All posts by ERTorre

E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
Music

Blackstar (2016) a (right on time!) album review

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The opening months of 2016 are filling me with nostalgia.  Not only did I pre-order and just download the new David Bowie album Blackstar (formally released today, December 8th, the same day as Mr. Bowie’s -gulp!- 69th birthday) but I’ve also pre-ordered the upcoming Anthrax album For All Kings (release date: February 26th) and the Megadeth album Dystopia (release date: January 22).  So far, the preview songs released from these later two albums have impressed me and, with regard to Megadeth in particular who I feel had become lost since Mr. Mustaine’s religious right conversion, that’s saying a lot (check out the song The Threat is Real.  Whew!)

It’s rare that I want to buy one album in any given two month period of time, but three?

Getting back to David Bowie’s Blackstar, I’m usually hesitant to review an album in full until listening to it a few times.  Songs you may not like at first may grow on you while others you like right away may wear out their welcome.

However, before downloading the full Blackstar album, Mr. Bowie pre-released two of its seven songs and I’ve heard them plenty of time.  The first release was the song the album was named after, Blackstar…

…a little later came Lazarus, a song which supposedly is about Thomas Jerome Newton, the alien character Mr. Bowie played in the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth…

Having thoroughly vetted both songs, I really, really liked what I heard.

Given the album has 7 songs and I’d listened to two of them as well as a somewhat different version of a third song, Sue (or a Season in Crime), I’ve already heard nearly a third of the album before its official release so I feel more comfortable in giving my thoughts.

Here goes: This is one hell of an album.

The cliche regarding just about every new David Bowie release falls along the line of “his best work since Scary Monsters” or somesuch.

To some degree, I understand the sentiment.  After the release of his immensely popular album Let’s Dance way back in 1983, Mr. Bowie hit a bump in the road, creatively.  He followed up Let’s Dance with Tonight, an album that had a few good songs but felt like a half-hearted effort.  He followed that up with the ironically titled Never Let Me Down, an album that also featured some good songs but, to my ears, appeared to be Mr. Bowie trying a little too hard to create a “hit” record.  It’s little wonder Mr. Bowie himself feels this is the worst album he’s created.

After that album, Mr. Bowie tried his hand at hard rock/heavy metal (not as strange a concept as one might think) with Tin Machine.  After that fizzled out, he released 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, an album that didn’t do all that much for me.

But what followed was magic.

Starting with 1993’s The Buddha of Suburbia and the absolutely excellent follow-up, 1995s 1. Outside, Mr. Bowie was suddenly on a roll.

Blackstar represents Mr. Bowie’s 8th album since the release of The Buddha of Suburbia and it is breathtaking how invested he appears in this particular work.  It’s as if he’s found yet another new crack in the music landscape and is mining it for all its worth.  His singing is soulful and the mere seven songs presented are emotional, vibrant, strange (in an oh-so-good-way), experimental (I’ve never heard anything from Mr. Bowie quite like Girl Loves Me, a song that sounds almost like…rap?!), and fulfilling, even more so than the critically acclaimed (and also quite good) previous album The Next Day.

When I was younger and just discovering Mr. Bowie, one of the greatest laments I had was the “what if” question of what might have happened if Mr. Bowie had continued with his Spiders of Mars bandmates, especially guitarist Mick Ronson.  Might there have been more albums on par with The Man Who Sold The World or Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane?

With the release of Blackstar the answer, which should have been evident before, becomes all the more clear: Because of Mr. Bowie’s nature and his drive to create different types of music, Bowie works best with musicians for a limited amount of time.  His best stuff seems to come when he moves on to new musicians, as he transitioned from those early rock albums into the Berlin Trilogy, etc. etc.  With Blackstar, Mr. Bowie has a new stable of musicians behind him, known mostly for their work in jazz, and it appears to have reinvigorated and renewed him.

Having said that, the music on this album isn’t so radically different as to not be recognizably David Bowie.  In the song Blackstar, it would appear Mr. Bowie, to my ears anyway, has fused his very early work The WIld Eyed Boy From Freecloud…

…with Loving the Alien…

For Sue (or a Season of Crime) I get a distinct 1. Outside vibe, so much so that the song could easily fit on that album.

Regardless of the call outs or similarities, Blackstar is a terrific work from one of the most gifted musicians out there today.

