The Deadly Chemical Medley part I

At the beginning of the Summer of Action, I had no idea who the hell Gary Daniels was or why he was being included in The Expendables. I'm still not sure who the hell he is or why etc. etc. I did find out, however, that in 1995 he was in a movie called Rage, in which the netflix blurb describes him as a school teacher who is "forced to consume a deadly chemical that causes extreme violence in those who ingest it." Since this sounded a lot like the premise of Crank I decided it would be fun to pull a "dangerous chemical which causes unruly, SoA-approved behavior" marathon. However, I already watched the original Crank because of this technically convincing piece on a site I dabbled with doing some writing for. Also, Dally-Wally and I, like all of my co-conspirators here, had a very detailed plan of who was going to watch which movies. Right. That's it.

So, here in part I of The Deadly Chemical Medley I will discuss Rage. Wasn't Dally-Wally's flambeing of Crank part I? you ask. Well, he didn't call it The Deadly Chemical Medley part I now, did he? DID HE? If you're that worried about continuity, just think of it as the prelude.

It's clear from the outset of RAGE (starring Gary Daniels) that his character, Alex, is a little too happy with life for things to go well for him. He appears to be happy with his job as a 2nd grade teacher wherein he gets to hold forth with bizarre, winding discourses all day. At the start of the lesson it appears as though he's teaching the children to read by writing the word "Monkey" on the board.
However, the reading lesson becomes a biology lesson when he teaches them all about the lifestyles of monkeys. Discussion of the fact that some monkeys are carnivores then turns into a morality lesson when he teaches one particularly pessimistic little second grader, who believed that people are just like the monkeys who eat smaller monkeys because of the sterling example of Jeffrey Dahmer, that people are largely good at heart. He drives this point home by having the whole class stand up and tell them that they love the little pessimist. Not sure how well that one went over though, as they all giggled after they said it.

Indeed, life was going far too well for Alex. Maybe the little pessimist is right: he gets picked up by the renegades who had earlier taken a bunch of messicans captive. They take him to the Westech labs. Unfortunately for Alex, he's a perfect specimen for experimenting. He's bout to get' 200 ccs of something or other, but uses some nifty martial arts tricks and the Doom unlimited ammo cheat to shoot up his captors. (Upon review: 200ccs is a LOT of volume. That's 200 milliliters. For those of you who live your lives by gallons and cups, the average shot is like 5ccs. You have something like 8 liters of blood circulating in your body (I did not fact check this). That means his Deadly Chemical Content would be 2.5. Assuming that deadly chemicals are as dangerous as alcohol, he would be considerably past the legal limit of 0.08. Like, more than 30 times over.) That is, until the boss man comes and gets him. Why doesn't the boss man ever just come first to these brawls? He'd save a lot of henchmen.

Well, at some point in there he got his 200ccs and managed to fuck up the entire evil organization, including the boss. Rematches never work out well for the boss. That's the second thing they should figure out: you gottta just count your gains after you bet his ass the first time and then mosey on out of town.

Anyhow, here are the awesome things that happen as the authorities and media go on a manhunt to stop the crazed, drug-addled mad 2nd grade teacher:

