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Reviews
4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
Tires, Bores, Sputters.... Fails.
If you're a fan of the original Fantastic Four, you already know more than I do about the source material. I haven't been weaned on them... I won't conceal that that I've always been drawn to the darker Marvel material such as the Punisher. In fact, "dark and morbid" are probably reserved for the Punisher, if we examine the origins of every major title to hit the news stands in the past 50 years.
But onto the film... where Spiderman revels in its altruistic to a fault pauper protagonist who can't reap his reward for fear of violating some nonexistent superhero code, Fantastic Four is about four heroes who are in the public spotlight. It's the opposite, and whereas I criticized Spiderman for playing the hardship card way too often, Fantastic Four is manufactured cool which is exactly like Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen, it's so boring.
The plot about Silver Surfer coming to earth and whupping our foursome with his intergalactic powers... and then there are a few divergent story lines with say, Doom coming back, and Reed marrying Sue. The dialogue is truly groan-worthy... Reed is not a charismatic geek in the film, he just makes you want to bury your head in your lap. Sue hopelessly adores him and bitches when she finds out he is working on something to help out the US military, and the military's top brass engage in some of the stupidest banter I haven't seen committed to script. (At one point, a general tries to allude to Reed's non-participation in sports in high school... and acts 10 paygrades below his rank while doing so.) I didn't appreciate the obligatory disaster-happens-and-four-work-together-to-save-ppl scenes in the first movie and I don't appreciate them here... they're little more than filler, and they're not very creative in my opinion. X-Men did this with much more flair and suspense, in Fantastic Four it's another yawn-inducing crescendo that barely raises the pulse on this unplausible, unlikeable, mediocre movie. I give it 3. Because at the very least, Jessica Alba is very hot.
Disturbia (2007)
Finally... a horror movie that thinks.
Very little is implausible in Disturbia if you think about it. Okay, maybe a chick won't fall for a stalker so easily, and maybe it's not likely a visually unobstructed car will be hit by another car going full speed on the highway, and a few other small goofs, but Disturbia packs a lot of thought into what it does and removes the questions from the audience. This is the way horror films should be and exactly the reason why I avoid the genre of horror... because they never stop and think about how ridiculous their situations are. Meanwhile, I'm squirming in my seat, unable to enjoy the ride because I'm thinking to myself... Jesus, this movie is so dumb.
Disturbia isn't like that. Everything that is done is done by believable characters... Shia LeBeouf and the girl are excellent in their roles, as is the Asian friend. Everyone's excellent! Shia's character never falls into an emotionally devastated lull and continually whine or bring up the death of his father, as many trite and unsincere movies are wont to do. Shia sets his friend up to break into his suspicious neighbor's car, which may seem like a stupid scene, until you see that he has a lookout trailing the neighbor at the store. This alleviates the false tension which comes from many movies who simply throw their characters into situations without considering the obvious consequence (If you venture into a dark house, someone's going to pop out and stab you.) What I enjoyed the most? When Shia is in danger, in every scene, the first thing he picks up... is a weapon. AMAZING. More horror films should be like that. When I see horror protagonists carrying around weapons instead of running around locked complexes with their heads chopped off, I will start to care. Shia fights like someone who is trying to survive and win, instead of someone who has given up himself to die and merely wants to make that death as entertaining and gory as possible.
It's just so strong, the performance that the primary cast gives. The mother, a good mix of caring and firmness, the girlfriend, the friend, and not to forget the villain... a neighbor who wears an amicable veneer with a savage rage underneath (at one point he piledrives a female victim into a doorsill, knocking her unconscious).
Another thing of note is how MacGuyverish the movie plays out... as a boy on house arrest, Shia finds the time to rig a transmitter to his video camera and find blueprints of his neighbor's house. A pursuit worthy of someone whose xbox and itunes have been canceled.
One of the best movies this year, and one of the best suspense/thrillers I've ever seen, period. I never thought it'd be this good, but it is.
300 (2006)
One of the best comic book adaptations to date...
300 probably won't win any awards for depth, but it's a very strong, entertaining film. Whatever criteria you use to separate the genre Action Films from The Rest, use it, because you won't be deriving something incredibly meaningful, deep, or layered from 300. It reinforces the ideas of responsibility, honor, courage, in a very old-fashioned and perhaps anachronistic method which may have you in fits of either indignation or triumph... depending how highly you crave a movie that mythologizes a historical event into a pitched battle between good and evil.
