Formula 51

“Formula 51,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Emily Mortimer, and Meatloaf (aka Marvin Lee Aday) is a movie about a pharmacologist. Or at least that is what is printed on the UCLA diploma of Elmo McElroy (Samuel Jackson) when he is busted in 1971 for having a graduation-cap full of marijuana. It gets a little confusing for a true pharmacologist when McElroy pleads with the cop to let him off because a drug rap would prevent him from ever being able to get a license to practice. (Folks still don’t appreciate the difference between pharmacy and pharmacology. Is that our fault or theirs?) Be that as it may, thirty years later McElroy works as a “master chemist” for a drug lord known as The Lizard (Meatloaf). He has synthesized POS 51 (the Formula 51 of the title), a drug that is “51 times stronger than cocaine, 51 times more habit forming than heroin, 51 times more potent than ecstasy.” And the best part is that it is synthesized entirely from innocuous (and legal) ingredients that you can get from your local pharmacist.

McElroy decides to shed The Lizard and market the drug on his own, and so, departs L.A., leaving behind a chemically catalyzed, time-release fire bomb that takes out The Lizard and half-a-dozen foreign drug lords as well. Wearing a kilt (McElroy tartan) and carrying a stash of his little blue POS 51 pills in his sporran, McElroy heads for a sales rendezvous in Liverpool, unaware that The Lizard survived the conflagration and has put a female assassin named Dakota (Mortimer) on his tail. The plot begins to get a little complicated here, or as complicated as a plot can get when the primary dialogue consists of “f--k” and its adjectival form. McElroy is met at the airport by a British drug lord’s lackey, Felix, whose dim sidekick misunderstands the phrase “Take care of him” and kills off the chemist that McElroy was supposed to meet. Dim sidekicks seem to be a theme in this movie. Everyone seems to have one—the policeman, the drug lords, the drug lords’ lackies. When they finally get to the drug lord’s apartment, the $10 million deal is disrupted when Dakota blows everyone away except McElroy and Felix. Seems The Lizard has changed his mind and wants McElroy alive because the only place the formula for POS 51 exists is in McElroy’s head. And Dakota spares Felix because she used to be his girlfriend. McElroy and Felix escape together and become uncomfortable companions. You see, Felix isn’t really bad. He is just a rabid football fan, and the only way he could get tickets to the upcoming Liverpool vs. Manchester United football match was to work for the drug lord.

What follows is a series of spectacular car chases, bloody fights with dimwitted skinheads, and more foul language. But, believe it or not, Formula 51 is a comedy. A gory, offensive, scientifically inaccurate, gross-out comedy. There are a couple of truly funny scenes. I won’t give away the plot, just in case someone decides to go see the movie, but there is an abundance of graphic bodily-function humor, gross British dialectal humor, and of course the continuing absurdity of a black man named McElroy wearing a kilt and carrying a bag of golf clubs everywhere he goes. To find out the answer to that riddle, you have to sit through the entire movie and part of the credits.

Although the relationship to pharmacology is tenuous at best, this is, to my knowledge, the first movie where the word “pharmacologist” is actually mentioned. And there is even a reference to pharmacokinetics toward the end of the movie. McElroy is explaining to the gay rave-club-owner/weapons dealer and The Lizard in the VIP box at the Liverpool– Manchester football match (“football and drugs—a perfect Saturday afternoon”) that certain drugs are essentially harmless until they are acted on by the body. This takes a certain amount of time, as they are about to find out.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend this film for anyone who is extremely sensitive to foul language. Its use is continual, slightly more frequent than every other word. The violence is graphic, and with one exception, patently absurd. If you are a car-chase fan, this one rates about a “B,” playing more to humor than to whiz-bang. For about the first half hour, I sat in the theater feeling a martyr to my craft and planning revenge on the movie’s editor. However, I eventually got into the plot, absurd as it was, and actually found myself laughing out loud a couple of times. Bottom line: adults only. Wait for it to come out in video and rent it for $2.00.

• © American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Theraputics 2002