As you might tell from my links page, I'm a bit of a movie buff, and I often end up recording my random thoughts about movies I've seen. That's what this page is all about. Below you'll find my reviews of movies that so enthralled, provoked, or bored me that I felt compelled to write about them. Updates will come as time permits. For now, here's a list of movies I've reviewed:
For further info on any of these movies, type the movie's title into the SEARCH function at the Internet Movie Database. Also, please note that some of the reviews below are more essays than reviews, and so contain SPOILERS. These will be noted. Enjoy!
This movie is about sleight-of-hand. As Michael Caine informs us in his voiceover in the beginning of the movie, a magician must not only make something disappear, he must bring it back again. It might be something small, like a rubber ball. Or something slightly larger, and living, like a canary. Or at the last minute, the whole plot might disappear and reappear again, but turned inside-out.
This movie is also about two talented, obsessed, and thoroughly unlikable stage magicians, Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden (Christian Bale). The two first meet as crowd plants who help an aging magician with his act. During a show, the stage girl, Angier's wife, dies in an accident possibly due to Borden's determination to improve the act. Borden's first attempt at a solo act is interrupted by Angier appearing in the crowd and shooting several of Borden's fingers off.
And so it goes. What begins as a a grieving man's revenge turns into something more consuming and more dangerous, as the two continually try to best each other with their shows, particularly The Transported Man, a trick Borden invents. To learn his secret, Angier goes to Nikola Tesla, who is studying lightning in Colorado Springs. The machine he brings back may or may not actually work.
A little helpful knowledge going into this film: the book it was based on, also titled The Prestige, was written in a modified epistolary form in which the events are portrayed by the entries of two men's journals. The movie weaves this story-telling element well without letting it overwhelm the on-screen action (as opposed to, say, a similar device in the generally dreadful screen adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Possession). Also, the author of the book, Christopher Priest, has been a member of the speculative fiction community for years, and has written a quantity of fiction that lands squarely in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Thus, at least one reviewer has complained that in the third act, the film "suddenly incorporates a major element from another genre." So be forewarned.
This film also suffers from having completely unlikable characters. I spent a good portion of the film wishing they'd both get over themselves and grow up a little - when prop inventor John Cutter (Michael Caine) tells Angier that "Obsession is a young man's game," what he means is, "Show a little maturity!" At least, that's what he should have meant.
The results of these men's obsessions include some surprises for the audience, one that I caught and one that I didn't but should have. The plot suffers from the directorial sleight-of-hand mentioned above, because one of these surprises conceals a much stranger and more interesting relationship than anything that is openly discussed during the film. It was so interesting, in fact, that I might have to go back and watch this again sometime - but not soon.
This is a dark, gritty film. Despite the pleasant connotations of stage magic, the story told here is neither pleasant nor about stage magic. It is about the lengths to which each of these men will go to best the other. They do horrific things to themselves, to each other, and to everyone they supposedly care about.
It is a disturbing spectacle, but engrossing enough that I rate this film a 7 out 10 - which is darned good, considering that I didn't even like it.
A young docter starting a new job in the city (Sandra Bullock) and an architect who's stuck building condos (Keanu Reeves) begin to exchange letters via the mailbox in front of the lake house they each have lived in. The architect, being a bright sort of fellow (he went to architectural school, after all), realizes that they're actually writing letters across a two-year separation. As in, for him it's 2004 and for her it's 2006. They both think that's sort of weird, but they fall in love anyway. Someone is going to have to wait awhile, though, if they're going to finally find each other - and a lot can happen in two years.
I heard about this movie while I was looking for Keanu Reeves's new projects, and was instantly intrigued. Never mind that it was a romance, just the premise of a "time-traveling" mailbox sounded interesting. Plus it had Reeves and Bullock in it, and I enjoy them both.
First, a note about the pacing - this is not Speed. This is, as my dad would say, a "sicky love story," and the plot revolves around the relationship of the main characters, regardless of the funky mailbox. Like Meet Joe Black, some of this movie's best scenes are the slow ones. In particular, there is a scene of the leads meeting at a party that preserves all the awkwardness and longing one would expect when A is in love with B and B very honestly has never met A before.
The hook that originally brought me to this movie was the pseudo time-travel plot device, and it was interesting to see what the creative staff did with it. Basically, they just sort of shrugged at the whole prophecy / time travel paradox, the question of whether or not one can change the future. Certain plot elements strongly reminded me of 12 Monkeys, while ignoring the fate and free will issues found in that movie. So if you're looking for a new spin on the philosophy of time travel, this isn't it.
What I found intriguing about the handling of the speculative material was the world-building, or perhaps lack thereof. This unheard-of, unexplainable thing has happened, and the characters figure it out in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, but after that the strangeness of it all is sort of ignored. There's obviously something very unusual about that mailbox, and also about the dog that each character has in his or her own time. Why all this is happening, and whether it's a regular phenomenon, isn't investigated. The characters just accept it and go on from there. I suspect that this approach may come from Il Mare, the original Korean film of which this is a remake. I could see that kind of acceptance making more sense in an Asian film, although I'm not sure what philosophical approach I'm thinking of to give me that impression. At any rate, I'm now curious to see that picture.
Unfortunately, this film focuses on its key romantic relationship to the point that subplots and side characters suffer. Alex Wyler, Reeves's character, has unresolved issues with his brilliant, architect-of-the-year-father, and this relationship is designed to give Wyler some depth, although it seems to distract more than anything. Is it Reeves, or is it the writing? Maybe both. Kate, the doctor, has people she talks to occasionally - her mother, a co-worker - but none of these relationships add any weight to the movie. She also has an occasional boyfriend who, despite the amount of screen time he's given, is provided with almost no character development beyond a vague whine. Thus, while the film shares a lot of the mood of an earlier Reeves romance project, A Walk in the Clouds, it doesn't have even the one or two strong supporting characters that one had. Reeves and Bullock are on their own for this one.
In the end, that works, for the most part. Aside from one or two signature bouncy moments, Sandra Bullock played an isolated, unfulfilled woman quite competently. I confess to being a closet Reeves enthusiast, so my opinion is biased, but I thought his performance was fine as well. That is, he acted like Keanu Reeves, which will bother some of you more than others.
Objectively, I don't think this movie quite works. The characters aren't really developed enough, particularly not considering the lack of good supporting characters. The speculative element isn't handled with enough originality to carry the movie. Subjectively, however, I enjoyed this film quite a bit, and recommend it to anyone who likes either of the leads or who is looking for a moody romance. I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
This is a film with a lot of expectations to meet and a lot of comparisons to benefit or suffer from, as the case may be. C.S. Lewis's children's book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was the first in his much-loved fantasy series, and any movie adaptation is bound to be seen by a lot of discriminating fans. In addition, comparisons will inevitably be made to the low-budget BBC version of the late 1980's.
