An interesting attempt to create a vampire “culture” while adhering to vampire lore, Daybreakers is nonetheless a disappointment despite some pretty good ideas.
The movie cleverly examines a world where vampires are at the top of the food chain and humans a rung below. Unfortunately, the vampire race is immediately presented as being in danger. Their main source of food, human blood, is rapidly running out and vampire scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) tries to find an “artificial” blood which could be used to feed the vampire culture’s voracious appetite while keeping humans alive. Dalton, as presented, is a conflicted character. While being a vampire, it is clear he has sympathy towards humans and realizes the vampire culture is corrupt and in decline. Later in the film, we also discover that he longs to return to his own humanity.
The vampire culture within the film is well thought through. The vampires drive cars that offer protection from the daylight and they live in appropriately dark abodes. Child vampires and vagrants run along the streets, their souls obviously much older than their outward appearances. All long for blood, and the deprivation of their source of food turns these vampires into hideous creatures who cannot be controlled.
Into this milieu Dalton finds Lionel Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a man who was a vampire yet somehow was able to turn back to human. It is this search for the cure to vampirism that forms the bulk of the second half of the film.
The movie’s main problem, however, is that it was clearly intended to be a much longer, much more detailed work than what we ultimately see on the screen. Indeed, watching Daybreakers is like reading a CliffsNotes version of the same…so many characters and situations are thrown at you and dealt with so quickly that you can’t help but wonder how much of the original screenplay was left behind or on the cutting room floor.
I suspect that the original concept and story was much better fleshed out. Had the film been, say, a half hour or so longer and allowed more time for story development, we might have felt more sympathy for some of the characters and their fates (whether good or bad). Instead, we have a film that feels like it rushes through what it wants to present to us and never allows us the opportunity to fully immerse ourselves into what we’re seeing before reaching the inevitable end.
So I was in one of those “lulls” with my Netflix queue. While waiting for a couple of movies to be released in the next few weeks, I had my pick of films I was curious about but not necessarily waiting with bated breath to see.
Among them I chose The Guard, a 2011 comedy featuring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle. I recalled the movie received positive reviews upon being released even if the film seemed to disappear rather quickly from theaters without garnering all that much attention from audiences.
So I gave it a whirl. I didn’t expect all that much, which made what came next all that more delightful.
The Guard is, to put it bluntly, one of the most consistently funny films I’ve seen in a very long time. From the beginning to the end I found myself laughing out loud at the situations presented and the very clever dialogue.
The story: Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Gleeson) is a walking contradiction of a police officer. He operates in a very small town in Ireland and is viewed as a “loose cannon” by those around him. He is alternately vulgar, seemingly corrupt (to a point), and, some may think, dim witted. However, there’s much more to Boyle than meets the eye. Over the course of the film, he becomes involved with a group of shady, violent, and surprisingly eloquent (!) drug runners as well as a very “fish out of water” American FBI agent (Cheadle) who is hunting them down.
Those expecting big action sequences will likely be disappointed. However, those same people should be won over by the movie’s clever and hilarious script. If, like me, you’re a little too accustomed to American English, feel free to use the subtitle feature to capture every delicious bit of dialogue.
It is rare to see a comedy that manages to sustain its energy level throughout its run time. Though The Guard wasn’t one of the films I was “dying” to get to on my queue list, I’m very happy to have given it a try. Highly recommended.
These are the most telling numbers regarding what the movie earned over the weekend (I’ve bolded the truly jaw dropping stats):
According to studio estimates, the colorful toddler-targeting entry, which is being distributed by Kenn Viselman Presents (Viselman formerly found massive success as producer of The Teletubbies), earned a truly awful $448,131 from 2,160 theaters in its debut three-day weekend.
That gross yielded a per theater average of $207. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: $207!
Just how low is that? Let’s pretend that the average ticket price for each customer was about $7 this weekend. That would mean that only 30 people saw Oogieloves at each theater — across all its showings — over the past three days.
Yikes!
Perhaps the worst part of all this is that, according to the article, the movie’s budget was an incredible $20 million to produce and another $40 million to promote!
Yikes, redux!
Saddest of all was the fact that I caught actor Chazz Palminteri on one of those morning shows on Friday promoting the film. He seemed like he was pleased with it and happy to have worked on something intended for very, very young viewers. But…he’s Chazz Palminteri. Whenever I think of him, what floats in my mind are mob/crime dramas. Adult fare like The Usual Suspects. Yet there he was, surrounded by people dressed in the Oogieloves’ costumes. Needless to say, he looked really out of place.
