One Man Fights The Group Dynamics Of The Apocalypse In World War Z!

The Good: Decent effects, Good concept, Generally good plot progression
The Bad: No real character development, No truly stellar acting moments
The Basics: Marc Forster creates yet another massive infection movie that is entertaining, but hardly compelling with World War Z.


With the dramatic success of The Walking Dead (Season 1 is reviewed here!), books and graphic novels focused on infections and zombie-like plagues have become a proven cash cow for television and movie studios. The latest most successful mass infection movie with results that seem to be mindless humans is World War Z. World War Z is a Brad Pitt vehicle adapted a novel that I have, admittedly, not read. I caught the film in its unrated form and the Director’s Cut would have been “R”-rated as opposed to the PG-13 version that aired in theaters.

Regardless of its theatrical rating, World War Z is a procedural film that is much more plot-focused than it is a character’s journey. World War Z actually bears a number of similarities to 28 Weeks Later (reviewed here!) and is yet another film that features a rabies-like viral outbreak with victims who move lightning-fast. The film is very much a realist piece for how a single person might try to track the origin of the biological infection and that makes it a niche film; Brad Pitt’s role is one of his less-memorable characters because his Gerry Lane is more of a medium for plot exposition than it is a unique or compelling individual.

Opening in Philadelphia, PA, Gerry Lane and his wife and two daughters are caught in traffic when an outbreak of a rabies-like virus sweeps through the population. Escaping the carnage and chaos in a stolen RV after Gerry witnesses the speed of the virus (twelve seconds after a victim is bit, they leap up as a mindless killer chomping to sink their teeth into anyone nearby), the small family makes it to Newark, NJ. Gerry and his family are rescued from death from the swarms of infected people by the United Nations, which Gerry used to work for. Drafted by his old boss, who is now the effective leader of the United Nations flotilla that rescues refugees from several countries, Gerry is extorted to search for the origin point of the outbreak when his compliance is leveraged against his family’s presence in the limited bunk space on the UN aircraft carrier.

Gerry and a small team accompany a brilliant scientist to South Korea where the word “zombie” was first associated with the victims of the outbreak. After the surprising death of Gerry’s expert virologist, Gerry is left to search for “patient zero” and he is told by a mercenary in custody that North Korea has halted the plague (by pulling the teeth of all its citizens) and that Israel has become a safe zone because walls went up a week prior to the outbreak, effectively sealing off the small nation. Gerry’s team makes it to Jerusalem where Gerry continues to piece together why the effective anti-zombie techniques work and when he witnesses the overflow of zombies into safe zones, he notices behaviors he finds suspect. Following a hunch, Jerry and an Israeli soldier whose life he saves head to Cardiff on a desperate mission to get access to a World Health Organization facility that might hold the key to humanity’s survival.

World War Z gets good marks for the realism of its situation and the somewhat random nature of the search Gerry ends up on. His attempt to find ground zero for the viral outbreak is a mildly-focused series of strike-outs that nevertheless provides him with random information that might be useful in managing the global epidemic. The nature of the search is more frustrating and random than it is a dogged scientifically methodical search for a scientific link between viral outbreaks before and the fast-moving terror that is destroying the world.

The concept of a UN flotilla is a good one and it makes the peril of the survivors of the global outbreak take on a different tone; problems of overpopulation and strained resources pop up in World War Z in a way that such issues do not usually crop up in similar films.

At the other end of the spectrum, World War Z features some truly ridiculous conceits. Chief among the film’s plot faults is how an infected man manages to remain dormant on a flight for several hours, trapped in the bathroom, without anyone ever noticing. Unless the bathroom was surrounded by infections held by the world’s most important research virologists, that zombie should not have remained dormant at all.

The concept of how the zombies in World War Z might be thwarted was an interesting one, but it comes after the film has expelled most of its worst ideas. Thierry Umutoni is one of the least credible characters ever established in the viral outbreak genre film. Umutoni seems to be the de facto world leader following the outbreak and the death of the leadership in the U.S., so his ability to extort Gerry makes some sense. But, when Gerry goes missing, Umutoni acts like a hapless victim of circumstance when he authorizes the expulsion of Gerry’s family from the carrier.

On the character front, World War Z focuses on a vague protagonist whose skill set is not entirely clear. Gerry has survived areas torn apart by political strife and chaos. But what makes him ideal for going into areas overrun by zombies is not clear, especially when the military forces in the film are depicted with equal to greater survival skills for the altered world. Gerry is utterly lacking in personality quirks or unique character traits. He is given a power couple wife and two liability children, but quickly mortgages their presence in the film for a sleeker team dynamic that allows Gerry to run more credibly from the masses of zombies.

Because the character is vaguely rendered, Brad Pitt is not given sufficient material with which to shine. Pitt is adequate, but not exceptional as Gerry and he is surrounded by performers who are given equally little to work with.

That said, World War Z is entertaining and has a good pace, at the very least. Fans of zombie or other invasion/contagion genre films are likely to find World War Z worth watching at least once, but not worth adding to one’s permanent library.

For other movies about widespread infections, please check out my reviews of:
Contagion
28 Days Later
Aaah! Zombies!!

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Smokin’ Aces Is No Bound, Nor The Usual Suspects, Nor Worthwhile

The Good: Good cast, I liked two of the characters
The Bad: Feels long, Boring, Intensive set-up for little action, Unextraordinary characters, plot and acting
The Basics: With minimal entertainment value, Smokin’ Aces disappoints this viewer so much that only after I'm done do I realize I reviewed the movie without ever mentioning Jeremy Piven.


One of my favorite stories I occasionally share is about my childhood and how I played with toys. I used to have a playroom in the basement of my house where I could spread out with all of my toys and play. It was wonderful. However, my father was a stickler for neatness and as a result, whenever he called my siblings and I up for dinner or when it was time to go to bed, the basement had to be spotless, everything had to be put back in its place or else we got in trouble. My thing was that I would come up with elaborate backstories for all of the toys. Every character had a history, a concept, a motivation that would set it in motion when my play began. Yes, I suppose this was an obvious foreshadowing to my life as a novelist, but at the time, the result was that I would spend hours setting the toys up and figuring out how everything was going to begin and then - invariably - my father would call down to have me clean up. Sigh. Thus, after a great deal of setup and preparation, many of my scenarios ended with "And they all fell in a pit and died" as I swept them up and back to the cupboards where they are stored. Sitting through the abysmal Smokin’ Aces, I am reminded of this and I have the feeling that writer/director Joe Carnahan might have been raised the same way.

When the head of the Cosa Nostra, the Mafia in the U.S., is about to be taken down by a snitch who is basically a mobster wannabe named Buddy "Aces" Israel, a $1,000,000 bounty is put on Israel's head and he becomes a target for a couple of hitmen. What results is a collection of four hitmen/hitwomen/hitmen families converging on a hotel while the feds try to protect Buddy Israel. The "catch" for the hunters is that in order to collect the bounty, Israel's heart must be intact and . . .

. . . who cares?

Okay, I was excited about this movie when I sat down to it. I was drawn to it because I've been enjoying Jason Bateman in his role on Arrested Development (reviewed here!). He has a bit role in Smokin’ Aces and he's part of a large cast that is enough to dupe the uninformed into believing that this movie cannot possibly be a piece of crap. Be glad you can be informed!

Actors I respect in other works turn in surprisingly bad performances or have almost no screentime. Andy Garcia appears with as little inspiration as when he performed in Twisted and Ben Affleck is reduced to little more than a cameo. It's a sad thing when the most impressive performance may well be from a singer, in this case Alicia Keys.

The thing about Smokin’ Aces is that it's a long set-up, the first half hour is all exposition that establishes who the characters are. It's all setting up the board and it feels that way. The characters are stylistically introduced with their names on the screen so the viewer can keep them straight, as if to justify a ridiculously complicated sense of backstory to each of them. Then, there's about forty-five minutes of bloodbath which is broken up by trips to a wounded character who slowly recovers throughout the day enough to pop up near the very end. And then it ends with an elaborate explanation of what all has happened, so the viewer knows just what they've sat through.

