Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Public Enemies (2009) -vs- Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The Smackdown.  Gangsters have occupied a rather over-elevated rung on the movie subject matter ladder since the first hand-cranked silents unspooled for the hungry hordes a century ago. Criminals lead such dramatic lives, so full of danger and tragedy and excitement that we naturally look to them for our movie myths and anti-heroes.  We fantasize and fetishize these quintessential losers so dutifully that they continue to exude glamour and power some seventy-odd years past their reign of terror. Their Depression seemed more romantic, more photo-ready than our own, their poverty and hard times made picturesque by the passage of time. Criminal desperation and anarchic violence gets rendered literary and archetypal. So which film featuring the fall of which ill-fated bankrobber/lover makes the grade? Depp’s dapper Dillinger faces off squarely with Beatty’s Barrow.

The Challenger. "Public Enemies" (2009) ||  Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp in an ambitious fever dream version of the last gasp of 1930’s glamorous gangster life in Chicago. John Dillinger is the film’s centerpiece, released after nine years in prison only to be squeezed uncomfortably and fatally between two larger and far more deadly forces – the burgeoning FBI and organized crime. Dillinger and other infamous crooks meet their famous ends at the hands of Melvin Purvis and his nameless G-men.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) -vs- The Thin Red Line (1998)

The Smackdown. War is hell. And until Steven Spielberg got involved, we'd never really experienced war through the eyes of a soldier. We'd come close, with filmmakers as diverse as Coppola and Oliver Stone all giving us their interpretations, but it always seemed to be at a safe distance.  The viewer was taken on a journey, but not our own journey. Unlike Ron Kovic or Ben Willard, who undertake a journey for us, Spielberg attempted to give us our own experience in war without having to leave the cinema. "Saving Private Ryan," which graphically shows us the D-Day landings of a group of US forces in 1944, opens with an assault on the senses unlike any we'd ever seen. It thrust us into the heat of battle, the confusion and carnage of an assault that beggars description. It wanted us to know exactly what war is really like. 

At the same time, at a different film studio, a reclusive film director had also embarked upon a journey to show us the inhumanity and insanity of war. Terrence Malick, who had disappeared from the Hollywood radar for the better part of two decades in a self-imposed exile, had returned with a lengthy, languid exploration of the mental anguish of fighting the war in the Pacific, the other major theater of World War II. Gathering some of the cream of Hollywood talent and star wattage, Malick constructed a story of broken hearts, hope and devastation, the jungles of the Pacific cast as a beautiful backdrop to some of mankind's darkest moments. With "The Thin Red Line," Sean Penn and James Caviezel lead a massively talented cast into battle, told in a style that is so completely different to Spielberg's more grimy effort, so ensuring that we experience both styles of film-making to endure the horrors of war. 

Two mighty juggernauts of cinema, lined up head to head. Both set during WWII, both featuring a large cast of known names, all vying for screen-time, all with a story to tell. This Smackdown will be a brutal, casualty ridden affair that will leave only the bravest, the strongest standing. Soldiers, open fire!!!

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) -vs- Crimson Tide (1995)

The Smackdown.  People trapped inside the cold steel of big machines. Check. Ticking clocks relentlessly counting down to disaster. Check. Battles of will between A-list actors. Check again. Director Tony Scott must have known he had a good thing in 1995's "Crimson Tide" and was looking to repeat it with this year's re-make of the classic "The Taking of Pelham 123."  As far as action directors go, Scott (brother of Ridley) is in the very elite. He makes movies that are almost always worth the price of a ticket at the cineplex. The best are tense, scary, hard-edged ones where his screenwriters give him high stakes and the dialogue to support them (often for Denzel Washington) and then he paces the hell out of the film itself. We have a real fight on our hands with some Scott-on-Scott violence.

