It’s fair to say that life is pretty sweet for Jon Bernthal right now. By re-inventing the character of Frank Castle for Netflix, he’s won over a legion of adoring comic book, fans, and secured roles in a whole host of blockbusters. He’s also a big fan of Twitter, and caused a bit of a stir last month when he posted several set-photos of himself dressed up in full military assault gear, teasing the fact he had just completing work on a new mystery project. That project, a short film titled ‘The Escape’, has now been released, and it turns out that there’s quite some pedigree to it.
The history of corporate sponsorship in filmmaking has always been a somewhat dysfunctional affair. Ultimately, movies don’t get made without big companies financing them, but it can be hard to find the balance between a cheeky subliminal product plug, and a full-on assault of corporate branding that ruins the whole effect of the film.
There have been a significant number of movies that have been damned for all eternity by the huge degree of product placement they contain. Rather than inventing a fictional company, or minimising their involvement, FedEx made sure their logo was in virtually every frame of ‘Castaway’. There’s a staggering amount of references to Pizza Hut in ‘Wayne’s World’, and Daniel Craig even felt the need to publicly address the overt placement of Heineken in ‘Skyfall’.
So, is there a safe way to avoid the controversy? Well, if you’re BMW, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. You just create your own film studio and make your own movies, telling people in advance that that’s exactly what you’re doing. Then you go and hire a whole host of top talent to helm the projects. Job done.
Remember Frank? Jason Statham’s character in the ‘Transporter’ franchise? A highly-skilled and cool-as-shit driver who lives by a strict moral code, and has a habit of doing the right thing even when it’s the worst thing he could do? Well it turns out that the idea wasn’t entirely original, because BMW managed to beat the Stath to the punch (which doesn’t happen very often) by a full two years.
Between 2001 and 2002, the company released 8 short films, all about 10 minutes long, in which an unnamed driver carried out a series of tense and dangerous illicit assignments, evading capture from the authorities and a whole host of criminal antagonists in the process. The roster of directorial talent that the company engaged for these films, which were all released via the internet (a relatively new idea at the time), is impressive to say the least. Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, John Frankenheimer and Tony Scott all created movies for the series, and their leading man was a little-known British actor named Clive Owen.
Prior to the BMW shorts, Owen had only really worked in the UK, in television and a small number of homegrown movies. However, the project massively raised his profile, taking him from televisual fayre such as ‘Chancer’ and ‘Second Sight’, and rebranded him as a brooding vigilante. The BMW films gave him the chance to appear onscreen alongside Stellan Skarsgard, Madonna, Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle, and in one particularly bonkers installment, he was found saving Soul Sensation James Brown from the Devil, being played by Gary Oldman. This would go on to give Owen leading roles in ‘The Bourne Identity’, ‘Sin City’ and ‘Shoot Em Up’.
Now, fourteen years on, BMW have resurrected the concept, and ‘The Escape’ sees The Driver rescuing a young girl named ‘Five’ from the clutches of a shady corporation, pursued by Bernthal’s security contractor, and the FBI in the process. And they’ve obtained the services of the perfect Director to present such a story, Neill Blomkamp. If there’s anyone who has experience in writing and presenting stories involving evil corporations who employ sociopathic operators to enforce their will, it’s Blomkamp, as ‘District 9, ‘Elysium’ and ‘Chappie’ demonstrate.
Check it out below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzUFCQ-P1Zg
‘The Escape’ is brilliant, showcasing exactly why Bernthal’s star is in the ascendancy at the moment. The short film follows his character who is trying to sell Dakota Fanning’s dictionary definition-spouting clone on to a mystery buyer, only to be wrong-footed by Owen. This results in to blisteringly tense chase sequence, culminating in the lay-off scene where Owen uses his BMW as a weapon against a pursuing helicopter gunship.
What’d you think of the short film? Tell us in the comment section below!