Wednesday, October 24, 2007
DiCaprio Doesn't Die in The 11th Hour
Last night I went to watch The 11th Hour - the global warming film produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. Just before the movie started, I casually said to the people with me, "I wonder if Leo dies in this film too?" They were stunned.
Have you ever noticed that Leonardo DiCaprio dies in a significant percentage of the films he's in? The obvious ones are Titanic, Romeo+Juliet and Blood Diamond. He also dies in The Quick & the Dead and The Departed. The Man in the Iron Mask is a bit fifty-fifty because he plays identical twins, one of which dies (or so I'm told, I never saw it).
While not explicitly dying on screen, his character also has depressing endings in The Basketball Diaries, The Aviator and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Whilst this doesn't happen in every one of his films, I think dying on screen or at least ending badly is his thing.
Contrast that with an actor like Tom Cruise who almost never dies on screen. And it's a real pity too because people increasingly dislike Cruise for his bizarre behaviour so he should be the one dying on screen more often.
Some of his movies, like the Mission Impossible series, you know from the very beginning that he can't die. But in Far and Away, at the start of the film, he pulls the trigger on a rusty old rifle which blows up in his face and he survives. Then halfway through the film, he gets the living sh*t beat out of him in bare knuckle boxing and survives. Then at the end of the film, he falls off a horse, the horse falls on him, he looks like he's dead but wakes up!
In The Last Samurai, he and a bunch of Samurai charge on horseback with swords against the modern Imperial Japanese Army who use rifles, gatling guns and cannons. ALL the Samurai are slaughtered and it appears that Cruise FINALLY dies of his injuries as well. But right at the end, he limps into the Imperial Palace and speaks with the Meiji Emperor despite having suffered about half a million serious wounds in the previous fight scene. Can't he just bloody die already?
Anyway, back to The 11th Hour. Good documentary. I'd recommend watching it after An Inconvenient Truth, even though Leo doesn't die in this one.
Last night I went to watch The 11th Hour - the global warming film produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. Just before the movie started, I casually said to the people with me, "I wonder if Leo dies in this film too?" They were stunned.
Have you ever noticed that Leonardo DiCaprio dies in a significant percentage of the films he's in? The obvious ones are Titanic, Romeo+Juliet and Blood Diamond. He also dies in The Quick & the Dead and The Departed. The Man in the Iron Mask is a bit fifty-fifty because he plays identical twins, one of which dies (or so I'm told, I never saw it).
While not explicitly dying on screen, his character also has depressing endings in The Basketball Diaries, The Aviator and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Whilst this doesn't happen in every one of his films, I think dying on screen or at least ending badly is his thing.
Contrast that with an actor like Tom Cruise who almost never dies on screen. And it's a real pity too because people increasingly dislike Cruise for his bizarre behaviour so he should be the one dying on screen more often.
Some of his movies, like the Mission Impossible series, you know from the very beginning that he can't die. But in Far and Away, at the start of the film, he pulls the trigger on a rusty old rifle which blows up in his face and he survives. Then halfway through the film, he gets the living sh*t beat out of him in bare knuckle boxing and survives. Then at the end of the film, he falls off a horse, the horse falls on him, he looks like he's dead but wakes up!
In The Last Samurai, he and a bunch of Samurai charge on horseback with swords against the modern Imperial Japanese Army who use rifles, gatling guns and cannons. ALL the Samurai are slaughtered and it appears that Cruise FINALLY dies of his injuries as well. But right at the end, he limps into the Imperial Palace and speaks with the Meiji Emperor despite having suffered about half a million serious wounds in the previous fight scene. Can't he just bloody die already?
Anyway, back to The 11th Hour. Good documentary. I'd recommend watching it after An Inconvenient Truth, even though Leo doesn't die in this one.
# posted by Fore! @ 4:33 PM 
