On my radar…

Over at Salon.com Max Cea reviews the documentary American Anarchist.  The film, directed by Charlie Siskel (he is the nephew of movie critic Gene Siskel), focuses on William Powell, the man who in 1971 published the very controversial book The Anarchist’s Cookbook.  The review of the film can be found here:

American Anarchist contends with the deadly impact of a writer’s words

I’m incredibly fascinated with the subject matter.

Back in High School, I recall at least one fellow dorm dweller having a copy, though I suspect it wasn’t so much that the person who had it fancied themselves an anarchist but rather they wanted to own this controversial book.  In the book, Mr. Powell, who wrote it when he was 19, weary of the Vietnam War, and held a “radical libertarian’s” viewpoint, offered a manual of how to make DIY explosives/weapons and drugs.

Mr. Powell is now 65 years old and, according to the review, was not aware of the “influence” this tome has had over the years, including being found among the possessions of the Columbine shooters.

According to the review:

(Mr. Powell) has publicly denounced the book’s message and argued for it to be taken out of print. “Over the years, I have come to understand that the basic premise behind the Cookbook is profoundly flawed,” he wrote in a 2013 Guardian op-ed. “The anger that motivated the writing of the Cookbook blinded me to the illogical notion that violence can be used to prevent violence.”

Further, the review notes Mr. Powell is not that interested in looking into his book’s connections to other acts of violence.  Though he clearly regrets the book and its contents today and wishes it was “out of print”, I get the feeling from the review that Mr. Powell feels the publication of the book is not unlike a gun-maker producing weapons which subsequently are used for violence.  The defense is the old “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” cliche.

I’m very likely simplifying things as Mr. Powell no doubt holds his own views and I cannot get into his mind.  Nonetheless, the documentary intrigues me.

I certainly feel for Mr. Powell as 1971 was a rough time to be a 19 year old.  With the Vietnam War raging and the draft still in effect, the idea of going overseas to fight -and possibly die- for what many considered by then a worthless war must have created a tremendous strain in many people of Mr. Powell’s age.

His book, created at the height of these very harsh times, will likely be his life’s legacy and it must bother him that a book he now wishes was “out of print” remains out there and, possibly, influencing minds if not actions.

As someone who writes, this proves to be a cautionary tale.  Whatever you choose to write and publish might linger for many, many years beyond the time of publication and if you’re forward thinking you may want to carefully consider this before releasing something into the general public.

It is possible to regret your words.

Fax machines and… electric cars?

Over on Salon.com Jonathan Coopersmith offers a fascinating -and dead on, IMHO- article regarding one of the bigger issues which may be holding back the success of electric cars: the variety of different charging stations.  He notes this issue is not unlike the slow/stagnant growth of fax machines in the 1960’s and 70’s and how, after a single fax “standard” for operation was adopted the fax machine became huge.

Read the article for yourself:

What fax machines can teach us about electric cars

Without stepping too much on the article, Mr. Coopersmith notes that in the early days of the fax machine each machine had its own sending/receiving “language” and therefore you could only send a fax to a person who had the same type of machine as you did.  If you worked for Industry “A” and needed to send a form to Industry “B” but your fax machine was created by the XYZ company and the people you were trying to send your form to had a fax machine created by MNO, chances are you were out of luck.

That changed when the Japanese adopted a single fax “standard” operating system and, suddenly, that fax created by the XYZ company could send faxes to a MNO fax machine and vice versa.  Soon, all fax machines worked together and, as obvious as this may seem in retrospect, it really pays to be able to send a fax to any machine, regardless of who made it.

The problem Mr. Coopersmith points out with electric cars is similar.  When driving your gas powered car, you can drive up to any gas station and fill ‘er up.

That’s not yet the case with electric cars and their charging stations.

Granted there are other issues with electric cars (such as the distance they can travel on a charge, how long a charge takes, etc), but I believe Mr. Coopersmith is right in saying the charging stations/charging of electric cars should be standardized.

If you have a Tesla car (I envy you), you shouldn’t have to be on the lookout for only Tesla charging stations.  Similarly, if you have a Chevrolet Volt or Bolt, you shouldn’t be looking for only Chevrolet charging stations.

