Professor Garbage - Issue #3: PG Regards Henry
When you take a bullet to the head in real life, the most likely result is a close-casket funeral. When you take a bullet to the head from a gun fired by a young John Leguizamo in a film helmed by Mike Nichols and written by a barely post-natal J.J. Abrams, the results are different.
The Most Magical Bullet of All
Welcome to Regarding Henry, a mid-budget early ‘90s Harrison Ford failed awards-bait vehicle* where catching a shot in the dome ends up being the best thing that ever happened to our titular Henry. For starters, the shot is so surgical in its precision that the entry point leaves Ford’s movie star visage intact.**
Sure, Henry is going to have to relearn how to speak, read, and walk thanks to the bullet ripping through his brain, but nothing is gonna keep your mom from having to sit on a towel while watching this schmaltzfest.
You can tell we’re supposed to think the protagonist is a piece of shit because he’s wearing the most easily recognizable symbol of ‘80s*** overconsumption: the Gordan Gekko hair helmet.
We’re also supposed to think he’s a piece of shit because he’s a high-powered corporate lawyer who cheats on his wife and neglects his young daughter. You’re right to think that, of course, but keep in mind this film came out in 1991 right in time for a grand cultural reset**** and a rebuke of the previous decade’s soulless overconsumption.
Nichols was a filmmaker known for extracting incredible, nuanced performances from his actors. He must have seen working with Harrison Ford as a challenge. While I’m never mad when Ford pops up on my screen, I don’t think I’m particularly out of bounds when I say the man has limited range as an actor. His career trajectory begins with roles where he’s cocky, but sexy and progresses to deadpan leading men and pissed off action heros before evolving into an old grump who communicates mainly through growls and grunts. It’s not that he isn’t good at what he does; he’s just not who first comes to mind when casting a role that requires its actor to convey the complex array of emotions and challenges felt by a character going through painful physical rehabilitation while temporarily losing the ability to speak. He’s definitely not who I’d cast when there’s a significant portion of the movie where the lead has to communicate complicated feelings exclusively through facial expressions, unless those feelings were annoyance or constipation.
Check out how Ford uses his signature angry finger point when a pre-bullet-in-the-head Henry gives his daughter a stern, yet loving talking to about responsibility. It doesn’t really bode well for the post-gun-shot Henry whom Ford interprets as regarding every challenge with the same petulance as a teenager who was just told he can’t go see Slipknot because he didn’t pull up his algebra grade.
Perhaps Ford should have just let the hair do the talking. The fact that he liberates his hair from its gel prison is probably the biggest indicator that Henry Turner is a changed man. A changed man who realizes he loves his wife and child, rediscovers his humanity, and decides wants to leave his palatial Park Avenue penthouse and law firm partnership to live a simple life in the suburbs. Instead of being sent to prison, Leguizamo’s character should be given the Congressional Medal of honor. I know those typically only get awarded to people in the military, but certainly an exception can be made here.
I could delve further into the mechanisms of this baffling movie, but the late, great Roger Ebert already did it better than I ever could. From his Chicago-Sun Times review:
With all that said, I will stop and watch this movie every time I stumble upon it while flipping channels; that’s the Professor Garbage promise.
Footnotes:
* Also a movie I watched for the first time after stumbling upon it while flipping channels and haven’t stopped thinking about since.
** A few months after Regarding Henry came out, Oliver Stone’s JFK hit theaters. The JFK autopsy photos that momentarily flash onscreen are a better representation of what actually happens when a bullet rips through a human skull. Magic bullets had quite a moment in ‘91.
*** Let’s not forget that this is the same decade where America, myself included, fell in love with a wisecracking, supernatural child murderer. (I still love him.)
**** It came out in July, just two short months before Nirvana would drop Nevermind, and as the popular mythology dictates, slay hair metal hedonism.