"Tropic Thunder"

Title: "Tropic Thunder"
Director: Ben Stiller
Producer: Stuart Cornfeld, Eric McLeod, and Ben Stiller
Editing: Greg Hayden
Composer: Theodore Shapiro
Starring:
- Ben Stiller as Tugg Speedman
- Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus
- Jack Black as Jeff Portnoy
- Nick Nolte as John "Four Leaf" Tayback
- Tom Cruise as Les Grossman

Plot and Critical Review: During the filming of Vietnam veteran John "Four Leaf" Tayback's memoir Tropic Thunder, the actors—fading action hero Tugg Speedman, five-time Academy Award-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, rapper Alpa Chino, and drug addicted comedian Jeff Portnoy—behave unreasonably (with the exception of newcomer supporting actor Kevin Sandusky). Production is going poorly: rookie director Damien Cockburn is unable to control the actors while filming a large war scene and just five days into shooting, filming is reported to be a month behind schedule. Cockburn is ordered by studio executive Les Grossman to get the production back on track or risk having it shut down.

Acting on Tayback's advice, Cockburn drops the actors into the middle of the jungle, where he has installed many hidden cameras and special-effect explosions rigged so he can film "guerrilla-style". The actors have guns that fire blanks, along with a map and a scene listing that will guide them to the helicopter waiting at the end of the jungle route. Unbeknownst to the actors and the production, the five actors have been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang. Shortly after the group is dropped off, the actors are stunned to see Cockburn blown up by a land mine. Speedman, believing Cockburn faked his death, attempts to convince the other actors that it was a hoax. The gang, believing the actors are DEA agents, are about to ambush the actors. However, the actors scare away the gang as they aimlessley fire their guns and Speedman persuades Chino, Portnoy, and Sandusky that Cockburn is alive and that they are still shooting the film. Lazarus is unconvinced that Cockburn is alive, but joins the other actors in their trek through the jungle.

When Tayback and pyrotechnics operator Cody Underwood attempt to locate the now-dead director, they are captured by the gang, at which point Tayback is exposed as a fraud when Underwood pulls off his prosthetic hooks to reveal fully functioning arms. Meanwhile, the actors continue to forge through the hostile jungle. After Lazarus and Sandusky discover that Speedman is leading them in the wrong direction, the four actors, tired of walking through the jungle and hoping to be rescued, part ways from Speedman who leaves by himself to follow the film's scene listing.

The next day, Speedman is captured by several members of Flaming Dragon and is taken to their heroin factory. Believing it is the prisoner-of-war camp from the script, he continues to think he is being filmed. The gang discovers that he is the star of the box office bomb Simple Jack and force him to reenact it several times a day. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Speedman's agent, Rick Peck, is trying to negotiate with an uninterested Grossman an unfulfilled term in Speedman's contract that entitles him to a TiVo. Flaming Dragon calls the two and they demand a ransom from them, but Grossman instead curses out the gang. Despite the threats he made to the Flaming Dragon, Grossman then tells Rick that they can benefit more by collecting the insurance claim on Speedman's death, even offering the agent a share of the profits along with his own personal Gulfstream V.

The actors stumble upon Flaming Dragon's heroin factory. After seeing Speedman being tortured, they plan an ambush based on the film's script. Lazarus impersonates a farmer bringing in a captured Jeff, distracting the armed guards so Chino and Sandusky can sneak in to where the captives are held. After the gang notices inconsistencies in Lazarus' story, the actors open fire on the gang, temporarily subduing them. When the gang realizes that the suspected DEA agents are only actors using guns filled with blanks, they begin firing on the actors.

Chino, Portnoy, Sandusky, and Lazarus locate Speedman and attempt an escape in Underwood and Tayback's recaptured helicopter. After rejoining with Tayback and crossing a bridge that Underwood has previously rigged to detonate, they meet up with Underwood at the helicopter. Speedman asks to remain behind with the gang which he considers his "family", but he quickly returns with the murderous gang in hot pursuit. Tayback detonates the bridge just in time for Speedman to reach safety, but as the helicopter takes off, the gang fires an RPG at their helicopter. Rick unexpectedly stumbles out of the jungle carrying a TiVo box and throws it in the path of the RPG, saving them all. Footage from the hidden cameras is compiled into a feature film, Tropic Blunder, which ends up becoming a major critical and box office hit and a multiple-Academy Award winner.