Like gas stations, there should be universal charging stations, places where you can take your electric vehicle and charge it up regardless of what brand it is and, as Mr. Coopersmith notes toward the end of his article, Tesla appears to be moving toward this goal:

In the last few years, Tesla has veered from its initial exclusivity to cooperation. In 2014, Tesla announced it would share its patents royalty-free – including its charger and plug designs – to encourage the spread of electric vehicle technology. In 2015, the company agreed to make its cars and charging stations compatible with China’s new standard, possibly by using adapters at charging stations.

I long for the day we finally rid ourselves of the outdated, noisy, and polluting gas engines.  They’re a technology that is over a hundred years old now and, given all the advances in battery technology, should be on its way out.

Perhaps with the standardization of electric charging stations, the end of the gas powered vehicle might be closer to reality.

Though one wonders how long before the self-driving vehicles gobble up the driving market anyway!

Hollywood (racial) Castings…

Samuel L. Jackson, during an interview for (I’m guessing) his new Kong: Skull Island film, had some thoughts on the use of British actors to play African American roles, such as the lead in the hit film Get Out:

Samuel L. Jackson Revives Debate on British Black Actors in American Roles

I appreciate Mr. Jackson’s point.  There is something to be said about British actors playing “American” Black people, especially in a film where the American Black experience is an integral part of the movie’s plot.  Mr. Jackson, too, is not alone in lamenting the use of actors to depict certain racial roles they clearly are not.

A short while ago, for instance, there was an uproar over Emma Stone playing a Asian/American in the movie Aloha (the actress herself weighed in on the controversy) and Rooney Mora playing a Native American in Peter Pan.

I suppose it would be weird to see, say, notable American actors like Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford playing, say, Sherlock Holmes or James Bond.  Especially if they were trying to emulate a British accent.

Keep that example in mind because there is also an effort of late regarding casting a person of a certain race when the original character was not originally presented that way.  In this, Samuel L. Jackson can very easily be listed as prime example “A”.

One of Mr. Jackson’s bigger roles of late is that of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel movies.  A character who, in the comics, looked like this…

Image result for nick fury

That’s him, before getting his eyepatch, on the far left of the image.  The character moved from a WWII fighter to a secret agent (this was to capitalize on the James Bond craze in the 1960’s) and came to look like this…

Image result for nick fury

A movie, believe it or not, was made in 1998 with David Hasselhoff in the titular role.  Here’s the movie’s poster:

Image result for nick fury

Still don’t believe me?  Here’s a fan made “trailer” for that film:

My point is this: One can argue in favor of characters written to be of a certain race and when presented on film should be played by actors of that race.  But what about when you take well established (or even not so well established) characters on the page and completely change their race for the screen?

In the case of Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury, I think the end result wasn’t by any stretch a bad one.

However…

For no other reason than the fact that Will Smith was a very popular actor at the time, he was cast in the role of James West for the film version of the popular 1960’s action/adventure/fantasy series The Wild Wild West.  Here’s an episode from the original TV show, which featured Robert Conrad (that’s him in the still from the episode!) in the role of James West:

Casting Will Smith in the role of a secret service agent in the “wild west” of the post Civil War era was, I’ll be completely blunt here, idiotic.  Granted The Wild Wild West, both TV show and movie, were meant to be fantasy, but the idea of a black male roaming the wild west in fancy duds and not being immediately noticed by the locals just doesn’t work, especially for that time frame.

I suppose the “color blind” casting was meant to broaden this role but in this case, as opposed to Nick Fury (who, let’s face it, was known mostly to comic book fans before the Marvel films were released and became such big hits), I felt it hurt the overall product as much as the silly film surrounding it.  I can easily imagine a film being made featuring Will Smith in the post-Civil War era and working as some kind of secret service agent, but not in the way presented in The Wild Wild West TV show and subsequent movie.

So here’s the bottom line: I think one can get behind the idea Mr. Jackson presents that when a role is created for someone of a certain background/racial heritage it is indeed appropriate to want a person of that background/heritage to play the role.

It is also appropriate, some might also argue, that when a character is originally created to be of a certain race/background and has been depicted that way for many decades, then perhaps there should also be some respect given to keeping the casting there consistent as well.

Morgan (2016) a (mildly) belated review

I’ve noted before that as far as my opinion on movies are concerned, I’ve mellowed out considerably and give features far more of the benefit of the doubt than before.

