Almost Christmas (2016)

22 Saturday Dec 2018

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Comedy, Danny Glover, David E. Talbert, Drama, Dysfunctional family, Gabrielle Union, Kimberly Elise, Mo'Nique, Review, Romany Malco, Xmas

D: David E. Talbert / 111m

Cast: Danny Glover, Gabrielle Union, Mo’Nique, Kimberly Elise, Romany Malco, J.B. Smoove, Jesse T. Usher, John Michael Higgins, Nicole Ari Parker, Omar Epps, Keri Hilson, DC Young Fly

For Walter Meyers (Glover), it’s the first Xmas since the death of his wife, Grace. Determined to have the same traditional family get together that they always have, Walter invites his children and their partners and their children, and his sister-in-law, May (Mo’Nique), to spend the five days before Xmas with him. It should be a happy time for everyone, but his two daughters, Cheryl (Elise) and Rachel (Union) don’t get on, his eldest son, Christian (Malco), is wrapped up in running for Congress, and his youngest son, Evan (Usher), has an addiction to painkillers that no one is aware of. Animosities old and new soon take centre stage as Walter tries to rein in his family’s inability to get along for just five short days, while Cheryl’s husband, Lonnie (Smoove), does more than flirt with checkout girl, Jasmine (Hilson), and Christian’s involvement with a local planning issue threatens the homeless shelter that Grace and Walter supported their entire marriage. And that’s without Walter’s own plans to sell the family home, something he hasn’t mentioned to anyone…

Ah, the dysfunctional family. What would movie makers do without it, and especially at Xmas? (They’d probably have to invent it,) In writer/director David E. Talbert’s ode to the the highs and lows of Yuletide family arrangements, the Meyers family behave just like most large families, with some members still clinging on to long past upsets and disappointments as if they were freshly minted, with yet others in unfulfilling or strained relationships, and yet others trying to make sense of the lives they’re leading (while all of them are wondering where it all went wrong). None of the scenarios and storylines in Talbert’s screenplay, however, are particularly original, and even if you haven’t seen that many movies with a similar set up, there’s little here that will come as a surprise, except perhaps for Talbert’s laidback approach to the material, and how the search for easy laughs hampers the more dramatic elements (such is Talbert’s reliance on the tried and tested that Glover even gets to repeat his Lethal Weapon catchphrase, “I’m too old for this shit”). Audiences may feel the same way, as each sub-plot and scenario is worked through in the same formulaic way that dozens if not hundreds of other, similar movies have adopted before.

It’s a relief then, that the movie has the seasoned cast that it has, because without them, much of Talbert’s laboured screenplay would have stopped the movie from having any kind of impact at all. Glover is the patient patriarch who should really be banging some heads together, while Union and Smoove grab the lion’s share of the viewer’s attention by playing, respectively, the sister who’s still looking for a direction in her life, and the self-absorbed ex-basketball player whose head is easily turned by a pretty, young admirer. Stock characters they may be, but at least the cast know how to play them for maximum effect, even if that proves somewhat contradictory in practice. As a result, the movie is pleasant to watch, but in an undemanding fashion that allows the viewer to just sit back and let the movie do all the work, while the comedy is successful enough to warrant a few hearty guffaws here and there. Ultimately, it’s held together by good will and perseverance, and by a determination to do the best that it can, even if the odds are against it. And so, it’s like a lot of Xmas movies that feature a dysfunctional family: basically entertaining, but you wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.

Rating: 5/10 – with little to recommend it beyond the obvious, Almost Christmas is competent enough to hold the casual viewer’s interest – and not exactly a chore to watch – but it does what it does without attempting to be anything more effective; one to watch on a quiet Xmas Eve afternoon perhaps, but not one that is likely to be adopted as an annual Yuletide treat.

Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adventure, Alain Guiraudie, Alberto Cavalcanti, Amen Island, Animation, Anthony Russo, Assassin, Avengers: Infinity War, B-movie, Babak Nafari, Bank robbery, Barbara Britton, Billy Brown, Blaxploitation, Blue Sky, Brad Peyton, Bullfighting, Burglars, Carlos Saldanha, Children of the Corn: Runaway, Children's Film Foundation, Chris Evans, Christina De Vallee, Comedy, Crime, Danny Glover, David Paisley, Drama, Eugeniusz Chylek, Ferdinand, France, Genetic experiment, Hafsia Herzi, Horror, Jake Ryan Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Russo, John Cena, John Gulager, Johnny on the Run, Kate McKinnon, Le roi de l'évasion, Lewis Gilbert, Literary adaptation, Ludovic Berthillot, Maggie Grace, Marci Miller, Mark Harriott, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mike Matthews, Naomie Harris, Pine-Thomas, Proud Mary, Rampage, Reviews, Rival gangs, Rob Cohen, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Lowery, Romance, Ryan Kwanten, Sequel, Sydney Tafler, Taraji P. Henson, Thanos, The Hurricane Heist, The Monster of Highgate Ponds, They Made Me a Killer, Thriller, Toby Kebbell, Unhappy Birthday, Video game, William C. Thomas

They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

Monthly Roundup – July 2017

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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47 Meters Down, Action, Alain Desrochers, Animation, Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Brian Fee, Cars 3, Claire Holt, Comedy, Crime, Cristela Alonzo, Daniel Brühl, Danny Glover, Day of the Mummy, Drama, Girls Trip, Horror, Jessica Chastain, Johannes Roberts, Johnny Tabor, Lesley Selander, Malcolm D. Lee, Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Niki Caro, Owen Wilson, Peggie Castle, Phil Daniels, Queen Latifah, Quincannon Frontier Scout, Regina Hall, Reviews, Robbery, Ronnie Thompson, Security, Sharks, The Hatton Garden Job, The Zookeeper's Wife, Thriller, Tony Martin, True story, Warsaw Zoo, Western, William McNamara

The Hatton Garden Job (2017) / D: Ronnie Thompson / 93m

Cast: Matthew Goode, Phil Daniels, Larry Lamb, Clive Russell, David Calder, Joely Richardson, Stephen Moyer, Mark Harris, Jack Doolan

Rating: 6/10 – a group of aging ex-cons decide to rob an underground safe deposit facility in London’s Hatton Garden, but find that too many interested parties want in on the job, and the proceeds; based on the actual robbery that occurred in April 2015, The Hatton Garden Job is a light-hearted, and often lightweight version of actual events, but gets by thanks to some winning performances, a sense that it’s all too, too implausible, and a broad sense of humour that suits the material well enough despite its low budget origins.

The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017) / D: Niki Caro / 126m

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl, Michael McElhatton, Timothy Radford, Val Maloku, Efrat Dor, Iddo Goldberg, Shira Haas

Rating: 4/10 – at the outbreak of World War II, the Warsaw Zoo, run by Antonina and Jan Zabinski (Chastain, Heldenbergh), is commandeered by the Nazis, but it becomes a hiding place for Jews, and an even more dangerous place without its animals; a true story undone by telling it across the whole course of the war, The Zookeeper’s Wife is a turgid, painfully dull movie that is only sporadically interesting and which wastes the talents of its cast by making their characters’ plight seem like its been lifted from an unsuccessful soap opera.

Day of the Mummy (2014) / D: Johnny Tabor / 77m

Cast: Danny Glover, William McNamara, Andrea Monier, Eric Young, Philip Marlatt, Michael Cortez, Brandon deSpain

Rating: 4/10 – an archaeological trip into the Egyptian desert in search of a lost tomb sees its members at the mercy of a mummy, while they try and find a sacred stone said to be worth millions; a found-footage movie that like most doesn’t know how to make the most of the format, Day of the Mummy stretches its audience’s patience at every turn, and literally reduces Glover’s role to the bottom left hand corner of the screen, something that could be construed as “video-phoning” in his performance.

