Real Steel

Alternate Title:  Rock 'em Sock 'em Rocky


One sentence synopsis:  An ex-boxer and his estranged kid try to take a broken-down sparring bot to the championship of the World Robot Boxing League.


Things Havoc liked:    Hugh Jackman has been in his share of bad films (Wolverine and Swordfish come to mind), but I've never thought that he was bad, just unable to elevate the material. And when Jackman is good (X-men 2, The Fountain, the Prestige), he's quite good. Headliner as he is in this film, I have to admit that he's quite good. Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, who is a douchebag (no, not a lovable douchebag, a douchebag), an underground robot boxing promoter who scams and steals and does all the things movie douchebags do. Yet despite being a douchebag, unrepentantly, Jackson brings an excellent performance here, such that the movie doesn't have to soften him in order to get the audience to like him. I'm actually impressed.

But not as impressed as I am by Jackson's co-star, a kid named Dakota Goyo, playing Charlie's estranged 11-year old son Max. Child actors are dangerous in any movie, especially a movie that is transparently about cute kids and robots. Moreover, this particular kid has the unfortunate characteristic of reminding me of Jake Lloyd from the Phantom Menace (and we all know what a cinematic masterwork that was). Yet, to my surprise, Goyo nails the role (and it's a much bigger role than one would expect from the trailers) very well. The character fails to lend itself to particular adjectives, he's not "plucky" or "edgy" or "angry" or "cute" though he does at times hit all those notes. The performance, and the interplay with Jackson's character (and with the robot) just... works.

Speaking of the robot(s), the effects in this movie are excellent. That's par for the course these days, but they're excellent regardless, mostly because of the decision to use animatronics where possible and CGI only when necessary. It gives the robots weight and dimension, such that when they fight (or simply run about), we actually feel their existence rather than view video game images. There is none of the cinematographic bullshit that got in the way with the Transformers movies. Fight scenes are shot cleanly and with good lighting, giving us an excellent idea of what's going on. The robots themselves are distinctive, well-designed, and interesting, and their fight choreography (shaped by Sugar Ray Leonard of all people) is excellent and entertaining.

Soundtracks are a dime a dozen, but I did notice in watching this film that this particular soundtrack was excellent. There are some recognizable songs on it, but mostly its a mood-setter soundtrack that blends standard orchestral scores with, of all things, synthesized country ballads. That this is the work of Danny Elfman, a composer of great fame and skill, comes as no surprise, but the music fits the mood shifts of the plot much better than any film of this caliber has a right to.

Oddly enough for a story about pugilistic robots, the plot of this movie is derived in no small part from a famous 1973 movie called Paper Moon, starring real life father-and-daughter Ryan and Tatum O'Neal. An excellent film in its own right (it garnered an Oscar for Tatum), this movie basically blends it with Rocky to produce a movie that's simultaneously about an estranged father and son coming together and about robots boxing. All that I will say here is that the writing in the film is good enough to elevate it above what you would expect a ludicrous combination like this to result in, and the actors carry it off well enough to make it work...



Things Havoc disliked:  ... sometimes.

When I say that this movie is Paper Moon crossed with Rocky, I mean it. It is those movies verbatim, plot point by plot point, woven together to create something simultaneously new and completely predictable. I have never guessed right so many times as to what was going to happen in a movie as I have with this one. I said that the writing in the film is good, and it is, but the plot (as distinct from the writing) is really lackluster. Not only have you seen this all before, you've seen it before so many times that you know exactly what's going to happen. This makes parts of the film (towards the beginning especially, I found), rather painful to sit through

I know I praised the cinematography before, and I meant it, in that it's so rare we see good fight sequences in this age of over-processed CGI. But the reason the cinematography is good in the fights is because the movie uses a very old-school approach to its cinematography (see Paper Moon again). This is good in the fight scenes, but less good in the rest of the movie. It's not that the film is badly shot, far from it, but there is an unconscious language to cinema of inferences and shot constructions, and this movie abuses that language to the point of absurdity. Many shots were almost pretentious in their obvious desire to symbolize things like the gulf between two characters, to the point where I was just waiting for the director to get over his film school textbook and get on with it.

Some of the supporting cast is good and some is less good. The villains in this film are among the latter, stereotyped "evil terse asian supertechstar", "evil russian ice queen mobster" and "evil redneck racist hillbilly" foremost of all. Other than adding something for our audience to root against, they don't do a hell of a lot. This actually undercuts some of the effective design work that went into the bots, as it takes the attention away from the thirteen-foot armored monstrosity trying to beat the heroic underdog into the dirt with pile drivers. That's not an easy thing to do, mind you.