But there are limits to this and I present to you Example A: Morgan.  Here’s the movie’s trailer…

Directed by Luke Scott, son of Blade Runner/Alien director Ridley Scott, Morgan feels like an attempt to tread in Blade Runner territory with more than a little of Frankenstein.  Perhaps the movie was meant to be a Blade Runner prequel?

Anyway, Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an artificial creation housed in a remote forest lab.  She is five years old though looks to be in her later teens and, as the movie opens, she viciously attacks Dr. Kathy Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh, completely wasted in a small cameo role).  The attack, which results in Dr. Grieff losing one eye, is in turn investigated by the corporation funding the Morgan “project”.

Sent in to check the status of the scientific group, Morgan, and the viability of the project itself is Corporate clean-up specialist Lee Weathers (Kate Mara, sadly one note and morose throughout this film).

She begins her investigation and meets the various people in this scientific community, almost all of whom, including Dr. Grieff, have strong positive feelings toward Morgan and try to convince Weathers that Morgan’s attack was an anomaly and that she deserves a second chance.

Ok.

So we have Weathers meet up with the group and, eventually, Morgan herself.  Since the attack, Morgan has been placed in isolation and behind a thick glass.  Morgan states she is sorry for the attack and all and Weathers takes it in unemotionally (as she does everything else) and things are oh-so-serious and…dull.

And then, stupidly (there are an awful lot of stupid things being done by supposedly smart people here), the corporation brings in Dr. Alan Shapiro (Paul Giamatti, acting set to “overkill”) to interview Morgan and see just how stable she is.

He does this by essentially yelling he’s got the power to kill her and what the hell is she going to do about it?!

Now, can you just guess what Morgan will do about it?

The movie’s second act, as if you haven’t guessed it yet, is Morgan going apeshit on those she is convinced are out to kill her (some are, most are not).  This leads to the movie’s climax and a “twist” ending that does almost nothing for the film and an epilogue featuring Brian Cox who explains everything that’s just happened and…

…ugh.

Morgan, if you haven’t guessed it yet, is to me an almost complete bust.  The movie features a lackluster, all-too-simple and all-too-familiar plot that begs for a much more robust, in-your-face and perhaps even campy presentation.  We need blood and guts and craziness but instead are offered a far too-mannered, too-Masterpiece Theater presentation and this, unfortunately, makes the movie’s plot problems all the more evident.

A real disappointment.

Broken Arrow (1996) a (very) belated review

Waaaaay back in the early 1990’s I, along with many other movie geeks, discovered the works of director John Woo.  Most specifically for me were two movie he made starring ultra-cool Chow Yun-Fat: 1989’s The Killer and 1992’s Hard Boiled.  The later film, according to Mr. Woo himself and if memory serves, was intended to be not just a great action film but a calling card to Hollywood that Mr. Woo was not only a top-tier action director, but that he was willing and able to make the leap to American films.

This bravura sequence from Hard Boiled, shot mostly in one take (if you look hard, there is one clear break), is one of the film’s highlights:

Hollywood, needless to say, took notice.

The very next year, in 1993, Mr. Woo’s first American film, Hard Target, featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, was released.  The movie was, to me, a disappointment.  It was a good Jean-Claude Van Damme film, perhaps his best, but considering what Mr. Woo released the previous years, it felt like a step down.  (NOTE: Mr. Woo’s original version of the film was cut for theatrical release.  You can read more about what was changed/taken out of that version here)

It would be three years and not until 1996 that Mr. Woo’s next Hollywood film was released and that was the John Travolta and Christian Slater action-fest Broken Arrow.

I recall seeing that film back when it was released and found it a far better film than Hard Target yet was still disappointed because I expected so much more from the man behind the camera.

Mr. Woo would go on to make a handful of other films for Hollywood, including Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Windtalkers, and Paycheck, before heading back to more familiar ground -and Hong Kong- to continue his career.

Now, looking back at Mr. Woo’s Hollywood years, one can’t help but feel this once very exciting director’s career stalled or, sadly, took a big step backwards during this time period.  Today, Mission Impossible II is looked at as one of the lesser MI films.  Paycheck, to  many (including me) was an outright terrible film and one of the reasons Ben Affleck’s career nosedived after a promising beginning.

So while I harbored good feelings toward Mr. Woo’s earlier works, there was little doubt I felt either ambivalent or bad feelings regarding his Hollywood career.

Today, that’s very far in the past and when I found Broken Arrow playing on cable yesterday, I decided after all these years to give it another try.

