Volume 127: Il legionario / Air Force One Down
The Voice of Energy Vol. 127
And a very good day to you, madam. I hope you have all had a wonderful or at least relatively calm week. All is well on this side of the fence.
First things first, if you happen to be in the Portland area, I'm hosting what should be a fantastic event at my little shop this evening. Visiting from Northern California is Blue Knots, the new project of Danielle Stech-Homsy of Rio en Medio fame. The music is dream pop brilliance in the vein of early '80s 4AD or the Space Lady. Joining her on the bill is the duo known as Office Products and ambient artist Airabout. It's only $10. Mask up and join us.
With that out of the way, let's get to the reviews.
Il legionario (2021, dir. Hleb Papou)
There's little subtlety to be found in Il legionario, the 2021 drama that builds off a 2017 short film of the same name. Writer/director Hleb Papou approaches this story of Daniel, a young Black man from Africa who serves on a police riot squad (Germano Gentile), with the brute force of a truncheon to the spine.
Daniel is stuck between two worlds, engaging in some pretzel-like code switching as he bros down with the other cops in his unit — and has to absorb a torrent of blatant racism (his nickname in the squad is "Hot Choc") — and looks to protect his brother and mother, fellow African immigrants squatting in an apartment building in the San Giovanni region of Rome. Daniel tips his brother Patrick (Maurizio Bousso) to a planned sweep of the building by the police, giving the residents, nearly all of them immigrants, time to organize and stave off their eviction. As you have likely worked out, it becomes a tense, volatile situation that eventually boils right over.
Papou naturally tips his hand a little too heavily throughout the film. During an afternoon cookout at his squad leader's house, David sports a "Fuck The Police" t-shirt, and later, after he's been suspended for being too aggressive in a standoff with protestors, he's seen mowing down cops in a GTA-type video game.
The filmmaker is far more successful at presenting the stakes of this conflict on the side of the building's residents. In an early scene, Patrick takes the roll at a co-op meeting and each name he reads reveals them all to be from a country other than Italy. This situation that they are in — immigrants living off the grid in an otherwise neglected piece of real estate — is one that is surely happening in hundreds of other cities around the Western world. And undoubtedly, Papou knew in making this film how easily the story could be transposed onto any major metropolis from London to New York to Toronto to my hometown. The watch words of intolerance that run through the mouths of these characters — communist, gypsy, the n-word — are, sadly, easily translatable to other languages.
Il legionario is available to stream on Film Movement+.
Air Force One Down (2023, dir. James Bamford)
When they were being released in the ’80s, the films of John Hughes — in particular, the six features that focused on the experience of high schoolers — promised a fresh generation of leading men / ladies and / or character actors. But whether due to issues of typecasting or an entropic decay in talent, nearly all the fresh-faced stars of these pictures eventually found themselves picking among the scraps of b-movies or bit parts.
One of the few that consistently seemed poised to steer out of this particularly lifelong skid was Anthony Michael Hall. He has managed to get his hooks on some great parts, from his starring role in the underrated TV adaptation of The Dead Zone to his work in The Dark Knight, Halloween Kills, and Foxcatcher. What, then, could explain his slumming it in a piece of overheated junk like Air Force One Down?
His is one of few recognizable names in the cast for this rotten thriller — outside of Rade Šerbedžija (Eyes Wide Shut, Before The Rain) and Dascha Polanco (Dayanara on Orange Is The New Black), the rest of the roles are taken up by unknowns / barely knowns. A fitting fate for an ultra-generic story that follows a rookie Secret Service agent (Katherine McNamara) thrust into fending off hordes of Eastern European baddies who have hijacked Air Force One.
The paint-by-numbers plot and first person shooter action sequences are why I'm spending my time kvetching over the fate of Anthony Michael Hall and his co-stars in affirmed classics like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Chances are they are walking this planet with zero regrets, and happy to take whatever work they can get to help pay their mortgages. Or in the case of Michael Schoeffling from Sixteen Candles, happy to walk away from it all after a few solid years in front of the camera to live a quiet life making furniture.
I still have this foolish hopes for a second or third act for these folks that I grew up lusting after or feeling jealous of. I would love to see AMH or Ally Sheedy or Judd Nelson settle into a nice groove of supporting roles or juicy leads in an independent production. Let them have the moment Molly Ringwald is having right now as she earns her flowers for her work in Feud or Alan Ruck was given for Succession. Surely there's something more out there for them beyond slumming it in featureless, thankless movies like this.
Air Force One is available to rent through the usual VOD services.
FTA Pick of the Week
Our regular feature — a recommendation of a movie to watch that is hiding below the fold on one of the major streaming services. In other words: fuck the algorithm.
She's Gotta Have It (1986, dir. Spike Lee)
News broke earlier this month that director Spike Lee and his frequent collaborator Denzel Washington were set to adapt Akira Kurosawa's masterful crime drama High & Low, with most folks bracing themselves for another trainwreck a la the unfortunate 2013 remake of Oldboy. I'll reserve judgment until I see the finished product, but I have high hopes as I remain a committed fan of Lee's work going all the way back to his stylish and sexy feature debut She's Gotta Have It. Nearly 40 years later, the story of Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) and the three men in her life — all of whom are trying to lock her down — still feels bold and modern with a refreshingly feminist outlook on sex and relationships. Watch it and join me in wishing that Johns found her way to stardom as a result of her energetic, naturalistic performance in this indie classic.
She's Gotta Have It is streaming on Netflix.
That's what I have to say this week. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Comments or questions? Reply to this and let me hear them. Back next Friday.
Artwork for this edition is by Sky Hopinka whose exhibition Subterranean Ceremonies opens at Seattle's Frye Art Museum on February 17.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.