Rock It Like You Stole It: The Bling Ring and Its Killer Argument for Sociopathy

"Yeah, we're hot shit. You don't have to like it. We don't care. We love it."

Rebecca Anh is a badass.

As the head of the eponymous Bling Ring in Sofia Coppola's fictionalized account of the smash-and-grab queens and king of Calabasas who stole millions in clothes, trinkets, and trash from Young Hollywood between 2008-2009, ice water doesn't run through her veins because those suckers are probably beyond frozen.

Rebecca, played wonderfully by Katie Chang, is cool in the way that I haven't seen since, maybe, Denzel's performance as Frank Lucas, truly his most glorious riff on Alonzo Harris since Training Day. She is the heartless, ambitious, amoral gangster fantasy reshaped into a delicate frame that cares more about Louboutins than Pinstripes. She is unflappable. She is confident. She is sociopathy personified. And I love it.

We don't see characters like Rebecca as much as we used to in the days when the gangster film ruled the screens. Great work like Goodfellas and the Sopranos humanized organized criminals to the point that they became so relatable that they were no longer threatening.

Shute, the last time we had a character even remotely close to Rebecca Lee was Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas. Now, there was the definition of a smooth operator, at least on film. Neither Frank Lucas nor Rebecca Lee are particularly accessible or relatable to the average moviegoer. They're too detached, too above it all. They're probably not even be aspirational figures to another segment of the audience--again too reticent, not pretentious or flashy enough--but they are something else. They are not what any of us want to be but something we all wish we could be at all times: cool.

Yes, they do terrible things. They steal. They poison. They destroy. But these are actions borne of an an understanding of the world that is simultaneously deeper and lesser than any of us will ever know. They understand that nothing's fair and rules are inconveniences. They comprehend the simple fact that taking what they want is more than acceptable its essential. It is a sad truth that so many of us know so wheel, but mostly as victims. Yet, to see these characters do such things, often at the expense of the self same members of society that would do the same to us, and to do so without blinking an eye, well, that taps right into an ugly little truth at our core: if we could take what we wanted and hurt nobody, or at least those who can take care of themselves, we would probably do it.

That ethos is what makes The Bling Ring such a great film. The teens thieves in The Bling Ring are vapid, shallow and obsessed with things that absolutely don't matter, but I'm typing this on an iPad that millions of people have or want because luxury, however ephemeral, is intoxicating. The Bling Ring is our id, but trendier. It reflects a part of us that some of us don't want to acknowledge and others actively rail against. But, that part of us is in there, creeping right along the edges our psyches anytime we see a free dollar in the street or a bargain basement sale of designer brands or high-end electronics. To see that story writ large-ish, is unquestionably cathartic.

Much has been made in various articles about Coppola's view of her subjects. Does she deplore these kids who she swears she didn't want to make any more famous? Is she ambivalent? Is she mad as hell that they managed to get one over on her and the other 1%? Is she ashamed that she probably would have done the same thing if given half the chance when she was their age? She is possibly all of these things, and so are we. That is why it works. It taps into the fact that many of us feel equally ambivalent, reviled, and entranced by these kids. The fact that it is more cohesive, detached, and low-key than Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers doesn't hurt, though Spring Breakers clearly benefitted from James Franco's dynamite performance as a more electric version of the sociopath who leads a handful of misguided teen girls astray. The Bling Ring emanates cool, the kind these kids would want to be, the kind we don't often get amongst the over-eager bombast of the summer. 

The Bling Ring is the second film I have seen this summer that I have desperately wanted to see more than once. The first? Fast and Furious 6. Another flick about cool, but decidedly more hotblooded and noticeably less hip, criminals living life by their own rules, even if its a dumb rule like living life a quarter mile at a time, and taking what they want (though less so in this entry than the last). 

These two movies are worlds apart, but at their core they are about criminals who are patently, unrealistically unafraid to live outside of law and society's rules. Criminals who are supposed to be deplorable, despicable, but are oh so enticing because they are a little bit of who we don't want to be and a lot of who we are. 