The Challenger. The 2009 "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" takes its inspiration from the 1974 film "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" which took its inspiration from the same novel written by John Godey. In the hands of current screenwriter Brian Helgeland, the central idea -- bad guys board a New York subway and take the passengers hostage while demanding a huge ransom -- remains the same. He's given us a few new twists, like the lead hijacker, Ryder (John Travolta) is now an ex-con and the negotiator, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) is now a transit executive. Then director Scott bends and twists it through pacing, tone and special effects. In this film, Travolta drives the action but it's Washington who gets put on the spot in one particularly tough moment when, without benefit of waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques, the hijacker gets the negotiator to confess to a crime of his own. It's one of those "what would you do" moments and particularly effective as played by Washington.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) -vs- Transformers (2007)

The Smackdown. Hollywood's in love with the 1980s, and nowhere is it more apparent than with the Transformer's franchise. In 2007, the first "Transformers" was a box-office success, easily earning a sequel in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."  Now, in less then two years, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" hits theaters with the same cast and crew as the original.  Sounds like a fair fight?  So true to the spirit of the Transformer series, today's smackdown pits robot against robot in a knock-down intergalactic cinematic fight as we ask which film does robot-on-robot action better?

The Challenger. With "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," Michael Bay spares no expense ensuring audiences get more bang for their $14 movie ticket. This time, a college-bound Sam Witwicky finds himself trapped in the ever-escalating war between the Autobots and Decepticons...again. See, a prehistoric Transformer called The Fallen intends to drain our sun to obtain the Transformer's life-force, Energon. Naturally, he'll then conquer the cosmos or achieve some equally impolite end (like chewing with his mouth open). But only Sam knows the location of this Energon machine due to a series of psychic visions. Now, Sam must lead the Autobots to Egypt where they wage war against The Fallen, his Decepticons, and Megatron...yes, that's right, Megatron's back too. Still want more plot? Don't worry; I just gave you half. Clocking in well over two hours, "Transformers: RotF" has enough plot for three trilogies. It's the only type of sequel you'd expect from Michael Bay: one that's bigger, louder, and dumber.

Deja Vu (2006) -vs- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

 Time It Was 

The Smackdown. Maybe it's because the summer of 2009 has given us another Tony Scott film in "The Taking of Pelham 123" and another episode in the Terminator franchise with "Terminator Salvation," but this Smackdown from 2006 has been getting lots of traffic. 

If people from the future could travel back to the past, wouldn't they have already done it? Would it be better to see into the past or into the future? Do they both exist simultaneously, along with the present, because time is relative to where you are? If you like these kinds of questions, we have a couple of films to really put your through Olympic-sized paces in the Suspension of Disbelief event. We've put a couple of major star vechicles in our time travel machine, both of them about scooting back through the years in order to change the future, both directed by major directors with reputations for getting the action up there on the screen. "Deja Vu" is the more cerebral -- "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is the more literal -- but both of them cause your brain to short-circuit if you think too much about twists-and-turns of time travel as they would have you believe it works. But this is an entertainment site, not a physics lecture, so let's get to it.

The Challenger. The ever-likable Denzel Washington stars in the Tony Scott-directed "Deja Vu," a collaboration that must work for both men since they've done so many films together. This one starts with a terrorist bombing of a New Orleans ferry as a way to get at that time-honored sci-fi question -- if you could go back in time, could you also change the future? This film posits that with all those nifty satellites we have scanning the globe that there's a way to use them to "triangulate" and snoop on anybody we want exactly four days in the past. Okay, that's a stretch,  but it works well-enough that this flashy Jerry Bruckheimer produced, Tony Scott directed movie still works. In a heavily-plotted script by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio, Washington's ATF investigator uses this hot-new technology to time-travel back to save the life of a woman who holds the key to the terrorist's identity. Naturally, he will fall in love her. Even more obviously, this will never pass the logic test, but even so, the action and suspense never really flags. Bruckheimer and Scott, as a team, have reputations for delivering a great evening's entertainment with lots of loud explosions, fast cuts, and crazy violence -- they don't ask for too much thought but they do provide maximum diversion. The film works.