Ron Eldard – Movie Musings

Pacino roars to Oscar-glory with an impressive turn in an enjoyable but predictable coming-of-age drama

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Al Pacino (Lt Col Frank Slade), Chris O’Donnell (Charlie Simms), James Rebhorn (Mr Trask), Gabrielle Anwar (Donna), Philip Seymour Hoffman (George Willis Jnr), Ron Eldard (Officer Gore), Richard Venture (Willie Slade), Bradley Whitford (Randy), Nicholas Sadler (Harry Havemeyer)

Hoo-ha! It took eight nominations, but Pacino finally lifted the Oscar for his abrasive, damaged, charismatic turn as blind retired army Lt Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. It’s not really a surprise: it’s a gift of a part, tailor-made for an actor as in love with bombast as Pacino to rip into, and rip he does. But he also manages to find the moments of gentleness, pathos, fear and self-loathing while expertly calibrating his internal acting dial to pings with explosive entertainment when the big show-stopping speeches come. It’s a million miles away from Michael Corleone’s bolted down, internalised rage – but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Pacino picks Scent of a Woman up and carries it single- handedly through enemy lines. Almost nothing will surprise you in this cosily familiar mix of coming-of-age posh-school drama and well-worn “odd couple” friendship, where an abrasive older guy toughens up a reluctant mild protégé. But, whaddya know, the kid also softens the old guy up. Charlie Sims (Chris O’Donnell), decent and polite scholarship kid at super-posh Baird school, faces expulsion because his principles won’t let him snitch on the spoilt, trust-fund, tosspot kids who played a prank on the school’s sanctimonious headmaster (James Rebhorn). Taking Thanksgiving to think about what to do, he accepts a job looking after Slade who promptly ropes him into a trip to New York, where the blind Slade plans on one final glorious weekend before blowing his brains out in a five-star hotel.

Of course, the film doesn’t end with Pacino’s little grey cells dripping down the side of the Waldorf’s no-expense-spared wallpaper. It will not surprise you at all that Martin Brest’s film heading where all feel-good films like this head: learned lessons, love of life re-embraced and a big speech from the big star solving all the problems. Scent of a Woman’s biggest flaw is it takes a very long time to hit all these familiar beats on the way towards its cookie-cutter capping of its coming-of-age/road trip set-up. Martin Brest was never a director to tell a story in a few sentences when a whole chapter would do, and Scent of a Woman is the last time he got the balance right between the length of the journey and the pleasure of being on it.

But then, as mentioned, a lion’s share of the credit belongs to Pacino. Surly but with just enough cheek. charm and biting wit, it’s a hugely entertaining role with big meaty speeches to chew on. Pacino makes it very funny, from his don’t-give-a-crap rudeness to his don’t-take-no-for-an-answer insistence on getting his own way. The film gives him a memorable set-piece moment pretty much every 15 minutes: his surly introduction, via a speech on the beautiful scents of women, the film’s iconic tango-dancing with Gabrielle Anwar, driving a Ferrari around the empty streets of the Bronx (and convincing a cop who pulls him over that he’s not blind), a thwarted suicide with the sort of barked refrain Pacino loves (“I’m in the DARK here!”) to a leave-no-prisoners final “courtroom” speech that’s one of the best of its kind. This is all meat and drink for Pacino.

But this is a more nuanced performance than just a star’s turn. Pacino makes Slade a deeply unhappy man, slowly realising he has been so most of his life. A man who uses anger, wit and cruelty as shields to drive people away and make himself look and feel tough. Blindness has become a constant reminder of his vulnerability and dependence, but also made the shell of isolation he has built around himself all consuming. He’s realising pretty much everyone he knows hates him, whose family (from youngest to oldest) want as little to do with him as possible, who has never had a meaningful relationship and clings to a war record he frequently garnishes to appear more important. Pacino manages to convey all this deep-down regret and self-loathing extremely well, matched with a physically dedicated performance of approximating blindness that is one of the best there is on film.

