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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.

Movies

Solomon Kane (2009) a (mildly) belated review

Pulp author Robert E. Howard’s best known creation is, most likely, Conan the Barbarian.  Despite this, it is his another of his major recurring characters, Solomon Kane, that remains my personal favorite.  Surely it has something to do with the fact that the character is a religious 1600’s era Puritanical “Dirty Harry” that most intrigues me.  He hunts evil…and deals with it mercilessly.

A few years back, when word came that a Solomon Kane film was in the works with James Purefoy in the lead role, I was eager to see it.  The film was made and there was word of a coming release and then…nothing.

The movie, a European production, was eventually released to theaters in Europe but, as far as I can tell, didn’t make it to United States theaters.  If it did, it was very a very limited release.  More time passed.  Eventually, I found the movie was released to the video market, again in Europe, but it remained left out of the U.S. markets.

Until, that is, last month.

Now, four years later, I finally had a chance to get my hands on Solomon Kane and give it a shot.  Would it live up to my expectations?  More importantly, would it live up to Robert E. Howard’s original stories?

In a word…kinda.

Solomon Kane is a low budget movie and, like many low budget features, suffers at times from a lack of spectacle.  While this can hurt movies that strive for “big” stories, it doesn’t hurt the film all that much…at least until the end (I’ll get to that in a second).  Where the film may bother Solomon Kane fans is in the story it tells.  Solomon Kane is, essentially, an “origin” story for the character and this winds up being the worst -and most unnecessary- part of the film.  Worst because the character’s story arc from bad to good feels way too compressed and -given what we see- unlikely.  Unnecessary because the movie’s makers could have eliminated almost all that back story and still given us almost everything presented…only without that clutter.

Robert E. Howard never bothered to give Solomon Kane much of an origin, though one of his best Kane stories -in this case a poem- involves Solomon Kane’s return to his home town.  It was this poem, I suspect, that was the primary inspiration for this movie.

Unfortunately, while the poem was wistful and grand, the movie is decidedly smaller.  We start with Solomon Kane as a berserk killer, a privateer lusting for gold and mayhem and willing to kill anyone that gets in his way.  On his latest adventure his pirate crew invades a castle in search of gold.  As they climb the castle, however, evidence of dark magics appear.  Eventually, Solomon Kane’s entire crew is butchered while the bloodthirsty man is confronted by one of the Devil’s own…a demon who wants to drag evil Solomon Kane to Hell.

Solomon barely escapes with his life and, years later, we find that the encounter with the Devil’s minion has made Kane renounce his evil ways.  He now lives in a monastery, alone and non-violent, and is trying his best to repent.  Alas, and as I said before, this is the part of the movie that just doesn’t work for me.  Why?  Because rather than the Robert E. Howard vengeful zealot, we have a man that, for lack of a better word, was scared shitless into becoming “good”.

Seriously?

Anyway, the monastery decides its time for Solomon to leave their grounds.  They can’t keep him anymore and he ventures off, only to run into foul deeds performed by a rumored sorcerer.

Once again, I was bothered by this whole introductory segment.  Not only is Solomon presented as a bloodthirsty murderer who was “scared straight”, but he’s also forced to leave the Monastery when they don’t want him anymore.  Had this not happened, would the fearful Solomon Kane remain hidden for the rest of his life?

An instant fix that might have worked better:  Eliminate the whole privateer thing and introduce audiences to Solomon as a mysterious figure in the monastery, a man who knows the devil has chased after him all his life and decides, on his own, that the time has come for him to leave the safety of the monastery and confront his nemesis.  The monks beg him to stay, but he refuses.  He will not live in fear anymore.  On his way out the door, he tells the head monk regarding his eventual, inevitable confrontation with the Devil: “We’ll see who’s left standing”.  After saying this, he walks out the monastery gates.  No more “scared” Solomon, no more silliness.

Anyway, back to the real movie…

So Solomon Kane is out and about and, because he has renounced all violence, suffers from this, especially when a family he falls in with are for the most part butchered by the sorcerer’s soldiers.  This wakens the grim Solomon and he vows to save a kidnapped maiden and rid the terrorized lands of the sorcerer and his army.  The climax, if you haven’t guessed it already, leads Solomon Kane back to familiar ground and the poem I referenced above.  Unfortunately, the final battle features some CGI effects that may work better in a DOOM type game rather than Solomon Kane.  Ah well.

