Review: In ‘Baby Driver,’ It’s Kiss Kiss, Zoom Zoom Ansel Elgort and Lily James in “Baby Driver.”CreditWilson Webb/TriStar Pictures
Baby Driver NYT Critic's Pick Thriller R 1h 53m
Directed by Edgar Wright Action, Crime, Music,
By Manohla Dargis ● June 27, 2017 In “Baby Driver,” the director Edgar Wright is out to show you a most excellent time. He’s never been one of those filmmakers who expect you to be blinded by the bright sheen of his résumé, which includes comical genre rethinks like the zombie flick “Shaun of the Dead” and the cop caper “Hot Fuzz.” Mr. Wright works for your love, hard enough that you notice the whirring machinery if perhaps not the strain. He wants it easy and
breezy, although mostly he wants it cool, whether the latest means to his end, Baby (Ansel Elgort), is smooth-moving like Gene Kelly or burning rubber like Steve McQueen. A genre ride with a rebuilt engine and a sweet paint job, “Baby Driver” is all about movement and sometimes stillness and how a beautiful man looks (feels, seems, is) even better when he’s in glorious, syncopated, restless motion. The first time you see Baby — that’s his handle, which suits Mr. Elgort, with his angelic face and young man’s lissomeness — he’s in the driver’s seat, where he belongs. The car doesn’t look like much, just a cherry-red box with doors and a spoiler. Like us, Baby is waiting for the action to start, seemingly sealed off from the outside world with his dark sunglasses and earbuds. This is how Baby rolls, with shifting gears, pumping feet and thumping tunes, and how Mr. Wright rolls here as well. There’s a story, sure, about Baby getting in and out of trouble while finding love and money. He doesn’t have much of an inner life, but he has skills, a heavy back story and a kindly foster father, Joe (CJ Jones, who helps give the movie its faint heartbeat), a deaf invalid with whom he signs. Baby also has tinnitus, which he quells with music; mostly, he has killer timing and gracefully elastic, reactive physicality that suggests Mr. Wright has put in time with the films of Jacques Tati.
From left, Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx in a film crammed with cubistic action, glowering and golly-gee types and an encyclopedia of cinematic allusion.CreditWilson Webb/TriStar Pictures
That’s wonderful company to keep and to learn from, especially when you’re as cleverly attentive a student as Mr. Wright. Baby drives hard, fast, tight and seemingly oh so effortlessly, spinning wheels across pavement like a Russian Olympian on ice. In the eye-tickling opener — a wham, bam, we’ll-take-the-cash-ma’am heist — Baby peels out in that red box (a souped-up Subaru) and motors into one of those warped Road Runner chases that builds momentum with near escapes, not-even-close winking and the twangy throbbing of “Bellbottoms,” from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a group once unforgettably described by the critic Robert Christgau as “avant-travestying da blooze.” “Baby Driver” isn’t avant-travestying; it’s a pop pastiche par excellence, crammed with cubistic action; glowering and golly-gee types (played by the seductive likes of Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza González and Lily James); and an encyclopedia of cinematic allusions, all basted in wall-to-wall tuneage. At times, the whole thing spins like a tribute album, a collection of covers of varying quality: diner yaks à la Quentin Tarantino, Godardian splashes of color. When it works, the allusions give you a contact high, like when a friend turns you on to a favorite movie. At other times, Mr. Wright’s pleasure veers into the self-satisfied, and all that love feels smothering, near-bullying, like bro-cinephilia in extremis.
