15 Minutes

In this country, nobody is responsible for anything he does, and everybody wants to be on a big or small screen, a reality helped along by scheming lawyers, unscrupulous TV producers and a media-numbed public. But is there anything they wouldn't put on television, no matter how gruesome or sensational? John Herzfeld's 15 Minutes takes on Big Media and America's corruption by celebrity and money, and answers that question with a No. Robert DeNiro is reliably wonderful; the movie is by turns highly entertaining, intense, fast-paced and very dumb. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, but not the ending. (Read more).

It's a loss. The Net is a great source of information, but it's fragmented. TV news was once America's common ground, its universal Town Hall, primary source of information and context. In the 80s, more than 90 percent of all U.S. families regularly watched one of the three major evening newscasts. Today, the number has fallen below 20 per cent, and TV has become an electronic nightmare, degrading civic life more often than elevating it. As television has become ever more ratings-obsessed, the boundaries between what used to be called serious journalism and video entertainment packaged as news have blurred. "Burn and bleed" video is the new ethos of TV news: Ratings are king, not truth.

This corruption of Big Media propels 15 Minutes, which stars Robert DeNiro as New York City celebrity detective Eddie Fleming. DeNiro is almost automatically great at playing the New York City tough guy in any guise: psycho, villain, or lawman. Edward Burns plays his naive but moral sidekick Fire Marshal Jordy Warshaw, and Kelsey Grammar is TV news anchor Robert Hawkins, who will pay any price to get blood-and-guts video onto his news show.

The movie is entertaining, violent, intense, and wildly uneven, the plot weaving from brutal thriller to ironic comedy to savage social commentary. It never quite makes up its mind which it wants to be, so the effect is confusing and disorienting.The first third of the movie is riveting, the final third a stupider version of Dirty Harry.

The basic idea is that Emil and Oleg, two Eastern European sickos, come to the United States to track down a fellow thief who betrayed them. In short order, they find him and the bloodbath begins. They also get hold of a videocamera, which they use to record their grisly deeds. They are fascinated to learn from watching various TV talk and news shows that in the United States, no one is ever held responsible for anything he does, even committing the most heinous crimes. That discvoer from the world of daytime television that even callous murderers get off the hook by claiming victimhood themselves, their evasions helped along by slick lawyers and manipulable media. Emil and Oleg are particularly fascinated by one vicious killer who claims child abuse, gets off on an insanity plea, and ends up not only with a fat book and movie deal but on the cover of People.

Not only are media utterly corrupt in this bleak view of American life, so are law enforcement and the idea of justice itself. Emil and Oleg figure they're a cinch to sell a movie of their own gruesome videotaped crimes and get off through one of the many loopholes in the legal system. In a truth-is-stranger twist, mob lawyer Bruce Cutler, who represented John Gotti, plays himself in the film.

15 Minutes is over the top, its caricatures of almost everyone extreme and unreal. But it moves so rapidly, and is so arrestingly shot, that it isn't boring for a second, not even when it veers off into ludicrous plot turns.

The psychos go on a vicious rampage -- one of them introduces himself all over town as Frank Capra (the famous director) -- spurred on by a desire for fame and money, and by the belief (echoes of OJ) that they will beat a system that worships visibility and money as much as ours does. DeNiro and Burns also get swept up in the ravenous media machine, which they think they can use to their advantage.

Ultimately, media are an equal opportunity destroyer, the most vicious element in 15 Minutes, consuming everything. Grammar's anchorman, for instance, is a ratings-mad caricature of the sensational and immoral types who have infected TV news. Unfortunately, he's too much of a clunky stereotype to be interesting. Furthermore, like lots of other Hollywood movies, this one has no idea how to end, so it circles around improbably, and increasingly foolishly.

That's too bad, because it takes some of the sting out of an intense movie that takes on a deserving target everybody loves to hate, one that can't really be thumped often enough. For all the flaws in the script, this makes the movie worthwhile as well as fun to see, and likely to succeed. (The soundtrack is pretty great too.)

Comments

American Television - Killed by commerce

[euroderf]

I have spent some time in America, and while many things impressed me during my stay there, one of the things that most definately did not was the television. It struck me as being dumbed down for the common denominator (and I mean dumbed down), full of endless and frequent advertising and 'infomercials' and also of horribly low quality.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, there are just too many channels available. Some promote this on the grounds of choice, but the problem, as I see it, is that there is only a finite amount of talent available to produce television, and so if you have a huge number of channels that talent is diluted. Also, American television stationstypically all produce the same sort of programmes - they all aim for certain market segments, but I do not see the need for many hundreds of channels.

Another problem is that with the lonely and underfunded exception of PBS, all the stations are commercial. They are all owned by one or another conglomerate or multinational, and so they have but one aim - to make money.

Here in the UK much admirable television is produced, mainly because there are few channels, and only 2 of the terrestrial channels can be said to be fully commercial, and even then they are heavily regulated. The BBC is funded by the television license, and is free to produce innovative and original programming, regardless of market constraints. ITV and Channel 5 have to exist in this reality, and compete with this by producing original programmes of their own.

If I were a dictator charged with improving American television, I would cut down the number of channels to 15 or so, start up an organisation similar to the BBC informed by the Reithian ethos and funded by licenses paid by the end consumer, and give it perhaps 6 of these channels. The remaining commercial channels would of course have to compete with this new entity by creating innovative programming.

This would also concentrate talent and money into a much smaller number of channels, and free these talents from the grinding demands of money and ratings. The quality of television would inevitably improve.

I know this is a pipe dream now, but really I think it would work wonders for the quality of American television.
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