Ten Statements About....3 DAYS TO KILL (2013)

This film is actually as much about this kind of scene...

1) If you’re thinking this is a script where Luc Besson scratched out ‘Liam Neeson’ and wrote in ‘Kevin Costner,’ you’re kinda right....but then, Besson has been known to work with other Hollywood stars whose light had faded (i.e. Travolta in the unbearable From Paris With Love), and I don’t know if Neeson would have worked as well as Costner does due to the nature of the role and his relationship with the family he’s trying to reunite wih.  Plus working with a group other than his stock players sometimes revitalizes him.

2) Boy, Amber Heard--who is obviously assaying the role Besson would have given his beloved Maggie Grace--is having a ball playing Vivi.  Never showing up in the same outfit or hair color or hairstyle twice, Heard ends up playing the spy master as one part Mae West, one part Veronica Lake and one part Sigourney Weaver.  She’s a delight to watch every time she walks into a shot.

3) I was originally dismayed to see McG had directed this picture....but I have to admit that the man’s style has matured.  Instead of the ADD style of his earliest pictures, McG shows a newfound capacity to handle longer, subtler scenes of genuine human interaction with style and grace.  More importantly, he’s discarded most of his jittercam action style and is able to choreograph his set pieces much more effectively.

4) You know, I can do without the subtitles for the guy who may have a real thick French accent, but is speaking in English.  I mean, yeah his words are garbled, but they’re understandable.

...as it is about this kind of scene.

5) Since this is a Luc Besson penned action movie, the actual villians are little more than video game stage bosses...hell, they even have stage boss names like ‘The Wolf’ and ‘The Albino’ and ‘The Accountant.’  But that’s part of the point when it comes to being a Besson Bad Guy--you’re there to make the bad ass hero look good.

6) Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this version of the Besson thriller is how Costner’s Ethan ends up going to some of his quarry for advice on how to raise his daughter.  This even creates a strange, sympathetic-yet-sadistic relationship between him and Marc Andreoni’s Mitat that has a very Lethal Weapon 2 Mel Gibson/Joe Pesci vibe.  And the narrative arc between these two is so satisfying that the ultimate payoff makes total sense.

7) Perhaps the big problem with the film structurally is that the film’s twist, when it comes--and you know it’s coming the moment The Wolf mentions his partner--isn’t set up at all.  We never see the partner until the final set piece, although we have seen one of his relatives.  It’s a strange and puzzling choice.

8) I find it fascinating how the closer Costner gets to reuniting with his family, the more he begins to look like our concept of a spy--turning in his pseudo-cowboy outfit for a series of more stylish suits as the film progresses until, in the final act, he’s the very model of a superspy.

Yes, Amber Heard...you are Pretty With A Pistol...

9)  Luc, dude...what is it about you having people’s daughters run off to do something naughty and then get, I don’t know, grabbed by slavers or, in this case, nearly raped in a bathroom by three guys?  You got issues you need to come to grips with.

10) You know, as good as the action is at times, some of the best moments involve Costner and his onscreen daughter, Hailee Steinfeld’s Zooey going through some of the rites of passage a father and daughter have, albeit a few years too late.  While I was in no way a fan of Steinfeld’s performance, finding it strident at times (this was a case where the film would have benefited from a much younger Maggie Grace), but there’s a genuine warmth between the two actors which makes their narrative arc thoroughly believable.

Overall...a typical Luc-Besson-European-Set-Action-Thriller like the ones he seems to pump out every year, but with a surprisingly warm emotional center and much more subtlely directed than I ever thought possible by McG.

I ventured into Manhattan to visit The AMC Kips Bay this time.  Trailers included typical action fare as Brick Mansions (Besson’s attempt to Americanize District B13 that might be more interesting because it’s the first posthumous Paul Walker role); Sabotage (Could somebody please tell Arnold to stop...just..stop?); and Edge of Tomorrow (It’s the Annual Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner, only with the ‘what is he doing here?’ presence of Doug Limon behind the camera), plus inexplicably one for a romcom (The Other Woman, which continues to chronicle Cameron Diaz’ ongoing ungraceful journey towards old age).

Ten Statements About....U.S. MARSHALS (1998)

"C'mon!  Do I look like a villain?  I'm so charming in my
forced smile at the unfair charge of my nefariousness...."

"The river didn't get this guy. He's loose. If you can't find him dead someplace, he's running. Folks...we got ourselves a fugitive."

1) The biggest fundamental problem with this film is that this is a Modern Action Movie that is serving as a sequel to an effective and faithful adaptation of a classic TV Show that is one half action movie and one half mystery. With that mystery part gone, the film itself becomes unbalanced...