Review: In ‘Furious 7,’ a Franchise Continues to Roar Furious 7
Directed by James Wan
Action, Crime, Thriller
PG-13
2h 17m
By A.O. Scott April 1, 2015
In a recent interview in Variety, Vin Diesel predicted that “Furious 7” would win the best picture Oscar at next year’s Academy Awards. “Unless the Oscars don’t want to be relevant ever,” he added, though that issue may already be settled. If Mr. Diesel’s prophecy doesn’t come true, it won’t necessarily be a matter of merit. Movies much worse than this lucky-number episode of an overachieving franchise — movies far less sure of their intentions, sincere in their themes or kind to their audiences — have snapped up statuettes. There will no doubt be better movies released in 2015, but “Furious 7” is an early favorite to win the prize for most picture. Here is a movie with room for not one but two ruthless supervillains: a snarling pit bull played by Jason Statham and a terrorist mastermind played by Djimon Hounsou. Mr. Statham participates in an early, glass-shattering smackdown with Dwayne Johnson and a climactic, asphalt-shattering donnybrook with Mr. Diesel. And that’s not all. That is as far from all as Tokyo is from Abu Dhabi, or Azerbaijan from Los Angeles, to name just a few of the spots where this movie, kinetically directed by the horror master James Wan, pops its clutch and taps its brakes. Michelle Rodriguez, stunning in a red gown, takes on an all-female Emirati
security detail. Mr. Johnson pops his arm out of a cast with the merest twitch of a biceps. Kurt Russell drinks a beer. Ludacris fiddles with a laptop. Paul Walker drives a minivan and trades kicks with Tony Jaa. And I haven’t even really gotten to the cars yet. One of them is a Subaru. Motor vehicles are the whole point of the “Fast and Furious” gestalt: the power they confer; the tribal loyalties they inspire; the whine of their engines and the squeal of their tires. From modest beginnings, the series has grown into a global juggernaut. The first installment, released in June 2001 — before the first Harry Potter movie; before the cinematic dawn of the Marvel Universe; before Tesla — was a souped-up hot-rod movie, rooted in the streetracing subculture of Southern California.
Vin Diesel portrays the leader of an automotive misfit fraternity in “Furious 7,” the latest installment of a film series rooted in street-racing subculture. Credit Universal Pictures
As the movies expanded and internationalized, and characters came and went, the ideal of an automotive misfit fraternity remained at the center of each story. Though Mr. Diesel faded away in early sequels, his Dom Toretto has been the anchor and the glue. With his mouth-full-of-ball-bearings line readings, his heroic trapezius and his infinitely sorrowful eyes, Dom serves as coach, guru and big brother for the rest of the furious speedsters. A lot of familiar faces are back for “Furious 7.” Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) has settled down with Brian (Mr. Walker). They have a young son and another baby on the way. Letty (Ms. Rodriguez) has amnesia. Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) are still clowning around hoping to attract some female attention, in this case from a computer hacker named Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel). There are also a lot of anonymous women in bikinis, no doubt a coincidental result of the movie’s fondness for warm-weather locations.
From left, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker and Ludacris as speed demons in a series that grew into a global juggernaut from a modest start. Credit Scott Garfield/Universal Studios NYTCREDIT: Universal Pictures
Occasional ogling aside, “Furious 7” extends its predecessors’ inclusive, stereotype-resistant ethic. Compared to almost any other large-scale, big-studio enterprise, the “Furious” brand practices a slick, no-big-deal multiculturalism, and nods to both feminism and domestic traditionalism. “I don’t have friends. I have family,” Dom says, and there is something beautiful and downright utopian about the idea that the bonds among his gear heads and speed demons transcend race and nationality. Gasoline is thicker than blood. The rules of the family are simple enough. Dom is the boss — the “alpha,” as Ramsey puts it — but everyone else is organized in a nonhierarchical, mutually supportive division of labor. While the work they do sometimes puts them in the service of larger entities (like the United States government, here represented by Mr. Russell and Mr. Johnson), their real motives tend to be much more primal. Money and national security are cool, but upholding honor and exacting revenge are what it’s really all about. The battle against the superterrorist is a sideshow to the settling of scores between Dom and Deckard (Mr. Statham), who blames the maiming of his brother on Dom and his people.
Mr. Walker, pictured, died in 2013, before filming was completed. Credit Universal Pictures
Enough plot summary. There is much too much plot in any case, and a little too much heavy weaponry for my taste. Like Dom, I prefer fisticuffs and car chases to apocalyptic computer-generated explosions, but I must admit that some of the digital stunts hit the sweet spot of wacky, oh-no-they-didn’t sublimity. Cars are driven out of airplanes. They soar between skyscrapers. They hurtle over cliffs. Nearly everything that happens is the visual punch line to a joke with a very simple set up. “Cars can’t fly,” Brian says to his son. How many ways can dad be proven wrong? But viewers of “Furious 7” will experience a melancholy, earthward tug whenever Mr. Walker, who died in 2013, appears on screen. Filming was not complete when he died in a car accident, and his brothers, Cody and Caleb, and another actor, John Brotherton, filled in during some scenes. Mr. Wan also relied on his specialeffects experience to finish the movie without Mr. Walker. The final moments, when Mr. Walker’s longtime colleagues say their farewells while he still appears to be on screen with them, are both awkward and moving. They remind you what these movies have always been about, underneath all the noise and the bravado: the ferocity of friendship and the terrible speed of loss.
