Joe Carnahan's "Narc" has the intensity of a landmine sandwich. And it tastes good.
Regardless of the entrée though — an "Iron Chef"-winning meal or the aforementioned explosive sandwich — minor subtleties can ruin meals. Whether it be a fly in the soup, undercooked vegetables or a hair in the Peking duck, edible treats can go from palatable bliss to dog scraps quicker than a movie slices onto a screen (24 frames per second).
"Narc" was awesome — wicked yet sweet, vulgar yet passionate, urban yet refined. It was nearly perfect… except for some dope projectionist's unforgivable malice with a film's eternal master — the theater projector.
To make a long story short, the projectionist forgot to change the lens.
Each movie is shot differently. Different lenses and films create different rules for theater booths. There are flat movie prints, which require one lens, and then there are scope prints, which require a different lens. Mixing them up is like putting diesel gasoline in your Jetta — it won't work.
There are other kinds of prints, but movie houses have adopted these forms over the years, due to their simplicity no doubt. Yet, each and every time a movie is revved up for audience consumption, a projectionist about as qualified as airport security or a Walgreens photo tech steps behind the controls to dictate to us the worst case scenarios a movie print can go through. There's bad film splicing, bad framing, bad focusing, bad sound, bad lens changing, bad, bad, bad, bad.
A projector is probably one of the easier machines on this planet to run. It's right up there with the can opener, forklift and the bowling alley's reset button. It's a simple machine, one that relies on systems so ancient that the Egyptians found them tedious and probably "behind the times" when they were building the pyramids.
Modern projectors are really based on motors that pull film with clinking wheels and mashing sprockets, a high-intensity light bulb and let's not forget the caveman delights and pirate necessities (wheels and pulleys, respectively).
All "Narc" (which opens in Arizona in early 2003) needed was a simple exchange, one lens for another. But no. That's too easy for a movie crony to pull off. By the way, the guilty party was a Harkins team member.
Not that every frame should be composed, framed, focused and lit like an Ansel Adams landscape, but it should at least be coherent. The Valley's biggest theater chains, Harkins and AMC theaters, knowingly or not, can't play movies the way directors intended. During a press screening last week at an AMC cinema of film destruction, "The Ring" was screened two sprocket holes out of frame. Each frame consists of four holes, so in AMC's defense, they were only 50 percent off.
If that's a press screening, one that media and film reviews will be written around, common moviegoers are in trouble. Rumor has it that in certain Harkins theaters, they don't even turn the projector on. They ask you to imagine how good the film would be. And it costs about $40 a person. Unless you're a student, in which case it's $37. It's nice to know my university enrollment is good for something.
Passengers on a plane wouldn't stand for this. If the captain was baked like Snoop Dogg and buzzing farm animals upside down in a 737, you could bet your soiled shorts that someone would complain.
Medical patients put up with this. If the doctor demanded crotch examinations for earaches, he'd get complaints.
Parents of kindergarten-aged children wouldn't stand for it. When their kiddies came home slangin' street talk and rollin' fatties, there'd be some complaining.
And you can bet all of these problems would get fixed.
Yet, when a movie screen goes sour with the flagrant violation of film standards, complaints are given but never heeded.
The worst part about this whole thing is that the only movies that look exquisite in movie theaters are the ones that really stink. Call it twisted irony, but "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is screened with shimmering beauty. Colors are crisp and exact, focus is sharp and piercing, framing is flawless. Every time, you see anything that anyone would ever think to rave about — the "Vertigos," "Godfathers" and "Raging Bulls" of cinema — that's when the projectionist is practicing proctology with his thumb and neglecting the careful responsibilities his job entails.
Harkins and AMC, shame on you. Shame on you for hiring and utilizing projectionists that couldn't reel up a tiny tadpole, not to mention a "Narc" or a "Dr. Strangelove" or a "Pulp Fiction."
Shame on you for not caring enough about cinema to actually show it correctly.
Michael Clawson is a journalism junior and can be reached at michael.clawson@asu.edu.