It looks good, as I expected it would. I was particularly impressed with the beavers, who are integral to the story, and with the gryphon, who isn't important at all but looks really cool anyway. The movie does things that the old BBC version didn't, like giving Susan the proper hair color and having the robin lead the Pevensies to the beavers. It also does other things that were mostly there to heighten the drama, such as several rather intense chase scenes. And there were a few things that just don't work at all for a would-be Narnian like me, such as the fact that Peter rides a unicorn into battle.
There are several tacks I could take in a review - whole essay topics, in fact, if I felt the urge. There's the whole discussion of puppets vs. CGI, and why I liked puppet Aslan better than this one (a learned suspension of disbelief - although I know the puppets aren't real, I can still believe in them in the way that I can't with CGI in a real setting, even though it might look much more "real" in one sense. Maybe this is also related to the fact that with CGI, it's always just insubstantial enough to leave my subconscious wondering what it's looking at). There's also my problem with not being able to appreciate movies on their own merits if I'm too familiar with the books they were based on - I can't make any real judgement of how a movie follows its own internal logic if I'm always operating with an omniscient viewpoint, as it were.
So, my quick thoughts on the matter:
The battle scenes are too big. There's too much drama - one of the things I love about Lewis is his wonderful way of understating things, or stating them in very familiar yet evocative terms. Particularly, there's too much cue music, telling us how we were supposed to feel. The ascension of the Pevensies to Cair Paravel feels more like wish fulfillment than prophetic fulfillment. Peter especially goes from English schoolboy to general awfully fast - why didn't it seem so unlikely in the book? I need to go back and reread now. There's something missing about Aslan, though I'm not entirely sure what it is. Of all the major characters, he seemed to suffer the most from the adjustment and out-and-out overwriting of the dialogue. They managed to cut out a lot of his majesty, which the BBC version kept despite Aslan being a puppet.
On the other hand, the Pevensies are developed much more fully as characters here than in the old version, or perhaps even in the book. I like pretty much everything about Mr. Tumnus, and his house was great. He even had the there that are mentioned in the novel, like Is Man a Myth?. The beavers work much better visually than in the BBC version, since they don’t have to be human-sized anymore.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the White Witch. Tilda Swinton has a slippery quality about her that makes her tough to pigeonhole. Her character was wearing rather odd clothes, though. And dreadlocks? I'm glad that the polar bears shown on all the posters don't show up until the very end of the movie, and that they're never shown pulling her sledge.
This incarnation of Lewis's classic takes the plot elements of the original and leaves out nearly all the charm. I rate 5 out of 10.
The Wedding Date, is billed as a romantic comedy but clearly isn't comic, as it deals with a girl pining after her ex-husband who, it turns out, has seduced her sister at some point. Talk about soap operish. Add a "male escort" whom the girl hires for the weekend of her sisters wedding to show off as her boyfriend and show up her sister and her ex, and who eventually lets his feelings get in the way of his job, and we have a full round of ridiculous melodrama. And then, of course the sister's fiance forgives her and they get married, the girl and her male escort acknowledge their feelings, the girl forgives her sister, the ex is run out of town, and everyone's happy.
What? Are you telling me this girl (her name's Kat) can just get over the stuff between her sister and her ex? That this new guy, who of course has Bond-ish good looks, can just smooth over her hurts and make them all better?
Now, movies are not real. They're fiction, right? But this is an excellent example of a movie that is also not true in any sense of the word. The picture given here of how relationships (romantic and other) function isn't optimistic or overly rosy, it's false.
(Tangent) I see how this disparity between truth and representation spurs a lot of the artsier movements. I once defined literary fiction as being fiction where everyone's depressed and nothing happens, or something like that. Yet I'm beginning to understand part of their motivation, though I still staunchly disagree with the specific viewpoint many of them espouse in their work. They're trying to deal with real-world hurts, and suddenly that makes perfect sense to me.
This is not to say I'm suddenly going to turn Hemingway. There's more to life than a series of moment of "quiet desperation." I still believe in the power of the unreal to tell the truth where the strictly real might fail. But this movie is an example of what might motivate people to write some of the stuff that they do, even when I don't like it.
I should say that I don't think this one bad movie suddenly brought all this out in me. I think it's been coming on for awhile.
Anyway, back to the movie. The "male escort" (Dermot Mulroney, of My Best Friend' Wedding), has no character development to speak of. Of course, in the movie he's supposed to be very businesslike and rather reserved. He's playing a part, after all. Yet if we're supposed to actually find him more interesting as a character than as a model for hairstyling gel, we need to get to know him a little. It's possible to do this without Kat being around to see this unveiling. There's just got to be something about him we can hang onto. As it is, there's nothing.
Also, I really hate the fact that he's so good-looking and Kat's ex is so homely. Come on. Can we move away from physical stereotypes for just a minute, please? Not that her ex should be handsome and the male escort should be homely, but they should both just be normal enough to make it not an issue anymore, so I'm not sitting there wondering whether the movie-makers are going to do the obvious thing and hook Kat up with the good-looking guy (they did ) or make a statement and hook her up with the homely guy. Can't they just both be normal?
All I can say is, thank goodness for people like Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks, who manage to find roles without looking like movie stars.
The Wedding Date gets my Participation Award, as it contains all those necessary elements we learned about in literature class: plot (untruthful), characters (cardboard), setting (well, that part was okay), and theme (the cutest guy is the good one, even if he's working for an escort service at the time). For attaining this bare-minimum standard of storytelling, I rate it 1.5 out of 10.
Words from the director himself:
"Science fiction for me is a vacation, a vacation away from all the rules of narrative logic, a vacation away from physics and physical science... It just lets you leave all the rules behind and just kind of fly."
Ah. This explains much about this movie, particularly that bit about a "vacation away from physical science." Why does he think they call it science fiction, I wonder?
There are two main problems with War of the Worlds, Spielberg's new incarnation of the H.G. Wells classic, updated with a modern setting. First, this story has very little story. The main characters, practically the only characters, are Ray Farrier (Tom Cruise) and his kids Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakotah Fanning). Ray is the typical self-centered slob/divorced dad who loves his kids, more or less, but rarely gets around to expressing it. He just happens to be the Everyman of this story of extraterrestrial invasion (after all, you wouldn't cast Tom Cruise and then choose some other Everyman). The lightning strikes, the machines come out of the ground, he takes his kids and runs. There's the usual trauma: separation, creepy scared guys, rays of light that evaporate people. Running, hiding, screaming, a deus ex machina, and a nice Spielbergian denouement. It's a really simply story arc with an abrupt and heavy-handed ending.
