Pushing Tin «««
R, 124m. 1999
Cast & Credits: John Cusack (Nick Falzone), Billy Bob Thornton (Russell Bell), Cate Blanchett (Connie Falzone), Angelina Jolie (Mary Bell), Barry Plotkin (Jake Webber), Vicki Lewis (Tina). Screenplay by Glen Charles and Les Charles. Directed by Mike Newell.
The job air traffic controllers have is not that much different from computer helpdesk analysts who sit around in their cubicles, work ten or twelve hour shifts, three to four days a week taking and returning call after call until there are none left to resolve.
By comparison, the people who work at the Terminal Radar Approach Control centers, much like the one in Pushing Tin, sit in front of their electronic radar screens not much larger than the 25- inch monitors computer analysts stare at on a daily basis. They bring plane after plane in for final approach before turning them over to the tower.
In the world of computer helpdesk troubleshooting, I.T. departments must provide fast, expedient, helpful service to the stores and their customers.
Computer analysts, however, aren’t responsible for the millions of lives in the air the way traffic controllers are. The most that could ever happen to an I.T. support helpdesk which fails to offer good quality customer service is declining profits and mass firings.
The opening title card in Pushing Tin says it all. One small mid-air collision and you will never hear the end of it. When troubleshooting computer hardware and software problems, delete a store’s business transactions for the day, even it if is on accident, and you have committed bloody murder.
Over time an analyst’s attitude begins to show signs of burnout and tires of repeating the same vicious cycle every week, attempting to return along with the rest of their crew, provided no one has called in sick or is on vacation, the 300 plus calls waiting to be returned in 24 to 48 hours. The task becomes something he or she never thought they would be doing, a somewhat brainless, preprogrammed assembly line job. I can relate to this because I have been doing it for three years. I found it just as easy to relate to what the characters go through on the job in Pushing Tin.
It is only a matter of time before a fast-talking hotshot air traffic controller like Nick Falzone (John Cusack) reaches a boiling point and loses control of not just their professional but their personal life as well.
I don’t know a whole lot about air traffic controllers other than they went on strike one year demanding more pay and work in overly stressful jobs. For a while, director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco - 1997) and writers Glen and Les Charles, the creators behind the long running bar room sitcom Cheers (1982 – 1993), briefly took me into that often chaotic, nerve racking world of computer guidance systems.
At one point early in the film, Newell focuses in on the inner workings of the radar screen itself and the small light colored blips, which represent the dozens of planes in the air awaiting instructions. This is like a video game and the one who can land the most planes wins like the mysteriously, quiet newcomer, Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton). Bell doesn’t waste a moment getting all flights in close knit fashion as he asks his co-workers if there is another flight he can get to place in empty airspace a mile wide.
Russell’s blatant risk taking and the employers liking his questionably dangerous tactics of getting more planes on the ground are what cause Nick to compete with the guy in just about anything both in and outside the workplace. During much of the movie’s first hour, their heated competitions bring in a few humorous results. When Nick takes Russell out for a ride in his car evading traffic going 100 miles-an-hour, the half Native American falls asleep.
Thornton is the juiciest character in the film simply because he doesn’t allow us to really get to know him. Bell’s actions and reactions are intriguing to watch giving Nick twisted facial gestures that one can’t tell what is he is thinking. He runs off traveling on his motorcycle never telling his wife, Mary (Angelina Jolie), where he is going, never returning home until the next morning and sports a ceremonial feather behind one ear when working. Russell talks very little when around his co-workers and reveals even less about his past.
Nick already has everything he could want from a good paying job to a stable home life with his wife, Connie (Cate Blanchett), though he doesn’t spend much time with their kids. He needs something to break the usual routine though and sees a challenge in his new rival. To Nick, Russell is like the brother he never had and if he ever did, I think he would have wound up hating him.
That is before Newell and the screenwriters drift off course, so to speak, focusing more on Nick’s marital infidelities with Russell’s wife before almost losing everything. The subplot reminded me of a tame version of Fatal Attraction (1987) with no psychotic women. In one scene, when Nick tells his wife he had dinner with Mary, I was left with the impression he wants to confess what he did next. Like Michael Douglas’ morally flawed father/husband in director Adrian Lyne’s movie, Nick regrets his actions.
This was where I was ready to give Pushing Tin a two star rating. I figured the only thing that could possibly give this movie a jumpstart was if one of the two characters actually caused a mid-air crash. I wasn’t the least bit interested in the adultery. I was drawn more by the characters professions and Russell’s unique, often times standoffish personality.