'Cars' Is a Drive Down a Lonely Highway
Directed by John Lasseter, Joe Ranft By MANOHLA DARGIS JUNE 9, 2006
Lighting McQueen leads the King at a motor speedway in "Cars."CreditPixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures THE temptation to write about "Cars" using automotive metaphors may be unwise, but it's also irresistible. You could say, for instance, that the film — the first directed by the Pixar guru John Lasseter since the company's 1999 hit "Toy Story 2" Mr. Roth was the creator of a delightfully unappetizing cartoon rodent called Rat Fink, a kind of anti-Mickey Mouse mascot for the hot-rod set. Given Pixar's carefully cultivated — and, for the most part, justified — reputation as a modestly maverick outfit, it would be nice to think that a decal of Rat Fink adorns the computers of at least a couple of the film's many, many animators. But both in its ingratiating vibe and bland execution, "Cars" is nothing if not totally, disappointingly new-age Disney, the story of a little cherryred race car, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), who can win the race of life only after he learns the value of friendship and the curvy appeal of Porsche Carrera (Bonnie Hunt).
Right off we know we're not in Kansas anymore or, for that matter, Monstropolis, home to the critters from "Monsters, Inc." or suburban Metroville, where the superheroic family in "The Incredibles" Welcome to Weirdsville, Cartoonland, where automobiles race — and rule — in a world that, save for a thicket of tall pines and an occasional scrubby bush, is freakishly absent any organic matter. Here, even the bugs singeing their wings on the porch light look like itty-bitty Volkswagen beetles. That sounds like a slap and a tickle, and for a while it's both. As written by Mr. Lasseter, who shares screenwriting credit with Dan Fogelman, Joe Ranft, Kiel Murray, Phil Lorin and (whew) Jorgen Klubien, the film hinges on a premise older than the 1951 Hudson Hornet named Doc (Paul Newman), who gives the story its requisite geezer wisdom. After taking a wrong turn on his way to a race, McQueen lands in Radiator Springs, a town that time and the freeway forgot. There, on a derelict lick of asphalt, he meets a pileup of metal and ethnic clichés, including a tow truck with a deep-fried accent This ethnic and cultural profiling is pretty much par for the animated film course, hence Jenifer Lewis, as a two-tone 1950's ride with big fins called Flo, provides the only identifiable "black" voice. Less wince-inducing are Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), a banana-yellow Italianaccented Fiat that runs the local tire store; Sarge (Paul Dooley), a World War II jeep as memorable and colorful as dung; and Fillmore (George Carlin), a VW bus who extols the virtues of organic fuel, mutters about conspiracies and raises the Stars and Stripes to the guitar squeals of Jimi Hendrix. Given the film's regrettably retro attitude toward all things automotive (not a hybrid in sight!), it's no surprise that Fillmore, this desert outpost's most credible resident, is also its designated kook.
Ramone, a lowrider given voice by Cheech Marin, in Pixar's "Cars," directed by John Lasseter. CreditPixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures An animated fable about happy cars might have made sense before gas hit three bucks a gallon, but even an earlier sticker date couldn't shake the story's underlying creepiness, which comes down to the fact that there's nothing alive here: nada, zip. In this respect, the film can't help but bring to mind James Cameron's dystopic masterpiece, "The Terminator," Rendering plausible human forms remains one of 3D animation's biggest hurdles, something that Pixar directors like Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") have readily admitted. As if realizing that they can't (yet) compete with nature, Pixar filmmakers tend to avoid the human form or create caricatures that, by virtue of their very exaggeration (think of the middle-age spread bedeviling Mr. Incredible's wife), are wonderfully lifelike. With his machine world, however, Mr. Lasseter appears to have tried to do an end run around the vexing problem of the human body with cars that might as well have come out of a Chevron advertisement.