Leonidas and his 300 Spartans combat the oncoming hordes of Persians who have been turned into, well, flesh-eating mutants. Actually there is a mix of barbarian, exotic cultures represented as weirdly painted, antler-donning lemmings that wilt under the mighty defence of the Spartans, but their inclusion is welcome. It serves to highlight that 300 is historical fiction as traditionally was done by the Greeks - truths intertwined with dramatic license, a method necessitated by the limited media available to ancient Greeks.
The Spartans go to war in very little armor. If this bothers you, don't be alarmed. You're not gay because you're watching underwear model physiques fighting. There are many more sports done by men that are a million times gayer. What is very pleasant however about the fighting is that the cuts are very few and far between, the editing preserves the integrity of the continuous fight, and it slows down so we can watch in glee as spears rend flesh, or shields smash jaws. To a hardcore action film fan, this is very important. You don't want your fight scenes edited by ADD-afflicted crackheads.
There's just enough sex to remind you what the demographic is, which I think is 18 to 36 year old males. The green screens, surprisingly don't interrupt the believability of the picture and don't stunt the excitement of the fighting.
The one thing that I do enjoy VERY much and is why I gave this movie such a high rating is that the film was adapted for the screen. Unlike Sin City, which comes from the same writer/director team if I'm not mistaken, 300 does not follow the comic word for word. Even though 300 the comic, with its mute protagonist and straightforward, undramatized historical perspective would be perfect just for that kind of film... the movie adds just enough dramatic license to make things interesting for people who've read Frank Miller's work, over and over and over. A good adaptation in its own right - one of the best to hit the screens yet.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Hippie Superheroes
I've never been impressed with Spiderman, to be perfectly honest. I thought he was all well and good until the movie came out, which sowed doubt in my mind about the whole license. If Spiderman is being true to the source material then I have been utterly tricked. Out and out, Spiderman is the biggest pansy ever committed to the silver screen.
While I hate to tarnish 75 years of tradition (or however long Spiderman has been in circulation), I feel that it has to be said that Spiderman has no edge. He takes one in this film but it's funny how this plays out. He acts like an evil emo hipster who does evil things like expose rival photographer's unethical photoshopping techniques (MY GOD PARKER, HOW COULD YOU), and then obsesses about how Sandman's gun went off in Uncle Ben's belly but for Parker to wish for his death is totally unbecoming. Especially amusing is the way that Parker snaps at the landlord who caustically reminds Parker that the rent is due - "You'll get your rent when you fix your door!" As if it was morally questionable in any sense to demand what you are promised, or set wrongs right, or god forbid, wish for someone's death every now and then (you know you have similar thoughts about someone at work). I understand Parker is a pure character... and yet the pragmatist in me utterly condemns him. Here he is, blessed with incredible superpowers, and he can barely support himself, let alone his aunt/surrogate mother.
Maybe I was an antifan from the start, I just never knew it.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
If you know better...
... then you should do better.
I'm hesitant to speculate on the motivations of foreign filmmakers who had a hand in making this film, but it won't escape me how puerile this film is. With all the foreign criticism towards the Iraq War lobbed safely from the sidelines by non-Americans, one can't help but think that 28 Weeks Later is a manifestation of those pretentious, drearily imagined apocalypses in which the evil military reigns supreme.
I'll get right to the point. 28 Weeks Later fails simply because it is implausible and stupid. I hate to be a stickler for realism, but one ought to know better... It's not coincidental that this film has been lambasted for being unrealistic, stupid, brazenly off-target with its pejorative presentation of the military (28 Weeks indicts the concept of the military, in my opinion, rather than the US military in particular).
I don't have the energy to spoil this film, but as you're watching it, try to think of what you might do in their shoes, regardless of your military experience. Would you allow zombie virus carriers to be unguarded, would you allow soldiers to sleep alone without someone standing guard, would you allow ANYONE unsupervised access to sensitive areas which he has no purpose going to...
There's a lot of gotcha moments which make no sense at all and a lot of fast cut/editing. And lots of gore. It's pointless. Many zombie films before this have been great, including the last installment.
This is little more than an excuse to infect the entire world with a zombie virus and then kill off 6 totally unlikeable characters (Except for perhaps the Delta sniper, who plays his part well) to set up 28 Months Later. If this one is any indication, that one is going to suck too.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Flags exploits the flagraisers worse than we did.
Despite the fact that Jack Bradley gave his endorsement to this film, I find that all praise for this movie have been co-opted by its simplistic anti-war and anti-war-profiteering message or by its attachment of star power, namely Clint Eastwood's venerable reputation, the one that has convinced everyone he can do no wrong.