Security (2017) / D: Alain Desrochers / 92m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Liam McIntyre, Gabriella Wright, Chad Lindberg, Cung Le, Katharine de la Rocha, Jiro Wang

Rating: 5/10 – ex-Army veteran Eddie (Banderas) takes a night security job at a mall, and on his first night, finds himself fighting off a band of mercenaries hired to kill the teenage girl who’s taken refuge there; another Die Hard rip-off (when will they stop coming?), Security does have committed performances from Banderas and Kingsley as hero and villain respectively, but lacks sufficient invention to make this anything other than a pale echo of similar and better movies.

Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956) / D: Lesley Selander / 84m

aka Frontier Scout

Cast: Tony Martin, Peggie Castle, John Bromfield, John Smith, Ron Randell, John Doucette, Morris Ankrum, Peter Mamakos, Edmund Hashim

Rating: 6/10 – when the Army discovers someone is selling rifles to the Indians, it’s down to experienced scout Quincannon (Martin) to get to the bottom of it all; while there’s nothing new here, thanks to Selander’s astute direction, Quincannon, Frontier Scout zips along at a decent pace and delivers on its basic premise, but not even Selander can mitigate for a pretty awful performance from Martin, a singer who really should have ignored his agent on this one.

Cars 3 (2017) / D: Brian Fee / 102m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Ray Magliozzi, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt

Rating: 6/10 – Lightning McQueen’s days on the race track are numbered, but only he doesn’t get it, until racing for a new team begins to show him that there’s more to life than being Number One; Pixar redeem themselves somewhat after the complete and utter disaster that was Cars 2, but this is still tepid stuff that struggles to make the impact it needs, leaving Cars 3 looking nostalgic for the first movie, and trading on that movie’s glories to make itself look good.

Girls Trip (2017) / D: Malcolm D. Lee / 122m

Cast: Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Larenz Tate, Deborah Ayorinde

Rating: 6/10 – self-help guru Ryan (Hall) decides it’s time that she and her three best friends (Latifah, Smith, Haddish) should reconnect while in New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, but having a good time proves more difficult than she, or they, could have ever imagined; yet another female-centric variation of The Hangover, Girls Trip wants to be raunchy and out there (the urination scene), but ends up instead as a warm and fuzzy ode to sisterhood that conforms to expectations, but is rescued by the committed performances of the “girls” themselves.

47 Meters Down (2017) / Johannes Roberts / 89m

Cast: Mandy Moore, Claire Holt, Matthew Modine, Chris Johnson, Yani Gellman, Santiago Segura

Rating: 6/10 – two sisters (Moore, Holt) on vacation in Mexico find themselves stranded in a shark cage at the titular depth, and they only have an hour to save themselves before their oxygen runs out; better than it sounds thanks to Roberts’ hand on the tiller, 47 Meters Down isn’t beyond making some silly mistakes (let’s have Modine’s captain recite the perils of nitrogen narcosis – twice), being too repetitive once on the sea bed, and building up tension only to allow it to dissipate to no great effect.

Bad Asses on the Bayou (2015)

09 Monday Mar 2015

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Action, Bad Ass, Baton Rouge, Bayou, Bernie Pope, Carmen, Craig Moss, Danny Glover, Danny Trejo, Drama, Frank Vega, Green machine, John Amos, Kidnapping, Review, Sequel, Thriller

D: Craig Moss / 85m

Cast: Danny Trejo, Danny Glover, John Amos, Loni Love, Jimmy Bennett, Carol Sutton, Sammi Rotibi, Davi Jay, Judd Lormand, Jeff Pope

Pensioners with attitude Frank Vega (Trejo) and Bernie Pope (Glover) are still the best of friends and still annoying each other. When their friend Carmen (Love) calls to say she’s getting married, and she wants both of them to come to Baton Rouge for the wedding – with all expenses paid by her father Earl (Amos) – they head on down for the festivities. They meet Earl’s wife, Lois (Sutton), Carmen’s brother Ronald (Bennett), and Carmen’s wheelchair-bound fiancé, Geoffrey (Rotini). But on their first night at Earl’s mansion home, intruders break in and kidnap Carmen, despite Frank’s best efforts to stop them. The next day, Earl receives a ransom demand for $5 million, due in thirty-two hours.

