A Roman Goddess (Juno is).

It only took a few clicks forward into Juno’s initial succession of color-moderated shots before something…before something altogether striking happened. For me, at least.

Before everything began good and not quite proper, before the screenplay sets forth upon its trek of fingersnap dialogue and human conditions; while the majority of the audience members were still sitting back and taking care to properly situate themselves within the frames of deep blue seats, I saw something that really, truly, utterly endeared itself to me.
It got to me.

There sits a boy, there stands a girl. She approaches him, small creases forming on the sides of her mouth, marks of effort formed by hard-earned smiles. They come close. So close that all we can see are mouths surrounded by soft skin, mouths that don’t quite touch, mouths that are just taking a careful moment to breathe heavy and warm.

I see this, and I remember.
There sat a boy, and there stood a girl. The boy was me, the girl was she. Coming together in a series of moments that seem altogether separate while being all together, a myriad of feelings forever encapsulated into a series of steaming breaths. Moments in close-up. Bright eyes, close to mine; quick glances toward the door, in case her lesbian mother might burst in with the hope of catching an untrustworthy boy in the act; mouths on mouths, mouths not on mouths; fingers sliding over smooth spaces, common places that we still could not see from the proximity of our interaction; finally, a sweet voice uttering “Hi,” into the depths of my ear, a word dripping with sweat that tasted sweeter to my ear than that word ever has had the right to be. Yes. We were in love, she and I -- as simply and sweetly and completely as it gets. We were just another pair of ridiculous youngsters, but it was love.

First loves are in soft-focus.

And they are close. And there it was. There was my past, the way that it cannot help but be remembered. After that?
There were jokes.

That’s the beauty of it, you see. Because of all the elements that turn this screenplay by the indefatigable Diablo Cody (copywriter turned stripper turned blogger turned biographer turned screenwriter) into an act of wizardry, the part that makes it so goddamned watchable is that even if it didn’t bother with dredging up slivers of pastlife that make the pretentious blathering of Quarterlife seem as loaded and grating as they actually are, the words present in Juno would still get around to making me laugh like a H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S S-I-M-I-L-E when the receptionist at the Abortion Clinic leans in to discreetly reveal that boysenberry-flavored condoms make her boyfriend’s dick “smell like pie.”
Nothin’ says lovin’ / Like somethin’ from the oven.

Which brings us to the baby.
As I appear to not have previously mentioned, the titular character of this earnest little snark-bomb of a movie happens to be exceedingly pregnant for most of the running time. However, separating it from the recent swell of surprisingly high-quality comedies about women who are with child when they would rather not be (the charming Waitress, and the hilarious Knocked Up) Juno manages to differentiate itself: It’s not actually about the baby at all. It’s not quite about motherhood or fatherhood, not quite about buying diapers and cribs, not quite about the choices that we make. It’s about the things that we actually do, when presented with choices that we didn’t make ourselves. With jokes.
And with truth.

Earlier in this year that ends with a series of ferocious films (No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood come immediately to mind), I had the pleasure of seeing a film that was so, so, so…genuine, in the way that it conveyed human speech-interaction-emotion, the way that it wove it with music and spoke its feelings in such a way that gave us a beautiful taste of something real. Once, that movie was called. It was something special. Juno is something else altogether, but something about the pairing of them…

While Once stood from the pack by being entirely genuine, Juno earns its praise in a similar, yet significantly different manner: by being unwaveringly honest.

There’s ferocity in that, as well. Because while finding traces of reality in the world might be somewhat difficult whilst being distracted by the gaggle of golden colored runners who are continually running through the frame, while girls in high school don’t generally have such silvered tongues that they employ in the midst of Diablo Cody’s charming vulgarity, while the tone of the movie stretches us past the breaking point of things that we might call reality…it never plays a false note. It’s always true, no matter what happens, no matter what words we hear from inside the sizable expanse of Juno’s brain. Yes, even while she’s calling people “douchepackers”. It’s fierce, truth such as this.