Furious Six and the Careless Propagation of The Ridiculous

"Are they serious?"  "I think so, but just keep smiling until we cash the check."

The guys behind us were the bullseye in the center of the target audience.

Two of them escaped from the set of COPS, with their gaunt frames, toothless grins, and oversized dayglo Akademiks hoodies and jorts.

Their benefactor was probably well outside of the coveted 18-34 demo, but mentally he fit right in. The only thing holding him back from being as raucous and garroulous as the knuckleheaded tagalongs beside him was the likely heart condition he was nursing, as signaled by fits of wheezing and a minute of labored breathing every time he climbed the steps to corner of the top row.

They were they type to ask for their money back from a free screening when the movie started to play sans sounds or subtitles tailor made for eighth grade readers. They were also proof that my cousin was right, "acting out and acting stupid has nothing to do with color and everything to do with class."

Once the sound was fixed and the cars, a black 2012 Challenger (that will always pale in comparison to the 70' original) and a silver GT-R, blared through the tunnel, speeding down a single-lane highway that winds around the mountainous landscape of the Canary Islands, they were hooked.

Of course that's how The Fast and The Furious 6, or Furious 6 as the title card at the end of the flick's TV-show style opening states, starts. With a growl. It continues with a succession of loud shouts and doesn't stop until midway through the credits.

Furious 6 grabs the attention of audiences like the folks behind us by excising cohesion, logic, or narrative intelligence and becomes the famed Set Piece showcase that cinephiles have prophesized since the rise of the blockbuster. Where Fast 5 was light, silly, generally focused, and vaguely purposeful. Furious 6 is the same, but far more audacious albeit much messier and far sillier. Does it tread into the realm of "so bad it's good"? No. It goes beyond such a distinction and rolls right into the realm of being so ridiculous that there's no way it can be anything other than entertaining.

This time, Texas Rocky (Dwayne Johnson as Lucas Hobbs), or Samoan Thor as Ludacris' Tej considers him, and Haywire (Gina Carano) conscript Dominic Ocean (Vin Diesel) and his band of merry thieves to help him bring down a team of ex-paramilitary "warriors" who are planning to steal a nuclear device with souped-up Indy Cars that with ramps built onto the frame, for the express purpose of flipping suckers. No bullshit.

So, rather than acknowledge that Torretto and his demo-specific rainbow crew--white (Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor); black (the aforementioned Ludacris and Tyrese's Roman, both all stars in this); asian (Sung Kang's Han); middle eastern (Gal Gadot's Giselle); and hispanic (Michelle Rodriguez's Letty and Elsa Pataky's Brazilian cop, whose name is irrelevant because...Letty)--are essentially criminals with hearts of gold who just happened to destroy lives and property in Rio for a cool hundred million, Furious 6 tries desperately to convince us that they are the "urban" Avengers by handwaving the less savory aspects of the characters and highlighting their heroics and devotion to family. In case you're unclear about that, check the slow walk pose poster of the heroes tagged onto the end of the opening.

Eschewing all evidence to the contrary, Texas Rocky believes these guys are heroes and gives them government funding and resources to take down the crew's military dopplegangers (a point thankfully lampshaded by Tej) led by the depressingly shallow Owen Shaw, played by the frighteningly charisma-less Luke Evans, who has proven that he should be kept as far away from Brandon Lee's legacy as possible with this performance. The hook? Michelle Rodriguez's resurrected Letty is one of Shaw's team. The twist? She can't remember anything about her past life.

To catch Shaw and bring Letty back to "The Family", Dom's crew must destroy London, and eventually Spain, with anything on four wheels they can get their hands on. There is a level of wanton death and destruction that surpasses even the climax of Fast 5, which is almost proof positive that few people in the industry, creatives or otherwise, understand that the basic purpose of heroes is to safeguard human lives. In truth, this destruction is limited to two major set pieces and a handful of physical encounters that demonstrate how nobody involved remembers that this movie series used to be about drag racers (see Tokyo Drift for the most on-target Fast and Furious movie about racing and youth culture).

