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neerood
Reviews
The Hero (2013)
What is a Hero?
The Hero sends a group of contestants to Panama for a series of physical stunt challenges. The rules are ambiguous and change on the fly. I appreciated that though, as it represents a much needed fresh departure for the format. But the ongoing ambiguity and rule changes will make many criticize The Hero's legitimacy - and rightly so.
The Rock is a surprisingly smooth and affable host for the show. He pops up and presents different 'temptations' to the players.
Superb editing even plays with the timeline and time scale a bit. Viewers don't always know right away what key decisions the players have reached about temptations and eliminations. This technique was effective - very effective - to the point I expect to see other programs copy it.
But the editing goes way too far in the challenges, to the point where it seems there's obvious fakery and rigging to create dramatic events.
The challenges all have unverifiable or unknown countdowns or puzzle solutions. Even gullible viewers have said the outcomes seem fake or rigged.
The casting is excellent as we have a collection of distinct and memorable players. The game and their living situation create an abundance of compelling tension and teamwork. This aspect is probably what made The Hero watchable in spite of the its seeming lack of legitimacy.
It becomes murky, yet water cooler friendly, as it presents some players as scum for falling to temptation, while other players are sentimental favorites for doing the same thing.
I never understood why one player who fell to temptations would be painted as heroic, while others who did the same thing with no harm to anyone else were cast as villains.
The challenges themselves were more of the same. More of those rope walks and climbs that have been triple safety rigged to require no player skill and remove even the slightest of risk. More harmless snakes and tearless tear gas.
The final winner was supposedly decided by public vote. I was left to wonder why a Hero should be someone who was the most casual in the aforementioned super safe quote-unquote challenges. I also pondered why it's heroic to turn down a cash temptation in hopes of building a bigger cash jackpot that you want to claim later. Is that a hero or a gambling addict?
Despite the apparently rigged nature of this show, the final assembly was interesting and different. For me at least, the villains and eventual Hero of this show were indeed its aggressive editors.
Skyfall (2012)
Enjoyable but ultimately very disappointing
Really enjoyed it while watching and was surprised to learn the actual running time as it went by quickly for me. But starting near the end and certainly afterwards, I'm quite disappointed.
I'm not usually a stickler about plot holes, but they really degrade this effort overall.
The essential story here is a disgruntled agent comes back to harm M. MI6 and Bond condone a hundred needless deaths to protect a very old figurehead who dies anyway, and we're to be happy with the outcome? Even worse, she makes the point earlier that on multiple occasions she cheerfully sacrificed the lives of individual agents (Silva, Ronson, Bond) to save the lives of others. Why doesn't she or the plot disrespect that philosophy? The villain didn't pose much of a threat to the world. He wanted to get back at his mother figure, and all the mayhem was mostly caused by attempts to stop him.
The spectacular opening sequence aside, nothing actually happened, and there wasn't any jeopardy beyond what MI6 themselves provoked.
So much of the traditionally cleverness of a Bond film was seemingly overlooked. We see his hands are unsteady, so why doesn't that come into play later? He magically becomes a crack shot, rendering his age and growing infirmity pointless as the film moves along. Sure he has to use the duelling pistol and hang from the elevator, but these challenges are never used in any clever way.
Same with the gadgets. They brush it aside with an insulting comment that "we don't go in for the exploding pens anymore". Hey guess what, the audiences do. I'm not slavish about following the more hackneyed conventions of the Bond films, but admitting you have no clever gadgets by slighting the audience for expecting it is just weak.
The gadgets we do get are a bland homing beacon and a fingerprint gun which isn't new, isn't impressive, and both end up being utilized in banal fashion.
They used a corny 1980's level of digital espionage, where hacking always has some visually stunning and graphical representation, and defeating it is just a matter of wild guessing.
The only remotely clever bits are badly telegraphed, like Kincade throwing the dagger on the table and repeating the theme 'the old ways are best'. When a priest hole is mentioned, you know it's going to be used, and when Moneypenny discusses field work with Bond, you see that coming too. Everything just seemed so forced.
There was also so much rehashing. Rooftop motorcycles is cool, but it's a re-run. Same with the hall of mirrors in Shanghai, and the lusty Latino villain.
Once they were at the underground and it turned into a cop shootout movie I started to question what I was seeing.
The third act prolongs the senseless gunfight theme with Bond inexplicably going there to defend his old childhood cottage, which even he doesn't care about.
They also failed on the tradition of cleverly turning peril for Bond into enemy deaths. The komodo dragon was highly telegraphed, and was never really a threat to Bond. And while the internet can debate the finer points of choking someone's carotid versus holding them underwater, the drowning/choking enemy kill was an uninteresting waste of a situation. A race to a breathing hole big enough for only one to survive, a rope that becomes a tug of Bond versus henchman, maybe a shot of an enemy pressed up against the ice, so close to living but quite making it. Any would be more clever than a Where was the Bond wit? "Did you kill Patrice?" Fans wait to hear a Bond response: "I dropped him off in Shanghai" or "We had to let him go." Nope, he just says: "Yes" I'm not asking for stand-up routine, just some token realization of who the character is after 20+ movies.
I think why I'm most disappointed is this could have been so much better. A traditional Bond would have cleverly managed to save Severine on the Ghost Island, rather than passively allowing her murder. And why did he stand around and just wait for the sniper murder to occur? And what was the point or connection of the art heist sniper to Silva? I'm not insisting they slavishly adhere to formula, but give a little respect to what a Bond movie is about.
Yes M had to die off given how many years elapse between releases, but it didn't need to be the only event of the movie.
When I hear about millions spent on an underwater tank for no effect, I wonder if some of that budget could have gone into script review. Then I hear the script had 13 re-writes, yet nobody saw the big picture which is that after the opening sequence, nothing really happens, the world isn't in much jeopardy, there's just a disturbed former agent with a narrow vendetta followed by extended shootouts.