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Movies

The Numbers Station (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I like actor John Cusack.  He’s been in a number of very good films but even when the film isn’t all that good -given the amount of movies he’s been involved in during his very long career, there were bound to be clunkers here and there- he always seems to rise above and rarely fails to give an engaging performance.

So when I spotted The Numbers Station, a 2013 film starring Mr. Cusack on instant view on Netflix, I decided to give it a whirl.  I knew little about the film other than it never reached theaters and, because of this, I didn’t expect all that much.  Was I in for some major disappointment?

Not really.

To begin with, The Numbers Station is a very low budget thriller.  There are maybe fifteen people in total during the film’s runtime that appear on screen.  Other than a single exploding car, there are no other “big” special effects.

The movie’s premise is that in this age of easy access to computer data, top secret black ops units employ short radio bursts composed of nothing more than a series of numbers (the codes) to get their next assignments.

These assignments are, it is implied, “dirty” works that usually involve assassination.

At the start of the film we meet Emerson Kent (John Cusack) and Grey (Liam Cunningham).  They sit in a car talking to each other when a coded message arrives.  After deciphering it, Kent temporarily leaves his partner (and getaway driver) and walks into a sparsely populated bar.  He chats with the bartender, who we find once worked for the agency but ran away from it several months before.  Kent allows the man to have one last drink before killing him.  Kent then takes out the two bouncers/bodyguards but cannot kill the fourth man in the bar.  This man manages to get away, but Kent has the license plate numbers of his car.

Thanks to this information, Kent and Grey locate the man’s home.  Kent goes into the house and kills the man.  He is then surprised when his teenage daughter appears.  Kent cannot get himself to kill her and his partner Grey winds up doing this.  Thanks to this “botched” job, Kent is no longer viewed as having the “right stuff” for his special ops unit.

Fast forward a few months and we find Grey has moved up in the agency while Kent is on the outside trying to get back in.  Thanks to Grey, he is given a second chance, only Instead of being offered his old assassination job, he’s assigned to watch over the other end of the numbers operation.  He is to be the security guard to Katherine (Malin Akerman), one of the agency’s code readers.  Katherine makes and sends out the numbers from a secure bunker while Kent guards her.  When their shift is over, another duo (also woman and man) replacements them.  It is clear this duo is a couple and equally clear Katherine is trying to socialize with Kent, though he wants nothing to do with this.

The second day of their shift all appears normal, but they soon find that the bunker has been breached and there are signs that the duo that preceded them may have met a grisly end.  Trapped inside the bunker, they have to find a way out while determining if a phony assassination order was sent by their predecessors.

Ok, so there you have the setup and, yes, once again we’re dealing with a “siege” type film.  There are other interesting elements thrown in but before you get your hopes up too high, let me say this:  The Numbers Station is hardly a “must see” film.  What it is is a modest thriller that painlessly killed a couple of hours without making you feel like you completely wasted your time.

There are two things that work against the film and, of those, the low budget is the biggest and worst element.  Without giving too much away, we have our two leads being held in the bunker by a decidedly small –very small- force on the outside.  It’s hard to get worried about their prospects of survival when facing such an ultimately insignificant force.  The second thing working against the film is that Katherine is a really underwritten character.  While Malin Ackerman does a decent job playing the character, there is very little to her other than a damsel in distress.

Still, if you’re like me and have a bit of time to kill, you could do worse than catch The Numbers Station.

 

Movies

Trance (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I’m always curious to see works by director Danny Boyle.

When at his best, Mr. Boyle creates films that are solid entertainment and well worth watching, such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later.  His latest works, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, were received well received by critics and did well at the box office.  Mr. Boyle would follow those two films with the head-scratching Hitchcock wannabe Trance.

Did he go three for three?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.  However, that doesn’t meant there aren’t some things in Trance worth seeing.  The acting by most of the principals is good.  The direction is interesting and there are scenes that really grip you.  The movie’s biggest problem is the story, which unfortunately veers between being unbelievable, silly, confusing, and just plain odd.

