Guy X

November 30, 2007

Rated: R Runtime: 101 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! Someone here obviously wanted to make a movie that would be the darling of the movie festival circuit. They didn’t try to terribly hard, though, and what little effort they did put into it was mostly wasted due to incompetence. But that’s ok. All you have to do is make a movie that puts forth the idea that the army is run by secretive, half-crazy bureaucrats leading a rank-and-file that are mostly hedonistic, half-crazy f*** ups.

That’s pretty much the setup for Guy X, a 2005 movie directed by Saul Metzstein. The fact that the movie is only now making it to DVD should tell you a lot about the quality of it…or lack thereof. Another clue is that Metzstein’s only work since Guy X was an episode of a Discovery Channel docu-drama series. Yeah, it’s quality stuff.

On the plus side, the acting is actually pretty decent. Jason Biggs is on hand as Rudy, a U.S. soldier on his way to Hawaii who, thanks to an army snafu, ends up the victim of mistaken identity as well as stuck in Greenland. After getting used to the slack, lazy lifestyle of his fellow defenders of Greenland, he develops a relationship with Sgt. Irene (Natascha McElhone) and then tries to unravel the mystery that is his commanding officer, Col. Woolwrap. Notorious B-movie villain, Michael Ironside, is on hand to deliver a surprisingly good performance as a horribly disfigured vet.

That’s about it for the good things I can say about this one, though. The film’s biggest problem, in my opinion, is that it’s built completely on a foundation of ignorance of what the army is really like as well as a general disregard for logic and normal human behavior / reactions. Many times I could be heard uttering, “That’s STUPID!” out loud and I could have done it more but I simply chose to just shake my head in disbelief. Take, for instance, the premise of the main character being stuck in Greenland:

He was mistaken for someone else and put on the plane to that god-forsaken place. How does this happen?!? Even if he was dog tired and not paying attention to where he was being routed, you’d think the icebergs and snow-covered tundra outside the windows of the airplane would have clued him in that he was NOT on his way to Hawaii. Then there’s the matter that he arrives with NO transfer orders (or ANY other paperwork, for that matter). That right there would have clued them in that he wasn’t supposed to be there. And how is it they thought his last name was Pederson when it was actually Spruance? Didn’t he have some kind of ID on him to show what his real name was? Of course not.

And why didn’t he try to get someone to listen to him about his plight? Every time he tried to explain that he WASN’T Cpl. Pederson, he would get interrupted and then he’d just shut up. I’m sorry, but I’d be yelling til I was blue in the face to someone until they investigated my plight. But not our ‘hero’. If he got his problem resolved quickly and left as soon as possible, then he wouldn’t be able to uncover the mysteries of Woolwrap. And thus is another of the movie’s many illogical turns for the sake of plot.

The final verdict: this is just a bad B-movie masquerading around as socially biting commentary on the army. This dog, however, can do little more than gum you to death. Two weak stars from me on this one.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 2 Stars, DVD, Jason Biggs, Michael Ironside, Natascha McElhone, R