Last time: Stabbing! Explosions! The good stuff!
28. Wackjob lives.
After a pause during which I try to hold on to my opinions about the Kurgan’s character development as tightly as my cat holds on to everything in this picture…
…we rejoin the movie to see that The Captain From Police Squad! and Johnny Caspar from Miller’s Crossing are paying Wackjob an official police visit in the hospital—in other words, the Kurgan still hasn’t killed anybody who wasn’t a fellow sword-wielder.
After a quick rundown on what a “survival nut” is and the unsurprising revelation that Wackjob was a Vietnam veteran, the cops reach his room. Someone has given Wackjob a bowl of fruit; that seems kind of a cruel gift for someone with an abdominal wound, but what do I know?
They try to get him to pin down Connor/Russell Nash as Kastagir’s killer, but Wackjob is adamant that 1) they’re not even close, but 2) it shouldn’t matter anyway, because he is super-duper armed and shot the heck out of the guy who did do it, only 3) it didn’t take, and now Wackjob is in a state of existential despair. (I am summarizing.)
After agreeing to work with a sketch artist, Wackjob does something that actually makes me feel sorry for him: he tries to tell the police about the Quickening. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie—the camera pulls back and there’s no sound, just furious gestures—and so I’ve at last given in to necessity and learned how to screengrab.
This goes over exactly as well as if you or I tried to use the same thing as an excuse for missing a family party, although at least Moran gives him a little salute before the police go outside to talk about what a nut that guy is—and since Moran specifically mentions “swordfights in New York City” as part of the general crazy, I guess we can assume the police helicopter that caught Connor and the Kurgan fighting doesn’t tell him anything.
The cops’ bad day continues at the hot-dog truck, where they buy lunch from a man reading a newspaper with the headline “HEADHUNTER – 3, COPS – 0.” And even Tony the hot-dog guy is making fun of them as he reads the article: “What does ‘baffled’ mean?” he asks an exasperated Moran, who’s complaining about how the mayor sure would like them to stop these decapitations.
Next time: That all depends on how fast I can reread a book I’m not sure I want to reread.
Next time on TCBOM!: No sooner did Tony the hot-dog vendor work his way into my affections than he’s supplanted by the prettiest eyes in this movie. Also, Brenda does research.
