Director:
Paul Verhoevan
Screenplay
by: Gerard Soeteman and Paul Verhoeven
Starring:
Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson, Susan Tyrrell,
Brion James, Ronald Lacey, Jack Thompson
Running
Time: 2 hours and 8 minutes. (Unrated Edition)
Tagline:
“Betrayed by power. Corrupted by love. Bound by honor.”
Hop
in the Way-Back Machine and set the dial for the summer of 1987.
Little Bill Smiley is living with his parents and two older sisters
in Union Grove, a wide place in road somewhere in the hills of rural
Alabama. He loves watching movies, has ever since his family took him
to see a re-release of STAR WARS in theaters, and right then there
was one movie that he wanted to see more than anything. You can
imagine how happy he was when his mom informed him that a friend of
the family, her name forgotten thanks my increasingly fuzzy memory,
was going to be taking her son and couple of his friends to the movie
theater over in Huntsville and asked if he would like join them. No
question what his answer was. Once he was in the car and couldn’t
back out, though, he was given some disappointing news. See, she was
concerned that the movie he wanted to see may have been “too scary”
for her kids to watch and wondered if he was open to the idea of
seeing a different movie. This was a big let down for Little Bill, he
really wanted to see that other movie, but the one they suggested
sounded cool. Something about a robot cop.
It’s
a shame that I don’t remember who that woman was and neither would
anybody else who’s still around for me to ask. Even if, I doubt
that she would remember that day anyhow because that’s close to
thirty years now. Good God. But I’m still curious to know that if
at any moment sitting in that Hunstville theater, watching ROBOCOP,
she ever considered that maybe we should have gone to that other
movie I wanted to see. ROBOCOP was not, as we assumed, some safe
action adventure full of wacky hijinks to please the popcorn crowd
and little else. The violence was bigger and messier than everything
else, the level of excess wasn’t so much turned all the way up as
it was somebody tore the dial off, and the humor was of the pitch
black variety. Within fifteen minutes, we witness our hero getting
tortured and cut to pieces with shotguns. Corporate executives talk
about an accident that resulted in a horrific death more in terms of
what it would mean to them financially rather than show concern for
the schmuck that got turned into paste. A rapist takes a bullet in a
very uncomfortable but deserving place, an executive is snorting coke
out of a model’s cleavage before he’s executed by his rival’s
henchman, and one goon ends up doing an extremely unhealthy
impersonation of the Toxic Avenger. She must have been horrified, or
maybe she wasn’t, since we stayed through the whole movie. We’ll
never know. I can tell you what I thought of it and what the other
kids thought of it, we thought it was the greatest thing we had ever
seen. It warped my fragile little brain in the best possible way.
Naturally, when my sister Susan wanted to go to the mall a couple
weeks later, you can guess who convinced her to take him along and
what movie he wanted her to take him to see. I wish could say this
was the story of how ROBOCOP is the only movie I’ve seen more than
once in the theater but that would be a lie. I really don’t like to
advertise that I also saw CROCODILE DUNDEE II twice, you understand.
Such
went my introduction to director Paul Verhoeven, seen here being his
usual restrained self on the set of ROBOCOP:
If
you want my opinion, it’s a crime that we’re no longer getting a
new movie from Verhoeven every two or three years. Like John Milius
before him, he was a filmmaker who managed to find mainstream success
making movies that grabbed their audience by the throat and didn’t
give a flying damn whether or not their precious sensibilities got
offended in the process. Back then, discovering a film like that was
like taking a big hit of the strong stuff when all you’ve ever had
was flat soda, and even today, with too much of our popular genre
entertainment made up of PG-13 no-risk safe bets, revisiting
Verhoeven’s filmography feels particularly revelatory. Come to
think of it, it’s a crime that Milius isn’t making movies any
more too or, though he had a major hand in DEADWOOD, my favorite TV
show, the only thing of Walter Hill’s that’s made into cinemas in
the past decade and change was the simply adequate buddy actioneer
BULLET IN THE HEAD. That could have been directed by anybody,
climatic STREETS OF FIRE-style axe duel between John Rambo and Khal
Drago aside. When these men stopped making movies or were forced to
find work elsewhere, testosterone cinema got a good deal less
interesting, now mostly a home for aging action stars to show that
grandpa can still hang with the cool kids. Said he, with a knowing
nod to the copies of THE EXPENDABLES 1 & 2 he owns on blu-ray.