Even with the faults I mentioned above regarding the character’s origin, Solomon Kane is a reasonably entertaining film, but one that could -and should- have been much better.  Even ignoring the unnecessary origin aspects for a second, the film, at least to me, never really catches fire.  Mind you, it moves along well enough and doesn’t bore…but neither does it draw you in with bated breath like a good action film should.  The bottom line is that while you may be entertained, you’re likely not to be terribly impressed.

On the plus side, and despite the silly origin aspects, the filmmakers clearly were familiar with the Solomon Kane stories and tried hard to make a film that honored them.  A bigger budget, a rethinking of the origin aspects, and a more exciting pace would have surely helped make for a better film.

Despite this, I would cautiously recommend Solomon Kane to fans of the stories.  Others may want to stay away.

Movies

The Heat (2013) a (almost right on time!) review

The 2013 edition of the Big Summer Movie Extravaganza! is slowly, inevitably, winding down.  Audiences have been “treated” to all manner of big spectacle, though it felt like every other film being released every other week was either a) a superhero adaptation and/or b) a big sci-fi effect extravaganza.  To be sure, there were others genres in the mix, but given the spate of films released, many of whom wound up eliciting yawns from the movie going audience, one almost feels a sense of…relief…that the summer movie season is just about done.

I suppose its a sign of the times (and my relative lack of it) that to date I’ve seen exactly two (2) of the many movies offered thus far.

The first, Star Trek Into Darkness, was a film that I enjoyed reasonably enough while watching it and immediately afterwards.  In the days/weeks since, the film’s stature has decidedly shrunk in my mind.  No, I haven’t changed my mind and now feel the film was bad…but…well…let’s just say that Star Trek Into Darkness is one of those films of the moment, and the moment has passed.

The second and so far last of the 2013 summer movie films I’ve seen is The Heat, the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy action/comedy.  Truly, more comedy/comedy, as the action sequences aren’t really all that spectacular and are few and far between.

NOTE: This is not a knock against the film!

In fact, The Heat, while perhaps not a comedy “masterpiece”, is nonetheless exactly what it aims to be: A female version of the foul-mouthed “at-first-enemies-but-eventually-friends/allies” buddy cop films.

Sandra Bullock plays the “uptight” Ashburn while Melissa McCarthy plays the vulgar, streetwise Mullins.  They are drawn together in Mullins’ stomping grounds of Boston because of the emergence of a mysterious drug lord.

To get into the plot details is an exercise in describing pointless cliches.  Yes, the couple spar at first.  Yes, they have to deal with unsupportive higher ups.  Yes, they do things “their way” and, eventually, become a true crime-fighting team.  Finally, they take down the drug lord.  Duh.

The plot, let’s face it, is just an excuse to get at the meat of the movie, which lies in the way the two actresses play their respective roles and build a relationship.  This is where The Heat succeeds very well.  As a bonus, the film even manages to deliver a touching moment toward the very end concerning Ashburn’s old high school yearbook…before following that up with a brilliant joke involving a certain animal.  I love jokes that are set up early in a movie and followed up later on.  In this case, the set up and payoff are wonderful.

So if you’re in the mood for a good, old fashioned vulgar buddy cop “R” rated comedy (with no nudity!) that happens to feature two female leads, then The Heat is very much worth your time.

Movies

Evil Dead (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Expectations and hopes are a tough thing to overcome.

When I first heard that they were remaking the original 1981 The Evil Dead, and more importantly that the original director Sam Raimi and the original star of the feature (and cult hero) Bruce Campbell were involved, I was really, really hoping this remake would be good.

When it was released, I was dying to see it in the theaters but, as has happened all too often, I simply didn’t have the free time available to make the trip to my local cinema.  I did read some reviews and became…concerned.  On Rotten Tomatoes the film scored a decent 62% positive among critics and a similar 68% positive among audiences.  While these scores were enough to label the film “fresh”, the rating was hardly a strong endorsement.  Nonetheless, I had to see it for myself.  When it finally reached the home video market, I gave it a twirl.

So…what did I think?