It feels right amidst the rest of things, and it breathes warmly into the room of the theatre, bringing with it such a sense of the world and the people in it that when we come to the final, unbroken shot of the movie -- when we came to that, I stared, transfixed, at one of the most romantic images that I’ve seen in a good, long, time. It was like it was reaching out to me, one final gesture, taking a moment to whisper into my ear.

“Hi.”










-ADDENDUM-

At the request of my friend Jorge, I state this here for no particular reason: Skeet, skeet, skeet. Make it rain.

Take that how you will.

A picture (a review).

For you, a picture:
There’s a man, walking under the unwavering glare of the Sun in the Sky. His feet scuff quietly in the shallow yet always swirling dust, kicking up tiny clouds around his feet that mean nothing to anyone but him. If you could hear him, his breath would be hot and labored, coming out in staccato bursts that do nothing in the desert expanse. The man, he’s alone. The man, he’s cold.

Under the unwavering eye of the Sun in the Sky, he’s freezing.

His heat is leaving him, erupting in a steady series of gobs that force their way out despite the pressure of his fingers, the pressure that steadily wanes as the heat, the heat of him, the heat of him draws dark patterns on the dryness of the dirt. He hasn’t got long. Not long before his legs go slack, bringing him crashing down with a tiny, but thunderous echo; not long before the legs eventually stiffen, his glassy eyes fading to black with nothing beautiful before them other than the swirling dust pecking at his face.

It’s cold. But it isn’t strange.
It’s the world.

Yeah.

No Country for Old Men is cold. That much is certain.
And certainly, it’s not without precedent. Them there splentacular Coen Bros. have provided us with a multitude of offerings over the course of their filming years, films that have been funny and sad and violent and verbose and lengthy and quiet and dismal and sordid and random and obtuse. And yes: they’ve given us a wealth of things that were cold. Warm blood dripping itself icy on hardwood floors; cold sweat running down foreheads as a man dragged a corpse from the light; feelings that shatter like glass as a man with a gun in his hand dismisses emotion in order to do what must be done; something moving within us, as we see a daemon force his way down a the halls of a building consumed by angry fire; and of course, dismal landscape of blistering white, enveloping everything with truly, truly oppressive nature. Truth be told, when looking towards this New Country for Viewing Wo/Men, there are many similarities to be found.

There they are, in the quiet, and in the loud. In the spaces wide and cramped. In the worlds those Brothers have built under the Sun in the Sky.

But this…

This is different.
Even though it isn’t.
Because it is.

The differences come, and we don’t feel the same. We feel shamed and frightened and invigorated and tense and alive. We feel different. Because of the cold.

It affects us, as we sit there in the dark. Away from the light of the Sun in the Sky.
We sit down, and we watch. There they are, a small pack of people revealing themselves in full through the course of their methodology. And they do, you see. Lives and pasts, unfurling before a transfixed audience without exactly being explicitly stated, instead only being expressed by the manner in which they do things, and the way that they seem to bend down and touch the world with their fingers, as if they were looking to feel a pulse. It’s strange to me, thinking about that. Because we never seem to learn for sure. But we learn that they try to feel.

They feel cold and alone on our warm, lonely planet.
They don’t feel lonely.

They are alone.
We know this, as they discover this. We can see it in their faces: The horrifying smile of the monstrous Anton Chigurh, knowing enough to accept the ways of Chaos and the altering paths of Choice. The stoic features of Llewellyn Moss, locked in acceptance of a possibility, while still holding a silent hope -- a belief -- that there is a chance of weary absolution on the face of the Earth.

And there is the face of the Sheriff, looking as if he wants to cough the bitter taste of the world from the corners of his mouth. That’s it. That’s what he wants. He wants a sense of knowing, something for him to comprehend, something for him to believe in. A man terrified by the choices made by the Sun in the Sky. A more pleasant way of saying that there is nothing but the heat and expanse. Choices made by nothing but Chaos.
No, not lonely.

