Reviews

I figured I would hate this movie and I was disappointed. I didn't actually hate it but one thing that hit me right out of the gate was how horribly miscast everyone was. I liked the action scenes, in fact some of the best of the year but I can't remember a movie so woefully miscast. Not one single character in this movie had an ounce of believability with Karolina Kurkova MAYBE coming close to respectability but the rest are just fake Barbie girls with no connection to reality at all. Dennis Quaid as General Hawk? Puhleeze.

Now as to the story, it wasn't horrible but it's the same old crap we're always given. Weapons maker makes super weapon for the good guys, sells it to the bad guys, makes a lot of money but as usual has an ulterior motive--come on, that theme has been done to DEATH.

What kills me about Hollywood is they still want to use super models as bad asses and though they're totally fun to look at with all those finely tuned jiggly parts, they lend an air of silliness to any flick trying to appear real. It just doesn't work. Hand Kathy Bates a damn ninja sword over these washed out blond bimbos any day.

There's one aspect of Casablanca that is seldom if ever discussed. Every character in the movie has made choices out of necessity rather than desire and yet the entire movie centers around desire.

Humphrey Bogart's, Rick, settles in Casablanca after being on the run with Sam, his piano man who has very little choice but to follow him. Bergman's, Ilsa, who is torn from Bogart in Paris, leaves him out of necessity when she learns her husband who she thought was dead is alive.

Ilsa's husband played by Paul Henreid, is a non-reluctant political mercenary, taking refuge in Casablanca.

In the background there is Louie, the French prefect, who also by necessity plays the aggressive supporter of Vichy France and yet has no love for his superiors.

In the background is the oppressiveness of the German army in a town where every non-native is there out of necessity, trying to free themselves from the yoke of German viciousness.

Thus is the backdrop where desire must heed to necessity against a menace out to crush both. A truly remarkable film with remarkable performances that have gone on to be more than a timeless classic but rather a thread in the fabric of every American. It carries messages that may seem lost on today's youth but still provides timeless lessons.

I have to say, I wasn't very interested in seeing this until the end as it just didn't entertain me at the beginning but I hung in with it and noticed that over the coarse of the film, the relationship between a young, naive private and a grumpy old sergeant, both dentists bored with their perspective lot in the army who decide it's time to contribute to the war effort, began to solidify.

If even half of their adventures are true then they were two truly amazing men who pulled off quite a feat. This is one of those films that is more human interest than anything but it holds your attention as it progresses by some of the situations they find themselves in and the wonderful way it's brought to conclusion.

I was 22 years old the first time I saw Bladerunner at a drive-in movie and being quite drunk at the time I really didn't get much out of it.

20 years later, I don't drink any more and I revisited this movie and I can honestly say I can't think of another science fiction movie that stands up to it save maybe Alien, ironically.

A movie that puts us in the middle of internal and external conflicts. Internal in that Harrison Ford, the best of the best in replicant executioners still struggles with that fact that he kills. It doesn't matter that what he kills isn't really human, he still feels his own humanity as he does the awful deed of ending a replicant's life.

It's revealed to us early on who these replicants are but amazingly we don't find out their reason for escaping their assigned occupations. In a very crafty fashion their mission reveals itself in the people they are looking for. More life, the wish of everyone, is their only true goal.

Outside of the movies plot, there are two things that stand out with Bladerunner. The first is that this movie's atmosphere as put forth by special effects and set designs stand up with the best out there today. They blend together in such as way as to elicit that eery aura we all feel sans The Day the Earth Stood Still.

But the one thing that stands out and has always stood out is the absolute perfection of Sean Young in make-up. To this day I've never seen a more beautifully scuptured face with absolute perfection in her coloring and features. She's made up in such a way that she literally pounces out of the screen. She has never received the credit she deserved for this film and it's a shame because no character in any science fiction movie has put forth a more perfect performance than her.

