Two people who have been in my life one way or another have passed.
Jerry Lewis was 91 years old and, toward the end of his life, was rather notorious in his later years as a (let’s put it kindly) a crank. His style of comedy, I must admit, wasn’t to my taste but it is undeniable he left behind a large legacy and plenty of comedians who were guided/inspired by him.
My greatest memories of him is for the muscular dystrophy telethons, which took over the TV back in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s and lasted for a solid 24 hours. Mr. Lewis, toward the end of these telethons, was sometimes barely coherent but given the good he did during these events, one can’t help but admire him for that.
Dick Gregory also passed away. He was 84 and also leaves behind a large legacy though, like Mr. Lewis, his biggest contributions to culture came a little before my time. An African American comedian who was one of the very first to be able to perform in front of white audiences. He was a civil rights activist and, occasionally, actor.
While neither individual personally touched me as they did so many others of the generation(s) before mine, its nonetheless worth given them their due.
Interesting article regarding costume design in movies and how it serves to further the story in subtle ways:
I was particularly intrigued with the analysis of the costumes in the original Star Wars film.
Those who have followed this blog for any length of time know that I’m not a huge fan of Star Wars, both the original movie and series of films. I don’t begrudge everyone else’s enjoyment of them, but they just never worked for me in spite of the fact that I was of the right age at the right time and went to see the original film in 1977 in a packed theater and… it just didn’t work for me like it did for so many others.
Yet the analysis of the dress/costumes in the film as presented in the above video is spot on. It is a far trickier thing to create “original” costumes that are futuristic and fit into the setting of a film like Star Wars yet are grounded enough in things we as an audience may recognize -even if subconsciously- to understand what we’re seeing. Thus, the military style outfits of the Empire are recognizably so, even if they don’t necessarily look like any military we are familiar with. Similarly, Princess Leia’s outfit is regal, hinting at her royalty, yet original/futuristic enough to make us both recognize it for the royal aspect and the sci-fi aspect.
And Luke Skywalker’s outfit… I have to say, I never thought of it the way it was explained above but what’s presented is a brilliant observation. (No, I don’t want to spoil it)
Directed and written by Oz Perkins, son of actor Anthony Perkins who is best known today for the role of Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, The Blackcoat’s Daughter sure does play out like a Hitchcockian horror film.
Here’s its trailer:
I found it humorous to see, after the fact, a couple of videos also on YouTube “explaining” the film and, in my opinion, the explanations are sometimes quite off.
Which leads us to The Blackcoat’s Daughter’s (BD from here on) biggest problem: It presents a story in a very non-linear manner (nothing wrong about that) but fails to be clear enough about what we’re seeing and, worse, getting us to care enough about it.
Which is not to say BD is a total bust.
Mr. Perkins has clearly sucked in Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre and if nothing else this film reflects his love for that thrill master’s work. BD is elegant, measured, and when it gets bloody it certainly reminded me of the film Psycho.
However, the story presented simply doesn’t take you in as it should and while the final reveal (another Psycho inspired element?) is made, you must have seen it coming from a long way away.
In a nutshell, BD goes like this:
At an upscale Catholic boarding school Freshman Kat (Kiernan Shipka) awaken from a nightmare where she walks through a snowy parking lot and sees a crashed vehicle which clearly has some victims within it. That day in late February (which, by the way, was the original name of the film), the school goes on break and parents are supposed to pick up all the kids for a week off.
Kat is clearly disturbed by this vision and somehow appears to know that her parents will not come to pick her up. Even more eerily, she has a strange attachment to the school’s headmaster and is bothered that he won’t be around for her piano recital given on the date of the parental pickups.
Meanwhile, fellow, but older, student Rose (Lucy Boynton) is a more rebellious student who fears she is pregnant.
When the parents show up to pick up the kids in the boarding school, neither Kat nor Rose’s parents show up. Kat, who had the premonition of his parent’s death, is very disturbed they haven’t shown up. Rose, on the other hand, played her parents and told them the pickup date was later that week. This was done so she could talk with her boyfriend and tell him of her possible pregnancy.
