Fighter, The (1994)

Posted on Jan 02, 2002 under Action-suspense, Western |

Directed by Isaac Florentine
Written by Isaac Florentine and Julian Stone
Starring
- Olivier Gruner
- Marc Singer
- Ashley Laurence
- R. Lee Ermey
- Michael Palance

There is absolutely no genre that has been worked to death to the degree that the Western has. It’s not enough that Americans have cranked them out for most of a century; other countries, most notably Italy, have also joined in. The vein has been mined out. Every possible story has been told. “Hey, I’ve got an idea for a Western where this guy –” “It’s been done.”

There have been a couple of enjoyable Westerns in the last decade or so — The Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead and Purgatory come immediately to mind — but they’ve been at least moderately successful precisely because they know that everything’s been done. Each of them plays off the fact that some tropes and devices are pounded deep into the psyche of the American viewer. Each is a paean, a tribute, to some facet or plot device that has gone from novelty to cliche to archetype. In other words, none of those three would have been successful without the long history of Westerns behind it.

**“I’m wearing sissy pants?? You’re wearing sissy pants!”**

The Fighter, on the other hand, behaves as if it thought that the hoary old cliches it trots out hadn’t been done time and time and time again.

Olivier Gruner, the poor man’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, is Joseph Charlegrand, a French soldier who had recently been fighting in Mexico directly after the American Civil War, now making his way through Texas. (Note: Having been raised in Canada, I’m a little shaky on my American history, so if anything here is grossly inaccurate, don’t expect me to point it out.) He has his horse shot of from under him by some ex-Confederate brigands, and treks on foot across the desert, accompanied only by his saddlebags and some flashbacks.

Said flashbacks are a little sketchy, but they consist of him fighting his friend Phillipe (credited only as “Takis”) in exhibit matches in front of other French soldiers and receiving a medal for it, and then Phillipe has his ass handed to him by the hulking, posturing, monocle-wearing German goon, Ziegfield Von Trotta (Marc Singer) — hoo boy, ain’t that just the meanest German name you ever did hear?

If only that were a melon instead of a cabbage, I’d have a joke right here.

When Joseph wakes up from a dead faint in the desert, he finds himself being trundled to the town of San Miguel by brother and sister Cain (Ian Ziering) and Mary Parker (Ashley Laurence, hubba hubba). San Miguel just happens to be gearing up for a “Tough Man Tournament” in a couple of days, for which Joseph just happens to have a broadsheet in his saddlebags.

Once in town, Joseph is about to be on his way, but as luck (and the machinations of the plot) would have it, Mary is pestered by young gun tough Mitchum (Michael Palance), and her brother’s attempts at protection prove ineffectual against his little posse. So Joseph steps back in and wipes the dusty street clean, thanks to his fancy savate footwork. (Which isn’t too hard, since Mitchum’s cronies are holdovers from the Golden Age of western black-hat sidekicks, complete with missing teeth, breaking voices, and a propensity toward stumbling all over each other during fights.) Just when Mitchum’s getting tired and decides to go for his gun, his boss steps in to stop him: muttonchopped Benedict (R. Lee Ermey), landgrabber supreme. (Never trust a man who can keep his black suit immaculate in a dusty desert town.) Seems that Benedict has been offering folks around town one hundred dollars to move off their land, since the government considers these southern homesteaders squatters and is going to impose a $1000 per town tax for protective services. He’s only trying to help, after all.

Naturally, Cain and Mary aren’t willing to sell, and since Joseph is now their buddy, he’s embroiled in the fight. (Let’s see — the mysterious fighter who stumbles into town just in time to help the innocent homesteaders fight The Man. This storyline was old when Shane came out, for crying out loud!)

Naturally, Benedict’s goons try all the normal harassment to drive the Parkers out, and naturally they fight back with Joseph’s help. So naturally Benedict wants to bring in outside help, and naturally one of his men had seen some other feller fight like that once before, a hulking guy with a monocle…

That gun’s big enough to be, ah, “compensatory.”

Meanwhile, the citizens had made an appeal to the government to lift the tax, but Colonel Jones (James Brolin) brings back the sorry news that the appeal has been denied. And just to rub salt in the wound, Benedict drops his buying price to fifty dollars per farm.

The locals start making noises about caving in, but at the town meeting the church, Cain tries to rally them. Between them all they’ve got about two hundred dollars — and Cain plans to enter and win the Tough Man Tournament; with that five hundred dollars, plus the winnings if they bet their two hundred on him, they can pay the tax.

It’s a long shot, but Cain’s so gosh-darned convincing that the locals decide to go with that plan, and Joseph starts teaching Cain some tricks while Mary makes the requisite “I don’t like violence” objections. Nevertheless, it’s pretty easy to see that she’s got eyes for Joseph. (And what pretty eyes they are, too.)

That night, though, their barn is torched, and Cain finds one of Mitchum’s lucky dice that he’s always twiddling between his fingers. He goes to confront him at the saloon, but like a dimwit, he brings a shotgun to a quickdraw competition, and ends up perforated for his troubles.