Alone.

When I sat in my seat of this film for the first time, watching the credits roll in their quiet way, I heard a man speak these words from behind my head:

“You gotta be a genius to figure this one out.”

Such words are ones that I will never really understand. Because while this film is never easy, it is certainly never difficult. It knows what it wants, and it knows what it wants to say. Sketching marks of cold across the screen with the same deliberate methods of its characters, letting us know all that we need to know. All that we need.
Not what we want. What we need.

When it was over and done with, I looked down at my hands and saw that they were trembling. Something so slight that it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone other my own self.

And yet, I was unafraid.
This film has been called nihilistic, it’s been called brutal; it’s been called numerous things, some right, some misguided. But while the world presented here is caustic, violent, and random it is never depressing. Not to me. Because this is the world that I believe in, a state of being a person beneath the Nothing in the Nil. I trembled because of immersion. I trembled because of wonder. I trembled because those Coens reached into my caffeine soaked heart and traced cold through me, with nothing more than the brutal lives of men. I trembled because I was affected, by things that I might not even be able to say.

Here I am, cold and alone on our warm, lonely planet.
Am I sailing to Byzantium? No.
But I’m nothing short of amazed.

A feat of grand prestidigitation. (A review of "The Prestige")

“When you go to the theatre, you pay for your ticket, but those who perform pay too. Whether trading their treasure for store-bought secrets or bloodying their minds on the cliffs of Sophocles, they pay -- and joyfully.”

- Teller, “The Price of Admission.”

To begin:
Magic is dying.

Stage Magic, in particular. With the notable exception of Penn & Teller (as well as Ricky Jay, although he actually does close-up tricks on a grand scale), stage magicians as a whole have fallen into a tacky rut, awash in a sea of flowing shirts and suggestive hand movements. They've forgotten the dignity. And more importantly, they've forgotten to strive for innovation. During the classical magical era, which existed from the late 1800's to around the 1940's, stage magicians were in constant competition and demand, which drove them towards the creation of better tricks in order to survive.

These days...such a demand doesn't exist. And because people have become accustomed to magic as something that exists alongside bad synth music and purple sequins, many people who actually attempt magic fall into that persona, because they believe that's what people want. It was a world that I once belonged to, a world that I have long since left behind.

A world that to this day, continues to break my heart. And so it is, with this broken heart left over from days when I made coins move from hand to hand, and let cards find their way into the air…I wish to speak about a film. A film featuring magicians from the turn of the century, the time when they were wanted, where people would come from miles around to see that fellow on the stage. “The Prestige”.

There’s an image from this film, one that has burned itself into my memory. Not the central image. Not one from the climax, not one built upon a foundation of reveals, not one that has been expressively made to shock and/or titillate. But even so… It consists of a single man, bathed in streams of light. A man standing not atop the stage, but beneath it, basking in the glowing lights that are pointed his way by mere coincidence. A man beneath a stage, bowing in the face of thunderous applause, applause that he has earned. But applause that the audience directs somewhere else entirely. No one cares about the man in the box. But that man, that palm, that technique, that sleight, that pass, that feat of prestidigitation…that is what magic is.

It is this image that makes “The Prestige,” matter. To me, at least.
Because if nothing else, this film understands magic.

But that isn’t what it’s about. And that isn’t what makes it triumphant.
“The Prestige,” is a film full of magic, that isn’t necessarily about magic. No. It’s about many things. So many things turning over in its mind, so many things being turned in front of us, so that we as an audience make think and wonder. So then. What is it about?

Obsession.
“The Prestige,” is a film wherein a pair of magicians endure themselves to each other through the machinations of seething hatred, a bitter rivalry that drives them forward, making them both seek a path that would allow them to be great. Trying to be someone special. Trying to be some kind of a man, the kind who would be remembered for his craft, for that single moment when people make look on and feel that something truly special has taken place. And is it for this obsession, that these great men, these uncompromising bastards; it is for this obsession that they do terrible things. To each other, and to themselves.

