FILM REVIEW OF "UNBREAKABLE" (2000)

Writer & director M. Night Shyamalan's fourth film "Unbreakable" refers to its protagonist, football stadium security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who has been born with an almost perfect body because his bones cannot be broken. Far less introspective and surprising than the enigmatic "Sixth Sense," this atmospheric melodrama depicts the friendship between Dunn and an African-American, Elijah Price, nicknamed Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), who suffers from an unusual bone disease designated 'Osteogenesis Imperfecta.' Basically, 'Osteogenesis Imperfecta' is a genetic disorder where bones break easily. In other words, Glass' surname reflects the extremely fragile nature of his body. The first scene in "Unbreakable" details the birth of Mr. Glass in a department store apparel fitting room.  One of the men who takes charge of the infant discovers to his horror that the little boy's arms and legs are misshapen from where he fought to get out of his mother's womb. Later, we learn that Mr. Glass has become obsessed with comic book superheroes.  Shrewdly, his mother (Charlayne Woodard of “The Crucible”) used comics to coax her son out of the seclusion of their apartment. Glass becomes a leading authority on comic books as well as the characteristics of super heroes and super villains. He represents a strong villain because he reckons if he occupies one end of the spectrum then an 'unbreakable' hero occupies the other end. In his fiendish efforts to find the other end of the spectrum, Mr. Glass commits incorrigible crimes which eventually land him in a mental asylum. For example, he engineers a train wreck where everybody on board dies, except for our protagonist David Dunn. 

Eventually, Mr. Glass catches up with David after his miraculous survival without a broken bone makes news’ headlines as the sole survivor of the deadly train wreck.  Moreover, he takes a bizarre interest in him that Dunn doesn't reciprocate.  Nevertheless, David’s curiosity prompts him to search for information about his health that he has taken for granted.  For example, he has never missed a day at work owing to illness.  Later, he realizes that he was never injured in an accident that broke his future wife’s leg.  After the wreck, David cites an injury that convinced him from pursuing a promising career in college football.  His wife, Audrey Dunn (Robin Wright of "Forrest Gump"), is relieved to learn David has decided to hang up his cleats.  Glass' inquiries arouses the curiosity of David's son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark of "Gladiator") who loads up more free weights than David thinks possible to press and winds up impressing both of them.  David pushes 350 pounds!  Later, when Joseph is convinced that his father cannot be hurt by flying lead, a standoff occurs in the kitchen with Joseph threatening his dad with a revolver at point blank range. Of course, neither David nor his terrified wife Audrey believe that he is invincible where bullets are concerned, and they manage to persuade Joseph to put the pistol down.  Reportedly, when George Reeves portrayed the Man of Steel on the television program “Superman,” a child approached him with a gun during a public appearance and tried to shoot him, but Reeves talked him out of it.  He warned him that the bullet might ricochet off him and wound somebody else.

The $75-million "Unbreakable" boils down to your basic clash of the titans. Mr. Glass has spent his entire life searching for David. Initially, David refuses to believe anything about him made him special.  After the tragic train accident, David has second thoughts.  One scene demonstrates both of David's two usual capabilities. A maniac forces his way into a residential home, kills the husband, ties up the two children, assaults the wife, and leaves her tied up with bleeding wrists. Meantime, David has the power of insight that enables him to tell who constitutes a threat to the public. Glass is on hand at the football stadium when David displays this power.  Scrutinizing the spectators filing into the stadium, David points out a suspicious character wearing a cameo shirt.  Our protagonist suspects this fellow may be packing a pistol out-of-sight under his shirt. At the last minute, the suspicious fellow steps out of line.  Desperately Mr. Glass pursues him and falls down a stairway in his efforts to learn if he was toting a firearm which matched David's description. Indeed, this suspicious guy was carrying a concealed weapon!  Later, David spots a maintenance man.  They brush past each other, and David follows him to the house where the husband lies dead and the children are tied up.  David attacks the maintenance man and gets his arms around his neck.  The maniac slams David repeatedly against walls, smashing up those walls, but he cannot dislodge David who keeps him in a choke hold until the brute loses consciousness.  At first, David and his family didn’t trust Elijah, and they classified him as a nuisance. Their attitude changes, and the two become friends, until the final quarter of the action, when Elijah reveals his true colors, and David realizes that Elijah poses a threat.  He orchestrated three terrorist attacks in an effort to find the man at the other in of the spectrum.  Once, David recognizes Glass as a threat, he alerts the authorities. 

