TIFF ’07: King of the Hill

September 2, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Spain, Thriller, TIFF
El Rey de la montaña***½/****starring Leonardo Sbaraglia, María Valverde, Pablo Menasanch, Francisco Olmoscreenplay by Gonzalo López-Gallego, Javier Gullóndirected by Gonzalo López-Gallego by Bill Chambers A political thriller in the sense that it's bound to polarize audiences, King of the Hill (El Rey de la montaña) is if nothing else gripping from beginning to end. The effective, switcheroo set-up finds lost souls Quim (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and Bea (María Valverde, who from certain angles suggests Monica Bellucci's little sister) hooking up anonymously in the bathroom of a gas station, after which Bea makes off with Quim's wallet. Giving chase, Quim is shot…

TIFF ’07: Emotional Arithmetic

August 31, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF
**/****starring Susan Sarandon, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne, Max von Sydowscreenplay by Jefferson Lewis, based on the novel by Matt Cohendirected by Paolo Barzman by Bill Chambers A "Never Forget" PSA done up as a Bergmanesque psychodrama, the destined-to-be-retitled Emotional Arithmetic at least has the good sense to co-opt Bergman veteran Max von Sydow, who turns in the kind of twilit performance that functions as both a compendium of and an exquisite gateway to a storied career. Asked point-blank how he managed to survive the Holocaust, a prison sentence, and shock therapy, Sydow, as the noble but senile Jewish poet Jakob…

Halloween (2007)

August 30, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Malcolm McDowell, Sherri Moon Zombie, Scout Taylor-Compton, William Forsythe
screenplay by Rob Zombie, based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
directed by Rob Zombie

Halloween2007by Walter Chaw If Rob Zombie ever decides to direct a horror movie, watch out. To date, up to and including his remake of John Carpenter's legendary Halloween, he's presented us a series of family melodramas peppered with modest genre references and exploitation flourishes. His best film, The Devil's Rejects, is widely misread and underestimated, the most common complaint being that it isn't scary. It's a lot like complaining that Ordinary People isn't scary. But I'd challenge anyone to come up with many more ebullient, honest moments of uplift than the conclusion of that film (set to "Free Bird" of all things), as Zombie's miscreant clan makes a bid to let their freak flag fly in the middle of the American desert. His pictures are throwbacks to the Seventies in more ways than their relationship to drive-in and grindhouse fare: they're lovely odes to a sense of frustrated possibilities in a United States suffering the first throes of post-Sixties culture shock. It goes hand-in-hand with the Nixonian westerns littering the popular culture in the new millennium; no surprise to me that this administration–and the attendant feeling of paranoia and cynicism befouling our air–encourages this kind of revisionism, and really, who better than Zombie to helm an update of Carpenter's seminal slasher?

Cult Camp Classics, Vol. 3: Terrorized Travelers – DVD

August 30, 2007Posted in1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Disaster Movie, Drama, DVD, Romance, Thriller

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

SKYJACKED (1972)
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Jeanne Crain
screenplay by Stanley R. Greenberg, based on the novel Hijacked by David Harper
directed by John Guillermin

Skyjacked is the inevitable result of people pretending to be casual and relaxed while actually being stiff and formal. The actors would desperately like you to believe that they just happened to be on a jumbo jet when it was, by sheer chance, hijacked by a crazed veteran–but who are they fooling? As everybody is cruelly slotted into a stereotypical role (and forced to spout inane pleasantries no thinking person would utter), the artificiality of the proceedings is about as plain as the nose on Chuck Heston's face. Pulse-pounding excitement–which would have required people in whom we could invest–is not on the menu. In fact, the whole thing seems remarkably tranquil as a bunch of slumming character actors cash easy paychecks.

