Tank Girl (US Dir-Rachel Taladay) The mid 1990s saw three poorly recieved Futuristic Comic Book adaptations:Judge Dredd, Barb Wire & Tank Girl. I thought Judge Dredd was good for the first 20 mins before it turned into a rehash of Demolition Man with an OTT Armand Assante & a highly resistable Rob Schneider. Barb Wire had two things going for it...Pamela Andersons assets...and i guess a welcome appearence by Steve Railsback. Tank Girl however i thought was BRILLIANT!!! The feisty Lori Petty is simply perfect as Tank Girl, a ballsy young lady just trying to make her way in the post apocalyptic wasteland that is Earth 2030. Not only does she look the part but her spunky performance of Tank Girl is full of attitude & drenched in the spirit that would explode worldwide in 1996 with the emergence of both Lara Croft in the videogame world & The Spice Girls in the music world. Tank Girl is really the only film from the 90s that truly succeeds as an artifact of the Girl Power movement & it was made a year before the phrase was even coined. Perhaps that is why Tank Girl was not as well recieved as it should have been? Had Tank Girl been released in 1996 or 1997, it may have attracted a wider audience than rather just the Comic Book fans. Barb Wire is a similar story as it was a female led Action film based on a Comic Book, plus it had the marquee value of the then popular Pamela Anderson. Comparing Barb Wire to Tank Girl however is a no contest! :D Barb Wire was a shambles while Tank Girl IMO is a success that captures the spirit of its source & has an innovative visual style that sets it apart from anything being made at the time. Indeed Tank Girl blends authentic Comic Book art with live action which is far more seamless than what Oliver Stone attempted in Natural Born Killers a year earlier. Actually if i could compare Tank Girl to any of its contemporaries then it would be 1994s Natural Born Killers which not only featured multiple visual styles but also ran at a breathless pace from start to finish. I liked Natural Born Killers alot, though its creative use of the visual medium was for very different purposes. Natural Born Killers is a media satire which brilliantly captures the channel surfing/celebrity culture of the 1990s. Tank Girl is a much more surreal, carefree experience & being set in a post apocalyptica where humans & mutants mingle, the insertion of Comic Book imagery within a live action film & a soundtrack of some of the 20th centuries most diverse musical artists, never feels out of place! The diverse soundtrack is another common trait Tank Girl shares with Natural Born Killers. The soundtrack features everything from Punk Rock to Trip Hop to Big Band to Gangsta Rap to Electronica etc(artists include Ice T, Bjork, Devo, Hole, The Magnificent Bastards, Portishead, L7, Bush, Issac Hayes, Iggy Pop etc). The supporting cast too is as diverse as the music...Ice T, Naomi Watts, Don Harvey, Scott Coffey, James Hong, Iggy Pop etc. Pitted against Lori Petty is Malcolm MacDowell who had become a regular in Sci Fi & B-Movies in general at this stage in his career & often cast as the obligatory British accented villian/wiseman(Moon 44, Star Trek:Generations, Cyborg 3, Y2K, Pact With The Devil, Fist Of The North Star & the videogame Wing Commander 3 are just a few off the top of my head). MacDowell actually performs very well in his role which midway through requires nothing more than his unmistakable voice(following an unfortunate incident for his character courtesy Tank Girl). There is a scene where MacDowell has a henchman walk barefoot across broken glass only to be berated for being foolish enough to do it & not courageous enough to kill himself. MacDowell then kills him via an injection which drains the blood from his body & converts it into water, which MacDowell then drinks! :O A great introduction to his character & the sequence itself holds up today. Its one of the few restrained scenes in the film & definetly the most effective at conveying a villian. Tank Girl is one of the most underappriciated Comic Book adaptations ever made & totally unlike anything that have come before or since. To give an idea of what to expect? Hmmm lets see...take a little bit of Delicatessen, take a little bit of Freaked & add a dash of Cherry 2000....you get a germ of an idea of what to expect from the Psychedelic Post Apocalyptica of Tank Girl. Great characters, great soundtrack, great action, great make up effects & great dialogue! If i had to throw a line at you to close me review it would be... Its been swell but the swellings gone down youtube/watch?v=YbtrrKpRYqM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 07:56:46 +0000
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