Not all crimes are created equal. I don’t harbor any illusion that my Uncle Todd’s drunk driving arrest is going to get optioned by Scorcese, even though he defecated in the squad car while singing a pitch perfect version of “Amazing Grace.” Some crimes, however, involve such spectacular daring, dramatic violence or sheer WTF factor that they burn themselves into the popular consciousness. Perhaps more importantly, they catch the bloodshot eye of a Hollywood producer coming down from a coke bender, because these are the people that really tell us what to think and how to feel.
Party Monster
We’ve all been there: it’s three in the morning and you’ve been up for two days consuming drugs like some kind of narcotic-vaccum-cyborg and twirling glowsticks while engaging in voracious sodomy with frenemies and strangers (Lindsay Lohan call this “Tuesday”). It’s inevitable that at some point, someone is going get a hammer and Oldboy out all over someone else. “Party Monster” is based on the life of 1980′s club kid Michael Alig, who hit the clubs, plowed a bunch of coke, played too much Super Mario and subsequently hammer-brothered his friend Andre “Angel” Velasquez to death. The film garnered mixed reviews, but your rabid desire to watch the kid from “Home Alone” go hammertime on the gay kid from “My So-Called Life” (it’s okay; you don’t have to have secrets from me) is finally realized in all it’s cinematic glory. Also, if you really wanna PARTY HARD, Alig is getting out of jail and will be available to chill with/bludgeon you to death. No pressure, just see where the night takes you.
Alpha Dog
Young, male violence is nothing new to the criminal world. As savvy media consumers, every time a story of an inner city murder makes the paper we all shake our heads and collectively ask “Where’s Wallace, String? Where’s Wallace?” What sets “Alpha Dog” apart is when you replace “inner city” with “privileged, white L.A. suburb.” Suddenly Chris Hansen is letting Pedobear rampage all over the U.S. because rich, white kids and their senseless acts of violence are infinitely more entertaining. This actually turns out to be half true, as the film, under Nick Cassavetes’ careful direction, is a nuanced depiction of confused, over-indulging teens dabbling with a culture of violence. Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster give excellent performances of the kind of misplaced rage only white people can muster, while Justin Timberlake does a passable job of looking rich and white (and sporting an idiotic tattoo of his birth year just in case he forgets it — he honestly might). Harry Dean Stanton spends his scenes glowering through his leathery folds, or as I call it “doing the Stant.”
Bonnie and Clyde
The iconic Romeo and Juliet of the Depression-era gangsters, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are probably best known now via the landmark 1967 film. Many critics consider Arthur Penn’s movie to be the first mainstream film displaying graphic violence in a realistic manner, and a major cinematic game changer. Warren Beatty is alternately charming and menacing, and it’s a revelation to see him in a film before he turned his body into a petri dish for STD’s. A very young Faye Dunaway is also excellent, and it similarly eerie to see her before any surgeon had made small incisions around her face, pulled her loose skin over them, and then sewed them taut with tiny cosmetic stitches. Though the violence may not seem particularly brutal to modern viewers, this is probably because modern viewers are sick people whose perception of human value has been shaped by a consumerist celebration of vanity and violence that is incapable of appreciating the beauty of the sublime. Anyway, that’s what I keep telling the good people at the Discovery Channel.
Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson’s comi-tragic tale of lost innocence and the emergence of the VHS pornography market borrows significant elements of the storyline from the so-called “Wonderland murders” also known as the “Porn-Drugs-Murder-and-Giant-Ding-Dongs Make Great Copy Murders.” Though Anderson’s film and Mark Wahlberg’s character are only loosely based on real life porn dynamo John Holmes, they were careful to preserve certain elements, namely porn, drugs, murder and giant ding dongs. I could tell you that the film is actually a very touching ensemble piece and well worth watching, but since your insatiable fetish for Marky Mark wearing giant prosthetic ding-dongs (yes, I know about you) is unquenchable, just skip to the last five minutes.
Monster
Aileen Lee Wuornos has been dubbed the first female serial killer. Wuornos’ life story is a cavalcade of molestation, rape, and prostitution, which culminated in the killing of seven of her male clients over the course of a year. I’m not going to lie to you, the movie wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. Though Wuornos sold the rights to her story two weeks after being sentenced, it was slim consolation, as she was executed by lethal injection in 2002. She declined a last meal, but offered some inspiring last words: “I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mother ship and all, I’ll be back.” Though she may have suffered a lifetime of abuse and degradation and was very likely mentally ill at the time of her execution, Charlize Theron made it all feel better by donning ugly make-up, shaving her eyebrows and winning an Oscar for playing Wuornos in a Hollywood feature film.
