FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT" (2018)

The title of a movie may sometimes reveal more about its plot than you need to know.  Freshman writer & director Robert D. Krzykowski's atmospheric, historical epic "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" (*** OUT OF ****), starring Sam Elliot as the titular protagonist, doesn't tell everything.  As the legendary huntsman Calvin Barr, Elliot plays the individual who infiltrated the ranks of the Third Reich and put lead through Hitler's head. "Poldark" star Aidan Turner credibly portrays the protagonist as a younger man in the World War II scenes. Happily, Turner bears a reasonable resemblance to what Sam Elliot might have looked like 50 years ago.  After all, Sam is pushing 75.  After the Hitler shooting, Elliot takes over from Turner as the older Barr for the 1980s.  Meantime, Krzykowski cuts back and forth between past and present storylines, and he displays nimble flair.  Everything considered, though he appears in perhaps half of the movie, Elliot's sturdy presence turns "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" into an intriguing, occasionally exciting, meditation on loneliness and heroism.  The scene where Barr penetrates Hitler's security and confronts the Führer is suspenseful. Even better is the unusual weapon our hero assembles from various inconspicuous personal items to shoot him.  The gun is reminiscent of the weapon wielded by Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond extravaganza "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974). Despite all his medals and bravery, our hero doesn't live in the lap of luxury.  Of course, nobody knows he killed Hitler.  The U.S. government covered up his audacious deed when the Third Reich replaced the Führer with an imposter!  Moreover, as each imposter perished, Barr explained the Nazis lined-up another to maintain the masquerade.  This kind of inventive plotting distinguishes this artsy, little, independently produced film.  The palatable authenticity that permeates "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" is contrary to most current films.  Fate constitutes a fickle thing for Calvin Barr as well as for the audience, but the movie never degenerates into a maudlin melodrama.

Good fortune has not favored Calvin Barr in his personal ambitions.  He bides his time contemplating the past. Barr keeps to himself unless he ventures out to his younger brother's barbershop for a trim.  Barr's congenial brother Ed (comedian Larry Miller of "Undercover Blues") is only too happy to give Calvin a haircut.  Sometimes, they go fishing and drift idly around in a boat on a serene lake, but never utter a word.  Calvin experiences flashbacks from the Hitler assassination throughout, reliving those white-knuckled moments.  Meantime, he eats breakfast with Ralphie, his pet Labrador Retriever, slipping him a fragment of link sausage under the table.  Calvin lives alone, and Krzykowski often shows him pondering a small wooden box.  Neither the significance nor the contents of the box is divulged, but it is enough for us to know that it contains something valuable to him.  Calvin's mysterious box is comparable to the enigmatic attaché case in "Pulp Fiction."  You can guess all you want, but Krzykowski neither affirms nor denies what lies within it.  When he least expects visitors, Calvin finds himself chatting with an FBI agent nicknamed Flag Pin (Ron Livingston of "Office Space") and a Canadian government official Maple Leaf (Rizwan Manji of "Charlie Wilson's War") who pitch him a preposterous proposition straight-out-of-a-science fiction saga. 

In Canada, health experts have learned the fabled creature Bigfoot is carrying a deadly plague which could wipe out mankind.  Every animal that Bigfoot has come into contact with has died an ugly death.  Miraculously, Calvin is immune to the creature's virus, so he enjoys a modicum of protection.  Flag Pin and Maple Leaf want him to enter a fiery arena about 50-miles in diameter in the Canadian wilderness and shoot the Bigfoot to death.  Initially reluctant to undertake such an outlandish mission, Calvin changes his mind at the last moment.  The creature Bigfoot is reminiscent of the apes at the dawn of time in Stanley Kubrick's original "2001: A Space Odyssey," but it isn't a schlocky B-movie monster.  Calvin reports back that the creature doesn't have big feet.  Nevertheless, this creature is clever, and it almost leads Calvin off the edge of a cliff.    Earlier, Calvin's encounter with thieves outside the bar in his home town turns ugly and violent.  These three dastards brandish knives and pistols and demand his keys and his wallet. The methodical way Calvin disarms them and leaves them sprawled senseless on the asphalt would prompt the heroes of "The Expendables" film franchise to high-five him with admiration.

Sam Elliot's performance is laden with dramatic gravitas.  Not every actor can play a seasoned killer who convinces us that he is not only lethal but also remorseful.  Elliot doesn't shrink from performing his own stunts, and the filmmakers thrust him into situations that few 75-year old men should experience.  One stunning long shot of Elliot scaling a mountain with his bare hands with his rifle strapped to his back reminds us that the journey of the hero is fraught with constant peril.  Krzykowski keeps the actor on his toes. Mind you, everything Krzykowski does here as a filmmaker clashes with the common wisdom of theatrical tentpole releases.  Krzykowski's film suffers somewhat from the pervasive sense of melancholy our stalwart, tight-lipped hero experiences.  Bridging the 1940s with the 1980s, Zach Passero's polished editing makes these drastically different scenes appear integrated.  As Calvin's younger version, Aiden Turner has a brief, bittersweet romance with the heroine Caitlin FitzGerald.  However, they are never shown sleeping together. Seriously efficient at his tracking and killing, Calvin Barr lacks the control over his personal life that he has attained over his prey in his professional life.  The actor cast as Hitler-- Joe Lucas--is a dead ringer for Herr Schicklgruber!  Altogether, "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot" qualifies as a derivative, but above-average, character study with nuance about an individual who without question made sacrifices to serve his country. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''WARM BODIES" (2013)

