Category Archives: action

Transformers

Posted on October 13, 2007

I never saw the ’80s TV show and wasn’t even that excited to see this big movie of the summer during its original run. The Big Guy popped up with a suggestion to see Transformers in IMAX, though, and that seemed like just the right idea, even if it was only playing up in the City.

The storyline is nothing exciting or surprising and, to be honest, there were a few bits I’d have left out to make it better. The truth is that Transformers is incredibly well-suited to the huge screen and massive sound system because of its scale, color and movement. Michael Bay knows how to make this kind of movie, though not all his efforts are as good: Bad Boys (I & II), The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor. Surely having a screenplay by the team of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Mission Impossible: III, The Legend of Zorro, Alias and the upcoming Star Trek film) is responsible for a bit of the quality as well.

Among the cast I liked Shia LeBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Megan Fox, Anthony Anderson, Jon Voight and Rachel Taylor. The actors voicing Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Megatron (Peter Cullen, Mark Ryan and the omnipresent Hugo Weaving!) were really entertaining too.

The big deal, of course, are the special effects. The way the transformations occur is stunning and fun. Fast too, thank goodness for the really cool computers and software we have these days, eh?

recommended

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Deja Vu

Posted on October 6, 2007

Denzel Washington and Tony Scott do not generally make for a thrilling combination (e.g., Man on Fire) despite the quality of their work otherwise. So I skipped this 2006 release until the other day when the supply was really low and it was available in HD on demand. Deja Vu exceeded my expectations but that’s only because they were so very, very low.

Washington plays Doug Carlin, an ATF agent in the New Orleans office, when one weekday morning someone blows up a ferry full of kids and soldiers and their families, killing over 500 of them. Carlin catches the eye of FBI agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer, who gives a paycheck-oriented performance) after he points out that one body was actually found dead five minutes before the explosion and Pryzwarra adds him to his very special investigatory team.

Special because the team is using, for the first time in the field, what they explain to Carlin as a very high power satellite surveillance system that allows them to show in ultrahigh def exactly what happened anywhere within the target area from any angle, with high fidelity sound as well. The catch is that the system can only show what happened four days and six hours in the past, because it takes that long to process the input, and the data flow is so large that it cannot be recorded.

Pryzwarra and the system’s slacker savant developer, played by Adam Goldberg, try to hide the true nature of the device from Carlin but he’s too slick and figures out that it’s actually a camera which sees directly into the past. Or rather, creates a sort of tunnel into the past, through which they can send a signal. Probably a piece of paper, with a warning of the impending explosion, and maybe even a person. A person?! That’s so whack they never had the nerve to test the idea.

The biggest problem is that everything in the movie rests on this magic camera and, despite the explanation that Goldberg’s scientist character eventually provides, is something even this inveterate science fiction fan won’t accept. It’s a combination of a bad take on string theory and inconsistent technology, and the script by Bill Marsilli (whose previous credits are for a couple of kid’s TV cartoons) and Terry Rossio (a better track record but presumably brought in to fix Marsilli’s work) can’t overcome this basic failing.

not recommended

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The 6th Day

Posted on September 3, 2007

After 20 years, his producers seemed to be having trouble coming up with new big action thrillers for Arnold Schwarzenegger; this 2000 release was the next to last one he made except for the third Terminator, which I don’t count because it was a sequel. At least the producers gave us a villain who was neither a terrorist nor a machine this time, eh?

In The 6th Day, set a few years in our future, the Governator plays Adam Gibson, partners with Hank Morgan (Michael Rappaport) in a leading edge helicopter taxi service. One beautiful day the two are hired to fly multi-billionaire Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) up to a nearby mountain for some skiing. Actually Gibson is hired but he and Morgan switch without telling Drucker’s people as Adam needs to run an errand.

There’s a big surprise when he gets home to his lovely wife (Wendy Crewson) and daughter and it isn’t just the surprise birthday party for him: he’s already inside celebrating. Then, after four hard cases come along and try to kill him, Ah-nold is off and running. We already know who’s chasing him: Drucker is sponsoring cloning research by superscientist Griffin Weir (Robert Duvall), and while the research has pretty much succeeded cloning humans is still against the law. No one outside Drucker’s inner circle can be allowed to know about the active program.

