Best Supporting
Badass
The
film opens with a long tracking shot through a quiet Hollywood mansion. The camera pans by various awards and framed
photos revealing that we are in the home of a Hollywood power couple of
superstar actors, Paul Wexter (James Woods) and Gina
Gray Carrington (Helena Bonham Carter) and their adopted son Indigo Stroodle Freetrade Wexter (Jet Li). We
ultimately end up in a luxurious home office where Paul and Gina are gathered
solemnly with The Babyfinder (Charles Dance with long
red dreadlocks, a finely trimmed goatee, and wearing a flamboyant white
suit). The mood is heavy.
The couple keep
reassuring themselves in a decision they’ve made repeating that “He’s just
not cute anymore” and that “He’s run his course”. They warn The Babyfinder
that Indigo learned martial arts with them when they trained for an action
movie and may put up a fight. The Babyfinder assures them that he’s got precautions and lifts
up a giant hunting rifle with big elephant tranquilizer darts loaded in it.
The Babyfinder motions to some goons and they all make their
way down the hallway to Indigo’s bedroom where he is peacefully asleep. His bedroom shows that despite being an
adult, Indigo is kept in a psychological state of suspended childhood because
his room has a racecar bed and a cloudy sky mural
painted on the walls and various Teletubby dolls
around the floor. The Babyfinder shoots Indigo with the dart, Indigo is shocked
awake and begins fighting The Babyfinder’s goons but
quickly passes out from the tranquilizer.
He awakens on a
boat in a cage where The Babyfinder is talking to him
about how when he first found him and gave him a home. The Babyfinder
speaks in an even tone, but you can also sense that he’s sad about what he
does. He tells Indigo that he should be
grateful for having a luxurious life with movie star parents for a couple
decades but that he’s “just an accessory that went out of style”.
They get to the
port of an island and The Babyfinder’s goons secure
the dock and then they throw Indigo out on the shore. The goons all keep their guns aimed at Indigo
while they get back onto the boat, The Babyfinder
wishes Indigo good luck and the boat sails away. Indigo explores a bit and quickly discovers
he’s on an island populated by the discarded adopted ethnic children of white
Hollywood celebrities and that on the island they all fight in Thunderdome style fighting tournaments to pass the
time. The big heavy on the island is
Sparkle Ptolemy Charles Anti-Landmine Curtis (played Djimon
Hounsou), Sparkle rules over
the fighting tournaments with his unstoppable brutality and intimidates all the
other celeb kids on the island prison.
Sparkle has beef with Indigo because their fathers were both up for an
Oscar the same year and Indigo’s father won.
Indigo trains for his big match against Sparkle. The whole
island of abandoned celeb orphans gather and the fight turns brutal resulting
in Indigo snapping Sparkle’s neck with his thighs. The victory goes to his head and Indigo
quickly becomes an arrogant bully just like Sparkle was. Until Paprika Joan Splendora Michaela St.
James (played by Maggie Q) arrives on the island. Indigo tries to taunt her into fighting but
she refuses. She always uses Tai Chi to
dodge his moves without ever striking back.
Ultimately she calls all the island orphans on their savage behaviour
and touches on their buried humanity, which sparks an organized movement to
escape from the island.
We then cut
back for a single scene at Paul and Gina’s Beverly Hills mansion where they are
meeting with Doctor Von Teichman (Scarlet Johansson
doing a corny German accent). They keep
discussing a “procedure” and Paul ultimately just shrugs and says “Ya know, I’ve got skin from my butt transplanted to my
face, I’ve had my face lifted, I’ve got hairs from my back transplanted to my
head, I’ve had my abs sewn in place to look like a sixpack,
there comes a time when renovation has run it’s course and it’s just time to
buy a new house.”
Doctor Von Teichman seems pleased and verbally confirms the
‘procedure’ at which point Paul stops her saying that the only thing that
concerns him is her age, to which she laughingly replies that she is 67 years
old. Gina says she wants to go first.
We cut back to
the island where the orphans are busy planning to escape. They build a giant catapult and wait for the
next drop-off of an island celebrity orphan.
The island orphans all ambush The Babyfinder’s
goons who retreat onto their boat under the guard of panicfire. The orphans then use the giant catapult to
launch Indigo through the air, where he lands on the front end of the boat and
stealthily moves around the ship killing the guards and leading up to a big
fight against The Babyfinder who he kills by jamming
his head in between the pegs on the boat steering wheel and spinning around
until it snaps his neck.