When Hollywood started making zombie movies, filmmakers used voodoo as the means of controlling the dead.  The first genuine zombie flick, "White Zombie" (1932), featured Bela Lugosi of "Dracula" infamy as a sinister zombie master who owns a sugar cane plantation and exploits zombies as his labor force.  While most zombie movies were set in the West Indies, Hollywood didn't confine its sub-genre of the horror movie strictly to the Caribbean.  For example, "Revolt of the Zombies" took place in Cambodia.  Nevertheless, standard-issue zombie movies, such as "King of the Zombies" (1941), "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943), and "Zombies on Broadway" (1936), clung to the traditional Caribbean setting.  Meantime, "Revenge of the Zombies" (1943) occurred in Louisiana.  A fiendish Nazi scientist toiled to forge zombies to supplement the ranks of Hitler's Third Reich.  Occasionally, exceptions to the rule cropped up, like the first Caped Crusader serial "Batman" (1943) where a devilish Japanese spy on American soil converted individuals into mindless zombies by means of electricity. Apparently, nobody felt like experimenting drastically with the zombie formula, aside from relocating them beyond the West Indies.

Pittsburgh-based writer & director George A. Romero reimagined the zombie formula in 1968 with his classic chiller "Night of the Living Dead." Ironically, nothing like a global apocalypse had spawned zombies until Romero conjured up such a notion.  Romeo's zombie slayers aimed for the head when they shot zombies.  The next change came about courtesy of the Italian-made epic "Nightmare City" (1980) where zombies no longer lurched about but now ran like track superstars.  Aside from this minor formula tweaking, the biggest difference in post "Night of the Living Dead" zombie sagas has been the use of either an apocalypse or a virus to trigger an outbreak of zombie-mania. Just when you thought zombie films were stuck in a rut, Hollywood brought Seattle-based writer Isaac Marion's novel "Warm Bodies" to the screen, and movies about the undead will no longer will be the same. Simon and Schuster published the inventive book in 2010. 

"50/50" writer & director Jonathan Levine's adaptation of Marion's "Warm Bodies" is surprisingly captivating. A comparison between what occurs on screen and in Marion's book suggests Levine took minimal liberties with the source material.  This innovative makeover of a moribund genre takes matters beyond anything that either "Zombieland" or the "Resident Evil" franchise has tried in terms of permutation.  Basically, "Warm Bodies" takes zombie movies to the next level that gore-hound purists may not appreciate.  Levine doesn't pile up gratuitous amounts of blood and gore with shocking revelations to keep you stimulated.  Sure, zombies feed on the living, and they prefer the brain as an entrée. 

Nevertheless, Levine doesn't make a spectacle out of gut-munching for the sake of gut-munching. He obscures the feeding frenzy to accommodate a PG-13 rating.  First, the "Warm Bodies" zombies consume brains to experience the memories of those they've slain.  They just don't eat brains for no reason.  The idea you can derive knowledge from the consumption of an opponent's gray matter is fanciful.  Some cultures have argued eating the heart of an antagonist imparts strength to the victor.  Second, "Warm Bodies" has classified zombies as either good or bad.  Previously, all zombies were bad.  Creating a division between good and evil zombies endows the genre with greater sophistication.  In the "Warm Bodies" universe, bonies are the bad zombies.  Bonies are zombies who tear the skin off their bodies and resembled mummified skeletons. They move like lightning and they are treacherous.  They feast on the living as well as some of the dead. They are reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen's sword-wielding skeletons in the 1963 fantasy "Jason and the Argonauts."  Following Marion's lead, Levine has appropriated virtually everything else from the genre but cleverly has reconstituted the subject matter. 

Basically, Levine has synthesized the traditional zombie movie with a romantic comedy.  Like its literary source material, "Warm Bodies" makes allusions to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."  Indeed, there is even a brief balcony scene, though nothing like the Shakespeare version.  Our hero, a zombie known only as R (Nicholas Hoult of "X-Men: First Class") because he cannot remember his name, has spent most of the last eight years gnawing on humans.  When he doesn’t join his dead pals, like M (Rob Corddry), for group hunting trips, he enjoys his vinyl collection on a stereo in a derelict commercial jetliner.  You see, he holes up in an abandoned plane.  All the zombies congregate at the local airport.  Similarly, zombies in both George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and Zack Snyder's 2004 remake gravitated toward a shopping mall. After they became zombies, they were drawn by memories of the good times that they had had when they shopped together there.  Our lovesick zombie falls big-time for a young female zombie fighter, Julie (Teresa Palmer of "I Am Number Four"), after he chomps her boyfriend Perry’s brain.

Perry (David Franco), Julie, Nora (Analeigh Tipton), and others had left their heavily-fortified camp to scavenge the zombie infested outskirts of their fallen city for medical supplies.  When the zombies storm the medical supply room, R kills Perry, chews his brain, and feels smitten by Julie since he is seeing her from Perry’s perspective.  Incredibly, these sentiments of love reanimate his heart.  Now, R swears to protect Julie from the rest of his kind.  He escorts her back to his jetliner, and they grow to love each other.  According to this imaginative premise, biting into brains has the side effect of giving the undead a cerebral blast from the past.  If you shun run-of-the-mill zombie movies, "Warm Bodies" may change your attitude toward Z-pictures. This off-beat epic unites the living and the dead as allies in their collective war against the wicked bonies.  The happily ever after ending may curdle in the mouths of zombie purists. Nevertheless, "Warm Bodies" qualifies as the best thing that has happened to zombie movies since George A. Romero.