Stark Raving Furious

Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Children of all ages... It is my esteemed privilege to bring to you another wonderfully self-serving, jaded and random rant, tinged with age, experience and fury. The subject of my fury this time? Stupid movie theories that the viewer is expected to swallow...

Now before I get to that I'd like to acknowledge this week as being the week in 1974, that saw the birth of Joe C, the late (but fairly great) dimunitive MC of the Kid Rock band. Acknowledged.

Now moving on, I love cinema... Really, I do. It entertains, amuses, confounds, delights and most importantly, entertains me... But one thing never fails to annoy me-.. no, 'annoy' is far too weak a word... One thing never fails to piss me off to the point of hurling the remote control at the television screen and screaming "Fuck YOU, Jerry Bruckheimer!!" is the way a lot of movies deal with solving crimes. The target of my fury is the concept that a serial killer/rapist/molester (it's immaterial) will strike in a set pattern. Be that a given shape on a geographical relief model or pin codes or even a fuckin' mathematics model.

Humans are irrational, chaotic, entropic beings.. THEY DO NOT CONFORM TO MATHEMATICAL LAWS!

If anybody has ever watched a stupid movie by the name of 'Numb3rs' (constantly paraded by AXN), they will know exactly what I mean. A moronic mathematician with far too much time on his hands, sets out to prove that the location for the rapist's next target can be determined by a complex mathematical model, full of differential equations and all kinds of algebraic hoo-ha. All this, while random women are being raped all over the city. The loon actually weeps when he finds out that his model was a waste of time, energy and film... How I longed to be next to him and to laugh in the face of his stupid model, to douse the blackboard with lighter fluid and set it aflame and then strike him repeatedly over the head with a chair for wasting my time.

And then, you have these 'FBI Experts' who sit with a map of the good ol' US of A (it's nearly always in the USA... fuckin' American morons) and they set about putting thumbtacks or drawing pins (whichever you prefer) on the cities/towns in which the perpetrator of these heinous crimes has struck... The dramatic music kicks in, the 'experts' exchange high fives and slap each other on the back in ultra manly fashion as they discover that the perpetrator has struck in cities that form the shape of a star on a map and the next point is.... HOLY CRAP!! Denver, Colorado.. That's where the detectives are right now!!!! So they scramble to their vans or jeeps or whatever, put together a task force and snuff out the perp.

WHY in the name of all things sacred, would ANYONE carry out serial crimes in a pattern, so as to alert the authorities to the next location of the crime. OK, so it makes for an aesthetically pleasing pattern, a succesful interception and succesful movie.. but it makes the criminal look like a complete retard!!!

And that's not all... Bomb diffusion teams who go in with all their padded suits and you just know that they won't need a miligram of padding, because they're the 'experts'. They'll diffuse it without so much as breaking into a sweat.. All they need to do is to locate that green wire that will deactivate the whole bomb... and just for us, the lucky lucky viewers, they'll deactivate it with about 0:00:01 on the clock.. Oooh!! Scary stuff!!! GIVE ME A FUCKIN' BREAK!!! But I digress... The point I'm trying desperately to make (if only I can quash my Tourette's Syndrome-esque waves of hatred) is, WHY oh why would any self respecting bomber or bomb maker create an effective way out, a way to eliminate his bomb?!? OK, there may be a chance that the bomb maker enjoys the act of making bombs, and doesn't actually like to see them go off.. Again, the aesthetic beauty. OR maybe, it's a totally redundant and stupid idea to put a wire in there that will diffuse the goddamn bomb!!!! An idea that kills any realism or fun in the movie..
I'm not a violent person, it's an established fact, but I do like to see movies with a vicious criminal being thwarted and outsmarted by an intelligent crime busting unit... Not a fuckin' cop out with the criminal 'slipping up' and leaving too many clues.. Oops! how clumsy of him/her!!
For once, I'd like to see a bomb go off in the face of a pompous and cocky bomb-disposal unit, so they learn their lesson and treat the situation with a more intelligent approach (which is what? I don't really know.. but that's what I want to see). And would it kill these movie makers to actually put a believably maniacal criminal in their films?!?!

Rant over.. and I would like to stress that my bloodlust is confined to the realms of the fictional alone and not to the realm of the real. Remember kids, Crime doesn't pay..

Until next time.... keep it slanderous and libellous!

Karan