Prison Break: Season One (2005-2006) – DVD

August 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Television, Thriller

Image B+ Sound B Extras C
"Pilot," "Allen," "Cell Test," "Cute Poison," "English, Fitz or Percy," "Riots, Drills and the Devil (Part 1)," "Riots Drills and the Devil (Part 2)," "The Old Head," "Tweener," "Sleight of Hand," "And Then There Were 7,"  "Odd Man Out," "End of the Tunnel," "The Rat," "By the Skin & the Teeth," "Brother's Keeper," "J-Cat," "Bluff," "The Key," "Tonight," "Go," "Flight"

by Ian Pugh The elements that make "Prison Break" compulsively watchable are almost painfully easy to locate and describe, but the taut dialogue, compelling characters, and claustrophobic environment–which together bring a renewed vigour to a genre mired in bravado and uneasy partnerships–also make it something of a chore to sift through the supposed complexities that serve as the show's pretext. Begin with the bare essentials that probably constituted the pitch: wrongfully convicted of the murder of the Vice President's brother, death row inmate Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) has quickly burned out his appeals and has less than a month before he's to be executed at Fox River Penitentiary. But there may be hope yet: Lincoln's brother, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), is a structural engineer by trade, and in fact designed Fox River. Intentionally botching a bank robbery, Michael enters the prison sporting an elaborate body tattoo that hides a complete map of the prison grounds–in addition to a series of codes and ciphers that detail what Michael will have to do and with whom he must ally himself in order to bust his brother out.

Offside (2006) – DVD

August 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Iran, Sports

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Sima Mobarak Shahi, Safar Samandar, Shayesteh Irani, M. Kheyrabadi
screenplay by Jafar Panahi and Shadmehr Rastin
directed by Jafar Panahi

Offsidecapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Offside finds Jafar Panahi in a light mood. At least, in a lighter mood than when he made The Circle, his previous dissertation on the depressing state of women's rights in Iran, which painted the nation as a Kafka-esque hell full of paranoia and punishment for any woman with the fatal courage to get out of line. That movie is a brilliant sucker-punch you don't easily forget, though its huis clos mentality leads one more to despair than to hope that something can be done. His latest film is the flipside to The Circle: a tribute to the resourcefulness of young women who will get their football fix any way they can while still pledging allegiance to the idea of their nationality–even when the reality is a hostile force bent on keeping them at home. It is, against all odds, funny, mischievous, and brazenly positive; and it'll send you out soaring, your faith in humanity restored under conditions you never thought possible.

TIFF ’07: Just Buried

August 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, TIFF
*½/****starring Jay Baruchel, Rose Byrne, Graham Greene, Nigel Bennettwritten and directed by Chaz Thorne by Bill Chambers Just Buried (formerly Pushing Up Daisies) stars Jay Baruchel as Oliver Whynacht (get it? "Why not?" Me neither), a neurotic with a really annoying affection (his nose bleeds when he's nervous) who inherits a small-town funeral parlour from his estranged father. He's ready to hand over the reins of the money-hemorrhaging business to a competitor when he falls under the spell of the Lady Macbeth-like mortician, Roberta (Rose Byrne), whereupon the two hatch a scheme to drum up business that rather rapidly transforms them…

TIFF ’07: Angel

August 27, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Romance, TIFF, UK
**/****starring Romola Garai, Michael Fassbender, Sam Neill, Charlotte Ramplingscreenplay by François Ozon & Martin Crimp, based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylordirected by François Ozon by Bill Chambers François Ozon is what David Bordwell might call a "polystylist," though his eclecticism has mostly yielded diminishing returns. His latest finds him suiting up for yet another genre, and although it could be considered something of a throwback to his early features Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women (if by virtue of its roots in someone else's material), he's too tony now for the vaguely subversive pastiches with which he…

Unaccompanied Minors (2006) – DVD

August 20, 2007Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound B- Extras D+
starring Lewis Black, Wilmer Valderrama, Tyler James Williams, Dyllan Christopher
screenplay by Jacob Meszaros & Mya Stark
directed by Paul Feig

by Walter Chaw The bare bones of it–misfit kids stranded, The Breakfast Club-like, in a relationship pressure-cooker–seems tailor-made for "Freaks and Geeks" co-creator Paul Feig, but the fact that it plays out in a series of deadening, eternally-unspooling pratfalls and Catskills set-ups and payoffs proves that it's possible for good artists to produce bad art. Feig getting work at all (ditto erstwhile partner-in-crime Judd Apatow, who's sadly already used up a good bit of good will) in Hollywood suggests that the same blindness that finds consistent employment for Michael Bay and Brett Ratner will sometimes smile on good, smart people like Feig. That being said, Unaccompanied Minors is appalling. If it's not offensive in any substantive sense, it's bad by almost every measure of quality. People defending things like this children-running-amuck slapstick piece–which demonstrates precious little in the way of focus or restraint (think Baby's Day Out or any Home Alone sequel, but without the depth)–because their children like it would have their kids taken away from them were they to apply this rationale to food, toys, friends, schools, car seats, and so on. The reason we don't let youngsters vote and sign contracts is that their judgment is for shit, and if we want to keep them from setting themselves on fire we ought to be protecting them from this stuff, too, not indulging their affinity for it.

