The Mechanic
This is a translation of an earlier article by the same title. The original was written in the very spoken sort of written Romanian I practiced at the time ; as English has no such mode unless you're willing to go Scottish which I'm not, the current piece does the original scarce justice. I'm sorry.
I despise "action" movies.
I get nauseous just thinking about it. Let aside that some fatsos who used to work out ten years ago beached themselves in front of the TV wrapped in the lard that started as primo beef -- but what's the use, if no one ate it -- devouring painted plastic with the painted plastic in which it comes wrapped... supposedly watching action movies. No, dickhead, there's no action involved. They're just as bedridden as any other movie. There's absolutely no difference. A movie in which a male idiot who can't act presents a constant unchanged face to the camera while shooting 25 Giga Joules through a two kilogram piece of metal, which consequently reaches temperatures in the millions of degrees (notwithstanding the fact that all that quantity of spent shells somehow disappeared is perhaps engaging in fusion producing even more energy) is exactly equal to a movie in which a female idiot who can't act presents a constant unchanged face to the camera while snorting daisies and farting skittles or whatever the fuck it is they do. What's the difference ? Is the human wreck beached by the TV ? It is. Does it suck Poca-Pola and Cecsi through a straw ? It does. Is it too lazy to visit the toilet, so it holds it in while mentally spinning on the topic of how much longer can this continue ? It is, and it does. Well, what the fuck ? What action's involved ? No action.
Leaving this aside : there's a copper. But, he's not the copper one sees whenever business takes that one to such a taxpayer-funded copper zoo as they have in "the civilised world", an object too fucking dumb to not sneeze while taking a piss. No such thing. This copper him by himself and of his own initiative (no, seriously now, coppers with initiative and supposedly this isn't a mistaken identity comedy, it's an "action movie") saves the world. So the world, right ? All of it. Including Africa (probably on account of being too fucking dumb to consider the matter of why exactly is he saving some dorks with much bigger schlongs than his who consequently fuck all the hotties which is why he ended up married to an elephantiazis patient). I'm just saying, if I were a copper saving the world I wouldn't also save Africa. But whatever, the dood is himself, he saves the whole world including Africa, and this in spite of his boss who doesn't understand him, just with the help of his helper. Whose name is, let's say, Bula. Or whatever, Tinklebell if it's an US production.
And he disarms bombs. But you know how these are, the bombs ? They've got clocks. Just so you know, if they've no clock on them they're no bombs. At some point ticking was also on the list of requirements, but more recently beeping's good enough. Oh, and the bomb has colored cables. Mother of god, were I a manufacturer of artisanal bombs I'd put nothing but gray wires in all my products, just to fuck with the action movie heroes who will die chunked up by my bombs because I'm not fucked in the head enough to put the wires out where you can fuck with them if they're actually doing anything useful. It's not like that clock's obviously glued on so the potato on the couch can clearly see "how close it was", for being too fucking stupid to figure it out any other way. It's not like the wires are there just so that Pepsiboy gets the impression "he also could". Because other jobs, matters more involved than "grab the cutter cut the wire" he's not capable of undertaking, this universal man incapable on his own initiative of as little as going to take a piss in time.
Or those with the "martials arts" experts -- fuck my dick, there's no such thing. They're not arts, to begin with, they're dancing and gymnastics. And they're not martial, in the second place. They're ballet. Martial comes from war, not from Mary walking on tiptoess across the livingroom in the vague hope that maybe she finds a good husband like that whore on the second floor. So, the story goes, this SEO expert in martial outer spaces keeps injuring himself against the world. But not the world understood as one or two dudes at a time, like when you open the closet door. No such thing, dozens, hundreds, BILLIONS of citizen-enemies, all arranged by the finest calipers such that they'll fall like domino pieces carefully arranged by the caliper.
I recall an encounter of my own with one of these martial arts experts. I was in some bar, the stupid kind with dancing, and I grabbed the ass of some chick as I was coming out of the bathroom (I piss in time, okay ?). She smiled at me and this dude grabbed my shoulder, "Listen friend..." I turned around "Yes ?" and he produced this indescribable noise, you can't properly notate their interjections, something like an old train trying to stop in a rural station, and cracked me one that sent me straight on my ass at my very table, among the five dudes with which as it happens I had come in. Five dudes whose main role in this world was to make sure I don't get beaten up, and whose only hope of survival was my staying alive.
