Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Amos and Andrew - Like Die Hard with a Vengeance, only not.


So it's been a while, again, but we arrive at the next thrilling installment!

This time it's 1993's Amos and Andrew, a sort of Much Ado About Nothing meets the Keystone Kops meets Die Hard With a Vengeance comedy.

Basically, Samuel L. Jackson plays Andrew Sterling, a well-to-do and reasonably famous black guy whose job it is to be an angry black guy. He's on the cover of Forbes magazine, he teaches at a university and generally gets around on the speaking circuit. He's quite rich.

Sterling has recently moved to an unnamed, upper-class island community in the Northeastern United States. As he's moving his stuff in - in the dark and at night - some nosy neighbours, who are planning on paying a visit to whatever definitively white family used to live in the house, see him moving some stuff around and "naturally" assume that he's burgling the place, so they call the cops.



Incopetent cops, led by a politically ambitious chief, arrive on scene, one thing leads to another, shooting starts happening, and then stuff becomes really big. By that time, the chief has realized that the black guy inside the house and the "hostages" that he's taken are one and the same, and that they're all the famous Andrew Sterling, so he enlists the help of thieving vagabond Amos Odell (played by our hero) to pretend he's taken Sterling hostage, go through the negotiations motions and then be released once everyone's saved face.

It doesn't work out that way, and Amos takes Andrew hostage for real.


Anyway, it's a thoroughly enjoyable movie. The story moves along, one facepalmingly stupid mistake after another, and in the end Amos and Andrew can call each other brother.

That's right. A racially vitriolic Samuel L Jackson learns by the end of the film that the white guy he's been forced to work together with might not be all bad, and may just be an alright guy after all. Remind you of any other movie? That's what I thought.


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