This is a great film about terrible things.

About method, and about the madness that comes with it.
All the while enforcing that air of beautiful refinement and dignity that magic hasn’t be associated with for far too long. Yes, this is a beautiful film in regards to technique. The images are crisp and well composed, the sound thunders and whispers whenever each is appropriate, and the editing uses the primal power of cuts to tell this story with nearly unfathomable grace.

Dancing around time as its characters dance through space, playing with revelations and a style of storytelling that recalls Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu Monogatari,” in the way that it telegraphs the place where it is going to end up, even though it initially appears to be something else entirely. Brutally enforcing its ideas about who these men are, about how far they are willing to go, about how downright cold and uncompromising they are willing to become. Not attempting to force empathetic attributes upon characters who are willing to sacrifice everything they ever had, if only to destroy the other.

Showing us conflicts that really happened, and people who really lived. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Chung Ling Soo. Two people who destroyed each other with their rivalry. And a man who wasn’t what he claimed to be, who tragically died upon a well-lit stage.

Men who sacrificed everything.

The film shows us these things, these tragedies of reality that hadn’t yet fully budded and died, and gives us everything that we need to know. Everything we need to raise the question of human limits, the limits of how far we’re willing to push our hearts and our minds. How we’re willing to split ourselves, make ourselves diamond hard and arctic cold, all in the name of things that we tell ourselves are needed. No one cares about the man in the box.

Magic is, by its very nature, an ugly beast. It wears (used to wear) that glossy finish, those plastered smiles, those solemn bows for things that may or may not have actually been done. But magic is lies and deceit, shills and marks. Magic is paying a man to hide in a table full of stinking fish guts. It hides the hours and weeks of dedication put into serving the master that is the audience, claiming mysticism where the secret is actually bruises on the palms and days spent doing nothing but making hand motions in front of a mirror. It’s beautiful.

And yes, it’s dying. And as such, it’s a pleasure to see a film that treats magic as something to behold, beyond what they know of shallow illusions. In this place, this beautiful thing is treated with respect. With reverence. Which is needed, in a world where it has gotten to a point where people aren't exposed to it, and as such, they cannot know. Or perhaps…they do not want to know.

All they remember is that final moment, “The Prestige,” of the title, where you make that coin transpose in between their interlocked fingers. Where you stand out there and smile broad. That’s all that is remembered. And as is surely going to be the case with this film, people are going to focus on the end, on the moments of revelation. On the secrets. But that isn’t where the power lies. The power is in that unseen man, bowing beneath the stage.

The power is in realizing just how horrible they are willing to become. How much they are willing to pay, willing to go so deep within themselves that it nearly feels like drowning, breath growing short as it gets cold and dark, where nothing can be seen except that vital need for something, something, something…until all is lost. Minds decorated by shattered glass.

Such things might be lost within the thriller framework that the film occupies so well, creating an atmosphere of tension that only serves to further our journey into the depths of this world of deceitful destruction. So much is here, in the tautest manner possible. So much to see. So much that may be looked over. So much that may be passed right on by. Just like magic, with its epic and involving history, that people look at with casual glances before going about their lives. Seeing only the entertainment, while not always looking close enough to see the art.

Like I said, it breaks my heart.
Does it mean more?
Does it mean less?
To me?
To you?

It asks a lot of questions. It covers a lot of ground. It shows lots of history. It touches upon true pain. It gives a glimpse of true horror. It gives us a chance to wonder. It’s peppered with intelligent set pieces, it’s full of performances by fine actors, and quite frankly, it’s one of the best films of the year. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

To end:
Take a bow.

“How much is it worth to incandesce”?

A Brick to the face. (An entirely positive review)

The most successful of films work with the strength of a certain type of rhythm.

A rhythm that is built within us, the audience, a strong connection between ourselves and the screen that allows us to ebb and to flow, to rise and to fall, the rhythm tiding us into the places that we need to be at any particular moment.