The local chief of police, Broussard (Jay) takes charge of the investigation, but he’s aware of Frank and Bernie’s notoriety and warns them against getting involved. In no time at all they ignore Broussard’s advice, and using a clue found by Ronald, track one of the gang of intruders to a local club. There they force him to tell them the name of another gang member, Landry (Pope), who is more “connected”. While Carmen remains imprisoned in an abandoned factory, and her family struggle to deal with her kidnapping, Frank and Bernie ignore a further, more serious warning from Detective Williamson (Lormand) and track down Landry who tells them where Carmen is being held. At the same time, Carmen manages to escape from the room where she’s been imprisoned. She ends up in an office where she’s able to fax her location to the police.

However, the fax is intercepted by one of Broussard’s deputies who takes it to his chief. On their way to the abandoned factory, Frank and Bernie are forced to stop by uniformed police. Broussard is with them, and it becomes clear that he’s behind the kidnapping. He knocks Frank unconscious; when he comes to he and Bernie are on their way to an airstrip. Broussard’s plan is to have them thrown out of a plane to their deaths. But Frank and Bernie have other ideas…

The first Bad Ass movie, released in 2012, was based on the real-life exploits of Thomas Bruso. It was an uneven mix of wish fulfilment action beats and cornball humour that did enough to warrant a sequel, Bad Asses (2014). This upped the humour, thanks largely to the involvement of Glover, and showed that there was mileage to be had from a pensioner – or two – who wasn’t prepared to take any shit. With no sign that the series is stopping any time soon, and with the budget getting bigger with each instalment, Bad Asses on the Bayou shows the series stretching credibility and common sense in its efforts to provide a good time.

Lacking a cohesive script, the movie opts to play out like a Seventies low budget actioner, with dreadful leaps in both narrative and characterisation, and with writer/director Moss clearly having assembled his script from the bottom of the bin marked “clichés”. So we have Frank and Bernie bickering in a bank and foiling a robbery. We have Frank and Bernie taking out purse thieves at a gas station (actually well choreographed). We have Frank dispensing wisdom to a bullied Ronald, Carmen played as a sassy, high-energy stereotype, Bernie hitting on women around three times younger than he is, and the odd moment of sadistic violence (Frank pushing Landry’s face into a fat frier). And to cap it all we have intermittent scenes where Bernie’s recent liver transplant causes him pain at the wrong time (but which is never developed any further than that).

There’s also some poorly executed attempts at humour – Bernie: “I ain’t running” – and Moss hasn’t decided if he’s spoofing his own creation yet, but with Trejo’s performance bordering on tired already, and Glover playing Bernie exactly as he did in Bad Asses, the series is in danger of disappearing up its own absurdity. It’s not enough this time round for the movie to flirt with plausibility and then leave it high and dry like a forgotten bride at the altar, or for it to include moderately well executed action sequences that show off where the bulk of the budget has been used. Instead of using the extra money to strengthen, expand or add depth to the original concept, Moss and co have taken Frank and Bernie out of their comfort zones and relocated them to the Deep South – and fallen back on the same approach they used in the first two movies, thus making the change of scenery no real change at all (and Frank and Bernie never actually spend any time “on the bayou”).

With Baton Rouge proving a poor, unfriendly backdrop to the main storyline – a short montage of the sights of Baton Rouge shows very little that could be considered attractive about the area – and a visual style that highlights blandness each time, Bad Asses on the Bayou is the least interesting of the series to watch in terms of its look and feel, and is a movie propagated with too many similar-sounding rap songs. If there is to be another Bad Ass movie, and this one promises a next instalment titled Bad Asses in Bangcock (yep, that’s how they’ve spelt it), then let’s hope that Moss works from someone else’s (better) script, and Trejo and Glover are given more to do than beat people up and make cheap wisecracks.