Simon (James McAvoy) works at an auction house that sells very high end expensive paintings.  During one of the auctions, there is a violent robbery and Simon follows his trained routine to pull the most prized painting to a “safe” area for storage.  Once he reaches the safe are drop off, the chief of the thieves Franck (Vincent Cassel) appears and, after knocking Simon out with the butt of his shotgun, runs away with the container he thinks houses the painting.

The thieves get away and meet in their hideout.  Upon opening the contain with the stolen painting they find all they have is an empty frame.  Naturally they are furious, and it is then revealed Simon was in on the theft all along and the trio of thieves naturally believe he has double crossed them.

The robbery, however, has left Simon with a brain injury.  After leaving the hospital, the trio of thieves get Simon and ask him where the painting is.  He tells them he can’t remember and they brutally torture him.  They soon realize he is telling the truth: He cannot remember what, if anything, he did with the painting.  The desperate thieves realize they have to use other means to get him to remember what he did.

To that end, they allow Simon to randomly -or so it appears- choose a hypnotherapist to get to the lost memory.  Enter Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), hypnotherapist and, we quickly realize, mystery woman who appears to know far more about what is going on than she lets on..

What follows are a lot of mind games between Elizabeth and the thieves and the quest for the missing painting.

Trance features many moving parts, but the central premise, that these street-toughs would willingly allow this hypnotherapist in their midst so willingly is awfully –awfully– far fetched.

I can’t help but suspect that Mr. Boyle was hoping to create a mind-bender of a movie along the lines of Vertigo.  But, again, the premise proves too hard to believe to begin with and many of the subsequent revelations -some of which are hallucinations- create difficulties for the viewers to follow.

Is Simon ultimately a pawn (note the character’s name…Simon says?).  What is the real relationship between Elizabeth and he?  And what is the relationship between Elizabeth and Franck?  I understand the use of cues and suggestion but given that some of the sequences we see are nothing more than hallucinations we are sometimes left putting too many pieces together on our own.  Note that I haven’t even broached the subject of Elizabeth’s…uh…shaving preferences.

In the end, I have to give Trance a pass.  There’s plenty of energy and skill both before and behind the cameras, but the story needed much more work.

Movies

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) a (mildly) belated review

One day history will look back at the past couple of years and note a curious little trend:  Using historical figures and/or classic literature and injecting horror tropes upon them.

The first (and largest) wave of these works would appear in such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Jayne Slayre or Alice in Zombieland.  But one of the biggest successes would be the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

So successful was this novel that it was made into a film in 2012.  The film, however, didn’t exactly set the box office on fire and while the book was considered a well thought out lark, critics scorned and audiences ultimately ignored it.

Did they make the right choice?

In a word: Yes.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is, if nothing else, a handsome looking film with some pretty good CGI effects mixed in with some not-so-very-good CGI effects in the telling of the “real” story of Abraham Lincoln”s (Benjamin Walker) life and how it secretly tied in with his near life-long struggle against vampires.

Having not read the book and going into the film cold, I figured the movie’s makers must be playing this for laughs.  I mean, come on…Abraham Lincoln and vampires?  There has to be a chuckle or three here, right?  Right?

Nope.

The film plays out like a Cliff’s Notes (for the younger among you, Sparkle Notes) version of Abraham Lincoln’s life.  We see his early childhood (and first exposure to vampires), we see him as a young man (who happens to be on the prowl for these vampires and is ultimately recruited to be just that), we see him a little later working and studying to become a lawyer while courting Mary Todd (while secretly ridding the town he’s in of vampires), we see his rise in politics (while continuing his fight against vampires), and, finally, we see him as President and discover the “real” reasons behind the Emancipation Proclamation and the “real” reason the United States became embroiled in the Civil War.

And while most of the film was muddled without building much (if any) momentum, it was this concluding segment and climax of the film that really lost me.  For in linking such sober -and very tragic- issues as slavery, the massive loss of lives during the Civil War, and even Abraham Lincoln’s loss of his son (to vampires, natch), I developed an acute distaste for what I was seeing.

Perhaps the issues of slavery and the massive losses of life during the Civil War are simply too sensitive a subject to me to be played for such cheesy cinematic camp.  Yes, I’ve seen plenty of movies that dealt with tragedies both large and small.  However, to link these tragedies with something, frankly, as goofy as vampires felt more than a little distasteful.

