November 4, 2008 will be a truly landmark day for the United States of America as we all head out to vote in the most historic election of our time. Will we elect our first ever black Vulcan President or continue our long standing tradition of electing old, rich, white guys? Will it be the Democratic Senator who has abstained more times than a judge on Boston Legal or will it be the Republican Senator most likely to snap from a Vietnam flashback and kill an innocent person for looking at him cockeyed? On the Vice Presidential side, will it be first time since its founding that the state of Delaware actually mattered or will it be the hockey mom who thinks living across the street from Russia makes her a foreign policy expert? And if Barak Obama does not win does that mean that most Americans are still prejudiced against voting for a black man or does it actually mean that Oprah's stranglehold over the will of American populace isn't quite as powerful as we all thought? And if John McCain how long until someone puts a pillow over his face in the middle of the night so that the Manchurian MILF can take power sooner rather than later. Truly historic times are upon us. Who will we vote into office this year? Will we vote for "change" or "change we can believe in"?

I briefly considered suspending this month's Foyeurism to concentrate on the nation's financial holocaust, but decided at the last minute that it would be better if I did my patriotic duty instead. In anticipation of the most historic election of my lifetime I have decided to devote this month's Foyeurism to three cinematic acts of patriotism: a movie about the greatness of the USA, another starring the ultimate American, and another about an unsung modern American hero fighting the good fight as only an Ameri-can.

And while you're at it, follow the instructions on the message board because very shortly the Foywonder.com message board is going to undergoing some real change alright - change you will believe in.

PATRIOT ACTS

The United States of America - now in convinient movie form

Are you a proud American? Writer-director Fred Ashman wants you to be one and that's why he's made PROUD AMERICAN, a celebration of everything good and righteous about the United States of America, a flag-waving salute to the enduring freedom of our great nation, a love letter to the American dream and all who strive to achieve it, a friendly reminder to those of us who may have forgotten or come to take for granted what an amazing country we live in. Ashman really does want to be a uniter, not a divider; his is a surprisingly apolitical film for the most part. Just a 90-minute motivational movie composed of several dramatic reenactments loosely based on true-life American success stories intermixed with montages galore displaying postcard quality American scenery either voiced over by actual testimonials from everyday Americans giving their thoughts on how the American dream has benefited them or set to the tune of jingoistic songs that sound like 20-year old Christian pop music but with all the Jesus stuff replaced with inspirational and patriotic lyrics. I don't know about you but until PROUD AMERICAN I'd never actually seen a feature length PSA before.

So there I was on opening day sitting alone in an empty theater watching a movie I didn't even know existed until two days prior filled with the overwhelming sense that I could drop dead in here and nobody would find my corpse for a very long time. I sat back with my all-American popcorn and made-in-the-USA frozen Coke ready to be awash in a tsunami... Hold on a sec. Tsunami isn't an American enough term. I sat ready to be awash in a tidal wave of superpatriotism. That's better. There was a long line of elderly white people buying tickets at the same time I was who I assumed were going to see this motion picture. Instead they all appeared to be going to see that new Tyler Perry movie. That I live in South Mississippi and all the old white folk opted to go see the film from the charismatic black guy instead of the star-spangled orgy of American idealism, this may not be a good sign for John McCain come November.

The first thing the movie about the greatness of American values taught me was that everything that's great about American values is sponsored by MasterCard, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart; their corporate logos adorning the screen to make sure we all know who helped fund this film. I know many consider it uncool to be patriotic these days, but I personally felt no shame in raising my frozen Coke high in saluting the logo of the great American corporate overlords that made that cup full of frosted sugar water possible. Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola! Coca... I mean USA! USA! USA!

In retrospect it's only fitting that this film both opened and closed with corporate sponsorship logos since looking back on it now I'm left with the weird feeling that for 105-minutes I traveled back in time to the mid-Eighties and watched a PBS production that would have aired on the Fourth of July right after a very special Independence Day edition of Reading Rainbow. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if at some point one of the voiceovers informed us that this program was made possible by a grant from the Chubb group.

PROUD AMERICAN opens with our first travel log of iconic American scenery (of which there are seemingly hundreds of in this film) with the voices of various immigrants telling of how much more freedom they have in America than their countries of origin. A judge is then shown administering the citizenship oath to said immigrants. The music swells tremendously and the film's title explodes upon the screen in an eruption of red, white, and blue. And following up this orgasm of patriotism is...

