DARN good Prochnow film.
First of all, it falls into the "western" category, but it isn't a western. It's not related to Guns of Honor or Trigger Fast. Score thirty points right there.
It takes place in Canada over a 20-year period starting in 1885, I think, the plot centering around a French Canadian trapper played by Yves Renier. He murders a man for raping his wife (who dies), then disposes of the man's body and takes his infant son Peter into the wilds to live in hiding.
10 years later he sends the kid back to town to live with his best friend, Jürgen. At this point so many silly little subplots started happening with so little clarity that I began to question my sanity, but I came to three conclusions about that:
A) A lot of it was my fault because I wasn't paying enough attention.
B) A lot of it wasn't my fault because there were definitely holes in this story.
3) It's not important.
The rest of the movie was a mishmash of intertwined-but- related plot elements, and I'm just not fresh enough to invent a concise explanation of it.
However, you don't care and neither do I, so let's get to the good stuff.
The very instant Jürgen appears in this film, he gets shot up. This was a good thing and a bad thing. Good because Jürgen getting shot up at the START of a movie is the wonderful kind of something they'd have done to him in Interceptor, had the story line given them any kind of opening for it.
It was a bad thing because he was shot in the leg and spent the next 20 years (that is, the entire movie) with a severe limp, using a cane. We'll get back to that later.
Twenty minutes in, Jürgen got wet.
Some time later, he poured water over somebody's head.
There were boats. Jürgen didn't get on one, but when you get as much from a movie as you do from this, you just can't complain about petty details.
The script reeked like a summer swamp from start to finish.
So did all the actors, except three: Jürgen, Yves, and the kid who played young 10-year-old Peter. Yves Renier looked vaguely familiar, but he's not even listed in the cast index of my video guide. I have no idea where I could have seen him before - maybe I haven't. He was a Jürgen, though, definitely: very talented, very professional, and way too good to be in this movie.
Otherwise, The Other Side of the Law holds the record for having the worst collection of actors ever assembled around Jürgen Prochnow. Nothing else springs to mind as even coming close. It's like watching a bunch of people trying to think up something cute to do while Dad has the camcorder going.
In regard to that, there was one fellow I decided to like a lot, just to be perverse. I'm sorry to say I didn't catch the actor's name, but he resembled Cary Elwes and played a young (20-ish) psychopath, providing by far the greatest amount of fun whenever Jürgen wasn't in the picture. Al Pacino should run, not walk, to take lessons in plasterboard-snarfing from this future megastar. I know now what Wing Commander was missing. It was THAT guy.
There was very little background music used, but it arose occasionally during the most dramatic scenes, and... well, Linda, I'm going to leave that to you since you liked the Tangerine Dream music so much. I really don't have the words for this score, but I know you will. Partners, okay? You write. I'll censor.
There was a ho named Bridget in this movie. She wasn't Jürgen's ho, but she did have the best dialog of all: "Mona's grandpa lost his entire fortune gambling in Monaco. It was much more dignified than losing it in a stupid business deal like your father did."
The movie had wonderful scenery in it.
Toward the end some things occurred which I did not like.
I did not like seeing Jürgen tramping cross-country with two snot-nosed kids, one of whom he'd raised half his life, who zipped on ahead without a thought for the fact that Jürgen was having a hell of a time trying to keep up and couldn't do it. It turned out to be a plot point, but still. I had long since resigned myself to the fact that one thing missing from The Other Side of the Law was the treat of just watching Jürgen get around, because he couldn't get around very well with that limp. (I didn't like that either, but I accepted it. Then THAT happened. Sheesh!)
I did not like seeing another snot-nosed kid whack Jürgen's already permanently-injured leg with an axe. Oh, I really... really...really didn't like that. And I have a suggestion for the first male in a Prochnow movie to be honored as a bona fide Ho.
I did not like, in a manner of speaking, having to watch Jürgen react to the death of his best friend just after they were reunited for the first time in 20 years. He did it much too well and I wanted to cry, and I DON'T DO THAT. (Linda, I'm guessing we'll be hearing about that one from you also.)
Basically, this had pretty much everything you could ask from a Jürgen movie. It had all the right good stuff, all the right bad stuff, and plenty of things to like AND to hate. Jürgen, I should say, looked really great in this movie... in 19th- century rural gentleman's clothes.
Cool!
Thank you for reassuring me that I am not the only one out there interested in plot. I have a terrible, according to my professors, plot habit. They don't say so in so many words, that would be too cute, which as we all know is the kiss of death in literary circles.
One comment, intertwined IS related. Especially within a mishmash.
I particularly liked your subtextual perversity plot.
To say otherwise would be to propagate a calumny of epic proportions.
Yes, I just got home from SAT class. I am given to superfluous verbosity in the temporal periphery of that endeavour.
Buenos noches, bon noir, buono sera, guten nacht.
Thank you. I knew it needed to be edited, but if one single sentence made sense it's a miracle. I think I was groping for "entangled"... or something...
Here's one I sent to Linda a little later, after she mailed me something... Compared to this, the review was Ralph Waldo Emerson... (um, is that the name of a poet?)
=====
Is it ok if I read it in the morning over coffee... I'm long-term sleep-deprived here and just spent the whole day watching the database server go poop, then watching a new Jürgen movie oh SH*T I popped that thing back in just to let it run while I was writing the review, and there goes the scene where Jürgen's best friend dies argh arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh
ok, I just finished The Other Side of the Law...my god what a piece of crap! Who let these people have enough money to film this sadistic vision of Canada? What grudge do the French have against Quebec to portray its inhabitants as dim-witted, occasionally homicidal clods? I am appalled.
I hope Jürgen got a lot of money and a 5 month stay in the Chateau Frontenac for allowing himself to slog in the mud for these idiots.
As you can tell, I'm not happy with this film....at least Hurricane Smith was fun in its awfulness...sheesh.
There's no haiku for Other Side... here is my humble entry
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAW
Jürgen's a trapper
in a town of bad actors.
Kill the Screenwriter.
Subject: Alternate ending
To OTHER SIDE OF THE LAW:
Jürgen gets pissed off and drives a diesel train over the the entire town.
Psycho ho-boy took an axe
And gave poor Jürgen's leg some whacks.
When he saw what he had done,
Jürgen burned the town for fun.