Basically, this is a survival story, a disaster film with aliens.
This still would have been alright if Spielberg had been successful in presenting his little family-sized drama. Farrier is obviously supposed to mature and gain perspective as a result of the ordeal, as we have indications that his son Robbie is doing, before he is suddenly taken out of the movie. Unfortunately, Cruise has neither the script nor the talent to handle this role with the mastery the film needs. Farrier's son Robbie abruptly leaves the storyline two thirds of the way through, and his daughter Rachel is mostly just hysterical or scared speechless, though Dakotah Fanning does this quite convincingly, including in a basement scene with three-legged aliens snooping around.
Which brings us to the second problem with this film: either intentionally or not, it borrows elements from so many previous movies it felt like a game of "What movie is that from." There's the basement scene and small-family story that Signs did so much better, although flavored with a scene from "The Abyss." There are the lights and people standing and staring that bring Spielberg's own "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to mind. And perhaps it's not quite fair, but I found myself comparing the tripod machines unfavorably to the robots in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."
Most strongly, though, "War of the Worlds" reminded me of "The Day After Tomorrow," the much-maligned weather disaster film of last summer (who knew global warming could be so exciting?). In fact, I liked "The Day After Tomorrow" better. The special effects were better; the people story was more interesting, even if it was a little hokey; and I thought the scenario there, however unscientific, was played out for more entertainment value than this movie.
So, if you want to see a drama about alien invasion, watch "Signs." If you want to be entertained by an alien invasion, watch "Independence Day" - it has fewer plotholes than this movie (!) and was more fun, too. But if you want to watch people aimlessly running around, Benji-style, this is the movie for you. I rate it 5 out of 10.
WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS
Finally, the movie everyone's been waiting for since Darth Vader breathed that first magnified breath in the beginning of the "original" Star Wars, A New Hope. You'll notice the spoiler warning above. However, I'm not giving away anything that a lukewarm fan of the series hasn't already figured out. For example, So, brief overview: There's a war on. The Jedi and Chancellor Palpatine don't trust each other, with good reason, and Anakin is caught in the middle. He eventually throws his lot in with Palpatine in hopes of discovering a way to save his wife Padme from death, which he's been having visions of. Most of the Jedi are killed, Obi-Wan goes after Anakin and defeats him, Padme dies, and the twin babies Leia and Luke are taken to remote parts of the galaxy to be raised in solitude.
As expected, the special effects are magnificent. There are lots of explosions and pretty scenery. And, I'm not so much of a purist that I can't appreciate Yoda with a light saber. The score's fine, too.
Really, it's amazing how much of a reunion a mega-blockbuster like this can bring together. James Earl Jones is back to voice Darth Vader's few worlds after his reconstruction, Frank Oz still speaks for Yoda, and Anthony Daniels is C-3PO. Of course, John Williams wrote the score. It's all one big happy family. In fact, that might be one of my issues with these new Episodes - they seem determined to bring back just about every single character from the old trilogy. Chewbacca, okay, that's cool. But Boba Fett? How on earth was he important enough in the old series to warrant the entire clone army to be cloned from his DNA?
The story in this Episode goes along at a fairly good clip. Fortunately, the intricacies of the political situation are mostly ignored and the story focuses on the main characters. Obviously, it's difficult to pull together all the threads that need to be in place for Episode IV to make sense. For the most part, however, this is all done fairly smoothly. In fact, seeing the backstory really does add some depth to the old trilogy. For instance, it's much clearer now why Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan on the death star. And you can only wonder how Chewie, Wookiee military commander, ended up with a low-life smuggler like Han Solo.
Anakin's turn to the Dark Side was quite dramatic but only sometimes believable. Just as campaign funding politics broke the spell in Episode I, the ongoing traumatized childhood bit that's supposedly at the root of Anakin's personality imbalance smells strongly of a modern-day psychological analysis. Who knew that Darth Vader, scourge of the universe, turned bad because his mommy was killed? I'm not saying it mightn't be realistic, but reality doesn't make good mythology.
Of course, the more immediate reason for Anakin's decision is his wild hope of saving Padme from dying in childbirth. It turns out she wouldn't have if he hadn't made the decision - a nice flavor of fate seasoned with "Would you have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"
Indeed, Padme serves entirely as an excuse for Anakin to choose evil. She seems to possess no character of her own in this movie; she just stands around looking sorrowful and pregnant. Good grief, what does she do all day? Anakin has obviously gotten older and possibly more mature since Episode I; she seems to have gotten younger. I would put my finger on her as this movie's most serious downfall.
The cast is at least adequate, for the most part. Hayden Christian surprised me by actually filling out his role nicely. He smolders much more attractively than he whines. I don't know that his lines are much better, but he worked around them fairly effectively in this last Episode. Ewan McGregor is fine again as Obi-Wan Kenobi, although as a character side note, since when did Obi-Wan have a sense of humor? Ian McDiarmid is quite convincing as Chancellor Palpatine. Christopher Lee and Samuel Jackson's characters both die before getting the chance to do much of anything, and most of the rest of the main cast is either digital or beyond recognition.
Overall, this movie is neither as bad as I feared nor as well-crafted as it might have been. For sheer fun, it can't beat the old trilogy (it had Harrison Ford, after all). Still, it has enough drama and special effects to more than keep your attention. I rate it a 7 out of 10.
This SF-ish movie is about a gulf war vet, Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), who is put into an insane asylum for killing a police officer. He's given drugs, put in a full-body straight jacket, and placed in a morgue drawer as "treatment" by an uncaring doctor who's using him for an experiment. Thing is, the drugs take his mind to the future, where he meets someone from his past and begins investigating his own death, which occurs just days after the "present."
It's an odd movie. There are certainly shades of 12 Monkeys in it, what with a man popping back and forth in time, and also that man's time in an asylum. On the other hand, it's darkest at the beginning, and though there's always the tension of see what's going to happen, the atmosphere gets progressively brighter and culminates in a happy ending - sort of. There are the usual time travel paradoxes and questions, which the film acknowledges but seems content to ignore. There's the question of why he geographically ends up where he does when he travels in time - it's very convenient to the plot that he appears in approximately the same place each time, and that this so happens to be where he can find a previous acquaintance who helps him investigate his death.
Overall, I enjoyed it. It provides an interesting counterpoint to 12 Monkets. Whereas that film dealt with the inevitable destruction of the world, this one is about one man's mental and temporal stability hanging in the balance. Also, this one has a more upbeat ending. However, though there are a lot of questions that it simply ignores. It also doesn't deal much with Starks's original reason for being hospitalized - his PTSD and his war flashbacks. Yet it's quiet and understated, a proper spec fic movie; and Adrien Brody plays the role convincingly and sympathetically. I also enjoyed Keira Knightly as Starks's friend Jackie, and in fact I think it's her best performance so far.
