Vincent Schiavelli – Movie Musings

Romance and the afterlife come together in a very earnest, but rather endearing, mega-hit

Director: Jerry Zucker

Cast: Patrick Swayze (Sam Wheat), Demi Moore (Molly Jensen), Whoopi Goldberg (Oda Mae Brown), Tony Goldwyn (Carl Bruner), Rick Aviles (Willie Lopez), Vincent Schiavelli (Subway ghost)

The biggest smash hit of 1990, Ghost turned Demi Moore into one of Hollywood’s biggest star, transformed ‘Unchained Melody’ into one of the most popular songs of all time and turned pottery into a hobby everyone thought they should try at least once. You wouldn’t have predicted any of this when you were pitched Ghost, helping to explain why nearly everyone in Hollywood turned it down. After all who wants a romantic film where the hero is six feet under and ectoplasmic by the end of the first act? Throw in that the film was directed by Jerry Zucker, best known for a parade of spoofs, comedies and farces and the smart money was on a bomb waiting to happen. Guess again.

Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) are a loving couple, living in New York: she’s a sculptor, he’s a banker (the sort of contrasting professions only Hollywood romantic couples have). They have big plans for the future; plans cut short when Sam is killed by a mugger. But Sam doesn’t move on with the bright heavenly light. Instead, he sticks around on Earth, wanting to be near Molly and desperate to find out who killed him. Something that’s hard to do when he can’t touch or move anything and no one can see or hear him except other ghosts. Two things change his (after)life – discovering his murder was only the tip of a pile of shady dealings at his bank that puts Molly in danger and fake-psychic Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) who isn’t quite as fake as she thought.

Ghost is extremely earnest and surprisingly endearing. Despite what the doubters said, from Romeo and Juliet to Titanic nothing gets people invested in a romance more than a tragic end. Ghost merely reshuffles the deck by placing this death at the start, then explores the on-going grief of two deeply bonded people, wrenched apart. It mixes that with familiar romance tropes: it doesn’t let Sam’s demise get in the way of the old “he just can’t say I love you too” chestnut (a Han Solo-ish ‘Ditto’ is his preferred response), inevitably finding a way to flip this in a later plot point.

Sure, it’s easy to giggle at the soft-focus obviousness of the lovey-dovey material between Swayze and Moore, but you can’t doubt their commitment or their natural chemistry. The film’s ace-in-the-hole of ‘Unchained Melody’-sound-tracked pottery turning into earth-rocking rumpy-pumpy is parody-bait, but kind-of-works in its soapy earnestness in showing how much they hunger for each other’s touch. (You could say it can’t be that good since they seem to fly through foreplay to climax in the time it takes a not-that-long song to play). Both actors are quite under-rated: Moore is perfectly tender and fragile (she was partly chosen for her ability to cry on a six-pence) but also tough and determined when the situation calls for it, while Swayze charmingly develops his character from cocky junior-master-of-the-universe to a deeper, more rounded man after he ceases to be alive.

Having stressed so much their tactile love in the film’s first act, it makes the afterlife hit harder. In this film haunting has the potential for a being a dull chore (the rules of haunting here were wonderfully parodied in BBC’s Ghosts sitcom): ghosts are stuck in whatever clothes they died in (without all the blood), can’t touch anything in the real world and end up sitting around waiting for they’re-not-sure-what. Dead Sam carries on one-sided conversations, tags behind Molly when she drives places and watches time go by so slowly. Ghost captures rather well the weakness of this situation: Sam sees all sorts of danger unfolding for Molly, but there is literally nothing he can do about it (a desperate Swayze thrashing his hand through things trying to stop them, plays rather well).

Ghost gets some brief meta-physical fun out of the lack of logic in ghosts being able to walk through walls and pass their hands through objects but can sit in chairs perfectly fine and never sink through floors (basically, don’t ask, as also parodied in Ghosts). It even chucks in some mildly-disturbing POV shots of what it looks like to Sam as he walks through someone else (icky basically). You can’t keep a high-flyer down though and Sam masters ‘ghost skills’ after what seems like a few hours training from an unbalanced poltergeist (a wonderfully twitchy Vincent Schiavelli), allowing him to interact with objects in the real world (he basically becomes an invincible superhero – and the ease he masters this makes me wonder why every single ghost can’t put aside an afternoon to learn how to do it. They’ve got the time after all!).

