Title: The Phantom
US release: 6/7/1996
Directed by Simon Wincer
Written by Jeffrey Boam
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Cast:
Billy Zane – The Phantom/Kit Walker
Treat Williams – Xander Drax
Kristy Swanson – Diana Palmer
James Remar – Quill
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa – The Great Kabai Sengh
Katherine Zeta-Jones – Sala
Patrick McGoohan – The Ghost of Kit’s father.
Bill Smitrovich – Dave Palmer
The Skinny:
A young
boy is traveling by sea when his ship is attacked by the notorious pirates of
the Sengh Brotherhood. The boy’s father,
even though he puts up a valiant defense, is cut down by the pirate leader,
which he witnesses to his horror. The
boy jumps overboard and finds himself washed up on the shores of Bengalla, and
is discovered by the native tribe of the jungle. The tribe takes him to their camp and
ritualistically makes him “The Phantom” and charges him to fight greed, piracy
and cruelty in all their forms, and gift him with a magical skull ring.
Centuries
later, in the era of the 1930’s, Quill (Remar) leads a small group of
smugglers, hired by the power-hungry businessman Xander Drax (Williams),
through the Bengalla Jungle. He manages
to traverse the jungle terrain with the help of a small native boy they
kidnapped to act as their guide, even using him to drive the truck all by
himself across a decaying rope bridge.
Once they cross a certain point, the boy becomes scarred and will go no
further. He speaks of the jungle being
guarded by a “ghost who walks”. Quill
dismisses the boy, even when it’s revealed he has a skull imprint on his jaw
matching the Phantoms ring. The group
goes on without the boy and raid a small cave they find. Quill is only interested in one artifact, a
skull made out of silver. The group
hears drums start to beat in the distance and flee back to the truck, only to meet
the Phantom himself.
The group flees, but The Phantom
chases them down until Quill is left. He
manages to fight off The Phantom and ditch the truck as it careens back across
the rope bridge and gets stuck. The
Phantom discovers the kidnapped boy in the back, frees him from his ropes and
makes a daring escape as the bridge turns over from the weight of the truck and
eventually breaks loose of its supports and falls down into the canyon.
The Phantom, revealed to be Kit
Walker (Zane) recovers in his hideout, a cave with an entrance under a rock
face that resembles a skull. Researching
his archives, he’s tended to by his native servant Guran. He discovers the silver skull Quill stole is
part of a set of the 3. The other two
skulls being made of jade and gold. If
all 3 are put together, they are said to create a powerful force, with no known
defense against them. As Guran retires
to another room, Kit is met by the ghost of his dead father (McGoohan) who
implores him to retrieve them at any cost.
The situation is made graver when Kit reveals he saw a tattoo on Quill’s
arm matching the emblem of the Sengh Brotherhood.
The scene shifts to New York, where
Diana Palmer (Swanson) returns from a trip to the Yukon. She arrives just as her uncle Dave (Smitrovich),
a rich newspaper mogul, is throwing a charity party. Its
revealed that uncle Dave has been investigating Drax for his known associations
with the mob. Dave has discovered that
Drax has been looking into to foreign artifacts, and even finds an artist
rendering of the tattoo of the Sengh Brotherhood. Intending to go to the Benghalla jungle to
investigate, he’s afraid to leave as it would give Drax the opportunity seize
control of his newspaper. Diana offers
to go in his place. Drax finds out about
uncle Dave’s plan, when it is revealed he not only owns the New York Mob, but
the Police commissioner as well.
Diana’s plane is forced to land by
pirates, all of whom are women, flying bi-planes. Their leader, Sala (Zeta-Jones), takes Diana
back to the Benghalla jungle to Quill.
The Phantom hears of the kidnapping from the captain of the jungle
patrol, who acts as his contact while he feigns ignorance, and sneaks aboard
the boat where Diana is being held captive.
He frees her and they make their escape back into the jungle, evading
pursuit by the pirates.
The Phantom takes Diana back to the
Skull cave where she meets with Guran and the Captain of the Jungle patrol. Having swiped the drawing of the Sengh tattoo
before being kidnapped, she shows it to The Phantom. His reaction revealing how serious the
situation is, she tells him of Drax and his research into the skulls back in
New York. He sends her away abruptly, to
her surprise.
Back in New York, Quill delivers
the silver skull to Drax. Drax is
pleased but more upset that Diana is still alive. Sala, having tried to seduce The Phantom
during his rescue attempt only to be rebuffed, believes he’s in love with
Diana. Drax doesn’t believe in The
Phantom, until Quill shows him a gun belt identical to the one Kit wears when
in persona. Quill admits he killed The
Phantom by stabbing him in the back, even showing the cut in the back of the
belt where he stabbed him. Drax,
impressed with Quill’s villainy, still dismisses The Phantom as a threat
believing him to be still in the Beghalla jungle.
Kit, unknown to Drax arrives in New
York to track down the jade skull, getting information about it while
reminiscing with uncle Dave. Diana
interrupts their reunion, and is surprised to see Kit, since he left suddenly
years ago, ending their long college romance.
Heading to a local museum to obtain
the Jade skull, Kit and Diana are intercepted by Drax and his hired muscle,
including Quill. With the silver and
jade skulls now within close proximity, they cause a massive disturbance within
the museum, and burn a hole in nearby wall map to mark the location of the 3rd
skull.