While the writing is good overall, the decision to stick so closely to formula hurts the movie in that there are some sequences that simply cannot work in a modern film, no matter how good your actors and how good your writing. Tearful apology scenes for instance are tremendously hard to do right without a tremendous amount of skill, and chaining the film to older movies with older sensibilities only guarantees that won't be the case here. These moments weren't that common, frankly, but they were still present, and almost cringeworthy when they popped up.

Finally, the product placements in this movie were egregious, even by today's standards. Guys, we get that Dr. Pepper and Budweiser (and ESPN and Droid and Toshiba and Red Bull and fifty others) paid you. At a certain point, enough is enough.


Final thoughts:  *Sigh*

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to writing this review as I was taking the train home from the movie theater, and most of the reason for that was that, while I was able to portion out and characterize this movie's strengths and weaknesses, the way I have for every film I've reviewed here, I knew I was eventually going to have to come to this section, wherein I would be required to admit that I basically adored every second of this movie the instant I started watching it.

That sound you hear is the sound of my credibility disappearing.

I loved this film. I loved everything about this film. I'm not entirely certain I can explain why. Everything I said above, all the criticisms I made about the pretentious cinematography, about the outright theft of a plot, about the stupid villains and the cringeworthy moments, all of that is true and I don't give a damn. This is the movie I wanted Transformers to be. Fuck, this is the movie I wanted Rocky to be. Nothing here makes sense. Paper Moon crossed with Rocky (plus robots!) makes about as much sense as crossing Total Recall with Driving Miss Daisy, and yet something, something buried deep inside this movie just worked, on a level so profound that I completely forgot everything mean I had said about the film by about the 2/3s mark. Part of it is the acting, which from both Jackman and Goyo is just right. Part of it is the overall design. Yes I whined about the product placement overload, but the design work on the film is awesome regardless. It feels like a real near future, even with a premise this ludicrous. Part of it is the soundtrack, which I cannot rave enough about in doing a fantastic job of buttressing the movie emotionally. And part of it is the writing, which despite the hackneyed plot, feels completely real at all times.

But I think most of it is none of those things, or maybe all of them in aggregate, I don't know. Alfred Hitchcock said that the soul of cinema lies between the shots. Something lies between the shots in this movie, something real and intense and passionate and just plain childish fun. Somewhere along the line, someone associated with this movie loved it enough to insert blood and sweat into polishing it, and the end result shows up on screen. This film was everything a setup like this could possibly be and more, exciting, fun, appealing, everything I wanted the retread movies that trampled on my childhood to be, and were not. Watching this movie, I felt like I was ten years old again, watching awesome robots fight with wide eyes and an open imagination. I suspect someone making this film brought the same mindset towards its creation.

On paper (and maybe even in objective reality), this film should be around a 5.5 or a 6, a decent film but nothing spectacular. After all, everything here has been done before, and bigger, and louder, and more edgy, and more real, and with more cool jump cuts and CGI. All of those things may be true, but goddamnit, these are my reviews, and I will call them as I see them. Call me a sucker. Call me a nostalgic fool. Call me an idiot, I don't care. I loved this film. I loved everything about this film. This is what Transformers should have been.

This is what Transformers once was.

Final Score:  8.5/10

Killer Elite

Alternate Title:  Action by Numbers


One sentence synopsis:  A retired mercenary must assassinate several ex-SAS operatives to save his partner's life.


Things Havoc liked:   Clive Owen is a bad motherfucker. Jason Statham is a bad motherfucker. And Robert DeNiro is the original bad motherfucker. Between them all, there is a recipe for an excellent action movie here, and I'm pleased to report that what you see is essentially what you get. Killer Elite is a meticulous, complex action film wherein our heroes beat the piss out of one another in reasonably inventive ways.

As action is a relatively important element of an action movie, I must report with some satisfaction that the action here is of top quality. There's very little in the way of superhero tricks, no shaky cam or new-edge cinematography bullshit getting in the way, just basic, competent action camerawork, and the scenes that we get are executed well. The plot is serviceable, if not anything groundbreaking, but it does do a nice job of establishing the bad guys both as an effective force in their own right (we are talking SAS here, after all), and in giving them a more complex motivation than simply "we are evil and must do more evil." Clive Owen's character in particular (he plays a former SAS turned dirty-tricks man for a cabal of other former SAS men) is even given some depth.



Things Havoc disliked:  The word "formulaic" comes to mind here constantly, which is perhaps a bit unfair, as the movie really isn't that much of a formula. It does however have an astonishing lack of empathy to it, despite the aforementioned gestures in the direction of good characterization and villain establishment. First off, this movie continues to prove my assertion that Jason Statham should only play assholes. His attempts to emote things like regret and compassion are just not convincing, and never have been. The man is an excellent action star, but charisma is not his forte. By far, the best thing I've ever seen him in (Snatch), knew this. This movie does not.