2) ...which means that we never buy into the presence of Robert Downey Jr.'s Royce. Even though Downey does his best to give Royce enough dimension in the earlier part that his 'surprise' turn in the final act is a surprise, we know by his arrival that we're in a Modern Action Movie. That means The Government Can't Be Trusted, and any one assigned to Tommy Lee Jones' Gerard is Suspect.

3) And speaking of Royce...you know the scene where he uses the eyeglasses to get out of the handcuffs, the scene that supposedly gains him Gerard's respect? We know from the previous film how smart Gerard is. He pegs Royce as someone interested in hindering his investigation a minute of so earlier...and yet this parlor trick is enough to throw him off the trail? No. F'in. Way. In the interest of throwing us off of Royce's scent, the script effectively devalues Gerard as an intelligent and cagey character.

"I ain't jumping off no roof.  Do I look like Harrison Ford?"

4) One of the strengths of The Fugitive was that we spent enough time in the first act with Dr. Kimble that we believed in his innocence, and even if we suspected otherwise his actions proved it. Wesley Snipes' Mark gets only cursory screentime so we don't get a backstory enough to trust him, and his actions are suspect in that first act. We're asked to trust that Mark is innocent because, well, he's being hunted down by Sam Gerard and that's what happened the last time, right? Right?

5) What was up with the relationship between Gerard and Kate Nelligan's Walsh? The whole through line between the two comes off as so...weird, right from her making that strange comment about Gerard taking the hot Chicago newswoman to a party to her out-of-nowhere admission of love for him. It's like we're supposed to surmise that they--what? Had a relationship in the past? Were married?--and yet, the script by John Pogue seems afraid to admit they're anything other than co-workers...so the film gets this strange vibe right from the start.

6) The whole conspiracy angle suffers because it's waaaay more complicated than the whole medicine tampering storyline in the original. And, since we get the idea that this is A Typical Modern Action Movie very early on, we know the two Government wanks who puts Royce on Gerard's team is In On It, the bulk of the New York stuff comes off as just running around eating up time.

7) While I enjoyed seeing the original team backing up Gerard again, the killing of Tom Woods' Newman is on the whole gratuitous. Newman is not as vividly drawn as either Daniel Roebucks' Biggs of Joe Pantiliano's Renfro, so we're not as upset or shocked when he's shot.

Because the thing THE FUGITIVE was really missing was
a generic French Hot Girl....

8) I wonder if the film would have held up better if the script didn't hew so close to the original's plot. The disaster freeing the fugitive, the revelation he's innocent, the perimeter search announcement, even Tommy Lee Jones wearing a silly outfit in pursuit of a fugutive...all of these things only serves to remind us how much better the original is. Maybe if the producers and scriptwriters had chosen to go down another pass--what if, let's say, the fugitive wasn't innocent but an outright pure-D-mean master criminal. Wouldn't that be cooler?

9) Don't get me wrong--Tommy Lee Jones tries his best to keep this film from falling apart, and the chemistry between him and his staff from the previous film (especially Pantaliono) is still strong. But there's only so much good will can do. This script is so intent on playing it safe that they give Jones nothing new to chew on, and as such Jones eventually sinks into going through the motions.

10) Considering how the original film was informed by its Chicago setting, director Stuart Baird falls down a lot when it comes to the locations. Until Kentucky is mentioned by name, a large chunk of the second act seems to take place in some redneck limbo, and if I hadn't recognized the little pocket park Snipes places his call to his French Hot Girl to I wouldn't have known this was New York until much, much later. It's just another little contribution to the overall sense of genericness this film has.

Overall...not very good at all, this sequel fails its star by never allowing him, the script or the direction to stray from anything other than generic Action Movie-ness.

Ten Statements About....FULL CONTACT (1992)

Chow Yun-Fat goes undercover at Surgis...no, wait...

"Come after me if you're tired of living."

1) While John Woo seems to be influenced by the Sam Peckinpahs and Sergio Leones and Don Seigels of the world, Ringo Lam seems gleeful in the way he wallows around in his influences--namely the Bruckheimer/Simpson axis of directors. This film has all the earmarks of a typical Bruckheimer/Simpson action film, from the thorough disregard for collateral human damage to the cartoony bad guys to the way all the action sequences seem to be drenched in sexy blue light.

2) Watching this film made me once again feel sorry for Chow Yun-Fat. Here's this guy who is truly a movie star in the old school sense--someone who plays himself more or less and holds the film together strictly by force of charisma. There are long stretches where this film just threatens to fall apart...and yet, when all seems lost, Yun-Fat's Gou-Fei steps back into the picture and pulls everything back into place with a simple line reading or bit of body language.