Add this to the fact that the film suffers from a lack of any sort of momentum and you have nearly two hours of, frankly, not all that much at all.

A pass.

Movies

Maximum Overdrive (1986) a (very) belated review

Found this under the IMDB entry for the film:

When asked why he hasn’t directed a movie since Maximum Overdrive, horror writer Stephen King responded “Just watch Maximum Overdrive.”

I first saw the film when it reached the home video market some time after a weak theatrical outing.  I recall when the film was first released the critics were really savage toward it, one even stating something along the lines of “Stephen King is a master of horror.  So how did he do in his directorial debut?  Horribly.”

Nonetheless, being a fan of the “machines gone homicidal” sub-genre of horror (My favorite of which is Steven Spielberg’s first big splash, the film Duel), I had to give it a look.

At the time I did…and I found it to be a pretty weak film.  Since sometime in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s I haven’t seen it again.  Until yesterday.

So…what do I think of it now?

Well, let’s face it, Maximum Overdrive isn’t a very good film.  But I have to admit it isn’t the complete wreck that I felt it was when I first viewed it.  In fact, when viewed in its proper (cheesy) light, there is some fun to be had…

Based on the very downbeat King short story “Trucks”, Maximum Overdrive involves Earth coming into the tail of a comet whose radioactivity causes all manner of machines to come to homicidal life.  Almost immediately there is a big glitch here, as a pair of characters, the newly married couple (which includes the voice of Lisa Simpson, actress Yeardley Smith), manage to drive their car for quite a while after all the machines have supposedly come to life.

After a (somewhat) gory opening where we witness the end of the world, we settle upon the patrons of the Dixie Boy truck stop (Included among this group is our protagonist, Bill Robinson, played by Emilio Estevez).  The patrons and staff of the truck stop quickly find that they’ve been surrounded by the homicidal trucks and are forced to deal with them and, eventually, escape.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the story.  It should become pretty clear pretty quickly that Maximum Overdrive lies in the genre of “siege” films.  The trucks outside could easily be George Romero’s zombies or Indians surrounding a fort or any other number of scenarios.  Alas, when one makes a siege film, one goes up against some truly great works, from Gunga Din to the original Assault on Precinct 13.

The worst aspects of the film wind up being the script and some shoddy directorial work, both of which were Mr. King’s responsibility.  This is a film that in more experienced hands could easily have been far –far– more suspenseful.  However, Mr. King’s story is at times very campy while his (for the most part) hillbilly characters are difficult to root for. As for the direction, it does try to go for gore (and succeeds, though we’ve seen worse by now) but never quite delivers the scares promised by Mr. King himself in the film’s admittedly memorable trailer.

Still, I can’t entirely hate the film.  It is what it is: an attempt to create a cheesy horror film without any pretensions to a more lofty or classic film standard.  Maximum Overdrive is dispensable entertainment, and some might even argue it is little more than a good guilty pleasure.

So yes, while there are far better siege films out there and I recommend them highly over Maximum Overdrive,  I’ll also turn around and say that if you’re in the mood for cheesy no-brain entertainment, you could do worse.

P.S.:  Intriguingly, the very end of this film was essentially lifted whole in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.  I can’t help but wonder if this was done on purpose.

Movies

Erased (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I spotted the trailer for the film Erased on, I believe, the video release of Solomon Kane.  It had me intrigued…

Not bad, right?

So I looked up the film and it was (and still is as of this writing) available on Netflix for instant viewing so I loaded her up and…

Wow.

Let’s face it, one shouldn’t expect much from films that are, as far as I know, not formally released to U.S. theaters and arrive via direct to home video formats.  While you may find overlooked gems here and there, the majority of such films are usually features movie studios have looked at and don’t have all that much faith in.  Rather than invest (and lose) more money on the work via advertisements for a theatrical run, studios are content with collecting what they can through the home market and moving on to their next project(s).

