|
Sam Raimi (USA, 1954) debuted with
Evil Dead (1983), a horror movie, which would remain his best film.
Unfortunately its sequels Evil Dead II (1987) and
Army of Darkness (1992), more hilarious than scary,
were the exact opposite.
Darkman (1990) is a mediocre superhero movie.
(DeepL translation of my original Italian text):
A scientist cannot explain why a chemical compound disintegrates after 99 minutes. The scientist lives with the girl, an attractive businesswoman who is on the trail of a bribery scandal, and asks her to marry him. The girl goes to the city official to ask for an explanation, and the city official candidly admits that she had to bribe in order to realize the dream of a new neighborhood. The man warns her that a complaint could be dangerous because a powerful underworld boss is involved in the affair. Meanwhile, the scientist has discovered that in darkness his compound survives the fateful 99 minutes. Scientist and girl do not have time to rejoice in the discovery that a group of gangsters break into the house: they are looking for the document discovered by the girl and think he has it. The gangsters find the document by searching the other room and then throw it upside down inside his potion. The apartment explodes. The scientist dies and is buried. The girl is consoled by the very corrupt city official.
A hospital receives the disfigured body of a man, probably one of the many homeless people sleeping under bridges. The surgeon explains to the students that the difficult operation performed to save his life may affect the patient's psychology. As they talk, the homeless man, tormented by the nightmare of the fire, breaks free. The tramp is the scientist, who miraculously survived. The scientist immediately goes home to the wreckage of his laboratory. He would be just a desperate homeless man if he did not discover that his old formula has an extraordinary power: he can make himself any mask, but of course they last only 99 minutes. He can thus begin his private revenge against the gangsters who "killed" him, mocking the underworld boss (a psychotic who collects fingers of his victims). And he can even reintroduce himself to the girl, wearing a mask of his old face. Each time, however, he has to rush home because after 99 minutes his head starts to break down.
In his new laboratory, the scientist can fabricate virtually any mask in minutes. The scientist enjoys fabricating a boss mask and carrying out a robbery in a store in order to incriminate the boss. The boss is arrested and the scientist goes in his place to collect a loot, but the boss is released on bail and arrives in time to be confronted by his doppelganger. The scientist has to escape because the head is coming undone, but the real boss finds his mask on the ground and realizes that someone has the power to impersonate others.
The scientist goes to an amusement park with the girl, but all it takes is one overbearing man to unleash his animalistic psyche. Then he has to flee because his face is falling apart. The girl, however, chases him to the laboratory and sees him so hideously disfigured.
Then the woman goes to the city official to explain that she can no longer see him, and she discovers the document that was stolen by the gangsters, and realizes that the city official has always been in agreement with the boss. The city official immediately warns the boss that the scientist is still alive and it is he who is pursuing him. The gangsters follow the wife to the scientist's hideout, kidnap the woman, and give the man a merciless hunt. The boss even pops up in a helicopter and the scientist is scrambled hanging from a cable until he hooks the cable to a truck and crashes the helicopter. The superman then plummets between the new skyscrapers, where the city official has taken the woman to kill her, and engages in another no-holds-barred fight, during which the wicked city official taunts him, and finally the superman kills everyone and saves the woman, jumping like Tarzan between the scaffolding. Then he escapes into thin air like Zorro.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) is a screwball comedy scripted by
Joel and Ethan Coen.
The Quick and the Dead (1995) is a revisionist western.
His best film was the noir thriller A Simple Plan (1998), an adaptation of
Scott Smith's 1993 novel. It came out two years after the Coen Brothers' Fargo (1996) and it borrows a similar theme: an ordinary man with an ordinary life who comes up with a criminal plan that could change his life but ends up leaving a trail of dead people. Like Fargo this film is set in a remote rural
town in winter.
Raimi's film shares with the Coens' film another
aspect: the actors
(notably Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Brent Briscoe)
deliver spectacular performances, each one becoming emblematic of a "type" of ordinary life.
The major difference between the two films is that Raimi shows the descent into hell not of one ordinary person but four (including the wife).
And the other big difference is that the two survivors (husband and wife) are condemned to live their ordinary life, and condemned to live with the guilt and shame of their crimes, instead of ending up in a prison.
They are losers either way.
Hank and Sarah are a typical young couple living in a small rural town.
He is a college graduate who works in a shop, she is a librarian, they own a nice two-story home, and she is pregnant with their first baby.
It's New Year's Eve. Hank and his brother Jacob, a simple-minded man who didn't study and didn't get married, drive to the cemetery to place flowers on their father's tomb. Hank is upset that Jacob brings along his best (and only) friend Lou,
a notorious drunkard. On the way back home a fox cuts in front of Jacob's truck,
he loses control and hits a tree. Jacob and Lou immediately decide to go hunting
the fox, although they are in a natural preserve and it's illegal. Hank tries
to dissuade them but eventually he tags along.
Jacob and Lou behave like losers while Hank snobs their childish attitudes.
As they walk in the snowy forest, they stumble into an airplane buried in the snow. Hank crawls inside.
The pilot is still in the seat
and looks like he's nodding but it's because scavenging birds are picking at his face. Hank is wounded by the birds when he scares them. Hank finds a bag full of $100 bills for a staggering amount. Hank is ready to report the whole thing to the police but simpletons Lou and Jacob think they should keep the money because technically it's not "stealing": the money is most probably drug money.
Hank accepts on condition that they keep the money hidden in his house until they are sure that nobody is looking for it. As they are heading home, sheriff Carl
stops by and Hank distracts him, but Jacob mutters the word "airplane".