Rating: 4/10 – the law of diminishing sequels kicks in with a vengeance, leaving Bad Asses on the Bayou looking and feeling like a half-finished idea that sounded good at the time; with a sense that everyone involved is treading water, or just going through the motions, keeping the series going may not be the best way forward for both the makers and for future audiences.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Chris Rock, Counterfeit money, Danny Glover, Human trafficking, Jet Li, Joe Pesci, Martin Riggs, Mel Gibson, Police, Rene Russo, Review, Richard Donner, Roger Murtaugh, Sequel, Thriller, Triads

D: Richard Donner / 127m

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock, Jet Li, Steve Kahan, Kim Chan, Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Eddy Ko

An incident involving an iron-suited, flamethrower-wielding criminal leads to two revelations: that Roger Murtaugh (Glover) is going to be a grandfather, and that Martin Riggs (Gibson) is going to be a father. Nine months later the two men are looking forward to the imminent births. Out one night on Roger’s boat, and accompanied by Leo Getz (Pesci), they find themselves nearly struck by a cargo freighter. When the freighter’s crew opens fire on them, Riggs takes the fight to them and boards the vessel. The ship eventually runs aground and the cargo hold reveals a group of Chinese illegal immigrants.

Later, Murtaugh discovers a family hiding in one of the lifeboats. Instead of letting INS know, he allows them to come home with him (but he doesn’t tell Riggs; he also doesn’t tell the investigating officer, Butters (Rock), who is secretly the father of Roger’s grandchild). In Chinatown, triad boss Uncle Benny (Chan) has a visitor in the form of Triad negotiator Wah Sing Ku (Li). Wah has been expecting the family Roger has discovered, as they are an important part of his plan to free four Triad overlords (including one who is his brother) from the clutches of a corrupt Chinese general. The head of the family, Hong (Ko), has an uncle who is a master engraver; Wah aims to buy the overlords’ freedom with counterfeit money.

Riggs and Murtaugh are given promotions to captain, and they start to help Butters with his investigation. A visit to Uncle Benny sees them meet Wah but they don’t find out who he is. Leaving Leo to trail Uncle Benny, Riggs and Murtaugh are unaware of just how close they’re getting, but it’s close enough for Wah to find out where the family are hiding and to abduct them – and then to put Riggs, his partner Lorna (Russo), Murtaugh and his wife (Love) and pregnant daughter (Wolfe) in danger of being burned alive. They all manage to escape unharmed, and with Butters in tow, Riggs and Murtaugh track down Uncle Benny at his dentist’s. With the use of some nitrous oxide, they get Uncle Benny to reveal the plot involving the Four Fathers (the triad overlords). When they liaise with other detectives who work the Chinatown beat, the three men learn about the corrupt Chinese general and where the exchange is likely to take place. Interrupting the meet, they spill the beans about the money, and a vicious firefight breaks, along with a three-way showdown between Riggs, Murtaugh and Wah.

The last in the series, Lethal Weapon 4 could, and perhaps should, have been a whole lot worse, but it’s a measure of the likeability of the characters, and the directorial flair of Richard Donner that, while it may still be the least in the series, it’s also an entertaining ride that will put a smile on fans’ faces. The familiarity of the material and the verbal sparring between Riggs and Murtaugh (however predictable), along with the extended action sequences and the often slapstick comedy, makes this the celluloid equivalent of being wrapped up in a nice, warm blanket on a cold winter’s evening. It’s a huge comfort to know that everything you could want from a Lethal Weapon movie is all present and correct.

With all the series’ highlights in place, the movie does meander in places, mostly when it’s trying to acknowledge the fact that its characters are getting on a bit and are “getting too old for this shit”. Given that this is the fourth in the series, and also given that there’s been a clear decision to end the franchise before it gets too derivative and stale, this acknowledgment is a welcome development. It makes for a satisfactory conclusion to the series, but all the angst and drama of the first two movies – already lessened in Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) – has now been left behind completely. Riggs’ journey from near-suicidal nut job to devoted family man is complete, while Murtaugh is a proud grandfather whose anxiety about the loss of material things (usually his car, this time round his boat) and whatever can go wrong actually doing so, is more accepting of what Fate throws at him. These are now very settled men, and while it’s heartening to see them take on the bad guys one last time, this is a movie that – fortunately – realises it’s time to call it a day.