6th Day was written by the husband and wife team of Carmac and Marianne Wibberly and directed by veteran Roger Spottiswoode; it’s the first big production for the writers, who went on to write the I Spy movie, the Charlie’s Angels and Bad Boys sequels, Tim Allen’s Shaggy Dog remake and Nic Cage’s National Treasure, while Spottiswoode previously gave us the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, the Robin Williams/Kurt Russell The Best of Times and Sly Stallone Stop! Or My Mother Will Shoot comedies and the AIDs docudrama And the Band Played On.

Here the first half is entertaining because we know what’s happening but Schwarzenegger’s character is struggling to figure it out for himself and then the movie kicks into top gear after the two Adams connect and work together to take down Drucker. Dr. Weir gives a major assist after finally growing himself a conscience.

Of the big guys post-True Lies action flicks, The 6th Day is my favorite though it doesn’t really reach the same heights as that one, Last Action Hero or the first Terminator.

recommended

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Aeon Flux

Posted on September 3, 2007

Less than a decade from now, a lab-created virus is unleashed and decimates the human population; only a few million of us survive, all of whom live in a single city governed by the sons of Dr. Goodchild, the scientist who found the cure for the virus. After 400 years, though, not all the citizens are satisfied with the state of things and the most disaffected have formed an underground rebel group called the Mohicans. The group’s leadership have decided that direct action is required to make a change in the status quo and dispatch an assassin.

Based loosely on the MTV animated series from the mid 1990s, 2005′s Aeon Flux stars Charlize Theron as the titular character, the Mohican assassin, Martin Csokas as Trevor Goodchild, the current governor, and Jonny Lee Miller as Trevor’s younger brother Oren. Frances McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite have supporting roles as Aeon’s Mohican handler and the ancient Keeper of genetic records.

The script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfreddi (the pair also collaborated on Jacky Chan’s The Tuxedo and Crazy/Beautiful) has to account for the practical differences between live action and animation, and between a continuing series and a 90 minute movie as well, though I think most fans of the original were disappointed in this film. I’ve not seen the old series except for bits and pieces so the comparison wasn’t too important for me yet I felt the writers could’ve done better in keeping all the various aspects more consistent with each other.

This is the movie Karyn Kusama chose as the followup to her critically acclaimed 2000 indie drama Girlfight. I can understand the attraction for her, the chance to develop a similar theme on a much broader canvas, but have to wonder how constrained Kusama was by the studio production execs. They were probably a lot more interested in having as many cool fight scenes and big action sequences as could be stuffed in, and far less emphasis on Flux’s inner turmoil and the philosophical conflict between the Goodchild brothers.

recommended

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War

Posted on September 2, 2007

Teaming up for the second time, Jet Li and Jason Stathem are the opponents in a movie that matches the latest trends in extreme violence. FBI agent Hank Crawford (Stathem) gets in the middle of a war between a Triad gang lead by Chang (John Lone) and a Yakuza family run by Shiro (Ryo Ishibashi), but he really wants Rogue (Li), a Chinese hitman who used to work for the CIA and now does the business for Chang. He also murdered Crawford’s partner and his partner’s wife and young daughter just moments before Crawford arrived with his own wife (Andrea Roth, Dennis Leary’s wife on Rescue Me) and son.

War is pretty much what one expects for a late summer action flick: plenty of action with guns and martial arts smackdowns, cops versus robbers and a bevy of gorgeous babes. In the latter group are Devon Aoki as Shiro’s daughter and number two, Nadine Velasquez (Catalina on My Name is Earl) as Chang’s wife and an uncredited, tall and very well endowed beauty as a hooker who delivers Li’s first payday.

The real hottie in War, though, is the car Jet Li drives throughout: the Spyker C8 Spyder. A Dutch marque not widely seen in the US despite being around since 1914 and having a Formula One entry, you can check them out in person at Spyker of Silicon Valley. However, you better go loaded since the car lists for over $250,000.

