The journey the Boys Outta Brooklyn started back in Episode 34 is getting closer to completion as Tom and Derrick discuss the first two films of The Reign of Craig. They examine how Bond was re-imagined for the 21st century, and how the unconventional choice of Daniel Craig fit the remit for change. They really like one film, hate the other one, and then talk about the present situation with MGM and what it bodes for the world’s longest-running movie franchise. All this, plus a little disagreement on the hotness of Karen Gillan, a major announcement, and the revelation of what the letters in QUANTUM stand for. It’s a six-head’s worth of fun, so get to clicking!
Our survey of The Bond Films arrives at a major turning point as The Boys Outta Brooklyn reviews the first two movies to feature Roger Moore. It’s the edge of some very, very dark territory with some seriously goofy films (including one Tom subtitles ‘Black People Hate Bond’), but they do the usual cool eyed dissection. Plus Derrick says something so hilarious it makes Tom speechless and we rant about our choice for the worst Bond Girl ever. There’s a solar-powered laser weapon aimed at your head…so get to clicking!
Whenever action movies of the 1980’s are discussed by movie fans, plenty of titles leap out right away: “Die Hard” “48 Hours” “Beverly Hills Cop” “Rambo” “Commando” “The Last Dragon” “Road House” “Tango & Cash” “Lethal Weapon” “Lone Wolf McQuade” “Predator” and at least two dozen more. Hell, even “Megaforce” and “Treasure of The Three Crowns” will get mentioned just for shits n’ giggles if nothing else. But nobody ever seems to remember ACTION JACKSON. Which is a downright shame as the movie features Carl Weathers in a starring role for a change and for my money he showed he had what it takes to stand alongside Stallone, Schwartzenegger, Willis, Seagal and Norris as an Action Movie Hero.
Sgt. Jericho “Action” Jackson (Carl Weathers) of the Detroit Police Department has been riding a desk for two years since his demotion from Lieutenant. In his pursuit of a hideously deviant sexual predator he nearly killed the man, almost ripping his arm off. This particular hideously deviant sexual predator happened to be the son of Peter Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson) who has some bad wiring himself but hides it better. Being Detroit’s most powerful businessman enabled Dellaplane to get Jackson demoted.
But Dellaplane gets back on Action Jackson’s radar due to the horrific deaths of a number of influential officials of the city’s auto workers union. Dellaplane’s trophy wife Patrice (Sharon Stone) gets a whiff that something’s not right with her husband and confides in Jackson which gets her right dead right quick. Dellaplane frames Jackson for the murder. On the run from both his own friends and fellow cops, Jackson has to depend on the help of his network of street people and Sydney Ash (Vanity) Dellaplane’s singer/heroin-addict mistress to clear his name and bring Dellaplane down before he assassinates the president of The Auto Worker Alliance. He’s also being hunted by The Invisible Men, Dellaplane’s cadre of ninja-like killers. It’s a lot to do in only 96 minutes but they don’t call him Action Jackson for nothin’
When this movie opened back in 1988 it was enough of a hit that there was talk of two, three and even four sequels to this picture. And considering the amount of time the movie takes to set up the large number of supporting characters in this one, it certainly feels like this was intended to be the first movie of a series. During the course of the movie, Action Jackson picks up some interesting sidekicks such as Kid Sable (Chino ‘Fats’ Williams) an ex-boxer who now runs a fleabag hotel. Dee The Hairdresser (Armelia McQueen) who is a library of illegal information which she dispenses almost entirely in words starting with the letter ‘D’. Mr. Edd (Prince A. Hughes) Sydney’s man-mountain of a bodyguard who speaks like a scholar and deplores using violence even though he’s very good at doing so. And Albert Smith (Stan Foster) a purse snatcher who faints dead away upon meeting Action Jackson for the first time, so fearsome is his reputation. And Action Jackson himself isn’t just a rogue cop running around blowing stuff up. He’s also famous as a local boy who made good as a celebrated athlete running track in high school and going on to graduate from Harvard.
Craig T. Nelson does a very good job of villainy in this one. One of the reasons I like ACTION JACKSON is that he’s not put up against some drug kingpin, terrorists or gang bangers. No, Dellaplane’s scheme is to gain control of the powerful auto unions (and back in the 80’s they were pretty powerful) and use their political clout to muscle who he wants into key government offices to benefit his business interests. His Dellaplane makes a very good adversary for Jackson as both men are evenly matched in intelligence, physical abilities and their need to win. It’s even pointed out to Jackson that Dellaplane actually is a lot like him.
Sharon Stone is surprisingly good as Dellaplane’s wife. She’s never much interested me as an actress but I found myself actually liking her a lot in this one. Vanity is just as gorgeous and as charming in this movie as she is in “The Last Dragon” and she has a nice chemistry with Carl Weathers. Sure, they go through the usual male/female bickering that I’m used to in Action Movies but if it’s done well, I don’t mind.
The direction by Craig R. Baxley is tight due to his having worked as a stunt coordinator and second-unit director on movies such as “The Warriors” “The Long Riders” and “Predator” as well as TV’s “The A-Team.” So he knows how to direct action and fight scenes that are sharp, energetic and full of power.