But I do believe that Flags of our Fathers is a deep injustice to the Marines that landed on Iwo Jima, let alone those that actually scaled Suribachi and planted the flag in the earth. We never get to know the characters in the movie, not as the book tells us. Sgt. Mike Strank exists solely for Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) to foist upon us his cloying, drunken grief, while Franklin serves the same purpose, except on a much, much smaller scale. Harlon Block is only mentioned in any detail because he's misidentified as Hank Hansen, and never received his recognition in a timely manner. Their lives are mere convenient footnotes only mentioned when it reinforced the film's main conceit, that we exploited the flagraisers without understanding their sacrifices and their suffering, making the film just about as hypocritical as the various bureaucratic villains it casts... all the way from Commandant Vandegrift to the Secretary of the Treasury, whose callousness towards the grief of the men they brought back is petulant, childish, even. The rest of the movie is about crass war profiteering by the manufacturers of the Mighty 7th, the seventh tour for war bonds that was designed to fund a war many believed America was losing the stomach for, but was not yet close to over.
As a film, the confusing disjunction of events that go back and forth lead to a very hard-to-follow narrative. The addition of an awkward "I was a bad father" touchy-feely scene between Jack Bradley and his father John Bradley neither seems relevant nor is it in the book. Flags of our Fathers, in its rush to destroy American myths and promote our condemnation of wartime profiteering done by American government officials, trivializes all the lives of the brave Marines and Navy Corpsman that stormed Iwo Jima beach, -especially- the flagraisers. It does so in a way that could have never been done so masterfully by anyone else, not even the US Government. In that way, it is the greatest injustice of all, because although Ira Hayes was dead drunk and suffering most likely from severe PTSD, he was regarded by many as a good Marine (at least in the field) as were his 5 contemporaries. Flags helps us to forget that, all by portraying John Bradley as the only sane man with the only tale worth telling.
I am not pleased with the film, and believe that it molests a historical event and a piece of US Marine Corps history the way that propaganda never can, because it is supposedly a sincere effort to pay tribute to the flagraisers. How can one pay tribute to those Marines whether they barely bother to tell their stories? At the end of this movie, you may have to look up Franklin Sousley, Mike Strank, and Harlon Block to find out what kind of people and Marines they were... Because the creators of Flags certainly couldn't be bothered to deliver even that cursory homage in a rush to tell such a damning and one-sided expose on the heartlessness of the US Government.
I loathe to mention Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's other half of the Iwo Jima saga, in a review of Flags, but I feel that it may shine light on how unfair this movie is. While Letters, judging from the trailer, will portray the Japanese as sane, patriotic fighting men, Flags will show us only what we did to the battle-haunted Marines that took Iwo Jima. Nothing will be shown of Marines like Ralph Iggnatowski, John Bradley's buddy during Iwo, being tortured, brutalized, and killed in those dark caves that caused the death of so many Americans... and instead the Japanese, enlightened before their time in what is bound to be hopelessly revisionist and placating to Japanese right-wingers, will sit next to the wounded Oklahoma boys and start up friendly conversation. Apparently it is patriotic to defend your country, unless you are an American.
Annapolis (2006)
A Non-Academy Review
Annapolis is about an academy where people play stupid games all day and night, 20 questions with dinner on the line, pushups in the rain, obstacle courses which fat mids cannot pass, tell dirty Latinos to shower. It's all quite boring and seems more likely than not the perspective of an outsider looking in, rather than an insider's recollections.
Witness: Tyrese Gibson's character delivering a stone-serious quip about a trivia question that Huard has guessed at. "Would you be willing to bet everyone's dinners on it? What about everyone's life?" The night ends with Gibson (Mid Lt. Cole) telling Franco (Plebe Huard) that an officer should have the guts to admit he doesn't know the answer... BS. Gibson also regales Huard's company with how he knows "EXACTLY what it takes to be an officer", when he is not even one yet himself! He also refers to himself as a soldier when he is a Marine... heinous.
The inaccuracies pile up for the sole purpose, as I imagine, of convincing us how "tuff" the Academy is. One middie is separated for about what I can presume is the stupidest reason ever foisted upon viewers... he was ordered to shower 3 times a night and lied about it. Later, his roommate dimes him out. Well, how do you know he didn't shower, Plebe Loo? You wake up 3 times a night to make sure he does? But I'm not here to nitpick for the sole purpose of nitpicking. Truth be told, Annapolis doesn't fill the purpose of a film like this, which is to elevate our understanding of the institution that is USNA. The main issue I have with all these inaccuracies is that it gives us a cast of characters I wouldn't follow into a checkout line, much less combat. Annapolis' version of USNA doesn't seem to be training leaders at all.. and that's important to me, that beyond the beatdown PT and the shrill verbal abuse of drill sergeant-like Middies, I see some evidence of 2nd Lts being groomed to LEAD. Leading is not dropping a dime on your roommate because he failed to disclose he didn't take a shower during the night, leading is not yelling at people below you like you are a stereo with no volume dial, and leading is not acting like a chickensh*t placing greater emphasis on useless trivia than should be placed and then giving out BAD advice (Just admit you don't know the answer, Huard).