Meanwhile (part deux), a mysterious young woman named Joan (Emma Roberts) is taking a bus to a mysterious destination. After arriving at her destination, she sits on a bench in the winter cold and a kindly man named Bill (James Remar), realizes she looks lost and cold and offers her a ride.
Bill and his wife Linda (Lauren Holly) take Joan in and, it turns out, they are on a very sad journey.
I don’t want to get into too many more details here (though I will after the SPOILER ALERT), but suffice to say these five characters and their stories will intersect before we reach the film’s end.
BD is, as I stated before, an elegant, well acted and well filmed movie which presents an admittedly fresh story… but, sadly, when all is said and done the film fails to sufficiently draw in this viewer (at least) and while I appreciate the care and thought behind the movie, it simply doesn’t present enough -and present it clearly enough- to get me to care.
Still, there is meat here and while I may feel this film is ultimately a whiff, Mr. Perkins shows considerable talent behind the camera, even if he’s a little better a director than a writer (again, IMHO).
So I can’t recommend BD even as I can commend Mr. Perkins for giving us something relatively new and interesting, even if it fails in the end to this viewer.
Now, on to…
SPOILER ALERTS!!!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!
Still there?
You have been warned!
BD presents, in the end a very non-linear story. It offers us scenes and then returns to them later in the film from a different character’s viewpoint which reveals to the audience just what was going on.
For example, Kat has a strange relationship with the heat furnace in the school’s basement, which is called back to later in the film.
But the one biggest reveal, which as I said before falls into Psycho territory, is that we find that “Joan” is not really who she says she is. It turns out this woman strangled a woman in a bathroom and took her ID, which was indeed “Joan”.
For this “Joan” is Kat, nine years later.
Kat, it turns out, at the time her parents didn’t show up to get her all those years before, descended into some kind of a breakdown or -and this is where the film kinda lost me- was possessed by a demon.
Kat in time goes on a killing spree and takes out the two headmistresses/nuns living just outside the school before killing Rose who, moments before and in the bathroom had a period -again, something implied more than “shown” although in this case I’m OK with that!- and realized she wasn’t pregnant after all.
So nine years later Kat has managed to escape the insane asylum and is making her way back to the boarding school. The people who picked her up, ironically enough, turn out to be Rose’s parents. They are still in deep grief and are headed in that general direction to pay tribute to their lost daughter, unaware they have just picked up her daughter’s killer and will soon become victims of her just as their daughter was.
And Kat’s ultimate goal?
In the concluding moments of the film it is revealed that shortly after Kat was subdued a priest performed an exorcism on Kat and banished the demon that possessed her.
But Kat didn’t want it to go!
So she’s returning to the now boarded up school with her fresh victims (her first while “on her own”) and when she gets to the school and returns to the furnace where she first encountered the demon directly, she finds… nothing.
The furnace where she worshiped her personal demon is long cold.
The demon is long gone, banished forever.
And the disturbed Kat wandered back out to the road and cries.
Fin.
When watching the videos “explaining” what the movie is about, both I watched miss completely the fact that Rose finds out she’s not pregnant. One of them seems to think that Kat and the school knew her parents were dead already (they most certainly did not) and missed the fact that when the headmaster and police officer come to the school later in the film, they’re obviously doing so to tell Kat her parents are dead, only to find Kat has gone on her bloody rampage.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter all that much. Indeed, the whole subplot involving Rose and her pregnancy/non-pregnancy are, in the end, not really all that important to the story, which makes me wonder if maybe this is yet another tribute to Psycho (Janet Leigh’s character’s story, which initially draw the viewer in, winds up being something of a red herring in the end).
So there you have it folks, a decent and potentially intriguing film that just missed for me.
So yesterday our President had some hair raising things to say about North Korea… words that made him sound a lot like North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, the man who his words were directed at!
And coincidentally and over on the cable channel Starz, they happened to be playing Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
Seeing Sterling Hayden’s insane General Jack D. Ripper had me in a cold sweat.