What else? There’s a lot of faces from 80’s movies and TV you’ll recognize here that turn in solid supporting performances such as Bill Duke, Robert Davi, Bob Minor, Branscombe Richard, Ed O’Ross, Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen from “Back To The Future”), Miguel A. Nunez, Jr. and Sonny Landham who along with Carl Weathers and Bill Duke was in “Predator”
And above all, ACTION JACKSON never loses sight of its purpose: it’s an Action Movie. It’s not designed to illuminate the human condition or cast an eye on the state of the world or contemplate existential middle-class angst. It’s supposed to deliver 96 minutes worth of shootings, impalings, stabbings, immolations, explosions, fights, out-of-control car chases, snappy one-liners, sexy women, bad guys and good guys beating up on each other and do it in the most entertaining manner possible. ACTION JACKSON gets my highest recommendation.
Inspired by The Bourne Series written by Robert Ludlum
I will give THE BOURNE LEGACY credit for being original in one major area: it’s not a prequel or sequel to the previous three Jason Bourne movies starring Matt Damon. The events of this movie take place at the same time the events of “The Bourne Ultimatum” play out. Jason Bourne is mentioned a few times and we briefly see pictures of him but for all intents and purposes these are new characters dealing with a different level of fallout caused by Jason Bourne exposing Operation Blackbriar and Project Treadstone.
But after that I’m sad to say I can’t give THE BOURNE LEGACY any more credit after that. Matter of fact, by the time I got to the end of the movie (which has a terrific new version of Moby’s “Extreme Ways” playing over the credits) I felt the filmmakers owed me.
While Jason Bourne is in Manhattan carrying on cranky, CIA Director Kramer (Scott Glenn) and Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) bring in Eric Byer (Edward Norton) to help control the chaos. Turso and Byer are apparently part of a larger organization/conspiracy that has way more power than the CIA since Byer is able to sanction the dismantling of all CIA Black Ops programs. Including Operation Outcome which is genetically modifying super agents through blue and green pills that enhance physical and mental abilities via a virus that can actually restructure DNA. Byer also sanctions the assassination of all Outcome operatives.
One of these super agents, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is on a training mission in Alaska. He meets up with another operative, Number Three (Oscar Isacc) and caught by a blizzard, accepts Number Three’s invitation to stay the night. Kinda makes it easy for Byer to attempt to kill them both by using a U-CAV to blow up the cabin. Cross alone survives and somehow makes his way back to the lower 49 as he is out of blue and green pills and must get a new supply.
Virologist Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) is the only one who can successfully make more pills, all the rest of her colleagues having been brutally murdered in what is for me the movie’s best and most suspenseful scene. Marta barely survived that massacre and it’s only through Cross showing up at her house in time that she survives a hit team of CIA agents sent to kill her. From then on, it’s Cross and Marta trying to stay one step ahead of various attempts to kill them. The film jumps back and forth between them and Byers, Turso and a buncha other suits in a control room that would give NASA technicians fits of envy. They spend most of their time fretting about their dirty tricks being discovered. Really. That’s all they do. They also yell at each other a lot. Cross and Marta don’t do nearly as much yelling but they sure do a lot of running.
I really wanted to like THE BOURNE LEGACY a lot. There isn’t an actor in this movie I don’t like or didn’t turn in a solid, professional performance. Jeremy Renner with this movie goes up a dozen rungs on the ladder to being the Next Big Action Star. Edward Norton doesn’t know how to do anything less than be terrific in any movie he’s in and Rachel Weisz is way more interesting playing a scientist than a lot of other actresses who have played brainy types.
But it’s that first hour of THE BOURNE LEGACY that sank the movie for me. Now I don’t mind a movie that makes me work and makes me think about what I’m watching but there is so much that happens in the first hour that is not explained and characters introduced and I wasn’t sure of who they were or why they were there or what they were doing or why should I care about any of it. Maybe it would have helped if I had re-watched the first three BOURNE movies before seeing this one but I don’t think that really would have helped. The only actors from those movies who are in this one are Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Albert Finney but their appearances are little more than cameos.
John Gilroy did the editing for this movie. Now if you’ve been reading my reviews for a while you’ll note that I generally don’t mention editing unless it’s spectacularly bad and it is in this movie during the action and fight scenes. You can’t convince me that Aaron Cross is supposed to be an unstoppable fighting machine unless I can tell who he’s hitting and how he’s hitting them. Just a frantic blur of motion and bodies flying through the air don’t cut it for me. It’s not shaky-cam but it’s almost as bad.
Another thing that bothered me was the high number of innocent bystanders who get killed in this movie. If I’m correct and counted right, Aaron Cross kills at least six people who have nothing to do with the conspiracy trying to kill him and were merely people who were just doing their jobs. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And by the time I got to the ending I finally figured out why the movie is constructed the way it is. The studio is obviously so convinced this movie is going to be such a huge hit that a sequel is guaranteed and they needed to save a lot of story for that.
So should you see THE BOURNE LEGACY? I’m gonna grudgingly say yes. It’s not that it’s a bad movie. It’s professionally made and the performances are good. But it’s just that whole confusing first hour that didn’t work for me and the poorly edited action sequences.
