World War Z (2013)
DIRECTOR: Marc Forster
CAST: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, David Andrews, Fana Mokoena, Ludi Boeken, Pierfrancesco Favino, Peter Capaldi, David Morse
REVIEW:
Fans of Max Brooks’ book of the same name, a pseudo-documentary collecting accounts of survivors from a worldwide zombie apocalypse, are not likely to be impressed with Marc Forster’s screen adaptation, which owes little more to the written source than the title, basic premise, and some plot ideas. Taken as a standalone film, World War Z is still flawed but fares better. Its scattershot focus gives it a fragmented, episodic feel, but it’s entertaining and boasts some impressive set pieces and tense sequences. Continue reading
Skyfall (2012)
DIRECTOR: Sam Mendes
CAST:
Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Berenice Marlohe, Albert Finney, Rory Kinnear, Helen McCrory, Ola Rapace
REVIEW:
WARNING: THIS REVIEW WILL DISCUSS SPECIFICS OF THE FILM’S PLOT
While Martin Campbell started the process in 2006’s Casino Royale, with Skyfall, Sam Mendes has truly finished what Casino Royale started—rebooting James Bond as Christopher Nolan did with Batman and J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek, taking the series back to the starting gate as if the previous films never happened. Casino Royale, star Daniel Craig’s debut—which was well-received—took 007 back to the basics, whittled down to the bare bones, with no gadgets, no Moneypenny, no Q, the quipping and sexcapades kept to a restrained minimum, and 2008’s Quantum of Solace—which was generally regarded as a disappointing follow-up—continued in this vein, but Skyfall truly completes the circle of the old and the new, keeping the “new” series’ restraint and seriousness (by Bond standards, at least), while adding a few familiar ingredients that were MIA in its two predecessors back into the mix. Most notably, Skyfall can stand on its own as an individual film. Familiarity with the events of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace is not necessary. Continue reading
Looper (2012)
DIRECTOR: Rian Johnson
CAST: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo, Noah Segan, Garret Dillahunt, Summer Qing, Pierce Gagnon
REVIEW:
Time travel is commonplace in sci-fi stories, sometimes used effectively, sometimes as a flimsy plot device. With Looper, writer-director Rian Johnson finds a way to embrace the inherent paradoxes and incorporate them into a hard-hitting sci-fi thriller in ways that are intelligent and unpredictable. Looper is not just a generic action flick with time travel as a plot device; it’s a smart movie that works on different levels as an action thriller, a sci-fi story, and even a morality play, and stimulates the adrenaline, the brain, and the heart. It’s not a perfect film, but its narrative is engaging, involving, and thoughtful, and doesn’t shy away from a tragic vein. Continue reading
Terminator: Salvation (2009)
DIRECTOR: McG
CAST:
Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Michael Ironside, Jane Alexander, Helena Bonham Carter
REVIEW:
Terminator Salvation, the fourth entry in the ‘just when you thought it was over’ Terminator series, returns to the bleaker, grittier feel of the earlier installments, but like its immediate predecessor, lacks the depth of the first and second films despite working on the most epic canvas of any of them. Continue reading
Salt (2010)
DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
CAST:
Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Andre Braugher, Olek Krupa
REVIEW:
Equal parts The Bourne Identity and The Manchurian Candidate, Salt is a dizzyingly-paced whiz-bang action thriller that contains enough spectacular stunts to dazzle in the immediate present, and enough twists and turns to avoid making the viewer feel like checking their brain at the door is a prerequisite to their enjoyment. In fact, Salt requires a level of the viewer’s attention. Continue reading
Eagle Eye (2008)
DIRECTOR: D.J. Caruso
CAST:
Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Ethan Embry, William Sadler, Julianne Moore (voice)
REVIEW:
The kind of movie that epitomizes brainless entertainment, Eagle Eye (reteaming director D.J. Caruso and star Shia LaBeouf from last year’s superior Disturbia, and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who penned the same year’s Transformers, which also starred LaBeouf and like this was produced by Steven Spielberg) can be a mindlessly entertaining ride as long as you check your brain at the door, but actually expecting anything onscreen to hold up to even perfunctory scrutiny is expecting too much from what’s on display. Continue reading
Live Free Or Die Hard (2007)
DIRECTOR: Len Wiseman
CAST:
Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Maggie Q, Kevin Smith, Cliff Curtis, Zeljko Ivanek
REVIEW:
Like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Live Free Or Die Hard largely abandons the grittier feel of the original film in favor of more typical flashy whizz-bang action extravaganza, but since the Die Hard series doesn’t aspire to be more than action extravaganza as much as the Terminator series, that’s not as much of a detriment here. No one is likely to compare it with the original Die Hard, but if nothing else, it’s an entertaining summer action flick.
John McClane (Bruce Willis, older and balder) is divorced, and his now-grown daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) goes by her mother’s name and seemingly wants nothing to do with him. McClane gets what sounds like a routine assignment: transport hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) to be questioned by government officials about a security breach at Homeland Security. But as usual, nothing goes routine for McClane. Turns out the security breach is just the beginning of an assault on the entire US infrastructure, shutting down Washington, Wall Street, airports, cities, and threatening to throw the country back to the Stone Age. Of course, the mastermind, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), hasn’t counted on John McClane. But things get more personal when Gabriel decides to take Lucy hostage.
