Flooding With Love For The Kid
There are
certain things that a man must see for himself and in their entirety. I’ve seen my share of goofy trailers that are
absolutely hilarious and then the resulting full film just proves that the joke
didn’t have the steam to last 90 minutes.
Or that some ideas are just better as ideas. Stuff like Robogeisha
and Megashark Versus Giant Octopus,
hilarious trailers, but somewhat boring films that overstayed their
welcome. When I saw this trailer
advertising that one man decided to re-adapt First Blood and play all
the roles himself and film it entirely in his single room Manhattan apartment
for a budget of under $100, I knew I had to see it. And the result was something I’m very glad I
saw.
The man in
question is Zachary Oberzan. Who appears to be a blonde American guy in
his 20s. I
don’t think he has ever done any professional film work, but I guess this idea
just hit him and he plugged away at it instead of whatever it is the rest of us
do with our free time. The film must
have required a fair bit of planning because when he is playing John Rambo he
has a scruffy beard and he is cleanshaven for most of
the other characters. And the dialogue
seems well thought out.
He sometimes
uses very crude blue screen technology.
He films scenes against the white walls of his apartment and then tells
his computer to fill in the white walls with forest imagery. The images of forests frequently have text on
them saying which website holds the copyright to this photo. And the technology he uses is pretty
weak. He almost always casts a shadow on
what’s supposed to be a wide open space like a sky or something. And during the scenes when there are two or
three of him all superimposed into the same shot, some of them look semi-transparent
like ghosts.
But most of the
time he doesn’t even use that high tech stuff.
He uses editing to have conversations with himself. And he frequently just puts some branches
around his apartment to communicate that it’s a forest. The few sparse branches in no way cover up
the white walls, hardwood floor, or his bookshelf and CD collection.
Surprisingly,
the film doesn’t really take much getting used to. I remember seeing Lars Von Treir’s Dogma and feeling like I got hit with a
freight train of boredom. But even
though this is also essentially a stage play on film, I was pretty engaged and
not thinking about the fact that I was in a dude’s apartment and not a forest
or a police station.
Since he plays all of them, Oberzan
is forced to do a lot of things to differentiate the characters. Various disguises and different voices come
into play. Some of his performances are
a bit hokey.
The characters with accents mostly come out the worst. His attempt at an Irish accent sounds too
much like Scotty from Star Trek.
And his German guy ends up sounding Australian at times. Yes, I meant to type Australian, and not
Austrian. It’s obviously pretty funny
the first couple times he shows up playing a woman, but again, you get used to
it. His portrayal of Vietnamese soldiers
in Rambo’s flashbacks come across a bit like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At
Tiffany’s; he could’ve used some makeup or at least covered up his blonde
hair.
But he gives
his best performance as Teasle and focuses most of
the movie on him. It’s been awhile since
I saw the old Stallone film, but it seemed that Oberzan
really emphasized Teasle’s personal life and the
message of the story being how people’s personal and professional lives bleed
into each other. This film not only
shows John Rambo being unable to shut off his killing machine mentality even
after he’s been discharged, but he also shows how Teasle’s
estrangement from his crazy wife might be effecting his judgement on the job.
Oberzan is also good
John Rambo, which is probably the trickiest role because Stallone’s
performance casts a long shadow. His
commitment to this role is fierce. He
bares it all emotionally as well as physically in a high amount of nudity. But seeing as I was one of five people in the
cinema watching this, I doubt many more people will see his dick than that of
any average dude.
Oberzan also plays
dogs by wearing a black ski mask and crawling around on the floor in black
underwear and then superimposing himself many times to appear as a pack of dogs
hunting Rambo. His performance as Trautman was obviously drawing on Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus, right down to the same
sunglasses. Which was kinda strange.
Oberzan has very good
editing skills because the conversations all felt very real and had a good flow
to them. I’ve seen my share of no-budget
indie movies where the editing makes two people talking feel like they were
filmed on separate days in different countries, but here I never really felt
like that. And the fact that it was one
guy playing all the roles rarely entered my mind. Like the scene where Teasle
is strip searching Rambo, I never thought about the
fact that the scene was one man pretending to be looking up his own anus via
superimposing technology. It just felt
like a cop looking up a drifter’s anus and that those two were separate people.
This venture
probably goes more in the category of ‘film experiment’ than actual film, but I
do feel it’s a reasonably engrossing telling of the First Blood story
and surprisingly easy to watch. I have a
lot of respect for Oberzan and his dedication to this
project and would be happy to see more from him.
If you liked
this, check out these other related writings:
No relation to the Son of Rambow
Rambo 4: The Stallone
Renaissance Part Two
Some throats were made to
be slit.
I put on my tux and stand
in line and buy a ticket at this super-exclusive movie event of the year.