For its suspenseful and emotionally-engaging approach to a speculative premise, I rate The Jacket 7 out of 10.
The concept of cold-blooded killer isn't new. Movies open nearly every week featuring one or more people that calmly destroy other people. The assassin is less overdone, but still fairly common. In Collateral, Tom Cruise stars as a man in a gray suit who hires a cab driver (Jamie Foxx) for the night in LA and then starts shooting people. In fact, he is a highly-paid assassin for some shadowy crime contingency.
Much has been said about the movie's style - dark, with a few bright lights here and there. Much of the dialogue takes place in the cab using various shots of Foxx, Cruise, or both. But the style isn't just different, it's done well enough that it doesn't distract from the overall picture.
Of the four people I saw the movie with, two really liked it and two were bored. Be forewarned - this isn't really an action movie, despite a few stunts and a lot of corpses. It's a thoughtful look not just at an assassin, but at the relationship he develops with his cabby. Vincent is very, very good at killing people and he does it 'for a living' with no apparent qualms. Max is a cabby working at a temporary job he's held for twelve years while planning to start a limo company. In the midst of forcing Max to drive at gunpoint, Vincent tries to teach the cabby some guts.
This movie was unexpected. I did not, at any given moment, know what was going to happen next. And there were a few moments that were believable but totally surprising. It's a great feeling to watch a film and not know the ending. There was one development that, despite being set up previously, still seemed overly convenient to the story line. The movie rides the bump fine and keeps going, though.
The supporting cast did fine, but Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx had to carry this film, and carry it they did. Cruise stars in his first, albeit atypical, bad guy role and does a tremendous job. With a mug as famous as his, he still manages to convince the audience that his name is Vincent and that no one knows what he looks like. Foxx does equally well, with acting so natural you don't notice it at all. He is Max. That simple.
Stylistically, technically, visually there's nothing wrong with this movie. My only excuse for not giving it a rating of "10, you should all rush out and see it," is the violence and the dark theme. And the violence isn't what I would call gratuitous, at least not compared to a normal action film. I would guess that's it's closer to being realistic, which actually makes it more chilling than if blood was always splurting everywhere. And watching an entire movie featuring a man with so little regard for human life is chilling, too, even if he does look like Tom Cruise and the ending is somewhat satisfying. This does not claim to be a warm-fuzzy movie; if that's what you're looking for, look somewhere else.
This film is thoughtful, well-styled, and well-acted. It's not entertaining at the same level as summer blockbuster, but it is fascinating, a truly character-driven film. I give it an 8 out of 10.
If, way back in the spring when the major publicity was starting, I'd been forced to pick one movie I *had* to see this summer, this one would have been it.
I was expecting a lot - the Shyamalan's 'Sixth Sense' is on my (very small) list of all time favorites. His next film, 'Unbreakable,' was generally panned but I thought its take on comic books and their origins was intriguing, if missing something. 'Signs' I considered the best portrayal of a Christian since the Oscar-winning 'Chariots of Fire,' and I was impressed that Shyamalan dared to take a science fiction concept, an alien invasion, and turn it into a movie that had very little to do with aliens.
From his previous films, I'd learned to expect more than whatever the story was 'about.' Even if I wasn't satisfied with the story as a whole, I expected something that would continue to niggle at my mind long after the more conventional summer movies had been forgotten.
Did 'The Village' measure up? Yes and no.
This movie is a story about a small, colonial-type village cut off from civilization by haunted woods. It turns out that's okay with them, though, because many have suffered violence during their earlier lives in 'the towns' and have set up their village as a sort of attempted Utopia, Quaker-style.
Things are not as simple as they appear, however. While the village is being thrown into turmoil by evidence that 'the ones we do not speak of' are breaching the borders into the village, one of its youngsters, Lucias Hunt (Joaquin Pheonix) is determined to venture through the forest and bring back medicines that will keep the village in better health.
I usually try not to give any of the plot away past the first third or so of the movie, so that's all you get, though I grant you it isn't much. The problem is that in the first forty minutes or so, there is no action in this movie. We are introduced to the characters and given a view of how these people live. Other than a vague sense of impending doom (after all, something's bound to happen sometime, right?) there is no suspense or clear conflict until the second half of this movie, and that is not acceptable.
Part of the problem is this movie is very self-conscious of its various secrets, and in trying to build up suspense for all them results in a movie that's not suspenseful; it's just muddled. This is made worse by a series of flow-disrupting flashbacks.
Speaking of self-conscious, Shyamalan continues his penchant for appearing in his own movies, and while before it was just amusing, and he actually had a pivotal and believable role in 'Signs, in 'The Village' it just comes off as distracting. A slap on the hand for you, Mr. Shyamalan, for letting your Hitchcock homage get in the way of your story-telling.
Having said all that, I have to admit I enjoyed this movie. While 'Signs' was less an alien movie than a movie about belief, this movie is even less about spooks than it is sacrificing for a dream, for a chance at hope. This theme is as muddled as the suspense surrounding it. The idea still comes through, and I liked what there was even though it wasn't plumbed as deeply as it could have been.
Another thing I liked about this movie was the cast. Watching the opening credits, I whispered to my neighbor that it looked like a supporting cast without a star - and that worked just fine. John Hurt and Joaquin Phoenix gave solid performances as a village elder and a quiet young man, respectively. Adrien Brody, the most celebrated member of the cast, was utterly believable as a developmentally disabled man. Sigourney Weaver was the only disappoint, as she wasn't given anything to work with.
The key to this movie, however, was a young lady whose name I'd never heard before, Bryce Dallas Howard (yes that kind of Howard). She does a phenomenal job as the Ivy Walker, Hurt's character's blind daughter and the person on whom most of the second half's scenes depend. Not to give too much away, but after Lucias Hunt is injured, Ivy sets out on a mission for the medical supplies he needs. Howard's performance is 'The Village' should set her on road to stardom, because the believability and the spirit she infuses in her part makes this movie work.
On another positive note, the film's score managed to be emotive without manipulative, and made a big difference in how certain scenes came off.
Overall, this is an undeniably flawed film that I still managed to enjoy quite a bit. Shyamalan hasn't perfected his art yet, but as long as his efforts continue to entertain I'll continue to help fund them. I rate this effort a 6.5 out of 10.
It's difficult to watch a movie sequel without continually comparing it to its predecessor. It's even harder when that movie is the second in three, because you always know in the back of your mind that some of the story won't wrap up, that some of these heart-warming moments and odd coincidences are really just setting the stage. It seems almost unfair to try and judge the second in a trilogy on its own merits.