Rutger Hauer of course provides us with a performance that was worthy of a best supporting actor Oscar and had this come out today he would have gotten it.

Daryl Hannah, perhaps the weakest link in the cast still puts forth an acceptable performance as one of the replicants. It would have been a lesser movie without her.

The filming of facial expression, the interaction between all the characters and the final scenes which actually promote full circle motivations is fascinating.

I've spun Bladerunner on the platter a good 20 times since watching it again in 2000 and I must say, I never get tired of it because it's difficult not to appreciate a masterpiece.

What is it about a Ralph Fiennes movie that it gets great reviews but is so god awful boring that one needs a pot of coffee and No-Doz just to get through it.

I felt NOTHINg where the characters of The Constant Gardener were concerned. Tessa Quayle, an annoying rabble-rouser with no real point other than to insult high level diplomats rather than actually doing something that might be helpful to whoever she is trying to help which we're just not quite sure of.

Compound this with the fact that she is phony and a back-stabbing wife who was carrying on an affair behind her mild-mannered husband's back left me with no feeling for her whatsoever.

Finnes comes off as a spineless wimp who now gushes all over his dead wife as though there is some sort of noble honor in trying to figure out who killed his wife.

Throw in a homosexual doctor that is supposedly working on something with Tessa, that we never really can figure out nor can one figure out what he's doing with her from the start.

But of course, this is one of those "really gets good at the end" sort of movies where boring the audience to death is justified trying to build up suspense for a story that I found no redeeming value to.

All of this in the context of two hours of mind-numbing dialog that makes one want to poke one's eyes out with steak knives. Artsy-fartsy to the extreme and sure to be a huge hit with the Brie cheese and caviar club, nonetheless The Constant Gardener left this steak and potatoes man numb.

The gunfight isn't realistic some say? It's one of the more realistic gunfights ever portrayed on film. Finally someone got it right. The REASON Costner's character is able to walk up and shoot the gunfighter in the head is most likely because the gunfighter was probably RIGHT-HANDED! In the fight he has his gunbelt on his left side. As he had gotten into a fight with Mose earlier in the film it's most likely that Mose broke the arm that the gunfighter was using!

Not to mention that Costner was not a gunfighter thus he wasn't going to stand toe to toe in the traditional High Noon manner. The odds were 5 against 2 with 3 more lurking in the shadows. One thing that gets most gunfighters killed is overconfidence and Butler wreaked of it, not thinking for a minute that he had a thing to worry about. They stood out in the middle of the street because they didn't think for a minute that the two of them would dare try anything.

The other thing that made the gunfight incredibly realistic is the number of misses. This is the west in 1888, not Dirty Hairy. Guns were usually dirty, not easy to come by therefore old and if you've ever fired a handgun especially one of the size they were using you're talking about having to steady something that weighs about 5 pounds while trying to hit a moving target. Expert marksman hit non moving targets from 25 feet away with clean well polished guns, not people with old dirty guns who are wondering if they are going to be alive in the next 10 seconds.

Robert Duvall's dialog was incredibly well done. He kept his character throughout. I have to admit that one of the weaknesses of the movie was the relationship of Benning to Costner. I didn't think their interactions made me feel as though they had forged a strong enough relationship but most likely it's because typical Hollywood portrays a love interest as having to gush all over themselves. I think that the chemistry between Benning and Costner just wasn't enough for me to buy into. But overall it was a small thing in the overall scheme.

Finally someone made a movie where the townspeople aren't just a bunch of sniveling cowards. From Unforgiven to High Plains Drifter to a dozen other movies it was finally nice to see people act like real people rather than jelly filled ooze buckets. They played their parts excellently choosing not to put themselves in harm's way but taking a shot when it was sensible to do so.

It's been a long established fact concerning the rancor of ranchers to open rangers, finally someone figured out how to present it intelligently. Quite frankly I really didn't want to see Kevin Costner cutesy it up in another movie. The boyish charm worked great back when he made Silverado but Costner is not a kid anymore.