Succubus (1968) – DVD

August 20, 2007Posted in1960s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blue Underground, DVD, Germany, Horror

Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden
**/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Janine Reynaud, Jack Taylor, Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven
screenplay by Pier A. Caminnecci
directed by Jess Franco

by Alex Jackson Jess Franco's Succubus begins with heroine Lorna (Janine Reynaud) torturing and molesting a man chained to a stake while his similarly bound, bloodied, and partially-nude lover watches. The lover protests, so Lorna tortures her some until she passes out. She then goes to the man and plays with him a bit before skewering him with her ceremonial knife. The lights fade up and an audience applauds. The snuff scene was simulated. It's part of an act Lorna performs at a chic nightclub. This opening is the most eloquent and lucid scene in the film, for it establishes that director Jess Franco no longer has a responsibility to be eloquent and lucid. Succubus is going to be told subjectively through the perspective or Lorna, who is going schizophrenic (or something) and is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Thus, whatever we see might actually be happening–and then again it might not be. We never really know.

Year of the Dog (2007) – DVD

August 20, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, Regina King, Tom McCarthy
written and directed by Mike White

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A sea change has happened in cinematic irony. Where the well-dressed snarky bastard of the Eighties would scapegoat the consumer mentality of the expendable poor, the ironist of the new century knows the landscape is manufactured and that he or she is implicated in an artificiality nigh impossible to avoid. Thoughtful Wes Anderson occupies the high end of this movement, oblivious Jared Hess its nadir; Year of the Dog resides somewhere in the low-middle. It's intriguing to see Mike White–author of scripts for more naturalistic filmmakers Miguel Arteta and Richard Linklater–resort to this tactic for his directorial debut, and it certainly adds a layer of meaning that could've helped his screenplay for Arteta's The Good Girl. Though I fear the approach goes for instant recognition instead of entering deeper and pretty much says that resistance is futile, Year of the Dog still manages to wring a little moisture out of the damp rag of the style.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

August 15, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Wes Craven, ZERO STARS

The Hills Have Eyes II
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras D
starring Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
screenplay by Wes Craven & Jonathan Craven
directed by Martin Weisz

by Walter Chaw I don't have any real objection to anything depicted in The Hills Have Eyes II: not to the live-birth prologue that ends with the grisly murder of the mother; not to the greenstick demise of one National Guardsman or the death-by-feces of another; not even to the brutal rape of still another enlistee whose very existence opens the door for an ugly sequel. No: testament to the howling ineptitude of the enterprise is that its every desperate attempt to offend fails miserably. It's so poorly directed and edited, in fact, that not only is nothing frightening (which is to be expected, frankly)–nothing's surprising, either. Every jump scare is completely telegraphed, the nigh-invulnerability of the bad guys is totally predictable, and every fatality of every alleged hero is delivered sans pathos or, really, consequence. It doesn't matter who dies because who lives has already been decided within the first few minutes. What's more, it's already been divined by the dullest member of the audience–said dull member the only one who gives enough of a shit to try to figure it out in the first place and stick it out through to the end. The sole reason why anyone would watch the whole thing would be if they were paid to do so, and even then, it's only money. Let me stress, though, that you're not leaving because the movie is horrific, appalling, and a moral vacuum–you're leaving because it sucks balls.

Stardust (2007) + Interview (2007)

August 14, 2007Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Netherlands, Robert De Niro, Romance, Theatrical, UK

STARDUST
***½/****
starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Robert De Niro
screenplay by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman
directed by Matthew Vaughn

INTERVIEW
*/****
starring Sienna Miller, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by David Schecter and Steve Buscemi, based on the film by Theo Van Gogh
directed by Steve Buscemi

