A Parody Of Itself, Tomorrow Never Dies Is Fun James Bond!

The Good: Some great lines, Decent performances, Good pacing, Entertaining
The Bad: Some terrible, over-the-top lines, Very predictable plot progression, One of the least satisfying endings of any Bond film
The Basics: The final James Bond film I had to watch, Tomorrow Never Dies is remarkably average Bond . . . when it is not delivering laugh-out-loud funny one-liners.


With Tomorrow Never Dies, I am done with the James Bond franchise! As of now, I have seen all of the James Bond films in the franchise (at least until S.P.E.C.T.R.E. comes out later this year!) and I'm ending on an odd note. Tomorrow Never Dies is an emotionally-enjoyable film in many ways, though much of that comes from the writing and casting, as opposed to the film being an objectively good work. In fact, for the first half hour of Tomorrow Never Dies, the film is written in such a way that it seems almost like it is a parody of a James Bond film. A decent portion of the film has incredibly quotable one-liners that are funny and create a surprisingly light tone for the film. But the moment the Bond villain, Elliot Carver, gives his first, over-the-top presentation to his inner circle of slimeballs, the film takes a turn into utterly groanworthy territory.

Such is the "split personality" of Tomorrow Never Dies, a film smart enough to note that (even in 1997) a military incursion into Vietnamese waters by anyone with U.S. tech could be disastrous for U.S. foreign policy and dark enough to include a "long lost love" for James Bond who is horribly murdered, but features more tongue-in-cheek gags and ridiculousness (James Bond is beaten up by three characters who are, essentially, the Three Stooges, while at the Carver Media network launch!) than any other Bond film in memory. I was excited going into Tomorrow Never Dies because of my love of Jonathan Pryce from Brazil (reviewed here!) and my general enjoyment of Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of James Bond. But the positive elements are weighted pretty much equally with the film's detractions, making for an average (albeit enjoyable) movie.

Opening at a terrorist "supermarket" on the Russian border, where MI-6 is monitoring the potential sale of a small army's worth of hardware (including nuclear torpedoes on a Russian jet), James Bond has to outrace a British missile and terrorists when things go south. The H.M.S. Devonshire is in the South China Sea, where it is attacked by a stealth drill submarine operated by minions of a billionaire media mogul, who is launching a worldwide cable news network. The attack, triggered by the Devonshire's GPS system rerouting the boat out of international waters, is designed to bring about World War III and is used by Elliot Carver as the first big story for his news network. With the British Navy 48 hours away from being able to fully deploy in the South China Sea, M tasks James Bond with gathering the evidence needed to avert World War III.

That takes Bond to Hamburg, Germany, where he meets Carver. At the party, Bond meets Wai Lin, a spy posing as a Chinese journalist and he reunites with his lost love, Paris, who is now Carver's wife. Carver utilizes tech genius Henry Gupta to learn that Paris still has a soft spot for Bond and he easily discovers that she has betrayed him to Bond. After Elliot implicates Bond in the murder of Paris, Bond and Wai Lin find themselves exploring the sunken Devonshire together. The pair works together to try to avert a war between Britain and China and stop Carver from attaining world domination through media manipulation.

Tomorrow Never Dies is enjoyable in that it is one of the Bond films that has Bond balanced by a superspy that appears for all intents and purposes to be his equal. Wai Lin is anything but the typical Bond Girl, which balances the especially easy Paris in the film. Wai Lin comes with her own tech and, like the C.I.A. ally of Bond Jack Wade, Bond is forced to rely upon both her help and her assets to achieve his mission objectives.

Wai Lin is credibly played by Michelle Yeoh, who is a martial arts expert and is able to completely sell the film's action scenes. She and Pierce Brosnan have decent timing for the quips their characters deliver. While some might not like how Bond's reliance upon an ally weakens the superspy, after watching dozens of Bond films where Bond alone accomplishes impossible things, it is refreshing to see some level of realism where he cannot achieve everything on his own. Moreover, the realism of the team of super-spies balances the almost cartoonish nature of the film's villain.

Elliot Carver is a great concept for a villain and it is hard to criticize Jonathan Pryce for how he delivers the worst, most over-the-top lines of the film (and the franchise). Carver is a brilliant idea who is written as a quip-spewing maniac who has all the weaknesses of a Bond villain. He details his plans as exposition, he trusts all the wrong people and he is handicapped by a desire for power that is utterly unrealistic. Pryce does the best he can, but the role is a pretty lousy character.

The result is a funny, action-filled film that is filled with ticking clocks, decent actors, ridiculous characters, good lines, chases and gadgets. Tomorrow Never Dies is fun, so long as one disengages much of their sense of reason and just goes with it.

For other works with Geoffrey Palmer, please check out my reviews of:
Paddington
The Pink Panther 2
"Goodbyeee" - Blackadder Goes Forth

5/10

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

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Study In Average Sequels, How To Train Your Dragon 2 Predictably Underwhelms.

The Good: Moments of character, General plot construction
The Bad: Predictable, Moments of forced humor, Erratic animation quality
The Basics: How To Train Your Dragon 2 continues the story of Hiccup and the dragons near Berk by introducing an unexpected ally and a ruthless new villain.


It is a pretty impressive thing when a single film’s release can change the direction of a production company. In the case of Dreamworks Animation, the somewhat ridiculous (but entirely impressive) winning streak the company had ended rather abruptly with the cinematic release of How To Train Your Dragon 2. Personally, I am surprised Dreamworks did not get their comeuppance a few years back when Prometheus (reviewed here!) was released in the U.S. opposite one of the Madagascar sequels, but regardless of my opinions, it took years later and the ridiculous 22 Jump Street to end the box office dominance of Dreamworks Animation.

Now comes the time for the Monday Morning Quarterbacking; was it the film or the statistical inevitability that led How To Train Your Dragon 2 to fail to take the top spot (or get there in its second week of release). Given that I was not the world’s hugest fan of How To Train Your Dragon (reviewed here!), I tend to fall on the side of statistical inevitability and weather for why How To Train Your Dragon 2 is being perceived as a box office failure (and causing a stock dip in Dreamworks!). Summer has not been intensely hot yet, so families aren’t feeling the push to go out to the air conditioned movie theaters with their children, whereas young adults and nostalgic adults with money in the mood for ridiculous comedies will drop dollars regardless of the weather. Another factor in play is audience age; How To Train Your Dragon was produced at the peak of the children’s book series popularity and the kids who grew up on that series are a few (significant) years older, which makes them less eager to go see the sequel. Regardless, even without having seen the first film in years, How To Train Your Dragon 2 holds up surprisingly well on its own. How To Train Your Dragon 2 might not be a stellar movie or an incredible sequel, but it is a not-disappointing work that is entertaining enough to be diverting, if nothing else.

Opening with a spectacular sports sequence, the Vikings of Berk are at peace with the dragons they have trained. Young dragon riders like Astrid and Hiccup ride their familiar dragons in Quiddich-like sports much to the delight of the Vikings of Berk. Stoick The Vast, Hiccup’s father, is enamored with the idea that Astrid might someday be his daughter-in-law and he wants the young Hiccup to take his place as Berk’s protector. After the entertainment, Astrid and her dragon find Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless, at the edge of the realm. There, seeing a fire, they investigate and Astrid’s dragon is knocked out of the sky. Astrid and Hiccup meet Eret, a dragon trapper who is working for Drago Bludvist. The youths leave with their dragons and report back to Stoick that Bludvist is amassing a dragon army.