The twelve years between Die Hard With A Vengeance and Live Free Or Die Hard has done nothing to slow Bruce Willis down as action hero material, but while he’s called John McClane and sometimes acts like John McClane, he’s transformed from the scruffy everyman into more of a typical unstoppable action hero. Willis is effective in the role, and he has moments where he feels like the old McClane, especially when he confesses to Farrell the personal costs of his job, but some will miss when McClane almost seemed like an average Joe instead of pure movie action hero. Justin Long avoids making Farrell as irritating as he could have been, and he’s occasionally funny, but he doesn’t completely avoid seeming like a bit of a third wheel (I think someone like, say, the ubiquitous Shia LaBeouf, could maybe have done a little more with the role). As far as action-buddy odd couples go, Willis and Long are adequate but not as good a mesh as Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in the third installment. The bad guys are an undistinguished bunch. Timothy Olyphant is the blandest bad guy in the series, seeming to think smugly smirking and lots of wide-eyed glares constitutes a villainous performance. Maggie Q gets a to throw in a little kung-fu buttkicking in a scene that makes her almost as indestructible as Kristanna Loken’s ‘Terminatrix’ in Terminator 3, and French martial artist/stuntman Cyril Raffaelli gets to show off his Spider-Man-esque agility a couple times. Kevin Smith doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb as much as one might fear in basically a cameo, and Cliff Curtis and Zeljko Ivanek are the token cops trying to handle the situation. One cast member we wish had been given more to do is Mary Elizabeth Winstead. In fact, Winstead has enough of Dad’s attitude in her all-too-small role that things might have been kicked up a notch if it had been she and Dad teaming up instead of McClane and Farrell (the original version of the script had McClane joined by his hacker son).
While the previous Die Hard entries were wall-to-wall action, they at least kept things more gritty and semi-realistic, while Live Free Or Die Hard is more typical flashy whizz-bang action extravaganza of one wildly over-the-top action sequence after another, with each trying to top the one that came before, until the tension is diluted by our knowledge that what we’re seeing onscreen defies the laws of physics. The bad guys’ plot is also a little too convoluted. It was inspired by a newspaper article about the danger of the US infrastructure being vulnerable to computer attack, and all the hacker mumbo-jumbo gets a little mind-boggling, until we get impatient to get back to some McClane ass-whipping. And whip serviceable amounts of baddie ass McClane does.
While it’s freely open to debate about how much or how little this actually ‘feels’ like a Die Hard movie, I’m giving it two and a half stars because it delivers on the action we expect from the series. Don’t think about it too much, just enjoy it for what it is, and strap yourself in for an entertaining ride.
**1/2
Casino Royale (2006)
DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
CAST: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Caterina Murino
REVIEW:
With Casino Royale, Martin Campbell has done for 007 what Christopher Nolan did for Batman with Batman Begins the year before: reboot a floundering film franchise back to the basics and start afresh, as if none of the previous films happened. This is Bond stripped down to the nitty gritty. There are no gadgets, no Q, no Moneypenny, restrained sexcapades, and a Bond who’s the most serious he’s been in decades. The iconic line of “Bond, James Bond” isn’t uttered until the closing scene, and the James Bond theme is only heard in brief, subdued snippets until finally playing in full over the ending credits. Even the opening sequences’ conspicuous lack of the expected naked women indicates this “new” series’ direction. This Bond still enjoys attractive women and Aston Martins, he still drinks Martinis, and he still occasionally slips into a tux in glamorous international locales, but the mission holds most of his steely-eyed attention. Those who grew up on the campy tongue-in-cheek charm, nifty gadgets, and wildly over-the-top action of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan’s outings may find this Bond disappointing, but others welcomed it with enthusiasm as the first since Sean Connery, and maybe the first ever, to truly portray the cold-blooded professional killer from Ian Fleming’s original novel series (it’s based on Fleming’s novel of the same name, and while other Bond films have used the names of Fleming novels while jettisoning most of the plots, this one follows its namesake fairly closely), before that perception of 007 was overtaken by the ultra-suave super-spy action hero and ladies’ man.
V For Vendetta (2006)
DIRECTOR: James McTeigue
CAST:
Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Pigott-Smith
REVIEW:
Based on the controversial graphic novel by Alan Moore, and produced by the Wackowski brothers behind The Matrix, V For Vendetta mostly succeeds at serving up both entertaining action and a few eerily timely bits of political commentary, and represents a case of being entertained without having to leave your brain at the door.