Even stranger, the film turns Detroit's paving over of America into an occasion for some nostalgic historical revisionism. Surreal isn't the word. Over the last two decades Pixar has invigorated American mainstream animation with charming stories and sterling technique, reaching a company best with the consecutively released "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." The age of Pixar may not be as golden as that of 1930's and 40's Disney, but it's an estimable run, especially since each new Pixar feature has reached deeper and higher in thematic and aesthetic preoccupations. Like classic Disney, Pixar films are invariably traditionalist, with stories of familial and social retrenchment, but they're also witty and playful, fresh in both graphic and written line. One clunker won't shut down or even threaten the factory line, but here's hoping that as this onetime scrapper becomes increasingly entrenched and establishment, it keeps its geeks-and-freaks flag flying. "Cars" is rated G (General audiences). Everything is clean but the fossil fuel. Cars Opens today nationwide. Directed by John Lasseter; written by Dan Fogelman, Mr. Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Kiel Murray, Phil Lorin and Jorgen Klubien, based on a story by Mr. Lasseter, Mr. Ranft and Mr. Klubien; supervising technical director, Eben Ostby; edited by Ken Schretzmann; music by Randy Newman; production designers, William Cone and Bob Pauley; produced by Darla K. Anderson; released by Walt Disney Pictures. Running time: 114 minutes. WITH THE VOICES OF: Owen Wilson (Lightning McQueen), Paul Newman (Doc Hudson), Bonnie Hunt (Sally Carrera), Larry the Cable Guy (Mater), Cheech Marin (Ramone), Tony Shalhoub (Luigi), Jenifer Lewis (Flo), Paul Dooley (Sarge) and George Carlin (Fillmore).
MOVIES
Need for Speed: Film Review
What you want from a movie called Need for Speed is right there in the title. You want a flick that swiftly moves you from car chase to car chase -- each more impressive in its accelerated virtuosity than the last. You want a simple story upon which you can hang a bit of character development. You want a hero who can gamely stare death in the eye as he pilots 3,000 pounds of screaming metal faster than anyone else. You want to feel the wind in your hair and leave the theater with your ears ringing from the deafening roar of Detroit muscle. You will get some of that in Need for Speed, DreamWorks and Disney’s adaptation of the Electronics Arts series of games. When Aaron Paul’s Tobey Marshall is behind the wheel -- and a crew of stuntmen are wreaking some refreshingly non-CG automotive havoc -- director Scott Waugh’s movie is a blast. Some interest in what Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman does next, along with young men drawn to horsepower, could give this a decent enough opening weekend, but it’s not the franchise starter I’m sure everyone involved hoped it would be. STORY: Aloe Blacc, Kid Cudi, Skylar Grey Featured on 'Need for Speed' Soundtrack That story, such as it is, follows Marshall, mechanic-savant by day, underground racer-savant by night. He runs the top-flight Marshall Motors garage, which specializes in squeezing every last ounce of speed from the hot rods that apparently litter the sleepy upstate town of Mt. Kisco, NY. He inherited it from his dear old dad, who was apparently not fond of paying bills -- and Tobey finds himself deep in debt. Luckily, a fella named Dino (Dominic Cooper) -- a local kid who left town to become a professional race car driver and entrepreneur (and stole Tobey’s girl on the way out) -shows up with an offer. Dino is in the possession of an unfinished Ford Mustang that was being designed by legendary car customizer Carroll Shelby. Dino wants Tobey and his crew of grease monkeys to finish the car -- worth at least a cool million at auction -- and will cut the Marshall
Motors crew in for a quarter of the sale price. Of course, because Dino spends the movie twirling his imaginary mustache, you know he’s going to screw Tobey over. Said screwing comes during a post-sale race, during which Dino runs Tobey’s best friend, Little Pete (Harrison Gilbertson), off the road to his death -- and Dino frames Tobey for the crime. Two years of prison later, Tobey is back and thirsty for revenge. Good thing the plot comes to his rescue: There is an underground race called the DeLeon, organized by a mysterious internet racing evangelist called Monarch (Michael Keaton). Only a select few drivers are invited to race their million-dollar sports cars and the winner gets the pink slips to the losers’ rides. Dino’s business is failing, so he’s entering to keep the ship afloat. Tobey wants to watch Dino explode in an expensive ball of fire. All Tobey needs to do is get