Italian composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino permeates "Hercules Against the Moon Men" director Giacomo Gentilomo with a flavorful, atmospheric score for his above-average, but predictable spear and sandal saga "Goliath and the Vampires" (*** OUT OF ****), starring muscle-bound Gordon Scott as the legendary champion. Like the Reg Park outing "Hercules in the Haunted World," Goliath confronts a supernatural adversary named Kobrak. Pirates from a distant kingdom attack a defenseless village without mercy. They raze the village, slaughter the men, abduct the nubile young women and transport them across the sea into slavery. These heartless sea raiders are so wicked that they feed the older women to the sharks. The eponymous strongman follows the pirates to their faraway island to rescue the women. Outnumbered as always, Goliath tangles with dozens of soldiers, but he exploits his strength to triumph over these greater numbers. No, Kobrak doesn't qualify as the standard vampire with fangs, a regal wardrobe, and beguiling eyes. Kobrak materializes like an apparition from nowhere, kills with ugly clawed fists, and reduces his victims to lifeless mummies. Moreover, the evil Kobrak shows no qualms about dispatching his own subordinates. Gentilomo and scenarists Sergio Corbucci of "The Mercenary" and Duccio Tessari of "Duck You Sucker" have contrived one of the better peplums, with several elaborately staged combat scenes. Indeed, a couple of counterfeit looking little monsters cheese up a scene or two, but they are quickly forgotten. Meantime, our brawny hero has his hands full most of his time struggling with his opponents. Bare-chested Gordon Scott is appropriately stalwart and purpose-driven as the male lead. The beautiful, hour-glass shaped women wear big hair. Gianna Maria Canale looks as gorgeous as she is treacherous, and producer Dino De Laurentiis seems to have spared no expense.
The opening scene solidly establishes the protagonist's character. Goliath (Gordon Scott of "Tarzan's Great Adventure") trudges behind two oxen and a plow, gouging grooves in an inhospitable field. Typically, the peplum hero is an outsider, sometimes a wandering adventurer, who enters a society and delivers it from tyranny, but Goliath is not an outsider here. Later, when he enters Salminak, he is an outsider. Gentilomo depicts Goliath as a peaceful farmer, using his incredible strength to uproot and remove a stump from the field. Clearly, though the most convincing but mundane scene, this modest display of brute force illustrates Goliath's determination to let nothing stand in his way. He uses his brawn to solve his problems. No sooner has Goliath gotten rid of stump than he hears cries of alarm. The young boy, Ciro (Rocco Vitolazzi), that Goliath brought with him, is drowning. Plunging from a high mountain cliff, Goliath saves the lad from a watery grave. Some kind of sea monster may have figured in Ciro's near drowning, but the fight has been mysteriously edited. As he takes Ciro back to their village on his white horse, Goliath reminds the youth that his sister would never have forgiven him if Goliath had let him die. Ciro chastises Goliath because he has kept putting his impending marriage to sister, Guja (Leonora Ruffo of ""Goliath and the Dragon") on hold. Gentilomo and his scenarists sketch more depth into Goliath's character than the typical peplum.
As they approach the village, they see clouds of dark smoke gathering. They arrive too late to thwart the pirates. Ciro's mother and father lay dead, while Goliath's mother (Emma Baron of "Aphrodite, Goddess of Love") dies in his brawny arms. "I shall avenge them," Goliath vows. "I shall free Guja and the others and those responsible will pay for their crimes." Moreover, Goliath is puzzled by the raiders. "Their ferocity and cruelty make no sense. Why do they murder like this without plundering. Why take nothing from the houses? Only the women are kidnapped and the men are thrown in the fire." An elderly man who survived the carnage informs Goliath that the raiders hail from the faraway island Salminak. Meanwhile, aboard their ship, the pirates slash the women, drawing plasma from all them but Guja, to fill a goblet for Kobrak to quench his thirst for blood. Kobrak's initial appearance aboard the ship is rather sinister. The leader of the raiders, Amahil (Van Aikens of “Revolt of the Slaves”) enters a chamber and a hideous hand wreathed in smoke emerges from behind a curtain and grasps the goblet. Gentilomo heightens the tension as the interior turns blood red and the curtain billow after Kobrak has drunk the blood. The captain scrambles out of the room, happy to be alive.
The setting shifts to the market place in Salminak as the soldiers force a man against his will to ascend a wooden pole about as high was a telephone pole. At the square-shaped base of the pole is an area laid out with spikes. The man reaches the top of the pole but loses his grip on the pole and plunges to his death. This is the same area where the women from Goliath’s village are about to be sold into slavery. An observant man named Kirtik (Jacques Sernas of “"Duel of the Titans"), who drapes himself from head to toe in apparel as if he were in an Arabian Knights adventure, stands in the crowd and takes an interest a new arrival. Goliath and Ciro ride into the market place and Ciro spots some of the village girls. Our hero goes into action, helps the girls escape. Magna (Annabella Incontrera of “"A Bullet for Sandoval"), slips away from the crowd with Kirtik. Later, they meet Goliath and Ciro in a hidden place while the army searches for the strongman. News of Goliath’s amazing exploits have swept through the city and alarmed not only Sultan Abdul (Mario Feliciani of "Devil of the Desert against the Son of Hercules") but also Astra (Gianna Maria Canale of “"The Lion of St. Mark"). We learn that he wants to destroy Kobrak: “There exists here a beast who is more evil than a fiend. You can repay me by helping me defeat him.” In the palace, the Sultan worries about both Goliath and Kobrak. One of his older advisors confides in the Sultan: “A monster dominates the country with his hooded murderers and diabolical forces. The time has come to act. The last hope of the people is you.” The advisor urges the Sultan to lead a rebellion against Kobrak, but he gets nowhere. “Impossible,” the Sultan snaps. “Remember we are slaves ourselves.” The advisor suggests Goliath might be convinced to work with them against Kobrak. Meanwhile, Astra eavesdrops on the Sultan and the advisor and kills the advisor after he is leaving by the hallway. She hastens to her altar and summons Kobrak. The huge entity in a hood with horns on its head emerges amid red smoke. Astra urges Kobrak to kill Goliath. But the vampire has no such plans for the strongman. “I want him alive. His magnificent body can serve as a model for the army of slaves with which I shall conquer the earth. An army of indomitable giants subservient to my will.”
Goliath and Kirtik venture out into the city under the protection of darkness and avoid the Sultan’s army. Initially, Goliath regards Kirtik with suspicion. “I only trust my shadow,” Goliath states. Kirtik tries to convince Goliath that they share the same enemy. “I do know that mine is a murderer who lurks and hides in the dark.” Kirtik relishes the challenge, “We’ll see if I can’t make him come out.” While our heroes skulk through the darkened streets, Magna rummages through Kurtik’s documents. She stumbles onto one with a serpent drawn on it. She reads it: “And from the serpent born in the depths of the kingdom of evil sprang the monster that nourishes itself on human blood to generate an army of automatons. Only the proud and noble people—the race of the blue men—will have the courage to combat the monster and restore face to each of those he has deprived.” Magna latches onto the name of the monster. “Kobrak is the name of the monster.” Predictably, the evil Kobrak materializes in a cloud of red smoke before Magna. He wastes no time and rakes his powerful claw across Magna’s screaming throat and kills her. At this point, “Goliath and the Vampire” has gotten just over a half-hour into its sprawling plot.