Second, this movie is a complete waste of Robert DeNiro. His character is locked in a jail cell for the majority of the first and second acts. When he breaks out, he gets a couple of decent scenes, but they are only decent because he is in them, not because they're integral to the plot or well-written. It's clear that the filmmakers were trying to come up with something for him to do just so that they could headline him in the film credits.

The plot is labyrinthine and fairly absurd, but that I mind less. What's annoying is the third act "revelation" of how (surprise surprise) the government is evil and doing evilly evil things for the sake of being ever so evil. We did not need a ham-fisted recitation of the hard-bitten life of a mercenary or ex-soldier. This is not Platoon, guys, get over yourselves.


Final thoughts:  Honestly, this movie is about what you think it is, a reasonably well-executed action vehicle for Statham and Owen. There are some sequences (the whole section with the remote control truck and the following scenes in the container park for instance) that are elevated by good camera, plotting, and stunt work. The majority of the film however really never rises above "decent". Not a condemnation, certainly, but nothing to write home about.

Final Score:  6/10

Moneyball

Alternate Title:  The Agony of Defeat


One sentence synopsis:  The general manager of the Oakland A's turns to Sabermetric analysis to find a championship team he can afford.


Things Havoc liked:   Baseball is the great American pastime, and I am a great admirer thereof, particularly of my own home team, the San Francisco Giants. As a loyal Giants fan, not to mention a San Franciscan, I of course believe that everything even remotely related to Oakland, including their foul, diseased, putrid excuse for a baseball team (playing godless American League baseball, no less) should be summarily consigned to the lowest pit of Hell, where they shall be tormented by the devil with hellfire for ever and ever for the sin of having employed the Designated Hitter and thereby tarnishing the face of baseball for all time.

Er... sorry, where was I?

Er yes, the film. This is not a standard sports movie by any stretch of the imagination. For one thing, it's primarily about the back office. Brad Pitt plays A's general manager (and now minority owner) Billy Beane as a very rounded character, one whom I can easily see alongside the Steinbrenners and La Russas and the other lunatic personalities that baseball seems to generate. The movie focuses on him as general manager, a role entirely different from the manager (played in this case by Phillip Seymour Hoffman), one concerned with the details of personnel acquisition, high pressure player trades, and scout management. More time is spent looking at spreadsheets and computer models than at baseball players playing baseball. Pitt's character doesn't even watch the games.

Indeed, this movie is almost single-minded in its overturning of the general cliches of the sports movie genre. The players are shown almost as an afterthought (with the exception of Scott Hatteberg, an injured catcher-turned-first baseman whom the A's are able to pick up because nobody else wants him). No rag-tag team of plucky all-stars here, but a bunch of soulless, interchangeable parts, picked up and released without so much as a question. What we see therefore resembles more of a collectible card game than Field of Dreams, as managers call one another and enact byzantine strategies to outmaneuver one another for the players they think are undervalued. The movie takes what seems to be pathological delight in completely dispensing with notions of "fundamentals", "intangibles", "scout wisdom", or "small ball", all concepts that are usually used to give the plucky, ragtag group of movie baseball misfits a fighting chance against the big bad soulless ball team.

And yet, surprisingly, this doesn't make the film unwatchable, far from it. The focus instead is on Beane and on his assistant general manager, Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill in easily the best performance I've ever seen out of him). Brand is a 25-year old Yale-educated economics student, who also happens to be a fat baseball statistics nerd. Yet he brings an absolute conviction to his belief that baseball in general is doing it all wrong, valuing (and thus, rejecting) players for subjective reasons that have nothing to do with their actual performance. Through Brand, the movie throws massive amounts of data at us, but never in a fashion that feels infodumpish or bewildering, and the core tenet that teams are buying players when they should be buying wins, is one that underlies everything that these people do.

The effect is very weird, turning everything we normally see in a sports movie on its head. The plucky misfit players become almost background noise, the wise, sagely coach becomes the antagonist who nearly derails the team for the sake of his future employability. The sports commentators vilify our heroes when the system doesn't work, and credit the useless manager when the sabermetric analysis pays off with an unprecidented 20-game winning streak. And all that time, the penny-pinching, numbers-obsessed capitalistic moneyball players are our heroes.

And yet it works, more or less. Pitt and Hill deliver effective, realistic performances, as do many of the more minor characters (including, of all people, Robert Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, playing the owner of the A's). The movie generates investment for the idea that these people are working with, rather than for the players or the coaches. And somehow, none of this takes away from the majesty of the game itself. When the A's pull of their streak, it's no less effective than in any other well done sports movie. The movie looks the moneyed aspects of baseball in the eye, and still comes away with a love of the game.



