O sucesso do filme Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016), que a
propósito eu achei bem medíocre, reascendeu a discussão a respeito do uso da
linguagem obscena em filmes mainstreams/blockbusters, atualmente castrados pela
necessidade comercial de servir ao gosto da garotada - a censura exerce uma
restrição legal -, cuja faixa etária representa o público que paga as contas e
a qual a maioria das produções é direcionada. Quem vem ganhando terreno nessa
queda de braço é o sempre subestimado Paul Verhoeven, cujo legado
cinematográfico acumula uma série de sucessos outrora negligenciados, que agora
passaram a servir de modelo para um tipo de cinema que anda fazendo muita
falta.
A Netflix exibe atualmente seis
filmes do diretor holandês em sua grade de programação: Flesh + Blood (1985), Robocop (1987), Showgirls (1995), Starship
Troopers (1997), O Homem Sem Sombra (2000) e A Espiã (2006). Não havia
visto ainda o Flesh + Blood e acabei
preenchendo essa lacuna no meio da semana que se vai. O texto de Jessica
Ritchey para o site rogerebert.com publicado ontem, Before “Deadpool”: The golden age of the r-rated blockbuster, lista
uma série de filmes de Verhoeven, dentre os quais Flesh + Blood, elegendo o diretor como o melhor dos R-rated
Blockbusters. O texto integral pode ser encontrado aqui. Transcrevo apenas a
primeira parte que aborda Flesh + Blood.
In a move that must offer a great deal of comfort to people who toil on lost causes everywhere, the attempt to make a movie star out of Ryan Reynolds finally struck gold with "Deadpool." Its $135-million opening weekend washed away pyrite memories of “Green Lantern” and "Self/less." It also rejuvenated Hollywood’s interest in R-rated blockbusters. Unfortunately, it seems Hollywood is getting ready to learn the wrong lessons from success again. It isn’t so much that pasting curse words onto the flagging comic book movie juggernaut is the next step to insure they continue to be a license to print money. It's that audiences don’t want to see the same movie over and over again. And the bloodless, sexless, anemic PG-13 rating has slowly drained mainstream genre movies of their drive and nerve. It used to be par for the course that among the PG-13 sops there would a healthy crop of event movies that earned their R rating. And the freedom it gave directors to run to the limits and past them is sorely needed now. Full frontal shots aren’t going make comic book movies grow up or be more palatable to audiences in telling the exact same origin story. Things will be better when R-rated blockbusters remember their roots and stop being afraid of women, sex, and consequences.
Perhaps the best of the R-rated blockbuster directors was Paul Verhoeven. Coming to Los Angeles by way of Amsterdam, he brought an outsider’s perspective and energy to American popcorn flicks. His first English-language film, “Flesh + Blood” was part of the medieval fantasy films boom made in the wake of “Excalibur”, but there wasn’t a single dragon in sight. Brutal and bloody, "Flesh+Blood" is "Game of Thrones" done better, tighter and sharper. It is anchored by two excellent performances from Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. In the film co-written by Verhoeven, Hauer is the leader of a group of brigands and Leigh is the fair maiden whose caravan he captures. Instead of a hearts-and-flowers romance, what follows is sexual assault, kidnapping and fleeing the plague, with Leigh discovering that a ruthless pragmatism can be a weapon stronger than a sword.
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Abaixo uma crítica hilária do
filme encontrada no IMDB.
Por rhinocerosfive-1 (04/10/07)
It's like David Lynch took a bunch of speed and made SPARTACUS on a spaghetti Western budget. Not many movies serve up plague dog steaks, or tie nude nuns to bedposts, or dangle Bruno Kirby's penis overhead; but that's Verhoeven, always ready to take the normal out of your day.
Right down to Rutger Hauer's white linen Sonny Crockett suit, this movie is a product of its outrageous, conspicuously consumptive time. As such, it's pretty good pulp. Crude, shocking, not terribly intelligent, but willing to go from zero to lurid every fifteen minutes. And if everybody involved has done better work, from director and photographer to writer and composer, at least Jennifer Jason Leigh is naked all the time. B pictures have succeeded on less.
The second unit stuff, and basics like set dressing, costumes, and weapons, all look kind of second-rate; there are several not very good performances, and much of the dialogue has the simplistic feel of having been translated.
So what. It ain't Austen. The violence is exciting and the sex is sexy. FLESH + BLOOD deserves a place somewhere below the first CONAN and high over the neutered HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS or LORD OF THE RINGS; not as slick as CROUCHING TIGER or as pedantic as some Mifune sword movies, better than Richard Fleischer's VIKINGS or CONAN II, and miles above the awful Marcus Nispel's unwatchable PATHFINDER.
FLESH + BLOOD is about equal to the more mundane 13TH WARRIOR or APOCALYPTO in thrill quotient and overall quality, as far as medieval action movies go - both of those have superior production values, but lack this movie's bleak comic philosophy. McTiernan is a stout journeyman, and Gibson is good at the Old Hollywood rah-rah stuff, but it's not a fair comparison. For all Verhoeven's absurd metaphors and silly imagery, he almost always manages not to be pretentious. The 1985-model Verhoeven was a master filmmaker who already had done better work than those fellows ever are likely to do, and he was only gearing up to make ROBOCOP, BASIC INSTINCT and STARSHIP TROOPERS within the next ten years. Let's watch those in a couple decades, against two DIEHARDS and a BRAVEHEART, and see who still looks visionary, or relevant, or interesting.