At best, Erased is a decent -if completely unexceptional- low budget thriller in the Bourne mold.  The reliable Aaron Eckhart plays Ben Logan, an ex-pat living in Belgium and working for a high tech security firm.  He lives there with his daughter Amy (Liana Liberato, who turns in a good performance as well) who, we find, has only recently moved in with him.  Ben left his wife for mysterious reasons which are never entirely explained, though it might have been due in part to his original work and/or a relationship with fellow CIA agent Anna Brandt (Olga Kurylenko).  All this is hinted more than outright stated, not that it matters all that much.  After Amy’s mother gets sick and dies (more story material that happens off-screen), Ben takes her in but there is friction between them as Amy isn’t all that happy about living in this foreign land and clearly holds her father responsible for the dissolution of the marriage.

Anyway, one day Ben finishes one of his main projects in the company and goes to Amy’s school to pick her up.  He’s a little late (something she also doesn’t appreciate) and finds his daughter is hungry.  Ben offers her some cookies he’s carrying with him but it turns out there are peanuts in them and Amy is allergic.  Off to the hospital they go.

Amy spends the night there along with Ben and, in the morning, they head out.  Ben stops at his work for a moment to pick up a package he expected to arrive, but when he gets there the movie’s singular best sequence occurs (you can see it on the trailer):  The entire floor is completely empty of everything.  All the desks, computers, folders, etc. etc. are gone.  Ben can’t understand and goes to the parent company.  They have no record of him having ever worked for them.  What happened to his company?  What happened to his friends and co-workers?  What is going on?!

Sadly, what follows from this point is pretty standard stuff.  Ben’s company and its staff have been eliminated, and the only reason Ben and Amy are still alive is because they were at the hospital rather than their home the night all the skullduggery went down.  Ben is forced to sort through the clues to find what exactly is going on, all while being pursued by his possible ex-lover Brandt.  Her allegiances are, until the movie’s last act, never entirely clear.

As I describe the film, it sounds far better than what is ultimately presented.  While the “agency-decides-to-eliminate-its-operatives-but-one-gets-away” has been done many times before, it can work well.  With Erased, unfortunately, the end result are simply too damned bland.  If you find the above plot description intriguing, however, and would like to see a film along these lines, my recommendation is to forget Erased and instead look up the Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway vehicle Three Days of the Condor.  Far better film featuring many of the same elements.

Movies

Phantom (2013) a (mildly) belated review

One of my all time favorite movie reviews was made by a now forgotten (by me) local movie reviewer on television who noted of 1989’s James Cameron directed The Abyss that it was like watching a marathon runner having the run of his life and being way, waaaay out in front and heading to the finish line in triumph…only to stumble and fall just before the end.  I love and remember that review so vividly because it perfectly encapsulated the movie to me.

Ironically enough, that film featured actor Ed Harris in (double irony) a film set for the most part underwater.  So here we have the barely-released-to-theaters film Phantom which features Mr. Harris in the title role of Demi, the Captain of an old, nearly obsolete Russian submarine during the height of the Cold War who has been sent on a mysterious mission that might well result in the end of the world as we know it.  And like The Abyss, Phantom is a film that draws you in and keeps your attention…until it blows it big time at the very end.

The mission Demi is sent on appears, on the surface (ha!) to be a normal patrol.  However, a few last minute -and mysterious- additions to his crew, including Bruni (David Duchovny), appear to have some kind of ulterior secret mission in the works.  Are these new members of the crew part of a zealot Stasi group?  Is their mission sanctioned by the government…or are they a rogue group out to start a war?  And what of Captain Demi?  We find that he suffers from epileptic seizures and may have a thin grasp of what is real and what isn’t.

All these elements mixed together form a potent, engaging brew that kept me intrigued as Phantom played out.  This is old school movie making, where the action is limited but the tension and suspense are slowly built up, scene after scene.  Ed Harris is pretty damn good in the title role.  David Duchovny is good, though perhaps not quite as flashy in a role that required him to for the most part display an emotionless poker face throughout, leaving audiences to wonder whether he is good or evil.

And for approximately 90 or so minutes of the movie’s 98 minute run time I was thoroughly engaged.

