Movie Zone: action

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Film Review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

It's always great to see artist evolving, even if this process alienates some of their old fans. Guy Ritchie is definitely prone to evolution, but it’s obvious that the same process for him takes place in phases. His first phase started in 1998 with the cult classic Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, after which he developed his contemporary London crime phase. The same had some good films and some average ones, but it nonetheless ended with RocknRolla in 2008.

After this, Ritchie moved the setting of his new phase backwards one century and developed two Sherlock Holmes films, which were both successful and impressive action flicks, having in mind the serious overuse of the original material in pop culture. Now, with The Man From U.N.C.L.E, the third phase of Guy Ritchie has begun and it brings style and substance on a completely new terrain for its director.

Sure, the film has nicely dressed, charming and witty main characters who are accustomed to guns, violence and far-fetched plans, but this time, it is all located in the 1960’s chic Europe, divided by the Cold War. In spite of their home agencies rivalry and feud, one US and one Soviet agent have to work together to stop a development of a diabolical plan that would place a nuclear weapon in hands of practically anyone.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is laden with style on all levels, from the costumes to the shots Guy Ritchie takes in a manner similar to 1960’s classics like the movie Point Blank. This can be seen in the way characters move both when it comes to their gestures and their positions in the frames. The film’s director was always willing to invest a lot of energy in the visual aesthetics of his works, but here, the idea is even more prominent and gripping. Yet, he manages to keep things unburdened by this, which is clearly shown in the quick and comic-like editing of the commando raid near the end of the movie, and the broken bike confrontation that quickly follows.

Here, Ritchie is ready to peel the onion of style and very effectively show the essence lying below it, where dangerous men are willing to kill for their mission, no questions asked. At the same time, like the ending segment of the boat sequence shows, the comedy essence is also never too far away. On a side note, with films like Spy and Kingsman: The Secret Service, it appears that the world is in a mini spy comedy Renaissance.

The cast of the film also works exceedingly well together. Henry Cavill looks like he was born to wear perfectly tailored suits and places inside of them a character that is the optimal combination of a slimeball and a kind of normal guy how was forced to work in the same area. Opposite of him, Armie Hammer as Illya continues to do his brand of characters (who are so serious that they are unintentionally funny) really well. The main female lead, Alicia Vikander, also does a nice job as Gaby, the East German car mechanics turned drafted spy.

As the movie glides through picturesque locations and the tension mounts, the audience is free to enjoy The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as a new take on the classic James Bond film, minus the retro science fiction gadgets. It never bores and never meanders from its set goal of being a fun and stylish action comedy. Because of it, I’m really looking forward to seeing what Ritchie will do with his upcoming Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur.

Film Review: Final Girl (2015)

Part proxy renege fantasy, part action film, Final Girl is a type of story that tries to produce a smooth visual experience, but offers very low amounts of substance. If follows Veronica, a specially trained killing machine who is planted in the midst of a group of young psychopaths who kidnap girls and hunt them in the forest as their own wrapped form of entertainment.

Veronica enters the pack and begins killing the killers and hunting the hunters. Sadly, this is the entire Final Girl film. As a narrative, it looks more as a draft of a story than the story itself, because it appears to be lacking any divergence from a single line plot. Of course, like Mad Max: Road Fury clearly showed, there is nothing wrong with a one-liner films, but only if they have a strong delivery.

Even though Final Girl starts off in a somewhat intriguing manner, showing the young Veronica being interviewed by her future handler (played by the always creepily intense Wes Bentley) the intrigue does not last. The director Tyler Shields soon tries some interesting shots where he places characters really close to a background surface like a wall and shines a strong spotlight on them.

But then, the movie movies to a forest, where the action includes some whiskey laced with a hallucinogenic drug. Here, Shields gives us some half-cocked tense moments and drug-induced trips which seem to belong in a more ambitious student film. The only semi-impressive thing from that point on are Abigail Breslin (as Veronica) and Alexander Ludwig as the leader of the psychopath pack. The end comes fast and leaves almost no impression at all.

Final Girl includes some interesting moments and Tyler Shields should not be written off. But, as a whole, the film is utterly forgettable, aside from the fact that it shows that Abigail Breslin is now all grown up.

Film Review: Spy (2015)

With Spy, its director Paul Feig delivered a great comedy which elegantly erases the elements of masculinity and bravado from the James Bond type of films. This simple action then reverts the entire narrative into its truer form of completely ludicrous comedy.

In the film, Melissa McCarthy plays Susan, a desk officer in the CIA tasked with protecting her designated field agent Bradley, played by Jude Law. When Bradley gets killed in a strange encounter with a beautiful woman, Susan decides to leave her computer and become a field agent herself, in the hope of finding the persons’ responsible for Bradley’s death.

In a fantastic cooperation with Feig, Melissa McCarthy unleashes a tour de force of comedy, where she quickly shuffles between physical gags and a really aggressive type of verbal humor (better said, verbal insults). The second element demonstrates some excellent writing with jokes that are both smart and unpredictable. As the plot develops further, Feig drops McCarty’s character into every deeper waters of intrigue, danger, and suspense, where Susan’s actions also need to become bolder and even more insane.