If you’re a fan of David Bowie, buying Blackstar is a no-brainer.  If you haven’t listened to any of David Bowie’s recent works, you’d do well to give it a try.

Highly recommended.

General

As a Floridian…

…I totally endorse this list:

11 Reasons Florida Is The Worst

Of course, the list is presented as tongue in cheek and presents 11 reasons why Florida is great.  All mentioned are true, at least to my experience.

Yet Florida is a most curious place as well.

Our politicians -and many of the people- are, by and large, exactly what author Carl Hiassen says they are: At times beyond…strange.

What other state does reddit offer an entire section to its very weird inhabitants?

Florida Man!

A recent example:

Florida Driver Gives Fake Name to Deputy; Fake Name Has DUI

Heh.

Only in Florida.

General

Is this a way to run an Olympic event?

Amusing -and equally sad- story from the AP regarding Rio De Janeiro’s…um… difficulties while preparing to host the 2016 Summer Olympics:

Rio Olympic Track Stadium Goes Dark Due To Unpaid Bills

The upshot of the article is that the Track Stadium owes some $250,000 for electrical and water bills and, having not paid them, now has neither.

And who can forget this article, also found on AP, regarding the rancid waters the athletes are supposed to use for the water related events?

Rio Olympic Water Badly Polluted, Even Far Offshore

Man, is this looking like a colossal mess in the making or what?

Though I don’t usually follow the Olympics all that closely, I may just have to watch this one.

 

 

Movies, TV

A little more on The Abominable Bride…

Yesterday I reviewed the New Year’s day premiere of the 4th season Sherlock episode The Abominable Bride.  If you’ve read the review (its here), you know I absolutely loved it.

Loved it.

But what’s most surprising is the fact that it appears this episode has really torn some fans of the show.  While I’m clearly in the camp that loved it, there are those who really detested the episode.

Over at IMDB and on the page representing the episode, the main user review featured (at least for now), is highly negative.  Scroll down a little more and a couple of the topics featured in the message board also note the series is “going downhill”.

Frankly, seeing these negative comments surprises me though by now it should not.

It proves yet again that critical opinions of artistic works can vary -sometimes wildly- from person to person.

As someone who did not think all that much of either Star Wars (back when it was originally released in 1977!) and absolutely hated Guardians of the Galaxy, yet finds himself strangely enthralled by the mess that is Supernova, it should come as no surprise that others won’t agree with my opinions.

Yet the negative reviews of The Abominable Bride nonetheless did surprise me.  Not that they’re many (despite the mentioned critical comments, the film nonetheless scores a high 8.6 out of 10 on IMDB), but it just seemed like those who didn’t like it either didn’t get “into” it (ie, lose themselves in the story as I did) or were frustrated by the fact that the show went on such a flight of fancy.

I admit, the episode did go off on a tangent (especially when the previous series ended on such a cliffhanger).  Still, it’s hard to believe those who didn’t like it didn’t at least see something good in that episode, whether it be the clever dialogue or acting or…

Ah well, that’s why they’re called opinions.

TV

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (2016) a (very mildly) belated review

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If you haven’t watched any of the Benedict Cumberpatch/Martin Freeman Sherlock movies, you’ve missed out on something truly special and should check them out.

Go ahead, I’m waiting.

Seriously, with perhaps a single exception, Sherlock could well be one of the greatest things to make their way to television in these past couple of years.  The idea behind the series is to make adaptations of Sir Conan Arthur Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories but set them in modern times.

Benedict Cumberpatch rocketed to superstardom as Sherlock Holmes but equally effective is Martin Freeman as the sardonic Dr. Watson.  The two play off each other magnificently and the movies presented are alternatively hilarious, incredibly clever, and eminently watchable.

(I mentioned above that there was one exception.  That would be the adaptation of perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Sadly, of all the Sherlock episodes made, this proved to be the most confusing one, to me)

On New Year’s Day, the BBC released The Abonimable Bride, a special “one-off” Sherlock film that had our intrepid characters going back in time to the era Sherlock Holmes is most associated, the late 1800’s.

I’m so tempted to get into details regarding the episode but all that would do is spoil things so I won’t.  I will say this, however: This might well be one of the absolute best of the Sherlock episodes/movies ever made.  It is clever, engaging, hilarious (some of the dialogue!  I would kill to write such clever dialogue!), and incredibly surprising.

When it was over I was absolutely blown away by what I had just seen.

