If you’ve been keeping up with the boys in the quarterlies you know that experts in horror film studies have noted the increase in this post- Guantanamo era in torture as a theme in scary flicks. Hostel and Saw are frequently noted as “horror” films that exist to erect lengthy scenes of torture, whereas in older horror films the monster, be he zombie or werewolf or whatever, did what he wanted and left. The modern monster wants to dwell on the pain and enjoy his victims discomfort and screams. Well, it’s not just horror films. Torture — as an endurance test, as a means of eliciting info, as cleansing and ennobling exercise — has infiltrated mainstream pop narrative films as well. 24 is a succession of torture scenes and phone calls. Take a look at The Devil Wears Prada. Is it not in its way a torture movie? So is Annapolis. You may recall Annapolis. as the military film that came out earlier this year that everyone could tell just from the trailer was a remake, unofficial or not, of An Officer and a Gentleman. Actually seeing it makes the resemblance clearer. Guy with little direction in life joins an elite military school. Has run ins with his trainer. Befriends secondary character who has suicidal tendencies. Has confrontation with trainer in tub of water. Guy gets chance to fight with trainer to vent mutual hostility.

The guy in this case is Jake Huard (James Franco), who in a variation on the source works in the steelyards across the bay and who is honoring his dead mother by joining the school. Except that he doesn’t seem to really want to join. He’s not a very good student and threatens the success of his bunkmates by his anger and inattention. His indifference to his goal is one of the many mysteries lodged in this ultimately incoherent text. Jake’s trainer is Cole (Tyrese Gibson), a Marine imported for the nonce and an expert boxer, as is Jake to a certain degree (more on this in a second). The love interest is not a townie, but another naval officer, the shiny haired Ali (Jordana Brewster), who looks less like Deborah Winger than a woman from another naval drama, Demi Moore in A Few Good Men.

There is a fight in Gentleman but it is not the raison d’etre of the film. Here, it turns out, boxing is the real story of the film. It’s not clearly stated, but one officer (Donnie Wahlberg) has apparently recruited Jake solely for his boxing skills (an idea that also harks back to From Here to Eternity). The second half of the film is all about the Brigades, some kind of boxing competition of importance to Annapolis candidates. Along the way, the film neglects nary a cliché of the boxing or any other genre even tangentially related to it.

 

The film’s sole narrative drive is that Jake must punish his body, that his “teachers” must punish his body and mind, and that all the other boys and girls around him must have their minds and bodies punished, throughout the full year that this story comprises (just like The Devil Wears Prada, which is a “year in the life”). The audience is asked to sit there and observe this torture and presumably think that it is good for them, that Jake and his coevals are rendered better sailors and officers (those who aren’t drop out or commit suicide, and we are not asked to shed a tear for them). Torture films occupy the same odd space that violent films and war films occupy, which is that though sometimes these films decry violence and war, in fact war and violence are more “cinematic” in a commercial sense than pacifism and turning the other cheek. 

Justin Lin directed the film. It’s difficult to come up with a review of Annapolis better than Roger Ebert’s, which expresses the deep disappointment of a man who admired the director’s debut (Better Luck Tomorrow) only, from the vantage point of Sundance, to stand agape as said director leaps to sell out as quickly as possible (though apparently Lin has redeemed himself a bit with the third Fast and the Furious film).

If you expect the disc for Annapolis (Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2006, 103 minutes, color, PG-13, one single sided dual layered disc, 1.85:1 (enhanced), DD 5.1 in English, with English and French subtitles, animated musical menu with 16-chapter scene selection, audio commentary by director Lin, editor, and writer, seven deleted scenes with optional commentary, two making ofs, keep case, $29.95, released on Tuesday, June 27, 2006; also in a full frame version) to clarify some of the inconsistencies, forget about it. On the commentary track, the giddy crowd, which includes credited screenwriter Dave Collard, don’t come near mentioning the Gentleman precedent, and fail to note that the film is inconsistent (the yak track was recorded after the film was locked, but before it was released).