Stardustby Walter Chaw I do wonder about films that don't seem to be about anything, but I'll say this at the outset: Matthew Vaughn's Stardust, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, isn't about anything at all–and it's wonderful. Far from empty-headed, though, Stardust is a deeply meaningful series of sweet-nothings, wholly apolitical even in a macho supporting character revealed as a cross-dresser and hair stylist; and by its end, it wins not in spite of being so exuberant in its indulgence of flamboyant clichés, but because it is. It's so much better than the trailers and Gaiman's track record as a novelist (his métier is decidedly rooted in the comics) would lead you to believe, while the inevitable comparisons to The Princess Bride are misleading because The Princess Bride is a piece of shit. A beloved piece of shit, but a piece of shit just the same. On the contrary, Stardust is extremely well-made despite an opening half-hour that boasts of a few too many long establishing shots, directed with real snap by Guy Ritchie's former producer Matthew Vaughn (who did the same with Layer Cake) and executed by a stellar cast that includes a literally incandescent Claire Danes as a fallen star named Yvaine and Michelle Pfeiffer as a hideous bitch goddess, which, given that Stardust follows on the heels of Hairspray, appears to be the vehicle of her late-career comeback. More difficult to embrace is Robert De Niro as the film's Dread Pirate Roberts, a fencing mentor who happens, in this incarnation, to be a ballroom-dancing guru as well. The instinct is to recoil, but damned if it isn't the first De Niro performance in his self-parodic period that's both spot-on in its auto-satire and funny to boot.

Disturbia (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

August 13, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras C+
BD – Image B+ Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras C+
starring Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer, Carrie-Anne Moss
screenplay by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth
directed by D.J. Caruso

Disturbiacapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover I’m not terribly upset that Disturbia directly steals from the infinitely superior Rear Window. If ever there was a time to resurrect the lesson in voyeurism that is Hitchcock’s masterpiece, it’s now, at the dawn of the closed-circuited twenty-first century. The problem with the newer film isn’t that it’s a rip-off, but that it fundamentally misunderstands its source. The terribly ambiguous stance on Jimmy Stewart’s Peeping Tom tendencies has become 100% gung-ho support of illegal surveillance, a development problematic for reasons that go beyond ethical considerations and political ramifications. I get that nobody involved means for Disturbia to champion creep behaviour–they’re merely fulfilling the hormonal wishes of the adolescents who made it a surprise hit last spring. It’s just that, stripped of any theme beyond catching a killer, Rear Window‘s not that interesting to watch.

Looking for Kitty (2006) – DVD

August 12, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C-
starring Edward Burns, David Krumholtz, Max Baker, Connie Britton
written and directed by Edward Burns

by Alex Jackson This is Edward Burns's fifth feature. Wouldn't you think he'd have learned a little something about filmmaking by now? If Burns were a complete unknown outside the margins of the industry and this were his directorial debut, maybe we could pat him on the head, tell him good job, and stick Looking for Kitty on the refrigerator door, all the while assuming that now that he's proven he can make a movie and get it seen, he'll move on to something he actually cares about. But this is his fifth film. Looking for Kitty feels like the first attempt at narrative storytelling by a young, inexperienced screenwriter who's just glad to have finished something. It's the kind of thing you write before you've found your voice. This is where you start out, not where you end up.

Understanding the Words: FFC Interviews Chris Tucker

August 12, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Interviews

Ctuckerinterviewtitle

The Twenty-Five Million Dollar Man on working with a master director…and Brett Ratner

August 12, 2007|Two interview offers recently found their way to my inbox: one with the cast of the Bratz movie, the other with Rush Hour 3 co-conspirators Chris Tucker and Brett Ratner. Though I do wonder how the toy-line movie interview would have gone, the choice was obvious: Ratner's films certainly inspire plenty of witty rhetoric 'round the pages of FILM FREAK CENTRAL (as far as critical tidbits go, the opening line of Walter's X-Men: The Last Stand review stands as a personal favourite), and I welcomed the opportunity to sit down and talk to the man about the accusations that dog him in these parts. As for my own personal experience with Ratner's movies, it ranged from hazily-positive recollections of a theatrical viewing of Red Dragon to an astoundingly negative reaction to X-Men: The Last Stand. It was time to get educated, once and for all.