So they grabbed the artist for a corrections round, breaking three different chairs on his dumb face in the process. It should be noted that they weren't "martial arts" experts, as I don't hire idiots. They were jailbirds, those I hire. What the my probiscus, they've paid their debts to society, it's time to make new ones. In any case, the 70 kg martial arts expert did not beat up the half-ton together five dudes! I give you my word of honor, I know it won't be believed because you know better as you've seen the action movies while lifting things with your toes hardcore, watching the ballet artist beat up a whole contingent of coal miners every ten minutes. But in reality, he didn't just fail to beat them up, but ended up with more broken bones than he ever had girlfriends. And I still took his woman home. I'm not saying I took her to my place, I took her to her place, but it's the intention that cunts, aite ?
Anyway. This dude, the cinematic arts expert, doesn't usually save "the world", but his wife, or daughter, usually from a gangbang. Or else he revenges their gangbang, in any case some bullshit in this vein, fascinatory for every closeted homosexual incapable of admitting it (or taking time to piss when he needs to).
And then of course there's your true blockbuster, with the copper martial artist (don't laugh) who saves the world from catastrophe while saving his univiteline twin wives from a planned gangbang with stallions, in spite of the boss who doesn't understand him and with the sole help of a funny busker named Friedjorf, plus variously sophisticated equipmentry (electric pencil sharpener, Bruce Lee's petrified boogers, rhododendron-flavoured anal vibrator etc). After which he dragon-punches some meteorite or something that was loitering about. And this in spite of the boss who doesn't understand him (did I say this part before ? that's ok, they repeat themselves also) and while ignoring a full set of pre-established procedures for the greater good (which greater good he alone can understand and apply, given that he's a very smart fellow and well versed in all parts of philosophy that are called logic).
Ah, and usually there's also some cunt, who broadly speaking contributes tits.
The whole thing is so fucking dumb I can't comprehend how the actors manage to not crack up laughing. I have some working hypotheses :
- They're so fucking stupid they literally have no inkling of what's going on and just how ridiculous they're being. This'd be possible if they hired ex-boxers exclusively, which is to say some people whose brainbox didn't pedal all that well to begin with, and certainly doesn't pedal at all anymore, after Stephen Hawking is the last one left to not have cracked them one in the jaw.
- There's ten minute breaks every two minutes of footage, during which they bring in beggars and patients from the hospital of cancer for children on the set, and proceed to cut these up with a rusty straight razor. So the "acting" is really a sort of shock.
- They get chemified to Trompi, they shove everything and anything from botox to that thing the faggots use to expand their butthole, I forget what it's called into them. By the shovelfull. This'd explain the face, but it wouldn't explain how come they move. Whatever, maybe they're on wires or something.
But seriously now, punching meteorites and disarming bombs by wirecutting. Any one of you could spend ten minutes searching teh Interwebs and another ten minutes following instructions, thereby producing a bomb that'd send straight to Heaven (which is where idiots go) the hero-artist-policeman-martial, alongside the sidekick, the director, the producer and a good portion of the "love interest"'s artificial boob material. And you wouldn't even need any kind of red wires. What red wires did that McVeigh character have in his van, and who cut them, dearie ? Mumu.
Yet let's say for the hell of it that you're the perverse kind, after all you're reading Trilema. So you mount an electronic timer on the bundle of joy. What's the big deal, can be had for a few dollars, not a problem. Ok, you've mounted it. Tell me now that you also set it to the right time. First of all who the fuck has the patience to set up clocks, my cellphone for instance thinks it's July 1st 2009, 19:45. Because that's how long it's been since I last dropped it so it went into parts. I did gather it, and reconstruct it, but for setting the clock I could summon no energy. And before that its clock was also in the same situation, so it can't be said I sufferent some notable information loss. And secondly, why not set it 47 seconds late, just to fuck with people ? 0:59 "dramatic" music, 0:49 close-up on the hero's forehead sweat, as he's fucking with some decorative wires, 0:47 BOOM! Seriously now, there should be a film like this just to troll the idiots, they'd probably piss themselves and get the couch wet too.