In one moment, the spiral of lies and moronic improvised stories becomes so convoluted that there is no way of remembering who began lying about what. Throughout this, Feig never loses direction or control of the plot, showing his rich experience with comedy content.

Aside from these McCarthy, Jason Statham also worked diligently to create a parody of his previous roles, in this case, a macho killer with a less than impressive intellect. Statham, who is apparently looking to diversify his acting portfolio but without straying outside of this beloved action genre, just like he recently tried with Wild Card, really chose well when he decided to join the cast of this movies.

A fun comedy, Spy is one of the better parodies on the 007 films in recent years. It, along with Kingsman: The Secret Service, clearly show how many super-serious thriller plots are actually comedy gold.

Crowdfunding Push: Black Angel

Epic fantasy is something that is currently really popular in many formats, especially video games. But, at the same time, apart from Peter Jackson’s not so brilliant Hobbit trilogy and many fringe, sort of fantasy young adult adaptations of successful novels, there aren’t many movies that delve straight into this territory. Now, there is a crowdfunding campaign aimed at funding a film called Black Angler that is going for the full epic fantasy feel. The film’s Indiegogo page states:

Think Game of Thrones meets Valhalla Rising, Excalibur meets Lord of the Rings. A powerful tale of ancient Celtic magic and Nordic Paganism, it’ll be gritty, dirty and heroic – everything great fantasy should be. The story follows a knight as he journeys deep into the dark underworld with the daughter of a rival king, to meet the face of evil itself and fight the Black Angel in combat. Full of drama, action and heroism, pure light is pitted against eternal darkness and damnation.

The film will be created by Roger Christian, who worked on projects like the original Star Wars and Alien. With this experience, he plans to reimagine his short film by the same name made in 1980 into a full, feature-length epic adventure. The thing which I really like in Christian’s presentation is the vintage fantasy feel that many of its concept art pieces carry with them, but the project as a whole does not seem like a futile push to bring back the “good old times”. The recent Mad Max: Fury Road is a perfect example of how modern cinema definitely has a lot to learn from the semi-forgotten approaches of the previous decades, I’m certain that Black Angle can turn out to be a really good action adventure.

The film campaign started out really well and it’s currently close to 90% of its goal. Check out the film’s official Indiegogo page and see how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: Kung Fury (2015)

Like all great plagues in history, the 80’s nostalgia was also gaining strength unseen and hidden, sprawling in the corners of the public collective consciousness. It started with the demonic resurgence of pixel art, a form of visual design that people in the gaming industry happily buried more than two decades ago. This spread to VHS tapes, vintage computers and many other things which are now cool as cucumbers only because the generation that grew up in that period (like me) entered their fourth decade and is prepared to pay money to see more of this falsely golden decade. But like Mary Schmich remarked long ago, nostalgia is essentially a process of recycling that turns old memories into overpriced notions which we cherish.

Kung Fury is a half an hour of 80’s roller-coaster of action and comedy, but it’s not a cheap trick to get money out of the pockets of the Millennials and X generations (not completely, at least). In the film, the viewers are bombarded with colors and action scenes, making the film something similar to a 12-year-old boy’s dream that took place somewhere in 1987. There is a loose plot, where the main character goes through an epic adventure involving porno-looking Viking female warriors, Hitler and hacking time, but watching Kung Fury is mostly about the laughs. Using some true kung fu wisdom, the creators of Kung Fury decided to steer clear of long dialogue or verbal humor, apart from several 80’s puns and instead focused on the slapstick elements, some of which are really brilliant (shooting through the phone connection, for example).

During its crowdfunding campaign, the film promised a joy ride colored in the tones of a none-existed era of Regan on LSD and definitely delivered the same. Like Blue Ruin, it shows that this system of gathering money really can produce very successful films, both from an art and business perspective. For me, the great thing about the film is how its director David Sandberg compacted it into a run-time that is neither long nor short. I believe that this is the ideal length for the future genre of YouTube feature films (along with a brand new production and financing model) and I’m very much looking forward to those movies.

Watch the complete Kung Fury right here.

Film Review - Mad Max: Fury Road

At one point in the Mad Max: Fury Road, a character calls bullets “anti-seeds” because you plant one and then watch something die. This is not a big part of the film, nor did its director George Miller put some special emphasis to this idea, which is delivered in less than 20 seconds and then never mentioned again.

But, as soon as I heard it, I thought to myself that this is a pretty interesting idea, but more importantly, one that I never heard before. It made sense instantly while, at the same time, it was very original and funny in a dark way. I had one of those “why didn’t I came up with that idea first?” moment. Its morbid, biting, and comical wisdom is like the entire film. In it, there is nothing spectacularly new or never seen before. But, as a whole, it’s an anti-thesis to the idea that big blockbuster films need to be stupid or made by Christopher Nolan.

