The Tao of Logue

Much like the film scholar who grapples with the question of how to both contextualize and contemporarily criticize a film from, say, the 1960s, so grapple I, the amateur film critic, with the question of how to do just that with a film from the year 2000. Traditionally, the much less time concerned piece ends up being one that is itself “timeless.” But this method overlooks the potential of exploring older films, either decades old or merely a decade, as a means for seeing what people living then were like; not necessarily how they were but how they saw themselves, how their entertainment portrayed them.

“The Tao of Steve,” pronounced “Dow,” is a very 1990s comedy released in the year 2000, when the nineties had yet to do the courteous thing and give way to the new millennium completely. It has the 90s motifs of extremely dated music, editing, and writing. It also passed, and to some extent still continues do to so, as a raunchy, lecherous film, in a style that today’s more “realistic,” Judd Apatow-produced comedies attempt to make their own.

. The action takes place in and around Santa Fe, NM, and follows a stoned, disheveled, overweight part-time kindergarten teacher named Dex, who holds both a degree and a considerable amount of knowledge in the field of philosophy. Not content to keep this knowledge in its time period, our hero Dex applies it to the art of seduction. Despite his appearance, the film would have you believe that Dex has slept with the entire female populace of Santa Fe and then some. He espouses his “Tao of Steve”-named for famous Steves such as McQueen, McGarrett (Hawaii 5-0) and Austin (the six million dollar man, not Stone Cold)- to and along with his friends, three of whom he lives with in a seemingly mansion-ian bachelor pad.

We first meet Dex at his College reunions-this film is the first time in my twenty-three years that I’ve heard of any such thing existing. Dex has a tryst with a married former academic colleague in the library stacks and picks up a student worker serving drinks, and still has time to fall for Syd, another former classmate and friend of his best friend’s wife. Syd, in town from New York City working on an opera, instantly catches Dex’s attention. They spend the rest of the movie flirting around and with each other, each learning something about the other and themselves in the process.

“The Tao of Steve” implemented the unlikely leading man; a tactic used both before and much so after the year 2000. Donal Logue takes us inside the schlub, forming with his equally marginalized friends a coalition against the good-looking, successful men of the world, embodied in the film by Jeremy, another suitor of Syd. Dex’s philosophical edge allows for a strikingly interesting, yet not preachy, dialogue on the meaning of God and life to emerge within the film. “Everyone who talks to God is expressing gratitude, or groveling…God must be the loneliest person in the universe.”

The casting of Mr. Logue, an extremely charismatic Harvard graduate, in the leading role and the film’s use of various philosophies are by far the most compelling reasons to view the film. As a time machine, the film places the viewer back in a time uninterrupted by constant cell phone usage and lacks the distractions of a far more viral driven society, such as ours. It gains extra interest, as a time capsule, when viewed within the context of a time where Judd Apatow and the R-rated comedy boom that followed “Wedding Crashers” cast a shadow on many mainstream comedy releases. Where those movies combine raunch and sweetness in an organic, non-separate way, “The Tao of Steve” is each of those, only at different times: Lecherous, sweet, then lecherous and sweet again.

Ultimately, “The Tao of Steve” succeeds because its multiple components are each given just enough time on screen: the central love story, the ongoing theme of philosophy, the “Tao” behind seduction. With the lead character in play for each of these, no one element feels over or under explored. That coupled with appealing, on-location scenery, which makes the viewer feel like a Santa Fe resident, makes this film worth watching, and slightly compelling even.

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I can't say, when asked directly, that this blog has been something I have been passionate about. I've posted some lame and wack film reviews that no body has probably read and about half as many half-hearted epiphanies that could only be called such because the writer wishes them to be so.

I can say that the claptrap written before this has been some of the more therapeutic and enjoyable activity, that I have felt...somewhat PURPOSEFUL after doing a little off-the-cuff writing.

It has lifted "more weight" off my chest.

That isn't to say there isn't weight. As I said in my last post, "Deep down, you know you deserve this."

So as I lie (or is that lay? I'll never be able to remember, or remember why I don't remember, although I could expound a theory or three on that subject...) here in the bed of a dear friend's sister, I wonder, which of the weight is bad luck? Which do I create? And which is heavy and awful and generally awful because life is so some(most)times? And then I shake my head, and realize that there is no overarching theme to the world I live in. Here is where literature and film exist, and regular things are simple, random, pointless and plotless. Here just is. It is not bad or good. It's my world, and whateer the state of it, I sure as hell am living in it.

Deep down, you know you deserve this.

Mel Gibson’s absence from the big screen has spanned from my high school days and through the college years and beyond. I remember watching, for the first time, “We Were Soldiers” during this long absence, roughly three years into it. I was extremely perturbed by his presence, it seemed so foreign an idea to see him in a relatively recent film I had not yet viewed. To see Gibson onscreen in any form.

My first exposure to Gibson was a theatrical trailer of “Conspiracy Theory,”  which I was not allowed to see, and “Payback,” the first Gibson film I ever watched in theatres. “Payback” is my touchstone of reference for Gibson’s new film, “Edge of Darkness,” although many say “Ransom” is far more comparable (I have not seen that film.) “Payback” is a tale of revenge, as is “Edge of Darkness,” although for far more superficial reasons, a stolen 70,000$ that is perpetually mistaken for 150,000$.Gibson’s character, Porter, only wants what is fair, what was taken for him. It is here where he shares traits with Thomas Craven, Gibson’s Boston Detective whose daughter is gunned down on his front door.

Gibson plays dotting father cop Thomas Craven, whose only family member, a twenty-something daughter, is home for an unspecified visit. It is early on obvious that she is sick, but before Craven can get her explanation, she is graphically shot-gunned down, sending Craven on mission for justice that uncovers a shady government-contracted plant and even shadier weapons construction. Craven is up against some powerful players, including the head of the corporation and a corrupt Republican senator, and may or may not be being aided by a British clean-up man. Craven’s search for the truth turns violent and lawless when he is left with no other options to fight these economic, political, and social giants.

Both trailers and reviews for “Edge of Darkness” have unfairly cast it as revenge porn, which, quite frankly, I would have been happy with alone. “Mad Mel,” as he was so astutely described in “Entertainment Weekly,” has always been a favorite of mine. However, Thomas Craven uses brains and investigative techniques, and rarely projects bland rage at his antagonists; Craven prefers to learn what he can quietly, raging only when left no other choice. It is in this way that the film becomes something of a hybrid. It is a thriller, not entirely suspenseful but not with the obvious plot some have accused it of, and also a bloody, brutish revenge bath. These two styles fit together quite nicely, as they are both balanced enough within to satisfy the viewer’s thirst for both. Gibson gets his and doesn’t; vengeance is both wrought and punished.

A bit has been said about how the movie’s plot treads in unrealistic waters. This is true to a point. It isn’t believable, as “The New Yorker” ably put it, that “one man, it seems, can stanch the flow of evil.” Yeah, but so what? With every movie out there these days trying to out-realistic the next, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a well-constructed thriller that doesn’t want to induce suicide within the viewer due to it’s unforgiving closeness to said viewer’s real, dreary, miserable life. “Edge of Darkness” isn’t a whodunit, more of a whatnowdunit. Craven’s reaction to his tragedy is perhaps the surprise of the film; satisfaction comes slowly and bitterly in this film.