Peplum lenser Alvaro Mancori of "Ulysses against the Son of Hercules" captures the larger-than-life splendor and savagery of "Goliath and the Vampires" with his widescreen cinematography. The violence is somewhat abrasive, but it remains primarily bloodless during the commission of the act with blood visible afterward. One scene shows a marauder firing an arrow into a man's face, while other shows a spear hurled into the villainess' stomach. The Corbucci & Tessari screenplay boasts a surprise or two, especially during the finale when Goliath confronts a foe that matches his strength. The filmmakers put our hero in several tight spots. One fantastic scene has Goliath with his wrists shackled to a huge wooden yoke behind his neck and across his shoulders. Goliath's captor challenges him to escape. Exerting his superhuman strength, Goliath snaps the yoke in half, removes the shackles, and then dislodges a pillar that brings part of the dungeon crashing down on his captors. An earlier scene in the town square has our hero dismantles a torture device with giant spikes in it and wields it as a weapon against armed horsemen. According to the Wild East blurbs, Corbucci helped out Gentilomo helming a scene or two, but Gentilomo directed the lion's share of the action. He keeps the action moving briskly along in this trim 91-minute opus.
"Goliath and the Vampires" ranks as a better-than-average peplum.
CINEMATIC REVELATIONS allows me the luxury of writing, editing and archiving my film and television reviews. Some reviews appeared initially in "The Commercial Dispatch" and "The Planet Weekly" and then later in the comment archives at the Internet Movie Database. IMDB.COM, however, imposes a limit on both the number of words and the number of times that an author may revise their comments. I hope that anybody who peruses these expanded reviews will find them useful.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
FILM REVIEW OF ''REPO MEN" (2010)
No, “Dreamer” director Miguel Sapochnik’s violent, outlandish science fiction thriller “Repo Men,” co-starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, bears no relation to director Alex Cox’s cult hit “Repo Man” (1986), with Emilio Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, about repossessing automobiles. Instead, “Repo Men” (** ½ out of ****) concerns the sales and manufacture of artificial body parts in the unspecified future and the ruthless ruffians dispatched to repossess these state-of-the-art organs from individuals who fail to maintain their payments. Although it features many suspenseful scenes, some appealing characters and charismatic performances, “Repo Men” looks more often than not like an uneven blend of “Brazil” and “Blade Runner” with an ending that leaves an unsavory taste in your mouth.
Derived from Eric Garcia's 2009 novel "The Repossession Mambo,” this slickly-produced dystopian chiller -vaguely similar to "Repo: The Genetic Opera"--boasts its share of twists and turns that will keep your hands clenched into white-knuckled fists until its one-too-many endings alienates you. Jude Law toplines an incomparable cast and you’ll find yourself cheering for him, even though he qualifies initially as a quasi-villain. Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber play unrepentant villains and they milk their roles for every ounce of villainy that they can muster. An opening metaphor about a cat trapped in a metal box filled with a deadly nerve gas will most certainly offend feline animal lovers, but the crowd that this Universal Pictures release is targeting will take pleasure in the adrenaline fueled action sequences and the high-tech equipment with which the principals deal. Hopelessly far-fetched in every detail, “Repo Men” has some elements that should undoubtedly absorb sci-fi fans. The aerosol foam that seals up gashes in the human body like fast-acting super-glue and the miraculous resiliency of the victims as they endure hands probing around inside them is pretty far-out stuff.
In the future, a billion-dollar corporation, the Union, fabricates high-tech artificial organs, nicknamed "artiforgs," so that nobody’s loved ones need endure the heartache and torment of biding their time awaiting genetically compatible body parts. The catch, however, is the sky-high cost of these miracle organs. In fact, few people can afford loan-shark interest rates imposed by the Union once they have signed a contract with the company. As a result of not being able to manage their credit cards anymore than their debts, these unfortunate souls wind up not only paying through the nose, but also often losing those pricey parts. When a recipient falls behind more than three months on their payments, the eponymous men materialize when they least expect them to gut and retrieve the Union’s property.
Remy (Jude Law of “Sherlock Holmes”) and Jake (Forest Whitaker of “Vantage Point”) are childhood pals, and the best repo men at the Union. They waste no time when they are on the job and show no more compassion that a repo man in the car business. Standard operating procedure dictates that our heroes provide the victim with the option to call an ambulance before they eviscerate them. Meantime, Remy’s wife Carol (Carice van Houten of “Valkyrie”) wants her husband to stop repossessing organs and move over into sales so he can allocate more time with their adolescent son, Peter (Chandler Canterbury of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), who doesn’t see his dad as often as he’d like. Eventually, Carol puts her foot down and refuses to let Remy sleep with her, much get gain access to their comfortable house. As much as Remy wants to accommodate Carol, he loathes the idea of a buttoned down suit and tie existence on a 9-to-5 schedule.
Matters come to a head during one job when Remy visits a musician. As he is about to give the guy a jolt from a defibrillator to take his heart, the device malfunctions and knocks him unconscious. When Remy recovers, he finds himself in a hospital bed with Jake and local Union branch manager Frank (Liev Schreiber of “The Manchurian Candidate”) hovering over him with their smiling faces. The horror of what has occurred sinks in and Remy wants nothing to do with his new high-priced ticker. Nevertheless, Jake and Frank bring him around and Remy is back on his feet in no time and prepared to pick up where he left off repossessing organs. The problem is that Remy is no longer the same guy and he no longer has his heart in his job. In fact, he ends up in the same predicament that virtually every Union creditor finds themselves in and has to worry about Frank sending out Jake to repossess his heart.
“Repo Men” is a darkly-themed satire that never takes itself seriously, and Sapochnik stages several visceral action scenes involving blood, gore, and stabbing galore that may challenge your ability to keep from chucking up, when body parts are repossessed. Like the hero in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” Remy winds up on the other side and helps out other organ recipients who have gone to the black market to save themselves. Like the heroes in a Sam Peckinpah western, our life-long friends—Remy and Jake--find themselves on opposite sides. Clearly, the producers couldn’t have picked a better time to release this sardonic nail-biter about high-tech medicine as Congress has passed a new health insurance bill. This compelling, sometimes convoluted, amoral thriller shows the two sides of humanity. Ironically, once it has eliminated the problem of obtaining human body parts, our capitalistic society has created a larger problem, footing the bill for manufactured variety. Organ donor epics will never be the same with the advent of “Repo Men.”
Derived from Eric Garcia's 2009 novel "The Repossession Mambo,” this slickly-produced dystopian chiller -vaguely similar to "Repo: The Genetic Opera"--boasts its share of twists and turns that will keep your hands clenched into white-knuckled fists until its one-too-many endings alienates you. Jude Law toplines an incomparable cast and you’ll find yourself cheering for him, even though he qualifies initially as a quasi-villain. Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber play unrepentant villains and they milk their roles for every ounce of villainy that they can muster. An opening metaphor about a cat trapped in a metal box filled with a deadly nerve gas will most certainly offend feline animal lovers, but the crowd that this Universal Pictures release is targeting will take pleasure in the adrenaline fueled action sequences and the high-tech equipment with which the principals deal. Hopelessly far-fetched in every detail, “Repo Men” has some elements that should undoubtedly absorb sci-fi fans. The aerosol foam that seals up gashes in the human body like fast-acting super-glue and the miraculous resiliency of the victims as they endure hands probing around inside them is pretty far-out stuff.
In the future, a billion-dollar corporation, the Union, fabricates high-tech artificial organs, nicknamed "artiforgs," so that nobody’s loved ones need endure the heartache and torment of biding their time awaiting genetically compatible body parts. The catch, however, is the sky-high cost of these miracle organs. In fact, few people can afford loan-shark interest rates imposed by the Union once they have signed a contract with the company. As a result of not being able to manage their credit cards anymore than their debts, these unfortunate souls wind up not only paying through the nose, but also often losing those pricey parts. When a recipient falls behind more than three months on their payments, the eponymous men materialize when they least expect them to gut and retrieve the Union’s property.