Suddenly, the film wasn’t quite as funny as before.
Many years ago I stumbled upon a book in -I think- a used bookstore (remember those?) and the cover image blew me away. Because it was part of a very long series, I can’t recall which book it was exactly, but the cover most likely was a James Bama illustrated one like this:
For those who don’t know who Doc Savage is, he was/is arguably the first ever “superhero”. His adventures were mostly written by a man named Lester Dent along with a few others and under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson. The original stories were presented in short novel form and in pulp magazines…
The Bantam reprints of the Doc Savage books were a hit though I suspect a great deal of credit goes to James Bama’s re-imagining of Doc Savage’s “look” (the two images presented above are the original cover to the story Fortress of Solitude, with Doc looking like a typical 1930’s hunky movie star, and the James Bama one, where he looks like an odd, mysterious, almost mutant-like being). James Bama eventually left the reprint series but the subsequent books featured artists who emulated his style, especially his “take” on the character of Doc Savage…
Recently all 181 Doc Savage novels were reprinted -beautifully, I might add- in a prestige magazine format…
To say I’m a fan of Doc Savage is an understatement. I find the original novels fun, intriguing, and, while dated, exciting as hell.
No doubt in large part thanks to the success of the Bantam reprints, in 1975 a film version of Doc Savage was made. It featured Ron Ely in the title role. Strap yourselves in if you haven’t “experienced” this before…
To say the movie -to a fan of Doc Savage like myself- was a disappointment is pretty much the king of understatements. While the cast was pretty good and Ron Ely, IMHO, was a good choice for the titular role, the film suffered from a lack of a consistent tone and at times too cheesy -and jokey- presentation.
The movie was a flop yet interest in Doc Savage remained. Over the many years since that movie’s release, a number of directors, including such luminaries as James Cameron, have attached themselves to a new film version. None, however, were able to seal the deal and get the film actually made.
The latest in this line was/is Shane Black, best known for his screenplays to, among others, Lethal Weapon (the original), or acting in films such as Predator, or directing/writing films such as Iron Man 3 or last year’s The Nice Guys. Mr. Black’s version of Doc Savage, it was further reported, drew the interest of Dwayne Johnson which is a coup considering how popular an actor he is.
That news, alas, didn’t thrill me so much. While I like Mr. Johnson and feel he’s very good -and charismatic- in a number of movies, I just didn’t feel he was the right choice for the role of Doc Savage.
Regardless, back in July Shane Black was asked about progress on the Doc Savage film and it appears the movie may be stalled right now. The below link is to the article -again, from July, so take the information with that grain of salt- by David Kozlowski and presented on lrmonline.com:
The bottom line is that Shane Black is currently very busy with the editing of the new Predator movie, which he also directed, and Dwayne Johnson is very busy making his twenty to fifty plus movies each year, so Mr. Black is basically telling everyone to not hold their breaths regarding the new Doc Savage film. At this point it’s a matter of finding the time for all parties to be freed up and able to get together and that may not happen -if at all- for a while.
Sure, I’d love to see a new Doc Savage movie. But I’d be lying if I said this news of its stalled nature depressed me. Though some of the interviews with Shane Black regarding Doc Savage gave the impression he was a big fan of the character and wanted to make a respectful movie from the source material, I continued to have doubts about Mr. Johnson in the lead role (again, I like his work, but until I see him do it, I just can’t envision him in that role) and therefore can’t be too unhappy this particular project might not come to fruition.
A while back I caught -for maybe the fourth time- the 1966 Paul Newman detective film Harper (you can read my full review of the film here). Based on the Lew Archer detective stories by writer Ross Macdonald, Harper is considered a great second generation version of the old hard-boiled detective movie genre.
Ross Macdonald, to me, was a great writer who wrote many great novels and his Lew Archer books are high up there on my list of re-readable works. Having said that, it is also clear Mr. Macdonald (actually a pen name for Kenneth Millar), was very much mimicking the Raymond Chandler detective novels, even as he was doing a magnificent job at it. I can see where some might find it difficult to admire Mr. Macdonald’s work because it owes so much to Raymond Chandler, but, again, his works are so damn good it eventually doesn’t matter.