Indigo steers
the boat back to the island and all the orphans pile on and he guides the boat
on a long journey back to the shores of Los Angeles where they all
disperse. Indigo first goes to the film
studio because it’s daytime and he figures one of his parents will be
there. He skulks around and ultimately
finds out that his adoptive mother, Gina, is filming a movie on a sound stage
and he goes there to find it seemingly deserted. The sound stage is a set of his own bedroom.
Indigo kinda freaks out, picking up the
replicas of his own toys and inspecting the replica of his car bed until he is
startled by a voice asking him what he’s doing.
He turns around and barely recognizes his adoptive mother because she is
now being played by Kiera Knightly. He asks her what she’s doing and she explains
that through breakthrough surgery she now looks young enough to play her
younger self in her own biopic. She then
introduces Chan, a young Asian guy, who she says will be playing Indigo in the
biopic. Gina snarls to Chan “Let’s
see how you stack up against the real thing.”
Chan
attacks Indigo and the two begin a brutal fight scene which results in the
complete destruction of the set of Indigo’s bedroom. When Chan starts losing Gina joins in and
it’s Indigo against both of them at once.
The fight goes into full Corey Yuen mania with all sorts of inventive
combat use for boon mics and terminating with Indigo whipping a film reel through the air like a Frisbee
and it severs Gina’s head with its smooth steal edge.
Indigo takes
her keys and drives to the mansion. He
enters the front door and Dr. Von Teichman and his
adoptive father Paul are waiting for him at the top of the staircase. But Paul is now played by James Franco and has
the James Woods body lying dead on an operating table with its skull cleanly
cut open and no brain inside. Paul
greets Indigo and explains that through a radical procedure, Dr. Von Teichman grew clones of Paul and Gina and they had their
brains transplanted to the younger clone so that they could retain their
memories and the clone brains are discarded.
Paul motions to another body of a young boy and offers Indigo a chance
to become his son again. Indigo reacts
with puzzlement saying that the boy is not a clone of him because the boy is
clearly East Indian. Paul replies that
Asians just aren’t in anymore and Sir Lankans are now the hip ethnicity of
adopted child and that Indigo would be given the new name of Darfur Vegan
Barrack Wexter, but that he’d still be the same
person inside. Paul elaborates that it
would be a shame to throw away their relationship.
Obviously
Indigo refuses the offer and Paul says that’s a pity and so Indigo must
die. Paul calls in his professional
stunt doubles to fight Indigo and in rush a bunch of martial artists all styled
with wigs of that wavy brushed-back brown hair that James Woods / Franco
have. We get fight scene similar to the
courtyard rumble in The Matrix 2: Reloaded only these guys aren’t full
clones, they’re just guys like Scott Adkins and Zoe Bell wearing wigs and
dressed alike.
Indigo fights
his way through the stunt doubles and ultimately tangles with Paul (James
Franco) and ends up smashing his head in with his Oscar. He then turns against Dr. Von Teichman who remains calm and says that there’s a sensible
way out of this. She elaborates that
after what happened at the studio and what happened here, the police are
looking for Indigo, but only his body.
She motions to the old James Woods body with a clean empty skull, and
calls it his getaway vehicle. Indigo
asks her what her end is in all of this, to which she replies that she just
wants money and once Indigo’s brain assumes control of Paul’s body, he can pay
her with Paul’s money.
We get a
sped-up brain transplant montage and then dissolve to the next scene where the
old James Woods body of Paul, with Indigo’s brain in it, is giving a statement
to the police who are picking up Indigo’s dead body which has had the head
bashed in and is lying on the ground. Paul gives an outlandish story about his son
going crazy and killing all these people and Paul defending himself.
The police
leave and talk just to each other, the one cop asking the other if he believed
Paul’s outrageous story. The other cop
says some stuff about actors being professional liars and the first audience
member they convince is themselves and there’s no use investigating them. The stamp ‘closed’ on the case dossier and we
cut to Paul striking a bunch of martial arts poses in his mansion and then cut
to the end credits.
If you liked this, here are some other
recommended writings:
They made her to fuck up
the past.
Now she’s going to fuck up
their future.
My attempt at
writing a religious action movie like Constantine.
This is not a story about
if I were the Pope.
Snakefox: The Hurterizing Brutalitor of Painification!
My correspondence with a cage fighter and the resulting
merchandise.