Tag: David Patrick Kelly

The Warriors (1979)

THE WARRIORS

THE WARRIORS (1979) Three-and-a-half stars

David Patrick Kelly belongs in the Actors Who We Love to Hate Hall of Fame, right alongside such performers as Thomas F. Wilson (for his work as 1955 Biff, 1985 Biff, alternate 1985 Biff, 2015 Biff, Griff, and Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen in the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy) and Michael Moriarty (Q: THE WINGED SERPENT).

You might remember Kelly from COMMANDO as Sully, the creep who John Matrix promised to kill last because, you know, Matrix liked Sully … well, Matrix lied and Sully took a great fall. Or maybe DREAMSCAPE starring Dennis Quaid and Kate Capshaw, where the name of Kelly’s would-be presidential assassin, Tommy Ray Glatman, suggests Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, and James Earl Ray.

Kelly made his motion picture debut as Luther in Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic THE WARRIORS and Kelly plays a great creep right straight out of the box. Hill later cast Kelly as (a different) Luther in 48 HOURS.

Luther assassinates charismatic, visionary street gang leader Cyrus (Roger Hill) in an early scene and the Warriors from Coney Island are framed as the assassins. The police and every street gang in New York City want them Warriors bad, real bad. The Warriors’ long, harrowing journey back home makes up the vast majority of the movie.

Kelly delivers the goods in every scene that he’s in.

Swan (Michael Beck), the leader of the Warriors, and Luther, the leader of the Rogues, are finally face-to-face late in the picture. Thankfully, because everything’s been leading up toward showdown, Swan asks Luther the burning question we’ve been wanting to ask him ourselves, you know, why’d you do it, why’d you waste Cyrus? In an answer that makes THE WILD ONE proud, Luther says, “No reason. I just … like doing things like that!”

Just a few minutes earlier, Kelly begat the world the famous “Warriors, come out to play,” made famous by the way he said it.

Kelly alone earns THE WARRIORS three stars.

THE WARRIORS is a chase movie, predominantly on foot, and a survival of the fittest movie. It’s one of those great entertainments where you can find deeper messages or merely just sit back and enjoy Hill’s ability to stage larger-than-life action scenes, the colorful characters, and the approximately 90-minute tour of large city street gangs.

In addition to our title characters, we have the Turnbull AC’s, the Orphans, the Baseball Furies (they naturally brandish baseball bats and Kiss-like face paint, combining two of Walter Hill’s two loves), the Lizzies, the Punks, the Rogues, the Riffs (Cyrus’ former gang), the Boppers, the Boyle Avenue Runners, the Electric Eliminators, the Gladiators, the Hi-Hats, the Hurricanes, the Jones Street Boys, the Moonrunners, the Panzers, the Saracens, the Satans Mothers, the Savage Huns, the Van Cortland Rangers, and there’s a whole slew of gangs listed in Hill’s original script.

These gangs have a meeting in the Bronx and that’s when Luther kills Cyrus. All hell breaks loose with our title characters, eight gang members, at the center of the mayhem. The Warriors have more than 20 miles to go from the Bronx to their Coney Island home. It takes about 2 hours via mass transit, so THE WARRIORS feels like it plays out in real time.

Another stylistic flourish in a film overflowing with them involves a female DJ (face of Lynne Thigpen, voice of Pat Floyd) who’s the voice of the street gangs. “All right now, for all you boppers out there in the big city, all you street people with an ear for the action, I’ve been asked to relay a request from the Gramercy Riffs. It’s a special for the Warriors, that real live bunch from Coney, and I do mean the Warriors. Here’s a hit with them in mind.” Her apology to the Warriors at the end comes in the form of Joe Walsh’s “In the City.”

Real-life violence, allegedly inspired by seeing THE WARRIORS itself, unfortunately soured the reaction to the film in early 1979. Tony Bill, who produced his own gang film (BOULEVARD NIGHTS) that was protested in early 1979, said in People Magazine, “It makes sense that a movie that basically glorifies violence would attract violence.” Co-screenwriter David Shaber said THE WARRIORS was Sesame Street compared to a Sam Peckinpah movie (like THE WILD BUNCH). Paramount VP Gordon Weaver said of the violence, “[It’s] the sort of thing that happens at rock concerts, high school basketball games and any place where diverse groups meet. It could have happened anywhere.”

Similar controversies unfortunately later swirled around such films as DO THE RIGHT THING, NEW JACK CITY, and BOYZ N THE HOOD.

Commando (1985)

day 63, commando

COMMANDO (1985) Three-and-a-half stars
In some ways, COMMANDO is the ultimate comic book movie, although it’s merely based on a screenplay by Steven de Souza and a story by de Souza, Joseph Loeb III, and Matthew Weisman rather than something adapted from DC or Marvel.

