At the beginning of the film Michael Moriarty, a correspondent in Vietnam, is writing a letter to his wife (Tuesday Weld), describing how the elephants are thought to be used as pack animals for the VC, so US choppers have been ordered to chase them and destroy them. "You see," he writes, "in a word where flying men pursue elephants, people just naturally have to get high." That's a pretty good line, and it's not the only one in this fairly literate dialog.
Moriarty obliges Nick Nolte, a friend from their Marine Corps days, to smuggle five pounds of heroin back into the states for him. Everything is all set up. Well, it's not. A crooked narcotics agent (Zerbe) and a couple of his goons barge in and try to rip off the smack. Nolte escapes with Weld. The heavies capture Moriarty and demand to know where Nolte and Weld have taken this fortune's worth of heroin, but he has no idea. They beat hell out of him, shoot him full of drugs, force him back on a red hot stove burner, and dunk him in a bathtub, but it's no use. (Man, does Moriarty do a great job of registering horror and pain.) There follows a cross-country pursuit, from Oakland to Los Angeles to a barren mountain in New Mexico, site of a long-deserted hippie commune and fair grounds. That's where the final shootout takes place, with Nolte and Weld on the mountain and Zerbe, his goons, and the captive Moriarty down below.
If this sounds a little confusing it's because I found the story itself a little confusing. At critical points in the story, cause and effect seem to evaporate. I'll just give one example. Nolte and Weld in their Land Rover or whatever it is race across the Southwest with their stash and an M16. Weld asks where they are going. Nolte tells her that they're headed for this isolated hideaway in the great beyond of the New Mexico hills, El Ojo Grande. For all purposes, he seems to have improvised their destination on the spot. And yet, after leaving the highway and crawling up a dirt road and driving through dry washes, they finally pull up at their destination, one of Zerbe's spies is watching them through binoculars and through his radio tells Zerbe, "They're here." I don't know, either.
Throughout, the film follows the general idea layed out by Moriarty in his letter. Culture ("flying men") destroy Nature ("elephants"). And narcotics are the by-product of this conflict. The cities we see are smoggy industrial Oakland and a Los Angeles in which rich people are ridiculed as stupid before being victimized for no reason. Zerbe, the government man representing civilization, is corrupt and treacherous. There are one or two references to Nietzsche, the relevance of which eluded me, but I guess philosophy is culture too, even if its boiled down to a crib sheet. "When he encounters danger the man of courage goes forward." You don't have to read Nietzsche to get the idea. You don't have to get past Hemingway in high school. Nolte, basically a natural man, could easily hand over the dope but he won't do it -- out of pride. "I swore I was never again going to let myself be ordered around by morons." That's his justification for endangering everyone's lives. Culture is despicable.
Nolte is only really happy after he reaches the faded hippy hideout, an unspoiled paradise now, full of joyous memories for him. He plays Hank Snow's "Golden Rocket" and does an impromptu square dance with Weld on the delapidated bandstand. His friend, a kind of caretaker of the place who lives in a tiny abandoned mission, is a Mexican and a gardener and a caring avuncular figure. How natural can you get? Can you beat a Mexican gardener? Well, I guess you could, but at least we are spared the stereotypical Indian communing with the spirits and exercising second sight.
Villains aside, the characters are pretty complex, not to say unformed. Nolte's role is the easiest -- the he-man who knows his business and is hard. Weld is required to change from a blithering housewife who works in a Berkeley bookstore to a drugged-out frightened escapee from the bourgeois life who falls for Nolte and begins to share his dreams of owning a boat in Mexico. ("But who will be on the boat?", she asks him dreamily. "Where will the boat go? It must be some boat.") The most complex character -- and the best performance -- is Moriarty's. He's a genuine philosopher. He commits an existential act at the beginning and follows its consequences through all the way. Whenever he's asked a question of any intricacy, his answer is, "I don't know," said simply, the way a child might say it in a second-grade class. He's bony and balding, his face innocent and a bit bewildered, and he feels real pain -- but he faces threats with a gangling carelessness. A gun is put to his head and he's ordered to get down on his knees and pray. Instead he walks away and sits down carelessly. The performance is just short of marvelous.
I'm not sure I've got a grasp around the whole movie. I'm not sure anyone does. It's vague enough to be interpreted a dozen different ways and sometimes seems meandering. But what's on screen is directed well by Karel Reisz, my director in "Weeds," and if we can ignore the holes in the script it's an enjoyable and tense story. But do not look for a standard-typical action flick, with people's heads getting regularly wrenched off by some Lyngbakr with an attitude. It's more than that.