3) I can't help thinking that Lam is playfully mocking John Woo's bromances with Simon Yan's The Judge being openly homosexual and yearing for Gou-Fei. The fact that he's apparently a magician thief who hangs out with a cartoon punk and his perpetually horny, hyena-laughing wife makes this aspect all the more odd. And Yam, bless his heart, just jumps in with both feet and has as much fun as he can with this insane idea.

"Stop looking at my panties and get me a piano...I'm playing
Neil Gaiman's birthday in an hour!"

4) And speaking of that henchwoman--I found Bonnie Fu Yuck-Jing (who apparently doesn't even have a character name--at one point she is referred to as Yin) rather appealing in a peculiar, disquieting way. Looking like an Asian Tori Amos, doing the weirdest laugh I've heard in action cinema in a while (I wonder if Ellen Page watched this before taking on her role in Super), and behaving like the dream Bruckheimer/Simpson girl, she's....well, unique. Far more unique than her mohawked, unitard wearing husband, Frankie Chin's 'Madman.'

5) Thankfully, we have Ann Bridgewater's Mona to balance out the bizarre and out there Yin. Playing the usual thankless task of a Bruckheimer/Simpson girlfriend, Mona is all to willing to go along with her rote role--until it's time for her to fall back into Gou-Fei's arms. At that point, she tells both Gou-Fei and his brother, who she gets together with during the long, long period where he's believed dead, to get stuffed because only she gets to decide who she stays with. It's a very satisfying swerve.

6) I am very, very curious about the club several key scenes happen in. I understand that the reason Gou-Fei hangs out there is because Mona works as a dancer....but what is the deal? The music seems to indicate this is a strip club, except that Mona's dance routines seem to be some sort of weird kinda amateur modern art dancing. The one routine with Mona and a partner dressed as what appears to be Pacific Islanders seems particular strange entertainment for the bikers and thugs of this place.

"And my switchblade went snicker-snack...."

7) Lam does some strange things in his action sequences. Most people will point to those primitve CGI shots of bullets rocketing toward each other like, but the one moment that strikes me as unusal in a beautiful way occurs during the opening knife fight. The way Gou-Fei finds a stream of water falling from--the roof? A lamppost? the composition never makes it clear--and uses it to clean his switchblade after stabbing an enemy while strange shting-shting noises pervade the soundtrack is so bizarre but eloquent, establishing something about the style of the film going in.

8) While this film does seem to show a rather...vigorous disregard for civilian casualties--there are numerous firefights between these two criminal crews where people just go down in sprays of strawberry jelly, and cars blow up as if on reflex with civilians inside--but there's this weird, discordant moment in the second act where Gou-Fei takes the time in his escape from a burning building to save a young girl. This girl is cut back to a number of times even when the plot has moved on. It's a strange development, given that its result--Gou-Fei desiring to mend his ways and revenge himself on The Judge--given that the shock of being betrayed by his brother Sam could also work to achieve this end. And speaking of Sam...

9) Anthony Wong Chau-Sang gives what may be the most interesting performance as Sam. In the first act, he behaves like a sniveling toady, and it's obvious that Gou-Fei is in this life partially to protect his brother. But after that moment where Sam is forced to 'kill' Gou, there is a moment of transformation. Chau-Sang's body language, his appearance, even his voice seems to change ever-so-slightly over the course of a couple of scenes until he's an entirely different person by the third act. And even then, he starts slowly regressing while still retaining his new persona throughout the last twenty minutes.

10) Look, I will accept the phony prosthetic fingers Gou sports even when they look like they're made out of reaaaaalllly thin rubber they use to make cheap monster masks in novelty shops. But being asked to accept that these fingers somehow allow him to shoot The Judge dead....nyah.

Overall...gleefully out there and cartoony without a hint of irony, this is an example of another great Hong Kong director. Plus, it's a reminder of why Chow Yun-Fat was the Garry Cooper of his time.

Ten Statements About....KILLER ELITE (2011)

The truth?  The guy in the chair would kick the ass of
the guy with the gun any day...

1) The pre-title sequence is extremely well-crafted. In just a few minutes, we get a real sense of the relationship between Statham's Bryce and DeNiro's Hunter, learn a little bit about both them and their partner, see them in action and find out why Bryce walked away. It's the sort of quick storytelling that the film really needs...and that we don't see again.

2) The film is frequently in danger of being stolen by Dominic Purcell's Davies and Aden Young's Meier. These two work off each other extremely well--and off Statham--that I sort of wish we could see the three of them put together for an real caper flick. As it is, they light up the screen, and their presence is missed in the film's second half.

