Monday, January 17, 2005

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" and other impressive movie lines

The Shawshank Redemption (MMIV): The prison outbreak drama based on a novella by Stephen King is high up there on my list of favorite movies, and its not hard to see why. The dialogs, the characterizations, the fleshing out of the story, and the gradual but surely lolling waves that lead you ashore to the wonderfully uplifting climax..it is indeed a pity that this movie went over a lot of peoples heads when it released theatrically in 1994. But atleast as a partial saving grace, it ended up as one of the best ever rented movies..so a lot of people did get to see what the fuss was all about. To me, much of the fuss can be summed up in the following four lines

"Get busy living or get busy dying",
"Andy Dufresne swam through a river of foul-smelling shit and came out clean on the other side",
"On the outside, I was straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to become a crook", and the clincher "Hope, is a beautiful thing. Maybe the best of things. And no beautiful thing ever dies"

Oceans 11 (MMI): That excellent comic/heist caper Oceans 11, starring George Clooney as Daniel Ocean was not memorable for its story. In fact, the story was not even original. But it does stand out for something that is as impressive as is memorable, something as confident as it is perky, something that is so full of itself, you cannot help but just laugh at and with it.

But what stood out from the entire movie was this clip that was oft shown on the promos for the movie..the scene in a bar in Chicago where Danny "offers" Linus Caldwell's character a job in the heist.

You're either in or you're out. Right now! Yes, I was all in, right at that moment. One of the few movies that had me hooked from the trailer on and did not disappoint the expectations. True, if you want to be that humorless person who wants to surgically take this movie apart, you can find holes so big you could fit the entire Yucatan peninsula into it. But hey, come of it will ya? This is entertainment at its very best..."Walk before you can crawl.....reverse that".

"Look, we all go way back, and I owe you for the THING with the GUY in the PLACE, and I will never forget it"
"They have watchers, they have timers, they have locks, they got vaults. They have enough armed personnel to occupy Paris!"

A Few Good Men (MCMXII): You want to know the truth? I am entitled to the truth. I want the truth. You cant handle the truth!

This excellent legal drama involving the JAG corp and a battle-hardened marine who thinks his way is better than their way, again stands out for a well-paced plot with good acting sustained by dialogs that help the characterization of the person, which otherwise would have to be redundantly portrayed on-screen. Many a memorable scenes stand out from this movie, notably the second meeting between Lt. Cdr JoAnn Galloway and Lt Danny Kaffee in the ball field, which ends with Kaffee pleading ignorance to what "Code Reds" meant.

And the dialogs are the spring board that push the movie into stratospheric heights.

"Who did she handle, the Rosenbergs?"
"Why do you think a Lt. junior grade, with a track record of nine months and a reputation for plea-bargaining gets assigned a murder case? Is it so it never sees the inside of a court room?"
"I like you navy boys. Whenever we have to go fight somewhere, you boys give us a ride!"

No comments: