THE STORY: A mad IRA bomber (Tommy Lee Jones) escapes jail and travels to Boston, the place he stalks his former protégé (Jeff Bridges) who now has a brand new id and is a member of the police bomb squad.
THE PLAYERS: Director: Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Judgment Evening, The Ghost & The Darkness, Misplaced in House, TV’s 24). Writers: John Rice, Joe Batteer, and Jay Roach (sure, THAT Jay Roach). Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones, Lloyd Bridges, Forest Whitaker, and Suzy Amis (Titanic). Rating by Alan Silverstri (The Avengers).
THE HISTORY: Blown Away was presupposed to be the sleeper hit of 1994. It had all of the components. Tommy Lee Jones had simply gained the Oscar for taking part in U.S Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive, and this may be his first full-on unhealthy man half since Below Siege, which was an unlikely megahit in direction of the top of 1992. It additionally had Jeff Bridges in full-on motion hero mode for the primary time in his profession. Whereas Bridges is now thought to be a beloved character actor, twenty years in the past he was extra of a heartthrob, however for essentially the most half, he averted massive motion components. This was primed to be the film that might make him a Harrison Ford-style hero.
“My character is changed by his experiences of colonialism, racism and imperialism….But when I started using those terms; I emptied the room right quick. That language wasn’t popular with the writers or the producers. Instead, (my character’s) motivations were left purposely vague and ambivalent.” – Tommy Lee Jones
On the time, motion pictures about bombs have been curiously in vogue. Opening on July 1st, 1994, Blown Away was the second of three motion pictures about bomb-makers/the bomb squad, sandwiched between Velocity and The Specialist. If something, Velocity was guilty for Blown Away’s middling efficiency on the field workplace. You see, nobody anticipated Velocity to turn out to be a success. Keanu Reeves was strictly B-list on the time, nobody had heard of Sandra Bullock, and it was director Jan De Bont’s first film. In truth, the most important star within the solid, on the time, was Dennis Hopper. Nobody anticipated a lot from it, whereas Blown Away seen as a possible summer season blockbuster.
When Velocity opened to boffo field workplace and largely wonderful evaluations, Blown Away was all however doomed. Opening only a few weeks later, critics savaged it, mocking Tommy Lee Jones’s try at an Irish accent and complaining that the carnage was nowhere close to as creative because it was in Velocity, which – to be truthful – it’s not. Rubbing slightly salt within the wound for Bridges was the truth that he was initially courted to play Reeves’s half in Velocity (as per the IMDB). In the long run, Blown Away eked out about $30 million on the field workplace, nicely beneath the $50 million funds. It didn’t assist that it needed to compete with The Lion King, and later True Lies and Forrest Gump, all which went on to make a whole lot of thousands and thousands. Worst of all, in week 4, Velocity nonetheless managed to high it over opening weekend (as did the now obscure Alec Baldwin superhero flick, The Shadow).
WHY IT’S GREAT: I’m not going to make a case for Blown Away being a traditional. In truth, within the pantheon of motion flicks launched in 1994, it’s not even near being the most effective, with Velocity, True Lies and even Clear and Current Hazard all cleansing its clock. I noticed this theatrically with my people opening weekend in 1994, and as a twelve-year-old, I appreciated it nicely sufficient, but it surely’s solely been lately that I actually began to understand it. The explanation for that is easy – motion motion pictures have gotten horrible. What was initially solely a mediocre nineties motion flick now looks like a type of mini-masterpiece, given how low the bar has been set. If Blown Away was launched now, individuals can be tripping throughout themselves raving about how stripped-down and uncooked it’s (though a scene the place a canine is murdered would have by no means made it handed take a look at audiences).
Whereas readers who bear in mind seeing Blown Away when it was new will in all probability assume I’m manner off-base celebrating it, I truthfully consider that our youthful readers, who know Bridges most for his grizzled character roles in motion pictures like True Grit, will get a giant kick out of seeing him in motion hero mode. Lean and good-looking, even when he was in his mid-forties when this was made, Bridges did certainly make for a likable hero, along with his Jimmy Dove being a solidly complicated motion hero for the time. He seems like an everyman, missing the burliness of most motion stars of the period.
The hero/antagonist relationship is deeper than traditional, with it established that Dove was as soon as the protégé of Jones’s Ryan Gaerity and in love along with his sister – solely to have betrayed him as soon as he bought wind of the truth that a bombing Gaerity was planning was designed to inflict most collateral injury. Whereas he helped foil this assault, Gaerity wound up in jail, along with his sister lifeless, whereas Dove high-tailed it to Boston and began a brand new life with the assistance of his Irish cop uncle (Lloyd Bridges – Jeff’s real-life dad – very good in a juicy character half).
“I beloved appearing with my dad, Lloyd Bridges, in Blown Away. He loved the method a lot. His pleasure was contagious. Everybody had extra enjoyable and took their work up a notch when he was on set. – Jeff Bridges
If the film has any failings it’s that buddy-cop angle with Forest Whitaker’s hot-shot rookie additionally feels artificially antagonistic at first; though a scene the place they work collectively to diffuse a bomb in Forrest’s earphones is top-notch. That stated, the battle between the 2 does drive dwelling the truth that Bridges’s Dove is markedly totally different from most motion heroes of the period, being extra of a accountable sort determined to keep away from any lack of life in any respect – making him really feel extra like an actual cop. I additionally just like the low-key romance with Suzy Amis, with them marrying early within the movie and her and her daughter being jeopardized within the massive chase finale. Certain, it’s a cliché, but it surely works.
Director Stephen Hopkins does a stable job orchestrating the motion. At all times an underrated motion director, Blown Away was certainly one of a number of good motion pictures he made throughout this period. Predator 2, whereas missing the bigger-than-life side of the unique, was a advantageous B-movie, whereas Judgment Evening was a slick thriller (with an awesome soundtrack). His subsequent film after Blown Away, The Ghost & The Darkness, was in all probability his greatest, though sadly it by no means fairly discovered the viewers it deserved – a destiny shared by lots of his motion pictures. Hopkins has a knack for pulling off spectacular photographs, reminiscent of a extremely cool one the place Bridges observes an explosion that claims the lifetime of his Bomb Squad colleagues from the balcony of his resort room, and one other the place he permits a “Bouncing Betty” to blow up throughout his mano-a-mano showdown with Jones.
The rating by Alan Silvestri is slightly too bombastic for my tastes (though I usually actually like his work from this period), however Hopkins manages to include some traditional U2 tracks that underscore the Irish side of the plot, despite the fact that Bono and the boys have been in all probability shocked by Jones’s accent—which I’ll admit isn’t good.
SEE IT: Blown Away is broadly out there on DVD (it was one of many first movies launched in that format), 4K Blu-ray, iTunes, streaming and extra.
PARTING SHOT: Once more, Blown Away isn’t some type of unheralded motion traditional. However, it’s a superior thriller with a terrific efficiency by Jeff Bridges in an atypical half for him. Whereas it might have paled alongside Velocity or True Lies in 1994, twenty-two years and a whole lot of subpar motion motion pictures make it appear much better now than it did then. As such, it holds up nicely and is a obscure little movie well-worth trying out.