Ladies and gentlemen, the comedy stylings of Yakov Smirnoff!

Seriously. Yakov Smirnoff. Yakov freakin' Smirnoff doing "What a country!" jokes. Only now they're about what an amazing country the United States is. You'd have thought Yakov Smirnoff's whole career would have died the day the Iron Curtain fell - apparently not. No entertainer will ever be truly washed-up in America as long as there's a Branson, Missouri. What a country!

Smirnoff's shtick segues into our first tale, the story of Dawn, a young Vietnamese girl whose family immigrated to America in 1975. Home schooled by her parents to learn broken English (But who taught the parents English?), Dawn's inspired-by-a-Reader's Digest-story segment picks up with her first day of high school where she demonstrates a knowledge of American history greater than that of many of the people who'll be going to the voting booth this November. Her broken English and book smarts incur the wrath of some racist mean girls. Fortunately, coming to Dawn's rescue are a trio of multi-ethnic nice girls who take the young woman under their wing and immediately plan out for her an after school tutoring curriculum that I suspect is more advanced than the actual tutoring programs offered by most real-life public schools. Then it's suddenly graduation time and even those mean girls begrudgingly applaud Dawn receiving her diploma. This is not the end of Dawn's story. It is, however, the last we hear of those high school friends who helped her so much.

College time! But not much college time. She earns herself a business degree in about 45-seconds. All we get is a voiceover of Dawn telling us (I'm paraphrasing here), "College was a lot harder than high school, but I got through it. And that's when I met Michael. We fell in love."

Now Dawn is married to a computer nerd. She awakens him asleep at his keyboard so that he can tell her about the new program he's developed. A few seconds of skyline later and we're right back to the same exact tiny computer desk set where he now tells Dawn how he pitched his great new program to his bosses but they shot it down because they felt he was too low on the corporate totem pole to be showing them up with his ingenuity. Dawn suggests he go into business for himself marketing his software; she's even already drawn up a business model for them. Faster than Samantha on Bewitched could wiggle her nose, they now have their own small business and are deep in debt. Then another voiceover informs us that superwoman Dawn secured their first big order and from there they were off and running. The end.

This is typical of how these vignettes operate. They're just disjointed vignettes composed of even shorter vignettes that skip around so that massive amounts of story and time can pass in mere seconds. Most of the facts are not presented in story form but by the tag team voiceovers narrating the segments. Their messages don't resonate because they aren't given time to properly develop, they're written in an almost juvenile manner and the acting... Oh, dear lord, the acting! With very few exceptions the actors are all relative unknowns and I think I can safely say that for the majority of them it will remain that way. I'm talking about acting on par with that seen in old educational shorts you were shown in elementary school. That is perhaps highly appropriate considering PROUD AMERICAN often plays like an old fashioned industrial film only if the corporation was America and the product being hocked was patriotism, opportunity, hard work, and personal responsibility.

During these segments you can count on being subjected to some truly maudlin songs tailored to what we're seeing on the screen with lyrics designed to ensure we know exactly what we're supposed to be thinking. "You can do anything you put your mind to" is the oft repeated verse to the featured song in Dawn's story of achievement. I don't want to say these songs are excruciatingly bad but I'd be willing to bet this movie's soundtrack could even make Toby Keith want to move to Canada.

Dawn's tale is followed up with another voiceover montage showcasing America's entrepreneurial spirit. Specifically, how small businesses are the real backbone of America - not massive corporations. Never is this message pounded home better than during a very brief dramatization of Sam Walton founding his first few small town department stores that would eventually grow to be the Wal-Mart megaconglomerate.

The second story is easily the loopiest of the lot; undoubtedly the hardest hitting tale of overcoming anti-Semitism since that episode of Powerhouse where the Jewish kid faked his death to trick a confession out of the teenage neo-nazis that firebombed the community center.

A pair of skinheads pull-up in front of a small suburban home and smash a window displaying an electric light-up menorah; they yell "Merry Christmas" and then speed away. While this is clearly a hate crime - let's be honest; this is a fairly tame hate crime by violent Nazi skinhead standards. Yet the way everyone will react to this you'd think those skinheads had painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs on the house. Who should come to the rescue but none other than Principal Belding from Saved by the Bell. He ain't havin' none of this hate crap in his hood. He lets the Jewish family know right away that neither he nor his wife nor anyone else in their suburb approves of this sort of hatred. Well, geez, I'd hope that would go without saying. His wife even seems more emotionally traumatized by the incident than the Jewish wife and this broken window was all it took to get her going on about how her parents died in the Holocaust.