The story, in short: In late 19th Century London, a woman in a wedding dress appears to go crazy on the balcony of her apartment and fires at people down below.  Ultimately, she puts the barrel of one of her revolvers in her mouth and blows her brains out.

She’s dead, it would appear, yet her husband, who is about to head out to identify her corpse, is confronted by his wife in her wedding dress.  He sees her and positively identifies her before witnesses…before she kills him with a shotgun.  She then vanishes but her corpse is still in the morgue!

How could a dead woman kill her husband?

Holmes is tasked to solve the mystery but is unable to.  A year later, he is presented with a new mystery…and the ghostly bride appears to have returned from the grave to seek out another victim.

Great, great stuff.

I’m once again tempted to go into SPOILERS but I won’t.

Suffice to say, this “old fashioned setting” episode plays an intricate role in the Sherlock series though, on the surface, it would appear not to.

For those who haven’t seen the series, you simply must try to catch it.  For those who have, The Abominable Bride might well be one of the very best episodes of the series ever created.

I’m not kidding here: Sherlock, and The Abominable Bride in particular, is television at its very best.

TV

Ash Vs. Evil Dead, Season One (2015): A (mildly) belated review

I’m going to come right out and say it: I loved the first season of Ash Vs. Evil Dead, for the most part, but really –really- hated the ending.  (A quick counterpoint from i09: How Ash Vs. Evil Dead Took Everything We Loved From The Movies And Made It Better).

If you know anything at all about the Evil Dead films (the original Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) and actor/God Bruce Campbell, there’s nothing I can add to the myth/legend that is Ashley “Ash” J. Williams, the “hero” of these three films and the new Starz! series Ash Vs. Evil Dead.

Good ol’ Ash (Bruce Campbell, of course), like all of us is a little older but -hopefully unlike all of us- not at all wiser than he was in the original series of films.  He’s still full of those delightful, often vulgar wisecracks and smart ass comments that endeared him to legions of fans, of which I’m one.

The Ash Vs. Evil Dead series started out incredibly strong with a premiere episode directed by Sam Raimi, who was the director of the previous three original Evil Dead movies (the less said about the modern remake, the better).  One of the biggest problems subsequent episodes of the series had was that Mr. Raimi didn’t direct any of the other 9 episodes and, while the other directors didn’t do a bad job by any stretch, that premiere episode looked and flowed, to my mind, much better than what followed.  Please note this was not a critical problem with the bulk of the series but became more noticeable when we reached the the last two to three episodes of the season.  It was in the climactic moments I wished Mr. Raimi was there, directing us through the greatest mayhem.

I’ll get back to the first season’s climax in a moment.

So the plot of the show goes like this: Ash screws up yet again and while stoned and with his latest “girlfriend” reads from the cursed Book of the Dead, the Lovecraftian Necronomicon.  Of course, this releases a new wave of deadly demons/deadites.

Ash comes to this realization and while in his dull Superstore job he reluctantly gathers his coworkers Pablo Simon Bolivar (Ray Santiago) and Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo) and off they go together to try to end the deadite menace once and for all.

Meanwhile FBI agent Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones) also has an encounter with the strange and this leads her to believe Ash is behind the menace.  We’re concurrently introduced to the mysterious Ruby Knowby (Lucy Lawless who, for most of the ten episodes is but a cameo player), who eventually joins forces with Agent Fisher in her pursuit of Ash.

The episodes that follow are filled with gory, bloody effects mixed with hilarious dialogue that further proves Ash is a blowhard fool.  The show, however, shows us that deep beneath the swagger lies a man who genuinely wants to do the right thing even with his mental handicap(s).

Again, this is played to great effect and I absolutely loved -and relished!- every moment Bruce Campbell’s Ash opened his mouth, so eager was I to hear the latest silliness he was about to utter.  My favorite line of the series came early and is found at the 50 second mark of the series’ trailer and concerns…churros?

So the series proceeded and characters got together and eventually made their way -it was logical- to the cabin in the woods that birthed the whole mess in Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

Repeating once again: While the direction in these concluding episodes wasn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination, one can’t help but compare the cabin scenes in Ash Vs. Evil Dead with those of the movies, particularly Evil Dead II.  And when one does this, one can’t help but feel that the Sam Raimi directed movie had a greater manic energy and humor and, once again (redux), one comes away wishing Mr. Raimi was again at the helm during these episodes.

