Saturday, November 21, 2020

Only now does it occur to me... THE BODYGUARD (1992)

Only now does it occur to me... that Kevin Costner's character in THE BODYGUARD hates boats because he's experiencing psychic reverberations of the trials he will endure in the future of... WATERWORLD.







Speaking of "psychic reverberations of the future," he's talking to Whitney Houston's onscreen son there, played by DeVaughn Nixon. Throughout this film, he must live in fear of an unstoppable killer who wants to murder his mom. Not unlike his performance in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, when a practically unstoppable killer (Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor) wants to assassinate his dad (Joe Morton's Miles Dyson).

I must also give a shout-out to two major nods to arthouse cinema: first, during Whitney's "Queen of the Night," she is done up like Brigitte Helm in the notorious "Whore of Babylon" dance sequence from Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS:


as scenes from the film are projected behind her:


 Secondly, Costner takes Whitney on a date to see Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO,

which translates to, in English, "THE BODYGUARD." They review the film as follows:
I wish this would happen more often. What if, in Paul Haggis' CRASH, Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard had gone to the movies and seen David Cronenberg's CRASH? What if, in Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, Viggo Mortensen had arranged a post-apocalyptic screening of Fellini's LA STRADA? Some good possibilities there. Anyway.

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