Aside from sporting jackets with feathered shoulder pads, Brandon Flowers has been flying under the radar for the better part of 2010. But in September, the lead singer of the Killers will release his debut solo album that will surely have teenage hearts cracking wide open for the entire first semester. The first single, “Crossfire” is a run-of-the-mill love song that unsurprisingly plays like a Killers tune. Lyrically, the portrait of a relationship “caught in a crossfire between heaven and hell” is uninspiring, but who cares….he’s sooooo dreamy!
The video is a damsel in distress role-reversal and features Charlize Theron, in her first gig since the 2010 World Cup Finals Draw. She plays a tough but beautiful heroine who spends an entire day rescuing Flowers’ character from a trio of harrowing scenarios. The hopeless Flowers, who by all rationale must be mentally handicapped, manages to escape the bad guys and his legal guardian three times apiece. Each time finding himself in more dire circumstances, he sits and waits, in the same clothes he’s been wearing since Sam’s Town, for a babe in a wife-beater with a samurai sword. Basically it’s Something About Mary with ninjas, and Flowers begs the question, “Have you seen my baseball?”
I might add that the qualifications for ninjas have entered a steep decline if the talent displayed here is any indication. Twice! Not once, but TWICE, Theron foils attacks from behind as if the assailant were attempting a sneak attack in clogs. You call yourselves ninjas? Pssssh. And since when do ninjas torture people? Isn’t that more of a terrorist or US government kind of thing?
Fortunately, the director decides to forego the upside-down Spiderman kiss that would have been entirely too cliché for the final scene. Instead, she cocks her head and stares him down as if to say, “Are you fucking serious?! THREE TIMES?!….IN ONE DAY?!” His response is a stupid, shit-eating grin, reminiscent of the feigned innocence Ferris Bueller lays on his parents after getting away with his “day off.” Remarkably, as they climb into her beat up pickup truck she refrains from publicly beating him like a red-headed step child. Instead her icy glare is replaced by comforting arm around the shoulder and the feeling that everything’s gonna be ok. “Now let’s get you out of those clothes and into your favorite feathered jacket.”
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