But then came the movie’s climax and denouement and boy oh boy oh boy did things fall apart.  The movie’s climax committed the lesser sin, being decent yet not-as-exciting-as-it-should-have-been all things considering.  A better director and/or editor could have made this sequence a standout, with gunfire, factions fighting against each other for control of the vessel, another submarine taking aim at our protagonist’s vessel, and quite literally the fate of the world in the balance.  Unfortunately, the sequence plays out in a rather drab way, ending without being all that terribly exciting.

And then came the denouement.

Wow.  Just…wow.  In the history of bad ideas, this one is right up there.  I know the movie’s makers were trying to give us an emotional release, but this sequence was not only stupid but, frankly, borderline insulting….at least to me.

To describe it involves considerable SPOILERS, so I’ll leave you with the film’s trailer and get to that in a moment…

You still there?

Again…SPOILERS FOLLOW!

….

….

Ok, so this is the deal:  Duchovny and his boys have crafted a scenario where Demi’s submarine is thought to have been already sold to the Chinese.  Thus, when he launches a nuclear missile at the U.S., it will be thought the submarine was under Chinese command and a war between China and the United States will result, a war that his character coldly notes will be the only nuclear war Russia can “win”.  This is really clever storytelling, in my humble opinion.

However, Demi and his faithful staff manage to send out a distress signal which brings in another Russian sub.  The Russians are by now aware of what’s going on with the rogue group and are intent on sinking Demi’s sub and stopping them from launching their missile and starting a war.  Duchovny’s rogue group is overtaken but Demi’s submarine is incapacitated and settles on the bottom of the sea (actually on top of a sea mountain).  The crew is stuck and air is running out.  Demi orders one of his crew to suit up and swim to the surface to try to get a rescue party down to the stricken sub.  In the film’s final minutes, we see the crew on top of the sub and the sub in port, seemingly rescued.

Not so fast…

Turns out the entire crew is dead.  The sub is indeed in port, having been salvaged, but now the corpses are being brought out.  The ghostly crew stands on the sub, watching as Demi’s wife and child come to pay respects to those lost.  The person they sent out of the sub wound up being the only survivor and thus was able to tell authorities what really happened on board, and that Demi and is crew did not go rogue.

Ugh.

A ghost crew, watching as their bodies are removed from the sub?!  Demi’s ghost tearfully watching his wife and child, then saluting the surviving crewmate?!

Double Ugh.

Maybe this won’t sit so bad for other viewers, but for me this ending was beyond silly.  It was manipulative and childish in concept, an ending that threw away all the good will the movie managed to offer throughout the rest of its run time.

To those who still want to watch Phantom, please please please shut it off the moment Ed Harris sees the light.

You’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Movies

The Man With The Iron Fists (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Back when I was much younger and in High School, local TV stations would often run some wild fare over the weekends.  Among reruns of such fantastic series of yesteryear such as The WIld Wild West, the original (and at that time only) Star Trek show, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, etc., those who stuck around until the early evenings, perhaps at about 5 to 6 P.M., were often treated to some really, really crazy Karate/Kung Fu films.

These films were often as outlandish as they were senseless, featuring really bad English dubbing and questionable filmmaking/editing along with some at times memorably impressive acrobatics.  After watching several of the films, I eventually recognized certain actors, but in those early pre-internet days I had little to no idea of these films’ origins.

Fast forward several years and the works of the Shaw Brothers Studios, among others, while perhaps not as well known to the general public as it is to some film afficionados (geeks) like myself, are warmly regarded for their at times cheesy movie fare.

It appears that rapper RZA saw some of the same stuff I did when he was young.  He parlayed his success as a musician into the movies, delivering soundtrack material as well as acting in several features and TV shows.  2012’s The Man With The Iron Fists was his first directorial feature, and his love of those cheesy martial arts films of yesterday is clearly in evidence.

The film deals with Blacksmith (RZA) a…well…blacksmith in an ancient, small Chinese town where a rather large gold shipment is about to pass through.  He is hired by some shady characters to craft weapons which, in turn, are used against the man who is to watch over this shipment.  The betrayal brings several parties to this town, from the good to the bad to the just plain unbelievable.  Yes, we have an African American blacksmith in an ancient Chinese village (this is explained), but soon after he is joined by Russell Crowe as the enigmatic Jack Knife, a British (?) subject whose loyalties are revealed in the film’s later acts.