In a nutshell: Not all that much, alas.  On a four star scale, with four being a “classic”, I’d give the film at best two stars.  I can only recommend it to fans of the original series who absolutely, positively have to see the remake.  Others may want to avoid it and stick to the originals.

Longer review follows…

BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!!!

Unlike the original film, 2013’s Evil Dead is first and foremost a gore fest.  Its main goal and purpose appears to be to try to gross you out as much as possible while, here and there, giving small and larger shout outs to the previous Evil Dead films.  Yes, we have friends going to a cabin in the woods for a weekend.  Their purpose to go there is because one of their group, Mia (Jane Levy), is a drug user and the group of friends along with her somewhat estranged brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) want to force Mia to go through a “cold turkey” weekend and hopefully kick her habit.

On its surface the drug element is interesting but, as the movie plays out, it ultimately is just an excuse to justify why the soon to be un-happy campers stay at the cabin a little longer than they should have.  For you see, it is Mia who first notes the strange things going on in this cabin and is the first to see the ghostly images…and when she tells her friends what she sees, they excuse it as her attempts to get out of the cold turkey treatment and back to more friendly environs.

Anyway, the proverbial shit hits the fan and our group of friends are knocked off one by one in very brutal ways.  Unfortunately, between the start of the film and that point we get so little characterization and therefore develop so little empathy toward most of the group.  Most woefully underwritten is Elizabeth Blackmore’s Natalie.  I wasn’t sure exactly what her relationship to the others was, other than that she just happened to be present.  Despite this, she is given the “honor” of replicating one of the more (in)famous sequences in the original Evil Dead 2.

Speaking of which, of the other characters the one that is perhaps the better developed is Olivia (Jessica Lucas).  She is the nurse and friend who watches over Mia and, unfortunately, is also the one who tells the others they need to be strong and remain through the cold turkey session.  However, she’s also the very first to pass on.  A real shame as she, more than the others, elicited sympathy…at least from me.  If only the director had made her the secondary lead!

And that brings us to perhaps the film’s greatest problem:  Just who is the lead?  Reading up on the film before its release, it was noted many times that this film would give us a “female” Ash (Ash, of course, is the Bruce Campbell character from the original Evil Dead films).  From the beginning it was clear Mia was intended to be the protagonist.

As mentioned, however, she is the first to see and feel the “evil dead”, whereupon she’s completely taken over by them.  What winds up happening is that she spends most of the film “possessed” and then locked away in the basement while the others are being picked off one by one.  During that section of the film, the longest part of the film, Mia’s brother appears to be the protagonist.  But since I already knew Mia was the central character, as the minutes pass I grew more and more impatient to see her do something -anything!- other than be locked up in a basement.

She is supposed to be the female Ash after all.  Let’s see her do something!

Alas, it isn’t until all but her brother are dead that she “comes back”.  Even then, however, her fight against the resurrected demon is (natch) gory but not all that exhilarating.  We even get a repeat -of sorts- of the Evil Dead 2 gag mentioned above (twice in one movie?!), but it plays out rather ridiculously.  The movie ends and we get the credits.  You stick around until they’re over and you get perhaps the movie’s best scene, a very tiny cameo by Bruce Campbell himself.

All right, so the characters are weak and the movie’s focus appears to be more on the gore than anything else.  On the positive side, the direction is quite good and the effects are damn good.  As with many films that have left me wanting in the past, the main problem appears to once again be a script that could use a little more work.

Evil Dead isn’t a terrible film, just not a terribly good one either.  As a fan of the original Evil Dead series, perhaps there’s a little bias in my views.  Regardless, I came in hoping for the best and felt, when all was said and done, that this film could have been a lot better than it ultimately was.

Movies

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I know I’ve mentioned this before, so indulge me for a bit.

When I was younger, I was really harsh in reviewing films.  I couldn’t tolerate what I viewed as mistakes, large or small, especially in a feature’s story.  If something didn’t make sense, even if it was a tiny thing that might not have amounted to all that much in the feature’s full running time, I nonetheless blasted it.  If a film was suspiciously similar -at least enough to accuse it of being a rip off-, well ditto.  If the effects weren’t up to snuff, if the acting was off, if the direction and editing weren’t pleasing, ditto again.

