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Bushwick (2017)


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Edgy MD
Dec 10 2017 09:20 PM

When a dippy grad student returns to her Brooklyn home, she finds herself exiting the subway just as a massive invasion of mysterious origin is under way. A hostile foreign power? Domestic crackdown? Domestic terrorists? No clue! Communications are down!

She makes her way through the streets trying to get home as soldiers advance and civilians alternate between fighting back, looting, and shitting their pants. But there are no answers, just bullets flying and the borough burning. She is fortunate enough to stumble upon a massively-built Marine veteran and together they try to navigate the streets and try to stay alive and put the pieces together.

Now stuh-reaming on Netflix.

Vic Sage
Dec 11 2017 10:36 AM
Re: Bushwick (2017)

now THAT'S my kind of movie! I love me some Drax!

Edgy MD
Dec 11 2017 06:49 PM
Re: Bushwick (2017)

You'd probably like it more than not.

What I think works best is the frenetic style. From a brief surreal moment where the main character is oblivious to what's happening around her and then sees a man run down the subway steps on fire, she exits onto streets that are familiar but insane. It's unclear what direction the threat is coming from, who the good guys are, or why anything is happening. People are killed utterly senselessly and the pillars of her small home-neighborhood world are falling apart around her.

I have little clue, but it's what I sensed that it was what life must've suddenly become in Aleppo. And it put me in mind of how hatefully oblivious people were who rejected the very idea of refugees, saying they should go back and fight for their country. How do you stand and fight in a situation where one day is trips to the deli, swimming lessons, and a visit to your mom's endocrinologist, and the next day is absolutely insane, with a well financed army raining destruction on you from vantage points you can't even see? It's all done with handheld cameras running alongside the actors, with mostly practical effects, one character suddenly appearing, having an exchange with the principles, and then deleted by a sniper shot like they were never there, as the other characters just go on, because they have to. Every death is pointless, which makes it's point. Look for poetry elsewhere.

It's like the urban, gritty, existentialist Sidney Lumet street dramas of the seventies, with a broader chaotic war-film scope, more approaching Saving Private Ryan or something.

The problem is a search for a message in the script, beyond the tone of the direction. I have my doubts that this urban Red Dawn occupational army could get a toehold in Brooklyn, when New York is wired to the hilt to detect against hostile threats. You may set off a bomb, but digging in with an army is another thing. It's never quite clear how they arrived, either. Plus the film is loaded with an uneasy ambiguity about private ownership of assault weapons. Watch out, those guys loading up on weapons may be planning an insurgency, but hey, you'd better load up on weapons for the counter-insurgency. I'd be more inclined to hole up for a few days.

And in this search for meaning, the most stagey moments become the most eyerolling absurd. When a disturbed priest (in the basement of a church that sounds more Pentecostal than Catholic) goes into a batshit crazy monologue, you know the script isn't going to save the day. It briefly tries to make a point about strength through diversity, but abandons that thought mostly as too cute. But the story told with the cameras and tone and utter chaos can keep you glued nonetheless.

Mets Willets Point
Dec 12 2017 05:21 PM
Re: Bushwick (2017)

The internet has failed me. I tried to find a picture of King Bushwick the Toidy Toid from "Rocky and Bulwinkle" to post in this thread and could not find one.