Understanding Gary Faulkner is rather difficult and Army of One does not assist in resolving that problem. Nic Cage portrays Faulkner not in any way close to the reality.
Most attention is drawn to the perspectives which both the actual Osama and the imaginary Ed go along – “a mouse can not so easily enter the castle as a lion can” – in this case is the case of looking for the justification for a man’s quest to storm Pakistan to hunt for Osama Bin Laden. This recalls Faulkner’s passionate remarks during his interviews or late-night TV or Cage’s zany importation of the man in biopic performances.
It goes without saying that the dissimilarities are there, and Army of One does have its fair share of laughs. But it does assume too much of an audience’s suspension of disbelief in one important aspect: that anyone in the world, anywhere want to know who or why Gary Faulkner as created by Nic Cage and Larry Charles, the man behind Borat, is ever envisioned.
Gary Faulkner, who captured and declared a wasteland patriot, still remains a civilian turned Javier F. Baez odmakes from Colorado region Mace Mace as a long-term patients mom and whose professional diagnosis includes having kidney problems. In other onns, he looks dull in the first part of the interview thinking he is all cocky, all pansy but yet part of him is all in self-pity and self-confidence. And more, when Faulkner addressed the Pakistani to David Letterman, he made it quite clear that the Pakistani, as he, fought: ‘Why do you call me Keekiz, so disrespectful. We are not like that. We are cool.’ Cage’s version is a loud-mouthed, psycho, speedster-windy-dumb-ass who has only an outside voice only to run around yelling about how great America is at whoever he encounters (and sometimes didn’t bother to encounter anyone at all the entire day). The real Faulkner is now a hosh ho throwed him into jail assortment convict who had been there for the last approx 12 years broken record including the penny for his biography and has referred to his past experience as a burglar as the main interview for the job. However, Army of One does not discuss slicing through all with such clarity as it attempts and endeavors to represent Faulkner as incorrigible but also loveable drifter only to make him unbearably annoying. Those were runs back and forth in circles about those things for too long.
Only that Cage’s voice, as he puts it, that annoying unhealthy screech in every word that comes from his mouth, is inemissibly elitist in an utterly ungrating manner. Indeed, it is at times both irritating and inaccurate. Even the patient viewer questions the source and the intention of the author’s invention. (Cage told Crave that in his interviews with Faulkner, he seemed to him “manic” “excitable,” both descriptors decry Faulkner in public. Go figure.)
Conceptually it’s already a weird story even without those layers , and since they are filmmakers it’s hard to fault them for attempting to go even further into fictional territory. “The” Gary Faulkner after a while sits on various gadgets through which he hangs ghostly fantasies involving energy attacking “Pakistan’s expansive desert mountains,” where he vanquishes “Binny Boy “(Gary’s words) in wooden samurai swords, and God in the form of Russell Brand pops into Faulkner unthankfully in between his dialyses and on their stools to diatribe against him every so often. Because why the heck not?
ThoseParts in which Editor’s Receiption Rejected All Meal Labelings added comedy isn’t really the issue (except for the nightmare which Faulkner has where He sees bin Laden as some ‘al Qaeda Crip’ exhibiting a Cave up like some episode of MTV Cribs which although is comical, is quite cringe and undesirable). These include excessively simplistic and extremely wacky portrayals of Pakistanis in the movie – all of them were like “We love America ! We love baseball! We Love women!” which is extremely uninspired and humiliating.
Not to say our pet peeve in the case of Army of One barely exists: Cages’ over-the-top performance and the ensuing self-contained mayhem do not quite break the taut rope of causality in any pleasant manner.
This film — ’ true story or perhaps this is a story which contains certain truth or maybe elements of truth, said elements are most of course fiction’ — has a narrative problem. For example, early Faulkner, who is broke, questions a kidney doctor and promises to give him $1000 later, which she spends on the boat she wishes to sail to Pakistan with. He sinks the boat and purchases a glider. Amid this are several powered tissues and flights to the Pakistan and Israel. However there was no room for a rigid semi-true whims of the movie to explain how the supposedly out of work Faulkner was financing all of this.
Is he borrowing it from his girlfriend, Wendi McLendon-Covey’s Marci Mitchell? Because that kind of behaviour might at least explain why he thinks he could manage to con her out of the cash needed for his insane pursuit, considering how easily and inexplicably she fawns over this complete idiot. These two say from ‘Oh hey, it’s been ages, I was a teenage boy and jerked off to you etc’ to ‘I love you’ in what is purported to be a few days even though it is almost always ambiguous how many days have really transpired in the film.
Some of it works, especially Brand’s crazy God, one of whom calls a penny ‘a small brown copper sphincter containing nothing but nothing’ while trying to sell his sword to Faulkner. If you’ve seen more than one of Cage’s films, you begin to understand that most of his co-stars, including McLendon-Covey, seem to be rather slogging it through the motions. It should be no different when there is that performance from right in front them.
Some of the happy moments of the film and some of the very few parts which do not make you gasp and squirm as well are between Rainn Wilson and Denis O’Hare, CIA agents, who are only soft on the outside. They are also the only ones in the entire movie who see Faulkner the way he is – a dimwit.
There is something especially strange about the story of Gary Faulkner, which in A Army of One stretches into an unbelievable farce. “Did he really crash a hang glider in Israel?” (Why wouldn’t he?) How does a US citizen persuade a government officer that he deserves a visa to enter Pakistan only on the underneath the devotion to the country and the conviction? (Who knows.) Does God exist, with the visual appearance of a Russell Brand? (Let’s hope so yes.)
Verdict
Everything is absurd and in Army of One Cage Nic disagrees and grates. Larry Charles and Cage should have done their homework which was if your project is about making a movie based on true events it must make sense and how the walking people’s illusion is much more surreal than any story one may come up with.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