3) While I understand that the film is based on a non-fiction book recounting events set in 1981, there's no reason why the film needed to be set in 1981. We never get a sense of the film taking place in the past, and the themes and elements contained within are just as pertinent to a modern day story. On top of that, I'm sure the film is so fictionalized that saying it was 'based on a true story' is questionable (thus the 'suggested by the book' credit at the end). Hell, except for the crawl at the beginning and end of the film, I wouldn't have noticed it was a period piece.

First Stallone, now deNiro...Statham is specializing in
starring with Ass-Kicking Grampas!

4) Look, I know Yvonne Strahovski is uncommonly tall--you only have to look at the shot of her and Statham kissing to realize this--but she still looks weirdly like a much taller woman squished into the form she's in now. That being said, she does her thankless task as Bryce's Girl admirably and with grace, and it's refreshing to see her act with her natural accent.

5) Once again, the shakey cam is a detriment. Hey, I understand that using shakey cam allows the director to hide the use of stunt doubles, but you don't hire Jason Statham and Clive Owen, two of the most physically capable actors around today, and then blunt our attempts to appreciate their physicality by giving the cameraman a triple cappuccino with added sugar.

6) It's real nice to see that director Gary McKendry allows deNiro a small but effective fight sequence to remind us that at one time he was as physically capable as the other two leads.

7) And speaking of deNiro, I do like that the script from McKendry and Matt Sherring presents his Hunter as someone who is proud of Bryce for walking away. All too often, we get the mentors who try to pull their proteges back in, but McKendry realizes the story is about things other than that.

8) I gotta wonder if the sudden appearance of a third player in this film's intrigue just complicates things needlessly, since that aspect of film disappears just as quickly as it is introduced.

Jason Statham is about to kick a guy's ass tied to a chair. 
This is why he is Cooler Than You.

9) I also have to wonder if the secret society of S.A.S. agents, The Feathermen, is truly necessary to the plot. We only see them two or three times giving orders to Owen's Spike, boasting about how they control things...and yet, we never see any proof they do. Isn't the concept of 'Mercenaries Vs. S.A.S. Bad Asses' enough to sell your story?

10) And speaking of The Feathermen...this movie is supposedly 'suggested by' a book named The Feathermen, and yet somebody--McKendry, the producers, whoever--decide to pass on that mysterious sounding name for something as relatively generic as Killer Elite? I suspect someone had Peckinpah on their mind after all.

Overall...meh. Nothing to write home about that could've been better.

Back to the Atlas this time, and another show where someone forgot to turn on the projector lamp until it was time for the trailers. Hearing the audio-only soundtrack to the Firstlook and imagining your own visuals does not make it better. Trailers included The Grey (Daniel Craig versus wolves...shrug), Paranormal Activity 3 (double shrug), J. Edgar (which is really intriguing) and The Rum Diary (which I want to see...the prospect of Johnny Depp returning to Hunter S. Thompson at a point in his career prior to the events of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without the influence of an outre director like Terry Gilliam is...fascinating).

Ten Statements About....FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (2010)

"That's right...I got a wacky goatee...I got a big gun...life is good."

"If you wanna be a secret agent man, you have to roll like a secret agent man. It's code"

"Code?"

"Yeah. Code. Wax is on, he's gonna take you off. Gives them something to think about, throws them off balance. Got it?"

　1) Even more so than Unknown (see this previous post), this movie is designed to take advantage of the success of Taken. The film's structure is frighteningly similar, right down to one set piece involving the sudden shooting of a woman during dinner. However...

2) Even though the aping of Taken includes the fifteen minutes or so of us getting familiar with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' Reese, you never get the impression these characters exist in anywhere other than movie world. The only moments that indicate that these characters have a life outside of the ninety minutes of the film are those designed to set up a sequel.

3) Boy, give John Travolta a distinctive hairstyle and he'll eat up not only all the scenery in the movie, but part of your home....

"Oh, Sweet Caroleen...Caroline...oh, whatever."

4) This script is so shoddy that I did not realize that Caroline (which the characters in the film keep calling 'Caroleen') was a) a fashion designer or b) Pakistani until late in the third act. Both of these points are extremely important to the film's plot, and should be established far, far earlier...although it does make the nonsensical scene where she shows off a dress made out of their bedroom curtains a little less silly.

5) There's something risible about Reese's character arc--so the only way he can become a hero is to be an overacting, loudmouthed, over-ammo'd jerk like Travolta's Charlie Wax?

