Memo to Movieland: `Marshals' Hard to Digest

It's never been explicitly stated why people take these Tom Cruise Jobs, the ones where the sector disavows you if you get caught. These yahoos are breaking the law at a daily interval and yet they have no problem accepting the fact that they are engaged in something that appears treasonable to all but the most trained observer. That doesn't make any sense. What kind of benefits exist as compensation for this depression era job security? The scenario in La Femme Nikita is more plausible. Do a nasty deed, get blackmailed into doing several more, only for the good guys this time.

Well perhaps Sheridan (Wesley Snipes) of the movie U.S. Marshals didn't get on the force this way. Actually there are rumors going around that audiences have seen this movie before. Since the director Stuart Baird knew this, he didn't even bother to pick up where The Fugitive left off (not that there was anywhere to go, but that's sort of the definition of sequel); he just starts over again. Sheridan's framed, Sheridan escapes, Sheridan fights back. Well, at least it's more believable that track star Snipes can elude the capture of trained professionals who always seem to find a contact lens left in Grand Central but can never seem to catch him even though all he has at his disposal are duct tape and a twinkie. Oh, and a Macintosh. He's just a bit faster than the statue of Harrison Ford that has been appearing in movies billing old Hans these days, Amazing what they can do with claymation, but that's another article.

In keeping with realism in the movies, Snipes has taken to the big screen an idea he has expressed in real life. In a move that will probably ensure that he will never surpass Denzel's top spot in the hearts of black women across the country, Wesley Snipes aired what can only be described as generalized grievances he had about Black Women as a group. Though never specifically addressing them, he did his venting in a magazine that exclusively targets black women. Snipes says that he doesn't want to come home to a helpmate who would fight with him. He also said that he didn't need a woman to say, "Them days is over," when asked to fetch him a glass of water. For all the sisters who almost passed out during that exaggerated shot that moved from his waist to his face during the groundbreaking movie Waiting to Exhale, the shot that received a standing ovation in the theatre that I was in, a change has come. In U.S. Marshals, he's moved on to a more compassionate woman. His character in this movie is dating a French Starbucks waitress named Marie. She's feminine. She falls in all the right places. She endears herself to U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones '69) with her charming ignorance of U.S. laws against lying to federal agents, and she knows when to let her man go. The real reason for the change? Perhaps Angela Bassett could mop the floor with him, beat him until people that loved him wouldn't know him. But these are ridiculous statements to make about a movie that's based on something as untrue and trite as good triumphing over evil. That's Grimm alright. This movie is about the world as it should be.

Let me explain my position about this little utopia of movie plot scenarios. There's a scene in U.S. Marshals where Gerard catches Sheridan picking his handcuffs off and asks him whether or not he's going to escape because Gerard is busy and can't watch him just now that characterizes the mood of the film. Jones is aboard the prison transport plane because of this stupid public relations reason that his superior all but made up. (Didn't these people see ConAir? Why is it that people have to fly criminals anywhere? It's not like they have anywhere to go in a hurry.) When asked whether or not he's going to escape, Snipes says no, no he's not going to leave the scene of the second most ridiculously contrived escape scenario ever to be created, because surely there will be another plane crash or boat crash or bicycle crash or cow-tipping accident in the near future that will make his escape at this point seem a waste of time. Well, he winds up escaping, ending up in small-town America.

Movieland America rolls along at its usual faster-than-real-life clip, with all of the conventions in place. It's not for Americans to question why we've never been defeated by this little den of evil that rests on our shores, but in case someone missed it, any federal agency that trains any group of killing machines is evil. The Diplomatic Security Service messed up and picked the wrong guy, the supersmart guy to take the fall for them, this time, like always. The man they frame is of course not only super-human, but well supplied with random friends, the Starbucks waitress and this agent that moonlights as a bouncer at Any-club USA, friends who are willing to go the distance for him, providing him with beaucoup cash on demand.

The U.S. Marshal that always gets his man is snappish in that eye-rolling corny kind of way that makes him both endearing, pitiful and annoying. He has taken under his wing a gumshoe to nurture until he is ready to fly on his own. And of course the hunt to find this escaped good guy, the one who is running from the bad guys, is complicated by the hotshot desk - job agent who was assigned to the case. Oh, and all the people of small-town America have the stupidity required to hold residence in these towns. They are also always ready to cede power to the smart fold from the big scary city during the one interesting crisis that has happened in their area in the last 50 years (which they will of course gossip about for centuries to come). Goodness.

Even with all of that, there is a point in the movie where even a perfect world becomes too much too take. Near the end a black man dressed in street clothes, in a skull cap no less, looking like something out of a FuBu ad walks out onto the street and catches a cab in New York City's financial district, in two seconds by simply raising his hand. He didn't even have to lay down in front of the cars or do other passive-aggressive things to get into the cab. Nothing after this was believable, because every person in the movie theatre knows that the brother would have had to take the bus to his next rendezvous point. Then he would have been late so nothing else would have gone according to plan. Plots just can't maneuver around this little law of nature. There's physics and there's cab protocol. They can't feed lies like that to the American public, not even in a movie. People from small towns are stupid, fine. Federal agencies are evil, yes, yes. Black man catches cab, are you kidding? Bad movie.