American Gangster
The 1970′s was chock full of fun: disco, bell bottoms, pet rocks, chinchilla coats and smuggling heroin from Southeast Asia in the body bags of dead soldiers to sell to impoverished African Americans in Harlem. Frank Lucas was primarily into the last two. His drug empire in Harlem actually netted him around $52 million, and he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids (the meddling kids in this case being played by Russell Crowe). The film chronicles Lucas’ rise and eventual fall as he is convicted of multiple felonies and sentenced to prison. Although Lucas is now a free man after serving his sentence, Russell Crowe remains a serious danger to telephones, himself, and others and should not be approached if encountered, even if you have the smooth, sultry voice of Denzel Washington.
The Krays
Before “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” set off a resurgence of the British gangster genre, the 1990 film “The Krays” told the real life story of Ronald and Reginald Kray, twin brothers who happened to rule London’s East End with the help of their organized crime outfit “The Firm.” Ronnie suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and Reggie was exceedingly mean, which meant that they were pretty much Wonder Twins. Their notorious and bloody exploits are captured pretty well by the film and watching them go into a snooker hall with a cavalry saber and slice up drunk Brits like weird 1960s pirates is most entertaining. The film, much like the twins themselves, was generally overlooked stateside. The twins were arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 1969, officially ending London’s awesome era, and ushering in its 1970′s lame era. Ron died in 1995 in prison, while Reg was released briefly on compassionate grounds before his death from cancer in 2000. God then replaced them with the Jonas brothers, which is the problem with this generation.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Produced by David Lynch and directed by Werner Herzog, “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” is an exercise in crazy that the whole family will enjoy, especially if your family is really into Aeschylus, schizophrenia, and mom-killing. Mark Yavorksy was a San Diego man who became obsessed with the Greek tragedy “Orestes” (he was scheduled to star in a production of it before being kicked out for behavior described as “grossly psychotic”). In 1979 he suffered a psychotic break and decided to reenact the last scene in which a vengeful son kills his own mother with a sword. Yavorsky was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was instead institutionalized. If you’re as hardcore as Werner Herzog you’re probably thinking “Zat eez a guy I vant to hang with.” Herzog set up a meeting with Yavorsky in the late 1990′s, which was uncomfortable at best. Herzog said of their encounter “I felt it imperative to keep a distance from him, to stay away.” After Yavorsky died in 2003, Herzog started to move forward with the project. The result is a gripping and beautiful film, full of wonderful performances by indie favorites Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, and most powerfully Michael Shannon as man in the depths of mental illness and suffering. So, you know, a Sunday afternoon relaxer.
W.
Oliver Stone is not known for his subtlety, though in fairness, most people on coke and shrooms are not known for their subtlety. “W.,” his Bush years biopic, is a bit of a surprise in that it paints a largely empathetic portrait of a flawed man struggling with his relationship to power, wealth, and his family legacy. The early years have a bumbling Josh Brolin engaging in a wealth of doofy crimes: drunk driving, fighting, weird gay hazing in the Skull and Bones, draft dodging. It was all stuff that came out during the initial presidential campaign, but we all chose to ignore it as a country because Bush was vaguely chimpish, and our collective love of chimpanzees (cf. “B.J. And the Bear,” “Every Which Way But Loose,” “Bedtime for Bonzo,” need I go on?) led us to excuse it. Chimps are rascals, which is why we like them. The real crime that “W.” details so chillingly is the great lie of that presidency, the non-existent WMD’s that made the fallacious case to go to war with Iraq. Jeffrey Wright, playing a concerned Colin Powell, asks Richard Dreyfuss’ Dick Cheney about an exit strategy for the proposed war; Cheney calmly tells him there isn’t one. Cut to today, where America has won the war and liberated a safe, stable Iraq. Wait, really? So it remains a dangerously unstable war zone torn apart by partisan and ethnic tension where the death toll of men, women and children keeps climbing? Huh. My bad.
Donnie Brasco
Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are a hard combination to hate. Toss them in an undercover FBI sting on the mafia and you’ve got a movie. Interestingly, the producer who greenlit “Donnie Brasco” was named Duh McDuh. Admittedly the film doesn’t really break into new cinematic territory, but what it does it does very well. Much of its success and realism is due to the consulting of Joseph Pistone, the real life Donnie Brasco who helped take down the Bonnano crime family. The title of the film was not initially Pistone’s undercover alias, but instead was dubbed Scowling, Swarthy Men in Very Ugly Coats Smoking Cigarettes. Pistone wisely suggested they just keep it the same as his book on the subject, to which executive producer Duh McDuh replied durr, durr. Derp.
