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Was Kim Basinger's role in Cellular degrading/demeaning?

posted 6 years ago by TMC-4 (19408)
7 replies | jump to latest

https://www.quora.com/Was-Kim-Basingers-role-in-Cellular-2004-degrading-demeaning

Maybe I ask this because it seemed like Kim was relegated to being essentially a MacGuffin (playing a kidnapped woman, who is held captive in an attic) for Chris Evans and vehicle to get the plot going. I'm also not comfortable with Kim being marginalized with the bad guys calling her a "bitch". Like there's a scene in which Jason Statham's bad guy character while beating up Chris Evans said in reference to Kim "Even that bitch has more fight than you!" And even the bad guy that Kim kills by slashing his artery (while schooling him on 8th grade biology) refers to her as a bitch. The whole movie (which I suppose, was meant to cash in on "Phone Booth" with Colin Farrell) is like Kim's past damsel in distress roles like Vicki Vale and Domino from "Never Say Never Again", cranked up to eleven.

[–] TMC-4 (19408) 6 years ago

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700003628/Cellular.html

"Cellular" would qualify as being simply dumb fun — stress the dumb part — if it didn't have such a vicious, misogynistic bent to it. For a PG-13 rated movie, there's a surprising amount of cruel violence — violence that verges on debasing — against its main female character.

https://www.salon.com/2004/09/10/cellular_2/

But Ellis can't always distinguish between suspense and sadism, and unfortunately, Basinger is the performer who suffers for that. Basinger is a limited actress, but there's a fragile sweetness about her that tends to inspire protectiveness in an audience, if not excitement. Ellis seems to take far too much pleasure in showing her being knocked around and terrorized: When Statham, as Ethan, swings at her with that mallet, or seizes her and lashes her slender neck to a post with his leather belt, her eyes betray genuine terror.
This bothered me as I watched "Cellular," and after reading the press notes for the movie, I understood why. Ellis claims that he didn't rehearse some of the "more physical scenes" between Statham and Basinger; instead, he gave Statham an idea of the effect he was after and allowed Basinger to be surprised.

https://www.quora.com/How-important-is-it-for-a-film-director-to-rehearse-some-of-the-more-physical-scenes-with-his-or-her-actors?q=didn%27t%20rehearse%20some%20of%20the%20%22more%20physical%20scenes%22

[–] PaladinNJ (20309) 5 years ago

She definitely wasn't a McGuffin since she was essentially driving (no pun intended) the whole storyline.

[–] Roguemail (1562) 5 years ago

Are we going to revisit every old movie and take it to task for such 'sins'?

This sort of stuff was considered acceptable at the time. And the further back you go the more examples you will find.

A TV channel here in the UK that shows old movies primarily from 30's up to 80's very often has to add a disclaimer about movies from that period having themes that reflect the attitudes of the time, particularly towards racism, sexism, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.

We just have to accept that there are many examples in older movies of stuff that would just not fly today. But I think people should just leave it and move on.

You have to take these things in context of the time in which they made. We dont do that stuff any more. That's it.

[–] PaladinNJ (20309) 5 years ago

??????

All I was trying to say is that she is necessary for the story.

[–] TMC-4 (19408) 4 years ago

Remember in Never Say Never Again, where there's that scene in which Kim Basinger is being put up on auction to be sold into slavery to those barbaric middle eastern dudes? Cellular seems to be that movie entirely (let's knock around and terrorize the hot blonde lady for 90 minutes). Just imagine that Kim separated from Sean Connery the whole time like she is from Chris Evans. It's like the filmmakers saw Kim's prior damsel in distress roles like that and in Batman and made a slapdash mixture of the movies Sorry, Wrong Number, Speed, The Desperate Hours, Phone Booth, Training Day (sans the charisma of somebody like Denzel Washington while playing a dirty cop), the works of Alfred Hitchcock, and Grand Theft Auto for additional good measure.

[–] TMC-4 (19408) 4 years ago

That reminds me of this other movie that Kim Basinger did called The Real McCoy about 9 years prior to Celluar:
http://www.flickattack.com/2019/01/the-real-mccoy-1993/

Watching The Real McCoy for the first time in 20 or so years, it’s a bit strange now to watch these Joel Silver, Andrew Vajna, Don Simpson or, in this case, Martin Bregman-produced flicks in the era of #MeToo, because throughout most of the movie, Basinger takes beating after beating from various men and never once fights back — until the very end, of course, when she all of a sudden unleashes kung-fu kicks left and right.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/customer-reviews/R24EHCESTHPVMK/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00004RPQZ

As the protagonist, a reknown bank robber out on parole after 6 years in a Georgia jail (which allows for her accent) and blackmailed into doing another bank, Kim Basinger is limited by the genre's stereotype of a woman in an action movie and the misogynistic screenplay by William Davies and William Osborne. We know things are off when Mulcahy doesn't give Basinger the coverage to confirm the Who is That? response of Val Kilmer as someone vaguely connected to her parole officer and a rookie criminal. Basinger's self-conscious beauty is seen to attract constant sexual harassment by men far less appealing than her - just note the repeated "you've kept your figure" observation - but then Mulcahy has a queasy scene where she is beaten and offers no self defense when she has already demonstrated she possesses some skill in that area. Why? Does Basinger being so beautiful mean she must pay for it? When she is first released from prison a man comes on to her on a train, but he is inexplicably repelled when she tells him she robs bank. There is also an implication that she is a bad mother for abandoning her child in favor of a life of crime.

[–] TMC-4 (19408) 4 years ago

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/main.html

Staying on the line: Larry Cohen's latest again inspired by Hitchcock

Phone Booth, the project that writer-director Larry Cohen (It's Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Stuff) had hoped to sell to Hitchcock, and which Fox 2000 eventually bought for Joel Schumacher, was clearly considered enough of a hit earlier this year to warrant a new Cohen project. David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2) will direct Cellular from a Cohen script, and it, too, has a 'minimalist', telephone theme. Starring Kim Basinger, it follows the fortunes of a woman kidnapped and thrown into a car trunk with only her cell phone as a lifeline to the outside world. She makes desperate calls, trying to find a rescuer and to prevent her husband and child from being kidnapped too - before her cell phone battery goes dead. According to Cohen, one film in particular inspired both Phone Booth and Cellular: Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). 'It's one of my favourite thrillers', Cohen has said.

http://web.tiscali.it/contux/cellular.htm

The Macguffin device in the original was some technology, now it is simply a dvd which recorded an event.

https://slate.com/culture/2004/09/cellular-roamin-holiday.html

Although Statham—veteran of assorted overdirected Guy Ritchie films and the hero of The Transporter (2002)—has real charisma, managing to be magnetic and threatening in the same instant, the MacGuffin is forgettable.

https://wetranscripts.livejournal.com/117337.html

In this episode we field some questions about elemental mystery. Here they are! How do you balance between two mysteries in the same story? What types of mysteries can fit well as sub-plots? What do you do when beta readers figure out the mystery really early? In the MICE quotient, are mysteries all "Idea" stories? How do you write a protagonist who is smarter than you are? How do you make sure your genius protagonist is still experiencing an interesting struggle? How do you make a kidnap victim more than just a MacGuffin? How "literary" can you make your mystery? Liner Notes: The movie Howard referred to is Cellular, with Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and Jason Statham. Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.