Remy (Jude Law of “Sherlock Holmes”) and Jake (Forest Whitaker of “Vantage Point”) are childhood pals, and the best repo men at the Union. They waste no time when they are on the job and show no more compassion that a repo man in the car business. Standard operating procedure dictates that our heroes provide the victim with the option to call an ambulance before they eviscerate them. Meantime, Remy’s wife Carol (Carice van Houten of “Valkyrie”) wants her husband to stop repossessing organs and move over into sales so he can allocate more time with their adolescent son, Peter (Chandler Canterbury of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), who doesn’t see his dad as often as he’d like. Eventually, Carol puts her foot down and refuses to let Remy sleep with her, much get gain access to their comfortable house. As much as Remy wants to accommodate Carol, he loathes the idea of a buttoned down suit and tie existence on a 9-to-5 schedule.
Matters come to a head during one job when Remy visits a musician. As he is about to give the guy a jolt from a defibrillator to take his heart, the device malfunctions and knocks him unconscious. When Remy recovers, he finds himself in a hospital bed with Jake and local Union branch manager Frank (Liev Schreiber of “The Manchurian Candidate”) hovering over him with their smiling faces. The horror of what has occurred sinks in and Remy wants nothing to do with his new high-priced ticker. Nevertheless, Jake and Frank bring him around and Remy is back on his feet in no time and prepared to pick up where he left off repossessing organs. The problem is that Remy is no longer the same guy and he no longer has his heart in his job. In fact, he ends up in the same predicament that virtually every Union creditor finds themselves in and has to worry about Frank sending out Jake to repossess his heart.
“Repo Men” is a darkly-themed satire that never takes itself seriously, and Sapochnik stages several visceral action scenes involving blood, gore, and stabbing galore that may challenge your ability to keep from chucking up, when body parts are repossessed. Like the hero in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” Remy winds up on the other side and helps out other organ recipients who have gone to the black market to save themselves. Like the heroes in a Sam Peckinpah western, our life-long friends—Remy and Jake--find themselves on opposite sides. Clearly, the producers couldn’t have picked a better time to release this sardonic nail-biter about high-tech medicine as Congress has passed a new health insurance bill. This compelling, sometimes convoluted, amoral thriller shows the two sides of humanity. Ironically, once it has eliminated the problem of obtaining human body parts, our capitalistic society has created a larger problem, footing the bill for manufactured variety. Organ donor epics will never be the same with the advent of “Repo Men.”
Monday, March 22, 2010
FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOUNTY HUNTER" (2010)
"The Bounty Hunter" (* out of ****) is not a rewarding experience. This lightweight but disposable comedy of errors about a grumpy bail bondsman up to his ears in gambling debts who must track down his investigative journalist ex-wife and take her into custody for bumping an NYPD police horse lacks momentum, coherence, and surprises. Indeed, the two leads--gorgeous blond Jennifer Aniston and rugged unshaven Gerard Butler--radiate more than enough physical chemistry, but a lackluster script lets them down. "Hitch" director Andy Tennant and "See Jane Run" scenarist Sarah Thorp have created an interesting premise packed with irony, but they blew it by having our attractive leads bicker with each other more often bash the bad guys in this lolly-gagging 110 minute misfire. Although it struggles to combine comedy with suspense as hilariously as both the Robert De Niro & Charles Grodin bounty hunting comedy "Midnight Run" (1988) and the witty Clint Eastwood & Bernadette Peters saga "Pink Cadillac" (1989) did, "The Bounty Hunter" rarely succeeds with either comedy or suspense. Nothing adds up here in this artificial romance about a divorced couple who rediscover their affection for each other.
New York Daily Times investigative reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston of "Marley & Me")receives a tip that a NYPD cop who leaped off a rooftop may not have committed suicide. Meanwhile, she ignores a summons to appear in court and pursues a red hot lead that may land her a scoop about the cop's mysterious death as well as police corruption. Nicole ditches her court date when her informant, Jimmy (Adam Rose of "The Squid and the Whale"), calls her up frantically as she is about to set foot in the courthouse and demands $500 with the story of a lifetime. Before our heroine can reach Jimmy, a trigger-happy thug with a gun, Mahler (Peter Greene of "Pulp Fiction"), abducts him in broad daylight. Back at the courthouse, the irate judge (Lynda Gravatt of "Landlocked") issues a bench warrant for Nicole's arrest. Ironically, former NYPD Detective Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler of "300") is pleading for more jobs when his boss Sid (Jeff Garlin of "RoboCop 3") hands him the task of hauling his ex-spouse to the hoosegow. Sid wonders if he is making the right decision when Milo reacts with ecstatic joy. Nicole and he were married for all of nine months before they got a divorce. Nicole's career soared as a result of their divorce, while Milo's career went down the crapper.
Simultaneously, Milo has been dodging two tenacious debt collectors. He owes them approximately $11-thousand dollars and needs the dough from Nicole's bond to pay them off. Naturally, when he cannot find Nicole, Milo contacts his former mother-in-law, a loony Atlantic City lounge singer, Kitty Hurley (Christine Baranski of "Mamma Mia!"), who sends him off to a nearby racetrack. Nicole, it seems, believes that she can take advantage of all the good luck that abandons other people at the racetrack to help her in her quest. Nicole's bubble bursts when Milo shows up and stuffs her unceremoniously into the trunk of a powder-blue limo. Inevitably, this leads to a succession of Nicole escaping from Milo and Milo recapturing her before our hero finally encounters Mahler. Not only does the murderous Mahler sideswipe Milo's car to get at Nicole, but he also exchanges gunfire with Milo. Milo starts taking Nicole seriously, especially when she implicates his former NYPD detective partner Bobby (Dorian Missick of "Rachel Getting Married") as a dirty cop. Naturally, Milo refuses to believe that Bobby, who gave Nicole away to him at their wedding, could be involved in corruption of any kind.
An array of harebrained supporting characters does nothing to supplement the humor in "The Bounty Hunter," except to make it seem even more labored. First, Irene (Cathy Moriarty of "Raging Bull") dispatches two incompetent morons to collect the big bucks that Milo owes her. Neither nitwit has any success, however, at recouping Irene's dough. Second, rather than nabbing Milo, they mistake an idiotic New York Daily News reporter, Stewart (Jason Sudeikis of "The Rocker"), for Milo. Stewart desperately wants to team up with Nicole on the suicide story. Nicole refuses to have anything to do with Stewart, but he stubbornly declines to take no for an answer. Repeatedly, Nicole turns Stewart down every time that he pleads to collaborate with her. Eventually, Stewart ends up following Milo around so that he can contact Nicole. At one point, Stewart checks the trunk of Milo's car because he thinks that Milo may still have Nicole stashed in it. One of the debt collectors traces Milo's car. When he sees Stewart tampering with the trunk, he assumes that Stewart is Milo. Nothing that Stewart can say persuades the debt collector to let him go. Instead, the debt collector brings Stewart back so Irene can torture him. Irene and company go to work on Stewart before they discover that they are breaking the wrong guy's legs! This exasperating routine turns into a running gag that lacks humor. Eventually, Irene and her henchmen realize that they have made a terrible mistake. Consequently, they call in a racetrack physician who brandishes a giant syringe filled with horse tranquilizer to alleviate Stewart's pain. Unfortunately, this subplot generates little humor, largely because Stewart gets what he deserves for behaving like such an obnoxious lout.
Predictably, everything works out for our heroic couple, but the story is so incoherent and humorless that you don't care what happens to them, or for that matter Stewart in this lackluster opposites-attract-romantic-comedy-thriller.
