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Tropic Thunder
A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.
2008 · Directed by Ben Stiller · 107 min · Action · Comedy · War · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
Get some.
Plot
Tropic Thunder, the memoir of handless Vietnam veteran John "Four Leaf" Tayback, is being made into a film on location in Vietnam. Except for supporting actor Kevin Sandusky, the cast — faded action hero star Tugg Speedman, overbearing five-time Academy Award-winning Australian extreme method actor Kirk Lazarus, closeted gay rapper Alpa Chino, and drug-addicted comedian Jeff Portnoy — all cause problems for the inexperienced director Damien Cockburn, who cannot control them, resulting in a $4 million pyrotechnics scene being wasted. With the project months behind schedule, studio executive Les Grossman gives Damien an ultimatum: get the cast under control, or the project will be canceled.
On Four Leaf's advice, Damien drops the actors into the middle of the jungle, with hidden cameras and rigged special effects explosions to reshoot the film in guerrilla style. The actors have guns that fire blanks, along with a map and scene listing that will lead to a helicopter waiting at the end of the route. Unbeknownst to the actors and production, the group has been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang. Just as the group is about to set off, Damien inadvertently steps on an old land mine, and is blown up, stunning the actors. Tugg, believing Damien faked his death to encourage the cast to give better performances, assures the others that he is alive and that they are still shooting the film. Kirk is unconvinced but joins them in their trek.
When Four Leaf and pyrotechnics operator Cody Underwood try to locate the deceased director, they are captured by Flaming Dragon guards. Four Leaf is revealed to have hands; he confesses to Underwood that he actually served in the Coast Guard sanitation department, has never left the United States, and that he wrote his "memoir" as a "tribute". As the actors continue through the jungle, Kirk and Kevin (the only actor who bothered to properly prepare for his role), discover that Tugg is leading them in the wrong direction. The resulting argument ends with Kirk leading the rest of the cast back toward the resort they were based at, as an increasingly delirious Tugg is captured by the Flaming Dragon guards. Taken to their base, Tugg believes it is a POW camp from the script. He is then brought forward to the gang's boss, the 12-year-old Tran, who discovers that Tugg is the star of their favorite film, the box-office bomb Simple Jack, and forces him to reenact that film, several times a day, leaving him brainwashed.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Etan Cohen
- Cinematography: John Toll
- Edited by: Greg Hayden
- Music: Theodore Shapiro
- Production design: Jeff Mann
- Produced by: Stuart Cornfeld, Eric McLeod, Ben Stiller
Cast
- Ben Stiller as Tugg Speedman
- Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus
- Jack Black as Jeff Portnoy
- Jay Baruchel as Kevin Sandusky
- Brandon T. Jackson as Alpa Chino
- Brandon Soo Hoo as Tran
- Matthew McConaughey as Rick Peck
- Tom Cruise as Les Grossman
- Nick Nolte as Four Leaf Tayback
- Danny McBride as Cody
Production
- Country: United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany
- Language: English, Mandarin
- Studios: DreamWorks Pictures, Red Hour, Goldcrest Pictures, International Film Production Stella-del-Sud Second
- Budget: $92,000,000
- Box office: $195,702,811
- Themes: vietnam, movie business, satire, parody, jungle, movie star, southeast asia, land mine, shackles, taunting
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