Moriarty obliges Nick Nolte, a friend from their Marine Corps days, to smuggle five pounds of heroin back into the states for him. Everything is all set up. Well, it's not. A crooked narcotics agent (Zerbe) and a couple of his goons barge in and try to rip off the smack. Nolte escapes with Weld. The heavies capture Moriarty and demand to know where Nolte and Weld have taken this fortune's worth of heroin, but he has no idea. They beat hell out of him, shoot him full of drugs, force him back on a red hot stove burner, and dunk him in a bathtub, but it's no use. (Man, does Moriarty do a great job of registering horror and pain.) There follows a cross-country pursuit, from Oakland to Los Angeles to a barren mountain in New Mexico, site of a long-deserted hippie commune and fair grounds. That's where the final shootout takes place, with Nolte and Weld on the mountain and Zerbe, his goons, and the captive Moriarty down below.
If this sounds a little confusing it's because I found the story itself a little confusing. At critical points in the story, cause and effect seem to evaporate. I'll just give one example. Nolte and Weld in their Land Rover or whatever it is race across the Southwest with their stash and an M16. Weld asks where they are going. Nolte tells her that they're headed for this isolated hideaway in the great beyond of the New Mexico hills, El Ojo Grande. For all purposes, he seems to have improvised their destination on the spot. And yet, after leaving the highway and crawling up a dirt road and driving through dry washes, they finally pull up at their destination, one of Zerbe's spies is watching them through binoculars and through his radio tells Zerbe, "They're here." I don't know, either.
Throughout, the film follows the general idea layed out by Moriarty in his letter. Culture ("flying men") destroy Nature ("elephants"). And narcotics are the by-product of this conflict. The cities we see are smoggy industrial Oakland and a Los Angeles in which rich people are ridiculed as stupid before being victimized for no reason. Zerbe, the government man representing civilization, is corrupt and treacherous. There are one or two references to Nietzsche, the relevance of which eluded me, but I guess philosophy is culture too, even if its boiled down to a crib sheet. "When he encounters danger the man of courage goes forward." You don't have to read Nietzsche to get the idea. You don't have to get past Hemingway in high school. Nolte, basically a natural man, could easily hand over the dope but he won't do it -- out of pride. "I swore I was never again going to let myself be ordered around by morons." That's his justification for endangering everyone's lives. Culture is despicable.
Nolte is only really happy after he reaches the faded hippy hideout, an unspoiled paradise now, full of joyous memories for him. He plays Hank Snow's "Golden Rocket" and does an impromptu square dance with Weld on the delapidated bandstand. His friend, a kind of caretaker of the place who lives in a tiny abandoned mission, is a Mexican and a gardener and a caring avuncular figure. How natural can you get? Can you beat a Mexican gardener? Well, I guess you could, but at least we are spared the stereotypical Indian communing with the spirits and exercising second sight.
Villains aside, the characters are pretty complex, not to say unformed. Nolte's role is the easiest -- the he-man who knows his business and is hard. Weld is required to change from a blithering housewife who works in a Berkeley bookstore to a drugged-out frightened escapee from the bourgeois life who falls for Nolte and begins to share his dreams of owning a boat in Mexico. ("But who will be on the boat?", she asks him dreamily. "Where will the boat go? It must be some boat.") The most complex character -- and the best performance -- is Moriarty's. He's a genuine philosopher. He commits an existential act at the beginning and follows its consequences through all the way. Whenever he's asked a question of any intricacy, his answer is, "I don't know," said simply, the way a child might say it in a second-grade class. He's bony and balding, his face innocent and a bit bewildered, and he feels real pain -- but he faces threats with a gangling carelessness. A gun is put to his head and he's ordered to get down on his knees and pray. Instead he walks away and sits down carelessly. The performance is just short of marvelous.
I'm not sure I've got a grasp around the whole movie. I'm not sure anyone does. It's vague enough to be interpreted a dozen different ways and sometimes seems meandering. But what's on screen is directed well by Karel Reisz, my director in "Weeds," and if we can ignore the holes in the script it's an enjoyable and tense story. But do not look for a standard-typical action flick, with people's heads getting regularly wrenched off by some Lyngbakr with an attitude. It's more than that.