Category: Film

The Raid / Dark Shadows

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsOnce again courtesy of a lovely grandmother, we managed to escape for a couple of hours cinema time. Two films coincided well timewise so we decided to cram them in.

The Raid: Redemption

“YYYAAAAAHHHHH!!!!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Who cares?

See it if you like: Lots and lots of lovely bloody violence

OK, so there is a plot. 20 Indonesian police storm a block of flats under the control of a drug baron and experience far more resistance than they anticipated… and no way out.

However, the plot’s wrapped up in some of the most intense and bloody violence I’ve seen in a film of this ilk. Imagine something like Die Hard meets Hostel starring Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa. Only it’s not them who are in it, it’s a bunch of incredibly talented Indonesian martial artists and actors.

Unusually, from my point of view anyway, the director (and writer) Gareth Evans is Welsh. How he ended up making this film on the other side of the world is beyond me, but I’m glad he did. It’s dark, gritty, bloody, edge-of-the seat action magnificence. At times right after some of the combat scenes I – with no exaggeration –  found myself wanting to applaud. I settled, for the most part, with cackling with sadistic glee.

I’m glad to see that reviews have been overwhelmingly positive for The Raid, and it’s great to see a moderately low-budget Indonesian film with subtitles getting a wide release across the UK. Certainly Momentum Pictures are doing a better job than Revolver Entertainment are with their farcical plans for Iron Sky… Just a heads-up there for other indie film companies!

Iko Uwais and the rest of the cast will be pretty much unknown in the UK, I would expect. After The Raid, I hope they go on to be better recognised and with luck we might see some more of their work. Simply breathtaking athleticism, top notch make-up and effects, a taught script and a pace that pauses for breath only fleetingly over its course.

If you like action films then this is without a doubt the 2012 definition of “must see”.

Dark Shadows

“Welcome home, Barnabas Collins.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: spurned witch turns her eye candy into a vampire and buries him for 196 years. He awakes in the 1970’s…

See it if you like: quirky comedy horrors with excellent effects and cheesy humour

I was aware of the old TV show when I heard of this film, but as far as I know it’s never been released in the UK. I gather the original was a lot darker than this update, but having nothing to compare it with I can only comment on what I thought of the 2012 version.

Tim Burton is known for his weirdness – and also for casting Johnny Depp. Both are present here, Depp taking the lead role of involuntary vampire Barnabas Collins. Cursed for breaking the heart of Angelique (Eva Green), he escapes from buried imprisonment in 1972 and finds his mansion home in disrepair, populated by what little remains of his descended family.

Discovering that Angelique is also immortal and currently head honcho in the town, he vows to bring her down and revive his family’s fortunes.

Most of the laughs in this film come from Barnabas’ unfamiliarity with the world he is living in and his unwanted attraction to his nemesis. There is a dollop of erotic humour, but the majority is just nice and silly with a small amount of slapstick thrown in for giggles.

Visually, it’s a treat with some lovely effects, costumes and sets. The acting’s as good as you would expect from the cast, and the story’s OK if a little “by the numbers” and over-long by about 15 minutes.

Enough laughs to keep most people going, though I gather the reviews are not overly favourable. A shame as it’s simply just a good, fun movie.

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Safe

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsAfter a day recovering from the Ben Nevis hike and ripping the spare bathroom apart, we decided to head to the cinema for a bit of mental relaxation. Cue some silly fighty action:

Safe

“What did you do, kid?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Seen Mercury Rising? It’s that with more violence

See it if you like: Statham fodder

The trailers for this looked OK, although it was immediately apparent it wasn’t an original plot. Mei (Catherine Chan) is a gifted child growing up in China. Her ability to memorise numbers is discovered by the Triad (I’m guessing – they’re never named as such) who decide that she’d be better suited in their working environment. So they kidnap her.

