My Five Year Plan

Random thoughts: Fun genre trash. Not nearly as visually interesting or narratively shocking as Ms. 45, or as intellectually compelling. (I wanted Jodie in a nun’s habit.) This is what passes for serious work in the year 2007? Exploitational to the hilt - every stereotype of black and Hispanic male aggression is paraded out in a way even most legitimately sleazy genre flicks wouldn’t. Notably, the big white criminal highlighted by the film is White Collar Yuppie Scum. Even Terrence Howard as the Good (Light Skinned) Black Man seems to work within a rather racist line of representation. Neil Jordan made this? The same Neil Jordan who made the considered, emotionally resonant The Butcher Boy?! (A personal favorite). But Jodie’s good - so’s Terrence, really. And there are some really well-constructed, tautly edited sequences. It’s certainly entertaining.

Can audiences stop applauding when Bad Dudes get killed in movies? It’s kinda inappropriate, and mostly obnoxious, even when the director has given up placing any sort of real moral ambiguity (dig that title) or weight (silly one-liners) on said Bad Dudes’ deaths.

Also: this movie’s almost wholesale endorsement of Jodie’s uberfrau vigilantism seems kinda fascist, no?

Also: is it just me, or does every image of the Lyric Theater feature Maniac as the headlining show? One of my former bosses has a picture of the 42nd Street grindhouses taken at about the same time as the above image.