`Blown Away' -- It happened in poetic Boston?

By Sean Cole

JAKARTA (JP): In all of the time I have lived in and around Boston and Cambridge, I have never seen the city look as captivating, rich and intriguing as it is depicted in this film. I know I'm biased, but it is more than that.

What the greater Boston area can lend to the camera is originality, a quiet depth of form and design and a very visible history. When filmed by the right hands, Boston can even smack of the poetic.

Blown Away is one of the better shot films that has come to Jakarta this year (won out perhaps by Age of Innocence and In the Name of the Father). The camera work is stunning: slow motion bird's-eye and worm's-eye scenes of helicopters flying above the Prudential and John Hancock buildings, before one of the film's chief explosions; worm's eye, angled views of bomb-disposal expert Jimmy Dove (Jeff Bridges) moving through downtown on his motorcycle; sweet glimpses of Cape Cod where Jimmy's new wife Katie (Suzy Amis) and step-daughter Lizzie must hide out from the bomber.

We discern that Ryan Gaerity (Tommy Lee Jones) and one of his prisonmates are planning to escape. He vomits up a small plastic bag full of volatile liquid and haphazardly constructs a make shift bomb in the cells toilet. Then, making sure that his cellmate will not wake up, Gaerity blows a hole clean through the far wall of the cell and leaps.

The cut to the next scene is almost instant and we are on the Charles River Bridge, the sun and colors beaming, contrasting the gray, hallowed stone of the prison. This escape from a dirging Castle Gliegh to the modernity of the American city is a terrific set up for what is to follow.

Jimmy Dove has a secret and the information needed to decipher it is leaked out slowly and expertly through the first half of the film. In one of the first scenes, Jimmy must defuse a bomb that a psycho M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) student has rigged up to a computer and his girlfriend. This is where we first get a taste of the suspense that eventually rules the film. A suspense even more gripping and cruel than that of Speed.

Suspense

The scenes of these bombs being defused are sheer, painful suspense. And though one is fairly sure they will not go off, the success of the film is that there are times when we are forced to wonder.

We wonder and it is this same suspense that later leads to an explosion in the middle of Copley Place just before Jimmy discovers who the bomber is. This scene is epic. When Jimmy realizes that there is a bomb in one of the squads trucks, the slow motion begins. He runs screaming the name of the driver "Cortez! Cortez!" and trying to wave off the helicopters lest they be hit by flying shrapnel. He bounds through an obstacle course of uniformed policemen. Cortez's grip lingers on the key; he moves his hand on and off of the ignition several times before he turns it. The explosion, the squadron running in apparent synchronicity and the movement back into normal speed are superb filming. This scene, though obviously gruesome and morbid, is treated even beautifully.

But that's nothing. Almost immediately after this, Gaerity calls from Jimmy's house. The scene after that contains the truly insane suspense of the movie. At the risk of spoiling the surprise I will only say that the unorthodox, intriguing and enigmatic use of the camera in Blown Away is not limited to the outdoor sequences. In this scene we are put in so much suspense that the only avenue out of the surging, extreme tension is laughter -- and that is just within the walls of Katie's house...and, at one point, the walls of her toaster.

Accents

Of course, like all things in life, Blown Away does have its flaws. These are not found in the story, which is structured quite well, or even necessarily the characterization. They have to do with one of the age old monsters of theater and film: accent and dialect.

Ryan Gaerity is supposedly from Belfast, or at least this is heavily implied. Yet his brogue reeks of the standard, non- specific, priest/New York cop "Top 'o the mornin' to ya Jimmy me dahrlin'" caricature. Subsequently, when Gaerity puts on an American accent (Tommy Lee Jones's real voice) in order to fool Katie and Lizzie, it appears more natural than his "real voice" in which every syllable is effected.

Similarly, Jeff Bridge's takes that rather unnecessary tactic of putting on a Boston accent (and here I spent years attempting to lose mine). There are thousands of people coating the entire territory of Massachusetts who do not say "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd and coom to my Pahty!" Indeed there were some parts of Blown away that were embarrassingly overly-Bostonian: such as the male mourners at a dear colleague's funeral watching the Red Sox game on television. I was almost sick over the sound of "So what ah you bums doin'?" "Bums?" I thought, not having heard it used in that context since Jimmy Cagney's last picture.

Though this problem with accents is distracting it does not seriously impede Jones, nor Bridges but especially Jones, from delivering extremely energetic and professional performances.

Also extremely professional, as always, is the work of Jeff's dad Lloyd Bridges who plays Jimmy's confidant Max O'Bannon. His accent is quite a bit more subdued but it is also his charm and graceful characterization that lend added dimension to the movie. Even when strapped to an enormous bomb atop an elementary school, he is still a source of lightness, comic relief and, eventually, piercing sadness.

It is this scene, too, that the camera perfectly captures the intricate things that rain and twilight can do to Boston. Both director Stephen Hopkins and director of photography Peter Levy A.C.S. should at least be nominated for an academy award this year.

Dedication

This article would not be complete without mentioning that Blown Away is dedicated to a member of the Boston Bomb Disposal Unit who lost his life in the course of duty, as well as to members of bomb disposal squads all over the country "who risk their lives every day to keep us safe." It is ironic then that, according to Premiere magazine's Eliza Bergman Krause, late one night when the film crew was working on their Hollywood soundstage, a supposedly inactive M25A2 riot flash grenade went off. Nine were injured, the rest quite shaken up. As Krause reported it in last February's issue of Premiere, "All were back at work the next day."

"Fortunately, it ended up being a very minor incident" said producer John Watson in an interview with Krause, "but it's something that shouldn't have happened."