Of course, you couldn’t make a film about a man who can’t talk to anyone. Ghost has a trump-card in the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg, having a whale of a time in a terrific comic performance as a hustling fraudster who unknowingly turns out to be a real psychic, eventually pushed into helping Sam. Goldberg provides nearly all of the film’s laughs – and her mad-cap energy makes an excellent contrast with the earnest leads – with her fast-talking frustration at the constant stream of interjections she hears from Sam (making conversations with other people rather challenging). It’s a role with several comic set-pieces, not least a crowded séance full of ghosts desperate to be heard, but also with heart as Oda Mae becomes a better person despite herself.

She does this of course by helping Sam root out exactly why he was murdered. The reveal of Sam’s secret nemesis will be a shock only to someone who has never seen a film before. Of course, his even cockier colleague and best friend (played with a sleazy desperation by a marvellously weasily Tony Goldwyn) is behind the shady financial dealings Sam was uncovering. Just to hammer home how much we loath Goldwyn’s Carl, he’s also a whiner, a guy who loves flashing his cash and makes some none-to-subtle topless moves on our grieving Molly. How dare he!

Ghost builds itself to a neat final confrontation that proves surprisingly affecting in its honesty (dead means dead) and its optimistic view of the afterlife as a place where love still lives on. Sure, it’s a bit corny and its weakness for teary, soft-focus romance is easy to poke fun at. But you can’t argue that it doesn’t work: it’s romantic, sweetly played, funny when it means to be (Goldberg is excellent) and surprisingly optimistic and feel-good.

Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh take on big media in the fun Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Cast: Pierce Brosnan (James Bond), Jonathan Pryce (Elliot Carver), Michelle Yeoh (Wai Lin), Teri Hatcher (Paris Carver), Joe Don Baker (Jack Wade), Ricky Jay (Henry Gupta), Gotz Otto (Richard Stamper), Vincent Schiavelli (Dr Kaufman), Judi Dench (M), Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny), Colin Salmon (Charles Robinson), Geoffrey Palmer (Admiral Roebuck), Julian Fellowes (Minister)

For Pierce Brosnan’s second Bond film, they knew there was life in the old dog yet. GoldenEye’s success meant Tomorrow Never Dies could be all about bangs and fun, a Moore-esque caper with a modern touch. And fun it certainly is – exciting, amusing and with some top gadgets. This doesn’t re-invent the gun barrel, but it gives us a hell of a ride.

A British Navy ship is sunk in Chinese waters (the navy is always so luckless in Bond films!) and a Chinese MiG is shot down. Each side blames the other: but MI6 believe they are both being played against each other by a third party – media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce). There’s 48 hours to find the truth and stop a war. Best send Bond (Pierce Brosnan) to Carver’s HQ to shake things up, not least because he has a past relationship with Carver’s wife Paris (Teri Hatcher). Soon partnering with Chinese Intelligence agent Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), the two work to expose Carver’s dastardly schemes to start a war to increase his ratings and secure those lucrative Chinese broadcast rights.

Tomorrow Never Dies sometimes has a by-the-numbers feel to it – probably because the script was written on the go, with only locations and set-pieces decided in advance. Usually that’s a recipe for disaster, but with TND it works. Probably because everyone looks like they are having a whale of a time making it and the tongue is wedged so firmly in the cheek it’s practically touching the ear. And its concept of a mogul using fake news to manipulate the world seems alarmingly prescient today – think how powerful Elliot Carver would be if he ran Twitter (as he surely would today).

You can forgive Tomorrow Never Dies almost anything because it has so many stand-out sequences. The film has a (literally) explosive start, with Bond racing against time to fly some nuclear missiles out of a terrorist trading camp, before a British cruise missile blows the base sky high (and “make Chenoboyl look like a picnic”). Naturally the destruction as Bond lays waste to the camp makes you wonder why they wasted the money on a cruise missile when Bond can destroy the place for free.