Then again, I'm not from the Academy. I would think they reserve the yelling, screaming, and chickensh*t for enlisted Boot... but what do I know. Maybe the movies isn't such a great place to learn about Annapolis after all...
Over There (2005)
A Blunt Hammer of Leftist Proselytizing
This show is much more than an embarrassing attempt at edginess or your regular garden variety soapbox criticism, it's a shameful opening score to any preceding military dramas that will arise around the subject of the Iraq War. You would try hard to get worse than this.
The Iraq War itself is not a "safe subject". People have mixed feelings about it, and those who didn't are starting to have mixed feelings. That sort of thing is attributable to the fact that the war hasn't ended. So why would you make a show about it? If you were syndicating a show on a conflict that is ongoing at the time of filming, wouldn't you take the effort to be as fair as possible? Over There is a puerile leftist look at the military, from the recreation of Vietnam Era-stereotypes, to embarrassing dialogue ("If you ever disobey me again, I'll kill you myself!"), to unbelievable situations, to the annoying "Over There" title song that plays to a slo-mo montage of soldiers just walking around looking dazed, confused, lost in the morally ambiguous jungle that is Vietnam... oops, I mean Iraq.
I mean, this is just stupid. If you want to be liberal, BE LIBERAL. Why purport to realism and then mask your criticism in the strange circumstances which visit this one little infantry unit.
The military straight up bombs a farm without first verifying that it has the bombs in question... even though the soldier who interrogates the prisoner who gave up the location had guaranteed "nothing would happen to the farmers". The squad gets stuck in a bunker and debates all day whether or not the person they are spotting is an artillery spotter, to which end "Angel", the designated marksman revolts: "I'm a soldier! Not a judge...". "Dim" is just annoying beyond belief, wrecking morale with tired, defeatist statements like "How do you fight someone who's not afraid to die?". And next week, they stumble onto a boatload of cash in a wall... yay. Three Kings Reloaded, except Three Kings was a much superior film.
What can I say? If you want to watch a realistic take on Iraq, just go watch "Gunner's Palace". Over There is tripe.
The Ultimate Fighter (2005)
A few flaws, but very, very promising...
It was bound to happen: A show about UFC hopefuls training, living, and eventually competing with each other to see who would win a contract in North America's biggest mixed martial arts event. With the glut of reality television shows about anything from weight loss to word puzzles where contestants win by chicanery, politics, and backstabbing, it's refreshing to see a show where the outcome is determined by actual skill, not elections, not BS.
TUF beats the Contender by about 8 weeks... and its contestants possesses more mettle than the Contender has marketing, nothing against what boxers do. Don't believe it? An MMA fighter has to know how to fight on the ground and on his feet: Anything that works, is used. Anything that doesn't, is not even given a second thought. Mixed martial arts has done more to bring what's real to the table and kick all the BS to the curb than anything or anyone else in the broad subject matter of the "fighting arts". Like Joe Rogan said: We now know exactly what happens between two guys in an (approximately) no holds barred fight.
All I can say is FINALLY! For someone who's a big UFC and Pride fan, this is a godsend.
Few flaws and kinks, such as the changing of the rules midway through the competition, first two episodes eliminated two contestants through physical challenges and not through fights (Another way of saying, BORING), the strange way that the good fighters of Team Liddell like to fight the bad fighters, the very 'coincidental' twists of fate (that allowed for an eliminated rabble-rouser to re-enter the competition). However, since all the fighters were selected as the best MMA unsigned fighters in the country, then it stands to reason that they should all be good, and that no fight among them should be "unfair".
Sometimes I see an invisible hand moving the pieces of this "reality show" and am hard-pressed to ignore such improbable coincidences.
EG, the Leben-Koscheck rivalry, between one who's a good striker/frat boy loudmouth and an excellent wrestler, was obviously good for ratings but ended in a judges' decision that eliminated Leben from the competition in Episode 6. In Episode 9, Leben comes back, due to the prerogative granted an injured Nathan Quarry to choose one member to take his place as a competitor. Not surprisingly, he picks Leben, who he has counseled through the tiff that arises between Leben and Koscheck/Southworth.