Produced by Nicholas Cage, Todd Garner, Norman Golightly, Graham King and Arne Schmidt
Directed by Lee Tamahori
Screenplay by Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum
Based on “The Golden Man” by Philip K. Dick
One question folks like to ask me is this golden oldie: “Have you ever seen a movie so bad that you walked out on it?” And I’ve always answered: “No.” And don’t think that I stay to watch a movie all the way through out of some principal that I should stay to the end of a movie so that if I trash it later on I can do it fairly. I stay because I’ve paid my money and I’m not getting up until I’ve seen what I’ve paid for. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of movies I’ve wished I’d walked out on. I could give you a list in two minutes flat of 25 movies I wished I’d walked out on. And NEXT is near the top of that list. NEXT is so appallingly bad that I don’t know who I feel sorrier for: the people who pay good money to see it or the people who were contractually obligated to work on this movie. At least I hope they were contractually obligated.
Cris Johnson (Nicholas Cage) is a third rate Las Vegas magician performing under the name Frank Cadillac. He’s not flashy enough to play the big rooms. He mainly works the small lounges where the losers nurse their drinks while trying to figure out how to tell their wives they’ve lost the kid’s college fund shooting craps. Cris deliberately stays under the radar because he does have a gift that is akin to real magic: he can see two minutes into his own future and tell what’s going to happen to him before it happens. He uses this talent to rake in some extra cash at the blackjack tables until one shitty night when he finds himself preventing a robbery that hasn’t happened yet and winds up on the run from not only the Las Vegas Police Department but also FBI Special Agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore)
Turns out that Agent Ferris knows all about the special power Cris has, apparently from studying casino videotapes and somehow she’s convinced herself that Cris can help her find and stop a band of terrorists who have a nuclear device somewhere in Los Angeles that they’re going to denote in five days. Yeah, you read that right. Terrorists have an active nuclear device on American soil and the FBI is chasing after a Las Vegas magician instead of trying to find the bomb. Using his ability, Cris manages to stay out of the clutches of the cops and the feds as he desperately needs to find Liz (Jessica Biel) a young woman who keeps appearing in his visions of the future. But these visions don’t take place two minutes in the future. They apparently take place days and even weeks ahead. Cris wants to find her to find out why. This leads to a scene that is actually kinda amusing and clever: using his ability to see two minutes ahead Cris can actually ‘try out’ different approaches of meeting Liz until he finds one that works.
Now while Cris and Liz are falling in love and Agent Farris is tearing her hair out trying to catch up to Cris, the head terrorist (Thomas Kretschmann) finds out that the FBI is trying to catch Cris because they think he can help them. In a stunning leap of logic that dazzled me beyond belief, Terrorist Number One pulls all of his people from their main objective of blowing up Los Angeles and sends them to kill Cris. His reasoning? Well, if the FBI thinks Cris can catch him then Cris has got to be killed at all costs. You think the guy would do a background check or something before committing all of his people to such an action but NEXT never lets anything resembling common sense or logic get in the way of the next CGI action sequence.
Supposedly NEXT is based on a ‘novel story’ called “The Golden Man” by Philip K. Dick. I’ve never read the story but I’d be willing to bet you my autographed copy of Clive Barker’s ‘Weaveworld’ that it bears no relation to the movie at all. In fact, NEXT feels an awful lot like a television pilot on steroids. It plays as if the Johnny Smith character from ‘The Dead Zone’ was the hero of ‘24’ instead of Jack Bauer. To be honest, I think the character of Cris Johnson/Frank Cadillac to be interesting enough to sustain a television series and the ways he uses his power in the movie shows he’s a guy with brains. It’s a given that he can actually dodge bullets since he knows where a sniper is going to shoot him before the sniper pulls the trigger. And he can evade and escape his pursuers since he literally knows where they’re going to be before they do. He can outfight just about anybody since he knows from which direction their punches are coming. But there’s a goofy chase sequence where he orchestrates an escape that has a kind of lunatic Wile E. Coyote kind of deranged genius in the way one thing crashes over and flips something else over and causes something else to roll downhill. There’s also a nifty scene where Cris ‘searches’ an entire ship by himself simply by running through his mind every possible route he could take through the ship and foreseeing how the multiple routes will end.
And even though “Ghost Rider” is the better movie (although not by much) I liked Nicholas Cage’s performance in NEXT much better. Not once in “Ghost Rider” did I buy him as a daredevil motorcycle stunt rider but here, he inhabited the skin of this character very well. Julianne Moore walks through her performance as if she just wants to get this over with, get her check and call Paul Thomas Anderson to beg him to have a role for her in his next movie. After seeing Jessica Biel in “The Illusionist” and being highly impressed with her in that movie I was wondering if she was truly developing into a gifted actress or if it was just the director and the material of “The Illusionist” that made her look better than she was. After watching her in NEXT I would say that yes, her performance in “The Illusionist” was a fluke. And Peter Falk is in the movie for all of five minutes. If you sneeze you’ll miss him. The director Lee Tamahori knows how to direct action as anybody who’s seen “Die Another Day” and “XXX: State Of The Union” can attest but the action sequences in NEXT all were familiar to me, as if I’d seen them before. Especially in the last 30 minutes that play like outtakes from ‘24’.