Wouldn’t you know it, I found the film far more enjoyable than I remembered?

I think part of the reason is those old heightened expectations I had of Mr. Woo’s then-nascent Hollywood career were long gone and I watched Broken Arrow with far fewer -indeed, no- expectations, and the movie benefited tremendously without them.

The movie concerns Vic Deakins (John Travolta, looking very young, spry, and more than a little out of his freaking mind) hijacking two nuclear missiles from a bomber he and his co-pilot, Riley Hale (Christian Slater), were transporting.  As it turns out, Deakins was acting alone and intended to kill Riley during the hijacking.

Riley, however, survives and the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse chase between Deakins and his band of very bad-guys versus Riley and his eventual companion, Park Cop Terry Charmichael (Samantha Mathis), as they try to thwart Deakins and the very deadly missiles he intends to use to extort big money from the U.S. Government.

Broken Arrow, viewed today, is a surprisingly old-fashioned (I DO NOT say that as a slight!) good-guy versus bad-guy feature.  The bad-guys are really bad and the good guys are clean-cut and very good.  The bad guys will play dirty and snarl and curse while the good guys will take what’s given and not back down…even if the odds are against them.  The action sequences, while not quite as good as Mr. Woo’s greatest Hong Kong hits, are nonetheless exciting and entertaining and deliver the thrills.

After the film was done I couldn’t help but feel I’d been too harsh on Mr. Woo way back then and most certainly regarding this film.  I also wondered if maybe it was time to give at least some of his other Hollywood features a second chance.

I’m looking at you, Hard Target and Face/Off.

Broken Arrow is recommended…and further reviews of Mr. Woo’s works may be coming!

I present the movie’s trailer below but caution those who haven’t seen the film yet that they may want to before seeing this trailer.  It gives away an awful lot of plot!

The Winds of Winter…coming?!

If you were today, Tuesday, March 7th 2017, to look at the literary field and pick out some of the bigger names/books around, you’d likely list, among others, the works of Stephen King or J. K. Rowling.  Perhaps, today, you might be in the mood for Neil Gaiman or James Patterson.  I hear George Orwell is making quite a comeback, too.

(I’d love to include myself in this list…perhaps one day?)  😉

Another very big name on the list is George R. R. Martin.  His Game of Thrones fantasy series became red hot -and positively volcanic- after HBO started their adaptation of the series.

Most of you who are fans of Mr. Martin’s books know all too well that the HBO series has already leaped over the last of Mr. Martin’s published novels and will very likely end well before the final book in the series is released.

If it is ever released.

There are those who are growing increasingly pessimistic about the chances of the series ever being published/finished.  Currently, fans await The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the seven book series and that means there remain two books to be released while it looks like HBO will finish the storyline -granted, one which is their own at this point though they did consult with Mr. Martin as to where he intended to go with the story- well before the last book is released and possibly before the second to last book is released.

Amusingly, Mr. Martin is still involved in other literary properties he’s started up, including the superhero universe of the Wild Cards.  On February 28th he tweeted about the publication of the latest Wild Cards book and that earned him this amusing rant by Patrick Redford theconcourse.com:

F#$k off, GRRM!

Mr. Redford’s very small post essentially wonders where The Winds of Winter is and why this Wild Cards novel is even being announced.

Let me tell you, I see Mr. Redford’s point.  I’ve been a fan of book series and there is nothing more infuriating than waiting for an author to finish up a series.  It’s almost as frustrating as starting a series and then finding it fades away over time.  For example, I was really, really into David Weber’s Safehold series (currently running 9 books worth, which is apparently the entire first “big” story line) but after four books and what appeared to me to be minimal advancement, I jumped off that particular boat.

With my Corrosive Knights series, which in the end will run eight books long, six of which are now available, I’ve tried mightily to a) give readers something new and interesting with each new book and b) not overstay my welcome.

Because I’ve experienced both the writer’s and the fan’s side of getting into a novel series, I can certainly sympathize with Mr. Redford and the many who are impatient to read the next Game of Thrones book but, likewise, can sympathize with Mr. Martin as well.

The fact of the matter, and I’ve mentioned this many times before, writing a novel is not an easy task.  In my case it takes incredible concentration and patience.  How many of you out there can write a 100,000 page (or longer!) work, then spend many, many months revising and re-revising and re-re-revising this same work until you’re satisfied it is ready for release?