What's worse, I can't grok for the life of me who the fuck would pay to see new "action movies". New, aite ? What the fuck is new ? Oh, the clock is now beeping instead of ticking ? Thanks, but I really can supplant this by the power of my imagination. New action movies is straight nonsense, they're all exactly the same much like Lindsay Lohan's ugly mug affixed here on the right. Or like the "music" of the latest music girls, they're so different from each other I can't distinguish them anymore than I can distinguish my own earwax. Can you ? If you can, you possibly are spending too much time analyzing your earwax, I suspect.
It's also boring, so in the 1930s there was a dude with a long moustache tying some dumb ho on the railroad. Then in the 40s the Nazis, mang, the bad people. Not the Russians, the nazis were the bad people. Then in the 50s "scientists", those were the problem, there's a scientist somewhere with happenstantially-Einsteinian hair, and he does the bad in some abandoned bellfry somewhere. As it happens "scientists" of that kind were exactly the reason shitheads could even watch color TVs instead of, picking randomly, spending their ample idle time inside the Arbeit Macht Free fence. Rather ungrateful. But then by the 70s it was something with teh drugs, then moving into the 90s it's terrorists. And the bombs have evolved from some kind of mechanical spearhead adjusted so as to impale some blondy cuntwise to absurd nonsense in the vein of "polar cap melting ray" and then "bombs" which are some kind of "nuclear" something or other. Preferably something that couldn't possibly exist.
Which takes us to the most amusing, and most painful problem of action movies : reality. You know, that thing which takes place after, before and while you're watching TV. Name the policeman who avoided by his own self that big Oklahoma blast, through cutting the red wire. What was his name ? Oh, you forgot his name ? Me too. But who's the hardass who caught that Las Vegas shooter guy, in spite of the spiteful boss and the suffocating red tape, even before that madman sent five dozen useless ESLtards to meet Saint Osama (which in a way is almost like the end of the world, I admit) ? Oh, wait, he was caught... after, not before. After killing himself, that is, before that he held his own against the idiots no problem.
But what was the name of that (martial) artist who beat up with his bare hands a dozen Kuran lickers, found in different planes all airborne ? Wasn't that one hell of an action movie, how the martial was jumping from plane to plane, ten thousand kilometers apart and way up in the sky ? Our good fortune that we had such a hero on the side of Good, else what the fuck, bad things could have happened. They might've flown those things into like skyscrapers or the pentagon or something. Oh, wait. They actually did hit some skyscrapers. And the pentagon ?! Fucking hell, and where was this martial artist guy ? Did the government photoshop him from all the pictures ? Is there some kind of world conspiracy at work ?
The first and most important thing a trainer even remotely competent will point out is to stay the fuck out of trouble. Simple things like "if you see some dudes carrying pipes marching with a frown, take a left". And yet, I've yet to see the martial in one of these action movies try and stay out of trouble. Which means that any trainer even remotely competent'd have a) broken his head off for idiocy and b) kicked them out of his gym for idiocy. Perhaps not necessarily in this order.
So, how did the policeman who's no policeman by any conceivable standard and the karateka-thaiboxer-whatever that'd be thrown out of any dojo on Earth such major cinema tropes and cultural icons ? It wouldn't be on account of the watchers being idiots, by any chance ?
Alright then. This is the whole thing with The Mechanici : it's a bad remake of a bad action movie. The first was useless in the 70sii, this one's just as useless today. It'd try for a comparative, but it's not possible, they're both equal. To zero. In there starring, if the word can be so abused, Jason Statham. The guy had some decent parts in the excellent films of Madonna's husband, one Guy Ritchie. They were secondary roles. Under the harness of a competent director, a rather dim bulb such as Statham managed memorable parts, much like in a well run corporation all sorts of vegetalians, great lovers of action movies, manage to produce slightly above what they consume, an arrangement which they could never ever reach on their own.
Some idiots thought of giving him main parts. In which he sucks horribly. Practically speaking he's a sort of Teo Trandafiriii : existent for as long as he exists as a small cog in a large mechanism. Visible, but utterly irrelevant. When it tries to be the mechanism... mumu.
That's about it. I want my money back for this film, notwithstanding I didn't pay to see it nor did I watch the whole thing as by the 20th minute the chicks started taking turns on my cock.
It's that bad.
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