Moving away from the direction, the crux of my critique lies in the way the series “ended”.  Or, rather, didn’t.

Evil Dead II, the movie that most resembles Ash Vs. Evil Dead, gave us a great story which had a definite ending.  It was then followed by a coda meant to get us interested in more Evil Dead material.  This coda was the jumping off point into Army of Darkness.

Unfortunately with Ash Vs. Evil Dead, we get a great story but even with the 10 episodes of approximately half an hour each for a total run-time of five or so hours, when all is said and done what we were given was nothing more than an introduction to a story.

Ash Vs. Evil Dead’s conclusion wasn’t much of one at all.  Through the series we move from place to place and reach that cursed cabin in the woods but instead of getting a conclusion to the story we’re effectively told the story is about to happen (hello, season 2!) and this disappointed me tremendously.

We still don’t know who/what exactly Ruby Knowby is.  Sure we were given some big hints but she remains an enigma that will obviously be dealt with in greater detail in the future.  Worse was the fate of another of the main characters (I won’t get into spoilers here) who wound up being nothing more than an overglorified victim.

As for the remaining characters, including Ash, its obvious his fight against the deadites has just begun.

In sum, I loved loved loved Ash Vs. Evil Dead…up to the conclusion which I felt wasn’t much of one.

Given the amount of joy the series offered versus that disappointing final five or so minutes, I suppose Ash would likely say, “quit your bitchin’, there’s a second season on the way”.

Of course that’s true.  And you know what?  I’ll be right there to see it.

Alright, I’ll quit my bitchin’.  Despite my reservations regarding the conclusion, I HIGHLY recommend the first season of Ash Vs. Evil Dead to anyone who likes their gory horror mixed with some hilarious -and vulgar- comedy.

Just go into this realizing that the full story will take at least two seasons to tell…I hope!

General

…Ring in the New

So its 2016 and I feel super-refreshed.  Why?  Because for one week I got to get out the house for the first time in way too long and was extremely lucky, it turned out considering the too-warm weather, to have a day like this…

E

Just call me the master of the Bunny Hill in Horseshoe, just north of Barrie, Ontario.  For those curious, no, I didn’t have strange visions of deceased actors…

I went up those mighty fifty or so feet and their terrific 10 degree drop and came down several dozen times with but two near wipe-outs.  Great fun was had until the final run, when I did the Bunny Hill + (a slightly longer Bunny Hill with a somewhat sharper angle descent) and a father and his daughter were in my path, forcing me to swerve while going waaaay too fast onto a not-too smooth surface.

Yes, it was there I had a mighty wipe-out.  Messed up my left shoulder a little and it still hurts when I turn my head to the right…

Well, that’s what ibuprofen is for.

Hope everyone had a great Holiday and are as refreshed as I am for the new year!

Movies

Ring out the old…

As 2015 rapidly reaches its end, I’ve somehow found a few minutes of time to ring out the soon-to-be old year with a couple of thoughts.

First up and excuse the sentimentality: I want to thank all those out there who’ve read and enjoyed my books and have subsequently taken the time to either review them on Amazon or Goodreads or Library Thing or personally send me kind words regarding your experience.

Though I’m not arrogant enough to think all of my novels will or should be enjoyed by everyone out who gets their hands on them, words cannot express how grateful I am to hear from those who have enjoyed the material I’ve worked so hard on.

To all of you, there is much more coming and I appreciate your patience in waiting for the next book’s arrival.

The reality of writing is that it takes an awful long time to get each of my novels finished in a way I’m satisfied with.  Trust me when I say I’m as eager to get them out as I’m sure many of you are to read them.  The new books will come.  Slowly but surely, they’ll come.  And when they do, I guarantee they will be the very best works I’m capable of delivering.

The second and last thing I wanted to talk about before bowing out for the year (Don’t worry, I’ll be back to posting no later than January 3rd or 4th) is, of all things, Star Wars.

No, I have not broken down and gone to see The Force Awakens (If I catch the movie at all it will be when it reaches home video).  What I’d like to talk about is the original 1977 Star Wars.

You know, the movie I’ve gone on and on (and on and on) talking about how when I originally saw it in 1977 I was the right age and a sci-fi fan and how I just couldn’t get into it and so on and so forth and how, to this day, I never became a Star Wars fan…

Well, draw a deep breath: I’d like to see the original film again.

