Hell in a Handbasket

They say that, when a work of literature is adapted into a movie, it is a mistake to read the book before visiting the theater. This is because there is always a great deal that the screenwriter has to throw away in order to condense a whole book down into a 2 hour film.

I suppose you could say that I goofed a bit, because I read the book some months before the film was released. For the first few pages, I thought the prose was simple and rather unartful. While simple, it was hardly without merit. In fact, the author managed to be extremely evocative, even poignant.

Another thing that impressed me about the book was that it was unrelenting, brutal, and unsympathetic. The ending was rather untraditional, to say the least, and I could see how most of the public wouldn't be able to accept it. At the time I thought it was impossible for anyone to adapt the work into a film without ruining it, at best making an action film without any of the underlying emotional themes remaining intact.

I was wrong about that.

Oh, don't get me wrong. They did have to toss a great deal of material in order to make a movie. But they didn't do too bad a job, with the basic emotional punch that the author was trying to convey mostly intact. I was very impressed.

All the talk up above about "emotional punch" and how the book was "extremely evocative" shouldn't scare anyone off. At it's heart the story is pretty much a crime drama, and a well done one at that with some impressive action scenes.

The story concerns a hunter in the Texas scrubland who stumbles across a drug buy gone wrong. There is a pile of drugs, a pile of money, and more than one pile of dead bodies. The sole survivor is in pretty bad shape, dying slow and begging for water. The hunter takes the money and leaves, but he can't forget that one guy who was taking his time in expiring. So he fills a gallon jug with water and heads back, only to run into some really bad hombres who are looking to kill whoever took their cash.

From then on it turns into some sort of chase movie, as the hunter tries to figure out a way of eluding his pursuers while the two drug cartels send their best enforcers to try and find him. Every character is competent, every character is generally ruthless to one degree or another, and every character is determined to come out on top. Although quarter is occasionally asked, it is never given.

I was impressed with the gunfights. The stunt coordinator understood that violence is ugly and brutal, and there is hardly any chance for flashy moves when the bullets start to fly. It is refreshing to see a film that treats firearms and their handling with respect.

There is one quibble, though. The best of the hitmen after the hunter (or the worst, if you prefer) uses a suppressed 20 gauge shotgun as his main arm, as well as a portable air hammer usually used to dispatch cattle. This means he has to wander around with what looks like a scuba tank, and a shotgun equipped with an enormous stainless steel can attached to the muzzle.

I can't help but wonder why. He uses the air hammer to punch out the lock cores of any door he wants to open, but a ball peen hammer and thin chisel would have done the job while not weighing as much as the scuba tank. The suppressed shotgun was a neat idea, but there is a reason why you only see them in the movies. An Ingram M-10 would have been both quieter and handier in close quarters. These details were in the book, so I don't blame the filmmakers for including them, but I suppose there just had to be a little bit of flash.

Bottom line is that it was a film I really enjoyed, and one I recommend. Be warned, though, that they kept the same ending that many will find completely unsatisfying.

If this won't phase you, then I say you should go and check it out.