Nada: I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum. "Who are they? And what do they want?"They Live is one of John Carpenter's coolest movies, but not one of his best. The only thing that really brings this movie down is the horrible acting, mainly Roddy Piper. He is horrible, but he
does seem to bring the movie some laughs with every bad one liner he says. Although, his acting kept this from being one of my favorites from Carpenter; it didn't hinder just how fun and cool the plot is. Roddy Piper plays Nada, a drifter on the road looking for some much needed cash. He stops in a city, gets a job and finds a pair of sunglasses that show him how the world really looks. The sunglasses break the signal,that "they" are sending. He sees what billboards really say, "Obey." He sees that money is "god." He sees who the politicians really are. Now he is on a race to try to find our just what is going on and to see if he can, somehow, end this. The movie was a lot different then I expected. It's more of a straight up action film then anything else. While watching They Live; I couldn't help but keep thinking about Assault on Precinct 13. Carpenter kind of goes back to that story with this movie. Except this time instead of cops being outnumbered by gangs; we have a few humans who know what is going on outnumbered by aliens. In both cases there's a lot of shootouts and a lot of violence. The only big difference structurally, besides the obvious, is that this isn't in anyway a serious movie. All the one liners pretty much give that away. The movie isn't without its problems; the main one being the lead actor. Also, it has the weakest of any scores I have heard from Carpenter. Sometimes it is overly silly, to the point of embarrassment and other times it tries to be deathly serious. The tone is just all over the place and it kind of takes the flow of the film and throws it right out the window. But the concept is just too cool to not like. It's an extremely entertaining film; but a little sad because this could have been much, much better.
October 13, 2011
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