Looking at the cast of the film over at IMDB.com, I was surprised to see so many recognizable names among it. Did they actually appear on film or simply provide voices to the characters? I don’t know.
I’m not all that interested in finding out, either.
One of my favorite “slow burn” films is the 1968 Steve McQueen classic Bullitt. The movie features a dense plot and urges its viewers to pay attention to what’s going on. Steve McQueen himself, as the title character, appears at times to be almost sleepwalking through the proceedings, ever watching and paying attention to what’s going on around him. In the end, we realize he knows only too well what’s happening and has played his cards just right, dealing with his superiors and his superior’s superiors while faithfully solving a perplexing case.
I’ve long maintained that the movie’s one “superfluous” sequence is perhaps it’s best: The justifiably famous car chase sequence through the hilly streets of San Francisco. This sequence didn’t have to be in the film, yet it was there, a cheery on top of the cake, which for a moment made a “day in a policeman’s life” drama into an exciting action film.
To me, all this works to make an absolutely smashing film.
Fast forward forty four years and last night I popped the 2011 version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (from now on I’ll refer to it as TTSS to save on typing) into my DVD player and gave it a whirl. TTSS is an adaptation of the classic John Le Carre Cold War spy drama and, like the book, is set in the early 1970’s. You wouldn’t think such a work would have all that much in common with Bullitt, a police vs. the mob film from 1968, but you’d be surprised by the elements they do share.
In the case of TTSS, like Bullitt you’re dealing with a thoughtful protagonist who’s called in to solve a sticky situation. Bullitt’s sticky situation involves the mob and a witness who the higher ups want him to protect so that he will get to testify before a jury. TTSS involves a semi-retired spy who is called in to find out who among his closest ex-allies is a Russian mole. The protagonist in both films quietly observes all that goes around him, often realizing more than others realize. Both films also present the material almost blandly, showing us the routine of each day in a mostly realistic fashion.
But while Bullitt held my attention throughout, TTSS ultimately never really catches fire. Years before I recall seeing the original TTSS television mini-series with Alec Guiness in the title role, but I recall very few of the details. What I do remember is that it, unlike this new film, held my attention.
While the acting within this new TTSS movie is uniformly good and the presentation of early 1970’s London is quite spectacular, the direction and pace of the film borders on the outright boring. I suspect the people behind the film were trying their best to make an “anti”-Bourne type spy film, but one wonders why they decided to present virtually everything in such a sedate way.
And, no, I wasn’t hoping for an exciting -though perhaps superfluous- car chase in the middle of the film.
Might have helped, though!
In the end, I simply cannot recommend the theatrical version of TTSS. A real shame, given the talents involved.
As an interesting comparison, here’s a sequence from the original TV version of TTSS:
There have been quite a few nice tributes written for the late director Tony Scott, who committed suicide last week and was recently laid to rest.
His career was varied and productive, not unlike his (perhaps) better known brother Ridley Scott. Unlike his brother, however, Tony Scott’s films never quite achieved the higher critical reaction that his brother Ridley received for at least two of his films, Alien and Blade Runner.
Nonetheless, Tony Scott was behind the director’s chair for such commercial -if not always critical- hits like Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Man on Fire, Spy Game, and, most recently, the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 and Unstoppable. The films mentioned above were all, in my opinion, reasonably popular entertainment, but I suspect there are few who would all or even most “classics” that will stand the test of time.
Of these, the two that I find the most intriguing are Enemy of the State and Spy Game. These two films, along with the Michael Bay directed The Rock, formed a trilogy of “pseudo” sequels to very famous films. As a great bonus they also featured the same actors playing very similar roles to their more famous original films. In the case of The Rock, for example, it was clear Sean Connery was playing an older James Bond. In the film he was described as a top British spy who had run afoul of -and was betrayed by- the people he worked for. A relic of the Cold War. Enemy of the State featured Gene Hackman reprising his role from the Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation, while Spy Game featured Robert Redford reprising his character from Three Days of the Condor. While none of these pseudo sequels rose to the level of the originals, I felt it was an intriguing idea and made for some entertaining, if not quite classic, films.
Of the films Tony Scott directed, I personally consider The Hunger and True Romance his two “best” films. When originally released, The Hunger was way ahead of its time, a romantic/erotic vampire story that was much more influential on what followed than it was successful upon its release. True Romance, which featured a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, proved an entertaining and very wild ride, with a large cast of actors doing some great work.
While I don’t consider myself a huge fan of Tony Scott’s overall body of work, there is no denying that for the past several decades his presence has most certainly been felt. His death comes as a shock and one can’t help but wonder what might have come next.
