What’s Aged the Best?
The Dr. Dre needle drop and the film's L.A. feel; the two lead performances; the anti-hero crime storytelling that anticipated The Shield; Fuqua's modern, propulsive direction; Ethan Hawke's career moment
In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 00:25:05Read transcript
- Hearing the Dr. Dre song takes one host straight back to 2001, the second decade of hip hop, with Dre then turning up in the movie later; the music and the legitimately L.A. feel are that host's pick.
- The two performances discussed for thirty minutes still work perfectly; the film sits close to where TV was heading, the anti-hero era of The Shield that became consistent in cop and drug-dealer stories, and the Denzel performance splits the difference between that and the Sidney Lumet and French Connection documentary grit of the 70s, in a period with fewer crime movies than anyone in the room would like.
- The direction is totally modern with nothing dated, like Fight Club; Fuqua is slick and bright, Hollywood dirty, with great pace and propulsive movies even when they are not good, a cross between Michael Bay and William Friedkin, and the locations are authentic even though parts of this movie do not hang together.
- Ethan Hawke has aged nicely, this being the next step after Reality Bites, Before Sunrise and Gattaca; they will give him an Oscar at 70 for a grand old man performance even though he deserved one for six or seven movies, like a player who never won the MVP but could have.