Nowhere nearly as clever as The Usual Suspects, Smokin’ Aces wants to be complicated and smart and also wants to cater to the blood and guts crowd. The result is that it fails to satisfy either crowd. I tend to fall more in the former crowd, wanting a smart, intense movie that might actually surprise me. The only newer film of late to do that for me was Lucky # Slevin and Smokin’ Aces is both more contrived and needlessly complicated than that film. The thing is, the basic storyline, which includes a fifty year old murder of a Federal Agent that is shown over and over again is pretty easy to figure out. I'm not saying I called the end exactly, but the way the murder of the agent is shown makes it obvious that one of the supposed twists is that the agent is not dead. Before you get up in arms and screaming about spoilers, I'll say this: the murder of the federal agent is shown early on in the movie and the thing is, anyone paying even a modicum of attention will notice that the viewer is never shown the guy getting killed. Sure, he's shot, but we never see him die. Movies that want to be clever need to be clever and this tries to be surprising and shocking while putting almost everything in full view. As a result, if you're awake and have your brain engaged, the movie is not surprising, not intense and not particularly clever.

Okay, I hear you cry, what if you want to see this for just a brainless, manly action adventure flick? Wow, will you be disappointed. See, I actually sat down to this hoping it might be a bit of blood and guts. I wanted to watch a bunch of bounty hunters nailing each other to get to the prize first. I thought it would be violent, suspenseful, intense and basically a competition between professionals of a certain ability; that's essentially what the trailer promises.

Instead, the Federal agents sent to protect Israel, along with hotel security are mostly competent and good at their jobs. In fact, the only glaring problem with the Feds is that they seem to know that one of the most insidious bounty hunters got away and they seem okay with that. Otherwise, they rival the gun totin', chainsaw wielding maniacs set upon Israel.

If you're looking for brainless and intense, you're bound to be disappointed because the movie continually removes itself from the action and insinuates talking. I'm a big fan of movies involving conversations, information and character development. Here is completely destroyed the flow of the movie. There's action, long exposition, action, More than a competition between bounty hunters for the prize of Israel's (literal) heart, this becomes a weak "storming the castle" type movie where all sorts of characters who are touted as being mean and undeniably badass are for the most part thwarted by generic feds.

Sure, there's Richard Messner, the Fed played by Ryan Reynolds with no hint of his Just Friends persona. No, here he's dedicated, determined, professional, and in the last fifteen minutes over-the-top melodramatic. The result is that he becomes one of the few characters the audience cares about, though he is not focused on enough to be truly empathetic.

Even worse, the film entirely weakens itself by pushing the limits of human endurance and suspension of disbelief. There's a wonderful scene where Messner's partner, Donald Carruthers, ends up in an elevator with one of the most notorious of the bounty hunters, Pasquale Acosta, and correctly identifies him as one of the potential assassins. It's a great moment that I cheered for because I like seeing federal agents portrayed as smart and efficient. The result is that the equally clever criminal draws down on Caruthers and both end up shooting each other several times. The moment this happened, I turned to the person who I was with - who was generally as bored with the movie as I was by this point - and I said, "I like that, that they were so matched that they took each other out. That was cool." If the story had gone this way the government would have lost by simple attrition (there are more hunters than feds) and the movie could descend into a bloody free-for-all for Israel's heart with a fair amount of believability. But no, that was not to be and the resulting scenes that involve the characters continue to gut an already broken up movie.

In short, there's not enough action to be an action movie, not enough clever to be engaging, not enough screentime for any of the performers to give any characters a chance to become truly empathetic, and not enough of a sense of the stakes to make the viewer care. Smokin’ Aces was a film that promised to entertain and failed to live up to those promises like going to a James Bond movie and getting an algebra lesson. At least when I was a kid and I had to throw my toys back into storage with the excuse "they all fall into a pit and die," I got dinner afterwards. In Smokin’ Aces there might be a bit of carnage as the hunters fall, but then it's followed by a lengthy exposition that bothers to explain why everyone who died did, long after the viewer stopped caring.

I'm going to go watch Bound (reviewed here!) and try to forget I ever sat through this one.

For other works with Ryan Reynolds, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Change-Up
Green Lantern
The Proposal
X-Men: Wolverine
Definitely, Maybe
Waiting . . .
Blade: Trinity

3/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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When The Wachowski Brothers Fall Down, They Race To The Bottom: Speed Racer Disappoints!

The Good: Cinematography
The Bad: Light on character development, Uninspired acting, Very basic plot, Predictable
The Basics: In their latest outing, the Wachowski Brothers make a lackluster live-action version of Speed Racer, which ultimately stands as a standard race movie.


With all of the websites devoted to actors, recording artists, and celebrities from the world of fashion, it occurs to me that there are no real services that keep score on directors. I'm thinking something like Consumer Reports for directors, a scorecard kept like a politician's voting record for interested parties. I mean, most of us know when our favorite actors and actresses appear in a dud (fans of Ben Affleck and/or Jennifer Lopez pretty universally admit that Gigli was a bust for both) but fans tend to look at the overall career of those they are most interested in favorably. Perhaps we are similarly blinded by the record of our favorite directors. Objectively, though, the Wachowski Brothers are perhaps the most successful "hit or miss" directors. Their scorecard of films I've seen of theirs puts them at a complete draw: 3 to 3.

Their genius can almost go undisputed when considering Bound, The Matrix, and V For Vendetta. But then there are the two sequels to The Matrix, which were mediocre and just plain horrible. With Speed Racer, the latest endeavor by the brothers Wachowski, the scorecard equals out. This film, preoccupied with looking good, is of very little substance and less interest.

Speed, one of the two surviving sons of Mom and Pops Racer, excels at exactly one thing: racing. From a very young age, he displayed an ability to drive fast and maneuver at high speeds. This has led him to a life of car racing that is competitive, dangerous and just enough to get a girl to have an interest in him. The races Speed participates in, and the dream race he longs to compete in - the Crucible -, are controlled by corporate moguls and when arguably the most prominent and powerful one, Royalton, wants Speed to throw a race, Speed Racer is caught in something of a moral dilemma.

Despite his parents' business failing, Speed takes a moral stand and refuses to throw a race. As a result, Royalton and his forces engage in a determined effort to insure that Speed Racer never completes another race. Pops upgrades the Mach 5, Speed appeals to the sportsman's nature in his rival, Racer X, and his girlfriend Trixie encourages him to fight the powers that be and race in the Crucible.

Speed Racer is based upon an animated series by the same name, but as one not fluent in the series - I watched it when I was a child, but have no specific memories of it - the film is evaluated as it is. And, sadly, there's not much to Speed Racer. Despite the production elements, Speed Racer is essentially a race movie, a sports story. This is all about a fast-driving, lives on the edge guy who is obsessed with winning. Speed Racer has a sense of honor; he and Racer X share a love of the pure race and the sense of outrage over the idea of throwing a race. They, despite being rivals on the track, respect one another's abilities and the thrill of the sport. This is a sport's story.

What separates it from virtual every other sports story on screen is the Wachowski Brothers' sensibility toward authority and the look. Like V For Vendetta and The Matrix, the Wachowski Brothers include in Speed Racer a strong sense that authority figures are corrupt and are out to alter the reality by which freedom-loving people live their lives. As a result, Speed and his family are characterized with a purity that Royalton and his peers entirely lack. I dig the idea of resisting authority and rejecting the established paradigms, but in this context, the Wachowski Brothers simply reinforce that paradigm. Sports movies often include a corrupt adversary and the simple obstacle they create.

What Speed Racer has is a lush animated look to the races. The colors are neon and fantastic, lending an unreal quality to the races that is very much a Wachowski conceit. They create a reality unlike the one we live in and they enhance the mood by pushing the boundaries of physics in that reality. Cars fly and leap, take awkward, three dimensional curves as unreal speeds. There are flashes of color and light that lend the film a rather psychedelic quality. I'm not recommending watching the film stoned or high or anything, but the look certainly lends itself to the same type art as what one finds in a headshop. Just at an incredible speed!

