Great Character: Shannon Mullins (“The Heat”)
The Great Character theme for the month: Action Comedy. Today: Shannon Mullins from The Heat.
Prior to the 2013 action comedy The Heat, director Paul Feig and actress Melissa McCarthy previously made magic, and $288,383,523, with the marital blockbuster Bridesmaids. Replacing bridal gowns for badges and guns, Melissa McCarthy joined Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock in the modern reworking of the buddy cop comedy standard, proving women have been long overdue to fill the boots of the male dominated duos from flicks similar to 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon and the more recent 21 Jump Street and The Other Guys. Taking in $229,930,771 on a $43 million budget, The Heat lit a fire underneath gender bigots that view ladies and crime fighters as polar opposites.
The Heat IMDB:
An uptight FBI Special Agent is paired with a foul-mouthed Boston cop to take down a ruthless drug lord.
Putting the “pro” in profanity, Melissa McCarthy’s Boston hard knock cop Shannon Mullins cusses her way through humanity like a four-letter infection. With a screenplay composed by Katie Dippold, who has committed written wit to page for television’s Parks and Recreation and MADtv, Mullins rips through even routine cop duties with militant distain, sarcastic backhanded compliments and venomous threats,
MULLINS: I’ll kill her with your dead body!
Most often than not, when Shannon Mullins shapes the oral vibrations that we commonly refer to as language into comprehensive communication, they are usually released in the form of furiously insensitive insults.
MULLINS: You’re giving her beauty advice? Do you even own a fucking mirror?
Even a co-worker with albino pigmentation deficiency is not protected by any type of “no fly zone” when it is time for Mullins to drop some harsh atomic critiques.
MULLINS: What’s wrong? You look a little pale… Snowcone.
With Mullins being a Boston working class neighborhood girl at heart and her slick reluctant New York City partner FBI Special Agent Ashburn being equal parts arrogant and uptight, sparks fly in their inner circle — and all around it. Ashburn attempts to make a more civilized and professional defender of the law out of Mullins. In return, Mullins strives to loosen up that ivory tower, holier-than-thou baggage that Ashburn totes around like a hitchhiker’s satchel. Mullins’ voyage to play big-sister-knows-best to the once orphaned Ashburn is a rigorous boot camp of booze bars, heavy artillery and verbal zingers.
ASHBURN: I was actually married for six-some years.
MULLINS: Was he a hearing man?
Granted, there may be times where The Mullins Way appears self-serving and highly irrational.
MULLINS: If you’re not in trouble you’re not doing your job.
But quite often we find Shannon Mullins thinking clearly on her feet and adapting to turbulent situations with 1000-watt light bulb brilliance. Having the more street-savvy experience between the pair, Mullins can often view the world accurately through the eyeballs of the crime committers that she is tracking down. With that being said, she has that criminology six sense to scope out Special Agent Ashburn’s attire as being too puritanically prude for the nightclub scene that they are investigating in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES0GlTjIG1E
With all that fast-reacting coarse commentary that she dishes out like a grungy cook serving a burger off of a sticky floor with his filthy bare hands, we wonder, why is Mullins so defensive? Is it a feminist instinct to guard herself against the machismo of her testosterone-filled profession? This could be true, but coming to that conclusion alone is complex with Mullins being visibly the toughest in her department. She fears no one — her boss included — all men included.
Could Mullins be automatically grumpy because of being mistreated because of her heavier physique that doesn’t fit into the crack-fiend skinny model body the media promotes? Maybe, but again, you can’t jump to this conclusion completely because we witness Mullins turning guys down who are actively pursuing her.
What we do know for sure is that Mullins’s family tree has many sour apples. No one, from her parents, to her siblings, to their significant others are any too proud of the self-reliant Shannon Mullins who’s police work dedication has led to putting her own brother Jason in incarceration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoTJz-3C5ho
Seeing Mullin’s normally high-strung frozen cold mood get melted down to a disappointed puddle of humbleness in the presence of her family tells the whole story unfolding inside her heart. Many of them reflect a demeanor even cruder than her own, with just as much acidic angst towards Mullins. She let everyone down by putting her brother behind bars, even if she meant well, trying to keep him off the dangerous streets. In her eyes, she was teaching through tough love. But to The Mullins Clan, jail is still jail and family is still family.
MULLINS: [about her comatose brother] It was a terrible resume. He mentioned prison, and in Special Skills he said, Keeping it real.
The guilt of this perceived domestic betrayal has scorned Mullins. How will she redeem her trusted place in her family and make them all proud again?
For her intense remarks, her go-go-go momentum and her broken heart that seeks some supportive super glue — Shannon Mullins is a grandiose GREAT CHARACTER in the action comedy category.
I was so happy to see this movie because it was not only entertaining, it also conveyed two important messages to Hollywood. First, it confirmed the fact that Action Comedy, a once popular cross genre, still has some legs. Second, it proved that female leads in an Action Comedy can work at the box office. And much of the movie’s success is based on McCarthy’s role as Shannon Mullins.
Thank you, Jason, for this post. Please join us in comments to discuss The Heat.
You may follow Jason on Twitter: @A2Jason.
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