There are also two brief makings ofs, one of them focusing on the Brigades, the boxing tournament that turns out to be the main thrust of the film. There are seven deleted scenes, one of which is a longer version of the “first day” sequence, and which is better than the one in the movie, but which was truncated because, as they say on the optional commentary, they wanted to focus on Jake, exactly the wrong thing to do, especially since they don’t really do that anyway. Other deleteds show Jake smoking in the rain at his mother’s grave, and at the bedside of his suicidal friend. Editor Fred Raskin joins Lin and writer Collard for a chat over the film in which they sound like they loved working with each other and everyone else so very much. If nothing else, I guess, Annapolis proved that Lin could helm a big studio financed feature, if that’s what he wants to do for the rest of his life. Maybe, though, he’s like the characters in Better Luck Tomorrow, who on the surface are successful by society’s standards but behind the scenes are subversive and anarchic.

There are two things I thought about while watching Commander in Chief: Part 1, Inaugural Edition (Buena Vista-Touchstone Television, 2005, 427 minutes, color, two single sided dual layered discs, 1.78:1 enhanced, DD 5.1 in English, with English subtitles, static musical menu with 10-chapter scene selection per episode, 10 episodes, keep case, $39.95, released on Tuesday, June 27, 2006). One was, why is this (now-cancelled) show not as good as The West Wing (now also-cancelled). And when did the studios come up with the idea of divvying up TV seasons into half-season chunks, priced at a level that ends up costing you twice what a season of shows went for?

The forthcoming first season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, for example, is released by Fox in two big chunks, each one $40 bucks. Thus the first season cost $80 dollars in full, which is about as much as HBO charges for its full seasons, which are, though, usually only 13 hours long. Commander in Chief comes out now with its first 10 episodes (and a cliff hanger) to be followed in September by the second half of the season. Will anyone care more than then than they do now enough to pick up the second part of a cancelled show?

And why was it cancelled? There is a long story behind that, best summarized by Entertainment Weekly. The program was conceived by Rod Lurie, who fashioned a show about a female president so that he could cast Joan Allen, with whom he had worked on The Contender. ABC bought the pitch, but Allen dropped out. At some point, Gena Davis, who was already batting zero as a TV star, was summoned to give the role of an unelected female president stature. The first eight or nine shows were written and supervised by Lurie, but ABC, which moved the air time around, imposed short hiatuses, yanked Lurie in October, ostensibly because he was too slow for the hectic pace of episodic television, and installed emergency surgeon Steve Bochco (pronounced Botch Co.) to take over. Bochco instantly fired most of Lurie’s team, added new opening credit and music, and changed the direction of the series, away from cold cunning political games and more toward warm and fuzzy family drama. Though Davis won a Golden Globe, Bochco left the show in March, passing it on to a third runner, and ABC cancelled the show in early May of 2006. In the end, the show garnered a mere 6 million viewers, more people than have ever read all of Proust, but a disaster by TV’s math.

 

 

 

 

It’s difficult to assign blame, and sometimes things just don’t work, thanks to key wrong decisions early in the procedures. Still, ABC seems to think that hit shows just happen, and happen quickly, but according to background tales concerning both Lost and Desperate Housewives, these were shows that executives had to fight to get aired. Lost could easily have been pulled early and not be given a chance to develop.

Now, in my heart I want to love Rod Lurie. He is a film critic who transitioned to writing and directing. He should be an avatar, someone we who might have similar aspirations should all emulate. But there is something rather cold and stagy about his three extant works, Deterrence, The Contender, and The Last Castle. He is ambitious; has ideas instead of just feelings about things; and he works well with ensembles. But the coldness of the movies was also present in the series. It seemed to dwell on the tension between the presidentially ambitious Florida house speaker Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland) and his cat and mouse game with the new Prez Mackenzie Allen (who is an independent, thus affiliated with neither party), a game that progressed at a snail’s pace.

 

 

The set under review takes the first 10 shows, the last two of which fall under Bochco’s influence. Sad to say, in its way, but the show was much more feel good and viewer friendly under Bochco’s short regime, which is to say much more appealing to female viewers, more sentimental, and “cleaner” in its through lines. One of Lurie’s mistakes, I believe, was in trying to make Allen an independent. By severing her from one of the two parties, he neutered her and kept the show from getting into the trenches with trenchant political debates, as in The West Wing.

I also wasn’t particularly fond of the CIC family, the selfish daughter, the straight-laced son who was at first passive and then unconvincingly something of a cheater. Kyle Secor as the “first husband” provided another TV face I was tired of seeing (he was probably hired because he is one of the few actors taller than Davis). But worse, the stories — about disaster relief, VP nominations, cabinet members bailing — just weren’t engaging.

The set has no extras. For supplemental material, instead do a search on the show’s title at the Entertainment Weekly website.

 

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