Yes, I’m eyeing the Unrated edition of the third one too. Anywho,
back on topic…
A disposition for splashing more blood around and showing off more bare breasts than the other guys is appreciated but that’s not all that Verhoeven has going for him. I may not have been able to put into words why, but even back then, I kept wanting to return to ROBOCOP and his other efforts for reasons that went beyond just tickling my reptile brain. A movie doesn’t leave the impression on somebody that this one did me if all it’s going for is simply being edgier-than-thou. There’s the funhouse mirror effect the movie has, highlighting the insane bullshit of the nineteen eighties and American culture by distorting the hell out of it. Like I said in my review of COBRA, Robocop is the Reagan-era action hero taken to its most logical extreme: an actual killing machine programmed to spout inane catchphrases while blowing people away. Tip of the ice berg. The film is interrupted by news breaks where anchors with fake smiles cheerfully report that dozens of people died when a satellite laser malfunctioned or commercials where families bond over a Battleship-clone based around thermonuclear war. Criminals discuss their drug empire using the same jargon that the corporate executives do. Violence that’s horrific when inflicted on the hero becomes triumphant when aimed at more deserving targets. Verhoeven makes it clear that he’s in on the joke and it carries over to his other movies as well. Of course, TOTAL RECALL’s Doug Quaid is really an invincible secret agent who can wipe out small armies single-handedly, he’s played by Arnold Schwarzenegger! STARSHIP TROOPER’s cast being made up of so many bland pretty people is a feature, not a bug, no pun intended. I haven’t seen SHOWGIRLS but I have seen BASIC INSTINCT and just going by the latter I could tell both were made with the understanding that the best way to goof on Joe Ezsterhas’s coked up screenplays is to let them speak for themselves. It’s not just satire and excess though. For big budget blockbusters, they can be strangely personal movies. Verhoeven grew up in the shadow of WWII in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and what he experienced there informs not only STARSHIP TROOPERS'S farcical spin on facism but his whole filmography. When Verhoeven discusses how a religious experience left him doubting his sanity and he took up filmmaking to keep himself grounded, TOTAL RECALL
suddenly looks like a bit of wish fulfillment, a man solving his own
upset mental state via simple brute force. Underneath all the blood,
guts, feathers and eyeballs flying everywhere, ROBOCOP’s story is
tragically humane. A family man has his life and soul stripped from
him, rebuilt as a walking coffin with a knight-in-shining-armor
exterior, all so some yuppie can stick it to his business rival and
get a cushier office. What follows is his fight to get something of
that back and I never fail to do a little fist pump when, at the end,
a smile crosses Peter Weller’s face as he answers “What’s your
name?” with “Murphy.” That the moment is punctuated by Basil
Poledouris’s fantastic score immediately kicking in helps.
The
year is 1501 and we’re somewhere in Italy,
dropped in the middle of the siege of some nameless city by the
forces of nobleman Arnolfini. (Fernando Hulbrek) See, Arnolfini used to rule over this
city and I think it can be deduced by the good sized army of soldiers
and mercenaries he’s brought with him, he’s somewhat displeased
with his being ousted from it. Capture the city before the end of the
day, he informs the troops, and you’ll get free reign over it for
the next twenty four hours. Goes without saying that the offer of a
full day of unrestrained looting and pillaging is all it takes to
motivate Arnolfini’s forces, lead by Hawkwood (Jack Thompson) and
the ruthless Martin (Rutger Hauer), to finally break the siege and
begin the attack proper. One other person of note we’re
introduced to here is Arnolfini’s son, Steven (Tom Burlinson), an
engineering genius in the DaVinci mold, who is taking part to show
off some of the siege weaponry he’s invented. (There are still a
few minor problems he hasn’t worked out yet, as that sap who
volunteers to test his mobile bomb finds out the hard way.)
