Da Four Oh! 1

A friend of mine challenged me to write a movie for some actors that I don’t like. He suggested Mark Wahlberg since I always bitch about this guy, and I added Eva Mendes as somebody else I don’t like. The result is sort of a combination of Dave Chapelle’s Block Party and Commando. Enjoy.

Mark Wahlberg plays Peter “Fife” Fifer, an ex-marine Gulf War vet who teaches hip hop breakdancing to a group of at-risk orphans at a youth centre called the 401 in Harlem. The group of orphans he mentors consists of Pino (played by Taye Diggs) Boz Dogg (played by Ade) Sneakz (played by Coolio) Chops (played by D.J. Qualls) and Tricksta (played by Tyrese). He spends most nights at the 401, a dilapidated brown brick building and everybody calls it ‘da four-oh’ omitting the ‘one’ because these kids grew up without father figures and good education. The movie opens with Fife wrapping up a rehearsal with the orphans and his girlfriend, Soul Marquez (played unconvincingly as always by Eva Mendes) shows up to pick up Fife for a date. Fife tells the orphans that they’ll give a great performance at the block party next week and that they should be proud of themselves. Then Tricksta replies that it’s a shame Fife won’t be around to see it. Fife grows concerned and everybody tenses up and then the orphans surprise Fife by telling him they all chipped in and paid for Fife and Soul to take a trip to Jamaica. The orphans tell him he’s done so much for them and he never takes a night off and deserves a vacation more than anybody.

Then we get a Blue Crush style montage of Fife and Soul frolicking on the beach cutting back and forth to the orphans back in Harlem breakdancing at the block party for the neighborhood’s enjoyment. This montage be set to some cheesy remixed Bob Marley song or cover that didn’t need remixing or covering and make a special point to include shots of Fife’s military tattoos to establish the life he left behind and also shots of Soul’s boobs to establish her value in this narrative.

They’re riding back to Harlem from the airport in a cab and they stop by da four-oh to check in and see a bunch of ‘sold’ signs nailed to the front and some big billboards advertising condos. Fife sees Pino looking all crestfallen and asks him what happened and Pino says some big company bought the place, nothing they could do, they didn’t want to call Fife and ruin his vacation.

Fife and Soul go back to their flat and Fife starts taking it all out on himself saying if he hadn’t left this wouldn’t have happened and how these at-risk kids are going to be out on the street without da four-oh. Soul tries to comfort him by embracing him with her boobs in his face, but it does nothing. Fife just breaks down and goes into some illogical rant about how he wasted eight years of his life in the marine corps accomplishing nothing in a war nobody cared about and was just used and thrown away by his country and this was the first good thing he’d done with his life blah blah blah. Then Fife snaps his head out of the boobs of comfort and says he’s got it.

He rounds up Pino, Tricksta, Chops, Boz Dogg, and Sneakz outside da four oh for an emergency meeting. The at-risk orphans all seem really demoralized and are already talking about joining gangs and shit. Fife talks them into cheering up and argues that there’s a way to keep da four oh. Fife gets in touch with the real estate developer, Mr. Masterson (played by Stanley Tucci), and says he wants to put on a show for all the rich people who want to buy the condos in an effort to get them to let the group use their rec room a couple times a week. Mr. Masterson agrees saying it will be a good selling point to show the neighborhood’s culture.

We then get a rehearsal montage set to hip hop music of the orphans doing breakdance moves and horsing around with each other and Fife in genuine moments of comradery. Then cut to the big show, the middle-aged yuppies all start filing in all dressed well in and take their seats looking skeptical. Mr. Masterson and Fife are at the doorway at the back of the room. The orphans give an amazing breakdance routine and the crowd seems to be getting into it. Then they strike their final pose and the crowd cheers and Pino flashes that Taye Diggs winning smile and proclaims “I don’t feel so at-risk no more.”