New York Daily Times investigative reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston of "Marley & Me")receives a tip that a NYPD cop who leaped off a rooftop may not have committed suicide. Meanwhile, she ignores a summons to appear in court and pursues a red hot lead that may land her a scoop about the cop's mysterious death as well as police corruption. Nicole ditches her court date when her informant, Jimmy (Adam Rose of "The Squid and the Whale"), calls her up frantically as she is about to set foot in the courthouse and demands $500 with the story of a lifetime. Before our heroine can reach Jimmy, a trigger-happy thug with a gun, Mahler (Peter Greene of "Pulp Fiction"), abducts him in broad daylight. Back at the courthouse, the irate judge (Lynda Gravatt of "Landlocked") issues a bench warrant for Nicole's arrest. Ironically, former NYPD Detective Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler of "300") is pleading for more jobs when his boss Sid (Jeff Garlin of "RoboCop 3") hands him the task of hauling his ex-spouse to the hoosegow. Sid wonders if he is making the right decision when Milo reacts with ecstatic joy. Nicole and he were married for all of nine months before they got a divorce. Nicole's career soared as a result of their divorce, while Milo's career went down the crapper.
Simultaneously, Milo has been dodging two tenacious debt collectors. He owes them approximately $11-thousand dollars and needs the dough from Nicole's bond to pay them off. Naturally, when he cannot find Nicole, Milo contacts his former mother-in-law, a loony Atlantic City lounge singer, Kitty Hurley (Christine Baranski of "Mamma Mia!"), who sends him off to a nearby racetrack. Nicole, it seems, believes that she can take advantage of all the good luck that abandons other people at the racetrack to help her in her quest. Nicole's bubble bursts when Milo shows up and stuffs her unceremoniously into the trunk of a powder-blue limo. Inevitably, this leads to a succession of Nicole escaping from Milo and Milo recapturing her before our hero finally encounters Mahler. Not only does the murderous Mahler sideswipe Milo's car to get at Nicole, but he also exchanges gunfire with Milo. Milo starts taking Nicole seriously, especially when she implicates his former NYPD detective partner Bobby (Dorian Missick of "Rachel Getting Married") as a dirty cop. Naturally, Milo refuses to believe that Bobby, who gave Nicole away to him at their wedding, could be involved in corruption of any kind.
An array of harebrained supporting characters does nothing to supplement the humor in "The Bounty Hunter," except to make it seem even more labored. First, Irene (Cathy Moriarty of "Raging Bull") dispatches two incompetent morons to collect the big bucks that Milo owes her. Neither nitwit has any success, however, at recouping Irene's dough. Second, rather than nabbing Milo, they mistake an idiotic New York Daily News reporter, Stewart (Jason Sudeikis of "The Rocker"), for Milo. Stewart desperately wants to team up with Nicole on the suicide story. Nicole refuses to have anything to do with Stewart, but he stubbornly declines to take no for an answer. Repeatedly, Nicole turns Stewart down every time that he pleads to collaborate with her. Eventually, Stewart ends up following Milo around so that he can contact Nicole. At one point, Stewart checks the trunk of Milo's car because he thinks that Milo may still have Nicole stashed in it. One of the debt collectors traces Milo's car. When he sees Stewart tampering with the trunk, he assumes that Stewart is Milo. Nothing that Stewart can say persuades the debt collector to let him go. Instead, the debt collector brings Stewart back so Irene can torture him. Irene and company go to work on Stewart before they discover that they are breaking the wrong guy's legs! This exasperating routine turns into a running gag that lacks humor. Eventually, Irene and her henchmen realize that they have made a terrible mistake. Consequently, they call in a racetrack physician who brandishes a giant syringe filled with horse tranquilizer to alleviate Stewart's pain. Unfortunately, this subplot generates little humor, largely because Stewart gets what he deserves for behaving like such an obnoxious lout.
Predictably, everything works out for our heroic couple, but the story is so incoherent and humorless that you don't care what happens to them, or for that matter Stewart in this lackluster opposites-attract-romantic-comedy-thriller.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
FILM REVIEW OF ''GREEN ZONE" (2010)
“Bourne Ultimatum” director Paul Greengrass thrusts audiences into the thick of the gunfire in his action-packed Matt Damon thriller “Green Zone” (*** out of ****), co-starring Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson and Jason Isaacs, about the Allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unfortunately, Greengrass’ high-octane, adrenaline-fueled combat actioneer clashes with Oscar-winning "L.A. Confidential" scenarist Brian Helgeland’s conspiracy theory narrative. This above-average, 115 minute, military melodrama about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will grip you with its verisimilitude. Greengrass choreographs the violence with such nerve-wracking ferocity that you feel as if you are scrambling with American soldiers as they blast their way into and out of tight spots with enemy gunners literally springing up out of nowhere to rattle off small arms. Anybody who has seen not only “The Bourne Supremacy” but also “The Bourne Ultimatum” knows Greengrass is the latest accomplished master of an old filmmaking technique known as cinema vérité. Cinema vérité occurs when filmmakers rely on hand-held cameras to capture actors and action as if it were really happening. Today we classify this form of filmmaking as ‘shaky cam.’ Greengrass helmed both “Bourne” thrillers and used cinema vérité to supercharge them. Despite its vigorous action set-pieces, “Green Zone” suffers marginally because Helgeland tampers with history and cooks up an expose that implicates a Washington, D.C., orchestrated conspiracy to go war against Iraq without sufficient cause.
Our protagonist, U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon of “The Informant”), has been dispatched to Iraq to ferret out weapons of mass destruction following the 2003 invasion. People without a clue about Miller’s military rank should know that while he outranks top-senior enlisted soldiers, he is lower than commissioned officers. No matter where Miller and his team go, they always come up empty-handed. They shoot their way into three life-and-death predicaments, and each time they discover nothing. Miller’s frustration mounts and his questions make his superiors feel uneasy. He quizzes them about the so-called ‘reliable’ source that furnished them with the information. Later, disheveled CIA Baghdad Bureau Chief Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix") informs Miller that he will find no weapons of mass destruction at next scheduled WMD site on his list.
Meantime, a strictly peripheral character, Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), wants her confidential Washington, D.C., source to identify himself. As it turns out, Dayne’s source--code-named ‘Magellan--is none other than slippery Bush Administration official, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear of “Stuck on You”), who knows far more than he is prepared to share. The villainous Poundstone keeps stringing along Dayne. Things change entirely for Miller when a friendly Iraqi (Khalid Abdalla of “The Kite Runner”), who Miller nicknames ‘Freddy,’ confronts him at a crowded intersection with a valuable tip. Freddy points them like a bird dog to a clandestine meeting of Saddam’s top lieutenants where he saw Iraqi General Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor of “Rendition”), who has been in hiding in Baghdad. Miller and his men storm the building, swap lead with the fleeing Iraqis, and our hero spots General Al-Rawi.
No sooner has Miller nabbed one of Al-Rawi’s subordinates, Seyyed Hamza (Said Faraj of “The Siege”), than Special Forces descends out of the blue in helicopters. Briggs (Jason Isaacs of “Daredevil” with a bandit mustache) takes Hamza into custody. He demands Miller cough up an address book that Miller confiscated with all the locations of Al-Rawi’s safe houses. Later, Miller slips the address book to Brown. Brown enlightens Miller about the amoral complications in the Iraq predicament. Stunned by these dire revelations, Miller tells Brown with a straight face, "I thought we were all on the same side." Brown straightens out Miller, "Don't be naive." In fact, while Miller concentrates on tracking down General Al-Rawi, Briggs and his men use all the resources at their disposal to shadow Miller without his knowledge. Basically, Americans are trying to outsmart other Americans in this melodrama of deceit. Indeed, Poundstone has important reasons for General Al-Rawi’s silence. Principally, Al-Rawi knows the truth about the WMDs. Poundstone wants Al-Rawi dead, and Briggs is committed to carrying out his boss’s orders.
