Six years. Six years since either of us Rosses have posted anything on this crummy site.
You know how much it costs to keep a website going for six years without posting anything? Yeah, not much.
In those six years, Ross McD (him) and Ross McG (me) have seen each other… once. The Atlantic Ocean has that affect on late 2000s blog bromances.
But how many times have I watched Crocodile Dundee II in that same period? The whole way through? Again, probably just once. How many times though have I thought about Crocodile Dundee II in the past six years? Oh that’s easy. Once. Once every day.
And the thought it always this: Crocodile Dundee II is one of the most gorgeous looking films ever made, and nobody talks about this.
And I’m not going to either. Not yet, anyway.
First, we have to talk about Crocodile Dundee II as a thing, a sequel that financially made all the sense in the world yet, for me at least, has become a movie monolith – inexplicable.
For those of you who did not grow up in fashion’s worst decade, 1988’s Crocodile Dundee II (even the Roman numerals are off, a film like this usually carries a big fat ‘2’) is the sequel to 1986’s Crocodile Dundee.
Croc Dun One, as no one but me just then called it, was a riot, a fish-out-of-water tale that turned into a whale, grossing more than $300m worldwide and getting outperformed in the US by only one other film: Top Gun. Where’s the sequel for that one, huh?
Audiences were so taken by the adventures of Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) in New York that he was back on the big screen within two years in the inevitable sequel. Crocodile Dundee II was The Way of Water of its day – it took in a tonne of money ($230m) then everyone tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
But thank goodness it does, because it looks phenomenal.
The eight-year-old me saw it in the appropriately opulent surroundings of the Grand Opera House in Belfast, on a day trip with our town youth club summer scheme, and while I loved the clothes-switch ending, which has always stayed with me, I quickly forgot about Mick and his adventure in the outback (unlike the original, most of Crocodile Dundee II takes place Down Under).
But then something happened.
I caught Croc 2 a few years back on TV, and it’s been doing the rounds of Film4 or ITV4 ever since. Like Jaws or Predator or that dire third Taken movie, it’s never not on television.
Crocodile Dundee II is far from a masterpiece – it’s kind of the original but in reverse order, and with a needless drug cartel/kidnap plot tacked on – but my obsession with it stems from just how damned fine it looks.
I’ve never classed myself as one of those ‘Oh, the cinematography was masterful!’ buffs, because deep down every wannabe film critic accepts they don’t know the first thing about cinematography. But even my untrained eye is always opened by the popping vistas and bright colours of Crocodile Dundee II. No cash cow sequel should look this wonderful.
The man largely responsible for that look is Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd, and everything starts to make sense after a quick glance through his CV.
He also shot the first Crocodile Dundee movie, but the budget almost doubled for the sequel, and frankly, it looks like a good chunk of that money was wisely thrown at the screen.
Boyd may not be the best known cinematographer – he’s not a superstar name like Roger Deakins or Emmanuel Lubezki – but he’s had a hand in crafting some of the best – and best looking – movies across five decades.
Most of these were done in collaboration with one of my favourite directors, Peter Weir, on beautiful works of art such as 1975’s Picnic At Hanging Rock, the closest thing to an Impressionist painting come to life, and 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, for which he won a deserved Oscar.
Boyd was also behind the camera on two of the greatest sports movies of the 1990s, White Men Can’t Jump and Tin Cup, both directed by Ron Shelton.
And you know what? I’d put flipping Crocodile Dundee II up there with any of them in the visual feast stakes.
Ignore the film’s 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – and while you’re at, ignore Rotten Tomatoes altogether, it’s a pointless site – Crocodile Dundee II is a glorious piece of cinema eye candy.
Happy 35th birthday, CDII…
Ross v Ross 
I need to talk about the 1990 Gene Hackman film Narrow Margin
Posted in COMMENT with tags Film, Gene Hackman, Movies on August 29, 2023 by Ross McGAnyone turned on the TV lately?
It’s bloody awful out there, isn’t it? Critics who drone on about how we live in the golden age of television clearly haven’t switched one on in the last ten years or so.
I’m not talking about the endless options on streaming – which, lately, is its own problem – but the daily shovelling of crud you are fed if you are unlucky or, like me, stupid enough to try to find something to watch on terrestrial telly.
