My Opinion: Channing Tatum An Ode
This week Joe West proves his man crush on Channing Tatum is only getting stronger…
People often ask me ‘Which is the world’s most beautiful monkey’. This is a tougher question than you might imagine, and it is also not an insult when I respond with the words ‘Channing Tatum’. His name may sound like nonsense whispered to calm a Roman baby, or that of a satirical reporter from The Day Today, but I’ve taken something of a shine to this irrepressible jock and improbable Hollywood leading man.
You can catch Mr Tatum in cinemas right now, taking a supporting role in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire. In it he plays a government agent chasing after former colleague and one-time love interest Mallory Kane, played by the physically imposing former mixed martial artists Gina Carano.
There are two things about his performance in this film that have managed to endear him to me a little more than usual. Firstly, he is the sex object under the gaze of the female protagonist, which is such an unusual state of affairs as to be almost revolutionary. After completing a fraught mission in Barcelona, Tatum and Carano’s characters have a tingly encounter, but it is she that initiates the monkey business, tugging on his belt, unthreading the buckle and dealing with the zip. And then she takes her reward. She takes her reward.
That first one isn’t down to Tatum as such, but his role as the eye candy, the meat in the room, definitely fits in with his wider persona and his former career as a male stripper (check Wikipedia). The second charming quality of Tatum in Haywire is that (**SPOILER ALERT**) his death towards the end is one of the least convincing, and thus funniest, in recent memory. He gradually succumbs to a gut shot from a pistol and as his spark is seemingly extinguished, he is laid gently on the floor by Carano. This would be more convincing if were not patently obvious that he is still clenching and unclenching his jaw muscles, pulling a sort of death pout, as if modelling for a perfume called Rigour Mortis by Calvin Klein. Some people say that death is like sleep. Tatum makes it look like a sales pitch for his face.
Haywire itself is worth watching if you’re interested in seeing what the Jason Bourne franchise would look like with an Ocean’s Eleven style soundtrack. Plus Antonio Banderas is in it, showing off his luxuriant beard and middle aged body while speaking in that voice that sounds like stirring embers with a maraca.
If you can’t get enough of Tatum then later in the year he’ll be appearing alongside the newly thin Jonah Hill for a filmic reimagining of 21 Jump Street. Against all odds this actually looks like it could be quite good fun, given that the writing and directing team seem to have embraced the silliness of Tatum pretending to go undercover as a high school student now that his is an athletic 30-something. And if you hear him complaining about being called a beautiful monkey, just tell him to look into the coco-brown eyes of a baboon and say that it isn’t like staring at the smelly face of God.
See more of Joe’s film musings here.
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