Post by Fireflyfanuk on Jan 6, 2005 13:46:56 GMT -5
*** This writeup contains a full synopsis with spoilers! ***
TITLE: My Bodyguard
YEAR: 1980
CHARACTER: Ricky Linderman
REVIEWED BY: Holly Q
"My Bodyguard" is my all-time favorite film. Adam Baldwin, a teenager at the time, was discovered in the search for the perfect Ricky Linderman, the gigantic, misunderstood kid who elicits terror in even the toughest high school bullies.
Before you even see Linderman, you hear the rumors, the most prominent being that he'd actually committed a murder and gotten away with it. Clifford (who is also played perfectly by Chris Makepeace) is the new kid and protagonist, and he doesn't buy it. Clifford is a likable, dorky kid who, on his first day at a new school, makes the mistake of making a wisecrack about bully Moody (Matt Dillon, who never met a tough kid part he couldn't play, in his second role, following the controversial “Over The Edge”). Clifford quickly finds himself at the top of Moody's (s)hit list.
Moody and his buddies corner Clifford in a bathroom, explaining that they're the school's "bodyguards" (from themselves, of course, though they claim to keep kids safe from "psycho" Linderman) - for a fee. Clifford discovers the power Linderman unintentionally holds over the bullies by accident, when he scares them away after they realize that he's been in the boy's room with them, having a smoke unseen in one of the stalls. They really do seem to believe Linderman's psychotic, but it doesn't hurt that he's huge, absolutely towering over the other teenagers (the kids in the film are all real teenagers, too, in all their awkward glory).
The solution is clear: only one kid at school can "out-bodyguard" the "bodyguards," and it's Linderman. And Cliff, unlike every other kid at school, isn't scared of him.
The problem is, Linderman doesn't give a crap about any of it. He seems pretty OK with the fact that nobody ever talks to him. He doesn't get involved with high school dramatics and isn't looking for a friend. Cliff is stubborn; he knows Linderman is misunderstood, even as he hears increasingly horrific stories about him - at this point, Linderman is, supposedly, a cold-blooded murderer and teacher-rapist who even shot a cop ("look it up," one kid tells him, "it was in all the papers.") He's not getting anything from Linderman himself, so he turns to an English teacher they share. She agrees that it's best ignore the rumors, and tells him what she does know: that he had found the body of his younger brother after he had accidentally shot himself playing with his father's gun a year before, and never recovered from the trauma.
Clifford finally gets his wish when, after getting shoved into a locker after gym class by the bullies, Linderman, who happens to hear him struggling to get out, opens the door. He's met with a near hysteria, with Cliff challenging him with "You want your turn? [...] Go ahead, you big dumb sunovapregnant dog!" Now, people don't even say hi to Linderman. They avoid him like their life depends on it, and they certainly don't taunt him. For the first time in the film, Linderman cracks a smile. Operation My Bodyguard begins. Moody and his buddies get a taste of public humiliation, served up by Cliff, and when they find out that Linderman has his back, there's nothing they can do about it. Basking in the glory, Cliff plans for big changes at school, assuming he and Linderman are friends now. Linderman, as it turns out, has no intention of being Cliff's permanent bodyguard or friend. He informs Cliff that it was a one-time only thing, and leaves.
Cliff's stubbornness turns to near obsession, as he follows Linderman through the streets of Chicago. Linderman tries to get rid of him again, but finally breaks down, and an unusual and moving friendship begins. Clifford eventually wins over Linderman (who, at this point, we can refer to as Ricky), and we learn that, underneath that intimidating exterior is a nice, lonely kid, who spends most of his time trying to find the final cylinder to a motorcycle he's rebuilding himself. They spend hours wandering junkyards together, talking about their lives. By the time they find the cylinder, their own little Holy Grail, they've bonded. Cliff, so it seems, has broken through completely. In my opinion, the junkyard/motorcycle ride montage is one of the greatest things ever put on film.
Then things go bad. Moody, still furious over being humiliated by Cliff and Ricky, gets his own "bodyguard," an older bodybuilder with a mean streak named Mike. Mike isn't afraid of Ricky either, and when push comes to shove, Ricky won't fight back, even when Moody pushes his motorcycle, the symbol of his social breakthrough and friendship with Cliff, into the Lake. Ricky runs off, leaving a baffled Clifford behind.
