Review #2 GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS (2017 Jay Baruchel)

 

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In Halifax, Canada, a tough amateur is living the dream of playing for a professional hockey team, but he may not be tough enough to beat his new rival – or to cope with his new arrival.

Starring  Seann William Scott, Alison Pill, Wyatt Russell, Jay Baruchel, Elisha Cuthbert, Kim Coates, Liev Schreiber

Written by  Jay Baruchel, Jesse Chabot

Produced by  David Gross, Jesse Shapira, Jeff Arkuss, Andre Rouleau

Duration  101 minutes

I came to this sequel having not seen the original GOON, but I got the gist: regular-Joe hockey fan demonstrates a talent for aggression and is hired by his underachieving local team, improving both them and himself.

In fact, I realise now that this may be the only hockey movie I’ve ever seen, period. Paul Newman in SLAPSHOT? Nope. THE MIGHTY DUCKS? Somehow passed me by in my youth. THE CUTTING EDGE? No, and anyway that was figure skating. All that comes to mind is Van Damme’s SUDDEN DEATH and that doesn’t really have anything to do with the sport, it was just that by 1995 the ‘DIE HARD in a ...’ formula had been stretched so far it had reached ‘hockey stadium’. Other than that, we’re talking one scene from LETHAL WEAPON 3 and that SIMPSONS episode.

Also, it’s always ice hockey, never the regular type. Why is that? Does anyone even play the other version outside of school? It definitely pops up at the Olympics or whatever on TV ...

Anyway, I’m certainly not an expert on the sport, either onscreen or in real life. But from what I can tell, (ice) hockey should make good film material. Fast, high-scoring, and brutal: I have visons that every two minutes there has to be a crunching collision, often with players slammed against a sheet of perspex with faces contorted comically, or a full-on gloves-off fist fight.

Having now seen GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS, it seems I wasn’t too far off the mark. One thing about which I had been ignorant was the concept of a hockey ‘enforcer’, AKA a ‘goon’. Low-skill, high-aggression, usually not scoring many but typically a cult hero, they lead the fighting – which if not officially encouraged is definitely indulged. I guess NHL 96 on the Sega Mega Drive wasn't so unrealistic, after all.

In football terms – the terms I understand best – there is an equivalent to the goon/enforcer: it’s known as being a ‘shithouse’. Examples include Sergio Ramos, Vinnie Jones, Scott Brown, Joey Barton and Diego Costa. Quite a diverse range of players qualify, and more euphemistic terms are usually used, like ‘combative midfielder’ or ‘uncompromising defender’, but all shithouses have one thing in common: their employment of the game’s ‘dark arts’ make them hated by other teams’ fans and loved by their own.

And that’s certainly true of Seann William Scott’s protagonist in LAST ENFORCER, who at the start of the movie is not only made captain but is honoured with the squad number 69, which will clearly always be the most hilarious number, or at least as far as comedy screenwriters are concerned. But after he’s beaten to a pulp on the ice by rival Wyatt Russell, he jacks the game in to go work in insurance, which according to the movies is the lowest and most humiliating industry of all (except maybe teaching or working for the IRS). When Russell goes on to replace him in the team, Scott turns to Liev Schreiber’s grizzled veteran and he trains him towards a comeback. Oh, and his wife Alison Pill is pregnant, so there's a personal life subplot in there as well.

The whole thing is fitfully amusing to an acceptable degree, even if I got the impression that there’s a vein of Canadian humour running through that I'm unable to grasp, particularly in the TV sports channel segments that seem to be one long baffling in-joke. 

That the film succeeds is mostly due to the lead actor and his goofy, doofus appeal. Scott used his Stifler-in-AMERICAN-PIE momentum to star or cameo in practically every lowbrow comedy of the early ’00s. This scattergun approach yielded predictably mixed results, but I always liked him. This despite the unnecessarily convoluted moniker: did he really need the middle part, when there was a perfectly concise and alliterative superhero identity-sounding name right there? And was the extra ‘n’ strictly necessary? Did he want to avoid an imbalance with the double ‘t’ that comes at the end?

Um, anyway, the MVP (as I think they say in hockey; they certainly say it in one of those sports) actually turns out to be Russell, who imbues his character with a tough guy/sensitive guy contradiction that is always amusingly off-balance and is chased with some oddball quirks, like an obsession with sunflower seeds. Kurt and Goldie should be proud; and if an ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake ever finally sees the light of day, there is no other choice for the new Snake Plissken.

After co-starring in and co-writing the first film, Jay Baruchel is promoted to director this time. He’s always been one of the lesser known of ‘Team Apatow’, only really getting the spotlight as the kind-of protagonist in THIS IS THE END. He equips himself well in his triple role here, delivering what is clearly a labour of skates-on-ice love, and if you’re after an undemanding timewaster sports comedy, you could do much worse.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Despite the (hopefully) exaggerated bloodshed that paints the ice red, there’s no sign that the enforcer tradition is going anywhere.  

What would a movie called FIRST OF THE ENFORCERS be about?  Popular opinion puts it as either Red Horner of the Toronto Maple Leafs or John Ferguson, who played for the Montreal Canadiens.

