20th Century Schizoid Men

Just by coincidence, last weekend we managed to program three movies about men suffering from symptoms of PTSD. Let me tell you about two from the end of the last century - I’ll save the one from mid-century for separate post.

Gun Shy (2000) stars Liam Neeson. We meet him in an airport restroom, having a freak out. He’s trying to get out of undercover job - he was rumbled during the last meeting, stripped naked and laid on a bed of watermelon with a gun to his head. A DEA team got him out, and killed everyone who could talk, but he isn’t ready to go back into the lion’s den. He has disasterous psychosomatic digestion problems and just wants to retire. But his boss talks him into getting on the plane.

There he meets a psychiatrist, who convinces him to seek help, so he starts going to group therapy. He also goes to a doctor for his stomach and meets Sandra Bullock, who gives him an enema and tries to get him to try alternative therapy.

Meanwhile, he is in the middle of a deal between the Colombians and the Mafia (Oliver Platt). These guys are serious, but the money man, Andrew Lauer, keeps trying to ply them with women and champagne. But maybe they are trying to cut out the booze, and they actually respect women. And the Colombians don’t want to seem like stereotypes.

There’s a lot of fun, sharp writing in this - it has a Shane Black feel. The writer, Eric Blakeney, who also directs, seems to have mainly done TV. He did a lot of Moonlighting, which kind of makes sense.

Sadly, Bullock is very under used - she is barely a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But she does give Neeson the confidence he needs to get back in the game.

Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) doesn’t have an exciting job like Neeson. He works in a disgusting anal probe factory. He has a depressing office, a horrible boss (Dan Hedaya), and a vague set of psychosomatic ailments. He goes to the company doctor and discovers the horrible truth: his symptoms are psychosomatic, probably due to his previous high-stress firefighting job. But he actually has a symptomless brain disease which will kill him in weeks. So he quits his job, invites the secretary to dinner, and gets ready to die.

His new devil-may-care attitude fascinates the secretary (Meg Ryan), but when she finds out what’s up, she can’t take it, and dumps him. Then a mysterious millionaire (Lloyd Bridges) shows up: His company needs a mineral only found on an isolated Pacific Island. The natives, descendants of an ancient Roman expedition and their Jewish and Celtic passengers, need to sacrifice someone to the volcano. Hanks is going to die anyway, so Bridges offers him a large sum of money to take the leap.

So Hanks goes on a shopping spree, buying everything he can think of, and four waterproof steamer trunks to put it in. He meets with Bridges daughter, the kinky, freaky Meg Ryan again. She is also intrigued by Hanks until she finds out he has a fatal illness and splits, delivering him to her half sister, Meg Ryan again, who will be sailing Hanks to the island in the family yacht.

The yacht is struck by lightning and sinks, but Hanks and Ryan survive - the steamer trunks float and serve as a raft. Hanks gives the unconscious Ryan sips of Pelligrino from the bar in the trunk, until he succombs to the sun and thirst. When he wakes up, Ryan has revived and is touched by his sacrifice. And together they watch the moon rise over the wide Pacific.

They get to the island and meet chief Abe Vigoda and his right-hand man Nathan Lane. Now he must make the ultimate sacrifice, although he may have met the love of his life. The ending is unbelievable and fantastic, in the literal sense. But a lot of fun.

I thought it interesting that men’s emotional pain was such a big seller at this time, but the next post will show that it isn’t particular to the end of the century.