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Photo courtesy of Screen Gems
Samuel L. Jackson plays the baddest man ever to be named Elmo in "Formula 51."
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By Mark Betancourt
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday October 17, 2002
Certain movies require certain moods to be entertaining. If, for instance, one happens to be in a generous mood while watching "Formula 51," the chances of enjoying it are relatively good. For those unable to regularly and willfully attain such a free-wheeling mood, drunkenness is suggested as an alternative.
That said, "Formula 51" is not an exceedingly compelling movie, nor is it provocative. It is not "stunning." It is merely passable. It is diverting.
Elmo McElroy (Samuel L. Jackson), the film's protagonist, is, described in the film, as "a large black man wearing a dress." Unsurprisingly, this "joke" serves as the comedic backbone of the film, and is rehashed with only marginal variation in virtually every scene.
Elmo is a master chemist, a title possibly fabricated by the writers of the film for the sake of clarity. In any case, he is a chemical genius, and his life of peaceful pharmacological practice is instantly diverted by a traffic stop in which he is busted for doing whatever it is one does with marijuana.
The result, in a bizarrely-placed comment on the penal system in the United States, is that Elmo learns all about drugs in prison and comes out the prodigal pet of a dealer named The Lizard, affectionately played by Meat Loaf.
The Lizard, who like all good villains refers to himself strictly in the third person, bears a mysterious burn scar down one side of his face for no other reason than that perhaps he didn't look evil enough without it, and is something of a rapscallion. He shoots people in the kneecap on a whim. Why he is called The Lizard is unclear.
Elmo, cleverly escaping The Lizard and his malevolent congress of like-minded and doubtless similarly-named fellow drug barons, flies to England to find a buyer for his miraculous mind-bending formula, "P.O.S. 51."
Here, in what he calls "Liver-motherfucking-fool," he meets Felix DeSouza, played by the usually mesmerizing Robert Carlyle. As DeSouza, Carlyle is a mere regurgitation of his spitting Glasgow hooligan character in "Trainspotting," but that's OK,
provided we're being generous.
All kinds of tomfoolery ensues, including brutal shootings intended to be funny and which, providing for the above-mentioned jovial mood, are. Usually, comic violence for morons amuses only morons; but this film has some charm that at least momentarily absolves it of serious criticism.
It is as if the characters are some disgusting paste candy coated in an equally-disgusting-but-somehow-tolerable and incomprehensibly entertaining paste of some lighter, less- offensive shade.
The film manages to include a number of anti-drug messages as well as a light-hearted treatment of Anglo-American relations, which culminates in The Lizard's assertion that England "ain't nothin' but the 51st state." Whatever that means.
Of course, these quasi-political quips are hard to reconcile with the bold inclusions of things like human beings exploding, especially since that misfortune is intended to make the audience giggle. For reasons perhaps only marketing directors can fathom, it works every time.