Essentially, George Miller took the story of Mad Max 2 and made it into something perfectly crafted for the Millennials, but he did not cater to their short span of attention like AAA action films usually do. He also didn’t do what Nolan does and try to show them how shallow or self-centered they are by making even more shallow and self-centered films. Miller made a film that is relentless like a rabid dog and lost in oneself like an addict before an OD shot. In it, the action is not something that happens; it is the only thing that happens, but this does not rob the film of depth or meaning. Like the anti-seed idea, it’s cleverer that the audience, but the audience does not feel this in any negative way.

In fact, like Dredd 3D, it injects its sense of purpose through action, violence and machines breaking up and exploding. In an endless post-apocalyptic desert, a single man tries to run and escape a warrior society that captured him. On his path, he meets a woman called Imperator Furiosa driving a War Rig and looking to escape from the same society, carrying a precious cargo. The man does not care for her, but he will help her to make sure he stays alive. Film like The Rover show us how it can begin in the Australian outback. Films like this one shows us here it will end up.

In Mad Max: Fury Road there is no sugar coating and no attention grabbing. Like a face submerged in a bowl of water, there is only the now because the next breath might flood the lungs. In the desolate, savage and sand-covered space, the escape is not a plot device, but the plot itself. It does not want to stop and it can’t stop unless War Rigs occupants are victorious or dead. This film is like Transformers made by a person who does not care about the focus group feedback and producer cuts. It only needs to roll out and its tires have to dig deep into the ground because that is its only purpose. Stay moving, stay alive, and continue to watch. But it’s not serious about itself, or any of its characters. At the place and time where they exist, being alive is a transient category. All along, glorious cinematography and 3D effects paint the movie in every tone of the Ultraviolent specter. And then the film ends.

No one will fall asleep during this film. Some might leave it, but no one can ignore it. The same is true for the entire Hollywood industry, where a myth about the idea that blockbusters have to be only a certain type of film (I mentioned already the stupid vs. dark dichotomy). George Miller showed with Mad Max: Fury Road that gripping cinema only needs to grip you and its authors can choose among many ways it can do this. This film’s grip will leave on most people burn marks that will last for days.

Coming Soon - Mad Max: Fury Road

The critics who managed to see the film love it and all the footage and trailers we saw pointed to the same conclusion - Mad Max: Fury Road will be one hell of a film - from the violence to the beautiful cinematography and crazy action choreography, it's all here. It is coming out in a matter of days, so be ready to start planning to go and see it once it hits the theaters on May, 15.

To get into the mood (unless you want to stay pure until you see it on the big screen) here is Mad Max: Fury Road Official Retaliate Trailer.

Film Review - Kingsman: The Secret Service

This movie is best described as unexpected. This is true for several layers of it. On a global narrative level, it provides a plot about Eggsy, an ordinary yob from London, who one day gets drafted into Kingsman, a non-governmental, secret spy service.

His mentor is Harry Hart, his complete opposite - he is a gentleman from a bygone era and an individual who is determined to get the job done, even if that means repaying a man who saved his life almost 20 years ago. While he tries to mold Eggsy into spy material, Richmond Valentine, a hugely successful tech entrepreneur, dreams about saving the world in a way that seem to be leaving plenty of corpses in its wake. Soon enough, the Kingsman take notice.

Here, the regular elements of a fish-out-of-water and a tradition James Bond plot are mixed, but throughout the film, they are constantly reshuffled and dealt over and over again, which produces a really high level of engagement. The director of Kingsman: The Secret Service Matthew Vaughn guides the film as if he is influenced by both larger than life spy films and modern, edgy sitcoms (where things like fisting or anal sex jokes are not a big deal) which makes the plot development a process that just can’t be predicted. The comic elements of the film, especially their offbeat and adult nature, provide a lot of fun during the action scenes, but also when the action dies down.

But the thing about Kingsman: The Secret Service that really intrigues me is its embedded subversiveness. In it, heads of world leaders exploded in a beautiful, colorful explosions. The main villain works for humanity, even though his methods are horrific and he is exceedingly afraid of the sight of blood (and getting his hands bloody, all of which Samuel L. Jackson plays masterfully).

At one other moment, the same villain comments that the world does not even know the name of the Chinese secret spying agency, like it does with the USA or Russia, which is completely true in the real world as well - ask yourself what is the Chinese version of the CIA and what is it called? (a very weird but effective way of breaking the fourth wall).

Also, as Eggsy notices, he and other blue-collared individuals go into the Royal army so that they can act as cannon fodder for “posh bastards”. Here, the film makes quite a leap from the things that are expected from an action comedy and shows that super villains and the political elite actually have everything in common when it comes to ideology and global goals. The only difference is that politician in many countries (fortunately, in reality as well) simply can’t kill all those people they want to see dead.

While this idea is present, the film and Vaughn do not push it like some kind of an anarchist pamphlet. Continuing the great tradition of the British cinema, the subversiveness is not an element that is shown for a couple of minutes, when it gets its exposure and is then subsequently forgotten. Instead, it is interwoven in the very essence of the film, not as a clear motive that characters discus or are even aware of, but it is there constantly, blanketing the film like moss in a very ancient forest. It and other similar films that were made in the UK during the last half of the century are not created to tell us what to do, but to show us the hypocrisy and insanity of those who we elect to wield the biggest power over all of us. Think 22 Jump Street, but where the movie is not making fun of the contemporary pop culture, but is parodying the global decision makers and the horrific things which drive them deep down inside.