As lighthearted – and lightweight – as it is, Lethal Weapon 4 still does its best to deliver where it matters most: in the action sequences. The opener, with its exploding tanker and fiery devastation, is as preposterous as it sounds, but is still an impressive start to the movie and at least reassures the viewer that it’s going to be business as usual. There’s the obligatory car chase with its detour aboard a trailer, a foot chase that ends with Riggs dangling from a roof, a well choreographed fight at the Murtaugh home that showcases Li’s martial arts skills, and a climactic shootout that evolves into the three-way showdown mentioned above. All are expertly shot and cut together, and all are exciting to watch, but the familiarity they bring with them makes them less than memorable. It’s a shame, but draws attention to the fact that familiarity doesn’t always breed originality.

It’s difficult as well to bring anything new to the table with such well established characters, and while Gibson and Glover are still as enjoyable to watch as always, there’s more than a hint of tiredness in their banter, as they rework old lines and try to maintain the jokiness of previous outings. This leads to some awkward dialogue being exchanged – mostly around Murtaugh’s belief that Butters is attracted to him – and a sense that all the in-jokes and series’ references were included at the expense of more original material. It’s a trade-off, no doubt willingly made by Donner and the producers, but leaves the movie feeling a little jaded and occasionally lacklustre.

On the performance side, everyone acquits themselves well, particularly Pesci who’s given a completely out of character monologue towards the movie’s end that is surprisingly effective, and Li who provides Riggs and Murtaugh with the series’ first truly formidable adversary. Two scenes aside, Russo is reduced to hovering in the background, while Rock plays Butters as an earnest, slightly duller version of the man Murtaugh may have been when he was younger. Behind the camera, Donner plays ringmaster with his usual skill and expertise, while Andrzej Bartkowiak does a great job in making even the static shots interesting to watch. And no Lethal Weapon movie would be complete without the musical collaboration of Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen, here adding another familiar element with their jazz-infused score.

Rating: 7/10 – the tag line reads “The gang’s all here” and they are, along with all the other “best bits” of the series, in a movie that could have been called Lethal Weapon’s Greatest Hits; fun, if a tad too long thanks to its need to wrap things up, Lethal Weapon 4 is still an enjoyable diversion and provides an admirable send off for its two aging heroes.

Tokarev (2014)

29 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Crime, Criminal past, Danny Glover, Irish gang, Kidnapping, Murder, Nicolas Cage, Paco Cabezas, Rachel Nichols, Revenge, Russian gang

aka Rage

D: Paco Cabezas / 98m

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rachel Nichols, Danny Glover, Max Ryan, Michael McGrady, Peter Stormare, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Max Fowler, Aubrey Peeples, Jack Falahee, Ron Goleman

Paul Maguire (Cage) is a successful property developer with a beautiful wife, Vanessa (Nichols), and a precocious teenage daughter, Caitlin (Peeples). One evening, while Paul and Vanessa are out to dinner with the mayor, and Caitlin is at home with two friends, they’re interrupted by Detective St. John (Glover), who tells them that Caitlin has been kidnapped. Her two friends, Mike (Fowler) and Evan (Falahee) tell Paul and the police that three armed men broke into the house and took Caitlin; the men were brutal, efficient and said nothing. St. John warns Paul to let the police do their job and not use the skills he has to track the men down (it turns out Paul was part of a criminal gang but got out and has been straight ever since). Paul pays lip service to St. John’s advice and enlists the help of old friends Kane (Ryan) and Doherty (McGrady) in searching for his daughter.

Their own enquiries reveal nothing; no one knows who is behind the kidnapping. Then, after a few days, Caitlin’s body is found in a nearby river; she’s been shot in the head. At her funeral, Paul is stopped by his ex-boss, Francis O’Connell (Stormare), who warns him not to stir up any more trouble than already exists between O’Connell’s gang, and that of the Russians, led by Chernov (Lychnikoff). The warning brings back memories of a heist Paul and his two friends carried out nearly twenty years before, and which ended with them killing Chernov’s younger brother. Having kept their involvement a secret all these years, Paul wonders if someone now knows, and Caitlin’s death is a form of payback. Convinced this is the case, Paul, Kane and Doherty begin to target the Russians’ drug business, shutting down distribution houses and killing anyone that gets in their way.