Previously:  THE LAST BOY SCOUT
 
Next time:  THE LAST AIRBENDER

 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #1 THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991, Tony Scott)

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A disgraced former secret service agent turned private eye teams up with an ex-American football player (also disgraced) to uncover a conspiracy within the sport.

Starring  Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Taylor Negron, Danielle Harris, Halle Berry, Bruce McGill

Written by  Shane Black

Produced by  Joel Silver, Michael Levy

Duration  105 minutes

There are certain points in history when the planets align, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY-style, heralding another evolutionary step for the human race. And so it came to pass, as the 20th Century entered its final decade, that celestial bodies rearranged themselves in the heavens named Bruce Willis, Tony Scott, Joel Silver and Shane Black.

And what was this Star Child hence birthed among the cosmos? It was the one thus christened THE LAST BOY SCOUT. 

Willis, Scott, Silver, Black … it’s a roll-call of names that graced the credits of innumerable ’80s and ’90s action classics. Not since SCARFACE (Pacino, De Palma, Bergman, Stone) or TOTAL RECALL (Schwarzenegger, Verhoeven, Vajna & Kassar, O'Bannon) had so many titans collaborated to create such an opus of thrilling big-screen mayhem.

Did they pull it off? Pretty much, even if by all accounts no one had a great time during the forging of this cinematic Excalibur. With so many egos among the principles tensions ran high, and that included the headline-grabbingly highly paid screenwriter. And after somehow making it to the end of production, legendary editors Stuart Baird (THE OMEN, SUPERMAN, DEMOLITION MAN) and Mark Goldblatt (THE TERMINATOR, COMMANDO, PREDATOR 2) had to be brought in to clean up a mess that director Scott was thoroughly sick of by then.

Fortunately, all the behind-the-scenes friction seemed to give the project a jagged energy that serves the material well. And out of all the competing voices, it really is Black’s that comes through the loudest – and a lowly writer making such an impression was no doubt met with resentment by the alpha male actor, director and producer.

There’s always a point in a Shane Black movie where he goes too far. In LETHAL WEAPON, it’s Riggs’ disgust at the suggestion that two females may have been entwined sexually. In THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, it’s Craig Bierko threatening to ‘blind the kid and shoot out her knees’ minutes after finding out that said kid is his own daughter. THE NICE GUYS has a pre-teen asking Ryan Gosling if he wants to see his penis, whereas THE PREDATOR’S nadir came whenever Black decided that someone having Tourette's Syndrome is a never-ending well of comedy.

In THE LAST BOY SCOUT, it feels like the whole movie is that ‘too far’ point, although Willis holding a gun to his daughter’s head to persuade a stranger to hand over his car keys is probably the standout. (Along with Christmas, which features only briefly this time around courtesy of a ‘Satan Claws’ illustration, Black’s main calling card is throwing kids into violent situations – he even does it in IRON MAN 3.)

Here’s an early exchange between Willis and Wayans that captures the movie’s tone:

Wayans: "Hey, man, you ever play ball? You've got a good build."

Willis: "What are you, a fag?"

Wayans: "No, I'm just trying to break the ice."

Willis: "I like ice. Leave it the fuck alone."

Around the time of SIN CITY’S release, that film’s co-director Frank Miller described Bruce Willis as "this generation’s Humphrey Bogart". That would make THE LAST BOY SCOUT Willis’s MALTESE FALCON or THE BIG SLEEP (note how private detective-nut Black pays tribute to a non-Bogart Marlowe adaptation, THE LONG GOODBYE, in the title of one his other scripts). I concur with Miller’s observation, although I don’t remember Bogie ever being introduced waking up hungover in his car with a dead squirrel for company and then worrying about whether he had "fucked it to death".

This is a bleak film, where everyone is angry, washed-up, bitter, and horrible to one another. It takes self-loathing to a new high/low – the first words Willis utters are to his own frazzled reflection in the rear-view mirror, having thrown his fuzzy bunkmate out the window: "Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You’re gonna lose. Smile, you fuck". Wayans doesn’t fare much better, playing a once-promising athlete thrown out of the sport he loves for habitual drug use. It’s the murder of his girlfriend Halle Berry (who is, of course, a stripper and who seems to be test driving the silver hairdo she would later sport in X-MEN) that throws our heroes together, when she hires Willis as a bodyguard because she (rightly) fears for her life after finding out about some kind of shady conspiracy to legalise American football gambling, or something like that.

Yeah, the plot is never that important in a Shane Black movie; I’d defy anyone to remember LETHAL WEAPON’S actual story and that’s one we’ve all seen, often several times. These films are all about the bantering mismatched buddies, the quips and, of course, the action. Judged on those terms, THE LAST BOY SCOUT earns its merit badge.

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Though not literal, the title’s wry cynicism is in tune with the rest of the film and so works in context.

What would a movie called THE FIRST BOY SCOUT be about?  There doesn’t appear to be a biopic of Robert Baden-Powell out there, so let me just consult my rolodex for the contact details of a Mr J Silver, Hollywood, California …

Next time:  GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS

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