One of the more interesting bits of casting in the movie Harper was having Lauren Bacall in it as the matriarch of the screwed up family Harper (Paul Newman, reportedly, wanted the Archer name changed because in the 1960’s he was on a roll with movies featuring characters whose name began with an “H”. I’m not kidding) is investigating. This bit of casting was especially satisfying as one of her classic roles had her co-star, with husband Humphrey Bogart, in the Raymond Chandler novel adaptation The Big Sleep (1946), which as I stated above was mimicked so well by Ross Macdonald in his novels.
Harper, to me, is a damn good movie thought I don’t feel it quite reaches the level of The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon or Murder, My Sweet. It feels over-long and, sadly, the near cameo role played by Janet Leigh (who is quite good in the film, nonetheless), could have been clipped without affecting the movie much at all.
Nearly ten years later and in 1975 a sequel to Harper was released entitled The Drowning Pool. Returning to the role of Lew Harper was Paul Newman.
I’d seen the film a while back and didn’t think all that much about it. In general, most critics felt this film was an inferior production, though like Harper it was based on, and adhered to, the Ross Macdonald novel.
A few days back I noticed it was being played on a cable channel (TCM?) and decided to give it another look. I set the DVR and, a couple of days afterwards, sat down and gave the film a look.
And I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.
Don’t get me wrong, The Drowning Pool is not as good a film as Harper. The plot kinda rolls along and there’s plenty of talk but not a whole heck of a lot of action.
Yet the movie intrigued me and -I won’t lie- I found myself immersed in it.
Paul Newman, as noted, returns to the role of Lew Harper. When the movie opens, he’s flown into New Orleans and meets up with Iris Devereaux (played by Paul Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward). Mrs. Devereaux, it turns out, was an old flame of Harper’s and is now married and living in an old Plantation house. She was, and its implied still is, something of a wild child and has apparently had a fling or two on the side. A recently fired chauffeur, it appears, is sending blackmail notes to her demanding money or her affair(s) will be revealed.
Because Mrs. Devereaux lives under the steel thumb of Olivia Devereaux, the mother of her husband and a woman who supposedly keeps everyone in the household in line, she fears that if this information is revealed she’ll be cut off from the family and its fortune and sent packing. Worth noting is the implication her husband, the barely seen in the movie James Devereaux, is heavily implied to be a closeted homosexual whose marriage to Iris is a sham and therefore her fears are very real.
So Iris Devereaux calls on Harper to find the chauffeur and make him stop sending the notes and Harper agrees to do so while getting involved in the machinations of the Devereaux family and people who know them.
He soon encounters Iris’ daughter, the angry and even wilder-child Schuyler (Melanie Griffith in one of her first movie roles) as well as the chief of police Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) and his very hot tempered deputy, Franks (Richard Jaeckel). In time, Harper will also bump into J. J. Kilbourne (Murray Hamilton), who may be pulling several strings behind the scenes.
Interestingly, much as I liked the movie Harper and still feel it is a superior movie, I came away feeling The Drowning Pool more effectively captured the tone of the Ross Macdonald novels, and for that I have to give the film a huge plus.
Again, The Drowning Pool may not be a superb film but it is a pretty damn good one and like Mr. Macdonald’s novels it unravels in a slow yet satisfying way, giving you time to sink your teeth into almost every character and realize how it is they interact with -and against!- each other.
Ross Macdonald’s Archer novels tended to feature complex -and very screwed up- family interactions and this movie gives it to us in spades. The ending is shocking, sad, and leaves us wondering what could have been, another familiar theme present in the Archer novels.
In conclusion, its nice to revisit a film you didn’t think all that much of and find it a better experience than you thought. While today’s ADD audiences might find the movie too slow to sit through, I enjoyed soaking up the ambiance and characters present in The Drowning Pool.