When the rhythm is controlled, the film may take hold.
When the rhythm is controlled, the message may be bold. The images may unfold, the strengths leave us cold. If the film works us the way that it should, with that particular rise, that particular fall; then we’re left with an experience that we may remember.

Rian Johnson’s “Brick,” is a film of many rhythms.

Rhythms made from constant images of peoples feet bringing us towards a new location. Rhythms made from the diabolical roar of an engine that’s clawing its way straight out of hell.
Rhythms made of footsteps, running, running, running like the wind away from the plodding pace of a man with a blade.
Rhythms made from lines of dialogue that alternate between stinging whip cracks and soft coos of spun silk.

Rhythms that work in and out. Working in smooth breaths that keep us constantly moving along with them. Some of these are figurative. Some are quite literal. In either case, the point is the point, the point being that we are there. If we let ourselves.

Because the trick of this matter is that we have to let it take us. We have to sit there, as the audience, silent and still. We have to let the world of the film pick us up with the strength of its metaphorical tides, with the gusts of its metaphorical breaths, with the very real power of its concepts and its characters. We have to want it. We have to accept this world that takes two things that are inherently familiar (high school and film noir) and melds them together towards an altogether new entity, one that confuses at first glance; but when taken in, makes more sense than you can possibly imagine.

When “Brick,” takes hold of us, everything that goes on up there -- every double cross, every right hook to the jaw, every dementedly clever word of dialogue -- everything feels perfectly right. It feels right. The rhythm feels right.

Why?

Because we know this place.

We know these people. These characters built upon the remnants of classical archetypes, these people who have the same snaky cool as a Bogart or a Greenstreet, without trying to be the very same as them. They aren’t the same, they aren’t aware of the roles that they’re playing. But they are playing roles. And because of that, they carry the weight, the strength, of all those roles that came before them. Working within a genre that is beloved by film buffs the world over, a genre that carries more rhythms within its dark shadowy recesses and twisted brains than any other of its peers.

“Brick,” has the sense to know its place.
It knows where it belongs. It belongs to a category of films made from desperation and distrust. Films that began during an era of world war, films that continued to exist during the period when the world was forced to rebuild itself from ruins. Films made to be smart, made to be aware, made to be cheap. A genre built on elegance borne of limitation.

Rian Johnson had limitations. A premise that was a hard sell even amongst those that got the point. A genre that has been largely distilled in recent years, usually only coming across in films based on comic books, comics that had been inspired by the films of the forties that were inspired in the first place by pulp crime novelettes. Not a lot of time, not a lot of money. But a lot of love. A lot of passion.

And yes, a great deal of elegance.

As a result of this elegance, we’ve been graced by something truly, truly special. A film that can be used to invite newer audiences to the classics that are neglected by the young, a film that works old clichés while building new styles, a film with a soundtrack that combines mournful trumpets and Anton Karas with electric guitar strings that remind me of “Once upon a Time in the West”. A film that -- perhaps somewhat inadvertently -- uses its setting to give us a metaphor for how important high school feels, even though in reality it meant nothing.

I love this movie.
But then again…does that mean that you will?
There is so much in this movie that can be loved. It features a foot chase that comes off with such impeccable timing that it almost feels like poetry. It features a beating that moves with a flurry of images and a pounding of violent drums, culminating with in single gunshot that hits with such a chilling fury that it sent shivers moving along my entire body. It features jokes that are made upon well intentioned absurdity, such as the antique lamp illuminating the back of the Pinivan (heh).

Words that sting and words that caress, moving with such a carefree cool that feels natural to the world that it belongs in. Words that you have to listen to. That will reward you if you do.

Will you be entranced by these salient images?

After all, despite the unquestionable strength of Johnson’s rhythms, they still don’t have the effortless perfection of something made by Chan-Wook Park. This film hits strongly, but it requires a desired involvement, meaning that you cannot just treat it like something that you flipped past on HBO during a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It takes effort to let it take you.
But if you know what it feels like to be hit by the strength of Samuel Spade’s shout, if you miss the era of expressionistic shadows and dutched camera angles, if you long for a time when screenwriters didn’t give a damn whether or not their dialogue actually sounded realistic…then you probably won’t mind the effort needed.