Front-and-centre though is the “Bond drives a car through a shoot-out on the back-seat with a remote control” sequence. Which when written down, captures only about 5% of the sequence’s delight. Narrated by an over-cautious sat nav (constantly warning about hazards ahead, while the car is pummelled by bullets), we get all the gadgets we expect (bullet-proof glass, rockets, caltrops, a buzz saw that conveniently rises to the exact height required to cut through a steel wire obstacle) while also watching Bond masterfully steer a car around a multi-storey car-park on his phone from the back seat. Of course, Brosnan knows it’s silly and telegraphs his enjoyment, letting out a chuckle when he reinflates his tyres after driving over his own caltrops (I love this moment).

Tell me he’s not having fun.

There is a cursory sense of mystery, but TND wisely doesn’t have much patience with that. Bond is nominally under-cover at Carver’s HQ as a banker (inevitably using his own name) but, just like his Moore-heyday, Bond’s undercover skills are hilariously bad and his hints clankingly blunt. Fortunately Carver follows Bond villain form, confirming any suspicions by ordering his goons to beat Bond black-and-blue (more fool them, as Bond uses every instrument in a sound proof recording studio to best the baddies).

This was Brosnan in absolutely top form. He’s extremely charming, handles the action very well and gets more than a few grins. He looks like a guy just delighted to be there, living the dream of playing Bond. He’s both self-deprecating and cocksure and manages to be both a believable ruthless killer and a sort of charming little-boy-lost when needed. He loves a pun in a way no other Bond apart from Moore has done (“brushing up on a little Danish” indeed…) and his chemistry with Michelle Yeoh is superb, the two playing off each other like a sort of all-action Morecambe and Wise.

It’s a Bond where comedy is to the fore. An expensive satellite at Carver’s HQ is introduced (“It’s worth $300 million. You break it, you bought it”) solely so Bond can trash it without a second glance. A hitman (hilariously played in a cameo by Vincent Schiavelli) assures Bond he could “shoot him from Stuttgart” and still make it look like a suicide then apologises with embarrassment when he has to delay the hit to ask Bond how to unlock his car (“I don’t know what to say. I feel like an idiot.”). Moneypenny even calls Bond a “cunning linguist” after she interrupts by phone Bond’s tryst with a Danish professor (a joke which I certainly didn’t get when I first watched the film at a young age).

The lighter side of the script works more successfully than some of the attempts at emotion. The script bluntly states Bond had deep feelings for Paris Carver, but this never comes across at all in the performances. Probably because the emotions were torpedoed by the blatantly obvious lack of chemistry between Brosnan and Hatcher (allegedly they couldn’t stand each other). This is made all the more obvious by contrasting it to the delightful chemistry between Brosnan and Yeoh (watch the motorcycle chase with them handcuffed together – brilliant stuff, and Yeoh is excellent in this). When Paris is dispatched early in the film, Bond is cut up about it for literally 10 seconds before he’s having a whale of a time in that car park chase.

“There’s no news…like BAD news!”

Like many Bond films you can see how the franchise had become besotted with the latest “cool thing” in cinema. In this case, the film seems deeply in love with John-Woo-Hong-Kong-action gunplay. Bond probably fires more automatic machine guns in this film than he does in all the rest of the franchise put together, and the film’s finale (the dullest set-piece) is a run-of-the-mill shoot-out on a stealth boat, that feels pretty familiar from the series’ countless “face off in a sub” endings.

Spottiswoode directs with a straightforward lack of flair. Pryce has fun going OTT (and channelling Gus Hedges from Drop the Dead Donkey) as Carver even if the part is a bit under-written. But the main joy is in watching Brosnan have a huge amount of fun running around, blowing things up and shamelessly smirking through some dodgy puns. His Bond may never have been the most complex interpretation, but at his best I’m not sure anyone else was as purely enjoyable. Much like the film.