My Rating: 7.5/10

The "Reel Revelation": "Behind These Masks"

We've all wanted to be someone else. There has been at least some point in all of our lives when we've desired the identity of someone else for reasons that no doubt seemed reasonable enough at the time. Perhaps they still seem reasonable? Ask yourself a hypothetical question; if you could take on the identity of any one person for a single day, who would it be? Go wild, entertain your dreams! I am not ashamed to say I would willingly take on the identity of Herbert von Karajan, the most successful conductor of the 20th century. To attain even 1/10th of his talent would please me, indeed. Then the sun would set (the end of that one glorious day) and i'd transform back into Eric Thompson. What a dream it would be. And that's what it would have been, a dream, no more, and no less.

To many "Tropic Thunder" is a film of such disrespect and "poor taste in humor" that it seems no redemptive value can be drawn from it's scenes of gore and altogether inappropriate adult humor. Within this film, however, we are able to catch a glimpse, albeit a humorous one, of two men who are looking for their own identity. Tug Speedman is the quintessential action-actor, the king of the effects-driven film. He represents actors like Arnold, Sylvester, Wesley, and Bruce, who have spent so much of their acting careers shooting guns and bandaging wounds they seem altogether lost to their folly. Kirk Lazarus is the prince of drama and is no good to anyone unless he's weeping by the seashore. In "Tropic Thunder" both make an honest attempt to become more than they are within and outside the fictional production of Tayback's falsified Vietnam tale. While the way they encounter their "true selves" is comedic, it is truthful.

To properly "fill the boots" of Sgt. Lincoln Osiris, Lazarus has a "skin pigment-changing" surgery which darkens his skin so as to portray an African American character. His strong drama background allows him to fill the role with excellence (the role actually won Downey Jr. a real Academy Award nomination) but by the end of the movie Lazarus realizes that his attempts at self-manipulation for the sake of cinematic excellence don't represent who he is. No matter how hard he tried to become any one of the scores of characters he portrayed he was never true to himself. His attempts to be someone else failed. Speedman, meanwhile, realized that he was far more sensitive and caring than all of his action films may have led fans to believe. They both came face-to-face with the biting reality that the pursuit of other identities besides their own would only lead them to failure and personal depression.

While the film presents this contrast of character in an extreme way (which film has a very particular way of doing time and time again) it speaks to a very real dynamic of the human condition. We are all looking to become someone else. Admit it! Admit it to yourself that you've probably always wanted to look like this person, or be as strong as that person, or have the talents of so and so. While we experience a very real desire to improve upon ourselves, to make ourselves "better" people, we must not fall into the very real sin (coveting in action, in this instance) of seeking after the talents, looks, or abilities of other people so much we forget the gifts God has given us! They say "It's never too late to learn to play the piano!", and so we have the sense that we will always have the time to learn new sets of skills, etc. But God will give us (and has given!) the gifts necessary to fulfill our calling, to do the work of the Gospel where we are in the world. Do not waste your energy longing for the things you don't have...if it is for you then God will grant it!

To have "heroes" is no sin, and if it is then I am in need of much forgiving. But to chase after an identity all apart from our own is no way to use the gifts God has place within our hands. If you want to desire to be like someone else...look to Jesus. Let us desire to be like him, to love as he loved and to forgive as he forgave the sins of many, even those who persecuted him! Let us look to his instruction, his living example, and seek after the way of righteous living he laid our for us. That is the identity we must strive to attain, to be, as C.S. Lewis said, "little Jesus'" to our world. To pursue that identity will never lead to failure but only draw us closer and closer to the heart of the God who made us and loves us.

See you tomorrow - E.T.