Upsetting Day: Urge 🌭

Urge is a 2016 movie starring Pierce Brosnan. Urge is also the most secret, hidden Pierce Brosnan movie ever made, for one cursed reason and a lot of fun reasons. Here’s the trailer. Here’s one of its many frames that drew me in:

Brosnan? Vaping? In cocaine clothes? Count me, and only me, in. Despite my repeated and correct proselytizing, society has not yet adopted Pierce Brosnan as its central cultural figure. You would think “he played James Bond when Alex Schmidt was a child” would win folks over. What a convincing argument for making Pierce Brosnan the star of every movie ever. But no! Pierce has to settle for whichever roles he can get. For instance, he settled for third billing in the elaborate psychological experiment Black Adam. Don’t get me wrong: Black Adam was important. Black Adam won the Nobel Prize In Superhero Genre Entropy Confirmation. That’s an important scientific finding and it makes Pierce Brosnan the Irish Einstein. But as an actor, in this century, Pierce doesn’t get picked to be a movie’s top star. Urge is a rare exception to that. Here’s why no one’s aware of that:

What a progression. Sure, Pierce Brosnan is the beloved Dad-God to us all. But Justin Chatwin is not a name you know or face you recognize. I watched Justin Chatwin be the main character of this whole movie, and I’m still half-convinced I generated Justin Chatwin, by asking an A.I. art program for “a spare Justin Bartha.”

That’s not the big problem. Star #3 on that list is why this movie got buried. Davey Masterston, this movie’s co-co-lead, is a monster. The only people who want to see A Danny Masterson Vehicle are cops double checking a car’s fingerprints. Urge hit theater(s?) in June 2016. Less than one year later, three women jointly filed sexual assault claims against Danny Masterson. Last year a judge sentenced him to 30 years to life, in jail. It’s grim. It’s bad! And it’s a slam dunk reason for the whole world to vanish this movie. People can barely watch the best work of Woody Allen or Kevin Spacey. This movie’s criminal is an actor I called “Davey Masterston” without you noticing. A much less famous guy, doing a passable portrayal of “boring selfish guy.” Nobody NEEDS that. We can lose that morsel of acting. And this situation is a rare case of entertainment algorithms being a good thing. One line of code evaporated this movie from streaming services. Evaporated it, like a gross puddle, in a way that is a bummer for no one but Pierce Brosnan. Pierce has performed 101 Hollywood roles and counting. Due to Pierce’s co-star’s crimes, this role is his absolute least discoverable.

What movie are we missing out on by “cancelling” Urge? A bad movie. A movie with less Pierce Brosnan in it than we want.

Pierce Brosnan has three scenes in this movie, and he exits two of the scenes by vanishing. I’m only pretty sure it’s on purpose, and they didn’t run out of their limited Brosnan Minutes. This role is the briefest role I’ve ever seen be most of a movie’s poster. Pierce barely swings through here. If Pierce Brosnan is the lead of this movie, I’m the lead of my nearest gas station’s security footage.

Here is the gist of the movie: seven bad, boring twentysomethings go to an island and then to a nightclub and then take a magical party drug called Urge. Later, the most obvious twist in the world happens. Nothing before or after that twist is engaging or comprehensible. There’s also a bulbous hell-clown who does some dance moves.

I’m boiling this down. But not way down. Urge has a runtime of 82 minutes, then credits. Then there’s one post-credits scene, which is 100% a scene from a zombie movie.

Thanks, IMDb. Let me expand on that. The after-credits scene is in a dim deserted grocery store. A child discovers an aisle of frenzied bloody moaning people. It’s not really relevant to Urge. None of Urge’s cast are in it. Here’s why I think this scene exists. I think the producers embezzled their own budget, shot a proof of concept for a next movie, couldn’t sell that next movie, and did their fallback plan of gluing their demo onto the end of this movie.

The beginning of the movie is also plausibly part of something else. The opening titles are a montage of sex-writhing bodies in matching red unitards.