Clocking in at 106 minutes, “Unbreakable” seems to take forever to unfold.  The ending is a let-down because Glass and David never tangle, but the character-driven action is momentarily engrossing until it concludes with an anti-climactic situation. Bruce Willis delivers a beautifully restrained performance, and he behaves just as we suspect a normal person would.  The scene on the train before the accident is liable to draw the wrath of married women.  David removes his wedding ring and makes a play for a female passenger who sits beside him.  Samuel L. Jackson is just as good as Elijah but never really seems menacing enough.  Despite the strong character study of two rivals, “Unbreakable” is by its dreary pace and its anti-climactic ending.  

FILM REVIEW OF “G.I. JOE: THE RETALIATION” (2013)

The sequel “G.I. Joe: The Retaliation” (**1/2 out of ****) scraps half of everything in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra.”  Basically, if you missed the first “Joe,” then this splendid looking sequel may not make a whole lot of sense, particularly the Presidential hostage scenes.  Unless you’ve seen “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra,” you won’t know Zartan had been tweaking his impersonation of the U.S. President. Despite a sturdy cast and stupendous production values, this futuristic actioneer could have retained several elements that made its predecessor entertaining.  The first mistake Paramount and Hasbro made was eliminating everybody but Zartan, the President, and Storm Shadow.  Ripcord, General Hawk, Scarlett, Ana, and Destro are A.W.O.L.  Well, Destro has a cameo, but we never get a glimpse of him or Christopher Eccleston.  Arnold Voslow appears briefly as Zartan, but you could miss him if you blinked your eyes.   When the sequel isn’t sacrificing top tier cast members, it is rewriting the first film and rehabilitating a villain.  Not only is Storm Shadow no longer wicked, but we also learn he had been framed in the first film.

Meantime, “Step Up 3-D” director Jon M. Chu and “Zombieland” scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick introduce several new characters, including Dwayne Johnson as a massive sergeant major, Adrianne Palicki as sexy Lady Jaye, D.J. Cotrona, and Bruce Willis as General Joe Colton.  Presumably, the producers brought Bruce Willis on board to beef up things, but he shows up for only a handful of scenes.  When he enters combat, he doesn't even have to duck bullets.  Bruce takes our heroes on a tour of his armory-like residence, rides in the back of an El Camino with an assault rifle, and later passes out medals. As a character nicknamed ‘Roadblock,’ Dwayne Johnson saves the day after Channing Tatum makes an early departure about a half-hour into the melee.  Chu and his scenarists must have seen “The Expendables 2” because “G.I. Joe: The Retaliation” strikes me more about revenge rather than retaliation.  Other things missing are the outlandish Delta 6 accelerator suits that our heroes donned for the Paris sequence of “G.I. Joe” and those nasty nanomites that gnaw through armor as if it were candy.  As comely as both Adrianne Palicki and Elodie Yung are, they’re no match for Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols.  The second “Joe” comes up light on villains, too.  Nobody here can compete with either Christopher Eccleston or Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

