Movies Seen Recently: The Cat From Outer Space, Heat, RED

The Cat From Outer Space (1978) – This is from that period of Disney history when every feature was really made with an eye toward showing up on The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights.  Throw together a fun and innocuous script, assemble a team of workhorse professionals (including 45-year-old Ken Berry as a “promising young” scientist, plus both commanding officers of the 4077th), don’t break the bank on special effects, and ta-dah! Something eight-year-olds will love.

One of the lynchpins of the plot is using the Space Cat’s telekinetic powers to gamble and win enough money to get enough gold to repair his flying saucer, and absolutely no one gives even the slightest thought to “Hey, is this completely ethical?”

(I expected to feel more annoyance when the Space Cat used his technobabble to reduce several pounds of gold to something the size of a crayon, and another character simply picks it up… but I had already shrugged at enough bad science, so what’s one more instance?)

Heat (1995) – Yes, I’m getting to the age where my adult children will say, “Wait, you haven’t seen [X movie] yet?”

It’s fun as a character study, with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro playing each other’s opposites on either side of the law as De Niro plans a heist and Pacino cuts corners to stop him.  However, the moral equivalency should really drop away when it becomes apparent that, when Plan A fails, De Niro and his crew have absolutely no qualms about shooting down every damned cop in L.A. so they can get away with the money.

The real weak part, in fact, is the naive graphic designer with whom De Niro begins an ill-conceived relationship.  She’s met this guy for all of two times (and slept with him both times), but when she suddenly finds out that he’s a bank robber who just murdered literally dozens of cops, she somehow reaches the conclusion that, sure, she’ll run away with him to New Zealand.  The members of robber crew have all cauterized their consciences slowly over the years; she leaps right there in one angst-filled moment of decision.

RED (2010) – I will forever use this movie as an example of how you can get away with things in movies (and graphic novels, like the one this was based on) that you just can’t in novels.

For instance: Part of the plot involves getting to the Vice-President despite the Secret Service.

So, the crazy member of the team played by John Malkovich leaps out of trash compactor to knock out a waiter and steal his uniform…

NOVEL VERSION: Wait, how did he get access to the trash compactor? How long before the event would he have had to sneak in to evade the Secret Service?

MOVIE VERSION: Shut up, we’re getting to the point at which the Russian ambassador is pulling out his big-ass knife that he somehow got past security.