Babel: A Review
Last
weekend the movie theater at the student union showed the movie Babel
free of charge to all who presented student identification. My friend
Drew called and asked if I wanted to attend the showing, and as I
hadn’t seen it but had heard many positive reviews (namely,
that
it had won for best drama at the Golden Gloves over the one of the best
movies I have ever seen, The Departed), I agreed. Though the movie did
not win at last night’s Academy Awards, it continues to
garner
immense praise and skyrocketing DVD sales, and as such I would like to
offer my own opinion of the movie.
But before
I declare my final
verdict, one must know the history behind making the film. To complete
his trilogy of fated death, Director Alejandro González
Iñárritu decided to part ways with the
traditional
methods of filmmaking, and instead, in an act of utter unprecedense,
defecated into thousands of film canisters and distributed them to
theaters nationwide.
And as much
reflects onscreen. Babel is a giant turd.
The movie
is comprised of four
barely-connected plots (murderous and incestuous Moroccans, drunk
Mexicans, whiny Brits smoking opium, and psychotic sex-driven Japanese
school girls) that attempt to reveal something about something. What
either of those somethings are is beyond anyone. Babel attempts to
instill a sense of morality with tragic imagery and serious subject
matter, but provides nothing in the form of commentary or actual
character development. After what seemed like seven hours of movie, my
friend Drew expertly summarized Babel by saying, “It feels
like
it’s about something, but I have no idea what.”
But as with
most movies, any reader
can find plenty of negative reviews, so I will no longer subject my
readers to what amounts to nothing more than whiny babble. I will
instead go beyond the casual review and propose a fail-proof outline
for a sequel.
Babel II:
Pitt’s Revenge will
be the greatest movie of the generation and will define cinema for
centuries to come. Following is a brief summation of the sure-fire
Academy Award winning script.
After an
opening montage of various
explosions and car chases with graphical overlays of the
actor’s
names, the movie cuts to a shot of Brad Pitt sitting by his wife Cate
Blanchett’s bedside, still hospitalized from the bullet wound
inflicted in the first movie. Though doctors initially believed she
would recover relatively easily from the shoulder wound, they soon
discovered that the bullet used by the Moroccan child was indeed laced
with Solanum, better known as the virus responsible for the
transformation of healthy humans into zombies.
After
succumbing to an intense
fever and eventual coma, the doctors pronounce her dead while a
bereaved Pitt wails at the ceiling camera, “No! Take me
instead!” A single tear falls from his eye as the nurse
(played
by Jenna Jameson) lifts the bed sheet over her head. As Pitt exists the
room, he looks back at his wife one last time, and freezes. Did she
just twitch? “Impossible!” he thinks. He calls the
nurse
and she consoles him with obvious sexual connotations, saying it was
only his imagination. But then the body twitches yet again. A
flabbergasted Pitt stands frozen in place as the nurse rushes over,
removes the sheet, and reveals a fully alert Cate Blanchett. As nurse
Jenna calls the doctor, Cate Blanchett rises from her bed and devours
Jenna’s face. Doctors rush in and are bit as well as they
struggle to subdue the undead Cate Blanchett. After calling multiple
security guards (including Ving Rhames and Gary Coleman) to shackle
Cate Blanchett to the bed, doctors order all non-medical personnel from
the room, sending a mortified Pitt home to contemplate his life.
The next day Pitt returns to
check the status
of his wife, but quickly finds the hospital overrun by zombies. Without
hesitations, Pitt draws a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand and fully
automatic AK-47 in the other, laying waste to the undead hordes with
astonishing efficiency.
Pitt is
then called via the
“Pitt-signal” by a frustrated President of the
United
States (played by Mufasa from the Lion King). Mufasa explains that
everyone in the CIA is too terrified to locate and eliminate the source
of the zombie virus, so he calls on Pitt to travel to Morocco, locate
the child who shot his wife, and determine the extent to which the
virus exists. Pitt complies and disappears into the night.