It moves fast, thankfully so very, very fast because it keeps us from looking at logical mistakes, continuity errors, and the like. There’s a lot of them and we cruise right past them, because it’s onward and forward to the next bit of action. From the first scene, it’s nonstop action for 90 minutes, larger-than-life action with a larger-than-life hero who’s funnier than, for example, Howard the Duck.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made for a great villain in THE TERMINATOR and he made for a great comic book action hero in COMMANDO, a style that he would again utilize to great effect in PREDATOR and TOTAL RECALL. He’s the right size of personality and fighting style for John Matrix, and he’s believable in an unbelievable world that’s like a heightened macho take on terrorism in news reports.

Both the director Mark L. Lester and screenwriter de Souza are right at home with an exaggerated macho world. Lester directed THE CLASS OF 1984, the Punks vs. Teachers public school nightmare world epic from 1982 that should be required viewing for substitute teachers or anybody entering a public junior high or high school today for the first time. De Souza wrote screenplays for the first 48 HOURS and the first two DIE HARD pictures, so he proved himself at writing the mixture of action with comedy that worked for Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Eddie Murphy, especially Schwarzenegger, who seemed to have studied Clint Eastwood.

Just as Eastwood perfected reading lines like “Go ahead, make my day,” “Smith and Wesson … and me,” and “Why don’t you boys suck some fish heads, huh?” by the time of SUDDEN IMPACT, Schwarzenegger did the same in several of his films from THE TERMINATOR and PREDATOR to KINDERGARTEN COP and TERMINATOR 2. There’s a reason Schwarzenegger’s dialogue became the basis for soundboards. He just might be at his funniest on film throughout COMMANDO. (For the ultimate Schwarzenegger experience, try his 1983 “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Body Workout.” Nirvana edited together clips from “Total Body Workout” to most humorous effect when the band played the U4 on November 22, 1989 in Vienna, Austria, Schwarzenegger’s native land.)

Take his exchanges with Sully, one of the prerequisite henchmen who’s a genuine sleaze (played by none other than David Patrick Kelly, who did this kind of creep in THE WARRIORS, 48 HOURS, and DREAMSCAPE, for example).

At one point early in the movie, Matrix tells Sully, “You’re a funny guy Sully, I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”

Later on, though, we get a great big payoff based on his promise that he would kill Sully last.

Did anybody remember this exchange when Schwarzenegger ran for Governor of California in the 2003 recall election?

You should remember Matrix’s line “I eat Green Berets for breakfast and right now, I’m very hungry” right alongside Nada’s “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass … and I’m all out of bubblegum” from THEY LIVE.

In one of his funniest reviews, Roger Ebert on the “Siskel & Ebert” program boiled COMMANDO down to its essence: “Schwarzenegger tough guy, bad guys kidnap daughter, he blow ’em up real good.” Ebert said the script was written on the back of a small envelope.

They made some great choices for the actors who played the bad guys. In addition to Kelly, they picked Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, and Bill Duke. They’re actors who you love to hate, especially Hedaya, who’s been effective in that role in everything from BLOOD SIMPLE to THE HURRICANE. He made a great Richard Nixon in DICK.

Back when reviewing THE FLY (1986) a couple months ago, I touched on how it and DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) work on several more levels than just merely being horror movies.

To a slightly lesser extent, the same holds true for COMMANDO within the action movie genre. Other Schwarzenegger films work on additional levels.

In THE TERMINATOR, for example, we get an unexpected tender love story between Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).

In COMMANDO, we get the airline stewardess character named Cindy and played by Rae Dawn Chong, a part that Sharon Stone and Brigitte Nielsen wanted.

“The part was written for a Caucasian actress,” Chong said, “so I knew I had only one shot. My first reading with Arnold was this weird scene where he pulls a dildo out of my handbag. I knew other actresses were stumbling, because the character was supposed to shrug and say, ‘It gets lonely on the road.’ I thought that was so lame, so when my turn came I screamed and said, ‘That’s not mine!’ It got me the part. Was Arnold embarrassed about the dildo? Not even slightly. He didn’t break a sweat running a state, and he didn’t break a sweat handling a dildo then.”

Of course, there was a plan for a sex scene between Matrix and Cindy when they’re en route to the dictator’s island, but the studio did not like a Schwarzenegger and Chong pairing just as surely as Universal Pictures did not want a Schwarzenegger and Grace Jones pairing in CONAN THE DESTROYER. It worked out for the best in the long run, because that final scene of Matrix and his daughter boarding the plane with Cindy says all there needs to be said.

Cindy gives COMMANDO an extra dimension, a nice change of pace within a hypermacho world, and characters like her lift a genre picture even higher above others.