No, not the “Special Edition” I saw a few years back when George Lucas tinkered with the movie and replaced/expanded many of its special effects along with adding the whole “Greedo shoots first” bit.  I’m talking about seeing the original film I saw back in 1977.

While I remain, at best, ambivalent towards the whole Star Wars phenomena, I can’t deny the zeal (and box office success) resulting from the release of The Force Awakens.  It is this zeal which has (ahem) awoken in me a desire to revisit the first Star Wars film and, to be very honest, give it another chance.

Thing is, I can’t.

Not legally, anyway.

Sure, I can see a smudged, poor sounding copy that was released to VHS tapes and, later laserdiscs before finally being put in as an add-on to the “Special Edition” releases, but let’s be honest here: The quality of those copies is horrendous.

So to repeat, the only way to see the 1977 version of the film in a print that looks and sounds as gorgeous as it did back in 1977 when it was originally released and without the many add-on special effects George Lucas inundated the film with…is to do so illegally:

You Can Watch an “Unaltered” Version of Star Wars in HD Today, If You Bend The Law

The article’s heading tries to be too kind.  To see a beautiful restored HD copy of the original 1977 Star Wars you have to go to a torrent site and download it.  There you will find the work of a group of Star Wars fans who were eager to see the film they treasured in a sparkling clear format.  To do this, they found multiple sources and cleaned up the various elements and ultimately recreated the film for this HD era.

According to the article above, their work is nothing short of breathtaking.

However, by making it available to others to download, they are engaging in -and causing those who download their copy of the film- into performing illegal acts.  Though they make not one cent from their work, they are still releasing copyright material they have no rights to.

I suppose the one good thing which may come from their efforts is that Disney/Lucas may finally be forced to release a cleaned up HD copy of the movie on their own.  That is, of course, unless George Lucas still refuses to allow its release.

George Lucas’ obvious disdain for the original 1977 version of Star Wars remains one of the great modern mysteries in the movie world.  Given how successful his film was and is, whatever qualms I may have over the film obviously pale compared to Mr. Lucas’ views.

Which, in a very long winded way, brings us back to what I wrote about my own novels above.  I absolutely don’t want to release any of my works unless I’m certain they’re “good enough” to be released.  Perhaps Mr. Lucas is caught in a version of this, only his “rough draft” copy of the film was already released to great acclaim.

The Special Editions will always exist.

Why not give fans access to a pristine, cleaned up HD copy of the original, unaltered, original version?

Anyway, see you in 2016!

Have a great Holiday Season and a terrific New Years!

Movies

Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am…

While Star Wars was indisputably THE big summer hit of 1977, there was another film released at that very same time and in direct competition with that movie that was also a very big hit: the Burt Reynolds/Sally Field/Jerry Reed/Jackie Gleason action/comedy Smokey and the Bandit…

I love Smokey and the Bandit.  Back in the day I saw the film over and over and over again and have large swaths of its dialogue memorized.  Though the film does show its age today, at the time it was easily the most exciting and hilarious action film I’d ever seen…and the stunt work was like something from another planet.

The reason I point this out is because there is an upcoming auction which will feature a Trans Am that was used to promote the film back in the day.  Check it out…

Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am set for auction

From the article, here’s what I assume is a photograph of that particular Trans Am:

1977 transam

Now, note what I said above: The auction features the Trans Am used to promote the film.  While the car looks exactly like the one in the movie, this car was never actually in it and this is partly the reason why I’m pointing the article out.

The other, more interesting to me reason is I’ve always been curious if there were any of the original Trans Ams actually used in the film out there somewhere.  Given the sometimes grueling stunts these cars performed, I also wondered how many were used and how many were destroyed in the process of the film’s production.

And the article answered my questions.  From the article:

The four 1977 Pontiacs that were used for filming were so damaged that they were destroyed soon after filming was complete, according to auction house Barrett-Jackson, which is selling the car.

They “only” used 4 Trans Ams for the film?  That surprises me, to tell you the truth.  As anyone who’s seen the film knows, these cars were really put through their paces.  Some of the bigger showcase stunts, especially those involving the car jumping high in the air, I’ve long suspected left the vehicles useless.

Now I know that all the cars used in the film, alas, didn’t make it.

Now I know and, if you were as curious as I was, so do you!

