Hot Guys, Bad Movies (pt. II)

Ricochet

The Counselor

Well well well, we have survived a maddening March and April Fool’s Day (a terrible day for gullible, earnest suckers like myself) and I’d like to reward us with a round of films that come from a genre that I have shockingly only explored one time in the whole five years of this blog: Hot Guys, Bad Movies. Now, don’t get me wrong, there have been a handful of accidental entries into this genre along the way, and last week’s Demi Moore double feature certainly represented for the Hot Girls, Bad Movies genre, but I haven’t intentionally sought out movies of this specific caliber since I started this cinematic odyssey with my sister back in 2020. I love a hyper-specific genre like this one because it takes the pressure off of a critical viewer like myself—I don’t have to worry about plot points that are too clever or writing that is too heavy (or even good), I just gotta sit back and watch hot guys act in their (typically) macho, tough guy roles. I know my definition of “bad” is just as subjective and varying as my definition of “hot”, but I love a low-stakes, low-brow watch after watching one-too-many critically-acclaimed, groundbreaking films. And I don’t mean to sound demeaning! Maybe tonight’s films have more value to them than hotness and hate-watching-capabilities, especially if any real-life hot men think so—whatever you say, handsome! The Hot Guys, Bad Movie genre continues to reinvent itself and can be pleasurable for reasons that go far beyond eye candy, and tonight’s selections really proved this.

Let’s begin with a film that I was not personally recommended, but was recommended to the community of fans of comedian Stavros Halkias on his podcast Stavvy’s World, with the disclaimer that it’s one of the best bad movies to watch, this is Russell Mulcahy’s 1991 film Ricochet. This film was actually meant to be part of the Dirty Harry series, but Clint Eastwood deemed it too violent. Ricochet stars forever-hunk Denzel Washington, at the peak of his (young) hotness, as a South Central Los Angeles rookie officer and law student Nick Styles, who we first see playing a rowdy game of basketball with his partner, Larry (Kevin Pollak), and his childhood friend, Odessa (Ice-T.) Even from this quaint opening sequence, I knew I was in for a wild ride, because the camerawork during this basketball game involves some Challengers-level action basketball POV shots. Even as a young man, we know Styles is ambitious, as he tells the girl he’s crushing on that he wants to be the first black president. We then cut to a crowded carnival where Styles and Larry are patrolling, and happen to stumble upon a meeting of the criminal minds that is shot up by crazed hitman Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow.) This once clandestine meeting ends in a barrage of bullets, and the entire carnival descends into chaos as Styles comes face to face with Blake in a standoff. When Blake grabs a nearby woman and puts a gun to her head, Nick carefully negotiates by removing his gun belt, taking off his shirt to reveal a lack of a bullet proof vest and/or hidden weapons, and eventually takes off everything but his underwear. Just when Blake thinks he’s safe to attack, Nick grabs a gun from the back of his underwear and fires at him, triumphantly saying, “I guess a Beretta in the butt beats a butterfly in the boot, huh?” All of this happens in like, the first five minutes of this film. This victory turns Styles into a hero, earning him and his partner a promotion to detectives, and earning Blake and his accomplice a spot in a maximum security prison. Eight years later, Styles now has a mustache, he’s the Assistant District Attorney, and he’s married his crush, Alice (Victoria Dillard), with whom he has two cute daughters. But in these eight years, Blake has been busy, too. He’s been singularly-focused on exacting his revenge upon Styles—whom he has made a obsessive shrine to in his prison cell. He’s been reading, plotting, forming alliances with the local Aryan Brotherhood—who all find him terrifying as he defeats each inmate in hand-to-hand combat with makeshift spears that, I guess, none of the guards at this “maximum security prison” are privy to… Meanwhile, Styles is proselytizing in court, causing the judge to make a face that says, “my god, he’s good”, having his babies baptized by his preacher father (John Amos), taking crackpipes out of the mouths of people strung out on the street, even facing his old friend Odessa, who’s now a bit of a drug lord. If anyone else were to stand on a soapbox in front of drug users and give a spiel about doing the right thing, it would sound ridiculous, but because it’s Denzel as this helplessly-charming character, I was captivated. Plus, only seconds later, when the dealers all pull guns on him, Styles pulls out a grenade and says, “Okay then, let’s all die, who’s ready to die?”, I was reminded of the jarring absurdity of this film. Styles can do it all, but when Blake finally executes his daring prison break, which involves ingeniously faking his death, Styles is in for a world of trouble. Stavvy mentioned that John Lithgow is absolutely bonkers in this, and Lithgow did not disappoint. Blake does more than threaten Styles’ career, family, and friends, he seeks to drive him mad, which, for awhile, he really succeeds in doing. Blake ruins a telethon for the police that Styles organized, he drugs Styles, makes him cheat on his wife with a sex worker, tarnishes his good reputation by making him seem like a child molester, and puts everything he holds sacred in danger. And this is just a sampling of Ricochet’s ludicrousness, the rest of it you’d have to see yourself to believe. This film has some of the most batshit writing, editing, directing, musical choices, line deliveries, and stunts I’ve ever seen, and I truly couldn’t look away. John Lithgow is deeply freaky in this—reaching a level of depravity that I doubt audiences had seen before, and may not have seen since—and in order to take him down and clear his name, Denzel chooses to fight crazy with crazy, which was especially fun to observe since his characters are typically so cool and calm. Ricochet features a hot Denzel Washington, a completely unhinged John Lithgow, and a reliably funny Ice-T in such a free-wheeling and logic-defying premise that it pushes this bad film right into good-bad-film territory, and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re looking for a jaw-dropping and hilarious movie to watch.

