, that they could just take him out of the movie entirely. Evidently, the point was taken.

Here’s the quote from the actors’ interview with FoxNews:

“I said if that scene is not in the film I want them to take every shot of me out of the movie.  But it’s in.  It’s so . . . it’s just sexy,” Willis told Pop Tarts while promoting the film,  in which he headlines a group of retired CIA agents, including John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman. “Who knew? I think Helen would’ve been doing action films a while ago – with that .50 Caliber machine gun in a ball gown. Wow!”

John Malkovich agreed he can now die a happy man thanks to the British Oscar-winner’s hotness.

“What more could you want than Helen Mirren with a firearm? One can pass over to the other side and be happy,” he said.

And despite being 27 years Mirren’s junior, co-star Karl Urban still hadn’t picked his jaw up from the floor.

“Oh my God. It was the sexiest thing I have seen in a long time,” he responded when we asked about the scene. “Helen Mirren on a 50-caliber machine gun, full rock-and-roll. I would pay to see that.”

So if you’re looking for a movie to check out this weekend, we’d highly recommend going to see Red. And after you do, let us know what you think: Is Dame Mirren mighty sexy with a machine gun?

-GGtG

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Stay tuned for our first GGtG Movie Review, where we’ll talk about both our impression of the overall movie and what we think of how these leading ladies handle their guns!

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Here she gives an interview about the film:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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