Heat
Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are a hard combination to hate. Toss them in a cops and robbers story with a crazy shootout and you’ve got a movie. In all seriousness, Michael Mann’s “Heat” actually did break some new ground. It is the only film on this list to actually inspire crimes, rather than be inspired by them. The climactic bank job which pits Robert DeNiro’s heavily armed crew against a horde of police officers gave some enterprising sociopaths some interesting ideas. The robbers of “Heat” go in armed with kevlar body armor, armor piercing rounds, and fully automatic rifles. They shoot their way out of the bank, moving from cover to cover with heavy fire and taking out loads of cops in the process. Cinematically, it works great: the realism of the shootout and the volume of each shot jars the audience and delivers an intense scene. In real life, it only kind of works. The film was released in 1995, and in 1997 the infamous “North Hollywood Shootout” occurred. Two heavily armed men in full body armor pulled a Heat on a Bank of America. The police who responded to the scene were sporting pistols and shotguns that were unable to effectively penetrate the robbers’ body armor. They were both eventually shot and killed (some reports say their fatal wounds were self-inflicted) but not before wounding 15 people and firing hundreds of rounds. Their body armor/heavy weapons strategy was awfully similar to the film, and one of the assailants was even sporting one of the same automatic rifles; there were even reports that a VHS tape of the film was found in one of the men’s homes. I even heard someone one time asked one of the guys “What’d you think of ‘Heat?’” and he was all like “Cool story, bro!”
Blow
Johnny Depp’s second appearance on this list finds him playing real life cocaine smuggler George Jung, who made an illicit fortune in the 1970s and 1980s. The real life story and the film are both interesting and tragic, as Jung descends from enterprising hippie stoner to strung-out narco kingpin. There’s two things I really want to say about “Blow.” The first is that Penelope Cruz all spun on Colombian wacky stacks is really hot. Honestly I could watch her blow lines and jabber en espanol at a hundred miles a minute forever. This is how I want to spend forever. The second is that George Jung has a website where you can buy t-shirts he’s designed while in prison. Spoiler alert: he does not look like Johnny Depp. Another spoiler alert: if I wanted a t-shirt with a drug-addled, confused old-man face on it I would just wear my Rip Torn shirt.
Bronson
Another selection from across the pond, “Bronson” is the fascinating and often excruciating tale of Michael Gordon Peterson, who changed his name to Charles Bronson. Tom Hardy plays the title role, and paints a fierce and frightening portrait of a man gripped by violence. Bronson looks like a really pissed off Karnov and spends the entire film beating up police, bystanders, boxers, prisoners and dogs. Bronson was initially jailed for armed robbery in 1974 for seven years. Some people would use this time for reflection and rehabilitation. Bronson used it to punch people, walls, bars, apples, wishes, and dreams. This movie has so much punch in it Jason Statham would be like oi, gov, enough wif da punching. All this hostage taking and assaulting kept stacking extra years on Bronson’s sentence, and he used those years to continue punching. I could watch Tom Hardy punch things forever. I would like to spend forever watching Tom Hardy punch things while a jacked-up Penelope Cruz yells at those things in Spanish. The real life Bronson has a website where you can buy t-shirts and artwork. I would buy a Bronson shirt, but really only because I am afraid he will punch me.
Dog Day Afternoon
Al Pacino hits the hat trick on the list with “Dog Day Afternoon,” a film based on real life events about a New York City bank job that ended in a hostage crisis. Al Pacino’s character, Sonny Wortzik, was based on first time bank robber John Wojtowicz. Wojtowicz’s interesting personal life spurred him to rob the bank: although he was married, he had a male lover who needed the money for a sex-change operation. The relationship of Sonny and his wife and his lover is one of the most touching aspects of the film, and highlights the sexual and societal confusion of the mid 1970s. Roger Ebert called Sonny “one of the most interesting modern movie characters,” and added “It’s fucking hard to make jokes about ‘Dog Day Afternoon.’”
Goodfellas
C’mon. It’s the best film inspired by a crime. Waddaya talkin’ ’bout. It is. Don’t be smart. What, you didn’t like Nicky Pileggi’s collaborative screenplay with Marty? Why not? Don’t be smart. You liked it. You liked it. What is this, amusing to you? Do you find it amusing that in real life Henry Hill helped rob, hurt and murder people and then Hollywood paid him $480,000 for his life story rights? Because in all honesty I actually find that very amusing. If I could spend forever watching the real Henry Hill count money while Tom Hardy punches it and coked-out Penelope Cruz screams at it in Spanglish, I would die a happy, happy man.
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