Back at Drax’s executive office, he
tries to interrogate Kit by having Quill punch him in the stomach with brass
knuckles. Kit notices the gun belt Quill
is wearing, and soon comes to realize he murdered his father. En route to the roof to get Kit to talk, he
breaks free of his captors and flees into a nearby utility room. Quill and company pursue but are met by The
Phantom.
Drax, along with Sala, Quill and
Diana as a hostage, head to the uncharted island revealed on the map, with The
Phantom in close pursuit. Not only must
he save Diana (whom he still loves) he must ultimately stop Drax from obtaining
the 3rd skull, and unleashing their rumored power, becoming
invincible.
On the Surface:
An adventure
movie based on a comic book character, this film feels corny while watching it,
that is if adventure movies are not to your liking. A buff guy in a purple suit feels corny
enough, but double fisting AMT Hardballers (anachronistic, as that handgun was
not manufactured until the 1970’s) seemed over the top. Add
some classic adventure elements, like the rope bridge sequence, and the film
feels like a 3-part miniseries of a Saturday morning cartoon, just given a bigger
budget and released in theaters. Still,
since adventure movies are a rare breed to begin with, this film will be
welcomed by action junkies and fans who have wanted more action movies since Indiana
Jones set the bar. During the mid-1990’s,
comic book and super-hero movies (The Phantom doesn’t have super-powers) were
considered a waste of time by production houses, and with the Batman films
starting to turn into an updated version of the camp TV series (with
anatomically correct foam rubber suits), this film seemed to be released at the
worst time and into a very unforgiving viewership.
In more
recent years, this film has garnered a cult following, from adventure movie
junkies to the niche market that has followed The Phantom character, even
collecting the original 1930’s comic strips from draw by creator Lee Falk.
Production wise:
This
film was in development for many years, even the great Sergio Leone was
interested in developing the character for the big screen. Eventually, the late great screenwriter
Jeffrey Boam (who had contributed to the Adventure film genre when he wrote the
successful Indiana Jones and the last crusade), penned a script, and Australian
director Simon Wincer, were pegged to helm the project. Billy Zane, coming off an acclaimed performance
as the psychopathic villain in “Dead Calm” had actually been introduced to The
Phantom comic strip while on set for that film, and lobbied hard for the
role. He did win the role, beating out
Bruce Campbell, and would go on to train hard for the next year to gain the cut
physique required for his character.
Studio
filming was done in Wincer’s home country of Australia, with remaining
sequences shot on location in Thailand and some California locations.
Why I like the film:
I had read
some Phantom strips in collected volumes I would check out from the local library,
so seeing the trailer for The Phantom piqued my interest. The folks let my brother and I see it by
ourselves at the mall theater (the only mall in our town) and we both loved
it. I’m surprised that no movies since
have used a rope bridge sequence, or even tried to reboot the film per the
current trend.
I think
Billy Zane could’ve grown into an action star had the film not received such
bad reviews. His presence on the screen,
even in the purple costume left now doubt that he was the hero, taking away all
distracting thoughts about his movements on screen and allowing all the audience’s
focus to be on the action as it played out.
The romance between Kristy Swanson and Zane was trimmed down to allow
for faster pacing, customary for an action film, still it served as a necessary
subplot and left the door open for a sequel, which sadly never came.
Though
always type cast as the Asian villain, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa still played his role
as pirate king beautifully. I loved the
scene where he insults Drax and company.
Treat Williams played the role of villain posing as a businessman well,
so well its hard for me to see him in any other role without comparing it to
this one. James Remar was solid as
Quill, and the angle of him being a back stabber who killed Kits father gave
him that little extra degree of bad guy-ness to make his death at the end of
the film justified and anticipated. Remar, already known for playing villains
and villainous henchmen, would pretty much make a career out of playing that
type of character, but knew how to make each role unique, instead of one villain
fits all.
This
was the first time I had seen Catherine Zeta-Jones on film, and for awhile was
hard for me to see her as anything else but the villainess in her later
films.
As I
said before, the basic adventure element of the rope bridge sequence may have
been over expected by the audience, but I think it was done right. The bridge was wide enough for vehicles to
pass over, and the bridge turning upside down was original for the sequence as
a whole. The bi-plane sequence where The
Phantom and Diana drop down onto his horse before the plane crashes was reminiscent
of what would most likely be drawn in one of the original 1930’s strips. It felt very fitting, and I don’t think it
was meant to blow the audience away, just be familiar in a “ah, there’s good ol’
stuff” kind of way.
This
film may have been based on a comic book character, but I see it as an
adventure movie. Straight adventure
films haven’t been done a lot in Hollywood over the years, and sadly seem to
have been overused in the B-movie industry, leading to a bad image. So, to see classic adventure elements (rope
bridge sequences, Bi-plane stunts, etc.) is very rare in big budget film
history. So even though not a straight adventure
film, I still love this movie, and it’s very hard for me not rant against
people who write it off as “just corny”.
The film was rated PG, I guess to appeal more to the under
10 years old crowd, and for a lot of shootout sequences. No language, and only a short scene showing
women in their 1930’s era under-garments.
Even for the 1990’s, that was pretty tame. Stream or rent where available when you’re in
the mood for an adventure film, or when you need a taste of an old school adventure
story with a more modern touch.
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