And the decision between Stephan Bonnar (Team Couture) and Bobby Southworth (Team Liddell) that sends Southworth packing. Granted, judges' decisions usually tick people off regardless of sport, but this one strangely ends at Round 2 when it easily could have gone to Round 3, due to the inconclusiveness of the 2nd Round. But Team Liddell has had straight fight victories.. Team Couture has had nothing. It can be a drag... especially considering that only one person from each weight class is going to get a contract, and all this team rivalry is for naught.
If you're not interested in the team politics or the characters of the show, there's a fight each episode... watching Diego Sanchez dish it out is truly a joy. That in itself, it worth watching TUF for.
TUF shows promise. Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell, arguably the two best heavyweights in the UFC, coach and comment on their teams... the members of the teams form rivalries and friendships, and Dana White throws in a little bit of caustic pep talks mixed with rational advice here and there... If TUF works out its details, I don't think I will miss even one second of Season 2.
Battlestar Galactica (2004)
"Limited supplies, limited fuel, no allies, and now, no hope."
I may relinquish some legitimacy over the fact that I am a first time BSG watcher. What I know of the old BSG is hearsay.
I do know for a fact that Star Wars and the shadow it cast over the glut of proceeding filmic works(Including the old BSG) changed science fiction irrevocably. I guess when I say 'changed', I mean it may have 'damaged' SciFi in the sense that nothing cinematic would ever reach deeper than that seminal work. SciFi programming was very 'safe', very antiseptic, inclusive of all the excesses of SciFi that had been constructed on the formula of Star Wars over the years. Or it was stuck in the dead night hours on cable TV networks.
Today, it's safe to create shows about self-doubt and self-questioning attitudes, and to explore those avenues of thought during times of crisis. Blame postmodernism. Blame 24 and the Shield, while you're at it. What I have seen so far is that this first season has hit harder and dug deeper than any other season of scifi TV than I've ever seen (DS9 included, one of my favorite shows), shaky-cam and all.
I think the appeal of the show is really its characters, which are very much like us, in a sense. They don't overly complain, they don't show weakness even though they are intrinsically flawed... they merely rise to the challenges with the tools they are given. Mankind faces the brink of extermination by a race it created and is powerless to do anything except run. The common sense of running is counter to the no-surrender ethos which is the unspoken rule in today's dominant military powers, such as the US. That kind of predicament has to sting in the hearts of the hardest soldiers. That kind of decision-making would make even the strongest of leaders feel like vomiting out their guts.
And the questions of what the Cylons are planning, who they are among the population, what they plan to do, none of which is clear - builds a kind of tension foreign in most shows but welcome to this science fiction series.
What else can I say? It's so -new-. The docu-style filming may cause epilepsy in some folks but it works in spades along with the insistent beating of drums, delivering some much-needed adrenaline and originality to ship combat that now actually occurs in zero-g instead of pretend-space, fantasy-land. The dialogue is sharp and fun and actually provocative... the show involves the watcher first-hand in the emotions and the molding of the characters as story lines progress.
All in all, this is a solid story being told, and in some unfortunate cases, being missed. Perhaps it does not deserve its Galactica license per se, but it is one hell of a TV show. If you can allow yourself to be taken, this show is a scifi drama that examines painful situations which gnaw straight to the crux of the provocative catch-all question that BSG purports to explore (and does, with resounding success): The question of who we are... the meaning of our democratic ideals, our tenacity as a people, our military might, our responsibility and willingness to accept culpability for acts of wrong, even our spirituality. Thankfully, none of these topics become vehicles for the writers to foist personal or politically correct beliefs on the audience... they are instead questions posed to us, leaving us to figure out exactly what these things are worth.
Pay attention to the series. You won't regret it.
The Punisher (2004)
A game effort but not good enough...
When it comes to the Punisher, you don't need too many of the comics to know what he's all about. His family died, he got revenge, but found that wasn't enough. Mack Boland had a similar story (Who was the inspiration, to use the word lightly, for Punisher), as do the Boondock Saints, the Crow, Wyatt Earp, etc. so on and so forth. Over some 30-odd years Punisher killed a lot of dudes, went to prison a couple times, appeared in a few "what-ifs", met the merrier side of Marvel (Spidey, Daredevil, with mixed results), and even became a servant of the Lord (Don't ask). Garth Ennis wrote a miniseries called "Welcome Back, Frank" which started the resurgence of interest in the Punisher after a few disastrous detours from the simple and successful vigilante formula that keeps fans coming back to Punisher.
