War Criminal Double Feature: Subway and The Hitcher

I guess I was in a bad mood today. This started as one War Criminal and then morphed into two. The atrocities just keep piling up. Bring on the Grindhouse:

War Criminal: Subway

I did the Subway walk today - I walked right out of the place. The restaurant has been going downhill pretty much since Jared lost all that weight, but they finally reached the tipping point for me today. Every time I go in, the price seems to go up. Today I went for lunch and found my footlong BMT is now $6.99! Whores in Pahrump don't cost this much. If I want to pay $7 for a sandwich, I'll go somewhere better.

Subway was the bland, reasonably priced sandwich shop, beating back the onslaught of hideously expensive toasted subs with spices from Corsica on them. Well, they started toasting, but other than that, its just the same bland sandwich for twice as much as it used to cost.

Beyond the price, they've just pissed me off the last couple times I went. "Would you like the combo with that?" has now become "CHIPS AND DRINK?!?!?!?". I don't want some high school flunkie with blue hair and a disked lip barking CHIPS AND DRINK at me.

I've always hated the way they assume you want all the veggies too. No, I don't want lettuce and pickles on my meatball sub you fucking goober! Why do they always grab enough lettuce to feed a sperm whale? I want a sandwich, not a salad.

Subway used to be a treat too. I remember Grandma bringing me back subs because the closest one was 40 miles from our house - now there's a franchise on every corner. When I was recently in Berlin, I saw a Subway at Checkpoint Charlie! On one side of the road is a slab of the Berlin Wall and the last flag to fly over the Kremlin and on the other a picture of that formerly fat fuck Jared offering you "Der Subway Klub".

So because of all that, Subway is dead to me and Jared has Aides.

War Criminal: The Hitcher (2007)

I've seen some bad movies in my day, but this takes the cake. I never saw the original "The Hitcher", but I can safely say the remake with Sean Bean is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. When I say that, keep in mind a former girlfriend dragged me to see Goodbye Lover. I speak with authority here.

The movie starts out with a Switchfoot lookalike picking up his super hot girlfriend for spring break. The cliches start right away with his car. When I was in college, I never saw anyone with a badass muscle car. Roger Ebert has opined on this before, but why don't college kids in movies drive cars they may actually have - you know, Grandma's hand me down Ford Taurus wagon (or in my case, Great Grandma's Cutlass Ciera Brougham)?

They hit the road on a dark and stormy night (hooray Charles Schultz!). Of course, he doesn't pay attention to the road and nearly hits a guy on the roadside. They spin out and stop. Hot-Chick says they need to go, but oh no, the car won't start! Queue Sean Bean walking creepily towards the car in the rain as they finally get it to start and speed away.

By some cosmic happenstance, they end up at a gas station at the same time as Bean and after a ridiculous conversation with the clerk that could only happen in a movie like this, they agree to take him to the next town. With only 80 minutes of actual movie here, they get down to business right away and Bean tries to kill them. They fight him off, but as you may have guessed, he's always one step ahead of them - even when he's sans car and they're speeding down the highway at 70+.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Later in the film, Bean kills an entire police department with a knife, pushes a truck off a cliff even though he's seen walking from another direction shortly after, takes out 3 New Mexico State Troopers and a police helicopter, tears Switchfoot-guy in half with a big rig, and rips his skin off without wincing while escaping from handcuffs.

I enjoy a cheeseball highway slasher movie as much as anyone (Joy Ride is in my DVD collection), but this is just too much. Beyond just being retarded, I think they literally used every horror/slasher movie cliche in the book. Housewives that buy romance novels with Fabio on the cover expect better than this.

In the grand scheme of things, thanks to Blockbuster online, I probably paid less than a dollar for this steaming turd of a movie. I want my money back.