However, the inherent flaws of a second-out-of-three are among the only ones Spiderman 2 has. This one, like the first, has plenty of action, plenty of special effects, reasonably plausible characters, and enough romance bordering on soap opera to make the quiet moments feel important.
What Spiderman 2 has that the first one didn't is a very cool villain. Granted, some of the psychological background is a little harder to swallow. Still, Docter Octopus clanking through the streets and up tall buildings manages to look much more plausible than 'Green Goblin the Oversized Action Figure' on his souped-up hover board ever did.
This movie also takes advantage of the comic book Spiderman's human frailties, along with his superpowers. In the first movie I enjoyed the human parts better than the super-hero action sequences. This movie actually pulls that duality together better than the first one did, so that even the action scenes reveal more about Peter and bring in some heart-warming moments, too - my favorite takes place on a train.
Peter Parker's journey of maturing continues and still rings true. His statement that 'Sometimes you have to give up your dreams,' reminded me of another sacrificial character and one of my favorites in cinema, a Mr. George Bailey.
Once again I enjoyed the subplot of Harry Osborne, who's now spoiling for a fight with the man he's convinced killed his father. Harry's dangerous, which I suspect we'll see fully in the third movie. His relationship with Peter will continue to be important in the Spiderman saga.
I take my hat off to the people In Charge of this movie, who resisted the temptation to make the special effects too spectacular. Probably minute-for-minute there were more SFX action scenes than in the first movie, but they do not overwhelm the story. Could it be that Hollywood is learning bigger doesn't always mean better? Well, probably not, but this is still encouraging. I salute you.
A side note for my fellow members of the SeaQuest DSV cult following: Yes, the director's most important brother does appear and gets several more lines than in the last film.
If I had any issues with this movie at all, it would be with one of those odd coincidences I mentioned - the truly bizarre familial connections of MJ's fianc'. Granted, she's had no previous luck in looking at potential fathers-in-law, but this takes the cake. I fail to believe that that man raised a son who became an astronaut. Oh, well, don't mind me.
Overall, despite a mild case of middle-childitus, Spiderman 2 surprised me by at least equaling the quality of the first Spiderman. I rate it 7.5 out of 10.
It's become something of a truism in our culture that of all the places for people-watching, airports are one of the best. If you can stand the reheated food and the chairs that are only bearable so long, an airport can be a fascinating place. It's a place of transition; everyone has a destination, everyone's going somewhere.
Well, almost everyone.
Tom Hanks stars in this movie about one man in an airport who can't go anywhere. Due to a coup back home and international red tape, Viktor Navorski is stuck in John Kennedy airport. He is employed variously as cart returner, construction worker, and matchmaker. In his spare time he volunteers as an interpreter. He befriends a pretty flight attendant. And everywhere he goes he carries a Planter's Peanuts can.
Tom Hanks is his inimitable self in this movie, and does a wonderful job. His 'Krakohzian' accent is quite believable, by the way. Hanks reprises some of the innocence of his Forrest Gump days, although some of this material is more laugh-out-loud funny than that movie was. Frankly, Hanks is hilarious, especially in the first half. He's got good lines, granted, but he fills out this role so effortlessly that it's fun to just watch him walking with Viktor's uneven waddle.
The second half moves from funny into heartfelt and falters a bit there. Both Viktor's motivation and that of the antagonist, a Bureaucrat with a wounded ego, are puzzling at times. Also, the movie would have benefited from a clearer understanding of the rules governing Viktor's confinement. Really, it all seems to rest on the antagonist's one-sided feud with Navorski. That one man acts out with such vindictiveness at his own expense is not supported well.
Aside from Hanks, the cast works well. Ranging from the airport commissioner to the variously accented airport employees, everyone is at least believable. The only misstep, in my opinion, was Catherine Zeta-Jones' performance as the love interest. For starters, the character itself seems sort of unnecessary. Beyond that, Jones shows an alarming tendancy towards Meg Ryanish expressions. Perhaps that's just the effect Tom Hanks has on his co-stars? Or perhaps a Meg Ryan-style role naturally brings out Meg Ryan likenesses. Shudder.
Overall, while slowing a bit in the second half, this movie still had a great many funny moments and Hanks redeems all its other faults. This was definitely worth the price of admission. I rate it 8 out of 10.
Brad Pitt. Orlando Bloom. Achilles. Hector. Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Sand. Blood. Lots of blood. The ring and squish as a sword pierces a man's armor. The squirt from a man's cut throat. Shouts and dull thuds of shield against shield and the constant clanging of swords, all masking the groans of the dying and the silence of the dead.
A war, like the battle at Waterloo, which hinges on the little things. A man stealing another man's wife. A man who refuses to sacrifice his brother for his country. And standing always alone with his tiny band of near-immortals is a rogue, tall, strong, quick. A man impossible to kill, if his men, if the Greek soldiers, if the gossips and the old wives and even his enemies are to be believed.
If only Paris had been honorable or strong or wise or even just cowardly enough to leave blond Helen behind in Sparta, none of it would have happened. If Hector, finding out his brother's foolishness, would have just sent her back, with or without Paris, it might all have been averted. If King Priam of Troy, so wise in so many ways, had not such faith in his gods, Troy would not have counterattacked when it did. If Patroclus, cousin to the Greek champion, had not led Achilles' men into battle and then gotten himself killed, Achilles and his men would have sailed for home, Hector would not have died. If only Priam had heeded the first wise words to ever fly from Paris's mouth and had burned the treasonous wooden horse, Troy would not have fallen. Even, in the end, if Paris had not chosen a supremely inopportune moment to find some courage, Achilles would not have died and might still have been redeemed by a woman he was willing to quit fighting for. The if-onlies are enough to drive anyone insane, but it's not the fault of the filmmakers; tragic irony is a Greek invention and inevitable in this most Greek of stories, that of the fall of Troy.
I hate to pick apart the movie; it still seems so present that it seems a shame to shine light on its faults, or on any of its devices at all, successful or not. Let it be said that the individual fight scenes were exquisite, while the scenes of battle en masse was simply gratuitous. Yes, they fought, but is the blood really relevant to the storyline? I doubt whether an epic is possible in the space of 163 minutes, but if it is, then certainly it needs every one those minutes to weave its tale.
Along the lines of casting, I must first praise Eric Bana, whose tortured hero would have been reminiscent of the last leading character he played, had not his performance as Hector been better than that other by orders of magnitude. Orlando Bloom is more than convincing as the lovely younger son that everyone in the audience wants to choke. Peter O'Toole was fine as King Priam, though even if he should win that long-desired Oscar, I'm not sure he earned it for this role. Diane Kruger was well-cast as the face that launched a thousand ships, and especially so because she was a complete unknown before this. And Sean Bean played ably everything in a character that Boromir wanted to be but wasn't.
