FILM REVIEW OF ''BRICK MANSIONS" (2014)

Acclaimed French filmmaker Luc Besson has a knack for recycling material.  Nevertheless, he knows how to write riveting action thrillers. “La Femme Nikita,” “The Transporter” trilogy, “Kiss of the Dragon,” “Taken,” “Taken 2,” “Lockout,” ‘The Family,” “Leon: The Professional,” and “Colombian” illustrate his expertise.  Besson’s heroes and heroines are stalwart souls who refuse to be intimidated by either formidable foes or odds.  Revenge usually lies at the heart of the matter, and the cruel, heartless villains get their just comeuppance by fade-out.  Back in 2004, Besson wrote a gripping little actioneer about French ghettos entitled “District B13.”  Essentially, “District B13” combined elements of the futuristic Kurt Russell sci-fi saga “Escape from New York” with “48 HRS.”  A convict who had murdered a corrupt cop in a fit of rage teams up with an indestructible undercover detective to infiltrate a crime ridden neighborhood.  They must retrieve a deadly bomb that has fallen into the hands of desperate drug-dealing criminals who live like warlords.  The possibilities for conflict are predictably rampant.  “District B13” served not only as the film title, but it also is the setting for all the anarchy.  Since law & order never prevailed in the District, Parisian authorities have sealed it off with impressive containment walls that enclose it like a fortress.  They are also evacuating their police forces to leave those lawless citizens to their own designs.  

Meanwhile, “District B13” gave audiences their first glimpse of stunt man David Belle.  Officially, Belle originated Parkour.  Parkour is a form of hand-to-hand combat where the combatant exploits his surroundings for maximum advantage.  Meaning, our hero searches first to find ways out of a predicament and then fights only when individuals block his escape route.  Belle qualifies as a competent enough actor, but his gift for adapting himself to his surroundings so he can elude the villains is extraordinary.  Belle performs his outlandish feats with the grace and agility of a youthful Jackie Chan.  The character that he portrays is not a professional lawman, criminal, or mercenary.  He is just a law-biding citizen seeking justice for others.  Later, in 2009, Belle reprised his role in the dynamic sequel “District 13: Ultimatum.”  He makes his English-language film debut in editor-turned-director Camille Delamarre’s “Brick Mansions” (** OUT OF ****), with the late Paul Walker as his co-star.  Since Belle speaks with a heavy French accent, Vin Diesel dubbed him for American audiences.  You’ll have to strain your ears to detect traces of that signature growl that has made Diesel famous.  Unfortunately, this lukewarm action thriller is neither half as good as either of the “District B13” nail-biters.  Belle upstages Walker in all their combat sequences, and the two actors display little camaraderie.  Perhaps the language barrier prevented them from bonding.  Presumably, “Brick Mansions” constituted little more than a paycheck movie for Walker between his “Fast and Furious” epics.  What is worst is that Besson has rewritten crucial parts of his original “District B13” screenplay for this flawed remake.  Essentially, it boils down to a case of fixing something that didn’t require fixing.  Indeed, Besson has taken the edge off the action in many instances and packed in the clichés that he didn’t stick in either of the “District” movies.