Ricky's backslide comes to an apex when Cliff follows him into a subway station later that night, convinced that he has gone back to using the accidental death of his brother to as an excuse to shut himself off from people (it's important to note in this scene that Cliff is no stranger to personal tragedy himself; his mother had been killed in a car accident). "You walk around like a d**n ape, for nothing! ... over something you had absolutely nothing to do with!" he shouts. Cornered,
Ricky snaps. He grabs Cliff and pushes him against the wall, and drops a bombshell: "I didn't find [my brother]... I killed him! I shot him!"
It's a shocking moment. The viewer has gotten to know Ricky along with Cliff, and to think that the awful rumors may have actually been true is jarring. Then Ricky tells the wrenching story of how he was the one who was playing with the gun, and it went off when his brother tried to grab it out of his hands. He had lied and said he'd found him afterwards. "I let everyone down," he says, "that's just how I am." Then he disappears again, leaving Clifford, stunned but relieved that
it was still, in the end, a tragic accident.
Cliff is thrilled when, several days later in the park, he spots Ricky fishing out his bike (again, the symbol of their friendship). The reunion is subdued. Unfortunately, Moody and Mike happen to be nearby, and want to claim "Moody's" bike. Ricky acts like he's going to cave to Mike again, but he's changed, and this time he does fight back. Mike,
as it turns out, isn't much of a match for Ricky when he's riled up (especially when Ricky sees his own blood). Moody tries to help Mike out by jumping on Ricky's back, and Cliff does what he never thought he could: he pulls Moody down, and starts to fight him on his own. Ricky, catching his breath from whipping Mike's butt, notices the fight, and watches intently. Cliff is losing, but he doesn't intervene - he picks him up, gives him a few of tips, and tells him to get him. A few punches later, Cliff manages to get him in the nose and knock him down. "I think I actually broke his nose!" Cliff gasps. "You did do it," Ricky says, in a tone that says he never doubted for a second that he could win the fight. Cliff looks at Mike, who is still struggling to get up. "So did you." Our heroes, along with their oft-abused friends, head home victorious.
"My Bodyguard" has often been likened to a love story, and it is, really. Not in any sexual way, mind you, but the relationship between Cliff and Ricky is deep and emotional. It even follows the "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" template, but the point isn't that romantic love is all you need - it's that true friendship can have the biggest impact imaginable. When Ricky gets on that subway car after making his confession, all you want is for Cliff to get him back. When he does, and they walk off, teasing each other and laughing, it feels like everything is right with the world.
Another obvious observation is that this is a movie about the underdogs triumphing over the "elites." Certainly. But, unlike so many of these types of films, especially those centered around youth ("Revenge of the Nerds," "Better Off Dead," "The Goonies," etc.), it doesn't come off like a total fantasy. Cliff wins the fight, just barely, but when it comes down to it, tough talking Moody wasn't much of a fighter himself. They don't get the girls (there are female friends - a very young Joan Cusack and Jennifer Beals, but they're incidental, although Cusack's Shelly, especially, is a character you just can't help but root for). And, as fabulous as Napoleon Dynamite is, they don't need to be overly quirky to be endearing (the film isn't without it's quirkiness, though - Ruth Gordon adds some as Clifford's man-chasing grandmother).
As a teen-angst movie, you can't do any better. Unlike the stilted, "relate to me!" feel of John Hughes movies of the era, "My Bodyguard" is achingly honest. It's dark, but innocent at the same time, with a soaring score by Dave Grusel that also makes it stand out from the pack (using an instrumental score instead of a pop one was one of director Tony Bill's most monumentally successful choices, next to the casting). It does something most "teen" movies, even some of the good ones, only wish they could achieve: it moves you without seeming like it's really trying. Fantastic.
Performance: When I first saw "My Bodyguard," it was hard for me to imagine that Adam Baldwin wasn't really and truly Ricky Linderman. Every facet of Ricky - scary, lonely, tough, innocent, triumphant, broken, charming, frustrated, intense, flippant - seemed effortless, and still does to me, 25 years later. I won't say he's never matched this performance after more than two decades and dozens of films, but this, his first one, was where it was established that he is something special.