Things Havoc disliked:  This movie is almost perverse in its focus, relentlessly, on failure, loss, and lack of success. We see many games in the film, almost all of them from the period when the system wasn't working, and nearly none from the period when it was. An even more pressing example is that the one game we focus on clearly. In this game, the A's take an 11-0 lead, and then lose it, returning to 11-11, before finally winning with a walk-off home run 12-11. We do not see any of the A's runs to take their lead, but we watch in abject, well-shot detail as they lose it, run by run, before an almost perfunctory victory sequence that glosses over their record 20th consecutive victory by following it up instantly with a lengthy speech indicating how it doesn't matter at all.

I don't mind that they want to turn sports movie cliches around, but the movie is so single-minded about showing us nothing but loss and failure that it becomes very awkward to watch, ironically because it's shot so well. This obsession spills over into the rest of the film as well. Even when people aren't on the field, we hear nothing about them except that they are going to fail, have failed, or have succeeded, but that their success doesn't matter because they're going to fail at something else. It's not maudlin or campy, but it does get old.

Finally, I have to say, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who is an excellent actor, simply does not do well in this role. His manager's an antagonist, I understand, but unlike the antagonistic scouts, the film doesn't give him an opportunity to make his case, instead simply having him hamfistedly refuse to play the new players and to adopt the new style for no reason other than blockheadedness. I can see why the real Art Howe had nothing good to say about this movie.


Final thoughts:  This is a very strange film, and a hard one to rate, frankly, as the tone and the writing are simultaneously very skillful and very subversive. Overall though, baseball fan as I am, I was entertained and fascinated by this look into the backrooms of the great pastime, and both Pitt, who is not my favorite actor, and Hill, whom I have never seen before, sell their roles really well in it. Hoffman's a letdown, and the emphasis is really too grim for a movie that's supposed to be about sport and a team that, frankly, was a great and shocking success, but the movie still tells quite an interesting story, and might be worth a look even if baseball isn't your particular thing.

Oh, and fuck the A's. And Oakland.

Final Score:  7/10

Cowboys and Aliens

Alternate Title:  Indiana Jones and the License to Kill ET


One sentence synopsis:  A drifter and a cattle boss must join forces with townsmen, bandits, and Indians to defeat alien strip miners.


Things Havoc liked:   I could watch Daniel Craig read a phone book. He's one of my favorite actors, who makes every movie he's in better, at least by my opinion. As to Harrison Ford, it really doesn't matter what other movies of low or high quality he's been in, as we are speaking of Indiana Jones and Han Solo, and therefore there shall be nothing ill said of him. While Ford certainly sometimes oversells his roles, he does reasonably well here. Both lead actors are helped by the addition of a sterling supporting cast, including Paul Dano (last seen in There Will Be Blood), Clancy Brown (last seen in the Shawshank Redemption, Carnivale, and as Lex Luthor in the DCAU), Olivia Wilde (last seen in Tron, but I will try not to hold that against her), and the incomparable Keith Caradine (last seen being generally a bad motherfucker).

With a cast this good, much that would otherwise be unbearable can be borne with ease. Daniel Craig in particular is given the task of playing an amnesiac drifter who appears to have been an outlaw before he lost his memory at the hands of the aliens. Acting-wise, this job is nearly impossible, but Craig pulls it off. Ford's character, a former army colonel who fought various battles in the Civil and Mexican wars, is given the task of expositing much of his own backstory, and with one or two exceptions, it works pretty well, proving once again that good actors can often elevate pedestrian writing.



Things Havoc disliked:   I think you know where I'm going here.

This movie is written badly. Very badly. Like long-exposition-scenes-strung-back-to-back badly. Like "I wish I had a son like you" badly. The actors, and they are excellent, do the best they can with the material given to them, but there is simply no salvaging some of this crap. I grant, it's not Last Airbender bad, but it does no service to the film. When even Daniel Craig can't sell a line, you know you've fallen off something.

Bad writing though I am used to. Movies like this are not sold on the strength of their writing. Unfortunately, the problems here go much further, into the entire making of this film. For one thing, the editing in this movie sucks. Continuity mistakes are everywhere. Daniel Craig pours the same shot of whiskey two or three times without emptying the glass. He is covered in dust by an explosion multiple times and is then clean in the next shot. Battle sequences are edited such that it is often impossible to determine where everyone is in relation either to one another or to the surrounding terrain (which is of some importance, given how much time they spend discussing the need for open ground).

Equally, the design and cinematography of this film is just bad. Lots of shots take place in the dark or in twisted, restricted tunnels, all of which are impossible to see thanks to terrible lighting and sloppy cinematographic shot selection. The alien ships look ludicrous, not flashy enough to be camp, and not interesting enough to get away without it. Entire set pieces for the film (such as the random steam boat they find in the middle of the desert) are badly designed and never explained reasonably. Why would the alien mothership have cavernous caves leading secretly to the surface? Didn't the aliens have to excavate all that?

