“1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992)
After the genre exercise of “Black Rain” and the aforementioned “Thelma & Louise” (arguably his most successfully “grounded” picture — i.e. one not set in a dystopian future or a long-distant past or an unreal alternate reality), Scott attempted a return to spectacle, but this time on an epic scale with “1492: Conquest of Paradise.” The ingredients were all present and correct: an international cast led by recently Oscar-nominated Gerard Depardieu, lavish production design and costuming, and a bloated eventual runtime of 142 minutes. But the result was rather scuppered (!) by a Weighty Sense of Importance (the film was designed to be be a kind of definitive celebration of the problematic Columbus “discovering America” story, released exactly 500 years after he landed), and even the seeming home-run elements didn’t quite work. Depardieu, wonderful in his native French films and blessed with the kind of imposing charisma that should have suited the part to a T, seems lost and uncomfortable here in his Awkward English dialogue, and the grandeur of the setting and locations just seems to drag the pacing down to a slow crawl. Scott did manage some of his trademark razzle-dazzle at times, but surface was never the problem here —it lacks substance, and unsurprisingly sank like a stone at the box office. [C]
“White Squall” (1996)
What should be a thrilling, white-knuckle ride becomes a perfect storm of forgettability (and yes, that’s a reference to the much more memorable “A Perfect Storm” from Wolfgang Petersen that would come along four years later) as Scott headed out to sea for his second waterlogged box-office bomb on the trot. The based-in-fact tale follows a group of 1960s high school boys (including Scott Wolf, Ryan Phillippe, Balthazar Getty and Jeremy Sisto) taken out to sea by their schoolmaster and skipper (Jeff Bridges), when the titular violent windstorm hits and threatens to sink the boat. There’s a great deal of impressive, lived-in detail, a fair amount of hard-won sailing-is-life wisdom, and Bridges delivers a typically strong, understated performance. But Todd Robinson‘s script leans too heavily on coming-of-age cliches between the young guys whose problems all feel lifted directly from the Inspiration Teacher movie handbook, and so while the storm footage is as impressive as you could wish for, everything leading up to it feels pretty familiar, not too engaging and frankly a little dull. [C]
“G.I. Jane” (1997)
People really hate this movie. But while as a feminist manifesto, it has none of the zip and effortless-seeming chemistry that made “Thelma & Louise” such a instantly irresistible hit, “G.I. Jane” is at least a failure that’s trying to do something interesting. The wafer thin script by David Twohy probably doesn’t help, though he does give Viggo Mortensen‘s ruthless drill sergeant a DH Lawrence poem to recite, so there’s that —there’s very little plot here and the characterization does not feel strong enough to make it a character portrait either. But still, Demi Moore, shaved head and rock hard, pumped physique gives her all in an impressively muscular performance (literally and figuratively), and while the tone can feel oppressively grim if you’re not on its wavelength, that’s also an admirable stylistic choice for a Hollywood movie starring one of the biggest female stars of the time. It’s by no means a home run, but as a lean and unsentimental look at SEAL training and sexism in the military —where physical endurance and strength often is the battleground for women attempting to prove themselves— it’s a bit like a training montage from another film stretched out to feature length, with the upbeat Survivor track removed, but not necessarily in a bad way. [C+/B-]
“Gladiator” (2000)
…aaand… as much as people hate “GI Jane” and we don’t, people really love “Gladiator,” and again we’re a little out of step. It’s certainly not bad by any stretch of the imagination, yet it’s still hard for us to get our heads around just what a phenomenon this film became back in 2000: the film was a box office sensation, a career-making vehicle for Russell Crowe who’d been knocking on superstardom’s door since “LA Confidential,‘ and a five-time Oscar winner, including that year’s Best Picture and Best Actor statues. To be sure, it’s an impressive and accomplished piece of entertainment, but the film is also a little self-consciously grandiose for what is really a decent, old-fashioned swords-and-sandals yarn. Still, the production design is again outstanding, especially the fairly seamless CG recreations of the Colosseum and also of parts of the late Oliver Reed‘s last performance, as he died before shooting had finished. Joaquin Phoenix (also Oscar-nominated) made an appropriately sneery villain in real-life baddie Emperor Commodus, and Crowe gives fictional hero Maximus the kind of tectonic presence that suggests, even if it’s not his greatest performance, that it may well always be the one that defines him. [B]