In my case, I’m writing alone.

In Mr. Weber’s case (and I suspect Mr. Martin’s as well), I’m certain he has staff to help him keep names and characters in some kind of order.  Even so, these are books filled to the brim with at times hundreds of different characters and getting everything to “work” in the course of the story is not an easy task.

And let’s face it, some suspect its not made any easier when, like Mr. Martin, you’ve probably already made more money than you’ll ever spend on the success of both the novels and the HBO series.

Why bother finishing up the series, they may wonder, when its being done for you?

I can’t speak specifically for Mr. Martin but I will say this: If my Corrosive Knights series was a successful HBO show and I was down, as I currently am, to the last two books in that series and it was looking like the show would “beat me to the punch”, I’d still finish the two books I was working on.

Writing for me is a part of my being and its impossible to stop.  Further, I don’t have everything all worked out.  New ideas pop up and I can’t help but wonder when/if the last two Game of Thrones books come out they prove to be very different -moreso than anyone thought- to the HBO series.

If I had the entire story line of Corrosive Knights already planned out to the smallest detail, trust me when I say that the series would have been done years ago.

I suspect the same can be said for Game of Thrones.

On Writing…technique: Simile

A few days ago I examined literary techniques via a book that was advanced to me (you can read the article here).  I provided an example of a passage in the novel and why it was problematic to me as it was in the middle of an action sequence and focused on something that didn’t advance that chapter’s main purpose: To build suspense.

Now, let me get into another literary element: Similes.

What are similes?  A full description and definition is offered in the link below:

Simile: Examples and Definitions

To spare you clicking the above link, here are some examples of similes:

He collapsed like a bag of potatoes.

The car wheezed as if a severe asthmatic.

The gunfire was like a series of explosions.

The bottom line regarding similes is that you compare something with something else, usually using the word “like” of “as” to make the comparison more direct.  The purpose of this is to give you an idea of the degree of the item(s) being compared.

Taking the above examples, the person didn’t just fall to the ground, he did so “like a bag of potatoes”, ie with great force and complete chaos.  The car wheezed like a severe asthmatic because that implies not only a failing motor, but one that is dangerously failing.  The gunfire wasn’t just loud, it was explosive loud.

Got it?

Good.

Now, and at the risk of having someone point out my own hypocrisy: I really don’t like using similes, at least for “serious” writing.  And it’s fair to say up to this point most of my writing has been fantastical but relatively “serious”.

Yes, I’m certain I’ve used similes in the past.  I don’t doubt that if someone goes through all my past writings they will find examples of me using them.  But I really don’t like them.  I really, really, don’t like using them.

Why?

In part its because most of the times similes are incredibly lazy.

I mean, how many times have you read about someone falling “like a sack of potatoes”?  Or that gunfire being like “explosions”?  Or how about these, presented as examples in the link above: Something being “as dry as a bone” or someone being “as cunning as a fox”?

Blah.

But there is another big reason for my lack of enthusiasm for the literary device and it involves, of all things, the Naked Gun films of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.

Bear with me here.

Starting in the late 1960’s and going through the 1970’s, disaster films were all the rage.  You had the “classics” like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure (which, btw, featured a cameo appearance by one Leslie Nielsen).  These gave way to bigger and bigger disaster films like Earthquake and Roller Coaster and The Swarm and Beyond The Poseidon Adventure.

But one of the bigger “disaster” hits in the 1970’s were the Airport films.  The first movie, released in 1970, featured a huge, all star cast and was an equally huge hit.  It was followed by Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde: Airport 1979.

In 1980 the above mentioned Abrahams and Zucker Brothers released the classic comedy Airplane! which parodied the living hell out of the “airliner in distress” movie genre.  However, I would argue the film also took great glee at parodying all disaster film tropes.

So good was the film at pointing out the many absurd cliches in airplane/disaster films that if you look carefully at the films released post Airplane!, you’ll see that the airline disaster film was all but gone for years afterwards (though some may argue The Concorde: Airport 1979 didn’t help the cause) and that big scale disaster film also were much more muted as well.  Sure, there have been disaster/airline-type films released since but they haven’t ruled the box office quite like they did up to that point.  In fact, the only big successful disaster film I can think of in recent days is probably the original Independence Day.

Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers would go on to make the Naked Gun films and within them, at least to me, they laid a similar wrecking ball to the use of similes, something which was a commonly used literary device in the type of crime drama the Naked Gun films so beautifully parodied.