The director is Phillip Atwell, moving up to features after making his mark with some high profile rap videos for 50 Cent, DMX, NWA and Xhibit. Atwell does okay, never letting the action slow down and adding flash and movement even in what could otherwise be very talky scenes. The script, from Lee Smith and Greg Bradley, is less exciting though there are a couple of pretty decent twists in the third act; not terrible for the first produced script for either.

recommended

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Rush Hour 3

Posted on August 21, 2007

After taking down Vegas and Hong Kong, the unlikely pairing of LAPD detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) and Hong Long PD Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) are after the biggest game of all in Paris, the leaders of the Hong Kong Triads. Brett Rattner retains the director’s seat he’s occupied for all three installments while Jeff Nathanson, who took over the writing for 2, repeats here.

In Rush Hour 3, Lee’s mentor Ambassador Han is about to reveal this great secret of the Triads before a made-up version of the World Court when he’s assassinated with Lee just a few feet away from the podium. Lee sees the sharpshooter and gives chase, running into Carter. Han’s daughter, now all grown up and hot, is kidnapped, sending the boys to France to finish the job Han started and recover the girl.

Tipped to a private gentlemen’s club, Lee and Carter connect with a hot Asian (Youki Kudoh) and French-African woman (Noemie Lenoir), respectively. Kudoh, unfortunately for Lee, is a Triad assassin and requires him to use all of his agility to get away but Lenoir is much friendlier to Carter. Max von Sydow and Oscar-winning film director Roman Polansky are not bad in supporting roles as the head of the World Court and a French police detective. Polansky, of course, has also been a fugitive from American justice for over 30 years on a statutory rape charge, so I was quite amused to see him playing a cop; von Sydow has played this type of roles so many times over the years that one worries he’s going to walk through his lines.

Hiroyuki Sanada is Kenji, the principal villain, beginning with Han’s killing and right to the climactic confrontation with Lee and Carter in the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Along the way, through the three’s interactions, we finally learn a bit of Lee’s personal story and Carter shows he hasn’t been talking out of his ass when claiming to have spent the years since the duo’s last adventure studying martial arts.

Overall this was an enjoyable entertainment even if it is also the slightest of the three Hours. Rattner and Nathanson still to their formula like SuperGlue in every scene and line of dialog, and I’m not sure I’d pay to see Rush Hour 4, but since it’s a decent formula we walked out of the theater laughing and if they do make a fourth I’d certainly watch it on cable.

recommended

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Miami Vice

Posted on August 7, 2007

Twenty years on Crockett and Tubbs finally make it to the big screen, with Colin Farrell replacing Don Johnson and Jamie Foxx in place of Philip Michael Thomas and a budget commensurate with their star power. Since Michael Mann created the TV show and wrote and directed this movie, we get a lot more continuity than in similar migrations (e.g., Lost in Space, SWAT). Castillo, Zito, Switek, Gina and Trudy are all back too, though things are far too serious to make time for the series’ parade of goofy informants like Noogie and Izzie.

Miami Vice the movie felt like a really well-made two hour episode and I mean that as a compliment. The plot, the characters, the atmosphere, the visuals are all in tune with the best of the series; overall I was most reminded of the second season opener Prodigal Son that spent much of its time in New York, with Crockett falling for a bad woman and walking the streets at night to Glenn Frey’s song “You Belong to the City” all over the soundtrack.

No Manhattan here, though we do get to see a bit of Havana, Port au Prince (Haiti’s capital) and Columbian jungles. Crockett and Tubbs get brought in by an FBI ASAC after they help him discover a leak in his drug task force and, not knowing where the bad apple sits, leave them to run things as they see fit. Finding a weak link in the cartel’s use of outside contractors to transport their drugs, the squad busts the current jobholders and get hired in their place.

One of the top lieutenants is a hot Asian woman (Gong Li) and she and Sonny fall for each other immediately. This doesn’t sit well with Jose Yero (John Ortiz), the cartel’s security and counterintelligence manager, and in the end he tries to use it against them. Tries. There are gun battles, a few explosions.

recommended

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Huo Yuan Jia (Jet Li's Fearless)

Posted on August 6, 2007

One cannot deny that I’m a big Jet Li fan. Oddly, and mistakenly, I was reluctant to watch Huo Yuan Jia since I had the impression he’d made an adoration to a man who was his own hero, who’d founded the Wushu school of martial arts a century ago. Indeed, before becoming an actor, Li five times won the Chinese Wushu championship although modern Wushu is a creation of the country’s Communist leadership and not the same style practiced by the historical Huo Yuan Jia.