Arnolfini
soon comes to regret his offer when he sees the alacrity with which
the mercenaries take to their sacking of the city. There’s a good
chance that there won’t be much of the place left before the day’s
even half over and he’s not about to let some sellsword rabble tear
apart what he worked so hard to reclaim. When he learns that during
the battle that Hawkwood injured a young nun and the old soldier is
willing to do anything to help the girl, he seizes the opportunity.
Using the girl as leverage, Arnolfini convinces Hawkwood to turn on
his former comrades. Forced to surrender, Martin and his mercenaries
are stripped of their weapons and loot and then driven out of the
city. When we rejoin them later, their numbers have dwindled down to
only a handful of thugs and camp followers. When Selene, a prostitute
who is pregnant with Martin’s child, gives birth, the child ends up
dying. While digging a grave for the baby, they discover a statue
of St. Martin of Tours, the patron saint that Martin himself was
named offer. One of Martin’s men, a loony nameless Cardinal (Ronald
Lacey, the creepy Peter Lorre-esque Nazi from RAIDERS OF THE LOST
ARK) takes this as a sign from God that Martin is a chosen one who
will lead them to glory. Now, one gets the impression that Martin
doesn’t completely buy into this but the man is itching for revenge
against Arnolfini and Hawkwood and as history has proven over and
over, saying God is on your side with enough conviction gets people
to rally behind your cause.
There’s
still one more important character that needs to be introduced and
she makes her way into the narrative right about now. Agnes (Jennifer
Jason Leigh) is the daughter of a local prince and Arnolfini has
arranged for her to be Steven’s wife. The young scientist scoffs at
the idea, too interested in his studies and inventions to want to
settle into the married life just yet; his father has to trick him
into coming along on a “hunt” to get the boy to even meet up with
her. Once the two do manage a few moments alone, however, Agnes wins
him over. It’s during her seduction of Steven that we pick up that
Agnes possesses a good degree of cunning and knows how to play people
to her advantage. This skill is going to come in handy because things
are about to go south real fast. On their way back to Arnolfini’s
castle, they’re ambushed by Martin and his cohorts disguised as
pilgrims. Arnolfini gets laid out with a spear wound to the chest and
Agnes is unable to escape from the wagons before Martin’s crew
steals them. Later that night, as the mercenaries are reveling in
their victory and enjoying their newly acquired spoils, they stumble
across Agnes in her hiding place and despite her attempts at
bargaining with them, she ends up thrown to the wolves. Agnes is
quick to notice that Martin doesn’t seem quite so keen on sharing
her with the rest and it’s while Martin is raping her that she
decides to start acting as though she enjoys it. Horrifying and hard
to watch as this scene is, her gambit works and as one of his men
makes a move towards her Martin starts a fire as a distraction.
When
the fire results in the St. Martin statue they’ve been dragging
around with them shifting around, Martin tells everyone this is
another sign pointing towards their future fortunes and has them move
out. When they pass by a castle the next day, Martin decides this is
as good of a place to as any to set up shop. He has Agnes accompany
him when he breaks into the place so he can open the gates and let
the rest in to kill the occupants; they waste no time in making
themselves the lords of their new little domain. Tensions are already
building, though, as it becomes apparent that whatever new fangled
rules the mercenaries have sworn to live by, Martin certainly doesn’t
think they apply to him or his new playmate. The party gets cut short
anyway because the daughter of the castle’s lord, a sickly young
girl, was able to escape the attack and was found by Steven. Before
she expired, her raves about “devils” breaking into her home are
enough to clue Steven in that he’s headed in the fight direction.
