The idea that you could be in your 70s, and have “a certain set of skills” that allows you to beat down folks 1/3 your age, while getting a hot young widow to fall in love with you is definitely “porn for old guys”.
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“Fast Charlie” provides exactly this kind of stimulus. This puts it in the same area code as “porn for girls” (”Twilight”), “porn for women” (”Fifty Shades of Grey”), and “porn for men aged 13-60” (actual porn). As your trusted advisor, I do have a piece of advice.
All y’all need to get better porn.
Now, before you think I’m handing out random burn notices to my loyal readership, I will say this: I get it. I get the thrill of smoking punks that don’t have respect or understand “the code”. I get wanting every hot guy in your school to fall in love with you. I get wanting to surrender control to a dark, tall, handsome stranger (although, arguably, Jamie Dornan is none of those things, but I still get it). I get the appeal of a pearl necklace. I’m down for all of it. However... Doesn’t it all strike you as... A little mundane? It’s time to level up to some real porn.
I am talking about *intellectual* porn.
For the intellectual porn pinnacle, one need look no further than the films of Shane Carruth. I am talking about the realization in “Upstream Color” that the worms are god (Ooooooooooooooooooooo!!!) and that reality itself has no meaning, to the erasure of your own past in “Primer”, thus proving that time itself is a construct of consciousness (Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg!!!) and that reality itself has no meaning, to the FURTHER realization that god is actually the worms (Don’t stop! Don’t stoppppppppppp!!!) and that reality actually has a meaning, which is that it has no meaning.
That’s right. Instead of blowing your wad, Shane Carruth blows your mind. Then your wad.
Unlike “Veronica Mars”, I don’t advocate addiction, but by all means you don’t need to stop there. You can gyrate on over to the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Kenji Mizoguchi, or any movie starring the god of intellect himself, Kelsey Grammer. I need Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, aka “the rumple” on my jock right now.
The point is dopamine release. Excitement. Curiosity. When your mind can get you there as well as your junk, and you realize that the intellectual and sexual are as interwoven as, say, Hans and Franz, then your porn possibilities become endless. It’s not about replacing vampires or stepsisters with something completely different, it’s about expanding your mental and physical ecosphere. Where the vampires and the god worms can live together in a disjointed mansion built for spooge fracking.
Take this advice, and hear me now and believe me later: You’ll thank me now. Or later.
Which segues not at all back to “Fast Charlie”, where our hero is played by Pierce Brosnan (which means you know Liam Neeson passed on the role, and Aaron Eckhart probably did as well). He does indeed smoke punks 1/3 his age, and despite the fact that he’s approximately 893108209380 years old, he ends up in Italy with Morena Baccarin as his lover (although, in hollywood years, Morena is about 78, which still makes her way younger than him). Even Liam had to say “Fook mate. That’s impressive”.
But you know something? The journey wasn’t bad. Yes... We’ve seen the old guy action hero before, but the film has a solid foundation. The dialogue is pretty funny, the action scenes are somewhat adrenaline pumping (as much as you can get from an 893108209380 year old pump), and Charlie’s plight is sympathetic enough that his nonsensical revenge by murdering a bunch of people actually carries some emotional weight. The best thing in the movie is probably the Fil Eisler score. It’s full of grindy, twangy cajun pieces that really set the mood and exemplify the southern setting. We even get some banjo. What happened to the banjo anyways?! There isn’t nearly enough of it, dueling or otherwise. Props to my man Fil for bringing it back!
The problem is... The filmmakers assume their audience is idiots. A thug has a shirt with the logo “Crispy Cream”, and he proudly proclaims, “I had it custom made!” Charlie rolls his eyes, and at this point, you have two options: Charlie says nothing, and the people who know about “Krispy Kreme” get the joke, and the people who don’t know about it don’t get it. OR, Charlie explains the joke, and the people who already got it now get double joke dipped, which is a fail, and the people who didn’t get it the first time are exposed as being as ignorant as our thug. OF COURSE Charlie says, “You spelled it wrong”. NO!!! Don’t explain the joke! How much of my nonsense do I take the time to explain?!? Not a lot! Because exposition and comedy work at cross purposes. Kind of like Hans and Gloria Steinem.
So, if you’re an old guy and want your porn fix, you can do worse than “Fast Charlie”, and if you’re not quite that old and want to spend 90 minutes with some zippy lines, decent action, and Morena Baccarin, you also could do worse. But you can also do better.
Or, better yet, you can do both.
2/10