Over the course of the film alliances are forged (ouch!) and the good guys eventually confront the bad while the fate of the gold lies in the balance.

So, is the film worth your time?

For someone like myself, the answer is a yes…with reservations.  The film could have been tightened up a lot more, but I did enjoy all the various (outlandish) personalities present and the fight scenes were generally well done.

Where the film fails, sadly, is with RZA himself.  As Blacksmith, RZA is the film’s “hero”, yet while he did a good job directing the feature (he also was responsible for the story and shares screenwriting credits), I felt his acting simply wasn’t all that good.  In Blacksmith we needed an actor strong enough to take on the role and make him stand out over everyone else.  When multiple tragedies befell Blacksmith, we needed to feel sorry for him enough that when he ultimately triumphs, we should be jumping from our chairs in glee.  RZA, however, delivers for the most part a one note sleepy-eyed performance while his character is often lost to the wilder, more engaging work of the actors representing good and evil around him.  Even worse, later in the film when Blacksmith confronts one of the big bad guys, it is also evident his fighting skills aren’t quite up to par with many of the others as well.

Having said that, I have to give RZA credit for putting this Kung Fu fever dream of a film together.  Again, for someone like me who is versed in the films RZA was trying to emulate and offer in tribute, there is much to enjoy.  However, for those not versed in the old Karate/Kung Fu films of yesterday, The Man With The Iron Fists will most likely not resonate.  In the end, I can only offer only a mild recommendation.

Movies

Hopscotch (1980) a (very) belated review

Edward Snowden.  Glen Greenwald.  Julian Assange.  Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.  Wikileaks.  The NSA…

The names and institutions have been all over the news of late and, unless you’re getting reaaaaally tired of reading and/or seeing stories about leaking of highly confidential government material and are in the mood for a comedy featuring the same concept and some top notch acting talent, you could do far worse than settle in and give Hopscotch a try.

Based on a far more serious thriller written by Brain Garfield (also the author of Death Wish), the theatrical version of Hopscotch deals with Miles Kendrig (Walter Matthau) an older CIA agent whose boss, the crotchety Myerson (Ned Beatty), decides is over the hill and should spend the remainder of his career before retiring working behind a desk.  Lined up to immediately replace him is Cutter (Sam Waterston), Kendrig’s understudy.

Instead of doing as he’s told, Kendrig pulls his personnel file, destroys it, and heads off to Europe and meets up with an old flame, Isobel (Glenda Jackson).  He’s not sure what he’s going to do next and, upon meeting his friendly rival from the other side, Russian agent Yaskov (Herbert Lom), Kendrig comes upon the idea of writing a memoir of his experiences in the spy agency…warts and all.

Once finished with the first chapter of his manuscript, Kendrig sends it out to all the major intelligence agencies of the world with a promise of sending each subsequent chapter to them as it is completed.  Naturally, the revelations within that chapter -and what is to follow- pushes Myerson over the edge and what follows is a manhunt to find -and eliminate- Kendrig before the whole book is completed and all the “dirty tricks” of the agency are exposed.

Though the film implies more than one spy agency (and therefore government) is out to get Kendrig, the focus of the film is on the games played between our renegade agent and the CIA.  Matthau is rock solid in the title role and Ned Beatty is wonderfully vulgar as his ex-boss and nemesis.  I have to give the film a lot of credit in the decision to portray Sam Waterston’s Cutter as a protege that is sympathetic to his elder spymaster.  The character could easily have been presented as a typical “young gun out to get the older gun” but is instead the only person on the side chasing Kendrig down to actually understand what he’s up to and wish he come to no harm.  It is also his character that delivers what is perhaps the film’s biggest laugh at the movie’s climax (It is also his character’s final line).  Glenda Jackson, as Kendrig’s love interest, is a delight, but be warned her appearances alongside Walter Matthau aren’t quite as many as one would have hoped.  In fact, her character’s role is relatively minor when all is said and done.