When Stoick is upset by the news that Bludvist is raising an army, Hiccup and Astrid head back to Eret’s ship to try to negotiate with him for a meeting with Drago Bludvist. The negotiations quickly fall apart when Hiccup’s friends arrive (and are almost captured) and Stoick himself tries to mount a rescue attempt for the not-captured Hiccup. After learning of the dark relationship Stoick and Bludvist once had, Hiccup is headed home when he and Toothless are attacked by a mysterious, masked dragon rider who leaves Toothless to die in the icy water. Hiccup finds himself in the custody of a woman who claims to be his mother and her horde of dragons. Valka tells Hiccup of how she came to be with the Alpha Dragon twenty years before while Hiccup’s friends worry about his whereabouts and prepare for a war with Bludvist. With a conflict eminent, Hiccup and his friends work to enlist the aid of Valka’s dragons to stop Bludvist from conquering Berk with his army of enslaved dragons.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 is not bad as much as it is predictable and formulaic. With the first film virtually ending the conflict between the dragons and Berk, the sequel has a predictably external conflict. The introduction of Drago is an interesting adversary, though the fact that he comes into the narrative a decent amount of time after the much lighter antagonist, Eret, causes the film to have a few pacing issues. Because the film is very much a family-friendly film, Drago Bludvist is characterized as a psychopath without being shown to be much of one for most of the movie. Instead, he is a generic, short-tempered Viking lord who employs mercenaries and is told to viewers to be a crazed villain. He is rough on his subordinates and his goals are sinister, but he mostly fills the generic villain role without being shown on-screen as being truly monstrous.

At the other end of the spectrum is Valka. Hiccup’s mother is a protector of dragons and might well be best embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome seen in recent years in film, but she is presented with a similarly simple nature. Valka is a pretty universal good character, despite her twenty year absence from Hiccup and Stoick’s lives. A realistic amount of time is spent re-assimilating Valka to Viking culture (getting her away from considering herself a dragon), but that leaves shockingly little time for the actual conflict between Drago and the heroes of Berk (while keeping the film at a family friendly 90 minutes). The result is that the characters in How To Train Your Dragon 2 are almost universally simplistically rendered.

Hiccup seems much younger than the twenty years old he is supposed to be, until he has the threat of invasion to respond to. Predictably, Hiccup rises to the occasion of saving the dragons that Valka has been living with. That predictability makes How To Train Your Dragon 2 seem unremarkable and some of the lines – most notably the romantic obsession Ruffnut has for Eret – seem like throwaway bits of filler. As one might figure for a family film, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is largely lacking in complexities. Hiccup is interesting in that he is a pacifist among Vikings, but even having not seen the first film in years, that seems more a function of his initial characterization than actual character growth.

On the acting front, the talents employed by Dreamworks Animation are predictably impressive. Djimon Hounsou’s deep voice is perfect for connoting menace in every line Drago speaks. Cate Blanchett is good at delivering exposition as Valka, but director Dean DeBlois fails to capitalize on her ability to deliver lines with real emotion by not giving her character the chance to make some of the moments sufficiently deep. Returning actors like Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and Gerard Butler are pros who return to their roles easily, even when they are forced to deliver simplistic or unchallenging lines.

It seems like much of the purpose (within the universe of How To Train Your Dragon) of How To Train Your Dragon 2 is to raise the visual stakes of the world of Berk. The Alphas certainly do that, though their visual majesty is trumped by their use as background props for some of their most significant battle moments. Unlike something like, for example, Star Wars where the director might let the special effects department play long enough to create a lavish sequence involving the mammoth visual elements of the Alphas, DeBlois establishes the scale of the Alpha then uses the two massive dragons as background elements (deferring to their control over the rest of the dragons to express their influence in the film more than their physical presence).

Ultimately, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is incredibly average and the result is a movie that suffers as one might expect a sequel to: it is a return to a familiar place where one is left feeling like they did not need more of an expanded story than they already had.

For other Dreamworks Animation films, please check out my reviews of:
Rise Of The Guardians
Rio
Rango
Shrek Forever After
MegaMind
Shark Tale
Shrek

4.5/10

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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Stylish Sprays And . . . What The Hell, 300: Rise Of An Empire Is Just Pointless!

The Good: The film looks good/stylish stunts, Most of the acting is adequate
The Bad: Light on character development, Dull plot
The Basics: In one of the least-necessary sequels of all time, 300: Rise Of An Empire pitches another force of Greeks against the Persian naval forces.


As winter inevitably turns to spring, the first hints of what Summer Blockbuster Season might be like are inevitably teased. This year, the mindless action movies that tend to dominate Summer Blockbuster Season are introduced with the March release of 300: Rise Of An Empire. 300: Rise Of An Empire is the first major sequel of the year to be released and if it is any indication, 2014 will be a poor year for cinematic sequels.

300: Rise Of An Empire is a sequel to the stylish historical fiction graphic novel-turned blockbuster film 300 (reviewed here!) and it is an especially lackluster sequel. Like the worst of dramatic war sequels, 300: Rise Of An Empire starts with a heavy burden; most of the significant characters in 300 cannot return, so the slate is mostly clean for the viewer. That leaves an immense pressure on the writers and director to create new iconic characters and situations while preserving the world of the original film. 300: Rise Of An Empire merely recycles and reformats the familiar, iconic elements of 300 and the result is more transparent than it is audacious. One almost suspects that the moment in 300: Rise Of An Empire where the villainous Artemisia throws a general giving her a bad report, weighted, into the sea comes at virtually the same time in the film as shoving the ambassador into the “bottomless pit” in 300 happened.

So, amid a mildly reframed plot and populated with new characters (though it makes sure to use archive footage that includes Gerard Butler’s Leonidas), 300: Rise Of An Empire once again pits Greeks against Persians in a bloody, stylishly-shot, color-muted, historical fiction war film that is overly familiar. Themistokles crying out that the Persians fear Greek freedom is not exactly as catchy as Gerard Butler’s “We are Spartan!” and such is the lament of 300: Rise Of An Empire: the entire film has a “been there, done that” feel to it.

The Persian King Darius leads ships to Marathon. There, the Athenian general, Themistokles defends Athens and, in a crucial moment, Themistokles manages to cut Darius down with an arrow. Darius turns the empire over to his son, Xerxes and the naval general, Artemisia, tells Xerxes he will be a god-king. Manipulated by Artemisia, Xerxes brings the Persian fleet to bear on Greece. Themistokles works to unite the Greeks against Artemisia’s navy, but finds the Spartans unwilling to join his forces. Routing out a Greek spy, Artemisia prepares to attack the southern portion of Greece.

With a woefully inadequate naval force of Greek ships meeting Artemisia’s thousand ships in the water, the Greek cause is once more imperiled. While Themistokles leads a successful campaign on the first day of naval battle (Artemisia’s fleet loses almost a tenth of its ships), Artemisia learns who her adversary is and demands her generals bring her a naval victory. On the second day of battle, Artemisia’s ambitious general sails into a trap and the Athenians are able to leap off the cliffs onto the boats to bloody the Persians. After meeting Artemisia, Themistokles’s ships are once more besieged by the Persians. Firebombed and hit with arrows and amphibious forces, the Greek forces struggle to survive the relentless attack by Artemisia’s forces. As Persian forces sweep through Athens, Artemisia and Themistokles are put on a collision course with one another.