He’s brought some help too: a few dozen of his father’s soldiers
and Hawkwood, who he’s extorted into helping him. Unfortunately,
that girl they found was infected with the bubonic plague; now
Hawkwood has caught it and the bloodletting used to treat him doesn’t
seem to be doing more than hastening along his demise. With him out
of action, it’s up to Steven, using both his engineering acumen and
a willingness to be every bit the ruthless bastard his father is, to
find a way to get into this castle and Agnes out. Yes, ladies and
gentlemen, we’re in Robert E. Howard’s favorite hang out:
Barbarism vs. Civilization, and Agnes, caught in between the two, is
going to do whatever she can to make sure she’s still alive when
the smoke clears.
It’s
impressive that FLESH + BLOOD comes together as well as it does
because by all accounts, it was an absolute nightmare to shoot. The
America-Dutch co-production was Verhoeven’s first English language
film and he was still learning to speak it while filming, which often
made communication with its multi-national cast difficult. While the
film’s six million dollar budget was larger than anything Verhoeven
had to work with back in the Netherlands, it didn’t quite match the
ambitions of this project and you can tell things were getting
stretched a little thin by the time the finale rolls around. Disputes
over the portrayal of Martin ultimately lead to Verhoeven’s
refusing to ever work again with Hauer, who had been his lead actor
of choice back in the home country. Most notably, is that due to
studio interference, the movie we ended up with wasn’t the movie
that Verhoeven had set out to make. What he was originally going for
was something akin to THE WILD BUNCH with swords; Martin as Pike
Bishop and Hawkwood as Deke Thorton, respectively. The studio, on the
other hand, wanted the focus to be more on the supposed love triangle
between Martin, Agnes, and Steven, so Hawkwood ended up being
relegated to a supporting role. Well, as much as I hate to side with
the bean counters over an artist, this worked out in the film’s
advantage. Of the two stories, that’s simply the more compelling
one and it all due to the character of Agnes. Women who will do
whatever they can to survive, even if it means crawling over a dead
body or two, are a staple of Verhoeven’s films and she’s without
a doubt one of the best examples. She’s smart enough to realize
that Martin claiming her as his woman is the only way to ensure any
degree of safety and is willing endure his brutal attentions if it
means staying out of the hands of the others. What surprises her is
that, as the movie goes on, her medieval Patty Hearst act gets her in
touch with a more devilish side of herself and danged if she doesn’t
find something a little liberating about being the queen of this
bunch of lunatics. Of course, once Steven and company come knocking,
that’s not going to slow her down one iota in letting him know that
he needs to hurry up and get her out of there.
It’s
an understatement to say that FLESH + BLOOD is a wildly different
movie from the other medieval adventure and sword and sorcery flicks
that were popular in the eighties. With its constantly shifting
character relationships, symbolism and imagery, cast of characters
that runs through nearly every social class, and the way that it goes
completely scorched earth on that cast for its apocalyptic finale, it
wouldn’t be too presumptuous to call it the closest thing we’ve
gotten to Verhoeven doing a Shakespeare adaptation. Even the film’s
original concept, which would have been about shipwreck survivors
falling under the thrall of a religious heretic exiled to the island
they crashed on, can’t help but call THE TEMPEST to mind. Whether
you agree with that reading or not, you have to admit that one
shouldn’t go into it expecting something along the lines of CONAN
THE BARBARIAN or John Boorman’s EXCALIBUR. There is one medieval
fantasy series I would say FLESH + BLOOD closely resembles, though,
and that takes us back to my earlier comment about it being ahead of
its time. That’s because the series in question wouldn’t be along
until a decade later and wouldn’t become a household name for
another fifteen years when its television adaptation hit HBO: George
R.R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE and A GAME OF THRONES. Sure,
FLESH + BLOOD doesn’t feature much in the way of the supernatural
or magic (though as Scott Ashlin elaborates on in his review, Steven might as well be a wizard) and Agnes never gets her hands on a trio of
newborn dragons, which would have been a big help. What
connects the two is how they enjoy knocking holes in the notion of
the romanticized idea of medieval life. Much like
Martin’s Westeros, Verhoeven’s 16th century Italy is a land where every authority figure is
pettily corrupt, horrible bastards thrive, women have to find ways to move within what spaces a society that actively hates them allows and everything's covered in a layer or two of grime, filth and squalor. Whether or not this gritty approach is really a more realistic depiction of the Middle Ages than verdant hills dotted with shining castles and gallant knights astride white horses is a whole other discussion but there's no denying its effectiveness as a backdrop if handled correctly. FLESH + BLOOD success at doing this comes down how Verhoeven handles the difficult balancing act of never standing in judgement of its characters while at the same time making no excuses for the horrible things they do. He may be an extremely charismatic example of one but the movie never wants you to forget for a moment that Martin is a vile thug. At the same time, it's impossible not to feel sympathy for him when he has to bury his stillborn child in the only casket available, a small wine barrel, and is shocked into stunned silence when he catches sight of the infant's small hand. Its penchant for finding moments of humanity in the worst and viciousness in its best (granted, by comparison) gives the narrative much of its strength, going beyond simply saying "there are, like, no real heroes and villains, man" like that 22-year old who gets how the world works.