The problem with “Green Zone” is British director Paul Greengrass and scenarist Brian Helgeland want the movie to double as a top-notch, white-knuckled, nail-biter but also as an indictment of the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq based on faulty information. In other words, the skillful filmmakers have intermingled truth with fiction or what is designated in intellectual circles as a roman à clef. Essentially, a roman à clef occurs when writers ridicule real people, such as either celebrities or political officials, without using their actual names. In this instance, New York Times reporter Judith Miller becomes Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne and Iraqi politician Achmed Chalabi have been given a fictional equivalent. Remember, Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction served as the key rationale for military intervention. Ostensibly, Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran's insightful 2006 non-fiction book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" inspired Greengrass and Helgeland. For example, in the middle of all this mayhem, Baghdad has a place, referred to as a “Green Zone,” for people to enjoy themselves as if war were not raging outside. Moreover, Chandrasekaran wrote that pork is commonly served in the Green Zone despite the fact that Muslims staff these areas. They used Chandrasekaran’s book to forge the appropriate background for their expose about the bureaucratic arrogance and stupidity that Americans exhibited in Iraq.
Production designer Dominic Watkins, art directors Mark Bartholomew, Mark Swain, and Frederic Evard, along visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang and special effects supervisor Chris Carreras should not be overlooked for their contribution to the film’s authenticity. These guys deserve recognition for recreating war-torn Baghdad with such meticulous detail. For the record, Universal Studios lensed “Green Zone” in Spain and Morocco, but you’d swear you were deep in the heart of hostile territory in this riveting, slam-bang shoot’em up.
Our protagonist, U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon of “The Informant”), has been dispatched to Iraq to ferret out weapons of mass destruction following the 2003 invasion. People without a clue about Miller’s military rank should know that while he outranks top-senior enlisted soldiers, he is lower than commissioned officers. No matter where Miller and his team go, they always come up empty-handed. They shoot their way into three life-and-death predicaments, and each time they discover nothing. Miller’s frustration mounts and his questions make his superiors feel uneasy. He quizzes them about the so-called ‘reliable’ source that furnished them with the information. Later, disheveled CIA Baghdad Bureau Chief Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix") informs Miller that he will find no weapons of mass destruction at next scheduled WMD site on his list.
Meantime, a strictly peripheral character, Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), wants her confidential Washington, D.C., source to identify himself. As it turns out, Dayne’s source--code-named ‘Magellan--is none other than slippery Bush Administration official, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear of “Stuck on You”), who knows far more than he is prepared to share. The villainous Poundstone keeps stringing along Dayne. Things change entirely for Miller when a friendly Iraqi (Khalid Abdalla of “The Kite Runner”), who Miller nicknames ‘Freddy,’ confronts him at a crowded intersection with a valuable tip. Freddy points them like a bird dog to a clandestine meeting of Saddam’s top lieutenants where he saw Iraqi General Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor of “Rendition”), who has been in hiding in Baghdad. Miller and his men storm the building, swap lead with the fleeing Iraqis, and our hero spots General Al-Rawi.
No sooner has Miller nabbed one of Al-Rawi’s subordinates, Seyyed Hamza (Said Faraj of “The Siege”), than Special Forces descends out of the blue in helicopters. Briggs (Jason Isaacs of “Daredevil” with a bandit mustache) takes Hamza into custody. He demands Miller cough up an address book that Miller confiscated with all the locations of Al-Rawi’s safe houses. Later, Miller slips the address book to Brown. Brown enlightens Miller about the amoral complications in the Iraq predicament. Stunned by these dire revelations, Miller tells Brown with a straight face, "I thought we were all on the same side." Brown straightens out Miller, "Don't be naive." In fact, while Miller concentrates on tracking down General Al-Rawi, Briggs and his men use all the resources at their disposal to shadow Miller without his knowledge. Basically, Americans are trying to outsmart other Americans in this melodrama of deceit. Indeed, Poundstone has important reasons for General Al-Rawi’s silence. Principally, Al-Rawi knows the truth about the WMDs. Poundstone wants Al-Rawi dead, and Briggs is committed to carrying out his boss’s orders.
The problem with “Green Zone” is British director Paul Greengrass and scenarist Brian Helgeland want the movie to double as a top-notch, white-knuckled, nail-biter but also as an indictment of the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq based on faulty information. In other words, the skillful filmmakers have intermingled truth with fiction or what is designated in intellectual circles as a roman à clef. Essentially, a roman à clef occurs when writers ridicule real people, such as either celebrities or political officials, without using their actual names. In this instance, New York Times reporter Judith Miller becomes Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne and Iraqi politician Achmed Chalabi have been given a fictional equivalent. Remember, Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction served as the key rationale for military intervention. Ostensibly, Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran's insightful 2006 non-fiction book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" inspired Greengrass and Helgeland. For example, in the middle of all this mayhem, Baghdad has a place, referred to as a “Green Zone,” for people to enjoy themselves as if war were not raging outside. Moreover, Chandrasekaran wrote that pork is commonly served in the Green Zone despite the fact that Muslims staff these areas. They used Chandrasekaran’s book to forge the appropriate background for their expose about the bureaucratic arrogance and stupidity that Americans exhibited in Iraq.
Production designer Dominic Watkins, art directors Mark Bartholomew, Mark Swain, and Frederic Evard, along visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang and special effects supervisor Chris Carreras should not be overlooked for their contribution to the film’s authenticity. These guys deserve recognition for recreating war-torn Baghdad with such meticulous detail. For the record, Universal Studios lensed “Green Zone” in Spain and Morocco, but you’d swear you were deep in the heart of hostile territory in this riveting, slam-bang shoot’em up.
Monday, March 15, 2010
FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOONDOCK SAINTS 2: ALL SAINTS DAY (2010)
Sophomore scenarist & director Troy Duffy has revived Connor and Murphy MacManus for his ultra-violent but often riotous sequel “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day.” If you missed the original , these two Irish-American brothers who worked in a meat packing factory decided to arm themselves with a pair of silenced automatic pistols and imitate Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” antics. In their case, the MacManus twins believed God had summoned them to serve as his avengers. Moreover, a rogue FBI agent pulled strings on their behalf so Connor and Murphy with their sidekick Rocco could terminate 22 of Boston’s finest criminals. According to Duffy, this 118-minute sequel materialized only because the cult status of the original convinced Hollywood that a second opus was inevitable. Happily, most of the original cast have returned and Duffy’s pro-vigilante message remains intact. Everything that made the first film engaging recurs in “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” (**** OUT OF ****), within the constraints of minimal realism. The controversial history of the original movie has something to do with the ten years that it took for Duffy to helm the sequel. Between the release of the original and sequel, a 2003 documentary about “The Boondock Saints” entitled “Overnight” showed what Duffy did to alienate Hollywood. Otherwise, “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” qualifies as both an ambitious and entertaining sequel that springs several surprises. Two of the cherished original characters bite the dust. This time around nobody accidentally shoots a cat. If you liked the original, you may enjoy the sequel.