from New York to the starting line in San Francisco in a little over a day. For that he needs his old Marshall Motors crew: Finn (Rami Malek), the expert tuner; Joe (RamonRodriguez), who drives the support truck; and Benny (Scott Mescudi, better known as hip hop artist Kid Cudi), who flies a Cessna that never runs out of gas and can spot the police from the sky. Together -- along with the firecracker of a British woman, Julia (Imogen Poots), who secures for Tobey that same Mustang dream machine he restored -- they Cannonball Run it across the country, dodging the occasional cop and street punk after the bounty Dino put on Tobey's head. (Why there was more than one attack on the Mustang in 3,000 miles is something else entirely.) VIDEO: New 'Need for Speed' Trailer: Aaron Paul Hatches a Plan for Payback When the opportunity arises for vehicular mayhem, the Need For Speed production delivers it. Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut’s camera is always in the perfect place for maximum impact and the cadre of stunt drivers assembled by Waugh whip the assorted sports cars around with expertly choreographed abandon. But you realize, about halfway through the story concocted by George & John Gatins, that there’s not a lot under the hood. Paul and Poots don’t have the same easy, trapped-in-a-car chemistry as Burt Reynolds and Sally Field did in Smokey and the Bandit. The film doesn’t have the same mythic heft as The Road Warrior, no matter how often Keaton’s Monarch barks from behind his podcast mic that “racing is an art…but racing with passion is high art and I think that’s Tobey Marshall driving the chariot of the gods.” It doesn’t sell Tobey as a preternaturally gifted driver nearly as well as Speed Racer conveyed the brilliance of its titular throttle jockey. And, ultimately, it’s not as much sexy-pulpy fun as the Fast and the Furious franchise, which leaves Need For Speed in the neon-bikini dust. Aaron Paul is a truly fine actor who is given neither much to do here or any guidance on how to do it. Consequently, he spends the entire movie glowering, summoning his best Charles Bronsonhero voice. (Too bad Will Arnett’s Lego-Batman beat him to it.) And Keaton is off in his own movie: He’s never on screen with anyone; it’s just him, a bank of monitors, a mic and an apparently ravenous hunger for all of the scenery in sight. Every now and again you get a glimpse of the live wire that lit up the ‘80s, but more often you just wonder who thought that much rambling was a good idea. Car movies are always about adolescent indulgence, existing in a world without rules where the hero – and the film around him -- can do anything and everything he wants to because he is just that good. He wants the girl? He gets the girl? He wants to ignore every speed limit? Done, no matter how much consequence-free destruction is left in his wake. But Need For Speed is a flat, sexless movie that seems not to understand why people like to sit in the driver’s seat and rev that big engine: Because of the transgressive rumble in your nethers. Opens: Friday, March 14 (Disney) Production: DreamWorks Pictures Cast: Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots, Michael Keaton, Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Ramon Rodriguez, Dakota Johnson Director: Scott Waugh Screenwriters: George Gatins, John Gatins
Producers: John Gatins, Patrick O’Brien, Mark Sourian Executive producers: Stuart Besser, Scott Waugh, Max Leitman, Frank Gibeau, Patrick Soderlund, Tim Moore Director of photography: Shane Hurlbut Production designer: Jon Hutman Costume designer: Ellen Mirojnick Editor: Oaul Rubell, Scott Waugh Music: Nathan Furst PG-13 rating, 130 minutes •
The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift Directed by Justin Lin Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Thriller PG-13
104 minutes
Photo: Universal Pictures
By Roger Ebert June 15, 2016 After Sean wrecks a construction site during a car race, the judge offers him a choice: Juvenile Hall, or go live with his father in Japan. So here he is in Tokyo, wearing his cute school uniform and replacing his shoes with slippers before entering a classroom where he does not read, write or understand one word of Japanese. They say you can learn through total immersion. When he sees the beautiful Neela sitting in the front row, it's clear what he'll be immersed in. "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is the third of the F&F movies; it delivers all the races and crashes you could possibly desire, and a little more. After only one day in school, Sean (Lucas Black) is offered a customized street speedster, and is racing down the ramps of a parking garage against the malevolent D.K. (Brian Tee), who it turns out is Neela's boyfriend.
