Tank Girl (1995)

Way back when I did my look at comic book movies for my Wild Card posts, about two years ago, late in the game a few people came to me and suggested I do Tank Girl. It seemed like a no-brainer, except my line-up was already set. So I set it aside, kind of forgot about it, and then it sprang up as a part of the Stars Play 11, and I knew I couldn't let it disappear from Watch Instantly without seeing it and putting it up for review on here.

Tank Girl stars Lori Petty as our eponymous hero, a girl living in a future where a large comet has smashed into the Earth and for whatever reason affected the climate so much that it hasn't rained in 11 years. As you can imagine, that makes water a very valuable commodity, and Malcolm McDowell's evil corporation wants a monopoly over what's left. That puts Tank Girl in his crosshairs when her commune is discovered to be siphoning water from his plant. So he sends his troops in, they destroy it, capture her, then she escapes with one of their tanks. Now she has them in her cross hairs, and is ready to exact some revenge.

I don't know how I didn't see this movie when it first came out, or how I went this long without seeing it, or that it took Netflix having to dump it for me to finally see it; but I guess it's important that I've seen it now, and it's fantastic. I feel like this is the movie that Sucker Punch was sold to me as, or it's the movie Catwoman wanted to be but wasn't. This isn't an action movie made for guys with women as eye candy in the leads; but it also doesn't lean on the novelty of being an action movie with a legitimate female protagonist. It has a lot of other elements I enjoyed, like this very authentic 90s music aesthetic, from the soundtrack, to the clothes, to the sets and cinematography. The cast was great too, with Petty as the perfect heroine and McDowell as the ultimate baddie, Naomi Watts, Ice-T, and Jeff Kober in supporting parts, and people like Iggy Pop and James Hong in cameos. This immediately jumps into my top five all-time favorite comic book/comic-strip movies.

Gotta start with Lori Petty, who I remember at the time seemed like the only person who could play this part, and as it turns out, that's pretty accurate. What I found different between her character here and the one she played in Point Break, is that in the latter, she's Kathryn Bigelow's metaphor for the woman who tries to play by the man's rules, but still ends up being relegated to damsel in distress status; while here she's not playing by the man's rules, she's tearing them down and recreating her own, and ultimately she prevails. I think both work because Petty makes them work, but here it's more on her to pull it all off, and she doesn't disappoint.

Of all the supporting people in this, I had to make a special mention of DTVC favorite Jeff Kober. I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since his last film on here. When we started the DTVC, I figured Kober would be an integral part of what we had going on. Not a Hall of Famer, but at least a semi-regular. Funny how things work out like that. And when we finally do get back to him after three years, he's covered in kangaroo make-up. Well, at least he got the girl. Here's to you Jeff Kober, you're one of the good ones, and I'm sorry we haven't gotten you on here in so long. Also of note, another DTVC favorite, James Hong, has a small cameo as McDowell's doctor.

Two interesting roles here in Malcolm McDowell as the baddie and Naomi Watts as the sidekick. McDowell was as you'd expect him to be, sufficiently bad, but really having fun with it. I imagine, if this had been bad, he still would've been solid, the way Dennis Hopper was often solid in a lot of these kinds of movies that really were bad. Watts was different, because we're used to her as a sexy leading lady, where here she's more a meek wallflower type who discovers her agency as the film goes on. If you look at her IMDb bio, she doesn't break out in Hollywood for another 6 or 7 years, when she did Mulholland Dr. and The Ring in quick succession.

In addition to having a really sweet soundtrack--including Devo doing a re-recording of their own song "Girl You Want" to make it sound like Soundgarden's cover of it--we had some musicians acting in the film as well. Ice-T had the biggest part, as one of the kangaroo people. We're used to seeing him around here, though at the time he hadn't started his major DTV run of the late 90s/early 2000s that we're more familiar with him for. Then we had two cameos that stood out. Dawn Robinson of En Vogue played the image of a woman at the brothel telling women what to wear. The other was my man Iggy Pop. This is actually the first time we've seen him at the DTVC. Best concert I've ever been to was Iggy Pop at the Avalon in Boston in 2001. It was so good, I forgot the opening act--which sucked--even played, and even though I was dead tired from traveling 5 hours to get there from Bangor that day, I couldn't stop moving, the music was that good.

But this post isn't about how amazing Iggy Pop was in concert, it's about how amazing this movie is. It might not be for everyone, but it was definitely for me. You can get it on DVD or VHS, more likely used than new, but either way it's worth it. You can also rent it off of Netflix even if you can't get it on Watch Instantly.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114614/

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