Jet Li’s Fearless, the English title, is a bit idealized from the man’s real life. Not just to make a nice dramatic 100 minute package but to create a more heroic character; not that it matters to me, not being Chinese all I care about is an entertaining film. It does apparently present the man’s true position on the meaning of martial arts: self-improvement and self-development, with combat against others useful only as a means of testing one’s progress.

The movie can be divided into three parts: Huo’s childhood and early adult years, his years in the wilderness absorbing some tough lessons and finally, the emergence of a national champion at a time when Westerners and the Japanese treated China like a toy chest. At first Li’s character is arrogant, his ambition only to defeat every other fighter in his home city of Tianjin, but on attaining this goal its revealed as shallow and empty and his conceit leads to the death of his mother and daughter.

Destroyed, he’s nearly killed after running away from the shame but saved on the point of drowning by the crew of a fishing boat from a simple village. A lovely young blind woman and her grandmother take him in, restoring his health and teaching her their traditional wisdom. After several years working his way to an integrated, mature mental state, he returns to Tianjin only to find that foreigners have arrived in his absence and reduced his proud friends and neighbors to servants.

With his hard-earned insight Huo travels to Shanghai to take on a massive boxer. This O’Brien has defeated every Chinese fighter who gets in the ring with him and mocked the entire nation as weak, providing the final spark in Huo’s thinking. Not only does he defeat the boxer, easily, but does so with such graciousness that his opponent is able to push through his rage to acknowledge defeat.

Huo then founds the Jingwu Sports Federation (Jing Wu Men) based on the idea that only through unity will China pull free of foreign dominion. The foreigners don’t cotton so quickly to this thinking and challenge him to fight a champion from each of their four nations, a British boxer, a German lancer, a Spanish fencer, and a Japanese martial artist. Huo wins but also loses.

Li has the meat of the action, but also turning in strong performances are Betty Sun as the blind woman, Shido Nakamura as his Japanese opponent in his final match, Yong Dong as his lifelong friend and partner; the youngster who play’s Huo as a child isn’t listed in the IMDB or official website credits but was also terrific.

The movie was directed by Ronny Yu, one of Hong Kong’s most highly regarded filmmakers, and the action sequences were choreographed by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping.

recommended

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Bourne Ultimatum

Posted on August 5, 2007

Longtime readers will remember that I was a huge fan of both Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy; indeed this was my most anticipated movie of the entire summer big budget season and, frankly, the first in a long time I might pay to see twice. Though not perfect–director Paul Greengrass needs to get control of his shaky handheld camera addiction–even the Big Guy, who watched it with TS1 and me, gave it a TZero rating. TZero, in the time flies when you’re having fun sense, means the apparent time elapsed was zero; my own scale focuses on ass pain, meaning the longer the experienced length, the more discomfort from sitting still, and the third Bourne flick got a zero on that one too.

Bourne Ultimatum picks up in the minutes after Jason Bourne apologized to Irena Neski and left her Moscow apartment, which was only the next to last scene in Supremacy. He evades the Russian police and, nicely foreshadowing a similar confrontation towards the end, doesn’t kill a cop after disarming him even though the cops had shot him moments before.

Skip to a few weeks later. We see British journalist Simon Ross (Paddy Considine) meeting a source in Italy, a man who gives him highly classified details about Bourne, Treadstone and the (new in this film) Blackfriar Program into which the motivations and methods of Treadstone have been folded. Ross has already written a few articles about Jason, attracting his attention and so Bourne arranges to meet him in London.