There’s a striking scene midway through where Slade crashes his brother’s Thanksgiving dinner. The family are less than happy to see him, but tolerate him at a table he dominates, first with garrulous (uninvited) army stories and then increasingly rude, sexual comments about his nephew’s wife. The nephew (Bradley Whitford) eventually tears him off a strip: in 1992 some felt sorry for this merciless puncturing of Slade’s self-mythologising, but today I can’t help but agree with Whitford’s takedown of Slade’s bullying. Slade’s eventual assault on his nephew is allegedly for calling Charlie “Chuck” once too often, but really feels like a desperate attempt to take revenge without feeling in the wrong. It’s a scene that actually cements what an awful negative force Slade has been, something he’s just starting to realise no end of whimsy can fix. This is a complex stuff among the Hoo-Ha.

Pacino’s helped by a very fine, generous performance from Chris O’Donnell as a young man who may be naïve and innocent but, in his own way, has more guts and integrity than the mercurial Slade ever did. While Slade is fundamentally selfish (and always has been), Charlie will make sacrifices for people he knows will never do the same for him and won’t flex his principles for any personal gain. O’Donnell also does some magnificent reacting throughout, frequently generously providing the dramatic context and crucial reaction points to make Pacino’s character work effectively.

Scent of a Woman’s posh-school drama provides a few more straight-forward figures of loathing: from James Rebhorn’s headmaster, via Philip Seymour Hoffman’s smug, gutless, entitled fellow student (a prototype of his role in The Talented Mr Ripley) who hangs Charlie out to dry, culminating in the three unbearably arrogant rich kids who carry out the prank. In some ways the plot here is far more engaging than Slade’s suicide run, even though nothing surprising really happens at all throughout it’s runtime. It also allows Brest to caps it off with such a dynamite speech from Pacino that it made the Oscar probably a foregone decision (even though Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X could feel rightly aggrieved at missing out on the little bald man).

That kind of sums the whole film up. Despite moments of complexity in its character study – forcefully delivered with depth and feeling by Pacino – Scent of a Woman is a film that offers virtually no surprises at all while expertly hitting every single beat you would expect to see while giving maximum entertainment factor along the way. It’s the sort of thing that Oscars are grown from.

Ridley Scott’s immersive combat film is politically simple but one of the great combat films

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Josh Hartnett (SSG Matt Eversmann), Ewan McGregor (SPC John Grimes), Eric Bana (SFC Norm ‘Hoot’ Gibson), Tom Sizemore (LTC Danny McKnight), Sam Shepard (General William F Garrison), Ron Eldard (CWO4 Michael Durant), William Fichtner (SFC Jeff Sanderson), Jeremy Piven (SW4 Clifton Wolcott), Ewen Bremner (SPC Shawn Nelson), Gabriel Casseus (SPC Mike Kurth), Hugh Dancy (SFC KURT Schmid), Jason Isaacs (CPT Mike Steele), Tom Hardy (SPC Lance Twombly), Orlando Bloom (PFC Todd Blackburn), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (MSG Gary Gordon), Johnny Strong (SFC Randy Shughart)

On 4 October 1993, the US won a pyrrhic victory supporting UN efforts to prevent genocide in the Somalian Civil War. A mission in Mogadishu to capture the lieutenants of rebel leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid collapsed into a desperate overnight street battle as Aidid’s forces rose up en masse (up to 4,000 of them) in an attempt to cut off and wipe out the c. 160 US troops.

Although the majority escaped, it was one of the most costly American operations since Vietnam, with the loss of 18 dead and 73 wounded and two Black Hawk helicopters shot down. As many as 2,000 Somalians were also killed. Pictures of the bodies of American soldiers dragged through the streets by Somalian rebels led to a major realignment of US foreign policy, with a reluctance to join future peace keeping operations (most notably the Rwandan genocide).

This is bought to the screen in a virtuoso directorial achievement by Ridley Scott, one of the most immersive and gripping war films ever made. Black Hawk Down doesn’t shirk on an inch of the war experience. Combat is loud, sudden, all-consuming and a barrage on the senses. It’s scary, confusing and always unforgiving. Mud, blood and dirt are flung into a camera that runs through streets alongside the soldiers, embedded with them under siege. The slightest lack of focus or mistake is punished by horrific injury or death. The battle is a nightmare of confusion and desperate improvisation in which neither side (especially the Americans) really knows what’s going on.