Oh and speaking of the aliens, this movie presents us, in keeping with such films as War of the Worlds or Signs, with aliens who have mastered the interstellar hyperdrive, but not pants. Their design is totally uninspired, growling tooth-laden monsters who are sufficiently advanced to fly between the stars, but who talk by roaring, and fight naked on all fours by leaping on their target and tearing them apart with claws. Their master plan involves (spoiler alert) mining for gold, making this movie perhaps the only one I've ever seen to consciously rip off Battlefield Earth. Moreover, even this lame excuse is handled half-assed, as nowhere is it explained why the aliens are kidnapping humans instead of spending their time getting the one thing they actually are here for. Moreover, the physical capabilities of the aliens are completely inconsistent. They go from being bulletproof to susceptible to gunfire within the same sequence. At one point, bows and arrows are sufficient to kill them, while Winchester rifles are not. If you don't establish rules for your film, then the audience can't figure out what the hell to think.


Final thoughts:  A tired, cliched, poorly written film, elevated by the strength of its cast. The plot makes no sense and is hackneyed in the extreme, the direction and editing are awful, the design is lazy, and the movie overall is just a one-note bore. Even the action scenes are foolish and poorly cut together. The actors assembled for this project manage, just barely, to elevate it into mediocre level, but that's hardly a stunning recommendation. Avoid.

Final Score:  4/10

Captain America: The First Avenger

Alternate Title:  America!  Fuck yeah!


One sentence synopsis:  A 4F volunteer becomes a super-soldier to fight an evil Nazi mastermind trying to destroy the world with occult super-tech.


Things Havoc liked:  Take another look at that one-sentence synopsis above. If that concept sounds awesome, then have I got a film for you...

We live in an age when Comic book films are not merely good, but are actively some of the best movies available. While I could write a soliloquy on why that is so, the upshot is that standards for this sort of film have become higher and higher. Such movies can work because of excellent characterization, as in X-men First Class or Iron Man, or because of the inherent capability of movies to distill the essence of the fun and boisterous wonder of comics, such as Thor. This film is one of the latter.

Captain America is a pulp movie to its core. Note that I say Pulp, not Camp. It is a movie that does not in any way attempt to disguise what it is about, namely two-fisted pulp WWII fun. There is a sequence in this film where Captain America rides a rocket-propelled motorcycle while being pursued by Nazis with death rays, whom he evades by riding up an embankment, leaping onto a Leman Russ battle tank (Yes), knocking a Nazi super-soldier out with his shield, and destroying the tank with a satchel charge. If this sequence is not to your liking, find another film. The movie abounds with occult super-science, dastardly Nazis and square-jawed heroes doing epic battle for the fate of nations. It is not camp, and it is not silly (okay mostly not silly), but it is very much in the style of Gearkreig or Superwar or any of the other WWII pulp tales one might remember fondly (at least if one is me).

The cast for this film does an excellent job overall. Chris Evans, last seen being terrible in the Fantastic Four films, is, while perhaps not great, certainly good as Steve Rogers/Captain America. Cap's a hard one to get right, as he's basically a boy scout with a ridiculous costume who perpetually fights Nazism. Evans plays the character well without lapsing into schlock or flag-beating super-patriotism. He manages to make Captain America seem like a real person, which is more of a feat than it sounds like.

The rest of the cast however are uniformly excellent. Tommy Lee Jones steals the show as Colonel Chester Phillips, in which he essentially does a send-up to Patton. Hugo Weaving does an superb job as Red Skull, during which he does a send-up to Hitler. Dominic Cooper plays Howard Stark (father of Tony), who is essentially a send-up (and a hilarious one) to Howard Hughes. And Stanley Tucci plays Docter Erstein, which is essentially a send-up to Albert Einstein. It amazes me how strong our collective memories of the towering figures of that period are, such that one merely has to cite their names to get a fulsome idea of what one is dealing with, but that's neither here nor there. All of the above actors, particularly Weaving and Jones, do a spectacular job, as do those who are not performing send-ups, particularly Sebastian Stan, who plays Buckey, in the comics a kid sidekick for Cap, while in this film Rogers is his sidekick until the serum hits. Finally, while Haley Atwell is reduced to playing the token female love interest, she at least does a fine job with it.

One last line regarding the effects. Special effects are hardly special anymore, but the ones in this movie, particularly the mask for Red Skull, deserves a great deal of praise. Red Skull is an inherently ridiculous concept, and one that many versions of the mythos have struggled to get onto the screen. They found a version here that looked neither stupid nor (entirely) fake. Moreover, I don't know what method they used to make Chris Evans look like a wimp early in the film, but it was utterly convincing (except for his voice, which didn't fit a guy that small).