Duffy has the “Boondock” formula down to the bullet holes, but he has made a number of changes. Many involve the replacements for the original characters who don’t return. First, FBI Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) doesn't reprise his role. Second, super sexy, southern-drawling, FBI Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz of "Rambo") replaces Smecker and struts around stiletto high heels. Make no mistake, Bloom ranks as Smecker’s rival when she analyzes a crime scene. Third, although Rocco makes a cameo appearance, Dully replaces Rocco with a goon every bit as hilarious as Rocco. Indeed, Romeo (Clifton Collins, Jr., of "Crank 2") replicates Rocco in most respects, but he exhibits more discipline. Our heroes encounter this outlandish Mexican aboard the freighter that they take to cross the Atlantic. Fourth, Mafioso chieftain Concezio Yakavetta (Judd Nelson of “The Breakfast Club”) serves as the chief adversary this time, and Yakavetta commands an army of trigger-happy hoodlums. Audiences that saw the first “Saints” saga know that our heroes executed Concezio’s father in a courtroom.
Meantime, Duffy preserves other plotlines. The three Boston detectives play a more integral part in this sequel’s shenanigans. They fear that their role in aiding and abetting the MacManus twins in the last courtroom scene will come back to haunt them. Peripheral characters, such as the arms dealer and Doc, the barman with Tourette's syndrome who runs McGinty’s bar, reappear along with the Boston Chief of Police. Not only does Duffy recycle the best parts of the original, but he has also gone in and fleshed out the most enigmatic character for the original, II Duce (Billy Connolly), and furnished him with a back story. The back story concerns how II Duce as a youth named Noah who grew up to become a serial executioner after he saw his father murdered before his eyes. This subplot adds a whole new dimension to “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day.”
Our Irish Catholic vigilante heroes have been living in a self-imposed exile in Ireland herding sheep and rolling their own cigarettes with their long-haired, bearded father (Billy Connolly) with whom they were reunited during the final quarter hour of “The Boondock Saints.” A beloved Catholic priest, Father Douglas McKinney (Dwayne McLean of “Charlie Bartlett”), has been brutally murdered in his own church, and the killer has framed the MacManus twins. Specifically, he imitated their ritual of shooting their victim in the back of the head and placing pennies on the eyes. Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery of “Powder”) and Murphy (Norman Reedus of “Hero Wanted”) cut off their shoulder-length locks and excavate their hardware. They return to their old stomping grounds and vow to kill anybody who had anything to do with the priest’s demise.
Initially, Bostonians are divided over the priest’s homicide. Half of Boston believes the MacManus twins iced the poor cleric, while the other half refuse to believe that their heroes would stoop to such sacrilege. Duffy uses the scenes involving the media to recap the Saints’ exploits from the first movie and their sudden disappearance after the courtroom shoot-out eight years ago. Meanwhile, Eunice wants to feed the hysteria and keep the MacManus twins on the front page until they can find who is at the bottom of the murder. Naturally, Eunice knows Connor and Murphy had nothing to do with the priest’s slaying. At the same time, the mob is incensed about the killing of the priest because it means that somebody wants the Saints back in town. The resolution of this mystery, which involves an enigmatic character called ‘the Roman’(Peter Fonda of “Easy Rider”) fame makes the final half-hour absorbing stuff.
“The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” bears all the earmarks of the original: audacious gunfights, profanity galore, oddball characters, fractured time lines, and witty but politically incorrect dialogue. Duffy enjoys reversing the chronological order of events. An excellent example of his fractured time line occurs in the Chinese heroin massacre—about 35 minutes into the action--when the cops first investigate the slaughter at a heroin factory and then everything shifts into flashback mode before the massacre. The difference here is Duffy gives us a look at it from the perspective of an exploitation picture. In other words, he stages the shoot-out as if it were part of a 1970s era movie. Our cigarette smoking heroes are riding in a crate atop a fork-lift driven by Romeo. They perform incredible acrobatic feats as they plummet from the crate and then wield two guns a piece like Buffalo Bill to annihilate their adversaries. The film looks old and lacerated. The actual scene with our heroes experiencing a more realistic encounter with the villains ensues after their parody scene. Not surprisingly, the ending leaves everything open for another sequel. Altogether, anybody who calls Duffy a Tarantino clone doesn't have a clue about cinematic artistry and the depth of "The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day."
Duffy has the “Boondock” formula down to the bullet holes, but he has made a number of changes. Many involve the replacements for the original characters who don’t return. First, FBI Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) doesn't reprise his role. Second, super sexy, southern-drawling, FBI Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz of "Rambo") replaces Smecker and struts around stiletto high heels. Make no mistake, Bloom ranks as Smecker’s rival when she analyzes a crime scene. Third, although Rocco makes a cameo appearance, Dully replaces Rocco with a goon every bit as hilarious as Rocco. Indeed, Romeo (Clifton Collins, Jr., of "Crank 2") replicates Rocco in most respects, but he exhibits more discipline. Our heroes encounter this outlandish Mexican aboard the freighter that they take to cross the Atlantic. Fourth, Mafioso chieftain Concezio Yakavetta (Judd Nelson of “The Breakfast Club”) serves as the chief adversary this time, and Yakavetta commands an army of trigger-happy hoodlums. Audiences that saw the first “Saints” saga know that our heroes executed Concezio’s father in a courtroom.
Meantime, Duffy preserves other plotlines. The three Boston detectives play a more integral part in this sequel’s shenanigans. They fear that their role in aiding and abetting the MacManus twins in the last courtroom scene will come back to haunt them. Peripheral characters, such as the arms dealer and Doc, the barman with Tourette's syndrome who runs McGinty’s bar, reappear along with the Boston Chief of Police. Not only does Duffy recycle the best parts of the original, but he has also gone in and fleshed out the most enigmatic character for the original, II Duce (Billy Connolly), and furnished him with a back story. The back story concerns how II Duce as a youth named Noah who grew up to become a serial executioner after he saw his father murdered before his eyes. This subplot adds a whole new dimension to “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day.”
Our Irish Catholic vigilante heroes have been living in a self-imposed exile in Ireland herding sheep and rolling their own cigarettes with their long-haired, bearded father (Billy Connolly) with whom they were reunited during the final quarter hour of “The Boondock Saints.” A beloved Catholic priest, Father Douglas McKinney (Dwayne McLean of “Charlie Bartlett”), has been brutally murdered in his own church, and the killer has framed the MacManus twins. Specifically, he imitated their ritual of shooting their victim in the back of the head and placing pennies on the eyes. Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery of “Powder”) and Murphy (Norman Reedus of “Hero Wanted”) cut off their shoulder-length locks and excavate their hardware. They return to their old stomping grounds and vow to kill anybody who had anything to do with the priest’s demise.
Initially, Bostonians are divided over the priest’s homicide. Half of Boston believes the MacManus twins iced the poor cleric, while the other half refuse to believe that their heroes would stoop to such sacrilege. Duffy uses the scenes involving the media to recap the Saints’ exploits from the first movie and their sudden disappearance after the courtroom shoot-out eight years ago. Meanwhile, Eunice wants to feed the hysteria and keep the MacManus twins on the front page until they can find who is at the bottom of the murder. Naturally, Eunice knows Connor and Murphy had nothing to do with the priest’s slaying. At the same time, the mob is incensed about the killing of the priest because it means that somebody wants the Saints back in town. The resolution of this mystery, which involves an enigmatic character called ‘the Roman’(Peter Fonda of “Easy Rider”) fame makes the final half-hour absorbing stuff.
