|
SCANNERS (1981)
Five movies made so far out of an exploding head Scanners seems to enjoy the healthiest reputation of old (pre-Dead Zone) Cronenberg movies, touching off four sequels and giving us an exploding-head moment that went on to pop-culture immortality, but watching it again today reveals a disappointingly routine sci-fi thriller with some of the most standard elements around. Cloak-and-dagger guys shooting people with tranquillizer darts, car chases, shootouts, an exploding gas station, a guy shouting out "Oh, shiiiiiit!" as he runs away from the exploding gas station...Cronenberg must've felt like he needed a hit, and he got one. Stephen Lack stars as Cameron Vale, a homeless guy who is captured by those cloak-and-dagger guys and taken to one Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) who tells him he's a scanner, basically a guy with ESP. There are 237 scanners out there, and none of them want to work with Dr. Ruth (...ah, never mind, too obvious) - they either want to remain uninvolved, or rally behind the murderous, totalitarian machinations of uber-scanner Daryl Revok (Michael Ironside, looking distinctly uncomfortable on that badassed cover art). Ruth wants Vale to infiltrate Revok's organization and find out more about what he's up to. All pretty much standard infiltrate-the-badguys shit, and there's a pretty lady who wants to defect, and a traitor in their own organization, and a "Kill him!" order from Revok during a clandestine meeting in the subway, and super-ruthless and -soulless corporations which will cheerfully experiment on expectant mothers...this could've been a Michael Crichton story. I don't mean that as a compliment. The main problem is Lack, who doesn't have the charisma or the imposingness to make me believe that he can go from homeless fuckup to confident superspy over the course of this movie. Actually, more like about fifteen minutes in this movie. I get why his scanner powers are more powerful than most, I just don't see how that helps him go from eating abandoned food off of strangers' plates in an infernally-painted shopping mall food court, to effortlessly slipping past corporate security to infiltrate a rival chemical company and start farting around on their (1981) computers. The secondary problem, endemic to the Scanners movies and probably the very nature of scanners themselves, is that much of the "action" consists of some cool effect or implied brain-scrambling, cut with shots of the scanner grunting and puffing and looking like he's straining at stool. It's a good thing that the climactic scanner fight is as gruesome and painful-looking as it is, because it isn't otherwise, uh, exciting. Nevertheless, Scanners delivered the action-and-violence goods well enough for 1981, and its success is probably what gave Cronenberg the budget and freedom to make a movie as expensive and weird as Videodrome. There are a few ideas here with a nice WTF? creativity behind them, like the idea that a scanner can function as a modem, many years before most people knew what a modem was. But most of the ideas here are essentially gore ideas, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I expected something a little wilder and brainier from Cronenberg, who'd then so recently given us Samantha Eggar growing an external womb so she could raise a small army of murderjawas made entirely of her own rage. Next to that, seeing a pretty lady with a hard glare make a security guard sob "Momma, I'm so sorry Momma!" feels like a bit of a letdown. (c) Brian J. Wright 2008 BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |