(1998)
Reviewed by Michael Bolvary
Written and Directed by Skip Woods
Starring Thomas Jane, Aaron Eckhart, Paulina Porizkova, James Le Gros, Paula Marshall, Michael Jeter, Gary Dourdan, Mickey Rourke
"It is unhip to admit to being offended by anything in the new movies, and indeed it's pretty hard to offend me, but a film named Thursday crossed the line..." wrote Roger Ebert. "Watching it, I felt outrage. I saw a movie so reprehensible I couldn't rationalize it using the standard critical language about style, genre or irony. The people associated with it should be ashamed of themselves.... There is a "plot," but essentially the film is a series of geek-show sequences in which characters are tortured, raped, murdered and dismembered in between passages of sexist and racist language."
That was all the incentive I needed. I dropped everything I was doing and rushed out to the nearest obscure video store and checked out Thursday (somehow I didn't think I'd find it at Blockbuster). Since I'm always looking for new movies that promise to shock and offend, this film looked like a sure bet--and besides, I try to see all the films that Roger Ebert pans. For those of you who are not in a very politically-correct frame of mind, Thursday delivers. This movie goes out of its way to be offensive--to women, Orientals, Pakistanis and especially blacks. Thursday's attitude towards blacks is so obscene, I'm surprised that it was made in this day and age.
Judging from Ebert's description, you'd think Thursday would be a non-stop orgy of bloody violence and offensive language, like Cannibal Holocaust crossed with an Andrew Dice Clay video, but it's not. This is a Tarantino-inspired, flashback-filled comic crime drama about the craziest day in the life of Casey Wells (Thomas Jane), a young architect living in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. What his new young wife Christine (Paula Marshall) doesn't know is that a few years back, her husband was one of the meanest, toughest drug dealers in Los Angeles. After Christine leaves on a business trip one Thursday, Casey's old partner in crime, Nick (Aaron Eckhart) shows up at his house. Presumably there just for a visit, Nick has really come to close a drug deal and leaves a suitcase full of heroin in Casey's house. Not wanting anything to do with drugs anymore, Casey stuffs the whole load down the kitchen garbage disposal. But several of Nick's friends and enemies want the stash, and Casey spends the rest of the day dealing with them in various surprising ways.
So what's the offensive content of this movie? "Here is a head count," Ebert curtly states: "Innocent East Asian female grocery clerk, shot in cold blood after argument over coffee. Black cop, shot dead. Black Rastafarian heroin dealer plans to kill hero, but is overcome, bound with duct tape, and hung upside down in garage. Dominatrix in red leather minidress enters, tapes hero to chair, rapes him. Her head is blown off in midclimax by another visitor who wants drugs and money, and retapes hero to chair, preparing to slice him with power saw. Hero will not bleed to death because visitor has brought along propane torch to cauterize wounds ("I once cut on a girl for sixteen hours before she died"). Hero frees self, knocks power saw man unconscious, hangs him in garage. Cop arrives, is in on the deal, offers to fix everything if money is handed over. Is shown people hanging upside down in garage, shoots them without asking who they are, leaves. In the middle of this carnage, the dominatrix narrates a flashback about dope-smoking black smack dealers who are gunned down by hero and friend, after which black girl enters room and is killed. (A later flashback doubles back to explain that the girl was eight months pregnant.) The dialogue is heavy with the n-word and its usual satellites. The n-word is no longer neutralized by being used primarily by blacks, but is used by whites among themselves."
Now I've seen movies with much more offensive content than that, but what makes Thursday particularly disturbing is the way it sugar-coats the violence with ironic humour, trying to excuse its excesses. Lots of other films have used that approach, from David Lynch's Wild at Heart to Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. Hell, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is 80 minutes of excess wrapped in wicked humour. But unlike that film, Thursday is more crafty, more insidious in the way it combines violence with jokes. In a way, this makes it more troubling.
Take the opening scene, in which Nick, his dominatrix-in-red-leather-minidress girlfriend Dallas (Paulina Porizkova) and his partner Billy Hill (James Le Gros) shop at an all-night convenience store cashiered by a young Pakistani woman. After she's shot in the argument over the price of a cup of coffee (Nick handed her a $50 and she replied, in an exaggerated Indian accent, "I cannot accept any moneys over a $20-bill"), the black cop arrives. He suspects nothing, because the body has been hidden and Nick has assumed the role of the cashier. The black cop asks, "Who do you like better--Picard or Kirk?" "Kirk," Nick replies. "Yeah--you gotta respect a guy who can fuck a green bitch and destroy a whole civilization in 60 minutes." The subtly racist undertone of that "joke" makes the scene more disturbing because it shows that what is really felt between the two characters is expressed in hints, not overtly, while the feelings are there all the same and explode in violence.