But largely, Speed Racer is a very typical sports/race movie. As such, there are repetitive, insufferable fast-paced race scenes that one gets tired of in the first viewing, much less subsequent ones. The races have an animated quality to them as the Wachowski brothers present an altered reality where the physics of the world only loosely apply. There are the typical Bound-inspired, made-famous-by-The Matrix slow motion rotational shots that are the Wachowski Brothers' standards. But at the end of the film, it's just a race film.

As a result, character is by no means the pinnacle of the movie. Speed is very much the generic hero, just like Trixie is the archetypal girlfriend character and Pops is the mentor. Trixie has no real motivation in Speed Racer save to love Speed and support him in his endeavor. Pops and Mom support Speed and they provide a generic humanizing base for Speed to have a framework. Even Racer X is a generic adversary who turns into a reluctant ally when the plot turns on it. Royalton is largely an over-the-top archetype, with the most predictable place as tempter and villain in the film.

The point here is that in the attempt to make a film based on Speed Racer led the Wachowski Brothers to employ virtually every conceit of the sports story film and the result is an almost complete gutting of genuine character. Speed Racer is a character who lacks any fear of death while driving at superhuman speeds, but he is also emotionally distant, but no more interesting. There is nothing compelling about his character because at this point we expect the sports hero to be great on the field, but something less or different in the real world.

Speed Racer is played by Emilie Hirsch, who plays him with a tight-jawed, determined stare that has a very Anime quality to it and that is the essence of virtually every parody of Speed Racer ever created. Hirsch has the look, the bearing of an actor attempting to play a sports star and instead of intense, he comes across too frequently as distant and detached. More than in any other film in recent memory, Hirsch seems like an actor who is in front of a blue screen and acts that way. He often seems detached from his surroundings in a way that makes it very difficult to watch him. When the protagonist seems detached, it does not bode well for the film.

The usually-wonderful Christina Ricci appears to have been cast only to bug her eyes out even more, an effect that is utterly freakish in this context. Also failing to capitalize on their talent is Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, who play Mom and Pops. Neither one leaps onto the screen with any sense of presence. Instead, if one were to think of what one would expect of the most generic possible supportive mother and father, this is how Sarandon and Goodman were acting. Neither one gives anything we have not seen from them before, though Goodman is particularly . . . generic in an outgoing way. Having seen him perform brilliantly in The Big Lebowski and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and, come to think of it, The West Wing, his cookie-cutter father role here is just a let down.

Indeed, the only actor to do anything remotely interesting is Matthew Fox, who plays Racer X. Fox portrays Racer X as a dramatically different character than Jack on Lost or his older-brother character from Party Of Five. The fact that he has more range than just the tortured, moody thirtysomething is refreshing but he is quite underused in the role as well.

On DVD, Speed Racer is presented with remarkably little fanfare. There are only two featurettes for the standard DVD release: a tour of the set and one on the World Racing League. The Wachowski Brothers did not, apparently, try to explain the movie with a commentary track and if there were deleted scenes, they are not on this!

In short, Speed Racer does not pop, even with some of the Wachowski Brothers' efforts. They are the efforts we have seen before and here they are not nearly as interesting as part of an otherwise generic sports/racing movie. Truth be told, if one saw Iron Man (reviewed here!) and they had the extended preview for Speed Racer, they have essentially seen the film. And I ought to have figured I would not be thrilled by the movie from that. You need not make the same mistake.

For other works with Susan Sarandon, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Cradle Will Rock

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Near-Perfect Season Of Television You Shouldn't Buy Unless You've Already Been Lost (Season 6)!

The Good: Excellent character development, Great story twists, Great acting, Amazing finale, (Presumably) great bonus features.
The Bad: Utterly pointless for those who have not watched the series.
The Basics: Lost The Complete Sixth Season tells an amazing story and is a must for fans of the series, but stands alone poorly.


Lost recently completed its six-season run on television and almost the next day the DVD and Blu-Ray sets were announced. Most of those features have already been leaked - and many of them are the standard Lost features - but even without getting the bonus features the sixth season of Lost may be very completely considered and the review of the content of the sixth season is very simple.

Don't bother.

Yup, I said it. There are three types of people who might be reading this review: Lost fans, Lost fans who are patient, and those who have never seen Lost. For Lost fans, they are buying this set regardless for the simple reason that they have the other five sets and need the sixth season to complete the storyline. For Lost fans who have been patient, there is Lost - The Complete Series, which was being released concurrently with Lost - The Complete Sixth Season (and is linked at the bottom of this review!). For those few fans who didn't buy the DVDs all along, or those upgrading to Blu-Ray in one smart, fell swoop, Lost - Season 6 is a pointless investment. And then there are those who have never seen Lost before. For those people, reading a review of Lost - The Complete Sixth Season, especially one which has an "episode guide" quality to it is utterly pointless. Why? Lost is, more than any show on television in the last decade, a novel on television. Reading a plot synopsis of the episodes is like reading a synopsis of the last few chapters of a book. Sure, you might learn something about the plot, but: 1. the ramifications and significance of those events are often lost on the reader and 2. In Lost there are mystical aspects as well as twists that are either incomprehensible or ruined by reading the plots out of context.

That said, Lost The Complete Season 6 is easy to recommend for fans who need it to complete their collections. But for those who have never seen an episode of the series, this is an abysmal place to begin the series. There is no point in trying to start here and because it is layered, complex and phenomenal, the storyline will just baffle and confuse most people. So, despite the fact that I must write on to write a considerate review of the contents of Lost - The Complete Sixth Season I highly recommend casual readers stop now, rent or borrow (aren't libraries great?!) a copy of the first season of the series. If you get hooked, go out and purchase Lost The Complete Series. Buying just Season six is pointless and reading about it makes it impossible to get the full element of surprise that comes from the smart way the series unfolds over the six seasons. (If you haven't seen any of season six, it is impossible to discuss it intelligently without revealing some of what the characters go through early on and in important moments from the prior season.)

Lost - The Complete Sixth Season opens with "LA X," a double-long episode which appears to reimagine the entire series. Words like "appears to" in a Lost review are the way reviewers help to indicate that one has to be engaged while watching Lost without actually ruining the many twists and turns of the show. Gone are the time travel elements from the fifth season of Lost and they are replaced with what the producers are calling "Flash Sideways" occurrences. While I will gladly reveal how the "flash sideways" world differs from the standard Lost universe, the significance of the "flash sideways" experience is what is revealed in the final fifteen minutes of the series and ought not to be ruined by a reviewer.

In the "flash sideways" world, Oceanic flight 815 did not crash and Jack Shephard finds himself on that flight, a cut on his neck, but generally no worse for wear. He saves Charlie from a drug overdose in the bathroom of the airplane and when his father's coffin is lost, he meets John Locke and offers to consult with him on his spinal injury. As Kate flees the authorities and the very pregnant Claire tries to learn the status of her baby, other people on the flight - like the police detective James Ford - begin to return to their lives after their trips to Sydney, Australia. But when Desmond, who is working for Charles Widmore, needs to make sure Charlie gets to an event for Widmore, he begins to break through the realities and bring together those who were on 815 and those who have alternate lives off the island in this existence.

In the main narrative, Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hugo, Jin, Miles and Sayid return to the present as a result of Juliet setting off the nuclear bomb at the climactic moment of the prior season. Sawyer, distraught, goes rogue while most of the others head for the Temple. Unfortunately for them, on the other side of the island, the man who appears to be John Locke is leading Sun, Richard Alpert, Lapidus and Ben Linus toward the Temple. Having killed Jacob, the group which is now led by Jacob's adversary, sets off on a mission to leave the island. The man who appears to be Locke wants nothing more than to leave the island and he soon reveals just how badly he wants to leave.

When Jin, separated from the others, finds himself in the care of Claire, he quickly realizes that Claire has gone quite mad and is under the influence of the man who appears to be Locke. When Charles Widmore manages to return to the island with a submarine, Jin is abducted and the various camps collide. As Jack tries to keep as many of his friends alive as he can, Locke attempts to leave the island and Charles Widmore establishes a dangerous camp which seems to be bent on exploiting the island for his own nefarious gain.