Then thinking about it further especially before I wrote this review, I found there were a lot of things I did like about the movie. I loved Thornton’s performance as much as I liked the chemistry and sincerity displayed by Cusack, Blanchett and Jolie. I have always found Cusack to be a much more engaging actor than Keanu Reeves whom I still can’t take seriously.
I also enjoyed watching News Radio’s Vicki Lewis, who as another traffic controller lifts weights while on break, and does a sexy dance number in a bodybuilding contest.
I liked how the employees placed wagers on whether one of their fellow controllers, who can’t bring himself to sit in front of a radar screen again, can make it to the front door before breaking out into a sweat and bolting back to his car. And the Sunday barbecues held by one of the co-workers who gets upset because the planes are flying directly above his house. And the controller’s wives who talk about how they were not the first women their husbands married.
That was enough for me to give Pushing Tin a higher rating than it probably deserves. I find it hard to make movies about people in stressful professions like air traffic controllers. Scriptwriters always have to come up with ways to make the story more interesting, if not unbelievable.
The best movie to date that convincingly balances people’s lives both in and outside the workplace is director Ron Howard’s The Paper (1994) about life at a New York City tabloid.
Take away all the marital difficulties and relationships and you find air traffic controllers lead boring, uneventful lives when they are off work. At least that is the impression I got watching Pushing Tin. The best authority figure I have seen on the big screen who balanced both his hectic professional and dull private life was the manager Burt Lancaster played in the 1970 classic disaster movie, Airport.
I guess I really can’t blame Newell and the Charles’ brothers for delivering an uneven film. If I wrote a script about life at an actual computer support helpdesk, my story would evolve around the lives of two employees in and outside the workplace. The only difference is my movie wouldn’t be very far from the truth.
One would be about an anal retentive vice presidential corporate want-to-be perfectionist dictator who takes assembly line jobs so seriously that he has no life and his employees talk about him behind his back. The other is about a burned out analyst who finally decides to go back to school and finish his journalism degree. Just as he is about to take a low paying job at a weekly suburban tabloid while working weekends as a support analyst, executives at NBC call to tell him they will make his two hour TV pilot into a new drama series to take ER’s Thursday night time slot in the fall of 2001.
The analyst quits giving no notice knowing he is going off to do something he has always wanted to do. While after five years, the level three manager, who goes ballistic every time his employees come to work in shorts, is still vying to be the next director of operations and getting nowhere.
I doubt such a film would ever get made much less bring in high revenue at the box office but then again...
©5/5/99
R, 124m. 1999
Cast & Credits: John Cusack (Nick Falzone), Billy Bob Thornton (Russell Bell), Cate Blanchett (Connie Falzone), Angelina Jolie (Mary Bell), Barry Plotkin (Jake Webber), Vicki Lewis (Tina). Screenplay by Glen Charles and Les Charles. Directed by Mike Newell.
By comparison, the people who work at the Terminal Radar Approach Control centers, much like the one in Pushing Tin, sit in front of their electronic radar screens not much larger than the 25- inch monitors computer analysts stare at on a daily basis. They bring plane after plane in for final approach before turning them over to the tower.
In the world of computer helpdesk troubleshooting, I.T. departments must provide fast, expedient, helpful service to the stores and their customers.
Computer analysts, however, aren’t responsible for the millions of lives in the air the way traffic controllers are. The most that could ever happen to an I.T. support helpdesk which fails to offer good quality customer service is declining profits and mass firings.
The opening title card in Pushing Tin says it all. One small mid-air collision and you will never hear the end of it. When troubleshooting computer hardware and software problems, delete a store’s business transactions for the day, even it if is on accident, and you have committed bloody murder.
Over time an analyst’s attitude begins to show signs of burnout and tires of repeating the same vicious cycle every week, attempting to return along with the rest of their crew, provided no one has called in sick or is on vacation, the 300 plus calls waiting to be returned in 24 to 48 hours. The task becomes something he or she never thought they would be doing, a somewhat brainless, preprogrammed assembly line job. I can relate to this because I have been doing it for three years. I found it just as easy to relate to what the characters go through on the job in Pushing Tin.
It is only a matter of time before a fast-talking hotshot air traffic controller like Nick Falzone (John Cusack) reaches a boiling point and loses control of not just their professional but their personal life as well.
I don’t know a whole lot about air traffic controllers other than they went on strike one year demanding more pay and work in overly stressful jobs. For a while, director Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco - 1997) and writers Glen and Les Charles, the creators behind the long running bar room sitcom Cheers (1982 – 1993), briefly took me into that often chaotic, nerve racking world of computer guidance systems.
At one point early in the film, Newell focuses in on the inner workings of the radar screen itself and the small light colored blips, which represent the dozens of planes in the air awaiting instructions. This is like a video game and the one who can land the most planes wins like the mysteriously, quiet newcomer, Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton). Bell doesn’t waste a moment getting all flights in close knit fashion as he asks his co-workers if there is another flight he can get to place in empty airspace a mile wide.
Russell’s blatant risk taking and the employers liking his questionably dangerous tactics of getting more planes on the ground are what cause Nick to compete with the guy in just about anything both in and outside the workplace. During much of the movie’s first hour, their heated competitions bring in a few humorous results. When Nick takes Russell out for a ride in his car evading traffic going 100 miles-an-hour, the half Native American falls asleep.
Thornton is the juiciest character in the film simply because he doesn’t allow us to really get to know him. Bell’s actions and reactions are intriguing to watch giving Nick twisted facial gestures that one can’t tell what is he is thinking. He runs off traveling on his motorcycle never telling his wife, Mary (Angelina Jolie), where he is going, never returning home until the next morning and sports a ceremonial feather behind one ear when working. Russell talks very little when around his co-workers and reveals even less about his past.
Nick already has everything he could want from a good paying job to a stable home life with his wife, Connie (Cate Blanchett), though he doesn’t spend much time with their kids. He needs something to break the usual routine though and sees a challenge in his new rival. To Nick, Russell is like the brother he never had and if he ever did, I think he would have wound up hating him.
That is before Newell and the screenwriters drift off course, so to speak, focusing more on Nick’s marital infidelities with Russell’s wife before almost losing everything. The subplot reminded me of a tame version of Fatal Attraction (1987) with no psychotic women. In one scene, when Nick tells his wife he had dinner with Mary, I was left with the impression he wants to confess what he did next. Like Michael Douglas’ morally flawed father/husband in director Adrian Lyne’s movie, Nick regrets his actions.
This was where I was ready to give Pushing Tin a two star rating. I figured the only thing that could possibly give this movie a jumpstart was if one of the two characters actually caused a mid-air crash. I wasn’t the least bit interested in the adultery. I was drawn more by the characters professions and Russell’s unique, often times standoffish personality.
Then thinking about it further especially before I wrote this review, I found there were a lot of things I did like about the movie. I loved Thornton’s performance as much as I liked the chemistry and sincerity displayed by Cusack, Blanchett and Jolie. I have always found Cusack to be a much more engaging actor than Keanu Reeves whom I still can’t take seriously.
I also enjoyed watching News Radio’s Vicki Lewis, who as another traffic controller lifts weights while on break, and does a sexy dance number in a bodybuilding contest.
I liked how the employees placed wagers on whether one of their fellow controllers, who can’t bring himself to sit in front of a radar screen again, can make it to the front door before breaking out into a sweat and bolting back to his car. And the Sunday barbecues held by one of the co-workers who gets upset because the planes are flying directly above his house. And the controller’s wives who talk about how they were not the first women their husbands married.
That was enough for me to give Pushing Tin a higher rating than it probably deserves. I find it hard to make movies about people in stressful professions like air traffic controllers. Scriptwriters always have to come up with ways to make the story more interesting, if not unbelievable.
The best movie to date that convincingly balances people’s lives both in and outside the workplace is director Ron Howard’s The Paper (1994) about life at a New York City tabloid.
Take away all the marital difficulties and relationships and you find air traffic controllers lead boring, uneventful lives when they are off work. At least that is the impression I got watching Pushing Tin. The best authority figure I have seen on the big screen who balanced both his hectic professional and dull private life was the manager Burt Lancaster played in the 1970 classic disaster movie, Airport.
I guess I really can’t blame Newell and the Charles’ brothers for delivering an uneven film. If I wrote a script about life at an actual computer support helpdesk, my story would evolve around the lives of two employees in and outside the workplace. The only difference is my movie wouldn’t be very far from the truth.
One would be about an anal retentive vice presidential corporate want-to-be perfectionist dictator who takes assembly line jobs so seriously that he has no life and his employees talk about him behind his back. The other is about a burned out analyst who finally decides to go back to school and finish his journalism degree. Just as he is about to take a low paying job at a weekly suburban tabloid while working weekends as a support analyst, executives at NBC call to tell him they will make his two hour TV pilot into a new drama series to take ER’s Thursday night time slot in the fall of 2001.
The analyst quits giving no notice knowing he is going off to do something he has always wanted to do. While after five years, the level three manager, who goes ballistic every time his employees come to work in shorts, is still vying to be the next director of operations and getting nowhere.
I doubt such a film would ever get made much less bring in high revenue at the box office but then again...
©5/5/99
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