-Alex survives being thrown from the top of a semi which he'd rigged to run straight into the chief bad guy's school bus. Because flying through the air and landing on the road at 70 mph doesn't hurt if you're planning for it!
-Alex walks in on a really weird S&M session. I think the part of the woman may have been being played by a man? Or a woman with a very sturdy jaw and bad wig.
-After the national media sleuth gets the DL on Alex and Westech (a cruelty to animals suit against Westech was dropped two years ago because the evidence was lost- SOUNDS SHADY!), the S&M couple pull the ol' kneel-down-behind-him-and-push-him-over routine. Alex isn't a fan. He knocks the girl? out for their attempt at third grade-level shenanigans.
-BAD SCIENCE ALERT! Media sleuth talks to one of the animal activists who brought the suit. They got a tip that Westech had been injecting monkeys with chemicals that induced violent behavior. The chemicals: benzene, thioridizine, methyl amine, hydrochloric acid, "and a list of other shit I can't pronounce". Unless the monkeys (and Alex) are getting worked up because they're going to get cancer, experience a fever or muscle rigidity, smell like fish, and have their insides melt, I'm not sure how that combination of chemicals is inducing an irrepressible rage. But hey, I'm just a scientist what do I know?
-Alex avoids apprehension by hanging over the edge of a really tall building which may or may not be located close to my place of employment. Hanging over a ledge does not seem like a very aggressive way to handle the situation. He avoids a helicopter gunner using the same technique. WHERE'S THE RAGE, ALEX??
-CLASSIC MANEUVER! He escapes the helicopter gunner by sliding down the buliding onto a window-washing scaffold! Lucky for him that empty scaffold was there. Makes perfect sense really. Also lucky for him, instead of using the z-dimension maneuverability of a helicopter, the guy just keeps shooting him from the same plane (as in geometric plane) which of course doesn't work because the scaffold thing has bullet-proof metal around the bottom of it.
-BAD PHYSICS ALERT! Alex falls from the helicopter (which he got to by tarzan-swinging from the window rig, naturally) a good 20 stories through a glass roof into a garden. Also naturally, he survives this fall. Because gardens are really soft to land in, even from 200 feet up.
-We get an incredibly odd exchange of non-subtitled conversation in some kind of oriental language between Alex and a man with a yacht he calls 'sensei'. He then leaves his wife and kid with sensei. I don't think bona fide senseis have yachts.
-All that sleuthing pays off as the media sleuth gets an exclusive with Alex. He airs the footage and brings the heart of the story to us: "Before we become judge and jury, Alex Gainer should have his say. After all, what if he's innocent."
-It should probably be mentioned that the rage appears to have worn off, so that was rather short-lived. Furthermore, the rage has subsided to a strange sex scene with Alex and his wife. Sex is always the way to go when you're the target of a major manhunt. You can't run, you can't hide, but you CAN get your rocks off.
-I just figured out who one of the TV execs is: Jack Sheppard's dad. Also in this movie: the leader of the Mayans motorcycle club from Sons of Anarchy. Quite the character actor breeding ground, this Rage movie.
-While telling his full side of the story to the media sleuth Alex gets apprehended. The head of the lab tells him that the only way he'll survive is to go back to the lab for the antidote, and that he's putting people through this suffering in an attempt to make a better army. It was nothing personal. But Alex takes it personally! He doesn't like this kind of brash disrespect of human rights. So kicks some more henchmen ass and shatters a LOT of plate glass windows.
-SUPER SWEET MANEUVER! To avoid imminent capture on the 2nd level of the mall where he was doing the interview (where else can you get so much plate glass?), Alex detaches one end of a balloon arch and uses it as a rope to swing down to the 1st level. He parlays the momentum into an awesome slide tackle under a middle-of-the-mall sales cart, taking out a bad guy in the process.
-As Paul Blart taught us, you really can't beat a mall for staging a big action scene. As Paul Blart also taught us, movies shot in malls feel really hokey. For proof of both statements, check this out:


-And if you didn't think the carousel in the middle of the mall was going to provide some subterfuge BOY WERE YOU WRONG!
-It's great to fight for your freedom and all but at some point you have to start giving some serious consideration to that whole "needing the antidote" thing. Becomes less significant though when the lab boss starts shooting you up.
-Now would be a good time to report that the guy stressing the antidote was also some kind of agent. Earlier, his partner told him that they were supposed to cancel the mission at the behest of central command. Well, just as Alex is about to get shot in the head, GUESS WHO STEPS IN WITH A BIG ASS SHOTGUN? If your guess was Malcolm Jamaal Warner, you were wrong. And way, way off topic. That's right, it was the do-gooder partner who wanted to follow command's orders. He did look a little like MJW though. But I'd say more like Carl Lewis. No, it wasn't Carl Lewis.

And so Alex makes it out alive. Lost in all this "the scientists are torturing people to make a super-soldier" business is the fact that the doctors were magically able to concoct the antidote for him despite (I presume) limited knowledge of exactly what it was that was about to kill him.

Finally, the media sleuth who himself would not just take the storyline that was pre-packaged for him, breaks it down for us once again: "Alex Gainer would not accept business as usual. Against all odds he stood up for what he believed in. He drew a line against a flagrant abuse of power and trust.... One person, acting alone, can make a difference. And the future of our democracy is in the hands of every one of us."

Not a bad day's work: a massive semi truck-school bus collision, some rooftop/helicopter theatrics, and a blowout in a shopping mall with the heady lesson that we must all stay alert to the injustices of the world around us. It's certainly no Crank, as most of the big action scenes here were not directly caused by an undying necessity for action- they were more poetically necessitated by the neverending quest for justice. Looks like Gary Daniels wins this round.