Those set pieces are all that matters, and as the product of Justin Lin's wild imagination, they are the best evidence that he should be sending his reels to Kevin Feige and Marvel so he can get a shot at contributing to their blockbuster assembly line. This doesn't make him a great auteur--in fact, many of the action scenes raise more questions about Lin's ability to examine human consequence of such destruction more than anything else, but what action director hasn't made the same fundamental error--or anything like that, but any director who can come up with multiple stunts where mere humans jump from speeding cars across fifteen to twenty foot chasms deserves to play with bigger, flashier toys.

Screenwriter Chris Morgan, on the other hand, should really sit in a public place and just listen to people talk rather than reading the index of the Christopher Nolan Guide to Weighty Dialogue in a 21st Century Action Film. Expository to a fault, the script explains everything, even when the same information is shown within the same frame. The best example is the return of Nucky's brother (Shea Whigham) as a FBI agent and colleague of Brian's who gets his nose broken by Brian again in a practically unnecessary yet purely fanservice-y subplot. The character literally says "again", to help viewers whose memories and attention spans can't even reach back to last week's showing of Fast and Furious on USA. Unfortunately, the script structure works perfectly for audience members like the jolly fellows behind us, who repeated every moderately clever line, guffawed at the adolescent ribbing, and were absolutely flummoxed by the obvious turns in the narrative.

Despite its faults, Furious 6 is unquestionably a critic-proof crowd pleaser, and an astounding amount of credit goes to Tyrese and the usually wooden Ludacris for making Furious 6 far more palatable than it had any reason to be. They double-handedly saved this farce from devolving into pure, unadultered fandango. These guys deserve a buddy movie where they are a pair of good natured, ne'er-do-well thieves with a love for the high life. Tyrese, moreso than Luda, exemplifies the perfect response to the concentrated ridiculousness around him by laughing at the insanity and carrying on like a man who left his marbles at the door. Both he and Luda are quick with generally funny one-liners, followed by what appears to be an honest laugh at the silliness on display, yet Tyrese's Roman, with his insatiable hunger and toothy grin, hews closer to glib braggarts found in better criminal team-up movies like Ocean's 11. He and Luda stand in stark contrast to stone-faced Diesel, Walker, Rodriguez...almost everybody except for Rocky, on occasion, who are so busy playing phony tough and crazy brave to ever find a sliver of humor or inanity in their circumstance. And really, thank goodness for them. Granted, it kind of sucks to see the brothers reduced to comedy relief, especially with so many POC in the film, but without them, this would be an excruciatingly dour, yet still unintentionally hilarious, experience. 

Ultimately, this elaborate diatribe is meant to say one thing: this is a silly movie (maybe the most unintentionally hilarious flick this year). Take it for what it's worth. It's targeted at the back rows. The loud folks in the jorts and dated urban gear who spent fifty bucks on a small heart attack at the concession stand. The ones who aspire to ball in tricked-out super cars and stuff massive amounts of overdeveloped muscles into smedium tees while punching Renegade GI Joes into oblivion. In no way will this ever be confused for something designed for  the cineastes, but neither was The Avengers

Yet, Furious 6 is also aimed at the 13-year old in many of us who is absolutely tickled at superheroes in. If you can sit amongst the crowds described above, witness such ridiculous wonders as a man jumping from a moving car and catching another person then slaming into the windshield of another car, laugh, and cast them aside as adolescent diversions then enjoy. If you can absorb the audacious ridiculousness of Furious 6 and smile, like I did after I had a week to let it sink in, then have as much fun as you can with it. But, be warned, don't over analyze this flick. Don't even analyze it.  Leave that to silly people like me, who should know better. If you think to much about Furious 6, you will find yourself arguing with an idiot, and we know how that argument usually ends.