And the ending of NEXT…I sat there in my seat for maybe a minute not believing that they actually had ended the movie the way it did. I’m sure that the writers sat around congratulating themselves on how clever they were. I don’t think they were clever at all. I think they wasted my time and the time of everybody at the showing I saw it with. I remember vividly seeing this in the theater while on vacation with my wife in Florida. I looked at some of the faces of the people leaving the theater with me and they were not happy faces at all. That ending, combined with the silly, sloppy premise of the story and an overwhelming number of plot holes as big as craters on The Moon made for a horrendously disappointing movie.
I’m going to give you the best recommendation I can give you for SHOOT ‘EM UP and it comes from my wife Patricia. We went to see this movie and I was fully prepared for her to hate it. 86 minutes later the credits are rolling and I asked her what she thought of it.
“I loved it.” Says she, taking me totally by surprise and yet again reminding me that I should never be so arrogant as to presume to predict what a woman will think.
“What did you like about it?” I ask.
Patricia smiles at me and says quite seriously: “I like a movie that gives you exactly what the title says it will give you.”
And she’s right on the money: SHOOT ‘EM UP is exactly that and nothing more: a series of gloriously over the top, spectacularly inventive and violent shootouts that is hung on a plot so bizarre and outrageous that it leaves you with only two options: sit back and have a good time or just eject the DVD and watch another movie. Really. SHOOT ‘EM UP is just that kind of movie. It makes no apologies for what it is. You either just have to go along or go home.
Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) is sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, eating raw carrots when a bleeding pregnant woman runs past him. Five seconds later a bunch of guys with guns in a car screech past him, waving guns out of the windows and following the pregnant woman. On an impulse, Mr. Smith follows and in a devastating gun battle wipes out the guys in the car and delivers the baby, severing the umbilical cord by firing a bullet through it. The mother catches a round through the forehead and Mr. Smith goes on the run with the child. He’s being pursued by Mr. Hertz (Paul Giamatti) a former FBI forensic profiler gone bad who now leads a team of badass gunslingers whose only job is to recover the child Mr. Smith is now caring for.
Mr. Smith enlists the aid of Donna Quintano (Monica Belluci) a prostitute whose specialty really comes in handy: you see, she fulfills men who have breast feeding fantasies. So Mr. Smith offers her $5000 dollars to breast feed the baby while he goes about the business of annihilating the army of killers Mr. Hertz sends after him and maybe while he’s doing that he can find out why everybody seems intent on killing this baby.
If I told you that Mr. Smith eventually learns that the baby is tied into a dying Presidential candidate whose life can be saved only by the bone marrow of infants and his campaign is being bankrolled by a arms merchant you’d call me crazy. But it is what it is. SHOOT ‘EM UP is the kind of movie that John Woo used to make before Hollywood destroyed his talent. It’s a ‘movie’ movie if you know what I mean. It makes no pretensions at being realistic. It throws the most improbable characters, situations and plot twists at you and you either say; “What the hell, I’m having fun” or you say ‘Screw it.” You kinda get what writer/director Michael Davis is going for in the first confrontation between Mr. Smith and Mr. Hertz when they’re pointing guns at each other while Mr. Smith, who is chewing a carrot says; “What’s up, Doc?” and Mr. Hertz responds with: “You wascilly wabbit, you” Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti are playing live action versions of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd who are really trying to kill each other with no bullshit.
Clive Owen is one of my favorite actors and he is obviously having a fun time playing the stone-faced hero who can escape from any situation and who handles a pair of 9mm Berettas almost as good as Chow Yun Fat. He and Monica Belluci make a great team as the dysfunctional surrogate parents of the child that they have inherited and there is something honestly redeeming about the way they determine to protect this child. Paul Giamatti is the one actor who is having the best time in this movie. It’s so unlike anything he’s ever played before and you can see it in his eyes how much he’s enjoying himself. And yeah, Giamatti makes for one great bad guy.
And how about those gunfights? Take it from me: every single gunfight in SHOOT ‘EM UP is good enough that any other director would have ended his movie with any of them. But here, they come one right after another. Just when I thought the one I just saw was so outrageous that it couldn’t be topped here comes another one that not only thrilled me with the sheer energy and audacity of the choreography but made me giggle like a schoolgirl as well. The daddy of ‘em all has to be the gunfight that takes place between Mr. Smith and a dozen assassins who have all jumped out of a plane and are plummeting to the ground while blasting away at each other. It’s a sequence that absolutely has to be seen to be believed.
So should you see SHOOT ‘EM UP? If you’re an action movie junkie like me, you probably already have. SHOOT ‘EM UP doesn’t have a single realistic moment in the movie. But I enjoyed the hell out of the fact that the actors and filmmakers were willing to throw everything out the window and just have a good time telling a really out there story and do it with incredible action and their collective tongues firmly in their cheeks. SHOOT ‘EM UP gives you exactly what the title says it’ll give you and if you expect any more than that then you paid your money for the wrong movie.
86 minutes
Rated R for graphic violence and language. And I mean it. There’s an extraordinary amount of violence here as well as a pretty graphic torture scene near the end. And don’t even get me started on the scene where Clive Owen and Monica Belluci are having sex and he has to fight off half a dozen guys trying to kill them and continue having sex with her. They tried to copy this scene in “Drive Angry” but trust me, SHOOT ‘EM UP does it way better.