I was in Ireland earlier this month, where, secret payment scandals aside, viewers are lucky enough to have good old RTE. For those of you reading this in the UK, RTE is like BBC, only useful, and not totally beholden to the endless ream of sewing, repairing and masterchefing shite that is served up nightly.
This is because RTE has discovered that there are these things called… ‘films’. And that people might want to watch them during primetime hours in the middle of the week. And don’t get me started on Film4… showing Taken 3 once every fortnight does not make you a movie channel.
Either RTE1 or RTE2 had a film on every night when I was there, so I lapped up In The Name Of The Father for the first time in years (still brilliant, especially that moment when the late great Sinead O’Connor’s track kicks in), Official Secrets (am I the only one who loves Keira Knightley? Go watch The Duchess or Never Let Me Go if you still need convincing) and a wonderful little Irish movie called Herself, about a woman who builds a house in her elderly friend’s back garden (it sounds terrible but it’s actually great).
While Irish TV is a haven for movie lovers who like to stumble on to their film fare rather than scroll through Netflix for longer than it takes to watch what they eventually choose, in the UK it’s slim pickings on the old Freeview.
But then, out of the blue, on an August bank holiday Monday night, strides Gene fecking Hackman, on a little channel up in the number 30s or 40s called Legend. Now, I dunno what the hell Legend is, but I know I will be coming back to it.
That’s because it was showing a Gene Hackman movie at the blissfully ordinary time of 9pm.
The film in question was Narrow Margin, a 1990 thriller in which Hackman plays an assistant district attorney forced to chaperone a witness to a mob murder to safety on board a train hurtling through Canada. It’s like Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, but, you know, a real film.
As a bonus, it was also a Hackman film I had never heard of. That may be something to do with its lousy box office and middling, but fairly accurate, 6.6/10 rating on IMDb.
But who cares?! It has everyone in it – there’s Anne Archer, perhaps unfairly best known as the wife in Fatal Attraction and Patriot Games; there’s Harris Yulin, whose role here is a neat precursor to his memorable turn in the Frasier episode, A Word To The Wiseguy; there’s the late JT Walsh, the original ‘Hey! It’s that guy!’, who played memorable slimeballs in everything from Red Rock West (man, I need to watch Red Rock West again) to Breakdown and The Negotiator; and there’s M Emmet Walsh, who is simply in every great film ever made.
Narrow Margin is also the only film that has both JT Walsh and M Emmet Walsh, so, I mean, come on.
I won’t give away any of the plot – not that there’s much of one – but there is some brilliant in-camera action that still holds up three decades later.
Technically a remake of the 1952 movie The Narrow Margin, which writer/cinematographer/director Peter Hyams caught on TV late one night (wonder if he was watching RTE?), the 1990 version has some fighting stunt work that I genuinely preferred over the much-lauded, but, in my opinion, strangely flat, top-of-train sequence we got recently in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
On a side note, I did want to write here about the sadly disappointing time I had with Mission: Impossible 7, but I have a feeling I may be kinder to it on a repeat viewing.
I had known Hyams mainly as the director of the one good Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Timecop, and the very underrated Arnie v Gabriel Byrne’s devil flick, End Of Days, and Narrow Margin showcases his great flair for action.
And yet the film’s more quiet moments are the most memorable, as in almost all of the interaction between Hackman’s surly deputy DA and Archer’s tough publishing editor, as they inexplicably avoid the cardboard cutout bad guys while on the train, and in the wonderful opening blind date scene between Archer and JT Walsh, which pulls you right into the movie from the off.
It’s Hackman’s film, however, and he obviously enjoyed playing a lawyer, as he stayed in court for 1991’s Class Action (damn, when is that going to be on TV?) and 1993’s Cruise missile The Firm.
Narrow Margin definitely belongs up there in the pantheon of two-worded Gene Hackman films whose titles mean almost less than nothing, along with Under Fire, Uncommon Valor, Split Decisions, Extreme Measures, Absolute Power and Under Suspicion.
So if you are lucky enough to have Legend on your telly box, keep an eye on the TV timetable for when this train pulls back into the station.
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