300: Rise Of An Empire is more about style than substance, but following on the heels of similar films like Immortals (reviewed here!) and the alternate-history Watchmen (reviewed here!), the latest blood-splash war flick seems particularly vacuous. After several war scenes, there is a pointless and rapey sex scene between the hero and villain that serves only to undermine the character of Artemisia. Before trying obvious seduction and violent sex, Artemisia is cool and brutally efficient. While she ends up on top in that scene, she loses both her mystique and the sense that there is something special and impressive about her as a tactician.

So, the movie degenerates quickly out of the thin dialogue, recapping the prior film and attempts at character-building and turns into the predicted bloodbath one expects of a sequel to 300. Having not seen 300 in years, it says something bad about 300: Rise Of An Empire that I recall several of the shots from 300 in its sequel. The dramatic jumping shots, filmed from a low angle, in slow motion, the blades speeding up until the moment they draw blood and then followed by super-slow arterial spray; director Noam Murro seems unwilling to contribute anything truly original to 300: Rise Of An Empire.

The truly bright spot in 300: Rise Of An Empire is Eva Green as the Greek-turned-Persian General Artemisia. Despite the character flaws with Artemisia, Green is solid and menacing in the role. She has the screen presence that the white bread Sullivan Stapleton lacks as Themistokles. Green has presence and posture to make Artemisia draw the eye, so much so that it feels cheap when her character spreads the slit in her skirt to start enticing Themistokles. Green is credible and powerful as Artemisia, though.

Very late in 300: Rise Of An Empire, the film ties tightly into 300, bringing back the villainous hunchback and a handful of others from 300 to lead to a stirring end. There is, on the wind, the threat of another sequel, one which would finally bury the villain of the series. But if 300: Rise Of An Empire taught us anything it is that what happens to Xerxes is somewhat immaterial; the 300 film brand is already tired and trite.

For other fantasy war films, please check out my reviews of:
Hammer Of The Gods
Alice In Wonderland
I, Frankenstein

3/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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At Least It’s Not “Home Alone In The White House:” Olympus Has Fallen

The Good: Decent performances, Attempts at character/character development, Effects/tension.
The Bad: Increasingly absurd and predictable plot
The Basics: Shakier than many might want to admit, Olympus Has Fallen is engaging . . . so long as one shuts off their brain.


Sometime, admittedly, a work suffers in my estimation because of when I encounter it. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is true. In the case of Olympus Has Fallen I feel less bad about my bias. My wife and I have been watching Babylon 5 (reviewed here!) nightly and that show features a cast of characters who tend to have a sense of personal ethics and a backbone. One of the themes of the show is the value of sacrificing the individual to service the greater good. Apparently, the writers of Olympus Has Fallen either never watched Babylon 5 or did not embrace the themes.

It’s too bad, because Babylon 5 is quite a bit smarter than Olympus Has Fallen and I spent much of the film waiting for one of the characters to make things easy and thus defuse the entire situation. Up until the film’s last ten minutes, a perfectly reasonable solution to the hostage situation the film focuses on was for any one of the four relevant hostages to sacrifice themselves and thus effectively neuter the hostage-takers. In fact, the President makes things more dangerous for the members of his staff whom he encourages to surrender!

At Christmastime, the American President, Banjamin Asher and his family are headed to an event when their motorcade is attacked and the first lady is killed. A year and a half later, the secret service agent (Mike Banning) who was blamed for failing to protect her is eager to return to White House Security. Asher has the South Koreans to the White House to talk about the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. At that time, the White House is attacked and in securing the President and his guests in the subterranean bunker below the White House, the President and Secret Service inadvertently lock themselves in with the masterminds behind the attack. The North Korean terrorist Kang, who had worked with the U.S. as a South Korean diplomat to carry out his acts of terrorism and the traitorous American, Forbes, take the President, Defense Secretary and others hostage in order to get the codes to a nuclear weapons deactivation system known as Cerberus.

While the President holds out against torture and allows his brutalized staff to comply to protect them, the Speaker Of The House, Trumbull, is elevated to the Presidency to deal with the current crisis. Even as Kang and his forces work over the staff for the Cerberus codes, Banning infiltrates the wreckage of the White House to find the President’s son, Connor, to prevent him from being used against the President. As the effort to save the hostages and avert all-out war with North Korea comes from Trumbull’s apparent willingness to accede to Kang’s demands to remove U.S. troops from South Korea and the Pacific, Banning acts as eyes and ears inside the besieged White House.

The tragedy of Olympus Has Fallen is not that it depicts an incredibly brutal series of events (there is no entertainment value to watching Melissa Leo’s Secretary Of Defense McMillan getting brutalized), it is in that most of it is entirely avoidable based on a single act of sacrifice. But, more than that, on the character front, none of them are presented as being smart enough to realize that. Olympus Has Fallen features the obvious and familiar dichotomy of politicians being spineless jerks who fold and are generally unprincipled and only soldiers, secret service officers, etc. (who have a decidedly more militaristic bent) can hold out against violent adversaries. Accepting the conceit of the Cerberus device, which had the activation codes split up among four people, it makes perfect sense that either all four people would never be allowed in the same place at the same time (much like one of the members of the Cabinet being kept away from the State Of The Union Address in order to protect the line of succession) or, barring that, the moment one of the four people with the codes realizing what Kang had planned to commit an act of sacrifice.

So, I was a bit disappointed.

To be fair to Olympus Has Fallen, the film did not take the most obvious plot progressions it could have. I kept waiting for, late in the film when all else had failed, Banning’s partner, Leah, to get abducted and thus force him to stand down. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Still, most of Olympus Has Fallen progresses in an obvious and pretty brutal way.

What is better-than-average is the acting. Gerard Butler is credible as Mike Banning and he, predictably, gets through the action sequences exceptionally well. More than that, he actually displays his charisma (which I usually refer to as “alleged charisma”) in the early scenes of the film, making the character seem likable and smart enough to be a credible secret service agent. To his credit, Dylan McDermott – who as recently as five years ago would have been credibly up for the role of Banning – plays Forbes with a character-appropriate level of dispassion and conniving, never hinting that he could have been the film’s action hero.

Rick Yune is decent as Kang, though he plays the most horrible version of a patriot. Kang is calculating, but comes in with a plan and an efficient demeanor which Yune plays perfectly. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Melissa Leo as McMillan. Leo’s performance is difficult to watch as her character is pretty horribly brutalized by the terrorists. It’s impossible not to watch Melissa Leo in Olympus Has Fallen and not have one’s stomach tighten in disgust; so realistically does she portray getting tormented. Aaron Eckhart is appropriately presidential in his bearing as President Benjamin Asher.

But, I suspect the reason Morgan Freeman is getting so much high praise for his performance in Olympus Has Fallen is that, in the role of Trumbull, he seems anything but Presidential. It’s hard to imagine Morgan Freeman as not being commanding, powerful, confident and smart enough to lead the free world, but he makes Trumbull uncertain and shaky at the beginning and the performance is a wonderful one because it goes against any number of other performances we have seen from Freeman (or interviews with the actor himself).

Still, it is not enough to save Olympus Has Fallen from “average” territory. Go in with low expectations and it is fine, but for enlightened folk, it is a much harder sell.