Written by George Miller, Byron Kennedy and James McCausland
In the “Lethal Weapon” movies Mel Gibson played L.A. police detective Martin Riggs who undergoes such a severe psychological trauma when his wife is killed that the common held belief is that he’s gone straight flat out crazy. Insane. Mad, even. That’s the main trait shared with an earlier Mel Gibson character: Australian highway cop Max Rockatansky who undergoes such a severe psychological trauma when his wife and son are killed that the common held belief is that he’s gone straight flat out crazy. Insane. Mad, even. In fact, so mad that he’s called MAD MAX.
The movie is set in Australia of the near future after some sort of global disaster. We’re never told in this movie what the disaster was but the two sequels to MAD MAX make it clear that the world superpowers finally threw down over dwindling oil resources. Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is a highway cop in The Outback. Along with his partner Jim Goose (Steve Bisley) and the other members of the small band of cops known as The Main Force Patrol, they do their best to protect the public from marauding bands of motorcycle gangs that roam the highways, looting, raping, pillaging and just generally carrying on cranky.
The cops are so poorly funded that their headquarters, the ironically named Hall of Justice looks like a rotting pigsty with only one half-crazed mechanic to keep their vehicles running. The MFP has a hideously dangerous run-in with a psychotic called The Night Rider who steals one of their souped up Interceptors and leads them on a terrifying high speed pursuit that ends in several civilian and police cars wrecked, an officer severely injured and The Night Rider dead.
This starts Max to thinking that maybe it’s time for him to get out. He’s got a wife (Joanne Samuel) and a baby boy he’d like to be around to grow old with. The Goose conspires with their boss, Fifi Macaffie (Roger Ward) to get Max to stay by bribing him with a customized Ford Falcon with a supercharged V8 engine. Max is Fifi’s best cop and if he loses Max then the MFP is going to be in real trouble as they’re barely holding their own against the vicious motorcycle gangs as it is.
The situation heats up when The Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne) the leader of the gang that The Night Rider was a member of decides to wage war on The MFP and takes a horrible revenge on Jim Goose, setting a trap for him and burning him alive while he’s trapped in a flipped over truck. This decides it for Max. He turns in his resignation, takes his wife and son and heads north, determined to find peace for them while he’s still able. But Max is next on The Toecutter’s list of revenge. And if he can’t have Max then he’ll settle for Max’s wife and son instead.
MAD MAX is a good example of what is meant by ‘grindhouse’. It’s a straight-up B-budget action/adventure with no other purpose than to entertain. I vividly remember seeing this on 42end Street back when it really was 42end Street and thinking even then it was pretty damn cool. I watched it last night for about the 12th time and I still think it’s pretty damn cool. Primarily because of the highly exciting action sequences. George Miller knows how to film action. And he knows how to film car chases. Back in the 70’s audiences had become pretty jaded when it came to car chases because just about every action movie back then definitely had one, sometimes two and if they could figure out any way possible then dammit, they’d throw in three. But George Miller really has a way of making car chases so energized that you don’t feel like you’ve seen these car chases before.
And even though I’ve got nothing against CGI, I dearly love action films of the 70’s and 80’s because you know that these are real guys in real cars doing these stunts. When cars are slamming into eighteen-wheelers at 90 miles an hour or guys go flying through the air to land on concrete and roll for another 50 feet you feel it because you can see it’s an actual human being getting busted up and not a CGI. It also gives an air of believability to the action because nobody is breaking the laws of physics here. The fighting is sweaty, brutal and painful. Especially in the scenes where Mad Max faces down The Toecutter and his protégé Johnny The Boy (Tim Burns) during which Max is shot and run over with a motorcycle. Max doesn’t shrug off his wounds and get up to whoop ass. He gets up, sure, but it takes time, it hurts like hell and even back then Mel Gibson was a good enough actor to sell the scene.
This being Mel Gibson’s first major starring role is probably the reason most will want to see a movie that’s almost 35 years old and even then you can see the easy charm as well as the grim intensity that would bring him international fame. He’s as competent as you would imagine in the action sequences but he’s also amazingly gentle and warm in the scenes with Joanne Samuel who plays his wife. They have a real chemistry together and it’s not hard to buy them as a young couple in love. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Gibson blows the screen apart but he’s a helluva lot better in his first film than a lot of others I’ve seen. Steve Bisley as Max’s partner Jim Goose is so full of life and so likeable that you wish he had more screen time. He’s got one of those grins that you’ve seen before: he’s either just put one over on you or he’s about to. Either way, you’re gonna let him because you just can’t resist that grin. Roger Ward is one of my favorites in this movie. Despite being named Fifi, he’s a towering slab of man, bald as a rock, always chewing on a cigar, wearing a flowing black scarf and telling his boys: “Do whatever you want out on the road as long as the paperwork’s straight!”