Similarly jaw-dropping and hilarious was tonight’s second film, which I chose mostly because it stars my favorite hot-scary guy Michael Fassbender (as an homage to his appearance in the last HGBM night, and because his birthday was yesterday), but it continued to reveal the layers of its terrible goodness the more it went on: this is the 2013 film The Counselor. Directed by one of my favorite problematic directors Ridley Scott and written by one of my favorite problematic writers Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor follows a Texas attorney who is simply referred to as “the Counselor” who becomes embroiled in some drama that goes beyond his paygrade. The film opens with a scene that should’ve been hot, wherein Michael Fassbender’s Counselor asks his girlfriend, Laura (Penelope Cruz), to tell him something sexy, but because of tonight’s genre, they did not stick the landing and it’s not that sexy. Even when she attempts to dirty talk, he says, “say it more sexy”, which is what every woman wants to hear. Their house is huge, their love is boundless, and the Counselor makes a trip to Amsterdam just to buy a diamond ring that will be big enough to represent their big love. When he returns to Texas, the Counselor walks into an extravagant rich-people party, where he is greeted by a security guard that says “lookin’ good, Counselor”, and a cheetah on a leash is just casually chilling by the pool. He meets with a man named Reiner (Javier Bardem), who’s taste in fashion and spray tans is as over the top as his taste in interior decorating, and the two discuss a vague business venture they’re embarking on together. Beyond the pet cheetah, we’re given hints that Reiner’s line of work isn’t the most above-board, and he remarks to the Counselor that, “a law degree is a license to steal and you’ve never really capitalized on it.” Reiner also expresses some concern about his current girlfriend, Malkina (Cameron Diaz), how she knows more than she probably should, and he earnestly warns the Counselor that, “the truth about women is you can do anything to them but bore them.” There are several more weird, pseudo-philosophical, vaguely-threatening comments made about women throughout this movie, but the most interesting part of Reiner and the Counselor’s conversation is when he mentions a new weapon he’s learned of called "the bolito", which, after being pulled around one’s neck, self-constricts and decapitates the victim. Because McCarthy loves a unique murder weapon. We then cut to a bougie restaurant, where yet another cheetah is casually sitting on a leash—as if we needed a reminder that these are rich people we’re dealing with—and the Counselor very casually proposes to Laura, which she very casually says yes to. Later on, when Laura and Malkina are at a spa together, and we see Malkina’s cheetah-print back tattoo, Malkina questions the validity of Laura and the Counselor’s relationship, and Laura’s relationship to religion. “You’re teasing”, Laura says, “Just rattling your cage”, Malkina smirks. Like everyone else in this film, these two have bizarre chemistry, and oddly clunky dialogue coming from a writer whom I typically find very intelligent. There are moments of this film that involve the descriptive, meditative, existentially-dreadful writing that I know McCarthy for, but when it comes to crafting the relationships between these characters, this writer’s trademark syntactive asymmetry didn’t exactly translate to the screen. After the Counselor meets with another shady businessman, Westray (Brad Pitt), who recommends the Counselor not work with Reiner on account of the mercilessness of the Mexican cartel, our protagonist faces quite the dilemma. And when he takes the deal anyway and the plan goes awry, the Counselor will have more to answer to than just drug-dealing drama. Michael Fassbender, for all of the aggressive and calculated men he plays, was actually rather normal and sweet in this film. Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz were the flashy-trashy-fashioned couple from hell, and the once-beautiful-but-now-just-looks-like-an-abuser-to-me Brad Pitt sounds expectedly ridiculous in this cowboy persona that feels like his character from Thelma and Louise all grown up. Only in a Cormac McCarthy story will you hear crime bosses saying words like “pustulant” and “heretofore”, and that’s why I love him, but that’s also why he pisses me off. I also love that his backdrop is always Texas, and his muse tends to be Javier Bardem—who is cursed to only have crazy hair in his stories. Ridley Scott is known for his inconsistent filmmaking, as one user on Reddit said, “every time he makes a movie, the gods flip a coin”, but one thing he’s never made is a boring movie. The Counselor is a wild, weird, both intentionally and accidentally funny adventure that was likely more sexist and racist than I could even suss out between the strange 2013 fashion and forcibly-horny dialogue. I had just as much fun with both of tonight’s movies as I knew I would, and I highly recommend you watch both of them if you’re into bad movies with hot dudes. I mean, I am. I’m only human! Ttyl!