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The Man
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This mediocre movie is equal parts Lethal Weapon franchise (1999- ), Midnight Run (1988) and Deuce Bigalow (1999 & 2005). It rides on a familiar mismatched-buddies plot premise. Tough cop Vann (Samuel L. Jackson) is out to bust some crims who killed his crooked partner. But, in a vaguely North by Northwest (1958) touch, an innocent bystander, dental technician Andy (Eugene Levy), happens to be mistaken for the connection in an undercover sting. So, Andy and Vann ride around town together for most of the film. Andy talks of his job and family, while Vann snarls and swears. Occasionally there are brief bursts of action in which Vann draws his gun and Andy pops his eyes in fright – but this film is so devoid of blood or pain that not even the villains seem to get hurt badly. The script (by several hands) tries its best to float above its central implausibility: that, while Andy is being chauffeured around by Vann, it is only the former who gets constantly photographed, tagged and investigated by law makers and law breakers alike. Moreover, all this background checking raises a Midnight Run-style possibility – that Andy really is some secret criminal mastermind – which, frustratingly, never amounts to anything. Along the way, some attention is paid to improving Vann’s abilities as a Dad, as well as preparing Andy for his big sales speech at a dental supplies convention (an especially pointless subplot). But these are essentially distractions from the film’s central concern. Like many trash comedies since the late 1990s, The Man runs a line in crypto-gay humour. But this line ends up swamping the entire picture. Virtually every gag – about Andy caught with his pants down, Vann “ramming the ass” of a suspect with his car, the ritual of mutual frisking for weapons, or a cavity search at the airport – returns us to this bizarrely gratuitous obsession that entirely overflows the status of (as folks love to say nowadays) subtext. Director Les Mayfield’s career has veered between Disney assignments (such as Flubber [1997]) and mildly cheeky teen comedies (Encino Man [1992]); it appears to have stopped dead in 2007 with Code Name: The Cleaner, the director then only in his late 40s. In The Man, however, the balance of sentimentality and raunchy humour goes seriously askew. Due largely to the talents of Jackson and Levy, The Man is an amiable time-filler – and nothing more. © Adrian Martin October 2005 (+ update) |