Hugh Keays-Byrne does something really remarkable with The Toecutter in that you really get the sense that this is a guy who actually tunes into the wavelength of a world we can’t see. He leaves the stereotypical villain-type acting stuff to Tim Burns who plays Johnny The Boy as a cowardly bad guy. Much more interesting and fun is Geoff Parry as The Toecutter’s enforcer, Bubba Zanetti. He’s the main source of humor in the movie as he delivers some really goofy lines but in a sober, dead-pan manner that I found both utterly hilarious and totally chilling. He was a character I wanted to know more about as compared to The Toecutter and Johnny The Boy he seems rational, calm and he gives The Toecutter advice that is perfectly sane. I wanted to know how Bubba ended up with these guys but unless George Miller decides to do a prequel, my curiosity will continue.
MAD MAX was followed by two sequels: “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” each of which I heartily recommend. Both movies aren’t just rehashing the first movie. They continue the story of Max Rockatansky, deepening his character and humanity even as the world slides further and further into barbarism. Taken as a whole they’re not only classic action/adventure but also a forerunner of just about every adventure trilogy you see nowadays. If you haven’t seen MAD MAX in a while, treat yourself. And if you’ve never seen it, why don’t you? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not a 100 million buck summer blockbuster but the lack of a budget actually gives the movie a hard and gritty reality that a lot of today’s movies simply don’t have. And it’s simply just a lot of fun to watch. Enjoy.
Screenplay by Phil Sears, Blake T. Evans and David S. Ward
Based on a story by Blake T. Evans
There is only one thing that any movie is not allowed to do to me: bore me. I’ve sat through a whole lotta movies in my life and a sizeable portion of them have been either bad ones or outright stinkers. But at least they kept me interested and entertained on some level. There’s nothing worse than a boring movie. Especially one that I have been looking forward to seeing and FLYBOYS fits in that category. I’ve always been interested and fascinated by World War I and FLYBOYS looked as if it would be an exciting adventure film set in that period. I’d have got more excitement washing the dishes. I actually fell asleep twice while watching it and had to go back to see what I missed during those brief naps. Not that I missed anything of value. I could have kept on watching without a problem.
The movie concerns the adventures of The Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American fliers who join The French Air Service prior to America’s entrance in The Great War. Aerial warfare then was something akin to Arthurian knights jousting. Pilots saluted each other and treated each other with honor and respect. There’s a sense of gallantry on both sides, as in one scene where an American pilot runs out of bullets during an aerial duel and the German pilot breaks off the fight and allows his opponent to go home so that they can finish the fight fairly another day. There’s a brief sequence that introduces us to some of the pilots we’ll get to watch fight and fly: Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) is a Texas cowboy who’s lost the family ranch. Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis) is a black expatriate who has found success as a boxer in Marseilles. He feels loyalty to France because living and working in that country has allowed him to escape the rampant racism in The United States so he signs up. Briggs Lowry (Tyler Labine) is a slightly overweight underachiever who has just been kicked out of Harvard. His fat cat dad pressures him to sign up in the hopes that war will toughen his son up and make a man out of him. Eddie Beagle (David Ellison) is a good flier and an even better shot: he just can’t do both at the same time.
These guys are barracked at a gorgeous French chateau that has been bought for their use by rich American backers who want their boys to have the best and there our heroes meet the legendary Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson) who has a pet lion and whose past is mysterious and shady. He also has a Zen like approach to flying and aerial combat that has kept him alive long after he should have been dead. He’s one of those types who don’t get close to the other fliers because he doesn’t want the grief when he has to watch them die. The squadron is trained and led by Captain Thenault (Jean Reno) who isn’t adverse to bending the rules and looking the other way when his boys go on unauthorized missions.
The movie is so predictably paced and plotted that I accurately guessed most of the scenes two or three minutes in advance: you’ve got your training scene, you’ve got your scene of the fliers getting drunk together and bonding, you’ve got your scene where the black boxer punches out a racist, you’ve got your scene where Rawlings meets up with a lovely French girl (Jennifer Decker) and they begin a sweet romance. I even guessed the correct order in which the pilots died. In short, there is nothing remotely suspenseful or surprising about this movie at all. Even though I had never before seen FLYBOYS until last night I had the strangest feeling I’d seen this movie before. That’s how familiar the material seems. Know how dull it is? Here’s an example: there’s a scene where Rawlins has to rescue his French girlfriend from a house full of Germans. They don’t know the girl is in there and Rawlings literally walks right past them, gets the girl and walks out. What should have been a scene full of danger and suspense is about as dangerous as going to the store for milk. And why does he struggle to talk to her in the hospital with an English to French phrasebook when there are half a dozen people standing two feet away who can speak French and English and can translate for them?
Strangely enough, even the dog fighting scenes, which should have been the most thrilling and exhilarating lack any kind of energy or excitement. I will say they are beautifully photographed and the CGI airplanes look terrific. In fact, this is a wonderful looking movie and I dug the planes and the gear that the guys wore. The production looks great and I only wish there was more of a story to go with it.
The acting is undistinguished. I will say that James Franco, Jean Reno and Martin Henderson look as if they’re having the time of their life and they do try their best to bring a sense of devil-may-care excitement and fun to the movie. But even they can’t save this one. It’s slow, it’s plodding and nowhere near as thrilling and exciting as the trailer. Pass it up even if you get a chance to see it for free.