Do not make Mr. Belding angry. You won't like it when Mr. Belding gets angry.

A day later, the Belding's present their Jewish neighbors with a brand new golden menorah complete with a tearful Mrs. Belding giving a brief explanation of what the word menorah means. Yes; the gentile actually begins explaining elements of the Jewish faith to the Jewish family. I'm fairly certain they already know this - THEY'RE JEWS! Nothing ever comes of the skinhead angle; they get away scott free. The story ends with everyone in the neighborhood showing their solidarity with their Jewish neighbors by displaying their own electric menorahs. This brief segment had the tone of one of those Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints public service announcements. Religious tolerance - pass it on.

This leads right into a montage of churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. Here the film celebrates religious freedom in America set to a song that opens with the line "There is no one road". I can think of quite a few Americans who would take issue with that song and if you don't believe me then ask Mitt Romney why he's not the Republican nominee for President right now. Oh, and if you're an atheist or agnostic, you're not represented in this montage, so clearly you're not true Americans. Take your godlessness elsewhere. Same goes for you, Scientologists.

Maybe it's just me but if you're going to make an anthology movie celebrating all that is great about America perhaps you shouldn't have two of your stories built around people having to overcome good ol' American bigotry.

The next American success story is that of Curtis, a young African-American kid growing up poor in a bad Chicago neighborhood. Grandma takes him to the local clinic after he suffers a bad cut on his arm running away from street thugs attempting to steal his saxophone. Kind of hard to believe a 10-year old has never heard of stitches and never seen a stethoscope before; just being in a doctor's office appeared to confound him. This trip to the clinic becomes a life-altering experience as Curtis now not only decides to devote his life to becoming a doctor, he'll quickly undergo a major growth spurt into a different, older actor who'll play him the rest of the way through high school and college. Curtis must overcome poverty, financial woes, grades that are good but not good enough to earn a scholarship, the trauma of community college, difficult med school entrance exams, personal loss, and self doubt in order to fulfill the circle of life and become a doctor, but you just know he's going to make it because we wouldn't be seeing this tale if he didn't.

It’s easily the best of these segments thanks to it getting more time to develop than the others and because it boasts the best acting. The young actor playing the older Curtis was one of the few actors in this film who seemed genuine; almost enough to even make you want to root for him. But again, as is the case with all of these, the writing is amateurish, the editing choppy, the music intrusive, and the whole segment feels like a BET Afterschool Special.

The tackiest segment of the film begins. A mom and daughter discuss the meaning of love over dinner. Then they go to say goodnight to daddy and tell him how much they love him. Wait. Why is mom crying her eyes out doing so? Because they're now standing at Ground Zero in New York City where daddy was killed on 9/11! This is so manipulative it borders on being crass.

That leads into another musical montage, this time of various war memorials across America set to a song about sacrifice. If PROUD AMERICAN had come out a few years earlier you'd swear the "Freedom isn't Free" music video from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE was a direct parody of this very montage.

Finally, the last of the inspirational stories begins. This is the tale of Carlos, a Brazilian skateboarder (and C. Thomas Howell look-a-like) who came to stay with a family in Miami. He gets a job at an Italian restaurant run by a guy who sounded like he was impersonating Robert DeNiro; for a moment I honestly thought Carlos' tale was going to involve him being mixed up with the mafia. Carlos' meteoric rise from a dishwasher who barely speaks English to the manager of the restaurant in such a short amount time rivals only that of Sarah Palin. But then he drops the bombshell on his bambino boss: he's leaving to join the Navy SEALs. In the span of a 60-second montage of Carlos in boot camp, we're told of how difficult it is to become a Navy SEAL, how Carlos succeeded in becoming one of only 11 out of over 100 who made the cut, and then without warning and in an awfully casual voiceover, we're informed that Carlos got shot in the spine and is now a paraplegic. Carlos’ story now begins almost anew, from inspiring tale of an immigrant's rise to military valor to the triumphant tale of how a crippled veteran overcame physical adversity to find true love and become a world record holding wheelchair racer. This story had enough crammed into those 15-minutes to fill its own full-length Hallmark Network original movie.