Whenever I've tried to get the few people I meet who are not already fans of Lost they tend to have an "I'll wait to see if it ends well and then start from the beginning attitude." Perhaps the very best thing one may say about Lost - The Complete Sixth Season is that it ends the series magnificently. With such an ambitious show, fans tended to want both answers and a resolution that justified the faith they had in the prior seasons. With this season, they get exactly that. The plots progress, people change sides and allegiances, backstory holes are filled in, mysteries of the island are revealed, Ben Linus gets beaten up and there is a sense still that the story is moving without it ever being dumbed down. In this fashion, season six may be a final chapter of a book, but it makes one want to go back and reread (or, in this case, rewatch) the book again.

The episodes hardly stand alone in the sixth season as the story progresses, but moves in a very strong, serialized way toward the end. In fact, the only real disappointment in the sixth season is that the story ramps up and adds tension to the main narrative the episodes "Ab Aeterno" and "Across The Sea" come up and break the flow. Those two episodes finally give explicit answers on how Richard Alpert's story and Jacob's stories unfolded to get them to the places they started the series. But while they are satisfying for fans and the overall narrative, they take tangents at awkward times, much like the cave scene on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back.

Lost Season Six returns the emphasis to characters, as well as just finishing the plot up. Sawyer's actions are largely motivated by his sense of loss and when we watch him, especially early in the season, it is hard not to feel for him. Similarly, Claire's return is more than just a pleasant reunion for the fans, it is a troubling exploration of a woman mentally tormented for three years. As Jack learns more about his fate and begins to adopt the idea of destiny in relation to the island and his life, he begins to step up to the challenges of protecting the island, especially now that Jacob needs a successor.

In the sixth season of Lost, the characters get their chance to grow and some of them make leaps and bounds in the brief season, making for a compelling sense of journey. In the final season the preliminary characters include:

Dr. Jack Shephard - Returning to the present, he tries to protect his friends and put some faith in others, like Hugo. As he learns about Jacob's need for a successor, he considers what the island has meant to his life and debates stepping into the role Jacob selected for him. In the flash sideways universe, he is a successful doctor with a son who offers John Locke hope,

Kate Austen - Her return to the present means Kate may actually have a chance to find Claire and when that quest takes a turn for the dangerous, she ends up in Locke's camp by default. Despite trying to help Sawyer through his loss, she is eager to get Claire and get off the island, to return to Aaron and her life in the real world. In the flash sideways universe, she is a fugitive once more who accidentally abducts Claire before continuing her run from the authorities,

Sayid - Almost mortally wounded, he is brought to the Temple by Jack and Hugo and ends up being menaced by their "protectors" there. When he attempts to do the bidding of the disciples of Jacob, he meets up with Locke and offers the man who appears to be Locke the best chance of eliminating threats to him that exist. In the flash sideways universe, he is trying not to be a mercenary, but problems with Nadia's husband compel him to return to his violent tendencies,

Hugo ("Hurley") - Returning to the present, he starts to see the recently-deceased Jacob and learn what it means to be a "candidate" of Jacob's. By following Jacob to a lighthouse - and taking Jack with him there - he manages to save himself from the man who appears to be Locke. But as the end draws nigh, his destiny appears to be most bound to the island. In the flash sideways experience, he is the luckiest man on earth,

Sun - Stuck with the man who appears to be Locke, she uses that status to search for Jin. Her single-minded quest causes her to splinter off from Locke's protection and she never gives up hope of finding Jin, especially when she encounters others whom she knew were lost in time. In the flash sideways, she is having an affair with Jin, despite her father's disapproval,

Jin - Back in the present, he starts looking for Sun, but finds himself caught in one of Claire's traps when he leaves the protection of the Temple. Almost as soon as he recovers, he is abducted by Charles Widmore's forces. In the flash sideways, he is charged with the task of bringing money to a mercenary with a cruel purpose while hiding his love for Sun,

James "Sawyer" Ford - Broken by the death of the one he loves the most, he heads back to where he was happiest on the island on his own. Soon, though, his drunken solitude is interrupted by the man who appears to be Locke, who tells him why he was brought to the island. Once that happens, Locke employs Sawyer to learn all he can about Charles Widmore's faction, which has landed on nearby Hydra Island. In the flash sideways, he is a police detective who is searching for Anthony Cooper,

Richard Alpert - Almost immediately realizing who the man who appears to be Locke actually is, he becomes convinced that he is in hell and develops suicidal tendencies. With Ben, he tries to insure that the man who appears to be Locke never leaves the island,

Miles - Pretty much along for the ride, Miles looks to stand up to the man who appears to be Locke while still getting himself off the island. He tends to take the less risky ways when he can and is pretty much out to survive. In the flashes sideways, he is James Ford's partner on the force,

Charles Widmore - Finally returns to the island ready to rule it for his own purposes. He quickly abducts Desmond and subjects him to a horrific experiment. In the flash sideways, he is a billionaire whose son is a piano prodigy,

Ben Linus - Changing sides almost every episode, he is on the run for his life when Ilana realizes he killed Jacob. Almost rescued by the man who appears to be Locke, he begins to question which side in the conflict for the island he actually wants to be on. In the flash sideways world, he is a history teacher who must choose to either help his favorite student or make a play to become principal of the school,

Desmond - Brought to the island again, he is experimented upon in a way that allows him to be used by Widmore and feared by the man who appears to be Locke. His love for Penny makes him want to leave the island more than anything else. In the flash sideways, he was on Oceanic 815 and actually works for Widmore directly,

Ilana - The bounty hunter who is bound to protect the remaining candidates, she becomes distraught when she learns Jacob has been killed. In the flash sideways experience, she is a lawyer who reunites Claire and Jack,

Claire Littleton - Left alone on the island for far too long, she went pretty much crazy, though she recognizes the man who appears to be Locke for who and what he is. She vows revenge against Kate and the Others for stealing Aaron. Protected by the man who appears to be Locke, she reenters the mix in a dangerous way. In the flash sideways universe, she is still pregnant and is aided by an unlikely Kate in her attempts to find the people who were supposed to adopt Aaron,

and John Locke - Having been revealed as only the form of the man, his true nature is slowly revealed as more than just an enemy of Jacob. He single-mindedly focuses on leaving the island while he tries to convert the remaining candidates to his cause. When Charles Widmore arrives on the island, he sees that he has one last opportunity and obstacle to leaving and sets about removing those obstacles. In the flash sideways, Locke is aided by Hugo in becoming a substitute teacher at the school Ben works at.

In the sixth season of "Lost," the acting is exceptional. For performers like Daniel Dae Kim and Evangeline Lily, this means honing their roles. But for actors like Jorge Garcia, Josh Hollowell, and especially Emile de Ravin, this season is a chance to branch out. Jorge Garcia gets a chance to play Hugo in an entirely different way in the flash sideways bits and he makes excellent use of that opportunity to reinvent the character. Hollowell is absolutely amazing in the way he plays a broken Sawyer. But from the moment de Ravin, who was absent from the prior season, returns, she is electrifying. She manages to play Claire as disturbing and disturbed in a way that will make fans realize just how much they missed both the character and the actress.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, the brief sixteen episode season (two are double - or better - long) of Lost comes with the Lost-standard bonus features. There are four featurettes, one on the flash sideways, the featurette that preceded the series finale and two others which talk about how the season progressed and the series ended (at least one is never-before-seen, produced for the DVD/Blu-Ray). There are also commentary tracks on four episodes ("The End" is NOT one of them) and fans are likely to be happy with the commentary track on "LA X" and the sidestory episodes. The Complete Sixth Season also includes deleted scenes and a blooper reel.

Fans of Lost will want to own "The Complete Sixth Season" and it is a great value for those completing their DVD series. But for those who haven't started, pass this buy, shell out a few extra bucks and buy the big set instead; this is a series that is worth the faith we put in it and "The Complete Sixth Season" ends it remarkably well.

For other Lost works, please check out:
Lost The Complete Series
Bad Twin
Lost Series 1 Shannon Rutherford action figure

9/10

For other television series reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Better With More Viewings/Features, Lost Season Five "Dharma Initiative Orientation Kit" Is For The Fans!

