What’s Aged the Worst?
The acting; the crawling monkey fighter; the reporter plot; the 'On My Own' moping montage; the chase with Forrest Whitaker; Ray Jackson's lack of MMA skills; young Frank's accent; Ray Jackson harassing the woman on the train
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:08Read transcript
- The acting was mentioned first; the crawling monkey fighter is problematic now, loved for years before anyone thought twice; his low, hopping style got him to the semis but is like small ball or the James Harden one-on-five: a surprise at first, scouted by the later rounds, unable to work over a seven-game series.
- The torch-holding islanders in the opening show the film was written by white guys who, asked what they knew about this, said make them a monkey; it is called really bad.
- The reporter plot has aged worst in parts: going undercover basically as a call girl and sleeping with a subject is very bad, part of a seventies-eighties trope of how to get the female reporter in, as in The A Team; the making-of says they wanted the action movie everyone liked in the eighties with a little romance added, so the writers gave the reporter a thing for Jean-Claude.
- Two tough minutes after Ray Jackson's injury have Jean-Claude moping around Hong Kong to a song going 'on my own, I can be strong', worse than Frank Stallone, but it leads to the split on a balcony around the fifteenth floor with no ropes or harness, a pretty great shot Scorsese would approve of in a terribly acted and probably directed movie.
- The lame chase is a fall from grace for Forrest Whitaker, the star linebacker of Fast Times who now cannot run through Hong Kong; his IMDb run from 1985 to 1988 is read out: Vision Quest, The Fall Guy, Diff'rent Strokes, North and South, Amazing Stories, The Color of Money, Platoon, Stakeout, Good Morning Vietnam, Bloodsport and Bird, several Oscar-nominated films with Bloodsport thrown in; he later popped up in Species.
- Whitaker is respected for securing the bag, or for simply wanting to do things that sound cool, like a sex alien movie after a Vietnam picture; he eventually won an Oscar playing Amin (transcribed 'D.D. Amin') and carries Phone Booth with Colin Farrell; told there was an Oscar winner in this movie, nobody would have picked Jean-Claude or Gibb, and the actress might have been the guess; Whitaker is definitely mailing it in here.
- Ray Jackson's MMA skills have aged badly since he does no MMA at all, more a Chuck Liddell knock-you-out-or-get-knocked-out fighter; young Frank's accent and acting feel like a head-shot pick with $1,200 left in the budget, and his father has a totally different accent.
- Final answer: the monkey guy and the reporter; Ray Jackson sexually harassing the woman on the train, trapping her in her seat with his gigantic leg while Jean-Claude looks on amused, is also recalled as very dumb.
- The acting is named first as what aged worst, before the discussion returns to aged best.