Dark Highways

(Spoilers)

There is much talk of roots in this flick and these particular roots are not hard to spot. 

John Wick, certainly. There is more than one John Wick joke in the film and its visual sensibility sometimes match those bombastic action classics. 

But there is also a host of Kung Fu DNA in this, along with exploitation cinema, Batman/Daredevil super-hero stories, Indian philosophy, politics, mythology and the classic Jungian hero’s journey. 

Anytime you see your hero die and go in the water only to be saved/reborn so that he can finish his story just know you are in classic hero territory.

Also, this is a movie where one of the main bad guy decides to settle things with a fist fight instead of, you know, shooting our hero when he gets off an elevator. 

This is also a movie where we get a solid training montage, a wise mentor, a rigged fight club and a street dog that can be trained to be a critical part of an assasination plot. 

Are these cliches? I would argue that they are only cliches if you are bored. They’re only cliches if they don’t work. If you get upset at sports movie cliches when you went to a sports movie the problem most likely is not the movie. 

In the first act an all too human Dev Patel executes a plan that (spoilers) completely fails. 

He is rescued by a group of outcasts who train his body, his mind and his heart to become the hero India needs. Hmmm, hero may not be the right word. Instrument of vengeance? Yeah, this is a flick where the main character is an instrument of vengeance. 

Any story where the wise mentor gives the hero an LCD kind of drug that would kill a normal man and says, “the pain will last until it is done teaching you” is my kind of grimy, glorious entertainment.

(I didn’t take notes and I can’t find the specific quote but that’s close enough.)

Anyway, as you can tell this was the right movie at the right time for me. It’s got its flaws, particularly in the editing and some of the direction. 

There were spots where I wanted to yell, “just stop cutting and shaking the camera!”

Trust your shot, let it breathe and let me enjoy the furious movie violence. 

And a car is introduced in the movie for no particular reason except that the characters will need to use it in a chase a few scenes later in the movie. 

But the annoyances were small and everytime the movie started to go astray it did something else that made me deliriously happy. 

That car chase bit redeems itself by having that particular vehicle equipped with a turbo burst. Dumb? Absolutely. Fun? You bet!

An elevator knife fight is one kind of highlight and Dev opening up his chest and showing you his cosmic heart is another. 

I want to see another one of these.

The story lends itself to a singular kind of trilogy. you can do anything you want with it. And it might still work.

Let’s cast Keanu as the bad guy. Or set it in the ancient past.

The ending might suggest that a direct sequel is not possible. But the heroes of myth never really die.