For other works with Melissa Leo, please check out my reviews of:
Flight
Red State
Welcome To The Rileys
The L Word - Season Two
Hide And Seek
Homicide: Life On The Street

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Attempting To Sell The Mundane As Extraordinary, Chasing Mavericks Absolutely Flops!

The Good: Decent enough acting
The Bad: Very obvious plot structure, Very predictable character arcs, Overbearing soundtrack
The Basics: Chasing Mavericks is an obvious sports movie that is bloated with ridiculously predictable character arcs that leaves viewers completely disappointed.


Sports movies are tough to make interesting or even feel original. Sure, there are ways to make the formula seem audacious or fresher than the formula actually is. Chasing Mavericks does not even make the attempt. In fact, the formula seems to be so rigidly executed that the subject of it makes the film seem anticlimactic. After all, at least a typical fight movie or sports movie has a prolonged game to play or more than one round of a fight to make it through. Chasing Mavericks is a long-feeling build-up to a short resolution that makes one feel like they have wasted their time.

Chasing Mavericks only has one real thing going for it and that is the strength of the performances in it. For a change, Gerard Butler does not appear as a character who is a sexist pig. He does, however, play yet another disillusioned character whose character arc is an obvious one that involves him reclaiming his past glory to become less of a curmudgeon. While Chasing Mavericks is based upon a true story, but I know nothing about that, so how it portrays the actual people involved is something I cannot comment upon at all. Instead, this is a pretty pure review of the film, Chasing Mavericks.

Years ago, Frosty Hesson surfed a massive wave that he survived and the act of which made him a local celebrity. Now, he is essentially the surrogate father to the neighbor next door, Jay. Frosty and Brenda do what they can to protect Jay, who at an early age shows an eagerness to learn to surf. When rumors of the return of Mavericks (25 – 80 ft waves) nearby surface, Jay makes it clear that he is going to try to surf them. Seeing his determination is likely to get him killed, Frosty reluctantly begins training Jay and, in the process, he begins to appreciate life again.

Jay, on the other hand, struggles to get into the physical shape he needs to survive. While he works out, he wrestles with helping his best friend (who is into drugs), while winning over the girl of his dreams. As Jay prepares for the chance to catch a Maverick and gain some celebrity himself, he and Frosty bond.

Chasing Mavericks is bad. On the surface, its problem is in how formulaic it is, but it does not take much digging to see that the fundamental problem is that it is filling a weak concept (young man trains to surf) out to be a feature-length movie. This would be a basic cable Movie Of The Week were it not for the presence of Gerard Butler and Elisabeth Shue in the cast. In fact, one has to imagine that the commercial breaks are all that might get it in a M.O.T.W. format up to the two hour minimum for a M.O.T.W. Chasing Mavericks is not so fortunate, so the writers filled with every cliché in the Disappointing Hack’s Playbook. We have the friend in trouble, obvious romantic subplot, mother who is disappointed with the direction the kid is going (until she sees just how incredible the one thing he is working for actually is), out-of-touch mentor figure who uses training the next generation to reinvigorate his own life and relationship, and the Basic Sports Story.

In fact, Chasing Mavericks left me utterly unwilling to waste my time with more throrough analysis; there is none to give. Chasing Mavericks is an obvious film that viewers of any two sports movies has seen before. It includes the pounding, youth-oriented soundtrack, young, good-looking actors, and utterly no surprises.

As for the performances, Gerard Butler is fine in Chasing Mavericks. He does not seem like the usual jerk he plays in so many of his films, nor as the powerful leader (a la 300, reviewed here!) type. Instead, he seems pretty much like an average guy who got lucky in Chasing Mavericks and he makes that work for the character of Frosty. Jonny Weston is fine as Jay, but given how close in ages the character is to the actor, it seems like very little of a stretch for a young actor to play a young (I use the term loosely) athlete.

Easy to pass by – because it’s about three months away from a $5 DVD bin ($1 Black Friday specials next year) - Chasing Mavericks is an utterly horrible, formulaic sports movie without a single hook to sustain a full feature film.

For other sports films, please check out my reviews of:
Rocky
The Blind Side
Chariots Of Fire

2.5/10

Check out how this film stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where movies are organized from best to worse!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Everything But Katherine Heigl's Breasts In The Ugly Truth, Another Insulting Romantic Comedy.

The Good: Movie is not entirely devoid of smiles, Gerard Butler's performance
The Bad: Message and execution of same, Long stretches without humor, Entirely predictable
The Basics: The Ugly Truth is not only just as bad as the trailers might make it seem, but worse with a lack of humor, a terribly predictable plot, and horribly underlying messages.


For those who might take instant offense to my review based upon the title, it was intended originally as a note to myself, based upon my surprise at discovering at the end of the closing credits that The Ugly Truth was rated "R," not PG-13. This surprised me because of the phrase "fucking" in place of actually using the f-word two of the three times it would have been used. Knowing that a PG-13 film can use it only once, I thought that the judicious use of the actual f-word had to do with trying to keep the movie in PG-13 range. So, when it turned out that the movie was "R," I found myself wondering why there had been so many safe shots by director Robert Luketic looking down Katherine Heigl's dress instead of just having her show her breasts outright. My alternate title was "Women Are Idiots And Men Are Dogs (Yet Again) In The Ugly Truth" (which could have just as easily been my title for Confessions Of A Shopaholic, reviewed here!). My point in opening the review this way is to say that there is little that is truly offensive or shocking or even funny in The Ugly Truth.

Have you ever seen a movie's trailer and thought, "I bet I could write a review of that without actually seeing the movie?" I'm wishing I didn't have scruples tonight, following a preview screening of The Ugly Truth which was so predictable I actually felt insulted and ashamed of some of the people watching the movie around me. As Katherine Heigl continues her terrible trend into romantic comedies that began with the abysmal 27 Dresses, she fails to improve or pick a better project and The Ugly Truth will no doubt be on many reviewers Worst Of 2009 lists.

Abby is the producer of the morning news program on channel 2 KSXP in Sacramento where she takes her job very seriously and has little time for a social life as a result. As her show's ratings decline, due in part to her married anchorman and anchorwoman losing their spark and sexual attraction, Abby finds herself increasingly frustrated. After a terrible date with a man who still meets many of her criteria for a man, Abby calls in to the misogynistic cable access show The Ugly Truth where the host, Mike Chadway, berates her and others for believing in a romantic ideal only. Abby is mortified the next morning to discover that the station manager has hired Mike to add his segment to the morning news.

Almost immediately, Abby's world is turned around as Mike's ridiculous, but accurate, rants lead to an on-air reconciliation between her anchors, Georgia and Larry. And after getting caught peeking in on her new neighbor, Colin, she finds herself smitten. When her first attempts to begin a relationship with Colin flop, Mike makes a bet with her; he will help her win Colin if she will lay off him and his program and if he can't, he'll quit. Abby then allows Mike to make her over and in the process, she discovers Mike is not the worthless cretin he appears initially to be.

