THE PHANTOM
A film review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Combine one quart of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, a dash of a Jackie Chan movie (sans Jackie), two teaspoons of gun- and swordplay, and a dollop of CGI. Simmer for 100 minutes. Yields: Zilch.
THE PHANTOM is a depressing and tired retread of so many earlier, better movies that after the fifteen-minute mark I started cataloguing them out loud. It's hard to make a good action-adventure movie that doesn't simply recycle its predecessors, and I've seen movies that even at least did the recycling gracefully. THE PHANTOM, allegedly based on the long-running comic of the same name, doesn't even bother to be graceful. It's a stupid and incompetent movie in too many ways to list, but I'll try.
The film opens up with a "prelude" sequence that looks like it was slashed to ribbons in the editing and then given a Heavy Voice-Over to compensate for whatever got thrown out. We go from there to a jungle sequence that, I swear to God, recycles the truck-chase scene from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK note-for-note, possibly even shot-for-shot, right down to the moment where Indy wrenched open the door and slung one of the drivers out into the brush -- AND THEN GOES ON TO RIP OFF THE ROPE-BRIDGE SCENE FROM "SORCERER" AS WELL! SORCERER, as you may well remember, was a remake of a French movie, THE WAGES OF FEAR, in which a bunch of lowlifes were paid piles of money to drive a truck loaded with nitro through horrible jungle terrain. Both versions of that movie were far more interesting than this flick, but I've got my job to do, so back to the salt mines we go.
Anyway, the cinematic theft doesn't stop there. Or at least the lack of inspiration. There isn't a single thing here we haven't seen, and it's not given to us in a way that remotely evokes our interest. We have (where's my list?) a Bad Girl, a Tough Good Girl, a Secret Cave Hideaway (which seems inspired more by DR. NO than anything else), a Boardroom Meeting That Drips With Greed and Venality, Magical Artifacts of Terrible Power, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa wasted in another stupid role where he gets to wear a Fu Manchu mustache and sneer a lot and generally humiliate himself.
What else is there? The plot is a waste of time. The sets alternate between big but hokey -- and tiny and still hokey. There are lines in the script that are just begging to be MST3Ked -- and I'm sure once Mike and the 'Bots get the cash, they'll stick it on their sked.
The only thing in the movie worth noting is Billy Zane -- he's a good actor, and he tries very hard, even when the script is sending him down one dead alley of a scene after another. All I can say is that I pray this isn't the beginning of the end for him -- although it sure looks like the final nail in the coffin for the comic-book super-hero movie.
Half of one out of four magic skull rings.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://serdar.home.ml.org another worldly device...
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