Creating a movie that combines these ideas with awesome and gruesome action scenes and jokes about a Scandinavian Princess who promises Eggsy to have anal sex with his (the finest moment of the entire Kingsman: Secret Service movie) is actually a very impressive feat.

Film Review: Last Knights (2015)

One of the things that really produced a whole lot of problems for Last Knights is everything about it apart from the film itself. First of all, it has a horrible title, which sounds really similar to First Knight, Last Samurai and anything else that is “last” and includes men wielding some kind of swords. Then, it poster features Clive Oven and Morgan Freeman looking all serious while riders do serious stuff behind (or in front) of them.

Finally, the film’s trailer and synopsis suggest a variation of the 47-Ronin story, which was all done before and never lead to stellar results. When I saw this, I immediately thought that the film is trying to imitate, at least on the surface, those much more famous films, like B-production movies often do.

So, there is no doubt that the casing of this product isn’t much. But, this film is no B-production ripoff. Thanks to the cinematic gods of irony, the movie Last Knights is actually really good. First of all, its dialogs are brilliantly written. The film carries a basic story about a discredited feudal lord whose knights, mainly their commander Raiden, get without a retainer, their jobs, and their honor. Of course, an evil and corrupt official is behind all of this and Raiden does not seem like a guy who lets go of stuff easily.

In spite of the cartoonish plot, Michael Konyves and Dove Sussman wrote the film like a Shakespearian play, minus the archaic language that I always loathed (I’m not a big on any Shakespeare cinematic retelling projects). In Last Knights, everything is deadly serious and larger than a small planet. The plots and schemes are deceptive and cruel while (some) knights are loyal to their grave. Best of all, the plot is placed in an undefined, mostly medieval setting, where names, accents and skin colors are totally mixed up, while the main weapon of choice is a redesigned Katana blade (with a Katan’s tip and a European style straight blade).

All this is used by films director Kazuaki Kiriya as a fantastic setup for an action film, which Last Knights basically is. With an awesome chassis, Kiriya aptly puts in an action fueled engine that runs the entire contraption. The second half of the film, where things really take off, provides an excellent medieval cinematic fun with is both rewarding and engaging. From the start to the finish, its diverse cast of known and slightly less known actors does a solid one for this timeless fantasy.

Like with the movie Chappie, in the case of the Last Knights film I also expected something which I ended up getting, but the packaging and the key ingredients (which I knew and recognized from the start) blended up so well that both films left me very impressed.

Film Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures

In many ways, this movie is similar to Kim Jong-un. Sure, he looks clumsy, fat and has a weird haircut that makes him look even fatter, so it’s really easy to make fun of him (unless you’re living in North Korea or working in Sony).

Jupiter Ascending, just like the chubby Kim, also practically begs to be ridiculed. It is also dumb and over the top in its decisions, probably thanks to a hugely inflated sense of self-worth which is most likely present in both entities.

But, unlike the petit dictator, Jupiter Ascending is not malicious. In the cinematic reference space, for me this means that it does not practice any form of false advertisement. It presents itself just like it truly is and does not use any tricks during its entire length that would show otherwise. In fact, it is a fairy tale, like the ones Lana and Andy Wachowski use to make when they forever changed the movie industry with the Matrix (the first movie, not the horrid series that followed, not counting Animatrix).

Here as well, the audience is introduced to an ordinary woman called Jupiter, who works as a cleaning lady in Chicago. But one day, she is swept away by a flying boots-wearing alien hunk that is there to save her from assassins and bounty hunters from outer space. This begins a huge adventure, sweeping the galaxy and covering many exotic and foreign places.

The Jupiter Ascending film is a space opera in its truest sense. Granted, it is not a masterfully crafted space opera like Guardians of the Galaxy, but it still provides beautiful images and action packed romance story. Sure, it’s characters are flat and the plot is silly, but who goes looking for deep-impacting drama in a film that features skating anti-gravity boots that make it “easy to go down, and hard to go up”? While many of its details could be improved, the main purpose of the film is crystal clear and readable from the first moment when Mila Kunis, who plays Jupiter, falls into the bulky arms of Channing Tatum.

Actually, I’m really glad to see that Lana and Andy Wachowski chose to continue to make films like this. While it might seem that they are going in the direction everyone else is taking by creating popcorn blockbusters (or at least trying to), the opposite is true. Films like Interstellar do not only bring with it absolutely no essence whatsoever (where they are exactly like Jupiter Ascending), but actually produce a strange, negative narrative dampening field, where a movie like that can be declared a masterpiece, although it would be more suitable as a Scientology instructional video on black holes and feeling good about dead parents. In works like the Interstellar I believe true stupidity lies, and that is the one that masks itself in higher knowledge and spiritual presence. I’m afraid that we’ll begin to see more and more films like that, which terrifies me.

Jupiter Ascending is not the smartest film in the world, but it does not hide anything about itself and honesty is always a great thing in art, even if it is soaked in science fiction pulp and undeveloped teenage fantasies.