On November 5, 1605, as many will know, a man named Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament and was hanged for his trouble. In the future, with war and a deadly biological terrorist attack (or at least that’s the official story) leading to order being restored in Britain by a Fascist totalitarian government, a man known only as V (Hugo Weaving), who hides his burned features behind a Guy Fawkes mask, seeks to unleash a wave of theatrics, rabble-rousing, bombings of London landmarks, and assassinations of prominent government officials that will culminate in the destruction of Parliament on Guy Fawkes Day. Like the man he emulates, V is either a freedom fighter or a terrorist depending on who you talk to. This is the dilemma faced by Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), an ordinary citizen whom V saves from rape by the thuggish police after being caught on the street after curfew and then casually invites to watch as he detonates the Old Bailey building, the opening salvo of his one-man fight. The dictatorship, headed by the rarely-seen High Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), tries to maintain a facade of control by explaining the building as a planned demolition, but V theatrically takes over a major news network to set the record straight. Over the next year, V moves like a wraith through London, simultaneously setting his government overthrow in motion and carrying out a personal vendetta against the government officials involved in his past sufferings. Evey tags along, not entirely willingly at first, then having to decide whether to escape V or support him. Meanwhile, Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea) is leading the investigation to stop V, but in the process stumbles across buried atrocities that make him question whether the real villain might be his own government.
V for Vendetta is a rousing and thought-provoking experience even when it threatens to lapse into overwrought chaos. Like The Matrix, it’s bursting with ideas beneath its stylized action surface. It contains any number of moments to get the pulse quickening and the nape hairs standing, and asks tough questions about how far we should go in the name of security, and what defines a terrorist. The filmmakers also don’t let the stylized look and feel overwhelm the human element. In fact, the most indelible part of the movie is a lengthy subplot in which Evey reads the letter of a lesbian prisoner tortured and murdered by the government, that is so striking because its inclusion is so unexpected. And it’s hard not to see shades of Phantom of the Opera in the relationship between V and Evey. Like The Phantom, V hides disfigurements behind a mask and threatens to let personal vengeance overwhelm his claims of righteousness.
It’s telling of Hugo Weaving’s acting ability that he manages to generate such a strong, charismatic screen presence without once showing his face (his mask is unmoving, meaning he has no way of conveying even a hint of emotion with anything other than his voice and body language). Weaving uses his meticulously precise enunciation and commanding vocal tones to great effect- he delivers a rapid-fire monologue in which every word starts with v that has to be heard to be believe- and also gets to engage in a little Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling (although the fact that V’s features are hidden makes it impossible to determine when it is Weaving and his fight double). Natalie Portman is adequate, and at various times more than adequate, but her performance is a little uneven, and her somewhat forced English accent is somewhat distracting. Portman is particularly good during the infamous torture scene where her head is shaved, but also a few too many moments where she doesn’t seem to quite have quite a firm handle on her character. More solid is Stephen Rea, who uses his usual hangdog demeanor to good effect as Inspector Finch. In fact, despite his low-key performance, Rea’s Finch could be said to be the most three-dimensional and sympathetic character in the movie- a man with a job to do who finds nothing about his job is turning out as simple as he expects. In smaller roles, Stephen Fry is a talk show host who uses his program to slip in dissent against the government and befriends Evey, and John Hurt spends 99% of his limited screentime with his ever-angry visage amusingly projected onto a wall-sized television monitor faced by a half-circle of dwarfed underlings like some embodiment of Big Brother while he snarls and thunders about V’s antics. As his secret police chief henchman, and arguably the real primary villain, Tim Pigott-Smith is suitably oily.
The climax is easily the weakest thing about V for Vendetta. In particular, our final brief face-to-face with Chancellor Sutler is disappointingly anti-climactic. One wonders if the filmmakers were making a statement about some dictators being figureheads to the real power behind the throne, or one’s public image not matching up with the real person, but in any case, Sutler turning out to be so pathetic kills the momentum provided by a centralized hub of villainy to battle against, and once he’s quickly here and gone, all we have left is a shootout enlivened with some (arguably too many) moves obviously inspired by The Matrix, and the destruction of Parliament, which seems a little pointless. I understand a large part of V’s mission is symbolic, creating grand spectacles to snap the public out of their apathy, but since the dictatorship has been effectively destroyed by this point, it seems the gratuitous annihilation of a historic British building. Then again, maybe we’re not supposed to be sympathizing with V by this point. In any case, the climax is disappointingly flat, even with the cool fight scenes and massive explosions, considering the build the narrative had generated leading up to it. The dictatorship goes out with a disappointing and rather anti-climactic whimper, even if V and Evey send it off with a closing bang.
Even so, V for Vendetta is frequently thrilling, frequently thought-provoking, possessed of both a mind and a heart, and serves up a far richer experience than your average action thriller.
***
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Mostow
CAST:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, David Andrews
REVIEW:
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was probably the best summer action movie of 2003. As action flicks go, it’s above average. But it’s not up to the level of either the original Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day . Terminator 3 lacks the vision and depth of its predecessors, and coming next in line after Terminator 2, one of the best sci-fi/action films ever made, it’s a clear step down. This does not mean it is a bad movie. In fact, it is a thoroughly entertaining, sometimes spectacular action movie, a skillful and immensely enjoyable piece of summertime entertainment. But the first two installments were more than that. Continue reading