Air Force One (1997)
DIRECTOR: Wolfgang Petersen
CAST: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews, Dean Stockwell, William H. Macy, Paul Guilfoyle, Xander Berkeley, Philip Baker Hall, Jurgen Prochnow
REVIEW:
Air Force One, the third major American action thriller from German director Wolfgang Petersen (following In the Line of Fire and Outbreak), proves that an accomplished action director can turn a flimsy premise into an entertaining ride, smoothly distracting from some plot holes and implausibiliites to turn Air Force One into one of the better of the myriad Die Hard-esque action flicks that have come out in the years since 1988’s Die Hard popularized the basic premise. It’s not as good as the original Die Hard, but it’s an entertaining ride if you don’t scrutinize everything too closely. Continue reading
The Fifth Element (1997)
DIRECTOR: Luc Besson
CAST: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Brion James, Luke Perry, Tommy Lister
REVIEW:
It’s unsurprising that Luc Besson wrote The Fifth Element when he was a teenager, even if it took him decades to bring it to the screen. Put simply, The Fifth Element is a hot mess of a movie, a scatterbrained, scattershot hodgepodge of colorful scenes thrown slapdash into the mix, with a borderline incoherent plot to string it all together, served up with $100 million worth of visual razzle dazzle, relying on a sensory overload to compensate for a muddled narrative. The result still has its entertainment quota, and is a colorful, lively, and vibrant enough ride that it’s at least not boring, but it helps to shut your brain off in the interim. Continue reading
The Scarlet Letter (1995)
DIRECTOR: Roland Joffe
CAST: Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, Robert Duvall, Joan Plowright, Robert Prosky, Dana Ivey, Edward Hardwicke
REVIEW:
That Roland Joffe’s film is “freely adapted”, as it puts it, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel isn’t necessarily an inherent problem. Book purists would grumble, for sure, but a movie adaptation of a book taking significant liberties is nothing new. The problem isn’t necessarily that The Scarlet Letter has been freely adapted into a movie, it’s that it’s been freely adapted into this movie, which cheerfully throws Hawthorne’s themes to the wind and turns his Puritan morality play into a feminist treatsie on sexual and religious liberation. Those themes are all well and good, but they’re not The Scarlet Letter, and what’s worse, it’s all wrapped up in a sudsy, overwrought romantic soap opera.
Continue readingMurder in the First (1995)
DIRECTOR: Marc Rocco
CAST:
Christian Slater, Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Embeth Davidtz, William H. Macy, R. Lee Ermey, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brad Dourif, Kyra Sedgwick, Mia Kirshner
REVIEW:
Murder in the First is a serviceable, if generic, courtroom drama with one exceptional performance and a couple harrowingly effective sequences. Unfortunately, it’s also a film that makes a virtual lie of its ‘based on true events’ tagline and docudrama style from beginning to end. If you’re looking for a movie to stoke the flames of righteous indignation at prison system injustice, Murder in the First may get your juices flowing, but keep in mind to take everything you see and hear with a very large grain of salt.
The Professional (1994)
DIRECTOR: Luc Besson
CAST: Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Danny Aiello
REVIEW:
From French director Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) comes this distinctly European-flavored action thriller that boasts some kinetic action sequences but has at its core an unlikely relationship between a lonely hitman and a young girl. Continue reading