Film Review: A Most Violent Year (2014)

Both interior and exterior of this film are about control. Inside of its plot, the main character Abel Morales, superbly played by Oscar Isaac, is a young New York businessman who desires to expand his heating oil enterprise. But, he chose to do this in 1981, one of the most violent, crime-stricken years in the history of New York. At the same time, his delivery trucks start to get hijacked, often involving violent attacks on the drivers while the same danger begins to gradually cross over into his private life.

In spite of this, Morales is determined to stay in control and do not stray from the path of doing business legally, even though his wife Anna, played by Jessica Chastain, continually pushes for other alternatives, some of which involve crime figures.

On the outside, J. C. Chandor directed this film by also providing it with a large level of precision and control. Like his miniature masterpiece All is Lost, Chandor has a talent for making compact cinematic pieces that are tightly wrapped, but still manage to feel very natural and organic.

In All is Lost, the sea and the weather made the film seem that way while, in this case, something similar is achieved by a masterful soundtrack. At some points, the film’s music number seem larger than life in their melancholy and without a doubt strike the same tone as soundtracks from films like Once Upon a Time in America.

Alex Ebert, who created the film’s soundtrack, utilized the groove of things like Miami Vice or Scarface, making it laden with the 80’s atmosphere. But, for me, the track work much more as a soundtrack of the city itself, which is an empire built on ambitions, desires, money and schemes, where the streets are dangerous and dreams bigger than the skyscrapers. American Hustle had some of that on its surface, but this film drills deeper and thus finds something more than costumes and haircuts.

While the music colored the atmosphere, the great acting cast provided the main construction of A Most Violent Year narrative. Primarily a crime drama that intentionally struggles to keep its crime element on the margins, where it constantly threatens to erupt into the main fold, the film produces a whole and stable story about the struggle between ambition and principle.

This all makes it a unique movie that shrouds itself in the real history of one of the most fascinating places on the planet, but still remains a clear and hard-boiled thriller. In other words, J. C. Chandor continues to impress me in ways I don’t see coming.

Film Review: Chappie (2015)

So far, Neill Blomkamp’s films weren’t works of art that felt completely organic to me. When District 9 was hailed as the future of a gritty, dark, socially sentient science fiction, I wasn’t convinced that it truly had a real message to transmit. Instead, it seemed to me that Blomkamp figured out how his work can seem deep and meaningful while it had nothing new to say, apart from the fact that people tend to be racists and savage in many different circumstances.

His new film Elysium was, for me, the crown evidence for this theory. In this awkward mixture of Hollywood A-list actors and high-budget CGI, Blomkamp delivered a shallow story that neither sold its drama nor its action. It was District 9 all over again, but it lacked the charm of a small production set in a real exotic, turbulent location.

This is why I was even less excited when I heard that the same director was making a movie called Chappie. To me, it seemed like he decided to retreat even further back into his original breakthrough film and I doubted it could result in something interesting. I was completely wrong about that.

In Chappie, Blomkamp dug deep to reconnect with a totally personal narrative, free of forced social commentary. In his new film, a tale of a police robot that gets hijacked and reprogrammed so it develops full consciousness, is funny and fun, but still managed to deeply resonate with something in me which differentiates between a living thing, and those things that are not alive (or so I judge them).

In the whirlwind that follows after the mechanical birth of Chappie, the childlike robot is left with Ninja and Yolandi, South African street gangster (and in real life, two of the core members of a band Die Antwoord). These two act as surrogate parents to the intellectually young Chappie, who grows up in a matter of days under their completely opposite directions. The additional element is Deon, a young and idealistic programmer who created Chappie’s intelligence and dreads to see him joining a criminal lifestyle.

In its course, the film deals with the nature of life, death, violence, creativity and the needs of individuals that come into conflict with the needs of others around them. At moments, Chappie’s growing up is hilarious (the segment with stealing cars), while in others it is totally terrifying and even disturbing. All these ideas are fantastically presented by the incredible acting skills of both Yolandi and Ninja. I knew that they were great performers, but in Chappie they show an impressive range that covers deadly serious, sadistic to a scary level and completely goofy, especially in Ninja’s case.

The larger narrative ideas of the plot seem irrelevant when they are is compared to the character of Chappie itself. Like Wall-E and other great robot characters, I experienced the film from his perspective and it was an impressive ride. For me, the entire Chappie movie was a vessel that delivered a complex, believable character to whom I could relate completely, even though he (or it) is not even a human being.

Coming Soon: The Gunman

Although Sean Penn isn't an actor who is immediately associated with action films, he looks perfectly suitable in The Gunman. The effectively named film is hitting theaters on March 20th and seems like an engaging spy-gone-rogue action thriller. Aside from Penn, the cast is led by Idris Elba, Javier Bardem, and Ray Winstone, and directed by Pierre Morel, who made the first film in the Taken trilogy (he was dearly missed in the lukewarm Taken 3).

Check out the Gunman trailer below.