Is this a powerful metaphor for the dangers of hedonism? Or is this the Hollywood equivalent of hopping over a residential fence to slip a business card and resume through the front door mailslot of whoever makes American Horror Story? Perhaps the answer is “all of the above.” That’s not a good answer, but it is dumb and vague. Dumb and vague are what Urge is all about.

The movie begins with our main character, Danny Masterson, gathering bland twenty-nine year olds on a New York City roof. They gather on this windy rooftop so the producers don’t have to pay for a background.

Hell yeah: a free Chrysler Building. They can’t make you pay for that location if you’re at Peeping Tom distance. Meanwhile, indoors, we meet one of the ladies from Twilight. Her first scene establishes she’s the sexually exploited corporate employee of Danny Masterson, because why not dramatize what LAPD’s sniffing out IRL.

Everyone gets in two different helicopters and flies to Manhattan-Adjacent Party Island. Upon arrival, Danny Masterson and friends find their other friend (played by Justin ChatGPT) having shameless, mostly-clothed sex in a glass room. His partner is a woman who vanishes from the film immediately after coitus.

This is one of one million interactions, between all the non-Brosnan characters, where they all disregard and disgust each other. Somehow seven old friends can’t stand any member of a large group of themselves. They just glare at each other and make cutting remarks, on their vacation. Why? This movie is HARDCORE. This movie is here to get real about the depraved evil lurking in the hearts of men. The filmmakers know humans are so evil, they cannot form one relationship anyone would ever have with any other human. Because people are frauds, you see. This movie is here to prove people are frauds, by revealing the hidden evil lurking under the surface of our… obvious upfront evil. Wow: a powerful insight. Humans present themselves as jerks, while privately being jerks, because deep down we’re jerks. And if we have no positive qualities, that raises a very smart question. Perhaps humans are not as civilized as we pretend to be? Perhaps we’re just a big ol’ ball of…urges. Isn’t that right, one of this film’s producers?

Later – MUCH later – we meet Pierce Brosnan. He is in a lair, in a nightclub. The characters get into this nightclub by lining up outside, offering the bouncer money, learning no amount of money can get them in, then going straight through the velvet rope after a big exterior wall projection of eyes looks down at them.

Our wealthy Manhattanite characters descend into a club. The club blows their minds more than any place they’ve ever been in their entire lives. The club looks almost as good as an average Gossip Girl prom.

Remember: this club refused their money. Then this club offers them an astounding party drug, for no money, with just one rule (don’t take it a second time). Hmm. What manner of club is this? It’s as if this club is…a test? A test of the characters’…urges? Perhaps Pierce Brosnan can explain. In his first scene, Pierce says a bunch of mysterious stuff with Biblical connotations in a room full of Biblical art and tentacle projections.

Before you lambast me in the comments, let me take one step back. The fanatical Urge fans know I’ve mis-described Pierce’s character. His character is not named “Pierce”. His character is called “The Man.”

“The Man”! What new cinematic concept is this?! Truly nothing more deft than putting one nameless character in a movie. Probably no twist or shock coming! Also, scratch that. The movie doesn’t have the courage to actually make Pierce nameless. His character gets called “The Man”, out loud, more than a few times. He’s named a lot. People say “The Man” so often, there’s one part where it’s medium-confusing who or what is being discussed, like this is an Abbott And Costello And James Bond routine. Why don’t the filmmakers go all the nameless way? I have the urge (lol) to theorize why. These filmmakers hamfist this because the filmmakers are smart, according to them. This movie is loaded with Smart Person Blather, despite all its non-Pierce characters being callow jackals. Characters presented as hellraising cokeheads, with no interests beyond nonstop party times, also paint modern art and quote philosophers. Don’t get me wrong: this is not Quentin Tarantino’s fault. But much like how everybody decided Quentin Tarantino is smart because he gives smart dialogue to burger-filled hitmen, the guys behind Urge want their window sex man to tell you he’s read a book, because the filmmakers sure have googled one.

Here’s the entire rest of the movie: the characters accept Pierce Brosnan’s totally normal and not suspicious offer. They take one dose of the Urge party drug, and have the best night of their entire lives. You can tell it’s the best night of their entire lives because they stand at a bar and tell each other they are having the best night of their entire lives.