The other day I picked up a bargain BluRay disc featuring two Bruce WIllis films, Last Man Standing and the Tony Scott directed The Last Boy Scout. The one and only time I saw The Last Boy Scout was when it was originally released back in 1991. Back then I didn’t think all that much of it but nonetheless recalled one bit of dialogue between Bruce WIllis’ character and a police detective/ex-friend. If memory serves (and it certainly might not!) Willis’ character’s wife left him for that now ex-friend and the meeting was salty, painful, yet surprisingly down to earth.
Perhaps I’ll revisit it when I get a chance.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Scott. While not all your films were my cup of tea, considering all the works you were involved in, you nonetheless provided me with hours of entertainment.
Heard plenty of good things about The Raid: Redemption, and being a fan of action films, I just had to give it a try.
Filmed in Jakarta, Indonesia, The Raid: Redemption starts out really, really well. In fact, the opening of the film reminded me in a very pleasant way to what I consider one of director John Carpenter’s very best films, Assault on Precinct 13 (the original 1976 version, not the pretty lame 2005 remake).
The plot of The Raid is simple yet very effective: A group of young SWAT officers is tasked to silently enter a fortified building within the Jakarta slums. Their mission is seek out and apprehend the crime lord that runs that building and bring him to justice. However, halfway up the building the hunters become the hunted when the many criminals residing within the building target the SWAT team.
There are a few other plot flourishes I won’t get into but suffice to say the film is a lean, mean action adventure that should satisfy most fans of this type of genre.
If there are any quibbles I have with the film, it is that there are several martial arts-type fights that, frankly, took me out of the nitty gritty nature of the film. Allow me to elaborate. In the movie’s early going, the sense of claustrophobia and the real fear of sudden death lurking behind any corner were very effective. You had a sense that the SWAT members were trapped in a hell where they would have to claw their way to freedom.
However, by the time the remaining SWAT members were down to using their fists and knives against the many villains they faced, the protracted fight scenes unfortunately resembled more typical martial art films and removed me from the more noir elements present up until that point.
Please note, though, that this is a relatively small quibble. There is word that producers in the United States are working on a remake of the film. I’m not terribly surprised. This is the type of feature that should be easily translated for American audiences. There is very little that need be changed.
So if you’re in the mood for a solid action film, you could do far worse than spend some time watching The Raid.
I still have pretty vivid memories of first seeing the poster for a then upcoming film that was scheduled to be released in 1981 called Escape From New York.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
Back then in the stone age of 1981, there was a great possibility movies you never heard of at all would suddenly “appear” before you either as posters (as was the case with that film) or via movie trailers. Nowadays, of course, we hear about, and sometimes even see clips of films as they’re being made. The element of surprise is, for the most part, gone.
When I finally saw Escape From New York, I had a curiously paradoxical reaction to it. I absolutely LOVED parts of it, from the clever storyline to actor Kurt Russell’s bizarre Clint Eastwood-talking Snake Plissken. But the film seemed to lose steam as it went along and I felt that as good as certain elements of it were, overall the film didn’t thrill me as much as I hoped it would.
Over the years, my opinion of it has changed, albeit slightly. I’ve grown to appreciate more of the film and realized, in retrospect, that much of my disappointment might well have been due to the film’s very low budget. The fact is that most of the special effects are presented at the start of the film while the rest of it features our characters running around dark streets that might well have been anywhere and, as it turned out, most of the city scenes were indeed not filmed in New York!
However, the good stuff stuck with me and when rumors came out that director John Carpenter envisioned making more Snake Plissken films, even one he wistfully (or perhaps jokingly?) called Escape From Earth, I was certainly all in favor of seeing that.
In the end Escape From New York proved something of a box office dud. Given its budget, it certainly made its money back and then some, but it took many more years -fifteen in fact- before Escape From L.A. was released in 1996. Sporting a far greater budget and the same lead and director, Escape From L.A. nonetheless proved a box office flop, earning less than its cost.
And that, it appeared, was that.
Until, that is, this year when producer/writer/director Luc Besson released Lockout. Produced and co-written by Mr. Besson, Lockout is, essentially, Escape From Earth as envisioned by him. Guy Pearce stars as Snow, a somewhat more gregarious version of Snake Plissken while Maggie Grace stars as Emile Warnock, the daughter of the President of the United States. The plot is a mild variation of both John Carpenter Escape films: The daughter of the President goes to an orbiting penal colony, the prisoners manage to escape and take over, and Snake…er…Snow goes in to find and free her. Oh, and the clock is ticking.
When I first saw the trailer for Lockout I was intrigued. My younger, more strident self (as opposed to the more mellow person I’ve since become) might have been furious that Mr. Besson (who is also listed in the credits as having the “original idea” of this film!!!!) would so cavalierly rip off another person’s concept.