Not if you miss those days.

A positive Harry Potter review that rambles on about liquid. And humanity.

As is customary in circles of delightful madness, I shall begin by making a terribly odd statement: For a film with the word “Fire,” in its title, it certainly is wet. Characters spend the majority of the film covered in some form of liquid or another, be it the water in the lake or the mist in the air, the sweat on their brows or the tears in their eyes.

Or the blood that runs through their veins, suddenly dripping down their fingers.

It is in this, let us call it ‘tenacious moistness,’ that this film differs from its predecessors, the liquid dripping off of the celluloid with an intensity that few family films shall ever even dream of possessing. It is because of this liquid, in point of fact, that this film is far greater than any of those that have preceded it.

The reason for this is simple: It strips away that which is glamorous. Water is that which smothers us with its depths, drowns our homes with its terrible wrath, even stings our eyes with its intensity as we cry away the simplest notions of sadness. It has power. The water washes away the calm and the collected, giving us instead the sweat that streams down foreheads, blinding us as we run through a terrible maze that hopes it may swallow us whole. The water covers us, filling our lungs as we try to do nothing more than to drag our friends from its depths. We, us, the people in the theatre, become the people who suffer the blood, the sweat, the tears.

The meaning. It is within that meaning that we often find that which we are looking for in film, the point of it all, and at the very same time, we are given…beauty.

The beauty of a deep mist that swirls throughout the air, which only serves to conceal the thundering wingspan of a Hungarian Horntail that wishes for nothing other than to taste the soft meat of your face. The beauty of droplets that shimmer as a grand ship explodes from beneath the surface, a torrential downpour of sensation that catches every beam of light and sends it where it belongs, right into our eyes, right into our minds. The sheer beautiful horror of a birth, the birth of something that those who know had hoped would never occur again.

The film does not always give us what we want. It gives us our vistas, yes, our soaring score, and our moments where heroism stands forth. Where the man of the hour is stalwart and true. But it gives us other things as well. It gives us terror, it gives us pain. It gives us scared eyes and darkness slithering about underneath all things. It gives us death.

Yes, death. Those who have read these tales before, know what’s to come, where things are going, and yes, those who will die. But the death here isn’t glamorous. It exists as death should, as something cold, immediate, and painful. We have no prolonged speech from dying lips, no sweet kisses passed to lovers with the quick, forced breath of those about to go. People die. Things occur, the death lost beneath the need of the moment. And then the moment comes.

Where the true horror comes through, from the anguished cry of those who loved. Those who still love. No sudden sweeping cranes to the sky, no searing violins stabbing our hearts with their motion and missing the point in the meantime. No glamour. No real reason. Just sadness. Just respect.

Respect for people. Respect for the intelligence of those watching, for those who loved the source, and for those who simply love to catch a flick on a Friday night. This film is for people, first and foremost.

For those who love the words, the words from which it came, that which need be, is. Unlike the previous film, which despite dazzling us with lovely visuals, lost any semblance of credibility as far as writing was concerned. Key story elements went missing, tremendously powerful turning points were underwritten to the point of farce, and characters that needed development simply didn’t receive it, for better, or for worse. Worse.

In this case, the fat has been cut. We have what need, even if we don’t necessarily have what we want. We have laughter, we have romance, we have strained smiles plastered on the faces of those who are truly uncomfortable. We have old friendships being tested, and new friendships being forged, culminating in a tremendous celebration of brotherhood that matters a great deal in this day and age.

As a world, as a people, we have friends. We forget this sometimes, oftentimes, as we lose ourselves within our hate and our misguided need for deceit. We must remember. Remember the blood, the sweat, the tears. Remember the beauty. Remember the fear. Remember the meaning Remember the things that belong to us. All of us. It doesn’t matter if it’s the fictitious people locked within that world seeping with tremendous liquid, or the real people, outside the frame, who talk and laugh and love. We belong to it. Together.

