RIFLE RANGE BOY

Dead for a Dollar (2022) Director: Walter Hill These days, one of the things that parents fear when they drop their kids at school is not that they fall or get hurt but that a mad kid might go on a shooting spree with a semiautomatic gun.  The debate on gun control will appear occasionally after every massive shooting, which is quite often; it dies as quickly as it escalates. Arguments like 'guns don't kill people, people do!' are not unheard of. Using archaic laws at a time when white men tamed the lawless Wild West, they justified their fights to bear arms for defence. Of course, it was for offence when the leaders of the initial thirteen states decided to expand their hegemony westwards.  The Second Amendment of the Constitution support gun possession for defence but not with assault rifles and M16s. Repeated studies worldwide, including experiences in the UK and Australia, have unequivocally shown tight gun laws and stringent control reduce gun violence. In the USA, the...

Beef (Miniseries, S1E1-E10; 2023) Netflix This convoluted drama reveals the whole message behind its story only in the last two episodes of the season. Suddenly everything made sense. It tries to show how fragile we are as a society, to maintain peace and to fit in. We pull up a front to portray an image of Zen to the outside world, but deep inside, we hate the person beside us. We wish we could just wring their necks. Unfortunately, civil society does allow this. So we suppress that urge. As we did in our cavemen days, we yearn to be part of the pack to hunt together. Our strengths lie in our numbers. We exhibit specific behaviours in front of people but let our hair down and show our true inner demons under the cloak of anonymity. In public, we are expected to utter certain pre-ordained niceties. When somebody mentions death, the automatic response is, "I am sorry!" irrespective of whether he died as a national hero or OD'ed. We are expected to put a smiley face in publ...

The Power of the Dog (2021) Director: Jane Campion King David, of the David and Goliath fame, went through troubles after troubles in his kingdom. He prayed to God. In the Book Psalm 22:20, it is said that King David had requested God to ' Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.' 'The power of the dogs', which the title refers to, is probably referring to the herd mentality of the mob that is out to humiliate, denigrate and decimate those who do not fall within the standard narrative. These dogs hide their deficiencies behind the strength of the pack. They may doubt their own convictions, but they know cognitive dissonance is too overwhelming. Hence, they just join in the barking match. The best way for the abused to fight the crushing power of the dogs, as suggested by the movie, is to stand tall against the pack. There is no point in clashing head-on against this unruly band but to win them over with wit, on the sly. The message behind th...

Christiane Amanpour: Sex and Love Around the World (Netflix Documentary, Season 1; 2018) This provocative six-episodes presentation discusses matter considered taboo in many of the towns the episodes were centred - Tokyo, Delhi, Beirut, Berlin, Accra and Shanghai. If one were to look at olden civilisations, it seems evident that our ancestors used to quite accepting of sexual practices and its deviations. The Japanese, during the Edo period, boasts of Shunga erotic art. They were a liberal and stable society. All that came to zilch when Commodore Perry landed in Edo Bay and Emperor Meiji banned their erotic drawings.  The Indians had Kamasutra long before the Western world learned to count, but in the New World, it was viewed as yellow literature. The Victorian mindset even deemed donning of saree was obscene. In the 19th century and before, the blouse was not part of the female attire. The saree was used to drape the chest and bosom as well. Legends say that the Tagore la...

Westworld 1973 Michael Crighton, 20 years before his blockbuster, Jurrasic Park, was a debutante with this sci-fi thriller. The on-going Westworld mini-series has its roots in this Yul Brunner acted classic.  The setting in the same; patrons have their dreams came true in a make-believe resort with different themes and manned by recyclable robots/androids/AI (whichever generation you are from). Just like in 'Jurassic Park', things go terribly wrong. The robots start malfunctioning or infected by viruses and start harming the guests. Even though the film was done at a time way before it was thinkable of portable computers and smartphones, it is interesting to note that many of lingo used many a lot of sense and are relevant in this digital age and time. It must have been revolutionary to think of a 'biological' agent like 'virus' infecting robots, but it is here. It looks like all man's endeavours seem to bite him at where it hurts him most. He...

