Movie Review - Tropic Thunder

A movie "based on a book based on an Army rescue mission that happened in South East Vietnam in 1969", a mission to rescue a Sergeant that was considered suicide. And thus is the premise of Tropic Thunder, the making of that movie.

The bodycount in this seems like it will be very high (even if their only making a movie) but isn't & we get the pleasure of seeing the near fatal wounding of Ben Stiller before the movie is 4 minutes old. Rather unusually this movie set is actually in Vietnam (Quang Tri Provence according to the title graphic) because most Vietnam movies are generally filmed outside the country (it is worth noting that they actually filmed this on one of the islands of Hawaii).

We get to meet some of the on screen and behind camera personal (including Steve Coogan playing Damian Cockburn the director) Jack Black as Jeff Portnoy playing one of the soldiers (who is a parody of Chris Farley), Robert Downey Jr as Kirk Lazarus (a white actor playing a Negro soldier) and Ben Stiller playing Tugg Speedman who is the lead actor whose movies have all flopped.

Matthew McConaughey plays Speedmans agent Rick Peck and a very heavily disguised Tom Cruise plays Les Grossman the films financer. Nick Nolte is playing John Tayback who is the author of Tropic Thunder. There are also 2 minor parts that are Kevin Sandusky (the only guy who attended the Army boot camp training and the only person who read the book & script) and Alpa Chino, a black rapper trying to become an actor (parodying people like Ice Cube).

Cockburn can't control his actors and comes up with a plan to drop them into the middle of nowhere away from their luxeries to get a more gritty realistic movie by filming from hidden cameras. He confiscates their mobile phones (althought Speedman hides his) and sends them off with a map & shot list to get going & try to save the movie from being shut down.

Cockburn is killed after stepping on a landmine taking their only link to civilisation with them but Speedman doesn't realise its not a special effect. They manage to attract the attention of some heavily armed locals who think the actors are real military or DEA. Speedman gets the other actors to pursue the movie even though he doesn't realise they aren't being filmed and the director is dead.

When Tayback & Cody Underwood the special effects guy go to find out why Cockburn isn't answering they find his remains and Underwood discovers Tayback actually does have hands. The actors argue and Speedman goes off on his own, they further the idea his character might be the crazy John Rambo type when he attacks and kills what he thinks to be a bear and turns out to be a panda.

Tayback admits he was only in the Sanitation Department of The Coastguard & that he wrote Tropic Thunder as a tribute and Speedman is captured by the locals as Portnoy suffers the DT's. We discover the locals are harvesting opium & Portnoy unwittingly finds the drug processing centre that Speedman thinks is a POW camp set.

After being beaten by Tran (the leader of the drug gang who looks about 12 and probably is) they realise Speedman is really an actor and decide to hold him for ransom and the drug gang finally identify themselves as Flaming Dragon and they force Speedman to re-enact the entire movie they love (Simple Jack, a parody of Forrest Gump) and we also discover that none of the main actors have read the book or script of Tropic Thunder.

Grossman tells Flaming Dragon they can kill Speedman as they wont pay the ransom (which started at 50 million and was increased to 100 million) so they can claim on insurance and recoup the costs of the movie. Portnoy confesses his drug habit and asks to skip the mission to go cold turkey. Peck is left to contemplate if he wants to help Speedman or become the owner of a luxery G5 jetplane and Chino almost reveals he is gay.

Lazazrus hatches a plan and its ridiculous to believe that none of the Flaming Dragon troops wouldn't be able to recognise the difference between blank and live rounds being fired (suspension of disbelief is slightly too much there) and we see Speedman has developed Stockholm Syndrome.

Underwood & Tayback help create distractions after being freed and Lazarus suddenly loses most of his pigment after removing his wig, contacts and fake facial hair. Speedman & Lazarus ape his death scene (from near the start of the movie) and Peck manages to save them all using Tivo. Speedman wins an Oscar (for a film about the making of Tropic Thunder) and along with numerous other Oscars the film also makes $400 Million dollars.

The film isn't great, Tom Cruise as Grossman lifts the film from slightly annoying to rather funny. Stiller fans will probably love it, Jack Black has his moments (mostly after he goes cold turkey) and Robert Downey Jr has his moments alternating between funny and annoying. The drug aspects of Flaming Dragon could have been more easily and quickly explained and established by showing an aerial shot of poppy fields before the actors landed (it would have also given a good reason for them to think the actors were DEA).

It was very annoying that the only person who died was from a 30 year old landmine, with the amount of live rounds that were fired during the rescue scene at least 1 cast member should have died (normally its the black guy who gets killed 1st so Chino would have gone) and Sandusky should have died in the truck explosion ditto Speedman in the bridge explosion. It probably would have been funnier for Lazarus to be accepting Speedman's Oscar for him posthumously.