Just saw the mother of all alcohol ads. In it, African runner named John is getting ready to run the big race, when he learns that Mr. Big and his Henchman have kidnapped his lady. Their ransom: John must throw the race. Mr. Big sits in his luxury box, smug he has the game rigged. The henchman have John's wife in the back of an Audi leaving the stadium. John pours his heart out to his friend, who is obviously an action star badass of some sort. Badass gives John the advice you knew he would: You run your race. I’ll handle those summonabatches.
The gun goes Bang! and we're in the middle of the race. John hangs in the middle of the pack as it runs past the Guinness billboard. John’s charismatic working class buddies are at home watching the race (while drinking Guinness) and wondering what’s up with their buddy. But the audience knows: Worry about those two henchman who are about to face the wrath of Buddy Badass.
Badass races to the roof of the nearby parking lot, where he sees the Audi henchmobile racing to the exit--yet fortuitously driving directly under him. He dumps a handy oversized bucket Guinnessfroth-colored paint over the edge of the railing, and it splatters over the windshield. Does the Audi careen into a lightpole, sending the girlfriend through the windshield and into a trash compactor? Hell no. Badass got this whole mug orchestrated like frickin’ Mozart. Audi careens into harmless pile of empty cardboard boxes.
While the henchmen exit the car in a daze—damn it’s easy to daze henchmen—the eyes of John's woman lock onto Badass, six stories up. In what Hemingway called “that voice which is softer than any whisper,” Badass says, “Me. Focus on me.” He points two fingers at his eyes for emphasis: Look in my eyes and know that it is Go Time.
In a one second pause between action sequences, the audience has two thoughts. Thought one: I bet John's wife is would dump John in a second if she could get one night with that Badass. Thought two: Ye-heah, right. Take a number, sister.
But those thoughts are wiped from our mind as we realize the meaning of Go Time. The Wife, apparently responding to Badass telepathy, grabs a slack piece of cord trailing down from the mammoth Guinness sign. Badass grabs the top of same the cord from its spot on the Guinness sign, loops it around a pole or something, and leaps from the precipice. Wifey zooms stories into the air, straight toward Badass who, cucumber cool plummeting as he plummets toward the cement, leaves one arm free to catch his buddy’s woman.
Do they miss one another, flying up and down toward their respective deaths, him a dull thud and her like an exploded ketchup packet against the Guinness sign? Man hell no.
She slips into his muscular arm—aesthetically pleasing gym muscle, not that pansy streamlined athlete muscle on John’s arm—they come to a perfect equilibrium, and Badass swings them effortlessly over the edge of a railing.
After that the commercial was way too much John, not enough Badass: John’s wife yells over the stadium loudspeaker that she's safe, John accelerates and wins the world record, everyone celebrates by going to the local pub and getting wrecked on Guinness. Badass has no woman attached to him. S’okay, we know. He likes to keep them off-screen, keep his options his open, not rub friends’ noses in the splendor that is a Badass's life.
All this in a one-minute commercial. Frigging transcendent.