Ross also got noticed by CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) after using the Blackfriar name in a cell phone conversation with his editor and Vosen, the character taking the place of Brian Cox’s Ward Abbott here, dispatches his local resources, including a Bourne-like assassin, to grab or kill him. The way Jason walks Ross through the huge Waterloo Station via a cell he sneakily slipped him after recognizing the CIA agents is terrificly inventive, more so as Vosen is unaware for the opening moments that the writer’s there to meet Bourne. Unable to trust his new ally, Ross chooses to flee against advice and is killed, though Bourne grabs his notes and does get away.

Following those notes takes him to the Agency’s cover office in Madrid and, although he’s too late to find the station chief, Ross’s source, he does meet up with cute and perky Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). She doesn’t hesitate in helping him get away from the secondary smash team and to the source in Morocco. Why? We never get an explicit answer but she’s surprised that Bourne doesn’t remember, the implication being that before he lost his memory they were romantically tangled (note: this is not known by the CIA). After having her dye her hair black and cut it short, looking very much like Franka Potenta in the earlier movies, Bourne puts her on a bus to safety.

The action moves to New York City, where Bourne and Pam Landy (Joan Allen) have that conversation we saw as the last scene in Supremacy. By now Landy understands she’s being played for the patsy by Vosen and the Director of Central Intelligence (Scott Glen), is pissed that Parsons is considered an acceptable casualty and so ready to do unto the men who massively underestimate her as they’d do for her. We also meet Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney), the man who devised the program that transformed David Webb into Jason Bourne, and that Webb volunteered for this change; of course we know that whatever rhetoric Hirsch and others gave him, Bourne’s trust was betrayed time and again.

As I said, Greengrass (besides Supremacy, United 93, for which he got nominated for the directing Oscar, and Bloody Sunday) needs to kick the handheld habit, here he uses it so much during furiously-paced chase scenes both on foot and in cars that I was wishing for a dose of Dramamine. Other than that, his work is great, tremendous velocity, tightly framed shots and terrific cinematography from Oliver Wood a very big help.

Tony Gilroy, who also wrote the first two, is joined by George Nolfi (Ocean’s Twelve, The Sentinel) and Scott Z. Burns (only previous credit is indie hit The Half Life of Timofey Berezin, starring Considine) in writing smart dialog in a fluff-free script.

The performances by Matt Damon, Joan Allen and Considine are first rate, with Stiles, Strathairn and Finney just a step behind.

recommended

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Posted on August 1, 2007

This fifth movie in the Boy Wizard series is enjoyable but suffers from a lack of a clear objective, most likely because this is actually the first of a three part finale while each previous story had a well-defined milestone. JK Rowling’s novel handled this by dropping hints and bits about the prophecy regarding Harry and his dark counterpart but the script by Michael Goldenberg made no mention of it until just before the Ministry of Magic confrontation that climaxes this movie.

No knocks against Goldenberg (the 2003 Peter Pan and Jodie Foster’s Contact) but Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the first script not written by Steve Kloves and I’m happy to see that Kloves is doing the script for Half-Blood Prince, due to arrive on your local cinema screen in 16 months. David Yates took over the director’s chair and will also return for HBP.

Harry, Hermione and (less so, but that’s his part) Ron have learned from the harsh lessons of their previous four terms at Hogwarts but, as we see right from go, Voldemort is only getting started: two dementors attack Harry and his muggle cousin Dudley in the first scene, with Harry barely able to drive them off with his Patronus and his use of magic leads straight to a trumped up trial in front of the entire Wizangamot.

Not everyone, you see, believes our boy that Voldemort has returned and that he killed Cedric Diggory at the end of the Tri-Wizards Cup in the previous book. The Death Eaters do as do Harry’s friends in the Order of the Phoenix but, denial not being just a river in Egypt, key members of the magical community like Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and his top staff refuse to admit it. So Potter’s use of magic in front of Dudley can’t be justified and therefore deserves expulsion but Dumbledore arrives in time to convince the Wizangamot to acquit.

Most of the movie, unfortunately, focuses on the antics of Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), Fudge’s assistant who comes to Hogwarts to restore order and stamp out absurd notions of appropriate student behavior. These bits are good for quite a few laughs and getting Harry to step up as a leader among his peers but were, correctly in the novel just a sideline. This volume wasn’t titled Harry Potter and the Annoyingly Nasty Woman, after all.

recommended, just

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