In the early days of my movie-going, sometimes I'd just pick a movie at random in one of those multiplex theaters and see it. The game would be about knowing NOTHING about it, just picking the name off the marquee and buying a ticket. Some- times you win doing this, sometimes you lose. I wound up seeing "The Terminator" that way, on its opening night; that was a win.
Now that I live in a town that doesn't show any English-language movies, the game is harder to play. So what I do every so often is pick a title from the list of torrents available to me *without* looking it up on the IMDB, and I just download it "cold," not having any idea who is in it or whether it's any good or *anything* about it. Again, sometimes you win doing this, sometimes you lose. Tonight I won. I saw a weird film name in the list of movies and said, "That's probably a really rotten film, but what the heck...it's not costing me anythihg, right? Why not download it and give it a try?" So I did, and it sat around on my hard disk for awhile before I got around to watching it. And then I put it on tonight, and it grabs me in the opening scene, and I perk up a little. I watch the scene play itself out, and then the credits come on. The actors include Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Hal Holbrook, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (tremendous in "The Lookout"), and Rosario Dawson. I think to myself, "Self, you may just have won this time." And then I notice that it's the movie version of an Elmore Leonard novel. I put the sucker on Pause, get up and fix myself some snacks and pour myself a glass of good wine, and settle in. I won. The film is called "Killshot," and it's pretty good. Not for filmgoers who don't like violence and movies about Native American hitmen named Blackbird and their psychopathic partners/dead-little-brother- substitutes, but for me, and for tonight, it was "just right." "Citizen Kane," it's not. But it was just right after a long workday, a clean, taut thriller. A married couple trying to have a nice, civil divorce witnesses an incident and gets sent into the witness protection program. Unfortunately, the incident they witnessed involved Blackbird, and Blackbird doth not suffer a witness to live. Drama ensues, Elmore Leonard style. Besides, it's got Diane Lane in it, and I would drink Diane Lane's bathwater. "Citizen Kane," it's not. Heck, "Cape Fear" it's not, either version. But it was a cool way to pass a couple of hours until the club where I'm meeting the Irish woman I met on the beach today opens. I talked to her because she looked -- coincidentally enough -- like Diane Lane. Who knows...that may turn out to be a win, too. Every so often you've just got to take a chance on a complete unknown.