The embedded trailer below, alas, cuts off some 1:15 seconds in. No matter, its not a terribly good trailer for the film and makes everything look more tongue in cheek than it was…
In case you’re curious (and, what the hell, even if you’re not), I’d probably still put Memento as Christopher Nolan’s best film. Though low budget, it was an absolutely incredible bit of daring film making, giving us a story presented in chunks and going backwards in time.
Incredibly, there is a big payoff at the very end and, even more incredibly, if you have the DVD and/or BluRay that allows you to play the film in “normal” time, it works just as well!
As for most disappointing Christopher Nolan film… that would have to be Insomnia, which Mr. Ebiri also ranks rather low, giving it the #9 slot (I would put it at #10, frankly).
Here’s the thing about Insomnia: Mr. Nolan’s 2002 film was a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film featuring the same title which, IMHO, was so much better.
The plot of Insomnia is that a somewhat corrupt cop accidentally -or could it have been on purpose?- shoots and kills his partner while chasing a killer in the fog. We learn that our corrupt cop is about to have a hearing before the board and that his partner, the man he killed, may well have been about to testify against him.
The case they are involved in lies in a distant city in the Arctic and there, daytime light lasts for weeks. Our “hero”, whom audiences can’t quite know if he’s actually good or not, is affected by the constant light and can’t sleep all while trying to solve the vicious crime and keep an eye out on his superiors… who may be about to drop the hammer on him.
The original film, which featured an unknown cast (though lead actor Stellan Skarsgård has since become a better known fixture in American films), worked because of that fact. We were never sure of just how “good” or “bad” our protagonist was.
In the Christopher Nolan remake, the lead character is played by Al Pacino and, unfortunately, right away we know he’s a somewhat bad man who is trying to redeem himself from the grime of his life.
With the bigger names in the roles, we unfortunately know too much about the characters and their motivations and, therefore, already have an idea of where things are going, which we didn’t in the original film.
Yes, the remake had a big, powerhouse cast. But this may well have been a case where having bigger names meant we knew the film wouldn’t take too many chances and, indeed, it did not.
Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia isn’t a “terrible” film, by the way. I don’t think any of Mr. Nolan’s films are mediocre, much less “bad”. But when compared to some of his other works, it simply doesn’t measure up to them.
The other day I reviewed John Wick 2, the sequel to (duh) John Wick (if you’re curious, click here for that review). Long story short: Though I enjoyed the original film, I hated the sequel… even though the Rottentomatoes.com score among critics and audiences was quite high, I found the movie monotonous, repetitious, and ultimately incredibly boring for something that was purported to be an “action” film.
Today, I review another sequel, actually the third film in a series but second to feature Vin Diesel in the title role (I’ll explain in a moment),xXx: Return of Xander Cage.
The original 2002 film xXx was, to me anyway, an enjoyable “modern” take on the James Bond superspy. Back then, the X-Games were becoming a big thing and it seemed everyone was into doing “adrenaline” pumping stunts. Bungee jumping, extreme skiing/snowboarding, parasailing, etc. etc. etc.
Into that setting came xXx, a film that, if memory serves, opened cleverly with a pseudo-James Bondian type spy trying to infiltrate a party filled with these young adrenaline junkies. He’s sniffed out almost immediately and then snuffed out almost as quickly.
We then are introduced to Agent Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) who realizes that the “old” superspy won’t get the job done. That what is needed is someone young, someone who is comfortable in the adrenaline junkie world.
Enter Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage.
As far as superspy films go, I thought xXx was a decent piece of entertainment which had its tongue sufficiently in cheek to work. Vin Diesel, not quite yet the big star of the Fast and Furious films as he is now (at that point, only the very first Fast and Furious film had been released and the second of the franchise, the one not featuring Vin Diesel at all, would be released the following year).
Like Fast and Furious, Vin Diesel would skip this movie’s sequel, the 2005 xXx: State of the Union, which would hint that his character was killed and have Ice Cube come in as the “new” xXx agent, Darius Stone.