No, sir, C. Thomas Howell and Johnathon Schaech did not have a baby. Why do you keep asking?

PROUD AMERICAN concludes with a moral of the stories summary about how with hard work, dedication, and a good attitude you can accomplish anything in the US of A. Well, that's the working theory anyway. I think it's a tad more complex than that. I think one of the bigger problems with the film is that it takes such a simplistic view of American ideals that the only audience I can imagine truly benefiting from what's being presented on the screen are third graders and under and even then I can't imagine them sitting through most of this without growing incredibly restless.

Time for one last montage of sweeping vistas and American scenery set to a song named after the movie. Figures they'd use this montage to end the film since I kept thinking this is the kind of footage you usually hear the national anthem playing over before a TV station signs off for the evening. The film's title re-appears, accompanied by the corporate logos to remind us one more time who's really running the show.

That's when something truly unexpected occurred. A very special thank appears on the screen, a shout out to "a true American patriot who lent his inspiration and support when no one else would listen". That American: H. Ross Perot. Now that was a climactic twist greater than any M. Night could come up with. I did not see that coming. "When no one else would listen", eh? Judging by the current box office gross - less than $132,000 total - Perot and I were the only ones who even saw it. PROUD AMERICAN: the movie inspired by a nation that was meant to inspire a nation only to go completely ignored by that very nation.

It's really hard to hate on a film like this because for all its many, many, many faults it really does mean well. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then PROUD AMERICAN is the transcontinental off-ramp into Hades. It's not awful; kind of nice in its well-meaningness, but it's no damn good. I was never completely bored but I was never interested. It's earnest to a fault yet never inspires like Mr. Ashman intended. Personally, I saw more beautiful American scenery during the running across America sequence in FORREST GUMP. Hearing the GI Joe theme song fills my heart with more patriotism than any of the songs on this film's soundtrack. Nothing here filled me American pride more than every time I watch Rocky knockout that Russian. Heck, I was more inspired to chant "USA" earlier this year watching Rambo single-handedly blows half the genocidal Burmese military to hell.

No apple pie here. PROUD AMERICAN is as American as a ham & cheese sandwich. In fact, that's what this film is loaded with: ham and cheese.

You'll definitely need whiskey for your men to sit through this one.

You know somebody who doesn't need to go see PROUD AMERICAN: Toby Keith. That man could give PROUD AMERICAN lessons on how to be a proud American. Toby Keith sings songs so patriotic that the American flag crosses its own heart when it hears them playing. The American flag has a Toby Keith lapel pin. Toby Keith is so American that G.I. Joe yells "Yo, Toby!" Toby Keith truly is the ultimate American; his blood is red, his skin is white, and his eyes are blue. I'm willing to bet you the man pisses concentrated freedom too. You want to create a race of super-soldiers? Just draw some of that red-blooded patriotism from Toby Keith's veins and inject it into our weakest warriors; we'll have an army of Captain America's in no time flat. And we won't need Toby Keith to sing jingoistic songs about their heroism in service to our nation because the lyrics will already be encoded into their DNA.

As successful as Toby Keith might be when it comes to performing country music about salutin' and boozin', he isn't much of an actor and he's even less of a screenwriter. Continuing the long-standing tradition of taking a hit song title and building a movie around it (See also: GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT, HARPER VALLEY PTA, et al), BEER FOR MY HORSES, named after a duet he performed with Willie Neslon and referenced only as a beer toast in the film, is Toby Keith's attempt to crossover from country music superpatriot to Hollywood superstar; he stars, produced, and even co-wrote it. Keith, his big, burly, blonde curly-haired, goateed self - I sometimes wondered when he'd get pissed off and start slapping John Stossel around while asking him "Does that feel fake?" - saunters through his first starring role trying to get by on his twangy charm alone because he certainly doesn't show much by way of acting ability. Is there such a thing as having a mono-twang speaking voice? There is now.

BEER FOR MY HORSES really seems to be more of a showcase for redneck comedian and co-writer Rodney Carrington; he upstages Keith at every turn mugging for the camera like the white Marlon Wayans. Clarification: not the white Marlon Wayans in WHITE CHICKS. I've seen Carrington's stand-up before and he's one of the few of the so-called "blue collar" comedians I've found funny. Not here though. So forced is Carrington's performance as Keith's doltish bumpkin sidekick he comes across like the witless creation of a genetic experiment to merge Jeff Foxworthy, Tim Conway, and Ken Berry into a single organism with a perpetual overbite and generally behaving like an escapee from the Hee Haw cornfield.