Soon enough, Chernov begins to retaliate. He abducts Kane and tortures him, while at the same time, Paul begins to suspect that Doherty has told someone what they did to Chernov’s brother. With St. John doing his best to keep Paul out of trouble, and Chernov getting ever closer to finding out what happened to his brother, a sudden realisation leads Paul to the truth about Caitlin’s kidnapping and murder.

Tokarev, with its slipshod script and lacklustre mise-en-scène, re-confirms the downward spiral that seems to be Nicolas Cage’s career. Since World Trade Center (2006), Cage has appeared in twenty-one movies before this one, and the number of genuinely good movies he’s made can be counted on the fingers of one hand*. It’s also hard to believe Cage is an Oscar winner, such is the decline in quality of the movies he’s made since then (only Cuba Gooding Jr’s post-Oscar career contains more poor choices). Either Cage has some serious bills to pay, or his critical faculties are all burnt out, but either way, Tokarev is an out-and-out turkey.

None of it makes any sense, from Paul’s having been able to walk away clean from his criminal past, to the hackneyed “secret-no-one-knows” subplot, to St John’s leniency in the face of Paul’s flagrant vigilante behaviour, to O’Connell’s warning to Paul to let it go. Expediency is piled on top of artifice which is then topped off with preposterousness, and it all comes complete with a large side order of implausibility. The truth behind Caitlin’s abduction and murder is so unlikely even Cage can’t make it work (not that he’s trying very hard; his performance isn’t so much phoned in as faxed in from a different decade). It’s all so much nonsense it’s almost insulting, the script by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller adding up to a series of barely connected scenes and events that operate separately from each other, and sometimes, in complete isolation (the two or three scenes where Paul tries to persuade Vanessa to find somewhere safe to be while he does the things she’s asked him to do but really doesn’t want to know about).

Adding to the disappointment doled out by the script is the leaden direction courtesy of Cabezas, an amazing combination of apathy towards the material and disinterest in the characters, leaving the cast adrift and having to fend for themselves. What acting there is in the movie is mostly unexpected, as Cage et al. deliver their dialogue with all the capability of people for whom English is a second language. Doherty, in particular, seems unable to say anything without mangling the content, and even when he does manage a clean delivery, there’s no emotion or heart there; he’s like a robot who’s stuck in neutral. Nichols plays the upset second wife and stepmother as if she’s grateful to be there, while Stormare (in a glorified cameo) attempts an Irish accent with all the purpose of a man who knows he’s probably not going to be called back for redubbing. As for Glover, he’s hamstrung by a character so vapid and ineffectual (as a policeman) that he might as well be invisible.

It doesn’t help that the movie is also drab to look at, with uninspired lighting and camera movements, and pacing that kills the movie stone dead just minutes in (editor Robert A. Ferretti has the same problem as the script writers: he doesn’t know what to focus on or for how long). Scenes that should be powerful and dramatic are regularly stopped from doing so, and thanks to Cabezas, any potential interest in the story is quickly abandoned, leaving the viewer to count the minutes until the movie ends.

Rating: 3/10 – with the action sequences providing a bare minimum of excitement, Tokarev – the make of gun that kills both Chernov’s brother and Caitlin – has little to recommend it; fans of Nicolas Cage might give it a go, but otherwise this is one quasi-revenge movie that should be avoided completely.

*Those genuinely good movies: Kick-Ass (2010), The Croods (2013), and Joe (2013).