Then again, the John Carpenter Escape property is, let’s face it, dead. Kurt Russell isn’t as young as he was before and I suspect he can’t pull off the character of Snake Plissken anymore (there was talk, by the way, of a remake of Escape From New York with new actors in the central roles, so obviously the studios already feel that Mr. Russell may be too old for the part). And John Carpenter, as big a cult movie director as he is, hasn’t made a “big” feature in a very, very long time…and I suspect studios aren’t exactly lining up to front him big money to do another Escape movie.
So when Mr. Besson and his “original” story idea for the film Lockout appeared, I couldn’t be too terribly upset. In fact, I was hoping that Mr. Besson and company captured some of the Escape magic -the good stuff versus the bad- and made some mindless piece of entertainment that I could sit back to and enjoy.
However, early reviews of the film were not very positive. In fact, most of the reviews I read were quite negative (the film scored an unimpressive 37% positive among critics and an almost equal 40% positive among audiences at Rottentomatoes.com).
Still, I wanted to see it. Yesterday, I finally got the chance.
Long story short (if that’s possible at this point): Lockout is a mediocre film. If you’re curious to see someone else’s take on the Escape films, you won’t come away impressed with what’s here, but neither do I think you’ll be begging for the pain to go away.
Guy Pearce is mostly good in the role of Snow, but I felt at times he wasn’t terribly invested in his role. He appeared to be…and I could be guilty of mind reading here…uninterested in most of what was happening. His delivery of lines was one-note and it appeared he was doing the bare minimum required. It’s a tough thing to say of an actor’s work, especially one I happen to like quite a bit (he was absolutely terrific in both Memento and L.A. Confidential, among other films). Maggie Grace, on the other hand, seems to realize the nature of this film and, for the most part, delivers in her role. That’s not to say she saves the film, only that at the very least she stands toe to toe (and sometimes ahead!) of the movie’s actual protagonist.
Unfortunately, where the film mostly fails is in its all too busy plot. Lockout starts with a strange bust gone bad. The action sequences here aren’t quite as terrible as some have stated, yet not enough explanation and context is ever offered to what exactly our hero was doing here…or what it was he was hoping to get his hands on. Even by the end of the film, we’re still not sure what exactly was so terribly important to his character in those early sequences.
When the movie moves to the prison colony satellite, the jail break sequence proves way, way too easy. MILD SPOILERS: Essentially one man gets his hands on one gun and manages to free the nearly 500 homicidal prisoners in minutes. Did the people behind this penal colony not have any decent security designs? And did they really have to put the “Get the prisoners out of stasis” button only a few feet away from an interview room he escapes from?
Very silly stuff.
Once those opening sections of the film are over, however, it does manage to move along decently. It’s a silly affair, but I’m glad I was able to satisfy my curiosity without feeling the need to fling my remote control at the TV set.
Still, it could -it should– have been so much better.
Now that the new version of Total Recall has just been released to movie theaters, I’ve noted a batch of “Best/Worst Movie remakes” articles appearing on the web.
I can’t disagree with much of what they list. If I were to pick my personal favorite remake, I’d probably go with The Maltese Falcon. What is most amazing about that classic film Humphrey Bogart film is the fact that it was actually the third version of that film! The first version, also titled The Maltese Falcon was released ten years earlier in 1931 and featured Ricardo Cortez in the role of Sam Spade. Bette Davis would appear a few years later in Satan Met a Lady (1936), the second version of the story that instead of a Maltese Falcon featured the hunt for a valuable “French Horn.” Both films can’t hold a candle to the quality of the Humphrey Bogart version.
As far as worst remake…there are just so many examples of retreads that were either inadvisable or silly. Not listed in the above article, for example, is the remake of the classic 1973 horror cult movie The Wicker Man. The original film was an incredible and very unique work, which featured some very sharp jabs at something I believe no big time studio would dare approach in this day and age: Religion. When I heard a remake was in the works, I simply couldn’t believe that the makers of this remake would dare to approach the subject matter in the bold way the original did.
I was right. The 2006 version of The Wicker Man stayed very clear from the more potent religious themes present in the original film and the result was proved what I expected, a bland, ultimately silly and meaningless film that couldn’t hold a candle to the original.
Another film that I personally found hard to take was the 2006 film Superman Returns. I am a HUGE fan of the 1978 Richard Donner directed Superman film. To this day, I still consider it the very best superhero film ever made. Director Bryan Singer obviously loves it too, but when he directed Superman Returns, I believe that love wound up hurting the overall product. When Superman Returns was originally released in 2006, I was led to believe it was a sequel to the first two Superman films. However, while there were some new ideas presented here and there (Lois having Superman’s baby), the movie was in reality a not so stealthy remake of Richard Donner’s Superman.