This here's the part of my body where the script came from. Let ya touch it for a buck.

Between Koby Teeth's toothy grin and Rodney Carrington's goober overbite I sometimes watched the two together on screen wondering if I was actually bearing witness to the world's first periodontal North Texas smirk-off competition. If so, Carrington won.

In promoting BEER FOR MY HORSES Toby Keith has been throwing out comparisons to CANNONBALL RUN. Am I to understand it that Toby Keith believes comparisons to CANNONBALL RUN is an enticement and not extra incentive to stay as far away as possible? Is he not aware of the reputation of the CANNONBALL RUN movies? Would someone please inform Toby Keith that for a time in the 1970's Burt Reynolds was the biggest movie star in the world until he got snared into Hal Needham's death web and started making the CANNONBALL RUN movies? Will Toby Keith hype his next film by telling people, "If you loved STROKER ACE..."

True story: For some reason as an itty bitty kid back in 1981 I had it in my head that I wanted to see CANNONBALL RUN. One day I thought my mom was taking me to see CANNONBALL RUN, but once inside the Cineplex she led me into the theater to see RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK instead. I was initially annoyed by this switcheroo because I really had it in my head to see CANNONBALL RUN. Two hours later and I was reminded why mom's always know best. I love you, mom.

BEER FOR MY HORSES definitely lives up to the CANNONBALL RUN legacy: flat jokes, lame antics, performers trying to get by on personality alone, a pulling-a-plot-out-of-their-ass feeling, and recognizable actors appearing in minor roles that squander their talents: Willie Nelson and a few other country music stars pop up, Tom Skerritt looking almost corpse-like as the sheriff, Park Overall AKA the sassy nurse from Empty Nest as a sassy waitress, and cinematic powerhouse Curtis "Booger" Armstrong as the exasperated district attorney. Not enough car crashes though. Also suffers from a distinct lack of Deluise.

Toby Keith plays a guy called Rack. Rack, people! I do believe that was also originally the name of Pamela Anderson's character on Baywatch. Rack's a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town populated by rejects from Mama's Family. None more so than Rodney Carrington as best friend and fellow deputy, Lonnie, the sort of guy who'd probably complain about the show King of the Hill being too erudite for his tastes.

King of the Hill... Sure, the characters on that animated show are total Texas redneck stereotypes and their antics frequently wacky - often downright dumb; but even when the characters are saying and doing stupid things there's an intelligence to the writing that's non-existent here. Even the slower-witted Southern caricatures on the original Dukes of Hazzard TV series had more going upstairs than just being mentally-challenged good ol' boys. On the evolutionary scale of redneck comedy films, BEER FOR MY HORSES may not be as far down into the primordial ooze as those Larry the Cable Guy movies but it certainly isn't walking upright.

I walked into this movie hoping for some Texas pan-fried action buddy comedy antics of the ACTION U.S.A. variety. I'd have even been okay with some SMOKEY & THE BANDIT shenanigans. What I got was more akin to SMOKEY & THE BANDIT 3. The trailer promised more action than there actually was - really only a brief scene early in and no more until the climactic shootout. BEER FOR MY HORSES should have taken a cue from one of Keith's other songs: A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action.

Speaking of less talk, now you just know when you have a character in a movie that never speaks but has the capacity to speak that some time before the movie is over that character will finally speak and when they do so it's going to be a big moment. If it's a drama you know they're going to say something profound. If it's a horror movie you know it's going to be a life-saving moment. If it's a comedy you know they're going to suddenly let loose with something really funny meant to bring the house down. BEER FOR MY HORSES has Ted Nugent as Deputy Skunk, a silent crazy type fighting crime with a bow & arrow and two-fisted sub-machine guns. When The Nuge's moment finally comes to speak in the movie's closing minutes it turns out to be nothing but a throwaway line that's not funny, really doesn't sound like it was meant to be funny, and isn't even treated like that big a deal. That's how bad the writing is. One of the most obvious, easy to pull off clichés in all of screenwriting and Keith & Carrington found a way to botch it.