Hopscotch does show its age and unfolds at a pace that many younger viewers may find too dull.  Having said that, I personally found the film a delight to watch and, if I have any complaint at all, it is that the film could have actually been expanded (again, showing the “other sides” going after Kendrig).  Recommended.

I’ve presented the trailer below but, a warning: Most of the film’s funnier bits are given away here.  Just goes to show how trailers, even trailers to thirty three year old movies, had a tendency sometimes of giving away a little too much.

Movies

Bullet to the Head (2012) a (mildly) belated review

I suspect most people, while about to watch a “new” movie, approach the subject before them with a certain amount of optimism and/or good will.  They hope the film they’re about to see is, at the very least, worth their time.  One feels even more optimistic about the film they’re about to watch when one is a fan of the work of one or more of the people involved in the film.

In the case of last year’s barely-theatrically-released Bullet to the Head, directed by Walter Hill, I’ve noted several times in several posts to being a big fan of his movies.  Starting with 1975’s Hard Times (his directorial debut) and going through such classics (in my opinion) as The Driver, The Warriors, The Shadow Riders, Southern Comfort, 48 Hours (perhaps his biggest hit) and up to 1984’s Streets of Fire, Mr. Hill had quite a run of incredible, testosterone fueled hits.

Following Streets of Fire, however, Mr. Hill hit something of a rough patch.  While a few of the films that followed had their moments, the overall quality of many of the theatrical films he directed after this point was noticeably…less.

Still, I’ve kept an eye out for his new works.  When I heard he had paired up with Sylvester Stallone to make an action film/crime drama, I was intrigued.  I eagerly awaited word of when the film would be released, fully intent on giving it a whirl while it was in theaters.  Time passed.  Then more time.

And more.

It seemed obvious the movie studio bankrolling the film wasn’t all that thrilled with the final product.  BY the time Bullet to the Head was finally released theatrically, it was done with little to no major promotion and, subsequently (and not surprisingly), the movie disappeared rather quickly before reaching the home video market.

Did the film deserve this fate?

When I put the film into my DVD player, I hoped for the best while, in the back of my mind, I braced for the worst.  For the first twenty or so minutes of the film, things looked good.

Mr. Stallone plays James Bonomo, a hired killer.  He and his younger partner take on their latest target and eliminate him.  Afterwards, they go to a bar to unwind and pick up the second half of the payment for their job.  Bonomo’s partner, however, is viciously knifed and killed.  The assassin, Keegan (Jason Momoa), tries to do the same with Bonomo but fails to take down the more senior of the two hit men.

Enter Taylor Kwan (Sung Kang), an out of town cop who arrives to investigate Bonomo and his partner’s latest victim.  Turns out he was Kwan’s boozy ex-partner and a man who may have incriminating evidence related to some very powerful interests within this big city.  Kwan quickly connects Bonomo to the hit and manages to meet with him.  Both men, interestingly enough, seek the same thing: The people who hired Bonomo to perform this latest kill.

Thus, we have the set up for this buddy action/adventure/crime drama:  A by the book cop and a bloody hit man are forced to partner up to get to the bottom of this case.

Sadly, despite starting well enough, the film loses steam with each passing minute.  Both Bonomo and Kwan are simply not very intriguing characters and their “bickering” is never terribly funny or engaging.  The story, too, unfolds in a highly predictable manner, offering few surprises along the way to a rather unimpressive climax.

While I wish I could say that Mr. Hill has delivered a film worthy of his early classics, Bullet to the Head is ultimately a very average film.  It is certainly not terrible, but neither is it ever all that much more than mediocre.  A real pity.

Movies

Olympus Has Fallen (2013) a (mildly) belated review

With many, if not most action films, you often are forced to overlook dumb/improbable things that occur in order to enjoy the feature.

For example, nearly every James Bond film has that scene where our hero is captured by the villain.  Instead of pulling out a gun and putting a bullet through Bond’s head, ending all unpleasantness right then and there, our villain inevitably decides now is the perfect time to tell Bond all about his plans before (usually) leaving him alone in some overly complex death trap he will inevitably figure a way out of.  Thus, when Bond is free once again, he knows where to go and what to do to triumph.

Moving away from Bond specifically and into action films in general, its hard not to notice that when bullets fly, they seem to have a really hard time finding the hero…but a much easier time finding the bodies of the villain and his henchmen.