And now we must come to Achilles. Mr. Brad Pitt did his darndest, but it took him at least half the movie before he could make me forget that he is, after all, Brad Pitt. The part had so much to work with, but whether due to subpar acting or just having seen him in too many other things, the suspension of disbelief took much more effort than it should. Still, by the end he had won me over, making the fateful arrow to the heel that much more difficult to watch.
The romance between Achilles and Trojan princess Briseis was an unexpected but pleasant surprise. I'm told it's a major departure from the source material, but to me is proof that sometimes a little artistic license is beneficial. Their relationship caught me at an angle and let me believe. I think this may be because Briseis is such a strong character and very easy to root for. Helen is the fool her brother-in-law claims she is and Hectors wife is given to fits of weeping, but Briseis looks out into the world with eyes wide open, and is not afraid to suffer death for what she believes.
It's a visceral experience, and I recommend it. But its a draining experience. Dont expect to leave untouched. I rate it a 7.5 out of 10.
There must be a meeting place between my entertainment needs and the intrinsic qualities of comic books, because I keep watching more comic book movies, with no end in sight. Just before this one I saw Hellboy, on recommendation from a friend; and I hope to see X-Men 2 and Batman Begins before the end of the summer. Yet I've never read comics, unless you count Archie, and I rarely expect much from the movies into which they're adapted.
For example, I expected Daredevil to be a sodden mess, at best. The reviews were all poor; I'd never heard of the character, and who in their right mind would cast Ben Affleck as, well, anything? It was an experience I was willing to forego indefinitely, but a friend insisted and she was even willing to fund the rental.
And I was pleasantly surprised. This is by no means a great movie or even a good one, but I enjoyed it enough to wish it had been better. Ben Affleck actually turns in a decent performance, and his character's vulnerability - he's blind - lends him some appeal that he's always lacked in other things in which I've seen him. Daredevil is a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock by day and a vigilante with radar by night who struggles throughout the film with whether his personal brand of justice is really right. This conflict gives him slightly more complexity than many action heroes. The villains, Bullseye (Colin Farrell) and The Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), are quite entertaining in their constrained but important roles. And there's one fantastic scene when Murdock and his love interest, the heiress and martial arts expert Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), are on the top of a building and it starts to rain.
There are some caveats, of course. While Murdock's internal conflict is interesting, he's never developed well enough as a character for us to care much about his struggle. The character of Elektra is barely developed at all - one feels that there was a lot more development and insight in the comics that was cut from the film to save time. Perhaps this is, in fact, an editing problem, because the movie ran a regular two hours and odd minutes in length and yet felt as though a lot of the story was missing. There's been some talk about a sequel, which might address some of this, although unfortunately the word is that Affleck would return as Daredevil. And finally, there's some annoying and completely unnecessary voiceover in the beginning and end of the movie. It tells us nothing we can't infer from the screen itself, and just interrupts the flow.
While Daredevil is certainly not the best comic film I've seen - presently that honor is shared by the two Spiderman movies - it's not the worst, either, and manages to fairly engaging for most of its run time. It's a pity that more care wasn't taken to transfer the story from comic to screen, so that more of the character nuances could have been preserved. Overall, I rate this one a 6 out of 10.
I think I appreciated this movie more because I hadnt read the comic books, so the movie came across looking like a real story to me, instead of adaptation.
Spiderman is a superhero with superhuman abilities. The movie did a good job of looking at Peter Parker's transformation from nerdy geek to secret superhero. Our heart totally goes out to the kid, who has to make some huge choices. Peter's catchphrase through the movie is, 'With great power comes great responsibility.' The way he acts on that at the end of the movie with the girl who he's loved forever is truly heart-wrenching.
This movie has great special effects, a decent storyline, and good-looking leads. What bothered me about this story (aside from one of the corniest villains since 'The Thing') was character motivation. Why do these super-hero types always get hung up on crime and natural disasters? Even if you prevented all the crime in the world and fixed the earth so there were no more natural disasters, would life be happy ever after? If you solved world hunger, brought about world peace, destroyed nuclear weapons and perfected intergalactic travel to guarantee room for unlimited population growth, would all be well? People are still people. As long as they're their natural human selves, there will always be crime and war and all those other stains on humanity.
What this world needs isn't a super-hero to nab the bad guys and rescue babies from burning buildings. This world needs a savior. We don't need someone to treat the symptoms of humanity; we need someone to cure the disease.
And what do you know? That's exactly what God gave us. Jesus didn't come and kick the Romans out of Israel because He had more important things to do. Rather than protect the 'good' people (who haven't broken human law yet) by locking up the 'bad' people (who have already acted on their human impulses), Jesus redefined 'good' and 'evil' altogether. He offered to transform both the best and the worst of human beings.
Let's see Spidey do that!
The good stuff I said above still goes, though. This is good entertainment that'll have you looking at those cobwebby corners with a whole new perspective. I rate it 7.5 out of 10.
This is a hodgepodge of a thriller. A senator's young daughter is kidnapped from her ritzy, hi-tech, high security private school. The kidnapper pulls Dr. Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman), psychologist and policeman, into the case. Cross must then track down the kidnapper with the help of the private school's head of Secret Service, while dealing with the pain of losing his old partner eight months before.
The plot takes the obligatory twists and turns, but one turn manages to make the film feel cut in half, a l' Psycho. What's worse is the fact that none of the twists or turns really seem credible. The one really interesting, spine-tingling element of the beginning story, the kidnapper's fixation on the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby, never really pans out. It's going along fine when suddenly the afore-mentioned turn makes it irrelevant.
Sometimes these kinds of faults are forgivable, if the characters are interesting enough. Unfortunately, the bad guys here go from evil to plain unbelievable. Just how many psychotic criminals are there out there who leave careful trails of evidence behind? This movie, for a while, tries to do with its villain what Speed did so much better.
Morgan Freeman, AKA the good guy, plays the semi-reluctant pursuer of justice with the same warm-hearted wisdom he has before, which is fine but feels like a replay. The emotional damage of losing his partner is made much of in the beginning of the movie, but then almost completely dropped by the second act. So he goes from being semi-reluctant to just another cop on the job. The FBI agents lend more unbelievability to the story, as they serve absolutely no purpose in the movie from start to finish except clean up messes after they've happened. Cross and his partner might just as well have been on their own for all the help the FBI is. Even the potential conflict of a city cop with no jurisdiction working on a federal case is diffused when the FBI man-in-charge welcomes Cross in, saying, 'Turf wars are a waste of time.'