Things Havoc disliked:    The story for this movie is extremely formulaic, something that isn't helped by a needless "framework" story that actually manages to spoil the movie's ending in the first scene. Even without the opening gaffe however, I could have told you exactly what would happen with my eyes closed. Granted, the movie is fun enough to make the ride worthwhile, and there are even a few elements I didn't expect (Captain America the War Bond salesman!), but overall it goes pretty much exactly the way you would expect it to go.

Moreover, the thing that elevates most comic book movies is their razor-sharp writing. The material is always somewhat ludicrous, but excellent writing can redeem much. The writing in this film certainly isn't bad. Some lines verge on inspired, particularly those given to Tommy Lee Jones. But overall it's not quite at the level that some of the great works of the genre have been.


Final thoughts:  This movie was not X-men First Class good. It probably wasn't even Iron Man good. But it was Thor good, and Thor good is pretty damn good. It was a hot-blooded, funny, action-packed, two-fisted pulp action extravaganza, befitting the era that Captain America is derived from, and I personally enjoyed the hell out of it. It has all the things one should expect to see from a retro-40s action thrill ride. It has occult super-science, dastardly villains (Roger Ebert said in his review "You can't do better than Nazis", and I agree with him), beautiful dames, and clean-cut virtuous heroes. It has chases and death-defying stunts, it has courage and heroism, it has Dum Dum Dugan and Nick Fury, it has Patton and Einstein and Hughes and Hitler all under different names doing what Patton and Einstein and Hughes and Hitler all ought to do. This movie has Captain America, who throws his mighty shield.

What else can you really ask for?

Final Score:  8/10 

Additional note:  This didn't occur to me until after I finished the review, but a movie that this one reminded me of a great deal was 1991's pulp action classic "The Rocketeer", a movie that bombed horribly, but that I thought was an excellent movie, very much in keeping with the source material. Imagine my surprise to find that both movies were directed by Joe Johnson.

13 Assassins

Alternate Title:  (2xSeven)-1 Samurai

One sentence synopsis:  A picked band of samurai attempt to assassinate an evil Shogunate Lord in 19th century Japan.


Things Havoc liked:  I am not a fan of Takashi Miike. I recognize that's not easy to say, given the sheer volume of the man's work, but I will say it regardless. Ichi the Killer was one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever seen, and Audition was a gruesome gorefest that I felt lacked artistry in favor of raw shock value (yes, there is artistry even in horror, see the Exorcist or Alien). I grant that these two films represent about 1% of Miike's overall film output, and some of his films such as Zebraman and Agitator have garnered great praise from people whose opinions I respect. Nevertheless I have to call them as I see them overall, and to-date I have not liked what I've seen from Miike.

Until last week at least.

13 Assassins is a classical Samurai movie in the genre (and more) of Akira Kurasawa's epic masterpiece Seven Samurai, which I maintain is one of the greatest movies ever made. This film is more than just similar to Kurasawa's film, but borders on a remake of it, albeit with some significant alterations. Normally I'd object to such a thing, but this is not the first (nor the fifth) time Seven Samurai has been remade, and the remakes have occasionally been spectacular (The Magnificent Seven, for instance, which was much closer to this movie than 13 Assassins is). Miike is known for over-the-top gruesome body horror, and while there's a single scene in this film that seems reminiscent of that, it is at least appropriate given the subject matter, and isn't dwelt upon for long.

That's not to say that there aren't some alterations done, and by and large, these alterations are to the film's credit. The core of the film is around two middle-aged Samurai, Shinzaemon Shimada, played by Kôji Yakusho, and Hanbei Kito, played by Masachika Ichimura. These two men are former sparring-mates and rivals from dojos decades ago, now minor Samurai lords in their own right. Shinzaemon largely plays the role taken in the original by the great Takashi Shimura (and Yul Brenner in the western), an old, wise, war-weary soldier who is hired to perform a seemingly-suicidal job and recruit a team of Samurai to do it. While Yakusho doesn't quite have the stage presence of Shimura, he brings a presence to the role that does the job. Hanbei however, is a new character, not present in the original film, and plays the head Samurai of the assassination target, a man of honor who recognizes the corruption and decadence of his Lord but has sworn to defend him to the death regardless. Ichimura plays the role perfectly, easily stealing the show in every scene he is in, as a tired but indomitable samurai who regrets the necessities of his position but will do his duty to the last. Samurai movies are usually about honorable death and performing duty in the face of tremendous hardship, and Ichimura captures it perfectly.

The other great role from the original film was that of Kikuchiyo, a bandit farmer who pretends to be a Samurai and serves as a foil for the noble pretensions of the other six. In this movie, that role is taken by Yūsuke Iseya playing Kiga Koyata, a poacher who joins the Samurai largely out of boredom and revulsion with the Samurai class in general. Here too, some alterations are made, ones I will not spoil here, but elements of his character are infused with classical Japanese mythology, left open for those who know what they are looking for. It's a nice touch.