Bad Asses (2014)

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Andrew Divoff, Comedy, Craig Moss, Danny Glover, Danny Trejo, Drugs, Fanny pack, Frank Vega, Ice pick, Review, Vigilante pensioner

bad-asses_9f0f4187

aka Bad Ass 2: Bad Asses

D: Craig Moss / 91m

Cast: Danny Trejo, Danny Glover, Andrew Divoff, Jacqueline Obradors, Ignacio Serricchio, Melany Ochoa, Patrick Fabian, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Jonathan Lipnicki, Leon Thomas III

Three years on from the events of Bad Ass (2012), Frank Vega (Trejo) is mentoring young boxers at a community centre. One of his young proteges, Manny Parkes (Valdez), is poised to turn professional but has gotten mixed up with a drug dealer called Adolfo (Serricchio). Manny steals from Adolfo and is killed in retaliation. At first Frank leaves it to the police to investigate Manny’s murder, but when Manny’s mother, Rosaria (Obradors) asks him to look into it the obligation he feels convinces him. Suspecting another of the young boxers at his gym must know something, he trails them to an apartment block where the young boxer, Tucson (Thomas III), collects a packet of drugs from one of the rooms. Frank busts down the door, beats up the muscle, and burns the drugs.

Frank lives next door to a convenience store run by Bernie Pope (Glover), a grumpy old man with a serious liver problem that has left him with around six months to live. When Frank is ambushed by some of Adolfo’s goons, Bernie comes to his aid. Frank tortures one of the goons and learns about Adolfo’s involvement; hearing about Manny, Bernie offers to help. Despite warnings from Officer Malark (Fabian), Frank and Bernie track down a lead that takes them to a frat house and another of Adolfo’s street dealers, Hammer (Lipnicki). Hammer, encouraged by having a fan pressed against a tender part of his anatomy, tells Frank where Adolfo lives. Frank goes there and confronts Adolfo who ends up with an ice pick in his right eye; he also tells Frank that it was his father, an Argentinian diplomat called Leandro (Divoff) who ordered the hit on Manny. Frank and Bernie carry out a citizen’s arrest on Leandro but his diplomatic immunity means he’s released the same day.

Following Leandro’s release, Frank and Bernie trail him to a meat packing plant where they find out how the drugs are being smuggled into the country. They are captured, and Leandro tells Frank that he’s going to retaliate for Adolfo’s losing an eye by taking Rosario and her daughter, Julia (Ochoa), away from him. Frank and Bernie escape but are too late to stop Adolfo from kidnapping Rosario…

As a low budget follow-up to an equally low budget original, Bad Asses retains the first movie’s sense of its own absurdity and refuses to take itself seriously, eliciting groans throughout and an equal measure of affection. Both movies are cut from the same template, with an Eighties action vibe that is reflected in the fight sequences and the way in which the script connects scenes with only the merest nod to logical continuity. It’s easy to criticise a movie like Bad Asses but it’s mostly a pastiche of the kinds of movies that starred Chuck Norris or Michael Dudikoff, unrepentant in its paper-thin characterisations and their flimsy motivations, the meagre plotting, the dreadful picture car filming, the perfunctory nod to a romantic angle for the main character, and a villain who is both suave and slimy at the same time. And all wrapped up with a knowing, almost winking at the camera kind of humour that offsets the predictable nature of the script and stops the movie from being completely ridiculous.

Thanks to returning director Moss and his star, Bad Asses works for the most part and is genuinely entertaining. Watching Trejo and Glover riffing off each other is great fun, and even if they are “too old for this shit” their obvious enjoyment at working together boosts the movie immeasurably. The retooling of the plot of Lethal Weapon 2 isn’t as off-putting as it might seem, and while some moments seem misguided or out of place – Bernie chatting up a young girl who’s only wearing her underwear, Adolfo surviving having the ice pick go through his eye and into his brain, Frank taking out a helicopter with a grenade flung from a moving car – the good will the rest of the movie engenders allows these moments the equivalent of a free pass. (Even so, it’s inevitable the movie will have its naysayers but they won’t be picking up on the clear love of the genre the filmmakers have, and the necessity of embracing its faults as well as its good points.)

Rating: 6/10 – with Bad Ass 3 already in the can (and reuniting Moss, Trejo and Glover), Bad Asses is an unexpectedly enjoyable second outing for the vigilante pensioner; funny, derivative, good-natured, improbable, knowing, problematic – the movie is all these and more, and proof that some movies can be all the better for being uneven… but only when that was the intention.