| Patrick Clifford |
Shakedown plays in glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, January 23rd, through Sunday, January 25th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
I recently bought a meatloaf and mashed potato sandwich from a gas station. I was on a road trip of sorts and had stopped out of need. For gas, a bathroom, and something to eat. The meatloaf and mashed potato sandwich was suffering under a heat lamp alongside more standard, familiar options. It made me laugh out loud. It made me buy it. It made me excitedly show my wife, who was less excited. It made me eat it. I don’t need to tell you that it wasn’t good, but I am going to anyway. It wasn’t good. At all. Still, I’m glad I ran across it. I’m glad I bought it. And I’m sort of glad I ate it. I find joy in things that I know aren’t going to be good. I can’t necessarily recommend this attitude when it comes to road trip food choices. But when it comes to movies, it’s an approach that has merit.
Am I saying the 1988 action/crime film Shakedown is a bad movie? I’m saying it doesn’t have to be. My expectations going into Shakedown were similar to my expectations of finding something to eat in a gas station. I would encourage this mindset for action/crime films made in 1988 not named Die Hard. The next thing I’d encourage is to find your mashed potatoes. In other words, seek out an ingredient to the movie that brings you instantaneous personal joy. And when it comes to Shakedown, that ingredient is Sam Elliott.
I have never met a movie lover who has anything bad to say about Sam Elliott. It could be they find him super sexy. It could be that they love his soothing drawl. Could be his mustache or the way a cowboy hat sits on his perfectly wavy locks. Roadhouse. All fair. For me, Sam Elliott has something even more badass. Yin and Yang. On one hand, Elliott always feels like he possesses a calm spiritual wisdom about whatever situation he’s in, and all the players involved. At the same time, he’s instinctively the first guy you’d pick to be on your side when asses start getting kicked. It’s a rare onscreen combination for an actor. And Sam Elliott consistently achieves it, even when a script doesn’t ask him to.
This rings loud and true in Shakedown: a movie that’s almost proudly unconcerned with spiritual wisdom and satisfyingly content staying in its ass-kicking lane. Three scenes in particular deserve your shameless action-flick loving attention. The first is a spectacular chase with bad guy #2, whose wardrobe alone slaps you in the face with 80s villainy. It includes shimmying a falling streetlight onto the top of a bus, commandeering a motorcycle from a fabulously unterrifying biker gang, and a classic pistol shot to a gas puddle bad guy #2 happens to be standing in and eventually blown up real good in. The second scene is another chase with a more minor drugged out thug who is hell bent on shooting every cop in sight. It features a fist-packing fight on a climbing roller coaster that Sam somehow induces to go off the rails with a MacGyver-esque pulling of the brake line. Or something. The third scene quite honestly tells the first two scenes to holds its can of Budweiser in a paper bag. It’s Shakedown’s final scene, and even though Shakedown would never suffer from something as trivial as a spoiler alert, I’m gonna leave this one for the watching. Just know that mikemdp from reddit can confirm it is “one of the most unintentionally hysterical scenes” he has ever seen. I shan’t disagree.
If you’re still wondering whether Shakedown is worth a watch, I’d say this. Of course it is. It’s got Sam Elliott in it. But I happily ate a meatloaf and mashed potato sandwich from a gas station.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon