Dennis Quaid stars as secret service agent Barnes in the story of an assassination attempt on the President (William Hurt). The movie is told from the perspective of several characters. In order to give you my opinion on this movie, I have to tell you how it ends. So be careful, SPOILERS FOLLOW:

The President is in Spain for a meeting on terrorism and is set to speak in the middle of an open-air plaza. But, when he is called back to his hotel, his double heads to the speech. Of course, our evil-doers know this because secret service agent Taylor (Matthew Fox) is in on the whole plot. So, the assassination turns into a kidnapping and off we go. (By the way, the lead terrorist is Suarez (Said Taghmaoui) who masterminds all of this through his cell phone.)

I think the best way to do this is to split the movie into my likes and dislikes. So here we go:

SHAGO LIKED…

…the concept of this film. We see the assassination attempt, then we rewind and see it again from a different character’s perspective. Pretty cool..the first two or three times. Then we go again and again and again and yawn. Wait…should this be in the “like” category? Hmmm…anyhoo, moving on.

SHAGO DID NOT LIKE…

…the characters. Oh man, talk about being spoon fed some BS in order to make the characters believable. As my loyal readers know, this is one of my biggest complaints about movies these days. You can’t just give me one line of crap (see below) and expect me to care about the characters…but that’s a whole other post.

Let’s start with the President’s double. They make a point of telling us that they’ve used him before for photo shoots, but nothing this important. Ok, good enough, he must be convincing.

There’s Agent Barnes, who is just returning to work after taking a bullet for the President in an earlier assassination attempt. Ok, he’s tough, I bet he could survive a car crash.

Then there’s Javier (Edgar Ramirez) who, we’re told, has double secret super commando ninja skills. Ok, he’s a bad ass, that’s how he can kill about 20 secret service agents by himself. Oh, and he’s only doing this to get back his kidnapped brother. Kinda pointless, but what’s a movie without some futile in-fighting between the bad guys.

Lastly, there’s Howard (Forest Whitaker), an American tourist, who confesses to a random child that he’s having some family issues. Let me say that I really like Forest Whitaker as an actor. Unfortunately, he comes off looking more like a psycho child molester filming little girls than a concerned parent.

SHAGO RIDICULED…

…the car chase, about ten minutes of:
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Seriously.

SHAGO HATED…

…the ending. Let’s recap, our terrorists have: shot the President’s double, blown up a bomb in the middle of a crowded plaza, killed most of the secret service, turned on their henchmen, and are now escaping in an ambulance with the President. Until…dramatic pause…a stupid girl wanders out into the street in front of them looking for mama. The ambulance swerves to miss her and crashes, the end.
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Are you f’ing serious? They just killed hundreds of people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You expect me to believe that they give a crap about saving this kid’s life? Really, hit the kid, drive away, and you win.

Ugh, maybe I’m being too cruel. Or maybe I’m just too damn mean to be a terrorist.

8 Strangers, 8 Points of View, 1 Truth, 1 Pig.

So I was pretty much a lazy piece of crap in 2008. I quit my job to pursue my lifelong dream of getting drunk on my porch while flicking off the passing hobos and throwing stones at small children. It was wonderful I must say, but all I really have to show for it is a beer gut, a couple lawsuits, and a few less years to live. So, I decided to punish myself for these slothful ways. Call it Shago’s penance or act of contrition or any other word I vaguely remember from Sunday School twenty years ago.

For my punishment, I forced myself to watch Winona Ryder movies…numerous Winona Ryder movies. Now, we all know that Winona Horowitz (her given name) is just awful. I mean can anyone watch Alien: Resurrection without enjoying this part?

So let’s get started. Remember mullets, I am a trained professional, DO NOT attempt this at home.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

Tim Burton’s creatively uncomfortable story of Edward (Johnny Depp) and his scissor hands trying to fit into suburbia. This is really a fascinating movie but, let’s face it, it’s ruined by Horowitz trying to be a blond. In the end, Kim (Horowitz) falls in love with Edwards because he’s so innocent, has cool scars, and wears leather pants. But their love is not to be. Actually, this ending is not sad. I mean who wouldn’t prefer an eternity of isolation to the love of Horowitz? 3 pigs, a really good movie, but doesn’t make Shago’s top tier.

SEX AND DEATH 101

Roderick (Simon Baker) receives a strange list that includes every women he has ever had sex with and all of his future sexual partners. He breaks off his engagement and starts down the list.

In separate but colliding stories, Death Nell (Horowitz) is a serial killer seducing and murdering her male sexual partners. You see where this is going…

The best part of this movie is that Horowitz really doesn’t have much of a role until the end. Silly, but still kinda fun, this film wasn’t terrible, 2 pigs.

HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT

A bunch of old ladies are making a quilt for Finn’s (Horowitz) wedding. They sit around and tell stories about their lives. The movies flashes forward and backwards to these stories until you are utterly confused. Or maybe I was too busy bashing of my head against the wall and praying for death to understand. What I got is that Finn is worried about getting married so she has sex with some random hot guy. Somehow, this is her husband’s fault. Then, her thesis is ruined when it is blown away by an angry gust of wind. But she feels better when the quilt is done.

I think the point of this story is that men are bad because they have a penis and women are awesome because they can quilt. I guess we’ll have to live with that, 0 pigs.

BOYS

After a fall from her horse, a couple of kids from an all boys school find Patty (Horowitz) unconscious in a field. Patty is a 25 year old ugly, strange gal who is being investigated by the police in connection with the disappearance of a baseball star. Her rescuer, John (Lukas Haas), instantly falls for her because he is also ugly and strange. Patty ends up getting this poor high schooler drunk and then rapes him. After getting arrested, they “escape” from the two-story police station with the help of an ultra fast elevator and station wagon. We are only left to hope that they crash and die a horribly painful death.

In a strange twist, John C. Reilly plays the police officer. I kept waiting for him to say a quote from Talladega Nights or Walk Hard, but it never came…mullets…(sob)…(sob)…it never came. This movie is one of the worst pieces of crap I’ve seen, 0 pigs.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. Now that I have stopped crying and trying to burn my eyes out, I would like to introduce the new Shago, a changed man
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…kill me Billy…

I’ll kick off the new category with my alternate ending for The Rock starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. It’s a well known fact that once you start watching The Rock, you cannot turn it off. One of the mysteries of the modern world.

In Shago’s ending, the US Government agrees to pay Ed Harris the $100 million, but they require him to fire the VX chemical weapons at a Raiders game. Everyone ends happy and the last 45 minutes are filled out with some sweet lesbo action between Vanessa Marcil and Claire Forlani.

THE END

Wake up all you mullet fans out there! Dust off your hangover and walk with me. A new chance at parody awaits you as I introduce our new “Alternate Endings” category. Up to this point we’ve been limited to the “bonus features” we get on reanimated Blu-Ray versions of the same ol washed up trash we saw 3 years ago. Well I have had enough and I’m not gonna take it anymore.

Ever wanted Shia LeBeouf to grow a nice beer gut?

M. Night Shyamalan to get the Aunt Jemima treatment?

Eddie Murphy to save the world from the Nazis?

Jennifer Aniston to get bitten by that asshole dog on yet another sugary spoonful of sanctimonious crap (thanks G.I. Jab) we got subjected to this holiday season?

Michael Keaton to show up at the end of The Dark Knight and kick someone in the nuts?

Me too. Me too.

What I’m trying to say is we can do better folks. Choose your own adventure. Make your own endings. The right kid dies. Stuff like that.

Oh and Happy New Year, Peace and Love, Peace and Love from Anita and all of your favorite Mullets!