The Ugly Truth is insulting to women everywhere and the joke of it all is that most of them are the target audience and do not seem to realize they are being insulted. At the screening I attended, I cringed when women nearby me actually let out gasps of surprise at a plot-obvious moment wherein Mike leaves Abby and she opens her door to discover Colin, not Mike, waiting for her. At the moment it happens, anyone who has seen a romantic comedy will see it coming a mile away. But the truly insulting aspect comes from how Mike gets away with his inflammatory messages. He insults the stereotypical feminine perception with obscenity, including Abby's worldview, and almost immediately we're told that the ratings have skyrocketed, based mostly on the power of women and that 93% of women watching love Mike. In other words, it doesn't matter what Mike says or how abrasively he says it, women like him! Yes, this only perpetrates the mythos that women like men who will treat them poorly, as opposed to nice guys.

Beyond that, the film is offensive for its obviousness and the continuation of the idea that men know best. Abby is immediately characterized as an incredibly intelligent, but socially inept character and frankly, I'm sick of the type. Intelligent people are often characterized as miserable or unable to socialize and that stereotype is almost as offensive as the idea that Abby can be an articulate woman, but she will still be wrong and need Mike to teach her how things really are. This movie insults the intelligence of women everywhere, but figures they can get away with it because the movie was co-written by three women. I don't care how many women wrote the script, it's still insulting to women and movie lovers.

The Ugly Truth suffers from severe lacks of originality as well. The plot is so canned and predictable that watching the trailer alone will adequately spoil the movie. The reversals are entirely cliche and the average viewer will know from the outset that no matter how close Abby and Colin get, Colin's days are numbered. In The Ugly Truth, this is made even more painfully obvious by the fact that Mike has an attachment to his nephew, which becomes exactly the schmaltzy tool one would expect to help open Abby's eyes up to seeing him differently. And, I'm not saying that When Harry Met Sally has a monopoly on orgasm scenes, but if you're going to have a woman having an awkward orgasm on her own, do you honestly have to set it in a restaurant?! The Ugly Truth makes obvious nods or steals from other, better, romantic comedies.

And the characters are utterly uninteresting. They are types. Abby is the smart dumbwoman who needs a man to tell her how wrong she is, Mike is the misogynist with the heart of gold, Joy is the lackluster sidekick and Colin is one of the most generic male love interests to grace the screen in a long time. Georgia and Larry are the stereotypical married couple who have lost the spark and Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins, who portray them, are more the result of good casting than anything remotely resembling good acting.

As for the acting, Gerard Butler earns his paycheck as Mike. Butler is smarmy and annoying, often painful to watch. He plays the role of Mike in a completely different way than he played his role in 300 (reviewed here!). He is sarcastic and when he often mumbles his lines, making him seem more guarded than anything else. That works well to create a very different and vivid character.

By contrast, Katherine Heigl is just terrible. She has no sense of comic timing exhibited in this role and her on-screen chemistry with Eric Winter (Colin) is less than zero, never convincing the audience that her character has any chance with him. She is able to get her articulate her more fast-paced and complicated lines, but this is easily within her range. She gives us nothing new and if the movie had anything resembling dramatic moments, she does not carry them any better than she carries the few comic moments she is expected to deliver laughs. In fact, from the moment director Robert Luketic has her made over to appear like Britney Spears, she delivers nothing noteworthy in her performance.

In all, The Ugly Truth is an ugly joke on the audience and women in general. Only the fact that I did find a few moments amusing and the performance by Gerard Butler saves this from being considered an absolute turkey.

For other works with Bonnie Somerville, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Without A Paddle
Spider-Man 2
Bedazzled

3/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Ancient Warpath Fight Club: 300 Does What It Sets Out To Do.

The Good: Decent effects, Interesting moments of character, Good DVD extras
The Bad: Annoying voice-overs, Not much in the way of acting
The Basics: 300 is entertaining and worth the viewing, if only for how visually impressive it is, but it's a hard sell for owning as it does not hold up over multiple viewings.


It's a sad day when our history lessons come from big special effects movies. I'm not saying that there's no value in historical fiction, because there is, but when what we come to know about history comes mostly in the form of entertainment, that's problematic. I'm a rather educated person and the first time I heard about Spartan King Leonidas's and his battle at Thermopylae was in the series finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Yup, in the closing moments of my favorite series of all time, Dr. Bashir trades his Alamo annihilation fantasy for the Battle Of Thermopylae. That was the first I had heard of it. My A.P. European History teacher is coming back to take my "5" away on that exam. The first representation I had of the Battle Of Thermopylae was 300, a summer blockbuster film known for its special effects and violence now available as a decent DVD.

300 is a work of historical fiction and it is presented as a cinematic graphic novel. It is based on a historical battle and a graphic novel, but this review will focus solely on the film without comparison to those things. 300 is a worthwhile, if simple, film that is worth watching, but it is hard to argue it is a must-buy. After all, when one knows the story, it's not surprising even the first time around. Rewatching the film simply desensitizes the viewer to the violence and it holds up poorly after the third viewing. That said, it's hard not to enjoy it while it's still fresh and original.

King Leonidas, leader of the Spartans, has grown into a warrior through the traditional Spartan method of - essentially - torturing their children through tests and trials from a young age. When the Persian king Xerxes begins to march on Greece, several of the city-states fall under his influence. Leonidas consults the oracles and is warned not to go to war with Xerxes. Rejecting the oracles, Leonidas marches two hundred ninety-nine other Spartans to the mountain pass of Thermopylae, where Xerxes forces are held on the coast.

As Leonidas and his small army hold off the waves of soldiers, immortals, mutants and giant animals sent to crush Greece, Queen Gorgo works to rally the Greek senate to send reinforcements. Gorgo sacrifices her dignity to be allowed to speak before the legislature, while bought allies of Xerxes work to let Leonidas and his forces die a senseless death. The bloody, futile battle that follows stands as a visual masterpiece that is bound to thrill those who want a violent popcorn movie. Provided, of course, one can stomach popcorn amidst violence, gore and rape.

300 is perhaps most notable for its visual style. While the violence and effects are reminiscent of The Matrix (reviewed here!) or V For Vendetta (reviewed here!), what makes 300 distinctive is the color-shift to make the movie more like a comic book (or graphic novel). The color-shift makes everything more brown and golden and there is a muted, darkened quality to everything, which highlights the shadows, blood and movement. Throughout the film, there is an animated quality to much of the look and while it takes a few moments to get used to, it works out for the story, allowing the viewer to get sucked into a very classical and yet fanciful world. The stark realism of the blood and gore and intrigue set in the unique visual style allows the viewer to immediately accept the conceits that arise as the film continues. Leonidas's army is not fighting simple mortal Persians, instead, there are adversaries that are superhuman; a giant, immortal ninjas, and the godlike Xerxes himself. In fact, part of what makes the visual style so incredible is in Xerxes. Xerxes is played by Rodrigo Santoro, who I watched for his entire run on the third season of Lost (reviewed here!) and he was utterly unrecognizable in his role in 300. It's incredible how the make-up and color-shifting effects make the film work as something truly unique. With Santoro, there is also some serious forced perspective work going on.

It is the visual style, the slowdowns and speed ups and the unreal coloring that creates a world where everything is possible and real and this allows such conceits to fit into the imagination of the viewer. 300 is a fantastic visual marvel.

