Tag: Paul Walker

Your Highness / Fast Five

A two-film Saturday night courtesy in a change of Gillian’s mum’s shifts. The two which fit nicely into our available timeslot were as follows:

Your Highness

“Quests suck!”

See it if you like: Dungeons & Dragons and drawing cocks on school text books.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Useless prince has to help awesome brother on a quest to rescue a maiden from an evil wizard. While telling cock jokes.

Your Highness is a very silly film from the people who made Pineapple Express which I’ve not seen. I can see it being a very divisive film – you’ll enjoy it or you’ll think it’s awful. I doubt there will be any middle ground. I also think that watching it over a few beers would be best.

The story tells of Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride) and his squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) who must help elder brother and all round superstar Fabious (James Franco) rescue his virginal bride-to-be Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux). On the way they encounter tough-as-nuts questress Isabel (Natalie Portman).

There. That gets the cast out of the way. A cast, incidentally, who apparently improvised the majority of the dialogue. Impressive. Even if the dialogue is fairly basic and full of sexual innuendo. And sexism. And tasteless insults. As I said – best watched with beer.

The cast do carry things off very well, and it’s quite a surprise to see Portman in particular move from OSCAR nomination in Black Swan to such completely different fare. Franco overacts in just the right way while McBride and Hardiker pair off well as the useless slob prince and his aide who doesn’t realise what a dick he is.

For an admittedly low brow comedy, the production values are quite high and the special effects and action sequences aren’t badly done at all.

Definitely not one you’ll be taking the kids to see unless you want to start explaining about Minotaur penises and why a hand would be like a vagina. Let your inner schoolchild enjoy it and you’ll have a good time.

Fast Five

“One last job, then we disappear forever.”

See if it you like: the thought of Newton spinning in his grave

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Members of the casts from all four previous films get together to pull off one last huge job before the franchise retires.

The gang’s all here – and then some. Pulling in cast members from all the films, including the somewhat sideways jump of Tokyo Drift, Fast Five aims to finish the franchise with a bang (although there are rumours of a sixth…)

We watched the fourth instalment the other night in preparation and I realised how slow it was. Gillian really didn’t enjoy it either. A few action sequences held together with a rather dull plot. Definitely the weakest of the series so far after the novelty of the first, buddy/buddy laughs of the second and scenery change of the third.

Fast Five manages to take all the ridiculous madness of the previous four, shove them through a blender, syphon off anything to do with Newtonian physics and pour the mixture onto celluloid. My only regret about watching this film is that I didn’t see it on IMAX.

As I think I hinted at, I think the laws of physics **** themselves when this film hit the screens. It makes no sense whatsoever. On the other hand… who, seriously, cares? It’s got cars, babes, muscle-bound men, explosions, crashes, trains, dirt, guns, grenades, rocket launchers, laughs, spills, fights, romance…

OK, so the plot in brief. Brian (Paul Walker) and Dom (Vin Diesel) team up to pull a huge job in Rio, taking down a drug lord and making themselves massively rich. In a not-very-well-hidden nod to the likes of Ocean’s Eleven they require a group of specialists. This is where they raid the back-catalogue of characters.

The cast definitely seem on a high and there are some really funny moments and great dialogue as they bicker and cajole. This fleshes out the utterly mind-blowing action scenes. If you thought the opening stunts in the last few films were a little over-the-top, you’ve seen nothing yet.

And that’s nothing compared to the final sequence. Good – and indeed – grief. For those with as much as a Physics GCSE, kindly partition off that section of your brain (particularly the segment to do with friction, force, acceleration and so forth) otherwise you’ll just turn in to a gibbering Newtonian wreck. I opted to sit there and giggle at the incredible destruction and sheer ludicrousness of the entire thing.

I know it’s only April, but I can see this ranking as one of the best action films of the year by the time we hit Christmas. Like all the best shows it leaves the audience wanting more. Whether we’ll get that is anyone’s guess.