When you need to make a successful movie about the Punisher, you need to preserve the general conceit of the Punisher ethos. 1) He's insane. Anyone who kills for both a hobby and a living is crazy. 2) He's only redeemed by the fact that the people he kills are worse than he is. MUCH worse. 3) Since he's insane and cannot possibly coexist with society in a sane world, it's nice to have some humor about the whole situation, just to keep some perspective on the issue and with luck, some major distance from any real-life "what-ifs".
It's strange to me that a relative unknown (Thomas Jane) got the title role while a very known guy (John Travolta) got the villain. This, if anything, hurt the film. John Travolta is a capable actor in many of his films but a film like the Punisher requires the bad guy to be SO bad that the people have to admit that wow, he really needs to die. John Travolta was more evil in Broken Arrow and Face/Off. The Crow had villains that really deserving of death. "The Punisher" fails. The moment of satisfying righteous vengeance is marred by the fact that, well... Thomas Saint's (Travolta) son DID die. What did you expect the reaction from a powerful criminal would be? To top it off, most of Thomas Saint's operations are not shown to be bloodthirsty and brutal... he doesn't usually murder, smuggle, dabble in child pornography, or anything that would be universally regarded as really, really bullet-in-the-head -bad-.
The Punisher is a failed opportunity. Most of the plot plods along with direct references to "Welcome Back, Frank", "Warzone #1", "Punisher: War Journal", which serve to bore rather than pay homage. It's a Garth Ennis Punisher without the humor and dialogue, War Journal without Frank's psychotic narration, and War Zone without the mafia. Characters either have too much depth or not enough. In the end, what would really be just a bad, bad film gets a better vote from me only because it tried to stay true to its source material, which a mixed blessing for Punisher though it may not be for other comics (Spiderman, Daredevil). Fanboys tend not to stick with Punisher very long.
Note to producers: next time, try something different.
The Recruit (2003)
If this is what the modern CIA looks like...
Were Hollywood to govern the recruitment and instruction of espionage agents, with we'd be stuck with clandestine service officers who possess cultural delicacies of corpses, the intelligence of rats, and the sexual drive of rabbits. Colin Farrell, the agency's top recruit, can't seem to control his libido for five seconds, and apparently we're supposed to overlook this serious flaw while he tries to emphasize his other assets.
He's "graduated first in his class MIT, fast, and agile," or at least we are led to believe so by a grousy spy instructor played by Al Pacino. His presence here reminds me of another movie where a young recruit is paired up with a old hand, "BAD COMPANY", which this movie is only marginally better than.
The Recruit heavily plays the sexual appeal card and ends up short in everything else. It disrespects the tradecraft of actual spies by subjugating the entire plot to some BS sexual connection that occurs within the first 15 minutes between Moynihan and Ferrell. This aspect of the movie gets special attention while everything else falls by the wayside. EX: Ferrell goes on an op requiring him to pick up a girl, Ferrell peeks at Moynihan during the test, Ferrell hits on Moynihan, Ferrell tries to bang Moynihan and eventually, he does. It's ridiculous how sexually charged and unprofessionally Ferrell acts. Do they teach principle on the Farm? Apparently not. Every bonehead with a girlfriend or a boyfriend is ready to have some kind of idiotic emotional breakdown that will compromise the Company.
Do spies actually fall victim to stupid romantic conflicts as much as Hollywood believes, as they have in Spy Game, The Recruit, and Bad Company?
It's said that love makes fools of all of us, but if any spy who worked for me made such retarded decisions in the name of love, I'd have fired, prosecuted, and jailed the moron. The country's national security just IS so much more important than one man, one woman, or one piece of tail, no matter how salivating it may be.
Bad Boys II (2003)
Can a movie be given TOO MUCH money? Apparently yes.
I'm an unabashed Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay fan. The extent of that support is conditional and has been ever since I got to take a good look at Pearl Harbor and The Core, but at least I've never went to a JB/MB film and felt I was being completely suckered.
Bad Boys 2 is really an insult to my intelligence. It's the last straw and next to line to totally unrealistic cop movies where paramilitary police offices duke it out with well-armed citizen terrorists, and the city gets blown up in the process. There are so many fallacies and inconsistencies that I couldn't care to list them, but let me say this: where the original had some roots in reality, Bad Boys 2 straps a rocket to the concept and sends itself to another planet, where physics, governments, gun control laws, and believability don't apply.
For example, I didn't know all we had to liberate Cuba was to send the Miami Police Department. They send the Miami Police to CUBA, to do battle with Cuban forces, to perform a high-risk extraction on a house under full military guard.
It's over-the-top, way past the point of no return. Michael Bay, apparently receiving all the money in the world to film explosions, gunfights, high-profile stars and one hell of a LONG-ass movie, manages at best to bore, at worst to insult one's intelligence.
