jonathancanucklevine

A documentary? A docudrama? A music video? Whatever it was, it seems to have run about an hour too long. There is apparently a true story underneath the singing and moody driving-around-at-night visuals, but it failed to fight its way to the surface. And I don't know what to make of this silly culprits-who-cannot-by-law-be-named thing, as the info is out there in the free press: Jamie Petrolini and Richard Elsey. But this watch-us-make-the-story-of-the-story-and-hey-doesn't-this-singer-look-cool-and-the-audience-is-swaying-to-her-singing stuff?

Dude, just because you had a new idea doesn't mean you had a *good* idea. Two thumbs down.

... now that CRIMPOTUS has started his lunatic trade war. It was made by ex-con Peter "Rabbit" Navarro, based on his own book, in which he credits a non-existent Ron Vara (hint: anagram of "Navarro") as the intellectual basis for his work. The film and book are pure twaddle; Navarro was plucked out of obscurity by Jared Kushner to provide an underlying economic "theory" for the tariffs that CRIMPOTUS had always wanted anyway because he's not just mentally ill, and not just grossly ignorant of economics, but shockingly stupid.

I'm sure that Martin Sheen is deeply embarrassed, in retrospect, at having participated in this bucket of swill, even if it was just a voice-over gig.

But to a more specific critique, this work is completely consistent with the MAGA grievance culture that blames everyone else (usually the "libs") for everything without ever analying the *real* causes or offering practical remedies. You'll see exactly the same thing if you watch Errol Morris's documentary on Steve Bannon, whose sole prescription is "tear it all down" - without even hinting at what to do next - and Americans are now (April 2025) experiencing what that means in practice. So here, Navarro blames China for being mean and unfair and "stealing" from the US, rather than reporting the truth, which is that China stole nothing; American laissez-faire capitalists - fixated on quarterly earnings - handed it all to them. (Hint: China didn't sneak over the Pacific in the dead of night and spirit away Boeing.)

So if your idea of a good time on a Saturday night is to hear "It's all China's fault!" bleated for 80 minutes that feel like forever, party on, dude. Otherwise, give this one a pass.

The 1974 Matthau/Shaw original is a piece of pure art. The tension is amazing, the humour wry. And David Shire's soundtrack is absolutely stunning - his use of the longhair twelve-tone composition technique was utterly masterful; it's hard to grasp why it's so powerfully unnerving until it's explained, then you understand what makes it so unique. So I pity the reviewer who describe it as "dated", as it's anything *but* - even if you don't get it and think it's simply "70s cop show jazz" (a genre I eternally love), it stands head a shoulders above the rest. A correspondent on a music list I shared many years ago called it "strict and punishing"; I've never heard a better description.

So what we have here is a solid cast of TV regulars, actors whose work I generally enjoy (e.g. Richard Schiff in The West Wing). And I've been a fan of Stewart Copeland's soundtracks going all the way back to his days in The Police. But all of that does *nothing* here. Compared to the original, this version is completely denatured. All of the life, the tension, and the humour have been wrung out of it. I had higher hopes - I had to wait a lot of years for this to be released onto the MGM+ service, and I feel let down. Did I expect the original? No. But I didn't expect anything this lifeless either.