Yes, my Dear Hotdogger: some of the characters kiss. On the lips! And also dance on each other somewhat. That is the power of Urge. If you take Urge, like the characters in the movie Urge do, you too might achieve the dizzying heights of the coolest 60% of Winter Formal attendees.

I don’t know how they kept making the movie after shooting those scenes. The whole movie depends on those scenes. This drug is supposed to be more seductive and powerful than every real drug. The rest of this movie is the characters deciding to break the one rule and take the drug a second time. They decide they simply must do this drug again during their sober next morning, set in a kitchen nicer than the club.

The characters insist they must take Urge a second time, despite the ominous warning, because they had a spectacular fantasy-fulfilling orgy of pleasures [citation needed] last night. They also insist on retaking Urge despite Danny Masterson offering them an amazing day of spa treatments, meals, relaxation, and a private tennis lesson with Pete Sampras. I am not throwing in a gag. When Danny Masterson describes his planned itinerary, he brings up tennis lessons with Pete Sampras as if they’re as big of a deal as dinner. Pete Sampras is a world-famous tennis player, with independent wealth, married to the lady who played Veronica Vaughn in Billy Madison. He is harder to get a hold of than, say, a table at a steakhouse. I don’t think Jeff Bezos can book tennis lessons with Pete Sampras, and Jeff Bezos can kidnap every one of us. No one told the actors this Tennis Fact, and they don’t react to this suggestion at all. They reject Danny Masterson’s itinerary of four equally ordinary things, and make a plan to do more Urge. To do more Urge, they return to the club. They discuss this club passionately, and call it by its name for the rest of the movie. The club is called “Volcano”.

I need more people to have seen Urge so we can quote “What do you think I do here at Volcano?” to each other. It could’ve been the new “my wiiiiife!” The name is supposed to be ominous and it comes off as heartwarming. “Volcano” is what America’s restaurateurs could’ve named Rainforest Café, with no modifications. But in this movie, Volcano is home to the most incredible drug in the world. A drug that turns obvious jerks into differently obvious jerks. That’s what we do here at Volcano!

The rest of the movie is not worth recounting blow by blow. Jacked up on Urge, the characters do random acts of The Purge until we run out of characters. One of them starts a vague Fight Club. Another eats parts of a cake with her hands, and later describes this as “fucking” a cake, because this movie won’t put dirty stuff in its dirty scenes. Urge-fueled Danny Masterson says mean things to the gal from Twilight. That’s messed up. That’s less messed up than the sexual exploitation he put her through before he took Urge. Then the gal from Twilight gets revenge on Danny Masterson, by tying him up for sex reasons, but then not doing sex, then inflicting burns on his chest with the ferocious heat of one table lamp’s one lightbulb.

The island descends into chaos. Only Justin Chatbot is unaffected. He is immune to Urge, it turns out. The characters say this might be because he’s already so uninhibited [citation: one window sex]. This is supposed to be ironic about morality. The one voice of reason and sanity on this Bronx-adjacent island is Justin Chatwindows97? Irony! Smart! Makes you think! Justin Clubpenguin wanders the island as civilization erodes. He seeks sustenance in a diner, where Pierce Brosnan apparates into a booth for his second scene.

Hmm. “The Good Book”? Why would this regular club owner bring up the Bible, in his very first words of an interaction? This brings us to the movie’s second greatest crime. Crime #1: false adver-brosnan. He’s almost not in this. But crime #2: The entire movie is one big obvious twist (morality test), but the twist gets exaggerated into a much bigger and dumber thing there wasn’t any setup for. Here’s where it goes: Pierce Brosnan is not merely testing the morality of this friend group. As he explains in his third and final scene, Pierce Brosnan is God. Specifically, he’s the version of God from the Old Testament, as understood by a guy who’s not religious, and doesn’t respect religion, and did go to USC for Camera School. Pierce Brosnan’s nameless mystery character… [waggling eyebrows at you from behind the most Los Angeles eyeglasses ever not filled with a prescription] …IS MORE THAN HE SEEMS. After an entire hour of all of us knowing the basics of that, the film says Pierce Brosnan is a vengeful God doing a Biblical Flood. While “He” was morality-testing seven ding-dongs, Mean God implemented global distribution of his club drug that makes you feral.