The Good: Intriguing plot twists, Decent acting, Amazing Blu-Ray bonus features/limited edition swag.
The Bad: Light on character development
The Basics: The limited edition release of the Blu-Ray of Lost Season Five offers fans some real boons, as well as great television!


Give up. Give up and stop reading this review now. Yes, I'm talking to you, the reader who has never seen an episode of Lost, doesn't understand what the hype is about and is wondering if this makes a good gift for someone. It doesn't . . . unless that person is a fan of Lost. Lost is a show which is take-it or leave-it. You're a devoted fan or you're not and if you've never heard someone talk about their love of Lost, they probably are not the devoted fan who would want this DVD or Blu-Ray set. Moreover, the "Dharma Initiative Orientation Kit" packaging of the season is limited edition, more expensive and intended only for the true fans of the show.

Seriously, give up. There's no reason to read this review. No one needs a review of Lost Season Five. The people who want it, bought it three days ago when it hit stores, have asked for it on their holiday wish lists or have some plan to buy, rent, steal it or pick up the complete series set (reviewed here!). If you are not one of the people who has seen Lost and is waiting, keep waiting. If you're thinking about getting into the show, this is absolutely the last thing in the world to read. The reason for this could not be more simple: Lost is like a novel for television. Each season is a "volume" within that novel. As a result, picking up and watching Lost Season Five is like picking up the fifth book in a series or turning to a fifth chapter or section within a single book. Lost Season Five moves at a pace that is fast, continuing a story so deep in progress that it does not even make an effort to backtrack and repeat old information to viewers. Thus, anyone who has not seen Seasons One through Four will be missing vital pieces of information and have no clue about the significance of certain peripheral characters.

. . . and in the fifth season, peripheral characters in the Lost storyline become incredibly important. As well, what is going on in the main plots are confusing enough (though fans who know what came before expect the show to be smart and doing new things and will easily catch what is going on), having to have others explain it to viewers is pointless. Stop now, go back and watch from the beginning. By the time you get to "Season Five," you'll want this boxed set. You'll buy it . . . or you'll hate the show and have given up on it. There is truly little middle ground with Lost.

Despite that being the very best advice anyone can give readers on Lost Season Five, here is what to expect when buying this DVD:

Following the climactic event of the fourth season of Lost, where six members of the crashed Oceanic 815 flight and Desmond Hume were rescued and returned to civilization and those left behind were besieged by a commando force, Ben's attempt to move the island has an unforeseen consequence. Those left behind on the island, along with Jin (who survived the destruction of the freighter), find themselves unwillingly skipping through time at unpredictable intervals. As John Locke carefully pieces together what has happened, with the help of Daniel Faraday and Richard Alpert, and seeks to set right the relationship the mysterious island has with time and space, off the island, Ben makes contact with each of the Oceanic Six and tries to get them to return to the island. Three years after they were rescued, Ben, Locke and the Oceanic Six find themselves on a new plane headed to the new location of the mysterious island they randomly crashed on before.

But those left behind were not restored to time and space in a normal fashion. Instead, when Locke rescued them from the dangerous shifts in time, Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Miles, and Daniel found themselves in the past, where they took up with the Dharma Initiative. When the second plane with Ben and the Oceanic Six crashes on the island, it does not do so normally: Jack, Kate, Hugo and Sayid end up in the past, complicating the lives of their peers working for Dharma. That leaves Ben and Sun in the present, on the island, dealing with an incredible mystery: the resurrection of John Locke!

In its fifth season, Lost becomes an even more complex mystery, one that seems to have the Island as a playground for two avatars who have arranged the principle characters as pieces, from long before any of them ever ended up on the island. The initial concept seems to stem from a very subtle piece of acting in the fourth season finale, where Ben knocks a mysterious wheel awkwardly while turning it. That one moment knocks the island off its temporal axis and causes the characters left behind to time shift. The involuntary leaps through time have dangerous consequences, weakening the bodies of those who have been there the longest and killing Charlotte.

The episodes hardly stand alone in the fifth season as the character groups each are given very different "quests" and in most episodes, only one decision is reached in each group and one corresponding action is taken. So, for example, in "Jughead," Faraday determines that a bomb found on the island needs to be buried and Locke makes the decision to return to the Orchid, though it isn't until the next episode that he and his group actually journey there. Similarly, while it had been teased for two season finales now, the process of Jack rounding up the Oceanic Six with Locke's body takes five episodes.

Lost Season Five is also hampered, in part, by a lack of character development. Viewers know that Jack's return to life as a doctor in the United States left him tortured from Season Four. In season five, we just see the end result of that as he desperately tries to get the Oceanic Six to come with him and how. But Jack does not so much grow and change this season (save for the fact that he is able to take orders from LaFleur - Sawyer - when he joins the Dharma Initiative in the past). In fact, only Sawyer and Juliet have real character arcs this season; everyone else is caught up in plot arcs. And the plots are incredible with essentially two arcs the entire season: the round-up/timeshift plot and the return to island/conflict with Dharma plot. Of course, it is vastly more interesting for fans than just those two concepts, but the truth is, the season does boil down to those two (or, I suppose, four) arcs and the characters in them tend to encounter plot challenges - like the sudden presence of a nuclear bomb on the island - as opposed to character challenges.

Even so, for that hypothetical reader who is determining whether or not to shell out $100 on the limited edition "Dharma Orientation Kit" version of the fifth season of Lost (snicker!), it helps to know who the principle characters in this season of Lost are:

Dr. Jack Shephard - Getting himself off drugs, he teams up with Ben to bring everyone back to the Island, believing that leaving was a huge mistake and everyone there is in danger. With the second plane crash, he finds himself in the past where he is happy to slum under the radar of the Dharma Initiative while LaFleur solves the problems,

Kate Austen - Having met Sawyer's girlfriend and finding herself hounded by Claire's mother, she reluctantly gives up Aaron and returns to the Island. There, she finds herself coming between Sawyer and Juliet and working in the motorpool. She risks everything to save the child Ben Linus, which changes everything,

Sayid - Having made a split with Ben, he is captured by Ilana and is forcibly returned to the Island. There, he finds himself in the past, where he comes to believe his destiny is to set everything right . . . by killing Ben in the past,

Hugo ("Hurley") - Rescued by Sayid from the mental institution, Hugo continues to have conversations with the dead and his second plane ride puts him in 1977 where he is happy to work for Dharma and write "The Empire Strikes Back,"

Sun - Now in charge of her father's company, she has allied herself with Charles Widmore. However, a visit from Ben which proves to her that Jin is alive gets her to return to the island. The only one of the Oceanic Six left in the "present" when the plane crashes, she soon learns that the others ended up in the past and works with Ben and John to figure out how to get them back,

Jin - Having been knocked clear of the freighter and ended up back at the island for the time shifts, he is rescued in the past by Sawyer and finally learns English. Pining for Sun, he is happy to do whatever might reconnect him with his wife,

"Sawyer" ("LaFleur") - After the loss of Jack and Locke, he takes over as the natural leader of those on the island and helps them weather the dangerous time shifts. He convinces the head of Dharma that he is not a hostile and even negotiates with Richard Alpert (an ageless denizen of the island) to save everyone's life. He masquerades as "LaFleur" and becomes the Dharma security chief. As a result of their struggles together, Sawyer forgets about Kate as best he can and develops a relationship with Juliet,

Juliet - Trying to save the lives of the timeshifting survivors when the time shifts have serious health consequences, she is relieved when the shifts end and she settles in with the Dharma Initiative. She and Sawyer soon fall in love, but with the return of Kate, it is her strength that will change the course of history,

Miles - The psychic specialist from the freighter quickly figures out the identity of one of the chief Dharma scientists and comes to realize exactly how his fate has been tied to the island all along,

Daniel - After the death of Charlotte from the time shifting (don't look at me that way, it happens ridiculously early in the season!), Farraday loses it some and is saved by discovering Charlotte in the past living as a child in the Dharma Initiative. He uses the time in the past to return to the mainland to figure out how to right the course of history and return everyone to where and when they belong. His return to the Dharma Initiative, though, sets off a chain of events which will inspire the entirety of season six,

Ben Linus - The villainous leader of The Others works to return to the island and against all odds and reason is successful. As he, John and Jin struggle to figure out what happened to the others and he works to atone for the death of his daughter, his past is revealed as a child in the Dharma Initiative. And when Sayid tries to kill his child counterpart, it is Richard who steps up with a way to save him that changes him forever,

Desmond - (is he even in the season?!) Briefly seen in only a couple episodes, Desmond is happy with Penny, but may fall prey to Ben's lust for vengeance against Penny's father, Charles Widmore,

Ilana - A bounty hunter who captures Sayid and leads a new team with a nefarious purpose across the island,

and John Locke - After timeshifting around and meeting Richard Alpert in various time periods to have clues scattered for him, John returns to the United States the same way Ben did . . . but fixes what Ben screwed up. Once back, John works quietly to get the Oceanic Six to return to the island, but ends up dead at the hands of Ben (which is no surprise to viewers). But the trip back to the island resurrects Locke and he uses Ben to gain access to the ruins of the temple on the island, where a much bigger showdown is brewing.

