From the mists of time: “I, the Jury”

 

It’s tempting to call 1982’s I, the Jury a sleazy, pulpy , mercenary adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s 1947 novel, but that would ignore just how sleazy and pulpy Spillane’s novel is in the first place. Sure, the movie basically jettisons big chunks of Spillane’s plot and fills it in with crap about mind-control and the CIA, but Spillane probably would have done that if he’d thought of it at the time (and who knows, he might have used it in later novels—he wrote, like, a million of them). No, this I, the Jury is just as trashy and lurid as its source material (which courted controversy upon its release for its violence and sex), adjusted, of course, for for 1982 sensibilities, and that amounts to very lurid and trashy. I mean, there’s a reason that during my childhood, this movie was the Holy Grail of HBO’s early offerings, and it’s not the snazzy soundtrack.

No, you can leave this one: “Takers”

Chris Brown deserves to be thrown off a bridge. He deserves to be blown up in a hyperbaric tank like that dude in License to Kill. He deserves to be fed to water monitors–small ones, adolescents—who will tear out his intestines and play tug-of-war with them, while the whole thing is broadcast internationally, so that all of us normal joes who work hard, pay our taxes, and don’t beat the holy living fuck out of Rihanna can watch and raise a glass and discuss what a little bitch he is when set upon by hungry reptiles. Appearing in Takers isn’t quite a comparable punishment, but it’s not going to make anyone forget that he beat a gorgeous woman so badly she looked like last night’s sirloin steak either. Call it a draw.