In recent years I’ve mellowed out considerably.  Not that I don’t find films here and there that are, to me, utter and complete failures.  It’s just that I as an author I can sympathize with the heavy lifting that goes into the act of creation and have come to realize that sometimes things just don’t work out, no matter how hard you may try.

A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth (!) movie in the Die Hard franchise (but not the last as a sixth movie is in pre-production for release in 2015), arrived with considerable critical scorn, at least as far as I could see.  The original 1988 Die Hard was a watershed moment in the career of actor Bruce Willis.  While his TV series Moonlighting was popular, his movie career was hardly flourishing.  His two previous motion pictures were both directed by Blake Edwards, first the comedy Blind Date and then the comedy/mystery/pseudo-western Sunset.  Both movies, if memory serves, didn’t exactly light the box office on fire or make anyone think Mr. Willis had what it took to transition from TV actor to Movie actor.

All that changed with Die Hard.

The movie proved a box office hit and the character Mr. Willis portrayed in the movie, Officer John McClane, was funny, witty…damn near brilliant.  Two years later Die Hard 2 was released, and while some now “poo-poo” that film as nowhere near as good as the original, I consider it a great action film as well.  Five years later, in 1995, Mr. Willis and original Die Hard director John McTiernan returned for Die Hard: With a Vengeance and audiences once again were happy to follow the further adventures of Willis’ McClane.

Me?  I didn’t like Die Hard: With a Vengeance all that much, though I enjoyed seeing Bruce Willis return to that role.  It would prove to be the last time we’d see Mr. Willis playing the character until twelve years later, in 2007, when Live Free or Die Hard was released.  As with the previous Die Hard film, I thought it wasn’t all that great.  It seemed the action sequences were becoming waaaay too big and unbelievable while the characterization of McClane was becoming an ever smaller part of the overall picture.

Which, in a nutshell, is the problem A Good Day to Die Hard has in spades.

Sadly, another problem is that Mr. Willis has aged.  He no longer looks like the young man he once was, the young man we could envision doing all those crazy stunts while beating his body to a pulp.  Still, it would be hard to envision a young Bruce Willis doing the action sequences called upon his character in this film.  For the action sequences in this movie are so big, so wild, that it becomes nearly impossible for us as an audience to believe anyone could survive even one of those set pieces, never mind the five or six strung out through the film.

And those action sequences, as good as they might be (I happened to think the initial one, involving what appeared to be the demolition of every road and vehicle in and around Moscow was quite excellent) nonetheless strain our ability to believe what we’re seeing could happen.

In action films, that’s the trick a director/actor/effects crew should be sensitive about.  Can the audience believe what they’re seeing might happen?  Even avoiding that question, the fact is that A Good Day to Die Hard winds up being so enthralled to those same action sequences that the characterization so beloved in the first few Die Hard films is almost completely missing.  This is easily the least “John McClane” film of the bunch.  Bruce Willis could be playing any “good guy” Bruce Willis-type character…he’s that invisible as a person within the context of the movie.

He’s not the only one.

We’re presented with McClane’s son and, to a far lesser extent, daughter in the movie, but both characters are just that, characters.  Jai Courtney, who was nicely menacing as one of the main baddies in Jack Reacher, switches to good guy mode here and isn’t all that bad…but neither is he all that great either.  The blame, as before, lies in the fact that this is a movie built around those all important action sequences.  Jack McClane’s character, therefore, is a stereotype:  The angry, abandoned son who, by the end of the film, grows to love the old man.

Dodging bullets, I guess, will do that to you.

Anyway, near the end of the film we are presented with an interesting switcheroo regarding the bad guy(s) and, I have to admit, I found it a clever switch indeed (Maybe by then I was desperate for anything other than action action action).  In fact, seeing that switcheroo made me wonder what the original screenplay for this film was like.  Could it possibly have been more character oriented?  Could more thought have been put into creating a suspenseful, less pedal-to-the-metal action fest?

Who knows.

We can only judge A Good Day to Die Hard for what it is:  An expensive and near non-stop action fest that features little in the way of character development.  Not the worst action film I’ve ever seen, mind you, but one that desperately could use an infusion of the smart-assed humanity we saw in the earlier appearances of one John McClane.

