A New Kind of Airport

A New Kind of Airport
Directed by Warren Wagner

Encouraged by his success with The Totalitarian Blueberry and The Protest as short, concept-based films made in a short amount of time, Warren takes the Indie 3DMM idea and runs with it....in entirely the wrong direction. I'm in a pretty frustrating position reviewing this film, because he offered to let me testview it just before release, but I turned him down because I was...well, I was seriously hung over. If I'd known how unpolished his final version of the film was, I'd have told him not to release it. A New Kind of Airport is one of the few movies under that oh-so-elusive category of "bad but interesting"; it does almost everything wrong, but through the length of the entire runtime you are distinctly and painfully aware of how good it should have been.

As of this writing, I have not seen HAIL TO THE CHIEF yet, a movie written by Warren and directed by Mike Storch, using the same black-and-white effect displayed here. I have more hope that that one uses it in an interesting way. A New Kind of Airport is a story....well, not really a story, more of a conversation between a man with extreme (and dangerous) racial prejudices, and a man on the cusp of being swayed in that direction. We learn that an Arabian man was just there, and left his briefcase behind; the first man venomously points out all of the most typical stereotypes about Muslims and suspects that it's probably a bomb. The second man is one of those kinds of people who doesn't think about the problems of the world very often (or just doesn't think very often, period), and is easily swayed to the first guy's point of view simply because he is saying things and seems to believe them.

However, while their conversation builds and is clearly intended to show how stereotypes reinforce each other and end up leading to more drastic and ignorant actions, the movie is constructed literally out of four camera angles: a dead-on shot of the bench and the two men on either side, a dead-on closeup of the first man on the left, a dead-on closeup of the second man on the right, and a dead-on closeup of the briefcase at their feet. Wagner cycles the angles with increasing predictability, and the two men so lazily animated that they never actually face each other while they're talking. In a film that's supposed to be about stereotype and ignorant speculation and how persuasive the easy, hateful solutions can be, the direction renders the entire thing into something far sillier and more simpleminded than it has any business being.

As I watched, new possibilities for camera angles crept up in my mind. A shot underneath the bench, looking toward the man on the right, and tilted so that his legs are visible, so that they turn slightly to face the first man as he asks, "You think so?" A profile shot of the first man from the center of the bench, lounging back and making lazily moronic statements, the airport a busy place behind him. Even a cut to a slightly tilted closeup the second man, who turns slightly to listen as the first is talking. There's so much possible that this script could have suggested about ignorance and persuasion and all of the themes it seems to try to tackling, and the direction pounds it flat at every corner.

The dialogue is unfortunately indicative of a continuing thorn in Warren's side as a writer: a militant insistence on using "fuck" and "shit" for no apparent reason and in the places in lines where it sounds the most gimmicky; a painful lack of subtlety in expressing the themes of the film through the characters' mouths; a weak grasp of what real conversations sound like, specifically in making characters seem like people and not just tools for the screenplay. He has a great voice as a writer, an awesome potential to make things that speak to people, but it was impossible to listen to the dialogue and not imagine the process of writing the script, of Warren writing what these characters are saying. I'm seeing the movie, but I'm also seeing him writing it. You feel like he's hovering just out of the borders of the screen, like a puppetmaster.

I mentioned earlier that Airport was a step in the wrong direction for Indie 3DMM. What I meant, specifically, was that "less is more" is a philosophy that can only be applied as long as the movie does justice to the material. Jason Ruiz can crank out Johnny Samsinite in one sitting and it becomes a cult classic because all the movie has to be is funny, emotive, and weirdly touching, which Ruiz's voice acting handles at least 80% of. A film like A New Kind of Airport practically demands subtlety, timing, good camera angles, and directorial precision. The missed potential practically bleeds right out of every frame in this version.

Critical Score: 35/100.
Personal Score: 40/100.