“The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” bears all the earmarks of the original: audacious gunfights, profanity galore, oddball characters, fractured time lines, and witty but politically incorrect dialogue. Duffy enjoys reversing the chronological order of events. An excellent example of his fractured time line occurs in the Chinese heroin massacre—about 35 minutes into the action--when the cops first investigate the slaughter at a heroin factory and then everything shifts into flashback mode before the massacre. The difference here is Duffy gives us a look at it from the perspective of an exploitation picture. In other words, he stages the shoot-out as if it were part of a 1970s era movie. Our cigarette smoking heroes are riding in a crate atop a fork-lift driven by Romeo. They perform incredible acrobatic feats as they plummet from the crate and then wield two guns a piece like Buffalo Bill to annihilate their adversaries. The film looks old and lacerated. The actual scene with our heroes experiencing a more realistic encounter with the villains ensues after their parody scene. Not surprisingly, the ending leaves everything open for another sequel. Altogether, anybody who calls Duffy a Tarantino clone doesn't have a clue about cinematic artistry and the depth of "The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day."
Sunday, March 14, 2010
FILM REVIEW OF ''COP OUT'' (2010)
This uninspired police procedural comedy of errors from "Clerks" director Kevin Smith and TV scribes Robb & Mark Cullen teams action icon Bruce Willis up with "30 Rock" comic Tracy Morgan as two N.Y.P.D. homicide detectives who tangle with a gang of trigger-happy Hispanic drug dealers. Smith's previous comedies were coarse, loquacious, low-budget efforts about losers on the fringes of society. As classic as "Clerks," "Dogma," "Chasing Amy," and "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" are, these imaginative but niche comedies never scored big bucks at the box office, so Smith decided to helm a formulaic genre piece that he knew his father would appreciate. Interestingly enough, Smith didn't pen the screenplay as he usually does, but the film bears visages of his irreverent humor. "Cop Out" (** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a predictable mainstream law & order thriller that delivers fewer thrills than it does gags. The marginal humor is at times crude, especially an interrogation room scene, but you won't find yourself laughing out loud at some of the jokes that Smith's usual characters, Jay and Silent Bob, would crack or pranks that they would perform for their gross-out hilarity. Half-comic and half-dramatic, this 107-minute, R-rated feature lacks memorable characters in memorable predicaments. Reportedly, "Cop Out" is a homage to 1980s' cop movies with the stereotypically intolerant captain who complains to his overzealous underlings about their questionable actions. Another allusion to 1980s cop movies is the charismatic but hardly classic Harold Faltermeyer synthesized score that the composer of "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop" came out of retirement to contribute to this undistinguished opus.
Detective Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis of "Die Hard") and Detective Paul Hodges (Tray Morgan of "The Longest Yard") have been partners for nine years. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine who would tolerate an idiot like Paul. During the questioning of a suspect at the outset, Paul enters the interrogation room and tries to masquerade as a crazed gunman. A peanut gallery of spectators on the other side of the interrogation room window chuckle as Paul struggles to get the suspect to open up. Jimmy shakes his head incredulously as Paul quotes movie dialogue in his tough guy act to loosen the suspect's tongue. Surprisingly, Paul's lunatic performance succeeds, and the suspect spills the beans about Latin drug dealers. Our heroes stake-out the suspect's cell phone store. Unfortunately, not only does the Latino ice the suspect with a submachine gun, but also he eludes our heroes so that they look like amateurs. Predictably, Captain Romans (Sean Cullen of "Cop Land") chews them out because they lost the suspect and shot-up the neighborhood. Moreover, Romans suspends both Jimmy and Paul, because their slipshod antics fouled up two of their fellow detectives, Hunsaker (Kevin Pollak of "Deterrence") and Barry Mangold (Adam Brody of "Jennifer's Body"), who were investigating the Hispanics.
Captain Romans' suspension could not have come at a worse time for our protagonist. Jimmy learns that his daughter, Ava (Michelle Trachtenberg of "17 Again"), wants a dream wedding and her stepfather Roy (Jason Lee of "Dogma") wants to foot the $48-thousand dollar wedding if Jimmy cannot pay for it. Jimmy insists on paying for it. He decides to sell a collectible baseball card of National League player Andy Pafko that is worth of bundle. Jimmy takes the baseball card to a dealer, but he loses it when a light-on-his-feet thief, Dave (Seann William Scott of "Role Models"), knocks Jimmy down with a tazer during a daylight robbery and pinches the card. Ironically, Paul is standing out front the entire time jabbering on his cell phone with his wife without the slightest idea what is happening inside the store.
Meanwhile, an ambitious Spanish drug dealer decides to take over some new territory. The baseball card thief sells Jimmy's card to this murderous Mexican (Guillermo Diaz of "The Virgin of Juarez") who is obsessed with baseball memorabilia. Poh-Boy--as he is called--has a BMW that thieves have stolen out from under the noses of his henchmen. Poh-Boy agrees to fork over the baseball card if Jimmy and Paul can get his car back. Several people get shot along the way, but Smith doesn't wallow in blood & gore the way a real 1980s movie would have. Indeed, "Cop Out" is no white-knuckled, "Lethal Weapon" type, high-octane cop saga. Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody are okay as the second-string pair of sartorial cops that shadow our heroes. The only decent gag that Smith handles with finesse concerns Paul's jealous behavior about his gorgeous wife. Paul suspects that his sexy spouse, Debbie (Rashida Jones of "I Love You, Man") is having an affair with a hot young stud next door so he puts a teddy bear with a nanny cam in their bedroom to monitor her.
Basically, Willis and Morgan kindle little chemistry with their sophomoric shenanigans. They walk through this lackluster shoot'em up with Willis as the gruff, seasoned partner who doesn't need a moron like Paul. Paul cannot say homage right and Smith milks this joke far beyond its use. The death of Poh-Boy detracts from his overall villainous stature because our heroes eliminate him with far too much ease. The plot really gets wacky when Jimmy bails out Dave, the baseball card thief, and sends him into Poh-Boy's house to recover his card. The usually agile thief slips and knocks himself out cold, so cold in fact that our heroes believe that he is dead. This set-up provides the best joke that Smith plays out during the end credits. "Cop Out" conjures up forgettable characters, forgettable situations, and consistently forgettable gags.
Detective Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis of "Die Hard") and Detective Paul Hodges (Tray Morgan of "The Longest Yard") have been partners for nine years. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine who would tolerate an idiot like Paul. During the questioning of a suspect at the outset, Paul enters the interrogation room and tries to masquerade as a crazed gunman. A peanut gallery of spectators on the other side of the interrogation room window chuckle as Paul struggles to get the suspect to open up. Jimmy shakes his head incredulously as Paul quotes movie dialogue in his tough guy act to loosen the suspect's tongue. Surprisingly, Paul's lunatic performance succeeds, and the suspect spills the beans about Latin drug dealers. Our heroes stake-out the suspect's cell phone store. Unfortunately, not only does the Latino ice the suspect with a submachine gun, but also he eludes our heroes so that they look like amateurs. Predictably, Captain Romans (Sean Cullen of "Cop Land") chews them out because they lost the suspect and shot-up the neighborhood. Moreover, Romans suspends both Jimmy and Paul, because their slipshod antics fouled up two of their fellow detectives, Hunsaker (Kevin Pollak of "Deterrence") and Barry Mangold (Adam Brody of "Jennifer's Body"), who were investigating the Hispanics.
Captain Romans' suspension could not have come at a worse time for our protagonist. Jimmy learns that his daughter, Ava (Michelle Trachtenberg of "17 Again"), wants a dream wedding and her stepfather Roy (Jason Lee of "Dogma") wants to foot the $48-thousand dollar wedding if Jimmy cannot pay for it. Jimmy insists on paying for it. He decides to sell a collectible baseball card of National League player Andy Pafko that is worth of bundle. Jimmy takes the baseball card to a dealer, but he loses it when a light-on-his-feet thief, Dave (Seann William Scott of "Role Models"), knocks Jimmy down with a tazer during a daylight robbery and pinches the card. Ironically, Paul is standing out front the entire time jabbering on his cell phone with his wife without the slightest idea what is happening inside the store.