Movies

Django Unchained (2012) a (mildly) belated review

After sitting around for several weeks, I finally plopped the Django Unchained DVD into my machine last night and gave it a whirl.  As it started up, I thought back to the very first time I ever heard of director/writer Quentin Tarantino.  It was many, many years ago, back in the pre-internet intensive days of 1992 when his first major motion picture, Reservoir Dogs, was making quite a buzz at film festivals and newspapers (remember those?) lauded the work of this wonderful new director.  By the time the movie finally reached my area, I absolutely had to see it.

Watching Reservoir Dogs proved quite the experience, like sitting in the passenger seat of a car which was being driven by a complete maniac, all the time wondering when/if you’re going to crash.  Other than the somewhat ambiguous ending, I loved, loved, loved what I saw.  Never mind that later we found the movie “homaged” (or, if you’re less tolerant, ripped off) City on Fire.  Regardless, Reservoir Dogs was such an incredibly unique experience, at that time, that I had to see more of Tarantino’s works.

His follow up film, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, cemented his reputation as a director/writer to watch, but as much as I liked it, it wasn’t as good an overall film, IMHO, as Reservoir Dogs, mainly because for me the Bruce Willis segment was lacking (though I would hasten to add that I did love both the prologue to this segment, featuring Christopher Walken’s demented “watch” sequence, and the non-chronologically revealed fate of John Travolta’s Vincent Vega).  Mr. Tarantino’s follow up films, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill (Volume 1 and 2), unfortunately, didn’t do all that much for me, though I’ll admit up front I’m in a minority with those particular feelings.  Jackie Brown, for all the fascinating actors, never really engaged me story-wise.  Kill Bill appeared to be Mr. Tarantino doing his personal version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, only using 70’s karate-type action instead of the wild west.  The question I had after seeing the film(s) was why bother with Mr. Tarantino’s version when I can just watch the Eastwood original?

Mr. Tarantino’s next major motion picture, Deathproof, part of the two-part Grindhouse motion picture set, was absolutely great…at least in the latter half of the film.  I absolutely, positively loved the film’s second act while absolutely, positively felt the complete opposite about the surprisingly uninteresting dialogue-filled first half.

Inglourious Basterds was next and proved one of the first BluRay purchases I ever made…but I have yet to actually see the film.  One day soon.

Which brings us back to Django Unchained.  As you can probably imply from the above, my one time love for Quentin Tarantino’s works has fizzled over the years.  Given that I haven’t found the time or inspiration to sit through his last film and the length of time it took me to get to his most recent one, my frame of mind while watching it wasn’t the best.

Yet as Django Unchained rolled out, I was very much into the film.  It was bloody, it was violent, it was profane…and yet also quite hilarious (the movie’s best bit has to be the whole pre-“hooded raid” segment…the dialogue there by the actors, and Don Johnson especially, was hysterical).

Sadly, this highlight of the film led into the second and final act, which while reasonably entertaining was nowhere near as good as what preceded it.  Like Death Proof, we had roughly one half of a great film.  Unlike Death Proof, the better stuff was in the first half.

Before I go any farther, a quick recap of the film’s plot:  Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave in the days just before the Civil War.  He was separated from his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and longs to get her back to his side.  In comes Dr. King Schultz (the excellent Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter, who needs Django to identify a trio of criminal brothers he is hunting.  He frees Django and, after getting his prey, takes a liking to his new partner.  King asks Django to continue to work with him for the winter and, following that, will help him find and free his wife.

It is after winter (and the aformentioned Don Johnson sequence) that we proceed to the movie’s second act, where King and Django find that Calvin Candie (a slimy Leonardo DiCaprio) purchased Broomhilda and has her at his plantation.  The duo attempt a variation on the Trojan Horse (this movie features plenty of echoes to mythology) to try to spirit the woman from his clutches.