However, this scene is nothing compared to the extremely racist set-piece in the middle of the film. Let me set things up: Casey is visited at his house by Dr. Jarvis (Michael Jeter), a meek, mild-mannered man who works for an adoption agency; he has come to evaluate Casey's character becuase he and Christine plan to adopt. Just as they get underway, Dallas arrives, announces herself as Nick's friend and breaks the ice with Dr. Jarvis by talking about her failed career as a porn star while chugging down a bottle of beer and feeling herself up. Casey has been secretive to the good doctor about his criminal years in LA, and Dallas decides to fill Jarvis in about Casey's past life: she tells about a drug deal set up between Casey, Nick and the biggest, baddest, roughest, toughest drug dealer in LA--a black guy named Lester James, nicknamed Ballpean. "How the fuck did a nigger get a name like that?" Casey asks Nick. Nick explains that Ballpean likes to hit people with a ballpean hammer if they ever make a joke about his penis; it seems that Ballpean had a white girlfriend who bit his dick off when he tried to force her to suck it. "Unfortunately, they found it and sewed it back on--but it never worked right again," Nick explains. When Casey and Nick come to the house to do the drug exchange, they find that they're the only whites in a room full of armed blacks. Ballpean (Gary Dourdan) looks like he could be a professional football player, and the tension in the room is so heavy, you could cut it with a knife. After Casey's smack is deemed worthy by Ballpean, things lighten up a bit and he and Casey share a joint. Just when it looks like this deal's going to be over and done with, quick and easy, Casey spills the beans and tells Ballpean that he knows how he got that nickname; Casey actually sympathizes, because that's something that could happen to any guy. But then he says something else.
"There was a passage of dialogue midway in this film that was so vile and cruel, I felt my temples pounding," Ebert hissed, and this is it:
"There's something I can't get out of my head, and I was wondering if you could help me," Casey says, looking Ballpean straight in the face. "I heard about how most niggers got these really big dicks--I mean these salami-sized cocks. Well, I've had many a blowjob by many white bitches and I know how much my white boy dick takes up in a bitch's mouth. My question is: how the hell did this little bitch get this big nigger dick all the way in her mouth--and just chomp it off in one bite? No nigger would let her nibble on it. The only thing I can think of is that this big, bad, ass-kicking nigger must've had one tiny, little bitty dick. Probably wouldn't have done him no good anyway. Whaddya think--am I close?"
Then Casey pulls out his guns and shoots Ballpean and all the other black drug dealers dead in a hail of bullets--including a black woman who's pregnant.That's all that Dr. Jarvis needs to hear about Casey Wells; after hearing Dallas' story, he packs up and gets as far away from Casey as he can. In all honesty, I laughed at that payoff--but that scene before it still left a bad taste in the mouth. Having offended blacks, Skip Woods returns to offending women in the sequence between Casey and Dallas--she tapes him to a kitchen chair, sticks her gun in his face and demands the drugs. "First, there's something I need to know," Casey asks. "Are you on the rag?" "I am a complete bitch whether I'm on the rag or not," Dallas replies, before sticking her hand down her underwear and proving to Casey that she isn't. The scene where she strips and forces him to get hard by fellating him before sitting herself down and raping him--all in front of a picture of Casey's wife, just to get him mad--is my personal favourite. You don't see women raping men in the movies every day--it's as if Thursday is trying to even out the cinematic rape scorecard.
In all honesty, this film isn't quite as bad or as offensive as it was made out to be--at least not to my permanently-warped sensibilities. The actors do a good job of portraying their unlikeable characters and delivering the nihilistic dialogue, while the funny, off-kilter music by Luba does a lot to candy-coat the carnage. As a bonus, Mickey Rourke has a good cameo as Detective Kasaroff, a cop who's in on the deal and offers Casey the choice of either handing over Nick's drugs and money or ending up like Nick--decapitated. However, there are some scenes here that are simply irredeemable, and the film's efforts to weasel away from its material through uneven jokes too often diminishes the effect.
Thursday is a film I have to admit I admire--against my better judgement.
3 Bitch-sSlaps
