This review is a part of my Bill Paxton Project, an attempt to watch and review every piece of film the man did during his lifetime.
Okay, here we go! I’ve been wanting to see this one for a long time now. Monolith is a 1993 sci fi film starring Bill Paxton, Louis Gossett Jr. and John Hurt – all fantastic actors, and all together in a sci fi flick! So, what the fuck happened?
Paxton plays wise-cracking loose-cannon mullet-sporting detective Tucker (think a less-depressing version of Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon character). Oh, that mullet? Exact same hair he sports in Indian Summer, which was released the same year and is way more entertaining. Anyway, after beefing an overstuffed chili dog and selling cocaine to a bum, he springs into action to fail to stop a Russian woman from running down and shooting a small boy to death. Yes, fail to stop. Along with his soon-to-be partner and romantic love interest, Detective Flynn (played by Lindsay Frost). They soon learn the boy was no normal boy, but a body-hopping alien consciousness which is apparently hell-bent on eradicating humanity. But first, it needs to get back to its spaceship, crashed for millenia underneath Los Angeles. Got all that?
Lou Gossett Jr. plays the “tough-as-nails”, “the mayor-is-up-my-ass” chief of police, named “Mac”. John Hurt is the shadowy government operative who works for the “Department of Historical Research”, has a security clearance higher than Jesus, and wants to possess and control the alien…for some reason. Ugh.
The story is a knock-off of, and seriously less interesting than, the other two alien body-switching movies that recently preceded it, The Hidden (1987) and Jason Goes To Hell (1993). Paxton, Gossett and Hurt are all veterans of great science fiction films (Aliens (1987), Enemy Mine (1985) and Alien (1979) respectively). While Paxton does get to chew some tasty dialogue along with his chili dog, his goofy persona doesn’t quite match the horror of living past his wife and child, who we see brutally murdered in front of him in flashbacks. Gossett’s got little to do but bitch and moan, and then die in a hail of bullets during the pre-climactic helicopter assault. John Hurt? Well, Hurt plays his government spook like a true sociopath, and it’s really satisfying to watch him villain the shit out of this movie.
This film was directed and financed by John Eyres, the British version of Roger Corman who is most known for giving the world not one, but three Project Shadowchaser movies. The script is shitty, and the direction inept. It’s got some interesting cinematography at times, but seems like when it came time to edit the film together, they just gave the reels and a bag of Cheetos to a junkie and said, “have a ball”. Many of the edits are choppy, some are incoherent. The music is typical late-80’s/early 90’s synth compositions reminiscent of drawing with crayons in the dark. Why is there a metallic “chink” noise when the title appears?
And, by the way, at no point is it explained why the film is called “Monolith”. The primary definition for that word is “a large, single, upright block of stone, especially one shaped into or serving as a pillar or monument”. Hmm. Nope, didn’t see one in the entire film. There are a few shots of skyscrapers, but they’re background filler. The alien threat is bodiless, and the alien’s ship is shaped like a sunny-side up egg, and is buried underground. Not very monolith-like. There is a second definition: “a large and impersonal political, corporate, or social structure regarded as intractably indivisible and uniform”. Well, maybe this could refer to John Hurt’s “Department of Historical Research”, but we don’t really get a sense of “monolithic” scope. We mostly see just Hurt and two henchmen, and at most half-a-dozen other employees. And they don’t seem “monolithic” in presence.
This is the second Paxton film I’ve reviewed where the title didn’t make any sense to me (see my review of Red Wing). Film students out there, please take note: make your film title mean something, something reflected on the screen, so we all get it. Please, pretty please?
If, after this, you’re excited to see this film, well, it won’t be easy. It doesn’t appear to ever have been released on DVD or Blu-Ray, just VHS and laserdisc. It’s not currently streaming on any reputable service, although there is a print on YouTube, but no idea how dodgy that is. For the record, I bought a VHS copy on eBay for about ten bucks (which was originally a Blockbuster Video rental copy).