In Morocco,
Pitt infiltrates the
prison in which the child is being held, dispatching guard after guard
with Steven Segal neck twists and Ralph Macchio crane kicks. Pitt
interrogates the child Jack Bauer-style (increasing levels of torture
and yelling the same question over and over), who reveals that it was
in fact Osama Bin Laden who supplied the child with the zombie-bullets.
A
steely-eyed Pitt then tracks down Bin Laden in his underground cave
layer in Afghanistan (think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom),
recklessly charges in, punches out multiple terrorist guards but is
eventually wrestled to the ground by forty-three of Bin
Laden’s henchmen. Bin Laden, impressed that Pitt had gotten
so far, reveals his plan to kill America, that Pitt’s wife
was just the test case before Bin Laden unleashes a full on zombie
assault on the United States, then orders Pitt be turned into a zombie.
Pitt then
challenges Bin Laden’s testicular fortitude, saying that a
real man would fight him in hand to hand combat. Bin Laden complies
with a smile on his face, but instead orders his seven-foot three-inch,
three-hundred and forty-seven pound bodyguard (played by Alex
Rodriguez, made to look taller with cinematic trickery) to box Pitt in
an underground boxing ring, and allows Pitt one month to train [cut to
training montage].
The day of
the fight arrives. Thousands of terrorists from around the globe fill
the stands of the cave-arena, cheering for the gigantic bodyguard
terrorist in a symbolic fight against America. In the pre-fight
stare-down, Pitt stares A-Rod down without fear and with absolute
resolve says, “I want you to hit me as hard as you
can.” A-Rod blinks.
In the
ring, thanks to the tried and true defensive tactic known as
“getting your face punched in repeatedly while keeping your
hands at your sides in an attempt to tire your opponent,”
Pitt is roughed up in the first four rounds, suffering massive cuts,
swelling, and multiple broken ribs. The crowd roars with each Pitt
knockdown. By the eleventh round, Pitt is utterly overwhelmed, lying
face down on the mat for the seventeenth time. As the referee counts,
Pitt thinks back to his life as a child [flashback sequence of Babe
Ruth coming out of Pitt’s closet in a dream and telling him
that heroes get remembered, but legends never die].
With fresh
zeal Pitt climbs back up with only one second to spare on the knockout
countdown. A-Rod, sensing sure victory, charges in with fists raised
and flared nostrils. The bodyguard swings a wild right, but Pitt slips
under and hits A-Rod, slicing open his cheek. The announcer screams,
“He’s cut! The terrorist is cut!” as the
momentum shifts and Pitt nails A-Rod with a barrage of wild hooks and
uppercuts. Pitt hangs in with the overpowering bodyguard for several
rounds, even winning over cheers a few of the terrorists in the
audience. By the twenty-ninth round (traditional Afghani boxing matches
last thirty rounds), the crowd of terrorists has become decidedly
pro-Pitt, and Pitt does not disappoint with an improbably knockout of
the nefarious A-Rod.
After the
fight, draped in the American flag and with thousands of reformed
terrorists cheering him and America, Pitt makes a speech examining the
pointlessness of war and endless fighting. His closing of,
“If I can change, and you can change...everybody can
change!” is met by a standing ovation from all, even bringing
a applauding Osama to his feet.
And just
when the noise from the crowd reaches a fever pitch, Pitt grabs a
flagpole bearing the American flag and hurls it like a javelin at
Osama, piercing him in the heart and causing him to death-fall face
first onto the ground with the American Flag proudly flying from his
back. Pitt then hops into a mine cart and careens for the exit as he
detonates a pre-installed explosive in the cave, ridding the world of
terror, his mine cart emerging from the tunnel just ahead of the
flames. Pitt dusts himself off, turns back to the cave, and calmly
says, “Who’s babeling now?” Roll credits.
Surely this
cinematic masterpiece, upon release, will bring unprecedented praise
from all. Film goers will weep at its beauty, directors at its
brilliance, and actors that they could not partake. Billions of dollars
will be grossed world wide, single-handedly saving the movie industry.
The Academy Awards will be cancelled, instead awarding every Oscar to
Babel II: Pitt’s Revenge. And the films anti-terror message
will be felt worldwide as an apologetic Osama surrenders to the
authorities, ending terrorism once and for all.