Unfortunately, the screenplay follows closely to a graphic novel format. Making the film look like a graphic novel, with its color scheme and sense of movement, works. Up until the last minute of the movie, the exposition does not. Throughout the movie, there is a voice-over from Dilios, one of the 300 Spartans. Dilios tells Leonidas's story from his harsh childhood through his part in the battle. While the setup story works all right, this conceit becomes more and more inane as the movie progresses for the simple reason that the medium does the work of the voice-over. I mean, it's pretty simple to see what Leonidas is doing during the battle because it's a movie. We don't need Dilios telling us what we are able to see. As a result, a portion of the film becomes eye-rollingly bad because it is not using the medium to its best advantage.

That said, the voice-over is a great deal of the dialogue in the movie. This is not an especially wordy film and 300 does not claim to be. Instead, it's a gore flick, it's a battle film and it works for that. The political intrigue level, with Gorgo's appealing to the Senate with the aid of the Loyalist, is a decent story, but it is fairly predictable, down to how she resolves her interactions with the traitorous Theron. Anyone who has seen any film involving political machinations and betrayal from those who are thought to be loyal, will figure out who the traitors are early on, long before their treachery is revealed.

As a result of the lightness of the dialogue - not thematic lightness, the quantity of lines - 300 is very hard to judge on the acting and character fronts. The character aspects are fairly monolithic in a very Spartan kind of way. They are willing to sacrifice life and limb for country. They are devoted to State, they are warriors and patriots (almost) all. We get it. The problem is, that is all they are.

Leonidas, Gorgo, the Loyalist, Dilios and Captain are all patriots; they are the ideal Spartans. But they don't have quirks or personalities. They are not individuals, they are all the same type put in different roles. And it's hard to care, in some ways, about any one of the characters as a result. Sure, we want to see Leonidas fight and overcome or die honorably, but we never doubt that's the direction it's going in. The film takes a very predictable plot and character sequence.

As a result, it is difficult to evaluate some of the acting. Indeed, one of the few performances that stands out is that of the minor role of the Loyalist, played by Stephen McHattie. McHattie often plays villains, coming to my attention with his role in the two-part episode of The X-Files "731" and "Nisei" (reviewed here!). Far different from his role as an assassin, McHattie plays the Loyalist with a subtlety and humble quality that resonates and impresses the viewer. While Gerard Butler's Leonidas fights with all his body, McHattie portrays the Loyalist with a quiet and grim determination that is no less impressive.

One of the amusing aspects of the casting of 300 is the use of David Wenham as Dilios. Never before had I appreciated how hard Peter Jackson worked in The Lord Of The Rings (reviewed here!) to cast the brothers Boromir and Faramir as I did when watching 300. Quite simply, I kept waiting to see Sean Bean's name pop up in the credits and when it turned out to be Wenham, I nodded and said, "Of course!" The guy who looks like Boromir is the stud who played Faramir. It's refreshing to see Wenham getting work.

Beyond that, the acting is mediocre at best. Lena Headey has a steely gaze that defines Gorgo and Gerard Butler has the ability to yell and run with the best of them, but for the most part, Butler's acting is reduced to swinging a sword and Headey's acting is mostly in fixing that gaze on her target. And performing in sex scenes. Butler and Headey do fine, but there is not much they are called upon to do to define their characters. And once the characters are defined, much of their performance is in movement and maintaining that resolve. Playing characters who do not so much grow and change, but rather fight and snarl is not much to go on.

On the DVD, there is a commentary track that is insightful and enjoyable, but for those who want extras, you'd have to pick up the two-disc version. That has multiple featurettes and other goodies in addition to the commentary track. For my money, given how quickly I tired of rewatcing 300, the two-disc version is not a terribly good value in my book.

But, it's enough to recommend watching 300, if not owning it. Anyone looking to get their fix out of senseless violence and gore and make a good case that 300 has a point. Truth be told, after years of watching politicians not stand up and soldiers acting with questionable honor, it's refreshing to see a cadre of loyalist who will stand against oppression and wrong, even if it is just historical fiction. If you want something as cool and a bit smarter, be sure to check out Watchmen (reviewed here!).

For other works with Micheal Fassbender, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Haywire
X-Men: First Class
Jonah Hex

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Musicals Of Darkness, Desire and Disfigurements: The Phantom Of The Opera

The Good: Great singing, orchestration, costumes
The Bad: Garbled audio in several scenes, Most characters don't "pop," Plot technique removes menace
The Basics: Worth watching for Emmy Rossum's magnificent voice and performance, The Phantom Of The Opera is otherwise a startlingly average tale of love and obsession.


I think the reason most horror movies do not play with narrative technique is that it keeps the viewer wondering who lives and who dies in a story. It's hard to have menace when the story is told in flashback by one of the characters. In fact, one of the few drawbacks of the show Carnivale (reviewed here!) is that the series begins as a story told by one of the characters, who looks noticeably older. So, no matter the menace, the viewer knows the apocalypse does not come and no matter how severe the bloodbath, we know one character who never perishes. In a similar way, The Phantom Of The Opera mortgages elements of menace because the story is a flashback wherein one of the surviving characters attempts to recapture moments of his past by purchasing a chandelier.

Christine is an opera singer whose talents are hidden in the shadows as her career is dwarfed by the diva Carlotta. When new managers buy the Paris Opera House, Christine's career is given a boost by a mysterious figure who live beneath the theater, who insists that the new owners give Christine the lead part in a new opera. Christine performs, and quite superbly, attracting the eye of Raoul, and the ire of Carlotta. Carlotta returns so Christine may not continue to steal the spotlight, which irks the Phantom of the Opera (Christine's mysterious tutor). Hoping to divide Christine and Raoul, the Phantom attempts to seduce Christine, the pupil he has fallen in love with, and chaos ensues.

And the viewer just keeps waiting for that chandelier to make its entrance.

The Phantom Of The Opera is based upon the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and it, too, is a musical. That means during most of the important character moments and times when characters are relating to one another, they break out into song as opposed to just talking with one another. It's a pretty solid musical.

The decent thing about The Phantom Of The Opera as a musical is that it's a decent musical. The music is good, the tunes are operatic, grand and memorable. The style is a fusion of classic opera and pop-rock, giving the piece a sense of being timeless while still appealing to younger audiences. There are recognizable tracks like "The Music of the Night" and the theme to The Phantom Of The Opera and they are well performed in this outing.

Much of the film has to be judged on the music and in this regard, director Joel Schumacher - whose work I have traditionally not enjoyed - chose well in his casting. Gerard Butler, who plays the Phantom, has a magnificent voice and it is used well in this film. He is paired with Emmy Rossum, who I first noticed in Songcatcher. Rossum's voice is exceptional and in this presentation of The Phantom Of The Opera, she is able to explore the depth and breadth of her vocal abilities and she shines brightly.

Emmy Rossum steals every scene she is in and not only because she is magnificently costumed, which she is. Rossum, whose parts have generally been smaller than this - she does not last long in Mystic River, for example - but here she clearly proves her worth. She creates a distinctive, viable, articulate and empathetic character through her portrayal of Christine. It is her performance that invests the viewer in caring what happens in the movie and Christine becomes the only memorable or intriguing character in the movie based on Rossum's acting.

That is saying quite a bit when you have a movie with so many intricate machinations, including a disfigured guy living in possibly the most cinematic sewer of all time.

Truth be told, though, there is little else to recommend The Phantom Of The Opera, though it is worth mentioning that the direction is decent. Schumacher uses the camera to focus on angles, perspectives and views that could not be captured by watching a stage performance. Wisely, Schumacher makes a visual feast out of The Phantom Of The Opera with lush sets, extraordinary costumes and a sense of movement that establishes a world that feels cinematic, rather than theatrical. This is easily the best directed Schumacher film I've yet seen.