Basically, freshman director Camille Delamarre and Besson have transplanted the action to Detroit in the year 2018 and their dystopian storyline isn’t a far cry from the urban renewal machinations in the “RoboCop” franchise.  The “RoboCop” thrillers occur in Detroit, too.  Skyrocketing crime plagues the Motor City, and the Mayor (Bruce Ramsay of “Collateral Damage’) has constructed an impregnable wall around the troubled sector where the police wage a holding action until they can extract themselves.  In a sense, “Brick Mansions” resembles “The Purge.”  You can do anything you want within this labyrinth of housing projects designated Brick Mansions.  Sure, the storyline shares similarities with the latest incarnation of “Dredd,” except skyscrapers run by warlords don’t loom in this woebegone ghetto.  African-Americans traffic in drugs like heroin and cocaine, and Tremaine Alexander (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, a.k.a. RZA of “American Gangster”) is the alpha male of Brick Mansions.  The first time we see our hero, Lino (David Belle of “Femme Fatale”); he is destroying a fortune in heroin.  Alexander’s gun-toting henchmen swarm into Lino’s apartment complex, but he manages to escape them because he knows every nook and cranny in the place.  Later, Alexander’s second-in-command K-2 (Grouchy Boy) comes up with a plan to lure Lino out.  They take his ex-girlfriend, Lola (Catalina Denis), as a hostage.  Miraculously, Lino breaks into Alexander’s stronghold and rescues Lola.  He and she hold Alexander at gunpoint so his ruffians won’t kill them.  At the police station, a corrupt cop turns Alexander loose and jails Lino.  In “District B13,” the hostage was our hero’s sister.  The sister made better sense in the first film than the ex-girlfriend.

While this is going down in Brick Mansions, undercover cop Damien Collier (Paul Walker) has an agenda of his own.  His father, who was a decorated cop, died under suspicious circumstances when he plunged into the Brick Mansions.  Since then Collier has put Alexander on his short list of suspects who need to pay.  The Mayor has been planning to renovate the Brick Mansions when the gangsters steal a deadly bomb.  Collier accepts the assignment to retrieve the bomb.  He wants more time to acquire intelligence about the Brick Mansions.  The Mayor refuses to give him more time.  Instead, he pairs him up with Lino.  Naturally, the two men don’t trust each other.  Worse, the criminals have tampered with the bomb and activated its countdown.  Our heroes have less than 24 hours to disarm it.  “Brick Mansions” packs enough surprises to make it palatable, but this is pales by comparison with Walker’s “Fast and Furious” franchise, and the shoot’em ups and close-quarters combat are considerably less gritty.  “District B13” carried an R-rating, while “Brick Mansions” earned an PG-13 rating.  Only hardcore Paul Walker fans will appreciate his second-to-last movie.

                                  

FILM REVIEW OF ''GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE" (2012)

 Nicolas Cage reprises his role as the incendiary Marvel Comics character Johnny Blaze, an Evel Knievel-type motorcycle stunt rider who sold his soul to the Devil, in "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance." This impudent, 95-minute, PG-13 opus is a reboot of the franchise rather than a sequel. The original "Ghost Rider" (2007) was a standard issue supernatural hero origins epic. Alternately adventurous, amorous, and absurd, this lightweight, middle-of-the-road, action mash-up was as tame as it was tedious. When the Rider wasn't tangling with either Mephistopheles or his rebellious son Blackheart, director Mark Steven Johnson pitted the him against the local constabulary conducting a homicide investigation. The protagonist’s outlandish motorcycle stunts amounted to cheesy hokum. Further, "Ghost Rider" imitated at least two scenes from the infinitely superior "Terminator 2: Judgment Day": Blackheart's assault on a biker bar and the Rider's encounter with the cops. Nevertheless, fans wallowed in this conventional nonsense, and "Ghost Rider" coined a fortune. Peter Fonda made a momentary but memorable impression as a sartorially elegant Mephistopheles, but the Rider's face-off against Blackheart (Wes Bentley made-up like a 19th century minstrel singer) to rescue his girlfriend Roxanne Simpson yielded no surprises. "Crank" co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor along with “Blade” scenarist David S. Goyer have drastically altered the franchise. Gone is Johnny Blaze's girlfriend. Gone are Johnny’s two guilty pleasures: eating jelly beans and listening to the Carpenters. Gone is Johnny's playful paranoia about his supernatural alter-ego. "Ghost Rider" qualified as a Disney superhero movie without any grit. If the two movies were compared to motorcycles, “Ghost Rider” would be a quiet, graceful Honda Gold Wing and “Spirit of Vengeance” would be a noisy, skeletal Yamaha dirt bike. Moreover, the color of Ghost Rider’s skull depicts the tonal differences. In the original, the skull is white, but in the reboot black.

"Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" (**1/2 out of ****) dispenses with Johnny's earlier ‘fear no evil’ credo. He dreads his lack of control over his combustible alter-ego. Indeed, he has fled in fear to Eastern Europe to lay low until he can come to grips with his condition. This doesn't discourage a wine-guzzling, motorcycle-riding, French monk, Moreau (Idris Elba of "Thor"), from tracking Johnny down and approaching him with a proposition. If Blaze will protect a helpless child from his malevolent father, Moreau assures him that his renegade order of monks will help him remove his curse. Moreau and his cassock-clad compatriots have Danny (Fergus Riordan of "Fragile") along with his attractive Gypsy mom, Nadya (Violante Placido of "The American"), hidden in their remote monastery. Basically, Danny is the spawn of the Devil. Moreau warns his father superior, Benedict (Anthony Head of “Scoop”), that Satan will stop at nothing to possess Danny. Basically, the Devil has taken the form of a human, Roarke (Ciarán Hinds of "Excalibur"), while he treads the Earth. Unfortunately, Satan’s power is waning because Roarke’s body is deteriorating. Satan needs Danny’s body for a ritual enacted at dawn before the Winter Solstice so he can rejuvenate his dominance. Interestingly, this child in jeopardy plot resembles a similar storyline in an earlier Cage movie “Drive Angry.”

Satan dispatches a thoroughly obnoxious hooligan, Ray Carrigan (leering Johnny Whitworth of "Limitless"), to get Nadya and Danny after they escape from the monastery. Meanwhile, Johnny discovers he has a psychic connection with Danny and sets off in hot pursuit. The Ghost Rider uses his deadly Penance Stare on some of Carrigan's men. When he isn’t looking, Carrigan blasts him with enough firepower to land an unconscious Johnny in a hospital. Predictably, not only does Johnny recover, but he also befriends Nadya, and the two elude the authorities. Eventually, Johnny and Nadya free Danny from Carrigan's clutches in a larger-than-life confrontation at a construction site. The Ghost Rider converts a gigantic crane into a blazing juggernaut to combat his enemies. Johnny kills Carrigan, but Satan refuses to let his lieutenant lay down on the job. Instead, Satan revives Carrigan and provides him with the diabolical power to rot anything he touches. The best joke shows Carrigan destroying everything for a snack but a Twinkie! Carrigan emerges with a mop of long white hair that makes him look like bluesman Johnny Winter. Indeed, Satan and Carrigan take Johnny Blaze to the mat before our hero receives help in the last quarter hour from the lad he is supposed to save.

Basically, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" qualifies as a darker, more sarcastic saga. Unlike the original, the reboot emphasizes Johnny's contagious ability to incinerate everything he handles. At one point, Danny asks Johnny what would occur he had to pee as the Rider, and we are treated to glimpse of the Rider performing figure eights with his urine. As clever as this visual gag is, it doesn’t match the Twinkie joke. Everything about the "Ghost Rider" reboot has fringe written on it rather than mainstream. Unlike the original, every character experiences a radical change. Johnny Blaze suffers like the Hulk. Carrigan changes from an ordinary hood to a supernatural ruffian. Even the Devil admits the pact he struck with Johnny was his worst. Neveldine and Taylor with their penchant for making R-rated movies were probably not the ideal directors for this PG-13 outing. Aside from emphasizing anarchy, Neveldine and Taylor streamline the action, eliminating superfluous love interests and law enforcement intrusions. They ramp up the violence with their guerrilla filmmaking style that makes everything look harrowing. The special effects are staggering. You can feel the heat of the Ghost Rider. Cage gives a better performance with a greater expressive range since his character evolves rather than remains static. Idris Elba is charismatic, while Johnny Whitworth is audaciously villainous. Christopher Lambert makes little impression as a tattooed monk, but it’s great to see him again. The post-production 3-D effect rarely enhances "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" since nothing comes flying out at you during the fracas. Ultimately, this above-average reboot will aggravate anybody who wanted something more conventional along the lines of the original.