In the fifth season of Lost, there are no new real parts (Zuleikha Robinson Ilana is a supplemental character whose presence is hardly as inspired as prior cast additions, like Daniel or Desmond or Juliet), so by this season, all of the principle actors have their beats down. Henry Ian Cusack is neglected for the season, while Jeremy Davies gets a real chance to shine as Daniel. But for the most part, the actors are performing within the established greatness of their abilities. Actors like Matthew Fox, Terry O'Quinn, and Evangeline Lilly give unsurprisingly wonderful performances in the roles they had had for four years prior.

In fact, the only real surprise on the acting front comes from Josh Halloway and Elizabeth Mitchell as "LeFleur" and Juliet. After years of working together, Halloway proves he can mix it up by developing real on-screen chemistry with Mitchell. Together, they make the Sawyer/Juliet arc not only plausible, but enjoyable to watch. They deserve some serious kudos for shaking it up well.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, the brief sixteen episode season of Lost comes loaded with bonus features. There are the usual episode commentaries, deleted scenes and a gag reel. As well, there are featurettes which include Nestor Carbonall on-set while shooting his last scenes for season five (very entertaining) and Michael Emerson off-camera wandering the Burbank Lost studios (also very entertaining!). As well, there is a video of the celebration thrown for the 100th episode of Lost! But the grail for Lost fans come in the "Dharma orientation kit," a deluxe packaging that includes an annoying VHS tape (with all of the orientation videos shown so far on Lost spliced together properly), a c.d. single ("Dharma Lady" by Geronimo Jackson), and patches from the show. Among the non-programming swag are maps of the island, the truce with the Others and the patches (one is limited edition, if you manage to pull it). The VHS tape is an actual tape and that's annoying, but the bonus swag reminds one of the postcards put in the Gold Box Twin Peaks Complete Series Set and it is hard for die-hard fans to complain about all of the extra goodies. Those with a Blu-Ray player with an internet connection may use the discs to connect with Lost University, which is an interactive experience that makes the viewer one of the Dharma Initiative!

So, fans of Lost get a slightly above-average season with exceptional swag with the limited edition packaging. And while the season is a little rockier than I would have liked, my faith in the show has not been shaken. For those who have the same faith, this is THE way to get the penultimate season of Lost!

For other Lost works, please check out:
Season 1
Season 2
Bad Twin (a tie-in novel)
Season 3
Season 4

7/10

For other television reviews, please check out the index page!

© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Rescue Comes For Some: Lost Season Four Makes A Great DVD Set!

The Good: Great story, Interesting new characters, Decent acting, Amazing DVD bonus features
The Bad: Slightly repetitive feel to the narrative technique
The Basics: Brilliant, if slightly repetitive and inaccessible to new viewers, Lost Season Four is an indispensable DVD for anyone who loves weird, serialized television!


I have developed a pretty simple i.q. test for television viewers in the last few years; it's one, simple question: "Are you into Lost?" From this question, I am able to derive much. I can easily take the answers: "Yes, I love it, would you like to spend the next eight hours comparing notes on it?!" or "No; I've seen it, but it didn't grab me." I'll associate with either of those types of people, no problems. It's the ones who say "I don't understand what's going on" that I've decided to weed out of associating with. That might sound elitist, but frankly, for all of its supernatural elements and the shiftings in time back and forth, if one only watches the show and pays attention, it's pretty easy to tell what is going on. How one interprets what is going on is a different matter, but those who are lost (no pun intended) simply by what happens on the show paint a pretty bleak picture for the future of humanity.

Nowhere is this more true than with the fourth season of Lost, now out on DVD in a pretty magnificent boxed set. Cut down to only thirteen episodes (fourteen hours) by the writer's strike, Lost - The Complete Fourth Season is many things, but hard-to-follow is not one of them. For sure, there are elements that might not be immediately comprehensible, like for example the time travel elements that Faraday quickly discovers indicates that the island in the show is not in temporal synch with the rest of the world, but by this point, the story of Lost is becoming very - almost ridiculously - clear. In the fourth season of Lost, a freighter off the island comes on a mission to recover someone or some thing from the island.

Set up in the last episodes of Lost Season 3 (click here for my review!), an offshore freighter comes near the island and some of the people trapped on the island make it off. This season charts a ridiculously simple course: two groups come from the freighter to the island: scientists and hunters. While a paramilitary group from the freighter hunts for Ben Linus, Daniel Faraday and his group try to understand the unique properties of the island while Sayid, Desmond and Jack work to escape the island and get the survivors of Ocean Flight 815 home. With the usual technique of flashbacks now mixed with flashes forward, Lost - The Complete Fourth Season tells a powerful season-long story that leads to six people escaping the island!

After just over a hundred days on the mysterious island where they crashed, six people have made it back to the United States from the doomed flight 815 from Oceanic Airlines. The Oceanic Six, as they are known, have become celebrities and have worked to keep the people of the world ignorant of the existence of the island or any other survivors from the crashed flight. But as the survivors of flight 815 divide over the issue of whether or not to attempt to leave the island with the crew Naomi's presence insinuates, life on the island becomes increasingly complicated. As Locke leads most of the crash survivors deeper into hiding in fear that the freighter crew has come to kill the survivors, Jack, Kate and Juliet find themselves in the company of people from the freighter, including the scientist Daniel Faraday.

Faraday is a physicist and he almost immediately lets slip that the freighter did not come to the island to try to find survivors of Oceanic 815. Instead, he and his associates Miles and Charlotte reveal that Oceanic 815 was recovered from the bottom of the ocean, though several like chopper pilot Frank Lapidus suspect a conspiracy. With Jack working with Faraday to try to get off the island, Sayid and Desmond take a trip to the freighter and a commando named Keamy leads an operation to the island. Keamy's intent is clear: to find Ben Linus and as he cuts a swath of destruction across the island, his actions forever change the balance of power between those off the island who in a struggle for the powers the island represents!

In its fourth season, Lost progresses with two parallel tales, consisting of the known and the unknown. The known story is what was set up in the prior season's finale: from that we know that Jack and Kate both get off the island and season four is concerned on one level with how that happens and who else manages to get off the island with them. The unknown story is with John Locke, Ben Linus and Keamy, who essentially get into a war on the island. The story is strangely direct, despite the puzzle-piece way it is assembled, leading rather directly to the answers many have sought while still maintaining enough of a mystery to come back for a couple more seasons.

Lost is ideally presented on DVD as this is a heavily-serialized television show and the episodes in the fourth season blend from one to the next very naturally.

The truth is, though, that this season is not for newbies. By this point in the Lost story, you're either onboard or out of the loop. This DVD boxed set very clearly illustrates that the show has gotten to a point where it is so self-involved and self-referential that it is not even geared toward those who had not been watching before now. The plots are sufficiently complicated and the characters have developed so far that those who pick up just this DVD set will be lost. The story so far is so extensive that trying to hop in now is just pointless. That said, it is the character elements and the extensively detailed backstories that prevent it from being accessible to a new audience, not the plot elements or the narrative techniques. The fourth season of Lost does not take the time to educate new viewers to the extensive allusions detailed in the prior seasons and as a result, it is difficult for new viewers to pick this boxed set up and get caught up.