Meanwhile, an ambitious Spanish drug dealer decides to take over some new territory. The baseball card thief sells Jimmy's card to this murderous Mexican (Guillermo Diaz of "The Virgin of Juarez") who is obsessed with baseball memorabilia. Poh-Boy--as he is called--has a BMW that thieves have stolen out from under the noses of his henchmen. Poh-Boy agrees to fork over the baseball card if Jimmy and Paul can get his car back. Several people get shot along the way, but Smith doesn't wallow in blood & gore the way a real 1980s movie would have. Indeed, "Cop Out" is no white-knuckled, "Lethal Weapon" type, high-octane cop saga. Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody are okay as the second-string pair of sartorial cops that shadow our heroes. The only decent gag that Smith handles with finesse concerns Paul's jealous behavior about his gorgeous wife. Paul suspects that his sexy spouse, Debbie (Rashida Jones of "I Love You, Man") is having an affair with a hot young stud next door so he puts a teddy bear with a nanny cam in their bedroom to monitor her.
Basically, Willis and Morgan kindle little chemistry with their sophomoric shenanigans. They walk through this lackluster shoot'em up with Willis as the gruff, seasoned partner who doesn't need a moron like Paul. Paul cannot say homage right and Smith milks this joke far beyond its use. The death of Poh-Boy detracts from his overall villainous stature because our heroes eliminate him with far too much ease. The plot really gets wacky when Jimmy bails out Dave, the baseball card thief, and sends him into Poh-Boy's house to recover his card. The usually agile thief slips and knocks himself out cold, so cold in fact that our heroes believe that he is dead. This set-up provides the best joke that Smith plays out during the end credits. "Cop Out" conjures up forgettable characters, forgettable situations, and consistently forgettable gags.
FILM REVIEW OF ''CAT PEOPLE" (1942)
"Cat People" (**** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a subtle, suspenseful, 73-minute, black & white, B-picture horror movie from RKO Pictures about a delectable young thing who cannot consummate her marriage because she fears that she will change into a deadly panther and tear her husband to shreds. Russian-born producer Val Lewton, who had once served as a story editor to producer David O. Selznick, advocated the power of suggestion to forge genuine horror in the hearts of an audience. Lewton shunned the standard approach by depicting outright horror as Universal Studios did with their "Dracula," "Wolfman," and Frankenstein" franchises. When "Cat People" was made, the Production Code Administration censored movies and chief censor Joseph I. Breen worried about the implications of this sinister tale of terror. Indeed, you never see anybody get clawed and Irena (French actress Simone Simon) never actually turns into a cat. By comparison, Nastassia Kinski went through a transformation in the 1982 color remake. Nevertheless, it is the ambiguity and the power of suggestion that makes this movie a masterpiece of understatement. The themes of light/good and darkness/evil permeate this yarn as well as the women versus women permeate this impeccable nail-biter.
Director Jacques Tourneur creates a spooky sense of atmosphere and freshman scenarist DeWitt Bodeen pile up ideas that brood just beneath the surface in this memorable fright flick. Simone Simon is perfectly cast as the tender young girl who draws fashion pictures and worries about her village in faraway Serbia. The stories that she tells Oliver about King John of Serbia and the witches foreshadow her own demise. Indeed, she has a statue of the regal witch-hunter in her apartment with a cat impaled on a spear. This hearkens back to the first scene when she throws away a sketch of a panther impaled on a sword. She meets a nice, clean-cut young draftsman, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith of "Hitler's Children") at the local zoo one day while she is sketching pictures of the caged panther and Oliver helps Irena dispose of her crumpled up drawings. He accompanies Irena back to her brownstone apartment and they begin a brief courtship that end with them getting married. This is where trouble enters paradise.
During her wedding party, Irena is approached by a strange woman in a black cat suit who addresses her in her native tongue as her sister. Later that evening, Irena cannot bring herself to have sex with her husband because of her intense fears about her past and what she might do. Patient, understanding Oliver recommends that Irena see a shrink, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway of "The People Vs. Dr. Kildare"), so she can come to terms with her anxieties about marriage. Dr. Judd is literally a wolf in sheep's wool and Conway turns in a brilliant but slimy performance and pays with his life for his perfidy. She never kisses Oliver and they never sleep together. Struggling to deal with her own fears, Irena turns on Oliver's office buddy, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) who has a thing for him, but she only wants to help Irena and Oliver. Irena doesn't like what Alice is doing and one night some strange things happen. "Cat People" is a classic, far better than its graphic remake with its mind-blowing special effects. Nicholas Musuraca's black & white photography is fantastic. No, "Cat People" won't give you nightmares, but it is an effective chiller with two incredible scenes, both between the opposing women. The first scene occurs at night while they are walking down a dimly-lighted city sidewalk and a bus appears. Later, Irena follows Alice home to the latter's apartment and stalks her in the swimming pool. The swimming pool is cloaked in eerie shadows so that we cannot see Irena or the panther into which she has transformed herself. Afterward, Alice finds her clothing clawed.
"Cat People" contains many inventive touches, such as Irena parading around in a fur coat, particularly when she visits the panther at the zoo. There is another brief scene when Tourneur frames Irena in a shot with tiger lilies. Bodeem's screenplay contains many wonderfully clever lines.
Director Jacques Tourneur creates a spooky sense of atmosphere and freshman scenarist DeWitt Bodeen pile up ideas that brood just beneath the surface in this memorable fright flick. Simone Simon is perfectly cast as the tender young girl who draws fashion pictures and worries about her village in faraway Serbia. The stories that she tells Oliver about King John of Serbia and the witches foreshadow her own demise. Indeed, she has a statue of the regal witch-hunter in her apartment with a cat impaled on a spear. This hearkens back to the first scene when she throws away a sketch of a panther impaled on a sword. She meets a nice, clean-cut young draftsman, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith of "Hitler's Children") at the local zoo one day while she is sketching pictures of the caged panther and Oliver helps Irena dispose of her crumpled up drawings. He accompanies Irena back to her brownstone apartment and they begin a brief courtship that end with them getting married. This is where trouble enters paradise.
During her wedding party, Irena is approached by a strange woman in a black cat suit who addresses her in her native tongue as her sister. Later that evening, Irena cannot bring herself to have sex with her husband because of her intense fears about her past and what she might do. Patient, understanding Oliver recommends that Irena see a shrink, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway of "The People Vs. Dr. Kildare"), so she can come to terms with her anxieties about marriage. Dr. Judd is literally a wolf in sheep's wool and Conway turns in a brilliant but slimy performance and pays with his life for his perfidy. She never kisses Oliver and they never sleep together. Struggling to deal with her own fears, Irena turns on Oliver's office buddy, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) who has a thing for him, but she only wants to help Irena and Oliver. Irena doesn't like what Alice is doing and one night some strange things happen. "Cat People" is a classic, far better than its graphic remake with its mind-blowing special effects. Nicholas Musuraca's black & white photography is fantastic. No, "Cat People" won't give you nightmares, but it is an effective chiller with two incredible scenes, both between the opposing women. The first scene occurs at night while they are walking down a dimly-lighted city sidewalk and a bus appears. Later, Irena follows Alice home to the latter's apartment and stalks her in the swimming pool. The swimming pool is cloaked in eerie shadows so that we cannot see Irena or the panther into which she has transformed herself. Afterward, Alice finds her clothing clawed.
"Cat People" contains many inventive touches, such as Irena parading around in a fur coat, particularly when she visits the panther at the zoo. There is another brief scene when Tourneur frames Irena in a shot with tiger lilies. Bodeem's screenplay contains many wonderfully clever lines.
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