This scene happens on a ferry boat. Pierce Brosnan tells Justin Barthish that by taking this ferry ride in the New York City area, Justin Barthish has ended humanity. How? Because something something something Urge spreads worldwide now. For failed morality test reasons. Or not? It’s about that clear. Then the camera shows us the name of the ferry boat. The ferry boat is called “Megiddo”.

Did you know Megiddo is the name of an ancient Mesopotamian city? Whose Greek name has something to do with Armageddon? I did not know that until I skimmed its Wikipedia entry, in disgust, after that shot of a ferry’s duct-taped prop name sign was the central image of the “we give up” final shot of the movie.

I’m furious about this role for Pierce Brosnan. I’m not just furious because a sex criminal plunged the footage into Hollywood’s Phantom Zone. Pierce Brosnan should have the time of his life for the rest of his career. Once you’ve been James Bond, you’re a permanent star with unimpeachable credibility as a cool handsome guy. That’s a magic power. If you walk into the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and say “I would like a next paycheck playing a silver fox”, a camera crew leaps out of a manhole to film you. It’s unique stardom security. This gives you a free pass to do fun weird stuff forever. Timothy Dalton is leering creeps now. Daniel Craig is wackadoodle Southerners now. Sean Connery was Spanish, twice. I want that same freedom for my man Pierce. He should be out here sinking his teeth into every bizarre character he pleases, with the same verve he gave one line in Taffin. It’s obvious that’s why he took this almost-a-role. Pierce signed on for Urge with the clear goal of a Timothy Daltonian Rumspringa. Why not get weird? He can always fall back on playing a zaddy the next time his mortgage is due. But it wasn’t the 31st yet, so he did this movie. Pierce plays a character in a pale suit, swilling red wine, offering a demonic bargain. Brosnan delivers it with the wild vibe of a louche, vaping Agent Smith. He toggles between a snarl showcasing his bottom teeth, and a liquid shimmy while cooing the words “easy breezy”.

This brings us to my biggest joy, and my favorite problem with this movie. The problem: Pierce Brosnan is too clearly a nice guy. This extraordinarily flawed movie needs Pierce Brosnan to come off as more evil than every other character. They stack the deck against him. Every twentysomething main character is an unlikable rich dingus, on the verge of their deserved comeuppance, while one-seventh of them are Danny Masterson. Meanwhile, Pierce Brosnan says a bunch of lines about humanity being a sickness that must be eradicated, with the vibe of a guy who made the craft services lady’s day two seconds ago. Don’t get me wrong: he delivers these lines as loudly as he can. He’s showing up. But my man Pierce is not my favorite actor for acting reasons. Kind of the opposite. He never quite lets go of the sweet guy I know so well. The guy from Pierce Brosnan’s Instagram account.

Pierce Brosnan has a mere 2.1 million followers, because some of you are not living your best life. His account consists of three post types: Pierce Brosnan’s paintings, Pierce Brosnan complimenting people, and boomer photo collages of how much he loves his wife and sons.

This movie’s filmmakers want us to be terrified of Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan wants us to be terrified of Pierce Brosnan. Instead, a zaddy teddy bear inflicts righteous vengeance on that criminal from That 70s Show. You could try to miscast 100 movies and never chuck your dart this far from the board. It’s an exquisite miss. I’ll never watch it again. And it brought me less than a fraction of the joy of my Instagram feed. When he’s in the role of himself, Pierce Brosnan is not spooky or demonic or an offensive caricature of God. He’s posting this:

That’s right: earnest, blurry cell phone pics of dinner with Greg Kinnear and three other guys and one business card I briefly worried was the zoomable front of somebody’s debit card. It’s nice. It’s pleasant. And it turns out you don’t need Urge when you’re high on my man Pierce’s life.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Kyle Campbell, who is revealed in the big twist to be the actual Old Testament Tod. Not a typo.