Film Review: Wild Card (2015)

Wild Card is one of the films that can be listed under the Neo-Statham movies. In these films, it seems like Jason Statham is trying to slightly get away from his previous batch of action films while he still remains grounded in the action and thriller genres. He tries to make this work by playing action guys who are not into being actions guys, but are into drinking and wasting their life. Redemption is a great example of this trend and it definitely continues with the Wild Card.

In this movie, Statham plays Nick Wild, a washed-out Last Vegas tough guy who works as something between a low-level bodyguard and a private investigator (which he claims he is not). The purpose of these jobs is to allow him to drink and gamble, both of which are going into the red for Nick (although not in a extent of the character Bruce Robertson from the movie Filth).

One day, Holly, one of his friends from the Las Vegas strip nightlife, tells him that she was assaulted and molested by a mobster and his goons and begs him to help her get back at them. Nick is dismissive at first, knowing the connection of the mobster in question, but then reluctantly agrees.

The director of Wild Card, Simon West knew where to take the film’s segments. But then as a whole piece, the film still works as a series of episodes, starring Statham, which are connected by an almost transparent thread. Because of this, the entire film could be called Nick Wild Doing Things in Vegas. But, thanks to West’s large experience with action films in general, he wings through this disjointed story with a lot of style, making it hard for anyone to truly focus on the lacking element of a bigger picture.

Statham’s rocky charm offer assistance in this endeavor by making his character someone who the audience slightly feels pity for, in spite of the fact that he can still single-handedly put down a room full of mob enforcers. The biggest aid to the film’s smooth dynamic is Dominik García-Lorido who plays Holly. In this role, the actress managed to pull off a very substantial character living on the border of the Las Vegas criminal underground. Holly is hurt, afraid and confused, but still willing to risk it all for a taste of revenge.

While this was no easy task, García-Lorido successfully made Holly a real human being on which the cold determination of Nick Wild to mind his business slowly erodes. I hope we will see more of this talented actress in the future because she obviously has plenty to offer. Wild Card movie is fun to watch and its problems never arise so much over this layer of entertainment to have the ability to spoil its thriller action vibe.

Film Review: Taken 3 (2014)

The Taken franchise seemed very interesting back in 2008, when it brought a cool and minimal plot, featuring the ideally cast Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, an ex-something-dangerous-and-murder-enabled man, but also a dad whose daughter gets kidnapped in Paris. The rest of the film covered Bryan hunting and killing his way to the end goal.

In this constellation, Taken worked perfectly while it balanced between ultraviolence and a regular action thriller. Neeson, who became very proficient in this type of role, which variation was recently seen in the A Walk Among the Tombstones, added the right kind of style and sealed the deal. The sequel pretty much did the same thing, but Taken 3, the ending of the trilogy, goes completely off its old playbook and because of that, ruins the fun.

Now, Bryan is his home in the Los Angeles area, where he lives separated from his wife, trying to be a good dad to her college-going daughter. One day, all this goes to hell when he comes back home and finds something terrible in his bed. The police burst in, believing he is responsible for the crime they find. Bryan does his ex-something Kung-Fu and flees the scene, determined to get to the truth by producing a pile of corpses that belong to one or another East-European crime syndicate.

Director of the film, Olivier Megaton, definitely made two huge mistakes that gutted this film of much fun. First one is a strange editing process which destroys every car-chase scene with a badly positioned camera (that is too close to the vehicles) and fast, maniacal cuts that stack up until the vehicles finally come to a halt. In every car sequence, the same thing occurs as if Megaton thought that he needed to cover bad stunt driving scenes by cutting everything in milliseconds and filling it with tons of motion blur effect. But then, weirdly, the ending car chase was shot and edited perfectly, apart from the fact that its setup is very original (this is the best element of the film by far).

The other problematic feature of Taken 3 is its lack of narrative direction. First half an hour are filled with family drama that builds tension, but also muddies the waters when it comes to defining a clear antagonist of the story (which is a necessity in these setups). Later, it mutates in a Fugitive-type of film, where Bryan dodges cops and investigates gas stations, making us wonder who he is really fighting against. Somewhat of a similar mashup can be seen in Cold in July, only Taken 3 doesn’t have its strange but strong charm. Instead of rushing through this part of the story, Megaton takes it slow, killing with this the winning and recognizable Taken dynamic.

It tries to go for red herring characters, but this comes off as a waste of time and completely nullifies the laser-precise plot development of the first film. Taken 3 full movie feels like an action film that struggles with this fact and covertly aspires to be something more. The character of Franck Dotzler, played by Forest Whitaker, is a good example of this thought. Whitaker performs Dotzler in a solid manner, but his purpose in the film turns out to be nothing more than stealing screen-time from the real bad guys.

With a slow, watered-down script and a few sub-standard action scenes, Taken 3 ends the series on a very low note.

Film Review: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy movie is a merciless beast. It mainly targets the generation that fondly remembers the 80’s, but does this in a sort of haze. In this memory mist, things like cool cartoons and funky music are present, while things like chemical attacks of Iran-Iraq war are inconspicuously missing.

This comes from the fact that this nostalgia is being sold to people who were kids in that weird decade, or just leaving their true childhood. Those born in the early 70’s have nothing to do in this historical fantasy, mainly because they most likely didn’t play with spike-hair trolls or weren’t that amazed when they got their first Walkman in 1986.