It helps that FLESH + BLOOD happens to be such a good looking movie. Cinematographer Jan de Bont, who would also work on DIE HARD and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER before becoming a director himself, was a frequent collaborator with Verhoeven and between the two of them they hit on some fantastic shots and compositions of smoke shrouded battlefields, candle lit chambers, and groups of dirty face flashing wolf-like grins full of yellow teeth. It took me a while to decide on what screenshots to use with this write-up because there's so much memorable imagery in it, whether its Martin's head haloed by a burning wheel or (God, only in a Verhoeven movie) Steven and Agnes's first kiss taking place beneath a pair of hanged, rotted corpses. The film's score was composed by another Verhoeven regular, Basil Poledouris, and his orchestral themes support the visuals more than admirably, the rousing music sounding like how an exciting adventure story reads. Verhoeven hired Poledouris after hearing his score for CONAN THE BARBARIAN and would work with him again on ROBOCOP and STARSHIP TROOPERS and it's understandable why. 
Considering that there was little else like it at the time and the biggest audience for it wouldn't be along for almost two and half decades, it's not surprising that Orion Pictures had no idea how to market the film. The trailer released for it is impressively able to spoil the entire movie without telling you a single thing about it. If you were going by any of the posters used to advertise it (save for one) you wouldn't be blamed for thinking that you were in for a romantic adventure like that other medieval Rutger Hauer movie from '85, LADYHAWKE, which FLESH + BLOOD almost feels like a savage response to. Even the summary on the Netflix envelope did that. Won't lie, though, I would have liked to been in a theater to see the reaction of someone expecting a movie like LADYHAWKE and got one where its cast is pelted with chunks of plague ridden dog meat instead. ("Oh that Rutger Hauer is so dreamy, I can't wait toOH MY GOD!") Nothing says romance like The Black Death, I guess.
...
...
...
Oh, I almost forgot!
I never told you what the other movie was. Y'know, the one that I had wanted to see on the afternoon I went to see ROBOCOP? The one that we ended up not going to because she thought it would be too scary for us kids to see. Ummm...yeah. 'bout that...
We can all agree that I came out ahead here, right?
A Little Something Extra:
Basil Poledours - "FLESH + BLOOD Suite"
But that's not all!
Grantland's Career Arc: Paul Verhoevan - A fantastic retrospective on the man's career, though I must deduct points for it leading off with a shot from ROBOCOP 3, for cryin' out loud.
On Dangerous Ground: Paul Verhoevan Interviewed: An in-depth interview with the man himself from circa TOTAL RECALL.
Grantland's Career Arc: Paul Verhoevan - A fantastic retrospective on the man's career, though I must deduct points for it leading off with a shot from ROBOCOP 3, for cryin' out loud.
On Dangerous Ground: Paul Verhoevan Interviewed: An in-depth interview with the man himself from circa TOTAL RECALL.
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