The victim of the these sorts of movies is often mostly ignored, which is too bad in this case, because the young actress playing Megan Rose does a credible job with what she's given. Megan's attempts to free herself are some of the more exciting moments in the film. It's unfortunate she and her friend and co-conspirator, Dimitri, didn't play larger roles in the story.
Overall, this effort was choppy, had too many trains of thought that led nowhere, and required more suspension of disbelief than I had. I give it a 4 out of 10.
WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS
This movie leaves me with many unanswered questions. What is Don Diego planning to do when he shows up at Monterro's hacienda towards the end of the movie, saying he'll take his daughter back? Why did the blonde captain have such a fixation about the Murrieta brothers? In whose house are Alejandro and Elena living in at the end of the movie? What was Diego's original plan in taking on Alejandro? Why did Santa Ana not know there was gold in California? How were Alejandro, Elena, and the mine workers able to survive that horrific explosion without a scratch? Why on earth was Alejandro such a good swordfighter when he'd only been practicing a few months?
Some of these questions, such as the last two, are typical 'isn't that convenient' questions. But some of the others leave without any real understanding of what was going on. Perhaps I'd understand the movie better if I had some historical context for it. The concept of a bunch of dons buying California sort of boggles me. I also don't understand why it would be so bad. Of course, the movie assumes the audience has some Zorro background and knows why Rafael and the dons are such bad news, but we are never really told why they should not be allowed to rule California. Who should?
These big questions leave the movie with an unsatisfying feeling. The Mask of Zorro takes what would have been epic events and an epic hero and crunches it all in a two-hour movie. It's fun to watch, yes. Anthony Hopkins is fine as the aging Zorro, Antonio Banderas puts some spice in the part of the new Zorro, and Catherine Zeta-Jones sizzles as the lovely Elena. But their character motivations are weak at best, I thought. Would wearing a mask really change a man as much as it does Alejandro?
In addition, this movie seems to have been made assuming the audience understood all that went before. Older Zorro movies are winked at, such as when the padre hides Alejandro in the confessional and is later sent to a mining camp. Someone who hasn't seen the older Zorro films will miss the nuances, however.
Overall, the finale seems lacking in both credibility and pizzazz, the story's context is ignored, and the characters are underdeveloped. The Mask of Zorro is a decent night's entertainment, but don't think about it too hard. I give it 5.5 out of 10.
This is one truly bizarre picture. I'd had it strongly recommended by one friend; another one hated it so much she stopped in the middle and whenever it was mentioned she'd say how 'horrible' it was. I wasn't sure what to expect.
The hook is simple, and it goes like this: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you.' Such is apparently the case for Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson), a clinically paranoid taxi driver who sees conspiracies everywhere and also suffers from epilepsy and social dysfunction. One of his theories apparently wasn't as crackpot as the rest, though, because someone really is after him. He turns to his crush Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts), who works with the justice department, for help.
For starters, this movie features one of the most enduring archetypes in American culture, the underdog. Watching the antics of Jerry the paranoid are just plain fun. The stuff that is never quite believable when the guy-next-door finds himself on the run makes perfect sense coming from Jerry. In addition, Mel Gibson is utterly mesmerizing and Julia Roberts is a both credible and beautiful damsel-in-charge who has a soft spot for Jerry.
One of my pet issues with movies is when the storyline isn't cohesive. By that I mean that the premise starts in one direction and then swerves off in another, never fulfilling the initial promise. Or there are plotlines that are begun and never followed. Or the style begins in one genre (say comedy) and in the second act turns into another (sappy drama-romance). Another way of looking at it might be that a cohesive movie is true to its own world, if not necessarily to ours.
This movie was, at least on first viewing, cohesive. You've got the underdog, secret agents, secret secrets, and all the fireworks. What makes this movie so much fun is that it's not about James Bond saving the world without getting a hair out of place. This is about a guy who might be considered socially unfit who somehow finds himself in the middle of all the trouble he's been imagining for years. Let me just say that this movie works. It's quirky, bizarre, all of those things, and yet...
And it ended the way I wanted it to end. It almost looked like was going to go serious on me there at the end, and I was really, really hoping it wouldn't, and it didn't. Sigh of relief.
The story of the Conspiracy itself is actually one of the less believable points in the story, but once accepted, it does seem to make sense of most everything else. (Besides, as Jerry points out, if a conspiracy can be proved than someone messed up somewhere). What's really funny to watch, at least for this girl who hates chick flicks, is the interaction between Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson. Jerry is the kind of guy we are all afraid to be seen with in high school, yet a few minutes of watching him and you can't help but have a sneaking liking for him. It's no wonder Alice starts looking at him differently, although that part of it is paced so well that it doesn't seem forced.
It suddenly occurred to me that this movie sort of reminds me of a Hitchcock thriller. It's got all the great suspense of Sir Alfred's best films. Think Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Spellbound all wrapped into one.
So, overall: performances were excellent, the plot was fun if slightly suspicious in parts, and you get your money's worth from this one. I rate it 8 out of 10.
Does hypnosis as a plot device put you to sleep? Do stories of past lives give you deja vu? Me, too, and I still managed to enjoy this movie quite a bit, even though it has lots of both.
A woman (Emma Thompson) shows up at a grand old mansion outside L.A. run by some nuns and a priest. She can't speak, seems barely conscious, and screams in terror in her sleep. Mike Church (Kenneth Branaugh), a jack of all trades with some detecting skills, agrees to try and figure out who she is. After her picture runs in the paper, an antique dealer and hypnotist shows up and offers to regress the woman back to find her identity. Woven throughout are threads of another drama, one of love, passion, and murder, one that takes place in the late forties between two people who bear a remarkable resemblance to Mike and the mystery woman.
Like I said, past lives aren't my thing, and hypnosis ranks alongside dream sequences in my book of plot devices. But if Alfred Hitchcock were to make a movie about reincarnation, I suspect it would look something like this. The black-and-white flashbacks flow fairly smoothly between the present storyline. The scissors gleam, as Hitchcock insisted scissors should. The sense of location is iffy, unfortunately - seeing the Shakespearian cast, I was expecting Britain.
The story itself, despite its suspicious elements, managed to keep me interested, although I suspect it won't for everyone. It tried to say a few things about fate and karma while it was at it, and ended with poor Church experiencing a bit of an identity crisis - one of the unmentioned quirks of reincarnation. However, the movie plays much better if you ignore the philosophical stuff, and especially the question of why the people reincarnated look so much like their previous selves, especially considering...
The cast is on par with the plot, although with one exception, they don't exactly outperform their material. Branagh does fine as the handsome American rake with a heart of gold; he's equally good as the regal German composer of whom everyone's afraid. Emma Thompson, alas, sounds British as both characters. She really performs better as an Englishwoman. Still, she looks terrified and hypnotized at the appropriate times.