The Guns of Navarone (1961) [2-Disc DVD Set] – DVD

August 10, 2007Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK, War

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren
screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on the novel by Alistair MacLean
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover My brother Oliver is fond of citing movies where you actually root for the Nazis. Not because you like what they stand for, of course, but because the cinematic alternative suddenly seems much worse: fact of the matter is those fucking Von Trapps will simply not shut up in The Sound of Music, while anyone who would voluntarily off Jon Bon Jovi, as the Nazis do in U-571, can't possibly be ALL bad. To this very short list we may add the inexplicably popular guy-movie staple The Guns of Navarone. Supposedly trading on the selfless heroism of a commando unit behind enemy lines, the film has such a hair up its ass about the virtue of grim determination that it manages to bore you into an early grave within the first five minutes. Nearly three hours of watching Gregory Peck and his group of he-men bicker over ethics and strategy would make any thinking adult pray for some kind of violent deliverance. Nazis, Italian Fascists, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir–I'm not choosy about who shoots these jerks dead, just as long as somebody does it.

Summer School (1987) [Life’s a Beach Edition] – DVD

August 7, 2007Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Teen

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, Robin Thomas, Patrick Labyorteaux
screenplay by Jeff Franklin
directed by Carl Reiner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover We at FFC ride ourselves on sussing out the subtleties in what is widely condemned as popular junk, and more power to us. But if you're expecting a review of Summer School that illuminates the film's hidden complexities, you've sadly come to the wrong place. Although there are certain thematic features that identify it as an atypical entry in the '80s teen-comedy genre, not the least of which a sort-of social conscience that suggests National Lampoon's Degrassi High, these anomalous credentials are largely wiped out by a thudding lack of wit and a functional ugliness of craft that makes the film barely tolerable at the best of times. While the actors generally convey personality beyond the limited means of the production, they're fighting an uphill battle against a pervasive laziness behind the camera.

Reign Over Me (2007) + TMNT (2007)|TMNT – DVD

August 5, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Hong Kong, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

REIGN OVER ME
**/****
starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler
written and directed by Mike Binder

TMNT
*/****
written and directed by Kevin Munroe

Reignovertmntby Walter Chaw In response to the charge that critics are "downers" because they're too judgmental, a colleague and friend said on a panel that I participated in that some films only deserve judgment. It's a wonderfully bleak declaration, and dead on–think of it as an expansion of Pauline Kael's belief that no one ever takes the time to bash terrible pictures. But there's more to it than simply that brittle shattering of cinema's impregnable mythic mystique. I think certain movies deflect even judgment–movies that are the exact equivalent of, say, Michael Bolton and Kenny G collaborating on a cover of a Richard Marx song. Rail against them if you must, but there's no sport in it, and definitely no swaying of the assembled masses. There are films that are what they are, deserving neither praise nor condemnation in providing precisely the comfort of a tattered terry cloth robe worn ritualistically until disintegration. It's possible to meticulously, ruthlessly, intellectually deconstruct the aesthetic and functional properties of a favourite pair of sneakers, you know, but it's masturbatory and redundant and like swatting a fly with a Buick. I suspect that deep down everyone knows films like Reign Over Me and TMNT are as worthless as a plug nickel, that their appeal lies entirely in the fact that they'll present no surprises along with their usual meek payload of cheap emotional prattle and pocket uplift. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that, either–I'm just saying I feel like I don't have much more to say after reviewing the same fucking movie about a dozen times a year.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

August 2, 2007Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Espionage, France, Germany, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Joan Allen
screenplay by Tony Gilroy and George Nolfi, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Paul Greengrass

Bourneultimatumby Walter Chaw I look at the first film in this very fine trilogy as Jason Bourne embodying Harrison Ford’s Deckard character from Blade Runner: someone with hidden potential and a certain confusion about his place in the world–and the kind of figure Matt Damon is best at portraying, as it happens. I see the second film as Bourne-as-Roy Batty: robotic, violent, inexorable, and at the end of his string, valuing life and looking to make what amends he can. This third film, The Bourne Ultimatum, directed again by Paul Greengrass and welcoming several key players (Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Damon, screenwriter Tony Gilroy, DP Oliver Wood) back into the fold, ties both strings together: Bourne inhabiting his potential as something of an unparalleled killing machine while, simultaneously, becoming more human in his machine-like purposefulness. If there’s a feeling we’ve been here before, mark that down as the inevitable side-effect of staying just a little too long with a series that, to this point, had yet to make any missteps, minor or otherwise. Consequently this film, more than the other two, feels like a straight line: less improvisation, more inevitability, all of it leading to the moment where our hero, the merciless assassin, decides whether his training to be an instrument overrules his instinct to be a human. It can’t be a surprise anymore, so all that’s left is that it be true.