I never saw that film but from the reviews, it would appear I didn’t miss all that much.
It appeared the franchise was essentially dead after that point but, because of the box office rise of one Vin Diesel, one must never count out any of his previous projects.
So, twelve years after the release of xXx: State of the Union appears xXx: Return of Xander Cage and it features (you wouldn’t guess in a million years) the return of Vin Diesel’s Xander Cage!
…and…
…its not all that bad.
The film stuck to what made the first one a decent bit of entertainment, even though the whole “X-Games” and “adrenaline junkie” thing isn’t as big a thing as it was when the original film was made.
Further, Vin Diesel no longer looks like the young new guy and, perhaps fittingly, there is no attempt to have him blend in with the “young” crowds like was done in the first film.
The plot of xXx 3 (let’s just abbreviate it to this from now on, OK?) involves a computer device capable of bringing down satellites onto Earth and, thus, using them as a tool for assassination.
I know what you’re thinking: Aren’t there like, a zillion easier ways to assassinate people than to bring down satellites on them?
Of course there are but in this case, if you’re willing to accept this whooper of an absurdity and let the film go, you’ll have a reasonably fun time with it, though I grant you when its all over xXx 3 is nothing more (and for some/many I’m sure a lot less) than a mindless time killer.
Add an all star-action cast, a fun/surprising cameo appearance at the movie’s end, and delightful turns by Toni Collette (almost every scene she’s in she steals the show) and Nina Dobrev (who plays a somewhat ditzy xXx version of Q) and you have a decent time killer and not much else.
(A sidenote: This is the third film this year that’s had Ruby Rose in a smallish role in it, the first two being Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and the film I reviewed before this one, John Wick 2… she’s had a hell of a year appearing in these “B” action films!)
Look, this movie ain’t no Citizen Kane but, if you have a free afternoon and want to park your mind on “Neutral” and let things go, you could do far worse than see what’s up with Xander Cage.
Over the weekend (a busy one, at that), came the sad news that actor Martin Landau and director George A. Romero have passed away.
Martin Landau is one of those actors that I found really intriguing. When he was very young, he worked as a cartoonist and, when he went into acting, was a friend of James Dean’s. Perhaps Martin Landau’s best early role was the almost completely non-speaking thug Leonard in the seminal 1959 Alfred Hitchcock directed/Cary Grant starring North by Northwest.
Mr. Landau’s big breakout role would be as Rollin Hand in the wonderful 1960’s TV series Mission: Impossible…
Mr. Landau was rumored to have been considered for the role of Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series but, of course, that role went to Leonard Nimoy. Interestingly, when he and his then wife (and knockout beauty) Barbara Bain left the show, Leonard Nimoy would subsequently come in and play a character similar to his!
A few years later Mr. Landau and Ms. Bain and go on to star together in the sci-fi series Space: 1999…
For my money, that remains one of the groovier openings of any TV series. Sadly, the show itself was no Star Trek and, while a cult favorite, it never reached the heights of that show.
Mr. Landau seemed to essentially disappear after this show, popping up on oddball movies or shows here and there, including playing the crazed “Sarge” in the mostly forgotten (but not by me!) low budget chiller -and Predator pre-cursor- Without Warning.
While it appeared Mr. Landau’s career was faltering, he was about to have a late in life turnaround, appearing in such critically loved films as Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and, in a role that would earn his an Oscar for Best Supporting actor, the foul mouthed and elderly Bela Lugosi in the Tim Burton directed Ed Wood…
A fascinating actor who played many fascinating roles, even if the movies or TV shows he was involved in seemed beneath his talents. R.I.P. Mr. Landau.
******
The other big passing was George A. Romero, best known as the director of the original zombie epics Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (a personal favorite), and Day of the Dead.
Given what he created with these three films alone -and ignoring all the other things he was involved in, including his collaborations with Stephen King (Creepshow among them) and the TV series Tales From The Darkside– I hope he received plenty of recognition, if not a percent of the action, from the producers of The Walking Dead, a show that simply wouldn’t exist at all without Mr. Romero’s works.