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Buried and Takers

Ah, the joys of having afternoon CPD sessions. Not the greatest of fun last thing before the weekend, but it does place me near the local Cineworld. As such, as soon as the lecture was over I drove right along the road and picked up a ticket for…

Buried

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Man wakes up to find himself trapped in a wooden box. Time and air are running out.

Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is having a bad day. He’s just woken up trapped inside a wooden coffin, buried underground. The last thing he remembers is his convoy being attacked, his co-workers being shot… and then taking a blow to the head.

Oh, and he was in Iraq at the time.

Director Rodrigo Cortés has gone for the most claustrophobic film he could. Taking the single-scene premise of Phone Booth and pushing it to extremes, the entire film is located in this one dark location. Reynolds’ is the only face we see, the other characters only featuring as voices.

It’s a great idea for a film, and a brave one for mainstream cinema. It is well filmed with all angles of the box being seen constantly so you really get a feeling for  Conroy’s situation. Reynolds plays the part very well, for someone who apparently has made his way so far with comedy roles. Having said that, the best lines in the film are ones which did get the audience laughing.

It’s not a long film, but it does still feel padded in places. The ending is either superb or awful, depending in your viewpoint as well. I liked it, but one discerning (and loud) voice declared it “a load of *****” as the credits rolled at the end.

Certainly something different.

Takers

“We’re takers, gents. That’s what we do for a living. We take.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a gang of robbers push to do one huge job at the behest of a comrade who’s just got out of jail.

What at first looks like a heist movie turns out to be a pretty taught character-driven thriller with quite a few twists and some good back-story. The closest recent film is The Town, but on balance I think I preferred Takers.

As well as a great cast, there are some excellent set pieces including a wonderful near-final shoot out sequence where sound (or lack of it) has been put to excellent use. The central “job” is also very well done.

The sidelines leading off the central plot are perhaps a little fluffy (a detective’s family issues, gang member’s crackhead sister and so on) but they add depth to the characters without detracting too much from the story. They’re also woven into the plot so that they effect events without seeming like hugely improbable coincidences.

A lot of people might not like the fact that Paul Walker is in the film judging by comments I’ve seen about him since the Fast and Furious films. However, he’s more than acceptable in this. Matt Dillon is on the opposite side of the story playing one half of a detective duo (Jay Hernandez plays the other half). Even the cops aren’t all clean, however…

There’s enough meat on this film to fill a mini-series, yet it doesn’t seem to be too much to take in the running length. Definitely worth seeing.

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In-flight films

A380 In-flight entertainment
A telly. On a plane.

Another quick rundown of the flicks I got to see on my last Etihad flights from Bangkok to Heathrow. Just shorties.

First up was Fast & Furious which was pretty good. This is the sequel the first film’s been after for all these years. Don’t get me wrong – 2 Fast 2 Furious was decent enough in a light-hearted way and Tokyo Drift was a half-decent sideways step. But getting the original cast back was the best thing they could have done and this immensely silly bit of car fun is worth the running time.

I then opted for Push which wasn’t quite so good. A nice premise – people with natural superpowers and a government agency trying to improve them by pumping them with drugs… which usually kill them. The superpowers fall under several labels and a lot of the “empowered” try to live off the radar so that the government can’t find them. The story does drag and there are so many holes in the plot that even Swiss cheese would get jealous. Dakota Fanning, though, once again proves she’s a pretty good child actor by not being annoying.

A change of planes and on to The Boat That Rocked which was so good it’s getting a full review (next post).

Final film was Outlander which was nowhere near as good as I was hoping for. Sci fi meets historical fantasy as a spaceship crashes in Viking Norway. Hitching a ride with the humanoid pilot is a rather nasty beastie intent on wiping out anything on two legs. It’s a bit of a mix of The Spaceman and King Arthur, Alien and a Viking Braveheart. Overall not too bad, but it just didn’t flow very well and was fairly predictable.

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