Jump to the US and we are introduced to the Russian Mafia, a host of corrupt cops, more nasty Chinese and our hero Luke Wright (Jason Statham). Statham pisses off the Russians so they make his life rather difficult, he’s been ostracised by the cops and he’s living on the streets. As luck would have it, though, he lands in a plum position at just the right time to get them both back. And the Chinese while he’s at it.

Acting as guardian to a runaway Mei, he kicks ass, shoots people, knifes a few, breaks some arms, jumps out of windows, drives insanely… hell, you know how action films go.

The thing is, this one has a plot. OK, it may be one stolen from an old Bruce Willis film but they’ve dusted it off well. After a brief flash of violence at the start, the film actually takes a while to get going as it works on the story. Once it kicks in, though, it kicks in hard.

The fight scenes are typically brutal, and Statham seems to be working more and more random objects into these sequences. It’s hard not to get the feeling that he’s trying to be a be-stubbled Jackie Chan at times.

Despite the short breaks for breath-catching, it flies along though never reaching the breakneck pace of the utterly mental Shoot ‘Em Up. It’s not a short movie, but it never seems to drag.

If you don’t mind your action films failing to keep count of the number bullets in the clip, this is one to catch.

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American Reunion

All good things must come to an end, and the American Pie series has been good. OK, except for maybe The Naked Mile. And Book of Love. And Beta House. Hmm.

American Reunion

“The name’s Noah, motherfucker!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: The class of ’99 have a 13 year reunion, featuring a return to the days of debauchery

See it if you like: the original films… but you’ve grown up a bit

I’d heard very positive things about this film from the handful of people I know who caught it on the opening night (or even earlier, at the world premier in Australia). As mentioned above, the three theatrical films in the series to date have been pretty good managing to maintain a good level of humour without digging the same hole over and over.

I’m glad to say that American Reunion manages to maintain this drive, and doesn’t fall into the trap of rehashing old joked the way the straight-to-DVD episodes did. What makes the difference above all else? The cast and original characters.

Our story begins 13 years after the original, which did indeed come out in 1999. There are plenty of references back to it, but our characters have moved on a lot. Some are married, some are successful, Jim and Michelle have a baby boy, Jim’s dad is a widower… quite a few changes.

Oh, except Stifler. He’s still acting like he’s 14.

As the film goes on, more and more of the original cast make appearances. It really is like being reintroduced to old friends yourself as the characters meet up and exchange memories.

The plot is superb. There’s no shortage of gross-out humour and the opening 2-3 minutes is as full of giggles as the original. Somehow writer Jon Hurwitz has managed to find a thread of originality and uses it to string a handful of ****-smeared, boobs-out, bondage-gear-wearing sequences into a story that ultimately has a real feelgood ending.

It’s always tempting to say that Eugene Levy is the star of the moment – his character is wonderful and the show of weakness that comes in as we discover he’s lost his wife really adds a new dimension. However, though he’s not upstaged by anyone else, the improvement in storyline and depth added to the other characters stops the film being just about him. He does, however, get the best line in the film – hence why I’ve used it above!

I don’t think fans of the originals will be disappointed. People’s senses of humour change as they age, and this fourth (and final?) film has taken this into account. All for the better.

While not being as rib-achingly hilarious as the first film was, it’s probably actually a better film overall as a result. Definitely worth seeing.

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Marvel’s Avengers Assemble

A surprise trip out to catch the film on the night of release. Carefully avoiding the crappy 3D version, and not being able to afford the IMAX we settled on the tiny-old-cinema-screen-with-dodgy-sound experience.

Marvel’s Avengers Assemble

“I have a plan: attack!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Superheroes team up and fight bad guys. Well, dur.

See it if you like: Low-brow superhero flicks with too many characters.

There’s no denying the huge hype machine for this 142 minute effects-fest. With four films supplying the lead-in as far as story goes (more if you include the two Hulk movies) it has a lot to live up to. But does it manage it?