Toby Keith also gets to show off his romantic leading man side much to the chagrin of Claire Forlani. For some reason she appeared to be in a constant state of surprised delight in that the moment Toby Keith would appear in a scene with her she'd get this look on her face like she just walked in on her own surprise birthday party, possibly because even she can’t believe she gone from being romanced on screen by beefcake Brad Pitt to a beefy Toby Keith in the span of a decade.

More a prop than an actual character, Forlani plays Rack's old girlfriend, Annie, back from Chicago so that she can meet up again with him for the first time in years, go out on a date with him the next day, go to bed with him that night, and get kidnapped the next morning - all in the span of about 15-minutes. Is that some sort of record?

Rack, Lonnie, and Skunk busted a truckload of guys trying to steal liquid fertilizer for their meth labs. One of them turns out to be the brother of one of Mexico's biggest drug cartels. The crimeboss brother responds by having Annie abducted. Rack, Lonnie, and Skunk decide to go commando (gun-wise, not in the no-underwear sense, thankfully) by sneaking the Mexican out of the local jail, hopping into Lonnie's jacked-up 4x4, and heading to Mexico for a pistol-packin' showdown.

All Rack and Lonnie had to do was put the only policeman on overnight duty, an old Wilford Brimley look-a-like, asleep with doughnuts (too much sugar makes him sleepy) and walk the Mexican out the front door yet one of Mexico's biggest drug families had to resort to kidnapping a deputy's girlfriend? It's clear that neither Toby Keith nor Rodney Carrington have ever seen a single episode of The Shield.

Toby Keith is so American Ford Trucks declare themselves to be built "Toby Tough"

Multiple gags are at the expense of the Mexican in their custody being physically mistreated - Keith elbows him in the face about a half dozen times - or having his hair-brained escape attempts thwarted. The only blacks in the film are some gangbangers in the bathroom who turn out to love Motown. One could cry foul against the movie's racial aspects but I see no point since Rodney Carrington does more to set white Southerners back at least thirty years. Thirty years ago, coincidentally, being about the era when a movie like BEER FOR MY HORSES should have come out.

Their road trip to Mexico will involve all manner of screwball antics and zany personalities ensue along the way. Aside from "Show Them to Me", a country music song from Carrington's stand-up act about girls gone wild showing off their "funbags" and an out-of-left field bathroom sing-a-long with Carrington, the humor truly is CANNONBALL RUN caliber - as in non-existent. By the time the trip took a brief pit stop at a traveling freakshow run by Willie Nelson the memories of watching that atrocious Super Dave Osbourne movie years ago and wondering what about that film was supposed to be funny came flooding back. If you've ever seen that SUPER DAVE movie they you know the degree of unfunny I'm talking about, though, thankfully, BEER FOR MY HORSES isn't nearly as stultifying.

I live in the Deep South and even I don't understand the appeal of some of what passes for Southern humor in movies like this. I don't get why I'm supposed to be laughing at a police dog that farts whenever it senses danger. When was the last time someone getting shot in the ass with an arrow was funny? There are jokes about trucks and lawnmowers that often are more references than jokes. The laws of redneck humor apparently dictate that any discussion of lawnmowers constitutes belly laughs.

But I'll tell you what; there was this elderly couple in the theater sitting behind me - the only other people in the theater - yukking it up, so even lame lamebrained humor like this appeals to somebody out there and the scary thing is I know those people are going to vote on November 4th.

Just in case I wasn't sure where I reside, on the way home from the movie I was stopped at a red light and a guy in a big ass pick-up truck pulled up next to me, window rolled down. He looked like Trapper John M.D.'s vagrant twin brother wearing a wifebeater t-shirt and smoking what looked like a self-rolled cigarette. He stuck his head out the window and hocked up a great big mouthful of spit to the ground. Yep, I'm definitely living in the Deep South. You know for all the ragging the Republicans give Barak Obama and the Democrats for being "elitist" and too "cosmopolitan", sometimes being an elitist isn't so bad; sometimes I crave a little bit of that cosmopolitan behavior.

Speaking of cosmopolitan, now that I've gone red state, how about I take a moment to work blue?

This generation's TURK 182

And finally, we conclude this Foyeuristic tribute to the American dream (not Dusty Rhodes) by saluting a truly great American, David Owen, an insane man in an insane world trying to fight back against the insanity with his own special breed of insanity. I'm speaking of the title character of the motion picture entitled NOISE, truly the BILLY JACK of noise pollution films. NOISE is like DEATHWISH only except targeting street punks that wronged him, the character of David Owen takes aim at everything in New York City that makes a loud noise and is reasonably breakable.