Rating:
/ 5
TITLE: My Bodyguard
YEAR: 1980
CHARACTER: Ricky Linderman
REVIEWED BY: Holly Q
"My Bodyguard" is my all-time favorite film. Adam Baldwin, a teenager at the time, was discovered in the search for the perfect Ricky Linderman, the gigantic, misunderstood kid who elicits terror in even the toughest high school bullies.
Before you even see Linderman, you hear the rumors, the most prominent being that he'd actually committed a murder and gotten away with it. Clifford (who is also played perfectly by Chris Makepeace) is the new kid and protagonist, and he doesn't buy it. Clifford is a likable, dorky kid who, on his first day at a new school, makes the mistake of making a wisecrack about bully Moody (Matt Dillon, who never met a tough kid part he couldn't play, in his second role, following the controversial “Over The Edge”). Clifford quickly finds himself at the top of Moody's (s)hit list.
Moody and his buddies corner Clifford in a bathroom, explaining that they're the school's "bodyguards" (from themselves, of course, though they claim to keep kids safe from "psycho" Linderman) - for a fee. Clifford discovers the power Linderman unintentionally holds over the bullies by accident, when he scares them away after they realize that he's been in the boy's room with them, having a smoke unseen in one of the stalls. They really do seem to believe Linderman's psychotic, but it doesn't hurt that he's huge, absolutely towering over the other teenagers (the kids in the film are all real teenagers, too, in all their awkward glory).
The solution is clear: only one kid at school can "out-bodyguard" the "bodyguards," and it's Linderman. And Cliff, unlike every other kid at school, isn't scared of him.
The problem is, Linderman doesn't give a crap about any of it. He seems pretty OK with the fact that nobody ever talks to him. He doesn't get involved with high school dramatics and isn't looking for a friend. Cliff is stubborn; he knows Linderman is misunderstood, even as he hears increasingly horrific stories about him - at this point, Linderman is, supposedly, a cold-blooded murderer and teacher-rapist who even shot a cop ("look it up," one kid tells him, "it was in all the papers.") He's not getting anything from Linderman himself, so he turns to an English teacher they share. She agrees that it's best ignore the rumors, and tells him what she does know: that he had found the body of his younger brother after he had accidentally shot himself playing with his father's gun a year before, and never recovered from the trauma.
Clifford finally gets his wish when, after getting shoved into a locker after gym class by the bullies, Linderman, who happens to hear him struggling to get out, opens the door. He's met with a near hysteria, with Cliff challenging him with "You want your turn? [...] Go ahead, you big dumb sunovapregnant dog!" Now, people don't even say hi to Linderman. They avoid him like their life depends on it, and they certainly don't taunt him. For the first time in the film, Linderman cracks a smile. Operation My Bodyguard begins. Moody and his buddies get a taste of public humiliation, served up by Cliff, and when they find out that Linderman has his back, there's nothing they can do about it. Basking in the glory, Cliff plans for big changes at school, assuming he and Linderman are friends now. Linderman, as it turns out, has no intention of being Cliff's permanent bodyguard or friend. He informs Cliff that it was a one-time only thing, and leaves.
Cliff's stubbornness turns to near obsession, as he follows Linderman through the streets of Chicago. Linderman tries to get rid of him again, but finally breaks down, and an unusual and moving friendship begins. Clifford eventually wins over Linderman (who, at this point, we can refer to as Ricky), and we learn that, underneath that intimidating exterior is a nice, lonely kid, who spends most of his time trying to find the final cylinder to a motorcycle he's rebuilding himself. They spend hours wandering junkyards together, talking about their lives. By the time they find the cylinder, their own little Holy Grail, they've bonded. Cliff, so it seems, has broken through completely. In my opinion, the junkyard/motorcycle ride montage is one of the greatest things ever put on film.
Then things go bad. Moody, still furious over being humiliated by Cliff and Ricky, gets his own "bodyguard," an older bodybuilder with a mean streak named Mike. Mike isn't afraid of Ricky either, and when push comes to shove, Ricky won't fight back, even when Moody pushes his motorcycle, the symbol of his social breakthrough and friendship with Cliff, into the Lake. Ricky runs off, leaving a baffled Clifford behind.
