I would bother to write about some dumb Netflix action movie. But dumb movies need love to, and truly entertaining dumb movies are hard to find. I’m talking about old fashioned values here - i.e. not going nuts from boredom. I noticed The Gray Man the way I notice everything on Rotten Tomatoes — any movie that gets called ‘limp’ by the critics but has a 90% audience rating deserves to be noticed. Let’s say the silent part out loud; Ryan Gosling is the new James Bond — the movie hints at this when he tells someone his secret agent number is ‘6’ and then adds casually ‘You know — 007 was already taken.’ Right. What does it take to be a true action hero? It means being a great actor, which Ryan Gosling is, while at the same time oozing accidental sex appeal. Keanu Reeves (John Wicks) has only his personal appeal; whereas Gosling can actually act sex appeal; but paradoxically, whereas Keanu Reeves, is, I would argue, studiedly masculine (He’s gay isn’t he? I mean who is that old lady he calls his girlfriend?) Gosling is ‘effortlessly masculine’ -- meaning you just want to lick whatever he’s got. On top of that, Gosling makes us believe he’s a nice guy — which he may not be. But it’s not just Gosling, it’s the script — which is actually warm and witty and has real characters who you get to know, and you want to see them again and again. The action in a good action movie must make sense, you must care about what’s happening, not just think it’s ‘cool.’ So why, if this movie is the new James Bond movie in disguise, is it getting bad reviews? Well — right now Hollywood is probably working very hard to create the new, official James Bond hero — probably a woman, non-white, and politically correct. Meanwhile the Russo Brothers (who everyone seems to hate for some reason) snuk The Next James Bond Movie onto Netflix and the critics are mad, but the public is ecstatic. I remember when I used to read the Ayn Rand Newsletter (didn’t you know that about me?) and Rand used to love James Bond. She talked about some poor hapless guy (Rand was always talking about poor hapless guys who approached her with idiotic questions) who said — ‘If James Bond opens a bottle for a girl, he always does it perfectly, but if I do it, I might mess it up. I could never be James Bond, so what’s the point?” Rand aptly pointed out that if James Bond did not pop his cork in precisely the correct manner it wouldn’t matter to him, so it wouldn’t matter to the girl either. In other words a hero is not perfect, he just makes others believe he is. This is fiction, not real life, and definitely not therapy. And no, it’s not about seeing yourself ‘represented’ up there, it’s the opposite of seeing yourself, because you are a bumbling fool and always will be. There’s no hope for you, me, or any of us, so we must see visions that are not in any way like us, i.e. Caliban who is half fish half human, or Miranda who has never seen a man before and is dangerously impressed by Ferdinand. This is fiction folks, and fiction does not teach because there must be no lessons in art. If you are a better person after reading that book or seeing that play, it is not because of ‘the message’ — but because great art has it’s source in the imagination of a person in touch with something very deep, and offers you an alternative reality which you might as well not necessarily strive for — because you will never achieve it -- because life is dull, tragic, painful and pointless. But this alternative reality may redeem you nonetheless. The fact that The Gray Man can’t get a completely good review anywhere — although it is an entertainment masterpiece — is a big problem. I mean you know me by now, don’t you? I desperately need to be entertained, and I am trying to do that right now — trying to keep myself from slashing my wrists on the bus on the way back to Hamilton after an uninspiring rehearsal of a play that is going to need a lot fo work. And yes I found the cat on the porch this morning (when we came back from signing that stupid piece of paper for the lawyer). How did she get out of the house? She’s not supposed to ever leave, because she’s not an outdoor cat, she’s a housecat with no front claws. Yes, that’s the brutal truth. Yes, we tortured her in that particular way, we allowed a sadistic vet (one of the only ones left who will still do it) to pull out her claws because we were selfish enough to want to keep her as well as our furniture. But as she has a tiny cat brain she loves us anyway, and after we accidentally let her out of the house this morning, there she was, chewing on a leaf, and soon after docilely submitting to being taken in. This is reality; a cat on the porch and facing your own cruelty for defanging her; it is a tale told with sound and fury signifying nothing. So when we get a chance to see something sublime (and I mean that in the Edmund Burke definition of the word — both beautiful and frightening simultaneously) it is incumbent on us to submit. Submission is highly underestimated — though it is much valued by Muslims, who made it their religion. I advise you to submit yourself to art, to the imagination, to wit, to beauty, to yes —entertainment — to senseless fictional violence, to the unknown — to all that is not real and beyond life. I don’t know how I arrived at that particular idea, but it it was The Gray Man that took me here. Odd as that sounds.