Hank told Jacob and Lou not to tell anyone, but instead Hank tells his wife
Sarah right away, asking for her advice. Sarah thinks it through and suddenly
becomes part of the scheme: she advises Hank to return a fraction of the money
to the airplane, so when it is found it will be obvious that nobody ever was there. They are all assuming that nobody knows how much money that airplane was transporting. When Hank and Jacob drive back to the forest, Hank walks to the plane
and Jacob waits by the car. A local farmer chasing the fox stops by, Jacob panics and hits him with an iron tool. Hank rationally decide to stage a snowmobile accident.
Hank drags the body away but realizes that the man is not dead yet. The man has
recognized Jacob and begs Hank to call the police. Hank instead suffocates him.
Jacob is ready to surrender to the police but Hank reveals that he, Hank, kills the farmer. Back home Hank, devoured by guilt, confesses to Sarah that he murdered an innocent, but Sarah coldly reassures him that he did the right thing.
Jacob recovers from the shock and starts dreaming of rebuilding their family's
old farmhouse for himself with the money. Hank is not excited because he is counting on both Jacob and Lou to move far away. We learn that their father was bankrupt. Jacob reminds Hank that their father made debts to pay for Hank's college.
Jacob now wants the farmhouse and Hank can't say no.
Meanwhile, Sarah did a little research at the library and found out that two
criminals kidnapped a tycoon and disappeared with the ransom. Now we know that 1. the authorities know the exact amount that disappeared and 2. there is a second kidnapper.
Sarah, the evil spirit behind Hank's action, gives birth to their daughter Amanda.
One night Lou shows up, drunk as usual, confessing to Hank that he is broke and owes money all over town. He demands his share of the money right away. Jacob told Lou that Hank killed the farmer, and Lou is ready to blackmail Hank.
Sarah talks Hank into tricking Lou into a fake confession. Hank talks Jacob
into helping with the trick. Jacob is reluctant, torn between his brother and his best friend. Family ties are drivers of their actions and loyalty to their
father's memory is paramount. Hank believes that their father died in a car
accident.
Jacob believes their father killed himself so that the life insurance would pay
for their debts. Hank, the college graduate, never thought of it.
Finally, Hank and Jacob invites Lou to a bar and get him drunk. Lou gets kicked out after getting into a fight and they move to Lou's house. Hank is hiding a voice recorder. Jacob is reluctant to go along with the plan to trick Lou into
confessing. He even mentions that Lou is more a brother to him than the college educated Hank. But then Jacob does just that: he gets the drunk Lou to play the part of Hank confessing having killed the farmer. Hank tapes it and it sounds like Lou is confessing having killed the farmer himself. Hank pulls out the tape and tells Lou that now it's him, Hank, who can send Lou to jail if he doesn't behave.
Lou realizes that he has been betrayed by his best friend Jacob. Lou grabs a gun
and points at Hank, demanding the tape. Jacob begs him not to shoot. Lou is ready to pull the trigger. Jacob shoots him dead. Lou's wife screams. Fearing that Hank is going to kill her as the only witness, she runs to the kitchen, grabs a pistol and shoots at Hank. Hank has no choice but to shoot her dead.
Then Hank stages the scene so that it looks like Lou and his wife killed each other.
Hank forces Jacob to lie to the police, again to both protect himself, protect Hank and protect his dreams of using the money to fix up the farmhouse.
Later Jacob has a nervous breakdown.
To futher complicate matters, an FBI agent shows up: he is investigating the
disappearance of the airplane. The sheriff, Carl, remembers hearing Jacob mention the airplane and so invites both Hank and Jacob to lead the search in the forest.
Hank panics and tells Sarah that he's ready to return the money to the airplane.
Sarah objects that she has no desire to leave their ordinary life for the rest of her life. She wants the money.
Sarah also suspects that the FBI agent is in reality the second kidnapper.
They convince Jacob not to show up and Hank is supposed to meet the sheriff and the agent but buy time until Sarah finds out for sure if that agent is real.
Sarah finds out that she was right: that FBI agent doesn't exist. She alerts
Hank but Hank refuses to leave the unsuspecting sheriff alone with a criminal
who may kill him. Sarah on the phone begs Hank to run for his life, but Hank
instead grabs a gun and accompanies his friend the sheriff and the criminal.
When they reach the forest, Jacob shows up: Sarah alerted him and asked him
to go armed to the forest. When the sheriff finds the plane, the fake FBI
agent shoots him dead and forces Hank to enter the airplane and get the money,
but Hank is armed and shoots him dead. Hank now has to deal with two more dead
people and starts thinking of yet another story to avoid revealing the truth about the money. Jacob has had enough and tell Hank that there are only two options: Jacob can kill himself or Hank has to kill him and make it look like it was the kidnapper who killed him. Realizing that Jacob will indeed kill himself, Hank has no choice but to kill him. Hank has now killed his own brother.
The authorities believe his version of the facts and Hank can resume his life
but not use the money: the FBI reveals that they have the serial numbers of the $100 bills.
Back home, Hank decides to burn the money. Sarah tries in vain to stop him, desperate at the idea that her dreams of a luxurious life are going up in smoke.
They return to their simple jobs in their simple town, returning every evening to their simple home, having achieved nothing but to get their family and friends killed.
For Love of the Game (1999)
He flirted with horror again in
The Gift (2000) and
Drag Me to Hell (2009).
He wasted his talent in the superhero trilogy of
Spider-Man (20022007), adapted from a famous comic strip.
Raimi returned to the horror genre with
Drag Me to Hell (2009).
He also directed a children's movie, Oz the Great and Powerful
(2013), a sort of prequel to the old children's classic The Wizard of Oz.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) was the sequel to Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange (2016), yet another movie based on superhero comic strips.
|