The characters in Lost continue to develop over the course of the season and more of the backstory for each of them is revealed. As well, stories from how the characters who escape the island - flashes forward - act and are treated are told as well. Unfortunately, given how massive the cast is by this point, not all of them have plum roles this season. Still, there is enough that is engaging to keep those who have been with it engaged. Here is how the fourth season finds the principle characters on (and off) the island:

Jack - One of the Oceanic Six, he has returned to civilization where his work is no longer satisfying him. Drunk, falling apart and failing to adapt to the return to civilization, Jack becomes convinced that he and the others must return to the island. On the island, Jack struggles to get the people he has kept safe off the island, leading half of them back to the beach when John challenges him. Also, his appendix begins to act up and he and Juliet get closer,

Kate - Leaving with Locke to be with Sawyer, Kate becomes curious as to the motivations of the people who have come to the island. She allows Miles to meet with Ben, which compels Locke to banish her from his camp. Abandoning Sawyer, she becomes one of the Oceanic Six with . . . of all people, Aaron, Claire's son,

Sawyer - Accepting that he has nothing he wants off the island, when Locke splits the survivors up, he happily joins, eagerly taking up a house in the camp the Others used to occupy. He acts as Locke's lieutenant and when Kate leaves, he is deeply hurt,

Hurley - One of the Oceanic Six, Hurley is suffering more than ever from his mental illness which causes him to see the dead, including Charlie. On the island, he reacts to Charlie's death and the message that the freighter is not from Penny by joining Locke and going into hiding. Locke uses him to try to find Jacob's cabin and this leads Hurley to a new sense of despair,

Sayid - One of the Oceanic Six, Sayid becomes involved with a sinister force off the island as a hitman following the death of the woman he loves. One of the first off the island, he trades Charlotte with Locke in order to get on the chopper. Flown out by Lupidus, he and Desmond struggle to secure the freighter and he encounters an unlikely person on the freighter,

Jin - Looking forward to being a father, he promises Sun he will get her off the island,

Sun - With her pregnancy threatening to kill her, she works to get off the island and her secrets are exposed by Juliet to Jin. Off the island, she becomes allied with an unlikely person for what appears to be a sinister reason, though she does have a bright spot as well,

Claire - Reacting to Charlie's death, she joins Locke's camp and eventually meets with the most unlikely person, leading her to abandon her son, Aaron,

Desmond - Eager to get off the island, he and Sayid fly out with Lupidus. Unfortunately for him, leaving the island triggers something as far as his temporal slipping and he is forced to find Daniel Faraday in his past. Struggling to maintain his life, he desperately tries to contact Penny off the freighter,

John Locke - Convinced that Charlie's message supports his theory that the crew of the freighter has come with a sinister purpose, Locke calls upon the survivors who want to live to fall back with him to the homes of the Others (who have abandoned that section of the island). Struggling to make sense of what is going on, he searches for Jacob's cabin and gets into a war with Keamy,

Juliet - Desperate to get Sun off the island, she exposes Sun's secret to Jin. She build's Jack's trust by removing his appendix and she strives to get off the island herself,

Daniel Faraday - A scientist from the freighter, he has a boyish enthusiasm for studying the effects of the island and the unique properties it possesses. His past and present soon collide, though, when it becomes clear that the temporal experiments he did back in college have been realized by some on the island, including Desmond,

Miles - Having lived as a ghost hunter for profit and treasure, he joins the "rescue team" to try to collect the bounty on Ben, but ends up as a pawn in the machinations between Ben and Keamy,

Charlotte - Ostensibly the leader of those who parachute onto the island and the brains behind keeping alive there, she is connected to the island,

Martin Keamy - A psychopathic commando who storms the island searching for Ben, he initiates a bloodbath that changes everything,

Michael - Aboard the freighter, under an assumed name, the only adult to escape the island earlier returns to the island to redeem himself for the murders he committed while there. With Walt safe on land, he has nothing to lose,

and Ben Linus - The leader of the Others (for the most part), captured by Locke, he quickly becomes the subject of the hunt from those on the freighter. On the island, he trades information for his freedom, saving the lives of some from Locke's camp, including Claire, only to end up in a situation where he loses what is most important to him. When that happens, he declares war on his greatest enemy and begins a hunt that spells future doom for at least one person on the island!

The new and returning characters make for an interesting new blend, with the return of Michael being well-explained and a real gift to the fans of the series. Daniel Faraday, who initially seems like a plot device to explain some of the mechanics of the island for those who did not get it from the film strips shown in prior seasons (or the whole purpose of the hatch), quickly becomes an interesting and viable character. He's hard not to like. And he interacts beautifully with Henry Ian Cusak. In fact, the episode "The Constant" in this season, which focuses on Desmond, Faraday and Penny is easily one of the best hours the series has produced.

The acting in the fourth season is more honed than new and the continued chemistry and conflict between Ben and Locke is masterfully handled by Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn. Perhaps the best new performances, though, come from Yunjin Kim and Matthew Fox. Fox set up his distraught performances for this season in the prior season's finale with Jack becoming increasingly messed up by leaving the island. In this season, Fox capitalizes on that and takes Jack in the flashes forward into new territory where Jack is completely unlikable. Fox makes the transition appear perfectly normal and rational, though, which is the real and impressive challenge.

But it is Yunjin Kim who deserves an award (and if she's not even nominated this year for her performances in "Ji Yeon" and the later episodes, then the nominators shall lose the last shreds of respect I once had for them) for acting in this season. Previously, she has had to act like she did not understand English and throughout the series, she has tended to present Sun as somewhat submissive. In this season, she recasts the character as completely strong and at times beautifully cold-blooded, performing with a strength and clarity that is eerie to see and amazingly executed.

On DVD, the series looks great and has incredible bonus features. In fact, this might well be the television DVD boxed set of the year, as far as DVD programming goes. With two discs packed with bonus features, Lost The Complete Fourth Season makes up for its shortened amount of source material with an impressive array of bonus bits. There are audio commentaries (I could always use more of those!) on several episodes and they are informative and entertaining, definitely adding value. While the set does not include the pop-up "Enhanced" feature that aired with the reruns of episodes from this season, there are a number of incredible features that make up for that. There are ten featurettes on everything from the guns to the freighter crew to the music of Lost. There is a blooper reel that is predictably funny and a bevy of deleted scenes that will make viewers wish they could be branched back into the episodes. Fans will be very pleased with all of these bonuses as they truly do reward us for our devotion with all sorts of goodies that cannot be found elsewhere.

This is the DVD of the season for fans of compelling, surreal drama, despite being impossible to recommend for those who are not already into the series. With this set, viewers get a whole lot of payoffs for the investment in the earlier seasons, though, while setting up a few final mysteries to keep us coming back for more!

For other works in the Lost universe, please check out my reviews of:
Lost Season 1
Lost Season 2
Bad Twin (A Lost Tie-In Novel)
Lost The Complete Series

8/10

For other television reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Neighbors From Hell: Lost - Season 3 Holds Up Well On DVD!

The Good: Great character development, Decent acting, Interesting plots, Decent DVD bonus features
The Bad: Repetitive, A little more predictable than prior seasons
The Basics: When Lost returns in its third boxed set, it finds most of the characters in dire straits and fans will be eager to see how they resolve them!


One of the nice things about DVD is the ability to go back and catch things one missed on television the first time through. We find clues, subtle moments that might have passed us by the first time, have a greater appreciation of how a certain story is put together or where a character is coming from, whatever. In the television series Lost, this is especially useful as it is a fairly dense show that is packed with information week after week. That said, with the appearance of Lost - Season 3 on DVD, that benefit is somewhat diminished; fans of the series - and I have been watching since the first season (click here for my review!) - will likely not need the DVDs to catch as much from the show this time around; we are becoming tuned to it. As a result, Lost - Season 3 is not quite as indispensable for fans - who are likely to buy it anyway - as prior seasons. The set is ideal for those who watch shows year after year and never catch the groove of the writers/executive producers. For those people, I am certain there is incredible value in the basic programming of this DVD set.

