A mismatched pair of protagonists has to travel a long distance for an important reason. Friction abounds. Hijinks ensue. There’s an epiphany along the way. We’re not so different after all. It’s the plot for something like 852 different movies. “Soul Men” (2008) is one of those movies. Thankfully, Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac are the protagonists and the backstory is interesting (estranged former Motown artists reunite) so the trip is relatively enjoyable. But like a lot of these movies, there’s hijink overkill and you get to the point where you’re like, “Geez, can they just get there already?”
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“Patriot Games” (1992) is one of the few contemporary novels that I read and then saw as a movie. I read it during a week of jury duty back in 1990. I thought Tom Clancy wrote one of the most compelling car chase scenes I had ever read, but I was highly unsatisfied with the ending (Jack Ryan might stand for justice, but not the poetic kind.). The movie comes across as rushed and too actiony for a spy thriller. It’s like a sports highlight reel with no context of how the game was actually played. The ending? Slightly better.
For the first half of “The Hateful Eight” (2015) (BTW, I counted nine relatively hateful main characters, but anyway…), there is surprisingly little violence. There is, however, a scene in which bounty hunter Kurt Russell expresses concern that a duplicitous co-conspirator will get jumpy and reveal themselves. The jumpy one turns out to be Quentin Tarantino, who could no longer hold back his violent instincts and unleashes a torrent of blood that drowns what had been a downright Hitchcockian Western mystery. I’m not stupid. I know Tarantino deals in the visceral. But there’s usually a payoff. Here, not so much.
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