Produced by Sean Daniel, Bob Ducsay, James Jacks and Stephen Sommer
Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
Since I’m a major fan of pulp action adventure there’s very little chance of you getting a bad review of THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR outta me. I think it’s only fair to tell you that up front. Even though I did miss the direction of Stephen Sommers and Maria Bello is no substitute for Rachel Weisz. And yes, the climatic battle between the two undead armies did go on about five minutes longer than it should have and it’s true that Brendan Fraser didn’t have to yell: “I hate mummies!” every ten minutes. But I was willing to overlook all that and just allow myself to enjoy what is essentially a B-movie with an A-budget. It’s not the best of ‘The Mummy’ movies but it does exactly what it’s designed to do and really, that’s all I ask from any movie.
Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) live in a splendid English country mansion big enough to have its own zip code. They’ve retired from their life of wild adventuring and while Rick attempts to become a proper country squire, Evelyn has become a best-selling writer, using the adventures she’s had with Rick as the basis for her books. The adventuring is handled now by their son, Alex (Luke Ford) who is something of a maverick like his dad and has quit college to join an expedition to discover and excavate the tomb of Han, The Dragon Emperor (Jet Li)
Alex soon learns that he’s in way over his head as there are two factions fighting over the mummy of Emperor Han. It turns out that Han was cursed by the witch Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) more than two thousand years ago to remain encased in living rock but he can be revived if one knows how. One faction knows how and it involves a giant diamond, The Eye Of Shangri-La while the other faction mostly consists of Zi Juan’s daughter Lin (Isabella Leong) and Zi herself (didn’t I mention both mother and daughter are immortal? I didn’t? Sorry, my bad) Rick and Evelyn are soon heading to Shanghai to help out their son, picking up Evelyn’s brother Jonathan (John Hannah) and a half-drunk pilot, Mad Dog Maguire as backup.
It’s a race against time to find the mystical city ofShangri-La and stop Han from reclaiming his humanity and his awesome mystic powers to control the five elements (earth, air, fire, water and metal) which he needs to resurrect his army of warriors and resume his ambition of ruling the world. Considering that he’s now in the year 1946 and his men are armed with spears and swords while modern armies have bombs, machine guns and tanks, I must say that admire Han’s confidence. Me, I don’t think that the modern world would have sweated Han too much, even with his magic powers but then we wouldn’t have much of a movie, would we?
How much you want to see this movie depends on how much you like pulp adventure, Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh or the previous ‘Mummy’ movies I would guess. The ‘Mummy’ movies have been looked upon as ‘Indiana Jones Lite’ but I think that’s unfair. There’s more enough room for two globe-hopping adventurers in the movies today and indeed, back in the 30’s and 40’s where these movies are set you could go to your local theater or newsstand and there were literally dozens of movies and magazines featuring two-fisted men of action that were the grandfathers of both Rick O’Connell and Indiana Jones.
What sets the ‘Mummy’ movies apart and especially TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR is the interaction between this family of adventurers. Alex has grown up into his own man and his style of adventuring is different from his mom and his dad’s. But even though father and son have their differences they can still bond over mutual interests such as what’s the best machine gun to use against a rebel Chinese army trying to kill you or exactly how much dynamite it takes to blow up a golden shrine. Evelyn is trying hard to be a lady and a respectable mom but she’d much rather be raiding tombs and destroying evil mummies trying to take over the world. Jonathan has become a successful nightclub owner but he drops it all to help out his brother-in-law, sister and nephew save the world. Of course the fact that Rick and Evelyn have The Eye Of Shangri-La has nothing to do with it.
By now Brendan Fraser can do a ‘Mummy’ movie without thinking about it. He turns in a dependable, solid performance and here he’s not just a rough-and-tumble mercenary with a quick quip for every occasion. He’s now a husband and father and he takes a little more time to think about what he’s doing and how it affects the people he loves. Luke Ford does an okay job but I liked the relationship between Rick and Alex better in the previous ‘Mummy’ movie. Here Alex has an attitude toward his father for much of the movie and I never quite understood why. I like Maria Bello as an actress but for some reason she didn’t do anything for me here. She did have a cute little scene during a book reading where she’s asked if the character in the book is anything like her. Her answer kinda reminded me of George Lazenby’s classic: “This never happened to the other fellow” line from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”
Michelle Yeoh walks away with the acting honors in this one. Her character has a fascinating back story and the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie relates that in such a way that you almost wish the entire movie would continue that story. She’s never anything less than convincing and of course any time you get to see two such masters such as her and Jet Li fight on screen that’s a definite bonus. Don’t look for a lot martial arts from Jet Li in this one. He does have some nice fight scenes but nothing spectacular. And I’m always delighted to see Russell Wong in anything as I was a major fan of ‘Vanishing Son’ and he has a small but pivotal role in this movie.
So should you see THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR? I would say yes. It’s a totally undemanding movie and asks nothing more than you sit back, relax and have fun. It’s got hidden tombs with lethal death traps, undead armies, Abominable Snowmen, Shangri-La, plenty of chases, fights and last minutes escapes from fates worse than death. And it’s done with style, good humor, top notch stunts and special effects. It’s one of the most enjoyable Saturday Afternoon Movies I’ve seen in quite a while.