That hat’s just so… so… you.

The whole town’s ready to give up after the funeral, but Joseph, being the noble type he is, steps and declares he’ll fill Cain’s spot at the Tournament. Which seems like a good bet, except that’s when Ziegfield Von Trotta (bum bum bum BAAHM!!) show up in town, and he’s now added a bowler hat to his monocle for the complete “I’m so tough, no one can tell me I dress funny” look. We now get more background on that whole Joseph/Ziegfield grudge, which makes little sense to me: Von Trotta had killed civilians in Mexico (he blamed it on his lack of night vision) and gotten demoted, and then there was something about Von Trotta forcing Joseph to hold Phillipe by a rope over a pit for hours, until Joseph’s muscles gave out and Phillipe died, and then Von Trotta shot Joseph, but that medal he got for savate stopped the bullet and saved his life. Honestly, I have no idea what that meant, but in a nutshell, Joseph’s got a bigass chip on his shoulder.

The day of the tournament arrives, and Benedict wants some “insurance” on Joseph. Fortunately for him, Mary’s decided to stay home, since she just can’t bring herself to watch violence. (This despite the fact that the violence involves a man she’s sweet on, who’s gonna get the crap kicked out of him selflessly for the good of her town and the memory of her dead brother. Women — who can understand’em?) Which makes it really easy for Mitchum & Co. to ride up and snag her from her home and tie her to a bed in town, right beside the tournament ring. You know, a location from which she can be rescued easily.

Naturally, Joseph and Von Trotta aren’t going to square off until the final round, so we get the prelimary bouts in which they vanquish mountain men and toughs, plus the obligatory ethnically diverse assortment of fighters: A Brazilian, a Chinaman, and a big Cajun. (Never has my characterization of Gruner as “the poor man’s Van Damme” seemed more apropos, as this whole tournament sequence is right up Jean-Claude’s alley, and almost seems like it was written to entice him to star.) In between, Benedict makes it clear to Joseph that Mary will die if he doesn’t throw his next match, so he does the logical thing: he wins the match, then clubs his way into the upstairs room where she’s being held and fills the room with flying feet. On the way out, he also stumbles into Benedict and Colonel Smith and finds out that the whole thousand-dollar-tax deal was a scam to let Benedict buy up land before the railroad comes through. Oh, and Benedict and Smith both end up dead, and Joseph catches a bullet in the leg.

‘Course, he’s then got to have a showdown shootout with Mitchum before he then climbs back into the ring for the final bout with Von Trotta. Why does he bother, since the tax thing is bogus? Mostly because everyone bet their money on him, so he has to get it back (although I’m guessing there’s still some of that vendetta thing going on.) With an injured leg, he doesn’t do too well, but when Von Trotta throws him right out of the ring, he gets the bright idea to lure him into the darkened church, where Von Trotta’s night blindness will hamper him and give Joseph the edge.

Ashley Laurence. Sigh…

Wait — am I saying that the hero cheats in his final battle with the bad guy? That’s right. He contrives to get out of the ring and get Von Trotta into the church to gain an advantage, which would be okay if Von Trotta had anything to do with Joseph’s leg injury, but since Von Trotta wasn’t involved in that, it strikes me as extremely dirty pool to leave the ring in order to gain the upper hand. But we’re supposed to be too busy watching the kicking and punching and balsa wood flying to think about that. Joseph wins, everyone’s happy, roll credits.

as far as performances go, it wasn’t too bad. Gruner’s acting barely approaches adequate, but since he’s mostly a silent type here, you don’t have to notice it if you don’t want to. Singer obviously has great fun playing the blackhearted villain, which is good, because he has even fewer lines than Gruner; mostly “Ja! Come!” and a couple of lines of dialogue in his best Colonel Klink accent. Ashley Laurence is given almost nothing to do except look pretty and demonstrate that even the most unflattering style of clothing can be sexy, given that it’s tailored tightly, the fabric is thin, and the body beneath is spectacular in the first place.

But dear heavens, is there anything here in the entire plot that required conscious thought to write? It’s “every western ever made” meets “every Van Damme movie ever made.” I’ve heard recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance that were more unpredictable than this story. I will say that I thought that Cain would make it as far as the tournament itself before he bought it — just as hackneyed, but at least a little more emotionally immediate. And that’s the sum total of “innovation” brought to this movie — that, and the monocle.

What really sends everything over the edge is the score. My guess is that composer Kevin Kiner realized just how unoriginal every facet of this movie was, and decided to parody that by crafting an all-inclusive soundtrack just as derivative: I mean, we’ve got Spanish guitars, whistling, humming, harmonicas, synthesized trumpets, baritones chanting “baum!”, and even bullet ricochet sound effects. It’s a great joke (please say it was meant as a joke), and the fact that producers apparently had no problem with it makes it even funnier.