“G.I. Joe: The Retaliation” picks up where the first film concluded.  The villainous Zartan has completed his masquerade as the President and has managed to fool everybody.  Next, he sets out to locate Cobra Commander.  As it turns out, Cobra Commander and Destro are imprisoned in a European poky at the bottom of an old East German mine shaft.  Warden Nigel James (Walton Goggins) provides Storm Shadow with an expository laden tour of his maximum security facility when he arrives with an escort.  Meantime, the President dispatches Captain Duke Hauser (Channing Tatum of “Magic Mike”) and the G.I. Joes on a secret mission to Pakistan to retrieve some nukes.  Initially, our heroes encounter little difficulty and wind up in the Hindus Valley waiting for an extraction team.  Suddenly, the worse thing imaginable happens.  They are blown to smithereens by their own people.  The President (Jonathan Pryce) orders their deaths because he is in reality Zartan.  Meantime, Zartan appears on national television and reveals that the G.I. Joes tried to appropriate the atomic bomb for their own use.  Fortunately, Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson of “Snitch”), Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki of “Red Dawn”), and Flint (D. J. Controna of “Dear John”) survive the sneak attack.  Actually, Duke saved Flint but died in the process.  The three hide in a convenient well when the mop-up crew arrive.  As usual, the villains are too lazy to mop up well enough.  They check out the well and fire a couple of shots into it that miss all three crouching just below the surface.  A hand grenade would have done nicely, but the heroes have to survive.  This is the first mistake that Reese and Wernick made when they let the heroes off too easily.  The trio make it back to America and establish a secret base with the help of one of Roadblock’s old ghetto friends.  

Eventually, our discredited heroes contact retired U.S. General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis of “Die Hard”) who was one of the original Joes.  Colton furnishes them with an incredible arsenal and agrees to join them.  You can tell this scene was lensed before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting because it made the final cut.  Colton leads our heroes on a tour of his residence.  Every drawer and cabinet conceals automatic pistols and assault weapons.  While Roadblock and company are acquiring weapons, Snake Eyes (Ray Park of “X-Men”) and Jinx (Elodie Yung of “District 13: Ultimatum”) are on the other side of the world.  They are scaling the Himalayas mountain to nab Storm Shadow where he is recuperating in a temple.  Storm suffered horrible burns on the back when an ex-Joe (Ray Stevenson of “Punisher: War Zone”) rescued both Cobra Commander and he from the prison.  Chu stages the mountain side scene with ninjas tangling on the slopes with some finesse.   

Paramount Pictures shelved “G.I. Joe: The Retaliation” for a year to add 3-D.  I’ve seen both versions, and the 2-D surpasses the 3-D.  Furthermore, the 3-D contributes nothing to the action because—like most 3-D movies now-- nothing flies at you.  Polished production values, top-notch cinematography, and first-class CGI work, except in Bruce Willis’ El Camino scene, distinguish this complicated combat caper with too many characters.  The finale with our heroes struggling to prevent the Zeus satellites from destroying Earth generates a palatable amount of suspense.  Of course, Cobra Commander eludes everybody, and General Joe hands Roadblock one of General Patton’s pistols to bring him back.

A FILM REVIEW OF "A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD" (2013)

Before I saw “A Good Day to Die Hard,” I remembered “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” as my least favorite film in the Bruce Willis franchise. Now, “Max Payne” director John Moore’s “A Good Day to Die Hard” (** OUT OF ****) has acquired that dubious distinction.  This fast-paced, but formulaic, 98-minute actioneer should have gone the straight to video route.  Nobody would have missed it.  I’ve seen better Bruce Willis epics go the straight to video route.  Although it boasts some sensational, larger-than-life stunts, the fourth “Die Hard” sequel qualifies as a Spartan saga with little to distinguish from its straight t0 video competition.  The film generates little charisma and lacks a strong villain like previous “Die Hards.”  Indeed, it appears that Twentieth Century Fox has inserted the Bruce Willis/John McClane hero into a raw-edged, generic thriller about a tense father and son relationship.  Unlike the first two “Die Hard” movies, the action doesn’t occur at Christmas, and McClane isn’t confined to one setting as he was in the first two “Die Hards.”  “A Good Day to Die Hard” is more like “Die Hard with a Vengeance” and “Live Free or Die Hard” since the hero remains at large.