The villain in the original film was forgettable (I think he had two lines). In this movie, the villain is a major character in his own right. Gorô Inagaki plays Lord Naritsugu like a complete sociopath, a man who literally does not feel remorse or empathy, almost to the point of solipsism. Naritsugu is a complete monster, but is given enough facetime that he doesn't just feel like a "designated bad guy" (which he is), but more like a mad dog who simply needs to be destroyed. His reactions in the second half of the movie, when the fighting breaks out and men are dying on all sides, is almost one of reverential joy, as he is finally able to experience sensations of any sort, even physical pain. It's unsettling, but it works.

Finally, this movie was famous in some circles for "the battle sequence". The entire second half of the movie is an unbroken, 45-minute battle in which hundreds of people fight and die. There are things both wrong and right with this approach, but while I frankly enjoyed the first half of the movie more than most of the second, the battle was invigorating, well-shot, and choreographed very nicely. In an age of Shaky-cam, one can ask for little more.


Things Havoc disliked:   The problem with changing the movie from 7 to 13 samurai and then halving the time of the film (and taking up half of that with a single fight) is that your characters get lost. Every one of the other Samurai has a name and some gesture towards a character, but only just. I absolutely could not tell one from the other once the armor was put on and the swords began to sing, and so apart from the characters I mentioned above, everyone else is basically an extra with a flag on their arm to indicate "good" or "bad" guy.

Even the characters that are given time and characterization are somewhat problematic though, particularly Yūsuke the poacher. The original character of Kikuchiro was played by the unparalleled Toshiro Mifune, arguably the greatest Japanese film actor ever. Kikuchiro was one of the most memorable characters in all of my years of movie watching, animated, boisterous, slightly crazy, driven by deep anger and resentments, comic and serious and tragic all at the same time. Kiga Koyata does his best, but has neither the acting chops (which is no shame, honestly) nor the screen time that Mifune had, and is therefore reduced in my mind to a pastiche of Mifune's performance.

The great battle scene, meanwhile, has its own set of issues. For one thing, 45 minutes of ceaseless combat gets very repetitive if you don't spice it up with variation. There is some, don't get me wrong, the transition from ranged weapons to swords to duels is done well, and the end of the battle is by far the best segment, but the ceaseless slicing and dicing beforehand does get a little old. Don't get me wrong, I love long, involved battles, but I love them precisely because of the "awesome!" moments you find within them. There were not enough of those here. Instead we get drawn out death scenes as the heroic samurai die one by one, overwhelmed by a tide of foes. After the eighth of those, one gets restless for something different.

There's also a minor issue in that it is very hard to film 13 people killing 200 people with swords without looking completely ridiculous. Yes, this is a Samurai movie, wherein skilled warriors can defeat many opponents with nothing but their awesome skill. But at the same time, no Samurai, no matter how badass, can take on thirty-six sword-wielding maniacs at once and survive, and we know it, which makes scenes where they do this look cartoonish. Yes, there's a great history in Martial Arts movies in particular of heroic badasses taking down entire armies by themselves. But this movie purports a very realistic feel for the entire run, and to suddenly see everyone turn into Superman for a mook fight is disappointing. Once more, the original film made all the Samurai into badasses without need for this.


Final thoughts:  Perhaps it is unfair of me to judge this film so harshly in the light of Seven Samurai, but this is a personal review, and Kurosawa's film colonized my memory so effectively in terms of what Samurai films ought to be that it's very hard for me to separate out this film, particularly when it takes such pains to emulate Seven Samurai in so many ways. That said, I don't want to give the wrong impression here. 13 Assassins does many things right, especially when it breaks from the Kurosawa format and adds new elements to an already established genre. This film wasn't a masterpiece by any means, but it was a damn good flick, proving once again that even a Flawed remake of Seven Samurai is still quite a thing.

Final Score:  7/10

Green Lantern

Alternate Title:  An Actor's Day, A Writer's Night, A Decent Film, but not too Bright

One sentence synopsis:  A test pilot is chosen by an intergalactic corps of superhero defenders to protect Earth from the living embodiment of Fear.


Things Havoc liked:  Green Lantern is a high concept, in almost every way. The comic is about a semi-omnipotent superbeing who can conjure anything he can imagine into reality in order to fight evil. Though I'm hardly an expert on the Green Lantern mythos, the notion has always been one of high concept space opera mated to superhero comics. The hero is incredibly powerful, the villains are cosmic-scale, the battles world-devouring in their scope. Much of the reason for this is that the comic, moreso than many of the contemporary ones, is hammy as all hell, and needs to cover for it by going all the way. Green Lantern has a magic poem he has to recite after all, and if you're going to sell magic poems, you really have to sell them absolutely. No sly winking to the audience, no holding back. The key to movies like this (as evidenced by Thor, among others) is absolute sincerity.