Then Mr. Masterson shouts out to the crowd “If you want your free upgrade to granite countertops, you know what to do!” and all the yuppies pull uzis and assault rifles out of their purses and briefcase and mow the orphans down. Mr. Masterson tries to grab Fife but Fife does some Bourne moves and flips him and dashes out the door. A yuppie who we’ll later learned in named Walters (played by Christopher Walken) sees the scuffle and pursues Fife. Fife has sprinted several blocks away and Walters deftly aims and shoots Fife down. Fife manages to crawl wounded back to his flat and removes the bullet himself while Soul panics uselessly. He starts sobbing and passes out.

Fife recovers in a montage to Antonio Pinto / John Murphy style intense guitar music and scouts out the condo construction as it replaces da four oh. He reads local papers that blow off the death of his dance troupe as “another gang shooting gone bad”. Fife watches all the yuppies who killed his friends moving into the building from a distance wearing a hoodie and calls Mr. Masterson pretending to be an interested potential buyer and sets up a meeting at his office in downtown Manhattan. Over the phone Mr. Masterson says most of the units were presold, but there are a few remaining units.

When Fife comes to Mr. Masterson’s office Masterson recognizes him right away and tries whipping an ash tray at Fife but Fife judo chops him to the ground and starts choking him. Fife says “I’m taking back da four oh!”

Masterson croaks out “You don’t know who you’re messing with! That entire building is a retirement community for former CIA assasins. The government is putting them up in there as reward for stellar service. You walk back into 401 and you’re dead.”

“You first.” Fife snaps Masterson’s neck. The next shot is of all the yuppies gathered around in the lobby of their building where Fife has wallpapered the place with copies of the orphan obituaries. They all look aghast at first but then start taking out their pistols and stretching the necks and scowling. Walters looks especially displeased.

Then we see one couple moving into their place (played by Michael Ironside and Cynthia Rothrock) and they have a box marked Ikea Chair that they unload from their minivan and carry up to their living room but then Fife bursts out of the box with a machine gun and blows Cynthia away while Ironside dodges into the bathroom using the bathtub to deflect bullets and firing his own uzi in a panic of counter fire. Fife rolls a grenade under the bathtub and blows the floor out from under the tub which falls through to the floor below killing another yuppie ex-CIA assassin who was doing knuckle pushups. Ironside survives but is dazed from the fall and Fife looks down on him through the hole in the floor and puts a bullet right between his eyes. Ice cold.

I think this scene would be even funnier if the Ikea box appeared really light while the couple were moving it and was too small for a man to fit in, but then cut to a slightly different box on the floor when Fife bursts out of it.

Then we get a scene where one of the yuppies is putting up with his bratty Paris Hilton-type daughter who keeps calling to her dog and then the little wiener dog with a pink bow on its head finally struts into the living room and Fife has put a dynamite vest on him. Cut to shot of father and daughter getting blown through window.

We then get a series of action sequences as Fife works his way up the stories of the condo complex. A samurai sword fight against Udo Kier. A hand to hand fight against Greg Kinear resulting in Kinear getting a yuppie’s death by getting the spout of his cappuccino machine shoved up his nose and then Fife hits the ‘brew’ button and his head explodes all over his granite counter top. Every couple fights we see Fife stop and take out some stuff from a backpack and start affixing it to the ceiling but we’re not sure what it is.

He finally gets to the penthouse where we see Walters sitting with a young man (played by Lucas Black) in a dapper military uniform. Walters introduces him as his son who just graduated from WestPoint. Walters says “Son, here’s your graduation present! (motions to Fife) Open it!”

The son laughs a braindead laugh and gets up and fistfights Fife until Fife rips the medals off the sons chest and shoves them in his eyes and kicks his throat in and throws his dead body across the room. Walters goes over to comfort the dying son and Fife pulls out a remote and tells Walters he’s about to be moved to a basement apartment and clicks the remote and we find out that he was rigging a specific spot on each storey with explosives and Walters and son go plummeting through the aligned holes to their death in the basement.

We then get a dissolve shot of the splattered bodies to a new group of at-risk youths who are now using the condo complex as a posh new youth centre with Fife teaching them some moves and then sending them home for the night. He and Soul then embrace and talk about heading up to their new penthouse. Some R. Kelly type R&B song will close and the credits will roll.

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