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Flagpole Magazine
February 14, 1990
“Hard to Kill" & The Art Of The Movie Critic
In last week's issue, Buckaroo Bonzai s
movie review column was inadvertently cut
short. With apologies to Buckaroo, we are
reprinting the story in its entirety.
Each year, in time for the Academy
Awards, the once upon a time Athenian, J.
Greg Clark, prepared the semi-official bal
lots for guessing the award winners with the
unstated purpose of gambling while dem
onstrating so-called profound insights into
the nature of the cinema. Each year my
ballot was always simple: I wrote in my
choices for best movie, actor, etc. Of course
I always lost because my choices were not
even in the running, and besides, no one
ever took me seriously, even though it was
my own genius that selected "Lethal
Weapon” followed by "Lethal Weapon II”
and "Above the Law.” And this year I would
suggest "Tango and Cash", an ultimate
conquest of Neo-Dadist irrationality. How
ever, this year is not up and, as I predicted,
and will not emblazon upon the Apple
memory disc for all eternity, the greatest
movie of the year is, the yet-to-be-seen,
long-awaited post sequel to “Above the
Law"", once again starring Steven Segal as
a Zen murder machine, in "Hard to Kill".
Sight unseen, I most heartily recommend
this movie. I risk my awesome credibility on
my full, unreserved support for whatever
Steven Segal does in this next film. This is a
rapturous vision that I once held only for the
early Clint Eastwood, the existential, exter
minating angel of death and deliverance.
Having not yet seen this film I remember
it well, just lika my experiences in the house
of Kama Sutra and will paraphrase from
Salvador Dali in support of this film made
independently of any aesthetic purpose.
That which makes this movie radically dif
ferent from any other id the unique fact that
instead of being conventional, prefabri-
Clark, the mercenary
movie critic, left his job...
cated, unconscious and hypnotically con
ditioned, it is real and therefore, like life
itself, enigmatic, incoherent, irrational,
absurd, inexplicable and, of course, sub
lime. Let me emphasize: the facts of real life
are irrational, inconsistent, and unexplain
able and it is only through the consubstan-
tial imbecility and cretinism of the majority of
non-thinking humans that one is hypnotized
in believing that real life is endowed with a
well defined significance and a normal
coherent meaning. Consequently, there is
an unofficial suppression of the mysterious
which all but blinds us to the awesome fluid
gifts
books
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beauty of Segal’s choicelessly executed
violent rapture. Only God, in Her infinite
capacity for arbitrary and capricious action,
could have directed a more ultimate state
ment. But then God, being God, probably
would be unable to limit and contain the
action within the structure of the art form and
in no time at all, She would be up to Her
usual expressions of cataclysmic earth
quakes, random violence, self-righteous
religious inquisitorial abuse and unlimited
and unparalleld boredom and so on and so
on. And that is reality, except most movie
critics write as if their opinions were truth
and they would impose upon us a world in
which everything is explainable and politely
consistent. So when Clark, the mercenary
movie critic, left his job at Davinci's and his
home in Athens to work at Little Caeser’s in
Atlanta, he left behind a great gulf, a marvel
ous void, to be filled with the light and glories
of my illuminated islands of mysterious vi
sions and with the celestial, transcendental
peninsulas of my enlightened flesh, to say
nothing of the exalted and hallucinatory
mountains and crevices of my furrowed
cloud-like grey matter. Coming soon to a
theater near you; I recommend a pizza
bianca with raisinettes for dessert.
Hard to Kill,
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