Ricky's backslide comes to an apex when Cliff follows him into a subway station later that night, convinced that he has gone back to using the accidental death of his brother to as an excuse to shut himself off from people (it's important to note in this scene that Cliff is no stranger to personal tragedy himself; his mother had been killed in a car accident). "You walk around like a d**n ape, for nothing! ... over something you had absolutely nothing to do with!" he shouts. Cornered,
Ricky snaps. He grabs Cliff and pushes him against the wall, and drops a bombshell: "I didn't find [my brother]... I killed him! I shot him!"
It's a shocking moment. The viewer has gotten to know Ricky along with Cliff, and to think that the awful rumors may have actually been true is jarring. Then Ricky tells the wrenching story of how he was the one who was playing with the gun, and it went off when his brother tried to grab it out of his hands. He had lied and said he'd found him afterwards. "I let everyone down," he says, "that's just how I am." Then he disappears again, leaving Clifford, stunned but relieved that
it was still, in the end, a tragic accident.
Cliff is thrilled when, several days later in the park, he spots Ricky fishing out his bike (again, the symbol of their friendship). The reunion is subdued. Unfortunately, Moody and Mike happen to be nearby, and want to claim "Moody's" bike. Ricky acts like he's going to cave to Mike again, but he's changed, and this time he does fight back. Mike,
as it turns out, isn't much of a match for Ricky when he's riled up (especially when Ricky sees his own blood). Moody tries to help Mike out by jumping on Ricky's back, and Cliff does what he never thought he could: he pulls Moody down, and starts to fight him on his own. Ricky, catching his breath from whipping Mike's butt, notices the fight, and watches intently. Cliff is losing, but he doesn't intervene - he picks him up, gives him a few of tips, and tells him to get him. A few punches later, Cliff manages to get him in the nose and knock him down. "I think I actually broke his nose!" Cliff gasps. "You did do it," Ricky says, in a tone that says he never doubted for a second that he could win the fight. Cliff looks at Mike, who is still struggling to get up. "So did you." Our heroes, along with their oft-abused friends, head home victorious.
"My Bodyguard" has often been likened to a love story, and it is, really. Not in any sexual way, mind you, but the relationship between Cliff and Ricky is deep and emotional. It even follows the "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" template, but the point isn't that romantic love is all you need - it's that true friendship can have the biggest impact imaginable. When Ricky gets on that subway car after making his confession, all you want is for Cliff to get him back. When he does, and they walk off, teasing each other and laughing, it feels like everything is right with the world.
Another obvious observation is that this is a movie about the underdogs triumphing over the "elites." Certainly. But, unlike so many of these types of films, especially those centered around youth ("Revenge of the Nerds," "Better Off Dead," "The Goonies," etc.), it doesn't come off like a total fantasy. Cliff wins the fight, just barely, but when it comes down to it, tough talking Moody wasn't much of a fighter himself. They don't get the girls (there are female friends - a very young Joan Cusack and Jennifer Beals, but they're incidental, although Cusack's Shelly, especially, is a character you just can't help but root for). And, as fabulous as Napoleon Dynamite is, they don't need to be overly quirky to be endearing (the film isn't without it's quirkiness, though - Ruth Gordon adds some as Clifford's man-chasing grandmother).
As a teen-angst movie, you can't do any better. Unlike the stilted, "relate to me!" feel of John Hughes movies of the era, "My Bodyguard" is achingly honest. It's dark, but innocent at the same time, with a soaring score by Dave Grusel that also makes it stand out from the pack (using an instrumental score instead of a pop one was one of director Tony Bill's most monumentally successful choices, next to the casting). It does something most "teen" movies, even some of the good ones, only wish they could achieve: it moves you without seeming like it's really trying. Fantastic.
Performance: When I first saw "My Bodyguard," it was hard for me to imagine that Adam Baldwin wasn't really and truly Ricky Linderman. Every facet of Ricky - scary, lonely, tough, innocent, triumphant, broken, charming, frustrated, intense, flippant - seemed effortless, and still does to me, 25 years later. I won't say he's never matched this performance after more than two decades and dozens of films, but this, his first one, was where it was established that he is something special.
Rating:
/ 5