Here are the biggest/most hilarious lines, IMHO, featured in the three Naked Gun films:

Like a blind man at an orgy, I was gonna have to feel my way out.

Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes.

I like my sex the way I play basketball, one on one with as little dribbling as possible.

As Airplane! did with airliner/disaster films, these twisted -and hilarious!- similes affected my writing.  As much as I may want to use a “serious” simile in a passage, when I use the word “like” in comparing one thing to another I can’t help but recall one of the three above lines.

If I were writing a comedy, these lines would be inspiration.  But for “serious” writing?

Nah.

Don’t Breathe (2016) a (mildly) belated review

One of 2016’s bigger hits was the suspense/horror movie Don’t Breathe.  Here’s one of the movie’s trailers…

The movie’s plot is, essentially, a thematic inversion of the 1967 Audrey Hepburn/Alan Arkin film Wait Until Dark.  Here’s the trailer for that film…

In Wait Until Dark, a trio of thieves enter Audrey Hepburn’s character’s home and, eventually, terrorize her as they seek heroine they are certain is hidden within the place.

In Don’t Breathe Rocky (Jane Levy), her sleazy boyfriend “Money” (Daniel Zovatto), and the clean cut/not-so-secretly-pining-for-Rocky Alex (Dylan Minnette) form the trio of thieves who use information Alex gets from his father’s security company to break into homes, disarm their alarms, and steal whatever items they can get their hands on.

It turns out Rocky has a very good reason for engaging in these activities: She lives in a highly dysfunctional home with her very sleazy mother and much younger sister.  She hopes to get enough money to be able to flee this hellish house with her young sister.

So while her methods are bad, her goal is noble.

When the trio hear about a man, as it turns out a Blind Man (Stephen Lang, absolutely terrific here), who may have as much as $300,000 hidden away in his home in a deserted slum within Detroit, they figure they’ve found the right mark and haul that can finally get them out of their individual bad situations.

Unlike Audrey Hepburn’s character in Wait Until Dark, however, Stephen Lang’s Blind Man turns out to be far from helpless…or, for that matter, good.  There be terrible secrets hiding within his house and our “heroes”, or perhaps more appropriately “anti-heroes”, are about to enter a very dark (no pun intended) world from which they may not escape from…alive.

Don’t Breathe was made by the same team, and features the same star, Jane Levy, of 2013’s Evil Dead remake, a film that, frankly, I didn’t much like (you can read my review of that film here).  Unlike the bloody and gore filled Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe uses very little actual blood and almost no gore in telling its story.  Instead, this movie relies on building tension through the strength of the actors and situations they are in to convey the terror of their situation.  While I’m not adverse to gore in films (I loved the original Evil Dead films and the first two were filled with gore!), this movie benefits tremendously from the decision to forego the bloody stuff and focus on situational tension.

Before I go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that those who faulted the film felt its second act and the big reveal regarding what the Blind Man was up to in his decrepit house was a little too much.  Frankly, I can’t argue against those who felt these things were unnecessary.  Indeed, these elements could have been cut out and the film and we therefore might have had a leaner and meaner feature.  However, these revelations didn’t bother me as much as it did some others.

In the end, Don’t Breathe is an easy recommendation to all fans of good tension/horror films.

Criminal (2016) a (mildly) belated review

Several years ago I saw and reviewed Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011) (you can read the full review here) and noted the following:

Have you ever seen a film that, upon exiting the theaters, you could tell it underwent some major revisions in the story it was trying to tell?

In the case of MIGP, if felt to me the film took a major deviation in its climax and I strongly suspect (still do!) the movie’s bad guys were intended to be Josh Holloway’s Hanaway (a character who apparently dies in the opening act…a strange choice to have a fairly recognizable actor like Mr. Holloway in what amounts to little more than a cameo role) and his girlfriend/fellow agent, Paula Patton’s Jane.

The film, IMHO, leads to this revelation up to the sequence in the very tall building in Dubai.  It was there I was absolutely certain Hanaway would be revealed as not dead and Jane, seemingly distraught at the death of her boyfriend and wanting revenge, was really a double agent working alongside him.

For whatever reason the film’s makers decided not to go there and, as I explained in my review, the movie’s climax was hurt (but, to be fair, not fatally) by this change.  I suspect MIGP would have been far better/shocking -and made more sense- had they gone that way.

