Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Review: Special (Rx) Specioprin Hydrochloride
Special tells the story of a man called Les (pronounced 'Less', and more on that later), a mild mannered metermaid who takes part in a clinical trial for a drug nick-named 'Special' that switches off the part of the brain that gives us self-doubt. He then starts exhibiting superpowers such as levitation, telepathy and running through walls and quits his job to become a crime-fighting superhero. But is he really superpowered, or has the drug made him crazy?
The trailer plays up this 'is it real?' question a lot, possibly because more people are likely to go and see a superhero movie. The film, however, makes it clear in the first ten minutes that these powers are entirely in his head.
This, I guess, would be the big twist in an actual superhero movie, so giving it away in the first ten minutes seems insane. This is actually a great move, however, and leads to the best parts of the movie. Les, as played with a charmingly clumsy goofiness by Michael Rappaport, patrols the streets in a homemade costume looking for crime and, as we know he's gone loopy, it turns the myth-building and iconic poses of superhero stories on their heads. He looks like a drugged-out perv and has a legitimately creepy presence while staring at people passing by.
With that 'is he/isn't he' dynamic out of the way, film plays out as an inverted paranoid conspiracy thriller - with the audience knowing that the protagonist is, in fact, just a paranoid loon. It's a nice gag and the film gets some good mileage out of this in certain scenes but, unfortunately, it never develops beyond this conceit set up in the first reel. We know everyone is being basically quite honest with him while he thinks he is a superhero trapped inside an ever increasing web of dark deeds. It's played out fairly organically so that we know, without too much forcing of the issue, both what he is thinking the world is like and what the world outside his fractured mind is like. But what would be a good opening of a Philip K. Dick story is stretched out to feature length without any further development.
Which is fine, or would be if the point of the film was to be a character piece, or an exploration of mental illness. Getting the 'twist' out of the way early on is the best evidence of this reading. The film also starts with quiet, slightly melancholy keyboard music that sounds a bit like the quieter bits of Air or Sigur Ros and Les narrates his diary over the top in a slightly dazed, faux-naive expression of simple-talking wonder. The problem is that this is rapidly becoming a cliche of independent movies, signaling that this movie is about character rather than simple plot, and is slightly more spiritual and uplifting than normal. What it doesn't give us is anything specific about Les' character. It's tremendously generic, not saying much more than 'this is an indie movie, and slightly quirky'.
Equally, we aren't given much more about the specific nature of Les' illness than what I have already included so the hokey bit of pseudo-science about a doubt-inhibiting drug comes over as nothing more than another comic book device, no more believable than radioactive spiders. Perfectly fine in a comic book movie, but it doesn't tell us anything about mental illness. Adding to that problem is that the film-makers still try and add 'maybe it's real' moments to the proceedings, so trying to have their heroic conspiracy-thriller cake and eat it, only to undermine the more human, character-based tone they try to cultivate.
These mis-steps in tone all suggest that this is not an adult movie using comic-book conventions to get under the skin of a mentally ill man, but just a comic book movie with pretensions to being adult and mature. It can't be both and, as such, is a mess.
This is a very low budget movie that was successful enough on the festival circuit for it to get some actual distribution and so, for these new film-makers, the film is a great success. But for everyone else, the bar for no-budget independent genre films was set in 2004 with Primer and compared to that, this film is amateur-hour.
Les is pronounced 'Less', as I mentioned, which is a horribly clunky 'signifying' name for this meek under-achiever, the outside world is mostly presented to us by some broad satire of corporate mantras given by his boss, the 'evil' corporate stooges talk about Les' 'powers' (throwing in the 'is it real?' idea once again), only to have one finish the sentence later to with 'his powers to sue us'.
It looks terrible, displaying very little compositional imagination (so often the saviour of no-budget movies). I've already mentioned the unoriginal sound choices, but when it breaks out into heavy metal for a wacky chase sequence, we're into home-movie territory. The performances are very likable, especially from Rappaport and, at 80 minutes, the film doesn't outstay its welcome. Unless you count the last five minutes which I get the horrible feeling try to be profound and, even worse, symbolic.
Special wants to be the realistic, adult movie, but it reverts to often into comic-book movie broadness, so ultimately failing at both. Let's hope that this is a film by some rapidly developing talents, as a bigger budget may have allowed for it to look a lot better, but it wouldn't have changed the failings in basic conception.
5 capes out of 10
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