Cinema
Marks out of ten
Mark Amory
Ihave always been attracted to the star system. Not film stars but stars for films: one — dud, two — disappointing, three — fair, four — excellent, five — awesome. It is the thumping crudity of it that appeals, Ingmar Bergman and Elvis Presley on a par, also the way it renders redundant that pompous little summing-up paragraph at the end. In conversation, though, I have long used a system just one degree subtler: marks out of ten, no halves allowed. As I am going to write about films here for a couple of months it seemed feeble not to carry this useful shorthand into print, but it does need a word of explanation.
Ten out of ten means an overwhelming, perhaps spiritual experience that alters your life; I haven't had one of those yet. Similarly a nought would denote a total lack of talent by writers, directors and actors, perhaps even photographers, edi- tors and producers. A friend has pointed out that even a nine is only awarded in retrospect, when a film proves memorable, though actually my only recent example is in the more usual other direction: over- excited, I gave The Player nine but have since downgraded it to eight or even seven.
This drab year I have not seen an eight, but Groundhog Day got seven and so, rather generously, did Dracula. There has been no one, but Honey, I Blew Up the Kid was a two. In recent years eights have been Flirting, Blue Velvet, Howard's End, Jesus of Montreal, Goodfellas; twos Personal Ser- vices, Crocodile Dundee 2, The Fruit Machine, Too Hot to Handle, Nadine. Five means just worth seeing, four just not.
Mad Dog and Glory has an impressive pedigree. Richard Price writes tough, funny urban dialogue like no one else, starting when he was 24 with the novel The Wander- ers, which was changed completely and still made a brilliant film; recently and slightly less impressive was Sea of Love. The direc- tor, John McNaughton, made Henry: Por- trait of a Serial Killer. Nobody wanted it; he sent a copy to Scorsese, who thought it the best first film in a decade. It got shown, caused a sensation but it sounds too dis- gusting for me and I have not seen it. Per- haps on video with a nervous finger on the fast-forward button. . . .
Scorsese brought these two together and is one of two producers. The stars are
Robert de Niro, Bill Murray and Uma Thurman, who made her name when she was seduced by John Malkovich in Danger- ous Liaisons. All very promising, but it was not a success in America.
It starts not with a bang but with two bangs. Drug dealers shoot each other. 'Mad Dog' (de Niro), an 'evidence techni- cian', is woken to go and take photographs of the corpses. Someone taking down the cause of death on the telephone repeats slowly, 'Huge f—ing bullet holes. That sounds right'. So it is cops again, but cops with a difference.
'Mad Dog' is a friendly but sarcastic nickname because he is, and knows himself to be, timid. He wishes he was handsome and brave and an artist but has no hope of becoming any of these things. Once he saw a deer in downtown Chicago, vulnerable but surviving, and photographed it: a self- portrait. He saves the life of a gangster, Frank, played by Murray with jokes but no wish to ingratiate himself. It is his great virtue as a leading man and, not really paradoxically, makes him more appealing than the narcissists around him.
In the best scenes they go out and get drunk together. Frank is a stand-up comic in his spare time CI own the club') and when he asks, 'What did you think of the act?' Mad Dog tells him in acute but unflattering detail. It is all odd, surprising but interesting. Then Frank gives his saviour a girl for a week and the film takes another turn. It had started as another tough police film, gone sardonic and then turned into an intriguing drama of charac- ter. Now it becomes romance and though de Niro is enjoyable in his enjoyment, the tension just falls from him. What the film- makers call a fable, I call incredible. Never- theless, six.
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