I could go on and on with other, perhaps lesser examples, but suffice it to say I offer the above to segue into this:  Olympus Has Fallen is an awfully dumb action film.  Perhaps one of the dumber ones I’ve seen in a long time.

And yet…I can’t deny finding it entertaining as well.

Olympus Has Fallen is the first -and lower budgeted- of the two “White-House-gets-nuked-by-terrorists” films released this year (White House Down being the other, bigger budgeted one).  The movie opens with a sequence that, frankly, didn’t even need to be in the film at all:  We see the President (Aaron Eckhart) leaving Camp David with his wife (Ashley Judd, in what amounts to a very small cameo) during a snowstorm and their limo winds up crashing through a bridge guard gate.  The President’s personal bodyguard/secret service man, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), is forced to pull the President out of the limo just before it falls off the bridge but is unable to save his still trapped wife.

Eighteen months later, we find that Banning is now working for the Treasury (the President doesn’t want him around as his personal bodyguard because, even though everyone, including the President know his actions were correct, the mere act of Banning being around the President reminds him of this loss).  Banning wants to get back into his old job but knows it is difficult to get past the emotions.  Therefore, he does his paperwork and hopes to one day move back into the job he was meant for.

Enter: tensions between North and South Korea.

We find that a delegation of South Koreans, including their Premier, are coming to the White House for high level negotiations.  In the middle of negotiations, a large, U.S. military aircraft starts strafing Washington D.C. with high caliber bullets, slaughtering many people and causing incredible mayhem.  The President and the South Korean delegation head to the “bunker” under the White House where it is revealed the security detail of the South Korean leader are, in fact, a group of terrorists.  They take out the security details around the President and now have him and his immediate staff under their control.

Outside, a small army of North Korean (?) terrorists have emerged from hiding and are locking down the area immediately around the White House.  Banning runs from his job at the Treasury Department and makes it into White House grounds before the area is sealed.  By the time he reaches the doors of the White House and enters the bullet ravaged structure, he alone is left to fight the terrorists off…and free the President of the United States.

Before we go any further, let’s get to the dumb stuff.  I suppose I could enumerate all the dumb things that happen in the film but, in the interests of brevity, let me point out three of the juicier ones (Some mild SPOILERS follow):

1) Perhaps the biggest dumb thing this movie wants us to accept is the idea that an unauthorized military aircraft essentially can make it alll the way to the Washington monument while strafing the grounds with countless bullets before finally being taken out.  In pre-9-11 times I could envision something like this taking the U.S. defense forces by surprise.  Post 9-11…it is an awfully hard thing to swallow.

2) I keep having visions of Banning just outside the entrance of the White House, crouching behind a cement pillar in relative safety while wave after wave of soon to be dead (and most certainly brain dead) Secret Service members run out of the structure only to get mowed down by heavy machine gun fire.  Perhaps we needed better editing in this sequence, but all those supposed “professionals” came out looking like lemmings!

3) The traitor.  The moment I saw this recognizable actor in what appeared to be a “minor” role, I KNEW he was going to revealed as a baddie.  After this revelation, he delivers some ferociously nasty lines to the captured President of the United States and looks, for all intents and purposes, VERY willing to kill him.  But when he is sent (alone, of course) after Banning and the two eventually clash and Banning has him at his mercy, it takes a grand total of two seconds for the traitor to completely flip.  He agrees to help Banning out against the terrorists as his last act.  Seriously?!?

Ok, so there are a few of the really silly ones.  But the bottom line is this:  As silly as the film was, it moved.  There was very little fat -other than the opening sequence- to take up your time.  The good guys are good (if a little bit slow) and the bad guys, including Rick Yune as Kang, the head terrorist, are deliciously bad.

The movie never really lets up once it gets going, delivering a higher body count combination of 24 and Die Hard while entertaining you just enough to (almost) forget the silliness.  No, we’re not talking Oscar caliber material here…but if you’re in the mood for some pretty good action and aren’t the type to get too hung up on dumb plot points, you could do a whole lot worse than check out Olympus Has Fallen.