Sadly, though, the film has some of the same limitations as the play. The Phantom of the Opera mortgages any sympathy the viewer might have for him through his villainy and Raoul is pretty much a generic good-looking guy who the audience is supposed to think is a better choice for Christine. The truth is, Christine and her friend Meg have more on-screen chemistry and more binding them than Christine and Raoul. The plot here takes precedence over genuine character development or real sensibilities.

Instead, this is plotted like a very average musical and essentially tells the simple romantic narrative that has been told and retold from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte on. Writers Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher add nothing new to the essential story of a woman who has two men to choose between.

But, at least they make it look good. And it sounds good. And if you can't create something genuinely new, the least you can do is make an illusion of it that hints at originality. This does that, at the very least.

For other works with Patrick Wilson, please check out my reviews of:
The Switch
The A-Team
Watchmen
Passengers

6/10

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

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Under The Hood Sublimated To Tales Of The Black Freighter: Both Flesh Out The Watchmen World.

The Good: Decent-enough animation, Good acting in Under The Hood, Good stories
The Bad: Expensive, Only tangentially related to Watchmen, A LOT of advertisements.
The Basics: Adequately fleshing out the cinematic Watchmen, the comic from within the comic book Watchmen is now presented as an animated feature, Tales Of The Black Freighter.


The nice thing about getting to the bottom of my backlog of video reviews is that I can finally begin enjoying new DVDs that I've had on the shelf for months and yet not had an opportunity to watch. Principle among those DVDs is the Tales Of The Black Freighter DVD that has been gathering dust on my shelf since it was released. Arguably the reason, atop the other DVDs I had already watched but not yet reviewed, it has taken me so long to take in this DVD was the fact that I loathed the Watchmen Original Motion Comics DVD that was released at the same time (reviewed here!) and the fact that my wife had no interest in watching Tales Of The Black Freighter. I suspect that my partner has not yet forgiven me for subjecting her to the IMAX experience of Watchmen (reviewed here!), so I humored her by not pushing the issue. So, finally, while she was at work today, I had a chance to sit back, pop some pistachios and watch everything that is on the Tales Of The Black Freighter disc I bought months ago.

First of all, it is worth noting that Warner Premiere, which is producing and distributing Tales Of The Black Freighter is trading on the fans of Watchmen and preying upon their desire for completion with naming the DVD Tales Of The Black Freighter. The Under The Hood segment of the DVD, which is advertised simply as a bonus feature to the main program, actually is ten minutes longer than the animated feature. Perhaps this was necessary because Tales Of The Black Freighter was rated "R" and Under The Hood only received a PG rating. Second, it does appear that the content of this disc is on the Watchmen Ultimate Edition DVD and Blu-Ray. This, ultimately, was what turned me to the "not recommend" for this disc.

For those unfamiliar with the Watchmen world, in the original comic and graphic novel Watchmen (reviewed here!), there was a comic book presented within the storyline. As certain events happened in the middle and end of the story, a young man sat on a streetcorner reading a comic book, Tales Of The Black Freighter. This worked - despite being confusingly interpolated between panels of the main story - on an allegorical level and in the quest to keep the cinematic Watchmen under three hours, this was one of the first omissions from the live-action film. However, because fans of Watchmen were no doubt going to kvetch about the absence of Tales Of The Black Freighter, much the way The Lord Of The Rings die-hards continue to complain about the lack of Tom Bombadil in Peter Jackson's films, director Zack Snyder let slip early on that there was an animated feature being produced to correct this oversight.

More than that, fans of the cinematic Watchmen can expect Tales Of The Black Freighter to be melded with the live-action film when it arrives on DVD, as part of the "Ultimate Edition." This, however, is a recipe for disaster. Tales Of The Black Freighter rightly fleshes out the entire world that Watchmen is set in by essentially answering the question, "in a world where super heroes are real, what would comic books be about?" It's an interesting, if geeky, question, and Tales Of The Black Freighter works to do that. Putting the animated feature back into the film - anywhere other than a prologue to prime the audience - is potentially disastrous as the concept works better than the execution. While the movie Watchmen was complex and deep, the diversion to have a comic book told to the audience (Tales Of The Black Freighter) is an unnecessary distraction in an already long and complex film. This would be like having an animated short of Moby Dick placed into The Dark Knight; are there themes that parallel the live action and animated stories? For sure. Is it necessary? Not at all.

So, on its own, Tales Of The Black Freighter works better. It's a good bonus feature, but an unsatisfying addition to a meal. Surprisingly rated "R," the animated feature is a bit gore-filled and not intended for children. More accurately entitled "tale of a survivor of an attack from the Black Freighter," Tales Of The Black Freighter tells a pirate story perfectly translated from the original graphic novel.

Following an attack that destroyed his ship, a sea captain washes ashore to a desert island. There, he becomes fearful that the Black Freighter which obliterated his ship is headed to his home, Davistown. As the bodies of his crew wash to the same island and bloat in the sun, the Captain decides he must do what he can to save his home. He lashes the bodies together and sets back out to sea. On the open water, he fights gulls, dehydration, hallucinations (one of his dead friends begins to speak to him) and a shark attack in his attempt to get home. But returning to Davistown to try to stop the denizens of the Black Freighter, he is driven mad and his homecoming is not what he anticipates it being.

Tales Of The Black Freighter is an interesting story, but the character work is told far more than shown, especially as an animated feature. The Captain provides a voice-over, but the voice-over - from actor Gerard Butler - is delivered in the same rational, reasoned tones throughout, which make no real sense by the end of the episode. As the Captain is driven mad, one suspects he would sound different, but Butler delivers the lines with a consistency that seems to defy the theme of the comic.

Visually, Tales Of The Black Freighter is well-made. The animation is quite good and this is not a hokey performance like the Motion Comics were. There are a few issues - the Captain describes the sky as golden and it is not, for example - but more often than not, the animation crew at Warner Premiere got it right. In fact, they insert some nice visual nods, like a bloodstain on the Captain's improvised mast looking like a Rorschach ink blot!

More worth the Watchmen fan's time, money and attention is the presentation Under The Hood. Fleshing out Stephen McHattie's character Nite Owl, Under The Hood takes the form of a retrospective look at an interview with Hollis Mason (Nite Owl) from the release of his autobiography, Under The Hood. Under The Hood tells the story of the Minutemen, the first group of masked vigilantes working in New York City to fight crime. This allows peripheral characters seen only in the opening credits of the cinematic Watchmen to have their day on screen. Mason discusses the backstory of what drove the women and men who dressed up as costumed heroes to do what they did. The feature is presented as an interview show and has Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter and Moloch being interviewed. The concept is fun and it is well-executed down to the fact that it looks like it was filmed in the 1970s.

Under The Hood stars Watchmen stars McHattie, Carla Gugino, Matthew Frewer and a cameo from Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as well as a few others from the movie. This is a nice bonus feature and watching it before seeing Watchmen certainly enriches the world of the film appropriately without revealing anything that the film focuses on. Also, the interview show is broken up by advertisements . . . for products by Veidt Enterprises!

