Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
70:51 – 76:20… and that was it. He was out. He was out. He was like, I don't want to do this. Yeah, research. You would have thought he would have made a comeback. But no. Apex Mountain. Mel Gibson, I think it's Braveheart the year before. Sure, of course. They're coming off that. Mm-hmm. Rene Russo made this movie and Tin Cup in the same year. I would argue she never had more juice than 1996. Yeah. It's a pretty big combo of movies. And she's playing off Costner, who we didn't even mention earlier when we were talking about the A-list actors at their peaks at this point. She was there. She's off Costner and Gibson in the …
The whole segment, as transcribed
I did not even think about that until I looked at the credits were rolling before. And I'm like, Nolte, it's got to be. I've never met another Nolte before. Then I looked it up. Like, that kid's Nick Nolte's kid. Did he just jump out of the game? I think he did a couple more and that was it. He was out. He was out. He was like, I don't want to do this. Yeah, research. You would have thought he would have made a comeback. But no. Apex Mountain. Mel Gibson, I think it's Braveheart the year before. Sure, of course. They're coming off that. Mm-hmm. Rene Russo made this movie and Tin Cup in the same year. I would argue she never had more juice than 1996. Yeah. It's a pretty big combo of movies. And she's playing off Costner, who we didn't even mention earlier when we were talking about the A-list actors at their peaks at this point. She was there. She's off Costner and Gibson in the same year. That's pretty good. Yeah. Apex Mountain for her. Apex Mountain for kidnapping movies? Made a lot of money. Made a lot of money and also was very overtly telling us that this was a kidnap movie. Yeah. Yeah. You might be right. Yeah. That's why I thought maybe the Apex Mountain, the most popular kidnapping movie ever. Do-Re-Lindo. It's not his Apex Mountain, but raises the question, what was his Apex Mountain? Whoo! He's just been doing solidly good work for a long time. And I don't really know what it is. Well, had he been nominated for the Academy Award for The Five Bloods, it certainly would have been that. But he's older at that point. Like, it's near the end of his career, right? So you're saying, yeah, I guess so. I'm going through the- Crooklyn? Yeah. There's this- I was thinking there's this run from- He's got Crooklyn 94, and then Clockers 95, Get Shorty. He's in Broken Arrow, but he's not like carrying those movies. Ransom, Devil's Advocate. He's like barely in the Devil's Advocate. It's tough. I don't- He's one of those guys that I'm not sure had the Apex. It was just- He was just steady for- If he had an Apex- Decades. If he had an Apex, it had to have been Crooklyn. If he had an Apex, it had to have been Crooklyn. Crooklyn was maybe- Because there was really no- Never a Delroy Lindo device. They never really gave it to Delroy like that. He was just- See the lead in Crooklyn? It did set up a bunch of character actors. It's him. Yeah, Alfred Woodward. Yeah, you're right. He was the lead. Yeah, you're probably right. So I would say it would be Crooklyn. Gary Sinise. I'd probably say Apollo 13. Coming off Gump. The combo of that, where it just seemed like, he was going to be Tommy Lee Jones. I had a couple more. You had kidnapping movies. We did that. The Gibson-Russo combo, I think, was peeking right around now. And then I was thinking Jackie Brown as a movie character. We had this, and then the next year, there was a Jackie Brown movie. This was the mid-90s. Jackie Brown Heights. Right. The apartment slash condo that Mel Gibson and Rene Russo have in this movie. Is that the apex mountain for you for rich guy New York apartments? That thing's fucking amazing. I actually could have watched a half-hour scene of just, where was it? What were they looking at? Like, just like a deleted scene of just, where was this? Central Park? It was the first time that I can remember being in the movie, because I'm from a place where people don't do that, right? From Louisiana. So the first thing that you do when you get super paid is go buy a ridiculous plot of land and build a way too big house on it, right? With a pond and horses and all of that. So this was like one of the first times in the movie, I was like, they're a billionaire. Why are they living in an apartment? I had no concept of a high-rise apartment. But it's like a three-story apartment, basically. It's a three-story apartment. I had no concept of it. I thought everything was a loft, like in big. I wish Juliet was here, because Juliet would have an opinion on the best high-end real estate in New York in a movie. I think there's other candidates. Gecko is a good one, too. Picanets. That TV station's calling Tom a multimillionaire I thought was weird. I think he's worth... There's some word between billionaire and multimillionaire that he... But I don't think we have the word. Just that the... Jimmy jumping the gun on getting the ransom, and that whole thing felt sloppy to me. That's my biggest nitpick in this movie. I guess he's thinking, I have three days before they make the connection with me and Lily Taylor's character. I got to make a move now. But just him showing up unannounced for his ransom... Well, where are Mel's security guards? We're led to believe he's pretty rich. Where's his bodyguard that's just always there? Everything about it just feels off. So for me, they telegraphed that by saying, hey, a lot of people believe the mastermind is still out there. They show a picture of the girl. There's bound to be someone that connects him to the girl. And at that point, there's going to be no reason for him to have a connection to the girl. So he was just in panic mode. So I can get with that a little bit. I guess my thing is, his relationship with her, I never was really sold on. Like, even beginning and then even now. Like, when he hesitates in killing her after and he seems to be kind of haunted by her death. For some reason, they didn't do enough to sell me that they were really something for real to where it would bother him like it did. And that was a big part of the dynamic in the kidnappers crew. So if I was picking this, I just didn't buy them. I also needed the scene of Renee and Mel lying in bed at night, really upset that their kid's gone.
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