Who better to bring the character of David Owen to life than the great American actor and noted left-wing bellyacher Tim Robbins? If anyone would ever star in a movie that openly advocates civil disobedience and vandalism as a means to protest the overabundance of loud noise disturbing the general populace in New York City it would have to be Tim Robbins - or maybe Sean Penn.

Tim Robbins 24 hours after Bush won re-election

American hero David Owen started out as your average American living in the Big Apple married to an impossibly hot wife (Tom Brady sperm junkie Bridget Moynihan) with a daughter who looks like neither of them. All was well until the noise drove his sound mind to irksome madness. Watching television, having a conversation, playing with the kid, reading a thought-provoking book, getting laid with the missus: all drowned out by the noise from outside. Car alarms that don't turn off for minutes at a time, building alarms that get tripped by accident, garbage trucks scraping the sidewalk, vrooming motorcycles; even the sirens from ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars tax his patience. I suspect on 9/11 David Owen stuck his head out the window in the direction of the collapsing towers and yelled, "Keep it down already!"

David Owen started out as simply an exasperated citizen standing up for himself; and getting arrested for it. Then he tried collecting the license plates of people whose car alarms were allowed to blare unchecked and taking those people to small claims court; his argument being that loud noises constitute a form of assault and battery. The judge, naturally, repeatedly throws these cases out of court. Fortunately for the judge, this was before David Owen truly descended into anti-noise dementia and didn't go after him with a baseball bat for banging his gavel too loudly.

Thus he does what any normal person would do in his position: declare a jihad. Make no bones about it; this is a holy war for David Owen. The man declares war on car alarms, the true bane of his existence, in much the same way Ahmadinejad wishes he could declare war on Israel. He smashes car windows with hammers and baseball bats, pop hoods so that he can cut car alarm cables, slashes tires, scrapes paint, breaks tail lights, and then tries to get all existential about it afterwards, persisting that his actions are neither criminal nor insane. Hey, it all makes sense in his mind - a certifiably crazy mind. It's one man's darkly comic descent to becoming the crazy schizophrenic on the street corner screaming about how the CIA are talking to him through his dental fillings. But in his mind it all makes sense and everyone else is sheep in need of a shepherd to wake them from their mental slumber. Sure, David Owen has more issues than a comic book shop, but then so does Bruce Wayne and where would Gotham City be without its Dark Knight?

If they mated: Neo and The Unibomber

Owen even goes so far as to compare himself to the likes of Jonas Salk. I fully understand the comparison. It's a little known fact that Jonas Salk actually developed his polio vaccine by beating polio suffers senseless with a slapjack until the disease retreated from the pores of their bodies.

With all great causes comes sacrifice. For David Owen, his righteous indignation against the obscenity of big city life decibel levels costs him his wife, his daughter, his job, his home, most of his sanity, and leaves him living in a part of town that's even noisier, in an apartment a guy with no job in New York City should ever be able to afford.

Just when it seems like David Owen's life is falling down he picks himself back up and becomes a true American hero. No, make that a superhero. A Rambo montage of him putting on a head band, loading up on hammers, bats, and wire cutters, adorning himself in black garb like that of some teenager's dad accompanying his child to a Rage Against the Machine concert and wrongfully thinking he looks hip enough to blend in with the crowd; David Owen takes on the identity of his noise nullifying alter ego - The Rectifier. His mission: to vandalize everything and anything that contributes to the city's noise pollution problem, leaving behind a Rectifier sticker that looks like the cover of an indie skater punk album and sometimes a typed memo informing the owner why he felt justified in destroying their property. He's like The Punisher with the attitude of a British soccer hooligan.

The Rectifier prepares to leave behind his calling card after burning down a theater putting on a production of "BRING IN DA NOISE, BRING IN DA FUNK"

Every great American hero must have a supervillain. Batman has the Joker. Superman has Lex Luthor. G.I. Joe has Cobra. Popeye has Bluto. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin has Vince McMahon. Bill O'Reilly has Keith Olbermann (or would that be Keith Olbermann has Bill O'Reilly?) The Rectifier has his Mayor Schneer - the world's most hate-filled Mayor. William Hurt, sporting a hair of William Atherton hair, is the contemptible Mayor Schneer, and like the a-hole Mayor of TURK 182, he is not happy about this vandalizing vigilante no matter how much the city's populace loves him for it, those he's vandalized excluded, of course.