Ryan Reynolds is not a name I would normally have associated with Hal Jordan. Until this film, I don't know that I've ever seen him before. However, in this film, he manifests the proper sincerity that is necessary for someone to be a convincing Green Lantern. Not knowing the comic terribly well, I can't speak to the "fidelity" of the portrayal, but he did manage to convince me that he could be both a test pilot, and ultimately, even a superhero. Known mostly for romantic comedy roles (which I avoid like the plague), Reynolds is able to successfully turn what I must assume to be natural charm on in this film, and manifests the proper sense of wonder, awe, and eagerness that makes the film breathe. It is not an easy feat to recite the Green Lantern oath on film and make it sound credible. Reynolds has to do it twice.

We live in an age where good special effects are not even remarkable anymore, but even by those standards, those in Green Lantern are top notch. They do not commit the terrible sin of simply piling image upon image, and even give us a pretty memorable vision of a villain in the form of Parallax the World Destroyer. The Green Lantern suit seems real, and the conjurations that he and the other Lanterns produce have heft and weight to them.

The supporting cast in this film is very high caliber, which works to the film's advantage. Peter Sarsgaard, an excellent actor, plays Hector Hammond, one of the antagonists of the film, and brings creepy life to a fairly pedestrian character. Sinestro, not yet evil, is played by the always-dependable Mark Strong, who seems to be channeling David Niven (not a bad thing). Smaller roles are given to veteran, excellent actors such as Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett, and the voices of none other than Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan. As a result, some of the scenes and lines that would not normally work are able to garner a pass due to the caliber of actor delivering them.


Things Havoc disliked:   Some of the scenes that don't work get a pass. Not all. Not even most.

This film's screenplay needed another six months in the oven. Some of the individual lines, and even a couple of scenes, are actually pretty good, but overall the plot, while coherent (not as easy as it sounds with a Green Lantern movie), is lackadaisical at best. The exposition, while not the worst I've ever seen, is very clunky. Thor had no less of a fantastical setting to establish, but did so effortlessly, while in this movie we clearly encounter the dreaded "Designated Exposition Scene" more than once, and not even Geoffrey Rush's narration can carry us over it.

Worse yet, the entire movie is comprised of one long set of Daddy Issues, which are established ham-handedly and without skill in a series of jarring flashback scenes and awkward Villain-Exposition-Moments. Hal Jordan misses his dead father. Hector Hammond resents his successful one. Green Lantern is about imagination and awe, and the one thing a film version should not be is formulaic and predictable. The tired old cliches of "Why doesn't my father love me?" and "How do I overcome my fear" have not only been done to death, but more importantly, have been done much better and with more wit and care than this. I don't mind if a character doesn't know his true potential for courage or resents his father. There's a reason these concepts keep getting re-used, after all. But give me something interesting and worth caring about when they do these things, characters who are smart enough to retain my interest and written well enough to make me pay attention. Don't just go through the motions, especially in a film like this.

The lack of originality unfortunately spills over into the Lantern's powers. Green Lantern can literally create anything he can think of out of pure force of will. Not only is this a tremendous power, but it allows the screenwriters to completely go to town. Unfortunately, they don't go very far. One or two moments of conjuration were inventive enough to make me smirk (I kind of liked him getting sick of Sinestro's bullshit in the sparring session and pulling out a minigun), but the majority of Hal's conjurations are exactly what you'd expect him to use. Someone fights you? Get a big fist. Someone shoots at you? Make a shield. Green Lantern is about flights of wild imagination and fantasy. Give us something truly breathtaking, not springs and toy catapults.

Finally, in a movie with excellent actors, someone who just isn't up to par is gonna stand out all the worse. Blake Lively, who plays the most obvious "designated damsel in distress" I've seen in a while, is one such sub-par actress. She's not terrible, but unlike the rest of the cast, she doesn't have the chops to surpass the mediocre writing that's fed to her.


Final thoughts:  Green Lantern, at it's heart, is a mediocre movie elevated somewhat by the sincerity of the lead actor and the skill of the supporting cast. It's not a bad film, but it is a very forgettable film, which given the subject matter, is almost worse. Reynolds tries to evoke the epic, sweeping scale of the material with his acting, and does a legitimately credible job, but he is hamstrung by bad screenplay decisions, ugly exposition, and pace-grinding "introspective" moments accompanied by terrible show-don't-tell violations. Some lines, and even some scenes in this movie seem to hint at a far better film than this one was, but overall, the movie never manages to rise above decency. If they ever made a sequel to this movie, it might well be significantly better than this one, as the backstory and exposition would not be necessary. Unfortunately, given the overall quality of this movie, I would not rate that as a strong likelihood.

Final Score:  5.5/10