“A Good Day to Die Hard” takes place almost entirely in Moscow.  The Russian villains are former political allies who are prepared to kill each other.  Chaganin (Sergey Kolesnikov of “Cold Souls”) is a clean-shaven, natty, high-ranking politician with influence galore.  The other is a wealthy bearded dissident, Komarov (Sebastian Koch of “Unknown”), who bides his time in jail playing chess.  Ultimately, one of these villains wants what the villains in “The Expendables 2” wanted: weapons grade uranium.  As Detective Lieutenant John McClane, Bruce Willis returns in fine form to thwart the evil villains.  Sadly, scenarist Skip Woods doesn’t give Willis any clever wisecracks.  Consequently, for lack of anything better to utter, Bruce says, “I’m on vacation,” at intervals.  Ironically, he isn't on vacation.  He does utter his personal motto once when he pulls his biggest stunt to save his son’s life.  He performs feats of derring-do to assist his estranged son.  Basically, Bruce is the whole show.  The only other actor you may recognize is Cole Hauser.  Cast as the expendable CIA partner, Hauser gets caught in the cross-fire.  The remainder of the cast is largely unknown.  Jai Courtney resembles Sam Worthington of “Avatar” fame, but he radiates little of Worthington’s charm.

Our indestructible hero, Detective John McClane, is shooting targets on the NYPD firing range when he learns that his son Junior (Jai Courtney of “Jack Reacher”) has been imprisoned in Russia.  What the elder McClane doesn’t learn until later is John McClane, Jr., works as a spook for the Central Intelligence Agency.  Naturally, McClane flies off for Moscow after an obligatory moment with his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead of “Live Free or Die Hard”), with whom he remains on good terms.  The last time we saw Lucy, she was struggling with the villains in “Live Free or Die Hard.” Aside from Winstead reprising her role, there is little here to associate with the franchise.  When our heroes get a quiet moment to reminisce, they mumble forgettable dialogue. They are better off blasting away at the opposition or dodging both bullets and explosions.  McClane still has a thing or two that he can teach his son, but their relationship doesn’t advance very far.  They lack camaraderie, and Junior is one of those sons who could die and not be missed.

Everybody is after the elusive Komarov who claims to have an incriminating file on the wicked Chaganin.  You see, Chaganin is campaigning for the position of Defense Minister.  Komarov had a deal with the CIA, specifically Agent John McClane, Jr., before everything went chaotic.  Chaganin will do anything to dispose of Komarov, and he dispatches a gang of gunsels led by Alik (Rasha Bukvic of “Taken”) who hates Americans.  The younger McClane shoots his way into prison and then during a raid on the courthouse, Komarov and he get together.  John confronts them, and Junior puts a pistol in his face.  No, he isn’t happy to see his father.  Meantime, Alik and company are breathing down Junior’s neck.  A demolition-derby automotive chase ensues with some spectacularly orchestrated car crashes.  Junior and Komarov are desperately struggling to elude Alik, while John tags along close behind trying to run interference when he has the chance.  As it turns out, Komarov hasn’t been entirely honest with Junior about the mysterious file he has on Chaganin.  Eventually, we learn that Komarov has a daughter with her own pistol and an attitude.  The Komarovs betray our heroes and grab a helicopter.  They are bound for the sinister ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant when Komarov has stashed the file.

Sadly, the villains in “A Good Day to Die Hard” aren’t memorable.  Nobody here is both as deadly and debonair as Alan Rickman was in the original “Die Hard” or Jeremy Irons in “Die Hard with a Vengeance.”  After father and son reconcile themselves somewhat, the best they can do is dodge more bullets and hope for the best.  At one point, after surviving several close scrapes, McClane scrambles aboard the villains helicopter and commandeers a vehicle stashed inside the chopper.  The villains are about to riddle yet another office building with machine gun fire where Junior is hiding.  Our stalwart hero cranks up the vehicle inside and drives it out of the cargo bay.  This action tilts the helicopter backwards at a precipitous angle so its machine guns miss their intended target.  This destruction of the helicopter qualifies as the best of the fireball explosions in “A Good Day to Die Hard.”

“Swordfish” scenarist Skip Woods doesn’t give us a lot to get attached to in this installment.  The surprises aren’t very surprising, and the filmmakers struggle to do anything that hasn’t been done before, like blowing up the above-mentioned helicopter.  No matter when you see it, “A Good Day to Die Hard” has nothing good about it.