Coming off a shockingly good season finale for the second season (click here for my review!), Lost returned to an eager audience and on DVD, the show eliminates its ridiculous two-mini-season concept and seems much more unified and part of a single story. That is a nice benefit of the series on DVD, no hype, just programming!

With Kate, Sawyer and Jack in the company of the Others - residents of the island on the other side of the island, who have been there for quite some time before Oceanic flight 815 crashed there -, the hatch destroyed and Sayid and his team circling the island in a boat to try to combat the Others, there is a lot of repair work to be done on the beach by the survivors. When Hurley returns to the beach with news of the capture of Jack and the others, fear strikes the survivors and when Sayid, Jin and Sun return, without their boat, things look even more dire. Locke and Desmond return from the decimated hatch with the news that Eko, who they had been searching for, is dead, further casting the survivors into doubt as to their collective longevity.

Jack awakens in a nondescript room where he is treated like a lab rat and has contact with Juliet, one of the Others. While Jack works to escape, he learns a little bit more about the Others and what they are doing on the island. Soon, it becomes apparent to Jack that they want him for his medical abilities. Kate and Sawyer, held outside in old animal cages, work on escaping as well, though Kate is eager to find out where Jack is. Jack learns that the leader of the Others, Ben (formerly Henry Gale, in their prior contacts) is ill and needs surgery, which Jack can perform to buy his freedom from the Island.

Jack uses the opportunity to leverage the Others for the freedom of his friends, setting off a chain of events that starts - essentially - an all out war between the Oceanic survivors and the Others!

Lost - Season 3 holds up better on DVD than it did in the original broadcast (much like how I enjoyed the third season of Alias, more on DVD than when it first aired) and seeing this whole "chapter" of the Lost story in one place makes it much easier to grasp and it carries a sense of flow better. Fans and non-fans will find the show flows better this way than broken up by weeks and months.

The truth is, though, that this season is not for newbies. By this point in the Lost story, you're either onboard or out of the loop. This DVD boxed set very clearly illustrates that the show has gotten to a point where it is so self-involved and self-referential that it is not even geared toward those who had not been watching before now. The plots are sufficiently complicated and the characters have developed so far that those who pick up just this DVD set will be lost. The story so far is so extensive that trying to hop in now is just pointless.

That's not to say that this is a pointless show, far from it! Lost remains engaging and complex, ultimately worthwhile. But it is a show one has to be paying attention to to truly "get." Fortunately, fans get the payoff of some of the earlier plotlines and ideas in this season. As a result of the capture, through Jack and Juliet, fans learn quite a bit about the Others. When Locke runs off to join Ben, we learn even more. Questions are answered about the now-destroyed hatch and the viewer is teased with snippets of other hatches. In all, this season progresses the stories of Lost wonderfully, while adding new elements that are sure to intrigue viewers for the final three seasons!

The characters in Lost continue to develop over the course of the season and more of the backstory for each of them is revealed. This is quite a task considering how massive the cast is and how many characters there are to focus on. Sayid, for example, is terribly neglected this season. Over the course of the twenty-two episodes (the finale is double-length), the show covers a great deal of ground and new relationships are formed and some old ones fall apart. Here is how the third season finds the new principle characters on the island:

Jack - Captured by the Others and isolated for his medical skills, Jack wrestles with his abandonment by his wife. This allows Juliet to manipulate him some, though he soon comes to learn that Ben has the ability to monitor the world (at the United States) and he engages in a risky gambit to protect the people from Oceanic Flight 815, all the while tempted with the very real possibility that he can return home,

Kate - Trapped near Sawyer and working with him to escape, the two bond. She exhibits tremendous loyalty to Jack, though, by working to insure that he is freed. She risks her life and works with Rousseau to find out more about the Others,

Sawyer - Captured and developing a relationship with Kate, it is Locke who will most change Sawyer's life this season, by providing him with exactly what he's always wanted,

Charlie - having survived the destruction of the hatch, he and Claire reconcile some and they set to raising Aaron. Unfortunately, Charlie's newfound friendship with Desmond is based on a rather morbid principle; Desmond has visions of Charlie dying repeatedly,

Hurley - After becoming obsessed with getting a van he finds in the jungle to drive, he assists the people on the beach by conning Sawyer into being nice to them,

Sayid - After losing the boat, Sayid becomes one of the great explorers of the island, searching for the community of the Others and ultimately launching a battle against them,

Jin - After losing the boat with Sayid, he works to protect Sun and is otherwise neglected,

Sun - After losing the boat, she works to reforge the bonds with her husband, Jin and survive with everyone else, though Juliet soon informs her of the terrible tragedy that befalls all pregnant women on the island, casting her longevity into doubt,

Paulo and Nikki - Other people on the beach from the crashed flight, they don't last long,

Claire - Continuing to raise her son Aaron, she finds herself growing closer and closer to Charlie, especially after she learns about Desmond's visions,

Desmond - Stuck back on the island, he finds himself estranged from Locke and develops a friendship with Charlie based on the fact that he has the ability to see the future now and in it, Charlie is always dead,

John Locke - Having survived the destruction of the hatch and seeing Mr. Eko buried, Locke feels an even deeper connection than before to the island. As a result, he hunts down the Others and joins them, only to discover that Ben has been expecting him and has a test for him,

Juliet - One of the Others, a fertility specialist and a generally decent person, she is kept on the island by Ben against her will. She sees Jack as a potential escape mechanism and works to use him to get herself freed, even as it appears Ben has set her up as a mole for the Others in the camp of the survivors,

and Ben Linus - The leader of the Others (for the most part), his life is saved by Jack, though that does come with a price. He is manipulative and devious and he seems determined to keep the island a secret and to see Locke buried there!

The characters in Lost are often used as plot vehicles this season. While that might be normal, in Lost that is taken to a new level this season as much of the plot is disguised as character elements. So, for example, Desmond's whole new "gift" seems largely to foreshadow plot events and the emphasis on Charlie and death in that sets the stage for the viewers. Similarly, Locke and Sawyer are set about wrapping up plot holes and character threads that have existed for all three seasons. Lost - Season 3 packs in a lot of plot for the twenty-two episodes and the greatest character development comes from the flashback sequences.

The acting in this season of Lost is quite good, though most of it is simply portraying the characters with a consistency so they feel like the characters we know. The performers who are new to the mix come with mixed results. It was no great loss when Rodrigo Santoro and Kiele Sanchez came and left the cast as Paulo and Nikki, but having Henry Ian Cusak (Desmond) and Michael Emerson (Ben) join the cast definitely works out well. They are both wonderful actors and they do bring something their roles and the show. The third season performance by Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet, was not quite enough to sell me on her. Now that the whole series is done, I am pleased that she grew remarkably well. To her credit, Mitchell is wonderful in her flashback episode, layering her performance throughout with a nice sense of loss and desperation.

Emerson and Terry O'Quinn, who plays Locke, have great on-screen chemistry. They play off one another with a suspicious relationship of each other that is truly wonderful. O'Quinn deserved his Emmy and while he does not have a huge role in this boxed set, he performs in every single frame he is in. He and Emerson create a relationship that is very creepy and plays well in this weird island world.

On DVD, the series looks great and has decent bonus features. There are four audio commentaries (I could always use more of those!) and they are informative and entertaining, definitely adding value to the set. The seventh disc is packed with bonus features including three featurettes on behind-the-scenes information and on the effect of the show, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel. Fans will be very pleased with all of these bonuses as they truly do reward us for our devotion with all sorts of goodies that cannot be found elsewhere.

But my original assessment holds; despite how good this plot-heavy season is, it is not designed for anyone who is not already a fan of the show and purchasing this boxed set on its own is more likely to lead to confusion and frustration as opposed to the satisfaction those of us who love lost feel with this great show!

For other television season reviews, please check out my takes on:
30 Rock Season 1
VR.5
Star Trek The Complete Original Series

7/10

For other television program reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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