And it just didn’t have the majesty, the humor, or the charisma to pull it off. Now, there are many who disagree with that assessment. My local paper’s film critic was blown away by the film upon its release and gave is three and a half stars and proclaimed it one of the best films released up to that point in 2006. The film appeared to be a modest success, so at the very least film audiences were divided.
Now, the quirkiest movie remake of them all: Airplane!
Few may realize this, but Airplane! is a hilarious remake of the very serious 1957 film Zero Hour!, complete with exclamation point on the end. The video below presents wonderful examples of the similarities between both movies. Enjoy!
The Hollywood reporter offered an interesting article that focused on the possibilities of sequels to films released this past summer, given their box office success/failure:
The bit that fascinated me was about what was probably one of the most disappointing films released this summer (indeed, considering how eager I was to see this and the high hopes I had for it, maybe the most disappointing film in many summers!), Prometheus. This is what they had to say about the possibility of a sequel to that film:
(FOX) studio’s big summer bet was Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus, June’s sort-of Alien prequel. The $130 million-budgeted film grossed a solid but not spectacular $303 million globally, putting it right on the franchise bubble. Fox confirms to THR that Scott and the studio actively are pushing ahead with a follow-up (stars Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace are signed) and are talking to new writers because Prometheus co-scribe Damon Lindelof might not be available. “Ridley is incredibly excited about the movie, but we have to get it right. We can’t rush it,” says Fox president of production Emma Watts, who also has overseen the successful reboots of the X-Men and Planet of the Apes franchises. A Prometheus sequel would be released in 2014 or 2015.
Despite my feelings regarding the film, I have to admit that I’d be open to a sequel. I might -might!- even become excited to see such a thing, provided the story this time around is a good one and not the messy (though undeniably ambitious) story we had with Prometheus.
Going over the reprinted blurb above, the people who did enjoy Prometheus and are eager to see the sequel should note that nowhere in this piece does it say that this potential sequel is a certainty. Indeed, note how the article states the movie’s gross was “solid but not spectacular” and that because of that it is on a “franchise bubble”. Yes, director Ridley Scott is “excited about the movie” and is working on a sequel, but Fox president of production Emma Watts does not come out and say this sequel has been greenlighted.
Perhaps I’m reading more into this very short blurb than I should, but I get the impression that the people at Fox are well aware of the disappointment audiences had to the film and realize the Prometheus could have flopped badly. While it made them money, they may feel they dodged a bullet and whatever profit they made was in spite of the movie’s weak story. This is further reinforced by the fact that they are talking to other writers about the sequel because screenwriter Damon Lindelof “may not be available”. One gets the sense that this is a polite way of saying they may not want him back.
However because the movie did make a profit, FOX studios are willing to give the film’s makers a chance to present a sequel concept/treatment/screenplay. If this presentation excites them enough, they’ll go ahead with the sequel. If it doesn’t…
Then again, the DVD/BluRay of the film will be released soon enough, and if that proves to be a success they might just warm up to the sequel idea a little bit more.
When I first heard about Attack the Block, a quirky British alien invasion/Our Gang mash-up, the word was mighty positive, indeed.
Our Gang eventually inspired The Goonies, which this film is probably a bit closer in theme to Attack the Block than the far more innocent Our Gang shorts of the early 20th Century.
As mentioned, early word was very positive about this film, and it was on that basis alone that I became curious to see it. I think the film is indeed a good one, but it has some issues, particularly in the first fifteen or so minutes of the film, that almost made me want to eject it from my DVD player before going much further.
The problem -at least for me- is that when our “heroes” are first introduced, they’re engaging in something that borders on Clockwork Orange territory (without the sexual assault). I suppose its a bold move to present troubled youth in such an unflinching way early on in the film, but given I’m not sure if giving the audience such a negative first impression was a wise move.
What follows, the meat of the story, is what I mentioned before: An alien invasion. This invasion, too, is presented in a mostly unflinching way. There is blood shed and lives are lost. The alien invaders, while not quite on the scary level of the Alien or Predator creatures, are nonetheless a force not to be trifled with, and the eventual resolution of the storyline is quite clever.
Which is a long way toward saying I recommend this film but urge viewers to stick through the opening act which may make you think you’re about to see a very different film from what follows. Once Attack the Block gets rolling (roughly at the point where our protagonist is arrested), things move briskly, leading to a good wrap up.