Based on a story by Fulvio Morsella and Ernesto Gastaldi
As will usually happen to a writer, people will always ask me what my influences are. And I name various writers and genres and then I mention spaghetti westerns and a strange thing happens: their eyes light up and they start asking me have I seen this movie or that movie in the genre and people are always surprised that I proudly cite spaghetti westerns as an influence on my writing style. I don’t see why. Out of the nearly 600 spaghetti westerns made between 1960 and 1975 I would estimate I’ve seen at least 200 of them. You don’t see that many movies in a genre without it having a profound effect on you. And I’m not the only one. If you’re a fan of John Woo, Roberto Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino then you’ve seen three of the most popular filmmakers of current times who were profoundly influenced by the spaghetti western. Most people only know the Sergio Leone “The Man With No Name” Trilogy as an example of the genre. But as far as I’m concerned “Once Upon A Time In The West” is the greatest western ever made with “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” following a damn close second. But there are many, many, many more spaghetti westerns besides Sergio Leone’s that are well worth seeing. But we’ll get into those in other reviews, okay?
For many movie fans, myself included, Sergio Leone invented the spaghetti western, as we know it. Leone created a mythic American West that has more in common with the fantasy fiction of Robert E. Howard than the actual American West. In Sergio Leone’s American West, warriors carried six-guns instead of swords and instead of sorcerers they fought villains of unimaginable cruelty whose skills rivaled that of the heroes. And in most of Leone’s movies, the only reason the good guys won out was because they played just as dirty or even dirtier than the bad guys. Evil was challenged, fought and defeated by a greater evil that somehow was nobler and more pure.
Now if you look at the credits of this movie above you’ll see that Sergio Leone’s name is not mentioned and since he is officially unaccredited I did not do so. But trust me that MY NAME IS NOBODY is a Sergio Leone picture. He worked on the screenplay, he choose Henry Fonda for the movie (in fact, he wouldn’t make the movie without him) and he directed key scenes. And he did so because this movie was his statement about The American Western Vs. The Spaghetti Western.
Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) is an aging gunslinger just looking to retire in peace and quiet. Unlike most gunslingers his age he knows his time is up and the world has moved on. He’s booked passage on a ship that will take him to retirement in Europe. Jack only wants to get on the ship and spend the rest of his days his peace. It’ll take Jack about two weeks to get to the ship and he plans on doing it nice and easy.
However, Jack runs into a young, handsome gunslinger that apparently has no name. Whenever he’s asked what his name is he simply replies: “I’m Nobody.” But this Nobody (Terence Hill) clearly idolizes Jack. He knows everything about Jack’s life and can recite the names of every man Jack has killed, where he killed them and even how many shots it took for Jack to kill them. Jack isn’t clear as to what this Nobody wants. Does he want to face down Jack in a gunfight? No, actually Nobody wants Jack to take on The Wild Bunch, a gang of 150 purebred sons of bitches and he wants Jack to take them on alone in a battle of Ragnorakian proportions. Nobody wants Jack to go down in the history books as the greatest gunslinger of them all and for much of the movie, Nobody manipulates Jack until Jack has no choice and he has to face down The Wild Bunch in an epic gunfight.
It’s interesting to see how MY NAME IS NOBODY is filmed because the scenes with Henry Fonda by himself are done as a straight American Western while the scenes with Terence Hill are done as a Spaghetti Western. What Sergio Leone was doing in this movie is basically acknowledging both genres, using the then current icons of the genres and letting them play off each other and it’s a really good piece of work. MY NAME IS NOBODY is a very funny movie in its own right as Terence Hill made his rep in western comedies, often pared with Bud Spencer who played his brother in the ‘Trinity” movies and he’s got some great comedic moments here. I always like how he treats his near supernatural abilities with a gun as if it’s the most boring thing in the world. He’s got a great scene where he’s holding his saddle on one shoulder and on a dare, draws his gun and replaces in the holster three times with the same hand holding the saddle without letting it drop.
Henry Fonda is really good in this movie. The whole thing revolves around the relationship between Jack Beauregard and Nobody and Henry Fonda sells it. He never really knows exactly what Nobody wants or what he’s trying to do but by the end of the movie you truly get the sense that they have become friends. And you also get the sense that Sergio Leone has made friends between The American Western and The Spaghetti Western. And I couldn’t write this review without mention of the score by The Master Himself: Ennio Morricone. He’s got this really hilarious theme for The Wild Bunch whenever they show up in the movie that’s based on Wagner’s “Ride Of The Valkyries” that you’ve have to hear for yourself to believe. Only Morricone could make it sound both threatening and funny at the same time
It’s a remarkable film just in the way it’s filmed, with those vast vistas that Italian directors loved. There’s a tense scene where Nobody and Jack are talking in a graveyard that is deadly serious and another that mirrors that scene but it’s in a pool hall and played mainly for whimsical laughs. Henry Fonda is his usual reliable self when it comes to acting. His Jack Beauregard is a tough old son of a bitch who can still outdraw and outshoot young punks half his age. He just doesn’t want to anymore. And Terence Hill is a really goofy, funny actor who I like a lot. He’s absolutely great in this movie and he works well with Fonda. They make an intriguing team and MY NAME IS NOBODY is a movie you should put on your Netflix queue to see if you haven’t seen it yet or even if you haven’t seen it for a while. It’s a worthy western that any fan of the genre should see.
