i saw a movie and boy did it suck

I checked out two movies from the library this weekend that were filmed in Portland: Drugstore Cowboy and The Hunted. I haven't watched Drugstore Cowboy yet b/c I'm saving the good one for last. I'd heard The Hunted was really bad, but they were filming it when I first came to town I've wanted to see it ever since.

Oh sweet jesus did it suck. It was really bad. But thoroughly entertaining due to all the Portlandia and also due to the crazy inconsistencies. I really wish I'd been watching it with someone who could have appreciated all my exclamations and gesticulations as I laughed my ass off at the folly of it all. Here are some of my favorites:

(If you're not a Portlander, you might not enjoy this part very much...)

1.) Portland is a big town or a small city, it is not a bustling urban metropolis. There's a great scene in The Hunted in which Benecio del Toro has once again slipped away from the array of law enforcement officers who are chasing him. In this scene, he climbs up out of a manhole in the middle of a downtown street and then disappears into a crowd -- a CROWD -- walking quickly down the sidewalk a'la midtown Manhattan. Whence this crowd? Since when are downtown Portland sidewalks awash in pedestrians? This isn't New York, you'd be hard pressed to walk down a sidewalk here with ten other people on your block, much less the thronging masses into which Benecio del Toro slipped unnoticed in this scene. They must have paid a LOT of extras for that shot...

2.) In keeping with the 'urban jungle' atmosphere the filmmakers were shooting for, I noticed that every single downtown scene featured copious wafts of steam billowing up out from the streets. Whence all that steam?? I have never once in all my six years of living here ever seen steam pouring out of the streets into the air. I guess the steam made the scenes all look grittier.

3.) Kudos to the filmmakers for actually using our local news station KOIN 6 and their real anchorman Jeff Gianola in the scene where del Toro has wrecked the van and escaped. Unless I'm blind and crazy, that guy in the movie is the real Jeff Gianola, whose name appears soon after on the side of the MAX train that will make up the rest of my complaints about this ridiculous movie.

4.) Ok, the MAX train. Let me count the ways they misused the MAX train in this movie. A.) The MAX crosses the Willamette river over the Steel Bridge, yet they call it the Hawthorne Bridge in the movie. I guess "Steel Bridge" didn't have the same ring... B.) In the movie, the MAX appears to be barrelling across the bridge at breakneck speeds when those of us who've ridden the MAX know that it barely hits five miles an hour on the bridge. It's SLOW. C.) The part of the MAX that extends from the roof and touches the cables, in order to maintain power, etc, is shown in the movie to be CONSTANTLY GIVING OFF A CASCADE OF ELECTRICAL SPARKS! As if the MAX is really just this traveling pyrotechnic show, all the time shooting fire off its roof. Give me a break. D.) All the bullshit climbing onto, breaking into, fighting on and chasing through the MAX that occurs as the train crosses the bridge takes FOREVER when it generally only takes the MAX about a minute, tops, to cross the river. E.) There are cops blocking the exit of the bridge, pointing their guns at the MAX, demanding it stop. AND IT DOES! ON A DIME! And we all know, as the signs inside the MAX warn us, it takes the MAX a full three blocks to come to a complete stop. YOU CAN'T JUST THROW SOME COPS IN FRONT OF THE MAX TO STOP IT!

Ok, that's all I'm going to say. It was ridiculous but I'm glad I saw it. I was excited to see Mary's Club (a notoriously tacky strip club downtown) in one shot and I was extremely excited to see my little workplace, The Oasis, in another scene. It was worth it all just to laugh so hard and see my sweet little city in a movie.

But if you're not from Portland, you should avoid this movie like the plague. It sucked.