In many other aspects, the film is coldly calculated to please its demographics. It plays on its own absurdity and lack of fame when it comes to popular culture (not many have heard about characters like Rocket before 2014) and its distance from much bigger franchise series made by Marvel. On the other hand, it dumps names, places and characters seemingly without any sense of tact, even to those viewers who are not familiar with the wider universe (who are the majority). But, with much cunning and no apparent strain, it is feeding every part of the demographics, like a great Pixar film, giving chunks to kids, teenagers and adults alike.

Guardians of the Galaxy is simply an unhateable film. Its director James Gunn is a much bigger scholar of Hollywood than anyone could imagine just a few years ago when he made art like Super, a movie that is both small and risky. He is so sly in this manner that he even opens the film with a kid losing his mother to cancer, following by an out-of-space dance routine to a catchy pop tune. This is seemingly strange, but under the surface, Gunn is obviously one of those people who can listen to corporate metrics about the audience and then cram some unexpected things in there to improve the test viewer scores.

On the other side of the lens, Guardians of the Galaxy cast was also predefined. Only one among them who was designed to stand out was Chris Pratt as Peter Quill or Star Lord. Everyone else is CGI constructed or wearing so much make up that they character could be interpreted by any actor in the world. This was a chance for Pratt and Gunn to take a huge chunk out of that blockbuster pie and they did it with a samurai sword.

Still, unlike the similar but god-afoul Interstellar, this corporate child is fun to watch. It doesn’t preach and it doesn’t bore, which is very nice to see. While it is definitely a merciless corporate product of market share expansion into new comic book asset waters, it’s still very enjoyable.

So bad it’s good: The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies

Yes, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies movie has a lot of things in it, or should I say a LOTR of things (I had to make that pun). It has a dragon, armies one, two, three, four and five, and possibly six and seven, but this is more a question for all those Tolkien strategy masters out there.

It has magical stones, magical rings and a whole bunch of magical riding animals, starting with wolves, and going all the way to riding mountain goats, moose and even riding pigs. In the story, characters fight evil Orks while they lose their footing, and then other characters also fight other evil Orks while they also lose their footing in a slightly different manner.

The film has all these things, including never-ending battles where swords are mostly used clubs or metal planks (hey, the budget of the film was enormous, but no one can make that many engaging/not silly sword fights) but in spite of all these things, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is about one thing, and one thing only – a character named Alfrid.

In short, Alfrid is a total bastard of the backstabbing kind. He is stupid, malevolent, treacherous and self-serving to an illogical and sadly comical degree. He is present throughout the film (not counting the unending last battle sequence worthy of films like Lone Survivor) and he is completely pointless. In this character, Peter Jackson demonstrated why all this stuff with Tolkien adaptation should just stop for a while and let everyone figure out what they want out of this.

This wasn’t done for the Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies film, so we got a comical piece about people fighting on plastic rocks and much more than that, about Alfrid. He is part Grima Wormtongue, part village idiot and part plain old jackass. But Jackson was glued to him like a bad horror director to a barrel of artificial blood. With Alfrid, there is nothing to be gained: we don’t see his arrival at this horrific state of total corruption (of a comical kind), and there is no redemption or resolution.

But, we do get to see him cross-dressing at one point (this was also supposed to be comical, but is much less so than Orlando Bloom’s faces when he is shooting arrows) and then he vanishes, just like any point Jackson was trying to make with these films. Compared to him, the total failure of the character Radagast in Hobbit series is a small misdemeanor.

Of course, there are many other out of place elements which make the last Hobbit film a proud entry into the So Bad it's Good category, but like the One Ring, Alfrid can truly bind all of them and rule them in the cinematographic darkness.

Crowdfunding push: We Are Soldier

Military science fiction is a genre where independent films of the 21st century really entered a new domain of possibilities. Recently, I wrote about a miniature masterpiece of effective cinema called Mis-Drop and it perfectly shows indie potential when it comes to these kinds of stories. Now, a project about a similar militarized dystopian future needs help with its completion. The official We Are Soldier Indiegogo page states:

A former violent criminal, forcibly reprogrammed to be a mindless Battle Drone, regains his self-awareness in the heat of battle and must escape the clutches of his own forces whilst maintaining his newly-found humanity, or die trying.

This is the story of We Are Soldier, an ambitious, independent Sci-Fi thriller set in the not-too distant future.

Led by myself Lee Asquith-Coe (Writer, Director), we have assembled a crew of the finest quality armed with years of experience and talent. From our DoP, to our Armourer, our VFX Supervisors, Prosthetics, Production Design and Pyro, our team is a skilled and committed one with a shared vision - to create an exciting and dynamic movie that can hold its own against the big boys.

The existing short trailer shows promise when it comes to pacing and cinematography, which is especially evident in the combo of low light and menacing music (done really well for the promo video). Currently, the crowdfunding campaign reached 25%, so check out how you can help if We Are Soldier looks interesting to you.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: Dracula Untold (2014)

If you don’t like this film, and I sure wasn’t made into its fan after I watched it, its name offers many possible puns. Like, this movie is so bad that its story should be like its title and it should have remained untold. Or, doesn’t this film kill its own name by telling the story which is supposed to be “untold”?