G.I. Jane (1997)
"I now turn you over, to Master Chief John James Urgayle."
The rating of this movie is farcical: GI Jane is wholly underrated. Women in positions that would by conventional logic require the physical aptitude and the presence of males is a subject that isn't broached often enough. I don't have an agenda as per the subject, but I feel that it's fascinating and worthy of further study. Demi Moore becomes a Navy SEALs, the most "intensive training program known to man." Usually there are two categories of these kinds of butch femme characters, sexy actresses who try to be tough soldiers, and actresses who convincingly portray soldiers. Demi is a little bit more of the former than latter, bringing her attitude on the platter of a nice body.
The political play of the movie is disregarded as unrealistic. Why? It's obvious that much of this "women-in-combat" experiment is conducted at the highest levels of Congress and the Executive branch. The only thing that I could see happening in a scenario like this is a massive lawsuit by military figures to stop this woman going through BUD/S, unless they were co-opted by superior officers, which I think that they are in this film.
Otherwise, I feel that the performances are quite excellent. GI Jane's Master Chief Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen) was one of the reasons I got excited to see LotR. All of the minor supporting roles, Anne Bancroft, the general who operates the SEAL base, all evince their roles with skill. The only complaint I have is with the shallowness of the supporting cast, such characters Slovnik and Cortez, both who doubt "GI Jane" with a passion bordering insubordinance. Their characters are highly unprofessional and in my opinion would lack the fortitude to execute orders in a real combat situation.
A deeply underrated project whose commentary on the modern social ambiguities regarding gender and sex is pitiably ignored.
Troy (2004)
60 percent ego, 40 percent plot
Prior knowledge of the Iliad or any of the arguably better Iliad adaptations will damage your perceptions of this film. Most of the film is spent subverting the audience to a propagandist vision of Troy and Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector. Wolfgang has done a great disservice to the story of Troy by stripping it of its flesh. The Gods have been removed, as have principal characters, as well as principal fates. <<Spoiler>>All that's left is a typical movie arc, where the entire Trojan war is a parabolic 3-hour curve in which the beginning of the curve is at Paris' eloping with Menelaus' wife, Helen, the middle peaks with the climactic confrontation of Hector and Achilles, and the end is some bullsh*t where Paris escapes with Helen and Achilles kills his own king. You know it's going to suck when principal characters (like Menelaus) are killed off just to expedite the movie, even though their insight is crucial to the remainder of the story.<<End Spoiler>>
I squirmed and sat bored throughout the entire movie. Troy certainly fits the "2004" updated rendition of the Iliad, as it is earmarked by the completely fake and mitigated violence/storytelling depth that made the Lord of the Rings such a sell to the 9 years and up film crowd.
Wolfgang cutting the fat from the story leaves it with nothing. Troy is a very typical Hollywood movie with shallow lead characters delivering subpar performances in war movie that tries to achieve realism, but only manages to slaughter its titular mythology. There's no depth at all: no insights into actual Grecian warfare, no proper evincement of character, no historical depth to make up for all the things that Wolfgang cut. I spent the entire movie trying to be convinced that Brad Pitt was Achilles, that Eric Bana was Hector. I failed.
When Braveheart was released, the folk hero William Wallace was portrayed in all memorabilia with the likeness of Mel Gibson, a subtle honor to a great movie and a man whose documentation is even more scant than Achilles. Will Brad Pitt, just to name one of the principal characters who participated in this disastrous PG-13 watercolor portrait of ancient Greece, ever be so intimately tied to Achilles? Neither his performance, nor this movie, is memorable enough. We're still waiting for an excellent and classic filmic adaptation of Troy, and this, my friends, falls far, far short.
The Shield (2002)
An In-Depth Look at Precinct Politics and Police Brutality
People qualify the Shield as another show celebrating police brutality, which is what I first thought when I switched on the TV and saw the promos. Unfortunately, the promos can be very misleading. Sure, it can be fun to watch police whaling on suspects and breaking the law to preserve it, all that sort of doublespeak stuff, but in all honesty the Shield is much more conscious than other cop shows when it comes to the issue of police brutality.
First of all, the reality of the LAPD Rampart Scandal is probably more shocking than anything that happened on the Shield, (barring the money train heist). Officers stole money from evidence rooms, planted drop-guns, sold drugs, planted drugs, and some served as bodyguards to the notorious Death Row Records while off-duty. A single officer's testimony (Rafael Perez) led to the overturning of 100+ convictions and the Public Defenders Office is investigating thousands more.