Every superhero must also have a love interest and since the wife left him that attractive, young, Russian female from across the street whose father's store window he broke because the alarm system kept getting tripped will suffice. She easily ascertains the true identity of this Rectifier who has left both the police and city hall scratching their collective heads. Once having unmasked the non-masked vigilante she realizes there's nothing left for her to do but to have sex with him - like immediately after telling him she knows what he's been up to. She's like Lois Lane turned Eurotrash sex groupie. Good thing for her she wasn't one of those women who make loud noises during sex otherwise he might have taken a claw hammer to her skull mid-orgasm. The cops would then find her corpse in a dumpster the next day with her skull bashed in and a Rectifier sticker on her bloody face. That might have taken the film in a whole different weird direction, though still not quite as weird a direction as the film eventually goes anyway.

Writer-director Henry Bean built NOISE around his real-life foibles dealing with noise pollution in New York City. So in true American Hollywood fashion, he's used his own personal dislikes and transformed them into a motion picture that's half advocacy film, half revenge fantasy. Then he takes it to a strange other level. What starts out as this entertaining black comedy/oddly serious character study about a guy being driven mad by noise pollution and deciding to fight back abruptly takes a inexplicable turn around the halfway point into what I can only amass to be a bizarre ego-trip on the part of the filmmaker; annoying art house movie mode kicks in with an impotent man driven mad by the noise around him who finds solace in pot smoking three-way sex with a Russian philosophy major and her girlfriend while waxing existential about the nature of good and evil and discussing the beauty and ugliness of women’s' vaginas. It's a little hard to watch this part play out and not get the sense filmmaker Bean was living out his own personal fantasies onscreen to a rather embarrassing degree.

Before Russian girl calls off their relationship because she's off to London to study philosophy and the Rectifier goes completely persona goes out the window; she encourages David to fight back in the most American way possible: ballot initiative. She gets him to put some sort of anti-car alarm initiative on the ballot for the next election cycle. The people would never get a chance to vote on it due to the interference of the despicable Mayor Schneer, quite obviously in the back pocket of the car alarm industry. Bastard!

David Owen has even bigger problems. His daughter is one of the CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED!

The film returns to black comedy mode with David uncorking his ultimate weapon in his proxy war against Mayor Schneer as a means to win his ultimate battle with the tumultuous acoustics of the Big Apple. Using the logic that the country with the biggest, baddest bomb wins, David Owen has a pick-up truck pimped out with maximum car alarmage, every last one of them hooked up to loudspeakers adorning the truck cab. He then parks it out front of the Mayor's residence during an important business meeting and unleashes deafening vengeance.

This disappointed me just a little bit. I was hoping NOISE would end with David Owen walking into a STOMP production on Broadway and going postal with an uzi - an uzi with a silencer on it. Or even better, take a page from the ending of X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES and have him poke his own eardrums out so that he'd never have to hear the noise ever again. That's where I'd have gone with this.

But NOISE does culminate with a sanctimonious trial scene featuring one of the corniest speeches since Steven Seagal's anti-oil speech before the Alaskan legislature in ON DEADLY GROUND. His point made, reunited happily with the wife who was willing to overlook that whole affair deal she was fully aware of, David Owen returns to the normal life of a happy family man at peace with the blaring cacophony of his hometown metropolis, but the movie lets you know that deep down inside he still longs to destroy everything in the world that annoys him in the misguided name of humanity. The concluding message of NOISE actually appeared to be that since loud noise is tantamount to assault nothing short of a call to arms to commit vandalism as a legitimate protest against noise pollution and whatever else is uglying up your beautiful world. Nothing will change until you pick-up a baseball bat and start smashing car windows like Michael Jackson in that music video some years back. Wanton violence and rampant vandalism, true Democracy in action!

Special cameo appearance by Jack Nicholson

What a strange, screwy, self-indulgent, yet undeniably entertaining film. Thank you, NOISE. Thank you, 21st century BILLY JACK. Thank you, Henry Bean for projecting your personal inner rage and concupiscence on the big screen. Thank you, Tim Robbins, for once again standing up for the little guy even if the little guy is a raving nutjob who probably could have saved himself a lot of grief if he'd just use some dang earplugs.

And while I'm at it... GOD BLESS AMERICA!

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE INDEPENDENCE DAY