Well, as far as scale goes it’s pretty good. There’s a nice central bad guy and a nice huge threat towards the end to make it all larger than life. However, I found it somewhat messy with a couple of the characters virtually sidelined. Don’t expect the same level of cover for Black Widow and Hawkeye (Chris Evans) as for the other Avengers. In a way, it’s a good thing as they’re definitely weaker characters, certainly in this script. Scarlett Johanssen, for instance, just doesn’t convince me at all in her role, especially as the films plods on. She looks positively weak trying to wield two handguns.

On the flip side, there’s a great dynamic between Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and the banter between characters overall is pretty good. Snappy one-liners and a good dose of humour lift the film in just the right places. In fact there’s one very brief sequence – it involves Hulk and that’s as much as I’ll say – which had the audience roaring with laughter.

I wasn’t a fan of the Thor movie, but he’s much better in this. He’s just two dull to be the focus of a whole movie, but works well as part of the ensemble. I still don’t get how he’s a Norse god, but speaks with a posh English accent though.

The effects are predictably top-notch, with a good blend of live action and CGI. It looks like the effects masters are finally getting this right. The explosions are suitably meaty, and there’s plenty of destruction to keep even the most child-like of minds happy.

There’s not a huge amount in the way of plot – bad guy wants to take over earth, superheroes stop him (sorry if that spoils it for you) – and it does go very slowly in places. I confess to being a little tired on the evening we went, but I still didn’t expect to catch myself almost falling asleep. I did. Twice. One it got past this (around the hour mark), thankfully things picked up pace and I began to enjoy it more.

Overall, the two Iron Man films still stand out as the best recent offerings from this particular canon. The third in that series is coming up soon, and there’s also a teaser in the end credits of this film for more forthcoming action. Whether it’s a hint for Iron Man 3 or a second Avengers film, though, I don’t know.

Good, but not brilliant.

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Lockout

Sneaking in a quick film before the end of the weekend, we took our chances with something unknown:

Lockout

“Here’s an apple. And a gun. Don’t talk to strangers – shoot them.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: improperly (or was he?) convicted secret agent person must single-handedly save the President’s daughter from a prison. Which floats in space.

See if it you like: the idea of Die Hard meets Escape From New York meets Fortress

Based on an idea from Luc Besson, Lockout starts with a bang (actually, lots of them) and just doesn’t let up. It’s fast-paced, funny, utterly daft and thoroughly entertaining as a result. There are threads from many genres mixed up in the plot and the characters and dialogue are as over-the-top as you could hope for.

Guy Pearce plays our lead, be-muscled secret agent Snow caught for (allegedly) turning traitor and killing another agent, then disposing of the secrets he was supposedly stealing. As luck would have it, prisoners break out on board the floating space-prison to which he’s just been sentenced and he’s given a chance to earn his freedom in exchange for rescuing the President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) who conveniently happens to be up there.

This is a relatively low-budget film and comes out opposite the titanic Battleship (see what I did there?) against which it’s surely going to look like a tugboat. However, despite being a much “smaller” film in all respects, it holds its own in the entertainment stakes and most definitely deserves your time. The plot is more focussed than in the larger film with everything following our two main protagonists, and the sharp dialogue – mainly from Snow – is wonderfully dry. James Bond wishes he had this line in humour.

There’s nothing to complain about regarding the quality of the special effects either, although a couple of the speedier sequences are hard to follow as they pan and flip from angle to angle far too fast for these old eyes to follow.

Every action film needs a decent antagonist, and Lockout has two particularly nasty ones in the forms of mastermind Alex (Vincent Regan) and utter nutjob Hydell (Joseph Gilgun). They play off each other and offer two sides of the overblown lunatic that one central bad guy would have entailed.

While there aren’t any real surprises in the storyline, there’s nothing to stop the viewer going along for the ride and thoroughly enjoying the antics of anti-hero Snow. He’s a great character and I’d not mind seeing him in some kind of follow-up.

Incidentally, random link between this and Battleship? Grace played Neeson’s daughter in the awesome Taken (co-written by Besson), a sequel to which is due out later this year. Both actors are due to reprise their roles.

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