The Shield frames its moral questions with a diverse and solid cast. Detectives Claudette and Dutch are the good cops, who rely heavily on by-the-book interrogation tactics and case-making confessions, opposite to Vic Mackey and his Strike Team, for whom "victory at any cost" and preservation of self-interests are special dispensations granted by the authority given them by their badges... "shields". Caught in the middle are P2s, Julian and Danny, who often find it hard to reconcile their interests of loyalty to their fellow officers and doing the right thing as honest cops. Captain Aceveda oversees all of them, playing his own power games, balancing political ambition with the desire to see his streets safe from thugs, even if the thugs are the ones wearing the badges.
No show more so than the Shield gives the audience such a deep look at the consequences of police actions. Vic Mackey's brutal and debatedly unethical tactics weigh on him not only as blackmail but as guilt on his conscience. In S02, Dead Soldiers, Mackey beats and burns a suspect only to find that the blood that's congealed on his shirt and head isn't so easy to wash off. A fight between Shane and Tavon leaves Tavon hospitalized and teetering on the brink of mental paralyzation, but Shane only wants to make it disappear, so used to covering up the truth in order to protect loved ones.
In contrast, Claudette never fails to keep herself and others honest. Dutch nearly crosses the line himself, following some off-hand advice from Vic Mackey. Two seconds after Dutch plants evidence in a suspect's home, he screeches his car to a halt and rushes back into the building to retrieve the "evidence" before patrol officers do.
In my experience, I've never seen NYPD Blue handle the moral ambiguity of police tactics and politicking as well as the Shield does. I've seen L&O: SVU detectives beat down suspects and pass them up through levels of beating with NO consequences whatsoever. L&O is simply too boring and procedural to mention. Right now, the Shield is in my opinion, the best cop show on TV. There's a lot of reasons you should watch this show.. a solid cast, sharp writing, and an edge. The Shield hits parts of the precinct I never even see touched in those three above-mentioned shows.
Hellboy (2004)
Would love to love it but honestly, it's weak kiddie-fare
As I am going to trash Hellboy, I feel very sorry, sorrier than I was when I left the theater contemplating all the potential squandered on that film.
I love Ron Perlman. He shines even in his cameo performances. Blade II was fast, fun, and violent, so del Toro should have had no trouble delivering something along those lines. I love comics. I never read Hellboy admittedly but it's safe to say I was willing to give Hellboy all the chances I could possibly given it.
But ugh. The script is awful, cheesy, full of cliches and a kiddie morality/philosophy towards life. "Just tell her how you feel" - I nearly puked over that line. Selma Blair portrays a one-dimensional introvert/emotionally distraught pyrokinetic, Rupert Evans is the most unimposing CIA agent you ever saw, Ron Perlman can't save his character from horrifically bad one-liners, and the short-list of minor characters is composed of the most incompetent government agents ever seen in the big screen. It's painfully obvious no one recruited any technical advisors from the CIA or FBI to instruct how an actual paranormal agency might work (Especially when it's staffed by idiots like the director who whines the audience to the death about how HE'S IN CHARGE, NOT HELLBOY *yawn*).
My attitude towards the characters was totally unsympathetic. Too little character development and what little of it is there comes through their (not-so-)witty repartee and jests about death, combat, anonymity.
The action is sub-standard. Blade II pumped adrenaline through my veins (thanks in part to Donnie Yen's choreography) but also Perlman's excellent facial expressions and physical tics in his Reinhart character. Hellboy is watered-down action and one hell of a CGI light show. Most tiring are the lazy and gaping plotholes (traffic rushes past a pedestrian in the center divider as if he's not there), while del Toro pulls the typical the old "hero-says-something-witty-while-monster-sneaks-up-behind-him-in-the-dark" trick a half-dozen times too many.
It's a messy plot no one can understand, about nazis and the occult and little demon children who look like the mascots on plague remover commercials.
I left that theater smashed with disappointment. Most of the budget was obviously spent on special effects, while no thought was given to the characters or the plot (EX: Supersecret paranormal agency allows director to operate on a paranormal corpse without supervision or adequate security [since paranormal corpses have a habit of jumping to kill people at tension-building points in the movie]). It had all the ingredients of a winning movie but someone got out of control with the special effects, and it's pretty obvious no one cared about the rest of the film.
If you're 14 or younger, you may like this film, otherwise you may find yourself wishing you'd waited for something better. Hellboy is a PG-13 film treading on PG ground, subject matter elementary enough to be suitable only for children, not for people hungering for more than just a lame story about a life-and-death struggle between the forces of the costume department (hellboy) and the computer animated flunkies.