Movies

Momentum (2015) a (mildly) belated review

While I can’t remember when/how I first heard of the 2015 film Momentum, I do recall seeing the trailer and thinking it didn’t look too bad:

Then, shortly afterwards, appeared reports the film was given a very limited release in England and flopped.  Hard:

Hardly a blockbuster! Morgan Freeman thriller Momentum makes just £46 from its opening weekend at cinemas across Britain

The above article, from dailymail.com, notes the film was released to only 10 theaters as well as simultaneously being available on demand.  Therefore it is possible those interested in seeing the film watched it from the comfort of their homes rather than heading out to the theaters (It is also my understanding the film was dropped into theaters without any advertising which is a sure fire way to generate a cinematic bomb).

Regardless of the bad press, I remained curious to see the film and yesterday had a chance to do just that.

So, was the film a decent enough action/adventure time killer or a waste of time?

As it turns out, all the above.

Momentum, despite its $20 million budget (this is according to IMDB), “feels” like a cheaply done film.  Yes, there are special effects and stuntwork but the overall look of the film is surprisingly dreary for a relatively higher budgeted film.  Comparing the “look” of Momentum with that of, for example, the also low budgeted The Frame (you can read my review of that here) and there is no comparison at all.  The Frame looks gorgeous while Momentum…doesn’t.

The visuals aside, how does Momentum fare as a movie?

Well, it starts off rather silly, with a bank robbery wherein the perpetrators, including our hero Alex Farraday (Olga Kurylenko, looking as beautiful as ever), perform a bank robbery while wearing high tech but ultimately silly sci-fi looking costumes.  How silly are these costumes?  When any of the members of the robbery team talk, a band of lights come on where their mouth is to indicate who is speaking.  Was that really necessary?

Anyway, you get glimpses of the costumes in the above trailer and, while they may look neat, other than showing us who is speaking with those fancy lights and hiding their looks, one wonders why the thieves didn’t save their money and get some cheap Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan masks…or something.

The thieves wind up robbing a security box of its diamonds but within the box is also a computer chip.

This computer chip becomes the movie’s “MacGuffin“.  On the chip is information that can take down a powerful and very corrupt U.S. senator (Morgan Freeman in a role that it looks like he did over a day or so while nowhere near any of the other actors).

What happens is one of the thieves, Kevin Fuller (Colin Moss), ex-lover of Alex and the man who brought her into this job against her wishes, was always after this chip and, by extension, the Senator.  Alex winds up in the cross hairs when a “cleaning squad” led by the deadly Mr. Washington (James Purefoy, looking like he’s enjoying himself while playing a slimy bad guy) shows up to take out Kevin and another person working for him while Alex hides and witnesses the whole bloody affair.

Of course Alex becomes Mr. Washington’s target as she winds up with the chip and what follows is the best part of the film, an open air version of Die Hard with Alex on the run from the bad guys.

We’re soon introduced to other characters, including Kevin’s wife (given the fact that Alex is Kevin’s ex-lover, she has good reason not to like Alex) while mayhem follows in their wake.

I won’t go into too many more details but a little after the halfway point of this film the (ahem) momentum sputters and some really stupid things happen that call into question Alex’s plans for taking down these bad guys.  Without giving too much away, we have another of those cliched “character gets captured on purpose to effect her plan” and, given what Alex goes through in this section, she’s either a masochist or stupid or both.

Despite all that, the movie manages to salvage a pretty good climax involving, of all things, Mr. Washington’s tie.

Yes, I’m serious.

In the course of the movie Alex references Mr. Washington’s “ugly” tie a few times and as a viewer I thought it was one of those throwaway “humorous” lines.  Yet these seeming throwaway lines wind up having not one but two terrific -and very clever- payoffs in the movie’s climax.

Again, I’m being dead serious here.

It is the cleverness of these payoffs that makes me wonder if Momentum’s script might well have been far better than the final product suggests.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t quite end with that second tie payoff (but it should have!) and in the movie’s closing minutes it is clear the makers planned Momentum to be the first in a series.  Our evil Senator is still out there as is Alex and the envisioned -but seriously doubtful to be made- sequel would likely feature the two on a collision course (hey, maybe that was the name they would give the film!).

Considering the amount of money the theatrical release in England didn’t make, don’t hold your breath waiting for the sequel.

Momentum wound up, to me, not being a total waste of time but neither is it a movie worth recommending.  While I felt the cast in general did its work, the people behind the scenes, including the director and, in particular, cinematographer could and should have done better.

A real shame because there are parts in this film that lift it from your typical brainless action-fest.