High Noon (1952) When John Wayne was offered the role of the protagonist, he declined on the basis that there were many political connotations in its storyline. It was at the heights of McCarthyism and witch-hunt against card-carrying members of the Red Communist Party was ongoing. The screenwriter and producer, Carl Foreman, was involved in this; he subsequently migrated the UK after the film completion. Many iconic figures, including Charlie Chaplin, were blacklisted and lost their source of income during this time. For a Malaysian who is watching this movie after GE14, it resonates at a different level. I see a lot of parallelism in the storyline with the occurrences around the country. It does not need much imagination; a retired law enforcer returning to do one last unfinished business of a duty related to his tenure before he rides into the sunset. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly Marshall Kane marries a Quaker lady, a pacifist, just before turning in the badge to lead a civi...

Godless (TV Miniseries, 2017) How would a Godless country be? Will it be one of lawlessness where the strong would be King where weaker ones would just be spun around in serfdom? Would the primal needs of human see no boundaries and chaos would be the order of the day? With no fear of perceived retribution to their action, would the mighty act with impunity? Without an agreed code of conduct would the fairer sex, the young, the slow and the handicapped be left behind to be at the mercy of the others? Or would the situation spur them to go yonder and explore beyond their perceived capacity and surprise themselves? On the other hand, a country holding firm on their theological beliefs also imposes many restrictions on certain quarters of the society which appear to clip their wings from doing things beyond what the real potential lies. The feminine gender is usually suppressed by the most patriarchally centred religions. Certains dogmas drilled by the elders as the gospel truth...

Unforgiven (1992) Produced & Directed by: Clint Eastwood This depressing Western is not your typical swashbuckling gunslinging escapade that one would expect. It instead, looks at nihilistic look at life through the eyes of a reformed bandit in late 1800s of the Wild West. Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood), a reformed professional gunfighter, is now a struggling hog farmer. His pigs are sick, he is poor and has two kids (children) to feed. He gave up his wayward ways after his wife changed him into becoming a new man, giving up his whiskey and the senseless killings. Sadly, his wife succumbed to smallpox. Mundy lives a broken man, pledging not to go to his old ways ever again. But when a young punk (Schofield Kid) turns up at his home with the news of two crooks with a bounty on their head for mutilating a lady’s face, at a time when he was in dire straits, the temptation was too much. For his children’s future, he joined forces with his ex-partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to...

Django 1966 The music score starts with a catchy tune 'Django'. A blue eyed cowboy drags along pulling his coffin through the muddy road. In next scene, this cowboy (FrancoNero), shoots a gang of Mexicans and a group of cowboys who ungentlemanly shoves around a blonde damsel. The silent cowboy rescues the damsel in distress and heads to town. A certain Major Jackson who terrorizes the town and has a bone to pick with our hero as the 5 men in the beginning scene were Jackson's henchmen. The Mexicans whom our hero, Django shot, come to town to avenge and take back Maria, the damsel in distress. Django had come to town to kill his wife's killers. Django, with his secret weapon on the coffin that he drags - an automatic machine gun!, bulldozed the Mexicans. Django has a sad past, his wife had been gunned down during his absence. In the final showdown, Django with his broken hands, managed to gun down Major Jackson and his henchmen all his 6 barrel pistol at the cemet...

Django Unchained (2012) Director: Quentin Tarantino This film has been praised to high heavens for its boldness in depicting American's not so pleasant past. Even though , the powers that be always paint a sanitised and just past of the invaders who not only raped the American continent of its resources and systematically annihilated an advanced civilization already present before their gungho appearance in the New World, it takes a renegade son of the soil like Tarantino to highlight their equally unpleasant past with the workers who were slaved and treated worse than livestock. This film can be best described as one of those spaghetti westerns which Clint Eastwood is commonly associated with. In keeping with Tarantino's penchant for gore and violence (as in Kill Bill and Hostel), there is plenty of spurting of crimson sanguineous fluids to make Dracula go into ecstasy. It is set at a time before the American civil war and has very eloquent dialogue with poetic words tha...