Mr. Romero would spend his later years continuing to work on his zombie films and to, truth be known, produce far lesser results. At the time of his passing he was working on what, at least to me, appeared to be a pretty outrageous new zombie concept called Road of the Dead. According to IMDB, this is the film’s description:
The story is set on an island where zombie prisoners race cars in an arena for the sole purpose of entertaining the rich.
I actually kinda like the concept. Hopefully, one day we’ll see it and it’ll prove to be something as good as some of George Romero’s best works. Dark black comedy, bleak horror, and plenty of chills.
R.I.P. Mr. Romero. And, as the joke making its rounds goes, please don’t come back as a zombie!
Back in 2014 and after a series of critical and box office duds, Keanu Reeves’ star appeared to be on the wane. The actor himself noted that after the failure of 2008’s The Day The Earth Stood Still remake, he was no longer viewed as a very in demand actor.
But things got considerably brighter for Mr. Reeves when, in 2014, he starred in the quirky, action-filled John Wick.
The film concerned a proverbial cliched bad ass hit man who had retired. When we first meet Mr. Wick, he’s morose. His wife, we find, has died of cancer but not before leaving him a puppy. One day, while going out, his flashy 1969 Mustang captures the eyes of some youthful thugs and they want to buy the car. Wick says no and, later that day, they assault his house, beat him up, kill his puppy, and steal his car.
The rest of the movie concerns Mr. Wick getting back at the ones who wronged him, who turned out to be the son of a powerful Russian mobster Mr. Wick has worked with before.
John Wick, in my opinion, was a good -if not quite great- action film filled with great stunts and at times brutal gun play. Keanu Reeves was quite good as the driven hit man who seeks justice. There were other interesting touches in the film, including a sense of some kind of hit man/gangster order, including a “safe haven” hotel in the middle of New York where the dregs of society can stay at and be safe and woe be it to anyone who creates any chaos in this safe haven.
As I said, I liked the film. In my original review of it (you can read it here), I said the following:
(John Wick) builds on and on, reaching its climax and conclusion and leaving at least me hoping to see more.
As the saying goes, beware of what you wish for.
Earlier this year John Wick: Chapter 2 was released to generally good reviews and positive fan reaction. At this moment and on this day, Rottentomatoes.com has the film scoring a damn good 89% positive among critics and a near equal 87% positive among audiences. This score, by the way, is slightly higher than the 85% positive among critics and 80% positive among audiences for the original John Wick.
And like my reaction versus everyone’s else to Guardians of the Galaxy, I can’t help but shake my damn head.
John Wick 2 is more… and more… and more of the same.
And after about a half hour of seeing what to my eyes was essentially the same gunfight pattern again and again (close quarter combat, shooting people in the head, flipping and fightin’, etc.), I was bored.
To tears.
The plot this time around concerns a marker mobster Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio being at best only an “ok” slimeball) has on John Wick. Said marker entitles Santino to call in a favor from Wick and, while he refuses at first to do so, because of the hit man rules, Wick soon realizes he has to.
Them’s the breaks.
The favor Santino asks? He wants his sister killed. Seems his father recently passed away and willed her his power and seat at the prestigious “Table of 12”, a worldwide mobster power. Santino wants her out of the way so he can rule the clan and take that seat.
So after Wick realizes he has to do the job he heads to Italy and, eventually, gets down to business. He is then (surprise!) betrayed and gunfire, fights, CGI blood, close quarter shootouts, flips, punches, stabbings, etc. etc. yawn etc. etc. occur. Over and over and over and over again.
I honestly can’t think of another more action filled movie that bored me as much as this one did.
And I’m even more bewildered, as I was with the extremely positive reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy, as to why my opinion of this film is so at odds with the “mainstream”.
So for me, John Wick: Chapter 2 was a near total bust and, given I liked the first film, a big shame. However, given how much others seemed to like the film versus me, perhaps you should take my opinion with a proverbial grain of salt… it looks like I’m in the minority here.