The problem with this half of the film is two fold.  For one, it feels disjointed, as if Mr. Tarantino realized belatedly while filming that the movie was running too long and was forced to cut a lot of material in the telling of this last half of the film.  For example, Candie’s sister Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette) is presented in a total of perhaps three or four very brief scenes and barely has any dialogue…and yet I get the feeling the audience is supposed to view her as every bit as evil and slimy as her brother.  However, we simply see too little of her to get much more than a hint of possible incest between brother and sister and almost no real sense of evil.  We’re also briefly introduced to Candie’s “trackers”, a group of mysterious gunfighters in the man’s employ, and the most intriguing of the group is Zoe Bell’s female tracker, a woman who is seen a grand total of maybe two times, who wears a blood red scarf to hide the lower half of her face.  Who is she?  How did she end up being part of this all male gunfighter group?  Is she indeed a deadly gunfighter?  Why does she hide the lower half of her face?  All good questions, NONE of which are ever resolved.  She appears very briefly in one scene and the next time she appears Django kills her and her crew in a matter of a few seconds.

Really?

So, assuming I’m right, Mr. Tarantino was forced to trim an awful lot of material from the second half of the film and it hurt.  But nothing hurt the movie so much as what he had Dr. King do toward the film’s end.  I won’t spoil things too much, but suffice it to say that after all this time, I would have expected this professional bounty hunter to act in a far more professional manner than he did toward the film’s first major climax and not risk his life and the lives of both Django and Broomhilda because of his own stupid pride.

Or, to put it more succinctly for those who have seen the film:  Really?  All you had to do was shake the man’s hand!  Shake it already!

Still, despite a weak and at times confusing closing half, I enjoyed enough of Django Unchained to recommend it, especially to fans of Mr. Tarantino’s unique mix of humor and violence.

Movies

The Last Stand (2013) a (mildly) belated review

“Like riding a bike.”

That old quote suggests something that once learned is difficult to forget.  Watching The Last Stand, and more specifically the acting of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first major motion picture starring role -excluding the various small and larger cameo appearances in a handful of films- since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in (gasp!) 2003, one is struck with the fact that acting, indeed, is decidedly not like riding a bike.

At least for Mr. Schwarzenegger.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger I most recall is the one that could be alternately terrifying, charismatic, and even outright humorous in his motion pictures…sometimes even in the context of a single film.  Sure, his acting skills are the type that will likely never merit any serious awards, but at his best he could be a very engaging movie presence, one that audiences flocked to in droves.

Then, of course, Mr. Schwarzenegger moved on to politics and, through a unique set of circumstances got himself elected Governor of California.  He spent years away from movies and, having finally finished his term, dipped his toe back into acting via small roles in both Expendables movies (the second of which featured a larger role than the blink and you’ll miss him appearance in the first film).

With 2013’s The Last Stand, Mr. Schwarzenegger took front and center in a motion picture and the results…well, they weren’t all that hot.  The Last Stand’s box office, given the film was a relatively cheaply budgeted work to begin with, wasn’t all that great, though based on Rotten Tomatoes it maybe/coulda done better (critics and audiences gave the film a near identical rating, 60 and 58% approved).

So, was The Last Stand a worthy re-entry point for Mr. Schwarzenegger?

As I mentioned above, I found the acting of Mr. Schwarzenegger in this film lacking.  He reads his lines (even the “funny” ones) in the same dull tone and appears to my eyes unengaged with the material.  Given how wildly ridiculous the premise of the film is, this becomes a BIG problem.

The plot of the movie goes as follows:  A nasty drug kingpin is boldly broken out of a “high security” Las Vegas prison transport, then heads out of the city in a souped up Corvette, his intention being to drive himself to Mexico and safety.  We find that on top of being a high level drug kingpin, he’s also a professional race car driver, so the Feds are quickly overwhelmed in trying to capture him.  Indeed, it becomes clear that all that stands in the kingpin’s way to freedom is the small town of Sommerton Junction and Schwarzenegger’s Sheriff Ray Owens and his few companions.

What could have been a tense (though silly) feature moves along as if it were a documentary on building a fence.  There is precious little tension, almost no humor, and certainly no feeling of dread.  Once the kingpin arrives in the town (after a big shoot out with his minions), our Sheriff pursues the villain in a Camaro for a bit before going mano-a-mano with him.  However, given how gifted our villain supposedly was with driving and how he was driving a super souped up Corvette, one wonders how the Sheriff, in a far less powerful car, could somehow catch up to the villain.

In the end, I have to side with the 40 or so percent of critics/audiences who didn’t like The Last Stand.  Given the slate of films Mr. Schwarzenneger has coming, one hopes he can get his mojo back.  I’d love to see Mr. Schwarzenneger figure out how to ride that bike once again.