It doesn’t matter if that’s what was intended by those involved. It is in there. All you have to do is look.

Personally, I suggest that you do.

And don’t forget to bring a towel.

A game review that calls for the nostalgic.

As I sit here, with my faithful laptop resting upon my knees, I can hear the nostalgic sounds of the River City theme battling against the tune of Quadrophenia by The Who. One sound emerges from the laptop, the other from the Gameboy Advance that sits slightly to my side. On the screen, I can see the pair of Alex and Ryan (or Kunio and Riki, whichever you prefer) in full pixilated glory, ready to kick the ass of any fiend who dare stand in their way. These sights and sounds fill me with joy.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might want to stop reading. This is a review, a game review. A review for a game that spits in the face of stupid fucking graphic whores, laughs at people who demand that their games take 300 fucking hours to complete, casts aside those who want endless corridors and multiple endings. This my friends, as well as enemies, is a throwback to one of the milestones of Two-dimensional gaming.

Still here?

If you are, congradufuckinglations. You’ve been checked off in my cool book already. The game in question was one that was not one of the most popular games to come out for the NES. It didn’t break sales records, and unlike Super Mario Brothers, it didn’t become a household name. But you know what? Who gives a shit?

This game isn’t Contra (but I prefer Metal Slug anyway), not Super Mario Brothers (but Super Mario World is better), instead something which became a cult classic. It’s my single favorite game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. River City Ransom. A game about kicking ass, and being wacky while you’re doing it.

This is a review about the latest installment of this game, RIVER CITY RANSOM EX, for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance and Gameboy Advance SP. This is something that pulls off what Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes was trying to do. It takes a classic game, and actually makes it fucking better.

How does it do this? Well, calm down, and I’ll get around to telling you about it. It pulls this difficult task off by fusing the simple spirit of the old, with a bit of the new, creating an unholy fusion of badassity that shall serve to rock the faces off of anyone who knows enough about the old days to bother with this sort of thing. New gamers probably need not apply.

Just like in the original, the game begins when you get a letter informing you that the girlfriend of one of the two protagonists has been kidnapped, and if you want to get her back in his loving arms, you must battle your way through the hordes of gangs (rival high schools in the Japanese version) as well as “evil bosses,” in order to finally confront the villain who is keeping her captive. Just like the original, you start out weak, but gain strength by taking the bouncing currency away from corpses. You use this currency to buy food/goods from shops located in one of the games shopping centers, which in turn affects one or more of the games 10 different stats which document your abilities. Also, just like in the original, you may purchase technique books from the bookstores, giving you access to more powerful abilities.

It is in these abilities, that this game differs from the original that the three stripe members remember oh so well. For you see, in the classic version, you only had access to a handful of these abilities, which did things like give you faster punches and kicks, or let you do a cool flip that damaged fuckers who got in your way. In this one however, you gain access to a shitload of cheesily-named techniques including:

KICKSTAND- This allows you to jam the toe of your precious Texas boots into the ass of those who were weak enough to get knocked down.

SLAP HAPPY- A useful ability that enables you to run into a crowd and become a spinning mass of fists, like a crazy-carousel-o-doom.

KILLER KICK- You do an awesome Bruce Lee style Dragon kick that sends you flying across the screen, catching anyone in front of you on your foot. It kicks serious ass.

Another sweet addition to this game, is that the boss characters are know longer just normal enemies with slightly larger stats. No, this time around they get access to badass special moves just like you do, making them at once more formidable as well as more interesting. Even though it seems so simple, it makes them far more than the standard enemies that you remember from the original.