It’s not surprising they don’t. The film expertly demonstrates how a multi-approach plan (helicopters delivering ground forces, an armed convoy to collect prisoners) was effectively a rashly planned house of cards, which collapsed when the hornet’s nest of an uncontrolled city, crammed with thousands of potential hostiles, roadblocks and a prepared and dedicated enemy (willing to suffer a level of loss the Americans were not) was unleashed. Ground forces are stranded, helicopters shot down, the exposed convoy becomes a slow-moving hospital, all under constant fire in a dusty, urban centre where every single civilian could be a enemy combatant.

Scott shoots and edits this with pulse-pounding intensity, aided by the dizzying camera work of Sławomir Idziak and the high-octane cutting of Pietro Scalia, whose work grips you by the throat and never lets go. It’s a “grunt’s-eye” view of the war, that puts the viewer very much in the trenches with the soldiers. We pretty much join them running through gauntlets of bullets, ducking into foxholes and desperately trying to stay alive. Scott’s work is outstanding here, a brilliant depiction of the chaos of battle in which events are both intimidatingly out of control but also crystal clear to the audience, assembled with a never-lets-up energy leaving the viewer tense and breathless.

As Eric Bana’s fiercely professional Hoot says “it’s about the man next to you”. That’s very much what Black Hawk Down is about. There’s very little context about the American operation in Somalia, the Somalian people, the impact on long-term American politics… The film believes the whys and wherefores are less important than protecting the lives of your colleagues.

Argument has raged about whether Black Hawk Down is pro-war or not. I’m not convinced it is. Can a film which shows soldiers maimed, disfigured and literally torn in two, really be a celebration of war? But, what it clearly is, is pro-the American fighting man. The training and expertise of these soldiers – trained to make every shot count and keep their cool in terrifying situations – is crucial to their survival. (The scattergun indiscipline of the Somalian rebels is noticeable by comparison – and it’s fair to note that Black Hawk Down gives very little focus to the Somalians at all, other than as a faceless hostile mass).

The film is in awe of the soldiers’ willingness to sacrifice themselves for each other: the dramatization of Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart’s request to be dropped in to provide some sort of cover to one of the downed Black Hawk pilots (a request they know is a suicide mission) exemplifies “leave no man behind” bravery. Black Hawk Down is a tribute to soldiers.

Interestingly though, that also means it’s a film where characters are more important for what they do rather than who they are. We learn very little personal information about any of them. Hartnett’s newly-promoted SSG has sympathy for the Somali people and is nervous about his first command mission. McGregor’s admin officer is unsettled by his first field operation. Sizemore and Isaacs are professional officers, executing orders to the best of their ability; Fichtner and Bana experienced Rangers, samurai trained to adapt and improvise. But their personalities are only hooks to hang their deeds on. Each melts into the large cast as needed. Black Hawk Down is the triumph of the unit – be that fighting together or some member volunteering to die to help protect others.

It is fair to argue the film should have done more to contextualise events. Black Hawk Down focuses so much on celebrating the bravery of soldiers, it skips any political impact: it’s not made clear in the end captions that the US effectively withdrew from its peace-keeping responsibilities for years afterwards (only shocked back into it by 9/11). It never mentions the UN were slow to respond as they had been caught in an almost identical disaster a few weeks before (a lesson the US didn’t bother to learn from). It never mentions the cost of non-intervention in places like Rwanda. It never explores how these events – and American complacency, not least in the committed-but-unengaged soldiers – were a step toward a terrorist world that would culminate in 9/11.

Scott was aiming to make an immersive film. Perhaps his work on films like Body of Lies (and even Kingdom of Heaven) later was about adding more shading and depth to his presentation of world affairs (and critique of American policy). But, in its intent, Black Hawk Down is a triumph, one of the most unrelenting and compelling combat films ever made. You can argue it turns the Somalis into bogey men fighters – but it’s trying (rightly or wrongly) to be a representation of a single military action, from a single side’s perspective. And there is no doubt this is one of Scott’s finest achievements – and one of the great war films.