I had similar feelings, though on a smaller scale, with the movie Criminal.  The film was an entertaining action/thriller with a small yet significant sci-fi element whose use reminded me a little of the John Woo directed, John Travolta/Nicholas Cage starring Face/Off.

The movie opens with Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) in the process of doing …something… in London.  We know he’s on the run and avoiding some suspicious people who are after him.  He gets a bag full of money and a passport and, we find, is not only being chased by some dubious characters but also tracked by a CIA office run by Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman).  Wells is frantic to figure out where Pope is going and provide him protection.

While fleeing Pope manages to call his wife Jill (Gal Gadot) for what will turn out to be the last time he speaks with her…ever.  Not long afterwards Pope is captured by the people pursuing him but not before hiding the money he got.  Despite being tortured, Pope refuses to tell the bad guys what they want to know.  By the time the CIA finds him, he’s already dead.

Whatever Pope was up to was big league stuff and the CIA, desperate to figure out what exactly he was up to before he died, contact Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones).  Dr. Franks is working on a way of transferring the memories of one animal into another.  The CIA tasks him with transferring the memories of the deceased Bill Pope into someone else so they can figure out what he was up to before he was killed.

Enter Jerico Stewart (Kevin Costner), a psychopathic -and imprisoned- killer who had severe brain trauma as a child and cannot feel or distinguish emotions or right versus wrong.  His frontal lobe never developed due to this brain trauma and therefore he is the one, the only subject which Dr. Franks feels may be successfully used to transfer Pope’s memories and find the information the CIA is so desperate to get.

All the while, the clock is ticking…

I won’t go into too many more SPOILERS and please note what I’ve written above occurs in the movie’s first fifteen or so minutes.

Suffice to say Criminal centers around the psychopathic Jerico as he struggles with Pope’s emerging memories…all while the villains are closing in.

Criminal is a pretty good action film, IMHO, that could have been even better had the script been tightened down a lot more (You knew I was going to get back to that Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol stuff eventually, right?).

The fact is that the movie’s opening minutes are far more confusing than they should be.  For whatever reason Pope’s mission was kept under wraps until later in the film and this was a mistake.  They could have told audiences just how important the mission was right off the bat and that would have made us care more about Pope and, later, Jerico.

When Jerico is brought in, there is a choppiness here as well, as if parts of the script were tossed in favor of keeping the movie’s runtime reasonable (the movie nonetheless clocks in just shy of 2 hours).  We quickly hurry through introductions to Dr. Franks and Jerico so we can (also very quickly) get him to England and then out on his own.

Despite the choppiness, the film settles down and, to its great credit, Kevin Costner is quite good in the central role of Jerico.  He is something of a Frankenstein monster, gruff and confused yet slowly -and sometimes angrily- reacting to the humanity that is starting to spread for the first time into his system.

The movie features an astonishingly large cast of recognizable actors, many of whom, amusingly enough, were previously featured in comic book or sci-fi fantasy type films.  Let’s see now: Kevin Costner/Waterworld & The Postman, Man of Steel/Batman v Superman, Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Tommy Lee Jones/Two-Face in Batman Forever, Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, Ryan Reynolds/Green Lantern & Deadpool, and, finally Alice Eve/Star Trek.

I point out Alice Eve last and here, again, I get the feeling her character’s place in the movie as released is a good example of what had to be major script changes.  Alice Eve’s character, Marta Lynch, is a CIA agent and, I can only guess based on her very limited role, Quaker Wells’ right hand man.

As presented in the film, Marta Lynch is little more than an extra who could have been played by anyone.  One can argue whether Ms. Eve is an “A” list actress or not, but she has a very long resume and has been featured in several very big movies yet her role here is so small and anemic that one wonders why a) she took the role and b) why the movie’s producers would hire her as she no doubt commands far better pay versus a smaller, lesser known actress.  Again, I can’t help but think there was more involved in the character of Marta Lynch but as the film was made her role was chopped down to near nothing.

Despite these oddball elements, I recommend Criminal.  It may not be The-Very-Best-Action-Film-Ever-Made© but it is a pleasant enough diversion whose chief strength lies in a very enjoyable acting turn by Kevin Costner.

Before I go, here’s the movie’s official trailer.  If you decide to see it, beware…it comes perilously close to revealing a little too much about the film.