Speaking of things that you remember, there have been a few graphical differences from the original River City Ransom. Sure, the graphics have been upgraded from 8-bit to some that looks closer to 16-bit, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. What I’m referring to is the fact that Alex and Ryan no longer wear the Jeans and T-shirts that you might remember. Instead, in something left over from the Japanese version, they are wearing school uniforms, something normal for Japanese High Schools. This might turn some people off, but for me, as long as the Generic dudes still wear green and the Mob still wears gray, I really don’t give a fuck. They hit me with chains and pipes just the same.

A few new weapons have also been added, including a super-long chain that makes old Mr. Links jealous, as well as strange weapons like…a ladder. Yeah. Anyway, the weapons, new and old alike, really make combat cool, as they are always flying all over the damn place. Just like in the old days. Another welcome change has been the slight revision to the level design. Take the warehouse from the original game as an example. In that area, you had to jump over the obstacle of a wall in order to advance through the game. However, the jumping mechanic in this game was never designed for any sort of precision, and with the run that was required you usually ended up crashing into the wall like a stupid fucktard. The wall is gone now, an the warehouse has become my favorite area in the game. Picture this: a multi-tiered room, full of weapons with a tendency to travel unpredictably. The Mob, one of the games cooler gangs, coming in droves on both sides. Do you run? Or do you fight? Do you chug a karma jolt, give a few practice kicks, and then charge the enemy with all your might? Jumping from box to box, only to take out an enemy above you with a well placed uppercut? Finally taking out your oppressors only to be accosted by the leader who was lying in wait? If you answered yes to all but one of those, then you just might understand. Welcome to the world of River City.

Of course, the game has problems. I mean, WHYTHEFUCKISTHERENOCO-OPPLAYITWOULDBESOBADASSTOUSEMYLINKCABLEAND WECOULDBEKICKINGASSANDSTUFFANDITWOULDROCKANDWHYTHEHELLDIDN’TTHEYDOITITWOULD BESOFUCKINGEASYTOPUTIT INTHEREBUTTHEYDIDN’TWHICHISFUCKINGSTUPIDTHOSEASSHOLESOVER ATATLASNEEDTHEIRHEADEXAMINEDGORRAMNIT!

…

Ahem. Yes, the lack of co-op play is a huge problem, but it is somewhat remedied by the fact that you have access to an optional computer comrade to whoop-ass alongside you. Yes, the save system doesn’t save progress, instead only saving stats and items, functioning as a simpler version of the originals password saves. But since the game itself is so fun, that doesn’t end up causing much grief. The only other real problem is the noticeable lack of innovation that this title possesses. This is a game that was truly a brilliant step ahead for the beat-em-up in it’s time, but went fairly unnoticed, leading designers to not learn from its match of quirky humor, old school fighting mechanics, and basic yet engaging rpg elements. Games have changed, but this game is still essentially the same. If you really wanted to, you could beat it in a few hours. Then again…would you want to?

I myself have had this version of the game for about a week or so. I could easily have beaten it by now. But I haven’t. Instead, I continue to wander the city streets, eating sushi and kicking ass, listening to the games music as well as other music that I have lying around. I’ve been raising my stats, and testing the games new special moves. I’ve been wandering back and forth, wreaking havoc, taking my time before I eventually pass the threshold of River City High to face the infamous Dragon Twins. When I do, I’m sure it will be one hell of a battle. But I’m not ready yet. Which is why this game is right for me.

Now, if you have just gotten yourself a Gameboy Advance, and are relatively new to gaming, this might not be the game for you. You’d probably be better off getting a copy of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. That game features a shitload of depth, as well as really good action. Or if you want something simple and insanely hard, get Super Monkey Ball Jr., as that will more than accommodate. But if you remember what it was like to find out that the princess was in another castle, or a story meant that you were chasing a mutant frog down a hole only to find a tank there for no reason, then this might be the game for you. For any old-school gaming soul, whether they remember River City Ransom or not, the game could very well strike them as brilliant.

Oh and by the way: Defeated enemies still shout “BARF!!”

9/10

-----------------------------------------------------
(originally published on 'The Stripe' in October 2004)