Other bonus features on the disc include a featurette on the making of Tales Of The Black Freighter and Under The Hood. Fans desperate to get their Watchmen fix will enjoy the fact that in the behind-the-scenes shots there are snippets of Hollis Mason's demise, which was edited out of the cinematic release. As well, in talking about integrating Tales Of The Black Freighter into the Ultimate Edition of Watchmen, there are scenes featuring the Bernards (the comic book vendor and reader) which are supposed to bridge the live-action into the animated feature which are teased. As well, the DVD has previews for Terminator Salvation (the film and the video game), the new straight-to-DVD Green Lantern feature preview, and previews for the film and video game for Watchmen. As well, the first chapter of the Watchmen Original Motion Comics is provided, but that acts more as a deterrent to purchasing that DVD than an effective sales tool.

Ultimately, this disc is a bunch of glorified DVD bonus features being sold separate from the main feature. Fans lose nothing by not seeing Tales Of The Black Freighter, though most would appreciate Under The Hood. It is not enough to recommend this DVD, especially at the stifling $20+ price tag.

And on the off chance that Watchmen director Zack Snyder is reading this: take it from a loyal fan, the movie is good enough without Tales Of The Black Freighter. Don't ruin what you have by reintegrating this! Every other deleted scene, we'll take, right where they belong. But this animated feature . . . even with its allegories that enrich the main story . . . hold, enough!

For other DC-universe animated DVDs or animated features, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Woman
Batman: Gotham Knight
The Fantastic Mr. Fox

5/10

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

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Didn't I See This Last Year?! Gamer Is Death Race Without The Cars.

The Good: Decent acting, Moments of concept, Stylish presentation.
The Bad: Unoriginal concept, Characters we don't care about, Moral implications.
The Basics: Not truly all that imaginative (or even interesting), Gamer explores a violent prison game in the near future and follows one criminal's impending freedom while making a bolder statement on the viewers.


For those who follow my regular reviews, I'm making no note of "violence" in the "good" or "bad" sections about the film, Gamer because it is, quite simply That Kind Of Film. Complaining about the violence in Gamer is like complaining about car chases in a Jason Statham film. That there was the closest I come to a clever segue in complaining about Gamer, the 2009's first big Fall action flick for adults who want mindless entertainment. The biggest complaint I had after enduring a screening of this ninety-five minute "shoot-em up" flick was that it did not take long before all I was was bored with the film. My boredom came from an easily-identifiable source: I've seen this movie before. Gamer is a mildly clever twist on Death Race and given that that was a remake, Gamer becomes pretty unoriginal upon reflection. But more than that, Gamer is disturbing because while it might attempt to lampoon the entertainment complex by showing how degenerate a society may become through its entertainment, the way it is directed has the viewer experience the thrill of that moral decay.

This ought to have been unsurprising for me considering that Gamer was written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the team that brought us the one-trick pony Crank and its mind-numbingly pointless sequel earlier last year (which even I could not muster up the enthusiasm to go see!). Neveldine and Taylor play on the same basic instincts with Gamer, a near-future flick that involves tough men with guns, big explosions and pointless nudity. But, again, what are we complaining about, we pretty much figured this going in!

Incarcerated and working as part of a "work release" program, Kable is a player in a game where he is a character in a live-action video game. Along with other convicted criminals, he is plugged into a Gamer's console and he responds to commands to take out adversaries, in this case other convicts. Told he will be set free after thirty victories, Kable begins to become convinced that the system itself is corrupt. As the popularity surrounding Kable grows, pressure is put on Ken Castle, the designer of the system, to keep the ratings high and the system working. When Castle's system is hacked by a group of humans (Humanz) who sense that the system is not above board, Castle begins to hunt for them.

As Kable gets closer to the thirty victories, the system itself seems to be against him and with contacts from Humanz and his controller on the outside, Kable begins to piece together a conspiracy to keep the gaming system intact and popular regardless of whether or not Kable lives or dies! As the menace grows, Kable tries to work with the sympathetic forces to expose the corruption of Castle and the game and free his wife from the counterpart game, Society.

Gamer, to be fair, often feels fresher than it actually is and the directors do occasionally unexpected things like throw in a literal song and dance (this is less surprising when one knows that Michael C. Hall, who plays Castle, has a dance and theater background). But for the most part, Gamer is undermined because exactly what we suspect will happen does. This includes, rather annoyingly, moments where the mind-control technology of the gaming system is sublimated to sheer human will and we are meant to feel like human will can trump anything. Unfortunately, in this context, the idea is more problematic. Kable is supposed to be at the mercy of his player, Simon, and even the idea of Kable being able to speak without Simon controlling it becomes problematic for the concept. After all, if Kable truly has the will to take on the system all along, how did he get so far with Simon controlling him?

This leads to an unnecessary and often-pointless plot involving the reasons Kable was incarcerated and the state of his family on the outside. Here the film more-than borrows from Death Race and given how often uninspired that movie was, it is unsurprising how the whole conspiracy story unravels. As a result, Gamer is a movie that has multiple personalities, even if both are monolithic. One half of the film is a pointless, violent action-adventure film wherein a man responds to controls from a player to blow apart other human beings (who just happen to be death row inmates). The other half of the movie is a mystery involving Kable's family and the institutions which arose to create the game "Slayers."

Gamer is stripped of any real social commentary or social relevancy, though, because Ken Castle is a somewhat monolithic villain. There is something not right about the entrepreneur from the beginning and the movie spends more time looking at him and his issues than it does at exploring one of the basic questions the film implies. If death row criminals are set free after thirty wins - which involve killing, maiming and generally violent behavior - what is the penal system doing to society? The idea that video games are bad for people is a metaphor in hyperbole in Gamer, but the idea that in addition to raising a new generation of psychopaths (the gamers who devalue human life by playing with death row inmates) our society becomes content within a quarter decade to let out the current generation's psychopaths for doing exactly what got them incarcerated to begin with is utterly ridiculous. As a result, this becomes a movie one can only watch with their brain firmly in the off position (though there are plenty of explosions and bright lights for those who do!). And with the nudity, gratuitous murders and explosions, the viewer becomes essentially the characters who are lampooned for being slovenly controllers.

The acting in Gamer is fair, with most of the performers simply playing to their strengths. Michael C. Hall uses his theater background and ability to vocalize in dialect well and Kyra Sedgwick shows up and plays essentially the same way she does in The Closer. Even Ludacris (Chris Bridges) is surprisingly sedate in this movie and playing along the lines of other characters he has in the past. Of course everyone in Gamer looks Hollywood beautiful in either obvious or "ruggedly good-looking" ways.

Gerard Butler once again plays a warrior and here his performance is entirely within what is expected of him and it is hard to be empathetic with his character because Kable is a bad guy on some level. Butler plays the role as the archetypal action hero and lets the dialogue make for any character ambiguities, but on screen, he is tough, moves well and he carries the action scenes. Even so, he has no more depth here than he did in, for example, The Bounty Hunter (click here for that review!)

Still, there is nothing remarkable about Gamer and this became very easy to pass up in theaters. Now on DVD, Gamer features surprisingly sparse, but predictable, bonus features. There is a commentary track which neglects much of the film's actual commentary as well as two featurettes on the making of the movie and the film's trailer.

None of this makes the movie more worth watching.

For other action-adventure movies I have reviewed, please check out:
Inception
The Game
Zombieland

3/10

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

© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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