6) All the points in the script meant to give a little life to Charlie Wax just don't work. The shoutback to Pulp Fiction is particularly winge-worthy, given how the film pretty much stops dead so the jokey lines can play out. But the gags about The Karate Kid and the propensity for action films to use heavy metal also fall flat.

7) Even though there is supposed to be a face to the villains here, they're totally one dimensional, just straw men for Wax to shoot down, blow up and otherwise mutilate. Even when one of the villains mumbles stuff about having a purpose and a destiny, there's no emotional resonance because there's no weight to the character as established.

8) So you Chinese restaurant guys hide cocaine in the ceiling of your restaurant why, exactly?

Theirs is a proper love...

9) I kept thinking throughout this that if someone decided to do a reboot of the Matt Helm films, but tried to make them spoofy like the original movies...well, the modern Matt Helm wouldn't be too far afield from Charlie.

10) Considering that so much of this film resolves conflict by having Charlie shoot a procession of larger and larger guns--leading up to the third act set piece of Travolta chasing a faceless terrorist with a rocket launcher--there's no reason to spend so much time establishing Reese's intelligence or cunning.

In short--a shabby let down of a follow-up to Taken, too in love with its explosions and in-jokes to realize that the reason Taken worked was because you believed in the characters.

Ten Statements About....UNKNOWN (2010)

Liam Neeson and Aiden Quinn fight over whose robot
January Jones is....

1) There are wax statues more expressive than January Jones. Every time she is on screen, she sucks the life force out of the film. And on top of that....

2) ...the obvious discrepancy in ages between the fifty-something Neeson and female leads Jones (32) and Diane Kruger (34) gives the film a very strange vibe. Granted, I suspect the discrepancy between Neeson and Jones may have been intended by writers Oliver Butcher and Steve Cornwell as a clue to what is going on, but it's never addressed at all.

3) I know Kruger was born in Germany and is fluent in the language, but I have no idea what her rationale was behind that 'moose and squirrel' Bosnian accent she attempts.

Oh, if only this guy was the protagonist of the film...

4) To my surprise, the best performance hands down is from Bruno Ganz, playing the former secret agent turned detective Neeson turns to...and his single scene with Frank Langella is the highlight of the film.

5) It's obvious to me that this film was meant to capitalize on Neeson's success in the Luc Besson-produced Taken (Hell, look at that movie poster!), and the look and pacing of the film is very reminiscent of that earlier film. What this film lacks that Taken had was a definite sense that these characters had a life and personality outside what the film requires. Now granted, the twist indicates that some of these characters don't have a life outside the film--but we should never have felt that so soon in the movie's running time.

6) And about that twist--it is a good one, a little bit of information that just changes the playing field and makes some of the weird super-heroish behavior Neeson exhibits in the first two acts. But it also colors Neeson's character in such a way that you can't accept his stated intention in the third act, especially after the savage knife fight he has with Adian Quinn.

7) There's a second twist in this plot, one involving the ultimate MacGuffin--but it's one that is so sketchily presented out of nowhere that it doesn't feel right...especially since the revelation of the second twist ties into the reason for the first twist.

8) I was really taken with Rainer Bock's performance as security chief Herr Strauss. He manages to successfully be an impediment to Neeson without once appearing to be a caricature. It's small roles like this one, and that of Clint Dyer (playing a co-worker of Kruger) and Karl Markovics (playing the doctor who treats Neeson) and Eva Lobrau (as the nurse who directs Neeson to Gant), that creates a veracity of place in the film...and that is sadly squandered.

"How does it feel/to treat me like you do..."

9) I never, ever want to see Liam Neeson in a nightclub where the DJ is blasting New Order's 'Blue Monday' again. That's just so...wrong.

10) Quinn tries the best he can with what is ultimately an incredibly thankless role as Neeson's doppelganger--although the scene of the two of them recounting facts of their colleague's life to prove that they're both the genuine article is terrific.

In short--there are some good elements here...but the film ultimately doesn't succeed due to the lackluster script, some questionable casting and a slavish desire to imitate Taken to the point where....well, we want to see Taken again.

I saw this at the Regal Atlas and...well, things are falling apart there. I suppose I should be grateful that the always dreadful movie spam Firstlook was lacking any video for the first fifteen minutes...but the lackadasial way the staff corrected the problem worries me. The trailers were a seemingly random mix including reprises of the Green Lantern and Battle: LA (which is so distinctive, with its atonal score and lack of narrative, that makes me wonder if I should watch it after all), and a horrifically bad trailer for a romcom called Something Borrowed that manages to make every single person in the film appear repulsive...but then, it stars Kate Hudson, who seems to have made her career out of appearing in romcoms that make her appear repulsive.