Photo: Universal Pictures
The racing strategy is called "drifting." It involves sliding sideways while braking and accelerating, and the races involve a lot of hairpin turns. The movie ends with a warning that professional stunt drivers were used, and we shouldn't try this ourselves. Like the stunt in "Jackass" where the guy crawls on a rope over an alligator pit with a dead chicken hanging from his underwear, it is not the sort of thing likely to tempt me. The movie observes two ancient Hollywood conventions. (1) The actors play below their ages. Although the "students" are all said to be 17, Lucas Black is 24, and his contemporaries in the movie range between 19 and 34. Maybe that's why the girls in the movie take their pom-poms home: They need to remind us how young they are. They are also rich. After Sean wrecks the red racer that Han (Sung Kang) has loaned him, he has access to a steady supply of expensive customized machines, maybe because Han likes him, although the movie isn't heavy on dialogue. "I have money," Han tells Sean after the first crash. "It's trust I don't have." He lets Sean work off the cost of the car by walking into a bathhouse and trying to collect a debt from a sumo wrestler.
Photo: Universal Pictures
Meanwhile, in the tiny but authentic Tokyo house occupied by his father (Brian Goodman), a U.S. military officer, Sean has to listen to a movie speech so familiar it should come on rubber stamps: "This isn't a game. If you're gonna live under my roof you gotta live under my rules. Understood?" Yeah, sure, dad. Sean is scorned in Tokyo as a gaijin, or foreigner, and that gives him something in common with Neely (Nathalie Kelley), whose Australian mother was a "hostess" in a bar and whose father was presumably Japanese, making her half-gaijin. "Why can't you find a nice Japanese girl like all the other white guys?" Han asks him. Luckily Neely speaks perfect English, as do Han and Twinkie (Bow Wow), another new friend, who can get you Michael Jordan’s even before Nike puts them on the market.
Photo: Universal Pictures
The racing scenes in the movie are fast, and they are furious, and there's a scene where Sean and D.K. are going to race down a twisting mountain road, and Neely stands between the two cars and starts the race, and we wonder if anyone associated with this film possibly saw "Rebel Without a Cause." What's interesting is the way the director, Justin Lin, surrounds his gaijin with details of Japanese life, instead of simply using Tokyo as an exotic location. We meet the sumo wrestler, who will be an eye-opener for teenagers self-conscious about their weight. We see pachinko parlors, we see those little "motel rooms" the size of a large dog carrier, and we learn a little about the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) because D. K.'s uncle is the Yakuza boss Kamata (Sonny Chiba). One nice touch happens during the race on the mountain road, which the kids are able to follow because of instant streaming video on their cell phones. Lin, still only 33, made an immediate impression with his 2002 Sundance hit "Better Luck Tomorrow," a satiric and coldly intelligent movie about rich Asian-American kids growing up in Orange County and winning Ivy League scholarships while becoming successful criminals. That movie suggested Lin had the resources to be a great director, but since then he's chosen mainstream commercial projects. Maybe he wants to establish himself before returning to more personal work. His "Annapolis" (2006) was a sometimes-incomprehensible series of offthe-shelf situations (why, during the war in Iraq, make a military academy movie about boxing?). But in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," he takes an established franchise and makes it surprisingly fresh and intriguing. The movie is not exactly "Shogun" when it comes to the
subject of an American in Japan (nor, on the other hand, is it "Lost in Translation"). But it's more observant than we expect, and uses its Japanese locations to make the story about something more than fast cars. Lin is a skillful director, able to keep the story moving, although he needs one piece of advice. It was Chekhov, I believe, who said when you bring a gun onstage in the first act, it has to be fired in the third. Chekhov might also have agreed that when you bring Nathalie Kelley onstage in the first act, by the third act the hero should at least have been able to kiss her.