The film has a recognizable supporting cast, including Jurassic Park's treacherous computer programmer and Ocean's Eleven's suave casino owner, both of whom are decent if not exciting. Plus there's a surprise whom I won't mention, since he's not listed anywhere until the end credits; suffice to say that his presence grounds the movie better than anything else in it. He's that exception I mentioned earlier, and plays his minor character with all the wisdom and sleaze the role requires.
So the plot was so-so, the production was patchy, and the cast was nothing spectacular. Why was this film worth writing about? Perhaps because it's got the worst title for a movie that I've seen in a while. Perhaps because I discovered Kenneth Branagh for the first time outside of Shakespeare.
No, I liked this movie because it was unexpected, and because it did feel suspiciously like one of Mr. Hitchcock's classics; think a Psycho sensibility with a strong flavour of Spellbound. If you want a rather dark evening's entertainment with a murder mystery and lots of scissors, this just might be for you. I rate it 6.5 out of 10.
Welcome to a film that gives new meaning to the term deja vu. James Cole (Bruce Willis), resident of a post-apocolyptic prison, is "volunteered" to travel back in time to collect information about the virus that swept the world clean of most human life and sent the rest of it scurrying underground. He finds himself flung back into various eras, always searching for the clues to how the outbreak. Through all the disorientation, the chases, the grime, he is haunted by a dream of being a young boy and watching two men and a woman hurtle past him in a brilliantly lit hallway. This dream, it turns out, holds the key to everything.
This movie is grimy, dark, depressing with an insane hopelessness that seeps into your bones. It wouldn't have such an aura of despair if it wasn't so well-made. The disorienting sweep of events always make some kind of disconnected sense, and yet each new turn is totally unexpected. Despair is gift-wrapped in this movie, with the plot turns feeling so horribly real it's difficult to remember the rest of the world.
Granted, there are a few rough spots, particularly in the future. Cole's menacing bosses come across pretty cheesy at times, as does the room where briefings and debriefings are conducted. Fortunately, most of the movie takes place is something near present-day, and that works much better.
The mood of the film is aided by a superb score, particularly an accordion bit that's just pure menace.
The cast does an admirable job as well. Willis believably plays the reluctant time-traveler who rarely has an entirely sane, coherent line. Madeleine Stowe plays her role as Cole's psychiatrist and love interest with human emotion but no overacting. It may be a help that I've never seen her in anything before, but she is Dr. Katherine Railly. And Brad Pitt is remarkably amazing as the not-all-there son of Nobel-prize-winning virologist Pitt was nominated for a supporting-role Oscar for this part, by far the highest artistic honor of his career thus far.
I write this review after having seen the film for the second time, because once wasn't enough. This is the sort of movie that plants an itch in the back of your mind, in the manner of some Philip K. Dick short stories, and you just have to come back and scratch it. You finish it and sit quietly for a while, trying to understand the implications. Of course, it presents the usual time-travel paradoxes, although it in no way devolves into the mind games that characterize some time-travel stories. This is a dark movie that makes you think. It's not the sort of thing you'd want to watch on a sunny Sunday afternoon, but it's a mezmerizing ride. I rate it 8 out of 10.
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
So, as my fiction workshop teacher says, 'What's this story about?' It's about a greenhorn FBI agent who follows his mentor's hunch by looking for a notorious bank-robbing gang in Southern California's (?) surfing scene. To do so, he convinces a surfer girl to teach him how to surf and settles into the community, looking for suspects.
As one might suppose from the locale, this is not your typical shoot-'em-up crime thriller. Nor is it an Eddie Murphy-style spoof of shoot-'em-up crime thrillers, though judging from the premise, that might be a logical guess. This movie is trying to take an FBI agent and some 'adrenaline junkies' and say something meaningful about them and life in general.
So just what is it saying? I'm not altogether sure. The FBI agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) is changed by his experiences with the surfers, especially Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Despite the fact that Bodhi not only robs banks but ends up killing people when things go sour, Utah still seems to find a kindred spirit there. This movie is really about their friendship. The girl has little to do with it, although she appears in a lot of scenes. It's another one of those buddy movies where a good guy and a bad guy become friends and realize that beyond one or two crucial differences, they have a lot in common.
Although Reeves' name is listed first in the credits and is apparently the main character, both his lines and his performance are lackluster at best. It's Swayze's performance that makes the movie here. This movie ends up being mostly a character study of Bodhi, and Swayze in more than up to the task.
His character would seem fairly straightforward if this was a typical action thriller: guy who lives for thrills and seems to live a fairly enticing life philosophy, but who is, in the end, just the bad guy whose only interest is himself. But this, as mentioned before, is not a typical thriller, and so we're expected to sympathize with Bodhi the way Utah does. Utah never looks Boaty in the eye and realizes that the man is essentially selfish. Bodhi talks about robbing banks to 'make a statement' for society's sake, but his disregard for society is obvious when he kills people in a bank robbery gone sour. His attitude is summed up in his question, 'Why be servants of the law when we can be its masters?'
Utah never sees the bankruptcy (no pun intended) of Boaty's philosophy. Utah's job is to uphold the law; doesn't he have any belief at all in what he's sworn to uphold? His experiences with Bodhi cause him, in the end, to throw his badge away, as though being Bodhi's downfall is more than he can deal with and still be in law enforcement. All this would be much easier to swallow if there was something in Utah's background to back up his reactions to things, but we know next to nothing about him. Our only clues are the reasons he gives the girl for wanting to surf, but those are suspect, since we know at least some of them were flat-out lies. So how did Utah get where's at? We don't know.
Although I differ with the movie's philosophical conclusions, the story along the way and Swayze's charismatic performance definitely kept me interested. I did have issues with a couple of moments of extreme predictability: once when Utah and fellow agents make a raid on some suspects for no apparent reason story-wise, and once at the end. During the last five minutes of the movie it was obvious how it would end, yet there was a chance for the screenwriters to be brave and make a totally different, less sentimental statement.
The supporting cast is mostly forgettable. The exceptions are Gary Busey as Utah's mentor, who steals every scene he's in, and the girl, who is charmingly convincing in her role as the love interest despite her irrelevance to the overall story.
This is a moody look at the surfing scene and one man's lawlessness. Despite its flaws, parts of it are mesmerizing and I'll not soon forget it. I rate it 6 out of 10.
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The Jacket (2005)
Collateral (2004)
The Village (2004)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
The Terminal (2004)
Troy (2004)
Daredevil (2003)
Spider-Man (2002)
Along Came a Spider (2001)
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
Dead Again (1997)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Point Break (1991)
Last updated October 21, 2006.