Granted, these puns are not that great. But, truth to be told (not untold), this film isn’t that great either. But, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I felt as someone who was robbed of 90 minutes. The key issue and the slipping point of this film is the fact that its director, Gary Shore, simply didn’t know where to take it most of the time.

The movie industry is continuously drawn to the story of Dracula and vampires in general. Psychologically speaking, there are so many good things in these tales that they are simply irresistible – sexual allusion of dominance, clothing style, the notions of unstoppable power that comes at a great personal cost – vampire have it all, and they are easy for everyone to understand them.

Shore decided to take a bite from this blood cookie (pun overload), but focused on something that films like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula only grazed – the origin story of this famous Transylvanian feudal guy turned monster turned even bigger monster. In the film, Luke Evans plays the Transylvanian prince who was brought up in the Ottoman court. There, he became a well-known killer of Ottoman enemies, but got to go back home. The film finds him as a happy married man, but faith brings the Turks back to his feudal doorstep.

Certain that the Transylvania will lose the upcoming war, the Prince ventures to a mountain where an unspoken horror lies, only to find the slim chance of resisting the Sultan and his army.

Shore is good when it comes to directing action sequences and depicting CG eye candy (although he too often turned to darkness to mask visual problems), but on a bigger scale, the film is in a continuous state of lag. The Prince comes and goes, while his entourage, including his wife and son, do the same, occasionally meeting and then moving further. Because of this, it is hard to latch on to something while movie frames of forests and dead Turkish soldiers (who are in almost every situation both unreasonably sarcastic and unafraid) make up of 60% of all visual material in the film.

The redeeming qualities of Dracula Untold are Evans and the excellent Charles Dance. Both of them deserve much better, as Evan already showed in No One Lives, but still they managed to salvage this film from being almost comically bad to the level of mediocre. The very end of the film is especially unpleasant to watch, and reminded me of the ending to The Maze Runner, where the creators practically beg the audience to demand a sequel.

Gary Shore has a capable director’s eye, but I would advise him to steer clear of any possible sequel (apart from his personal financial reasons). While watching Dracula Untold wasn’t a devastating experience, I’m pretty sure that the sequel, especially in this form, will certainly be exactly that.

Film Review: The Equalizer (2014)

It’s very enticing to examine the newest Antoine Fuqua’s film as a pseudo-religious tale. In it, a character called Robert McCall is a deity right from the Old Testament. He is never uncertain about what is wrong and what is right, and is prepared to commit acts of unabated violence to help those who are in need. Watching The Equalizer, I saw only two modes of Robert’s existence – quiet nothingness in which he is practically an invisible older worker in a Home Depot kind of place, and the quiet rage setting, in which Robert becomes a demon of death who kills to solve problems.

In this setting, Denzel Washington, who plays Robert, reaches once more for a character he constructed a decade ago. This person is an ordinary guy who is in fact a real world superhero with unshakable faith in his ideals.

Even when Fuqua presents Robert in a state that might be near to something like doubt, just a moment or two later, we see him suffocating cops or destroying pipelines while he calmly walks away from the nuclear-like explosion. Because, you know, tough guys don’t look at explosions, especially if they are a murdering psychopath. Although Washington’s acting is strong, his physical demeanor and loosening facial skin tell more about a tired man who only wants to complete another gig where he uses interiors of cars to torture people.

While he developed this middle-age man’s revenge fantasy and theological dissertation, Fuqua quickly established that Robert is a righteous angel living among the minority of oppressors and a large majority of sheepish and oppressed. He is infallible, and all-powerful, meaning he can kill professional criminals that are used to violence using only his bare hands. If needs be, he will go to the ends of the Earth and kill people there. He is a messiah who returned to his strayed flock only to push shot glasses in their eyes and shoot them with nail guns.

This is presented in stunning cinematography, which uses cameras that shoot in super slow-motion. Fuqua really focused on frame setup and photography, especially in the Russian owned nightclubs and bars which combine black and gold, and are filled with gangland tattoo bearing thugs. The Equalizer looks really nice, but also somehow managed to present a very disturbing story.

Apart from the actress Chloe Grace Moretz playing a Russian call girl in distress whose story manages to activate the murderous Robert, The Equalizer shares another thing with the horror remake Carrie from 2013, and that’s the notion of revenge. But, unlike Carrie, Robert isn’t providing personal vengeance, but is acting like a proxy, a man who kills for others. In this Equalizer review I have to conclude that I don’t have the problem with the delivery of a character like that, but the conception that this man is something good or positive, and a person who somehow represents righteous values.

Equalizer Denzel Washington as Robert is something similar to the character of the insidious spirit in his older movie Fallen. Like that spirit, he is ever-present, powerful and never completely explained. He is Louis from Nightcrawler, but holding a gun instead of a camera, believing he is helping people. This film finds him in a position where he desires to help those who are oppressed, but what is stopping him from turning to the other side and becoming a cereal eating serial killer?